The Skeptics Guide #1036 - May 17 2025

Dumbest Word of the Week: Moxibustion; News Items: Cold Plunges, The End of Life, Floating Nuclear Power, Visualizing Special Relativity, Brainspotting Pseudoscience; Who's That Noisy; Your Questions and E-mails: Ethics of Pig Hearts, Are Flat Earthers Real; 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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• 0:30Speaker 01

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

• 0:37Speaker 02

  Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Monday, May 12, 2025, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella.

• 0:47Speaker 03

  Hey, everybody.

• 0:47Speaker 02

  Cara Santa Maria. Howdy. Jay Novella. Hey, guys. And Evan Bernstein.

• 0:52Speaker 03

  Good evening, everyone.

• 0:53Speaker 02

  So, guys, I don't actually, I think we forgot to mention last week.

• 0:58Speaker 03

  What happened last week?

• 0:58Speaker 02

  That we have now completed, fully completed, 20 years of podcasting.

• 1:04Speaker 03

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:06Speaker 02

  What was the date of the very first episode? So, we recorded that first episode on May 5, 2005, which kind of fell between weeks this time. When did it air? That Saturday, so.

• 1:22Speaker 03

  Uh, we'd have to go back to it.

• 1:23Speaker 02

  8th of the 8th.

• 1:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, that makes sense.

• 1:26Speaker 02

  Okay. Yeah, so now we've officially completed 20 years, and this is the episode we're recording right now is episode 1,036.

• 1:34Speaker 03

  When I talk with people about our podcast nowadays, I have to remind them that we were podcasting in a time really before YouTube. There was no video podcast. It was an audio-only platform at the time. We primarily remain that way to this, to this day. So, when I'm talking with someone about a podcast today, the first thing they ask me, if they're new to it, it's like, "Oh, where can I watch it?" That's what they say to me.

• 2:03Speaker 02

  I know. Oh, wow.

• 2:04Speaker 03

  I have to remind them it's an audio. That's why I have to say, "Audio only, audio only." Something I didn't expect to have to happen.

• 2:11Speaker 02

  You can point them to the live streams.

• 2:13Speaker 03

  Certainly, of course, of course I do. I tell them about all the social media channels, everything, everything that we do, the whole slate.

• 2:19Cara Santa Maria?

  I find that strange because it's not like every podcast has a video component.

• 2:23Speaker 02

  That is, that is common now, though.

• 2:25Cara Santa Maria?

  Some podcasts do have video components now, but the podcast itself is still on a feed.

• 2:32Speaker 02

  And the, the crazy thing is when we do the live streams, most people listen to the audio only.

• 2:37Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 2:38Speaker 02

  And then they complain about the bits that are video only. You know what I mean? Oh, I fast forward past this because you can't see anything. What's because it's a live video stream and you just watch, you're choosing to listen to the audio, which is fine. We make it available to you, but you can't win, you know?

• 2:53Cara Santa Maria?

  You cannot win.

• 2:54Speaker 03

  Wow, I didn't know that. So yeah, you just have to, and that's how far we've come. That's how far this, the platform itself has evolved. The product has, has evolved in lots of different ways, but that, that's one of the main ways. At least I have to be, I have to make that distinction regularly to people. Um, because there's still so many people discovering our show for the first time.

• 3:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, yeah, 20 years is, is long enough that an entire new generation has come up that didn't exist or were, you know, toddlers when we started podcasting.

• 3:25Speaker 03

  And I think you also, we also have to couple that with the, I don't know, it was practically 10 years of skeptical activism we did before.

• 3:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:38Speaker 03

  There was even a podcast. No, we didn't just walk into it cold. We, we had, we had almost 10 years of, of experience under our belts.

• 3:45Speaker 02

  We earned our bones. Absolutely.

• 3:48Speaker 03

  We were in the field.

• 3:49Bob Novella?

  Newsletter, four newsletters.

• 3:51Speaker 03

  Newsletters.

• 3:52Cara Santa Maria?

  Wait, so then have I been on the show for half of the life of the show or more or less?

• 3:58Speaker 02

  I think a half.

• 4:00Speaker 03

  2015 you joined. So yes.

• 4:03Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 4:03Speaker 02

  That's weird to think about that. I still think you was the new girl, you know, but in a way, even though it's been a long time, but it's funny to think that.

• 4:09Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, half the time. 10 a decade. Wow.

• 4:13Speaker 03

  That's amazing.

• 4:14Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 4:14Jay Novella?

  You know, the thing, the thing about this whole 20 years, you know, and of course it predates 20 years. You guys, you know, did a lot more than I did because I was busy playing music. But, you know, when the podcast started, I was, I was all in. The thing that really, I just can't wrap my head around the fact that we've been doing this for 20 years. And like, very soon after we got our feet wet, you know what I mean? We're like, okay, we got, got our sea legs doing it. We haven't missed an episode. You know, we have consistently put out an episode for, you know, 19 and a half years, say. When, when we hit that mark, that accomplishment really was impactful to me. Because this is really like the longest commitment to anything I've ever had in my life.

• 4:56Cara Santa Maria?

  Wow.

• 4:56Jay Novella?

  And, um, you know, it's fantastic. I mean, think about it. Think about all the people that we've gotten to know and meet. Think about all of the, all the times that we've helped people figure out, you know, not only what the truth is, but make career paths and things like that, just because, you know, our science communication inspired them in one way or another. Like, I, I am humbled to that. I feel, you know, honored that any work that all of us do gets to do that kind of thing. And then, you know, Kara, like, meeting you, it's like, you are like the closest thing to destiny in my life, right?

• 5:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Aww.

• 5:29Jay Novella?

  Because it really, you know, when I first met you, I was like, I want to work with her. It was immediate.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 5:34Jay Novella?

  Just like with George, like, it was like a, a switch went off. I really like her, she's really smart, and I wanted, I want to work with you.

• 5:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, your natural communication talents just shine. They do.

• 5:45Jay Novella?

  It's, so it's how, I feel like we're all lucky, you know, we have a family feel here.

• 5:51Cara Santa Maria?

  When did you guys meet George?

• 5:53Speaker 02

  Very early on, yeah.

• 5:54Cara Santa Maria?

  Really?

• 5:55Jay Novella?

  Wait, Steve, I think it was at that TAM.

• 5:57Speaker 02

  No, it was, we met.

• 5:59Speaker 03

  No, it was prior to that.

• 6:00Jay Novella?

  Are you sure?

• 6:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. Wasn't it like the first TAM or the second one?

• 6:04Speaker 03

  It was the second.

• 6:06Speaker 02

  The second one that we went to, that we went to.

• 6:07Speaker 03

  2008, I believe.

• 6:09Jay Novella?

  The story is, we saw him. And all of us had the same first impression of George. He's like, wow, that guy's really cool.

• 6:16Speaker 02

  He's too cool to be a TAM.

• 6:20Jay Novella?

  And um.

• 6:21Speaker 02

  Well, I saw, I remember the first image in my mind of seeing George. George was, you know, dressed in a suit and tie. He was holding his guitar in one hand and he had, you know, a woman on his other arm, which was, I believe Donna, you know, is a friend of ours, we know that, you know, I think they were dating at the time. And I'm like, who the hell is that guy? Like, he stood out so much from the rest of the crowd. It was funny.

• 6:50Jay Novella?

  That's funny.

• 6:51Speaker 03

  You just have any kind of conversation you want with George. It doesn't even have to be about skepticism or science or anything.

• 6:57Jay Novella?

  Oh, no.

• 6:58Speaker 03

  That kind of person who just, you know, whatever tickles your fancy, he'll converse right back with you about whatever that topic is. It's, he fits right in.

• 7:08Jay Novella?

  Awesome dude, faux show. I love his look, by the way. I mean, oh, yeah, everyone loves his look. It's great. If I didn't have a weird shaped head, I would, I would go bald as well.

• 7:17Speaker 03

  It's the glasses as well that helps the whole image. You know, it makes him distinctive in a way.

• 7:23Jay Novella?

  And Kara, you and George in particular, like getting, getting to know you guys intimately and realizing, you know, you guys are profoundly high quality people, you know? It's like, it's not just we're, we're working together, you know? We, we are a family in every sense of the word, you know? Like we.

• 7:39Speaker 02

  Except biological.

• 7:40Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 7:42Jay Novella?

  Except the actual sense of the word.

• 7:44Speaker 02

  Except the actual literal sense of the word.

• 7:47Jay Novella?

  Except for literally.

• 7:52Jay Novella?

  You know, my wife, like Courtney will say to me, she always asks me, like, we're doing something and, you know, as if Kara's not going to be there, but she's like, is Kara going? And she's like, I go, yeah. And she goes, I should go. I miss Court. I miss her. But anyway, I'm just thankful and I thank you, Steve. You know, Steve, I've been very vocal about your profound contribution, but, you know, it's been, it's been a pleasure doing this with you, Steve, because you, you are, you've just kept us all on track. You make sure that everything happens.

• 8:21Speaker 02

  Every project needs a taskmaster.

• 8:23Jay Novella?

  Tell me about it. I know, I know. And you're, but you're great at it, you know? You just, you've really like taught us a lot. It's all, it's all been positive and I wouldn't change anything. I just, well, I would like to have actually earned a lot more money.

• 8:37Jay Novella?

  But beyond that, that goes without saying in general for everybody. But anyway, thank you all, guys. I love all of you and I love doing what we do and I don't even think about it ending.

• 8:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I could do, this is my

• 8:50Bob Novella?

  I do sometimes.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  forever job, basically, as long as I'm, until I go demented or something, you know. At some point, you guys will have to tell me, Steve, it's time to stop.

• 8:59Speaker 03

  Are we, are we the ones to make that determination?

• 9:02Speaker 02

  Whoever is like the least demented, and we can keep the rest of us.

• 9:06Speaker 03

  Kara, that's huge.

• 9:08Bob Novella?

  I think we need to have a, you know, an ongoing demented rating then, just to see who, you know, just in case, we need to know fast.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  Part of the reason why I'm retiring now from medicine, from treating patients, actually, is because there is no question that I am still at peak performance cognitively and professionally, you know what I mean? And I, I didn't want to be one of those doctors who's like, people look at him and go, he should retire, you know what I mean? This is like, this is like

• 9:37Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, Steve, when you planning on taking some time for yourself?

• 9:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. I mean, God, there are some of my colleagues like 75, you know, upper 70s, still working, and like, what the hell?

• 9:51Speaker 03

  Oh, my gosh.

• 9:51Speaker 02

  Don't you have any other interests? You have no hobbies?

• 9:54Speaker 03

  Right? These people die at their work.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  I mean, I enjoy it, but it's like, you know, this is, I'm ready for the next phase of my life.

• 10:01Jay Novella?

  I mean, unless you're making science fiction movies, like, you know, work is work. And even, you know, even the S2U, I love a lot of it, but it's work. I would rather be doing the stuff I don't do when I'm working, right?

• 10:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, but at least this, again, this is, as you say, we're all working, we're friends, we could, I could work from my office at home, mostly I could sleep in, you know what I mean? Like, it's just different than having scheduled professional

• 10:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's not, no rat race.

• 10:24Speaker 02

  Exactly, no treadmill, no rat race, except for just getting the podcast out every week, which I've been doing anyway, so now I'm still gonna be doing that.

• 10:31Jay Novella?

  It's gonna become very easy, Steve, because you're gonna go from, you know, working 40, 50 hours a week to not doing any of that.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  You think I'm only working 40, 50 hours a week? That's adorable, Jay.

• 10:44Jay Novella?

  I mean, what is it? Say it.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  Well, Jay, I'm working almost 40 hours a week for my day job.

• 10:50Jay Novella?

  That's what I was referencing.

• 10:51Speaker 02

  And you gotta tack 20, 30 hours on top of that.

• 10:54Jay Novella?

  But what I was saying was, you're gonna like eliminate that 40 or 50 hours of work a week.

• 11:00Speaker 02

  Yes, okay, there you go.

• 11:01Jay Novella?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm tired and messed up right now, but I'm not stupid.

• 11:08Jay Novella?

  Yeah, and again, like, you know, I think, and I hate to be morbid about this, but this will continue until we lose Steve. Right? Like, we're gonna just keep doing, we're gonna keep making these shows until Steve is no longer with us, and then that's it.

• 11:19Speaker 02

  Either mentally or physically.

• 11:23Speaker 02

  All right, well, I'm in. I don't plan on stopping anytime soon. All right, guys, let's go on with the show. Evan, you're gonna start us off with a new hybrid segment.

• 11:32Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 11:33Speaker 02

  The dumbest word of the week.

• 11:38Speaker 03

  Thank you, Steve. Throughout history, there have been a few combinations that have changed the world. For example, hydrogen and oxygen, fire and food, hand washing and healthcare, peanut butter and chocolate. Right, Bob? Today marks the latest and perhaps most significant combination of two distinct things that will be recognized as equally significant of a turning point in history. I've combined "What's the word?" with "The dumbest thing of the week." And so, for the first time in history, of this universe and all other universes combined, I present to you "The dumbest word of the week." It's the dumbest word of the week. Come with me, let's take a peek.

• 12:20Speaker 03

  Where it's okay to binge, even though we might cringe at what I speak. The dumbest word of the week. You know that song, right?

• 12:28Speaker 02

  What's happening right now?

• 12:31Speaker 03

  A new segment, a new, a new jingle.

• 12:35Speaker 02

  That's the rule?

• 12:36Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  All right, no more new segments.

• 12:38Speaker 03

  For those, for those of us brave enough to, for those of us brave enough to tread such waters.

