The Skeptics Guide #1063 - Nov 22 2025

Dumbest Thing of the Week: Noah's Ark; News Items: Using AI to Design Viruses, Creatine for Cognitive Function, Earth Digital Twin, Quiet Supersonic Jet, Tet For Chronic Fatigue Syndrome; Who's That Noisy; Your Questions and E-mails: Wolf Tool Use; 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.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Thursday, November 20th, 2025, and this is your host, Stephen Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella.

• 0:46Bob Novella?

  Hey, everybody.

• 0:47Speaker 02

  Jay Novella.

• 0:48Speaker 04

  Hey, guys.

• 0:48Speaker 02

  And Evan Bernstein.

• 0:50Speaker 04

  Good afternoon, everyone.

• 0:52Speaker 02

  Now, Cara is away this week, but I did record her segment previously, so that will... She'll be jumping in in the middle of the show with her news item, but she is not here to participate in the rest of the show. She actually, we did her science or fiction as well, so I'll be clipping that.

• 1:08Bob Novella?

  Ah. Oh. Ah ha, she went first.

• 1:10Speaker 04

  If I had known, I would have sent, I would have texted her and asked her.

• 1:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 1:14Bob Novella?

  Does that mean, though, we get to hear her ramblings before, in her decision, before we go?

• 1:18Speaker 02

  No, not at all. Why? Why wouldn't she go first?

• 1:21Bob Novella?

  She's in a limbo.

• 1:21Speaker 02

  She went, she's done, but I'm not gonna play her for you.

• 1:25Speaker 04

  Did you tell her if she got it right or not?

• 1:27Speaker 02

  Maybe.

• 1:27Speaker 04

  Oh, Steve, you are clever.

• 1:29Speaker 02

  All right. So I'm, I, Bob just picked me up at the airport a few hours ago. I just got in from Dubai. I'm significantly jet lagged, but I'm...

• 1:39Speaker 04

  This'll be fun.

• 1:40Speaker 02

  I'm mostly awake. It was a good trip, it was a lot of fun. You know, I did a nine-hour seminar on, you know, primer on scientific skepticism, which is always fun. After that, there was a conference where I was on a panel on the future of consciousness and the mind. It was good, it actually turned out to be a really good, really good panel. So, yeah, things are happening in Dubai, we may be going back there next year. What's your number one?

• 2:01Jay Novella?

  Takeaway.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  So, I mean, there's, you know, Dubai's trying to position itself as like the city of the future. You know, they're investing in a lot of technology. They're trying to attract a lot of talent, a lot of investment. And they're motivated to make this happen. So, you know, they have like the museum of the future there. It's actually a pretty snazzy kind of construction. Yeah, so, you know, the Muhammad is the guy who's hosting me there, who's a listener of the show. He's a skeptic, he's like, skepticism has to be part of this process. Otherwise, the pseudoscience will come in. Of course. Which, of course, I completely agree with. The learning curve is pretty steep when you're, you know, thinking about metacognition, critical thinking, science versus pseudoscience.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  Thinking about that versus not thinking about that is a huge difference, right? So, having some kind of process where we say, okay, is this something that's legitimate? That deserves our time and attention, our investment? Or is this just some crank looking to exploit the situation, you know? So, that's, we're trying to at least introduce that basic nuts and bolts kind of process.

• 3:08Jay Novella?

  I mean, even them pausing for a second and asking themselves, could this be a scam? Or am I, could I possibly be taken advantage of? Is a wonderful start.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  And there's huge, there's research on that. Anything you do to make people think about, be aware of, the truth status of a claim, makes them more skeptical about it. You know what I mean? Just to introduce, even if saying anything about, is this true or not true? Soon as you introduce the idea that it may or may not be true, people think about it, you know? So, yeah, but obviously doing that in the context of, this is how you tell real science from fake science.

• 3:49Jay Novella?

  Steve, when you're, when you're there, like, this is part of a giant conference, right? That you said it lasts like a month?

• 3:55Speaker 02

  So, there's two things, right? So, the first is the FEEL program, which is, like, there are 30 fellows that are invited each year. And they spend a month-long seminar workshop with, going through multiple seminars. I did One of the of the seminars, you know, for that course there, but they have many other people doing that. And then the other one was a two day conference. It was the future forum. Just a two day conference that anybody could go to, just got to buy a ticket like any other con.

• 4:25Speaker 04

  Was it dominated by AI discussion?

• 4:27Speaker 02

  So AI all over the place, man. It was so much AI, absolutely.

• 4:31Bob Novella?

  Of course.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  Like almost every, it seems to come up in almost every context, you know?

• 4:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:36Speaker 02

  Like, of course, AI is gonna change this. It's like, sure.

• 4:38Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 4:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:40Bob Novella?

  See what they're saying after the, uh,

• 4:42Speaker 02

  After the bubble burst.

• 4:44Speaker 02

  No, listen, it's, it's, AI is, um, as we've said before on the show, it is, it's, it's hype, but it's real technology as well. Just like any new technology. It's, doesn't work for everything, but it's still figuring out, like the internet, you know, when, uh, internet commerce and the, and, you know, the web came out. Obviously, it's transformed our economy, but there was a lot of hype that led to a bubble, which then burst, you're right? And so the two things can be true at the same time. It is a powerful new tool that is being used in research in so many ways. But because of that, there's also a ton of hype around it. And there's a lot, a lot of talk in the last couple of weeks, you know, about the AI bubble and when's it gonna burst and et cetera, et cetera.

• 5:29Jay Novella?

  I don't see it bursting. I mean, there,

• 5:30Speaker 02

  We will see, then it will, and then it, you know, it'll, things will sort itself out, you know, over time, like what really works. Now we're in the throw shit against the wall phase, you know, see what happens.

• 5:41Jay Novella?

  But there is, there is so much money being put into that industry. It's crazy.

• 5:46Speaker 02

  That's the thing. If there's so much money, that's the bubble, right? It's attracting crazy investment money, which is inflating the whole thing, you know? But,

• 5:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, the way I had it explained to me, actually it was, you know, one of our, one of our friends who was an investment guy. Remember, stocks are based on two things. There's the actual value of the company, its assets, its revenue. And then there's speculation about its potential in the future. When speculation gets too far ahead of reality, that's when you have a bubble, right?

• 6:17Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  So we are absolutely in the massively speculative phase. of AI and that it's no question that there's that that's causing a bubble because of that. At some point, there's a quote unquote correction, right now that correction is when you get back to a proper balance of, you know, the actual value of the company like its profits and its assets versus speculation. The question is, is the correction going to cause a recession or even a depression, right?

• 6:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:49Speaker 02

  You know, hopefully it won't get that bad.

• 6:51Speaker 04

  Hopefully not.

• 6:52Speaker 02

  But that's what happened in 1929, right? There was other problems too. There were regulatory problems that we've hopefully fixed this time around, but you know, a lot of, a lot of economists are worried that there's some, some, some similar things going on now that we have to be careful about.

• 7:08Speaker 04

  Yep. And there have been some big sells by some prominent investors who have sold, for example, all their Nvidia stock, like dumped it all now, like just this week. Because they see the downturn coming already.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  But that could become a self fulfilling prophecy.

• 7:23Speaker 04

  It could be, it definitely could be, but there's more than one of these people in hedge funds and other things that have been unloading.

• 7:31Speaker 02

  That's why bubbles burst, right? There's everyone's getting in to make money. And then as soon as people think that it's going the other way, there's a rush for the door. And then it collapses.

• 7:41Speaker 04

  Right. And then there'll be a buyback once it's backed down. But you're right. There could be a lot of collateral damage on the way. Just hope it doesn't get to that point.

• 7:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. And can you trust those bastards?

• 7:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, trust. It's a big word.

• 7:53Speaker 02

  Hey, and you know, I guess we're not going to talk about the Epstein files, right?

• 7:59Speaker 02

  Has that been in the news recently? I don't know.

• 8:01Speaker 04

  A little bit, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Even in Dubai.

• 8:04Speaker 02

  No, even in Dubai, it's in the news. Actually, my, my lifeline while I was over there was BBC International, which was like the one English speaking news station I could get in the hotel room. So that was, that was my lifeline to US News was through the BBC. It's actually pretty good. It's actually, you know, it's fairly objective reporting in my opinion. Uh, anyway, let's move on. Evan, you're gonna start us off with the dumbest thing of the week.

• 8:32Speaker 04

  Thank you, Steve. Yes, dumbest thing of the week. Now, Steve,

• 8:36Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 8:36Speaker 04

  Uh, you know, you were in Dubai recently.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  I, I, that's what I understand.

• 8:41Speaker 04

  This particular dumbest thing of the week took place relatively close to where you were. Not exactly, not, not, you know, but in the same, same

• 8:50Speaker 02

  Same part of the world, same region.

• 8:51Speaker 04

  Same part of the world. Yep, yep. And this can, comes to us courtesy of the Today Show.

• 8:57Speaker 02

  Oh, boy.

• 8:58Speaker 04

  I know a lot of people in the United States know about this show. It is a big, big morning television show here in the USA on a major network. And this network even has a deeper online reach to its various related media products. So, yeah, NBC, the National Broadcasting Company, this is their product. This is not some fringe TikToker or MySpacer or SixDegeerers. SixDegree? Do you guys remember that at all?

• 9:27Speaker 02

  No.

• 9:27Speaker 04

  It was like the precursor, the precursor to MySpace. Look it up.

• 9:30Speaker 02

  Oh, geez.

• 9:31Speaker 04

  I had to look it up because I didn't even remember what SixDegree was. But that was the pre-Myspace, though. Due to its enormous reach and potential damage to the collective IQ of the planet, this, they have earned definitely the dumbest thing of the week. So, they thought it was a good idea to head out to Mount Ararat in Turkey and re-cook a long-dead burger known as Noah's Ark.

• 9:53Bob Novella?

  Uh, Ararat? Isn't that where Noah's Ark is?

• 9:55Speaker 04

  Thank you, Bob. Yes.

• 9:57Bob Novella?

  Do you remember that?

• 9:58Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:58Bob Novella?

  Wow.

• 9:59Speaker 04

  Well, NBC did because that's where they went, and that's what this particular story was about. Because the news team of investigators went, went out there to once again, study the, study this particular area to see and try to get confirmation that they have located the biblical, the fictional, the mythical Noah's Ark.

• 10:19Bob Novella?

  Steve, I gotta say real quick, Steve and Jay, do you remember going to the movie theater to see the movie popularization of that whole thing?

• 10:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:27Bob Novella?

  It was just like a, it was just like a bad pseudo-scientific documentary.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  It was horrible.

• 10:31Bob Novella?

  Oh my god.

• 10:32Speaker 02

  It was, yeah, it was in search of level of horribleness.

• 10:36Bob Novella?

  Yes.

• 10:37Speaker 04

  Oh, yes.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  It's all speculation and coincidence and, you know, you know what I mean? It's like never, ever, that was one of the shows that in my formative years, you know, like when I'm in the, when I was a proto skeptic, not really a full skeptic, but we were all interested in all of this kind of stuff, where I always had this nagging feeling, it's like, how come we never get to actual evidence? There's always the promise of evidence, the implication of evidence, the suggestion that there might be evidence, and it's all really full of hype and everything, but never anything solid. And that was definitely in that, that bucket, you know, that, that movie was that way.

• 11:21Speaker 02

  It's like, it's all just wild ass speculation.

• 11:24Speaker 04

  And yet, teams of researchers continue to visit the site in an attempt to try to make fact out of fiction, basically, is what happens. Now, for those who don't know, in the Book of Genesis, Noah's ark came to rest, according to the book, on the mountains of Ararat, which has led to a long tradition of searching for Noah's ark near Mount Ararat in what is modern day Turkey, the highest peak in Turkey, in fact, Mount Ararat. It's a dormant volcano near the borders of Armenia and Iran. So despite many alleged sightings over the centuries, as you said, Steve, there has been none, zero credible scientific or archaeological evidence that the ark has been found.

• 12:08Speaker 04

  Geological studies of a presumed ark formation have concluded that they are what? Not, not an ark, but a natural rock formation.

• 12:16Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 12:18Speaker 04

  Yep, yep. So, the new claim, in 2025, an American-Turkish research team using GPR and other geophysical scans claimed to have found evidence of man-made structures within this particular formation. Finally, you know, using latest, greatest technology to, to go back to an archaeological site to try to find more information, which is not unusual in archaeology, that does happen. However, what, what did, what did they find? Well, let's see. According to Lawrence Collins, who is a retired professor of geology from California State University and co-author of a paper that thoroughly debunked this formation near Mount Ararat as a natural geological structure, which was formed by

• 13:01Speaker 04

  a volcanic sediment, by the way, and erosion, rather than being a man-made vessel. His analysis determined that the supposed artifacts looks like an iron bracket and drogue stones, or is it droge stones? D-R-O-G-U-E. And that's what these new researchers said that their readings came back with. But actually, nope. Natural mineral concentrations, local rocks, it's still just geology that we're looking at. But hey, it looks like an ark, right? It has the shape. It has roughly, I guess, the size that would that would match it. So what do you do if you're a true believer, creationist, or what have you? You go back and you try to continue to find evidence to support your conclusions.

• 13:45Speaker 02

  I mean, it's not even good pareidolia.

• 13:47Speaker 04

  Right.

• 13:48Speaker 02

  It's just vaguely bodish shaped. It's clearly a natural rock formation. You know what I mean? It's the kind of thing like you wouldn't even necessarily think anything about it until somebody points it out. It's like a face in the cloud. Like, you kind of see how this could be a boat. Yeah, okay, you know, sure, if you squint really just right. But it's not it's not even convincing. Even just as just as being in a boat shape. It's terrible.

• 14:12Jay Novella?

  But Steve, for a lot of people, that's enough.

• 14:14Speaker 02

  Apparently.

• 14:15Speaker 04

  Well, right. And, you know, and what and again, they just continue to go back to try to get more information, you know, something, anything that they can cling on to to help support their particular biblical-based theory of what of what this is. But it fails. It fails time and time again. Why NBC and the Today Show decided to do a segment on this?

• 14:38Speaker 02

  I mean, we know the answer to that question.

• 14:39Speaker 04

  Well, I suppose so, you know.

• 14:42Speaker 02

  Why does Time Magazine have Jesus on the cover once a year, no matter what's going on?

• 14:46Speaker 04

  That's true. Shrouded Turin pops up all the time, you know, regularly. These things are cyclical in this way. So, so, uh, that's NBC. They get the dumbest thing of the week for helping to keep creation, creationism alive.

