The Skeptics Guide #1040 - Jun 14 2025

Dumbest Thing of the Week: Premium Water; News Items: NASA Budget, RFK Jr Sacks Vaccine Panel, Digital Life After Death, Light Out of Nothing, Possible New Treatment for HIV; Who's That Noisy; Your Questions and E-mails: Replicating Eratosthenes; Science or Fiction

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:33Speaker 01

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

• 0:40Speaker 02

  Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, June 11th, 2025, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella,

• 0:49Speaker 03

  Hey, everybody.

• 0:50Speaker 02

  Cara Santa Maria.

• 0:51Cara Santa Maria?

  Howdy.

• 0:52Speaker 02

  Jay Novella. Hey, guys. And Evan Bernstein.

• 0:55Speaker 03

  Good evening, folks.

• 0:56Speaker 02

  Cara, how is LA? I hear it's on fire again.

• 0:59Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, that's what people want you to think, I think, but it's not. Okay. Obviously, stuff is going on in LA. There are protests. There is a curfew downtown at night, but it's quiet at night, like the curfew is being heated. It's not affecting my day to day, and I know that most citizens in LA feel the same way.

• 1:20Speaker 03

  LA is a large area.

• 1:22Cara Santa Maria?

  LA is really, really, really big. And yes, there are protests in pockets. The protests are largely peaceful. And if you ask not only our mayor, Karen Bass, but also our governor, Gavin Newsom, we don't want the National Guard here. We don't want the Marines here. Nobody asked them to come. Actually, it's a violation of the Constitution for them to be asked to come here without, without our permission. And they're not doing anything. They're not needed. They're mostly just standing around, quote, guarding government buildings, from what I'm not sure.

• 1:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, seems like a pretty thin pretext and something that Trump was spoiling to do just to do it.

• 2:04Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I mean, it's

• 2:05Speaker 02

  Just to say that he could do it.

• 2:06Cara Santa Maria?

  It's the same game of make a problem and then publicize the problem, exaggerate the problem, and then, quote, solve the problem. And then you get to be the hero, but in doing so, engage in a lot of government overreach, which is quite frightening. So I mean, this all started with these ICE raids. And some of these ICE raids are scary. Some of them were really, obviously, we've seen the news all over the country of these like intensive maneuvers by immigration enforcement that like entering schools, you know, elementary schools attempting to enter without parental consent. But so that's what the protests are about, right? So for anybody who like has not

• 2:49Cara Santa Maria?

  been watching the news this week, I mean, this is global news, but for anybody who's not been watching the news this week, that's what the protests have been about. They've been about ICE, like these militarized forces going in with, you know, rubber bullets and flashbangs and fatigues and body armor into neighborhoods, into peaceful neighborhoods, and pulling people from their homes, trying to enter schools to pull children from the classrooms. And so people are protesting and they're saying, no, you're not going to enter our community. We're not okay with this. And those protests, again, have been marches, largely peaceful marches. And there has been some LAPD kind of retaliatory violence.

• 3:30Cara Santa Maria?

  But for the most part, there haven't even been that many arrests. And then, of course, Trump called in the National Guard and a few days later called in the Marines, which I don't think has ever happened. Has that ever happened? The Guard hasn't happened since desegregation.

• 3:44Speaker 03

  Well, yeah.

• 3:45Bob Novella?

  It happened in 92 with the

• 3:47Speaker 03

  Yes, that's correct.

• 3:48Bob Novella?

  Los Angeles.

• 3:49Speaker 03

  And it happened during World War II and

• 3:51Cara Santa Maria?

  No, but that's different. In 92, it was called in with permission.

• 3:56Bob Novella?

  Oh, I see what you're saying.

• 3:57Cara Santa Maria?

  Right? Los Angeles asked for the Guard to come.

• 3:59Bob Novella?

  I see what you're saying.

• 4:00Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I don't think the Guard has been called into a state without that state's requesting.

• 4:05Bob Novella?

  I couldn't tell you when.

• 4:06Cara Santa Maria?

  I don't think since desegregation.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, since desegregation, yes, since the 60s.

• 4:11Cara Santa Maria?

  And so, so this is, you know, a massive overreach. But then have the marine, have, have our troops, which are meant to protect our citizens from foreign threats, ever been called in against our own citizens?

• 4:26Speaker 02

  The most recent time that a president invoked the Insurrection Act to deploy military troops domestically was in 1992. President George Bush did that to quell the Rodney King riots in LA, again in LA. That didn't go well, and they pulled the troops out after a few days because they fired on civilians because of miscommunication between officers and soldiers. So this would be the first time in 33 years that that's done. The big question is, is Trump's invocation of the Insurrection Act legitimate? Is there, is there cause? And the courts are going to be fighting that out.

• 5:04Cara Santa Maria?

  So we are seeing conscientious objectors. I'm starting to see more and more interviews online with, with Marine Corps, men and women marching in marches across the country. Yeah. But here in the United, here in Los Angeles, I think it's a, what do you do, right? What do you do if you're in that position?

• 5:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:23Cara Santa Maria?

  But yeah, so we'll see what comes of this, but this is, you know, this is dress rehearsal. And my concern is that we see a lot of people kind of saying, oh, my gosh, the riots, it looks so dangerous and scary there. LA's on fire. Everybody's rioting.

• 5:35Bob Novella?

  Media will frame that, you know, to their fullest extent.

• 5:38Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, that's how it's been framed left and right.

• 5:40Bob Novella?

  To sell viewers, right?

• 5:41Cara Santa Maria?

  You know, my mom texted me yesterday, and my mom lives in Texas, and my mom is 76 years old. And she said, how are you doing with this manufactured fiasco masking Trump's coup of taking over LA? And I was like, you get it, mom. But I don't think that that's how a lot of people are looking at this. It's, it's peaceful here. I can go to the grocery store. I can drive wherever I want to in my town.

• 6:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's sad to watch, you know, happening in our own country.

• 6:08Cara Santa Maria?

  Mm hmm. Super scary.

• 6:10Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 6:11Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. That's what the voters that showed up wanted, apparently. They may have, but regardless, there are a lot of legal scholars out there, you know, talking about how this is a massive violation of the Constitution. So I guess we'll see what happens.

• 6:23Speaker 02

  All right, Evan, you're going to start us off with the dumbest thing of the week.

• 6:28Bob Novella?

  Thank you, Steve. Yes, the dumbest thing of the week is water, specifically gourmet water, often called fine.

• 6:37Speaker 03

  Water and the so-called connoisseurs who will try to convince you that the difference between gourmet brands of water are superior tasting to say the water from your tap. And this was, I found this at the New York Times, an article written by Kim Severson titled, "You've Heard of Fine Wine, Now Meet Fine Water. Bottled waters from small, pristine sources are attracting a lot of buzz with tasting sommeliers and even water cellars." Did I pronounce that right?

• 7:06Cara Santa Maria?

  Sommeliers.

• 7:06Speaker 03

  Sommeliers. Sommeliers. I didn't know if the L was silent or not. And even water cellars, yes.

• 7:13Cara Santa Maria?

  No, you say the L. Sommelier.

• 7:15Speaker 03

  Sommelier.

• 7:16Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, but you can say Psalm.

• 7:18Speaker 03

  It sounds like smelly.

• 7:20Cara Santa Maria?

  You can say Psalm.

• 7:20Speaker 03

  Psalms. Psalms. I like that. That's better.

• 7:26Speaker 03

  Here's how the article starts. I got a kick out of this. She says, "I recently spent 90 minutes watching six very serious people taste 107 varieties of mineral water. Each container was hidden under a cloth bag, its contents dispensed by small pours into wine glasses. The judges swished and gazed thoughtfully into the middle distance. They dumped the excess into buckets at their feet and joked about needing a bathroom. They each gave the water a score between 90 and 100. Fine water is the preferred term of its growing cadre of enthusiasts. The taste is distinct to a place rich with minerals it picked up as it traveled to the surface of the earth. The fine water crowd shuns giants like Perrier and Aquapana, both owned by Nestle. Fine water has a better story, you see."

• 8:11Speaker 03

  Winners at April's Wine Tasting, part of the Ninth Annual Fine Water's Taste and Design Awards in Atlanta, included melted snow that had been filtered through Peruvian volcanic rock, deep seawater that had been pumped 80 miles off the coast of South Korea, and there was water gathered from nets hung in a misty Tasmanian pine forest, along with a Texas brand laced with lithium called Crazy Water. It's also gaining traction among the, what, wellness crowd, which has grown increasingly skeptical of municipal tap water and purified water in plastic bottles. I wonder if part of that skepticism of municipal tap water is fluoride-related. I would not be surprised if that whole thing is taking

• 8:57Speaker 03

  root here. She also reminds the readers that back in, this is the early 2000s, Penn and Teller's show Bullshit, when they had an episode about water, and they made basically a, their own little water, fine, fine water bar, in which, it was very pretentious, and they had fancy names for everything, and what they did is they went out back and turned on the hose from the, from the spigot, filled up a bunch of water, and served it to people for $7 a bottle. $7 a bottle, that seems like a bargain. How about $100 a bottle for a Slovenian water enriched with magnesium?

• 9:35Speaker 03

  Or what do you say about $150 a bottle for water collected from a 4,000-year-old glacier? And, yes, so, and the rise of influencers, this person, Martin Ries, your personal water psalm, and energetic German who spreads the gospel for fine water, from everywhere, from National Geographic to Instagram, among others. So, the water you buy falls into one of two categories, purified and natural. Purified water is tap water, stripped of minerals and impurities. Natural water, which includes brands like San Pellegrino and Deer Park, they always go from the earth to the bottle with little intervention, and they are microbiologically safe, they say.

• 10:18Speaker 03

  Bottom line, can you taste the difference between tap water versus fine water?

• 10:21Speaker 02

  I would say no.

• 10:23Speaker 03

  Yes, most blind taste tests are saying no, and it has been studied many times, mostly in formal experiments, but universities have done this, consumer advocacy groups have done it, TV shows, obviously Penn and Teller, among others, have also done it, and they've shown that the average person struggles to distinguish high-priced bottled water from tap water in blind tasting. So what is the allure? Well, it's marketing and presentation, of course, along with some of the claims having to do with perhaps a more natural and healthy kind of lifestyle associated with the type of water you decide to drink. But, you know, again, this is all about perception and status, rather than what you're actually

• 11:06Speaker 03

  putting in your body, or exactly how it tastes. So, for all the fine water connoisseurs out there, believing in water superiority, and trying to convince others to spend unreasonable sums of money on the most basic and widely accessible commodity of water, these sops are the dumbest thing of the week. Back to you, Steve.

• 11:25Speaker 02

  Thank you, Evan. Yeah, and there is something untasteful, I guess, about or distasteful about somebody spending $150 on a bottle of water when there are people who don't have just basic clean water to drink.

• 11:38Speaker 03

  Exactly, yeah, right, yep, that's, that's quite a gap.

• 11:42Speaker 02

  All right, thanks Evan. Jay, how's NASA's budget looking?

• 11:47Jay Novella?

  This new development is that NASA has these, a potential crisis, looks like it's, you know, it's gonna manifest, that has nothing to do with, you know, anything that they're developing, or, you know, people on the moon, or any of that, it has to do with economics and the government, so, we have a combination of, you know, massive proposed budget cuts, and the political feud between Trump and Musk, have, this has created a really bad outlook for NASA. If the current newly proposed budget, if that goes through, guys, then there'll be, you know, decades of investments that have already been made in space science and climate monitoring, you know, international partnerships and everything, and all that stuff could just simply go away.

• 12:32Jay Novella?

  So the basics of this situation are, the White House has submitted their 2026 budget, this is what is being referred to as the big beautiful bill, and it cuts NASA's total funding from 25 billion to 19 billion, so that's a significant drop, slashes the science directorate by up to 52%, reduces earth science funding by 53%, cancels or suspends 40 active or planned missions, and the only thing that they did was they boosted funding for human missions to the moon and Mars by 100 million. So collectively, this is what is considered a complete train wreck.

• 13:13Jay Novella?

