The Skeptics Guide #1068 - Dec 27 2025

2025 Year End Review, with special guest Ian 🍉; Best of SGU; Best Science of 2025; Skeptical Hero and Jackass of the Year; In Memoriam; 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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• 0:56Speaker 01

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

• 1:03Speaker 02

  Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Thursday, December 17th, 2025, and this is your host, Stephen Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella.

• 1:12Bob Novella?

  Hey, everybody.

• 1:13Speaker 02

  Cara Santa Maria. Howdy. Jay Novella.

• 1:16Jay Novella?

  Hey, guys.

• 1:16Speaker 02

  Evan Bernstein.

• 1:17Speaker 05

  Good evening, everyone.

• 1:18Speaker 02

  And we have a special guest, Ian Callanan. Ian, thanks for joining us again.

• 1:23Speaker 06

  Ian. Well, hello, everyone. How are you?

• 1:27Speaker 05

  You know they can see you.

• 1:28Bob Novella?

  Ian, good, man.

• 1:29Speaker 02

  Has become a regular on our year end wrap-up show. This is it, the last show of 2025.

• 1:36Speaker 05

  Oh, my gosh. What a year.

• 1:38Speaker 06

  What a good year.

• 1:40Speaker 05

  I think we'll have one or two things to say about this year coming up shortly.

• 1:44Bob Novella?

  Yeah, how much worse can it get?

• 1:46Speaker 02

  Don't even.

• 1:48Speaker 06

  Wait a couple hours.

• 1:49Bob Novella?

  Yeah, right.

• 1:50Speaker 05

  Wait, gosh.

• 1:51Speaker 02

  I would not assume.

• 1:52Jay Novella?

  I'll break the ice here by letting everyone know that I'm sick with the flu.

• 1:56Bob Novella?

  Yeah, we told them last week.

• 1:57Jay Novella?

  Okay.

• 1:58Speaker 05

  All right.

• 1:59Jay Novella?

  I just want people to know.

• 2:00Speaker 05

  Jay's still sick with the flu.

• 2:02Cara Santa Maria?

  But also, it hasn't been a week since we recorded. It's been two days.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  It's been two days. Yeah. It's been a week in podcast time. It's been two days in reality.

• 2:09Speaker 05

  That means the week really flew.

• 2:11Speaker 06

  It's forever. Okay.

• 2:13Speaker 05

  Thanks Ian.

• 2:14Jay Novella?

  Now, does anyone remember me being sick last year at this time?

• 2:17Cara Santa Maria?

  I was sick last Christmas. Were you sick last Christmas or the before also?

• 2:21Jay Novella?

  I reme- it's right around this time of year. Like, the, the pattern is my daughter goes to school. Apparently his best friends or whoever the most sick kid is.

• 2:30Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 2:31Jay Novella?

  And then she comes home and infects me and then I infect my wife. Yeah. That's, that's having kids. They are Petri dishes.

• 2:38Cara Santa Maria?

  Gross. Is that good for us as? No. Parents? Okay, thank you. It's not, it's not good to be exposed to deadly illnesses all the time. Oh. Well, some, my uncle on Facebook said otherwise, so.

• 2:51Speaker 05

  I watched a TikTok video once and you know.

• 2:53Jay Novella?

  Oh, why?

• 2:54Cara Santa Maria?

  Thank you. Last year I had a, a cold over the, uh, over Christmas. It wasn't the flu, but it was a cold and I had, I, I got COVID. I can't remember if it was just before or just after, maybe like a month apart. And my cold was like 10 times worse than my COVID. I felt so ill. And when I had COVID, it was like the sniffles for a few days.

• 3:15Jay Novella?

  Well, did you have the, uh, the vaccine?

• 3:17Cara Santa Maria?

  I have been vaccinated three cards worth of times.

• 3:21Speaker 05

  Has any, were you close to anyone else around you who was also suffering that, a cold with similar symptoms?

• 3:26Cara Santa Maria?

  It's funny, I couldn't find patient zero for that one. I got, I got magic sick. No, I, I, I have a feeling that I caught something when I was at the pharmacy, picking up meds. I remember somebody coughing in the aisle and I held my breath as I walked by. But I had that feeling of like. So that doesn't work. That's me. I'm sick. I'm sick right now. I felt myself get sick from that.

• 3:51Speaker 05

  I, I, I do know the moment. I can pinpoint a moment where I'm like, okay, I have a cold coming. This is it.

• 3:57Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, same.

• 3:58Speaker 05

  My throat is sore.

• 3:59Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 4:00Cara Santa Maria?

  But you know how you try to will it away for the first two days?

• 4:02Speaker 05

  I know. I'm like, ooh, Advil, get me Advil quick.

• 4:05Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, you're like, it's not really. I just slept with my mouth open.

• 4:08Jay Novella?

  No, I always know when I'm gonna get really sick. It sucks. That first alerting, I'm like, shit, this is it.

• 4:14Cara Santa Maria?

  It's the tickle, the tickle in your nose.

• 4:15Jay Novella?

  That tickle.

• 4:17Speaker 05

  It's so uncomfortable.

• 4:18Jay Novella?

  I remember colds.

• 4:20Cara Santa Maria?

  Jay, how did you know? Because the flu is like a whole other beast. It's so much worse than a cold.

• 4:26Jay Novella?

  Yeah, it starts with a like an internal itch, you know, you get like that. You get that like, oh, what's going on, you know, like, and there's always that disdain. But it progressed very quickly. Like, I went to bed, I'm like, eh, you know, I feel like I, something's happening, you know, because my sinuses, and then I wake up the next day and I'm like, oh, God, this is, it hit hard. And I, and that was the entire day I was suffering from the chills and that was really horrible.

• 4:54Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, and it's that malaise. I mean, it's the perfect word for how you feel when you have the flu.

• 5:01Jay Novella?

  But, you know, it's remarkable how your energy is gone. Like, just utterly gone. Like, I got up a couple of times today.

• 5:12Bob Novella?

  What's going on there?

• 5:12Jay Novella?

  I had to rest from going to the bathroom, you know?

• 5:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a lot of work sometimes.

• 5:18Bob Novella?

  He's winded after.

• 5:20Speaker 02

  Ian!

• 5:24Speaker 06

  Actually, it is a good segue, because I was gonna say, can you think your way out of that?

• 5:27Cara Santa Maria?

  No.

• 5:28Speaker 06

  Like, being sick? Okay, because I wanted to bring up, I know if this was what you were gonna ask me. I wanted to bring up, like, the failure of the power of positivity, if I may, a little bit. So, the last, like, week ago or so, I attended a funeral of a family member.

• 5:44Speaker 02

  Sorry to hear that.

• 5:45Speaker 06

  It was sad, thank you. I know, he had pancreatic cancer and was, like, very aggressive. He survived the whole year, like, from the diagnosis.

• 5:51Speaker 02

  That's the average life expectancy from diagnosis is one year.

• 5:54Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, so, like, now, he was, like, a little wooey, but, like, his siblings were all, like, very, like, pro-science. So, like, we did all the things. We went to New Haven, Yale, tried experimental things, you know, it didn't work, obviously.

• 6:06Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 6:06Speaker 06

  But, you know, the thing I wanted to bring up is, like, the power of positivity kind of infected everybody in a way that I found was actually troubling.

• 6:16Bob Novella?

  Oh.

• 6:16Speaker 06

  Because even the week before he died, they were still ordering, like, medical devices to, like, get him in and out of bed. They were beside themselves with, like, oh, he'll recover. He was the youngest, he was only 60 when he died, you know, like, he was the baby of the siblings, he was, like, comedian, the glue of the siblings, sort of thing, you know? So, like, they were really shook up about it, but the, the power of positivity, I feel like, blinded them to see what was coming.

• 6:42Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, that's so common.

• 6:44Speaker 06

  The funeral, we had no plans for him, like, didn't know what he wanted. We all kind of just winged it. Didn't really know what the burial should be, didn't know any, and so much so that they kind of fell for the idea of like, we should bring him home so he's comfortable while he recovers.

• 6:59Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 6:59Speaker 06

  So much so that he, by the time he got to hospice, it was like too late. The nurses weren't prepared. Even one of his siblings was a hospice nurse. And he said it was like the worst thing he'd ever seen. Wouldn't train his fluids, give him medication.

• 7:12Cara Santa Maria?

  That's really common, you know, that people go to hospice long after they should have first gone to hospice. And when I say should, all I really mean by that is for them to have had good quality of life after they've stopped um, taking life sustaining treatments or, or, you know, cancer fighting treatments. Because in hospice, there's so much comfort care available to you. And a lot of people wait so long that some of those things can't really be, um, you know, taken care of as well as they could have early on. A lot of people have, when they, if they make the decision at the right time, they have time to do things that they want to do and, you know, engage in bucket lists and things like that.

• 7:57Speaker 06

  Yeah. But Kara, how do you break through that wall?

• 8:00Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, it's okay. So I work with the patients mostly, but people on my team work with the families as well. And I have worked with families. Uh, it's not uncommon for me when I first see a patient in the cancer center for them not to have an advanced directive and for them not to have thought about a lot of these things. So a big thing that we do in therapy is go there. We go to the hard place. And when the patient goes to the hard place, sometimes that helps the people around them go to the hard place, but sometimes it doesn't. So a lot of what we do is work on how we cope with the fact that the bubble of people around the patient aren't thinking realistically about the end. The patient is often the only one who is ready to accept it.

• 8:43Speaker 02

  I think people feel a lot of pressure to be positive.

• 8:47Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, of course.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  To be supportive, I'm gonna like focus on the hope and the positive angle and, right? And then that morphs into the magical thinking of the power, as you say, the positive power of positive thinking. Like, you can fight, you can fight, you can, you know, just think positive thoughts and everything will be all right. But that's not a healthy approach to this at all. That, that then morphs into denial, which I've seen as well, you know, as you know, Cara, for a time I was treating a lot of patients with ALS. And the denial was the worst thing. That was the absolute worst thing.

• 9:17Cara Santa Maria?

  Especially with ALS.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  Completely hamstring the management. And, yeah, the, the approach is that you have to gently but firmly tell them like it is. Make them answer questions, like you have to decide whether or not you're gonna get intubated when the time comes, et cetera, et cetera. You just force that, and then you give them time, too. You have to just start early, you know, you don't push early, and you give them months, you know, to come to terms with what's happening. But the, to the extent that patients go into this positive thinking denial, they absolutely harm themselves in so many ways. It is absolutely harmful, I agree.

• 9:56Speaker 06

  Is this just like a cultural thing?

• 9:58Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it is, it is. I think it, it can be very cultural. It's hard, too, when you're working with patients where culturally there are some pretty strong rules around what you can and can't talk about. Because obviously, I work in a, and you did too, Steve, like a large hospital in a, in a large city, right? With, which is a huge melting pot, it's very multicultural. But a few things that I would say, Ian, one of the things that I do, it doesn't solve the problem, but it, I think it, it's important to me, is I don't use euphemisms. And Steve, I know, we've talked about this too, I say the word death and dying.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:32Cara Santa Maria?

  I don't talk about passing, or when you go, or when you, I'm like very clear in, in my language, and I start to normalize that language early. And, but I also measure the patient's reaction to that and work with them on their death anxiety. The other thing, though, is that there's a fine line between hope. And as you mentioned, denial. And it's not bad to have hope so long as, and I use this phrase all the time. So long as we understand that hope is a moving target. What we hope for changes based on the progression of our illness. When we can't move with the target and we're maintaining hope that we had upon diagnosis

• 11:15Cara Santa Maria?

  when we still have treatments available to us that have the potential to be life extending. But now, let's say we've exhausted all our resources. We've already gone through all the clinical trials and the, our oncologist is saying, there is nothing left for treatment and it's time to start talking about your end of life options. If you're still hoping that you're going to get better, that's problematic.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  So the, the other layer here that has a massive influence on how you, well, you're able to navigate this whole situation is the amount of trust that the patient and their family has in the system. And this is where the really terrible effects of conspiracy thinking and all of the anti sort of medicine, alternative crap and wellness industry propaganda is so harmful because when, when there's a lack of trust and you're telling them, trust me, you have a year to live, we need to, you need to prepare for it. They're like, fuck you, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna do other things. I don't trust what you're telling me. And then they go out, they spend all their money, they, you know, waste their time, they

• 12:21Speaker 02

  don't make important decisions that they have to make. It's really harmful.

• 12:24Cara Santa Maria?

  And it's hard, it's hard to know what anybody, even the most, the strongest skeptic, it's hard to know that what they would do when they realize that there are no good options. You know, we'll all kind of sometimes try things that are a little extreme if we have the disposable income to do it, or if we're, you know, if even though it's a long shot, we don't see any downside, we may do things that we wouldn't think we would do when we're well.

• 12:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:55Cara Santa Maria?

  I think one of the biggest concerns that I see, and Steve, I'm curious about your take on this, and Ian, I'm wondering how much insight you have into this. I struggle when I see patients working with providers where the providers have not managed their own death anxiety. And so the providers aren't being very clear. They're not giving true prognostication. They're sort of kicking things down the line. Oh, well, we'll worry about that when that's an issue. Right now, I want you to focus on getting well. And I see this, you know, not a lot, a lot, but I see it enough that I find it really difficult to deal with.

• 13:35Speaker 02

  No, I'd say I hate to start the show this way, but this is an appropriate discussion for 2025, don't you think?

• 13:40Cara Santa Maria?

  It is.

• 13:40Speaker 05

  Well, yeah.

• 13:41Cara Santa Maria?

  Absolutely.

• 13:42Speaker 06

  Yeah, sorry about that.

• 13:43Speaker 05

  By comparison, it's happy news.

• 13:45Speaker 02

  Ian, the question I was going to ask you.

• 13:47Speaker 06

  Sorry.

• 13:48Speaker 02

  Is when is the first episode of Political Reality gonna drop?

• 13:52Speaker 06

  Oh, God, now you're really putting the screws to me. Um, so we just finished actually a little intro video that we're gonna be editing it up. But we have like seven episodes in the can. They just need a little refinement, I think. And I think we're gonna post it by the end of the year, maybe the first of the year, maybe January.

• 14:17Cara Santa Maria?

  We start the year off strong.

• 14:18Speaker 06

  We haven't actually decided on that. That's what I thought, too. It's like, hey, 2026, we're fixing things, right?

• 14:23Speaker 02

  At this point, you might as well just say like, first week of January, of January, we'll post.

• 14:26Speaker 06

  Yeah, whatever. We still haven't figured out the exact day, but yeah, let's, uh, let's, let's do first of the year.

• 14:32Speaker 02

  We have to make it happen.

• 14:33Speaker 06

  We'll commit to it. We'll make it, make it so.

• 14:35Speaker 02

  Okay. People are starting to doubt that it exists.

• 14:38Speaker 06

  No, it exists. I keep telling them and they're like, oh, editing is so easy. You could, yeah, you edit a podcast.

• 14:45Cara Santa Maria?

  Don't let help people.

• 14:46Speaker 02

  I will say, this is video and video is 10 times harder than audio.

• 14:50Speaker 06

  It is a lot more.

• 14:51Speaker 05

  If we were, if we were closer to April 1st, I don't think anyone would believe you.

• 14:57Speaker 05

  But you know what happened January 1st, 1996, 30 years ago?

• 15:02Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, God, what?

• 15:03Speaker 05

  The official launch of the Connecticut Skeptical Society.

• 15:07Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh.

• 15:08Speaker 05

  Thirty years.

• 15:10Cara Santa Maria?

  I thought you were gonna say something that felt like five years ago.

• 15:13Jay Novella?

  Couple of young kids.

• 15:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 15:16Jay Novella?

  Hoping to change the world.

• 15:18Speaker 05

  That's right. Yeah, it was like, hey, let's, hey, kids, let's get together and put on a.

• 15:23Jay Novella?

  Put on a show.

• 15:24Speaker 05

  Put on a show, kind of. Yeah, it all started that way.

• 15:28Speaker 02

  All right. So the first segment we usually do in this year end review is the best and worst of 2025. And we could start with the best and worst of the SGU. Is there anything that you guys remember from the past year? That sticks out.

• 15:43Speaker 05

  Should we just go to Nauticon right now?

• 15:46Speaker 02

  Nauticon was great.

• 15:48Bob Novella?

  Nauticon was so epic. I mean, how.

• 15:51Speaker 05

  The first half of our year, so much effort went into, went into that. I mean, Jay, and you, you can speak more to that than any, any of us.

• 16:00Cara Santa Maria?

  If he can actually speak.

