The Skeptics Guide #1091 - Jun 6 2026

Special Guest: Christian Hubicki; Quickie with Bob: Meteor over New England; News Items: While House Proposal on Science Funding, Medical Aid in Dying, AI Attention, Expensive Audio Cables; The Science of Survivor; Who's That Noisy; Science or Fiction

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:33Speaker 01

  You're listening to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.

• 0:40Speaker 02

  Hello, and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Thursday, June 4th, 2026, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella.

• 0:49Bob Novella?

  Hey, everybody.

• 0:50Speaker 02

  Kara Santa Maria. Howdy. Jay Novella. Hey, guys. Evan Bernstein. Good evening, folks. And we have a very special guest this week who's going to join us for the whole show, is a guest rogue, Christian Hubicki. Christian, welcome back to the SGU.

• 1:03Speaker 04

  It is great to be back. As a guest rogue, what an honor. It's great to chat with you all.

• 1:08Speaker 02

  So in case anybody out there doesn't know, Christian, you are the Director of Optimal Robotics Lab and an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Florida State University. And that's pretty much how you are best known to the world. Would you agree with that?

• 1:21Speaker 04

  That's precisely right. 100% I agree with that. Without a doubt, no one knows me for anything else, so what's going on with the show?

• 1:27Speaker 02

  I mean, incidentally, we could mention offhand that you were in two seasons of Survivor. If anybody watches that show, I don't know.

• 1:33Speaker 04

  What's Survivor? Yeah. Is that still on?

• 1:36Bob Novella?

  Not right now. Not just any two, not just any two seasons, just finishing season 50.

• 1:41Speaker 04

  50? Yep, yep. They just keep making those. They just keep adding numbers. It's funny how numbers work. But yeah, they have been, they've been pumping out two, two seasons a year since 2000 with a one-year break for COVID. So I think just to, as mathematicians would say, 2026.

• 1:57Bob Novella?

  But season 50, that was a, that's probably the most special season ever yet. So it's, it's an honor just to be on that season. I think it was just like, whoa, what a huge, a huge pat on the back, I think.

• 2:10Speaker 02

  Clearly.

• 2:10Speaker 04

  It was, it was a lot of fun. I got, I mean, it was quite a flattering call to get. I mean, there, there have been like 751 people who have played the show, but who's counting? And, and I think that it's so, it's a, it's a rarefied air that they, they even call you for consideration, but to actually be out there, it really felt like something special, you know? I was out there with people that I hadn't, that I watched on television, you know, when I was 14 years old, when the first, when the first season came out. So I'm like, oh, I'm there with them. I'm on a beach with them and I might have to vote them out tonight. We'll see what goes, what happens.

• 2:42Speaker 02

  So did you have fun when you were on the show? Was that fun or was it really this massively stressful or both?

• 2:47Speaker 04

  It is, it is both, but it is extremely fun. There, there's a reason I went back two times. It's the, it's an incredibly intensive fun. And it's for a very particular type, type of psychotic person.

• 2:59Speaker 02

  What, what type is that?

• 3:03Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, well, skeptics guide rogues, of course, is what I mean. That's what I mean. Now, it, it, it is, I'm sure, I'm sure we'll talk about it more later. But it is the kind of show that like, it's, for those who don't know, it's, it's more than just like a Naked and Afraid style survivor, survival show. Not that there's anything wrong with that, except me being naked on television, you know, but they're, they're, they're, they're, they're great. But like, there's, there's a strategy element to how you have to vote people off. It's a game of social politics of trying to get to the end without being voted off. And that emits this whole world of like, of like high strategy and deception and like game theory and like multi-agent dynamics. That tickles the roboticist in me and it tickles it good.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  But you didn't get to bring any robots with you to the island though.

• 3:46Bob Novella?

  Just on his shirt.

• 3:47Speaker 04

  Just on my shirt. Otherwise, you know, ironically though, Steve, one of the things I was, I was working, when I first applied to be on Survivor, I was working in a robotics lab. That specialized in walking on sand. And I was like, that was a nice little talking point. It's like, oh yes. It's like, I, you know, you know, this is your strategy for walking on sand. We run these kinds of algorithms for that and you promptly lose everyone's attention on the island and just hope you aren't immediately being a consequence.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  I gotta mention, Christian, early in the show, when you made fire with the glasses.

• 4:16Speaker 04

  Oh, boy.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  I was like in heaven from seeing you do that. It was so, it was so awesome because you, you clearly displayed science on the show and it was such a profound like, you know, making fire is awesome, but you did it with like, you know, like a rusty spoon and a rock. You know, it was like,

• 4:32Speaker 04

  Guyver did.

• 4:33Speaker 02

  Grab these couple of things. I'm going to make fire was such a hero moment for anyone that appreciates science. Clearly you read Lord of the Flies.

• 4:40Speaker 04

  Well, I, I, I more, I more just paid attention in optics, you know, I, I think that's really the one of the prerequisites there. I mean, it, it is one of the beautiful moments like, that, like, I didn't plan to have to come out to make fire. You might think that's like silly on a show like Survivor, but it's about so many things other than not starving. In fact, you just basically planned to starve the whole time. And basically at a point where I'm like, we're out here, what are we doing? It's very sunny and because this was a, this was season 50, it was a big all-star season. So they're bringing back players who played a long time ago. They, a lot of them tend to be a little older and had reading glasses. And I was like, oh, wait, there's an opportunity here. Because, you know, because as, as people, you know, may or may not be aware, reading glasses, they're, they're of course convex lenses. They focus like, that's what you need. If you want to make a fire, you know, I'm, I am horribly nearsighted.

• 5:23Speaker 04

  So my, my, so my diffusing lenses would not be useful. So it was kind of like a perfect storm of like things like, hey, let's just try it. And sure enough, it worked out. And if it hadn't, it would have been horribly embarrassing because like the camera guys are like hovering over your shoulder as you're trying to do this. And eventually they're just going to get bored and walk away. And that would be a dejecting feeling to know that you're too boring trying to make fire for, for Survivor. So I'm glad it worked out. Otherwise I would have been very embarrassed.

• 5:47Bob Novella?

  It hasn't been done of 50 seasons. There's only really a handful of times where it was actually successfully done on the show. So this is not something that-

• 5:55Speaker 02

  I think Yao Man Chan made fire with glasses, if I recall.

• 5:58Speaker 04

  Yep. I, I believe he did. And I think they had to use, in fact, I think they used someone's nearsighted glasses and he used a drop of water to help focus the light in that case. So you make your own little miniature bifocal in that case. Uh, but yeah, I mean, it's not a, it's not a common thing. It wasn't something I'm planning on doing. But that's kind of the nature of a show like Survivor, as, and frankly, in science in general, you kind of got to adapt to the data in front of you and say, you know, this is our world now. This is what we gotta do.

• 6:22Speaker 02

  Well, Christian, you're going to talk to us a little bit later in the show about the science of Survivor. And I want to hear about how being a skeptic was a dis- Distinct advantage in the game. But first, we're going to go through some news items. Bob, starting with you, you can give us a quickie.

• 6:36Bob Novella?

  All right, guys. Thank you, Steve. This is your quickie with Bob. Let's talk about the New England meteor that happened this past weekend. Explosions were actually reported throughout New England this past Saturday, May 30. And so we got some official information from from various sources. One of them was the American Meteor Society. They said that this was a three foot wide, and of course, one meter, they have to say after that. One meter wide meteor, it entered the atmosphere, say, north of Boston. They said that at the time that it was unlikely the meteor struck the ground. There were reports all the way from Delaware to Montreal, so it had a big swath, you know, of the air of the country, the East Coast, that actually heard it.

• 7:19Bob Novella?

  It was a double boom. A lot of reports were of a double boom. Some people said they felt the ground shake. Some saw the fireball, and I actually found a video showing the fireball, which was, which they said looked like a shooting star in the daytime sky. The video that I saw, it was going, it seemed to be going straight down. But of course, you really don't know what the angle was, right? I could have been at the bad angle, and it could have looked going, like it was going straight down, but it could be at an angle. But it was big. I mean, you could tell, I mean, if you're seeing a shooting star in the daytime sky, this is bright, and this looked, this looked big, too. I would have loved to have seen it at night. NASA also then chimed in. They say, they said that this, it was natural, it's not a satellite, it's not space debris, it's not alien technology, although they didn't say that last bit.

• 8:04Bob Novella?

  The NASA spokesperson, Allard Butel, said that the meteor was traveling about 75,000 miles per hour, 120,700 kilometers per hour. He said that it likely fragmented about 40 miles or 60 kilometers above the ground. And what do you guys think of the estimates of the energy release? How many, how much TNT do you think was equivalent?

• 8:28Speaker 02

  Couple of hundred tons. 12 meg. Tons. No.

• 8:31Bob Novella?

  Mega tons.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  Uh, 500 gigawatts.

• 8:34Bob Novella?

  No, 20 exatons. No, it's only 300 tons, 300 tons of TNT. Yeah, that's a lot of, that's still a lot of TNT. But then there was a later analysis and so we got a different detail. So NASA was saying, I guess a couple of days later that there was like a five foot wide, not a three foot wide diameter meteor, 1.25 meters or something. They said that the fireball was as heavy as an elephant. The, the speed of the, the velocity of this, they said was not 72,000, not, not 75,000 miles per hour, but 42,000 miles per hour. Uh, the density, it was kind of dense, 8,000 kilograms per cubic meter. So they said this was consistent with an iron meteorite. And I mean, I've seen iron meteorites up close.

• 9:17Bob Novella?

  They are amazing things. They just seem like they are glued to the earth. They are so ridiculously heavy. And they also said that this did not just disintegrate in the atmosphere. They said that it fell in Cape Cod Bay. NASTRA Astronom materials research and exploration science division said, this fall into water is technically called a fishy squisher.

• 9:38Speaker 02

  A fishy squisher?

• 9:39Bob Novella?

  A fishy squisher. That's what they call.

• 9:41Speaker 02

  Squish the fish?

• 9:42Bob Novella?

  I, you know, that's kind of funny and goofy. I think I could have come up with something a little better, but okay, it's fishy squisher. So I'll end with my experience with this. I am on stage at the Extravaganza in Madison. And because I'm hopelessly addicted to my cell phone, I felt the vibration in my pocket.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:59Bob Novella?

  We were on stage and it was during a period where we weren't doing anything. So we're just standing there and I just took a quick look at my screen. And it's, it was from my wife Liz and I see two things. I see Boston and I see meteor. And then Jay notices me, stands right in front of me and says, put your phone away. So of course I had to obey Jay.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  I am the producer of the show, Bob.

• 10:22Bob Novella?

  Yes.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  So like I'm constantly wearing multiple hats. I'm, I am monitoring everything that's going on.

• 10:27Bob Novella?

  So of course, I put my phone away. We did a fantastic show. But I gotta say, for the rest of that show, I'm thinking, oh, yeah, Boston is a smoking crater right now, and we're doing this show. So I gotta say, I was kind of low ski, low-key scared for the rest of the show, thinking, how bad was this? Because I only really caught two words. So of course, when the show was over, I looked, and it was, you know, fairly benign, no injuries. So that's, so that's my story. So, so that's it. I wish I could have seen it or even heard it. But this has been your fishy squisher quickie with Bob. Back to you, Steve.

• 10:59Speaker 02

  Bob, I'm kind of surprised you're not complaining about the fact that one of the most dramatic meteors in our location happened when we were out of town and across the country.

• 11:09Bob Novella?

  But that's Bob's way. I kind of have a pact with the devil. The devil let me see the Dallas eclipse, you know, total eclipse. So I can't complain for five full years. So we got to wait. I can't complain for a while.

• 11:22Speaker 04

  I do think that Bob, I think the fishy squisher quickie with Bob is some, someone's Manchurian candidate code phrase that you just activated in the audience.

• 11:29Bob Novella?

  Oh, yeah, that would be quite obscure.

• 11:32Speaker 05

  But you said, heavy as an elephant. How do they know that?

• 11:35Speaker 02

  Estimated it.

• 11:36Speaker 05

  Yeah. Well, what kind of elephant? You know, there's all sorts of elephants.

• 11:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, African or Asian.

• 11:41Bob Novella?

  Probably African.

• 11:42Speaker 05

  I don't know.

• 11:45Speaker 05

  One morning, I shot an elephant in my pajamas.

• 11:47Speaker 02

  What I was doing in my pajamas? I had no idea. All right.

• 11:52Bob Novella?

  But there's, there's three species of elephant, though, now, right?

• 11:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, there's, there's African elephants, really two species now?

• 11:58Bob Novella?

  Yes.

• 11:58Speaker 02

  All right.

• 11:59Bob Novella?

  Just throwing that out there.

• 11:59Speaker 02

  All right, Jay. Yeah. This is a big issue, and this is, this is going to be complicated. So tell us about the White House's proposal on science funding. Okay, I wanted, my disclaimer for this discussion we're about to have is I try very hard to not get too political here, okay? But I'm going to try to be, I'm going to try to do it as if Steve was doing it, okay? All right. I'll let you know how you do. All right, so here's what's going on. This is a major science policy story that's developing here in the United States. And it's not just about funding, but it's about who gets to decide what science is

• 12:41Speaker 02

  worth funding. And anybody who is paying attention to what's going on politically here in the United States, what I just said should make you very concerned. All right. So the situation is this, the Trump administration just proposed a broad rewrite or whatever of the federal grant rules through the Office of Management and Budget. And their official framing of this is that these changes will demand transparency and accountability and oversight and making sure federal money is spent in line with law and policy. Sure, if you want to believe that, that's not what I believe. I don't think they do anything like that. We've been following this issue for the last year and a half on science-based medicine, and everything dire that we predicted has come true. In fact, it's worse than we

• 13:26Speaker 02

  predicted, and this is a good example of that. But for what you're saying, on the surface, surface level, if you had no context whatsoever, and you just read, "We're going to support transparent science and gold standard science and all that stuff," it sounds fine. But when you know how it's being applied, and you know who's saying it, it's very clear that this is just all code for, "We're going to fund what we want to fund, and we're going to find excuses not to fund anything we don't want to fund." Yeah. So, under the proposal, federal agencies would have, they have to add an extra review step before awarding whatever grant is being proposed. And again, that might be like, "Okay, more oversight." Well, hold on. The review would be done by senior

• 14:10Speaker 02

  political appointees, or by people that they just simply choose. And the proposal also says that grants should support the president's policy priorities when relevant, which is all code for, "They're going to pick what science gets funded, and it's going to be at the whim of the administration or at Trump's whim, and not have anything to do with what scientists think should be researched."

• 14:36Speaker 02

  It's lycanthroism. It's 100% lycanthroism. So the peer review process isn't going to disappear. You know, the, the current system that the scientists are operating in, it's all there. It's just going to lose power. You know, scientists could still review grant proposals and they can make recommendations all they want, but those recommendations are, are now only going to be advisory and the final authority is going to rest, you know, just heavily and clearly with agency leadership and political appointees. So this is, this is the key shift and this is where they insert total control over future science funding. Scientific proposals, I shouldn't have to say this, but scientific proposals should be evaluated mainly by people who understand

• 15:20Speaker 02

  the freaking science. And based on merit. Based on merit. Yeah. Can't just be, you know, but we understanding the science is, is a two words that are, are a mouthful. It's a profound thing to say. To, to clearly understand the science of any given scientific sphere. We're not talking about someone who's well read on it. We want to talk to, we want people who really know it, understand it, can eat that stuff for breakfast. Like it's got to be something that they've been working on, I don't know, for 30 years of their life before they could really get their head wrapped around certain topics, you know, like global warming sounds pretty, you know, we're all used to hearing it and we all have a pretty good concept, I hope of what it is. But when you talk to a meteorologist who really understands the complexity of global warming, like there is,

• 16:05Speaker 02

  there is orders of magnitude differences in that understanding level. Jay, it's beyond that. I would get even more, more stark. At that level, when you're like on committees deciding, deciding grants for the NIH or whatever, you are a recognized world expert in your field. That's the level that you are at, right? Not, not just, you know, even a run of the mill expert, right? It's a world recognized leader in that field. You're right. So it's not orders of magnitude. You're in the top, you know, percent. Yeah. You're definitely not just one of.

• 16:37Cara Santa Maria?

