The Skeptics Guide #1097 - Jul 18 2026

Live from Seattle; Theaters vs Home Streaming; News Items: The Enshittification of Academic Publishing, Ending Forever Plastic, Reanalysis of Type Ia Supernova, Manipulating Gravitational Waves; 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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• 0:44Speaker 00

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• 0:56Speaker 01

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

• 1:03Speaker 02

  Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

• 1:11Speaker 02

  Today is Saturday, January 10th, 2026, and this is your host, Stephen Novella. We are live from Seattle. Welcome to Seattle, everyone.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  Joining me at this live show are Bob Novella. Hey, everybody.

• 1:29Speaker 02

  Kara Santa Maria. Howdy.

• 1:33Speaker 02

  Jay Novella.

• 1:34Jay Novella?

  Hey, guys.

• 1:37Speaker 02

  And George Rivas.

• 1:38Speaker 04

  Oh, baby, I hear the blues are calling.

• 1:44Speaker 02

  This is our second time in Seattle.

• 1:46Speaker 04

  Second time?

• 1:46Speaker 02

  Second time. The first time we were here, COVID was spreading through the city. We didn't know it. None of us knew. We didn't know it. But luckily, none of us caught it. We were like completely, like we were at a restaurant, all like getting up in each other's virus.

• 2:02Jay Novella?

  We were at a family-style Asian restaurant with like people rubbing up against us.

• 2:05Speaker 04

  Live chickens walking around.

• 2:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, even just a dozen people having it in a big city was a huge thing in January 2020. It's like, oh, my God, it's really spreading there. So it doesn't seem big, but it was big.

• 2:18Speaker 04

  What's amazing, we were basically a month before shutdown, whereas this time, we're a month before civil war. So it's like a bookend.

• 2:28Speaker 02

  Good symmetry. So before we get to some more news item kind of discussions, we're going to do a debate. And we're going to try to do what we call a skeptical debate, which means that not only are you going to try to convince the other side of your position, you're going to try to identify where the common ground is, like find out what do we agree on? Why do we disagree? But this is more of a fun cultural one that we're going to start with. George, you came up with this idea, I think. So the question is, would you rather only be able to see movies in the theater for the first two years after they come out? So kind of like it used to be. No streaming for two years?

• 3:11Speaker 02

  Or there's no theaters and all movies are only streamed? Right?

• 3:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:17Speaker 02

  And we kind of were divided. So who's taking which position?

• 3:21Speaker 04

  I'm a theater guy.

• 3:22Speaker 02

  Theater?

• 3:22Jay Novella?

  I'm theater.

• 3:23Speaker 02

  Theater? Streaming. Streaming, streaming, streaming. All right, it's very convenient the way we're set up.

• 3:30Speaker 02

  All right, so George, you're theater only, so why don't you?

• 3:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, you'll get that idea? So this is like it used to be. So it used to be a movie would come out, and if you had HBO, let's say you were lucky enough to have HBO, it took about a year, sometimes two, depending how popular the film was, before you could watch it on your own television. And to me, there was something kind of cool about that. About, I'm all about anticipation. I like, and I almost like the anticipation of a thing better than the thing. Like, the weeks before Christmas are always way cooler than Christmas.

• 3:59Speaker 04

  And yet, the, the experience, the theatrical experience of having a shared experience, I think is so important culturally, that it would be to me way worth waiting a year or two to be able to have it in your home with your friends, with your family. So I would be completely fine if that model changed back over to, you know, you see it in the theater, big, huge screen, as big as you can possibly manage, and then you just gotta wait. And I, I like the anticipation of waiting. And I think, I think it'd be, I think it'd be, I think it would force people to go back and do those kind of public activities where you have a shared cultural experience, because there's fewer and fewer of those, I think.

• 4:33Cara Santa Maria?

  And I think that it is a, I like that you're framing it as a shared cultural experience, because, you know, we think about shared spaces and how we have fewer and fewer of them, and how we are engaging with them less and less. But I've never thought a theater is a shared space. Like, yes, there are a lot of people in it, but you're all facing the same direction. Like, it's the worst first date.

• 4:58Speaker 04

  It's not a good, it's not a good date.

• 4:59Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, because you're not getting to know the person next to you at all.

• 5:01Speaker 04

  But to share a laugh with like 50, 30 people, or like a surprise or a shock, a horror movie, when that, when the whole audience sucks in.

• 5:08Bob Novella?

  I'll tell you, the first time I watched Evil Dead back many moons ago, I'll never, to this day, decades later, I remember this experience that I'd never really had anywhere else. There's a scene, super, it wasn't very graphic, but it was a scene where this guy was just chopping up somebody. You see like a shadow, but he, he's chopping this person up, the entire, almost, not me, but the entire audience was like screaming at the same time, everybody. And that was just like, whoa, that was, I've never experienced that before, or since.

• 5:37Cara Santa Maria?

  Bob's doing that thing he likes to do during debates, where he makes arguments for the other side.

• 5:43Jay Novella?

  Well, Carrie, he's warming up for the extravaganza tonight.

• 5:45Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, exactly, exactly. No, but I guess the thing is, like, the reason I fall on the side of streaming is that I just need to look at my own experience and data. I'm not going to the movies. Now that I don't have to, I'm not doing it.

• 5:58Speaker 04

  What's the last movie you saw in a theater? Do you remember even?

• 6:01Cara Santa Maria?

  You know, I live in LA and I have a lot of friends who are filmmakers. So the only time I'm going to theaters is for their screenings. I'm not going for Hollywood movies at all anymore. I'm watching them at home. I'm watching them in my sweatpants, which you really can't beat.

• 6:16Jay Novella?

  I am with George. You know, streaming is great, you know, like staying home and being, having access and all that stuff. But the, the reason why I went, I went with that is, you know, COVID took away so many things from us. Like it, it really did change how people feel in a theater. It cha, it just changed it somehow like I, and it's, I feel it when I go to a theater now. I feel a little awkward for some reason.

• 6:40Cara Santa Maria?

  See now, my art.

• 6:41Jay Novella?

  No, no, I'm not. No, I'm telling you though, though I want to undo that. Like I want, I want those shared theater experiences, not just movies too. Like anytime you're experiencing anything theatrical with other people, there is a very human group response. We have hardwired group responses in us. So when you're in a room and a lot of people have an emotional outburst, whatever it is, it could be good, could be bad. You know, scared or whatever, whatever the movie elicits from the audience. It enhances your, your personal experience as well, and it feels good. And like this, the, the thing about community, like we are so not belonging to individual communities anymore. Most of us don't talk to our neighbors. Like we're just, you know, we, we, we try not to say the Trump word or the Biden word when we're out in public.

• 7:25Jay Novella?

  You know, we're like scared to like, you know, ruffle, you know, ruffle anybody's feathers and everything. I, I, I, anything that is a positive group experience to me is just a, a huge net gain that we have to get back to somehow.

• 7:37Speaker 04

  I don't, I don't watch very many like reaction videos. Like sometimes they're fun to watch and this isn't necessarily a reaction video, but there's a famous clip on YouTube of Avengers Endgame when Captain America gets Mjolnir. When it flies into his hand and you hear the audience go ape shit.

• 7:55Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 7:56Speaker 04

  I love that.

• 7:57Jay Novella?

  Yeah, it feels.

• 7:58Speaker 04

  I love watching that clip. There's like something that almost gives me like a little sense of hope in a weird way of like that you could have that moment of like everyone there knows what that means. They've been waiting for it. Steve Rogers gets the hammer. I know this is a total nerd thing, but it's just. Just like, and it's so satisfying, and that can only happen in a shared environment like that. I remember finishing, finishing Breaking Bad. I'd never watched it. My parents watched it. And I finished it, or finished some season, and when one of the characters died, first thing I called them. I called them, "Oh, the guy just died. He just blew up in the hospital." Cause I wanted to have that shared experience, even though I was sitting at home watching it in my sweatpants.

• 8:32Jay Novella?

  Totally. George, we used to, when we, when we saw kids with our dad, my dad took us to see every single movie. Like, we saw everything that we were age, age appropriate to see.

• 8:40Bob Novella?

  Almost every weekend.

• 8:41Jay Novella?

  Yeah, and...

• 8:42Speaker 04

  And some that we were not age appropriate.

• 8:46Jay Novella?

  Yeah, there's a couple I wish I didn't see. Like, I had no business seeing Jaws when I was nine years old.

• 8:50Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 8:51Jay Novella?

  That would scar me as an adult. Like, that changed my relationship with water for the rest of my life.

• 8:57Bob Novella?

  Remember that movie, that horror movie he took us to, where this guy was like, this surgeon was taking out the eye from some dude? I think we walked out, cause it was just like, "Whoa, we're out of here." Like, "No, I wanna see this."

• 9:06Jay Novella?

  But anyway, my favorite, my absolute favorite part of the experience wasn't actually seeing the movie. It was the discussion that we had, walking out in the car, all the way home, and when we got home. And I don't have those discussions today. They're gone for my life.

• 9:20Cara Santa Maria?

  See, I do. Like, that's the thing. I'd rather be with a really close group of people that I love than a bunch of random strangers. And this is gonna cause some mixed reactions in the audience, but I'm a pauser.

• 9:33Bob Novella?

  Yes.

• 9:33Cara Santa Maria?

  And a talker. Like, I like to pause, and, and that's what we do a lot at home, when we're like, "No, no, blah, blah, blah, blah." I mean, it's better than talking over it, I think, right?

• 9:43Jay Novella?

  Yeah, so the streaming experience, overall, is superior because what, you can pause.

• 9:50Cara Santa Maria?

  You have to troll over it.

• 9:51Jay Novella?

  You have to go to the bathroom.

• 9:53Cara Santa Maria?

  You don't have to miss things.

• 9:54Jay Novella?

  In the theater, there are times where it's like, you have to decide, "Do I hold it?"

• 9:58Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, do I get a UTI?

• 9:59Jay Novella?

  Or do I miss? Oh, I don't know. I mean, this is such a weird thing. It's like, you could just go before you watch the movie.

• 10:06Cara Santa Maria?

  No. Sometimes you're still gonna have to go.

• 10:08Jay Novella?

  What are you drinking? Like, a Big Gulp?

• 10:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, you have bladder privilege, Jay.

• 10:14Speaker 02

  Check your bladder privilege. No, seriously, sometimes you can't get through the movie. And then also, then you have to like, I can't drink that much during the movie because otherwise I'll have to pee halfway through.

• 10:23Jay Novella?

  Sounds very selfish to me, Steve.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  Well, this is the point.

• 10:26Jay Novella?

  It's all about you. I'm talking about community. George almost cried over there. And you're like, if I have to go to the bathroom, or I have to get food out of my refrigerator, then I'm stopping the movie, you know?

• 10:37Cara Santa Maria?

  And also, you save a lot of money at home.

• 10:39Jay Novella?

  They have that app, they have a pee app for movies. Did you hear about this?

• 10:43Speaker 02

  No.

• 10:43Jay Novella?

  Yeah, it tells you when to pee when you're at the movie.

• 10:46Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, that's funny.

• 10:47Jay Novella?

  Like, right now, at minute forty-two, you could miss the five minutes. Go paint an office, whatever you want to do.

• 10:55Cara Santa Maria?

  But yeah, it's also, it's a lot less expensive.

• 10:57Speaker 04

  Paint an office?

• 10:58Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, so. The advantages are, it's less expensive, you have total control, you're not paying the ripoff prices of their concession stand, and you don't have to worry about catching illness from other people, which is still a thing, even though we're not technically...

• 11:16Speaker 04

  But no one's taking that away from you. You just gotta wait. No one's taking away your streaming experience, your home experience. It just won't happen.

• 11:22Speaker 02

  You are, for two years.

• 11:23Speaker 04

  For two years.

• 11:23Bob Novella?

  That's part of the problem, because you could, say you miss the movie, movies are out for a few months maybe, at best, and then if you miss that, oh, I gotta wait a year and a half to watch that? That's ridiculous. I mean...

• 11:35Cara Santa Maria?

  That's how it used to be.

• 11:36Bob Novella?

  That's how it used to be, but we didn't know any better. We could never go back.

• 11:39Cara Santa Maria?

  Exactly.

• 11:40Bob Novella?

  So what would that mean? I mean, there'd probably be a thriving black market, like, you wanna watch this movie, it's not gonna be on TV for eight months. It's like, come on, that, to me, that's a deal breaker.

• 11:49Jay Novella?

  That's why there was a black market.

• 11:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, you remember watching, like, people would record it in the theater, and it was like a shaky, yes.

• 11:55Speaker 04

  But remember, the other side of this is you can never go to the theater.

• 11:59Cara Santa Maria?

  I'm okay with that.

• 11:59Speaker 04

  Right? We're shutting down theaters.

• 12:00Jay Novella?

  Well, you can go to the theater for live plays, though.

• 12:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, but I'm saying for movies, you can never experience a big screen.

• 12:05Jay Novella?

  You say the big screen, but if you have an HDTV, you're pretty much getting the same.

• 12:11Cara Santa Maria?

  And you can do the Dolby surround pretty easy now.

