The Skeptics Guide #1042 - Jun 28 2025

What's the Word: Eco; News Items: Vaccinating the World, How Children vs AI Acquire Language, Vera Rubin Observatory, Visible Nova, Effects of Chat GPT on the Brain; Who's That Noisy; Name That Logical Fallacy; Science or Fiction

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:33Speaker 01

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

• 0:40Speaker 02

  Hello and welcome to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, June 25th, 2025, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella. Hey, everybody. Cara Santa Maria.

• 0:52Cara Santa Maria?

  Howdy.

• 0:52Speaker 02

  Jay Novella.

• 0:53Jay Novella?

  Hey, guys.

• 0:53Speaker 02

  And Evan Bernstein.

• 0:55Speaker 05

  Good evening, everyone.

• 0:56Speaker 02

  Just want to say, as I record this, two days. I have two days left of work.

• 1:04Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:04Speaker 02

  Basically, Steve, when people are listening to this, you'll be in bed. Yeah.

• 1:08Speaker 05

  All right. I want, I want to know, Steve, what, what takes place in the last two days of work?

• 1:13Speaker 02

  I have a full day. I have two full days of patients.

• 1:16Speaker 05

  But.

• 1:16Cara Santa Maria?

  Do they know?

• 1:17Speaker 05

  They haven't transitioned yet to another doctor?

• 1:19Speaker 02

  I mean, no, a lot of my patients have transitioned, but they, I've scheduled patients to my last day. Right? So, and they just stopped scheduling patients for me. They're just, they're making use of my open slots. Let me put it that way.

• 1:31Cara Santa Maria?

  Whoa. How sad that somebody you're doing coverage for, like, the patient sees you and is like, you're amazing. Finally, I have this doctor. I'm so, and you're like, sorry.

• 1:40Speaker 02

  It happens every time.

• 1:41Speaker 05

  Steve, has anyone, has anyone said yet, well, will you still be my doctor after you retire?

• 1:46Speaker 02

  One or two people have sort of asked in that direction. Like, you know, you don't get it. I am fully retiring.

• 1:52Jay Novella?

  I'm out of here. So, Steve, are you going to tell your very last patient that they are your very last patient?

• 1:57Speaker 02

  I guess so.

• 1:57Cara Santa Maria?

  Cool.

• 1:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:58Cara Santa Maria?

  Are you gonna like?

• 1:59Speaker 05

  You're gonna livestream?

• 2:00Cara Santa Maria?

  Load a streamer or something?

• 2:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:03Cara Santa Maria?

  The examiner?

• 2:05Jay Novella?

  That, you know, Kara, what I've come to realize after grilling Steve for the past couple of months, is there is virtually zero drama coming from his office. There's no one to like yell at or say something nasty to on the way out. There's, he doesn't want, he doesn't want to steal any stethoscopes.

• 2:22Speaker 05

  You're not gonna defenestrate anything.

• 2:25Jay Novella?

  Yeah, like he doesn't like wanna tell any boss off. He's just gonna like, okay, goodbye Steve.

• 2:29Speaker 05

  You're not gonna burn any bridges.

• 2:31Cara Santa Maria?

  You think they'll have cake?

• 2:32Speaker 02

  I had my cake already. Just gonna come and walk out.

• 2:35Speaker 05

  That's right, you can stuff your pockets with a bunch of medicine. I'm outta here. So long, suckers.

• 2:40Jay Novella?

  I'm happy to have finally realized that Steve is like, super, super happy about this. There is no like, I'm gonna miss this or that. He's just happy he's done.

• 2:48Speaker 02

  I mean, I am gonna miss aspects of my career. It is sad and it's to a certain extent, but I have something very exciting I'm moving into.

• 2:56Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, here's an interesting question.

• 2:58Speaker 05

  You're not gonna play golf, right?

• 2:59Cara Santa Maria?

  Are you going to maintain your license?

• 3:01Speaker 02

  Uh, at least for the first year, cuz there's no reason not to, and I've met all my requirements. But, but it would take work for me to maintain my requirements going forward beyond that, and I probably won't.

• 3:14Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it's a lot of work just for the...

• 3:16Speaker 05

  You mean definitely not?

• 3:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:17Cara Santa Maria?

  I guess the ability to, to step in an emergency, which you can do anyway because of Good Samaritan.

• 3:22Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, yeah. This is only about me working and getting paid. Like if I wanted to do locum tenens, I would need a license.

• 3:29Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, and that would be fun.

• 3:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I wanna be too busy. I wanna be too busy doing...

• 3:34Speaker 05

  Too busy SGU work.

• 3:35Jay Novella?

  Too busy looking good.

• 3:41Speaker 02

  Alright, what movie is that from, Evan?

• 3:42Speaker 05

  No, I don't know it. Don't.

• 3:45Speaker 02

  Kara has no chance. I'm trying to...

• 3:46Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I thought that was just Bob being clever. What is that, Bob? Now you're, it goes deep.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  I'll be too busy looking good.

• 3:53Speaker 05

  And to the dragon.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  And to the dragon.

• 3:55Speaker 05

  Oh, hell, why don't I know that?

• 3:57Speaker 02

  Which we just saw with a childhood friend of ours that we saw it with like when it was in the theaters, you know?

• 4:04Bob Novella?

  Yeah, my old friend, best friend growing up, we were like Bruce Lee fanatics. So yeah, we of course watched Into the Dragon. And yeah, that's one of those quotes that you just

• 4:14Speaker 02

  There's a hundred quotes.

• 4:15Bob Novella?

  It's hardwired into our brains.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  Lasered into our brains. Anyway, I have to-

• 4:21Bob Novella?

  I found the perfect time to use it. I'm so happy.

• 4:23Speaker 02

  You did. In context. I want to keep everyone updated on the shenanigans of RFK Jr. So very quickly, now he's withdrawing funding, the funding pledge from GAVI, which is an international organization that vaccinates poor kids.

• 4:41Cara Santa Maria?

  Does this surprise anybody?

• 4:43Speaker 02

  Every four years, you know, they have to get their funding for the next cycle. And last time around, the Biden administration pledged 1.2 billion for this cycle. And RFK Jr. wants to claw that back.

• 4:57Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, so they probably already spent some of it.

• 5:00Speaker 02

  I think it's for the, it's 26 to 30 cycle is what the money is for. And guess how he's justifying it?

• 5:07Cara Santa Maria?

  He's saying vaccines don't work?

• 5:08Speaker 05

  They're not transparent, or they're not, you know, they're in violation of some crap.

• 5:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, basically. He basically said that they quote unquote ignored the science. And so he's weaponizing, and we got a question about this too, but we've talked about it on the show, he's weaponizing the language of scientific medicine, right? The gold standard science.

• 5:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, we did a whole deep dive onto this.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  I know. That's exactly what he's doing. So he's saying that they're just rubber stamping vaccines, that they're not, they're ignoring the science, and they're not considering the side effects and the risks and blah, blah, blah.

• 5:41Bob Novella?

  Who's ignoring science? Who is ignoring science?

• 5:43Cara Santa Maria?

  The scientists, apparently.

• 5:45Speaker 02

  World vaccine experts, you know, who are following the guidelines of the World Health Organization.

• 5:51Cara Santa Maria?

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:52Speaker 02

  It's total nonsense. Like, they don't believe my bullshit conspiracy theories, therefore they're quote unquote ignoring the science. He wouldn't know science if it hit him in the ass, this guy. It's just bullshit.

• 6:04Bob Novella?

  Let's hit him in the ass with it. Let's just do it.

• 6:08Speaker 02

  This is what he's doing. He is weaponizing this notion of scientific standards. He's using it as a weapon, not as a way of genuinely finding the truth, which has been his life. This is what he has done his whole life.

• 6:21Speaker 05

  To say it's predictable is an understatement.

• 6:23Speaker 02

  And again, we have loosely keeping track of how many millions of people he's going to kill in his career. This funding shortfall will probably, in the next cycle, the estimate is it will save eight million lives. So it's some big chunk of those eight million lives that should have been saved by 2030 will be lost because of RFK Jr.

• 6:48Speaker 05

  I hope some benefactor comes along and does the right thing and fills the gap that the United States is about to fill.

• 6:53Speaker 02

  Bill Gates funds this organization, too.

• 6:56Bob Novella?

  I just want karma to come along and do some justice. How about that?

• 7:00Speaker 05

  No, I get that. Yeah, that would be satisfying, but also, you know, let's hope it doesn't become this possible worst-case scenario that he's thrown us all into.

• 7:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, but when we're talking about his death toll, it's in the millions. That's what we're talking about. How many millions of people?

• 7:17Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 7:17Speaker 02

  It's crazy.

• 7:18Cara Santa Maria?

  It's already worst-case scenario. It's just going to be worser.

• 7:21Speaker 05

  Right. And then to play catch-up later on, after all this stuff is out there and people are, oh, my gosh, this will last long beyond those four years.

• 7:30Bob Novella?

  This is generational horror is happening.

• 7:34Speaker 02

  Yep. I mean, we'll probably do what we can to reverse as much of this as possible if we, you know, replace him, replace the current administration. But, yeah, so much damage will have been done, right? You can't go back and vaccinate those kids who weren't vaccinated and died, you know?

• 7:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Yep.

• 7:51Speaker 02

  And it's whatever. It's hard. It's just a tiny little sliver of the horribleness. Okay.

• 7:56Bob Novella?

  Right.

• 7:57Speaker 05

  Shame.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  Let's move on with the regular show. Carrie, you're going to start us off with a what's the word?

• 8:02Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it's been a bit. I am going to dive into a word that was suggested by Adam from Louisiana. He said, "Hi, a word, etymology, research, or discussion possibility for the SGU? Eco, as in ecosystem and economy." Thank you. Longtime listener. Thanks, Adam. So yeah, those two words sound like they're pretty far apart. Ecosystem and economy, but they both start with eco. Maybe everyone but Steve.

• 8:37Cara Santa Maria?

  Any of you, do you see a similarity between the eco of economy and the eco of ecosystem? Or ecology?

• 8:46Speaker 05

  Have to do with systems.

• 8:48Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay, systems.

• 8:49Speaker 05

  Like, like, how would you, how would you put it?

• 8:54Cara Santa Maria?

  I think what we might be looking at there, though, is the relationship between the suffixes, not the prefixes. So system oronomy orology. And those, yes, do have to do with schools of thought. But the prefix eco. What is eco?

• 9:12Speaker 02

  It's Greek, not Latin.

• 9:13Speaker 05

  Peace or something. It's like, um, what is it?

• 9:18Cara Santa Maria?

  It's Latin from the Greek.

• 9:20Speaker 05

  What, not to, not to hurt? Do no harm, something like that.

• 9:25Cara Santa Maria?

  It actually means home.

• 9:28Bob Novella?

  Yeah, home economics. Remember home economics class decades ago? Do you still even have that?

• 9:34Cara Santa Maria?

  They do. It comes from the Greek oikos, which means home or house or habitation or dwelling. And really, the first use of the word economy that I could find is from home economics. Household management. So the word economy would not have been called home economics back then because that would have been redundant.

• 9:58Bob Novella?

  Redundant.

• 9:58Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it would have just been economy back in the 1500s. So economy would have been household management back then. And then eventually, it became

• 10:11Cara Santa Maria?

  used to kind of describe resource management and frugality. And then later, it kind of evolved to become a larger system of political economy. That didn't actually happen until the mid 1600s, even into the 1700s. Apparently, you know, the founders of the United States only used the word. Economy once in The Federalist, like they actually use the word frugality over and over instead of the word economy, and then they described a political economy as a noun only once in those early recorded documents. So it's pretty interesting that it's a relatively new word to describe the economy of a nation, but really, economy goes back to the home.

• 10:55Cara Santa Maria?

  And it's the same thing with eco being ecology or ecosystems. So when we talk about home, we're talking about our home, right? So the living things in their environment, that would be the ecology, coming from that that habitation, that dwelling place, that home. And then same thing with ecosystems. So the entire system or the organized whole of home. So it's interesting that we don't, we think of those things as being quite separate, quite far apart, but they do come from that same root. And I couldn't really find any other examples of the the term eco, except for sort of branches of ecology or ecosystem, kind of that planetary

• 11:40Cara Santa Maria?

  usage versus economy, that usage. All of the different kind of related words that I could find were just variations on that theme. Eco disaster, eco housing, econometrics. I couldn't find another kind of branched term there. So it seems like there was a bit of a fork in the road, but they both lead back to home.

• 12:04Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 12:04Cara Santa Maria?

  Interesting.

• 12:06Speaker 02

  Nice.

• 12:07Speaker 05

  Home.

• 12:07Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 12:08Speaker 02

  All right. Thank you, Cara.

• 12:09Speaker 05

  I like that.

• 12:09Speaker 02

  Jay, you're also going to talk about vaccines. This has nothing to do with RFK Jr., but vaccinating the world is challenging.

• 12:16Jay Novella?

  Steve, this this has to do with him a little bit because he is the person that is currently driving things in the US. Yeah, it's pretty, pretty grim things going on here, guys. Like, so after 50 years of vaccine progress, you know, I'm talking about childhood vaccination coverage, it's now slowing and in some cases, it's slipping backwards. So vaccines, of course, have prevented an estimated, what, 100?

• 12:42Speaker 02

  154 million saved lives, basically, over the past few decades. Their safety and efficacy are extremely well documented. And of course, none of this is up for debate. It is that, and there is no information to the contrary. I mean, sure, there's edge cases, but the vast, vast majority of people have a net benefit for taking vaccines. So we made, in the United States, we made pretty decent gains between the 1980s and the 2010s. But now, we've hit a plateau, and we are starting to really see the consequences of the progress stopping and slipping backwards.

