The Skeptics Guide #1019 - Jan 18 2025

Interview with Nick Tiller, News Items: Does Fact-Checking Work, Nuclear Electric Propulsion, The LA Fires, Building Materials for Storing Carbon; Who's That Noisy; Science or Fiction

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:33Speaker 01

  You're listening to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Your escape to reality.

• 0:39Speaker 02

  Hello and welcome to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, January 15th, 2025, and this is your host, Stephen Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella.

• 0:49Jay Novella?

  Hey, everybody.

• 0:49Speaker 02

  Kara Santa Maria.

• 0:51Cara Santa Maria?

  Howdy.

• 0:51Speaker 02

  Jay Novella. Hey, guys. And Evan Bernstein.

• 0:54Speaker 05

  Good evening, everyone.

• 0:55Speaker 02

  Kara, we got to start with an update. How are you doing?

• 0:57Cara Santa Maria?

  I'm good. I'm OK. The city is not. I mean, I'm OK insofar as I'm OK. You know what I mean? Maybe you don't.

• 1:04Speaker 05

  By comparison to many others.

• 1:07Cara Santa Maria?

  By comparison to many others and also just by comparison to this same time last week, I guess we could say. There's two ways to answer the question when people ask, how are you? And actually, many people were sharing a meme from Broad City across social media that was like everyone in LA this week and it's one of the main characters going, I'm or like, how are you? But like, she's holding up air quotes because the one way is I'm safe and I'm not, you know, and my houses didn't burn down. Like, so in that sense, yes, I'm OK. Psychologically, I don't know how OK people are right now. We were talking off air before we, before we started recording, but the saying right now, and I think so far, everybody I've talked to, there's truth to it.

• 1:48Cara Santa Maria?

  If, if you live in LA, everyone in LA knows somebody who lost everything. You know, it's a communal tragedy. And I've been working with patients all week. I've been working, you know, with myself, with my supervisors and also friends, family members, all that. And, you know, there's this sense that it's kind of hard to articulate, but I used a...

• 2:10Cara Santa Maria?

  Metaphor of like, if you fall into the ocean and you're splashing and you feel like you're drowning, and then somebody throws a life preserver to you, you can look up and you can see the sturdiness of the boat that threw out the life preserver. So very often, when we're dealing with our own stuff, and I work with cancer patients, so they're dealing with their stuff, even amongst the most difficult personal tragedy, there's a firmament around you, there's a sense of security when you look around. But these past, you know, this past week, LA is not secure. And so it's like looking up and the boat itself is on fire or sinking, you know? And that's, that's sort of the feeling that most people have.

• 2:50Cara Santa Maria?

  And I think one of the hardest realizations is when you turn on the news, or you pick up your phone, or you reach out to somebody who's not right here, and you realize that life didn't stop. And this is always really tough in the grief process. You're going through something really difficult, and the world is still going, you know? And there's still the confirmation hearings, and they're still, and you're just like, oh, my God, because you feel like everything's on pause.

• 3:19Speaker 05

  I feel that way when somebody close to me has, has passed away or died.

• 3:23Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, you, you want everybody to go, just stop for a minute. Just stop doing all the things. Don't you see somebody died? But, you know, that's, that's how life is. It's tough to be a provider against this background, especially a, a new one. There's a lot of processing around that, you know? It's like, Mr. Rogers, like, look for the helpers. And then it's like, but who's helping the helpers? Like, I hope that our first responders are taking up all of the offers for pro bono therapy, are really leaning on their loved ones right now, because it's a lot.

• 3:55Speaker 02

  Well, we're gonna, we're gonna talk in a little bit about some of the, um, just the science surrounding what's happening with the, yeah, with the fire. But let's go on to some news items. Jay, does fact checking social media work?

• 4:10Jay Novella?

  Yeah, before I start, guys, I'd be curious to hear what you think.

• 4:13Cara Santa Maria?

  Zuck doesn't think so, apparently.

• 4:15Speaker 05

  Well.

• 4:16Cara Santa Maria?

  I think it probably does, to some extent. I mean, work is a loaded question.

• 4:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, it seems kind of broad.

• 4:22Cara Santa Maria?

  Does it work?

• 4:23Speaker 02

  It does, uh, this is what I think about it. If you just tell people this is fake, that doesn't work. If you keep, if you actually suppress it in the algorithm, or keep it from, from either going online at all, or being spread, that absolutely does work.

• 4:36Cara Santa Maria?

  Right, right. Like, this is demonstrably untrue, so therefore it is against our policy to continue to show it as if it is true. Yeah.

• 4:45Jay Novella?

  Well, it turns out, you know, it's complicated. We have statistics, but in the end, you know, there is a definite, a definite positive influence. So let me get, let me start at the beginning here because this, this news item is inspired by Zuckerberg's change to Facebook's platform where Meta announced that they have plans to scrap their third-party fact-checking program. It's been in place since 2016, and the program, they paid independent groups to verify the accuracy of articles and posts on Facebook. And this plan, moving forward, is to use a crowdsourced system, right? They will implement a model that's

• 5:25Jay Novella?

  inspired by Twitter's community notes, which some of you might be aware of. The system allows users to contribute context and additional information to posts on the platform, and the aim is to provide clarity or correct misinformation by those community people. So Meta says this change was made to address concerns about bias and censorship. Joel Kaplan, who is Meta's Chief Global Affairs Officer, said the following: "Experts, like everyone else, have their own biases and perspectives." So I think that his comment is straight-up marketing BS.

• 6:02Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it sounds very loaded to me.

• 6:04Jay Novella?

  Right? Totally. The experts he's referring to, these aren't regular people. They have a long, long, impressive list of credentials, and I'm going to name a few of them. This is what they typically have, you know, lots of variation, of course, but they hire people as professionals in the field, right? So they have an academic background in the relevant fields that, that they're observing and that they're, that they're editing. They commonly have critical thinking skills. They, they could, they could be journalists. They, they have a lot of credentials, not, not, these are not lightweight people that come in and say, "Hey, look, I circled this in the, you know, in the wanted ads." Like, no, these are people that have

• 6:47Jay Novella?

  Very strong legitimate credentials that qualify them. And you know, the word expert is not used loosely here. They are, they are content experts. They could do lots of different things, like they could be able to source the material, you know, the comment all the way back to its source and then figure out how legitimate that source is or isn't. Look it up, you'll be interested to read the credentials that these people typically have. So Meta's new approach, like I said, is mirroring the community notes on Twitter, and I dare say that it didn't really work that well, especially Elon Musk's version, which you know, just throws all of that out the window. So an obvious question is, does general fact checking actually work?

• 7:31Jay Novella?

  Right now, of course, the intent of the company has to be very firm and very good. They have to have good intentions because they are the ultimate quality control of whatever fact checking is happening. In general, to answer the question of does fact checking actually work? Like Steve says, research suggests it absolutely does. Studies done on the topic show similar conclusions that fact checking reduces beliefs about false claims. I know that's an easy sentence to say, but there's a lot behind that. And but you have to let that, let that fact ride as it is because it is a very simple answer. Yes, fact checking works. Now, of course, we can discuss for hours on what degree that it works, and it's very hard to judge that just by the nature of what's being done here.

• 8:15Cara Santa Maria?

  Jay, I mean, fact checking has been the backbone of legitimate journalism for all of journalism.

• 8:24Jay Novella?

  Right, I mean, it is absolute, it's a, it's a cornerstone of journalism.

• 8:30Cara Santa Maria?

  And journalists don't share things that don't pass muster under fact checking. So by definition, it is, it's at least a, what would you call it? Threshold? A minimum standard?

• 8:41Jay Novella?

  Right. I totally agree, absolutely agree. And you know, of course, if you had total control over the information and with the intent on helping humanity, then that false information would be very short-lived on social media and wouldn't get to as many eyes as you know, the these pieces of information typically do. But let me give you guys a, for instance, a 2019 meta-analysis of studies involving more than 20,000 participants. They found that fact-checking had a clear positive effect on people's political beliefs, helping them to actually better differentiate between truth and falsehood. That's great. And that says it all right there. The ideal scenario is to prevent the misinformation from spreading in the first place.

• 9:26Jay Novella?

  You want to absolutely limit its exposure to the masses. You want to, you want to contain it as quickly as possible. But when people are already exposed, fact-checking actually can still reduce its impact, of course, because they're, either they're removing it, or they're putting up flags that say, you know, this, this information can't be verified, it doesn't have a clear source. That type of thing actually does have an impact. Now, why does fact-checking still matter? Well, fact-checking might not always change minds directly, but it does play a big role in the shaping of the online information ecosystem. If you think about, you know, all the information that's out there online and how that information

• 10:07Jay Novella?

  revolves around groups of people, like-minded people, people of different political beliefs, people that have, you know, core beliefs that are, that are different, you know, the information that surrounds skeptics is very different than the information that surrounds, you know, health and fitness people. But one thing about misinformation is that it kind of brushes over all of those groups and subgroups, and it does get to everybody, right? Because it can exist in any, in any category that's out there. I think it's really important to say that without the fact-checking, what we're going to see is we're going to see the proliferation of misinformation, and then there's going to be a, a battle. It's going to be, it's going to create battlefields, very similar.

• 10:52Jay Novella?

  To what we see on Wikipedia, right? Wikipedia has approved Wikipedia editors. And, you know, they could do things like creating new pages, which is, you know, absolutely important because as, as things happen, we have to, you know, we want to see posts that are, that are, you know, gathering all the information. Like you could go and look up the, the LA fires and there'll be a post on Wikipedia about that that, that gives up to date information on it. Now that the knife cuts both ways because, you know, in an ideal Wikipedia situation, we have people that, you know, are unbiased and have the skill sets to, to do this and they're going to do the best job that they can and they're going to vet the information. They're going to do all the steps that we skeptics have learned how to vet information.

• 11:33Jay Novella?

  But you have people that become editors that, you know, have other intentions. Right? And I've, I've talked to Wikipedia editors that say that they're in a tug of war where they'll go on, on one day and they'll, they'll add information, they'll shape it, they'll make it, you know, present reality. And then you have people that will come in that night or the next day or whenever the next approval, uh, whenever they, they can edit it again because it's not like a moment to moment. Then what happens? They change it and they put back in the misinformation. Because they're having a tug of war over that. This is what we can expect to happen on Meta when people are going to be going in who don't have the qualifications, who, who really, you know, shouldn't be editing information or doing anything

• 12:15Jay Novella?

  to, you know, to provide direction to other people on what's true and what's not true. It's going to, it's going to be a train wreck. And I'm really, um, I'm really concerned because we already live in a world that has weaponized misinformation. It's rampant. You know, Meta's move is a horrible sign of the web sinking deeper into misinformation. Fact checking isn't a panacea, but it's one of the few tools proven to have a positive impact. And what we should be doing is leaning into it and figuring out ways to even make it more useful and more powerful. But that's not the world we live in.

• 12:48Cara Santa Maria?

  But also, why are people getting their news from Facebook?

• 12:52Speaker 02

  Because that is ship has sailed. I mean, people are using social media as a convenient way to just get information about the world. And they may not even be looking for news so much as just looking for content, you know, but that's this is what people are talking about today. They're talking about whatever's happening. And so it becomes the de facto source of news.

• 13:12Cara Santa Maria?

  Do you think that this is going to do for Facebook what Elon taking over Twitter did? Like, I'm not there. Most people I know aren't on Twitter anymore. And every time I do reopen the app, it's a cesspool. It's like, you know, an abandoned car that's overrun with rats. Like, I'll look at posts and it's just, it's, it's amazing, the rhetoric that I see, and just the spam and the bots. And I don't know what happened to it. But do you think that's going to happen to Facebook?

• 13:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think it would. Sure. That's the concern, right? It's that you're opening the floodgates. I mean, this is a deeper conversation about social media. The fact that it, so if you have like, just completely unregulated social media platform where people can say whatever they want to say, and there's, there's no fact checking or editorial filter or limit on hate speech or anything, then it becomes a playground for psychopaths. It becomes a tool for propaganda of every type. You know, the people who have the most time on their hands and the most obsession about topics are the ones who are going to be disproportionately represented. So it's not like, oh, it's going to be a free marketplace of ideas where the

• 14:24Speaker 02

  quality of the idea is the one factor that's going to allow things to rise to the cream to rise to the top. That's not what's happening. That is demonstrably not what's happening. It's you have the obsessive extreme propaganda, you know, speech is what is propagating, and it's drowning out all other types of speech. It's not-

• 14:46Cara Santa Maria?

  And you can purchase speech. So people who have a monetary interest in changing political ideology, or changing thoughts, or, you know, changing purchasing power, you don't even know what's behind most of these posts. Like, why are they posting it? Are they trying to swing an election? Are they trying to get you by something? Are they trying to, you know, whatever-

• 15:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's the other thing. It's a great point. There's no transparency. So normally, like, if you have a political ad, you have to say, this ad is supported by this person. But you could have de facto political ads on social media with no disclosure of who's behind them at all. So like all of the rules that have evolved over the last century or whatever in terms of equality, journalism, of fairness and reporting, of transparency and, you know, who is speaking or whatever, it's all gone. It is all gone.

