The Skeptics Guide #1032 - Apr 19 2025

Dumbest Thing of the Week: Turned to Stone; News Items: Where Did Earth's Water Come From, EPA Data on Emissions, Is Your Red My Red, Evolution of Complex Life, Crow Math Skills; Who's That Noisy; Your Questions and E-mails: Separate the Art from the Artists, Does the Moon Rotate; Science or Fiction

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:33Speaker 01

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

• 0:40Speaker 02

  Hello and welcome to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, April 16th, 2025, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella.

• 0:50Speaker 03

  Hey, everybody.

• 0:51Speaker 02

  Cara Santa Maria. Howdy. Jay Novella. Hey, guys. And the recently not doing taxes Evan Bernstein.

• 0:59Speaker 03

  Oh, so this is what sunlight looks like, right?

• 1:01Speaker 02

  April 16th is one day after tax day. So now you get a little bit of a breather, right? I know you still have like other stuff to do, but.

• 1:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, now we enter the second, right, the extensions. It's fascinating because I've become very immersed in the work. I mean, just the volume itself takes up all of my time. For example, I will get up at and be out of the house at seven in the morning every morning, if not earlier. And I, in these later days, leading up to April 15th, I'd be getting home at two in the morning. I kid you not, going right to sleep and then waking up and doing it again. And that's really how my last couple of weeks of the season was this year. So there is, there is really not much else. It's amazing. I've actually made the podcast as often as I had because that's the only other thing I've been able to kind of squeeze in here. Haven't been doing which game first. I had to put that to the side for a little while.

• 1:50Speaker 03

  But I'm just coming out of the space now and it does take a little while to adjust. It's quite a feeling.

• 1:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's hard maintaining a day job and doing the skeptical thing.

• 1:59Speaker 03

  Just, you know, this seasonal work can be brutal. It can be, but I'm glad it's, I'm glad it's over and I'm very happy for April 16, one of my favorite days of the year.

• 2:08Speaker 02

  And Kara, you are in Hong Kong now.

• 2:10Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I'm still in Hong Kong. I was in Hong Kong last week and now I'm in Hong Kong until Monday and then I'm going to mainland China and then I'm going to Vietnam after that. So.

• 2:22Speaker 02

  Have you been to Vietnam before?

• 2:24Cara Santa Maria?

  No, Vietnam will be new. I've been to Hong Kong and mainland China. I was here seven years ago, actually, with some of the skeptic organizations out here, doing some events, some skeptics in the pub, you know, getting to know people and I made some kind of lifelong friends. So now I'm back, but it's been great. My friends are so kind. They've like taken off of work to hang out with me and show me the sights, been doing a lot of big hikes, going to really beautiful beaches, kind of exploring the natural side of Hong Kong. So it's very cool, that juxtaposition between the intense, intense city, amazing food, really kind people, lots to do.

• 3:02Speaker 02

  Kara, we talk every now and then about the SGU going out to either Hong Kong or Japan or just somewhere in Asia, but it's hard to get a read on how big like the skeptical movement is out there. What's your experience with that?

• 3:17Cara Santa Maria?

  You know, when I was here last time, it was strong, strong and mighty but small. But it's hard to know, especially because, you know, how many people listen to SGU but wouldn't consider themselves part of some sort of movement where they're going to skeptical meetups, for example, but they like the podcast and they would want to come see the show. Obviously, Hong Kong is a massive melting pot and it's got a huge expat community as well. There's a very large English speaking portion of the region. And I think we could say the same thing for a lot of places throughout the world. Like, I think about the European skeptics, I think about the upcoming eclipse, you know, places where we could travel to, because it does seem to be the case that we've done most of our shows domestically in the US. Or where do we go typically?

• 4:02Speaker 02

  UK.

• 4:02Cara Santa Maria?

  Australia. English, English-speaking countries. But not even all. Primarily English. Yeah, but not even all of them.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  Couple of times to Canada.

• 4:08Cara Santa Maria?

  Really just UK and Australia and Canada, yeah. But what about South Africa? What about other parts of Europe, you know?

• 4:14Speaker 02

  There was like one time where somebody from the South African skeptics contacted me and said, hey, can we bring the SGU down here? We could get 20 people to show up to a meeting. And we're like.

• 4:23Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, that's the issue, right?

• 4:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:25Cara Santa Maria?

  We need to know that we can get it. What, what are we looking at? 200, 300, 500? Oh, hundreds, yeah. It should be hundreds.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  I mean, to get us to travel internationally, we'd like to see 200 to 300 people show up at, at our event.

• 4:36Cara Santa Maria?

  At least.

• 4:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:38Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 4:39Speaker 02

  Otherwise, it's just way too expensive. Yeah. But again, but I agree with you. Like, probably like a skeptics in the pub may not be the full measure of who we would get to show up at a, at an event.

• 4:49Cara Santa Maria?

  And I think what folks might not realize is it's not just the five of us. It's also Ian, it's also all of the logistics that, that are involved in it. And.

• 4:58Speaker 02

  And George.

• 4:59Cara Santa Maria?

  And George, of course, and maybe Brian, or, you know, anybody else who might be involved. But most of us do have jobs. And so the thing that we have to realize too is that when we do an event like that and we, it's one thing to go like, oh, we're going on vacation. We, we can't take weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks off every single year. We have to be really strategic about how we travel. And it's, it's also work for us.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  Right. I used almost all of my vacation time over the last 15 years, at least, on SGU events.

• 5:30Cara Santa Maria?

  Exactly. Oh, absolutely.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Very few, like just straight up vacations. Yeah.

• 5:35Cara Santa Maria?

  Two or three events a year, that's it. That eats up all of our vacation time. And that's really, really hard if we are also paying out of pocket to travel. And it, yeah, it just gets very expensive. So that's, that's the hardest part of all of this is figuring out how to make it financially feasible, because it's something we love to do.

• 5:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, we love, we love traveling and meeting our listeners from around the world. We love holding events. It's great, but yeah, but we're kind of like right on that edge in terms of it being financially feasible.

• 6:03Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 6:04Speaker 02

  So if you do want us to come to your part of the world, having said all that, you know, then talk to us. But we also need to, to know that, you know, there's enough people are going to want to come out and see us.

• 6:14Cara Santa Maria?

  For sure.

• 6:15Speaker 02

  All right, well, let's get started with the news items. Actually, Evan, you're going to start us off with the dumbest thing of the week.

• 6:22Speaker 03

  I am going to, and for the sake of brevity, I'll spare everyone the song this time and I'll break it out next time. I'm going to put one or more of you on the spot, though, with a question to start this one. Kara, name a story, or a TV show, or a movie, or some other medium of fiction where a person was turned to stone.

• 6:42Cara Santa Maria?

  You pick, you pick the person who doesn't watch fantasy. Wait, Medusa, did Medusa turn people to stone?

• 6:47Speaker 03

  There you go, bingo. Thank you. Very good. Medusa, yes, Perseus and the, and the, and Medusa would look at people and turn them to stone.

• 6:54Cara Santa Maria?

  There you go, okay.

• 6:55Speaker 03

  Bob, do you have one?

• 6:57Bob Novella?

  She took mine.

• 7:00Bob Novella?

  And I was going to say Sodom and Gomorrah, but that's a pillar of salt. That's not stone.

• 7:03Speaker 03

  Yes, you can. I will accept that, though, because salt is sort of a form of mineral. Very good. Jay or Steve, you want to, want to?

• 7:09Speaker 02

  Well, I did gargoyles.

• 7:11Speaker 03

  Yes, but which, which?

• 7:12Speaker 02

  Cartoon series.

• 7:13Jay Novella?

  It's called gargoyles, yeah.

• 7:14Speaker 03

  Cartoon series.

• 7:15Speaker 02

  Well, there the gargoyles turn into stone.

• 7:18Bob Novella?

  I could back Steve up on that. He's right.

• 7:19Speaker 03

  Very cool. Very cool.

• 7:22Jay Novella?

  Evan, I think somebody turned to stone in the original Star Trek series.

• 7:26Speaker 03

  Oh, right, or?

• 7:27Bob Novella?

  The Kelvins?

• 7:29Speaker 02

  The mineral cubes, you mean?

• 7:30Jay Novella?

  Somebody turned to stone.

• 7:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, the D20, they turned into like a salty D20?

• 7:34Speaker 02

  Joe Deckerhedron, I believe.

• 7:37Speaker 03

  Oh, boy. Well, I mean, look, you can, and those are great examples. And I think we can all agree that people or live creatures being turned to stone is 100% pure fantasy. It is fiction. It is 100% implausible, a physical impossibility, no connection to reality whatsoever.

• 7:57Speaker 03

  But you are all incorrect, because once again, thanks to the recent declassification and release to the public of all sorts of government information that was once kept secret by United States agencies, our clandestine services, we not only have things like psychics looking for arcs of the covenant like I talked about two weeks ago, but we now know that the ability to turn living things into stone almost instantaneously is a fact. And not only is it a fact, but it's a power not of this world, because extraterrestrial beings and their amazing technology have the capability of turning people to stone.

• 8:33Bob Novella?

  I did not know this.

• 8:34Speaker 03

  Thanks all to it, yep, thanks all to a declassified CIA report brought to light, in which there was one such incident reported where Russian soldiers in the 1980s fought off a UFO and got turned to stone by the aliens that they were fighting.

• 8:50Jay Novella?

  What?

• 8:51Speaker 03

  Joe Rogan, yeah, no, no, Joe Rogan told us. He shared the details of this 250-page report, yep, that was allegedly written by the CIA. The original report was, the original report was apparently provided initially, the source of it, KGB agents, late 1980s, and later covered by Ukrainian media. And the incident was also documented in a classified intelligence file in 1993, according to the Jerusalem Post, but obviously it has become brought to light again because of all the declassification that's been recently going on. I'll read you a couple of highlights directly from the report, so you can hear it yourself. According to the KGB, this is the, from this, this is the report. According to the KGB materials, a quite low-flying spaceship in the shape of a saucer appeared

• 9:36Speaker 03

  above a military unit that was conducting routine training maneuvers. For unknown reasons, somebody unexpectedly launched a surface-to-air missile and hit the UFO. It fell to Earth not far away, and five short humanoids with large heads and large black eyes emerged from it. It's stated in the testimonies by the two soldiers who remained alive that after freeing themselves from the debris, the aliens came close together and then merged into a single object that acquired a spherical shape. That object began to buzz and hiss sharply and then became brilliant white. In a few seconds, the spheres grew much bigger and exploded by flaring up with an extremely bright light. At that instant, 23 soldiers who had watched the phenomenon turned to stone. Only two soldiers in the shade were less exposed and

• 10:21Speaker 03

  they survived.

• 10:22Cara Santa Maria?

  What?

• 10:23Speaker 03

  Okay, you're right. And then it goes on. First of all, a couple of points here. First of all, Joe Rogan. All right. Second of all, second point, Soviet KGB. And third point, perhaps most important, a report that said something happened, therefore it is true. This reads like a children's book at best, and it's not even that good of a children's book, frankly. All you have to do is go to prior works of fiction and, you know, forgive me, I'm not attacking religion here, but the Bible, for example, is filled to the brim with stories about metamorphosis, polymorphing, and Bob's favorite, transmogrification.

• 11:00Cara Santa Maria?

  Ooh.

• 11:01Speaker 03

  Of course. You know, you mentioned Lot's wife, Pillar of Salt, but there are so many examples of things like this. And look, throughout history, these kinds of stories have been told. And, but here's what Joe Rogan said, because I listened to this section of his podcast. He said, "It's really interesting what's going on with these disclosures, and it's hard to know what's true and what's not true." No, Joe Rogan, it's actually not hard at all. And then he goes on to reference like the FLIR video and the Go Fast video. These are those UFO videos from the, that captured by the pilots, the Navy pilots, as the best evidence of inexplicable UFO events. And of course, those have been pretty thoroughly

• 11:43Speaker 03

  debunked by Mick West and others. So there you go. You have the Joe Rogan crowd, the UFO UAP crowd, all going, "Yep, this is real because of this made up Soviet era throwback in what was likely deliberately fabricated nonsense that wound up eventually in a CIA report." And there you have it. That is your dumbest thing of the week. How bad is that? Really? I think they reported it on Fox News. That's pretty bad.