• 12:44Jay Novella?

  True, true.

• 12:45Speaker 03

  This week's, the initial dumbest word of the week is "Moxibustion."

• 12:50Jay Novella?

  What the hell, man?

• 12:51Speaker 03

  That is a compound word. Would anyone like to care or guess at what two words make "Moxibustion"?

• 12:59Speaker 02

  Combustion.

• 13:00Jay Novella?

  Yeah, combustion, but fire. The first one, that was like, my-

• 13:04Speaker 02

  Moxa.

• 13:05Speaker 03

  Moxa. Moxa refers to the dried leaves of mugwort. Oh. Traditionally used in heat therapy. Combustion refers to the process of burning, which is central to the moxabustion practice. What is the moxabustion practice? Glad you asked, because I'm not certain, Steve. You may have a different thought on this. I don't think we've ever talked about this before on the show.

• 13:28Speaker 02

  I'm sure, I know, I have done a dedicated segment on it, but I'm sure I've done a drive by while we're, while talking about other things like acupuncture and cupping.

• 13:37Speaker 03

  Exactly. And that's where this comes in. Moxabustion, a traditional East Asian therapy that involves the burning of dried mugwort, called moxa, near or on specific acupuncture points on the body. The goal is to stimulate the flow of qi, you know, life energy, and expel cold and dampness from the body, according to traditional Chinese medicine principles. How does it work in practice? Well, there are two main types of moxabustion. There is direct moxabustion, in which you place a small cone of moxa directly on the skin and you burn it. However, that can cause some burns or scars, especially in the traditional scarring moxabustion method. That's a thing, the scarring moxabustion method.

• 14:21Speaker 03

  The other way is the indirect moxabustion, in which, that's more common today, you know, they're not actually burning people. It's burned near the skin and it's held over the acupuncture points or on top of the acupuncture, acupuncture needles. Sometimes a moxa stick, like a cigar, is used and waved over areas of the body. Moxabustion supposedly dates back over 2,500 years, which could be earlier than acupuncture itself. Hmm. In traditional Chinese medicine, diseases are often thought to stem from the imbalances of ying and yang, and moxabustion is seen as a warming, yang strengthening therapy. Here are some of its claimed benefits.

• 15:07Speaker 03

  It warms and invigorates the flow of qi and blood. It treats cold conditions like arthritis and menstrual cramps. And it helps breach baby's turn in utero. That's a popular claim. Helps breach baby's turn in utero. What is the scientific evidence for this? None.

• 15:28Speaker 03

  There are studies, though, particularly from China, that claim these effects. But they're considered weak and biased, and I think that's probably very generous. The breach baby claim got attention from a few small trials suggesting a slight increase in fetal movement when combined with acupuncture. But this has not been able to be replicated, so the science really says no. Safety and criticisms, oh yeah, burns, blistering can occur if you're doing it wrong, the smoke from the burning moxie contains a particulate matter that can irritate your lungs, especially if you're using it indoors.

• 16:07Speaker 03

  And overall, this is definitely ironclad pseudoscience based on non-falsifiable and unproven concepts. So congratulations to the term moxie bustion, the very first, what is likely to be many more in this new segment, the dumbest word of the week. Oh, and stay tuned for more hybrid segments in the future, including the newly thought of segment, Swindler's Quickie. Back to you, Steve.

• 16:31Speaker 02

  I thought you were gonna do Science or Noisy.

• 16:33Speaker 03

  I gotta save something for the future. We have 20 more years of doing this.

• 16:38Jay Novella?

  When I do Swindler's List, what are you doing?

• 16:41Speaker 03

  Swindler's Quickie. That's another hybrid segment.

• 16:44Jay Novella?

  I'm gonna do the Quickie quote, then. That's my new segment. And then anything you come up with, I'll just put Quickie in front of it, and that'll be my new bit.

• 16:52Speaker 03

  Perfect. See how easy it is?

• 16:55Speaker 02

  Okay, let's go on with some full news items. Kara, start us off with the science of cold plunges.

• 17:02Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, some new, well, evidence, question mark, about cold plunges just published in PLOS 1. The article is titled, "No Ex-" well, that kind of gives it away, doesn't it? Damn it. Spoiler alert.

• 17:21Cara Santa Maria?

  The article is titled, "No Acceleration of Recovery From Exercise-Induced Muscle Damage After Cold or Hot Water Immersion in Women: A Randomized Control Trial." So the authors, you know, anytime researchers set out to ask an interesting scientific question, they justify the question. They say, you know, why is this important? What is this going to contribute to the literature or to our kind of field of knowledge right now? And one of the arguments that the authors make is that the vast majority of research in existence right now on things like cold plunge or cryotherapy or cold water immersion

• 18:01Cara Santa Maria?

  post-exercise for recovery are done on men, that there's very, very little evidence using women research participants. The other argument is that the evidence on men is weak at best. There is some evidence showing some changes, but a lot of it has not been easily replicated. And there's a fair amount of evidence showing no improvement. I even just did a quick kind of Google search before sitting down to do this story where I just looked up, you know, cryotherapy or cold water immersion skeptic and found, you know, a ton of summary articles over the years, starting, you know, back when this

• 18:45Cara Santa Maria?

  got really big in like the teens, up until recently, talking about things like whole body cryotherapy or cold water immersion and how the evidence is just kind of all over the place, but it's not very good. So far, it's just not very good that this is actually beneficial. And there is a fair amount of harm that can come from things like cryotherapy or cold water immersion if done inappropriately or done kind of not under the supervision of, like, let's say, a PT or a physician. Right. So what did these researchers do? Well, they said, what happens if we take a group of women?

• 19:26Cara Santa Maria?

  They took 30 women and they had them complete something called, an exercise called a drop jump. Have you guys ever done drop jumps? They're not box jumps, they're different. I had to like, watch a video about it. It looks brutal. What is it?

• 19:40Speaker 03

  I know what a box jump is, though.

• 19:41Cara Santa Maria?

  It's like the opposite of a box jump. It's like you start elevated, not too, too high, just a little bit elevated, like thigh high, and then, or even lower, and then you jump onto the ground and immediately rebound and spring up. So it's like, hit the ground and jump as fast as you can.

• 19:57Bob Novella?

  Yeah, I've seen it.

• 19:58Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, and sometimes you just jump, sometimes you jump onto another box.

• 20:01Speaker 03

  Like, it's a CrossFit exercise.

• 20:03Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it's like, it's like a high intensity, you know, exercise. And so, yeah, they had them do five sets of 20. So it's enough of an exercise that it should cause some amount of like muscle damage, right? Or at least irritation of your muscles. And so then they had the, and these were young women, they were, the average age was 23, they had them do one of three different protocols. They did either a 10 minute dip in 10 degrees Celsius water, a 10 minute dip in 40 degrees Celsius water, or nothing, right? That's the control group. So they did cold water immersion, hot water immersion, or no water immersion. And that was immediately after. And then again, two hours after that first

• 20:46Cara Santa Maria?

  soak, they did another one. So they did an immediate soak and then a delayed soak. And then they looked at a bunch of different markers, one, two, and three days after the experiment, both subjective and objective measurements. So everything from their muscle strength, how sore they felt, how swollen their muscles were, and creatine kinase, which is a marker of muscle damage in the blood. So they had these subjective and these objective measures. And they found that across the board, muscle recovery looked the same. Whether somebody did a cold water plunge, a hot water plunge, or no plunge at all, their muscles sort of recovered in the same way. They did find some differences. So they

• 21:29Cara Santa Maria?

  found that the cold water immersion protocol reduced oxygenation of the muscles, and they are referring to that as oxygen saturation within, within the muscles. So they found that the cold water protocol reduced oxygen saturation within the muscles and the temperature of the skin by a significant margin. They also found that the hot water protocol increased core body temperature and the temperature of the skin. So they did affect a measure, right?

• 22:01Speaker 03

  Which I imagine they predicted ahead of time would happen.

• 22:04Cara Santa Maria?

  There was some confusion about the oxygen saturation. It was actually kind of interesting in the discussion. I don't want to get too into the weeds, but they like they found that typically the reason that there's some, there's still a lot of debate within like the exercise science community about whether cold or hot is beneficial or deleterious is because they both do interesting things. And the question is which, you know, do they counteract each other? We don't know. So obviously, when you apply cold to your muscles, what happens?

• 22:36Speaker 03

  Contraction.

• 22:37Speaker 02

  It reduces blood flow.

• 22:38Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, reduces blood flow, right?

• 22:40Speaker 02

  Which is a bad thing.

• 22:40Cara Santa Maria?

  Which can be, yeah, which is a bad thing, but it also reduces inflammatory response, which could be a good thing potentially.

• 22:48Speaker 02

  But actually, but actually, I don't think it is because that's part of the re, the muscle building activity. It requires that inflammation.

• 22:55Cara Santa Maria?

  If it's a, shall we call it like a normal, healthy amount of muscle damage? But if there's injury or anything beyond that, it, you know, it can actually be a good thing. But then on the flip side, what happens when you apply heat?

• 23:07Speaker 02

  Get increased blood.

• 23:08Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, you've got increased vasodilation. And so you've got metabolic increases, nutrient delivery increases, an increase in the removal of these waste byproducts.

• 23:18Speaker 03

  Ah.

• 23:18Cara Santa Maria?

  And so it's like, okay, well, heat sounds like it would be good, but maybe in some instances, cold would be good, or maybe we shouldn't do either and let the body do what it's supposed to do.

• 23:28Speaker 02

  Let the body do what it's gonna do. Like that it evolved over millions of years to do.

• 23:32Cara Santa Maria?

  And also, is this something where this is damage that's beyond normal activity? Or is it normal damage? Like, this is complicated, right?

• 23:39Speaker 03

  Does it mitigate pain?

• 23:41Cara Santa Maria?

  And that's another question, right? What happens for, if you feel pain in your muscles, if you feel soreness? And so they were like, okay, we want to look at all of these things. And they found that, yes, when they applied cold, the muscles were less oxygenated. But actually, weirdly, they immediately vasodilated and then they constricted. So when they looked at the first measurement. In both the heat and the cold group, there was vasodilation and they were like, well, that's weird. But then they found that similar to some other studies, there does appear to be this like biological response that's sort of like the body's reaction to frostbite. So when the body can tell that there's been an extreme drop in temperature and that it

• 24:23Cara Santa Maria?

  could be dangerous for tissue, it actually will vasodilate before it vasoconstricts. So that's kind of interesting. They call it cold-induced vasodilation. It's proposed to occur a few minutes after cold exposure to protect against injuries from the cold, like frostbite, but then it usually reverses. But that's like neither here nor there. So they found that overall, across the board, in the cold group, the muscles were more oxygenated and the skin got colder. Okay. In the hot group, the core body temperature raised and the skin got hotter. Okay. But there was no measurable difference in any recovery parameter. So they didn't see any subjective or objective characteristics in the cold water immersion group or the hot water immersion group compared to the passive

• 25:05Cara Santa Maria?

  control. Participants didn't feel any better and participants didn't have any metrics that showed that their muscles were were healing or improving faster. And that was at, you know, immediate measurements and up to three days later. Now, there are some limitations of this study. Obviously, it was a small sample size. They didn't, and they talk about this a lot in the study, which I think is interesting, they didn't do any sort of pre-test about psychological bias. Like, they didn't ask them, do you think this will work? Or what kinds of things do you typically do and what works for you? And they do note that there could be a psychological component to these types of post-exercise rituals. Because we've all met people, yeah, we've all met people who are like, I always

• 25:49Cara Santa Maria?

  do this thing and I always feel better after.

• 25:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:52Cara Santa Maria?

  And it's like, well, yeah, because maybe you think you're gonna feel better.

• 25:55Speaker 02

  Psychological conditioning, yeah.

• 25:56Cara Santa Maria?

  Totally. And so they didn't test for that. But either way, what's interesting is they did find no measurable difference. And so they argue in their paper that not only is this an important Contribution to the literature because you know, the literature on cold water immersion and cryotherapy is all over the place. And this is just another sort of nail in that coffin that says it doesn't seem to work. But also, most all of that literature, all of those studies have been performed on on men. And so here is a study showing something that is important to talk about the unique physiology of women when it comes to exercise science. So I liked this study for multiple reasons. And it's just one more thing that

• 26:35Cara Santa Maria?

  we can kind of reference when cryotherapy comes up in conversation, as it so often does.

• 26:43Speaker 02

  Got to be careful. Joe Rogan's not going to like you now. Right.

• 26:47Cara Santa Maria?

  I think that ship has sailed, Steve.

• 26:50Speaker 02

  That's where you got, you got, didn't like me because I said, there's no evidence to show that cryotherapy or this cold plunge treatment is good for muscle recovery or good for anything. And there still isn't, years later, there still isn't evidence. In fact, what evidence we do have, as you say, it's all over the place, which is always a sign that the, it's the null hypothesis. But this is pretty much a dead negative study.

• 27:11Cara Santa Maria?

  And even when it comes to areas where we have really good evidence, like I still find myself frustrated. So I'm going to see an ortho tomorrow because I, I don't know if you guys remember, but I sprained my ankle way back in February. I was very good and I wore a boot, an air boot for a couple of weeks. I was, I babied it for a while, but then eventually I went back to gymnastics and I went back to hiking and doing all the things that I love to do. And it just is not healing. And every time I would talk to a physician, they would be like, well, you have to stay off of it. And I'd be like, for how long? And they would say, until it stops hurting. And I was like, it doesn't hurt until I work out and then it hurts again. And they're like, well, until it doesn't hurt after you work out. And I'm like, well, I am not psychic. So I don't know how to figure that out. Right? And, and find, and the x-rays keep showing nothing. So obviously

• 27:55Cara Santa Maria?