• 13:21Speaker 02

  So from 1980 to 2023, vaccines against ephtheria, tetanus, and pertussis, measles, polio, tuberculosis, these helped drive the global coverage from under 25% to over 80%. That's a huge increase. In 1980, nearly 59 children did not receive a single dose of a routine childhood vaccine, but by 2019, that number dropped to about 15 million. And many people, of course, consider this a public health victory. When you really do understand and appreciate the power of vaccines, knowing that those numbers were increasing that dramatically, not only can we track the success and see the changes in people's quality of life, but the saved lives and the overall savings

• 14:06Speaker 02

  on medical costs and everything. Because if you go unvaccinated and you need to be hospitalized for a few weeks because of something, that raises medical costs. So since 2010, though, all of that momentum has completely flatlined. Measle vaccine coverage fell in over 100 nations. Even in 29 high-income countries, coverage for at least one vaccine decreased. And this is not a developing world problem alone. It's a global backslide. That's what the data is showing. When COVID hit, routine vaccines, sadly, they were all disrupted. And during lockdowns and resource reallocations, millions of children missed their scheduled vaccines, including vaccines for measles, polio, and DTP.

• 14:52Speaker 02

  Which is diphtheria, you know, pertussis and tetanus. So it's all serious, you know, and you know, the big hitting of the breaks happened during COVID. So in 2023, the number of zero dose children, now, these are kids who had not received even a single vaccine. So in 2023, the number of these zero dose children had risen to 14.5 million, and that was up from 12.8 million in 2019. So, you know, that's a lot of, a lot of kids not getting vaccinated. Also, the percentage of vaccinated kids has completely plateaued, like I said, staying the same way for 10 years. Now, if you consider that we've had, we've had the percentage roughly be 84% for the last 10 years.

• 15:35Speaker 02

  Now, the problem with that is, population has gone up, which means if the, if the percentage plateaus, that means more kids, because more kids are alive, more kids are actually going unvaccinated. The numbers are higher, because the population increased. So about 53% of all zero dose children live in sub-Saharan Africa. South Asia holds 13%. Nigeria leads the world in unvaccinated children with 2.5 million, followed by India, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Sudan. And the problem that they're dealing with is they have fragile health systems, and they're, the programs are significantly under-invested. Now, the typical problem with vaccine levels staying at the same percentage is that the

• 16:20Speaker 02

  population increase means, like I said, that as the population increases, there's a lot of things going on. First off, with more people means more likely to spread, because you have more vectors, which is, which is definitely a problem. And then, of course, you know, you have the, as the percentage stays the same, you're not going to have, you know, more people, you're going to have less people being vaccinated. And now, we're seeing the consequences, and they're pretty significant. So measles, measles cases are spiking. We have over 100 countries reported with outbreaks last year. There is an estimated 35 million children that lack full measles protection. Polio, which we almost had completely eradicated, it resurfaced in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Papua

• 17:04Speaker 02

  New Guinea, and even in Europe, in the United States, vaccine preventable diseases are showing signs of returning. And this pattern is, it's crystal clear. It's, it's very easy to track, and it, the numbers are going in the wrong direction. So what's causing all this? It's super complicated. You know, we could say things like vaccine confidence is a problem and misinformation and disinformation, particularly around COVID-19. You know, there has been an erosion of public trust in vaccines across the board. The disinformation is routine and it's significantly affecting childhood immunizations. And we're seeing a growing number of parents who are delaying and refusing to vaccinate altogether.

• 17:47Speaker 02

  And this ties into RFK because he's all about, you know, you gotta make your choice, you gotta do your own research. You know, that's all patent bullshit. Another factor that came in was high-income countries are not immune to this. Australia happens to rank sixth worst, worse, among developed nations in routine childhood vaccine coverage. The United States, we have measles outbreaks and they've claimed the lives of people living in communities with declining vaccine or vaccination rates. UK, funding for GAVI, the global vaccine alliance, is being slashed by nearly 40%. And meanwhile, the political momentum for vaccines is faltering and it's failing. You know, like, you know, again, I can, I can point to one man in the US government

• 18:28Speaker 02

  who is, who is changing the vaccine outcome in our country and it hasn't even really, you know, he's doing it, but we haven't even seen like, direct results yet. It's gonna take a while for it to play out, but we will see it. We will see kids die because of that man. I assembled a list of all the reasons that are going on here and it's a huge, complicated list of reasons, but I'll just give you the headers, right? So we have the COVID-19 pandemic disruption, which disrupted the routine vaccines. You know, there was a health worker crisis, which is, which is a hugely, a huge problem, very difficult to deal with, lack of resources. Then we have rising vaccine misinformation and the public distrust.

• 19:10Speaker 02

  You know, we have false claims that are widely spread on social media. We have people who are, are, you know, a lot, a lot more people today who are, who are, you know, essentially fighting against vaccine and vaccine information. It's not just misinformation, like, you know, we have a lot more people who are pushing hard against it because they have zero trust in any of it.

• 19:31Jay Novella?

  We have political undermining of scientific institutions, right? We can go into this for, we could talk about this for hours, you know? But everything that's going on in the US with Kennedy Jr., you know, he removed the CDC recommendations, removed the panel of, the advisory panel, you know, he's, he's, right now, he's linked to 13% of all vaccine misinformation retweets on Twitter, more than any other individual source. And the global, global health systems and funding cuts, you know, that's another big thing because the governments are choosing to not put the money into it anymore, which I, I just don't understand. Now, just look at it like this. This is the single most effective medical intervention ever created, and it's orders of magnitude more effective than anything else that we've ever done.

• 20:14Jay Novella?

  This is, this is, if anything has, has proof behind it. If anything that we've ever done medically has, has been the massive success, it's vaccines, right? It's unequivocal.

• 20:23Speaker 02

  It's also very cost-effective, extremely cost-effective.

• 20:26Jay Novella?

  It saves tons of money. Not only are you saving lives, not only are you improving people's quality of life, right? Because you could get the measles and it can do bad things to you and it literally changed the rest of your life, right? So you're literally keeping people healthy and happy. We could see how much money it saves, it's easy to track that. And then, you know, we're talking about the, the amount of data. Because think about the number of people who historically were getting vaccinated. We have the statistics and it's a massive body of statistics that shows the effectiveness. And if that's not good enough, nothing ever will be. And it isn't good enough. It, it, and that's the sad state that we're in, you know? So what do we have? We have a bunch of skeptics out there and critical thinkers who, who fully understand this.

• 21:10Jay Novella?

  We have a, a strong medical community that understand this. And then we have, you know, people out there that are, that are reading misinformation, can't tell the difference between the truth and lies. You know, we have people being appointed to government positions who don't have the skillsets and they're being, they're being trusted over experts, right? They'll trust RFK over Fauci. You know, we actually, you know, the smear campaign against Fauci is, is another thing that we have to be aware of that happened, that's happening here. It's not just the misinformation, it's the disassembling. Of medical professionals.

• 21:42Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 21:42Jay Novella?

  Who who have been lifetime contributors to vaccines and to well the well being of a population. So it's really concerning and this whole thing that I just said begs the question, what can we do? And unfortunately, we can't do any big brush stroke stuff as a community here. Uh, what we can do is try to be as calm and polite as you can with the people in your life. That are buying some of this misinformation, you know, try to talk to them, try to find some common ground. You know, you could show them statistics, you could talk to them a little bit about that. But it's difficult because once people get that idea in their head that they can't trust it, they don't even trust the statistics. And there's just no way to reach them. I'm not saying, don't try, but it's, you know, that's what we're faced with.

• 22:26Jay Novella?

  And unfortunately, there is no panacea for this.

• 22:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, obviously, we need to spread critical thinking skills, scientific literacy. It for individuals, I think informing yourself, it's it's you have to do more than just say, yeah, I'm. Pro vaccine, I'll vaccinate my kids. But also, you know, we need to arm ourselves so that we can deal with the spread of misinformation or disinformation. You know what I mean? Like being informed enough to promote vaccines, not just do the right thing for yourself. Part of the problem is, is like, if you are just a rational, science based person, there's a thousand issues that we deal with. Whereas like the anti vaxxers have one issue, right? Like they can dedicate their life to destroying vaccines.

• 23:11Speaker 02

  Whereas we're trying to defend a hundred things, you know, all at the same time. But that means, you know, we need everyone who's on the side of science and reason, et cetera, to be involved. You know, professionals, the public, you can't look the other way anymore.

• 23:27Jay Novella?

  Yeah, and the scary thing is, as an example, I know this is an anecdote, but it happened and it's worth repeating. For example, there was a family in Texas who whose child died from measles. And they were so anti vax that they literally lost their child, could have easily prevented their child's death. And they said, even though we lost our child, we still don't want you to go out and get the vaccine. Like, that's how deep in the woods they are.

• 23:53Speaker 02

  Well, that's, that's complicated too, because otherwise, they have to admit they killed their kid. Right? And like, that may just be emotionally unattainable to them. So they kind of have to think that. Although not, some people do, like, after a family death, because they opposed vaccines or opposed medicine, they will come around. But then usually, they portray themselves as a victim. Right? So that's like, we have to get to one of those two places. Either I was victimized by misinformation, or I was right all along. Very few people can say, "I was wrong, it was my mistake, and I killed somebody I love." You know what I mean? That's just a little bit too much for most people to bite off.

• 24:35Jay Novella?

  Yeah, I agree. I mean, look, it's, it's, it's a hard thing to look at a family that could have easily prevented the death of, of another family member by giving them something that was incredibly inexpensive and easy. You know, we're not talking about surgery here. We're talking about a shot that takes two minutes. I can see it. Yeah, I don't want to come out swinging and go, you know, I want those parents to, you know, to have a horrible rest of their life. They'll have that anyway, but the point being, you know, we have to hold them accountable, but we also have to give them an out. Because it's a terrible situation. They are thinking that they're choosing what's best for their children. You know, they're not trying to neglect their children, and that, they're not being neglectful in that way. It's not laziness with a lot of these people. It's more, they're just in the wrong information bubble, and there's no way to get them out.

• 25:19Speaker 02

  It's always complicated, you know? To, to some extent, they failed, right? They, they came to a bad decision, and, but at the same time, they're also victims. Because, again, as you say, they are living in an information ecosystem that sort of led them down that road. It's not as if our society, our government, our medical establishment, whatever, that we're doing such a good job of educating the public, that they have no one to blame but themselves. We can't say that. They, it's, it's tough. It is a tough information environment to live in, to raise kids in. It's very hard on individuals, so it's not surprising when they-

• 26:00Speaker 02

  Fail individually, but they did fail at the same time. So it's a combination.

• 26:06Bob Novella?

  It's a triple failure. I mean, they could, they, and I understand the psychology to an extent behind this, but they, they are in an amazing position, a horrible position, but also there's an opportunity. They could prevent other kids from dying. If they just picked up that mantle and said, yeah, we screwed up big. Of course we did. But maybe we can save at least one kid. Imagine the power of that voice.

• 26:32Speaker 02

  And some people do go there too. That is one of the psychological mechanisms is that it turn it into something good. Yeah. All right. Let's move on. This is an interesting, it's a bit complicated, but this is an interesting, it's not really a study. It is a proposal in a way. Talking about how researchers could move, can move forward trying to answer the question of how children acquire language. It is an amazing feat when you think about it is that toddlers go from no language essentially. Not that they're a blank slate. They definitely are not. They have a brain prepared to learn language. But they don't really have any language and they go from that to being fluent,

• 27:17Speaker 02

  like fully fluent by the time they're seven or eight years old. And it really is an amazing acquisition of knowledge, skill and information.

• 27:27Bob Novella?

  Yeah. It's a hell of a window, man.

• 27:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, and so researchers have been trying to understand that process in detail. And the last 10 years has seen an explosion in research in this area because we have a lot of tools at our disposal now that we didn't have in the past, like infant EEG, head mounted, eye tracking and other things, other technologies have really accelerated this research.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  Now, the one other thing that caught my interest with this paper is the comparison that sort of strewn throughout between how babies acquire language versus how AI, large language models acquire language. And they're very different.

• 28:06Bob Novella?

  Hmm.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  I do, I do want to say that.

• 28:09Bob Novella?

  Makes sense.

• 28:10Speaker 02

  One of the things that caught my eye, which as far as I could tell, I cannot source this claim. It's not in the article. It's only in the press release. But the press release says that, quote unquote, if a human learned a language at the same rate as ChatGPT, it would take them 92,000 years. So.

• 28:30Bob Novella?

  Wow.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  That means that they're, they're basically saying that people acquire language at 10,000 times the speed as ChatGPT. I have no idea how they quantified that. And I have no idea where that number comes from. And I couldn't find it. All references point to that press release. And it's not in the study. So I have no idea where they, where they, where they came up with that.

• 28:52Bob Novella?

  Is there something in the study that could give you the?

• 28:54Speaker 02

  No.

• 28:55Bob Novella?

  You know, the data that to at least calculate that?

• 28:57Speaker 02

  No.

• 28:58Speaker 05

  Did you ask an LLM?

• 28:59Speaker 02

  I did. And they all point to this study. That press release.

• 29:04Speaker 05

  No, it's circular. No.

• 29:05Speaker 02

  Everything points to this press release. So, but it's funny. Anyway, I don't think it's true. I can't even source it.

• 29:11Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 29:12Speaker 02

  But, and again, I'm not really, you know, there's no even explanation for how they would quantify it. But the core idea here is.

• 29:17Speaker 05

  Do you think the point is, yeah, is the point valid?

• 29:19Speaker 02

  The, the point is valid. Again, just that they, I don't know where that number's coming from. But the point is that humans are way more efficient at acquiring language fluency than LLMs are.

