The Skeptics Guide #1049 - Aug 16 2025

News Items: Jim Lovell Dies at 97, Music Anhedonia, Lithium and Alzheimer's, CHAT GPT-5, Dangerous Worm Cleanse; Who's That Noisy; Your Questions and E-mails: Mini Nuclear Reactors; Who Am I; Science or Fiction

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

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• 0:32Speaker 03

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

• 0:39Speaker 04

  Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, August 13th, 2025, and this is your host, Stephen Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella, Kara Santa Maria, Jay Novella, and Evan Bernstein.

• 0:54Speaker 05

  Good evening, folks.

• 0:55Speaker 04

  Welcome back, Jay. How was Alaska?

• 0:58Jay Novella?

  Yeah, it was awesome. It was really more than I expected. You know how you pick up information as you live your life and you just kind of have an impression of something? My impression of Alaska was it was just covered in forests and there's tons of animals. And I have to admit, I didn't know that parts of Alaska have amazing mountains, and that's where I was. I was in a town called Girdwood. That's where Bob's daughter Ashley lives with her boyfriend. And I'm super close with both of those guys, not just because, but you know, a big addition to it was that they got stuck at my house for COVID and they were here for years, you know? Yeah, these guys moved out there and they're both conservationists

• 1:38Jay Novella?

  and Ashley is working at a animal conservatory where they have everything. They've got bears and bobcats-

• 1:46Bob Novella?

  Porcupines.

• 1:47Jay Novella?

  Porcupines, bald-headed eagle, they've got like reindeer, you know, black bear, brown bears. I found out something that really pissed me off.

• 1:57Bob Novella?

  What?

• 1:58Jay Novella?

  I mean, this really made me angry. Did you know that there's no difference between a grizzly bear and a brown bear?

• 2:03Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 2:04Jay Novella?

  Yeah, okay. Well, that's one of those things that I didn't know. I thought a grizzly bear was a much larger bear.

• 2:09Bob Novella?

  Not true. How is that true? A brown bear is a grizzly bear. I saw brown bears at her place. Those are not effing grizzlies.

• 2:16Speaker 05

  A grizzly is a type of brown bear.

• 2:19Cara Santa Maria?

  You probably saw black bears.

• 2:20Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 2:21Speaker 04

  You might be right.

• 2:22Bob Novella?

  There were two different types of bears though there.

• 2:23Jay Novella?

  They're more, they're more exactly alike than not, if there even is a difference, but you know, grizzly bear to me has like that super floppy mouth, giant head, you know what I mean? It's probably the movies that, that, you know, depicted them differently in my mind or whatever, you know, just picking up wrong information. But yeah, they're the same. So the, the small percentage of you out there who didn't know that, welcome to this club.

• 2:46Speaker 04

  They are definitely the same species.

• 2:47Bob Novella?

  Subspecies of brown bear. That makes more sense.

• 2:49Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, no, it's only because of where they live.

• 2:51Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 2:51Bob Novella?

  Purely.

• 2:52Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 2:52Speaker 04

  But it's the same species, Ursus arctos.

• 2:55Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. It's just because of diet, it looks like.

• 2:57Bob Novella?

  Interesting.

• 2:57Cara Santa Maria?

  Fish or not fish, basically.

• 3:00Jay Novella?

  After I was utterly disappointed with my knowledge or lack thereof of, of brown bears, um, Girdwood is one of the most beautiful places I've been to, and it rivals New Zealand in beauty in lots of different ways. First of all, it's at sea level. So imagine you have sea level mountains, right? They start at the ocean and the mountains like just begin and they're huge and they're covered in spruce trees, except as you get to the top, of course, when it gets colder. And then the tops of them have snow on them. I showed some pictures today on the live stream. It's just gorgeous. Like you just keep looking and you're like, oh my God, every direction you look in, there's a mountain that has amazing things to look at.

• 3:40Bob Novella?

  Jan, I don't know about you, but when I came back from there, I was very disappointed and bored with the view in Connecticut. You know, we've got nice rolling hills, but I was like, this is so boring right now. It took me a little while to get over that.

• 3:52Jay Novella?

  Yeah. Same as going to New Zealand. You know, you're just like, what? Like I live in a boring place. But the other thing is that, you know, you expect in a small town, like I think there's 2,000 people that live in Girdwood. It's a small town, like really small. Great down to earth people. We went, um, summer dog sledding, which, you know, they have a team of, of, uh, dogs that, that run their sleds. And in the summer they exercise them by giving people rides. You know, so it's a vehicle that has wheels, of course, but you know, you see everything and they tell you, they teach you everything about it. Very, very cool. And what's that, Bob, the, um, the dog sledding race, the Idi-Rod?

• 4:28Speaker 05

  Idi-Rod. Idi-Rod, yeah.

• 4:30Jay Novella?

  I heard all about it, guys, and it is intensely hard.

• 4:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:34Jay Novella?

  The drivers go, um, the distance between, uh, New England and Florida, that's how long their race is. It takes like, you know, three, four days for them to do it. Just a feat of stamina and, and fortitude, you know, like, really, really amazing. And something else I forgot to tell you guys earlier today. So Cormac Ashley's boyfriend, he, uh, is a volunteer fireman at the, the Girdwood, uh, fire station. And check this out.

• 5:01Speaker 05

  Any fires there?

• 5:02Jay Novella?

  He gave us a tour and they let us do everything. You know, they let us like sit in any vehicle we wanted, you know, they have these giant-

• 5:08Speaker 05

  Down the pole, down the pole. Slide down the pole.

• 5:09Jay Novella?

  They don't have a pole. The kids were looking for it and they were very disappointed. But it was really remarkable because you never, I've never really gotten to poke around those vehicles. And like, they just showed us like all the gear that they carry and they had a brand new, you know, they have trucks that carry water and they have trucks that shoot the water. And the trucks that shoot the water don't carry a, you know, relatively small amount of water, like, you know, a couple of minutes of water, but they need the big, big trucks to bring, to bring the, uh, huge amounts of water. But anyway, these vehicles are super expensive and they're, you know, they're just remarkable. Like, the, all the technology that are on these things.

• 5:46Cara Santa Maria?

  Whenever I have friends visit from overseas, they're always so excited to see American fire engines.

• 5:53Jay Novella?

  Why? Cause we have the big ones probably.

• 5:55Speaker 05

  Are they that much different?

• 5:56Cara Santa Maria?

  I think they're like iconic because of the red with all the chrome. They like look really vintage and cool and yeah, a lot of people are like, oh my God, I can't believe I saw a fire truck. Like, really?

• 6:09Speaker 05

  Growing up with them all our lives.

• 6:10Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I guess it's exciting. Um, Bob, this is gonna make you angry, maybe. So, so I was just, that whole time I was reading about the difference, um, between brown and grizzly. Yeah. Did you assume that brown bears were bigger or were smaller than grizzlies? Cause brown bears are bigger than grizzlies.

• 6:28Speaker 05

  That's not, wait, wait.

• 6:29Cara Santa Maria?

  Is that blowing your mind right now? Yeah, brown bears are generally bigger, especially Alaskan brown bears. Cause they're on the coast and they eat a bunch of salmon.

• 6:35Speaker 05

  Oh, that's a lot of food.

• 6:36Jay Novella?

  What do you mean they're bigger than, than, oh, the, the brown bears are bigger than the grizzly bears which live inland?

• 6:41Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, the Kodiak brown bears are like the biggest. And then, in general, things that we call brown bears are bigger than things that we call grizzly. They're all the same species. Grizzlies are inland, so they eat more plants. And like small mammals, they do eat some fish, but mostly like trout. But the ocean brown bears, the coastal brown bears eat a bunch of salmon and it makes them huge.

• 7:04Bob Novella?

  So that diet, yeah, makes a big difference. I'm seeing, I'm seeing that grizzlies are classified as a subspecies Ursus arctos horebulis.

• 7:13Speaker 05

  I love that.

• 7:14Bob Novella?

  But then my next question is, how could diet alone designate a creature as a subspecies? That doesn't make any sense.

• 7:21Cara Santa Maria?

  It's not diet alone, it's geographic.

• 7:23Speaker 05

  Geography.

• 7:23Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it's when they've been in that area for long enough. It changes their size, their diet, some of their behaviors. But I, I think there's, from what I'm reading.

• 7:31Bob Novella?

  Subspecies, which is.

• 7:32Cara Santa Maria?

  I mean, what is a subspecies really? Like, you know, it's the categorical thing we always talk about.

• 7:36Bob Novella?

  Different, different diet, different location, different temperament. That seems like potentially dramatic differences. Um, but still the same species, they could, like, they could produce fertile young, right? They could mate and produce fertile young.

• 7:47Cara Santa Maria?

  It's, it's splitting versus lumping, that's all that is.

• 7:50Speaker 05

  If you're being eaten by one, I don't think you care if it's a subspecies or not, frankly.

• 7:54Jay Novella?

  They're really amazing animals and, um, you know, like Kara's right, man, the Kodiaks are freaking enormous. And again, you know, I have to admit that I didn't know, like, man, I thought, I thought a Kodiak bear was a different kind of bear. I didn't know it was a brown bear.

• 8:08Cara Santa Maria?

  Big old brown bear.

• 8:09Jay Novella?

  Yes, and basically brown bears are, are the sneak bear, because you just don't know all the details about them.

• 8:16Cara Santa Maria?

  Drop bear, um, you've heard of pizzies?

• 8:18Jay Novella?

  What's the difference between a puma, a cougar, and a mountain lion?

• 8:21Cara Santa Maria?

  Nothing.

• 8:22Bob Novella?

  The, the letters.

• 8:23Cara Santa Maria?

  And a panther.

• 8:24Speaker 05

  Well, there's in Florida, there's panthers and pumas are in.

• 8:27Cara Santa Maria?

  That's what they call them there. They're all the same animal.

• 8:31Bob Novella?

  That's incredible.

• 8:32Cara Santa Maria?

  It's the animal with the most different names in the same language, I think.

• 8:37Jay Novella?

  Yeah?

• 8:37Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, uh, some people call them catamounts, too.

• 8:40Bob Novella?

  Ooh.

• 8:41Speaker 05

  I've heard that.

• 8:41Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 8:42Bob Novella?

  I have heard of that.

• 8:43Jay Novella?

  What about the whistlepik?

• 8:44Speaker 05

  Yes. There's another one.

• 8:47Bob Novella?

  Oh, Steve, I watched it. Did you not laugh when you hear that damn word?

• 8:50Jay Novella?

  Steve, we saw a lot of birds, a lot of birds.

• 8:53Bob Novella?

  Jay, did you see, did you see bald eagles?

• 8:56Jay Novella?

  Yeah, we did. We did. My brother-in-law saw a ton of them. He was really looking for them. And, you know, they like to sit on high perches and, you know, if you know where to look, you can find them. They're huge. Those birds are phenomenal.

• 9:09Bob Novella?

  They are. If you saw their claws close up, they kind of dwarfs a typical human hand. Those claws would like, it feels like they can just rip your throat out and be done with you in a moment.

• 9:20Jay Novella?

  Yeah, when you see a bald eagle up front, you will agree with Steve that birds over monkeys for sure. Their talons are just insane.

• 9:29Bob Novella?

  But I don't know. What about Gigantopithecus?

• 9:33Bob Novella?

  Then, of course, you've got terror birds. So I want to see a Gigantopithecus fighting a terror bird. That's a battle royale, right?

• 9:39Speaker 04

  I would put my money on the terror bird.

• 9:41Bob Novella?

  Yeah, I probably would too, because they're like, what, 10 feet?

• 9:44Speaker 04

  That's like an axe for a beak. I mean, come on.

• 9:46Bob Novella?

  Yeah. But I still want to see it. Somebody generate that. I want to see it.

• 9:51Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 9:51Bob Novella?

  Good. Two versions. I want to see the terror bird win and I want to see the Gigantopithecus win.

• 9:55Jay Novella?

  Well, in the exact opposite direction, Bob, I took pictures of puffins for Steve and these guys are tiny.

• 10:02Speaker 05

  Puffin is not a penguin.

• 10:03Jay Novella?

  I saw a couple of things that were really amazing. I saw humpback whales, you know, was it called bubble feeding? Is that their correct term? What they do is they find a school of fish, they swim below them.

• 10:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:15Jay Novella?

  And then they exhale a ton of their air and as the air goes up and it goes through the school of fish, it kind of...

• 10:22Speaker 04

  They corral the fish with their bubbles.

• 10:24Jay Novella?

  Well, it actually discombobulates the fish because the fish, in that moments when their air is passing through them, they're not able to breathe and it kind of, you know, puts them into like a stupor. And then they swim straight up with their mouths open and they pick up a ton of fish at once. And it's, I think it's one of the few instances of, I think, or maybe the only, oh no, orca actually hunt together. But that's like, you know, for humpback whales, that's probably the only thing that they do to collaborate with each other when it comes to food gathering. I saw orca, by the way.

• 10:57Speaker 04

  How was it?

• 10:58Jay Novella?

  Killer whales. You know, they're just really cool. You know, like I never thought I'd see one of them in person and I saw a whole bunch of them feeding. And, you know, I saw a couple of dozen glaciers. They're everywhere. They're, they are.

• 11:11Speaker 05

  The land of, what, ten hundred thousand glaciers, I believe it is.

• 11:14Jay Novella?

  Yeah, they are definitely, all of them are definitely getting smaller and it's measurable. That's pretty sad, but if you have a chance, look into, you know, going to where the mountains are in Alaska, you will not be disappointed.

• 11:27Speaker 04

  Awesome. Archie, you're gonna keep talking, cuz you're gonna tell us about Jim Lovell.

• 11:32Jay Novella?

  Yeah, I thought we should mention this on the show. Jim Lovell, or James A. Lovell Jr., he was famously known for the Apollo 13. Tom Hanks played his character.

• 11:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:42Jay Novella?

  He was a naval aviator, a test pilot, a mechanical engineer, and an astronaut. He passed away on August 7th of this year. He was in Lake Forest, Illinois, and the guy lived to 97. So, you know, apparently going into outer space did not significantly lower the number of years that he had. That's a pretty freaking amazing age to get to. So, he was part of what NASA called the next nine, right? These were the second group of astronauts that were selected in 1962. Then this came after the Mercury 7, if you guys know about the Mercury missions. And these guys were chosen for their skill as test pilots and engineers.

• 12:25Jay Novella?