• 15:02Speaker 02

  Well, I do want to point out one other thing, and that is I'm noticing that the use of this, you know, penetrating sonar is the latest pseudo-scientific tool. Because it's a blob squatch tool. Because you get back these vague, low-res images that you can hallucinate whatever the freak you want to hallucinate in those images. And so they look, this could be a corridor. And then they, then they superimpose on top of these blobs, a ship. You know, and you're like, come on.

• 15:33Bob Novella?

  We're seeing it under, under the pyramids, right? In Egypt, we're seeing similar.

• 15:37Speaker 02

  That's what I'm saying. It's, yeah, so this, uh, now my radar is up for any pseudo-archaeologists, whoever using this ground penetrating radar. It's just pareidolia generating machine at this point in time.

• 15:50Jay Novella?

  Which, you know, suits their purposes perfectly.

• 15:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. It's, it's like the ghost hunters who use the squelch machine to, to listen to ghost voices. It's, there's, the pseudo-scientists will use noise generating machines that they could then overinterpret to be whatever they want it to be, or whatever they need it to be, to support their nonsense. But, you know, real scientists know how to use it properly, and you know how, you know, its strengths and weaknesses, et cetera, et cetera.

• 16:17Speaker 04

  Limitations of the instruments, correct. Absolutely.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  I mean, the thing is, and this is again, this is standard archaeology, is when you see something that looks like it might be something, right? Just because it has a shape or whatever, that's meaningless until you find the physical stuff itself, right? So like, show me, where's the actual ship? There's gotta be some, we have ships that are about 4,000 years ago. Yeah.

• 16:43Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  2,700 BCE. So, yeah, so we can find shipwrecks from thousands of years ago. There should be something, some wood, some, because you say nails, some of the metal that you use to make it.

• 16:56Jay Novella?

  Something.

• 16:57Speaker 02

  Not just, it's dirt in a vague ship shape that I impose my beliefs onto. All right, Jay.

• 17:05Jay Novella?

  What?

• 17:06Speaker 02

  I understand that scientists have used AI to make a virus to kill a bacteria.

• 17:12Jay Novella?

  That is correct, Steve. I was really, really looking forward to hearing what you guys think about this. I think it's really cool. I think it's another great example of, you know, of using artificial intelligence. But of course, there's details and there's things that we have to consider. So what we have is two scientific teams, both in California, and they claim they've used artificial intelligence to create functioning viruses that can infect and kill bacteria. You know, on the surface, this sounds, you know, incredible, right? Both groups designed complete viral genomes using the AI systems. The AI systems were trained on massive DNA data sets, you know, they just filled it with as much information as they could.

• 17:54Jay Novella?

  And then they assembled those genomes in the lab and watched them come to life inside bacteria cells. They had 16 successful AI-generated designs from the Stanford and Ark Institute teams. They produced fully working bacteriophages. And this marks a, you know, a significant shift in how biology can be engineered. Now, of course, I mean, who hasn't thought about this? I've been thinking about, you know, them using AI to do genetic engineering for a long time and I'm.

• 18:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's code, right? It's a perfect tool for it.

• 18:28Jay Novella?

  Exactly, yeah. And it's, this is probably not the first time it's been used this way, but this, this particular thing that was accomplished is, is pretty significant. So in case you don't know, a bacteriophage is a virus that infects bacteria. It can't reproduce or grow on its own. And what it does is it attaches itself to a living bacterial cell. Then it injects its genetic material, which then hijacks the cell's internal machinery, which forces the cell to make new viral components. This is, you know, exactly what happened with COVID. And then eventually, it causes the cell to burst open and this. This is very much like a Thanksgiving meal at my house, by the way.

• 19:09Jay Novella?

  Each phage usually targets only one type of bacteria, sometimes even a single strain, and that's pretty cool. That means you can match a specific phage to a specific infection. So the targeting potential here is at maximum. This is why researchers are right now exploring these phages and the precise treatments that they could eventually bring to us for antibiotic-resistant bacteria. And if you don't know about what is going on in the world of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, well, there is a growing problem caused by several things. One of them is people taking their medication and not finishing their antibiotics. You know, you can get some nasty bacteria that comes out of that, happening over and over and over and over again.

• 19:54Jay Novella?

  And it's always good to future-proof ourselves from future potential, heavy-duty bacterial threats, which happen from time to time. The California team at Stratford and ARC Institute, they were focusing on PHI X174. This is a tiny phage with a genome of about 5,000 bases and 11 genes. In a virus, this genome is a single, continuous piece of DNA or RNA, and that tells the whole cell which proteins they produce and how to assemble new virus particles, right? This is all basic virus information. PHI X174, this is a well-known and very much heavily-studied phage, which makes it

• 20:36Jay Novella?

  a perfect test case for these synthetic genome designs that they're coming up with. The researchers also used the LLM that is specifically trained on DNA sequences, right? So it wasn't just a standard, like, out-of-the-box LLM. They were training it to only, essentially, only understand DNA, and there wasn't even really, like, a talking component to it. Like, you couldn't just type into it. You know, the way that they were communicating with it was largely just based on them pumping in DNA information and it spitting out DNA information. And that LLM was part of the Evo and Evo2 family of artificial intelligence systems. You could read a little bit more about them. They're being used for different

• 21:19Jay Novella?

  things. So they used it to write complete virus genomes from scratch and the AI was able to do this very well because the models were trained, like I said, on just a huge amount of data about bacteria and virus and everything. So they built, they loaded the gun perfectly for them to get these results. The AI learned many of the rules that real biological genomes follow, and this part is important because it wasn't just it shooting into the dark. They concluded that the success of this program proves that it had, you know, a quote unquote, a real understanding of what the, you know, you can call them rules or whatever, but just how these systems work. And it needed that in order to have this

• 22:04Jay Novella?

  many successes. So, once they had these DNA sequences, they used other laboratories to actually build these structures and they were assembled and they were able to inject them into bacteria and it worked. It was actually very successful. And the interesting thing here, so now that we have the DNA and now that they were able to build these phages, the implications are significant because we see what was able to be done with the LLM. We know that it can function and we know that it can spit out usable data. So now, what are we looking at? You know, phage therapy could become a much more targeted

• 22:46Jay Novella?

  thing in the future. Synthetic biology could explore, you know, designs that are way beyond what evolution has produced. But of course, there's like the Frankenstein risks here that we have to be very careful about and there needs to be responsible oversight. And of course, whenever we say that we need oversight, it's the one thing that we seem not to get because, you know, we have this incredible, powerful technology that, again, we could do incredible things with. Here's a few things people need to keep in mind. This could be used in the future. It's not ready today.

• 23:17Speaker 02

  We also should say that this is a pre-print, so it hasn't been peer-reviewed yet.

• 23:21Jay Novella?

  Uh huh.

• 23:22Speaker 02

  And it hasn't been replicated. So...

• 23:23Jay Novella?

  Yeah, that's why I'm saying that they claimed it.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 23:26Jay Novella?

  This isn't 100%.

• 23:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, just to point that out specifically, this is preliminary. So, but this is, you know, the next iterative step in this research that's been done. It's not, this is not a huge leap.

• 23:36Jay Novella?

  And again, this is how science works, right? Right now, it's in a super early phase. We don't know exactly where it's going to go, what's going to happen with this research. If you look back on like mRNA and the mRNA platform, for example, it took 40 years from the very beginnings of it to get it to where, you know, we could create a vaccine, you know, or at least come up with the vaccine code in a few days, right? Incredibly powerful. They need to, they can only test this thing in a controlled lab environment. They have to work on, you know, safe model organisms. This is not a medical application that involves people. It probably won't be that. If it even gets there, it would be a very long time from now.

• 24:17Jay Novella?

  But, that said, this is not insignificant, and it's one of those things where it could potentially have a massive downstream effect.

• 24:24Speaker 02

  Both good and bad. So I think the idea that we could make designer bacteriophages to fight bacterial infections, that could be a massive new medical application, right? That could be wonderful.

• 24:38Speaker 04

  We need it.

• 24:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, we definitely, yeah, we bacterial.

• 24:41Speaker 04

  Gotta have it.

• 24:42Speaker 02

  Antibiotic resistance is an issue, yeah.

• 24:45Speaker 04

  Antibiotics are going down.

• 24:46Speaker 02

  So, yeah, again, it could be, if it works, this all pans out, and I've seen a reason why it wouldn't, you know, again, genetics is code, and LLMs are sort of a perfect tool for this, then the applications could be amazing, but the risks are equally powerful, right?

• 25:04Bob Novella?

  Double-edged sword, as usual.

• 25:05Speaker 02

  It's a double-edged sword.

• 25:06Bob Novella?

  Technology.

• 25:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, the ability to create, you know, custom viruses, as a potential bioweapon, that's obviously the first thing to be concerned about. Somebody could, somebody could use the same platform to create, to engineer a bioweapon, just telling LLM to do it. So, once again, we're at the point where in a perfect world, the regulators would be all over this, and they would be getting, you know, the testimony from the right experts and trying to craft thoughtful regulation to minimize the worst risks of this kind of technology.

• 25:44Jay Novella?

  Right.

• 25:45Speaker 02

  Without slowing down genuinely. And innovation or the potential upside of it.

• 25:48Bob Novella?

  And they should do it now.

• 25:50Speaker 02

  They should be doing it now. You've got to stay ahead of the curve.

• 25:52Bob Novella?

  Because this is going to happen, right? Is there any doubt that this is going to happen on some level in the not-too-distant future? I mean, it's happening now.

• 25:58Speaker 02

  So let me, let me say something, because I was, I was at, you know, at Dubai. One thing that's interesting is that it's very, the whole thing, especially like the Future Forum is very corporate, which is fine. But, you know, so it's a little bit different than the academic conferences that I'm used to. It had more of a corporate vibe to it. But it's, but it's good for me. I think it was good to get a perspective, to get that perspective. And one, one of the panels, you know, one of the guys, you know, running a company, doing this kind of cutting-edge research is like, yeah, we, we prefer operating in that phase before the regulators know we exist. Because then we get to do whatever we want. But they're, and they're always behind. You know, they always are playing catch-up late. That means you have this phase

• 26:42Speaker 02

  where you could just do whatever you want, you know? Um, and without having to worry about regulation. So that's kind of, that, that, that's, I agree with that. The idea that regulators tend to be decades behind sometimes. You know, regulating these new technologies when they really need to, like, we need a system. We need, like, there should be an office or whatever. There's got to be people whose job it is to keep an eye on emerging technologies that may need to be regulated before the genie's out of the bottle. Right?

• 27:15Bob Novella?

  Right. And it would also be nice if we had politicians that barely, you know, that do more or know more than just barely understanding what email is.

• 27:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:23Bob Novella?

  I mean, right? I mean, so having these old guys, you know, try to understand these complicated advances, it's just not working out.

• 27:30Speaker 02

  I mean, again, not to be ageist. It is just, they're from a generation who didn't grow up with digital technology. That doesn't mean they, they can overcome it if they make it, if they make a point to understand the technology and to learn and keep up. But they're saying things like the internet is a series of tubes. You know what I mean? They're making comments that indicate that they don't understand the technology.

• 27:52Bob Novella?

  Uh huh. Yeah, they don't inspire confidence at this point.

• 27:54Speaker 02

  They don't inspire confidence. That's a good way to put it. So we're going to cut to Kara's item, which we pre-recorded, and then we'll come back to the, to the stuff we're recording now. All right, Kara, you're going to tell us about Earth's digital twin.

• 28:08Cara Santa Maria?

  So there's a really interesting study that was just published, oh no, actually it's still this month, in the archive Physics. It's called Computing the Full Earth System at 1 Kilometer Resolution, which is actually really funny because it's 1.25 kilometers resolution, but they're like, close enough.

• 28:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, we'll round it off.

• 28:31Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, round it off. They're like, yeah, for all intents and purposes, it's the same thing. So this was published by a group of scientists who, basically, I mean, there are two main things that happened here to make this possible. And from everything I'm reading, and you know, this area of press, it was originally published in Universe Today, and then it was picked up by Science Alert and by other outlets. And the Physics Archive, it was published in, I guess, the subheading is Atmospheric and Ocean Physics.

• 29:04Speaker 02

  And is this pre-print?

• 29:05Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I mean, it's in the archive, so that's almost always pre-print. But from what, and the main reason it's a big deal is, well, it's two things. Number one, they used the latest technology to be able to do this, technology that just wasn't available before, and we'll get into what that is. And number two, they simulated the Earth, and we're talking about weather and climate patterns, or systems of the full Earth, down to a resolution that's never been achieved before.

• 29:37Speaker 02

  So you say weather and climate, weather meaning it's very, it's very, on a short time scale, not just on a long time scale?

• 29:45Cara Santa Maria?

  And they actually, for the purposes of communicating the research and the modeling, they basically talk about two categories, and they call them fast and slow systems. So they use these different models, and we'll talk about what the models are, or at least how they got to the models, to reflect these two systems. These are obviously very dynamic systems. The fast system is basically what they're calling weather, like, energy and water cycles. And then the slow system are the things that have Been somewhat successfully modeled in the past, like the carbon cycle and changes to ocean geochemistry,

• 30:25Cara Santa Maria?

  the biosphere. So these, these are things where the changes occur over years, sometimes decades. Whereas the FAST system, we're talking minutes, like imagine a thunderstorm and it's moving from one area of the map to another. They're able to get that resolution down to 1.25 kilometers, which is high enough to be able to say, here is a storm moving from one area to another. Previously, systems were only computationally mappable down to about 40 kilometers or more. So this is a big

• 31:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a big change.

• 31:04Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 31:04Speaker 02

  Now, are they feeding it real time data, or this is just to look and see simulated weather?

• 31:10Cara Santa Maria?

  I'm actually not sure because all of the reporting has to do with how they did the model computationally. And it has less to do with what they fed into it. But basically, what they decided to do, and well, yeah, I think what ends up happening with a model is that you do get real time data, but I'm not sure if it's historical or if it's, you know, to the minute.

• 31:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, for climate, you know, if it takes them a year to input the data, it doesn't matter. For weather, it's got to be pretty in real time.

• 31:40Cara Santa Maria?

  It's got to be pretty, yeah, real time.

• 31:43Speaker 02

  But so that's, that's maybe a different thing.

• 31:45Cara Santa Maria?

