The Skeptics Guide #1099 - Aug 1 2026

Live from CSIcon Buffalo; CSI 50th Anniversary; News Items: Artemis III Crew Announced, Sniffing Out the Spotted Lanternfly, Human Echolocation, Are Cold Stars Alien Megastructures, Ediacaran Sex; Interview with Michael Mann, Science or Fiction

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:42Speaker 00

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• 1:03Speaker 01

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

• 1:09Speaker 02

  Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

• 1:18Speaker 02

  Today is Friday, June 12th, 2026, and this is your host, Stephen Novella.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  Joining me this week are Bob Novella.

• 1:27Bob Novella?

  Hey, everybody.

• 1:29Speaker 02

  Terrace Antamaria.

• 1:30Cara Santa Maria?

  Howdy.

• 1:32Speaker 02

  Jay Novella. Hey, guys.

• 1:35Speaker 02

  George Robb. Totanka.

• 1:38Speaker 02

  And we have another guest on our show this week, Richard Wiseman.

• 1:45Speaker 02

  Hello. It's lovely to be here.

• 1:52Speaker 02

  So we are live from Buffalo, Saigon. This is the 50th anniversary of CSI.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  So I brought a couple of pictures. So this is first picture, for those of you listening at home. So this is a picture from the first meeting that we were summoned to Buffalo for, that we were then just running a local group, and this is a meeting of the local groups. You could see in that picture, closest to the camera, Joe Nickell, and then Barry Carr, then Paul Kurtz, then a mystery guy told Barry, "Who's this guy?" And he said, "He'll find out for me." I said, "Great."

• 2:30Bob Novella?

  Was that John Kane?

• 2:32Speaker 02

  No, that's not him.

• 2:33Bob Novella?

  Okay, never mind.

• 2:33Speaker 02

  So then, I just went up to him before the show, and I'm like, "Do you know who the guy is?" He's like, "Yeah, I'll find out later. I have to go to my office." Like, "We're going on in like, five minutes." So that doesn't help me. And then, there's the, there's, you know, Bob, me, Evan, and Perry, who was with us at that time. Here is a picture of me and Paul Kurtz. So this is the first CSI meeting that I went to, and Paul was great. Like, he didn't know me from anything. I was nobody, and he like, spoke to me for 10 minutes, told me all about secular humanism and CSI and everything.

• 3:02Bob Novella?

  And you could see the remnants of Steve's brown hair before it went fully gray.

• 3:09Speaker 02

  And then this was the first meeting that I spoke at CSI for. This is on alternative medicine, so, and now this is when we have color photos at this point.

• 3:20Bob Novella?

  So I think it's been colorized.

• 3:23Speaker 02

  We've been doing this for 30 years, but of course CSI's been doing it for 50 years, and you know, definitely, they get credit for really kickstarting the modern skeptical movement, and they are still going. They're still chugging along 50 years later. They are absolutely essential to everything that we do. I do, like, it's one of those organizations where if it didn't exist, somebody would have to invent it, right? Richard, you've been interacting for a long time with the skeptical movement, with CSI. Tell us a funny British anecdote.

• 3:58Speaker 05

  I knew Paul quite well, and the first time I went to headquarters, I hope, we can edit this out, can't we, if it's inappropriate?

• 4:07Speaker 02

  I can.

• 4:09Speaker 05

  So I went to see Paul, and lovely, lovely man, and amazing, and raised lots of money and so on. Anyway, he said, "I'd like to give you a book." And he took down one of his books from the shelf, and he wrote to Richard, "One of the world's greatest skeptics, Paul Kurtz." I said, "That's, oh, so lovely." Went outside, and I turned the page. On the next page, it said, "To John, one of the world's greatest skeptics, Paul Kurtz."

• 4:35Speaker 05

  That was my main memory from that trip.

• 4:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, but the good, the good news is that we've been doing this for 50 years collectively, and, you know, we've gotten rid of anti-vaxxers, global warming denial is gone.

• 4:49Speaker 05

  Lots gone on.

• 4:50Speaker 02

  And there's no more pseudoscience, where it's really all on the fringe, like astrology and all that stuff, you know, UFO, belief in UFOs. Those things will never come back now, because we've pretty much eradicated pseudoscience. We have top thinkers in the US government, guys.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  That's why we're turning into a sports podcast.

• 5:08Speaker 05

  How about them teams?

• 5:14Speaker 05

  I think it's like, when you're at school, though, a lot of teachers would say to me, "You've achieved nothing, but you've tried your best."

• 5:20Speaker 02

  You did your best.

• 5:23Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 5:25Speaker 05

  That, to me, is what it's all about. We've tried our best, we've had fun, and we've achieved very, very little.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  So that's a conversation we tend to have at these meetings, like we were, I was sitting with, with a few fellow skeptics, and the, the thing I hold on to is the completely unfalsifiable counterfactual of how much worse the world would be if we weren't doing this. And you can't prove that that's not true, so therefore, I can believe it if I want to.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  No, but I really, I do think, and you said this to me once, Richard, this always stuck with you, you said, "We really punch way above our weight, just because we're kind of a small, scrappy movement, let's face it, but we have a lot of impact on the media and, and on the conversation, even if it looks like that one token skeptic or whatever." But without us, there would be not even token skepticism, and I think that's important, you know?

• 6:26Speaker 05

  Well, it's also who we're playing to. I mean, if you've got a bell curve, you've got the extreme believers in anything that we're probably not going to touch at all.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:34Speaker 05

  But there's a big middle ground, and that's the shifting sands, and maybe they hear one skeptical argument and go, "Oh, my goodness, there's a bit more to this than I thought." And that's, that's a big win. So we shouldn't be down on ourselves. We've achieved a great deal.

• 6:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:48Speaker 05

  That's how I see it. Just edit out the bit where I was skeptical about being skeptical.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  We didn't know how good we had it. We used to have to deal with Bigfoot. You know what I mean? Like, we thought that that was a struggle. I mean, look at our lives today. But we are, I think what we're all living in is, you know, it's a two steps forward, one step back. We're in a really big step back right now. We, you know, skepticism, it has to survive. We have to pass it on to the next generation, because hopefully, you know, when the two steps forward part happens, they'll be in the front. Right, and sometimes, you know, also, and I mean this sincerely, is that, you know, it's not always about changing the world. You know, sometimes, like, I write an article, and maybe it affects one person, but I may have saved that person's life, literally, because it's about, "Oh, I was gonna get

• 7:33Speaker 02

  this fraudulent medicine, but I read an article you wrote, and so I didn't." And so, okay, it's one person, but damn, that was important to that one person, and I'm okay with that. I mean, a lot of people have come up to us at this conference, we really appreciate, said, "You changed my life. We'd love to hear that." It's like, that's enough. That's what they tell you? Yeah. That's not what they're telling me. That's not what I'm hearing. Yeah. You really pissed me off last week, Jay. You're such an idiot. You know, that's not what you guys are hearing? Wow, okay, fine.

• 8:02Speaker 05

  I was gonna say, you know that one of the problems with hearing that from people is that the meeting opposite us in those other rooms there is the International Sarcasm Association.

• 8:13Speaker 05

  And you never know, do you? You never know.

• 8:16Speaker 02

  All right, there's been a lot of great talks here. It is hard not to be negative in this current environment, but we're going to talk about some positive news items. There's a lot of cool stuff that's always happening, and we like to talk about it, and Jay's gonna start off by telling us about the Artemis III mission. Artemis III. So NASA just announced who the crew is. So we have Randy Breznik, Luca Par, you know, and I'm terrible at pronouncing names, Parmetano, Andre Douglas, Frank Rubio, and Bob Hines. These are all veterans. They're very, very skilled, and they need to be, because this mission that they're going to be doing is incredibly important. So originally, Artemis III was supposed to be the moon landing. Right.

• 8:59Speaker 02

  But NASA retooled everything, I think, and it's a wonderful retool, and now that we have it, I look back and go, "How could we not have had this?" I know, it seems like, it doesn't make sense. There's a lot of wishful thinking going on. So Artemis III now is going to focus basically on working with the, the two, like, the two Pathfinder ships. One is being built by Blue Origin, and the other one is being built by SpaceX, and these are going to be the lunar landers that they have to do maneuvers in low Earth orbit to dock with, right? So these are two different ships, built by two different companies, that, that, you know, do not function exactly the same way, and the astronauts have to, you know, dock with, you know, learn the maneuvers, you know, perfect the maneuvers, dock with them,

• 9:41Speaker 02

  enter, enter them, you know, pretend like they're doing things, because these aren't fully functioning landers, of course, they're more test ships. And there's a ton of things that could go wrong, so they have to smooth everything out as best they can. Now, we, of course, we're hoping here that nothing bad happens, because we want, we want, you know, Mission Four to come as quick as possible. So this whole thing is going to happen in 2027, and, you know, there is a list of things that they're supposed to be doing. I'll quickly go through it. So first of all, we have the Orion Space Capsule, we have the SLS Launch System, we have SpaceX's and Blue Origin's, you know, two ships. So this is cool. So, you know, we have a lot of things, a lot of moving parts happening at the same time. So what's going to happen in order of, of occurrence is Blue Origin is going to launch

• 10:25Speaker 02

  Pathfinder first, and it's going to wait in orbit, then Orion's going to go up on the SLS, then Orion is going to dock with Blue Origin, and that's going to be about two days of testing, then Orion's going to separate, wait for SpaceX's starship Pathfinder to arrive, then they're going to, you know, they're going to dock with that. That's going to be about a day. I don't know why one is getting two and the other one's getting a day. I think probably because SpaceX...

• 10:48Speaker 06

  ASEX has their ship more, it's probably a better system.

• 10:52Speaker 02

  Farther along.

• 10:53Speaker 06

  Yes, farther along. Then Orion's gonna splash down in the Pacific Ocean. The whole thing is gonna be a two-week mission. And if they come out correctly on the other side of this, then we will be completely poised to schedule Mission Four.

• 11:07Speaker 02

  Which should be 2028. And that's gonna land on the moon. But if anything goes wrong here, does that push?

• 11:13Speaker 06

  Of course.

• 11:14Speaker 02

  Artemis Four?

• 11:14Speaker 06

  Absolutely. If they have anything that they can't, that they don't feel comfortable-

• 11:17Speaker 02

  They might have to even add another mission.

• 11:19Speaker 06

  Yeah, they might have to test again, but we're hoping, they've been doing such a good job that we're hoping that that's not the problem. Right now, the schedule is Artemis Three is the low Earth orbit lander test integration. Artemis Four is the first crew lunar south pole landing. And Artemis Five is expected to continue with lunar surface activities, developing the space station. And we're not hearing anything beyond that right now. But of course, the missions are gonna go way, way beyond that. Now, there are some catches and risks here. One of them is, for example, we're testing this in low Earth orbit and not at the moon, obviously, because if something goes wrong, they're very close and they can just get back, you know, hopefully without a problem. But if there is any kind of error that happens when they're at the moon-

• 12:03Speaker 02

  Like the microphones don't work or something like that?

• 12:05Speaker 06

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 12:09Speaker 06

  So if anything like that happens, we right now have no way to recover the astronauts.

• 12:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:15Speaker 06

  There isn't like a ship at the ready that's gonna fly to the moon quick and do anything. So, again, the stakes are incredibly high. The other big thing is the space suits.

• 12:24Speaker 02

  Ooh.

• 12:25Speaker 06

  Yeah, so we have two different kinds of space suits right now. One of them is the suit that they wear in the ship, right? So this isn't like, you know, an exosuit. This is like, you know, we're in the ship. It's a more comfortable suit. It's not as bulky and heavy and everything. And then the big one is the, um, Axiom is building the second one, which is the, uh, what do they call it? It's like the exterior suit. I forget. Thank you.

• 12:47Speaker 02

  EVA, yeah.

• 12:47Speaker 06

  The EVA. That is a very aggressive space suit. It has to have a lot of functionality on it. Of course, it has to have like its own, you know, it has to be able to give them heat and oxygen. It has to pressurize. The suit has to be more durable in case, you know, anything happens. And that's the suit that they're actually gonna be walking on the moon with.

• 13:07Speaker 02

  That's the same one? I thought that we'd be able to separate loon walking.

• 13:11Speaker 06

  Apparently, no, it's these two suits.

• 13:12Speaker 02

  So it's the EVA and the moon suit.

• 13:14Speaker 06

  Right.

• 13:14Speaker 02

  And then there's just the, in the spaceship suit.

• 13:15Speaker 06

  Yeah, so they're gonna be wearing the, the lower profile suit, obviously, for the launch, and then going in between ships, because they're not going into outer space or going on lunar surface. Of course, the problem is, is that Axiom keeps saying, "We need more time." Which kinda sucks, because like, I thought the suits were gonna be done a few years ago, right? I remember when we first had a view of the space suits and it seemed like they were getting close to the end. And NASA's like, "These are not even close to being done."

• 13:40Speaker 02

  If you recall-

• 13:41Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 13:41Speaker 02

  This whole thing was moved up by a number of years, by some guy, right? Donald something? Just arbitrarily.

• 13:49Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 13:50Speaker 02

  I mean, so NASA is kinda slowly reverting to their original timeline, which, because this is how long it freaking takes. And you can't just say, "Let's go to the moon four years earlier, because I want to." You know what I mean?

• 14:00Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  So I think that's what we're seeing.

• 14:03Cara Santa Maria?

  Hey, Jay.

• 14:03Speaker 06

  Yeah?

• 14:04Cara Santa Maria?

  You notice anything about this group?

• 14:06Speaker 02

  They're all guys.

• 14:07Speaker 06

  They're very good-looking people out there.

• 14:08Cara Santa Maria?

  They are good-looking, but they are all men.

• 14:11Speaker 06

  I see women out there. What are you talking about?

• 14:13Cara Santa Maria?

  I'm talking about the astronauts.

• 14:14Speaker 06

  Oh, the astronauts?

• 14:18Speaker 06

  All right, Kara, I have caught up to you now. Yes, they are all, these are four men.

• 14:24Cara Santa Maria?

  They are four men. I'm curious why.