• 16:02Speaker 05

  What Jay would say right now is.

• 16:04Jay Novella?

  It's an incredible amount of work, but you know, you just do a little bit every day and you know, I get through it no problem. It's largely me and then, you know, Ian is handling the, the technical side, but we do work a lot together throughout that process.

• 16:19Speaker 05

  It's a good committee. It's a good committee.

• 16:21Jay Novella?

  We had so much, so much fun. Like people really, you know, that was our highlight, I think.

• 16:27Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 16:27Jay Novella?

  This year was definitely that conference. I mean, it, it felt fantastic and it really, really thought everyone had a great time.

• 16:34Speaker 05

  We, we had high expectations going into it, and I think we achieved those expectations. At least that was the feedback we received.

• 16:40Bob Novella?

  The first one, the first one was so perfect. I'm like, how are we gonna beat that? And like, well, we did. It was.

• 16:47Cara Santa Maria?

  And so much of it, I mean, not to undermine all of the incredible hard work and like, I mean, it was, it was phenomenal having all of these great guests there. Um, who was there with us? Like through the whole thing? It was George, Adam.

• 16:59Speaker 05

  Brian and Andrea.

• 17:00Cara Santa Maria?

  Andrea and Brian. Yeah, they were phenomenal. But it's that we have like literally the best listeners, the best fans. The group of people that was there with us was just incredible. They made the weekend.

• 17:13Speaker 05

  Oh, absolutely. Yes.

• 17:15Bob Novella?

  Totally.

• 17:15Speaker 05

  The vibe was incredible.

• 17:16Jay Novella?

  Yeah, it would have been boring without them.

• 17:19Cara Santa Maria?

  Eh, we would have made it work.

• 17:21Bob Novella?

  We would have had fun, but it wouldn't have been the same.

• 17:24Cara Santa Maria?

  Definitely not.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  Uh, we got some emails. Uh, listener Victor wrote from episode 1061. Bob says, talking about the Neo-robot. Bob said it really needed help for most anything it did. It needed help. And Kara responds, oh, great. So it's like having a man in your house. So wonderful. You want to go do it? Okay. Let me help you the whole.

• 17:47Bob Novella?

  That was great.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  Little sexist though Kara, is a little sexist, but.

• 17:52Speaker 05

  Not necessarily.

• 17:53Speaker 02

  Not all the truth?

• 17:54Cara Santa Maria?

  That was, it was describing reality.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  Hey, I'm pretty independent from my house chores.

• 18:02Cara Santa Maria?

  That's good to know, but I can point to the vast majority.

• 18:06Speaker 02

  I'm a modern man.

• 18:07Cara Santa Maria?

  Of the literature showing that women do like.

• 18:10Speaker 02

  Oh, you're gonna quote statistics on that?

• 18:12Cara Santa Maria?

  Not just the majority, but like a ridiculous amount, like a major majority of the domestic labor.

• 18:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, but that's an average, you know, which doesn't, doesn't say it, but everybody.

• 18:24Bob Novella?

  Well, how do you, how do you guys do it? Do you, do you have discreet tasks and your significant, significant other also has these discreet tasks? And that's kind of how, or do you kind of swap them and trade them here and there or what? How does that work?

• 18:36Speaker 05

  Our household has that, but we also do some things together.

• 18:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, for each task, it has its own percentage, you know, like Jocelyn does 80% of the laundry, you know? Cooking is like 50/50. She hates shopping, so I do almost all the shopping.

• 18:53Bob Novella?

  Wow, that's so different than me and Liz. Wow.

• 18:55Speaker 02

  Well, it's just, yeah, just chore by chore, you know?

• 18:58Cara Santa Maria?

  And so much of it, Steve, like when, when I make snide comments like that, and I'm, of course I'm being funny, but I'm also trying to hold up a mirror to reality. It's less about what people do and it's more about the kind of undercurrent of. A, that the tasks that men tend to do in the home tend to be very visible and the tasks that women tend to do tend to be very invisible. They're the ongoing, it's never finished work. Whereas men tend to do more discreet tasks where everybody can like go, oh, look, you did the thing. Congratulations or thank you.

• 19:31Speaker 02

  I hung that painting.

• 19:32Cara Santa Maria?

  Exactly. I mowed the lawn. I, you know. And then the other thing is that very often, we're not actually talking about the, the labor itself, but the cognitive labor that goes into it. And so I'm not saying you're the example, but very often a man will say, I go out and I do all the grocery shopping. And it's like, yeah, but she makes the list. She tells you what you need to get. You call and you're like, what brand do we use? I don't know anything. And she has to do all of the mental work.

• 19:57Speaker 02

  Where the hell is that item on the shelves?

• 19:59Cara Santa Maria?

  And that's a very common issue, even in liberal, progressive relationships with high levels of parity. When, when dug underneath the surface, most of the, the research shows that women are still doing the majority of the cognitive labor.

• 20:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:14Cara Santa Maria?

  Which is a huge bummer. We've got to fix it.

• 20:17Speaker 02

  Victor also wrote, favorite quote of the year was from me. Extraordinary claims don't require extraordinary evidence. They require appropriate evidence.

• 20:25Cara Santa Maria?

  Mm hmm.

• 20:26Speaker 02

  I remember saying that. Wow. And the funniest thing, he's on that, he says a recurring joke that if the SGU ever misses a week, something catastrophic must have happened. Yeah. Which he said, I guess, more than once. That is.

• 20:39Cara Santa Maria?

  We've never missed a week, right?

• 20:41Speaker 02

  That tracks. We haven't. That's, that's the whole point.

• 20:43Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, I see. I get it. I get it.

• 20:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 20:47Cara Santa Maria?

  We got a lot. Can I say, I know, I don't even know what order we're supposed to be doing this in.

• 20:51Speaker 02

  This is just best of SGU stuff.

• 20:52Cara Santa Maria?

  Best stuff. Okay. We got a lot of emails and I have to agree, and I also agree with the reasoning. It's probably the recency bias.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:01Cara Santa Maria?

  But that Battle of Hastings episode.

• 21:03Speaker 02

  It was a funny episode. Recency bias.

• 21:06Cara Santa Maria?

  Really funny episode. I think that you also left in a lot more banter than usual in that episode.

• 21:14Speaker 02

  Cause it was funny.

• 21:15Cara Santa Maria?

  Exactly. People loved it. Like, we got a lot of good feedback.

• 21:19Bob Novella?

  Learned what's up.

• 21:21Speaker 02

  Although a couple of people felt that you guys were a little pushed back a little bit too hard.

• 21:27Bob Novella?

  Hard up, yeah.

• 21:27Speaker 02

  On my love of history and the Battle of Hastings. Almost dancing around, almost being a little anti-intellectual. I'm not saying you were. What? Couple of people, they have a point. He left it in to get sympathy. I know, it's all for humor. It's all for humorous effect. But we do have to understand our audience and the vibe of the show and, you know, saying that, oh, you're a nerd because you like this intellectual discipline.

• 21:52Cara Santa Maria?

  No, nobody thinks that it's bad that you are really into it.

• 21:57Speaker 02

  I know. Well, Jay sort of did, but yeah, I know.

• 22:00Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, yeah. Jay was kind of being funny about that.

• 22:02Speaker 02

  But yeah, but that's just, that was just Jay leaning into it and being funny. Yeah, I mean, the bottom.

• 22:06Cara Santa Maria?

  Bananas that you expected us to be as into it as you are.

• 22:10Bob Novella?

  Well, you know.

• 22:12Speaker 02

  It's appropriate.

• 22:15Bob Novella?

  No, I mean, and I specifically said, I'm not a history buff. And that's fine. Who the hell are any of us to put down someone's niche geekdom? I mean, that would be something, it's ridiculous. Quite the opposite. Something that we would never really do. Quite the opposite, actually. Yeah, we were definitely leaning into it. And I am proud to say, I knew what Steve was talking about. I mean, I read that book. I mentioned it. And it was an awesome book. And I learned a lot. And it was pivotal.

• 22:39Speaker 02

  Proud of you.

• 22:40Bob Novella?

  But, uh.

• 22:41Cara Santa Maria?

  And I am kind of a history buff, but I, you know, the areas where I tend to focus, the documentaries that I tend to watch, they're just not that. I'm not a big war. Yeah, they're not battles.

• 22:52Speaker 02

  But this was not just, it wasn't about the fight. It was about the massive cultural change that resulted from. We don't have to get back into that.

• 23:00Bob Novella?

  That's true. We covered that shit.

• 23:04Cara Santa Maria?

  Does it?

• 23:05Speaker 06

  History needs more vampires, I think. If there was a vampire in there, I'd be really interested.

• 23:09Cara Santa Maria?

  Does anybody? I have a favorite. It's so, it's so funny because it's like, we think about favorite news stories of the year. And often we'll talk about, oh, this was the, my favorite like, science news that we learned. But I was thinking this year about, well, what's my favorite topic that I covered? Like, what did I learn the most from digging deep?

• 23:28Bob Novella?

  I do that every year. That's what I do every year.

• 23:30Cara Santa Maria?

  Do you? Okay.

• 23:31Bob Novella?

  Oh, yeah. It's like, this is the one that I covered that I loved the most.

• 23:34Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay, yeah.

• 23:35Bob Novella?

  If it was a dramatically like best of the year news item, I'm grabbing that, man. It's just like, of course I would grab that. Something so, that's worthy of that list. So, yeah, I invariably, although this year, I'm not, ironically, I'm not necessarily picking something that I talked about. Because I think it's something that needs to be at least mentioned on the show.

• 23:53Cara Santa Maria?

  I think they're just two different things. Like, some of my favorite science news, which we'll get to, were like huge discoveries and like amazing things that happened mostly in, in medicine. But my favorite news item that I did was, I had to dig for it, but it was episode 1058, which I think was in October. I covered this study where the researchers described a construct that they called symbolic strength.

• 24:19Bob Novella?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 24:20Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, really deep into like, why people find pride in like denying reality. And, and why they seem so entrenched and how hard it is to quote, change their minds. Because not only do they not want their minds changed, they feel special having the anti-viewpoint.

• 24:39Bob Novella?

  They have a golden nugget that you'll never-

• 24:40Speaker 06

  Is it just the anti-viewpoint, or is it like, yeah, is it like special knowledge?

• 24:43Cara Santa Maria?

  It's, yeah, it's definitely special knowledge. It's, it's we're the one. It's not, and it's not even like the whole conspiracy thing where like, we're the ones who know and you don't really know. But it's like, oh, the mainstream-

• 24:55Cara Santa Maria?

  They are whatever they would call liberal.

• 24:59Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 25:01Cara Santa Maria?

  It's like, they're like, but we, we have the, you know, information, even if it flies in the face of, of evidence.

• 25:09Speaker 06

  But does it require that we, that like group think consolidation or like camaraderie that they have it? Or can they exhibit it on their own individually?

• 25:18Cara Santa Maria?

  I do think it requires the camaraderie because these aren't just like made up viewpoints. They're, they're echo chamber viewpoints.

• 25:24Speaker 05

  Flat earth. Kind of stuff.

• 25:26Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 25:26Speaker 02

  It becomes part of the group identity.

• 25:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Exactly.

• 25:28Jay Novella?

  I have a favorite news item from this past year. Um, if you guys remember, I talked about, talked about lab grown teeth.

• 25:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:37Speaker 05

  Yeah. You did, yes.

• 25:39Speaker 06

  Love that.

• 25:39Jay Novella?

  You know, if you, if you guys remember the, uh, this wasn't like a minor, um, achievement, this last, this last, uh, level that they got to. Like they're, they're legit testing it, you know, like it's, it, this could be a thing. It could really happen. So I think that's encouraging.

• 25:54Bob Novella?

  That was fun. Yeah.

• 25:55Jay Novella?

  Cause you know, not only is dentistry crazy expensive, but it could be horribly painful. And it's really sad, you know, lots of people have to lose their teeth and they have to get implants and all that stuff. Like if this works out, you know, it could avoid all of that.

• 26:09Speaker 06

  Wouldn't it still be an implant or you, I assume you're not growing it back in your skull. You assume you're growing it externally and then putting it back.

• 26:15Speaker 02

  No, they're planting the bud in your jaw and then.

• 26:17Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 26:18Speaker 06

  Oh, they are planting the, oh, okay. That's that part. No, that's neat.

• 26:22Speaker 02

  I have a couple of things from, from the interwebs, from our listeners talking online. Uh, a lot of people locked, liked Bob's mega rant about quantum crystals. You remember that one, Bob?

• 26:32Speaker 06

  What? No.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  It was a pseudoscience item and you got so outraged at the pseudoscience that you had this monologue rant afterwards. That people loved.

• 26:45Speaker 05

  Just a classic quantum pseudoscience crap. Yeah. I hate that shit. You probably said grind my gears at some point during that.

• 26:52Speaker 02

  And you guys have a favorite guest?

• 26:54Speaker 06

  Ooh, um. I remember we had Dr. Nick Tiller, the exercise scientist. That was a, that was a fun interview. I like that one. That one was memorable.

• 27:03Speaker 02

  President Dave.

• 27:04Cara Santa Maria?

  One of my favorite interviews, I mean, anytime we have the chance to talk to Marsh, I love those interviews.

• 27:09Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. Gosh, had we not seen him since QED in 2018? Maybe.

• 27:16Speaker 02

  In person?

• 27:17Speaker 05

  Well, that's perhaps the last time he was on an SGU episode.

• 27:20Cara Santa Maria?

  Wow, really? And what a great thing that he and Cecil, that they're, that they're doing this podcast where they dig into Joe Rogan episodes.

• 27:30Speaker 05

  Oh, really? That's like the focus?

• 27:33Cara Santa Maria?

  Yes, the No Rogan Podcast.

• 27:35Speaker 05

  Yep, the No Rogan. I love it. With a K. The No Rogan, nice. Oh, gosh, I hope it's also three hours because you need that per episode because you need that much time to undo what he's doing.

• 27:45Speaker 02

  I liked the interview with Kyle Johnson, the philosopher. Because I think it was like the perfect level of wonkiness for the show, you know what I mean? Getting like, let's do a deep dive on logic. And like really suss it out because we obviously something that comes up a lot on the show. So it was great to talk to a philosopher, you know, an actual expert and like really dial it in tight, you know?

• 28:08Speaker 05

  Right.

• 28:09Speaker 02

  Tight.

• 28:10Speaker 05

  Yep, yep.

• 28:11Bob Novella?

  Well, we did mention the most interesting or best whatever science news item. I was going to talk about the whole Oz-Olo color thing, which, which I mentioned only because I talked about it where at the Nauticon show on stage. And, and I, for some reason, this was just so extra fascinating, be how color perception and how, how the retina works and all that. I took a few onion layers deeper than I typically delved and it was just so fascinating. That one really comes to mind, but I think we have to mention, it's kind of obvious. It's not the best, it's not the most interesting science of the year, but it's the most impactful. And it's, it's pretty obvious, you know, the gutting of science research in the United States this year has been unprecedented.

• 28:56Bob Novella?

  Thousands of researchers, you know, withholding federal research funding, dismantling, you know, climate research. It's, it's been devastating and we'll feel the impact for generations. This is like the biggest science news item of this year. It's like, what, what could impact, what, what can compare to this in terms of just sheer impact of science in this country? It's just like, it's ridiculous. It's just like beyond the pale. It's just like, what, how is this our reality?

• 29:22Speaker 02

  Another Bob rant.

• 29:23Bob Novella?

  All right, come on, man, that's worthy, Jesus.

• 29:26Cara Santa Maria?

  And not just defunding science, research, but defunding public health programs like AMFAR, like these different, or USAID.

• 29:36Bob Novella?

  Yes.

• 29:37Cara Santa Maria?

  These programs that, I mean, we know for a fact, like, there's a body count.

• 29:42Bob Novella?

  And I know, have you read some of the estimates of the numbers?

• 29:45Cara Santa Maria?

  They're bananas.

• 29:47Bob Novella?

  It's one, uh, let's see, I read one that was 124, and these are models, right, of likely deaths and excess deaths because of this slash USAID. 124,000 adults, over a quarter million children, 88 deaths per hour. That's the result of what's been done to USAID, and that's, those are the estimates. And even if it's off, I'm sure it's not perfectly accurate, right? But it doesn't matter, even if it's just somewhat correct, it's devastating and like, what the hell?

• 30:18Cara Santa Maria?

  There's, there's a study-

• 30:19Bob Novella?

  Oh, my God, that's the body count.