• 12:10Speaker 02

  All right. Thanks, Evan. Jay, where did Earth's water come from?

• 12:15Jay Novella?

  Well, before we get into that, Steve.

• 12:17Speaker 03

  The fossil.

• 12:17Jay Novella?

  Guys, I'm going to ask you a question. I want you to be honest. Do you drink enough water?

• 12:21Speaker 03

  I try to. Who gets to determine what enough is?

• 12:24Jay Novella?

  I will determine that.

• 12:27Speaker 03

  I don't drink eight, eight ounce glasses.

• 12:29Jay Novella?

  Oh, that's BS. That's a bit, that's a myth, yeah. Yeah. Well, okay, since that was a hard question, I don't know if you guys are even going to be able to come close to answering this one. But do you know where the Earth's water came from, or at least what the, you know, the current theories are?

• 12:44Speaker 03

  Comets is, comets is one. Yes, comets delivered in the early, what, proto Earth? During the bombardment, heavy bombardment?

• 12:50Jay Novella?

  Yeah, there's, there's four common theories that you'll hear, you know, that one of them, yeah, comets, like icy comets that bombarded the Earth. This was about four billion years ago. Solar nebula capture, right? Hydrogen from the solar nebula was captured by the or hydrogen by the early Earth. And that combined with oxygen to form water. And then asteroids, people, you know, scientists have theorized that, you know, water rich asteroids collided with the early Earth. And, you know, we, that's where a lot of water came from. Now, the one I always thought it was, was the concept of outgassing from Earth's interior.

• 13:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:27Jay Novella?

  And I think I got this from going to Walt Disney World when we were, when we were young, a lot younger. And I watched some video and it stuck with me.

• 13:36Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. It's a wet world after all.

• 13:40Jay Novella?

  But there has been some new research that may very well change what scientists around the world think the real source of water was. So like I was saying, you know, for many decades, scientists thought that the water, uh, that simply just wasn't there when our planet formed, right? The belief was that water was, like you said, guys, was delivered by what? Water rich asteroids or comets, uh, during like the first 100 to 200 million years after the Earth formed. And, you know, that made sense, you know, there, it does make sense. It, it, it's kind of like a happy happenstance, right? It wasn't like a planned thing, of course, like, you know, these, these asteroids or and or comets had to, um, you know, had to hit the Earth in order for the Earth to have water, going under that theory.

• 14:25Jay Novella?

  But the early solar system was dry and it was violent, right? It was very hot. It was, it was a not a nice place to be. And this was particularly true in the inner region where the Earth took shape, you know, the, the inner planets. And the minerals making up Earth's early building blocks appeared to be bone dry after, you know, doing the best research that we can on, on, um, you know, any, any, anything that we can find that would shed some light on what it was like back then. So the prevailing equation for our oceans was that their water came from collisions with icy comets and water-rich asteroids that came from the outer solar system. But there's a big but. So there's a new study published in the journal Icarus, and it came to a different

• 15:10Jay Novella?

  conclusion, and it's really compelling. The study was led by a research team at the University of Oxford, and the study focused on a mineral, um, it's called enstatite chondrites. Have you guys heard of this?

• 15:25Bob Novella?

  Heard of chondrites.

• 15:26Cara Santa Maria?

  Chondrites are in meteorites.

• 15:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, chondrites.

• 15:28Jay Novella?

  Yeah, so this is a particular, it's a silicate mineral. Um, and the research focused on a meteorite called L A R one, two, two, five, two. Again, why don't they give them cooler names? I don't know. So it, this, this meteorite was chemically similar to the material that built Earth about four point, four point five billion years ago. They used a really powerful technique called sulfur X-ray absorption spectroscopy. Kara?

• 15:56Cara Santa Maria?

  Spectroscopy?

• 15:57Jay Novella?

  Thank you.

• 15:57Bob Novella?

  Yes.

• 15:59Jay Novella?

  And

• 16:01Speaker 03

  I get that wrong too, Jay.

• 16:02Jay Novella?

  I'm not even, you know.

• 16:03Speaker 03

  That one twists me.

• 16:04Jay Novella?

  You know, if you watched the live stream last Wednesday, but today's Wednesday and I'm sick and I, I just, my mouth is not getting around words right now.

• 16:12Cara Santa Maria?

  That's fair. That one's tough too, because mix it up with spectrometer, spectroscopy. Yeah, it's all.

• 16:18Jay Novella?

  They examined using this new machine, they, they were able to examine on a microscopic level what is actually going on. In this mineral. So what they found was very surprising to the researchers. The meteorite contained a large amount of hydrogen and it wasn't from Earth's contamination. The hydrogen was chemically bonded to sulfur, meaning it was part of the meteorite's original composition. Why is this significant? Well, this directly challenges the longstanding assumption that the, that mineral ends to take chondite, right, or clondike bar, right? That's, I've read. So this discovery directly challenges the longstanding assumption

• 16:59Jay Novella?

  that the mineral was too dry to supply any hydrogen and therefore water to the early Earth. So past studies have only found tiny amounts of hydrogen in these rocks, but they hadn't looked in the right places or in the right form. And that, that's a mind bender right there. They looked for hydrogen, they didn't find it, but with this new tool, they found it. The new research shows that most of the hydrogen is stored as hydrogen sulfide. And this is in the meteorite's fine grained matrix, which is a part of the rock that has completely been ignored. That region turned out to contain almost 10 times more hydrogen than other parts of the meteorite. So the implications of this are astounding. Earth's primary building material, which is that mineral, contained, you know, they

• 17:44Jay Novella?

  had no idea that it contained that much hydrogen from the start and it dramatically changes our understanding of the origins of Earth's water or potentially where the origin was from. So in this model, water isn't of, it is not like a, you know, a galactic lucky afterthought. It was a predictable outcome of the materials and the conditions at the time our planet formed, which is huge. That's a really impressive find that they did and it's, it's a game changer. And the study also offers a likely explanation for how the hydrogen got into the rock in the first place. The researchers found that areas rich in hydrogen were also full of pyrotite, which is a mineral made of iron and sulfur. These grains probably formed when hydrogen gas from the early solar system reacted with

• 18:29Jay Novella?

  iron sulfide in a cloud of sulfur-rich dust. That reaction created hydrogen sulfide and that's a gas which then mixed into nearby molten rock as the molten material cooled quickly into glass, right? That's what they're calling it. The hydrogen was sealed inside. So in other words, the hydrogen became part of the rock when it first formed. It wasn't added later by any outside sources.

• 18:53Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, and these these chondrites, right, when we think about chondrites, do you guys collect meteorites at all?

• 18:58Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 18:58Cara Santa Maria?

  Anybody? Yeah.

• 18:59Speaker 03

  I wish.

• 19:00Cara Santa Maria?

  So I have like a bowl of them.

• 19:03Speaker 03

  You do?

• 19:03Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, chondrites are the non-metallic, like, non-

• 19:07Jay Novella?

  Like nodules, right?

• 19:08Speaker 03

  Nonferrous.

• 19:08Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, yeah, they're the ones that look like rocks that are kind of variegated, because the way that they formed was in the early solar system, right? They were they were primitive asteroids, and they have all these little speckles on them, because the idea is that all that dust and those little grains all, like, coalesced, and they haven't changed since then.

• 19:29Jay Novella?

  Yep.

• 19:29Cara Santa Maria?

  Like, they're cool. Like, these are billions of years old.

• 19:32Speaker 03

  You have them?

• 19:32Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, of course.

• 19:33Speaker 03

  I mean, of course, not everybody has these.

• 19:36Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I assume Steve had a little collection, too. Maybe not.

• 19:38Jay Novella?

  I have a couple that I bought. I don't have any that I found. I've been given a couple, but-

• 19:42Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 19:43Jay Novella?

  So this process, Kara, it would have occurred in the inner solar system, and again, like I was saying, it was hot, it was a sulfur-rich environment, and this is where Earth and probably Mars and Venus formed. And if that's the case, then it's not just Earth that could have started out wet. The mechanism, you know, they're saying it could apply to any planet that formed from similar material under similar conditions, which are largely the inner planets. And the significance of this work lies in what it removes from the equation, which is chance. Remember I was saying, like, you know, you're just lucky that these water-rich comets and asteroids came to Earth?

• 20:23Jay Novella?

  You know, it's not the asteroid delivery hypothesis depends on a series of, you know, super-low probability events. But if the hydrogen, and you know, of course, when I'm saying that, by extension, I also mean water, if that was inherent to Earth's formation, then the presence of oceans becomes much, much less surprising. And water and the potential for it to, you know, create life and everything may be a default condition for rocky planets that are formed in these right zones and not by some crazy cosmic accident that is the previous prevailing theory. So I think that is, you know, it's pretty profound. You know, of course, there's going to be other studies, and they're going to, you know,

• 21:06Jay Novella?

  further try to find more evidence and try to see if this holds up to scrutiny. But the bottom line is, it was a major, major find, major significant perspective on where water likely came from. Yeah, of course, this doesn't mean that-

• 21:21Speaker 02

  There weren't comments, or later media writes, that brought more water to the earth, but it's just a matter of where the bulk of it came from.

• 21:28Jay Novella?

  Yeah, definitely. Sure. I mean, you know, one theory, Steve, is that it's all of these things.

• 21:33Speaker 02

  It's all of these things. Yeah, it's all about a proportion.

• 21:35Jay Novella?

  You know, what I wanted to find out, and I could not find anything, and I went to the original study, was how much could they have calculated? Like, it seems that there's implying that there would have been enough hydrogen to make this amount of water that's on the planet.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:49Jay Novella?

  You know, they didn't confirm or deny that, but I think that's pretty implied in the study.

• 21:52Speaker 02

  All right. Thanks, Jay. Kara?

• 21:55Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah?

• 21:56Speaker 02

  So tell me, how much emissions is the United States putting out every year? Like of greenhouse gases?

• 22:01Cara Santa Maria?

  Nobody knows, Steve. Nobody knows. How is one to know the answer to this question, except by a federal regulation, Title 40, from the Environmental Protection Agency, especially Part 98, the GHG RP, which is, ooh, let me read right here.

• 22:24Jay Novella?

  Greenhouse.

• 22:25Cara Santa Maria?

  Yep. Good job. More? Anymore?

• 22:27Jay Novella?

  Uh, greenhouse gas.

• 22:29Cara Santa Maria?

  Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program.

• 22:30Jay Novella?

  Ah.

• 22:31Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. Super important, codified by Congress, that required, yeah, about 8,000 facilities every year to report their emissions to the EPA, right? So we're talking a lot of data here. And specifically, emissions that are direct, so reported at the individual facility level, but also upstream suppliers. GHG RP did not include historically emissions from agriculture, or lower emitting sources, like direct emissions that had annual emissions

• 23:09Cara Santa Maria?

  of less than 25,000 metric tons of CO2, or sinks of greenhouse gases. But any other, what would you call it, like, facility? I guess they use that term a lot. Any other individual facility, or upstream facility, that produced methane or other climate-warming gases was required by law

• 23:31Cara Santa Maria?

  Has been required by law to report their annual emissions. And guess what's going to happen to that?

• 23:38Speaker 02

  And go bye bye. Goodbye.

• 23:40Cara Santa Maria?