• 15:35Bob Novella?

  From La Vista.

• 15:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. Either we need to just run this psychological, social experiment and see what happens, although I think that we have a pretty good idea, you know, I think what's good, what's happening, or we have to figure out how to transfer the same kind of social protections to this new media, you know?

• 15:56Speaker 05

  Warning labels?

• 15:57Speaker 02

  Well, I think, nah, the warning labels don't really work, you know?

• 16:01Cara Santa Maria?

  And/or honestly-

• 16:02Speaker 05

  Right, well, I guess that's my point. What does work? What has been proven to work in these cases?

• 16:06Bob Novella?

  We'll get right on it, right after we fix global climate change.

• 16:08Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, and I don't want to skip ahead to my news item, but I'm going to touch on an app that is, an app that had an express intention that is run by individuals, actually a team of people with a very specific mission that is not for sale, that does not scrub user data, and is factual only. I mean, so much of that, so much of how you affect change in this situation is who is controlling the platform?

• 16:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:37Cara Santa Maria?

  And what are their rules?

• 16:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I think that's a good point, Kara, is that, so one choice we have as consumers is which social media will we patronize, right?

• 16:47Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 16:47Speaker 02

  And so we, we need to pick social media apps that do have good quality and that do have rules of engagement which promote, you know, at least have a minimum filter for like the worst kind of propaganda hate speech, straight up lies, all that stuff, right? So, and so, you know, we may just have to just go off of platforms that are not doing that. And like, you know, we've moved, a lot of us over to, to Blue Sky, you know, just because for now, anyway, it seems to be a little bit better environment.

• 17:22Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it feels like old Twitter a little.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  That's not a panacea either, because then that just contributes to the further isolation of societies. Now we're going to have, like- We have red states, blue states, we're gonna have Twitter people and blue sky people, you know, like, you, we're gonna be siloing ourselves into these subcultures of social media platforms, that's not good.

• 17:40Cara Santa Maria?

  But that's a larger geopolitical question, right? Like, you think about the Civil War and you think about areas like in the United States, where ultimately we stayed one nation, uh, where a lot of people, we made compromises that many people weren't happy with and a lot of people were disgruntled and that continues to this day in our policy and in our, um, uh, the way that we vote. And then you see other nations where they split. Or where people seceded and they said, you know what, we have irreconcilable differences and the people who think this way are gonna live here and the people who think that way are gonna live there. And I, I'm not saying either way is right, but that does play out time and time again.

• 18:22Cara Santa Maria?

  So is the answer always to say, let's not be siloed? Maybe. But does that create more conflict? Does it create less conflict? I don't know. It's a complicated question.

• 18:34Speaker 02

  It is very complicated.

• 18:35Cara Santa Maria?

  Especially when the ideologies are so diametrically opposed.

• 18:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it's, it's hard to, like, if in order for a forest to be green, all the trees must be green, right? It's hard to have a society that's open and, uh, where we have open conversation and good faith and everybody's reasonable, right? It'd have a reasonable society unless most of the people are reasonable. And we're not gonna fix that with social media.

• 18:59Cara Santa Maria?

  No, and there's a reason that after World War II, Germany had very strict laws about what you could say and what you could do. Because they said, this is not in keeping with a fair and just society. We will not allow Nazi propaganda to flourish after the war. We have to tamp it down, you know, so you're right, Steve. I think it's really complicated when, I guess it depends on the goals, right? What are the goals of the people in the society? And do they agree?

• 19:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. There's no perfect solution, because at the end of the day, You know, either you're gonna have a chaos, anarchy, free for all, or somebody is going to be imposing some kind of filter. And then, of course, that, who is that person? Who's that group? Who's that entity? What are their motivations? Right? There's something to be said for free speech. Of course, we support free speech strongly, but free speech requires a venue where your voice can be heard and not overwhelmed by a bunch of psychopaths, you know, who are just trolling everybody, or bots who are spreading propaganda. You know what I mean? So

• 20:03Cara Santa Maria?

  And free speech only means that the government does not abridge it. You know, like, really, when it comes down to it.

• 20:08Speaker 02

  Well, that's the First Amendment. Yes, we could distinguish the concept of free speech and the First Amendment. The First Amendment is

• 20:14Cara Santa Maria?

  Which I think most Americans are

• 20:16Speaker 02

  They conflate the two often.

• 20:17Cara Santa Maria?

  Conflating the two.

• 20:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. But, you know, free speech doesn't mean, again, a free for all. It doesn't mean that, like, there isn't editorial policy.

• 20:25Speaker 05

  You can't defraud people.

• 20:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 20:27Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, you can't straight up lie about somebody. And like, yeah, there's a lot of limits to free speech.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  It doesn't mean you can't fact check. Fact checking doesn't mean you don't have free speech. It means there's somebody who's gonna look it up and say, that's wrong. Here's the real, here's the real answer. Or here's the vetted information. So, yeah, so I think there's that. And I think, obviously, people need to be skeptical, have critical thinking skills, have media savvy, because it is the Wild West now. And so, you know.

• 20:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, we have to look out for ourselves more than ever.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  More than ever, absolutely.

• 20:57Speaker 05

  It was true 20, 30 years ago. It's more true today.

• 21:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, but, you know, again, having said that, being somebody who spends a lot of time on TikTok because we're promoting skeptical content on TikTok, it is a cesspool of misinformation, anti-intellectualism, and just utter nonsense.

• 21:15Speaker 05

  Oh, gosh, if you don't have some minimum level of intellectual protection, you know, like, mental protection against that, you will, you will fall prey to so much stuff, you don't even realize you're falling prey to it.

• 21:26Speaker 02

  Right. But, again, we live in a democracy, so we also have to think about this statistically. Like, if a majority of people tick over into radicalized ignorance, that's the society that we have. Doesn't matter if it's 51%. That's now the ruling majority of our, of our democracy.

• 21:43Cara Santa Maria?

  And it's going to be that way if we don't prioritize education.

• 21:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:48Cara Santa Maria?

  We, you know, that has to be at the top of our list.

• 21:51Speaker 02

  But then that also becomes a war as we know, because then you have

• 21:54Cara Santa Maria?

  Absolutely.

• 21:55Speaker 02

  Some states fighting against teaching critical thinking, you know?

• 21:58Cara Santa Maria?

  Or just, I don't know, funding schools.

• 22:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, there are some basics.

• 22:03Speaker 05

  No easy answers, as you.

• 22:04Speaker 02

  All right.

• 22:05Bob Novella?

  Steve, Steve, can we talk about something positive, fun and cool?

• 22:08Speaker 02

  Yes, that's, I'm just about to pivot. We're not going to solve the, not going to solve this problem. We're just going to whine about it.

• 22:13Speaker 05

  A haunted graveyard?

• 22:14Speaker 02

  Bob, tell us about nuclear electric propulsion.

• 22:18Bob Novella?

  Oh, yeah, baby.

• 22:19Speaker 05

  What? That doesn't exist.

• 22:21Bob Novella?

  All right, so this was fun. Two cool companies have signed a strategic partnership to create a powerful nuclear electric rocket that could finally make serious progress in ending the dominance of chemical rockets for space travel. And I want this to happen so bad, so bad that I don't even care about the grammar of this sentence.

• 22:45Speaker 05

  Wait a minute, hang on. We, in the, in the last 12 months, we must have touched on at least six or eight news items that have talked and we've, and we've come to the conclusion that it's, it's chemical propulsion. And that's it. That's the only way we get anywhere.

• 23:00Bob Novella?

  No.

• 23:01Speaker 05

  Right? Isn't that kind of what we concluded?

• 23:04Bob Novella?

  Chemical propulsion, I'll talk a little bit about this at the end of my talk, but chem- chemical propulsion is, is going to stay for quite a long time to get to orbit. But once you're in orbit, its days are numbered. Absolutely, absolutely. Okay, so, um, so the, the two companies are Ad Astra and Space Nuclear Corporation, also simply called Space Nukes, which is an awesome name.

• 23:27Cara Santa Maria?

  It's a terrifying name.

• 23:29Bob Novella?

  I know. It's fun, it's fun though. Let's start with the rocket company, Ad Astra. They've been developing an electric rocket engine called Vassimir. They describe it on their website as a disruptive development. I love some disruptive developments in the space propulsion status quo. It's the product of more than 40 years of research in plasma physics and electric propulsion, first at the United Department, United States Department of Energy and NASA, and later now at Ad Astra Rocket Company. Now, electric rocket engines are Distinct from chemical rockets. We all know, we all know chemical rockets and I barely tolerate them at this point. As the name implies, they use electricity to accelerate propellant. Vasemir rocket engines are different than other well-known electric engines that I'm sure you have

• 24:14Bob Novella?

  heard of, especially if you listen to the show, namely ion engines and hall effect thrusters. Jay talked about them a little while ago. These vasemirs different than those. Vasemir is in some ways a hybrid of those two.

• 24:25Speaker 02

  It's a hybrid.

• 24:26Bob Novella?

  It's a hybrid and many, many call vasemir, yeah, many call vasemir, it's a magnetoplasma is a better descriptor, much better than ion engine or hall effect. This technique is different in that it uses powerful radio waves to heat a gas propellant and that gas propellant then becomes the most common state of matter in the universe. What is that?

• 24:48Speaker 02

  Plasma.

• 24:49Bob Novella?

  Plasma, yes.

• 24:51Cara Santa Maria?

  Plasma's the most common.

• 24:52Bob Novella?

  All stars are plasma, so that basically does that right there. So a plasma, a soup of free electrons and positive ions, basically just unbinds the electrons from the, from the atomic nucleons, a very hot charged gas. So this super gas then can now be controlled by magnetic field and that was the goal. It's ionized so that it can be controlled and that magnetic field guides and accelerates a plasma out the back of the rocket as a potent rocket thrust. Thank you, Newton's third law. So, so that's basically how it works, very basically. So, cool stuff, but you, you, some of you might be thinking, well, what does vasemir stand for, right? It's got to stand for something, right? It's got to be an acronym. Vasemir stands for Variable

• 25:36Bob Novella?

  Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket. And those first three words, variable, specific impulse, make this rocket incredible and unique. Chemical rocket, so, so to explain that, let's, let's talk about this. Chemical rocket fuel, and this is a really interesting angle. Chemical rocket fuel reaches thousands of degrees, very hot, right? Thousands of degrees, but electric plasma engines can get to millions of degrees and that is a critical distinction. So, because the higher the temperature, think about it, the higher the temperature, the more- The more the whatever is heated to that degree is bouncing around, hitting each other, all the atoms, the higher the temperature, the faster the exhaust. And that means that every gram of fuel can deliver more energy, right?

• 26:21Bob Novella?

  So, so going from thousands of degrees to millions of degrees therefore means that the propellant is more effectively being converted into thrust. So you got that? So this increase in efficiency for rockets is expressed as specific impulse, ISP, a critical rocketry word if ever there was one. If you, if you read about rockets and rocket technology, you have probably come across specific impulse, ISP. It's basically discussing, it deals with the efficiency, how effectively the propellant is converted into thrust. Now, chemical rockets typically have an ISP rating in the hundreds. Vasimir could have an ISP over 5,000. So keep that in mind out. So that's, that's the background.

• 27:04Bob Novella?

  So vasimir stands for variable specific impulse magnetoplasmic rocket. So that means that this rocket, this rocket can actually change its specific impulse depending on the needs of the specific mission that it is on. I'm not aware of really any other rocket design that, that really does this like this.

• 27:23Cara Santa Maria?

  Sorry, Bob. Define impulse again?

• 27:25Bob Novella?

  ISP, specific impulse, is a measure of the, of how efficiently the fuel is converted into thrust. And remember, as I said, that the higher the temperature, the faster it shoots out the back. And because it's going faster, that means you're getting more bang for your buck for that, for that fuel. So what does this mean? This variable specific impulse, what does that mean for this rocket? So that means, say you're near a gravity, you're near the gravity of a planet and you need some extra thrust, you can just hit the dial and you can lower the ISP and you'll get more thrust. You know, not, not chemical rocket like thrust, but you're still getting much more thrust than you would think from, from an electric rocket. But remember though, when you've got a lot of thrust though, it's, it's less efficient.

• 28:08Bob Novella?

  The ISP is going down, so it, it becomes less efficient. But you could do that on demand. So there, on the other hand, if the rocket is cruising through deep space, the rocket can be Switch to high ISP mode, you know, like a high gear and become super efficient. And then you're using, you're using the, the fuel that's available just in very tiny, much more tiny amounts than, than otherwise. So now remember acceleration is low in this mode, right? Because you're, you're, the fuel, the thrust that you're throwing out is going very, very fast, but you're not throwing out a lot of it, right? That's kind of inherent in these types of rockets. So it's not throwing out as much mass as a chemical rocket, but what it is throwing out is throwing at very, very, very, very high speed.