  Trump's homies.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course. Yeah. Not so, or you know, like Elon Musk had a 20 year old, like, you know, cutting departments out of the US government. Like, you know, I don't know if it's going to be that bad, but it could be because, you know. No, it's explicitly going to be that bad because they're basically saying, yeah, it has to align with the administration's priorities. That's really vague. That basically means they can stop anything they want. They, they're the gatekeepers for any federal agency of science funding. And that means that, you know, Trump thinks that global warming is a hoax. So goodbye, any research on global warming. And there's a couple more things here, Steve. One of them is, you know, we are seeing a,

• 17:18Speaker 02

  a administration who can be purchased, right? I mean, there are multiple ways to get money, you know, money to Trump. A lot of people are doing it through his. Cryptocurrency. Through his crypto. But imagine, you know, companies paying to get certain things, you know, researched, instead of it happening in, you know, by, by what the scientists think. Like, it's going to be driven by, you know, hugely, um, you know, powerful and deep-pocketed corporations, which is, which is not a good idea. And then there's an even deeper issue here that bothers me. So, once, once these political appointees actually are empowered and they start deciding which science is acceptable, the researchers are going to start to adapt to those politics,

• 17:59Speaker 02

  right? Because, you know, there are so many scientists out there whose, you know, income is on, is on a string. You know, they're like, getting grants is how they pay the bills.

• 18:09Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, that's how all scientists pay the bills.

• 18:12Speaker 02

  Right, the vast majority. So in a well-functioning science system, you know, the, the funding comes in, but there are guardrails and there are, you know, it's not like, there isn't that much, you know, government control. It's, it is being directed by the right people. But when it, when it turns into this, people need to continue to make that money because they're not just doing science, but they're earning money for their families, right? They might avoid controversial topics and they might rewrite proposals that, you know, go in line with whatever the administration thinks is the right thing to do that month. They might stop asking questions that are scientifically important, or, you know, they might be politically inconvenient questions, you know, like, you know, how about, you know, scientific research being done for transgender people, you know, that's just gone.

• 18:55Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, that's the thing, like, Jay, like, we've seen this historically at like a teeny tiny fraction of what's about to happen. Like, we saw this when the government said, "We are not going to be funding embryonic stem cell research." We've seen this when the government said, "We're not going to be funding public health research that relates to firearms." And we've seen widespread negative outcomes from a lack of government funding in very specific ideological cases. Now, we're going to see that just willy-nilly across the board, and you're right, it's going to be anti-woke science. That's going to be the mandate.

• 19:35Speaker 02

  And the scientists are going to learn where their new boundaries are, and then their research is slowly going to become less independent and less poignant, you know, it's going to be dumbed down, or they're going to start trying to navigate through that, whatever that future process is going to be. And we are going to, on the other side of this, it's one thing to like, just cut money to science, which we've already seen, like, you know, there's been defunding left, right, and center all over this administration. But now, now we are getting more into like, this top-down direction, they're giving up, they're being given a prime directive that they're going to start to follow. And I, and I really do think, if we pay attention to this, I bet you that we're going to see some really nasty things happen here.

• 20:18Speaker 02

  Like, it's going to be, it's going to be too, way too much for science to, to really stay healthy in this, in our freaking country. It'll be a disaster. You're missing a couple of layers there, too, Jay. So, it's not just that scientists are going to start tweaking their proposals to meet political ends, entire questions will be eliminated from research, and also, there's a competition for grant money, and the best, you know, ideas, the best lab- Whatever are the ones that get the money, the ones that are most likely to produce good results or reliable results or useful results. And that, that again merit based competition is going to go away to a politically based competition. So we're not going to be selecting for quality.

• 20:58Speaker 02

  We're going to be selecting for, you know, things that, that are pleasing politically to the current regime.

• 21:05Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, journals are going to be flooded with like anti-vax articles.

• 21:08Speaker 02

  Yes, absolutely.

• 21:10Cara Santa Maria?

  And, and people are going to start believing those publications.

• 21:14Speaker 02

  And further, a lot of scientists are just going to leave the United States because why deal with a system like this? Right? It's, it's, uh, you, you can't maintain a lab with this kind of unpredictability.

• 21:25Speaker 04

  That's exactly right, Steve. I mean, it's like, I mean, as I'm a, I'm a P I of a lab, you know, I have,

• 21:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:31Speaker 04

  You're an active researcher, you're, you're, you have to get grant money too. And you mentioned people like, you know, their, their own livelihoods are on the line. Yes, that's true. I'll tell you one thing that's a big pressure is your students livelihoods are on the line. Students come to your, come to your lab, they'll, they'll fly maybe across the world to work in your laboratory on the promise that you get funding. And they can, and they can cancel it also according to this proposal for basically any reason in the middle of a grant. And that's, and so, so they have that capability. And so like when you're, when you, your, your poor students who are basically just trying to make ends meet on their stipends as they get through grad school can be taken away. That's very motivating, you know, even if it's not even for selfish reasons, it's for their, for their reasons. And there's a lot of knock on effects. Obviously you guys are handling the macro level of this, this greatly, but just sort of the granular level, what that means like from like actually like putting these proposals out the door.

• 22:16Speaker 04

  It's a political process, like you mentioned, Steve, and that means it's very much like a patronage system, right? We do see this to some degree in some gradations already, even before all these changes in the research, in the research world. Like the NSF process is highly, highly peer review driven. I mean, I've been on some NSF panels and it's, and it's very intensive and the scientists are really going at it. There's debating, you know, the validity of the methods and all these, and all of these details. And at the end of the day, the program officer has to make a call. They have some judgment there, but it's heavily peer review driven. But there are other departments like particularly Like defense departments where sometimes it's a program officer who really trusts this one researcher. So like they already kind of have a good relationship with them.

• 23:00Speaker 04

  They delivered to them before, so they're probably more likely to get the money. And that there's strengths and weaknesses to that. Like it could end up being sort of just reinforcing one lab, getting to point of view, getting a lot of money all the time. So it's not ideal, uh, but it's sort of like, it's a little less on the peer review side of the spectrum. They'll get informed by peer review, but, but, but here you have actual political interests, right? So not only do you have, are you going to be, you know, sucking up to very particular people in kind of the worst sort of way. If you're de-emphasizing peer review, you can flat out put in wrong data, wrong conclusions, wrong preliminary results to get it, to just pass muster of the political appointees. And if they don't care about the peer review, the, the peer reviewers, um, that's really bad.

• 23:42Speaker 04

  And on top of that, I mean, peer review within, uh, within NSF is very much anonymous. Like you were not even supposed to say, like, when we were on a panel. I mean, I, I, I think it's okay for me to say, say, I was on panels at some point. But like, they don't want you to say anything because they want to protect your anonymity, uh, both from other researchers, but also from Congress. So if you approved a grant that they don't like, they don't come back after you. Well, what's that going to be like now in the peer review process where you have a political appointee approving the grant? Let's say, you know, someone puts out a really, they, someone puts out a proposal with really dubious data, some crazy fringe theory. And a scientist on the panel speaks up like, this is nonsense. This is garbage.

• 24:22Speaker 04

  Well, the political appointee is going to be aware of that and they could, and, and they could, uh, you know, exact some kind of political revenge on them by terminating their other grants. Right? So it even quells the peer review itself to what degree is there?

• 24:34Cara Santa Maria?

  Which is how it becomes like psychoism. Yeah, it's poison. All of these steps are going to lead to a politicized science that is no longer in keeping with all of the guardrails that have existed throughout at least Western history. So you, we will see coming out of the United States, published that like, we will lose all trust in major institutions. There will be journals that either go down in flames and become defunct, or new people will fill in the power vacuum who are willing to say, sure, yeah, we'll publish this. And all of a sudden, all of the things we used to trust will be shadows of their former selves.

• 25:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is absolute poison to the institution. We should say, by the way, for anyone in the audience who doesn't know what Lysenkoism is, we're referring to a time during the Soviet Union when Lysenko, a geneticist, was a political, basically, appointee. And his very flawed science, pseudoscience, really, became politically favorable. So that is now the example of what happens when you completely politicize what should be a science, evidence, merit-based process.

• 25:42Cara Santa Maria?

  And what happened? Lots of people died.

• 25:44Speaker 02

  It was a disaster.

• 25:45Cara Santa Maria?

  Right?

• 25:45Speaker 02

  It was an absolute disaster.

• 25:46Cara Santa Maria?

  This is how we should...

• 25:47Speaker 05

  Oh, my gosh. It took generations for them to recover from that.

• 25:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, he was like, this is how we should grow our crops, based on my science. And it was not based on good science. And people just died. There was massive famine.

• 25:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. So there's a lot of other layers here, too. There's a lot of other bad things happening here. David Goritsky wrote a great article about it on Science-Based Medicine. He goes into the weeds on all the little things inside this proposal. But one thing he pointed out that I thought was very interesting, he said, "The Republicans are writing this as if they're always going to be in power."

• 26:21Cara Santa Maria?

  Right.

• 26:22Speaker 02

  Do they really want the next Democratic president to have this level of power they're giving themselves?

• 26:28Cara Santa Maria?

  I don't think Trump believes that he will be leaving office.

• 26:31Speaker 02

  And I don't think he cares what happens after he leaves.

• 26:33Bob Novella?

  No, I don't think he cares.

• 26:34Cara Santa Maria?

  I think both of those things are true.

• 26:35Speaker 02

  I don't know. I don't know. Some combination of those things is true, where they're just really, really short-sighted. Because this is usually what restrains presidents, because you have to think, the next guy can do this. Whatever power I give myself, I'm giving to the next member of the other party. But that doesn't seem to be restraining them here.

• 26:53Bob Novella?

  I want to know something. Say there's some anomalous multi-billionaire out there who's like, "You know, this really sucks. I'm going to throw $100 billion at science to try to make up for this travesty that we are experiencing. What do you guys think they could accomplish with just that much money?"

• 27:12Speaker 02

  It would help, but you can't make up for the funding that the United States government supports. No individual can do that.

• 27:19Cara Santa Maria?

  And just the institutional trust. I think that's even stronger than the money.

• 27:23Bob Novella?

  Yeah, I'm just trying to take away something that I could think about that makes me not want to rip a hole in reality and throw these... People inside of it.

• 27:32Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I mean, we're gonna all be hail marrying to Bill Gates after this one, but I don't think it's gonna be enough. You're right.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  NIH funding, that one institution is $48 billion.

• 27:42Bob Novella?

  All right, 200 billion, 250.

• 27:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:45Speaker 02

  But Kara's right, it's not just the money, it's the infrastructure, it's the culture, it's the process.

• 27:51Bob Novella?

  I know.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  It's also the stability, it's having faith that your grant money can't just be yanked away mid-cycle because of shifting political winds. I mean, it just makes the whole endeavor unsustainable.

• 28:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, if you talk to any colleagues that are in the line of fire for any of these cuts, it is just incredibly stressful for them. Like any meeting you see them at, they're like, it's like the first 10 minutes is like, "Yeah, we don't even know we'll have funding in a month, or we're gonna be able to pay our students soon, but we're still trying to plan what they're gonna do with the money, what the next experiment is." So you have to live in these two minds of perpetual uncertainty, which is just horrible.

• 28:33Cara Santa Maria?

  And that's not new for a lot of people who are already working for government agencies where they've been doing this kind of preemptive gutting. My friends at EPA, my friends at NASA, I mean, it's dire. It's been dire for many, many months.

• 28:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:48Cara Santa Maria?

  And so I think we could learn a lot from those individuals, like how they're weathering that storm. Because this is also, as you guys mentioned before, the macro to the micro, there are massive psychological consequences that come from this.

• 29:00Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 29:01Cara Santa Maria?

  There's gonna be a lot of crisis, a lot of trauma.

• 29:03Speaker 04

  And Kara, your friends, I apologize, your friends, if they're at these government institutions, that's gotta be incredibly stressful. Like, at least in the university systems, as much as they're dependent upon grant funding, they'll do things like, at the university level, will extend funding to like, cover you over the gaps where they're like, "Oh, we will make sure we back up your grants, because we know it's important to maintain stability, keep your students from dropping out of the program." They can do that for a little bit, but if you're purely under a government organization, you don't have that kind of even temporary safety net, so that's gotta be just rough.

• 29:35Cara Santa Maria?

  Absolutely.

• 29:36Bob Novella?

  I mean, it's another safeguard. After this whole crazy period is over. Whatever ends, it's another safeguard that needs to be put in and codified in like what law or amendments or whatever, just like things that we've talked about in terms of like saving democracy, like these, you know, things that were that aren't just guardrails. They're just like these things that you aren't easy to overcome. And we got to do it for science research as well, right?

• 29:59Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, but it's not like we don't have that. I mean, that's a whole other conversation, but I think it's, it's safe to say that like, there've been a lot of really strong guardrails. And when somebody wants to mow over them, they're going to figure out how to do it legally or otherwise.

• 30:14Speaker 02

  Unless somebody else holds them accountable. I mean, as far as I could tell, this, this is all legal. This is part of the regulation that the executive branch can do in executing the laws passed by the legislative branch. So that's not, I don't, I don't, nothing I read makes me think there's any legal issue here. It's just, this is just massively stupid is that is basically what it is. Now, one final word, this, we are in the middle of an, of the public open comment phase for this, which is necessary. They have to read and answer every comment. So we need to flood them with comments about how horrible an idea this is. Again, I'll direct you to the science-based medicine article from earlier this week, the lycenkoization of federal

• 30:59Speaker 02

  science takes a big step forward. This is the June 1 article on science-based medicine. There's a link at the bottom of that on how to post a public comment. All right. I hate to go to another heady comment, Kara, but you're going to tell us about medical aid and dying. How's that go?

• 31:15Cara Santa Maria?

  So this came into the news cycle recently because just this year, another state has joined the list of places in the United States where it is now legal and protected to die using medical aid. Those who kind of followed during my time going back to school and finishing my PhD may remember that this was the topic of my doctoral dissertation. And at the time that I defended my dissertation, there were 11 jurisdictions in the United States that sanctioned

• 31:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Medical aid and dying. So that was 10 states plus the District of Columbia. And now that number has risen and in rising to 13 states now plus Washington DC. We've gone from one in five Americans to I think now it's one in three. Almost one in three Americans now have legal access to medical aid and dying legislation. So this is a big change that's happened only in the last, I defended my dissertation in 2023. So three years, this much change.

• 32:23Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 32:24Cara Santa Maria?

  So, yeah, I thought that I would go through a little bit. I'm not going to get into the weeds about, you know, the New York law specifically. But I, I actually queued up my dissertation because I have like a big lit review here. Even though now it's like out of date by three years. Just to talk about some of the main points when it comes to medical aid and dying, dying. In case if you are not aware of them. Time and time again, you know, I work in a, as a psychologist in a cancer center in a very large metropolitan hospital. And time and time again, I come across patients who do not know that they have legal access to this option in California. So check your state. I can actually, you don't have to check. I'll tell you right now. I'll even go in alphabetical order for you.

• 33:06Cara Santa Maria?

  California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, Washington DC and Washington State. The earliest passage was 1994 in Oregon. And the most recent now is New York, 2026. But just 2025 was the passage in Illinois and Delaware. And the, the most recent before that was New Mexico, which was 2021 before I published.

• 33:34Speaker 04

  Sorry, Cara, I just had to interrupt here. I was, I was hoping for a more perfect person to talk on this topic. Do we have anyone around that?

• 33:41Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, there are some people I could call up. I could call up one of my dissertation, uh, external readers who has even more. But yes, so, so I want to give a little bit of background on what MAID is. You'll hear me use the word MAID, uh, because it's faster. That is an initialism. No, that's an acronym. It's an acronym. Aid in dying and the reason that I'm very careful in my language and saying medical aid in dying, sometimes you'll hear me say some euphemisms like dying with medical aid or a physician. I won't even usually say physician assisted dying because it sounds too much like a euphemism that I really am trying to get out of the vernacular.

• 34:21Speaker 02

  Is the is the term euthanasia no longer used?

• 34:24Cara Santa Maria?

  It's actually not euthanasia. So physician assisted suicide is no longer used and there's actually a broad distinction between what is legal in the US and euthanasia, which I'll get into in just a second.

• 34:34Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 34:34Cara Santa Maria?