  Goodbye. So yeah, unfortunately, Trump has plans to stop collecting that greenhouse gas data. And we know this basically from some reporting by ProPublica, which has been reposted here in Undark, two of Trump's officials, Tardif and Sabo, I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. So political appointee Abigail Tardif, who is now the principal deputy assistant administrator of the EPA's Office of Air and Radiation, recently, as of, I think, just a couple of days ago, about a week ago now, instructed EPA staff to draft up a rule that would eliminate

• 24:20Cara Santa Maria?

  reporting requirements for 40 of the 41 sectors of that federal regulation that are now required to submit that data. She has not made any further comment on that. And then another political appointee, Aaron Sabo, he is awaiting confirmation as assistant administrator to the EPA. He also has been directed to affect change in this area. Neither of them have obviously responded to comment from reporters. Both Tardif and Sabo previously worked as lobbyists. Sabo represented the American Chemistry Council and Duke Energy and a bunch of different companies and trade groups.

• 25:02Cara Santa Maria?

  And Tardif worked for Marathon Petroleum and the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers Association. So these are two individuals basically now working with or at EPA, directing policy about emissions reporting, who previously were lobbyists for for energy sector jobs. So let's talk about what this means. You know, we know that we have to design policy around what's happening to our climate. And it's very, very difficult to write policy if we don't have data. Right? Like, how do we? Effect change when it comes to climate emissions, we don't know what those climate emissions are. Does that make sense?

• 25:45Speaker 03

  Makes perfect sense.

• 25:47Cara Santa Maria?

  I mean, we're talking, again, oil refineries, power plants, coal mines, petrochemical manufacturers, cement, glass, iron, steel manufacturers, and we're talking about carbon dioxide, methane, all these other different greenhouse gases. Oh, not agriculture. Agriculture is not included in this.

• 26:04Speaker 03

  Oh, not agriculture?

• 26:05Cara Santa Maria?

  Not in this, this specific legislation.

• 26:07Speaker 03

  Interesting. Okay.

• 26:08Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. So obviously, not every bill can do everything. This specific legislation is not targeted towards agriculture, the greenhouse gas reporting program. Edward Maybach, who is a professor at George Mason University, said in response to this decision to obviously stop collecting all of this vital information, he said, quote, "It would be a bit like unplugging the equipment that monitors the vital signs of a patient that is critically ill. How in the world can we possibly manage this incredible threat to America's well-being and humanity's well-being if we're not actually monitoring what we're doing to exacerbate the problem?" Another important quote here is by Rachel Cletus, who is a senior policy director with the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of

• 26:52Cara Santa Maria?

  Concerned Scientists. She said, "The bottom line is this is a giveaway to emitters, just letting them off the hook entirely. Not tracking the data does not make the climate crisis any less real. This is just putting our heads in the sand." It's, it's very disconcerting.

• 27:07Speaker 03

  Sounds about right.

• 27:07Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. We don't know where we're going to net out with this, obviously, because these policy changes are happening really, really fast and loose. They're happening very often through executive action and not through legislative action. And there's still a lot of questions. We are not legal scholars here on the SGU. I, I am definitely not a legal scholar. There's still a lot of question about whether the ordering and then the implementation of these policy changes.

• 27:38Cara Santa Maria?

  Which were legislative policies is even legal to do, right? At an executive level. So we don't know how this will net out, but we do know that we have already started to see some changes from within the agency. So like last month, they announced that they were reconsidering the program. EPA on March 12th sent out this kind of like suite of bulletins, celebrated they, they said that, quote, "It was the most consequential day of deregulation in US history." You can read it right there on the EPA website where Administrator Zeldin talks about all these things that they call, quote, "historic actions to power the great American comeback." So they, you know, they bullet point them in there.

• 28:22Cara Santa Maria?

  Basically, the argument here is that this reporting program is burdensome and it costs American businesses in manufacturing, you know, millions of dollars. I love how they, they hide under that, like it hurts small businesses and the ability to achieve the American dream. We're talking about like the largest polluters across the country. It's 85 to 90% of all greenhouse gases, which are reported by this program. 85 to 90%. And we're just not going to have access to that data. And the thing is, it's, that's really devastating because the data itself helps these companies function. It, it helps American businesses. They don't have to do their own, you know, individual data collection and forecasting because they have access to federal data that's mandated, that everybody can use unfettered

• 29:07Cara Santa Maria?

  because our tax dollars pay for it. But now that's, you know, not going to be the case. And, and here's another quote, which I think is an important one by Andrew Light. He was the Assistant Secretary of Energy for International Affairs during the Biden administration. He said, "We will not get to the kinds of temperature stabilization needed to protect Americans against the worst climate impacts unless we get the cooperation of developing countries." If the United States won't even measure and report our own emissions, how in the world can we expect China, India, Indonesia, and other major growing, developing countries to do the same? So we know that when Trump first took office, the portal where companies could share their data was closed by the Trump administration and stayed closed for several weeks.

• 29:50Cara Santa Maria?

  So already, admissions reporting has been really, really delayed. And then, you know, through the series of bulletins, the fate of this program is not looking good, even if these programs aren't shuttered, or if they are shuttered, let's say via executive action, but then brought back through legislative, I guess, saving. The damage is already done, right? That move fast and break things attitude actually gets what they want to get accomplished, even if later on, it has to be reinstated. Because when the data are lost, the data are lost.

• 30:27Speaker 03

  It's just faster to tear things down than it is to.

• 30:30Cara Santa Maria?

  Way easier, exactly. And to, and to make it harder to report and to close down a portal. And now you can't log in, and now you can't do your job. So maybe even if everything gets back online in six months, or hell, four years, you know, who knows? What do we do about that massive hiccup? Where the whole machine, you know, ground to a halt?

• 30:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, this seems to be a pattern, though, of.

• 30:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 30:51Speaker 02

  Essentially, let's just stop collecting information.

• 30:55Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, exactly. And then maybe it won't be real.

• 30:57Speaker 02

  Let's just not report information. They, you know, like, just, oh, let's just not report COVID cases. This is like a pattern. This is not an isolated incident.

• 31:05Bob Novella?

  While we're at it, let's delete a lot of information, too.

• 31:08Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, totally, yeah.

• 31:09Speaker 03

  Well.

• 31:09Cara Santa Maria?

  Let's rewrite history.

• 31:11Speaker 02

  Absolutely, yeah. This is, this is like, just control the information, limit it. Let's not research the effects of gun violence, you know, or the effectiveness of gun safety regulation. Let's just not study it. Let's just not collect the data. Let's just not report the data. The CDC, we're not going to report measles numbers anymore. Why, why, you know, why alarm people? It's, yeah, this is a very disturbing pattern because they say, you know, information, you know, facts, data is the beginning, right? This is like, this is a crucial thing that feeds into our ability to have science-based policies, science-based discussions.

• 31:46Cara Santa Maria?

  A hundred percent.

• 31:46Speaker 02

  That's the point, yeah.

• 31:47Cara Santa Maria?

  And it goes far beyond partisan politics. This regulation to report this climate data was a congressional regulation. This, this is law. This is, clearly, there may have been people in the past, you know, on certain sides of the aisle who pushed back, but this passed. This is bipartisan policy, and it's held for quite some time. This new idea of just not getting any information goes far beyond partisan politics. It's, it's heartbreaking to see so much hard work, so much collective strategy, so much science being just dismantled in front of our eyes.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  Yep. Well, it's, it's, yeah, if you, if there's no objective information, then you can create whatever political narrative you wish, right? And that substitutes for reality.

• 32:39Cara Santa Maria?

  Exactly. But that has never, ever been the policy of the left or the right in this country. It's, it's never been, let's just not have information and let's fill it with vacuum.

• 32:49Speaker 02

  Not like this.

• 32:49Cara Santa Maria?

  That's what's so heartbreaking. Not like this. Yeah, exactly. That's what's so heartbreaking.

• 32:53Speaker 02

  Terrible. And again, I know, we're trying awfully hard not to be like partisan or political on this show, but this is about data, this is about science. You know what I mean?

• 33:01Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, absolutely.

• 33:02Speaker 02

  They're just trying to win the whole global warming thing by fiat, by just like, oh, we're just not going to track data. So, right? That's what, that's what it is.

• 33:08Cara Santa Maria?

  And it's not specific even to global warming. That's the really scary thing.

• 33:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:12Cara Santa Maria?

  This isn't political, per se. I mean, it is political, but it's not partisan.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's not, it's not a typical left, right, yeah.

• 33:20Cara Santa Maria?

  Exactly.

• 33:20Speaker 02

  Conservative liberal issue. This is a democracy issue, really.

• 33:24Cara Santa Maria?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah.

• 33:25Speaker 02

  All right. Let's move on. So, let me ask you guys a question. This is, this is a totally a late-night college dorm room stoner type of question. Okay, go ahead. Dude. Is my red, your red? Right?

• 33:43Cara Santa Maria?

  I hate this question.

• 33:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, we've talked about this.

• 33:45Speaker 02

  I know. We have talked about it.

• 33:47Speaker 03

  Well, we did. Is this the blue dress?

• 33:49Speaker 02

  No.

• 33:50Speaker 03

  The gold dress?

• 33:50Speaker 02

  No.

• 33:50Cara Santa Maria?

  But there is a difference between subjective downstream interpretation, but no, that there are wavelengths of light that we all observe similarly because we have the same architecture. Whether you interpret red as having a specific feeling, or it feels different to you, or I don't know, even like the way that you talk about red is different.

• 34:10Speaker 03

  Oh, how you perceive it.

• 34:11Cara Santa Maria?

  But the red that you see is the same red that I see.

• 34:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it's ultimately an unanswerable question because we're talking about a fully subjective experience.

• 34:20Cara Santa Maria?

  Exactly. But I think we often forget that first half of it.

• 34:24Speaker 03

  But we don't, but we have deficits too, and that varies from person to person.

• 34:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, but those are, but those are observable. Those are demonstrable. We understand exactly how those deficits work.

• 34:33Speaker 02

  So there, well, there are certainly hardcore deficits, like various types of color blindness that can be objectively determined. I have a red-green, I think, diffusion, you call it, color blindness.

• 34:45Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it's red-green or red-green-yellow. Like, there's very specific types.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  Like, I can't see certain numbers in those little boxes of bubbles, you know, of circles. I just can't see the numbers.

• 34:54Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 34:54Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, so you can't determine sometimes the difference between those colors.

• 34:57Speaker 02

  But we're not talking about that. They're just talking about, is your experience of a color the same as, you know, or at least similar to, there's probably everyone will see, even I see different shades at different times depending on conditions and whatever. You know, even if I'm sleep deprived, things might look a little bit different to me, or whatever, but basically, red always looks red, you know, to me, my subjective experience of it. And I have no way of knowing what your subjective experience of it is. But scientists are interested in that question and trying to figure out, is there any way that we could infer what the probable answer is? There's, you know, one way that we can, that we can argue it is to say, as you were saying, Cara, we all have the same brains. We have mammalian

• 35:41Speaker 02

  brains, we have human brains, and there's no reason to think that anyone's experience of something as fundamental as just color would be fundamentally different. Than anyone else's.

• 35:54Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 35:55Speaker 02

  Also, another inference is, but this is, this is again, not rock solid, but there's generally agreement about like, yeah, blue is a common color and red is an exciting color, you know, like, there are certain emotions that go along with it, but you could argue that's completely learned.

• 36:11Cara Santa Maria?

  Sure. And association. Experiences.

• 36:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it's just association. All right, so this gets us to this, what this study, where this is the approach that they took, and that's what I'm fascinated in, like, how they approached the question, not so much like the data that came out of it. But what they did was, they, they created a network of color associations, right? That's the framework that they created. In other words, is red, is this color, right, showing that somebody read without labels? So they, like, they didn't communicate in labels, just, is this color more similar to this color over here, or that color over there? So you would show them red, pink, and green, and, and somebody might say, yeah, the red is closer to the pink than it is to the green.

• 36:59Speaker 02

  And they just keep doing that to build up this network of associations.

• 37:04Bob Novella?

