The Skeptics Guide #1062 - Nov 15 2025

Live from Kansas; Special Segment: Nightmares; News Items: The NeuroWorm, Ant Gives Birth to Different Species, Primordial Black Holes, Cultish, Tooth Eye, Snake Oil, Flowing Water on Asteroid; Science or Fiction

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

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

• 0:37Jay Novella?

  Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

• 0:46Jay Novella?

  Today is Saturday, September 20th, and this is your host, Stephen Novella.

• 0:57Jay Novella?

  Joining me this week are Bob Novella.

• 0:59Bob Novella?

  Hey, everybody.

• 1:01Jay Novella?

  Evan Bernstein.

• 1:02Bob Novella?

  Hello, Kansas.

• 1:04Jay Novella?

  Jay Novella. Hey, guys. Cara Santa Maria.

• 1:08Cara Santa Maria?

  Howdy.

• 1:10Jay Novella?

  Yeah, baby. Wow. And George Robb. Auntie M, Auntie M. Yay, George. We are live from Lawrence, Kansas. This is my first time in Kansas. How about you guys?

• 1:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, first time.

• 1:22Jay Novella?

  Yep.

• 1:23Bob Novella?

  Third time.

• 1:24Jay Novella?

  Third time?

• 1:24Bob Novella?

  Yes.

• 1:25Cara Santa Maria?

  How do you know that?

• 1:25Jay Novella?

  Yeah, she drove through it twice.

• 1:26Bob Novella?

  I've driven through it twice. Once north-south, and once east-west, and that was it. We may have stopped for lunch or something while we were moving around the country, but that's it. Never had a whole day in Kansas.

• 1:38Jay Novella?

  When we were driving from the airport, George said, "You know, if we didn't know we were in Kansas, could you tell from just looking around?" And other than being flatter than we're used to, not really. Yeah.

• 1:49Cara Santa Maria?

  It's pretty... It looks a lot like Texas.

• 1:50Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:51Cara Santa Maria?

  Honestly, yeah. Not the hill country, but like, North Texas.

• 1:53Speaker 05

  Parts look like Jersey or like Pennsylvania, too. Like, I mean, that's the problem with, you know, Raymore and Flanagan being everywhere. That's the thing.

• 1:59Cara Santa Maria?

  That's just America.

• 2:01Speaker 05

  America, yeah.

• 2:02Jay Novella?

  Yeah, it's Chili's and... Basically, it's all the same thing.

• 2:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:06Jay Novella?

  We're gonna start with, off with a little bit of a discussion about nightmares. Uh, this, you know, Evan suggested this as a possible news item. The item itself is pretty simple. It's like, oh, you can control your nightmares and it makes you healthier. It's like, okay, well, not so much. But, there is this issue of, and Bob and I, you know, have talked about this for a while, about like lucid dreaming, or trying to develop the ability to control, like, to be aware that you're dreaming, and to control your dream, which is a really difficult and a very unstable state. You tend to either dream you wake up, or you, which means you're back into the dream, or you actually wake up. It's very hard to maintain that knife's edge of being dreaming, but know that you're dreaming. Um, but we thought we would use this as a jumping off part, point,

• 2:51Jay Novella?

  to talk about our common recurring nightmares. And interestingly, I had my recurring nightmare last night.

• 2:59Speaker 05

  Uh-oh. Do tell.

• 3:01Jay Novella?

  Cause so, this, I think this happens more often to me when I'm sleep deprived, and just, you know, cause of travel and everything, and being in a hotel room, I usually don't sleep as well. Um, so I woke up at like four o'clock in the morning, and then, you know, went back to sleep, and it was hard to get back to sleep. And then, I slept for four more hours. And that's, that was the period, that was, that was very, uh, that was my sleep deprived sleep that I had. So I had a little bit of sleep paralysis, which happens sometimes. I did that thing where I dreamt that I woke up, but I was still dreaming. Mm-hmm. And like, I'm getting out of bed and going to the bathroom. I knew I was, had to meet these guys, and I'm like, "Am I awake?" "Yeah, I'm awake, I'm awake." I keep, I'm walking around, I'm looking at things and everything.

• 3:45Jay Novella?

  You like, your dreaming self can't tell that you're not really awake. Then I go, then I walk back to the bed, and I see myself sleeping in the bed. Like, shit, I'm still sleeping.

• 3:54Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 3:56Jay Novella?

  But the nightmare, the recurring nightmare, I had some point in there. Jay, you were in it, and you were there, and you were there.

• 4:03Speaker 05

  Put 'em up, put 'em up.

• 4:05Jay Novella?

  Oh my god. That was awesome. Jay was there and there was some other person, it might have been Ian, but I'm not really sure. So we were being chased and that's my recurring nightmares and being chased by some malevolent force. So this time it was the authorities, like the, whatever that means.

• 4:18Bob Novella?

  The po-po.

• 4:19Jay Novella?

  And you know how you just know things in dreams? They were chasing us because they thought that we were criminals, but it was a misunderstanding. But still, we like felt like we had to run away from them. And Jay had a portal gun from the Portal game, you guys know that?

• 4:34Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 4:34Jay Novella?

  Wow. So we're, we're using the portal gun to like escape into the Rocky Mountains or something. And, but they still managed to track us down. And then the guy had me at gunpoint, I had to wrestle the gun from him and I shot him in the ass. Still didn't, which was surprising because the guns almost never work in my dreams. Right? Like you can't pull the trigger or something. Or swords are wobbly.

• 4:57Bob Novella?

  Or phasers, phasers never work. Always shooting early. Never work.

• 5:01Jay Novella?

  Why is that? Well Freud had something to say about the wobbly swords.

• 5:05Cara Santa Maria?

  There's no answer to that question.

• 5:06Jay Novella?

  The thing that bothers me is like dreams are just happening, you know, and, and one part of your brain's making it up and another part of your brain is experiencing it. And why is it a universal like big F U? Why couldn't it be ultra successful and ultra fun?

• 5:19Cara Santa Maria?

  I don't think it's universal.

• 5:20Bob Novella?

  Sometimes that can happen.

• 5:21Cara Santa Maria?

  So, so what's interesting to me, and I don't know if there's like gender differences with this, but I, I've dated, I had an ex who was male, who had night terrors. And almost always he'd be like, ah, no, get away. And I'd be like, what were you dreaming? And it was, he was always being chased or people were breaking it. That's literally never happened to me. I've never had those kinds of like I'm being hunted dreams. But I had a recurring dream when I was little and it's like fucked up, you guys. Like honestly, I think this is why my parents put me in therapy like really early on. I don't dream anymore that I know of because I'm on like sleep medication that keep me in Delta and I don't, I just don't think I dream or I don't remember them.

• 6:00Bob Novella?

  You have to be experiencing REM at some point.

• 6:02Cara Santa Maria?

  I don't, I don't get, I don't get much REM at all.

• 6:04Bob Novella?

  But you don't.

• 6:05Jay Novella?

  You just don't remember them.

• 6:05Bob Novella?

  You don't remember.

• 6:06Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, but I also, the drugs I take prevent me from getting a lot of REM.

• 6:10Bob Novella?

  But you've got to get somewhere, you'd go slowly crazy.

• 6:12Cara Santa Maria?

  I don't think you do have to have REM.

• 6:13Bob Novella?

  You'd go slowly crazy without REM.

• 6:14Jay Novella?

  You do have to have REM.

• 6:15Cara Santa Maria?

  Have to? Even if you're in delta all night?

• 6:17Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 6:18Cara Santa Maria?

  I don't know.

• 6:19Bob Novella?

  You would not last long.

• 6:20Cara Santa Maria?

  I don't think that's true. I think you can't not have delta. Yeah, delta. I think you can avoid paradoxes.

• 6:25Jay Novella?

  My understanding is that you really need a good sleep architecture.

• 6:29Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 6:30Jay Novella?

  You need to go through all of the stages of sleep, you know, with a certain pattern. There could be variations.

• 6:35Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I don't.

• 6:36Jay Novella?

  But if you.

• 6:37Speaker 05

  Carrie, you're actually dreaming right now.

• 6:40Jay Novella?

  Wake up, wake up.

• 6:41Speaker 05

  This is your nightmare.

• 6:42Cara Santa Maria?

  Anyway, as an aside, anybody out there who has narcolepsy or narcolepsy type sleep disorder, I have IH, which is similar to narcolepsy. There's a medication we take, which is like GHB, it's um, ZI Wave. And it just forces you into delta all night and you're like awake during the day. And without that, I am sleepy girl my whole life, been sleepy. Anyway, when I was young, I had this recurring dream, and I'm talking like kindergarten, first, second grade, where I would go to sleep and I would wake up, just like you did. And I would be like, oh, it's time for school. And I'd go to my parents' room to wake them up for school. And they were dead in their beds. And I was like, holy shit. So I went to find my sister and she was dead in her bed. And so I left the house and went around the neighborhood, knocking on doors. Some of them were open, went in, everybody was dead, all the animals were dead.

• 7:24Cara Santa Maria?

  And I was the only living soul and it was terrifying.

• 7:28Jay Novella?

  This is a good TV show.

• 7:29Cara Santa Maria?

  Right? And it was like, everything was dead but me. And I spent the whole nightmare trying to search for something that was alive.

• 7:36Jay Novella?

  You ever find it in the dream?

• 7:37Cara Santa Maria?

  And I never could, no, I would just be searching, searching.

• 7:39Jay Novella?

  Wow.

• 7:40Cara Santa Maria?

  And then I'd wake up. And I had that a lot and I haven't since I was a child. Um, as an adult, the only things I have are like stress dreams about going to file for my graduation and I still owe like a whole credit, which I don't know. What, when do those end?

• 7:53Jay Novella?

  I still have the, I have to take a final dream.

• 7:55Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, when do those end?

• 7:56Jay Novella?

  Yeah, never, apparently.

• 7:57Cara Santa Maria?

  God.

• 7:58Jay Novella?

  No, stressors do it. My, uh, so my kid nightmare was anybody, when I was a kid, my dad used to let all of us watch all the science fiction movies and everything. So there's one thing where some dude reanimates an arm, you know, from the hell, remember that? And I remember one scene, like it grabs the guy, scared the shit out of me. So my semi-reoccurring dream was that there was a gauntlet, you know, like an armored hand crawling after me. And then I stopped having it when I finally picked it up and I scooped out the mustard that it was, that filled it. And that how, that broke the chain because mustard wasn't scary to me. But my real wow.

• 8:32Cara Santa Maria?

  Maybe you should have gone to a therapist.

• 8:35Speaker 05

  Back up, back up, back up.

• 8:36Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 8:37Speaker 05

  The arm was full. Of mustard.

• 8:38Jay Novella?

  It was a gauntlet. It was like a, it was like armor. You know what I mean?

• 8:40Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 8:41Jay Novella?

  And that was, that was how my brain transferred it from like a human hand to like a more terrifying gauntlet hand crawling after.

• 8:47Speaker 05

  More terrifying.

• 8:48Cara Santa Maria?

  Explain to him that it was full of mustard. Like, well, yeah, because it was a gauntlet.

• 8:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 8:52Cara Santa Maria?

  It wasn't a real arm.

• 8:54Speaker 05

  Real arm.

• 8:54Jay Novella?

  The other arm had ketchup.

• 8:55Cara Santa Maria?

  Gauntlets are always full of mustard.

• 8:57Jay Novella?

  I was in my parents closet and they had a deep closet when we were kids. And my dad had his safe right there. And I remember I was sitting next to it.

• 9:03Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 9:03Jay Novella?

  And the thing came in.

• 9:04Speaker 05

  Where's the mustard coming? I don't understand.

• 9:06Jay Novella?

  I have no idea. I don't know. Did you not like mustard? Was it brown or yellow? It was yellow. Yellow mustard? Yeah. George, you like yellow mustard?

• 9:13Speaker 05

  I hate, I hate mustard, but.

• 9:14Jay Novella?

  I mean, mustard is scary. That would make it scary. So gross. Gauntlet of mustard? Oh, my God. Yeah, it was, yeah. I mean, now that I'm thinking about it, it's pretty messed up. So anyway, my adult dream, so really quick, I gotta give you a little background. I had been looking my entire life to have a proper love relationship and I, and I mean, like many people, just failure after failure after failure. And I got into my 30s, got into my 40s and I'm like, you know, nothing was working. And I finally was at the point where I'm like, it's not gonna happen, you know? Because statistically, it was getting less and less likely. I meet my wife, who's my best friend and is the freaking sunshine of everything that's good in my life.

• 9:55Jay Novella?

  She's, she's unbelievable and I've never been loved like this. I've never felt loved like this before. You know, I can go on and on.

• 10:01Speaker 05

  This is my nightmare, by the way.

• 10:05Cara Santa Maria?

  With you.

• 10:05Jay Novella?

  My nightmare is that I don't know, I know that the idea of her, like, I found someone, she's my wife, but I don't know who she is. I don't know her name. I don't know what she looks like and I don't know where she is. So it's like that whole veil thing, like something's wrong. Why am I with this weird person? There's this, I'm not supposed to be here. This is not what's supposed to be happening. Spoiled zone kind of dream. Yeah, and it, and it totally upends me. Like, I wake up freaking out when I, because I, because you really feel it.

• 10:32Cara Santa Maria?

  And that's like a real neurological disorder. Like when people, the invasion of the body snatchers thing where they don't reckon, like, there's people that they know, but they don't recognize.

• 10:40Jay Novella?

  Capgras syndrome. That's scary as shit. Like, if I ever had, there is a, yeah, that, imagine having that. Like, in the dream, everything's normal, except I know that I'm supposed to be with somebody else and I have no other idea of who that person is. Yeah, that's kind of like a dream about having capgras syndrome. Like, this is not my wife. Yeah. It's interesting. Yep.

• 10:58Speaker 06

  George, what about you?

• 10:58Speaker 05

  I had one very influential dream when I was a kid. It wasn't recurring, but I was probably four, four or five, and I was in bed. And to me, it wasn't a dream. I was awake. I mean, in my mind, I was awake in my bed. And subsequently, most of my dreams do take place like in my bedroom. Like literally, I'll be in bed, I'm aware that I'm in bed and something is happening in the room. But I was a very, very young youngster and it was morning. And I looked up and at the foot of my bed was a closet that had the door open. And at the top of the closet was sort of like a shelf at the top. And it was a dark sort of shelf. And there were two hands, sort of these wispy, not quite bone, not quite smoke, hands just sort of doing this waving motion, just independent.

• 11:42Speaker 05

  There was no body, there was no whatever. And I remember just sort of looking at it and like being scared, but sort of, but not really doing anything about it and just being terrified. I told my mom the next day that this had happened. And she was like, "Oh, it was probably a dream." And for probably 10 to 15 years after that, I couldn't have a door open. Like if I was in a, in a bedroom somewhere, like my dorm, the closet couldn't be open. It had to be shut. And it never happened again. It was just that one time.

• 12:09Cara Santa Maria?

  Do you remember, like you said, you didn't do anything about it? Could you move? You might have been having a hypnopompic hallucination. Yeah, I don't think that was a dream. I think that was a hypnopompic hallucination.

• 12:19Speaker 05

  It felt so unbelievable. Like I knew what dreams were. I knew what dreams were at that point, but it was just, and it was just...

• 12:25Cara Santa Maria?

  You said it was morning, you were in bed, you didn't do anything.

• 12:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, so that, and to this day, I can sort of still picture it. I'm sure I've modified it in my head over time and now it's Technicolor or whatever, but... And it wasn't, you know, there was no blood, there was no, it was just, "Oh, that ain't right. That ain't right." Yeah.

• 12:39Speaker 06

  When I was a kid also, my dreams have changed. I think a lot of people have had that experience as well. You don't dream about the things you used to and you dream about new things. But when I was a kid, the reoccurring dream I would have that would frighten me is that I could not control myself from falling. It's the falling dream, right? I think we've all experienced that, that sort of, you're, you're dropping, you, it's, death is coming. You have that sinking sensation in your body. But I would have the dream where I would try to remain on the ground, yet something was nefarious or otherwise, was pulling me up into the sky.

• 13:21Speaker 06

  And would drop me. I would constantly get dropped as a kid. Now, as an adult, though, I would, I don't really have nightmares per se, but my recurrence is that it's this level of frustration that I can't seem to get something done. I need to be over there now. I know I need to be over there now. Why aren't I over there now? I'm trying to walk. I'm not walking. Why? So I get very frustrated at that.

• 13:45Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it's called a stress dream.

• 13:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, oh, total, total. And it's true of all sorts of scenarios. Like, I know I have to write this thing. Why aren't I writing it? Why? What is going on? I have to write this. Why aren't I writing? So I can't make sense of it. And I wind up getting really angry with myself in those dreams. And that takes on many forms and many, various kinds of scenarios.