• 29:30Speaker 05

  At the moment.

• 29:31Speaker 02

  At the moment.

• 29:32Bob Novella?

  Wait, wait, wait. When does the, when does the clock start for an, for an LLM to acquire language? Are they talking about what? The beginning of research decades ago? What are they talking about? What's the starting point?

• 29:41Speaker 02

  No, no, just training, training an LLM to acquire language.

• 29:44Cara Santa Maria?

  You're talking about an individual one?

• 29:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. My best guess is that they're talking about processing power. Training an LLM uses orders of magnitude more processing power than the human brain uses. So I guess the one way to interpret it is if you trained an LLM on the processing power of a single human brain, it would take 90,000 years. So that that is probably it, but I don't I just they didn't show me their work.

• 30:12Speaker 05

  Is it too much comparing apples to oranges?

• 30:14Speaker 02

  Yes, but that aside, that's just I wanted to point it out because it's like this press science press release thing. Like, I don't know where they pulled that out. But anyway, and Kara, I don't know how much you've ever delved into this research as a psychologist as well. It's very it's fascinating.

• 30:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, because I think not only is it fascinating from a evolutionary developmental genetic, psychological, neurological perspective, there are like huge camps within many of those fields who like wildly disagree with each other.

• 30:44Speaker 02

  And what this opinion piece really is trying to do is to pull it all together because what they said was there's many different theories. They're basically each looking at a piece of language and they're not there's really no way to compare them. And they're trying to bring it all together. So what they said is that if you just look at all of the theories of language development that are constructivist, and by that, what they mean is that children construct language. That's pretty much all that that means. Language is not just representational, for example, right? So it's not just this word represents

• 31:23Speaker 02

  that. True fluency requires that you construct language to have like abstract meaning.

• 31:32Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  And

• 31:33Cara Santa Maria?

  And you use grammar to do that.

• 31:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 31:35Cara Santa Maria?

  And little kids do interesting things, yeah, with their grammar.

• 31:38Speaker 02

  Complicated process for constructing language. But they said that all of the theories, the constructivist theories of language have the same four components. They don't all have all four components, but these four components are part of every constructivist theory. So they they said, looking at all of that, they think that these four are the core ideas of how we learn language. So one is that children, this is and they focus on this as the key difference between kids and AI. Kids engage in active adaptive learning. They are not passive.

• 32:17Speaker 02

  Learners, right? So what the, what the research shows is that children are engaging with people. They're engaging with their parents. They're engaging with other people in their environment. They're engaging with their environment, not just the people in that environment. They will point at things they find interesting. For example, just to give a simple example, they're actually actively seeking data and there's evidence to show that they optimize their data acquisition efficiency. So they will seek out data that is at the perfect level of complexity for their current learning needs, right? Does

• 33:01Speaker 02

  that make sense? So they are attracted to things that are not so simple that they're not going to learn anything and not so complicated that'll overwhelm them. They're kind of seeking out things that are just beyond their conceptual grasp and then adding that to their knowledge.

• 33:15Bob Novella?

  Oh, cool, man.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, it's neat. And you think about all the-

• 33:19Bob Novella?

  That comes in handy. It's like baby steps, just taking the appropriate baby steps over and over and over.

• 33:25Speaker 02

  And it's, you know, humans evolved this really adaptive process for learning in general and learning language specifically. There, there, I guess there must have been a bunch of, of language papers coming out at the same time because I saw a couple of other papers as well that relate to this. One was, had to do with the fact that humans engage in baby talk with babies and most of our primate relatives do not. Like baby talk is a fairly unique human thing. And what is baby talk? It's humans, adults adapting their vocal interaction with infants to the infant's level to optimize their learning, right?

• 34:10Bob Novella?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:11Speaker 02

  We, we kind of instinctively will talk at the level that the child needs to learn. And if you're a parent, for those of us who have been parents, which is basically everybody but Kara, when you, you really, you know, obviously live every day with your child, you become-

• 34:27Bob Novella?

  Kara's got killer.

• 34:28Speaker 02

  Intimately.

• 34:29Cara Santa Maria?

  But killer can't talk.

• 34:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:31Cara Santa Maria?

  I do talk to him differently, though.

• 34:32Speaker 02

  You do be, you become intimately familiar with their precise level of ability, linguistic ability and cognitive ability. Like even day to day. And if, and if somebody else like tries to interact with your child, they never get it exactly right out of the gate. You know what I mean? You've, we've all had this experience. How can they? How could they? They either undershoot or overshoot. And same thing, you do that with other people's kids. You don't feel as comfortable with them because you don't know exactly where their level is. But with your own kids, you kind of know exactly what they need. Um, again, so the, the adaptation goes both ways, not, not just Cool. with the kids, but with, with the, the adults in their environment as well.

• 35:14Cara Santa Maria?

  And that's just a function, right? Of just like constant exposure?

• 35:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, but the thing is we, but somehow, but again, we instinctively do this and other species don't do this.

• 35:23Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 35:24Speaker 02

  So this is, I think, part of the brain's prepared to learn language thing, but also to teach language. All right. Another one is we, the children engage, and this is very different than AI, in multimodal input. So they are physically interacting with their environment. They're touching, smelling, tasting, mouthing. Eating. We know kids mouth everything at a certain stage. They're, they are exploring their environment and, and they are using all of that information, visual as, it's not just written. So LLMs are trained on, trained on written words.

• 35:57Cara Santa Maria?

  Kids don't even, yeah, kids don't even use written language right away.

• 36:00Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 36:00Cara Santa Maria?

  Can you imagine trying to teach a kid their colors without having access to physical?

• 36:04Speaker 02

  Colors.

• 36:05Cara Santa Maria?

  Color?

• 36:05Speaker 02

  Exactly. They learn words through, through doing, through interacting, through context, through, you know, how, if being in the world and using all of their senses to acquire this information. So again, that's very different than how, um, LLMs operate. The third one is structure building. Again, they, they use this information to construct, to build the language structures that get increasingly complicated as they learn. And the fourth thing is that the children themselves Are developmentally dynamic. Their brain is not done maturing. So it would be as if the neural network on which an LLM is being, is training, right?

• 36:49Speaker 02

  Is actually adding new nodes and new connections and adapting its physical structure to the learning process. As we learn, our brains are physically adapting to our needs and our.

• 37:01Bob Novella?

  It's like their brains are like li- like literally wrapping around the language.

• 37:06Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 37:07Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, and not only are they physically adapting, like are they highly plastic? Because maybe you could sort of model that with an LLM, but they're physically growing. Like they are metabolizing, you know, and increasing like their glucose consumption. Like that's a huge difference. The LLMs aren't getting older and larger.

• 37:26Speaker 02

  Right, exactly. So what they're suggesting is that, you know, we recognize that these four components seem to be core to any constructivist model of how kids acquire language. And but also this can really help model language acquisition in computers. And maybe we want to completely rethink how we develop large language models in order to incorporate this constructivist framework. Because it seems to be way more efficient. Again, I don't know that it's 93, whatever, thousand times efficient. But it seems to be way more powerful and efficient than the current method that we're using, which is really just brute, I hate to use the term brute force. I know that programmers don't like when I do that.

• 38:11Speaker 02

  But we're, we're training, we're training it in a limited way on a massive amount of data.

• 38:16Cara Santa Maria?

  True, but also it's, it's easier said than done that these researchers are like, you know, just kind of do it the way we do. It's like, we don't even understand how we do.

• 38:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I hear you, I hear you. But, but we talked about this, this one aspect of it before. The fact that AI, in order to really get to like human level functionality, may need to be embodied, you know?

• 38:40Bob Novella?

  Oh, yeah. There's no conception of interacting with a physical world. That's why I like the idea of training models in a computer, in, in silico, if you will. And so to mimic like a 3D environment that people could then log on and interact. I mean, that, I think that's going to be a critical component. Otherwise, how could it even relate? You know, to a, interacting with a physical world.

• 39:01Cara Santa Maria?

  Or maybe it's okay that they just stay in the digital. Maybe that's not the worst thing in the world, that we don't embody the AI.

• 39:09Bob Novella?

  I was wondering, I was wondering, when language is emerging in humanity, how much selective pressure do you think there was? Like, were there bands of people, I mean, but were there bands of people that just were not hardwired for language at all and they just died out because they just could not even remotely compete?

• 39:25Cara Santa Maria?

  No, all our brains are the same. Like, there weren't like whole sections of people that had none of the architecture necessary to

• 39:33Speaker 02

  Well, I think Bob was talking about Homo habilis versus Australopithecus, or whatever.

• 39:37Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, but we've got to look at like who were contemporaries, right?

• 39:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:40Cara Santa Maria?

  I, I think if you're talking about actual selection pressure temporally, of course there's going to be, if you have different groups of, let's say, early Homo sapiens spread out across the globe, and some groups are able to communicate verbally, they have way more efficient capability to stay alive.

• 39:58Speaker 02

  Totally. Cooperation in hunter gathering, I mean, just for one, just in one thing.

• 40:02Cara Santa Maria?

  They're just going to be way better at reproducing and, and maintaining fitness of the species than those who don't have language. I mean, leaps and bounds.

• 40:09Bob Novella?

  When did language emerge in terms of dispersal of humanity?

• 40:13Speaker 02

  I'm trying to remember, like, so there was, that's a, that's a, that's a hard question to answer, that's a

• 40:18Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, how do we even know?

• 40:20Speaker 02

  Well, I know there's one piece of evidence is when did the hyoid bone move into the modern location?

• 40:25Bob Novella?

  Right, right.

• 40:26Speaker 02

  And I'm trying to remember what species that was. It was in the Homo line genus, whether it was habilis or erectus, I don't remember which one. But at some point, we could say, oh yeah, this is like a now a modern vocal chord where they had probably elaborate speech like humans do. So somewhere along that line. But it's, it's hard to know, like, how language doesn't fossilize.

• 40:48Speaker 05

  According to National Institutes, National Institutes of Health, they say Homo sapiens around 150 to 200,000 years ago, that's when the anatomically modern, I guess, features came

• 41:02Cara Santa Maria?

  But then you don't know what follows what.

• 41:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, but we don't, but language predates humans, modern humans, and, you know, there's different, you know, pretty inferential lines of evidence in terms of like, when and in what group You know, language really took off to like modern human levels. So.

• 41:18Cara Santa Maria?

  And also, it's, it's also a fuzzy delineation, like what is language?

• 41:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 41:24Cara Santa Maria?

  You know, grunting and pointing or using like higher level or lower level inflections.

• 41:29Speaker 02

  It's a continuum.

• 41:30Cara Santa Maria?

  Versus.

• 41:30Speaker 05

  Proto languages may have been earlier with homo habilis.

• 41:33Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, that my, my assumption is that it was proto language, then the and then the, the kind of more dialed in anatomy necessary for.

• 41:42Speaker 02

  Right.

• 41:42Cara Santa Maria?

  For oral language to fully evolve, but they're going to be happening in lockstep.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 41:48Cara Santa Maria?

  You can't have the words without the architecture and you can't really, you don't really have the pressure to develop the architecture without trying to make the words.

• 41:54Speaker 02

  And the architecture is there. I mean, did you know that children can distinguish even infants who only babble? They will pay attention to forward speech more than backward speech.

• 42:06Cara Santa Maria?

  Hmm.

• 42:06Speaker 02

  Speech versus non-speech and they will pay more attention to sign language than non-language gestures of.

• 42:14Jay Novella?

  How do they know, Steve? How do they know?

• 42:16Speaker 02

  They, this is the eye tracking thing.

• 42:18Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, this is the really interesting, like, this is the Noam Chomsky of it all, right? Like, what is intuitive there? I love, have you guys seen the really like lovely videos of, I think there's one in particular I'm thinking of, it's a dad and his. Baby and the baby is babbling and the dad just kind of responds. And he says something and then the baby looks at him and then they babble back and it looks like they're having a fluid conversation.

• 42:41Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 42:42Bob Novella?

  Love it.

• 42:42Cara Santa Maria?

  And I love it so much. It's like.

• 42:44Speaker 02

  All kids went, you know, went through that phase where they're babbling. I remember like Olivia, Jay's younger daughter, really did this a lot when she was. A hundred percent babbling, but she was having a conversation.

• 42:55Bob Novella?

  Oh, my God, yeah.

• 42:56Speaker 02

  Every other aspect of the, of, you know, the, the physical, physicality of speech was there and the case, also kids will take turns even when they're just babbling.

• 43:05Cara Santa Maria?

  It's so cute. It's like they're asking you a question, then you're like, "Yeah, totally, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." And then they add to it. It's so good.

• 43:11Bob Novella?

  Yeah, mommy and dad make those noises, and I can do it, too.

• 43:14Cara Santa Maria?

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:15Speaker 02

  Absolutely. It's part of the dynamic process. Okay, let's move on. Bob, tell us about the Vera Rubin Observatory.

• 43:21Bob Novella?

  Yes, the new observatory, hearing about it all over the news, all over, it's ubiquitous. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory has finally seen its first light, published astonishing images online for us astrogeeks to drool over. So pause the show right now, if you haven't. Check them out. Check them out, the images, and come back. I'll wait. Do, do, do, do, do. Okay, so, ready? Okay, let's drill down to the juicy details. First, of course, we need to describe the observatory's namesake, Vera C. Rubin, who I talked about way back in episode 520 in 2015. I remember that. In 2015. So, yeah, 10 years ago. What is happening right now?

• 44:02Bob Novella?

  All right, Rubin was the first scientist to provide solid enough observational dark matter evidence for the scientific community to take it seriously. Look her up. She is a superhero of science. Okay, the observatory itself is located in Cerro Pachon, a mountain in Chile. It was funded primarily by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy's Office of Science. The instrument is incredible. Wow, I was so... It just really taken aback by how wonderful this is. It's a tour de force of astronomical...