  Wait, red is closer to pink than green? Wait a second, oh, never mind.

• 37:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:09Cara Santa Maria?

  I was like, oh, god, no, Bob.

• 37:11Bob Novella?

  He had me for a third of a second.

• 37:13Speaker 02

  Now, what did they use as a control?

• 37:15Cara Santa Maria?

  Uh.

• 37:16Bob Novella?

  Um, I don't know.

• 37:18Speaker 02

  People who are colorblind, people who are colorblind. And they had them.

• 37:21Cara Santa Maria?

  So it's a negative control, people can't tell the difference.

• 37:24Speaker 02

  So they went through the same process, well, there's different kinds of colorblind, it's not like people just seeing in black and white, they just have.

• 37:30Cara Santa Maria?

  No, it's, it's red, green is the most common.

• 37:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, so they have, they have limited, they have a limited color palette. So, the question, the, the hypothesis was, that if we see colors the same, then neurotypical people in terms of their color vision, would all build the same network of color relationships, but people who are colorblind would build a different network of color relationships. Does that make sense? And that's what they found.

• 37:59Bob Novella?

  Well, yeah.

• 37:59Speaker 02

  That's what they found.

• 37:59Bob Novella?

  I like it.

• 38:00Speaker 02

  So, again, this is not ironclad, rock solid, but it is just like, this is what we would predict if this thing that we think is probably true were true, and that's what they found. So it, yeah, so, yeah, so if. And that kind of makes sense, you know, that if we're seeing colors the same way, then we would think, yep, lavender is more like purple than it is like green or whatever. Like you would, you would make those associations would be the same as well, even when they're discrete frequencies, right? They are different frequencies. There are different mixtures of your, of your cones, right? So you could, if people saw colors differently, you could experience completely different relationships among those colors too. You don't have to,

• 38:44Speaker 02

  but you could. So at least this is consistent with the conclusion that people see color the same way.

• 38:51Bob Novella?

  All right. That's encouraging.

• 38:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a new little, little wrinkle in this sort of old, again, kind of like college dorm room question.

• 38:59Bob Novella?

  It's a good idea though. I like, I like the way they approached it. Like you said, it was a cool idea.

• 39:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was the point. All right. That was just a quick one for me this week.

• 39:07Bob Novella?

  Oh, boy. Holy crap.

• 39:08Speaker 02

  Bob, tell us about the evolution of complex life.

• 39:13Bob Novella?

  What you're done? I was, I was just settling in. What?

• 39:18Bob Novella?

  Jesus. I gotta like, wait, I gotta like.

• 39:20Speaker 02

  I cede my, I cede my time to you, Bob.

• 39:23Bob Novella?

  Yield my time? Yeah, I might need it. Okay. All right. All right, guys. This was fun. The iconic tree of life may be changing near its root. A recent discovery could force the topmost domains of all life, bacteria, archaea, eukarya, to reduce down to just two domains, maybe. Which domains survive intact? And, and what did they know? What did they discover? This is from the journal Cell. The name of the study is Microtubules in Asgard Archaea. Settle in, people. And there will be a quiz. Pay attention. I have been, I've been especially interested in this iconic tree of life and microorganisms ever since, I remember, ever

• 40:07Bob Novella?

  since I read Stephen J. Gould's book, Full House, The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin. Wonderful book, especially when narrated by Ephraim Zimbulis Jr. What a wonderful voice that guy has. No spoilers, please. Yeah. So he described there, initially he starts with. He describes the old five kingdom classification of life. Remember this, guys? Oh, yeah. Plants, animals. I learned that when I was like 10 years old. Fungi, protists and monera. I remember those guys. Now, the plants, animals and fungi, we know those. Protista? Protists are a group of all the eukaryotes that are not fungi, animals or plants. So protozoans, slime molds, stuff like that. Then monera, it's kind of a weird,

• 40:50Bob Novella?

  I haven't heard that word in a while, but monera was like a catch-all category that grouped single-celled organisms, bacteria and archaea together, prokaryotic cells. So that's what that was. So many of us grew up with those classifications. And yes, we are slowly dying off. So they were the top dogs, right? All life on Earth fit under one of those five kingdoms. Maybe not beautifully neatly, but they fit in there somewhere. To quote the Animatrix, "And for a time, it was good." And then microbiology. Oh, I just love that damn. All right. And then microbiology happened. This elucidated the hidden genetic relationships between organisms with unprecedented accuracy.

• 41:33Bob Novella?

  And we learned that five kingdoms just didn't cut it anymore. They did not properly reflect Earth's evolutionary history and the diversity of life. Yep, just didn't cut it anymore. Oh, they lied to me, basically. Well, you know, like the Earth, you know, gets a little bit less round as we learn more about it. That's right. But we needed a broader classification. Okay? So then Gould then described in his book how that forced the removal of the five kingdoms at the top. And they needed to be replaced with the three domains. These domains were bacteria, archaea and eukarya. Bacteria, we all know bacteria, right? They're our buddies. Bacteria, single-celled organisms that have prokaryotic cells and that have no nucleized,

• 42:16Bob Novella?

  one of the main differentiators between these cells and other cells. Prokaryotic cells, bacteria. Then there was archaea. These have prokaryotic cells as well, but there's also major biochemical differences and other interesting differences between the bacterial prokaryotic cells. At the final domain, eukarya, that's us, and other things, and the rest. These organisms have eukaryotic cells that have a nucleus and other membrane organelles. Okay, animals, plants, fungi, protists are in here. That's four, think about that. That's four out of the five kingdoms that I just mentioned a minute ago in this one domain. Four out of the five are like put in there because they belong in there.

• 43:01Bob Novella?

  All multicellular life is in there. Protists, of course, are single-celled, but all the rest are basically multicellular. So we have three domains to rule them all, and for a time, it was good. Now, has anyone ever fused Lord of the Rings and The Matrix before? I don't remember ever hearing that, but I doubt I'm the first. Okay, and for a time, it was good. So what's new now? All right, what's changed, right? I'm obviously going to talk about some change here. So researchers have been studying a recently found subgroup of archaea with probably the best name ever. They are called Asgard archaea. I just loved it.

• 43:39Speaker 03

  Oh, here we go, Marvel.

• 43:40Bob Novella?

  The nanosecond I heard Asgard archaea, I loved it. So that was basically, one website described it as a superphylum of archaea. Now, they use that name, as you know, from Norse mythology because they found it near a formation in a mid-Atlantic ridge called Loki's Castle. So of course, you see the connection between Loki and Asgard. But when I first read Asgard archaea, though, I didn't think about Norse mythology. My first thought was the cool aliens from Stargate, the Asgard. I don't suppose any of you also thought of Stargate first. Kara, did you think of Stargate first when I said?

• 44:15Cara Santa Maria?

  No.

• 44:15Bob Novella?

  Asgard archaea, probably not. But yeah, I'm weird that way. So let's see, so yeah, they were cool aliens, but so tragic. All right, the new bit here for this news item has to do with the cytoskeleton. Do you guys, did you guys know that cells have a skeleton? Essentially. No. Sort of. Yes. So. Cytoskeleton. That's the framework of proteins in a cell that give it shape and support and it enables even movement. All three domains have cytoskeletons in their cells, but in bacteria and archaea, they are simple structures. Eukaryote cells, on the other hand, have very complex cytoskeletons, including very specialized structures called microtubules. And these things help the cells organize internally.

• 44:58Bob Novella?

  They help with division, with cell division, and they also help moving materials around inside the cell, kind of like a cellular conveyor belt. Or, oh wait, also a better analogy would be those bank drive-through vacuum tube thingies. That maybe that's a better analogy. What do you even call those stupid things? Pneumatic tubes. I'll move on. Yes, pneumatic tubes. See, so these complex structures weren't supposed to exist in simpler organisms, just the eukaryotic cells, until they actually do, though. When they studied some of these Asgard archaea, they found not only a more complex cytoskeleton in general, but they also found microtubules as well. Now, they weren't quite as complex as eukaryotic cells,

• 45:42Bob Novella?

  but these Archean cells had microtubules that shouldn't have been there. They should not have been in there. They've never been found in there before. And even in other Archean cells, they never saw microtubules before. Now, the researchers' takeaway is that there appears to be less of a distinction between archaea and eukarya, which then, of course, suggests that perhaps the eukaryotic cytoskeleton evolved directly from archaea ancestors. You got that? So you don't have these three domains branching out separately, but you have, well, I'll continue, we'll get to that point. So if this is correct, then eukaryotes evolved from within archaea and not separately from it. That's what I was trying to say. The tree then doesn't branch cleanly into three domains anymore.

• 46:27Bob Novella?

  If this is true, that clean branching isn't valid anymore. Instead, it looks like there's just two major branches, bacteria and archaea, with eukarya kind of like nested inside. Of Archaea, maybe as some superphylum, I'm not sure, but it's no longer would have its own domain. So, the next question is, is the cytoskeleton critical for the evolution of complex life? That's one of the big questions that they're going to be working on. Perhaps it is. The researchers think that a complex cytoskeleton was clearly important for the evolution of eukaryotes. And get this, this was really cool. Some Asgard's have tentacle-like appendages that are moved by the cytoskeleton, right?

• 47:10Bob Novella?

  So that might help them actually grab or interact with their environment in complex ways. Professor Martin Pilhofer at ETH Zurich said, "This remarkable cytoskeleton was probably at the beginning of this development. It could have enabled Asgard, Archaea, to form appendages, thereby allowing them to interact with and then seize and engulf a bacterium." Now, what bacterium do you think he was referring to? He was referring to a bacterium being absorbed into the cell and becoming mitochondria. This is basically the beginning. I mean mitochondria, it's like taking a kind of a crappy car and throwing in like a jet engine.

• 47:54Bob Novella?

  That's why complex cell life took off. I mean the mitochondria, these amazing powerhouses. I mean, basically, evolution in Earth changed when that happened. So, all right, so who knows what they're going to find? But this cytoskeleton, the fact that these cells have this complex cytoskeleton could have meant that this complexity existed far earlier than we thought. So in the meantime, though, until this happens, I think we should prepare for the possibility that we'll have only two high-level domains. So what do you guys think that they're going to do with this, with the domain names?

• 48:34Speaker 02

  They better not be a bunch of series of numbers and letters, that's for sure.

• 48:37Bob Novella?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, Jay?

• 48:39Cara Santa Maria?

  Superheroes?

• 48:40Bob Novella?

  4.357. So what I think they're gonna do is, I think they're just gonna be boring and it's gonna be like, okay, it's the two top level domains now are Bacteria and Archaea. Because and Eukarya will just be kind of underneath Archaea. And that'll be probably what they're gonna do, right? Because that makes sense. But I think they should fuse-

• 48:59Speaker 03

  It does make sense.

• 48:59Bob Novella?

  But I think they should fuse the Archaea designation with the Eukarya and call it Arcaria. But they'll never do that because that's way, way too interesting. So either way, though, either way, stay tuned for a potentially interesting minor tweak to our family tree and who knows when that's gonna happen. But it could, you know, if this pans out, you know, the two domains could go from three to two, you know, in a few years. Who knows if it's really gonna happen, but this looks pretty, looks pretty solid with this study that I read. So we'll see what happens.

• 49:30Speaker 02

  It's weird to think that we're Archaea, basically.

• 49:34Bob Novella?

  Yeah, but yeah, I'd rather be, I'd rather be from Archaea, though, than Bacteria.

• 49:38Speaker 02

  Really?

• 49:38Bob Novella?

  Because Archaea, oh, yeah. I mean, Steve, think about it. Archaea have most of the extremophiles. I mean, a lot of Archaea are extremophiles. Archaea, yeah, I think they're definitely the OG. They are so metabolically diverse, so many of them are extremophiles that could survive crazy, crazy crap, that I'd rather be descended from Archaea than a bacteria. I'll just like-

• 49:59Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, didn't we used to call them Arche-bacteria?