  And I guess modeling too is complicated because I watched a few videos on how to model climate and all of the different levels of complexity that go into it. And some of it does seem to do with just basic earth parameters. Like especially when we're talking about climate, it's like albedo, it's where, you know, it's like the rotation of the earth. It's all these different things that are relatively Standard. And then when it comes to weather, of course, there are pressure changes and shifts and and all the things that kind of feed into pockets of weather forming. So, so two things that were kind of big here. So they used something called the IC, okay, the

• 32:28Cara Santa Maria?

  icosahedral non hydrostatic model. What?

• 32:33Speaker 02

  Icosahedral?

• 32:34Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, icosahedral, but ICO is like in capitals for some reason. Yeah, so I'm not sure why, but the icosahedral non hydrostatic model was developed as the German Weather Service, or sorry, by the German Weather Service and the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology. That is, I guess, the data that they used, or the the kind of basic modeling that they built upon. The big difference here is scale. So in order to get that 1.25 kilometer scale, they're estimating that basically, if you imagine like a grid covering the surface of the earth, that that grid is composed now of 336 million

• 33:18Cara Santa Maria?

  cells. They doubled it because then they kind of modeled atmospheric cells and they're mapped directly above the ground based ones. So we're looking at a model of around 672 million calculated cells, which they estimate translates to like one trillion, what they're calling degrees of freedom, which I know is different depending on the statistics that you're talking about. But here, what they're referring to when they talk about a trillion degrees of freedom is the total number of values it's calculating. So it obviously needs a supercomputer to run this, and that's where this big new bit comes in. They used

• 33:59Cara Santa Maria?

  20,480 of the new Nvidia GH200 superchips to be able to model 145.7 earth days in a single day.

• 34:13Speaker 02

  That's why my gaming rig costs so much.

• 34:15Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 34:17Speaker 02

  Using up them and everybody else, every cryptocurrency.

• 34:21Cara Santa Maria?

  So I had to look up what a GH200 superchip is, because I was like, what does GH stand for? Is that like gigahertz? What does that actually mean? It's not. That's that was really confusing to me. The number and the the letters have nothing to do with computing power. So the Nvidia GH200 is also called the Grace Hopper. So GH stands for Grace Hopper. It's, you know, to honor her and 200 is just their name and convention. So this is the 200th product in their series. But the GH200 by every measure that I've read is a huge leap in performance, a huge leap in memory.

• 35:01Cara Santa Maria?

  We're talking mostly because it's integrating two different types of processing. So there's the Nvidia Grace CPU integrated with the Nvidia H100 tensor core GPU. And then they work in tandem. So you've got CPU processing along with the graphic processing. And so it's got this high bandwidth interconnect between the two. It's got unified memory. It's got a massive memory capacity. And so the platforms, like the applications for things like this is generative AI. It's high performance computing. It's data analytics, you know, it's things like modeling the climate and the weather of the entire earth.

• 35:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:42Cara Santa Maria?

  And

• 35:42Speaker 02

  Since we're talking about computer chips, though, as a little bit of an aside. IBM just announced their latest quantum computer chip, which does seem to be a real game changer. We'll probably have to do a deeper dive on it at some point, but they combined error correction on the same chip with the quantum computing. This kind of reminds me of the same thing. It's like it's the two, two functions in one. And as Bob and I have said previously, the error correction is like the ball game at this point with, with quantum computer chips. Like what's the error rate, you know? And so anyway, if this pans out the way they say it, it would, it should, then they should have like commercial quantum computer chips by 2030 is what they're saying.

• 36:24Cara Santa Maria?

  No way.

• 36:25Speaker 02

  So I wonder if that would apply to this kind of model. Cause that's always the first thing you hear and they say, what's it going to do? It's going to be able to do climate models. Like it's always on the top of the list of like what these chips could do. I wonder if that would, you know, for some applications, they could be thousands of times more powerful than conventional chips or more.

• 36:45Cara Santa Maria?

  And this is what's really interesting. As you were talking about that, I did a Little so I'm trusting AI here a little bit, but I did a little search about the Nvidia chip because it's not a quantum.

• 36:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:57Cara Santa Maria?

  Chip, right? It's a classical chip.

• 36:58Speaker 02

  Quantum chip that you could buy.

• 37:00Cara Santa Maria?

  But they are calling it a super chip. And the interesting thing says that even though it's a classical processor, it is playing a really important role in advancing quantum computing because it can, it can run large scale simulations of quantum algorithms. And because it's got that low latency classical computing power, it can be used for quantum error correction. So like combining these things is big. Yeah.

• 37:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:27Cara Santa Maria?

  And apparently this one was like a leaps and bounds, like they made a big leap when they went from their pre, when Nvidia went from their previous super chip to the the Grace Hopper 200.

• 37:37Speaker 02

  Right.

• 37:37Cara Santa Maria?

  So now, yeah, combine that with what's going on over at IBM and wow.

• 37:41Speaker 02

  But so not surprisingly with this model, it's basically it's a hardware upgrade and a software upgrade. Yeah.

• 37:46Cara Santa Maria?

  Mm hmm. Yeah.

• 37:47Speaker 02

  They're using these these super chips and they're getting better at the software with, you know, using generative AI. And boom, we got a one quote unquote, one kilometer.

• 37:59Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:00Speaker 02

  Weather.

• 38:00Cara Santa Maria?

  And also other hardware, right? They're using these massive supercomputers in order to run it because it just takes, it takes so much of everything.

• 38:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, it takes so much energy. It's going to warm the climate itself just by running the model.

• 38:15Cara Santa Maria?

  But that's what they, the authors at least really put a lot of of the kind of onus, I guess. That's not quite the right word. But they they say that this is really only possible because of that GPU CPU bifurcation. It allows them to run the fast models. Previous to that, they could have only done the carbon cycle models. So they're doing the carbon cycle models on the CPU portion in parallel with the fast models on the GPU portion. So the weather and climate is being modeled sort of at the same time due to this big innovation in the in the in the chip.

• 38:51Speaker 02

  So yeah, and from what I'm reading, just so you tell me if this is your understanding too, they're using an existing model, right? An existing. Model of climate.

• 38:59Cara Santa Maria?

  I think that's what the Icahn.

• 39:01Speaker 02

  They just made it higher resolution.

• 39:02Cara Santa Maria?

  Mm hmm. Yeah.

• 39:03Speaker 02

  So it's not like this model has to be validated. It's already been validated. They're just making it, they're just putting it on steroids.

• 39:09Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, basically, they're taking a model that has been used in Germany and that is, I think, yeah, like, um, valid, completely validated because it's in use today.

• 39:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:18Cara Santa Maria?

  Um, through Icahn and then they are, because of this computational power, it made a huge leap from like forty plus kilometers down to like one point two five in resolution, which is enough to talk about weather. But forty kilometers, yeah, you can kind of talk about huge weather systems. But we're not talking, you know, looking at your app on your phone and seeing what's happening right where you live. That wouldn't be possible with forty kilometer resolution. So, you know, the, the, the write-up does caution and, and the authors do as well, that, you know, models of this complexity are not going to be carried by local weather stations. It's just too, you know, it requires too much computational power.

• 40:00Cara Santa Maria?

  And they worry, of course, that big tech is going to use that type of computational power, like these GH two hundreds are going to be used for generative AI a hundred percent. And then all of the supercomputing time is, is being taken for that. But maybe, you know, you've got to show that something's possible before it becomes faster, cheaper, better. And this is showing that it is possible.

• 40:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I wonder if this will impact the, uh, the global warming, uh, modeling that this, uh, this model does, you know?

• 40:30Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, right. Because even if, you know.

• 40:32Speaker 02

  Get more precise or will it be different than?

• 40:35Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, yeah. Like even if your local weather station can't afford to do this, obviously, the, the researchers doing this are going to give this data to like the UN and to, you know, all of these groups that are sort of responsible for modeling what's happening.

• 40:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. Local weather services, by the way, like your local weather, they're all pulling their data off the weather service. They're not doing anything themselves. So this would be used like by the government and then everybody would get the information.

• 41:01Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. But yeah, this idea of a digital twin, it's, I don't know, when I first read about it, I couldn't help but see the parallel between our fields, right? Where there's constant modeling of brains or of other biological processes and we're trying to get better and better at that. Uh, that in some ways the climate is, I don't know, there is a parallel there because it's stochastic and it's complicated. And there's so many variables that have to be fed into it.

• 41:25Speaker 02

  And we are just trying to get more and more resolution.

• 41:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Mm hmm, yeah.

• 41:29Speaker 02

  You know, but we don't have like with the, we could do a mouse brain, you know, because it's smaller than a human brain. We don't have any small planetary systems to model.

• 41:37Cara Santa Maria?

  True. Well, actually, we have been able to model things like Mars pretty well because like the atmosphere is a whole level of complexity that we just, you know, makes the Earth way more difficult to model.

• 41:50Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. Do we have really complicated climate models of Mars?

• 41:54Cara Santa Maria?

  I, well, really complicated is, is tough, but I did do a deep dive into this really great video where I learned an awful lot. So I want to give a shout out to Dr. Trevor Bazett's YouTube channel, but he talks about how climate modeling works and he goes into like four different levels of complexity. And he says over and over, he uses like Mars and the moon as an example over and over where he's like, yeah, this would be easy to do on Mars or the moon, but like now that we have the atmosphere of Earth, things get a lot more complicated.

• 42:26Cara Santa Maria?

  But yeah, probably not down to 40 or even definitely not down to one kilometer.

• 42:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. All right. Thank you, Kara.

• 42:33Cara Santa Maria?

  Yep.

• 42:33Speaker 02

  All right, guys. Have you ever heard of this idea of using creatine supplements for brain function to improve your brain health or improve your brain function? So I was asked about this.

• 42:44Bob Novella?

  I've heard of it.

• 42:45Speaker 02

  I was asked about it and I hadn't heard of it specifically. I heard it for like bodybuilding, you know?

• 42:50Bob Novella?

  Yeah, me too.

• 42:51Speaker 02

  But that's like 20 years ago, you know, it was, it was when it was, I think, having, in having its heyday.

• 42:57Speaker 04

  I wonder what creatine exactly is, though.

• 42:59Speaker 02

  Well, it's protein, basically.

• 43:02Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 43:02Bob Novella?

  You could say that about anything about biology and you will probably be right.

• 43:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a good, good first guess.

• 43:08Speaker 04

  Protein. It's organic and.

• 43:09Speaker 02

  And if you want to get, you want to get crazy, you could say it's an enzyme. This isn't an enzyme, though. All right, but.

• 43:14Speaker 04

  That would be crazy.

• 43:15Speaker 02

  Here's the basic science. So this is specifically creatine monohydrate, but you know, creatine gets converted to phosphocreatine and stored in neurons. Phosphocreatine can be broken down into ATP, which is the energy currency.

• 43:31Speaker 04

  Adenosine triphosphate.

• 43:32Speaker 02

  Adenosine triphosphate. So it basically could be turned into energy that can be used by cells to function.

• 43:39Speaker 04

  Kind of important.

• 43:40Speaker 02

  So, the idea is if you take supplements, you'll increase your store of phosphocreatine, and therefore, you'll increase the availability of this, you know, energy currency to the brain when it needs it, so it'll function better, right? So, I consider this to be a semi-plausible mechanism. At least, it's something physical happening, like the biology adds up. It's not saying quantum vibrations or anything like that, right? It's saying, you know, ATP.

• 44:11Speaker 04

  Homeopathic memory.

• 44:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. But, you know, the idea that because, you know, the, it's based upon the premise that the availability of the raw material is a rate-limiting step here. And, that's rarely the case, right? Just eating more of something usually doesn't make your body function better. It only, it would only be helpful, it'd only be helpful in a situation where the body's being stressed beyond its normal parameters, and we'll get to that in a second, or where you are deficient for some reason.

• 44:46Speaker 04

  Right.

• 44:47Speaker 02

  Right? Or you have a disease that makes it deficient, whatever.

• 44:49Speaker 04

  Take vitamin C if you have scurvy.

• 44:51Speaker 02

  But if you're, yeah, exactly. Vitamin C is helpful for scurvy, because you're deficient in vitamin C. But if you're a healthy person with a good diet, taking more vitamin C probably isn't going to help, right? That's the idea. So, I have sort of the same overall view of this. It's like, okay, that sort of makes sense, and it's helpful, but does it necessarily mean that it's going to help if you're a healthy person to take it? Your brain's going to function better because it has more ATP being made from this sort of side pathway?

• 45:18Speaker 04

  Right. Is it even noticeable?

• 45:20Speaker 02

  Right. It may, and also, it all may be, that is true of so many things, Bob, where it's like, yeah, that's true, that is happening, but is that a clinically significant effect in and of itself? Maybe not, you know? So, how do we know? You have to do clinical studies, right?

• 45:38Speaker 04

  Can it lead to toxicity as well?

• 45:40Speaker 02

  Well, the, the big thing with creatine is that it's gotta be processed by the kidney. And if you take too much of it, like a lot of proteins, it could stress out the kidneys. But generally speaking, the doses that people are using for this specific indication are below the general safe levels. Again, if you have kidney disease, then don't take it, right? I'll talk to your doctor, all bets are off. But if you're healthy kidneys, you could, you know, take this. The supplement levels are probably safe. Okay, so there was 2024 systematic review, so that's pretty recently. 16 clinical trials, that's not a lot for a systematic review. But it's not nothing. 492 participants in total. Again, that's not a lot, especially for 16 studies. That's, those are, that means they're mostly small studies.

• 46:26Speaker 02

  So it's a, you know, overall modest amount of data. This is telling me this is preliminary research. So they, they found that creatine supplementation showed significant positive effects on memory, attention time, and processing speed. But no significant improvements were found on overall cognitive function. That seems like a big thing. Or executive function. So it kinda sounds like, it's like, alright, there's some improvement on components of thinking, but it didn't improve your overall cognitive function and didn't improve your executive function. So they also did a subgroup analysis to show that the effect was more significant in people with diseases.

• 47:08Speaker 02

  Those aged 18 to 60, not sure about what that means, and females. Again, not sure what that means. So what is, how do we make sense of all this data? First, these results are a bit mixed, right? They're, it's not a clear, consistent signal. It shows improvement in some things, but not others. Also, those are kinda quirky subsets of people to be affected by it.

• 47:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, right.

• 47:33Speaker 02

  So that tells me that this could just be an artifact of small studies looking at a lot of variables and some things are gonna come up positive, right? So this is overall not very confidence building, right? Not a, not a good sign. So the, the authors themselves conclude that there's, that the evidence is low to moderate confidence. That would be like more of an evidence-based evaluation. I would say putting, adding the other things that I just said, the, the mixed results and the patterns that we're seeing, I would put, to me, that's low confidence. And they say that we need larger, robust clinical trials to validate it. So again, that's code for, this is not ready for prime time. This results are not, have not been established.

