The Skeptics Guide #1039 - Jun 7 2025

Interview with Emily Schoerning; Quickie with Bob: Prepping for Q-Day; News Items: Seed Oils, Lead into Gold, American Lysenkoism, The Screwworm is Coming, Galactic Collision; Who's That Noisy; Your Questions and E-mails: Dream Learning; 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 4th, 2025, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella,

• 0:49Bob Novella?

  Hey, everybody.

• 0:50Speaker 02

  Cara Santa Maria.

• 0:51Cara Santa Maria?

  Howdy.

• 0:52Speaker 02

  Jay Novella.

• 0:53Jay Novella?

  Hey, guys.

• 0:53Speaker 02

  And Evan Bernstein.

• 0:55Speaker 06

  Good evening, everyone.

• 0:56Speaker 02

  We got the OG, the original crew back on the show this week. Jay and Cara were out last week.

• 1:01Speaker 06

  Welcome back.

• 1:02Speaker 02

  Welcome back.

• 1:03Cara Santa Maria?

  Thanks.

• 1:05Speaker 02

  We're back. Okay, is this a big deal? You know, we make 52 shows a year. You gotta, you gotta like make this weird now?

• 1:12Speaker 02

  Actually, you know, whatever, just pop out whenever you want.

• 1:14Jay Novella?

  You told me not to speak about Disney, so what do you want me to say? Yeah, I was gone. Now I'm back.

• 1:18Speaker 02

  Yep, that's it.

• 1:21Jay Novella?

  But everything's okay, right? I had a wonderful time. If you want to know more, watch the live stream that we recorded on 6/4.

• 1:29Speaker 02

  That's today. Yeah.

• 1:30Jay Novella?

  That was today. You'll get everything. Well, not the day you're listening to this. But Steve, I gotta say just one thing.

• 1:36Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:37Cara Santa Maria?

  Wait, before you do, I noticed while I was away, I was in Prague for the last week, and so couldn't handle the time difference yet again.

• 1:45Speaker 02

  Did you get defenestrated while you were there?

• 1:47Bob Novella?

  Oh.

• 1:48Cara Santa Maria?

  What?

• 1:49Speaker 06

  Hopefully not.

• 1:50Jay Novella?

  Good historical reference there, Steve.

• 1:52Speaker 02

  The defenestration of Prague?

• 1:53Cara Santa Maria?

  I see. I noticed that we got a lot of emails. We always get a lot of emails, but sometimes I notice themes in our emails because I have acute powers of perception. And one of the themes that I saw coming in over and over had to do with the archive. And I'm wondering, did somebody mispronounce the archive on the show?

• 2:14Speaker 06

  It's A-R capital X-I-V, R-arc-siv.

• 2:18Speaker 02

  George thought it was AR14.

• 2:23Speaker 02

  But no, we landed on, it's pronounced archive. We pronounced it correctly.

• 2:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh.

• 2:28Speaker 02

  But none of us knew how those letters translated into the pronunciation archive.

• 2:34Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:34Speaker 02

  Cause we didn't realize that that X in the middle is really a Chi.

• 2:38Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. A Greek letter. Yeah.

• 2:40Bob Novella?

  Which is cool.

• 2:41Cara Santa Maria?

  God.

• 2:42Bob Novella?

  Yeah, we've, we've pronounced it correctly on the show many, many times. But yeah, I didn't know that where that came from. And that's cool. Interesting to learn. So thank you.

• 2:49Speaker 06

  Kind of smashing up alphabets like that. I suppose this can be cool-ish.

• 2:54Speaker 02

  I always have a problem with too clever branding like that.

• 2:59Speaker 06

  It is a little.

• 3:00Speaker 02

  It's generally frowned upon to have a brand that not a hundred percent of the population is going to intuitively know how to pronounce it.

• 3:07Speaker 06

  Right. They should be able to snap identify it.

• 3:09Cara Santa Maria?

  I don't think it's a pre-print outlet. I don't think it was ever meant for the general population.

• 3:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's probably why.

• 3:15Cara Santa Maria?

  Like nerdy scientists to use.

• 3:16Speaker 06

  Not for the gen pops.

• 3:17Cara Santa Maria?

  So, yeah.

• 3:18Speaker 02

  It reminds me of that movie. You guys remember the movie The Wonders?

• 3:21Speaker 06

  Yes, Tom Hanks.

• 3:22Speaker 02

  It was about a pop, yeah, band. They, they spelled their band O N E D E R S, Wonders. But everyone pronounced it O needers.

• 3:31Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 3:32Bob Novella?

  Oh, man.

• 3:33Cara Santa Maria?

  I could see that.

• 3:33Speaker 02

  So once a professional got their hands on it, they're like, it's W O N D E R S. It's wonders.

• 3:37Speaker 06

  Right. Let's fix this now.

• 3:40Bob Novella?

  How about the band Leonard Skinnerd? I think for their first album, they actually had a pronunciation key, like, like right there, pronounced.

• 3:46Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, cause people were like Linard?

• 3:49Speaker 06

  Linard, Sky Nine, Weard, yeah.

• 3:53Speaker 06

  You know, I mean, and I understand George's take too. Anytime you see X, one V together.

• 4:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, but if that were the case, they, the, the X, the I and the V would all be capital.

• 4:05Speaker 06

  Yes, I agree. I agree. But at the same time, you know, our brain will very easily make that correlation.

• 4:12Speaker 02

  To my point, it was confusing and we're just making the best fit they could and were mostly wrong.

• 4:19Speaker 06

  That's right. So therefore, what archive is going to change it?

• 4:22Speaker 02

  No. Nope. It's archive.

• 4:24Speaker 06

  Not a chance.

• 4:25Speaker 02

  Nope. All right. Well, we have a great interview coming up later in the show. So let's get right to some content. Bob, you're going to start us off with a quickie.

• 4:33Bob Novella?

  Yes, thank you, Steve. This is your quickie with Bob. Dealing with quantum encryption threats in the news. We've talked about this a few times on the show, the coming revolution of quantum computing does pose a serious threat to today's powerful encryption methods like RSA 2048. Is that how it's pronounced 2048, whatever, you know, RSA? And now we're paranoid. Yeah, now we're paranoid.

• 4:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, don't say it. Incorrect.

• 4:58Bob Novella?

  Yeah, sometimes you read something a trillion times, but you don't really hear it spoken aloud. So RSA, we're all familiar with RSA. Cyber criminals are increasingly using a technique called harvest now, decrypt later. So these strategies, that's a strategy where they steal encrypted data today that they can't decrypt it because it's just too powerful, especially with classical computers. It would take, you know, a billion years or so to decrypt it. But they hope to hold, they want to hold on to it and hope to be able to decrypt them eventually in the future, once quantum computers are robust enough. And this is pretty scary. If you're an owner of online banking data or health records or even trade secrets, that kind of data could still be valuable, even if it's 20 years.

• 5:41Bob Novella?

  You got to sit on it for 20 years before it can be quickly decrypted by quantum computers. So that's a strategy that we're seeing increasingly happen in the modern, in the modern world. So now researchers at Boston University, Cornell University and University of Central Florida, they're developing physics inspired encryption method that could not only enhance current data security, right, make it more robust, but also prove problematic for quantum computers in the future. And that could hopefully minimize this modern, you know, harvest now decrypt later thinking and make it less attractive. These physics based solutions that they're working on are essentially, it's a bridge solution, right? Instead of basing encryption keys on purely mathematical complexity, like the large

• 6:28Bob Novella?

  Factors of RSA, they could be based on naturally, a natural, physical phenomena. So for example, microscopic imperfections on a silicon chip, right? Every chip has these microscopic imperfections. They don't matter. They still perform well, but there's something that is just so random that even the manufacturer couldn't precisely predict what those are or recreate them because they're different for every chip. So that's something that if you, if you know what those imperfections are, then two people can, can create these encryption keys based on that information.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  Can they use the variable consistency of Jay's meatballs?

• 7:05Bob Novella?

  Maybe, you know, one specific meatball.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:08Bob Novella?

  Cause I'm sure he's got some variability in there between the meatballs. Oh, let me give you another example then, using chaotic physical systems. So like chaotic light waves that you need specifically tuned layers to decode them. So if two parties had, knew how to tune their layers, lasers, I mean, they would share that information. Then they could, then they could encrypt things that, that nobody else would really be able to decrypt. Because it's just too, it's completely unpredictable. So here's a good analogy. Think of it like encoding data based on the unpredictable flickering of a candle flame, right? So unless you know exactly how the air moves around the flame, you can't really decode it. So that's something that, that two parties can share that information as well.

• 7:50Bob Novella?

  And then bam, you can't, it's not something that could be brute force decoded using even quantum computers to a certain extent, because it's just inherently unpredictable. You just got to have that information.

• 8:01Speaker 02

  So basically it's a key that cannot be derived because it's way too complicated.

• 8:06Bob Novella?

  It's not just, not just complicated. Cause I mean, RSA is complicated because you got large.

• 8:10Speaker 02

  But I mean, it's like quantum computer level complicated.

• 8:13Bob Novella?

  Yeah, it's, it's basically that since they're, they're physical systems that have this, that are unpredictable. So you, if you just don't, if you don't have that key, you're not going to be able to brute force it essentially. All right. So these quantum, these are quantum resistant algorithms we're talking about. These, these, another. Big benefit here is that these could be integrated into modern systems without requiring major disruptions. You don't have to basically redo a lot of, a lot of, a lot of the components of the infrastructure because they can just be kind of more easily integrated than if you were trying to incorporate real quantum computers into the, into the whole decryption encryption schemes here. But this, of course, it's not going to be easy. It's going to take a lot of work. It's going to take also a lot of cooperation between academia, industry, and

• 8:58Bob Novella?

  government. So will they do that? Who knows? We're, we're going to see. It's, but it's going to become increasingly important. And after a while, it's just going to be too late. Like, got too late. The quantum computers are going to be here soon anyway. So you might as well start planning for that, whatever. So we'll see what happens. It's definitely not going to be boring in this regard after a period of time. So this has been your Quantum Quickie with Bob. Back to you, Steve.

• 9:19Speaker 02

  So you're saying, Bob, we can't afford a quantum computer gap?

• 9:23Bob Novella?

  Ha, yeah, that's what you did there. That's a good one, Steve.

• 9:25Speaker 02

  All right, thanks. That was very condescending, but thanks. All right.

• 9:33Cara Santa Maria?

  Kind of like whenever you say, Steve, whenever you go, proud of you, after one of your stuff.

• 9:38Speaker 02

  That's deliberately condescending. That's like on purpose.

• 9:43Speaker 06

  Right. So much so that that is.

• 9:44Bob Novella?

  So what are you assuming? I wasn't doing that?

• 9:47Speaker 06

  It jumps right from condescension to humor at that point.

• 9:51Speaker 02

  All right. What do you guys know about seed oils?

• 9:55Speaker 06

  Oh, I hear, I hear horrible things about them. They're terrible for you.

• 10:00Speaker 02

  It's going to kill everybody.

• 10:00Speaker 06

  Exactly. And RFK told me.

• 10:03Speaker 02

  Yep, RFK.

• 10:04Speaker 06

  Oh, God, is this an RFK thing?

• 10:06Speaker 02

  No, it's not. It's a, just a, the latest health fad thing where they're demonizing seed oils. But of course, RFK Jr. has jumped on that cranky bandwagon. He posted on X, for example, he said, he writes, interestingly enough, this began to drastically rise around the same time fast, he's talking about obesity, began to drastically rise around the same time fast food restaurants switched from beef tallow to seed oils in their fryers. He's blaming the obesity epidemic on seed oils based upon this spurious correlation. Because he is a total crank.

• 10:46Speaker 06

  It's rather simplistic, isn't it?

• 10:48Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. What a, what a nut job this guy is.

• 10:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Nut, nut job. Ha.