  All of it is being oddly justified, where they're saying that they want to refocus their quote unquote strategic priorities. It seems though, but all they want to do is they want to plant flags on the moon and on Mars. So here's some missions that are on the chopping block, this is not all of them, just some of them, the Mars sample return, you guys remember, we talked about the, the fact that the rover was dropping regolith samples, and that they came out, come up with ways to return those to Earth, they did come up with a way, so that has been canceled.

• 13:47Speaker 03

  Oh no.

• 13:48Jay Novella?

  And you guys can look, look these up, there's, because there's a lot of them and I won't get into descriptions on everything, but they're canceling Maven, Da Vinci.

• 13:56Speaker 02

  Wait, wait, they're canceling Maven?

• 13:58Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 13:58Speaker 02

  That's like, but the probe's already there around Mars, isn't it?

• 14:02Jay Novella?

  I, I believe it is, Steve, and they're just canceling it.

• 14:04Speaker 03

  I guess the future funding for it has been pulled.

• 14:08Jay Novella?

  They're canceling Veritas, Osiris Apex, New Horizons, Juno, then some-

• 14:14Speaker 03

  We've talked about so many of these programs.

• 14:15Jay Novella?

  I know, we talked about all of it. Earth Observation, uh, the Land Sat Next, PACE, which is Plankton, aerosol, cloud, ocean ecosystems, uh, Geocarb, this is where George goes on a carb-free diet.

• 14:29Jay Novella?

  Surface water and ocean topography, and then collaborative missions or international missions, the ESA's, uh, Roseland Franklin Rover, which is a Mars rover. ESA's Envision, which is a Venus rover, and support for lunar gateway contributions. Lunar gateway, guys.

• 14:45Speaker 03

  Oh, no.

• 14:46Jay Novella?

  So these aren't-

• 14:47Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 14:48Jay Novella?

  You know, speculative future projects, a lot of these are already operational and most are in development with launch, with their launch costs already paid. So what's being cut now are, um, you know, relatively low-cost operating budgets. You see what that's happening? Meaning like, they bought the car, they paved the street, but they don't want to pay the cheap price of gasoline to run it. That, that's essentially what they're doing here. So this war between Trump and Musk has a very powerful and negative downstream effect. After Musk criticized Trump's immigration rhetoric and this recent spending bill, Trump threatened to cancel federal contracts with SpaceX.

• 15:29Jay Novella?

  And Musk responded by hinting he could withdraw the Dragon capsule from service, which currently, you know, is used, uh, to move astronauts and cargo to and from the International Space Station. That would be devastating. Now, I'm hoping it's posturing because, you know, who wants to lose all that money and, you know, we can't, of course, strand our astronauts up there, uh, but who the hell knows, right? Because we've seen crazy stuff going on. SpaceX holds about 22 billion in US government contracts. So if that relationship dissolves, NASA's in big, big trouble and there's no backup ready to fill the gap. As much as, you know, other companies are, are scrambling to try to do that, there's nobody, no one close to where SpaceX is.

• 16:12Jay Novella?

  Next thing is the phasing out of the SLS. So another shift here is the plan to phase out the Space Launch System, right? This was after Artemis III. The SLS costs about 4.1 billion per launch. And that is, that's very expensive compared to the 100 million for SpaceX's Starship. That's crazy expensive. However, that's what it costs. And Blue Origin's New Glenn is expected to be in a similar price range, I think, to SpaceX's, which is great, right? So we have, you know, these much less, you know, less expensive ways to launch. But Starship has failed three of its last test launches and New Glenn hasn't even reached orbit yet.

• 16:53Jay Novella?

  So both rockets are still significantly under development and NASA is, however, betting on the future of human spaceflight programs on private systems. And these private systems aren't ready and their funding depends on essentially two billionaires staying interested in all of it. So the, uh, the climate science that, that's happening is taking a hit. And, you know, it's already had lots of problems, but now things are getting kind of worse. You know, they're making these, these cuts to the budgets and these budgets are essential for monitoring, right? So what are we monitoring? Atmospheric CO2 levels, ocean temperatures and health, ice melt in the Arctic and Antarctic and severe weather patterns.

• 17:36Jay Novella?

  Now, I couldn't pick one of these to remove from this list, let alone all of them. These programs are basically our early warning signs, right? To all sorts of bad things that we already know are in motion, right? We know that atmospheric CO2 levels are rising. We know ocean temperatures are rising. We know that there's significant ice melt and we know that weather patterns are going to become more and more severe as more energy is put into Earth's atmosphere. So what the hell, right? We won't be able to, to model or predict any climate events with any real accuracy. And it's just a dangerous, dangerous way to move forward. Now hopefully here, Congress might step in. You know, we have some Senate Republicans, they've pushed back.

• 18:20Jay Novella?

  They're proposing 10 billion to restore Artemis SLS, you know, some other science missions. But if Congress can't agree on a new budget, then these proposed cuts very likely will take effect, you know, and just completely, you know, hit our science programs like a tsunami and... Just drag it all away, you know? And the problem is, once you shut these very expensive and lots of gears moving at the same time with these missions, right? Once you shut them down, it is cost prohibitive to start them back up again because you lose that momentum, you lose the people, you lose the hardware. You can't just shut them down and then a year later, start them back up.

• 19:03Jay Novella?

  Because that would probably end up costing a ton more money and, you know, these people are not sitting on their hands.

• 19:09Speaker 03

  Right. Part of these cuts are going to be, we're going to lose the personnel. They're going to go elsewhere, they're going to, and you're right, you can't easily just bring these people back and restart where you left off.

• 19:20Jay Novella?

  No, I mean, you know, we already saw it with, you know, Doge cutting all the, you know, 100,000 jobs from the US government, you know, and a lot of those people are administrators, but they have this knowledge and know-how and skills that you can't just snap your fingers and hire new people, right? It's the kind of stuff that, you know, is passed on from generation to generation, in particular, when you are, you know, when you're a rocket scientist, when you're in charge of, even, you know, even the people that are in charge of just dealing with, you know, fueling the rockets before they launch, these are all super specialized jobs. You know, you shut, you shut them down and they either get other jobs, they retire, they do what they do, but these people aren't sitting there waiting for the US government to like, change its mind in four years. That's not how it goes. They just go away.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  It's also massively inefficient. You know, the way they're going.

• 20:09Cara Santa Maria?

  It's the opposite of efficiency.

• 20:10Speaker 02

  It's a massive loss of efficiency. They're doing it in the name of efficiency, which is ironic, but they're, they're, it's a, the wastage is just profound. You know, it's also, you know, the arbitrary nature of so much of it is difficult. Like with the, you know, Jay, you're talking about like the recent fight between Trump and Musk, you know, like Trump threatening to cut off funding for SpaceX and SpaceX threatening to like, stop taking astronauts from the, the space station and whatnot. I mean, is that kind of thing really just at the whims of these two guys? You know?

• 20:46Cara Santa Maria?

  Isn't that scary?

• 20:47Speaker 02

  It is scary. Plus, you know, SpaceX, you know, as part of this, I learned that SpaceX, in 2024, they launched more missions, launched more tonnage into space, launched more satellites, 83% of all satellites, and the rest of the world combined. That's how critical SpaceX has become, you know, through government contracts to our, you know, aerospace industry. You can't just, you know, turn that off because you're having a spat. You know what I mean? Yeah, where's the process? We do have a little bit more crazy to talk about. I could not avoid, could not avoid this topic this week.

• 21:24Speaker 03

  You better not have avoided this one.

• 21:25Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 21:26Speaker 02

  So I wrote about this on Science Space Medicine. It's actually an update even since I wrote my article. RFK Jr. just sacked the entire US vaccine committee.

• 21:37Speaker 03

  Oh, that's brilliant. Yay. Great job.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is the advisory committee on immunization practices, or ACIP.

• 21:45Speaker 03

  Who needs that?

• 21:45Speaker 02

  So this is the committee. It's a 17-member committee that reviews all the scientific evidence. It makes recommendations for the CDC in terms of, you know, which vaccines to recommend for which populations or which conditions. Like, what's the vaccine schedule for childhood? You know, who should get a COVID vaccine? Who should get a flu vaccine? Who should get the shingles vaccine, et cetera?

• 22:06Cara Santa Maria?

  Do they also choose which, like, which flu strain? Like, you know, what do we need to make for the next flu season?

• 22:13Speaker 02

  I don't know if that committee makes that decision, but they definitely make the recommendation. So we saw this coming, and I've got to give credit to David Gorsky. Four months ago, when RFK became the HHS secretary, he said, this is how he's going to destroy the vaccine infrastructure in America. And, and he's been doing everything that David said he was going to do, and this was on his list as well. He, but what David said was, all right, you know, the committee members have staggered terms, and over the next four years, he'll be able to replace all of them. But of course, he said, but he might not, he could decide not to wait and just replace them all now, which is what he did.

• 22:56Speaker 03

  Bingo.

• 22:57Speaker 02

  The fear now is that he's going to pack the ACIP committee with anti-vaccine cranks.

• 23:04Speaker 02

  And that's the, and now just, you know, looking at the news, he, that's exactly what he's doing. He's already appointed eight people to this committee, anti-vaxxers, pretty much all. One person is Martin Kulldorff, who's one of the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration. Do you guys know what that is?

• 23:25Speaker 03

  I've heard that.

• 23:26Speaker 02

  That's a, yeah, it's, look it up on Science-Based Medicine. We go into great detail about it. Basically, they were the ones who were saying, we should not be vaccinating people for COVID. We should just let COVID rip through the, the, the population to create herd immunity that way. That was their recommendation, which of course is batshit crazy. Cause then you get, of course, you get all of the death and disease and long COVID and everything from that as opposed to the vaccine, which gives you immunity without the disease and without the risk and all the downside. It was just nuts. So one, so that guy's on the committee. Then there are other people again, who are, you know, known associates of RFK or who are prominent vaccine critics,

• 24:12Speaker 02

  who have been members of anti-vaccine groups.

• 24:16Speaker 02

  So, you know, again, that's like our worst fear, just firing all the actual experts and then putting in his anti-vaccine crank buddies, who are going to, going forward, base their decisions on their ideology. Now, what he wrote, what RFK wrote on X was, "All of these individuals are committed to evidence-based, gold-standard science and common sense. They each have committed to demanding definitive safety and efficacy data before making any new vaccine recommendations." Definitive safety and efficacy data, which means you could set that bar as arbitrarily high as you want. You, we talked about this last week, Kara, about the gold standard, using gold weaponizing basically standards,

• 25:01Speaker 02

  not to have the optimal outcome, but to, to basically get rid of anything you don't like.

• 25:08Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, to use the rhetoric to your licensable advantage. Yeah.

• 25:12Speaker 02

  So it's like a denier portraying themselves as a skeptic, right? It's the same thing, using the language of skeptics, but with the foreordained conclusion of denying signs they don't like. In this case, they're like, yeah, we're only going to accept definitive safety and efficacy data, which is code for no vaccines are getting through. Yeah, like no vaccines are going to get through this committee. They're not going to be recommending any new vaccines. They're going to be paring back their, which is already happening, recommendations for existing vaccines. And so this means that it's going to basically shut, you know, bring any progress or any new vaccines to a halt. And, you know, removing recommendation, like removing vaccines from the schedule, for

• 25:56Speaker 02

  example, means that insurance companies could stop covering it, right? They won't pay for it. And even if they do, some people won't get it. And, you know, the vaccines are, you know, it's all about compliance, like how, what percentage of people get the vaccine. And in order to maximize as any public health measure, if you're going to maximize any outcome, you have to make it as easy as possible. You have to make it affordable to everybody and you have to have consistent and persistent messaging on it, right? Need people to understand vaccines are important. Get them off their butt, get them to their doctor, get their vaccine. Now, all of that's going away, right? He's altering the messaging, saying, you know, emphasizing personal choice.

• 26:40Speaker 02

  He's, you know, pulling funding for new vaccine research, like they pulled funding for the end of bird flu mRNA vaccine. Gee, I wonder if bird flu is something we need to worry about. It's only like the most likely candidate for the next pandemic. So no research to develop a vaccine for that. And, and now he's packing the CDC committee that reviews vaccines. So this is the worst case scenario. This is, you know, we got David called all of it. He said, this is what he's going to do. He's doing all of it. He completely lied through his teeth to the, his confirmation hearings. Yes, he did. Saying that he wasn't going to take vaccines away, that he would look at the evidence. It was all bullshit.