• 28:52Bob Novella?

  So acceleration is low in this mode, but it doesn't matter in, for a lot of missions, right? Because you're, the velocity can be built up over time, slowly over time, and eventually even, eventually going faster than chemical rocket speeds. So this, this rocket can actually dial up or down. It can go into low gear, near, near a gravity where it needs higher thrust, or it could go into a high gear, a high ISP mode where it's super efficient and can cruise, it can cruise and accelerate for weeks or months or even longer. So that's, that's what you could do with this, this type of rocket design. So that's all great and stuff, but all that awesomeness, especially ionizing the fuel requires a lot of power and that is one of the key problems with the Vassumir.

• 29:36Bob Novella?

  So in space, that typically means that solar panels or perhaps RTGs, radioisotope thermal generators, but neither of those options are, are really a good fit for Vassumir. Solar panels would need to be stupidly large to supply enough power and the RTGs are great for a Voyager or perseverance, but not for an engine like this. So we need something to soup up to that, that can get high density electronics, you know, electrical energy for this Vassumir. And this is where space nuclear corporation, space nukes comes into play. They were famous for their killer power device. I talked about that on episode 859. Killer power is essentially a small nuclear reactor made to power electronics on the

• 30:19Bob Novella?

  moon, Mars and deep space away from, from easy solar panels or, or other types of technology that can get you what you need. Currently, it's designed to supply 1 to 10 kilowatts of electrical power. Space Nuke has demonstrated a 1 kilowatt device back in 2018, and it's now working with US Space Force on a project called Jetson, which is pretty fun, for a 12-kilowatt version. I assume, though, I gotta say, that in the near future, the US Space Force will be renamed X-Force. So I'm just gonna throw that out there, see if that happens. Killapower, now Jay, you and I were talking about this earlier. Killapower uses a sterling heat engine, which is a very, very efficient engine that converts heat from the reactor into electricity.

• 31:04Bob Novella?

  It's very efficient, more efficient than solar panels, and it can operate, get this, for 15 years continuously, continuously. That just blows my mind. I want a few of those under my damn house. Now, okay, so the obvious idea here is that this partnership is to integrate the nuclear reactor with the propulsion technology, vastly leveling up the Vassamir, right? I mean, it would be amazing. The company partnership is described this way on the AdAstra website. "The Memorandum of Understanding," MOU. "Memorandum for Understanding between AdAstra and Space Nuke outlines a shared vision and a passion for developing and demonstrating NEP, nuclear-electric propulsion technology, and establishes a framework by which both companies will jointly pursue technical and

• 31:49Bob Novella?

  business development." David Poston, CTO of Space Nuke, said, "Nuclear-electric propulsion will achieve game-changing performance via stepwise technology evolution." Our plan will begin with 100-kilowatt-plus nuclear-electric propulsion system as a stepping stone to, get this, a less-than-5-kilogram-per-kilowatt multi-megawatt NEP system that's with the capability to reduce the round-trip human transit time to Mars from more than a year to a few months. So they're saying with this 100-kilowatt system that they are developing, that they'll hopefully get to before too long, they could take a round-trip human transit time to Mars

• 32:29Bob Novella?

  from more than a year to a few months. That's a huge, huge game changer in getting to Mars. A few months, the risk from solar radiation and galactic radiation is much less. Three months compared to 12 months could be a game changer. Now, these plans are in the early stages, but they say in their press release, "The partnership aims to demonstrate high-power NEP in a flight program by the end of the decade and commercialize the technology in the 2030s." So that seems fairly aggressive to commercialize it by the in the 2030s. I'd hope these two crazy kids can make it work. So this is really fascinating. I really hope that they I mean, coming up with a nuclear electric propulsion engine like this is just

• 33:14Bob Novella?

  it's something that I hope I can really see in my in my lifetime. Now, remember, I got to say, as a closing, keep in mind, a Vazimir rocket, even in low gear, right, even in low ISP with maximum thrust, still won't be able to launch off the surface of the earth. Gravity is is too high, right? Gravity is just way too high. It's thrust to weight ratio is too low. It's still not as good as chemical rocket. There are, however, extreme nuclear rocket designs that could make potentially a surface launch possible, but the engineering problems are non trivial, not to mention regulatory, environmental, and moral problems, since it would most likely or probably or maybe spew radiation over half a continent.

• 33:59Bob Novella?

  It could be nasty stuff, but it might it might work. It might work, but yeah. So it unfortunately, so it seems likely to me that the only reaction engine, you know, something that throws stuff out the back to take advantage of Newton's third law, the only reaction engine that will ever launch from the earth to orbit will probably be chemical rockets, unfortunately. But I hope orbital rings eventually will make them finally obsolete in a couple hundred years, but we're going to wait for that one.

• 34:25Speaker 05

  Not that slingshot, right?

• 34:27Bob Novella?

  No, Steve, I'm not orbital rings could make could make the chemical rockets obsolete because you won't you can get to the orbital rings because you could because you can get to them. They could be low altitude. They're not in low, you know, they're not in earth orbit. They're much, much lower because they're they're orbital rings, which are a different beast entirely, which we've never really talked about.

• 34:44Speaker 05

  Lord of the orbital rings.

• 34:46Bob Novella?

  Yeah, they're I mean, they're just super sci fi, physically possible, but yeah, very, very sci fi. But yeah, chemical rockets are here to stay, but I think nuclear rockets are going to it seems inevitable. They will take over deep space, you know, rocket missions and anything outside of earth orbit will probably go, you know, mostly nuclear and then eventually even fusion once we got those. But but in the so this this Vazimir with killer power, joining this marriage here between these two could be really could be a game changer that I hope we see in the next 10 to 15 years really, really take off.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  Whew. It, I mean, yeah, something like this is definitely going to be a game changer if we're ever going to be going to Mars and back, you know?

• 35:28Bob Novella?

  Yeah, yeah, I'm really getting optimistic about it because also you've got a lot of countries trying to control cis lunar space, the space between Earth and the moon. And it's not just like a science thing or a gee wow, how cool. This is like a government like control thing where like we must control this parcel of space. So that means they're going to dump a lot of money into it. And so, and we've talked about this a bit before, but I, so I think we, nuclear rockets will be very common in cis lunar space because you've got to move materiel vast distances between the Earth and the moon very efficiently, very fast. And you're not going to do that with chemical rockets. So the governments are going to start pouring money into nuclear rockets. And NASA has expressed interest in being part of that so that they can then take that

• 36:11Bob Novella?

  technology, whether it's, whether it's Vassamir or some other type of nuclear rocketry, take that and, and expand on it so that it can go beyond, beyond the moon to Mars. So we'll see one way or the other, just a matter of when.

• 36:24Speaker 02

  Well, everyone, we're going to take a quick break from our show to talk about one of our sponsors, Curiosity Weekly.

• 36:30Jay Novella?

  Guys, on Curiosity Weekly Podcast from Discovery, you're going to hear about some of the biggest questions and ideas shaping our world. And each week they will unpack breaking science and tech news with expert guests who make it all make sense.

• 36:44Bob Novella?

  Yeah, guys, this is a real go to breaking science podcast. They talk about stuff like, this one was good, a study that let AI tag along with a toddler to learn language the human way. That sounds pretty cool. The brightest object in the known universe. And check this one out, a bacteria that turns plastic into spider webs. Go to Curiosity Weekly to check that one out.

• 37:05Speaker 05

  Listen to Curiosity Weekly wherever you get your podcasts.

• 37:09Speaker 02

  All right, guys, let's get back to the show. Kara, get us up to date on some of the science surrounding the LA fires.

• 37:16Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay, so first, I guess, a little bit of an update just on the status of the fires, because they are much more contained than they were when we talked last week.

• 37:25Bob Novella?

  Oh, good.

• 37:26Cara Santa Maria?

  The fire that's closest to me, the Eaton Fire in Altadena, California, and Pasadena, California, it is now 14,117 acres and 45% contained. And southwest of me, the Palisades Fire, which is larger at 23,713 acres, is now 19% contained. We still don't have total numbers on how many structures have been destroyed. In terms of the death toll from the LA fires is 25 is the latest. So nine people in the Palisades Fire, 16 people in the Eaton Fire,

• 38:10Cara Santa Maria?

  but that number is probably going to rise. Today was another Santa Ana extreme wind warning day. I think the hope is that things will continue to get better and better after this. So I wanted to talk about a few things that came up for me. I think part of this is sort of like a PSA and part of it is, you know, obviously just keeping up with what's going on. But boots on the ground, these are the things that I recognize and that I found kind of important to focus on. The first one is I wanted to talk about this incredible app that if you live in LA, this has been your lifeline throughout this past week. It's called WatchDuty. If you don't have WatchDuty, I recognize, I recommend that you download it.

• 38:55Cara Santa Maria?

  Right now, it's only active in 22 states, but the plan is to become nationwide. And who knows, maybe it'll even go global eventually. This is an app that is very, very easy to use. It's a 501(c)(3), so it's a nonprofit. And it was co-founded by two individuals who really basically lived through a fire and recognized that it was just really hard to find information because different government agencies were posting things on different sites and some of the information wasn't coming out in real time. And if anybody knows when there's a disaster going on, how difficult it is to get up-to-date information and how easy it is to doom scroll.

• 39:38Cara Santa Maria?

  They would recognize why WatchDuty is so important. It's a map. It's a really clean, easy to read map that has every evac zone listed, whether it's a level two or a level three, whether it's a wait or a go. It shows the perimeter of the fire as soon as it's ready. It shows the containment. And then every press conference is summarized there. And there's a team of reporters who are vetted reporters, who publish within the app when you click on the fires, the latest information. So there's a quote from one of the co-founders that said, this came out of an idea that John had. He talked to me about it four years ago. We built the app in 60 days. It was run completely by volunteers, no full-time staff. So side project for a lot of engineers. So the aim was to keep it as simple as possible.

• 40:22Cara Santa Maria?

  Now there are full-time staff, but it's still very simple. There's no login. It doesn't scrape user data. And it's completely free. You don't have to pay for it and there's no ads. And their view is we're never going to sell this thing. We will fundraise if we have to. This is a public service. So here's a quote from the other co-founder, Merritt. We view what we were doing as a public service. It is a utility that everyone should have, which is timely, relevant information for their safety during emergencies. Right now, it's very scattered. Even the agencies themselves, which have the best intentions, their hands are tied by bureaucracy or contracts. We partner with government sources with a focus on firefighting. So they're able to get push delays out fast. Like 1.5 million people downloaded the thing in like a few days

• 41:07Cara Santa Maria?

  and it never crashed. Here's another quote that I think is a really important one. And this speaks to what we were talking about earlier. All information is vetted for quality over quantity. We have a code of conduct for reporters. For example, we never report on injuries or give specific addresses. It's all tailored with a specific set of criteria. We do not editorialize. We report on what we have heard on the scanners. And you know, this really did save lives. This app, we will probably, after the fact, be able to directly link it to saving lives because people were able to know when their evac zones were updated to the minute, which is a rare experience in a disaster of this, of this scale. Fire is fast, really fast.

• 41:51Cara Santa Maria?

  And the Santa Anas were blowing upwards of 90-plus miles per hour. It shifted very quickly. And in those first two days of the fire, the winds were too strong for air suppression. So this was just boots-on-the-ground firefighting. It spread like wildfire, as they say. Speaking of that, a friend of mine reached out to me during this whole thing and she goes, can they use salt water to put out a fire? And I was like, I don't know. And then we just stopped talking about it. And then a day later, I saw that the super scoopers were here. And I was like, OK, this is interesting. I want to dig a little bit deeper. So after the winds calmed down, a couple of days into the fire, these pilots flew planes, they're called super scoopers.

• 42:35Cara Santa Maria?

  And what they do is they skim 1,500 gallons of seawater out of the ocean. They just fly down to the surface of the ocean, skim the seawater, and then go dump it on the fires, just like they would freshwater or fire retardant. I had never seen or heard of this before. And so I found an interesting article online that was written by some researchers who are studying how high saline water affects inland ecosystems. Because it seems like a really obvious answer, right? The coast was burning. The fire spread literally to the shoreline. And all the houses along the shoreline in the Pacific Palisades and many in Malibu burned to the ground.

• 43:20Cara Santa Maria?

  So there's so much water right there. The hydrants were, at certain points, they couldn't keep the pressure up and they just weren't able to deliver the water because they're trying to fight. A basically a wildfire using a civic water system, which is not what it's built for. Why not use seawater? So it seems really obvious, but apparently there are some real downsides to this. I mean, we had to do it, but there are some real downsides. What do you guys think is a big one?

• 43:46Speaker 05

  Corrosion.

• 43:47Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. So not only is it corroding some of these firefighting systems, the firefighting equipment itself, but these researchers indicate that it may harm ecosystems. So.

