The Skeptics Guide #1017 - Jan 4 2025

Psychic Predictions 2024; News Items: Space Exploration in 2025, Emerging Diseases, Dark Energy May Not Exist, Bigfoot Deaths; Who's That Noisy; Your Questions and E-mails: Fusion Energy, In Memoriam Addendum; 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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• 0:42Speaker 01

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

• 0:48Speaker 02

  Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Thursday, January 2, 2025, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella.

• 0:58Speaker 03

  Hey, everybody.

• 0:58Speaker 02

  Cara Santa Maria.

• 1:00Cara Santa Maria?

  Howdy.

• 1:00Speaker 02

  Jane Novella. Hey, guys. And Evan Bernstein.

• 1:03Speaker 03

  Alive and thrive in 25.

• 1:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, 2025. Always interesting to start a new year. I get to delete all of last year's files and start with a fresh folder.

• 1:16Cara Santa Maria?

  How many times are we going to write the date wrong?

• 1:18Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:19Speaker 03

  I already.

• 1:20Speaker 02

  I've already got it. I've already.

• 1:22Speaker 03

  Yes, I did my one. And I swore aloud. I admit it. Steve, you like even number years and not odd number years? Is that right?

• 1:32Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, but 25 is really.

• 1:33Speaker 02

  25 is okay. 25s are the best of the odd number years because it's divisible with a 10.

• 1:39Speaker 03

  I got it. That's your numerology.

• 1:41Speaker 02

  It's all about symmetry.

• 1:42Cara Santa Maria?

  That's a quarter of a century.

• 1:44Speaker 02

  Quarter of a century.

• 1:45Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:46Speaker 02

  We are coming to the end of the first quarter. We're heading into the second quarter of the 21st century.

• 1:51Cara Santa Maria?

  Year 2000 was a quarter century. What? What?

• 1:55Speaker 03

  So much happened and so much didn't happen.

• 1:58Cara Santa Maria?

  True.

• 2:00Speaker 03

  It's a very true statement.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  And all along the way, the psychics were basically wrong about it.

• 2:08Speaker 03

  Here's my shocked face. Yeah.

• 2:10Speaker 02

  So we're going to start off, as we always do, with our first episode of the year by poking a little fun at psychics, looking back at some of the predictions they made for 2024 to see how accurate or inaccurate they were. And then we're gonna pit ourselves against the professionals to see how well we do with our own predictions. Does anybody wanna start?

• 2:30Bob Novella?

  I guess I'll start it. No one else is chiming in.

• 2:33Speaker 03

  Go for it.

• 2:34Bob Novella?

  All right. I found a few, a couple, a few different people. I didn't focus on one cuz I just didn't feel like it. Sonia Choket. And she's, of course, a well-known intuitive guide. And this is an example of people that just fluff it out. They just throw out the absolute fluff that infuriates me. So she said she anticipated a widespread awakening in 2024. When more individuals will embrace their intuition and soul's purpose, this shift will lead to a spread of authenticity, compassion, and creativity. That, that kinda stuff, it just screams, you can't predict crap. And they just throw that out there, and every year, it just pisses me off more. Oh, here's a good one.

• 3:19Bob Novella?

  I don't know if you had this one, Steve, but Baba Vanga, I'll throw one out from her. She predicted the climate would worsen.

• 3:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:27Bob Novella?

  And it's like, and then she, I think, I think she threw, also threw out, it's gonna be the warmest year on record. Wow, really going out on a limb there. Just like, come on.

• 3:34Cara Santa Maria?

  She keeps stealing mine.

• 3:36Bob Novella?

  Yeah, right. And then, and then there's a psychic Nikki, I don't remember her last name, don't care that much. She envisioned, get this, she envisioned a dynamic US presidential election. Really, it's gonna be dynamic. Passionate debates and lively public engagement.

• 3:52Speaker 02

  Well, I never would've thought of that.

• 3:53Bob Novella?

  Yeah. And then, how about this one?

• 3:55Speaker 03

  Opposed to it happening in a closet, right?

• 3:57Bob Novella?

  She, she predicted the progression of climate change. Oh, man, I expected it to stop and reverse last year.

• 4:03Speaker 03

  What?

• 4:04Bob Novella?

  And then, an increasing importance on environmental awareness and adaption. And it's like, oh, here's, here's a good one. Significant developments in artificial intelligence. Like, you could maybe argue against that, but it's like, okay. And then, then she throws one out from, from left field. She's like, oh, also, there's a possibility of peaceful extraterrestrial contact. Okay.

• 4:26Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay.

• 4:27Bob Novella?

  All right. Okay, there you go. I'm done with this.

• 4:30Speaker 02

  Well, since you mentioned Baba Vanga, I just stuck with, with her. So, for those of you who don't know, she's the blind psychic. She actually died in 1996, but like Nostradamus, people keep following her predictions. She made predictions, apparently out to the year 5076 or something, which is when, of course, the world ends, cuz that's when her prediction ends.

• 4:51Speaker 03

  Wonder what episode we'll be on by then.

• 4:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, but she is the is the master of the vague prediction. Bob already mentioned one like there will be climate crisis in the future. Okay, that wasn't wasn't hard. But this is like she's saying this in the time of that like the first real period of time when the climate crisis was being discussed. You know, the this is the unfortunate truth, you know, period.

• 5:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:16Speaker 02

  She said there will be

• 5:17Speaker 03

  Inconvenient truth.

• 5:18Speaker 02

  Similarly, there will be economic crisis in 2024. Okay, like what does that mean?

• 5:25Speaker 03

  That never happens.

• 5:25Speaker 02

  That can't be. It's almost an unfalsifiable thing. She gets all right. She gets a little specific. And when she does, she gets completely wrong. Right? So she says a major country will engage in biological warfare and testing in 2024. Nope, there were no biological weapons attacks in 2024. Another another vague one. There will be breakthroughs in diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's. You know, like there is every year. You mean?

• 5:56Speaker 03

  Right.

• 5:57Speaker 02

  Again, just like big breakthrough in cancer, like what, you know?

• 6:01Speaker 03

  Define breakthrough.

• 6:02Bob Novella?

  The sun will rise.

• 6:04Speaker 02

  And she's and she said, oh, and aliens will land.

• 6:10Speaker 02

  And it'll be during

• 6:11Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, by the way.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  During a sporting event, like she had to throw that in there. Aliens will land during a sporting event.

• 6:17Speaker 03

  Isn't there a sporting event?

• 6:19Speaker 02

  I mean, I think like on the midfield at the Super Bowl or something.

• 6:22Speaker 03

  Oh, I see. Right. The halftime show. Got it. Got it.

• 6:25Speaker 02

  Whatever. I'll take any, you know, unequivocal aliens landing like we are here. No, but that didn't happen in 2024 either.

• 6:34Speaker 03

  Darn it.

• 6:35Speaker 02

  Yep. A complete fail. Except for like the most vague predictions.

• 6:40Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, and we saw something really similar with good old Nostradamus.

• 6:46Speaker 03

  Did we?

• 6:46Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I think like one, one of his predictions came to fruition, which was

• 6:53Speaker 03

  Oh, my gosh.

• 6:53Cara Santa Maria?

  The dry earth will grow more parched and there will be great floods when it is seen. Right? So this is like his climate change prediction.

• 7:00Speaker 03

  Nailed it.

• 7:00Cara Santa Maria?

  Nailed it. But like, most of them were pretty also pretty specific and definitely did not happen like. A king of the Isles will be driven out by force, which a lot of people thought that meant that like Charles was going to abdicate, but that didn't happen. There's also through the death of a very old pontiff, a Roman of good age will be elected of him. It will be said that he weakens his sea, but long will he sit inviting activity. Well, the Pope's still there, so.

• 7:28Speaker 03

  From the omen or something? Okay.

• 7:31Cara Santa Maria?

  No, that's just how Nostradamus talked.

• 7:36Speaker 03

  From a movie.

• 7:37Cara Santa Maria?

  Also, something about European powers clashing with England and new foes being spawned.

• 7:44Speaker 03

  I say.

• 7:45Speaker 02

  Anyone else?

• 7:46Speaker 03

  You want mine? I found a person. Her name is Kelly Sutliff, a psychic medium, author and guest radio host. She conducts readings for clients worldwide, and she predicts the upcoming year's events with much accuracy every year. That's right from her website. Sutliff also uses her gift. With much accuracy every year. Who wrote that? Sutliff also uses her gifts to help find the missing. It just says the missing, like children, animals, what do you, the missing. Okay. Here are some predictions. Oh, some medical predictions. We love these. An MS breakthrough on its connection to mold injuries and why the disease is caused. That's interesting.

• 8:31Speaker 02

  Mold injuries? No.

• 8:33Speaker 03

  No. But that's an interesting prediction, at least. That's not the usual pap.

• 8:41Speaker 03

  Does mold? Okay, here's another one. New innovative healing and medical research and cures around why inflammation causes disease in cancer. She wrote this. Disease and inflammatory diseases, myocarditis and melanoma.

• 9:00Speaker 02

  Okay, she's just looking up medical terms.

• 9:02Speaker 03

  Right? Isn't that what that seems like? All of this rapid succession of disease due to vaccine injury. And why cells are going haywire will help heal those people with these issues. It's like a world cure comes in. That's a prediction. I don't think that happened.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  Doesn't seem to align with reality in any way.

• 9:21Speaker 03

  But Steve, she talks about water therapies and electromagnetic therapy and oxygen therapies and topical skin therapies, the new wave in our future of healing in the year 2024.

• 9:35Speaker 03

  And radium therapy. She makes post-dictions, not predictions. She also gave, you know, some usual stuff, election stuff, such as, oh, here we go. President Biden will not finish his term. Kamala Harris will become the new president when Biden steps down. Did not happen. Donald Trump will pick a woman as his vice president running mate. That did not happen. She delves into economics. Real estate will dip with interest rates, two and three quarters points down. That did not happen. It was more like one point. Currency and cryptocurrency and Bitcoin get more regulated in 2024, whatever that means, but no. Oh, and then there's earthquakes and floods, you know, the usual kind of stuff. Anybody can predict that.

• 10:20Speaker 03

  Oil is up due to what's happening in the Middle East. Prices go up in 2024. That did not happen either. They went down. Leadership changes. Okay. Are these, did these leaders lose their, lose their power? Vladimir Putin.

• 10:35Jay Novella?

  Absolutely not.

• 10:36Speaker 03

  Zelensky from Ukraine.

• 10:38Jay Novella?

  Nope.

• 10:39Speaker 03

  Trudeau, Canada.

• 10:40Jay Novella?

  Nope.

• 10:41Speaker 03

  Pope Francis.

• 10:42Jay Novella?

  Nope.

• 10:42Speaker 03

  Oh, she was 0 for 4 there.

• 10:44Jay Novella?

  Whoops.

• 10:45Speaker 03

  All right. And here's her final bit of wisdom for us all as we head into 2024. Remember, this was a year ago she wrote this. Remember, we are in an eight year. The number eight has infinity to it metaphorically. It means respect and love are limitless. So even though there will be lots of hell raising and conflict this year around the world, we'll return back to love and spirituality of what humans are. Souls.

• 11:07Jay Novella?

  Wow.

• 11:08Speaker 03

  There you go. And people pay for that because she has a, she has a phone number and, you know, book your session and give her lots of money. Okay.

• 11:19Jay Novella?

  Yeah, I found somebody named Athos Salome.

• 11:23Speaker 03

  Oh, that's a cool name.

• 11:24Jay Novella?

  I know, I thought it was a great psychic name. He is, he has a subheading to his name. He's the living Nostradamus.

• 11:33Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:33Speaker 02

  Everyone wants to be the living.

• 11:35Jay Novella?

  I'm sure that he, you know, gave himself that name. So there was three things that this guy said that there was that World War III was imminent in 2024. He said, the worst is yet to come, suggesting the possibility of a global conflict. Then we have cyber threats identified cyber warfare as a significant threat to global security, highlighting the potential for hacker attacks, leading to global failures. Now, I was thinking about this, if you read that every year for the last 15 years, that would have been an accurate prediction.

• 12:09Speaker 03

  There you go. The more vague, the more accurate.

• 12:12Jay Novella?

  What I mean, but it's like, really, dude? That's your prediction? The cyber attacks? They're happening every second of every day.

• 12:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, right. You know how many letters I got this year in the mail saying, your, your information may have been compromised. We're giving you a free year of credit protection. I got about nine of them over the course of the year.

• 12:32Jay Novella?

  I get, I get so many phishing attempts and, you know, I get phone calls now, like live people scam phone calls.

• 12:40Speaker 03

  But these are from banks and, you know, these, all these companies and stuff who can't stop it. They, they, they don't know how to get it under control, the most sophisticated companies.

• 12:48Cara Santa Maria?

  Whoops. Your social security number is out there. Sorry.

• 12:52Speaker 03

  Again.