• 27:22Speaker 02

  It was all completely transparent BS and, and they knew it. They absolutely knew it. Uh, the, the senators who voted for him.

• 27:32Speaker 03

  Crazy.

• 27:32Speaker 02

  And now we're, we're, we're exactly what we said was going to happen is happening. Uh, and as we said last week, the only real question is how many millions of people is RFK junior going to kill? Is he going to be responsible for the death of how many people? Because, you know, it's all, it's all luck of the draw at this point depends on how bad is this measles epidemic going to get? What's, when's the next pandemic going to happen? What, you know, what's the nature of that going to be? Well, how, what's going to be going to start dropping below herd immunity now on, you know, all of our vaccines because they're not going to be recommending or paying for them anymore or whatever, including them in the schedule. So we'll have to keep an eye on this and see how it actually plays out. But

• 28:13Speaker 02

  right so far, it's the worst case scenario that we predicted. Absolutely terrible. And you can say, what, what do we do about it? Well, certainly, you know, individual people should be up to date on all their vaccines, you know, despite RFK junior's efforts, you should get vaccinated. Uh, but also write to your congressman and representative, make sure, you know, give them as much hell as, as you possibly can for inflicting this boil on American medicine. And, you know, when the time comes, get out there and vote. That's the ultimate answer to all of this because this is, it is horrific. I mean, we're trying to be objective and scientific and rational and nonpartisan here. And I think we are being

• 28:54Speaker 02

  all of those things. But this is what's happening. If an anti-vaccine crank is in charge of healthcare and he's packing the CDC committee on vaccine recommendations with anti-vaccine cranks. They were in charge now. Just think about that. It's insane. It is absolutely insane.

• 29:13Speaker 03

  Hopefully doctors will still continue to ignore what they have to say and, and give the correct advice to their patients.

• 29:20Speaker 02

  But what are you going to do if insurance, like we're not going to pay, we only pay for the approved vaccines or whatever.

• 29:25Speaker 03

  That's a real big problem. Massive problem for that one.

• 29:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Especially Medicare, you know, these, these large, they, they set the standard and they're government funded or government run at least.

• 29:34Speaker 03

  Jeez.

• 29:35Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 29:36Speaker 02

  All right. We're going to pivot away from these type, this type of stuff now.

• 29:41Speaker 02

  Kara, tell us about our digital life after our death.

• 29:45Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I thought this was an interesting.

• 29:48Speaker 03

  No, Bob, that's not cool.

• 29:49Cara Santa Maria?

  No, I mean, it's an interesting topic, right? And I don't think it has to be dark or depressing. It obviously is in line with the work that I do. I counsel patients with cancer and I kind of focus on end of life, although I see them across the lifespan. Oftentimes, when I'm counseling patients about end of life, the things that come up, some of the larger things that come up have to do with advanced care planning, right? Like filling out an advanced directive, doing some of the legal work, but also the emotional work that comes along with saying goodbye, that comes along with feeling like you've completed certain relationships.

• 30:29Cara Santa Maria?

  And it can give a really important sense of psychological calm. You know, it can be a really good alleviation of anxiety to know that you have a bit of control in what happens to your things, what happens to your assets. But one of the things that we often ignore is your digital assets or your digital life. You know, very often when we're talking about, oh, these paintings or, you know, my home or the furniture or the jewelry, these are physical things. So whether somebody allocates them or doesn't in a will, when they die, something has to happen to those physical things.

• 31:10Cara Santa Maria?

  But when it comes to a digital legacy, many times, people not only don't think about it, but there's no, obviously, physicality to it. So you're not confronted with like a house full of things. So a couple of researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder wrote a piece in The Conversation about how to prepare for digital life after death. And they introduce a really interesting concept. They have a student-run clinic. At their campus that actually serves people, of course, online.

• 31:51Cara Santa Maria?

  So I think across the country, I don't think you have to be in Colorado to to access this clinic. But it's called the Digital Legacy Clinic. And in that clinic, they help folks understand sort of the tech side of what is online? What can they do about it? Everything from like social media pages to different online accounts that may be password protected that, once you die, your password may be dying with you. So they cover, as they mention, a lot of digital, what they call digital estate concerns.

• 32:32Cara Santa Maria?

  So like having trustees or trusted contacts across like Google or Apple or Meta accounts, choosing people to manage your profile, and also guidance on what to do with public facing accounts like social media accounts. Like, I guess I didn't realize before, did you guys know this? That like, if you have a Facebook account, right?

• 32:55Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 32:56Cara Santa Maria?

  When you die, you can either request that that account be removed or you can memorialize it. And in order to do that, somebody has to be entrusted with providing proof of death, the date of death, so either death certificate or an obituary, and verification of their relationship to you. And then they can request that that account become memorialized or shut down. But also, think about all the things that exist now in the cloud, all the things that are online. Photos, videos, important documents, legal documents, music, exactly. What do we do with those things? So in this clinic, these students, which it's pretty cool, like, because they're obviously

• 33:41Cara Santa Maria?

  students from across different disciplines who are learning how to engage with older adults or with with sicker individuals to help them both understand sort of the technical side of it, like I mentioned, but also navigate. This psychologically difficult conversations, it's hard enough to talk about end of life planning. It's even harder when you're talking about something that maybe is is difficult to even understand how it works. And so the students are learning how to, you know, communicate these difficult topics with empathy. And how to navigate things like privacy laws, how to manage sensitive data. So I guess anybody can visit.

• 34:22Cara Santa Maria?

  They they said that they sort of operate it kind of like a pro bono law clinic. So so community members can contact the clinic for help, they fill out a form and then they'll often meet via Zoom. And have like a personal plan developed for free. It's only been around for several months, so it's still kind of an experiment. But it's an interesting approach and hopefully we'll see more and more of this kind of guidance. Whether it just be online kind of lists, you know, checklists or books that you can purchase to walk through the process. Or individuals with expertise, much like, I don't know, an accountant or a lawyer who you would maybe hire for a consultation to help you walk through.

• 35:07Cara Santa Maria?

  How to manage your your digital assets, which gosh, I don't think I thought about very much. Did you guys?

• 35:14Speaker 02

  I mean, I've definitely thought about it in the context of the of your the music that you own, right? That's your collection that you pay for. And I know it's been a controversial question over whether or not you can

• 35:26Speaker 03

  Give it to someone else.

• 35:27Speaker 02

  Yes, can somebody inherit your digital music collection? They could certainly inherit your records or your CDs or whatever. Why shouldn't they be able to? You bought them, you own them, you should be able to turn them.

• 35:38Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, and more and more younger people don't own music at all. They just pay for streaming services.

• 35:43Speaker 03

  Spotify service.

• 35:44Speaker 02

  That's why they go, they, part of the reason why they've moved to that model, because then there is nothing to own, so it's not an issue anymore.

• 35:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Right, so then it's just about what do you do with the account so that you're not still getting billed? So that, you know, if there is any personal information there, that it is not open to the public or that it's still, you know, the privacy is still maintained after death. And that's a, that's a complicated issue that when you die, all of your passwords die with you. I mean, I remember when I attended a medical aid and dying death, a maid death here in in California. With a younger individual who had a brain cancer.

• 36:24Cara Santa Maria?

  The day of, prior to taking the medication, he was talking to his family about, oh yeah, make sure you write down the password to my bank. Make sure that you, oh, I'll make sure, you know, I emailed you guys this so that you can have access to that. Like, things that we don't often think about, but it's, it's really important.

• 36:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, because I deal with people for their taxes on an annual basis, part of our reminders to them are certain things, not having to do directly with taxes, but these related sorts of topics, such as who, who has your power of attorney, who makes your medical decisions for you, who are your beneficiaries for your accounts, you know, and make sure that they're properly. And we do also remind people to have a book, have a physical book or piece of paper with the list of your important accounts, your passwords, put it somewhere safe, in a safe, safe deposit box, wherever you have, and get, you know, let someone you trust, assign it to them, along with your instructions and your wishes on, on how to handle all of that. So, it is something that I, because of my profession, I regularly do think about, and

• 37:25Speaker 03

  I'm constantly reminding my clients about these things.

• 37:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, and what's interesting is that, you know, we think about, oh yeah, I've got, I've got like a few accounts I would have to worry about, but there's-

• 37:34Speaker 03

  I have over 100.

• 37:35Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, there's a study listed here that's, uh, recent studies by both NordPass and Dashlane, which are passport, uh, password management companies. The average internet user maintains more than 150 online accounts.

• 37:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think I'm at 111 or 112 last time I checked.

• 37:52Cara Santa Maria?

  And that's just that you, like, were able to access and know about, there's probably some that, you know, are slipping off.

• 37:58Speaker 03

  That could be, yeah, some that I've forgotten about or just don't use anymore. I probably still have a MySpace, uh, password somewhere.

• 38:04Cara Santa Maria?

  Right, isn't that funny? And then, um, they also mentioned that many tech companies haven't really gotten, you know, hip to this, so fewer than 15% of popular online platforms have clear kind of, um, protocols for what to do when a user dies. And customer support's like, oh, I don't know. And so it's, it's obviously something that the tech companies have to keep up with or catch up to as well.

• 38:30Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 38:30Cara Santa Maria?

  But it's something to think about, you know? I mean, it's hard enough. We've got to think about, like you mentioned, advanced care planning, including things like advanced directives. Like, so that's your healthcare proxy, wills, power of attorney, all these different things. But yes, more and more, our digital lives are deeply woven into our regular lives. And we've got to think about that as well.

• 38:51Speaker 03

  Oh, definitely.

• 38:52Cara Santa Maria?

  There's so much personal information there and, and things that are valuable, like,

• 38:56Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 38:56Cara Santa Maria?

  again, photos, videos.

• 38:58Speaker 03

  Bitcoin. What, what's, what will happen for people who start to pass away who are Bitcoin investors? And where, what? You're done?

• 39:07Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, if you don't have that key.

• 39:09Speaker 03

  If you don't have the keys, it's over.

• 39:10Cara Santa Maria?

  It's over. That, that, yeah, that Bitcoin dies with you. All that money is just gone.

• 39:14Speaker 03

  And, and, oh my gosh. That could be a nightmare for families.

• 39:19Bob Novella?

  More importantly, what about, you know, my zombies and skeletons? Geez, that's.

• 39:23Speaker 03

  Do you have directives for each one, Bob? As far as you have a note?

• 39:26Bob Novella?

  Each one?

• 39:27Cara Santa Maria?

  Are they digital, Bob? You have digital zombies?

• 39:30Bob Novella?

  No, I'm just talking.

• 39:31Speaker 03

  Not yet.

• 39:33Speaker 02

  Kara, what do you think about having a digital avatar that lives beyond your death?

• 39:37Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I mean, that's another conversation. As I was linking out to some of these articles, I was seeing that there was a Holocaust educator who died, I think, two, three years ago. And because of the vast amounts of like talks that she had given online, that they were able to use AI to develop a tool to interact with friends and family at the funeral. And I think, I think about all of us, like, we have thousands of hours of online content. So an AI could easily learn me and engage with people as me. And so you just map that to an avatar and right there, how difficult will it be to tell the difference? I don't think podcast listeners would be able to tell the difference.

• 40:19Cara Santa Maria?

  And I wonder if the people I'm like the absolute closest to would be able to tell the difference.

• 40:24Speaker 02

  You may be an AI right now.

• 40:26Cara Santa Maria?

  Sure, true. It's very meta.

• 40:28Bob Novella?

  Yeah. Imagine when we, you know, when we've got hard drives that are just. You know, Yottabytes of hard drives. Woo. That, you know, imagine, I think we'll get to the point where people will basically be just live recording most of their lives all the time. Imagine having literally decades of film of you in your, your normal life, not just, not just when you're trying, not just when like you're blogging or podcasting or, or writing a speech, but just like your everyday, you know, hanging out and, and chatting and just doing little quotidian things that just everyday things that aren't very special. Imagine the fidelity of the, of the avatar at that point.