• 14:07Bob Novella?

  Yeah, I've had plenty of nightmares. I can't really remember any that are like, really like, oh, listen to this one. I've had, the stress, the stress dreams are common, everyone. But there's one nightmare that I remember that was really fascinating. And it was a nightmare of a movie nightmare. Werewolf, American Werewolf in London. There's a dream sequence where he's, where David Naughton's attacked by these weird creatures with weird faces. So in my dream, I'm in my kitchen in, where we grew up, and they come in the house with machine guns and start killing everybody. So, yeah, pretty bad, right? But I was also experimenting with lucid dreams at that time. And I said, this

• 14:51Bob Novella?

  is not real. These aren't real bullets. This is all bullshit. So I walked right up to them. Like, you're not even real. And they start shooting me. I'm like, see? Nothing, guys. So then I'm like, all right, I'm done with you. I walked out of the house and I, and I tried to fly, which is what I would do whenever I had a lucid dream. I tried to fly. And I would almost invariably fail because it's so hard. You know, you try to leap in the air like Superman. It just, you just fall flat. It doesn't work. It's so frustrating. But the few times it actually worked, it was magical. It was just like, holy crap. You feel like Superman. If you ever tried to lucid dream, try to fly because it's like amazing.

• 15:27Cara Santa Maria?

  Bob, when you, when you fly in your dreams, so when I fly in my dreams, if I'm like doing the breaststroke in the air, is that how everybody, or do you like?

• 15:34Speaker 06

  Sometimes.

• 15:35Bob Novella?

  I have both.

• 15:36Cara Santa Maria?

  That's the only way I've ever been able to do it.

• 15:37Speaker 06

  And it's silly, right?

• 15:38Jay Novella?

  It requires a lot of mental effort and it's hard to sustain.

• 15:40Cara Santa Maria?

  Ah, interesting.

• 15:41Jay Novella?

  Even my dreams. But you can.

• 15:43Cara Santa Maria?

  I can do it in my dreams, but like it's, this is how you get up a level and you're aloft. And I'm always the only one and everybody's going, whoa, that's so badass.

• 15:52Speaker 05

  Is there any evolutionary advantage to not just dreaming, but nightmares in particular? Is there some kind of, can we think of any of any?

• 15:59Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, we still don't even understand a hundred percent like what dreams are and why we dream. So I think it's hard to make that leap.

• 16:06Jay Novella?

  You know that dreams, the REM sleep is important for consolidation of memory for your brain is sort of recalibrating itself.

• 16:13Speaker 05

  Desktop clearing.

• 16:14Jay Novella?

  Does the dream actually have to happen or is your, maybe you need to be conscious enough for your brain to do the work that needs to happen during REM?

• 16:21Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, you're not conscious when you're dreaming.

• 16:22Jay Novella?

  Maybe it's a byproduct.

• 16:23Bob Novella?

  I thought it's like your brain is just firing in a much more random sequence than normal. And your mind is trying to make sense of all of that static. And that's kind of how I see the dream imagery.

• 16:35Jay Novella?

  When you're dreaming, the part of your brain that does reality testing is not functioning.

• 16:40Bob Novella?

  Which is why.

• 16:41Jay Novella?

  Which is why things make sense to you in dreams that don't make sense to you when you wake up. Cause you're a different person when you're dreaming. You're not your, the same person, you're not your waking self.

• 16:48Bob Novella?

  And the key with lucid dream, and I think is that you, there's a critical threshold of activation in that, in that, that lobe of your brain. Where you can do reality testing, like whoa, this isn't real, this must be a dream. So that's, that's the idea, I think, behind.

• 17:02Jay Novella?

  So Bob, you mentioned that you, in that dream, you were in our childhood home. What's interesting is that when I remember my dreams, it's either in a place that's not real. If it isn't a place that I'm familiar with, it's almost always in our childhood home. I don't think I've ever had a dream where it's in my current home that I'm living in, that I remember. Is that same for you guys as well?

• 17:20Bob Novella?

  That's, that's true.

• 17:21Cara Santa Maria?

  No, my dreams are usually pretty typical, like, yeah.

• 17:24Jay Novella?

  Did you guys ever, Bob and Steve, growing up, when mom and dad put the extension, like put the, the party room in? Did you ever dream that you were being pulled in there? Did you ever dream that, Bob? Cause that, I don't know why, like I remember being dragged down the stairs. That was like, oh, they're having a shared room.

• 17:42Speaker 05

  Wait, explain, explain what this is.

• 17:44Jay Novella?

  What are you being pulled into? So my dream was.

• 17:45Speaker 05

  Was there mustard? What's going on?

• 17:46Jay Novella?

  Well, it was always, like the lights were always off, right? So when we all went up to bed, it was like that room and then the, the new room that they were putting on off of it. It was pitch black. And I always be, being creeped out, going quick, I gotta go quick. The light, there's a kitchen there and I gotta run and turn the corner and get up the stairs before that room gets me. Then the light switch doesn't work. So, I had a dream that I got pulled into that darkness.

• 18:08Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 18:08Jay Novella?

  And it, I still get a little creeped out when I think about it.

• 18:11Speaker 05

  Sure. You know what I love when, when, when pets dream?

• 18:14Jay Novella?

  Oh, yeah.

• 18:15Speaker 05

  Like when you're, when you're puffy.

• 18:18Speaker 05

  And they're chasing bunnies. We used to call it, yeah, chasing bunnies. That's just the coolest thing. Cause it's just like, oh, they're dreaming too. So there, you know, there is some evolutionary purpose for it, to reprogram, whatever. But do, yeah, but like, do dogs have nightmares too? Like, is there a?

• 18:30Jay Novella?

  Sure.

• 18:31Speaker 05

  Wow. Like some mailman that's got a machine gun or like, what's the?

• 18:35Jay Novella?

  That could be anything.

• 18:36Bob Novella?

  Here's one more. I think we had nightmare cross fertilization when we were growing up. Cause I remember my sister telling us that she, her nightmare, I think infected some of our nightmares. She had a dream where she called this monster the beep beep eye. The beep beep eye.

• 18:49Jay Novella?

  Oh my gosh.

• 18:53Jay Novella?

  That's where that came from?

• 18:54Bob Novella?

  In her mind, in her dream, the beep beep eye was an eye, right? But it would draw eyes all over you, right? That's my memory. In my version of it, it was a robot, cause beep beep to me is a robot. So it was a robot that would draw eyes on you. And that's where my memory ends. What, what's your memory of that?

• 19:11Jay Novella?

  Giant floating eye.

• 19:12Bob Novella?

  Yeah, alright.

• 19:13Jay Novella?

  But that was chasing you. That was again, the cha, just a chase dream.

• 19:15Bob Novella?

  That's kinda creepy.

• 19:16Jay Novella?

  Yeah. In my dream, I ate the eyes and they were meatballs. Yeah? That's surprising. So, that tracks. Alright, have you guys heard of the brain worm? Not the brain worm.

• 19:27Bob Novella?

  Of course we have.

• 19:28Jay Novella?

  Do you guys know where that quote comes from, by the way, in the eyes? Not the bar worm. Yeah. Anybody know where that?

• 19:33Bob Novella?

  Yeah, wait.

• 19:34Jay Novella?

  Anyone know where it comes from?

• 19:35Bob Novella?

  It sounds like Lord Farquaad.

• 19:37Jay Novella?

  Flash Gordon. Flash Gordon.

• 19:38Bob Novella?

  Nice.

• 19:39Jay Novella?

  Flash, good job.

• 19:39Bob Novella?

  Nice, that's right.

• 19:41Jay Novella?

  You get two, two SG geek points. Okay.

• 19:43Bob Novella?

  Wow.

• 19:43Jay Novella?

  The 1980 version. So we have spoken about brain machine interface before. And you guys remember what the biggest technological limitation of the brain machine interface is? Yes. Fidelity.

• 19:55Bob Novella?

  The electrodes staying put.

• 19:56Jay Novella?

  The electrodes. It's the electrodes. But that's, that's what I mean. It's part of it, but it's really the, so with the software, we're kicking butt, right? We can make sense.

• 20:04Speaker 05

  They move, they, they don't stay in place, they what?

• 20:06Jay Novella?

  So, yeah, so the, the, the problem with the, so we have multiple choi, choices with electrodes. You can put them on the scalp surface, which is not invasive, but they're... There's a lot of attenuation with the skull, right? So you lose a lot of information. You could put brain surface electrodes, and they're much higher fidelity, but they fibrose over, they form scar tissue and, you know, inflammation and whatever, so it's not good. Deep brain electrodes, same thing, they eventually will scar over. And then there's the stentrodes, which you put inside veins, which are still experimental, but those are, those have a lot of promise. But, so what we're missing, like, the next step would be to make flexible electrodes

• 20:47Jay Novella?

  that flex with the brain, so it doesn't cause the scar tissue. So that, so that is, you know, there are a lot of groups working on that. So now there's a study, not only doing that, but taking it even a step further. This is, this is the, the brain worm. So what they've done is, they've designed a series of electrodes, right, to look like an earthworm. So if you imagine an earthworm, and the bands are each electrodes, right? Yep. And they, in the head of the worm is a magnet, so they could actually have the worm sort of crawl through your brain. By moving the magnet? By moving, from external magnets. Oh, wow.

• 21:29Jay Novella?

  So they could reposition it as desired, and because it's flexible and movable, they tested it in, well, they tested it in, because it also could be used for muscle, like, you could use this to monitor muscle activity or brain activity. They tested it in the muscles of rats, and they went a year with minimal scar tissue, which is, that's the key, right there. So you move it to minimize the scar tissue? Well, but, yeah, the fact that it moves, it's not rigid and not fixed in place, then that's where the scar tissue forms.

• 22:01Speaker 05

  How is it not destroying tissue as it moves, though? Like, why would it, it's, on the surface?

• 22:06Cara Santa Maria?

  It must be weaker than the surrounding tissue.

• 22:07Jay Novella?

  So it's going, it's going, it's going, it's going to take the path of least resistance, right? In the muscles, it's going through the fascia, the fascia's the connective tissue.

• 22:14Speaker 05

  Oh, okay.

• 22:14Jay Novella?

  It's not boring through muscle cells.

• 22:16Speaker 05

  Okay, okay.

• 22:16Jay Novella?

  It's like moving through the, the planes between muscles.

• 22:19Speaker 05

  Gotcha, gotcha.

• 22:19Jay Novella?

  In the brain, you know, it would be going through your, the gyri and the valleys. I don't know what that is. You're talking about the surface of your? Yeah, it'd be outside your brain.

• 22:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, so these are super, they're on the surface?

• 22:30Jay Novella?

  It would be on the surface, this would be brain surface electrode.

• 22:32Cara Santa Maria?

  And also, just to clarify, they're modeling it after an earthworm, but they're not the size of an earthworm, right?

• 22:37Jay Novella?

  No.

• 22:38Cara Santa Maria?

  They're very small.

• 22:39Jay Novella?

  They're actually, they're, they're smaller and they're flatter.

• 22:42Speaker 05

  Flatworms.

• 22:43Jay Novella?

  So, would you feel that? Your brain does not feel anything. But I know, but it's not your brain, it's on the surface of your, could the, the bottom of your skull has any sensation? Well, so it would be the dura, right? It would be the lining around your brain.

• 22:54Cara Santa Maria?

  Is it underneath the dura?

• 22:55Jay Novella?

  Yeah, the whole point would be to put it on the surface of the brain, right? So we could crawl along the surface of the brain. So, the, the advantage here is one, so the, the primary thing is if they could get these electrodes to last for years, that would be amazing, right? That would, that would, it makes it much more viable as a technology. So it's not like a, a prong that's stuck into your brain? It's just touching the surface? It's a skimming on the surface? Alright, that's cool.

• 23:19Cara Santa Maria?

  But what's, what diseases are they, because, I don't know, I think about like DBS, that, that's by definition, deep brain.

• 23:25Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 23:25Cara Santa Maria?

  So how helpful, what, what kinds of things can this help with?

• 23:28Jay Novella?

  So, first of all, just for studying the brain, right? So if you have, if somebody has epilepsy, let's say, so what, you know, and we could do EEGs, you know, electroencephalograms from the brain surface, sometimes we do, you know, from the skull surface, but then, for, if we're planning on cutting out a chunk of your brain to stop your seizures, we need to know exactly where the seizure's coming from, which means we need to capture it, right, as it starts.

• 23:51Cara Santa Maria?

  But you still aren't gonna know depth, you're only gonna know...

• 23:54Jay Novella?

  Well, yeah, but the thing is, if you could, once you put the electrodes in place, then that's it, you're getting one spot.

• 23:59Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 24:00Jay Novella?

  This would say, let's, let's see what's happening over there, let's move it along the brain. How quick can you move it? I mean, it's, it's in real time, they're just moving it with magnets. Yeah, but I mean, like, could you move it from here to here in like three seconds? Or you have to be like... I don't know exactly how long it takes, but it's not a limiting factor, it doesn't take long to move it.

• 24:16Speaker 05

  No, could this theoretically, could this be non-invasive, like, like the bug in Wrath of Khan?

• 24:21Jay Novella?

  It's minimally invasive, they don't call it non-invasive.

• 24:23Speaker 05

  You put it in the ear or put it up your nose or something and it like finds its way?

• 24:25Jay Novella?

  That's a good point, it's minimally, it's considered minimally invasive because they, like with the, if you're laying electrodes along this, the brain's surface, you gotta open up the brain to do that. But here, you could literally bore a hole, bore, right?

• 24:39Cara Santa Maria?

  Still invasive.

• 24:40Jay Novella?

  Put the worm in there and then get it to the place where you need it.

• 24:43Speaker 05

  Get it to where it's gonna go.

• 24:43Jay Novella?

  So it's less invasive for that reason, you only have to bore a small little hole. And then for brain-machine interface, the, the thing, because it's dynamic... And flexible at the same time, you could calibrate it, get it to the right part of the brain to have the functionality that you want, right? So there's more flexibility there, rather than putting it someplace, hoping it's the right place and seeing how well it works. Like, if this isn't working out, let's move it a millimeter to the left and see if that works better, whatever. It'd be just more of a dynamic relationship. So, I know it's super small. Yeah. But like, let's say here's the head, like, my thumb is the head. It's long, I mean, you should think, it's not short, it's the hope, you want it to be long. So it could go literally to the front? Because the whole, the whole thing is electrodes, like sixty electrodes. Yeah.

• 25:27Jay Novella?

  And so you want them spaced out, you know, for a reasonable distance. How do they control where the tail is? So I just think because of the way it moves, you know? But there's only a magnet on one side? On the, on the head, yeah. Okay.

• 25:39Speaker 05

  Is this built, or this is theoretically here?

• 25:41Jay Novella?

  They published a paper where they did, they showed that it works in the muscles of rats.

• 25:45Speaker 05

  In the muscles?

• 25:46Jay Novella?

  Yeah. Kara, tell us about these ants.

• 25:48Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, this is a really interesting story. It was actually published, uh, earlier this month in Nature, it was a big deal. Um, so, these ants, this is a picture of queens of a Mediterranean harvester ant. Uh, the species here is called Messer Ibericus, they're in Spain. Um, so we're gonna have to hold two different species in our heads in explaining this story, because it's a little bit complicated. So there's M. Ibericus, Messer Ibericus, and then there's M. Structer, or Messer Structer. So two different species, same genus, right? M. Ibericus, M. Structer. So, researchers were observing these M. Ibericus, um, colonies, and they realized that there

• 26:32Cara Santa Maria?

  were some M. Structer drones hanging out within the M. Ibericus colony. They also realized that there were some hybrids of these ants within the, within the colony.

• 26:45Jay Novella?

  Hybrid.

• 26:46Cara Santa Maria?

  It's, I'm gonna say that word so many times.

• 26:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Be cute for a minute. And, and so the researchers were like, okay, it's not that uncommon to see hybrid species within some kind of colonies or structural organizations of animals, right? We've seen hybrids of different like dog species or different marine animals.

• 27:10Jay Novella?

  Animals are always getting busy.

• 27:11Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, and if they're close enough, like if they're the same genus and the species is close enough, they can often make offspring, but the offspring might be sterile. So in an ant colony, it doesn't really matter if the drones are sterile because as a general rule, the drones aren't there to mate, they're there to do jobs. But what the researchers noticed was that there were drones that were from a different species within the colony, but the species in question, M. structer, sometimes was like hundreds of miles away geographically. And they're like, how did these ants come across these other ants? Also bear in mind that these ants diverged about as long ago in evolutionary history as we did from chimpanzees. This will be important for the analogy that the researchers make later.

• 27:56Cara Santa Maria?

