The Skeptics Guide #1092 - Jun 13 2026

Quickie with Steve: Ebola Update; News Items: Ben Franklin's Anti-Counterfeiting Innovations, Mars Maven, Human Cooperation, Pre Cambrian Animal Senses, Peudoscience Protection Bill; Your Questions and E-mails: Sucking, Audio Cables; 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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• 0:32Speaker 01

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

• 0:39Speaker 02

  Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Sunday, June 7, 2026, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella.

• 0:48Bob Novella?

  Hey, everybody.

• 0:49Speaker 02

  Kara Santa Maria.

• 0:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Howdy.

• 0:50Speaker 02

  Jay Novella. Hey, guys. And Evan Bernstein.

• 0:53Speaker 05

  Good evening, everyone.

• 0:54Cara Santa Maria?

  Six, seven.

• 0:58Speaker 05

  Might as well get that out of the way early.

• 1:01Bob Novella?

  I heard enough of that last October at the haunt. Why are these kids saying six, seven?

• 1:06Speaker 05

  And some adults, yeah.

• 1:08Cara Santa Maria?

  This, we're recording weirdly on a Sunday because of travel and all that good stuff. So guess what I did yesterday?

• 1:14Bob Novella?

  Yesterday was Saturday.

• 1:15Speaker 02

  You woke up.

• 1:16Cara Santa Maria?

  I woke up.

• 1:17Bob Novella?

  You woke up.

• 1:18Speaker 02

  You brushed your teeth, ate dinner?

• 1:20Cara Santa Maria?

  Did all that, but before I ate dinner, Steve, I played in a poker tournament at our local casino. I usually play in a home game. I do like a home game about once a month, and friend of the show, Brian Wecht, is often at our home game, among other friends.

• 1:35Speaker 02

  Oh, thank you, Brian.

• 1:36Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, but this, this week, I joined a friend of mine at a local casino, the Bike, for, they have these summer, like, super stack tournaments with a $25,000 guarantee. And I know, ooh. And it's rare that you can find, like, a really fun, single-day tournament, you know? Like, I can't dedicate multiple days to playing poker, but a single day, I think, is a good way to spend a Saturday. And, okay, there were 179 entries.

• 2:02Speaker 02

  You won?

• 2:03Speaker 05

  What's the buy-in?

• 2:04Cara Santa Maria?

  I didn't win. Buy-in was $250.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  Don't worry, talk about that.

• 2:08Cara Santa Maria?

  Steve, Jesus Christ.

• 2:11Speaker 02

  I'm trying to, trying to mess with you. Go ahead.

• 2:16Cara Santa Maria?

  So the top 23 were in the money.

• 2:20Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 2:20Cara Santa Maria?

  And I busted out 29th.

• 2:22Speaker 05

  Oh, so close.

• 2:24Cara Santa Maria?

  29 out of 179.

• 2:26Speaker 05

  And there's not a huge difference between like the 29th place and the 23rd place.

• 2:30Cara Santa Maria?

  No, I mean, the difference, I mean, whatever, I can bitch and moan, but basically for anybody who plays poker, you'll appreciate this. I was about to get, yeah, it was Hold'em, it was Hold'em tournament and no limit tournament. I was about to get blinded out, which is how this sometimes happens. I knew I had one big blind left and I was going to go all in blind on the big blind. The button was, or it was like coming my way, but I had one more hand before I was on the big blind. One more hand to decide, right before the dealer dealt.

• 2:56Speaker 05

  Pocket aces? What'd you get?

• 2:57Cara Santa Maria?

  No, the pit boss came around because this, at this point in a tournament, the tables are breaking up and they're moving people around.

• 3:03Speaker 05

  Start moving you.

• 3:04Cara Santa Maria?

  And he grabbed the big blind to move him to another table. So the button advanced to me and I missed my free, like hand.

• 3:11Speaker 05

  No.

• 3:12Cara Santa Maria?

  You don't understand. I'm about to get busted out. Okay. So I was like, I'm all in blind and I just put my cards underneath my chips, pushed them to the front. Somebody called. They could have all folded to me, but a guy had pocket fives, so he had to call. He called me with his pocket fives. I was like, come on, come on, come on. Turned my cards over.

• 3:29Speaker 05

  It was.

• 3:30Cara Santa Maria?

  Queen, king, hearts.

• 3:32Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 3:32Cara Santa Maria?

  Queen, king, hearts.

• 3:33Speaker 05

  Suited. Queen, king, queen suited. That's a.

• 3:35Cara Santa Maria?

  Flop comes.

• 3:36Speaker 05

  Versus, versus a, wait, wait, versus a pair of fives. The pair of fives, probably like a 60% chance. You're like a 40% chance.

• 3:43Cara Santa Maria?

  Exactly. Flop comes. There are two hearts on the flop, but they're all low cards. And then just two more black cards come. So his fives hold. Yeah.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  So close.

• 3:51Cara Santa Maria?

  I was like, oh man.

• 3:52Speaker 05

  Oh, but that was a good chance though. I mean, yeah, for your last hand, I would have, I would have taken that.

• 3:58Cara Santa Maria?

  I haven't been playing in a casino much lately, so I was, I think I've played one other tournament recently, maybe two in the past, like many, many years. So I was pretty proud of myself. 29 out of 179.

• 4:12Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 4:12Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  That's awesome.

• 4:14Cara Santa Maria?

  I think I want to keep on truckin'. I'm being the money soon. Man, first place at that tournament took like, I think 9,800.

• 4:22Speaker 05

  Nice.

• 4:23Cara Santa Maria?

  And if I had made it to the money at 40 or at 23rd place, it would have been like 410, 420. So I would have gotten my money back.

• 4:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, you would have gotten your money back.

• 4:32Cara Santa Maria?

  And then some. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I only bought in once. So that was nice too. A lot of people bought in multiple times.

• 4:37Speaker 05

  Gambling winnings are taxable.

• 4:39Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, yeah. Thanks, Evan.

• 4:41Speaker 05

  Oh, sorry.

• 4:42Cara Santa Maria?

  What about losses? Do I get to write those off?

• 4:45Speaker 05

  Only if you have, only if you have wins. You can only write them off against the wins.

• 4:48Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, you can? You can write them off against the wins?

• 4:51Speaker 05

  You can. Check with your accountant then on, on how to do that. It's kind of a two-step process.

• 4:55Cara Santa Maria?

  That's kind of amazing, actually.

• 4:57Speaker 05

  It, it goes in as part of an itemized set of deductions. So it depends on if you're going to itemize your schedule. You can take gambling losses against gambling wins in that regard. Little complex, so just check with your tax people.

• 5:08Cara Santa Maria?

  Interesting.

• 5:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I remember a story, not vouching for whether this is true or not, but so when you like, when you go to a place where you buy tickets, you know, like we would go to, um, highlight, right? And so if you, to prove your losses, you have to show the, the losing tickets that you got, right? And so some guy was like claiming ridiculous losses to offset his winnings. And he had to go before a judge and the judge says, I'm, I'm going to have to reject these ticket stubs that you presented to the court as evidence of your losses. And the guy said, why? It's like, well, one, for one thing, because of the obvious footprints on them.

• 5:46Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 5:47Speaker 02

  Guys just picking them up off the floor and say, yeah, these are my losses. Yeah. Sorry, guy.

• 5:54Cara Santa Maria?

  Amazing.

• 5:56Speaker 02

  By the way, guys.

• 5:56Speaker 05

  There's more sophisticated ways of keeping track of that stuff nowadays, but back in the eighties.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was back in the day.

• 6:02Jay Novella?

  Kara, I have something fun to tell you.

• 6:04Cara Santa Maria?

  Yes.

• 6:05Jay Novella?

  So a friend of ours invited us to play a, um, you know, it's like, probably like a two or three session D and D game, right? So of course she wants us to create our characters and give her an image and all that stuff ahead of time. I had no idea what Courtney was going to do, right? And I made my character. I'm like, I make a druid or whatever. And we get to the game and she describes her character to me. And this is what she said. She was, okay, so my character, basically like a fighter, but that, that's not the cool part. The cool part is my character is inspired by Kara. And I'm like, oh, my Kara? Like, what?

• 6:39Speaker 05

  My Kara.

• 6:41Speaker 02

  The Kara.

• 6:43Jay Novella?

  Yeah, so like what she does is when somebody is about to die, like she gives them basically therapy. I'm like, this is a D and D game. Like, what are you talking about? She was, I love the idea. It's so weird and new. Like, you know, no one's ever done it. I just want to do that. I want to like, you know, be concerned about people. And I'm like, oh, my God, I have to tell Karen, she's not gonna believe it.

• 7:07Cara Santa Maria?

  So Courtney's character in D and D was like a death therapist?

• 7:10Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 7:11Cara Santa Maria?

  That's amazing.

• 7:13Jay Novella?

  I played on your tape.

• 7:14Cara Santa Maria?

  What kind of powers did it give her?

• 7:15Jay Novella?

  Well, no, it's just like, that's pure role playing. Like, that's basically her profession.

• 7:21Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay.

• 7:21Jay Novella?

  But she, her skills in the game, she's a fighter.

• 7:23Speaker 02

  So she has a lot of experience with dying people?

• 7:26Jay Novella?

  Yeah, they die all around her.

• 7:27Speaker 02

  She kills you and then counsels you as you die.

• 7:33Cara Santa Maria?

  It's bittersweet, really.

• 7:35Speaker 05

  She ignores their last thoughts.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  Ah, that hurt.

• 7:39Jay Novella?

  What am I about to say?

• 7:40Bob Novella?

  Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

• 7:42Jay Novella?

  No, just close. When Bob and I were very young, we were reading comic books and one of the comic books we loved was Laser Eraser and what was it?

• 7:52Bob Novella?

  Press Button.

• 7:53Jay Novella?

  Press Button and Laser Eraser. So Press Button was a cyborg. And the reason why he's a cyborg is basically from like mid chest down, a alien fungus slowly was eating his body, right? Rendered him, he can't move, can't do anything. And the whole time he's slowly eating this guy's body, he's apologizing to him. He's like, I'm so sorry. I have to do this to survive. You have to understand. I mean, no disrespect. You know what I mean?

• 8:20Bob Novella?

  Yep. And yeah, it's always, it was telepathic alien fungus, starting at it from his toes all the way up. And somehow he got saved before, you know, he was dead, dead. But, oh, boy.

• 8:32Jay Novella?

  All right. So guys, we're gonna start off with a quick Ebola update. Have you guys been following this story?

• 8:37Speaker 02

  A little bit, yeah.

• 8:38Speaker 05

  Uh, yeah, not, not, yeah.

• 8:39Bob Novella?

  Not too close, I didn't want to catch it.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  So. Yeah, as I said, this is definitely an active story that we are going to be following. So there is an Ebola outbreak in the DRC in Uganda, and it's looking bad and it's spreading pretty bad. And the, the big problem is that they just don't have the resources on the ground. And this is a hundred percent due to the US pulling out of USAID and, and it's funding out of the World Health Organization, et cetera. So this, the CDC, and again, everything the US is doing is like a hundred percent designed to prevent cases from coming to the US, right? Which is, I find that they're doing those things, but the best way to do that is to

• 9:22Speaker 02

  treat it, just treat it there, is to try to, to, to contain this as much as possible. All right, so the CDC's ransom numbers. And, you know, they business are in different scenarios, what's the likely spread of this disease? The primary variable they were looking at is isolation levels. They looked at, and isolation means within two days of symptoms, you are, you get a test, you're diagnosed as having Ebola and you're isolated, you're physically isolated, so you can't spread it to anybody else.

• 9:52Bob Novella?

  Right.

• 9:52Speaker 02

  They looked at 20%, 50%, 70% and 95% isolation levels. 20% is like where we are now.

• 10:00Bob Novella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:00Speaker 02

  You know?

• 10:01Bob Novella?

  Oh, really?

• 10:01Speaker 02

  So this is like the realistic outcome. Yeah, they, the, the primary problem is they don't have the test, the tests. They don't have the actual test they need to test everybody. In addition to all the other things, the conflict in the region, the burial practices, the lack of trust, all these other problems. But, you know, even when they want to do it, they don't have the infrastructure, they don't have the actual tests. But let's say if, if we sort of stay at the 20% level, within three months, they predict more than 20,000 cases. If we can get it up to 70%, that's, it'd take a lot to get us up to 70%. Then they said there's a 95% chance of keeping it below 10,000 cases, which is still a lot.

• 10:45Speaker 02

  That's a huge outbreak, 10,000 cases. But basically, we could keep it under 10,000 if we, you know, get the testing and isolation up to 70% or more. But if not, if not, this is going to rival the biggest Ebola outbreak ever. And that's just under the next three months. Again, that it could take one or two years to burn itself out. This is just over the next three months.

• 11:09Cara Santa Maria?

  This could have been completely avoidable if we had just kept the infrastructure in place.

• 11:14Bob Novella?

  What did they say? 20% would could give how many?

• 11:17Speaker 02

  More than 20,000 cases in the next three months.

• 11:20Bob Novella?

  All right. Well, the big I see I'm seeing here, the biggest ever was the 2014 to 2016 West Africa epidemic, and that was 28,000 reported cases over 11,000 deaths. So just that's just the comparison.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's in the zone. Yeah.

