The Skeptics Guide #1075 - Feb 14 2026

Quickie with Evan: Erich von Däniken dies at 90; News Items: Review of ADHD Treatment, Religious Nones, EPA Ends Endangerment Ruling, The Physics of the Quintuple Jump, Crotchgate; Who's That Noisy; Your Questions and E-mails: More on the yellow sun, The Turkey Illusion; 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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• 0:39Speaker 01

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

• 0:46Speaker 02

  Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Thursday, February 12, 2026, and this is your host, Stephen Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella.

• 0:55Bob Novella?

  Hey, everybody.

• 0:56Speaker 02

  Jay Novella. Hey, guys. Evan Bernstein.

• 0:59Speaker 04

  Good evening, everyone.

• 1:00Speaker 02

  And we have a guest rogue on this episode, Parrish Knight. Parrish, welcome to The Skeptic's Guide.

• 1:05Speaker 05

  Thank you so much, y'all.

• 1:06Speaker 02

  Hello, Parrish. So Kara's not here because she's sick. She has a little bit of a cold. So she, rather than coughing her way through the episode, she's went to sleep. It happens. Yeah, occasionally we get sick.

• 1:18Bob Novella?

  And Parrish is a patron of the SGU, and that's why he's on the show tonight.

• 1:22Speaker 05

  All right.

• 1:23Speaker 02

  So Parrish, tell us a little bit about yourself.

• 1:24Speaker 05

  I am a computer desktop support technician, and I live in the Washington DC area. I've worked with a number of different agencies over the years, mostly at NIH, but I've also been with others that are more interesting, including NASA and the Mint. And when I come home, I like to fuss around with my home network and see what kind of damage I can do with inside the house, once I'm done damaging things at work.

• 1:51Speaker 04

  Is this call being recorded for quality assurance?

• 1:54Speaker 05

  I believe it is.

• 1:56Speaker 02

  It is being recorded.

• 1:57Bob Novella?

  How many times have you said, have you tried turning it on and off again?

• 2:01Speaker 02

  Off and on again.

• 2:02Bob Novella?

  Off and on again, damn it.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  Kara, what was that?

• 2:06Speaker 05

  I said, I've lost count on that one. But you know, I did actually have one customer once who sent me an email saying that she needed help because she couldn't send email.

• 2:17Bob Novella?

  But she emailed you that?

• 2:19Speaker 05

  I just wrote back and I said, really? And she said, oh, she wrote back and she said, oh, right. Oops, sorry.

• 2:26Bob Novella?

  That's pretty good.

• 2:29Speaker 02

  I thought you would have said I'm using someone else's email, you know, or something, you know, sane.

• 2:34Speaker 05

  You'd think, but no, it wasn't, wasn't that.

• 2:36Speaker 02

  Well, what, is that the craziest thing that's happened to you in terms of tech support?

• 2:39Speaker 05

  That's probably the craziest one that I can mention on a public podcast.

• 2:43Speaker 04

  Ah, oh, no.

• 2:45Speaker 02

  All right. So when we talk about computer stuff on the show, how do we do?

• 2:49Speaker 05

  Quite well, actually. In fact, I think any one of you could probably replace me with just a little bit of polish. Mostly it's, it's, it's political, you know, you have to be polite and mind your own, or some agencies are, are more casual than others. Like, for example, at NASA headquarters, sometimes I would come in in the morning and before my shift started and there'd be somebody flying an RC helicopter around the help desk area. Now, in, in some places, if you did that, you know, you'd probably get fired, but at NASA, if the director came in and saw it, he'd probably ask if he could take a turn.

• 3:23Speaker 02

  Well, tell us about your time at NASA. What did you do there?

• 3:26Speaker 05

  I was the Apple engineer, which meant that I was responsible for supporting all the, the Macs in the headquarters building, uh, rolling out security patches and helping anybody who was having problems with their computers, which at the time we were using a really bad email client. So I ended up supporting that one quite a bit.

• 3:44Speaker 02

  Did they use Macs on the space shuttle?

• 3:46Speaker 05

  I'm not sure. Um, but I, I do, sometimes I got to help people who were a lot of fun. Like the director of planetary science was having problems with his Mac laptop.

• 3:58Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 3:59Speaker 05

  So, uh, sitting in his office and chatting with him while I was getting that fixed was, uh, was really neat. It's a little intimidating.

• 4:05Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 4:05Jay Novella?

  How many pictures did you download from his computer?

• 4:11Speaker 05

  Uh, he was watching me a little too closely.

• 4:12Bob Novella?

  This exo-planet, he never announced.

• 4:15Speaker 04

  Did he show you the proof of aliens? The stuff they've been hiding all these years.

• 4:20Speaker 05

  I asked him about that, but he said he, if he told me, he'd have to kill me. So, uh, we skipped it.

• 4:25Jay Novella?

  Yeah, that never works out.

• 4:26Speaker 05

  No.

• 4:27Speaker 02

  Well, speaking of UFO alien conspiracies.

• 4:30Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  Evan.

• 4:32Speaker 04

  Mm hmm.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  I understand we lost a giant in the UFO world. Tell us.

• 4:36Speaker 04

  Uh, we kinda did. Yeah. On January 10th, 2026, sorry, this is a little bit dated, but it's been a little while since I've been able to do an extra segment. We'll call it a quickie with Evan. Eric Von Dynakin died.

• 4:51Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, that's right.

• 4:51Speaker 05

  Oh, Lord.

• 4:52Speaker 04

  And for the benefit of.

• 4:54Speaker 02

  Dynakin? Dyna, I've never heard Dyna.

• 4:56Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 4:58Speaker 02

  Donnican?

• 4:59Speaker 04

  It's an A with umlaut, so Donnican. Eric Von Donnican.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  So who was he?

• 5:05Speaker 04

  Well, if you're forty-five years and under, you probably never heard of him. I was about to joke with Kara about that, but she's sick, so I'll have to move on from that. Actually, he was influential and controversial. Definitely a figure in modern pseudoscience. He left behind a legacy that has shaped our popular culture's fascination with ancient mysteries, extraterrestrials, and the idea that what humanity's past was guided by extraterrestrial visitors. Von Donnican rose to international fame with the publication of, do you know, remember the name of the-

• 5:41Speaker 02

  Carriots of the Gods.

• 5:42Speaker 05

  Carriots of the Gods.

• 5:43Speaker 04

  Oh, Lord.

• 5:44Speaker 02

  They're floating over the skies like flies. Yeah, that entered the lexicon big time.

• 5:50Speaker 04

  Absolutely, right in nineteen sixty-eight as well, also right on the heels of the Apollo program and everything. So just remarkable.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  Wait, was it the heels or the cusp?

• 6:03Speaker 04

  Never mind. Well, cusp, heels.

• 6:05Speaker 02

  Heels is the back end, cusp is before, so it was the cusp.

• 6:08Speaker 04

  In this book, he proposed that many ancient civilizations, including ancient Egypt, the Maya, Mesopotamia, among others, were influenced or even engineered by advanced extraterrestrial beings who were mistaken for gods. And they left evidence of this in the ancient monuments, the artwork, and the myths that were reinterpreted and misunderstood evidence of alien technology. That book was huge. It sold tens of millions of copies worldwide. It was enormous. It launched the entire genre of ancient astronaut speculation.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  And it's pseudoscience from beginning to end, like really bad pseudoscience.

• 6:47Speaker 04

  Hundred percent, one hundred percent. I mean, think of the documentaries, the TV shows, people who came on the lecture circuits, all of it. He sparked that, basically, that entire, that entire genre, no doubt about it.

• 7:03Speaker 04

  I call it contamination of the culture, as it were. His fingerprints are on all sorts of people who are still influencing today a much younger audience who wouldn't know Eric Von Denneken from Eric Estrada. Among those, among those are Joe Rogan, Tom Cruise, Tom DeLonge of Blink 182 fame, Stephen Greer, oh, and how about Avi Loeb?

• 7:26Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 7:27Speaker 04

  Or even John Mack, our Harvard, our Harvard contingency there. The History Channel has a whole series on this nonsense. Steven Spielberg was, oh, yeah, he was influenced. Indiana Jones and that crystal skull thing, oh, my gosh.

• 7:42Speaker 02

  Oh, God, I'm gonna start.

• 7:43Speaker 04

  Forget it. What bile that was. So from the very beginning, Von Denneken's claims were rejected by historians, archaeologists, and scientists. Unfortunately, that did not have enough influence in stopping people from glomming on to his thoughts and his own unique ideas. He was more like an L. Ron Hubbard sort of type of character in my book. Because his arguments failed to meet basic standards of evidence.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  Well, he would do, he would follow a formula that so many people on TikTok and whatever are still following. Say, the whole ancient astronaut thing basically follows this formula where you look at some piece of ancient history or ancient artifact in complete isolation of any knowledge of archaeology.

• 8:28Speaker 04

  Right.

• 8:29Speaker 02

  And then you just, you know, pull some alien interpretation out of your butt. And seriously.

• 8:36Speaker 04

  Right, and it's, it's true.

• 8:38Speaker 02

  People have spent their lives studying this and we know a lot about the culture in which it was embedded and what this symbolism means and et cetera, et cetera. There's lots of other examples of it and we weave together, you know, an interpretation of what this likely meant. They're like, nope, I just looked at this picture. I see an astronaut in a capsule. Well, good for you. It has nothing to do with what's actually going on.

• 8:59Speaker 04

  Right.

• 9:00Speaker 02

  But it's a lot more provocative, say it's an astronaut than, oh, here's the, all of the evidence that tells us what this actually meant in this culture.

• 9:09Speaker 04

  Remove all context.

• 9:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 9:11Speaker 04

  Take, take an image, take, take one little snapshot and go nuts.

• 9:15Speaker 02

  Just run with it, yeah.

• 9:16Speaker 04

  Create a whole mythology around it.

• 9:17Speaker 05

  I always looked at it from the other side. I mean, why would they even be doing this? The, these alien astronauts, were they bored?

• 9:23Speaker 04

  They were toying with humans, you know?

• 9:27Speaker 02

  There's never a coherent story, right? Cause when you're, when you're mystery mongering, basically, you don't really have to have a coherent story. Aliens move in mysterious ways, right? Like, we can't imagine what they were doing. Good, that gives you a lot of room to maneuver, right? And just to make shit up.

• 9:41Speaker 04

  And thank goodness for James Randi, who, who was one of the, oh, boy, chief critics of Von Daniken's work. Uh, he was, uh, he wrote about him in Flim Flam, which is a wonderful book. If you have not read James Randi's Flim Flam, please, please go get a copy and read it. Still relevant today. And he basically used the ancient astronaut theory as the textbook pseudoscience, right? It's like, here, here's a perfect pseudoscience, and here's how you can break it down, and here's how, and here's how you know.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  Joe Nichol too, Joe Nichol actually reproduced the Nasca lines. With technology that was available at the time. It's not hard. You know, you could take a drawing on a piece of paper and turn it into a giant drawing on the ground.

• 10:26Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  With some basic techniques, without having to be in a spaceship hovering above the earth.

• 10:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, like, it sounds like, yeah, like crop circles.

• 10:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:35Speaker 04

  Right, yeah, yep, no alien technology required.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 10:38Speaker 04

  So how you gonna do it? You gonna do it the hard way with the alien technology? You're just gonna do it the way humans managed to do it.

• 10:43Speaker 02

  I'll never forget, we were at a, at a talk, right? As the New England Skeptics. And it was a psychic who was giving the talk, and then, and she was espousing the crop circles. And of course, we were there to ask skeptical questions. And somebody said, how can you draw a perfect circle? That's impossible. We're like, oh, have you ever, have you ever seen a compass? Have you ever tied a string to a stick? You know what I mean? You could draw a perfect circle with a string and a stick. Hello?

• 11:15Speaker 04

  Some technology is more advanced than others. To some people at least. But at least, okay, well, I mean, so the, the, the end of an era, in a sense, in that he is now past. We in the skeptic community, we, we will remember him forever, you know, and acknowledge both sides of his legacy. He was not a scientist. His claims were never supported by evidence, but he did play a major role in illustrating why skepticism matters. And why curiosity must be paired with rigor and why storytelling, no matter how compelling, is never a substitute for science. And there you have it.

• 11:49Speaker 02

  He was one of those people where you hear that they die, like they were still alive? Cause he was 90, like I haven't heard about him, you know, for, in so long.