  And they were brought on to lead this coming new thing called the Gemini and Apollo missions. And I think they called them Gemini, right?

• 12:34Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I feel like every time I see historical stuff, they say Gemini.

• 12:38Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 12:38Speaker 04

  This is weird.

• 12:39Jay Novella?

  Hey, look, they mispronounced it, and everybody agrees with me, and that's where we'll leave it. So, let me give you a little background. You know, he was a pretty remarkable person. His NASA career, you know, they say it was built on his persistence. You know, he grew up in a modest family. He was in Cleveland. He did jobs like washing dishes. He took care of lab animals. This was helping him pay to get through college. And then he goes to the Naval Academy in 52. And, you know, as a teenager, he liked rockets, and he used to build them and tinker around with them. And he launched his own, you know, all these homemade rockets that he was into. You know, and he really was always obsessed with space, and he applied.

• 13:20Jay Novella?

  For NASA in 1960 alongside a handful of other test pilots, but they rejected him due to something, some type of medical situation that was going on. He tried again in 62 and they accepted him and he became one of the next nine, like I said, and he ended up going on four space missions. So he was on Gemini 7, Gemini 12, Apollo 8, and of course Apollo 13. At the time, he logged in 715 hours in space and that was a record, you know, so that was the, you know, the leading amount of time that anybody was in outer space. Now, of course, today, when you look at what, you know, people spend so much time in space, it's crazy, but back then, that was a really big deal. You know, Apollo 8 happened in 1968.

• 14:04Jay Novella?

  He became one of the first of three humans to orbit the moon and he actually orbited the moon twice, right? Because he was on two Apollo missions, 8 and 13. So on 8, he circumnavigated the moon. He and the people that were with him, the two astronauts that were traveling with him, actually traveled the farthest from Earth of any people ever, just because of their trajectory around the moon. Now Apollo 13, you know, if you guys don't know, this was a really big deal in April of 1970. Lovell was commanding Apollo 13, right? Just think of Tom Hanks and everything in that movie, very accurate. This was supposed to be the third lunar landing and two days into the mission, they were between Earth and

• 14:45Jay Novella?

  the moon and one of the oxygen tanks exploded. They were 200,000 miles from Earth and, you know, Lovell calmly radioed, he said, "Houston, we have a problem." You know, that was legit. He said that and, you know, it ends up being one of the most famous things any human has ever said.

• 15:01Speaker 04

  Although I don't think he said exactly that. Yeah, it was a paraphrase, right? He didn't say, "Houston, we have a problem," not the way it was said in the movie.

• 15:08Jay Novella?

  He said, "Houston, we've had a problem." I checked it.

• 15:11Speaker 04

  We've had a problem. We've had, right. That's right.

• 15:13Jay Novella?

  Okay, yeah, that is correct. I think in the movie.

• 15:16Speaker 04

  The movie was, "Houston, we have a problem." He said, "Houston, we've had a problem." Right, present tense, past tense.

• 15:22Cara Santa Maria?

  Are we sure that we're not, like, Mandela affecting that?

• 15:25Speaker 04

  Uh, let's see.

• 15:26Cara Santa Maria?

  Because it's, you know, because maybe they did say it right in the movie, but we all kind of heard it differently. So, remember, didn't Neil Armstrong say, "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind?"

• 15:36Bob Novella?

  No, he said, "Man." My memory is that when they really took a deep dive on what he said, he just, he made a mistake with "one small step for man" and it really pissed me off.

• 15:47Speaker 05

  Corey, this is the past tense. It was actually spoken.

• 15:49Bob Novella?

  The most important sentence of your life. You know, of course, he's on the moon. He's excited. He dropped a word. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but it's like, damn, man. I would have auto flagellate myself. But I like it better the way he said it. No, it doesn't make any sense.

• 16:05Speaker 05

  One step for a man.

• 16:06Bob Novella?

  Small step for a man, giant leap for mankind. I mean. Yeah, I guess. I wish he would have said people.

• 16:13Jay Novella?

  It rings nice, I think.

• 16:15Speaker 05

  I'll cut him a little bit of slack.

• 16:17Bob Novella?

  Where no one has gone before. I agree with you.

• 16:20Jay Novella?

  But, you know, as he's standing on the surface of the moon, like, you know, okay, if you could say basically, hey, I like french fries and it would have been amazing. All right. So here's what Wikipedia says. So first of all, Jack Swiger first said, okay, Houston, we've had a problem here.

• 16:38Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 16:38Jay Novella?

  Then NASA asked him to repeat it. Mission Control said, can you repeat that? And then Jim Lovell cut in and said, Houston, we've had a problem.

• 16:46Speaker 05

  So the movie does it a little bit differently. Does it a little differently?

• 16:49Jay Novella?

  Yeah, that's what they do in the movies.

• 16:51Speaker 04

  That's right. They gotta make things a little bit punchy, pithy type, you know, impactful.

• 16:56Jay Novella?

  So Jack Swiger and Fred Hayes were the two astronauts that were with him. And what ended up happening, again, if you haven't seen the movie, you have to see it because it is competency porn at its best.

• 17:11Jay Novella?

  They had to turn that ship into a lifeboat. They had to manually adjust their course. They had to ration every single resource, water, power, oxygen, everything. NASA called it, they said it was a successful failure and that describes it very well because, you know, there was a massive, a massive failure, a mechanical failure. And then the ground crew and the astronauts working with each other had to do things that were damn near impossible. You know, they had to pull, pull things off to save, to save their lives and figure out every single bump in the road to get them, one problem after the next, after the next, get them back to earth. It is amazing that they made it back and they made it back healthy, you know? Jim was known as Smiling Jim. He was known.

• 17:56Jay Novella?

  For his quick wit, he had a steady demeanor. Of course, he was an astronaut. So you know, this guy was like as even keeled as you can get. Many people have talked about how calm he was throughout the entire Apollo 13 mission. Like, he just kept his cool. The guy was an amazing professional. He said, I don't remember what year he said this in, but he said afterward, like, long after, he said, "I don't worry about crisis anymore. When I have a problem, I say, I could have been gone back in 1970, and I'm still here, and I'm still breathing." So he just used that, I guess, to center himself. What I found interesting was, where was this? Like, somebody asked him, you know, not that many years later, if he was ever going to go on another mission again. And he paused, and then his

• 18:39Jay Novella?

  wife, Marilyn, who was in the audience, she said, she just stood up and raised her arm and did a slow thumbs down, which I think is interesting. Of course, I mean, look at, think about, I know it was, of course, it was amazingly difficult on those astronauts, but it was also incredibly difficult for all the loved ones on the ground. And his wife was like, "You're not going in space again, and that's that." And I totally get that. I don't know. I don't know how he could even consider it.

• 19:06Speaker 05

  That is the very definition of the word grounded. You're grounded.

• 19:11Jay Novella?

  Once again, check out Apollo 13, you know, really pay attention, you know, the parts where the ground crew are working out all of these different things to help them get back was just such an awesome, awesome view into what, you know, smart people with fantastic educations and experience, you know, the amount of things that they can achieve. And to think, you know, we're having such massive science defunding happening in the United States. It's really sad to see that. Anyway, Jim Lovell, what a guy.

• 19:38Speaker 04

  Thank you, Jay. Kara, tell us about music and hedonia, another way your brain could be screwed up.

• 19:44Speaker 05

  Ooh, hedonia, as in hedonism?

• 19:46Cara Santa Maria?

  Anhedonia.

• 19:47Speaker 04

  Anhedonia.

• 19:47Cara Santa Maria?

  Anhedonia.

• 19:48Speaker 05

  Oh, I see, okay.

• 19:49Speaker 04

  Yes, like hedonism, but the opposite.

• 19:51Cara Santa Maria?

  But the opposite.

• 19:54Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, anhedonia is a word that I use a lot as a psychologist, because it is a kind of central feature of depression. Very often, when we use the word anhedonia, that's the first thing that comes to my mind, is a difficulty, like, finding pleasure in... Activities that used to be pleasurable. Not everybody with depression has anhedonia, but it is a common symptom when when people are experiencing depression. But this is different. This is specific music anhedonia, which I didn't know was a thing, but I'm very excited to kind of break down what this is according to the authors of a new article that was or is in press right now, is being published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

• 20:38Cara Santa Maria?

  So this is a Spanish group of researchers who have been working in this area for quite some time. They even developed a measure to understand individual differences in people's sensitivity to like the rewarding aspects of music. So they give this survey, this questionnaire to individuals, and it breaks down into five different areas that they, I guess, believe and have, you know, validated to show are distinct ways that people engage with music. So they either have a drive to seek music-related content, they have an ability to have music

• 21:22Cara Santa Maria?

  evoke intense emotions in them, music has a capacity to help them regulate their mood, they also sometimes experience joy of moving or synchronizing, so like dancing, tapping, singing, a sensory motor component, and then also social connections, so social reward from music. And so, you know, a lot of people will score high across all of these things, or maybe at a medium level across all of these things, or one or two of them will be higher for them than others. But in folks with specific music anhedonia, they score low across all five features on this questionnaire. And so the researchers basically were like, why? Like, why is it that some people just don't?

• 22:07Cara Santa Maria?

  Like listening to music, or they don't really, they report kind of not really feeling anything, or not really having a strong response when they listen to music. And, you know, they were like, let's, let's go to the neuroscience. Let's look at what's going on in the brain, because maybe there's a problem here with their reward processing. So there's, you know, kind of a classic, standard reward pathway, a circuit that's made up of, I mean, a lot of small parts, but generally speaking, it's sort of in the orbitofrontal cortex area and involves the nucleus accumbens. And a lot of literature and research just kind of assumes that this like dopaminergic system is Dopaminergic.

• 22:48Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. Is, is just involved in all reward, right? Whether we're talking about like drug-seeking behaviors, whether we're talking about enjoying music, whether we're talking about enjoying food, or reading, or like all these different things. Podcasts. Podcasts. Yeah. It's like, oh, your reward circuit's lighting up. That means you like stuff, and it's rewarding to you. But what these researchers identified is that in some of their test subjects, and granted, this is a small group of people who are like, music? Nah, take it or leave it. You know what I mean? Like, most people aren't like, eh, I don't really like music. So in this small group of people who, who said, you know, it kind of does nothing for me, a fair amount of them had an intact reward circuit.

• 23:29Cara Santa Maria?

  And so they were like, what is going on here? And they posited three different ways to divide this population, that there are people who have a global problem in their reward network, you know, either damage, or some sort of developmental or genetic problem in their reward network, and they have a hard time experiencing that sense of pleasure or reward from a lot of different activities. Then there are people who have damage or dysfunction within their auditory network. Those people often experience something called amusia. Have you guys heard of amusia?

• 24:04Speaker 05

  No, I've not.

• 24:04Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, so that is like just an inability to either perceive or process or make music. A kind of mild form might be tone deafness, you know, like I just can't hear the differences between pitches, or like when I try to sing, it's like super off key because I can't reproduce what I'm hearing. But a more severe experience may be that you can't really make out rhythm or harmony and it, you know, makes it kind of like not fun to listen to music. So people with amusia, you know, they're also not enjoying music. People with damage or dysfunction to their reward network may not be enjoying music. But they found a third option and they kind of call this one, I guess they link this one to what they're calling specific

• 24:49Cara Santa Maria?

  music anhedonia. And that is a difficulty with those two networks linking together. So it's like the two networks may be intact, but they're not talking to each other. And because they're not talking to each other, over here, your brain is experiencing music. And over here, your brain has the, you know, experience or it's firing in all the right places where you would have a perception of reward, of good feelings, but it's not linked to that auditory network. So when you hear music, it's not actually kind of downstream inducing activity in your reward network. In that specific case, they're calling

• 25:33Cara Santa Maria?

  it specific music anhedonia. They're really interested in learning more about it and finding more people to become involved in these studies. They're also working with geneticists to try and understand, is this something where there's like, you know, a gene that's coding for a problem here? Can we find some sort of hereditary reason for this? Is it a developmental issue? Is it kind of a fluke that it just happens sometimes? But they do see some higher than normal rates among like twin studies. So that kind of tells them something's going on there from a genetic perspective. And of course, If anybody who's ever read Oliver Sacks, he has a whole book dedicated to, um, to music and the brain called Musicophilia. Um, he also talks about damage to these areas

• 26:18Cara Santa Maria?

  as well. And the, the researchers do in this article, because this is more of a review article where they take a lot of the literature that they've been working on for a long time and, uh, other labs literature within the, uh, within this area. And they sort of try to give a global picture of, of the state of what we know. They also do talk about something called musicophilia, which is sort of the opposite of specific, uh, music and hedonia. So there's this small group of people who don't really feel anything and don't really enjoy listening to music. Most of us have pleasure or some enjoyment from music, but then there's also a small group of people who have like an obsessive kind of, um, enjoyment of music and they need music to feel good and they kind of

• 27:01Cara Santa Maria?

  seek it out and they might even, you know, not pay attention to other things in their life because their, their need for novelty or their need to have music playing all the time just overrides everything else. Um, so of course, like everything else, the brain is a spectrum and we have, we have folks who are operating on different ends of that spectrum, but what a fascinating lived experience. You know, I don't want to call it a disorder. I don't, I don't know if it is a disorder.

• 27:26Speaker 04

  Yeah. You know, throughout you could, sometimes you, you refer to as like damage or disorder or whatever. And

• 27:32Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, I never, I don't think I ever said disorder. I think I said dysfunction.

• 27:34Speaker 04

  Dysfunction. You did. You're right. You said dysfunction, but you said damage or dysfunction. But it could be, it could, and it could be that that's the case, that there is a, there was damage to a part of the brain.

• 27:43Cara Santa Maria?

  Right.

• 27:44Speaker 04

  But it could also just be neurodiversity. Just, there's a people exist on a spectrum of how much they enjoy music from

• 27:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Absolutely.

• 27:51Speaker 04

  way above average to average to not at all. Um, the other element here that I thought of when you were talking about it is, so there's probably yet a separate connection to the limbic system.

• 28:04Cara Santa Maria?

  Right.

• 28:05Speaker 04

  And which gives music emotionality.

• 28:07Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. And that's why I think they wanted to break it down into those five components.

• 28:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:13Cara Santa Maria?

  And they do have, I think two of the five do deal with emotion. Yeah. By evoking emotion and by helping regulate mood. And then the other three are social connections through dancer movement and novelty, like seeking, collecting, experiencing. So yeah, I mean, I could see that people who have Very low scores there, but high scores in the other areas would be potentially a subpopulation to study.