• 11:33Bob Novella?

  Yeah, it's in the zone for the worst.

• 11:35Cara Santa Maria?

  And that's just in three months. Think about how much that kind of explodes beyond there.

• 11:39Speaker 02

  And of course, the bigger it gets, the greater the probability that cases will get into travel hubs and then explode. Right? So.

• 11:47Speaker 05

  Are there any confirmed cases yet outside of this?

• 11:51Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 11:52Speaker 05

  Area. Okay.

• 11:53Speaker 02

  It's still regional so far. But that's it. So we'll keep an eye on it. I mean, this is again, it's just it's a completely preventable, and we're just dropping the ball. Continuing story that will keep you updated on. Let's go to the regular news items. Kara, tell us about Ben Franklin's anti-counterfeiting innovations.

• 12:12Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, this is a really interesting write-up by Dr. Manukyan, I think, from a research professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Notre Dame, who is, I guess, also does material science. I didn't realize that was his.

• 12:30Speaker 05

  Nice.

• 12:31Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. And so he and his team have been basically diving into Benjamin Franklin's innovations when it came to paper money in early America. So he really, really understood early on during the transition from metal standards, right? Gold and silver. Did you say barter?

• 12:58Cara Santa Maria?

  Not in the 18th century. There was some bartering going on. Well, there's still bartering going on. I'm just saying that wasn't the bulk. That was not the backbone of the economy at that point. Uh, there was apparently a chronic shortage of gold and silver coins during the establishment of the United States, you know, these early British colonies. And so what did they do when they didn't have enough of these metal coins? Paper money. They had to move to paper money. Yeah. And paper money, it wasn't new at all, but it was kind of new. Paper money was first documented in Imperial China over a thousand years ago. So paper money is not a new concept at all, but it didn't really start in the West, um,

• 13:42Cara Santa Maria?

  or especially in Europe until the 17th century. And so in, in early America, paper money became, you know, the main way that people traded for goods and services. It, it kept the, uh, the economy healthy, but it also was worrisome, right? Because it's actually really funny. It links right back, Steve, to what you were talking about at the beginning of the show, that we're just picking those tickets up off the ground. Yeah. How easy is it when there's a piece of paper that says, this is money for somebody to go, well, I can just make that. Copy. Right. Yeah. And we think about counterfeiting now and it's hard because there are a lot of little things that are embedded into our money that help people not counterfeit.

• 14:24Cara Santa Maria?

  And actually very often, when I talk to my friends from Europe, or really from most countries that aren't America, when they see American money, they're like, you guys have actual paper money? This is crazy. It's linen, but yes. Yeah, but they're used to plastic money in, in most other countries now. Looks fake. Yeah. Monopoly-ish. That's right. But what does Ben Franklin have to do with any of this? The same thing he has to do with so many early innovations. He was, man, he had his hands in a lot. He was doing a lot, but probably a lot of people do remember, if you've ever done any research or, or read any books about Brett, Ben Franklin's life, that he was, he was a printer, right? He was really, really into printing and he was really into innovating to make the

• 15:06Cara Santa Maria?

  Printing process as efficient as possible to save as much money to come up with new ways to do it. And he very early on understood that counterfeiting is a legitimate concern. So he got into this idea of how do we make sure that people cannot counterfeit money? And you're right, Evan, when you say it's linen, it's not paper. We call it paper money. And yes, it is paper, but paper is pulped from other things. And so in the early colonies, the paper money was mostly made out of old linen and cotton rags that were soaked in water, you know, broken up into individual fibers and then compressed on those screens.

• 15:50Cara Santa Maria?

  And so when you look at them under magnification, you can see, you know, hallmarks of different eras of money manufacturing. You compare old money to money today, you can, you can tell the difference based on the kind of matrix of the fibers. So what do you think are some of the things that Ben Franklin was doing, you know, in the mid 1700s? In order to ensure that the money could not be counterfeited?

• 16:16Jay Novella?

  Well, how about a very complicated design?

• 16:18Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay, complicated designs. And you mean like the actual printing itself would have been complicated?

• 16:23Jay Novella?

  Well, yeah, I mean, you know, first off.

• 16:26Speaker 02

  Well, the image can be complicated.

• 16:27Jay Novella?

  The image itself could be complicated, but they could also use materials that they can, that the government can only buy.

• 16:34Cara Santa Maria?

  Interesting. So, and at that point, remember, everything was kind of Wild West. So yes, maybe materials that would be harder for the average person to get their hands on. I'm not sure if there would, would be a line in the sand that said that this is government only at this point. But yes, things that maybe the average counterfeiter would have a hard time, you know, to be able to make paper, for example. What do you think, Bob?

• 16:57Bob Novella?

  Inserting special fibers into the, into the bill, into the paper currency as a security.

• 17:04Cara Santa Maria?

  So individual threads, and this was a common practice, like ensuring that there were some indigo threads that were in the pulp itself. Or here's one that they discovered as they started to dig deeper, this, this lab. Basically, when went and looked at a lot of Franklin's bills to understand why they were so advanced and why they were so different, they found MICA particles in the paper, which caused it to kind of shimmer a little bit. Yeah. And so it's a visual feature that's very easy for somebody to look at and hard for a counterfeiter to reproduce. Also, yeah, I mentioned those little indigo fibers. And we do this now, right? Like, are those of us who have paper money? Yeah, we have specific particles and fibers and threads and layered

• 17:45Cara Santa Maria?

  features in there. You're right, Jay, there were really complex designs on some of the bills, I guess we can call them. There's a great image in here that's a pretty close up image of a three pence note. And it has some really interesting spirals and different kind of hash marks on it, making a border with a big seal. And so to, you know, obviously, they didn't, they couldn't Xerox back then. So you would have had to do this by hand. You'd have to trace it or figure out some other way to make it fake. And then what are some other things? Think about the actual texture. He did something really interesting.

• 18:26Speaker 05

  Like a watermark?

• 18:26Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. Yeah. So he, he would press leaves into the material while the pulp was hardening, and would capture these like vein patterns of the leaves.

• 18:38Speaker 05

  Like a fossil.

• 18:39Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. And so that then when you would reproduce it over and over, it would be like, you can't remake that one leaf. And so that was a really interesting way to watermark it early on. You know, the researchers write quite a bit about it wasn't just his innovation. And really, they called him in some ways, like an early material scientist, although he never described himself as a material scientist. Probably if we listed all the different jobs that Ben Franklin had formerly or informally, you know, he was definitely a jack of all trades.

• 19:10Speaker 05

  Fire department, gosh, you know, printer, so many, forget it. Wow. The harmonica, right? That was his invention. The glass harmonica? The glass harmonica, so many things. The what? The glass harmonica.

• 19:25Cara Santa Maria?

  Harmonica. Okay. There was one other thing that he did that was really different that kind of blew their minds at the time. They looked at the actual ink itself. And what do you think ink from colonial era money was mostly made out of? Charcoal? Yeah, it was soot based. Usually they would burn vegetable oils or they would char animal bone and they would make black pigment from that. His pigment had, they said, layered carbon structures similar to graphite. Oh, advanced. Yeah, it was similar to what we see in modern pencils. And so he, you know, this researcher believes that Franklin, although they don't really know his process because it wasn't documented, or actually, I think they wrote about how it was documented, but they never found this one notebook

• 20:10Cara Santa Maria?

  that may have had some of, some of his process in it. But they think that he was, you know, experimenting with ink composition to a degree that they hadn't really seen around that time. And so, yeah, the ink itself was actually quite advanced for the time. So texture, fibers, pigments, all the printed details, all of these things collectively helped these notes be authentic and be harder to counterfeit. Now Franklin didn't just do this work. He also wrote quite a lot about the value of paper money, why paper money matters. There's a whole treatise that he wrote, A Modest Inquiry into the Nature and Necessity of Paper Currency,

• 20:53Cara Santa Maria?

  April 3rd, 1729, where he's basically declaring that paper money is necessary for a functional economy. And he talks about how important it is that we establish trust in our money as a community and continue with that trust, that it's fundamentally important. So this was a very smart man, a flawed man, but a very smart man who did some very interesting things early on. And, and with modern technology, let's see what they use. Non-distractive, micro-destructive and advanced atomic level imaging methods, including, let's see, Raman? I don't even know what that is. Infrared electron energy loss spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, X-ray fluorescence,

• 21:35Cara Santa Maria?

  and aberration corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy in their studies. That's how they analyzed these pre-federal American paper monies from the rare books and special collections of the Hezberg Library at the University of Notre Dame. Fascinating.

• 21:51Speaker 02

  Now Kara, do you believe that I at one time had to develop my own anti-counterfeiting techniques?

• 21:57Cara Santa Maria?

  What for?

• 21:59Speaker 02

  So Evan and I were running a game and in that game, there were tags that represented items that you own in game, right?

• 22:06Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay.

• 22:07Speaker 02

  And of course, if people could easily duplicate those tags, they could cheat very easily have all the stuff that they would need. So we did two things and it was perfectly adequate for our purposes. One was we ordered a special like vinyl kind of printing paper. So nothing you could go to the store to get. We found like a company that provided for it online. And the other thing was we included in the graphic, these very thin lines, like knockout lines, like as thin as we could make them in the graphic.

• 22:42Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  Just parallel lines. Printers, scanners and copiers could not, could not handle them, right?

• 22:50Cara Santa Maria?

  So they would be blurred or they would have like holes in them.

• 22:53Speaker 05

  Right, they wouldn't show up.

• 22:54Speaker 02

  They wouldn't show up at all. Yeah, or they would give an interference pattern if they did, if they were really, really, really high resolution, but nobody had that in their office, right? So basically they would just miss those lines and, but you could see them with the naked eye. So it was very easy just to look at it. You could see the lines if you knew what to look for, but you probably, if you probably wouldn't notice them if you didn't know what to look for. And we never told anybody what they were, but we could look at it into a tag and know if it was legit or not. Some of them were not even on the right material, so that was easy.

• 23:20Speaker 05

  Oh, so people were counterfeiting?

• 23:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, we caught some counterfeits in game. Yep.

• 23:24Cara Santa Maria?

  That's nuts. Wow, that's really cool.

• 23:26Bob Novella?

  Did you flog them publicly?

• 23:28Speaker 02

  Yes. The, the problem is we, we would take them out of circulation, but.

• 23:34Speaker 05

  How can you prove?

• 23:35Speaker 02

  We don't know who, where they got them from. You could just say, I just found it, you know, whatever. We don't know how, what the entry point into the game was.

• 23:41Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh yeah, that's true. And you can't blame somebody who did a legitimate trade, but got fake money in the process.

• 23:47Speaker 02

  Whenever we found them, we just took them out of circulation.

• 23:49Bob Novella?

  You could have made examples of somebody.

• 23:51Speaker 05

  It wasn't a major problem.

• 23:53Speaker 02

  It was very minor.

• 23:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was minor.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  It was very minor.

• 23:56Speaker 05

  But it worked, but what the the plan we put into action worked.

• 23:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. All right, Jake, give us an update on the Mars Maven Explorer.

• 24:04Speaker 05

  Maven.

• 24:05Speaker 02

  Orbiter.

• 24:06Jay Novella?

  The Maven.

• 24:07Speaker 02

  The Maven.

• 24:09Jay Novella?

  Unfortunately, NASA has officially said goodbye, goodbye to Maven.

• 24:13Speaker 02

  No.

• 24:14Jay Novella?

  Yeah, it's gone. It didn't survive. So it's a Mars atmosphere and volatile evolution orbiter. Very cool title. So let me tell you what it did. So first off, the spacecraft was orbiting Mars for 11 years. And yes, a long time, particularly because they only had one year of planned missions for it.

• 24:35Speaker 02

  Hey, if you guys recall, not to personalize every news item, make it about me, but I just by coincidence.

• 24:41Jay Novella?

  Someone trying to fake the Maven orbiter, Steve.

• 24:43Speaker 02

  No, no, I saw the launch of the Maven live, if you recall.

• 24:46Speaker 05

  Live.

• 24:47Speaker 02

  Talked about it on the show. Yeah, I was somebody, a listener invited me down to Florida and my family. We saw the launch of the rocket that sent Maven to Mars. It was cool.

• 24:57Jay Novella?

  That's cool.

• 24:58Cara Santa Maria?

  It's fun.

• 24:59Speaker 02

  Do that if you have, that's a good bucket list thing. Like, watch NASA launch something, some giant rocket.

• 25:04Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, watch a rocket get launched. It's very cool.

• 25:06Bob Novella?

  It was epic. I saw the last chance to go up.

• 25:08Speaker 05

  It was great.

• 25:08Cara Santa Maria?

  I did. Yeah, I saw the Soyuz capsule launch in Kazakhstan.

• 25:12Speaker 05

  That's, that's pretty epic.

• 25:14Cara Santa Maria?

  It was pretty cool.

• 25:14Speaker 02

  We were talking about, I'd like to make this happen, seeing.

• 25:18Speaker 05

  The next.

• 25:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, the next Artemis launch.

• 25:20Speaker 05

  Artemis III.

• 25:21Jay Novella?

