The Skeptics Guide #1066 - Dec 13 2025

News Items: Young Cancer, Adapting to Modern Life, Safety of mRNA Vaccines, Cosmic Rays Ground Aircraft, Reverse Aging Claim; Who's That Noisy; Your Questions and E-mails: EU Gene Editing; Who Said That; 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 Tuesday, December 9th, 2025, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella,

• 0:45Speaker 03

  Hey, everybody.

• 0:46Speaker 02

  Cara Santa Maria.

• 0:47Cara Santa Maria?

  Howdy.

• 0:48Speaker 02

  Jay Novella. Hey, guys. And Evan Bernstein.

• 0:51Speaker 03

  Good evening, everyone.

• 0:52Speaker 02

  How's everyone doing? You guys ready for the holidays?

• 0:54Speaker 03

  Getting there.

• 0:54Speaker 02

  Getting there. Yeah. Hey, Bob.

• 0:56Speaker 03

  The decorations are up. It's a lot of work, man.

• 1:00Cara Santa Maria?

  You guys decorate?

• 1:01Speaker 03

  I did that last year. Oh, yeah, man.

• 1:03Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:04Speaker 03

  We decorate.

• 1:05Cara Santa Maria?

  You got kids, so that I get. But you guys, everybody else decorates?

• 1:08Speaker 03

  My kids in Alaska, man, I still decorate the crap out of this house.

• 1:12Speaker 02

  I got you in the holiday spirit, I guess. You don't decorate at all?

• 1:16Speaker 03

  Bob, we're talking about Christmas.

• 1:17Speaker 02

  Put a candle in the window, put a

• 1:19Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, yeah. I do something minimal. I always get like a little tree from Trader Joe's, like a little tabletop tree, and I put it on my dining table. And then that's where I throw all the gifts that I'm giving to people. But that's basically the extent of my decoration.

• 1:34Speaker 03

  That's okay.

• 1:35Cara Santa Maria?

  Because then I don't have to do much cleanup.

• 1:38Speaker 03

  That is the point, the cleanup.

• 1:40Speaker 02

  Do you like even like watch holiday movies or anything?

• 1:43Cara Santa Maria?

  No.

• 1:44Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:44Speaker 03

  What was the last holiday movie you think you?

• 1:46Cara Santa Maria?

  I'd say Elf is the only holiday movie I really watch.

• 1:50Speaker 02

  But you don't watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer or?

• 1:54Speaker 03

  Miracle on Thirty Fourth Street, the old classics.

• 1:57Speaker 02

  The Heat Miser. I mean, come on, Heat Miser.

• 2:00Cara Santa Maria?

  What's the Heat Miser?

• 2:00Speaker 03

  Christmas Carol.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  Wow. Santa Claus is coming to town.

• 2:03Speaker 03

  Wait, the Heat Miser?

• 2:04Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, but I rarely.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  You have no cultural awareness of the Cold Miser and the Heat Miser?

• 2:08Speaker 03

  Wasn't it Freeze Miser?

• 2:09Speaker 02

  Snow Miser, Cold Miser, one of those.

• 2:11Speaker 03

  Ice Miser?

• 2:12Cara Santa Maria?

  What is happening?

• 2:14Speaker 02

  It's from a TV. It's one of those shows like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer where they have puppets and they animate them.

• 2:21Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, oh, do you guys remember?

• 2:23Speaker 02

  It is the Snow Miser.

• 2:24Speaker 03

  It is Snow Miser. I don't, yeah, you see, that's how long it's been for me. I thought it was Freeze Miser.

• 2:29Cara Santa Maria?

  Do you guys remember when we did one of our Skeptical Extravaganzas? And there was a reference to some character from those old claymation, uh, movies? And I was like, what is this wor- it was, I don't like it when we're playing those games. And I'm like, that is a completely foreign con- it's like Quidditch one time was one of the references. And I was like, I don't know what that is.

• 2:50Speaker 02

  The Burger Meister Meister Burger? You know what Quidditch is now though, right?

• 2:55Cara Santa Maria?

  Now I do. I've been edumicated, but, um.

• 2:58Speaker 03

  You know what a Charlie in the Box is?

• 3:00Cara Santa Maria?

  Tough. What? What is happening right now?

• 3:05Speaker 03

  Oh, Kara, if only you were Mormon.

• 3:07Speaker 02

  Did you have a childhood, Kara? Or were you deprived because you were Mormon? They didn't let you watch any of these?

• 3:11Cara Santa Maria?

  I think I had a childhood a little later than you.

• 3:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's right. That's exactly what it is. We had a childhood where there was a television set that had three channels that functioned all the time and maybe five that you could get. And this was on television. You had no other real choice to watch something other than this in the seventies.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I showed these kids, I showed these shows to my kids.

• 3:33Cara Santa Maria?

  Right, but my parents didn't.

• 3:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you had neglectful parents.

• 3:40Speaker 03

  It's, yeah, it was a matter of, of scarcity of resources, as it were.

• 3:45Speaker 02

  It was the year without a Santa Claus, nineteen seventy-four. The Burger Meister Meister Burger.

• 3:51Bob Novella?

  Voiced by the iconic Paul Frees, who you may know from the Disney's Haunted Mansion host voice.

• 3:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right.

• 3:58Bob Novella?

  Paul Frees is wonderful.

• 4:00Cara Santa Maria?

  Wait, his last name is Frees?

• 4:01Bob Novella?

  F R E E S, yeah.

• 4:03Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, okay.

• 4:03Speaker 03

  Well, Die Hard is still the best Christmas movie out there, perhaps.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  It's, yeah. It's up there.

• 4:09Cara Santa Maria?

  Does this mean that next week is our year in review already?

• 4:13Speaker 02

  Yes, we are recording the year in review on the 17th. So if you're, if you're listening to the show soon after it comes out, you still have a few days to email us your votes for best of, favorite this, Skeptical Hero, Skeptical Jackass, favorite new item, in memoriam, anything you want us to talk about that reviews, 2025, the SGU, etc.

• 4:35Cara Santa Maria?

  So many to choose from this year, Jackasses, that is.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  I mean, there's one clear winner which we'll talk about, but we have, we have to talk about runner ups because otherwise there's only, you know.

• 4:46Cara Santa Maria?

  There's plenty of runner ups.

• 4:47Bob Novella?

  For which category?

• 4:49Speaker 02

  Skeptical Jackass of the year.

• 4:50Bob Novella?

  Oh my.