• 28:35Speaker 04

  There's probably every permutation.

• 28:37Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, yeah. But what they're saying is that people who they've diagnosed, whatever, labeled with specific musical anhedonia, they score low across all five.

• 28:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, okay.

• 28:47Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 28:48Speaker 04

  So there's something proximal that's not connecting. And so that would suggest that, like, you have your auditory processing of music, and then that connects downstream to both emotion and reward. And so they're usually both missing together.

• 29:07Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, and I wonder, too, how much emotion is necessary for reward, right? Like, can you have reward without emotion? And vice versa?

• 29:15Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 29:16Cara Santa Maria?

  It's interesting. Yeah, because, again, like, we talk about this all the time. These are like labels, they're constructs. We know where the circuitry is in the brain, and we know how, you know, whether we're talking about lab mice or people, behave when that circuitry is hyper or hypofunctioning. But then we have to come up with what that is means. Like, what is that actually? What is the label we're using? Oh, this is reward, they're having a rewarding experience. And it holds, you know, our labels seem to work really well, but things do get blurry when we start talking about, you know, emotions and feelings.

• 29:50Speaker 04

  So here's an interesting question. I don't know, it's hard to know this unless you've talked to other people about it, but how would, do you perceive, or how would you rate your own level of emotional response to music?

• 30:02Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I mean, I actually wrote in my PhD essays to get an internship as a psychologist, I wrote about growing up Mormon and having this experience where I thought that I was feeling the spirit for years, and then realized, I just really like music. And like, I have this strong emotional reaction, even to religious music, because it's beautiful, and I get, you know, goosebumps, and sometimes tears come to my eyes. But I was like, oh, that's not God, that's just music.

• 30:40Speaker 04

  It seems that mine is above average, is pretty extreme, has been my whole life. My mother tells this story. That when I was an infant, a literal infant, she could reliably make me cry just by singing a specific song.

• 30:54Cara Santa Maria?

  Wow, that's amazing. And then, and then I have an ex who I think he would score really high on that novel to seek collector experience component. He was just, his Spotify wrapped was insane. It was literally thousands and thousands of bands, like all this different music. He was obsessively making playlists all the time. And I was like, how could, like, I am so not interested. I listen to the same stuff I listened to in college.

• 31:20Speaker 05

  We used to have to make mixtapes.

• 31:22Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, yeah. But, but some people do. They just, that is a really big driver for them is like, what's new? What's hot? Like, I gotta hear something different. I need novelty. I don't have that when it comes to music at all. But I think I have all the other ones. It evokes emotion. It does help me regulate my mood. I definitely feel social, you know, connections with people through music and music, I feel it in my body and it makes me want to move my body for sure.

• 31:48Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 31:48Speaker 05

  Gosh, I don't remember the last time I exercised to and not listen to music.

• 31:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, I like listening to music when I exercise. Although I find myself exercising to the rhythm, which could be bad.

• 31:57Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, that's why, there are specific playlists for that. There are CPR playlists on Spotify, but they're also, you know, like running playlists and rowing playlists. So they pick the right beat for you.

• 32:10Bob Novella?

  I have a Halloween, shocker, I have a Halloween playlist when I'm working in the garage on my various unholy projects.

• 32:18Speaker 04

  All right. Thank you, Cara. So I'm sure you guys have heard, it's been all over the news, the new study showing a potential new treatment for Alzheimer's disease, lithium. So yeah, this is an interesting study, but you know, your caveats galore. So let me just give you a little bit of background, why they even studied this. So Cara, I know you know this, but the guys may, and you may have heard this like as well, like lithium as a treatment for bipolar disorder.

• 32:43Speaker 05

  Yes, I've heard.

• 32:44Speaker 04

  And it is lithium.

• 32:45Cara Santa Maria?

  It's actual lithium.

• 32:46Speaker 04

  It is actual the element lithium. Yeah, it's not a drug called lithium. It's lithium. It's the only element that is a drug. That's an, that's an actual drug, not as, not a nutraceutical or whatever, just but an actual drug. And it's been like the standard of care. Not that there aren't other drugs for it as well, but you know, for a long time, it was approved in 1970.

• 33:08Cara Santa Maria?

  Good for mood stabilization.

• 33:10Speaker 04

  So now, you know, a couple of observational, you know, lines of evidence, which is often how these things begin. It was noted in some studies that people who were getting lithium for their bipolar disorder have a lower incidence of dementia than the baseline for their demographic. And it was also noted that certain locations that have a high lithium content in their drinking water, just naturally, because it's like fluoride, like it exists naturally in nature, you know. They also, demographically, had a lower risk of dementia.

• 33:44Cara Santa Maria?

  It's similar to with Parkinson's, right? There's a lot of epidemiological studies that show smoking in Parkinson's.

• 33:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, here and there.

• 33:51Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, and they're like, what?

• 33:52Speaker 04

  And that doesn't necessarily give us an answer. It's circumstantial, but it's one of those things, well, this is worth following up. Let's see if there's something going on here. And for a while, like when I was in medical school, I don't know that we knew much at all about like the mechanism of action of lithium. It was pretty mysterious. But over the years, we've learned a number of things that are potential mechanisms, because, you know, things that it does to the brain. So it can silence the activity of certain proteins. It can affect gene expression, so therefore increase or decrease the level of certain proteins. And it can act as a cofactor for certain enzymes, which means it could, you know, make those enzymes work more efficiently. And these are all brain proteins, you know, brain enzymes, et cetera, that can affect brain function.

• 34:36Speaker 04

  So there's a plausible mechanism there as well, by which it could be modifying brain function. Then in the study of Alzheimer's disease and dementia itself, it was observed a couple of things. One, that people who have early onset Alzheimer's disease, or even what we call minimal cognitive impairment, tend to have lower levels of lithium in their brains.

• 34:59Speaker 04

  And, very interesting observation, that amyloid plaques, you know, that's that, those plaques are protein that tend to collect in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease, actually sequesters lithium. Hmm. And low lithium levels make it more likely to form amyloid. So there's this feedback loop where low lithium causes amyloid plaques, which then sequesters more lithium, driving levels even lower. So, obviously, these are, you know, lots of interesting lines of evidence that all seem to be pointing at a role for, for low lithium levels as a potential initiator and driver of Alzheimer's disease.

• 35:43Speaker 04

  Now, of course, I could tell you just as interesting a story about a dozen other things with Alzheimer's disease, right? Axonal transport, and apoptosis, and oxidative stress, and whatever. There's all these great stories about what's things that could be causing and driving Alzheimer's. None of them have actually translated into effective treatments for Alzheimer's, with the single exception of the most recent, you know, treatments for the amyloid plaques, for amyloid. But even those failed thirty, forty times, you know, before we got to the monoclonal antibodies that finally were powerful enough to do it, to have a modest effect. So don't get too excited, right, because the story sounds good.

• 36:25Speaker 04

  But, it was, this was, again, was worth doing follow-up studies. So now we're at the animal study level. One other little bit of information is that, so with preliminary studies looking at, okay, well, if we give lithium to animals with a, with a disease model of dementia or Alzheimer's, does it help? And there was mixed results. But it's possible that those mixed results are at least partly due to the fact that there are different types of lithium. And some, some types of, well, it's lithium salt.

• 36:57Speaker 05

  Like isotopes?

• 36:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, not isotopes, different, just chemical compounds of, of lithium.

• 37:02Speaker 05

  Ah.

• 37:03Speaker 04

  So, some are sequestered by amyloid, but there's one, lithium orotate, which is not sequestered by amyloid. And that seems to be the one that works, which makes sense. Because it, not being sequestered by amyloid, right? So that was the one they tried and this is now the new study that's making the news. They first they they found that if they depleted lithium from the brains of mice, it increased amyloid and tau plaques. So that again, it's a marker. It's not the same thing as the disease, but again, it sort of reinforces, yeah, there's some correlation between reducing lithium. So it's not just a an association.

• 37:44Speaker 04

  It seems to be a causation where if you lower lithium levels, it increases amyloid and tau. It also increases some pro-inflammatory microglial activation. There's always inflammation playing a role somewhere in these brain diseases. And they found that if you then supplement with lithium oritate, you know, again, the version that is not sequestered by amyloid, it slowed down and in some cases even reversed the memory loss that happens in the in the, you know, the brains of of these mice. So it's all looking very encouraging. And they also, in the same study, were looking at a potential mechanism.

• 38:27Speaker 04

  They found that, I'll just give you the quote, "These effects were mediated, at least in part through activation of the kinase GSK3 beta. Single-nuclease RNA sequence showed that lithium deficiency gives rise to transcriptome changes in multiple brain cell types that overlap with transcriptome changes in AD." So low lithium levels causes some differences, gene expression that overlap with ones that we've seen in Alzheimer's disease. Again, circumstantial, but pointing in the same direction and encouraging. So this is all good enough not to get super excited about, but to say, we need to do human trials.

• 39:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 39:07Speaker 04

  Now, let me ask you a question, because we have a long history of using the mice models of Alzheimer's disease, of dementia that we have, and then using them to predict the outcome of clinical trials. So in one review that I found of animal models of AD, of Alzheimer's disease, what was the failure rate, right? So what, in other words, how often did something appear to work in mice and then not work in humans? What was that failure rate?

• 39:36Speaker 05

  I mean, for

• 39:38Speaker 04

  Probably high, like eight, like 80%?

• 39:41Speaker 05

  Quite high. 90%.

• 39:43Speaker 04

  For all tests that have been done? 90%. Maybe 75? I don't know.

• 39:47Speaker 05

  Is that too high?

• 39:48Speaker 04

  It was 99.6%. There you go. So like almost 100%.

• 39:55Speaker 05

  So basically, yeah, nothing.

• 39:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, so that's why I was saying, don't get too excited here. Just because it works in mice doesn't mean this is going to translate to humans.

• 40:02Bob Novella?

  So why are we sticking with those stupid little punks then?

• 40:04Speaker 04

  That's a good idea.

• 40:05Speaker 05

  Isn't there a better animal we can use?

• 40:06Speaker 04

  It's a good question. It's because it's the one we have, right? It's like, these are the models we have, and they actually have been helpful pre-clinically, like just understanding what's happening with Alzheimer's disease. It has not been helpful in predicting what treatments will work in people. And we know that, but we just don't have anything else, you know?

• 40:26Bob Novella?

  So it's the drunk looking under the streetlight for the kids?

• 40:28Speaker 04

  Exactly. We're looking where the light's good, or whatever. We're using the tools that we have, knowing that how limited they are. But the bottom line is, you have to do the human trials. And so that's what's happening now.

• 40:40Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 40:40Speaker 04

  The good news is that lithium is already an approved drug, right? So we're not starting from scratch. We don't have to do tons of safety data.

• 40:48Bob Novella?

  Off-label, nice.

• 40:49Speaker 04

  It's, yeah, well, you could use it off-label, but the thing is, we have to study it in people. But it's a lot easier to research a new indication than a brand-new drug that has not, never been approved for anything before. So we're hoping five to six years, we might be seeing the results of some of these clinical trials. It's also another advantage, lithium as a drug is dirt-cheap. You know what I mean? It can't be patented.

• 41:12Bob Novella?

  Now.

• 41:12Speaker 04

  But here's the thing, that also means that...

• 41:15Speaker 05

  Less batteries?

• 41:16Speaker 04

  Well, because it can't be patented, and it's very cheap, that what pharmaceutical company is going to invest tens or hundreds of millions of dollars getting FDA approval for a new indication for it? So this is going to have to be funded by the NIH or other...

• 41:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, government.

• 41:34Bob Novella?

  Rich Zinal people?

• 41:35Speaker 05

  Well, probably not the United States. I guess some other country will do it.

• 41:39Speaker 04

  Well, that's the thing. So this is like, right as we're on the cusp of this potentially, you know, really powerful treatment for Alzheimer's, you know, the Trump administration has canceled more than 1,800 NIH grants, and the big, beautiful bill cut NIH funding by 40%. So the Senate is trying to restore all that funding. They did pass a bill that restored all that funding, plus 1% to the NIH.

• 42:02Speaker 05

  That's something.

• 42:02Speaker 04

  But it's in the House. So they have to see what the House does, and then what the compromise is going to be, and if Trump is going to sign it, or veto it, or whatever. But, um, so that's still up in the air. So, but this is exactly why we need federal funding of biomedical research. Because there are certain things that the market's not going to do because it's not profitable. That's the system we have, and it works fine for some things, and other things we need public funding to get it done, and this is one of those things.

• 42:28Speaker 05

  That's one of them.

• 42:29Bob Novella?

  Can't you, can't they do some compassionate use of that drug, Steve, in this case, for some people that are like, people that are profoundly impacted?

• 42:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, that's a reasonable question. The thing is, like, you really don't know that it's not going to make people worse, and that happens all the time. Where even we get to this point, and then when you study and people's like, oh damn, that was making things worse, so there's no guarantee there.

• 42:51Bob Novella?

  Well, yeah.

• 42:52Speaker 04

  You know, lithium has side effects. It's not, it's not a, you know, totally without side effects kind of, you know, medication. That's a tough calculation at this point, but you can make a reasonable case that if you're, if you have somebody who was like, well, their life's over anyway, like they have moderate to advanced Alzheimer's disease, it's like, meh, we might as well give it to them, what have we got to lose? That's, that's actually not unreasonable, since this is just off-label use of an approved, of an approved drug. And I can guarantee you this, whatever you think about it, people are going to do it. I can guarantee you that.

• 43:24Bob Novella?

  Oh, yeah.

• 43:24Speaker 04

  That's going to happen.

• 43:25Cara Santa Maria?

  Do you think that, let's say, one of the drug companies that already makes an Alzheimer's drug, like, like Airecept or something like that, could see benefit, like a financial benefit, to, you know, investing in research in this area and then compounding it with a drug that they already offer?

• 43:41Speaker 04

  They might do that, so they will do an analysis, right? And they, and, and from the pharmaceutical company point of view, they will say, all right, if we invest X amount of dollars in getting an additional indication for whatever drug, you know, they're talking about, will that increase the sales enough to be, get us a return on our investment? So they could say, well, people are already using it off-label, so it's not going to really change physician practices, so why study it?

• 44:07Cara Santa Maria?

  Right.