• 10:53Speaker 02

  There has been like, again, health influencers, I even hate saying that term, you know, have, one of the things that they do is they fear monger about specific foods, right? Everything is either gonna make you live forever or kill you instantly. And so there would be no self-help industry, essentially, if everyone were honest. Basically, you could say, the same health advice has been true for the last five decades. Eat everything in moderation, and for most people, you're probably okay. You know, like, you're 95% of the way there, and everything else is just window dressing. And the same is true of seed oils. So, but interestingly, seed oils are actually good for you, if anything, right? It's the,

• 11:37Speaker 02

  it's a plant-based oil. This, of course, seed oils are oils derived from seeds, right? Like, sunflower or canola. And there's two ways you can get the oil out of the seeds. You could either cold press them, which is a little bit more expensive, or you can chemically get it out of the seeds. And then you have to treat the oil to remove anything that you don't want in the resulting seed oil. Here's, I think, it's hard to track down, like, who started this fad of demonizing seed oils. But it comes from, as it often does, a simplistic misinterpretation of preliminary scientific data, right? Usually,

• 12:20Speaker 02

  they're extrapolating from basic science data they don't understand, leaping over to clinical conclusions that are not justified by the data. But here are some of the details to give you an idea of what they're doing. Plant-based or seed oils contain omega-6 fatty acid. Omega-6 fatty acid is one of the good fats, right? The evidence shows that it actually reduces the risk of heart disease, especially fatal heart attacks. This is partly why nutritionists were puzzled, you know, quote-unquote puzzled, by this, you know, health influencer pushback against seed oils. Plant-based oils are- healthier overall than animal-based oils.

• 13:06Speaker 02

  And we should be eating a lot of it and omega-6 fatty acids like linoleic acid. It not only is it essential, it's actually it's polyunsaturated essential fat. And it reduces LDL, which is the bad cholesterol, and it's overall a good thing. A recent systematic review of all the clinical studies that were published so far found that increased levels of linoleic acid reduces the risk of fatal coronary heart attack. So the clinical evidence shows that the net effect of this is reduced, you know, heart disease. But this is where the influencers and RFK Junior and those, you know, types of cranks get things wrong. The question is, what is the optimal level ratio of omega-3 to omega-6?

• 13:52Speaker 02

  Right? Omega-3, also a healthy, usually nut-based or fish-based, you know, fat, right? Omega-3 fatty acids. So the pre-industrialized societies, a typical omega-6 to omega-3, 6 to 3 ratio is anywhere from 1 to 1 to 4 to 1. Industrialized diets, however, because we mass produce seed oils, it can be closer to 20 to 1. So I think they're extrapolating a lot from that. It's like, oh, it's not natural. You know, we have way, we're consuming way more, you know, omega-6 than omega-3. And we have to get back to our quote-unquote "natural" ratio. That's essentially the chain of logic. Now, they have sort of tied it to a couple of things.

• 14:37Speaker 02

  One is the claim that omega-6 can increase inflammation and two, that it can increase blood clotting. On the first score, actually, the majority of the evidence shows that omega-6 decreases inflammatory markers. So it's just not true that it increases inflammation. And again, you know, we're talking about the difference between increasing some inflammatory marker in the blood versus like increasing the risk of autoimmune disease, right? Those are two different things. The immune system is one. One of those homeostatic dynamic systems in the body that exists in some sort of balance where you want just the right amount of it, but not too much, right?

• 15:21Speaker 02

  Too much inflammation can cause tissue destruction, not enough makes you susceptible to infection and illness. So you need, there's a balance. And just saying that something is increasing or decreasing inflammation is not necessarily good or bad. It depends on the details. And just saying that, oh, this one marker, you know, which of course there could potentially be many of them, is increasing or decreasing in the blood doesn't mean you're going to get more autoimmune disease. So again, these are sort of the leaps from preliminary kind of basic science findings to clinical outcomes that they're making. But in this case, it's not even true, really. The clotting thing is the same. It's the same kind of issue. You want your blood to clot just the right amount. Too little and you bleed, too much and you have strokes and heart attacks, right? And there's sort of a sweet spot.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  Even within that sweet spot, if you sort of push the, push the system in one direction or another, you know, if you, if you make, if you thin the blood, you'll increase bleeding, but reduce vascular events. If you make it clot more, you'll increase vascular events, but reduce bleeding. There's just no way around that. That's just the way the system works. And so again, they're just saying, oh, look, in this study with this marker or whatever, there's reduced or there's increased clotting, therefore it's going to cause heart attacks and strokes. But the, but it doesn't. Probably this is all down in the noise of, you know, every food does everything. You know what I mean? Like if you really looked at, at biomarkers, pretty much anything you eat would probably

• 16:45Speaker 02

  have some effect on some clotting number or some, you know, inflammatory number somewhere. And it, without having any net effect clinically, because again, the body kind of adjusts for all this, it's all sort of comes out in the wash, appears to be the same thing. Again, the bottom line is omega six reduces your risk of heart disease. It does not increase it. But I think these are the reasons, at least this is how they're justifying their anti-seed oil crusade, right? The ratio is off or whatever. Now, what actual nutritionists who know what they're talking about say is that there's just, just don't worry about it. You go ahead and use seed oils, cook with them, eat them, put them in your salad. You're not getting too much. It's perfectly fine.

• 17:29Speaker 02

  There are plenty of things to worry about. Don't worry about seed oil. If you're worried about your six to three ratio, eat more omega three. Like, don't restrain or restrict your omega six, increase your omega three, which is a good thing anyway. Like, we could all use more omega three in our diet. There's, there's one tiny thread where there is maybe some legitimate concern, like there always is, right? And that is if you refry the seed oil at high temperature over and over again, right? So like in a deep fryer in McDonald's, right? Then there's a, there's an open question about whether or not that can form any unhealthy substances.

• 18:06Jay Novella?

  Why would that be hard to figure out? It seems like they could do it really quickly. Yeah, they got lots of tests.

• 18:10Speaker 02

  Well, because again, it's a matter of dose, right? Yes, it forms aldehydes, but how long, how much of them are in there? How, and does it get absorbed? And how much of a clinical effect is there, et cetera, et cetera? So again, it's a hazard versus risk thing. We could say, yes, there's aldehydes get, can get formed in seed oils that have been fried over and over again at a high temperature. Doesn't mean that's actually a, a health risk. But again, this has nothing to do with home use, or, you know, buying it from the, in the grocery store and using it in your salad or cooking with it. This is sort of more like, should we, you know, have regulations about how frequently restaurants need to change their deep frying oil? You know what I mean? Like, that sort of thing.

• 18:49Speaker 02

  Now, probably going back to beef tallow, like a animal-based fat to fry foods in, would be counterproductive, right? Which, again, is very hallmark RFK Jr. Is using his misinterpretation of science to make bottom-line recommendations, which are actually harmful to your health, right? Because he just doesn't know how to put everything into perspective. He's just sort of, as I like to say, he uses scientific evidence as a drunk, uses a light post for support rather than elimination. I didn't make that up, but it's a great, it's a great phrase. So, here are my take homes. Don't worry about it. Just don't worry about seed oil. Don't believe the demonization. Don't believe the health gurus. It's fine. There's nothing to worry about. Again, if you want to, if you want to make your six-three ratio

• 19:33Speaker 02

  more pre-industrial, eat more omega three fatty acids. Yeah, we should do more research on fryer oil, probably whatever we use in the fryer is probably gonna have you know, something. And again, if you're concerned about that, you could try eating less fast food, fried food. That that would be one thing to do. And also do not listen to anything RFK Junior says. He's a dangerous crank. And as an extension of this RFK rule, don't get your health advice from health influencers on social media. So those are the takeaways. But don't worry about seed oil. It's fine. What's your, what's your guys' favorite oil? I mean, I Oh, favorite oil. Virgin olive oil is probably

• 20:14Cara Santa Maria?

  I use avocado oil when I cook mostly because it has a high burn point. So you can do like really high heat with it before it starts to smoke.

• 20:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:25Cara Santa Maria?

  So yeah, like most of the things I cook with, I just stick with avocado because it's easier. I like olive oil the most if you're not cooking.

• 20:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I

• 20:32Cara Santa Maria?

  You know, yes.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  With olive oil, I put it in my salad. I only use like sesame oil for certain Chinese dishes. Yeah, peanut oil, whatever. You use specific seed oils for specific dishes, but otherwise my go to is olive oil.

• 20:45Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, yeah, I never cook with olive. I only use it for like a dressing.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  It's great for cooking. But I just read a study today. There's always something like just like you almost like this is the noise you should ignore where it says that that one type of fat in olive oil might promote fat cell growth and promote obesity. It's like crap. I'm just not going to worry about it until I see a clinical study. You know what I mean? And again, as I said, there's like probably everything you eat. And then we got years ago, I talked about this study which looked at I just went through a cookbook and looked at every the first hundred ingredients and almost every one of them either like prevented cancer or caused cancer. Like every one, like the, you know, any food, you could look at any ingredient. There's some studies somewhere where people are promoting it as either it's healthy or it's terrible for you.

• 21:31Speaker 02

  You could, you could ignore all of it, you know, just have a generally a varied diet and you're fine. You know, otherwise there's nothing, you can't eat anything.

• 21:40Cara Santa Maria?

  Also, the psychological, like, I feel like so often when I've had friends who are, you know, I live in LA, who fall victim to like, the influencer sphere, like, the health influencer sphere. And I feel like the biggest outcome of having a restricted diet due to fear mongering that health influencers, um, monger, is anxiety.

• 22:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:06Cara Santa Maria?

  Like, there's so many people who I feel like their mental health suffers because they obsessively worry about what they're feeding themselves, what they're feeding their children. Everything's gonna kill me, everything's gonna give me cancer. And while there is, you know, a prudent level of paranoia about certain foods that have demonstrable, you know, negative health consequences, the neurosis that I see very often, especially, I don't, I don't know, I think it's, yeah, it's especially bad out here in LA.

• 22:35Speaker 06

  Would it be to the point where one of those people would, like, eat something accidentally they didn't realize was in it that they fear, and then they would just really freak out about it?

• 22:44Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, all the time.

• 22:45Speaker 06

  Even though they, but it's part of their brain must know that eating that one, maybe bad thing one time is not going to have a negative impact on them.

• 22:53Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, and the problem is, even more than just, oops, I accidentally ate a thing, it's the obsessive worrying, it's the amount of money that they spend at the grocery store, the amount of time they spend online scrolling and reading, just like the, I don't know, the portion of their life that's dedicated to fear.

• 23:08Speaker 02

  It heats up a lot of time and attention, you know, it's a limited resource. Yeah, so I agree, it's anxiety and neurosis.

• 23:12Cara Santa Maria?

  And increases depression, anxiety, yeah.

• 23:13Speaker 02

  And increased expense, right, because they'll pay for the stuff that apparently, you know, is the fad today that's avoiding the bad food or that is the good food. And probably, if anything, worse nutrition because they have a more restrictive diet.

• 23:27Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 23:29Speaker 02

  All right, Jay, tell us how to turn lead into gold. Well, let me ask you guys a question first. Is gold valuable? Inherently, it, it, yes, because it has some properties in electronics, et cetera, that are valuable.

• 23:45Cara Santa Maria?

  But otherwise, it's just a standard that we've chosen as a society to use.

• 23:50Speaker 02

  But as valuable as it is in our society, like monetarily, that's just convention.

• 23:56Jay Novella?

  I mean, I think there's a few ways to look at it. One, it is actually rare compared to other precious metals. It's hard to extract, right? It's got, it's got some complexity to it. And it's beautiful, right? Gold has been sought after largely historically, not, not because of the, you know, the fact that it has cool properties that we use today, but it's, it's gorgeous, you know? A lot you can do. Yeah, pirates bought those damn... So Steve said, one of them, it's electrically, it's fantastic to use with electronics. It just has, it has a lot of electrical properties that are wonderful. It's biocompatible, so it doesn't corrode in the human body.

• 24:35Speaker 02

  It doesn't get, react to the immune system.

• 24:37Jay Novella?

  Yep. And it's chemically stable. So it has a lot of really good industrial properties that make it very sought after. But, you know, can we create gold? Has gold ever been really created? Well, this is, um, this is a, what I'm going to talk to you about tonight, and it's a little complicated. So, you know, the Large Hadron Collider, right? The LHC? Heard about it. Word on the street is that the physicist at CERN successfully transmuted lead into gold. So how did this happen? So this, you know, so CERN is near Geneva, right? And what they did was they did a lead ion collision experiment using the Alice detector. This is a large ion collider experiment, right? And this is what they did. They had beams

• 25:21Jay Novella?

  of lead ions that they, that had, were accelerated to almost the speed of light, and they were directed to graze past one another rather than collide head on. And this is a key factor in how this, how they pulled this off. So these near misses created a very strong electromagnetic field around each of these lead ions, and that electromagnetic field generated high-energy photons. And when one of these photons hid, hit a lead nucleus, it could knock out three of the protons. And since lead has 82 protons, losing three results in a nucleus with 79 protons.

• 26:03Speaker 02

  Oh, boy.

• 26:03Jay Novella?

  Which is, which is gold, but it's not exactly what you think. So let me give you, let me give you some details.

• 26:09Speaker 02

  Pseudo gold.

• 26:10Jay Novella?