• 41:09Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, and Bob, it's, it's interesting that you use terms like hard drives and film. It's, it's so funny that you used those terms because the truth of the matter is all this stuff is in the cloud now.

• 41:21Bob Novella?

  Yep.

• 41:21Cara Santa Maria?

  It's not, it's all digital. And so it's not even on a draw, a physical drive anymore. And so, I mean, it is somewhere, but not one that you have access to.

• 41:30Bob Novella?

  I would, I would think though, if you're recording your entire life, I don't think you'd want a lot of that going to the cloud. I mean, if you could have, if you could have a button, if you could have a button on your chest, that's, that's like a Yottabyte. I mean, that's, it's all there and you could back it up to, to your local home-based computer.

• 41:48Cara Santa Maria?

  I disagree.

• 41:48Bob Novella?

  I wouldn't want some of that shit on the cloud.

• 41:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Bob, your, your entire photo collection on your phone is on the cloud right now.

• 41:55Bob Novella?

  Oh yeah, on purpose. I don't want to lose that shit.

• 41:57Cara Santa Maria?

  Exactly. Exactly. Like, we don't want to carry all of that storage.

• 42:01Jay Novella?

  Wait, Kara, like even all those nudes I took? I mean, what?

• 42:04Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, that's the thing. If you put them in a hidden folder, they're still on the cloud. Like, we are more than happy to offload a lot of this very private stuff to the cloud, simply because of convenience. So I disagree that people are going to be that careful. I think it's just going to be normalized.

• 42:17Bob Novella?

  Oh gosh.

• 42:18Cara Santa Maria?

  But, but the real question is then, what happens when you die? Does, you know, is it in the fine print that Meta gets to, or that Google or whoever, Alphabet gets to just take that data? You know, whoa, you don't need it anymore. You're dead. Privacy laws don't apply anymore. You're dead. You know, these are things we have to think about.

• 42:34Jay Novella?

  Yeah. Your estate needs to own that.

• 42:36Cara Santa Maria?

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And we have seen some really interesting legal arguments with, I don't know if you guys remember when the, the whole like Pepper's ghost phenomenon where like Tupac was made into a quote hologram.

• 42:48Bob Novella?

  Pepper's ghost? How did that play into that?

• 42:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, that's the actual, it wasn't a real hologram, it was a Pepper's ghost.

• 42:53Bob Novella?

  Oh, was it a Pepper's ghost?

• 42:54Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, there was a lot of conversation around that time of like, who owns the likeness of a dead person? And there, you know, we can kind of have conversation about who owns their musical library, but what about their voice? What about their?

• 43:07Bob Novella?

  Their likeness, yeah.

• 43:09Cara Santa Maria?

  Their likeness, yeah. Are you allowed to just use that? Or does the estate have to approve it?

• 43:13Bob Novella?

  If it was a Pepper's ghost, what was the actual Tupac thing then? What was creating the reflection?

• 43:19Cara Santa Maria?

  Mirrors?

• 43:21Bob Novella?

  No, but yeah, but for Pepper's ghost to work, you need to reflect something onto a mirror that makes it look transparent.

• 43:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it was on a stage, so I don't know if it was like a mesh or something, but yeah. The Tupac thing was on stage.

• 43:33Bob Novella?

  I don't think it was a Pepper's ghost.

• 43:34Cara Santa Maria?

  I'm almost positive it was a Pepper's ghost.

• 43:37Bob Novella?

  Huh?

• 43:37Cara Santa Maria?

  I'm almost positive it was a Pepper's ghost.

• 43:39Bob Novella?

  No, Pepper's ghost is a reflection of something, an object, onto a mirror, onto a glass, that makes it look ethereal and transparent. So you need something, you need a solid object in order to reflect it off of the glass.

• 43:52Cara Santa Maria?

  No, you can, a Pepper's ghost can also use a projector.

• 43:56Bob Novella?

  What's being projected?

• 43:58Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, a Pepper's ghost, I'm looking up even the Wikipedia article here. It's an illusion technique used in theater, cinema, amusement parks, museums, in which an image of an object offstage is projected so that it appears to be in front of the audience. And they specifically cite the Tupac and Elvis and Michael Jackson.

• 44:13Speaker 02

  That's an alternate version, Bob, you can use a projector.

• 44:15Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, so oftentimes people call that a hologram or a holographic, but it's not, it's not actually, it's a Pepper's ghost.

• 44:20Bob Novella?

  That's, yeah, that's weird, I've never heard of Pepper's ghost referring to a pure and only of a reflection.

• 44:26Cara Santa Maria?

  No, not a reflection, a projection.

• 44:28Bob Novella?

  I mean, a pure, you know, just a pure projected image, I've never heard of that as a, so if, yeah, if Pepper's ghost encompasses that use as well, then that's fine, but typically...

• 44:36Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, no, that is the actual definition.

• 44:38Bob Novella?

  Well, the classic Pepper's ghost is like the haunted mansion, where you were passing in front of a, like a grand hall, that's got, actually got a pane of glass five feet from you that you don't see. And the dancing ghosts, you see ghosts, and those dancing ghosts are actually physical animatronics that are below you and above you, being reflected on the glass to your eyes. So this is like from the... Late 1700s, this is a

• 45:02Speaker 03

  Jeez.

• 45:02Bob Novella?

  Very old, very old illusion. And it's, they never use projectors. It's always been with a solid object that is being lit up and reflected onto glass into somebody's eye at an angle. That's the classic, that's the classic Pepper's Ghost.

• 45:17Cara Santa Maria?

  Bob, Pepper's Ghost is named for John Henry Pepper in 1862.

• 45:21Bob Novella?

  No, 1790s.

• 45:23Cara Santa Maria?

  1862.

• 45:24Speaker 03

  We have a controversy.

• 45:25Bob Novella?

  The technique was been used since the late 1700s.

• 45:28Cara Santa Maria?

  That technique might have been used, but the actual naming of, of what we now know to be the Pepper's Ghost was named for a guy in 1862.

• 45:35Speaker 03

  Yep. He had a degree, he was Dr. Pepper.

• 45:40Cara Santa Maria?

  He was a scientist, so he may have been Dr. Pepper.

• 45:43Bob Novella?

  I'm not familiar with the, the original name then, but. Okay, it says here 1860s, Pepper's Ghost has become a universal term for any illusion produced via reflection, any illusion. So yeah, so it has a broader definition than, than I, than I'm aware of. And I've read about this many times. And I've also come across that, that late 1700s. It's been used in stage work since the late 1700s. I've just read that over and over and over.

• 46:09Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, yeah, they weren't using projectors then, because they didn't have projectors then.

• 46:13Bob Novella?

  No, but it was.

• 46:14Cara Santa Maria?

  But as soon as they could project, yeah, they adapted the technique.

• 46:17Bob Novella?

  I've read that the term Pepper's Ghost was first, the techniques was used in the late 1700s.

• 46:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was popularized by him in the 1860s.

• 46:26Bob Novella?

  Well, maybe he made it popular, but that technique has been used in stage work since, you know, for, for, since then. According to the, you know, the many, many sites that I've, that I've come across and read about.

• 46:36Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay, but either way, you're, yeah, you're being like a purist about something that is not the pure definition.

• 46:42Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 46:44Speaker 03

  Nerd tangent.

• 46:45Cara Santa Maria?

  That was cool. Anyway, that was such a weird aside.

• 46:48Bob Novella?

  Sorry to have something that I've read over and over, just swept away.

• 46:52Speaker 03

  Like an impromptu throwdown, it was cool.

• 46:55Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, that's funny.

• 46:56Speaker 02

  All right, Bob, can we get light out of nothing?

• 47:00Bob Novella?

  Oh, let's see, shall we? Scientists have, for the first time, simulated how extremely intense lasers can interact with a vacuum to produce bizarre effects that could potentially help discover new physics, which I love. Uh, this comes from scientists from the University of Oxford, working in partnership with the University of Lisbon researchers, published in Communications Physics, called, the paper's called "Computational Modeling of the Semi-Classical Quantum Vacuum in 3D." Sounds cool, huh? But it gets even cooler. Uh, this one can get heady, kind of, pretty quickly, but I got you covered, guys, don't worry. The news item has at its foundation one of the most well-tested and validated theories out there: QED, Quantum Electrodynamics. This is essentially a fusion of special relativity and quantum mechanics. This, it's really an amazing theory.

• 47:45Bob Novella?

  It deals with fundamental particles, we know, like photons of light and charged particles like electrons. It describes them as excitations of an underlying field. So in QED's view, there are many fields permeating the universe, one being the electron field, which means that, that, uh, any and all electrons, according to that theory, are an excitation in that electron field. It's, it's really a fascinating topic. Look it up, there's some really good YouTube videos, too, as well. So QED also represents a vacuum as something special, a quantum vacuum. Classic physics sees, um, 100% pure vacuums as what? Just like, it's like a parcel of profoundly empty space, right? Just devoid of particles, as nothing, as, as nothing gets. That's a, that's a classic vacuum.

• 48:29Bob Novella?

  QED, though, has this conception of the fields permeating everything, right? So even within what we would consider the purest of pure vacuums, um, it would, they're still in there. In such a place, these fields would still be there, but they would be at their minimum, right? Their minimum activity, if you will, of course, their so-called ground state, as it's called. But that minimum doesn't mean that the fields are perfectly still within that vacuum, and that's because of what famous principle? Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.

• 48:58Speaker 03

  Oh, I wasn't sure about that, okay.

• 49:00Bob Novella?

  Um, in this context, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle means that

• 49:05Bob Novella?

  You can't know precisely both the amplitude of a field and how fast it's changing, or its momentum. Therefore, the fields within a vacuum can't have no values. Okay? So now the ground state of fields within the quantum vacuum jiggles then, right? There's this inherent jiggling that won't go away, of these subtle energy fluctuations, kind of like a restless nothing of sorts. So these minimal fluctuations are described as virtual electron pairs. Virtual is the critical word there. These are strange mathematical blips that aren't real particles in the traditional sense, and they are undetectable and ephemeral at the same time. Absolutely. They're very weird. Check those guys out if you're interested in them, if you haven't heard about them.

• 49:50Bob Novella?

  I know we've talked about them a few times. So now we get into the crux of this newsletter. QED predicts that very intense electromagnetic fields, like from wickedly strong laser beams, can alter the vacuum in such a way that light interacts with the vacuum differently than it otherwise would. Now specifically, the theory says, all right, get this, Jay, you're gonna like this one. Yeah. The theory predicts that three high-powered laser beams can interact in such a way within the vacuum that the energy is redistributed into an entirely new beam with a different frequency and direction. So it's like this beam that comes out of the vacuum out of nowhere, in a sense. That's how it could seem to you. So this process has a very boring name.

• 50:34Bob Novella?

  This theoretical prediction has a very boring name. It's called vacuum four-wave mixing, but I'm giving it a new name. I'm calling this Death Star Photon Convergence. Now, right, doesn't this sound like the Death Star? You've got beams converging, and then another beam emerges from them. You know, the beams don't pass through each other as they would classically, right? But they converge, and a new beam comes out, and of course, it can blow up planets. It's so funny how it made me think of the Death Star. And the Death Star, I actually got images of the Death Star firing its lasers, and I counted nine beams, which is three sets of three beams that the theory predicts. So, all right, it was just totally funny, and I'm just totally Going to run with that. All right. Now, guys, you got to remember, this theory was confirmed

• 51:19Bob Novella?

  through models and simulations. No real lasers have been used yet. All right.

• 51:23Speaker 03

  Or harmed in this process.

• 51:24Bob Novella?

  This is just simulated. Yes. So if you're interested, the simulation software package that they use is called Osiris, which models the interactions between laser beams and matter or plasma. The timing for this simulation's confirmation of the theory is actually pretty fortuitous because there's multiple facilities that recently either came online or are being constructed that use this latest generation of experimental multi-pedawatt-class lasers. And many of them are going to want to test this theory because previous lasers just were not powerful enough to even do this. So some of the facilities that are either online or soon to be online includes the 10 pedawatt beams in Romania as part of their

• 52:06Bob Novella?

  extreme light infrastructure. I mean, I didn't even know that Romania even had pedawatt beams. That's pretty amazing. I didn't know they were even in that industry to such a level to create these multi-pedawatt lasers. Pretty cool. Way to go, Romania. Let's see. There's also the 20-pedawatt Vulcan 2020 laser in the United Kingdom. And there's two 25-pedawatt beams proposed as part for the United States for the EPO project. Now, the way, I got to say, sorry, got to say, the way science funding is going in the US, though, I'm sure that they will use, that they will either probably cancel those lasers or use them to fire at alien spaceships. So one of those two. The most exciting new facility, though, where

• 52:48Bob Novella?

  do you think the most exciting new facility is with these multi-pedawatt-class lasers that's being built? Who would be building it? Huh?