• 12:14Bob Novella?

  I mean, you can't really say it's the same.

• 12:15Jay Novella?

  It's similar. It is similar.

• 12:17Cara Santa Maria?

  It's not like the old days.

• 12:19Bob Novella?

  It's better than it was.

• 12:19Cara Santa Maria?

  It would be a bummer to lose out on IMAX, but I think a regular movie, like...

• 12:23Speaker 04

  THX?

• 12:24Jay Novella?

  Can you ask the audience?

• 12:25Speaker 04

  Oh, okay, yeah. Good question, yeah. So, so we're gonna, so we're gonna vote. Uh, how do I say this?

• 12:30Jay Novella?

  Theater or streaming?

• 12:30Speaker 04

  So, so, yeah, so, and again, it's not, it's just, you get the streaming still, you just have to wait. So, so, and no theater ever. So, theater?

• 12:39Jay Novella?

  Two hundred years.

• 12:40Speaker 04

  Streaming.

• 12:41Speaker 02

  Wow, dead even.

• 12:42Bob Novella?

  Damn.

• 12:43Cara Santa Maria?

  That wasn't even streaming. But the truth of the matter is, more and more, those things that are shot just for the theater are artsy, like the directors say, oh, I'm gonna do film and I'm gonna... Like, most things are actually shot for you to watch it at home now. Yeah, but more and more, people are actually thinking about the home viewing experience when they are making these films.

• 13:03Speaker 04

  Did you not like Oppenheimer? Were you not an Oppenheimer fan?

• 13:05Cara Santa Maria?

  It was fine.

• 13:06Speaker 04

  It was fine, okay.

• 13:06Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I was a Barbieheimer.

• 13:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 13:10Speaker 02

  All right, so to conclude that, yes, streaming is the best.

• 13:15Speaker 04

  I'm glad we found some middle ground here. So like, like, a month? Two months? Six months? What's the middle ground?

• 13:21Cara Santa Maria?

  Sweatpants in public.

• 13:23Speaker 04

  What would be a good number?

• 13:25Cara Santa Maria?

  I could do a year.

• 13:25Speaker 04

  A year?

• 13:26Cara Santa Maria?

  I could split the difference into a year.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  I saw the Stranger Things finale in the theater. I loved it. It was so much fun seeing it in the theater. I'm actually on the theater side. I only went streaming to balance it out.

• 13:36Cara Santa Maria?

  I think I was the only streaming person. I think Bob was the same, right?

• 13:40Bob Novella?

  No, I mean, the premise to me was ridiculous, that they're waiting two years.

• 13:43Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, that's why. It was the two years for Bob.

• 13:45Speaker 04

  All right, so we'll say, we'll say eight months.

• 13:47Bob Novella?

  But that, but that said, I think we, a lot of us would agree, we used to go to the movies all the time. Now we are going a fraction. I mean, COVID had an impact.

• 13:55Speaker 02

  A few times a year.

• 13:56Bob Novella?

  But we are going so infrequently now.

• 13:58Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, it's expensive now.

• 13:59Bob Novella?

  It's kind of sad, yes, it is.

• 14:01Speaker 02

  Just for really epic movies.

• 14:03Jay Novella?

  Just buy candy at the store, though.

• 14:05Bob Novella?

  Some movies are...

• 14:06Cara Santa Maria?

  No, I mean, the actual movie tickets are expensive.

• 14:08Jay Novella?

  What are they, like, 20 bucks?

• 14:09Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, 20, 30 bucks sometimes. Like, it's expensive to see a movie.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  You can't buy any of their concessions. It's just insane.

• 14:15Speaker 04

  I'm spoiled. I go on a Tuesday afternoon at 2:00, and it's like, whatever, 9 bucks, and there's no one in the theater, and it's awesome.

• 14:22Speaker 02

  But then where's the community experience?

• 14:28Speaker 04

  It's me and the guy drinking off in the back. It's fantastic.

• 14:32Speaker 04

  There's a bond there. There's a bond of understanding.

• 14:36Jay Novella?

  George, why aren't I getting invites to this?

• 14:39Speaker 02

  I do think on the streaming side, though, the other thing is you can make an event out of it. You can invite people over, have dinner, watch the movie, have the snacks there. And that could be a very good community experience with people you actually know and care about. So there is sort of that mix. You know, if you have a good system, you've got a good TV, a good sound system. Jay, when I watch, when I watch the-

• 15:01Bob Novella?

  65 inch 4K, it's like, that's a damn good TV. And Steve, you've got the OLED, you have an OLED?

• 15:05Speaker 02

  OLED 4K.

• 15:06Bob Novella?

  Oh, man.

• 15:07Speaker 02

  All right, let's move on to some news items. Carrie, you're going to tell us about, I love this, the in-shit-ification of the scientific literature.

• 15:15Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, yeah, so-

• 15:17Speaker 02

  It's a technical term.

• 15:17Cara Santa Maria?

  It is a technical term. A couple of years ago, there was actually an article, I think it was, yeah, originally at Wired, by Corey Doctorow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he sort of coined the term in-shit-ification. And he's talking about the in-shit-ification of TikTok, but really as like a synecdoche for all sort of digital platforms. That has since been described with a lot of different, like outlets or platforms. And what's funny is in The Conversation, which I'm always citing The Conversation because it's a, it's an online repository, it's like a news site, but all of the writers of the articles on The Conversation are the scientists themselves. So it's sort of their way to do press releases around their own academic literature.

• 16:02Cara Santa Maria?

  So Carl Rhodes on The Conversation wrote about the five stages of the in-shit-ification of academic publishing. So he kind of took that and applied it. But what I love is that when you actually link to the journal article, it's actually called the junk-ification of research. They probably didn't even let him use the word. Yeah, I was like, that's a bummer. So junk-ification and shit-ification, that's all fine. But it's this phenomenon, they're calling it emergent phenomenon, as in not emergent like, like the brain, the mind, but emergent like it's happening now, yeah. Which describes, as they call it, quote, "the increasing volume of low-quality content and products permeating digital platforms." Right? So we know that this is directly tied to the commodification, right? The-

• 16:45Cara Santa Maria?

  Capitalist sort of layer on top that as soon as the amount of money you make has to do with clicks and page views, you're going to completely change not only the way that you position that content, but the content itself. And with that comes an increasing change in the quality. And so in their academic publications, that's very meta, their academic publication about the insidification of academic publishing, they talk about this death spiral as five major steps. So the first one, as I mentioned, that's the commodification of research. And they're saying it shifts the value from intellectual merit to marketability.

• 17:26Cara Santa Maria?

  And we see this, and we can make this argument across the board in a capitalist society where there are things that, you know, you may moralistically argue or not should not be profit driven, like healthcare or education. You know, we've, we've heard this argument a lot. So what happens when there is a profit motive sort of superimposed on it? Well, then the quality is going to shift and the reasons that people receive that kind of care, that kind of treatment are going to change. The second part of the death spiral, they said, is the proliferation of pay to publish journals. So we've seen that a lot, right? They spread. And what's unfortunate, and I think they do a good job in this right around of talking

• 18:09Cara Santa Maria?

  about this, is that this isn't just predatory journals. We talk a lot on the show about predatory journals, these sort of like fake or kind of vague fringe journals where you can pay to publish and you're not really sure, or maybe it's really obvious that they're not doing any peer review, or their peer review is really weak. But they talk about the, the section of elite journals that are pay to publish as well, that sort of, once you're in, you just keep getting in. And a lot of times it becomes less about the quality of the research and more about where you publish the research. It's like, everybody just takes it whole cloth. Oh, it's in science, it's in nature, that means it must be good. And the kind of critical view of it changes.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  But just to emphasize one thing there, when you shift from a traditional ...format where you don't pay to publish in the journal, they accept your article and it gets put, you know, the publication pays for everything and then they make their money through advertising.

• 19:05Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, or through, and they, they make their money through subscriptions, too.

• 19:08Speaker 02

  Subscription, yeah, subscription and advertising. So what drives that is impact factor, right? And that's a measure of how many people are citing, basically, that study. So ideally, and for the most part, that favors quality, right? You wanna, you wanna publish quality research to have a high impact factor. The not so good part, it also favors unusual research.

• 19:29Cara Santa Maria?

  Yes.

• 19:30Speaker 02

  Which is not necessarily high quality. So that's the one thing there that you have to keep an eye on.

• 19:34Speaker 04

  Unusual like unique or unusual like just weird?

• 19:37Speaker 02

  It's saying, it's saying something surprising.

• 19:39Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, catchy headline, or catchy headline.

• 19:40Speaker 02

  Which makes it the most likely to be wrong and the most likely to be retracted.

• 19:44Cara Santa Maria?

  And also, it, it disfavors, uh...

• 19:47Speaker 02

  Exact publica- replication.

• 19:49Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, replication, confirmatory studies.

• 19:51Speaker 02

  So that's not perfect either, but at least there's, the primary thing is the quality. But then with pay to play, it's all volume. There's, quality is irrelevant, it's all volume. And then the predatory journals are sort of the end stage of that, but you, all along the way, there's, there's significant downside.

• 20:08Cara Santa Maria?

  And part of the reason, and I think it's important to note, part of the reason that we have pay to play or pay to publish is it was an attempt to allow for open access. So we want, um, I mean, I can't speak for everybody, but even these, uh, these researchers are saying we, open access is a goal, but the way that we have the system set up is that the publishers have passed off the cost to the actual scientist. Should I wait? Okay.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  Give it, give it a second.

• 20:34Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I'll pick up there.

• 20:35Speaker 02

  That's a funny thing, too, they just, it's just cheaper to make a huge, long train rather than a bunch of little train, anyway.

• 20:43Jay Novella?

  You always have like a comment about everything.

• 20:45Speaker 02

  I do.

• 20:47Jay Novella?

  You never just sit there and go, "I don't know shit, I don't know."

• 20:53Speaker 02

  It's funny you say that, Jay.

• 20:58Speaker 02

  Oh, never mind.

• 21:01Cara Santa Maria?

  So, so what ended up happening when open access was first kind of floated is that these larger and more elite journals were like, okay, we want to get on this, you know, open access train as well, but we are not going to make money from people paying to read this article. Because I don't know if you've ever tried to read a journal article online, it's behind a paywall, right? It's $45 to just get this one. Or if you want to subscribe, it's 250 or a thousand.

• 21:27Speaker 02

  Crazy expensive.

• 21:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Whatever. They're crazy expensive. And so instead, they're like, when you, the lab, have, or you, the individual scientist, did this experiment, and now you want to publish your findings, we're going to charge you $900 to publish in this, but that makes it so that everybody else can read it for free. So that leads to this kind of downstream, this death spiral, right? So that's number two. Number three, a decline in quality and integrity follows as profit-driven models compromise peer review and oversight, right? Number four, the sheer volume of publications makes it hard to identify authoritative work. So not only are there fraudulent journals that are publishing hoax articles, but you're seeing more and more motivation for elite journals to just publish more crap, you know?

• 22:11Cara Santa Maria?

  It's just a volume game. So finally, they're saying in shitification follows, and the scholarly system's overwhelmed by quantity, distorted by profit motives, and it's stripped of its purpose of advancing knowledge. And so, you know, they kind of argue for new ways to reclaim academic publishing, to remember the point of academic publishing, that it is a public good, and it, you know, in their view, and in mine as well, should not be a for-profit venture, or if it is going to be a for-profit venture, because as we know, unfettered capitalism is always going to lead to a greed model. So you have to have guardrails, and you have to have regulation. And so they talk about different alternatives

• 22:56Cara Santa Maria?

  that exist, like cooperative publishing models, or institutional repositories, and then different initiatives. They give a shout out to the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment. And then they talk about just reclaiming academic publishing as this public good and building new sustainable open access systems with more oversight. And I think in some ways, we have to have bigger barriers to entry.

• 23:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:20Cara Santa Maria?

  But those barriers to entry need to be on the people who have historically had none. They need to be on the more privileged individuals who so easily have been publishing. And we need to democratize publishing to people who haven't had those barriers and shift that balance of power.

• 23:37Speaker 02

  The other layer there is that, and this is happening to some extent, oftentimes, like, the government paid for the research and now the public doesn't have access to the research because it's behind a paywall.

• 23:48Cara Santa Maria?

  It should be open access if it was NIH funded, 100%.

• 23:50Speaker 02

  So they're saying if the government funded the research, it has to be open access, which helps.

• 23:55Cara Santa Maria?

  That should be built into their funding.

• 23:56Speaker 02

  It's got to be built into the system. But yeah, we're at the point where there is so much crap being published, you can support any position.

• 24:04Cara Santa Maria?

  Absolutely.

• 24:05Speaker 02

  With, by cherry picking from the literature. And another layer they didn't even bring up here is the globalization of scientific research because, you know, whatever standards we have in, like, the rich Western industrialized nations doesn't necessarily exist around the world. It's very cultural, it's very institutional, and there are times when, you know, there are places where there's, that are just cranking out shit.

• 24:29Cara Santa Maria?

  Yep.

• 24:29Speaker 02

  And that's just the nature of what's happening in that part of the world, in that country.