• 30:21Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, there's a study out of UCLA that was done by their, uh, Fielding School of Public Health this July that said more than 14 million preventable deaths would occur by 2030 if USAID defunding continues, including more than 4 million children under the age of 5.

• 30:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, but the savings, though, you know?

• 30:40Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, the savings for their bank accounts tomorrow, but the savings for the globe, or even the American government in the long term, are not savings.

• 30:49Speaker 02

  It was, it was not, you know, but even if you take it as a savings rather than the investment that it is, it was less than what Trump just decided to hand to, uh, Argentina.

• 30:59Bob Novella?

  Yeah, right?

• 31:00Speaker 02

  There you go. More than what was allegedly, quote unquote, "saved" by gutting USAID. Just, that was just madness. There's also, I mean, if we're talking about like crap that happened this year, you know, the, the, you know, gutting of, of support for research, scientific research in the United States is terrible. And I could tell you that the rest of the world is like, "Come here," you know? Yeah.

• 31:29Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:30Speaker 02

  They are poaching, talk about a brain drain, they are poaching all of our talent now. Because they're not, because people, you know, if you're, even if you're here on a visa and you're completely legitimate, you are afraid, you know, that you're just going to be suddenly deported because somebody doesn't like the color of your skin or something, or the country that you came from, so.

• 31:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it's twofold, Steve. It's like, not only are people losing their NIH grants and losing their funding that keeps their labs afloat, people that are either naturalized or natural born citizens, but then you have individuals who, as you mentioned, are all different levels of immigration status, who don't feel safe, and many of whom have already been asked to leave. So, it's a brain drain, not just of American scientists, but scientists who have become American scientists, or who are practicing in America.

• 32:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:24Cara Santa Maria?

  Even natural born citizens are like, well, I can't keep my lab open, so this other country that might be offering more funding, seems like an interesting place to go. It's like a double loss.

• 32:37Speaker 02

  And they're like, cutting funding for, for clinical trials or for research.

• 32:42Cara Santa Maria?

  Mm-hmm.

• 32:42Speaker 02

  That is where they're collaborating with a non-US laboratory or scientist.

• 32:49Cara Santa Maria?

  Which is every legitimate thing.

• 32:51Speaker 02

  I know.

• 32:53Speaker 02

  Within academia, collaborating with people outside of your institution is considered the best. Like, that is what, it's what you're supposed to be striving for, is that kind of collaboration. And now they're punishing people for that. Nope, can only work with other Americans. It is insane, and it's absolute.

• 33:10Cara Santa Maria?

  Ah, it's horrible.

• 33:11Speaker 02

  Anti-scientific madness. It's crazy.

• 33:14Cara Santa Maria?

  Lysenkoism.

• 33:15Speaker 02

  It's going to, it is lysenkoism, absolutely. And it's going to hurt us for at least a generation, if not more. We may never get to back, get back to where we would have been if they did not do this.

• 33:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 33:28Speaker 02

  This is like a permanent hit to, to the US. And to the world.

• 33:34Cara Santa Maria?

  And it makes me nervous. Like, I was looking into the best sciences, like the stuff that I was the most excited about this year. And they were, I mean, hands down, gene therapies, gene therapy for Huntington's disease, T cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, there's the new CAR T cell therapy, the first CRISPR that was individually tailored. It was like designer CRISPR for, yeah, for the baby with CPS one. And I worry that those stories, that is the confluence, the amalgamation, like the, the end result of previous year, like a lot of hard work and previous study. How many years are we going to be able to say, look at all this cool stuff that happened, at least in the US this year?

• 34:17Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 34:18Cara Santa Maria?

  I don't think we're gonna have years like that.

• 34:20Speaker 02

  Maybe a while.

• 34:21Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 34:21Speaker 02

  Well, let's shift into the science, into best science news of the year. I agree that the, the genetic stuff is just incredible. And, and it looks to, you know, continue. I think we're just getting started.

• 34:33Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, maybe not we, but the world, the world is just getting started.

• 34:37Speaker 02

  But, and along those lines, you, you kind of touched on this, immunotherapy for cancer also is just taking off. It is, that, you know, there's continued to be advances and breakthroughs this year for that. Also, a couple of things I noted, there's been a number of significant breakthroughs in quantum computing, you know, authoring by assessment of how likely and how soon we may have actual practical, practical quantum computers. I think they got a lot closer this year, more than any other single year that I could remember.

• 35:11Bob Novella?

  It seemed like a definitely a multiple incremental.

• 35:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:14Bob Novella?

  You know, leaps.

• 35:15Speaker 02

  And it was a big year for life in the solar system. Oh, right.

• 35:20Speaker 05

  Yes, it was. Sure was.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  We haven't found the Holy Grail yet. We haven't found actual life in the solar system, but in terms of biosignatures. So, we talked very recently, you know, about finding all the, all the makings of RNA on asteroid Benu and.

• 35:37Bob Novella?

  Yeah, right.

• 35:38Speaker 02

  And the, the most tantalizing signs of ancient life on Mars that we have yet discovered.

• 35:43Speaker 05

  Carbon chain, yes.

• 35:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, the large carbon chains, yep.

• 35:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, we're, we're, we're peeling that back to the point where, boy, it's just incredible what we've been able to figure out. Plus, we haven't even gotten the samples back from Mars yet.

• 35:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:54Speaker 05

  Which we're still hopefully working on. And I think there was, what, a glitch in the system, right, Jay? Or there was, there was talk of. Shelving that, but I think it's back on schedule, if I recall.

• 36:04Jay Novella?

  I haven't checked recently, but I think the last we heard that it was back, right?

• 36:08Speaker 05

  Yes, that's, that was my understanding. And that's going to be so significant. And again, the thing about these particular samples, yes, that we've seen evidence of these things that have on objects that have fallen to earth, but we're collecting them out in their natural habitat right now. And without that contamination, potential for contamination. So it just, it becomes more affirming than anything else that we've, that we've been able to study and understand. I'd like to mention, it's not strictly science, but it was certainly significant. And it happened almost a year ago. So it was early in the year, you know, and again, the recency bias takes over at a certain point. But the LA fires was, was a massive, massive story.

• 36:46Cara Santa Maria?

  Of course.

• 36:46Speaker 05

  That did have certainly elements of science to it, but also a lot of different things. Carrot was, first of all, was, you know, close home to you.

• 36:54Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:55Speaker 05

  Having to deal with that on, you know, a day to day basis, it lasted for about three or four weeks. All of January practically.

• 37:02Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, yeah. And we couldn't breathe the air. I mean, it was even those of us who were outside of the evac zones. I was like in, in the, you know, have your go bag ready area, but I never had to actually evac. Oh, it was horrific. Like my, I have two pretty fancy like Dyson air filters in my house. You know, those like standalone fans that have the filters. And within a week, I had changed them within the past month or two. And you're supposed to change them maybe once a year, I think. Within the week, they were clogged and not functional anymore.

• 37:37Speaker 05

  Whoa, wow.

• 37:39Cara Santa Maria?

  It was bananas. The intake filters in my HVAC were black and thick, like inside my home. And I have a pretty new home that's pretty well sealed. Yeah, I think the air quality was like in the 300s, maybe.

• 37:52Jay Novella?

  300.

• 37:52Cara Santa Maria?

  It was something just horrific. Don't quote me on that. I have screenshots of it, but.

• 37:58Speaker 05

  Certainly wasn't just grass and trees and things that burned. There were 18,000 structures.

• 38:03Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, homes. Yeah.

• 38:05Speaker 05

  So, so in, so in those particular, in the particles there that they're being breathed in, there's, there's plastic. There's all kinds of things going, you know, that is coming, that is in, in that air that is hurting, damaging people.

• 38:17Cara Santa Maria?

  Vintage building materials, you know, there's like all, yeah, there's.

• 38:21Jay Novella?

  A little asbestos.

• 38:21Cara Santa Maria?

  Asbestos, yeah. There's, everything went up into the air. And, you know.

• 38:27Cara Santa Maria?

  From a personal perspective, you know, I know people, I know lots of people who lost their homes. Cause I was close to the Altadena fire, not the, not the fire.

• 38:36Speaker 05

  Palisades fire.

• 38:37Cara Santa Maria?

  In Palisades, but because I was finishing my fellowship at the time at this like large cancer center. I saw patients from all over and I had patients who lost everything, you know? So not only were they dealing with their cancer, that's why they were seeing me, but they lost everything. Yeah, like it's, I mean, when, when an entire city goes up in flames like that, like I remember a teenager that I was speaking with. And they said, the school I went to for elementary, middle, high school, the, you know, grocery store I shopped at, the library I went to, my friend's house, my other friend's house. The place I went to summer camp, they don't exist anymore.

• 39:19Cara Santa Maria?

  Just like her entire childhood was wiped off the face of the map. I mean, it's just, it's pretty hard to fathom. And that's, that's somebody who survived and is, you know, going to be able to rebuild. There are people who didn't survive.

• 39:33Speaker 06

  Now, can we definitively say it wasn't because somebody didn't turn the water on, so to speak?

• 39:38Cara Santa Maria?

  Yes, we can, because we know, we know that the, the original or the very, very beginning of the fire. Folks or an individual is charged for, for that, right?

• 39:50Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 39:51Cara Santa Maria?

  For intentionally setting the fire.

• 39:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 39:53Cara Santa Maria?

  Fireworks? I can't remember.

• 39:55Speaker 05

  No, no, no, he, he apparently, oh gosh, it, it's still, it's still playing out, but the evidence against him is that. He, he's deliberately set the fire, but he has shown through his social media posts and other things, a fixation with fires. So I, I don't know what that is, if, if there's a mental illness of some sort that, that accounts for something like that. I wouldn't know how to classify it. I don't want to call him an arsonist per se, right? Because, you know, uh, but definitely it was one person who with a lighter.

• 40:27Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it's a small brush fire.

• 40:28Speaker 05

  Started a little fire and it just, and it got out of control. Now they contained it a few days later.

• 40:33Cara Santa Maria?

  But then it.

• 40:34Speaker 05

  But then the winds picked up, there go the Santa Anas and you lose total control at that point. And it, and it turned into the, to the devastation that it did.

• 40:41Cara Santa Maria?

  And now we see, I'm seeing here 12 deaths, nearly 7,000 structures and 150 billion dollars in damages just from the Palisades fire.

• 40:50Speaker 05

  That was just.

• 40:50Cara Santa Maria?

  And remember, we had the two huge fires and lots of small fires around them.

• 40:55Speaker 05

  Thirty-one direct fatalities from all the fires. There were a total of fourteen individual fires as a result of this. But they're also saying the mortality, it's hard to measure the long-term mortality rate of this because of the breathing issues that everybody is having. You know, it's like, it was kind of like, in a sense, nine eleven where people were dying years later from the, from having been exposed to that atmosphere.

• 41:18Speaker 06

  Do you think this will change how we build houses in America? I mean, especially given that this seems to recur over and over? Or is that a lost cause? Are we just doomed to keep building out of wood?

• 41:30Cara Santa Maria?

  It's both, right? I think that in California, we've known about fire risks and we've also known about, about earthquake risks and we do what we can to mitigate, but there's only so much you can engineer your way out of these things.

• 41:44Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

• 41:45Cara Santa Maria?

  But definitely, I think it'll change the way that we build from a civic perspective, like the, the infrastructure around the homes.

• 41:52Speaker 05

  I hope so. Yeah, and other fire mitigation.

• 41:55Cara Santa Maria?

  Exactly.

• 41:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, they have to bury all those electrical, electrical transmission lines.

• 42:00Cara Santa Maria?

  And we do have to be careful about how the pressure that's put on the water system and are we trying to tap into water that's not meant to fight, you know, a blazing forest fire with water that's meant to fight, you know, a small, uh, structure fire.

• 42:18Speaker 02

  All right. Should we go on to Skeptical Hero and Skeptical Jackass of the year?

• 42:24Cara Santa Maria?

  Do we start with Jackass so we get all the?

• 42:27Speaker 05

  Oh, you want to do that first?

• 42:28Speaker 02

  You want to do that?

• 42:29Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, here's one thing. Everything keeps getting really dark. So if we get the dark stuff out of the way, maybe we can end on a higher note.

• 42:37Speaker 06

  The end will be happy.

• 42:37Speaker 02

  It doesn't matter. We could do Jackass first. Who'd you have in mind, Kara?

• 42:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, who?

• 42:42Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, for me, I mean, it's hard because who, who did we, did we ultimately choose RFK Junior last year?

• 42:49Speaker 02

  You can pick them again.

• 42:49Speaker 05

  Well, but you're right. The administration really didn't start until this year.

• 42:54Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, so for me it was.

• 42:55Speaker 05

  Officially became RFK this year.

• 42:57Cara Santa Maria?

  It was RFK and his band of merry science deniers. I mean, it's not just him, right?

• 43:02Speaker 05

  No, no, of course. It's everything he dragged in with him.

• 43:05Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, and I think some of them he dragged in and some of them just also were there because Trump put them in place. Like, we've got to remember that RFK is the Secretary of Health and Human Services, but we've got, uh, Dr. How do you say his last name? Batisharia? Jay Batisharia? He's the director of NIH. We've got Jim O'Neill, who's the Deputy Secretary of HHS and the Acting Director of the CDC. We've got Martin Makary, who's the Commissioner of the FDA. We've got Mehmet Oz, who is the Administrator for, you know, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid. Like, these are all science deniers, to some extent, in these very important positions.

• 43:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, and Trump is basically MIA. I mean, he's not doing anything. He just let RFK handle everything.

• 43:54Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 43:54Speaker 02

  You know, he's really just deferring to him. And, yeah, I mean, for me, it begins and ends with RFK Jr., right? Yeah, so all the people that come along with it as well. But he is anti-science, pseudoscience, conspiracy-mongering, personified. He is the poster child for all of the harm that can be done when you give actual power to these crazy, nutjob science deniers. And, you know...

• 44:21Speaker 05

  The power is enormous.

• 44:22Speaker 02

  It's just mind-blowing, the harm. Again, we talk about, like, how many people are going to die due to the reckless, you know, cutting of USAID. You know, RFK already has a body count attached to his nonsense. True. The only question is how many zeros is he going to add to that, you know, over his tenure? And a lot of that, Mark Chrislip just wrote about this on Science-Based Medicine, the fact that, you know what the pandemic-preparedness plan is? To do nothing. To do absolutely nothing. You know, if we have a pandemic in the next three years, we're effed. It's going to be bad.

• 45:03Speaker 06

  Why, the last one was a hoax anyway, right?

• 45:05Speaker 02

  We're just gonna make people healthy and that they'll be able to fight off the infection. That's basically their plan, which is basically saying we're gonna do nothing.

• 45:12Bob Novella?

  And what really sucks is that even after the horrific results of that plan would be like, well, it would have been worse if we did it your way. It's like, whoa, jeez.

• 45:22Cara Santa Maria?

  It doesn't even make sense from a long-term political expediency perspective because who's gonna die?

• 45:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:31Cara Santa Maria?

  It's gonna be the older people who voted for these folks. It's gonna be the unvaccinated people who voted for these folks. It's going to be a lot of people who are the most vulnerable among us.

• 45:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's gonna change the political calculus, but I mean...

• 45:49Cara Santa Maria?

  A huge pandemic would, but I mean, it's just devastating.

• 45:53Speaker 02

  I mean, for COVID, COVID death rates were a lot higher in red states than blue states, in states that were not doing the things, you know, that would be science-based.

• 46:05Cara Santa Maria?

  That's what I'm saying. Imagine if COVID happened again, but this was the administration and we had no plans in place.

• 46:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, the Dapo is basically the RFK for Florida. You know what I mean? So it's a smaller scope, but basically the same thing. So, I mean, no one can come close to the havoc that RFK is wreaking, but, you know, it's not fair to all the other pseudoscientists out there. So we have to have some rumors up in my opinion.

• 46:30Cara Santa Maria?

  Exactly.

• 46:30Speaker 02

  You can't let RFK Junior overshadow all the other cranks and charlatans that deserve to be mentioned.

• 46:36Speaker 06

  We need a top 10 list of the cranks, honestly.

• 46:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:41Speaker 05

  Top 100 list.

• 46:43Speaker 02

  I mean, I have a couple of people. Does anybody wanna throw something out? Evan, come on.

• 46:49Speaker 05

  Well, you want the Avi Loeb?

• 46:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:53Speaker 05

  Oh my gosh. Why does every article I come across have him as part of the article? Why can't I have an atlas, right, what is it, 3L atlas?

• 47:04Bob Novella?

  3I.