• 43:59Bob Novella?

  Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

• 44:01Cara Santa Maria?

  Mm hmm. And we're starting to see this as a problem more and more, not just in these urban wildfires scenarios, but also as climate change brings coastlines higher and deeper. Ecosystems that were never exposed to saltwater are now getting higher salinity, or they're finding themselves in higher salinity environments. And excessive salts can stress and kill plants. So these researchers did an experiment called Tempest, where they went into these forests, basically, and they added different salinities of water. They did it over the course of several years. They first did a 10-hour exposure of salty water that was a little bit more brackish, and they found that like it didn't really affect the forest. The next year, they exposed it for 20 hours.

• 44:45Cara Santa Maria?

  And the forest was mostly okay, but some of the poplar trees were like acting a little funny. They started drawing water too slowly. And then the next year, they did a 30-hour exposure, but something major shifted that year, and that's that the rains didn't come. So what they think happened is that a lot of that salt was never washed away, and things went south after the 30-hour exposure and the lack of rain. A lot of the trees started to brown in mid-August instead of late September. The forest canopy was bare by mid-September, like it was already winter. So it just, the forest switched over much earlier. And then they also found that the water that was draining through the soils was brown instead of clear.

• 45:28Cara Santa Maria?

  So it wasn't maintaining its typical filtration capabilities. It was absorbing all sorts of clays and silts and different particulates and taking it with it, which could have. You know, intense downstream effects because you didn't have the water system operating as normal. So these researchers, they still don't know what the downstream effects of salt dumping on areas that aren't used to saltwater will have, but they have a feeling that it's going to be large. And so that's going to be something that we're going to have to look out for here in SoCal because, yes, large areas of forest and urban water supplies are overrun with saltwater because of these super scoopers, but they also put out the fires and that's, you know, really important.

• 46:13Cara Santa Maria?

  Oof. And what else are we going to be cleaning up for a while, but we shouldn't clean up right now? That is the ash and the pollution. And so that's the last thing I wanted to touch on is these deadly downstream risks from these fires. So if you live in LA, even if you were far from the fires, you are dealing with hazardous air right now. And there's a lot of chatter about even if the AQI looks good, don't take that number at face value, not because it's not measuring what it says it's measuring, but it doesn't measure some of the things that are threatening to Angelenos right now. So AQI, air quality index, is a measure of how hazardous the air is outside to breathe. It's a measure of pollution and

• 46:58Cara Santa Maria?

  it factors in a lot of different variables. One of the big ones is that 2.5 PM, you guys have heard of this, you see it on air filters sometimes. Anybody know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Yeah, right. Well, no, the PM is actually just particulate matter. Oh, wow. Yeah. PM, not PPM, okay. Yeah, not PPM, PM. So PM 2.5, you'll also sometimes see PM 10. Like, I have two Dyson air pit filters that I bought after the last fire, when things were really smoky. And they give you a bunch of different readings. I'm trying to think of all the things they tell you, like the ozone, maybe, but they, the first two are always PM 2.5 and PM 10. So that stands for particulate matter 2.5 microns or less and particulate matter 10

• 47:43Cara Santa Maria?

  microns or less. Today, when you look outside, it looks clear.

• 47:49Cara Santa Maria?

  The smoke is not as nearly as thick. And sometimes people go, oh, it looks clear. It must be healthy. The scary thing is the things that are the most dangerous for you, you can't see them because they're small. So something that is a 2.5 PM, which is so smaller than 2.5 microns, can enter your lungs. Sometimes they're so small that they can enter your bloodstream directly through your lungs.

• 48:15Bob Novella?

  Whoa.

• 48:16Cara Santa Maria?

  Larger particles, PM10 or larger, they're usually caught by your nasal epithelium. They're usually caught, you know, by your throat before they get into your respiratory tract or your bloodstream. And very often, when we look at AQI, there are, there's a combination of factors that go into the algorithm for calculating AQI. Certain things that are in the air right now from these fires are not even measured by an AQI index. So when a house that was built in 1920 goes up in flames, you can expect asbestos, volatiles from paint, plastics, a lot of different plastic. Because it's not just the house, right?

• 49:01Cara Santa Maria?

  It's all the furniture. It's the varnishes. It's the adhesives that were used.

• 49:05Bob Novella?

  Everything, yeah.

• 49:05Cara Santa Maria?

  It's every single thing. And that's becoming like aerosolized and it's, it's spreading for miles. So I, I mentioned this last week, but I, I think it bears repeating. At its worst, where I live in my house, the AQI was 375.

• 49:21Bob Novella?

  What's normal for you?

• 49:22Cara Santa Maria?

  Good, healthy air is between zero and 50. Zero to 50 means that satisfactory, you can go outside, fine. 50 to 100 is semi-normal in Los Angeles. That means that it's acceptable. They call it moderate. But there may be a risk for people who have like asthma or other respiratory sensitivities. A hundred to 150, now we're talking unhealthy for sensitive groups. We sometimes see this in LA when the smog is very, very thick. So sensitive groups may experience health effects, but the general public may not notice. 150 to 200, unhealthy. That's the label that's used. Flat out unhealthy. All of last week, we never dipped below this.

• 50:03Cara Santa Maria?

  So every time, even when we had a good air day, it was like 160, 170. 200 to 300, very unhealthy. This is a health alert. The risk of health effects is increased for everyone. And then 300 plus is called hazardous. That's when they show you the icon of the gas mask and they say health warning of emergency conditions. Everyone is more likely to be affected. So at its worst, on, I think it was Tuesday of last week, it might've been Wednesday. The AQI was 375 and hovering between 350 and 375 for several hours, most of the day. It smelled like a campfire on the ground floor of my house. And when you walked outside, you would immediately cough or sneeze. So, you know, obviously I'm still not leaving the house without an N95.

• 50:46Cara Santa Maria?

  And that is the public guidance right now is to wear a respirator when you leave the house, even if the AQI looks low. Because even if those 2.5 PMs aren't being picked up, there may be volatile, volatiles in the air that aren't measured by AQI. So it's very, very important to remember that the fires are still burning. There's still a lot in the air. The ash on the ground is toxic. The ash on the ground is the large particulate matter that was made from houses, furniture, and cars burning. This is not a wildfire. It's a wild urban fire. So the things that were burning were not just trees and we have to remember that. Oh, yeah.

• 51:31Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, there's guidance right now. You cannot use leaf blowers in Los Angeles. Do not think that it is safe to take a leaf blower or even a broom to sweep all that ash off of your property. You're putting it right back into the air. It's very, very dangerous. Here is an expert in the health effects of air pollution at UC San Diego, said that Los Angeles in particular saw air pollution levels that could be raising daily mortality by between 5 and 15% just due to the air pollution alone from these fires. And obviously, people with respiratory sensitivities, children and older adults are more vulnerable. So be smart. Wear a respirator when you go outside. Wear your N95s. I know you have a stash left over from COVID. I don't leave my house without

• 52:13Cara Santa Maria?

  one, even if it seems kind of, you know, clearer in these past couple of days. The fires are still burning. The winds are still shifting. And we still don't know. That's the thing. We don't know the long-term effects because usually when we study the health effects of wildfire exposure, it's a one and done, or it's once and then again 10 years later. But when we're getting hit by wildfires in the same area and they're wild slash urban fires and you're getting multiple exposures a year, you know, that's going to change things a lot. Here is a lovely quote from Dr. Lisa Patel, a pediatrician in San Francisco Bay and executive director of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health. She said, "We are breathing in this toxic brew of volatile organic compounds

• 52:58Cara Santa Maria?

  and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and hexavalent chromium. All of it is noxious."

• 53:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, one of the things that I heard reported was that, you know, the fire got so hot that the water pipes were melting or breaking and therefore water was leaking from a lot of locations, which was further reducing the water pressure and frustrating attempts at obviously controlling the fire. Like, that's not a thing that you deal with in a wildfire, but you do.

• 53:24Cara Santa Maria?

  No, you never do. And you wouldn't, you wouldn't be tapping urban hydrants in a wildfire. They're not built for that. They're not built to all be tapped at the same time.

• 53:33Bob Novella?

  Right, exactly.

• 53:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, for like one building, that one building's on fire.

• 53:36Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. And so that's, that's why I think it's so frustrating when, because everybody's upset, everybody's angry, but it's really heartbreaking being here in the city and seeing all the chatter. That's like, it's your fault. It's your fault. It's your, it's all you're hearing right now. Not so much within the city, but from outside, kind of pointing fingers at LA and saying, "Well, if this hadn't happened, this wouldn't have happened." Here's the thing. Climate change is real. The humidity outside right now is 25%. It hasn't rained so far this, quote, rainy season. You know, usually by January, it's rained. We talked about this last week. Fire season is usually summer, a little bit spring, a little fall.

• 54:19Cara Santa Maria?

  Santa Ana season is usually winter, a little bit spring, a little bit fall. The problem is when the Santa Ana's come, but fire season never left because we didn't get any rain. So now the winds are at their worst and it's as dry as it's ever been outside. It's a recipe for disaster and that's what's happening right now.

• 54:38Speaker 05

  Perfect storm.

• 54:39Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, and we do not have a wildfire water system in the middle of the Pacific Palisades.

• 54:48Speaker 05

  Because what? Show me the city or the place on the earth that can handle something like this. I don't know it.

• 54:55Speaker 02

  All right, thanks, Kara. All right, guys, this is an interesting news item. Is that some researchers did an analysis of how much carbon could we store in building materials realistically? And could this be have any kind of significant impact on our, you know, net carbon? So the idea is, you know, this is carbon sequestration, right? As we spoke about many times, we could reduce our, the amount of carbon that we're releasing into the environment, but unless we get it down to zero, we're still going to be increasing the amount of carbon. And further, we're never going to be decreasing it unless we can get it to be negative.

• 55:36Speaker 02

  The only way to do that is to pull carbon out of the air, out of the environment, and then store it in some kind of long-term way. It's not very permanent, permanent, but it should be, you know, hundreds of years at least, right? We want to take it out of circulation. So like growing trees is one way to store carbon. Trees take carbon out of the air and start store it in solid form, but they give that carbon back when they rot or burn or whatever. So that's medium term ish, like a long-lived tree might help for the time being.

• 56:07Speaker 05

  Artificial trees, like, you know, that that won't die. They'll they'll hold the carbon.

• 56:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, or we talked about just burying the trees, you know.

• 56:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, right.

• 56:16Speaker 02

  But but.

• 56:16Bob Novella?

  More sequoias.

• 56:17Speaker 02

  But burying carbon in some form reuses up land. It may have environmental impacts. And that there's a lot of logistical issues with that. But what if we could store the carbon in stuff, in stuff that we're making anyway, that's going to exist anyway. We're not burying it. We're just building stuff out of it.

• 56:40Speaker 05

  Right. As long as it's not disposable, right? It's the long, like you said, that lasts a long.

• 56:44Speaker 02

  They have to be things that last for a long time.

• 56:45Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, like roads.

• 56:46Speaker 05

  Long lifetime.

• 56:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, roads. So asphalt is one.

• 56:49Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 56:49Speaker 02

  Another is concrete, right?

• 56:52Speaker 05

  Well, concrete, yeah, but you have to, you have to make a lot of carbon to make concrete, right?

• 56:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's the whole point. You got to make a lot of carbon and that that's we want to do that. We want to store carbon in these large scale things. Also wood, obviously. Uh, we can, we could do it just by growing trees or by making wood-like products. And plastics, plastic-like stuff you can make out of carbon and brick, you know, basically things that are bricks. So cement, asphalt, plastics, wood and brick. So if we took those building materials, how much material do you think that is?

• 57:34Speaker 05

  You mean in terms of how much carbon it could have?

• 57:36Speaker 02

  No, no, in terms of how much does all that stuff weigh? How many, how many tons of stuff is that per year do we make of concrete, asphalt, plastics, wood and brick?

• 57:47Speaker 05

  Holy moly.

• 57:48Bob Novella?

  Four?

• 57:50Speaker 05

  Four trillion? I don't know. I have no idea.

• 57:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, if I couple orders of mag today, about, so it's more than 30 billion.

• 58:00Speaker 05

  30 billion.

• 58:00Speaker 02

  30 billion. Right. How much carbon do we release into the atmosphere every year?

• 58:04Speaker 05

  Four.

• 58:06Bob Novella?

  More than 30 billion.

• 58:08Speaker 02

  This year, you know, we hit a new record, 40 billion tons.

• 58:14Bob Novella?

  So.

• 58:14Speaker 02

  Forty gigatons. Yeah. So.

• 58:17Bob Novella?

  Not good.

• 58:18Speaker 02

  Right. So what if, what if most of that stuff was built out of carbon that we were sequestering?

• 58:25Bob Novella?

  That'd be nice.