  It's never, yeah, it's never exactly what, you know. You know, the analysis that came after, there was a, a paper published in Physical Review C on, on May 7th, 2025, and they found that from 2015 to 2018, the LHC created approximately 86 billion gold nuclei, right? It's not a lot. It sounds like a lot, but it's not a lot. This is equivalent to about 29 trillionths of a gram. It's also called 29 picograms, picog. So the gold atoms were super unstable. They existed only for a fraction of a microsecond, and they were destroyed almost immediately by the further collisions that were happening or decay. So they, they, you know, they were just, they were there for just the tiniest of time.

• 26:54Jay Novella?

  And then to continue, because there is obviously more complexity, it wasn't the gold that we handle, it was a, what do you call it, Steve?

• 27:01Speaker 02

  An isotope?

• 27:02Jay Novella?

  It was an isotope of gold, yeah.

• 27:04Speaker 02

  There are 41 apparently isotopes of gold, but only one, gold 197, is stable.

• 27:09Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 27:10Speaker 02

  Oh, I see.

• 27:11Jay Novella?

  So the, the, this has scientific importance, not because they were trying to get rich. It confirms a theoretical model, or, or more than one, that electromagnetic interactions in high-energy physics can actually do these things. You know, they're, they want to know what those electromagnetic interactions are and how they function. Um, you know, this is how science works, right? They might not know exactly today, there might not be an application for this today, but there could be a lot of downstream applications that would take advantage of this. It also helps refine the future of particle accelerator experiments, you know, just gives us more data on what we can do with particles. It shows that the, the precision and the power of the, of our modern nuclear transmutation techniques, this is a big deal.

• 27:56Jay Novella?

  You know, they were, again, remember when I said they weren't head-on collisions, they were grazing? These were grazing collisions, but they did that on purpose and they were able to control that, which I find to be unbelievable. Like, I don't care who sits me down and explains to me how they do that. I, it's remarkable that, "Bob, say it."

• 28:14Bob Novella?

  Remarkable.

• 28:15Jay Novella?

  Thank you. It's remarkable that they do that. It also provides a clear example of proton removal nuclear alchemy through photonuclear reactions. Yeah, listen back to that three times and I still don't understand exactly what the hell that is. Proton removal nuclear alchemy. They're actually calling it alchemy. What the hell?

• 28:36Speaker 02

  Well, you know, alchemy was about changing the base metals, you know, from one to another.

• 28:42Bob Novella?

  Yep. So if, if, if most of the isotopes are unstable, what do they decay into?

• 28:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a good question. What isotope is created by this process? Gold, what?

• 28:54Jay Novella?

  So, stable gold has 79 protons and 118 neutrons, right? Gold 197.

• 29:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:01Jay Novella?

  The CERN process knocked three protons off lead, the lead nuclei, but it didn't, didn't carefully control the number of neutrons. So they left behind these gold isotopes with, they had unusual neutron to proton ratios, which made them incredibly unstable. So it wasn't a, a, a standard thing that it created. It created lots of different isotopes.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  But mostly unstable.

• 29:24Jay Novella?

  Yeah, and there was radioactive decay that immedi-, these immediately started to decay. So they were created and if they weren't smashed apart by other interactions that were happening around them, they just started, bingo, they started to decay instantly. They said that some of them likely underwent beta decay, fission, and other nuclear transformations, turning them into different elements, or just breaking apart completely. The LHC...

• 29:49Speaker 02

  Well, which would turn them into different elements.

• 29:51Jay Novella?

  Yeah. Now, they said that the, the LHC, like, when they're, when they're doing an experiment, it's considered to be a very violent place, right? Because there's, there's a ton of particles that are super dangerous, that are, you know, banging into each other. And these, the nuclei that were created during the collisions were surrounded by extreme energy and radiation. So, you know, it's a pretty, pretty serious environment that they're creating in there.

• 30:12Bob Novella?

  I see here that radioactive gold isotopes decay typically into mercury or platinum.

• 30:18Speaker 02

  Well, platinum wouldn't be bad.

• 30:19Bob Novella?

  That wouldn't be bad. That's a decay?

• 30:21Jay Novella?

  But still, remember what I said. It, it was like the tiniest of tiny. Like, there wasn't like someone picked up a chunk of platinum and they're like, "Psych!", you know, that didn't happen.

• 30:31Jay Novella?

  But I like this because, you know, historically alchemists, they wanted to turn lead into gold. Through they had all these chemical processes that they were trying. They didn't know what they were doing. It's actually impossible to do because, you know, the, there's a fixed atomic number, right? Lead has 82 protons, gold has 79. What they were doing back then couldn't do what they were hoping would just spontaneously happen. So it's really cool, you know, like, you know, they took this idea of chemists in the, you know, back in, you know, when were they doing this? God, I don't even know what, when, when were people trying to do this? In the 1600s, 1400s?

• 31:10Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. Yeah.

• 31:11Speaker 02

  Sometimes I forget exactly like when it would hit its heyday, but sometime like that.

• 31:14Jay Novella?

  But the idea that today now we perfectly understand what the difference is between lead and gold. Like we, with absolute precision, we completely understand that. And, you know, we actually took a step in that direction to create an isotope of gold, but no, no gold that is going to turn into, you know, electronics or jewelry or anything.

• 31:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I wonder though, if they could refine this to knock out like the right number of protons and neutrons to create either gold or just to like create the, the isotope that decays into platinum. Cause that's even better than gold, to be honest with you, in terms of rarity and expense.

• 31:51Bob Novella?

  Doing it in mass is the problem, yeah.

• 31:54Speaker 06

  Yeah. Let's hope we don't get electron though.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  Electron.

• 31:58Speaker 06

  That's a Dungeons and Dragons joke, by the way.

• 32:02Speaker 02

  Thank you, Evan.

• 32:04Speaker 06

  Thank you, Kara.

• 32:06Speaker 02

  All right, Kara, tell us what's happening to science in America.

• 32:12Speaker 02

  It's kind of a big, big topic.

• 32:14Cara Santa Maria?

  It's tough. So I think, you know, it's hard to even know where to start, but because we're recording this on the 4th of June, I was out of town for the past week, so I wasn't there last week when we recorded. I want to say during Nauticon. When was Nauticon? It's like so long ago.

• 32:29Speaker 06

  15, 16, 17.

• 32:31Cara Santa Maria?

  It was the 15, 16, 17. Okay. So after Nauticon, there was an executive order that was released from the White House called Restoring Gold Standard Science. The day it was released, I know people, friends of mine who work in government agencies who happen to be scientists with those kinds of jobs, texted us this executive order and said like, you know, presented without comment. And it's, um, Shall we say worrisome, to say the least? And here's just a little bit of language from the, from the actual executive order. This comes from section 3A. Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Director of the Office of Science and Technology

• 33:13Cara Santa Maria?

  Policies, or the OSTP Director, shall, in consultation with the heads of relevant agencies, issue guidance for agencies on implementation of, quote, "gold standard science" in the conduct and management of their respective scientific activities. For the purpose of this order, gold standard science means science conducted in a manner that is, what do you guys think? Reproducible, transparent, communicative of error and uncertainty, collaborative and interdisciplinary, skeptical of its findings and assumptions, structured for falsifiability of hypotheses, subject to unbiased peer review, accepting of negative results as positive outcomes, and without conflicts of interest. That sounds good, right?

• 33:51Speaker 02

  Superficially, yeah.

• 33:52Cara Santa Maria?

  Isn't that what we're always talking about here on the show? That is what gold standard science should look like. So why do we need an executive order calling for science to follow this gold standard? Well, as the executive order claims, and again, I'm quoting here, these are not my words, "Over the last five years, confidence that scientists act in the best interests of the public has fallen significantly." Although, when you look at Pew surveys, the general public still trusts scientists significantly more than the federal government. That was my interjection there. Okay, the order continues. "A majority of researchers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics believe science is facing a reproducibility crisis.

• 34:35Cara Santa Maria?

  The falsification of data by leading researchers has led to high-profile retractions of federally-funded research. Unfortunately, the federal government has contributed to this loss of trust." And then they go on to basically throw the previous administration under the bus with regards to COVID-19 guidance. They specifically call out the CDC. It literally says that executive departments and agencies have used or promoted scientific information in a highly misleading manner. They call out the National Marine Fisheries Service. They call out multiple agencies throughout this executive order.

• 35:12Cara Santa Maria?

  Now, this comes kind of against the background of a lot of, I mean, I don't even know where to start, right? Different political appointees who have questionable, if not outright, like anti-science views, being put in charge of scientific agencies. Let's see, since the presidency, since basically January 20th, when Trump actually took office, different executive actions have significantly cut funding at the NSF, the National Science Foundation, fired staff scientists across different departments, right? Like EPA, NOAA, the National Weather Service.

• 35:56Cara Santa Maria?

  Recently, you guys probably saw the government report on child health that cited research papers that don't exist, just fully fake citations.

• 36:06Speaker 02

  They probably used AI to generate it and didn't double check it. And there's just like made up shit in there.

• 36:12Cara Santa Maria?

  So scary.

• 36:13Speaker 02

  It's incompetent. It's gross incompetence.

• 36:16Cara Santa Maria?

  I mean, it's weaponized incompetence. It's intentional. And so we've seen just a bunch of undermining of research regarding climate change, regarding biomedical science, health and human safety. And so a fear here is the wording, right? Because the wording on its surface sounds like all the things that we're always talking about. Like, how do we make research papers rigorous and transparent? You know, open science movement, you know, reproducibility, unbiased peer review. But there was a letter of protest that was recently published by multiple scientists,

• 36:58Cara Santa Maria?

  over 6,000 scientists wrote this open letter, or I should say scientists and physicians and other researchers. And in their letter of protest, they said that the executive order is, quote, "co-opting the language of open science to implement a system under which direct presidential appointees are given broad latitude to designate many common and important scientific activities as scientific misconduct." And so this echoes. A movement that many people are aware of called Lysenkoism. And I've seen people writing even Ed Science Based Medicine. David Gorsky wrote about kind of the new Lysenkoism. He started writing about it in March of this year. He's written two articles about it so far.

• 37:41Cara Santa Maria?

  I've used this term recently around some of my friends and some of my friends I noticed. And again, I was born in 1983. So even though I'm in my 40s right now and I have, you know, contemporary peers that are my contemporaries. Some of my friends didn't know who Lysenko was or this concept of Lysenkoism was new to them.

• 38:00Speaker 06

  I was never taught until I was aware of through skepticism is how I found it.

• 38:05Cara Santa Maria?

  There you go. Okay. That's good to know.

• 38:06Speaker 06

  At age 30.

• 38:08Cara Santa Maria?

  Right. We're right. So even, even individuals who were like, oh, I guess I shouldn't say now alive about, because this actually, Lysenkoism was like a long time ago. But those, yeah, who saw the echoes of Lysenkoism may not have, um, I don't know, may not be as aware of it. So what do you guys know about Lysenkoism? Why don't we start there?

• 38:28Bob Novella?

  Well, it was supposed to basically repudiated Mendelian, Mendelian genetics and natural selection. And Soviets took it up right agriculturally and, uh, and, and even just regular science. And yeah, it was significant harm.

• 38:43Speaker 06

  I mean, that was. Yeah. When it was applied, it was so damaging.

• 38:46Speaker 02

  It became the official state science.

• 38:48Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, that's a perfect.

• 38:49Speaker 02

  Scientists who disagreed with it because they, they agreed with correct science were sent to the Gulag.

• 38:55Cara Santa Maria?

  Sometimes killed. Yeah.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  And then some of them killed. And then, of course, it did tanked the agricultural sector of the Soviet Union, causing mass starvation. And then even worse though, is when it was taken up by China and then millions of people starved. So Lysenkoism was responsible for millions of deaths.

• 39:14Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. Yeah. And so this started way back in, you know, the twenties and Lysenkoism is named for trophy Lysenko. So this was a, you know, a scientist. I was about to call him a geneticist. He was not a geneticist. He did not believe in genetics.

• 39:32Speaker 06

  An apparatchik.

• 39:33Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. He, well, some, some people called it like Marxist genetics. There are, you know, different terms that were used for it.

• 39:39Speaker 06

  State genetics.

• 39:40Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. But it was, it was basically like you mentioned, Bob, a repudiation of, uh, natural selection, of evolution via natural selection. And instead he favored Lamarckism.

• 39:53Cara Santa Maria?

  And I don't know if if folks remember Lamarckism, but this was kind of a prevailing view before it was debunked, that instead of there being genetic material that's already existing in a population, that's then under, you know, environmental pressure in which, quote, "the fittest survive," right, those organisms who happen to already have those beneficial mutations tended to do well against those pressures. Instead of that Lamarckism, you know, claimed Lamarck said, "Well, there's behaviors that happen during the lifespan of an organism, and those behaviors could then be passed down to their offspring."