• 24:33Cara Santa Maria?

  But also this part of the world.

• 24:34Speaker 02

  But it's just, it's just another paper online, you know what I mean? Nobody knows necessarily what the provenance is.

• 24:40Cara Santa Maria?

  But that's always going to happen if you build an elite publishing model and you leave people out. You have to include people so that they have a place to go. And that's really, really important.

• 24:49Speaker 02

  That's part of it, but it's also just the researchers themselves. There's got, there's a, there's a culture, an institutional knowledge and an institutional culture of the researchers. It's not, it's hard doing, even in the best, you know, institutions in the most privileged, wealthy part of the world, they still do shitty research sometimes.

• 25:08Cara Santa Maria?

  Exactly, yeah.

• 25:08Speaker 02

  It's hard.

• 25:09Cara Santa Maria?

  There's stratification everywhere.

• 25:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's very difficult. And we're trying to, like, that science-based medicine, this is what we're doing, saying, trying to push the quality. Higher and higher and higher and point out all the problems. And while that's happening, there's just this ton of crap being produced that's throwing all of the quality away. And so we have to get to, we have to reverse that so we can get back to pushing the quality higher.

• 25:33Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, and one last point that I'll make, and they make it at the top of their, of their write around, and I didn't realize this. I mean, we all kind of know that academic publishing is for profit and we know that it's a big business. I don't think I realized the sheer scale. So they said that between 2016 and 2022, the number of papers that were indexed in major databases went from 1.92 million all the way up to 2.82 million. But then they said that the industry is generating more than $19 billion a year and that by some metrics, it's rivaling music and film industries. And we just don't think about it that way. We don't talk about it that way. But it, this is big business. It's, it's like elitist kind of behind the curtain big business. Yeah.

• 26:17Cara Santa Maria?

  And I think we need to open that curtain for sure.

• 26:19Speaker 02

  Jay. Yeah. Have we found the solution to forever plastics? Well, first, I, I was looking for something positive. Yeah. You know, I didn't, I wanted, I wanted to have something like that could put a smile on some people's faces. We, you know, we all, we have a massive plastic problem in the world and it's getting worse. We're not even slowing it down. Like it seems like governments aren't doing anything about it. It blows my mind. It's just one of the list of 100 things where I'm like, what is happening? You know, you see people pull out, you ever see like the, what do you call it? That giant plastic thing in the ocean and you see like- Garbage patch? Yeah. But you know, you just see them pulling out tons and tons of plastic and it just keeps, it still keeps getting bigger. So we do have a massive plastic problem and not many, not many ideas at all. What?

• 27:04Speaker 02

  What happened?

• 27:05Cara Santa Maria?

  It's just like everywhere on our-

• 27:07Speaker 02

  I know, you can't get away from it. When I'm at the airport, if they have a metal, like an aluminum water bottle, I don't care if it's $5 more, I buy it.

• 27:16Jay Novella?

  It actually, I take it home, I reuse it too, so.

• 27:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, we buy as much as we can at home, we're glass and tin, right?

• 27:22Jay Novella?

  Yep.

• 27:23Speaker 02

  No plastic, but when you're traveling, it's like in your, in the airport, you gotta do what you gotta do. Yeah, but that's not, it's a tiny percentage of what we use.

• 27:30Cara Santa Maria?

  But that's also like, and I know that this isn't the, the point of your story, but it's the thing that constantly bears repeating, which is that the onus should not be on the consumer.

• 27:39Jay Novella?

  Exactly.

• 27:40Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  Should be on the industry.

• 27:41Cara Santa Maria?

  Because when you have no choice, or no viable choice, or no affordable choice, you're going to do what is simplest and easiest.

• 27:47Jay Novella?

  You know, they have like refill stations for like laundry detergent and stuff, you know, I've never seen it. I know there are in other countries do this.

• 27:55Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, in every country that's not America, they have like water stations all over the airport, and they have like hot water and warm water and cold water.

• 28:03Jay Novella?

  Well, ever since I found out that we have, we have microplastics in our brain, like I don't, I try to avoid drinking water out of these bottles, and I got rid of all my plastic cutting boards, everything's wood.

• 28:14Speaker 02

  I just saw an ad for a titanium cutting board, I don't know if that's better, it might be. The thing about wood, there's no perfect cutting board, this is a massive segue.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  Since you mentioned wood, Jay, did you know?

• 28:26Jay Novella?

  Well, I did mention, yeah, I did mention that you know everything, so tell us, Steve.

• 28:30Speaker 02

  No, the problem is, wood soaks up water and therefore bacteria, and when you, when you use it, so it's not a perfect medium.

• 28:37Jay Novella?

  But don't the tannins?

• 28:38Cara Santa Maria?

  That's why you oil it, right?

• 28:39Jay Novella?

  Steve, don't the tannins in the wood act as an antibacterial?

• 28:42Speaker 02

  No, not enough, no. So, anyway.

• 28:46Jay Novella?

  I, I clean my cutting boards though.

• 28:47Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, but like, don't cut chicken on a wooden cutting board.

• 28:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 28:50Jay Novella?

  Well, what are you cutting on then?

• 28:53Speaker 02

  Plastics to the board, yeah, plastic is not great either. They're both repositories of germs.

• 28:58Jay Novella?

  If I got Steve's Samurai sword, I can throw it in the air and go.

• 29:02Cara Santa Maria?

  No, but the, but the plastic, you can just put in the dishwasher.

• 29:04Speaker 02

  You can.

• 29:04Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 29:05Jay Novella?

  I don't, I just don't, I don't want to even see it in my kitchen.

• 29:08Cara Santa Maria?

  That's fair. Oh, silicone maybe.

• 29:09Jay Novella?

  So, plastics that are, that are made today, you know, they last for a very long time, you know, we're talking like, decades is on the low side, you know?

• 29:19Cara Santa Maria?

  No, they last forever, they just get smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller.

• 29:23Jay Novella?

  Okay, well, that sucks.

• 29:26Speaker 02

  It's like your self-esteem.

• 29:27Jay Novella?

  Yeah, you're right.

• 29:32Speaker 04

  I mean, one self-esteem.

• 29:35Jay Novella?

  Do you see the abuse? They're doing it out in the open now.

• 29:41Jay Novella?

  So, anyway, plastics, like Kara was saying, they're designed to not fall apart. Like, they're designed to be super durable. They're made to be strong, and this is done by creating really, really stable chemical bonds, meaning that the molecules are very happy to stay together and not break up with no matter what. Bacteria can't get its way in, sunlight doesn't do much, water doesn't do much. So, the fact that they can do all that resisting means that there's no way for them to break into smaller pieces and get reabsorbed back into the environment. Engineers, of course, have tried to make plastics break down. And to date, they have not, other than this study, which I'm going to tell you about. The way that they did that was they had to weaken the bonds, which means that the

• 30:26Jay Novella?

  plastic is just brittle, and, you know, meaning it won't maintain its shape, and it can break very easily. It doesn't have the properties that we need plastic to be. Because, you know, if you notice, like, there's a lot of plastics in our life. This is meaningless. But we're talking about, like, plastics that are in your car, or in products that you're buying, where you're touching the plastic all the time and moving it. It has to, you know, be able to function like that and not break. So, it just doesn't work, the methods that they've used to date. But there was a study that sought to answer the following question. They said, can we make really strong, reliable plastics that can fall apart when we want them to, that can degrade when we want them to?

• 31:09Jay Novella?

  So, what they did was, they were taking inspiration from biology, where they're noticing that molecules will break down because of, largely by how they're shaped and what they're surrounded by, not because the bonds are weak. So, the shape apparently has a lot to do with the research that they've done. So, instead of changing the main plastic bonds that keeps it together, they said that they rearranged nearby chemical groups around the plastic that are embedded into the plastic. And what they found... Was that it made the plastic, those, those other chemicals and you know, it's very complicated. And you know, there was like so much that you'd have to read it on your own.

• 31:49Jay Novella?

  But the bottom line is that they, it changed the shape of the plastic molecules. And that was it. That's what, that's what the big revelation was that those chemicals influenced how the, the plastic hardened and, and held a shape. And those new shapes make them much more vulnerable when they, when they want them to be vulnerable. So these plastics that they, that they've been studying, they're perfectly normal in everyday use. Um, but when they're exposed to, they're calling mild triggers. It could be a lot of different things. They, they were able to, to make plastics that were very susceptible to light or certain kinds of light or certain kinds of chemicals that they will begin to break down. And the cool thing is, is that the speed of the breakdown can be controlled.

• 32:33Jay Novella?

  They could be like, we want this plastic, you know, like, let's say they make plastic bottles and they're like, this thing can only last six months in the environment and then it's just going to be gone. It's just going to deteriorate. But then they could say, hey, let's, you know, we want a really durable plastic. We don't want this plastic to degrade until we expose it to this chemical that will, that will wipe it out.

• 32:51Cara Santa Maria?

  The problem is it won't actually be gone. The things that make it up are still wherever they are.

• 32:57Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 32:57Cara Santa Maria?

  And those things, I mean, do we want a plastic problem or a forever chemical problem? Because either way, unless we're talking about biologically useful building blocks, we're just going to end up with infused rock, infused landmass that has all of these plastic particles, whether they're at, at the atomic level or whether they're at, you know, the molecular level or whether they're at the.

• 33:21Jay Novella?

  I totally agree. Yeah. Like my first question was like, what's the sludge that comes out of that?

• 33:26Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, there's no such thing as it just goes away.

• 33:28Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 33:28Cara Santa Maria?

  It just, it just becomes something else and it, it will probably bioaccumulate in plants and animals.

• 33:35Jay Novella?

  But it won't be a, it won't be a, like a microplastic because that's still an intact plastic polymer. The polymer itself will break up into smaller pieces, but you're right. We have to ask, what are those pieces and what are, they might not have a physical property like plastic. What are their chemical properties? And it could just be that it's like in the background and doesn't do anything, but we have to figure that out.

• 33:57Cara Santa Maria?

  But time and time again, we've been shown that that's not the case.

• 34:00Jay Novella?

  Yeah, they're aware of that.

• 34:01Speaker 02

  Usually it'll get lucky.

• 34:02Jay Novella?

  That was a part of the study, like they're, they absolutely know. First off, you know, this isn't like it's going to be out next year, like they're, they've come up with a plat-

• 34:09Speaker 02

  Laboratory proof of concept.

• 34:10Jay Novella?

  But it's a platform, they've come up with like a platform in essence. And what they're, what they're doing is they're trying to figure out ways to make when the bonds break. And whatever, whatever it is that is the trigger to make them start to break down, that they want it to chemically change.

• 34:24Cara Santa Maria?

  The other thing that I'm so concerned about, and this may sound like cynicism, but actually it is a practical, realistic concern is that there's always this huge disconnect between innovative lab science and actual city planning and city projects. So we'll often hear about, oh, this thing breaks down when it's exposed to sunlight. Have you ever seen where our trash goes? Nothing's exposed to sunlight.

• 34:49Jay Novella?

  Yeah, they, they, they cap it.

• 34:51Cara Santa Maria?

  I mean, it's, it's feet and feet deep into the ground. Most plastic is not recyclable. And even if it is recyclable, it is not recycled. And it mostly ends up in massive piles, either here on our car, we used to ship it to, to many other countries. We don't do it as much anymore, mostly because they're sending it back. They're not taking it, but it just ends up, and, and in a lot of, what really sadly happens is we sell it or, or pawn it off to places that'll take it. They sell it or pawn it, and then when nobody else is willing to take it, the poorest among us are burning it.

• 35:22Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 35:24Cara Santa Maria?

  They're burning it.

• 35:24Jay Novella?

  Which is the last thing we want them to do.

• 35:26Cara Santa Maria?

  And that's, that's the only way they can deal with it.

• 35:28Jay Novella?

  Kara, I specifically looked up with this study, did they mention anything about reclamation? Like, could they turn it into something that could be recycled or reused or whatever? Again, this is early, but they did achieve this breaking of the bond thing. And, and they were able to control what circumstance that had happened under, which I think still is a net gain. It's a good step forward. And again, this is why I say this every time, you know, we talk in public is we need to be funding research like this because maybe it goes nowhere. Maybe it comes up with the best freaking thing that we need for, you know, we need thousands of, I know, it's money. You know, but

• 36:04Cara Santa Maria?

  And it also, it has to be, you know, it has to be calculated into the cost of making these things.

• 36:11Jay Novella?

  I agree.

• 36:11Cara Santa Maria?

  And we just don't, yeah, those externalized costs.

• 36:13Speaker 02

  It's the externalized cost of industry, which is a huge problem.

• 36:16Cara Santa Maria?

  Which they, which they leave on us.

• 36:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, but at least, you know, it is, I think, better to have the technology than not have the technology.

• 36:22Cara Santa Maria?

  Absolutely.

• 36:23Speaker 02

  And then, then we have to think about what the, how we're going to use it and what the consequences are. We can't just assume, oh, this is sexy, let's do it.

• 36:29Cara Santa Maria?

  Can we have a circular system where we just reclaim it and use it to make more products and then reclaim those products?