  All in. I would love to do that.

• 25:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:24Speaker 05

  Ah, I would give Bob's right arm for that.

• 25:28Jay Novella?

  All right. So anyway, so Maven sent its last last signal to Earth on December 6th of 2025. And I guess they they spent a number of months just trying to figure out like, you know, because they don't want to like, call it dead. You know, right then, like they spent time trying to communicate with it and trying to troubleshoot and everything. And after about six months, we're like, you know, we just got to call it. So they, the review board concluded that it's not recoverable. They think they understand what happened. So they said the likely chain of events is that Maven began rotating at this unusually high rate and it drained the batteries, it lost power to communications. And then after that, it was done.

• 26:07Speaker 02

  So to be clear, it's not supposed to rotate at all. That's what the article said. And so it was probably trying to to reorient itself until it just drained away its batteries. And then that was it. So.

• 26:20Jay Novella?

  But the end of its service is not the interesting or fun part of the story, because Maven actually did a lot of really cool things. And I think we should just go over those quickly, because 11 years, you know, like, you know, when NASA builds something, they build things very well. So about 3.8 billion years ago, Mars used to be warm, it had water, there was an atmosphere. But today, you know, it's like, you know, it's like the sand from Star Wars. It's cold, it's dry, you know, it's blasted by radiation. The surface tells us that ancient Mars, though it had liquid water, right? Remember when people were first talking about this? It just seemed like, no way, there isn't like these dried up riverbeds or whatever on Mars. Well, it turns out there are, there's river channels there.

• 27:03Jay Novella?

  There were minerals that formed in water. And there were definitely other signs that the planet just, you know, was kind of like Earth in a lot of ways. So the big question has always been, what happened? And Maven stepped up and found out what was going on. So it was the first mission specifically designed to study the upper atmosphere of Mars. And, you know, wondering how the atmosphere escaped out into outer space. So when they launched it in 2013, it entered Mars orbit September 2014. And it was not to look for fossils or anything like that, because, you know, we're not like looking for crazy stuff. It was just like to look at Mars and see if there was any traces of it losing any traces of atmosphere.

• 27:48Jay Novella?

  How do you guys think Mars lost its water?

• 27:51Bob Novella?

  Solar wind, oh, water? I know it lost atmosphere from solar wind.

• 27:55Jay Novella?

  That's true, but, you know, the water would evaporate and go back up into the atmosphere.

• 27:59Bob Novella?

  Yeah, but then if you've got no atmosphere, it's holding power. You know, the amount of water it could hold is utterly negligible now that the atmosphere is so thin.

• 28:09Jay Novella?

  Yeah, I knew you were gonna get it, Bob. Of course, Bob, no. So the basic problem for Mars is that it doesn't have a strong global magnetic field like the Earth does, right? Our magnetic field is like a suit of invisible armor, and it's no joke. Like, we need it. It's very important to the life on Earth. It helps shield our atmosphere from the solar wind. This is a stream of charged particles that come from the sun. Sometimes it's a lot, sometimes it's not so much, but it's always there. Mars lost most of its magnetic field, you know, billions of years ago. It was already gone. So the solar wind very, very slowly stripped away Mars's atmosphere. And this was all happening in the upper atmosphere.

• 28:50Jay Novella?

  And as it stripped away some of the atmosphere, you know, air would replace it and water would evaporate. And then it was just a very, very slow process. So Maven actually measured that process and NASA reported that the solar wind was stripping gas from Mars at about 100 grams per second. That's not a lot. That is not a lot. It's another example.

• 29:12Speaker 02

  That's up though. 100 grams a second. I mean, that's a kilogram every 10 seconds for billions of years.

• 29:18Jay Novella?

  Right. And that's what it took. So, but more importantly, this loss increased during solar storms, like I said. And, and our sun, you know, when it was younger, when it was just a boy, it was more active than it is today. So early Mars was probably getting hit a lot harder than the planet does today from the sun. And Maven also found that Mars has auroras. Did you guys know that?

• 29:42Speaker 02

  I knew it from the start.

• 29:43Speaker 05

  Small magnetic.

• 29:44Bob Novella?

  No, that's weird though, because with such a, you know, a small magnetosphere, I would think.

• 29:50Jay Novella?

  Bob, that's a good point. That's a really good point. Another thing I knew you.

• 29:55Bob Novella?

  Course it is.

• 29:56Jay Novella?

  They're not like the Earth's. On Earth, we have auroras and they're usually, you know, concentrated near the poles because of the Earth's magnetic field. And then, you know, when the solar wind flares up and hits them and interacts and it light is created that we could see. It also makes noise. But Mars, Maven found something called proton auroras. So the sun is constantly sending out charged particles and many of those particles are protons. When those protons reach Mars, what do they do? They interact with the hydrogen in the outer part of Mars's atmosphere. And in that interaction, the protons can steal electrons from the hydrogen atoms. So once they grab, you know, a random electron, they become neutral hydrogen atoms and this lets them slip deeper.

• 30:40Jay Novella?

  Into the Martian atmosphere. So they're kind of, you know, you know, they're, they're essentially just getting lower in the atmosphere. And that's where they deposit their energy and this causes the atmosphere to glow in an ultraviolet light. So it's not the same process at all, but it does have a visual component. Okay, so Maven was also part of the Mars relay network. Do you guys know what that is?

• 31:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's how we communicate with all the stuff.

• 31:03Bob Novella?

  Deep space communication, deep space communication.

• 31:05Speaker 05

  Communication.

• 31:06Jay Novella?

  Thank you, Evan. See Evan, I knew you knew that.

• 31:08Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 31:09Jay Novella?

  Alright, so if you guys don't know what it is, this is the system of orbiters that help move data from rovers on Mars back to Earth. And Maven's death is not just a loss of one really cool spacecraft that was out there. It's the end of a very productive chapter in Mars's science because NASA says the mission produced more than 800 publications in the archive data. You know, it's going to be used for years. The cool point here is that Maven sent more data back from Mars than any other of the satellites. And it has a record of sending the most data in a single 24 hour period. So it was doing a lot of heavy lifting for that effort to send data back to the, to NASA and to the scientists on Earth. So losing it kind of sucks because it's not, you

• 31:52Jay Novella?

  know, that array that's out there is not going to be able to send back as much data. So yeah, so bottom line here is that, you know, we do have a much better understanding of what happened to Mars. And it's not, you know, nothing weird happened. It's all very, you know, understandable. It's Mars was like Earth, you know, how cool would it have been if there was just another planet in our solar system that had water and an atmosphere and all that? Just think about that. Imagine if we had that right now.

• 32:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, but then they would have invaded us and taken over. It would have been bad.

• 32:19Bob Novella?

  Yeah, but back to you, I would have taken them out.

• 32:21Jay Novella?

  That's right. If Mars was bigger, it would have had a stronger magnetic field, right? And it probably would have been able to hold on to its atmosphere.

• 32:31Speaker 02

  Well, possibly. If it were bigger and the core didn't melt and you still had a rotating iron in the core.

• 32:36Bob Novella?

  Right.

• 32:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:37Speaker 05

  Okay. If it was more Earth like.

• 32:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. It doesn't have a global magnetosphere. Yeah, because the core cooled basically, you know, solidified billions of years ago. It may have localized fields because of.

• 32:47Bob Novella?

  It does. It has little ones. But yeah, so it's, yeah, it's gotta be because of the core. I just think, I just didn't, I just wouldn't think that Mars is small enough to have fully cooled that much, but just.

• 32:58Speaker 02

  No, it's so small. You don't realize Mars is small.

• 33:00Speaker 05

  Well, yeah, it's like a third, right? Third the mass of the earth.

• 33:03Speaker 02

  When you look at it next to the earth, it's like, it's pretty freaking small.

• 33:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 33:06Speaker 02

  All right. Thanks, Jay.

• 33:08Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 33:08Speaker 02

  All right, guys, you know, you know me, I like to start my, my items with a question.

• 33:13Speaker 05

  Go ahead.

• 33:14Speaker 02

  Let me settle that first though. So here's an experiment that I'm going to talk about. In this experiment, you have two people and each person is offered a hundred dollars.

• 33:23Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 33:24Speaker 02

  Right?

• 33:24Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 33:25Speaker 02

  And so they're separated and they're offered it individually, but they know, they know the rules. They know there's another person, but they're also given the option that you, instead of accepting a hundred dollars individually, you can get seventy dollars and will donate four hundred dollars to a charity dealing with global warming.

• 33:45Speaker 05

  Ah.

• 33:45Speaker 02

  But the money only goes to the charity if both people take that deal.

• 33:51Speaker 05

  Independently, without knowing?

• 33:52Speaker 02

  Without knowing what the other person does. If both person, if either person takes the hundred dollars, no donation.

• 33:58Speaker 05

  It's over.

• 33:59Speaker 02

  So the question is, what percentage of people choose to cooperate and take the lower amount of money?

• 34:08Speaker 05

  It's always just two people. Well, it's always pairs.

• 34:10Speaker 02

  It's always a pair, two people.

• 34:12Speaker 05

  So what percentage of pairs of people chose to?

• 34:15Speaker 02

  No, well, what percentage of individuals chose the lower amount of money, regardless of what the other person did?

• 34:21Speaker 05

  Regardless, oh.

• 34:23Cara Santa Maria?

  But lower than we want it to be.

• 34:25Speaker 02

  Wait, wait.

• 34:26Speaker 05

  Twenty-five percent.

• 34:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Forty percent.

• 34:29Speaker 02

  I'm going to say ten percent.

• 34:30Cara Santa Maria?

  Wow.

• 34:31Speaker 05

  Oh, we're being.

• 34:32Cara Santa Maria?

  Forty, forty-five.

• 34:33Speaker 05

  That's right, Kara, be positive here. Forty-nine point nine percent.

• 34:37Speaker 02

  The average guess, meaning when people get asked this very question that I just asked you, is forty-seven percent. So Kara, you were very close to what the average guess is.

• 34:48Speaker 05

  You're so average, Kara.

• 34:50Cara Santa Maria?

  I know, and you guys are cynical.

• 34:51Speaker 02

  You guys are cynical. The correct answer.

• 34:54Speaker 05

  Right, Lisa.

• 34:54Speaker 02

  The correct answer is sixty-nine percent.

• 34:57Speaker 05

  Nice. Hey.

• 34:59Speaker 02

  I'd rather be surprised.

• 35:00Speaker 05

  Yay, humanity.

• 35:01Cara Santa Maria?

  Yes.

• 35:02Speaker 05

  I don't believe it.

• 35:03Speaker 02

  Wow, you don't.

• 35:04Cara Santa Maria?

  Prove it.

• 35:07Jay Novella?

  What did you guess, Steve?

• 35:08Speaker 02

  The question, nothing, I read the study. But the question is, why do so many people underestimate how cooperative the average person is, right?

• 35:18Jay Novella?

  You know, because, um, like, why are, in other words, why are people having a negative?

• 35:23Speaker 02

  Well, it's just interesting. It's interesting that the, you know, two thirds of people cooperated, but the less than half of people thought they would, right? So this was, this was the study. And this study was done over many countries. The pairs of people were always from the same country, right? Cause they want to be able to compare different countries.

• 35:41Bob Novella?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:42Speaker 02

  Their, their study covered 101,000 individuals from 125 representative country samples. So it's a massive, you know, longitudinal study. Some other interesting details in here. So what, again, there's always caveats. This is a construct, right? They're looking at cooperation, but the, the game that they created is just a construct of that. But the good thing is it allows lots of comparison, because it was over so many people, over so many countries. So they found that, there were especially four major findings of the study. You know, one was there's a higher cooperation rate than what the perceived behavior of people is.

• 36:25Speaker 02

  They also looked at the determinants of cooperation and the number one determinant was what?

• 36:30Cara Santa Maria?

  Ooh. Gosh, out of what? Like any demographic information?

• 36:34Speaker 02

  Whatever, you tell me, whatever.

• 36:36Bob Novella?

  If they agreed with global, if they agreed with climate change.

• 36:38Speaker 02

  That was only 14%.

• 36:40Bob Novella?

  Really?

• 36:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. That was not the biggest one.

• 36:43Jay Novella?

  It could have been save the animals, it could have been some other cherry.

• 36:45Speaker 02

  Their preference for the common good donation was in alignment, right? That was only a 14% effect. In terms of how predictive it was. The biggest predictive factor.

• 36:53Cara Santa Maria?

  Financial insecurity?

• 36:55Speaker 02

  No, it actually didn't make a big difference.

• 36:57Jay Novella?

  They didn't want to be seen as greedy?

• 36:59Speaker 02

  The biggest difference was your belief in how many people cooperate. So that was the 39.8%. So it's interesting that the more you believed other people cooperate, the more likely you were to cooperate. And so, and yet, most people grossly underestimated the degree to which people cooperate. So of course, that creates kind of a simple thing you could do here, where if people understand that most people cooperate, they would cooperate even more.

• 37:27Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it kind, it reminds me of those studies where people meet somebody for the first time, and then they ask them after, how much do you think that that person liked you? And how much do you think that you were, and how much did you like that person? And people, by and large, are like, oh, I really liked them, but they didn't like you.

• 37:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. So too harsh on them.