• 11:58Bob Novella?

  Yeah, like literally decades.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:01Jay Novella?

  Well, he's living off all that bread he made, you know?

• 12:03Bob Novella?

  Hey, millions of books, man. I wish we sold millions of books.

• 12:06Speaker 02

  All right. Thank you, Evan. Jay, tell us about this massive review of reviews of ADHD treatment.

• 12:14Jay Novella?

  This is really awesome. I think anyone that's curious about how to medicate ADHD or how to treat it should definitely pay attention here and then visit the, uh, this website that we will put into the show notes. So the main question posed to people that have to deal with ADHD, whether it's their own or their child's, is, you know, how do you decide what the right treatment is for you? You know, and of course, one of those decisions might be to do nothing at all, right? But where would you start? I think out of the gate, most people would probably either consult a physician, you know, look it up online or chat GPT, you know?

• 12:52Speaker 02

  Well, you should be consulting a physician, not researching yourself online.

• 12:55Jay Novella?

  Yeah, you can read about it, but you gotta end up talking to a physician, you know, a specialist that can help you with medications like this. So, you know, the next question is then what would physicians do if they want the latest and greatest information? They would look in clinical guidelines, uh, individual trials, they'd look at meta-analyses, they'd talk to other physicians. You know, so each of these different places, they offer a, a part of the picture, but the results are typically with things like this, they're typically scattered. You know, the, the studies and things, you know, the information sources could vary in quality. And it's a hard thing to do, you know, even though there's a lot of good research going on out there, it's not always easy to access it. And then the other problem is, and Steve, I know you've said this many times, that you

• 13:39Jay Novella?

  have different sources of information from different studies or meta-analyses, but they're not always framed in the same way. So you can compare them, you know, apples to apples. Like you want to know, you know, take data from one study or conclusions from one study and then kind of compare it to another. And a lot of times you just can't do that. It just doesn't work that way. So now we have this new umbrella review that was in the BMJ and it attempts to, you know, take a step back and look at the entire landscape of data that's out there for ADHD. And the authors systematically reanalyzed all of the strongest available meta-analyses of specifically of randomized controlled trials

• 14:20Jay Novella?

  across age groups. And then they built an online platform where the results are organized by treatment type, age group outcome, and timeframe. And this makes the conclusions available and understandable to everyone. And that right there is unbelievably rare and so obvious that this is what studies should do with their data. I know it costs time and money, but it makes it accessible. You know, it makes it makes the data actually much more useful to a lot of people, including physicians, by the way.

• 14:49Speaker 02

  This is a Herculean task, this kind of, you know, systematic review of systematic reviews and reanalyzing all the meta-analyses. That, this was a lot of time in this.

• 15:00Jay Novella?

  Yeah. Well, Steve, you just described an umbrella review, right? It's a review of reviews. The researchers ended up searching six major databases. They focused on studies that compared actual interventions to passive controls, which included things like placebo, right? The main outcome was ADHD symptoms severity. And importantly, the authors broke this down into who rated the symptoms, right? Could have been a clinician, it could have been a parent, it could have been a teacher, it could be self-reported. And they also included the timeframes involved with this. They examined overall dropout rates and something called tolerability, which means, you know, are people able to maintain taking the medication or whatever they're doing to help their ADHD.

• 15:44Jay Novella?

  And there's a lot of people, for example, that drop out of things like this because of side effects, they stop taking the medication. The short-term findings are great, they're very strong. So in children and adolescents, several medications showed medium to large reductions in ADHD symptoms, severity with moderate to high certainty. They showed unequivocally that medications had a medium to large reduction in ADHD symptoms. And this could be a game changer for a young student like my kids, right? They, you know, they, when they take ADHD medication, they can focus. They quiz better, they test way better, you know, everything that they need to do in school, it's easier and better for them

• 16:27Jay Novella?

  because their brains have the functionality to do it. But the ADHD makes it hard for them to access that. And again, that's my personal experience and I'm not telling you what to do. You need to talk to your physician and, you know, everything has to be individualized, of course. But this study shows that medication is incredibly effective for ADHD. And how lucky are we that we have access to it, in my opinion? Some participants stopped treatments, like I was saying, due to the side effects. It's no small problem, it's always a big problem when medication is involved with any kind of clinical studies, you know, people could just say, I'm out, I don't want to deal with this anymore. The study tracked the different medications, concluding with which ones were the best tolerated, all the way down to the worst tolerated.

• 17:12Jay Novella?

  That's an incredible piece of information to have at your fingertips right there.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  You know what I found really interesting? You know what overall the best medication with the best evidence was?

• 17:21Jay Novella?

  What?

• 17:22Speaker 02

  Methylphenidate, which is Ritalin, like the original ADHD medication.

• 17:27Jay Novella?

  Yes, I know.

• 17:28Speaker 02

  Is still the best, even with. Even compared to all the newer ones, but that could be an artifact of the fact that it's been out the longest and so it has the most data, you know?

• 17:40Jay Novella?

  Yeah, but the, you know, the good thing about this and methylphenidate as an example, the drug has been around for so long. It's been tested and studied for so long and so much detail is there. We do, Steve's right, and we know an incredible amount about it. I take this medication, by the way. It helps me in a lot of ways and I can't tell you how important it is, guys, to not buy into the stigma of taking medication, admitting that you have a mental health issue like ADHD. We just have to ride along with the hands that we're given and make the best, you know, outcomes we can for what we're handed when we're born, right? We have to, we have no choice. And there's nothing to be ashamed of and there's nothing to be, to feel self-conscious about.

• 18:25Jay Novella?

  Everybody has pluses and minuses to who and what they are. And if you have ADHD, you know, without getting into the weeds here, ADHD could, could help you in a lot of ways. There's, there are pluses to it. If you learn to work with it. And that's exactly what my wife and I are doing with our kids is we're teaching them, you know, don't, don't determine that this is a horrible thing. Let it be what it is, mitigate the things that you can and lean into the things where it gives you, you know, we like to call them superpowers, like focus. I want to make sure though, like, you know, non-drug interventions are, are worthwhile. They're, they're there, they're just harder to do because you have to stick with them.

• 19:01Speaker 02

  Well, the, the only non-drug therapy that had reasonable evidence was cognitive behavioral therapy.

• 19:09Jay Novella?

  Of course, and that's always the number one choice with most of these.

• 19:12Speaker 02

  The, the effect size and the, the confidence in the results was not as high as for the best medication. And that's only in adults, that's also only in adults, not in kids.

• 19:22Jay Novella?

  Yeah, because cognitive behavioral therapy is very hard for children to do because it's a metacognition thing that you have to be able to, you have to have a lot of willpower and you have to be able to control yourself in order to do that correctly, but. You know, it doesn't mean that the non-drug interventions aren't worthwhile at all. They are. It just depends on who you are, you know, and you should explore them as well because some people have an incredibly positive response to them as well.

• 19:48Speaker 02

  Well, you keep saying "them," but there's only one with reasonable evidence, and that's cognitive behavioral therapy in adults. All of the other non-drug interventions, which they included acupuncture, CBT for children and adolescents, mindfulness in adults, had low to very low certainty.

• 20:08Jay Novella?

  Yeah, I'm sorry.

• 20:08Speaker 02

  Meaning the evidence was crap.

• 20:10Jay Novella?

  I'm talking about the different kinds of CBT because there's different flavors of it.

• 20:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay. You could focus on... Just to be clear, because they also used non-drug interventions to refer to other things, and they were in a completely different category.

• 20:22Jay Novella?

  Yeah, yep, definitely. So, one of the best things, though, again, and I have to remind everyone that came out of this, it's the online platform that came with it. So, it organizes results by the intervention age group and then the follow-up period. It makes it easy to see what's known and how certain the knowledge is. And the goal of the platform definitely is not to dictate a single best treatment, but to provide like transparent data that's easy to understand. It helps people make the best-informed and individualized decisions about how to treat their ADHD. And I'm telling you, I am going to be all over this website. You know, I'm just, not only am I just curious about it, but I'd like to see what it had, you know, how it could help me and my kids and other people that I know. I think it's a fantastic resource.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  So, a couple of things I think are worth pointing out. So, one is that the authors point out in the sort of the weaknesses of this data is that this is group-level data. And they didn't have access to the individual data, the people who did this umbrella review. So, they could only make group-level observations. They can't, for example, say, "Does this medication work better in boys than girls?" You know, or whatever, in different sub-populations or subtypes. So, we don't have that data in this database. That's something that maybe a follow-up could bring that in, but they didn't have access to it when they were doing this review.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  The other thing is that everything that we've been saying applies only to short-term results, basically less than one year. For long-term outcome, like a year or longer, we just don't have the data. And there's two basic problems there. One is there just aren't a lot of studies, and the studies that exist are small because it's harder, more expensive, takes a lot more research to do a long-term follow-up than to do, say, a six-month follow-up. So we just don't know, like, are these effects sustainable for two or three years? There's no particular reason to think that they're not, but we just don't have the data.

• 22:29Speaker 02

  But it's also that problem of small sample size is exacerbated by the fact that there's dropout over time because the effective interventions do have side effects. And especially in kids, they often don't like those side effects. So you're going to have a certain amount of dropout, not because they don't work, but because people may not like the side effects. And what I find that would happen a lot is that people are on the drug for a while, it works, but they don't like the side effects. They kind of forget when they were off the drug, so they go off of it. You know what I mean? Because they're more aware of the side effects than they are of the negative effects of not being on the medication.

• 23:12Speaker 02

  So then they go through this cycle of going on it for a while, then going off of it for a while, then going on it for a while. It's not uncommon. But we do need randomized controlled trials with long-term follow-up, with good rigorous methods and with large enough numbers to get meaningful data. So that's another big weakness of this data set. But given that, I mean, I think it is solid evidence that these interventions are effective, at least in that first year, and it can have a significant impact on people's lives. What I am most concerned about is the anti-medication bias and stigma that exists in our culture.

• 23:58Speaker 02

  Right? It's like, everything's risk versus benefit. People think there's something inherently negative about kids or drugging. We can't drug kids, right? As if, we've talked about this on the show before, like, it's ADHD is really a problem with parenting. No, it isn't. It is not a problem with parenting. It is not something that could be parented away. It is a neurological disorder. I think that's why, partly, you know, it's not just that kids are, it's harder to get them to comply with cognitive behavioral therapy. Like, ADHD in kids is like, it's really a neurological disorder. You have to take the medication in order to engage in CBT. You know what I mean? You can't really participate meaningfully or effectively if you have ADHD. So you gotta kind of take the symptoms, gotta

• 24:43Speaker 02

  whack those symptoms back to a certain extent. And I do think that's Yeah. Most practitioners use a combination of some kind of cognitive behavioral therapy with medication for that reason. You still need to have the behavioral interventions. All right. But yeah, it's, it's, it's great when you have experts, like, make this massive effort to pour through tons of data and synthesize it all into something that is usable. Yeah. Important part of the process, right? Yeah. No, it's great. All right. Have you guys ever heard of religious Nones? Of course.

• 25:20Bob Novella?

  They're not religious, are they?

• 25:21Speaker 02

  Yes. Of course, all the time. So it's not N-U-N-S, but N-O-N-E-S, the nuns. So when you do surveys, asking people what their religious affiliation is, there's always one option called "none," right? "I am not affiliated with any organized religious group. I don't have any sort of identity, nothing in particular," right? Just "none." That's the fastest-growing religious group in the United States, is the nuns, is people who say, they have no particular religious affiliation. So right now, so it's grown from approximately 16% in 2007 to 28% today,

• 26:04Speaker 02

  you know, since this data has been being tracked. So 28%, that's like, the largest, you know, That's a big shift. However, there's a more recent study, more recent data from the Pew Research Center, looking, diving a level deeper into like the people who are in that group, that 28% that are, that would be considered in the nuns. And so there's a couple of insights that come out of this. One is they're a very diverse group. We shouldn't assume they're all non-religious, or atheists, or agnostic. They're not. Actually, within that group, atheist is the smallest subset, at 16%. 21% are agnostic, 28% believe in a higher

• 26:47Speaker 02

  power, and 35% believe in God. And if you, what the Pew survey found was that if you look at those people who are considered, consider themselves nun, right, they are not affiliated with any organized religion, but they believe in God, their views on political issues and social issues, you know, closely aligned with religious conservatives. And so they support the death penalty, oppose abortion, support school of prayer.