• 50:01Bob Novella?

  Yeah, we used to think that they were basically, yeah, like I said earlier, they were Monera, right?

• 50:05Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, the look like, yeah.

• 50:05Bob Novella?

  Bacteria and Archaea, they were single-celled, they were prokaryotic. Ah, they're, they're so close, they've gotta be basically the same thing. But once, you know, microbiology took off and they're like, holy crap, look at the biochemistry of this damn single cell. They deserve their own domain. They're not going anywhere.

• 50:20Speaker 02

  All right, thanks, Bob. All right, Evan, tell us about Crowe's mad math skills.

• 50:25Speaker 03

  Yes, I am going to do that. To prepare for this particular news item, here's what I plugged into ChatGPT. What was the monkey versus birds debate about on the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast? You want to hear the answer when it came up? Yeah, do it. How great is this? The monkey versus birds debate on the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast was a humorous, long-running discussion among the show's hosts, particularly involving Perry D'Angelo, who staunchly defended monkeys as superior to birds. This lighthearted rivalry became a recurring theme on the podcast. In episode 53, Perry recounted a news story about a man caught smuggling animals through customs. When confronted, the man admitted, "I have monkeys in my pants."

• 51:10Speaker 03

  The incident involved two lorris monkeys surviving a transcontinental flight concealed in the man's underwear, while birds of paradise he was also smuggling perished during the journey. Perry used this story to argue that monkeys are tougher and more resilient than birds, humorously stating that surviving such condition proved monkeys superiority. The debate continued in subsequent episodes, with listeners contributing their own arguments and anecdotes. For example, in episode 64, a listener corrected a previous misclassification of a lorris, noting that it is a pro-simian, not a monkey, adding a layer of scientific accuracy to the ongoing jest. This playful banter became a beloved inside joke among fans of the podcast, showcasing

• 51:53Speaker 03

  the host's camaraderie and the show's blend of science with humor. That's what you get when you plug that in.

• 51:59Bob Novella?

  What the hell?

• 52:00Speaker 03

  Isn't that cool? That it can pick out that little aspect, basically? It's incredibly accurate. That is accurate.

• 52:07Bob Novella?

  From transcripts?

• 52:08Speaker 03

  That was it. That's what it got, Bob. That's exactly... It didn't have to go through iterations, just one question, and that's what it poured out. And it's surprisingly accurate.

• 52:19Bob Novella?

  Wow, that's cool.

• 52:21Speaker 03

  So, let's continue the debate, shall we? Because a recent study published in Science Advances reveals that carrion crows possess the ability to recognize geometric shapes, a cognitive skill previously attributed primarily to humans. Researchers tested how these crows perceive visual shapes, particularly quadrilaterals.

• 52:42Speaker 03

  Right, quadrilaterals, such as squares, rectangles, and parallelograms, using methodologies similar to those employed in studies with humans and monkeys. The birds' work involved basically playing computer games that are designed to tease out how much they know about math. And for this study, the birds would look at a computer screen, and they would see a group of six shapes. They would be rewarded with a tasty mealworm yum if they can peck on the one shape that was different from the five others. This study was performed at the University of Tübingen, sorry if I'm mispronouncing

• 53:21Speaker 03

  that, in Germany, and Andreas Neider, who is a cognitive neurobiologist, was the lead researcher for this particular project. He said, "Initially, we presented some very obvious different figures, for instance, five moons and one flower. So the crow would peck on the flower shape and they got a snack. But after the birds understood the game, got used to it, the researchers started showing them sets of shapes that included squares and parallelograms, or irregular quadrilaterals." And the crows, for example, could see five perfect squares, along with one foursided figure that was just slightly off.

• 54:03Speaker 03

  And the researchers wanted to know whether or not, with these quadrilaterals, they could still continue to find the outlier, even though the outlier was looking perceptually similar to the other five shapes. The findings suggest that crows can spontaneously discern key geometric properties such as length, parallelism, perpendicularity, and symmetry, indicating an advanced level of visual processing. Wow. And then, it even goes further, because this, a similar test has been done with primates.

• 54:37Speaker 03

  Baboons, apparently in a recent study, did this as well. They could not achieve the same results that the crows achieved. Wow. Yep. So where does it come from and why crows? That's a good question, and that's going to be the next, sort of the next phase. They're going to start to go into that level of research as to figure out why this is, why this happens with crows specifically. There really hasn't been a lot of work on this aspect of mathematics for species other than humans, so there's not really much to compare it to. But definitely, definitely, it suggests that they have the capacity to understand geometric regularities,

• 55:17Speaker 03

  and that that capacity is not unique to humans. Definitely challenging notions that cognitive abilities are solely a product of human culture and education. No. Understanding how crows and other animals perceive and interpret geometric information could provide deeper insights into the evolution of visual and cognitive processing in the animal kingdom. Do you find those results surprising, Steve?

• 55:41Speaker 02

  Not at all. I believe this is a much delayed point in my column on the bird versus monkey debate. What it brings up, though, is something that we've known for a while, but this is like more evidence of that, is that, first of all, crows are as evolved as humans, as chimpanzees, right, as primates. Every creature alive today has as long an evolutionary history behind it as every other creature alive today. But also, it's kind of hard to answer the question like, which animal is quote unquote smarter? Like, they evolved a different intelligence than primates did, right, than mammals did, and specifically primates. Primates evolved a different intelligence than, say, dolphins.

• 56:26Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, and even primates to intelligence, like, are humans smarter than apes? Maybe, yes, but if you drop me off in an ape habitat right now without tools, I don't think I would fare very well.

• 56:37Speaker 02

  Right.

• 56:38Cara Santa Maria?

  You know, I didn't, because I'm not evolved, I didn't adapt to that habitat.

• 56:43Speaker 02

  Certainly, humans have some extreme intellectual capabilities not shared by other animals. But yeah, it makes perfect sense that, you know, corvids, you know, the group that contains crows are, do have a lot of cognitive ability. And it doesn't surprise me at all that there are some things that they could do better than primates. That I don't find that surprising.

• 57:03Speaker 03

  Haven't they been shown also to have tool-using capabilities?

• 57:07Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 57:07Speaker 03

  So yeah, there is definitely, you know, we have to reanalyze the whole monkey versus bird. I know that's not entirely accurate, but that's what we're calling it. The monkey versus bird debate. And you're right, we continue to see more studies add up into the bird column on things. And, you know, certainly as primates ourselves, we have a certain bias perhaps, but time to shed those biases.

• 57:30Speaker 02

  All right. Thanks, Evan.

• 57:32Speaker 03

  Thanks.

• 57:33Speaker 02

  Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time?

• 57:35Jay Novella?

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

• 58:00Jay Novella?

  So a big clue in there was that noise in the background.

• 58:04Speaker 03

  Like the clattering, the clicking?

• 58:06Jay Novella?

  Yeah, that repetitive noise.

• 58:07Speaker 02

  I'm assuming that's the recording device.

• 58:10Jay Novella?

  That is correct, Steve.

• 58:11Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 58:11Speaker 02

  Which implies that it's very primitive.

• 58:13Jay Novella?

  Also correct. Wow, you are like, it's like you're a trained skeptic.

• 58:16Speaker 03

  Wax cylinder?

• 58:18Jay Novella?

  So let's get into it. Listener named Andy Roche said, "It sounds, it sounds a little like some dialogue out of Half-Life 2 with a motor from one of the game's vehicles running in the background. It sounds like the name Gordon is mentioned. Gordon Freeman, perhaps?" Well, I am a huge fan of Half-Life 2. So is Steve. And I'm ashamed to tell you that that is not from Half-Life, but that was a cool reference you brought to us. Thank you. Cindy Kane Shirro wrote in and said, "This is the first time that I've ever made a guess. Is this a recording of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the cult Scientology? It sounds similar to his nonsense." And I have to apologize to you Cindy, because I didn't make it crystal clear what I was looking

• 58:59Jay Novella?

  for in this noisy. I wasn't looking for who said it, but I've done this before where I have played, you know, people talking.

• 59:07Speaker 02

  So you know that that's not L. Ron Hubbard, because the guy's not drunk?

• 59:09Jay Novella?

  That's true, Steve. Good point.

• 59:12Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 59:12Jay Novella?

  So anyway, but thanks for writing in. It was my bad. I should have made it more clear. So next time, I promise you it won't happen again. So I'm gonna jump right to the winner, because we had so many people guess correctly, because apparently this had, this was taken from a popular YouTube channel. So Howard Bletcher said, "First time guesser. A couple weeks ago, I watched a YouTube vid of someone testing with the intent to repair a recorder that uses stainless wire. I've never seen or heard of such a device. That's what this sounds like to me." And then he says, "A YouTuber said something about these recordings being used mainly by psychiatrists." So this is actually correct. Let me give you more details on what this is. This, uh, this noisy is playback from something called a wire

• 59:55Jay Novella?

  recorder. And a wire recorder machine uses a reel-to-reel system. You know, if you've ever seen like an, an old film projector, right? The, it, you know, rolls off one reel and collects on the other reel. The wire is made of steel. It's very thin. It looked to be, it looked to me about the thickness of a human hair. And the sound information is stored on the wire magnetically. So as the wire is moving past the, uh, write and playhead, it's, you know, it's, it's encoding it magnetically. And then it's, you know, it's, as it plays back, they're able to translate that back into sound. The machine was originally developed in the late 1800s, and they were widely used from the 1930s to the 1950s. I'm very surprised that I had never heard this before. And then somebody else wrote

• 1:00:38Jay Novella?

  in and gave even more information. So this recording is from the 1940s. It's played on a Pierce Wire Recorder Model 55B by Paul Carlson of the YouTube channel Mr. Carlson's Lab. And I did watch some of that, and it was very cool, very technical, but a lot of fun to watch. So that is a wire recorder. I'll play a little bit for you. Listen in the background for the noise of the machine.

• 1:01:02Jay Novella?

  Not bad quality for what they were using as a medium. Yeah, it's totally understandable. Yep, I have a new noisy for you guys. This was sent in by a listener named Vladimir Bjorn Asgerson. That's, I got that name damn close, I promise you. And here it is.

• 1:01:47Jay Novella?

  Pretty strange and eerie sounding. If you think you know what this week's noisy is, you can email me at [email protected]. And don't forget, if you heard something cool this week, you can also send that to me at [email protected]. Steve, quick announcements here. Yep. You could give our show a rating on whatever podcast player you're using, or you can use iTunes to give us a rating. It helps new people find the show. We have a huge conference coming up in less than a month, as you hear this. It's called Not a Con 2025. We have a Beatles theme this year for the conference. We will be having lots of different things going on, like a live

• 1:02:29Jay Novella?

  Boomer vs. Zoomer, which is a game that we came up with with live contestants. It's a ton of fun. We will also be doing a live sing-along hosted by George Robb. Last year, the theme was the 80s. This year, of course, it's going to be the Beatles. It's going to be a ton of fun. If you want to socialize, if you want to have a good time, if you want to meet new people and make some friends, then go to notaconcon.com for more information. Tickets are still available.

• 1:02:56Speaker 02

  And Jay, we should mention that we have new events available for Nauticon because we sold out, you know, on a lot of the special stuff, the VIP and the board game. There were a lot of people asking for stuff. We added two separate ticketed events, one hour private SGU recordings on Friday over the lunch period and Saturday over the lunch period. These are separate one hour ticketed events, so check that out. Those are now active on the website.

• 1:03:25Jay Novella?

  Guys, we are coming to Kansas in September of this year. This is happening in mid-September. You can go to the skepticsguy.org and on the homepage, we have buttons there for the extravaganza that we'll be doing in Kansas and also for an SGU private show, which we will also be doing in Kansas. We should be, I think, about 40 minutes outside of Kansas City in a town called Lawrence, which I hear is a really, really fun town. It's a college town. So if you're interested, please join us. Go check out our website.