• 14:26Speaker 06

  I think it comes down to expertise. They had to find the four absolute best people that they could, right? Doesn't that make the most sense?

• 14:33Cara Santa Maria?

  Eh.

• 14:34Speaker 06

  No? Am I wrong?

• 14:35Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, here's the thing.

• 14:36Speaker 06

  That's what they're saying.

• 14:37Cara Santa Maria?

  So the NASA chief is saying, quote, "I don't think anyone should be reading into this," which I don't think is the best response to these inquiries. And the claim is that these individuals are the most trained. They have, like, a lot of them were fighter pilots. They have the most background. They're gonna get along the best, blah, blah, blah. But I feel like that is a positive claim. Like, I'm not understanding why it is that women couldn't and don't also have those qualities and those traits. And when we actually look historically, there have been 370 astronaut candidates that have been selected. 299 of them have been men. Only 61 have been women.

• 15:17Cara Santa Maria?

  But right now, of the 36 active astronauts, 15 are women and 21 are men. The parity is getting closer.

• 15:24Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 15:24Cara Santa Maria?

  The last astronaut class in 2025, women outnumbered men. I don't think it is a good look to continue to have all male crews. Because when you look back historically, how many crews have been all women? None. None!

• 15:40Speaker 05

  Zero.

• 15:41Cara Santa Maria?

  None, right? Until there are nine.

• 15:43Speaker 06

  But Kara-

• 15:43Cara Santa Maria?

  I do not understand.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  Those numbers are great, the recent numbers and the shift that's happening. Isn't it reasonable to say that they just didn't have anyone, any women that were-

• 15:52Speaker 06

  We don't know.

• 15:53Cara Santa Maria?

  I think that if there are only 36 people in the entire country who can, who can work at this level, all 36 of those people are probably capable.

• 16:01Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 16:02Speaker 02

  Okay, so that-

• 16:02Speaker 06

  You would think, you would think.

• 16:03Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 16:03Speaker 02

  So then it was a shitty decision.

• 16:06Cara Santa Maria?

  I think it was a decision that was not thought through. I definitely do. And so I'd be curious to see, given the administration's picks, you know, for who's running these departments, I'd be curious to see what Artemis Four does look like.

• 16:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah.

• 16:20Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 16:21Speaker 05

  I interviewed the person who designed the gloves for Neil Armstrong. And originally, he'd worked as a professional clown. Is that true? And so I was always relieved that he didn't design the boots as well.

• 16:39Speaker 05

  Because that'd be a huge step for mankind, wouldn't it?

• 16:44Speaker 05

  Very nice man.

• 16:45Cara Santa Maria?

  You never know what's real, you don't.

• 16:47Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 16:48Cara Santa Maria?

  It's amazing.

• 16:49Speaker 05

  Dixie Reinhardt, very nice man. That's so cool. Yes.

• 16:52Speaker 02

  Thank you for that very humorous British anecdote there.

• 16:58Speaker 05

  It's funny you should mention it, actually. It's a book about magic for children. And it's, uh, I'm just looking at it, it's really...

• 17:08Speaker 05

  Very good.

• 17:08Speaker 02

  Very impressive, very impressive. Does anybody recognize the, the bug on the monitor?

• 17:14Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  George does, because George from, George from Pennsylvania. It's a moth. There we go. That is a spotted, spotted lanternfly, which I think are quite pretty.

• 17:23Speaker 06

  It's not a moth?

• 17:24Speaker 07

  Nope. Spotted lanternfly.

• 17:26Bob Novella?

  If you see it, kill it immediately.

• 17:29Speaker 02

  It is a beautiful insect that you should murder on sight. Absolutely. So they are a invasive species, which means they're not supposed to be here. And they have no natural predators. So they're, they spread like crazy. And they are horribly destructive to a lot of different plants. I think there's something like 270-something plants that they, and a lot of them crops. I think vineyards especially are vulnerable to them.

• 17:55Speaker 06

  So what can we do?

• 17:56Speaker 02

  So what can you do? If you see one, kill it. That's, that's serious.

• 18:00Speaker 07

  Which can be a challenge, because these suckers hop like you would not believe. They, as you go to step on it, you think, "Oh, there's one." Because they're large. They're, they're bigger than a quarter. So they're, they're big. And you think, "Oh, okay, I'll just..." Because they're just sitting in the sun. They like shiny surfaces and they like to sit in the sun. You go to step on it, and it leaps a good, you know, eight to 10 feet. And you run after it and you try it again, and it leaps another eight to 10 feet. Sometimes it leaps onto you, which just freaks you out beyond belief. But then it has usually three good leaps in it, and then it gets exhausted, and then you can kill it.

• 18:32Speaker 02

  And you're like, "Oh, pretty." All right. But more important even than killing them on sight, George, is what?

• 18:39Speaker 07

  The, you would kill the egg sacs that are in the trees in the, in the fall. So in the fall, you go around town and you look for what sort of appears to be like as if someone has smeared snot on a tree. You get these stripes of sort of these snotty stripes. And those are full of thousands of little, little, tiny, tiny, tiny eggs. And you take a piece of plastic or a credit card or a piece of wood, and you just scrape it. You just go, "Hrrr." And you kill all the eggs that way. And you can, we, we in Bethlehem, where I'm from in PA, we had a really bad outbreak three years ago. And there was a vigilant, kind of, the next fall, a vigilant drive. You see a tree with the snot on it, scrape it off, which sounds awful. We need a better slogan.

• 19:21Bob Novella?

  What do you do with this snot?

• 19:22Speaker 07

  You just, it doesn't, you don't have to do anything to it. As long as you just take off, take it off the tree. And you can even leave it on the tree. As soon as you expose it to air, all the eggs die. And, uh, and that's your test thing.

• 19:32Speaker 02

  Officially, you're supposed to put it in like rubbing alcohol or something to make sure that you kill all the eggs.

• 19:36Speaker 07

  Right.

• 19:37Speaker 02

  Because they will lay their eggs on any flat surface. It's not just trees.

• 19:42Speaker 07

  Right.

• 19:42Speaker 02

  Including the, like, the cars, right? Until like the bumper or the trunk of your car. Now, Matt, that's a problem, as you might imagine, because that's how they spread. So you really, if you are in an area where they're native, you need to make sure you, there's none on your vehicle before you drive somewhere else and introduce them to another, another region. They are moving north. So people in Buffalo, you may start to see these at some point. I started to see them in Connecticut not too long ago. But they're, now, how do you, how do you find the egg sacs? You guess you could identify them on sight. And people in, in regions where they're common get trained to spot them. But even highly trained human spotters are not that good at finding all the egg sacs out there. So George, you know, what, what would be a better method

• 20:25Speaker 02

  for locating the egg sacs than just visual inspection?

• 20:28Speaker 07

  Oh, I don't know.

• 20:29Speaker 02

  Dogs.

• 20:30Speaker 07

  Ah.

• 20:30Speaker 02

  Because dogs can smell them.

• 20:32Speaker 07

  Sweet.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  And so they, so the, the authorities are basically training, expert-trained dogs to sniff out the, the egg sacs, and they're really good at it.

• 20:42Speaker 07

  I love it. Oh, that's great.

• 20:43Speaker 02

  Much better, better than any human-trained visual spotter. But there's just not enough to go around. So again, the news item they're talking about is a program to train just citizens and their pets, their pet dogs. And with just like a, with a short training session, the, the, the dogs can become better than humans at identifying egg sacs. And so it's still not 100%, but the more of them you identify and destroy, the better. So this is only gonna limit the spread, right? There's no way you could eradicate an invasive species like this once it's out there in the wild.

• 21:20Speaker 06

  So wait, there's an expectation that like, all of us have to train our dogs and go out and scrape snot off of trees?

• 21:29Speaker 02

  Basically.

• 21:29Speaker 06

  And this is a positive news item?

• 21:31Speaker 02

  Yes. Well, it is adding to... The thing is, if you're like, Georgia knows, right? Because you're from an area where this has been a problem and it's destroying the agriculture in your region. Everyone gets involved. We were, I was visiting, everyone is killing these bugs all the time. And so, for those who want to, it's not like everyone has to do this, but, once you start involving the citizenry, it's just a lot more people involved than what the official resources can be. And it will limit the spread significantly. It does matter. That's why it's not, it hasn't been as bad as like the bad, the worst year a couple years ago, but now, people then they lose interest and it's, it comes back.

• 22:07Speaker 06

  They need to gamify it. They need to make it so you can like...

• 22:10Speaker 02

  Something.

• 22:10Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 22:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, I agree.

• 22:12Speaker 07

  They're really pretty. It's a shame, because they are, they're quite pretty, but you just, you train yourself to destroy the thing as soon as you see it.

• 22:19Speaker 02

  Destroy the website. All right, George.

• 22:22Cara Santa Maria?

  Well?

• 22:23Speaker 02

  George, tell us about human echolocation.

• 22:26Speaker 07

  Okay. So, I always liked the superhero Daredevil. If you're not familiar with Daredevil, Daredevil has this kind of superhearing that allows him to echolocate and, and, and operate in his surroundings in a very efficient way, even better than if he was sighted. He fights criminals in the dark, because he echolocates. He doesn't even, he doesn't produce any sound, he just can hear the sort of natural sounds that are in the room, and he becomes a superhero and does all this fighting stuff. I always thought that was cool. Of course, until Homelander comes along and smashes his ears, he did, in that one episode. But, apparently, there are humans who can, who have claimed, visually impaired humans who claim to be able to echolocate as well. I started seeing this on shows. There was a Stan Lee show that was called, I think, Superhuman, or something like that,

• 23:10Speaker 07

  or Real Superheroes, or something. And they had a guy who was visually impaired, who, via the use of clicks, he would, he would be able to tell what's in a room. And this guy was so good at echolocating via these clicks, that he could ride a bicycle. Visually impaired, clicking down the sidewalk, riding a bike. And the skeptical part of me was like, there's no way this is real. There's no way this, like, this is being exaggerated, this is, it's just something felt fishy to me. And I would see other examples of people doing it, and it just always felt kind of fishy. Well, a study was done recently, that sort of proved that this is a, this is a real thing. It might not be at Daredevil levels of accuracy, but there are visually impaired people that

• 23:54Speaker 07

  have trained themselves to echolocate using clicks. So, there's an organization of neuroscientists, it's the neuroscientists at Smith Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, or SCARY. They don't call it that, but I call it that. They took four experts that can echolocate, visually impaired people that can echolocate, and 12 sighted non-echolocators. Oh, the other thing is, my best friend is visually impaired, and I used to talk to him about this, like, is this a thing? And he was like, yeah, I don't think so. So, I thought, all right, if he's saying it's not a thing, then it's not a thing. But, this study took four visually impaired people that could do this, 12 non-impaired

• 24:34Speaker 07

  that echoed, and they put them with EEG caps into like a dark room, and they would simulate environments that had items in this environment using clicks and echoes. So, it was all simulated, but they would like, put basically a big box, like a virtual box into this space, and they would listen to the clicks. And they had to determine where the box was within this space. Well, the 12 people that were sighted, were no better than chance. They were basically 50%. Whereas, the four experts got way better than chance, and three out of the four, who were blindest earlier in their lives, were 70% right, in terms of locating the items.

• 25:18Speaker 07

  And, there was a neat thing that happened, that the farther left or right the target was from center, the more accurate they would get, which kind of makes sense. Sort of like, if you imagine that it gets more difficult if it's in the center. But then also, their accuracy was exponential in terms of how many numbers of clicks. So that you would get, each click, they would get sort of more, more precise at an exponential rate, until they got to about seven or eight clicks. From seven to eight was a big leap, and then after eight, it didn't get any better. Which I thought was really interesting. So, these clicks stimulated the brain's spatial networks faster than each subsequent click. So, they're, yeah, so they're tapping into the central nervous system, and the visual and auditory pathways.

• 26:00Speaker 07

  So, it's a combination of both sound imagining, and then visual imagining in this, in this space.

• 26:06Speaker 06

  George, did they describe the perception that they're having? You know, was it just like, I feel like the thing's over here? Or are they having any kind of other like, construct in their head that's showing them where the objects are?

• 26:18Speaker 07

  I think it was just basically this idea of like, if, if this was a box, like a whatever, some kind of a two by two box, or whatever, whatever, whatever this object would be, it's, it's in this place. And they would kind of point to it with that certain, yeah, it wasn't like, oh, it's a, it's a bicycle, or it's a TV. It was just, the thing that has been put in the space is over there.

• 26:36Speaker 06

  Yeah, I brought that up, because I wonder if they train themselves to like, almost like visualize it. Do you know what I mean?

• 26:42Speaker 07

  Yeah, apparently, that's kind of what the brain is doing. It's using both, both of those parts of the brain to sort of simulate, or imagine what that three-dimensional space is.

• 26:50Cara Santa Maria?

  So, is the idea here that those who were congenitally blind, or who lost their sight very, very early, are actually kind of utilizing architecture in their occipital lobe, that they, they're not using as much for vision as we would be? Yeah, so they're repurposing that part of the brain?

• 27:06Speaker 07

  Right. The plasticity of it is that they can repurpose and be more accurate in the thing.

• 27:10Speaker 02

  So, yeah, because there are echolocators who are good at echolocating, they're trained, but they're not blind. And they do not use their visual cortex for this. But the blind echolocators are always better.

• 27:22Speaker 07

  Right.

• 27:22Speaker 02

  And they do use that part of the, the unused visual cortex.

• 27:26Speaker 07

  Right. So, you can actually train yourself to get better, but you'll never be as good as someone that...

• 27:31Speaker 02

  As a blind echolocator.

• 27:31Speaker 07

  Yeah, who's using more, more of their brain efficiently in the thing. Which I thought was really cool.

• 27:35Speaker 02

  That's cool.

• 27:36Speaker 07

  So, it is a thing. Yeah.

• 27:37Speaker 05

  I actually was associated with one of these studies 20 years ago. So, so, in Harts, University of Harts, here, we have a corridor with lots of offices off it, and my, my office is one of them. And what they would do is place either control people, or visually impaired people, at the end of the corridor, and they had to go along and tap the white stick against the ground, and work out which office doors were open. And that was the study. And so, many times, I'd turn around, there was somebody in my office. So, and that was, that was like 20 years ago, but it's amazing to see. Because visually impaired people are extremely accurate. They go along, and they're, I guess it's the same type of thing, as you're just hearing a reflection of, of sound.