• 27:16Speaker 05

  Really?

• 27:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we can't assume

• 27:19Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 27:20Speaker 02

  that, you know, the rise of this, this group, the nuns, is, represents any kind of movement away from religion per se, or even conservative religious beliefs. It's just not, you know, it's just that, you know, the younger generations just don't like aligning themselves with traditional institutions.

• 27:39Speaker 05

  Right, organized.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  You know, organized religion. But it's not really necessarily a shift in their attitude about supernatural beliefs, religious beliefs, et cetera.

• 27:50Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  I mean, yeah, but, you know, 21% agnostic, 16% atheist, that's more than the population as a whole. So obviously, those, those people are going to be captured in that nun group. But we shouldn't assume that that's universal in that group. So interesting, you know, you have to make sure that, you know, you can't make assumptions about things like that.

• 28:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, definitely.

• 28:12Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 28:13Speaker 05

  Well, the, the growth of that group is, is good in other ways as well, for, just to, just to have it normalized as being not part of any particular religion. For example, I remember once I, I cut my thumb, I had to go to the emergency room back in like 85 or so, and they were doing the checklist when they were checking me in, you know, how old are you, blah, blah, blah. And they said, what religion are you? And I just said, nun. And, and the nurse looked at me and she said, what, what? You don't have any religion? And that's a lot that's likely to happen today. Shouldn't happen then either, but even so.

• 28:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:46Speaker 05

  Nineteen eighty-six.

• 28:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, we've shifted. Yeah. I've had that conversation with people. It's been a while, but you know, the idea that there are people who don't believe in anything supernatural is not even part of their worldview.

• 29:02Speaker 02

  They just don't get it. And then sometimes if they're, if they are like evangelical Christians, they'll say, so you believe in Satan? It's like, no, you're not hearing what I'm saying. Oh, my God. So, yeah, so let me jump to the most crazy. There are a subset of people who think that atheist means you worship Satan. Yeah, right. They do not get it at all. And what's also interesting is that this kind of also tracks with the fact that in the United States at least, the number of people who don't affiliate with a political party is also significantly increasing. Sort of independents is now the largest political group. It is, yeah. Bigger than either Republicans or Democrats. I think they're just sick of anything, you know, any old. Yeah, there's fatigue.

• 29:46Speaker 02

  There's a lot of fatigue there. Yeah. All right, Bob, we're gonna have a couple of Winter Olympics related items here. Tell us about the physics of the quintuple jump.

• 29:56Bob Novella?

  Like you guys and probably many people listening, I'm sure. I've been watching the Olympics in Milano in Italy. There's so many amazing, amazing athletes from so many countries. But one athlete specifically caught my attention. And he's the so-called quad god of figure skating, Ilya Malinin. So I wondered, did he really truly deserve a nickname like quad god? And what about the possibility of him leveling up to an even more powerful god, a quint god? That's five rotations in the air. Might we see that in Milan? So, okay, now this is February. It's the day before Friday the 13th and Ilya is gonna, the finals is tomorrow. So we don't know what's going, what's gonna happen, obviously.

• 30:41Bob Novella?

  You guys already know what happened if you, if you follow it. But he is, Ilya Malinin is widely considered, website after website, widely considers him a generational athlete on, on the level of say Simone Biles, my all time GOAT and Michael Phelps as well. So this guy is, you know, generally considered to be at that level, really just an amazing athlete on so many levels. He's overwhelmingly the favorite to win the men's gold in, in figure skating Friday the 13th and that's, and he's actually one of the largest individual favorites in Olympics history, apparently. So yeah, a lot of people have confidence in him and it's, it's well learned.

• 31:23Bob Novella?

  Now people call him the quad god for many, many good reasons, but Malinin is the only person that's ever landed the near mythical quad axle in international competition. So what does that mean, Ben? Four, I'll tell you, that's four and a half rotations.

• 31:39Speaker 02

  You mean the quadruple?

• 31:43Bob Novella?

  So this four, this four, you know, this four rotation jump, this quad is, was first ratified in competition in 1988 by Kurt Browning. Now he did the easiest quad. He did the toe loop and there's lots of different types of jumps.

• 31:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:59Bob Novella?

  But toe loop is generally considered to be the easiest type of jump for a given quad or triple or double or single. It's considered the easiest and it took, now this is 1988, it took until 2022 for the other end of the spectrum, the hardest quad to happen. And that's the quad axle. Now it's called, it's the hardest because you do a front launch. It's the only, it's the only jump in figure skating where you launch frontwards, you're facing forwards, you jump, you do your spins and then you land backwards as you do in every jump, you land backwards. So because you're going from a front orientation and ending at a back orientation, it's going to be an extra half rotation. You got that? So it's four and a half rotations. So every other-

• 32:43Bob Novella?

  Quad leap is four rotations, so generally this is the hardest because it's an extra half rotation. That's why it's the hardest. It's generally the most studied type of of jump in figure skating, much more than than all the others. It's like it's the apex of of jumping because it's it's a little bit it's a half rotation more than the others. Since 1988, lots of people are now doing quad jumps. Not the axle, of course, because that's only Malinin who's doing the hardest axle quad. But everyone's doing all the other types of quads, as far as I know. In some competitions, if you are not if you don't have a quad jump in your routine, you are not going to be on the podium, basically.

• 33:28Bob Novella?

  That's I don't think that's universally true for everyone. And I'm talking I'm talking men here. The women have done the quad. I think the first women's quad was in 2002, which was amazing, but they're really not doing that anymore. There was some controversy when Russian competitors were pulling it off, but there was some there was some some controversy that happened. And basically, it's not even happening anymore, as far as I know, on the women's side of things. But for the men's side of things, it's basically rampant. You really need to be able to do a quad. But only Malinin can do the quad axle, this hardest quadruple jump. Now, Malinin likes telling reporters that he broke physics, which is he's goofing around.

• 34:12Bob Novella?

  I hope he's goofing around because there's obviously nothing broken here. But Ilya's an incarnate skating and jumping physics experiment, a walking, skating, jumping physics experiment because of because of what he does and how well he does it. So, for example, guys, how many rotations do you think there are per minute for a quad if they could actually do it for an entire minute? For a full minute?

• 34:36Jay Novella?

  Oh, God, 1,000?

• 34:38Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 34:39Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 34:41Bob Novella?

  No idea.

• 34:41Speaker 02

  Well, let's say they're doing four rotations in a second, basically.

• 34:46Bob Novella?

  Two hundred and forty.

• 34:47Speaker 02

  Two hundred and forty would be.

• 34:48Bob Novella?

  That's reasonable. It's about point seven nine seconds, you know, around there. So it's about, say, three hundred and forty rotations per minute. Now, how is that achieved? That's obviously ridiculous, right? I mean, how are you going that fast? Totally. Even if you're doing. It'd break physics. Even if you're, even if you're doing it for a brief period of time. So I will then now introduce you to the the chair spin exercise, which hopefully many of you have done. Well, you're sitting on a swiveling chair, right? That spins around and you spin yourself around, but with your legs and maybe I guess sometimes your arms out. But mainly your legs are out straight. And then when you and you start spinning, when you pull them in, you go faster and faster. And that's right. Titan. Everyone know, everyone knows about that.

• 35:28Bob Novella?

  And of course, the iconic example is actually the figure skater who who gets closer, who kind of shrinks their body and gets tighter and tighter and goes faster and faster. It's it's classic. Essentially, you're moving mass, you're moving more mass closer to the axis of rotation, and your rotation speed increases. That's essentially what's happening here. It happens for many things in nature, like, say, neutron stars, right? As they transition from a conventional star to a neutron star, they have what's technically called conservation of angular momentum. I'm sure a lot of you have heard of that. Conservation of angular momentum happens. And that essentially means that technically, as as moment of inertia decreases, it increases rotation speed. So just look that up if you want more details. It's fascinating stuff.

• 36:13Bob Novella?

  So the rotations are kind of off the hook for the quads. But also other things like just the pushing force off the ice. When you push off the ice to get into the air and initiate your your spins, a quad requires approximately five hundred to five hundred and fifty pounds of force pushing off the ice. I hope you have, you know, I hope you're you're not skipping leg days because that just sounds ridiculous. But yeah, it's about five hundred pounds. And there's lots of variables here. It depends on a lot of things. It's individual on the person, on your technique. So these numbers can vary greatly. So here, this one was really interesting. If you're doing a quad, as Ilya is doing his

• 36:54Bob Novella?

  quad, I think this is specifically for his axle. Imagine, you know, he tightens his body and he's experiencing angular, you know, conservation of angular momentum, right? He jumps and twists and then he pulls everything in and basically gets his body as tight, straight up and down as he can. But we know about centripetal force, right? So the, as you spin, your arms want to go out, right? There's a force that's kind of pushing your arms or pulling your arms outwards. It's been calculated that that's 200 pounds per arm. So as he's leaping in the air for a quad jump, 200 pounds of force are trying to push his arms or pull

• 37:35Bob Novella?

  it away from his body. Now, that sounds like a ridiculous amount of weight to resist, but remember, this is for less than a second. It's about, you know, three quarters of a second. So you can withstand that, just like you could withstand a lot of Gs for very, very brief periods of time. You can obviously, these skaters can obviously withstand that amazing force on their arms when they're in the air for less than a second. So the thing about Ilya is that this guy, he really does deserve this quad god nickname that he has. Because he's really, a lot of people consider him to be almost like the perfect package, the perfect package in terms of a figure skater. He's got a slight build, but

• 38:17Bob Novella?

  he's very strong. And that's a key thing that he just luckily has genetically, because that means that he can get his body into a much tighter formation that basically, like I said, it gets more mass closer to the axis of rotation. So that's why he could spin very, very fast. If you're a typical, you know, if you're somebody that's much wider and heavier, you're just not going to be able to do what he does in terms of spinning so fast and taking advantage of conservation of angular momentum. So now we know how hard a quad is, right? A quad is incredibly hard. Now we'll segue to the quint, the quintuple.

• 38:58Bob Novella?

  rotations, never been done. Some people question whether it can be done for a quint. So instead of 300 to 400 rotations per minute, a quint would require something around 400 to 500 revolutions per minute. So a lot, a lot more rotations going on here. It's basically spinning your body at, at about the speed of a ceiling fan on high, or even a helicopter rotor, which, which was surprising to me, but that's, that's what some of these websites are saying. So remember, it's a very brief period amount of time, but it's incredibly fast. 400 to 500 revolutions per minute. Force pushing off on the ground for a quint,

• 39:41Bob Novella?

  instead of say 500 to 550 pounds, it would probably be something around 600 pounds of force to push and twist off of the, off of the ice as you leap into the air. Now the centripetal force is pulling his arms away, instead of being maybe 200 pounds per arm for the quad. For the quint, it would be roughly maybe 280 to 300 pounds potentially on each of his arms, trying to shove them back out into the outward position.

• 40:09Speaker 02

  Bob, let me ask you a question. Could a large beetle do that?

• 40:15Bob Novella?

  Oh yeah, I'm interested.

• 40:17Jay Novella?

  No, they can only handle about 96 pounds, Steve.

• 40:19Bob Novella?

  Maybe, maybe beetle juice, but this, this really isn't speculative though, because in a recent interview, Malinin admitted that he has already accomplished the quint, citing his parents as witnesses to the act. So that's That's a wild boast. So that's the, that's the

• 40:36Speaker 02

  Is there video evidence?

• 40:37Bob Novella?

  Apparently no, there's, there's no mention of it. There's no mention of it. So I assume that he doesn't have it. But, you know, I, I believe him.

• 40:44Speaker 02

  I assume he has it, he's just not showing it. I mean, he's going to reveal that bad boy at the Olympics or some competition.

• 40:50Bob Novella?

  Well, yeah, that's, that's absolutely possible, but I believe him when he says he's done the quint already in practice. Because think, think about it, you're, think about it though, he's going, he's already doing four and a half rotations for the quad axle. He just needs to get, he needs to squeeze out just another half rotation and then he could land, say a quint toe loop. I think that's totally believable. All he would need to do is push off with a little bit more force, get a little bit higher, spin his body, make his body a little bit tighter. If you add all that up, I think that could add up to a half rotation. An extra half rotation that he's already doing. He's already doing half, you know, the 4.5s. Quite easy, arguably more easy than anybody else on the planet.