  So they're trying to figure out where did they come across these? How did they make these hybrids? And at the beginning, they were all joking, like, what if they were giving birth to a different species? That's ridiculous. And then the more they dug in, they were like, shit, I think that's what happened. So they start observing these, these queen ants and they're noticing that they're laying eggs and they're, they have offspring that are a different species. And so they look at the offspring and they're like, how did they get there? Maybe they came across some drones somewhere? What's going on? They looked at both the M. structer and the M. ibericus ants and they found that they all had M. ibericus. Was it M. ibericus or M. structer? So now I'm confusing myself. Doesn't matter. They all had the same mitochondrial DNA.

• 28:40Cara Santa Maria?

  And they were like, well, that's weird. What is going on here? As they dug a little bit deeper and they were able to actually watch these queens lay and then look at the genetics of, of the eggs that they laid, they realized that without any exposure to the other species. These queen mothers were laying a different species of ant, which is the first time that's ever been observed in any animal, anywhere on the planet. They're calling it xenoparity, foreign birth.

• 29:10Jay Novella?

  So it's just a coincidence?

• 29:12Cara Santa Maria?

  No, no. So it seems to be an evolutionary quirk that's helpful because if you can increase the diversity of your colony, because what often happens is that a queen will mate with a fertile drone to produce offspring, but they're all genetically the same, which is bad. Queens also tend to have something they call selfish genes. So sometimes when a queen mates, she just makes more queens over and over and over. And you need to have a balance of different roles in the colony. So one way to prevent that is to mate with a different species and then the queen is less likely to make more queens. So what ends up happening, and this is the analogy that they use, because one of the journalists on this was like, wait, so is this like if a human woman mated with a chimpanzee and

• 29:57Cara Santa Maria?

  then produced a hybrid offspring? It's a hybrid. That that was sterile and couldn't produce more? And they were like, no, it's even weirder than that. It's if a if it's if a woman, a human woman mated with a chimpanzee in an effort to produce hybrid offspring so that they could have workers continuing to make the colony run.

• 30:19Jay Novella?

  I'm so afraid that someone's going to try to do this.

• 30:22Cara Santa Maria?

  This is amazing. Well, the thing is, we had, we didn't even think this was possible. And so it's funny, I was telling Bob about it earlier and he was like, but how does it work? And I was like, I don't know, they didn't tell us that. I think they're still trying to figure that out. They they they figured out that it does work. They were able to observe the outcome.

• 30:37Jay Novella?

  To clarify, though, they're giving birth not to just hybrids, but to the other, the full other species.

• 30:42Cara Santa Maria?

  They're giving birth to the full other species so then they can mate with the full other species and produce hybrids.

• 30:47Jay Novella?

  So but they must have the genes then for that other species.

• 30:49Cara Santa Maria?

  They all have it in their mitochondria.

• 30:52Jay Novella?

  But that's, is that enough, though?

• 30:54Cara Santa Maria?

  I guess we'll figure out how that mitochondrial DNA is making its way into the gametes. I don't know. Or maybe there's some other, they still don't understand how it works.

• 31:02Jay Novella?

  Yeah, I think I'm missing something.

• 31:03Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, I think they are too. Like, they were like, this isn't possible. But then they observed it and they were like, this is the only explanation.

• 31:11Jay Novella?

  Is it possible they made it in the past, like they're saving the sperm from the other species for later, for later use?

• 31:16Cara Santa Maria?

  Hundreds of miles away and they're ants. So it doesn't, I don't think it is possible.

• 31:22Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 31:22Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, but maybe, maybe.

• 31:24Jay Novella?

  But once you've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable,

• 31:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Exactly.

• 31:29Jay Novella?

  Must be true.

• 31:30Cara Santa Maria?

  Because the truth of the matter is, this seems impossible, right? So it could be, could be, but, but either way, they are giving birth to a different species, whether they're holding on to that sperm, and they call it sometimes like sperm paratism, paratism, or something like that, parasitism? Or whether they have the genetic code somewhere in them, and they're able to kind of like drum it up, that's what's happening. It's the first time it's ever been observed.

• 31:54Speaker 05

  So this kills like every creationist argument about not having another species come from, you know, that transition.

• 32:00Cara Santa Maria?

  Just add it to the list.

• 32:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, just add it to the list.

• 32:02Jay Novella?

  They don't care, Jerry.

• 32:03Speaker 05

  It's right there. That's astonishing.

• 32:05Cara Santa Maria?

  Phenomenal, right?

• 32:06Jay Novella?

  But it also isn't, it's not like a deliberate choice, it's all happening like automatically now.

• 32:11Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I mean, we never know, like, what does deliberate mean? Are they, are they, you know, having philosophical debates about it? No, but are there certain environmental pressures that force it to happen?

• 32:20Speaker 05

  What must have, what must have failed previously to lead to this being successful and then be reproducible?

• 32:26Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, it doesn't always mean that something has to fail. Sometimes it's just that something is more successful, right? So, yeah, I mean, there, either way, there are environmental pressures that are allowing for this to happen.

• 32:36Jay Novella?

  That's frickin' cool.

• 32:37Cara Santa Maria?

  Evolution, very cool.

• 32:38Jay Novella?

  All right. Bob, you're gonna tell us even more about black holes?

• 32:43Bob Novella?

  This one's cool. I love this news item so much. So new research seems to suggest that there could be a 90% chance that in the next 10 years, we could see an exploding black hole.

• 32:56Jay Novella?

  There could be a 90% chance?

• 32:58Bob Novella?

  Yes.

• 32:59Jay Novella?

  What's the percentage chance that there is a 90% chance?

• 33:02Cara Santa Maria?

  Sex Panther?

• 33:05Speaker 05

  80% of the time.

• 33:07Cara Santa Maria?

  Every time.

• 33:07Bob Novella?

  You can't, it's unknowable at this current time. If this is true, this would be the biggest... Gift to astrophysicists in our lifetimes. The upside is so good that it's fun talking about, even though it might be unlikely. But it's fascinating. And I learned a bunch of things that are actually, you know, probably 100% true. All right. So, all right, so to appreciate this, we gotta, we gotta just talk a little bit about just black holes and Hawking radiation. Black holes, we all, we have all heard of black holes, right? You've got a couple of varieties. We've got supermassive black holes, millions to billions of solar masses, right? They're amazing, other fantastic objects.

• 33:50Bob Novella?

  There's stellar mass black holes, a lot smaller, maybe three, three solar masses to perhaps 150 solar masses. Okay. But there's also a hypothetical black hole called primordial black holes. Now these, if they exist, they, they would have formed in the first second after the, after the big bang. After the big bang, there were so many density fluctuations happening that they think that these black holes could have formed, not by an imploding star, but by just these, these density fluctuations, that enough mass was in one space, enough mass energy was in one space, that a black hole forms. These black holes, when they're talked about today, they typically say, yeah, they probably

• 34:32Bob Novella?

  have the mass of maybe Earth mass, or down to an asteroid, or even, you know, much even smaller than that. So if you had a, if you were a primordial black hole with a mass of, say, an asteroid, you would, your event horizon would be about as big as a, as a dime. Very tiny. These are obviously very, very small black holes. So the next critical component here is Hawking radiation. Now, we've talked about Hawking radiation. Stephen Hawking, of course, came up with the idea. Hawking radiation, let me just set the table for this a little bit. Hawking radiation is a result of black holes losing their immortality and becoming just, you know, objects that won't live forever.

• 35:13Bob Novella?

  When, when Stephen Hawking looked at black holes through a quantum lens, he realized that they have a temperature. They actually have a temperature. And because of quantum effects, then if they have a temperature, then they're emitting thermal radiation. And if they're emitting thermal radiation, that means that they're going to be losing mass, which means they have a finite lifetime. So that's what, that's what his conclusion was. So what happened was, the idea is that the black holes would emit radiation and shrink and get hotter, and then emit more radiation, and then shrink and get hotter, and that cycle would continue. So Hawking radiation, though, is probably not being emitted from the big boys, the supermassive black holes and the solar mass black holes. Because they're colder than the universe is, so they're not really going to be emitting.

• 35:58Bob Novella?

  There's no net loss of mass from these big guys. But the primordial black holes, if they're still around and they're small enough, they're going to be small enough and hot enough to be emitting something that we could potentially detect. The problem is, nobody thinks they've been emitting radiation or gamma rays these years because we would have seen that glow in the universe. We would have seen this gamma radiation glow. So here's the new bit now. The new bit is that they're trying to incorporate some new theories and models of dark matter into these primordial black holes. So the end result would be that these primordial black holes perhaps have a charge, like a static charge, very, very small charge. But if it has that charge, and some models seem compelling, if these black holes have

• 36:43Bob Novella?

  the charge, then they would basically have been in kind of like a slow motion stasis for the past, you know, billions of years. They would not have been emitting anything, they would not have been shrinking. But according to this theory, they could be doing that now. They could be releasing this, they could be exploding in the near future. So that's where the 90% comes from. If their model is correct, then there's a 90% chance in the next 10 years, we could see an exploding black hole.

• 37:12Jay Novella?

  Bob, can I ask you a question? So which black holes could potentially explode? The super small ones?

• 37:17Bob Novella?

  Only the small ones, because the bigger ones are too big. They're not going to be releasing any real radiation for, oh, about 10 to the 67 years.

• 37:25Jay Novella?

  Alright, so what, is it a big deal if it explodes? Like what happens?

• 37:29Bob Novella?

  It's gonna be so awesome, and that's what I'm getting into right now.

• 37:32Jay Novella?

  Wait, wait, wait. Okay, never mind, go ahead, sorry. We want them to explode. You're gonna cover it. It's a good thing, and Bob's gonna tell us why.

• 37:38Bob Novella?

  Alright, so say we see the explosion. What does that mean? On its face, it's fantastic, because it proves so many things, it's ridiculous. It proves that Hawking radiation is real. If we see a gamma radiation burst that disappears very quickly with no, you know, with no delayed afterglow. Get smaller and smaller and other things. If we see that and we've got detectors that can detect that, then we know that Hawking radiations exist. Huge coup, right just there. We would also prove that primordial black holes exist. Another huge coup right there. We would also have evidence for this dark electromagnetism that's related to dark matter. That would also maybe even be the biggest discovery right there, having, finding some link to dark matter in this.

• 38:21Bob Novella?

  But the other thing, and the thing that really caught my attention and blew my mind is that the particle explosion, when this tiny black hole exploded, it would emit essentially an inventory of all possible particles that could exist. Think about that. It would emit everything that, that, that we have been looking for, that we have theorized about, that we've already found, everything that that black hole could create, could be emitted and we could detect it.

• 38:47Jay Novella?

  Now Bob, you're not talking about-

• 38:49Bob Novella?

  That just blew me away.

• 38:50Jay Novella?

  You're not talking about elements, right? You're not talking- Well, particles, different kind of particles.

• 38:54Bob Novella?

  Particles, yeah. Electrons, protons, quarks, axions, neutrinos.

• 38:58Cara Santa Maria?

  Isn't, I mean, all of those things are out there.

• 39:01Jay Novella?

  Higgs. Well, but see, there are very high, high-energy particles that we've never detected and we can't create even in a large high-energy collider. So this would basically be like a super, super, super, super collider with energies orders of magnitude beyond what we could ever create.

• 39:17Cara Santa Maria?

  I hear you.

• 39:18Jay Novella?

  Spitting out high-energy particles that would, otherwise we would never see.

• 39:20Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, but that's the question, right? So are you saying that we would need some sort of detector near this?

• 39:26Jay Novella?

  No, no, on Earth.

• 39:28Cara Santa Maria?

  But then, aren't all of those particles, they've been created at some point in the universe, so they are out there, we're just not able to detect them.

• 39:35Jay Novella?

  But it's just an event. We have to capture the event. You have to capture the event.

• 39:38Bob Novella?

  Right.

• 39:39Jay Novella?

  So when a black hole sucks something in, right? Like, you know, this is-

• 39:42Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, black holes don't suck.

• 39:43Jay Novella?

  Pull.

• 39:44Cara Santa Maria?

  They-

• 39:45Jay Novella?

  They pull.

• 39:46Cara Santa Maria?

  It's just gravity.

• 39:48Jay Novella?

  Whatever. When a thing goes into a black hole.

• 39:52Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 39:52Jay Novella?

  And it's made out of matter.

• 39:54Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 39:55Jay Novella?

  It automatically strips that down and turns all of that matter, which we're talking about, you know.

• 40:00Bob Novella?

  Down to a singularity.

• 40:02Jay Novella?

  Well, wait, no, it doesn't turn them into these particles or the...

• 40:04Cara Santa Maria?

  They're already made of those particles.

• 40:06Jay Novella?

  I know, I know. It takes them all apart and makes them...

• 40:10Speaker 05

  Specifizing.

• 40:11Bob Novella?

  Jay.

• 40:11Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 40:12Bob Novella?

  When something enters the event horizon of a black hole, we don't know what happens. Our physics breaks down. Singularity is just a placeholder for we don't know what the hell's going on. So you can't speculate. Wait till we come up with quantum gravity, then we might have a better idea, but it's... We don't know what's going on. But the thing is, it's not like the particles are in there waiting to leap out. What's happening is that this black hole that's exploding is releasing... When it gets hot enough, it releases one particle, say a photon. When it gets a little bit hotter, right, it shrinks and it gets hotter. Then it releases electrons. Then it gets smaller and hotter, then it releases protons. And then it goes through the inventory of all the possible particles that are related to the temperature of the black hole at that time.

• 40:57Bob Novella?

  And it goes through all of them. And so we're getting what we can detect from this is gamma radiation. So we're looking at this gamma radiation. And when a new particle is emitted, it changes. It changes the slope. It changes the energy spectrum. And we can see that little step. And then, oh, here's another step. Here's another step. Here's another particle. And when we look at it, we could say, here's the standard model of physics. I see the electron. I see the protons. I see quarks. I see all of these things that we know, that we've already discovered. But then you keep looking at this gamma ray signal and you're like, what the hell's that? What the hell's that? We don't know what that stuff is. It could be, it could give us a roadmap to all these particles that we probably never would have found, maybe in a thousand years of technological advancement.

• 41:40Bob Novella?

  It could give us just a roadmap for all these particles beyond standard physics, which we've been waiting for for so long. And it would be just an amazing occurrence that I hope, I really hope this is true because if it's not true, then we would have to wait. And I calculated how long we would have to wait for a small black hole, like a... Stellar mass black hole, say, the smallest black hole is about probably three solar masses, the small stellar mass, three mass, we would have to wait, I calculated, 10 billion octodecillion years in order for that thing to evaporate, and I don't think we're gonna be around in 10 billion.

• 42:13Jay Novella?

  But aren't there, because the universe is so old, isn't there things that are kinda positioned to do that right now? No, it's only 13 billion, he's talking to octogazillion or whatever he's saying. Oh, I don't even know what you meant.

• 42:21Bob Novella?

  I'm talking about the evap- I'm talking about the evaporation of a black hole that's more massive than the sun, not the primordial little black hole.

• 42:28Jay Novella?

  And that would take so long that... So long. Yeah, but the, but the primordial ones could happen, are happening now, apparently, and if we keep looking for them, maybe we'll see one, and as Bob said, Derek, here's the catalog of every possible particle that exists in the universe, even the ones you haven't discovered yet, and that will give us like the, like a roadmap to this, complete the standard model.

• 42:47Cara Santa Maria?

  So, two quick questions, the first one is, how do we detect that? I was gonna say, how visible?

• 42:53Jay Novella?

  What instruments are we using?

• 42:54Bob Novella?

  Gamma ray detectors, we have them now.

• 42:55Cara Santa Maria?

  I don't mean how do we detect the event, I mean, how do we detect all of those really, really high energy particles?

• 43:01Bob Novella?

  It's, we would detect, the easiest way to detect this is through gamma radiation, because there's gonna be a lot of gamma ray, gamma radiation coming out of this thing. Even particles that come out, we would never detect them because they decay too quickly.

• 43:12Cara Santa Maria?

  That's what I'm saying, like, how would we know?

• 43:14Bob Novella?

  But they decay into gamma radiation, so that would be part of the gamma ray signal and we, that, that we could interpret.

• 43:19Cara Santa Maria?

  We could interpret that to know the high energy particles?

• 43:22Bob Novella?

  Yes.

• 43:23Cara Santa Maria?

  Because that's the part that I was confused about, I know we can do this in a collider, but that's a closed system, when all this stuff is just flying through space, how do we even know, and it's decaying so quickly?

• 43:33Bob Novella?

  Yeah, it would all, it would, by looking at the gamma radiation, we did, we can detect what's going on.

• 43:37Cara Santa Maria?

  The signature inside of it.

• 43:38Bob Novella?