• 58:26Speaker 02

  We're on the same order of magnitude as the amount that is being, uh, that's being released. You know, of CO2 that's being released. Obviously, we want to get that amount down. If we can get that 40 billion tons down to, say, 10 billion tons or 5 billion tons. Um, you know, obviously the goal is to get to quote unquote net zero, but that last bit is going to be really hard. Even if we can get down to, say, to 5 billion tons of carbon that we're releasing every year. But what if we could sequester 10 billion tons, right? Then we could actually be net carb, net carbon negative for a bit, uh, until we settle into pre-industrial levels or, or somewhere between where we are now and pre-industrial levels.

• 59:11Bob Novella?

  Yeah. Anything helps.

• 59:13Speaker 02

  Somewhere before the, the climate started to go haywire.

• 59:16Bob Novella?

  How do we grab all that stuff?

• 59:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, yeah. So there's a couple of questions here, you know? One is how do we get a hold of that carbon in the first place?

• 59:25Bob Novella?

  Isn't that the, the hardest part of this?

• 59:27Speaker 02

  Yes. Yeah, it is. And the second part is how do we make it into these types of materials? Once you do, you know, once you, if you could make mostly carbon concrete, which actually is strong.

• 59:40Bob Novella?

  It sounds strong.

• 59:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, you could, if you could make like carbon nanofibers and infuse that into the carbon, into the concrete. It actually, we've talked about this before, it actually gives you very strong concrete. Same thing, what, you know, carbon-based plastics and are also good. And wood is wood, right? You just have, you know, this is the matter of using wood in, in a way, treating it so that it lasts for hundreds of years, not 10s of years. Uh, for example, and brick is rock, you know, so if you just make a, you know, a brick that has a lot of carbon. So the, what the analysis they did was, all right, so realistically, given the methods that we have today, if we try to store as much carbon as possible

• 1:00:22Speaker 02

  in these materials, how much could we store? It's obviously not 30 billion because these things are not going to be pure carbon, but they estimated that it would be 16.6 plus or minus 2.8 billion tons. So, you know, we're talking roughly 16, 17 billion tons of carbon per year. That's pretty good.

• 1:00:47Bob Novella?

  That's a lot.

• 1:00:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:48Speaker 05

  Not insignificant.

• 1:00:49Speaker 02

  That's, that's about half of the CO2 emissions that we had in 2021. Again, we're higher than that now. So again, if we can, if we can get down to, that, that is significant. That's huge. You know, that would significantly reduce our net carbon and, and makes it very plausible that we could get to net negative or net zero at least, right? If we, if we got, again, down to 10 to 15 billion tons of carbon per year, then, uh, then we could do that. So what are some methods for getting the carbon in the first place? The easiest method is growing stuff, right? That plants are the most efficient method we have of taking carbon out of the air and putting it into solid form.

• 1:01:29Speaker 05

  Tried and true.

• 1:01:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:30Bob Novella?

  Biotechnology, baby.

• 1:01:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it uses space, right? It uses either land or water to do that. We don't, and as we've discussed many times, like we're pretty much using all of our land to grow food. You know, we, we don't have the amount of like vast tracts of land to, um, to convert into the, into carbon sequestration, but you could use waste biomass, right? You take all that biomass that is not edible, that is not food, but that would otherwise be waste and you, you convert that into, you know, carbon that can be used in cement or, or brick or made into plastic or whatever. Uh, so that, that's the, those are the processes

• 1:02:15Speaker 02

  that they're talking about. Then there are other sources of CO2 as well, um, ash and whatnot that you can use. Now the, the, uh, The trickiest one, of course, is like directly pulling CO2 out of the air.

• 1:02:31Bob Novella?

  I love that option.

• 1:02:33Speaker 02

  It sounds the sexiest, but of course it uses energy. So it depends on where that energy is coming from. It doesn't, you can't burn fossil fuel to run the process. You have to use solar power, wind power, or water power, whatever.

• 1:02:47Bob Novella?

  Or nuclear power.

• 1:02:49Speaker 02

  Or even nuclear power.

• 1:02:52Speaker 02

  But

• 1:02:52Bob Novella?

  Killer power.

• 1:02:53Speaker 02

  The problem, the problem is doing that to scale. We can do it. You can do it. Just not to the industrial scale necessary to be really significant. So basically, we're talking about biomass. That's going to be the primary mechanism of getting carbon into these, into this material. So, you know, this is, this again, this is a thought experiment kind of study where they're just doing the math. Say, does it, does it add up? Is it feasible? How much, what, how much are we talking about here? And the numbers look good. You've just got to do it. You don't even, we have to build the infrastructure and the technology to do this and do it on a massive scale.

• 1:03:37Speaker 02

  I do think something like this is going to be necessary. It's going to be extremely hard to get to net zero. And just getting close isn't enough, right? We're still going to be adding more CO2 to the atmosphere. You know, we haven't even turned the corner yet. And we're talking about doing this. We haven't even reduced the amount by which we're increasing the CO2 in the atmosphere. That's still going up. But, and partly because we are increasing the percentage of our energy that's coming from low CO2 sources. But we're increasing the amount of energy we're using more. Right? So, and that's probably going to continue to be the case between now and 2050, 2060, when we're supposed to, you know, hit net zero.

• 1:04:21Speaker 02

  That's why, you know, if you look at it, what percentage of our power is from renewable energy, blah, blah, blah? It's going up. It's great. But we're still burning as much, if not more fossil fuel than we ever had because our energy demand is going up too. So we have to increase renewables and low carbon sources by more than.

• 1:04:41Speaker 02

  Significantly more than we're increasing our energy demand, which probably not going to do with wind and solar alone. That's why we need nuclear. It's just, it's just not going to happen without nuclear.

• 1:04:53Speaker 05

  Has to be part of the, a big part of it.

• 1:04:55Bob Novella?

  Space nukes, baby.

• 1:04:57Speaker 05

  There you go, Bob.

• 1:04:59Speaker 02

  Well, everyone, we're going to take a quick break from our show to talk about one of our sponsors this week, Rocket Money.

• 1:05:04Jay Novella?

  Guys, you can use Rocket Money to help you get control of your monthly expenses. You'll see all of your subscriptions in one place, and if you want to cancel any of them, they'll help you do it. You can also see all of your spending across all of your different accounts, so you can keep track of your spending habits and help you figure out what changes you want to make.

• 1:05:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, so Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitor your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Rocket Money has over 5 million users and has saved a total of $500 million in canceled subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year when using all of the app's premium features.

• 1:05:44Bob Novella?

  Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to rocketmoney.com slash SGU today. Rocketmoney.com slash SGU. That's rocketmoney.com slash SGU.

• 1:05:57Speaker 02

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

• 1:06:01Speaker 02

  All right, Jay.

• 1:06:03Jay Novella?

  It's who's that noisy time? All right, guys, last week I played this noisy.

• 1:06:12Jay Novella?

  All right, well, while you're trying to figure out what the hell that is, I did get some people guessing. A listener named Beth Earlacker said, hi, Jay, my 10-year-old son Aiden wanted to guess this week's noisy. He thinks it's an old excavator toy that that talks. And then she gave me the pronunciation. It's Earl Locker. Earl Locker. Stavus Maples said, this week's noisy is someone trying to start a truck. This was most likely be correct in some way. Another person, Vito Tuti, this noisy is bizarre. I can only think that it's the sound of a Japanese vending machine with synthesized voice. I don't hear that, anything like that in there. That's a very interesting guess. Michael Blaney wrote

• 1:06:55Jay Novella?

  in and said, hi, Jay. Hmm, it's kind of, it kind of reminds me of when I turn off my handheld vacuum cleaner, the powering down of the motor makes a really weird sci-fi-like recharge sound. So I guess that's my guess. It's a small electric motor powering down. And then, the final guess was from Evil Eye. A pull-string toy like the old Farmer Says thing, and the spring inside breaking or recoiling inside. It had the dial on the outside that pointed to the, to the animal. I used to love that.

• 1:07:24Speaker 05

  Oh yeah. The cat says.

• 1:07:26Jay Novella?

  I get that. Alright, no guess on this one, guys.

• 1:07:29Speaker 05

  No correct guess.

• 1:07:30Jay Novella?

  I knew that this one was very hard, but it's a cool sound. I'll play it again, see if this stirs anything in any of you guys.

• 1:07:41Jay Novella?

  Alright, let, let me walk you through it. What's the first thing that you hear?

• 1:07:44Bob Novella?

  Scratching.

• 1:07:45Speaker 05

  Some scratchy thing.

• 1:07:46Jay Novella?

  Alright, li- listen again.

• 1:07:49Speaker 05

  A bird.

• 1:07:49Cara Santa Maria?

  Birds.

• 1:07:50Jay Novella?

  What's that, that whooshy sound? Try again. Forget, forget the tweaking, the birds and stuff. What's the whooshy sound?

• 1:07:59Speaker 05

  Snow. Like someone scraping something.

• 1:08:02Bob Novella?

  It's something rotating around and, um...

• 1:08:05Jay Novella?

  Alright, I'll tell you what it is. Listen again.

• 1:08:07Bob Novella?

  Tell me.

• 1:08:10Jay Novella?

  Alright, that's fire.

• 1:08:11Speaker 05

  Fire.

• 1:08:12Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh.

• 1:08:12Jay Novella?

  Okay.

• 1:08:13Cara Santa Maria?

  Doesn't sound like fire.

• 1:08:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, not here at all.

• 1:08:15Jay Novella?

  Now, listen again to the whole thing.

• 1:08:21Jay Novella?

  Alright, what's the high pitched noise?

• 1:08:23Cara Santa Maria?

  A child?

• 1:08:25Jay Novella?

  A child?

• 1:08:26Cara Santa Maria?

  It sounds like somebody going, "Ah."

• 1:08:29Bob Novella?

  Yeah, it does.

• 1:08:30Jay Novella?

  Alright, so...

• 1:08:31Bob Novella?

  Sound a little human, but...

• 1:08:33Jay Novella?

  You may have seen a video of this...

• 1:08:34Cara Santa Maria?

  Is it one of those things in the fireplace? Like the "wee-hoo, wee-hoo, wee-hoo" things?

• 1:08:37Jay Novella?

  Nope.

• 1:08:38Bob Novella?

  Gas in the wood, burning?

• 1:08:40Speaker 05

  That was...

• 1:08:41Jay Novella?

  No, that was last week.

• 1:08:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:08:43Bob Novella?

  Thought it sounded familiar.

• 1:08:44Jay Novella?

  Okay, so, I've seen videos of people doing this many, many times. It's pretty interesting. What they do is, they'll use fuels, some kind of fuel, to reinflate a flat tire. Right, so they're lighting the fuel. It catches on fire, it, you know, the fuel like goes inside the tire. And then, you know, the gas that it produces expands really fast, and it actually can take a completely flat and even almost, you know, a tire that's not completely touching the rim, and it'll reinflate it.

• 1:09:17Speaker 05

  I've seen videos of that. It's pretty incredible.

• 1:09:20Jay Novella?

  Yeah, and it grips the, uh, the rim again.

• 1:09:22Speaker 05

  Looks dangerous.

• 1:09:24Bob Novella?

  Oh yeah.

• 1:09:25Jay Novella?

  I, I bet you there's lots of ways that that can go wrong. So, it's really cool. You could definitely look this up. Um, if you've never seen it, I really suggest that you do it, because it is a pretty impressive thing. Here it is one more last time.

• 1:09:40Jay Novella?

  Yeah, so that-

• 1:09:41Speaker 05

  Would've never guessed that sound was that.

• 1:09:43Bob Novella?

  Still not seeing it, but okay.

• 1:09:44Jay Novella?

  So that ping noise, that high pitched ping noise is the actual air expanding inside the wheel well.

• 1:09:51Speaker 05

  Dang.

• 1:09:52Jay Novella?

  And then the tire re-gripping onto the rim. Very cool. And no winner, so you know, I knew it was hard, but I think it's an instructional who's that noisy, because it's something you can learn about. A listener named Corey Hawes sent in this new Noisia, and I hope you guys like it.

• 1:10:22Jay Novella?

  If you guys think you know what this week's noisy is, or you heard something cool, email me at [email protected]. Few quick repeat announcements here. Nauticon 2025, it's gonna be awesome. We talk about it all the time, because we went to the last one and we all loved it. It was highly regaled as the absolute best thing that Steven Novella has ever done over the course of two and a half days.

• 1:10:51Jay Novella?

  And Steve's lack of response is proof of that.

• 1:10:54Cara Santa Maria?

  I think he was only there one and a half days, wasn't he?

• 1:10:57Speaker 05

  That's right, yeah.

• 1:10:58Jay Novella?

  But it was an intense one and a half days. No, he came two hours late, and we busted on him mercilessly.

• 1:11:04Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, we did. We rewrote history with that one.

• 1:11:06Speaker 05

  Those were critical two hours.

• 1:11:07Jay Novella?

  Let me tell you, when Steve walked in late, after I busted his stones for two hours.

• 1:11:16Jay Novella?