• 44:37Speaker 02

  Astronomical?

• 44:38Bob Novella?

  It's a tour de force. It's a tour de force of astronomical observation, as Douglas Adams might have called it. It is a ballet of technology. Its camera, the LSST Cam Imager, is the largest digital camera in the world. Steve, what did your digital camera cost?

• 44:55Speaker 02

  My most recent one I just purchased was...

• 44:58Bob Novella?

  Yes.

• 44:59Speaker 02

  Like $800?

• 45:00Bob Novella?

  Eight hundred bucks. That's nice. That's nice, but what could 168 million USD do? The LSST cam weighs three tons, three tons, and captures images that are, get this, 3,200 megapixels. 3,200 megapixels. If you're interested, that's 3.2 gigapixels or 0.003 terapixels, which I think I've never said before. Uh, Steve, how many terapixels is your camera? Never mind. I'm only kidding. Each full-size image, each full-size image would fill, this blew me away, 378 4K screens. 370, this is one image.

• 45:43Speaker 02

  That's amazing.

• 45:44Bob Novella?

  The full-sized image, the uncompressed, bam, 378 4K screens. Incredible.

• 45:49Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, I hope they have a big display there so you can look at their images that way.

• 45:52Bob Novella?

  Yeah, right.

• 45:53Cara Santa Maria?

  That would be amazing.

• 45:54Bob Novella?

  Each exposure, each of these exposures covers 45 full moons worth of the sky. That's 9.6 square degree field of view. Astonishing. That, that's just immense. Um, all right. So as cool as, as that is, we're, we're really just still getting started. These huge images can be taken fast, essentially every 30 seconds. Then, then it moves to the next location in a couple of seconds and bam, it's ready for the next image. So like basically 32, 32 seconds and it's taking an image and it's ready for the second, for the next one. Um, in this way, Ruben can image the entire southern night sky in three nights. Three nights for the, to do the entire sky. Um,

• 46:35Bob Novella?

  that's pretty slick. So now researchers say that they described this observatory as being built, uh, for the era of big data and automation. And so why do they say that? They say that because each of these huge images are sent over fiber optics to supercomputers in Calif, in California where systems, where the systems use AI to compare the images to the, to previous images. And if anything's changed, like, you know, for example, brightness or position, those are the two big ones, right? If that, if that changes, an alert is then And sent out to the interested parties. They actually, they're actually going to have these, uh, what do they call them? Like image brokers?

• 47:15Bob Novella?

  Where people will sign up for different types of, of, of these alerts that, that they're going to get. Hey, this thing changed. This thing that you're interested in this, in the night sky, uh, it has changed. Here's your alert. So give me a guess. How many alerts do you, do you think that they anticipate every night?

• 47:33Speaker 02

  I mean, doesn't it depend on the threshold?

• 47:35Bob Novella?

  No, they, they have, um, no, they, they don't mention anything about what the threshold is, but I mean, hard to say, but whatever, just throw out a number. How many each night?

• 47:44Speaker 02

  Thousand and one.

• 47:45Speaker 05

  One thousand. Oh, that's one more than I said.

• 47:48Bob Novella?

  Ten million.

• 47:50Speaker 05

  Ten million?

• 47:50Bob Novella?

  That's their anticipation. Ten million alerts are going to be sent out to these.

• 47:54Speaker 02

  It kind of makes the alerts pointless though, doesn't it?

• 47:57Bob Novella?

  No, no, not at all. Because the thing is, nobody's going to subscribe to, to every alert. You know, they're going to, they're going to say this area of the sky or this, this galaxy, I want alerts that apply to this. So that it's going to be fantastic for, for those people that, that, that can be granular enough. And that's there, how many, most of them are going to be interested in specific areas or specific things. Like, like send me all alerts about supernovae. I, I assume that that's what you'll be able to do. So yeah, no one's going to get drowned in every, in every damn alert. Cause yeah, what's the point? So now all of this, as amazing as all this is, of course, this is, this allows the observatory to fulfill its primary mission, right? And this mission is called the Legacy Survey of Space and Time.

• 48:38Bob Novella?

  For 10 years, this, this observatory will be taking an evolving time lapse of the cosmos. And, and this has never been possible before because you've, they've never, we've never been able to have us, you know, an observatory, a telescope that can take such high resolution pictures so fast and then move to the next one, then move to the next one. And then send those incredible files over to be analyzed and then have those, all those alerts sent. That infrastructure was just not in place. So, and then to do that so fast that you could actually string together these movies. So you're going to be seeing movies of the evolution of like anything you could imagine in, in the, in the universe that, and how it has changed. Over time, I mean, I would love to go if I had a, you know, if I could get some relativistic

• 49:23Bob Novella?

  time dilation going on, go 10, 10 years into the future. One of the top 10 or maybe top 20 things I would do is look at the, these videos because it's, that is going to be amazing. Never been done before. This is the first time we've ever been able to really do this type of thing. Now, what are they going to detect? They're expected to detect over the course of 10 years, 20 million supernovas. And that of course includes the supernovae, supernovae 1A, the ones that we use as the standard candles that, that basically showed us the, the, the expansion of the universe is accelerating. So that those of course as well, plus all the other types of supernovae, the core collapse, the, my favorites, the core collapse supernovas and every, every flavor. Also 20 billion galaxies and, and so much more. I like also that it's,

• 50:06Bob Novella?

  Vera, the Vera Rubin Observatory is going to essentially be taking an inventory of our solar system. It's, it's going to catalog essentially every planet, every dwarf planet, every moon, every asteroid, every comet in, in the vicinity, over and over until it has basically just filled up. Here's the contents. Here's the latest and greatest.

• 50:28Speaker 05

  Will it find rogue planets?

• 50:30Bob Novella?

  Yeah, I did see some mention of rogue planets, but, but that's, I'm talking mainly right now about our solar system. But yeah, rogue planets that also can be identified. They said that they're going to identify 90% of the possibly hazardous asteroids over 140 meters. So that's encouraging, although 90% was kind of a bummer to me. I mean, I'm thinking, oh, with this, with this observ, this new observatory, you can't get that a little bit higher, maybe 95%? Whatever, whatever. I'll be happy with 90% if that's the best they can do because it's that last 10% that's a little scary. And of course, this is the Vera Rubin Observatory. So they've got to honor her legacy. So they're also of course going to be mapping dark matter and also poking at dark energy while they're at it as too, of course. So please check out

• 51:15Bob Novella?

  the images online. They're a real treat. I was just mesmerized looking at these immense images that they've, they've already taken, zooming in, zooming out, just finding these awesome, awesome pinwheel galaxies. It's just amazing.

• 51:29Bob Novella?

  So, and I've only also scratched the surface of the technology here. There's so much going on here. I just, it would have taken me a half hour to even to really cover it. So I'll go to rubinobservatory.org. There's a huge website, ready to go, ready for you to go into any little nook and cranny of this, of this technology that you'd be interested in. Looks, it looks like a really cool site. I want to dig in deeper later on. But one other thing I wanted to cover, I'm sure many of you are wondering about the funding for the Vera Rubin Observatory, given the current decimation we're seeing in science funding. So here's what I found out. The current administration's proposed budget for 2026 cuts the overall NSF budget by a ridiculous 56%. So I'm going to say

• 52:12Bob Novella?

  that again. The proposal is to cut our National Science Foundation's budget by 56 effin' percent. That's just, phew, 56% the National Science Foundation. All right. The little sliver of good news, I think, from what I could tell right now, it seems that, that Rubin might not have a huge budget cut specifically for it in 2026. At least for that, for next year. It might not have a huge cut, although it'd probably see a little, some of it. But many projects are going to be absolutely destroyed. And I got so mad. I just found out that LIGO, you know, the gravitational wave detectors, detectors, they could see

• 52:55Bob Novella?

  in the United States, because we have two LIGO detectors, I believe, at this point, we could see 40% cut, a 40% cut. And the NSF has already said that one of our two LIGO observatories will have to be shut down. Shutting down, I was just so livid when I, when I read that. These machines are our only way to look into the cosmos that doesn't involve some type of electromagnetic radiation. You know, this is, this is part of multi-messenger astronomy. It would, it's revolutionary. It's already won Nobel prizes. And no, let's just shut it down. Okay, let's just do that. And, and this is just, this is just one, I haven't talked about it that much, but this is just one of the many disasters that's happening right now for science research in this country. And I'm just talking about

• 53:39Bob Novella?

  science research. I'm not even talking about anything else. So that's where we are, people. This is awesome, right? So let's just, just go to the next news item. I think I'm just going to get some coffee right now.

• 53:51Speaker 02

  All right, Evan, tell us about this new star in the sky.

• 53:56Speaker 05

  Now, we reserve our predictions that we made early in the year back in January. We save that until December every year. But however, one of my 100% money-back guaranteed predictions has to do with my news item this week. And as Steve said, a new star has exploded into the night sky.

• 54:15Bob Novella?

  Wait, who, what, where, when, details?

• 54:17Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 54:18Cara Santa Maria?

  That's what he's about to give you.

• 54:20Speaker 05

  I'm about to give you, but before I give you the details, I want to know if anyone knows what the word for new star is. What do we call a new star?

• 54:28Bob Novella?

  Nova Stella.

• 54:29Speaker 05

  Nova. Very good, Bob. And this one.

• 54:32Cara Santa Maria?

  And Kara.

• 54:33Speaker 05

  And Kara. Very good, Kara as well.

• 54:34Cara Santa Maria?

  Thank you.

• 54:37Speaker 05

  Nova Loopy 2025 designated V462 Loopy, located in the constellation Lupus. And here's the story. About two weeks ago, astronomers with the All Sky Automated Survey for Supernova, also known as the ASASSN survey, spotted something strange. It was a faint star in the southern sky that suddenly started to get brighter. Hmm. So fast forward a few days and boom, you've got yourself a classic Nova. This happened on June 12th. That's when it was, that was when the star was so faint, you could not see it with the naked eye. It

• 55:19Speaker 05

  was faint. But within about six days, June 18th, its intensity rose to the point of becoming visible, barely visible, but still visible. And since then, in these last few days, boom, it is now peaking at about four million times its original brightness.

• 55:35Bob Novella?

  Whoa.

• 55:36Speaker 05

  That is turning the dial way up, if you ask me.

• 55:39Bob Novella?

  Where is it exactly?

• 55:41Speaker 05

  It is in the constellation Lupus, which is in the southern sky, but is still visible from the northern hemisphere if you're in a, you know, if you're, if you're at the right part of the northern hemisphere and looking to the south and a couple of degrees above horizon at sunset, you can see it. But people in the southern hemisphere.

• 56:02Bob Novella?

  How far away?

• 56:03Speaker 05

  How far away, Bob? Excellent question. I was going to save that to the end, but since you asked, let's ask, let's talk about it. They don't know. They do not know how far this is away. They're guessing right now and guesses range from 1,500 light years away to almost 3,000 light years away. And I don't know why they can't pinpoint it. I didn't get that deep into the research.

• 56:25Bob Novella?

  This is big, though, for one main reason, of course, that this is in our galaxy. That is, that's kind of huge because, you know, we've been experiencing for quite a long time a dearth of supernovae. They estimate that each galaxy sees about one supernova a century.

• 56:41Speaker 05

  Okay, so what they're saying is that Nova, okay, so different, and we're going to talk about this, too. Nova appear roughly once a year, or like once every 14 months. But a supernova is much more rare. In fact, the most recent visible eye Nova was 2013, going back. But the most recent supernova visible, 1987. You have to go back there. So it's quite a big difference. And what is the difference between Nova and supernova? Bob, you probably know. Steve, you know, or Jay, Kara?

• 57:14Cara Santa Maria?

  Size, brightness? I'm sure there's just a threshold, right?

• 57:18Bob Novella?

  Well, the classic is the core collapse supernova. So you've got a giant star. But then, but there's also many different types of classifications, like supernovae, like 1A, that's the, you know, the, the white dwarf that collects matter from like an orbiting star, it reaches critical mass, and then, so that's recurring, you know, because they don't really-

• 57:43Speaker 05

  It can recur, yes.

• 57:44Bob Novella?

  It can recur. But there are lots of different types. So how are they, do they have a specific classification?

• 57:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, so this, this particular Nova, Bob, this one is a white dwarf in a binary system.

• 57:54Bob Novella?

  Okay.

• 57:55Speaker 05

  That accumulates its hydrogen from its companion star.

• 57:58Bob Novella?

  This is a, this is a 1A supernova?

• 58:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, 1A. Yep, classic, they said, classic Nova. So what happens is the white dwarf star is, and this is described as, in a tight cosmic tango with its companion star, the white dwarf siphons off gas from its partner, until it reaches a tipping point, and then kaboom, a thermonuclear explosion erupts on its surface, blasting out energy and light, and that is the Nova that we can see.

• 58:26Speaker 02

  So to clarify, this is not a 1A supernova. This is a classical nova. They both involve a white dwarf, which is why there's confusion. But in a classical nova, a white dwarf accumulates hydrogen on its surface, and then the hydrogen experiences runaway fusion, causing the nova. For 1A supernova, it's different. The white dwarf accumulates enough matter to reach the Chandrasekhar limit, and then you get a core collapse. You get oxygen, carbon fusion at the core. And in the 1A supernova, the white dwarf is destroyed with no remnant.

• 59:08Speaker 02

  In a classical nova, it's just the surface hydrogen that explodes. It's much less bright, and it's not destructive, and these things can happen over and over again. So this is a classical nova, not a 1A supernova, which is why they don't know how far away it is.