• 1:03:55Speaker 02

  Thank you, Jay. Couple emails, see if we can get to both of them. The first one comes from Nathan, who writes, "Been a fan of the show for a number of years and now have enjoyed learning and engaging in the community and the ideas discussed each week. I was hoping to ask your opinions on how skepticism can inform the way we view certain industries and institutions when individuals can cause conflict within core ideologies. The example I'm thinking of is how to view Tesla in the current political landscape. For background, I'm in the market for a new car to replace one that's recently hit end of life, and I was hoping to get something electric. This is driven both by the impressive technology and the reduced emissions and costs, especially

• 1:04:37Speaker 02

  attractive in my state where our power is almost entirely hydro. The Tesla Model 3 is in my price range and is by all accounts a fantastic car with sound engineering behind it. I come unstuck through grappling with what I believe is a logical environmental financial choice. The crinkle, though, is the ties to Musk, who I would have picked as my skeptical jackass of the year. This goes back to my original subject matter of whether we can separate art from the artist in the technological and political landscapes." Consideration how much of current Tesla is driven by Elon? And how much does that matter if the product at the end is still efficient, safe, reliable, and just well-designed? How should we as skeptics or individuals be tackling these decisions?

• 1:05:18Speaker 02

  And should this weigh in strongly to the final decision? Interested in your thoughts. So what do you guys think? Is it reasonable to boycott Tesla? I think we could say categorically, right? That any kind of violence or vandalism is not justified and shouldn't be done. And we condemn that, right?

• 1:05:40Cara Santa Maria?

  Of course.

• 1:05:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. But, because just in case there's any confusion about that. But certainly, your purchasing decision is a type of political speech.

• 1:05:51Speaker 03

  Hundred percent.

• 1:05:52Speaker 02

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 1:05:53Cara Santa Maria?

  And not just monetarily. I mean, it is monetarily because you're monetarily supporting something. But it's also, you have to accept the fact that if you drive around in this car, you're making a statement.

• 1:06:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think partly, but I, well, the problem there is a lot of people like me bought their Teslas years ago, you know?

• 1:06:12Cara Santa Maria?

  That's why they put the stickers on the back.

• 1:06:14Speaker 02

  I know, you have to have the stickers. That's the heinous silly.

• 1:06:16Cara Santa Maria?

  It's a disclaimer sticker.

• 1:06:17Speaker 02

  So, all right, so this is my personal take on it. So first of all, I get the notion of separating the art from the artist. And you have to do that to some degree. I don't care about the political opinions or whatever of every singer.

• 1:06:27Speaker 03

  Everyone driving a Volkswagen, everyone driving an Audi. What are you gonna do? Say this was Hitler's idea or something? I mean, come on, you gotta separate.

• 1:06:34Speaker 02

  Or even just like, you have an actor or a musician or whatever who has questionable behavior or beliefs or whatever. You can't get, you can get lost in the weeds there.

• 1:06:41Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, but don't say you can't, because some people can do that.

• 1:06:44Speaker 02

  I'm not saying you can't, I'm saying it becomes silly at some point, in my opinion. But.

• 1:06:48Cara Santa Maria?

  Sure, but that line is different for everybody.

• 1:06:50Speaker 02

  I agree, I agree.

• 1:06:51Cara Santa Maria?

  And just because it can become silly, like.

• 1:06:53Speaker 02

  I agree. What I said to him is like, I don't think the separating art from the artist applies here. And again, you can choose to do that, but it's a choice.

• 1:07:04Cara Santa Maria?

  Also, this isn't just art. It's a consumer.

• 1:07:06Speaker 02

  I know, this is, this is, this is a.

• 1:07:07Cara Santa Maria?

  It's a consumer good.

• 1:07:08Speaker 02

  This is a big purchase. Not just like buying a loaf of bread. This is a 35,000, whatever, 40,000, even more.

• 1:07:15Speaker 03

  More.

• 1:07:16Speaker 02

  Purchase, it's big and it is absolutely speech, you know, and it can, it is one of the few levers we have to affect the world, you know, at the current time. And so what I wrote back to him was, I don't think that you can hide behind the notion of separating art from the artist here, because you are making a statement, you are making a political decision. Unfortunately, not, we didn't do that. He did it. He tied his brand and his empire to a very, in my opinion, extreme political position, and that made purchasing his car political. He did that.

• 1:07:54Cara Santa Maria?

  And it's not just what the, what it represents either. It's, it's also, he is actively benefiting financially.

• 1:08:00Speaker 02

  Hugely.

• 1:08:01Cara Santa Maria?

  Deeply from, from his relationship to our government.

• 1:08:04Speaker 02

  You, I said, listen, no shame, but you'd have to make whatever decision that is best for you, you know, with your eyes open. Like, don't, I just wouldn't hide behind this notion of, well, you separate the art from the artist. Like, well, you choose to do that when you think it's not that important, but you can't really, I think, in this case, you, you are making a decision. And you may still decide to get the Tesla because you think that the benefits outweigh the downside politically, whatever. That's a personal choice you are making. Don't hide from it. I, I said, for me personally, I don't know that I could do it. I'm in the, I'm in the market for an EV right now. And I love my Tesla that we bought, whatever it was, five, six years ago.

• 1:08:44Speaker 02

  But I would have a hard time doing it now because it's just given what, what he has done and what he represents.

• 1:08:50Bob Novella?

  Couldn't, would not do it.

• 1:08:51Speaker 02

  But it's a person, but it's a personal decision. I get that. The good news is though, there's lots of other options out there. There's lots of very good EVs out there. So it's not like it's, you know, it's the only game in town.

• 1:09:02Bob Novella?

  China's got a good one.

• 1:09:03Speaker 02

  Or even just South Korea. I mean, there's a lot, there's, you know, the Kia Electric is very good. Uh, there's other choices. So you're not, you know, six years ago or longer, it was, it was tougher. The Tesla really did stand out, you know, in the industry significantly, especially because of the recharging infrastructure. But now it's not as true anymore, um, especially since, you know, they're essentially allowing other companies to use the Tesla chargers with adapters, you know? So it makes it more, I think, feasible to have another EV. It's an interesting question. It's a horrible question, you know, decision dilemma that is being foisted upon us. But I don't think we can hide from it is the bottom line.

• 1:09:43Jay Novella?

  I mean, Steve, I agree. It's one of those things. I mean, this is so unbelievably politically charged. I mean, if you are a conservative and, you know, you're, you're reading, do different news and have a different perception on everything, then it's a no-brainer. I mean, the, a lot of the Tesla vehicles, you know, reading reviews on them, other than the Cybertruck, they're, they're good cars.

• 1:10:04Speaker 02

  They're great cars. It just sucks that they're so great. I wish, I honestly, I just wish that the, the board of Tesla would just fire him as CEO. He, right now, he's a drag. He's a drag on the company.

• 1:10:17Jay Novella?

  Now, personally, I wouldn't get one largely because I would be afraid that it would get vandalized.

• 1:10:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, but that shouldn't be the reason. That's, I think, it's so unfortunate because there's a legitimate ban protest that you can do here, and because a small, tiny, small subset of people are choosing to do vandalism and violence, it taints politically the whole thing, or at least it becomes a convenient talking point.

• 1:10:45Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, that, I mean, I think that's what it is.

• 1:10:46Speaker 02

  Dismissively on the other side. Not legitimate, but...

• 1:10:48Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, there's, there's always been violence. There's always been vandalism.

• 1:10:51Speaker 02

  There's always gonna be the fringe. I know, I know. But it just sucks. And I just wish people would, would realize this.

• 1:10:55Cara Santa Maria?

  It does. I agree. But like, we, we, we can't let that talking point take over the narrative, right?

• 1:11:00Speaker 02

  I agree. We have to point to that. Most people are protesting peacefully, and then there's a couple of vandals that come out at night. That's what's happening. But, but they try to make it seem like that's the whole thing. It's just crazy.

• 1:11:10Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, that was massively the rhetoric during all the Black Lives Matter protests, when, when people were like, "It's terrorism, and these people are rioting in the streets." Like, oh my god.

• 1:11:18Speaker 02

  It's all propaganda.

• 1:11:19Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:11:19Speaker 02

  All right, let's go on to the next one really quick. This one is about the moon rotating. And this is, I hadn't, this is another, like, kinda cranky email. I had, I had a number of backs and forths with this person. I'll just read you his initial email.

• 1:11:34Speaker 03

  Oh, is he a flatmooner?

• 1:11:35Speaker 02

  No. No, it's weird. It's so weird. I just couldn't wrap my head around what his problem was. So he says, "The moon does not rotate on its axis," which is kind of a weird belief to hold on to.

• 1:11:47Jay Novella?

  Okay.

• 1:11:48Speaker 02

  He said, "Rotation in orbit: An object moving in a 360-degree orbit will, by the end of that orbit, have returned to its original position relative to the body it's orbiting. In that sense, its overall orientation has rotated 360 degrees relative to an external viewpoint. Rotation on its axis: This requires a change in which part of the object leads its motion. A tightly locked body, by definition, maintains the same face forward the object it orbits. Therefore, the same part of the object consistently leads its motion in that relationship. The one-to-one orbital period to rotational period of tightly locked moons, like our moon and 20-plus others, is a consequence of their orbit and the gravitational forces involved.

• 1:12:30Speaker 02

  It results in a consistent face towards the primary body. According to the definition of rotation on its axis, this consistent facing means that these tightly locked moons are not rotating on their axis, in the sense that different parts of them are taking the lead in their motion. The rotation that completes one cycle per orbit is the rotation of their orientation in space, due to their orbital movement, not a spin around an internal axis that changes which part leads the way." He had a lot of other sort of things. He has this teddy bear experiment, where you hold the teddy bear in front of you and you spin around, and the teddy bear's always facing you, therefore it's not rotating. So I tried to figure, all right, obviously this is ridiculous, right? I mean, the moon rotates on its axis.

• 1:13:11Speaker 02

  But it's always interesting to try to deconstruct it and figure out, where's his major malfunction? What mental mistake is he making?

• 1:13:19Cara Santa Maria?

  Wait, he's, he's holding a teddy bear and he turns around in a big circle and the teddy bear's not rotating? Yes, it is rotating.

• 1:13:25Speaker 02

  Of course it is!

• 1:13:26Cara Santa Maria?

  I was like, "Wait, what?"

• 1:13:27Speaker 02

  But that's like his big experiment. It's like the teddy bear hypothesis, like he really focuses on it.

• 1:13:32Cara Santa Maria?

  Put a laser on the teddy bear's forehead and you'll paint a circle around the room.

• 1:13:36Speaker 02

  But that is... An external thing that doesn't count, apparently. So, yeah, what about the moon in relation to the sun? It clearly is rotating as well. He said, "That doesn't matter. It only matters because it's local to the earth." So clearly, the problem here is one of frame of reference, right? He is choosing a rather bizarre frame of reference in order to make his point. And in fact, he's choosing a non-inertial frame, which is always a bad frame of reference to choose. If you choose an inertial frame, meaning one is where there's no other local movement, you know what I mean?

• 1:14:17Speaker 03

  Like a point in space?

• 1:14:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, right, exactly, like a point in space. Or for our solar system, you could use the sun. That's a good sort of non-inertial frame within the context of our solar system. And it's absolutely rotating. Now, of course, there's an objective way, according to physics, to tell. How did we figure out? What's one of the ways in which we prove the earth is rotating on its axis?

• 1:14:41Speaker 03

  To cause pendulum.

• 1:14:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, the pendulum, it rotates once every 24 hours as the earth spins. So you could do that on the moon. I don't think we've ever done it.

• 1:14:51Speaker 03

  Oh, interesting, let's do that.

• 1:14:53Speaker 02

  But we could take a month, 28 days, to go around.

• 1:14:57Speaker 03

  It's too long.