• 40:33Speaker 02

  Can I say though, Cara, just because you just to not get an email on this?

• 40:36Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 40:37Speaker 02

  That that idea, the the passing on of acquired characteristics, was not invented or unique to Lamarck, and he did, and he renounced it later in his career. So it's really not even fair to call it Lamarckian.

• 40:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, that's it's interesting, because that is what it is.

• 40:52Speaker 02

  I know, it's known by that, but it's really unfair to him.

• 40:55Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, poor Lamarck. Well, but he changed his mind, right? But he did publish under that.

• 41:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, but like everybody, like, again, he didn't invent the idea. It wasn't unique to him. There's like, there's no reason legitimately to attach the idea to him.

• 41:10Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, that's so interesting, because there's almost like not another, like, I just looked up on Wikipedia, like, the the term Lamarckism, also known as Lamarckian inheritance or Neo-Lamarckism.

• 41:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:21Cara Santa Maria?

  But there's no other, oh, also called the inheritance of acquired characteristics, or more recently, soft inheritance. Maybe that's what we should start saying. We'll call it soft inheritance. So this idea of soft inheritance, right, and the the example we often hear about is the giraffe, but it could be any example, like, an organism wants to reach, or let's say a bird wants to get at a certain seed, and it pecks at the seed, and it's, you know, beak gets like pointier, and then it has offspring with pointy beaks, and then their offspring have pointy beaks, right? Like, that's just not how it works. And it's long been debunked. Although, there are some, we could have a whole side conversation about epigenetics, which is really interesting, but we know that epigenetics still requires genetics.

• 42:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:02Cara Santa Maria?

  You're right. Like, we're still talking about DNA.

• 42:06Cara Santa Maria?

  And so his specific technique, which was called vernalization, was a really interesting process that he used to help certain plants survive more in Russia. And it actually worked with certain plants. And that's why it started to gain momentum. The problem is it didn't work beyond that. But Stalin thought that he was great. He loved his ideas. His ideas made sense to him. They were easy and palatable. They felt like they kind of went with the nationalistic pride of the time. Like, oh, we can, we can sort of have this new biology and it's just ours. And we have this national pride for it.

• 42:47Cara Santa Maria?

  And because of that, as you mentioned, Steve, even against evidence, physical evidence, that this vernalization and grafting technique that he used was not working with specific crops and that the crops were failing. And, you know, more and more, Lysenko had more and more power. He was able to kind of affect most of the policy around Soviet agriculture. He said, no, I don't want there to be any pesticides or herbicides that are used. I want to only use my specific form of agriculture. And these crops just started failing left and right. And even against that evidence, it was, you know, explain it away. Keep going, keep pushing.

• 43:32Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, now we have new problems, but that's okay. Lysenko and his approach are going to fix them. And because of that, I want to say it was about a 30-year period where the crops failed and there was mass famine. And then, of course, we know that there's kind of a ripple effect that happens after that because you can't just go back to how things were, you know, a day later. Like, there's some kind of evidence that there were still effects from Lysenko's decision-making up through the 90s.

• 44:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, plus you kill off a generation of experts, you can't recreate that expertise.

• 44:11Cara Santa Maria?

  Exactly. So it's not just about the science that's being practiced, it's also about the good science that's being suppressed. And those are actually two separate issues that have outcomes that are related. And so that's why I think, you know, I don't know if it's a, if it's a direct correlation. Gorsky writes about Lysenko being, you know, like RFK Jr. being the new Lysenko. And he does, I think, like, to his credit, he says, it's not Lysenko that killed all those people. It's, you know, it's Stalin.

• 44:47Cara Santa Maria?

  But it's Stalin choosing Lysenko. And I think that's the part that we have to remember here, that these executive orders that with Trump at the helm, it's not just about RFK Jr. Trump is choosing RFK Jr. But even beyond RFK, we're seeing across federal agencies that have, you know, that control federal science and funding for federal science. So we're not just talking about Health and Human Services, we're not just talking about biomedical science, we're talking about environmental science, we're talking about the climate, we're talking about all sorts of knock on effects.

• 45:22Speaker 02

  It all flows down from Trump, but he is giving Kennedy a lot of free rein with the healthcare. So like, for example, Kennedy wants to, at least he said he wants to ban American scientists who get federal funding from publishing in, in journals, in like, publishing in the top journals. He wants like the CDC to create its own journal where you're forced to publish. Essentially, again, this is sort of taking over the scientific process by the government, which is Lysenkoism. It's very, very bad.

• 45:54Cara Santa Maria?

  It's super scary. And these are, this is new, but not new. So we've heard these, these kind of mutterings. People were starting to publish this, you know, even a couple of months ago, about this consideration of banning, you know, scientists from publishing in, in journals like. JAMA in journals like The Lancet and journals like the New England Journal of Medicine. He Kennedy literally said, quote, "We're probably going to stop publishing in The Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, and those other journals because they're all corrupt."

• 46:27Speaker 06

  True.

• 46:27Cara Santa Maria?

  He just like, straight up, "They're just corrupt," which is bananas because these are some of the top-tier medical journals to publish.

• 46:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's it. It's about, you know, undercutting, delegitimizing institutions of science and, and health and professionalism.

• 46:45Cara Santa Maria?

  And we all saw this coming, right? Because what is, what did we know RFK Junior as prior to this position?

• 46:52Speaker 02

  I mean, basically an anti-vaxxer, but.

• 46:54Cara Santa Maria?

  An anti-vaxxer?

• 46:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:55Cara Santa Maria?

  And why was he an anti-vaxxer? Where were the original MMR studies published? In The Lancet.

• 47:04Speaker 06

  Lancet.

• 47:04Cara Santa Maria?

  I mean, obviously, they were retracted, but it's hard to unring a bell. It's, but it's the retractions that probably made him so angry. And so there's a new piece to this puzzle, and that was just published like yesterday, or no, like a couple of days ago. So two researchers from the VA, right, Veteran's Affairs, they're both pulmonologists. They published an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, and that article was critical of the, basically, that these mass cancellations of contracts and the planned staff reduction of 80,000 VA employees is going to put the health of a million veterans

• 47:46Cara Santa Maria?

  at risk. Like, that's what they said in the article, including those seeking treatment for toxic exposure. This opinion piece was a warning. It was published, and this bothered the administration. And so the administration basically is ordering staff scientists now not to publish in medical journals without first receiving official clearance.

• 48:12Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 48:13Cara Santa Maria?

  So it's one thing to, like, pontificate about it on a podcast like RFK Junior did. It's another thing to send out an email to the VA saying, "No more publication until we approve it."

• 48:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, only state approved science publication. I mean, that's as

• 48:30Cara Santa Maria?

  That's authoritarianism 101.

• 48:32Speaker 02

  Totally. And getting back to your And getting back to your original list of gold standard science, they're weaponizing it. They're just using that as an excuse to target, because no science is pristine, right?

• 48:46Cara Santa Maria?

  No.

• 48:46Speaker 02

  You could nitpick any study, anything, any research or whatever. And you could, if you could say this is gold standard, then you just, you know, gin up some reason to go after any study that, or any scientist that you don't like the conclusion of. You don't like their results.

• 49:02Cara Santa Maria?

  And I think the important question is, according to whom?

• 49:05Speaker 02

  Right.

• 49:05Cara Santa Maria?

  Because I would prefer that that be gold standard science according to the scientific community, wouldn't you?

• 49:11Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 49:11Cara Santa Maria?

  I don't want it to be according to RFK Junior or according to Donald Trump.

• 49:15Speaker 06

  Or any politician.

• 49:16Speaker 02

  Any politician, absolutely. I mean, they're like the two worst I could think of. But yes, but any politician.

• 49:21Cara Santa Maria?

  Any person who was put in a position of oversight at, across these different organizations and government agencies who either are not even scientists themselves, or if they are scientists, are fully, fully biased at this point. It's so, so scary. So, you know, I think that up until now, it's felt more theoretical and the alarm bells have been ringing, but we're starting to see more and more evidence. You know, it's one thing to cut funding. Yes, it has a really terrible knock on effect, right? And it definitely is a direct and quick way to say, I don't want you to do that thing. So I'm just going to not give you the money to do the thing.

• 50:05Cara Santa Maria?

  It's, I think, an entirely different animal to say, I don't want you to do that thing. I, I command you not to do it. And that's really, really scary.

• 50:14Speaker 02

  So this is something we definitely have to keep an eye on.

• 50:17Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 50:17Speaker 02

  And there's got to be, like, the public has to complain about this. Like, there needs to be public pushback.

• 50:23Speaker 06

  Call your congresspeople, folks, your senators, anybody, everybody.

• 50:26Cara Santa Maria?

  And I hope people know that this is happening. I, I, that's the scary thing, because if you read The executive order, it sounds like they're using all the right buzzwords. And unless you get it, yeah, it's so cloaked. It's like here in California, we see this all the time when we vote there, which is why you have to constantly read different voter guides because you'll sit down to vote on the different ballot propositions and you'll be like, oh, that sounds good. And you don't realize because it's the way that the proposition is written, what they're actually getting to.

• 50:57Speaker 06

  It's frustrating.

• 50:58Cara Santa Maria?

  It's so scary. Yeah. It's all propaganda.

• 51:01Speaker 02

  It's like, you know, a lawyer giving you a contract and signing it without having another lawyer read it. Right? Like, you really think like as a, as a non-expert of layperson, you're going to be able to parse all of the fine print and, and know that you're not being screwed. It may superficially sound reasonable, but you have to know the details. It's the same thing with legislation. You got the devil's in the details.

• 51:22Cara Santa Maria?

  And I think that like an important outcome here, because we've talked about this before, but this comes from, you know, I've read a lot of different articles and kind of pulled from different articles and quoted different articles when I was talking about this. Um, but one that I'm looking at here from Environmental Health News, they, they do, they like summarize the story and mostly they were pulling from, from a Washington Post story, but they did like a little why this matters at the end. And I think they kind of are saying it better than, than I could. Cutting off access to peer reviewed medical journals doesn't just isolate US research. It threatens global health standards and it further politicizes the nation's scientific institutions. Science does not thrive under censorship and undermining scientific integrity does not bode well for maintaining robust public health systems.

• 52:07Cara Santa Maria?

  RFK Junior, and mark my words, like he said, he wants to do this. So when this happens, we need to be wary. Not only is he trying to ban these scientists from publishing in leading medical journals, he wants to start an HHS preeminent journal, he used, he used that word, to house taxpayer funded, uh, research.

• 52:28Cara Santa Maria?

  So if we start to see a government sanctioned journal, we know that that journal is biased.

• 52:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 52:36Cara Santa Maria?

  It's very important to remember that.

• 52:36Speaker 02

  It's state science, right?

• 52:38Cara Santa Maria?

  It's state science.

• 52:38Speaker 06

  Yeah, here we go again.

• 52:39Cara Santa Maria?

  It's Ly-senko-ism.

• 52:41Speaker 02

  A hundred percent.

• 52:41Cara Santa Maria?

  We have to remember that and spread the word about that.

• 52:44Speaker 02

  The only question now is,

• 52:46Speaker 06

  Kennedy-ism.

• 52:47Speaker 02

  will RFK Jr. kill more people than Ly-senko? And a lot of people think he will. He is on track to doing just that.

• 52:55Cara Santa Maria?

  Right, because it's not just agriculture.

• 52:57Speaker 02

  No.

• 52:58Cara Santa Maria?

  No, this is, we're talking vaccinations, we're talking, you know, health advice. Like, what about the next pandemic?

• 53:03Speaker 02

  If there's a pandemic in the next three years, he absolutely will be responsible for more deaths.

• 53:08Cara Santa Maria?

  Super scary.

• 53:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:09Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. And deregulating all the, oh, gosh, there's so much. Our food, our, oh, okay, medicine.

• 53:16Speaker 02

  All right, Evan, I need one more thing to worry about. Tell me about,

• 53:20Cara Santa Maria?

  Great.

• 53:21Speaker 02

  Tell me about the screw worm.

• 53:23Cara Santa Maria?

  What?

• 53:23Speaker 02

  Wait, wait a second. Wait a second. We're talking about worms now?

• 53:27Speaker 06

  Have we talked about the screw worm on the SGU before? I don't think so.

• 53:33Speaker 02

  I don't remember talking about it.

• 53:35Speaker 06

  It's a good thing.

• 53:36Speaker 02

  Not the boar worms.

• 53:37Speaker 06

  It's a very good thing.