• 4:51Speaker 02

  Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

• 4:53Speaker 03

  But no, we're teasing and we're encouraging the audience.

• 4:55Speaker 02

  Before we have to do the review show.

• 4:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:00Speaker 02

  All right, let's get, let's get down to this episode. Kara, you're gonna start, start us off talking about a lighthearted topic, childhood cancer.

• 5:08Cara Santa Maria?

  No, it's not childhood, sorry. It's, it's young people, but maybe it's, it's like not childhood.

• 5:13Speaker 02

  Okay, young people, but not children, that's okay then.

• 5:19Cara Santa Maria?

  No, actually, this, this is slightly lighter hearted than, than you would expect. So there, there's a new article in the New York Times. It was just published yesterday as of this recording. And the title really caught me. And so I was like, ooh, what's going on here? And then I was like, oh, yes, this debate, it's, it's an important debate that I've been hearing a lot about. So the, the title of this article is Why Some Doctors Say There Are Cancers That Shouldn't Be Treated. Which like, that's a big gotcha headline for an article. So statistics show, and, and there's a clear and kind of irrefutable trend. Now, we don't, we can argue, and actually I want to have a conversation about why the

• 6:02Cara Santa Maria?

  numbers look like this, but statistics are showing that across eight different cancers, there is a massive increase among younger people. But the question now is, A, what is causing this? And B, should we be doing something about it? Which sounds like a duh question, especially if you're a person who is dealing with a cancer diagnosis. Like, it can be really hard to hear somebody say, "I wonder if we should have even caught that," or "I wonder if we should actually try and treat that," if you're somebody who has faced cancer before, but let's, let's hear out the experts. So these eight diagnoses, or these eight different cancers, thyroid cancer, kidney

• 6:47Cara Santa Maria?

  cancer, cancer of the anus, the small intestine, colorectal, endometrial cancer, and pancreatic cancer. So those are solid cancers. And then also myeloma, which is a blood cancer, are on the rise since 1992 in, in a pretty significant way. We're also seeing other types like breast cancer that are increasing, but we're not talking about breast cancer in this particular conversation. We're talking about those eight previous that I mentioned. This, there's been this sharp uptick, and specifically for people under the age of 50. So that's what they mean by young, Steve, or younger. Yeah. And so, why are we seeing a sharp uptick?

• 7:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, you're seeing a big division among the experts, but I will say that when you sort of dig into it, what I'm seeing is that a lot of the people who are concerned from an environmental perspective tend to have more epidemiological expertise, but a lot of people who are in the trenches, you know, oncologists who are in the trenches treating cancer have a different view altogether. So I don't want to say there's this like false Dichotomy or this war out there of like, these people are saying, this is the reason. And these people are saying, that's the reason. It's both probably, and there are plenty of rational people who are saying, yes, it's both. But what do you think the two main camps are right now? What do you think is the reason that we're seeing a very sharp uptick in eight different cancers

• 8:13Cara Santa Maria?

  among patients under 50?

• 8:15Speaker 03

  Well, better ways of detecting it.

• 8:17Cara Santa Maria?

  There you go. That's like what everybody said first, right? Like, because we are checking for them. And we're doing that in a better way. So that's what a lot of oncologists are saying. No, no, we're just detecting these things better. We have better resolution. We're doing more screenings than we ever used to do. But there are epidemiologists and oncologists and other experts who are saying, but even beyond that, what if there is an environmental factor? We do see obesity on the rise. We are seeing more, obviously, environmental pollutants than we've ever seen before. Climate change is on the rise, like more kind of, you know, some people are blaming like processed food, which I don't think there's a lot of good evidence to support that.

• 9:02Cara Santa Maria?

  But, but, you know, a lot of people are saying, we don't know, but we need to figure this out and we need to research this more. But let's now get down into the trends. So this is the bulk of the reporting here is based on an article that was published in JAMA Internal Medicine by a team out of Harvard and Brigham and Women's Hospital, which is affiliated with Harvard and then Dell Medical School in Austin, Texas. And so they wrote a special communication entitled, "The Rise in Early Onset Cancer in the U.S. Population: More Apparent Than Real." So right there, that gives a little bit away. And they're saying that these eight cancers with the fastest rising incidence,

• 9:44Cara Santa Maria?

  the ones that I mentioned previously, they, they seem to have doubled in incidence since 1992. But what hasn't gone up? So more people are being diagnosed, but what are more people not doing?

• 9:58Speaker 03

  Death rate.

• 9:59Cara Santa Maria?

  Dying. Yeah. And so they argue because the incidence rate has increased. But the death rate has stayed flat. This is probably a diagnostic issue more than anything else. More things are being uncovered, but that doesn't necessarily mean that these cancers were deadly or even dangerous. Now, there are people who are still counter arguing with that within the, you know, population of experts saying, well, we also have better treatment than we ever had before. So of course mortality is not going to rise in lockstep with incidence because as we're finding more cancers, we're also getting better at people not dying from cancer. And there, I, there is an argument to be said there.

• 10:42Cara Santa Maria?

  That's why this is really, really complicated. But here's an example they discussed in the write up in the New York Times. They said, for example, colorectal deaths are up by 0.5% a year, but their incidence is increasing by 2%. So there's a mismatch there. Whereas endometrial cancer is in lockstep. We're actually seeing a 2% increase in both the incidence rate and the death rate. So it's, it's very likely the case that we can't lump all these eight cancers together either. We might be seeing different things happening with these different cancers. But one of the big questions is, and, and this is a question that a lot of oncologists are asking, should we be doing the screenings that we're doing as intensely, especially

• 11:26Cara Santa Maria?

  since we're using CT, ultrasound and MRIs that are increasingly more sensitive? We're using them more frequently. We're doing a lot of blood tests and we're finding a lot of cancers via happenstance that previously were not part of routine cancer screening. They say in this article that there are cancers that will spontaneously go away. There are cancers that will start growing and then just stop and never become a problem. There are a lot of early, early stage cancers that are never symptomatic. And I remember, and I don't know if you guys have ever heard this, but when my dad got prostate cancer, and he had pretty early stage prostate cancer was, so he was able to undergo, you know, aggressive treatment, but he was, you know, he was, I think in

• 12:11Cara Santa Maria?

  his early seventies when he had the, the treatment. So it may not even be considered aggressive. Early on, catch it before it's spread. There doesn't appear to any, be any risk. But I remember his physician said to him at the time, a lot of people will not die from prostate cancer. Some will, but a lot won't. But I will tell you that a lot of people who die will have prostate cancer on autopsy. Does that make sense to you guys?