• 48:15Speaker 02

  So we can also look at this from the lens of, if we take a hundred things, right? Medical claims that where there's this level of evidence, how many of them pan out to actually work? And it's, you're probably down in the one to two percent range.

• 48:31Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 48:32Speaker 02

  And there has been some, some research to back that up. It's hard to, it's hard to say it's exactly analogous, but you know, when we generally ask that question, the answer is quite low, usually single digits in terms of percentages. Part of the reason is, is because there's a huge false positive bias in the literature. So if you have preliminary data, mostly small studies with mixed results, and you would count for a positive, a significant positive research bias, then you know, statistically speaking, and again, historically, this is true, most of these things don't pan out.

• 49:07Bob Novella?

  Hmm.

• 49:08Speaker 02

  And of course, the supplement industry has the flavor of the weak approach, right? It takes 10, 20, 30 years to do the research to really tell if something is effective or not. That gives them 20 to 30 years to market it. And then by the time it gets shot down, they're on to the next thing. So to me, this is just the next, you know, sort of an endless sequence of, of brain supplements that are supposed to help your brain function better, make you smarter, whatever, the smart pill thing. And none of them really pan out.

• 49:35Bob Novella?

  Where sometimes the baloney sticker, it sticks around. It does go away, like.

• 49:39Speaker 02

  Sometimes it doesn't. Like, yeah, the oxy, the antioxidant thing is just, is so embedded now.

• 49:44Bob Novella?

  Oh.

• 49:45Speaker 02

  Some things become permanent. Like, this has become a permanent addition to the culture and the health halo thing that, that never goes away. And I think, yeah, I think antioxidants are here to stay, even though. I think there's no evidence that there's any benefit to supplementing them. So be cautious with the creatine thing again. Don't spend a lot of money on it, would be my advice. I'm not saying there's no benefit. There may be some benefit, but the evidence is preliminary, low confidence. These things don't have a good history. I will say one other signal, there's another study I looked at that wasn't in the systematic review that showed that it may have a benefit for people who are sleep deprived. So that's a little bit more plausible, because if you're sleep deprived, you're under a lot of stress,

• 50:30Speaker 02

  then things like this could make a difference at the edges, you know what I mean? I don't think it's going to affect normal, healthy functioning of your brain, but it may help with these kinds of situations. But again, we need more research to tell, but that is at least somewhat more plausible. And it wouldn't surprise me, right? Wouldn't surprise me to think, "Oh yeah, there's a little bit of a benefit if you take a high dose right when you're sleep deprived." Okay, maybe. It's kind of like the probiotic thing too. Like, probiotics don't do anything for most people, most of the time. But if you take a super high dose, only when you have post antibiotic use problems because you wiped out your gut flora, it may help. You know what I mean? There's this little sliver of, there may be some effect here with all of these caveats.

• 51:15Speaker 02

  So it wouldn't surprise me if, again, in some subset of a subset, it may have some limited benefit. But it's not a panacea. It's not, "Oh, take these smart pills and all your cognitive function is better." I think already we could say that that's probably not true, because if it were, we'd be seeing it, right? There isn't a false negative bias. Usually, the false positive bias means the preliminary research is usually calibrated to make sure that they're seeing an effect and not missing it. But at the expense of overcalling it, right? So if you're not seeing a home run positive effect in this level of data, it's probably not there, right?

• 51:59Speaker 02

  So that's kind of the longest answer to, "Hey, is there anything to the whole creatine thing for brain health?"

• 52:03Bob Novella?

  The answer is meh.

• 52:04Speaker 02

  The answer is meh.

• 52:05Bob Novella?

  Even less than meh. Met minus. Yeah.

• 52:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like, I would characterize this research as this is a the plausibility and the preliminary research is sufficient to justify doing large clinical trials, but that's it. Okay. It's not sufficient to market it or make clinical claims, or I think even take it, but I do think it's enough to justify further research and that's it.

• 52:29Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 52:29Speaker 02

  I think that's the best way to look at it.

• 52:32Jay Novella?

  But people won't, won't change their buying habits.

• 52:35Speaker 02

  Well, some people will. Maybe some people listen to this show, who are critical thinkers and skeptics will say, oh, that's good information, I will change my buying habits. Who, who knows?

• 52:45Bob Novella?

  That's because we have awesome listeners.

• 52:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. All right, Bob, I'm very excited about this.

• 52:52Speaker 04

  Oh, there we go.

• 52:53Speaker 02

  Tell us about this quiet supersonic jet.

• 52:56Bob Novella?

  Yeah. Guys, commercial supersonic flight took a significant lurch out of its grave recently. When, when a test plane, the X-59, flew for the first time at relative slow speeds to check its systems, the plane's been designed to fly faster than sound, but not create the jarring.

• 53:19Speaker 02

  Oh, wait, it didn't fly faster than sound for the test?

• 53:22Bob Novella?

  No, this was a shakedown cruise, okay?

• 53:24Speaker 02

  Okay, all right.

• 53:25Bob Novella?

  Yeah, I wanted to mention that out of the gate, because then it's just like, you know, you'd be, the disappointment's hopefully over.

• 53:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, get that over with now, tell us the cool stuff.

• 53:32Bob Novella?

  Right. The plane has been designed, Steve, to fly faster than sound, but not create the jarring ground level sonic booms, only tiny sonic thumps. Sonic thumps. So this X-59, it's the baby of NASA and Lockheed Martin, the first full-scale experimental plane designed for tolerable booms. We all remember the iconic Concorde, right?

• 53:55Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 53:56Speaker 04

  Oh, yes.

• 53:57Bob Novella?

  It flew its last flight early in this millennium, I think it was 2003.

• 54:01Speaker 04

  I knew people who went, who were on Concorde.

• 54:03Bob Novella?

  Oh, yeah, man, I remember it. I remember being so excited. But such commercial planes are not allowed to fly over, over the land in the US, even, you know, if the Concorde couldn't do that. And that's because the sonic booms are so loud and disruptive that it could, it Could actually potentially break windows and cause minor building damage even worst case scenario. But despite that, the real sonic boom problem was the chronic annoyance and the public backlash that it caused. It was people were, you know, were just not happy. Can you imagine?

• 54:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:33Bob Novella?

  Hearing that all the time.

• 54:35Speaker 02

  Can I point out at this point?

• 54:36Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 54:37Speaker 02

  Cause I had a misconception about this when I was younger and I wonder how many people still have it too.

• 54:41Bob Novella?

  I know what you're gonna say. Me too.

• 54:43Speaker 02

  The sonic boom, yeah, was when it crossed the barrier, which is supersonic. But it's the entire time it's flying supersonically, there's a, there's a continuous boom as it, as it travels.

• 54:54Bob Novella?

  It's constantly.

• 54:55Speaker 04

  Is it a putter or is it a solid kind of?

• 54:58Speaker 02

  I've heard it before. I've heard it.

• 55:00Bob Novella?

  It's a constant booming. It's a constant booming.

• 55:02Speaker 02

  But you hear it, you hear it once each person, but as it travels over the land, the boom travels with it.

• 55:08Bob Novella?

  Exactly.

• 55:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:09Bob Novella?

  And, and I had that misconception as well and that, that's the biggest misconception. Uh, but I'll go into a little bit more detail about that. Now, commercial supersonic flight, that's a, that's one of the sci-fi staples, right? I mean, not one of the big boys, but it's a, it's a sci-fi staple.

• 55:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it existed.

• 55:23Bob Novella?

  The desk, this one is extra frustrating because we already had the damn thing and now we don't. Bye bye. See you later. Just a big tease. So, but have you considered this other angle as well? This is also frustrating. The Boeing 707 in 1958, 67 years ago, flew at 965 kilometers per hour, 600 miles per hour. And that's just about what commercial jets do today.

• 55:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:49Bob Novella?

  You know, that's, when you think about that, how is that even a thing in this age of rapid scientific advancement?

• 55:54Speaker 04

  We're going the same speed we were 70 years ago.

• 55:57Bob Novella?

  Across so many fronts. It, it just sounds wrong, right? But you know, there are, there, engineers aren't lazy and just like, ah, this is good enough. It's, there's good engineering reasons why we don't see commercial flights getting faster and faster.

• 56:09Speaker 02

  Bob, isn't it largely fuel efficiency?

• 56:12Bob Novella?

  Uh, that, that's part, that's part of it, but it's also, yeah, but it just becomes more and more difficult to go much faster than commercial airlines today. It's not just for the reason of surpassing supersonic speed. You know, the drag just gets worse and worse and worse. Lots of reasons, but NASA and Lockheed Martin, they're trying to solve a lot of these problems on test planes like the X-59 and in just general research. But they specifically, from what I could gather, they specifically want to make this technology available so that US manufacturers could then build their own supersonic commercial jets. That's one of their goals. So ideally, these technologies will need to solve so many problems, all of which plague the Concorde and are why it no longer flies.

• 56:55Bob Novella?

  And these reasons include inefficiencies and expense. If you look at the tickets back then, they were priced at, in today's dollars, many thousands of dollars, you know, and even tens of thousands of dollars, almost twice, about twice the first-class subsonic ticket at the time. And even then, the Concorde struggled to be consistently profitable. It was very, very difficult, even with those exorbitant prices that people were paying. And then there's safety, there was safety problems, remember? There was a crash in 2000. It killed over 113 passengers. That greatly, that was a real turning point, that greatly diminished ticket sales and confidence that people had.

• 57:35Speaker 04

  It had a good safety record up until that.

• 57:37Bob Novella?

  And yeah, there was just a crazy thing. Yeah, the tire taking off hit some debris that flew into the wing, which punctured the tank and like, oh man, you could imagine, just extrapolate from there, how bad that got. So those are just a couple of the problems that these planes would experience. There's also the environmental impact, takeoff and landing noise, there's high-altitude emissions and there's, you know, there's weight. But finally, one of the greatest barriers for commercial supersonic flight is this iconic sonic boom. And it's that specifically which the X-59 test plane is addressing, that major problem right there. That's basically the purpose of the X-59.

• 58:21Bob Novella?

  So it's not specifically addressing these other issues which are important, but it's a sonic boom problem. This relates to another critical goal of this research, and that's essentially to change aviation laws, right? Now, there's a specific aviation law that says no civil aircraft over Mach one in US airspace without special authorization. So that's, that's, that's a law. So these researchers want to change that. Ideally, I think if they, if we could change that law, or if they could change that law to say something like, you can go supersonic over, over land as long as what people on the ground here stays below a certain decibel range or a loudness limit, if you will. That's also one of their major goals here is to make that happen, to actually change these laws.

• 59:05Bob Novella?

  But then I'm thinking, well, what, what made sonic booms so bad? What, what is it about them? Why are they so bad? How do, so I definitely took a dive and just learned as much as I could about what is actually happening here in, in these scenarios. So to do that, let's start with subsonic flight first, right? And then we'll just kind of work our way up. So below the speed of light, wait, sorry, that's force of habit, guys. Below the speed of sound, we're dealing with sound, not light. So below the speed of sound, planes push air out of the way as they move. And that creates these pressure waves, which is what? Sound, it's essentially sound, right? So they travel at the speed of sound, obviously. And, and since the plane is moving slower than sound, the sound waves can move smoothly away

• 59:49Bob Novella?

  from the plane as it's coming and in all directions, it just can move away. There's plenty of time to do that. In a lot of ways, similar to the boat waves that you may look at boat waves as a boat is going through the water. So then, guys, what comes after subsonic? Supersonic.

• 1:00:03Speaker 04

  Sonic.

• 1:00:04Bob Novella?

  Yeah, you would think, but technically, no, technically, technically. Perisodic. Actually, actually, it's transonic. It's, the term is transonic, but that occurs between Mach point eight and one point two. Right between zero point eight and one point two. And things start getting messy in this regime. It's basically around the cutoff of Mach one. It's a little bit messy for a little while. So that's because, I didn't realize this, that's because parts of the plane, like the wings, can experience supersonic airflow, even though the plane itself is subsonic. Right? So it's kind of like a mixed, mixed airflow. These isolated shock waves, you know, supersonic airflow can cause these many kind of.

• 1:00:47Bob Novella?

  Proto shock waves, so we're already starting to see this transition to supersonic flight, before you even hit supersonic flight. And then finally, we have, we enter the regime of supersonic flight, Mach 1, right? At sea level, that's 1,234 kilometers per hour, or 767 miles per hour. At altitude, it gets a little bit lower because of temperature changes. Okay. Now, this transition is characterized by the smooth pressure waves of subsonic flight, changing abruptly into shock waves. That's what, the key thing that happens when you become supersonic, the formation of shock waves. So basically, the air pressure waves can no longer get out of the way of each other, right? Because the plane is traveling as fast or faster than sound itself.

• 1:01:32Bob Novella?

  So these pressure waves pile up, merging together into essentially this thin, sharp wall of compressed air. That's a shock wave. That's the cause of these sonic booms. Now, Steve, I was going to say here, what you had mentioned, this is, the misconception is that the plane creates a sonic boom as it exceeds the speed of sound, and then it's over, like, ah, we're done here with the sonic booms. No, the shock wave is continuous. It booms as long as the plane is exceeding Mach 1. And also important, you have multiple shock waves. This isn't just one big shock wave. This is, multiple shock waves are generated from the cone, right? The leading cone of the plane, the wing, the tail, any surface like that are creating their own shock waves.

• 1:02:16Bob Novella?

  What happens is that all of these shock waves kind of merge into a cone, expanding behind the plane. So the plane is at the pointy end of a cone, and behind it, you have the cone shape expanding, and it's all the sonic waves, all these shock waves, that the plane fuselage, the body is, and the wings, and everything about it, all of those shock waves are being formed and pushed into this expanding cone behind the plane. And when that cone intersects the ground, we hear a sonic boom. So that's why it's such a deal killer for commercial planes over populated areas. Anyone near that plane is going to hear. You hear, you could hear the classic, you know, the double sonic boom, which is a Which is often the, you know, the, the front of the plane and the tail of the plane.

• 1:03:00Bob Novella?

  But sometimes it's just a rumble, a nasty rumble. That's kind of like hard to, to tease out specific booms. So it depends on lots of different variables. So that's why it's such a deal killer overpopulated areas. Anyone, anyone that's under that boom carpet, they call it the boom carpet. As the plane passes nearby, they're going to hear that boom. Not, not just the people right under the flight path, but even extended outwards as well. So that's a, that's a sonic boom and that's supersonic flight and what happens. So to turn the sonic boom into a sonic thump. The engineers are in essence sculpting and shaping the downward part of that cone of shockwaves. Right? So you got the, they don't really care about the upward part of the cone.