• 37:48Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 37:50Speaker 02

  But what I'm giving you is the average of the determinants. Number two was social norm, like what is typical for that culture, that country. And then there were some individual traits, which actually had a small effect, altruism, patience, and risk-taking, you know, 4.1, 3.7, 3.6. So individual differences were not that big. It was mainly what's normative for your culture, what do you believe about other people's cooperation, and do you agree with the common good that we're using? Now, those, but the strengths of those determinants varied a lot across countries. So again, I'm giving you the average. But in some countries, the cooperation belief was much bigger, in some it was much smaller.

• 38:33Speaker 02

  In some, the social norming was much bigger, and others, it was much smaller. But this is, this is how it averaged out. So that's interesting. What do you guys think about that? What implications does this have for people and society?

• 38:45Jay Novella?

  We're heavily influenced by, you know, our perception of what other people

• 38:49Speaker 02

  Absolutely. That's definitely one thing.

• 38:51Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, it's like trust. When we think about things like trust in institutions, if people think that, you know, society is functional, that governments are functional, that the systems in place are healthy and work, they're more likely to engage with them. But if people are, you know, become cynical because they're losing trust, they're actually, they become less pro-social, which is a Problem and it's like a negative feedback loop.

• 39:16Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 39:16Bob Novella?

  Is it kind of related to the, the principle of charity?

• 39:19Speaker 02

  Uh, in what way?

• 39:20Bob Novella?

  You know, that you, you ascribe evil intentions to people, but to yourself, it's like, oh no, there's, I have good reasons.

• 39:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I, I'm clearly cooperative and generous, but the other person's probably not. Yeah. There's a little bit of the fundamental attribution there going on. So, yeah, all that's true. For me though, it, it also reinforces something that I've long observed, which is that, is, is what you were saying, I think, Kara. The, our perceptions of what's normative in our society is a self fulfilling prophecy.

• 39:48Cara Santa Maria?

  Yes.

• 39:49Speaker 02

  And that's, I think, really critical lesson that this research reinforces. That people who think the world is a bad place are more likely to make it a bad place by the choices that they make. They fulfill their own prophecy. People who think that, you know, people generally are nice and cooperative and generous, et cetera. Their world is all of those things to some extent because they make it that way, because they believe it's that way. Right? So I, I always push back against people like, well, that's just the way the world works. You know, this is just the way it is. And, you know, whatever. Like that kind of cynicism, it's like, it's no, that's not the way the world works. That's not the way it has to be.

• 40:35Speaker 02

  We make it, we all collectively make it that way by the millions of decisions that we make, which are guided by what you believe is normative in society. And if you just think, whatever other people do, I'm going to be a good person and spread goodness around and be cooperative and to be all, you know, whatever, try to be virtuous. At least to a reasonable extent, the world is more virtuous because of that.

• 40:57Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, yeah. So there's an actual effect there and there's also a perceived effect. And both, both I think, uh, are synergistic with each other. I talk about this all the time with my patients too. Like if you're the kind of person who just expects that everybody is like crappy all the time to you. Then every time that person doesn't hold the elevator or doesn't hold the door, you notice. But every time that they do hold the door, you sort of minimize that interaction in your mind.

• 41:23Speaker 02

  Well, yeah. There must be some reason. That's confirmation bias, right?

• 41:26Cara Santa Maria?

  Yep, yep. So you're constantly operating with that confirmation bias and then you're changing your own behavior, which does have downstream effects on other people's behavior.

• 41:35Speaker 02

  Now, of course, if you believe this about a subset of people, that confirmation bias and self fulfilling prophecy creates bigotry and racism and biases and all that stuff. And we've seen that in action as well.

• 41:48Bob Novella?

  So we should have some news sources that just report on the fun, happy stuff.

• 41:54Speaker 02

  Well, I think, hey, if it just reflected reality, I'd go for that because the news has a massive negativity bias. And it absolutely, if it bleeds, it leads. It absolutely influences people's perception of reality, right?

• 42:09Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 42:10Speaker 02

  And that has a negative self fulfilling effect on society. We see that, I hate to say this, we see that in our own administration with people like Stephen Miller saying, "The world's a rough place and we gotta be rough." It's like, no, you're making it that way. But that very attitude, it doesn't have to be the way. It's not inherently that way. I've started, I think I've said this on the show perhaps, I think of this now as the Game of Thrones effect, right? Because, you know, yes, it's a work of fiction, but what, reading all the books and watching the shows, it struck me how everybody consistently in that world thinks that their world is a dark, evil place. And it's also very clear that

• 42:51Speaker 02

  all of those same people are making it a dark, evil world. But they don't realize that. You know, we see that as the reader, hopefully. But it's like, no, no, it's not an evil place. You're just making it evil by the choices that you make. And I just think that's a lesson we have to constantly remind ourselves about. And also be more optimistic about people because people are better than you think. We're more cooperative than we think. Also, this evolutionary idea of survive, love, the finished, you know, nature, red and tooth and claw. It's like, no, nature also favors cooperation and we are a very cooperative species. That is more in our nature than killing or whatever.

• 43:28Speaker 05

  Right. Tribe survive, individuals don't.

• 43:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:30Speaker 05

  Right?

• 43:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. Absolutely.

• 43:32Speaker 05

  Yeah. Survivor.

• 43:34Speaker 02

  Okay. Well, everyone, we're going to take a quick break from our show to talk about our sponsor this week, Quince. Guys, you know, I really love this brand. Quince is one of my favorites. Everything at Quince is always priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. Just do a quick check because it's actually true and it's awesome because their stuff is very high quality and I think you're gonna love it.

• 43:58Cara Santa Maria?

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• 44:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can't beat it.

• 44:15Cara Santa Maria?

  Super excited about that.

• 44:17Speaker 05

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• 44:36Speaker 02

  All right, guys, let's get back to the show. Bob, I just talked about this a few weeks ago, but you have another news item about pre-Cam- pre-Cambrian animals.

• 44:46Bob Novella?

  Yes, yes. Wait, what did you say a few weeks ago?

• 44:49Speaker 02

  It was on Science Fiction. Science Fiction, we had a couple of pre-Cambrian news items.

• 44:52Bob Novella?

  Oh, yeah, I try to, I try to forget.

• 44:54Speaker 02

  By the way, we sometimes mispronounced Idiocaren as Idiocarian, but it's Idiocaren.

• 45:01Bob Novella?

  Idiocaren.

• 45:01Speaker 02

  Just to be clear.

• 45:02Bob Novella?

  Yeah, Idiocaren.

• 45:02Speaker 02

  What did we say? Idiocaren?

• 45:04Cara Santa Maria?

  Idiocarian. We added a Y after that.

• 45:06Bob Novella?

  Yeah. So guys, scientists, scientists have shed some fascinating light on the more mysterious and impactful periods of evolution, specifically the transition from the simple earliest animals to the more modern, complex and more mobile animals found after the Cambrian explosion. Okay, this is from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, otherwise known by some other acronym, whatever it is. The title, the title, the title is Trace Fossils Constrain the Perceptual Ranges of the Earliest Motile Animals.

• 45:40Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 45:40Bob Novella?

  Now, I love after I do research and I go back to the title.

• 45:44Speaker 02

  And it suddenly makes sense.

• 45:45Bob Novella?

  But no, not just suddenly makes sense, it suddenly looked so wonderfully pithy. I almost don't have to say anything else. It's so tight, it's just such a great title. This one specifically is so good. "The study in many ways is an attempt to deal with a fossil problem. How do you learn about the most ancient animals on earth if their remains almost never fossilized?" This is not fun for people who are looking into this and want to discover what happens. But there's no fossils that I could find. Alright, so to put this in context, we need to go back, way back machine, half a billion years, to the time around the time of the famous Cambrian explosion.

• 46:24Bob Novella?

  So at that time, about 539 million years ago, we see a relatively rapid, very rapid increase in evolutionary diversification in the fossil record. The Cambrian explosion, from out of nowhere ostensibly, Steve, ostensibly, we find that ancestors of almost all the modern animals, we find almost all the modern animal phyla. And so when I say phyla, you could think complex body plans, anatomical innovations, that's kind of what we're talking about. So, we find the earliest known ancestors of vertebrates, hello, mollusks, sponge, lots of worms, and arthropods, which eventually will become insects, spiders, crabs, and more. We just found all this great stuff, wow.

• 47:09Bob Novella?

  I'm sure Steve is champing slash chomping at the bit for this next bit here. This explosion isn't just from pure diversification alone. This is also, it's an artifact, the reason why we see so many then and not before, it's an artifact of fossilization itself, right? Precambrian soft bodies hardly never fossilized, they're squishy. And the new-fangled hard body parts in the Cambrian do fossilize. So that's, so like, so ipso facto, always wanted to say that, ipso facto, we see a proverbial explosion, right?

• 47:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I love Stephen J. Gould's description of it. It's like turning on the lights and go, where did all this stuff come from? You know?

• 47:47Bob Novella?

  So, right, I like, you know what I like is I like the Cambrian fossil is a, the fossil record in the Cambrian explosion era is like fireworks, right? There's lots of oozes and ozes, but the pre-Cambrian, or specifically the Ediacaran period is where a lot of the, like, the fuse was burning, right? There was a lot of setting up happening there, and it's so frustratingly hard to see what was going on there. So how do we shed more light on this period of evolution? One way is to look at other fossil types, right? Something other than these body fossils, if that's what you want to call them, something other than those body fossils, which are just too rare at that time. So, and then what comes in here, Steve? Trace fossils, right?

• 48:27Speaker 02

  Trace fossils, and I would say soft body fossils, because again, what I was talking about a few weeks ago, there's a few

• 48:34Bob Novella?

  Yes.

• 48:34Speaker 02

  really well-preserved fossil windows around the world, Canada and China specifically, that did preserve these Ediacaran pre-Cambrian soft-bodied

• 48:47Bob Novella?

  Right.

• 48:48Speaker 02

  critters. And every time we find that, we find out, oh yeah, all of the stuff that was going on in the Cambrian was already going on in the Ediacaran, we just weren't seeing it.

• 48:57Bob Novella?

  Yeah, right. And, but those are still too, just, just too rare. So, and it's not, you know, it's definitely outside the scope of this study. So, they were focusing on trace fossils. And so these are, in a sense, and we've mentioned them a few times on the show, trace fossils are essentially, you know, in a lot of ways fossilized behaviors or activities, if you will, right? These are the fossils that don't tell us how the creature looked, but what the creature did. So what are some examples of trace fossils? Steve, I'll take one from you.

• 49:24Speaker 02

  Dinosaur tracks.

• 49:25Bob Novella?

  Okay, the classic footprints, right?

• 49:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:28Bob Novella?

  Just, just perfect, right? And you could, we could learn so much from that. But there's also burrows, feeding marks, even coprolites, which is fossilized excrement. And I just, I just love the word coprolite. Sometimes if Jay annoys me, I'll, I'll refer to him as an unfossilized coprolite, which is kind of a fun take that. But also, I love you, Jay. There's also gastroliths. Gastroliths, where there's stones, right? Stones that are ingested to aid digestion. So- Often you, you know, right? So, so that's another, that, that's a trait, that's a trace fossil right there. Also stromatolites, which are kind of like those structures that, that, um, that microbes built by, you know, fusing like their slime with the sediment, right? At the time, they would

• 50:11Bob Novella?

  build these stromatolites. So those are, those are examples of trace fossils as well. So some trace fossils rely on the, the creature's interaction with a soft environment, like the classic footprint, footprint, right? So if there's mud or sand or sediment, it leaves impressions and then that, and then that material later hardens. So that's kind of what, that's what we're talking about here. The researchers here used, use these, this specific type of trace fossils, movement trails that the organisms left behind, right? As they're exploring and feeding on the ancient seafloors of the earth. Now remember that many of these organisms had, they had, you know, relatively new abilities, right? They had body plans and complexities they really didn't have for that long, when, you know, you know, geologically speaking. Now they, and they weren't the first

• 50:55Bob Novella?

  organisms to sense anything, right? Even microbes can sense chemicals, but this, what they're, what they're working with here is evidence of animals expanding their sensory bubble, right? And using that information to navigate. So that's kind of the crux of what they're doing here. So Dr. Zekun Wang, who led the research, said, "If an animal has a limited ability to sense its environment, it only gets information discontinuously." This means that it only finds resources when they stumble across it by random chance, so the tracks they leave are normally long and aimless. So imagine Jay forgetting his glasses, wandering around randomly, looking for meatballs. That gives you an idea of the kind, the kind of tracks that, you know, the paths that Jay would take. So the scientists analyzed and modeled these trails. There's hundreds of them that we've have

• 51:39Bob Novella?

  all over the, all over the world. We've got examples of these trails and they inferred from the pattern of movements, you know, by analyzing, analyzing the squiggles and how they moved and, and changed direction, it came back upon itself. They could infer from these patterns of movements, how well these animal-like creatures could sense their environment, right? Because the trail gives you an idea of what they're, of, you know, how well they could sense what's in their immediate environment. So this Information really wouldn't provide direct details about their body, obviously, right? Because they're trace fossils, but it would give details that no typical body fossils could. How far the animals, you know, could sense their environment, how far away, which is fascinating.