  Because it's all, the fingerprints of all these articles are embedded within the gamma radiation that's changing the, uh, the energy signature, the spectrum, the energy spectrum, all that stuff is being affected by the new art, the new particle that has just been created and released.

• 43:51Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay, and so the other question is, if it's such a high energy explosion, right, would it also cause a ripple in spacetime, like, would we be able to detect it with gravitational wave detectors? LIGO.

• 44:03Jay Novella?

  Not necessarily.

• 44:04Bob Novella?

  Not necessarily because.

• 44:05Jay Novella?

  Gravitational event.

• 44:06Bob Novella?

  Yeah, LIGO and gravitational waves are all about mass, accelerating mass, like two neutron stars.

• 44:13Jay Novella?

  Remember, it has the mass of an asteroid, and it's way too small.

• 44:15Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, but what about the explosion itself?

• 44:17Bob Novella?

  Even, but even explosions, I don't think is optimized for gravitational wave detection.

• 44:21Speaker 05

  Would it be at all visible, or we're just talking purely like gamma radiation?

• 44:25Bob Novella?

  If you could see in gam- if you could see gamma radiation, you will be, it'll be visible to you. Yeah, our telescopes, we wouldn't see anything. It would be a gamma radiation telescope.

• 44:33Speaker 05

  So it would be purely radiation kind of thing. It wouldn't be like, oh, look at that cool dot that all of a sudden appeared, kind of thing.

• 44:37Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 44:37Speaker 05

  Because it's not big enough.

• 44:38Bob Novella?

  A couple of caveats. This, this was a simple test model that they created. It was a proof of concept to show that their idea could work. And also, we don't know how many of these black holes formed. We don't know how much hidden charge they may have had. And so those questions are open, and the, the answers to those questions can make this be a not even, a non-even issue, a non-issue that might not even happen. But if it did, if it did happen, what I love about this is that it would be, it would be like a genie came to an astrophysicist and said, what do you want? They're like, give me a roadmap, every particle that's possible in the universe, and you could get it from this type of explosion that may happen. 90% chance, if this is true, within 10 years.

• 45:18Jay Novella?

  So it's a 20% chance.

• 45:19Speaker 05

  And the genie's like, really?

• 45:20Jay Novella?

  We'll be doing that follow-up 10 years from now.

• 45:22Speaker 05

  You have anything else you want?

• 45:23Jay Novella?

  But at least it's, it's falsifiable, right? I mean, in that, we, if this is true, we should see this happen.

• 45:28Bob Novella?

  Right.

• 45:29Jay Novella?

  So basically, like, three people are excited about this.

• 45:33Bob Novella?

  I hope, I hope, maybe, maybe we're up to, with this audience, maybe four or five of us. I don't know.

• 45:37Jay Novella?

  It sounds cool to me.

• 45:38Speaker 05

  They're excited. Listen to them. Yeah.

• 45:40Bob Novella?

  Thank you, thank you.

• 45:41Speaker 05

  You tell them, Bob.

• 45:42Bob Novella?

  I love this news. I'm so much.

• 45:44Jay Novella?

  Bob, you really, I, I learned a couple of things about black holes that I didn't quite wrap, wrap my head around in what you just said, so I thank you for that.

• 45:52Bob Novella?

  Yeah, because I've heard about Hawking radiation for decades, and I never really thought, well, what the hell is Hawking radiation? I thought it was just maybe some particles, some type of radiation. I didn't know that it was potentially everything. It's just all the particles, all of them.

• 46:06Jay Novella?

  All energy dependent. Well, everyone, we're going to take a quick break from our show to talk about our sponsor this week, Quince. It's getting cold outside, and when it's cold, I like to have great layers. One of my favorite pieces.

• 46:20Cara Santa Maria?

  This is from Quince. It's a $50 Mongolian cashmere sweater. I have this amazing zip-up hoodie. It's so warm, it's so cozy, and it's so much less expensive than the other guys, but even better quality.

• 46:36Jay Novella?

  Yeah, I think I talked about this sweater last year, and I got another one. It's the Mongolian cashmere fisherman pullover hoodie. That's a lot of words. All it means is it's a super comfortable, awesome, hooded sweater. I wear it all the time, Cara, and I am not afraid to tell you I look awesome.

• 46:55Speaker 06

  So, give and get timeless holiday staples that last the season with Quince. Go to quince.com/sgu for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com/sgu. Free shipping and 365-day returns. quince.com/sgu.

• 47:16Jay Novella?

  All right, guys, let's get back to the show. All right, George, you've been reading this book, Cultish, you were talking about it. Tell us what's going on.

• 47:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, I love, I love when you read a book, or you see a show, or you get some piece of information that sort of re-challenges sort of beliefs that you may have, or makes you kind of reexamine what you may think, or how you've acted in the past. The whole sort of skeptical experience of, you know, the hardest thing to be skeptical about is stuff that you believe in, you know, things that confirm what you believe, and you have to kind of take a second sometimes to stop. And this was a nice sort of journey in reading this book. It's called Cultish. It's by Amanda Montel. And in essence, Ms. Montel writes about this idea that the language of cults is very specific. What people that sort of control other people do it in multiple ways.

• 48:04Speaker 05

  And one of the ways they do it is by modulating and, and using language in a particular way, which isn't surprising. We sort of all know that. You kind of get that, that, you know, the Tom Cruise mild stare kind of like thing. But what was interesting is that her approach to this book, she talked about how it's not just Scientology or the Jim Jones cult, that things like CrossFit and SoulCycle, you know, Etsy workers and stuff, people that do a lot of beauty products, you know, like makeup and Amway and things like that, use very, very similar language. It's, it's sort of, it's, it's an idea of expressing an intense ideology.

• 48:48Speaker 05

  Creating a community and then controlling that community. And so what you do is you essentially create this language that is exclusive. You know, so in Scientology, there's these great, you know, someone is suppressive, right? There's a suppressive person. That's like the worst kind of person you can be. Interbulate, that's a great Scientology word, you know. Decludge, another one of these, yeah, you decludge something, it's basically like declutter, sort of figure out, you know, unravel. But you decludge it. And so, non-scientologists don't decludge. Scientologists decludge. It's a great word. Acclude. And you start having similar words like that, that, uh, and this is the part that I sort of realized my own experience. Years ago, a couple of years ago, I did, I did CrossFit for a while.

• 49:32Speaker 05

  And CrossFit, in an odd way, is almost proud of itself being a cult. You know, they sort of embrace this idea that, yeah, we're, we're a good kind of cult because we make you healthy and strong and all that kind of stuff. And I started realizing, they had all these key words and phrases and stuff, you know, things like W O D, the workout of the day. Or AMRAP. I mean, what an AMRAP is? As many rounds as possible, right? So you do this thing where you try to, you know, you have 30 seconds. And you have to lift the kettlebell until it smashes your face. And do it as many times as you can in a minute or whatever, as many rounds as possible. You don't go to the, you know, it's not a gym that you go to, it's an affiliate. You know, it's a, or, or box. You go, yeah, I'll see you at the box, you know?

• 50:13Speaker 05

  The other interesting thing was that just struck me was they have workouts that are named after women. They call them the girls. And there's the, there's the Annie, there's the Grace, there's the Chelsea. And there's certain kinds of exercises that you have sort of put together. So like, uh, Amy, I know is one, which is like you do five pull-ups, 10 push-ups and 15 squats. That's an Amy do that five times. And I thought like, oh, you name it like a female to, of course you can do that. Cause it's named after a girl. You know, this idea of like, this kind of cult programming of like, yeah. Strong male pseudo, you know, strong guy, jump into this thing and do it. And then I started thinking about, uh, my musical experiences and how jazz has this sort of particular language that's associated with it.

• 50:58Speaker 05

  That hasn't changed since the 40s, you know, a gig, right? You have, you go to a gig.

• 51:03Bob Novella?

  That's a jazz thing?

• 51:04Speaker 05

  That's, I mean, that's like music, music and sort of you go, yeah, oh, I got a gig. That's where that's from. Clams, you know, what's a clam?

• 51:10Bob Novella?

  Money?

• 51:10Speaker 05

  Everybody know what a clam is? No, a clam is a mistake.

• 51:13Bob Novella?

  Oh.

• 51:13Speaker 05

  So like if you're playing, if you're playing and you make a mistake, it's like, oh, man, the clams tonight. Oh, it was a seafood buffet tonight. Oh, my God, the clams. A head, like, is the top of the song, you know, or rushing, dragging, all that, all these like little expressions. And it just made me start to think about, like, have I been adding to this kind of cultish language?

• 51:34Cara Santa Maria?

  But isn't the difference then that if, if an in-group evolves organically? And so there's in-group status and it's a way for everybody to feel like a familiarity versus an out-group? Or when there's a intentionality and a leadership that says, think this way, talk this way? That's the difference, right?

• 51:53Speaker 05

  That's what she addresses. She talks about SoulCycle. And SoulCycle, for those of you that aren't aware, it's sort of a Peloton cycling thing. You sign up and you do these classes online. And again, they're very specific. They have very specific language. You pick your instructor. The instructors have sort of things about them that certain people like to do. And what, what the, the author of the book talks about, she says, "The difference between SoulCycle and Scientology is when the SoulCycle class is over, no one is saying you can't leave the class. And no one is insisting that you use those SoulCycle terms in the rest of your life. And that if you don't use those SoulCycle terms, you're being suppressive or you're being whatever. And that there is a, an agreement, a tacit agreement that like, we're coming here to this SoulCycle class or maybe this makeup tutorial or whatever it may be.

• 52:38Speaker 05

  And we understand that we're kind of, kind of winking. We're doing cult-like, cult-ish, cult-light maybe even. Uh, but we understand we can leave at any time. And that's, that's sort of, yeah, that, that, that main difference. Whereas if you're at the Jim Jones compound or you're from Scientology, they're going to do everything they possibly can to make you not leave. They want to maintain you. Amway, they don't want you to stop, you know, selling their garbage to your friends. Uh, a bunch of other sort of multi-level marketing thing, uh, that used it. The one, the one example from, that, that made me think that, uh, CrossFit started to cross over into this kind of dangerous cult was, there's a, there's a, a thing called, uh, Uncle Rabdo, which the more I thought about this, the more this disturbed me.

• 53:23Speaker 05

  So, rhabdomyolysis?

• 53:27Jay Novella?

  Rhabdomyolysis.

• 53:28Speaker 05

  Rhabdomyolysis is where if you work a muscle too much, if you exercise a muscle too much, it releases portions of itself into your bloodstream.

• 53:37Cara Santa Maria?

  It like breaks down.

• 53:37Speaker 05

  It basically breaks down.

• 53:39Jay Novella?

  Yeah, it's not too much, it's any exercise does that.

• 53:42Speaker 05

  Oh, okay.

• 53:42Jay Novella?

  If you actually, you're doing it now, it's just, it's just a matter of degree.

• 53:47Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 53:47Jay Novella?

  If you work, if you have a good workout and then I tested your blood, you would look like you have a mild rhabdomyolysis.

• 53:54Speaker 05

  Okay, right, right.

• 53:55Jay Novella?

  Right, and in fact, we often have to, I've had to ask patients, have you done any exercise in the last few days, because that, I have to adjust how to interpret the number based upon that.

• 54:05Speaker 05

  But it can get to that point of like where you actually have liver damage.

• 54:08Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, when you have Coca-Cola colored urine.

• 54:10Jay Novella?

  Kidney damage.

• 54:11Speaker 05

  Okay, kidney damage, yeah. So, to take this rhabdomyolysis, and they created this character called Uncle Rabdo, the idea of like, it's actually kind of a badge of honor.

• 54:22Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, that's awful.

• 54:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's awful, it's awful.

• 54:24Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, you can die from that.

• 54:25Speaker 05

  I had, I had read an article about, you know, what, you know, someone had referenced Uncle Rabdo, and I just didn't get a chance to ask what it was, I looked it up, and I'm like, wait a minute, that's terrible, so I went to the sort of main training guy, and I said, what's the deal, like, with this Uncle Rabdo and, and, and rhabdomyolysis? And he was like, well, yeah, you know, I mean, it's, and like, because like, people have gotten really ill, and, and, you know, they aren't aware of how hard they're working, and, and he's like, well, yeah, I mean, you could cross the street and get hit by a bus.

• 54:53Jay Novella?

  Yeah, that's a great answer.

• 54:54Speaker 05

  I was like, I'm done, thank you much.

• 54:55Jay Novella?

  Wow.

• 54:56Speaker 05

  Bye, you know, like, and that was the justification, like, yeah, no, you're not working hard enough, until you're literally like, your pee is colored.

• 55:03Jay Novella?

  You're destroying your kidney, yeah.

• 55:04Speaker 05

  You know, and so I thought, okay, that's, that's where it's crossed over, so it just, it just made me think about what else in my life that maybe has, is on that borderline.

• 55:11Jay Novella?

  It's important to recognize, and we've, we've spoken about this before, we got, we were really involved with anti-cult activity early on, pre, pre-SGU, we were doing it just the New England Skeptical Society. Uh, cause there's a lot of that based in Connecticut around us. But anyway, so the, you know, a cult is, first of all, the belief system is irrelevant.

• 55:30Cara Santa Maria?

  Mm-hmm.

• 55:31Jay Novella?

  Right? It's just the behavior.

• 55:32Speaker 05

  Right.

• 55:33Jay Novella?

  And the behavior is a continuum. It's, it's not a black or white. And there's a, what we call a demarcation problem. There's no sharp line that divides something that isn't a cult from something that is a cult. It's a, it's just a continuum. And so, yeah, a lot of things have, we have a jargon and we have a community and we have commonality or whatever. But the, the more of these features of cult-like activity that you build up, at some point, you do cross over this fuzzy boundary where it's like, alright, now this is really operating like a full-blown cult.

• 56:06Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 56:06Jay Novella?

  And of course, there's a lot of things that are just, are blatant cults. Like, they're doing it, they're doing it all. And it's top-down, it's deliberate, it's not organic or cultural, it's not a jargon for, for pragmatic reasons. It's just, it's meant to separate you from other people, to get you inside the community, make you dependent on the community.

• 56:24Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, that's the main thing. Like, as a psychologist, when I see people who are, who are trying to like heal from having been in a cult, it's no different than a woman who was in a coercive relationship. So it's, whether it's one person or whether it's 50 people, the, what, what I think of as definitional is that it's a high-control environment that takes, like, your volition away from you. And so...

• 56:49Jay Novella?

  It's something they deliberately try to break down your resistance.

• 56:51Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, and the good-

• 56:51Jay Novella?

  They'll still sleep deprive you, they will-

• 56:53Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 56:53Jay Novella?

  They will starve you to just make you susceptible.

• 56:56Cara Santa Maria?

  And the ones that are the best at it are the ones that make you think it was your choice all along. Like, that's when it's really nefarious.

• 57:02Speaker 05

  Which starts with the language, which starts with this, which she writes about. It starts with these, you know, these subtle memes they put into your brain, these little, like, portions of it.

• 57:09Cara Santa Maria?

  You know, it's funny, as you mentioned Amanda Montel, and I was like, that name sounds familiar. And I just looked. She was on my podcast-

• 57:15Speaker 05

  Oh, there you go.

• 57:16Cara Santa Maria?

  -last year.

• 57:17Speaker 05

  She had another book called Bit Bitch.

• 57:19Cara Santa Maria?

  Uh, it's called The Age of Magical Overthinking.

• 57:22Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 57:22Cara Santa Maria?

  Uh, Notes on Modern Irrationality. And we did like a, a live recording for the Toronto Public Library.

• 57:28Speaker 05

  Oh, cool.

• 57:28Cara Santa Maria?

  And like, yeah, so I was like, I know her.

• 57:30Speaker 05

  Oh, cool, nice.

• 57:30Cara Santa Maria?

  But we didn't talk about cultish, we should've.

• 57:32Speaker 05

  It's the thing of last year, I think it just came out.

• 57:33Cara Santa Maria?

  Fascinating.

• 57:34Speaker 05

  Highly recommended. It's, it's, it's nice. It's very conversational too.

• 57:37Jay Novella?

  Alright, yeah.

• 57:37Speaker 05

  Sticks with you.

• 57:38Jay Novella?

  Thanks, George. Alright, so we're gonna talk about miscon- common myths, common misconceptions that are being spread around social media. There was just an article that went through like fifteen of them. We can't go through all of them, you know, very deep. We don't have to. Most of these we've talked about before, and some are very quick hits. Evan, you sent this to me. What did you, what was the first thing on the list?

• 58:02Speaker 06

  Yeah, so, and again, the, the question that triggered all this is, uh, they, someone wrote about this who, um, says, "I came across a post on the popular Ask Reddit page from user whoever, who said, 'What are some things that are actually pseudoscience that people don't realize?'" And the list was extensive. A, alpha-based dog training. I don't know that we've actually covered that on the show.

