The Skeptics Guide #1056 - Oct 4 2025

Quickie with Bob: Galaxy Wave; News Items: Redrawing the Human Family Tree, Fig Wasps, ALS May Be Autoimmune, Complex Chemistry on Enceladus, Genius Act; Who's That Noisy; Your Questions and E-mails: Kea Intelligence; 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

  Your joints help you keep doing what you love. Give them daily support with Ancient Nutrition Multi-Collagen Protein. Two scoops deliver 20 grams of collagen from 10 types, including clinically studied eggshell membrane. Plus, vitamin C and probiotics to support skin, hair, nails, and joint health. Visit ancientnutrition.com/protein and use code PROTEIN for $15 off. That's ancientnutrition.com code PROTEIN.

• 0:30Speaker 01

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

• 0:37Jay Novella?

  Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Thursday, October 2nd, 2025, and this is your host, Stephen Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella.

• 0:47Speaker 03

  Hey, everybody.

• 0:47Jay Novella?

  Cara Santa Maria.

• 0:49Speaker 03

  Howdy.

• 0:49Jay Novella?

  Jay Novella.

• 0:50Speaker 03

  Hey, guys.

• 0:51Jay Novella?

  And we have a special guest, Lee Mossbacker. Lee, welcome to The Skeptic's Guide.

• 0:55Speaker 04

  Thank you for having me.

• 0:57Jay Novella?

  And Lee, you're joining us because you are a patron of the show, and you just mentioned to us that you've been listening to us for 20 years. Is that really true?

• 1:07Speaker 04

  Well, when did you start? I think it was like 2005 or 2008 or so.

• 1:10Jay Novella?

  2005, we started in 2005.

• 1:12Speaker 04

  I was part of the forums for the longest time and a listener on my iPod than my iPhone. So, yeah.

• 1:19Jay Novella?

  Okay, cool. Because we only had like 200 listeners back in 2005.

• 1:24Speaker 04

  Well, I did win one of the, who's that noisy, I think.

• 1:26Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, we could go back into the email archives. That's amazing.

• 1:31Jay Novella?

  Yeah, to make it clear, just so people that are listening know, so you have to be a patron at the $200 level or higher in order to get that. That's why we don't have that many people who actually get to do this. So, first off, Lee, I just want to thank you for being an awesome supporter of the SGU during these dark times. We need, we need support because, you know, we are trying to expand our reach, and we're starting new podcasts and, you know, adding in more live stream content, all to in some way help chip a little bit away at the amount of insanity that's going on.

• 2:09Speaker 03

  So you may notice that Evan's not here this week. That's mainly because his internet is down. We tried to troubleshoot, but he had other things going on too, so it just wasn't going to work this week. But that's okay, because we got Lee to take his place.

• 2:21Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, yeah, it's Yom Kippur is just starting, so.

• 2:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:25Cara Santa Maria?

  I don't know if you're supposed to say happy. Yeah. I don't know if Yom Kippur is a happy holiday, but.

• 2:29Speaker 03

  Aren't all Jewish holidays not happy holidays?

• 2:32Cara Santa Maria?

  No, no, I think that Rosh Hashanah is pretty happy.

• 2:35Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 2:36Cara Santa Maria?

  So, but I never know which ones to say like, "Happy this," or it's like, "And a good Yom Kippur to you." I'm not sure.

• 2:43Speaker 03

  We need to talk about Jane Goodall.

• 2:47Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, I cannot, I mean, I can believe it. She was, what, 91, 92?

• 2:51Speaker 03

  91, 91.

• 2:52Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, that's.

• 2:53Speaker 03

  Oh, boy. Yeah, she died yesterday, October 1st. So, most people here know who Jane Goodall was. She was the, essentially famous for being a primatologist, and she transformed, single-handedly transformed, our understanding of chimpanzees with an over, I think, six decades of field research, living with chimpanzees. Again, really changing our understanding of how human, really, chimpanzees are, how sophisticated their behavior is, their social structures, et cetera. And she also became a very, very spoken advocate for wildlife, for animal rights, also for

• 3:37Speaker 03

  mitigating climate change, et cetera. Very active right up until the end.

• 3:41Cara Santa Maria?

  You know something really interesting about her that I didn't realize? So, you know, I think about Jane Goodall and Diane Fossey, and like, these women naturalist scientists who spent all this time in the field doing incredible work. And I think famously Diane Fossey was a scientist for sure, but she wasn't a scientist in the traditional sense, as she wasn't like, an academic scientist. Jane Goodall, she earned her PhD from Cambridge in 66. She was admitted to her PhD program in 62, but did not have an undergrad degree.

• 4:14Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 4:15Cara Santa Maria?

  But they, they accepted her because she had done so much important field work already with chimps. So this was like, an era of women having a hard time, right, getting into these programs or getting any power within these programs, and just saying, "Screw it, I'm just gonna go do the work."

• 4:30Speaker 03

  Right.

• 4:31Cara Santa Maria?

  Which is incredible.

• 4:33Speaker 03

  And, you know, to his credit, she had a lot of support from Louis Lickie. You know, basically, he, I think, got her started on her.

• 4:40Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I mean, and that's very often what had to happen.

• 4:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:45Cara Santa Maria?

  Women had to find doors, you know, find, find someone, find help to open that door, and push through it and never look back. And she, obviously, her body of work is incredible.

• 4:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, I agree. Absolutely incredible. So, I remember I was reading a science fiction book about uplifting chimpanzees into sentience.

• 5:05Bob Novella?

  Alaa Bryn, David Bryn.

• 5:07Speaker 03

  I think, I think it might have been Bryn. And the chimpanzees, like, their expletive was "good all." Like, that's what they would say.

• 5:14Bob Novella?

  Very cool. My god, I love it. I forgot about that.

• 5:18Cara Santa Maria?

  That's hilarious.

• 5:19Bob Novella?

  Yeah, that's funny. I wonder if that book holds up.

• 5:20Speaker 03

  Nice touch.

• 5:21Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 5:22Speaker 03

  Okay, so, Bob, you're gonna start us off with a quickie.

• 5:26Bob Novella?

  Thank you, Steve. This is your quickie with Bob. I love finding quirks to the shape of cosmological objects that, that we used to think were relatively simple, right? The iconic example is the Earth. It's a sphere, right? But no, it's not, it's not just a sphere. It's an oblate spheroid, like, if you squished it so that the equator bulges out a bit, right? But then, beyond that, and even more accurate shape to the Earth might be described as a lumpy geoid, due to those, you know, all these irregularities to the shape caused by the gravitational field differences, oceans, land masses, all that stuff. So, our galaxy is similar. For years, growing up, it was the Milky Way is a spiral, right? But then

• 6:07Bob Novella?

  it became a barred spiral with a rotating bar going through the center. And the classic spirals of our galaxy emerge then from, from that bar. Also, if you could see gamma rays and X-rays, which would be quite cool, I think, you would see, and you were looking at the Milky Way, you would see massive lobes of radiation billowing above and, and below the core of the galaxy. So now, I'll be, I'll be talking about another twist, a galaxy-wide wave rippling through our galaxy.

• 6:35Speaker 03

  Bob, can I, before you go on to that?

• 6:37Bob Novella?

  Sure, sure.

• 6:38Speaker 03

  You could also say that our galaxy is twisted. It's not perfectly flat.

• 6:43Bob Novella?

  Yep. It's not, it's definitely not a pizza shape, as I came across in some of this research. So yeah, there's even more little nuances and quirks to the shape of our galaxy. But the biggest new reveal about the shape of the galaxy now is this galaxy-wide wave rippling through it. Billions of stars just bobbing essentially up and down like a galaxy-sized stadium, right, of a crowd doing the wave. It's kind of like what's happening at a huge scale in the Milky Way. This was discovered from the Gaia Space Telescope. Gaia mapped the motions of millions of stars to reveal this pattern. And it did this before it pulled the Steve and retired earlier this year. So it's a last interesting discovery by the Gaia Space Telescope.

• 7:26Bob Novella?

  The reach of this phenomenon extends from 30,000 light-years to 65,000 light-years from our galactic center. So it's extremely widespread. And we're not sure what causes this wave, but there are models, and those models point to the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy, which may have passed through the Milky Way multiple times, hundreds of millions of years ago, creating these ripples that we're detecting now. Kind of like a huge rock being repeatedly dropped into a galaxy-wide pond. So fascinating stuff. Look it up online. This has been your Rippling Quickie with Bob. Back to you, Steve.

• 8:03Speaker 03

  All right. Thanks, Bob. Lee, before we go on with the regular news items, tell us a little bit about yourself.

• 8:08Speaker 04

  For sure. So I guess my background, I'm from Ohio. I grew up on a farm, and I would say that, you know, my early life was tumultuous. And I would say that physics and Star Trek saved my life.

• 8:22Cara Santa Maria?

  Ooh.

• 8:23Speaker 04

  And so, yeah, I got really interested in physics and applied to university. Got accepted, did four years at a local university, took a break to start a company, sold that company. And then went back to get a PhD.

• 8:37Speaker 03

  Nice.

• 8:38Speaker 04

  And from that, um, got into investing and running a hedge fund, doing some startup investments. And that's what I've been working on the last 20 years.

• 8:47Cara Santa Maria?

  Wow.

• 8:48Speaker 03

  What was your PhD in specifically?

• 8:50Speaker 04

  It was more material science. It was physics, but I studied a, a material system called zinc oxide. And, um, was the first to create a P-type conductivity in that material.

• 9:01Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay.

• 9:01Speaker 04

  Yeah. Had a lot of, um, applications to like solar detectors, uh, ultraviolet lasers and things like that.

• 9:08Speaker 03

  And tell us how the SGU contributed to saving your life.

• 9:12Speaker 03

  Assuming that it did, so.

• 9:15Speaker 04

  You joke about that, but I would say that the SGU taught me more about scientific philosophy and critical thinking than eight years in grad school.

• 9:23Cara Santa Maria?

  Wow.

• 9:24Speaker 03

  So is that tell, is that a good thing?

• 9:31Speaker 04

  Definitely the American education system.

• 9:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. Obviously we talk about this all the time where it doesn't necessarily teach you critical thinking. I know, I know brilliant scientists who have these glaring blind spots in their metacognition because it's not systemically taught, systematically taught, you know what I mean? Which is a real, I think a real lack in our education system.

• 9:53Cara Santa Maria?

  Absolutely. And it totally depends on which program you're in, which professors.

• 9:58Speaker 03

  Your mentor. It's really mentor dependent.

• 10:01Cara Santa Maria?

  Totally. Some people really do get a great education in that area and some people do not. It, it bums me out that very often, most science degrees in the US, most, not all, uh, sorry, doctoral degrees are PhDs, which is a doctor of philosophy and very few people actually get any philosophy training.

• 10:18Speaker 04

  Got zero philosophy training. All of it was from SGU.

• 10:21Cara Santa Maria?

  Wow.

• 10:22Speaker 04

  I don't think I heard Popper's name until 2005 or 2006.

• 10:26Cara Santa Maria?

  Wow.

• 10:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's, you, you would think the, the philosophy of science would be one of those 101 things you would learn when you start to study science, but you know, you learn biology, chemistry, physics, but not the philosophy, not how to do science or the philosophy of science. They teach it like in fifth grade, but so poorly that it doesn't really have any effect in my opinion on the general public's understanding of science.

• 10:49Cara Santa Maria?

  I took a wonderful philosophy of natural science class in, in my, uh, training, but that's because I was a psychology major and I was a philosophy minor. I think the philosophy of natural science class was offered in the philosophy department and didn't offer any. Science credit, and then my philosophy of psychology in the mind class was dual credit for philosophy and psychology. Like, come on, natural sciences.

• 11:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:13Cara Santa Maria?

  Let your students take this class, even if it's in the philosophy department, and give them credit towards their degree.