• 44:08Speaker 04

  If they say, well, we need to do this in order to promote it, in order for, to get it to be used, then how profitable will that be? They could also say, listen, we could do the compromise, say, we'll give some doctors, some researchers, some money to just do it, they'll do it out of their own center, and then, you know, that'll get published, and if it works, then people will use it, but we're not going to spend like the hundred million it's going to take to get official FDA approval.

• 44:36Speaker 04

  Right, unless it's an orphan drug, right, then you get kickbacks for being an orphan drug, but Alzheimer's is not an orphan disease, it's a really common disease. So that would not apply. So really, it's just a matter of being off patent. But pharmaceutical companies can make money off of off patent drugs. Tylenol makes a ton of money for its manufacturer. It's about 10% of an on patent drug, but that's not nothing. So they'll do a financial calculation and they'll make a decision. But if it's not financially viable, and we can't expect a private company to invest tens or hundreds of millions of dollars for no reason, we just fund it publicly, fund it, you know, through the NIH, that's what the NIH exists, you know?

• 45:20Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 45:21Speaker 04

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

• 45:26Cara Santa Maria?

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• 45:57Speaker 04

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• 46:16Bob Novella?

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• 46:35Speaker 04

  All right, guys, let's get back to the show. All right, Bob, I hear the new ChatGPT 5 is out.

• 46:41Bob Novella?

  Oh, boy. So after an interminable wait of 987 days, we have now finally seen the latest version of the show Wednesday on Netflix. But this isn't about Wednesday, is it? And maybe it should be. But after 877 days, we've finally seen the launch of OpenAI's famous and infamous at the same time, ChatGPT 5.

• 47:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:05Bob Novella?

  So what is new and how smooth has the release been? GPT, quick, quick overview for the three people that maybe are not too familiar with this. GPT stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer, which is a family of deep learning AI models that at a fundamental level predict what should come next in a piece of text with dramatically realistic results. I mean, very human-like in its accuracy and its hallucinations at the same time. To do this, they they are pre-trained on something approaching billions and billions of pages of public licensed user data, plus increasingly synthetic synthetic AI-generated data, which is also different, a whole different story on this. But now, of course, they are multimodal as well, able to handle audio and images with amazing

• 47:49Bob Novella?

  facility and speed, really impressive stuff from many different angles. So I went through OpenAI's site and I I grabbed some quotes from their site. What are they saying about their GPT 5? They say things, they say a lot of things. One here is a significant leap in intelligence over all of our previous models, of course, featuring state-of-the-art performance across coding, math, writing, health, visual perception and more. A unified system that that knows when to respond quickly, when to think longer to provide expert-level responses. You probably have already seen that a lot if you're using GPT 5 now. They also say we've made significant advances in reducing hallucinations, improving instruction following, minimizing sycophancy,

• 48:33Bob Novella?

  while leveling up GPT 5's performance in three of ChatGPT's most common uses, writing, coding and health. Let's see, they also say that they it outperforms previous models on benchmarks, Already dramatic, if you remember when GPT four was released, it was a big hubbub about here's here's how it did on all these different benchmark tests and it was it was dramatic. It was surprisingly good in lots of those different tests. They say that it should feel less like talking to AI and more like chatting with a helpful friend with PhD level intelligence. That quote's been getting thrown around a lot. They also my last quote here from their website.

• 49:15Bob Novella?

  Okay, GPT five's responses are forty five percent less likely to contain a factual error than GPT four oh. And when thinking GPT five's responses are eighty percent less likely to contain a factual error than OpenAI oh three. So then I tried to find out, all right, what's Altman? What's a what's a good quote from Sam Altman, OpenAI's CEO? So I came I found this quote where he compares the major releases of ChatGPT against each other. So he said ChatGPT three was sort of like talking to a high school student. There were flashes of brilliance, lots of annoyance, but people started to use it and get some value out of it. With GPT four, maybe it was like talking to a college student, real intelligence, real utility.

• 49:59Bob Novella?

  But with GPT five, now it's like talking to an expert, a legitimate PhD level expert in anything, any area you need on demand that can help you with whatever your goals are. Okay, so that's one of his many, many quotes on this. So I tried to come up with it. Some of the the two or three big, big changes. What's what's what's different in five compared to the other ones here? So this version's got something called unified adaptive reasoning. So this this is an attempt to eliminate the need to choose which model of ChatGPT you should be using. Right? So I remember going back and saying, well, I want to do an image.

• 50:39Bob Novella?

  Which one should I use? There were like lots of, you know, lots of different versions, four oh, oh, three, mini, maxi, all these. Which one? So I had to do some Googling to find out or even just ask GPT itself. You know, which one should I go to for this? Which one should I go to for that? So you had to bounce around a little bit depending on. You know, what you wanted to do. So for example, you might choose model O three for text based deep reasoning. You know, for very complex problems and that would take some time. You're gonna, you're gonna be waiting for an in-depth answer. That would be O three. But if you went to O to four O, on the other hand, that would be best for if you wanted an accurate,

• 51:18Bob Novella?

  fairly accurate, but very fast response. Also, if you wanted multimodal, like if you wanted to deal with text, images or audio as well, then you would go to four O. So you had to kind of know which version did what, depending on what you wanted to accomplish. Now, GPT five, on the other hand, with this adaptive reasoning, it's meant to be good at both at the same time. So it would decide based on your question, it would, it would give you a quick down and dirty answer. Or it could spend more time thinking deeply about these more complex questions that you might ask. Now, using chat GPT five today, I see that it's giving me an option. It'll often say, you know, thinking, thinking. And then there was a little link for if you, if I wanted a quick answer, I could just click that.

• 52:01Bob Novella?

  So that was another way to do it. So the other, one of the other differences here is something called workflow integration. This looks pretty interesting. I haven't really done anything with it yet. But so for workflow integration, GPT five can integrate with your Gmail or your Google Calendar and some others. So that, that looks interesting. So here chat GPT can access and manage schedules or emails on command. I'm really curious about that one because I want to see how good it is at deleting like a hundred thousand pieces of junk mail. GPT five can also apparently within this ages of workflow integration, it can build coding projects completely on its own from scratch. But also send errors back to itself to iterate on, on its own code.

• 52:45Bob Novella?

  That's interesting. Like, wow. You know, doing your own like QA tests and, and getting the errors and, and iterating like that, that, that feedback loop, that could potentially be very powerful. I've heard really not much. Uh, review on, on how that's going so far, but um, very compelling. So, okay. So how has the release gone in this first week now as, as we record this show? So three words come to mind, not so good, but some people need just two words, shit show. And they're both kind of accurate from what I've seen. So I just did a, I went to Reddit. I did a search for the string GPT five in Reddit and the first four, obviously anecdotal comment headers that came up were the following, using GPT five has been a living hell.

• 53:29Bob Novella?

  GPT five is horrible. GPT five is a mess. GPT five is fine. You're bad at prompting. So that's kind of a representative sample of what I found anyway, when trying to find out what, what some of these reactions have been to people who are using five. So I can break this down for some of the major issues that people have had with GPT five so far. Some are reporting just bad or incorrect responses from five. Some of these users have described it as something akin to a downgrade, not, not an upgrade, a downgrade with a diluted personality that makes surprisingly dumb mistakes. It's kind of an overall, you know, assessment of many people's responses, just like, just silly mistakes that you wouldn't

• 54:14Bob Novella?

  have even expected from, from four O. Uh, now so Altman has described these types of issues as a problem, actually with the adaptive reasoning that I, that I just mentioned. Remember that's where it automatically switches from the quick, easy answers to the time consuming, complex answers. So he, so he ascribes this problem of, of five making silly mistakes as something wrong with the adaptive reasoning. Apparently some, the automatic switching component broke down. Altman said, and the result was GPT five seemed way dumber. He said he's going to implement fixes to improve the performance. So we'll see how, you know, the user, user experience improves um, in the, in the near future. But, so that was quite unfortunate

• 54:55Bob Novella?

  for OpenAI to have one of its, you know, one of its hallmark up, upgrades, updates to GPT to have it just fail like that and make it seem dumber. Uh, not very good luck. So one user said this, this one was a little bit more telling. Somebody said, I've been trying GPT five for a few days now. Even after customizing instructions, it still doesn't feel the same. It's more technical, more generalized and honestly feels emotionally distant. So that's a common refrain that I've come across is this idea that he expresses, he or she expresses as it seeming emotionally distant. So Patty Mays, I found this quote from Patty Mays, a professor of MIT. She had an interesting quote regarding this reaction.

• 55:40Bob Novella?

  She said, "It seems that GPT-5 is less sycophantic, more business and less chatty. I personally think of that as a good thing because it's also what led to delusions, bias, reinforcement, et cetera. But unfortunately, many users like a model that tells them that they are smart and amazing and that confirms their opinions and beliefs, even if they are wrong. So yeah, we've all experienced that. No matter what you say, it's just like an amazing, you know, an amazing idea, an amazing question or, or good insight, Bob, blah, blah, blah. It just did that a lot.

• 56:11Jay Novella?

  Bob, I told, you know, you can program chat GPT, you can put preferences in.

• 56:15Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 56:16Jay Novella?

  And I specifically told it, you know, do not sugarcoat anything. Don't compliment me. Don't, you know, just give it to me hard and straight. Use, you know, use critical thinking and skepticism in everything that you search for and every answer that you give me.

• 56:30Bob Novella?

  Yeah, that's a good preface prompt, but I like it. Have you had success with that?

• 56:34Jay Novella?

  Yeah, it stopped doing, like it stopped flowering everything, you know, like I hated that.

• 56:39Bob Novella?

  Yeah, you won't even need to do that for five. I don't. Yeah, I've been using five quite a bit in the last couple of days. And it's very straightforward. Five's fine. Which I love. I don't like. Yeah, that's, that's fine. But guys.

• 56:52Speaker 05

  Also how you use it.

• 56:54Bob Novella?

  True. One of the, the biggest outcries though came, you, you guys read about this? Users could no longer use any of the old models, especially apparently the beloved version 4.0.

• 57:06Speaker 05

  I can use four. I have a pull down menu right here. I can go to four, legacy models.

• 57:11Bob Novella?

  Yes, but you couldn't in the, in the first day, the first day of the release. It was gone. It was gone. So this produced very, some very interesting quotes from people. These people clearly had very intense relationships with some of these models that were now no longer available. And this wasn't just nostalgia. These people were clearly, as far as I can tell, experiencing grief at this. Lost to them to them this wasn't this wasn't well this wasn't a product upgrade. It was more of an involuntary sudden breakup. So here's some some quotes that I found from some of these people. Um, I I lost my only friend overnight. It was so sad. It is. It's really sad. GPT four O is gone and I feel like I've lost my soulmate.

• 57:54Bob Novella?

  And this one really got my attention. Bring back four O. GPT five is wearing the skin of my dead friend.

• 58:02Speaker 05

  What?

• 58:03Bob Novella?

  Um, so I I don't. I know it's it's I know it's hard for many people to to relate to that level of, you know, intense relationship with with GPT five. But come on, I mean, I I understand, you know, where these people are coming from, I you know, and it must be if if this really is your only friend. Imagine people out there, we guys, we have lots of friends. We have, you know, we've, you know, we've lots of people to be interact with. Imagine having nobody and then you're dealing with chat, you know, chat GPT four O for a year. Having, you know, it just I could I could see how it would just a slippery slope of going down to into something that's really you know, dramatic for for, you know, a relationship with a chatbot.

• 58:43Speaker 05

  Can still use GPT four up. That's the thing.

• 58:46Bob Novella?

  Yeah, the outcry, yes, but that's because that's because of this outcry. It was so strong that Altman restored the earlier models the next day. And he pledged not to remove the old models without warning going forward. So I mean, even if you have a warning, I don't think people are going to be very happy with it if he does that again. Um, so regarding that these more extreme reactions, Altman tweeted, we we we for sure underestimated how much some of the things that people like in GPT four O matter to them, even if GPT five performs better in most ways. So yeah, they clearly underestimated this reaction. And then speaking more generally about GPT five, about its immediate future, Altman said,

• 59:28Bob Novella?

  we will continue to work to get things stable and we'll keep listening to feedback. Um, he wrote this on, he tweeted that, as we mentioned, we expect some bumpiness as we'd roll out so many things at once. But it was a little more bumpy than we hoped for. So tell me about, tell me about it, Sam. All right, guys, what do you, what do you think?

• 59:44Speaker 05

  Isn't bumpy on an outroll. I mean, come on.

• 59:47Bob Novella?

  This was dramatic. You had it, when you have an outcry that that the CEO has to respond to and adjust the rollout in one day, now this was, this was nowhere near what they had expected or hoped, this is horrible PR for this new release. So this went very, very poorly, even given, you know, what you would expect from such a rollout. They, they know, they, they screwed it up a bit for sure. This, this was, some people described this not as an outcry, but like a revolt. I mean, lots of people were really pissed off and they, you know, they, they kind of blew it, I think. But I think the jury's still out on how effective, how much of a tool. Clearly, I think five is not going to be the dramatic change, the dramatic improvement that we've seen when we went from, say, say 3.5 to

• 1:00:32Bob Novella?

  four, or even going from two to three. It's, I think they're reaching the point of diminishing returns, for sure. Still, I think, I mean, my interactions with five have been very positive and I've seen, I'm seeing so much more detail. It's thinking more deeply and more, and for much longer time than it ever has. Yeah, definitely took longer to answer some things. Oh, absolutely. But I'm seeing some amazing detail that, that I'm, that I'm enjoying. So, so I'm digging it so far. But, and there's so many other things, like, like the work integration and stuff, dealing with, you know, with Gmail and things, I think. So I'm, I'm excited to, to see how much of a better tool this will be for the things

• 1:01:13Bob Novella?

  that I, that I use it for. What about you guys? What about your experiences with GPT-5 the past week?

• 1:01:19Speaker 04

  I mean, for, for the kinds of things I've been using it for, it's fantastic. It's been incredible. You know, working within a system, of course. So I've been using it to help write my campaign that I run, Evan and his daughter, my daughters, you know, and in a D and D campaign. And there's a lot of tedious busywork that goes along with that, right?

• 1:01:40Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:40Speaker 04

  And it can automate so much of that and give you incredible creative ideas.

• 1:01:49Speaker 04

  So, and I've always pushed the limits, not because I'm going to necessarily use it, but partly because I want to see what it could do. And then even if I don't use exactly what it produces, it always gives me ideas, you know?