  I'm going to need to get an MRI and see if I have any damage to my ligaments. But I hear all the time from different providers, well, have you been icing it? Well, have you used a heating pad? And I'm like, which one? When? Why?

• 28:08Cara Santa Maria?

  I ice it when it's swollen. I think I'm supposed to do that. But I don't know when to use heat.

• 28:14Speaker 02

  The general rule of thumb is the first 24 hours you ice to reduce swelling and then after that you use heat to make it feel better, you know, relax the muscles, just to prevent spasm. None of that promotes healing. It's just to make you feel better.

• 28:27Cara Santa Maria?

  Exactly. And I don't think there's anything going on with my muscles. Maybe, but it could be ligament. It could be whatever.

• 28:32Speaker 02

  If it was ligament, yeah, it's just.

• 28:33Speaker 03

  Tendon.

• 28:33Cara Santa Maria?

  But I.

• 28:34Speaker 02

  Then it takes a long time to get better and there's.

• 28:36Speaker 03

  Long time feet.

• 28:38Cara Santa Maria?

  Exactly. You can't stay off your feet.

• 28:40Speaker 02

  Well, you can. You can use crutches, you know.

• 28:43Cara Santa Maria?

  Exactly. Or an air boot to at least, um, yeah.

• 28:46Speaker 03

  Foot injury in professional athletics is awful. It takes them out of the game for a long time. We take our feet for granted quite a bit.

• 28:55Speaker 02

  Well, any part of the body that is like a part of your just core functionality, like you can't not use it. That's why like back problems are so bad because you can't not use your back, you know?

• 29:05Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, yeah. After, if you guys remember a couple of years ago, after my hysterectomy, I really had taken for granted how often I use my abs.

• 29:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 29:15Cara Santa Maria?

  You know, and it's like you just, you can't move your abs after hysterectomy.

• 29:17Speaker 02

  Core body muscles.

• 29:18Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. And it's, you can't do anything. And everything you do, you have to be so controlled and so intentional about it for weeks.

• 29:26Speaker 02

  All right. Thank you, Cara. Jay, when is life on earth going to end?

• 29:32Jay Novella?

  Guys, what's going to kill all the life on earth first?

• 29:35Speaker 03

  Oh, what will, what will the cause be?

• 29:37Jay Novella?

  Yeah, just throw out your guesses.

• 29:38Speaker 03

  Well, the easy guess is other.

• 29:40Cara Santa Maria?

  Nuclear winter.

• 29:42Speaker 03

  People.

• 29:43Cara Santa Maria?

  People, yes.

• 29:43Speaker 02

  All life on earth, I would say.

• 29:46Bob Novella?

  If you're including bacteria, then it's got to be the increasing heat of the sun.

• 29:50Speaker 03

  Well, right.

• 29:51Speaker 02

  Well, I think it's between, well, there's a few things I could do. It could be that just by necessity, eventually will, the sun will grow, you know, the temperature will increase and eventually the earth will boil. But before that, we may be hit with a gamma ray burst.

• 30:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:06Speaker 02

  Or we may be hit with an extinction level asteroid event.

• 30:11Jay Novella?

  Well barring any outside effects, you know, like Bob was in the right, the right zone. It definitely has something to do with the sun. So, you know, when we, when we think about the long-term future of the earth, you know, like you were saying, Steve, we often think of like, you know, weird things happening to the continents and asteroid impacts. And then, you know, I remember as a kid being told that the sun is gonna like engulf the earth. And I thought that was really horrifying. It's terrifying. But the cool thing and the interesting thing, well, first of all, we don't have to worry about any of this. Everyone, it's all good. This is gonna happen a very long time from now. So long before any of that nonsense happens, there, there is a slow and silent killer that could reshape the earth's biosphere. And what that means is there, there would

• 30:54Jay Novella?

  be a complete loss of atmospheric oxygen. And that, my friends, is it. That kills everything on the planet.

• 31:00Speaker 02

  What about the anaerobic bacteria?

• 31:02Jay Novella?

  Well, they'll, they'll hang out for a little while and then they'll die too. And the tardigrades? They're creatures like that will probably be the very, very last. Luckies. Um, you know, tardigrades, you know, who knows? And who knows what? Yeah, it's really cool. I'm curious to know. I wonder, I wonder if there would be, you know, evolution happening for creatures like that to survive.

• 31:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:23Jay Novella?

  So let's get into the details. So Kazumi Ozaki at Toho University and Christopher Reinhardt at Georgia Institute of Technology, published their study in nature geoscience and they used a sophisticated earth system model to forecast the fate, you know, the fact, you know, we have an oxygen-rich atmosphere and they wanted to know, you know, what was gonna happen to, you know, all the elements of the earth when the sun eventually starts really heating things up. So they concluded that earth's breathable air isn't going to last forever. And according to their simulations, the planet has about 1.8, 1.08 billion years left, and with an error bar of about 140 million years before oxygen levels like plunge.

• 32:06Jay Novella?

  And this would happen within about 10,000 years of when it starts, it'll be all over and there is no recovery from it. So they were saying that this would leave the atmosphere like the Archean Earth, right, you know, very, very, very long ago before, you know, we had the oxygen-rich atmosphere that we have now. So as our sun ages, it's gradually gonna become more luminous, which sounds very pretty. But that with that extra luminosity, we have, you know, heat and lots of different things changing, lots of levers are gonna change. It increases the solar energy, it kicks off this crazy cascade of geochemical and biological feedbacks that will ultimately trigger a total collapse in atmospheric oxygen.

• 32:50Jay Novella?

  So at the core of the model, they're saying it's photosynthesis. So the process that generates all the oxygen over billions of years on the planet, you know, these come from plants and microbes and they need CO2. But the more solar radiation Earth receives, the more chemical weathering occurs, which scrubs CO2 from the atmosphere, and that's it. That's the marble. So as CO2 levels drop, photosynthesis will eventually start to stumble and then it will completely break down. And then the biosphere can no longer sustain high levels of atmospheric oxygen. It just, the production will stop. And eventually, even oxygen-producing life, like cyanobacteria and plants, they're just not gonna be able to survive and it's gonna like, it's gonna plummet very quickly.

• 33:35Jay Novella?

  So like I said, they estimated that once this tipping point is reached, oxygen levels will, will fall severely over the span of about 10,000 years, which is nothing from a geological timescale. And the atmosphere, you know, it's gonna end up being rich in methane, very low in oxygen. It's gonna resemble Earth about 2.5 billion years ago, prior to what has been called, what, the Great Oxidation Event?

• 34:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, Oxygen Revolution.

• 34:02Jay Novella?

  Yeah, so they're just gonna, it's just, it's just gonna do a 180 on that. And this change isn't about habitability in the abstract, it's about, you know, the fact that the habitability of the planet, it's complicated, it's oxygen-dependent, and microbes and extremophiles might be able to last a little longer and everything, but it's just gonna get to the point where it, it's gonna change the atmosphere so much that they're saying they don't think anything is gonna survive. You know, we know exactly what the sun's gonna do. You know, it's not a mystery in any way. We know exactly what what the stages are and and you know, because of the size and makeup of our sun, we we know like pretty accurately how long it's gonna take for it to become more luminous and what that change in temperature and everything is gonna

• 34:47Jay Novella?

  do. And it just makes this whole thing fascinating, even though it's terrible, right? But it's so far in the future and any any humanity that is alive or any, you know, anything that is, you know, comes after humanity that's alive at that point is probably not gonna need Earth anyway, which I I find to be kinda sad, too. So I'm not worried about it like, you know, killing humanity in a sense. You know, you know what I'm saying?

• 35:09Speaker 02

  It's a billion years. Like, we won't even exist, not certainly in the state that we're currently in.

• 35:13Jay Novella?

  But like everything, most humans, like, we take everything for granted, including the simple fact that we have an oxygen-rich atmosphere. And it's not a fixed feature, though. It wasn't here when the Earth began, and it's not gonna be here for, you know, for quite a long time before the Earth really does get engulfed by the Sun. And they're saying like, you know, we we should think about it as it's a fragile system. But if you look at the frickin' Earth from outer space, there's this tiny, thin layer of roughly, on average, 70-degree, oxygen-rich atmosphere, and that's it. And there's nothing between us and space, just just a column of air that isn't that much. So it it was interesting to hear them say, you know, take a deep breath

• 35:55Jay Novella?

  and enjoy it, you know, it's it's wonderful and we should be be thankful.

• 35:59Speaker 02

  I know, we got a billion years left.

• 36:00Jay Novella?

  Yeah, but we could screw up our our atmosphere. I mean, we're

• 36:03Speaker 02

  Oh, sure.

• 36:04Jay Novella?

  We are doing things that are damaging ourselves right now. Like, we, you know, we should show some freaking respect to humanity and to the Earth and not allow these things to happen. Or at least, once we discover it, do something, you know, very, you know, very severe to undo it, but, you know, we're just not doing it. But I'm breathing and I'm enjoying it, and I just don't wanna lose that feel.

• 36:23Speaker 02

  All right. Thank you, Jay. Well, Jay, I have a solution for you.

• 36:26Jay Novella?

  Go ahead.

• 36:26Speaker 02

  For global warming.

• 36:27Jay Novella?

  Yep.

• 36:28Speaker 02

  For our energy conversion into a low-carbon future.

• 36:31Jay Novella?

  What is it?

• 36:32Speaker 02

  You ready?

• 36:32Jay Novella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:33Speaker 02

  Floating nuclear power plants. I like this.

• 36:36Jay Novella?

  Why would you do that? Wait, floating on the ocean or floating in the air?

• 36:39Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 36:40Cara Santa Maria?

  I'm so excited, you guys.

• 36:43Speaker 02

  That's a big take care. That's a big difference. That's true. That is true. Yes, floating on water. Now, what when was the first nuclear powered vessel commissioned?

• 36:56Speaker 03

  Oh, that was the Nautilus. That's the submarine, the 1956.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  55. Good guess. 1955, the USS Nautilus. So we have basically been operating nuclear powered reactors on ships for 70 years without incident.

• 37:13Speaker 03

  Isn't that, that's, that is impressive.

• 37:16Speaker 02

  That's the US. I mean,

• 37:17Speaker 03

  Right. Not the Kursk, right? The Russian.

• 37:19Speaker 02

  The Soviets had a couple of mishaps, but I don't think that's inherent to the technology itself. Let's say that. So, yeah, so it seems like it seems pretty doable. Right now there are 160 nuclear powered ships in operation, mostly submarines and aircraft carriers. So the idea is, well, why not make a ship that is a nuclear power plant, like not powering the ship, but just making power. So a typical ship will generate several hundred, you know, 200, 300 megawatts of electricity compared to a typical land based nuclear reactor, which generates 1600 or more megawatts. But you could certainly make one that again,

• 38:04Speaker 02

  since you're not using it as a aircraft carrier or submarine, you're just using it as a nuclear power factory, you could get up to like that range, you know, 500, 600 megawatts. Yeah, gigawatt.

• 38:18Bob Novella?

  How do you plug it into the grid, though?

• 38:20Speaker 02

  That's a good question. That, yeah, we'll get to that. So.

• 38:23Bob Novella?

  I just wanted to say before anybody else did.

• 38:24Speaker 03

  You take the three prongs and you click it in.

• 38:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. So what would be the advantages and the disadvantages to doing this as opposed to just building nuclear reactors on the land, which is what we're currently doing?

• 38:38Bob Novella?

  You can move them to where the power is needed.

• 38:40Speaker 03

  Mobility.

• 38:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. So mobility is one.

• 38:42Bob Novella?

  Mobility, obviously.

• 38:43Speaker 02

  So there's a company that's currently, I think, the farthest along, yeah, core power. They say that they're further, the farthest along. And what I could tell of any company, there are other companies working on this as well, in terms of being able to produce this, these floating nuclear power plants. So they point out that 65% of economic activity occurs in coastal regions. So that's a lot. Yeah. As Bob said, these nuclear barges could be towed to a port. And they could just park them in the port, like right now, we park nuclear aircraft carriers in ports, right? You could do it. No problem. Plug it in and you have power where it's needed. And I don't know that the moving thing is going to be that critical. You know what I mean?

• 39:29Speaker 02

  Like, once you put them where they need to be, they probably will be there for a while. But the big advantage, though, is you don't have to do any site preparation. Yeah. Before you build a nuclear power plant, you've got to prepare the land for it. Oh, sure. And that's a lot to do, that it's a huge delay, there's a lot of regulations. All the environmental studies. Costs a lot of money. So much.

• 39:51Bob Novella?

  Damn red tape.

• 39:52Speaker 02

  This way, you just float it where you want it to be, and that's it. There's no site preparation, right? Or at least not where the power plant is going to be itself. The other thing is, we already have a shipbuilding industry, right? We basically already have an infrastructure with the people, with the training and, you know, the shipyards to do this. So all we have to do is adapt that to building these nuclear barges. So, and then they could be produced relatively quickly. It'd be kind of like the similar idea to the small modular reactors, where you come up with a design, and then just produce a bunch of them in a factory, you know, rather than bespoke power plants on site.