• 12:53Jay Novella?

  And then he's got one, one more here, the South China Sea tensions. He predicted a critical event in the South China Sea that could disrupt military and communication systems of superpowers.

• 13:04Speaker 03

  That's where Godzilla comes out of the ocean in this, in the South China Sea.

• 13:08Jay Novella?

  But this guy's doing the same thing. We should name this type of prediction. It's basically like, yeah, they're reading the news and they're going statistically, you know, this seems like it's going to be a hit.

• 13:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, there's a few types of predictions that the psychics make and given, given that they still do horribly. So one is the vague prediction, which we had a lot of examples of that.

• 13:27Cara Santa Maria?

  That's my favorite.

• 13:28Speaker 02

  Like there will be an earthquake, you know, the things that are, that are just so vague that you could match them to anything. Once, another one is this thing that's currently happening is going to continue to happen. You know, like there will be wars, there will be global warming, there will be whatever. Another one's just the high probability prediction. Then there's the predictions that sound more specific than they are. They're not really specific, but they kind of can sound like they are.

• 13:51Cara Santa Maria?

  Uh, that's like the horoscope prediction.

• 13:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, like the horoscope, I see a red door, you know, kind of thing. Where it sounds like a really specific prediction, you don't realize how common it is. Like a plane will crash with red in its tail fin. You mean like 85% of the, you know, airlines out there? And then, uh, there's the ones, there's the shot in the dark, right? Where they just sort of make these lateral field predictions that, and they're just counting on the fact that people will forget them. But if they hit, if like one of their hundred out of left field predictions hits, that's the one they're going to broadcast to the world.

• 14:24Bob Novella?

  For years, for the rest of their career.

• 14:25Speaker 03

  Correct, Bob. That's right. For years. I mean, I saw, I saw psychics touting correct predictions from 2003.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:34Speaker 03

  On this year's.

• 14:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. What have you predicted lately? Now, now let's see how the rogues did last year. I'm going to go first.

• 14:41Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 14:41Speaker 02

  I believe I got four out of four. But you tell me what you think.

• 14:47Bob Novella?

  I thought it was three.

• 14:48Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I only did three.

• 14:49Speaker 02

  I threw it.

• 14:49Bob Novella?

  Steve gave us a bonus one.

• 14:50Speaker 02

  I gave you a bonus one.

• 14:51Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, okay.

• 14:51Speaker 02

  All right. So my first prediction, a health scare will cause Biden to drop out of the presidential race.

• 14:57Cara Santa Maria?

  Ooh, that's good.

• 14:58Speaker 02

  Causing the Democrats to scramble for a replacement.

• 15:00Bob Novella?

  There it is.

• 15:01Speaker 02

  I mean, a hundred percent.

• 15:02Cara Santa Maria?

  That's very good.

• 15:03Speaker 02

  Right?

• 15:04Bob Novella?

  Yeah. Did they really scramble that much?

• 15:06Cara Santa Maria?

  Yes.

• 15:06Speaker 02

  I mean, they scrambled. I mean, they, for a short period of time.

• 15:09Cara Santa Maria?

  They could have done it much sooner than they did. That was a scramble.

• 15:12Speaker 02

  It was a scramble because it was so late. Yeah. Um, all right. This one, this is the, this is the softest one. This is the most ambiguous. The total solar eclipse in April will be only the second most interesting astronomical event of 2024. Now I did look up astronomical events of 2024 and some sites do give the naked eye visible comet as the most interesting because it was unexpected, like this.

• 15:39Bob Novella?

  Boo.

• 15:40Speaker 02

  The, the eclipses are predictable. Like everyone knew that it was going to happen, but like an unexpected naked eye visible comet, this is comet 2024 S1 Atlas. I think that was it. It discovered in September 2024. So anyway, that's one a little ambiguous, but there's at least a candidate. Number three was 2024 will be the warmest year on record. Got that one. But that was too easy, which is why I gave a fourth one.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  A new CRISPR based drug will get regulatory approval in 2024. That happened. Those were the the two bloodborne, the thalassemia and and the sickle cell CRISPR drugs were approved in 2024. So

• 16:18Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 16:20Speaker 03

  Well, yeah.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  I made high probability predictions. The Biden one was the one that was a little out of left field, but that was a pretty good hit.

• 16:28Bob Novella?

  Yeah, it's your best one.

• 16:28Speaker 03

  I think of those of the four, that's the one.

• 16:30Speaker 02

  I mean, come on, if any psychic had that record, they would be screaming it from the rooftops, right?

• 16:35Speaker 03

  Steve, you could charge $350 an hour for a session with

• 16:37Speaker 02

  That's good, Steve. Yeah, I was I think that was my best year. All right, Kara, you go.

• 16:42Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay, so my first, no, mine mine are terrible. I feel like I can't go next.

• 16:49Speaker 03

  You want someone else to go?

• 16:50Cara Santa Maria?

  I use the I use the vague method. I use the vague. Okay, 2024 will be the hottest year on record.

• 16:55Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 16:56Bob Novella?

  Correct.

• 16:57Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 16:58Cara Santa Maria?

  A new COVID surge will occur early in 2024. And I was just looking at the trends across 2024. And there are two large spikes. And one was in like, like January 13 was the highest death toll in 2024. And then the next spike was in September. So I'd say January 13 was early. I'm going to give myself a point on that. And then this last one, I'm still struggling to figure out the exact number, but I said more than 15 species will go extinct in 2024. But I don't think we know yet the full number because it's January 2, 2025.

• 17:40Bob Novella?

  What's typical?

• 17:41Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I don't I don't even know the background extinction rate. But I mean, I am I am finding website after website of just like long lists. It's actually really depressing. Why do I keep doing this to myself?

• 17:52Speaker 03

  Done that before as well, Kara. I moved off.

• 17:56Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, the Wyoming toad, the spixes macaw, the

• 18:00Cara Santa Maria?

  Isopod, the Socorro Dove, Pear David's Deer, Kihansi Spray Toad, the Morian Viviparis Tree Snail, the Marbled Sword Tail Fish, the Hawaiian Crow, the Guam Kingfisher. This is so sad. Why do I do this? I'm gonna come up with happier ones this year. Nope.

• 18:20Speaker 03

  The only silver lining, when you look those up, is you can find that each year they take some animals or things off of the.

• 18:28Cara Santa Maria?

  That's true. They like spot something. Yeah.

• 18:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:32Speaker 02

  But sometimes they come off the endangered list because they're extinct.

• 18:36Cara Santa Maria?

  That's true, too.

• 18:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:37Speaker 02

  So you have to see why they were taken off.

• 18:39Speaker 03

  But also because conservation efforts do make a difference.

• 18:42Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, there are too.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  They absolutely do. So Kara, in 2023, 23 species were taken off of the endangered list because they were declared extinct. So I think we'll at some point get an official number for 2024.

• 18:55Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, and I think it will probably be over 15. I will say there have been two wins here. Reintroduction, reintroduction, reintroduction programs for the Prowolski's Horse and the Black-footed Ferret have both been pretty successful. So the horse was a wild horse species in Central Asia that was classified as extinct in the wild in 1996. It was then reintroduced. And although there's a small population, it's increasing in the wild now. And the Black-footed Ferret was designated extinct in the wild. But because of reintroduction programs, there are some self-sustaining populations in the wild now.

• 19:40Cara Santa Maria?

  So that's pretty, pretty cool.

• 19:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's good. All right, Evan, what did you do?

• 19:45Speaker 03

  My three predictions were as follows. Number one, the Summer Olympics. France will suffer a major blackout during the Olympics, causing massive delays in events. Here's a headline from the early in the Olympics. Paris blackout sparks chaos as Olympics get underway. Woo. Okay. But here's the details. Well, hang on, I'll read you the first paragraph.

• 20:12Speaker 03

  In Paris, Egyptian darkness took over. On the night from Saturday to Sunday, numerous photos and videos from the French capital appeared on social media. They show that the streets of the multimillion metropolis were completely dark services. Are explaining what caused the blackout, blah, blah, blah. But here's the thing. Yes, and there was a brief power outage in Paris during the 2024 Olympics, limited to a few districts, did not affect the Eiffel Tower, lasted about 10 minutes. So.

• 20:40Cara Santa Maria?

  Hey.

• 20:41Speaker 03

  There was a blackout. It just wasn't major.

• 20:44Cara Santa Maria?

  Did you say it was major?

• 20:45Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 20:45Speaker 03

  I said major. I know.

• 20:47Speaker 02

  Literally used the word major.

• 20:49Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, now you gotta, now see, you're gonna learn from your mistakes this year.

• 20:52Speaker 03

  That's right. That's right. And then I'll up my price to people for my predictions.

• 20:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, if you just said France will suffer a blackout during Olympics causing chaos, 100%, you would have got it. You got too specific, Evan.

• 21:08Speaker 03

  How dare I?

• 21:09Cara Santa Maria?

  Yep.

• 21:10Speaker 03

  How dare I try to actually help people with my predictions? Second prediction in 2020, oh, predicated in 2023, IBM developed a quantum processor chip with, which consists of more than 1,000 qubits. My prediction by the end of 2024, a company will announce the development of a 10,000 qubit QC or quantum chip. Well, let's have a look and see what happened here. Oh, I've been June 2024, IBM reportedly partnering with Japan's AIST to develop 10,000 qubit quantum computer. So they didn't actually, they started the development.

• 21:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, multiple companies are working on a 10,000 qubit chip, but none of them, none of them developed it.

• 21:56Speaker 03

  They didn't get there. They announced it, though. And but that was what I said, though. By the end of 2024, a company will announce the development of 10,000.

• 22:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay.

• 22:06Cara Santa Maria?

  I like your vague wording, Evan. That was really smart.

• 22:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, I know. It had double meanings.

• 22:12Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, they announced the development.

• 22:14Speaker 03

  Yes. So, so that was good. I get, I get extra psychic points for that.

• 22:18Cara Santa Maria?

  I think you do.

• 22:19Speaker 03

  All right. 2026 or 2028 is now when they think that they'll actually up and running. Third one, commercial real estate foreclosures in the United States will exceed 10% where 8% was expected. Well, uh, we don't have the exact numbers yet. However, we do have, uh, through the third quarter, we have three quarters of data because obviously the fourth quarter just ended. Commercial real estate foreclosures are surging across the United States, foreclosures climbing 48% in September year over year. I looked at the month by month trends for each of the first nine, um, uh, months of the year. They were all up.

• 22:59Speaker 03

  In fact, the highest one, there was a 238% increase when compared, uh, I think it was March compared to the year prior. So although I don't have all the data yet, I, this one is trending probably towards being true.

• 23:13Speaker 02

  Sounds like it.

• 23:14Speaker 03

  If that holds. That one's gonna, that one's gonna hold. So I did not do all that badly. I got a little too specific for my own good. Otherwise I would have had a really good psychic year.

• 23:24Speaker 02

  All right. Good job, Evan. Bob, what you got?

• 23:26Speaker 03

  Thanks.

• 23:27Bob Novella?

  I'll start with my favorite one. This was a weather prediction. April 8th, 2024 will absolutely be overcast over much of, if not all of Texas. And I think I absolutely nailed it.

• 23:39Speaker 03

  You were right.

• 23:41Bob Novella?

  In the best way, because the area that we were in cleared up at the last possible moment. So that was like.

• 23:46Speaker 02

  We have our cake and eat it too.

• 23:48Bob Novella?

  Yeah, that was wonderful. The rest of my predictions, not so much. Prediction number two for 2024, OpenAI will release ChatGPT 5 in 2024. Uh, I already failed, which will be sapient enough to realize it doesn't want anything to do with us and will leave the earth to uplift the microbes currently under the ice on Europa. So yeah, that didn't happen.

• 24:10Speaker 02

  But that is another genre of predictions, by the way. It is.

• 24:13Cara Santa Maria?

  Unprovable?

• 24:14Speaker 02

  No, it's the prediction that is so crazy, no one really expects it to come true. It's just entertaining in its own right. You know what I mean?

• 24:22Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 24:22Bob Novella?

  Yep, I aim to entertain. And then my third prediction, the moon will be hit by a large asteroid visible from Earth, greatly enhancing our efforts to track and detect and deal with near earth asteroids, or yeah, asteroids.

• 24:36Speaker 03

  I wish that were true.

• 24:37Bob Novella?

  That would have been cool to have. Imagine having a video of something hitting the moon with a huge eject and.

• 24:44Speaker 03

  Do you think we have cameras on the moon all monitoring it at all times?

• 24:48Bob Novella?

  No.

• 24:49Cara Santa Maria?

  Why not?

• 24:50Speaker 03

  Around the, around the planet? I mean, is something always looking and recording the moon?

• 24:55Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, maybe the near side.

• 24:56Bob Novella?

  Yeah. Yeah, I would think if something dramatic happened on the moon, somebody, there'd be a video somewhere.