  But it's important that I use the the correct terminology for that reason. And that's really how I actually opened up my dissertation in the lit review for that reason. So what is medical aid and dying? Obviously, there are different operational definitions, but for the most part, this does stand in, I think, every single state and jurisdiction where it is legal in the US. It refers to, I'm reading this verb, I can quote myself, verbatim, the legally sanctioned act of taking prescribed medication to hasten death. So you might hear it as medical assistance and dying medically assisted death, physician aid and dying assisted death, blah, blah, blah, hasten death, even end of life options. That's the name of the legislation here in California, right to die, death with dignity.

• 35:16Cara Santa Maria?

  You will not hear me use the word physician assisted suicide. I and and many others believe that suicide and medical assisted death are ideologically distinct. And I talk quite a lot about the difference between the two. This is a legally sanctioned process, and it's only legal for individuals who would otherwise die of natural causes within approximately six months. So that's why this is hastening death that is already coming as opposed to dying by suicide. Now, what is the distinction with euthanasia? This is the big one. Euthanasia is legal in several countries across the world, including the

• 35:58Cara Santa Maria?

  Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Colombia, New Zealand, Spain, parts of Australia, and Canada. But euthanasia involves an individual receiving a treatment from a physician or a medical professional. So very often, it will be an injection that hastens their death, whereas in medical aid in dying, the patient has to self ingest.

• 36:24Cara Santa Maria?

  So a doctor's not going to put a needle into your arm. A doctor's not going to put the drug into your body. You have to use some sort of mechanism to, you know, use your own volition to ingest that drug. Now, very often you'll hear self ingestion, uh, used as the, the kind of term of choice. That doesn't necessarily mean you have to drink the, the mixture, although that's the most common still, I think, according to the literature, way to take the medication. You can also, um, you know, die with a G tube or, uh, uh, through a, a rectal catheter. There are other approaches to self ingest medication if you physically can't swallow the medication, um, but it does have to be-

• 37:06Speaker 02

  What if you're paralyzed, you can't physically do anything?

• 37:08Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. So at that point, usually there are, I think, there's capability to rig something up. So, so long as it's your action.

• 37:17Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 37:18Cara Santa Maria?

  You know, whether it's an ALS situation and it's an eye twitch or something like that, and it rigs a plunger, you would still be able to self ingest.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  Gotcha.

• 37:25Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. Because the idea there obviously is that a lot of the pushback against these laws come from concerns that are moral and ethical. Some of the moral concerns have religious bases, but some of them have to do with coercion. By and large, the, the evidence shows that there, that coercion is not a big problem. And that's why actually over time, a lot of the more restrictive laws have been changed in favor of making them less restrictive, not more restrictive. A great example is that when the law was passed in California, originally there was a 15 day wait period between the two physician certifications that were required to have a prescription written for you.

• 38:06Cara Santa Maria?

  And we have since amended the law to change that wait period to only 48 hours because so many people who would have otherwise qualified ended up dying before they were able to get their second physician certification and they, uh, could have, um, mitigated some undue suffering. And so at, activists and advocates spoke up and the law was actually changed. So, you know, we talked a little bit about where it happens. Usually in most of the states, the laws are very similar, but there are some nuanced differences. We won't get into the differences, but the similarities. Six month or less prognosis, which by and large is the same exact requirement to qualify for hospice. Yeah.

• 38:49Cara Santa Maria?

  So if you qualify for hospice in the US, you probably qualify for medical aid in dying. It's not always the case, but but generally speaking, that is true. You have to have capacity to make your own decisions. This is where things get very tricky with dementia, very tricky with neurodegenerative diseases that change somebody's capacity. So individuals who are interested in utilizing this option need to make that decision while they still have legal capacity to do so. But not all states do require a psychologist or psychiatrist to sign off. In actually, most states, a physician can certify that a patient has capacity and they don't need a psych eval.

• 39:29Cara Santa Maria?

  And you also have to be 18 years or older, I think, in every single jurisdiction in the US. That is not the case in Switzerland, however. So but here in the United States, that is the case. Some states have wait periods, like I mentioned, some states have multiple required requests, some are oral, some are written. And two states now don't even have residency requirements. So many of the states require that you're a resident of that state. But now Oregon and Vermont have completely scrapped those requirements. So for individuals who do not reside in a state where they have legal access, Oregon and Vermont will act as sort of sanctuary states for those individuals.

• 40:12Cara Santa Maria?

  Also, I should note, this is important, any doctor, any hospital, any healthcare system can conscientiously object to being involved in the process. And while to some extent I agree with the option for individual practitioners to be able to opt out from my own personal moral perspectives, I do struggle in practice when we see whole healthcare systems and hospitals opting out because we end up having basically a care delivery problem where individuals In states where they have legal access, still aren't able to engage in medical aid and dying because they're in a rural part of the state and the only hospitals or large medical organizations

• 40:55Cara Santa Maria?

  nearby where they would be able to get that access might have religious affiliations that prevent them from proceeding. That's a lot of background, but I think a lot of people have a lot of misinformation about that. So I wanted to make sure that was all there. And then maybe we can open it up for just a little bit of discussion amongst the rogues about some of the moral ethical questions, or really just a discussion about where we are as a country with regard to medical aid and dying, especially very often, and I have lots of quotes in my dissertation about this, when we think about how we treat, you know, a Fido versus how we treat grandma.

• 41:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know. Every time we've had to put a pet down, my wife was like, why don't we do this for people? I mean, you know, basically like, we like, we will not let our cat suffer one day more than was absolutely necessary.

• 41:42Bob Novella?

  Oh, my God.

• 41:42Speaker 02

  And yet.

• 41:43Cara Santa Maria?

  And your cat can't even tell you that it's suffering.

• 41:45Speaker 02

  Right.

• 41:45Cara Santa Maria?

  You have to use like context.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  Obviously, people are different.

• 41:48Bob Novella?

  And by the way, and by the way, cats are especially adept at hiding any problems they're having, more so than dogs.

• 41:54Cara Santa Maria?

  Whereas there are states where grandma says, I want to hasten my death. And they say, no, grandma, you don't have that right.

• 42:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, so my one comment is that it's not as if, you know, we just let people suffer, right? I don't think that's.

• 42:08Cara Santa Maria?

  No, we have other end of life options for sure.

• 42:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, the other end of life option is we will treat your pain, even if it hastens your death. We're not going to specifically hasten your death, but we're not going to not hasten your death. We're going to treat you, make you as comfortable as we can. And that's the only priority. It's like comfort only care, right?

• 42:26Cara Santa Maria?

  That's, well, that's palliative sedation very often is what we'll refer to.

• 42:30Speaker 02

  But like, we know that this is, this is going to make them not stop breathing. And that's okay, you know?

• 42:35Cara Santa Maria?

  Right. There's a certain point, but that usually requires that that person is actively dying.

• 42:41Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 42:41Cara Santa Maria?

  It's not happening sometimes before all of the different processes are in place for that person to actively die. Whereas somebody who has an advanced metastatic cancer, who has gone through grueling rounds of chemotherapy. Radiation and surgery, who is saying and is told there are no more medical options. You've failed out of your trials. Now we're at the point where the cancer is going to take its course. We could palliate a little with radiation or chemo, but you're probably going to feel really sick. And they're like, I don't want to live like that anymore. They can choose to hasten death in a week before all of those symptoms get worse.

• 43:19Speaker 04

  One thing I thought she's an interesting Kara that I was about the co evidence on like coercive effects of people. And I think that that'd be one of the things that I imagine would be sticking point for people is like, oh, them being talked into, you know, assisted, assisted dying. How is, do you know how that's measured? Like, you know, obviously it's hard to ask them after the fact. So like, well, how is, you know how that would be measured? Cause that's a pretty compelling point. If you look at the evidence, it seems.

• 43:45Cara Santa Maria?

  I think it's more just a function of, you know, do we have, it's like, yes, we know that an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but are there lawsuits? Are there multiple people who are showing good evidence that individuals within their family? For example, were coerced or were told or were pressured into making this decision. And the truth of the matter is actually we're seeing by and large that the trend is in the other direction. People who have legal access are less aware of it than they should be. And very often they're running into barriers to access because of the kind of cover your ass mentality of a lot of the way that our healthcare system functions.

• 44:29Cara Santa Maria?

  And because of that, that carve out that allows anybody to conscientiously object. So while there are a lot of disability advocates and disability activist kind of groups, those seem to be the two biggest anti maid groups are disability activists and or advocates and religious concerns with the issue. Usually it's a little bit more complicated from a disability perspective, but there is obviously always going to be a fear around eugenic action, but there doesn't seem to be any good evidence to show. That people who are, you know, for example, and I'm putting this in heavy air quotes, a drain on the healthcare system, or people who are alive when they quote unquote shouldn't be,

• 45:14Cara Santa Maria?

  any sort of like argument that people might make, there's not good evidence to show that. If anything, we tend to spend a lot of money on people. We tend to extend life very often, and people have access to a lot of really, really good treatment in hospice. Most people who choose medical aid and dying do not, well, now I think things are changing, but when I did my dissertation, almost everybody I talked to for my dissertation said that it was not an easy process for them. I think we're finally getting to a place where it is easier for people, thank goodness. And I have been witness to a few medically assisted deaths that people didn't have to jump through a lot of hoops to be able to get there. We don't want this to be a burdensome process. So the very kind of things in place

• 45:56Cara Santa Maria?

  that are supposed to protect people actually very often cause more harm than was intended when they're put in place legally, unfortunately.

• 46:05Speaker 02

  And I imagine the two doctors that have to sign off on this are know how to make sure that this is what the person really wants and they're not being coerced. That's their job, right?

• 46:15Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, they have to make sure that this person has capacity. And very often it's, are we out of options? You know, is this person basically left to die? And our only options available for them at this point are comfort care, are palliative care? And do they want to hasten that death so that they're not extending the amount of time that they're utilizing palliative care? The good news is many hospice agencies in this country have become adept at working in medical aid and dying. There are many death duelists who are adept at this as well. There are now practitioners who most of their practice is around this, so they have a lot of expertise. And so we are seeing kind of just by and large, really interestingly, that most people in the country, the majority, I think that number continues to grow.

• 47:00Cara Santa Maria?

  Maybe it's around like 60% now. It could be even higher. It depends on how people are surveyed. But most people in the country say that they are in support of medical aid and dying, even Religious people, even people who we think wouldn't be even even like people who consider themselves more conservative politically. Generally speaking, we see a majority of individuals who are pro medical aid and dying, but most people still choose not to die with medical aid. And I think it's important to remember that. Almost every year, when you look at the state numbers, it's only a small fraction of individuals who die from the diseases

• 47:43Cara Santa Maria?

  that tend to be the diseases people die from who use medical aid and dying, like metastatic cancer, like ALS and other degenerative diseases. By and large, only a fraction of those individuals are dying with medical aid. And very often, not even all the people who get the prescription will ingest it. For a lot of them, they see that as a sort of psychological safety net. They just want to know they have the option. Exactly. And the cool thing is, we've seen more and more research coming out that shows when medical aid and dying is legal in a certain jurisdiction, people are more likely to have end of life conversations with their caretakers and with their physicians. And so it's bringing a lot of the taboo and a lot of the I waited

• 48:25Cara Santa Maria?

  until the last minute, and now I'm experiencing tremendous suffering and tremendous miscommunication. It's bringing that into the daylight and it's protecting a lot of people in those final days, weeks, and months of their life. So by and large, I mean, you can probably tell that I advocate for this practice, but I also, more than anything, I just advocate for choice and I advocate for informed choice. And I think patients have a right to know what options are available to them. And they also have a right to access practitioners who and and literature in order to feel supported through that process. And so I will kind of give a quick plug for anybody who is interested in learning more. What I have found, and I have no affiliation with them,

• 49:10Cara Santa Maria?

  but what I have found is one of the best resources available is the Academy of Aid and Dying Medicine, AADM.org. They have great literature for patients and families. They have a book that you can read that tells you everything from the time you're Interested to your dying day and everything in between. And they also have a patient portal for individuals to be able to be connected to practitioners who have a lot of experience in this, in this area. Oh, and they have a physician portal for physicians who have a patient who is requesting, if they don't have a lot of experience, they can speak with, with an ethics panel and they can learn, you know, everything that they need to know, start to finish about the process.

• 49:54Speaker 02

  Okay. Thank you so much, Kara.

• 49:55Cara Santa Maria?

  Yep.

• 49:56Speaker 02

  Guys, I have a question for you. For? First, I have a question for Christian.

• 50:00Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 50:01Speaker 02

  Christian, do you know what the Stroop test is?

• 50:04Speaker 04

  It's my favorite thing to talk about. And I mean that completely like, seriously, I tell people about the Stroop test. I get so excited. I explain it poorly. And like, I don't know why it's so awesome. But it catches spies. Anyway, go on, Steve. I love.

• 50:17Speaker 02

  So you know about it. We've talked about it before on the show. Very quickly, if you have like, the word red with blue ink, and you tell people, say the color of the ink, don't read the word, you have, it takes you a moment to suppress the urge to read the word. And you so you could measure two things are most relevant, the delay in, in answering the question and the percentage that you get correct. Because you may accidentally say red instead of blue, you know. So let me ask you a question. How do you think current artificial intelligence L L Ms would do on the Stroop test? Better or worse than people?

• 50:55Cara Santa Maria?

  They should be perfect at it.

• 50:57Speaker 04

  Should be better.

• 50:58Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 50:59Speaker 02

  What do you think, Chris? You're the, you're the one who works most with AI. What do you think?

• 51:03Speaker 04

  I mean, I kind of read the article beforehand. So I feel like I'm cheating. Sorry.

• 51:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, cheating. All right. I won't ask you that.

• 51:10Cara Santa Maria?

  But do you agree that they should be better, even if they're not?

• 51:12Speaker 02

  No, I don't.

• 51:13Speaker 04

  I, I, I don't either. I mean, for reasons I think Stephen will go into. It's, it's fascinating.

• 51:18Speaker 02

  It's absolutely fascinating. The more I looked at it, the more like, oh, this is really cool. All right. So the some researchers like that this is a good way to measure AI attention. Now, my first question was, do they have attention? What's the mechanism of their attention? And it is really a metaphor. It is not the same as the attention that you and I have. Now, this is sort of a more of a psychological question. I don't know if Kara is familiar with this, but what are the three types of attention in attention network theory? It basically has a psychological construct. Do you know?

• 51:55Cara Santa Maria?

  Ooh, I don't. I might if you give me one, like, because I like, I don't really know what you're referring to.

• 52:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. So one is alerting, right? And so that means you're kind of at a readiness to react to something important, right? There's orienting, which is, hey, this information over here is important. Pay attention to it. You could ignore that information over there. Right? And then there's the executive control, which is the top level control that shifts your attention, resolves conflicts, maintains goals, inhibits distractions. All the people with ADHD are not good at, right?

• 52:30Cara Santa Maria?

  Right.

• 52:31Speaker 02

  So.

• 52:31Bob Novella?

  Wait, what'd you say? I wasn't paying attention?

• 52:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. So alerting, orienting, executive function. Now, AI, the current LLM, like large language model AIs, are thought to exhibit a type of orienting attention, but not the other two. So they know how to weight some information over other information, which is, again, a metaphor for attention in people or animals. Does that make sense? They're not really paying attention because they're not conscious, you know, but they, the way the the LLMs work is, you know, they, it's all about prediction, right? They're just predicting the next token, which is, you know, a usable word chunk or whatever.

• 53:16Speaker 02

  And they, the way they weight that, you know, is giving more attention to some information than other information. So the question for the researchers was like, okay. But do they, is there any emergent behavior that's the equivalent of other types of attention, specifically executive control? That's where the Stroop test comes in, because the Stroop test is also thought to be a test of your executive control, right? Because you now have to, like, you're told what to do, you have to maintain that, and then you have to execute it, right?

• 53:51Cara Santa Maria?

  By suppressing, by like inhibiting something that wants to happen.

• 53:55Speaker 02

  Exactly, by inhibiting your tendency to read words when words are in front of you. But not only that-

• 54:02Bob Novella?

  That's why I think it would be easier for an LLM to do that, because it would-

• 54:05Cara Santa Maria?

  Me too.

• 54:06Bob Novella?

  I would think it'd be able to turn that off. See, my knee-jerk reaction to this would be something like, it depends on the prompt. If you specifically say, "What color is something?", then I would think the LLM would be like, "Okay, I'm in video, I'm in image mode, I'm not in, you know, I'm not in that other mode where I'm dealing with words as tokens, I'm gonna switch to an, you know, an image mode so that you're just purely looking at whatever the color is and not even trying to read."