• 12:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, but so does that mean we should continue to screen at the levels we have been screening or we are over screening?

• 12:41Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, I think my, I don't think that's the, either of those questions is the conclusion based on what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that in people my father's age, a lot of men have prostate cancer and they will die from something else first because it's so slow growing. But there are other people who will get prostate cancer. It will grow very quickly and it will be the cause of a lot of disability and pain and potentially death. And the problem is right now, we don't know. We just don't know who is going to have a cancer that grows really quickly and who is going to have a cancer that actually never causes them a problem.

• 13:18Speaker 03

  Is family history a determinant there?

• 13:20Cara Santa Maria?

  Hugely, yeah. But the thing is, you almost have to set that aside because people who have heavy family histories are already getting screened usually.

• 13:27Speaker 03

  I see.

• 13:28Cara Santa Maria?

  The recommendation is to screen those individuals. So, so now there's this question, right? Are we at this tipping point with diagnostic medicine where an asymptomatic patient who has a small abnormality that has no, you know, previously identified clinical relevance, something is caught on a screen, we might go in and biopsy it, we might end up doing aggressive treatment on this patient that can be painful, that can cause disability. And should we have done that? Would this patient, because there's no way to know after the fact, right? There's a huge bias. After the fact, the cancer might be gone. Well, is it gone because of the treatment or is it become because it was going to go away anyway? Or because it wasn't ever going to grow?

• 14:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:11Cara Santa Maria?

  And so this is a, this is a big, I think, conundrum in clinical oncology right now. We are seeing certain physicians, I mean, really respected physicians. Timothy Rebick is an epidemiologist and geneticist at Dana Farber, which is a, you know, really reputable cancer center and a co-chair of the American Association of Cancer Research and, or of the conference of the American Association of Cancer Research. And he said something very interesting's going on here and it's not good. Uh, this is very, and another doctor, uh, who is the chief medical officer at the American Society of Clinical oncology, that's Dr. Julie Grallo, I think is how you pronounce it. She said, "The surge in cases is of grave concern. I'm saying this is real and it is dangerous," or I'm sorry, "and it is serious and we need to understand why."

• 14:56Cara Santa Maria?

  But then you have other researchers saying, "I don't want to treat a patient that doesn't need to be treated." And I am really concerned about the level of screening that we're doing right now and the level of cancers that we're finding, that they may lead to over-treatment. We have examples of when this happened in the past. Steve, you remember when PSA tests came on the scene?

• 15:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's been a huge, you know, first they did them and prostate cancer incidents jumped because now we're testing or screening for it. Then they decided, "We're screening for it too much, doing unnecessary procedures, let's stop doing it." And then the incidents plummeted because they stopped doing this screening test. You know, again, in asymptomatic individuals.

• 15:40Cara Santa Maria?

  And that's the thing, during that time, a lot of men had their prostates taken out and had to undergo some treatments that probably really affected their quality of lives and maybe they wouldn't have needed to.

• 15:50Speaker 02

  You know, the burden of actual prostate cancer increased. So now they kind of found a middle ground, I think.

• 15:57Cara Santa Maria?

  Middle ground, exactly.

• 15:58Speaker 02

  So it's again, it's something you gotta tweak, you gotta find the sweet spot. It's all, again, risk versus benefit, right? So if you screen too much, you end up causing more harm than good. You find cases that are too benign, that don't need to be treated, and you end up causing unnecessary procedures. If you don't screen enough, you miss early treatable serious illness, you know, that then progresses. So there's always those lines cross at some point, you always look hunting for that point.

• 16:24Cara Santa Maria?

  The question is, where is that sweet spot? And I think, I think one of the ways to approach this that I didn't really think about, I mean, I guess I thought about it, but not in this clear of a way until after I read up on this, is that you've got sort of that, you know, under-screening, over-screening question. You've got that incidence versus, you know, mortality question. But you've also got the question of individual patients and epidemiological population.

• 16:53Cara Santa Maria?

  Wide measurements. And I think that is a question that we're really juggling with here. Right. Because as an individual, I can tell you, you find a cancer in my body, I want it out of me.

• 17:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:06Cara Santa Maria?

  Right. And like, there's a screening test available to me that I could find something early. I want that. But at the popular, and it's so hard for an individual to think at a population level. Because they know that at the population level, any measure we're talking about means some people died. And so it's, it's where is that balance between the two, right? Between what is best for the everyone without leaving out the few. But also, we have to remember when it comes to risk and benefit, it's not just about a surgery you might not have needed. Some chemos can cause other cancers, right? Radiation is not without its risks. Cancer treatment, it can be very aggressive and it is 100% necessary when it is 100% necessary.

• 17:50Cara Santa Maria?

  But it if, if it is not necessary, I do not want to undergo chemotherapy or radiation. And that's the question. And I think we don't really know the answer yet of that line in the sand of when it's necessary and when it's not. And that's what we're trying to figure out.

• 18:06Speaker 02

  Right. But it's just good to be thoughtful about it.

• 18:08Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, absolutely. And that's where things, Evan, like family history, genetic testing. You know, there are a lot of other parts of the algorithm that you can bring into play. But what we don't want to do is cast such a wide net that we pick up something and then say, oh, look at this thing we picked up that we never would have picked up before. Just to be safe, let's do a pretty aggressive treatment that could have negative consequences downstream for somebody's health and wellness.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  Okay, thanks, Kara.

• 18:37Cara Santa Maria?

  Yep.

• 18:38Speaker 02

  Jay, so tell me about this study into how humans are adapting to modern life.

• 18:43Jay Novella?

  Steve, let me ask you a question. How attached are you to your toilet? I'm not attached to it at the moment, yeah. But it's something you like, right?

• 18:52Bob Novella?

  I would, I would find life without it challenging.

• 18:57Jay Novella?

  Alright, alright, so obviously I'm kidding, but the question is not totally irrelevant. A better question is, how much do you guys think the modern world is, you know, relatively healthy for humans?

• 19:08Cara Santa Maria?

  Ooh.

• 19:08Speaker 03

  Compared to?

• 19:09Jay Novella?

  The not-modern world.

• 19:10Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, that's a hard question. Like, in some ways, it's way more healthy because we have modern medicine and, you know, we have all these tools that allows us to be healthier.

• 19:16Speaker 03

  A hundred years ago, yeah, right.