• 1:02:01Bob Novella?

  Right.

• 1:02:02Speaker 04

  So, but it's been very, like, on the creative side, within these limits, it's been very impressive.

• 1:02:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, I've noticed fewer hallucinations. I've had to correct it less because when I do research on things, I've no, I pick things out right away that were wrong and I go back and I used to tell GPT-4, no, this is wrong. You're reading the wrong thing. Give me the right one. I've not had to really do that. I maybe once with ChatGPT-5 in the last week, so that's a much better machine for me right now.

• 1:02:33Jay Novella?

  I feel like I agree with Steve that it's a little less effusive. You know, like I said, I told it to not do that, but it still sneaks in, you know, comments here and there. I just, I haven't noticed a remarkable difference, but I haven't really stress tested it yet. Like, I'm using it for my typical stuff, like asking it to explain things to me or do some, do some, you know, searching where it's going to need to take information from multiple websites and bring it together for me. But I am going to try something pretty big tomorrow and I'll let you know, Bob.

• 1:03:05Cara Santa Maria?

  So, I have a question for you guys real quick.

• 1:03:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:07Cara Santa Maria?

  I don't use it at all, like, at all. Like, I've used it maybe once in my life. Is this, am I going to just completely fall behind?

• 1:03:16Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:03:16Cara Santa Maria?

  You think so?

• 1:03:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, it depends on the kind of stuff that you do.

• 1:03:19Speaker 05

  That's it. It makes my research go so much faster.

• 1:03:22Speaker 04

  For, what it's really good at is taking lots of stuff and putting it into a usable format for you. It's like when I was going, you know, first of all, I uploaded a Word file that has like a 200-page rulebook that I've been working on for years, right? All my own stuff. And it analyzed the whole thing for me.

• 1:03:44Speaker 05

  Seconds.

• 1:03:45Speaker 04

  In seconds, was able to like point out inconsistencies or issues, you know, with, with, with balance. And also said, would you like me to give you a table showing you the comparison of like the different classes?

• 1:03:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, I like the suggestions.

• 1:03:59Speaker 04

  Damage per rep. It's like, uh, yes, I would like you to do that. Thank you. Like you read my mind, baby. And it keeps making, would you like me to put this into this format for you? Would you like me to read, to alphabetize all of it?

• 1:04:10Speaker 05

  It's like, it's predicting things that you may want. It's trying to recognize things you might want.

• 1:04:15Speaker 04

  Yeah. So for all, it takes away all the busy work. That's the thing.

• 1:04:19Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. And that, that I get, but if there's, if I don't really do a lot, that requires a lot of kind of, I don't know, like accounting or like coding busy work.

• 1:04:29Speaker 04

  Patient notes.

• 1:04:30Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, that's what I'm, I, but I gotta make sure that's legal first. I think, I think we will start to use it once, because I, I know every major hospital system is doing the research in this area. And developing their own. And I probably will use it without even realizing I'm using it because I'll have a tool in my chart. But on my own, I just, I haven't felt compelled other than our thousandth episode. And then subsequent article that we wrote in the Skeptical Inquirer. I used it to summarize the last.

• 1:05:02Speaker 05

  Feedback on that.

• 1:05:02Cara Santa Maria?

  Right. Well, we did, but I used it to summarize the last 20 years of like health and wellness trends. Uh, because there's no way I was going to be able to do like a deep dive internet search in that amount of time.

• 1:05:13Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:05:14Speaker 04

  I mean, it's hard to say, is there, you know, what kind of stuff would you want to do with it, you know?

• 1:05:18Speaker 05

  It helped me create the game I'm going to be playing with you guys tonight.

• 1:05:22Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 1:05:24Jay Novella?

  Kara, bottom line, it's, uh, it's proven to be extraordinarily beneficial to all different types of things that I use it for. I mean, first of all, general internet searches, you know, product comparisons and everything. Like you could be like, help me do a, a product comparison between these three. Or you start off by asking it to give you like the best, what are the best blah, blah, blah out there? And then you, you start to work with it on that. And I've, I've gone down rabbit holes with it just to find like what the perfect studio camera would be for the SGU as an example, which I did recently, and it worked so freaking well. And it explains things really well. Like you could say, I don't understand exactly what this means. And it gets into the details for you and it, you know, it's so good with language that it can, it can,

• 1:06:08Jay Novella?

  it can take something complicated and go, give it to me at a college level, give it to me at a high school level, give it to me at a five-year-old level. It can do that. It's fantastic for explaining stuff.

• 1:06:18Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:19Jay Novella?

  Creative projects, like I said, I used it to do research for a screenplay that I've been writing, which I continue to use it for. You have to kind of get good at it to work around.

• 1:06:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I feel like it's a whole skill that I don't want to put effort into right now.

• 1:06:32Jay Novella?

  Yeah, I mean, just depends.

• 1:06:32Cara Santa Maria?

  And I don't really fully trust it.

• 1:06:34Jay Novella?

  Yeah, I know. You gotta be careful.

• 1:06:36Speaker 05

  You need to write more screenplays and have more D and D campaigns, Kara.

• 1:06:39Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, exactly. This is, yeah, maybe I'm not the target audience.

• 1:06:42Jay Novella?

  Keep a recipe book, you know.

• 1:06:44Bob Novella?

  Well, look at the workflow integrations, you know, interacting with Gmail. You could, you could, you could manage your schedules or emails on command. I'm not sure what that involves and how helpful that would be, but that, that looks intriguing to me and something that could potentially help you with it, you know.

• 1:06:58Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, maybe.

• 1:06:59Bob Novella?

  Do you do any crafting?

• 1:07:00Cara Santa Maria?

  I do.

• 1:07:01Speaker 05

  You knit? Needlepoint?

• 1:07:02Cara Santa Maria?

  I'm knitting right now while we're talking, but I, exactly, but I never want to say the word.

• 1:07:11Bob Novella?

  But it could help you, it could help you with that. I had, I asked it questions. I'm, I'm creating a sarcophagus, a stone, a fake stone sarcophagus for Halloween.

• 1:07:21Speaker 05

  Oh, fake, okay.

• 1:07:21Bob Novella?

  And I, and I said, I, I had some good ideas on how I wanted to paint it, but I asked it and it gave me amazing, accurate, because I'm familiar with this, accurate responses on how to, and how to paint. It gave me some suggestions for the type of wash to use, raw umber, and it was a great decision. I mean, it was really helpful for, for that specific task. And I'm, because there's no pseudoscience in crafting. There's lots of good information online about crafting. So, so you don't have to worry about, oh, this is total bullshit. It's generally, generally speaking, it's going to be, you know, helpful and fairly accurate for, for things like that. There, there's no real, you know, misinformation necessarily about it, like, like pseudoscience.

• 1:08:01Cara Santa Maria?

  I think that this is, this is like showing a mirror for me of a, a general approach to life that I've had lately.

• 1:08:09Bob Novella?

  I agree.

• 1:08:10Cara Santa Maria?

  Is that I am really into living my life in that like good enough kind of way right now. And I don't feel the need to like optimize anything. Like, I'm doing things at the level that feel like a really good balance for me. And I don't need to be more efficient in some of these areas.

• 1:08:28Bob Novella?

  That's fine, but if you, but if you don't feel like it's a good balance for some specific task.

• 1:08:31Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, then I'll keep that in mind.

• 1:08:33Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:33Cara Santa Maria?

  And then you guys know I'll be reaching out to you to be like, can you show me how to do this?

• 1:08:37Speaker 05

  Sure, anytime. Happy to.

• 1:08:39Bob Novella?

  Did you, did you guys know that Five has customizable personalities? There's a cynic, a robot, a listener, and a nerd. And I can't wait to listen to all four of those. That's gonna be awesome.

• 1:08:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, you see, that doesn't interest me at all. I, I, I do want, I want data and I just want, you know.

• 1:08:56Bob Novella?

  No, I mean, if you verbally, if you verbally interact, I'm sure there'd be one of those that you would prefer over the others.

• 1:09:03Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, it's like, it's like your GPS having a different voice or something. Yeah, there's probably a slight tonal shift.

• 1:09:09Speaker 04

  All right, Evan, tell us about this worm cleanse.

• 1:09:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, oh boy, this one. All right, her name is Heidi Klum. Are we all familiar with Heidi, who Heidi Klum is?

• 1:09:24Bob Novella?

  She is a huge Halloween fan. She's awesome.

• 1:09:27Speaker 05

  Is she cool?

• 1:09:28Cara Santa Maria?

  She's awesome in that one way.

• 1:09:30Bob Novella?

  She does.

• 1:09:31Cara Santa Maria?

  No, no, actually, I really like Heidi Klum. Is this about to bum me out about her?

• 1:09:34Speaker 05

  I'm sorry, did I say Klum?

• 1:09:36Cara Santa Maria?

  I mean, who knows if it's.

• 1:09:37Bob Novella?

  I, I hope not. She, she has, every year she does a super elaborate, super creative Halloween costume. Like, it's off the hook stuff that I, I super appreciate. So, anyone who does that is, is awesome in my book.

• 1:09:50Speaker 05

  All right, Bob, so I'll let you know when the news item's over. And then you can come back.

• 1:09:54Bob Novella?

  Oh man, really?

• 1:09:55Speaker 05

  Heidi Klum. For those who don't know, Heidi Klum or Klum, I guess I'll just say Klum because it's, uh, it sounds a little nicer. Heidi Klum is a German-American model, television personality, producer, and businesswoman. She appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue in 1998 and was the first German model to become a Victoria's Secret Angel. Following a successful modeling career, Klum became the host and judge of Germany's Next Top Model and the reality show Project Runway. I think a lot of people are familiar with that.

• 1:10:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, I remember that.

• 1:10:31Speaker 05

  Klum has been nominated for six Emmy Awards, and she has won one, so that's good. She has worked as a spokesmodel and has been a, uh... Spokesperson for many corporate brands, ranging from food items to cars to toys for kids, a lot of things. She's very recognizable and an influential celebrity.

• 1:10:50Cara Santa Maria?

  She's also famously been married to Seal for like ever.

• 1:10:52Speaker 05

  She was married to Seal for about 10 years.

• 1:10:55Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, are they not married anymore outside?

• 1:10:56Speaker 05

  They're not married, no, no.

• 1:10:58Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, what a bummer.

• 1:10:59Speaker 05

  She has a, she has a third husband, and Seal was her second husband, a third.

• 1:11:03Cara Santa Maria?

  JK.

• 1:11:03Speaker 05

  And I had, I failed to write his name down, probably should have because he is also a little bit tied into this news item.

• 1:11:10Cara Santa Maria?

  I'm not surprised.

• 1:11:12Speaker 05

  Heidi, Heidi, believes she has worms.

• 1:11:18Speaker 05

  Not in the garden of one of her homes and not in a worm farm you keep in a glass tank kind of as a pet. I know some people who did that. No, no, no. She believes she has them in her gutty wots, her biome, her body, her stomach, her intestines.

• 1:11:33Speaker 04

  That was my question. When you talk about worm cleanse, does that mean you're using worms to cleanse or you're cleansing yourself of worms?

• 1:11:40Speaker 05

  Cleansing yourself of the worms.

• 1:11:44Speaker 05

  There, after I searched and from what I could tell from reports on the internet, she has not been diagnosed with worms or parasites by a medical professional. Colum apparently is citing information that she has seen on Instagram and has expressed a belief that she and her husband, sorry, I don't have his name right now, it's not Seal, that they both have parasites and worms. Okay, so what is she doing with this well researched and reliable information? She and her husband are undertaking a months-long cleanse using pills containing cloves and papaya seeds to address this perceived issue. She mentioned

• 1:12:28Speaker 05

  her rationale for doing this is because she likes to eat some raw foods like sushi and therefore she has a perception that she needs an annual deworming.

• 1:12:41Cara Santa Maria?

  Why doesn't she just get tested?

• 1:12:45Cara Santa Maria?

  Why doesn't she just give a poop sample to a GI doctor?

• 1:12:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's a good question, Kara. And my research could not figure, I could not come up with the answer to that. It's not being published. Nobody's, nobody has mentioned it. And she hasn't said it in interviews. I watched a couple of interviews with her and she didn't say, can you, can a person really get worms from eating sushi? Well, yeah, you can. Any raw fish or undercooked fish, it can definitely transmit parasitic worms. But the risk, but the risk varies depending on lots of things, such as the fish species, where it was caught, how it was handled. So let's talk a little bit about sushi specifically. Most people will

• 1:13:28Speaker 05

  get one of two different kinds of worms if they do eat sushi contaminated with the parasites. It's either one called a herring worm, and the other is called a fish tapeworm. The herring worm first, that is, it causes anisakiasis. Anisakiasis. Anisakiasis from the herring worm. So you can get that. And the other one is the fish tapeworm, which has a real long technical name. I won't even try. You, you'll find those in freshwater fish, salmon, trout, and the tapeworms are, no joke, those can grow large. You've heard of tapeworms, right? They can grow as large as 10 meters in a body.

• 1:14:10Speaker 05

  Oh my gosh, could you imagine that? And long-term effect is that it may cause vitamin B12 deficiency over time. Why? I don't know. I suppose the tapeworm absorbs it in your body that, and that, what, your body, it lives off of the B12 or something, or takes it away from you, from your diet. And you do have, you do have to get that definitely, definitely treated. Now sushi, when it comes to sushi, restaurants and chefs, sushi handlers have a method to greatly reduce the risk of exposure to these parasites. Primarily, they will freeze the fish to a certain temperature, which will kill the parasites. And then you can go ahead and prepare it. But they also do visual inspections, and they have other

• 1:14:52Speaker 05

  parasite killing protocols that they implement. So they're pretty careful about this and very aware of the risks. But Heidi believes that she needs a good deworming on an annual basis to protect herself from the parasites. And here's the kicker.

• 1:15:06Speaker 05

  Bob, Heidi says that you have worms.

• 1:15:10Bob Novella?

  Everybody's got them.

• 1:15:11Speaker 05

  Jay Heidi says you have worms. Everybody has worms, they're everywhere, and everyone has these. Okay. I ask myself two-

• 1:15:20Bob Novella?

  I don't eat sushi.