• 1:03:42Bob Novella?

  Uh, it's all about the downward part. That's what, that's what people are going to hear. And so they're, they're kind of sculpting it into smaller, gentler shockwaves, more spread out in time and space. They say that when you eventually hear it on the ground, it should have the volume of a, of a car door slamming a little bit a distance away from you. Or sometimes they liken it to the rumbling of distant thunder. A lot, a lot more tolerable than, than the classic sonic boom that, that we hear today. So to do this, the nose of the plane has to be really long. It looks kind of weird. It's so long. They, they call it, they refer to the plane as a swordfish. It really does look like a swordfish. But the end isn't pointed though.

• 1:04:23Bob Novella?

  It's, it needs to be this chisel shape to effectively change the shape of the, of the shockwave. And, and the entire body of the plane also is kind of designed to do this. So this test happened this past October, 2025. Um, they went very well. It passed all the tests. It only flew like, as I said before, at a boring 230 miles per hour at 12,000 feet. But it was still a historic test for this experimental X plane.

• 1:04:49Speaker 02

  This is to make sure it flies.

• 1:04:51Bob Novella?

  Yeah, this is, this is basically a 12,000 foot shakedown cruise, right? This is the shakedown cruise because this plane was built from scratch. It's not like they just added, you know, they, they screwed on a few things over a conventional plane. This is an experimental plane designed from the ground up. So they wanted to make sure that this. This thing actually flies and it's a huge milestone for any X plane to have that first cruise and it's not doing what it was specifically designed to do, but it can fly and it all the components are working together. So that's, so that was the goal of this, of this flight. So, but now what happens, you have the real test campaign is gonna, gonna begin. So in the near future, we should hopefully be reading about this test plane, this X 59 hitting Mach

• 1:05:31Bob Novella?

  1.4, uh, which is about a hun- uh, 925 miles per hour and at 55,000 feet. Uh, so soon after that, what's gonna happen is that they're gonna fly it over various communities in the United States, not only to record and assess these new sonic thumps, but also, and primarily to interview people to see what their impressions are of these sonic thumps. Is this something, could you live near an airport where you hear this multiple times a day? Is that something that would be, you know, uh, would, would cause problems or would you be annoyed? You know, what, what are your impressions? That's what they're, they're going to do, which is something that doesn't really happen. Typically, when you have an X, an X plane that's flying, it flies over a specific area, a military area. It's not

• 1:06:16Bob Novella?

  gonna go over, over communities, but this one, we need to do this. We need this, this real world data and see what, what people's impressions are because when they, when they did this test in the 60s with supersonic commercial flights, they, people, the, the feedback that people gave was, was not very good and, and I don't think, it never got, it never got good. And that's when I think maybe it was at that point, but that they said that, yeah, you can't fly over land. And that was one of the major, uh, problems with the Concorde. It could not, it could be supersonic over the ocean, but not, but not over the land. And that was a major problem for any, right? Any supersonic plane, you wanna be able to fly supersonically over land and they, they couldn't even do that. So if regulators are convinced that the thump is tolerable, this may be the first domino

• 1:07:00Bob Novella?

  to fall for the true return of commercial supersonic flight. And of course, as I mentioned, other hurdles remain like the environmental and climate impacts need to be addressed. And you actually have to make this into a viable business. You have to make money. You know, one of the many problems with the Concorde is what, it was not making, it was not making enough money or sometimes. No money at all. It just wasn't a consistent moneymaker and that was one of the things that would kill any business very quickly. But for the first time since the Concorde retired, we now seem to have a plausible path for a future with airliners traveling twice as fast as they do now with no one cringing over the inevitable boom that just never will come this time, hopefully. So, fingers crossed, definitely going to track this.

• 1:07:44Bob Novella?

  I hope to, you know, to fly on one of these at some point before I lurch into the ground as well. So, we'll see what happens.

• 1:07:50Speaker 02

  All right. Thanks, Bob. Yeah, we'll report back on this. I especially want to see what happens when they fly at actually supersonic speeds and see what kind of a sonic thump it makes.

• 1:08:01Bob Novella?

  Yes.

• 1:08:01Speaker 02

  But I love the fact that they're doing this and then saying to, so that commercial airliners can incorporate this into...

• 1:08:09Bob Novella?

  Yeah, I was very happy to hear that. Yeah, I was like, that's the goal. They want to make the technology. All right, guys, here's the technology. Just now use it and make it happen. Build your own supersonic airliners and let's have at it.

• 1:08:22Speaker 02

  Having just spent 14 and a half hours on a plane, I heartily endorse this plan.

• 1:08:28Bob Novella?

  Steve, imagine that trip would have been cut in half.

• 1:08:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, that'd be nice. All right, Evan, tell us about this new test for chronic fatigue syndrome.

• 1:08:38Speaker 04

  A new test, right? Chronic fatigue syndrome. It's been a little while, maybe since we've talked about it on the show. Steve, you blog a lot about this.

• 1:08:45Speaker 02

  I have in the past. I don't know about a lot, but yeah.

• 1:08:48Speaker 04

  Am I getting this term right? Is it myalgic encephalomyelitis? Am I pronouncing that right?

• 1:08:53Speaker 02

  Myalgic encephalomyelitis.

• 1:08:54Speaker 04

  There we go. But I am going to call it chronic fatigue syndrome because that's what most people know it as. Let's see, according to the, I looked up the definition of this, "A debilitating condition characterized by persistent fatigue that's not improved by rest. It can lead to cognitive issues, sleep problems, orthostatic intolerance, and other issues." Here's a little history on this. From what I could tell, in the, well, what, the 1980s, basically through 2010s, some researchers proposed psychosomatic or behavioral explanations. As to what this actually was, but in recent years, there has been some other, well, maybe

• 1:09:38Speaker 04

  more scientific support for it actually being a real physical medical issue. Let's see, the current, and by say current, as of late 2025, the current scientific and medical consensus based on CDC, NIH, the UK's NICE, NICE, the WHO, and some other recent peer reviewed research say that it represents a distinct physiological disorder, which involves immunology, neurology, autonomic, and metabolic dysfunctions. No single biomarker has historically defined it.

• 1:10:18Speaker 04

  Multiple converging lines of evidence seem to point to a biological disease process. This is controversial.

• 1:10:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think that that's definitely where that the science has been heading in that direction for the last 30 years, you know, that there is something biological going on here. And in any case, at least in neurology, like we've significantly moved away from the notion that anything is purely psychosomatic, you know, we don't even use that term anymore. It's functional neurological disorder, meaning it's just a complex disorder that involves, you know, brain function, but it's not, you know, simplistically understood. Now with chronic fatigue syndrome, the big caveat to chronic fatigue syndrome, that is probably not one thing. It's not one, it's not one discrete pathophysiological disease.

• 1:11:10Speaker 02

  That doesn't mean it's not real. That means it's complicated. It's probably multiple things. So different people, right? So it's a syndrome. You should think about it. It is chronic fatigue syndrome. That that word is appropriate. It's a syndrome because it's a clinical entity. It's a, if you have this again, persistent fatigue above and beyond, you know, your activity, you get this with modest physical activity, you get extreme prolonged fatigue that doesn't get better. Et cetera, et cetera. There's a lot of components to it. That's the syndrome. But different people could have different causes. It could be different ways that people get to that. So that makes any research on it difficult because any marker you look

• 1:11:53Speaker 02

  for may only be relevant in a subset of the people you're looking at. Or you may be looking at things that contribute to chronic fatigue syndrome, but aren't the essence of what it is, which all will be brought to bear on this news item that you're talking about. But, but go ahead and tell us what the new bit is, and then, and then I'll, we'll talk about how to make sense of it all.

• 1:12:17Speaker 04

  Uh, Science Daily had a headline, uh, recently that reads, "Breakthrough Blood Test Finally Confirms Chronic Fatigue Syndrome."

• 1:12:26Speaker 02

  That's all hype.

• 1:12:27Speaker 04

  Okay. Now, because yeah, based on what you just said, Steve, my, my follow-up sort of question immediately on this. Syndromes do, are, can you have something as simple as a blood test that could define or identify a syndrome? It doesn't sound like that that would be the case.

• 1:12:44Speaker 02

  No. I mean, that would be very unlikely at this point in time with all the research that's been done, everything we've done to try to understand this syndrome that, oh, it turns out it's just one thing. Like this one thing explains it pretty much completely. I doubt that that's going to be the result. It's not impossible. We may be missing something. You know, it may be like there's this one, that even if it has multiple things that contribute, contribute to it, there may be one thing about people who get it that is different. And maybe there may be one biochemical or biological pathway. Again, unlikely, but I can't say that that's impossible. But, uh, this test is not it though, right?

• 1:13:27Speaker 04

  It's not.

• 1:13:28Speaker 02

  If that is possible, or at least they have not established that it is. So the, the hype is in getting way ahead of where the research is. This is one component to a long and complicated research program to try to understand this very complicated syndrome. It is not, not the breakthrough that, that, that headline hyped it as.

• 1:13:48Speaker 04

  Right, right. But there was, but a research team has conducted these studies via the University of East Anglia in collaboration with Oxford Biodynamics Company. Has, they've developed a blood test using 3D genomic folding or epigenetic profiling that reportedly achieves roughly 96% accuracy in differentiating chronic fatigue syndrome from healthy controls. The assay examines, I brought my assay.

• 1:14:21Speaker 04

  The assay examines DNA folding signatures in immune cells, which suggests an underlying measurable biological signature for the disease. Lead researcher is Professor Dimitri, oh boy, this one, P S H E Z H, Dimitri Pazinski, I'm sorry if I got that wrong, of UEA's Norwich Medical School, was quoted as saying, "CFS is a serious and often debilitating disease characterized by extreme fatigue that is not really by rest. We wanted to see if we could develop a blood test to diagnose the condition, and we did!" Exclamation point. "Our discovery offers the potential for a simple, accurate blood test to help confirm a diagnosis, the diagnosis, which could lead to earlier support and more effective management."

• 1:15:06Speaker 04

  Post-COVID Syndrome, commonly referred to as Long COVID, is one example of ME/CFS, where a similar cluster of symptoms is triggered by the COVID-19 virus, rather than by other known causes such as glandular fever. "We therefore hope that our research will also help pave the way for a similar test to accurately diagnose Long COVID." What do you think of that?

• 1:15:30Speaker 02

  So, all right, so what do you, what do you?

• 1:15:32Speaker 04

  That sounds like something different, right?

• 1:15:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, right. He's basically admitting that this is multiple potential different clinical entities that might have this commonality, right? Like saying, this is also going to diagnose Long COVID, well then, is that same or different than chronic fatigue syndrome? Definitely, you know, I have seen plenty of patients with post-infectious chronic fatigue syndrome. That's definitely a thing. Again, we don't really understand the mechanism that causes that. But again, that's probably different thing than people who have it who have not had a brain infection or some other chronic serious illness. All right, so if there is one glaring problem with this research, though, with this specific study? I don't know if any of you have a guess as to what that might be. So they compared.

• 1:16:17Speaker 04

  Small. It's a small study.

• 1:16:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's the usual caveats. It needs to be validated, it needs to be independently researched, you need larger, you know, larger studies. But just they compared people who have the clinical diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome. Again, there's no real gold standard. It's just you meet the, you have the clinical diagnosis. And certain changes, epigenetic changes that they were looking for, you know, in their study. So what did they not do? I guess this might be hard for you, you know, as non-physicians to suss out, but just wondering if any of you have a guess. So they compared people with the disease clinically to healthy controls.

• 1:16:57Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:16:58Speaker 02

  What's another comparison that might be helpful?

• 1:17:00Speaker 04

  People with comorbidities.

• 1:17:02Speaker 02

  That's a close. I mean, that's good. That would be good too, but you're sort of getting, heading in the right direction. People with other diseases. So again, this is a kind of thing where a physician should, you know, who's familiar with this kind of research would instantly see that, oh yeah, they didn't compare it to other diseases, right? So if you're saying it's specific to chronic fatigue syndrome, then you have to show that it doesn't exist in everybody with any disease. You know what I mean? Just saying it doesn't exist, these markers aren't present in healthy controls. That's one important component. But you also need to show it's not present in people who have, let's say, rheumatoid arthritis, or who have Parkinson's disease, or Alzheimer's disease, or MS, or a hundred other diseases.

• 1:17:46Speaker 02

  You give us some idea that it's actually specific to chronic fatigue syndrome. What if it's present in all of these things?

• 1:17:53Speaker 04

  Well, that doesn't help.

• 1:17:54Speaker 02

  Well, then maybe it's just a marker for inflammation, right? How do I, how do we know that they didn't, they didn't just discover some other marker for inflammation that's going to occur in any chronic illness, or in many chronic illnesses? Or what if this is a marker for the depression that people often feel from chronic fatigue? That, you know, that's secondary to the chronic fatigue and then becomes comorbid with it. So. Who knows, right? We can't answer any of these questions because all they did was compare it to healthy controls. So that's why this is just getting the ball started. This is the kind of thing where, again, this is saying, oh, there's something potentially here. Now, here's a dozen other studies we need to do to really suss this out.

• 1:18:39Speaker 02

  We need to confirm it. We need larger data. We need a more generalizable population. We need to validate that it's unique to, or telling us something specific about chronic fatigue syndrome as opposed to just all chronic illness, or maybe some of the symptoms of chronic fatigue, but not the cause of chronic fatigue. So many questions. But then, at the end of the day, then, at the end of the day, this is something that I learned just over the course of my career, like, one of the pearls of wisdom that you get with experience that I teach to, you know, to students and fellows, is that when we first start to understand a disease, we're looking for ways to say, like, who has the diagnosis, right?

• 1:19:23Speaker 02

  Who has, who qualifies for having the diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome? But then, once we, once our knowledge of that disease, and especially how to treat it, matures, then the question shifts to who should get treated and with what? And that's the only thing that really matters, really, or that's the thing that matters the most, not the only thing that matters. But that overshadows the question of who gets the label, like, who gets the labels? Only a marker for these other questions. What's the prognosis? What's the treatment? What are any other, you know, comorbidities or other concerns that we have to worry about, et cetera, et cetera?

• 1:20:05Speaker 02

  And, but the thing, of course, most people are interested in is who gets what treatment and does it work? So if this, and that will be the ultimate test, if this is a marker of anything, is does it predict anything useful clinically?