• 28:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, for echolocating, you could make clicks, or you could tap the floor with the cane.

• 28:22Speaker 05

  They would tap, yeah, that's right.

• 28:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's just another method. They also, now, I was reading a study, you know, just to help, you know, just to prepare for this, they're trying to develop an ultrasonic clicker and receiver, because the higher pitch, you know, pitched sounds are more precise. And so, they get, they get even better at it. Of course, we can't hear those sounds, but if you have a device that can hear it for you, and translate it into sounds you can hear, you get more precise information. And then, the best echolocators are good like, within five or six degrees. I mean, it's really, it really can get pretty good.

• 28:54Speaker 05

  When you say, but, you, these are sighted people that have learned to echolocate?

• 28:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, anyone can learn to echolocate to a degree.

• 29:01Speaker 05

  Why would you do that, though?

• 29:03Speaker 07

  Party tricks.

• 29:04Speaker 02

  Why do people do anything, George?

• 29:07Speaker 07

  Yeah. One of my favorite memories is from, is from 2004, in the big East Coast blackout that we had. You remember that, was like, that huge blackout that happened? 2003? 2003. I was actually in the studio working with my friend, and, you know, the lights went out, and like, we were all in the dark, and he was unaffected. And like, because he's running up and down the stairs, like he normally does during the day, doing all his regular stuff, opening doors. We're all stumbling in the dark, you know, and like, all right, this is his world. This is his world, is this dark thing.

• 29:35Speaker 02

  It sounds like a setup for like, a, like a killer, you know what I mean?

• 29:39Speaker 07

  Well, yeah, some kind of, some kind of superhero thing. But, yeah, that was awesome.

• 29:42Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, did you see Silence of the Lambs? So, have you ever got into that situation? You know, where you're in, locked in a dark room with a, with a serial killer? Then you'll really be glad you have that echolocation ability.

• 29:52Speaker 07

  Oh, right.

• 29:53Speaker 02

  All right, Kara, this is like, a one-hour talk, but we're gonna do it in five minutes. Tell us about clean eating.

• 30:01Cara Santa Maria?

  Five minutes on clean eating. Well, I'm, I'm curious if anybody has heard a specific term that's gaining traction. It's not yet in any versions of the DSM, but the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the sort of psychiatrist psychologist bible. But it is starting to gain traction among clinicians, and it is called orthorexia nervosa. Has anybody heard of orthorexia? Yeah, okay.

• 30:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, we talked about it on the show.

• 30:28Cara Santa Maria?

  JK, I guess we've all heard of orthorexia.

• 30:31Speaker 02

  I have no memory.

• 30:32Cara Santa Maria?

  I have no memory of that either, J. So, the, sort of the top line here, this is a write-up in the conversation by a professor who is the head of Body Image Eating and Weight Disorders Research at Adelaide University, Dr. Gemma Sharp. She writes about the clean eating movement, and its tendency, its risk, to become what we would call disordered eating. And there are some distinctions we can make between disordered eating and an eating disorder. But of course, those distinctions are lumping, splitting, labeling, you know?

• 31:13Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, whether somebody actually qualifies for a psychiatric diagnosis has a lot more to do with how those diagnoses are recorded, than the actual symptomatology of the individual. But, what happens with clean eating, is when individuals become oftentimes obsessive about eating for health. And it seems to be that one of the major engines of disordered eating that, that occurs from clean eating... Is social media. And study after study now is showing that there's a strong correlation between exposure to these messages on social media and disordered eating.

• 31:55Cara Santa Maria?

  So, who do you think are the worst sites for it? A recent study showed that Instagram users are being exposed at a much higher frequency to diet-focused content that promotes obsessive eating habits, they say, under the guise of health. While Twitter, on the other hand, which is not Twitter anymore, is more about sort of the social pressure and the medicalization of eating. So we've got these individual examples that we're seeing on Instagram, of course, it's a visual platform, versus these more kind of like global examples that we see across Twitter. And so I wanted to, yeah.

• 32:33Speaker 02

  What are they doing, though? Like, they're like overdoing it with eating healthy?

• 32:37Cara Santa Maria?

  I thought what I would do is read you the proposed criteria if this ultimately becomes a diagnosable DSM disorder. So there are two main criteria that researchers have put forward. The first one, criterion A, is an obsessive focus on "healthy," they put that in quotes, "healthy eating," as defined by dietary theory or set of beliefs, whose specific details, of course, vary, because everybody's going to have a different definition of what that means, but it's marked by exaggerated emotional distress in relationship to food choices that are perceived as unhealthy. So you don't have to actually lose weight or have any sort of outcome, but you have to have a certain level of psychological stress anytime you're in a position, for example,

• 33:21Cara Santa Maria?

  where there may be unhealthy or unclean options available. So you may find that you are engaging in compulsive behavior, you're not going out to dinner or going to social events where there won't be clean choices available to you. If you do violate those self-imposed rules, you may have like an excessive fear of disease or of, you know, a lack of health. You may even feel somatic symptoms, like you immediately feel ill after eating something that is perceived as unhealthy. And ultimately, most psychological diagnoses require this criterion B, which would be that the compulsive behavior becomes clinically impairing by intrapersonal distress or impairment

• 34:04Cara Santa Maria?

  of social, academic, or vocational functioning, you see that in almost every diagnosis in the DSM, or malnutrition, severe weight loss, or other medical complications, or that your own sense of self-worth, identity, or having a positive body image is dependent on whether you continue to engage in these behaviors.

• 34:22Speaker 02

  Can we say at this point, though, just for context, that the clean eating, which is usually promoted by the wellness, you know, phenomenon, is all bullshit? Like, it's mostly nonsense?

• 34:33Cara Santa Maria?

  Right.

• 34:34Speaker 02

  And I've had patients say to me, "Oh, I'm really trying to turn my health around and be, you know, healthy and have good lifestyle choices, so I'm not eating GMOs, I'm eating only organic, I'm only eating real food," which means...

• 34:46Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, whole food.

• 34:47Speaker 02

  "Or whole food, I'm drinking raw milk." It's like, they rattle off a bunch of stuff that's not helping them.

• 34:53Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, and RFK is not helping any of us.

• 34:55Speaker 02

  Right, and so not only are they engaging in a lot of negative things, or at best neutral, they're, they think they're doing something, they're being misdirected from actual healthy things to worthless or even harmful things.

• 35:08Cara Santa Maria?

  You know, I feel so bad right now for like cardiologists and other internal medicine doctors who are probably dealing with a slew of patients coming up to them saying, "I don't know why my cholesterol looks like it does, I don't know why my numbers are bad, I'm doing what RFK Jr. said, I'm prioritizing meat, eggs, and full-fat dairy with every single meal."

• 35:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:29Cara Santa Maria?

  Like, he completely inverted the food pyramid.

• 35:32Speaker 02

  If he's telling us what to eat, and men apparently have low semen levels, what's going on here?

• 35:38Cara Santa Maria?

  Uh...

• 35:39Speaker 02

  He's gonna fix that, he's gonna fix that, Jay.

• 35:42Cara Santa Maria?

  And I think ultimately, when it comes down to it, and I mean, Steve and I have been talking about this for a long time, I'm increasingly reminded of this in the setting of my work. So I work as a psychologist in a cancer center, so of course, I'm constantly seeing orthorexic behavior that's developed following a diagnosis. What did I do to deserve this? Could I have avoided this if I only? And so there's a lot of cognitive reframing that has to happen around that. But one of the things that we'll often work on is, I don't want to say, you know, I think commonly people will say, "Oh, everything in moderation." That's not necessarily true. Like, there are a lot of things in moderation that are still really bad for you, and there are things...

• 36:23Speaker 02

  It's a good starting point.

• 36:24Cara Santa Maria?

  It's a good starting point, but I almost, I want to go a step farther, and instead of talking about moderation, everything needs to be a balanced risk-benefit analysis for you. If you have celiac disease, your calculus is different. If you are somebody with IBS, your calculus may be different. If you, you know, have a certain body mass, your calculus may be different.

• 36:46Speaker 02

  Diabetes is the big one.

• 36:47Cara Santa Maria?

  Exactly. And so, but ultimately, I think the place that the sort of charlatans and the hucksters, they always get us, and we've said this a thousand times, the quick and easy, just follow these rules.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  Right.

• 37:01Cara Santa Maria?

  Unfortunately, life doesn't work that way.

• 37:04Speaker 02

  Well, like, "These food's bad, these food's good, this is a superfood," you know, it's all nonsense.

• 37:09Cara Santa Maria?

  And just check the box all the way down. I've seen this with people who do low FODMAP diets as a result of a GI complaint, and then they, so this is like a very heavily exclusionary diet, and then they feel better, and then they're too scared to start adding the foods back that they should be adding back. And now, all of a sudden, they're engaged in severely disordered eating that could lead to massive malnutrition, because their food choices are so incredibly restricted. So ultimately, the big takeaway here is, not everything in moderation, but always think about the fact that there is a risk and a benefit to everything that we engage in. Nothing is at the 0%, nothing is at the 100%.

• 37:51Cara Santa Maria?

  When we eat foods that have high caloric content and low nutritional value, yeah, they may be risky for our heart health, for example, but they may also be very good for our quality of life, and vice versa. And I think you cannot decouple your mental health from your physical health. The minute that we become so obsessive over our physical health in that way, our mental health often suffers.

• 38:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. But I think even if you're just like, just conscientiously trying to be healthy, and then so much in the media is telling you to avoid these things that are not a problem, and/or avoid toxins, and, you know, again, these things are just misdirecting you from actual good advice. But also, people who have actual eating disorders latch on to this to justify their eating disorder, "I'm just eating clean," right? And the, I think the one, like, best advice for eating is just, it's not the everything in moderation, it's just have a lot of everything, just be bound, just be balanced, right? Really, the only way you're going to get into trouble is if you have a highly restrictive diet.

• 38:56Cara Santa Maria?

  Yes.

• 38:57Speaker 02

  And that's exactly what this encourages, the one thing that's really the big risk in terms of your overall strategy eating, because if you just eat a lot of everything, you're probably not going to get so much of any one thing that it's going to be a problem.

• 39:07Cara Santa Maria?

  Right, right, yeah. And this isn't so much about quantity either, that's another conversation. This is really about what foods are good foods and what foods are bad foods. Food is good.

• 39:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:19Cara Santa Maria?

  You need food to live. Food that is, that has sugar in it, good. You will die if you don't eat sugar. There are three major macromolecules: fats, proteins, and sugars. You need all three in order to live. So don't buy that hype.

• 39:34Speaker 02

  So hamburgers, hamburgers are good.

• 39:35Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 39:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, as long as you don't eat too many of them. No, no, this is what I heard, this is what I heard, eat a lot.

• 39:41Cara Santa Maria?

  Nope, that's not what we said.

• 39:43Speaker 02

  Steve said, "I was right here." So I'm gonna eat a lot of hamburgers, and then I'm good.

• 39:48Bob Novella?

  Wait, where does peanut butter fit in? This is important.

• 39:51Cara Santa Maria?

  It depends on you.

• 39:52Speaker 07

  Yeah, where does it fit in, Bob?

• 39:55Speaker 05

  The risk analysis, the risk analysis is a nice idea, but it depends where you draw the boundaries on the risk, because if I eat beef, it seems to me that's very risky for the cow.

• 40:07Bob Novella?

  That's true. Unless the cow wants to be eaten.

• 40:12Speaker 05

  I've met quite a few cows, they're not happy about it.

• 40:16Cara Santa Maria?

  That is true, that is true. And ultimately, I think a good example is, I have a lot of patients who, because of chemotherapy and a lack of an appetite, they are engaging in anorexic behavior, and they're starting to show a loss of weight because of that. And very often, the advice by the nutritionist that we work with is, "Put on calories, just eat." And they're like, "But, oh, I can only eat mac and cheese, and that's so bad." It's like, no, it's good for you. Mac and cheese is good for you if you don't have enough nutrition. So it really is a risk-benefit analysis, depending on you, where you're at in your life, what you're dealing with.

• 40:52Speaker 02

  All right. George, you're gonna do a quick game.

• 40:54Speaker 07

  Quick game.

• 40:55Speaker 02

  Very quick.

• 40:56Speaker 07

  Very quick. So I, if you look at this word that's on the screen there, it just says Adrian, and I don't think most people would think that's a quote, but if you do it with a certain panache, it becomes a quote instantly. If you go, "Adrian!" What movie is that from? Okay, there's a ton of one-word quotes that I've found from films. A lot of them are names, a lot of them aren't. And if you deliver it with the panache of the way it's delivered in the movie, it's surprising how much of these land.

• 41:23Speaker 02

  Even just knowing it's a movie quote, though, might be enough.

• 41:26Speaker 07

  Even just knowing it's a movie quote, absolutely, right. So I'm gonna do, I'm gonna go through these, I'm gonna say one, and then whoever guesses it, just like yell it out and just guess it on the panel here. And if no one on the panel gets it, then we'll go to the audience. But I think you'll be able to do these. Some are very obvious, some less so. Are you ready?

• 41:40Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 41:41Speaker 07

  Okay. Rosebud.

• 41:43Speaker 02

  Oh, that's a son of a bitch. Zizuke.

• 41:45Speaker 07

  Very good.

• 41:46Speaker 02

  Inconceivable! Princess Bride.

• 41:48Speaker 07

  Very good. Plastics.

• 41:51Speaker 02

  The Graduate.

• 41:53Speaker 07

  Graduate, very good.

• 41:54Speaker 02

  Stella! Streetcar Named Desire.

• 41:58Speaker 07

  Very good.

• 41:59Bob Novella?

  Red Rum.

• 42:00Speaker 02

  Shining.

• 42:01Speaker 07

  Very good.

• 42:02Speaker 02

  Atticus!

• 42:03Bob Novella?

  Spartacus?

• 42:04Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 42:05Speaker 07

  Dog Day Afternoon, very good, very good. This one you'll get, and it takes, it takes a second, so here we go, ready?