• 19:17Cara Santa Maria?

  But in other ways, it's way worse because we have climate change and pollution and, you know, all these forever chemicals and...

• 19:23Bob Novella?

  And vaccines. And vaccines are gonna be kind of illegal before too long.

• 19:27Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, there's stuff in our blood right now that didn't exist 50 years ago.

• 19:30Speaker 03

  A lot of plastic, that's for sure.

• 19:32Jay Novella?

  Yeah, the one that got me is the plastic, the microplastic in my brain. That blows my mind. Alright, let's get into this.

• 19:40Speaker 03

  And your vibrating brain.

• 19:41Jay Novella?

  So, we will, we'll look back on human history and, you know, people lived in the natural world, among natural materials and features, landscapes that were shaped by geology or the climate and ecology. They were using tools made out of stone, wood, and bone. You know, their shelters were super simple, probably temporary, and of course, dependent on whatever local materials that they could find. An analysis by evolutionary anthropologist Colin Shaw at the University of Zurich and Daniel Longwin at Lottborough University, they asked a very simple, but, you know, I think a lot of people who read this found it to be a little uncomfortable, the question

• 20:24Jay Novella?

  that they, they put up, they said, "Have humans changed their habits so fast that our biology can't keep up with it? And is that now eroding our ability to survive and reproduce over the long run?" And that is a question that, you know, I think is a legitimate one to ask because there's lots of things that we can point at that, you know, potentially could be doing us harm. And what, what is that harm? And what does that harm, you know, long-term? What would it do? So, they, the authors created a timeline and they said, you know, about five million years ago, hominins lived in environments... Like I was saying before, it made of soil, plants, animals, water, rock. And even after the agricultural revolution, people were still mostly in, you know, what we'd call these classic natural settings.

• 21:08Jay Novella?

  But when industrialization started in the late 1700s, and then particularly this crazy rapid acceleration in the mid, you know, 20th century, human environments have obviously changed and they've changed significantly. Now we have fossil fuel use, we have industrial agriculture, we have plastics and microplastics, we have explosive urban growth. And what we've done is we've turned much of the planet into what they call an industrial continuum, where even like the most natural places now contain microplastic fragments and other pollutants. By 2018, more than half of humanity already lives in cities, right? If you look at, if you look at where the population centers are, it's in the cities,

• 21:53Jay Novella?

  of course. And people in other countries like the United States and Canada and the United Kingdom, they, they spend about 93% of their time indoors. That, that's really, when you hear that number and you compare it to your lifestyle, I'm sure a lot of you out there would say, nope, that's not me. I'm sure a lot of you guys out there would say, yeah, that sounds about right. How much time do you guys spend outdoors when you have a full-time job and you have kids and you have to make dinner and you have to get them up in the morning? And then on weekends, you're super busy because you got to visit people that, you know, like, are we really spending as much time outdoors as we should be?

• 22:27Speaker 03

  I try so hard to get outside because of those things, Jay. I make a concerted effort to do it. As opposed to being locked in my office at a desk, especially during long hours, I try to get outside as much as possible.

• 22:39Jay Novella?

  Well, of course, I mean, I think inherently, most people would just agree with that. Yeah, I should be out more, I should get some sunlight, you know, I need some exercise. But that's not what's happening. And it's not just happening in the country that you happen to live in, it's happening pretty much everywhere. So in effect, we've become these indoor urban creatures, right? And you know, we, our daily experience is utterly dominated by artificial materials, artificial light, industrial noises, you know, all these things, you know, interacting with our computers. And a big one here, guys, is just polluted air. Like, you know, most houses that, that we all live in, like, you know, the air inside of our houses isn't a great thing to breathe in.

• 23:22Jay Novella?

  Like, you need to air out your house, you know, if you have a gas stove, you're definitely putting a lot of pollutants into the air that could cause you harm. You know, there's just a lot of reasons why living in the structures that we do and in the environments that we've constructed over the last, you know, 100 years, they're not healthy for us. As hokey as this sounds, you know, we truly did evolve to live in outdoor environments, not in the indoor environments that we are completely surrounded by today. And the core of the paper asks whether this new environment that I'm talking about is undermining these four biological systems that directly support evolutionary fitness. And here's what they had to say about this. They said reproductive function comes first.

• 24:06Jay Novella?

  So global fertility is falling and social factors clearly matter here. The authors point to a long list of industrial contaminants that plausibly impair the ability to produce an abundance of offspring. Air pollution is associated with lower sperm concentration and total sperm number. You know, they have poor mobility. There's a higher risk of pregnancy loss. Pesticides and herbicides can reduce sperm quality and testosterone and are linked to preterm birth and birth defects. Microplastics and nanoplastics accumulate in tissue, triggering oxidative stress, DNA damage, epigenetic changes that can harm male and female fertility. Endocrine disrupting chemicals like phthalates, right?

• 24:50Jay Novella?

  These are chemicals that are added to plastics to make them flexible and softer or durable. And some flame retardants interfere with hormone systems that regulate reproduction. So all of these things in combination with each other, you know, there is a measurable effect and, and lots of scientists are finding, you know, finding that they're, they're seeing trends now that weren't there or weren't as obvious, you know, going back even 30 years. The authors, they tie all of this to two mechanisms. One is reduced exposure to the diverse environmental microbes that help train our immune systems. The other is direct damage from air, noise, and light pollution that disrupts immune cell function and circadian rhythms, right?

• 25:32Jay Novella?

  So it seems to be that they've found some legitimate evidence and patterns here that we can no longer ignore and we have to pay some real consideration to it.

• 25:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, it depends on where you live. I mean, if you live in a city that has bad air quality, going outside is not going to help. It's not going to really do much for you. I mean, there's a lot of speculation mixed in here. Like, not everything they're talking about is like, there has been any clear research showing that there's a specific health effect. The ones that I think are the most solid, I mean, clearly, air pollution has a massive negative health effect. Especially for respiratory illnesses, but for other illnesses as well. And that's, again, that's one of the biggest things about burning fossil fuels. I mean, it costs, in the US alone, I think it figures like $100 million a year in increased

• 26:24Speaker 02

  healthcare costs, just from, you know, again, burning fossil fuels itself. The light is interesting as well, because, you know, I treat a lot of patients with poor sleep. In modern life, a lot of people, they go all day with the same light level right up to the moment they want to go to sleep.