• 11:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, I agree. All right. I'm gonna talk to you guys about redrawing the family tree of humans, which is something that happens quite frequently. Because, you guys have heard the muddle in the middle? Have you ever heard that term? No, what is that? Yeah. Yeah, so we know a pretty high-resolution picture of very recent human evolution, and we've got, we've really pieced together a lot of sort of the earlier hominid evolution. But there's this, this zone about a million years ago where we still don't, we still have a lot of specimens, and we, and there's, and a lot was happening, too. That's, there's a combination of, it was, seems to have been a very, a period of rapid

• 12:03Speaker 03

  diversification for which we have few fossils. And so, we, there's just a lot we don't know about it, right? And so, but a number of years ago, a few years ago, these two fossils were discovered in China. The Yunxian I and Yunxian II fossils, these are humans, right? They're homo whatever, and they're fairly complete, but they were in not great condition. Because most, you know, fossils are crushed, right? I mean, we don't find them in perfect shape in, in the ground. We find them in compressed fragments. Dirt and rock weigh a lot, you know? They weigh a lot. It's pressing down for millions of years.

• 12:48Speaker 03

  And they've been there for a long time. So, one thing I did, I didn't, if I knew this, I'd forgot it, but what I didn't know explicitly was that there's a different types of distortion that could happen to fossils. Oh, cool. The Yunxian I fossil had what's called plastic distortion, meaning that pressure over a very long period of time has actually changed the shape of the bone, which is bad, right? That's the, that's the bad, very, that's like the worst kind of distortion. Like, you could imagine, like, it didn't just crush a skull fragment, it actually flattened it out.

• 13:27Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 13:28Speaker 03

  Because it changed over time due to the, due to the pressure on it. The Yunshian II skull didn't have any of that plastic distortion. It had a lot of fracturing and then displacement of the fragments. That's an easier type of distortion to fix because theoretically you could just reassemble the fragments. A big puzzle, a big 3D puzzle. Yes. Now, the new news item is, again, these skulls, Yunshian I and II were found years ago, but paleontologists have used new technology to examine them. And especially the II skull, because that's, again, in better shape. Although they did use some information from Yunshian I to fill in a couple of gaps here and there, but most of the information came from II.

• 14:12Speaker 03

  And it's essentially using CT scanning and a specific technique called CT segmentation and fragment realignment. Ooh. So they use a CT scan to take highly detailed X-rays of the fossil, you know, in its natural state, and then identify the fragments and then digitally realign them. A little AI involved there? I would imagine so, but it didn't explicitly say that, but at least not that I saw. So that allowed for a much better reconstruction than we have been able to do in the past. In the past, one thing you have to understand is like when we were just physically trying

• 14:57Speaker 03

  to piece together fossils, and again, there may be some plastic distortion, there's a lot of fracturing, there's crushing, there's a lot of guesswork involved, you know? More than you might think, you can make those pieces fit together in different ways. But unfortunately, when you're talking about, again, like this phase of human evolution, whether or not that skull is one species or another species depends upon subtle anatomy of the skull.

• 15:28Speaker 03

  And so, just doing a regular reconstruction, paleontologists were unable to answer the question, which clade should be put this skull into? Because it all depends on how you put those pieces together, and it's a judgment call. There was no objective way to answer that question. But with this technique, of a CT segmentation and fragment realignment, they were able to do such a high-quality reconstruction that they could answer that question. That they could say, these subtle anatomical features place the skull into this clade rather than that clade.

• 16:04Bob Novella?

  Nice.

• 16:06Speaker 03

  Having said that, what does it tell us? So, the skull, Yunxian 1 and 2, right? They, with this reconstruction, they believe that they fit into the clade Homo longi, L-O-N-G-I, which is a sister clade of Homo sapiens. So, the way the branching order goes is that there was a common ancestor of all of the modern Homo clades. Basically, Neanderthal, longi, and human. That split off into Neanderthals in one branch, and then sapiens and longi in the other branch.

• 16:51Speaker 03

  And then they quickly branched off from each other. And this goes back 1.2 to 1.1 million years ago, when those two branchings occurred.

• 17:02Bob Novella?

  So, that's kind of like, it's kind of like the common ancestor for gorillas, chimps, and humans. Where we, the gorillas branched off first from the common ancestor, and then chimps and humans, Homo sapiens, hung out together for a while, and then they branched.

• 17:18Speaker 03

  Same relationship. So, 1.2-ish million years ago, Neanderthals split off. 1.1 to 1 million years ago, longi and sapiens split off from each other. And then the Denisovans, you guys know the Denisovans? They're probably in the longi clade, the Homo longi. And Homo longi is basically Asian humans. That's, they existed in Asia.

• 17:43Speaker 03

  Um, which is why these skulls were found in China, right? Mm-hmm.

• 17:45Bob Novella?

  Okay, what was the common ancestor, though, between?

• 17:48Speaker 03

  Well, we don't know. That's the muddle, that's the muddle in the middle. That we don't have that common ancestor of all three.

• 17:54Bob Novella?

  That's huge, man. How the hell do we have that?

• 17:57Speaker 03

  But that happens so much in evolution.

• 17:59Bob Novella?

  But this is important. This is us.

• 18:03Speaker 03

  But yeah, again, a lot's happening, but clearly, very quickly, there's, you know, there's, there's probably so many subbranches that we haven't found so far. And it was happening very quickly and also in isolated, small populations, almost by definition, right?

• 18:16Bob Novella?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:17Speaker 03

  So that, what this means, so I didn't answer, I didn't state a very important fact here. How old is this skull? How old do you think this skull is? Ew.

• 18:25Bob Novella?

  A billion years old.

• 18:27Speaker 03

  No, of course not.

• 18:28Bob Novella?

  That's a little bit too much.

• 18:29Speaker 03

  Uh, 400? It's about 1 million years old. Oh, wow. It's just about 1 million years old. So it's pretty much right at the branching point of Homo sapiens and Homo longi. Uh, and they place it in the Homo longi branch. And in fact, this skull is establishing when that branch took place. That was a long time ago. I didn't realize it was that far ago. So what this means is that the Homo sapiens clade is about twice as old as we thought it was. Yeah, wow. The prior dating was that, that last split into Homo sapiens into a clade we would call Homo sapiens took place about 500,000 years ago.

• 19:13Speaker 03

  This new classification of the skull suggests that, nope, the Homo sapiens clade branched off 1 million years ago. That's nuts. That is nuts.

• 19:24Bob Novella?

  What the hell?

• 19:24Speaker 03

  Yeah. Now-

• 19:25Bob Novella?

  So we're, if we're that much older, what the hell took us so long to get where we're at?

• 19:29Speaker 03

  That's a good question.

• 19:30Bob Novella?

  A million years.

• 19:31Speaker 03

  But hang on, these are still archaic humans we're talking about. Even though they're technically Homo sapiens, they look different than we do, right? They are, they are- I think we would think they were apes.

• 19:43Cara Santa Maria?

  If we saw them in the wild.

• 19:45Speaker 03

  No, no, no. If you saw.

• 19:46Cara Santa Maria?

  I think so. Even when I see Lucy, it looks like a very human, like ape.

• 19:50Speaker 03

  Well, we are so far away from Lucy.

• 19:52Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, that's true. Because you're talking about that, that split.

• 19:55Speaker 03

  The cliche is that the conventional wisdom among paleontologists is if you saw a Neanderthal in the New York subway station, dressed in modern clothes, you would not.

• 20:05Cara Santa Maria?

  Say Larry.

• 20:06Speaker 03

  Twice. Yeah, you would not, you would not necessarily notice them. So with these, like with Homo sapiens and Homo longi, maybe their eyebrows were a little bit generous, their forehead sloped back a little bit more, and they had maybe a little bit more elongated occipital thing. That's what you would notice. And there's a lot of little real subtleties that only a paleontologist would notice.

• 20:27Bob Novella?

  Could they have a sagittal crest?

• 20:28Speaker 03

  No, no, nothing like, no, that's, that's only in the robustest branch of the Australopithecines. That's like a couple of, that's millions of years more separate from us.

• 20:36Bob Novella?

  That anchored what the powerful chewing muscles, right?

• 20:38Speaker 03

  The chewing muscles, yeah. That's only the robust Australopithecines, basically.

• 20:43Cara Santa Maria?

  It looks like Australopithecines is three to two million. But this is nuts that this is all, already. I guess that's why I was thinking, already one million years ago, how human did they really look?

• 20:53Speaker 03

  Yeah. Again, that's what this is telling us, that this was one million year old skull, was very close to the branch point of the Homo sapiens clade.

• 21:02Cara Santa Maria?

  I guess, though, we were probably still covered in hair at that point, right?

• 21:05Speaker 03

  No, probably not.

• 21:06Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, you don't think so? Okay.

• 21:08Speaker 03

  You know, once we started living in groups, you know, wearing furs and stuff like that, there would have been selective pressure.

• 21:14Bob Novella?

  Pressure against it.

• 21:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, against that. We don't know for sure, but I, I, not hairy like apes are hairy, not like chimpanzees are hairy. But that's one of those things that it's hard to know for sure.

• 21:25Bob Novella?

  Don't we have more hair follicles than gorillas?

• 21:28Speaker 03

  I think it's the same. It's just how big and thick the hair is.

• 21:31Bob Novella?

  Yeah, okay.

• 21:33Speaker 03

  So, interesting. Yeah, I know, I've, this is, I've studied human evolution in college. I've been following it very, very closely, constantly redrawing the tree in my head with new information coming in. And this is a big change. This is a pretty big change.

• 21:46Bob Novella?

  It's getting very complicated.

• 21:47Jay Novella?

  No DNA made it, right?

• 21:48Speaker 03

  No, not a million. I think a million is too much. It's like, we have, we have Neanderthal DNA, but it's from like forty, fifty thousand years ago.

• 21:57Cara Santa Maria?

  Are any of these stuck in amber?

• 22:02Speaker 03

  Wouldn't help, doesn't, that doesn't-

• 22:03Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I know.

• 22:03Speaker 03

  That doesn't stop the DNA decay clock. It has a half-life, you know?

• 22:07Cara Santa Maria?

  Any of these stuck in the Jurassic Park movie?

• 22:09Speaker 03

  Uh, so interesting, and this is not, this is not the end, obviously, and even the, the implications of this fossil, you know, is, will continue to be debated. Cause again, it's really coming down to some subtleties of anatomy, and exactly how the reconstruction was made. So this is a pretty, this is the best reconstruction we have so far, cause we're using new technology. By the way, I have multiple news items queued up about fossils where this technique is sort of making huge impact- Oh, nice. On our ability to, yeah, so, and one thing though, like, I also was looking at a news item about, um, again, another specimen that's at the beginning, the branch point

• 22:54Speaker 03

  of snakes and, and lizards. So pretty much the same story, but for snakes and lizards. And again, it took 10 years, it took 10 years to do this analysis of that fossil. This CT- 10 years? 10 years, so this is a very detailed kind of reconstruction that we can do with the CT scanning. But it takes time, but the results are worth it, you know, because it's really transforming our understanding of some very key points in evolution. Alright, let's move on. Jay, are there wasps in my figs?

• 23:26Jay Novella?

  Alright, so before I, I get to, get to it, I gotta ask you guys a question.

• 23:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:30Jay Novella?

  Well, I wanna ask Lee a question. Lee, can you hear me? Yes. Okay.

• 23:35Speaker 03

  That's the question.

• 23:37Jay Novella?

  And you're sitting down, correct? I am. Alright. Now be honest, have you ever eaten a wasp? No, I don't think I have. How sure could you possibly be? I would say 30% sure. I would like to hear from everybody, have you ever heard, first, have you ever heard of someone saying that figs contain dead wasps?