• 42:12Speaker 02

  Khan! Star Trek IV. Star Trek II. That was two?

• 42:19Speaker 07

  Star Trek II, all right. Groovy.

• 42:23Speaker 02

  Oh, I know that, that's...

• 42:25Bob Novella?

  Evil Dead.

• 42:26Speaker 02

  Evil Dead.

• 42:27Speaker 07

  Evil Dead, very good, very good. One of my favorites, Otis Berg?

• 42:31Speaker 02

  Superman.

• 42:32Speaker 07

  Superman, very good, very good. Another one of my favorites, Francis.

• 42:37Speaker 02

  Peewee.

• 42:38Bob Novella?

  Peewee Herman.

• 42:38Speaker 07

  Very good. Peewee's a big adventure. Wilson!

• 42:42Speaker 02

  Castaway.

• 42:44Speaker 07

  Very good. This is very easy. Bueller.

• 42:49Bob Novella?

  I have no idea.

• 42:50Speaker 02

  There was Bueller.

• 42:50Speaker 07

  Okay. Another one of my favorite movies. Everyone! No? Yes. Very good. Leon the Professional. Leon the Professional. Great film. Great, great, great, great film. Okay, uh...mine?

• 43:05Speaker 02

  Oh, the...those are the, uh, Finding Nemo.

• 43:07Speaker 07

  Finding Nemo. Very good. Another favorite. Sedagiv?

• 43:13Bob Novella?

  Frankenstein.

• 43:14Speaker 07

  Frankenstein. Altogether. Me!

• 43:19Speaker 07

  Right. Another. Here's a good one. Fudge. A Christmas Story. Very good. Very good. Uh...Squirrel! Oh, very good. Steve's favorite. No!

• 43:32Speaker 02

  Don't even. We're not doing that.

• 43:34Speaker 07

  Yeah, we're not.

• 43:35Speaker 02

  Star Wars.

• 43:36Speaker 07

  Uh, another favorite of the SGU. Magma.

• 43:41Speaker 02

  Austin Powers.

• 43:42Speaker 07

  Austin Powers. Very good. Kara's getting all of these, I think, right?

• 43:46Cara Santa Maria?

  I'm just like, ugh. I've seen like 10% of the movies that you've mentioned.

• 43:51Speaker 07

  Just a couple more. This is a hard one. Gorlami. Inglorious Basterds. Very good. Very good. That's the Italian director, pseudo-director's name. Uh, Multipass.

• 44:02Speaker 02

  Fifth Element.

• 44:03Speaker 07

  Fifth Element. Good. Another favorite. Disappointed!

• 44:07Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 44:08Bob Novella?

  Oh, Frisco Wanda.

• 44:09Speaker 07

  Frisco Wanda. Excellent. Uh, Smokin'.

• 44:13Speaker 02

  Oh, uh, Mask.

• 44:14Speaker 07

  Good.

• 44:15Bob Novella?

  Mask, yep, yep.

• 44:15Speaker 07

  Uh, another favorite. Ready? Closer.

• 44:19Speaker 02

  Signs of the Lambs.

• 44:20Speaker 07

  You just said it. Signs of the Lambs. Good. Precious.

• 44:24Speaker 02

  Lord of the Rings.

• 44:24Speaker 07

  Lord of the Rings. Good. Correctamundo. Uh, Pulp Fiction. Very good. Pulp Fiction.

• 44:29Bob Novella?

  Is that Fonzie?

• 44:30Speaker 07

  Um...

• 44:33Speaker 07

  Hua!

• 44:34Speaker 02

  Devil's Avenue.

• 44:35Speaker 07

  Scent of a Woman. Good. And finally, Torga.

• 44:39Speaker 02

  Oh, Animal House.

• 44:41Speaker 07

  Animal House.

• 44:42Bob Novella?

  George, I have one.

• 44:43Speaker 07

  Go for it.

• 44:44Bob Novella?

  All right, I'm gonna say it just straight, monotone. The word is computer. That's too hard, right?

• 44:50Speaker 02

  From a movie? A movie, Bob?

• 44:53Speaker 07

  A Star Trek IV.

• 44:54Cara Santa Maria?

  Now do it the...

• 44:54Speaker 07

  Star Trek IV?

• 44:55Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh.

• 44:56Bob Novella?

  Huh?

• 44:56Speaker 07

  Star Trek IV?

• 44:57Bob Novella?

  Give me...what's the scene?

• 44:58Speaker 02

  Oh, that's the one with the whales.

• 44:59Speaker 07

  Computer.

• 44:59Speaker 02

  Holy crap. Good.

• 45:01Speaker 07

  Computer.

• 45:01Speaker 02

  Computer.

• 45:02Bob Novella?

  Very good. All right.

• 45:03Speaker 02

  All right. All right, this is just a reminder that we also have books for sale.

• 45:09Bob Novella?

  Don't you...I love the cover to The Skeptic's Guide to the Future. Remember how long we talked about it? What are we gonna put on the surface of that planet?

• 45:15Speaker 02

  Yes, I remember that.

• 45:16Bob Novella?

  I love it.

• 45:16Speaker 02

  Bob, so there might not be aliens here, but there might be aliens out there.

• 45:20Bob Novella?

  There might be. Wouldn't that be cool? So, researchers have uncovered a new hunting ground for my favorite alien megastructures, and they are, what, Dyson spheres, right? So, the idea is that instead of building a Dyson sphere around a sun-sized star, they're thinking that it could be beneficial for them to build them around the tiniest stars that we know of, and even potentially some stellar corpses as well. But why...why would aliens even bother to do this? So, that's the answer that I'm gonna try to give you today. This is, um, this is a pre-print from the archive by Arminazan Amiri. He's a physicist at the University of Arkansas. Um, okay, so Dyson spheres, we've talked about them. It's not really a Dyson sphere. It's more accurately called a Dyson swarm.

• 46:05Bob Novella?

  Um, Freeman Dyson himself never really said anything about having a unified, uh, sphere, but more of a Dyson swarm. A Dyson sphere is unstable gravitationally. It's mechanically probably impossible to make. So, if they're out there, it's probably not gonna be this, uh, one piece of metal around the star.

• 46:24Speaker 02

  I'm sorry, rat of time.

• 46:25Bob Novella?

  Rat of time.

• 46:28Speaker 02

  All right, guys, you can get going. All right.

• 46:29Bob Novella?

  So, the Dyson swarm is essentially collectors, billions or quadrillions of collectors around a star that is collecting every photon, every minute amount of energy that it can, all of it. Intercepting it and then using it for what they wanna use it for. Now, you think we have an energy crisis. Imagine a society, a super-advanced society, and they're looking into their future, and they're like, "We're gonna have about a quadrillion people in our solar system and beyond in our future. How are we gonna give them power?" And they might say, "Well, we've got fusion reactors, really good fusion reactors, and they're ubiquitous and they're really cheap, but even that's not gonna be enough."

• 47:11Bob Novella?

  And then imagine in their society, they've got these real annoying sextillionaires who are trying...who are trying to spend an obscene amount of quatu blows turning a moon...turning a moon into AI data centers. So, where's all this...was all this power going to come from? A Dyson sphere could literally handle all of that. It's really the ultimate expression of fusion power and solar energy. Um, and the amount of power available is really staggering from our sun, for example. So, say, uh, human civilization runs on 70...no, not 70, 20 terawatts. Human civilization runs on 20 terawatts. The Earth receives 173,000 terawatts.

• 47:53Bob Novella?

  The sun emits 385 billion terawatts. So, it's a huge amount of power out there. 19 billion times what humanity needs is what the sun is putting out there. If we could tap into it...if a society can tap into any of that, it would be seemingly endless. Now, this construct is plausible scientifically, thermodynamically. These are absolutely plausible, but they're also detectable, and that's really important to SETI, right? They're looking for techno-signatures. They're intercepting, trying to find radio signals, but detecting something like a Dyson swarm would also be something that's within their remit and what they're trying to do. So, they've been looking...so, the new study then, um, is what they're doing is instead of looking for a sun-like...

• 48:38Bob Novella?

  looking for a Dyson swarm around a sun-like star, using, you know, typically, they say that the Dyson swarm would be like a 1 AU out and more, um, very far away. So, but instead of looking at a sun-like star, what they're proposing is they're looking at some of the smallest stars and mostly dead stars, some mostly dead stars. So, Steve, what would be, you think, a mostly dead star that they're talking about? A white dwarf. A white dwarf is...our sun is gonna become a white dwarf. After it blows out its atmosphere, there's gonna be a core left about the size of the Earth with the mass of about half the sun. And so, it's really stored energy. It's not really creating more energy, but it's stored energy that slowly dissipates through trillions of years.

• 49:23Bob Novella?

  Literally, it will be emitting energy that could be tapped into for trillions of years. Um, but it's also low...it's low luminosity. It's really not putting out a lot. Even better than a white dwarf would be a red dwarf. Now, red dwarf is the smallest actively fusing hydrogen star that's out there. It's about a tenth the size of the sun to maybe half the size of the sun. If you look up into the sky, Steve loves when I say that, when you look up at the night sky, the stars that you're not seeing up there are the red dwarfs. You cannot see them. You cannot see them, but 75% of the stars, you like that too? 75% of the stars are red dwarfs. If you look at the 60 closest stars to our sun, 50 of them are red dwarfs. They're everywhere.

• 50:07Bob Novella?

  So, they're also very low luminosity, can't see them, and they will radiate...a red dwarf will radiate...how long do you think?

• 50:16Speaker 02

  Trillions of years.

• 50:17Bob Novella?

  No. 10 trillion years. 10 trillion years. That is just mind-blowing. Our sun is gonna last for 10 billion years.

• 50:24Cara Santa Maria?

  10 trillion years is trillions of years.

• 50:27Bob Novella?

  I know.

• 50:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay, just making sure.

• 50:29Bob Novella?

  I was just trying to, you know, make Steve look wrong, which is a...

• 50:33Speaker 02

  Nice try.

• 50:34Bob Novella?

  Which is, you know, I've done better in the past. So, you could think of a white dwarf as a cosmic battery that's discharging its power, um, over trillions of years. A red dwarf, you could think of it as a huge fusion reactor that just doesn't turn off. It just will not turn off for potentially 10 trillion years. So, what's the obvious disadvantage here for this plan?

• 50:59Speaker 02

  I don't even know what you're talking about.

• 51:01Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, get us up to speed again. Where we at?

• 51:03Speaker 07

  Everything, Bob? I mean...

• 51:04Bob Novella?

  The study is talking about looking for Dyson swarms around tiny, long-lived stars like a red dwarf or a white dwarf. So, what's the disadvantage compared to a sun-like?

• 51:17Speaker 02

  Not as much energy.

• 51:18Bob Novella?

  Yeah, I mean, yeah, the power that's coming out of that thing for our sun is much larger. But actually, it is emitting...the power's much lower, but it's still millions to billions of times what the 20 terawatts that we're using to power our civilization. So, still, even though it's not as much energy as the sun, these things can still produce energy billions of times what we need right now.

• 51:45Speaker 02

  So, how could we detect them?

• 51:46Bob Novella?

  Yeah, detecting them, this is what you need to do. Um, you need to find infrared. You need to find something that's very dim, a dim cold star that's emitting a lot of infrared. But that's not enough. You also need to rule out dust, because if dust is in the way, the dust is gonna absorb that and then re-radiate it as heat. So, if you find those three things, you have an anomaly, a real anomaly that could be one of these Dyson ones.

• 52:09Speaker 02

  So far, every potential techno-signature they've thought they might have seen has turned out to be dust.

• 52:15Bob Novella?

  Yep.

• 52:15Speaker 02

  Because it glows in the infrared, and that's like the big signal we're looking for.

• 52:18Bob Novella?

  Exactly.

• 52:18Speaker 02

  I think the real problem here is how the hell are they gonna collect all that energy from all of those satellites? Like, they'd have to beam it somehow, right?

• 52:27Bob Novella?

  I'll give you, this is an immense engineering problem.

• 52:31Bob Novella?

  We are nowhere near able to do...to fully absorb all that energy. Um, we cannot do that. We could take centuries before we're able to do that. But it's physically...it's plausible. It's scientifically plausible to have that. You want details? You know, I can't help you.

• 52:49Speaker 02

  We're just trying to speculate about what we might be able to see if it's going on out there.

• 52:53Bob Novella?

  It...like I said, it's infrared signature without any dust.

• 52:57Speaker 05

  I have a robot vacuum cleaner.

• 53:04Speaker 05

  And it doesn't do the edges. And until they get that sorted, I'm not...

• 53:13Bob Novella?

  Yeah, that's a good point.

• 53:19Bob Novella?

  So, the takeaway from this study is that Dyson spheres aren't necessarily more likely. That's not what they're saying. What they're saying is that we might be looking under the wrong lamppost. We're looking for sun-like Dyson swarms, when it could be these smaller red dwarfs or white dwarfs. And because if a civilization out there is really forward-looking, like, not billions of years, but trillions of years forward-looking, then these are the kinds of things that they would be interested in, and maybe we should start looking for these types of things out.

• 53:49Speaker 02

  Could you imagine a government that's out there that's looking into the future for trillions of years? I am looking into the future two and a half years. That's as far as my vision goes. Apparently, they worked out all that people shit problem that we have.

• 54:05Bob Novella?

  They just have different problems than we have, and they're much bigger than what we have.

• 54:09Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 54:10Bob Novella?

  Maybe.

• 54:11Speaker 02

  Very, very, very quickly, we've been talking about the Ediacaran fossils and Cambrian explosion and so on, so I came across this study, just wanted to add one more thing to it. So, if you recall, Ediacaran is when multicellular life first evolved on Earth, but they didn't have any hard parts yet, so we have very, very few fossils, right? Only very specific, very good places. The Cambrian explosion is when they evolved hard parts. And so, it looks like there's massive radiation of plants and animals. But there was a real explosion going on as well, not just an artificial one. This was the beginning of multicellular life.