• 53:41Speaker 06

  It's a good thing we haven't, because this little parasite comes right out of one of Bob's nightmares. You're gonna love it, Bob.

• 53:49Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 53:49Speaker 06

  Not. Screw worms come from blowflies, specifically the family, oh, here we go. Califoried, not Californier, but Califoried. They belong to a unique genera that set them apart from typical scavenger blowflies. And the two main screw worm producing species are, well, Old World Screwworm, Crisomia beziana, and New World Screwworm, Cocalmaia hominivorex, hominivorex.

• 54:24Speaker 02

  Homina homina.

• 54:25Speaker 06

  And that, homina, which translates to man eater.

• 54:29Speaker 02

  Oh, Christ.

• 54:30Speaker 06

  That's the one we're talking about, New World Screwworm. So NWS is what they call it for short. A screw worm is the larval, also known as the maggot stage of a parasitic fly, known for infesting and feeding on the living tissue of warm-blooded animals, including livestock, pets, and yes, even human beings.

• 54:54Speaker 06

  Now, human fatalities from screw worm infestations are rare. The condition is known as mye- MYIASIS. Miasis, miasis, miasis, I believe. Fatal if not promptly diagnosed and treated. In fact, I looked it up, the, uh, there was a death, two deaths last year in Panama from this of, of humans. And prior to that in Panama, it, you had to go back to the 1990s to find someone who died from it. And that's what this news item is going to be about. Animals at greatest risk include those that have recently given birth, have open wounds,

• 55:36Speaker 06

  or have undergone surgery, or management procedures like dehorning and branding. The screw worm is obligate. Do you know what that means, Bob?

• 55:46Bob Novella?

  Yeah, I've heard that. What's the, uh, finish the sentence. Uh, means that it's, um,

• 55:50Jay Novella?

  It has to do something.

• 55:51Bob Novella?

  It's an obligate what?

• 55:52Speaker 06

  Yes, it has to feed on living tissue, the opposite of necrophagous.

• 55:57Jay Novella?

  Okay. And, and, you know, where is it now in the world?

• 56:00Speaker 06

  Yeah. So it's been relegated, um, to the, the deeper parts of South America. Um, you know, in non-human, in non-human populations, kind of holding it there. And in Panama, because that's kind of where the efforts, and there's been ongoing efforts for a long time to keep this parasite in check. Uh, because it's super, super nasty. This parasite will kill a cow, for example, in as little as one week. If it gets it, that cow could be dead in seven days and no more than two weeks in many cases.

• 56:36Jay Novella?

  And what can they do? What's the, you know?

• 56:38Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's, again, the parasite will eat your flesh. And, uh, let's see. If left untreated, infestations can disfigure the affected areas, lead to severe bacterial infections, cause sepsis or organ failure, and destroy critical anatomical structures, including eyes, ears, and genitalia.

• 56:58Jay Novella?

  Oh my God. So worm can eat your balls?

• 57:00Speaker 06

  Uh, quite true. It's a fly, but yes. Specifically the larva state of the fly. We have been battling, do you know how long we've been battling this screw, the screw worm and keeping it in check?

• 57:13Jay Novella?

  200 years.

• 57:15Speaker 06

  Over 70 years.

• 57:17Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 57:17Speaker 06

  70 years. And this is why we haven't heard about it because the efforts in the mid 1950s were very effective at pushing this really away from the United States and much of Central America. In the 1950s, the US Department of Agriculture laid the groundwork for a continent-wide assault on the screw worm. Workers raised screw worms in factories, blasted them with radiation until they were sterile, and then dropped sterile adult screw worms by the hundreds of millions at its height weekly over the United States and then further south into Mexico and eventually the rest of North America. The screw worm was eradicated from the US, Mexico, and Central America between 1966 and 2006.

• 58:02Speaker 02

  Eliminated.

• 58:02Speaker 06

  With... What did I say?

• 58:04Speaker 02

  Eradicated. Eradicated is worldwide. Eliminated is from a region.

• 58:08Speaker 06

  Oh, gotcha. Okay.

• 58:10Bob Novella?

  Cool distinction.

• 58:11Speaker 06

  Oh, clever, Steve. Thank you for that correction. I will remember that. Eliminated. And again, there was a barrier in Panama, the Darien Gap, which maybe you've heard of before, and that's basically where it's been held in check for all of that time. But it has broken through and identified in 2023 that it broke through the gap. It's heading back north into Central America. It's been detected in Mexico, and there's a heightening risk now of reintroduction into the United States. To prevent this moving back northward, the US Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, they both

• 58:52Speaker 06

  collaborated with Panama to maintain the biological barrier zone in eastern Panama. So they're doing what they can to reinforce that buffer zone. But again, it has been breached, and there needs to be renewed efforts to keep this parasite away. If you... I saw pictures of this fly, and you know, it looks like a fly. However, it has an orange face, including like orange eyes and an orange, what do you call it, muzzle or mouth area to it, metallic green-blue body. So it has that sort of shiny, you know, almost coat to it. And there are three black stripes on its thorax. If one of these burgers gets

• 59:34Speaker 06

  into you, into you, within three days, there will be thousands of larvae present.

• 59:40Speaker 06

  They position themselves head down with their posterior ends visible at the surface of the wound. And in deep or narrow wounds, the only way that you know you might have this thing is the subtle movements under your skin and things that may be a visible sign. Oh, I'm getting all creeped out here just reading about this. So this is bad. I mean, again, for, for people, for the most part, they get treated in time when they have this infection and few people, you know, are become victims, but it can impact people. It definitely, in fact, impacts animals and especially livestock. This has already started

• 1:00:20Speaker 06

  to cause a little spike in cow and beef prices because of the extra efforts now that they're going to have to go through to, to keep this away. So it's already starting to manifest itself.

• 1:00:34Speaker 02

  Is this, is this where they use ivermectin?

• 1:00:37Speaker 06

  Yeah, they do have medicines and things that, that they can use in order to, in order to get rid of it in time. But again, if, you know, if, if a cow or a herd goes undetected in a few days or within a week, that, that could be the end of the herd. So it's, it kills very quickly and it's not to be trifled with. And there's been an ongoing effort for 70 years to keep this contained and now it has to be redoubled. If you happen to see one of these things, chances are you're not going to hopefully, but there is something called the USDA Screwworm Emergency Hotline, 800-353-7575. It's a

• 1:01:18Speaker 06

  real service. And, you know, like you said, Steve, just one more thing to kind of keep on the lookout for.

• 1:01:24Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, the, the real thing is that this is why we have agencies to deal with it, right? To keep an eye on this, to, to address it, to react to it. And without that, without, you know, agencies funded, populated by scientists, free to do the work that they need to do, these kinds of things are going to run wild. Right?

• 1:01:45Speaker 06

  Right. Can you imagine? I mean,

• 1:01:46Speaker 02

  You shouldn't have to worry about the screw worm. Right? There should be experts to worry about it for you.

• 1:01:51Speaker 06

  Exactly. And if they get defunded, guess what? How many things are going to get past the, past the net? It's, it's, it's unfathomable.

• 1:01:59Speaker 02

  All right. Thanks, Evan. Bob? I always thought that Andromeda one day was going to collide with the Milky Way.

• 1:02:07Bob Novella?

  Yes, and it, you know, it still is. We just are less certain about when that's going to happen. So, yes, Steve, new improved simulations simulations suggest that this Milky Way Andromeda collision is far less certain than previously thought, as Steve and I just discussed. It's no longer almost certain to happen within 5 billion years, which was the consensus since about 2012. As usual, the reasons for this change of thinking is fascinating, to me, anyway. Let's see if you guys agree. This is from the journal Nature Astronomy. The title, "Nonlinear Kinematic Modeling Suggests Stochastic Divergence in Galactic Collision Trajectory." Actually, that's not the title. I made that one up.

• 1:02:49Bob Novella?

  The real title is "No Certainty of a Milky Way Andromeda Collision." Like, what? That's weirdly straightforward and to the point. Okay, let's just roll with that. But I had to come up with some geeky variant, because that's what I'm used to. All right, so I'll start with an apology, maybe to Steve as well, as countless people since 2012. Because I've told many, many people that our Milky Way Galaxy should collide and merge with the Andromeda Galaxy within, in about 4.5 billion years. I was fascinated by that.

• 1:03:20Speaker 02

  It's on my Google Calendar.

• 1:03:21Bob Novella?

  Right.

• 1:03:24Bob Novella?

  They even had a name. They have a name for it, Milcopeda, Milcopedia or something. It's just like, which I'd never really, really care, yeah.

• 1:03:30Speaker 02

  Getting ready for it.

• 1:03:31Bob Novella?

  Didn't really care for that one. But, you know, but hey, that's the game you play with science communication. Even a scientific consensus can be shaken up at times. And of course, that's perfectly fine if that's where the evidence leads, right? When you don't really care where it leads. It's just whatever the evidence, good evidence says. All right, so what happened? Now, we've known since 1912 that the Andromeda Nebula, as it was known at the time, was headed in our direction. And 100 years later, 2012, they did a detailed study based on Hubble Space Telescope data. And that showed that there was a miniscule amount of sideways motion of Andromeda. So a titanic collision between our galaxy and Andromeda in 4.

• 1:04:12Bob Novella?

  5 billion years seemed fairly certain, very, very strong confidence on that. And of course, this would not be fun for the two galaxies. It would trigger massive star births as clouds of hydrogen just kind of smash together. Stars would probably never collide. They're just too tiny in the schemes of things, but these huge hydrogen clouds would certainly be smashing together. There'd be more supernovae. Even our sun could be forced out of its orbit into a different galactic orbit. You know the joke, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria. It would still be kind of cool to have that happen. I'd actually love to see it right now. Now, however, we have better observational data, not only new Hubble data, but we also

• 1:04:55Bob Novella?

  have data from the Gaia telescope, which I think we've mentioned a couple of times. And we also have new mass estimates of the galactic players involved. That new data, that new data was plugged into simulations that considered 22 distinct collision variables, each variable having an impact on the collision. And they ran it 100,000 times. And the new estimates put this chance of collision at, wait for it, only 50% over the next 10 billion years. Only 50%. Now, if you look at the simulations themselves, half the simulations show that our two mighty galaxies, the biggest in our local group of galaxies, these two galaxies fly past each other, separated by about a half a million light years.

• 1:05:39Bob Novella?

  That sounds huge, and it is huge, but it's not too far away, however, to have our dark matter halos interact, right? We had got these dark matter halos around, surrounding our galaxies, you know, beyond, you know, our galaxy is what, 100,000 light years across? Beyond that, we've got these dark matter halos, and they would be interacting. Milky Way and Andromeda, they would be interacting in a way, causing what's called dynamic friction. And that friction would eventually bring the galaxies back around towards each other. Who knows, maybe circle each other a few more times, but eventually causing a merge. So that's half the simulations causing an eventual merge because of this dynamic friction. But most of the other half

• 1:06:22Bob Novella?

  Of the simulations show that we that these two galaxies will be too far away even for this dynamic friction to close the deal, meaning that we could dance together far, far into the now, you know, more unpredictable future, not, you know, we just can't say at this time when they could potentially merge if they're if they're too far away for this dynamic friction to take over. So as of now, that the old prediction of a direct collision in five billion years has what chance of happening to you?

• 1:06:52Speaker 02

  20%?

• 1:06:53Bob Novella?

  1%. 0.01. Evan's closer, 2%. Yes. Only a 2% of happening. So it still could happen. That's how much uncertainty there is.

• 1:07:02Speaker 02

  My answer had a 2 in it, though.

• 1:07:04Bob Novella?

  What?

• 1:07:05Speaker 02

  My answer had a 2 in it.

• 1:07:06Bob Novella?

  Ah, yes. It did. But yeah, in the wrong column, though.

• 1:07:11Bob Novella?

  Columns do matter. So yeah, 2%, 2%. So it could it could still happen, but it's instead of being something like, whatever, what, 95%, 92% certainty back since 2012. Now it's back down. Now it's down to 2%. So now the the critical part of this new uncertainty, oh, my robots fell over. Crap. All right. They're good. They're good. Please leave that in the show.

• 1:07:38Bob Novella?