• 25:02Cara Santa Maria?

  That it would happen on the far side.

• 25:04Bob Novella?

  Yeah, right?

• 25:05Speaker 03

  But AI is gonna come along and show us something that's not true.

• 25:08Cara Santa Maria?

  What is that Murphy's law? Murphy's moon law?

• 25:12Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 25:12Cara Santa Maria?

  Is that the buttered toast law? No?

• 25:14Speaker 02

  But always lands butter side down.

• 25:16Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it always, yeah, it lands, yeah, exactly. It only happens on the far side, I mean.

• 25:19Speaker 02

  All right, Jay.

• 25:20Jay Novella?

  All right, my first one. Netanyahu will be unseated as Israeli prime minister.

• 25:26Cara Santa Maria?

  Nope.

• 25:26Speaker 03

  Nope.

• 25:27Jay Novella?

  I felt like it was gonna happen all year and never happened. The Tesla Cybertruck will have horrible sales and, and end production.

• 25:36Speaker 03

  Nope.

• 25:36Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 25:37Cara Santa Maria?

  No, but one did catch on fire the first day of the year.

• 25:39Bob Novella?

  And one blew up yesterday, but that was intentional.

• 25:43Cara Santa Maria?

  That was yesterday. That's what I said.

• 25:46Jay Novella?

  The Cybertruck has been a massive failure.

• 25:48Cara Santa Maria?

  They are everywhere in LA, you guys. It's so.

• 25:51Speaker 03

  Well, I've seen it in Connecticut now almost regularly on the roads.

• 25:55Speaker 02

  Really?

• 25:56Speaker 03

  We're around here.

• 25:56Speaker 02

  It's more complicated than that. I mean, their, their sales are very low when compared to other Tesla products, but they're not low when compared to other like trucks in the same class, you know, kind of.

• 26:10Cara Santa Maria?

  Really?

• 26:11Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, if somebody's gonna spend a hundred and twenty thousand dollars on a vehicle.

• 26:14Speaker 02

  Oh, for, for the cost, yeah.

• 26:16Speaker 03

  Right.

• 26:16Speaker 02

  But, but production didn't end, so I think that.

• 26:19Jay Novella?

  No, it did not. But they, I've read so many negative things about the Cybertruck. Like it just, the list just continues to grow.

• 26:26Speaker 03

  So don't get you one. Got it.

• 26:28Jay Novella?

  I said that the movie Godzilla minus one will win an Oscar and it did.

• 26:32Speaker 02

  Won multiple Oscars.

• 26:34Jay Novella?

  That was my only win.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  That was a solid win.

• 26:37Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, that's because that's, yeah.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  Five Oscars or something?

• 26:40Jay Novella?

  Yeah, they did. They did well. They definitely did well. And then my last one, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky will win the Nobel Peace Prize and he did not win it.

• 26:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, yeah. Not yet.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  No, no. Well, not in 2025. That was Nihon Hidunkio, which was the guy who started the grassroots organization for atomic bomb survivors.

• 27:01Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  From Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not Zelensky.

• 27:04Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I just mean, there's, there's not still time this year. There's still time.

• 27:08Speaker 03

  Well, sure. Right. You can predict it again for 25 if you want.

• 27:11Speaker 02

  So one out of four J is what they gave me.

• 27:12Jay Novella?

  Not bad.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  Not bad.

• 27:13Speaker 03

  Better than most.

• 27:14Speaker 02

  All right, let's go on to 2025. I have four predictions again for 2025.

• 27:18Speaker 03

  Oh, you did four again?

• 27:19Speaker 02

  Because I'm doing like a bonus one as my weather prediction at the end. All right.

• 27:23Speaker 03

  All right.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  Prediction number one, the Russia-Ukraine war will enter a new, more dangerous phase.

• 27:29Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 27:30Cara Santa Maria?

  So vague. I love it.

• 27:31Speaker 02

  It's very specific. All right.

• 27:33Speaker 03

  Already correct.

• 27:34Speaker 02

  Number two, a potential techno signature will be discovered that will defy explanation throughout 2025. So it will not be, not be definitively explained in 2025.

• 27:45Speaker 03

  I like that one. I like that one.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  Number three, AI applications will cross the uncanny valley, producing generative video indistinguishable from real footage.

• 27:54Speaker 03

  Shoot.

• 27:56Cara Santa Maria?

  Do not like.

• 27:56Speaker 03

  I was afraid of that.

• 27:57Speaker 02

  And I had four. Here's my weather prediction. 2025 will not be the warmest year on record, but it will be in the top five.

• 28:07Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, look at that.

• 28:08Speaker 03

  Bucking the trend.

• 28:10Speaker 02

  That's called La Nina, folks.

• 28:13Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, so you actually did research. Crap, I didn't.

• 28:17Speaker 03

  I looked into it.

• 28:18Cara Santa Maria?

  I did not.

• 28:19Speaker 03

  Well, you're next, Kara.

• 28:20Cara Santa Maria?

  Like a true psychic, I just pulled them out of my ass.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  He just winged it. It's from the hip.

• 28:24Cara Santa Maria?

  Uh, a stable democracy will fall when an elected leader successfully abolishes term limits.

• 28:30Jay Novella?

  Oh, boy. Kara, what the hell?

• 28:33Speaker 03

  What are you doing? What are you doing?

• 28:34Cara Santa Maria?

  I didn't say which country, okay?

• 28:36Speaker 03

  Kara, you just gave everyone a jada.

• 28:39Cara Santa Maria?

  All right. H5N1 will mutate to become transmissible from person to person.

• 28:44Speaker 03

  These are happy predictions. Where's the love and the harmony and stuff?

• 28:48Cara Santa Maria?

  2020, hey, man. 2024 to 2025 was not the best transition. Okay. Um, 2025 will be the hottest year on record. God damn it.

• 28:58Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 28:59Cara Santa Maria?

  Pitting.

• 28:59Speaker 03

  Well, you and Steve both can't, right?

• 29:01Cara Santa Maria?

  Pitting against each other. Yeah.

• 29:02Speaker 03

  Head to head.

• 29:03Jay Novella?

  One of you will win.

• 29:05Speaker 02

  Not necessarily. I also said it will be in the top five. Maybe it isn't.

• 29:09Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 29:09Speaker 03

  Oh, three more predictions. 2025. My first one has to do with catastrophe. A bridge on an interstate highway system will collapse, causing zero fatalities.

• 29:23Cara Santa Maria?

  I, you're right. You've got a nice optimism there.

• 29:25Jay Novella?

  Fatalities.

• 29:26Speaker 03

  Yeah. See what I did there? I turned something horrible and made it a story of no, no injury. Number two, technology. A computer will achieve 1.99 petaflops, becoming the new champion of supercomputers. So by comparison in 2024, 1.74 petaflops was tops. I went just short of 2.0. That was for you, Bob.

• 29:51Speaker 02

  Thank you, man. That'd be cool.

• 29:53Speaker 03

  And my third prediction, astronomy. Supernova explosions, not one, but three of them will be visible to the naked eye.

• 30:06Speaker 02

  What?

• 30:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, you heard it here first. See you in a year.

• 30:10Speaker 02

  Three. Evan, at the same time or just in 2025? I'm asking you. That, that would be crazy.

• 30:18Speaker 03

  Would you like me to read it again?

• 30:21Speaker 02

  But what do you think will be will be at the same time? We're gonna go crazy. Go crazy.

• 30:25Speaker 03

  No, no, I know. There will be three distinct distinct events.

• 30:28Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 30:29Speaker 03

  All right. There's a way of the naked eye.

• 30:31Speaker 02

  If you predict one, that would be huge. Predicting three.

• 30:35Speaker 03

  Three. I am tripling down.

• 30:37Speaker 02

  Well, will make me if that happens, I will reconsider my views on your predictive powers.

• 30:43Speaker 03

  Holy geez, I can't wait.

• 30:45Speaker 02

  That would that doesn't mean the odds of that are so incredible. I mean, like.

• 30:49Speaker 03

  Did you do any research about soup about supernovas?

• 30:52Speaker 02

  Well, it was one per century, right? In the in our galaxy.

• 30:55Bob Novella?

  In the typical, yeah, typical galaxy, but.

• 30:57Speaker 02

  How many of them would be naked eye visible?

• 31:00Cara Santa Maria?

  He didn't say during the day.

• 31:02Speaker 02

  It's true.

• 31:03Speaker 03

  I did not.

• 31:03Speaker 02

  So let's say if we just use the one out of a hundred, but then times three is one in a million. Did I get that right?

• 31:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:13Bob Novella?

  Well, you heard. It's probably even more than don't forget the naked eyes. That means that it's probably relatively close.

• 31:18Speaker 02

  I'm just assuming a hun- one to a hundred. Like at the at the at the low end, it's a million to one. It could be.

• 31:24Speaker 03

  I did not pull that out of the air. I did some research into this, actually, and used some information to make this prediction.

• 31:33Cara Santa Maria?

  He's insider trading on supernova.

• 31:35Speaker 02

  You think Beetlejuice is gonna go up?

• 31:37Speaker 03

  The Beetlejuice thing. Yes, Steve. The Beetlejuice thing is one of them.

• 31:42Speaker 02

  Even just saying Beetlejuice will go supernova in 2025. That's a huge prediction because it could still happen anytime over the last, I don't know what thousands of years. It's still relatively close, but relatively close is still thousands of years. All right. We'll see what we'll see.

• 31:57Speaker 03

  We'll have a lot to talk about.

• 31:58Bob Novella?

  Our definition.

• 31:58Speaker 02

  Bob?

• 31:59Bob Novella?

  Okay, prediction one. Chat GPT five will be won't be released until mid 2025, a year later than initially anticipated.

• 32:11Bob Novella?

  And I'm going to add more. It will be even more lackluster than anticipated. However, this will not start the third AI winter. There's been two winters in the past where

• 32:21Speaker 03

  Oh, thank you.

• 32:21Bob Novella?

  Where there was so much hype. This is in the seventies and eighties to mid nineties. There was so much hype that inevitably didn't live up to it and funding dried up. I don't think that would happen here to maybe a little bit if it's ChatGPT five is real shit. It may be a little bit, but it's this is they're too invested and I think there's still a lot to be could be done with it.

• 32:44Speaker 03

  We've come too far to turn back.

• 32:46Bob Novella?

  Uh, let's see. Number two, and echoing Kara, full on bird flu epidemic.

• 32:53Cara Santa Maria?

  Ooh, no.

• 32:53Bob Novella?

  Person to person.

• 32:55Speaker 03

  Come on.

• 32:56Bob Novella?

  Mutation will happen in 2025, but I said epidemic. I could have, I considered predicting pandemic, but I said nah, if it is a pandemic, then I predict America will have the worst deaths.

• 33:10Speaker 02

  Uh, you gotta, you gotta learn the psychics. You gotta say epidemic, if not a pandemic. Like you hedge your bets, but you still take credit for the whole thing.

• 33:20Cara Santa Maria?

  But you are hedging because if you say epidemic, it's always an epidemic before it's a pandemic.

• 33:24Bob Novella?

  Right.

• 33:25Speaker 02

  But I'm just saying you want to get credit for the pandemic if it occurs.

• 33:27Cara Santa Maria?

  Ah, right, right, right.

• 33:28Speaker 02

  So you say if not a pandemic. All right, anyway.

• 33:31Bob Novella?

  Yeah, if I cared, I might've considered that, but um.

• 33:35Bob Novella?

  And third prediction, Nosferatu will win more Academy Awards than any other horror movie ever.

• 33:41Speaker 02

  That's a solid prediction.

• 33:42Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I like that.

• 33:44Bob Novella?

  Loved it. Loved the movie.

• 33:45Speaker 02

  Last night, it was really good.

• 33:46Bob Novella?

  Highly recommended. Wonderful. What an art piece. My God. Beautiful.

• 33:50Speaker 02

  Oh, the cinematography was.

• 33:52Speaker 03

  The one from a hundred years ago.

• 33:53Speaker 02

  It was incredible. It was beautiful and horrible at the same time. You know what I mean?

• 33:57Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 33:58Bob Novella?

  Yeah. Solid, solid, solid movie on every, at every level, pretty much. I recommend it.

• 34:04Speaker 02

  All right, Jay.

• 34:05Jay Novella?

  Jay. All right. Ready, guys? Uh, the prices of groceries won't go down in the United States.

• 34:11Cara Santa Maria?

  Great prediction.

• 34:13Speaker 03

  When you have two kids at home, you'll understand.

• 34:16Speaker 02

  It's hard.

• 34:17Jay Novella?

  No company will ultimately achieve general AI. In order to make this fair, though, I have to define what I'm talking about. Okay, so here's my definition of artificial general intelligence. This refers to a form of AI that possesses the ability to understand, learn, and apply knowledge across a wide variety of tasks in a manner similar to human intelligence. So that I repeat, no company will achieve general AI in 2025.