• 59:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, so I suppose they're still going to analyze it more and try to make a better determination. The range is pretty wide, right? You know, too wide right now to make a definitive statement on the distance. The star does not explode, though, right? It's, they said, "A nova is like a stellar burp, violent but not fatal." So it just burped, you know, and basically outsourced its gas, its energy, and its light. Does not destroy the star. But the supernova, Bob, on the other hand, that's the death of the star, and that's an enormous release of energy.

• 1:00:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, the core collapses.

• 1:00:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, core collapses.

• 1:00:03Speaker 02

  It's life-changing. It's, yeah, it's the end of the life. You got, you end up with a neutron star, or a black hole, or a magnet, you know, some flavor of neutron star, like a magnetar would be very cool, but they're kind of, they're relatively kind of rare, but they're deadly. 600 miles away, what's it, 600 miles away, a magnetar would kill you. The magnetic field is so strong. Don't get in a star.

• 1:00:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, so don't get, don't get too close to one of those if you can help it.

• 1:00:24Speaker 02

  No, please don't.

• 1:00:25Speaker 05

  Plenty of, plenty of cameras capturing the action, telescopes as well, the G O T O.

• 1:00:32Speaker 02

  I bet Vera Rubin took a look.

• 1:00:33Speaker 05

  Telescope, mm hmm, yep, caught it, has caught the entire process in the act. They're still watching it and it's like watching a magic night in slow motion in space. Very, very cool. It's most visible in the southern hemisphere. It can be seen in the northern hemisphere if you're at the right, if you're at the right place. I can't see it from my house. I'm, I think I'm too far north, but they're saying Arizona, California, other places like that will have a much better opportunity to see it because it's going to be around for a little, little while longer. The rest of this week, they say probably next week as well, but then it will start to, to disappear from our visual view and go back to the way it was. So yeah, very cool. And they're hoping, you know, so again, this is remarkable.

• 1:01:18Speaker 05

  They say for three reasons, it's visible to the unaided eye, and that's a occurrence that is rare and unpredictable. Second, they say it came with little or no warning, showcasing the volatile nature of binary systems. And third, it adds to a growing catalog of transient sky events. So we can underscore that underscore how dynamic the night sky really is. And I wonder what the Vera Rubin Observatory might have seen in all of this as well. To be continued, but very cool. And part of my prediction again for the year has already come true.

• 1:01:51Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:01:52Speaker 05

  So yay me.

• 1:01:53Speaker 02

  Well, you didn't, you would say three or something?

• 1:01:55Speaker 05

  I did say three.

• 1:01:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:56Speaker 05

  I did say three.

• 1:01:57Speaker 02

  One down, two to go.

• 1:01:58Speaker 05

  Exactly. I know, I'm very excited. I was, I was, I was really hoping I wouldn't be a total washout this year and be zero. So I at least have one under my belt.

• 1:02:07Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 1:02:08Bob Novella?

  Yeah, we still have, what is it? Is it Beetlejuice?

• 1:02:11Speaker 05

  Beetlejuice, yep. They're still keeping an eye on that.

• 1:02:14Speaker 02

  That would be awesome.

• 1:02:15Speaker 05

  There are also a few others, they say, that have, that are quote, any day now, which mean, right?

• 1:02:21Speaker 02

  Could mean 10,000 years.

• 1:02:24Speaker 05

  It would prove my psychic powers are awesome and I'll be able to charge a lot of money per hour.

• 1:02:30Speaker 02

  Prove something. All right. Kara, is Chat G P T rotting our brains?

• 1:02:37Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, I'm glad you asked. I'm so glad you asked just like that. So I want to talk about three things for this news item. The first one is the actual study, which was recently, I don't even want to say published, it was published in the archive, but it is not peer reviewed yet. So we have to keep that in mind. The second thing is, you know, well, the first thing is what the study found. The second thing is what the authors of the study are projecting, I guess is a good way to put it, are preliminarily claiming. And then the third thing is how the media is covering this, because those are all very different.

• 1:03:16Speaker 05

  Very, three very different things.

• 1:03:18Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. So here is the actual paper. It is called Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt When Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task. This was submitted June 10th, 2025 to the archive under Computer Science, and it is not yet peer reviewed as of a write-up by the study authors on their website. One thing that was like, I gotta say, like, I don't like this. And this is just me personally. I don't know how you guys feel about it, but they have a website dedicated to this study. It's getting a lot of buzz. And the website is, it's kind of clean, easy, you know, it's not over the top or anything.

• 1:04:03Cara Santa Maria?

  But underneath one of the images from the article, it literally says, as seen on Salon, New York Times, Time, The New Yorker, CNN, like, like it's a product on Shark Tank or something.

• 1:04:15Speaker 05

  Doing advertisements for it, okay.

• 1:04:17Cara Santa Maria?

  I don't like that. But yeah, it is getting a lot of write-ups. So let's, let's talk about, because you're, you're probably going to read about this. It's quite a trending topic right now. But some of those write-ups do say things like ChatGPT is rotting your brain, which in no way is what the authors say. So what did they actually do? Well, they took participants, not that many, 54 participants, and they did a study utilizing EEG, where they divided the participants into three different groups. And over the course of Four months, they had them write an essay, like an SAT style essay.

• 1:04:57Cara Santa Maria?

  In one group, they were able to use ChatGPT. They called that the LLM or Large Language Model Group. In another group, they were able to use a regular search engine like Google. And in the last group, they could only use their brains. They called that the brain only group. So they were given a tool, ChatGPT, a search engine, or no tool, their brain only, to write this essay. And then they did three different sessions over the course of three months. In the fourth month, they took some of the brain only people, some of the LLM people, eighteen in total, and they had them switch. So the brain only people wrote an essay using an LLM, and the LLM people wrote an essay using only their brains.

• 1:05:42Speaker 02

  But Kara, did they write their essay?

• 1:05:45Cara Santa Maria?

  They did.

• 1:05:48Cara Santa Maria?

  It's a deep cut South Park reference. I definitely remember that one. And so during the experience, they used EEG, electroencephalography, to look at brain activity. They described this as an assessment of their cognitive engagement and their cognitive load. We have to remember that these are constructs, right? They can use the term cognitive engagement. They can use the term cognitive load. What they're actually looking at are brainwaves. And they analyzed it to sort of see neural connectivity. They also asked them questions after they wrote the essays. And they had both a human teacher and an AI judge,

• 1:06:33Cara Santa Maria?

  which was like a specially built AI agent, score their essays. And so, collecting all of that data, let's see what they found, what they actually found. They found that the brain only group exhibited what they're calling the strongest brain connectivity with the widest ranging networks. So they were finding that more disparate parts of the brain were active together during the brain only group, whereas the brain was less connected with less wide ranging networks in the LLM group. So they had what they called the weakest overall coupling. And in the middle, the search engine group kind of was like intermediate to that.

• 1:07:19Cara Santa Maria?

  They also found a couple of other interesting findings. They found that when they asked, you know, how well they felt like they owned the essay, like, was that my work? Did I feel, you know, good about that? Did I feel strong about that? Obviously, the ownership was low in the LLM group. They found that both the search engine group and the brain-only group had high senses of ownership over their essays. They also found that in just minutes after they completed their essays, when they asked them to quote things that they had written, the LLM group was significantly worse at that. But that all makes sense, right?

• 1:07:55Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yes.

• 1:07:56Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay. So, they then, oh, and then, of course, as I mentioned, that was across three months doing the same essay three different times. On the fourth month, they took 18, so a very small sample, and they did a swap. And the brain-only group used the LLM. The LLM group used only their brain. They found that the LLM to brain, so the ones that started by doing three essays using ChatGPT, and then they could only rely on their brain for the fourth essay, they showed, as they said, weaker neural connectivity and under-engagement of alpha and beta networks. Whereas, on the flip side, the brain-to-LLM participants had higher memory recall and re-engagement of large groups of the brain, like, across kind of a lot of architecture.

• 1:08:40Cara Santa Maria?

  So it looked more similar to the search engine group. These were their kind of findings, but they also draw some conclusions. And to be fair to the authors, okay, first of all, if you guys have lots of questions, I would love to field them. I may direct you to the 206-page study, because I can promise you I did not read it in full. But there is one section on page 141 where the authors talk about a finding that they consider preliminary, but a lot of people are citing it. They say, "Perhaps one of the more concerning findings is that participants in the LLM-to-brain group repeatedly focused on a narrower set of ideas, as evidenced by blah, blah, blah, blah. This repetition suggests that many participants may not have engaged deeply with the topics

• 1:09:24Cara Santa Maria?

  or critically examined the material provided by the LLM." Okay, to be expected. Then they said, "When individuals fail to critically engage with a subject, their writing might become biased and superficial. This pattern reflects the accumulation of cognitive debt, a condition in which repeated reliance on external systems like LLMs replaces the effortful cognitive processes required for independent thinking." And then they talk more about cognitive debt, saying that it defers mental effort in the short term, but results in long-term costs like diminished critical inquiry and increased vulnerability to manipulation, decreased creativity, all things that we in the skeptic community do not want to see.

• 1:10:01Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:10:03Cara Santa Maria?

  The problem is their study doesn't show that.

• 1:10:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:07Cara Santa Maria?

  But a lot of people wrote that their study shows that. And that's really disconcerting. If you do like a cursory search for MIT ChatGPT study, you will find headlines like, "MIT Researchers Say Using ChatGPT Can Rot Your Brain." "MIT Study Finds ChatGPT Can Harm Critical Thinking Over Time." "ChatGPT Use Linked to Cognitive Decline." "Researchers Scanned the Brains of ChatGPT Users and Found Something Deeply Alarming." "Is ChatGPT Making Us Dumb?" But when you look at the actual press release that they put out, there's an FAQ section, and literally the first thing in the FAQ says, "Is it safe to say that LLMs are in essence making us dumber?"

• 1:10:51Cara Santa Maria?

  And then the authors wrote, "No, please do not use words like stupid, dumb, brain rot, harm, damage, passivity, trimming, and so on. It does a huge disservice to this work, as we did not use this vocabulary in the paper, especially if you are a journalist reporting on it." They specifically ask journalists not to do that, and there's so many write-ups that do just that. So, there is a good, but it actually bums me out because they put "brain rot" in the title, but there is an interesting kind of hot take in the conversation, written by some researchers from South Australia. Unfortunately, yeah, their headline is "MIT Researchers Say Using ChatGPT Can Rot Your Brain." They did not say that. The truth is a little more complicated.

• 1:11:36Cara Santa Maria?

  And they argue that, of course, there's going to be limited engagement when using ChatGPT compared to when only using your own brain, but they were saying that's not how you should use ChatGPT, and they sort of use an analogy to when calculators first came on the scene.

• 1:11:57Cara Santa Maria?

  They were saying, early on, when calculators first came on the scene, pedagogy had to change, right? And the way that we tested had to change because math teachers were like, uh, if I want to test somebody's calculation abilities and they have a calculator, I'm not going to know if they're doing it themselves or if the machine is doing it for them. But what they started to learn is that we can just ask more complex questions that require the ability to use a calculator, right? And so what they're saying is that this study basically asked people a basic calculation question and then said, how do you do it with and without a calculator?

• 1:12:38Cara Santa Maria?

  Instead of asking a more complex question and saying, how do you do that with and without a calculator? And that's really the difference. And that's really their argument here. And I think it's one that that we all kind of echo. They say, you know, current and future generations need to be able to think critically and creatively to solve problems. And AI is changing what these things mean. But producing essays with pen and paper is no longer a demonstration of critical thinking ability. Just as doing long division is no longer a demonstration of numeracy. Knowing when, where and how to use AI is the key to long-term success and skill development. But they argue, our educational system has to catch up. And it's not. So right now, it's a hack that

• 1:13:21Cara Santa Maria?

  a lot of students are using to offload the cognitive effort that is required to do a lot of the tasks that they've been given. But when used correctly, I do think that that ChatGPT could be beneficial. But we do have to be careful because the one thing that's different here is that where their analogy breaks down is that graphing calculators always give you the right answer if you use them correctly. You know, whereas like ChatGPT, you can't always trust what it's telling you is true. And so I think we have to think about that as well.

• 1:13:55Bob Novella?

  Yeah, well, that's why you have to use them correctly as well.

• 1:13:57Cara Santa Maria?

  True, true. But the problem is-

• 1:13:58Bob Novella?

  Homesignations are a thing, man. You gotta be aware of that.

• 1:14:01Cara Santa Maria?

  But the problem is even the best computer scientists out there are probably not in agreement about how to use- Use chat GPT correctly, right? I mean, a lot of people are saying, use your brain first and use chat G P as like a validation tool. But don't go in first saying, answer me this or write me this paper and then go from there. But I can see the concern, right? I think I'm really sitting on both sides of this conversation that's happening online right now. I don't like how over the top a lot of the coverage is, but I do understand the alarm bells ringing. I didn't have this when I was in school. But Jay, for example, your kids are right at that age.

• 1:14:43Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:14:43Cara Santa Maria?

  Where this is going to be the tool that they use in school. How are they going to be able to use it appropriately? And how will it affect their cognitive development?

• 1:14:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:51Cara Santa Maria?

  That's an important question that be asking, and we need a lot more research into that. And I think this is one of the early studies to tell us how thinking is affected when we have tools like this at our disposal.

• 1:15:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is interesting. I mean, clearly, people are lazy, but like from an evolutionary point of view, meaning that we're, we have a huge motivation to, for efficiency.

• 1:15:14Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, let's say efficient, not lazy.