• 41:31Bob Novella?

  He actually pulled off two quad axles, one right after the other, which a lot of big figure skating fans lost it because that's amazing. One right after the other, two quad axles. Incredible.

• 41:44Speaker 05

  It's like being in the Matrix.

• 41:46Bob Novella?

  Almost, not quite, but almost.

• 41:49Speaker 05

  That whole bending back.

• 41:50Bob Novella?

  When he was asked specifically, hey, Ilya, you're gonna do the quint? And he said, maybe, maybe not. And he finished that by saying, he said this, physically, I'm ready. If the time is right, you might see it. So there it is with the quint. We might actually see the quint. I think, if I had to put some money down here, I think there's a slightly better chance that he won't do it in Milan. He's already, I've watched, I've watched him skate already for this Winter Olympics in Milan. He's so technically dominating everybody else that he's so many.

• 42:24Speaker 05

  Doesn't need it.

• 42:24Bob Novella?

  Yeah, he really doesn't need it. His axle is, his quad axle is so amazing. He might easily think, I would say, not want to risk a major fall or a bad injury. So I would not be surprised if, and probably it won't happen. But as he said, if things go the right way, however he interprets that, we may actually see it. And if not in Milan, I think we'll certainly see it before long. Because, I mean, how much time is there before somebody, you know, eventually does a quad axle? And then, and then he'll have, you know, much more serious competition in terms of pulling that off. If he's, especially once he's no longer the only person on the planet that could do a quad axle, I think he might be pushed even more to do that quint.

• 43:08Bob Novella?

  But then again, I, you could really say he will absolutely do this because this, I found this quote. He said, it's not for the medals. Not for the scores or the results, but I really want to change the face of skating. And that's exactly what a quint will do. So I think it's absolutely inevitable that we're going to see it. Assuming he really has done it in, uh, in, in practice. He is going to try that before, well before the end of his career. But then, there's one other thing I need to talk about. One more thing, you knew I was going to go there, and that is-

• 43:41Speaker 04

  Oh, two things.

• 43:41Bob Novella?

  That's the sextuple. What is going on with a sextuple? Will we-

• 43:47Speaker 04

  Oh, we're still talking about skiing, skating.

• 43:49Bob Novella?

  Yes, absolutely. Get your mind out of the gutter. Sextuple, um, six, six rotations. What's the deal with that? Is that even possible? And I don't know, but I have to, I'm gonna, I'm gonna listen to Leek Cabell, who is a biomechanics researcher. So that this guy's, this, this person is an expert. So I'll have to trust their take on this. They said, "There will be a physical limit, and I think that quintuple is the limit." So he's basically ruling out the possibility of a standard human from doing a sextuple, six rotations, if that's true, and it probably is.

• 44:30Bob Novella?

  I think then what we will see is, I think it's clear that Ilya will do a quint at some point, but an easy one, like a toe loop, uh, quint at first, and then what will be-

• 44:42Speaker 04

  That's what you say.

• 44:42Bob Novella?

  The holy grail, the holy grail at that point will be the, um, the quintuple axle. I mean, the, uh, yeah, the, uh, the quintuple axle. That's going to be the high watermark, I think, for what humans might be capable of. The, the axle, the, the, the five and a half rotation quintuple axle, I think might be the thing that, that we don't hit for, for many years. Or potentially even, that might be beyond the line where people just can't, it can't be done, based on the biomechanics of the human body. That might be the point. Uh, sextuple, looks like it really is. The, the, um, the quintuple axle might also be, I don't know, but I'd like to think that someday, somebody will do that.

• 45:27Speaker 04

  Cool.

• 45:27Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 45:28Speaker 04

  I heard he brought in a specialist. He was a spin doctor.

• 45:33Bob Novella?

  Spin doctor.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  All right, Evan, tell us about crotch gate. What the hell?

• 45:40Speaker 04

  I'm glad we're sticking with the Olympics here. All right, before I get into crotch gate, did you know that the 2026 Winter Olympics had a campaign slogan contest?

• 45:52Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 45:52Speaker 04

  I bet you didn't know. I entered the contest, but for some reason I didn't win.

• 45:57Speaker 02

  What was your?

• 45:57Speaker 04

  My submission was, "The 2026 Winter Olympics, it's all downhill from here." And for some reason, that did not win. But, all right, we'll try again in another four years. Oh, speaking of downhill, did you know that the official title, or titles, of the Olympic downhill skiing events at are the men's downhill and the women's downhill? And they're considered part of the broader Alpine skiing discipline, which also includes slalom, giant slalom, super G, and Alpine combined. So, but I'm getting out over my skis here. The Olympics, like any sporting event series, and due to the nature of competition in general, always have their controversies.

• 46:39Speaker 04

  So far this year, with the first full week of the 2026 Winter Olympics under our belts, the biggest controversy has been ski jumping. And it comes not from, well, you know, doping, you know, athletes taking illegal drugs, or geopolitics, or even some kind of judging bias, but it comes from human anatomy and the clothing that covers it. And they're calling it crotch gate. A few people out there are putting it more bluntly called penis gate, but I think we'll stick with crotch gate.

• 47:11Speaker 02

  I mean, if you want to go, if you want to one-up crotch gate, you go to penis gate? I mean, come on.

• 47:16Speaker 04

  That's what they did. That's where they went.

• 47:19Speaker 05

  Robin Williams said that those suits were so tight that you could tell what religion they were.

• 47:28Speaker 04

  All right, what's being claimed here? Here's the core allegation. There is a rumor that appears to have originated in the build, which is a German tabloid. And they're claiming that some male ski jumpers may be injecting, what is it? Hyaluronic acid into their genitals. Hyaluronic acid. Have you heard of hyaluronic acid before? Yeah, I've heard of it. Yeah, I've heard of acid. Well, I mean, you think like, what the heck is that? And why would you inject acid? Well, it's actually a, um, think of hyaluronic acid as your body's own personal superpowered sponge. And even though it has acid in the name, it's not really the kind that burns at all. It's gooey. It's a clear sugar molecule that your body makes naturally

• 48:12Speaker 04

  to keep things slippery and bouncy. Bob, imagine a tiny sponge, okay? But it can hold a thousand times its own weight in water. Nice. That SpongeBob could do that? Exactly. So if hyaluronic acid was the size of a grape, it could hold enough water to fill a bat- that would fill a bathtub. And when you put it in your skin or on your skin, it will grab moisture from the air and it will glue it to your face so it stays hydrated. And it's found in your joints as well, knees, elbows. Acts like WD-40 for your bones, making sure they slide past each other smoothly instead of grinding together when you run or jump or get old. But what, uh, doctors and licensed professionals use it as a filler to add volume to the face.

• 48:57Speaker 04

  And doctors also inject a medical-grade version of it into joints, most commonly knees. So that's what it is. Now, again, the rumor is that the male ski jumpers may be injecting this into their genitals. Why? Yes, why indeed? Because of the suits that they have to wear, which are tightly, not only tightly fitting, but tightly regulated. The athletes are actually body scanned and the suits must conform to strict limits on how much fabric surface area they can have. A slightly looser or larger suit with a little extra material will increase aerodynamic lift and essentially act like a like a little wing and give you that extra extra bit.

• 49:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, at no point can the suit be more than four centimeters larger than their body measurement.

• 49:47Speaker 04

  Than the body.

• 49:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:49Speaker 04

  Yep. So the rumor suggests that if an athlete could temporarily increase, you know, their body measurements or their dimensions in some way, you could qualify for a slightly larger suit. And a larger suit would mean more air capture, more air capture, more distance, especially at the point where the legs meet the crotch, right there in that V. That's the claim. Um, what's it based on though? Like, why? Why is this a thing? Because suit cheating is a thing. And a recent thing, there was a real scandal at the 2025 Nordic World Championships where officials were caught altering suits after inspection. No, no, no, can't do that. They added stiffer material in key areas like the crotch to improve flight characteristics.

• 50:34Speaker 04

  So that, when you have it in that context, then the injection rumor might feel a little bit plausible and some people might say, well, maybe there is something going on here. Does this really matter? Do physics say that this matters, Bob? And the answer is yes.

• 50:51Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 50:52Speaker 04

  Of course. Yep. Ski jumping is controlled gliding. Jumpers aim to maximize lift and minimize drag. And that suit functions as part of that entire system, like a flexible airfoil, in a sense.

• 51:05Jay Novella?

  Evan?

• 51:06Speaker 04

  Jay.

• 51:07Jay Novella?

  Did anybody inject their genitals with anything for this?

• 51:10Speaker 04

  Uh, the, the answer to that, Jay, is no. There is no evidence that any athletes are actually doing this.

• 51:18Jay Novella?

  All right, good.

• 51:19Speaker 04

  It's simply, it's simply a rumor, but it's a rumor that has caught attention and has been parroted and been, you know, shared in social media and before TikTok, and that's it. Now the world basically knows about this.

• 51:34Speaker 04

  And again, if you are going to do this, there are physics behind it. It does matter. Small increases in surface area can change lift coefficients. And that's why the International Ski and Snowboard Federation, they regulate these things. They regulate the permeability of the fabric, the thickness of the fabric, fit tolerances, as Steve was suggesting, and the body suit to gap measurements also, as Steve mentioned. And they do this by using 3D body scanning images to enforce that compliance. So, no evidence of this actually happening. In fact, they were, the World Anti-Doping Agency was recently asked about this rumor,

• 52:16Speaker 04

  and they say, no, they don't have no evidence of such a practice occurring. And not that it's technically doping in a sense, so it maybe doesn't exactly fall in their purview, but they were asked about it at a recent interview. It's just being dismissed as a wild rumor. So, yes, it's a controversy in a sense, but with no evidence to back it up. Yep, that's what they're talking about.

• 52:40Bob Novella?

  Now, that would be nuts.

• 52:42Speaker 02

  Crotch gate, alright.

• 52:46Speaker 04

  Crotch gate.

• 52:47Speaker 02

  I think the whole gate thing has been overplayed.

• 52:51Speaker 04

  Well, that's another thing as well that I read a couple of things. It's like, what won't we put the gate, right, at the end of?

• 52:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, nothing, anything gate.

• 53:00Speaker 04

  Everything can be gate, you know, paperclip gate, or whatever.

• 53:04Speaker 02

  Gate gate.

• 53:05Speaker 04

  I'm sure that's a thing, too.

• 53:07Speaker 02

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

• 53:11Bob Novella?

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• 53:27Jay Novella?

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• 53:44Speaker 02

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• 54:34Speaker 02

  All right, guys, let's get back to the show.

• 54:37Speaker 02

  Parrish, let me ask you a question. Do you know what the endangerment finding is?

• 54:42Speaker 05

  I do not.

• 54:44Speaker 02

  What if I told you that it has to do with the EPA regulations?

• 54:48Speaker 05

  Well, that sounds right. Uh, what are we, what's, what's going on there?

• 54:51Speaker 02

  How about any of you guys know that that ring any bells, the endangerment finding?

• 54:55Jay Novella?

  I'm with Parrish. I know nothing. Endangerment. I think I read recently about that, but of course it's lost in my brain.

• 55:02Speaker 02

  It is a 2009 ruling by the EPA that after reviewing the scientific evidence concluded that the release of greenhouse gases is a danger to American health and to the environment.

• 55:16Jay Novella?

  Yes.

• 55:17Speaker 04

  Okay, so confirmed what was suspected for a long time.

• 55:21Speaker 02

  It's not scientifically controversial. It's pretty clear, you know, that greenhouse gases are warming the planet. That they are increasing the, you know, frequency of severe fire, of severe forest fires, the severity of hurricanes, deaths due to heat waves. And also there's, you know, in the pollution that releases most of the CO2 from burning fossil fuels directly causes exacerbations of asthma and and also other negative health impacts, right? So that has been the, the justification for all of the EPA's regulation of greenhouse gases.

• 56:07Speaker 02

  And from the time that that ruling was passed, it has been a target by the fossil fuel industry.

• 56:14Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 56:15Speaker 02

  And others who have been trying to, you know, to get rid of the endangerment finding as a way of undercutting the EPA's regulations of, you know, fossil fuels. But they had basically given up on it, right? So they lost several court cases. The endangerment finding has been upheld in court numerous times. At the appellate level, the Supreme Court essentially declined to hear the case, so they just basically let it stand. So it basically has been settled law. Until now.