• 52:57Speaker 03

  You mean capability? What are they going to use?

• 52:59Bob Novella?

  What country? What country?

• 53:00Speaker 03

  Oh, what country?

• 53:01Bob Novella?

  Has the most exciting new pedawatt lasers?

• 53:05Speaker 03

  China.

• 53:05Bob Novella?

  China? China. You call it. Absolutely. They've got, get this, they're creating 100-pedawatt beam at the Station of Extreme Light. So they're building that in China. I don't know when that's going to be completed. But that is just, that is, 100-pedawatt laser is just off-the-hook crazy. 100 quadrillion watt pulse laser. That's just like nuts.

• 53:26Speaker 03

  Bob, when I, when we did our special episode in which it was the year 2035, if you recall.

• 53:30Bob Novella?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 53:31Speaker 03

  My, my news item that I made up had to do with petawatt lasers that they were going to use. But at the time, I predicted 50 petawatt lasers at the time. And I got feedback from listeners, they wrote me and said that that's ambitious, even for 2035.

• 53:46Bob Novella?

  Oh, my God.

• 53:47Speaker 03

  So if they're talking about 100 in the near future, wow, that's, that's a big deal.

• 53:52Bob Novella?

  Nuts. Just to, of course, I got to riff a little bit on this, this 100 petawatt laser. That's over 5,000 times the total power consumption of the earth at any given moment.

• 54:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's sick.

• 54:02Bob Novella?

  5,000 times. Now, but you got to remember though, this is a, this is a pulse laser. This isn't a continuous laser. A continuous laser at 100 petawatts is just ridiculous. Then, no, that's just, we are so far from being able to do that. So this is 100 petawatt laser, pulse laser. Remember now, this is delivering just a few paltry kilojoules. It's not a lot. That's not a lot, but the key here is that it does it over the tiniest sliver of a second. A femtose, over, I think it's femtoseconds. So they're delivering a little bit of energy over, over a ridiculously brief period of time. So, so that means that the power of it, now the power is what? Energy over time, right? So you've got a little bit of energy over a ridiculously little amount of time,

• 54:45Bob Novella?

  which means the power is really, really high, right? So you don't need a lot of energy. Study co-author Professor Louis Silva, a visiting professor in physics at University of Oxford, said, "A wide range of planned experiments at the most advanced laser facilities will be greatly assisted by our new computational method implemented in Osiris." I think these new laser facilities are going to be singing the praises of these researchers that I've been talking about, the ones that ran these simulations. Because these simulations and models described in this paper should be critical for these experimenters. Because when they're setting up their petawatt lasers and they want to do their experiments, this paper will describe to them critical things they need to know, like realistic laser shapes, the, the exact pulse timings,

• 55:27Bob Novella?

  and how the, the interactions are going to evolve, you know, evolve over time, and how the, the subtle asymmetries in the beam's geometry. can change the outcome. These are just critical things that they're going to be, they're going to be testing and going over and over. And with this paper, they can basically just dial it in a lot faster instead of spending, who knows, days, weeks, months, trying to learn what this paper has already learned in their simulations. So this paper's confirmation that Death Star photon convergence is real would clearly not just be of academic interest, in my opinion, and a lot of these scientists as well. It could really be a landmark achievement when they actually do this in real life. The quantum vacuum itself could go from

• 56:08Bob Novella?

  something that's mostly theoretical, right, at this point into an object, the vacuum can become an object that can literally be manipulated by experiments. I mean, manipulating the quantum vacuum is just so amazing and interesting. The real laser tests in the near future could help confirm some of these deepest foundations of quantum electrodynamics, you know, theories and predictions that haven't been fleshed out yet. On the other hand, perhaps these new experiments will find some very subtle cracks in the foundation of the theory that could lead to the holy grail of new physics that we've been trying to get for so many years now. It's ridiculous. So either way, we have these scientists to thank, these scientists from Oxford and Lisbon. We have to thank them because they are, these guys are the first to confirm that this theory,

• 56:53Bob Novella?

  this theory is actually legitimate, at least according to their simulation. And as I finish, there was, there's even more here that I couldn't even cover. This, their simulation showed interesting things about weird stuff called vacuum by refringence and even photon photon scattering, which I didn't even want to go into because this is like already ridiculous. So, so look it up online if you're interested. Really fascinating stuff. Adios. I'm out of here.

• 57:17Speaker 03

  I want to point out, you've used the terms yottabyte, femtometer, and petawatt in the same podcast.

• 57:23Bob Novella?

  Yeah, this is a good one for those terms.

• 57:26Speaker 03

  I appreciate that.

• 57:27Speaker 02

  All right. Thanks, Bob. Evan, tell us about this new possible treatment for HIV.

• 57:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, I read about this over at The Guardian with their headline, "Breakthrough in Search for HIV Cure Leaves Researchers Overwhelmed." And by overwhelmed, they mean that in a good way.

• 57:45Speaker 03

  The human immunodeficiency virus, HIV. HIV can hide in the body, making it difficult to detect and cure. And that's primarily due to the formation of latent reservoirs, where the virus remains dormant and inactive in infected cells. And that can escape the detection and control of ART, or antiretroviral therapy, and the immune system. But even when treatments suppress HIV, some of the virus lies dormant, and it rests within something called the CD4-positive T-cells. And a CD4-plus T-cell is a type of white blood cell that plays a crucial role in the immune system,

• 58:27Speaker 03

  especially in coordinating the body's response to infections. So this dormant HIV virus can come back if the treatment stops in the person. Researchers from the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Melbourne, Australia, have demonstrated a way to make HIV visible, paving the way to fully clear it from the body, or at least get a lot more of it than they used to be able to get. This paper was published in Nature Communications, and the researchers have shown, this is for the first time, that mRNA can be delivered into the cells where HIV is hiding by encasing it in a little specially-formulated fat bubble.

• 59:09Speaker 03

  The mRNA then instructs the cells to reveal the virus. This was previously thought impossible to deliver mRNA to the type of white blood cell that is home to HIV, because those cells do not take up the fat bubbles, or lipid nanoparticles, LNP's, that are used to carry it. But here's what the researchers did. They created a new delivery tool, which they call LNP-X.

• 59:35Speaker 03

  Which is a tiny fat-based bubble designed to carry RNA, mRNA, and it delivers it to those T cells, but it does so without damaging the cells, which they were very surprised at, I believe, as the result. They loaded LNPX with mRNA instructions for HIV's TAT, T A T, protein. This is something else I really hadn't known about before. Transactivator of transcription, T A T, a crucial regulatory protein produced by HIV. It's a protein which helps switch on the hidden virus. And delivering the TAT mRNA woke up the virus in infected T cells without overactivating

• 1:00:18Speaker 03

  those other T cells. They successfully delivered mRNA into testing CD4-plus T cells and achieved activity in over 70% of the cells, which they have declared, quote, "an unprecedented success." And again, the cells didn't experience harmful side effects or mass activation, and that's extremely important. First time that this mRNA has been shown to effectively work this way. It offers, they're saying, "This will offer a new path towards an HIV cure. Using what's known as a shock-and-kill strategy, you wake up the hidden virus and then you destroy it." Now, it was, you know, they did this in the laboratory with cells, so there's, we don't

• 1:01:02Speaker 03

  have animal testing yet, we don't have human testing yet, so, you know, there's, we're way off from that. They say it's going to be many years before we get to these stages, but this, they will continue to research this, and it's very promising, surprisingly promising. Thank you, mRNA technology.

• 1:01:21Speaker 02

  So a couple of things to add to that. So first of all, we already have treatments that do exactly this, meaning that they take HIV out of its latent stage. These are called latency reversing agents, LRAs.

• 1:01:36Speaker 02

  There are several drugs already on the market that do this. Varinostat, for example, romodipsin, penobinastatin. So these are already part of the protocol of an HIV treatment protocol. You give the LRAs, they keep the virus from remaining dormant so that the other anti-HIV drugs can kill more of the virus. And this reduces the overall viral counts much greater. It's not a cure, but it does help keep the viral counts minimal, which is, you know, effectively keeps the disease at bay.

• 1:02:12Cara Santa Maria?

  So what's the new bit here? Is it a different mechanism?

• 1:02:15Speaker 02

  It's just a different mechanism, it's just a different way. It's just a new mechanism of an LRA, a latency reversing agent. As Evan said, the virus is transcriptionally silent, right? It's not transcribing and therefore it can't be seen by the immune system or by drugs that target HIV. And this forces them to become transcriptionally active so that they're no longer latent and they can be targeted by anti-HIV drugs. So it's another way, it's just another mechanism. I doubt it's going to lead to a cure. I mean, it would be nice if it does, when combined with other strategies, if it's so effective that it could be a quote unquote a cure. But the probability is it'll just be yet another drug in the armamentarium that'll make

• 1:03:00Speaker 02

  overall HIV treatment incrementally more effective, you know, keeping the viral loads minimal and reducing the risk of, you know, reactivation of the disease or of, you know, if people stop or pause their anti-HIV drugs, have it coming back. Yeah, so I mean, the headlines always make it seem, they always do this, right?

• 1:03:22Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:03:23Speaker 02

  There's such a pattern. They always exaggerate how poorly we're doing now and how great the new thing is going to be, right? That's just par for the course when it comes to mainstream science news reporting. They either ignore or underestimate current treatments and they say this is going to be a cure, you know, for HIV. Well, no. This is incremental, you know, a new strategy that we're already doing that'll make things incrementally better, right? Once we have whatever five to 10 years it's going to take to get this to the actual clinic.

• 1:03:55Speaker 03

  Do many viruses have latency, latent reservoirs like this?

• 1:04:00Speaker 02

  No, not typically.

• 1:04:02Speaker 03

  So this is-

• 1:04:03Speaker 02

  But you know, but most viruses don't cause this kind of a chronic, like lifelong infection.

• 1:04:07Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:04:07Speaker 02

  Ones that do, you know, have a way of hiding. Another virus that I could think of off the top of my head that does this is chickenpox. Right? It goes into the anterior horn cells. So the, the chickenpox virus goes into, you know, a part of the spinal cord, basically.

• 1:04:26Speaker 03

  Jeez.

• 1:04:26Speaker 02

  And it goes dormant there and it could be there dormant for decades. And then it could become activated and that's what causes shingles. Yeah. Is that it's activated, comes out to the skin, causing the rash. It goes into the nerves and causes neuropathic pain and it's really bad.

• 1:04:43Speaker 03

  So have they been looking at, so have they been using those other, um, procedures that you mentioned to, to try to-

• 1:04:49Speaker 02

  Nothing, just completely different-

• 1:04:51Speaker 03

  -that as well?

• 1:04:51Speaker 02

  No, totally different mechanism. The treatment there is just get the shingles vaccine so that if it does get activated, your immune system can pounce on it and prevent it from causing shingles, basically. HIV is, you know, has pretty unique mechanisms for causing the infection that it does. You know, it's preemptively taking out the immune system. That's what causes the, you know, causes AIDS, basically the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. And other infections do that as well. So a lot of, a lot of bugs evolve the ways of undercutting the immune system as a way of surviving, right? But HIV is just really good at it.

• 1:05:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Isn't it, there's something kind of unique about HIV being a retrovirus?

• 1:05:32Speaker 02

  Yes. I mean, it's not, it's not the only retrovirus, but yes, that-

• 1:05:35Cara Santa Maria?

  But there's not that many. I mean, there are a few, but there's not that many.

• 1:05:40Speaker 02

  That adds to why it's so nasty.

• 1:05:41Cara Santa Maria?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah.