• 1:20:20Speaker 02

  If all it predicts is who we label as having chronic fatigue syndrome, who cares? That doesn't help us. It has to predict, but of course, we can't treat really, until we, they're saying, maybe this will lead to treatment. Sure, that's a pretty big maybe. Let's hope that it does, but that's like, now you're jumping ahead multiple steps. So yeah, this is one preliminary step in a complicated picture that may or may not pan out. Don't believe the early hype that finally, we've proven it's real and blah, blah. That's all nonsense. It's just one interesting little nugget in a complicated story. But those are the pieces that you have to think about when you hear things like this. You know, what other comparisons did they make and how has it been externally validated?

• 1:21:05Speaker 02

  Does it actually predict or mean anything, or is it just some correlation that they found? Right?

• 1:21:11Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:21:12Speaker 02

  All right. Complicated item, but it was, it's good to talk through those issues.

• 1:21:18Speaker 04

  And anytime CFS hits my headlines, obviously I stop and take a second look. Because it's something we have talked about before on the show, so we keep up on this.

• 1:21:27Speaker 02

  Absolutely. All right, Jay, it's who's that noisy time? Oh, boy.

• 1:21:33Jay Novella?

  How come all these frickin' studies, it's like, it's always like, there's a million things ahead of what you're reading before, like, anything legit could happen, you know? It's very frustrating.

• 1:21:44Speaker 02

  Science is complicated, and the news cycle wants breakthroughs and sexy headlines.

• 1:21:49Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:21:50Jay Novella?

  Yeah, I mean, I totally, look, I agree and I know all that. It's just, it's, it's every single thing we talk about, though, it's never like, this is functioning right now.

• 1:21:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. Because we're functioning on the edge, Jay. We're on the edge.

• 1:22:03Jay Novella?

  You're right.

• 1:22:06Speaker 04

  We're riding the wave, cresting the wave.

• 1:22:08Jay Novella?

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

• 1:22:21Speaker 04

  Oh, that's a sonic boom.

• 1:22:24Bob Novella?

  The lamest sonic boom ever created.

• 1:22:26Jay Novella?

  The lamest sonic fart. Sounded like a sonic fart.

• 1:22:29Bob Novella?

  Yeah, it sounded like a sonic fart or raspberry. Sonic raspberry.

• 1:22:34Jay Novella?

  I gotta preamble this Who's That Noisy segment with, uh, thank you to the 370 people who responded this week.

• 1:22:45Bob Novella?

  Wow.

• 1:22:46Jay Novella?

  Yes, because this is a noise that a lot of people recognize in one manner or another. Um, and as we get into it, I'll, I'll reveal some of the most common, um, responses that I got. So let's get into this. We've got a listener named Burkhalp Medehan. And Burkhalp says, "Hey y'all, Burkhalp from, uh, D. Butt of Turkish descent. D. E. Space. B. U. T. Of Turkish descent." I'm just reading what he's saying here.

• 1:23:13Speaker 04

  The T might be silent.

• 1:23:15Jay Novella?

  I, it could be, but you know, you know what my problem is.

• 1:23:18Speaker 04

  Well.

• 1:23:18Jay Novella?

  He says, "It's the second time guessing, but I don't count the first time. My guess for this week's noisy is a recording of a rocket launch at a public viewing. The weird farting noise is, I think, due to the decibels of the ignition of the rocket. The mic just couldn't handle the, the, uh, amplitude. Is this correct?" Um, you are not correct, but it is a good guess. Definitely is a good guess because it has some rockety noises in there. Um, so I totally can see why you picked that one. Thanks a lot for setting that in. I have another listener here named Steven Gluff. Says, "Hi all, long time listener, first time guesser to me. Uh, it sounds like a wasp being sucked into some sort of vacuum. Many pest control workers will eradicate a wasp nest by using something like a shop vac half-filled with liquid to suck up and drown the wasps."

• 1:24:04Jay Novella?

  I have never heard about this. I've never heard a noisy about this. Uh, but I thought that this one was very provocative. I, I think I need to know now what this thing sounds like. It's like a slop vac or whatever. But anyway, thank you, Steven. You are incorrect, but that was a fun guess. This next one was sent in by a listener named Edward Andrick. Uh, he is a friend of ours and I, um, but he did have a good guess. I'm not, I'm not playing favorites. He is a punk. But we love him. He says, "Hey Jay, don't normally have guesses on the noisy, but this sounds like a model jet aircraft powering up and taking off. The sound at the beginning could be some sort of electric pulse ignition device which starts the engine prior to take off. I have no idea if any of what I just said is even a thing, but it's my guess."

• 1:24:46Jay Novella?

  It's not that crazy. There are a lot of model jet aircraft, you know, they have jets. So, you know, there's definitely some jet sounding noise in there. It's not a bad guess. But you, Ed, you're incorrect, but don't be sad because this game's just for fun. Another listener named Nicholas Jasmine says, "First time guessing, long time listener. This sounds exactly like an A-10 Warthog firing its rotary cannon as it flies." Guys, this was by far the most popular guess and it's incorrect. It's a hell of a plane, man. But, but all the people that guessed this or similar, you're there, you're there. Now, we're just talking of like, what kind of apple do you like? It's about details.

• 1:25:28Jay Novella?

  Yeah, it's always about the details. I did have a winner from this week. The winner's name is Mike, not to be confused with Mike who sent in the noisy. And Mike says, "Damn it, Jay, I've heard this. I think my guess is that this is a demonstration of an F-16 doing a strafing run firing its M61 Vulcan autocannon." And Mike, you're perfectly correct. I don't know how people can tell the difference between the Warthog and the F-16. I listened to both of them and for my ears, there, it's the same exact thing. You know, some of them might have a little bit more bass or whatever, but there's, you know, it just depends on the recording equipment and everything, but some people, you know, they can tell.

• 1:26:09Speaker 02

  That would be an interesting skill to have to recognize all different kinds of fighter jets and planes from, just from hearing the engine.

• 1:26:17Jay Novella?

  Yeah, I guarantee you that there are people out there that can do this. Oh, yeah.

• 1:26:20Speaker 02

  Oh, absolutely.

• 1:26:22Jay Novella?

  So, this, this was sent in by a listener named Mike and, and Mike actually is the person that flew this plane. That was him flying the plane and firing those guns. You farted? He said, "This is me. You're seeing and hearing me strafing in an F-16, shooting the 20mm gun at a target on the ground." So that's pretty cool. You know, there's not many people-

• 1:26:45Bob Novella?

  Wait, is it a simulator?

• 1:26:46Jay Novella?

  No, it's a video. I saw a video of him do it.

• 1:26:49Bob Novella?

  Oh, it's not just an audio file. Oh, awesome, man!

• 1:26:51Jay Novella?

  He waved to me and he was holding up an SGU banner, too.

• 1:26:53Bob Novella?

  You liar.

• 1:26:55Jay Novella?

  No, but I saw the video. It's legit.

• 1:26:57Bob Novella?

  Awesome!

• 1:26:59Jay Novella?

  Yeah, and the sheer power of those guns, I mean, they're unbelievably powerful. Apparently, very useful when the time comes. But anyway, thank you, Mike, for winning, and thanks, Mike, for sending that in. That was a lot of fun. I have a new noisy for you guys this week. This noisy was sent in by a listener named Jim Grove, and here it is.

• 1:27:40Speaker 04

  Where's George Robb when you need to translate things like this? Sounds like-

• 1:27:44Jay Novella?

  I had to pick this one. This is a tough one, guys. We had an internal discussion here. I usually don't reveal what the thing is, but I wanted to, because I asked everyone, "Hey, should I give anybody a clue here?" And Steve came out swinging from left field and said, "Hell, no. Let them guess it. That's it."

• 1:28:05Speaker 04

  You're on your own, folks.

• 1:28:06Jay Novella?

  Yeah, so just do your best. Send me the wacky guesses if you have them. If you want to send me a guess, or you heard something cool this week, you gotta email me at [email protected]. Steve, I'm gonna shotgun this list real quick. If you support the work that we do, or would like to support us, please think about becoming a patron of the SGU. We have a ton of work ahead of us, for obvious reasons, you know what I'm talking about. And we want to make the world a more logical and skeptical place, and we do that through our weekly activism. So if you're interested in helping us, go to patreon.com/skepticsguide.

• 1:28:43Jay Novella?

  Every week, we send out a mailing list that tells you everything that the SGU did the previous week. Go to our homepage at the skepticsguy.org if you'd like to join that list. You can give our show a rating if you don't mind. It always helps other people find the podcast. And then, of course, guys, we have tickets going on sale or are on sale. We have a show in Seattle and a show in Wisconsin. There's going to be a SGU private recording. There's going to be extravaganza shows at both of those. At the Seattle show, we will be having a special event on Friday night. This is going to be a very, a very low attendance event to hang out and talk. And Steve, you called that the what? The special premium Talk About Bananas event?

• 1:29:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, the Talk About Bananas event. That's exactly what it is.

• 1:29:27Jay Novella?

  Okay. All this information, though, people, it's on the website. Go to the skepticsguy.org. Thank you.

• 1:29:33Speaker 02

  All right. Thanks, Jay. All right, guys, let's do one email. This one comes from Tom Buckley. And Tom writes, "A recent paper in Science claims wolves use tools. A wolf apparently learned to pull up a submerged net with crabs at the bottom. An ethologist on Blue Sky wrote, 'This meets the most standard definition of tool use used in primatology, and it surprises me how many don't think it qualifies as tool use.' The definition is apparently that they are using an unattached object, the net, to manipulate something else, the fish, and manipulated and properly orients the tool, correctly angles it to pull the net out and

• 1:30:16Speaker 02

  get the fish. To me, this seems like a weak definition of tool because it relies on humans' awareness of whether the object is unattached to the reward. For example, suppose crabs had a very long floaty tail that looked like, just like a net, and a wolf pulled that up and ate the crab's main body. Humans wouldn't call that a tool, but the wolf might not see any difference between that and the reported situation. What do you all reckon? Love the show. Best." So, yeah, I love these kind of questions because it has to do with definition or categorization, and these are always Objective, right? So what counts as tool use? And is there's not going to be any right or wrong answer. It's going to be a continuum.

• 1:31:00Speaker 02

  And this is arguably in the gray zone. Personally, I don't buy it. I don't think this is tool use. So you gotta watch the video. Essentially, it's a wild wolf pulling up a net from a, from a river and it's attached to a trap, you know, a fish trap. The fish swim in, but they can't, you know, swim out. And then there's a fish in there and eats it. So I don't think that's tool use. He just knows that there's fish there. He's just getting at the fish.

• 1:31:33Speaker 04

  I would liken it to maybe a bird getting caught in a bird feeder and a bear or something coming over, knocking down the bird feeder and eating the bird.

• 1:31:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, something like that.

• 1:31:41Speaker 04

  Something like that.

• 1:31:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, squirrels get into my bird feeder and eat my, sue it. Are they using a tool? No.

• 1:31:47Jay Novella?

  Steve, if he deployed the thing.

• 1:31:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 1:31:50Speaker 04

  Oh, sure.

• 1:31:50Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:31:51Jay Novella?

  He's not.

• 1:31:52Speaker 02

  He reeled it back in.

• 1:31:53Bob Novella?

  That would be impressive.

• 1:31:54Speaker 02

  He's an opportunist. So that's the thing. They say they are using an unattached object, the net, but he's not really using it. He's just pulling it out of the water because that's, because it's attached to food.

• 1:32:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, if this thing was on land, he wouldn't have pulled anything.

• 1:32:07Speaker 02

  If it were a branch, if there was a fish caught in a branch and he grabbed it and pulled the branch out of the river to get at the fish, would that be using a tool? He didn't go get, now if he went and got the net and put it in there and then pulled, that's different.

• 1:32:20Bob Novella?

  That would be impressive. But he had to connect the, there's this, there's this buoy that, right? He grabbed the buoy and so he connected the buoy to fish.

• 1:32:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, that'd be, that's smart. I'm not saying it's not clever.

• 1:32:33Bob Novella?

  How, but how, because the analogy with the, with the bird and the bear is, of course, is not a perfect analogy because the bear could see the bird, but he, he, you can't see the, the cage, you know, the net or the, the fish. You just see the buoy floating. So he, did he see somebody pull it out himself or herself and get the fish? Maybe that was where he made the connection? He or she made the connection? I don't know.

• 1:32:56Speaker 04

  We have a sample of one video here of one wolf. How could you say that wolves have learned to do this? Seems substandard to me.

• 1:33:05Speaker 02

  Well, they're generalizing. It could be a hasty generalization, but even that aside.

• 1:33:08Bob Novella?

  It doesn't matter. He did do it.

• 1:33:10Speaker 02

  Does this qualify? Does this qualify? I just, I don't know. I think the term using is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Like they're using an unattached object. They're, yeah, they're just pulling at something to get to food. You know what I mean? It's not really tool use. They're not, they're not using it. They did not deploy the net. They did not, they're not doing anything with it. They're just pulling at it to get at food.

• 1:33:35Bob Novella?

  It's not like, you know, a chimpanzee crafting a stick into a tool that can get ants.

• 1:33:40Speaker 04

  Taking the leaves off the stick, right, forming it for a tool, sticking it into the termite mound. Getting the termites, pulling it back out. There you go.

• 1:33:48Jay Novella?

  An interesting thing to look at here, though, is that wolf knows that there are fish in there.

• 1:33:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:33:53Bob Novella?

  That's the biggest leap. How was that connection made?

• 1:33:58Speaker 02

  Well, no, Bob, Bob, they eat fish. I mean, what are you talking about? Those, you know, that, those wolves, some wolves live by water. They eat fish.

• 1:34:05Bob Novella?

  Well, of course, but connect, my point is connecting the buoy, a man-made yellow and a white and red buoy with fish.

• 1:34:12Jay Novella?

  But how does it? Probably saw the guy throw it in the water and take it out.

• 1:34:15Bob Novella?

  That's what had to have happened, I assume, that that's how he made the connection. I don't think he could have made that connection otherwise, right?

• 1:34:23Speaker 02

  But, but you're, but how do you know that he's making that connection? Meaning that, and you're saying, how does he know that it's, that it's artificial? It's just something in the water. Fish get trapped in stuff in the water. You pull this stuff out and sometimes there's fish attached to it. And maybe this specifically, he's learned through experience or through observation that there's often fish attached to it. Again, is it different than pulling a branch out of the water and hoping there's a fish in it? I don't know. Right?

• 1:34:53Bob Novella?

  I mean, fish can get caught in submerged branches, I guess. But yeah, I see your point. I see, I see your point. Maybe, maybe he just brings stuff in that's floating just. You know, he just something that it's a behavior that they do.