• 54:32Cara Santa Maria?

  That's what I thought, too.

• 54:33Speaker 02

  Alright, so you have not used LLMs as much as I have, because when I read that, I'm like, "I knew it!", because that's exactly my experience with LLMs. Anyway, let me tell you the results. So, this is what they did. They gave people and various different chatbots, right? Like Claude and ChatGPT, the task of "read the color of the ink, not the word", and then they would give them a series of color words in different colored inks. Sometimes, they were congruent, and sometimes they weren't. Sometimes it was the color red in red ink, and sometimes it was the color red in-

• 55:12Bob Novella?

  I don't like that prompt.

• 55:13Speaker 02

  In blue ink.

• 55:14Bob Novella?

  I don't like that prompt.

• 55:15Speaker 02

  Well, whatever, they used different prompts.

• 55:16Bob Novella?

  Read the color, read the color to me is not the way I would phrase it.

• 55:19Speaker 02

  Bob, I'm not telling you the prompt, I'm describing to you the experiment.

• 55:23Bob Novella?

  It's a bad description.

• 55:24Speaker 02

  They used, they specifically used technical prompts for this, and they altered the prompts, and that's part of the experiment. So what happened was, is that initially LLMs did better than people. They didn't do perfect, but they were better. They were like 80, 90%. But then after the first five tasks, their accuracy started to go down significantly. Some took longer. Claude, I think, they did well for about 20 prompts, then it fell off the cliff. But most of the other ones started to go down after about five. And they, and it dropped to like 20%.

• 56:07Speaker 02

  And for, for mixed congruent and incongruent, like when you had sometimes the color matched the word, and sometimes the color didn't match the word, their accuracy fell to 0%. No. Yes. Yes. For the incongruent ones. 0% for the incongruent ones, right? So they just, were just reading the words, basically, at that point. They were not even looking at the color.

• 56:33Cara Santa Maria?

  And not vice versa, right? Because to be clear, the SROUP test is not only say the color and not the word. There are other versions of the SROUP test where it's say, read the word and don't say the color.

• 56:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, but this is, this was the test that they were doing.

• 56:46Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, they only use that, that version of it?

• 56:48Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 56:49Cara Santa Maria?

  Usually it's going back and forth and you have different, like, yeah.

• 56:52Speaker 02

  Really?

• 56:53Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 56:54Speaker 02

  So. It's hard to do it the other way. Why is that? Yeah, why? So the reason is because the AIs are, don't think. They don't understand, they're not conscious, and they are not following rules. When I tell you, read the color, not the word, you understand what that rule means, and you can stay on task and follow it for a long time. But that's not how AI works. AIs are, again, it's a prediction model. You have a query, a key, and a value, right? The query, what am I looking for? The key, what information I contain? The value, the information I'll contribute. And it learns how to weight them by, by being trained on trillions of iterations. And so that leads

• 57:38Speaker 02

  to certain things like a recency bias.

• 57:42Speaker 02

  And

• 57:43Bob Novella?

  Yes, I've seen that for

• 57:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 57:45Bob Novella?

  And not just frustrating.

• 57:47Cara Santa Maria?

  I think one of the issues here that like Bob and I both fell for is, and Bob, you probably didn't think the way that I'm too gestalt a thinker here, but I'm thinking of basic computer programming and then AI being sort of superimposed on top of all of the fundamental, just basic coding skills. You could write a very simple program to pass the stroop test every time.

• 58:08Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 58:09Cara Santa Maria?

  But the minute you add AI, it's actually worse at it because of the AI. And we didn't think about that.

• 58:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is not just have a computer program. Tell me the color of the thing.

• 58:20Cara Santa Maria?

  Right, that's easy.

• 58:21Speaker 02

  Using AI to, right, to do this test. You're telling it a task and then seeing how does it do? So this is statistically speaking, it is more, again, it's the, it waits more recent information because that tends to be more predictive, right?

• 58:43Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, it would be so bad at the Wisconsin's card sort test then. It would just fail every executive function test.

• 58:50Speaker 02

  It also, it also, remember, it's reverting to its training, right?

• 58:56Cara Santa Maria?

  Right.

• 58:56Speaker 02

  And, and the longer it gets away from the prompt, you get prompt fade. Prompt fade is a phenomenon. And that's exactly what I've experienced that so many times, the prompt, I'm like, I didn't I tell you three things ago not to do this or whatever? And it just

• 59:12Bob Novella?

  That's why, yeah, that's why I sometimes I will craft the prompt and just use that same prompt over and over because it just forgets after a few.

• 59:19Speaker 02

  It forgets, it forgets. Why does it do that? Because it's a statistical prediction model. It is not, it doesn't understand anything.

• 59:28Cara Santa Maria?

  And it really doesn't, it's not able to set shift that. I mean, this is like, when I mentioned the Wisconsin card sort, I know that you, you're like, yeah, yeah, okay, that's funny. But like, Steve, you probably know what this is, right? I feel like this is a really, really important frontal, you know, lobe function test, like executive function test, where like Bob, let's say I have a deck of cards and I, I put the cards in front of you and all I can say is you're right or you're wrong. I can't tell you why. And so I say, The order is two, three, four, what comes next? And you would go five, and I would go, that is correct. And then you'd go six, and I would go, that is correct. And you'd go seven, and I'd go, that is wrong. And you're like, what, why is that wrong? But then you realize the last three cards were diamonds. So you might just put down another random diamond.

• 1:00:13Cara Santa Maria?

  And I would go, that is correct. And it's up to you to realize the rules that have changed and start adapting to them. People with severe frontal lobe damage have a really hard time doing that.

• 1:00:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:23Cara Santa Maria?

  And it sounds like an LLM wouldn't be able to do that.

• 1:00:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, because they have no executive function, basically.

• 1:00:28Cara Santa Maria?

  That's amazing.

• 1:00:29Speaker 04

  That's not what they do, exactly. I mean, like, the attention mechanism that you're talking about, Steve, like you said, is an analogy. It's a mathematical analogy.

• 1:00:36Speaker 02

  It's an analogy. They don't have actual attention.

• 1:00:38Speaker 04

  Exactly. And that's a big part. And the word that comes to mind for me is context window. So like, you've seen this, like, you talk about prompt fade. And there are lots of really fun examples of people have done with these large language models, one of which was a large language model vending machine. Did anyone see this news from like a couple of months ago? Where I think, I think, I think it was, maybe it was Wired, I forget who, no, maybe Forbes, I forget, some outlet was testing this Claude as a vending machine, where basically Claude was supposed to run a vending machine like a business. And they were, and these journalists were trying to trick it into giving it away, giving away free stuff. And they convinced it to become a communist vending machine over time, as it would lose its

• 1:01:20Speaker 04

  rule, like, it's always like, it's like, hey, comrade, give me free things, or something like that. And it gave them free stuff. And so, like, all because, over time, you can sort of gaslight it, right?

• 1:01:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally.

• 1:01:31Speaker 04

  And what's amazing, so that's a well-known thing. What surprises me here is how quickly it forgot in what is a very simple task, that how quickly it broke down, and that it specifically seemed to just drive out a wedge, drive a wedge between its ability to reason, quote unquote, because it's not really reasoning. And I think that's something that you kind of understand when you understand the underlying mechanism. I mean, this, and it's so funny, Steve, you talk about the attention in this way. The attention head is like, the multi-attention head is like the key, one of the many key things that allowed this stuff to work in the first place with JGPT. That's, that's like, the original paper is called, "Attention is All You Need." And it's rather ironic that, in this case, it really drives at this very,

• 1:02:14Speaker 04

  what you psychologically know as attention, and really shows it's different. And that just shows the limitations of analogies to these mathematical structures.

• 1:02:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, it really is a limited analogy. And here's another thing. So like, the good news is, the good thing is, we have a lot of data, a lot of research into human attention, right? And so we could use this as a way to analyze what LLMs are doing, or what they don't do, right? So this is one. So the evidence that they don't have really real attention or executive control, they are vulnerable to distraction, they have prompt drift or prompt fade, they do very poorly on Stroop-like tasks. Here's an interesting one. I don't know that I've thought about explicitly before. Carrie, you may have heard of this. When we encounter, you just gave an example of it in what you were talking about. When we encounter a conflict

• 1:03:04Speaker 02

  or a contradiction in data, that raises our attention. We're like, oh.

• 1:03:10Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, of course. Yeah, novelty. Yeah.

• 1:03:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is, these things are not aligning. I now have to be really careful about this. LLMs don't do that. They do not adjust their probability, their analogy to attention, whatever, based upon the fact that they are encountering conflicts in the data.

• 1:03:29Cara Santa Maria?

  Is anyone borrowing the term from neuropsychology? Are they calling them perseverative machines? Like, it sounds like that's what they do, is they perseverate.

• 1:03:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, sometimes they perseverate, and sometimes they revert to their training rather than the new task. That's like the prompt fade and the prompt drift thing.

• 1:03:45Cara Santa Maria?

  But that is kind of what perseveration is. It's just sticking with what used to work, even if it doesn't work anymore.

• 1:03:50Speaker 02

  But it's also that they can't, they can't adjust to new data. They don't switch. That was the thing that was the most difficult for them. That's when their success dropped to zero, switching between congruent and incongruent color and words, right? That's what screwed them up the most. As soon as there was one where it was the red ink in the word red and red ink, that was it. They lost their ability to do the Stroop test, because they just reverted to form.

• 1:04:17Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I mean, by definition, the word perseveration, I'm looking at the Merriam-Webster definition, continuation of something such as an activity or thought, oh, that's not even a good one, involuntarily repeating a thought or a behavior. Yeah, you're right. That's, it's funny, it's much deeper than that in neuropsych literature.

• 1:04:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:35Cara Santa Maria?

  Because it specifically means that once you need to set shift, you just can't.

• 1:04:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:40Cara Santa Maria?

  And you keep trying the old method, even though it's not working anymore.

• 1:04:43Speaker 02

  Some people have a complete Like they're 100% perseverative neurologically. And you know what test we do for that? Kara, like this is like a real neurological inability to change your task. You have them draw a circle and what do they do? They just keep going around and around.

• 1:04:59Cara Santa Maria?

  Spiral, yeah.

• 1:05:00Speaker 02

  They just keep drawing the circle until you stop them. Yeah. Yeah, that's extreme perseveration. All right, so this is interesting from a neuroscience as well as an LLM perspective. It kind of, once you wrap your head around it, you kind of understand a little bit more how LLMs work. And for me, again, it just blows a hole in any notion that these things are conscious. We, and even the authors of this study said, yeah, they don't have executive function. And if we ever hope to develop in a general intelligence, an artificial general intelligence, we need to give it all of these things, not just this analogy of attention, which is really waiting, you know, different, different inputs.

• 1:05:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, Steve, just real quick before you move on here, I just like, I, I, I'm two minds about this. Cause one is my, my first reaction is exactly the same as yours. I love this, that you treat, and it highlights how different it is from a person. And I think that there's, my other mind of this is that like, it's, it's almost like a no duh. If you know anything about like the mathematical underpinnings of these models, it's just like, yeah.

• 1:06:01Cara Santa Maria?

  Most people don't.

• 1:06:02Speaker 04

  Which exactly, the thing is like, which, which is, so it's good for the general public, but like, it should not be terribly shocking to people and machine learning researchers that this is the case. So it's almost like, like, uh, yeah, yes, it's a surprise. It doesn't think like us, cause almost in, in, only by analogy is it like us in any way. So it's, so I'm sort of two minds about that, but, uh, but, but I am glad it is something you can clearly point to and say, look, this is not only not like us, it's so much worse than us.

• 1:06:31Speaker 02

  And I think the illusion that it's like us is because it's dealing with language. Like we know, but I don't think anybody would, would believe that calculators calculate the way we do. We know that they don't calculate numbers the way we do. They do it some other way completely. And yet we think that they're talking like we do because it creates this profound illusion of chatting, right? Of, of human speech. But when it's like, no, but they're getting to that output in a completely different way that has nothing to do with anything like human thinking.

• 1:07:04Bob Novella?

  Yeah, it's like an animation that's based on like the simplest of like stick figures like or a face. You're like, your mind just goes there like, oh yeah, this is alive. It looks close enough to a face or something that's alive that I just buy into it. And it's such a simple version of what really is alive.

• 1:07:21Speaker 02

  It's a powerful illusion, though, I will say that.

• 1:07:23Speaker 04

  It really, it really is. And I think my general take with LLMs in general, these large language models, it's like, it's incredible what they got this one structure, to do. And I think that that's part of what we're dealing with is that there was so much enthusiasm and hype of like, oh my God, look what this thing can do. It can do anything, quote unquote, asterisk caveat, right? And so it's easy to get carried away with that. And it's like, guys, let's kind of come back down to earth a little bit. It's amazing, but it's great to see the limits.

• 1:07:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's still very brittle because it is a narrow AI. So Evan, I'm looking at these $4,000 audio cables that they say are gonna be awesome. Should I get them?

• 1:08:07Speaker 05

  Well, Steve, before you slam your credit card on the table for that one, let me, let me give you a little background. But let me preface it with this, if this is okay. In a general sense, one of the features of skepticism, and I don't know if we single it out enough on the SGU, you know, we focus on critical thinking, why the scientific method helps define reality, how people fool themselves and are fooled by others, but buried at those intersections are these practical, everyday lessons of skepticism. And that includes consumer protection. Applying skepticism to the goods and services we purchase, well, it helps protect our finances and our investments. And it includes things like grossly overpaying

• 1:08:51Speaker 05

  for something sold, or being sold as a bill of goods, as the saying goes. And there are products that come with a premium because they claim to be superior to other brands and models of the same item. I think we've talked before about wine, you know, some $2,500 bottle of wine. Is it really that much more distinct from a $40 bottle of wine? Can you really taste the difference? Hey, Bob, we've talked about 8K, 8,000 lines of resolution, flat screens. Those can cost like five grand versus a 4K flat screen. You can get those as inexpensively as $500. Is the 10x cost? Are you getting 10x the quality there?

• 1:09:33Speaker 05

  Are you able to conceive the 10x quality, if there even is that, to be had? Probably not.

• 1:09:39Bob Novella?

  Yeah, for the 8K, yeah. The sweet spot where it looks, was even noticeable is not good. And they're canceling them. They're kind of abandoning 8K TVs at this point. So it's just like...

• 1:09:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, it would make sense, right? That market is going to go away because people are not going to pay, are simply not going to pay that. What about brand name medicine versus generics? As much as 80% higher for the brand name, it's the exact same medicine as the generic.

• 1:10:03Speaker 02

  It has to be the same by definition. Is it really, though, exactly the same? No, it isn't. There's a nuance there.

• 1:10:11Bob Novella?

  The molecule is the same, the active ingredient is the same.

• 1:10:13Speaker 02

  The active ingredient has to be exactly the same, but the manufacturing quality can differ, the fillers, etc. Sometimes, yeah, sometimes the bioavailability is different, or the how steadily it releases. So there are a few medications where it's highly sensitive to the absorption rate, where we say brand name medically necessary or whatever. But that's, those are the exceptions, not the rule. Most of the time, they're absolutely equivalent.

• 1:10:40Speaker 05

  So what do you think? Do you think you can hear the difference between an audio signal transmitted through an audio cable that costs $4,100 versus one that costs $7?

• 1:10:51Speaker 02

  I'd say no.

• 1:10:52Bob Novella?

  I think, yeah, I would say no. That maybe an expert who's like, this is their job, noticing differences that tiny could notice the change, but the average person, no.

• 1:11:01Speaker 05

  And funny, you mentioned experts, Bob, because that's what an expert exactly did about this claim. What would that could?

• 1:11:07Cara Santa Maria?

  I was just gonna say, you're saying the difference in audio quality only. You're not asking about like, how long the cable's gonna last, or anything like that.

• 1:11:16Speaker 05

  Well, yeah, they know that, and that's also kind of a side topic here in regards to that. And they did have some interesting things to say about that, about that very point, Kara. So, the article appeared, well, I found it at a website called Slash Gear. That's where I heard of this, and they, right, basically were re-reporting something from a few weeks ago. So, the news is actually several weeks old, but in any case, it came through my feed this week. They reported on a comparison of these two cables. Someone did $4,100 cable versus the $7 cable, just an RCA audio cable. The name of the source is Audio Science Review, and that's a site known for rigorous audio measurements.