• 1:14:58Speaker 02

  But yeah, I don't think anyone's constructed such a pendulum on the moon, but that'd be interesting to do that. But the question is, would it rotate around? And the answer is definitely yes, it would. So by definition, objectively, it is rotating. And you can't just choose some bizarre frame of reference to argue that it isn't. But he's just so mentally locked into it, I couldn't break him out of it. Anyway, very interesting.

• 1:15:19Speaker 03

  He was staring into the teddy bear eyes too much, I guess, as he spins around.

• 1:15:24Speaker 02

  But the teddy bear is not moving.

• 1:15:25Speaker 03

  But the teddy bear.

• 1:15:26Speaker 02

  But again, he just thinks that... Like, everyone else is wrong. Again, it always comes down to, too, like, the people who are acting like cranks. Is, there's always that element of, "I'm right and everyone else is wrong."

• 1:15:37Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:15:38Speaker 02

  You know, is there's a little bit of hubris involved.

• 1:15:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, it is a flatterer.

• 1:15:43Speaker 02

  And what you should be doing is, he should be trying to figure out, "Why am I wrong?"

• 1:15:48Speaker 03

  Break it. Right, break it.

• 1:15:49Speaker 02

  Not, "Let me convince you that I'm right, that I've sort of reinvented physics, or I've figured this thing out that hundreds of years of astronomers haven't figured out." But, "Explain to me why I'm wrong. What mental error am I making?" That's the approach. I always assume that's what they're asking anyway, and then that's how I answer it.

• 1:16:06Speaker 03

  There's no shame in asking people to help you with that, you know, especially people who have a, you know, a more robust understanding of these kinds of things, shall we say.

• 1:16:14Cara Santa Maria?

  And that's also fundamental to the scientific process. I think a thing, how do I break it?

• 1:16:18Speaker 02

  Right, that's how, remember the guys who figured, who discovered that faster-than-light neutrinos, you know, they were like, "Guys, how, what mistake are we making? Tell us how we're wrong."

• 1:16:30Speaker 03

  Right, you have to assume you're wrong. See that plug over there?

• 1:16:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, that cable over there, I think you should double check it.

• 1:16:36Speaker 03

  That's a healthy, healthy way of approaching it.

• 1:16:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. I know, I end up spending a lot of time on, like, my response TikTok videos. Like, built into every one is like, you know, "This could be solved with just a tiny little itty-bitty bit of humility on your part would fix this issue that you're having of thinking that you've figured something out that the world got wrong." Um, all right, anyway, let's go on with Science or Fiction.

• 1:17:04Speaker 01

  It's time for Science or Fiction.

• 1:17:14Speaker 02

  Each week I come up with three science news items, or facts, two real and one fake. Except this week, I have facts and there are four of them.

• 1:17:25Speaker 02

  Now, these all have the theme, the theme is extinct genomes.

• 1:17:31Speaker 02

  Okay, and the the preface to all of them are, we have fully sequenced nuclear genomes from the following extinct animals, right? So I'm gonna list you four animals, three of which we have sequenced the the nuclear genomes for, and one we do not. You have to tell me which one is not true.

• 1:17:51Jay Novella?

  Okay.

• 1:17:52Speaker 02

  Got it? All right, here we go. Item number one, the dodo, famous extinct bird of the Mauritius island. Two, the bluebuck, a blue antelope, and the first large African mammal to go extinct in modern times. Item number three, the giant moa, both North Island and South Island deinornous species of New Zealand. And item number four, Denisovans, a close relative of humans and Neanderthals. Evan, to celebrate tax season being over, you get to go first.

• 1:18:31Speaker 03

  This is crazy, Steve. I've heard of dodos. I've heard of the giant moa. I have definitely heard of Denisovans. A bluebuck? I've never heard of that. So I'm already, I'm kind of biased in my own head, like thinking, okay, well, didn't hear of bluebuck, so maybe that's the one that's the fiction. At the same time, my gosh, the genome sequence for the Denisovans, that seems, that seems, whoa, really? The whole thing? That seems extreme. Like, wouldn't that be difficult? Isn't that enormous? So I'm having multiple issues here with this. It ultimately just comes down to a guess, though.

• 1:19:17Speaker 03

  Why? Which one? Why? You know, I want to say Denisovans as the fiction because I, I think that's would seem to be the obvious one of these four. But then I, you know, come back to kind of the game itself. And it's like, okay, that's the one you definitely want me to pick. And then my mind goes back to blue buck, because I don't, I've never heard of the blue buck, a blue antelope. That's made up. That's something out of Willy Wonka or something. So I don't know. I'll say the giant moa for no particular reason, Steve. It is strictly a guess. This is really puzzling me.

• 1:19:57Speaker 02

  Okay, Bob?

• 1:19:59Bob Novella?

  I think maybe the Denisovans are meant to be like, ooh, no, can't be that. But they didn't, didn't go extinct that long ago. Something about the moa. I think that I don't know when they went extinct, but I think it was quite, you know, longer than you would think. So I'm

• 1:20:19Speaker 03

  huge. Yeah, I'm seeing pictures of those, right? The drawings.

• 1:20:23Bob Novella?

  Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm not sure about any of these, but I'll, I'm going to go with the moa.

• 1:20:28Speaker 02

  Okay, Kara?

• 1:20:29Cara Santa Maria?

  I just don't agree with the guys. I don't think.

• 1:20:33Speaker 03

  I barely agree with myself.

• 1:20:35Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, you probably, you probably can't tell us this this late, but the Denisovans went extinct like tens of thousands, maybe, maybe hundreds of thousands of years ago. These other things went extinct like a few hundred years ago. Right? Like we probably have.

• 1:20:50Bob Novella?

  I thought the moas were, I don't, like I said, I don't.

• 1:20:53Speaker 02

  This is something that Kara I think has to handle on her own.

• 1:20:55Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, maybe. But like, I think that these things did not go extinct. They were modern. They were contemporary. I know Denisovans were also contemporaneous with modern humans, but we're talking ancient modern humans. I think that these things were around during like, like big civilizations. So it just feels like we probably have museum specimens of these other three organisms that we could extract whole DNA from. Whereas the Denisovan DNA is going to be from like fossils. And that, that's why it just seems less likely. Granted, there's probably more of a push, like because humans are egocentric and we would love to.

• 1:21:34Cara Santa Maria?

  We would love to have a full sequence of a hominid species, but I think that's way more work. And so maybe we did it, and maybe we just haven't gotten around to one of the other ones. But in terms of what's most feasible, I think the Denisovans would be the least feasible to sequence. So I've got to say that's the fiction. I happen to agree with you.

• 1:21:54Jay Novella?

  And Jay.

• 1:21:54Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:56Jay Novella?

  Yeah, I agree with Kara. I mean, I think of all of these, you know, I've never heard of the blue buck before either. I mean, I would think, because I've heard the term Denisovans before, and I have a very, very vague feeling about how old it is. And I think it's a, they're very, very, they existed a long time ago. So I'm just going to go with Kara on that.

• 1:22:20Speaker 02

  Good. So we have a nice even split.

• 1:22:22Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:22Speaker 02

  So let's start with the first one, the dodo, since you guys all agree upon this, the dodo, famous extinct bird of the Mauritius island. Do we have the fully sequenced nuclear genome of this creature? So just for some details, why do I say qualified as nuclear genome? That's obviously like the DNA in the nucleus of the cell as opposed to, what's the other option?

• 1:22:49Cara Santa Maria?

  Mitochondrial.

• 1:22:50Speaker 02

  Mitochondrial DNA.

• 1:22:51Cara Santa Maria?

  Mitochondrial DNA, yeah. But with mitochondrial DNA, you wouldn't be able to reconstruct an organism.

• 1:22:56Speaker 02

  No, but it's really good for figuring out branch evolutionary relationships.

• 1:23:02Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it's great for evolution. It's great for forensics. It's great for all those things. Like, I understand.

• 1:23:06Speaker 02

  So that's why sometimes we do that. Sometimes like there's lots of creatures where we've sequenced the mitochondrial DNA specifically so that we could tell its evolutionary relationships. It's also, you could tell a lot about its, how much genetic diversity there is in the population, for example. So it's very useful, but not for, not for de-extinction.

• 1:23:25Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, nuclear DNA, we're talking about like de-extinction. We're talking about like, we need a fully sequenced genome to be able to make this thing again.

• 1:23:31Speaker 02

  All right. So this one, the dodo, is...

• 1:23:35Speaker 02

  Science. We have completely sequenced it. We have it. Now, as I say, fully sequenced, that means some creatures we have, for example, a we have a partial genome of a lot of creatures, but it has to get to a certain you know, saying like, fully sequenced doesn't mean that we know 100% about it. It just means that they have the whole genome, but there still may be some it's like, the question is, how many errors are there? It doesn't mean error free. Let me just put it that way. Having, saying that we have fully sequenced the genome doesn't mean that it's highly detailed and error free. So there's different quality, different resolution, but you still count as being fully sequenced if you basically have the full genome. Does that make sense?

• 1:24:17Cara Santa Maria?

  But this was that same company who did the dire wolf, right?

• 1:24:19Speaker 02

  Yes, that. This is the same company. This is the colossal biologists. They did that. All right, you guys also agree on the blue buck, a blue antelope and the first large African mammal to go extinct in modern times. Never heard of it. You guys all think this one is science. And this one is Fiction. Science. This is also science.

• 1:24:40Cara Santa Maria?

  Very cool. Okay.

• 1:24:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've been, I've known about the blue buck for a long time. Um, just because I'm interested in extinct large mammal fauna and stuff like that. And it's the, some of the artists, um, drawings of it. And also we have some skins, I think, still intact from it. Beautiful, beautiful antelope. These gorgeous curved horns, this, you know, blue tinted coat, kind of a large, a large antelope. And it was hunted for its coat, you know, to extinction. About 200 years ago. Yeah. So it's been extinct for about 200 years. Did they have any of the coats? We have. Did they have any of the coats left? Yeah, that's the thing we do. So that's where we got the DNA from. Well, at least we got the coats. Did it maintain its balloonism for all that time?

• 1:25:25Speaker 02

  So we have, they, they got DNA from 25 different fossils. And so that was, um, you know, that, that improves the ability to get sequencing.

• 1:25:36Speaker 02

  Although there was one that was really high quality, that that is most of the sequencing was done from this one well-preserved genome. So we got lucky with this one fossil. Without that one, like, we wouldn't have been able to do it, basically, from what I understand. So, yeah, so that's, that's nice. So that, and that's a, absolutely, I think, should be on the shortlist for de-extinction, if we're gonna do that. Because, first of all, it's not a predator or anything. It's an antelope. Its ecosystem is there, you know, we just have, we could just reintroduce it, just another antelope, and it's gorgeous. So, and it went extinct because of people, right? So those are kind of my criteria for why you should be on the shortlist. So dodo, bluebuck, definitely should bring them back. Okay, I guess we'll keep going in order.

• 1:26:19Speaker 02

  The giant moa, both North Island and South Island deinornis species of New Zealand. Evan, you kind of were bouncing back and forth between bluebuck and denisovans, and you just suddenly jumped over to the giant moa. Yes. For no reason. Right. We saw some, some giant moa skeletons Uh huh. Uh, when we were in New Zealand. It went extinct relatively rapidly between 1380 and 1440, so it has to be at least about 500, 600 years old. Okay, it's not that long. Oh, I thought they were a lot older, okay. No, no. Um, yeah, sorry, 500 to 600 years old. So this one, and it's so Evan and And Jay. But, and Kara. It was Evan and Kara. Anyone but Bob. No, no, no, Evan and Bob. Didn't Bob, didn't you say the name?

• 1:27:04Speaker 02

  Bob. Yes, he's pulling your leg. I'm fucking with you. Yeah, so Evan and Bob said the giant moa. And again, it has to, for this to be true, we need to have both, of both species in the genus deinornis, both the North Island giant moa and the South Island. That's right, double your chance here. And this one is the fiction.