• 54:51Speaker 02

  And so, recently, paleontologists were looking at simulations of different ecosystems and how the life would be interacting with each other in the Ediacaran. And, cut to the chase, what they found was that the early part of the Ediacaran, right? So, the Ediacaran animals were like ferns, attached to the bottom of the ocean. They didn't move, they didn't have mouths, or they didn't really eat, they just absorbed their nutrients. And then, they would just split off clones of themselves, and that's how they spread, or they would send off runners, right? So then, they would just spread out locally. And they were mostly in the deep ocean, where it was quiet and calm, and there were no competitors, and then life was good.

• 55:32Bob Novella?

  Ferns?

• 55:33Speaker 02

  For a time. They looked like ferns, but they were animals, right?

• 55:36Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, okay. So, they were mostly like budding? That's how they were reproducing?

• 55:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Or just sending runners.

• 55:41Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay.

• 55:42Speaker 02

  You know? But, as they spread into shallower and shallower water, then they started to get more competition, then there was also more, the environment was more chaotic, so they had to evolve. And what do you think was the big evolutionary step that allowed them to really take off? Roombas. One word? Sex. Sex. Absolutely.

• 56:04Speaker 06

  That is a big one.

• 56:05Speaker 02

  That's a big one. That's a big one.

• 56:07Bob Novella?

  That was an important invention.

• 56:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. And at first, they probably were just, you know, they're releasing, you know, buds of themselves in the local environment, and then they would hook up with each other, and then, of course, you get more and more and more specialized, and eventually, it evolves into biological sex.

• 56:21Bob Novella?

  So, Steve, so we're talking about pre-sex, there was no recombination.

• 56:26Speaker 02

  No recombination.

• 56:27Bob Novella?

  So, evolution was driven by mutation?

• 56:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:30Bob Novella?

  And that's basically it, right?

• 56:32Speaker 02

  So, yeah, we think of like, what provides variety, genetic variation or diversity within a population, everyone's like, oh, mutation. It's like, yeah, it's way more recombination than mutation. Mutation, long-term, you need the mutation, but recombination is huge. So, what they found was that with the, you know, prior to sexual reproduction, there was like over, almost 100 million years, there was very little evolution and diversification. And then, there was this, suddenly, even before, you know, the hard parts evolved, then there was a tremendous increase in the amount of morphological diversity. And they said that, their simulations say that's the point where they started to develop biological sex, sexual reproduction.

• 57:16Bob Novella?

  Steve, they didn't know this before? I mean, this seems like a pretty obvious thing now that you say.

• 57:21Speaker 02

  We thought that this was the case, but they're just, they're trying to match these simulations to the fossil record.

• 57:28Speaker 06

  All right, so the takeaway is when they developed hard parts, that's when they started to have sex.

• 57:32Cara Santa Maria?

  So...

• 57:33Bob Novella?

  Oh, my God.

• 57:34Cara Santa Maria?

  Is this too simple?

• 57:36Speaker 02

  Reverse the order.

• 57:37Cara Santa Maria?

  Is this too simple?

• 57:38Bob Novella?

  I can see that joke.

• 57:39Cara Santa Maria?

  Like, this is the move from mitosis to meiosis? I mean, obviously, mitosis is still happening, but this was the invention of meiosis?

• 57:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, basically. That's right, yeah.

• 57:48Cara Santa Maria?

  That's really cool.

• 57:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. All right, so we are here at SciCon 2026 with Professor Michael Mann. Michael, thanks again for joining us.

• 57:57Speaker 06

  Great to be with you guys.

• 57:58Speaker 02

  Always a pleasure to talk to you. So, I want to start with one question. How fucked are we?

• 58:03Speaker 06

  Well, one could address that on multiple levels.

• 58:07Speaker 02

  Multiple layers to that question.

• 58:08Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 58:09Speaker 02

  Take your pick.

• 58:10Speaker 06

  So, let's talk purely about climate, because that's mostly, you know, what I talk about, the climate crisis and what we need to do to address it. And it's always important to distinguish between like what's fact and what's sort of out-there vibes, like what people think. And there is this sort of doomism that has crept into the climate discussion. And some of it is frankly, like, some of the concern, some of the despair is understandable, given the state of our politics and what's happening in the US right now under the current administration, you know? Climate measurement platforms being sort of taken down.

• 58:52Speaker 02

  EPA is being eviscerated.

• 58:54Speaker 06

  EPA eviscerated, the National Science Board fired, the entire, I mean, every day, there's a new bad headline. Let's distinguish between that, because, you know, politics, you know, is not insurmountable, right? We can change our politics. We can change things pretty dramatically and pretty quickly if we get our act together. So, let's talk about then like the hard physical boundaries, like the climate system. And this is where there is a fair amount of misinformation. There's always been the climate denial misinformation. We've been dealing with that for decades, but there's this sort of newer version of misinformation, climate doomism. This idea that it's spinning out of control, there's nothing we can do about it, it's too late.

• 59:38Speaker 06

  And that's not helpful, first of all, because if you really, you know, believe it's too late to do anything, then why do anything? It plays into sort of the agenda of polluters and those who would much rather have climate advocates be disengaged. And so, you know, the reality is we are seeing dire climate impacts already. We are not going to avoid dangerous climate change, because it's here.

• 1:00:03Speaker 02

  It's here already.

• 1:00:04Speaker 06

  It's here already. So, the question is, how bad are we willing to let it get? And the good news, if there's, you know, some good news, is that the science increasingly tells us that there really is an immediate and direct consequence of our efforts to decarbonize our world. And the warming of the planet basically stops when we stop putting carbon pollution into the atmosphere. We didn't think that was true, say, a decade and a half ago. The best science at that time indicated that the so-called thermal inertia of the oceans would dominate, the oceans would continue to warm up, sort of like, you know, if you slam the brakes on a locomotive, it doesn't come to an immediate halt. It could go a half a mile down the tracks before it stops. We used to think that the climate system was dominated by the thermal inertia of the

• 1:00:49Speaker 06

  oceans, and that is an important factor. But the factor we weren't taking into account, because our models were incomplete, was the role that the oceans and the terrestrial biosphere plants, basically, vegetation, play in taking carbon out of the atmosphere. So, when we stop putting it into the atmosphere, those levels of carbon dioxide start to come down as those systems are pulling it out of the atmosphere. And that sort of offsets the thermal inertia effect, and what you get basically is a flat line.

• 1:01:20Cara Santa Maria?

  Does that only happen if you stop taking it out completely?

• 1:01:23Speaker 06

  If you stop adding any CO2 to the atmosphere.

• 1:01:25Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, any at all.

• 1:01:26Speaker 06

  So, if emissions have to go to zero, then it stops warming up.

• 1:01:29Cara Santa Maria?

  Is there a certain point where you can drop them, where it levels out with that carbon sink?

• 1:01:33Speaker 06

  Yeah, so, there is, again, it's sort of this cancellation between these two different effects, this thermal inertia effect and the CO2. So, it's a delicate balance between equal and opposite things that happens to be close to zero. We don't know that it's exactly zero. There's some uncertainty. So, some models suggest that there could be some additional warming, and if that's the case, then we would actually have to take CO2 out of the atmosphere through artificial means. And that gets us talking about, you know, geoengineering and other topics.

• 1:02:05Speaker 02

  Carbon sequestration.

• 1:02:06Speaker 06

  Carbon sequestration. We can't get to zero, though, right? Like, that's not... Yeah, so if we get really close to zero, that's really what we're talking about, you know? You hear about, well, you know, what about cement production? What about transportation, you know, air travel? Steel, you know, yeah.

• 1:02:19Cara Santa Maria?

  Agriculture?

• 1:02:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, agriculture, there's too, too, there's methane, which is another greenhouse gas that we have to think about. So, all of that is true, but it's sort of, that's down in the single digits. And so, at some level, it's sort of absurd for us to be worrying about those single digits when we're not really even at the point where we're reducing carbon emissions. We're sort of flat, and they need to come down pretty dramatically. So, in the end, yes, there may be a role for carbon sequestration. We may need to actually take carbon out of the atmosphere to prevent any additional warming, or to even maybe cool the planet back down.

• 1:03:02Speaker 06

  But, it doesn't make sense to be prioritizing that until we, you know, until we, you know, basically, take advantage of the low-hanging fruit, which is decarbonizing our energy infrastructure, our transportation infrastructure. We've got the tools to do it. Nothing is as effective as that. No, absolutely. What does that look like? Like, you're talking about, like, going to electric cars, that type of thing?

• 1:03:27Cara Santa Maria?

  Is that just straight-up no more fossil fuels?

• 1:03:29Speaker 06

  It's phasing them out pretty, pretty quickly, and, you know, it's, again, it's like, we're not going to go cold turkey on fossil fuels, like, in a year or two years. And so, we're not going to bring those carbon emissions to zero over a time scale of a year or two. But, we do have the potential, given existing clean energy infrastructure. If we scale it up, if we incentivize that, and, you know, stop providing financial incentives, economic incentives for fossil fuels, like the US is currently doing under the current administration, instead, you know, and they're, and they're deconstructing our fossil fuel infrastructure, you know, defunding nearly-finished wind farm. Well, it's killing the whales.

• 1:04:13Speaker 06

  Well, yeah, and you know how, they say the windmills are killing the whales. The windmills are killing the whales, is the claim. And it's because, you know, if you've seen a windmill, like, you know, you know, there are these, like, Scandinavian windmills that are right on the ocean, and there's all that grain that those windmills produce, and the whales, they lunge towards the windmill to get at the grain, and, and then the windmills scratch their noses and they get infected. And they, I mean, it makes no sense, like, how are windmills killing whales? I've never been able to figure out.

• 1:04:54Speaker 06

  You can't, you can't apply rhyme and reason to, like, something, I mean, that is, it was made up. Yeah. Or he heard something that was...

• 1:05:02Speaker 02

  They just make it up.

• 1:05:03Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, and the only, the only real argument there would be something about, like, the noise, right? Interfering with their patterns.

• 1:05:09Speaker 06

  With their communication.

• 1:05:10Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, but like, shipping is so much worse than that, and he's not trying to shut down global shipping, so, yeah.

• 1:05:16Speaker 06

  No, it was always, you know, like, these are always crocodile tears. Like, the people who complain about the birds and the whales don't give a damn about the birds and the whales. It's just a useful talking point for them, so... But we have, like you said, we have the technology now, like, you know, going back when Al Gore, you know, did, what was his thing?

• 1:05:33Cara Santa Maria?

  Incommunion truth.

• 1:05:34Speaker 06

  Just celebrated its 25th anniversary. Yeah, 20th anniversary, sorry, yeah. But anyway, the, the point is, like, we've come an incredibly long way since then. You know, like, solar panels should be everywhere at this point. And electric cars, like, they work great, you know, and they're, and they're getting better, and we have some battery breakthroughs that are on their way, and, you know, it's all poised. And it's cheaper. It's cheaper on a levelized basis than fossil fuel energy. The problem is, we're actually providing incentives, like, Trump, you know, just last week, announced a new, you know, sort of, set of policy incentives to basically provide money to the coal industry to try to prop up a form of energy generation that is not competitive in the free market.

• 1:06:18Speaker 06

  If you're a free-market, you know, libertarian conservative, then you would not be supporting those policies.

• 1:06:25Cara Santa Maria?

  It's, it's, these conflicting ideologies happen all the time, just from a fundamental, like, I don't want to rely on my government perspective, you would want to be off-grid. And you can be fully off-grid if you go electric, but they just don't want to.

• 1:06:38Speaker 06

  Well, one of my favorite cartoons, and there's some great cartoons about this stuff, is like, there's this, this home, there's like, members of the Green, it was called the Green Tea Coalition. These were Tea Party conservatives who believed in, like, not being bound to the government and to, you know, and to the energy grid. And, you know, so these, so these Tea Party conservatives have these solar panels, and one of the Koch brothers is up on the, you know, the top of their, their roof, taking down their, their solar panels, and they've got, like, a gun, and like, get your hands off of my solar panels. And it just really encapsulates exactly what you're saying here.

• 1:07:20Speaker 02

  But they could flip the narrative whenever they want to. There's no consistency, as you say. One thing, yeah, I always know what I'm dealing with, a climate change denier, because no matter what the topic, no matter what the angle, the answer is always, do nothing.

• 1:07:31Speaker 06

  Right, exactly. Doesn't matter how you get there.

• 1:07:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, doesn't matter how you get there. They will get there from any way that they can.

• 1:07:35Speaker 06

  That's exactly right.

• 1:07:36Speaker 02

  As long as it's just, keep drilling, keep burning fossil fuel, don't change anything, just do nothing, whatever, whether it's doomism, or it's not happening, or...

• 1:07:46Speaker 06

  It's happening, but it's good for us.

• 1:07:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, it may be, how do we know it's bad for us? You've got to prove that it's bad for us before we should...

• 1:07:52Speaker 06

  And hey, it's too late to do anything anyway. I mean, in a weird way, you can kind of look at it like, you know, the green technology and energy and everything, like, it works so well, that it was literally destroying these other industries. So, we have it. They can't take the technology away from, like, they can only suppress it, but as soon as this administration is gone, hopefully, right, like, you know, I don't want to be too wishful thinking here, but like, we'll have a government that's going to lean way back into this. Oh, yeah, well, let me give you guys just a statistic that I think puts this in perspective. Eighty-six percent globally, and globally is what matters, the US, sometimes we have an oversized view of our importance, increasingly, in a world where, you know, countries like

• 1:08:37Speaker 06

  China are merging as world powers now. And eighty-six percent of all added energy capacity last year was renewable energy.

• 1:08:48Cara Santa Maria?

  That doesn't surprise me at all. I mean, especially when you're talking about going into places where either there, it's time for an infrastructure overhaul because the infrastructure's failing, or places that are just developing. Why would you go old-school?

• 1:09:01Speaker 02

  It's also the cheapest.

• 1:09:02Cara Santa Maria?

  It's cheaper, yeah, and it's...

• 1:09:03Speaker 06

  And it's passive. It's like, you know, when you, when you, you need coal, which means you need a huge infrastructure, just pull it out of the ground.