• 23:58Cara Santa Maria?

  No.

• 23:59Speaker 03

  Not at all.

• 23:59Cara Santa Maria?

  Is that like a-

• 24:00Jay Novella?

  Oh, not really. Seriously?

• 24:02Cara Santa Maria?

  Is that like a comment?

• 24:03Speaker 03

  Oh, no, I've never heard of that.

• 24:05Jay Novella?

  Now I'm terrified.

• 24:08Bob Novella?

  But to be fair, eating fig figs is rare, in my experience. Usually it's like fig Newtons, but just regular figs. It's not something that I eat often. What about figgy pudding? No.

• 24:21Jay Novella?

  Well, you know, this is a news item. This is, I chose this news item, guys, because a lot of people out there have heard this urban legend. Like, it's something that people just say that if you're eating a fig, in order for the fig to exist, a wasp had to crawl inside the fig.

• 24:38Bob Novella?

  What?

• 24:39Jay Novella?

  And I literally am shocked that none of you have heard this. Like, I've known this for a really long time. Because I was gonna ask you whether or not you think it's true. So do you guys, would you guys believe this? If somebody said to you, "Hey, did you know that fig you're eating, like, a wasp had to crawl in there for the fig to exist?" Do you think that's true or false? I don't think I would buy that.

• 24:59Bob Novella?

  Yeah, I'm leaning towards false. I mean, unless I hear the reason. What reason could there be requiring the death, the suicide of a wasp to create, for a fig to even exist? What does it need? Is it some sort of?

• 25:13Jay Novella?

  Well, there's an answer.

• 25:15Bob Novella?

  Post-parasite scenario? What's going on?

• 25:17Jay Novella?

  I'm glad, I'm glad in one way, because I'm gonna tell you guys all about something that you, you know, first off, you didn't know about the urban legend, and second of all, you don't know any of this, and it's really cool, and it's a really great example of how complicated nature actually is. So first, let me explain to you what a fig is, right? So you guys would think, what, it's a fruit, right? So botanically speaking, it is a fruit, but it's, in the usual sense, you could say that a fig is called a synconium. This is a hollow, fleshy structure packed with hundreds of tiny flowers on the inside. I bet you didn't know that about figs. No. So what looks like, you know, smooth, self-contained...

• 25:59Jay Novella?

  You know, fruit flesh that's inside, it's really an enclosed floral chamber. Interesting, okay. I think is just fascinating, you know, when you, when you open up a fig, you know, you're like, there's the fruit and it's sweet, you know, and it, but it isn't, it isn't simply just that. The design here sets the stage for essentially one of the most interesting and peculiar relationships in the natural world, with no exaggeration. So now we've got the fig wasp. So for tens of millions of years, maybe old enough for the, the creatures that Steve was describing to live during, when this was, you know, when this was first coming to be. Figs and fig wasps, they co-evolved and they have a really tight relationship.

• 26:44Jay Novella?

  So about 850 fig species exist and almost every single one of them has a matching wasp species specifically that serves as its pollinator. So the wasp, they depend on the figs for reproduction and the fig depends on the wasps to carry pollen from other synconium, from one synconium to another, right? You know, essentially the same way as, as other flowers need the same activity, like bees do it, other insects do it, there's lots of different ways that it's carried out. But in the fig world, a wasp really is the only thing that can do it.

• 27:20Cara Santa Maria?

  Birds do it, bees do it, even electric.

• 27:25Jay Novella?

  So Kara, what is this called, by the way? Does anybody know what this is called?

• 27:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Uh, synergy?

• 27:30Jay Novella?

  It's called biological mutualism.

• 27:32Cara Santa Maria?

  Mutualism, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

• 27:34Jay Novella?

  Yep.

• 27:34Speaker 03

  And why isn't it just symbiosis?

• 27:36Jay Novella?

  Because they use more complicated terms to make it sound important.

• 27:41Jay Novella?

  This one though, this particular biological mutualism has a really wacky twist, which is the fun part. So when a female wasp finds a receptive fig, the wasp will crawl inside through a small opening called the osteal and it's almost as if, you know, these two things evolved to interact with each other. That little hole and that tiny little wasp, I don't know, Steve, God of the gaps, whatever, man, it's happening, you know? So one of the two things, one of two things can happen. If she enters a male fig, which is called a capra fig, she lays her eggs in some of the flowers that are inside and then her offspring hatch, they mate and then they eventually,

• 28:22Jay Novella?

  uh, you know, get out and they create a new generation of female, of the females that fly off and they repeat the cycle. If she enters a female fig, which are the edible kind, this is an important delineation here, things don't go as well for the wasp, in one sense. So she pollinates the internal flowers, like she's crawling through the hole, her wings and her antennae usually get stripped off. She gets in deep enough to pollinate the internal flowers, but she can't lay her eggs, because the flower styles in the female fig are much longer than the ones in the male fig. So the female wasp has something called an ovipositor, and this is a slender, tube-like organ, you might have seen some insects with these, they use them to insert eggs into the

• 29:07Jay Novella?

  ovules of the flowers. And that's essentially like where it would put the eggs in order for it to grow if it went into a male fig. But because the size of the flowers inside the female fig are really long, she can't reach the right spot. So what happens is, she dies inside, and she leaves behind, of course, her body, but, you know, no eggs or anything like that. Okay, so what happens next? Because here we are with the edible figs, the female figs, with a dead wasp on the inside. Somebody eats the wasp. So, is that your guess, Steve? Well, they're nice and tangy, I hear. Yeah, they have a little bit of tang to them. Anybody else have any guesses of what happens next here?

• 29:47Cara Santa Maria?

  To the wasp?

• 29:48Jay Novella?

  To everything, just this whole situation. You have the dead female wasp in a dead, in a living female fig.

• 29:57Cara Santa Maria?

  The fig probably processes the protein somehow.

• 30:00Jay Novella?

  Kara, I love you in so many ways.

• 30:03Cara Santa Maria?

  It's probably, yeah, it's carnivorous until it isn't, until we eat it.

• 30:07Jay Novella?

  Everybody take note of how smart Kara is. So the question is, if the wasp dies inside the fig, does this mean that people are actually eating insect corpses every time they bite into one? And I have to tell you, I've eaten some straight-up female figs in the last few years of my life, and I have had this bouncing around in my head, like, alright, I am sure I eat lots of insects, like, all the time. You know, it's hard to avoid in the modern world. Yeah, but I don't give a fig.

• 30:36Cara Santa Maria?

  Gotta fill in that Evan.

• 30:38Speaker 03

  Gotta fill in it for Evan, yeah.

• 30:40Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 30:42Jay Novella?

  All right, but this even is more complicated because if you're asking the question, do people eat wasp corpses inside of the figs that they're eating? The answer depends on the kind of fig. So here's another layer of complexity. Most of the figs you see, for example, in American supermarkets, the mission fig, the Kadota, the brown turkey, these are all Parthenocarpic, which means they don't require pollination at all. These figs ripen and develop without any wasp ever entering into a tiny hole and stripping parts of its body off and dying, right? So the majority of the figs people eat never had a wasp in them in the first place. When I read this, I was very relieved. Not that it would change my life in any way,

• 31:24Jay Novella?

  but it just made me feel good that I'm not eating wasps of any kind.

• 31:28Cara Santa Maria?

  But I pretty much only eat Majul. No, those are dates. Oh, yeah, I don't know what kinds of figs I eat. When do people eat figs?

• 31:35Speaker 03

  I grew figs on my deck. I grew for several years.

• 31:39Cara Santa Maria?

  Do they have wasp corpses?

• 31:40Speaker 03

  It died over last winter. I don't know why that happened. But that type of fig tree does not require pollination.

• 31:45Jay Novella?

  Okay, so you had more of a, you know, more of the safe ones to eat.

• 31:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:49Jay Novella?

  Okay, so.

• 31:50Speaker 03

  Not that the other ones are unsafe. I mean, that's not what we're implying here. But it didn't require a little wasp to crawl inside and die.

• 31:55Jay Novella?

  So of course, there is an exception to that list because the Kelly Mirna figs do require pollination by a fig wasp. And in those cases, it's possible that a female wasp does die inside. But there's even more detail here. And this is the part that Kara had some insight into. Figs produce a milky latex that has proteolytic, you ever hear of that, proteolytic enzymes? The one that we're talking about in particular is called physon. And these enzymes break down proteins. And they don't really care about, you know, whether it's plant tissue or insect tissue. They just break down proteins. So when people have studied this, you know, they look at the fig latex

• 32:39Jay Novella?

  and they confirm that the physon, the related enzymes, they are indeed powerful enough to quote unquote, you know, like digest. The soft animal matter that's inside the fig. So even if a wasp does die inside, its body just doesn't remain intact. You know, it gets, by the time the fig fully ripens, you know, what's left has been, it's been broken down into amino acids and it's been absorbed into the surrounding flesh of the fruit.

• 33:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, but those are wasp amino acids.

• 33:10Jay Novella?

  But still, I mean, there's a big difference between, you know, having an amino acid in your mouth and a frickin', you know, insect leg.

• 33:17Speaker 03

  They all get turned into amino acids eventually.

• 33:20Jay Novella?

  Yeah, whether it's in your mouth or your stomach. But you're not biting into a bug. And this is, this is, that is the clincher of this whole thing, Steve. That's why the people who have heard what I have heard wanted to hear this. You are not biting into a bug of any kind unless it, another one got in much later in the process, which is unlikely. So I personally feel happy and relieved for all the fig eaters out there that they're not eating bugs.

• 33:46Speaker 03

  So that was the upshot of this whole news item is just don't worry, you're not eating bugs when you eat figs.

• 33:50Jay Novella?

  So even if you were eating bugs, you'd be fine? But I want to tell you how important figs are because outside of fig Newtons, maybe most people have no use for them, but figs are really, really important. The fig wasp relationship is some weird odd trivia fact, and it's good, it's cool, it just demonstrates how awesome nature is. But ecologists consider figs to be pretty much like a keystone species in the tropical forest because, you know, figs can fruit year round. And because of that, they sustain birds and bats and primates, particularly during periods when other food is largely not available. So without the figs, you know, a lot of these ecosystems would just straight up collapse.

• 34:32Jay Novella?

  And without wasps, there would be, there would apparently be no figs. So we need that relationship. The figs are important because it feeds a ton of animals and you can't have fig Newtons without figs.

• 34:47Jay Novella?

  You guys feel like you learned something?

• 34:48Speaker 03

  Oh, sure.

• 34:49Jay Novella?

  Yeah. Great.

• 34:51Speaker 04

  I was like 3% confident that fig Newton's actually had figs.

• 34:54Jay Novella?

  Yeah. When I said that, Lee, I was thinking, there might not be, you know, but the one thing about fig Newton's that you know is you're definitely crunching down on seeds in there.

• 35:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:04Jay Novella?

  Cause it is a little bit of that.

• 35:05Bob Novella?

  Yeah, but thanks to you, Jay, when I crunch down on that, I'm going to be thinking of wasp feet and wings and crap. Thank you.

• 35:14Speaker 03

  For the record, for the record, fig Newton's are do contain figs.

• 35:19Jay Novella?

  Yeah, of course they do.

• 35:19Speaker 03

  The filling is made of dried figs and fig paste.

• 35:22Cara Santa Maria?

  For all of my elder millennials out there who watched Saved by the Bell growing up, you may remember the episode where Zack Morris freaks out his teacher because he serves him chocolate covered, I think, crickets and he crunches into it and he's like, oh, it's so good and crunchy. And he goes, the crunchy part's the thorax. And that has been drilled into my head since I was a child.

• 35:46Speaker 03

  All right. Thank you, Jay. Kara, tell us about ALS and whether it may or may not be an autoimmune disease.