• 58:25Jay Novella?

  Well, the idea that there is an alpha male in a dog pack is, that's been pretty debunked, right? So, anything derived from that is also...

• 58:34Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, yeah, and the idea that your dog thinks that you're his alpha is ridiculous.

• 58:39Jay Novella?

  Alpha, right.

• 58:39Speaker 05

  Can we have that like in skywriting across every other podcast? Like, every comedian's podcast? Can we just make it like there's no such thing as the alpha? Please stop talking about it.

• 58:49Jay Novella?

  What about, like, wolves don't have kind of like a de facto leader? No, I mean, there are more and less dominant dogs in the pack, but there's no like-

• 58:57Speaker 05

  And it varies, too.

• 58:57Jay Novella?

  That's the alpha, and everyone else is a beta. That doesn't exist. It's not that simple.

• 59:01Speaker 05

  It was a flawed study that a guy did, like, whatever that was, a hundred-plus years ago.

• 59:05Cara Santa Maria?

  And while there are some animals where there are, yeah, like, leaders within the group, that doesn't translate to, like, domestication of dogs to us. Even if there were an alpha in the pack, they wouldn't go like, "Human alpha, now follow you." Like, that doesn't make any sense.

• 59:19Speaker 06

  Astrology was on the list. We've covered that quite extensively. Here's one. They call it Barnes and Noble science. So, these are books published by people who can't get peer-reviewed papers published. And that's a pretty wide category of things.

• 59:33Jay Novella?

  We've talked about that a lot, too. Like, basically, if you're bypassing peer review and going right to the public with your wacky idea, you're a crank. Right? That's what, again, that's one of the things that cranks do. But now, of course, you don't have to publish a book. You could just make a website, or you can make a YouTube.

• 59:48Cara Santa Maria?

  Or a podcast.

• 59:49Jay Novella?

  Get a TikTok channel.

• 59:50Speaker 05

  A PDF on Amazon now, too.

• 59:53Bob Novella?

  Or worse than that, you have a, you have a, like, a fake journal, a bullshit journal, and submit to that, like, "See, I'm published, peer reviewed." Like, "Oh, my God, that's, that's nasty."

• 1:00:01Jay Novella?

  Journal of bullshit research.

• 1:00:04Speaker 06

  Biorhythms, mood rings.

• 1:00:06Bob Novella?

  Oh, my God, remember?

• 1:00:07Speaker 06

  Other things.

• 1:00:07Bob Novella?

  Biorhythms?

• 1:00:08Speaker 06

  Mood rings? God, how old were we? Two? Four?

• 1:00:11Jay Novella?

  Yeah, I totally believed that when we were younger.

• 1:00:13Speaker 06

  You did?

• 1:00:14Jay Novella?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:00:14Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. That was one thing, you know, like, most of these, and when you're kids, they impress you, but they also impress adults sometimes. Blood type astrology.

• 1:00:22Jay Novella?

  Oh, that's, oh, man.

• 1:00:23Speaker 06

  We've talked about that, blood type diets as well.

• 1:00:26Jay Novella?

  That's common in Japan, right?

• 1:00:27Speaker 06

  Yeah, very common in Japan.

• 1:00:29Speaker 05

  The blood type diet thing, there's nothing to that, correct?

• 1:00:33Jay Novella?

  Zero.

• 1:00:33Speaker 05

  Zero.

• 1:00:34Jay Novella?

  Absolutely zero.

• 1:00:34Speaker 05

  Because I started debating someone about this, and, like, they were so vehement. And I was just, and I was trying to be nice, I was trying to just, and I was like, "Okay, maybe I totally missed something," but there's nothing.

• 1:00:44Jay Novella?

  You get to question yourself if you're not 100% sure. I mean, so, do I really, am I sure? Because it sounds like bullshit, but maybe there's something to it. But in this case, there's zero to it. There's absolutely... I mean, this is just the, the immune proteins on your blood cells. It says nothing about any other aspect of your physiology, your biochemistry. It is complete nonsense. So you could be confident about that when you do. So, basically, there's a bunch of people out there who believe in this, who are basically not eating certain foods, because it's not their blood type food. Right. They're eating their, they're eating to their blood type. That's like eating to your astrological sign.

• 1:01:17Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, it's like eating to your eye color.

• 1:01:18Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:19Cara Santa Maria?

  Blue-eyed people really shouldn't be eating too much meat.

• 1:01:21Bob Novella?

  That's a good way to put it.

• 1:01:22Speaker 06

  How about this one? This is one I've heard of in the past, but I never thought of it. Your brain is continually developing until you're on an average of age 25.

• 1:01:30Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:31Speaker 06

  I've heard that over and over.

• 1:01:32Bob Novella?

  I've heard that a lot.

• 1:01:33Jay Novella?

  It's zero to that, so...

• 1:01:35Speaker 06

  Really?

• 1:01:36Jay Novella?

  Yeah, there's, there's nothing to that.

• 1:01:37Speaker 05

  Another one. Let me think about it for a while.

• 1:01:40Jay Novella?

  The, the study that kind of kicked that off, they only looked at people up to 25.

• 1:01:47Jay Novella?

  Seriously. I said, "Look."

• 1:01:51Jay Novella?

  The brain is developing until you're 25. Oh, that's so funny. But then they didn't look at people after 25. And here's the other thing there. What's the difference between developing, maturing, and learning?

• 1:02:06Cara Santa Maria?

  And rapid pruning.

• 1:02:08Jay Novella?

  Right, so there's... One of them is about growth. Like, you're a kid and your brain doesn't get any bigger. Well, it's not just about size. It's also... Well, not to you, but to a lot of people.

• 1:02:17Cara Santa Maria?

  Like the strength of connections.

• 1:02:19Jay Novella?

  It's myelination, it's connections. Well, wait, let me just say... Let me ask you from a person who doesn't know as well as you. At what point, on average, does a child into adult till their brain stops growing bigger? That just depends on when they stop growing bigger. Okay, so it's rando, but what is it? What's the age range? So, upper teenagers, typical, something like that. But just the brain getting bigger doesn't mean that it's necessarily developing more. So, I think, again, this is a definitional thing.

• 1:02:48Cara Santa Maria?

  Also, the brain-to-body ratio is different. It's not linear. Like, little kids can't put their arms over their heads. Because their heads are so big.

• 1:02:55Jay Novella?

  But they're adorable.

• 1:02:56Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it's cute.

• 1:02:57Jay Novella?

  The ratio is different.

• 1:02:58Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, the ratio is off.

• 1:02:59Jay Novella?

  So, like, if you're... Like, we've raised kids. At some point, like, you could see different circuits kicking in place in your brain. Like, they couldn't put words together, now they can. Whatever. And also, just even with coordination. We used to joke about, "Oh, their cerebellum is not fully myelinated yet." Right, that's development. My son's video game circuit turned on two years ago, and it's powerful. My god. So, there's that kind of just you actually getting the basic nuts and bolts of how the brain functions in place. You have that by the time you're through puberty, right? But then teenagers don't have the mental discipline that adults have. But what is that? Is that just maturity? Is it because their brain hasn't fully developed yet? Does it ever really stop? Is it just...

• 1:03:42Jay Novella?

  And if you look at people who are 50, 60, their brains function differently than people who are 20, 30, too.

• 1:03:48Cara Santa Maria?

  They're conflating, I think, the nature, nurture of executive function with overall brain development, which we should really... Only be talking about frontal, like prefrontal cortex anyway.

• 1:03:59Jay Novella?

  Yeah, but even if you're just talking about that, it's still, it's just, it's a continuum. And, you know, there's different ideas mixed in here, like developing bleeds into maturing, bleeds into just learning stuff and getting better at moderating your emotions or whatever.

• 1:04:14Cara Santa Maria?

  I think the thing is, the courts want to be able to say there's a one to one ratio.

• 1:04:18Speaker 06

  That's the problem.

• 1:04:19Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, they want to be able to say, you know the difference between right and wrong. You were an adult and you should not be responsible.

• 1:04:24Jay Novella?

  Is actually being used in sentencing and in policy. It's like, oh, we can't, like, you know, you can't drink until your brain's fully formed or whatever. And it's just pseudoscience. It's like, it's this black and white, again, like, there's no demarcation here.

• 1:04:37Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, the demarcation is a problem, because it's very easy to say, a five-year-old may not understand with a gun the outcome of their actions. It's much harder to say that about a 14-year-old or 19-year-old.

• 1:04:46Speaker 06

  Speaking of drinking, how's this one? Breast milk pump and dump after alcohol. So, these are, these are mothers who are breastfeeding. They'll have a drink, but then they'll go ahead and pump out the breast milk that they've got because that was contaminated with the alcohol that they just drank. That way, they're not giving alcohol to their children. Hadn't heard of that one before.

• 1:05:06Cara Santa Maria?

  Of course.

• 1:05:07Speaker 06

  You hadn't heard about it?

• 1:05:08Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, but I don't like the way they're debunking it either. They're saying, they're being very all or nothing about it. You should pump and dump if you drink way too much, or you shouldn't breastfeed.

• 1:05:17Jay Novella?

  So, some drugs pass through breast milk and some don't.

• 1:05:21Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:22Jay Novella?

  And we have to know that. Like, if I'm prescribing to a breastfeeding mother, I gotta know, is this something that gets passed through the breast milk or not? I actually don't know off the top of my head about alcohol.

• 1:05:29Cara Santa Maria?

  Alcohol does, but in small quantities.

• 1:05:31Jay Novella?

  So, in small quantities, only if you're, like, really, really drunk.

• 1:05:33Cara Santa Maria?

  That's what I'm saying. I don't like that they're saying, don't worry about it.

• 1:05:36Speaker 06

  The site that they sourced that debunked it said, no, it has to, it would have to be a lot of alcohol.

• 1:05:41Cara Santa Maria?

  But for some people, they are drinking a lot of alcohol. So, I, again, I wouldn't say that that's 100%.

• 1:05:47Jay Novella?

  Yeah, it's more a matter of degree.

• 1:05:48Cara Santa Maria?

  It's a matter of degree.

• 1:05:49Speaker 06

  I'll go quickly through some of these other ones. A lot of them we touched. Chiropractic, conversion therapy, detox, the general detox. Feed a cold, starve a fever. At old wives' tail.

• 1:05:59Jay Novella?

  No, it's nothing.

• 1:06:00Speaker 06

  No, no good. Fingerprints, uh, unique fingerprints, the, it's, it's undetermined. Uh, they don't have good science on this as to determine whether a person's fingerprints are unique or not.

• 1:06:09Jay Novella?

  And also, the whole fingerprint analysis is way more art than science. Like, do you, like, on television shows and movies, they pretend like, oh, you got a partial here. I met, the computers flash through the images and you make a match.

• 1:06:20Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:06:21Jay Novella?

  That's not what's happening. That's not reality. It is more of this, oh, yeah, I could kinda see. You know, it's really, it's very subjective. It's not as nearly-

• 1:06:29Cara Santa Maria?

  But there is a database.

• 1:06:30Jay Novella?

  There is.

• 1:06:30Cara Santa Maria?

  There's a code of data, yeah, of fingerprints.

• 1:06:32Jay Novella?

  And then maybe you can be, that's the other thing is, and there's a couple of things coming up on this list that are like this. It's not as black and white as TV pretends. It's way more subjective, but that does not equal useless.

• 1:06:45Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:46Jay Novella?

  It doesn't mean you can't maybe rule some people out because of fingerprints. Same thing with, we can jump to the lie detector.

• 1:06:52Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:06:53Jay Novella?

  The lie detectors are not detecting lies. Like, we talked about this. They're detecting stress.

• 1:06:57Speaker 06

  Stress.

• 1:06:57Jay Novella?

  And people get stressed for different reasons, and people have different ability to hide their stress. And so what you're detecting just-

• 1:07:03Speaker 06

  Knowing that you're taking a test could be stressful.

• 1:07:05Jay Novella?

  But that doesn't mean they're worthless.

• 1:07:08Cara Santa Maria?

  True.

• 1:07:08Jay Novella?

  They, they, it may not be like, you can't say, well, he failed the lie detector, therefore he, he was lying one to one. It could be that, well, or he passed the lie detector, therefore he wasn't lying. You can't say that. It's, it's just possible that he is really good at hiding his stress, or he was stressed out over being interrogated by an authority figure. You, you don't know.

• 1:07:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Psychologists use these tests all the time, and so they just don't call them lie detectors.

• 1:07:31Jay Novella?

  Where they're useful is basically just intimidating the person into telling the truth, because they think you can tell the truth.

• 1:07:37Speaker 06

  Oh, okay, that's awesome.

• 1:07:38Jay Novella?

  That's how they're really used.

• 1:07:40Cara Santa Maria?

  I, I also think with the fingerprint thing, what it, what the list is saying is that, you know, whether or not no other person on the planet has the same fingerprint pattern, we, we can't know that, because nobody's ever tested that.

• 1:07:52Speaker 06

  It's almost unknowable, right.

• 1:07:53Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. But for the most part, fingerprints are relatively unique, the same way that zebra stripes are relatively unique.

• 1:07:58Bob Novella?

  If they find your fingerprint at an emergency and you got some explaining to do, that's like-

• 1:08:01Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, that's right.

• 1:08:02Bob Novella?

  That's, you can't just say, oh, it's, it's not unique, so I'm, I'm free.

• 1:08:06Speaker 05

  I heard koalas have very human-like fingerprints, apparently. It's, it's thwarted some, some police investigations, apparently.

• 1:08:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:08:16Cara Santa Maria?

  Speaking of police.

• 1:08:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, right? Yeah, the koala, yeah, had some kind of a.

• 1:08:21Speaker 06

  Speaking of police investigation, certain forensics, bite analysis, ballistics analysis, and blood splatter analysis.

• 1:08:29Jay Novella?

  What? Dexter, Dexter's not true. They're all subjective. That's all. Not that they're not.

• 1:08:34Cara Santa Maria?

  It's not, yeah, it's not all or nothing.

• 1:08:36Jay Novella?

  They're not a slam dunk. Not the slam dunk that the CSI shows.

• 1:08:40Speaker 05

  Well, you're interpreting data. As soon as you interpret data, it's like, yeah.

• 1:08:45Jay Novella?

  The biting analysis, I think, is the worst of the ones.

• 1:08:47Speaker 05

  Really?

• 1:08:47Cara Santa Maria?

  I think bite, yeah.

• 1:08:48Jay Novella?

  That's the one where I think it's been completely debunked. What are they testing for? They're looking, yeah, they're looking at, does the bite mark match your, like, if you do a test bite mark, does it match?

• 1:08:57Cara Santa Maria?

  And very often, people have been let go when they realized, oh, that was made by a tool. Like, that wasn't even a bite. Like, they'll assume it's a bite based on the shape. And very often, when you see a criminal proceeding, the prosecution and the defense are gonna bring in their own spatter analysts, and they're gonna say opposite things.

• 1:09:14Jay Novella?

  You're just dueling.

• 1:09:15Speaker 06

  You'd think, though, that a bite would be kind of consistent, because your teeth typically stay in the same position.

• 1:09:20Jay Novella?

  Well, what conditions were you doing the bite under? You know, there's so many other variables in there.

• 1:09:25Speaker 05

  Also, how unique is your bite?

• 1:09:26Cara Santa Maria?

  And also, is it a bite? What we're talking about is actually when there's an analysis of a bite on skin.

• 1:09:31Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:32Cara Santa Maria?

  Like, is it even a bite? Or was that from an animal? Or was it, you know, yeah?

• 1:09:36Jay Novella?

  Like, if you bite into, like, a mold thing, it's gonna be your teeth. If you bite into the surface of an orange, it doesn't.

• 1:09:42Cara Santa Maria?

  Right, and if you bite somebody's leg, it might just look like a bruise.

• 1:09:45Speaker 05

  If you have Charlie from the Chocolate Factory teeth, then it's very.

• 1:09:48Jay Novella?

  Oh, come on. Are you doing this?

• 1:09:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Google it. They're terrified.

• 1:09:52Jay Novella?

  Explain what you're saying.

• 1:09:54Cara Santa Maria?

  You guys have seen, has anybody, does anybody know what I'm talking, yeah, there's, like, memes. The kid who played Charlie in Willy Wonka, like, his teeth are.

• 1:10:01Speaker 06

  First movie, the first movie.

• 1:10:02Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, the original. And not just jacked, like, like, I think there was some sort of physiologic problem. Like, you were explaining what you think was happening.

• 1:10:09Jay Novella?

  Yeah, right. Let's go on.

• 1:10:10Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:12Speaker 06

  Continuing, Sigmund Freud, apparently everything Sigmund Freud did was.

• 1:10:16Jay Novella?

  Preliminary and early on in a very new and difficult.