• 1:15:17Speaker 02

  No, I mean, but it's lazy in that evolutionary, you know, in a good way, I guess, in that we do crave efficiency. We will try to get things done with the least amount of effort. Shortcuts. And we, yeah, we have a desire for simplicity, all these things. These are adaptive. They don't really work perfectly well in a complicated civilization that we have. And so you almost have to consciously do things the hard way just to do it, just to keep your skills up, just to, you know what I mean? We could, you could spend your entire life sitting on a couch, letting machines do everything for you, you know what I mean? But we like do things like exercise, which is, I mean, when you think about it, that's a hundred percent inefficient in terms of getting something accomplished, right? It's just for the physical activity.

• 1:16:00Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:01Speaker 02

  So we have to do, like, we do puzzles. You have chat GPT do your homework and then do puzzles and play video games. But you know what I mean? It's like.

• 1:16:10Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, and what is that? And I think that's really the main question is like, what is that balance? Cause I see the sort of okay boomer argument on. The other side too. I see it with my parents where they're like never using a GPS. And they're like, I don't want to forget how to get there. And I'm like, you are describing. Yeah, I'm like, you are describing a skill you will need in a zombie apocalypse. I get it. If there is a big outage of all GPS, you will be ahead of the curve. That's great. But all of my adult life, that has never applied. And I'm more than happy to rely on my GPS.

• 1:16:39Speaker 02

  I want to push back a little bit on that.

• 1:16:40Speaker 05

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:16:41Cara Santa Maria?

  That's fine.

• 1:16:41Speaker 02

  Now, because like occasionally I will drive somewhere and deliberately not use GPS. Because it's not just that you need to be able to do it when you don't have GPS, like a zombie apocalypse. It's also, I just want to exercise my understanding of the terrain of the of the location of the streets. I don't want to be completely dependent on GPS. And have like no idea where things are in relation to each other, which is what happens when all you do is just completely follow GPS and are not involved in the process.

• 1:17:20Cara Santa Maria?

  That's also, I think, kind of, those are extremes. I often have my GPS up because I want to know if there's traffic. And I want to know if there's a better route, but that doesn't mean I'm staring at my GPS the whole time I'm driving. When I'm going to work, my GPS is always up. I know how to get to work. You know what I mean? I'm not looking at my GPS most of the time.

• 1:17:39Speaker 02

  You're using it for other reasons.

• 1:17:40Cara Santa Maria?

  Exactly.

• 1:17:41Speaker 05

  Kara, there used to be a time though, when we would say, you know, how do I get from here to there? Oh, you go down, go to the main road, pass the red brick house and it's three buildings beyond that.

• 1:17:52Speaker 05

  And that was good enough. You could navigate using that. That, that would, that could never happen now.

• 1:17:57Cara Santa Maria?

  Right. But then the argument here is, am I somehow less capable of navigating my world and am I cognitively dulled or slowed because of my dependence on GPS? Or, as you said, Steve, am I offloading that cognitive task so that I can focus on other cognitive tasks? And I think for a lot of people, that's the question. The problem with talking about chat GPT in an academic setting is that that's That's where we're learning how to learn.

• 1:18:28Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 1:18:29Cara Santa Maria?

  That's totally different than navigating the world after we've learned those skills.

• 1:18:33Speaker 02

  It's like going to the gym and having a robot exercise for you.

• 1:18:36Cara Santa Maria?

  Exactly. So how do we then go to the gym and use the nice machine so that we can do the exercise we wouldn't have been able to do with just free weights? We use the free weights when they're appropriate, use the machine so that we can get to even better muscle groups where we couldn't maybe do that specific thing without the, with the free weights, so that we're doing both. And that's going to be something that our, our teachers, our professors, our researchers, really need to prioritize for this next generation of children.

• 1:19:06Speaker 02

  Hey, if the end result of this is that education focuses on critical thinking rather than memorizing facts, I'm all for it.

• 1:19:12Cara Santa Maria?

  Me too, 100%.

• 1:19:13Bob Novella?

  And Steve, I'll just throw out there that you can do fitness that's not essentially not getting anything done. It's, it's rare, I know.

• 1:19:23Speaker 02

  I hear you.

• 1:19:24Bob Novella?

  Like yesterday, there's no, there's no I guess.

• 1:19:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, you mow the lawn, you're doing both.

• 1:19:27Bob Novella?

  I mow the lawn with a 16 pound, pound weight vest on, and it was a hell of a workout, especially in this heat. Man, it was rough, but man, I felt good after, when that was done. So if you can do that, that's great, but there's not too many opportunities.

• 1:19:38Speaker 02

  I do yard work as my exercise often, you know, like in the summers.

• 1:19:42Cara Santa Maria?

  But you're right, yeah, we are efficiency machines. So we've just got to make sure that we're not becoming so efficient that we're forgetting how to do the things that are actually foundational skills for all the other things we need to do in life.

• 1:19:56Bob Novella?

  Right. Got to go analog sometimes. All right, Jay, it's who's that noisy time?

• 1:20:03Jay Novella?

  All right, guys. Hello?

• 1:20:05Bob Novella?

  Yep.

• 1:20:06Jay Novella?

  You guys want to hear last week's noisy?

• 1:20:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, let's hear it.

• 1:20:08Cara Santa Maria?

  Yes, please.

• 1:20:08Jay Novella?

  Here it is.

• 1:20:20Jay Novella?

  What do you think, guys?

• 1:20:22Speaker 05

  I know, I know what it is.

• 1:20:23Speaker 02

  I know exactly what that is. Is there another layer to this that we're supposed to get, or is it just a thing that it obviously is?

• 1:20:31Jay Novella?

  I'm not telling you.

• 1:20:31Speaker 02

  All right.

• 1:20:32Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I don't know what that is.

• 1:20:34Speaker 05

  Game Space Invaders, the Arkham.

• 1:20:36Jay Novella?

  It is. I mean, this one, I, I did this one to make people of our generation smile because it's such a cool, like the, the soundscape of that game was genius. It is genius because it, it has like a heartbeat and it gets faster.

• 1:20:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:52Jay Novella?

  And it causes tension, and you know, it's so funny, like, in the beginning, it's like, "Oh, this is so easy," and then like 30 seconds later, you're like, "Oh, my God." So I had some fun guesses. I mean, lots of people knew this. This is one of those times where I got a tsunami of emails. I finally know it. So Brad Beam wrote in, said, "What's up, Jay? Oh, my God. Is this noisy from Math Blaster, zapping the trash to fill up the spaceship gas tank to catch the bad guy that hates math," or something. So I had to look it up, because Math Blaster rang a bell, and Math Blaster is a 1983 educational video game, and it was put out by a company called Learning Systems and created by Davidson and Associates. It's very cool. I did check the game out. I absolutely played it, I think,

• 1:21:36Jay Novella?

  because it looked very familiar to me. But it is not that. Of course, we did a reveal early, but it doesn't matter, because everybody knows what it is. Another listener named Russell Moverly said, "Yodel J E O." Yodel J E O. Okay, I see what he did there. This week's noisy can only be one of two things. Either it is the original sound effects for the demo version of Frogger, or one of the stems from a new Skrillex song. Yeah, so there is a little bit of a Frogger sound in here, if you know the game. It has maybe a little bit of that. I mean, to me, it's so crystal clear what it is. But what I found was, I got a lot of emails from people who were just referencing other games of that era,

• 1:22:21Jay Novella?

  which is funny, because your memory is very faulty, and the wires can get crossed. So another listener named Tom Howard wrote in, "I'm pretty sure this week's noisy is the old Tron game, where they throw discs. The arcade cabinet makes you stand up at weird angles, and it's very fun." It is not Tron. The two Trons, the Tron games, the first one and Discs of Tron, were two of my favorite video games as a kid, by the way. But anyway, this all, of course, is leading to the winner. Joe Lanandria, and Joe said, "Is this week's noisy not just Space Invaders?" And I said, "Well, look," he guessed it. It was Space Invaders. I think he did what you did, Steve. Is it just, you know, we just got to guess Space Invaders? It was funny, because a lot of people guessed, like, right when the

• 1:23:06Jay Novella?

  show dropped. So Joe got on the jump there. So let me tell you about Space Invaders, guys. Back in the late 70s and early 80s, we had a unbelievably awesome thing happen. Cabinet video games with game rooms like took over, particularly here in the United States. There was so many games to play and they all cost a quarter and you begged money off your parents and you went and you basically got to play video games for a half hour or an hour until your money ran out, but man, was it fun. So Space Invaders was released and anybody want to guess the year?

• 1:23:42Speaker 05

  1977.

• 1:23:44Jay Novella?

  78. I think it was created in 77.

• 1:23:46Bob Novella?

  Right around Star Wars.

• 1:23:47Jay Novella?

  It was released in 78 in Japan, published by a company called Taito, T-A-I-T-O. And then it was released overseas later that year by Midway, right? Midway is a name that a lot of people should recognize.

• 1:24:02Bob Novella?

  That game was huge.

• 1:24:03Speaker 05

  Midway was an enormous arcade company, yeah, video game arcade company.

• 1:24:06Jay Novella?

  I'm not going to pretend like I knew this, I'm just going to ask a question after doing some reading. Do you guys know what Space Invaders did that was unique and formative for video games?

• 1:24:17Cara Santa Maria?

  A joystick?

• 1:24:19Jay Novella?

  That's a great guess, Kara. Space Invaders, ready? It was the first video game.

• 1:24:25Speaker 05

  Multicolor.

• 1:24:26Bob Novella?

  Yeah, in terms of like money, how much money it made, it was a blockbuster video game?

• 1:24:32Jay Novella?

  All good guesses. It was a blockbuster video game, meaning it was highly loved and it was everywhere. I mean, everywhere.

• 1:24:40Speaker 02

  It transformed the arcade, you know, video game, console video game.

• 1:24:45Jay Novella?

  It was the beginning of it, pretty much.

• 1:24:46Speaker 02

  It wasn't the first one. The first cabinet video game was Computer Space in 1971, but how many people?

• 1:24:52Speaker 05

  No, but Space Invaders was the first popular one.

• 1:24:55Speaker 02

  Space Invaders was the first massively populated cabinet video game.

• 1:24:57Jay Novella?

  I think it was the first video game I played like arcade style.

• 1:25:01Speaker 05

  Probably same for me.

• 1:25:03Cara Santa Maria?

  So wait, wait, I'm on pins and needles, what is it, Jay?

• 1:25:05Jay Novella?

  All right, this is, Kara, I really want you to understand this. It was the first game that had endless gameplay and it was the first fixed shooter. So the endless gameplay idea is that the game will continue to let you play forever if your skill can get that high.

• 1:25:21Speaker 05

  Is that true with Space Invaders? Because there were limits on other games, like Pac-Man, the 255th screen, right? All that stuff?

• 1:25:29Jay Novella?

  This is what the Wikipedia page said, I'm trusting it. Let me tell you that I never got past the third freaking screen, ever. You know what I mean?

• 1:25:37Cara Santa Maria?

  I love it.

• 1:25:38Jay Novella?

  And they said it was the first fixed shooter. And I wasn't 100% sure what that is. I can actually click this link here and see. Wikipedia says, um, shoot 'em ups, also known as schmups.

• 1:25:50Speaker 05

  Oh, my God.

• 1:25:51Jay Novella?

  Are a subgenre of action games. There is no consensus as to which the design elements compose a shoot 'em up. Some restrict the definition to games featuring spacecraft and certain types of character movement. Okay, so I get it.

• 1:26:03Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, yeah, it's, it's, the screen is usually fixed. It doesn't scroll.

• 1:26:07Jay Novella?

  Okay, yeah, the screen is the screen. It's, yeah, right, it doesn't ever change. It's just a new group of bad guys shows up on the screen.

• 1:26:12Cara Santa Maria?

  Like Gallagher.

• 1:26:13Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:14Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. Uh, yeah, Jay, I can, according to what I'm seeing here, the, the game does not have a quote, "kill screen." In other words, where some other arcade games do have an end, even though they do generally, you can't usually get played to the end. But apparently Space Invaders doesn't have it. You can go infinitely with it.

• 1:26:32Jay Novella?

  Yeah, there are actually console games that you can win. You could actually, the game will say, "You won."

• 1:26:37Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, there's a lot like that.

• 1:26:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:26:39Jay Novella?

  So I'm gonna say something to, to the people out there. If you are of my generation or not, find a local, find a local, um, retro arcade near you, and it's very likely that there's one within an hour of your house, and go spend a few hours at the arcade. Because the smell of those machines and the, the, just the whole ergonomic experience, to me, is just freaking amazing. I, to this day, whenever I get behind one of the old arcade machines and I get to play, I'm like riveted, you know?

• 1:27:09Cara Santa Maria?

  We got to do that in Arizona, you guys remember?

• 1:27:11Jay Novella?

  Yes, of course.

• 1:27:11Cara Santa Maria?

  We went to that cool bar.

• 1:27:13Jay Novella?

  That bar was awesome.

• 1:27:14Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, super fun.

• 1:27:15Jay Novella?

  All right, I have a new noisy for you guys. Good job, everybody, and I mean, everybody. Oh, my God, so many people. I'm like, I, I got to the point where I just had to stop looking at the emails. Okay, I got a new noisy for you guys.

• 1:27:26Bob Novella?

  That's what you get, Jay.

• 1:27:27Jay Novella?

  What about?

• 1:27:28Bob Novella?

  That's what you get, man. You knew, you knew you'd be inundated with that one.

• 1:27:31Jay Novella?

  I gotta throw one of those out there every once in a while. I want people to feel like, you know, that they're not listening.

• 1:27:36Bob Novella?

  We got one.

• 1:27:36Jay Novella?

  Everybody, man.

• 1:27:42Jay Novella?

  My goddamn, Steve. Holy Christ. Okay, here we go, guys. This noisy was sent in by a listener named Bradford West, and check this out.