• 35:53Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, I'm going to tell you what a recent Nature article told me and then Steve's going to tell you why you should be skeptical, or maybe not skeptical, but take it with, with a deep breath and a grain of salt. So a recent article that was published in Nature, actually yesterday in Nature, titled autoimmune response to C9, I don't know if you're supposed to call this protein C9ORF72, or I think it rolls off the tongue more to say C9ORF72. Usually scientists do that, so we'll see. Autoimmune response to C9ORF72 protein in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Okay, so that's, I don't know, most people, they, they come

• 36:34Cara Santa Maria?

  across that title and they go, okay, I don't know what that means. So let's dig into it. So what we do know about ALS, and actually we know a lot more than what I'm about to say, is that it is a neurodegenerative disease and it's characterized by progressive loss of motor neurons. We also know that there are multiple mechanisms that appear to be at play, but the big picture is still a little bit fuzzy. So,

• 37:01Speaker 03

  One minor point of clarification. It's specifically, it's both upper and lower motor neurons. Because there are different diseases that cause just lower motor neuron loss, or just upper motor neuron loss. ALS is defined clinically as it has to have both.

• 37:17Cara Santa Maria?

  As both, okay. And for clarity, upper is brain to spinal cord, right? And lower is spinal cord to muscle.

• 37:24Speaker 03

  It's literally a two neuron system. There are two actual neurons.

• 37:28Cara Santa Maria?

  And so, you know, after, you know, years and years and years of research, we do know that there are some processes that are involved, and that there are some disease mechanisms that have been identified. But we still don't know kind of the why of it all, and how all these things fit together. We know that there are changes to the structure and the dynamics of the axons in ALS. We know that there are both apoptosis and necrosis, so programmed cell death and cell death due to damage or inflammation. We know that there are changes to the mitochondria in ALS. We also know that some neurotransmitters are affected, like glutamate.

• 38:12Cara Santa Maria?

  And we know that inflammation is a big part of the process. But according to the ALS Association's website, there's literally a sentence here that says, inflammation in the central nervous system, it's called neuroinflammation. There's increasing evidence that neuroinflammation accompanies the death of motor neurons in ALS. However, evidence so far does not support that ALS is an autoimmune disease. The inflammatory process apparently is a reaction to the death of the cells, and not the instigator. But this new study in Nature is claiming that that may not be the case. And so we'll talk about whether or not that is.

• 38:50Cara Santa Maria?

  True, soon. So basically, in this study, what the investigators found, they looked at, they tried to kind of chunk out the ALS patients that they looked at into two different groups. The ones who have a shorter time to death from diagnosis and the ones who have a longer survival time from diagnosis. And they wanted to see, is there something different about these two groups? They specifically looked at that protein that I mentioned before, the C9orf72 protein, because they knew that it had been implicated in ALS. And they

• 39:33Cara Santa Maria?

  found that in these patients who had a quicker time to death, their CD4 plus T cells were attacking the proteins, that specific protein I mentioned, on their neurons in large numbers. And they found that in the group that took, that had a longer survival time, they had more anti-inflammatory T cells present. So they called that like a protective immune response. And so in their view, I mean, we can get deeper into, you know, the, what are they called, like the epitomes, like the antigens on those cells that they were able to identify, how they attacked them, how they binded, all that good stuff, all

• 40:17Cara Santa Maria?

  of the inflammatory factors that kind of happened downstream as a result of that. But the big sort of takeaway here is that in their view, what's one of the main drivers, I mean, it really does feel like that's how this is positioned. One of the main drivers is an autoimmune response. So your body has these proteins on these neurons, right, these C9orf72 proteins, and you have these CD4 plus type T cells. In ALS, they're claiming that they are actively attacking those proteins on the neurons and that in a small subgroup of ALS patients, They have anti-inflammatory T cells that they produce in response to that.

• 41:02Cara Santa Maria?

  That gives them a protective immune response that helps them live longer. That's sort of the long and short of it. But Steve, you mentioned when we were talking offline that even though this is a new finding, it sort of fits into a long lineage of this type of research, right?

• 41:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, we could say we've been here before, right? And just for background, I mean, I did a little bit of ALS research early on in my neuromuscular career and, you know, I've been in meetings with pretty much all like the ALS researchers in the Northeast, you know, of the US. So I got a pretty good insight into the thinking and what's going on. Just say very quickly, many, many times, we find stuff that is happening when the motor neurons are dying that potentially could be a clue to what's driving the disease. And yet, the treatments don't have any effect, treatments based upon that. Researchers are very cautious.

• 42:02Speaker 03

  And while this may seem like a slam dunk, or it may seem very promising, this is not, you know, any more promising than a dozen other things that we discovered about ALS that did not turn out to be like the answer.

• 42:15Cara Santa Maria?

  Right.

• 42:15Speaker 03

  You've also mentioned that based upon this data, it appears that this mechanism is quote unquote, "driving the disease." But we have to be careful about that because

• 42:23Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 42:24Speaker 03

  There's, you could think about causes in different ways. Something might trigger or instigate a degenerative disease process or a progressive disease process. It might drive that disease process, meaning without it, it would not progress, it would not continue, or it may exacerbate that disease process. I think actually I would, my reading of this, that this is more likely to be an exacerbating factor than a driver.

• 42:52Cara Santa Maria?

  So, so this idea of like sort of a diathesis stress, that there's something genetic that tells the disease it's going to happen, and then this makes it either happen quickly or it gives the patient longer.

• 43:04Speaker 03

  Well, only, only about 15% of ALS is familial, right? So we're, we're, we're talking about sporadic ALS in this paper, uh, which means not genetic.

• 43:14Cara Santa Maria?

  But even sporadic ALS, does it really mean not genetic, or does it just mean not heritable?

• 43:18Speaker 03

  Not, not heritable. It doesn't mean there's no genetic- Predisposition, at most, there's a predisposition, or some people might react differently. But it's not a genetic disease, right? It seems to be sporadic, like there is no predictive family history at all, it just strikes at random. So, and again, sporadic ALS isn't one disease, it's just describing a syndrome. If your upper and lower motor neurons are dying, progressively, you have ALS, whatever's causing it. So there's definitely multiple diseases thrown in here. So that's important to note as well.

• 43:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. And it's probably hard to know if like, autoimmunity is so complex, is it, like you mentioned, that something happens in the body that sort of switches on an intense autoimmune cascade? Or is something else happening?

• 44:03Speaker 03

  The disease could trigger the immune system, which then you have a secondary autoimmune response in some people, which then exacerbates the original neurodegeneration. May predict, again, their survival, how quickly it progresses, but it doesn't mean that they will be fine without it, you know?

• 44:21Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, and that's the interesting thing, I think, from this study. Yes, okay, this idea of the CD4 T cells attacking this protein, that is really interesting. But that this subset of patients who had a robust protective response actually correlated very highly with patients who had a longer survival time.

• 44:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's interesting, but...

• 44:40Cara Santa Maria?

  To me, that's super interesting, yeah.

• 44:42Speaker 03

  At the same time, again, this idea that ALS, or a subset of ALS, might be autoimmune, is decades old. Like, this is not a new idea.

• 44:51Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:52Speaker 03

  And even 30 years ago, I remember this research ongoing. You know, for example, we've studied intrathecal IVIG. You know, you use IVIG as a broad spectrum, powerful anti-inflammatory treatment, and you put it in the spinal fluid, that's surrounding the brain and the spinal cord, and zero effect on ALS. That doesn't mean it's not autoimmune, because there's so many components of the immune system. But we can go down the line, and even with the newer, like, really powerful anti-inflammatory, anti-rejection drugs, we've tried them, we officially try all of them in ALS, and so far, none of them have worked.

• 45:35Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 45:35Speaker 03

  Again, does it mean that this may give us a very specific mechanism that may be the only one that works and all other immune modulating therapies would not work? I'm not enough of a neuroimmunology specialist to know if that's the case or not, but the fact that a long line of anti-inflammatory treatments, including T-cell based treatments, have not worked is a huge note of caution here.

• 46:02Cara Santa Maria?

  For sure. I think, I guess, the hope, the cautionary hope, which we see all the time as research turns forward and is built on the backs of other research labs, is that it's all about getting down to being more and more specific. It's identifying targets that maybe weren't looked at before due to outcomes of other research. And so what they're hoping for in this finding is that the specific inflammatory CD4 plus T-cells, which are specifically binding to the C9 or 72 proteins and these very specific

• 46:41Cara Santa Maria?

  anti-inflammatory CD plus, CD4 plus T-cells collectively may offer a new therapeutic target. And they also mentioned that, you know, in this field of neuroimmunology, this is a big field, right? And it's, there are implications for autoimmune components, or at least we could say immune responses, in a lot of neurodegenerative diseases.

• 47:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's always going to be inflammation.

• 47:07Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 47:08Speaker 03

  And it's never going to be a good thing. I mean, completely, right? But is it, again, driving the disease?

• 47:14Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 47:15Speaker 03

  Or just maybe exacerbating it, whatever? Yeah, I think it's complicated. It's a lot of complicated stuff happening and none of it is the cause, right?

• 47:24Cara Santa Maria?

  Absolutely. And I think when it comes to the world of therapeutics, it's important to remember that even if we're not able to get to a root cause, even if these are, like you mentioned, syndromes that are much more complicated than like Huntington's, where we can go in and genetically modify the genes that cause it.

• 47:41Speaker 03

  Which we did recently, by the way.

• 47:43Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I know, which is amazing.

• 47:44Speaker 03

  We kind of missed that news item in the cycle, but we basically cured Huntington's hello with genetic therapy.

• 47:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it's amazing.

• 47:52Jay Novella?

  Can we pause there real quick? When you say cured, like, what is the actual thing that's happening?

• 47:57Cara Santa Maria?

  Huntington's is a very simple genetic disease. Like, we know exactly what causes it.

• 48:04Speaker 03

  It's a trinucleotide repeat. Basically, it's three base pairs that repeat over and over again. And in each generation, the number of those repeats increases. And the more they increase, the more rapidly the disease progresses, the younger it presents, and the worse it is.

• 48:22Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 48:23Speaker 03

  Right?

• 48:23Cara Santa Maria?

  And it's a dominant disease.

• 48:25Speaker 03

  It's dominant, yeah. So what they basically did was used a genetic modification to get rid of most of those repeats. And essentially, in the patients they studied, they slowed it down to 25%.

• 48:39Cara Santa Maria?

  Wow.

• 48:41Speaker 03

  So if normally you would survive for 20 years with the disease, now you would survive for 80 years, which is not a cure, but it's pretty damn close.

• 48:49Cara Santa Maria?

  Right. There's a ceiling for all of us at one point. So, yeah.

• 48:53Speaker 03

  And especially since we can easily check for it, genetically test for it, we can identify if you're going to, if you have the trinucleotide repeat, when you're young, give you this treatment. And here's the other thing, it appears to be a once-in-your-life treatment. Because once you do it, the neurons don't turn over, right? You keep your neurons for life, basically. So they just have to do it once.

• 49:17Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, I wonder if you did it, if you did it more than once, would it do another 25%?

• 49:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:23Cara Santa Maria?

  You know, does it have returns?

• 49:24Speaker 03

  But it's an invasive, you know, brain surgery to do it. But what they showed was, yeah, apparently, you only need to do it once, it slows it down by 25%, and it's a total game changer for Huntington's.

• 49:36Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, completely. And the thing to remember, I think, about Huntington's, just to remind folks, is that it's really rare to pass on deadly diseases that are dominant. Because most deadly diseases that are dominant, obviously kill the person who gets them, so they can't reproduce. Huntington's is weird in that it has a delayed presentation, so that some people don't know until after they've, you know, produced offspring, until after they've given birth. And then it's like, oh, crap. So that's why it's such a devastating disease for a lot of people, because there's a lot of psychological guilt and shame, and just really complex emotions involved. So knowing that there's a therapeutic that, I mean, basically is a cure. And that's why that's different from things like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's,

• 50:19Cara Santa Maria?