• 36:33Speaker 02

  Ideally, we'd be more proud of it.

• 36:35Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 36:35Jay Novella?

  Yeah, but, and my last comment, though, is like, let's just use aluminum and glass for so many things. Like, that's probably where the bulk of this plastic is coming from, right?

• 36:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot of plastic use we could phase out.

• 36:46Cara Santa Maria?

  There is, but there's, it's, it's, again, it's an offsetting problem. And I've, I've talked to a lot of people in industry about this. It's like, why not, why, like, I remember talking to the people who literally owned a water company that was all about their sustainability, but they still had plastic bottles. And I was like, why do you use plastic bottles? And they were like, because when we ship it, the actual fossil fuels that we would have to use to ship it in glass are a bigger concern than putting it in plastic. And it's, yeah, there's tons of calculations there.

• 37:12Jay Novella?

  Oh, my God. It's like, we can't, we can't catch a break.

• 37:15Cara Santa Maria?

  I know.

• 37:15Jay Novella?

  We just cannot get out of this.

• 37:17Speaker 02

  Well, everyone, we're going to take a quick break from our show to talk about our new sponsor this week, Monarch.

• 37:22Cara Santa Maria?

  I love it when we get to talk about something that I use every day in my life. Monarch is, I mean, it's an app, it's a website, it's all these things, but it's a way to keep track of your finances. My finances are clearer in my mind than they've ever been because I can take out my phone and look at these summary screens to know exactly what I owe that month, what my spending looks like, what my income looks like, and, you know, my overall changes to my net worth. This has taken away having to use multiple services and it put it all in one place in my pocket, made it very, very easy.

• 37:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, another cool thing about Monarch is they have an AI assistant, which you can essentially ask it anything about your finances so you can get a clearer picture on what's going on. You can, you can ask it questions like, you know, how much did I spend on travel last summer? And you'll get the answer. Very, very powerful, very useful.

• 38:15Bob Novella?

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• 38:30Speaker 02

  All right, guys, let's get back to the show. All right, so this is a good time to remind everybody that we have collectively published two books, meaning the SGU. George, you've published a book too.

• 38:40Speaker 04

  I did, but yeah, not as cool as your book, though.

• 38:43Speaker 02

  Anyway.

• 38:43Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, and we've published other books, too.

• 38:45Speaker 02

  Well, we've published The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, and we've published The Skeptic's Guide to the Future. Those are our two, like, actual-

• 38:52Cara Santa Maria?

  Those are our books.

• 38:52Speaker 02

  Our books.

• 38:53Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, because we've also done-

• 38:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't mean, yeah, individually, but yeah, as the SGU, or some subset of the SGU, yes. George, you have an anecdote that you want to share with us about one of your friends who read one of our books.

• 39:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, so as a musician, I get to work with a lot of very interesting people, very talented, very interesting, and as is often true with artists, the woo is very strong amongst people I work with often. And I've kind of gained this reputation of being like the science guy. And so when my band would have questions about, like, is this a real thing? And 90% of the time, I'd be able to say, no, it's not a real thing, and here's why it's not a real thing. A number of years ago, about 10 years ago, I started working with this young musician, who, I'm just gonna call him Dave. Dave was unbelievably talented, unbelievably talented. He was 24, couldn't believe how much this guy knew musically, in terms of he knew standards, old songs, songs he shouldn't know, and just played brilliantly, and was the sweetest guy.

• 39:49Speaker 04

  He, however, was kind of raised in a pretty woo-filled environment. And we would sometimes have these conversations about things he would do, or things he would believe. One of which was he studied Reiki, and he was a Reiki practitioner. And I never said, oh, that's bullshit, that's horrible, you know? I never approached it that way. I just had questions for him, to maybe make him sort of start thinking about stuff. And I remember thinking, like, so you do Reiki in person? And he's like, yeah. I said, like, can you do? And then, I think I heard him mention one time that you could do Reiki over the phone. Right? And I was like, oh, that's interesting. I was like, could you do Reiki by email? And he kind of thought about it, and he was like, yeah, I guess you could. I guess you could do it. I'm like, oh, how would that work? And so we had this conversation about it.

• 40:34Speaker 04

  And the whole time, I'm just trying to hear, and sort of seeing the wheels turning in his brain of, you know, like, maybe that doesn't make sense. Maybe there is a point that Reiki wouldn't work, you know, through text messaging or something. COVID comes along, and the band gets this notice that if we want to play in certain venues, we all have to be vaccinated. And everybody in the band agreed to it, except for Dave. And Dave, like, again, he was very cautious about it. And he just didn't, he was like, didn't want to do it. So I had a phone conversation with him and we spoke for, for a bit. And I said, what's your hesitancy? And he said, well, this doctor that, you know, I've been going to my whole life, really helped my family in a crisis years and years ago, said I shouldn't do the thing because it's dangerous and we don't know what, what's the deal.

• 41:16Speaker 04

  And the whole time, I'm just trying to be supportive and say like, like, maybe really talk to the doctor to get the rationale. Because I'm curious what, what the doctor's rationale is behind you not getting the, the COVID shot. Some time went, he came back and he's like, I got the COVID shot. I'm like, oh, oh, great. Like, what, did you talk to your doctor? He's like, yeah, I talked to my doctor. And he started talking about, like, that there was 5G in the vaccine and like that there were microchips. And, and that just like, yeah, so. Well, yeah, question. Doctor in big quotes with italics, underlined in red font, you know?

• 41:52Speaker 04

  So, so I never, I never found out exactly, but I think this is a person that had been a practitioner with his family. And I think a relative had had an issue and, and probably it was one of these, they made a recommendation. It didn't do any harm. The person then eventually got better and they were like, see? That, that worked, you know? That's my, that's my estimation as to what happened. But Dave, we just, we just knew, like, Dave was sweet. Dave was a good guy, but Dave was kind of wooey and he kind of was raised in woo. He, he, I ended up not working with him for a little while. And maybe about, about four, five months ago, he texted me one morning. Something was going on in his apartment and he asked if he could use my shower. Because he couldn't get into his shower, but he had to go to work. And he lives a couple of blocks away. And I was like, yeah, sure, come on over. Came over, took a shower and we just started chatting.

• 42:35Jay Novella?

  Now, were you in the shower with him?

• 42:36Speaker 04

  I was.

• 42:39Speaker 04

  I was filming, but I wasn't in the shower.

• 42:44Speaker 04

  It's the musician's code. We start chatting. He's working on his doctorate subsequently. He's not doing so much music anymore. He opened up a yoga studio and he's working on his doctorate in education. He recounts that he said, hey, listen, George, you know, I read the skeptic's guide to the universe. I read the book like cover to cover and it completely reorganized my brain. I was like, what do you mean? He's like, yeah, it started making a little bit of sense and then it made more sense. And then it made more sense. And in every chapter, in everything, I realized the way that I was raised, the way I was influenced was influencing me in a negative way that I was seeing patterns that weren't there. I was all the skeptic stuff. I was seeing connections that weren't there.

• 43:27Speaker 04

  I understand now that my Reiki that I was doing with my patients was because I was in the room with them and being nice. And that's why they were having positive effects with me. And he goes on and like, I'm working on yoga now and I really want to remove all the woo from yoga because yoga is actually a great practice, you know? We want to remove sort of. And I'm just listening to him just nodding and inside I am doing the biggest touchdown dance you could like possibly imagine. Try not to be like, yeah, just I'm like, I'm like, Dave, that's so great. I'm like so proud of you. He then, we had played a gig actually years ago and the band played for a novella event. And he like can't believe that he was in the room with you guys and didn't know who you were.

• 44:12Speaker 04

  And now he's like so excited, he's going to read the guide to the future next. And it was one of these moments of like, it's possible. It's possible to reach out and touch, you know, an individual in a way that can change their life and that he's so self-recognized. All of the things because you guys laid it out in such a way that he could analyze it and be like, oh, this is why I thought my horoscopes were right. This is why Reiki was working. This is why, you know, when I faced East and doing the yoga thing, it was all that stuff laid out. There's always explanation and it made, he, he said the lovely thing of the more I investigated, the more sense. Sense it made, which was the opposite of everything else he had studied.

• 44:56Speaker 04

  The more he would question, can you do Reiki by email? The less sense it made, whereas this was the opposite. And it was like, page after page after page confirmed this process of using skepticism and science. And now he's getting his doctorate education. And like I said, he wants to have sort of this yoga practice be more scientific. And I'm like, what words are you trying to remove? Like, are there, he's like, yeah, there's so much baggage.

• 45:19Speaker 02

  Start with chi.

• 45:20Speaker 04

  So much, yeah, chi and energy and like all this kind of stuff. And he wants to do it in a way that still maintains and respects the, you know, the culture and the art of it. But I wanted to tell you guys that, you know, you got through to Dave and it's, it's fricking amazing. Yeah, Dave. Yeah.

• 45:36Speaker 02

  Yay. Thank you, George.

• 45:42Speaker 02

  George, now that day that he had that revelation and told you about it, was that the day that you started selling him the Jorob vitamins?

• 45:51Speaker 04

  He signed, he signed up for a course of 10.

• 45:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:54Speaker 04

  And it was, yeah, it was perfect.

• 45:55Speaker 02

  Well, my response to that is, first of all, it gives hope. You know what I mean? Like just to know someone out, now, we get emails from people and the, you know, the podcast has had this effect as well. But like, it is incredible to think that someone could read a body of knowledge and have a paradigm shift in the way that they perceive their reality.

• 46:14Speaker 04

  180, like 180. I mean, it's.

• 46:16Speaker 02

  That is, that is incredible. Oh, my God, I'm sorry. So, a couple of things, I appreciate the anecdote because we'd love to hear that stuff. It's good to know that the effort we put into the book, you know, is working. But one is your approach to him, right, was not antagonistic.

• 46:31Speaker 04

  Right.

• 46:32Speaker 02

  It was the long game that we talk about. You know, asking questions, sowing seeds and, you know, making, even those, just saying, yeah, I guess it doesn't make sense that Reiki could work over email, you know? And maybe that probably is what led him to read the book in the first place, right? And so he was reading it with a prepared mind. Otherwise it would have no effect, right? So that's, I think, a testament to that as well, that approach. And also from the way you're telling the story, the way it makes more sense and the research. Has shown this, and we try to be mindful of this, is you can't just take beliefs away from people. You have to replace them with an alternate way of understanding the universe. And, right, it's like the, I always do the Indiana Jones thing, right?

• 47:17Speaker 02

  You gotta do the sand and they take the thing. You can't just yank it away.

• 47:21Jay Novella?

  Yeah, but it didn't end good for him, though.

• 47:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:23Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, I like to-

• 47:24Speaker 02

  For Indiana Jones.

• 47:25Cara Santa Maria?

  I like to think of it as like with, like, um, like receptors in the brain.

• 47:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:29Cara Santa Maria?

  You know, and like molecules that fit in those, like, somebody is doing heroin. And in order to get them off the heroin, you might need to put some methadone in there for a while.

• 47:38Speaker 02

  True, yeah.

• 47:38Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, like, you've gotta put something else in that receptor. Um, or they're gonna be grabbing for something to fill that void.

• 47:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. But I love the fact that it's made more and more and more sense. It kinda builds on, which is what we were going for. It kinda builds on itself towards just like, oh, my God, you know, the scales fall away.

• 47:54Speaker 04

  Right.

• 47:55Speaker 02

  Love to hear that. All right, thank you so much, George. All right. I wanna poll the audience. Do you wanna do the thing?

• 48:01Speaker 04

  Let's do it.

• 48:01Speaker 02

  All right. So, how many people in the audience think that the ultimate fate of the universe is to expand forever into the heat death of the universe?

• 48:11Speaker 04

  It's okay. Wait, wait, wait.

• 48:13Speaker 02

  Whoa, whoa.

• 48:14Speaker 04

  Very good. You're like, I'm barely moved. You're right. Can I clap? Can I clap here? Expand, expand forever. Here we go. Not expand forever.

• 48:24Speaker 02

  All right. How many people think the universe is gonna slowly come back together and end in a big crunch? Like, the opposite of the Big Bang?

• 48:31Speaker 04

  Here we go.

• 48:31Speaker 02

  Oh, interesting. Okay. How many people think that they don't know, or scientists don't know?

• 48:37Speaker 04

  That's true.

• 48:38Speaker 02

  All right. So that's what I'm gonna be talking about, right? Is, uh, the expansion, like, this is cosmology, right? The expansion of the universe. Probably many people who've listened to the show for a while know that in the 1990s, scientists measured the expansion of the universe over time, right? Because as we look out into space, we're also looking back in time. Does anybody, I know Bob, you know, anybody other than Bob on the panel know what the primary evidence was for-

• 49:05Speaker 02

  For the fact that the, it's not redshift, actually, that the universe is not only expanding, what they discovered was that the expansion is accelerating. A discovery that earned them the Nobel Prize. What was the, what was the evidence that was the core basis of that conclusion?

• 49:21Cara Santa Maria?

  It's not the microwave background.