• 1:10:19Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, there's a big different, I mean, I'll soapbox this for a second. I am not a psychodynamic psychologist. I'm an existential psychologist, but I have, you know, colleagues who are psychodynamic. Generally speaking, we all learn about Freud, and I think what they're saying in this listicle is that a lot of people just stop there. And they go, okay, that's just how things are. But the reason we learn about it is from a historical perspective, to know where the field was early on. There is a field now called psychodynamic psychotherapy, which is based on actually like object relations. Like, it's very, very different, but there are some things that Freud talked about that now have evolved into understandings that we have.

• 1:11:00Jay Novella?

  It's kind of like saying Darwin was wrong about a lot of things. Of course he was. He was whipping up a whole new scientific discipline. It was amazing how much he got right. But we've, pretty much everything he said, we've evolved into different versions of what he said.

• 1:11:13Cara Santa Maria?

  But we have actually had to just be like, let's ignore that thing.

• 1:11:16Jay Novella?

  Yeah, there's something.

• 1:11:16Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, there's like, I mean, he was like giving his patients coke and like, you know, all the women were hysterical.

• 1:11:21Jay Novella?

  Psychiatry is way more wishy-washy, wibbly-wobbly than evolution.

• 1:11:26Bob Novella?

  My take is that he's not very relevant today.

• 1:11:29Cara Santa Maria?

  He's not really.

• 1:11:30Bob Novella?

  Right? It's not.

• 1:11:31Cara Santa Maria?

  But every psychology student learns about him, and that is a problem with how we teach psychology. Because if you get a 101 course, you get a bunch of history, but you don't get a lot of like modern lens. And so a lot of people think that that's how we're all thinking now.

• 1:11:45Speaker 06

  Handwriting analysis, graphology, we've talked about that. Immune system boosting, no, no, we've talked about that.

• 1:11:50Cara Santa Maria?

  You don't want to boost your immune system.

• 1:11:51Speaker 06

  Right, exactly.

• 1:11:52Cara Santa Maria?

  That's bad.

• 1:11:53Speaker 06

  Terrible.

• 1:11:53Cara Santa Maria?

  Unless you're immune, you know.

• 1:11:54Jay Novella?

  So either with the immune boosting thing, what I find is either the snake oil, supplements, whatever, that claim that they boost the immune system do nothing, or they're bad for you because they actually, you know, can cause autoimmune disease.

• 1:12:09Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:12:09Jay Novella?

  Like, your immune system needs to be tightly regulated. Just suppressing it or boosting it or increasing it is not necessarily inherently good or bad thing.

• 1:12:18Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, you should only do that under the, like, with medication with a physician because you have a diagnosis that requires it.

• 1:12:26Speaker 06

  But aren't vaccines

• 1:12:27Jay Novella?

  Generically just boosting your immune system?

• 1:12:28Speaker 06

  Aren't vaccines an immune boosting technology?

• 1:12:30Jay Novella?

  They're a way of targeting your immune system against a very specific target.

• 1:12:34Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:12:35Jay Novella?

  So if you can, the thing, the word boosting is very vague. So if that's what you consider boosting, sure. But that's not what people are talking about.

• 1:12:42Cara Santa Maria?

  But it's not the same as taking

• 1:12:43Jay Novella?

  Take vitamins and your immune system will just be more robust in just a vague, non-specific way. I mean, if anything, sleep will do that. Sleep will, sleep will keep you, you know. Anything that keeps you healthy makes your immune system function better. Just like your muscles function better and your brain functions better.

• 1:12:58Speaker 06

  Your stress level.

• 1:12:59Cara Santa Maria?

  But you don't want your immune system.

• 1:13:00Jay Novella?

  Well nourished and well rested and hydrated, all your systems operate better.

• 1:13:04Cara Santa Maria?

  But there is a, and this is not a demarcation problem, there is a point where your immune system is over-functioning and that is bad because it starts attacking your own body.

• 1:13:13Speaker 06

  Starts attacking, great, correct. We all know about that. Uh, natural and organic, we've talked about that, ad nauseam. Uh, the Myers-Briggs personality test.

• 1:13:20Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:21Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, we don't use that at all in psychology.

• 1:13:24Speaker 06

  It's like a wind-up toy that just won't stop, right?

• 1:13:26Jay Novella?

  And, yeah, that's culty.

• 1:13:27Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:13:28Jay Novella?

  Right, George?

• 1:13:29Speaker 06

  Totally cult. Quantum, anything non-physics. Yes. Oh, my God. Poor Quantum. Stay in your lane, Quantum. Uh, rain-based illnesses, like catching a cold from being out in the rain, that's been disproven.

• 1:13:44Jay Novella?

  So we can go beyond that even. There's, there's an open question about whether being cold can make you sick, like being, you know, it feels like, oh, what did? Well, it's not really. I mean, it's pretty much been debunked. Uh, I don't know that the, the final nail is in the coffin on that one. The, because you, you know, the question is do, are some viruses, do they spread more easily in the cold weather or things like that? But it, it, certainly you can't catch a cold by being out in the wet rain. Yeah, because you need a virus. You need a, you need a virus.

• 1:14:12Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, and that's like, it's, people always conflate like epidemiological data with individual data. Yeah.

• 1:14:17Jay Novella?

  Right, right.

• 1:14:18Cara Santa Maria?

  It's like, it might be colder.

• 1:14:19Jay Novella?

  And mostly, it's mostly, that's when the kids are at school. That's mostly what the winter, you know, viruses are about.

• 1:14:24Speaker 06

  Plus, yeah, when it's cold out, you're, you're amongst people in, in, in a building.

• 1:14:28Jay Novella?

  You're inside.

• 1:14:29Speaker 06

  And that's, and it's spreading that way. It's not just the cold.

• 1:14:31Speaker 05

  What about the, what about the bones, bones like, like you can tell the storm's coming because your hip hurts?

• 1:14:34Jay Novella?

  Oh, yeah. That's a, that's a humidity thing.

• 1:14:36Speaker 05

  That's, that's real.

• 1:14:37Cara Santa Maria?

  That's real.

• 1:14:38Jay Novella?

  There's barometric pressure for migraines, there's humidity for arthritis. So some people, like, they know when a storm's coming because they've got a migraine.

• 1:14:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's what I thought. I just, yeah.

• 1:14:45Jay Novella?

  That's real. That's real. Yeah.

• 1:14:46Speaker 06

  Uh, three more, oh, two more. Taste map of the tongue.

• 1:14:49Bob Novella?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:14:50Jay Novella?

  I mean, I heard about a song. Raise your hand if you believed it. I was taught it.

• 1:14:56Bob Novella?

  Yeah, everybody believed that.

• 1:14:57Jay Novella?

  I'm shocked to see it. Like, when I was a kid, that was the thing. And like, and I did it. I tested it, and I tricked myself into thinking that it, that... Once you put something in your mouth, your saliva dissolves it, and it goes all over your tongue. Right? So you can't, it's really hard.

• 1:15:12Speaker 06

  It'll localize it.

• 1:15:13Jay Novella?

  And we do, this is part of a neurological exam. And if someone has Bell's palsy, I want to know if, where the lesion is. And there's one specific place where you also pick off taste to half of your tongue. So if they, if that's where it is, then it's in the facial canal. If they, if they have retained taste, then something else could be going on. It could be a stroke. It could be something else. So, that's a very important thing to do. I have to learn the technique to do that. You have to like, really make sure that they're not... They can't close their mouth, they can't swish it around. You gotta just touch it with a, you know, a Q-tip. Lemon juice or something? No, sugar. You eat sugar water, and you go to this very side of the tongue without letting them swish it around at all.

• 1:15:58Jay Novella?

  Can you taste that? What does that taste like? They should immediately be able to know that it's sweet. If they don't... If they go, I can't tell, then they close their mouth, they go, "Oh, it's sweet." It's like, yeah, that's because you just, now you got it washed over the other side of the tongue. So that's probably what was going on.

• 1:16:12Speaker 06

  And the last one's the, what they call the troubled teen industry, like, uh, wilderness survival, uh, you know, throwing these kids who are having problems into these extreme scenarios.

• 1:16:22Cara Santa Maria?

  Harmful, yeah. There's a great book by Maya Salavitz about that. She, yeah, kind of blew the doors off of that.

• 1:16:27Jay Novella?

  All right, Evan, you're also gonna tell us about this one. What is this? This looks like a nightmare. This is the BP pie.

• 1:16:33Cara Santa Maria?

  Jeez.

• 1:16:33Speaker 06

  You've heard the expression, "The truth shall set you free," right? We're familiar with that? Well, this one is, "The tooth shall let you see." Uh, that's a tooth. No, sorry, a little, a little extreme graphic here. Yeah, so tooth in eye surgery, also known by its medical name, osteo-odonto-keratoprosthesis. Yes. Prosthesis, O O K P for very short. Correct. Uh, yeah, so this is a legitimate procedure. In fact, I shared it with Steve. I said, Steve, what, you know, this looks like a one we should talk about. He's like, are you sure about this? And we

• 1:17:09Jay Novella?

  I had to look it up.

• 1:17:10Speaker 06

  We had to look it up and

• 1:17:11Jay Novella?

  I wanted to multi-source it. It's real.

• 1:17:12Speaker 06

  Specialized surgical technique used when the cornea is so badly damaged by either scar and chemical burns or autoimmune disease, which we just talked about, uh, that regular transplants won't work. So this is, this is where they go next. Um, you, a patient will, they'll extract a tooth, usually a canine tooth from, from the patient itself. Uh, they'll, uh, include small amounts of bone to serve as a structural support for a tiny lens. Okay. So then they drill a hole right through it. They implant the tooth lens piece under the patient's cheek somewhere. So they take this, they put it into their cheek.

• 1:17:52Speaker 06

  Uh, somewhere where it allows blood tissue, blood and tissue growth to, to, to secure, I guess, you know, keep it, keep it all in place. The body also builds up support and integration for it. Then what they'll do is they'll prepare the eye. They'll remove the scar tissue, graft mucosal lining from the inner cheek over the corneal surface. And then after the tooth piece has matured while it's in your cheek, they'll take it, remove it and implant it into the eye, replacing the damaged cornea, allowing light through the optical lens. That is the procedure. Wow. And, uh, yeah, it's legit. Um, you don't get 2020 vision, uh, though, out of it, but, uh, in, in about a quarter

• 1:18:35Speaker 06

  of the cases, they get, you get 2030, 2040. The majority of cases, about 60% of patients are somewhere between 2040 and, and 2100. Much better than, you know,

• 1:18:47Jay Novella?

  And blind, yeah. Do you have to brush that tooth?

• 1:18:52Jay Novella?

  I think that's why they put the membrane over and everything. Yeah, so the thing is, a cornea is a really hard structure to mimic, right? It's gotta be rigid, hard, and transparent. So this is like one, this is from the 60s, right? This has like been around for a long time. I'd never heard of it. This is, you know, it's only been a few hundred cases like since the 60s where they've actually done it. So it's a pretty rare procedure. This guy, the patient that they were talking about, had like five or six cornea transplants, and they just only lasted for a few months and then they would degrade. So this wasn't working. That's why he was one of the cases where like, "Well, we could try this really rare thing." I'm sure the surgeons haven't done many of them because there's only so many that have ever been done.

• 1:19:32Cara Santa Maria?

  We don't have something that's like not, you know, like glass or plastic?

• 1:19:36Jay Novella?

  Because I guess because the body rejects it. And it just wants, that's why their own bone is...

• 1:19:41Cara Santa Maria?

  Because people can wear contacts, so you would think that you can just...

• 1:19:44Jay Novella?

  Well, you have to change them every day and clean them and everything.

• 1:19:46Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, yeah, okay.

• 1:19:47Jay Novella?

  Some can go a couple of days.

• 1:19:48Cara Santa Maria?

  You can change your cornea.

• 1:19:49Speaker 06

  And that is kind of the key. These are your own body parts anyway, so the rejection, your body won't reject this. You know, it's not like you grow it somewhere else and try to bring it in.

• 1:19:58Jay Novella?

  Yeah, just a weird but true kind of thing. Tooth eye. All right, Jay, tell us about the history of snake oil. Yeah, um, so this, this one caught my tooth eye because...

• 1:20:11Jay Novella?

  Because I, I, you know, I knew what the, what snake oil means to us as critical thinkers, but I didn't know the history of it. You know, I was just curious to know more details about it. And I really found a cool story here. So where did it come from? Where did the phrase come from? And why did, you know, and why do people today use it to say that things are BS? You know, that it's a scam or whatever. So originally what happened was there were Chinese railroad workers that came over to work in the United States. They, this was like, you know, early to mid 1800s. And they brought this snake oil remedy with them, but it was real. It was actually real, like they had... Well, "real" in quotes. I mean, the thing is, it, it, it's not like it's a pharmaceutical, like it was really effective.

• 1:20:56Jay Novella?

  It was one of their, you know, herbal... Type of remedies that probably had some. It did have some effects. Some effects. They tested it.

• 1:21:03Cara Santa Maria?

  It was real in the sense that it was oil of snake.

• 1:21:06Jay Novella?

  Doesn't mean that they, all the things they used it for was effective. Well, basically, this is what I read, that they only used it for inflammation. And let me get into the details here. So first of all, they only took oil from a water snake. And the way that they would extract the oil from the snake is first that they would, they would boil like snake fat, of course, and that's where the oil's coming from. They'd skim off the oil that rises to the top when they boil it. And they would just simply bottle it. And then when they needed it, now the history says that, you know, they, there were, these people were working incredibly long hours. It was a really, really hard life to be a railroad worker like that. And that the, they'd rub it on the exterior of their body.

• 1:21:49Jay Novella?

  And that there would be, um, you know, help joint muscle pains, inflammation, things like that. So that oil from that snake is rich in omega-3 fatty acids. And it's also rich in EPA, uh, which is another type of fatty acid. And it, it has been proven to have anti-inflammatory effects. And Scientific American actually verified that it works. It actually has a, it, it does do something of the, like Steve's right. It's not like, oh my God, it's like Advil. It's not a penicillin, but it's like, yeah, it's like a liniment. But, but it did something and it was real in, in that effect. So specifically, we say, why did it work? Well, EPA, the, you know, that type of amino acid, it reduces inflammation, muscle, like modern pain relief creams or whatever, but not as, not as strong or whatever.

• 1:22:34Jay Novella?

  And again, they just rubbed it on themselves and, you know, it was widely used in that community. So then, of course, what happened is people found out that they were using this and some guy in particular named Clark Stanley, uh, he called himself the rattlesnake king. Um, and he became the most famous snake oil salesman. So this was in the late 1800s. Okay. So it says 1893. Um, he was at the Chicago World's Fair and he completely won over a very large crowd of people. He would pull out a live rattlesnake, you know, he would extract the, uh, The fatty tissue from it, this is all on stage, he'd boil it right there, he'd bottle it right there, and he would be selling it, and of course, this was the type of person

• 1:23:17Jay Novella?

  that would say, "This can cure anything," you know, we know the whole, that story, you know, very common idea is that it's a panacea. "What do you got?" "It'll cure that."

• 1:23:26Speaker 05

  Did he call it snake oil?

• 1:23:27Jay Novella?

  Apparently, he did.

• 1:23:28Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:23:28Jay Novella?

  And his product became a national sensation, he became very famous. The, uh, the problem is that American rattlesnakes, they have almost no omega-3s, and none of the other fatty acid that actually was the active ingredient, which of course, doesn't matter, because he was making money. So in 1916, the, the government actually did something, which doesn't happen anymore. So they had, uh, the Pure Food and Drug Act, this is in 1906, and this gave the government authority to, to regulate these false medications that were- Beginning of the FDA. Yeah, it was. I'm bringing back snake oil, because I think it's gonna be a good thing.

• 1:24:10Jay Novella?

  Don't think I haven't been biting my fucking tongue this entire podcast with that brain worm shit, I was about to explode.

• 1:24:18Jay Novella?

  Anyway.

• 1:24:20Jay Novella?

  Not the brain worm.

• 1:24:23Jay Novella?

  So they take his stuff, they test it, the US Bureau of Chemistry, which Steve said the precursor to the FDA, they got lab results, and they revealed that snake oil had the following. It had baby oil, which is mineral, uh, it had less than 1% of beef fat, it had, uh, red pepper, turpentine, and trace amounts of camphor. So this guy, Stanley, he pleaded guilty, pleaded no contest, and he was fined. Anybody, just guess, how much was he fined?

• 1:24:51Speaker 06

  Ten dollars.

• 1:24:53Jay Novella?

  Twenty bucks.

• 1:24:55Cara Santa Maria?

  What year was it, though?

• 1:24:56Speaker 06

  1916?

• 1:24:57Jay Novella?

  It was early 1900s.