• 40:33Speaker 02

  This way, like, once you come up with a design, you could build 100 of these ships, these nuclear barges, send them to where they need to go. They would all be centrally produced in shipyards, which could also handle maintenance, fueling, you know, refueling and waste disposal, right? So all of that could be handled with this sort of centralized infrastructure. And you could even park someone, some of them further offshore, if that makes more sense, if you don't want them in the port. And that would work as well. So Bob, you bring up one point is like, well, how are they going to get plugged into the grid? Right? Because obviously that's that is important. And so, yeah, that would be the one infrastructure thing that we would need to do. We would need to make sure that there was a place for them to plug in.

• 41:17Speaker 02

  Right? There would need to be an access port for the grid. Wherever they are. That's obviously not a deal killer. That that's just, but that's some infrastructure that we would have to, that we would have to build. As opposed to, say, building a nuclear power plant on the site of a decommissioned coal-fired plant. Which is something else, I think, that we should be doing. We are doing that in some cases, but that's. Again, some of the low hanging fruit with the big advantages. We have an existing connection to the grid. You're just swapping out a coal-fired plant for a nuclear plant. That's awesome. This would be a new location. So, but so you would need new connections to the grid. It's like, to me, that's the one main downside. But other than that, I think it sounds like a good idea.

• 41:59Speaker 02

  There are a lot of advantages and it's a way of getting the nuclear power close to its end use. Just offshore, you know, you got a lot of our cities, a lot of our infrastructure is built along the coast for obvious reasons.

• 42:14Bob Novella?

  There'd still be a lot of red tape, right? Because you would still, you wouldn't need to prep the area necessarily for the construction, but you'd need to prep it for the regulations of having a nuclear power plant right there, you know?

• 42:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, but as I said, we already park nuclear powered ships in these ports, right?

• 42:31Bob Novella?

  Yeah, but they're not there. You said, once they go there, they're probably going to stay there for quite a while. And so those ships don't stay for that long.

• 42:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, so there's, I'm sure there's going to be some regulatory steps here, right? And of course, they, the companies are working with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and, you know, all of the regulatory agencies. And that, and they will have to get all of that. What I would like to see happen is an operation warp speed for these nuclear power plants. You know, get streamlined the regulations without compromising safety, of course. But, you know, we are nowhere near the optimal compromise of speed and safety. We are way towards the end of inefficient bureaucracy, way more inefficient than it has to be. And a lot of it is just that we don't have the resources. Like, you put

• 43:22Speaker 02

  it on someone's desk, like, yeah, I'll get to that in a year. You know, that kind of thing is going on, where if you just had more people who could, you know, pile through this, like, Operation Warp Speed for the vaccine for COVID, it didn't reduce the research, it just allowed them to happen at the same time, right? Instead of saying, okay, now you gotta do your phase one, and then when that's done, stop, pause, we'll look at everything, we'll go over everything, and then, once you get your approvals, now you can start planning for the second phase, right? So it takes years. And the Warp Speed was like, just do it all at once. You know, you still have to do everything and get approval of everything, but you don't have to wait to get started. And, right? It's not so sequential.

• 44:04Speaker 02

  It's more in parallel rather than in series. So, we could do the same thing. We could, you know, find ways to streamline the process, increase the regulatory resources, so that's not a logjam, right? That's not slowing down the process. And just make it happen, you know, just make it happen. And then, we could be deploying these fairly quickly. And this could be a great addition to our transition to low-carbon energy. So, hopefully, this will, this will proceed fairly quickly. I do think this is, nuclear power now, interestingly, is like, the one thing that has bipartisan support in the US. Because it has traditional Republican support, and the Democrats are like, it's better than global warming, you

• 44:47Speaker 02

  know what I mean? So they're, they're coming around to it as well. The Biden administration was all in on nuclear. They did a lot of, they passed a lot of things to, to fast-forward nuclear power. And it's like, the one thing I don't think that the Trump administration's gonna go back on. I mean, we'll see, but it looks like the, I mean, other than there's a generic destroying the infrastructure of our federal government, but, other than that, the, I, the, the hope is that, at least, we can continue to move forward on, on the nuclear power. So, by coincidence, I think this is a total coincidence, right after I, you know, wrote my article on floating nuclear power plants, I read a Research study on floating solar farms. So this is kind of the another low carbon energy, solar power.

• 45:30Speaker 02

  The idea here is that you build a a grid scale solar, you know, power plant. You have floating solar panels and you put them on a body of water, right? This is already happening, you know, and China, of course, is doing more of it than anybody else. And the growth rate is pretty huge. Right now, there's about 13 gigawatts of floating solar capacity installed worldwide. But the growth rate is about 34% per year and accelerating. So this is, I obviously it's gonna it's gonna level off at some point. But I think we're sort of picking the low hanging fruit. Mostly, it's going on artificial bodies of water. So reservoirs and irrigation ponds, you know, not on like natural lakes and not on the ocean or anything.

• 46:14Speaker 02

  Now here, there's an interesting synergy here because if like if you have an irrigation pond or if you have a body of a reservoir used as part of closed loop hydro grid storage power. Right? We talked about that before. Oh, yes. You need anti evaporation measures, right? Yes. So guess what? The floating solar panels, yeah, that can it can be your anti evaporation strategy. And

• 46:43Bob Novella?

  That's a win win.

• 46:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. So now you got like, imagine like a vast solar farm on top of a closed loop hydro reservoir. It prevents evaporation. It produces the energy that the closed loop hydro is storing, you know? So it's like its own little system. So that's it. That's another, I think, opportunity. The biggest, so the reason why that is critical, in my opinion, is because the what's the biggest downside of solar power? It's that it's intermittent. Battery. It's intermittent. Oh, transmission. Land use. It uses a lot of land. Do you what do you what do you guys think is the most intensive land use per? Like if you talk about how many meters squared per megawatt hour?

• 47:26Speaker 02

  How what's what type, what source of power uses the most land for the amount of power it generates?

• 47:31Bob Novella?

  Bio biofuel?

• 47:33Speaker 02

  No. Is it solar? Nope, it's hydro. Hydro. Really? Hydro. Number two, concentrating solar. So not a not a photovoltaic, but mirrors pointed at a tower, right? Okay. Three is coal power. Four. What about sand power?

• 47:51Speaker 02

  Four is photovoltaic, is some photovoltaics, solar. Uh, so it's pretty close to the top, nineteen meters squared per megawatt hour. Uh, hydropower's thirty-three. The best is, what do you think?

• 48:03Speaker 03

  Oh, least land use?

• 48:05Speaker 02

  Least land per megawatt hour.

• 48:06Speaker 03

  Is it nuclear?

• 48:07Speaker 02

  By far, nuclear, by far. Zero point three, literally two orders of magnitude less than hydropower.

• 48:14Speaker 03

  Cause they generate so much power.

• 48:16Speaker 02

  Yes, and then on a fairly small footprint, this would even be less. Alright, but, close to the bottom, one point two, is rooftop solar. That's, that is why I'm a big fan of rooftop solar, even though it's not the most cost-effective, per se, big solar installations may cost less for the energy generated, but they use a lot of land. So if you don't, if you include the land use, they become much less attractive.

• 48:42Speaker 03

  Right.

• 48:42Speaker 02

  So I think we should just have solar on every rooftop, or at least the top two-thirds, efficiency-wise, you know what I mean? We, we could, if we, if, by one estimate, if every rooftop in, in the country had solar power, panels on it, that would generate forty-five percent of our electricity. So let's say we do twenty to thirty percent, we pick the low-hanging fruit. That's like almost no land use, right? It's just on rooftops. Yeah, it's great. But in cases where we need some solar installations, um, we can put, have them floating on bodies of water that are artificial, that we just have sitting there, that we need anti-evaporation technology for, anyway. The only issue is it does affect, uh, water birds, because they do use those bodies of

• 49:27Speaker 02

  water. And so that, that actually was the news item that I came across, that they're studying the interaction between water birds and floating solar panels, both, how, how they affect each other, right? So no real conclusions out there, just just laying out the questions that we need to research, to make sure that we're having a minimal footprint. You know, it's kind of like with wind turbines. Do you guys remember, like, how many birds do wind turbines kill each year in the United States? Ooh, I don't wanna know.

• 49:59Speaker 03

  Hundreds of thousands, isn't it?

• 50:00Speaker 02

  It's hundreds of thousands. Estimates are between one hundred and fifty and seven hundred thousand birds.

• 50:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:06Speaker 02

  Sounds like a lot, but that's nothing. It's a round-off error.

• 50:10Bob Novella?

  Cats kill a lot more than that, right?

• 50:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:12Speaker 02

  Domestic cats, domestic cats kill one to three billion birds a year.

• 50:16Speaker 03

  Good kitty.

• 50:17Speaker 02

  One billion birds die annually just flying into windows.

• 50:20Speaker 03

  Windows. Yeah, the window dust.

• 50:22Speaker 02

  We gotta get rid of all those windows, Steve. So even if you rounded up wind turbines to a million, it's a roundoff error. It's nothing compared to that, to the billions that are dying from these other reasons. Essentially anthropogenic reasons. So we could do more, we could save more birds just by having bird-safe windows in buildings. You know what I mean? Rather than, and, but not having said that, we should be putting wind turbines in locations that minimize their impact on birds, especially the, you know, large raptors, you know. We don't want to put them right in a, you know, mating pathway or feeding pathway for large raptors. And we're getting better at that. We're studying it, we're getting better at it, we're trying to minimize the impact.

• 51:07Speaker 02

  We're designing them so that they're, that they're less disruptive to the birds, et cetera. You could put them at a height where most birds don't go. You could put them offshore, you know. Nothing, again, nothing has a zero ecological impact, but we could minimize it.

• 51:20Speaker 03

  Minimize it. It's always minimizing.

• 51:21Speaker 02

  It's all about minimizing it, yeah. So for all of these things, wind and solar and floating solar and floating nuclear, it's all about minimizing the footprint, minimizing the ecological impact, not to zero, but just to, you know, to less. And here's another thing, how many birds do you think burning fossil fuel kills a year?

• 51:38Speaker 03

  Oh, well, it's gotta be many tens of millions, if not hundreds.

• 51:42Speaker 02

  Quintillions. 14.5 million. So again, an order of magnitude more than wind turbines. And that's only from direct causes. That doesn't even include global warming. That's just, they just, you know, the burning fossil fuel, fossil fuel factories, you know, themselves, directly just the pollution and just interaction with the birds.

• 52:06Speaker 02

  14.5 million birds a year. So, any of the like global warming deniers who go, "Oh, their turbines are killing birds" are hypocrites. They're lying hypocrites because the fossil fuel kills way more, way more wildlife, way more birds than all of the clean energy combined. It's not even close. And that's not, and that's even before you include global warming. All right, guys, let's move on. All right, Bob, how can we better visualize special relativity?

• 52:37Bob Novella?

  Okay, let's do this. So, all right, so researchers have confirmed in a lab the Tyrell Penrose effect, which I didn't even hear about as of two weeks ago. It's a theory that at speeds close to the speed of light, objects would appear to be weirdly rotated and not flattened as early interpretations of Einstein's special relativity predicted or seemed to predict. So, I promise to be gentle with this one. This is from researchers in Vienna. The title of their paper is "A Snapshot of Relativistic Motion Visualizing the Tyrell Penrose Effect." Okay, so we've all heard of Einstein's special theory of relativity. It largely deals with the idea that the speed of light in a vacuum absolutely refuses to be measured at any other speed, no matter what.

• 53:22Bob Novella?

  186,000 miles per second, 300,000 kilometers per second, see, no matter what speed you're moving at, that's what you're going to measure. So, it just, that might seem like not too dramatic, but when you, but really though, it's, it's such a dramatic, universe-changing statement. Imagine you're zooming through space at 99.9999% the speed of light, and then you turned on the ship's outside lights and you measured that light. It would still fly away from you at 300,000 kilometers a second. What the hell's going on? You're traveling almost that speed right now. How could it? Go at same old speed. It doesn't make any sense. Of course, not to our highway traveling car sense, right?

• 54:07Bob Novella?

  But this is the way the universe works, apparently. So for that to be real, for that to be an actual thing that happens, that would mean that some of the basic assumptions that we make every day would not be true. Like, space and time, you know, time and length have to be assumptions that aren't going to always hold true. So at such relativistic velocities, time would have to slow down dramatically for you, in some real sense, for you to measure light as unchanged, right? So this is relativistic time dilation, talked about it about a billion times. Less well-known, to the uninitiated anyways, is that length contraction, or a flattening in the direction of movement,

• 54:48Bob Novella?

  is also a real and dramatically large thing at such speeds, according to observers, as usual. Now, you wouldn't notice any of this inside your ship, but outside observers, as I just said, could. And scientists have confirmed time dilation and length contraction over and over through the decades. But one ramification of these effects, specifically length contraction, has not been confirmed, and that's this Tyrell-Penrose effect, theorized in 1959 by Roger Penrose and James Tyrell. The key insight of this theory, one of them was that if an object is moving across your field of view at near the speed of light, and if you could also somehow, somehow see it or image it with a camera or whatever,

• 55:32Bob Novella?

  so given those assumptions, it would not appear to be visually flattened or Lorentz-contracted, as the boffins say. It would mainly appear rotated, and with some other effects, but mainly rotated, even though it's not really rotated. This optical effect would be, is what would be visualized. So how many of you guys have seen that representation of a contracted ship? Like, a flattened ship moving near the speed of light? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's like, I've seen it many, many times. It's common, and it's not really wrong, because our measurements would indeed show a shorter If it weren't for one thing getting in the way, the finite speed of light,

• 56:14Bob Novella?

  which is what is creating this optical illusion of this rotation, if you could in fact image it. So now if you imagine a Borg cube on impulse, of course, don't even think about that warp drive crap. It's on impulse, traveling near the speed of light across your field of view. And you have some technology that somehow lets you image it. And you take a picture of the cube. Okay, so that's the scenario. Now, you know, you're not seeing the cube as it is right exactly specifically this instant, right? You're not really seeing that. You see the ship, it's like a time mosaic.