• 1:05:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. It can insert its DNA into-

• 1:05:46Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, into the host cell. And, and it can be like dormant for a really long time. Yeah.

• 1:05:50Speaker 02

  Right. And then it comes out and it wipes out your immune system. Yeah. Nasty virus. Yep. So yeah, any new tool in fighting it is most welcome.

• 1:05:59Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:00Speaker 02

  All right. Thanks, Evan.

• 1:06:01Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:06:01Speaker 02

  Jay, it's who's that noisy time?

• 1:06:03Jay Novella?

  Okay, guys. Last week I played this noisy.

• 1:06:19Jay Novella?

  What do you got, guys?

• 1:06:20Speaker 02

  That's really fun noise.

• 1:06:22Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. It's absolutely fun. It feels like a toy that you would play with in the water.

• 1:06:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was thinking like Squidward makes that noise when he walks around. A little bit.

• 1:06:31Jay Novella?

  Okay, so I had some fun guesses here this week. So, uh, Hunter Richards wrote in and said, "Howdy, Jay. The noisy, uh, sounds like slush, snow melt off a roof, maybe, that is landing on and falling through a tube or a cylinder of some kind that has just the right-sized aperture to create a pop that then changes in pitch as the slush moves through the cylinder and then finally plops out on the ground." I thought this was a very, very good guess because, you know, you have like that tube sound and everything, which, which kind of does explain part of what we're hearing. It's not correct, but I thought that was a good guess. Uh, Michael Sosito said, "Hey, Jay, this week's who's that noisy sounds like it could be one of those golf ball cleaners with a microphone inside of it." Uh, have you guys ever seen a golf ball cleaner?

• 1:07:14Speaker 03

  Yes. I used to work on a golf course.

• 1:07:17Jay Novella?

  Right, so it's kind of like a, there's a handle and the golf ball kind of goes into a tube and then you kind of lift it up and down the handle to wash it and everything. Again, not, not a bad guess because, you know, again, there's that tube thing. And then the guy said he also hears birds, which I think was correct. Next guess comes from Ryan Pintek and Ryan says, "Is that a sound of a person making a balloon animal with a microphone up close to their hands?" Now, this would be one of those like balloon animals that's made out of that long, skinny balloon, you know, and if you do it really quick, it makes all those squiggy noises, you know what I mean? Again, I thought this was a good guess, but not, not correct. Mitch Brown wrote in and said, "Hello, I've been listening as long as I can remember. First time guessing.

• 1:08:00Jay Novella?

  Given the ambience of the background sounds, we appear to be a microphone sitting in a pond somewhere, then I hear diarrhea, but that can't be it. So I'm going to guess that it's some kind of swamp creature having an explosive egg release." Now, I know there was like some joking in here, but again, the idea of, of, you know, something moving through an aperture or whatever, it could, could make that noise. But Mitch is not correct. And then we had a winner, which I find amazing under certain circumstances like noisies like this, I find that this one is relatively difficult in the big scheme of things. But Travis Bailey guessed correctly and Travis said, hello Jay and fellow skeptics. The noises always puzzle me and I rarely officially guess, however, while playing

• 1:08:44Jay Novella?

  this one at work, I had a coworker immediately jump up claiming to know it. Now, guys, as long as the person submits the right answer, does it matter how they got the answer? I don't think so. I think it's just in that person's fear, if they can get the answer, they get the answer. Sure. So, yeah, right, we ask people, that's totally fine. So, the sound is of live bamboo being split apart, probably by hand as opposed to using a knife or tool. Travis got it perfectly correct. So, you have young bamboo that it's the bigger kind of bamboo, not the very narrow shoots of bamboo. This would be like a three, four, five inch diameter and when it's young, it's not as hard.

• 1:09:27Jay Novella?

  And this particular kind of bamboo is, you could walk up to it, let's say it's, you know, four feet tall, and you grab the top of it and you just rip it apart like in half with both hands and you're ripping it down the line of the bamboo pole, right? So, if you know how bamboo grows, bamboo has these individual sections that grow. So, there could be in one, one branch of bamboo, there could be like these sections that separate it into even parts, for example. If you've ever like cut into bamboo or whatever, have seen it, like, yeah, there's, there's these, these like, what would you call them, Steve?

• 1:10:05Cara Santa Maria?

  Segments?

• 1:10:06Speaker 02

  They're, they're, so the segments are called nodes and internodes. The nodes are the rings or the joints, you know?

• 1:10:14Jay Novella?

  That's it, that's a good way to put it. So, I'm just trying to describe this noisy, people are ripping the bamboo in two parts evenly and as it goes down and hits those nodes, you know, that's where you're hearing some of these noises are coming out of that. So, let's play it again and see if you could visualize this.

• 1:10:44Speaker 03

  And it still sounds like a cartoon.

• 1:10:45Cara Santa Maria?

  It's so cartoony, yeah.

• 1:10:47Speaker 02

  I think it was like for each inter-node, I guess, is that's what the increasing sound is, the, you know, frequency of the sound is.

• 1:10:54Jay Novella?

  So the brant is them ripping the bamboo apart, and then the pops are those nodes.

• 1:10:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, the nodes.

• 1:11:00Jay Novella?

  And then, you know, if you see the video, like, water is, like, popping out of this thing too. It's a very wet thing that's happening. Very cool, you know, and bamboo, my god, talk about a useful plant in so many ways. And I've seen videos of people doing all sorts of different things with bamboo. It's incredibly useful. It's like, people would use it for pipes. Early on, you could build furniture with it. You can do all sorts of things with it. Very useful. So I have a new noisy for you guys. Hey, good job, Travis, by the way. Good guess on that.

• 1:11:29Speaker 02

  So you know what kind of plant bamboo is?

• 1:11:33Jay Novella?

  Yes, I do. It's a coniferous.

• 1:11:38Speaker 02

  It's grass. Yeah, it's a type of grass.

• 1:11:39Cara Santa Maria?

  Such a great answer.

• 1:11:45Jay Novella?

  Isn't it funny how, when you're, when you know you're gonna make up something, you can feel, even before you can think it, you feel that your brain is gonna spit out something. It's such a weird, you know, the, working with your brain and feeling like these movements that your brains do is fascinating. I always have like a little premonition that I will say something funny or interesting or whatever, even though I have no idea what's gonna come out of my mouth.

• 1:12:11Cara Santa Maria?

  I have to admit, I'm annoyed that I didn't get that one because when I was in China, I went to a giant panda reserve and saw pandas, like, munching down on so much bamboo. And it's the cutest thing ever, but I guess all you hear is the crunch of their jaws. You don't really hear them ripping the bamboo because they're too far away. But they, like, rested on their bellies.

• 1:12:30Jay Novella?

  Kara, I saw a panda in a video who was using it as a kung fu stick.

• 1:12:36Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, they do. They use it as tools, yeah.

• 1:12:39Jay Novella?

  You know, like, doing moves on it. He's, he got pretty proficient at it. It was like his toy, you know, and I just thought he was so, he's like Kung Fu Panda, for crying out loud.

• 1:12:45Cara Santa Maria?

  And then when he was done, he just ate it.

• 1:12:47Jay Novella?

  Yep.

• 1:12:48Cara Santa Maria?

  So cute.

• 1:12:48Jay Novella?

  Okay, I have a new noisy for you guys. This noisy was sent in by a listener named Victor Windle-Mayer. Victor, you know damn well I cannot pronounce your last name. And you didn't send me the pronunciation, so from henceforth, you will always be known as Victor Wandelmayr. If I got that right, man, somebody better send me a prize. Anyway, Victor sent in a really cool noisy, and here it is.

• 1:13:21Jay Novella?

  Good luck.

• 1:13:22Speaker 03

  Oh, those are the minions from Despicable Me.

• 1:13:25Jay Novella?

  Good luck, man. I heard this, the second I heard it, I'm like, this is awesome, and I think it's gonna be really hard. I'm not gonna give you any clues, because there's a lot of people out there. So, if you heard something cool this week, guys, or if you think you know the answer to this noisy, email me at [email protected]. Please, if you're sending me noises, please attach the file and give me a description, if you can. That's always helpful, because most of the time, if people don't send me a description, I really don't, I can't use it, so you gotta let me, let me know what's happening there. A very quick few announcements. Steve, the big thing is, in two weeks, Steve will be retired. Two weeks? Retired! And then, I'm gonna let Steve take a week off.

• 1:14:10Jay Novella?

  Thank you. And then, we hit it hard. We've got good stuff coming your way, guys. We have new programming, we're working with, we'll give you full disclosure, pretty soon, but we're working with some great people on one of our projects. We're bringing AQ6 back, and more to come, so we'll give you information as that, as that becomes, as the timing becomes right. A couple of more things. We have a show in Kansas, guys. This is happening the weekend of September 20th. Actually, it's all happening on September 20th, that's a Saturday. We're gonna be doing a private show, and we'll be doing an extravaganza, that's hosted by George Robb. The extravaganza, if you don't know, it's a stage show.

• 1:14:51Jay Novella?

  And the private show is a panel show where we just record the podcast live. Both of these shows are a lot of fun and the extravaganza is a great ride. If you've never seen it, please do join us. It's a, it's a really good show. We've been working on it and fine tuning it for a decade and it shows because we are all very proud of it. You can go to the skeptics guide.org and you can find a button on there on the homepage that will take you to the tickets. You can also become a patron. We've had a very generous year with our patrons when, when people found out that Steve was coming full time. They wanted to show their support, particularly for the new stuff that we're about to do.

• 1:15:29Speaker 02

  And we're getting awfully close to the 24 hour show.

• 1:15:32Jay Novella?

  Yeah, that's true. That's true.

• 1:15:34Speaker 02

  I really want to inflict that upon my fellow rogues.

• 1:15:38Jay Novella?

  I've decided that I'll do it, Steve.

• 1:15:39Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:15:41Jay Novella?

  I really, I swear.

• 1:15:42Speaker 02

  We've committed.

• 1:15:43Jay Novella?

  I know, but all these years I've been like, I'm not doing another debilitating, like screw up an entire week of my life show. But I, I had so much fun doing that 24 hour show. So I really am looking forward to that. One last thing, guys, you could give our show a rating and you could join our mailing list. That was two things I turned into one thing. So Steve, there's one other thing that I think it's time to announce this. We have been discussing possibly having a conference in Australia. So we got ourselves to the point where, you know, we were doing like late in the game, negotiating with the venue. You know, trying to, you know, obviously get the cost down as much as possible. Now this would include, uh, this conference that we're having, by the way, is not a con.

• 1:16:28Jay Novella?

  We would do not a con Australia. For those of you who've been, you know what I'm talking about. For those of you who haven't been, uh, this conference is essentially all about, uh, community building. You know, having fun, socializing, you know, it's, it's really revolves around, you know, interacting with, with other people that go to the conference. The bits that we do are highly audience interactive, especially this most recent one. The conference is a ton of fun. We've had two very successful conferences that we ran in White Plains, New York, but we have been asked to. Bring it to Australia. So we're wanting to do it, but of course we have to have a couple of safeties in play here because we don't know how many people would be interested. So we created a survey.

• 1:17:13Jay Novella?

  The audience in Australia, if you're listening to us in Australia, you'll be receiving this email from the, either the Australian skeptics. I'm not exactly sure who's going to send it, but it could be one of many people. But I just, I just did send them the survey. So you'll get it through those channels. And if you don't, if you're not on their mailing list and you want to get it, then I will be sending out an email to all the SGU patrons and to our mailing list. So I think for now, if you want to, you know, just help us gather some information to find out whether or not there's enough interest, you could go to our homepage and you could join the mailing list, or I could put the link up there as well. I have to, I'll, I'll get that done. I'll definitely put that up on the homepage.

• 1:17:55Jay Novella?

  Bottom line is, we need you guys to let us know what the level of interest is. Of course, the more people that are interested, the less the ticket prices are. And we ask you to, to answer the survey as quickly as possible because time is really is at the core of this right now. We have to move quickly to make sure that we get the dates that we're proposing. So it would be May 2026. It'd be our Nauticon Special, you know, Australia Conference. This will be, you know, tailored for the people in Australia. We, we wanted to give you guys everything that you want and we, the questions that we ask in the survey are going to give us the answers that we need in order to figure out whether or not we're going to do it. So please do answer the survey and do it quickly because time is of the essence.