• 47:04Speaker 05

  3I atlas article that does not mention Avi Loeb, please? Someone out there in media, stop referencing this person. I get you have to have clicks and things, but my gosh, it's as if this person is the expert, the only expert on it, and he's nothing of the sort, frankly. All he does is promote his own interpretation of what's going on.

• 47:29Speaker 05

  I can't find another, I can't find any other reputable scientists that agree with anything. It's all the UFO and UAP community that backs him up. I mean, this, this guy is the UFO, UAP crank of now.

• 47:44Speaker 02

  He really has become a crank.

• 47:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, he's become the poster child for, for, for all of this. So, I mean, I know we've mentioned him in the past and I think he's been on this list in the past. But he keeps earning it. I mean, he keeps coming back and, and media plays right into his hands, unfortunately. Just today, I was reading another one about, oh, it's approaching Earth and it's accelerating at a rate that can only be, you know, unnatural, you know, nat- unnatural propulsion, propulsion. Bull. According to one scientist, N equals one. That's it.

• 48:14Speaker 02

  NASA recently gave a briefing updating, because you know, the, the comet is coming to, to its closest approach to Earth.

• 48:22Speaker 05

  It's glowing in X-rays, isn't it?

• 48:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it's doing all the stuff that comets do when it gets closer to the sun. Um, so they began their briefing by saying, this object is a comet. It looks and behaves like a comet and all evidence points to it being a comet. And they specifically called out Avi Loeb.

• 48:43Speaker 05

  Really? Good for them.

• 48:44Speaker 02

  I know, for his posted a non-peer reviewed pre-print. Um, and

• 48:51Speaker 05

  That's wonderful.

• 48:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. They, they, they shut that down fast. No, it is a freaking comet. It's, you know what I mean? And the more, and this has been, you know, there's been a massive, uh, mission to observe it from everything we have looking at. Anything that we could get eyes on, you know, through I-Atlas has been looking at it. You know, we have so much data and the more data that comes in, the more obvious it is that this thing is a comet. Now, it's an unusual comet because of course it's the first interstellar comet. So why would we think it would be identical to a typical, you know, uh, comet from our own solar system? But, you know, whatever, nothing that is anomalous. Just like, oh, that's interesting. A little bit more nickel. Okay. Or, you know, more carbon dioxide than a typical Earth.

• 49:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, right.

• 49:35Speaker 02

  You know, so, solar comet. Yeah, whatever. Nothing like, oh my god, this has got to be an alien spacecraft.

• 49:41Speaker 05

  I have another skeptical jackass I'd like to throw out there. It's more of a category, but I do have a couple of names that fit this category. And that's TikTok. Um, and I don't know if anyone else has anyone or anything having to do with TikTok on their skeptical jackass. But this, this platform is just pure poison. I'm sorry. I know there's good, and I know there's good stuff on there.

• 50:00Speaker 02

  There's good science communicators on there.

• 50:01Speaker 05

  And I have it on my Skeptical Heroes list. I have a list of some people who are doing some very good social media, um, in, in, in science. So it is not just a blanket statement, but these people, for example, you have these three people. Nora Smith, right?

• 50:17Speaker 06

  She, but, okay.

• 50:18Speaker 05

  Good. Promoting the consumption of raw milk while pregnant.

• 50:23Speaker 06

  All right, so that's.

• 50:26Speaker 06

  I, I thought you were just gonna be like, cause she is like a little quirky and trad wifey and like she does some goofy stuff with her husband and they, I think they're vampires.

• 50:36Speaker 06

  Yeah, that is fair. She does do some.

• 50:39Speaker 05

  How about Paul Saladino? You know, have you heard that name? The all meat carnivore diet.

• 50:44Speaker 06

  Carnivore, yeah.

• 50:46Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, I think I watched a documentary about that guy.

• 50:48Speaker 02

  Vegetables are poison, Evan.

• 50:51Speaker 05

  That's what Perry used to say.

• 50:53Speaker 06

  If you watch RFK or anybody in Congress, he is, he's walking around with them usually, like, especially RFK. He's like always there.

• 51:00Speaker 05

  Wow. And I want to mention this cause, cause it's funny, the Liver King, right?

• 51:05Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, no, that's the documentary I watched. Yeah, there's a whole thing on the Liver King.

• 51:09Speaker 05

  Yep, yep. If you focus on eating large amounts of raw organ meats, uh, then you're gonna have, you know, superpower. You'll, you'll live longer than anyone in your family ever has.

• 51:19Speaker 06

  I thought, yeah, unfortunately, I think he needs like therapy. Like he's not just like a crank fully.

• 51:24Speaker 02

  Well, you could sit about any of these people.

• 51:26Speaker 06

  Lost the plot.

• 51:27Speaker 02

  There's somewhere between needing therapy and being carnivore.

• 51:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 51:32Speaker 06

  Sure, yeah.

• 51:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, that too. But just the amount of clicks these people get is obscene. Have no, no business getting it.

• 51:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, as you know, Evan, I'm on TikTok.

• 51:43Speaker 05

  Well, yes, and this is why I qualified it.

• 51:45Speaker 06

  Follow at TikTok.com.

• 51:47Speaker 02

  Helps us produce our TikTok videos. And there's, there is a couple of dominant narratives on TikTok that I find myself addressing over and over again, just in different guises. One of them is, oh, this, this guy who invented a thing was killed, died, therefore he was killed to hide his discovery, kind of thing.

• 52:08Speaker 05

  Oh, Diesel.

• 52:09Speaker 02

  Like, yeah, like we talked about that.

• 52:11Cara Santa Maria?

  We were just talking about that, yeah.

• 52:12Speaker 02

  That's, that's what, that was from TikTok. The other one is that the, you know, anybody to do, anybody in the healthcare industry wants you to die, wants you to be unhealthy, or everything they tell you is a lie.

• 52:24Speaker 05

  Holding back the cure for cancer.

• 52:26Speaker 02

  Everything you've ever heard is a lie. And also that history didn't happen. You know, the other thing is like, whatever, that

• 52:32Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:32Speaker 02

  You can't prove anything in history and therefore, you know, Helen Keller didn't exist and this building was that, nobody built this building. It's in the history denial is, I mean, Sarah, I'm not, I'm not exaggerating in the slightest. I'm barely giving you a

• 52:48Speaker 06

  Were you there, Steve? Were you there?

• 52:51Cara Santa Maria?

  That's so bad.

• 52:52Speaker 05

  The buildings didn't, right. Could not have been built.

• 52:54Speaker 02

  There was a huge mud flood around the world a hundred years ago, a hundred years ago. You think we would have? They're not talking about thousands of years ago. They're talking about like 50 years ago, a hundred years ago.

• 53:06Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, they weren't born yet.

• 53:08Speaker 02

  I know, it's like, it's ridiculous.

• 53:10Speaker 05

  There weren't cell phones then, Steve. Nobody captured it.

• 53:14Cara Santa Maria?

  Can't prove it unless it was on TikTok.

• 53:17Speaker 05

  Are they talking about that molasses spill that killed a bunch of people in Boston?

• 53:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was real.

• 53:22Speaker 05

  That's what they think.

• 53:23Speaker 02

  I remember that. The memory hole is just profound.

• 53:27Speaker 05

  Oh, gosh.

• 53:29Speaker 02

  It's really, it's just sad. Um, and there's a lot of NASA hate on TikTok.

• 53:34Speaker 05

  Oof.

• 53:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, that is a weird one. I mean, part of it is, I don't know if I'm influencing it because I also kind of sourced a lot of the videos, so I actively go seek out the crazy stuff.

• 53:44Speaker 02

  Well, yeah.

• 53:45Speaker 06

  I mean, it does get a lot of likes and who knows if they're bots, but it is like, seemingly pervasive. Um, you know, so it is weird. Uh, yeah, I mean, I think all the platforms unfortunately have devolved. I mean, X is notoriously run by, you know, somebody who's not necessarily a straight shooter in many ways. Instagram, Facebook, all of those things are, I don't know, social media, maybe we shouldn't have started. Can we go back?

• 54:19Speaker 06

  There were good, there was an era where it was like-

• 54:21Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, but there's also more and more evidence to show how just like exceedingly damaging it is to young people's mental health.

• 54:30Speaker 06

  Sure, but what do you do? Because obviously, we've heard in the news, and this is a little political, but Australia is like banning it for underage, sixteen. However, like, if you grew up, like Kara and I grew up, long ago, we grew up in the world where there wasn't the internet, and then there was the internet, right? And I found ways around my parents putting, you know, like, an abstinence policy out there. Like, I found other ways to get on the internet. Is this gonna do anything, you think?

• 54:57Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, I do personally, because I don't think it's the same as abstinence. And I hear, I hear you why you're using that word, but it's, you could also say the same thing about, like, Australia banning guns. And like, yes, they did just have a mass shooting, but their numbers are nowhere near our numbers. Even, you know, adjusted for population. There's just, yes, I think that when you make it so that it's, it's no longer culturally normative, and when you make it so that it's not as easily accessible, people are always gonna figure out ways to do it, but not, not to the same extent as they do now.

• 55:38Speaker 06

  Right, but with the guns, there's not like an analog that you can get around it where you like have mass firing spoons or something. Like, there's not-

• 55:45Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I mean, some kids are gonna figure out how to use it regardless, but if there are heavy penalties, or I don't really know what, how they're gonna enforce this. And also, if you just straight up ban cellphones in school, that has another, like-

• 55:57Speaker 06

  That's a different, I agree with that, kind of, the school thing.

• 56:00Cara Santa Maria?

  But imagine both of them at the same time. What if young people aren't allowed on social media until a certain age, just like young people aren't allowed to drink alcohol until a certain age? Some of them still do, a lot of them still do, but it's not normative. They're not doing it out in public, they're not, you know what I mean? So you ban that, and then you also ban gun, not guns, cellphones in schools? I think you'll see a cultural change.

• 56:22Speaker 06

  Yeah, but isn't there some discussion about like maybe the way that we treat alcohol leads to a binging culture in America versus like Europe where they have a little bit more of, you know, a connection with it? So is the solution actually banning it when that might lead to them going down deeper, darker social media turns like on 4chan or something like Nazi stuff?

• 56:43Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, but I don't think they're saying, they're not saying they want to ban it altogether. They're saying they want to ban it until the children are at an age at which they can develop a healthy habit with it. And that's, that's the same thing with alcohol.

• 56:52Speaker 06

  True, but are they putting money into funding that?

• 56:55Speaker 05

  Just like social media was an interesting experiment. Yeah.

• 56:58Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 56:58Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, but I mean, I agree, but social media is not, I think there was a time when we could safely be like, everybody, every generation gets weird about stuff and it's like the new TV. And I think we can safely say now like, no, social media is its own beast.

• 57:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, the evidence is adding up.

• 57:15Cara Santa Maria?

  It's a different animal.

• 57:16Speaker 05

  It seems to be pointing a direction.

• 57:19Cara Santa Maria?

  And it's been completely unregulated till now.

• 57:22Speaker 05

  Well, that's it. It's the wild west, obviously, because you have.

• 57:25Cara Santa Maria?

  Some guardrails are helpful.

• 57:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, we've got to try something, man. I'm very curious to see how this goes.

• 57:30Speaker 06

  Especially for younger people. But seemingly they police themselves.

• 57:33Cara Santa Maria?

  Right, exactly.

• 57:34Speaker 06

  Even now, but even with this legislation, they police themselves on what they justify is somebody over the, or under the age of 16. Like there's, there are legal ways that they have to like, you know, upload licenses, but they also have algorithms that determine whether or not you're 16. So what, like clearly they have a desire to have kids on the platform.

• 57:54Cara Santa Maria?

  Of course they do. That's why they're proactively doing like, now there's like Instagram for teens and stuff because they're trying to prevent things from happening like are happening in Australia. They don't want regulation. They want to say, look, we're protecting kids, but they're not, and we know they're not.

• 58:10Speaker 06

  But they're not. Right.

• 58:12Cara Santa Maria?

  But I agree with you too.

• 58:13Speaker 06

  But then the legislation writes it to like, put it in their hands. So it kind of just obfuscates it and it's like, hey, we passed the bill to protect the kids.

• 58:21Cara Santa Maria?

  Of course, yeah.

• 58:22Speaker 06

  So it's just like a political sleight of hand. Like, I don't know, I think it's just like an art.

• 58:26Cara Santa Maria?

  I do agree with you, Ian, that there is a cultural responsibility to develop healthier habits with things that are not going away. And so I think the alcohol example is actually a good one because. Our relationship with alcohol can sometimes induce more, you know, binge culture and more abuse. At the same time, if alcohol was freely available to young people, I think that we would have a lot more health consequences.

• 58:57Speaker 06

  Yeah, there's definitely, obviously, a balance point. I mean, maybe we should be funding things that are scientific, you know, about like, uh, therapies for people, you know, like, it would be interesting. This leads me, I want to throw in my skeptical jackets, if you don't mind, and I'm going to expand it pretty wide. I'm gonna say like, the whole political class of every flavor, I'm gonna, I'm sorry, dragnetting them a little bit. But it like, it kinda, I don't know, showcased like, the myth that we had serious people that they're so self-serving or uncaring, and even the people that I kind of agree with. Yeah, I don't know, there's like, little bits where I'm like, what are you doing?

• 59:33Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 59:33Speaker 06

  Or anti-science, it's really just, you hit your head against the wall. Who's running the ship, or steering the ship? It's like, what is going on?

• 59:41Speaker 05

  Good observation, Ian. I've said for a long time, if you're gonna be skeptical about anything, be skeptical of politics and politicians. That's, that's a good application.

• 59:48Speaker 06

  That's the hardest thing. Like, I agree with you, Evan, with this, where it's like, I'm gonna, you know, maybe be a little tongue-in-cheek, but the skepticism against science is like, kinda easy. Skepticism with politics is like, kinda crazy. There's so much out there.

• 1:00:04Speaker 05

  It's a good way for us to check ourselves.

• 1:00:07Speaker 02

  It's an entire industry based on deception. Right? I mean, their goal is not to tell the truth, it's to influence you, influence your own behavior.

• 1:00:17Speaker 06

  Positive, yeah.

• 1:00:18Speaker 02

  You know?

• 1:00:19Cara Santa Maria?

  It's persuasion science.

• 1:00:20Speaker 02

  It's persuasion.

• 1:00:21Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:00:22Speaker 05

  And they'll say anything, anything, to make it happen.

• 1:00:26Speaker 06

  Like, you hope the person who's most persuadable actually has good ideas.

• 1:00:29Speaker 02

  I mean, there are some good politicians out there, obviously.

• 1:00:31Speaker 05

  Of course, yes.

• 1:00:32Speaker 02

  But it does seem like the system, there's a selective pressure for people willing to be shamelessly manipulative, you know what I mean?

• 1:00:42Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, yeah. Our political system has the same, we often talk, you know, you use the phrase a lot, Steve, where you're like, it's not a, uh, bug, it's a feature. Like, a lot of the bugs in our political system, I think, are similar to the bugs in our economic system. When you have a system that's built in such a way that greed is good... When you have a system that's built in such a way that those who kind of take the most continue to be the most rewarded and are given the most perks so they can continue to take more, this is the system you end up with, both politically and economically, which, you know, they're, and they're not really two separate systems.

• 1:01:23Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:01:24Speaker 05

  Right. And in order to change, and in order to change it, you have to, you have to convince these people to make laws to regulate themselves, and they rarely.

• 1:01:33Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, which is really hard to do. You have to be so politically active and, and you have to really hold these people to account. And even then, it's difficult when you're living in this like kind of post-whatever reality, reality, where the, the very people who, like you said, Evan, you're asking them to write laws to regulate their, themselves are also.

• 1:01:59Speaker 05

  It's not human nature.

• 1:02:00Cara Santa Maria?

  And not only is it not human nature, we're now living in a culture where, or maybe not a culture, but, but a system where the very people in power have like little connection to an interest in keeping their constituents happy.

• 1:02:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:17Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:02:18Cara Santa Maria?

  And so like, how do you hold somebody to account who doesn't care if their constituents care about them? It's strange. It's a very strange situation we're in.

• 1:02:27Speaker 05

  It's a weird place. I agree.

• 1:02:29Speaker 06

  And I know people might say, yeah, don't both sides it because there are, you know, one side maybe is objective. They're not symmetrical necessarily, but I would say it like this, is like, I don't know what's worse, is like the killer chasing you with the knife or the person who locks you in the room with the killer. You know, like who's like your supposed friend. It's really, I don't know where we are in that spectrum, but it seems bad, wherever we are.