• 52:22Bob Novella?

  So, okay, so the oldest tracks that they looked at seemed to indicate that the organisms that made them could only see about one centimeter around themselves. That's what their models and their analysis said. All right, based on these squiggles, it seems they could only sense about a centimeter around themselves. And if true, though, think about it, that would be quite a find, because this would be the first evidence of creatures not just moving on the seafloor, but really beginning to navigate using their senses. So that's a milestone in my book. All right, so now they're looking at tracks that were laid down six million years later, and they showed much more of like a direct route set of being taken to resources that they might need, like, say, microbial mats, right?

• 53:07Bob Novella?

  So they're finding these trails going directly there without so much aimless wandering until they stumble upon it, right? So Dr. Zekun Wang says, "But as the senses of animals develop, they can sense resources from further away." Wouldn't that be farther away? Okay, whatever. We can see this in the tracks. As their path suddenly changes course to head towards food, shelter, or whatever it might be, it's also more common for these tracks to cross themselves as the animal keeps heading to and from these resources. These organisms could have perhaps, they estimate, been able to sense up to 10 centimeters around themselves, not just, what was it before, six million years earlier was like a one centimeter. Now, six million years later, some of these can sense up to 10 centimeters.

• 53:51Bob Novella?

  The scientists theorize, you know, one possible cause here, they're just riffing, you know, they're not saying this is what happened, but one possible explanation for this could be primitive light detection, the beginnings of real vision, possibly. But of course, these trails can't prove that they had eyes. It just shows that their behavior is consistent with longer-range perception, which is really as far as they really can take that. So by the time the Cambrian Explosion was well underway. The trails seem to to show an awareness of 15 centimeters. So they've gone from one centimeter to 10 and then well into the Cambrian explosion. They're now they can sense 15 centimeters away. And it doesn't sound like a huge distance, but these are tiny creatures.

• 54:32Bob Novella?

  This this, you know, 15 centimeters could be 12, you know, 12 of their body width. So it's it could be very significant for them. Of course, the animals wouldn't abruptly change their course only for resources, right? So that's definitely one limitation of the study because they're kind of they're they're thinking mainly for resources. But they recognize that they could also be following boundaries, right? They these tracks could be responding to not a microbial mat for food, but it could be responding to currents or maybe it's avoiding danger. So all of these other possibilities could be related to their sensory acuity. But in the future, they hope that they'll be able to research and delve into these more types of details to see how it relates.

• 55:14Bob Novella?

  So, uh, so, yeah, interesting study. Check it out online if you want to see some more details. But this was a this was a fun topic.

• 55:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's cool.

• 55:22Bob Novella?

  Steve, what do you think?

• 55:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it makes sense. I remember, again, I've read a lot of Stephen Jay Gould. He wrote a lot about the Cambrian explosion and the Idiocaren. And, you know, he made the point, which makes sense, and I agree with. You would expect that when the fossil record turns on because of the innovation of hard parts.

• 55:39Bob Novella?

  Hard parts, yeah.

• 55:40Speaker 02

  You're not going to have really simplistic creatures with this, right? They will have they could have been evolving for 10s, you know, 100 million years.

• 55:48Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 55:48Speaker 02

  Prior to that, it had a lot of complexity. They just hadn't developed chitin or whatever yet. So, yeah, the evolution works with what it has. These things didn't come literally out of nowhere. So this is just the more we find out about the pre-Cambrian, the more we realize that, yeah, that's the explosion is really a complete artifact of the turning on of the fossil record.

• 56:11Bob Novella?

  Absolutely. And I think if we if we knew much more about, you know, the late Idiocaren, I think we'd be like, yeah, this is not an explosion at all because you could, you know, they can. I'm sure they would make such amazing discoveries. And unfortunately, you know, we'll get insights into that period, but never, you know, never like the insights we have now with the with the, you know, Cambrian explosion, all those hard.

• 56:31Speaker 02

  It was really, but I think it was really an Idiocaren explosion.

• 56:37Speaker 02

  And then turning the lights on during the Cambrian, right? That's, that's what happened.

• 56:42Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 56:42Speaker 02

  All right. Thanks, Bob. All right, Evan, tell me about this baloney protection bill.

• 56:47Speaker 05

  Wait a minute. You're right.

• 56:50Speaker 02

  You have a degree in baloney.

• 56:51Speaker 05

  You have a bill in baloney. Announced on June 5th, 2026. That was merely two days ago. So this thing is fresh off the presses. In fact, speaking of presses, it is a press release from one of our senators here in the United States. Senator Mike Lee of Utah. He and another Senator, Tommy Tuberville from Alabama. Well, I'll just, just let me read this to you. They introduced legislation, building an FDA framework for homeopathic medicine to protect Americans' access to natural health solutions. It's called the Homeopathic Drug Product Safety, Quality, and Transparency Act, which will provide a pathway for homeopathic medicinal products to gain approval from the Food and Drug Administration

• 57:36Speaker 05

  without needlessly banning safe products that simply do not fit into the same legal categories as traditional pharmaceuticals.

• 57:44Speaker 02

  Meaning that they actually work and do stuff.

• 57:46Speaker 05

  Right. Yes. Oh, my gosh. Homeopathy, do I have to explain what homeopathy is again? All right.

• 57:55Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, probably.

• 57:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 57:57Speaker 02

  Give the TLDR.

• 57:58Speaker 05

  All right, here it is. Homeopathy, what, back in the late 1700s, German physician Samuel Honneman developed a novel idea on, on what helps people feel better or cure themselves after they get sick. Like cures like, if a substance causes symptoms in a healthy person, then an extremely diluted version of that substance is believed, and believe is the operative term here, believed to treat those same symptoms in a sick person. And, and how does it work? What's the, what's the mechanism, you say? Like, how could this possibly? Well, there's a memory involved. You see, it remembers that even though it got diluted out of existence

• 58:42Speaker 05

  of all traces of the original material that made you sick in the first place. retains a sort of memory once it gets dissolved.

• 58:50Speaker 02

  It's an essence. Memory is actually more of a modern concept.

• 58:52Speaker 05

  Who is it?

• 58:53Speaker 02

  Evan, at the time, he thought that everything had an essence, right? That was actually a very common belief at the time. So he was like, well, it doesn't matter if there's molecules of whatever I diluted in the water. Its essence is still there. And in fact, we can make the essence more potent by diluting it and shaking it, basically doing a witch's brew kind of ritual over it.

• 59:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 59:13Speaker 02

  Water memory is kind of a modern recon of the essence idea from 200 years ago.

• 59:20Speaker 05

  He had the added advantage, Steve, of it being a time where if you did go see a doctor, they would let your blood out or drill holes in you or give you a bunch of stuff that would probably kill you. So if all you were taking was basically water or nothing, and you got better on your own, which is probably a better chance you had than if you maybe saw the doctor, you would think there would be some validity to a concoction or a tincture like this. But there's no plausibility whatsoever to this being legitimate, has no place in science. It just is pure fantasy. It's magic. It's magical thinking.

• 59:54Speaker 02

  It's magic. It's magical poesies. Plus, it's been studied anyway clinically, and it doesn't work for anything. After a couple hundred years of research, no one's been able to establish that it works for anything.

• 1:00:06Speaker 05

  You see, but apparently what this bill is about, it's about Americans having a right to manage their own health and choose treatments that are right for them, including homeopathic methods, says Senator Lee, who also says the current federal regulatory framework is designed around traditional pharmaceuticals, but it's ill-equipped to review the safety and effectiveness of homeopathic products.

• 1:00:26Speaker 02

  Which is bullshit. Absolute bullshit.

• 1:00:28Speaker 05

  Right, right.

• 1:00:29Speaker 02

  There already is a framework. They just don't like it.

• 1:00:32Speaker 05

  They don't like it. Yeah.

• 1:00:33Speaker 02

  They just want to create, they want to create a new pathway packed with homeopaths, right? That's what they want to do.

• 1:00:39Speaker 05

  Plus, what they don't address at all in the bill, and you can read the bill, it's only a 12-page bill, there's actually not much to it here, is that people who choose to go down this path of homeopathy to relieve themselves of their symptoms or whatever, or for their children or anything, they're delaying actual medical care that could work. Especially if you have something that's more serious than just, you know, something, you know, some minor ailment. And that's been shown as well in other places around the world. We have tons of stories where people delayed their real healthcare because they were relying on the on homeopathic tinctures instead. And then it maybe became too late for them and they either died or became severely sick and more injured as a result of having of having.

• 1:01:23Speaker 02

  And even in the best case scenario, it's a multi-billion dollar parasite on the healthcare system, providing no benefit and sapping people of their healthcare dollars. But Tuberville is clearly a true believer because he writes that it can quote unquote, it can yield miraculous results. No.

• 1:01:42Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:01:42Speaker 02

  It's water. It is water.

• 1:01:44Speaker 05

  So what are the chances that this is going to actually come to fruition? Well, you would think maybe on its own, you know, who's really talking about this? In fact, I looked it up, Steve. There's no major news outlet right now reporting about this. As of today, it's still a little early because the news is only two days old and it came out, you know, on a Friday, you know, before a weekend. So we'll see if it gains any traction. No science news sites have taken it up yet. It really is just this particular news release by the Senator themselves. However, there was legislation earlier out of the House of Representatives. Again, we have a two, you know, to our Congress is two things. It's a Senate and it's a House of Representatives. The House of Representatives back in January

• 1:02:29Speaker 05

  had something called the Homeopathic Drug Product Safety and Quality and Transparency Act introduced in, this was in late January. So what they may be trying to do at this point, the Senate comes up with their version, the House comes up with their version, they're going to meld the two into one bill effectively. I imagine they're kind of similar to each other. And maybe at that point, they will try to give it some traction, tack it on to something else, maybe some kind of spending bill that needs to go through, you know, and kind of, and kind of sneak it through that way. And, and I have a feeling this administration would sign this no problem. Like you can't rely on a veto here.

• 1:03:03Speaker 02

  This has Maha all over it.

• 1:03:05Speaker 05

  Exactly. Right. Yeah. He'll show it to Kennedy and Kennedy will say, yeah, do this. And the, and the president will put his signature on it if it ever got to the point where it would be potentially be able to come a law. So it's still very early in the process. And again,

• 1:03:17Speaker 02

  But, but not too early to write your senator, write your representative.

• 1:03:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, definitely. Especially if you're in Alabama and Utah, tell these people.

• 1:03:23Speaker 02

  I think this, this one provision is very significant. It says, withdraws the FDA's 2022 guidance that significantly restricted the sale of homeopathic drug products. So we talked about this at the time that it happened. The FDA was reviewing its regulation of homeopathy and they, they added a few good, I think insufficient, but good things like you can't lie about what's in the bottle, right? You have to clearly say how much, how diluted it is without using arcane methods that nobody understands. And you can't like make clinical claims that are not supported by evidence. And so that's what they mean by restricted the sale of homeopathic drugs. So actually holding it to the transparency

• 1:04:04Speaker 02

  and the evidence that they now claim it lacks. No, they clearly, this is about removing transparency and getting bypassing scientific evidence, bypassing the FDA. They want to hamstring the FDA so they can't properly regulate homeopathic products by creating a quote unquote, separate pathway for it. So it's all bullshit. It's just, it's just like the Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994. For supplements, this wants to do the same thing for homeopathy. Very bad.

• 1:04:33Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it's so bad. It's like moving backward. It's so far backward.

• 1:04:37Speaker 05

  It is. We'll keep, we'll keep an eye on it. Hopefully it will not progress far. Let us hope.

• 1:04:41Speaker 02

  All right. Thanks, Evan. All right, guys. We've got a couple of interesting questions. Follow up from our recent episode. First one comes from Sean, who says, hello from the UK. I haven't listened to 1091, so maybe you address this, but I have to respond to the toilet siphon discussion, if only for therapy from I wouldn't be surprised if I am not the only one responding to this. You were Sean. He goes on to say, suck does not exist. After three uses of the word, I was screaming at the podcast for you to stop. But no, you blithely carried on despite my protestations seemingly taunting me. Wouldn't that be awesome if we did respond to him?

• 1:05:17Cara Santa Maria?

  In the middle of it, yeah.

• 1:05:20Speaker 02

  He goes on, humans love to give a name and thus a physicality to an absence of a thing. A classic example is closing curtains at night to keep the cold out. Cold is an absence of heat energy. It cannot travel. Sometimes scientists use the absence of a thing such as holes because it makes the math easier. So what is suck? The absence of air pressure? Then he goes on to explain air pressure. It was like, thank you. I think we all understand this. But basically, and then he goes again, re-explains what I already explained in terms of how toilets work. So I wrote it back. I said, here's the thing. Suction is a recognized thing, right? It is a phenomenon. Yes.

• 1:06:00Speaker 05

  Phenomenon.

• 1:06:00Speaker 02

  It can be used to falsely imply that the forces are somewhere else. But like, we all understand where the force is. Like, when you suck water through a straw out of a glass. What do you say? You're sucking the water through the straw?

• 1:06:16Speaker 05

  You're sending suck down.

• 1:06:17Cara Santa Maria?