• 1:18:38Speaker 02

  Thank you, Jay. Got one email. This comes from Jay in Boston. Different Jay, obviously. And he writes, "I wanted to bring the experiment that Simon Dan is organizing to A, disprove a flat earth, but B, have a massive, possibly largest replication of Aristotein's."

• 1:18:59Speaker 02

  On June 21st, the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere, he wants as many people to measure the angle of the sun at noon, that's solar noon, as possible and send photographic, or better yet, video evidence of the measurements. Seemed like something up your alley? Have a good one. And he gives a link to the YouTube video where Simon Dan describes the experiment. You guys get this? So if Eratosthenes heard a rumor that in a certain city, that at noon on the summer solstice, there would be no shadow inside deep wells. Basically, the sun was directly overhead, it would shine directly down the well.

• 1:19:43Speaker 02

  But that wasn't the case in the city where he lived. So he paid somebody to pace out the distance between those two cities, measured at the same time, basically measured the shadow, you know, basically solar noon, measured the shadow of a stick of a certain height, and he used that to calculate the circumference of the earth. Yep. And he came within just a few percentage points. Degrees, yeah. Yeah, very accurately. He got, he wasn't trying to prove the earth was a globe, because the ancient Greeks knew the earth was a globe for various reasons. He was just trying to calculate the circumference of the earth and got it pretty close to the modern value. So what Simon Dan is proposing, if we, a bunch of people can do this around the northern

• 1:20:25Speaker 02

  hemisphere, then that would replicate the experiment on a massive scale, and also it would prove that the earth is a globe, right? More so. Yeah. If, if you could, there's a, you know, a strict correlation between how far above the equator you are, and how much of a shadow, a stick of a certain height, you know, leaves at solar noon, then...

• 1:20:54Speaker 02

  That would only happen on a spherical Earth, right? If the Earth were flat, that they should all be the same.

• 1:21:00Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:21:01Speaker 02

  Uh, I'm sure the flat Earthers will have some bullshit explanation for why this wouldn't work or whatever, uh, but...

• 1:21:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, Carl Sagan explained this in Cosmos.

• 1:21:10Speaker 02

  He did, yep.

• 1:21:11Speaker 03

  Uh, that's where I first learned about that. Very cool.

• 1:21:13Speaker 02

  So, we should do it. This is next, so this, this show's coming out on, you know, Saturday, the fourteenth. That's one, one week from the day this show comes out. So, this is really the only time we have to spread the word. So, go to the YouTube, uh, video that we link to in the, in the notes, or you can just look up, you know, Si Man Dan replicates, you know, global Earth experiment or whatever, you'll find it. And it's a fun little science experiment that you could participate in and be part of this, uh, massive replication. Um, you have to go to a website and look up like where the solar noon is where you live, like what time that is.

• 1:21:53Bob Novella?

  Yeah, solar noon just means like the sun's at its zenith, right?

• 1:21:55Speaker 02

  It's at the highest point.

• 1:21:56Bob Novella?

  But it's not necessarily noon in your clock.

• 1:21:58Speaker 02

  It's not noon. It's very rarely would it be actually noon.

• 1:22:01Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:22:01Speaker 02

  Right? Cause like, you know, you're in a time zone. It's noon for a very broad range. You, you have to look it up for where you are, like, you know, where the solar, solar noon is. Um, and then you have to measure the stick. You gotta make sure it's vertical and you gotta then measure the shadow, just videotape it as evidence. And Si Man Dan will do all the, the hard, he'll do all the calculations and everything. He's gotta send the data to him. Should be fun. It's a good way to teach a little bit of science to your kids or whatever. Okay, let's go on with science or fiction.

• 1:22:37Speaker 01

  It's time for Science or Fiction?

• 1:22:46Speaker 02

  Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two genuine, one fictitious, and I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake arooning. Just got three regular news items this week. You ready?

• 1:23:00Jay Novella?

  Yep.

• 1:23:00Speaker 02

  Alrighty, here we go. Item number one, researchers have demonstrated a brain-machine interface system that allows a subject with ALS who cannot physically speak to speak in real time and with 97% accuracy. Alright, number two, a new genetic analysis finds that Florida alligators are actually two distinct species, which may have resulted from interbreeding with introduced Asian alligators. And item number three, for the first time, engineers have built a working computer entirely of two-dimensional material without any silicon. Bob, go first.

• 1:23:40Bob Novella?

  Okay, brain-machine interface, somebody with ALS, speak in real time, 97%, oof. I did hear some advances about that, but this was like a news item from like a year ago, and it was somewhat accurate. Alright, so basically, somebody with ALS just can't muster the muscular strength to talk?

• 1:24:03Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:24:04Bob Novella?

  Because it's as simple as that, yeah, the muscles just aren't up to it anymore. Alright, hmm. Alright, number two, alligators, interbreeding, yeah, sounds reasonable, that sounds totally likely. Too likely, perhaps. Third one, let's see, working computer, what do you mean two-dimensional material? What kind of two-dimensional material?

• 1:24:25Speaker 02

  Two-dimensional material, one molecule thick.

• 1:24:27Bob Novella?

  Alright, not exactly two-dimensional.

• 1:24:31Speaker 02

  You know, Bob, that's what they call 2D materials. If it's one atom thick, it's a two-dimensional material.

• 1:24:36Bob Novella?

  Yes, interesting. A working computer, that's just such a broad statement right there. What does that, that could mean? Many different things. Ah, these are good. Nothing's really totally leaping out. You know, screw it, I'm going with the alligators, fiction.

• 1:24:53Speaker 02

  Okay. Kara?

• 1:24:55Cara Santa Maria?

  Brain-machine interface that allows the subject who cannot physically speak to speak in real time. I mean, is speak in quotes here? Like, what is that?

• 1:25:05Speaker 02

  So it's a brain machine interface.

• 1:25:08Cara Santa Maria?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:25:08Speaker 02

  So the computer is speaking.

• 1:25:10Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:11Speaker 02

  Physically speaking for them.

• 1:25:12Cara Santa Maria?

  Right, right.

• 1:25:13Bob Novella?

  Like Stephen Hawking?

• 1:25:14Speaker 02

  But in real time and with 97% accuracy. Just from the brain machine interface.

• 1:25:19Cara Santa Maria?

  I mean, we've been working towards this, right? Like, this is the holy grail. So if we figured it out, and if it has been at least proof of concept shown with a patient, that's incredible. 97% accuracy is incredible. But also, I think we've been getting closer and closer to, you know, thinking and, you know, we can do a lot of motor activity with brain machine interfaces. Speech is significantly more complicated than like playing a video game. But, but yeah, I think we have been working towards this.

• 1:25:48Bob Novella?

  Hey, what about, what about blocked in syndrome? Holy shit.

• 1:25:51Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And anybody who has a difficulty, a motor difficulty speaking.

• 1:25:56Bob Novella?

  Wow.

• 1:25:56Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. Bob, you said that the alligator one is fiction, but you didn't say why? That's helpful. From what I understand, there are only two species of alligator that are like alive. Like, we have one and then there's one somewhere else. Maybe it is in Asia. But I don't know if you interbred those two, you would get a third species. I don't think you call like a, I don't know, like a hybrid between two distinct species, a new species.

• 1:26:23Bob Novella?

  I wonder if it could have been a grail.

• 1:26:25Cara Santa Maria?

  Hmm. Um, well, they're crocod-, alligators are crocodili and, but I think there are only two alligator species. And I think we only have one of them. Uh, but I don't know, maybe if you bred it with the other, it would, like naturally, it would make a new species. Um, and then engineers have built a working computer entirely of two dimensional material without any silicon. I have no idea. But the fact that that didn't make Bob go, what? That's impossible. Um. Means I'm gonna go with Bob. I think there's only two alligator species.

• 1:27:01Speaker 02

  Okay, Jay.

• 1:27:02Jay Novella?

  All right, the first one about researchers demonstrating the brain-machine interface. I know that people have been working on this. I know that we've come a really long way with this technology. I mean, 97% accuracy is like, pretty much 100%, you know what I mean? Like, it's good, it's so good that, um, essentially, these people can really... So what are they doing? They're talking through it like they're typing on a screen, Steve?

• 1:27:27Bob Novella?

  No.

• 1:27:27Speaker 02

  No, it's pure thinking.

• 1:27:29Jay Novella?

  But what do they, how is the communication happening?

• 1:27:32Cara Santa Maria?

  It's through a computer.

• 1:27:33Speaker 02

  The computer is speaking in their voice.

• 1:27:35Jay Novella?

  Okay. And they're just thinking the thoughts?

• 1:27:38Bob Novella?

  In real time. Brain-machine interface, yep.

• 1:27:40Jay Novella?

  Damn, that's freaking amazing.

• 1:27:43Bob Novella?

  It sure is.

• 1:27:44Jay Novella?

  Damn, Kara, what's happening?

• 1:27:46Cara Santa Maria?

  It sure is.

• 1:27:48Jay Novella?

  We literally could be a brain in a jar, for Christ's sake. Okay. Number two, uh, new genetic analysis about the Florida alligators. There's two distinct species which have resulted in, from interbreeding. Okay, uh, and you guys don't think that's true? And then the final one, for the first time, engineers have built a working computer entirely of two-dimensional material without any silicon. So two-dimensional material, meaning what? It's one molecule thick, Steve?

• 1:28:13Speaker 02

  As I said, yes.

• 1:28:15Jay Novella?

  Okay, just checking, gotta make sure, you know?

• 1:28:17Speaker 02

  It hasn't changed since Bob went.

• 1:28:18Jay Novella?

  People make mistakes. I mean, sure, what the hell, right? Like, we've been working on this stuff for so long. There's a huge amount of money in miniaturization, and this is basically as far down as it can go. That's freaking amazing. I mean, they just need enough material there for the current, for electrical currents to function, right? Is it, this is electricity or light computer, Steve?

• 1:28:42Speaker 02

  I didn't tell everybody else, so I'm not telling you.

• 1:28:44Jay Novella?

  But they were too stupid to ask, so I'm asking.

• 1:28:46Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 1:28:49Jay Novella?

  All right, I'm gonna figure it's electrical and I'm gonna say that's definitely science. And then we got the, okay, and then if Kara believes that the ALS computer thing is real, then it's gotta be the alligators is the fiction.

• 1:29:03Speaker 02

  Okay, and Evan?

• 1:29:04Speaker 03

  Let's see, that is incredible about the real time, speaking for people with ALS and the brain machine interface. Remarkable, that's wonderful. That news, that has to be science because, you know, that would be such a letdown. It's such a bummer to say that was fiction and, and Steve, you're not gonna do that because, you know, you're, you know, you know some things about ALS and neurology. So I believe that one's science. And about the engineers, the two dimensional, oh, I have a question, Steve. If material is two atoms thick, does that make it three dimensional?

• 1:29:41Speaker 02

  It's no longer considered a 2D material.

• 1:29:44Speaker 03

  Uh huh, uh huh, all right. And that leaves us with the alligators. Did you know that, so in Florida, in Florida, the name of the mascot for the University of Florida is the Florida Gators, right, for alligator? And that Gatorade, the drink, was developed in 1965 by a team of researchers at the University of Florida. And therefore, this one is the fiction. Thank you.

• 1:30:10Speaker 02

  Perfectly prominent logic. All right, we'll take these in order. Researchers have demonstrated the brain machine interface system that allows a subject with ALS who cannot physically speak to speak in real time and with 97% accuracy. You guys all think this one was, is science. I'm a little surprised, until Evan, you guys didn't focus on the real time bit, right? The 97 accuracy, that's, you know, that's not that amazing, but in real time?

• 1:30:37Bob Novella?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 1:30:38Speaker 03

  Real time's crazy.

• 1:30:40Bob Novella?

  That is, yeah, true. Holy grail.

• 1:30:43Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, real time, I mean, there's still a slight delay between your brain thinking and your mouth moving.

• 1:30:47Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, but it's like the same delay as anyone speaking.

• 1:30:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, yeah. So like, it's not actually real time, but it's real time.