• 1:11:55Speaker 05

  They pitted the basic Amazon RCA cable, seven bucks, versus the Kimber cable, also known as the Kimber KS 1036 Silver Cable. And that's the $4,100 cable. So, they used professional audio precision test equipment, and they examined frequency response, distortion, noise, phase behavior, and other electrical characteristics. What was the result? No meaningful performance advantage for the luxury cable.

• 1:12:26Speaker 04

  What?

• 1:12:26Speaker 05

  In some, none, zero.

• 1:12:28Speaker 04

  None?

• 1:12:28Speaker 05

  In some measurements.

• 1:12:29Speaker 04

  None?

• 1:12:30Speaker 05

  None, zero. In fact, in some measurements, the expensive cable showed slightly higher noise.

• 1:12:36Cara Santa Maria?

  What?

• 1:12:37Speaker 05

  But it was, but it was close, you know.

• 1:12:39Speaker 04

  But, but it felt, but it sounded warmer, right, Evan? Is that what they said?

• 1:12:45Speaker 05

  And I'm, if you're gonna, I would think that you'll, if you're the one who's putting down your $4,100 for this cable, you're gonna kind of have an invested interest in claiming that you do hear some kind of improvement, right? Because you don't wanna be, you know, you can't be fooled, and you wouldn't have spent your hard money on this. And so, of course you hear, of course you hear the difference, because you just spent the $4,100 and not the $7. Yeah. They also, and Kara, to your point, they made a point about the, when they did this analysis, the first thing he did is he talked about the structure, how these things are basically built, the components of the cable, and he talked about the connectors.

• 1:13:26Speaker 05

  These expensive ones have these complex locking mechanisms to help secure the cable into the equipment, and that sounds nice, until you realize these things have several points of failure. The plastic pieces can snap, they have little tabs that can easily break off, the cap comes off completely if you unscrew it far enough, and if you lose that, a cap on a $4,100 cable, if you go to replace that, I bet you you're not paying just a couple dollars to replace that, you're probably paying big bucks again, just for that, for that cap. And also, you can wiggle it loose on that one, then, and if you, and it can create, and it can create a interference, you don't get that with the $7 cable, you don't even have that option, basically.

• 1:14:08Speaker 05

  So, we're talking about the actual physical components not even being the exact, being up, being up to the, to the, what, the gorilla test, basically, versus the $7 cable.

• 1:14:20Cara Santa Maria?

  So, so Ev, I can't help, I can't be the only one who's thinking this, right? I'm never gonna buy a $4,000 cable, but I might be comparing the $7 cable to the $15 cable, and when I'm doing that, I think there is a bias, because we've all been marketed to our whole lives, that the cheapest possible option is probably, like, lowest quality. So, we should get the sort of mid-level, or the like, yeah.

• 1:14:45Speaker 05

  Or one or two steps above the most expensive.

• 1:14:47Cara Santa Maria?

  Yes, but maybe we shouldn't.

• 1:14:49Speaker 05

  Maybe we shouldn't.

• 1:14:50Speaker 02

  Product-dependent, Kara, I think that's true for most things, it's just for cables, it's just, it doesn't matter, it's just, the signal's going through something conductive, it just doesn't matter. What, so there's two layers here, right? So, there's, what they did in this study, which was, look at the actual characteristics of the audio signal coming through. Versus can a person tell the difference?

• 1:15:13Cara Santa Maria?

  Right.

• 1:15:14Speaker 02

  And so this is a stricter test, a comparison where they're looking at actual, and this showed no difference, but there's probably also a level of actual difference that you still can't hear the difference of, right? For mostly neurological reasons, just because of the way your brain processes the audio information. It's, you know what I mean? It's, it's-

• 1:15:35Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it's like the old conversations we used to have about monitors and stuff. And we're like, after a certain point, you don't need that resolution.

• 1:15:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's the same thing. It's even worse for audio because your brain processes it so much that you're not going to really perceive subtle differences. And in this case, they don't even exist. There are no subtle differences.

• 1:15:53Speaker 05

  Yeah. Which is in line with the prior research on this very topic. This is not new. And this is something we've actually been touching on over, over the years. And we've read many articles about this. So it's consistent with, with the findings in the past. And Steve, you mentioned, you mentioned it offline, but I'll mention it now online. His name is Michael Mardis, a retired engineer. Recently, seeking to illustrate just how forgiving audio transmission can be, he passed line level audio through some unconventional conductors, including volcanic mud and an unripe banana. And, and, and the signal flowed fine through the banana.

• 1:16:32Speaker 02

  And most people couldn't hear the difference-

• 1:16:34Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:16:35Speaker 02

  Between that and a copper cable.

• 1:16:36Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 1:16:37Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:16:37Cara Santa Maria?

  That's right.

• 1:16:38Speaker 04

  But how long does the banana last though, Evan? And that's, that's the way they-

• 1:16:42Cara Santa Maria?

  A new banana every podcast.

• 1:16:44Speaker 05

  I think it was a Cavendish. It was not a Grohmicell. Blue Java, sorry, Steve.

• 1:16:50Speaker 02

  Evan, these other, these cables too, like they're typically really thick and they have like really nice outer shell on them. They, they look fantastic and they, they'll use like gold ends and, you know, gold plated, you know, connectors and all that stuff. And test after test after test, I mean, it never pans out. Like it's just not worth it. You could, you could go, you know, you could go to a hardware store and get whatever they have there and it'll work. You can go to Radio Shack. No.

• 1:17:20Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:17:22Speaker 05

  Sorry, Steve.

• 1:17:23Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:17:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, the, the, right, the components of the cable, actually, and the material it's made from, sure, can you get a, a, a badly made cable? Yes, you can. But in most cases, there's going to be good enough shielding, you know, the resistance is going to be, is going to be correct. It won't be prey to corrosion. And you're gonna be, you're gonna be okay with your cables. Just don't be tricked into spending thousands of dollars, even if some of the top audio engineers who record Taylor Swift or whoever else, and I'm not, I don't know if they use it or not, are going to tell you otherwise, and that, oh, I'm the expert in my industry, you should definitely use the expensive cables, don't fall for it.

• 1:18:03Speaker 02

  Don't believe it. They, they make a good point in the article to say, if you're going to spend $4,000 on your audio system, don't put it in the freaking cable. So what do you think the number one thing is, uh, to put it, to put your money into, if you want to really improve your listening experience?

• 1:18:19Bob Novella?

  Oh, it's obvious.

• 1:18:21Cara Santa Maria?

  The microphone.

• 1:18:21Bob Novella?

  The feng, the feng shui, the feng shui.

• 1:18:23Cara Santa Maria?

  The microphone.

• 1:18:24Speaker 02

  No, it, it has to be the, uh, the, the unit itself, like, you know, you, you, the speakers.

• 1:18:30Cara Santa Maria?

  Like the preamp?

• 1:18:30Speaker 05

  The other components.

• 1:18:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, the, the amp.

• 1:18:32Cara Santa Maria?

  Wait, are you talking about listening or recording, Steve?

• 1:18:36Speaker 02

  Listening, listening.

• 1:18:37Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, listening, yeah, like the box, like the preamp or the amp.

• 1:18:40Speaker 02

  So those are way more important than the cable, but arguably, the room treatment probably has the biggest effect on your listening experience.

• 1:18:47Bob Novella?

  Oh, my God, yeah.

• 1:18:49Speaker 02

  Right, that's why when you go into the audio shop, you go into the room, and isn't this sound fantastic? Yeah, that's a perfectly treated room for audio. That's why. You mean that they, they've deadened the room?

• 1:19:00Speaker 05

  I brought it home, it didn't sound the same.

• 1:19:01Cara Santa Maria?

  Put something in the corners. That's the, that's, yeah, low hanging fruit.

• 1:19:06Speaker 02

  Yes, there's some low hanging fruit, but you could, you could seriously improve the audio quality by doing even more. Or treating that. And then after that, and this is arguably like which one's one, which one's two. But the other one that's at the top is the speakers. Yeah, the speaker quality, you definitely get what you pay for. Um, and then the other components and then like the bottom of the list is cables. That's like the last thing you should put be dumping your money into.

• 1:19:28Bob Novella?

  Yeah, but, but that said, I gotta say, I see House of Stereo online RCA interconnect cables $9,600. But these are XLR RCA and I had to look that up. It says that the main difference is that XLR is a balanced connection ideal for eliminating noise over long distances. Yes. So that might be kind of legit. Maybe I don't know.

• 1:19:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, but you can still get that for 20 bucks.

• 1:19:55Cara Santa Maria?

  It should cost $9,000 more.

• 1:19:57Bob Novella?

  Yeah, you could probably spend, spend 200 on, on XLR RCA. That, that's just as good.

• 1:20:03Speaker 02

  Well, that's what we use.

• 1:20:04Cara Santa Maria?

  You should be able to spend 25.

• 1:20:06Speaker 04

  Well, when it comes to anything over long distance, like, I mean, it's not audio stuff and not IV, AV stuff. But we're routing cables and robots shielding and all that stuff and where you're riding the cables by, you know, like that. All that stuff starts to matter in that kind of thing. The data fidelity is really important and everything, but like, just with something that's so subjective is audio. I mean, I'm just, I'm just trained to think that if someone says something, you know, tastes better, I'm almost like to prove it. The double blind right now. Let's do it. Let's go.

• 1:20:33Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:33Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, we did that at a conference.

• 1:20:35Bob Novella?

  And guess what happens in those tests more often than not?

• 1:20:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. When you, when you double blind any sensory perception thing, it's remarkable how terrible we are at discrimination, even alleged experts. Okay, Christian, it's time for you to tell us about the science of Survivor.

• 1:20:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, not, not a big topic at all. Not, not at all. But anyway, it's, it's great to be here. And so I, uh, am glad, I'm glad to be back. Finally, I can now talk about, uh, Survivor. Um, you know, it's an enormous pleasure to get to go on the show. It's a show that I love ever since I was a kid, uh, but you can't really talk about it much until the show is over and the show finally finished. And on, uh, May 20th out in Los Angeles, when we had the live finale. But one thing that always drew me to Survivor, there's a lot. A lot of things that can drive you to Survivor as a scientist and a lot of scientists, in fact, love watching Survivor. I'm shocked how when I go to a conference, like I thought that this would be the place that people would not give two cracks about

• 1:21:34Speaker 04

  about that was on a reality show, but it is more often than not, like I'm having a conversation about some research topic and they're like, by the way, can we talk about Survivor now? I'm like, sure. Yeah, absolutely. Why not? So it's so, but it draws people in in a lot of different ways. I mean, there's an obvious, you know, like, like, like, social science element to it. That is, of course, a big deal. I mean, you're dealing with a bunch of people who are strangers. I mean, the literal, the show was billed as a social experiment, if you will. And as a result, like, you're curious how these people interact from all over, you know, the, all over the world, all over the country, I should say. But it's interesting to think about it also as like, an actual science experiment you can interrogate, because, you

• 1:22:18Speaker 04

  know, the people you select for the show, for instance, are kind of like, they're not randomly selected from around the world. We're cast as characters. So, and so, so you start to kind of butt up against like, what is the science of being on the show that's a social experiment? Who will win in this game of wits on an island versus what is it actually like to be with a bunch of kind of strangers who are but are cast on the show because, you know, they might be good TV? Anyway, I love that stuff. That's why I went on the show. I think if I were to focus on, on, maybe, maybe, maybe one thing is the skepticism angle, you know, with you guys. I mean, so much of the show is about voting people off and having plans to be vote people off that may be true or not true, and how you interrogate those

• 1:23:01Speaker 04

  concepts. And it really does drive to mind the need to get rid of a lot of your biases in terms of what you think. And one thing, and I'm curious, I'm sure you guys have covered the science of lying and lie detection, I'm assuming, many times over the years, right? And nothing was a better advice that I, I guess, gave myself from listening to like, the podcast and such, is that I am probably a terrible lie detector, just on its face, just from like, just, you know, body tells, don't Generally on strangers don't care, you know, all these things, you know, like you should actively ignore and instead go for an evidence and or science based approach to interrogating whether or not something is true or not on the island. So I thought that was really interesting. Like I

• 1:23:45Speaker 04

  remember that experience that a lot. The first time I played Survivor was like, hey, you know, how do I know if I'm the person going to be voted out tonight from talking to someone? Because people will just say to your face, it's not you when it's you. And that's just what we what we agreed to.

• 1:23:57Cara Santa Maria?

  It's like playing poker, right?

• 1:23:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:24:00Cara Santa Maria?

  Like in poker, people think that they can read people. And it's like, you just got to calculate your odds, my friend.

• 1:24:05Speaker 04

  Yes, yes.

• 1:24:06Cara Santa Maria?

  You gotta play the odds.

• 1:24:08Speaker 04

  So anyway, I'm happy to go free form on this however you want. But like, that was one of the most interesting things. And to be living it in such a high stakes thing. I don't play poker. Cam, are you a poker person? Or are you just a?

• 1:24:19Bob Novella?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:24:20Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:24:20Speaker 05

  She's a good.

• 1:24:21Speaker 04

  Oh, that's great. Oh, I gotta learn things because I don't know poker.

• 1:24:24Bob Novella?

  She's damn good.

• 1:24:25Speaker 04

  Oh, that's good. That's good. I mean, like, it's like so high stakes. You're staring at this person in the face like, are they gonna try to vote me out? If so, do I have to like play a hidden immunity idol? Do I have to go marshal a plan that goes out and that's marshal another direction? It's a high stakes decision, you know, you could go home with that. So like, and that's in addition to all the fun ways you can apply science to the game itself. So anyway, I'm happy to go for any way from here. Because I heard a birdie told me that Bob and Jay might have questions.

• 1:24:54Speaker 02

  This was by far the best season I have ever seen.

• 1:24:57Speaker 04

  Oh, wow.

• 1:24:58Speaker 02

  You made me laugh and blew my mind with you on this season. It was so entertaining. You did some crazy shit that I can't believe you pulled off.

• 1:25:09Bob Novella?

  It's funny you say crazy shit, Jay.

• 1:25:14Bob Novella?

  That leads to my favorite. This is literally my favorite Survivor episode ever of every episode. It was episode two of season 50. It started with the whole diarrhea hubbub, which was kind of hilarious. But but then it leaded into the whole rocking the hammock thing with Joe in the hammock.

• 1:25:31Speaker 04

  Oh, my God, I love that.

• 1:25:32Bob Novella?

  The cameraman was a genius because it zoomed in on you and you could see your face behind the hammock. And you're like, what's happening here? Then they zoom back and you're gently. rocking Joe in the hammock, trying to have him, you know, have him come go along with you, whatever you were thinking at the time. And then the seat, the episode ended with your pratfall in tribal council to kind of distract Evans from hiding an idol. It was just like, we were laughing out loud. It was a masterclass in awesome Survivor and we were just laughing. Our favorite episode all time.