• 56:53Bob Novella?

  The image is, in a sense, you know, ideally, it's kind of a mosaic in time. As it was, this image of the ship is as it was at different points in the recent past, right? Different parts of the ship at different points in time, all put together, constructed, composited together, in a sense. So I'm not talking about Star Trek time travel, just the fact that the light you see left the ship at a different time, depending on how far away that part of the ship was, right? The back of the ship is farther away than the near side of the ship. So that's true, even when you look at an object like a jet, right? If you're looking at a jet or one of those fast penis rockets, right?

• 57:35Bob Novella?

  They're moving so slowly, okay, but they're moving so slowly that the time differences of the light from the near sides and the far sides of those ships, for all intents and purposes, are the same. And there essentially is no time delay because they're just not moving fast at all. The Borg ship, though, is moving near the speed of light. That's the difference here. That means that the ship travels a relatively large distance as all the light that's coming from it gets together for your image. So think about it, the light from the rear of the ship had to travel farther. It left earlier when that part of the ship was farther back. Now, light from the front traveled a shorter distance and left more recently. So the image is stitched together from light-

• 58:19Bob Novella?

  emitted at different times and positions. That's the key. The image you're looking at when you're looking at that Borg ship traveling across your field of view at near the speed of light, that image you're looking at is stitched together from light that's emitted at different times and different positions. And that's why the object appears rotated because of that optical illusion that's created. It's this artifact of taking an image of something moving that fast. It's important to know and reiterate to outside observers, this rotation effect is an optical illusion. It's caused by a Lorentz contracted ship because this ship is still Lorentz contracted. It's still flattened in a direction of motion. That's still, that's not going away at all.

• 59:03Bob Novella?

  So this is kind of like a veil in front of that if you, if you tried to image it. So let me say it again. It's an optical illusion caused by a Lorentz contracted ship that's moving so fast that the light from different parts of it builds up over time and distance, which stretches the image, making it seem not contracted. So over time, you're building up these photons that are, that happen to arrive at the same time for your image. And as that's happening, it's stretching out the Lorentz contracted ship so that it doesn't look contracted anymore. That one's kind of tough to wrap your head around. I hope I'm describing it okay. So how do you even test this? You can't do real world testing. We're not, there's nothing that we could possibly do with a quintillion dollars to do a real world test on this.

• 59:48Bob Novella?

  You'd have to move something relativistically that is absolutely gargantuan on scale for this to even be remotely feasible. So it's not, you're not going to do this.

• 59:57Speaker 02

  You can't put a little model of a spaceship in the, the Large Hadron Superglider?

• 1:00:01Bob Novella?

  Yeah, that's not going to work, Steve. But, uh, nice thought though. But in this case, the scientists used a sophisticated camera that had picosecond laser flashes and rotating mirrors and essentially to, to trick the camera into seeing what a sphere and a cube would look like if it were traveling at these ultra-relativistic speeds. So that's what they kind of did. They, they made this analog that would, you know, run the equations from special relativity. And build it up in a way that was basically identical to what would a real world system, but without you having to use a real world system, which never would happen. This involved timing when the light from the objects hit the cameras, or timed when the

• 1:00:41Bob Novella?

  light hit the, created the image, basically reconstructing what a relativistic flyby would look like. So that's what they did. And the result was, the Tyrell Penrose effect was real. The object seemed, looked rotated, and also, there's also these distortions, like relativistic aberrations that happen too, that bends the curves and stuff. But that's kind of like, not important to this right now. So, a very, very slick experiment. Fascinating to see what this, look at some of the videos online of what you would actually see. They're really cool. And it depends a lot on where it is in your field of view, how far away it is. Is it approaching you? Is it, is it moving farther? Is it moving away from you? And all those differences can, can change how you would see the, the

• 1:01:24Bob Novella?

  object. So in the future, this experiment could open up other avenues for exploring other relativistic phenomena in laboratory settings. So that's, that's interesting. And there's always this hope I have, that would actually make me giggle out loud in the movie theater, the hope that someday they will actually incorporate a Borg ship, or probably better, a spaceship, a regular spaceship, that actually shows some of these real relativistic effects, that they never really do, hardly ever. I'm having a hard time thinking of a science fiction movie, that really shows some of these relativistic effects. Because if, these relativistic effects are fascinating and world-changing, really help illuminate what the universe is really all about at these, at these velocities. But they're never gonna, they don't do that in the movies, because even near the speed of light is not

• 1:02:09Bob Novella?

  fast enough. You need to go warp speed. You need to go thousands of times the speed of light in order to, to travel any distance in science fiction. So they're not, you know, they're not very interested. And they, I don't know, would you, I wouldn't, I'm sure you guys would enjoy seeing real bizarre relativistic effects in science fiction. But it's just not there, right? I mean, I just think they, they're just not, there's no motivation to do it, because that's not fast enough.

• 1:02:31Speaker 03

  What was happening in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, when they went through that wormhole?

• 1:02:35Bob Novella?

  Oh, that's a solid baloney. We have, we have no idea. Yeah, that's, that's fast, that's faster than light. That's

• 1:02:41Speaker 03

  But wasn't that an attempt to kind of capture that thought, would you say?

• 1:02:45Bob Novella?

  No.

• 1:02:46Speaker 03

  You know, where they distort everything, and things become stretched, and pulled, and...

• 1:02:50Bob Novella?

  No, no, I don't think so. I think it's just whatever's gonna look, you know, they throw out the, they don't even use wormhole. They, they're just, you know, warping space around the ship and it's just all kind of nonsense and it looks good, but um.

• 1:03:02Speaker 02

  I think the only movie with realistic visuals was Interstellar, the black hole.

• 1:03:07Bob Novella?

  They, they actually, they actually did so much work for that movie that they wrote a paper from the research they did to, to, uh, to show a black hole, um, in, in a way that is, is realistic. And that was, yeah, that was unprecedented and probably singular at the level that they, they achieved, but uh, yeah, it was great.

• 1:03:26Speaker 03

  Clever. Singularity. Got it.

• 1:03:28Speaker 02

  All right. Thanks, Bob. Evan, tell us about brain spotting. Is that like Trainspotting? That was a good movie.

• 1:03:36Speaker 03

  Wasn't that everyone's first thought maybe when they heard this word? Brain spotting, Trainspotting, the movie, right? In the nineties? But no, brain spotting is a thing. It's a psychotherapy by definition that aims to help people access, process and release trauma, emotional pain and other psychological challenges by using spots in the patient's visual field.

• 1:04:00Cara Santa Maria?

  What?

• 1:04:01Speaker 03

  The, here's how the method is described. The, there's a therapist who will guide their patient to find a quote, "brain spot," which they define as a specific eye position that seems to correlate with the activation of a traumatic memory or emotion. The patient then focuses on that spot while observing their, while observing their inner experience. The process is usually silent and allows the brain to quote, "unwind stored trauma without detailed verbal discussion." This was developed by a, uh, doctor, Dr. David

• 1:04:39Speaker 03

  Grand in 2003 as an offshoot of EMDR, which Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing.

• 1:04:49Speaker 02

  You got it.

• 1:04:50Speaker 03

  Thank you. EMDR, right. Uh, now EMDR, from what I've read, I don't know how much we've spoken about this on the show.

• 1:04:58Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, we've covered it.

• 1:04:59Speaker 03

  It's scientific, right? It's evidence-based.

• 1:05:01Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, yes, but no.

• 1:05:03Speaker 02

  It's complete nonsense.

• 1:05:04Cara Santa Maria?

  It's nonsense.

• 1:05:05Speaker 03

  Oh, it is complete. Wait, wait. I'm getting, I'm getting multiple signals here. Is it good? Or is it?

• 1:05:10Cara Santa Maria?

  No, no, no. It's not that simple. It is considered an evidence-based treatment by the American Psychological Association, but that is very problematic because of the type of research that they did to come to that conclusion. Basically, the underlying component, which is the therapy that's done for post-traumatic stress disorder, is evidence-based and works. The moving your eyes thing is a hat on a hat. They just do that on top of it and they go, look, see how much better they are?

• 1:05:37Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:05:37Cara Santa Maria?

  And that's the problem.

• 1:05:38Speaker 03

  So you're saying you can achieve the same result without the eye movement part?

• 1:05:41Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:05:42Speaker 03

  Ah.

• 1:05:42Speaker 02

  It's a part of this nutritious breakfast treatment.

• 1:05:45Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:45Speaker 03

  Okay. Yes. Thank you. That's an excellent way, excellent way of putting that.

• 1:05:50Speaker 02

  And it's, but the thing is, it's neuroscientific nonsense. It makes absolutely no sense. It's not based on any basic science about how the brain works. It's just people just spouting pseudobabble. You know, that's all it is.

• 1:06:05Speaker 03

  And are you at all surprised that there are proponents of EMDR out there and they are all over, you know, I mean, singing its praises, basically?

• 1:06:13Speaker 02

  So it's, you know, as Kara said, it's quote-unquote evidence-based. What that is, is an indictment of evidence-based standard. That's why, that is why we have a science-based standard, because it's absolutely not science-based.

• 1:06:27Speaker 03

  So this becomes a good example of the difference between something that's evidence-based versus science.

• 1:06:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, but even, even the advocates of EBM would say they're doing it wrong. There are some people who say because there is a study which shows an effect that it's quote-unquote evidence-based, but that's not what it really means. You know what I mean? You have to do an actual systematic review that shows a number of things, that there is efficacy, and it doesn't do that. There's no efficacy to the EMDR part of the intervention. So they basically just stopped controlling for it, right? They stopped doing the kind of studies that would show that EMDR, if EMDR has efficacy or not. So they just focus on studies which show that people who get it, in addition to effective therapy, feel better, right?

• 1:07:15Speaker 03

  Oh, okay. All right. That makes sense. And therefore, because this brain-spotting therapy, if you want to call it that, is what an offshoot of EMDR.

• 1:07:25Speaker 02

  Makes perfect sense.

• 1:07:27Speaker 03

  And therefore, that's why, uh, Dr. Gary Wank wrote in Psychology Today recently that brain spotting is pseudoscience. That's the name of the article. Um, and the news item for this week. I'll read you a couple of the highlights from what he wrote. A recent publication examined an egregious example of pseudoscience, brain spotting, for its lack of plausible underlying neural mechanisms of psychopathology, and for its promotion of a method of intervention that is literally impossible for a human therapist to implement. Brain spotting is a talk therapy. Cara, I imagine you're familiar with talk therapy?

• 1:08:08Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, yeah, all, I mean, all psychotherapy is talk therapy.

• 1:08:11Speaker 03

  Okay, all right. So it's just another way of describing that.

• 1:08:14Cara Santa Maria?

  Psychotherapy, yeah.

• 1:08:15Speaker 02

  I mean, as opposed to pharmacotherapy, right?

• 1:08:18Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:08:18Speaker 02

  It's a big category of intervention.

• 1:08:20Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:08:21Speaker 03

  And this is based on the unproven idea that eye positions correlate with activation of specific brain regions involved in unconscious emotional experiences.

• 1:08:30Speaker 02

  So they fail right there. I just have to say, they fail right there. That is not true. That is, they just make that up. That the idea that like, if your eyes are in a certain position, so that they're looking at a certain place in three dimensional space, that that correlates to an area of your brain stem.

• 1:08:47Speaker 03

  This reminds me of a homunculus.

• 1:08:49Speaker 02

  It is, it is. It's basically a neuro homunculus.

• 1:08:53Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 1:08:54Speaker 02

  And, and not only that, Evan, but that that part of your brain stem is where the traumatic memories are stored.

• 1:09:00Speaker 03

  Oh, no.

• 1:09:01Speaker 02

  That's where the, the actual physical trauma is stored.

• 1:09:05Speaker 03

  Wrong.

• 1:09:06Speaker 02

  And you can, you can release it by looking at it and without having actually even talk about it. I mean, it's nonsense from top to bottom. It makes no sense.

• 1:09:18Cara Santa Maria?

  That's no different than like, than reflexology. It's no different than pushing on this part of your foot to cure your liver. Yeah, exactly.

• 1:09:27Speaker 03

  Wow, okay. Well, the creators of this therapy.

• 1:09:35Speaker 03

  Got right to the spoiler alert there, but the creators of therapy claim that where a person looks affects how they feel. And that's what this, that's what Gary Wink wrote about here. He says, that is absolute nonsense. Brain spotting requires that the therapist identify very brief pauses in the patient's eye movements while the patient is following a moving target. Essentially, the principal component of the treatment requires that the therapist must accomplish a task that is physically impossible for humans to perform at the naked eye. Right? So there's another totally implausible aspect of this is that, you know, people cannot do this, what they, what they're claiming that they can do.

• 1:10:15Speaker 02

  It's kind of like in astrology, like if you're using a, the kind of astrology, the sidereal astrology, where you have to know the minute of your birth. Nobody knows the minute of their, of their birth. Nobody knows it. But that's not really the worst part of the astrology, right? It just happens to be this additional technical limitation that emphasizes how much nonsense it is, but it's, the nonsense goes a lot deeper than that.