• 1:30:52Speaker 02

  It's, it's the same as, yeah, it's real time. If it's, in other words, it's not like with Stephen Hawking where, you know, it's like 30 minutes later. Well, this one is science. This is very cool.

• 1:31:07Cara Santa Maria?

  Wow, incredible.

• 1:31:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is amazing.

• 1:31:10Bob Novella?

  Holy crap, man.

• 1:31:12Speaker 02

  They, so they, they implanted three strips of electrodes on the motor cortex of the subject. And it reads his intention to speak, right? His, his motor cortex is trying to speak, but he doesn't have the muscles to do it. Um, and it, the brain machine interface, the software learns what he intends to say from training, you know?

• 1:31:41Bob Novella?

  How much?

• 1:31:41Speaker 02

  And says it. I don't know how much training it was, but it was, it wasn't, it wasn't bad. Uh, of course, this is using artificial intelligence to interpret the signals, which has really caused a huge leap. I think I've said earlier, you know, in a previous episode, that the introduction of the latest sort of AI technology has caused the brain machine interface, this kind of application to leap forward like 20 years. Um, it really is amazing.

• 1:32:10Bob Novella?

  20.

• 1:32:10Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. We are now where I thought we would be 20 years from now.

• 1:32:14Bob Novella?

  Oh.

• 1:32:15Speaker 02

  Real time interpreting speech, just like the guy's thinking what he wants to say and the computer's freaking saying it.

• 1:32:22Bob Novella?

  Well, Steve, so technology is advancing quicker than you thought, huh?

• 1:32:25Speaker 02

  It is. In this very narrow, specific application. Yes, that is correct. Uh, so this one is very cool science. Um, of course, they've only done this to one person so far. This is a proof of concept, but there's no reason why this wouldn't work in a lot of, a lot of individuals. You know, the, the reporting on it says, you know, it could also work in people who have other neurological diseases like stroke. I'm like, well, stroke, that's not, wouldn't be on my shortlist because. If they can't speak because they have aphasia, this won't help them. And if they can't speak because their motor cortex is damaged, this won't help them. So what's the scenario in which this is helpful for somebody who has a damaged brain as opposed to just they don't

• 1:33:06Speaker 02

  have the ability to activate their muscles? So like a high spinal cord injury, yes. ALS is the perfect application for this. Stroke, not so much. Unless they're, as you say, Bob, locked in. So yes, a brainstem kind of stroke, yes.

• 1:33:25Bob Novella?

  Think about that. With locked in, you'd have to, really the only way to communicate would be through like, say, eye communication, whether you have like a code with eyes.

• 1:33:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's the worst possible condition.

• 1:33:35Bob Novella?

  They've got programs that could read your gaze. And so to pick out word, you know, letter by letter or word by word. This, you could just like think the words in real time. That's just, can you imagine? It's like going from typing 10 words a minute to 300 words a minute.

• 1:33:49Speaker 02

  It's absolutely life-changing for people with these conditions.

• 1:33:53Bob Novella?

  Now, what about covert communication?

• 1:33:56Speaker 02

  Covert?

• 1:33:57Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:58Speaker 02

  What do you mean?

• 1:33:59Bob Novella?

  You want to speak to somebody through a communication device.

• 1:34:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, if you have wires coming out of your head, that's not exactly covert.

• 1:34:05Cara Santa Maria?

  No, but like you could text somebody with your mind.

• 1:34:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:34:10Cara Santa Maria?

  Easily.

• 1:34:11Speaker 02

  They started doing that. They started with texting, right? But then they had recordings of this guy's voice from earlier before he got sick. And they basically programmed the computer to speak in his voice, which was cool. But yeah, texting is easier. You don't have to reduce the speech itself.

• 1:34:28Bob Novella?

  What else? What else could that thing, some application that we're not thinking about?

• 1:34:33Speaker 02

  I mean, it's a brain machine interface. There's a million applications, especially from the motor cortex, controlling a prosthetic limb. You know what I mean?

• 1:34:40Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:41Speaker 02

  That's the thing they're working on. Again, the limiting factor here is these electrodes on his brain. And those are not going to survive a very long. You know, although I hate to say it this way, but neither is he probably. Unless, unless he gets intubated, that's the thing. If you have ALS.

• 1:34:57Speaker 03

  Oh, right.

• 1:34:58Speaker 02

  It's either death or intubation, meaning you get, you get put on a breathing machine. So, but he may decide, hey, if I could talk, I, maybe it's worth hanging out, you know?

• 1:35:05Speaker 03

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:35:06Cara Santa Maria?

  Um, if. Do you know how old the patient was?

• 1:35:08Speaker 02

  He didn't look that old, like in his 40s, 50s.

• 1:35:11Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. So, yeah, I think obviously the younger people are.

• 1:35:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally makes a huge difference.

• 1:35:17Cara Santa Maria?

  The more likely they are.

• 1:35:17Speaker 02

  Having dropped this diagnosis on a lot of patients, it's absolutely, makes a massive difference how old the patient is. In terms of their emotional reaction.

• 1:35:26Cara Santa Maria?

  And their, yeah, their, their interest in intubation.

• 1:35:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:35:30Speaker 03

  My gosh.

• 1:35:31Speaker 02

  All right. So let's go on to number two. A new genetic analysis finds that Florida alligators are actually two distinct species, which may have resulted from interbreeding with introduced Asian alligators. You guys all think this is fiction. Now, Cara, you said something which is interesting. You said that there weren't three species, but that's not what this is saying. This is just saying that the Florida alligators are two species.

• 1:35:56Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, but I was saying, I think that there are only two species.

• 1:35:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, there are, there are only two species. That is correct.

• 1:36:01Cara Santa Maria?

  So if the Florida alligator is two species, then there would be three.

• 1:36:05Speaker 02

  And no, there's the American alligator and the Asian alligator. And what they're saying is that in Florida, there's basically both species from the interbreeding with the Asian alligator. There's basically Asian alligators in Florida. So there's two species.

• 1:36:19Cara Santa Maria?

  But if they interbreed it, why would they be Asian alligators?

• 1:36:21Speaker 02

  There's enough of them, they basically decide they're different enough that they're going to, where they're going to consider them no longer Florida alligator, American alligator.

• 1:36:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay. So that there are, that, so what you're saying is that there is a, maybe not native, but a wild population of Asian alligators living in Florida.

• 1:36:37Speaker 02

  Right. That's what this is saying.

• 1:36:39Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, that could be true. I don't know.

• 1:36:42Speaker 03

  But I mentioned Gatorade. Does that?

• 1:36:45Speaker 02

  You did.

• 1:36:46Cara Santa Maria?

  So it can't be true.

• 1:36:47Speaker 02

  This one is the fiction.

• 1:36:51Speaker 03

  I got it.

• 1:36:52Cara Santa Maria?

  Nice.

• 1:36:53Speaker 03

  Thanks, Ben.

• 1:36:53Speaker 02

  Backed into this one this week. I just made this up.

• 1:36:58Speaker 03

  What made you think of this?

• 1:36:59Speaker 02

  I saw a news item on alligators that was not usable for scientific fiction. I'm like, alright, I'm gonna rip on something with alligators. So, yes, there are only two species of alligators, the Florida alligator, the American alligator and the Asian alligator. There are only American alligators in North America. At first, I'm thinking, I almost did crocodiles, but crocodiles and alligators cannot interbreed. They are different. They are really different. They cannot-

• 1:37:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I think they diverged like millions of years ago.

• 1:37:30Speaker 02

  A long time ago.

• 1:37:31Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. There are multiple species of crocodile, yeah, but they cannot interbreed with alligators.

• 1:37:36Speaker 03

  Where does a gorille fit into this?

• 1:37:38Speaker 02

  That's a crocodile.

• 1:37:40Speaker 03

  Is it?

• 1:37:40Cara Santa Maria?

  What about a caiman?

• 1:37:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think-

• 1:37:42Cara Santa Maria?

  Caimans are crocodilian, but I think they're more recently related to alligators. But still millions of years ago.

• 1:37:50Speaker 02

  Basically, there's the crocodiles and the alligators. There's just the two groups.

• 1:37:53Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, but alligators are crocodilians still.

• 1:37:55Speaker 02

  They're the same order, crocodiles.

• 1:37:57Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, they're the same order.

• 1:37:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, so that's pretty high. Different families. Alligatoridae and crocodilidae, or dilidae, or whatever. Yeah, so same order, different families. That's pretty far up the taxonomical tree.

• 1:38:10Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, like I said, I think that they divide, they split off millions, plural, of years ago.

• 1:38:15Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 1:38:16Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:17Speaker 03

  If this was about crocodiles, I would have brought up the inventor of the Crocs. The footwear. But I didn't.

• 1:38:24Speaker 02

  Alright, this means that for the first time, engineers have built a working computer entirely of two-dimensional material without any silicon is also science.

• 1:38:33Speaker 03

  Tell me about that one, geez.

• 1:38:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you're right, Bob, in that computer is a sort of a broad term here.

• 1:38:39Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, super broad.

• 1:38:41Speaker 02

  Basically, it's, you know, an integrative, integrated, you know, circuit. They, and again, this is like not a practical application. This is just a proof of concept. They wanted to see, because the whole idea is, you know, as you scale down silicon semiconductors, they start to lose their physical properties when they get too small. So that puts limits on how much we could miniaturize silicon-based circuits. But with two-dimensional materials, they- Maintain their their properties, their physical properties, even at the smallest possible size of two dimensional, single, you know, atom thick or molecule molecule thick, you know, sheet. And so they made the basically the two types of transistors that you need out of two different

• 1:39:26Speaker 02

  types of two dimensional material. There's the N type and the P type transistors. And they were able to do an operation that, you know, constitutes a computer on circuits made of these two dimensional N and P type circuits, transistors. So it's again, proof of concept. They they did it. This is the first time they were able to do that. There's no silicon involved. So this is, they hope this is going to be a significant milestone in the development of 2D materials in microelectronics.

• 1:40:06Speaker 02

  Obviously, this can get a lot smaller, you know, and use up a lot less energy and produces a lot less heat, etc., all those things than silicon transistors.

• 1:40:18Bob Novella?

  That's huge.

• 1:40:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:40:20Bob Novella?

  Heat's a big problem.

• 1:40:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, again, who knows how long it's going to be before any actual commercial application of this kind of technology, but it is a, it is a good milestone. All right, well, good job, guys. Thank you.

• 1:40:32Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:40:33Speaker 02

  Seemed to guess your way to this one.

• 1:40:34Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:40:35Speaker 02

  All right, Evan, give us a quote.

• 1:40:39Speaker 03

  The progress of science depends less on the accumulation of facts than on the emergence of new ways of thinking about them, often by specialists deeply immersed in a problem. Stephen J. Gould.

• 1:40:54Speaker 02

  Great science communicator.

• 1:40:56Bob Novella?

  Love him, man.

• 1:40:57Speaker 03

  Oh, yes.

• 1:40:58Bob Novella?

  I miss him. I gotta read some, some of his books again.

• 1:41:00Speaker 02

  I know. I read all of his books. I've really, you know, he was very influential in my own science writing deliberately. He really perfected the essay format of science writing.

• 1:41:12Bob Novella?

  Yeah, he was.

• 1:41:13Speaker 02

  You wrote your essay, Steve? He wrote his essay.

• 1:41:16Bob Novella?

  Oh, God, we went there again, damn it.

• 1:41:22Speaker 02

  All right, well, thank you all for joining me this week.

• 1:41:25Bob Novella?

  Thank you, Stephen.

• 1:41:26Speaker 02

  Anytime, bro. And until next week, this is Your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

• 1:41:34Speaker 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.

• 1:42:11Speaker 00

  Breathe in and reset with Lincoln Rejuvenate, an available multisensory feature in the 2027 Lincoln Navigator SUV. Experience the luxurious massage, visuals, and sense to help you relax in the driver's seat. It's your time for a reset. Visit lincoln.com to learn more. Lincoln Rejuvenate does not operate unless the vehicle is in park. When the vehicle is off, or if any doors open, do not use the feature in a closed garage or in other enclosed areas. See owner's manual for important operating instructions. Lincoln and Navigator are trademarks of Ford or its affiliates. All rights reserved.