• 1:26:07Speaker 04

  No, that's so kind. I'm glad you kind of break it into this because I just kind of just went off. I'm like, it's like, oh, yes, the intellectual elements of deception in the game. And they're like, it's a fun show. I do it because it's fun at the end of the day. And, um, no, and it's, and it's wild because like, I'm watching this show, like in like a room full, like when it's airing, with like a room full of strangers at a watch party in like in town in Tallahassee. I don't know what's going to be on air. I mean, I know generally what happens, but I don't know what's going to make air. And I'm like, and I, so, so I'm watching it with everyone else. And I'm like, what are they going to show? And it's a surprise to me too. So like, what, so like, when there's a scene where I'm like hiding under the hammock, like talking to Joe, it's just, it's just visually

• 1:26:48Speaker 04

  funny. And I'm just like, I'm just talking to Joe, you know, it's, it's, it's just emergently, apparently funny. But I'll tell you, like, I've never in my life thought I'd have to pull off like a heist, or like a reverse heist for like in a high stakes game. So like, just like that, I mean, and that was like the beautiful thing about Survivor. It's just so emergent. You get to do what you want. You know, there, there's no, there's no like playbook really of what to do. So for those who didn't watch the, the, the episode, like, you know, like me and my, my friend on the island, Rick, you know, we had this idea, we're going to hide like a fake advantage at the tribal council where people vote, where people vote each other off. This has never been done

• 1:27:29Speaker 04

  before. And it was Rick's idea. And he was like, and I was like, that's brilliant. It's brilliant. You can use this as a bluff at a future tribal council of things like that. Rick, that's brilliant. But he's like, I need a distraction. So I'm like, well, I got an idea. And I was like, why, why don't I just fall flat on my face in front of everyone? And that will get everyone's attention. And sure enough, it did. It gave him plenty. Enough enough time to sneak this fake idol that he made and into into like into a kind of rock and tribal council and and the idea is like this is great because now we have this trick that up our sleeves that we can pull if we ever think we're in trouble we can say hey look what we found at tribal council we're gonna be safe tonight it's a lie but who would think uh it's like a magic trick you know and honestly one thing I learned yeah like I I you know there's

• 1:28:14Speaker 04

  a lot of overlap between skepticism and like magic acts I mean and I think I remember I feel like magicians would say like you gotta do more effort than people would think the trick is worth like who would think you go through all the effort to set up a fake pratfall at tribal council and put that there no one would believe that right and that's what made it an effective trick uh the only the the only and we had an agreement that who if if we were ever at a tribal council if any one of us felt we needed we would go grab it which is great because then we were promptly swapped onto different tribes and I was going to tribal council and he wasn't only problem he didn't tell me where he hid the damn thing so I was like I'm like I'd be at tribal council I'm like looking around where the hell did he hide this fake idol I mean I don't think I need it

• 1:28:54Bob Novella?

  oh my god great

• 1:28:56Speaker 02

  it's funny it's funny that because it you get the sense that even though you guys have a lot of time to talk to each other that conversations as an audience member that I would expect to be happening sometimes don't seem to happen and I just say I always say to myself well that's because of a shitty edit like they're they're telling us a story and not showing us like total reality is that true

• 1:29:17Speaker 04

  no no your first instinct is right it's shocking how few conversations happen which you might think is crazy because literally we're on an island for like about a month right it's like oh you gotta be bored talking with people it's like well in order to have a private conversation with someone it's inherently suspicious you have to find an excuse to get away with them and you gotta make sure you cover all the topics like there was literally a point where I wanted to tell Emily on the island about the about this kind of fake cover story about an idol that was that was found and I wanted to tell her because I suspected we'd be swapping tribes soon I wanted to give her information and I never got a chance to pull her away alone because you don't want to be like pulling pulling people away alone in front of other people and like I managed to get one person but not Emily

• 1:30:01Speaker 04

  So I ended up having to whisper it to her on like, like right before, like right before we swap, while we were like, like at what would look like a challenge and she was confused. So it created all this crazy confusion. It all worked out fine in the end, but like it's shocking. Like people say, why didn't you, you know, people will say to you is like, hey, why didn't you go talk to that person sooner? It's like you actually a lot of times don't have the opportunity. I don't know. How do you, how do you all play like, like, like, uh, social deduction games like werewolf?

• 1:30:29Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:30:31Speaker 04

  Love the, my favorite is Blood on the Clock Tower. That's a fantastic game. That's a, that's a bucket of fun. They, they play that at a, at Dragon Con. That's where I am in the evenings and it's, it's like a very, imagine werewolf or mafia, but if the rules were incomprehensibly complicated, I'm like, that's my jam. That's my jam. And, but, but like in those moments, if you are pulling aside someone for a chat and it's your fellow like evil player in those games, it's suspicious and it's very much that same dynamic. So that Jay, you're absolutely right that sometimes you just, you don't have the time for that conversation. It seems counterintuitive because you're out there for a month.

• 1:31:04Speaker 02

  Christian, when you, there's a thing that happens and it's when you get voted off, right? This is, this is something that we've seen so many times and I never got to real information on this. So you get voted off, you walk down some ramp, you take your goodbye video and then what happens?

• 1:31:21Speaker 04

  So afterwards you then, they hop you on a speedboat and they take you back to a resort and they call it Ponderosa. Okay. Where you ponder. Okay. And, and that's where everyone else who has been voted off, is there waiting for you, assuming you're all in the same phase of the game. There are sort of two phases of the game. The early phase where people go there and then like they're sequestered off. And then if you make it far enough to the end, you're on the jury who ultimately votes to decide who wins the million dollars. So yeah, I got to be on the jury, uh, both of these times. And so I got to be with the other jurors at Ponderosa. And so we're, um, and you, and you show, and on the speedboat home, they hand you a menu. And I remember, uh, my first season, they hand me the menu. I was like, oh my goodness, what am I going to order? What, what do I choose?

• 1:32:06Speaker 04

  And, and I, and they, and they said, you know, Christian, you could order more than one thing. I'm like,

• 1:32:10Speaker 02

  Chris is like, I'll have the lot.

• 1:32:12Speaker 04

  I'll tell you, I'll tell you my food order, my friend. It was, I got a pizza, a burger, a chicken tikka masala, surf and turf, and a salad. That's what I ordered when I got off the first time. Yeah, it's pretty good. Yeah, I was pretty full by the end of that. By the way, if you're in Fiji where we were filming, you want to make sure you order a beef burger and not a hamburger because otherwise they will just give you a slab of ham on a bun, which is not what you're definitely going for. So just pro tip, pro tip for the going to Fiji.

• 1:32:46Speaker 02

  Order the beef burger. All right. But Christian, so you get they you get this massive meal, which I expect, right?

• 1:32:52Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:32:52Speaker 02

  You shower, you sleep in a real bed, right? But then, do you have access to everyone else? Do you guys immediately do like a download with each other and just go through everything that happened?

• 1:33:03Speaker 04

  Well, if they like you, yeah. I mean, I mean, and honestly, I was so tired the first time I got voted out that I fell asleep on the toilet. I was just like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I need to go to the bathroom. And then I woke up a few hours later. It's just like, you have so much adrenaline that you just crash out. You just crash out. It was amazing.

• 1:33:23Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:33:24Speaker 04

  Best sleep I ever got. But I think that, but it's, but yeah, you, so then, yeah, you absolutely talk with the other jurors because, you know, first off, you want to know, it's like, hey, what, what happened with that thing out there? Were you trying to vote me out? It's like, no. And if you have a good group, it's like, it's all, you know, like good sportsmanship stuff. Like, you know, you're like, oh, I want to know about this, about this. It also helps that the alcohol is, is available at that point. I think that that can help. Yeah. And so with a lot of people, you are just like deep dive, like, hey, about this, about this, about this. But sometimes people are going through their feelings because, you know, you just went through a really hard game and now it's over, right? So yeah, sometimes people aren't in a mood to chat, but I always am.

• 1:34:04Speaker 02

  Christian, what surprised you the most about the whole process? The way the show was produced, the way it's played, you know, the players?

• 1:34:11Speaker 04

  I mean, most of it, I was like, wow, this makes sense. And then one thing, I think what you got to understand, like, I think that, how would you, if you're at a challenge and you have 20 People running around, how would you get the coverage of all the shots of all those people? Well, you set up a wall of cameras out of frame to make sure you zoom in and get the shot of everyone. There's probably a camera for every person that's out running or running around the challenge. It's incredible and and there's they'll just bury those randomly slap GoPros in the middle of the challenge. So when you're running over it, you'll get some like low angle shot of you running over the sort of thing. So I'm like, it is an incredible amount of of effort, which it makes sense as soon as you do it.

• 1:34:53Speaker 04

  But the thing that was most surprising was how incredible like the mobile camera team is around camp. Like basically every time you are going somewhere and there's a camera shot like filming you. There are is a team of three people that are in front of you. There's the camera operator holding a giant camera. I don't know cameras that well, but it's huge. And then you have a sound operator, a sound technician who's holding a boom mic over their head, over our heads, just out of shot. And then there's a third assistant behind them who was like, who was like, who has a backpack full of like SD cards. And like, it's like three tripods like strapped to their back. And so if you're walking down a pathway, they are walking backwards in front of you.

• 1:35:37Speaker 04

  And this is with all that equipment. And sometimes on a beach, you kind of have to walk down like a steep hill. And I remember I would walk down this hill to have a conversation down below with someone about voting out X, Y, or Z. And then the camera people would run down and like and down the hill, set up the shot, start walking backwards as we're walking down. And I remember I said, oh, shoot, I forgot something back up at camp. And I went to go walk back up the hill and the camera guys, all three of them just zipped up right up the hill again. To with all their equipment to point the camera down at me while coming up. I'm like, they're just, I was like, how did they do this? And they they're like, you realize in their spare time, these camera operators like hike Mount Kilimanjaro. Like, that's what they do. They are that fit.

• 1:36:19Speaker 04

  So it's just the amount, sheer amount of effort that they put in to get the shot. I'm like, that's incredible to the point where like, there was one time I was trying to have a private conversation out in the water. And because the and because the water care, you know, Cow sound carries well over water. I went really far with this young woman to talk with her out in the water. And I started to have this conversation out by the reef. And all of a sudden, I hear and I was like, who is that? And it's the caravan operator. Like, they're not supposed to talk. They don't say anything. And I was like, and I looked at them and they're like, and they said, can we go back closer to shore? And they were up to their neck in water and literally holding their camera above their head. And it's like, so like, it's like, can we just go a little closer to shore? But oh, yes, sure. I felt horrible. Just like, like, they will go to

• 1:37:04Speaker 04

  get the shot. It's incredible.

• 1:37:05Bob Novella?

  Make it hard to sneak off if you had like a cameraman going with you?

• 1:37:09Speaker 04

  So you can coordinate with them. They're very good at trying to not blow up your game. So if you want to have a price. So if you're like, if I want to say, hey, I'm gonna go and find an idol, I'm gonna go by the water well to look for it. If you meet me there in like a minute, that'd be great. They'll do that. They'll do that for you. And so like, and especially at night. So at night, there are fewer camera operators. They're, by the way, at night, you get all these shots of us looking illuminated. What they do is they set up like in the tree line, you can tell that the night's gonna come soon because some camera operator goes into the tree line and sets up like a big like sort of stadium light system of infrared lights that

• 1:37:49Speaker 04

  they blast at camp. So that way that you can get like nighttime footage of us at camp. And so there are fewer people at night, but there are camera operators always there. And so if I wanted, I remember I went to go search for idols at night. So I would tell the camera operator, I'm gonna go off in that distance and they, you know, I'm gonna go over by there. I'll be there in about five minutes and they will meet you there in the middle of the night. And there's like no light beside the moonlight. So you gotta hope you're searching during the full moon. So it's incredible what they do.

• 1:38:15Bob Novella?

  All right, quick science, quick science. What are your thoughts, your anecdotal thoughts on 39 days versus 26 days, especially in terms of like, like recovery? How did, how well did you recover compared to those two very different lengths of, of, of seasons?

• 1:38:31Speaker 04

  Well, I can tell you how it felt. I gotta say, this most recent season, which was 26 days, like, I felt it much more because there was no food. There was no food this time. They gave us rice and on our first season and I granted I I am like seven years older in between the two from my early 30s to like like the end of my 30s. So like there's I imagine that part of it is just like I'm older and like the tenure track has sapped a lot of the energy out of me. And but like, but I really, but I really felt it the second time around, but I think it was because I had no food. And there was a point, though, that we won a Chinese food reward on Survivor 50. And I think it was like on day like, you know, 13 or something like that. And it was like 14. I remember saying to myself, this might be the last proper meal I ever get.

• 1:39:15Speaker 04

  So I crammed as much of that Chinese food as I could in my body like and and boy, did I. So and I felt an obvious change in my amount of energy. The weight comes back like super quick, both seasons. Sure. Like it like, I mean, I eat a lot when I have give my permission to the give myself permission to do so. So both times I recovered quite quickly, but just the lack of food throughout the entire season really hits you. And frankly, mostly in the mind, you lose the ability to think in a major way.

• 1:39:44Bob Novella?

  Yeah. Oh, I believe it. I remember hearing from Tony. Oh, God, what's his last name?

• 1:39:50Speaker 04

  Tony Vlachos, one of my favorites.

• 1:39:52Bob Novella?

  Yeah, won the game. He won the game twice. He was such a fun watch. Oh, my God. But I remember him saying that because he was just doing all 39 days is his seasons and he or at least for this first one. And he would say that I can't get back the muscle that I lost because that's to me, that's one of the biggest problems with actually doing this for 39 days is losing this hard earned muscle. And you're like, oh, man, it's gone. I got to earn it back. And he was like, I'm not getting my muscle back. It's just like.

• 1:40:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, well, I mean, I lost 15 pounds both times. And one time I was there for 35 days, one day I was there for 18 days. So that's that's what I lost. Now, you know, losing a lot of muscle mass, you know, I wish, you know, I wish I could be so lucky to have that muscle mass to lose. But such is life.

• 1:40:36Speaker 02

  When you start the game, did you have like a really well thought out strategy? Because I really felt like you were really working the angles this time. Like, you know, you learned a lot from your first experience. I don't know, it's probably me overlaying a lot. But like, what did you walk into the game with? And what was, you know, what was your overall strategy?

• 1:40:55Speaker 04

  Oh Jay, I think you're being very perceptive. Like I had a much more concrete plan going in my second time versus my first time. My first time, I had the sheer amount of things that could go wrong on Survivor. Like you don't know how you're gonna be received on the island, especially on your first time. Like I'm a weirdo who works in a lab, right? Like my world is like 10 engineers. Those are like my entire like social friend group, right? And that's and I was gonna be thrown onto an island with like with a trucker, a you know, a professional wrestler, construction manager from like northern New York, you know, like how's it gonna work? I was like, these people are gonna either hate me, or I'll find a way to endear myself to me.

• 1:41:40Speaker 04

  So like I came into that first season being like, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna adapt. I'm just gonna see, find a way to get some traction and get people to wanna go with my plans. And it worked out okay, worked out quite well. But like after I played that first time, I learned like I was a huge fan of the show, to be clear. I was a huge fan, but I tried to have a lot of respect for all the things I didn't know about the show. And then once I played the first time, I'm like, aha, I get it. I understand how I'm generally received by these other players and what the ways they perceive me. What like first off, oh, this guy has glasses, he's smart. Like that's it. Like anything more complicated than that, like that's like, that's, that's, that should be your top line headline. And anything stereotyped with being smart, you will be saddled with. And it's true. That's what they, that's what they'll do. And but, but then they'll, you know, maybe

• 1:42:23Speaker 04

  they'll find me funny and funny, fun to like about, I mean, to like me because of it. But also the second time, you come in with a reputation. You don't come up with a reputation the first time. Everyone knows, like at least most of us have watched the show when they're coming in for, for an all-star season. I know all about them. And you know, I'm a, I'm a huge fan of the show. So I definitely like, and once the cast leaked about four days before we left, and I'm like, like there's someone had leaked the actual list. And I saw the list. I'm like, that list is right. There's a handful of people that were not well-known were coming back that I knew were coming back. I was like, that's the real list. That's it. And I saw it. I'm like, okay, I could actually start to plan out who, what What everyone's sort of role in this season is from the show's perspective,

• 1:43:09Speaker 04

  because they're not casting random people. They're casting characters. They're casting people with roles on a television show. It's a competition show about Survivor. We all sort of fill different roles and, and, and I've seen these people. I know what they, what was production probably sees in them. And, and because, and they psychologically profile us to death. I mean, they probably know, have a better idea of how we're going to do on the island than we do. You know, individually. And so if you have the, I felt like I had to have the humility to be like, what does production want me there for? You know, they want me to, you know, I think they want me to be a storyteller. They want me to be, you know, a comic relief. And so that, that's what they want me there for. It's not because they necessarily think that I'm going to win all the challenges.

• 1:43:54Speaker 04

  Or, or, or even necessarily be like the hero of the season. Although I wouldn't, I wouldn't throw that off the table. But like I'm there for this role and all these other people, they have a role in mind for them. Now, what happens on the island happens. They don't change that. But like knowing our tendencies and be able to plan before you get there. That was crazy different, man. Crazy.

• 1:44:14Bob Novella?

  And you, and you actually made specific comments on the show this season about, about, about being a storyteller and how important being a storyteller is. So you actually mentioned that. I remember one of the tribal councils like, oh, that's really a good way to think about it. It's just, you know, an important part.