• 1:10:41Speaker 03

  And the body of evidence so far to date to support this is anecdotal.

• 1:10:46Speaker 02

  It's non-existent. So I looked it up. I did a, you know, just did a literature search. There were four, four studies. Two, two in medical hypotheses, which is worthless. That's a, that's a pseudo scientific journal, in my opinion. And the other two were in studies. They were just talking about it. In 23 years or 22 years, right? So that's also a red flag.

• 1:11:08Cara Santa Maria?

  Massive.

• 1:11:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:09Cara Santa Maria?

  Also, it's a red flag that, like, I've never heard of it.

• 1:11:12Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, I was surprised.

• 1:11:13Cara Santa Maria?

  I just got a degree in this stuff.

• 1:11:14Speaker 03

  Hey, Kara, have you heard of this? You're like, nope.

• 1:11:16Cara Santa Maria?

  No, this is not taught in, yeah, I hope not. Yeah. It never even came across any book I read.

• 1:11:23Speaker 03

  No, the only way, the only way this should be taught is an example of pseudoscience. That's the only time this should be taught.

• 1:11:29Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:11:31Speaker 03

  So good on Gary Wink over at Psychology Today for bringing this to the public's attention and making it so clear what this really is.

• 1:11:38Speaker 02

  All right. Thanks, Evan.

• 1:11:40Speaker 03

  Thanks.

• 1:11:40Speaker 02

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

• 1:11:42Jay Novella?

  Last week I played this noisy.

• 1:11:57Jay Novella?

  Anybody have any guesses?

• 1:11:58Speaker 02

  Sounds mechanical.

• 1:12:00Jay Novella?

  Well, that's always a good guess because there's tons of mechanical things all over the planet. So a listener named Michael Blaney wrote in and said, "Hey Jay, sounds like some kind of electronic leaf sweeper." And then I was thinking about it, I'm like, if there was, and there probably is, an electronic leaf sweeper, I could totally hear it sounding like that. So I think that's a good guess. A listener named Christine Andrews wrote in and said, "I think this week's noisy is an air raid siren motor without the blower horn attachment attached." I thought that was a genius guess because I would never have thought of that as a source of sound, right? Because it's, you know, an air horn, an air raid horn, basically without the blower. Like, what does that sound like? So, I don't think anybody knows.

• 1:12:43Jay Novella?

  And then another guest from another listener named John Geis, and he says, "Jay, this week's noisy is the sound of a paper going through a shredder. If you need more specifics, it's Dr. Steve shredding his accumulated notes/records after retirement." Did you do that, or do you have to end up doing that, Steve?

• 1:12:59Speaker 02

  Well, everything's digital now, so no. We don't even keep physical records anymore.

• 1:13:03Jay Novella?

  Do you have like a whole bunch of personal things there?

• 1:13:05Speaker 02

  No, just books and stuff, which I'm just leaving behind for the residents and fellows.

• 1:13:09Jay Novella?

  Whoa, okay. Wow, that's cool. Alright, so I had two winners this week. One of them came in first. His name is Robert Caldwell, and Robert said, "Hi Jay, I was starting to wonder if I would ever know any of the noisies that were on the show, but this week I've got it. The sound is from a Boeing horizontal stabilizer trim wheel. This is a manual trim wheel located in the cockpit that's used to reduce control pressure." So, yes, Robert, you're absolutely right. And another listener named Paul Redmond wrote in and said, "Hi Jay, I think this week's noisy sounds like an aircraft's elevator trim wheel in motion." So, from what I have been explained by the person who sent in the noisy,

• 1:13:49Jay Novella?

  there is a wheel that is in a housing that is between, let's say, you know, on that plane in particular, there's the pilot and the copilot. So there's like a round-looking thing that is in between them, right? And inside of that casing is a flywheel. And that flywheel helps orient, when you look at the back tail of a plane, right? You have a horizontal stabilizer.

• 1:14:14Jay Novella?

  Airfoil, that's the thing. And if I'm wrong, somebody email me, but that's how it was described to me. Yeah, and it makes this noise.

• 1:14:35Jay Novella?

  So I remembered something else, too. This wheel mechanism, of course, it's part of a system that's in the plane. It actually auto controls that stabilizer fin in the back of the plane, right? So the pilot doesn't have to constantly be doing the trim. And I remember when I did go for flights in, you know, a single-prop Cessna or whatever, there is a wheel in there that the pilot manually moves, right? It's like a mouse wheel next to the seat, but it's big. And they just kind of roll it with their hand to, you know, trim out this thing that levels the plane up. It's really cool. Of course, yeah, it's automatic in those bigger planes. All right, moving on, I have a new noisy this week sent in by a listener named Sam Rumble.

• 1:15:33Jay Novella?

  If you guys think you know what this week's noisy is, or if you heard something cool, email me at [email protected].

• 1:15:41Speaker 02

  So Jay, when this episode goes up, we'll be at Nauticon.

• 1:15:43Jay Novella?

  Yes, Saturday. Yeah, that'll be the 17th.

• 1:15:48Speaker 02

  And next week's show is going to be that episode that we record. So it'll be a couple of weeks before we reveal this, who's that noisy?

• 1:15:56Jay Novella?

  That'll give people plenty of time to do tons of research.

• 1:15:59Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:16:00Jay Novella?

  Oh, and as a side note to that noisy, be specific, please. It'll just help you win. So a couple of quick things, Steve, because we have nothing to say about Nauticon at this point, other than we'll tell you how great it was when it's over. I just want to say, if you like the work that we do and you want to support us, you can go to patreon.com/skepticsguide, that's one word. You can join our mailing list. We send out an email every week, and you can join that on the skepticsguide.org homepage. You could give our show a rating on any podcast player you're using, or just use iTunes, because I think people still use that for podcast ratings. And we will be in Kansas the weekend of September 20th, and we'll be doing a live SGU recording

• 1:16:45Jay Novella?

  as one event, and the nighttime event, we will be doing a skeptical extravaganza. If you haven't made it to any of these shows, please join us. It's a ton of fun. You know, you give us a day of your life, and we will entertain you for most of that day. Right, Steve?

• 1:17:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, we'll try our best. All right, thanks, Jay. All right, let's go on with some questions and emails. We got a couple. So, one, we had a few emails, and also just reading the comments in various locations. So, when we're talking about the pig heart transplants, right, genetically engineered pigs, in order to harvest their organs, specifically their hearts, for human transplant, we didn't get into the ethical discussion, partly because the discussion was long as it was, and that's a whole other can of worms, right? But enough people wrote in about it that we should talk about it at least for a few minutes. So...

• 1:17:38Jay Novella?

  Just animal studies in general?

• 1:17:40Speaker 02

  Anytime animals are involved, there's ethics involved, absolutely.

• 1:17:43Jay Novella?

  Sure.

• 1:17:44Speaker 02

  There's ethics involved with animal research, with any use of animals in medicine, and also with any use of animals, period, right? If we're using animals for their parts, there's ethics involved with that. I'll just give you my personal take, which is going to be, you know, reiterate things that I've said in the past. You guys could tell me what you think, or if you think there's any other angle here. First of all, you know, we raise and slaughter pigs for food, right? So... Pigs will be raised and slaughtered. And slaughtered. Seriously, so, you know, and I know people think that's unethical, but the point is, we're just talking about raising and sacrificing them for another purpose.

• 1:18:23Speaker 02

  So, if you think that eating animals is ethical, you shouldn't have a problem, at least at a fundamental level, with using animals to save lives, you know, by donating organs, right, sacrificing them for their organs. The, for me, the only real ethical consideration, well, I mean, not the only ethical consideration, but the important bit is, how are they treated, right? What is, what is their, their treatment like? And there are rules to that, right? Just like there are in research. There are rules about treating any animals in, in research or medical use ethically, humanely, no gratuitous cruelty, right? Nothing that- No torture.

• 1:19:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, nothing is done, you know, they have good living conditions, clean, they're fed, they're cared for. In fact, the, you know, pigs that would be used for transplant organs are treated really well, in terms of just how their, their environment is extremely clean, they're, you know, they, they can't get any infections, obviously. The only thing that you, you can't say, and that some people pointed out, is that they're, they're not free range, right? They're in a very, very controlled environment.

• 1:19:34Cara Santa Maria?

  But that doesn't mean that it can't be built in such a way that they have a lot of stimulation.

• 1:19:39Speaker 02

  Right, exactly.

• 1:19:40Cara Santa Maria?

  But I, I, I think, I think it's important to point out that the laws around welfare of research animals are significantly stricter than the laws around research, or around the welfare of animals raised for food-

• 1:19:55Speaker 02

  Oh, sure.

• 1:19:56Cara Santa Maria?

  -in this country.

• 1:19:57Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:19:58Cara Santa Maria?

  So we already have that in place. And for me, I mean, this is something I've like, written about a lot and talked about a lot, and it's kind of near and dear to my heart. I think that everybody has a line in the sand. Everybody has a certain level of complexity, or of, you know, whatever word you want to use to define it, where you say, above this, I don't think it's ethical to use these animals, and below it, I do think it's ethical to use these animals. You know, for me, I don't think it's ethical to do research, or to engage, or to eat, for example, elephants, or cetaceans, apes.

• 1:20:32Speaker 02

  Dolphins.

• 1:20:33Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, or primates, or, or apes at least, at the very least. For some people, they would add dogs, and cats, and pigs, and cows to that. And for some people, they would say, you know, no animals, not even a fruit fly. It's about how do you live your life- Where is that line in your sand, right? What are your, what are your personal ethics and your morals? And what are you willing to, I guess, do in your own personal life to, to hold on to that? Because I think it's valid for somebody who practices veganism and who is opposed to using animals in any way to say, I don't want to add to the burden, right? Like, we already use them for food. I already am against that. I already fight against that. I don't want to see them also used for this purpose.

• 1:21:16Cara Santa Maria?

  I think what's important to recognize is they're already used for research.

• 1:21:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:21Cara Santa Maria?

  And so while that's a valid position to have, if it's morally consistent with how you live your life, it's important to speak up and to have those kinds of conversations about it and to do your activism in a, in a way that is respectful, right? And is legal. I don't think there's anything wrong with being against it, per se. I think the problem is when people are somewhat morally inconsistent with those values.

• 1:21:47Speaker 02

  Exactly. Those are the two points. Yeah, one is be internally consistent, right? You can't be like, I'm, I can eat pigs, but I don't want to use them for donating organs or being sacrificed for their organs. Right. But assuming people are being internally consistent, as you say, it's like, yeah, I'm against using animals for food and for research and for medical purposes or whatever. I will only go, you know, down, you know, so far. It's a continuum, right? I mean, how?

• 1:22:12Cara Santa Maria?

  It's always a continuum. Some people are perfectly fine with fruit fly and nematode research, but they don't want to see, let's say, vertebrates being used for research.

• 1:22:20Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:22:20Speaker 03

  But does that mean they're going to not take antibiotics and other medicines and things from which we, from which those studies ultimately, you know, that becomes the end of the road?

• 1:22:28Cara Santa Maria?

  I think we have to be careful with that argument, too, because while I agree that it is morally inconsistent to say, okay, I think this is wrong, but I want to take these meds, we have to remember that we can do things now that we couldn't do 20, 30, 40, 100 years ago. There are ways that we can do research now that increase welfare of animals significantly more than we did in the past.

• 1:22:52Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:22:53Cara Santa Maria?

  We know that. We used to do really messed up stuff in the lab.

• 1:22:55Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:22:56Cara Santa Maria?

  And we have a lot, yeah. And now we have a lot of laws that protect against them. There's a lot of basic research with animals that we don't have to do anymore because we already have those answers and we're moving beyond that, right? We don't, there are a lot of things that we can synthesize now that we don't have to extract from animals, for example. And so I do think it's a little bit like unfair to be like, well, then you can never take an antibiotic because we do a lot of drug research now. Yes, we still do a lot on mice, but we don't, we don't, I, it's not this, to the same extent that it was historically.

• 1:23:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think everyone's point is more like, if you're one of those people who's like, we shouldn't harm a fruit fly, it's like, okay, but, but, so no pesticides is what you're saying, so we...

• 1:23:37Cara Santa Maria?

  Exactly. It's like, think about all the implications in your life.

• 1:23:39Speaker 02

  But also, yeah, but if you think like, you can't, you're killing millions of bacteria to save yourself, is that okay? And if you're drawing the line at bacteria, why can't we draw the line at fruit flies? And why can't we draw the line at invertebrates? Or why can't we draw the line at somewhere else?

• 1:23:53Cara Santa Maria?

  And that's the important question. What is your moral argument for that? I think it's very rare. I use the fruit fly example. It's an extreme example. Mostly, we're talking about people who practice like really extreme Buddhism, and many of these individuals may actually be living in monasteries.

• 1:24:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:07Cara Santa Maria?

  But, but for some people saying, you know, no vertebrates or no whatever, if you have a solid argument, like I have an argument, if, if you want to really get into it with me, I'll tell you why I think no apes, no cetaceans, no elephants, and why I'm more permissive when it comes to other vertebrates.

• 1:24:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm with you, Kara. That's where I draw, I draw my line in the same place.

• 1:24:26Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it's like, I'm not pulling it out of my ass.

• 1:24:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:27Cara Santa Maria?

  Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but it's okay to have a line, but make sure that you've done the work.

• 1:24:31Speaker 02

  Exactly. And then, see, and my response is, oh, these pigs aren't, are not being treated well, whatever, is to treat them better, right? Just, I think, same thing like with, with the meat industry, and I eat very little meat, you know, this is for multiple reasons, but I do think that there's, we're trying to, to produce too much meat, and if we just reduce that, then we could, it, it becomes easier. easier to have high standards, you know, in terms of the way the animals are treated. Right. I think we need to regulate it so that the animals are treated humanely.