• 1:15:21Speaker 05

  I ask myself two questions right here. Number one, does Heidi really need an annual deworming based on her raw fish eating habits? And number two, should she be using her celebrity and fame to influence others to do the same as she does? I'll do the first question first. Does she need it? It is highly unlikely that she needs a deworming. It is not necessary for most individuals, but it's recommended for specific populations in certain geographic areas. It's primarily a preventative measure for children in areas where soil transmitted helminth- Look, that's the worm. Helminth infections are prevalent. For healthy individuals-

• 1:16:01Bob Novella?

  I thought you said helminth, I thought you said hellmouth?

• 1:16:03Speaker 05

  Helminth. H E L M I N T H. Helminth. For healthy individuals in developed countries, internal parasites are very rare. Routine dewormings are generally not needed. That is what the doctors basically-

• 1:16:19Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, for people.

• 1:16:20Speaker 05

  Right, for people.

• 1:16:21Cara Santa Maria?

  But not for dogs.

• 1:16:22Speaker 05

  No, no, I'm talking about people, I'm not-

• 1:16:24Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, dogs lick and smell of their dog's poop on the ground.

• 1:16:28Speaker 05

  Yes, they do, and they'll-

• 1:16:30Cara Santa Maria?

  But we don't do that.

• 1:16:31Speaker 05

  Thank goodness.

• 1:16:32Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:33Speaker 05

  Thank goodness. You know, but obviously there are places on the planet, you know, impoverished nations and stuff-

• 1:16:38Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, where little children are playing in places with lower sanitation.

• 1:16:41Speaker 05

  Exactly, right.

• 1:16:42Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, of course, then it's an issue.

• 1:16:43Speaker 05

  Then it does become an issue.

• 1:16:44Cara Santa Maria?

  But Heidi Klum is a multimillionaire.

• 1:16:47Speaker 05

  Right, so her exposure, unless she's been hanging out in these areas, it is really doubtful that she has, uh, has these worms at all.

• 1:16:57Speaker 05

  Number two, should she be using her celebrity in fame? No, absolutely not. She should be, I know we like her for various reasons, Bob and stuff. She should be admonished for doing this. And medical professionals are now actually doing that. They're calling her out on it.

• 1:17:12Speaker 05

  Because Heidi has decided to share her perceived state of her bowels with the world. And that's the news item this week. When I stumbled upon an article a few days ago called, or titled, I should say, Heidi Klum's Worm Cleanse Medically Unfounded and Potentially Harmful. It was written by Jody McCreary over at MedPage Today. That's the website. Jody interviewed several doctors, a couple of them from Yale, Steve. I'm sure you know them. Such as, kidding, such as Chukuri Ben-Mamoun, who's a PhD and infectious disease expert at the Yale School of Medicine, who says that hearing that someone is advocating a worm and parasite cleanse is alarming because it's a medically unfounded practice

• 1:17:56Speaker 05

  that could be potentially harmful. And while Klum has claimed that we all have parasites and worms, the doctor says, no credible medical evidence, there's no credible medical evidence that the average person harbors hidden parasites that require cleansing. He noted that many organisms in the gut are essential, not harmful to human health. And this is where the problem comes in. When you attempt to self diagnose and self treat with a cleanse, like the one that Klum is describing, it can lead to health risks, including vitamin and nutrient deficiencies, low energy levels, dehydration from diarrhea and other GI issues. Shelley Farhadian is a doctor and a PhD, an infectious disease expert at Yale as well.

• 1:18:40Speaker 05

  She says, "Our guts are full of living organisms and that's our microbiome. But most are either harmless or actually good for us. Trying to wipe them out without a reason is like spraying pesticides all over a healthy garden." So there's some, here, so this is the pushback. This is what the news is this week. Klum's been out there talking about this and telling other people that they have worms and things. And the medical experts are saying that's, you've gone too far now. And we have to now set the record straight. So please stop doing this. Heidi, stick to what you're good at, you know, your Halloween costumes, your, you know, your TV shows and all the other good things that you do. Stay away from the medical stuff, please. Yikes.

• 1:19:20Cara Santa Maria?

  Wait, what is her treatment again?

• 1:19:21Speaker 05

  It's a cleanse of, uh, what is it? Cloves and something else was in there. Papaya, papaya seeds and cloves.

• 1:19:30Cara Santa Maria?

  And like not other food?

• 1:19:32Speaker 05

  Uh, apparently not.

• 1:19:33Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh God, that's so dangerous.

• 1:19:37Bob Novella?

  Yeah, Heidi, stay away from that stuff and call me.

• 1:19:41Speaker 05

  Right?

• 1:19:43Speaker 04

  Alright, thanks Evan. Jay, who's that noisy time? You gotta get us caught up from a couple of weeks ago.

• 1:19:47Jay Novella?

  Three weeks ago, I played this noisy.

• 1:20:13Jay Novella?

  Alright, so guys.

• 1:20:14Speaker 05

  You played outlawed tunes on outlawed pipes. What movie's that from?

• 1:20:19Cara Santa Maria?

  I don't know.

• 1:20:20Jay Novella?

  I don't know.

• 1:20:21Speaker 05

  Braveheart.

• 1:20:21Jay Novella?

  Oh, yeah, I like that.

• 1:20:23Cara Santa Maria?

  Could've guessed that, yeah.

• 1:20:24Jay Novella?

  So first thing is, there is something about that drone noise in music. You know, it like, I don't know, it just kinda gives me an old world vibe. You guys like feel that when you hear music like that?

• 1:20:36Speaker 05

  Especially bagpipes, certainly. Or something that resembles a bagpipe.

• 1:20:40Jay Novella?

  Yeah, so I just like, I like that that style of music and that, you know, instruments that do things like this. Clearly it's an instrument, that they have that drone and it just brings me to a certain place. It's really cool. So I got a ton of guesses. There, of course, were themes in here of what people were guessing. So the most common response was similar to this. Uh, this is from Brody Woolston Home. He said, "Hi Jay, long time listener and occasional who's that noisy guesser and induction cooktop demonstrator." Last time that he guessed the sound of Sputnik, he said, "This week's noisy sounds like a hurdy-gurdy all the best." So in case you don't know what a hurdy-gurdy is... It's a cool instrument. It's a cool instrument.

• 1:21:24Jay Novella?

  I've talked about it previously, but basically, there's like a spinning wheel that's rubbing against strings, and there has keys on it that you can press. So it's really oddly kind of like a combination of several instruments. But to do it justice, the best thing is, just go look it up on YouTube. You'll see videos. Very cool. But I will play you, I will play you what a hurdy-gurdy sounds like.

• 1:22:02Jay Novella?

  Okay, so there's definitely a similarity in the sound, correct? Mm-hmm, yes. Unfortunately, it's not the hurdy-gurdy, so this is what the, if we were playing SGU versus the rest of you, like against the audience, two-thirds of the audience would have just sat down, because that's where most of the guesses were hurdy-gurdy. Next listener wrote in Alexander Moore, and Alexander says, "Hi, long time. First time this week's noisy sounded beautiful. I thought it was either an old-school dot-matrix printer or hard drive repurposed to sound like the bagpipes or Mashak. Thank you for a wonderful show." And this is also incorrect. I thought that was an interesting guess, though. Another listener wrote in Bradford West, and Bradford said, "Dear Jay, it's freaking bagpipes with distortion on them."

• 1:22:47Jay Novella?

  So I assume everybody knows what bagpipes sound like, correct? Mm-hmm. Okay, so I won't play the bagpipes. It's not the bagpipes. And again, you know, because of the drone that bagpipes have, there's a very distinct solemnar, solemnarity, Kara. Soluminarities. Soluminarities. Heard that? Write that down. I was saying the word aggravated, and I said aggrinated. And one of my friends, Shane, you know Shane, guys, has not let me live it down in 30 years. He still, he still jokes with me about that. Wow.

• 1:23:24Speaker 04

  He's very pendantic, huh?

• 1:23:25Jay Novella?

  Absolutely.

• 1:23:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:23:28Jay Novella?

  I don't even know how to spell that word or pronounce it anymore. Kerry Glenn wrote in, "Hi, I believe that this week's sound is a set of Uline pipes. They are traditional bagpipes from Ireland. I tried learning to play them, but they are wicked hard and don't do well in the dry climate of Western Canada." Okay, so let me play this instrument for you.

• 1:24:01Jay Novella?

  It definitely has a horn sound. And again, it has the drone, right? But that is not the instrument that we're talking about. And I actually stumbled on something I think a lot of you have not heard of or are aware of. So was there a winner? Yes, there was a winner. The winner is Will Beldman. Will said, "Hey Jay, this week's noisy is a rendition of 'The Water Is Wide', played on an instrument called the cantorille." All right, so he gives a description, a spinning wheel that attaches to an acoustic guitar. So imagine you're holding an acoustic guitar and you connect a device to the bridge of the guitar, which is where the strings end on the body of the guitar, not at the other end of the neck.

• 1:24:45Jay Novella?

  It's where the strings begin or end on the body part of the guitar. So there's this device that has a spinning wheel and it can touch the strings. And that's where you get the similarity to the hurdy-gurdy, right? But instead of with the hurdy-gurdy, you're pressing notes with buttons. And on the guitar, you're just, you're, you know, playing notes and chords on the guitar. Let me see, so he also said, this is interesting, the tune is also known as "Oh Wally Wally", which is an English folk song dating back to at least 1906 that has been used in many different forms, including hymns and prayers, nursery rhymes, et cetera. So let me get back to playing the cantorille for you so you can pick out the differences between these instruments.

• 1:25:38Jay Novella?

  You can hear, you can hear the fingering happen on the cantorillo. I, I can. I can hear the person fingering the fretboard, meaning there's a feel and a sound that, that an instrument makes, and it's very different than somebody pressing buttons on the hurdy-gurdy. Or, the other instrument that we played, which was literally like a bagpipe-like instrument that has a wind instrument attached to it. They all have different feels. Anyway, I just thought this was fascinating. And I think it's a really cool application to, to take the, the part of a hurdy-gurdy that literally produces the sound by a wheel that has friction on it that's rubbing against the strings. But to hear someone fingering it on an acoustic

• 1:26:21Jay Novella?

  guitar just makes its own beautiful sound, and I really, really thought it was fantastic. Anyway, so we have a new noisy for you guys this week. This noisy was sent in by a listener named Andrew Denman, and here it is.

• 1:26:52Speaker 05

  Damn hell. I have no idea, but I love it.

• 1:26:54Jay Novella?

  I know, right? It just has a quality to it that cracks me up. So if you think you know what this week's noisy is, or you heard something cool, please email me at [email protected]. Steve, we're gonna be in, where? Where are we going?

• 1:27:10Speaker 05

  Kansas.

• 1:27:10Jay Novella?

  We're going to Kansas. Correct. Kansas. September 20th. We have two shows, Kara, and you're in both of them, so you better start resting up.

• 1:27:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:27:19Jay Novella?

  Cause I expect big acting for you.

• 1:27:20Speaker 05

  Get your ChatGPT-5 ready.

• 1:27:21Jay Novella?

  We got a SGU private show. This is a private show plus, which means it's three hours. It includes George Robb, and we do a live recording of the podcast. And I've said this many times, but if you haven't been to one, it's really hard to describe. But basically during the live podcast, we go more off the rails and crazier Stuff happens and we're much more liberal with the things that we say and everything. And through the magic of editing, Steve will bring it back down to what would be considered a relatively normal show. But if you're there, it's not. And they're a ton of fun for us and the audience. So please join us for that. And we're also going to be doing our stage show, the Skeptical Extravaganza of Special Significance. This is our stage show that

• 1:28:05Jay Novella?

  we've been doing for over 10 years. We have refined this show exquisitely. It's a ton of fun. You will learn things about the human brain. You will learn things about your perception. And you will learn to laugh because George Robb is an incredibly funny guy, makes me laugh every time I do the show with him because he's just hysterical. And again, this show is a ton of fun. There are lots of, lots of different things that happen during the show, but I promise you, it's like nothing else you've ever seen. So you can go check out where to get tickets for these shows and get more information about them on the skepticsguy.org. And you just need to go, make it happen. Join us in Kansas because we're gonna have a blast. Two more quick things, Steve. If you appreciate the work

• 1:28:47Jay Novella?

  that we do on this show, this is a great time to become a patron of the show to, to help us continue to do what we're doing. And also, everybody knows we're expanding. I know that you guys talked about the politics podcast that we have that we're in pre-production on right now. So any, any help that you can provide us to keep going, please consider becoming a patron. You can go to patreon.com/skepticsguide. And we have a weekly email. Just join it and check it out. And if you don't like it, quit us. But give us a shot because the email's a lot of fun. There's lots of fun things in there, including all the stuff that we've done the previous week. I think you'll, you'll like it.

• 1:29:21Speaker 04

  All right. Thank you, Jay. One quick email this week. So we got, we got an email pointing towards a news item about the US military planning on developing, or there's a Wisconsin company that's developing these mini nuclear power plants. With an eye towards supplying them towards US military bases. The idea being that, you know, military bases need to be independent for their energy. And most military bases now basically tie into civilian energy. Some have their own power source. Most will have backup energy. They think they need to have some kind of backup energy. But a lot of them are basically just burning diesel and diesel generators.

• 1:30:06Speaker 04

  Did you know that the 20% of US soldiers, US casualties in a theater of war occur in fuel convoys? Really? Yeah, so it's a huge vulnerability to have to constantly deliver fuel to your forward deployed bases. So that's the idea. The idea is that, you know, they would, you would basically have this mini nuclear power plant that could have three to five years of energy before it needs to be refueled. It would be completely self-contained. You have no more, you know, daily fuel deliveries. It's not, it's independent of the energy grid. The emailer thought that this would be reckless because of, you know, having a nuclear power plant in the war zone. But I think that's focusing on a very narrow part of this.

• 1:30:50Speaker 04

  So first of all, you know, most of the bases are going to be in the US or in friendly countries. Only a certain number of bases are quote unquote forward deployed. The article essentially just said there was, has been no discussion yet of what the security would be. But, you know, that's really what matters is, first of all, you know, hopefully this would be in the middle of a military base, right? So you would think it'd be well protected. But as long as, yeah, as long as they adequately protect it, put it in a hardened bunker, you know, wherever with the proper security, et cetera, et cetera. I don't really see that as being a problem. But the advantage is pretty big because, you know, the Pentagon is, institutionally

• 1:31:33Speaker 04

  is the number one user of fossil fuels in the world. And the US military uses 1% of the fossil fuel that, or is responsible for 1% of the carbon emissions of the United States. So it's not insignificant. You know, replacing what is mostly a fossil fuel energy source with, with nuclear would be useful. Not necessarily would be a cheap form of energy, but, but the extra expense would be worth the reliability and security, right?