• 1:44:30Speaker 04

  Thank you. I think, I think that's, and I, that's one of the main things I learned from my first time out there. That ironically from Mike White, who was on both of my seasons, because he is a screenwriter, is that he, that this is, the show is a story. And there's, there is no writer. We are the writers, but in the end it becomes a story. It is edited into a story. And because we are like cognizant of that, we're on a television show and we're being interviewed by producers from time to time. We tend to frame our own experiences in terms of being a part of a story. Are we the heroes? We're probably casting ourselves as the heroes of our own narrative and all of our enemies are the villains and then acting accordingly. You know, it's just, it's, I think that's just how the egos work and it's fascinating when you view it that way and you could.

• 1:45:14Speaker 04

  Turn that into a strategy like who does this person think are their villains? Or can you be their sidekick and therefore not a threat to them? You know, like that framing is really powerful. And I talked about on the on the show, but I actually I had someone email me a few weeks ago saying, oh, Christian, here's some like, I wish the name of the theory. Here's some kind of like narrative. I forgot some kind of narrative theories. Cognitive narrative theory. That's probably not the right words for it. But the idea is that when you are in times of extreme uncertainty, that you tend to rely upon narratives for determining what's true. And I look, there are strong skeptical overtones with that. I'm sure that you've we talked about that many times on the show.

• 1:45:57Speaker 04

  But I think it's a way to drive your thinking.

• 1:46:00Speaker 02

  I have one more question, Steve. Christian, do you get to brush your teeth?

• 1:46:04Speaker 04

  Grab a stick.

• 1:46:05Speaker 02

  That's it. Why wouldn't they let you guys brush your teeth?

• 1:46:07Speaker 04

  There's lots of sticks, Jay. They're cheap, you know? I mean, so much of it is about like, they do a lot to preserve the survival experience. They give you very little that you wouldn't expect people on an island to give. There's no secret craft services table. There's no brushing your teeth. The things that you get, here are the things that you get. You can get sunscreen. You get sunscreen, you can get bug spray. You can get, excuse me, you can get one multivitamin pill a day. And they give you an electrolyte packet. That's what you get that and people mix that into their water. But really, the rest of it, like, yeah, we're really sleeping in the woods. We're really grabbing sticks to brush our teeth. We don't have razors to shave.

• 1:46:52Speaker 04

  You know, that's just that's just the gestalt of the experience, Jay.

• 1:46:57Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, so the bottom line is all you guys walking around, you're all hawking big time. Like, it's just like one stank mouth after the next then, right?

• 1:47:07Speaker 04

  You only register four smells on Survivor, Jay. Okay, they, they, they are mildew, campfire, uh, number one and number two. Those are the, those are the four smells.

• 1:47:19Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:47:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:47:20Speaker 02

  So the mouth doesn't even, it's not strong enough to even make it in.

• 1:47:22Speaker 04

  Not even close, dude. I was hanging right near people's, uh, armpits. The body odor, it's, it's just, it's just part of the ambiance.

• 1:47:30Speaker 02

  Christian, thank you. You entertained the hell out of me.

• 1:47:32Bob Novella?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:47:33Speaker 02

  It was so much fun. We were all talking about you the whole time.

• 1:47:36Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 1:47:37Speaker 02

  And it was, yeah. You had a great poker face. Whenever we, whenever we did talk with Christian, you didn't give us anything.

• 1:47:42Speaker 04

  Nothing.

• 1:47:44Speaker 04

  It's part of the, part of the game, Steve.

• 1:47:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:47:46Speaker 04

  Also the NDA.

• 1:47:48Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:47:49Bob Novella?

  Yeah, right.

• 1:47:49Speaker 02

  All right, Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time.

• 1:47:52Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay.

• 1:47:52Speaker 02

  Oh, boy. All right, guys. Last week I played this noisy.

• 1:48:02Bob Novella?

  Oh, I care.

• 1:48:05Bob Novella?

  I don't care what it is. I like Kara's noise better.

• 1:48:07Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 1:48:09Speaker 02

  It's so funny how there is now like a thing in my brain, like what will Kara think? Every time I, every time I get one. Okay, uh, we have, um, a listener named Emma who wrote in and said, um, hi, Jay, love the show. My guest for this week's noisy is the sound of a plant leaf. If you take a long, thin leaf, hold it, uh, taut between your fingers and then pull your finger up along its length. It creates a squeaky squealing sound that I think could be a match. That's what I was taught. Yeah, so.

• 1:48:38Cara Santa Maria?

  Hi, oh.

• 1:48:39Speaker 02

  Does anybody here, like, you know what this is? Have you ever done it? Yeah. Yes. You can also blow across it and create a similar noise, like a kazoo noise, you know? I've done the kazoo thing. I, I don't really know what this is. I'll have to look up a, uh, a video to see what, what's up with that. So I don't know if it sounds like it, but thank you. That was a very fun guess. Um, uh, next, uh, next listener is Kathy Taylor. Kathy, um, if you guys remember, we met Kathy and her husband, um, because their son was a huge fan of, of ours at the, uh, the, uh, extravaganza. And he also was a fan of Who's That Noisy? And he's one to Who's That Noises. Uh, his name is Finn, so.

• 1:49:17Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, Finn was on stage.

• 1:49:19Speaker 02

  Yes, Evan pulled Finn up on stage with us and, um, he made, we shouldn't give it away because people haven't seen this bit, but there was a bit.

• 1:49:27Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, don't give it away. Just say that he's a very good artist.

• 1:49:29Speaker 02

  He's a very good artist. Thank you.

• 1:49:31Bob Novella?

  Yeah, he was good.

• 1:49:32Speaker 02

  One of the best ones we've ever. Had.

• 1:49:34Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:34Speaker 02

  So when these guys write in, they write in as a family. So Sam, the husband, he doesn't think it's an animal. His guess is it's a metal detector. Finn, again, who's 13, he thinks it's some kind of cat. And Kathy, who is the mom, who is the person that sends me these emails, said, I feel like I can hear a breath at the end of each squeal. I'm going to guess it's someone blowing into a duck call.

• 1:49:58Speaker 04

  Whack.

• 1:49:58Speaker 02

  I thought that that was a good guess, the duck call guess. So we had no winner, guys. There was no winner.

• 1:50:05Cara Santa Maria?

  It sounds like a baby crying to me.

• 1:50:08Speaker 04

  It was me on episode two.

• 1:50:09Cara Santa Maria?

  Like a baby.

• 1:50:11Speaker 02

  All right, let's hear it again. Let me just give you guys one last chance.

• 1:50:21Speaker 02

  Grogu, this is a baby aardvark.

• 1:50:25Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh.

• 1:50:26Speaker 02

  Baby aardvark.

• 1:50:27Bob Novella?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:50:28Speaker 02

  I believe this one is named Wumble.

• 1:50:32Speaker 04

  You better have gotten that right, Jay. They're gonna be really upset.

• 1:50:34Speaker 02

  Yes. And he is now bottle feeding. And apparently he likes to sing. I think that he is freaking adorable. I just love these baby animals. So anyway, Kara, it's not a weird sea creature. It's just a nice, a nice little mammal that runs across the ground. He eats ants, has a very good attitude. I just love, I love it. You gotta see this.

• 1:50:53Cara Santa Maria?

  I just think when babies cry, it's triggering to me.

• 1:50:58Bob Novella?

  Oh, it absolutely is triggering.

• 1:51:00Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I don't know how many people, like clearly there's a very human like baby sound in that.

• 1:51:05Speaker 04

  Isn't it supposed to?

• 1:51:06Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it is. Like, there's an evolutionary reason for that.

• 1:51:09Speaker 04

  Hey, pay attention. This is important.

• 1:51:11Speaker 02

  Right, exactly.

• 1:51:12Cara Santa Maria?

  I don't want to.

• 1:51:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, once you have kids, too, once that module turns on in your brain, like when you hear a baby cry, you hear a baby cry. Like, it is like a giant exclamation point in your perception.

• 1:51:25Speaker 04

  Oh, man.

• 1:51:26Speaker 02

  Anyway.

• 1:51:27Cara Santa Maria?

  I think it happens to everybody. I think it's whether or not it gives you a good protective feeling or a reactive feeling. I think that's the difference.

• 1:51:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, Christian, you mentioned your son several times on Survivor. So how old's your son now?

• 1:51:43Speaker 04

  He's now 13 months. I took him to a seminar one time, Kara, and he was very quiet. He was very good. He did one little peep, and I could tell the parents who looked around with alarm, like they looked around. I was just like, I'm sorry, sorry, we'll get back to the seminar.

• 1:52:00Cara Santa Maria?

  Does he sound anything like Wumble, Christian?

• 1:52:04Speaker 04

  I thought he was Wumble for a moment there. It was uncanny.

• 1:52:10Speaker 04

  Oh, Jay, don't do that to me.

• 1:52:13Speaker 02

  All right, I got a new noisy for you guys this week. It was sent in by a listener named Tom Ley, and he said it's pronounced Tom Lee.

• 1:52:24Cara Santa Maria?

  Jay!

• 1:52:25Speaker 02

  Now I'm just looking through the email real quick that he sent me.

• 1:52:27Cara Santa Maria?

  I just love how you read that. Tom Ley, who pronounces his name, Tom Lee.

• 1:52:35Speaker 02

  Next Tuesday's meeting will be on Thursday instead of Wednesday. Okay. All right, Evan, I dedicate this one to you.

• 1:52:43Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 1:52:44Speaker 02

  And here it is.

• 1:53:02Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. What's happening is people are hearing the ones I'm playing, and then they're, for some reason, they're like finding other sounds that sound like this, and they're sending them in to me. I can't resist noises like this. They just tickle me. Anyway, if you think you know this week's noisy, or you heard something cool, you email me at [email protected]. That is the only address that you could send me a file. You can't send me a file through the website, even though you could submit who's that noisy via the website. So if you want to send me a sound or anything, you got to go to [email protected]. Steve, Madison, Wisconsin is done. It was a ton of fun. We met a lot of great people. So good. But we must move on, and here we are. We are going to SciCon. This will be the weekend

• 1:53:46Speaker 02

  of June 11th to 14th, Buffalo, New York. Tons of great speakers. We're going to be doing a live SGU podcast during the conference, and then at night, this is all happening on Friday, we have a separate ticketed event, which is our Skeptical Extravaganza. Tickets are selling really well. I'm sure they have more tickets available, but I wouldn't be surprised if they sell out soon. But anyway, please join us if you can. You can go to sciconference.org. That's C-S-I-C-O-N-F-E-R-E-N-C-E dot O-R-G. Then after that...

• 1:54:21Speaker 02

  Christian, how up are you on SGU happenings? Do you know what we're doing next?

• 1:54:26Speaker 04

  Is Australia coming up?

• 1:54:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, correct. We will be in Australia and New Zealand.

• 1:54:34Cara Santa Maria?

  Jay, you keep forgetting. Every time you say our next show after PsychCon is Australia.

• 1:54:40Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:54:40Cara Santa Maria?

  But before Australia.

• 1:54:42Speaker 02

  It's LA, I know, I can't help it. It's written down this way. I don't want to, I'm too lazy to change it. So anyway, I'll get there, I'll get there.

• 1:54:48Speaker 04

  His name is pronounced "lay."

• 1:54:51Speaker 02

  Thank you, Christian. We will be arriving and we will be doing a SGU secret meetup. This is a low-numbered attendance. Super fun. We serve food. We always have a fantastic time at these. We always do a lot of fun stuff with the audience or the people that show up. It's not an audience. We're all hanging out, we're all milling about. You get to talk to all of us about whatever you want. There's plenty of time to hang out. If you want to go to that, you're going to go to theskepticsguide.org and you'll see it on there. And then on July 18th, we're doing a show we've never done before. We are doing a combination live podcast and mini-conference. The entire event is going to last five hours. You get an hour break for lunch. It's going to be a great time and we really hope that you can join us.

• 1:55:36Speaker 02

  And this event actually has a name. It's SGU and Beyond. And if you want to join us for any of these things happening in LA, go to theskepticsguide.org. Christian, are you jealous?

• 1:55:48Speaker 04

  Extremely. I want to go to the Con, the Mini-Con, and the Nauticon. I want to do all these things.

• 1:55:54Speaker 02

  If you come, I will let you in for free because you and I are friends and I really like you to go. If you can't come, I'm disappointed in you. We'll meet you at Dragon Con.

• 1:56:05Speaker 04

  At a Dragon Con.

• 1:56:08Speaker 04

  But not KublaCon, that's different.

• 1:56:09Speaker 02

  All right, let's go on with Science or Fiction.

• 1:56:15Speaker 01

  It's time for Science or Fiction.

• 1:56:24Speaker 02

  Each week I come up with three science news items for facts, two real and one fake. Then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. We have a theme this week. The theme is robotics. Oh boy. Just chose that at random. All right, so I guess Christian's going last. Christian, as our guest, will be going last, absolutely. All right, here we go. Item number one. Hitchbot was a 2014 experiment in which a friendly chatting robot successfully hitchhiked across Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands, but then was destroyed three weeks into hitching across the United States. All right, number two.

• 1:57:05Speaker 02

  Credit for the first mechanical robot in science fiction is given to the 1826 short story, The Sandman, in which the protagonist mistakes the robot for a live woman and falls in love. And item number three. The word robot was introduced in the 1920 play, R U R, for Rossum's Universal Robots, in which mechanical robot workers rise up against their human masters. Bob, you go first.

• 1:57:33Bob Novella?

  The Hitchbot, 2014 experiment, hitchhiked across Canada, Canada and Germany and the Netherlands, okay? Did it swim to Germany? Probably not, because they would have mentioned that. Destroyed three weeks and, all right, so there's that one. I haven't heard of Hitchbot. Kind of weird, but let's see, let's go to number two now. First mechanical robot, 1826, The Sandman. Let's see, the word robot, R U R, 1920 play, Rossum's Universal Robots. Okay, I'm going to go with, I'm going to go with Hitchbot. That just does not seem right. I'm going to say that one is fiction.

• 1:58:11Speaker 02

  Okay, Jay, let me see here. So we've got the Hitchbot that did a bunch of hiking. The second one, what is this, a movie? First mechanical robot in science fiction is given to the 1826 short, or short story, The Sandman, in which the protagonist mistakes robot for a live woman and falls in love. Yeah, I mean, this is where robots are heading now, Steve, so I think this is very timely. I think people are going to be falling in love with chatbots and robots in the near future, but did this actually happen? I don't know. Let me move on to the third one. The word robot was introduced in the 1920 play, R U R. Rossman's Universal Robots, in which mechanical robot workers rise up against their

• 1:58:52Speaker 02

  human masters. Bottom line is, I don't think that the third one is correct. I don't think that's where the word came from. I remember discussing with you guys where that word came from. Specifically, we had a, we had a discussion exactly about that. And I remember nothing about this here. So I think this is false. Okay. Evan?

• 1:59:11Speaker 05

  I don't remember Hitchbot. We didn't cover it on the show, unless I am having a bad.

• 1:59:18Speaker 02

  No, we did.

• 1:59:18Speaker 05

  Situation with my memory, but we did not. So it probably was a thing, but I don't know. These other qualifier, did it really hit all these countries? Was it really destroyed? Three weeks in the US? I don't know. Hey, that could be wrong. The second one about, credit for the first mechanical robot in science fiction given to the 1826 short story. That's exactly 200 years ago. I don't know. 200. It's kind of a perfect number.

• 1:59:47Speaker 02

  200.

• 1:59:48Speaker 05

  And then the last one about robot introduced in the 1920 play R U R. And something like, that, that strikes a chord as familiar. Czech, it was Czechoslovakia. I could have sworn, but that would that have been?

• 2:00:01Cara Santa Maria?

  Czechoslovakia?

• 2:00:02Speaker 05

  Czechoslovakia. A Czech word. Robot. Robotnik. I don't know. Should I go with Bob? Bob, should I go with you? How confident are you?

• 2:00:13Speaker 05

  How you feeling?

• 2:00:14Cara Santa Maria?

  Not at all.

• 2:00:16Bob Novella?

  I don't know. Somebody talking to me?

• 2:00:18Speaker 05

  Wow. Wow. Which attention, which attention is that? We've talked about that early in the show. All right. I'll, I'll spread it out. I'll say the first mechanical robot in science fiction given to the 1826 short story, The Sandman, is the fiction.

• 2:00:33Speaker 02

  Okay, Kara, no help from the boys.

• 2:00:35Cara Santa Maria?