• 34:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, okay.

• 34:47Jay Novella?

  I think Kara, you and I agree on this one. The war between Ukraine and Russia will end.

• 34:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:52Jay Novella?

  Right, you said that?

• 34:53Cara Santa Maria?

  We agreed.

• 34:54Speaker 02

  No, I said it will enter a more dangerous phase.

• 34:57Jay Novella?

  Somebody said that war is going to end, I thought.

• 34:59Cara Santa Maria?

  No, you said it in your mind.

• 35:01Jay Novella?

  All right. Well, you agree with me anyway. And my final one, I agree with Bob here. The world will have another pandemic. Many Baathans will die.

• 35:12Speaker 02

  Okay. All right, there we are. We put our nickels down.

• 35:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:17Speaker 02

  Put ourselves, put ourselves up against the psychics. I think overall, over the years, we do better than they do.

• 35:25Speaker 03

  Which is not hard.

• 35:26Speaker 02

  Which is not hard. All right, we're going to go on to some news items. Jay, you're going to start us off by, some of these are still look ahead kind of news items. It's the first episode of the year. Jay, tell us about space exploration in 2025.

• 35:39Jay Novella?

  Yeah, I'm going to hit some of the highlights. There's a very long list of things that are going to happen with, in regards to space exploration. There's also, you know, quite a number of visual events, you know, like comets and all sorts of stuff like that. You should read up on those, but these are the, like, the launches and the missions, right? We have the lunar Trailblazer and Nova Sea IM2 lunar mission. This is going to happen at some type, sometime in January. This is a joint mission under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Service, and it's led by the private company Intuitive Machines. And the Nova Sea IM2 lander will launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9, and it'll carry several NASA payloads. And among those-

• 36:23Jay Novella?

  They'll have something called the Lunar Trailblazer, which is an orbiter designed to map the moon's water, water ice and hydroxyl deposits. So this is pretty cool. I am looking forward to this and it's going to happen soon. So everybody keep your eyes open. I'm hoping that there's video cameras on this thing so we can watch it land. We have the Blue Ghost Lunar Mission. This is also January of 2025. This is a separate CLPS mission led by the Firefly Aerospace. And the Blue Ghost Lunar Lander will carry something called the Lunar Planet Vac. What do you think they're going to do with that?

• 36:59Bob Novella?

  They're going to suck out all the atmosphere.

• 37:04Jay Novella?

  No, it is an advanced sampling instrument designed to collect surface material from the moon. I think this is pretty cool. You know, we need more moon rock. We definitely need it for research. It's just a cool thing to have. God, could you imagine? There was a half a second when I thought Bob gave me and Steve a piece of moon rock for Christmas. It wasn't true.

• 37:26Bob Novella?

  It was even better.

• 37:27Jay Novella?

  So the other payloads, this is going to include, there'll be scientific equipment to study the lunar surface and environment. And the mission will aim to expand knowledge about the moon's resources and environment while demonstrating technologies for future exploration. It's so wordy, right? The Europa Clipper Gravity Assist, this is in March. This is NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft. It'll conduct a gravity assist at Mars and it'll fly with 950, it'll fly within 950 kilometers is the 600 miles of the planet. The maneuver will adjust the spacecraft's trajectory for its journey to Jupiter, where it will set to study the icy moon Europa.

• 38:10Jay Novella?

  The mission's ultimate goal is to investigate Europa's subsurface oceans for signs of habitability.

• 38:17Jay Novella?

  Guys.

• 38:17Speaker 02

  I wanna see if it's habitable.

• 38:19Jay Novella?

  Habitable. So this thing, I talked about this, I was very excited talking about this news item last year. This is the one that's gonna fly through the ejecta. Hopefully, it'll get get to fly through some ejecta from the moon, which is essentially, you know, one of the water spouts. Very cool. I mean, this could be amazing if it hits. It's gonna be a big one. We have a Lucy flyby of asteroid Donald Johansson, April 20th of this year.

• 38:49Speaker 02

  You know who Donald Johansson is?

• 38:51Jay Novella?

  He's a flyby.

• 38:52Speaker 02

  But the asteroid was named after Donald Johansson.

• 38:54Jay Novella?

  Yeah, he's a guy.

• 38:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. I'm asking you if you know who he is.

• 38:57Jay Novella?

  No.

• 38:58Cara Santa Maria?

  Isn't he the guy who discovered Lucy?

• 38:59Speaker 03

  Scarlett's brother.

• 39:00Jay Novella?

  He's a, he's a-

• 39:01Bob Novella?

  Astronaut?

• 39:02Speaker 02

  Yes, that's correct.

• 39:03Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, yeah, right? No, he's not an astronaut. He's a, yeah, he discovered Lucy in Ethiopia. I interviewed him on my podcast.

• 39:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's correct.

• 39:10Jay Novella?

  That's great.

• 39:11Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, he's a really interesting guy.

• 39:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, paleoanthropologist.

• 39:13Jay Novella?

  So the spacecraft is called Lucy, and it'll fly past asteroid 52246, Donald Johansson, and it's located in the asteroid belt. And this asteroid, named after the discovery of Lucy fossil, is the second target in a mission to explore multiple asteroids. So I think that one's cool. Then we click forward to May. We have the Tianwen 2 mission. This is in May 2025. China's ambitious mission will target 469219 Camo Oluwa. It's a quasi-moon of Earth. I love the word quasi, by the way.

• 39:53Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 39:54Jay Novella?

  So it's a quasi-moon of Earth, and they're collect, they're gonna try to collect samples from the asteroid, and then return them to Earth. And the primary, if the primary mission is complete, it will continue towards comet 311P, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, it's like, it's gonna go to a comet. And it'll make it a dual-purpose mission, which is always good. And its goals include advancing knowledge about small celestial bodies, planetary formation, and potential asteroid mining. Which, you know, guys, asteroid mining, that is getting closer and closer as the years click by, man. So we have a- Couple more, the Juice Gravity Assist at Venus, this is in August, late August this year. The Jupiter icy moons explorer named Juice, right Juicy, right? Could you do that?

• 40:37Jay Novella?

  Jupiter icy moon explorer. Yeah, it works.

• 40:40Speaker 02

  Yep, that's it.

• 40:41Jay Novella?

  Led by the European Space Agency, this will perform a gravity assist maneuver near Venus to adjust its trajectory towards Jupiter. This is pretty cool. There's going to be an Earth flyby with this thing. Going out to 2031, it'll focus on the planets icy moons and it will study their potential habitability and subsurface oceans. So we have a couple of, couple of missions going out to Jupiter. And then the last one is the end of Juno's extended mission. So this goes to September of 2025. NASA's Juno spacecraft, which has been orbiting Jupiter since 2016. It will conclude its extended mission. It was originally designed for 37 orbits.

• 41:21Jay Novella?

  And Juno has basically provided us with groundbreaking data on Jupiter's atmosphere, which is great. Also its magnetic field and its internal structure. During this extended mission, Juno studied Jupiter's moons and auroras. And the mission is expected to end with the spacecraft intentionally de-orbiting into Jupiter to avoid contaminating its moons. And once it goes down into Jupiter, it'll be basically reduced down to like, you know, an eighth of an inch and stay there till the end of time.

• 41:51Speaker 02

  You know what's not happening in 2025?

• 41:53Jay Novella?

  What is not happening?

• 41:54Speaker 02

  The Artemis 2 mission, which was delayed from September 2025 now to April 2026.

• 42:01Jay Novella?

  Yeah, they suck.

• 42:03Speaker 02

  They're not saying, NASA's not saying it's going to happen in April of 2026. They're saying it's not going to happen before April of 2026.

• 42:11Bob Novella?

  Oh, that's even, yeah, it's worse.

• 42:12Speaker 03

  More delays.

• 42:13Jay Novella?

  Oh my God. Yeah. I mean, there's so many things that they don't have ready. They don't even have the space suits, you know, fully dialed in.

• 42:21Bob Novella?

  Wow.

• 42:22Speaker 02

  They're making progress, but yeah, of course it's slower than they say. You know, that's, that would have been a low hanging fruit prediction. The Artemis mission will be delayed.

• 42:32Jay Novella?

  You're right.

• 42:33Speaker 02

  Of course it will be. All right. Thank you, Jay.

• 42:36Bob Novella?

  Right.

• 42:36Speaker 02

  Kara, so keeping on your upbeat theme, you're gonna tell us about emerging diseases in 2025.

• 42:43Cara Santa Maria?

  We talked, I think it was the last time we met, or it might have been the time before that, because what is time really over the holidays? About-

• 42:51Bob Novella?

  Time is calories.

• 42:52Cara Santa Maria?

  Right, about H5N1 bird flu. And the number of cases that we have seen so far, I think the the count can, I mean, it continues to rise, but well over 60 here in the US. Globally, we're talking about kind of almost 1,000 cases over the last couple of decades. So this is not like, it's a very rare phenomenon that people get highly pathogenic avian influenza. So that's type A, H5N1. The reason it's so rare, once again, is because it's a spillover event that is then not transmissible from person to person. So that's why outbreaks aren't happening.

• 43:37Cara Santa Maria?

  There are massive outbreaks among birds, both wild and domesticate, and also massive outbreaks among cows here in the US and abroad. But we're not seeing epidemic proportions of bird flu because bird flu is not yet transmissible from person to person. But as I mentioned, the last time I covered this story, it is, researchers discovered that the only one mutation is necessary. One mutation, not a series of mutations like they used to think in order for this to become highly pathogenic from person to person. So obviously, this is on everybody's radar that this could be the epidemic or pandemic of 2025 or moving forward. But when we actually look at the not what ifs,

• 44:22Cara Santa Maria?

  but the what are's, what do you think are the three biggest, let's say, diseases of concern, infectious diseases of concern worldwide?

• 44:33Speaker 02

  I mean, isn't Ebola's always on that list?

• 44:36Cara Santa Maria?

  Ebola's scary. So I shouldn't say biggest. I should say maybe most common.

• 44:40Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 44:41Cara Santa Maria?

  So the infectious diseases that cause the most concern globally. Ebola, yes, is very, very scary, but it's not in the top three. Think about one of the most ongoing pandemics. Well, HIV. Yeah, HIV. Okay, so that's viral. There's one that's parasitic and we see it Malaria. In many, many countries, malaria. Mm hmm. And then there's one that's bacterial and it makes you cough blood. Tuberculosis. Tuberculosis. Tuberculosis is a bacterial infection. And so these three globally are kind of consistently on the lists. Covid is not anymore. And why is Covid no longer in the top three? Vaccines.

• 45:23Cara Santa Maria?

  Vaccines, yes, because we have very, very effective vaccines and treatments available as well. And then, of course, there are different, like, watch lists of different pathogens that are becoming drug resistant or that are sort of ebbing and flowing in the background. But the bird flu is kind of on everybody's radar as sort of our biggest candidate right now. And part of the reason that it is scary is, well, it's multi-fold, it's multi-factorial. One of them is that the mortality rate among human infections is around 30%. Yeah. That's not good. We don't like that. Another reason is because, I mentioned before,

• 46:07Cara Santa Maria?

  we are potentially one mutation away from this becoming transmissible from person to person. And even if it does not become transmissible yet, the occurrence of bird flu happening in isolated spillovers is becoming more of a reality. And why is that if our cows have bird flu? Because of it, it's raw milk? Yes, because we literally have people in positions of public influence advocating for drinking milk that has the potential to be infected by bird flu. Mind boggling. It's really scary, right? Because up until now, most of the cases have been from farm workers

• 46:48Cara Santa Maria?

  and from people drinking raw milk. Most of the cases have been spillovers from cows and they've happened from both of those incidences. And so we're seeing that there is Movement to prepare, right? The UK is stockpiling their five million doses of vaccine, H5 vaccine. Kind of they're ready. There are pandemic preparedness plans for bird flu that have been developed and then reiterated over and over. But I got to admit, I'm concerned here in the US. And I don't think historically, I have had this level of concern about our ability to successfully prepare and mitigate a potential disaster like that.

• 47:32Speaker 02

  It's we are living in the first act of a horror movie. A hundred percent, right?

• 47:39Cara Santa Maria?

  Right.

• 47:39Speaker 02

  We're like.

• 47:40Cara Santa Maria?

  And and we've seen it. It's like it's like the for the foreshadowing is because of evidence.

• 47:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:46Cara Santa Maria?

  You know, it's like we lived it. We don't want to live it again. And so, you know, really, I think remembering that HIV, tuberculosis and malaria and and obviously many others, those are only the top three are continue to be these global detriments, these quote, slow pandemics. We have to remember too, that even though here in the US and in many developed nations, we have the privilege of thinking of these as either diseases of the past or chronic diseases, they aren't. And they could just as easily rear their ugly heads here again. HIV is still a public health threat here in the US, although we have really good drugs to help prevent and manage.