• 49:22Speaker 02

  No, dark energy was the conclusion. The universe is expanding, we even discovered dark energy. That's a placeholder for what's pushing the universe apart. There's gotta be some energy that is overcoming the attraction of gravity. So we'll just call it dark energy. We don't, we'll figure out one day what it is.

• 49:37Bob Novella?

  It's a placeholder.

• 49:38Speaker 02

  It's just a placeholder. What was the observation? What was the data that led to the calculation that, oh?

• 49:44Bob Novella?

  You people need to listen to my talks more often. Nobody pays attention.

• 49:49Speaker 02

  What is it?

• 49:49Bob Novella?

  Supernova 1A.

• 49:50Speaker 02

  1A supernova.

• 49:52Cara Santa Maria?

  Obviously.

• 49:52Speaker 02

  Obviously. So why, why type 1A supernova? Because they are what we call standard candles, meaning that they're a way of measuring distance because we know their absolute brightness, their absolute magnitude. If you know how something is, how bright something is absolutely, and you can observe how bright it is apparently, you can calculate its distance.

• 50:16Bob Novella?

  And to be that bright, how far away would it have to be?

• 50:18Speaker 02

  How far away would it have to be to appear that bright if we know what its absolute brightness is?

• 50:23Jay Novella?

  How do we know, how do we know that it's the correct type of star?

• 50:26Speaker 02

  So how do we know what the absolute brightness is, is what you're asking, right?

• 50:29Bob Novella?

  Science.

• 50:30Jay Novella?

  So wait, wait, dumb it down a little bit. So they observe a star.

• 50:33Speaker 02

  It's a supernova, they're observing a supernova.

• 50:35Jay Novella?

  A supernova. We don't know how far away it is yet.

• 50:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:38Jay Novella?

  And...

• 50:39Speaker 02

  They could see how bright it is.

• 50:40Jay Novella?

  So during the supernova, they're measuring the...

• 50:43Speaker 02

  Brightness.

• 50:43Jay Novella?

  The brightness. But how, but how do we know what it was before the supernova?

• 50:46Speaker 02

  Does it matter? All we need to know is how bright does it get when it's a supernova? And how do we know that? Because...

• 50:53Bob Novella?

  The mechanism.

• 50:54Speaker 02

  The mechanism. So type 1As form when you have a white dwarf in a binary system with a large star. And it sucks off the gas from the large star, it accumulates on the white dwarf, and when it gets to a critical mass, it collapses and explodes into a supernova. So that means they're all exploding at the exact same mass. And that makes sense?

• 51:16Bob Novella?

  That's why...

• 51:17Speaker 02

  And that's what determines the brightness. So they're all the exact same. Same brightness, therefore a standard candle.

• 51:23Jay Novella?

  You know, you and Bob could have made all of this up two hours ago and I would not know the difference.

• 51:29Speaker 02

  True. Yeah, maybe.

• 51:31Speaker 02

  So.

• 51:31Bob Novella?

  Why do I do this?

• 51:35Speaker 02

  So they looked at hundreds of type 1a supernova and it turns out that they calculated the expansion of the universe in different times. Like, oh, the universe is expanding faster today than it was a billion years ago and even faster than it was 3 billion years ago. The expansion is accelerating, right? That led to dark energy and the Nobel Prize.

• 51:57Bob Novella?

  Remember how dramatic that was?

• 51:58Speaker 02

  It was huge.

• 51:58Bob Novella?

  We always assumed that there was enough mass in the universe to slow down the expansion and come back. Like, no, it's accelerating, it's getting faster and faster, which was, back then, was like, oh my god, nobody really saw that.

• 52:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, although the other wrinkle there is, if you, forget about dark energy before this observation was made. If we're just trying to figure out, will the universe expand forever or will gravity bring it back together? There's a certain critical amount of mass in the universe, right? And if we have more than that mass, it'll come back together. If we have less, it'll expand forever. And we're like, right, right at the line, right?

• 52:34Bob Novella?

  Yeah, it's bizarrely.

• 52:36Speaker 02

  Bizarrely, and to, you know, some cosmologists, and maybe we have, I think it's called an isometric universe, where it approaches that stopping asymptotically, but it never quite gets there. So it's like, right at the equilibrium point between expanding forever and contracting.

• 52:51Jay Novella?

  Does that mean it's like, expanding then this might stop and just be that?

• 52:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, without coming back together again.

• 52:56Jay Novella?

  Is that ideal?

• 52:57Speaker 02

  Well, that's an aesthetic question, so. Is that just an aesthetic question? I think it has more ramifications. Some people like the idea of the big crunch better, some people like the idea of the expanding forever better.

• 53:11Jay Novella?

  There are people that I don't want to get that close to.

• 53:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:14Bob Novella?

  The big crunch, though, or as Douglas Adams called it, the Gnab Gib, which is Big Bang backwards, right, which I always thought was really funny, and I just forgot what my point was, so never mind.

• 53:22Speaker 02

  All right. So, anyway, so...

• 53:26Bob Novella?

  Where are we going? Who knows?

• 53:28Speaker 02

  So, we could be on either side of that point. So, it was, even though it was, there was a lot of cosmologists thought we are headed for a big crunch, we always knew we were in the error zone, right? We're in the, the, so, nobody really knew, we're just, we're surprisingly close to, like, the line between expanding forever and closing. But then when they discovered, oh, no, we're accelerating, the debate was over, right? Oh, it's gonna end in the heat death, or maybe even the big rip. You guys, we've mentioned the big rip.

• 53:54Bob Novella?

  That was scary, man.

• 53:55Speaker 02

  That's when, it expands so much that molecules can't, like, atoms can't be, if primary particles can't be held together, they rip apart. The universe rips itself apart.

• 54:04Jay Novella?

  Why would it? How could it affect molecules?

• 54:06Bob Novella?

  Because, because space is expanding so fast at large scales, but that, if that expansion happens at small scales, like, human or planetary scales, then that would be eventually ripped apart as well.

• 54:14Jay Novella?

  Wait, wait, wait, wait. Like, you're, that sounds like there's fabric and all the threads are being pulled, like, oh...

• 54:21Bob Novella?

  Whatever. Spacetime, I mean, spacetime.

• 54:23Speaker 02

  Spacetime fabric, Jay.

• 54:24Bob Novella?

  So, so, so, it was, it was, I remember at that time, it was really unusual, because I liked the idea of the big crunch, because it's like, hey, it expands, it comes back, we got the crunch, and then you, the universe, maybe, would just happen again, the Big Bang would happen again.

• 54:38Speaker 02

  So, there's this endless cycle.

• 54:39Bob Novella?

  Endless cycle.

• 54:40Speaker 02

  Something, something appealing about that idea.

• 54:42Bob Novella?

  Right, right, but the heat death is like, man, this is our one shot, that's it.

• 54:44Speaker 02

  It's one and done, heat death. So, that's where we are now, the consensus of opinion among cosmologists, because of the type 1A data, is that we're accelerating, therefore, heat death, right? Everybody get that? But what if, what if there are technical problems with how we're interpreting the type 1A supernova data?

• 55:05Bob Novella?

  That they, that they haven't uncovered in a quarter century.

• 55:08Speaker 02

  That they haven't uncovered in a quarter century. So, there's a South Korean team that has re-analyzed the type 1A supernova data, and other databases as well, so now there are more data, because we keep observing, right? We have way more observations than we had in the 1990s. And they said, you know, if we look at the data, we think you, that the type 1As are not all the same absolute magnitude, that in fact, the older they are, the older they are, I think it's the older they are, the brighter they are. And when you make that adjustment, the uni- Personal expansion's not accelerating, it's actually slowing down. Therefore, big crunch is back, right?

• 55:49Bob Novella?

  But how does that even make sense? How do you have like, oh, this is an, this is an old school supernova 1A, and this is a young, hydrogen is hydrogen. You don't have old and young hydrogen.

• 55:58Speaker 02

  It could have to do with the mix that's in there. You know, there could be other elements or whatever.

• 56:03Jay Novella?

  So they're saying that...

• 56:05Speaker 04

  Universe has a big, big crunch.

• 56:10Speaker 02

  Well, they're saying as you eat, there is, but you have to adjust it for distance. They're saying they're arguing that you have to adjust the absolute magnitude of the type 1As to distance. And if you do that, there's no acceleration.

• 56:21Cara Santa Maria?

  But then you're right, is that then still a standard candle?

• 56:24Speaker 02

  It is, it's just with a, with a...

• 56:25Bob Novella?

  With an adjustment. But it would also mean...

• 56:28Cara Santa Maria?

  It's a modified standard.

• 56:29Bob Novella?

  It would also mean that other distances that we have calculated over the decades, these other distances would be incorrect in some way that also would need to be adjusted.

• 56:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:38Bob Novella?

  So some of these fundamental differences, like how far away is Andromeda? It's like, oh, no, it's not as far as we thought.

• 56:43Speaker 02

  So, all right, so is this now the new consensus among cosmologists?

• 56:48Bob Novella?

  No.

• 56:49Speaker 02

  No. So this is one team, right? And as we often say, you know, replication is king, right? And I don't believe things if just one guy is saying it or one team is saying it until it gets independently replicated by other experts in the field. So what are experts saying now? And they're kind of divided. So some are saying, it's interesting. There's something interesting going on there. They have, you know, they're, you know, like what they did with that, with their observations. But this needs to be replicated and we need other people to look at this and we need to consider other things. They're not ready to rip up the cosmology that we have had. They're not really taking away the Nobel Prize yet, right?

• 57:27Bob Novella?

  Oh, is that even on the table?

• 57:28Speaker 02

  No.

• 57:29Bob Novella?

  Has peer review happened?

• 57:30Speaker 02

  They don't revoke. Yeah, yeah.

• 57:33Bob Novella?

  Peer review has happened?

• 57:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 57:35Bob Novella?

  Okay.

• 57:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, but, but the other, but post-publication, just the community, how are they reacting? So they're being met with a lot of skepticism.

• 57:44Bob Novella?

  As they should.

• 57:45Speaker 02

  As they should. It's because they're saying, hey, we, we now have this data that reverses what other people were saying. But at the extreme end, some cosmologists are saying, nah, they had Bob's reaction, saying, this same group came out with some other reason to think that we weren't expanding, there was no dark energy, or we were, there's less dark energy, or whatever, and that was shot down, and now they're coming back with some other harebrained theory.

• 58:09Bob Novella?

  It seems like a sacred cow to them, potentially, like, oh, what they want.

• 58:13Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, either they have a conclusion and they're working towards it, or more, I guess, principle of charity, is that they're, as good scientists are, saying, okay, everybody, there's consensus on this thing, let's try to break it.

• 58:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:26Cara Santa Maria?

  Let's just constantly try to break the thing that everybody agrees with, to see if we're missing something. Because we do get lazy when we all go, okay, we agree, so we're no longer going to challenge our assumptions.

• 58:36Speaker 02

  But the real question is, how sure are we of any of this, right? And the answer is, not very. There are huge error bars on all of this cosmological stuff.

• 58:47Bob Novella?

  Sure.

• 58:47Speaker 02

  And, you know, again, as you said, the expand, probably most people here knew, like, the universe is expanding dark energy, but how many knew it was based upon a wonky interpretation of type 1A supernova data, right? It's like, yeah, the people, nerds like Bob and I are astronomy buffs.

• 59:05Jay Novella?

  The guy in the match shirt.

• 59:06Speaker 04

  The guy in the front row with the match shirt. What are the odds?

• 59:11Speaker 02

  He doesn't know shit. It's, there, it is interesting to think about how many of these sort of big things, dark matter, dark energy, the expansion, the ultimate fate of the universe, is based upon a pretty narrow interpretation of a limited set of data, and is really subject to change, and in, because again, we, because Bob and I have been following this for the last 40 years, we've lived through enough of these, oh, that thing that, that, you know, map of the universe that you had in your head for your whole life, it's wrong, it's this other thing now, like, the big crunch, nope, no big crunch, it's, it's the heat death.

• 59:48Bob Novella?

  You know, Steve, I'm trying to get through this week, and now I gotta worry about this shit.

• 59:52Speaker 02

  It's like, you know what? This is fun. This is fun. I love following these. No, it's not, because... It is. It is. Because, you know, if we do, if this happens, everybody dies. This is, we're talking about billions of years in the future. This is not going to affect you. People might be alive billions of years from now.

• 1:00:08Bob Novella?

  Not even billions, quintillions of millennia. I mean, it's so far ridiculous.

• 1:00:14Speaker 04

  Would there be a disingenuous reason? I mean, like, talk about enshittification of data, or like, or trying to get hits? Or something like that, or?

• 1:00:21Speaker 02

  Maybe. It's hard to know. Honestly, that's the kind of thing that, you know, the question is, could these researchers, you know, not be acting in good faith?

• 1:00:29Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:00:29Speaker 02

  Or have whatever. I'm telling you, so I don't know. I have no idea.

• 1:00:32Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:32Speaker 02

  And the reason why I know I don't have any idea is because I have been in the room with experts talking about other experts in my field. And that's when you learn what's really going on. So tell us what that's like. So, I'm sure other astronomers like these guys, you know, or whatever, or they're saying, yeah, this is our serious researchers who are making interesting. But we don't know in the public, you know?