• 56:52Speaker 04

  Uh oh, new lawsuit?

• 56:53Speaker 02

  Because the Trump administration has just gotten rid of it. They just have eliminated the EPA. Yeah, I mean, if you pack the EPA with a bunch of Trump toadies who think that climate change is a hoax, then you can do things like just the EPA changing its rules, say, oh, the greenhouse gases are no longer a danger to the environment or to public health.

• 57:19Speaker 04

  Okay, and that will be challenged, yes?

• 57:22Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 57:23Speaker 04

  Okay, yes.

• 57:25Bob Novella?

  Well, how do you think that challenge is going to go, Steve? Because this is bad.

• 57:28Speaker 02

  This is very bad.

• 57:29Bob Novella?

  Because how many regulations we have that are based on that?

• 57:30Speaker 02

  So this will eliminate any ability of the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases. This is the end game, right? This is the absolute end game for the fossil fuel industry and for climate change deniers, right? This is, this is it.

• 57:46Speaker 04

  They got their brass ring.

• 57:47Speaker 02

  If it's upheld in court, it becomes, it's not the kind of thing that you could easily undo, right? What will, what's going to happen now, and it's already being challenged, right? So it'll be challenged in court. There's always a couple of layers here. Do they have the legal right to do this?

• 58:01Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 58:02Speaker 02

  And do they get the science right? So I think the, the science question is always the easier one to answer, actually. In this case, it's very clear that greenhouse gases cause global warming, which has negative consequences. But the legality, you know, I, they have their claims, the other side has their claims. I think what they're saying is that they, that this, because this is settled law, they basically don't have. The ability to do this or that there are the arguments that I think the better way to look at is that the arguments that they're making are not legally justifiable because it's already settled that the that the EPA does have the right to do this. So they're

• 58:44Speaker 02

  just sort of resurrecting sort of the old claims that were used previously to try to shoot it down that have already been decided decided in the courts. And of course, their justification for it is always the same old crap. This will give consumers more choices and this will be good for the economy, which is, you know, all dubious. Actually, a lot of of industry, the thing is, they've already invested billions in adhering to the EPA regulations and making it go away is not a good thing necessarily for business. Also, what what is going to happen is that states are going to pass their own guidelines. So now, instead of having one federal guideline, companies are going to have to navigate 50 state guidelines.

• 59:28Speaker 04

  Oh, boy.

• 59:29Bob Novella?

  That makes total sense. Yeah.

• 59:30Speaker 04

  That's gonna be enormous.

• 59:31Speaker 02

  Because there's no way blue states are going to sit by and not do something about this. Right? They're going to pass their own standards. So it's a disaster all along. And it's entirely based upon Trump basically claiming, who knows what he actually believes, if he believes anything, but it's been his stated public position that climate change is a hoax that and he has been steadfastly against anything that can be perceived of as green energy or trying to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. You know, even if there's it has nothing to do with climate change, just he's against wind, he's against solar, he wants, you know, to burn as much coal as possible, even when industry doesn't want to do it. It's just it's just nuts.

• 1:00:16Speaker 04

  The lobby pressure is enormous.

• 1:00:19Bob Novella?

  Fortunately, though, he's definitely, I think he's definitely better in terms of how he feels about nuclear.

• 1:00:24Speaker 05

  Nuclear, right. I saw recently saw that Trump approved a huge expenditure to expand nuclear power development.

• 1:00:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that started under Biden, and I was paying close attention to whether that was going to continue. So that's fine. It's it's not it's but still, we are going to be emitting a lot more CO2.

• 1:00:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, what good does that do? Right? If we're gonna screw it up in other ways, it's.

• 1:00:50Bob Novella?

  Remember when I was reading about this, um, remember when you, we were flying into LA in the seventies and LA was, wasn't it like just basically well-known for having this like

• 1:01:01Speaker 04

  Oh yeah.

• 1:01:02Bob Novella?

  This layer of pollution that was, that was absolutely visible.

• 1:01:05Speaker 04

  Trapped in that valley.

• 1:01:06Bob Novella?

  All the time and, and that went away because of that regulation, right?

• 1:01:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, the California emission standards became, yeah.

• 1:01:12Bob Novella?

  Well, was that related to the?

• 1:01:14Speaker 02

  That was the Clean Air Act, pretty much that did that. On Fox Business on Wednesday, the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum basically resurrected an old, you know, anti-global warming chestnut. He said, CO2 was never a pollutant. When we breathe, we emit CO2. Plants need CO2 to survive and grow. They thrive with more CO2.

• 1:01:36Speaker 04

  I've heard that before.

• 1:01:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, so what, what cognitive error is he making there?

• 1:01:41Speaker 05

  Fallacy of scale?

• 1:01:43Speaker 02

  No, I don't think so. It's, there's, it's something pretty specific. It's a category type of mistake, but it's a, it's a false analogy. And so what's the false analogy here? Right? So you say, oh, we breathe CO2, so how could that be a pollutant?

• 1:01:57Bob Novella?

  Yeah, how could it be, of course, yeah.

• 1:01:59Speaker 02

  What's the difference between breathing out CO2 and burning oil?

• 1:02:02Speaker 05

  Burning fossil fuel adds CO2 that was not there before.

• 1:02:06Speaker 04

  It's a quantitative.

• 1:02:07Bob Novella?

  To the carbon cycle. It's adding to the cycle.

• 1:02:09Speaker 02

  So when we breathe out CO2 and plants, you know, breathe in CO2, that's all part of the existing carbon cycle, right? It's all already in sort of homeostasis in the environment. Burning fossil fuel is digging up a previously sequestered source of carbon that isn't part of the carbon cycle and then releasing it into the carbon cycle. So that's two completely different things. So either our Interior Secretary is scientifically illiterate and doesn't understand the basics of what he's talking about, or he knows it's bullshit and he's not intellectually honest. Or some combination of those two things.

• 1:02:48Speaker 04

  Fool or fraud, yep.

• 1:02:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, total nonsense. Uh, but the, you know, this will have significant negative consequences, even in the best-case scenario. We need to try to mitigate it as much as we can going forward.

• 1:03:01Speaker 04

  Let's hope the courts do the right thing here.

• 1:03:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, but yeah, even if they do, I mean, it's, we're losing years and businesses don't have any predictability. You know what I mean? It's like you have a fight over an issue. One side wins, the law gets passed, industry makes policy and investments based upon that. And they expect a certain amount of stability. They it's they don't expect that every four years, there's a complete reversal of all of our policy. Yeah. About something. And so you can't do business that way. Um, I mean, we may have no choice with Trump, you know, but to try to return some sanity to the federal government. But it's still going to just create this cycle of every four years, you get whiplash. And that's terrible for industry. Awful. It's terrible. Bad for the country.

• 1:03:45Bob Novella?

  I'm hoping there I'm hoping, Jay, Steve, I'm hoping there are some companies that still just do the right thing.

• 1:03:49Speaker 02

  They might.

• 1:03:49Bob Novella?

  No matter what.

• 1:03:50Speaker 02

  Because they've already made the investment. They've invested, right? They they think, all right, and this may not, you know, pass muster in the courts. And even if it does, it may get reversed. So, all right, there is a there is another layer here I'll bring up. And that is this. This is also partly a manifestation of the fact that our Congress, Senate and and representatives aren't doing their freaking job.

• 1:04:13Speaker 02

  They allow the agencies, right, to make do a lot of interpretation of how they're supposed to carry out their policy. Now, I'm not saying that Congress should be micromanaging these agencies. That's that's right. There's there's a balance where you could write a law that says, yeah, they're going to they're going to make the air clean. And then let the EPA make all the decisions about how to do that. Or at one end of the spectrum, or Congress could say the EPA is going to do A, B, C, D, and E. And then spell out all the things they can and cannot do. That's the other end of the spectrum.

• 1:04:51Speaker 02

  Then there's something in the middle where Congress, you know, is is passing a, you know, a specific agenda. But still with enough wiggle room for the experts to figure out how to accomplish it, right? But what what Congress has been doing in the last Three or four decades increasingly is just really not legislating like not Deferring. Yeah, they're deferred. It's just so much easier for them to defer to these agencies. And what that means is like as here, like this is an EPA rule. Congress never said specifically the EPA can regulate greenhouse gases. The EPA made that rule based upon the endangerment finding, which means the EPA can take away that rule as well.

• 1:05:35Speaker 02

  You know, but at any point, Congress can act and say Pass the law. The EPA can regulate greenhouse gases. And then the executive branch can't just take it away because it's now it's in law. So there is a balance there and they are not striking that balance. They are not doing their job. Yeah, they're shirking their responsibility. Absolutely. And this is the kind of shenanigans that that comes from that. And this is not an isolated incident. This is happening across the board. A lot of ways, yeah. Where the Trump administration is exploiting this fact in order to make huge changes to how agencies carry out their mission because they were given so much leeway in the first base, in the first place by a do nothing Congress. You know, that's not, not doing their job, basically.

• 1:06:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, so much for checks and balances, right? Right. Checks and balances are not functioning, in my opinion. So there's that deeper problem that needs to be fixed. Congress needs to get off their ass and actually codify a lot of these rules. Yeah, yeah. So that they're not, you know, there isn't this whiplash every four years when, when executive branch changes.

• 1:06:39Bob Novella?

  Well, if we don't see some serious codification going on in the next administration, I'm I'm

• 1:06:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, but again, that, the problem there Oh, gosh, please. The problem there is the, is the filibuster.

• 1:06:51Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:52Speaker 02

  So are you going to get rid of the filibuster to do it? And then take a chance that then if the other party gets a simple majority in the Senate, then they'll be able to do everything they want to do.

• 1:07:04Bob Novella?

  Do everything, yeah. I'm hoping that after these shenanigans, that is not even remotely possible.

• 1:07:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, I thought that four years ago, though, didn't we?

• 1:07:13Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:14Speaker 02

  But we can't count on that. So, you know, I think we need some major restructuring, you know, and to get to reestablish the checks and balances that were imagined by the framers of the Constitution, because it doesn't seem that we have it now.

• 1:07:29Bob Novella?

  I'll tell you, I want the AIs from the Politi universe to run shit, because clearly we can't do it ourselves.

• 1:07:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:39Bob Novella?

  I'll say no more.

• 1:07:40Speaker 04

  Be careful.

• 1:07:42Jay Novella?

  Bob said it.

• 1:07:44Bob Novella?

  That's the same way I said, the AIs from the Politi universe, they're really good.

• 1:07:49Speaker 02

  At this point, it's hard to imagine anything wouldn't be better. All right, Jay, it's who's that noisy time?

• 1:07:55Jay Novella?

  All right, guys, last week I played this noisy.

• 1:08:11Jay Novella?

  You guys know what that is?

• 1:08:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, someone's gargling and shooting pool at the same time.

• 1:08:16Speaker 02

  It's an aquatic mammal.

• 1:08:17Jay Novella?

  So, guys, I played a noise and none of you have any idea what it is.

• 1:08:21Speaker 02

  It's an aquatic mammal.

• 1:08:22Jay Novella?

  Carrot, yeah, well, that's not a bad start, Steve, not bad. Not bad at all. Let me get to the people here that wrote in. I have Michael Blaney, he said, hi, Jay, this week. I'm guessing it's a baby giant panda getting awfully annoyed at it as the keeper is trying to get him back into the cage. And it made me realize that I don't know what noises pandas make. So I'm gonna have to find out, or somebody send me one. I don't know. They make, do they make a lot of noises? They just seem happy and dopey, you know?

• 1:08:51Bob Novella?

  And sleepy.

• 1:08:53Jay Novella?

  And sleepy. Another listener wrote in, this is Josh, and he says, hey, Jay, this sounds like an animal in a concrete enclosure, so something that people would want to see in a zoo. That's a, that's good thinking there. So I'm going to go with an adolescent seal waiting for its fish dinner. Not a bad guess, my friend. Okay, Steve, I have another, another guess here from a listener named Martin Jane. And Martin says, my five-year-old son was listening tonight and asked if I could guess if the noisy was his little sister Minerva going crazy. And so I did, so he thinks that this is his little sister. All right, remember that guess as I play the sound for you again, because there was no winner this week. Ready? Listen again.