• 48:31Cara Santa Maria?

  Tuberculosis could just as easily come back. So could a number of diseases if we continue to bend to anti vax rhetoric. And malaria could continue to spread throughout the globe directly as a function of human displacement and shifting climate. The actual makeup of the globe is changing. And so the things that were potential threats in the past are potentially more threatening now. And there are, you know, new risks that are popping up.

• 49:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:03Cara Santa Maria?

  The the good news is. Across the globe, there are a lot of very dedicated people, public health experts, epidemiologists, researchers, who, this is what they do. The bad news is, they can't do it without funding, and they can't do it without public support and governmental support. And so we have to hold our elected officials accountable. We have to remember that these things are, these risks are real.

• 49:30Speaker 02

  My biggest concern is that the very notion of public health is under assault. We saw that during the COVID pandemic, the idea that personal liberty supersedes public health, which doesn't make sense, it doesn't make moral or ethical sense. Like, for example, one person who chooses to drink raw milk and gets the bird flu could be the infection in which that mutation happens that causes it to, to result in human to human spread, which causes a pandemic, which is basically going to be COVID, but with 30% mortality, rather than the whatever, 0.1% or 1%, whatever it was at the end of the day. Right? That,

• 50:15Speaker 02

  so that one person's liberty is not more important than the health of the world, you know, and the millions of people who could potentially die from such an outbreak. It's nonsense.

• 50:24Cara Santa Maria?

  And the issue is, this rhetoric isn't new, but the, its ability to take hold and its ability to be repeated and promoted at the highest levels of government is.

• 50:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:35Cara Santa Maria?

  Like, when you look back at the archives during 1918, there were people marching against masks.

• 50:41Speaker 02

  There were anti-maskers in 1918, 100%.

• 50:44Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. This is, the rhetoric's not new, but it's really taken hold and in a way that is frightening, that really, it hadn't back then.

• 50:53Speaker 02

  Well, it's been politicized in a very dangerous way.

• 50:55Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 50:56Speaker 02

  So that, did the, you know, the, the public health officials respond perfectly in hindsight to the pandemic? Of course not. They admitted, we're building this plane as we're flying it. They made mistakes. They made reasonable assumptions, some of which turned out to be not entirely accurate. You have to make trade offs. You could Monday morning quarterback them all the time. But we're living in a political environment in which those kinds of things gets turned into, we can't trust the elites. We can't trust the experts. You know, they're they're assaulted our liberty for pseudoscience, whatever. It turns into a really toxic, corrupt way of viewing public health.

• 51:38Speaker 02

  Really just setting us up for the next pandemic to to completely fail. You know, to deal with

• 51:44Cara Santa Maria?

  Absolutely.

• 51:45Speaker 02

  The next one.

• 51:45Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, because it only works if we all work together.

• 51:47Speaker 02

  Right, right. And now, as you said, we have the worst possible people in charge. You know, it's like when I said hard movie, I'm imagining, you know, like you're watching the early scenes of a movie. You know, you basically know what the movie is about. Like, you know, the the people who are the protagonists are having a conversation. And in the background on the TV is RFK Junior talking about whatever nonsense these conspiracy theories he's talking about. And like, the audience knows that's the guy who's going to destroy the world. You know, in this movie, right? That's obviously, I'm not, I'm not, you know, doom and glooming this. I'm not saying this is what's going to happen, but I'm just saying we are, the pieces are in play. Right, this, as you say, this is the foreshadowing.

• 52:30Speaker 02

  When we look back and ask, how did this possibly happen? We know how it happened. The pieces are all there.

• 52:38Cara Santa Maria?

  And it reminds me, Steve, of when we've talked about filmmaking, like the art of filmmaking. And one of your biggest frustrations is when an antagonist or protagonist even just like continues to fail through ineptitude. Like, and that's why the plot is moved forward as opposed to there being these outside forces. It's like, it's lazy filmmaking. I feel like we are, we are in a, we are in lazy life right now. And it's so scary.

• 53:04Speaker 02

  I know.

• 53:05Bob Novella?

  Oh, man, we'll have a guy running our country who has in the past actually thrown away pandemic plans.

• 53:13Cara Santa Maria?

  Right, the pandemic preparedness binder. He was like, we don't need this.

• 53:17Bob Novella?

  Basically, essentially burned it.

• 53:19Cara Santa Maria?

  We don't need it.

• 53:20Bob Novella?

  It's like, here, this work is a bit, ah, fuck.

• 53:22Cara Santa Maria?

  Yep.

• 53:25Speaker 02

  Right. As I said, stock up on toilet paper. We just metaphorically do whatever you have to do to be prepared for another COVID-like pandemic, but without a competent government, you know, in place. All right, this next news item is very interesting. Bob and I are going to tag team it. We're going to both cover the same news item for two reasons. Partly because we both wanted to cover it, but also it's a little complicated. I think we need both of us to really wrap our heads around this one. But go ahead, Bob, you're going to start us off.

• 53:58Bob Novella?

  Okay, so a new model of cosmology called Timescape. Recent study on that came out. It claims to more accurately describe the expansion of the universe. In fact, it suggests that dark energy is not even required at all to explain what is being observed. So potentially no dark energy? That got my attention. This is from Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters. The name of the paper is Supernovae Evidence for Foundational Change to Cosmological Models. The biggest change in cosmology during my life, Steve, I'm sure you would agree with this, has been taking what I thought was essentially the totality of the universe, stars, planets, galaxies, life, et cetera, all the protons, neutrons and electrons essentially,

• 54:43Bob Novella?

  baryonic matter, basically. And it was shrunk down to only 5% of everything. And it seemed to happen fairly quickly. That happened when we incorporated the dark sector, the so-called dark sector into the universe. That's dark matter and dark energy. Suddenly, we knew basically nothing about 95% of the universe. Dark matter, we all know this, right? Dark matter, it's this weird matter that only appears to reveal itself through gravity and how that gravity shapes structures all over the universe. Dark energy discovered in 98. This was huge, huge, huge, huge news item. I mean, a Nobel Prize in 2011.

• 55:23Bob Novella?

  Supernova analysis showed that there was a mysterious energy inherent in space itself causing its accelerated expansion. Very, you know, high level definition, of course. But we've just, we've covered this in detail over the years. Now, I say we suddenly knew almost nothing, because if you consider the entire mass energy of the universe, dark energy is 71%, dark matter 24%, and all that we could see with our eyes and instruments is a paltry 5%. So if you're going to create a standard model of cosmology, now I've discussed the standard model of physics, there's also, of course, a standard model of cosmology. If you're going to create this, then you would be correct if you think that it would

• 56:07Bob Novella?

  have to focus on dark energy and dark matter, right? I mean, those are, those are the big boys now, you know, 75% or 95% of the universe. So that model would have to include that, both of the dark, the entire dark sector in a big way. Now, the standard model of cosmology does just that, and it's called Lambda CDM. Now, the name has two parts. Lambda, that's dark energy. CDM is cold dark matter, which is a very specific theory of dark matter. Cold in this context just means, you know, it's not, it's, it's moving slower than light. This model, for years, it's offered just what you would want from such a model. It explains what we observe, and it makes testable predictions. Awesome. There's a problem, though.

• 56:52Bob Novella?

  Recently, the lambda, or the dark energy part of this cosmological model, has been getting beaten up lately. Here's a couple of examples why. The cosmic microwave background radiation, the earliest radiation that we could see, early universe, was it a few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang? It shows the early universe's expansion doesn't fit with the current expansion, creating what's called the Hubble tension, which is a whole other topic that is way out of scope of this talk here. So there's that. And then the second reason why dark energy has been taken a beating is a research instrument called DESI, which is the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, recently suggested that dark

• 57:36Bob Novella?

  energy behaves differently than we had, we have thought for all these years. Specifically, its strength, its strength has changed over time in a way that we just... Did not understand or have believed over the years. The authors argue that a different model called the timescape model, which accounts for the structure of the universe in the model itself, can account for supernova observations better than Lambda CDM. In fact, the lead author, Professor David Wiltshire, said, "Our findings show that we do not need dark energy to explain why the universe appears to expand at an accelerating rate." Steve?

• 58:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, so this is where it gets interesting. I'm gonna just clarify a couple of things Bob said.

• 58:18Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 58:18Speaker 02

  Or give more detail. The Hubble tension, that's a critical concept here. So just to go one layer more deep, this is problems with the cosmological constant, right? If you measure the cosmological constant with direct measurement, like type 1a supernova or Cepheid variables, you get one answer, 73 to 74 kilometers per second per megaparsec. If you measure it using the cosmic microwave background, you get a different number, 67 to 68. They don't agree.

• 58:50Bob Novella?

  And it's not instrument error. It's too big for that.

• 58:53Speaker 02

  It's too big for that, and they don't even overlap. So that tells us something's wrong. There's something we don't know about the universe, or there's something wrong in whatever, in the way we're going about this. There's also another problem, and that is there are structures in the universe too large to exist if the cosmological constant, if dark energy exists. And we don't know how to resolve that problem either. Right? So there's like, if you can calculate how big something could be in the universe in terms of a gravitationally bound structure, and we have observed, directly observed, structures bigger than the theoretical maximum if Lambda CDM is correct.

• 59:33Bob Novella?

  Which structures are those? Are those the quasar, Steve?

• 59:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's like, there's the giant circle one. There's a few. There's like two or three structures that are bigger than should exist at this point in time. There's also the fact that astronomers have absolutely no idea what dark energy is, right? They don't know what it is. They don't even know what it could be. They don't even know what could behave this way. It's something outside of our current model of matter, energy, and the universe.

• 1:00:03Bob Novella?

  Yeah, the biggest thing for me is

• 1:00:04Speaker 02

  Hence dark, right?

• 1:00:05Bob Novella?

  Yeah, the biggest thing for me is that dark energy does not dilute, right? You have a parcel. See, you have a square, a square light year of space. And there's a certain amount of dark energy within that. If you go away and come back and that space has increased 10 times, each cubic light year still has the same amount of dark energy as do all the other, the others that have been created. So it doesn't, so that's why it just keeps getting stronger and stronger as you get, as you reach like a critical, like a maximum amount of space. You're going to really start noticing it. And that's why there were some predictions that you'd have the big rip where that expansion became, becomes so strong

• 1:00:47Bob Novella?

  that it would actually rips apart at, you know, matter at the atomic and subatomic level, which is really scary. Not very likely, even when we totally were buying into dark energy. But still, like, wow, that's scary ideas.

• 1:01:00Speaker 02

  All right. So now, basically, the situation is now, there are two models of cosmology that explain the expansion of the universe. There is the Lambda CDM and Timescape. The main difference between the two is that Lambda CDM assumes a uniform universe.

• 1:01:23Bob Novella?

  Right.

• 1:01:24Speaker 02

  Whereas Timescape accounts for the lumpiness in the universe, right?

• 1:01:29Bob Novella?

  The structures that have been created.

• 1:01:31Speaker 02

  The structure of the universe. So, in other words, but, but we could say it another way, but, so the Lambda CDM model basically says that at the scale that we are making our observations, the universe is statistically homogenous.

• 1:01:46Speaker 02

  Right?

• 1:01:47Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:47Speaker 02

  So it depends on at what scale does the universe become statistically homogeneous? And Lambda CDM says, well, at the scale where we're making our observations. And TimeScape says, nope, only much bigger than that. And at the, at the scale where we're making observations, you cannot treat it as statistically homogeneous. And, and remember, we've talked about this before. The homogeneous basically has two parts to it. Homogeneity, which is that every piece of the universe is like every other piece of the universe in terms of its mass density. And the other one is, is isotropy, that no matter what direction-

• 1:02:24Bob Novella?

  Is it isotropy? I like that pronunciation. Go ahead.

• 1:02:28Speaker 02

  Isotropy or isotropy? No matter what direction you look in, the universe looks the same, right?

• 1:02:33Bob Novella?

  Yep.

• 1:02:33Speaker 02

  So no matter where you are and no matter which direction you look, it should all be-

• 1:02:36Bob Novella?

  Yeah, we agree.

• 1:02:37Speaker 02

  Homogenous.

• 1:02:37Bob Novella?

  That's the key difference. That's the key difference.

• 1:02:39Speaker 02

  But Time gives us, nope, there's parts, there's, there's voids and there's clumps of matter. And, and it's not statistically, you can't just say, all right, all averages out at the scale where we're making our observations, including observations of the type 1A supernova that we use to measure the expansion of the universe. So this is where relativity comes in. This is interesting.

• 1:03:03Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:03Speaker 02

  So relativity says, says that when matter causes time to slow down, right? Remember, you know, the, the movie with the black hole? You get close to the black hole and time slows down for you.

• 1:03:17Bob Novella?

  That's gravitational time dilation.

• 1:03:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and so, so, so time is traveling faster in the voids than in galaxies, right? And it's like significant. It's not a little bit. It's by, I think it was, the number was 30%.