  ALS, where these are also neurodegenerative diseases, but they appear to be more syndrome-esque. There's a lot of different things going on. But let's say, let's say... Development of a therapeutic that actually counters the intense immune response does occur, based on this research, fingers crossed, right?

• 50:42Speaker 03

  Best case, yeah.

• 50:43Cara Santa Maria?

  Best case, even if that's not a cure, it could help people live a Stephen Hawking lifetime versus...

• 50:50Speaker 03

  That would be amazing. I mean, we got excited when we slowed ALS down by 20% and people lived for three more months. Statistically, that was a disease-modifying treatment. And if this could slow it down by years, that's huge for patients with ALS.

• 51:07Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 51:08Bob Novella?

  Hey, Lee, how you doing over there?

• 51:10Speaker 04

  I'm doing great.

• 51:11Cara Santa Maria?

  Learning a lot?

• 51:13Bob Novella?

  Go ahead, Lee, continue.

• 51:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, ALS is in the news a lot the last couple of weeks because Eric Dane got diagnosed.

• 51:21Bob Novella?

  Oh, really?

• 51:23Speaker 04

  He was named for McSteamy on Grey's Anatomy.

• 51:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh. How old is he? Because most people are diagnosed after 50, right? But there are younger.

• 51:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think he's like 53, he was born in 72.

• 51:37Cara Santa Maria?

  Oof. It's tough. Yeah, it's tough.

• 51:40Speaker 03

  It's a terrible disease. All right, Bob, tell us about the complex chemistry they're finding on Enceladus.

• 51:46Bob Novella?

  Yeah, this was a fun topic to research. All right, so a reexamination of Cassini data from Saturn's moon Enceladus reveals even more reason for optimism for the potential of life on that moon. This was recently published in Nature Astronomy by a multi-institution team. The name of the paper was "Detection of Organic Compounds in Freshly Ejected Ice Grains from Enceladus's Ocean." All right, quick backstory, of course, I'm lying, this is not going to be quick. The story goes back as far as 2005. I actually found an old article that I probably read back then, and it sounded like, the name of this article sounded like the name of a sci-fi series. It was "The Fountains of Enceladus," right? Doesn't that sound like a title of a science fiction book?

• 52:31Bob Novella?

  It describes the now-famous Cassini mission, its epic discovery of ice particles erupting geyser-like in these jets on Saturn's moon Enceladus. The jets of water were bursting from cracks in the ice, and the resulting ice grains would be, you know, shot up... You know, into space. Eventually, many of them fell back onto the moon. Or they could have also left permanently, becoming part of the E-ring of material that traced out Enceladus's orbit, actually. Because if you looked in the middle of the E-ring, like, oh, there's Enceladus. Hmm. Now, if that wasn't cool enough, the obvious implication here is what? I mean, where is this water? Where is this coming from? There could be a hidden ocean beneath the ice supplying the water.

• 53:15Bob Novella?

  For something I found out today, they found 101 geysers ultimately. So this isn't just one geyser, 101 of these. Now, that fainty icy E-ring, you've heard about the different types of rings around Saturn. This E-ring has been known about for decades. And now, you know, back then, we could say that this ring was almost certainly coming from Enceladus and coming from these geysers. That's what was proved way back in, or shown very strongly way back in 2005. So over many years of Cassini's mission, the data from the Enceladus, the geysers and the E-ring information just got increasingly compelling, especially regarding the potential

• 53:58Bob Novella?

  for complex chemistry happening deep within the moon, in that ocean. So here's some of the highlights during Cassini's tenure in the Outer Solar System. In 2009, or at least for Enceladus-specific data. In 2009, it showed that this deep ocean almost certainly had salt water. Very important. In 2015, there was evidence announced for a deep hydrothermal activity. That's where hot rock and seawater interact. You know, we've got these hydrothermal vents on the Earth. So when a hot rock and seawater interact, good stuff can happen. In 2017, chemical energy was announced in the form of molecular hydrogen that was detected in the plumes.

• 54:42Bob Novella?

  This is what hydrothermal vents create. And most importantly, this is a potential energy source for microbes. At least on Earth it is. So it's like finding whoppers coming out of this place on the Earth. Like, yeah, that's a good energy source for whatever might want to live on. On that stuff. And then, let's see, in 2017, after Cassini was scuttled, right, in the clouds of Saturn, remember that one, like, okay, we're taking a dive into Saturn, and Cassini's never coming back. Scientists continued, even after the death of Cassini, they continued to mine and analyze this huge treasure trove of data and to create new discoveries. Like, for example, they found that large organic molecules was hidden in the data. They showed, you know,

• 55:26Bob Novella?

  this showed very rich ocean chemistry. It would not life, but life-friendly, for sure. Life-adjacent, maybe? I don't know. But very interesting stuff. And then in 2023, Steve, phosphorus, that was a, that was a big find. Phosphorus was found in, in higher concentrations than we find it in, in Earth's oceans. And it's absolutely key for Earth life, or life as we know it on the Earth. That, that was a very nice find. So, okay, so this now, this is where this latest research comes in. And for these researchers, this involved a reanalysis of the young ice grain data, opposed to the very, to the much more common analysis the researchers did back in the day, of these old ice grains that were orbiting in the E-ring. The problem there was that this,

• 56:10Bob Novella?

  this, these E-ring ice grains could be, could be orbiting for years or even centuries. And when you're in the space that long, what, what happens to things? There's space weathering. There's actually a thing called space weathering, and that could alter the, the molecules in weird, you know, not understood ways. So the researchers wanted to remove that potential complication of the space weathering and reexamine the data on fresh grains that may, that may already be existing somewhere in the data. And ideally, they, they would want to find these ice grains that were just recently shot straight from that ocean, from the subsurface ocean, and detected almost immediately by Cassini. And that's exactly what they did. In 2008, Cassini did a very rare,

• 56:54Bob Novella?

  a very fast flyby of Enceladus, right through the plume of particles. The scientists thought that their new model, their new models and their new filters and just, just the raw Cassini data ...experience that these scientists have, you know, they've gone through many years of looking at the Cassini data, examining it, studying it, testing models, so all of that experience they could now bring to bear on this new approach to looking at these young, these fresh ice grains coming out of those geysers. And they were hoping that they could tease out, obviously, more details about what kind of chemistry could be happening in that mysterious ocean. And that's what happened.

• 57:36Bob Novella?

  They focused on one specific orbit Cassini made through the plume. The orbiter was moving at about 18 kilometers a second, so it was faster than I think it had ever done around Enceladus. And it was only 25 kilometers above the surface, 16 miles. I mean, that thing was just skimming right over the planet, essentially, super low. So it examined, ultimately, they found that they were examining, or Cassini was examining ice grains that were only minutes previously were in the subsurface ocean. So within minutes, they came up from the subsurface ocean and were ejected out, and then there was Cassini, just 16 miles away, ready to detect them and figure out, you

• 58:19Bob Novella?

  know, what it was composed of. You know, obviously, there's ice, but what kind of hidden little gems might be in there that we hadn't seen before. So, yeah, so these were the youngest and the freshest ice grains ever detected. That high speed was actually an advantage, because typically Cassini wasn't traveling that fast. So when these ice grains hit the detector at like 18 kilometers a second, essentially, right? What it did was it removed this kind of weird water fog that typically obscured the data, right? Because you had a lot of these water molecules grouped together, and it kind of created a fog, just an obscuring fog that could potentially mask some interesting data.

• 59:02Bob Novella?

  So it obliterated those water molecule collections, and it kind of revealed, essentially, whole new organic families that just popped out, that these new analytical tools that they have, they could see for the first time. So... But I mean, we're talking about organics like, you know, you may have heard of some of these esters, ethyl groups. Most intriguing was the possibility of mixed nitrogen and oxygen-bearing compounds. That sounds like very interesting detection there. It's not as much of a slam dunk as the other ones I mentioned, like the esters and ethyl groups, but it seemed fairly solid. What they found, though, was no smoking gun for life. Let me make that

• 59:45Bob Novella?

  clear. They did not find any big hints of life at all. What they found were ingredients, you know, not organisms. But these ingredients were very compelling. This wasn't just simple chemistry that was happening there. Definitely a few steps above beyond that. So ultimately, what they did was to strengthen that link between the organic molecules directly to that deep ocean, right? Because remember, these are the freshest ice grains that were being ejected from that geyser. So they had no time for any space weathering to change the molecules in some weirdly unpredictable ways. So these ice grains were directly from that ocean, and what they found was, is more families of organic molecules better, you

• 1:00:29Bob Novella?

  know, just clear. Everything was a lot clearer and fascinating, and it just strengthened that link, that there is something going on. For me, this is more exciting to me than those minerals that we recently talked about that they found on Mars. This is a lot more interesting to me. Here, we have really good evidence of some kind of complex chemistry creating organic compounds right now. This is happening right now as we talk, as we record, as you listen to this, happening right now in our solar system, and this is not on Earth. In light of this data, which is, I admit, this is more of an incremental change. Could you guys think of a more promising location for life in our solar system right now, other than Earth? I mean, there's, what, there's Enceladus? Europa? There's Europa? Europa's the only other one, really.

• 1:01:13Bob Novella?

  Yeah. Europa and Enceladus are the big boys. I would put, now, I would put Enceladus over Europa. But there's also Titan and Ganymede and Callisto. They're not as strong as Europa and Enceladus, but they're also, you know, intriguing and there's some solid hints that something could be going on. I would Move Enceladus to the top position right now for sure, even over Europa. So my big hope here is that this is going to strengthen the case for the European Space Association to mount a mission to orbit and land on Enceladus. Because I didn't take too much of a deep dive in what they're actually doing about mounting a mission, but I think they've at least been talking about it and been planning it at high levels. But I think this could be the data they need to like, yeah, we've really got to go over there, man.

• 1:01:55Bob Novella?

  There's something really cool happening that we should, we need to get close to. And the reason why they would want to get there is because when we go back there, they could bring real chemical toolboxes to bear to examine the compounds before, this is important, they could examine them before they're smashed apart like our earlier techniques did. So I'm really hoping that we can get back there before I'm dead and see what the hell's going on in Enceladus. So cross your fingers.

• 1:02:23Speaker 03

  Saying get your ass to Enceladus.

• 1:02:25Bob Novella?

  Yeah, nice.

• 1:02:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, so to recap, it's got liquid water, a source of energy, it's got complex organic molecules, and it has the other chemical elements that are useful for life. It's all there.

• 1:02:37Bob Novella?

  It really is.

• 1:02:38Speaker 03

  It's almost, we would have to figure out why life isn't there if we don't find life.

• 1:02:42Bob Novella?

  Yeah, right? Because that would be, I'd be shocked. I just want to know. I mean, this is why I wish we had superheroes. Because I'd be like, Superman, go to Enceladus right now, pick us up a sample and bring it right back later today. And that'd be great. Because you know what it takes to get there, millions of dollars. The stupid chemical rockets are going to take years.

• 1:03:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, but it's worth it.

• 1:03:03Bob Novella?

  It's worth it. It's worth it. But, you know, hey, man, when you're 62, when you're 62, you want shit to happen faster.

• 1:03:10Speaker 03

  All right. All right, Lee, you're going to tell us about the genius act.

• 1:03:15Speaker 04

  First off, maybe I talk a little bit about what I do and then talk about the genius act. I'm in venture capital. Venture capital invests in really early-stage businesses. It's considered An alternative investment class, basically, how do companies, when they first start with a pitch deck or an idea, how do they get capital to expand and grow to get revenue? Once they have revenue, how do they expand and grow into the market? You know, in July of 2025, the Genius Act was passed. It is going to take effect in January of 2027. And it allows people who aren't necessarily the richest people in the world. It allows the managers of their retirement plans or their pension plans

• 1:03:59Speaker 04

  to divert a certain amount of capital into earlier-stage businesses. And so, you know, if you have a 401K, you have an IRA, a lot of listeners wouldn't classify to be able to, you know, invest in venture itself. But now you'll be able to.