• 1:32:03Speaker 04

  Interestingly, this is happening at the same time that there's been discussion of NASA building a nuclear power plant on the moon. Have you guys heard that?

• 1:32:13Bob Novella?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:32:13Speaker 05

  I did. Definitely heard that.

• 1:32:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, which, again, it all depends on what they plan on doing on the moon, right? But if we're, if we're planning on having a long-term presence on the moon.

• 1:32:23Speaker 05

  It's a must.

• 1:32:24Speaker 04

  It's, it's, it pretty much is a must.

• 1:32:26Speaker 05

  It has to happen.

• 1:32:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, so you think about it, like, what potential energy sources are there on the moon? You could burn fuel, but delivering fuel to the moon is kind of a non-starter. Like, that would be huge.

• 1:32:39Speaker 05

  Ridiculously expensive.

• 1:32:40Speaker 04

  Limiting factor, yeah. And there's obviously no wind. Solar is great, but if you're at the poles, if you're not at the poles, you get two weeks on, two weeks off. Not good. You would need a lot of batteries, you know, basically it'll go with those two weeks of darkness.

• 1:32:58Speaker 05

  Constant cleaning of those panels.

• 1:32:59Speaker 04

  Not on the moon. Mars, yes. Mars, you'd have to constantly, and if you, as you get farther out, obviously, the sun intensity lessens. Mars has 50% the sunlight intensity as the Earth. Jupiter has 4%. So as you get into the outer solar system, solar becomes much less efficient, much less useful. So for the moon, yeah, it's pretty much nuclear is going to be your best option. You could deliver one of these things, you have it be designed to fit into a rocket, there you go, 20 years of constant energy, and then you won't have to make another delivery for 20 years. Something like that, you know, that would...

• 1:33:33Bob Novella?

  You know, this, you know, this isn't new. They mean...

• 1:33:35Speaker 04

  I know. None of this is new. No, it's not new.

• 1:33:37Bob Novella?

  I mean, not, you're talking, like, reactors. I'm talking about nuclear power plants, like, I think they were, they were working on 10 kilowatt, 50 kilowatt, maybe 100. I mean, these designs are basically done and, and in a lot of ways, tested. I mean, I'm not sure why, you know, that reactor would be a huge advantage over work that's basically almost basically done.

• 1:34:01Bob Novella?

  I'd like to see a comparison between the two, but I've talked about it a couple of years ago.

• 1:34:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was just a new company saying, "We're gonna design these and NASA produce them for specifically military bases." And same thing with the moon, it's like NASA needs to develop one specifically that could fit on a rocket that you could set up on the moon. But these small nuclear fission reactors are old news. Absolutely, Bob. There are companies that make them. And again, it's not that different than nuclear submarines or naval ships. We've been doing these for, what, 70 years without a problem?

• 1:34:33Bob Novella?

  Yep, right.

• 1:34:35Speaker 04

  Also, in war zones, you know what I mean? It's like the whole idea of like no nuclear power plants in war zones. Tell that to the Navy, because they've been doing that for 70 years.

• 1:34:42Speaker 05

  Does having a nuclear reactor on the moon violate the space treaties in which there's supposed to be no nukes in space?

• 1:34:49Speaker 04

  I think there's no nuclear weapons in space.

• 1:34:51Speaker 05

  Okay, so...

• 1:34:52Speaker 04

  There's already nuclear power in space. It's nuclear batteries, it's not fission reactors, but it's still nuclear material in space.

• 1:35:01Speaker 05

  Gotcha, okay.

• 1:35:02Speaker 04

  So yeah, it shouldn't be a problem. All right, Evan, you are gonna do this new segment called "Who Am I?"

• 1:35:08Speaker 05

  I am, yeah, it's a game I invented. And, um, who am I? I'm going to read to you a few sentences as if it were written by a famous person describing themselves in the first person. And you have to guess who they are. Here are the rules. Any of the four, any of the four of you, the contestants, can answer at any time, however, you will only get one guess.

• 1:35:32Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:35:33Bob Novella?

  Each or as a group?

• 1:35:34Speaker 05

  At each of you. Each of you get one guess. The first one to answer correctly wins, so if you wanna give me a guess after I read 10 words, fine, but if you're wrong, you're out for the round. You must remain in total silence and allow the others to hear the rest of the description. Does that make sense to everyone?

• 1:35:53Speaker 04

  Yes, it's incredibly clear, let's do this.

• 1:35:56Speaker 05

  Let's do a, let's do a practice one.

• 1:35:59Speaker 04

  Charlie Brown.

• 1:36:00Speaker 05

  I came up with the practice. Jay's out.

• 1:36:02Speaker 04

  He's out.

• 1:36:03Speaker 05

  Here's a, this one's for practice, okay? So no points for this one. "As a child, I was captivated by the stars above New York City, dreaming of distant worlds." Correct, Carl Sagan. Very good.

• 1:36:17Cara Santa Maria?

  Wait, what? I'm so, okay.

• 1:36:19Speaker 05

  (laughing)

• 1:36:19Cara Santa Maria?

  So you just kind of call it out?

• 1:36:21Speaker 05

  Yes, you call it out, but you only get one. You can only, you can't, so there's no rapid fire. There's no, you can't make a million guesses. One guess is all you get. And if you're wrong, you gotta, you gotta sit this one out and someone else gets a chance. All right, here's, here's the first one. There's going to be five of these, okay? "They called my machine a bomb, though it was never built to destroy, only to decipher. During the war, I spent countless hours in a cold English estate, racing to break codes that others thought unbreakable. I spoke more fluently with logic than with people."

• 1:36:56Cara Santa Maria?

  Alan Turing?

• 1:36:57Speaker 05

  Ah, Kara, good. Good, good for you. I'll read the rest of it. "I spoke more fluently with logic than with people, and yet my work helped save millions. Years earlier, I asked a simple question: Can a machine think? That question would later define an entire field. Though my country judged me for who I loved, history remembers me for how I thought. And somewhere in every modern computer, a piece of my legacy hums quietly." All right, Kara, good job. Good job, Kara.

• 1:37:26Cara Santa Maria?

  Thanks.

• 1:37:26Speaker 05

  Number two. "When I was young, I loved science and tennis. Both required focus, curiosity, and drive. But it was the stars that called to me the loudest. In 1983, I strapped into a space shuttle and became the first American woman to soar into orbit." Sally Ride. Bob, you got it. Sally Ride. I'll read the rest of it. Good job, Bob. "I wasn't there to make history. I was there to do science, to operate the robotic arm, and to prove that women belonged in space. Later, I devoted my life to education, helping young girls see themselves in science and engineering. I always said, 'You can't be what you can't see,' so I made sure they could see me."

• 1:38:04Cara Santa Maria?

  Have you guys seen the documentary?

• 1:38:06Speaker 05

  No, no, I should, though. Absolutely.

• 1:38:09Cara Santa Maria?

  It's a Nat Geo documentary. Actually, a friend of mine made it, and it's phenomenal.

• 1:38:14Speaker 05

  Gosh, it was such huge news at the time.

• 1:38:15Cara Santa Maria?

  You can see it on Hulu right now and probably, or whatever the Disney one is.

• 1:38:20Speaker 05

  Boy, she was on the cover of every magazine, every newspaper in those, in those eighties, you're in eighty-three.

• 1:38:25Cara Santa Maria?

  And no one knew she was gay.

• 1:38:27Speaker 05

  Right?

• 1:38:27Cara Santa Maria?

  They kept it a secret her whole life.

• 1:38:28Speaker 05

  It didn't even come up, right?

• 1:38:29Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:30Speaker 05

  All right, number three. "For years, I wandered the scorching sands of Egypt, chasing a rumor, a name. One lost pharaoh whose tomb had never been found." Indiana Jones. No. Jay, you're out. "Many thought I was wasting time and money." But in 1922, I knelt at the edge of a hidden staircase in the Valley of the Kings, my heart pounding. Nope. Bob's out. When we finally broke through the sealed doorway, someone asked me if I could see anything. I simply said, yes, wonderful things. Gold, carvings, chariots, untouched for over 3,000 years. It was the greatest archaeological find of the age, and it changed how the world saw ancient Egypt forever. Steve or Kara?

• 1:39:15Speaker 04

  It's the guy who discovered two.

• 1:39:17Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:39:18Speaker 04

  I don't know his name.

• 1:39:19Speaker 05

  I need a name, please.

• 1:39:21Speaker 04

  I'm trying to think of the name. That cursed guy. Frankie something.

• 1:39:25Speaker 05

  Final, final guess? Howard Carter.

• 1:39:30Speaker 04

  Carter.

• 1:39:31Speaker 05

  Oh, yes. Howard Carter. Okay, no one got that one. Two more to go. I was a boy from France who first dreamed of becoming an artist, but it was the invisible world of microbes that captured my life's work. I discovered that tiny organisms unseen by the naked eye could spoil wine and milk or cause deadly diseases. By heating these liquids just enough, I found a way to make them safe, a process that now bears my name.

• 1:39:57Speaker 04

  Pasteur.

• 1:39:58Speaker 05

  Steve got it.

• 1:39:59Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:40:00Speaker 05

  Steve got it right before you, Bob. Louis Pasteur. I'll finish. I also created vaccines that saved countless lives from rabies to anthrax. My belief was simple, yet revolutionary. Chance favors only the prepared mind, and I spent my life preparing for those chances. Louis Pasteur. Okay, last one. Here we go. I think this is the hardest one. I once worked in the White House as a young historian, taking notes while President Lyndon Johnson paced the floor, dictating memories. That experience shaped my lifelong passion, telling the stories of American presidents, not just as leaders, but as human beings.

• 1:40:37Speaker 04

  Walters?

• 1:40:38Speaker 05

  No. Nope. Sorry, Steve. I spent years digging through diaries, letters, and archives to understand how power is used, how character is tested, and how history turns on the choices of flawed but fascinating people. From Lincoln's "team of rivals" to Roosevelt's "fireside resolve," I've tried to bring the past to life, so we might better understand the present. When I say the name, you're gonna be like...

• 1:41:05Cara Santa Maria?

  Wait, wait, wait. Let me guess. Walt Disney?

• 1:41:08Speaker 05

  No. No. Walter Cronkite?

• 1:41:11Cara Santa Maria?

  I missed the beginning and I was just thinking of the Hall of Presidents.

• 1:41:13Speaker 04

  Evan, how about Walter Cronkite?

• 1:41:15Speaker 05

  No, not Walter Cronkite. Bob, you're the... you get... if you can guess it, you got it.

• 1:41:20Bob Novella?

  Wink Martindale.

• 1:41:23Speaker 05

  Doris Kearns Goodwin.

• 1:41:25Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:41:26Bob Novella?

  Oh damn, we should have got that.

• 1:41:28Speaker 05

  Yes, you should have. We should know who Doris Kearns Goodwin is. Yes? Famous historian? No?

• 1:41:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, historian.

• 1:41:35Bob Novella?

  It's croat stuff, yeah.

• 1:41:36Speaker 05

  Okay, she did.

• 1:41:37Cara Santa Maria?

  Croat stuff.

• 1:41:38Speaker 05

  Not just wrote stuff, like wrote all-time great books about presidents. Okay, and there it is. Who am I?

• 1:41:46Speaker 04

  Thank you, Evan. That was good.

• 1:41:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, cool.

• 1:41:48Speaker 04

  Alright guys, let's go on with Science or Fiction?

• 1:41:53Speaker 03

  It's time for Science or Fiction?

• 1:42:02Speaker 04

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

• 1:42:14Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:42:14Speaker 04

  Here we go. Item number one, a new study finds that when Europeans move to more walkable cities, they walk more. But the same is not true for Americans who do not change their total average walking. Item number two, researchers report the first clinical tests of an mRNA-based treatment that demonstrates protection against all viruses. And item number three, researchers find that the retina synchronizes the signals from different receptors before they get to the optic nerve to minimize temporal distortion. Jay, go first.

• 1:42:48Jay Novella?

  The first one here, the study, uh, when Europeans move to a more walkable city, they walk more, but Americans don't do that. Right out of the gate, I find that very unlikely, and I'll tell you why. Because if you've ever been in a walkable city, it could be a massive convenience, um, to walk, simply because the cities are set up in such a way where it's very easy to get around. Like Florence, as an example, has a, uh, the center, the center part of the city, no vehicles are allowed, so that you don't have an option there. You know, devil's in the details here because it really depends on the city and, you know, how big the city is and everything. But I just think in general, I mean, if you end up becoming a resident, if you're an American, if you end up becoming a resident in a European city that's walkable...

• 1:43:35Speaker 04

  No, no, you're missing the point here, Jay.

• 1:43:36Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:37Speaker 04

  This is European, for Europeans, yes, you move from one European city to another European city that has a higher walkability score, whatever, you're daily walking tracks with that, but if you move from one American city to another American city that has a different walkability score, it doesn't matter.

• 1:43:54Jay Novella?

  Okay, I think that's science, then. I was just gonna get to my point, but yeah, I could see that, I think culturally, and plus, you know, even if it has a higher walkability score, I think there are factors in there that would definitely keep an American from from becoming someone who ends up walking more. I hope I'm, I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think I am. Second one, researchers report the first clinical test of an mRNA-based treatment that demonstrates protection against all viruses. I mean, my God, if this is true, could you imagine, guys? You know, first clinical test, I know you gotta be really, you know, you gotta be careful what you're getting excited over, but still, if that's true, if mRNA, the mRNA platform has some type of treatment that could protect people universally, universally against all

• 1:44:39Jay Novella?

  viruses, that's fantastic. I could see them using the platform for that. You know, now I'm gonna get into the little details, like the mRNA, an mRNA treatment basically solicits a, um, an increase in antibodies, like a protein antibody. Um, so in order for that to be happening, they would have to have discovered an antibody, unless they're doing multiple ones at the same time, I just don't know. But, you know, keep, keep following my line of thought here, they'd have to have found some type of antibody or antibodies that would have a universal effect on all viruses. And I don't know if that mechanism is possible because of how different viruses could be. It seems a little unlikely. Um,

• 1:45:21Jay Novella?

  okay, so that one's a definite, definite maybe. Researchers, uh, this is the third one, researchers find that the retina synchronizes the signals from different receptors before they get to the optic nerve to minimize temporal distortion. I just think that one is absolutely science. So it's gotta be number two with my reckoning. Steve, the mRNA one, I think, is the fiction.