  I don't understand. That's just like saying there's no such thing as dark because dark is just the absence of light.

• 1:06:22Speaker 02

  That's exactly what he's saying. Yeah.

• 1:06:24Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, but dark still exists. Like, we can still say, without light, we have dark.

• 1:06:29Speaker 02

  So there is a kernel of a point here, and I do, I do think he gave the best example with cold. Cause sometimes people do talk as if cold can move, but.

• 1:06:39Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, but that's just, that can just be corrected by saying, I'm keeping the heat in.

• 1:06:43Speaker 02

  Keeping the heat in, exactly. But here's the other thing. Cold air can move and often that's what people are referring to. They're keeping out the cold air. They just use cold sort of colloquially as a shorthand. But yes, sometimes it can lead to a confusion, but you know, it's not a big issue. Another one where it often comes up is like when you, you open the airlock on a spaceship. You say, he was sucked out into space. It's like, it is better to say he was blown out into space. Cause no one's creating, nothing is creating the vacuum out there. If you create the vacuum though, or the partial vacuum, you are suck, you are sucking.

• 1:07:21Speaker 05

  So when I'm vacuuming my carpet, I'm sucking.

• 1:07:24Bob Novella?

  Yeah, that's fair.

• 1:07:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, what are you gonna say? I'm creating a partial vacuum so that the ambient air pressure pushes the surface of the water down in my glass and the water up the straw is what I'm doing here. Or you could say I'm sucking. You know, you could, it's a, it's a convenient shorthand that says the action is in the creation of the partial vacuum. Right? So like with the toilet, the, the, the key to the siphon effect is that you have to get a solid plugs, that you are creating a partial vacuum behind the water and therefore that the pressure then pushes the water through. Yes, that is a, an accurate way to say it, but siphoning exists, sucking exists, and yes, we do need to recog, is good to think clearly about where the forces are acting. It's like centripetal and centrifugal force too.

• 1:08:09Speaker 02

  Like people always confuse where the force is, you know? But it's, and it's good to think about that clearly, but don't harsh on colloquialisms. You know what I mean? That actually mean what, it means what we wanted to mean. It says what we wanted to say.

• 1:08:22Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I would like to hear an alternative that would be acceptable, right? Like what shorthand?

• 1:08:27Speaker 02

  Well, you just described it, the water pushing its way down. It's like, okay, but that, but it's still siphoning, it is still a siphon. That is a, that is an accurate scientific term.

• 1:08:36Bob Novella?

  Right, right. Yeah, I think he's run into some people who just really did not appreciate what was happening during a sucking event at all. So I think it.

• 1:08:44Speaker 02

  Okay. We got a bunch of emails about audio cables, but here's two representative ones. Uh, the first one is from Josh who writes, more nuance on audio cable segment. Uh, longtime patron and listener from near the beginning, love so much what you do. The SG is the only podcast I must listen to every week when it comes out.

• 1:09:04Bob Novella?

  Oh, he's correct.

• 1:09:05Speaker 02

  Thank you. Thank you. Audio cables, I think your analysis was spot on. Something Christian said towards the end though, was also correct, that when it comes to transporting data through cables, other factors become significant and then the difference between a cheap cable and a more expensive cable can really be important. Adam Savage and friends did some really good work on this and he gives a link to a YouTube video, which I, I watched the whole video. It's very cool.

• 1:09:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Wait, wait, wait.

• 1:09:29Speaker 02

  It says sponsored content, so I have to point that out, but.

• 1:09:32Bob Novella?

  Well, yeah.

• 1:09:33Cara Santa Maria?

  I'm confused when. Why the distinction that when it comes to moving data through, we're always talking about moving data through cables?

• 1:09:40Speaker 02

  So, well, there are data cables and there are audio cables. And so, an audio cable can be just a copper wire. A data cable is like a USB cable.

• 1:09:48Cara Santa Maria?

  Right, but that wasn't the discussion.

• 1:09:50Speaker 02

  It wasn't. He's just adding a layer here, because Christian did mention something like, yeah, because when we're doing data, length matters and quality matters, blah, blah, blah.

• 1:09:58Speaker 05

  Okay, alright.

• 1:09:58Speaker 02

  He's just, yeah.

• 1:09:59Speaker 05

  That is true.

• 1:10:00Speaker 02

  So, it is interesting, and, and, because there is a related but distinct question. And let me ask you guys this question, because in response to this email, I did do a little bit of an exploration. So, do you think there's a meaningful difference between the $10 USB cable and the $120 USB cable?

• 1:10:18Speaker 05

  Possibly.

• 1:10:21Cara Santa Maria?

  I think the only difference is the difference between like a fast cable and a slow cable, no?

• 1:10:27Jay Novella?

  No, I mean, USB cables have chips in them, like, they communicate with your device.

• 1:10:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, based on this context, I would say yes.

• 1:10:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, the answer, it sounds like the answer is pretty much yes. That, again, we're talking about like 10 to 120, I'm not talking about $3,000 gold USB cables, right?

• 1:10:43Jay Novella?

  But you would spend $120 on a USB cable? Never.

• 1:10:47Cara Santa Maria?

  I wouldn't.

• 1:10:49Speaker 02

  So, there's a couple of, there's a couple of points. So, Jay, you are correct. A USB cable is not a passive conductor. There are chips at either end. And the construction of those chips is fairly complicated. They are designed to handle different amounts of data. So, generally speaking, the more you pay for a cable, the more data they can handle, the faster transmission rate. You are paying for the higher rate of transfer. So, this is one of those things where, for a certain duration, a certain range of price, you get what you pay for. You are paying for better quality. There's also the fact that some cables are really just meant as power cables.

• 1:11:32Speaker 02

  In fact, on the video, they show one cable that doesn't even have the data connected. It really is just meant for charging.

• 1:11:40Speaker 05

  Charging, yeah.

• 1:11:41Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, I remember. Oh, my gosh. When my Apple TV died, I have an old Apple TV and it died. And I was trying to do some sort of hard reset on it. And it required that you do a direct connection. I went to my bucket of cables.

• 1:11:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:59Cara Santa Maria?

  And out of like 15 of them, only like three of them actually transmitted data.

• 1:12:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, the others were probably just power cables.

• 1:12:06Cara Santa Maria?

  That's and like they, there's no marking on them.

• 1:12:09Speaker 05

  You'd think there would be an indicator.

• 1:12:11Speaker 02

  Well, when you buy it, there is.

• 1:12:13Cara Santa Maria?

  Right, but there should be some sort of legal requirement, like some sort of marking on the, on the USB part.

• 1:12:18Speaker 05

  So when you do. Or something, right?

• 1:12:20Speaker 02

  When you buy a USB cable, in addition to it being like USB B or C or Lightning, right? You have to know what kind it is. But it used to be also micro and mini or whatever. Now I try to have everything in my life C. But you should, so not only does that and it's, you know, A to C or C to C. And those things all matter in terms of how fast they, you could charge a device with them. And but they should also be rated for their data transfers. So look at how much, how quickly they could transfer data. And then the longer cables are more expensive and better quality absolutely matters when you get longer. If you just want a three foot cable to charge your phone, you can get the cheapest thing on the market, right? But if you are transferring lots of data or you're connecting it to a device,

• 1:13:05Speaker 02

  like if when you're connecting your, your microphones with a USB, you should use a high end cable. The longer the cable is, the more important it is too. And there is manufacturing quality differences. That's why some cables fray quickly or break and others last longer. And some are more flexible, some are more rigid. So in that range, I would say like in the like $10 to $120 range, you are getting what you pay for. But just look at those details. Don't remember they're not, not all USB cables are the same. And some are not even meant to transfer data. That's like a big thing to look out for. And if you got it with something for, that's for charging, it probably is one of those cables that's just for charging.

• 1:13:45Speaker 05

  Of course.

• 1:13:45Speaker 02

  It's not swappable with data USB cable. All right, there was another email.

• 1:13:49Speaker 05

  Ooh.

• 1:13:49Speaker 02

  And this, this comes from Matt, who writes, "I'm a fairly serious hobbyist audio guy and backup sound tech for several venues around town. Over the past 40 years of work, I've worked with hundreds of pros on concert tours and in studios. Most people who make their living making sure the sound system sounds great in challenging environments buy cable in bulk, sometimes buying spools of cable and cutting it to length and attaching the appropriate connectors as needed."

• 1:14:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, they'll make their own.

• 1:14:18Speaker 02

  But also buying lots of stock length instrument speaker, XLR, SpeakOn, and Ethernet cabling. Everyone has the brands they prefer. It's never a monster cable," he puts in parentheses, "but no one is turning their nose up at the mono price or hose of cables if that's what's there, if that's what there is. If you're, this, this is, I think, the money phrase. If you're paying more than $3 a foot for cable, you're a sucker." So he's basically supporting what we were saying. Like, don't you, there's no reason to pay more than $3 a foot for your cable.

• 1:14:49Speaker 05

  Sean would object to the term sucker.

• 1:14:55Speaker 02

  So you don't have to spend $9,000 on an audio cable.

• 1:14:58Speaker 05

  Right, correct.

• 1:14:59Speaker 02

  Or $4,000 on an audio cable.

• 1:15:00Speaker 05

  And when I worked in audio visual for, for a long time, with few exceptions, we made our own cables. Bought the raw material and put on the ends and connectors and things that we did. Not, not fiber optic and those kinds of things, but, uh, yeah, XLR, Ethernet cabling, all that, yeah, it was made in the shop.

• 1:15:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, because it's cheaper.

• 1:15:18Speaker 05

  Sure, a lot cheaper.

• 1:15:20Speaker 02

  If you know how to do it.

• 1:15:20Speaker 05

  And you, and right, you didn't have to worry about, "Oh, I need 100 feet or I can find some 50 foot thing." You just cut what you need and go, it's done.

• 1:15:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, cut to length, absolutely. All right, guys, let's go on with Science or Fiction.

• 1:15:44Speaker 02

  Each week I come up with three science news items for facts, two genuine and one fake. And I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. Just have three news items this week, and here they are. Item number one, a recent analysis of dental remains of modern humans, that means anatomically modern humans, so it's still thousands of years old, over the last 33,000 years, shows that entomophagy, consuming insects to supplement caloric intake was routine throughout Europe and Asia until the last two to three centuries. Item number two, in a new study, researchers explained how a supergiant isopod, an order

• 1:16:26Speaker 02

  of crustaceans, is able to maintain its large size and survive over five years without eating. And item number three, neuroscientists reveal research that shows a mechanism by which people can learn to perform true multitasking. All right, Jay, go first.

• 1:16:43Jay Novella?

  All right, the first one, a recent analysis of dental remains of modern humans over the last 33,000 years shows that entomophagy.

• 1:16:51Speaker 02

  Mophagy, entomophagy.

• 1:16:53Jay Novella?

  Entomophagy, which means you're eating insects, like Renfield, right?

• 1:16:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:00Jay Novella?

  Supplemental caloric intake was routine throughout Europe and Asia until the last two to three centuries. Oh, God, I hope that's not true. I mean, there were lots of tribes and things I've seen where they eat insects, but you're saying that this was like routine throughout Europe? Okay, yeah, that's, yeah, that's definitely possible. In a new study, researchers explain how a supergiant isopod, which is an older, an order of crustacean, is able to maintain its large size and survive over five years without eating. Jesus Christ, five years without eating?

• 1:17:31Speaker 02

  James nightmare.

• 1:17:32Jay Novella?

  Yeah, that's not good. If they were in really cold water and their metabolism was super slow, five years, that doesn't just, that doesn't seem possible. But they don't have, um, they're cold-blooded. Okay, I guess that's possible. Uh, the last one, neuroscientists reveal research that shows a mechanism by which people can learn to perform true multitasking. Well, come on now, that's gotta be the fiction because we don't multitask. We don't, our brain is not multi-threaded that way. We don't, we can't do it. Steve, come on, what are you trying to do here? This is a hard one, guys, but you know, they, everybody says there is no, what are you gonna learn? A trick on how to multitask? A mechanism by which people can learn to perform true multitasking? I think that one's got to be the fiction.

• 1:18:16Speaker 02

  Okay, Evan?

• 1:18:17Speaker 05

  Thirty-three thousand years consuming insects to supplement caloric intake, routine throughout Europe and Asia until the last two to three centuries. It makes sense at first glance. I just don't know about, there's, there's a couple of things that could be the part that would make this fiction. Could be Europe, not Asia, could be Asia, not Europe. The time, two to three centuries, maybe not as long as that, was not, you know? Wouldn't we have also maybe heard more about, you know, especially knowing kind of what people ate?

• 1:18:59Speaker 05

  Even peasants ate in the last two, you know, two, 300 years ago? I don't recall that insects were ever part of that discussion at all. Not even on some sort of supplemental level, it was always, I don't know. So this one strikes me as the fiction. But the other two, I just, you know, also don't know about. I mean, how would you maintain, the second one? How could these isopods maintain their large size and survive five years without eating? It must be, it is internally eating its own organs or something like that. It's like cannibalizing itself. Ew, which is kind of disgusting to think about, but maybe that's possibly an answer. Yuck, which is, yeah, just leave that alone. And then the last one about multitasking.