• 1:04:15Speaker 03

  So, reading about it, it seems like the part of this has to do with stable coins and cryptocurrency. What role is that playing?

• 1:04:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, so crypto and stable coins is a big part of it. But I'd say, you know, there's going to be a lot of people in the venture community that are going to try to get access to that large chunk of capital. Venture spending has been primarily dominated into AI over the past three years. And so, there's a lot of, you know, businesses that are looking for that capital, a lot of investors that are trying to deploy capital into that part of the asset class. And so, the, you know, many large VC firms are becoming registered investment advisors currently. People are trying to figure out, how do I tie my VC fund into RIAs that can allocate a certain percent to my, to venture capital?

• 1:05:06Speaker 04

  And so, you know, I'm getting into the intersection of sort of investing and skepticism and critical thought for the first time in my life, which I know that sounds silly, but there's a lot of potential. Risk around some of the things that we're investing in from a technical feasibility, from a scientific feasibility. And I think people should be concerned about it.

• 1:05:29Cara Santa Maria?

  And so should we be concerned about this act? Like, what do you think is going to be the downstream effect?

• 1:05:33Speaker 04

  Well, I think they're going to put a lot of restrictions on the amount of capital that can be diverted from a portfolio. So probably going to be one to 2%. You know, the asset class as a whole performs okay. It's very illiquid. You cannot typically get an exit or get money back for a 10 to 15 year period, which may not be appropriate for some individuals', you know, retirement horizon. So they're going to limit it a little bit. But I would say it looks like a gold rush for venture capital. And there's a lot of people trying to get access to that and really changing their business model in a way that allows them to to bring down new capital. And I'd say like, you know, you mostly think about venture capital as a bunch of billionaires putting money into these

• 1:06:15Speaker 04

  high risky, you know, early stage startups. And it's not necessarily true. Venture capitalists don't use a lot of their own money to run these large funds. And a lot of those large funds, you know, already get a ton of capital from, you know, pension fund managers and things like that. This is a whole new way to get access to 401ks and IRAs. And then the type of investments we're seeing, we're seeing a ton of investments in things that may have a 20 to 30 year horizon. A lot of, you know, there's been a huge bubble in AI. A lot of us are skeptical. We think that AI is going to be great. Do we think it's going to be as graded as it is, you know, presented? Probably not. And so there's a lot of hype around it. There's a lot of hype, you know, with quantum. Do we really

• 1:07:00Speaker 04

  know where we are in quantum? I have my own questions. There are certain research things that has to happen. There's certain algorithmic development things that have to happen. And if you're looking at a five to 10 year horizon, which was traditional venture, you know, back in the 90s and early 2000s, it's really questionable whether, you know, those types of investments will get a return. Because in the private markets, when you do an investment, that money is basically given to the company. And it's very hard to sell those positions. There's often no buyers until The company either goes IPO or someone, some large other company acquires that business. The investors don't get their money back.

• 1:07:38Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I mean, obviously, I'm no expert. I've actually talked a lot to another skeptical investor, Phil Ferguson, about these very topics. And like, all my money that I have control over is in index funds because I'm scared. And so for me, like, I don't know, these kinds of, like, investing a lot in crypto. I don't know, it scares, it scares the crap out of me. And maybe I sound like I'm older than I am, but I'm at a stage in my life where I just can't afford to not get returns on, you know, my retirement.

• 1:08:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, and I think, you know, fully diversified, I mean, some of the best advice I ever got was, you know, take $200 a month when you're in your early twenties, put it in an index fund, and just do that until you're like 45 or 50, and you'll be a multimillionaire. And I think that that's good advice. And there is some advice that most of the gains in these companies are going to be realized before they ever hit the public markets, right? And so if you're in an index fund, you're in something that's public most of the time. And so there, you know, most of those gains will be, will be given when it's a private company. And so you could use the same logic, but I think what we see in the industry is a lot of, you know, to get a fully diversified portfolio in venture, you have to be in, you know, a thousand or in 2,000 deals, maybe 500.

• 1:08:54Speaker 04

  What we see in venture is sort of these one-off, I'm going to gamble here and get a thousand to one or a hundred to one, and it's a real long shot. But that's also what, you know, brings the capital into the markets.

• 1:09:05Cara Santa Maria?

  Right, right. And so the people who can afford that kind of risk are the ones who are taking it.

• 1:09:09Speaker 04

  That's correct. And, and, you know, before this, I would say that, you know, there was a lot of pension fund money in venture. And as you know, it's a 1%, 2% allocation, but those funds are huge. They typically focus later in, in sort of the growth stage of the business. But now they can focus at the earliest stages where you can have just a team with a pitch deck. Maybe they've got a product built.

• 1:09:29Speaker 03

  So what do you think about the, one of the main criticism that I've read is that this is really just a way for tech giants to make money off of crypto with less regulation?

• 1:09:38Speaker 04

  Well, I've made more money in my life than anything with crypto, so I have a little bit of bias there, but it was, it was more just about being interested in the technology and sort of, you know, buying and holding over a long period. But I do think that's right. Tech giants, it's almost a shell game. Let's say that you have an investor, you create a large tech company, you fill it with the board of other investors, and those investors will invest in a new company, and then they sort of advise that company to buy that startup. So they get these amazing returns, you know?

• 1:10:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:10:12Speaker 04

  Because they have that connection. And so the best performing funds have that sort of baked in success that they've created for themselves through, you know, years and years of that, that shell game. But, you know, I agree, there, you know, a lot of the projects, not vast majority of projects in crypto, you often don't know who is running them. I have a crypto project, that's a sports betting project, and, you know, the people don't show their face on, on podcasts, or they won't give their name, because there's that, you know, anonymous nature to, to crypto. It just doesn't seem like, you know, for the stable coins, it's a little bit different, but I'm,

• 1:10:50Speaker 04

  I'm pretty skeptical if this, if this is a way to get into sort of this Ponzi scheme of, of crypto investing, that, that should be, you know, terrifying for everybody.

• 1:11:01Speaker 03

  Yeah. And for the audience, stable coins are crypto that's tied to a currency? Is that essentially correct?

• 1:11:08Speaker 04

  It can be tied to a currency. It can also be algorithmically tied.

• 1:11:11Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:11:12Cara Santa Maria?

  So what makes it stable? Or is that a misnomer?

• 1:11:15Speaker 04

  Well, when it's, when it's tied to a currency, when they're actually, you know, purchasing fiat, and, and sort of balancing the equation so that they're, it's backed by fiat, then it's a, it's a good stable coin. You might see others where it's tied to some other asset class. But, you know, a few years ago, they were just algorithmic, and I don't, I didn't understand all the details, but basically, they could or could not purchase a certain amount, or they had the ability to purchase certain amounts, and those, a lot of those crashed. I was actually in Puerto Rico. Pitching a hedge fund at the time, a crypto hedge fund, which would have done very well. But it was during one of the last crashes and it was because some of these algorithmic stable coins took a dive to zero.

• 1:12:02Speaker 03

  Not so stable. No.

• 1:12:05Speaker 03

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

• 1:12:08Jay Novella?

  All right, guys. Last week I played this noisy.

• 1:12:23Jay Novella?

  What do you think?

• 1:12:24Speaker 03

  The only thing I could say is that there appears to be a Doppler effect in there.

• 1:12:27Cara Santa Maria?

  It feels like something launching.

• 1:12:29Jay Novella?

  Those are both good comments. Bob, Lee?

• 1:12:31Bob Novella?

  Sounded like a jet to me.

• 1:12:33Jay Novella?

  Well, a lot of people guessed some type of aircraft. So a listener named Dan Lee said this week's noisy is a conveyor belt loading luggage onto an airplane as another plane takes off in the background. Dan, you are incorrect, but I like where you went with that. And again, you know, it's a very good guess that it's an airplane sound, but his guess was incorrect. Matthew Morrison wrote in and said, hi, Jay, my daughter Nev thinks this sounds like an airplane flying over a rainforest. Again, good guess. You're not in the right, exact right place, but that is definitely a good guess. We have a listener named Bob. Bob! I believe this is a sound of a jet fighter taking off from the deck of an aircraft carrier.

• 1:13:15Jay Novella?

  He goes on to describe at the beginning, you can hear what sounds like a cable slapping around on some metal, I believe. That is the catapult used to get the jet to the proper speed for takeoff. Also incorrect. I have another listener named Bob. Yeah, two Bobs. This is Bob Marshall. He said the sound is recorded in part in the Welsh Valley called Machlupe. And this is where you can sit on a peaceful mountain and watch a wide variety of military jets pass below you in the valley. Because apparently they do a lot of practice flying and everything. So that would be very cool. Sorry, Bob. Also not correct. Another listener named Alex Freshy said, hi, Jay, I'm going to guess this week's noisy

• 1:13:59Jay Novella?

  is a hypersonic wind tunnel. The cycle time for fast wind tunnels is surprisingly quick. Thanks for all you do. Yeah, check that out, guys. A hypersonic wind tunnel. I had never thought of that before. What the hell?

• 1:14:11Bob Novella?

  I thought they were impractical. Can they get them hypersonic?

• 1:14:15Jay Novella?

  Just because he said it doesn't mean that they necessarily exist. Yeah. But it is a cool guess. But that is incorrect as well. So what are we dealing with here? So, in the beginning, you hear what I would say is kind of like a little rumbling kind of sound, and then it builds into like a very fast, what Steve described as a Doppler effect noise. In the end, guys, this is a roller coaster.

• 1:14:39Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh.

• 1:14:40Jay Novella?

  So, this one is called Falcon's Flight, and it happens to be a record-breaking roller coaster that's being built at Six Flags in Kitya, Saudi Arabia.

• 1:14:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:14:51Jay Novella?

  It's designed to be the tallest, fastest, and longest coaster in the world when it opens. So it gets up to 155 miles per hour. Oh, my god. That's 250 kilometers an hour, which makes it the fastest one on Earth.

• 1:15:03Cara Santa Maria?

  That's terrifying.

• 1:15:05Jay Novella?

  It has a 640-foot drop, or 195-meter drop. That's higher than any existing coaster. It is nearly 2.5 miles, or 4 kilometers of track, which makes it the longest roller coaster. And the unique feature here is they say the ride will plunge off the side of a cliff using the natural terrain to create extreme height and speed.

• 1:15:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, my god.

• 1:15:29Jay Novella?

  Which is very cool. It's gonna be opening when that Six Flag apparently opens, and it is currently under development. So let me play that for you again. Yeah. And just give you a visualization. So imagine, so imagine the roller coaster is running on the track, and it comes over the lip of the cliff, and then goes straight down. And then, it picks up all that speed, and then it goes up a huge ramp, and that's when you hear that Doppler effect.

• 1:15:55Cara Santa Maria?

  How many people are gonna pass out on this thing?

• 1:15:57Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:57Cara Santa Maria?

  I wonder how many Gs you push.

• 1:15:58Jay Novella?

  Yeah, how many Gs are you pulling?

• 1:16:00Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:13Speaker 03

  And now that you know what it is, you can imagine what's happening when you hear this sound. That's scary.

• 1:16:17Jay Novella?

  It makes me think of something, right? So, all my life, I thought that what I was largely hearing from a jet was the engine. And this sounds like a jet, but it's not an engine. It's, you know, okay, there's wheels of some sort on a track of some sort, right? But, you know, it also might just be the wind breaking off of the front of the coaster.

• 1:16:38Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:16:39Jay Novella?