• 1:09:47Jay Novella?

  So that little five-year-old that thought it was his sister going crazy, he actually thinks that his mom sent in the noisy of the little sister.

• 1:09:57Bob Novella?

  Oh my god.

• 1:09:58Jay Novella?

  He's convinced that's his little sister. So I like, I like what's going on in that house. Alright, so nobody got it right, but you know, some close guesses. This is a, this came from a video of two South American giant river otters. The, the person, Michael Clanton, that sent it, sent it in, apparently he works with them. And he said they make very entertaining noises while they eat. And he said, "They remind me of Wookiees." And the clip was taken during a nightly feeding. You know, they come out in the evening and he said, "Please note that his facility is very strict about social media, so he asked you do not share the video." But I was able to at least talk about it. So yeah, these are giant river otters, just completely, like, these are gourmands, you

• 1:10:42Jay Novella?

  know, like, enjoying their dinner.

• 1:10:46Bob Novella?

  Nice.

• 1:10:46Jay Novella?

  You know, you ever see a dog eat dinner, you know how like that joy? That moment of joy that lasts about three seconds for them, poor bastards. Alright, anyway, thank you for guessing, guys, this week. I have a new noisy for you guys this week. It was sent in by a listener named John, and here it is. This is John Kelly.

• 1:11:20Jay Novella?

  That is the sound I have submitted. If you guys think you know what the sound is, or the noisy is this week, or you heard something cool, email me at [email protected].

• 1:11:32Jay Novella?

  Alright guys, we have a ton of SGU events coming up. George will be there.

• 1:11:36Speaker 02

  And you know what? George is here right now, in fact.

• 1:11:38Speaker 07

  I just, yeah, I just came in the room. Are you talking about our upcoming events?

• 1:11:42Jay Novella?

  George, sit down and join us.

• 1:11:43Speaker 07

  Okay, I saw the bat phone went off, so I thought, alright, let me get in here. Hi guys!

• 1:11:48Jay Novella?

  Hi, I was just telling them about the private show that'll happen, you know, in the late morning and early afternoon on May 30th in Madison, Wisconsin. You wear this. May 30th, right? So the secret SGU meetup is gonna happen on May 29th, this Friday night. Then Thursday morning, we're just gonna keep repeating this. Thursday morning, we have the private show plus, which is a private SGU recording. And then on the 30th, that evening, we are going to have the extravaganza show. This is our stage show. A lot of you have seen it. It's a ton of fun. You gotta come check us out if you haven't seen us. You can get all these tickets on the skepticsguy.org website.

• 1:12:26Jay Novella?

  The other big thing is we have tickets available for both the Nauticon conference that we will be having in Sydney, Australia. This is happening the weekend of July 20th.

• 1:12:41Jay Novella?

  It starts on July 23rd.

• 1:12:44Jay Novella?

  I won't go through each day and everything, but there's tons of events happening at this conference. We have private shows, we have extravaganza, we have VIPs. There's all sorts of stuff you should check out.

• 1:12:54Speaker 02

  You know what else we have, Jay?

• 1:12:55Jay Novella?

  What do we got?

• 1:12:56Speaker 02

  Dr. Carl.

• 1:12:57Jay Novella?

  Yeah, you know what? Steve and I talked to Dr. Carl today.

• 1:13:00Speaker 07

  Oh, how cool is Dr. Carl?

• 1:13:01Jay Novella?

  George, check this out. I said this to Dr. Carl. I go, "Hey, Dr. Carl." I explained to him what Nauticon is. I had to give him like the 30,000-foot view. Like, "This isn't speakers. We're not flying in people to come talk about anything." We are flying in people, we're flying in people to entertain people for fun. And then I told him, you know, we do this thing where we like pretend we're reading a movie script and one person doesn't know what movie it is. I give him a couple of other examples and he wants to do everything.

• 1:13:29Speaker 07

  He's all in, right?

• 1:13:30Speaker 02

  He's it.

• 1:13:31Speaker 07

  He's the best, man.

• 1:13:32Speaker 02

  I'm good, yeah.

• 1:13:33Jay Novella?

  Yeah, so he's awesome. And he will be there. I will be putting more information up on the website soon about the details. But right now, all the ticketed events are up, except we will be adding in, like I said, the secret SGU meetup, which will be happening in Australia. This is very likely to happen on Wednesday, July 22nd, at night. You'll hear about this next week, and I'll probably have it up by then, so you can buy tickets if you're interested.

• 1:13:58Speaker 07

  Aren't we doing some cool thing in June also up there in New York? Mm-hmm.

• 1:14:01Jay Novella?

  I have a list. I'm getting to it.

• 1:14:03Speaker 07

  Oh my gosh, okay, what's that about?

• 1:14:04Jay Novella?

  Yeah, so we're gonna be at SciCon 2026.

• 1:14:07Speaker 07

  Oh, that's right.

• 1:14:08Jay Novella?

  This is happening June 11th to 14th. What will be happening at SciCon is there will be a live SGU recording that will be on, you know, whatever their main stage is for everyone to see. It's part of the conference. But we will also be running a extravaganza. I believe that is happening on Friday night. You could check their schedule, but I do think it's happening that Friday night. But we'll be there. George, of course, will be running that show, and we're super excited. Stephen Hupp told us the tickets are selling really nicely.

• 1:14:35Speaker 02

  Awesome.

• 1:14:36Jay Novella?

  And there is a limit to the number of tickets, so if you're interested, you should go check it out right now.

• 1:14:40Speaker 02

  They're almost certainly gonna sell out.

• 1:14:41Jay Novella?

  And on top of that, guys, the conference itself is awesome. The speaker list is fantastic. You really should just go take a look. You know, I've been, I looked it over a few times, and I just am excited to be speaking with everyone that's gonna be there this year. It's gonna be a great time, June 11th to 14th in Buffalo, New York.

• 1:14:58Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's not Las Vegas. It's on the East Coast. It's in Buffalo, New York. So if you've always wanted to go to one of these things, but it's been too far away, because it's, you know, over there in Las Vegas or whatever, go to New York. It's gonna be fantastic.

• 1:15:08Speaker 02

  We're gonna shuffle off to Buffalo.

• 1:15:10Speaker 07

  Boom.

• 1:15:10Jay Novella?

  You go to SciConConference.org. I'm sorry. C-S-I-C-O-N-F-E-R-E-N-C-E.org. Now, I know a lot of people don't want me to say this, but the Star Trek Museum is only four hours away from where the conference is happening.

• 1:15:26Speaker 07

  Which is like one teleportation. It's not even...

• 1:15:28Jay Novella?

  George, I might fly up a day early and go do this.

• 1:15:31Speaker 02

  Transport up a day early.

• 1:15:31Speaker 07

  Yeah, might. Big quotes.

• 1:15:33Jay Novella?

  Very likely it's gonna happen. I'm telling you, I wanna do it. If you're interested, Malice, hello?

• 1:15:39Speaker 02

  Remember, we looked at the map. First of all, from where we are, Buffalo is basically due west.

• 1:15:45Jay Novella?

  Yep.

• 1:15:46Speaker 02

  And Ticonderoga is basically due north. You are no closer to Buffalo when you're at the Star Trek Museum than you are right now.

• 1:15:54Jay Novella?

  So you're telling me that you don't want me to go, is that...

• 1:15:56Speaker 02

  I'm just, and it's like six hours away. It's not four hours away. Can't mislead people. Can't mislead people.

• 1:16:01Jay Novella?

  Steve, you ever? You can miss lead parish. Have a love? No one else. Have a love for Star Trek?

• 1:16:05Speaker 02

  It's funny, because we think of upstate New York as being north, but it's really west.

• 1:16:08Jay Novella?

  Hmm. So you don't like Star Trek?

• 1:16:10Speaker 02

  I love it. I'm actually, I'm watching my way through every Star Trek series.

• 1:16:14Jay Novella?

  Okay, well, maybe you'll join me then, and stop talking. Thank you. Um, okay, so go to Including the cartoon series? Psychonconference.org for that. Now, there is another conference, my god.

• 1:16:23Speaker 02

  Wow, what a busy year.

• 1:16:24Jay Novella?

  This is the busiest freaking year.

• 1:16:25Speaker 02

  I love it.

• 1:16:25Jay Novella?

  Alright, we're also going to go to, uh, this year's New Zealand Skeptics Conference. It's gonna be in Christchurch, and we will be there, like, that Friday night, uh, July 31st, and August 1st, which is, and that'll be the day that we are providing content for the conference the entire day. So if you're interested, look up the New Zealand Skeptics website, and go check it out, because we're gonna be there, and I'll tell you what, this might be the last time, guys. It's an incredibly long trip.

• 1:16:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're really putting us to work down under.

• 1:16:56Jay Novella?

  Oh, hell yeah. I mean, they want us to do everything. They were talking to us about helping with politics over there, you know, because we have it so well over here. It's crazy.

• 1:17:03Speaker 02

  Alright, and George, you got some stuff going on, too.

• 1:17:05Speaker 07

  I have one really cool concert I think your gorgeous, attractive, intelligent listeners will really enjoy. On March 7th, right here in Bethlehem, you guys remember the Ice House? We did the no-show there?

• 1:17:15Jay Novella?

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:17:16Speaker 07

  We did two no-shows there, actually, two no-show there. Uh, I'm back in the Ice House on March 7th, and I'm doing a piece that I've kind of been working on for more than a decade. About, about 12, 13 years ago, I decided to write one song for each element on the periodic table. So it's 118 mini-songs. They're all done. I have a band, this unbelievable band, playing all these tunes. It's 118 elements, it's 118 songs, it's 90 minutes long. Uh, some songs are like 5 seconds. I think the longest song is maybe 2 minutes or so. And it's gonna be happening at the Ice House, right here in Bethlehem. It's every style of music. It's such a, it's such a fun thing, and that I get to do it with a band. I've

• 1:17:58Speaker 07

  done it solo before. I've done this whole show solo, just me and a guitar. But I've never done it with a band. And the whole thing about the band is that the musicians I have can do all these styles, because it's punk, and it's funk, and it's, uh, it's prog, and jazz, and classical, and polka, and, and, uh, it's like every style of music

• 1:18:17Speaker 02

  Any ska?

• 1:18:18Speaker 07

  There's a sort of, yeah, there's like a ska tune. There's like one of the scottish kinds of tunes.

• 1:18:22Speaker 02

  Is there zydeco?

• 1:18:23Speaker 07

  There's not really zydeco, but maybe, yeah, if any more are discovered, maybe we can add some. I mean, like, name an element. Name an element, anybody.

• 1:18:30Speaker 02

  Copper.

• 1:18:31Speaker 07

  Copper, so, yeah.

• 1:18:32Speaker 02

  That's right, copper.

• 1:18:33Speaker 07

  So, well, that's it. Copper is, uh...

• 1:18:37Speaker 07

  You'll never take me alive. Copper. That's copper.

• 1:18:41Speaker 02

  Okay, I'm there.

• 1:18:43Speaker 07

  All right.

• 1:18:43Speaker 02

  Molybdenum. You sold it.

• 1:18:44Speaker 07

  Molybdenum, uh, molybdenum. You got an M and a B and a D. Molybdenum. I guess that's what confused me. Cause I'm a dummy, I'm a dummy. They're like, they're all little, little sketches like that. I pretty much have the whole thing memorized, which is kinda crazy.

• 1:19:01Speaker 02

  The Georges, they're dancing at this show.

• 1:19:03Speaker 07

  Well, I'll be dancing, and if you wanna dance, by the end of the, by the end of the night, once we get, you know, into the 100s, people will be up and they'll be dancing and boogying, I can guarantee. So, so it's, it's me and the George Rob Band, uh, which is Eric and Vinnie and Kira and CJ, some amazing musicians. Most of these are very, very silly, they're very fun, they're very light. Uh, it's a wonderful distraction for 90 minutes. You can go to 118elements eventbrite.com, 118elements eventbrite.com, that's B-R-I-T-E, uh, eventbrite.com, and get tickets for it, and come see the show. It's like, it's just like nerd heaven. Cause it's music, it's science, it's, uh, everything, everything you guys love and that your audience loves, and I'm super excited to do it with a real band.

• 1:19:48Speaker 07

  So, please, come on out, March 7th.