• 1:03:32Bob Novella?

  Yeah, they said 35. That did seem a little high, but still the point's taken.

• 1:03:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it's significant. And so what the TimeScape model says is that the acceleration of the universe is an illusion. It's an, it's an illusion based upon the assumption of homogeneity in a non-homogenous universe. So if- Time is traveling faster in the voids. The universe will be measured as expanding faster in the voids and expanding slower in the clumps. Right?

• 1:04:08Bob Novella?

  Right.

• 1:04:08Speaker 02

  And as the universe expands, the voids get relatively bigger. Because we're not making more matter, it's just getting farther apart from each other.

• 1:04:18Bob Novella?

  Right, and Timescape actually has a, has a, attaches a number to that. That's called the void fraction, which is very important in this model.

• 1:04:27Speaker 02

  So, so, yeah, the void fraction, the amount of the universe that's void increases, meaning more of the universe has faster time and therefore faster acceleration. So if we're just looking out at the universe, it looks as if over time, the expansion is happening at a faster and faster rate, when really there's just bigger and bigger voids. And it's just an illusion of that. But when you account for a local non-homogeneity, it all works out. Right? So, they did, in their analysis, actually Bob, I'll disagree with you on one thing you said.

• 1:05:02Bob Novella?

  What?

• 1:05:02Speaker 02

  And this is because of the way it's being reported. Actually, the Lambda CDM model and the Timescape model did the same. They predicted-

• 1:05:13Bob Novella?

  Earlier in the universe.

• 1:05:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, they, well, if you look at the whole, all the data, they basically performed the same. They, they matched observation as well as each other. And, and so, so what this data they're looking at is, is the, the supernova 1A data. And we have more, this is the same data that was used in the 90s to say that the universe is accelerating. They're looking at the same data, but now we have 20 years or whatever, 30 years more data.

• 1:05:40Bob Novella?

  That's the Pantheon plus data, yeah.

• 1:05:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, the Pantheon plus data, so it's a lot more data, a lot more detailed, more precise measurements. They crunched through all that numbers. They said, alright, we'll see, how well does Timescape predict this data? How well does Lambda CDM predict this data? Overall, they did the same, but Timescape did better in the local universe and the Lambda CDM did better in the early universe. But if you look at all the data, they're basically the same. So in other words, there's no reason, there's no reason to favor one over the other based upon this data. But they say timescape gives us the ability to fix the Hubble tension. Yes.

• 1:06:22Speaker 02

  And to solve the problem of why are their structures bigger than Lambda CDM says there should be. So the authors say, they did a Bayesian analysis, which is what's the probability that this is true. So they said, strong to very strong. So, you know, this is not the final word. And even the authors can't say, based upon their analysis, that Lambda CDM is not true, or timescape is proven, or there is no dark energy. They can't say that. The headlines are all, there's no dark energy, but we cannot say that based on this study. All we can say is, there's two models now. One requires dark energy, one does not require dark energy. And not requiring dark energy doesn't mean it doesn't exist, right? It just means that it's not required.

• 1:07:06Speaker 02

  So it's possible there may be a hybrid model, right, Jen? Hybrid. That timescape may be a tweak on Lambda CDM. Because the thing is, Lambda CDM has a lot of explanatory power. It's right, all models, as I said, all models are wrong, but some models are useful. Lambda CDM is a useful model. Timescape is, may turn out to be a useful model, too. We may end up using both of them to help explain things. But it may be that eventually, as we take more detailed observations, and we look at this, you know, this can take years, maybe even decades. Eventually, one of these two models may emerge as the winner. As, in other words, it's just, it's more in line with the actual data.

• 1:07:50Speaker 02

  And we don't know how that's going to go. Maybe they'll figure out some other way within Lambda CDM to figure out the Hubble tension. Or maybe that timescape really is the answer to that, and that's because it's correct. You know, it's more, it's closer to reality than Lambda CDM. Maybe we don't need dark energy in order to explain why the universe appears to be accelerating over time. I do like the, to me, just aesthetically, the fact that timescape takes into account the structure of the universe and doesn't assume homogeneity that we know isn't there. Right. It seems to be an advantage, but... That doesn't necessarily mean that it's that it's correct. So it's really interesting scientific question and you know, this is science at its best.

• 1:08:34Speaker 02

  We have two competing models. They're duking it out using data and math and logic. What Bob and I are describing to you is such a superficial metaphor level sort of description of what's going on. Well, you know, I actually tried to read the paper. I also tossed it into chat GPT and had it explain to me what was going on.

• 1:08:55Bob Novella?

  Me too.

• 1:08:55Speaker 02

  There is so much math going on. This is all math, you know? Yeah, you cannot actually understand what the scientists are talking about unless you know, like the real high level math that's going on. Um, this is just really just like a layperson level metaphor level description of what we're talking about.

• 1:09:12Bob Novella?

  Steve, I love, I like this idea in timescape of this void fraction. How much of the universe is a void? And the bigger the voids, the more you could say that there's a disparity between these two models. Now, this, check this one out. When voids started dominating the overall volume, right?

• 1:09:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:30Bob Novella?

  Right, when the, when the voids became big enough where it, they were the big players in a given volume of the universe. When that happened suspiciously, when Lambda CDM, at the same time, that's when Lambda CDM predicts the dark energy starts taking over.

• 1:09:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:48Bob Novella?

  And that's right, you see that? That's telling. That's very, that to me, that was like a very interesting point to, that shows that in, you know, in some, in a lot of ways, in some ways at least, timescape seems to, you know, make a decent case, at least right now initially, that, you know, dark energy could be, you know, as we're describing, it could be, you know, it could go away. It absolutely could go away. It's like another way to look at it is that this, this whole idea of acceleration, you know, is it intrinsic to the universe itself? Or is it just really a consequence of how, how you look at this observational data and interpret it in a universe that's non-uniform?

• 1:10:27Bob Novella?

  You have a non-uniform cosmos and it's just how you're, how you're interpreting that data is, can lead to dark energy? Or nah, maybe you don't need dark energy.

• 1:10:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's interesting. Does that make sense to you guys? I mean, it took us a long time to wrap our head around this and I hope we sort of.

• 1:10:44Jay Novella?

  Yeah, I totally get it.

• 1:10:45Speaker 03

  You did. Timescape winner.

• 1:10:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean. Yeah, it unlike, for example, dark matter versus modified Newtonian dynamics. I think dark matter is kicking the crap out of Mont, right?

• 1:11:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, agreed.

• 1:11:02Speaker 02

  I think dark matter actually does exist. And the, you know, the, that's, you know, I think that's like the 95% answer right now. I think that's gonna, that's going to emerge victorious.

• 1:11:12Speaker 03

  With what, 40 years of science?

• 1:11:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, here, like Lambda CDM versus Timescape, to me feels like a coin flip. I don't really have a, I don't really, at this point, think that I might have a slight edge towards Timescape at this point in time, just, but that's only because I'm.

• 1:11:28Bob Novella?

  Well, I mean.

• 1:11:29Speaker 02

  But who knows? I think.

• 1:11:31Speaker 03

  It sounds cool.

• 1:11:32Bob Novella?

  We'll have to wait till it's vetted, but based on what they're saying, they're saying, they're saying that they, you know, Timescape outperforms Lambda CDM in, in explaining the supernova 1A and other Pantheon plus observations. You know, if you're outperforming it in that, in that context, that's, you know, pretty damn good, pretty, pretty telling.

• 1:11:53Speaker 03

  Not insignificant.

• 1:11:54Bob Novella?

  It seems to me, that's, that's important. And yeah, but like we said, we got to reiterate, this is not definitive, they need to do more work, they need to fine tune it, so that they're not there yet, but this, this is, I think this could eventually be an important paper. We'll see, we'll see what happens when, you know, with as more, as it's, as this paper is vetted and we do more research.

• 1:12:13Speaker 03

  We need more math.

• 1:12:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, I mean, yeah, I mean, other experts may look at this and go, eh, you know, the math's crap, and move on, like, it might not.

• 1:12:19Bob Novella?

  Bro, yeah, for, for all we know.

• 1:12:21Speaker 03

  Forgot to carry the five.

• 1:12:22Speaker 02

  We're just trying to understand what they're actually saying, right? And I, I think we were able to do that. Okay, Evan, now we're gonna get really serious now. This is like, cutting edge science, you're gonna tell us about Bigfoot deaths.

• 1:12:35Speaker 03

  For the first time that I can ever remember, and you guys can let me know if you remember differently, Bigfoot now has a body count. I'm not talking about dead Bigfoot bodies, I'm talking about a pair of Bigfoot enthusiasts who recently went into the wooded area of Skamania County, which is in the upper northwestern United States of Washington. This was back on December 24th, 2024, Christmas Eve Day. Two men set out on their quest to find the mythical creature. And when they failed to return to their homes later that evening, the authorities were contacted and an all-out search began on Christmas Day by more than

• 1:13:19Speaker 03

  five dozen rescue workers and volunteers. They utilized footage from something called a Flock Safety Camera. I just learned about that. And this is how the search team located the vehicle. A Flock Safety Camera is a type of automated license plate recognition piece of technology used by law enforcement. They were able to pick up the picture of the camera and find the vehicle. They actually found the vehicle. There is your starting point for the search. The men's car was located at the Gifford Pincho National Forest, which is 1.3 million acres of forest, wildlife habitat, watersheds, mountains. It includes Mount Adams, Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, among other sights to see there.

• 1:14:04Speaker 03

  That's a massive amount of territory to cover. And it did take them three days for the team to finally discover the bodies of the two men. The cause of the death was determined to be the result of weather exposure. And they were clearly ill-prepared to survive in overnight conditions at this time of year in this part of the country. Yep. So...

• 1:14:26Speaker 02

  Nature will kill you dead.

• 1:14:27Speaker 03

  It will kill you dead. Yeah. And, you know, I'm about to get to that. Couple other things. The search for the men took place amid difficult terrain and harsh weather conditions. Yep, it's a tough time of year to be going out into the woods like that. Freezing temperatures, snow, high water levels, all made for a challenging search. Oh, by the way, in this county, if you harm Bigfoot, you will be fined $1,000 and perhaps go to jail for a couple of weeks. According to the Chamber of Commerce, it's a law meant to protect the mysterious creature and to prevent hunters with large beards from accidentally getting shot. This is what they said. Yep. All right. In all seriousness, though, here are some lessons to be learned here.

• 1:15:11Speaker 03

  These are my takeaways. First of all, have you guys ever heard of people dying in a search for Bigfoot? I don't recall.

• 1:15:18Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:15:19Speaker 03

  This is my first recollection of anything like this taking place. So I can't say it's a common occurrence. But it's unfortunately a tragic occurrence in which, here we go again, believing in nonsense is not harmless. It is not. And here we have another example. I mean, do we even have to explain why Bigfoot does not exist in the first place?

• 1:15:41Speaker 02

  We could give a bullet.

• 1:15:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, lack of physical evidence. No DNA, no bones, no remains, no fecal material, they have no habitat we've discovered, no nests, no dens, no tracks, only faked tracks, no actual tracks, no evidence of them eating food, no verified photos or videos. Again, we have plenty of fake photos and fake videos, but nothing-

• 1:16:04Speaker 02

  Or misidentified.

• 1:16:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. And despite that amount, that incredible amount of negative evidence, you've got television shows, you've got podcasts, movies, books, organizations, and hey, right here, a government agency who are stoking the coals of the Bigfoot legend because, well, I don't, you know, there are groups of people who want to believe in these things that are not real. And then there are other groups of people who frankly, in some way, want to, in a sense, profit off of those beliefs of those people. So, I don't know. I think everybody shares, I think everybody in these categories shares a very small piece of responsibility in the death of these two unfortunately gullible people. And they need to remember

• 1:16:51Speaker 03

  that, that there is harm involved with believing in nonsense. It may not always come, it may not always result in death like this, but in this case it did, and this is another reminder of that.

• 1:17:01Speaker 02

  Now, you could argue that Bigfoot is incidental to the story.

• 1:17:05Speaker 03

  Incidental, absolutely.

• 1:17:07Speaker 02

  Because they, these are two people who went into the woods in challenging weather conditions, and they were ill-prepared. Apparently, they weren't experienced, and they were ill-equipped to deal with it. And that's what killed them. But I would argue, and I think is what you're saying, is they probably wouldn't have done that if they weren't motivated by belief in Bigfoot. You know, that they basically got in over their heads. And, you know, not that, people will do that for other reasons, but that was the reason in this- Case, it seems.

• 1:17:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I don't know, but I don't know enough about Bigfoot organizations and collectives and groups and stuff. Do they, do they have classes that do teach people proper survival skills if they are gonna go venturing off into the woods?

• 1:17:51Speaker 02

  I don't know, some might, but again.

• 1:17:52Speaker 03

  Some might.