  He walks in, everybody looks at him, and starts laughing right in his face. It was awesome. It was awesome. And then Steve gets this nervous smile on his face, like, uh-oh, what did I miss?

• 1:11:27Speaker 05

  What did I walk into? What did I walk into, or what did Jay do?

• 1:11:33Jay Novella?

  Anyway, please join us to Noticon 2025. Join us. We have a Beatles theme this year. We will definitely be doing a Beatles sing-along on Saturday night led by George Robb. There will be lots of surprises during that sing-along. So please do consider coming. You can talk to people on the SGU Discord if you're interested. If you're looking for a roommate or share a ride, go to noticoncon.com or go to the skepticsguide.org and there's a link to it on our homepage. You could join the SGU mailing list. Go to the SGU homepage for that. Every week we give a list of everything that we've done the previous week and it's definitely worth getting because there's some humor in there and a word of the week and lots of other pieces of information that you might like. So please consider joining our mailing list.

• 1:12:19Jay Novella?

  Please give us a show rating on whatever podcast player you're using. This helps new people find our podcast. And last but not least, please consider becoming an SGU patron. You could do this by going to patreon.com/skepticsguide. It's pretty damn obvious why it's more important now than ever in the past 20 years of the SGU. So if you're interested in helping us out in any way, it could be a dollar a month. Any contribution would help. Go to patreon.com/skepticsguide.

• 1:12:54Speaker 02

  Thank you, Jay. Well, we have a great interview coming up with Nick Tiller. So let's go to that interview now.

• 1:13:09Speaker 02

  We are joined now by Dr. Nick Tiller. Nick, welcome to the Skeptics Guide.

• 1:13:13Speaker 07

  Hi, it's great to be talking to you guys. Very excited. I'm a longtime listener to the show, so I'm super excited to be chatting with you all.

• 1:13:19Speaker 02

  Oh, thanks. So Nick, you are an exercise scientist and a science communicator promoting sort of critical thinking in the exercise and sports medicine realm. We actually met when we were at SciCon and you and I had a little bit of overlap in our time in Dubai recently, so I did get to meet you in person. Yeah, that was nice. We had wonderful food at that restaurant. I mean, it was...

• 1:13:43Speaker 07

  We had some great food there.

• 1:13:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was really good. I love Middle Eastern food, but it's like saying, I like European food. You know what I mean? Like, there's so many different kinds. You're a peach.

• 1:13:52Speaker 07

  And actually, you know, just on that, on that trip to Dubai, you know, Steve and I were out there. And I think, Steve, you and I had very similar experiences with this group, you know, this group of sort of young entrepreneurs, CEOs. And, you know, we were, we were talking about critical thinking. And I was talking more about critical thinking overlapping with exercise science. And they were, they were such a fantastic group, just so tuned in. So they were asking so many fantastic astute questions. And whenever I'm running a, this is a three hour workshop, and they were absolutely clued in from the first slide to the last. So that was a really pleasurable experience for me.

• 1:14:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, they were like the perfect audience. Because as you said, they were very engaged, very smart, very clued in, but were completely naive to the whole critical thinking angle. You know what I mean? So like, it was all new to them, pretty much. So yeah, very receptive, great questions. But I could tell them anything from my third past 30 years of skepticism, they never heard it before. So let's talk about the work that you've been doing. You've published a book called The Skeptic's Guide to Sports Medicine. Tell us about that. What topics do you cover in that book?

• 1:14:57Speaker 07

  Yeah, well, I hasten to add that the title is really, I named it in tribute to the SGU. And I wrote about in the introduction to the book, how I found the SGU, and you guys acted as my gateway into scientific skepticism and critical thinking. And I came up with the idea for the book when I was doing my PhD. This was back in 2011. My PhD was focused on, on human applied physiology with a specialism in respiratory medicine. And I was a poor, broke student at the time. And so to make ends meet, I started to write for mainstream science outlets. And I wrote two articles, there were, one was the follow up to the second. And it was, and they were called Myths and Fallacies of Sport Science, Part One and Part Two. And I just thought, this is something that

• 1:15:42Speaker 07

  I'm interested in. It combines my personal passion for scientific skepticism with my professional work in applied exercise physiology. And I got really positive feedback from that. And it occurred to me that nobody's really doing this. Nobody is trying to bridge the gap, this huge void. Between critical thinking and exercise science or health and fitness more broadly. And that was sort of the, I guess, that was sowing the seeds of the book. And then about eight years later, the skeptic's guide to sports science was published. And so that's essentially what I tried to do. That is the book's thesis is to bridge the gap between critical thinking and exercise science, which is, it's a, there's a big gulf there. So there's a lot of work that needs to be done.

• 1:16:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not just like a lack of critical thinking. There's an active industry of misinformation, right? In the wellness, exercise, dieting space that we're confronting. It's not just, oh, people don't really understand it. It's like they're being lied to, they're being given misinformation. So what's the biggest, what's the biggest kind of misinformation you encounter in that area?

• 1:16:48Speaker 07

  Well, I think very specifically, I guess it's about, I think nutrition is one of those areas that everybody likes to, everybody thinks is very important because it is. And everybody thinks that they know a little bit about nutrition. But actually, it's probably one of those areas that is most misunderstood and mostly misappropriated as well. Because under nutrition, you have fad diets, you have dietary supplements, you have performance enhancing supplements as well. And so that's, that's a huge can of worms. But I think, speaking more broadly, the entire health and wellness industry hinges on this idea that there is some kind of quick fix, that there is some kind of shortcut, there is some

• 1:17:26Speaker 02

  Superfood.

• 1:17:27Speaker 07

  magic equation that we have to unlock. The number of times that I've been asked, Nick, what's the secret to being in shape? What's the secret to true health and wellness? You know, and it's like, well, how do you even, it's like asking Evan, like Evan, how do you do your taxes? It's like, what do you, you want me to summarize that in a 30 second soundbite? I mean, it's, it's complicated. But inevitably, when you say to people, look, the secret is that there is no secret. You have to eat well, don't drink, don't smoke and exercise every day. I mean, that's, that's the secret equation. But of course, we are primed in health and wellness to want a quick fix, some kind of magic supplement, a special exercise.

• 1:18:11Speaker 07

  Program, you know, they want me to tell them that if they eat grapefruits every day, they'll lose weight or, uh, you know, they just do an ice plunge every day and, and it'll boost your immune system. But the human body is a little bit more complicated than that, unfortunately.

• 1:18:24Bob Novella?

  Yeah, it's, it's often, yeah, it's no, nothing quick. It's just, it's just hard work and consistency. In my experience, those, if you don't have two of those, especially consistency, that's when I'd seen some of my biggest gains throughout my life is like when you could stick with it, find something that you enjoy, even if it's not the optimal, like this is the best cardio that you could possibly do. It's the most efficient. It doesn't matter because if, if it's the most efficient and best for you, but you don't do it, then it's not helpful at all. But if it's something that's like, you know, maybe not as, as, as awesomely efficient as cross-country skiing or something like that, but it's something that you enjoy, you're going to stick with it and just do something that you enjoy that moves your body. And if, if the studies have showed anything, it's like you don't have to do a lot. It doesn't take that

• 1:19:07Bob Novella?

  much to, uh, you know, to have a noticeable benefit to your, to your health. Just be, move around, move around.

• 1:19:15Speaker 07

  Agree more. It's adherence. Everything it comes down to adherence and if you don't enjoy it, you're not going to adhere to it. You know, some people try going to the gym and they hate going to the gym. So, okay, well, don't go to the gym. You know, some people try and go running and they hate it. Okay, just, it doesn't matter what you do, just move. The more you move, the better. And once you start seeing those benefits, whether they're cardiovascular benefits or people are losing weight or, uh, you know, they're, they're getting stronger, whatever, whatever it happens to be, you'll be motivated to continue once you start seeing benefits. But yeah, it's just, if you're not gonna, you're not gonna keep doing it unless you enjoy it. So enjoyment is the key.

• 1:19:53Speaker 05

  Nick, only because you mentioned it, you said ice baths and I was going to bring up Wim Hof to see if you've done research in regards to him, you know, Dutch extreme athlete, famous for his ability to withstand extreme cold. And he has some, a method that he, I guess sells to people. If you follow his routine, it will lead you to better results. Any, any, any truth to this?

• 1:20:15Speaker 07

  Well, generally speaking, most people will engage in some kind of like ice bathing or ice dunking or some kind of cold water immersion, not just because they think that it's going to improve their recovery or boost their immune system, but because it it fits into a lifestyle, right? And most of the time in health and wellness, you're very rarely selling somebody a particular product. You're selling them a lifestyle. You're selling them a way to shape their own personal identity. So that's kind of the best way that I can describe Wim Hofers. In in most cases, it's not going to do do harm. There are going to be some instances where people, you know, they have some kind of pre-existing cardiovascular disease that they didn't know about. Maybe they shouldn't be ice dunking. And cold shock

• 1:21:00Speaker 07

  is a real thing, you know, so there's there's always this risk of of over harm. But with most people use ice bathing because it's entrenched in the exercise culture and definitely sporting culture. People think that it's actually facilitates recovery. And it all comes back to this idea that, you know, when you have an injury, that you should stick ice on the injury because it reduces the inflammation. And that there's, you know, that in itself has been contested a bunch of times, because, you know, inflammation isn't necessarily a bad thing when it comes to when it comes to repairing an injury. But you know, there's more and more research now that shows with ice bathing specifically that if anything, it actually inhibits recovery. It actually suppresses muscle protein synthesis.

• 1:21:45Speaker 07

  And it suppresses anabolic signaling in the muscle. So if you have like a hard workout, especially if you're an athlete, and then you go and sit in a cold tub or an ice bath for 10 minutes, it's actually going to slow your rate of recovery. So contrary to popular belief, but this is a is a an activity now that is so entrenched in sport and exercise culture that I don't think any amount of evidence is ever going to change that, unfortunately.

• 1:22:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, I agree.

• 1:22:13Jay Novella?

  Isn't that ironic, right? It's like the exact opposite. So you said it slows it down, but eventually the same level of recovery will be achieved, right?

• 1:22:23Speaker 07

  Right, yeah, I think I understand the question. You mean like if you wait for long enough, then you'll recover back to baseline level. Well, yes and no, because you think if somebody's exercising regularly, they might be, especially if they're a high-performance athlete, they might be training twice a day, three times a day. And actually, if they're blunting the rate at which they recover after each training session, that could have cumulative effects on recovery. So there's nothing to say that actually they'll rebound back to baseline levels. Ice bathing, if you're interested in repairing the muscle tissue after hard exercise, hard training, then definitely don't go on ice bath. And unfortunately, that's

• 1:23:05Speaker 07

  just the tip of the iceberg, pun intended, because a lot of people say that we should be using ice baths to boost immunity, and because it promotes healing, and it protects from cancer, and it can protect you from COVID-19. I mean, if you can think it, people will make those claims.

• 1:23:25Speaker 02

  You have a, it says on your website, you have a couple of other books coming out, one called The Health and Wellness Lie. And we talked a little bit about this when we were together, like wellness, like the whole idea of wellness, basically is a scam, like the entire industry. So tell us about some of the things that you've confronted in the wellness industry that gets you going the most.

• 1:23:46Speaker 07

  Yeah, thanks for bringing up the book. So this hopefully will be published early next year, and it's going to be published in the US with Johns Hopkins University Press, in the UK and Europe with Bloomsbury Publishing of Harry Potter fame. And the Health and Wellness Lie is basically, it's a thesis on this idea that everything we know, everything we think we know about health and wellness, has basically been dictated to us by an industry that doesn't actually care for our health or our wellness. So that could be the fact that when somebody wants to lose weight, they go on a fad diet. And what happens? They

• 1:24:28Speaker 07

  lose a little bit of weight in the opening weeks or months of the diet. The thing isn't sustainable in the long term. Inevitably, they they regain all of the weight that they've lost. A third of people that follow a fad diet actually gain more weight than they originally lost. So they end up weighing more than they did at the start. And then they just bounce from one fad diet to the next, engaging in what we call yo-yo dieting. And it has really negative long-term effects on cardiovascular health. There, when people want to improve their immune function, they'll start taking supplements. When people want to improve their recovery, they'll have cupping and they'll have acupuncture and they'll do ice bathing and they'll do all this stuff.

• 1:25:10Speaker 07

  Because that's what they think they need to do, because that's what's been dictated to them by the industry. So it's really an expose of the health and wellness industry, the incentives underpinning the industry. And teaching people, you know, I'm making sure that there's a thread of critical thinking in there. I don't, I don't want to be too heavy-handed with the critical thinking stuff because there are people already doing that. You know, you guys obviously are the top of the pile here. And but making sure that when, if people do have health and wellness goals, that they have a pretty good idea about how to accomplish those. So how to make good decisions in health and wellness and and navigate this, the wild west of wellness without getting ripped off, essentially.

• 1:25:55Jay Novella?