• 1:09:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. The economics of it are so incredible, because essentially, you have an economy based upon burning stuff, right? That is, you get your energy by burning a finite resource of fuel, versus, you know, we could theoretically get to a completely circular economy, where we're just building solar panels and batteries and whatever, and anything, we have enough refined material that it just, as long as we're recycling it, basically, we have as much as we want, and then we just get energy for free, basically, from the sun or the wind.

• 1:09:39Cara Santa Maria?

  With no emissions.

• 1:09:40Speaker 02

  With no, not burning any infrastructure, burning any fuel, and it's no...

• 1:09:44Cara Santa Maria?

  And not just no emissions and not burning fuel, but also, the actual act of getting, like, dirty energy...

• 1:09:51Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:09:52Cara Santa Maria?

  Kills people.

• 1:09:53Speaker 06

  Absolutely.

• 1:09:54Cara Santa Maria?

  And I think we, you know, it's like...

• 1:09:55Speaker 02

  Coal's the worst.

• 1:09:56Cara Santa Maria?

  Coal is the worst, and we're, and like, Trump wants to keep subsidizing this industry that is, people just die. It's awful.

• 1:10:01Speaker 06

  I'm going to give you guys another statistic. Twenty-five percent of all premature deaths in the United States are due to fossil fuels, water and, and air pollution from fossil fuels.

• 1:10:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've written multiple articles about the fact that it's like, even if you put climate change aside, we spend more money on healthcare, you know, for taking care of the extra health problems that we have. It's like a hundred million dollars a year or something, that, that's not even counting, like, lost lives, that's just healthcare costs.

• 1:10:32Speaker 06

  Exactly. You know who understands that? China.

• 1:10:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:36Speaker 06

  Because they pay for it. Because they pay for all of it.

• 1:10:38Speaker 02

  Right, although, we pay for, we pay for most healthcare.

• 1:10:39Speaker 06

  We pay for it, yeah.

• 1:10:40Speaker 02

  Well, Medicare and Medicaid's still huge.

• 1:10:42Speaker 06

  When you say "we," like, the citizens pay for that.

• 1:10:44Speaker 02

  We all, well, we pay...

• 1:10:45Cara Santa Maria?

  Our taxes.

• 1:10:46Speaker 02

  The, the single biggest payer of healthcare, healthcare in the, in the US is Medicaid, or Medicare.

• 1:10:51Cara Santa Maria?

  And it's a huge part of the budget. I mean, it's a lot of money that goes into that.

• 1:10:54Speaker 02

  Huge part of the budget. And so, we absolutely should care about the cost of healthcare.

• 1:10:58Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:10:59Speaker 02

  So, but even, it's like, if climate change, that's like a bonus, like, it's worse than even without the climate change.

• 1:11:05Speaker 06

  That's right. And we have electric cars, and, you know, they've come an incredibly long way as well, and like... Oh, yeah. And the other thing is, the more people that buy them, the less expensive that they'll be, right? Because, you know, they still are crazy expensive.

• 1:11:17Cara Santa Maria?

  No, they're pretty comparable.

• 1:11:18Speaker 02

  That is not true.

• 1:11:19Speaker 06

  To get a really nice one, they're very expensive.

• 1:11:21Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, to get a really nice car, it's really expensive. They're, they're pretty comparable to, to gas vehicles now.

• 1:11:25Speaker 06

  And China just... An electric vehicle, battery recharges, I believe, eighty percent within a few minutes.

• 1:11:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:31Speaker 06

  I mean, it's just, isn't it?

• 1:11:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, so, I mean, you know, I'm totally into EVs. I'm up on the data. So, right now, there's an overlap, right? So, the cost of an EV versus the cost of an ICE vehicle, it depends on the quality of the car and the brand or whatever, but you can get one that's upfront about the same price as a comparable gasoline engine. Maybe there's still a little bit of a premium if you want a lot of range.

• 1:11:56Cara Santa Maria?

  Sometimes, yeah, but like, my truck, which is hybrid, is cheaper than the full gas version.

• 1:12:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, but lifetime ownership of the vehicle, it's way benefits EVs.

• 1:12:05Speaker 06

  And one of the key points here is that it, you know, it's better for everybody if people drive EVs rather than ICE vehicles, right?

• 1:12:13Cara Santa Maria?

  Yes.

• 1:12:13Speaker 06

  So, that's why there should be incentives. There should be government incentives to do the right thing.

• 1:12:19Cara Santa Maria?

  And it was back in the day, like, it was cheaper. When I drove my, I drove electric for ten years before I got, there just wasn't a small electric truck on the market. But I drove electric for ten years, and with all the subsidies that they used to have, it was like, I don't know, my lease was like, a hundred fifty dollars a month, two hundred dollars a month.

• 1:12:35Speaker 02

  It was cheaper.

• 1:12:35Cara Santa Maria?

  It was great.

• 1:12:36Speaker 06

  That's why one of the first things that the Trump administration did was to eradicate all of the, you know, the policies of Inflation Reduction Act that actually incentivized clean energy and.

• 1:12:44Speaker 02

  Plus, with the sodium ion batteries are already out, and that basically halves the cost of a battery for a car. So, if you, if you need an EV at the lower end of the price mark, you just get one with a sodium ion battery, two hundred and eighty mile range or whatever, that's just fine for most people. And it's the, you know, you back off five thousand dollars or whatever from the price of it for a lithium ion battery. So unless you, for some reason, need a lot of range, you know, well, again, most people drive forty, fifty miles a day, you're very, like, ninety, whatever, five percent of trips are less than a hundred miles. So, you would rarely need more of the range than that anyway. Right. And, yeah, so they're cheaper to own, they're, they're, they're getting to be

• 1:13:26Speaker 02

  cheaper to buy, they have no maintenance, which is awesome. Like, there's no maintenance.

• 1:13:32Cara Santa Maria?

  They're cleaner, like, in your garage, nothing leaks on the ground.

• 1:13:35Speaker 02

  And then, of course, you know, if you own your own parking spot, which is a big if, I think it's sixty percent of Americans own their own parking spot, you're like, you'd never have to even think, unless you're going on a super long trip, you never have to even think about it, you just plug it in when you get home.

• 1:13:46Cara Santa Maria?

  Just like your phone.

• 1:13:47Speaker 02

  Never look at a gas station, you know, you laugh at the cost of gas when it spikes. It's awesome. And again, you know, on the right, so many people talk about energy independence. You were never going to drill our way to energy independence by definition, because it's just stuff that we're burning.

• 1:14:02Cara Santa Maria?

  The finite resource.

• 1:14:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, but being independent of fossil fuel is the only sustainable pathway to energy independence.

• 1:14:10Speaker 06

  Especially since we're exporting most of our fossil fuels anyway, so how's that playing to energy independence? It was always a ruse.

• 1:14:15Speaker 02

  It's always bullshit.

• 1:14:16Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:14:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. All right, but the other end of the equation, as we were saying, is that technologically, we're there, it's just a matter of how quickly can we get there?

• 1:14:24Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, and the political will to get there.

• 1:14:26Speaker 02

  But that's, well, the other end of the.

• 1:14:27Speaker 06

  Exactly.

• 1:14:27Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:14:28Speaker 02

  That's the real fight, is the political end of the spectrum.

• 1:14:30Speaker 06

  Yeah, the obstacles aren't physical.

• 1:14:32Speaker 02

  They're purely.

• 1:14:33Speaker 06

  They're, they're not technological, they are political.

• 1:14:35Speaker 02

  Purely political. So, and I know you're, I saw, caught your talk yesterday, which was excellent. So, again, this is where it gets to that, where we're, in addition to just gutting, you know, environmental policies, we are in the middle of the worst attack on science in America, I think in American history. This is Lysenkoism America style, you know?

• 1:14:55Speaker 06

  Yeah, you have to go back to McCarthyism and Lysenkoism in the mid-twentieth century to find anything even remotely comparable.

• 1:15:04Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, yeah. And McCarthyism, I mean, yeah, like, maybe it was politically comparable, but it wasn't scientifically comparable.

• 1:15:10Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, no, that's right. I mean, like, there were, you know, I guess because, like, Oppenheimer, you know, we know that there were some high-level physicists, scientists who were caught up in, in, in the Red Scare.

• 1:15:23Cara Santa Maria?

  But, God, it's so much worse now.

• 1:15:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that's like, one thing that got affected. Like, today, you know, we have so much science out there and so, you know, so much money going towards it, then all different fields and spheres and everything, and it all got chopped to hell.

• 1:15:36Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:15:36Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, and it's like, the new Red Scare isn't even the anti, I mean, yes, there's the anti-science just in general, but there's also, it's the woke scare, right? It's like, science is too woke, so we need to shut down all the woke scientists.

• 1:15:48Speaker 06

  Everything I don't like is woke.

• 1:15:49Speaker 02

  It's just a boogeyman.

• 1:15:51Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:52Speaker 02

  And it's just so naked, too. Like, so usually, you have to look one or two layers deep, like, no, this is what's really going on.

• 1:15:59Cara Santa Maria?

  They're saying the quiet part out loud, every day now.

• 1:16:02Speaker 02

  Well, we're just gonna politically take over science funding, and that's it.

• 1:16:05Speaker 06

  But you're right, it all, it's so in your face right now, it's so blatant, they're saying the quiet part out loud, and I think to those of us who care about, like, science and reason, that's what's so distressing, that we've reached the point where you can do that, they can be effective in doing that. And it, and it speaks to the, not just the lack of science literacy, but the lack of, like, critical thinking that we're dealing with today, where, you know, at least a third of the population is so susceptible to that, that propaganda.

• 1:16:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, and civics literacy as well. Somebody should start a podcast about that.

• 1:16:39Cara Santa Maria?

  And we have to remember, too, it's not new. Like, it feels new, but this is what nineteen eighty-four was about, and that was not written in nineteen eighty-four, you know what I mean? So, like, we have been, exactly, we have known that we were moving in this direction for a very, very long time, and I think there was like a hockey stick effect with our political climate, too. You know, we were slowly going, and then it took off.

• 1:17:03Speaker 06

  Well, the rise of Fox News in the early two thousands really changed, because now, that's why a third of the, the public is, is, has been weaponized by, you know, propaganda, anti-science propaganda, anti, anti-democratic propaganda.

• 1:17:17Speaker 02

  Small D, small D Democrat.

• 1:17:19Speaker 06

  Small D propaganda, and that, that's, that is really the fact, the corporate takeover of our media, which continues on today. And so, people, you know, people often say, like, well, you know, how long is it? There's still that, like, thirty, mid-thirties, you look at Trump's approval numbers, they're in the mid-thirties right now, it's like, well, they're, they're gonna continue to come down, right?

• 1:17:41Speaker 02

  That's the floor.

• 1:17:42Speaker 06

  No, that's the floor, because every, the rest of that, that contingent now, they're not hearing what we're hearing.

• 1:17:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:49Speaker 06

  They're not hearing the facts. They, everything that they're hearing is funneled through the right-wing media, through X Twitter, which is weaponized for conservative propaganda by Elon Musk.

• 1:18:00Speaker 02

  They are being affected, but, just like we are.

• 1:18:03Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:18:03Speaker 02

  They're seeing the gas prices, they're paying the grocery prices, they're, they're suffering from either not having health insurance or paying through the nose for health insurance. Yeah, but that's keeping Iran from bombing us, Jay. Their kid, their kids can't buy houses.

• 1:18:14Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, but they're being told that it's somebody else's fault.

• 1:18:17Speaker 06

  Again, it, it gets back to Orwell, there's that famous Orwell passage, you know, the final, you know, the most, what is, you guys know the line, the, the most, it was the final and most essential command to ignore the evidence from your own ears and eyes?

• 1:18:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:35Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it's, it's, the party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears, it was their final, most essential command.

• 1:18:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, you got it.

• 1:18:42Speaker 06

  It was close. I think it was like eighty percent.

• 1:18:44Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's always doublespeak, it's always, you know, the other, it's the very person who's doing the thing goes, it wasn't, you know, he got that, he got that playbook early.

• 1:18:53Speaker 06

  Well, I have a, just, a theory I've been playing around with lately, and I don't know if you guys have ever seen the movie Melinda and Melinda. It was a Woody Allen film in the early two thousands, Will Ferrell, a number of, you know, A-list actors. The premise was that, like, and they're telling, it's a dinner party, and they're telling a story about some, you know, friends, and, and the whole premise is that any story can be told as a comedy or a tragedy. And you see both versions of the story, Will Ferrell being in the comedy version of it. And my thesis now, or my example of that thesis

• 1:19:33Speaker 06

  is the demon-haunted world, that is the, the tragedy version of this prophecy that we're witnessing play out, and idiocracy is the comedy version of it.

• 1:19:46Cara Santa Maria?

  It's the same, yeah. It is the same, absolutely.

• 1:19:48Speaker 02

  All right, so, so, going to green energy, renewables, and electric cars, that's a, that's like a, in the pie chart of what needs to be done, where would you put that?

• 1:19:58Speaker 06

  That's the number one task, decarbonization. I would say it's sort of two-part. It's electrification and decarbonization. If we get everything electrified and we decarbonize the grid, then we're, we're eighty to ninety percent there, they're ninety percent there.

• 1:20:14Speaker 02

  Like, that really is the thing that we should be really focused.

• 1:20:17Speaker 06

  Not shooting particles into the stratosphere, not fighting the laws of thermodynamics and trying to suck the CO2 back out of the air.

• 1:20:27Speaker 02

  Do you have an opinion on nuclear power?

• 1:20:28Speaker 06

  You know, I try to be informed by the experts and what they have to say and, you know, and there's a wide range of views, but I listen to people like Amory Lovins, who is nobody in my view who's more informed about sort of, you know, the physics of energy and the economics of energy. We went to the same high school, as it turns out. I learned that just a few years ago, Amherst Regional High School in Massachusetts. People like Mark Jacobson, Stanford. So, you know, Naomi Oreskes has written a fair amount about this. It does seem, first of all, it's extremely expensive and it requires very large upfront

• 1:21:10Speaker 06

  government, you know, incentive subsidies to build large nuclear facilities. And so, the thing that always seems so weird is that many of the most pro-nuclear people would nominally call themselves fiscal conservatives and libertarians perhaps. And if you're a fiscal conservative, if you believe in the free market, then the last thing you would support would be nuclear because it requires huge upfront government subsidies.