  So a critical part of this new uncertainty that we seem to be experiencing, it really has nothing to do with the Milky Way or Andromeda, but our biggest satellite galaxies, the Andromeda have has the famous M33 galaxy near it, which actually increases the probability of a merger. On the other hand, our Milky Way has our beautiful smear of a satellite galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud, and that dude is actually pulling us away from a potential merger. So something's pulling it. Something is one satellite galaxy is making it more likely for a merger. The other satellite galaxy is making it less likely. So it's just like we had, just can't really pin this down. And of course, it's more complicated than that, of course. But it's actually fascinating that better data has actually increased the uncertainty, which which

• 1:08:23Bob Novella?

  happens a lot. And it's just like one of the wonderful things about science. So Til Sawalais, who is an astronomer of the University of Helsinki in Finland. And lead author of the study said this, "It's somewhat ironic that despite the addition of more precise Hubble data taken in recent years, we are now less certain about the the outcome of potential collision. That's because of the more complex analysis and because we consider more, we consider a more complete system. But the only way to get a new prediction about the eventual fate of the Milky Way will be with better data, with even better data. So our future is uncertain." Well, actually, it's not our future technically. If there seems to be a high probability that the Earth and even

• 1:09:03Bob Novella?

  the Sun as we know it will probably be gone by the time the Milky Way collides with Andromeda. So we'll be, we'll be long gone. The Sun will just be, you know, a white dwarf, kind of slowly losing heat. So even though we can't yet pin a confident date on that collision, we are, we are very certain that not only will the two biggest members of our local group of galaxies collide, Milky Way and Andromeda, and merge for sure, but all the scores of galaxies bound together gravitationally into our local group will also someday all merge as well into one mega galaxy that was once, or a part of it was at least, was once the home of humanity, but will be, or, you know, maybe our robot descendants will be hanging out, checking things out, but we probably won't be here.

• 1:09:48Speaker 06

  Not the ones that just fell, though.

• 1:09:49Bob Novella?

  Absolutely.

• 1:09:50Speaker 02

  All right, Jay, it's who's that noisy time? I've totally lost track on what the previous noisy was.

• 1:09:55Jay Novella?

  Well, I'll catch, I'll catch you up. Last time, guys, was it three weeks ago, Steve?

• 1:10:00Speaker 02

  Something like that.

• 1:10:01Jay Novella?

  A month, I played this noisy. Any guesses, guys?

• 1:10:16Speaker 06

  Broken didgeridoo.

• 1:10:17Speaker 02

  I would guess some kind of instrument, some kind of, some kind of wind instrument, maybe the flatulator?

• 1:10:28Jay Novella?

  You're gonna play in your retirement, Steve? I'm gonna take up the flatulator, yeah.

• 1:10:33Bob Novella?

  Steve, that reminds me of a fun movie, fun Disney movie, Treasure Planet. Basically sci-fi pirates, which is such a fun movie. And there was an alien who, whose language sound, you know, very, very close to that noise. And they, they called the language, the language had the best name, they called it Flatula, which I loved.

• 1:10:54Jay Novella?

  So it's not the flatulator? I had, I had a listener write in, say, hi, Jay, this week's who's that noisy? Sounds is the sound of a goliath beetle bench pressing 94 pounds.

• 1:11:05Bob Novella?

  Oh. Ayo.

• 1:11:08Jay Novella?

  Triggering, triggers.

• 1:11:10Bob Novella?

  Nice callback.

• 1:11:11Jay Novella?

  And Bob, I remember you because of your meatball NASA shirt. Thank you for teaching me about that. Another listener named BJ Tetrault said, Jay, congrats to you in the Rogues of recent 20 years on the podcast. He says, I was honored to be there for the Thousand Show recording and it was great. I also went to the two DC shows, but wasn't able to make it to Nauticon. I said, this week's noisy sounds like a brass musical instrument, probably a trumpet, that the player is playing pedal tones. I forget the acoustic mechanism, but it's a way to play very low notes. It's probably, it probably has something to do with the resonance of the instrument and the frequency of the player blowing in the mouthpiece. So this is actually iPuppy, by the way, and this is a very good guess, but not all the way there. Then Shane Hillier wrote in, say, Jabels for this week's guess.

• 1:11:56Jay Novella?

  I think it, this person's trying to learn to play a tuba. Again, you're in the vein there, but you are not, you're not all the way. James Lovell wrote in and said, uh.

• 1:12:07Bob Novella?

  James Lovell?

• 1:12:08Jay Novella?

  That's right. Think this week's noisy is someone playing a trombone in such a way that they get the harmonic notes along the bass note. They're likely using a particular embouchure to achieve this. That's somewhat there, but let me give you the, the winner is Mitch Burke for this week's noisy. And Mitch says, I'm sure many musicians have answered this one, but the noise that this week's is a multi-phonic ditty where a person blows a drone note on the instrument and hums a separate melody while blowing. Sounds like a trumpet, probably with a mute on this, in this case, hope this is specific enough. All right, so what we're seeing here, guys, what we're hearing here, this is actually from a listener named Sam Rumble, and Sam said, my old trumpet teacher.

• 1:12:51Jay Novella?

  Is the clip, in the clip, he actually, you know, videotaped his, his teacher. He said, "So hopefully the rights won't be an issue. This effect is created by playing the instrument with your lips and then also singing a note behind, uh, that was within your throat. This means you can play two notes at once, creating some really interesting harmonic effects and resonances between the played and sung notes. In this clip, he is playing a single note on the actual trumpet while only changing the sung notes. You can hear him change them if you listen closely." Yeah, so I mean, you know, there was, there was some definitely, uh, good guesses in here. I think out of all of them, James Lovell and, um, and Mitch got, got the closest. So let me play that again. For those of you who play wind instruments, I was, I'm curious to know how many of you were able to tease this out.

• 1:13:49Jay Novella?

  So I definitely hear the guy humming and you can hear where the notes don't perfectly match up, you know, that there is some like almost dissonance vibrations happening in there. It's really cool. Um, sound waves are pretty damn interesting.

• 1:14:02Speaker 02

  So a multi-phonic trombone.

• 1:14:05Jay Novella?

  Yes, well, it's, it's paired with, it's a drone note on the trombone with the singer, you know, singing a scale that, that is playing with that drone note. It's very cool.

• 1:14:15Speaker 02

  Also known as a flatulater. Okay.

• 1:14:18Jay Novella?

  That's right.

• 1:14:18Speaker 02

  What do you got for this week?

• 1:14:20Jay Novella?

  This week's "Who's That Noise?" was sent in by a listener named Stella Y. I can't answer that question Stella, I don't know. And here it is.

• 1:14:43Jay Novella?

  Wow.

• 1:14:44Speaker 02

  All right, that was interesting.

• 1:14:45Jay Novella?

  All right, so. If you think you know what this week's noisy is, or you heard something cool, you gotta email me at [email protected]. Steve, we have a show coming up.

• 1:14:55Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:14:56Jay Novella?

  The show is gonna be in Kansas.

• 1:14:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:14:59Jay Novella?

  Uh, it's the weekend of September 20th. But this is Saturday, the 20th of September, and we will be doing two shows that day. We will be doing a private show, and we will be doing a special extravaganza. You're gonna love either or both of those shows. Both of those shows will be in the same venue on the same day at two different times. One of them will be like somewhere around noon, and the other one will be at 8:00 P.M. If you're interested, all you gotta do is go to theskepticsguy.org, and you'll see a button on there that will give you a link to buy the tickets.

• 1:15:30Speaker 02

  Thanks, Jay. One very quick email. This comes from Keith from Wales, United Kingdom. And he asks, "I've just discovered your podcast and have started episode one. This means that I now have nine years to catch up on." Uh, try 20, dude, 20 years.

• 1:15:49Jay Novella?

  No, he meant, he meant nine years of listening straight through, non-stop.

• 1:15:53Speaker 02

  "If I listen to episodes while I'm asleep, will I absorb all of the information in the podcast to a level that I can readily recall them in detail?" Uh, no. Okay, let's move on. So if you want a little bit more of a longer answer than that, really, no. You cannot learn while you're asleep. So, but you, there is quote-unquote "learning" that goes on during sleep, but it's implicit learning, you know, it's like memory consolidation and, you know, the brain doing its thing to try to like lock in information.

• 1:16:22Jay Novella?

  Defragging the hard drive.

• 1:16:23Speaker 07

  Yeah, I love that.

• 1:16:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, but, but yeah, you can't like listen to some, there's no conscious learning, right? Your brain is not processing new information.

• 1:16:33Jay Novella?

  Wouldn't that be efficient? Oh, my gosh, that would be incredible.

• 1:16:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, there, you know, and obviously there are stages, there are the, the deep stages of sleep, where actually a lot of the implicit learning stuff is happening. Like, you're in a coma, like, there is no processing of information going on at that time. You are not able to hear, understand, and, and react to stuff. So, no. And in REM sleep, you know, the, your environmental things can influence your dreams, but still, like, you're not really learning during the dreaming. That's a different thing that's going on. Uh, so there'll be no benefit to listening to the show while asleep. You have to be awake when you listen to the SGU. All right, let's go on with our interview.

• 1:17:24Speaker 02

  We are joined now by Emily Schoerning. Emily, welcome to The Skeptic's Guide.

• 1:17:28Speaker 08

  Thanks so much for having me on the show.

• 1:17:31Speaker 02

  So Emily, you are the founder and CEO of something called American Resiliency. Tell us about that. What is American Resiliency?

• 1:17:38Speaker 08

  American Resiliency is a nonprofit. We're a 501(c)(3) and we're an education nonprofit. We're focused on getting actionable, accessible climate projection information to all Americans so that people can understand the changes that are likely to happen to their home and to places that they care about. There's a lot of range in the change nationwide.

• 1:18:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, so this is a very challenging subject for science communicators. We've been talking about this for 20 years, you know, for a couple of reasons. One is that this is one of the few issues where there are real stark differences, you know, among the population, like Americans. Usually, there really isn't much of like a middle consensus like there is on so many issues. We really are polarized. And two, it's like the one issue that does not respond to factual correction of information, right? You could tell a science denier, climate change denier, factual information, it doesn't change their mind. So first of all, do you find that and how do you deal with it?

• 1:18:40Speaker 08

  I think that the playing field has shifted enormously in the last 20 years where it is more common now. The majority of Americans believe that climate change is happening because we're feeling it on the ground. Yale Climate Communication has done a lot of great national survey work that gives us a more up-to-date picture of how people are feeling and accepting climate science.

• 1:19:06Speaker 08

  And I would also push back that climate science is the only issue where people are just like, just say no. I think that we see that sort of perspective on all kinds of stuff, even on if the earth is round, right? And we live in a world where the media is willing to set up two sides' problems in situations where dichotomies really aren't appropriate.

• 1:19:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I agree. Like, there's a false balance issue like that the media deals with. Yeah, I wasn't saying it's not the only issue, but it is one where there's a measurable polarization politically, which is not true of a lot of other issues. It's, you know, because the majority of people tend to fall in the middle. But in any case, the bigger problem, I think, is the fact that, again, we say climate denial, we're not talking necessarily about, you know, that's why people just straight up denying that climate change is happening. There's a whole spectrum of it. You could deny that it's happening, or that it's anthropogenic, or that it's going to cause bad things, or that there's anything we can do about it.

• 1:20:08Speaker 08

  That's true.

• 1:20:09Speaker 02

  And, right? They kind of shift up and down that spectrum. Sometimes, you know, deliberately, like the Martin Bailey Defense, where they just will change their strategy based on the context of the situation. But at some level, at the end of the day, they don't want to do anything about climate change, you know?

• 1:20:26Speaker 08

  You know, I think that that's true, and that it is not a strictly polarized denial. I think that there are quite a few people who are very accepting of climate science, who also deny that there's anything practical that we can or will do about it. I think that this is such a serious existential issue, that people bring a lot of deep psychology, deep emotions to their parsing of the issue. And that it's such a big problem, that there's a natural human response to shut down instead of work the problem. But it's a problem we need to be working.

• 1:21:03Speaker 02

  So what approach do you take in terms of just public education about climate change?

• 1:21:07Speaker 08

  I think that there are a number of nested approaches that I take, based on my communications research. Some of it is using broadly accessible language. I think that when we're inside the world of science, we use a lot of specialized vocabulary that helps us communicate in world that makes us sound completely irrelevant out of the world. Or we may start using vocabulary in specific ways without even realizing how foreign that can sound to a very educated person in another field, not even outside of academia. They could be on the other side of the building, right? So the language is important.

• 1:21:50Speaker 08

  And accessibility isn't just about using words that everyone can understand. It's about emotional engagement. It's about finding ways to connect. And it's about finding ways to translate knowledge into action. I think that the warmth, the connection and the action are all really critical elements of climate communication today.

• 1:22:13Speaker 02

  So give me the example of how you connect it to people.