• 26:40Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 26:41Speaker 02

  Right? Because you have bright lights on, you're looking at electronic devices, you know, and they never get any variability in their light level exposure. It's like, well, we did not evolve in that environment. You know, you should get outside during the day, and then turn down the lights, get some dim light at nighttime, let your brain know that it's night.

• 27:04Jay Novella?

  Steve, I think I told you guys this. You know, I was in a physical with my doctor a few years ago, and he's like, you know, after dinner, you got, you know, you're six o'clock, seven o'clock, you turn the lights down, you sit down, you start to slow down, you relax and everything. And as I'm listening to him, I'm like, you know, I'm shaking my head, like, okay, sounds great. And I go, hey, I have two kids. They are bouncing off the walls. After bedtime, not even like, it's not like, hey, guys, it's bedtime, go to bed. Yeah. And I get to like, hang out with my wife for 20 minutes before we both pass out from exhaustion. Like, there is no winding down in our culture, Steve.

• 27:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:44Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, but there should be.

• 27:45Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 27:46Speaker 03

  Well, right, there's supposed to be.

• 27:47Jay Novella?

  Of course.

• 27:47Speaker 03

  If they were working on the farm all day, they'd be exhausted.

• 27:50Jay Novella?

  But that's the problem. That's the problem. It's a systemic problem. You can't just fix it.

• 27:55Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, no, you can't. And like, you have to make, like, there are cultural issues that you're not going to change, right? If you go out to dinner at night, maybe if you're lucky and you have money and you're in a nice restaurant, the lights are going to be low. But if you are at McDonald's for dinner, because that's what you can afford, you're going to be in like fluorescent lighting. Like, there are like systemic things. But like, in my home, my lights are dim after the sun sets. I never have bright lights on in my house after the sunset.

• 28:24Jay Novella?

  Yeah, it's a good idea.

• 28:25Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 28:25Speaker 03

  I try to dim them as well here.

• 28:27Cara Santa Maria?

  It's partially because we know it's good for us, but partially because it feels cozier.

• 28:31Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 28:31Cara Santa Maria?

  I don't ever have the big light on. You know, the big light is evil. It's always like, the little lights around the house. And that's the thing, I'm not saying turning on dimmer lights is going to cure any of your kids, like, you know, ADHD or bouncing off the walls, but like, starting to kind of curate or foster a calmer environment at home. Your kids might calm down a little. They may not, but it can't hurt.

• 28:59Jay Novella?

  Yeah, but you know, they're, they crave screens and, you know, that stimulation as well. And kids are, you, I can as an adult, control myself to a certain degree, but kids, you know, not so much. And I just think, you know, we're training them to, you know, generationally, like, they're, they're screen users.

• 29:19Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 29:19Jay Novella?

  It's becoming a part of the way they interact with reality.

• 29:22Cara Santa Maria?

  That's a hard thing, too, because that's like a foot down, like, learn good at-home hygiene now. Because you're not going to get it in your school training or your work training.

• 29:32Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 29:32Cara Santa Maria?

  You're only going to get it at home. You know, rules about when the screens are off. And, you know, all my screens are preloaded with, with software that darkens them over the course of the night and turns them more and more red.

• 29:45Jay Novella?

  But I think part of it is, there's only so much you could do, as you're saying, on an individual level. Part of it's also just being.

• 29:51Speaker 02

  You know, politically active advocating for better air quality laws, better light pollution laws, better, you know, decibel level noise laws, things like that to make the environment a little bit more wholesome, a little bit less stressful with with less pollution. That's really the only big solution here. There's only so much you could do around the edges.

• 30:13Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, and so much of this is a function of income inequality, too. Like, study after study shows that there's more tree cover in rich neighborhoods.

• 30:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:22Cara Santa Maria?

  And just like when you're when you're poorer, you're more inner city, it's more hot, hot concrete, you know, that acts as like a heat sink and and also like bounces it back to you and less tree cover. And it's just, yeah, it's devastating.

• 30:38Speaker 02

  All right. Thanks, Jay.

• 30:39Jay Novella?

  Yep.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  Well, everyone, we're going to take a quick break from our show to talk about one of our sponsors this week, Aura Frames.

• 30:45Jay Novella?

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• 31:05Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. And this is what's so great about it. Let's say your mom's not very tech savvy. It doesn't matter because you can preload photos before it even ships and then you can keep adding them from anywhere. And also, it comes in a really beautiful premium gift box with no price tag. So it's just the best gift possible.

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• 31:54Speaker 02

  Okay, guys, let's get back to the show. So guys, I want to talk to you about mRNA vaccines for COVID, the story that just doesn't go away.

• 32:03Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, my God, we're still talking about this?

• 32:05Speaker 02

  We're still talking about this. And this is still an issue. Like, this is still on social media and politically, there is this is still a big issue and there are still a lot of people acting as if there's some controversy over the mRNA vaccines. It's amazing, you know, what's, there's been, again, there's been an anti-vaccine movement as long as there's been vaccines. But what COVID did, in the United States at least, was turn the anti-vaccine movement, because it used to be very bipartisan. We track a lot of these issues, like which ones are left, which ones are right, which ones are bipartisan. And sort of both sides kind of had their reasons. Where, you know, if you were an anti-vaxxer and you happen to be liberal, you would find liberal reasons to be anti-vaxxer and, and same thing with conservative.

• 32:49Speaker 02

  But with COVID, it really made it into a right-wing issue, you know? And it had, and so it became very political. It became very, you know, left-right. And so that, and we're still dealing with that. So, what I want to talk about is a new study. This comes out of France, it was just published. And it, so this is a post-marketing, like what we would call in the US a phase four study, right? So this, very quickly, you know, when we look at the safety and efficacy of treatments like vaccines, you do the basic science research, right? The pre-clinical stuff, animal studies, et cetera.

• 33:31Speaker 02

  And then you do preliminary studies, like just, you want to look at healthy individuals just to, to screen for any potential risk. Then you do some preliminary efficacy trials. Those are phase two. Then you do, if everything's looking fine, you do the definitive phase three trials, which are the ones that you use to get FDA approval, right? But then there is something that's, there's a post-marketing phase four trial, where you want to look at, at what's happening out in the real world, you know, once the drug is, is getting used. And that's important because while the double-blind placebo-controlled trial is absolutely necessary to establish efficacy, it also has its weakness, right?