• 1:02:55Speaker 02

  I have a category kind of jackass as well. Everyone involved with the telepathy tips.

• 1:03:02Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, yeah, we got a lot of emails on that, too.

• 1:03:04Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 1:03:05Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:03:06Speaker 02

  It's so pervasive. So the quick recap is, you know, they're, you know, claiming to like do these, you know, interviews with autistic children and they're just doing facilitated communication. And then, which is completely debunked nonsense. And but they're used to the facilitated communication. And then they claim that these autistic kids, not only are they brilliant, these nonverbal kids, but they're psychic. They're reading our minds.

• 1:03:30Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:03:31Speaker 02

  It is like such a classic pseudoscience, but it's gotten so much play. I can't tell you the people.

• 1:03:40Speaker 05

  Podcasts out there.

• 1:03:40Speaker 02

  And people who should freaking know better, who have said, oh, what about these kids who are psychic? Oh, please stop. It's just amazing.

• 1:03:50Speaker 06

  It's amazing. You can repackage the same thing with like a new name.

• 1:03:53Bob Novella?

  We're talking about that literally, you know, a generation ago.

• 1:03:57Speaker 02

  It's just a dumber version of it, too. It's just ridiculous.

• 1:04:00Speaker 05

  Right. And more popular. It's, it's, the correlation here is mind boggling.

• 1:04:06Speaker 02

  All right, Kara, let's pivot to skeptical hero of the year. Who do you have?

• 1:04:11Cara Santa Maria?

  Uh, I, I couldn't decide. I was really struggling with this. So I have a few different. I mean, you may have noticed that over the past several weeks, I've been singing the praises of South Park this year. Think Trey Parker and Matt Stone might be up there for me. But also just the people who turned out to be skeptics that I maybe didn't know were as skeptical as they are. And don't get me wrong. These people aren't perfect, but like John Oliver, Colbert. I mean, I've been a fan of Colbert. Jon Stewart came back into the fold, but you're seeing these skeptical takes from individuals who have been sort of beloved for a different reason, uh, doing more and more

• 1:04:57Cara Santa Maria?

  basically public science communication. And then, of course, we have our.

• 1:05:02Cara Santa Maria?

  tireless science communicators across social media platforms. And I think probably the one that I would nominate for this year would be Hank Green.

• 1:05:10Speaker 06

  Yeah, Hank's pretty cool.

• 1:05:11Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:11Speaker 02

  That's a good choice.

• 1:05:13Speaker 06

  He's a good dude. I mean, I think you also should shout out like the writers, the men and women who like write all of John Oliver's.

• 1:05:18Cara Santa Maria?

  Of course.

• 1:05:19Speaker 06

  It's probably them actually more than.

• 1:05:21Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, the problem is we don't, yeah, we don't know. Like if I said their names, people might not.

• 1:05:26Speaker 02

  You know, I think there's somebody on the writing staff of John Oliver that listens to our show.

• 1:05:30Cara Santa Maria?

  I think so.

• 1:05:31Speaker 02

  I don't have proof of that, but enough of what we have said, I have seen shortly thereafter on the show. The one that really got me was the pee hacking one. Yes.

• 1:05:43Cara Santa Maria?

  Uh huh.

• 1:05:43Speaker 02

  Right. Well, plus they also showed, they talked about our show on John Oliver. They did.

• 1:05:48Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:05:49Speaker 02

  They flashed the logo.

• 1:05:49Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:50Speaker 02

  It was up for a nanosecond, but we were there. Very briefly, they, yeah, they showed. Jimmy Carter. Um, so that's, that's pretty good. It's that there's some connection there.

• 1:05:59Speaker 05

  And if they're listening now, maybe they want to reach out.

• 1:06:01Speaker 06

  That's confirmation bias, I think.

• 1:06:05Speaker 02

  Um, yeah, similarly, somebody wrote in Hank Green as well, and also Dr. Knoc or Morgan McSweeney for their social media activity. I would add, um, someone who has just been, again, I'd like to focus on people who I see as tirelessly working, even if they're not like seeking big recognition.

• 1:06:26Cara Santa Maria?

  Sure.

• 1:06:27Speaker 02

  And for the person this year, somebody who has had a lot of recognition in the past, but Michael Mann, who has been, just for being tireless and also for just staying on top of things and shifting his strategy, you know, to keep up with the climate change denying community. Yeah. Like he's staying on top of it. He's not giving up. You know, that, and that kind of persistence and energy I really respect. Like this, he's in it for good. He's in it for the long.

• 1:06:55Cara Santa Maria?

  And did he co-write a book this year?

• 1:06:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:57Cara Santa Maria?

  He co-wrote a book with a vaccine scientist to kind of approach it from both angles, right? Like this is what happens when public trust in science disintegrates.

• 1:07:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:07:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, there are a couple other people in that same kind of category, Steve. They're, they're in it for the long haul, right? They understand this is a long-term effort that is required. Mick West comes to mind.

• 1:07:22Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:07:22Speaker 05

  Especially all the work he's done. Why he is not invited on to, you know, panels or congressional testimonies and things like that, so that more people can hear him is beyond me. Because he can really, really refute a lot of the UFO and UAP stuff, among other things.

• 1:07:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:38Speaker 05

  Another person who's like that is Timothy Caulfield.

• 1:07:40Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. Yeah.

• 1:07:42Speaker 05

  Who continues to fight the fight. Bruce Hood also is one of those people.

• 1:07:46Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:07:47Speaker 05

  And I do want to also give a shout out to Barry Carr. He retired this year. He was the executive director for CSI. But gosh, our relationship with Barry goes back 30 years.

• 1:07:57Bob Novella?

  Oh, my God. 90s, right?

• 1:08:00Speaker 05

  And he has, he has been so good to us in all that time.

• 1:08:03Speaker 02

  He's been very supportive from the beginning.

• 1:08:05Speaker 05

  Super supportive, really. Yes, yes. Even though from a, from a different organization and everything, he's been nothing but great to us and he deserves recognition for his lifetime effort as well.

• 1:08:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, he's one of those people where like it's the cause is what matters, right? Skepticism. Yeah.

• 1:08:21Speaker 05

  Incorrect.

• 1:08:21Bob Novella?

  It's funny, Steve and Evan, you mentioned tirelessly working in it for the long haul. I'm, I'm gonna, for this year, I'm for Skeptical of the Year, I'm throwing out Jay. He, he is the hardest worker that I, that I know. His work has had clearly a profoundly positive impact on this Skeptical Podcast and SDU Productions, every project that we do. He's also, I'm so impressed with what's the things that he accomplishes. He's a master at working and negotiating with event vendors and salespeople. Which I recently confirmed is actually a form of torture in hell. There's actually a department.

• 1:08:58Speaker 05

  No picking.

• 1:08:59Bob Novella?

  And Jay's killing it. He, he misses many of the, the awesome streaming shows that are out there these days because of his skeptical work, work ethic. And it annoys the hell out of Steve and me because we keep, we have to leave the room to talk about spoilers because Jay's like, I didn't see that. I don't have time to see that. It's just working, it seems like, you know, he's got, sure, he's got two young kids, but he's just working night and day. You know, and I just wanted to give a shout out to him like Jay, we appreciate it. We would not be what we are today. We'd be a different, kind of a different beast today if it weren't for all the work that you've put in to make sure that we could, we could do this and do not just a podcast, but so many other things.

• 1:09:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, Jay's a hard worker.

• 1:09:36Bob Novella?

  So, yeah, such, it's so ridiculous.

• 1:09:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I couldn't imagine doing everything without Jay.

• 1:09:40Bob Novella?

  Right? We'd be, you know, we'd get some stuff done, but I don't think we'd do it as good as Jay.

• 1:09:45Speaker 02

  Almost every day I'm like, Jay, do this.

• 1:09:49Bob Novella?

  He's a Sherpa.

• 1:09:52Speaker 02

  Jay had to bow out of the show because of his flu. He's really... We sent him to bed. So that's why, that's not why he's not participating in this discussion. He's weak when he's saying thanks.

• 1:10:02Bob Novella?

  Not kidding.

• 1:10:05Speaker 02

  So we got a couple of more emails from listeners with their votes. So one person voted for Emily Willingham, Willingham, for, for clear, responsible, skeptical analysis of emotionally charged pseudoscience. And we referenced her during the celebrity tapes discussion. Bring that up again. Kara, you got a couple of votes from listeners.

• 1:10:25Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:26Speaker 02

  For this year. For everything that you do, not just the SGU. And a lot of people really appreciate your role on the SGU because, you know, Bob, Jay and I are brothers. Evan is basically a brother. He's a very close friend. We've known him for a long time. And we can be a little, you know, closed, you know, close. You know what I mean? It could be a little bit of an echo chamber. In your own way. The audience really appreciates the fact that you are a different perspective and you're not afraid to push back on anything that we say.

• 1:10:58Cara Santa Maria?

  I, you know, it's, it's funny. I was going to say earlier that some of my favorite episodes, looking back, or just some of my favorite experiences with the SGU, and this speaks to the talk that you actually gave at CSI. Was that earlier this year or was that last year?

• 1:11:13Speaker 02

  Last year.

• 1:11:14Bob Novella?

  It was last, it was late last year.

• 1:11:14Cara Santa Maria?

  It's when skeptics disagree.

• 1:11:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:17Cara Santa Maria?

  Like, I, I...

• 1:11:17Speaker 02

  That's the fun part.

• 1:11:18Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:19Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. I really enjoy when we have differing opinions about things and we can kind of talk about the nuance. And, you know, when it comes to the really big stuff, we're definitely all, you know, on the same team, rooting for the same cause. But sometimes we disagree about how we should get there.

• 1:11:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. Which is fine.

• 1:11:37Bob Novella?

  Healthy.

• 1:11:37Speaker 02

  That's the discussion we should be having. I always say, like, on climate change, we shouldn't be wasting our time debating about whether it's happening or not. It's freaking happening. The only discussion worth happening is what's the best strategy to deal with it? And there's lots of, there's lots to talk about there.

• 1:11:55Bob Novella?

  Should we do geoengineering or is that too risky? Should we do this or what?

• 1:12:00Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 1:12:01Speaker 06

  You just burn money. I think that happens.

• 1:12:03Speaker 02

  You could.

• 1:12:03Bob Novella?

  Does that, does that, yeah?

• 1:12:04Speaker 06

  I think.

• 1:12:05Bob Novella?

  Might help.

• 1:12:05Speaker 06

  No.

• 1:12:07Speaker 02

  Ian, who was your skeptical hero?

• 1:12:09Speaker 06

  I honestly, all of the ideas you had were so good, I could not find, think of one. I'm like, I think I'm doomer brained. I've been on TikTok or social media for a while.

• 1:12:20Bob Novella?

  They got Ian, guys.

• 1:12:21Speaker 06

  Oh, God, I don't know what it is. I mean, I think, I said this last time and I'm gonna do it again. I'm just gonna cheat. Is like, the listeners, anyone who's still committed while seeing the world kind of fall apart?

• 1:12:35Cara Santa Maria?

  Right, yeah.

• 1:12:36Speaker 06

  It's maybe our skeptical project over the last decades hasn't fully fixed everything, or fixed enough, or fixed anything, who knows? But at least you guys are hopefully in, with us in the fight, as we're sinking. You know, so I, I don't know, just keep up, keep looking forward, you know? You gotta, there is some power in positivity, to throw it back to the beginning.

• 1:13:00Speaker 02

  It's called strategic optimism.

• 1:13:02Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 1:13:03Speaker 02

  I'm a firm believer in strategic optimism.

• 1:13:06Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:13:06Speaker 02

  You know, avoiding self-defeating nihilism, it doesn't serve any purpose.

• 1:13:12Bob Novella?

  I know, it's hard, it's hard for me to be strategically optimistic sometimes.

• 1:13:17Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, and sometimes it takes, and, and that's why I always go back to that thing I said before, that hope is a moving target.

• 1:13:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:22Cara Santa Maria?

  You have to sometimes take a step away from the issue and come back into it and, and look at how the parameters have changed. Like you mentioned, you've got to be strategically optimistic and that has to do with understanding, where are we now, what can be done? We might not be where we were, you know, 15 years ago, or 30 years ago, or whatever, but like, maybe we can compare ourselves to where we were 100 years ago. Or, you know, one of the things that was always really inspiring to me is when I talk to my friends who come from countries who have been through constitutional crises, or who have experienced authoritarianism, and they got through it.

• 1:14:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, and we'll get through it.

• 1:14:06Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, we'll get through it. It feels unique to us, but it's not unique in the world, it is unique in the world in some ways. I mean, I'm, I'm not arguing that, but there will be a future ahead of us.

• 1:14:18Speaker 06

  Yep, keep building community, you know, and like, you know, helping each other, you know, in whatever way we can.

• 1:14:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think a lot of my strategic optimism is informed by my career as a physician, right? Because talk about you're in a situation every day with your patients where you have to do everything you can, you know, to be an advocate for your patient and to get the best outcome. And then everything that can possibly go wrong goes wrong, right? But you still, and all the challenges that you could possibly have are there, but you still have to, at the end of the day, you have to have the best outcome you can possibly get. And so sometimes you have to say, "Well, I don't know what's going on, but if this were anything treatable, this is what it would be, so let's treat that and see what happens." You know, that's strategic optimism. Like, let's plan, you know, you always have to hope for the best, plan for the worst.

• 1:15:10Speaker 02

  But sometimes hoping for the best means acting as if this is something that you can fix. And then if it doesn't, you know, you did the best you could, right? You gave it the best odds you can. Same thing like with global warming. If we assume it's hopeless, then it is hopeless. By definitely, that makes the reality. But if you say, "All right, I'm gonna go, you know, I'm gonna go down fighting, or I'm gonna, you know, do everything I can and constantly change strategy and try like Michael Mann is doing, why I picked him." Like, just constantly doing what we can do to make it less bad, or try to move things in the right direction. And, you know...

• 1:15:48Cara Santa Maria?

  That's the key.

• 1:15:49Speaker 02

  It's a bit of a leap of faith. I don't know that it's gonna affect the world, but it's better than doing nothing, right? It's better than just giving into the negativity.

• 1:15:56Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, and it will. It will affect the world, because, once again, hope is a moving target. And sometimes, we're not talking about fixing something, or putting things back the way they were. Sometimes, we're talking about making it less bad.

• 1:16:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, less bad is not...

• 1:16:11Cara Santa Maria?

  But less bad is...

• 1:16:12Speaker 02

  Is a good goal.

• 1:16:13Cara Santa Maria?

  It is.

• 1:16:14Bob Novella?

  And so, basically, I think one of the only goals we got left with climate change is to make it as little bad as we can. It really is.

• 1:16:22Speaker 02

  It's all about being less bad, absolutely. Okay, let's move on to our "In Memoriam" segment. This is where we look back at all the people we lost this year, focusing on sciences, scientists and skeptics, but we throw in some other, you know, celebrity favorites that we have. I have a list, I don't know if you guys have any names, but I'll just go through my list. If I missed anybody, then you can chime in.

• 1:16:45Speaker 05

  Are they in reverse alphabetical order?

• 1:16:47Speaker 02

  No, they're... I'm gonna start with a couple of skeptics. Top of the list, of course, is Joe Nickell. Yes. Joe Nickell also. Joe. Again, Joe is, again, a tireless skeptic, a real, you know, he was an investigator. He was like really, there was a time. Oh, my god, yeah. When he was really the only full-time, he might have, might have been, you know, the only full-time skeptical investigator in the world. Yeah. And he would do the nitty-gritty, hard work, you know, he wouldn't just write opinions or, you know, use broad brushstrokes, he would do the nitty-gritty investigative work. And he would do the work that we would cite, to say, "Look, he did all the hard work and

• 1:17:32Speaker 02

  this is what that analysis shows, etc." He was really indispensable. He's also someone like Barry Carr that we met very early on in our skeptical careers, who was, you know, very friendly, very supportive, a great resource. Yeah. And, yeah, he was just, you know, a fantastic guy, really sorry, you know, to see him go. Yeah, that was, that one hurt, man. Yeah. There's also, one of our listeners emailed us to remind us that Randy Snyder died this year. So he was also an influential skeptic, mainly in the ex-Mormon community. Did you know him, Kara?

• 1:18:09Cara Santa Maria?

  No, but we had him on the show.

• 1:18:11Speaker 02

  We did have him on the show once.