• 1:35:06Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:35:07Bob Novella?

  Yeah, it could, it could potentially, you know, get lucky and like, and get some sort of food trapped in there, whatever it may be.

• 1:35:13Speaker 04

  I would be more, I would have been more impressed if the wolf took, see how these loose rocks are over here on the shore? It's a very rocky shore. Cause there's a technique by which you put rocks in it, in the water, near the, near the edge of the shore. And the fish will swim into that rock formation and kind of get trapped. And then if the wolf did that, I would, I would be more impressed with that.

• 1:35:33Speaker 02

  That's tool use. So again, I love this because it's this murky question of definition.

• 1:35:38Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:35:39Speaker 02

  And it shows you how careful you have to be with definitions because you could break them, right? And I think this is an example, which is breaking a poorly written definition of what comes as tool use. Again, I don't think the wolf there is making any of these associations. I don't think he's using that net or, or in any way, he's not manipulating anything. He's just getting at food. That's it.

• 1:36:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:36:03Speaker 02

  And that's not tool use in my book.

• 1:36:07Speaker 02

  Right?

• 1:36:07Bob Novella?

  Yeah, it's definitely, it's a stretch for tool use. It's, it's a cool behavior, but it's not, yeah, I could see it's.

• 1:36:13Speaker 02

  This is a real stretch. He manipulated and properly orients the tool, right? So he correctly angles it to pull it, you know, he's just pulling the net out of the freaking water.

• 1:36:24Speaker 04

  However, it came out, it came out.

• 1:36:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, like he just fucks with it until it comes out.

• 1:36:27Speaker 04

  Orientation.

• 1:36:28Speaker 02

  He's not, yeah, he's not, exactly.

• 1:36:31Speaker 04

  Measuring the 45 degree angle to optimization, no way.

• 1:36:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's, it's not like he's doing that to catch the fish. He's just pulling the thing out of the water.

• 1:36:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, let's see this thing recast that out into the water and that would impress me, but it's not, probably not gonna do that.

• 1:36:47Bob Novella?

  Reset the trap.

• 1:36:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:36:48Speaker 02

  All right.

• 1:36:49Speaker 04

  So that's.

• 1:36:50Speaker 02

  Where did you guys fall? I'm, I'm not buying it. I don't know, do you guys, do you guys agree or any of you think this constitutes tool use?

• 1:36:56Jay Novella?

  It's not tool use.

• 1:36:56Bob Novella?

  No, it's not tool, it's not tool use. It's cool, but it's not technically tool use as I envision it.

• 1:37:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, I guess it's no different than the bear getting my suet out of my cage, you know?

• 1:37:07Speaker 04

  Wolfie.

• 1:37:08Speaker 02

  Wolfie. I'm wolfie. All right. Let's go on with science or fiction?

• 1:37:16Speaker 01

  It's time for science or fiction?

• 1:37:26Speaker 02

  Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two genuine and one fictitious. Then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. And of course, you all can play at home. Feel free to play along with us. All right. Three regular news items. Are you guys ready?

• 1:37:46Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:47Speaker 02

  Here we go. Item number one. "South Korean researchers have developed a process for increasing bacterial cellulose production for textiles by over tenfold, approaching cost parity with natural fibers." All right, number two. "MIT researchers have developed a thin polymer film that is 10,000 times less permeable to gas than all other polymers." And item number three. "For the first time, scientists were able to create immortal cow cells without the need for any genetic modification." Bob, go first.

• 1:38:21Bob Novella?

  All right. So they've increased bacterial cellulose production for textiles an order of magnitude. Parity with natural fibers. I mean, okay. I mean, I don't know. It doesn't sound very dramatic at all, which kind of makes me want to pick this because it's just like, it seems a little ho-hum. I don't know the details about this, but not as dramatic as the other ones, it seems. Okay, now we've got a polymer film for the second one. 10,000 times less permeable to gas than other polymers. I mean, I just don't know enough about polymers, I guess, to know how dramatic this is. I mean, yeah, 10,000 times is dramatic, but, oof, I don't know what to make of these. Uh, let's see, let's try the third one. Maybe I'll have some insight into that one.

• 1:39:04Bob Novella?

  "Immortal cow cells without the need for any genetic modifications."

• 1:39:08Speaker 02

  That's the new bit, obviously.

• 1:39:09Bob Novella?

  Yeah. So what could you tell me, Steve, about this that might not, that you would allow? What kind of, what kind of question can I ask that you would answer? I don't know.

• 1:39:19Speaker 02

  You'll have to ask it. You'll have to ask it.

• 1:39:21Bob Novella?

  Not an unreasonable stance. Um, crap. I mean, I guess that's interesting because my first thought is like, can't they just grab some cancer cells from a cow and get immortal cells that way? But, um...

• 1:39:34Speaker 02

  Well, I'll tell you one thing. They're obviously doing this for the point of like, artificial meat, right? Lab-grown meat.

• 1:39:41Bob Novella?

  Right.

• 1:39:42Speaker 02

  Not gonna make that a cancer cells. Here's your cancer burger. I mean, you know.

• 1:39:45Bob Novella?

  Cancer burger. Maybe they should just call that the Sea Burger instead.

• 1:39:49Speaker 04

  Have it your way.

• 1:39:51Bob Novella?

  I don't know. This is a total crapshoot for me on these. I'm just really don't have a lot of a huge amount of insight into any of these. Couldn't you just throw in like an astronomy or physics one in here, Steve? I mean, Jesus.

• 1:40:00Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:40:01Bob Novella?

  Throw me a bone here. Alright, I'm just gonna, I'll take the one that is just seems like meh. I'm gonna say that the bacterial cellulose one seemed, you know, more mundane than the other ones. So maybe it's not, and hopefully it's not. So I'll say that one's fiction.

• 1:40:17Speaker 02

  Okay, Evan.

• 1:40:19Speaker 04

  Well, um, hmm. Yeah, I don't, I don't, this first one is confusing me a little bit. Uh, cellulose production for textile, cellulose production for textiles?

• 1:40:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, so alright, but basically, you know, you could engineer bacteria to make stuff, right? And grow it into that and it cricks out stuff. So it's making cellulose.

• 1:40:41Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:40:42Speaker 02

  Which is a structural protein.

• 1:40:45Bob Novella?

  Protein, baby.

• 1:40:46Speaker 02

  And then you could weave that cellulose into fibers, right? That you can then make clothes out of.

• 1:40:53Speaker 04

  I don't know this happened. This is possible.

• 1:40:55Speaker 02

  So this has been going on. That's not, that's not new. What's new is that they got the production increased tenfold, driving the cost down to close to, say, things like cotton, like natural fibers.

• 1:41:10Speaker 04

  Okay, so higher efficient, better efficiency.

• 1:41:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, to an order of magnitude.

• 1:41:13Speaker 04

  Of an existing technology.

• 1:41:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:41:15Speaker 04

  It seems reasonable. But Bob, you said this one's the fiction?

• 1:41:20Bob Novella?

  No, I said, I said, yes, I did.

• 1:41:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, yes, you did.

• 1:41:23Bob Novella?

  Yes, I did. No, yes, I did.

• 1:41:24Speaker 04

  You must have been more, more impressed with the other two, then, more so.

• 1:41:28Bob Novella?

  Yeah, but this one is interesting now that I'm really thinking about it, whatever.

• 1:41:31Speaker 04

  Yeah. Kara, what do you think? Well, moving on.

• 1:41:37Speaker 02

  I'll tell you what she thought after, after you go.

• 1:41:40Speaker 04

  She would have told you that. Okay, second one. A thin polymer film, 10,000 times less permeable. That's a lot. But it's gas, okay, compared to other polymers. Hmm.

• 1:41:55Speaker 04

  A thin polymer film. MIT researchers, okay, 10,000. I don't know, 10,000 is a lot. Maybe it's a thousand, maybe it's like order of magnitude kind of thing. But I don't know. You don't norm, you know, you don't usually play those games. You have, but not, not, oh, not always and not that often. The last item is scientists were able to create immortal, immortal cow cells without the need for any genetic modification. So create, without the need for any genetic modification. So what would be, what would be the option? What would be if it wasn't genetically modified? Then they did it through what?

• 1:42:37Speaker 02

  Some other way.

• 1:42:38Speaker 04

  Yes. How?

• 1:42:41Speaker 02

  That's, that's the essence of that one. So I'm not giving that to you.

• 1:42:44Speaker 04

  Oh, boy. So some other process that is not as well known as genetic modification. I don't know. Uh, this is tough. I, I, this is a very difficult one for me. I'm not really having a good sense for any of these. Therefore, Bob, I'm going to latch myself to you for no other reason. And you and I are going to rise together or we're going to fall to the deepest depths.

• 1:43:03Speaker 02

  I will proactively apologize. All right, Jay.

• 1:43:06Jay Novella?

  Okay, I'll just take them in reverse order here. Um, so we got the cow cell one. So there wasn't genetic modification and the, they were able to create immortal cow cells in some other way. I mean, I would know, I would just imagine if it wasn't from genetic modification, that it would be through their environment somehow, or, or, you know, you know, and if they made a genetic modification that made the cow cells immortal, I would imagine that would have been all over the news big time. And this one is like the biggest claim as far as I read of these three, like it has the most implications and it seems the most dramatic. And my science or fiction kung fu is telling me that, that this one is science.

• 1:43:51Jay Novella?

  But, you know, it's one of those things that could easily go either way. Like, what am I going to say? No, they didn't. And then what would my premise be? Cause I don't even know how they got there in the first place. So it's, it's too vague to actually even divine. Got that? No? Okay.

• 1:44:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:44:04Jay Novella?

  Um, anyway, I'll say that one is tentatively science. MIT researchers have developed this thin polymer film that's 10,000 times less permeable. Than other polymers. Okay, I mean, you know, on first blush, you know, I could see an advancement like this. I mean, companies are constantly working on making improvements like this. It is a massive jump forward, you know, 10,000 times is a profound change from the current polymers that are being used. We don't know if this means anything other than it happened in the lab. It's not like they're, you know, you can buy this stuff, whatever uses that they have for it. I don't know. That one seems, you know, like a big deal, like a big number jump there. Let me just go on to the first one. So this

• 1:44:44Jay Novella?

  one here, where the South Korean researchers have developed a process for increasing bacterial cellulose production by over tenfold. That's not, tenfold leap is not that big. It drives the cost way down, like Steve said. I don't see this being a, it's not a massive claim like the other two. But I find it interesting that Bob picked this one. And I have, I could tell you that the other two seem like crazy and, you know, a lot of, big, big claims and everything. And this one is like the stinker. This one's like, oh yeah, they'll believe it. It's so, you know, it's not that big of a deal. So I'm gonna go with the boys, Steve. I'm gonna go with the boys.

• 1:45:25Speaker 02

  All right. You guys all agree on number one?

• 1:45:27Jay Novella?

  Wait, I'll tell you why it's important. Because if I, if I'm wrong, and the work that we do here happens, and people will forget if we, no big deal, you know, we lost. But if we sweep you, then it's a thing. And I'd rather go for the sweep.

• 1:45:42Speaker 02

  You're going for the sweep. You're swinging for the fences.

• 1:45:44Bob Novella?

  It depends what Kara said. It depends what Kara said.

• 1:45:47Jay Novella?

  That's true.

• 1:45:48Bob Novella?

  No, she's irrelevant. She's not here. This is the boy sweep.

• 1:45:50Jay Novella?

  No, she's not irrelevant.

• 1:45:51Bob Novella?

  No, she, she put her guess in.

• 1:45:52Speaker 02

  So Kara's guess.

• 1:45:53Bob Novella?

  There's no interaction and no feedback.

• 1:45:55Jay Novella?

  Kara's guess.

• 1:45:56Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay, so, the first one here is, they've just developed a process, so that's important. They're increasing bacterial cellulose production for textiles by over tenfold. Approaching cost parity with natural fibers. Oh, bacterial cellulose. I was like, synthetic fibers are way cheaper, but yeah, they're bacterial cellulose fiber. Okay, so, so basically, they're artificially producing natural. Fibrils.

• 1:46:23Speaker 02

  Well cellulose based fibers, yeah, which is it's, yeah. It's a different kind of fiber.

• 1:46:27Cara Santa Maria?

  But we're not talking like, like polyester.

• 1:46:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:46:31Cara Santa Maria?

  Right, right, because that is way cheaper, which is why microplastics is like a massive problem.

• 1:46:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, we're talking like with cost parity, we're talking like cotton.

• 1:46:38Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's big. And then the thin polymer film, 10,000 times less. I mean, I don't know, less permeable to gas than all other polymers. So why would you need this? You would want something that is, yeah, that no gas can pass through for all sorts of applications, medical, industrial. I could see that being important, but I don't know how. I always thought polymers weren't very permeable anyway. I don't know. That seems like it's probably, maybe, oh, this is so hard. And then lastly, immortal cow cells without the need for any genetic modification. We don't already have immortal cow cells? We have immortal people cells.

• 1:47:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, but they, we get to them through genetic modification. So this is the first time they were able to do it without genetic modification.

• 1:47:27Cara Santa Maria?

  Gotcha. Well, I thought we had immortal cells through like, like cancer lines, too. Did we genetically modify those? Okay. Gosh, these all seem like they could be science or fiction. I think the one that's bothering me the most is maybe the cellulose. Because I don't think, I think that there's a reason that we have such a big cost difference right now. And I know that this is an area of a lot of research and like, you know, when we talk about sort of plastics or even biochemical innovation, we just see so much happening so quickly.

• 1:48:07Cara Santa Maria?

  Like when we talk about material science and when we talk about biochemistry in the lab. But I don't know textile science, I feel like it's really bifurcated. It's like the old school natural methods and then it's like the new stuff, which is all material science and it's all plastic. It's all like synthetics. And so either, I don't know, the will hasn't been there or maybe there is something that prevents it from happening. Of course, then that means that there's a vacuum. So there's, you know, space for a lot of innovation. But this one just seems like an area that we're not reading about very often and we're not seeing like these huge improvements and changes. But I mean, this is such a shot in the dark because all of these seem like they could be.

• 1:48:51Cara Santa Maria?

  Either completely realistic or not realistic at all, but I just gotta put my nickel down. So I'll say the bacterial cellulose production is either not increased by tenfold, or it's not approaching cost parity with natural fibers. One of those two things may be false. I doubt it's that it was not in South Korea. But, but, uh, yeah, I'll give it. Also, that one is really complex. It has enough variables that maybe, you know, one or two of those things are wrong.