• 1:21:39Cara Santa Maria?

  It's a very liberal approach, yeah.

• 1:21:41Speaker 06

  It really is. It requires big government. It requires big government. And, you know, it's not cost-effective and so the money that we would be spending in building nuclear infrastructure would be crowding out investment in scaling up clean energy, renewable energy infrastructure. And so, in a world where we could do everything, you know, it might make sense, but it's not a zero-sum game. Or it is a zero-sum game, rather.

• 1:22:11Speaker 02

  It's only a zero-sum game because that's the politics of it, though.

• 1:22:14Speaker 06

  Yeah, and I mean, and in the end, one of the arguments for nuclear has long been, well, we need baseload because the wind isn't always blowing, the sun isn't always shining, we've all heard. So, you know, we can't get the renewable energy all the time, so we need something, you know, that could be gas, peakers, natural gas, it could be nuclear. That is no longer true. I mean, the energy storage technology has come so far now, smart grid technology, we no longer have this so-called intermittency problem with renewables.

• 1:22:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, you need one or the other. You need this, you need energy storage versus...

• 1:22:51Speaker 06

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:22:52Speaker 02

  Or you need something like nuclear. Although the newer nuclear designs can be both because they get the salt-cooled ones because you could store the energy in the...

• 1:22:59Speaker 06

  Yeah, and there may be a role for like molten salt as a heat store. I mean, you know, and hydrogen, you know, strikes me as something like, let's keep these things on the table.

• 1:23:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, hydrogen's less efficient, but yeah.

• 1:23:10Cara Santa Maria?

  Is nuclear energy, though, like you kind of said, it's not cost-effective right now, but if you actually take your calculations farther into the future, is it an appropriate investment? Like, would we recoup those costs over time?

• 1:23:26Speaker 06

  So, you know, it's just the nature of, you know, there's an economy of scale, sort of, there's a reason for why you build very large reactors.

• 1:23:38Speaker 02

  They're more efficient.

• 1:23:39Speaker 06

  They're more efficient. And this idea of small, you know, we hear so much about small modular reactors, there is no such thing. It makes it sound like they're coming off of like a factory, you know, conveyor belt or something. They're not modular. They're, each one is a one-off and so you don't get those economy of scale payoffs. And so, I think that's, that's been somewhat misleading. People like Bill Gates talk and putting his own money into, you know, so-called small modular reactors.

• 1:24:08Speaker 02

  Right, well, his big project is the Natrium reactor, which is a big one. It's not a small reactor.

• 1:24:12Speaker 06

  Yeah. Well, that's the thing. A lot of what they're calling small modular reactors aren't actually small or modular.

• 1:24:18Cara Santa Maria?

  But hey, if a billionaire, or now a trillionaire, I can't even believe that Elon Musk is a trillionaire, if they want to build us a nuclear reactor, that's cool.

• 1:24:27Speaker 02

  Go right ahead.

• 1:24:28Cara Santa Maria?

  So, long as we get unfettered access to the power, yeah.

• 1:24:31Speaker 06

  If Elon wants to go to Mars, you know, more power to him.

• 1:24:34Speaker 02

  Go right ahead.

• 1:24:35Speaker 06

  Hopefully it's a one-way trip.

• 1:24:36Speaker 02

  I think so.

• 1:24:37Cara Santa Maria?

  Believe the money behind it.

• 1:24:38Speaker 02

  I've also read as much as I can about the question. So, the concern I have is a couple of things. Is that, yes, so the renewable energy is definitely the cheapest, but the cost goes up as you get higher penetration. So, I don't want to get to 70% and realize, oh, now we need the nuclear. It's like, yeah, we should have built it 20 years ago. We kind of have to do it now for when we absolutely need it. The other thing is, we're already at 20% in the US, 19, 20%. Do we really want another 20% of renewable that we have to build? Should we just at least maintain our nuclear?

• 1:25:09Speaker 06

  And I'm glad you mentioned that because that gets lost, the distinction between existing nuclear facilities. And there's an argument for letting them, you know, running them through their natural life cycle because there's already, you know, encumbered carbon, right? Like, you've already put the energy...

• 1:25:30Speaker 02

  You've already spent the carbon, you might as well get the energy out.

• 1:25:32Speaker 06

  You might as well get the energy out. And so, it's important to separate those, continuing existing nuclear with building new.

• 1:25:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, and there's, it's not, they're not small modular reactors, but there are other plans in working. For example, you could have a lot of nuclear reactors on ships.

• 1:25:52Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:25:53Speaker 02

  Which we do now.

• 1:25:54Speaker 06

  Well, submarines.

• 1:25:55Speaker 02

  Like submarines. And those are kind of, those are small-ish reactors. We can know how to make them work and you could also park them right next to any city that's on the coast.

• 1:26:04Speaker 06

  Right, and Sean Connery knows how to, you know, run them, so...

• 1:26:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, right, right, right. So, I'm sort of in the all of the above category. It's like, we, you're out of time in a way that we don't have the luxury of time. And so, I think we can get to a full renewable and energy storage grid, but I think it might take us 10 or 20 years longer than if we also at least maintain our nuclear infrastructure, maybe expand it a little bit. And that is going to matter, right? If we get to net zero by 2050 versus 2070, I don't want to do what Germany did, like, let's shut down the nuclear plants and they end up building coal plants.

• 1:26:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, no, there's, yeah, and there's a range of legitimate, you know, difference of opinion on, and a lot of it is based on like what assumptions you make, the financial assumptions, economic, you can come to different conclusions. I do think that there's, you know, maybe some degree of consensus that you probably continue with existing nuclear and then the real debate would then be over the new, the new nuclear.

• 1:27:04Speaker 02

  Right, right. Yeah, absolutely. And then, the next thing down on that list, what would that be? And I know that we, you know, so we talked...

• 1:27:11Cara Santa Maria?

  After the 90%?

• 1:27:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm just curious because this...

• 1:27:14Speaker 06

  We have a big party and we...

• 1:27:16Speaker 02

  But I suspect that, you know, that's energy and transportation you're talking about.

• 1:27:21Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, 90% is decarbonizing and...

• 1:27:24Speaker 06

  Energy and transportation and buildings, you know, and then, then you have other sectors like agriculture.

• 1:27:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you have industry.

• 1:27:33Speaker 06

  Yeah, you have certain, you know, like cement production, steel production. I mean, that's sort of, that's down in the, like, the majority of it is the energy, you know, power, transportation. There is quite a bit of debate over how large the agriculture footprint really is.

• 1:27:54Cara Santa Maria?

  I've never been able to see, yeah, like, pin down a number on that.

• 1:27:57Speaker 06

  No.

• 1:27:58Cara Santa Maria?

  Because also, how much of agriculture is some of that?

• 1:28:00Speaker 02

  Because it seems so circular, so why is there net carbon going? It's all about how much fossil fuel they're burning in order to...

• 1:28:06Cara Santa Maria?

  That's what I'm wondering, how much of it is the transit and the, you know, keeping the lights on?

• 1:28:10Speaker 02

  It's the fossil fuel fertilizer and all the transportation, right?

• 1:28:14Cara Santa Maria?

  But it's the methane itself from the animals or no?

• 1:28:18Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:28:19Cara Santa Maria?

  That's like a big...

• 1:28:20Speaker 02

  It's cow farts.

• 1:28:21Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it's cow farts.

• 1:28:22Speaker 06

  Yeah, and there's CO2. I mean, there's CO2 production from, you know, animal agriculture and plant agriculture. There's methane, there's CO2. And then, you're right, where it gets down into the weeds is, well, there's the transportation and the distribution, but we're going to need that for any food system, right?

• 1:28:38Cara Santa Maria?

  And that's already going to be solved if we do the 90% thing.

• 1:28:41Speaker 06

  Exactly.

• 1:28:42Speaker 02

  What can people like, like us do? Like, what does a homeowner do that you think that could have a tiny little impact?

• 1:28:48Speaker 06

  Vote. Well, you know, we, yeah, I mean, we just had a panel earlier with Bill Nye, me, Peter Hotez, and Bill, you know, was asked that question, like, what's the most important thing we can do? And he said, vote. And I sort of, I answered it and I built on that a bit. I mean, I agree completely and the reason why I agree with that is that individual action alone becomes very limited. You know, it's hard to make big changes in this, when you're locked into a system that makes it difficult.

• 1:29:24Cara Santa Maria?

  Yes.

• 1:29:25Speaker 06

  And so, we've got to change the system. And the only way we do that is by getting policymakers who will favor the changes in the system. And that's, right now, we've got, you know, a Congress and a presidential administration that is, you know, a wholly owned subsidiary of the fossil fuel industry. We're not going to get those policies under the current administration, so like voting in the midterms, we can make some progress if things turn over, at least in Congress. And then, you know, three years, we've got a, two years, a presidential election where we have an opportunity to make real change. And what we have to, you know, is some people, you know, understandably, fall into despair. It's like, what, we've got to wait like that many years?

• 1:30:10Speaker 06

  Like, we can't afford it. The rest of the world is actually making progress. We have to remember that.

• 1:30:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:30:17Cara Santa Maria?

  That's true. Yeah, we're not in a bubble. It just feels like it sometimes.

• 1:30:20Speaker 06

  It does and we have to, you know, and I think we haven't fully, I think Americans haven't yet awakened to the fact that we no longer run the show.

• 1:30:31Cara Santa Maria?

  Right, and we're kind of the bad guy. Like, we need to remember that too right now.

• 1:30:35Speaker 06

  We've all seen that.

• 1:30:36Cara Santa Maria?

  I know, I know.

• 1:30:37Speaker 06

  We've all seen that. There's that meme, are we the baddies? You know, it's sort of like, are we the baddies?

• 1:30:41Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, and it's interesting. I mean, obviously, we're talking about voting. Yes, you have to vote, but like even you have to hold these policymakers to account, right? Like if you vote them in and they don't do what they promised, you gotta vote them out. But we're actually at a stage-

• 1:30:54Speaker 06

  That's absolutely true, John Fetterman. Yes.

• 1:30:56Cara Santa Maria?

  We're actually at a stage now where we can vote with our dollar. Usually, I don't always advocate for the approach of like voting with your dollar, because I think it unnecessarily burdens the most vulnerable among us. And like you mentioned, there's only so much you can do within like a rigged system. But as we mentioned, when it comes to things like how you power your home, there is some amount of choice.

• 1:31:16Speaker 06

  Absolutely.

• 1:31:17Cara Santa Maria?

  The car that you choose to buy. If you're in a position to buy a car, it's actually almost equivalent now to buy electric and could save you a lot of money in the long term.

• 1:31:25Speaker 06

  No, absolutely. And one of the cool stories, Bill talked a little bit about this, but you guys know Ed Begley Jr., the actor?

• 1:31:31Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:31:32Speaker 06

  So he and Bill used to be next door neighbors in, I guess, Century City. And they had this friendly bet as to who could decarbonize their homes. And Ed Begley Jr. actually had this show, but which was about like him and his wife, and his wife is just a normal person, and he's like hyper focused on, you know, decarbonizing their... But I mean, and I think in the end, I forget who won the competition, but Ed has talked about this. He was selling energy back to the grid. I mean, he was talking about living the dream.

• 1:32:02Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:32:03Speaker 06

  He was actually selling energy back to the grid. And so there's so much you can do. Everybody should do everything they can to decrease their carbon footprint, their environmental footprint. Why wouldn't you do that? You feel better about yourself. You are making the world a better place. You're setting a good example for others. There are so many reasons. You're saving money. You're healthier, because you're bicycling. So many reasons to do it. What we can't allow is for polluters to convince us that that is the solution, that that's all we have to do.

• 1:32:32Speaker 02

  Well, this has been a great interview.

• 1:32:35Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:32:36Speaker 02

  It's always a pleasure to talk to you, Michael.

• 1:32:37Speaker 06

  Me, too.

• 1:32:38Speaker 02

  We'll catch up again, I'm sure, in the future.

• 1:32:40Speaker 06

  Sounds great.

• 1:32:41Speaker 02

  You have anything coming out soon? Any new books or anything?

• 1:32:43Speaker 06

  I'm gonna be, yeah, I'm gonna be announcing a new book sometime in the near future. It'll be, Peter Hotez and I just last fall published Science Under Siege, which is really about like the politics and anti-science that we're dealing with and climate and vaccines. This is gonna be a little more forward looking, a little more optimistic about the future. Hopefully, it'll time with, you know, some victories, political victories. And so, yeah, but just sort of thinking about where we are. And it's always important, you know, I always, it's become cliche on my part to say, we have to pair the urgency with the agency.

• 1:33:24Speaker 06

  And it's trying to do that, trying to both make sure people understand the threat that we're dealing with, but that they also understand that it's not too late to avert that threat.

• 1:33:36Speaker 02

  All right. Thank you so much.

• 1:33:38Speaker 06

  Thanks. Thank you. Thanks, guys.

• 1:33:41Speaker 01

  It's time for Science or Fiction?

• 1:33:48Speaker 02

  Each week, I come up with three science news items with facts, two real and one fictitious, and I challenge my panel of skeptics on which one is the fake. I will survey the audience afterwards, so no comments from the peanut gallery until everyone on the panel has had a chance to vote. The theme for this show is Buffalo. But what kind of Buffalo?

• 1:34:16Speaker 06

  A living Buffalo.

• 1:34:18Speaker 02

  No, it's the city Buffalo. Okay. So, here is the first item, item number one. Hydroelectric power was first produced by nearby Niagara Falls in 1934 and has since been the source of greater than 80% of electrical power for Buffalo. Item number two, Buffalo is home to America's largest celebration of Dingus Day, a Polish celebration in which people douse each other with water and hit each other with pussywillows. And item number three, President Theodore Roosevelt was inaugurated in 1901 in Buffalo, New York, and continues to be the youngest president at inauguration. I'm gonna start all the way over here at George. You get to go first.

• 1:35:03Speaker 07

  Oh, my goodness. The thing about the hydroelectric power that bothered me a little bit is was first produced in Niagara Falls. That feels weird for me, because I think it was, it might have been produced somewhere else before Niagara Falls.