• 1:18:12Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:13Speaker 02

  Back in, I think, episode 416. Yeah, a long time ago. Oh, wow. And then there was also Robert Lee Nadoo, who was an American academic and activist against climate denial, not known for outspoken criticism of climate change, misinformation, and deniers. So those are the three people kind of in the skeptical. Yeah. Category that I, that I found. And then for scientists, I think, you know, there's a few famous scientists who died this year, Jane Goodall. Yeah. Not too long ago. Dr. Goodall. She had an amazing career, obviously best known for her work with chimpanzees, but also a tireless advocate just for the environment and.

• 1:18:54Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:18:54Speaker 02

  Animal welfare and. Yeah. Yeah. I criticized her once. Yeah, we did. We did. She said some gullible things about Bigfoot.

• 1:19:03Cara Santa Maria?

  And nobody's above criticism.

• 1:19:05Speaker 05

  Look, look, not all scientists are skeptics at the same level that we are, right? Or not exposed to what we, what we concentrate on. They're concentrating on the work they're doing, which is fine. Right, but then they kind of speak outside of their element a little bit and this is, this is what happens and it can happen to the best of them and Jane Goodall is an example of that.

• 1:19:26Speaker 02

  Skepticism is a unique skillset.

• 1:19:27Cara Santa Maria?

  It is, yeah.

• 1:19:28Speaker 02

  You do not automatically go along with being a scientist, unfortunately.

• 1:19:31Cara Santa Maria?

  And I don't think she ever claimed to be a skeptic either.

• 1:19:34Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:19:35Speaker 05

  Correct, right, right. She was not pretending to be something she's not, right.

• 1:19:39Speaker 02

  And also, the other big name this year was James Watson. Also completely beyond any criticism, right?

• 1:19:45Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. Yeah.

• 1:19:48Bob Novella?

  I have a decently representative quote about him. This is from scientist historian Nathaniel Comfort, said, "The most famous scientist of the 20th century and the most infamous of the 21st."

• 1:20:00Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:01Bob Novella?

  Which kind of does it a little bit of justice right there. I mean, yeah, I mean racist views, sexist views were, yeah, were not good. He, he worked for, for decades and moved up the ladder at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, CSHL, and in, in 2019, they revoked his emeritus status and they condemned him for, I quote, "The misuse of signs to justify prejudice." I mean, that's just like, damn, man.

• 1:20:27Cara Santa Maria?

  And it's important to remember too, that it's not just, I think sometimes we hear people, and we had this argument or this conversation before, where it's like, well, he was of an era, and you know, some people might say, hey, he lived a little too long. Like, if he had died earlier, maybe he wouldn't have gone down in history that way. But we have people like Attenborough who are 101, right? Like, we've got people alive today who were alive when he was alive, who didn't espouse those views.

• 1:20:53Bob Novella?

  Yep.

• 1:20:54Cara Santa Maria?

  We have to remember that.

• 1:20:55Speaker 02

  But, so of course, he's the most famous for discovering the DNA helix structure with Crick. You know, Watson and Crick, everybody knows those names.

• 1:21:03Cara Santa Maria?

  And Rosalind Franklin.

• 1:21:04Speaker 02

  Yes, even then, he used data and ideas from Rosalind Franklin and bio physicist Maurice Wilkins without attributing them and they didn't get, and not even with Franklin's permission. So that was, that was terrible. You know, it's like, yeah, you know, women do a lot of the hard work. The, the two guys took all the credit, got the Nobel Prize. It was terrible. But of course, we have to say that Rosalind Franklin didn't get the Nobel Prize primarily because she was dead at the time it was awarded and they don't give posh prizes, but that doesn't, doesn't erase the fact that, you know, that she was abused.

• 1:21:37Cara Santa Maria?

  Right, and even if it was normative at the time, that doesn't make it right.

• 1:21:42Speaker 02

  No, of course not.

• 1:21:43Cara Santa Maria?

  And it wasn't right then either.

• 1:21:45Speaker 02

  It wasn't normative or right at the time.

• 1:21:46Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, it's still normative that women don't really get as many Nobel Prizes.

• 1:21:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, they don't get as much credit.

• 1:21:52Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:52Speaker 02

  Uh, Bob, do you know Chen Ning Yang?

• 1:21:55Bob Novella?

  I don't think so.

• 1:21:57Speaker 02

  Physicist whose work on symmetry paved the way for the standard model of particle physics.

• 1:22:04Bob Novella?

  I, I know I've come across his name, probably just like two initials and Yang and that was like, and he was on papers that I've read, so yeah, I probably have.

• 1:22:11Speaker 02

  Massive, you know, work, uh, for, in the standard model, which of course, even the standard model is at the core of physics today.

• 1:22:19Bob Novella?

  Absolutely, so.

• 1:22:20Speaker 02

  There's another physicist, this is an astrophysicist, George Smoot.

• 1:22:24Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh yeah, Smoot.

• 1:22:25Speaker 02

  Yes, so he won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2006 for his work on the Cosmic Background Explorer.

• 1:22:31Bob Novella?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:22:33Speaker 02

  John Mather led to the discovery of the black body form of an isotropy of the cosmic microwave, microwave background radiation.

• 1:22:40Bob Novella?

  Huge, man, that's great. We probably mentioned him on the show, but potentially in 2006.

• 1:22:44Cara Santa Maria?

  Wasn't, didn't David Baltimore die this year too?

• 1:22:47Speaker 02

  Yep, David Baltimore.

• 1:22:48Cara Santa Maria?

  He's another Nobel Laureate, right?

• 1:22:50Speaker 02

  Nobel Prize for discoveries concerning the interaction between tumor viruses and the genetic material of this cell.

• 1:22:56Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, and he did so much in like, I think in the HIV AIDS space.

• 1:23:01Speaker 02

  There's a, there are a bunch of other Nobel Laureates who died this year. George Smith, 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit, the C D, CCD sensor. So that which has become.

• 1:23:14Bob Novella?

  A charge coupled device?

• 1:23:15Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly, which is like all of digital photography.

• 1:23:18Bob Novella?

  Every camera, right?

• 1:23:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:20Cara Santa Maria?

  Wow, that's huge. And by the way, David Baltimore discovered reverse transcriptase.

• 1:23:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:25Bob Novella?

  Whoa.

• 1:23:25Cara Santa Maria?

  Like, that's enormous.

• 1:23:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:26Bob Novella?

  That's quite huge.

• 1:23:28Speaker 05

  Can you tell for the audience and my sake what that is?

• 1:23:30Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, it explained basically how HIV can replicate, like that, like,

• 1:23:35Speaker 05

  I see.

• 1:23:36Cara Santa Maria?

  And it's like, one of the foundational understandings, like, we wouldn't have gene therapy without understanding reverse transcriptase.

• 1:23:42Speaker 02

  It's how you get RNA back into DNA, basically.

• 1:23:45Bob Novella?

  Exactly, and that's how, that's how it gets embedded, embedded into the, into the genome by viruses, yep.

• 1:23:50Speaker 02

  John Girdon, Nobel Prize for research into turning mature cells into stem cells. We just talked about this too, about the stem cell ban, and how that was sidestepped by this science figuring out how to turn, like, skin cells into stem cells. So he got a Nobel Prize for that research. Hamilton Smith, Nobel Prize in 1978 for discovering restriction enzymes, also huge in biology. So I think that was all the Nobel laureates that I came across. But a few other physicists, or a few other scientists who were not Nobel laureates, but did, but did work. Richard Garwin, any, got anybody?

• 1:24:26Bob Novella?

  Hmm, that rings a bell.

• 1:24:27Speaker 02

  So he came up with the first design for a hydrogen bomb.

• 1:24:32Bob Novella?

  Oh. Wow, really?

• 1:24:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. Maybe not the legacy you want, but it was still important, you know, to, yeah.

• 1:24:39Bob Novella?

  So not, so not just a fission bomb, a fusion?

• 1:24:42Speaker 02

  A fusion bomb, yeah, fusion bomb.

• 1:24:44Bob Novella?

  Right.

• 1:24:44Speaker 05

  In the 50s, I suppose.

• 1:24:46Speaker 02

  Xavier Le Picchon helped create the field of plate tectonics.

• 1:24:50Bob Novella?

  Oh.

• 1:24:51Cara Santa Maria?

  Cool name, too.

• 1:24:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:52Bob Novella?

  Yeah, right?

• 1:24:53Speaker 02

  Elizabeth Verba, anybody recognize that name?

• 1:24:56Bob Novella?

  I do, I do.

• 1:24:58Speaker 02

  Elizabeth Verba, from evolutionary biology. So she's somebody, I, I read a ton of Stephen Jay Gould, so I know about her, you know, through that work. So she was also at Yale, so the reason why I know her. So she developed the turnover pulse hypothesis, coined the phrase, and coined the phrase acceptation with Stephen Jay Gould.

• 1:25:18Bob Novella?

  Nice.

• 1:25:19Speaker 02

  So the turnover pulse hypothesis is the notion that an ecosystem reaches a stability, and then something happens to destabilize the ecosystem, whether it is climate change, or some key index species goes extinct, or, or the invasion of another species, or whatever. The ecosystem gets destabilized, and then in a pulse of turnover, a lot of the species change, until you reach a new stable ecosystem.

• 1:25:46Bob Novella?

  Wow.

• 1:25:48Speaker 02

  And what is exaptation? Who wants to define that word for me? Oh, I used to know.

• 1:25:52Cara Santa Maria?

  We did it on the show.

• 1:25:54Speaker 05

  Exaptation. E-X.

• 1:25:57Cara Santa Maria?

  It's when one trait gets used for something different later, right?

• 1:26:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, it evolves for one purpose and then it gets

• 1:26:04Bob Novella?

  Well, that's kind of important.

• 1:26:05Speaker 02

  Co-opted for something else.

• 1:26:06Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:06Bob Novella?

  That's what evolution is, man. That's totally awesome. That's critical.

• 1:26:10Speaker 02

  What a critical concept of evolution, absolutely. Darlene Christian Hoffman confirmed the existence of seborgium, element 106.

• 1:26:18Bob Novella?

  Nice.

• 1:26:20Speaker 05

  Seborgium. That sounds fake. That's ridiculous.

• 1:26:26Speaker 02

  Mark Norrell or Norrell Kara, this is a dinosaur guy. Do you know him? Mark Norrell first discovered the first theropod embryo.

• 1:26:35Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, cool.

• 1:26:35Speaker 02

  And also known for his description of many feathered dinosaurs.

• 1:26:39Cara Santa Maria?

  Wow, really neat.

• 1:26:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, good work. All right, a few astronauts, most famously Jim Lovell.

• 1:26:47Speaker 05

  Jim Lovell.

• 1:26:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, Jim Lovell.

• 1:26:48Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:26:50Speaker 02

  We talked about him on the show, so.

• 1:26:51Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:26:52Speaker 02

  He was first one to go to the moon twice, I believe.

• 1:26:56Bob Novella?

  Yes.

• 1:26:57Cara Santa Maria?

  Wow.

• 1:26:57Speaker 02

  He is of Houston, we have a problem fame. We've had a problem.

• 1:27:02Speaker 05

  We've had a problem.

• 1:27:05Speaker 02

  He was 97.

• 1:27:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:27:07Speaker 02

  Good for him. Good run, man. Yeah, good run.

• 1:27:11Speaker 05

  Especially after, wow, surviving what he had to survive is amazing.

• 1:27:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. Captain Frederick H. Hawke, who was a space shuttle captain, died this year. And not really an astronaut, but kind of in that same vein, Felix Baumgartner.

• 1:27:25Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:25Speaker 05

  Right, yeah. At the time, it's the record.

• 1:27:28Speaker 02

  The space jumper.

• 1:27:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, that is a record. For the highest space jump.

• 1:27:31Speaker 02

  Jumped from the edge of space, died in a paragliding crash, and paragliding is dangerous. Yeah, man.

• 1:27:38Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, these like extreme athletes.

• 1:27:39Speaker 02

  I know, like jumping from space is dangerous too.

• 1:27:43Speaker 05

  I don't know how they get insurance, frankly. Somehow safer jumping from space.

• 1:27:46Speaker 02

  Somehow safer.

• 1:27:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, he was only 56, right? Yeah.

• 1:27:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was.

• 1:27:51Cara Santa Maria?

  That's a bummer.

• 1:27:52Speaker 05

  My age. Yeah, that's probably.

• 1:27:53Speaker 02

  So that's the scientists and, you know, technologists and space guys. A few just celebrities I thought I'd throw out there. We very recently lost Rob Reiner. Very sad story. He and his wife were stabbed to death by their troubled son. Allegedly by the son, yeah. Uh, yeah, very, you know, terrible thing. It's so sad, just imagine having a child who has mental health issues, drug, you know, use issues. It's so, so heartbreaking, but then of course, and now ending super tragically.

• 1:28:26Speaker 02

  June Lockhart, anybody know who she is?

• 1:28:29Bob Novella?

  Yes, oh my God, Lost in Space.

• 1:28:30Speaker 02

  Lost in Space Mom and Lassie.

• 1:28:32Bob Novella?

  And Lassie.

• 1:28:34Speaker 02

  Uh, Robert Redford, of course.

• 1:28:36Speaker 05

  Robert Redford.

• 1:28:38Speaker 02

  Hulk Hogan died this year, I missed that.

• 1:28:41Speaker 05

  He did, yes. Heart attack, was battling, uh, cancer and leukemia. At the time.

• 1:28:49Cara Santa Maria?

  He's pretty sick, yeah.

• 1:28:50Speaker 05

  His heart gave, well, you know, and what he did to his body and stuff over the years, you know, I can only imagine. What kind of toll that took, you know, with the drugs he took and performance drugs and everything else, but still, yeah, I mean, he was, he's, he's an icon. You know, whether you, whether you liked him or hated him, definitely an icon.

• 1:29:06Speaker 02

  Ozzy Osbourne.

• 1:29:08Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, sad in that he performed his last concert. A couple of weeks before he, before he left.

• 1:29:18Bob Novella?

  Right, right.

• 1:29:19Speaker 05

  It was his farewell, it was his farewell show.

• 1:29:21Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, well, I mean, that's kind of great then.

• 1:29:23Speaker 06

  Yeah, it was the way to go, I guess.

• 1:29:26Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:27Speaker 02

  All right, who knows who Drew Struzan is? Drew Struzan? No, no chance you'd recognize his name, but you do recognize his work. He's an artist.

• 1:29:39Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 1:29:40Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:29:40Speaker 02

  Famous for innovating the movie poster. Oh, responsible for such iconic movie posters as Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, E.T., Blade Runner, The Goonies, First Blood. Bob, you'll like this one, The Shawshank Redemption, The Thing. And Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

• 1:30:04Speaker 05

  Wow, so he, they called on him when they needed him.

• 1:30:07Speaker 06

  Did he invent that like kind of stacking pyramidal-ish shape?

• 1:30:11Speaker 02

  Exactly, that was his thing.

• 1:30:12Speaker 06

  That's very cool.

• 1:30:13Bob Novella?

  What was it stacking what?

• 1:30:14Speaker 06

  Well, you know how like movie like think of Star Wars movie poster, at least what comes into my head is like the head, the people's heads in a pyramidal shape or triangle or shape. You know, kind of like.

• 1:30:24Bob Novella?

  But.

• 1:30:24Speaker 06

  Or a tree or whatever.

• 1:30:25Speaker 05

  High Star Wars poster.

• 1:30:26Bob Novella?

  You would be surprised, though, at the calculus that goes into determining whose head is where and where the names are. This is all about negotiating with the actors and the actors' people because sometimes you have the people, the stars A, B, and C, their heads, but above them it's C, A, B, because it's a different set of rules for where the name goes to where the head goes and how big it is. It's this whole thing that probably makes it a horrible process to go through to figure out whose head goes where, how big, where the names go. It's this whole thing that I read. It was fascinating.

• 1:31:00Speaker 06

  Maybe they should just make the movies better, you know, not focus so much on that.

• 1:31:03Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, when I think about those iconic movie posters, I also think about the typeface and the actual title of the movie. How it takes up so much and it has such a presence in those movie posters.

• 1:31:18Bob Novella?

  Oh, yeah. You could look at a movie, but it's funny though, sometimes like recently I saw a movie poster for a movie that on paper sounded like something I would like, but taking one look at the movie poster, I'm like, that movie sucks because the poster is so bad that this can't possibly be even a halfway decent movie. And I was right when I did more research. It was a horrible movie.

• 1:31:40Speaker 06

  I mean, would you say that about The Room? Have you Tommy Wiseau's The Room? It's like a ridiculous cover, but it's one of the best terrible movies ever.