• 1:22:16Speaker 08

  So when I am talking about really serious change, it's one thing to show numbers and graphs. It's another thing to say, and if we look right here, if we look right at this spot in Texas, this is where we see threats converging. And this is how we saw that start to show up in the derachio that hit Houston last year. And my friend Diane was in Houston. And because she used some of the preparedness techniques we've talked about with American resiliency, she had water when their utility briefly failed. You know, you've got to go from the top down and to people's lived experiences. And I'm really fortunate that people around the nation

• 1:23:01Speaker 08

  share their lived experiences on the ground. Because I'm here in Iowa. You know, I don't see the whole national landscape just through my eyes. I'm glad to be part of the network of people who are paying attention.

• 1:23:13Speaker 02

  How have you dealt with the straight up misinformation that's being pushed by the fossil fuel industry? Or other, or, you know, or, you know, political agents who aren't trying to find the truth? Or for them, it's not an emotional issue. They are deliberately spreading misinformation.

• 1:23:30Speaker 08

  You know, I am not interested in being right. I'm interested in change on the ground. And so is it really worth my time and energy to fight misinformation? Or is it worth my limited time and energy? Because everyone has limited resources to put my work into getting the message out there and to getting work done on the ground. I think that we have wasted too much time in quote unquote debate that's about not taking action and we need to be taking action.

• 1:24:02Speaker 02

  So like, what kind of action do you recommend?

• 1:24:04Speaker 08

  The thing that I am personally fixed on is a small scale habitat creation. But that's because I'm in a situation where I have some access to land. I think that for everybody, there are meaningful actions that you can take beyond reduction of carbon footprints, which we often focus in the environmental movement on what you can stop doing, right? On how you can reduce your consumption habits. I think that we're in a point in our relationship with the earth where refraining from harm is not enough, that we need to be doing active good, that in our communities, wherever we are, we need to be doing things to nurture life,

• 1:24:46Speaker 08

  to make space for life and to put something positive into the world, rather than just make ourselves smaller. So like at my place, I do a lot of small scale prairie restoration. And five years ago, this was a very normal suburban yard. And now it's the place where the monarch migration comes through. I get to have like huge clouds of butterflies in my yard every year. It's amazing.

• 1:25:14Speaker 06

  You have the milkweed plants all ready for them?

• 1:25:17Speaker 08

  I have some milkweed, but I have a lot of butterfly bush. They're really into the butterfly bush.

• 1:25:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I got some of those in my yard, but people have complained that in Connecticut, at least they're technically, they're not native, so they're not great. So yeah, at least in New England, there's a big push for the milkweed. But it's gotta be the right one. There's milkweed, that's the wrong one that they don't like. So even there, you gotta be careful. You can't just go and say, give me a weak milkweed. You gotta do a little bit of research.

• 1:25:43Speaker 08

  There are so many milkweeds and it's wonderful that there's this growing awareness of native plants and about the incredible diversity of native plants. But I think that it to me. Rather than getting caught in analysis paralysis and making sure you do the perfect thing, you just do the best thing you can. And if it turns out that you bought an imperfect milkweed, you can get another one next year. Then you got two milkweeds.

• 1:26:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, don't make the perfect the enemy of the good enough.

• 1:26:12Speaker 08

  Yeah, you know, I think that a lot of people have very good intentions with climate. And of course, climate is a topic that causes people to have enormous anxiety. Anxiety often freezes us. It stops us from taking action. Anything that we can do is generally going to be better than not do attempting a positive action.

• 1:26:34Speaker 02

  So we often have a discussion about at what level should we really be focusing our efforts in terms of trying to, you know, slow down or, you know, avoid the worst outcomes of climate change. Essentially, is it at the individual level, at the community level, at the national level, you know, like the biggest level? And, you know, it's not that there's been any resolution, it's just that we have to have that kind of meta discussion. Like, because there's only, I think there's a lot individuals can do, but there's only so much individuals can do. And everything we do can come to nothing if big companies are still pumping out tons of CO2. So it sounds like from what you're saying, you're

• 1:27:18Speaker 02

  focusing more on the sort of individual community level. Do you get involved at sort of the biggest level as well?

• 1:27:23Speaker 08

  Well, you know, I think that at this time, my nested action is personal, it's related to my community on the ground, and it's related to the nationwide AR community, where people who are doing the work and helping get the message out there in our volunteer network. But the fact that I'm focused on this sort of ground-based, ground-up solution doesn't mean that I'm in opposition to other pieces of this puzzle. I think that we're in a place where if we want to slow this train down, it's an everything problem. It's

• 1:28:02Speaker 08

  an everything-to-the-table problem. And that we also need policy-level action as well as community-up action. But I think a lot of people feel adrift. You know, a lot of people don't know what to do.

• 1:28:20Speaker 08

  And that if you start by making concrete changes around you, changes that you can see in your life, where you can see the abundance and diversity of species increase around you, you can see life coming up around you, that can be a very grounding thing. Because even on days where you're like, this is all for nothing. It's hopeless because there's no policy level change. You can look around you and you can say, well, at least I made a home for this thrush. You know, this metal lark is here because of me. That's a meaningful thing. I think that all life matters and that being able to connect with life is important at this time. We're in a bottleneck event.

• 1:29:04Speaker 02

  Do you find in your research or your experience that if you get people invested at that level, you know, like trying to make their own backyard, you know, more friendly for local species, et cetera, that they then get more engaged at the political level, at the national level?

• 1:29:19Speaker 08

  I think that once a person feels less stuck and starts moving forward, that they can end up going quite far on their journey, that they can become civically engaged, that they can become more involved with diverse national networks, because there is a huge ecosystem of organizations working on climate, right? I think that for a lot of people, being able to feel grounded, knowing what they can do to start, and knowing what their local outcomes are, are things that can be very freeing. Because there is such a huge diversity in local outcomes, even at this next step of

• 1:30:02Speaker 08

  projected warming, which would be hitting about 2C above pre-industrial baseline.

• 1:30:08Speaker 02

  So Emily, so do you have like a shortlist? Like when people ask, hey, what can I do? I want to make the world a better place. What's your shortlist of things that people could think about or do in their, whether they're in an apartment or in a house, or they have property or don't have property? What do you tell people they can do to get involved?

• 1:30:27Speaker 08

  I encourage people to think about what could they be doing directly that will nourish life, that will nourish other living things, and that will nourish community? Because in times of change, it's impossible for any one person to completely provide for their own needs. We need community. And so whether you're engaged in nurturing life or nurturing community, these are good grounded places to start where what grows up around you will make you stronger and help you to the next stage on your journey.

• 1:31:01Speaker 02

  And do you have resources available for people on your, on your website or, or on your, your online presence?

• 1:31:08Speaker 08

  We do. We have a workshop that I think a lot of people would enjoy that can be found through our YouTube channel and through our volunteer network. We have a variety of worksheets and trainings to help people cultivate the resilience on a variety of system levels in their home and in their community. So anyone who's interested in that, I'd love people to get in touch with me. There's a contact form on the website and I'll get you hooked up with the right person and resource.

• 1:31:37Speaker 02

  And where should people go online to get to your stuff?

• 1:31:40Speaker 08

  They should go to AmericanResilience.org.

• 1:31:43Speaker 02

  Okay. Well, Emily, it was really fascinating talking with you. I would really appreciate the work you're doing at American Resiliency, so I encourage our listeners to check it out. Again, as you say, we need to be fighting this at, at absolutely every level.

• 1:31:57Speaker 08

  It's true. This is not a time where we should be fighting amongst ourselves. Anyone who's interested in life should be working together to get as much through this bottleneck as we can.

• 1:32:10Speaker 02

  Okay. Thanks, Emily.

• 1:32:12Speaker 08

  Thank you.

• 1:32:16Speaker 01

  It's time for Science or Fiction?

• 1:32:26Speaker 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. Just three regular news items this week. Back into a more of a normal rotation. You guys ready? Yep. All right, here we go. Item number one: Astronomers have detected the most energetic explosions in the universe. Stars that can release the total lifetime energy of 100 suns over the course of a single year. Item number two: Engineers have developed a 3D printer that can print with three different materials sourced from the same filament spool. And item number three: Researchers have used AI to accurately date ancient manuscripts,

• 1:33:11Speaker 02

  such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, based upon the shape of their characters. Jay, go first.

• 1:33:17Jay Novella?

  Astronomers have detected the most energetic explosion in the universe. Stars that can release the total lifetime energy of 100 suns over the course of a single year. Wow! So they can release that energy?

• 1:33:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, so like, you know, our sun. When I say suns, I mean our sun.

• 1:33:33Jay Novella?

  Yeah, of course. It's not explosion.

• 1:33:35Speaker 02

  Its entire 10 billion year lifespan, released in a single year. A hundred of those.

• 1:33:41Jay Novella?

  It's not an explosion?

• 1:33:42Speaker 02

  Well, that's, you know, explosions are relative.

• 1:33:45Jay Novella?

  Okay.

• 1:33:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's considered, yeah, it's considered an explosion.

• 1:33:48Jay Novella?

  Okay, so, you know, the quick equation in my head is if it's, if it's like, you know, if it's a, what's with the gravity, right? You have the mass, the gravity is what holds everything together. So why would it be able to push out that much energy? You know, and the light is also, you know, when, when that light is created by the sun, it bounces around in the interior of the sun for a very long time before it escapes. Okay, that's confusing, but, you know, I, I've, I learned something from Perry.

• 1:34:17Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:34:18Jay Novella?

  And he said if it has anything to do with bacteria or outer space, the answer's, yes, it can happen.

• 1:34:27Jay Novella?

  Engineers, number two engineers have developed a 3D printer that can print with three different materials sourced from the same filament spool. All right, now this is the one that bothers me when you read it the first time because I know my way around 3D printing. And you're saying that it has one filament spool, but there can be three, print with three different materials sourced from the same filament spool. How can it, how could it print from three different? The defined spool. The spool is basically the, um. The raw material. It's the raw material that's wound up on a spool, just like a, you know, just like thread, except it's. We had it printing at Noticon. Yeah, so that spool. Yeah, but can't you just wind two different materials around it? Yeah, but how would it, because the spool has to spin.

• 1:35:10Jay Novella?

  The fact that they're bringing this up, the fact that they're even bringing up the spool here troubles me because if it's like a, if it's like the same spool, it's very different than two spools of the same exact size, kind of right next to each other that are both spinning, which is how today you would do, you know, do a 3D print with multiple colors. But Steve is saying here, it's the same spool, and that's very particular. It doesn't make any sense, doesn't make any sense to me that you have a spool that has three different filaments, uh, three different materials sourced from the same filament spool. Okay, so maybe, maybe what Steve is saying here is that the filament itself has the three

• 1:35:51Jay Novella?

  different things and the printer head can, can pick which one it's using out of that. Text. Yeah, but then that's so wasteful, it's disgusting. Why is it wasteful? Because it's always gonna not print two thirds of what, of the material. And what happens to that material? Is it melted and discarded? Is it just spooling off, like going off to the side? I don't like it. I don't like this, Steve. It really bothers me. Let me quickly go over three here. Researchers have used AI to accurately date ancient manuscripts such as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Well, okay, fine, that's great. I believe it. I think the 3D printer one is wrong and fake and not. Okay, Kara?

• 1:36:29Cara Santa Maria?

  Um, what if the 3D printer, so most of these are polymers, right? So polymers are plastics, but they're made out of like, you know, kind of going to our material science brain, they're made out of these different compounds. What if it printed three different materials sourced from the same filament using like different levels of heat or different, you know, added some sort of chemical process to it to physically turn the filaments on the spool into three different materials? Right now I'm going to superheat it and now it makes this harder plastic or this softer plastic. I don't know, thinking outside the box here, but that sounds interesting.

• 1:37:10Cara Santa Maria?

  Jay didn't like it. Most energetic explosions in the, I have no idea. This is why Bob's going last. Stars that can release the total lifetime energy of a hundred suns. I mean, but our sun is kind of mid, right? So like, would that surprise me? Yeah, I know it's a single year. Yeah, I know it sounds bananas, but I'm never not surprised. Like, things are always bigger and hotter and more violent than I ever think they will be. So that one doesn't really bother me, especially because our sun is like not anything that's special.

• 1:37:43Jay Novella?

  And special to me.

• 1:37:45Cara Santa Maria?

  I mean, no, it's really special because of, we exist because of it. But yeah, I think it is pretty mid in the universe. And then finally, AI accurately dates ancient manuscripts such as the Dead Sea Scrolls based on the shape of their characters. Okay. So basically looking at a bunch of old manuscripts and the, the actual font, like the, the writing on them. Yeah, I could see that. So like, you know, styles changed over time with how things were written. Yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't be surprised if the written word evolved a little bit with stylistically. So, I think I'm going to go with Jay and say it's the 3D printer one. Like, I think my idea is cool, but maybe they haven't pulled that off yet.