• 1:19:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, this one is so, we've talked about true multitasking not being possible, Jay. I know we've talked about that on the show. But if there is, but a mechanism by which people can learn, a mechanism made me not, you know, is the key. I'll stick with my initial thought. I'm gonna say the insect. Consumption is gonna be the fiction.

• 1:20:07Speaker 02

  Okay, Kara.

• 1:20:08Cara Santa Maria?

  It's probably too late for me to ask, but what, how are you defining true multitasking?

• 1:20:12Speaker 02

  Being able to do two things at the same time. So the fake multitasking is switching back and forth between the tasks.

• 1:20:19Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, okay. And, and two is that like your brain is fully engaged in both?

• 1:20:24Speaker 02

  Well, you're performing two tasks at the same time.

• 1:20:26Speaker 05

  Remember that?

• 1:20:27Speaker 02

  You're not switching back and forth between them.

• 1:20:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. I think that people can do that all the time, and they do do that all the time.

• 1:20:33Speaker 02

  Switch.

• 1:20:33Cara Santa Maria?

  And I think that you just, you learn to do it all the time. I don't know if you've seen these, like, there are these great YouTube videos of women asking their male partners to cut out a circle. And then while they're cutting out the circle, they start asking them questions and they constantly stop cutting. And they're like, no, no, keep cutting. And then they'll ask them another question. And when they go to answer, they'll stop cutting. But then when women do that task, they'll often just keep cutting while they talk.

• 1:20:59Speaker 02

  What do they attribute that to?

• 1:21:01Cara Santa Maria?

  Demands that women have during child rearing.

• 1:21:04Speaker 05

  Interesting.

• 1:21:05Cara Santa Maria?

  And being able to perform those things.

• 1:21:07Speaker 02

  All right, let's, let's proceed with the, the, you guessing the answer phase of the game and then we can talk about it as a group later.

• 1:21:15Cara Santa Maria?

  So I think people can truly multitask. I don't, I disagree that that's like, I mean, it might be, it might be a myth when it's applied to certain situations for sure, but I think it does happen. So yeah, why wouldn't they be able to find the mechanism for that? So I think the two, it's between the other two for me. And how did people spread out? Evan, you went with the.

• 1:21:38Speaker 05

  Insect consumption.

• 1:21:40Cara Santa Maria?

  Mophagy, entomophagy.

• 1:21:42Speaker 05

  Jay said multitasking.

• 1:21:43Cara Santa Maria?

  Multitasking. Okay. And Bob hasn't gone yet. Europe and Asia to supplement, but they are just supplementing their caloric intake. It was routine. They looked at their teeth. How could they tell from their teeth that they were eating bugs unless they were just like bug DNA in the teeth?

• 1:22:01Speaker 05

  Little legs stuck between the teeth?

• 1:22:04Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, exactly. So like, mm, I don't know.

• 1:22:06Speaker 05

  Chitin.

• 1:22:06Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, insect parts in the teeth.

• 1:22:09Speaker 05

  Oh, God.

• 1:22:09Cara Santa Maria?

  I think about Asia, and it doesn't freak me out. And I think that there are, of course, cultures who like systematically eat insects. I think most of those cultures are like equatorial. Hmm. So maybe there's something weird there. I don't know. And then the super giant isopods, these are so cool. If you've ever seen one, they're so, so big and so cool.

• 1:22:30Speaker 05

  It's big.

• 1:22:31Cara Santa Maria?

  Maintain its size. Well, they do have exoskeletons. So I don't think it's size, even if it was cannibalizing itself, I don't think it would change its size because it's exoskeleton when it shrank.

• 1:22:43Speaker 05

  No, inside out, though.

• 1:22:46Cara Santa Maria?

  Large size. Yeah. I mean, I mean, how do other large, I mean, bears can go for like a whole, you know, season without eating. They just hibernate. Maybe they can hibernate. Five years is a lot, but

• 1:22:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:23:00Cara Santa Maria?

  What do they really do except lie there anyway, the isopods? You know, like, what are their real demands? Okay, so it's the bugs or the, or the big bugs, um, the sea bugs. I'm gonna go, I think I'm gonna go with Evan. I'm gonna say that, uh, well, it might, might seem reasonable that they didn't actually eat bugs in, in Europe and Asia for the last 33,000 years.

• 1:23:25Speaker 02

  Okay, and Bob?

• 1:23:26Bob Novella?

  All right. Um, the multitasking one, I, I think, when Steve, my take on true multitasking was that these were like two mental threads going and not just, not just a physical behavior and a thinking behavior. So I don't think that would be classified as true multitasking. Uh, I could be wrong, absolutely. But we have said over and over that true multitasking really is not possible. And it is the quick switching when people think, oh, I'm doing all these things at once. No, you're really kind. You're just going from one to the other. But still, I still think that there's something that, that some obscure thing Steve found, maybe with, so with meditation, you can engage these other circuits in the, I don't know, in the brain, whatever. The one that really rubbed me the wrong, the wrongest was this first one, the 33,000

• 1:24:11Bob Novella?

  year bugs in the, now you said dental remains and analysis of dental remains, nothing else. So that was like, well, wait, how do you actually find, how do you determine that? Where, you know, in these, I guess they 33,000, they're not necessarily fossilized, but they're, they may be real, still have lots of real bone, but what do you, yeah, what, how are you going to determine that they ate bugs? I, sure, there might be some weird way I'm not thinking, but that, that's what I thought that rubbed me the wrong way. The other two, I can kind of think of something that might, uh, make kind of make sense, but uh, plus it helps that Evan and Kara picked it as well, so that, so I'll go with them.

• 1:24:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Blame Evan.

• 1:24:52Speaker 02

  All right, you all agree with number two, so we will start there. In a new study, researchers explain how a supergiant isopod, an order of crustaceans, is able to maintain its large size and survive over five years without eating. You guys all think this one is science and this one is science. This one is science.

• 1:25:14Bob Novella?

  How, man? Five years?

• 1:25:16Speaker 05

  Does it cannibalize itself?

• 1:25:18Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:25:19Bob Novella?

  Is it like those Breivarians that were sneaking food and then scientists didn't know it?

• 1:25:24Speaker 02

  There's two methods.

• 1:25:26Speaker 05

  Two.

• 1:25:27Bob Novella?

  Two. Solers.

• 1:25:29Speaker 05

  Jack and.

• 1:25:30Speaker 02

  You, you sort of hit one. You mentioned.

• 1:25:33Bob Novella?

  Cannibalizing.

• 1:25:34Speaker 02

  Basal, no basal metabolic rate.

• 1:25:35Speaker 05

  Metabolic.

• 1:25:36Speaker 02

  So one way it does it is by significantly decreasing its basal metabolic rate.

• 1:25:41Bob Novella?

  All right.

• 1:25:42Speaker 02

  Right? I mean, it's still going around and doing stuff. It's not hibernating. They never call it hibernation.

• 1:25:47Bob Novella?

  Like a torpor?

• 1:25:48Speaker 05

  Goes into power saving.

• 1:25:49Speaker 02

  It's not torpor, it's not, no, it's not that. It's not torpor, it's not hibernation. It's, it's just significantly reducing its metabolic rate.

• 1:25:55Speaker 05

  Power saving.

• 1:25:56Speaker 02

  And they, they identified the gene that allows it to do that, and they showed that the gene is temperature responsive. So it's able to, in warm water, have a higher metabolic rate, and then it goes into cold water and its metabolic rate goes way, way, way down. So it's cold induced metabolic suppression. So that's one method that they use. The other method that they use, nobody mentioned anything about this, this is cool. They have a massive stomach. It's like two thirds of their body is a stomach.

• 1:26:28Speaker 05

  Really?

• 1:26:29Speaker 02

  And so what they do is when they are active and they have access to food, they gorge. They fill their stomach and then they turn what the, what they eat into like this sludge, this condensed sludge.

• 1:26:43Jay Novella?

  I do this all the time.

• 1:26:47Speaker 05

  Your stomach's not two thirds of you.

• 1:26:49Speaker 02

  Which also inhibits like the bacteria from eating it all themselves, right? And then they could slowly digest this, just like the creature from Star Wars, right? You'll be slowly digested over a thousand years. They could slowly digest this, this massive sludge in their stomach over five years and they could do it. Yeah. These things are cool. You should see the picture. They're like these massive critters. Do you guys know how to find isopods in your backyard?

• 1:27:14Cara Santa Maria?

  Roly poly's.

• 1:27:15Speaker 05

  Look around.

• 1:27:16Cara Santa Maria?

  How to find them? Look under a rock.

• 1:27:17Speaker 02

  You could just look for them. Yeah. Look under rocks and stuff or cut a potato in half, put the potato in your yard and go back and check on it like in a day or two days.

• 1:27:26Jay Novella?

  That's what they love. Potatoes.

• 1:27:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. They would, you'll see isopods, you know, making a home in the potato. Uh, we did that. I did that for my daughter for a school project. Very easy. They're, they're everywhere. These isopods. These are small ones, not the massive ones. They're not the super giant ones.

• 1:27:40Speaker 05

  Some of those pictures, oh my gosh, like half the length of a human body. Oh, get away from me.

• 1:27:47Bob Novella?

  With the long spindly legs.

• 1:27:49Jay Novella?

  They have lots of legs.

• 1:27:51Speaker 02

  And yeah. All right. Should I go back to one or should I go to number three?

• 1:27:55Jay Novella?

  Go to one.

• 1:27:55Speaker 05

  Three.

• 1:27:56Cara Santa Maria?

  Go to one that's.

• 1:27:57Speaker 02

  We'll go to one. A recent analysis of dental remains of modern humans over the last 33,000 years shows that entomophagy, entomophagy, consuming insects to supplement to caloric intake was routine throughout Europe and Asia until the last two to three centuries. Bob, Kara and Evan think this one is the fiction. Jay thinks this one is science. Now, Bob, you asked, and I think Kara didn't know either, none of you guys really hit upon, how do that, where are they getting this information from? Like, how do we know what people ate?

• 1:28:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:28Speaker 02

  Based on their teeth.

• 1:28:29Bob Novella?

  DNA.

• 1:28:30Speaker 02

  From where?

• 1:28:31Cara Santa Maria?

  My guess is.

• 1:28:31Bob Novella?

  In their teeth.

• 1:28:32Cara Santa Maria?

  Inside their. Cavities, I don't know.

• 1:28:34Speaker 02

  Your care is closer on the plaque on their teeth.

• 1:28:38Speaker 05

  Oh, my God.

• 1:28:40Speaker 02

  That plaque is basically a record of what you eat.

• 1:28:43Speaker 05

  And it doesn't fade with time, I guess.

• 1:28:45Speaker 02

  Well, you they could analyze it and you find it's not like DNA, but you could find the parts of the food that you're eating could have been embedded in the plaque.

• 1:28:55Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, so like little legs and wings and stuff.

• 1:28:58Speaker 02

  Well, more like not recognizable structures, but you could find.

• 1:29:02Speaker 05

  Proteins.

• 1:29:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:03Speaker 05

  Close enough that I agree.

• 1:29:05Speaker 02

  So, for example, you could find the chitin of insects, right?

• 1:29:10Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, Bob did say chitin.

• 1:29:11Speaker 05

  He did. I did.

• 1:29:12Speaker 02

  But it's trapped in the plaque. Isn't that cool?

• 1:29:14Cara Santa Maria?

  Right, because what else would have that? Well, fungus.

• 1:29:17Speaker 02

  So we have a pretty good record of how many chitinous things these people were eating over the last 33,000 years.

• 1:29:24Speaker 05

  Question is, were they eating them?

• 1:29:25Speaker 02

  The question is, how much were they eating, right?

• 1:29:27Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:29:27Speaker 02

  And so this one is the fiction. You guys got it.

• 1:29:33Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh.

• 1:29:34Speaker 02

  And there's a couple of reasons why it's the fiction, but Carrie, you hit it on the main one of the probably the main one.

• 1:29:39Speaker 05

  Latitude.

• 1:29:40Speaker 02

  It's it's eating insects is very much a tropical behavior. Why is that?

• 1:29:45Cara Santa Maria?

  Maybe there's just not large fauna.

• 1:29:47Speaker 05

  Protein otherwise.

• 1:29:48Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:49Speaker 02

  So what kinds of insects are more routine in the tropics?

• 1:29:52Cara Santa Maria?

  Big meaty ones?

• 1:29:54Speaker 02

  Big ones.

• 1:29:55Cara Santa Maria?

  Flying ones?

• 1:29:56Speaker 02

  Social ones.

• 1:29:57Speaker 05

  Easier again.

• 1:29:58Cara Santa Maria?

  So swarming ones.

• 1:29:59Speaker 02

  You find one termite mound and you have access to a lot of termites.

• 1:30:03Speaker 05

  Just take a stick, poke it in.

• 1:30:04Speaker 02

  And so in order.

• 1:30:05Speaker 05

  Kuna matata, my man.

• 1:30:07Speaker 02

  In order for it to be worth the chloric investment in hunting down insects, you need to get.

• 1:30:14Speaker 05

  Look, I found an ant.

• 1:30:15Speaker 02

  You need to get a lot of them.

• 1:30:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:30:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:30:17Speaker 05

  Yeah. Thousands.