• 1:24:58Cara Santa Maria?

  So what was that worth now?

• 1:25:00Jay Novella?

  About, like, 600 bucks. Nothing.

• 1:25:03Cara Santa Maria?

  No.

• 1:25:03Jay Novella?

  It's less than a slap on a wrist. He probably made, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars selling this crap. But what did happen was, there was a, you know, the newspapers reported it and he, you know, it cemented the snake oil is BS name. And that's where it came from.

• 1:25:17Speaker 05

  Nice.

• 1:25:18Jay Novella?

  So this goes back, you know, a hundred, over a hundred years ago. And of course, you know, again, like the last thing to say is, you know, now snake oil means everything. Anything that particularly skeptics think is BS, you know, but most people use snake oil if they want to talk like, oh, it's fake, it's snake oil. And that's where it comes from. I like this. Now, as a critical thinker, I didn't know any of that. I've been using snake oil the whole time. You know, we've been doing the podcast probably, you know, many, many years. Even before that, it was just, you know, a phrase that, that was put into my head. And there's a legitimate story. And the fact that it started off as something that actually worked, not great, but worked, blows my mind.

• 1:25:56Cara Santa Maria?

  But isn't that always how pseudoscience is? There's like that little kernel of truth. And then they just expand it and expand it and expand it.

• 1:26:03Jay Novella?

  Right.

• 1:26:03Cara Santa Maria?

  Until it no longer even exists. Yeah.

• 1:26:07Jay Novella?

  Well, but also very common at the time and still today was taking something that was used by some, either foreign culture, exotic culture, or indigenous culture, right? There was a huge industry of remedies that were taken from American Indians. And again, it was not the American Indians who were promoting it. It was some snake oil salesman, some, you know, some con artist who hit upon it. It's like, oh, you know, echinacea falls into this. Like, oh, they use, they use echinacea. It's like, okay, this is a, and even if they didn't, he just said they did anyway. But some, the echinacea was actually used by some, you know, American Indian tribe.

• 1:26:52Speaker 05

  Quinine, right? Also quinine was a bark?

• 1:26:54Jay Novella?

  Quite, yeah. So, well, yeah, but quinine actually can, does stuff.

• 1:26:57Speaker 05

  Right. But, but wasn't it used or was that, or was that coincidental that it's, I thought it was used by South, South American?

• 1:27:04Jay Novella?

  Yeah, but they didn't know what it was doing. Oh, okay. I mean, I think that, you know, some cultures did hit upon certain things that were obvious.

• 1:27:09Cara Santa Maria?

  Of course, I mean, there are like...

• 1:27:11Jay Novella?

  Things that would make you fall asleep.

• 1:27:12Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, there are indigenous practices that come from things that we ultimately made into pharmaceuticals.

• 1:27:18Jay Novella?

  Right.

• 1:27:18Cara Santa Maria?

  There are animals in the wild that use certain remedies.

• 1:27:22Jay Novella?

  Yeah, that's true. But here's the thing, they were using echinacea for a whole bunch of different stuff, but not flu. Not the thing that it was currently being marketed for. They would use it for snake bites and leg injuries, whatever, this is like random stuff. And it was not based on anything. But the idea that this is an ancient remedy used by this natural people There you go. was the marketing thing. And I'm sure the snake oil thing was the same, where it's like, oh yeah, this is from ancient Chinese remedy, right? I don't know if that comes from there too, but that's the same kind of thing. Usually, when there's something specific, like snake oil means generically a fraudulent treatment, there's a specific source to it.

• 1:28:01Jay Novella?

  We often will use things that have a specific reference, and then we generalize it to mean that type of thing.

• 1:28:08Cara Santa Maria?

  But that's also fun, because then you can be that asshole who watches movies, and somebody says the word "snake oil," but it's anachronistic, because it was too early or something.

• 1:28:16Jay Novella?

  It wasn't. They didn't use that phrase. They didn't have snake oil in 1874. The proper way to evoke that is, "Actually." Actually.

• 1:28:28Jay Novella?

  All right, one more news item. One more news item. One more? Yeah. All right. Then we're gonna do science fiction. Sounds like a plan. All right. All right, so, this, I don't know if this is Hyabusa, remember that? Hyabusa? This is the asteroid that... No, I think the Hyabusa was the satellite, right? Oh, yes. Yeah, this is the Ryubi or something asteroid. And they managed to rendezvous with an asteroid, collect samples, do some science right there, and they brought samples back to Earth. So this is a news item based upon a recent analysis of some of the samples from this asteroid. And they found something very interesting. I'm gonna save the conclusion till the end. So they were looking at...

• 1:29:11Jay Novella?

  Isn't that what the end is, though? Well, you could sometimes lead with the answer and say, "This is how they found it." But then you don't have a conclusion. Anyway...

• 1:29:23Jay Novella?

  They were looking at, again, this is something very, very technical and wonky, but it's very interesting. They were looking at the ratio of letrium and hafnium. These are two elements. The thing is, lutetium was, decays into hafnium. And so, they could, they, we know how old the asteroid is, right? So they said, well, this, the ratio of hafnium to lutetium in the sample should be this much. Right? That's, physics doesn't change, right? The half-lives are one of the, you know, you could hang your hat on that, that it doesn't change throughout the history of the universe. So, unless you're a creationist. Then they say, oh, it changes by whatever amount, it has to have changed in order for the Earth to be as old as I want it to be.

• 1:30:06Jay Novella?

  But, real scientists say they can, you can use it as a, as a constant, right? So, the problem is, the, there was far less hafnium in the sample than there should have been. So when there's less hafnium, is it quarterum? Yeah. You know, I'm trying. I, I wake up with the intent to entertain the people that spend money to come see us. Steve's all like, "Science and shit over here," like, I just want you guys to have fun. All right, go back.

• 1:30:38Cara Santa Maria?

  So that, that means it's younger?

• 1:30:39Jay Novella?

  So, you would think that. It means it's young, but it can't, because it ha, it's an asteroid. We know when it formed, we know where it formed, in the solar, it was an out, you know what I mean? So we know those things. Could it have hit a younger asteroid? Well, you're close to the answer. So with contamination? It's not contamination. It's not contamination, if that's your thought. So, but it's good, this is the, the conversation that we'll have. What could have happened? Why is there less hafnium than there should be? It's not because it's younger, because we know it isn't. It's not contamination from another body. Can I have a guess? Yeah. Could it have been like evaporated off by going too close to a sun or something? You're getting close. Okay. Getting closer to the answer.

• 1:31:18Speaker 05

  There's not a third element that has affected the other previous one.

• 1:31:20Jay Novella?

  It's not a chemical or, or, no, it's not, it's not, it's not it. Something washed away some of the hafnium.

• 1:31:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, so it did undergo the change, and then it somehow went away?

• 1:31:32Jay Novella?

  Right.

• 1:31:33Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay.

• 1:31:34Jay Novella?

  And this is, so again, they don't know that this is what happened, but this is what they're left with. Again, they've eliminated every other possibility they could think of, and this is what they're left with.

• 1:31:44Speaker 05

  Solar wind.

• 1:31:45Jay Novella?

  No. It would have had to have been something liquid. So therefore, there was flowing water inside this asteroid. But why wouldn't it freeze? Well, it did freeze. It refroze. Whoa. But the, so they're saying, but it would have had to have been much later than they thought it should have been. Cause you know, we, solar system formed out of a cloud of gas and dust. Everything's hot and then it cools down. And you know, we know where asteroids form based upon its constituents because there are different constituents at different places, distances from the sun. And you can tell this formed in the outer solar system then came inside or whatever. They can tell these kinds of things.

• 1:32:25Jay Novella?

  And a lot of, a lot of it is by the volatiles, right? Things that would evaporate if it gets too close to the sun or if it gets too hot. So this, they, you know, we, we know there's ice in, in the asteroid and we know where it's from. Um, but at some point, that ice must have melted, washed away the hafnium and then refroze. Right. Or evaporated. Right. So when it washed away this stuff, some of it, where did it actually go though? Well, then it washed it away, away from the asteroid. So evaporated out into space.

• 1:32:56Bob Novella?

  How much gravity is required to wash something away on the surface? Are we talking about this happens on the surface?

• 1:33:02Jay Novella?

  This is deep within the asteroid. But if the water evaporates, it doesn't take the hafnium with it? It did though. I mean, no, that's why it had to be liquid water that literally physically washed it away. Like, like. So they're saying, the only answer they're left with. Is this the conclusion? This is the conclusion. Okay, here we go. This is why I wanted you, I wanted you to tell me what you thought first. I, I agree. What, what could have done it? So they said, the only thing that's left on our list of possibilities is that there was liquid water percolating through this asteroid much later than it should have been.

• 1:33:34Bob Novella?

  Why water?

• 1:33:35Jay Novella?

  Well, liquid, so yes, liquid, liquid.

• 1:33:37Bob Novella?

  Okay.

• 1:33:37Jay Novella?

  Probably other liquid stuff too, but probably mostly water.

• 1:33:41Cara Santa Maria?

  A solvent.

• 1:33:41Jay Novella?

  Liquid, liquid.

• 1:33:42Cara Santa Maria?

  Some, some liquid solvent.

• 1:33:43Jay Novella?

  So what if it was, what if the regolith had frozen water and then it got near a sun and then it liquefied? But we kind of know about where it was in the solar system based upon what it's made of and its constituents.

• 1:33:55Cara Santa Maria?

  And so, does it, does it just not have enough of its own gravity for the water to? Like stay on it? Like, how does the water just?

• 1:34:02Jay Novella?

  This is inside.

• 1:34:03Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, but then you said it had to wash away.

• 1:34:06Jay Novella?

  So what do they think happened?

• 1:34:07Cara Santa Maria?

  So it percolates through.

• 1:34:08Jay Novella?

  It washed away from whatever, wherever they got the sample. Doesn't necessarily mean it washed away from the asteroid, but it could have if it got to the, if it percolated to the surface, it would have gone away.

• 1:34:16Cara Santa Maria?

  Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.

• 1:34:17Jay Novella?

  They're sampling deep in the asteroid and there should be hafnium there and there's a lot less of it than there should be, something.

• 1:34:22Cara Santa Maria?

  So maybe they'll see like a band if they actually did a core or something.

• 1:34:24Jay Novella?

  Well, but we have the samples we have. We don't have the whole asteroid. So this is what they're thinking. At some point, after a lot of the hafnium already was created through radioactive decay, another asteroid impacted it, melted the ice, washed away the hafnium and then it refroze. The liquid that had the hafnium and it just whisked off into space. Or, or again, just away from the sample that they had.

• 1:34:49Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, just to a different part of the asteroid.

• 1:34:51Jay Novella?

  So that's their, that's their current hypothesis. Something hit this thing, melted the ice from the heat of the impact and then it eventually refroze, but some of the hafnium went away.

• 1:35:01Speaker 05

  How cool that we have that sample.

• 1:35:02Jay Novella?

  But water should have been percolating through that sample way later than the history, the life history of that asteroid should have made it possible. Is that cool? That is cool. But the chain of logic is interesting, how they can infer. They have these little pieces of the asteroid and they're this, they're figuring all this stuff out. Again, that radioactive decay thing is always such an important piece of information. Because again, it is something that we could say, this is physics. This is what has happened.

• 1:35:29Speaker 05

  Where did they get the pieces?

• 1:35:30Jay Novella?

  This is, this was recovered from the, the high abuse.

• 1:35:34Speaker 05

  Okay, alright.

• 1:35:34Jay Novella?

  Yeah. So they sent a probe, they got it and they brought it back. In the future, they get another sample and there's too much hafnium, like this is where it went. It went over here. Maybe, yeah. Alright, cool. Well, everyone, it's time for Science or Fiction?

• 1:35:56Speaker 01

  It's time for Science or Fiction?

• 1:36:06Jay Novella?

  We should make an STU snake oil. Yeah? Careful. No, no, no, wait, let me just... Is this like your homeo pops idea? For cooking? No, that was actually Evan's idea.

• 1:36:16Cara Santa Maria?

  Homeo pops?

• 1:36:17Jay Novella?

  You came up with evaporative therapy, Evan came up with homeo pops. No, I just said it'd be a cool decorative bottle. It looks like an old school snake oil bottle. But then we have like an STU logo, or maybe you're the Barker or something. Okay, alright, there's an idea in there somewhere. As swag, you mean? Yeah, bookshelf item. Fake snake oil. Doc Novell, it's old timey remedy.

• 1:36:36Jay Novella?

  Evan, Evan, you see me, I appreciate that, thank you.

• 1:36:39Bob Novella?

  I got you, Jay. But we'd have to, you know, you have to write on it like a 100% bullshit.

• 1:36:44Jay Novella?

  Well, yeah, it's gotta be obvious.

• 1:36:46Speaker 05

  Well, Jay, what would it cure? What would that, what would the STU...

• 1:36:49Jay Novella?

  The fake cure be?

• 1:36:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, what would it be?

• 1:36:51Cara Santa Maria?

  Everything.

• 1:36:51Jay Novella?

  Good for what ills ya. Stay out of politics, let me see.

• 1:36:55Speaker 05

  Some kind of, yeah, like a, a, a remote control on we? Or something like this cures, uh, what, like, uh...

• 1:37:03Jay Novella?

  It'll keep you from giving, uh, getting the, what's a skeeby's, a scaby's? What's like a, what's like a kid's... Heebie jeebies? The heebie jeebies, something like that? Cures all heebie jeebies.

• 1:37:12Cara Santa Maria?

  Scabies is a real thing.

• 1:37:13Jay Novella?

  Yeah. Oh, scabies are real?

• 1:37:15Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:15Jay Novella?

  Yeah, okay. I don't know. I love the old timey diagnosis too. It treats consumption.

• 1:37:19Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it's something old.

• 1:37:21Jay Novella?

  Dropsy. Nervous condition.

• 1:37:22Cara Santa Maria?

  Dropsy, yeah.

• 1:37:23Bob Novella?

  Nervous condition.

• 1:37:24Speaker 05

  Nervous penile dropsy.

• 1:37:26Jay Novella?

  Nervous penile dropsy? Oh my god.

• 1:37:29Cara Santa Maria?

  Can we call it a liniment? Is that what they used to, there was a liniment?

• 1:37:33Jay Novella?

  Liniment, you know, liniment. Or one of my favorite ones as a neurologist, of course, is neurasthenia.

• 1:37:38Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, a neurasthenia?

• 1:37:39Jay Novella?

  Neurasthenia.

• 1:37:40Cara Santa Maria?

  Ooh, it can calm the nerves.

• 1:37:41Jay Novella?

  If I made the snake oil, who would like it? Who would like it? Just to see. Alright, forget it, I'm not doing it. No, no, no.

• 1:37:47Speaker 05

  Percussive melancholy. Cures percussive melancholy.

• 1:37:51Jay Novella?

  Percussive melancholy.

• 1:37:54Jay Novella?

  Nice.

• 1:37:55Speaker 05

  Guaranteed, 100%.

• 1:37:56Speaker 06

  George, you have percussive.

• 1:37:57Speaker 05

  This is not a guarantee.

• 1:37:59Jay Novella?

  Okay, each week I come up with three science news items, or facts, two real and one fictitious, and then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. We have a live audience, which means you all get to play along. We're gonna do this very specifically. I'm gonna ask the panel to give me their answers first, then we'll ask you to weigh in, and you have to be sure not to give away the answer before they vote. Right? You mean, you don't want them to say, "Hey, I know the answer." I don't want them to indicate in any way what they think the answer is. How many people here, by the way, you can do the one clap thing or whatever, how many people here are from Kansas?

• 1:38:41Jay Novella?

  A lot.

• 1:38:41Speaker 05

  That's good.

• 1:38:41Jay Novella?

  Right. Wow. The theme of the science fiction this week is Kansas.

• 1:38:47Speaker 05

  What now?

• 1:38:48Jay Novella?

  Evan asked me yesterday, "Is the theme gonna be Kansas?" I'm like, "Shut up."

• 1:38:55Speaker 06

  I said you should've thrown us a curveball, say it's Oklahoma.

• 1:38:59Jay Novella?

  I mean, I sometimes, I don't always do the place we're in, but we've never been here. And so, sometimes I do the place that we're in.

• 1:39:05Speaker 05

  Cure's Quizzical Bernstein.

• 1:39:07Jay Novella?

  That they can't know for sure. What's that?

• 1:39:09Speaker 05

  Cure's Quizzical Bernstein.

• 1:39:13Jay Novella?

  Alright, so... Keep it cool. Yeah, poker face, about any audience out there. You won't necessarily know the answer, but I don't know. Sometimes I think, I have to think to myself, like, would a local know this absolutely? How much do you really know about Connecticut? That's the question. That's, that's part of what I ask myself. So I'm not gonna do the state bird, you know, I mean, you guys know what state bird is. The meadow lark, thank you, you guys are all gonna know that, right?