• 1:38:27Jay Novella?

  Okay, Bob.

• 1:38:28Bob Novella?

  All right. So let me go backwards here. The manuscripts, Dead Sea Scrolls, it just seems kind of trivial. Now, remember though, these are, there's no printing press. I mean, these are written. So I'm not sure what's actually changing here. I mean, people write differently. The same language, they could, they all have, everyone's different. It's not like, it's not like, oh, they're using this font and that font didn't become popular until this, this century. Like, So that's kind of weird. It's kind of weird. The shape of the characters. I mean, is it the shape or is it actually, you know, the dialect of the language changing? Uh, I don't know. So there's a lot of questions there. And the second one here with the 3D printer, I mean, I don't know a lot about how three,

• 1:39:12Bob Novella?

  you know, I haven't actually observed 3D printers working that much. But I mean, I can imagine a spool that has three sections to it, each independently spinning compared to the other two or one or whatever. And so you need some of this other material, then you use this side of the spool. You use, and for the another material, you use the other one. But that might be going against the spirit of how this is worded. Where it seems like it's specifically saying that it's creating three different types of material from one spool. And then that's where Kara's interpretation comes in of adding something to a common spool that changes it into a different type of material.

• 1:39:54Bob Novella?

  Uh, it shouldn't be too hard. I don't know if it's increased heat or less heat, but it could be somewhat something else. So that seems reasonable that that would be true too. And, um, the explosions of the universe, I mean, that one could be reasonable as well, depending on how, you know, on the details, of course. It's, I mean, I'm not turned off by this possibility. It's not a knee jerk reaction, but I mean, it just depends on the details. So I'm going to, I'm going to go with the, um, the explosion one. That's, so which one is less reasonable? The manuscript or the 3D printer? All right, I'm going to, Jay's got some good familiarity with it. And Kara, you went with Jay as well, so I'll go with 3D printer fiction.

• 1:40:37Speaker 02

  Okay. And Evan?

• 1:40:38Speaker 06

  Yeah. Last time I was put in this position, I, I went a different direction and failed. Not that that's necessarily having an influence on me this time around, but Jay's.

• 1:40:52Speaker 06

  Passionate, and I mean passionate, defense of the 3D printer being fiction, I think, has won me over on this particular occasion. And therefore, Jay, I side with you and the team. We're all gonna go down together, or raise the cup in victory together.

• 1:41:12Cara Santa Maria?

  Sweet, sweet, sweet.

• 1:41:14Speaker 02

  Okay, well, there's definitely gonna be a sweep in one direction or the other. I guess I'll take these in order. We'll start with number one, astronomers have detected the most energetic explosions in the universe, stars that can release the total lifetime energy of 100 suns over the course of a single year. You guys all think this one is science, so you realize that means that this star, this object, is one trillion times brighter than our sun, right?

• 1:41:38Speaker 06

  I didn't do that math.

• 1:41:39Cara Santa Maria?

  Sure.

• 1:41:40Speaker 02

  A trillion, a trillion, a hundred, 10 billion times 100, right? So that means it would shine as bright as three or four Milky Way galaxies, right?

• 1:41:51Speaker 06

  Well, yeah, I mean, ours is not as bright.

• 1:41:52Bob Novella?

  That seems extravagant, but...

• 1:41:54Speaker 02

  So let me ask you a related question. How bright are the brightest supernova?

• 1:41:58Cara Santa Maria?

  Less bright than that, because you just said they detected the most energetic.

• 1:42:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, but by how much?

• 1:42:05Cara Santa Maria?

  Half?

• 1:42:06Bob Novella?

  Yeah, the classic description is that they're brighter than their entire galaxy, briefly. But that's on the order of, what, weeks?

• 1:42:14Speaker 02

  So a typical supernova, like a big supernova, would release the energy of one sun over the course of a year. They usually only are really like, bright, bright, bright for a few weeks, as Bob says.

• 1:42:26Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:27Speaker 02

  But if you look at their entire, like, that year, you know, because it is a longer term event. Basically, they're releasing the energy of our sun's entire lifetime over a year. So this is 100 times brighter than a supernova.

• 1:42:42Cara Santa Maria?

  Science, science. Yeah, I mean, well...

• 1:42:47Speaker 02

  All right, so.

• 1:42:48Bob Novella?

  Now, you're talking about a gravitational collapse supernova, I assume, right? Not a, not a supernova 1A.

• 1:42:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, yes.

• 1:42:53Bob Novella?

  So, I mean, for, for those giant stars, I mean, they, they are shedding outer layers. So it's really not the entirety of the star that's, you know, that's, so there's, there's less material to, to create the energy. But there's something funky going on here, I'm pretty sure.

• 1:43:08Speaker 02

  All right, so this one is science. This is very cool science. So then the question is, as Bob was getting to, how is this happening? What do you think?

• 1:43:16Bob Novella?

  Is it tidal disruption?

• 1:43:19Speaker 02

  Significant, from what?

• 1:43:20Bob Novella?

  Black hole.

• 1:43:21Speaker 02

  What kind of black hole?

• 1:43:22Cara Santa Maria?

  The lighting black hole?

• 1:43:22Bob Novella?

  Super.

• 1:43:23Speaker 02

  A super massive black hole. So this is what happens when a very large star gets too close to a super massive black hole.

• 1:43:30Bob Novella?

  Super massive, oh, sweet.

• 1:43:32Speaker 02

  And causes it to flame out in a year, burning as bright as a hundred of our sun's lifetime of energy over just one year.

• 1:43:40Bob Novella?

  Oh, man, that is cool.

• 1:43:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, that is cool. All right. These are, these are a new class of objects called ENTs, extreme nuclear transients. Extreme nuclear transients.

• 1:43:53Bob Novella?

  I gotta read on that.

• 1:43:53Speaker 02

  ENTs, oh, yeah, look it up.

• 1:43:55Bob Novella?

  Extreme nuclear transients.

• 1:43:57Speaker 02

  Bit of extreme nuclear transients. All right.

• 1:44:01Speaker 02

  Engineers have developed a 3D printer that can print with three different materials sourced from the same filament spool.

• 1:44:09Bob Novella?

  Better be right, Jay.

• 1:44:10Speaker 02

  You guys all think this one is fiction.

• 1:44:14Jay Novella?

  See, before you say it, can I add one more thing?

• 1:44:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, go ahead.

• 1:44:16Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:17Speaker 02

  Different materials require completely different printer heads that do, you know what I mean? They function differently. It's not like every, everything. Like, there, there's 3D printers that can print a wide variety of stuff, but you have to have a different printer head. So, nope. Probably not science.

• 1:44:34Bob Novella?

  Nice.

• 1:44:34Speaker 02

  Well, what if I tell you that Kara was the closest to reality here?

• 1:44:42Cara Santa Maria?

  Neat.

• 1:44:42Speaker 02

  And that it's the same material on the filament spool, but it's treated in different ways in order to change the physical properties of it, making it functionally a different material? Do you think that that, does that make it plausible for you?

• 1:44:58Cara Santa Maria?

  I think they tried and failed.

• 1:45:00Speaker 02

  No, they, they tried and succeeded.

• 1:45:03Cara Santa Maria?

  But only with two?

• 1:45:04Bob Novella?

  But.

• 1:45:05Speaker 02

  But only with two, but not only that, they did it with two, two materials and also it wasn't a filament spool 3D printer. It was with a different kind of 3D printer. The vat ones, you know, were busy where you just.

• 1:45:21Bob Novella?

  Oh, the lasers.

• 1:45:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:45:24Bob Novella?

  That cross and then they harden where they intersect. Okay. Those are cool, too.

• 1:45:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, that photopolymerization.

• 1:45:33Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:33Speaker 02

  So they, yeah, they basically they're growing the, the 3D printed objects out of this vat of polymer. And what they do is they essentially can make two different materials out of the same vat of material of, you know, source material. One is hard and permanent and the other is, is not permanent. It could be break down very easily. So essentially they're using the hard. So you have one pot of resin, right? And then you treat them with different frequencies of light. And then the hardened resin is your object and the.

• 1:46:11Bob Novella?

  Support, the other parts of.

• 1:46:12Speaker 02

  The other part are the supports that you have to take away anyway. So this is to try to eliminate a step and make it easier to get rid of the supports that you have to put on in order to print it. The scaffolding, the scaffolding.

• 1:46:25Bob Novella?

  Yeah, yeah. Like it. Thank you, Jay.

• 1:46:28Speaker 02

  Um, but yep, that's the fiction. So you guys swept me. And that means that researchers have used AI to accurately date ancient manuscripts such as the Dead Sea Scrolls based upon the shape of their characters is science. And Bob, it's the shape of the characters. It's what I said. I can't make it something else. It's not the, any other aspect of the language. It is just by based upon the writing itself. Well, this reminded me, so I was thinking the same thing though. It was like, how different do, do people make characters over historical time? But remember like colonial America, remember like all the S's look like F's, you know?

• 1:47:04Bob Novella?

  Yes.

• 1:47:05Speaker 02

  So it was different, like just 100, 200 years ago, yeah, people's letters looked different than they look today. So that does not surprise me. Me neither. Now, there's a, there, and this is not, they did the research on the Dead Sea Scrolls, but it's not, obviously, this technique is not limited to that. What they, however, what they need is, as a reference, are dated documents. Right. Now, interestingly, like, some ancient documents that we have, sometimes people put dates on them, and sometimes they don't. Right? And of course, it's very useful, if even one document is dated, like, somebody wrote the date, so we know exactly, you know, when that was written, that sort of anchors that in time. But, right, for the Dead Sea

• 1:47:50Speaker 02

  Scrolls, very few of them are dated. And so, we don't have enough of them in order to do this. So you had, they had to also use, um, what do you think? Oh, radiocarbon. Yep. Radiocarbon. Radiocarbon dating. So they used radiocarbon dating, and the precious few, like, dated documents to create the timeline. And then, they could do, you know, with other documents, they can put them into that timeline based upon the AI analysis of the characters. Hmm. And so, yeah, the hope is that, now that they've done this, that they could apply this to other series of documents, where, you know, we, we want to be able to know, not just, like, where individual documents fit into the sequence, but be able to, like,

• 1:48:34Speaker 02

  create the entire sequence of documents over time. Pretty cool. Hmm. And this is not new, the, the idea of doing, this is paleography, right? So, paleography is doing that very thing, placing writing into its chronology based upon the character shape itself. They're just using AI to do it better, you know? Because it could, it's, obviously, this is what AI is good at, analyzing lots of data and finding patterns, etc. And it was pretty accurate. Yeah, 79%, which is pretty good. Yeah. And when, when it was off, it was only off, it wasn't off by that much. You know, it was, like, off by 30 years, you know, which is not, nothing. So, pretty cool. All

• 1:49:17Speaker 02

  right, well, good job, guys. Jay led the way. Good job, Jay. Thank you, Jay. You're welcome, guys. Appreciate that very much. My gift to you. I'll get you next week. I'll make it up to you. All right, Evan, give us a quote.

• 1:49:27Speaker 06

  A short quote this week. "The history of science is the history of corrected mistakes."

• 1:49:35Speaker 06

  And that was written or said by David Gerald, G E R R O L D, a science fiction writer and novelist. He wrote the script for the original Star Trek episode, The Trouble With Tribbles.

• 1:49:49Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:49:50Speaker 06

  Awesome, awesome. Plus, he created the sleestack race.

• 1:49:56Speaker 02

  Oh, that's awesome.

• 1:49:57Speaker 06

  The TV series Land of the Lost.

• 1:49:59Speaker 02

  The sleestacks.

• 1:50:00Speaker 06

  The sleestacks. Gosh, that was terrible. I mean, it was so camp.

• 1:50:05Speaker 02

  It was very campy. It was wonderfully campy, yeah.

• 1:50:08Speaker 06

  And he also wrote the novelette, The Martian Child, which won the Hugo Award and Nebula Award. Hugo. Nice. So, yeah, the history of science is the history of corrected mistakes.

• 1:50:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. Because pretty much everything we thought, whatever, 2,000 years ago, was wrong. And we've had to correct everything we thought we knew about the universe.

• 1:50:30Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:50:31Speaker 02

  And we're still doing it.

• 1:50:32Speaker 06

  And we're still doing it.

• 1:50:33Speaker 02

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

• 1:50:36Speaker 06

  Thanks, Steve. Sure.

• 1:50:38Speaker 02

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

• 1:51:22Speaker 07

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