• 1:30:18Speaker 02

  I ate ants, singular cockroach. So as you go further north, insect eating becomes less common. And what they found was that when they're they did find chitin in the plaque of Asian and European, like more northern populations of humans, it was they said their insect eating was sporadic and probably accidental.

• 1:30:44Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 1:30:44Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh.

• 1:30:45Speaker 05

  Kind of like when we eat a hot dog.

• 1:30:47Cara Santa Maria?

  Like, like us, yeah.

• 1:30:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:30:49Bob Novella?

  Or maybe they ate an insect eater.

• 1:30:53Speaker 02

  So they

• 1:30:55Speaker 05

  Right to cannibalism.

• 1:30:56Speaker 02

  Think about, think about the meat they're eating. Probably has insects laying maggots in it and stuff. Yeah, no, you don't want to think about it, but they, yeah, so they were probably just accidentally eating insects occasionally, but it was not, they weren't seeking them out. It wasn't part of their diet. It was not a routine, you know, supplement. Now, something else happens too. What do you think? So as the Asian and, and, and European populations ate fewer and fewer insects as they migrated north, what did they lose? Do you think? And this really kicked off with the advent of agriculture.

• 1:31:32Cara Santa Maria?

  What did who lose? The people?

• 1:31:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:31:35Cara Santa Maria?

  As they ate fewer and fewer insects.

• 1:31:37Speaker 02

  And developed agriculture.

• 1:31:38Bob Novella?

  They lost their big plaque reserves?

• 1:31:41Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:31:41Cara Santa Maria?

  Some sort of fiber, some sort of

• 1:31:43Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:31:43Speaker 05

  They lost.

• 1:31:44Cara Santa Maria?

  Something in their teeth, the shape of their teeth. Oh.

• 1:31:47Speaker 02

  They lost their will to live.

• 1:31:50Speaker 02

  So how do they digest?

• 1:31:52Cara Santa Maria?

  Bacteria, some sort of bacteria. No. Okay. Gizzard stones.

• 1:31:57Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:31:57Cara Santa Maria?

  We don't have

• 1:31:58Bob Novella?

  You don't, you don't digest chitin?

• 1:32:00Speaker 05

  You don't?

• 1:32:00Speaker 02

  We don't.

• 1:32:01Cara Santa Maria?

  Termites.

• 1:32:02Speaker 02

  But our ancestors did.

• 1:32:03Bob Novella?

  Oh, oh shit.

• 1:32:04Speaker 02

  Cause they had chitinase. They had an enzyme that digested chitin.

• 1:32:08Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:32:09Speaker 02

  An enzyme. And so without the selective pressure to maintain the enzyme mutations basically deactivated.

• 1:32:17Bob Novella?

  Sure.

• 1:32:17Speaker 02

  So we have lost the ability to digest chitin. So Now there's lots of non-chitin parts of insects and, you know, uh, that you can still get nutrition from, but we can't fully make use of it like our ancestors in more equatorial regions did, right? So those are kind of the two big things. But, you know, and the, the part of the reason for this was because there's, you know, there's a lot of interest in modern insect farming. And so it's interesting that there are parts of insects that we can't really digest very well, and we wouldn't get a lot of nutrition out of. So if you're making cricket flour or whatever, you don't want a lot of chitin in there, right? You want the non-chitin.

• 1:32:55Speaker 05

  Genetically alter our cricket to have no chitin.

• 1:32:58Speaker 02

  Or just, I don't know.

• 1:32:59Cara Santa Maria?

  Wouldn't that cricket just die really fast?

• 1:33:01Speaker 02

  Can you just, um,

• 1:33:03Bob Novella?

  Just

• 1:33:04Speaker 02

  Strip off?

• 1:33:04Cara Santa Maria?

  It would all just be worms.

• 1:33:06Speaker 02

  Or just Crack open the chitin and scoop it all the gooey stuff?

• 1:33:09Speaker 05

  Can we go to multitasking?

• 1:33:11Bob Novella?

  Modify people that have chitinase.

• 1:33:13Speaker 02

  Steve. Or separate it somehow? I don't know.

• 1:33:15Speaker 05

  Steve, we're talking. Talking about this too long.

• 1:33:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I can't do it anymore.

• 1:33:19Speaker 05

  Jay's getting.

• 1:33:21Bob Novella?

  He's reached a limit.

• 1:33:22Speaker 05

  I'm getting there too.

• 1:33:24Speaker 02

  I've reached Jay's limit for entomophagy.

• 1:33:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:33:26Cara Santa Maria?

  I do think, though, by the way, that, yeah, insects can't not have chitin. It would fall apart.

• 1:33:31Speaker 05

  Jay, insects used to get in their bread, too.

• 1:33:33Cara Santa Maria?

  It's necessary for the structure.

• 1:33:34Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:33:37Speaker 02

  All right, all of this means that neuroscientists reveal research that shows a mechanism by which people can learn to perform true multitasking is science. So what do you guys think? What, how can you do it?

• 1:33:47Speaker 05

  You lied to us years ago when you said there was no true multitasking.

• 1:33:50Speaker 02

  I did not, so.

• 1:33:51Speaker 05

  Liar.

• 1:33:52Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, my guess is that you are offloading one of the behaviors to a different part of your brain.

• 1:33:58Speaker 02

  Yes, Karen is absolutely correct. Everything you said was correct, Karen. You're offloading. So this is what they showed. So what the thing you can't, so where's the bottleneck for multitasking? It's the frontal lobes. Exactly, it's your frontal lobes. It's, we have only serial attention, can only pay attention to one thing at a time. Right? So we can't, and so when you, when two things require your attention, you have to switch back and forth. You cannot simultaneously pay attention to two tasks that require a lot of attention. Let's say, you guys have all done this, when, when you first learn to drive, you have to pay attention fully. You're fully engaging your frontal lobes to know all the things you gotta do.

• 1:34:39Speaker 02

  And then, once you've driven for 20 years, you can do anything while you're driving. You can have a conversation, you could be listening to the radio. It, it doesn't take up any of your frontal lobes because you've offloaded the task of driving to other parts of your brain. And what they found was, in the tasks that they were studying, that the temporal lobes start to light up. The parts of the brain involved with visual spatial processing, right? Lights up and learned behaviors light up and not the frontal lobes. And those people can multitask, they can cut a circle while answering a question or whatever. If it's something you've done long enough that the brain has learned the behavior, it's specific, that, that act of repetition.

• 1:35:26Speaker 02

  And learning a behavior offloads the brain activity to non-frontal lobe parts of your brain. So it frees up the frontal lobes to do other things. And that allows you to truly multitask. Now, you can't, I just, it's not that you saying like, we can't truly multitask was wrong. It's just that there's more, there's another layer of nuance here. You can't multitask two things that both require your frontal lobes. But once you've offloaded one to another part of your brain, you can multitask with that other thing.

• 1:35:57Cara Santa Maria?

  That's cool. So but that means that would require like, a lot of training.

• 1:35:59Speaker 02

  A lot of training. There's no stuff you just gotta do it over and over and over and over again. Absolutely.

• 1:36:03Bob Novella?

  Steve, it reminds me of another Gould story about, you know, day date calculators. And how, how somebody, I don't know who it was, was it him or somebody? No, somebody he knew could say, if somebody said, January 5th, 2175, what, you know, what day of the week is that? And there's an algorithm you can go through. But he, he went through that algorithm so many times, that he basically internalized it or offloaded it. So that he wouldn't even have to, he wouldn't, he wouldn't have to consciously go through the algorithmic steps. He would just like, it would just happen.

• 1:36:34Speaker 02

  Just happen.

• 1:36:35Bob Novella?

  After a lot of training.

• 1:36:36Speaker 02

  Subconscious. So probably the task that I do, that I have offloaded the most, I could completely do it without thinking, is typing. Because I've been typing since I was in grade school. I can touch type without looking at the keyboard. And my fingers just magically go to the key I'm thinking of. You know what I mean? There's, there's like, no conscious or frontal lobe effort at all. I'm just, I want to say the word, and it's just my fingers do their thing. It's automatic.

• 1:37:03Bob Novella?

  Just the cerebellum, right? What's that offloaded to? Cerebellum?

• 1:37:06Speaker 02

  Partly for motor tasks like that, the cerebellum is partly involved. Yeah.

• 1:37:09Jay Novella?

  Steve, don't look at your keyboard right now.

• 1:37:11Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:37:12Jay Novella?

  Where is the letter L?

• 1:37:13Speaker 02

  Um, yeah, that's, that's right. That's a good question. I, my fingers know better than I do.

• 1:37:18Jay Novella?

  Isn't that funny?

• 1:37:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:20Cara Santa Maria?

  It is. That's really interesting.

• 1:37:21Speaker 02

  You know, It's in the right hand, it's right in the far right, I think.

• 1:37:24Cara Santa Maria?

  It reminds me a lot of a phenomenon that occurs in when I am at the gymnastics gym, because I go to a gym where it's mostly adult people doing gymnastics. And when they're learning new skills, they're complex, hard skills. And very often, people will be giving each other like tricks and tips. Say, okay, here, you've got to make sure that you really like push your hips or you like lock your elbows. And if you can't get too many hints at a time.

• 1:37:50Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:37:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Because it's like, as soon as I learn to lock my elbows, I don't do that other thing.

• 1:37:54Speaker 02

  Exactly. You have to teach people one thing at a time. Don't even worry about what's happening. We had that experience with both learning and teaching people golf swings. My father, who was a smart guy, terrible teacher, just not one of his skill sets. He would just say, do these five things. It's like, okay, but you can't do that. Jay, you remember when we did, Jay and I and some of our friends did a knife making class not too long ago? And the knife maker, the blacksmith was great. I mean, he had a lot of skill. He knew what he was doing. I don't think he was the greatest teacher because he had lost all sense of how much he has offloaded. The six or seven things you need to be doing simultaneously in order to have good technique.

• 1:38:37Speaker 02

  And he kept marveling at like, why are you not doing all the things I told you to do at the same time? It's like, because I have to think of every single thing.

• 1:38:45Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, and I physically can't.

• 1:38:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can't do that. You've offloaded all this to other parts of your brain. So to you, it's now second nature. So yeah, it's not like this is new or we didn't know this, but they saw it in the brain for the first time.

• 1:38:59Cara Santa Maria?

  Like in a scanner?

• 1:39:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, like they said, yeah, well, we could now see it like after a certain amount of time, the frontal lobe does not activate and the temporal lobe does activate. Like they showed that. So I think, I mean, again, there's been other research to show the parts of that. But I think this is the first longitudinal one where they show it moving to another part of the brain, which is cool.

• 1:39:20Bob Novella?

  Oh, how cool. Yeah, that is cool.

• 1:39:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. All right. Well, good job. So Jay, last week you had a solo win. This week you have a solo loss.

• 1:39:28Jay Novella?

  Yeah, I gotta give him, Steve, I gotta give him a win every now and again.

• 1:39:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know. I hear you. But that's the way science fiction rolls. You know what I'm saying?

• 1:39:36Jay Novella?

  I thought I was so right this week, damn it.

• 1:39:41Bob Novella?

  All right, Evan, give us a quote.

• 1:39:43Speaker 05

  "Science is a collaborative effort. The combined results of several people working together is often much more effective than could be that of an individual scientist working alone." John Bardine, who was the, was an American physicist and the co-winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in both 1956 and 1972.

• 1:40:06Bob Novella?

  Nice.

• 1:40:06Speaker 05

  The only person to achieve that, winning two Nobel Prizes in Physics.

• 1:40:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:40:13Bob Novella?

  Oh.

• 1:40:14Speaker 02

  Marie Curie was like physics and chemistry, right? She didn't.

• 1:40:16Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:17Speaker 02

  She didn't get it both in physics.

• 1:40:19Bob Novella?

  That's true.

• 1:40:19Speaker 02

  And the other guy was, he had two in chemistry, I think, or.

• 1:40:25Speaker 05

  But it wasn't physics, right?

• 1:40:26Speaker 02

  Linus Pauling was two in chemistry.

• 1:40:27Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:40:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:40:29Speaker 05

  John Bardine in physics. "Science is a collaborative effort," Steve, kind of harping back, touching back on your topic from earlier in the show.

• 1:40:36Bob Novella?

  Hark, hark.

• 1:40:37Speaker 02

  Absolutely. We, we display that when we play SGU versus all of you in our Extravaganza show.

• 1:40:45Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 1:40:47Speaker 02

  A few people collaborating do way better than even a bunch of individuals.

• 1:40:52Speaker 05

  Oh, gosh, yes.

• 1:40:53Speaker 02

  Well, thank you all for joining me this week.

• 1:40:56Bob Novella?

  Well, we love you.

• 1:40:56Cara Santa Maria?

  Thanks, Steve.

• 1:40:57Speaker 02

  Hey, next time we see each other, we'll all be, or we all see each other, we'll be at SciCon, and this episode's dropping on the Saturday of SciCon. So if you're listening to this, that's where we are, probably.

• 1:41:07Speaker 05

  I'll see you later at the main hall.

• 1:41:09Speaker 02

  All right, we'll see you guys later, and until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

• 1:41:18Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:41:55Speaker 07

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