• 1:00:54Speaker 04

  So when you hear that, Steve, do you like tear your shirt open Superman style? To reveal the skeptic logo and be like, "Stop that!"

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  Sometimes. So, yeah, so anyway, so it has to, we have to, this has to work its way through the system. My sense is that the South Korean researchers who are claiming now that it's going to be a big crunch, there's no acceleration of the expansion, based upon this new idea that we have to reinterpret the 1A data. They're probably the ones that are wrong rather than the rest of the community.

• 1:01:23Bob Novella?

  It's an extraordinary claim. Back it up.

• 1:01:25Speaker 02

  But sometimes... But every time we've had a big paradigm shift, everybody thought they were wrong until they realized they were right. That's why usually they start with one group.

• 1:01:32Bob Novella?

  Absolutely.

• 1:01:33Speaker 02

  Saying something different from everybody else, and either they convince everybody else with data, or they don't, and they go away and they're a footnote. Usually our tools improve.

• 1:01:43Cara Santa Maria?

  And then we collect more data and our tools improve more. And then eventually you can't deny it anymore. And that's how good science progresses.

• 1:01:50Speaker 02

  That's the good thing about astronomy, too. There's always more observations to make. And we are steadily accumulating more observations and we are steadily putting out better telescopes, better tools.

• 1:02:00Bob Novella?

  Better algorithms.

• 1:02:01Speaker 02

  So the data's just getting better and this will resolve itself eventually.

• 1:02:03Jay Novella?

  Yeah, I think what we should all do is just check back in on this whole thing in about 100 years.

• 1:02:08Speaker 02

  Now, I bet you will know in a year whether this is true or not.

• 1:02:11Cara Santa Maria?

  A year?

• 1:02:12Speaker 02

  Pretty well. And then maybe...

• 1:02:14Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it could.

• 1:02:15Speaker 02

  I think, well, yeah, I think once, well, no. So there's probably going to be like a short answer where the community really digests it and either says, "All right, this is a possible," or it's completely wrong. And if it's possible, then it might take five or 10 years to collect more data and to really sort it out.

• 1:02:29Bob Novella?

  I wonder what the sigma confidence level is for dark matter and the accelerating expansion.

• 1:02:35Speaker 02

  Dark energy.

• 1:02:36Bob Novella?

  What did I say?

• 1:02:37Speaker 02

  You said dark matter.

• 1:02:38Bob Novella?

  Yeah, is it like 6 sigma, 7? I mean, at this point, imagine if that's wrong. It could happen. But there... Why is that so funny? I mean, we're, at this point, at this point, we are so...

• 1:02:48Jay Novella?

  Bob, you lost everyone in this room when you said the word sigma.

• 1:02:51Bob Novella?

  Six, seven.

• 1:02:53Jay Novella?

  Six, seven.

• 1:02:54Bob Novella?

  Oh, that's what you were doing? Jesus. Give me a break. Wow, I did. Come on, it's meaningless, people. So, yeah, I wonder what, we're pretty damn confident about dark energy at this point.

• 1:03:11Cara Santa Maria?

  That's a calculation.

• 1:03:12Speaker 02

  But the sigma is dependent on the assumption that the 1As are standard.

• 1:03:17Bob Novella?

  But it'd be funny to see like a 6 or 7 sigma fall. I'd be like, "Oh, no." That would actually undermine confidence.

• 1:03:24Jay Novella?

  You guys are both disregarding omega. What's up with that?

• 1:03:28Bob Novella?

  Oh, that's another story.

• 1:03:29Speaker 02

  All right, all right, all right. Jay, we've taken you on a magical journey of science. And you're like, you know, not even looking out the window.

• 1:03:39Cara Santa Maria?

  Did you hear Steve, though, when he goes, "This is fun"?

• 1:03:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. I was like, "Wait, is that... You don't think it's fun to follow a scientific controversy play out in real time? This is actual drama. And the stakes are the ultimate fate of the universe." I mean, come on. All right. If you like that, Jay, you're going to love Bob's item about quantum gravity.

• 1:04:01Cara Santa Maria?

  Bob, when's the last time?

• 1:04:02Bob Novella?

  You covered quantum gravity. Too long, too long. Okay, alright. So a theoretical physicist has proposed an experiment, a fascinating experiment, where he says that if we can not only detect gravitational waves, which we can, but if we could somehow use lasers to increase the energy or decrease the energy of these gravitational waves, we may have a breakthrough and finally kind of understand gravity at a more fundamental level and create maybe one of the best theories in physics, where we combine quantum mechanics and general relativity, which has been a holy grail for decades. So this experiment could potentially lead to one of the greatest theories being finally created, which is, which is, it's just so difficult.

• 1:04:44Bob Novella?

  Einstein tried for most of his adult life and he failed to do it. This could lead to it. You know, it's a long shot, but it's fascinating to consider these options here. So, alright, gravitational waves. We talked about it on the show. Gravitational waves are ripples in spacetime, right? You guys have heard about these guys? Ripples in spacetime. Now, I tried to come up with a way to be like, how do I describe this in a kind of intuitive way? And it's so many ways to approach what are gravitational waves. So the best I can come up with, gravitational waves are mass that's accelerated in a way that the distribution of mass in this object changes over time. That, if you have that scenario happening, you're gonna have these gravitational waves happening. So, the classic example of creating gravitational waves is what?

• 1:05:28Bob Novella?

  Orbiting black holes, orbiting neutron stars, or maybe just a black hole and a neutron star. If they orbit each other, it creates these gravitational waves that propagate out at the speed of light. I thought they had to collide? They don't collide? They do. That's what we're usually measuring, right? No, no, it's, it's- It's the orbit.

• 1:05:45Speaker 02

  It's the spiral in.

• 1:05:46Bob Novella?

  Spiraling in. At the end. And then at the very end, you see a little chirp, which is the collision. And then it's end, then we know that's a critical part of the, of what, the signal. So, this is beyond subtle. These gravitational waves are so subtle that we can determine a distance change, one thousandth the diameter of a proton. This is what they're, when they detect gravitational waves, this is what they're detecting, a change in spacetime.

• 1:06:10Speaker 02

  That still blows my mind.

• 1:06:12Jay Novella?

  A thousandth the width of a proton and we're measuring it.

• 1:06:15Bob Novella?

  And we're, it's, it's, it's the most accurate distance measuring scientific instrument that exists. It's, it's, yeah, like, yeah, LIGO was one instrument. I, I remember when they were developing this, they had to, they had to cancel out or account for anything that could mess with their instrument. And one of the things they accounted for were wild wolves in the backyard behind the facility. They had to account for that because them walking around was messing with their accuracy. That's what they had to do.

• 1:06:43Jay Novella?

  So what'd they do with the wolves?

• 1:06:44Bob Novella?

  I think they killed them, Jay. Um, no, I don't know. I don't know. They didn't do that, but they, they, they had to account for that. There was a million little things like, okay, we got this one. What's next? Oh, and look at these damn wolves. Let's get rid of these guys. So it's just.

• 1:06:55Jay Novella?

  So they're like going around killing animals and shooting people?

• 1:06:59Bob Novella?

  It's science, Jay. It's science.

• 1:07:01Jay Novella?

  Just to, just to make it quiet.

• 1:07:02Bob Novella?

  Okay. But it's not just, it's not just orbiting black holes that are creating these. Everything, I'm waving my arm. I'm making gravitational waves right now. Now, if a black hole's colliding creates this small, what is this doing? And I actually looked it up. My, the gravitational waves I'm making right now are about, approximately 20 orders of magnitude smaller than what I just described with the, even Q from Star Trek is not detecting what I'm doing right now. It's just like, it's, that's how subtle it is.

• 1:07:30Jay Novella?

  Even Q?

• 1:07:31Bob Novella?

  Even Q, probably. Okay. All right. So what's his experiment? His experiment was that he would manipulate these gravitational waves as we detect them with, with a device like LIGO. But also what he is suggesting is that we, is we manipulate that wave by shining laser light, like infrared or visible light into the gravitational wave and adding a minute amount of energy to the gravitational wave or take it away from the gravitational wave. And if we do that, there could be a signature in the laser light that, that points to the existence of gravitons, something I've mentioned on the show a few times. Gravitons, if they exist, they're theoretical, that would mediate gravity.

• 1:08:12Bob Novella?

  So the way photons mediate the electromagnetic force, the way gluons mediate the strong force, gra- gravitons could mediate gravity, potentially.

• 1:08:21Jay Novella?

  So is gravitons then, if they exist, would they be everywhere?

• 1:08:24Bob Novella?

  Gravity's everywhere, so they'd have to be, they'd have to be everywhere.

• 1:08:27Jay Novella?

  And they're a particle?

• 1:08:28Bob Novella?

  Potentially, like Jay, whenever we interrogate a field in science, whether it's electromagnetic field, electron field, whenever we have taken that field and examined it, we've been able to quantize it. They're quantizable, and they have a particle, for example, a photon, a gluon. These are particles that are an excitation of that field, so gravity could be the same thing, right?

• 1:08:49Speaker 02

  Okay. Now Bob, am I remembering this correctly? If there are gravitons, then there's the potential for anti-gravity, is that correct?

• 1:08:55Bob Novella?

  Yeah, I don't really explore that in this talk, but yes, if you can create and manipulate gravitons, you could potentially control gravity, but we're never gonna be able to do that. That's just like, and you'll see why it's gonna be quite hard to do that. It's important to state here, though, that this experiment is only gonna infer gravitons. We're never gonna be able to catch a graviton and definitively say, yes, we have a graviton right here. That's just not gonna happen. We're gonna be able to infer it, which is great, because then these theories that predict gravitons will be supported if this experiment is good. So I read a fascinating paper. These scientists tried to say, alright, if we wanted to detect one graviton, definitively detect it, what would it take? They concluded that

• 1:09:38Bob Novella?

  you would need a detector the mass of Jupiter orbiting a neutron star.

• 1:09:44Cara Santa Maria?

  Wait, would it be, so it's with a detector, it's not with an accelerator? You're not making it, you're trying to detect it?

• 1:09:49Bob Novella?

  Right. So if you have a detector the mass of Jupiter orbiting a neutron star, which is a huge source of gravitons, right, because the gravity of a neutron star is ridiculous.

• 1:09:57Speaker 02

  Or you could just go like this.

• 1:09:58Cara Santa Maria?

  But could you not make a graviton?

• 1:10:00Bob Novella?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:01Speaker 02

  Even if you made it, you still have to detect it.

• 1:10:04Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, no, I know, but like, isn't that how we've done all the, like, that's how we did bosons, that's how we did, was with...

• 1:10:09Bob Novella?

  It's different. Gravity's different.

• 1:10:11Cara Santa Maria?

  It is, but we're still talking about trying to quantize a field.

• 1:10:15Bob Novella?

  Right, but we're not gonna be able to create, just like, create a graviton, I don't think.

• 1:10:19Cara Santa Maria?

  Is it because they're so much smaller?

• 1:10:22Bob Novella?

  Gravity is the weakest force by far. It's so ridiculous, and that's part of the problem. So in their paper, they said that if we built this thing, I mean, what kind of society could build this thing, but if they built it, they would detect one graviton every decade or... Every century.

• 1:10:39Jay Novella?

  So apparently it's not worth it, though, right?

• 1:10:41Bob Novella?

  It's just, it's just not gonna, but the thing is, it's even worse than that, right? As hard as that is, it's even worse than that, because they realize that, alright, if we're gonna detect, detect one graviton, then we're gonna have to filter out all these pesky neutrinos. Because, because there's, for every graviton, they said, there's probably, what, what did I put down here? Trillions of sextillions of neutrinos.

• 1:11:00Jay Novella?

  Now they're gonna kill trillions of neutrinos for this, this whole thing is murder, Bob.

• 1:11:05Speaker 04

  So it's a noise issue, Bob? It's just there's too much noise to detect the single thing?

• 1:11:09Bob Novella?

  Exactly, George. The noise of neutrinos is, is swamping the graviton. So they would have to create a shield, a filter, that would filter the neutrinos, but not the gravitons. And if they did that, the mass of the shield would be so massive, so-

• 1:11:23Jay Novella?

  How massive would it be?

• 1:11:24Bob Novella?

  That it would, that it would collapse into a black hole.

• 1:11:28Bob Novella?

  So scientists call this a non-trivial problem. So, the bottom, the bottom line is, we're not, we're not gonna catch one graviton. We're never, probably, we're never gonna definitively have a graviton. But, is this experiment worthwhile? If we're not, it absolutely, like, for the Higgs boson, we didn't detect it. We theoretically determined that the Higgs boson, which confers gravity to everything.

• 1:11:54Cara Santa Maria?

  You mean mass?

• 1:11:54Jay Novella?

  Mass.

• 1:11:55Bob Novella?