• 1:25:03Cara Santa Maria?

  Absolutely.

• 1:25:04Speaker 02

  That is the solution, not to not do life-saving research or, you know, do life-saving transplants from genetically modified pigs. I think we absolutely should be doing that and just treating them well. And I think we

• 1:25:18Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I often think throwing the baby out with the bathwater is the most extreme reaction. And regulation is probably a good first step.

• 1:25:26Speaker 02

  I agree. So that's where we are. And we have a reason to do that. It's not being thoughtless. It's not like we don't care. Some people said we were shameful. And I think that's not a very useful way to to approach this issue. It's like if you draw the line in a different place, just don't be judgmental about people who draw a line in a in a different place from you if it's thoughtful and internally consistent and reasonable. It's okay to say, all right, we have a slightly different values. That's fine. Rather than saying anyone who's to the left of me is shameful. You know what I mean? Like, that's that is not a useful way to approach it. Okay, let's go on to the next question. This is interesting. This comes up every now and then. This one comes from Matthew, who writes, I am convinced that flat-earthers don't really exist. And there are 2025.

• 1:26:09Speaker 03

  Interesting.

• 1:26:09Speaker 02

  In the year 2025, with today's technology and education, there is no way flat-earther philosophy can thrive. Instead, those who are self-proclaimed flat-earthers or conspiracy theorists continue to advocate for what they believe in because they benefit somehow or in some way, such as receiving attention or monetary gain. Think about all the TV shows, podcasts, news clips, blogs, or whatever. Those who proclaim to be a flat-earther just do it for some reason other than that is what they truly believe. And everyone is giving way too much attention to this nonsense. Would you agree to this?

• 1:26:42Speaker 03

  So they're role-playing the fact that they're flat-earthers?

• 1:26:44Cara Santa Maria?

  I've often I've often grappled with this question. I don't know if I fully agree with Matthew, but I've asked myself, is this for real? Are these people just doing this?

• 1:26:52Speaker 02

  It's power no, right?

• 1:26:53Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:26:54Speaker 02

  So I think the answer is yes, both of these things. I think there are people out there who don't care if they're a flat-earther, if it's real or not, they're just, it's just something ...gain clicks, or to be part of a community. I think for some people, the conspiracy is the thing. They're conspiracy theorists, and this is just one, this is like a grand conspiracy. I think for some people, they went down this rabbit hole. So, the thing is, I might have felt this way 20 years ago, but I have personally experienced people who genuinely are flat-earthers. There's no question that they are genuine flat-earthers. And also, people who are just, you know, not scientifically literate, and who were exposed

• 1:27:36Speaker 02

  to some of the claims of flat-earthers, and are, you know, questioning, right? They just are like, "I don't know this." They say things that make sense, and I don't understand this, and there's something going on, you know? And then also, just sort of somewhat distrusting of authority. And so, there's a whole continuum here, and I don't think you can make any simple statement as, "They're all just in it for the money or attention," or "They're all true believers." I think it's pretty much every permutation across the spectrum. Makes sense. Right. But we, yeah, I have met personally people who are absolutely real flat-earthers. And also, just, you could just, you know, you could watch the documentaries, like Behind

• 1:28:15Speaker 02

  the Curve, and other things online, that show, I think, a pretty broad breadth of who is in this community, and there's definitely true believers in that community. All right, guys, let's go on with Science or Fiction?

• 1:28:32Speaker 01

  It's time for Science or Fiction?

• 1:28:41Speaker 02

  Each week, I come up with three science news items, or facts, two deal, and one fake. And I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. Got three good news items this week. Are you ready? I said, are you ready?

• 1:28:58Jay Novella?

  Do it.

• 1:28:59Speaker 03

  Let's do it.

• 1:29:01Cara Santa Maria?

  We've gotten so afraid of being first.

• 1:29:03Speaker 03

  No utterances whatsoever.

• 1:29:05Cara Santa Maria?

  Earlier and earlier in the show.

• 1:29:06Speaker 02

  All right, here we go. Item number one, researchers find that the parasite Entamoeba histolytica evades the host immune system by crawling inside white blood cells. All right, number two, a new analysis finds that atmospheric mercury has decreased by about 70% since 2000. And item number three, a recent study finds that the universe will end, heat death, much sooner than previously calculated, in 10 to the 78 years, rather than the previous estimate of 10 to the 1100 years. Jay, you go first.

• 1:29:42Jay Novella?

  All right, this first one, researchers find that the parasite Entamoeba.

• 1:29:47Speaker 02

  Entamoeba histolytica.

• 1:29:50Jay Novella?

  Entamoeba histolytica, that's cool. Evades the host immune system by crawling inside white blood cells. Oh shit, could you, that's not cool at all. God, I'd never even heard of that. Go inside the body's system of removing foreign bodies. That's genius. I think that's science. I absolutely think some creature figured out to do that. Number two, a new analysis finds that atmospheric mercury has decreased by about 70% since 2000. Okay, so if mercury, if atmospheric mercury was going to go down, what's putting it into the atmosphere? Damn, what would be putting mercury in the atmosphere? I know that there's something for sure. Industry, is any kind of exhaust?

• 1:30:36Jay Novella?

  MMR vaccines? I don't think that anything has changed. I don't know, I think this might be the fiction because I just don't think that there has been massive changes in any kind of regulations that would be mindfully removing mercury from the atmosphere. And I just simply don't think 70% would go, would, it would drop by 70% without human intervention. I know I'm speculating, but I really do think that's a fiction. Let me go on to the third one. A recent study finds that the universe will end, heat death, much sooner than previously calculated, 10 to the 78 years, rather than the previous estimate of 10 to the 1100 years. Well, that sucks. And I guess my news item kind of fits in there somewhere.

• 1:31:20Jay Novella?

  Wow.

• 1:31:20Speaker 03

  Ironic.

• 1:31:21Speaker 02

  Ten to the what, nine years?

• 1:31:23Jay Novella?

  Steve, my gut is telling me that if there was a 70% decrease in atmospheric mercury, I don't think that that would happen on its own. And I'm not seeing activity by, you know, the governments that have large populations and everything. I'm not seeing anything that it would point in that direction. I mean, there's a lot of holes in my reasoning because I, I simply don't know what's putting it in the atmosphere, but I think that one's the fiction.

• 1:31:46Speaker 02

  Okay, Evan. Uh, well, yeah.

• 1:31:48Speaker 03

  Jay, mate, you brought up some good points. Um, the first one here about the parasite, uh, evades the host immune system by crawling inside white blood cells. Yikes. How? How does it get in there? Well, yeah, I suppose so. And I, and maybe this is why this would be leaning towards it being science. But at the same time, hmm, wouldn't it be rejected in some other way? If it, like the white blood cell? I need to know more about white blood cells as well and, uh, how the body would react to that because to use it as like a shield seems kind of against what part of the reason, what the function of

• 1:32:29Speaker 03

  what white blood cells should be doing. So I don't know about that one. Uh, the mercury one is the second one. Atmospheric mercury has decreased by 70% since 2000. Was it the aerosols? Is it the chlorofluorocarbon? Is that atmospheric? Is there, was there mercury in that stuff? Or is it just kind of we've, we've phased out mercury from a lot of products and over the course of the 20th century realizing, I mean, you know, they knew even before that that mercury was, you know, deadly. So there may have been efforts very early on to, uh, to, to, to do mercury prevention, uh, efforts. Uh, maybe this one's the science as well.

• 1:33:11Speaker 03

  The last one about the universe and heat death, 10 to the 78 years rather than the previous estimate of 10 to the 1100 years. And, um,

• 1:33:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, okay. A recent study. I think that one's of the three is the most science-y in the context of this game. Because sure, you can have all kinds of studies. I'll go with, I'll mix it up and say the parasite one is the fiction. But Jay, I would not be surprised if you're correct and the mercury one is the fiction.

• 1:33:42Cara Santa Maria?

  Thank you.

• 1:33:43Speaker 03

  How about that?

• 1:33:43Cara Santa Maria?

  Thank you. All right, Kara? I feel like it's the one that makes, like, that I would feel the most comfortable.

• 1:33:49Speaker 03

  Oh, there you go.

• 1:33:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Not with it being science, but with like, why my reasoning that it might not be science is the case. Because the atmospheric mercury one, I don't know, but it doesn't surprise me that there's been some sort of like massive change due to human activity in a molecule in the atmosphere. So, well, that's not even a molecule. That's an element in the atmosphere. So, like, yeah, that doesn't surprise me. There's probably some stupid thing we've been doing that's completely changed the makeup of our atmosphere. The heat death of the universe one, oh, I don't know, these numbers are not numbers. They mean nothing to me.

• 1:34:27Speaker 03

  Oh, they're numbers. Get out your scientific calculator.

• 1:34:30Cara Santa Maria?

  I know they're real. I know it's real. It's just so meaningless to me when we get into like, numbers that big.

• 1:34:34Speaker 03

  Steve, why didn't you put the 78 zeros behind that 10?

• 1:34:37Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. Thanks, Steve. If you'd just typed it out, it would have had a lot more sense.

• 1:34:42Speaker 03

  And then Bob could have said some fancy thing like septillion, killion, billion, zillion, gillion, billion, leillion.

• 1:34:47Cara Santa Maria?

  Yep, yep. But the parasite being, okay, so entameba, entameba, ameba, entameba.

• 1:34:56Speaker 03

  Ent.

• 1:34:57Cara Santa Maria?

  So like enteric, like inside, I don't know. Histolytica, see, that one bugs me because it's histological. So it's in the cell. Maybe that's how they discovered it as they saw it inside of cells. So it's like, ooh, that one feels like, okay, maybe that's how it works. But this is a new discovery, right?

• 1:35:16Cara Santa Maria?

  How would a parasite crawl inside of a... You don't want to be in that white blood cell, my friend.

• 1:35:21Speaker 03

  Right, that's what I...

• 1:35:22Cara Santa Maria?

  That's where you don't want to be.

• 1:35:23Speaker 03

  Thank you, Karen. I was trying to express that. I knew something was... seemed to be amiss there.

• 1:35:27Cara Santa Maria?

  I feel like parasite going straight to... He's just walking into the... Into taking himself to death.

• 1:35:33Speaker 03

  It's like bacteria going into the antibacterial room.

• 1:35:36Cara Santa Maria?

  Right, yeah, I don't like this one. So I feel like maybe there's something else going on, or maybe the real thing here is that it turns off the white blood cell, knowing to attack it, but just crawling inside of a white blood cell, I feel like, is not enough. I don't like this one. I'm gonna call it the fiction.

• 1:35:53Speaker 02

  Okay, and Bob?

• 1:35:54Bob Novella?

  All right, I'm gonna start with number three and go back down. Evan, for your edification, that number is a quintillion novemdecillion. And, yeah, I've heard of the... Of this type of stuff before. A new study, a new theory can change it, and, you know, can change the anticipated end of the universe. Sure, it's a big drop down to 10 to 78, from 10 to the 1100, but I'm totally buying that. The second one, let's see. I know nothing about atmospheric mercury at all. I really don't know what's going on with that, but I totally believe that it could be, you know, humans screwing up the atmosphere yet again, one way or the other, doing something... Something ridiculous.

• 1:36:36Bob Novella?

  Okay, number one, this is the one that really rubbed me the wrong way. Yeah, I just can't imagine how this is gonna happen. If the parasite squeezes itself into the white blood cell without destroying it, and then, what? Then it's gotta come out later to do its parasitic business, and then it goes back in again or in another one? I'm just crazy, not buying that at all. I'll say that is fiction.

• 1:36:57Speaker 02

  Okay, so you all agree on the third one, so we'll start there. Recent study finds that the universe will end by heat death, much sooner than previously calculated, in 10 to 78 years, rather than the previous estimate of 10 to the 1100 years. You all think this one is science, and this one is... Science. This one is science. Yeah, I had to put heat death in there just so you wouldn't think it was gonna be, you know, die from some other reason before it dies of the heat death. Notice that the heat death is gonna happen... Quicker. So, so yeah, so the idea is that I think the bottom line is that they didn't, they didn't think that white dwarfs would decay with Hawking radiation.

• 1:37:38Speaker 02

  But they say they would decay just slower. But if you even if you just consider the Hawking radiation, so what that means is it's, you know, Stephen Hawking first described this phenomenon with the black hole. If you have a particle, antiparticle pair emerging out of the quantum foam, right? And it happens right on the event horizon. So that one particle goes into the black hole and the other particle escapes from the black hole before they can annihilate each other. Right? So what this means is that black holes are evaporating. They're giving off Hawking radiation and they're evaporating, however you think that that's happening.

• 1:38:17Speaker 02

  So, so this does like, well, if that's happening to white dwarfs, which they think it is, then it would be much slower because they're less massive. The evaporation would be much slower. So they said, so the 10 to 78 years is how long it would, it would take for black, for white dwarfs to evaporate through Hawking radiation. They used to think it would take 10 to the 1100 years, but now it's only going to take 10 to the 78 years. So that moves up the date for the ultimate heat death of the universe by that much, which is quite a lot, but it's still a long time, but it's nothing compared to 10 to 1100 years. All right, let's, let's go back down in number one. Researchers find that the parasite Entamoeba histolytica evades the host immune system by crawling inside white blood cells.