• 1:39:37Speaker 05

  Meadow lark?

• 1:39:38Cara Santa Maria?

  Would you know that about your state?

• 1:39:39Speaker 05

  Uh, I think it's these, these, construction crane is my...

• 1:39:45Jay Novella?

  Come on, you know, you know what Pennsylvania is?

• 1:39:48Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:39:49Jay Novella?

  No? The bird? You don't know what it is?

• 1:39:51Cara Santa Maria?

  It's California.

• 1:39:52Jay Novella?

  It's Larry Bird.

• 1:39:53Speaker 05

  The Bethlehem bird is the swift, I know that.

• 1:39:56Jay Novella?

  The swift?

• 1:39:56Cara Santa Maria?

  Is California the condor?

• 1:39:58Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:59Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay.

• 1:39:59Jay Novella?

  Connecticut is... Robin. The American robin, thank you.

• 1:40:02Speaker 05

  Robin.

• 1:40:03Jay Novella?

  Um, this has been your birding moment. With Steve. It's not gonna be about birds. I almost said Kansas birds was gonna be my theme. And I found a couple of good ones, like just describing birds. Did you know there's a bird in Kansas called the Dixie?

• 1:40:18Jay Novella?

  Fiction. Alright.

• 1:40:21Cara Santa Maria?

  The California bird is the quail. I would not have known.

• 1:40:25Jay Novella?

  Some, some person who found the birds like Dixie. Like they had to know exactly what they were. Is there a reason? Is there an operational reason? Yeah, yeah, I don't know what it is for that one, but there, there, there is. And some have really funny names, but if you break, if you deconstruct it, it makes sense.

• 1:40:41Speaker 05

  Oh yeah, Jay, it cures Dixie.

• 1:40:46Jay Novella?

  George is all in on this. I like it. I wish more than three people raised their hands. I really like. There's the tit mouse, but we know that we have tit mice in Connecticut. Alright, here we go. Item number one.

• 1:40:57Jay Novella?

  There is a large population of bison in Kansas, and while they may appear docile, they are, there are score of reported attacks and injuries per year. Item number two, wind accounts for 52% of electricity production in Kansas, the third highest state in the US. And item number three, the incorrectly named Spanish flu of 1918 started in Fort Riley, Kansas, from which it spread to the rest of the world. Okay, should I start with Bob or should I start with George? Alright, George, go first. It's their fault, George.

• 1:41:33Bob Novella?

  Thank you.

• 1:41:35Speaker 05

  Large population of bison. I like that. I like that that's, I like that being true. Winning, winding, wind accounting for 52% seems awfully high, seems awfully high, which makes it feel like that's probably true. Because it's like it's being deceptive. So I bet that's true. And the Spanish flu did not start in Spain. I know it did start here some, somewhere in, I guess in the United States. Hmm, but would they, would, okay, would Steve know that the audience knows this? What is the, what does Steve think the audience is gonna know?

• 1:42:09Cara Santa Maria?

  You can't play these head games, man.

• 1:42:10Speaker 05

  No, I know.

• 1:42:11Cara Santa Maria?

  It always gets us.

• 1:42:13Jay Novella?

  To clarify, George, I tried to find ones I thought they wouldn't know.

• 1:42:16Speaker 05

  That they wouldn't, but still.

• 1:42:17Jay Novella?

  But I'm not good at doing that, which is why I wanted them to not chime in.

• 1:42:20Speaker 05

  So I think, I think. Okay, I'm gonna say the bison is fiction. The bison's fiction.

• 1:42:28Jay Novella?

  Okay, Kara.

• 1:42:29Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, so, uh, we know Spanish flu started in the US. We also know Spanish flu was spread around the world by soldiers. And so if it originated at Fort Riley, I don't know. I don't know, like, the main place where they were getting it. But maybe that was a port or something where a lot of training was happening for the war. I agree with George that 52% feels high. Because I think about wind, where are we doing a lot of wind? Like offshore, maybe not. I don't know. Is it windy here? Was it windy? Do you guys remember? Was it windy today?

• 1:43:08Jay Novella?

  They're not supposed to say anything.

• 1:43:10Cara Santa Maria?

  I know. But it is like, it's flat here, so plains, I don't know, maybe. And then, um, yeah, bison. Bison. I mean, they used to be everywhere. Uh, I think about them in, like, Montana, but I do think about them in, like, American grasslands, prairie. Good, I'm gonna go with George on this, I'm not sure.

• 1:43:30Speaker 05

  Maybe it's buffalo. Maybe he's being sneaky and it's actually buffalo and not bison.

• 1:43:33Cara Santa Maria?

  I don't think he would do that. I think that's too similar, yeah.

• 1:43:36Speaker 05

  Oh, you don't know Steve.

• 1:43:37Cara Santa Maria?

  I'm gonna go with George on that.

• 1:43:39Jay Novella?

  Okay, Jay? Yeah, I did, I know that the Spanish flu did not start in Spain. It started here. I don't know, I don't think, of my years of having Steve do science or fiction, I don't think that he would assign it to, um, you know, a local, you know, like, a place in Kansas. Uh, so I think that one is science. I'm gonna pop over to now the, uh, what do we got? The murder bison.

• 1:44:05Jay Novella?

  I mean, look, you know, there's a lot of people who are growing bison for the meat. You know, then I would think, okay, it's perfectly fine if they grow them. Here, a ton of flat land, seems like a really good state to grow bison and do all that. And they're dangerous. Of course they are, they're wild animals. You know, I don't know if they're, like, particularly feisty bison, but I think if you, if people, like, are, you know...

• 1:44:28Speaker 05

  Good band name, Feisty Bison. Ooh.

• 1:44:31Jay Novella?

  If they go onto other people's property, you know, teenagers and stuff, people can get injured, sure. You don't wanna be around giant animals like that. Uh, so I think that's science. I, you know, I don't think, I think what George says was the 52% seem too high. And I think that's where Steve, Steve likes to be tricky in those areas. I'm gonna say that one's a fiction. Right. Okay, Evan?

• 1:44:51Speaker 06

  Um, the bison of Kansas. I just don't know about these reported attacks and injuries per year. Um, I, I mean, you know, anytime you get people and animals together, there are going to be some injuries. Scores of reported attacks and injuries per year. Yeah, that would be the reason why I would go with that one is fiction. Now, the wind one, 52% and the third highest state in the U.S. So the other two would what be coastal and, uh, you know, hey, when I landed, uh, yesterday, uh, off the plane and here in Kansas City and we went to pick up our rental car and, uh, noticed signs by the bathrooms,

• 1:45:34Speaker 06

  uh, tornado shelter and I started seeing tornado shelter, tornado shelter, tornado. So, you know, yeah, there's a lot of wind in Kansas, actually, so, um.

• 1:45:44Cara Santa Maria?

  Windmills work in tornadoes?

• 1:45:46Speaker 06

  Well, sure. It just, you know, we're from Connecticut, we don't have those things. So we come to a state where we're not familiar with and just odd to see tornado shelter signs on a regular basis in a lot of places.

• 1:45:59Cara Santa Maria?

  Not in Texas.

• 1:46:00Speaker 06

  So I'm leaning towards that one being science. Uh, the last one about Fort Riley, Kansas. No, I don't, I don't know that for certain. Um, so I guess I'm gonna have to go with George and Kara and say it's the bison one.

• 1:46:13Jay Novella?

  All right, and Bob?

• 1:46:14Bob Novella?

  I was so happy when I saw the Spanish flu because I'm like, yes, I know it's not from Spain. I'd some, from some other country and then everybody seemed to say, oh, we all know it's from the United States. And like, it is? I didn't, I didn't know that. I told, so thanks for the info and thanks, and thanks to you guys for picking George first. Um, so that's good. So the other thing, I'm kind of really bummed now that I wasn't looking out that plane window because I think Jay was glued to the window and he saw that there was a lot, he saw bison. So he's like, all right, that's science. And I think, I think he didn't see a lot of windmills. So that's why he, that's why he picked the, uh, the windmill. So I'm gonna go with that. How could I not go with that? So that's fiction.

• 1:46:52Speaker 06

  Oh, boy.

• 1:46:53Jay Novella?

  There were wind turbines, but.

• 1:46:55Bob Novella?

  Turbines, windmills, turbines.

• 1:46:56Speaker 05

  Let's start with the third one.

• 1:46:58Jay Novella?

  Well, first we have to poll the audience.

• 1:47:00Bob Novella?

  Ah, yes.

• 1:47:01Jay Novella?

  All right, so I'm gonna do the George thing. Are you gonna go, you're gonna follow me? Gonna look at my eyes only. All right, if you think that the bison is the fiction, clap.

• 1:47:13Jay Novella?

  If you think that the wind is the fiction, clap. And if you think that the Spanish flu is the fiction, clap. Okay, so the audience thinks the wind turbines are-

• 1:47:24Cara Santa Maria?

  Audience is going Jay and Bob.

• 1:47:28Jay Novella?

  So let's take these in reverse order, since nobody went for the third one on the panel, very minority of the audience. The incorrectly-named Spanish flu of 1918 started in Fort Riley, Kansas, from which it spread to the rest of the world.

• 1:47:41Bob Novella?

  Would you be pissed if you were in Spain and they named this deadly scourge after the country you lived in?

• 1:47:47Jay Novella?

  It is true that it did not come from Spain. Do you know why it was called the Spanish flu?

• 1:47:51Bob Novella?

  Because nobody else was reporting, right?

• 1:47:53Jay Novella?

  Right, because World War I-

• 1:47:54Bob Novella?

  I'm not gonna fess up.

• 1:47:55Jay Novella?

  No country wanted to report their mortality numbers, because that would make them look weak. And Spain didn't care, so they accurately, they were the only ones to accurately report their numbers. So it looked like there was a lot of cases in Spain and not so much everywhere else, but it was a total lie. So it got called the Spanish flu for that reason. It did originate in the United States, but where in the United, it could have come from anywhere in the United States, right? That's the question.

• 1:48:20Bob Novella?

  Not Kansas.

• 1:48:20Jay Novella?

  That's what I pointed out. Very easy just to say, okay, I'll make it Kansas, right? This one is science. It did come from Kansas.

• 1:48:29Bob Novella?

  Did you guys, everybody here know?

• 1:48:30Jay Novella?

  Now, yeah, my understanding is that Fort Riley is a town, right? It's not a fort. It probably was a fort at some point. But, so it came from Camp something, I actually forgot the name, Camp something in Fort Riley. And yes, it was primarily spread through soldiers, because it was World War I, that's what made it so bad. So that one is true. Let's go back to number two. Wind accounts for 52% of electricity production in Kansas, the third highest state in the US. Bob and Jay and the majority, the vast majority of the audience, who are from Kansas, apparently, think this one is the fiction. And this one is science.

• 1:49:11Bob Novella?

  Oh dang! Wow, I thought we had it, man.

• 1:49:17Jay Novella?

  Fifty-two percent. What are the two states that are higher? Iowa, North Dakota. Those are the two that are higher. But yeah, Iowa's number one. Yeah, there's a lot of, a lot of wind in Kansas.

• 1:49:29Speaker 06

  Oh, well.

• 1:49:30Jay Novella?

  To answer Evan's question, you know, you can't use wind turbines during a tornado.

• 1:49:33Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I didn't think so.

• 1:49:34Speaker 05

  Well, no.

• 1:49:35Jay Novella?

  Nor in just, if the wind gets too brisk, you have to shut them down.

• 1:49:38Speaker 05

  You can use them once.

• 1:49:40Jay Novella?

  You can use them once. You've gotta shut those things down if the wind gets too, too high. So hurricane, any kind of like really stormy kind of weather, no, they gotta shut them down.

• 1:49:49Cara Santa Maria?

  All those Kansas hurricanes, yeah.

• 1:49:51Speaker 06

  I wasn't implying that you, you know, yay, a lot of electricity, let's get more tornadoes going. I was just saying, like, you don't realize how, you know, the conditions of the place you're going.

• 1:50:00Cara Santa Maria?

  You also realize tornadoes aren't just a function of like lots of wind, right? It doesn't just get so windy it becomes a tornado.

• 1:50:06Speaker 06

  I get that.

• 1:50:07Cara Santa Maria?

  Doesn't, doesn't work that way.

• 1:50:08Jay Novella?

  But yeah, there, there are a lot of flat states in the Midwest that have a lot of wind turbines. You know, Oklahoma, that's, and I was in Oklahoma. I was in Oklahoma, I was in Oklahoma and giving a lecture and there's wind turbines everywhere. Now, of course, Oklahoma's a very red state, so the, not the, in the cities, when you're in a city, it's like any other city anywhere else, right? But it's the rural areas that are very regional in terms of their beliefs and culture and politics and stuff. The population in Oklahoma believes that their dramatic increases in earthquake frequency is due to the wind turbines.

• 1:50:51Speaker 06

  Sure.

• 1:50:52Jay Novella?

  Not due to the fracking, which is actually what's causing it. Because that's what they were told. And then it's those damn wind turbines. All right.

• 1:51:00Speaker 06

  Should go attack them.

• 1:51:01Jay Novella?

  That means that there is a large population of bison in Kansas, and while they may appear docile, there are score of reported attacks and injuries per year is the Fiction. Now, what about it is fiction? Are there a lot of bison in Kansas? Yes, there are. But a lot, what's a lot? There's, the population's 5,000 to 6,000. Bison, that's a lot, that's a sizable herd. Some, a lot of them are in private herds, but some of them are not. But, and they are not docile, they are dangerous wild animals. Anybody here play the game Medieval Dynasty? Yeah, so there are medieval bison, not bison, I forgot what they call them. There are similar creatures in there, they will run at you and kill you. They are really dangerous in the game, and that's very accurate.

• 1:51:40Cara Santa Maria?

  In Oregon Trail, they help you cross the river.

• 1:51:43Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:45Speaker 06

  Oh, my gosh, Oregon Trail. I almost forgot about that game.

• 1:51:49Cara Santa Maria?

  It's a great game, defining my childhood.

• 1:51:51Speaker 05

  So are these just like protected somehow, or they're?

• 1:51:54Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, there probably just isn't that much human conflict with them.

• 1:51:56Jay Novella?

  So, there's zero injuries per year. I think, I guess because people who are around them know not to get near them. The last reported injury was from 2022, so three years ago, so not score per year. Yeah, but again, that kind of number, like, you could sound reasonable.

• 1:52:14Speaker 06

  And particularly if they're on private farms and all that. Like, the people who work there know what they're doing.

• 1:52:18Jay Novella?

  They know what they're doing, yeah.

• 1:52:19Speaker 05

  Are there any bison in the audience? Is there?

• 1:52:22Jay Novella?

  Anybody here see a bison in Kansas?

• 1:52:25Cara Santa Maria?

  Do bison moo?

• 1:52:27Jay Novella?

  No.

• 1:52:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Maybe, I don't know.

• 1:52:28Speaker 06

  Bison moo is a question.

• 1:52:30Jay Novella?

  Do bison moo? No.

• 1:52:32Cara Santa Maria?

  Somebody mooed in the audience, I'm just saying.

• 1:52:33Speaker 05

  They must have some kind of...

• 1:52:34Jay Novella?

  They make noise.

• 1:52:35Speaker 05

  Some kind of noise, yeah.

• 1:52:36Jay Novella?

  But it's not, I wouldn't call it a moo.

• 1:52:38Speaker 05

  Not mooing?

• 1:52:39Jay Novella?

  They licked your salt off your car? All right, so good job to the non-novelas up here and like three people in the audience.

• 1:52:47Jay Novella?

  Yay. Evan, give us a quote.

• 1:52:51Speaker 06

  "I may have discovered a planet, but the real achievement is the inspiration it provides to future generations." Clyde Tomball, who is the discoverer of the planet Pluto?

• 1:53:02Jay Novella?

  The dwarf planet Pluto.

• 1:53:03Speaker 06

  The dwarf planet Pluto.

• 1:53:06Cara Santa Maria?

  Gotta put that in brackets now in the quote.

• 1:53:08Jay Novella?

  The planet, scare quotes, Pluto.

• 1:53:12Speaker 06

  Who studied here at the University of Kansas, University of Kansas alumnus. So that is why we chose the quote to honor him.

• 1:53:19Jay Novella?

  Thank you, Evan. Well, thank you all for joining me this week.

• 1:53:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:53:26Jay Novella?

  Thank you all for coming and thanks to all the Kansans. Is that how, is it Kansans? Is that correct? Good. We're Keneeticutions. I love that. Yeah. Thanks to all the Kansans for your wonderful hospitality since we've been here. And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

• 1:53:50Jay Novella?

  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.