• 34:16Speaker 02

  That, that kind of, the problem with that kind of research, one, it's hard to get big, big numbers of people. You know, like, doing a big study could be hundreds of, of, of people, maybe a thousand, two thousand, that's a massive clinical trial, right? But even then, if you, let's say you do a clinical trial, three or four clinical trials that cumulatively have a thousand subjects in it, that would be, that's way more than enough to get, like, FDA approval. But what if there's a side effect that's one in 10,000 people, right? Chances are you're going to miss it in a study only looking at 1,000 people. But also, the controlled trials are very controlled, right? So you're controlling for as many confounding factors as possible,

• 35:01Speaker 02

  and you're randomizing, you know, people to either treatment or not being treated. And therefore, you're, there's a lot of inclusionary and exclusionary criteria. So you want to look at, you know, fairly uncomplicated group of people to make sure that nothing is going to interfere with the signal that you're looking for. So that means it may not be, it may be difficult to then generalize from that study to the general population. So that's why it's good to, you know, there's a complementary type of research where now you're looking, it's observational, but you could look at tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people out in the real world, where there are factors that don't come in with a clinical trial.

• 35:45Speaker 02

  Like, are people not taking the drug because it's too expensive? Or are they deciding that it's too inconvenient? Or whatever, there are things that can come into play that usually we control for in a controlled clinical trial. All right, so this is basically a post-marketing phase four trial of the mRNA, any mRNA vaccine for COVID-19, based upon France's public health database, right? So one of the advantages of, you know, having socialized medicine or living in, you know, one of those countries is that they have these complete databases. So this is the French National Health Data System, right? They looked for the French population aged 18 to 59, who were alive on November 1st, 2021,

• 36:30Speaker 02

  and they divided them into two groups. People who had received at least one dose of an mRNA vaccine, COVID-19 vaccine, and those who had not. Guess how many people were included in this study?

• 36:42Speaker 03

  All of them. Gosh.

• 36:43Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I would mean hundreds of thousands.

• 36:45Speaker 02

  28 million.

• 36:47Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh my god.

• 36:48Speaker 03

  That would be robust.

• 36:50Speaker 02

  This is a robust study, 28-plus million people. 22 million plus vaccinated, 5.9 million unvaccinated individuals. So that's statistically massively robust, right? That's the advantage of this kind of observational study.

• 37:06Speaker 02

  Again, the downside is it's not controlled, right? People are deciding whether or not to get vaccinated. You're not randomizing them to be vaccinated or not.

• 37:15Cara Santa Maria?

  So this is the whole population of, not the whole population, but this is a huge sample of what country?

• 37:19Speaker 02

  France.

• 37:20Cara Santa Maria?

  I'm surprised there are that many unvaccinated people.

• 37:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a lot. But this is over that period of time, you know? So there are what we call, right, confounding factors. Confounding factors are things other than the variables that you're interested in that could be affecting the outcome. So they controlled for the obvious ones, the ones that you have to control for in a study like this. Otherwise, it's worthless, right? So one is socio-demographic characteristics. You can't compare 20-year-old healthy people to 60-year-old unhealthy people, right? That would not be a meaningful comparison. So they controlled for the, for like age, sex, race, all that stuff, and then also 41 comorbidities. Do you have diabetes or do you not have diabetes? Are you obese or are you not obese? So they controlled for all of that. Now, that doesn't mean that we're not still missing something.

• 38:07Speaker 02

  And the thing that's the hardest to control for, what would you guys think in a study like this? People who choose to get vaccinated versus people who chose not to get vaccinated? What do you think might be a confounding factor? That's not a comorbidity, meaning it's not a disease and it's not a demographic feature, but that's something that's more behavioral that might be influencing the outcome.

• 38:30Cara Santa Maria?

  Why they chose to get?

• 38:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean.

• 38:32Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, why they chose not to? Was it a religious exemption? Was it a?

• 38:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's something called the healthy user effect, right? Which means that people who choose to do this are also choosing other healthy things to do.

• 38:46Cara Santa Maria?

  Of course, yeah, we see that a lot.

• 38:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. Lifestyle. It's a generic healthy user effect here. So people, there's something different about people who chose to get vaccinated and chose not to get vaccinated in terms of their, how well they take care of themselves, right?

• 39:00Cara Santa Maria?

  Yep.

• 39:00Speaker 02

  People who choose to get vaccinated may just basically take better care of themselves than people who did not. Again, we don't know that, but I'm saying that's certainly a possibility here that there's no way to really control for. But given that, you know, they did the best job they could to control for comorbidities. They wanted to see what was, was there any difference in mortality over a four-year period? So this is the longest duration observational study now, and also it's just a very massive one. So what they found, unsurprisingly, they found that in the vaccinated group, over that

• 39:38Speaker 02

  four-year period, they were 74% less likely to die from severe COVID-19 than the unvaccinated group.

• 39:47Cara Santa Maria?

  Wow.

• 39:48Speaker 02

  That is probably due to a direct protective effect of the vaccine, right? That is the most plausible, because that's due to a specific cause, and there's a mechanism there. The vaccine would protect you from that cause, and we know from other research that the vaccine does prevent, reduce your risk of dying from COVID, right? That's the primary benefit of the vaccine.

• 40:08Cara Santa Maria?

  It was designed to do that, and it's been proven to do that in other settings.

• 40:12Speaker 02

  This further supports that. You were 74% less likely to die from COVID if you were vaccinated than unvaccinated. But they also found, over that four-year period, the vaccinated group had a 25% lower risk of all-cause mortality.

• 40:27Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I could see that.

• 40:28Speaker 02

  Even when you eliminate death from COVID. So that's not all just not dying from COVID.

• 40:34Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, but they didn't eliminate COVID infection, did they? Because if somebody gets sick from COVID, and then they later die of pneumonia, you know?

• 40:44Speaker 02

  Correct. Yeah, so one of the possible causes here, you, I think, hit upon probably the most likely one. So one is what I've said already, there could be a healthy user effect going on here.

• 40:56Cara Santa Maria?

  Sure, sure, sure. There are healthier people, yeah.

• 40:59Speaker 02

  Two is having less severe COVID, even if you don't die from COVID, right? Having severe COVID that you don't die from may set you up for long COVID or for other infections or for having a heart attack more, you know, at a younger age, whatever. So it's possible that severe COVID causes other ways of increasing your mortality other than dying from COVID, right?

• 41:22Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 41:23Speaker 02

  But there also may be other protective effects of getting vaccinated that are go beyond COVID. That's another possibility.

• 41:30Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, like we know that one of the common colds is caused by a coronavirus. Like, I wonder if there's any transferable protection to other coronaviruses?