• 1:31:48Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:31:50Speaker 06

  So I don't know.

• 1:31:51Speaker 05

  1977 Star Wars poster sold for a record 3.875 million in auction this month. Just this month.

• 1:31:58Cara Santa Maria?

  Doesn't surprise me.

• 1:31:59Bob Novella?

  Wow, an original.

• 1:32:01Speaker 02

  It's an amazing poster.

• 1:32:03Cara Santa Maria?

  You guys are all like, I would pay that if I had it.

• 1:32:05Bob Novella?

  I had it. I had it. Like, oh, I have $3 million on my wall.

• 1:32:09Speaker 02

  That Star Wars font itself is iconic. You have Darth Vader's head, you know, Luke Skywalker with the lightsaber over his head. Princess Leia, Han Solo is not even in the picture. You got the droids in the background and you got the X-wing fighters, like a squadron of them in the background as well. And the Death Star hovering.

• 1:32:27Speaker 05

  And the Death Star.

• 1:32:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's just a.

• 1:32:29Speaker 05

  It's like, it's ingrained in my head.

• 1:32:30Speaker 02

  It's a great, I remember, yeah, it's amazing.

• 1:32:32Speaker 05

  And, and Drew Struzan also created the Revenge of the Jedi poster, which is also famous because he made the poster and then they changed the title of the movie and they took all the posters away. So if you have one of those, you have a rare item.

• 1:32:45Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:32:46Speaker 06

  Do you think anything nowadays could achieve that kind of rare item status? Or have we jumped the shark with all that kind of stuff? Is it like? It's hard to predict, obviously, because it could be financially beneficial to you if you could.

• 1:32:58Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, I think so, but there's just a lot more like chaff.

• 1:33:02Speaker 06

  Stuff.

• 1:33:02Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:33:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:33:03Cara Santa Maria?

  Chaff's the bad stuff, right? We want the we, yeah. It's just a lot more chaff.

• 1:33:07Speaker 06

  I don't know, yeah, what can you do with chaff?

• 1:33:09Speaker 05

  If you have the first iPhone in the box, I imagine that's worth some bucks.

• 1:33:12Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah, maybe.

• 1:33:14Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it could be.

• 1:33:15Speaker 02

  Are you guys ready?

• 1:33:16Speaker 06

  Save all your junk. Yeah, go ahead.

• 1:33:18Speaker 05

  Ready?

• 1:33:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. Ready for the final science or fiction?

• 1:33:20Speaker 06

  Oh, boy.

• 1:33:21Speaker 05

  Does this count?

• 1:33:22Speaker 02

  It counts.

• 1:33:23Speaker 06

  I think so.

• 1:33:24Speaker 05

  I'm not, I'm not, not ready.

• 1:33:27Speaker 01

  It's time for science or fiction?

• 1:33:36Speaker 02

  All right, each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake. And then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. But on this episode, first, we're going to go over statistics for 2025.

• 1:33:50Speaker 06

  Nice.

• 1:33:51Speaker 02

  So we'll give, we'll give you just the percentages.

• 1:33:56Speaker 02

  So.

• 1:33:57Speaker 06

  Don't be depressed already, come on.

• 1:33:59Speaker 02

  In last place.

• 1:34:00Speaker 05

  Higher math.

• 1:34:01Speaker 02

  Last place is J at 57.4%.

• 1:34:05Speaker 05

  That's, if 57.4 is the last place.

• 1:34:07Speaker 02

  That's not bad.

• 1:34:08Speaker 05

  That's very good.

• 1:34:09Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:10Speaker 05

  Last place used to be, we would have 30s and 40s in some years.

• 1:34:14Speaker 06

  He is busy negotiating those rooms, okay?

• 1:34:16Speaker 02

  You guys all generally had a good year. I definitely have to up my game.

• 1:34:19Cara Santa Maria?

  Are we getting better or are you slacking?

• 1:34:20Speaker 06

  Oh.

• 1:34:20Speaker 02

  I think you're getting better. I mean, it's a, I thought, I came up with good items and you sniffed it out like, what the? You go, I don't know what's going on. I have no idea. It's this one, like shit.

• 1:34:31Speaker 05

  It's like picking stocks, you know?

• 1:34:33Speaker 02

  And, and your reasoning is usually solid, damn it.

• 1:34:38Speaker 05

  It's Kara's.

• 1:34:39Speaker 02

  I gotta get one level more devious.

• 1:34:43Speaker 02

  In second place, or second from the bottom, is Evan at 63.8%.

• 1:34:48Speaker 05

  Wow, 63, that's really good.

• 1:34:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:34:51Speaker 05

  Very rare, I'm happy, I'm happy.

• 1:34:53Speaker 02

  Bob, you squeaked by Evan with 64%.

• 1:34:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, man.

• 1:34:57Bob Novella?

  Yeah, you suck, Evan.

• 1:34:58Speaker 05

  Awesome. Only by 1%.

• 1:35:00Bob Novella?

  I'll take second place. I mean, I think we could all agree, there's no defeating the Kara beast.

• 1:35:06Speaker 02

  And Kara had a great year, 77%. Wow.

• 1:35:10Cara Santa Maria?

  That's better than usual.

• 1:35:12Speaker 02

  That's a little bit more of a 3 out of 4, that's not bad.

• 1:35:14Speaker 05

  That's more like an anomaly.

• 1:35:17Speaker 02

  I think that's your best year.

• 1:35:18Speaker 05

  We need to investigate this a little bit.

• 1:35:19Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, I wonder how many times I went first. I bet you, I am, I think one of my skills is riding on you guys' coattails.

• 1:35:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:35:28Cara Santa Maria?

  It's recognizing which of you are making better arguments.

• 1:35:32Speaker 02

  It's tough.

• 1:35:32Speaker 05

  You're inviting us up on the podium with you.

• 1:35:33Bob Novella?

  I don't know, I don't think you need our help. I don't think you need our help too much.

• 1:35:37Cara Santa Maria?

  I bet you if you look at the number of times that I win when I go first, it's real low.

• 1:35:43Speaker 02

  It's tough because I hear, I want to be fair with who I go first, but I don't want everyone riding on your coattails every week either.

• 1:35:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Right, that's the thing, you have to be smart about, and a lot of times it's about the topic, right? Like when it's a physics thing, throw me first, it doesn't matter.

• 1:35:58Speaker 02

  Oh, totally.

• 1:35:59Bob Novella?

  Yeah, and then Steve, Steve gives me a dream science or fiction last week, and it's like, alright, I'm gonna get this one, and then every, everyone got it, like, what the hell, man? That's not how it's supposed to go.

• 1:36:11Speaker 02

  That wasn't my plan, Bob. I was hoping everyone to get it wrong, and then for you to school them at the end, but what can you do?

• 1:36:17Bob Novella?

  Hey, they sussed it out, and like, I can't disagree, so, okay, whatever.

• 1:36:21Speaker 02

  Andrea played 3, Andrea Jones Roy played 3 science or fictions, she got a 0%. Don't tell anyone.

• 1:36:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, she's gotta play more.

• 1:36:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's 3, I mean.

• 1:36:32Speaker 02

  George also played 3 times. He had a thirty-three percent. Got one out of three correct.

• 1:36:37Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay.

• 1:36:37Speaker 02

  Okay. One out of three ain't bad. Justin Dob and Adam Russell both played one and got them correct, so they had a hundred percent.

• 1:36:45Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh.

• 1:36:46Speaker 02

  So they win.

• 1:36:47Speaker 06

  Winner winner.

• 1:36:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, what do they?

• 1:36:48Speaker 06

  That's the best.

• 1:36:50Speaker 02

  Uh, Lee played once and got it wrong, so had zero percent. Steve, you didn't play once this year? I didn't play this year, I did every one. We need to fix that, yeah. I did every one. We should fix that.

• 1:36:59Cara Santa Maria?

  But every time, I've only done it a handful of times and I get swept every time. I'm not good at writing science or fiction.

• 1:37:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's tough, man.

• 1:37:06Cara Santa Maria?

  It's a skill.

• 1:37:09Speaker 02

  Up everyone else's average.

• 1:37:13Speaker 02

  Uh, okay. It was a good year. Yeah. Are you ready for the last? Yeah. Science or fiction of twenty twenty-five? Will this impact Bob's standing and my standing? It could if you win and he doesn't, you may, you may flop, you may get into Oh, shit. Into second place, haven't. Bob. Haven't. Ian, what did you, Ian, what was your record from last year? You played just once at the end of the year last year.

• 1:37:35Speaker 06

  I don't remember getting last year right. I think the year prior, uh, prior I did.

• 1:37:40Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:37:41Speaker 06

  And then, nah, I don't remember. Chatters, I say chatters, we're not streaming, what am I doing? Um, listeners, you tell me if I'm wrong.

• 1:37:50Speaker 02

  Uh, okay. So here are the items for two thousand and twenty-five. Uh-oh.

• 1:37:55Speaker 06

  Wow.

• 1:37:56Speaker 02

  I usually do variations on some kind of look back of two twenty-five for Yes. this science or fiction, that the specific theme I chose, these are all items that I blogged about on my Neurologica blog.

• 1:38:11Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:38:12Speaker 06

  Who's reading the blog?

• 1:38:13Speaker 02

  So this will be easy for anybody who obsessively reads my blog. Okay. Which of course, why wouldn't you? Hello. Right.

• 1:38:20Speaker 06

  Available.

• 1:38:21Speaker 02

  Neurologica. Neurologica blog. That's what it's called.

• 1:38:24Speaker 06

  The next dot com slash Neurologica.

• 1:38:26Speaker 02

  Item number one, an analysis finds that existing policies on use of plastic bags are mostly ineffective, on average reducing plastic bag waste by less than ten percent. All right, number two, an extensive genetic and cellular analysis finds that birds evolved the information-carrying neurons in their brain mostly independently from mammals.

• 1:38:50Speaker 02

  And our number three, researchers presented a new gene editing system that is even better than CRISPR, called the Tiger Task System. And as I usually do, we go in reverse order of your score. So. So Adam. Yep. Being here, Adam. Ian will have you go last. So we'll start with Evan.

• 1:39:13Speaker 05

  Oh, I see. The policies on use of plastic bags are mostly ineffective, on average reducing plastic bag waste by less than 10%. Okay. Why, why would you have blogged about this? I have a feeling you, you actually did blog about all three of these, right?

• 1:39:32Speaker 02

  I did blog about all three of these. I just changed.

• 1:39:35Speaker 05

  It's not like you made one up wholesale and never even blogged it. Okay. Yeah, I, I have a feeling, this one feels like science to me. And because I'm, don't know, there, there seems to be a shift almost a little bit back into the acceptance of plastic bags. For a long time, right? They were, they were banned and I don't, I imagine they're still banned in some states and some, in some places. But I've kind of seen them creeping back into my world in a sense. So in that, that would say that basically,

• 1:40:13Speaker 05

  ah, this really wasn't working. It wasn't effective and therefore we don't, you know, we're giving up the ghost here. So I have a feeling that one's going to be right. The second one about genetic and cellular analysis, about the birds that evolved the information carrying neurons in their brain mostly independently from mammals. That strikes me as significant, although I couldn't tell you exactly why that would be the case. Steve, you love birds and I don't, so this one, I'm going to just rely more on you than the actual science itself. Would you have the?

• 1:40:56Speaker 05

  Fortitude, let's say, to go ahead and pervert one of your stories about birds and make it into the fiction, right? I don't know. Are you more of a purist? Like, it would be like, no, I can't do that to birds because I love birds and everything about them and it's my hobby and everything. So that one leads me to believe it's also science, which leads me to the last one. Now, the Tiger Task system, gosh, did we talk about this on the show as well? We talked about several CRISPR items this year, and this seems familiar, even better than CRISPR. Gosh, so this one is also science. Therefore, all three are science. Very good.

• 1:41:37Speaker 05

  I will have to say, therefore, gee whiz, I have to say something, I have to guess, even better than CRISPR, Tiger Task. I mean, a new system, why wouldn't it be better than CRISPR? That's the point. Why would they develop something that wouldn't be better or just does something differently? I will say the one about plastic bags is the fiction.

• 1:42:02Bob Novella?

  Okay, Bob. I don't remember too many details about Tiger Task, but I think I'm going to say that one is, is science. God, I wish I remembered the details. It seems like a lot longer ago, Steve, than 2025, dude. Like, that, that seems like a 2023 memory to me, but...

• 1:42:22Speaker 05

  Then it would be the fiction.

• 1:42:24Bob Novella?

  Are you sure you talked about it this year? Or is that, or is that the premise that I miss? Am I incorrect about the premise? The premise is I blogged about it this year. Okay. All right. So I'll say that one is science. The, the bird one, the bag one makes sense, kind of make, it makes more sense as it's written, and I think you probably or maybe would not really want to write about it if it were the opposite, maybe. It's kind of strikes me that way. And I'm just, this, this, the neurons in the birds, man, that's just like, neurons at that level, neurons, I think, were some of the, one of the things that would be conserved to such a degree that I wouldn't imagine they would be that different. So I'm going to say that one's fiction.

• 1:43:04Speaker 05

  Ooh, interesting.

• 1:43:05Bob Novella?

  Okay, Kara.

• 1:43:07Cara Santa Maria?

  Oof. So it's funny because I think all of them, I think these are really well-written because they're all, I don't know, they all stick out in their own way. Like, the one that Bob just went with, right, the birds evolving information-carrying neurons in their brain mostly independently from mammals, to me, that's the most, holy crap. Like, if that's science, that's a big deal, right? And it seems the most counterintuitive to me. But that doesn't mean it's not science. And the one about Tiger Tass, or Tigertass, I love what Evan said, "Well, of course, it's better than Christopher. It wouldn't

• 1:43:46Cara Santa Maria?

  be newsworthy if they're like, 'We came up with a system that's worse than Christopher.'" The fact that I don't remember this at all is really, that's a bummer. And I don't know if that is an indictment of my memory or my attention. I'm not really sure. But this one definitely seems the most, well, not the most plausible, but this one seems plausible. And if this one is science, that's like amazing. So this one's, holy crap, that's amazing. The bird one is, oh, my gosh, I can't believe that's true. And then the plastic bag one, it's funny that you put your nickel down on that, Evan, because it sounded like you weren't gonna go with this at all.

• 1:44:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, right. But I was basing it only on my own personal experience, which is useless, right?

• 1:44:29Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. So my personal experience is that I live in California, right? And so we are, in many ways, a leader in this type of regulation. And from what I understand, there are, first of all, there are a ton of loopholes, and there are a ton of reasons why plastic bag bans do fail. Because like here, just as an aside, there's this stupid thing, and I think they're about to outlaw it in LA, but there's this stupid thing where you can sell reusable plastic bags. They're like slightly thicker.

• 1:44:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:59Cara Santa Maria?

  And so the idea is that people will use them more often, but it's just worse plastic to break down.

• 1:45:03Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:45:03Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it's like, it's a bad idea. Paper, right? Like, I only use paper bags.

• 1:45:08Speaker 05

  Paper or...

• 1:45:09Cara Santa Maria?

  Or reusable.

• 1:45:10Speaker 05

  Or the reusables. I use reusables all the time.

• 1:45:12Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. Like, if you're gonna ban... Plastic, you have to ban it outright, but, and we've got to remember that the way you worded this is very careful, Steve. An analysis finds that existing policies, policies on use of plastic bags are mostly ineffective. So that includes all those loopholes. But then it says, "on average, reducing plastic bag waste by less than 10%." And I just don't think that's true. I think places where there are policies in place, we see a bigger reduction. I think we could see an even bigger reduction, though, if there weren't so many, like, stupid loopholes. But 10% seems really low to me, so I'm gonna say that's the fiction.

• 1:45:49Speaker 02

  Okay, and Ian?

• 1:45:50Speaker 06

  Um, okay. So I'm gonna go backwards a little bit, just because when I heard you say CRISPR and tiger task, I was like, it has to be ending with tastic. Tiger task. I was like, this is clearly a lie. But then when I, you sent it to us, so I saw it written, and I was like, okay, maybe it's not. Maybe it is actually scientists, you know, writing a fun little name. At least in my head, that's how it comes out with. I could see, when it's saying even better, seems a weird thing, as opposed to like, maybe it has this different use case that is maybe more tailored to something. So maybe that's where the even better thing is, like, that they have slightly different specialties, whatever.

• 1:46:32Speaker 06

  So that seems like science to me, even though the even better thing kind of threw me a little bit. The birds, maybe I just don't understand how bird evolution and mammals, you know, evolved, but I don't see why they wouldn't be independently evolving information-carrying neurons, as opposed to like, what dependency would they have on each other?