• 1:19:51Speaker 02

  All right, thank you, George.

• 1:19:52Speaker 07

  Thanks, guys.

• 1:19:53Speaker 02

  Looking forward to seeing you at all these events.

• 1:19:54Speaker 07

  All right, be safe, bye.

• 1:19:56Speaker 02

  Bye. Bye. All right, guys, we're gonna do a couple emails. The first one is a correction of a correction. I love these. Oh, gosh.

• 1:20:07Speaker 02

  So, last week, we talked about the yellow sun, and why the sun appears, why the sun is white, even though it's classified as a yellow sun, and why it appears yellow even though the light from it is actually white. And I mentioned, uh, Neil deGrasse Tyson's example of, well, the snow would be yellow if the sun were actually yellow, and I didn't understand that because of the sun still looks yellow, doesn't matter why it looks yellow. But about 3,000 of our listeners pointed out that even though the blue light is scattered from the sunlight, making the sun look yellow... That blue light does eventually get to the ground. That's why you see the sky is blue, which of course makes total sense. And so essentially, all the white light is hitting the ground.

• 1:20:52Speaker 02

  It's just separated into blue light from the sky and yellow light from the sun. Does that make sense? Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:20:58Speaker 04

  Okay, combine the two.

• 1:21:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, so that makes sense. Yeah, so thank you, everyone, for sending in that clarification. I did check it out. That does make a lot of sense. Okay, have you guys, another email. This is really a named that logical fallacy kind of thing. This comes from Jeffrey from Columbus, Ohio, and he writes, "Ran across this cognitive bias with, while exploring impacts and trends in AI. Turkey illusion was first introduced by Bertrand Russell to illustrate a problem with inductive reasoning. Never heard of this cognitive bias before. Wondered if you guys had any thoughts. Have any of you heard about the turkey illusion?"

• 1:21:36Speaker 04

  No. No, I haven't.

• 1:21:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I've never heard this term before. I'm familiar with the cognitive bias, but let me explain to you why it's called the turkey illusion. So, a turkey gets fed by the human who owns him every day.

• 1:21:52Speaker 04

  All right.

• 1:21:53Speaker 02

  Right?

• 1:21:53Speaker 04

  Given.

• 1:21:54Speaker 02

  So, and this happens every day. And so the turkey observes the trend. I get fed every day by this human. And they believe that that trend is going to continue indefinitely because

• 1:22:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, why wouldn't they?

• 1:22:06Speaker 02

  It happens every day without fail for over a fairly long period of time. It's a well-established trend, right up to the point where the human kills the turkey to eat it. Okay. Right?

• 1:22:16Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:22:16Speaker 02

  So, the fallacy is the turkey not understanding the reason for the trend. Right? So he extrapolates the trend without understanding why the trend exists. Okay. And therefore, doesn't have the cognitive framework to recognize that there is a trend break coming. Right?

• 1:22:39Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:22:39Speaker 02

  So the turkey would have to know, ah, this human is fattening me up for the kill. It would have to know that context to realize that this trend will stop at some point. Does that make sense? So that is the turkey illusion. It's basically assuming that a trend will continue indefinitely because you don't understand the nature of the trend and why it will inevitably lead to a trend break.

• 1:23:04Speaker 04

  Like the hot hand fallacy that whole?

• 1:23:06Speaker 02

  Got it. I don't think it's the hot hand fallacy is different.

• 1:23:09Speaker 04

  Which is, yeah.

• 1:23:10Speaker 02

  That is seeing a trend or one doesn't exist. In this case, there is a trend. It's just you're extrapolating it indefinitely into the future because you don't understand its true cause.

• 1:23:21Speaker 04

  Okay, got it.

• 1:23:23Speaker 02

  Right? Can you, any of you guys think of another example of that? All right, I'll give you one.

• 1:23:28Speaker 04

  Please.

• 1:23:29Speaker 02

  There's a political one. So everyone was saying, like after the 2024 election in the US, that the American electorate is shifting to the right, right? Because that was the trend in voting over the last couple of elections. But actually, there are a lot of experts that think that the actual trend is away from incumbents, not towards the right.

• 1:23:51Speaker 04

  Interesting.

• 1:23:52Speaker 02

  And so it's quite-

• 1:23:53Speaker 04

  Peer, right.

• 1:23:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, which is actually a worldwide trend and is, is true. So over the last several elections, right? We've, that is, the last three elections, the incumbent party was voted out. So if you don't understand the true nature of the trend, the recent trend is not a shift to the right, it is an anti-incumbency trend that will cause you to mispredict the next election. Right? Does that make sense?

• 1:24:18Speaker 04

  Leads you astray, sure.

• 1:24:19Speaker 02

  So it's, it's, it's good to keep in mind, I think the broader concept, which we have said on the show many times, and we actually talk about it in our book, guys, right? That you cannot assume that an existing trend will continue indefinitely. Sometimes there are inherent limits. Right? All right, so Bob, like for example, the, the increasing the number of rotations in the- In skating, we can't assume like, oh yeah, so they went from doing triples to doing triple axles, to doing quads, doing quad axle. Now we're gonna do a quintuple. It'll keep going. That trend will continue. Sextuple, septuple, octuple.

• 1:24:58Speaker 04

  Octuple, non-tuple.

• 1:24:59Speaker 02

  But it won't because there are some flaws of physics involved, yeah.

• 1:25:04Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:25:05Speaker 02

  There's another related trend, another related cognitive bias is that we assume that trends are linear. There's a linearity bias. Right. And, and many trends are not linear. They're either geometric or Exponential. Exponential or something, yeah.

• 1:25:24Speaker 04

  Or more of a cycle, right? A up, down.

• 1:25:26Speaker 02

  Or a cycle.

• 1:25:27Speaker 04

  Like a waveform almost.

• 1:25:28Speaker 02

  Right. I've heard of double exponential. Is that a thing? Double secret exponential.

• 1:25:34Speaker 04

  Uh oh.

• 1:25:35Speaker 02

  Alright guys, let's go on with science or fiction.

• 1:25:41Speaker 01

  It's time for Science or Fiction.

• 1:25:50Speaker 02

  Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fictitious. Then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. There's a theme this week and I'm very sad that Kara is not here.

• 1:26:06Speaker 04

  Oh, is it about colds?

• 1:26:07Speaker 02

  I didn't pick this theme for her, but I was thinking of her when I did. The theme is astronomy. Three astronomical news items. Here we go. You guys ready?

• 1:26:21Speaker 04

  Ready.

• 1:26:22Speaker 02

  Item number one, astronomers have confirmed for the first time the presence of a lava tube on Venus. Item number two, astronomers have observed the quiet collapse of a super giant star into a black hole without first going supernova.

• 1:26:40Speaker 02

  And ion number three, exoplanet hunters have described a rare inside-out stellar system with four gas giants close to their parent star and four rocky worlds further out. All right, Parrish, as our guest, you get to go first.

• 1:26:56Speaker 05

  Oh, the first lamb to the slaughter, eh?

• 1:26:58Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:26:59Speaker 05

  Okay, well, let's see here. The quiet collapse of the supergiant into a black hole without passing into any of the intermediary stages that we would be expecting. That one doesn't strike me as too improbable. I know that that's been theorized, and some people are wondering whether it might happen with Betelgeuse. And the physics there doesn't seem too far out, assuming that the the supergiant is large enough and has enough mass in the first place to surpass or bypass the neutron star stage. So I think that one's going to be science. The exoplanet inside-out stellar system with the gas giants near the sun and the rocky

• 1:27:43Speaker 05

  planets farther outside, that one seems somewhat farther fetched because the planets closer to the star should be warmer and thus less likely to form into gas giants. So I'm not too sure about that one. The only reason I'm holding off is that the lava tube on Venus, I believe we don't have any active probes around Venus right now, so I'm not sure how we would confirm that. So I think it's a pretty close call between those two, but I think I'm gonna have to say that the lava tube on Venus is fiction because we just don't have anything there right now that would be able to see something on that scale.

• 1:28:27Speaker 05

  So I'm gonna say lava tube is the fiction.

• 1:28:29Speaker 02

  Okay, Bob.

• 1:28:30Bob Novella?

  Yeah, the lava tube on Venus, I mean, I really don't have any problems with that. The only potential problem here is that you say for the first time. I wouldn't be surprised if they found this, you know, many years ago as well. But that's more of a subtle thing that you maybe, maybe wouldn't have done. But I don't have any trouble with that, I think. The quiet collapse of a supergiant star into a black hole. Wow, yeah, because you classically think that this gun has got to be a supernova, right? There's got to be a huge explosion. Yeah, so I'm not too, I'm not familiar with this theory or this or this possibility.

• 1:29:10Bob Novella?

  But there's something about the rebound, the rebound of the of the star that that actually becomes the supernova that we see. I guess that could potentially happen in a way where that rebound just doesn't happen. I'm not sure exactly how that would work, but that seems possible. Let's look at this third one here. A rare inside out. Okay, so we've got four gas giants in close and the rocky worlds are out. That's pretty whack right there. But we do know that the giant planets can migrate, the hot Jupiter can migrate in closer to the to the star. And and I could imagine that would be wreaking havoc in the inner solar system and potentially

• 1:29:55Bob Novella?

  knocking out the rocky, the rocky planets. But I just think if you've got, how many here, three or four of these of these gas giants? Four gas giants close to the parent. That just seems like something that that wouldn't be too rare to be reasonable. I think they would probably kick out those planets just out of the out of the solar system entirely. The fact that they could, that they can migrate back out and and be in stable orbits doesn't seem terribly likely. Because if they formed it far away from the sun, then they would have, then they would have have huge gaseous envelopes around them as well. So, yeah, I'm going to say that the inside out stellar system is fiction.

• 1:30:35Jay Novella?

  Okay, Jay. Yeah, you know, I've been thinking about these as you guys were talking. And I don't have a lot of things to go on with the exoplanet, you know, the exoplanet hunters describing the inside out stellar system. I mean, I just think the universe is so big and wacky that something like this could happen, you know, statistically weird things are going to happen out there. You know, the the second one about the astronomers observing the quiet collapse of the supergiant star, it didn't go supernova first. I don't know enough about that, like, you know, what could have happened for it to not have an, you know, have that mega explosion event? I don't know. But the one that I, you know, kind of agreeing with Parrish here about the first

• 1:31:17Jay Novella?

  one because, you know, going on one premise, how the hell do we know what's going on on the surface of Venus? I don't think we could pick up details like that about the surface of Venus. Like unless we have a probe there that can verify anything, like what the hell do we know? You know what I mean? It's like super obscure. And on top of that, like, things don't last long at all on the surface of that planet. So I just don't think we know about lava tubes on Venus.

• 1:31:42Speaker 02

  Okay, and Devin?

• 1:31:43Speaker 04

  Well, the pushback for the lava tubes on Venus would be that they analyzed old data that was collected in the 70s, or from the time the Soviet Union launched probes there, and came to the conclusion that some of the data revealed a lava tube. Didn't know it at the time, whatever. So that could be the case. I don't think so, though. The supergiant, collapse of the supergiant star into a black hole without going supernova, I, you know, I usually rely on Bob anytime the word "black hole" comes up and he didn't go there, so that's kind of really all I have to go there.

• 1:32:25Speaker 04

  But he did say that the exoplanet one was the fiction, because we don't know how those rocky planets could have gotten out there, unless there's captured rogue, rogue rocky planets that got captured somehow on the outside, but why wouldn't they have been pulled in more? I mean, I suppose it's possible. So yeah, it's either that or Venus. I'll, I'll hang, I'll hang out with Bob and I'll, I'll join you, Bob. Exoplanets are fiction.

• 1:32:56Speaker 02

  Thank you. All right, so we've got an even split, but you guys all agree on the second one. Astronomers have observed the quiet collapse of a supergiant star into a black hole without first going supernova. You guys all think this one is science. And this one is science.

• 1:33:13Bob Novella?

  Yo.

• 1:33:14Speaker 02

  This is science, yeah. So not crazy.

• 1:33:16Bob Novella?

  Cool.