• 1:27:27Bob Novella?

  Whoa!

• 1:27:28Speaker 02

  We do not I totally guessed it.

• 1:27:31Bob Novella?

  Yeah, I knew it, dude. I did doubt it for a second.

• 1:27:34Speaker 02

  We do not have the complete genome of either of them, uh, of either the North Island or the South Island. Now, we do have the complete genome of the little bush moa, which is a different genus, anomalopteryx. Doesn't count. It doesn't count. That's why I threw in the, I threw in the genus just to be 100% because There is another moa that we do have the genome for. It's a but it's a different genus. Anomalopterus didiformis.

• 1:28:07Bob Novella?

  Anomalopterus?

• 1:28:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:28:09Bob Novella?

  The anomalous?

• 1:28:10Speaker 03

  Anomaly.

• 1:28:11Speaker 02

  It's the little bush moa. Apparently it was about the size of a turkey. So not the big boys, you know, like the.

• 1:28:17Speaker 03

  Not the 12 footers, right?

• 1:28:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. But we do have the the complete genome for that guy. But not the other two. So that is the fiction. So that means that we do have a complete sequenced nuclear genome of the Denisovans.

• 1:28:30Speaker 03

  How? How?

• 1:28:31Speaker 02

  We also have it for the Neanderthals. Now, the reason why I chose Denisovans over Neanderthals is because I thought everybody knew that we have completely sequenced the Neanderthal. And I thought you might think, oh, but I don't know if they did the Denisovans, but we have. Yeah, and we have, we had a fossil specimen that that yielded up a DNA sample sufficient to do a high, pretty good resolution sequencing of the Denisovans. And we were able, we have been able to, as a result, do a pretty genome wide comparison between Neanderthals, humans, and Denisovans. And and that was how they were able to determine that the genetic diversity within the Denisovans

• 1:29:12Speaker 02

  lies outside of the range of the genetic diversity within the Neanderthals. And it is a different species by those criteria. So that's how we know that, because they were able to sequence the genome.

• 1:29:26Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:29:26Bob Novella?

  Oh, cool, cool.

• 1:29:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:28Bob Novella?

  I mean, they went extinct, what, only like, what, 50,000 years ago?

• 1:29:31Speaker 03

  That's what I thought.

• 1:29:32Speaker 02

  30,000, 30,000?

• 1:29:34Bob Novella?

  Yeah, well, I think more.

• 1:29:35Speaker 02

  No, it's 30, I'm telling you, I'm not guessing, it's 30,000. I just looked it up.

• 1:29:42Bob Novella?

  So, yeah, well, so did I.

• 1:29:46Speaker 03

  Between 30 and 50,000 years.

• 1:29:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, this story says around 50,000 years ago. You're right.

• 1:29:51Bob Novella?

  I'm seeing here on Wikipedia 25,000 years. Who, well.

• 1:29:55Speaker 02

  Okay, there's a range. Then this one says 40,000.

• 1:29:59Bob Novella?

  Yeah, they're all over.

• 1:29:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, so let's say 30 to 50,000 years ago is when they went extinct. Now, I'll have to do a deeper dive to see if there's if there's more tighter consensus there, but, yeah, around there. And again, I think the Neanderthal was talking like 35,000 is the number I have in my head for when they went extinct. So around that same time.

• 1:30:16Bob Novella?

  Still seems kind of impressive. That's.

• 1:30:18Cara Santa Maria?

  Very impressive. That's like, yeah, they did a lot of work to do that.

• 1:30:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, thousands of years is impressive.

• 1:30:23Cara Santa Maria?

  They must have had a lot of specimens.

• 1:30:25Speaker 02

  Now that doesn't mean that the DNA is of sufficient quality that you could use it to make a clone.

• 1:30:32Cara Santa Maria?

  Right.

• 1:30:33Speaker 02

  That takes really high quality DNA. And if it's too degraded, even if we could say we have a complete genome, quote unquote, "complete," there might be too many errors and whatever for it to function as for cloning purposes. But it could be used for genetic engineering purposes, although I don't think anyone's gonna do that. I mean, that's, you know, no one's gonna make a, you know, try to de-extinct Neanderthals or Denisovans or Homo erectus. That would be crazy unethical, I think.

• 1:31:09Bob Novella?

  No, you're nuts. Who would that be?

• 1:31:15Speaker 02

  I mean, come on. I just, I have a hard time seeing, like, ethical approval for that. That doesn't mean that-

• 1:31:21Speaker 03

  That doesn't mean it won't happen.

• 1:31:22Speaker 02

  It won't happen sometime in the future when the technology becomes, you know, proliferates and everybody-

• 1:31:25Speaker 03

  Right, press this button.

• 1:31:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, really, basically. But I suspect there'll be laws against that sort of thing.

• 1:31:32Speaker 03

  Laws are made to be obeyed at all times.

• 1:31:36Speaker 02

  Obeyed, yes, followed.

• 1:31:37Speaker 03

  Yes. Obey the laws.

• 1:31:39Speaker 02

  And debated. All right, well, good job.

• 1:31:42Bob Novella?

  Evan and Bob.

• 1:31:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:31:44Bob Novella?

  Yeah, Scott got a little lucky.

• 1:31:46Speaker 02

  Nice work, boys. Kara and I, we're not angry, we're not gonna hold a grudge, we know you cheated.

• 1:31:52Bob Novella?

  Yeah, right.

• 1:31:53Cara Santa Maria?

  We know you threw a dart at a dartboard for that one.

• 1:31:55Speaker 02

  Evan's like, "I don't know anything, uh, number two."

• 1:31:58Speaker 03

  No, no, no, Saturn was rising in Taurus, so the luck, the luck of it was emanated down to me, so-

• 1:32:04Cara Santa Maria?

  Bob literally tried to do a confuse Steve at the last-

• 1:32:11Speaker 03

  Yes, the old shell game kind of thing. Which, where's the P? Okay, move it around. Was it here, was it there?

• 1:32:18Speaker 02

  Try to do the old Jedi mind trick on me.

• 1:32:19Bob Novella?

  Well, you know, don't matter, still gotta win.

• 1:32:21Speaker 03

  I have, I have a little bit of sad news before I give the quote, Steve. We have, we have to announce the passing of Wink Martindale.

• 1:32:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I saw that.

• 1:32:29Bob Novella?

  Wait a second.

• 1:32:29Speaker 02

  He lived a long time, man.

• 1:32:31Speaker 03

  Bob, I know you cite him more than anyone else on the SGU.

• 1:32:35Bob Novella?

  Yeah, I didn't know, actually, I didn't even know he was still alive, so-

• 1:32:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'll be honest with you. How old was he?

• 1:32:42Speaker 03

  Ninety-one.

• 1:32:42Speaker 02

  Ninety-one. Good for him.

• 1:32:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:32:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, so Wink Martindale, just for context, is, and I think we've done this on the show a number of times, whenever someone asks you to guess a name, there's a few, like, just funny sounding names, you know, or like really non sequitur, whimsical sounding names that we throw out there.

• 1:33:00Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:33:01Speaker 02

  And Wink Martindale.

• 1:33:01Speaker 03

  Joey Bag of Donuts.

• 1:33:02Speaker 02

  Joey Bag of Donuts. Wink Martindale is one of them. This is one of our go-to fake guesses when people say, you know, asking for a name. Because, yeah, Wink Martindale, I mean, you know, it's a great name. It's just a great name.

• 1:33:14Speaker 03

  It is. It is so TV game show.

• 1:33:16Speaker 02

  I know, absolutely.

• 1:33:18Cara Santa Maria?

  And he was ninety-one?

• 1:33:19Speaker 02

  Ninety-one.

• 1:33:20Cara Santa Maria?

  Wow. I can't believe, I just Googled it because I saw a quote, I'm sorry, this is gonna feel a little bit like a non sequitur, but I saw a quote from David Attenborough because he's doing a new show, and he said something like, "In my nearly one hundred years on this earth," and I was like, "Wait, what?" And I just Googled it, and David Attenborough is ninety-eight.

• 1:33:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:33:35Speaker 03

  My gosh.

• 1:33:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, oh, yeah, absolutely.

• 1:33:38Cara Santa Maria?

  And still working regularly.

• 1:33:40Speaker 02

  For their entire childhood, my daughters didn't know that Wink Martindale was a real person.

• 1:33:45Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:47Speaker 03

  It's a novella thing, right?

• 1:33:48Cara Santa Maria?

  It's true. It's because, like, I guess he was in his prime so long ago.

• 1:33:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:33:52Cara Santa Maria?

  Like, we don't hear about him now.

• 1:33:54Speaker 03

  In the seventies, yeah.

• 1:33:54Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:33:55Speaker 03

  It's definitely a seventies throwback thing, so. Our, our love and respect for the entire Martindale family. All right, the quote this week. "The ease with which we believe things that flatter us or confirm our prejudices should always be suspect," the wise words of Christopher Hitchens.

• 1:34:14Speaker 02

  Yo, man. Very pithy. Love it.

• 1:34:16Speaker 03

  Definitely. Yep. Oh, yeah. Always pithy, and, uh, little gems from him are wonderful.

• 1:34:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. Be most suspicious of beliefs that either flatter you or confirm you or what you want to believe. Absolutely.

• 1:34:29Bob Novella?

  Yes. Enjoy them for a few moments, but then...

• 1:34:32Speaker 03

  Enjoy the dopamine release, but then get to work.

• 1:34:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, because we all know people who like just jump on anything that supports what they want to believe. Like, that's it. That's an ironclad fact.

• 1:34:43Bob Novella?

  Yeah, it's in their, if it's in their worldview, we know some people like, oh, yeah. Hook, line, and sinker.

• 1:34:49Speaker 02

  But everyone does it to some degree, but there are people at one end of the spectrum. Your goal should be to be at the other end of the spectrum to be, like, I don't want to say something, especially if it like is right in my sweet spot and supports something I want to be true. You know, it's like, I better, before I start throwing this out there, I better carefully vet this.

• 1:35:05Bob Novella?

  Right, especially if you're gonna throw it out there.

• 1:35:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, right, right. Absolutely. You hate to like include things in your list of facts that you think you know that are not true, you know? But good, good life lesson and very, very pithily put by Christian.

• 1:35:21Bob Novella?

  I hate when I find the opposite, when I find something that I've been saying, telling people, like, it's a cool fact, then I found out that's bullshit. Like, oh, my God, who did I tell the past 20 years, this awesome fact? I gotta like find them and tell them, hey, wait a second, that was wrong.

• 1:35:36Speaker 02

  That's like you have herpes and like, who did I have sex with in the last?

• 1:35:40Speaker 03

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:35:41Bob Novella?

  No, you don't need to make that connection, Jesus.

• 1:35:44Speaker 02

  Just reminded me of that, you know?

• 1:35:48Speaker 02

  You need to like reconstruct all of your connections. All right, well, thank you all for joining me this week. You got it, brother. Before we sign off, the SGU would like to thank the following patrons for their generous support of the SGU. Parrish, Lee, Casey, Justin, Howard, Jonathan, Silly Tuna, Frizzo, Mary, Jake, David, Michael, Kevin, Steve, Jeffrey, Suzanne, Diane, Ben, Tina, Scionitis, Strong, AP, David, Jim, Dan, Douglas, Albert, Simon, Eli, Whitney, Wesley, Eric, Adrian, Wayne, Heather, Franklin, Gosplann, Joe, Steve, Marcel, Joe, Truth, Morgan, Jason, George, Jeremy, Ken, DJ, Stefan, Wolf, Olivia, Kevin, Oak, Werner, Jeff, Charlie, Tyler, and Mark. And until next week, this is your skeptic's guide to the universe.

• 1:36:35Speaker 02

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

• 1:37:12Speaker 07

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