  You know, that makes me think that, you know, they throw a lot of ideas at the wall. And then whichever ones, you know, seem to be popular or gaining popularity, then they just lean into it, right? This, because this whole idea about using cold as a after-workout treatment. The fact that there is no real science behind it means it's all hype. And that's, that is the trend, because I think in the end, it's all about making money and having something to talk about.

• 1:26:21Speaker 07

  Yeah, I couldn't agree more. But at the end of the day, this is a business. The health and wellness industry is worth over four trillion dollars worldwide, right? That, that's more than the smartphone industry, the fast food industry and all social media platforms combined, right? In fact, it's, it's, it's worth double, all of those entities combined. So this is big business. And the reason that it's worth so much money is because everybody is interested in health and wellness at some level. And as you said, whatever is trending at the time, people will lean into. And the people who operate within the health and wellness industry are interested in one thing, and that's making money, that's profits.

• 1:27:04Speaker 07

  And whether that's manufacturers, whether that's vendors who are selling the products, whether it's wellness gurus and fitness influencers online, they're more than happy to sell their followers quick fixes and supplements and diets and call training programs and garments and sneakers and powders, pills and potions, because it promotes engagement. And once they get engagement on something, it can be monetized. So it really does all come back to the bottom line. It's about making money. But that doesn't help the end user who actually wants to lose weight to reduce their risk of cardiovascular disease, or they want to improve their cardiovascular fitness, or they want to reduce their back pain, or, you know, whatever their health and wellness goals happen to be. So

• 1:27:49Speaker 07

  it really, it really is an industry that, that has prioritized profits above the outcomes for the end user. And that's something that I don't think will ever reverse it, but at least we can, I'm trying to do my bit at least to help the consumers to actually make good decisions for themselves. They need to act as their own content regulators because nobody's going to do it for them, right?

• 1:28:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. That's the world we're living in now. And I mean, in my personal assessment, about ninety-nine percent of that industry ranges somewhere between worthless and harmful. Like you have like this massive industry that's doing nothing for anybody except

• 1:28:30Speaker 07

  Right.

• 1:28:30Speaker 02

  enriching the snake oil salesman. Right? I mean, how many diet books actually are giving people good advice versus, you know, honestly, like what most people need to know about their diet, you could put in a pamphlet, and that's probably all people have the bandwidth for anyway. And yet there's like, how many books have been written about it, just with utter nonsense?

• 1:28:52Bob Novella?

  Thousands.

• 1:28:53Speaker 02

  Total libraries.

• 1:28:54Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, you just need to look at the, the profits from the diet and weight loss industry, right? They've, they've been going up for decades, now at an all time high. That, I think that, that's sector of the industry is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. And so these profits have been going up and up at an all time high. And what else has been going up and up? The rates of obesity. Now, the rates of obesity have been climbing since the 1970s, uh, uh, uh, going up exponentially now since COVID shows no sign of yielding. And people don't often enough stop and ask themselves, how can profits from diet and weight loss be going up? And rates of obesity also be going up? Those things, that doesn't make, that doesn't make any sense.

• 1:29:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 1:29:40Speaker 07

  There's obviously a mismatch. There's obviously some kind of detachment between the two entities. And, and what it basically comes down to is what we're investing in, what we're spending our money on in diet and weight loss, it obviously isn't working. Um, so people, we need to try something different.

• 1:29:57Speaker 02

  At the very least, no one has found the hack, right? The one easy trick or the, the secret to losing weight or maintaining a low weight. Cause if they did. When you say that, you mean the easy, like an easy way. That's what I'm trying to mean by a hack or a secret or.

• 1:30:10Bob Novella?

  What about Ozempic? That's pretty, that's kinda easy.

• 1:30:12Speaker 02

  Ozempic is, that's, that's science, man. That's a drug. That works, right?

• 1:30:16Bob Novella?

  Right?

• 1:30:17Speaker 02

  Say what you will, it freaking works. You know, I mean, it's, it's expensive. And if you go off of it, you probably will gain the weight back. That's the downside.

• 1:30:24Bob Novella?

  Consult your diet physician.

• 1:30:25Speaker 02

  Right. But, yeah, but you know, but if you, all the entire like dieting industry, all the different diets that have come up, if any of them actually worked, they would have staying power. They would be persistent. Everybody would be doing it, recommending it, et cetera. But there's just this, yeah, this is this never ending, you know, treadmill of different fad diets. None of them at the end of the day work. As you say, anything you do, it's like you go from not paying attention to your diet to paying attention to your diet. You're gonna lose a little weight.

• 1:30:57Jay Novella?

  Probably and like 95% of people will lose weight and then 95% of people will gain it back. You usually more die. It's in fact, some experts, you tell me if you what you agree with, if you agree with this or not. You know, I would argue that dieting is a failed strategy. It's it's about lifestyle factors, not going on a diet, anything you go on, you can come off of. As opposed to this is my, this is my healthy habits for life, right?

• 1:31:24Speaker 07

  Well, I sort of expressed it in the idea of this this wagon, you know, everybody talks about. I fell off the wagon. What as soon as you conceive the idea of a wagon, you're primed to fall off it. There in the in the path to true weight loss and sustained weight loss, there is no wagon. There cannot be a wagon. It's just about making, it's about changing your lifestyle. This has to be something and what I write about in the health and wellness lie is this idea that. When you're starting this new, I don't never call it a diet. I call it a nutritional strategy or whatever it happens to be. You have to ask yourself, is this something I can do forever?

• 1:31:59Jay Novella?

  Right.

• 1:31:59Speaker 07

  If the answer is, is, well, I'm not sure, then it's not going to work. Because, you know, as Steve said, you can go on a juice fast, you'll lose weight. Because you're you're in a massive calorie deficit, but you're going to be malnourished and it's probably gonna. You're not going to maintain it for longer than a couple of weeks or a month.

• 1:32:18Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:18Speaker 07

  So any kind of diet is not going to work.

• 1:32:20Jay Novella?

  If there's a wagon, you better be pushing it.

• 1:32:24Speaker 07

  Exactly.

• 1:32:25Jay Novella?

  Nick, that's the statement that dieters hear. And it's like they fearfully step back from it because. You know, we want it to be like, hey, I'm going to do this temporarily. I'm going to lose weight and then I will continue from there and just stay at that weight and eat what I want. And I do get it because it sounds like it's very hard to make lifestyle changes. And I think every human, like most people inherently agree with that. It's hard like I'm going to change this forever. Like I'm going to eat, you know, one dessert a month or something like that. It's to some people that's impossible. And I think that's the fear, right? That statement means that it's not a temporary discomfort and then everything's back to normal. It's a permanent change that you could live with that you become, that becomes normal

• 1:33:10Jay Novella?

  to you.

• 1:33:11Speaker 07

  Yeah. And this is the fundamental problem with, if there are several problems with Ozempic, but this is one of the problems with Ozempic and related drugs or Wegovy is that semaglutide is obviously the drug. And that is that in the studies where people have taken semaglutide and they've lost a lot of weight, as soon as they stop taking the drug, they regain most or all of the weight that they've lost. And that is because when physicians prescribe the drug, they are not prescribing it alongside dietary advice and advice on how to maintain the weight loss in the long term. So people become dependent on the drug, which is among other things, an appetite suppressor. And it doesn't matter if you suppress your appetite through semaglutide, or if you just

• 1:33:56Speaker 07

  have good discipline, or you go on a health kick and you lose the weight. If you don't know how to strategize in the long term, and if you don't have the basic understanding of healthy eating and physical activity to maintain that weight loss long term, you're just going to regain the weight. So it doesn't matter if it's a diet, if it's a drug, or if it's an exercise program, there has to be some kind of long-term strategy. And everything that we know about health and wellness, we know that it undermines those strategies about, that are aimed at long-term sustainability. It is all about the short-term, quick-fix biohack that people can buy into, because at the end of the day, we've evolved for economy, right?

• 1:34:39Speaker 07

  We haven't evolved to strategize in the long term to get long-term sustainable results. So as I've said, whether that's, whether it's Ozempic, or a diet, or an exercise program, there has to be a long-term strategy, otherwise it's not going to work.

• 1:34:52Speaker 02

  Let me push back on one thing, though, that you said there, Nick. So you shouldn't assume categorically that physicians are not teaching patients long-term diet strategies. So Ozempic, remember, first and foremost, it's a diabetes drugs, a diabetes drug. It's a diabetes drug that also helps you lose weight. But, and I'm telling you, physicians who manage diabetes have entire staff working for them that do nothing but advise people on their diet and tell people how to have a diabetic diet. That is part, absolutely part and parcel of standard of care management. Same thing, even if you get like bypass surgery for a gastric bypass to lose weight, they absolutely, that is part, you, part of that is going on a diet and they will tell you straight up,

• 1:35:36Speaker 02

  this is not going to make you lose weight by itself. I mean, it will to some extent, but this has to be part of a, you know, a healthy lifestyle in addition to that. It's not a magic solution. So at least that's the standard of care. That's what I've experienced, you know, being at a academic institution. I'm not saying there aren't some people out there just writing prescriptions without doing comprehensive care. You know, you'll see everything in medicine. But there is this sense that, yeah, doctors just write prescriptions, but they don't do that. It's really, really not true. If you're a diabetes doctor, you spend a lot of your time advising patients on how to have a healthy diet. Just like even me as like a headache doctor, I spend a lot of time advising my patients on their lifestyle factors, including their diet and how that relates to their headaches.

• 1:36:19Speaker 02

  That's always step one, actually. I do that before anything else. This narrative that physicians don't do that is simply not true.

• 1:36:28Speaker 07

  Well, I suppose in the cases where people have been prescribed Ozempic or semaglutide, Wegovy, and it hasn't helped them in the long term because, or they've come off it and they've regained the weight. Perhaps in those instances, if it's not long-term sustainable, it's because they haven't maybe had the appropriate support. That might not be the physician's choice. Maybe there's kind of user error there as well. But yeah, I totally get your point.

• 1:36:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, but and even there again, physiologically, like pharmacologically, when you come off the drug, because it's an appetite suppressant, basically, right? So you're essentially down-regulating that part of the brain that says you're You're satiated, you're not hungry. And then, just like anything, you come off that drug and you're going to get a little bit of a rebound effect. Now, you're actually more hungry than you were before, because you've kind of reset those receptors. So, it's not just behavioral, there is actually a physiological aspect to the weight gain after coming off the drug.

• 1:37:22Bob Novella?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:37:22Speaker 02

  This is something that I'm sure is going to get studied more, since this drug is relatively new, but that is the dominant hypothesis in terms of why that happens.

• 1:37:33Speaker 07

  And this means it might well be a drug for life for many people.

• 1:37:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, basically.

• 1:37:37Speaker 07

  And maybe, and I've had lots of discussions with people about, is that a good or a bad thing? Well, I think if you balance the risk, the long-term risk of taking semaglutide, you know, over the course of the second half of a life, or the long-term risks of being chronically overweight or obese, I think there's a pretty clear risk-to-benefit ratio in favor of taking the drug, right? You can't just go through your life being morbidly obese, that's not an option either.

• 1:38:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. It's risk versus benefit. All right, Nick, well, thank you so much for joining us.

• 1:38:12Speaker 07

  It's my pleasure. Thank you, guys.

• 1:38:14Speaker 02

  And just, people can find you at NBtiller.com. Your books are there, The Skeptic's Guide to Sports Science, you have two books coming out, The Health and Wellness Lie and What Science Says About Dieting, so we'll keep an eye out for those, maybe we'll get you back on the show when those books come out.

• 1:38:28Speaker 07

  That would be awesome. Thank you, guys, real pleasure.

• 1:38:30Speaker 02

  All right, take care.

• 1:38:31Bob Novella?

  Thank you, Nick.

• 1:38:44Speaker 02

  Each week, I come up with three science news items that are facts, two real and one fake, and then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. We have a nice, lighthearted theme for this week's Science or Fiction. That theme is death.

• 1:38:59Bob Novella?

  Love it.

• 1:39:00Speaker 02

  I've done that before. My favorite. It's a good science fiction. So, three facts about death. Okay, ready?

• 1:39:09Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:39:10Speaker 02

  Here we go. The World Health Organization reports that over 5 million snake bites occur each year, resulting in over 100,000 deaths. Iron number two, it is estimated that over half a million deaths globally in 2024 can be attributed to extreme weather events.

• 1:39:29Bob Novella?

  How many?

• 1:39:29Speaker 02

  Half a million. Iron number three, in 2021, COVID-19 was the second leading cause of death, just behind ischemic heart disease. Bob, go first.

• 1:39:40Bob Novella?

  These all sound kind of reasonable to me. Damn, 5 million snake bites. 5 million. That's a lot. And not many deaths. So what is that, 1 in 20, 50 die? That seems probably high. Okay. So half a million extreme weather, that's, now that I think about it, that seems over, that's kind of high, too. Extreme weather events, half a million, 500,000 extreme weather events. That's a lot. So these don't sound too reasonable to me. See, COVID, that one, that one makes sense. I'm going to go with 500,000 deaths from the weather. Seems a little high. I'll go with that as fiction.