• 41:40Speaker 02

  So that's one possibility that may be providing just other crossover protection. You know, probably marginal, but it might be in the numbers there. But also, there was a recent study that we wrote about on science-based medicine where they found that the COVID vaccines actually made cancer treatment more effective. It actually boosts your immune system against cancer. Again, that's preliminary evidence. We can't say that that's absolutely established at this point. But it raises that possible mechanism there. There may be, again, other benefits to your immune system that even go beyond infections, right? That might even be helping things like cancer.

• 42:21Speaker 02

  So, yeah, it might, quote-unquote, "sensitize" cancer to immunotherapy. So we'll see, you know, if that pans out. But that's another, you know, potential mechanism. And there may be other benefits as well. But the thing is, we just can't say about that group, that 25% lower risk of all cars mortality. There's lots of possibilities. And this data, because it's not controlled, does not allow for us to disentangle, you know, those potential effects. But the researchers didn't really even, you know, focus on that because they were, the purpose of the study was to see was the COVID vaccine safe and effective? So what they concluded was it was effective in preventing death from COVID-19,

• 43:06Speaker 02

  and there's no evidence of any increased risk, right? So unlike what many of the anti-vaxxers are saying. Or they're trying to argue that like people are more likely to die if they get vaccinated. This showed that that was not the case, you know, there was a 25% lower mortality, all cause mortality, if you were vaccinated. So that just shows you there's no increase. We can't say the vaccine caused the decrease. It was associated with a decrease, but it was not, it doesn't appear to be any signal in here that there was any increase in mortality from the vaccine.

• 43:43Cara Santa Maria?

  And I'm curious, my guess is that they didn't look at this. And my guess is that even if they did look at this, they wouldn't find it. But was there an attempt to see if in the vaccinated group, there was an increased risk of something, anything? Like, did the vaccinated group have more of some negative health consequence than the unvaccinated?

• 44:05Speaker 02

  They did look at that because they looked at all, they looked at, you know.

• 44:07Cara Santa Maria?

  They looked at all causes, but what if they?

• 44:10Speaker 02

  They did look at specific causes as well.

• 44:12Cara Santa Maria?

  That's good.

• 44:12Speaker 02

  There was no signal there as well. So we're seeing that over and over again, even for the things that we know the COVID vaccine caused.

• 44:20Cara Santa Maria?

  COVID causes it more.

• 44:23Speaker 02

  COVID causes it more, that's exactly correct. So like, we know that, like, okay, there was some cases of myocarditis, you know? Yeah, it was cardiomy... Yeah, some people got inflammation of the heart with, after the vaccine. It's still very rare, 100, 1 in 100,000 to 1 in 1 million, something like that. But the thing is, your risk of having that was much higher from COVID if you were not vaccinated. So again, the risk versus benefit still massively favors the vaccine. So, and that makes sense too, when you think about it, anything that the vaccine would cause, the infection would cause worse, you know, having a, an actual infection raging throughout your body rather than a controlled immune response specifically targeted, you know, against, you know, one of the proteins.

• 45:08Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, and from a statistical perspective now, Steve, I feel like you can no longer be one of these denialists who claims, yeah, but the risk is even lower if I just don't get vaccinated or get COVID. But I don't know if statistically, anybody has not had COVID. You know what I mean? Like, at this point, it's so prevalent.

• 45:29Speaker 02

  Right.

• 45:29Cara Santa Maria?

  That you have, if you've never had COVID, either you just didn't detect it, or you have some sort of genetic anomaly that allowed you to like... I don't know, be immune to it because most people at this point have been exposed to COVID.

• 45:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, even if you've had a subclinical infection, it's hard to, you know, what are you, living in the woods? Like, if you were never exposed to it.

• 45:48Cara Santa Maria?

  So there's not even an argument there. It's like, there's basically only two groups. Either you're vaccinated and exposed, or you're unvaccinated and exposed.

• 45:56Speaker 02

  Basically.

• 45:57Cara Santa Maria?

  You can't be unvaccinated and outrun this disease.

• 46:00Speaker 02

  At this point, it's very unlikely.

• 46:02Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 46:02Speaker 02

  It's, I mean, there's probably some people out there, but it's not many, not enough to worry about.

• 46:07Cara Santa Maria?

  But not statistically important. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 46:09Speaker 02

  Not statistically important. Good way to put it. Here's the other, one last thing, observation here, because the only real wiggle room for anti-vaxxers here is to say, well, it could be all the healthy user effect, right? I mean, they, you really can't argue about the reduced death from COVID. That's, I think, is pretty solid in this study. But the other 25% lower all-cause mortality. But, okay, you're right. It could all be the healthy user effect.

• 46:36Cara Santa Maria?

  But why are they healthy then?

• 46:37Speaker 02

  But that's the thing. Why are they healthier? Why are the people who, that's not a good argument for being an anti-vaxxer. You're admitting that anti-vaxxers are, make bad health choices overall. That's, that's a pretty weak defense.

• 46:51Cara Santa Maria?

  Right, because it's probably the case across all vaccines.

• 46:55Speaker 02

  Yes, right, right, right.

• 46:57Bob Novella?

  That's just kind of awesome right there.

• 46:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's the other thing, that people who get the COVID vaccine are probably more likely to be compliant with other vaccines.

• 47:05Jay Novella?

  And that's the exact type of logic they won't understand.

• 47:08Speaker 02

  Right.

• 47:11Speaker 02

  Because the healthy user effect equals the unhealthy, non-user effect.

• 47:15Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, that's the other part of that equation.

• 47:18Bob Novella?

  Yep. Hey, it's not dark when the lights go on. Hey.

• 47:25Speaker 02

  All right, Bob, tell us how cosmic rays grounded aircraft.

• 47:31Bob Novella?