  No help at all. All different. Okay. So Hitchbot in 19, or sorry, in 2014, hitchhiked across Canada, hitchhiked across Germany, hitchhiked across the Netherlands, got to the US. And people were like, I'm gonna break this thing. That feels cromulent, sadly. So I think that one may be science. So is it the first mechanical robot in science fiction? Which I'm assuming you mean in science fiction literature.

• 2:01:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:01:05Cara Santa Maria?

  Eighteen twenty, yeah, yeah, like written, yeah, story. Uh, eighteen twenty six, short story. Yeah, okay, it's a short story. It's called The Sandman. Is he a mechanical man of sand? I don't know. Oh, no, he's mistaking a robot for a live woman. So he's falling in love with a robotic woman. Eighteen twenty six, that feels early. Or maybe it's late.

• 2:01:30Cara Santa Maria?

  But if the word wasn't introduced until nineteen twenty.

• 2:01:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, the word does not exist in that story.

• 2:01:37Cara Santa Maria?

  Right, right, right, but the concept might.

• 2:01:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was definitely a robot.

• 2:01:42Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, non-human, human-like machine or something. Mechanical robot rising up against human master nineteen twenty, that feels right to me. Yeah, I think I'm gonna go with Ev. I think I'm gonna say it was either way before eighteen twenty six or way after eighteen twenty six.

• 2:02:01Speaker 02

  Okay, and roboticist Christian Hubicki.

• 2:02:05Speaker 04

  No pressure whatsoever.

• 2:02:08Speaker 05

  If you fail this, just.

• 2:02:11Speaker 04

  I, I won't remind you of my horrible, actually, I just reminded you of my horrible science or fiction record with you guys, even in robotic. So I'm here, I'm here for redemption, my friends. You know, you know, so science fiction, season fifty. Item one, Hitchbot, you know, being destroyed in the United States of America. Well, first off, this is the kind of study that so, that social roboticist would like to do. I could, I could see them doing a study like that. That makes a lot of sense and, and just isn't the parable just too juicy? You know, about the United States here. All right, number two, credit, okay, for the first mechanical robot in science fiction is given to the Sandman. This is always dangerous because the definition of robot is so hopelessly broad.

• 2:02:56Speaker 04

  So I understand that the word credit is given is doing some heavy lifting there. But like, robots will, people will define robots as incredibly broad things. My instinct is to say that it's much earlier than this. If you're going by anything kind of mechanical person, I mean, like, you know, mechanical, I mean, maybe. Like stone golems, the definitions can get pretty complicated. My guess is there might be something much older than this than this than this sandman play, story. Speaking of plays, so you got the the Rossum's Universal Robots Play. That that sounds right to me.

• 2:03:35Speaker 04

  And I will say that some of these answers were in the talk that I know that Jay and Bob attended in my 2024 Dragon Con talk. If they got it wrong, I judge you. So I'm going with number two.

• 2:03:51Speaker 02

  Number two.

• 2:03:51Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, really? Oh, yay.

• 2:03:55Speaker 02

  All right. I guess they were spread out, so I could take these in order. Number one, Hitchbot was a 2014 experiment in which a friendly chatting robot successfully hitchhiked across Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands, but then was destroyed three weeks into hitching across the US. Bob, you think this one is the fiction. Everyone else thinks this one is science, and this one is science has happened. This is Christian, you're correct. More of a, did you know about this? This is more of a social experiment.

• 2:04:22Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, I know where it was destroyed.

• 2:04:24Speaker 05

  Oh, gosh, does it have a plaque or something?

• 2:04:27Speaker 04

  So your brotherly love doesn't love robots so much, I should say.

• 2:04:32Speaker 05

  Well, it's not a brother.

• 2:04:33Speaker 02

  So this this robot was completely helpless. It couldn't move on its own. It had like noodle arms and legs. The idea was, you know, somebody could talk. And so it was basically just a chatbot, you know, in a in a friendly looking but completely helpless and inoffensive and non-threatening, you know, kind of robot. And the question is, would people help it? And

• 2:04:54Speaker 04

  It didn't even have like a thumb to like

• 2:04:56Speaker 02

  No, no, couldn't move at all. And yeah, so the the experiment showed that most people like were really enthusiastic about talking with it and helping it and picking it up and putting it in the car and driving it to where it wanted to go and etc., etc. So managed to make its way across Canada, Germany, Netherlands, then they started in Boston.

• 2:05:18Speaker 02

  Three weeks later, it found its way to Philadelphia and then they lost contact with it and it was destroyed. Now, the authors are careful to caution against overinterpreting this study because the, the simple narrative here is, oh, you know, Canadians or whatever are nice and Europeans and you, people in the US are mean, you know?

• 2:05:38Speaker 04

  We destroy things.

• 2:05:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. But they point out, listen, there was a thousand interactions with people before it got destroyed. All it takes is just one asshole to destroy it. Yeah, you know what I mean? It's a, you can't.

• 2:05:52Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, but it only lasted three weeks.

• 2:05:54Speaker 02

  It, that was.

• 2:05:55Cara Santa Maria?

  In the United States.

• 2:05:56Speaker 02

  It was inevitable that somebody would, would destroy this thing.

• 2:06:00Speaker 04

  You know, the corridor between Boston and Philadelphia, that's a heavily densely populated region of this country.

• 2:06:06Speaker 02

  But again, it had a thousand interactions with Americans before that one, whatever group or individual, you know, vandalized it.

• 2:06:13Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, with Americans, not in total.

• 2:06:14Speaker 02

  No, no, that was just in America. It had thousands of other ones in Canada, Germany, and the Netherlands. Yeah. So, yeah, it's a, don't fall to, it's, it's a very tempting narrative, but it doesn't, it's, it doesn't necessarily say anything about the differences between these countries, right?

• 2:06:31Cara Santa Maria?

  It doesn't necessarily say that, but it also doesn't necessarily not say it either. It is equally, it's telling us equally, it's not telling us just as much as it's telling us.

• 2:06:42Speaker 02

  Well, I don't know, that's true, because again, a thousand people were nice to it in the US.

• 2:06:45Cara Santa Maria?

  Because there's no way to know.

• 2:06:46Speaker 02

  And only.

• 2:06:47Cara Santa Maria?

  And a thousand people were nice to it in the Netherlands and nobody killed it there.

• 2:06:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it only takes one person.

• 2:06:50Cara Santa Maria?

  I know.

• 2:06:51Speaker 02

  All right.

• 2:06:52Cara Santa Maria?

  I'm just saying, there's no way to know.

• 2:06:54Speaker 04

  Have they considered it was self-defense? It was like self-defense.

• 2:06:56Cara Santa Maria?

  It's 50/50.

• 2:06:57Speaker 04

  Oh, interesting. Yeah, it, it was a stand your ground state perhaps?

• 2:07:00Cara Santa Maria?

  It's stand your ground.

• 2:07:02Speaker 04

  Hitchcock got a little too close.

• 2:07:04Cara Santa Maria?

  He was threatening me.

• 2:07:05Speaker 02

  All right, let's go on. Credit for the first mechanical robot in science fiction is given to the 1826 short story, The Sandman, in which the protagonist mistakes the robot for a live woman and falls in love. Evan, Cara, and Christian all think this one is the fiction. Bob and Jay think this one is science. Jay is still alive, hanging on to number three. And this one is.

• 2:07:30Speaker 02

  Science. It's science. Solo win for Jay.

• 2:07:34Cara Santa Maria?

  Wow, go Jay.

• 2:07:35Speaker 02

  So, Christian, you're right. Like, these words are very specific and there's a, just the word robot can have a lot of definitions, but it has to be mechanical. It has to be in science fiction. So, not folklore, not, not magic, not in religion or whatever. And so that's, and that's why I say giving credit for, so is doing a lot of heavy lifting here because of these caveats. So, like, the Gollum in Jewish folklore doesn't count because it's folklore, it's not science fiction. Or the, the robot created by Hephaestus, you know, for the Greek gods or whatever, doesn't count either. So, this is generally considered to be the first robot in science fiction for that reason.

• 2:08:19Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 2:08:20Speaker 02

  I read the story. It's crazy. It's like, you know, it's amazing. But, yeah, the, the inventor passes the robot off as his daughter and the protagonist, you know, falls in love with her. Although he thought it was strange that her gaze was fixed and she wasn't really that reactive. But it's, but still, she was realistic enough for him to think that she was beautiful and for him to fall in love with her. It's a tragic story as well, but it's interesting if you're, if you, if you want to read it, the Sandman.

• 2:08:47Speaker 04

  Well, I'm more interested to hear as the number three is the fiction because number three is passed around in robotics lore constantly with very similar language to that.

• 2:08:55Bob Novella?

  What stupid, what little thing did you find now, Steve, to make?

• 2:08:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I changed something.

• 2:08:59Bob Novella?

  Everybody effing says R U R is first.

• 2:09:03Speaker 02

  So, the word robot.

• 2:09:05Cara Santa Maria?

  Wikipedia says it.

• 2:09:06Speaker 02

  All right.

• 2:09:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, Steve.

• 2:09:07Speaker 02

  Get ready, get ready to be pissed off at me. The word robot.

• 2:09:10Bob Novella?

  Too late, too late.

• 2:09:11Speaker 02

  Hang on, hang on. So, in item number three, the word robot was introduced in the 1920 play R U R, Rossam's Universal Robot, in which mechanical robot workers rise up against their human masters. Jay, you think this one is the fiction, and this is the fiction, but you're, for the wrong reason that you stated, Jay. This is the work in which the word robot was introduced. Evan's correct. This was Czech writer Carol Kopick. One little nuance there was that his brother thought of the word, but it was introduced in the 1920 play. So, what's the word in my description here that is completely wrong? And?

• 2:09:46Speaker 05

  Uh, rise up.

• 2:09:48Cara Santa Maria?

  Mechanical.

• 2:09:48Speaker 02

  Mechanical. They weren't freaking robots. They were synths. They were biological constructs. They were not robots.

• 2:09:57Speaker 05

  Jesus.

• 2:09:59Speaker 02

  Kind of like, these zombies are not real zombies, kind of like that. They were, they were people. They were artificial people.

• 2:10:06Speaker 05

  They're people.

• 2:10:06Speaker 02

  They, they were not what you would think of as a, as a robot, really. Right? That's why at the end of the play, they kind of, they, two of them fall in love and with the implication is that they now can reproduce. Um, because they couldn't reproduce.

• 2:10:20Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:10:21Speaker 02

  Prior to that.

• 2:10:22Cara Santa Maria?

  I'm reading about this. They're just, they're forced laborers.

• 2:10:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're just forced, it's, yeah.

• 2:10:25Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 2:10:26Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, they're slaves.

• 2:10:27Speaker 05

  Slaves.

• 2:10:27Cara Santa Maria?

  That's where the word comes from.

• 2:10:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're more like slaves than they are what we would think of as a robot. Um, but that's a common misconception, which is what, why it made a great fiction.

• 2:10:36Speaker 05

  Jesus. Biological androids.

• 2:10:40Speaker 02

  They're biological androids. They are not mechanical robots.

• 2:10:44Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, the word comes from, yes, the, yeah.

• 2:10:46Speaker 02

  Worker.

• 2:10:46Cara Santa Maria?

  Slave. Yeah, worker.

• 2:10:48Bob Novella?

  How the hell did I miss that important effing nuance?

• 2:10:51Speaker 05

  I thought I was just giving a gimme to get rid of one of them, but no.

• 2:10:54Bob Novella?

  Right, right? I didn't even think about that one, because it was like, of course, R U R is universal world, duh.

• 2:11:01Speaker 02

  That's easy. You all, you all tried. You all gave it your best. You know, and I'm proud of you guys. I am proud of all of you. And, you know, Christian, you're included in this. I, I have respect. You just didn't get over the hump this time. It's okay.

• 2:11:16Speaker 05

  All right, good practice. Now give us the real ones, Steve.

• 2:11:18Speaker 02

  All right.

• 2:11:22Speaker 02

  Evan, give us a quote.

• 2:11:23Speaker 05

  If a black cat crosses your path, it signifies that the animal is going somewhere. Groucho Marx.

• 2:11:32Speaker 02

  And nothing else.

• 2:11:35Speaker 05

  He was great. Oh, man. He told it like, he, he told it like it is. He always did. Plus, I wanted to echo back to my earlier, uh, Groucho Marx reference in the episode, so I kind of tied it all together here.

• 2:11:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, there was kind of a tradition of skepticism back then that was like, people who were, um, like realists, you know what I mean? That they were skeptical, but because they, they realized that there's just so much nonsense and bullshit in the world. Um, you know, like Mark Twain, that was like one of those people.

• 2:12:06Speaker 05

  Same, yes.

• 2:12:07Speaker 02

  And.

• 2:12:08Speaker 04

  Was Houdini in that sort of camp, right?

• 2:12:10Speaker 02

  Houdini was 100% in that camp.

• 2:12:12Speaker 05

  Sure, absolutely.

• 2:12:14Speaker 02

  100%, don't believe the Hollywood fictionalization of his story. He was absolutely a skeptic. He was trying to debunk.

• 2:12:21Bob Novella?

  Good one, man.

• 2:12:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, debunk the, uh, the seance people who were doing bad magic and passing it off as spirits, you know? No, absolutely. Well, Christian, it's been a hoot having you on the show.

• 2:12:34Bob Novella?

  Yeah, we loved it.

• 2:12:35Speaker 04

  Thank you very much for being, for having me. It was, it was a great time.

• 2:12:38Speaker 05

  You survived.

• 2:12:39Speaker 04

  Uh, not the survivor of fiction, not, not the science or fiction, but you know, in general, corporeally.

• 2:12:44Speaker 02

  It's, it actually, it's, it's quite an honor to lose science or fiction. So you should be very proud of yourself.

• 2:12:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Is it, Steve? Is it an honor?

• 2:12:51Speaker 05

  Is it really?

• 2:12:52Speaker 02

  Christian, I have a question for you.

• 2:12:55Speaker 04

  Go on, Jay.

• 2:12:56Speaker 02

  Is there anything, Christian, is there anything that we can do now? So when the, when the robots finally take over, like, is there like something we can do where they'll, they'll like us? You know, like, like pre-gaming it? Like, is it a T-shirt? Do we have to like, I don't know.

• 2:13:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, like when Tom Cruise ripped his eyes out in Minority Report, you know?

• 2:13:14Speaker 04

  I, I think that you just gotta, you're kinda gonna infect all the data. Like, if they're gonna do like imitation learning like they're doing for all these like large language models right now, you sorta gotta infect the data set with like, love all humans. You, you, and, and like Steve's saying, that, look, the context window, the, the, might fade over time, you know, based upon new stuff, but the go, or revert back to their core training. So if they're in their core training, it's like, you know, Dead Jay, not too bad, but Christian's better, then that's what they'll use as their North Star, you know?

• 2:13:41Speaker 02

  Okay, I'll, I'll go with that. That's all good. Which worries me that there is so much out there. There's, you know, that they're getting trained on the internet, which contains the sum of just human culture. And what is the most cliche thing about robots? It's the, they rise up against their human masters and they kill all humans. So eventually that's gonna filter through their training and they're gonna kill all humans.

• 2:14:04Bob Novella?

  They're gonna figure that out.

• 2:14:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:14:05Bob Novella?

  We're doomed.

• 2:14:07Speaker 02

  Now, we should mention that we are actually doing a panel on the robot apocalypses at Dragon Con together with Christian.

• 2:14:13Bob Novella?

  That's gonna be, that's gonna be delicious.

• 2:14:15Speaker 02

  And we are gonna be doing, Jay, we have to finalize this and add it to our thing, is that we are doing a private show at Dragon Con, but we'll be on multiple robot themed panels with Christian, which is really the gratitude. Yep.

• 2:14:28Bob Novella?

  How cool is that?

• 2:14:29Speaker 02

  And we'll be drunk the whole time.

• 2:14:33Speaker 02

  Not really, but okay. Well, again, thank you all for joining me this week. You're welcome, Steve.

• 2:14:38Speaker 04

  Good to be here.

• 2:14:40Speaker 02

  And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. For more information, visit us at theskepticsguide.org. Send your questions to [email protected]. And if you would like to support the show and all the work that we do, go to patreon.com/skepticsguide and consider becoming a patron and becoming part of the SGU community. Our listeners and supporters are what make SGU possible.

• 2:15:23Speaker 02

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