• 1:17:53Speaker 02

  Do you really wanna get your survival skills from a Bigfoot believer? Uh, seriously, like the, that's part of the problem is that these are like amateur organizations. They're, they're probably themselves ill-equipped, you know, to deal with this because you know, the people involved and the motivation behind it, they're not like serious organizations that have invest in the skill and resources. Um, and also like will make good decisions about, no, we're not gonna go out in this weather because you know.

• 1:18:22Speaker 03

  There are stories of people who have hiked the Appalachian Trail in, in the United, in the United States. These are, these are, you know, what you would consider either professional or, you know, but amateur enthusiast hikers. And they know the rules of the trail. You don't go off the trail. Because they have found bodies like a hundred feet off the trail. When you go looking for Bigfoot in it, in, in a park or something like that, guess where you're, you're not staying to on the trails. There are no Bigfoots on the trails, there are no Bigfoots, but you're not gonna find Bigfoot on the trail. Where are you going? You're going off the trail, folks. So you are already putting yourself into a massive, massively more dangerous situation than you would have been had you just stuck to the trail in the first place.

• 1:19:06Speaker 02

  The motivation to get more risky, but I mean, having said that, even professionals die because they get overwhelmed by the

• 1:19:12Speaker 03

  They do.

• 1:19:13Speaker 02

  The weather. Yeah, this is dangerous even for people who know what they're doing. If you're not.

• 1:19:17Speaker 03

  Very dangerous and don't rely on your cellphone to get you out of them. I mean, your cellphone is likely not going to work out there. You have got to have the uh, proper communication equipment. It has to be satellite-based. Devices, shortwave radios, shortwave walkie-talkies. I mean, those are the kinds of things that you really need to have. And you know, I don't know what they were thinking, but you have to also assume worst-case scenario, you have to have a shelter with you, emergency blankets, dry rations, fire-starting materials, cold weather. You can't just go make it a day exploration into the woods to find Bigfoot or look for a bird or whatever it is you're gonna do. You have to, you have to, you have to be much better prepared for that. You're taking your life in your hands. And unfortunately, these two people died as a result.

• 1:20:00Speaker 02

  All right. Thanks, Evan. Jay, it's Who's That Noisy Timer rebooting for the new year.

• 1:20:05Jay Novella?

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

• 1:20:39Jay Novella?

  Okay. Any guesses, guys?

• 1:20:43Speaker 03

  Well, it sounds as if somebody took a microphone or a camera and a microphone and sent it down something, a tunnel, a hole, a... That's what it was recording, that noise of its venture going wherever, you know?

• 1:20:57Jay Novella?

  That's not a bad guess, Evan. A listener named Shane Hillier wrote in, said, "Sounds like a roller coaster ride before it starts, like when people are clicking in the locks and lap bars." I think that was a good guess. Not correct. I've heard that noise many, many, many times. There's definitely a similarity, but it is not correct. Benjamin Greenberg wrote in, "Hi, Jay. After coming close last week, I'm feeling confident. This week's noisy has some industrial vibes, heavy reverberation and mechanical propeller like a hum with a Doppler effect. The clacking noises remind me of a very specific sound: air hockey. So I'm going to say this is a giant game of air hockey taking place in an airplane hangar." That is not correct.

• 1:21:39Jay Novella?

  Bisto Tuti wrote in, "This end-of-year noisy sounds quite like being inside a tunnel under a road bridge. I've heard similar, the bridge creaking and cracking as traffic drives over above." That is not correct. Matthew Morrison wrote in, he said, "Hi, Jay. I think it sounds like someone picking up litter in a culvert under a highway." And his daughter thinks that it sounds like a really old, bad-quality video of people picking up weights at a gym. So that that's not correct either. So do we have a correct answer? And the answer is yes. We have a couple of people that guessed. One person guessed really well. I'll start with that person. This is Mike Sarah's answer. I think this is the power down sequence of a

• 1:22:20Jay Novella?

  large wind turbine from inside. And that is exactly what it is, guys. This is a large wind turbine powering down. And the video that goes along with this is amazing because of how much flex is happening in the tower. When you know, when you're looking up the tower as this thing is shutting down, and it's bending like crazy. And there's all these different things moving around and everything. It's really complicated and kind of scary looking. And that's, that's what happens when a wind turbine is shut off and it slowly winds down to a stop. Another listener named Cooper Parrish wrote in with a close guess, but I wanted to mention it because I know how hard this one was. He said, his

• 1:23:02Jay Novella?

  guess for this week's noisy is that we are hearing maintenance workers inside of a large windmill tower. And I think that's correct because somebody had to take the video. So we had two winners. Both great job, guys. Thanks for playing. And I got a new noisy for you guys if you're interested. Of course, you're interested.

• 1:23:38Jay Novella?

  What the heck is that, guys?

• 1:23:40Speaker 02

  Sounds like when I pour ice down the disposal.

• 1:23:43Jay Novella?

  So if you think that you've heard this week's noisy, or you've you heard something cool, if you think you've really, if you heard something cool, and you haven't emailed me yet, record it and send me an email to wtn@the skeptics guy.org. Steve, it is the new year.

• 1:23:59Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:24:00Jay Novella?

  And with the new year comes new things.

• 1:24:03Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:24:04Jay Novella?

  So I present to you and the rest of the rogues, Nauticon 2025.

• 1:24:09Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:24:11Jay Novella?

  We have a meeting on Tuesday and we're going to continue our work on writing all the bits and you know, fine tuning the whole thing. So far, it's been a ton of fun for us, which means that if you come, you're going to have a great time. So Evan, I believe that all of the board game seats are gone.

• 1:24:30Speaker 03

  Yes, we have a so, sold out event.

• 1:24:32Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 1:24:33Speaker 03

  Meeting, yep, has been sold out.

• 1:24:35Speaker 02

  Gotta move fast.

• 1:24:35Speaker 03

  It's gonna be awesome.

• 1:24:36Jay Novella?

  And the VIP has been sold out as well.

• 1:24:39Cara Santa Maria?

  Wow.

• 1:24:40Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:24:41Jay Novella?

  Yeah, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't buy tickets and come to the conference yourself. So you've must have heard me say this before on the show, so I'll keep it brief today. This is a conference about having a good time. This is a conference where all of us, you know, all five rogues, and then we have George Robb, Andrea Jones Roy, and Brian Wecht. We will be spending our daytime hours trying to entertain you with lots of different fun things. Uh, like last year or last time we did it, we had a live on the stage cooking show, which went over really well. We also have something called SG University, where each one of the rogues and, and the other, uh, directors of the show will be teaching you something from their past.

• 1:25:26Speaker 02

  We're gonna do that again?

• 1:25:28Jay Novella?

  Uh, that's what everybody was saying, yeah.

• 1:25:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it was a ton of fun. Like, that was the best bit that we did.

• 1:25:33Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:33Bob Novella?

  Yeah, it was fun.

• 1:25:34Speaker 03

  It was a lot of fun.

• 1:25:35Speaker 02

  It was good. It was, it turned out, I gotta say, it turned out better than I thought it was gonna turn out. It was, it was, everyone did a great job. Um, I've been thinking about what I'm gonna do this year.

• 1:25:45Jay Novella?

  Don't say it.

• 1:25:45Speaker 02

  Don't say it. Okay, I won't say it. I was, I was about to say it. That's fine.

• 1:25:50Cara Santa Maria?

  The suspense.

• 1:25:51Jay Novella?

  So if you're interested in learning more about Not a Con or you'd like to buy tickets, you can go to notaconcon.com or you could go to the skepticsguy.org and there'll be a link on there for you to take a look. We are also planning out all of our live shows that are gonna happen this coming year, guys. Um, probably starting after, um, May, I believe, but more details will come as soon as I start locking in dates and everything. And I am sick. Don't feel bad for me. I always get sick over Christmas because I'm so Surrounded by children.

• 1:26:21Speaker 02

  And then Jay got me sick, which you could tell from listening to my voice.

• 1:26:24Bob Novella?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:26:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. All right. Thanks, Jay. Couple of quick emails. So a little addendum to the in memoriam that we did on the last episode of last year. One is that I just forgot to include somebody on the list. A philosopher, Daniel Dennett, died in 2024.

• 1:26:42Bob Novella?

  It was 24.

• 1:26:43Cara Santa Maria?

  We didn't talk about Dan.

• 1:26:44Speaker 02

  We talked about, we talked about it. I just forgot to list him.

• 1:26:46Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, just not in the in memoriam.

• 1:26:47Speaker 02

  In memoriam at the end of the show. So I just forgot that one. And then, as is often the case, between us recording the show and the end of the year, sometimes notable people do die and they don't make it onto the list. So in this case, that person was President Jimmy Carter, who died, I think, the day, the day after the show came out or something. So you guys remember Josh Carter, who's one of Jimmy Carter's grandchildren, who's a friend of the show. We met him during our 1,000th episode, right? And he, he came on briefly to talk about some of the work that he's doing. So I emailed him just to give my condolences and he responded, because I said that, you know, you know, your, your grandfather had quite a legacy. And his response was, Governor of Georgia,

• 1:27:29Speaker 02

  President of the United States, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, 100 years old, 101 Christmases. I guess he survived after Christmas. 77 years of marriage, four children, 12 grandchildren, 14 great grandchildren. He spent his life fighting for America, democracy, global health, human rights and peace. He told the truth and obeyed the law. So yeah, that's quite a, he said, not bad for a peanut farmer. That is quite the life lived.

• 1:27:55Jay Novella?

  Wow.

• 1:27:55Speaker 02

  Cracked 100. Good for him.

• 1:27:57Jay Novella?

  I love that response. Love it.

• 1:27:59Bob Novella?

  That is great. Damn, man. I feel, I feel pretty lame right now.

• 1:28:04Speaker 02

  One other email. We had, we had a few people respond to our, we had a kind of an off the cuff discussion in the end of the year episode about a news item that we weren't covering, because we weren't covering new news items in the review show. This one was about the Commonwealth Fusion Systems announcing their plans to build a commercial fusion power plant in Virginia. Bob and I chatted about it a bit and wasn't sure if we We're gonna like, take a second bite at that apple and just do a full report on it, but we just figure out, we'll just, we'll just respond to the feedback in the, in the emails. One is a, just a, sort of a pedantic point. We said that they're going straight to a commercial fusion plant.

• 1:28:48Speaker 02

  But in fact, they are already building the spark reactor, which is the smallest possible arc reactor. Uh, that is their test reactor and that, but they, but while that's happening, they are planning to build their arc reactor, which will be the first. Uh, you know, uh, their first and the first really commercial fusion power plant that will be ready to send energy to the grid. And that is, this is a tokamak design, uh, which is, you know, this is the only design that has any chance of producing net energy. Yeah, it really seems that way right now. It's like orders of magnitude closer than anything else. So this is, this is it.

• 1:29:30Speaker 02

  So then we had, there was a lot of discussion about like, you know, Bob is a little bit more optimistic. I'm still a little bit more pessimistic about. You know, whether or not they're going to meet their projection of, of completing this, like getting net energy from a fusion reactor in the 2030s. And, um, just as one thing I want to point out, so the, the question is, how close are they? Right? So the one point is definitely true that the newer material science, Kara, right? Material science has resulted in high temperature. Superconductors, which allow for smaller, more powerful magnets. And that has been a game changer for the tokamak designed fusion reactors. It's the only thing that even makes this even a discussion, right? That while this is even plausible.

• 1:30:15Speaker 02

  The, and how close have they gotten? They've gotten to like 60 or 70% of the way to break even. And so it sounds really close, uh, but my point was, yeah, but remember one is break even, right? That's not producing net energy. How much more than that do you have to get before it's cost effective? I think one, at least if not two orders of magnitude beyond that. First of all, the conversion of the energy. Is, you know, I think optimistically it'd be like 30% efficient, like the energy to electricity using. A turbine, that's like what our, where our fission reactors are. So it'd probably be,

• 1:30:58Speaker 02

  the turbine design is going to be the same, just a different source of the heat, right?

• 1:31:02Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:02Speaker 02

  So probably going to be about 30% efficient. And so I would think, you know, that we would have to be at least be making 10 times more energy than, than it's consuming before the whole thing is going to be, uh, cost effective. And, you know, saying that we're going to increase the energy output by an order of magnitude is, is, is huge. That is huge. Uh, and there's still lots of these engineering, the other, some people made the point, well, the physics all works. You're right. That's indisputable. The, the physics works. That's not the issue. The issue is the engineering. The question is, are we going to get the engineering to work? And these are non-trivial issues that need to be solved.

• 1:31:42Bob Novella?

  Applied science is a bitch.