• 1:35:18Speaker 02

  No, that doesn't mean that's what that means.

• 1:35:19Speaker 07

  Oh, that doesn't mean that was-

• 1:35:20Speaker 02

  That is that it was first produced in Niagara Falls in 1934. Not that it was the first ever.

• 1:35:25Speaker 07

  Oh, okay. Well, that answers that.

• 1:35:27Speaker 02

  Just that that's when Niagara Falls first produced.

• 1:35:28Speaker 07

  Okay, so I'm screwed. Now, the second one, with the Polish celebration in which people douse each other with water and hit each other with pussywillows. Now, there is a thing that Ukrainians do at Easter where we hit each other with pussywillows. But yeah, oh, really? And you say a little poem. You say, "Bashka, bia..."

• 1:35:48Speaker 02

  Stop that.

• 1:35:50Speaker 07

  Run, Christians. "Bashka, bia, yanabiu, vesalis." Yeah, it's a whole thing. It's like, I'm not hitting you, the pussywillows hitting you. Happy Easter. It's a weird culture. It's a weird culture. I know we have great food.

• 1:36:06Speaker 06

  They couldn't come up with anything more fun than that.

• 1:36:08Speaker 07

  Hey, man, what are you gonna do? But it's, but the word dingus is very, very troublesome to me, because that doesn't feel very Polish. So President Theodore Roosevelt, I was not gonna... I'm gonna say the pussywillows is the fiction.

• 1:36:22Speaker 02

  All right, Jay.

• 1:36:23Speaker 06

  Yeah, this is the first time I'm hearing about any kind of hydroelectric anything at Niagara Falls.

• 1:36:28Speaker 07

  What?

• 1:36:29Speaker 06

  I'm just kidding. Anyway.

• 1:36:33Cara Santa Maria?

  It's all just for show.

• 1:36:34Speaker 06

  This is, so the word dingus, that is exactly the kind of word I would expect Steve to make up. But this is where I get caught, George.

• 1:36:43Speaker 07

  I know, I know, I know. Believe me, I know. It's like, ooh.

• 1:36:46Speaker 06

  Because it sounds like other words that are just not right. You know what I mean? I think the third one about President Roosevelt is science. That's fact. So it's between the first one and the second one. And I think, just for fun, I'm gonna say that you made up that word.

• 1:37:00Speaker 02

  Dingus Day is-

• 1:37:01Speaker 06

  Dingus Day is not true.

• 1:37:02Speaker 02

  All right, Kara.

• 1:37:03Speaker 07

  Save us, Kara, save us.

• 1:37:05Cara Santa Maria?

  What if the Roosevelt one is fiction? Because he knows that everybody associates Roosevelt with Buffalo. What if like he, have there been any younger? Hmm, I kinda wanna say that one's science, too. I feel like there's more chance for the hydroelectric power one to be wrong. Like, it could have been a different date. It could also be a different percentage. It could be that a lot of that power is actually, you know, shipped out and also shared, right, with Toronto, maybe? I don't know. Dingus Day is ridiculous, which is why it's probably science. Because, yeah, it doesn't sound Polish, but we love to just take things and make them like American.

• 1:37:49Cara Santa Maria?

  So it might have started as something that did sound Polish.

• 1:37:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:53Cara Santa Maria?

  Pussywillows are those ones that are like, they're like the long stick with the little, like, yeah, white, fuzzy.

• 1:37:59Speaker 02

  A little Q-tip at the end.

• 1:38:00Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, yeah. I want that one to be science, so, I don't care. I feel like I can afford to lose here. So I'm gonna go, I'm gonna, yeah, I'm gonna split from the guys and say it's the hydroelectric power one. There's something wrong about it.

• 1:38:14Bob Novella?

  Yeah, it's between Dingus Day and hydroelectric power. Dingus Day does ring a bell in my mind, but the other stuff, I don't know about any of that. But I think this is just too outrageous for Steve to say, just to make this up. But maybe that's what he wants me to think. So I'm gonna go with hydroelectric power. I think it's the greater than 80%. I think it's a surprising number, whether it's higher or maybe I suspect even lower, much lower than that. So I'm gonna say that one's fiction as well.

• 1:38:45Speaker 02

  Okay, and Richard?

• 1:38:46Speaker 05

  Well, I'll get to this in a moment. I wanted to recommend Starry, Starry Heist as another wonderful book by my good friend Karen. It's a time traveling book for young readers, and I really do recommend it. Getting back to this, it's obvious, isn't it?

• 1:39:09Cara Santa Maria?

  Is it?

• 1:39:10Speaker 05

  Well, it's obviously number three, because Roosevelt can't continue to be the youngest president in inauguration, because as far as I know, he's dead. So I'm going with number three.

• 1:39:24Speaker 02

  You're free to do that, but just to clarify-

• 1:39:29Speaker 05

  So what, what's the game?

• 1:39:30Speaker 02

  You have to tell me which one of those three do you think is the fiction? Two are real and one is fake. You tell me which one you think is fake.

• 1:39:46Speaker 05

  The third one's fake.

• 1:39:47Speaker 02

  But just to clarify, what that means is that no other president since him, not only at the time was he the youngest, he's still the youngest.

• 1:39:55Speaker 05

  It says continues to be.

• 1:39:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, in other words-

• 1:39:58Speaker 05

  He doesn't continue to be.

• 1:40:00Cara Santa Maria?

  His presidency.

• 1:40:02Speaker 02

  Since then, no other president younger than him has been inaugurated since-

• 1:40:05Speaker 06

  Steve, you've never done this before. You're literally trying-

• 1:40:09Speaker 02

  I'm gonna convince him not to pick the third one.

• 1:40:11Cara Santa Maria?

  No, he's not. He said he could pick it.

• 1:40:13Speaker 02

  I'm correcting his misinterpretation like I did with George.

• 1:40:16Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:40:16Speaker 06

  Yeah, you really could have been clearer with that one with Steve.

• 1:40:20Speaker 05

  It's out in hardback now, and it's remarkably good value. Uh, I'm going number three.

• 1:40:27Speaker 02

  All right, right. All right, so we're all spread out. Let's poll the audience. So I'm gonna do the one-hand thing, right?

• 1:40:33Speaker 07

  Do it.

• 1:40:34Speaker 02

  If you think that the hydroelectric power is fiction, clap.

• 1:40:39Speaker 02

  If you think dingus day is fiction, clap. And if you think Theodore Roosevelt is fiction, clap. Okay. So.

• 1:40:49Cara Santa Maria?

  I think the audience went with number one, right?

• 1:40:51Speaker 02

  I think it was one.

• 1:40:52Cara Santa Maria?

  One, three, two.

• 1:40:53Speaker 02

  One, three, two?

• 1:40:54Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:40:54Cara Santa Maria?

  That's what I saw.

• 1:40:55Speaker 02

  So should we start with two?

• 1:40:56Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 1:40:57Speaker 07

  I have to say, like, looking at the year for the hydroelectric, that now is like, mm, yeah, anyway, go ahead, go ahead, go ahead.

• 1:41:02Speaker 02

  All right. Number two, Buffalo is home to America's largest celebration of dingus day, a Polish celebration in which people douse each other with water and hit each other with pussy willows. To the right, George and Jay think this one is the fiction. Everyone else thinks this one is science. Most of the audience thinks this one is science. And this one is science. This is science. There is absolutely a dingus day. It's a, it is, there's a Polish diaspora in the area and they, this is, they sort of, um.

• 1:41:30Speaker 07

  Dingus day?

• 1:41:31Speaker 02

  Dingus day.

• 1:41:32Speaker 06

  Is that how it's spelled?

• 1:41:33Speaker 02

  Named after a person. And. Otis Burke.

• 1:41:38Speaker 02

  They have a parade and they wear the red and white of the Polish flag. And this is basically a Christian ripoff of a, of a spring tradition. Pagan, which is also in other countries.

• 1:41:49Speaker 07

  Yeah, usurped.

• 1:41:50Speaker 02

  Like. Like Ukraine.

• 1:41:54Speaker 06

  He does it all the time. We're in our studio.

• 1:41:56Speaker 02

  And it used to be like on Monday, the guys would hit the girls with pussy willows and then on Tuesday, the girls got their revenge.

• 1:42:03Speaker 06

  No, say it fully. Say it fully.

• 1:42:04Cara Santa Maria?

  He did.

• 1:42:05Speaker 02

  And now they.

• 1:42:07Speaker 06

  No, don't.

• 1:42:08Speaker 02

  With the modern celebration, they just all do it on the same day. It's Easter Monday, by the way. It's the Monday after Easter.

• 1:42:12Speaker 07

  Oh, see, we, yeah, ours was, ours was Good Friday.

• 1:42:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. All right. So let's go back to number one. Hydroelectric power was first produced by nearby Niagara Falls in 1934 and has since been the source of greater than 80% of electrical power in Buffalo. Uh, Kara and Bob think this one is the fiction. Everyone else thinks one is, thinks this one is science. I think the majority of the audience think this one is fiction. And this one is.

• 1:42:37Speaker 06

  Say it.

• 1:42:37Speaker 02

  The fiction.

• 1:42:41Speaker 02

  Now, there are two things that make this fiction.

• 1:42:43Speaker 06

  Yeah, the date.

• 1:42:44Speaker 02

  Is it what Kara said? Is it the 80% and the date?

• 1:42:47Speaker 07

  It's 34, though. It's too late.

• 1:42:49Speaker 02

  There's only two facts on there and they're both wrong.

• 1:42:50Speaker 07

  It's like 18, 18, 19, 1910 or something?

• 1:42:53Speaker 02

  It was, no, it was 1784. I mean, I'm sorry, 1884.

• 1:42:57Speaker 07

  1884.

• 1:42:58Speaker 02

  Remember that? 1884, yeah.

• 1:43:00Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, 1934 seems late.

• 1:43:03Speaker 02

  Don't, George, stop talking. It was in 1884. And so initially, they had just a, it was like a demonstration plant. It was just a DC plant, which means they could only transmit the power like a couple of miles. And then Nikola Tesla came around and said AC power can help you generate this, transmit this power over many, many miles. Um, now, the 80% uh, figure is just, it's not real because, as Kara correctly said, most of the power just goes to the grid, right? The estimates vary from like 30 to 50% in terms of how much of that power is ending up in Buffalo, but no one really knows because it's kind of hard to parse where all the, where all the juice is going.

• 1:43:44Speaker 02

  But, but having said that, Niagara Falls produces way more than enough power to fully uh, power Buffalo. In fact, they generate, generates enough power to power like 100,000 homes, like a tremendous amount of energy. Yeah. All right. And, and Canada actually produces even more than we do from, from the Niagara River.

• 1:44:05Speaker 07

  Because it's metric.

• 1:44:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. Do you know why, by the way?

• 1:44:10Speaker 02

  Why, why is there so much water flowing over Niagara Falls?

• 1:44:14Speaker 06

  Because it falls from the sky.

• 1:44:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, but, so the, the answer isn't what's feeding the Niagara River, which is.

• 1:44:20Speaker 06

  Mountain runoff.

• 1:44:21Speaker 02

  Four of the five great lakes feed into the Niagara River. That's why.

• 1:44:24Speaker 06

  Yeah, but the real question is then where are they getting their water?

• 1:44:27Speaker 02

  That's from the rain and stuff.

• 1:44:28Cara Santa Maria?

  That was our science or fiction several weeks ago.

• 1:44:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, okay. So, which means that number three, President Theodore Roosevelt was inaugurated in 1901 in Buffalo, New York, and continues to be the youngest president at inauguration, is science. Sorry, Richard. Richard, what was that book again?

• 1:44:46Speaker 05

  Starry, starry heist, and it really is a great read. I don't really like this game.

• 1:44:53Speaker 02

  Why, why was Theodore Roosevelt inaugurated in Buffalo and not in Washington DC?

• 1:44:58Speaker 07

  They moved the, uh, they moved the Capitol, didn't they?

• 1:45:00Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:45:01Speaker 07

  Was it a fire happened?

• 1:45:02Speaker 02

  It was because of dingus day. It was because of dingus day. He wanted.

• 1:45:07Speaker 02

  It's because, let the, let the panel, nobody could hear you on the podcast, so I have to let the panel answer. It's because he became president, he was the vice president to McKinley. McKinley was shot dead. So then he was in Buffalo and it was an emergency inauguration, right?

• 1:45:21Cara Santa Maria?

  What was he doing in Buffalo?

• 1:45:23Speaker 02

  Well, he is.

• 1:45:24Cara Santa Maria?

  Just hanging.

• 1:45:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So, and he, he was and was the youngest president at, to be inaugurated at the time and continues to be. Who was number two? Kennedy.

• 1:45:35Speaker 07

  Kennedy.

• 1:45:36Speaker 02

  Yes. Kennedy, he was, he was older than him when he was inaugurated, though. Richard, it's always a pleasure to have you on this show. What's, very quickly, what's, what's up next for Richard Wiseman?

• 1:45:46Speaker 05

  Oh, my goodness. Um, lots with, with, um, I have no idea. No, I've.

• 1:45:52Speaker 05

  Uh, we're, we're publishing papers on metas science. Uh, I'm doing the Seance Show, taking that around. Uh, I'm doing an art exhibition, which I'm very excited. It's paranormal. I can't say too much about it, a based art exhibition. Uh, and I'm giving lots and lots of talks at other skeptics and magic events. I'm very, very excited. And I'm delighted to be here. And I'm delighted to be back on the show. I don't know how many I've done. Each time, it is a delight. And I specialize in the psychology of lying.

• 1:46:21Speaker 02

  You're, you're, we appreciate your answer, but you are incorrect because the next thing you're gonna do is make a cameo at the Extravaganza tonight.

• 1:46:29Speaker 05

  Oh, my goodness.

• 1:46:29Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:46:30Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:46:31Speaker 02

  Well, thank you all for joining me this week.

• 1:46:33Speaker 06

  Thanks, Steve.

• 1:46:34Speaker 02

  Thank you all for joining us.

• 1:46:39Speaker 02

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

• 1:46:50Speaker 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.