• 1:39:03Speaker 02

  Bob, Kara and Evan, you think this is the fiction and you think it's a fiction for various reasons. I want to examine those reasons.

• 1:39:09Speaker 03

  Oh, no, don't do that. That's not, that's not, that's not cool.

• 1:39:15Speaker 02

  So first of all, these are not macrophages, right? So macrophages would eat the Entamoeba, right? But there are lots of other kinds of white blood cells that themselves don't eat.

• 1:39:26Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay, well, you didn't specify.

• 1:39:28Speaker 02

  But the, well, I said, that's, I know, but I didn't.

• 1:39:30Speaker 03

  Different types of white.

• 1:39:31Speaker 02

  There are different types of white blood cells. But definitely this, yeah, you know.

• 1:39:35Speaker 03

  Off white.

• 1:39:36Speaker 02

  Definitely wouldn't want to crawl inside a macrophage, but.

• 1:39:38Cara Santa Maria?

  No, that's the whole point. You're just coming to the macrophage.

• 1:39:41Speaker 02

  So the way I want you to think about this is like on Men in Black. Remember when the alien wore a human suit? Yes. Yeah, yes. So this is the same kind of thing where the entamoeba histolytica wears a white blood cell suit in order to look like the host, you know, a self cell from the host to, so that the immune system doesn't attack it.

• 1:40:05Cara Santa Maria?

  But why would it pick a white blood cell and not another type of cell?

• 1:40:09Speaker 02

  I don't know. A red blood cell. Evolution. Red blood cells are way too small.

• 1:40:12Cara Santa Maria?

  No, red blood cell wouldn't make sense.

• 1:40:14Speaker 02

  Oh, too small.

• 1:40:14Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:40:15Speaker 02

  Well, probably because it's serving a double function of also taking out the immune system, which a lot of parasites and bacteria do.

• 1:40:22Cara Santa Maria?

  Damn, are you saying this is science?

• 1:40:24Speaker 02

  But.

• 1:40:24Bob Novella?

  Yeah, that's one of Steve's ploys. He does that from time to time.

• 1:40:29Speaker 02

  The flow, the cadence.

• 1:40:31Cara Santa Maria?

  What?

• 1:40:31Speaker 02

  Are you saying I'm becoming too predictable, Bob?

• 1:40:33Bob Novella?

  Not so much predictable, it's just one of the games that you play unpredictably.

• 1:40:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:40:40Speaker 02

  This one is the fiction, is the fiction.

• 1:40:44Cara Santa Maria?

  Yes.

• 1:40:44Speaker 02

  Now, the reason why it's the fiction is because the entamoeba, which is an amoeba, is way bigger than a white blood cell.

• 1:40:54Cara Santa Maria?

  There you go.

• 1:40:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's a size mismatch here.

• 1:40:57Cara Santa Maria?

  So is it a different kind of cell? Does it hide in like a ovum?

• 1:41:00Speaker 02

  No. What it does is it eats the white blood cell and then displays its proteins on its outer coat and disguises itself as a host cell. That's what it's doing. It's not inside or wearing it, it's just eating it and then displaying the proteins, which a lot of cells do. And that works?

• 1:41:19Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, that would work.

• 1:41:20Speaker 02

  That tricks the system? Yeah, it works. It freaking works. Tricks.

• 1:41:22Jay Novella?

  How do do cells detect, you know, foreign bodies?

• 1:41:27Speaker 02

  By the proteins on their coat.

• 1:41:28Cara Santa Maria?

  By the proteins, yeah.

• 1:41:29Speaker 02

  That's how they do it. So they, yeah, so the immune system's like, oh, okay, that's that's self. I don't have to worry about that guy over there, right? But it's.

• 1:41:35Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, remember when we talked about spike proteins with the COVID vaccine and all that good stuff?

• 1:41:40Speaker 03

  How long has this been happening?

• 1:41:42Speaker 02

  A long time.

• 1:41:43Speaker 03

  Then why hasn't the white blood cell system adapted to that?

• 1:41:46Speaker 02

  Well, it's a, it's an arms race, Evan, right? We're evolving, they're evolving. This is just the current state of things.

• 1:41:52Cara Santa Maria?

  It's an infection that kills people, right?

• 1:41:54Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:41:54Cara Santa Maria?

  But it's not like we're, we're not all walking around with this all the time.

• 1:41:57Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 1:41:58Cara Santa Maria?

  That's why.

• 1:41:58Speaker 02

  So this is.

• 1:41:59Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, if we, if we were all walking around with it.

• 1:42:01Speaker 02

  This is, this is a infection that is, that comes from dirty water. Right? So very rare in developed nations, unless you have recent travel or you're just coming from a, a place where there isn't good sanitation, right? There wasn't the availability of clean water. And the histolytica, Kara, it, that means that it breaks down cells. This is the.

• 1:42:24Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, histolysis.

• 1:42:26Speaker 02

  Histolysis. This, this, this causes abscesses of liquefied tissue. Really bad.

• 1:42:32Cara Santa Maria?

  That's really disgusting.

• 1:42:33Speaker 02

  So most.

• 1:42:33Cara Santa Maria?

  But it also makes sense that it would break down these white cells.

• 1:42:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, most infections lead to just really bad diarrhea. And you could get very sick from it and you get these abscesses. But worldwide, 700,000 people die every year from this.

• 1:42:47Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, that's hard because abscesses get infected.

• 1:42:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Secondary infections. And also bad diarrhea can kill you.

• 1:42:53Speaker 02

  Yes, it can.

• 1:42:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, yes, yep.

• 1:42:55Cara Santa Maria?

  Of course.

• 1:42:55Speaker 02

  I have, I, I, again, I probably should bet this, but my memory is that like in, you go back to like Alexander the Great and some war that he fought, like most of the soldiers die of dysentery. They don't die of war. They don't die of wounds. They don't die on the field, but they die of dysentery.

• 1:43:11Speaker 03

  It's true of a lot of wars.

• 1:43:12Cara Santa Maria?

  Most people playing Oregon Trail also died of dysentery.

• 1:43:16Speaker 02

  Which means that a new analysis finds that atmospheric mercury has decreased by about 70% since 2000 is science. Jay, you're too cynical.

• 1:43:23Cara Santa Maria?

  That sounds bad.

• 1:43:24Speaker 02

  And this, this is science be, specifically because of regulations. That's it, 100% due to regulations.

• 1:43:33Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, it's a good thing that atmospheric mercury has gone down.

• 1:43:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, mercury's bad.

• 1:43:36Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:43:37Speaker 03

  Mercury's very bad.

• 1:43:38Speaker 02

  Mercury's very bad.

• 1:43:39Cara Santa Maria?

  Great. Excellent.

• 1:43:40Jay Novella?

  So I guess I missed all those news items, huh?

• 1:43:42Speaker 02

  It's the Minamata Convention on Mercury, basically sets standards for minimizing atmospheric mercury, which is mostly released through, you know, through man-made activity, anthropogenic, or at least it used to be. So there's natural anthropogenic biomass burning, which is very little, and terrestrial, just coming from the dirt. But of course, it gets in there because of anthropogenic reasons. So, to some extent. So anyway, the man-made portion of it, massive decrease since 2000, and leading to a total of 70% reduction in atmospheric mercury, which is good. Very, very good. And it's just a direct result of regulation. Just agreeing, we're not going to do things that puts a lot of mercury, like not burning

• 1:44:26Speaker 02

  super dirty coal, or requiring, you know, that you have, you filter it out, you know, at the smokestack level, things like that. You can't burn certain things.

• 1:44:35Cara Santa Maria?

  Good.

• 1:44:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's very, very good. And the reason, well, part of the reason why this caught my eye was because, very little, quick history. So you know, and Bob, you mentioned MMR. By the way, MMR vaccine never contained mercury. The, that's just a misunderstanding. But the, soon after the MM, like in the 1990s, the anti-vaccine, vacciners, anti-vaxxers were saying, "Oh, the MMR is causing autism." And then that was disproven very quickly. They never agreed that it was disproven, but they moved on to thimerosal, which contains ethyl mercury. And so it's the mercury in the, in the vaccines that's causing it, which is not the MMR, but other vaccines. And then we took thimerosal out of the vaccines, right?

• 1:45:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:45:20Speaker 02

  And the autism rates continued to go up. So then they said, "It's atmospheric mercury." So they were blaming it on atmospheric mercury right at the time that it was massively decreasing.

• 1:45:32Speaker 03

  So they're, so they're more than wrong.

• 1:45:35Speaker 02

  So just another way in which they're hopelessly wrong. Right. Because they just make shit up, right? Without looking at data. It's like, oh, the, it was the vaccines, but now as the thimerosal was decreasing, atmospheric mercury was probably increasing. But in fact, it was also decreasing at the same time. Losers. Okay. All right, Evan, give us a quote.

• 1:45:56Speaker 03

  This week's quote was suggested by a longtime listener and participant of the show, Jay Novella.

• 1:46:07Jay Novella?

  I guess I am a listener too, sure.

• 1:46:10Speaker 03

  You are a listener, we're all listeners.

• 1:46:13Speaker 03

  Thank you Jay for suggesting this one.

• 1:46:14Jay Novella?

  I had to.

• 1:46:16Speaker 03

  "The difference between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil." Man Mothma.

• 1:46:34Speaker 03

  From the Star Wars universe. Now Jay, maybe you can tell-

• 1:46:38Speaker 02

  From Andor, from Andor.

• 1:46:39Speaker 03

  Oh Andor, well, yes, the Star Wars universe, but the Andor series.

• 1:46:42Jay Novella?

  Yep.

• 1:46:43Speaker 03

  And Jay Man Mothma, can you tell us about that character?

• 1:46:47Jay Novella?

  Um, I mean, she's really a cool character. I mean, I loved her in the original series. And, I mean, I find that, um, hold on, I mean, what is-

• 1:46:55Speaker 03

  Is her rank general?

• 1:46:56Speaker 02

  She is the political head of the rebellion.

• 1:46:59Speaker 03

  Political head.

• 1:47:00Jay Novella?

  Let me say that, so I don't-

• 1:47:01Speaker 02

  She's like the Sinn Fein, you know, of the rebellion.

• 1:47:04Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:47:06Jay Novella?

  So, the thing, the reason why I sent that to Evan is I love when science fiction, you know, has something to say about modern times. Star Trek, the original series did this, like, wonderfully, you know, it was just unbelievable how almost every episode was talking about a very, you know, serious social issue that was going on. And I read that quote and I'm like, damn, that is like, that is so prescient, you know? It's like 100% what's going on right now.

• 1:47:32Speaker 02

  So, when my wife and I watched that episode, uh, last week, when it came out, and when I was watching her give that speech, she's giving a speech in front of the senate, right? And that's, it's a longer speech, that I think is the, is the money quote. And we definitely, about the time, we were like, that is so deliberate and aimed-

• 1:47:53Speaker 03

  Oh, sure.

• 1:47:54Speaker 02

  At the current moment in America, 100%, like, it was so obvious.

• 1:47:58Jay Novella?

  Without a doubt.

• 1:47:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, you could just pluck that speech out of, you know, Coruscant and put it into Washington DC and it would be 100% relevant. Definitely deliberate. I loved it too, I thought it was very, very good. So I was not surprised to see that pop up as the quote this week. Very nice. Yeah, but again, that is, it is, one of the, that's one of the things I like about science fiction, pay attention Kara, is that you can- I'm here, I'm here. You can make these big social points- Basically separated from their cultural context, right?

• 1:48:34Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, yeah, that's the only thing I like about science fiction.

• 1:48:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's like, yeah, so you-

• 1:48:37Cara Santa Maria?

  That's like, that's all the best science fiction for me is the socially-

• 1:48:40Speaker 02

  Exactly. But a lot, yeah, a lot of good science fiction has that in there. It's like, yeah, it's- Sometimes it's a little ham-fisted, like on Star Trek, where you have like the half-black, half-white people fighting each other.

• 1:48:48Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:48:48Speaker 02

  You know, it's a little heavy-handed, but it's at least like, oh, yeah, like, you could see all of these social issues playing out in another culture, in an alien culture, so that you're, it's not, you're not reacting to it. And it basically divorces it from your tribal reactions, or your identity. It's just in the abstract, yes, of course, you could see how this is true when you're looking at another culture, you know? So, yeah, so a science, good science fiction does that very well, and this was very powerful. I thought it was very, very powerful, the way they did that. And/or also, by the way, is my single favorite Star Wars property.

• 1:49:25Speaker 03

  Wow, that's, that's a big-

• 1:49:27Speaker 02

  It's great. It's just really, really good.

• 1:49:29Speaker 03

  That's a big opinion.

• 1:49:30Speaker 02

  Wait, wait, when you say that, do you mean like-

• 1:49:32Speaker 03

  Better than Empire?

• 1:49:33Speaker 02

  I meant it. I mean- Ooh. Yes, it is.

• 1:49:37Speaker 03

  Sacrilege.

• 1:49:37Speaker 02

  It is. It's, it's gritty, it's really well-written, the characters are fabulous. And it's, you know, I love it. It's, it is the best manifestation of the Star Wars universe, in my opinion. So there, so there. That's amazing. Yeah. Uh, anyway.

• 1:49:53Speaker 03

  Thanks for suggesting the quote, Jay.

• 1:49:55Speaker 02

  Very, very nice. All right, well, thank you all for joining me this week. You got it, Steve.

• 1:50:00Speaker 03

  Thank you, Steve.

• 1:50:00Speaker 02

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

• 1:50:08Speaker 02

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

• 1:50:45Speaker 07

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