  Yeah, yeah, mass, right. We, we, our theory pointed to that, and then we found it. So we don't need to actually say, we have a, we have a graviton. So this, so this theory, this experiment could be extremely helpful. But for, for two big ways. If this experiment is, is successful, we would, we could then say, gravity is quantum. Because right now, a gravitational field is a classical field. We don't have solid evidence that it's, that it's a, that it's a quantum field. Like, every other field that we've ever examined is, is quantum. We don't know about gravity. Uh, it's, it's, it's just so hard to test. So this experiment could say, yes, we have a gravitational field, is not just a classical field, it's a quantum field.

• 1:12:34Cara Santa Maria?

  But with all of our observations, can, can gravity stay classical?

• 1:12:39Bob Novella?

  Potentially.

• 1:12:40Cara Santa Maria?

  Really? So we've never observed anything about gravity that doesn't fit with like Newtonian?

• 1:12:45Bob Novella?

  There's hints, there's hints. For example, Hawking radiation.

• 1:12:47Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:48Bob Novella?

  Hawking radiation shows that a highly curved spacetime could create the Hawking radiation. So that shows that there's some dialogue going on between quantum mechanics and gravity. But you know, it's not super strong evidence. It's not like, yep, we nailed this.

• 1:13:07Cara Santa Maria?

  And gravitational wave science could be wholly classical?

• 1:13:10Bob Novella?

  Yeah, gravitational fields could be classical, potentially.

• 1:13:14Cara Santa Maria?

  No, I mean gravitational wave science, like using gravitational wave detectors to make assumptions about the universe. We could do that from a wholly Newtonian perspective.

• 1:13:23Bob Novella?

  Right now, there's nothing obvious about gravitational waves that says that it's quantum.

• 1:13:28Speaker 04

  But what does quantum gravity, not the consequences, but what does that mean necessarily?

• 1:13:32Bob Novella?

  That means that we have taken gravity and we've quantized it.

• 1:13:37Speaker 02

  And quantum mechanics and they work together. Now they don't.

• 1:13:41Speaker 04

  Oh, so it becomes a single theory? Oh, gotcha, gotcha.

• 1:13:43Bob Novella?

  It's two different languages right now.

• 1:13:45Speaker 02

  We can't explain black holes.

• 1:13:47Bob Novella?

  And it would be huge. I'm gonna mention that a little bit. But so, alright, so this experiment is worthwhile. We could determine that the gravitational field is quantizable, which would be wonderful, but it also points to this idea that if we prove that gravity is quantum mechanical, that then quantum gravity, the theory of quantum gravity unifying general relativity and quantum mechanics into one theory is possible.

• 1:14:14Speaker 02

  That's the holy grail.

• 1:14:16Bob Novella?

  That's the holy grail. That's absolutely the holy grail. And because right now, there's mysteries in science and astronomy and cosmology that...

• 1:14:23Speaker 02

  Like what?

• 1:14:24Bob Novella?

  You want to know, Jay?

• 1:14:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:26Bob Novella?

  Let's talk about it. So two big ones that I wanted to talk about that quantum gravity could solve for us is, what's in the middle of a black hole? It's a singularity. But a singularity inside a black hole is kind of like dark energy. It's a placeholder. We don't know what's in there really, because all of our theories just kind of fall apart. And that's why we want to unify them. Because our theories are predicting these infinities are just coming out everywhere. We don't know. So quantum gravity could tell us that, alright, the singularity isn't infinitely dense and infinitely curved spacetime. It's this, it's, um, it's this finite object. Finite is much better than infinite when you're dealing with these theories. So it's a, it's a more spread out thing. That's what quantum gravity could tell us.

• 1:15:11Bob Novella?

  It could also tell us that, you know, spacetime ends with, you know, within a black hole. It's something that's really strange. It's, it's not a singularity, but it's, but spacetime just ends right there. It's just, it's not a spacetime thing. And that would be, if we knew that, that would be a huge advance over just this weird like singularity that we, nobody knows what's going on there. Alright, another thing, if quantum gravity is real, this is a good one. Jay, you're gonna like this. So if we had quantum gravity, we could potentially know if we could travel into the past. You like that one, Jay? So, um...

• 1:15:47Jay Novella?

  I'm, I'm, I really am against traveling into the past, but I think it's, you know, interesting that they're making a relationship between those two things.

• 1:15:55Bob Novella?

  I mean, traveling into the past is, I think it's overwhelmingly likely not to, not to be possible, but you could not say definitively that science says traveling into the past is impossible. You couldn't say that because general relativity predicts that there's something called closed time like curves, like wormhole time machines, that could potentially be used as for traveling into the past. There are solutions that say, yes, we can travel into, into the past according to general relativity, but we need quantum gravity to definitively say, um, one of three things. So we develop quantum gravity, it could say one of three things. It could say that this is forbidden outright. Traveling into the past is never gonna happen. Closed time like curves, this weirdly shaped spacetime is, is not physical.

• 1:16:39Bob Novella?

  It's never gonna happen. We could say that. Quantum gravity could also say that mathematically, these closed time like curves exist, these potentially exist, but if you tried to build one physically, some quantum effects would prevent you from doing it. It's just, it's not possible physically. It's kind of, they call this like a chronology protection, which would, you know, which would be interesting and maybe be kind of nice that, you know, there's a protection going into the past, because that could be bad. Alright, so quantum gravity could also say, potentially, that it's allowed. Traveling into the past is allowed?

• 1:17:11Jay Novella?

  Impossible.

• 1:17:12Bob Novella?

  And it's engineerable. It's, it's something that, that we could do. So, um, but the thing is, it could be... You might need ridiculously extreme energies. You might need exotic matter to make it happen. But it could potentially say, yes, traveling into the past is possible. And it could be something that some super advanced civilization could potentially engineer. So there you are, this conceptually simple experiment. That would be very difficult to pull off, but it's conceptually simple. Could potentially point to a new quantum gravity theory that has been stymying the best scientists for a decade. So that's my story.

• 1:17:47Speaker 02

  Thanks, Bob. Okay, we have enough time for science or fiction, so we do have to move on.

• 1:17:54Speaker 01

  It's time for Science or Fiction.

• 1:18:04Speaker 02

  Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake. Then I challenge my panel of expert skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. Are you guys ready? So I'm going to read the three items. The people in the audience are not going to respond in any way. Poker face. And then we'll survey the panel. And then, once they've all committed, then we'll survey the audience. Until then, no feedback. Okay.

• 1:18:36Bob Novella?

  Zip it.

• 1:18:38Speaker 02

  And you'll understand why in a moment.

• 1:18:40Bob Novella?

  We already know, Steve.

• 1:18:42Speaker 02

  You know the theme.

• 1:18:42Bob Novella?

  Of course.

• 1:18:43Speaker 02

  It's not Seattle. It is Washington State. It's Portland.

• 1:18:51Speaker 04

  It's Washington, DC.

• 1:18:52Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:18:55Speaker 02

  Here we go. Item number one. Washington State has the highest number of reported UFO sightings per capita, while California has the highest total reported sightings. Item number two. Despite its climate, Washington State, led by Seattle, has the highest sunglass purchases per capita.

• 1:19:17Speaker 02

  And item number three, numerous reported sightings of a lesser known cryptid called bat-squatch, a large flying primate with bat-like wings, date back to 1980 in Washington. Bat-squatch. Bat-squatch. George, last time you were on the panel, you went first.

• 1:19:36Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:19:37Speaker 02

  And you got it right.

• 1:19:38Speaker 04

  Ooh.

• 1:19:39Speaker 02

  You and Brian were the only ones.

• 1:19:40Speaker 04

  Oh, that's right.

• 1:19:41Speaker 02

  You got it correct.

• 1:19:42Speaker 04

  That's right, okay.

• 1:19:43Speaker 02

  So I'll give you your choice. Do you want to go first? Do you want to go last on the panel?

• 1:19:46Speaker 04

  I'll go first.

• 1:19:47Speaker 02

  All right.

• 1:19:48Speaker 04

  I'll go first.

• 1:19:49Speaker 02

  There you go. There are the three items.

• 1:19:51Speaker 04

  Okay, I like the number two about the sunglasses. There is a certain hipster relevance to that of like, we wear sunglasses despite their necessary need or not. So I'm gonna say that that's probably, that's probably science. The, also the bat-squatch is from, is from number three, the bat-squatch from the 1980s. That feels like a very 1980s kind of thing. It feels like a very, very 1980s term.

• 1:20:18Speaker 02

  It does rhyme with swatch.

• 1:20:19Speaker 04

  Right? Sort of like a post, post Leonard Nimoy in search of like, we got to be like, we're 14, 15, 18 years old now, we're naming stuff. So just based on that, solely on that, there are hipsters here and wearing sunglasses, and that bat-squatch feels 80s-ish, I'm gonna say that Washington does not have the highest number of reported UFO sightings per capita. So number one is the fiction.

• 1:20:43Speaker 02

  Okay, Kara?

• 1:20:44Cara Santa Maria?

  I'm so glad that's where, that like, that's kind of what I was leaning toward. So to sort of take them in order really quickly, I think that the first thing I thought of was, ooh, with the California having the highest total versus the highest per capita, I like that, makes it more believable. But I still have a feeling that like, New Mexico, Arizona is gonna have a higher per capita, but that might be too obvious. And then the sunglass thing is hilarious, like, at its surface, you're like, that's the fiction, but... I don't know. Like, I live in LA. I wear sunglasses every day. I can't not. And I know what it's like when it's been gloomy and then all of a sudden the sun pops out and it's like, it hurts. And so I could see needing sunglasses, or maybe it's wishful thinking,

• 1:21:30Cara Santa Maria?

  or there are sun showers here. Like, it can be raining and it's still sunny. So, um, yeah, I don't know. I could see it. And then, I don't know, bat squash, I've never heard of. It sounds silly, but obviously Sasquatch culture in the Pacific Northwest is huge. So, you know, that one kind of is in keeping. I don't know. Yeah, the UFO, ah, this is tough. These are really good, Steve, because they could, they could all be science. But I'm gonna go with George and say the UFO. It's probably, California might have the highest total, um, or Texas. But I think the, the per capita might be in Arizona, New Mexico, that region.

• 1:22:05Jay Novella?

  Okay, Jay, wasn't the first UFO sighting in, from Washington State?

• 1:22:10Speaker 02

  You are correct. I'll say that doesn't affect this answer. Mount Rainier in, in Washington was where Kenneth Arnold reported seeing objects skipping like saucers that was misinterpreted as a flying saucer shape, right? He was describing their movement, not their shape.

• 1:22:27Speaker 04

  That's the 50s, 40s?

• 1:22:29Speaker 02

  40s, 47, I think.

• 1:22:31Jay Novella?

  All right, so, uh, Washington State has the highest, uh, number of reported UFO sightings per capita, and California has the highest total reported sites. I mean, that sounds, that sounds like, fine. You know what I mean? Like, I'm not, I'm not, I can't really shoot a hole in that. I, I'm taking into account that you guys picked it, but let me keep going here. Despite the climate, Washington State, you know, basically people here are purchasing the most sunglasses. I don't know. That seems counterintuitive by a lot to me. So that one is my first pick so far. And then the, the bat squash, I mean, I, I've never heard of it. I think I would have heard of it, right? I don't, you know, because of what we do. Lesser known, but we're skeptics. Like, we're the, when they say lesser known, it's us who know about it.

• 1:23:16Jay Novella?

  You know what I mean?

• 1:23:17Speaker 04

  Call me Les.

• 1:23:17Jay Novella?

  Yeah. So I'm going between those two. Bat Squatch. Steve, this is like a claim and not like a, no one has like

• 1:23:25Cara Santa Maria?

  You mean it's not been proven?

• 1:23:26Jay Novella?

  Reported sightings. No, I just wanted more information.

• 1:23:30Speaker 04

  Reported sightings, that's all it's all it's saying.

• 1:23:31Jay Novella?

  Right, so people are claiming that there is a large flying primate with bat-like wings, like, like a bat. With bat-like wings. I don't know, I mean, between these two, geez. Um, I'm gonna say the sunglasses is the fiction.

• 1:23:43Speaker 02

  Okay, Bob.

• 1:23:43Bob Novella?

  So for number one, the UFO sightings, it seems plausible to me considering that flying saucer was actually coined here and I think people would be like, "Yeah, this is, this is our thing." Uh, so that kinda makes it more tenable to me. The second one with the sunglasses, it's just too obvious. It just seems too obvious, unless that's what you want me to think. So I'm gonna discount that one. Uh, I've got a theory about Bat Squatch. I wasn't too familiar with it either. Somebody last night had a t-shirt on that had cryptids and it had Bat Squatch. And I think Steve saw that t-shirt and decided, "I'm going to put it in

• 1:24:20Speaker 04

  Interesting.

• 1:24:21Bob Novella?

  Science or fiction." That's my working hypothesis. So I'm gonna say that one is fiction.

• 1:24:26Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, you think that one's fiction, then?

• 1:24:28Bob Novella?

  Yes.

• 1:24:29Jay Novella?

  I would think you'd go the other way.

• 1:24:30Cara Santa Maria?

  I know, me too.

• 1:24:31Speaker 02

  Evan?

• 1:24:31Bob Novella?