• 1:46:56Speaker 02

  Well, the other option is that, that all vertebrates sort of have the same neurons, right?

• 1:47:03Cara Santa Maria?

  We all have a common ancestor.

• 1:47:04Speaker 02

  You have a common ancestor. So did neurons develop in the common ancestor, or are they independently?

• 1:47:08Speaker 06

  Oh, or after the fact.

• 1:47:09Speaker 02

  Developing birds and mammals.

• 1:47:11Speaker 06

  I see, I see, I see. Okay. So that, yeah, that's, that does interesting add a wrinkle. I'm still gonna go with my gut and say that they... The other word that throws me off is the mostly independently. It's like, well, maybe just like completely independently, whatever. I'm gonna, I still think that seems reasonable, whatever. Convergent evolution, I don't know if that's even like the right terminology for to use that. It is. Okay, thank you, I win. Um, and then, and analysis finds that existing policies unused to plastic bags are mostly ineffective in the bubble. Okay. Uh, I mean, I do hope that regulation does something. Like, please, God, let's that be somewhere. I mean, I, I

• 1:47:53Speaker 06

  will agree that like, putting a lot of the onus on like, the consumer seems to be, you know, maybe that's like, the wrong place when so many corporations pollute, blah, blah, blah, we all know that. I think, you know, so, but I would hope, I don't see plastic bags unless I go to like, Virginia or Pennsylvania, and then it's like, they just don't give a damn. But like, Connecticut or LA or like, you know, California, it's like, I don't see them. I don't even see those thicker plastic bags. It's funny that when you get to a certain thickness, they become like a reusable plastic bag that you don't want to throw out, but there's like this middle ground thickness, where I'm like, yeah, it's close enough, I do want to throw it out. Um, but anyway, yeah, I, it's gotta be that that is, that that's the fiction, that it's, it is actually effective. Like, it is reducing plastic bag

• 1:48:37Speaker 06

  waste. Please. Science, please.

• 1:48:40Speaker 02

  Bob, which one did you pick, Ken?

• 1:48:42Bob Novella?

  Oh, oh, well, I, yeah.

• 1:48:46Speaker 02

  The neurons, the neurons. All right, so you all agree on the third one, so we'll start there. Researchers presented a new gene editing system that is even better than CRISPR, called the Tiger task system. You all think this one is science, and this one is science. This is science. Yes, and we did talk about this on the show.

• 1:49:05Bob Novella?

  Yeah, and it's, it was better in a couple areas.

• 1:49:08Speaker 02

  It's better, it's got some interesting advantages. So it, it works on both strands of the DNA in terms of finding the plate, you know, the match, and therefore, it is more reliable. Um, and it's also not limited in the way that CRISPR is. CRISPR, you know, requires a certain particular sequence on the, on the RNA to be able to find it. And those are the so-called PAM sequences, proto spacer adjacent motifs, right? So CRISPR is PAM dependent, Tiger is PAM independent, which means it's more versatile, and it's more accurate. So it has the potential to be even better than CRISPR.

• 1:49:49Speaker 06

  So it replaces CRISPR? It's great.

• 1:49:51Bob Novella?

  Working on it, right? I haven't heard much about it lately, though.

• 1:49:55Speaker 02

  Well, it just came out this year. You know, CRISPR's at 10 years.

• 1:49:58Cara Santa Maria?

  Also, we've got to remember, we don't hear much like, we just hear the word CRISPR a lot, too. And I think that's become a catchall, a catchall, like,

• 1:50:05Bob Novella?

  Right, like a zero.

• 1:50:06Cara Santa Maria?

  We don't often hear like CRISPR Cas 9 versus CRISPR Cas 10.

• 1:50:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're right.

• 1:50:10Cara Santa Maria?

  You know, like, I think people just say CRISPR.

• 1:50:13Speaker 02

  When they, when they mean genetic, one of the newer genetic, you know, system.

• 1:50:17Bob Novella?

  Yeah, that could actually happen. The latest CRISPR thing. Technology.

• 1:50:20Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm. So is it like a complete replacement of all things CRISPR? Or is it just like, no?

• 1:50:25Speaker 02

  No, it wouldn't, you know, it wouldn't completely replace CRISPR because there are things for which CRISPR was fine.

• 1:50:29Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 1:50:30Speaker 02

  But there might be some specific use cases where the advantages of Tiger would make it worth it.

• 1:50:35Bob Novella?

  Whatever happened, Steve, I remember we talked about a new system that didn't cut anything. It basically just silenced the genes.

• 1:50:43Speaker 02

  That's an application of CRISPR. Again, that's the CRISPR, what, you know, the attachment to the CRISPR.

• 1:50:48Bob Novella?

  Yeah. That, to me, that was like, damn.

• 1:50:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, basically a toggle, you could turn genes on and off without breaking them. So you could turn them back on again, just silences the gene. Yeah, that's being used.

• 1:50:58Cara Santa Maria?

  But the thing is, it's probably being used.

• 1:50:59Speaker 02

  It is being used, it's totally being used.

• 1:51:01Cara Santa Maria?

  We're just not always like so specific about the exact mechanism at play because it gets really in the weeds.

• 1:51:07Bob Novella?

  Yeah, I got to look at that specifically. I thought it could, it could replace a lot of regular, you know, regular CRISPR Cas 9. I mean, it, because it just seemed like there's no, you're not cutting anything out. So you're just silencing and you could just turn it on and off. If there's a mistake, yeah, turn it on. You don't have to even worry about cutting or reinserting or anything. I don't know, it just seemed like a great advance that I just don't remember coming across in my news item searches every week.

• 1:51:32Speaker 06

  Well, you need to read the Neurological Blog, obviously.

• 1:51:33Speaker 02

  Dig deep, dig, dig deep and you'll see.

• 1:51:35Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I doubt it's even being really highlighted.

• 1:51:37Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:38Speaker 02

  All right, let's go back to number two. An extensive genetic and cellular analysis finds that birds evolved the information carrying neurons in their brain, mostly independently from mammals. Bob, you think this one is the fiction. Everyone else thinks this one is science. So this is a very interesting news item. The, have you ever heard the term the pallium?

• 1:51:58Bob Novella?

  Yeah. Nope.

• 1:51:59Speaker 02

  Bob, where do you hear it from?

• 1:52:01Bob Novella?

  Isn't that the name of the, uh, the publication for the high school we went to?

• 1:52:04Speaker 02

  Yes, it is.

• 1:52:06Speaker 05

  What do you mean? How can you say that then? Have anyone heard of something only Bob and I?

• 1:52:11Speaker 06

  The newspaper.

• 1:52:13Speaker 02

  Because "epileum" means something. It's not a random word they made up. The pallium is basically the cerebral cortex. Right? So they use that as the name for their, whatever, their monthly magazine. But, so the question is, and all vertebrates have a pallium, right? But the question is, how much of the structure, especially at the cellular and genetic level, how much of that is from a common vertebrate ancestor? And how much of it were evolved independently in reptiles, birds, or mammals?

• 1:52:48Cara Santa Maria?

  And they are really different.

• 1:52:50Speaker 02

  Organizationally, they're different.

• 1:52:51Cara Santa Maria?

  It's really different in birds than it is in mammals.

• 1:52:54Speaker 02

  So, but is that all organizational? Is that the networks? Or is that the actual neurons themselves?

• 1:52:59Bob Novella?

  Cellular level, man.

• 1:53:00Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, and how, yeah, I definitely wouldn't know that. I know that like from a mapping perspective.

• 1:53:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, oh yeah, definitely. So, they did a thorough analysis, looked at both these cells themselves and the genes. And what they found was, I'll quote one of the, one of the researchers, "Their neurons are born in different locations and developmental times in each species, indicating that they are not comparable neurons derived from a common ancestor." So this one is science. Sorry, Bob.

• 1:53:29Cara Santa Maria?

  That's so cool.

• 1:53:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:53:31Cara Santa Maria?

  And crazy.

• 1:53:32Speaker 02

  But there were a couple of neurons in common. That's why I had to say mostly. But most of the neurons were like, different genetics, different developmental biology. These evolved independently.

• 1:53:43Speaker 05

  Damn, man.

• 1:53:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:53:44Speaker 05

  That's pretty awesome.

• 1:53:45Speaker 02

  That's wild. Yeah.

• 1:53:46Speaker 06

  So then, what about other like vertebrates, though? Because like it's mammals, birds, like reptiles, amphibians? Do we, they have a common neurological ancestor?

• 1:53:55Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, but we all evolved from fish, right? We're basically all fish. Evolutionarily speaking, we are all fish.

• 1:54:01Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:54:02Speaker 02

  But yeah, that's why they looked at the derived, you know, groups. They reptiles, birds, and mammals.

• 1:54:07Cara Santa Maria?

  But are reptiles, did their, I guess they don't really have a cortex, but they still have a pallium.

• 1:54:13Speaker 02

  They do, they have a pallium.

• 1:54:14Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:54:15Speaker 02

  They don't have a neocortex.

• 1:54:17Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, yeah. But did their, are...

• 1:54:19Speaker 05

  They got the newsletter?

• 1:54:21Cara Santa Maria?

  Is theirs more similar to birds?

• 1:54:23Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:54:24Cara Santa Maria?

  No, so all three of us are just different?

• 1:54:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, all three are different.

• 1:54:28Speaker 06

  Oh, wow.

• 1:54:29Speaker 02

  All right, let's go back to number one. An analysis finds that existing policies on use of plastic bags are mostly ineffective, on average reducing plastic bag waste by less than 10%. That is, of course, the fiction, because the truth is, they're quite effective. So you guys, your wish list came true. They are, so the study that I was writing about, compared states with plastic bag policies, just any plastic bag policy, to states without any policy, and they found that the plastic bag waste was reduced by 25 to 47%. So at the high end, cut in half, which is still not good enough, but that's, that's significant. That's pretty, so they work.

• 1:55:12Cara Santa Maria?

  I can't believe there are states with zero policies in place on plastic bags.

• 1:55:18Speaker 06

  Woke is back, look.

• 1:55:20Speaker 02

  Plastic policies are woke, Kara, you should know that. There's some states that have 500,000 people in them.

• 1:55:28Cara Santa Maria?

  So, those 500,000 people, it would be so easy for them to not use plastic bags.

• 1:55:34Speaker 06

  Yeah, what, Rhode Island? What are they doing with those bags?

• 1:55:36Speaker 02

  There's also, there's no, there's no federal regulation.

• 1:55:38Cara Santa Maria?

  No, of course.

• 1:55:39Speaker 02

  This is why it was easy to compare states, because it's all statewide. That's because big plastic bag is all over. You guys heard about the woke fonts, right?

• 1:55:46Speaker 06

  Yes, okay, say, Times New Roman, I think.

• 1:55:49Speaker 02

  Calibri, Calibri's a woke font.

• 1:55:52Cara Santa Maria?

  I guess that you're being funny, but like, big plastic is the reason for this.

• 1:55:59Speaker 06

  Big plastic.

• 1:56:00Speaker 02

  Big plastic, yeah.

• 1:56:02Bob Novella?

  I think you guys are missing the important takeaway here.

• 1:56:06Speaker 02

  Bob has fallen into third place.

• 1:56:08Bob Novella?

  Did he? No, no, no, even more important and tragic as that is this, I just realized, you know, Kara gets, what, 77? I think she has an absolutely unfair advantage, being and living in California, and we should, we should tell her you gotta move to Texas to make it to even it out a little bit.

• 1:56:30Cara Santa Maria?

  But to be fair, Bob, I'm from Texas and I did live in Florida.

• 1:56:36Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 1:56:37Cara Santa Maria?

  So I have lived in, I lived in Texas longer than I have lived in California so far. And I lived in Florida for one year and New York for one year. So those like, they sort of cancel each other.

• 1:56:49Speaker 02

  All the big electoral states in the country. And you drive a truck.

• 1:56:53Cara Santa Maria?

  I'm quad coastal. I drive a hybrid truck.

• 1:56:56Speaker 02

  You got a hybrid truck. You gotta live for a year in Pennsylvania or something.

• 1:56:59Cara Santa Maria?

  I'm a very confusing person.

• 1:57:03Speaker 02

  And this is often why I'm frustrated because of items like this, Kara, because I forget these tangential connections you have to the topic that I'm talking about. Like, damn, you're from California. You know, you forget all the ways in which you're gonna find your way to, because you're right. You're like, you just knew that, yeah, we have backlogs. They're way more effective than 10%. Oh, I'll be reminding you, Steve.

• 1:57:27Cara Santa Maria?

  Not only am I from, not only do I live in California, I live in LA and I don't live in West Hollywood, but I spend quite a bit of time in West Hollywood. And West Hollywood, I think, compared to the rest of the country, has the most progressive legislation. It's a tiny little city that is mostly LGBTQI plus. Their leadership is as well. And they like, they banned fur, they banned foie gras, they were way early on the plastic bag and the straw and the styrofoam bands. Like, yeah, they're, yeah, yeah.

• 1:57:57Speaker 06

  It's got the Pink Pony Club. That's where all the people are going. No, anybody with a song?

• 1:58:01Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, yeah. I'm gonna keep on dancing.

• 1:58:03Speaker 06

  There you go.

• 1:58:05Speaker 02

  All right. Well, that's a wrap for 2025, guys. Evan, you gotta take us out with a quote.

• 1:58:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, we're gonna tip our hat to an old friend with ours quote tonight.

• 1:58:16Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:58:17Speaker 05

  Skepticism is an act of doing good in the world. Joe Nickell.

• 1:58:23Speaker 02

  Joe Nickell, great guy. Yep.

• 1:58:24Speaker 05

  Joe Nickell. Said that on a point of inquiry podcast and it was sweet and short and we miss you, Joe. We definitely miss you.

• 1:58:32Speaker 02

  Well, guys, it's been a blast doing the show with you in 2025.

• 1:58:36Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:37Speaker 02

  We survived. We survived. Has been a little island of sanity.

• 1:58:42Cara Santa Maria?

  One more year, Bob. I'm with you. One more year.

• 1:58:45Speaker 02

  One more year. Bob only ever commits to one year at a time. That's the way to live your life. Re-up, man.

• 1:58:52Speaker 06

  Will we have the internet in one year?

• 1:58:54Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:58:57Speaker 02

  Ian, thanks for joining us.

• 1:58:59Speaker 06

  Of course.

• 1:58:59Speaker 02

  Thanks for all you do, Ian.

• 1:59:01Speaker 06

  Thank you so much. And thank you, listeners, to all you do, especially when you go to Patreon.com.

• 1:59:09Speaker 02

  Oh, absolutely. For anyone out there who doesn't know, Ian is our tech guru. He is an absolute magician. I use that term metaphorically.

• 1:59:18Speaker 06

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:59:19Speaker 02

  But seriously, I mean, he, it's amazing what this guy can do. You know, he, he handles all of our live streaming, all of our live events. It's kind of, it's kind of like, we, we get in front of the camera, like, Ian, work your magic, make it happen. And we're sitting there like, Ian, come on, it's taken you two minutes. Ian, just push the button.

• 1:59:38Speaker 06

  I know.

• 1:59:40Speaker 02

  Push the button.

• 1:59:41Speaker 06

  Don't look behind a curtain, I'm crying.

• 1:59:43Speaker 05

  I thought of this new thing two seconds ago. Why isn't it happening?

• 1:59:46Speaker 02

  And also the extravagance is like, the audience will throw out the weirdest, random, wacky shit and he'll have an image of it in like, two minutes.

• 1:59:54Speaker 06

  Not AI, thank you. I make it myself.

• 1:59:56Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 1:59:57Speaker 06

  Thank you so much.

• 1:59:58Speaker 02

  Does it the old fashioned way with Photoshop or something?

• 2:00:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, oh, right.

• 2:00:04Speaker 02

  No, Ian, really, you have become indispensable to the SGU.

• 2:00:07Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

• 2:00:10Speaker 02

  You're never getting that integral, bro.

• 2:00:12Speaker 06

  Oh, wait, is that a good thing or a bad one? Oh, no.

• 2:00:16Speaker 02

  Once you're all the way in, you never get out.

• 2:00:18Speaker 06

  You never get out.

• 2:00:19Speaker 02

  All right, guys. You're bringing me back in. Thank you again. Thanks for, thanks for 2025. Thanks for joining me this week. Thanks, Steve. And until next week and next year, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

• 2:00:36Speaker 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.

• 2:01:13Speaker 08

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