  It makes a jet sound. That is, you know, pretty damn serious. I don't know. Bob, would you ride it?

• 1:16:46Bob Novella?

  I don't, I don't think so. Um, and I can't imagine. That's, that's a little too, I'll go on almost any ride. That seems a little extreme. I'd have to see it and then probably really not go.

• 1:16:58Speaker 03

  What if I double dog dare you?

• 1:16:59Bob Novella?

  Gotta, gotta do it now. Jay, for what it's worth, I confirmed that hypersonic wind tunnels do in fact exist.

• 1:17:07Jay Novella?

  Uh, very cool. Thanks, Bob. Hey, Lee, have you ever been drunk on a roller coaster?

• 1:17:11Speaker 04

  Never.

• 1:17:13Jay Novella?

  Good. Good man. You don't want to do that.

• 1:17:16Speaker 04

  I was less than 21 years old when I was on the roller coaster.

• 1:17:20Jay Novella?

  Well, you don't want to particularly be drunk on a roller coaster that sounds like a friggin' jet. That's my advice to the world. I have a new noisy this week. This comes in from a listener named Paolo Ciarocca. Yeah. Ci, Ciarocca. Thanks, Paolo. And here's the noisy. Well, well, well. So if you think you know what this week's noisy is, or you heard something cool, you can email me at [email protected]. Steve, as we speak, I'm planning three more

• 1:17:59Jay Novella?

  SGU private show pluses and extravaganza weekends that we just, like we just did in Kansas. Three more.

• 1:18:08Speaker 03

  LA, Sydney, and Christchurch.

• 1:18:10Jay Novella?

  No.

• 1:18:11Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 1:18:12Jay Novella?

  No. Uh, we are talking about, we are talking about, uh, Seattle. We're talking about, uh, somewhere near Milwaukee.

• 1:18:23Jay Novella?

  In that region, and then we are talking about New Haven, Connecticut.

• 1:18:26Speaker 03

  Oh, those three.

• 1:18:28Jay Novella?

  Yeah, I'm not even getting to next summer.

• 1:18:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was talking about next summer.

• 1:18:32Jay Novella?

  Yeah, there's gonna be a lot more activity going on then. That's the, uh, that is gonna be the two conferences that we're gonna be attending. First one is in Sydney, that's gonna be on July 23rd, and 24th and 25th, and then we're gonna be attending another one, which is the following weekend, uh, that'll be in Christchurch, New Zealand. And there'll be lots of events, you know, secondary events surrounding that. I'm gonna give out all the information coming soon. Um, we are finalizing, finalizing, finalizing, you know, everything takes longer than you want, but we're there. I just gotta like, you know, do the final work to, to turn on the ticket sales. It's gonna happen soon. Two more quick things. If you appreciate the work that we do,

• 1:19:11Jay Novella?

  you could consider becoming a patron of the SGU. You can go to patreon.com/skepticsguide, and join us on our adventure to educate the world, and get rid of every single thing that irritates all of us.

• 1:19:25Speaker 03

  And you know what we haven't mentioned in a while, is if you wanna learn more about skepticism, you can buy both of our books, The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, and The Skeptic's Guide to the Future. The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is basically a primer on scientific skepticism, quite a fun read. And then in The Skeptic's Guide to the Future, we apply all of that to thinking about future technology. Very interesting. So, you know, those books are still highly relevant. We, and, uh, you should not only get one, but buy one for everyone you know.

• 1:19:55Jay Novella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:19:56Speaker 03

  Got it.

• 1:19:57Jay Novella?

  I have people asking me in all, on all different platforms, what is going on with the new podcast? So let me give you all the base information.

• 1:20:05Speaker 03

  There's a new podcast?

• 1:20:05Jay Novella?

  Yes. It is called The Political Reality Podcast, and this podcast will be hosted by Steve, and it'll be hosted by Andrea Jones-Roy. Steve, what the hell is this podcast?

• 1:20:18Speaker 03

  So Andrew and I have been, man, we are deep in the weeds of scheduling out at least the first season of this podcast. We're going to be talking about a lot of political issues, but from a very, you know, academic and neutral point of view. Doesn't mean that we're not going to, you know, call it like we see it, but it's more about like the meta discussion of politics. We, it's the, Andrea said like, this is the civics class that everybody should have taken, but didn't. Nice. And, but try to make it as timely and relevant and in the news as possible. She has a ton of great guests lined up, all experts in political science and different areas of politics. So basically this is, if you want to have an informed opinion about something,

• 1:21:00Speaker 03

  we don't care what your opinion is, but this will help you have an informed opinion about any political issue. Nice. All right. Well, thank you, Jay. We have a quick email. This one comes from Gary, and Gary writes, parrot as intelligent as a chimp. And then he links to some experiments done with a Kia. Do you guys remember the Kia? K-E-A? Yeah.

• 1:21:24Jay Novella?

  No, what is that?

• 1:21:25Cara Santa Maria?

  Damn, that sounds familiar.

• 1:21:26Speaker 03

  Is that a bird in New Zealand? Yeah, Gary's from New Zealand. This is, it's a giant parrot, parrot of New Zealand.

• 1:21:32Jay Novella?

  I remember that.

• 1:21:33Speaker 03

  Never seen him on the side of the road, you know, we're driving around in New Zealand.

• 1:21:36Jay Novella?

  No, that was when we opened up the van door and he came running over to the van door, demanding attention and food.

• 1:21:43Speaker 03

  So you guys have to watch this video. It's a series of experiments where they're trying to determine the problem solving and predictive abilities of Kia. So the, the basic setup is there's jars that have either red or black clothes, clothesline clips, you know, like you take half of the clip, you know what I mean? Without the spring, that little piece of wood, and half of them are black and half of them are, are red. If, and then you have one person who picks from one jar, another person who picks from the other jar. And they're trying to see if the parrot can predict which person is more likely to

• 1:22:27Speaker 03

  have the black piece of wood. Because they will, they pick one hand, they get the wood and then they can exchange it for a treat, but they can only exchange the black ones for treats. So you get the setup? So the parrots want the black ones. So they do all kinds of permutations, including obviously picking it out of a jar with mostly black ones, picking it, you know, the other person picks it out of a jar with mostly red ones. The parrot knows it's more likely to get a black one from the jar with mostly black ones. That's easy. But then they keep going, right? They make it, they, they put in a barrier. So even if the bottom half of the jar is all black, the top half isn't black, the parrot won't fall for it, right?

• 1:23:11Speaker 03

  So it's not just going for the color, it knows that it's only picking from the top. You get that? And then they, they're, on some cases, the person looks at the color of the stick that they're picking, and the parrot could learn which of the people doing the experiment prefer the black pieces of wood. So they can actually, so, so in other words, if it's me and you, Cara, and you, Cara, you look and always pick a black one, and I don't look and it's random, the parrot learns that you always have the black one.

• 1:23:46Cara Santa Maria?

  Interesting.

• 1:23:47Speaker 03

  And so then it will pick you, even if I'm picking from a jar with more black sticks.

• 1:23:51Cara Santa Maria?

  Right. Yeah. Cause it's good at statistics.

• 1:23:54Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, right. So, but here's the, the upshot of it is they do as well in this experimental paradigm as chimpanzees do.

• 1:24:04Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, and that's, that's the thing about these headlines that are like so and so as smart as so and so, it's like, how are you defining intelligence?

• 1:24:10Speaker 03

  In this very specific paradigm.

• 1:24:12Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. They're good at this, they're better at this task than a chimpanzee, which there are all sorts of animals that are better at specific tasks than human beings, you know what I mean? It doesn't necessarily mean they're more intelligent, or maybe they are in that one definition.

• 1:24:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was wondering if I could borrow some of these parrots for venture capital?

• 1:24:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:24:31Cara Santa Maria?

  Seriously.

• 1:24:32Speaker 03

  There was that study where a chimpanzee, a monkey, basically chose stocks and did as well as, you know, most of the, the professional stock pickers. But maybe we could try it with a parrot. No, but, but the important thing here, Cara, is that birds rule. That's the important thing.

• 1:24:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. Birds are really smart.

• 1:24:52Speaker 03

  Let's not lose sight of that. Um, all right. All right, let's go on with science or fiction.

• 1:25:01Speaker 01

  It's time for Science or Fiction?

• 1:25:10Speaker 03

  Each week I come up with three science news items, or facts, two real and one fake, and then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. There is a theme this week. The theme is evolution. You guys ready?

• 1:25:25Speaker 04

  Let's do it.

• 1:25:26Speaker 03

  All right, and you'll see that there's a sub-theme within evolution that'll become apparent very quickly. Okay, item number one: Leglessness has evolved independently in lizards at least 25 times. Item number two: Although the precise number is debated, camera-type eyes has evolved from more primitive eyes independently in vertebrates about four times. And item number three: Complex multicellular life has evolved independently on Earth at least five times. Okay, Lee, as our guest, you get to go first.

• 1:26:04Speaker 04

  Leglessness has evolved independently in lizards at least 25 times.

• 1:26:10Speaker 03

  Now, I will clarify one small thing there. Leglessness doesn't necessarily mean there's zero leg left, because even snakes have leg bones, and even some snakes have primitive little legs sticking out. It means what legs they have are vestigial, they're not using them as legs.

• 1:26:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, I guess that could be true. I mean, we all know lizards hate pants, so... Independently, I think that could be true. Although the precise number is debated, camera-type eyes have evolved from more primitive eyes independently in vertebrates about four times? Yeah, sure, why not? I think possibly, yeah. The one that really is setting off my antenna here: Complex multicellular life has evolved independently on Earth at least five times? I just don't know how we get the evidence for that, so... I think that, to me, is the fake one.

• 1:27:10Speaker 03

  Okay, Jay.

• 1:27:11Jay Novella?

  All right, well, I might have some questions to you.

• 1:27:13Speaker 03

  Well.

• 1:27:14Jay Novella?

  The leglessness has evolved independently in lizards at least 25 times. I mean, that's interesting because, you know, we're talking about millions and millions in millions of years. And would that develop independently over all that time? Like, I guess it would be like, when you say independently, like, it started off in one species and then another one developed it and they didn't co-evolve the whole thing.

• 1:27:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's no common ancestor with leglessness. It happened completely evolutionarily, independently.

• 1:27:46Jay Novella?

  And why would, is this, when you say leglessness, meaning they don't have legs? Or they dropped their legs?

• 1:27:52Speaker 03

  No, they don't fall off. They don't have, they have vestigial or no legs, basically.

• 1:27:57Jay Novella?

  Okay, Roger that. With my understanding of nature and evolution, like, I think that this is plausible. Because I am aware that similar evolutionary traits have happened in other species that don't have a relation. Right? So this, why couldn't it apply to this? So, that one is tendently science. The second one is weird. I gotta ask some questions. Although the precise number is debated, camera-type eyes have evolved from more primitive eyes independently in vertebrates about four times. So when you say camera-type eyes, what are we talking about?

• 1:28:28Speaker 03

  So not compound eyes like insects? Like our eyes? Yeah, like our human eyes.

• 1:28:33Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, what? Lens retina. Yeah, a basic setup of like, yeah, pupil, lens, retina. That basic setup.

• 1:28:42Jay Novella?

  That would be really cool. Now, here's why I'm not sure about this one. Because if that happened, and with all the debates that I've heard, people talking about evolution and, you know, about the fact that, you know, what's it called, Steve? Irreducible complexity? Why wouldn't someone on the evolutionary side? Or why wouldn't I have heard someone, like, bring this up? Like, hey, man, it's happened four times independently from each other. Because that would be a great argument. That doesn't mean it didn't happen. It just means I have not heard that. And that would be something I would think that I would have heard at this point. So that's more of a no, a fiction than a science for me. And then complex multicellular life has evolved independently on Earth at least five times.