  Nope. What are the odds? Steve looked at it and like, "Oh, this is interesting. Oh, look, it was, it's seen in, in, uh, Washington." No, no, I think Steve just like, "I'm gonna use that somehow in science or fiction."

• 1:24:41Jay Novella?

  Or the person that was wearing the t-shirt is from here. It's a local dude ad. And, uh, that's what, you know, you're wrong about it.

• 1:24:48Bob Novella?

  You clearly did not see the t-shirt, Jay.

• 1:24:50Speaker 02

  All right, so we have George Kara for UFOs, Jay for sunglasses, Bob for Bat Squatch. I love when there's a good spread across the items.

• 1:24:59Speaker 04

  Like a nice sandwich.

• 1:25:00Speaker 02

  Now, we're gonna see how the audience feels.

• 1:25:03Jay Novella?

  Oh, boy.

• 1:25:04Speaker 02

  Um, so, if you think that Washington is having the highest per capita UFO sightings is the fiction, clap.

• 1:25:14Speaker 02

  If you think that the sunglasses is the fiction, Clap. And if you think that the bat-squatch is the fiction, clap.

• 1:25:24Bob Novella?

  Okay.

• 1:25:24Speaker 02

  Okay, so I one, three, two.

• 1:25:27Speaker 04

  Three, two, it feels like.

• 1:25:27Speaker 02

  Is what I'm hearing.

• 1:25:28Bob Novella?

  Is that looking good for me?

• 1:25:29Speaker 04

  Come on, come on.

• 1:25:31Speaker 02

  Let's take these in reverse order.

• 1:25:33Bob Novella?

  No, no. Do them in order.

• 1:25:37Speaker 02

  Numerous reported sightings of a lesser-known cryptid called bat-squatch, a large flying primate with bat-like wings, date back to 1980 in Washington. Bob thinks this one is fiction. Some of the audience think this one is fiction. Now, Bob, I remember the cryptid T-shirt from last night.

• 1:25:54Bob Novella?

  Of course you do.

• 1:25:54Speaker 02

  And who wore that T-shirt? Raise your hand. So I came up to you and took a long look at that T-shirt.

• 1:26:01Bob Novella?

  So as did I.

• 1:26:02Speaker 02

  To make sure that bat-squatch was not on it.

• 1:26:05Jay Novella?

  Oh.

• 1:26:06Speaker 02

  And it wasn't. I don't know what you're remembering.

• 1:26:09Bob Novella?

  Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second. There was like, there was a biped with bat wings. I mean, come on.

• 1:26:15Speaker 02

  But the word bat-squatch was not on it.

• 1:26:17Cara Santa Maria?

  It was Mothman.

• 1:26:18Speaker 02

  It was Mothman. You were looking at Mothman.

• 1:26:21Speaker 04

  This is like the priming thing with the word.

• 1:26:23Bob Novella?

  Mothman was upper left, the bat-squatch was bottom right, whatever. I was drinking too much last night.

• 1:26:27Speaker 02

  I was like, oh, is that bat-squatch? No, it's Mothman. Good, woo. Now, none of you.

• 1:26:32Bob Novella?

  There goes my theory.

• 1:26:33Speaker 02

  None of you made the connection to, what? What's the cinematic bat-like primate?

• 1:26:40Bob Novella?

  No.

• 1:26:41Cara Santa Maria?

  Batman?

• 1:26:42Speaker 02

  Wizard of Oz?

• 1:26:43Bob Novella?

  Monkey, Wizard of Oz, monkeys with wings.

• 1:26:46Speaker 04

  Monkeys with wings, yeah.

• 1:26:47Speaker 02

  And I hate that movie.

• 1:26:48Cara Santa Maria?

  But also Batman.

• 1:26:49Speaker 02

  But he's a, whatever.

• 1:26:50Cara Santa Maria?

  He's a primate.

• 1:26:51Speaker 04

  Oh, but 1980, wow, yes, so.

• 1:26:53Speaker 02

  This one is. Is. Science. This is science. Yeah, so some guy thought he saw bat-squatch in the 1980s.

• 1:27:04Speaker 04

  Good name.

• 1:27:04Speaker 02

  And there's been sightings every four or five years. It's not, again, lesser-known, it's not huge, but over the last 30, 40 years, there's been continuous sightings. And the legend has grown a little bit. During Mount St. Helens, people thought they saw him in the Spashmog, you know? Wait, wait, there's one bat-squatch? There's one? Well, whatever, there's just sightings of bat-squatch. Who knows if there's one or more?

• 1:27:27Speaker 04

  There's one Fred Bat Squatch.

• 1:27:30Speaker 02

  Then one person reported that Bat Squatch landed in front of his truck and his truck engine died. So then, so now Bat Squatch can make your truck engines die. So yeah, lesser known, but I like these, these local, not well-known cryptids are always fun. Okay.

• 1:27:44Speaker 04

  There's a beer named after it. Ooh, there's a beer. All right.

• 1:27:47Speaker 02

  All right.

• 1:27:49Bob Novella?

  Damn it.

• 1:27:49Speaker 02

  Nice. Let's go back to number two. Despite its climate, Washington State, led by Seattle, has the highest sunglass purchases per capita. Very few people in the audience think this is the fiction, which surprises me. Why does that surprise me?

• 1:28:04Cara Santa Maria?

  Cause you guys all have a lot of sunglasses.

• 1:28:06Speaker 02

  If, if you search.

• 1:28:08Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh yeah. So you don't need them all winter and then you, you keep losing them every, so you have to rebuy them all the time. That makes sense. Yeah.

• 1:28:17Speaker 02

  That's the common belief.

• 1:28:19Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh no.

• 1:28:20Speaker 02

  That, and there is a, now if you look up strange things about Seattle, right? This is on every single list that.

• 1:28:28Bob Novella?

  I didn't see it on my list.

• 1:28:30Speaker 02

  That they have the highest per capita sunglass purchase, but it turns out this is a myth.

• 1:28:34Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh.

• 1:28:35Speaker 02

  And this is the fiction.

• 1:28:36Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh no.

• 1:28:37Speaker 02

  I thought I was gonna actually get a lot more of the audience, but this is the fiction.

• 1:28:41Cara Santa Maria?

  Good job Jay.

• 1:28:42Speaker 02

  Good job Jay.

• 1:28:43Speaker 04

  Jay Bird, come on now. Come on, hands up.

• 1:28:46Speaker 02

  I just want, I just want to say that, you know, true intelligence, it's subtle, it's metered, it doesn't brag, it just says the right shit over and over and over again. So I love popular beliefs that are myths making that the actual fiction. So this is the fiction, yes. Um, the data clearly shows that the southeast is where most.

• 1:29:08Jay Novella?

  Kara was right.

• 1:29:09Cara Santa Maria?

  No, I was wrong.

• 1:29:10Speaker 02

  Well, she was saying.

• 1:29:11Cara Santa Maria?

  I was saying that about UFO sightings in the southwest.

• 1:29:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:13Cara Santa Maria?

  UFO sightings, yeah.

• 1:29:15Speaker 02

  We'll get to the UFO sightings.

• 1:29:16Jay Novella?

  It's like Florida then?

• 1:29:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:29:18Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, places where you need sunglasses.

• 1:29:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 1:29:22Speaker 02

  Exactly. The, the data actually tracks with what you would think it, where it tracks. The sunny states is where the most people have.

• 1:29:27Speaker 04

  Does anyone here have sunglasses on them? Just a couple? One, two, one, two, three, four. Okay.

• 1:29:32Speaker 02

  That, that Seattleites, is that how you, is that your name? Seattleites? I like that. That Seattleites lose their sunglasses, have to, that's the myth, that they have, that's why it's counterintuitively they have, cause they're constantly losing, they have to keep buying them.

• 1:29:45Jay Novella?

  Hold on a second. So why do you guys have sunglasses, like with you today?

• 1:29:51Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, cause it's sunny today.

• 1:29:53Speaker 02

  For the sun.

• 1:29:58Speaker 02

  It's a rare, not rainy sunny day.

• 1:30:00Jay Novella?

  Let me retort, because that, this is not sunny in Connecticut.

• 1:30:04Cara Santa Maria?

  But see, it's the same reason that in LA, when it's like 65 degrees, we all wear coats. We're like, we get to wear our coats.

• 1:30:13Jay Novella?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:30:14Speaker 02

  They're like trolls, Jay. They come like, oh. They have to put their glasses on. All right. Which means that Washington state has the highest number of reported UFO sightings per capita, while California has the highest total reported sightings is science. California, the population just dwarfs, you know, obviously. So of course they get it per just absolute number. Now, nobody mentioned what UFO sightings actually track and why Washington has such a high number. Vermont, by the way, has a very high number.

• 1:30:44Jay Novella?

  So you mean they're counting a, they're counting a hand?

• 1:30:47Speaker 04

  Kind of weather anomaly.

• 1:30:48Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:48Speaker 02

  You're close.

• 1:30:49Cara Santa Maria?

  What, what they actually are looking at instead of a UFO.

• 1:30:52Speaker 02

  What's, what's triggering all these sightings? Aircraft.

• 1:30:56Bob Novella?

  Lack of skeptics?

• 1:30:57Speaker 02

  It's all military bases.

• 1:30:59Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:31:00Speaker 02

  Carefully tracks.

• 1:31:01Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:31:02Cara Santa Maria?

  But there's so many in the southwest.

• 1:31:04Speaker 02

  But, but whatever, it's Washington.

• 1:31:07Speaker 04

  It's probably less crowded.

• 1:31:08Speaker 02

  This is what the data shows.

• 1:31:09Speaker 04

  There's fewer people probably in the southwest as opposed to...

• 1:31:11Speaker 02

  There's gotta be some critical density of people to see the stuff and also, I don't...

• 1:31:15Speaker 04

  Right. I guess, yeah.

• 1:31:17Speaker 02

  If you, it's, it's the, Washington has a combination of military bases and also not just, it's not just that it, there are planes. It's also that it's stuff that other countries want to spy on. It's their spy planes looking at our facility.

• 1:31:31Jay Novella?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:31:32Cara Santa Maria?

  Still too.

• 1:31:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. And the air force is like, yeah, the UFOs, you know, they're like, they don't, they don't contradict the public reporting, because they don't want, they're not gonna say, no, that's our secret military base and the Chinese were spying on us. They don't want to say that. So they, they just, they just let the, the UFO reporting stand as they are. So, yeah, that, I thought that was interesting.

• 1:31:53Jay Novella?

  So like, the best thing for the military to do, if they want to like, stay hidden, is make one of their aircraft look like a UFO.

• 1:32:00Speaker 02

  So, there was a scandal where in the 90s, the US air force did actually promote UFO belief as cover. And they, and they were, now they're being, let the conspiracy theorists eat that up, of course. Because they were actually engaged in a conspiracy to misinform the public to hide their activity. Yeah, like Project Mogul, you know, which was a secret. We're spying on the Soviet missile, uh, nuclear testing. So let's not, that was the Roswell incident.

• 1:32:28Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:28Speaker 02

  Was crashed, you know, uh, spy satellite.

• 1:32:31Bob Novella?

  Spy balloon.

• 1:32:32Speaker 02

  And they're not gonna say, no, that was our spy satellite, you know? So they just let that mythology stand.

• 1:32:37Bob Novella?

  They must've loved that shit.

• 1:32:38Jay Novella?

  That's awesome.

• 1:32:39Speaker 02

  They love it, yeah. It's totally, it's, it's organic cover for their activity. They, yeah.

• 1:32:44Bob Novella?

  Of course.

• 1:32:45Jay Novella?

  Can you tell me more about the sunglasses? I'd like to, you know?

• 1:32:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it is interesting because the rogues, they're often, I include items that seem blatantly false.

• 1:32:56Jay Novella?

  Yes.

• 1:32:56Speaker 02

  Right? They're counterintuitive and they could go either way. They could say, that's blatantly false, I'm gonna call that the fiction. Although say, that's too easy. That's why you included it, yeah. I'm gonna flip it and say that Steve's trying to fool us. I don't know which way they're gonna go.

• 1:33:10Jay Novella?

  And it is so painful to, to like go, look at the one that looks super fiction.

• 1:33:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:33:16Jay Novella?

  And you're like, oh, come on, that can't be it. And then when you miss it, as soon as you do the reveal, you instantly feel like a moron. You're just like, ah.

• 1:33:24Speaker 02

  And I just soak up your tears like they're the best.

• 1:33:28Speaker 04

  Let's give, let's give Jay one big clap for getting it right. Here we go, come on. There you go.

• 1:33:31Jay Novella?

  Good job, Jay. You did it.

• 1:33:36Bob Novella?

  I don't even wanna play this game anymore.

• 1:33:38Jay Novella?

  See, just so you know, I was 100% sure when you started reading the answers, I'm like, I am so wrong. It's like, there's just no way.

• 1:33:45Speaker 02

  Thank you all for joining me for this special Seattle episode.

• 1:33:49Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 1:33:50Speaker 02

  And thank you guys for coming to see us in Seattle.

• 1:33:57Speaker 02

  And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

• 1:34:08Speaker 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.

• 1:34:44Speaker 07

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