• 1:40:21Speaker 02

  Okay, Jay.

• 1:40:23Jay Novella?

  The first one about the WHO report that over 5 million snake bites occur each year, and there's over 100,000 deaths. And this is globally, correct, Steve?

• 1:40:31Speaker 02

  That is correct. It is the World Health Organization.

• 1:40:34Jay Novella?

  I mean, I would assume that 90% of this is happening in Australia. Just kidding. But I do think, I do think it's true, sure. There is an incredible number of poisonous snakes out there, and, you know, I think it's very common that people don't know how to react and don't know what to do.

• 1:40:51Bob Novella?

  Catch, Karen.

• 1:40:54Cara Santa Maria?

  Right? You bite snake, snake bites you.

• 1:40:57Jay Novella?

  Yeah, it bites you.

• 1:40:58Cara Santa Maria?

  No, they're venomous.

• 1:40:59Bob Novella?

  Venomous.

• 1:41:00Cara Santa Maria?

  Because they bite you. It'd be poisonous if you bit the snake.

• 1:41:02Jay Novella?

  Yeah, I meant that. I always screw that up. Yeah, it's a common thing that people do, you know? Number two here is it's estimated that over half a million deaths globally in 2024 can be attributed to extreme weather events. That's a lot.

• 1:41:17Bob Novella?

  That's what I was saying.

• 1:41:18Jay Novella?

  Half a million. I mean, that's a lot of people. And you think we'd be hearing about it more, right? God damn, I'm not sure about that. I mean, I could see, you know, as global warming is getting worse. I can't rule it out, though, because, again, you know, are we hearing about 100,000 snake bites? So, okay, then the last one here, 2021, COVID-19 was the second leading cause of death, just behind ischemic heart disease. Now, what is that?

• 1:41:44Speaker 02

  Heart attacks.

• 1:41:45Jay Novella?

  What does the word ischemic mean?

• 1:41:46Speaker 02

  Lack of oxygen.

• 1:41:47Jay Novella?

  Lack of oxygen.

• 1:41:48Bob Novella?

  Oh, oxygen.

• 1:41:51Jay Novella?

  Um, lack of oxygen. Oh, wow, that's a, didn't give me the number, though. And I think that means something. He didn't give the number in the third one.

• 1:42:00Bob Novella?

  Oh.

• 1:42:01Jay Novella?

  Second leading cause of death. You know what? I think that was the fiction. I don't think that was the second leading cause of death.

• 1:42:08Speaker 02

  All right. Kara?

• 1:42:09Cara Santa Maria?

  Jay thinks that it wasn't COVID-19. It could be. I think it was definitely in the top five. I don't think it, I don't know where in the top five. Because, okay, 2019 is when it first happened, but in China first. By 2020, it had spread everywhere. But I don't think we got a vaccine until maybe 2021, early, or maybe late 2020. But I definitely don't think it was in everybody's arms right away. So I could see that. If it was 2022, I wouldn't buy it, because I think we had vaccine and Paxivit, like a pretty good vaccine program by then. But people were dying, a lot of people died from COVID before we knew how

• 1:42:49Cara Santa Maria?

  to handle it. So I could see that. It's funny, because the, the over half a million deaths globally attributed, I was like, yeah, of course. And then you guys were like, that's really high. And I was like, was it? But maybe, maybe I'm primed because of my news item tonight. So can I, you probably can't clarify, but you mean, like, directly attributed? Like, they died in the hurricane? They died from the fire? Not like, you know, downstream effects of them? Or?

• 1:43:17Speaker 02

  I will not clarify that.

• 1:43:18Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay, all right. Because then I think if the number's low, I feel like at that point, it would be millions, plural, globally, from displacement and stuff. So I don't know. I feel like the number's either too high or too low. Maybe it's a Goldilocks. And then, yeah, globally, 5 million snake bites. I feel like we've talked about this before. We talked about like deadliest animals. 100,000 deaths. Snake bites are horrible. So yeah, if you get bit by a venomous snake and you do not have access to antivenin, which is expensive and difficult to produce, then you might die from it. So in areas with, without, I think, good health services, especially in rural areas, I definitely think people are dying from snake bites. So

• 1:44:02Cara Santa Maria?

  100,000? Yeah, maybe. So I guess I gotta go with Bob and say that that number is off on the, on the global attributed to extreme weather events.

• 1:44:16Bob Novella?

  Yay, Kara went with me.

• 1:44:17Speaker 02

  Okay, and Evan?

• 1:44:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think there's a reason why fear of snakes is a real thing. I don't think that just happened accidentally because we recognize it's a true danger and 100,000 deaths a year, I think, is a tribute to that. So yeah, I have a feeling that one's right. And yeah, I think also the, I'll go with Bob and Kara because this one about the extreme weather events, it's just so wide. It can be interpreted so many ways and it kind of lets, there are a lot, I think several ways this could be wrong, whereas less so with the COVID-19 one, but I wouldn't be surprised either if that one. But I'll go with Bob and Kara. I'll say, extreme weather events fiction.

• 1:45:04Speaker 02

  Okay, so you all agree on the snake bites. So we'll start there. The World Health Organization reports that over 5 million snake bites occur each year, resulting in over 100,000 deaths. You all think that one is science and that one is science. So yeah, so you have to distinguish between a snake bite and

• 1:45:28Speaker 02

  And invenoming, which is when a snake bites and injects venom. Most snake bites.

• 1:45:33Bob Novella?

  Usually a dry run.

• 1:45:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, most, or they're just not venomous snakes.

• 1:45:36Cara Santa Maria?

  They're not venomous snakes. Yeah.

• 1:45:37Bob Novella?

  Yeah, that's.

• 1:45:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:45:38Cara Santa Maria?

  And that wouldn't really kill you unless you're in a really inopportune place.

• 1:45:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, 5.4 million people worldwide are bitten by snakes. Eight, 1.8 to 2.7, so half are invenomings. Um, and of those, around 100,000 die. It's from year to year. It's like 81 to 137,000 at the high end. And then two to three times that number have amputations or permanent disability from the snake bite, even though they don't die. I thought that number was huge, you know?

• 1:46:10Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:11Speaker 02

  That's a lot of people die from snake bites, you know?

• 1:46:14Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, but I'm assuming again that they're in like rural or, uh, developing areas.

• 1:46:20Speaker 02

  Of course, I'm sure they're not in New York City.

• 1:46:21Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, they don't have access to good healthcare. But even here, people die from snake bites.

• 1:46:24Speaker 05

  Sure, yes.

• 1:46:25Cara Santa Maria?

  Like you gotta get.

• 1:46:26Speaker 05

  US.

• 1:46:27Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, you gotta get help fast.

• 1:46:28Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:46:29Cara Santa Maria?

  And you gotta hope that they have the antivenom for that snake. Yeah.

• 1:46:33Bob Novella?

  Yeah, right?

• 1:46:33Speaker 02

  All right. I was actually reading a separate news item about using artificial intelligence to design more effective antivenoms proteins.

• 1:46:40Speaker 05

  Do it.

• 1:46:40Speaker 02

  Yep. All right. Let's go to number two. It is estimated that over half a million deaths globally in 2024 can be attributed to extreme weather events. Bob, Cara and Evan, you think this one is the fiction. Jay, you think this one is science. And this one is the fiction.

• 1:46:59Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:00Speaker 02

  So what do you think the number is?

• 1:47:02Speaker 05

  Is it, well, 50,000 or 5 million?

• 1:47:05Cara Santa Maria?

  I think it's 50,000. Oh, directly, but like directly attributable to extreme weather events.

• 1:47:11Speaker 05

  Extreme weather events, right?

• 1:47:12Speaker 02

  I know, it's all, it's all.

• 1:47:14Bob Novella?

  500,001.

• 1:47:16Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:47:16Bob Novella?

  I don't know. You say over half a million.

• 1:47:18Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I bet you it's 50,000.

• 1:47:20Speaker 02

  The number is.

• 1:47:21Cara Santa Maria?

  Half a million, sorry. Yeah.

• 1:47:22Speaker 02

  11,500.

• 1:47:24Speaker 05

  Oh, wow.

• 1:47:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, not as many as you think.

• 1:47:26Bob Novella?

  More than I thought. Wow.

• 1:47:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Really?

• 1:47:28Bob Novella?

  I mean, less, even less than I thought.

• 1:47:30Speaker 02

  Even less than you thought, yeah.

• 1:47:31Bob Novella?

  Fewer than I thought.

• 1:47:32Speaker 02

  But I thought I'd get you on, you know, yeah, because we think, oh yeah, this, you know, one tsunami could wipe out, you know, a lot of people.

• 1:47:39Speaker 05

  Is a tsunami considered a weather event?

• 1:47:41Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 1:47:42Bob Novella?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:47:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:47:43Speaker 05

  But it's an earthquake. How's that weather?

• 1:47:46Bob Novella?

  Wait. Yeah, interesting point.

• 1:47:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's always, it's always a matter of definition, but it's the fiction.

• 1:47:51Speaker 05

  But that one in two thousand four, I mean, oh, my gosh.

• 1:47:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:47:54Speaker 05

  Two hundred thousand deaths from that one tsunami.

• 1:47:58Speaker 02

  Oh, right. I saw a whole.

• 1:47:59Speaker 05

  I've seen so many documentaries.

• 1:48:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, I saw a whole documentary on it. It was unbelievable.

• 1:48:02Bob Novella?

  Those videos.

• 1:48:03Speaker 02

  At first, it like, it looks really tame. The water's just sort of strolling in. But then when you get a little closer, you realize like, no, that water is carrying houses and trucks and cars and boats and debris. And if you're in that, you are, you are in a grinder. You're in a meat grinder. There's no, yeah, there's no way you could survive that.

• 1:48:21Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:22Speaker 02

  Water is powerful.

• 1:48:24Bob Novella?

  So scary. Yeah, get to high ground.

• 1:48:26Speaker 02

  Yes, you have to get to high ground.

• 1:48:27Bob Novella?

  As fast as you can.

• 1:48:28Speaker 02

  That means that in twenty twenty one, COVID nineteen was the second leading cause of death, just behind ischemic heart disease is science. That, yeah, that's interesting to think that, you know, well, a pandemic like that rocketed to almost, it was like, almost, almost as high as ischemic heart disease. It's like really, oh, just barely behind it. More than stroke, more than COPD or more than diabetes.

• 1:48:52Speaker 05

  Were there two million global deaths in that year? I don't, do you have an exact number on?

• 1:48:58Speaker 02

  So COVID nineteen was directly responsible for eight point eight million deaths in twenty twenty one. Yeah, it was nine point one million for ischemic heart disease. So again, it was pretty close. Eight point eight million. Yep, people die. People die for a lot of reasons.

• 1:49:14Speaker 05

  Lot of reasons.

• 1:49:16Speaker 02

  But good job, guys.

• 1:49:17Bob Novella?

  I think I propose, if you're first and you get it right, I think you should get one point two wins.

• 1:49:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, you think so? Yeah, it's not happening. All right, Evan, give us a quote.

• 1:49:28Speaker 05

  We had a quote suggestion this week from a listener in Johannesburg, South Africa. IQ BAL. How, how would I pronounce that? Iqbal?

• 1:49:39Cara Santa Maria?

  Iqbal, maybe?

• 1:49:41Speaker 05

  I'm, I'm, I'm not familiar with that name, so, yeah, very cool name. So thank you for this suggestion. Knowledge is a paradox. The more one understands, the more one realizes the vastness of his ignorance.

• 1:49:55Speaker 05

  And that was spoken by Victor, also known as The Herald, in season two of the hit Netflix show Arcane League of Legends, which has been referred to me so many times. That is on my soon to watch list.

• 1:50:08Bob Novella?

  Highly recommended. Great animations.

• 1:50:10Speaker 02

  The animation is off the hook. It is like the best animation I've seen, and the story is fantastic. The writing, like, this is typical of it. It's really intelligently written. The characters are all amazing. It's just like the imagery blows you away. It's highly recommended.

• 1:50:29Bob Novella?

  Yeah, check it out.

• 1:50:30Speaker 02

  If you're into that sort of thing. It's basically, it's magic infused steampunk.

• 1:50:36Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. Very good. I know steampunk is a little past its peak, but this doesn't matter. It's just the aesthetic is fantastic.

• 1:50:44Bob Novella?

  It's beautiful. Yeah, it's beautiful.

• 1:50:45Speaker 05

  Well, it's nice to see a quote like this appear in a show like that.

• 1:50:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. All right. Thank you, Evan.

• 1:50:50Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 1:50:51Speaker 02

  And thank all of you for joining me this week.

• 1:50:54Cara Santa Maria?

  Thanks, Steve.

• 1:50:55Speaker 05

  Thank you, Steve.

• 1:50:56Speaker 02

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

• 1:51:40Jay Novella?

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