• 1:28:00Jay Novella?

  I will tell you that the noises that start and end the video, you should pay attention to those as well. If you guys think you know what that noisy is, or you heard something cool, email me at [email protected]. Also, guys, if you enjoy the work that we do, and you want to support us going forward, you know, we have our new projects, and we plan to increase the size of the SGU's footprint, and it's a great time to become a patron, and to give us some support, even a tiny bit can help. Go to patreon.com/skepticsguide. You can also join our mailing list. We have consistently been sending out a weekly mailer. Lots of fun.

• 1:28:38Speaker 02

  Join us.

• 1:28:39Jay Novella?

  Yes, absolutely. We spike out the things that we did here at the SGU over the last week. There's other fun things going on in there. Ian and I might be working on a secret project that I'll tell you all about, because it's not a secret. Basically, I'm trying to create a weekly SGU puzzle game that is going to go in the email. So I'm coming up with ideas. If you have any ideas, you can email me at [email protected]. I do have a couple of things I'm narrowing down to, but I'm still completely open. You know, if you have any cool ideas, just email me, and if you, if we use your idea, I'll give you credit. And also, we will be in Kansas on September 20th of this year, and during that day, we will be doing two shows. We'll be doing a live SGU recording, probably

• 1:29:22Jay Novella?

  sometime around noon, and we will be doing a Skeptical Extravaganza of Special Significance. This is our stage show. Both of those shows will include George Robb. The stage show is an hour and a half to an hour and 45 minutes of lots of different things. We talk about, essentially, it has a science backbone to it, the entire show does. We talk about how your brain can fool you, and then everything else is improv by the SGU. We have all these different things that we do, and it's a ton of fun. We get amazing feedback on this show, and we deserve it, because we've been shaping this show for over a decade. So we've refined the hell out of it. We know exactly what we're doing, and it's a ton of fun. If you want to come check us out, you can go to theskepticsguide.org, and there will be buttons on the homepage.

• 1:30:07Speaker 02

  All right. Thank you, Jay. We're going to do a Name That Logical Fallacy. Haven't done one of those in a while. This comes from, a question comes from Alex Smith, and Alex writes, "I'm currently attempting a through hike of the Pacific Crest Trail, and I'm in the Sierras currently, and it is recommended that people can try an ice axe for the snowy areas, so people can self-arrest if they fall. I have heard a lot of people say they won't bring an ice axe into the Sierras because they don't know how to use it anyways. This feels like they are mostly trying to convince themselves that they don't need to spend the money on an ice axe, and they don't need to carry the extra weight. But this argument of, 'I don't want to bring it because I don't know how to use it,' feels

• 1:30:50Speaker 02

  like a logical fallacy to me. Though it is true that there are more effective ways to use an ice axe than others, it does feel like its main use is relatively simple in its design." Then he comes up with an analogy about a personal flotation device, and people are not trained how to use it, they would rather not use it at all if they can't use it perfectly, and he wants to know what logical fallacy this is. So, I definitely think there's a logical fallacy in there, although remember, these are informal logical fallacies, they're totally context-dependent, and you could come up with examples where it's reasonable to say that you don't want to use something because you don't know how to use it, and

• 1:31:31Speaker 02

  there are situations where it is a logical fallacy. So if this is a logical fallacy, which one do you think it is?

• 1:31:39Cara Santa Maria?

  "I don't want to go because I haven't learned how to use the thing, or I don't want to bring the thing because I haven't learned how to use the thing."

• 1:31:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. Or like, "I can't use this perfectly, so I'm not going to use it at all."

• 1:31:48Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, the perfect, the enemy of the good, whatever that was called.

• 1:31:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, that kind of sets it up a little bit easier. So that's the Nirvana fallacy.

• 1:31:55Cara Santa Maria?

  Ah, yes.

• 1:31:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, which is the perfect is the enemy of the good, or the good enough. The idea that, "Well, I can't use this perfectly, so why should I use it at all?" And I think he may be right in that, "Yeah, okay, sure, you may not know how to use an ice axe." I guess the idea is that if you're slipping on the ice, you can use it to slow your fall, right? You jam it into the ice and it slows your fall. Does seem pretty straightforward. But I would, I would point out that this can be a legitimate argument in certain contexts, because sometimes not knowing how to use a device might mean that you're actually...

• 1:32:34Speaker 02

  Will hurt yourself if you use it.

• 1:32:36Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:36Speaker 02

  You're more likely.

• 1:32:37Speaker 05

  Well, that could be.

• 1:32:37Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, like.

• 1:32:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, to cause yourself.

• 1:32:38Speaker 05

  Like a bazooka.

• 1:32:39Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, like, like being armed in a school.

• 1:32:43Speaker 02

  So, well, we, we, we actually, there was a study we, we talked about on this show where people who confronted a brown bear with a gun were more likely to be killed than people who didn't have a gun. And again, not that there aren't some people who like are hunters and have the right kind of gun and know what they're doing.

• 1:33:00Speaker 05

  False sense of security.

• 1:33:01Speaker 02

  But for a lot of people, if you don't know how to use a gun, or you don't have the right kind of gun, having it actually increases your chance of getting killed because you're just gonna piss it off.

• 1:33:11Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, it's two things there. Evan, I think you're right, too. It can give you a false sense of security and you may engage in riskier behavior.

• 1:33:17Speaker 02

  There's that, too.

• 1:33:18Cara Santa Maria?

  You may get closer to the bear than you should. Because you're like, I have a gun, I'll be fine.

• 1:33:23Speaker 05

  Can't rely on that.

• 1:33:23Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:23Speaker 02

  Right. So, again, I don't know. I mean, I, I would need to talk to an expert. You need topic expertise to know would, using a, an ice axe without training, does that have come with the risk of hurting yourself or making the situation worse? Or will people be engage in more risky behaviors? Because, hey, I got the ice axe if I do fall. It's not, doesn't seem totally implausible that that might be the case. But you would need either, you know, some topic expertise, or we would need specific evidence to really know. But if you are saying, this isn't perfect, so I'm not gonna do it at all, even when that's not the, the correct formulation of risk versus benefit, that is the Nirvana fallacy.

• 1:34:03Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:04Speaker 02

  Or this doesn't, this is useless because it's not perfect. You know, like, vaccines don't save 100% of people, so they're worthless, why get them?

• 1:34:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:34:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's the Nirvana fallacy.

• 1:34:13Speaker 05

  That's a good one, yeah.

• 1:34:14Speaker 02

  Yep. All right, guys, let's go on with science or fiction.

• 1:34:30Speaker 02

  Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two real, one fake. And I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. We just got three regular news items this week. Are you guys ready?

• 1:34:41Bob Novella?

  Yep.

• 1:34:42Speaker 02

  All right. Item number one, scientists have discovered a new organelle inside human cells. They are calling the hemifusome. All right, number two, researchers have been able to genetically engineer immune cells to produce a protein that induces long-term dormancy in HIV. And item number three, a recent graph of marine biomass over time shows that total biomass is mostly stable over geological time, punctuated by mass extinctions and later return to the longer-term baseline. Bob, go first.

• 1:35:19Bob Novella?

  New organelle, that's a fascinating possibility, and I would think quite rare at this day and age, but just too cool. I hope it's true, and I hope it's amazing. Number two, let's see, genetic engineer immune cells to produce a protein that induces long-term dormancy in HIV. I mean, it seems reasonable to think that we would be, that would be doable at this point. They made so many amazing advances with drugs for HIV. And now with genetic engineering, we're just becoming so good at it. So this is, it seems reasonable. So let's look at this last one here. Marine biomass, total biomass is stable, interesting, over geological time, and then mass extinctions and later return to, I mean.

• 1:36:03Speaker 02

  So, this is a little bit wordy, so I'll explain a little bit.

• 1:36:06Bob Novella?

  Yeah, what do you want to say?

• 1:36:07Speaker 02

  So they looked, it's 500 million years, right? So basically, over the last 500 million years, not the number of species or the number of whatever, it's just the total biomass of things in the ocean, right? The marine biomass has been roughly stable, not, you know, punctuated by the mass extinctions.

• 1:36:26Bob Novella?

  I mean, superficially, that sounds reasonable, that all the niches were basically filled without dramatic changes. I mean, it sounds reasonable, but, pah, they all sound pretty decent. Something's rubbed me wrong, though, about this biomass one, though. I could, I could kind of see that this is just like, oh, no, this is all baloney. It's not, you know, it's not stable over geologic time and, and change. So I'm just going to say that that one's fiction.

• 1:36:52Speaker 02

  Okay, Kara.

• 1:36:53Bob Novella?

  Biomass fiction.

• 1:36:55Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I mean, I think that the new organelle, I mean, it's really interesting that in, I mean, I don't know if it was this year or last year, but that we have to like make new models for all the classrooms.

• 1:37:07Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:37:08Cara Santa Maria?

  That have looked the same since like the seventies. Um, so that, I mean, it's pretty cool. I don't know what a hemifusome would do, something about half.

• 1:37:17Speaker 02

  Blood?

• 1:37:18Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, like, oh, I don't know. But we'll see. So that's cool. Then, so it's kind of between the HIV long-term dormancy, which I guess, I think that there are dormancy proteins and, I mean, part of me is like, why would they engineer, of course, they would engineer them for people because like most of our treatments aren't really, like, most of the research it looks like right now is about prevention. You know, I think that there was just a twice annual shot that was released. Like, how cool is that?

• 1:37:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's great.

• 1:37:51Cara Santa Maria?

  To prevent, uh, contracting HIV. But of course, a lot of people already have HIV. And so how can we, uh, ensure longer, healthier lives? That would make sense. That's pretty cool. And then the marine biomass mostly staying stable. That's such a hard one. Like, was there a time when it exploded because of, like, like the Cambrian explosion or something? I mean, 500 million is not that long ago, though. Or was there a time, well, I guess mass extinctions don't count here because they're saying it's punctuated by mass. Or like, has it been getting, has it been dwindling because of overfishing lately? I don't know. I feel like there's probably some sort of trend that I don't know about. So, yeah, it just seems the least likely to me, or the other two seem more likely.

• 1:38:36Cara Santa Maria?

  So I'll, I'll go with, uh, Bob. Go with Bob. Go with Bob.

• 1:38:39Speaker 02

  Okay, Jay.

• 1:38:41Jay Novella?

  Yeah, it's funny, you guys are, uh, you know, in referencing the biomass one in the ocean. That one seems like science to me. I mean, you know, Bob, you said it, like, once all of those nooks and crannies in the ocean have been filled, you know, it's, I look at the ocean almost like it's a singular living organism, right? And there's just... Certain amount of creatures that live there. You know, the ocean has a robust ecosystem and food chain. And also, like, you know, crazy stuff, in my opinion, doesn't happen in the ocean like it happens on land. I just think it's more stable. I don't know. For some, I want to take a walk out on a ledge here, guys, and say that one is science. The new organelle, to me, I agree with what Bob said. Like, you know, really? Like, today they found that?

• 1:39:22Jay Novella?

  I would more think that if they discovered a new organelle, it might mean that they figured out how the system works better inside the cell. And they're like, oh, actually, these three things are, should be considered one organ, maybe. You know what I mean? I'm just throwing that idea out there as what that could be. Being able to genetically engineer the immune cells to produce the protein, that's pretty much puts HIV to sleep. That seems legit. I mean, we have CRISPR, guys, you know? So I think that's science. And I think the ocean one is science. I'm going to go with the organelle as the fiction.

• 1:39:58Speaker 05

  Okay. And Devin? Oh, the organelle. I don't know. What I thought maybe is that, it's not so much that maybe they discovered a new organelle, but rather, they've identified something in a cell that they used to think was part of something else, but it actually turns out it's its own thing. A redefinition. I don't know. You know, they'd all of a sudden, hey, we didn't notice this before, and all of a sudden, this is here. So maybe a kind of a reclassification. Is that considered a discovery of a new organelle? It might technically qualify for that. The one about the HIV, I agree with everyone that that one is going to be science. Sure, genetically engineering immune cells? Why not? That tends to be science more often than not when we talk about that. Incredible.

• 1:40:43Speaker 05

  And the last one about the biomass, no idea, right? How do you quantify it? How do you really know? Yeah, geez, that's a specialty unto itself. That one gives me the least bit of confidence. I'll join Kara and Bob and say that that one's the fiction.

• 1:40:58Speaker 02

  Okay, so you guys all agree on the middle one, so we'll start there. Researchers have been able to genetically engineer immune cells to produce a protein that induces long-term dormancy in HIV. You all think this one is science, and this one is science. All right.

• 1:41:18Speaker 05

  Cool, that's cool, man.

• 1:41:19Speaker 02

  Guys are good so far.

• 1:41:20Speaker 05

  Good.

• 1:41:20Speaker 02

  Why would they want to do this? Didn't we just talk about the fact that they were trying to bring HIV out of dormancy? So that we could then target it with anti-HIV, like antiretroviral drugs?

• 1:41:31Jay Novella?

  Well, they try all sorts of things, Steve, you know.

• 1:41:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, but if it's like a permanent dormancy, then hey, man.

• 1:41:37Cara Santa Maria?

  Then if it's not going to affect you, it's not going to affect you.

• 1:41:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it kind of works both ways, right?

• 1:41:42Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:42Speaker 02

  So, and that's the idea, but it would have to like really put it into a, like it's out of commission now for the rest of your life.