• 1:33:17Speaker 02

  It's, it's just hard to observe it, right? This is the first time, I think, that where they saw the star, it was going, it was, you know, becoming a super giant. It was, looked like it was about to go supernova and then it just went dark. It did not go supernova. And so it's like, yep, that star, given the mass, given its mass, it has to be a black hole, but it never went supernova. So essentially the theory is that, that the shock wave is not strong enough to produce a black hole, right? With the core collapses. So again, very, very quickly, when, when stars burn through their fuel at their core, if they're heavy enough, they go on to the, they start fusing the new fuel, right? They have to, they collapse down to higher heat and pressure until they could burn the

• 1:34:02Speaker 02

  new fuel up to the limit of their mass, or iron, which is the heaviest element that stars, stars can get energy out of. And then, once they can no longer burn their fuel at their core, there's nothing to hold the star up, right? There's no outward pressure of-

• 1:34:20Bob Novella?

  Gravity wins.

• 1:34:20Speaker 02

  So gravity wins, it collapses down, that creates a shock wave, which then produces a supernova. But it's possible that it, that the shock wave is just not strong enough to eject the outer envelope as a supernova. But the star still has enough mass to collapse into a black hole. So it just kind of-

• 1:34:39Bob Novella?

  Right.

• 1:34:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, fades away into a black hole, rather than going supernova.

• 1:34:42Bob Novella?

  So basically, the star's outer envelope is gently expelled, rather than explosively ejected, right?

• 1:34:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. So yep, so that one is science. Let's go on to the third one. Exoplanet hunters have described a rare inside-out stellar system with four gas giants close to their parent star and four rocky worlds further out. Bob and Evan, you think this one is the fiction. Parrish and Jay, you think this one is science. So first, let me explain to you why this, it would be rare to have four gas giants close to a star and four rocky worlds further out. I remember wondering this when I was- Younger, like basically my whole life, until I learned what the answer was. But it's like, so is our solar system typical, right? We have the four rocky worlds, you know, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.

• 1:35:32Speaker 02

  And then, you know, closer to in the inner solar system and the outer solar system is Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

• 1:35:39Speaker 04

  And then there's a dwarf planet.

• 1:35:41Speaker 02

  And it doesn't seem random, right? It seems like, you know, there might be a reason for that. And I wondered, are, is this typical? Is this what we're going to find when we start finding exoplanets? Or could planets be in any configuration? Uh, it turns out, no, this is a typical configuration. There's a very good reason for it. So rocky worlds that are close to their stars, they can't collect the, the lighter gases like hydrogen and helium because the solar wind blows them away, right? So basically strips.

• 1:36:16Speaker 05

  Kind of gravity to hold on to.

• 1:36:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, they don't have.

• 1:36:18Speaker 04

  And no strong magnetic field.

• 1:36:19Speaker 02

  They could, but not that close to the sun. The outer solar system where it's cooler, as planets formed, they can't hold on to those lighter gases and get bigger and bigger and bigger and turn into gas giants. So you're always going to have rocky worlds close in and gas giants farther out. Bob is correct. A certain percentage of systems, however, have so-called hot Jupiters, which is when a gas giant which formed in the outer system migrates into the inner system, migrates in close. That does typically kick out all of the inner planets though, when that happens.

• 1:36:55Speaker 05

  There's a bad joke about ice in there somewhere, but I can't find it.

• 1:36:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:36:59Speaker 04

  Oh, boy.

• 1:37:00Speaker 02

  So, uh, how likely is it to have a, an atypical quote unquote inside out stellar system? Everyone agrees they would be rare, but have they actually found one?

• 1:37:15Speaker 04

  Right, one that we can observe from Earth.

• 1:37:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, you know, we can't.

• 1:37:19Speaker 04

  With our limited.

• 1:37:20Speaker 02

  Categorize, categorize thousands of exoplanets.

• 1:37:23Speaker 04

  Sure, but that's a small smidgen of all the systems.

• 1:37:26Speaker 02

  It's, yeah, isn't it a big enough sample size where we would expect something like this to happen? Or maybe it's more common than we think. Maybe there is some way this could happen.

• 1:37:33Speaker 05

  Some mechanism we're not accounting for.

• 1:37:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:37:35Speaker 05

  I mean, I doubt it, but.

• 1:37:37Speaker 02

  So. Therefore. Exoplanet hunters have found what they're calling an inside out stellar system. But this one is still the fiction. Okay, because it doesn't have gas giants. Because it's not this dramatic. So they what they found was, and the inside out is really like they're pushing it. You know, that's I wouldn't, I would reserve that term for when that's more like what I'm describing here. What they found was a red dwarf with a rocky inner planet, followed by two gas giants and then another rocky planet as the fourth planet. That's what they're calling the inside out system. Yeah, right?

• 1:38:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're trying to get more hits. But it's still, it's still a dilemma of, well, how did that rocky world form? Further away than that, why isn't it a gas giant? So what they their working hypothesis is that. Magnetic field? No. No magnetosphere? Capture. Nope. That the planets formed at different times. So early on in the formation of the stellar system, you know, inner planets would get stripped of their atmosphere and outer planets would hold on to it and form into gas giants. But if a if the outermost rocky world formed late in the age of this system,

• 1:38:58Speaker 02

  then when when it was forming, there was no longer any gas around to form a gas giant. So it even though it was far enough out to hold on to it, it just wasn't around. And so that's why it never evolved into a gas giant. That's pretty sad. Yeah, so that so that what they're thinking of is that what mechanism would cause planets to form at different times, rather than all form at the same time. You know, with the primordial disk. Right. Of gas and stuff. Could have been a capture, potentially. They don't think so. They think it formed in place just later in the age of the star. But we'll see, you know, what, you know, this is the planet, by the way, is LHS or the system LHS 1903. You could look it up.

• 1:39:43Speaker 02

  So it's the first, it's considered to be the first quote unquote inside out stellar system that has that outer rocky world. Semi inside out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's not, yeah, you know, four gas giants in the inner solar system and four rocky worlds in the outer solar system.

• 1:40:01Bob Novella?

  Yeah, that's whack, man.

• 1:40:02Speaker 02

  That's whack. We don't know how that, that's, that's a different thing altogether.

• 1:40:07Bob Novella?

  Yeah, that sounds, if it's even possible, exceedingly rare.

• 1:40:11Speaker 02

  It'd be very rare, yeah. And we, yeah, we have a challenge to figure out how that happened.

• 1:40:16Speaker 05

  Is it possible that something like that will happen with our solar system after the sun expands to a red giant and then collapses into a dwarf several billion years from now?

• 1:40:25Speaker 02

  Well, we still wouldn't have the gas giants on the inside.

• 1:40:28Bob Novella?

  Yeah, we'd still, yeah, they wouldn't be migrating down at that point, because that happens early, that happens, well.

• 1:40:35Speaker 02

  Well, when our, when our sun expands into a super giant, a red giant, it's gonna, it's gonna eat all the inner planets. You know, we'll be cinders.

• 1:40:45Jay Novella?

  And there's no way to prevent that either?

• 1:40:46Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:40:47Bob Novella?

  Well, I mean, they were holding out one possibility that as the sun loses its outer layers and its gravity actually goes down, that we will go out into a, into a higher orbit and, and, you know, potentially, you know, miss the nastiest heat. But I think they, but that's, could be old information. They may, they may have revised that and say, no, it's, it's, we're gonna be fried to a cinder. Definitely. So I'm not sure what the latest thinking is.

• 1:41:12Speaker 02

  We could theoretically do it ourselves, just to, you know, by, by doing the gravitational braking or gravitational assists to move the Earth slowly over millions of years into an outer orbit, just to keep pace with the evolution of the sun. That would be challenging to orchestrate that, but not theoretically impossible.

• 1:41:31Bob Novella?

  True, like getting some asteroids and bringing them in or something. But yeah, that's something that centuries and millennia of time, yeah, something that's absolutely not implausible.

• 1:41:42Speaker 02

  All right. Which means that astronomers have confirmed for the first time the presence of a lava tube on Venus is science. So how is that, how is that possible?

• 1:41:52Speaker 02

  So Evan is correct, actually. They used the evidence from 1990 to 1992. The synthetic aperture radar instrument aboard the Magellan spacecraft mapped the Venusian surface, and this is a reanalysis of that data leveraging SAR imaging technique developed for, so basically a new technique that didn't exist in the 90s for detecting and characterizing accessible subsurface conduits in the proximity of skylights. So Bob, have you ever heard the term pyroduct?

• 1:42:26Bob Novella?

  No.

• 1:42:27Speaker 02

  A pyroduct is a lava tube.

• 1:42:30Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, a pyroduct, makes sense, pyroduct. And you know what a skylight is, right?

• 1:42:35Bob Novella?

  Yeah, that's when the top of it collapses and you can see down into it.

• 1:42:38Speaker 02

  Exactly. So that's what they were able to image was the skylight looking down into a pyroduct, a lava tube. So yeah, there's a portion of the roof collapses down, exposing the lava tube. And what they were seeing, they said was, it's characterized by a diameter of about one kilometer diameter, a roof thickness of at least 150 meters, and an empty void height of no less than 375 meters. So that's a big boy. Extends in the subsurface for at least 300 meters from the skylight. So, pretty cool. Not to be unexpected, there's a lot of volcanic activity on Venus.

• 1:43:15Bob Novella?

  Sure.

• 1:43:16Speaker 02

  Or there has been. So it's, yeah, it's a feature that we expect to see where there has been volcanic activity. And of course, we're interested in lava tubes, in pyroducts.

• 1:43:28Bob Novella?

  On the moon and Mars. More, yeah.

• 1:43:31Speaker 02

  On the moon and on Mars, they're a great place to put bases.

• 1:43:34Bob Novella?

  Oh my god. It's a no-brainer. It's a no-brainer. The radiation and the damn regolith, it's such a nasty place on the surface of the moon for extended periods of time. The lava tube, I mean, I don't, do I need to?

• 1:43:47Speaker 02

  It's a ready-made, you know, underground dwelling, yeah.

• 1:43:50Bob Novella?

  Right. It's like a hobbit hole. Ready to go. We will, it's such a great idea, we will eventually be there.

• 1:43:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally.

• 1:43:57Bob Novella?

  It's basically guaranteed.

• 1:43:58Speaker 02

  All right, Evan, give us a quote.

• 1:44:00Speaker 04

  "The most difficult time to be skeptical is when we want or don't want to believe. It all comes down to how willing we are to be honest with ourselves." Melanie Tracey King.

• 1:44:11Speaker 02

  Yep, very true, although I'm saying it all comes down to, I think, no. It's willing to be honest with ourselves is a necessary but insufficient criterion for being skeptical. I think the biggest impediment to like having a really skeptical attitude on a specific topic is motivated reasoning.

• 1:44:32Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:44:32Bob Novella?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:44:33Speaker 02

  Because with motivated reasoning, you could convince yourself of any position. And you convince yourself that you have good skeptical reasons or scientific reasons for believing it. And we're just really good at it. And the thing is, smarter people are better at it. And so skeptics, who are used to thinking skeptically and scientifically, can leverage that through motivated reasoning to arrive at desired conclusions. It's the hardest thing to really be on the guard for, you know?

• 1:45:02Bob Novella?

  It is, because once you're certain about something like that, then you don't question it. And it's like, it's never reexamined.

• 1:45:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:45:10Bob Novella?

  It's obvious to you. So that's the most pernicious types of belief.

• 1:45:14Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:45:15Speaker 04

  All right.

• 1:45:15Speaker 02

  And even if you do, again, if you're motivated reasoning basically means you will leverage facts and logic and analysis. But it's all sort of twisted to leverage towards a desired conclusion. And you are subconsciously working backwards. So you do have to really discipline yourself, say, okay, I'm going to pretend like I really don't care what the outcome here is.

• 1:45:42Speaker 04

  That's tough.

• 1:45:43Speaker 02

  And or go out of your way to like defend the other side, the other perspective. You know what I mean? You have to consciously be your own worst skeptic. But just like thinking of reasons to defend a position you already have, we're good at that. We're really good at that.

• 1:46:01Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:46:01Speaker 02

  All right, guys. So Parrish, thank you for joining us. I hope you had a good time. I did. Thank you for having me. Thanks, man. Thanks, Parrish. Good to have you. And thank all you guys for joining me, as always. Of course, Steve.

• 1:46:13Speaker 04

  Steve, feel better, Kara.

• 1:46:15Speaker 02

  Yep, feel better, Kara. And until next week, this is your skeptic's guide to the universe.

• 1:46:23Speaker 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.

• 1:47:00Speaker 00

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