• 1:49:19Speaker 02

  Kara's guess was?

• 1:49:21Bob Novella?

  Yes.

• 1:49:22Speaker 02

  Number one is.

• 1:49:23Bob Novella?

  Oh.

• 1:49:25Speaker 02

  I actually.

• 1:49:26Bob Novella?

  Love it.

• 1:49:27Speaker 02

  It's going to be a sweep one way or the other.

• 1:49:30Bob Novella?

  Ha ha.

• 1:49:31Speaker 02

  Let's take these in reverse order. Follow Jay's lead.

• 1:49:36Bob Novella?

  I'm sure her reasoning though was much more, you know.

• 1:49:38Speaker 02

  Not really.

• 1:49:39Bob Novella?

  Aerialized in ours.

• 1:49:40Speaker 02

  Oh, good. We were all lost.

• 1:49:42Bob Novella?

  I love it. Excellent.

• 1:49:43Speaker 02

  She was pretty lost, but she, she had, she reasons her, her way pretty smartly through these.

• 1:49:48Bob Novella?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:49:49Speaker 02

  Anyway.

• 1:49:49Bob Novella?

  We, we know that by now.

• 1:49:52Speaker 02

  All right, we'll start at number three. For the first time, scientists were able to create immortal cow cells without the need for any genetic modification. You go, oh, I think this one is science and this one is science. This is science. So the, the previously it was believed that in large mammals, this was not possible.

• 1:50:09Bob Novella?

  Oh, really?

• 1:50:09Speaker 02

  All cells will only divide so many times. In order to bypass this limit, you have to disable genes that, you know, that can limit the number of times that cells can reproduce. So they wanted to see if they could find naturally occurring, like spontaneous immortality in, in the cells of a large mammal. Because the, it has been previously shown to exist in chickens, but they're not mammals and they're not large. So they said, all right, but they thought, but this can't happen in cows. So the, the researchers wanted to see if it was possible. So they, they basically plated the, the cow cells for 240 cell generations, over 18

• 1:50:52Speaker 02

  months, just looking for any cells that looked self-renewing, right? Any, any self-renewing colonies emerged and finally, finally one did.

• 1:51:02Speaker 02

  They basically, they proved that there's spontaneous emergence of immortal cell lines in cow cells. They then found out the mechanism was the natural activation of telomerase and PGC1 alpha. So basically extending the telomeres, right? So setting back the, repairing the telomeres to set back the biological clocks. All right. So that's cool. Obviously, the purpose of this is for lab-grown meat, right? The big advantage here is, one, is regulatory, because if there's no genetic modification, it bypasses all of the GMO regulation.

• 1:51:46Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:51:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:51:48Speaker 04

  And they need your fears of Luddites.

• 1:51:51Speaker 02

  And also, this could make the whole process cheaper, right? So they think, now they want to do this with like muscle cells and basically create immortal lines that then you could use to crank out those lab-grown hamburgers. All right. So we'll see if this leads to anything, but that was the purpose for that. All right. Let's get back to number two. MIT researchers have developed a thin polymer film that is 10,000 times less permeable to gas than all other polymers. You guys also think this one is science, and this one is also science. Yay!

• 1:52:25Speaker 04

  Thank you, Kara.

• 1:52:27Speaker 02

  So polymers generally are made from fibers which are woven together, and those are very permeable because there's gaps in between the weaving. So this polymer, however, was made as a two-dimensional material. So it's a single film, and therefore, there's a solid crystalline structure with no gaps. And so that's why it doesn't let the gas through. No gases? No gases. So they tested it with helium, nitrogen, oxygen, argon, helium, methane, and sulfur hexafluoride. Do you guys remember Huffing sulfur?

• 1:53:05Speaker 04

  Yes. It's the opposite of, right?

• 1:53:08Speaker 02

  Of helium. Makes your voice really loud.

• 1:53:10Speaker 04

  It was so cool.

• 1:53:11Speaker 02

  All right. So what would, what do you think this would be useful for?

• 1:53:15Speaker 04

  Well, gas-proof. Space.

• 1:53:18Speaker 02

  They didn't mention that as a potential one, but so...

• 1:53:22Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:53:23Speaker 02

  Big thing would be-

• 1:53:23Jay Novella?

  Scientific experiments?

• 1:53:24Speaker 02

  Food preservation, right? Because it basically prevents anything from oxidizing, if you can keep oxygen from getting access to it. So this would be very useful. Because it also could be a very, very thin coating, you know? So you could put it on, wrap food in it, for example. Also would be useful for... So the reason why I was interested in hydrogen, because hydrogen is notoriously hard to contain.

• 1:53:50Bob Novella?

  Well, yes, it's so small.

• 1:53:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:53:52Bob Novella?

  If you read Hail Mary, you, right?

• 1:53:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:53:55Bob Novella?

  You kind of would get there, too.

• 1:53:56Speaker 02

  You could line a tank with this film, and that would keep the hydrogen from leaking out. So any time when you need to, you need a sealant, it'd be useful as a sealant. Okay, that means that South Korean researchers have developed a process for increasing bacterial cellulose production for textiles by over tenfold, approaching cost parity with natural fibers, is the fiction, because the innovation has nothing to do with production, and this is still hella expensive and nowhere near the cost of natural fibers. But what they did was they figured out how to combine two different bacteria in the same vat. One makes the cellulose and the other makes the dye.

• 1:54:40Speaker 02

  So they had to get the timing right and everything. So essentially, you could do both things at the same time, and then you get these vibrant colored cellulose fibers to make the textiles out of. And they tested them to show that they would hold on to their color even with the usual test with bleaching or washing or whatever. So it seems like a good method for making textiles of these different colors, dyed in the wool, as they say, but in this case dyed in the cellulose. But it's, you know, it's still super expensive.

• 1:55:13Speaker 04

  Where do we see cellulose-based textiles in everyday life? Or don't we, because of the cost?

• 1:55:19Speaker 02

  Well, you can, but cellulose is in... Cellulose, I think, is the most... Yeah, cellulose is in cotton, so it's just artificial. Cellulose is, it is the most, most common structural protein that exists in the world.

• 1:55:32Speaker 04

  I just didn't realize it was used for textiles.

• 1:55:34Speaker 02

  Well, it's in, it's part of, any natural plant fiber is going to have cellulose in it. And a lot of natural fiber textiles are made out of plant fibers, right? Like cotton and jute and other things.

• 1:55:48Speaker 02

  Flax, you know. Yeah, so that, so this is, you know, it's an interesting technology that they developed. Again, you're, I'm concerned about the scalability of using that grown textiles. When you could use plants and, you know, like cotton to do it cheaper. But, you know, the part of the idea is that, well, if you're manufacturing the textiles, you have more control over them. So you could make fibers with, or the, the cloth itself with better properties, you know, than you would get out of the natural fibers.

• 1:56:17Bob Novella?

  Yeah, like bulletproof cotton.

• 1:56:19Speaker 02

  Or it shrinks less would be nice, you know? So I don't know if this is commercializable. It's a, you know, kind of a proof of concept kind of thing. We'll see if it goes anywhere, but it's a fiction, so it doesn't matter. Well, good job, everyone. You got me.

• 1:56:31Speaker 04

  You swept us a few weeks back.

• 1:56:33Speaker 02

  This was, can't make, less than I can't, can't make the fictions too simple.

• 1:56:36Bob Novella?

  This was kind of unique in that you had two people go first.

• 1:56:40Speaker 02

  You both kind of, she had a similar thinking.

• 1:56:42Speaker 04

  Interesting. It's like Kara was in a booth, right?

• 1:56:44Bob Novella?

  Just too mundane. I, you, you compliment me, dear sir.

• 1:56:47Speaker 02

  All right, Evan, give us a quote.

• 1:56:50Speaker 04

  What you learn from a life in science is the vastness of our ignorance. Very well put by David Eagleman.

• 1:56:58Bob Novella?

  Nice.

• 1:56:59Speaker 04

  An American, American neuroscientist, bestselling author and science communicator who teaches at Stanford University.

• 1:57:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a critical concept. You don't know what you don't know.

• 1:57:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:57:08Speaker 02

  And the more you learn, the more you know about what you don't know. So actually, the frontier of what, of the unknown increases as you learn more.

• 1:57:15Bob Novella?

  Yeah, the stupider you feel, the more you learn.

• 1:57:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:57:18Speaker 04

  Right?

• 1:57:19Speaker 02

  Or the more you learn, in a way, the more humble you are, like, you know, the...

• 1:57:23Speaker 04

  Humility.

• 1:57:25Speaker 02

  Because you realize how much more there is that you still don't know.

• 1:57:29Bob Novella?

  But which, which makes it even more exciting, right?

• 1:57:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:57:32Bob Novella?

  It should, anyway.

• 1:57:33Speaker 02

  And, and you guys have probably had this, this experience too. When I go from knowing basically nothing about a field to knowing something about it, one of the first things I realize is, wow, there's a lot of information here. This is way more complicated and way more deep than I thought.

• 1:57:49Bob Novella?

  Right, and you appreciate that the experts even more.

• 1:57:52Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:57:52Speaker 04

  Heck, yes. The people who devote their lives to their, their particular field. My gosh.

• 1:57:58Speaker 02

  And this is beyond science. This is in every, any field of intellectual endeavor. Like it's just, even just hobbies, anything. It's amazing how complicated things, everything gets when people are involved.

• 1:58:07Jay Novella?

  You know, in the, in the rare cases when the average person has some level of expertise in something, right? And they hear somebody talk about that topic.

• 1:58:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:58:17Jay Novella?

  And you, and you say to yourself, oh, they don't know what the hell they're talking about. You know, like I can, I have a couple of things in my life that I, I've been able to, I've had this happen with.

• 1:58:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:58:26Jay Novella?

  Right? Now imagine whatever that thing is that you're good at, that you did it for 30 years.

• 1:58:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:58:33Jay Novella?

  And you know it so well that, you know, there, there might be a hundred or less people in the world that know it on the level that you do. Like that, that's when, you know, you would be blown away by, by how the BS that people, you know, or how little understanding that people have on it and everything. And that, that is one of the things that causes me to, you know, have an enormous amount of respect for people who have developed these massive skillsets and expertise. Like, you know, when they say, hey, man, you know, we, global warming is happening and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That, that's good enough for me. I don't have to pretend that I'm going online, air quotes, to do research.

• 1:59:09Speaker 02

  You're not checking their math, right? You're not.

• 1:59:11Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:12Speaker 02

  Let me take a look at those ice cores and see if I agree with you on that. You know, come on. But I also flip that around you because I use that example a lot. Like your own expertise, that, that thing that you're an expert in. When you read an article about it in the lay media or somebody, you know, just in the general population is talking about it, they know nothing, right? Like you.

• 1:59:31Bob Novella?

  Yeah, and, yeah, it's cringey.

• 1:59:33Speaker 02

  They profoundly know nothing about this topic that you're an expert in. But that's you for every other freaking topic in the world. So that's the thing that you can remember. You are just as ignorant about all the other things you're not an expert in. So that should be a humbling experience.

• 1:59:49Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:49Speaker 02

  You know, but you have to, you have to make, extrapolate to that, you know, to that bigger point. So I often use that example in lectures because I think it drives it home pretty well.

• 1:59:59Bob Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:59Speaker 02

  You're that person, that cringey person who doesn't know what they're talking about on every other topic.

• 2:00:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, but what about all those TikTok videos I see?

• 2:00:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. That, yeah, again, don't get me started.

• 2:00:11Jay Novella?

  Don't get me started.

• 2:00:13Speaker 02

  The thing, all right, since you had to mention TikTok, so I have to rant about it for two seconds. The thing that kills me about TikTok is now that one of the themes that I'm picking up with the videos that get sent to us, etc. Is the denial of history, right? Just denying that something happened. The most recent one we talked about was now there's assholes denying that Helen Keller existed? Or, you know, that she was, that she was blind and deaf? She couldn't have been blind and deaf? Nobody could do what she did if they were blind and deaf? That's the point, you idiot! That's why you know her name a hundred years later? Cause she was amazing and she did amazing things? And now you're gonna try to take that all away from her because you don't believe it? Get a life. I mean, it's just-

• 2:00:56Jay Novella?

  I know. It's really, it really is sad to hear things like that because why would anybody even need to go there?

• 2:01:04Speaker 02

  Well, I know, that's the other thing, like-

• 2:01:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, right, right, what's the deeper point?

• 2:01:09Speaker 02

  Big Helen Keller made it up for some purpose? I mean, it's just silly.

• 2:01:12Speaker 04

  Right.

• 2:01:12Speaker 02

  Or you're seeing through the veil that nobody else could see through? Get up, you know, come on. Get real.

• 2:01:17Speaker 04

  We've been lied to all these years, you see.

• 2:01:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:01:19Speaker 04

  I know the truth.

• 2:01:20Speaker 02

  That's the narrative.

• 2:01:20Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:01:22Speaker 02

  Everything you know is wrong. I know what's really going on. It's all coming out now, right?

• 2:01:27Jay Novella?

  It's all coming out now.

• 2:01:28Speaker 04

  World according to TikTok.

• 2:01:31Jay Novella?

  It's good to have you home, Steve.

• 2:01:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's good to be home. I enjoyed the trip, but it's always good to walk in your front door and, you know, to be home again.

• 2:01:37Speaker 04

  Now you're going to sleep, I'm sure.

• 2:01:39Speaker 02

  Uh, dinner, then sleep. I haven't eaten in a long time.

• 2:01:42Jay Novella?

  And this time you didn't crash into your house at the very last moment of the trip, right?

• 2:01:47Speaker 02

  I know, I know. That, that when, the second time, I think, we were coming back from Australia. So, literally traveling for over 24 hours, door to door.

• 2:01:56Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:01:57Speaker 02

  And I crash into my house at the very end of the whole trip. It became, it wasn't as bad as it sounds. I hit the top of my driveway. The, the, my driveway was frozen over solid with a glass of ice.

• 2:02:12Speaker 04

  Oh, yes.

• 2:02:12Speaker 02

  And it's also like invisible, it's just this glass of ice.

• 2:02:15Speaker 04

  And it's downhill from there.

• 2:02:16Speaker 02

  And then, and then my car coasted all the way down and hit, and into the house. There's no, I have zero control, it just slid all the way down.

• 2:02:25Jay Novella?

  Ice.

• 2:02:28Jay Novella?

  No coefficient of friction, yeah. All right, well, thank you all for joining me this week. Sure, man. You're welcome, brother. And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

• 2:02:41Jay 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.

• 2:03:18Speaker 04

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