• 1:41:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:41:49Speaker 02

  Sort of thing would be, would be very effective. Because when it's dormant, it's not reproducing, it's not transmissible, right? So it's basically, who cares? But the only thing is it could be reactivated at some point in the future. And the, the advantage here is that because they're basically engineering the host's immune cells to make the protein, it's not like you have to take drugs for the rest of your life, as long as, the guess is it would survive for as long as those immune cells survive. But if you can get, these are the CD4, you know, positive cells. Or if you could, I guess, get, you know, make these changes into the stem cells so that from that point forward, you're going to be producing cells that make the protein.

• 1:42:32Speaker 02

  The, this is a proof of concept, obviously this is not like a treatment. They just wanted to say, hey, you know, would this work? Like if we made this specific protein, which is, you know, which they know has been associated with, you know, dormancy and HIV. It's, it's actually made by the HIV itself. It's the AST is the name of the protein. HIV antisense transcript. Is it, but what if we make it ectopically, like make it outside? Like the HIV isn't producing it, just the immune cells that the HIV is infecting are making it without work. And they showed that it does work.

• 1:43:07Cara Santa Maria?

  That's interesting. I feel like that could be another, a different approach to shingles too, right? Because isn't that what happens with chickenpox? Is it's like dormant?

• 1:43:15Speaker 02

  It's dormant, then it becomes activated.

• 1:43:17Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, and then it becomes activated.

• 1:43:18Speaker 02

  So again, basic science, interesting. See if it leads to anything, but it seems very plausible that it could. All right, let's go to number three. A recent graph of marine biomass over time shows that total biomass is mostly stable over geological time, punctuated by mass extinctions and later return to the longer term baseline. Bob, Cara, and Evan, you think this one is fiction? Jay, you think this one is science? So this is a very interesting question, isn't it? What, you know, because you could kind of make sense of it both ways. And, you know, Jay, I think had some really good points. So you, once you fill up the oceans, that's it, right? Why, well, how would you, why would it change except something

• 1:44:00Speaker 02

  big happening like a mass extinction? And this is interesting that this is the first time we've really been able to do this. Because it's a, this was a Herculean study to do. You have to think about, you have to find some way to quantitatively estimate the total biomass, marine biomass, over different points of geological history. They basically had to count shells and stuff in different strata and try to estimate the biomass based upon that. Well, this one is the fiction. It is a fiction. What do you think the study did find?

• 1:44:37Speaker 05

  There was a change.

• 1:44:38Cara Santa Maria?

  Or more?

• 1:44:41Speaker 02

  What was, what was the trend? What was the trend?

• 1:44:43Cara Santa Maria?

  Uh, over 500 million years?

• 1:44:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:44:46Bob Novella?

  A slow increase over time?

• 1:44:47Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I would say if it's slow increase, if it was fast decrease, if it was only like within the last, uh...

• 1:44:54Speaker 02

  That's 500 million years. It's basically since multicellular life was established.

• 1:44:58Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it was probably an increase. If there's a huge change in the last 500 years, I would say it was a decrease.

• 1:45:02Speaker 02

  It's been steadily increasing over geological time, which is really interesting. And they think that's, why do you think that's happening? They don't, they don't know from the study. This is just showing that that's what was happening. But what, what they?

• 1:45:14Cara Santa Maria?

  More, some sort of gas?

• 1:45:15Speaker 02

  More food available?

• 1:45:16Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, or gas, like oxygen or something in the water.

• 1:45:20Speaker 02

  They think it's because of evolution that life is just becoming more efficient. Right?

• 1:45:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, so things are staying alive.

• 1:45:30Speaker 02

  It's getting, it's able to fill up the, the, the resources, the space more effectively, more efficiently. Uh, right? The ecosystems are getting more complex and

• 1:45:42Cara Santa Maria?

  That's cool.

• 1:45:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. That's just, they think it's just an epiphenomenon of evolution. Just a greater sort of overall efficiency in the ecosystem. Yeah, which is really fascinating. Which means that scientists have discovered a new organelle inside human cells. They are calling the hemophusome is science.

• 1:46:00Speaker 05

  Cool, man.

• 1:46:01Speaker 02

  So what was it? Was it like a group of things? Well, they were gonna call it metachlorians, but that was taken already.

• 1:46:07Speaker 05

  Yes. Well, no.

• 1:46:11Speaker 05

  Only by a bad movie.

• 1:46:14Cara Santa Maria?

  So it fuses things?

• 1:46:15Speaker 02

  It does.

• 1:46:16Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:46:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:46:17Cara Santa Maria?

  It fuses half of things?

• 1:46:19Speaker 02

  The original, they say that the reason that this was recently discovered is because, when you think about it, we're looking at cells, we're using mainly electron microscopy. We're seeing slices of cells that are static, right? We're not seeing them necessarily in life. You, there are other forms of microscopy where you can do that, but you're not, in not as much detail. And so they were just missing stuff that was happening, um, like the activity of these hemophusomes. So it was really, they were identified by their activity, right? Which it's hard to see.

• 1:46:56Cara Santa Maria?

  But then they were able to find them?

• 1:46:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, but they were able to, they were able to see enough of them that they were able to identify them and what they do. So basically what they do is they're at the recycling center in the cell. They are involved in sorting, recycling and disposing of debris, of like protein debris.

• 1:47:16Cara Santa Maria?

  Are they free-floating?

• 1:47:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:47:19Cara Santa Maria?

  Or are they attached to another organelle?

• 1:47:20Speaker 02

  No, I think they're just in

• 1:47:22Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:47:22Speaker 02

  the cytoplasm there.

• 1:47:23Cara Santa Maria?

  So whereas like a, uh, what's it called? Like a lysosome would like take in stuff and just get rid of it. These reuse the stuff.

• 1:47:31Speaker 02

  So they'll, yeah, it's like this protein gotta get rid of it. This one over here, we need to recycle it, you know, put it back into, into the cycle there. And this one needs to go over there for, to do whatever it's going to do. So it's basically just that this recycling center inside the cell where it's just sorting through the, the different bits of debris and figuring out what to do with them.

• 1:47:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Hmm, that's interesting.

• 1:47:51Speaker 02

  So it, it connects to a lot of other parts of the cell. You know, it's like a, this transfer station.

• 1:47:57Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, and now it, now it makes, I'm just Googling it too. It's characterized by hemi, the hemifusion of two different vesicles.

• 1:48:04Speaker 02

  Yes, right.

• 1:48:05Cara Santa Maria?

  So it forms a structure with a membrane between, that's cool.

• 1:48:07Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:48:08Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, cause I was like, why would you need?

• 1:48:09Speaker 02

  And they also, they didn't know this step was necessary, right? So they felt that just things just went to where they were supposed to go to. They'd realize it was like all being managed by this organelle.

• 1:48:19Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, that's interesting because we've, we've known about lysosomes for a long time.

• 1:48:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:48:23Cara Santa Maria?

  That's just like, that's like throwing it away.

• 1:48:25Speaker 02

  No, the other thing is that this may be the cause of some diseases, right? And so if you don't know something exists, you can't possibly know that it's the cause of a disease. And so now, you know, we can say, ask this question of, is this disease of, you know, which we know is a protein problem in cells, is this a problem of the hemifusomes? Is this something that we could now figure out and treat? So obviously this is very basic science, but this is what creates the potential for translation into some kind of a treatment. Um, and there's already diseases on the shortlist that I think this might be playing a role in. So pretty cool. Yeah, that caught my, again, caught my eye. Like really, we're discovering a new organelle now? Like those things that happen much later than you think. We haven't discovered all these already.

• 1:49:10Speaker 02

  It's like, yeah, we discovered a new planet within our solar system, you know, within, you know, within the Kuiper Belt. That would be surprising. All right, well, good job, guys.

• 1:49:20Jay Novella?

  Hey, Steve.

• 1:49:20Cara Santa Maria?

  Hey, Steve.

• 1:49:21Jay Novella?

  I just played a game of Space Invaders.

• 1:49:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:49:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, how'd you do?

• 1:49:24Jay Novella?

  I am worse now than I was when I was a kid.

• 1:49:27Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:49:28Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. It's not like riding a bike.

• 1:49:30Speaker 02

  But you're playing on your, like an emulator?

• 1:49:32Jay Novella?

  Yeah, I just found one. I just thought, hey, why don't I check it out? And it's, I'm like, I'm telling you, like, what the hell happened to my reflexes? Oh my God.

• 1:49:41Cara Santa Maria?

  I actually think sometimes, and maybe I'm, maybe I'm wrong here, but I have an emulator for NES and I play NES games a lot. And I wonder if the reason it feels like I'm off sometimes when I'm playing Tetris or Dr. Mario is actually because we've gotten better at matching our motions to our eyes. And back then, there was a lag, but we were so used to the lag that that felt normal to us. Does that make sense? Video games now are faster than video games were back then.

• 1:50:08Speaker 02

  They're also three dimensional.

• 1:50:10Cara Santa Maria?

  That's true.

• 1:50:11Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:50:12Cara Santa Maria?

  But I am, I am curious if that's the case even with an emulator. Like, is the reason that it feels like, wait, I, why isn't it working? Is because we're actually ahead instead of the behind that we were used to being in the 80s and 90s?

• 1:50:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, you're still a little bit young, Kara. At 60, yeah, our reflexes are objectively slower than they were when we were 20. I mean, that's just a fact of life.

• 1:50:35Speaker 05

  Don't say that.

• 1:50:35Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, well, and also, Jay, you haven't played it in a while.

• 1:50:38Jay Novella?

  Yeah. Yeah, but again, I wasn't good then either.

• 1:50:40Cara Santa Maria?

  Good call.

• 1:50:43Speaker 05

  Cost you a quarter then.

• 1:50:44Speaker 02

  But I still feel like I could play a video game extremely well and keep up with kids. Although, it's always hard to know, because like, we were talking about this this past weekend. Like, I, I play a game called Overwatch, which is player on player, right? And it's 100% skill. Like, there's, everybody could play the same characters, but there's a, inside the game, everyone is a, a level playing field. So the only difference is the player's skill. There are some players who are so much better than I am. It's amazing.

• 1:51:18Speaker 05

  Professional Overwatch.

• 1:51:19Speaker 02

  But is that because they're putting, they're sinking thousands of hours into this game where I'm...

• 1:51:24Jay Novella?

  Yes, it's everything, Steve. It's kids, thousands of hours. It's, Steve, don't forget, people cheat at these games, too.

• 1:51:31Speaker 02

  Maybe. They also have really good gear. Like, I'm just using my keyboard, you know?

• 1:51:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, optimized.

• 1:51:36Speaker 02

  But at the same time, I can hold my own. I could totally hold my own with, with most players, you know? Anyway, but unfortunately, if you look at the research, our nerves are literally slower.

• 1:51:47Jay Novella?

  Good news, though, Steve. In two days, you will have so much time to get better at that game.

• 1:51:54Speaker 05

  Right. Oh, my gosh, you'll have Overwatch all day, all night.

• 1:51:59Jay Novella?

  We know that Steve's fully in when he starts wearing Overwatch t-shirts.

• 1:52:04Speaker 02

  All right, Evan, give us a quote.

• 1:52:06Speaker 05

  What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.

• 1:52:11Bob Novella?

  Oh, yes. Love that quote.

• 1:52:13Speaker 05

  Werner Heisenberg.

• 1:52:15Bob Novella?

  Yeah, Heisenberg.

• 1:52:15Speaker 02

  And he's the best person probably to come out with that quote.

• 1:52:21Speaker 05

  I mean, right, is that not Heisenberg in a sentence?

• 1:52:23Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:52:24Speaker 05

  Right there.

• 1:52:25Bob Novella?

  You know, is it a particle or is it a wave? Well, it depends how you interact with it, my friend.

• 1:52:29Jay Novella?

  I'm tired of hearing it.

• 1:52:30Speaker 05

  It's a good reminder, though.

• 1:52:34Speaker 02

  I'm so sick of quantum mechanics.

• 1:52:35Speaker 05

  That's right. Oh, that quote was from Einstein. I'm so sick of this stuff.

• 1:52:42Jay Novella?

  Come on, now. Can we talk about Space Invaders or something?

• 1:52:45Speaker 05

  Not that Heisenberg guy.

• 1:52:47Jay Novella?

  Well, Steve, congratulations, man.

• 1:52:48Speaker 02

  Thank you, Jay.

• 1:52:49Jay Novella?

  Congratulations, dude. I'm so proud of you.

• 1:52:51Speaker 05

  Finish line.

• 1:52:52Cara Santa Maria?

  Yay!

• 1:52:53Jay Novella?

  SGU version two, man.

• 1:52:54Speaker 02

  Yep. Looking forward to it. And guys, especially those of us on the East Coast, stay cool out there. We're in the middle of an epic heat wave.

• 1:53:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's supposed to break soon, but yes, definitely.

• 1:53:05Speaker 02

  Well, you don't get triple digits in Connecticut.

• 1:53:08Jay Novella?

  Yeah, but it's trending up, you know? I mean, we're just waiting for the world to end and nobody's doing anything.

• 1:53:12Speaker 05

  And the summer is only a couple days old.

• 1:53:15Speaker 02

  All right, well, thank you all for joining me this week.

• 1:53:18Jay Novella?

  You too, brother.

• 1:53:18Cara Santa Maria?

  Thanks, Steve.

• 1:53:19Speaker 02

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

• 1:53:26Speaker 02

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

• 1:54:03Speaker 00

  Breathe in and reset with Lincoln Rejuvenate. An available multisensory feature in the 2027 Lincoln Navigator SUV. Experience the luxurious massage, visuals, and sense to help you relax in the driver's seat. It's your time for a reset. Visit Lincoln.com to learn more. Lincoln Rejuvenate does not operate unless the vehicle is in park. When the vehicle is off or if any doors open, do not use the feature in a closed garage or in other enclosed areas. See owner's manual for important operating instructions. Lincoln and Navigator are trademarks of Ford or its affiliates. All rights reserved.