• 1:29:26Jay Novella?

  That one also, you know, you think, all right, doesn't everything kind of all go back to the same thing? But I don't, I'm not so sure about that. All right, I'm going to go with the camera type as the fiction, Steve.

• 1:29:35Bob Novella?

  Okay, Bob. The lizards, leglessness. Yeah, I mean, I've seen images of, of, of lizards with, um, clearly like weird, like, oh, they got front legs, but no back legs, or they're clearly vestigial. The, the only question here to, for me is 25 times? Seems a little bit big, but I could totally go with that, especially considering the other two here. Uh, the second one here, they had the camera eye. And again, absolutely, the, in my mind, there's no question about this. But four times might seem a little bit low. Uh, then you are focusing it on vertebrates. Um, so that narrows that down a little bit. Um, but sure, I could see that.

• 1:30:18Bob Novella?

  And then the third one, see, this is the one that got me. I think I agree with Lee, right? You picked, you picked this, uh, complex multicellular life as the fiction. This is the one that, that grabs me. I mean, it was, it took how many, how long? I mean, single-celled microbial life went for so long, millions and millions of years, even what? Was it a couple of billion, uh, years potentially? And then, and then all of a sudden multicellular life appeared. It took, it took a long time. Uh, really long, you know, depressingly long time. I don't think we have any evidence that it, that it evolved independently at all. Um, so this is the one that viscerally grabbed me. Doesn't, doesn't really make much sense.

• 1:31:00Bob Novella?

  And even if we did know that it, it happened, what, what, what would the evidence be? I think, I think all multicellular life has a common ancestor. Uh, that's fiction, I would say. Okay, Kara.

• 1:31:12Cara Santa Maria?

  I think that what is kind of getting me on this is if leglessness has evolved at least 25 times? If, if that is science, I think these other two numbers are ridiculously low, even for complex multicellular life. I do think that it always, it never ceases to amaze me when I learn about certain lineages, how many times certain things evolved over and over, simply because. The pressures continue to exist. So the mechanisms might change, but the pressures on those genes to be selected for continue to exist. So if leglessness in lizards evolved at least 25 times is science, then I think I have to

• 1:31:56Cara Santa Maria?

  be careful about the wording here. Multicellular life has evolved independently at least five times, I think is also science. But you said that camera-type eyes have evolved from more primitive eyes independently. You did say invertebrates, that is an important caveat, but it just says about four times. I bet you it's also at least more times than that. I think it's probably a lot of times. And so I'm gonna go with the camera-type lenses. I don't know if it's the same reason Jay is going with it, but I think it's probably more than that.

• 1:32:28Speaker 03

  All right. So let's start with the first one, since you guys all agree there. Leglessness has evolved independently in lizards at least 25 times. You all think this is science, and this one is science. Yep, this is science.

• 1:32:46Bob Novella?

  That's good.

• 1:32:46Speaker 03

  Lizards apparently like to be legless. And so there's two basic scenarios, they think, in which lizards evolve leglessness. One is burrowing, they go underground. And the other is on the surface of the ground. You're basically crawling along the top of the ground. And that does tend to result in some differences, like how long the tail is versus the thorax. But in any case, Alaya has a lot of legless lizards, the Western glass lizard, the European legless lizard, there's a lot of legless skinks. And they don't just form leglessness, they also form very snake-like anatomy overall.

• 1:33:28Speaker 03

  You know, they kind of adapt to the snake-like predatory style, not just...

• 1:33:32Bob Novella?

  Yes. Some of them you'd be like, yeah, that's a snake. Like, nope, that's not a snake.

• 1:33:36Speaker 03

  Well, some of them have evolved as mimics. Like, that's their defense mechanism. Like, skinks look like snakes as a defense mechanism, because they are relatively defenseless. But if a potential predator thinks that they're a snake, they'll leave them alone.

• 1:33:52Speaker 03

  So it's not that's that adaptation might be mimicry, not functionality, if that makes sense. But there's also a lot of functional convergent evolution among lizards. One piece of that is leglessness. Now, why would I say at least 25 times? In all of these items, this is the same reason why there's debate, whether it's at least or about or whatever. It's because there's always at least these two points of contention. One is, what's independent? Like, how independent does independent have to be? And what do you count as the feature you're looking for? Like, what counts as leglessness? What counts as independent?

• 1:34:37Speaker 03

  So, for example, like, how legless does the common ancestor have to be before you say it's homologous versus analogous, right? Homologous meaning derived from a common ancestor. Analogous means you independently evolved it, but they look the same. You know what I mean? Like, if you're like, if it was like partly legless and then spawned multiple clades that were truly legless, was that really independent? Or were they halfway there? Does that count or not count? So, anyway, there's no sharp demarcation line here, and that's why there's this fuzziness.

• 1:35:16Speaker 03

  But the general consensus is there's at least 25 lineages where it clearly independently evolved leglessness. The number could be a lot higher, depending on where you draw your line. So that one's science. I guess we'll go in order. Although the precise number is debated, camera-type eyes have evolved from more primitive eyes independently, invertebrates about four times. Jay and Kara, you think this one is the fiction. Bob and Lee, you think this one is science. And this one is...

• 1:35:48Speaker 03

  The fiction. Yeah, Jay. Kara. Right, Kara, how he did it? I can't believe it. Let me ask you guys, how many times do you think camera-type eyes have evolved in vertebrates? Uh, eight? Jay?

• 1:36:02Jay Novella?

  One.

• 1:36:03Speaker 03

  Or maybe it's like 25. What'd you say, Jay? One. It's one. The answer is one. Oh, so I was, okay. One time. Only one time? Yes, the common ancestor of vertebrates had eyes. That's all that that takes.

• 1:36:16Cara Santa Maria?

  Of course, of course.

• 1:36:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, so. Oh, so how many times did it evolve in all life, do we know? Give me a guess. Yeah, so, again, there's this what counts as an eye, what counts as independent. Okay, I'm gonna go with similar to the legs, then, like 25. Forty to 60, at least. And the number might be a lot higher. So if you're looking at all of life, there's at least 40 to 60 independent times where something like an eye evolved, right? So you have camera-type eyes in vertebrates, and famously also in squid, right? And cephalopods. You have compound eyes in insects. You have lots of creatures have eye spots. So it's like, does an eye spot count as an eye?

• 1:37:01Speaker 03

  So, most people, you know, biologists would say, yeah, if it's clearly detecting light, it's an eye. You know, even if it's a proto-eye or a primitive eye or whatever, it's still an eye. But again, you could nitpick about exactly where you want to draw the line there. Here's the other thing, though, about the independently part with eyes, which is very interesting. Is that all creatures with eyes share some biochemical similarities. So it's possible that the common ancestor of, like, early, early, early on, like, somewhere deep in the Cambrian, or even the Ediacaran, somewhere deep in the Cambrian, was a creature with the biochemical mechanism for photoreception.

• 1:37:44Speaker 03

  And then eyes evolved out of that many, many times, but those proto-photoreceptors were already there. The proteins were there, the genes were there. So is that truly independent? But they're counting that, if the physical eye was independent, they count that as independent. But even though it might not be biochemically independent, does that make sense? Yeah.

• 1:38:07Bob Novella?

  I can deal with that.

• 1:38:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, alright, that's why I said, this one, this one was so complicated, I had to make it the fiction. Cause I couldn't figure out a way to make it that would be not nitpickable, you know what I'm saying? It was too many variables, that's an easy way to make something the fiction, cause I don't have to worry about it being true. Alright, item number three, complex multicellular life has evolved independently on Earth at least five times. Bob and Lee, you think, you thought this one was fiction, and this one of course is science. So what are the, the at least five groups of multicellular life that evolved independently?

• 1:38:44Speaker 04

  They gotta be the kingdoms, right?

• 1:38:46Speaker 03

  So what are they?

• 1:38:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Animal?

• 1:38:51Speaker 03

  Animals?

• 1:38:52Cara Santa Maria?

  Plant?

• 1:38:53Speaker 03

  Plants?

• 1:38:53Bob Novella?

  Vegetable, mineral.

• 1:38:55Cara Santa Maria?

  Fungus?

• 1:38:55Bob Novella?

  How's that go?

• 1:38:56Speaker 03

  Fungus, and that, those are the easy ones, now it gets hard.

• 1:39:00Cara Santa Maria?

  Archaea?

• 1:39:01Speaker 03

  No, those are single-celled.

• 1:39:03Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh wait, sorry, what were you asking specifically?

• 1:39:05Speaker 03

  You know, complex multicellular life.

• 1:39:07Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, right, right, right, so it can't be archaea, and it can't be bacteria.

• 1:39:10Speaker 03

  Right, so animals, plants, fungi.

• 1:39:13Cara Santa Maria?

  It's like blue, blue, blue green algae, I think is single-celled.

• 1:39:16Speaker 03

  Close.

• 1:39:17Cara Santa Maria?

  Protists!

• 1:39:18Speaker 03

  It's, no, not protists, they're single-celled, red algae.

• 1:39:22Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, so it is a type of algae, okay.

• 1:39:24Speaker 03

  And brown algae, those are the five.

• 1:39:26Cara Santa Maria?

  Freaking algies!

• 1:39:27Bob Novella?

  Oh, god damn!

• 1:39:28Speaker 03

  There's a debate about a sixth, but five, that's why I said at least five.

• 1:39:31Bob Novella?

  Oh shit.

• 1:39:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, and you have to say complex multicellular life, cause there's a lot of simple multicellular life.

• 1:39:40Bob Novella?

  Yeah, like slime moles.

• 1:39:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, exactly, so the number could greatly increase if you go down that, you know, complexity spectrum to include simple things. Again, there's always demarcation lines in evolution, evolution is messy. But, but this is generally accepted that these five things independently evolved complex multicellular life. Yeah, I, that's what, that item is what triggered this theme, I saw that, I'm like, I don't know that everyone's gonna go for that. I'm gonna put that in as one of the items, and then came up with the other two. Good choice, Lee. Good choice.

• 1:40:14Bob Novella?

  Damn it, I'm pissed off, though. What the hell?

• 1:40:18Speaker 03

  That brown algae. Always gets ya.

• 1:40:21Bob Novella?

  That stuff.

• 1:40:23Speaker 03

  Alright, well, Evan's not here. So I'm gonna do the quote. I actually picked this quote even before I knew Evan couldn't be here. Steve, you mind if I do it? Go ahead. Jayce, Jayce, do the quote for us.

• 1:40:34Jay Novella?

  The chimpanzee study taught us perhaps more than anything else to be a little humble. That we are indeed unique primates. We humans, but we're simply not as different from the rest of the animal kingdom as we used to think.

• 1:40:48Speaker 03

  Jane Goodall!

• 1:40:51Bob Novella?

  Oh my gosh.

• 1:40:51Speaker 03

  It's a blast from the past. That's a great... I searched through a bunch of her quotes. That's my favorite. I really like that quote. Because it is so true. You know, her work, Fosse's work, so many other researchers' work has showed us that we are animals, and every time we think there's something totally unique about us, some other animal takes us down a peg and shows that, nope, we're just an... yes, a very interesting, but still an extension of the animal kingdom. Right? Yep.

• 1:41:21Bob Novella?

  I agree with that.

• 1:41:25Speaker 03

  Alright. Hey, Lee, thanks for joining us. Did you have a good time? I had an absolute blast. Oh, yay! And thank you all for joining me this week. You got it, Steve. Thanks, Steve. And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

• 1:41:43Speaker 03

  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.

• 1:42:20Speaker 07

  This is Jason Timp from Hoops Tonight with Jason Timp. Buy smart, drive for less and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it starts with a great deal on an off-road ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra. Two of Toyota's longest-lasting trucks combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. Built on a reputation for quality and reliability, Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which can mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places.