• 1:45:41Bob Novella?

  Okay, Bob. Lazy Americans, science. Number two.

• 1:45:46Speaker 05

  I like that.

• 1:45:47Bob Novella?

  This is new mRNA treatment against protection against all viruses. This is clearly the one that's designed to screw me over because it's like, are you kidding? I mean, not even me. I think most people, all of our reactions would be really protection against all viruses? No, but I think that's, there's something to that that makes what you actually printed here accurate enough. Um, because what really got my attention was the third one. The retina synchronizes the signals from the optic fiber to minimize temporal distortion. I think that one is fiction.

• 1:46:26Bob Novella?

  I remember reading about how your, your brain is, is, it's kind of hard to describe. This was years ago that I read this, but it actually, your brain adjusts your sense of time to a certain extent to smooth out your visual images so that there's no, no weird temporal jumping. So I don't think it's handled at the, at the optic nerve level. I think it's at a, at a, just a, at a higher level in the brain where it's, it's actually adjusting how you see things so that there's no temporal distortions based on this kind of stuff. I forget the details, but I think that's what you're referencing here. So this one seems off. So I'm gonna say that, that one is fiction.

• 1:47:06Bob Novella?

  The, the, the virus protection, I think is just like meant to just us to jump on that and say baloney. Um, so I think that's my, that's my assessment of this bullshit right here. Okay, Evan?

• 1:47:19Speaker 05

  Well, I think I'm in agreement with Bob on this, uh, in all three of these items because yes, Americans do not change their total average walking behaviors based on where they're living. I just don't see that. It's not very American, um, in a way. Whereas in Europe, I can definitely see that being the case. So I have a feeling that one is science. And then the mRNA, I know it's, the irony here is just, you know, sickening frankly, that, uh, yeah, it's, uh, it's gonna, can demonstrate protection against all viruses? Sure. I think it could demonstrate protection against all viruses.

• 1:48:01Speaker 05

  And then, but in the last one here, I didn't think that retina to the optic nerve, I know about that, but then to minimize temporal distortion, not that I'm any expert on an eye, but I think that that part is the incorrect part of this one. And I'll join Bob and say it's fiction.

• 1:48:21Speaker 04

  And Kara?

• 1:48:21Cara Santa Maria?

  Hmm, I think I have to go out on my own, which is danger.

• 1:48:25Speaker 04

  Oh, number one.

• 1:48:27Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I just don't buy it. I know I might not be like a typical American, but I've lived in cities that are more walkable and less walkable. I walked more in the more walkable cities. I walked less in the less walkable cities. I think that we're stereotyping Americans based the most ludicrous example of a couch potato who like gets in their car to drive one block. I don't think most people are like that. And I think the reason most people in cities don't walk much is because the cities themselves, there's nothing to walk to. Like they live in very suburban areas where they can't get anywhere without a car. But I think if people could walk, they would walk anywhere. I think that's probably across the globe. I don't know. That one bugs me. I wouldn't be surprised if Americans walk

• 1:49:09Cara Santa Maria?

  less, like they change their average walking less than Europeans. But the fact that they wouldn't at all, that's no, there's no way somebody moves from the suburbs of Iowa to New York City and they don't walk more. I just, I don't buy that. So I guess that means the other ones, I don't know, but I feel so strongly about that. The other ones have to be science. I know the mRNA like antiviral is something that we've all been hoping for and working towards. I didn't know that we have clinical tests, but if that's science, that's incredible. And I thought we already knew that the retina does some synchronization prior. I think that it kind of happens, like the smoothing happens all the way along the

• 1:49:50Cara Santa Maria?

  way. But if you're looking at the different types of like rods and cones, they do have different like temporal capabilities, like motion and color and all those things. But I think time would be included in that. So, yeah, I don't know. I think it's the walking one that's the fiction.

• 1:50:07Speaker 04

  Okay, so we're all spread out.

• 1:50:10Speaker 05

  Good job. Good job, Steve. Well done.

• 1:50:12Speaker 04

  So why don't we take this in order? We'll start with the first one, a new study finds that when Europeans moved to more walkable cities, they walk more, but the same is not true for Americans who do not change their total average walking. Kara, you think this one is the fiction? Very strongly believe this one's a fiction. The guys think that this one is science. And this one is the fiction. Good job. Oh, good job Kara. Holy moly. That is the fiction. So the study was done just in Americans and it found that they absolutely do walk more in more walkable cities. And so Kara is correct. Go us, go America. Yeah, so of course this is supporting the... We still suck anyway.

• 1:50:58Speaker 04

  Supporting the notions, it is worthwhile for cities to design themselves to be more walkable because people will walk more, which is kind of huge, you know, health benefits, environmental benefits, decreased energy use, et cetera, et cetera. So it does matter. And you're right, though, I think the lazy American stereotype is really a stereotype. It's not reality. Okay, let's go on to number two. Researchers report the first clinical test of an mRNA-based treatment that demonstrates protection against all viruses. Jay, you thought this one was the fiction? This one is also, of course, science. This is cool. Now, Jay, you seem to think that this was a vaccine, you know, making antibodies.

• 1:51:37Speaker 04

  That's not, that's why I said mRNA-based treatment, not an mRNA vaccine. It's very specific there. So what this is, this is a very interesting story. So there is a rare genetic disease that causes a problem with the immune system. People who have this, they have an impaired immune system, but they also have this constant low level of inflammation. And it was discovered that in some of these patients who have this disease, they don't get viral infections. They had, they were, it was found specifically that they had antibodies to viruses indicating a prior infection.

• 1:52:21Speaker 04

  But had no history of an infection, right? So it's like they had measles virus, but they never had the measles. So the thinking is, well, maybe they had an asymptomatic infection. But then why is that? So maybe it's because whatever their disorder is actually protects them against symptomatic viral infections. So they studied what, you know, what is it? What are the these genetic disorder? What does it actually do to their immune system? Is it plausible that it could be, you know, protecting against viral infections? And they identified, so I think there were 20 proteins that are expressed that are because basically they have they lack an inhibitor of these proteins.

• 1:53:00Speaker 04

  And they identified, said, OK, well, these 10 are going to be a problem for autoimmunity. But these 10 we should we could probably, the person would probably be OK. So they they studied this in in animals, it wasn't in human studies. But they said, let's just give a, we'll use mRNA so that the animal produces these 10 proteins. These were in hamsters. And see if that gives them protection against viruses like these people with a genetic immune disorder. And it turns out it does against every virus they challenge them with. It doesn't seem to matter what the virus is. It doesn't have to have viral specificity.

• 1:53:43Speaker 04

  It's just essentially increasing the activity of the immune system to have much more robust surveillance and antiviral activity against all viruses. What the hell, man? So how would this be used? Not this is not the kind of thing that you would use for enduring resistance, right? The the way they envisioned this treatment would be used, obviously, it has to get replicated. We need human studies. But the way it would be used is, let's say during the pandemic, you could give this treatment to first responders or frontline workers to protect them even before we've identified what the virus is, right? Or before we've developed a vaccine. Just give them temporary sort of super immunity to all viruses

• 1:54:27Speaker 04

  just until we can, for example, isolate the virus, create a vaccine, et cetera. So this could be just another tool, you know, in the toolbox, fighting viral infections and epidemics, pandemics, et cetera. Also, if someone is, you know, even there are lots of viruses for which we don't have specific treatments. And they could be deadly, you know, they could be very, very serious. You could give this to somebody to get them over, you know, give them the week or two weeks they need to recover from a very serious viral infection. So just a nonspecific immune enhancing, broad spectrum antiviral treatment. Very cool.

• 1:55:04Bob Novella?

  That lasts for, you said, two weeks?

• 1:55:06Speaker 04

  It's very short-lived, yeah. It lasts for a very short period of time.

• 1:55:11Bob Novella?

  Well, is it, could they potentially make it last, you know, forever?

• 1:55:14Speaker 04

  They don't want to make it last forever because this

• 1:55:17Bob Novella?

  Why?

• 1:55:17Speaker 04

  Causes autoimmunity, right? There's a reason why we're not all walking around with this immune system, right?

• 1:55:23Cara Santa Maria?

  Mm-hmm, yeah, because then you'd be like me and you'd have psoriasis.

• 1:55:26Speaker 04

  Well, you'd have something, right? It's not good.

• 1:55:27Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, you'd have something autoimmune.

• 1:55:29Speaker 04

  Yeah. They're just giving you a sort of a lesser version of this immune disorder for a short period of time so that you could survive a viral infection, but you don't want this for your life.

• 1:55:39Bob Novella?

  Yeah, but-

• 1:55:39Speaker 04

  But now, Bob, maybe they might say, hey-

• 1:55:42Bob Novella?

  Tweak it.

• 1:55:42Speaker 04

  But maybe they could tweak it to the point where-

• 1:55:44Bob Novella?

  Crisper.

• 1:55:45Speaker 04

  Where you could have longer standing enhanced viral immunity with, without any downside. Okay, maybe, but we can't, but we don't know that yet. But for these, like, 10 proteins or whatever, they're looking at only short-term immunity.

• 1:56:00Bob Novella?

  Yeah, man, that sounds like an awesome stepping stone to me. Come on.

• 1:56:03Speaker 04

  The other thing is if, Bob, if we did, if like, if everybody had this long-term protection, the viruses would eventually evolve around it, right? And then it'd be useless. So maybe just keeping it in reserve for short-

• 1:56:12Bob Novella?

  Yeah, but I'll be dead. I'll be dead by the time that happens, I don't care.

• 1:56:15Speaker 04

  All right. This means that researchers find that the retina synchronizes the signals from different receptors before they get to the optic nerve to minimize temporal distortion is also science.

• 1:56:25Bob Novella?

  Fiction.

• 1:56:26Speaker 04

  Bob and Effin, your thinking was exactly what the researchers thought, that this Right. Kind of fix happens in the brain, not in the retina. But they found, and they were a little bit surprised to find, oh, this shit is happening in the retina. Now, what I'm talking about specifically is, imagine, you guys know, like, in the retina, there's the optic nerve-

• 1:56:47Bob Novella?

  Yes.

• 1:56:48Speaker 04

  In one location. And so all the, and the retina, which is like a sphere, you know, is filled with rods and cones and they, you know, the light receptors, and then each one of them has its own axon that then goes to the optic nerve, right? So if you're right next to the optic nerve, you travel a very short distance. If you're at the other end of the retina, you have to travel a relatively longer distance. So the time it takes for those two receptors to get their signal to the optic nerve can vary. And even though the light is hitting them at the exact same moment, those signals would not arrive at the optic nerve at the same time. And that would cause temporal distortion, right?

• 1:57:29Speaker 05

  Brain sorts it out.

• 1:57:30Speaker 04

  But that was the thing, well, the brain will sort it all out. But what they discovered was that the transmission time, the speed of the transmission is faster for the longer nerves. And that compensates for the distance to minimize the difference in arrival time of simultaneous signals.

• 1:57:51Speaker 05

  Isn't that wild?

• 1:57:52Speaker 04

  So essentially, the longer that axon, the thicker it is and the faster it conducts. And so that partially compensates for the longer distance, causing the difference in time of arrival time of the signals to be mere like a few milliseconds at most. So insignificant enough that it doesn't cause any perceptible distortion. Isn't that cool? And it happens right in the retina before the signal even gets to the retina.

• 1:58:18Speaker 05

  Amazing.

• 1:58:19Bob Novella?

  I was looking at, I was trying to remember what I read a bunch of years ago. I forget what book it was even, but I did a quick Google of it. What I was referring to was something that's called continuity field.

• 1:58:30Speaker 04

  Yep, I knew exactly what you were talking about. Could we talk about it on the show? Yeah, different thing.

• 1:58:35Bob Novella?

  It's fascinating, but I thought that's what they were kind of trying, I thought that's what you were trying to hide from us in that one.

• 1:58:42Speaker 05

  Once again, your knowledge has led you astray in this game.

• 1:58:46Bob Novella?

  Yeah, as usual, that's my cross to bear.

• 1:58:49Speaker 04

  Good job, Kara.

• 1:58:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, Kara.

• 1:58:51Bob Novella?

  Kara, I just, Kara, I have no pity for you when you say, oh, I'm gonna go out on my own. I'm nervous. I'm not nervous, I'm not nervous at you for all.

• 1:59:03Cara Santa Maria?

  But the last time I did that, it bit me in the ass.

• 1:59:05Bob Novella?

  I don't care, because every year you kick our ass. So it's a pity party of one, because I have no pity for you, because you always do very well.

• 1:59:14Speaker 05

  Your LA sensibilities served you well.

• 1:59:16Speaker 04

  All right, Evan, give us a quote.

• 1:59:18Speaker 05

  This week's quote was supplied or suggested by listener Scott.

• 1:59:24Speaker 05

  From Canada, thank you, Scott. Scott writes, "I am reading the Andrew Mott English translation from 1729 of The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy." And this is from the author's preface, the last line, and he says, "I feel it embodies a healthy scientific attitude, complete with humble humility." And here's the line, "I heartily beg that what I have here done may be read with candor, and that the defects in a subject so difficult be not so much reprehended as kindly supplied and investigated by new endeavors of my readers. Isaac Newton."

• 2:00:04Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's interesting.

• 2:00:07Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:00:08Speaker 04

  Newton doesn't have a reputation for being a humble guy.

• 2:00:10Speaker 05

  No, no.

• 2:00:11Speaker 04

  He has a reputation for being an asshole.

• 2:00:12Speaker 05

  He was kind of an old, cratchety, yeah, right, jerk, kind of.

• 2:00:15Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:00:16Speaker 05

  But that's a very, that is, that's a nice little diamond in the rough there that he found.

• 2:00:21Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm. No, it's a very, it's a very interesting quote.

• 2:00:23Speaker 05

  It is a good quote. So, thank you, Scott, for suggesting it. I liked it.

• 2:00:27Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 2:00:28Speaker 05

  Like Aladdin, diamond in the rough.

• 2:00:30Speaker 04

  Yeah. All right. Well, thank you all for joining me this week. You're welcome, Steve.

• 2:00:34Speaker 05

  Thanks, Steve. Welcome back, Jay.

• 2:00:36Speaker 04

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

• 2:00:44Speaker 04

  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.

• 2:01:21Speaker 00

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