• 1:31:43Speaker 02

  It's a bitch. So I think my reading of everything is that, Bob, tell me if you disagree, like the 2035 timeline, that assumes everything goes perfectly well, which it rarely does. And it could easily get pushed back, can get pushed back to 2040, 2050, whatever, depending on how hard it really is to overcome these hurdles. And some of them may be indefinitely. There's so many, like when we're dealing at this level of cutting edge technology, it is, it is more the rule than the exception that like, we just don't overcome these engineering

• 1:32:23Speaker 02

  problems, you know? Um, or they take a lot longer than we think. So I still think we're in that phase, but it is certainly possible, I will admit, it is possible if everything goes perfectly well, that we could have a working fusion reactor in the mid 2030. So I hope that that's the case. I'm just-

• 1:32:41Bob Novella?

  Working and, and, and-

• 1:32:43Speaker 02

  Producing that energy.

• 1:32:44Bob Novella?

  Tight into the grid, you mean?

• 1:32:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, tied to the grid, producing that energy, producing energy.

• 1:32:48Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:49Bob Novella?

  Yeah, I'm hoping before 2040. That's my-

• 1:32:52Speaker 02

  That'll be, even that would be amazing.

• 1:32:54Bob Novella?

  2039 would be nice.

• 1:32:55Speaker 02

  Between 2040. But if, but again, like with Artemis being pushed back, it's the same thing. If it's 2050 or 2060, you know, if I'm still around, I won't be surprised. Right?

• 1:33:06Bob Novella?

  Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised either.

• 1:33:07Speaker 02

  Yep. Okay.

• 1:33:08Bob Novella?

  Unfortunately. Be crying.

• 1:33:09Speaker 02

  Let's move on to science or fiction?

• 1:33:23Speaker 02

  Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake. Then I challenge my panel of skeptics to sniff out the fake. We have a theme this week. The theme is new species discovered in 2024.

• 1:33:39Speaker 03

  Oh, wait a minute.

• 1:33:40Speaker 02

  I've done this before.

• 1:33:42Speaker 03

  Talked about this.

• 1:33:43Speaker 02

  All right, here we go. Item number one. Angiukulus dicaprio, or DiCaprio's Himalayan snake, was named after actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who helped discover the new species while on safari. All right, number two. A new species of clear-winged moth, Carmenta brachioclatus, was discovered in a living room in South Wales, based on an amateur photograph, posted on Instagram, and then seen by an amateur lepidopterist. And item number three. Myloplos sauron is a new species of vegetarian piranha,

• 1:34:25Speaker 02

  discovered in Brazil and named after Sauron from Lord of the Rings. Evan, go first.

• 1:34:31Speaker 03

  Okay, well, I won't even try to pronounce these things. It's hard enough when you know it, let alone you don't know it. But Leo DiCaprio's snake, we'll call it, helped discover the new species while on safari. That could be true. I mean, but would you name it for DiCaprio? Help discover, wouldn't it be someone else? I don't know. That seems a bit out there to me. Second one. Now, there's a clear-winged moth discovered in a living room in South Wales. That's Australia, right? Based on an amateur...

• 1:35:13Speaker 02

  No, that's South Wales. New South Wales is Australia. South Wales is just South Wales in England.

• 1:35:19Speaker 03

  Oh, Wales.

• 1:35:19Speaker 02

  South Wales in the UK.

• 1:35:21Speaker 03

  United Kingdom.

• 1:35:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:35:22Speaker 03

  Got it, okay. Well, we'll just leave it at that because that's correct. And it was based on an amateur photograph posted on Instagram and then seen by an amateur mothologist. So, that could be. It seems more plausible than Leonardo DiCaprio's named discovery. The last one here about Sauron now. This one, this one's kind of funny in a way, but I also, I think of the three, this is probably the most true. A vegetarian piranha, which is nice to hear. It makes me feel good. And of course, named after Sauron from Lord of the Rings. You know, you know, something, something that has had the history of the Lord of the Rings.

• 1:36:05Speaker 03

  I can definitely see names being taken from that and applied to, to new discoveries. Definitely. The least plausible one of the three to this is the Leonardo DiCaprio one. It's, um, that sounds made up of, now that I think about it, I'll say that one's fiction.

• 1:36:22Speaker 02

  Okay, Bob.

• 1:36:23Bob Novella?

  Let's see, I don't know. I could imagine Leonardo being, making a compelling argument to throw his name in there. I don't have too much of a problem with that one. And the, um, I just love the idea of an amateur lepidopterist finding an image on Instagram. I just love that. So I'm going to go with that one, which leaves, uh, Sauron, uh, vegetarian piranha. It just doesn't, eh, it doesn't sound right. Vegetarian piranha. And then, okay, if, even if it existed, would you name it after Sauron? I, I wouldn't. I'd think of something better than that. So I say that one's fiction.

• 1:37:01Speaker 02

  All right, Jay.

• 1:37:02Jay Novella?

  Yeah, I'm going to go with Bob. That's the one I'm leaning towards. I just don't think there's a vegetarian frickin' piranha.

• 1:37:08Speaker 02

  Okay, and Kara.

• 1:37:10Cara Santa Maria?

  Can I ask about a hole in my knowledge? Like, who is Sauron?

• 1:37:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, Sauron is the deceiver. He is a, uh, the dark lord who, who rules over.

• 1:37:22Speaker 03

  Lord of the Rings, bad guy.

• 1:37:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, but he is the main bad guy of Lord of the Rings.

• 1:37:26Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay, so piranha, that kind of makes sense, I guess. With the little teeth. Vegetarian. Yeah, I know it's vegetarian, but it's a deceiver. Who knows?

• 1:37:36Speaker 02

  Oh, good point, Kara.

• 1:37:37Cara Santa Maria?

  Right? I totally buy the, uh, species, the moth that was discovered based on a photograph. If you don't use iNaturalist, use it. It's super fun. There are so many, both, uh, professionals and amateur. Scientists and naturalists who use it. So if you, if there's cool wildlife near you, take pictures, upload it, somebody will help you identify it. It's really cool. Um, I could see that happening. So it's between the other two. Uh, and I am, think I'm gonna go with Evan. And you know what is making my spidey senses tingle the most? Is the word safari. I don't know why it bugs me that it says that Leo helped discover this species on safari.

• 1:38:20Cara Santa Maria?

  And yes, technically safari is just a wildlife like game drive, like it's going out and seeing wildlife. Whether you're hunting or taking photographs or whatever, but it's Swahili. And when we say safari, we're almost always talking about Africa. I don't think people talk about going on safari in the Himalayas. So I don't know why that just bugs me and I'm gonna call that one the fiction.

• 1:38:39Speaker 02

  Okay. All right. So you all agree on the second one. So we'll start there. A new species of clear winged moth, Carmenta brachyoclatus, was discovered in a living room in South Wales, based on an amateur photograph posted on Instagram. And then seen by an amateur lepidopterist. You guys all think this one is science and this one is? Science. This is science. That, that actually happened. Now this clear winged moth. Was a, an accidental, right? Somehow it, it's from South America. It found its way into Wales somehow. In this home, the people have a lot of plants in their home. So.

• 1:39:23Speaker 02

  The person saw, that's an interesting insect, took a picture of it, you know, just an amateur, nothing, right? Took a picture of it. And well, uploaded it on Instagram. And then this was a Daisy T. Cadet, who, who got her name on the paper. For doing that. And then, uh, this picture was seen by a, an amateur lepidopterist. So not a professional, but a knowledgeable amateur, a knowledgeable amateur, who said, that's, that's interesting. I don't know what that is, couldn't identify it. Turns out it's a newly identified species. Now there were, there was actually a population of this clear winged moth in the person's house, you know? They, they were like laying eggs in their plant.

• 1:40:03Speaker 02

  And there were dead ones on the windowsill. So they had lots of specimens that they didn't name the, you know, they didn't present just this picture. They actually went and got physical specimens, but the picture is what led them to it. Yeah. So cool. It's very interesting sequence of events. Amateur scientists, amateur naturalists, actually identifying new species. Okay, let's go back to number one. Angiuchulus dicaprio, or DiCaprio's Himalayan snake, was named after actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who helped discover the new species while on safari. Evan and Kara, you think this one is the fiction. Bob and Jay, you think this one is science.

• 1:40:45Speaker 02

  I will tell you that DiCaprio's Himalayan snake is real and was a new species named in 2024. It's a small brown snake.

• 1:40:56Speaker 03

  But.

• 1:40:56Speaker 02

  It was named after Leonardo DiCaprio.

• 1:40:59Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:59Speaker 03

  Wait.

• 1:41:00Speaker 02

  It was absolutely.

• 1:41:01Cara Santa Maria?

  But.

• 1:41:02Speaker 02

  But not because he was on safari and he discovered it.

• 1:41:05Speaker 03

  Oh, you got it, Kara.

• 1:41:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I threw in the safari thing. Because Leonardo DiCaprio is an activist, you know, naturalist, right? He is spending his time and money fighting against climate change and the effect on the environment and species. So it was to honor his, his naturalist activities.

• 1:41:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:41:28Speaker 02

  Just to honor his, his work, not because he was part of the discovery itself.

• 1:41:33Speaker 03

  So the safari was the fiction.

• 1:41:35Speaker 02

  That was the fiction, yeah.

• 1:41:37Speaker 02

  Which means that Mylopus sauron is a new species of vegetarian piranha discovered in Brazil and named after Sauron from Lord of the Rings is science.

• 1:41:47Bob Novella?

  Lame.

• 1:41:48Cara Santa Maria?

  It's so funny that you called it a vegetarian.

• 1:41:51Speaker 02

  It's a vegetarian piranha. That's what everything says.

• 1:41:54Speaker 03

  How about herbivore?

• 1:41:56Speaker 02

  It eats, it eats, you know, water-based plants.

• 1:41:59Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:00Speaker 02

  It is a paku. And so it was named after Sauron because it has this vertical black stripe behind its eye that looks like the pupil of Sauron, of Sauron's eye. So they called, they named it after Sauron.

• 1:42:16Bob Novella?

  Was afraid that might be the case.

• 1:42:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. So just because it just visually reminded them. And it's also kind of a round fish, you know what I mean? Looked at from the side, its profile is. Fairly circular. Yeah, and because scientists are nerds, so of course they named it after Sauron, right? That's

• 1:42:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, right. When they leave it to the public, it would have been, you know, Chompy McChompface or something.

• 1:42:43Speaker 02

  My God.

• 1:42:46Speaker 02

  All right. Good job, Evan and Kara.

• 1:42:49Bob Novella?

  Hey.

• 1:42:50Speaker 02

  Evan, give us a quote.

• 1:42:52Speaker 03

  Hope and curiosity about the future seemed better than guarantees. That's the way I was. The unknown was always so attractive to me and still is. Hedy Lamarr. Remember Hedy Lamarr?

• 1:43:05Bob Novella?

  Yeah, Wi-Fi, baby.

• 1:43:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's right. Glamorous Hollywood actress, but also a very talented inventor who made significant contributions to science and technology. The frequency hopping spread spectrum technology specifically. Back in 1942, um, during World War II, wasn't adopted during the war, but it laid the foundation for modern wireless communications. This became a core technology used eventually in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and cellular networks. So we are still benefiting from her invention, her discovery. And, uh, yeah, a, uh, definitely a, uh, what a, um, superhero of science.

• 1:43:48Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:48Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:49Speaker 03

  No doubt about it.

• 1:43:51Speaker 02

  Thank you, Evan.

• 1:43:52Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:43:53Speaker 02

  So guys, 2025 is off to a start with our first episode.

• 1:43:58Speaker 03

  There we go. We've got predictions. We've got news. It's all happening.

• 1:44:01Speaker 02

  This year we'll see the completion of our 20th anniversary, our 20th year.

• 1:44:06Bob Novella?

  That's correct.

• 1:44:07Speaker 03

  Whoa. What is it clocks? We have to buy clocks for each other?

• 1:44:10Speaker 02

  Something. We'll see.

• 1:44:11Speaker 03

  Is that the anniversary gift? Oh, something.

• 1:44:14Speaker 02

  I don't know. We have 20.

• 1:44:16Speaker 03

  It is China.

• 1:44:18Speaker 02

  China.

• 1:44:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:44:20Speaker 02

  We're going to China.

• 1:44:21Speaker 03

  A modern alternative is platinum. We have to get each other platinum. And Bob, a 23rd century anniversary, uh, alternative is gold press latinum. So

• 1:44:32Bob Novella?

  Nice.

• 1:44:33Speaker 03

  Threw that out for you, Star Trek folks.

• 1:44:35Speaker 02

  Nice. Gold, gold press latinum it is.

• 1:44:37Bob Novella?

  I think, I think that means we need to go to Disney China this year then.

• 1:44:41Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:44:42Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:44:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's probably not happening.

• 1:44:43Jay Novella?

  Well, Happy New Years, everybody.

• 1:44:44Speaker 02

  Yes, have a great New Year to all of our listeners out there as well. And until next week, this is your skeptic's guide to the universe.

• 1:44:57Speaker 02

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

• 1:45:34Speaker 07

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