  Yeah, this is really cool. 6,000, yes, 6,000 aircraft, about half the global A320 Airbus family fleet, had to be held on the ground for an urgent software fix because of, get this, space radiation. Of course, I dove into this like I gotta get more details on this. So this started the day before Halloween, which is, I guess, what? One, two, three, October 30th. This year, this year, when an Airbus A320 suddenly dropped in altitude while flying from Cancun, which is in Mexico, to Newark, New Jersey, in the United States. Some people, one to three people, it's unclear how many, had head lacerations. And at least 15 people were taken to the hospital after the flight,

• 48:15Bob Novella?

  which had to land in Tampa, I believe, with non-life threatening injuries. That's in Florida. No major injuries, but they still felt, somebody felt it was prudent for these 15 people to go to the hospital. After this, so Airbus fairly quickly determined that, that one of the Airbus's computers that controlled the movable, the movable parts of the wings, right, and then the tail caused the problem, right? They further concluded that the malfunction was likely triggered by cosmic radiation that often interacts with our atmosphere. So that's, that's what they concluded fairly quickly, I think. So let's see, then the next big point here was that the European Union's Aviation Safety Agency,

• 48:55Bob Novella?

  which is ESA, EASA, released an emergency airworthiness directive on November 28th of 2025 this year, an emergency airworthiness directive. So here's a quote from that directive. An Airbus A320 airplane recently experienced an uncommanded and limited pitch down event. A limited pitch down event. The autopilot remained engaged throughout the event with a brief and limited loss of altitude, and the rest of the flight was uneventful. Preliminary technical assessment done by Airbus identified a malfunction of the affected ELAC as possible contributing factor. Now, ELAC stands for Elevator Aileron Computer.

• 49:39Bob Novella?

  So that's the computer that controls the ailerons. Now, if you, if you look at, if you like looking out of the window when flying, like me, you've probably seen ailerons many times. They're those hinged flaps on the trailing edge of an airplane's wing, right? So the computer that controls them had a problem, and that's what caused this. Was their conclusion as they as they're now saying, or they said in the emergency airworth and is directive, the directive concluded, uh, well, at least my collection of quotes concludes here with this condition, if not corrected, could lead in the worst case scenario to an uncommanded elevator movement that may result in exceeding the aircraft's structural capability. That's not good. Clearly not good. And that's, that's really saying something though, isn't it? Cause modern commercial aircraft, they have amazing structural capability. I've seen,

• 50:24Bob Novella?

  you know, like, granted, it was many years ago, but it was in a 747 with its wings flapping like a bird essentially, under like the extreme stress. Oh my gosh. And it was still holding together. So I got to imagine that they, you know, structurally, they're, they're pretty, pretty solid, but man, this thing could fail, given a worst case scenario here. The United States FAA or Federal Aviation Administration, they also released a similarly worded emergency airworth and is directive. So luckily though, the delays and the canceled flights weren't as horrible as they could have been. Some airports had, had basically negligible impact. Other ones had definitely more than negligible. There were flight cancellations and delays and stuff, but it could have been far, far,

• 51:07Bob Novella?

  far worse than that. And I think this is mainly due to the fact that about over 5,000 of those planes, all they needed was just a software update and that can happen pretty fast. I think so many planes were completed within, within hours. I wasn't sure how, how many planes they had done in just a few hours, but yeah, this, this is can be done fairly quick as evidenced by the fact that there weren't that many delays and cancellations. The rest of the planes though, close to a thousand, they used older ELAX, you know, these computers and they had, they have to be manually replaced. And I'm not even sure if that's even done at this point, but that's obviously much more time consuming to manually

• 51:49Bob Novella?

  replace these, these specific computers. So how did this happen? The most likely culprit here is almost certainly cosmic rays. Uh, we remember those guys, right?

• 51:59Speaker 02

  Oh yeah.

• 52:00Bob Novella?

  Uh, oh wait, no, okay. Wait, let me, let me explain them again. They're bumping. Cosmic rays, cosmic rays are energetic particles. emitted by the sun and they're also extremely energetic particles emitted from supernovae and even more energetic events that are out there. These cosmic rays aren't rays, but are for the most part accelerated cores of atoms that have had their electrons stripped away, right? So essentially, these are atomic cores. For the most part, protons, but you can also get, you know, multi-particle nuclear atomic cores as well. But that's the 99 percenter, you know, is these cores. And primarily protons in that group. So the atmosphere protects us from these, but when they hit our atmosphere, some stuff happens, right?

• 52:44Bob Novella?

  And it's fascinating what happens. So these cosmic rays come flying in at, you know, near the speed of light, and they obliterate atoms. So which two atoms in the atmosphere do you think are hit the most? Nitrogen. And? Oxygen. Very good. Well done. Well done, guys. Want to know how we knew that? No, I'm just ecstatic that you're paying attention to that question. We got you, Bob. This obliteration creates secondary energetic particles that rain downwards. And one website was telling me that some of them go back out into space. So if that's true, some of them go down, some of them go back out into space, but we're concerned about what's going down here, right?

• 53:26Bob Novella?

  So these secondary energetic particles rain downwards, and they're further interacting with the atmosphere, they're interacting with each other, some of these are also decaying into other particles. So all of this creates a zoo of secondary and even tertiary generations of particles and electromagnetic radiation that this initial impact from the energetic cosmic rays causes when it hits the upper atmosphere, okay? They call this an air shower. This is an air shower, and it continues until the atmosphere absorbs all of it, right? Because you're losing energy as you're going through the atmosphere and stages, right, creating these first generation of particles, second generation of particles, third generation. So you're losing energy as it's being absorbed.

• 54:09Bob Novella?

  So sometimes, it's fully absorbed by the atmosphere, but other times, some of these secondary particles and tertiary or whatever.

• 54:17Bob Novella?

  Make it to the ground. And I think muons are, is the one that I'm aware of that actually makes it to the ground. But it's still very safe to fly through all this crazy crap that's happening in the atmosphere with this air shower. It's still safe to fly through this. In fact, at cruising altitude, you are basically constantly flying through overlapping air showers. So you're going through it the entire time, as far as I could tell. You're going through these air showers. It's just a normal part of the radiation background. You know, not a huge deal. Even crews that have been studied, these are, you know, crews that, that's their job. They're on a plane at high altitude for hours and hours, like every day, right?

• 54:59Bob Novella?

  That's how it works. And when they have been studied, typically the increase in lifetime risk of cancer is just a little bit. It's, you know, it's, you know, it's just not, not that big of a deal. I mean, sure, any increase sucks, but it's, it's a minimal, it's a minimal increase, right? So it's not like you're just being irradiated, you know, horribly every time you're flying in a plane. It's, it's pretty small. Okay. But the thing is, with airline altitudes, where these commercial air jets fly, it also happens to be near the sweet spot for some of these secondary particles, particularly like neutrons. That's where you're going to run into a lot, a lot of neutrons at these, at these airline altitudes. Maybe a little bit higher than what's typical, but there's still, there's a high neutron

• 55:41Bob Novella?

  flux where airlines, you know, consistently travel, you know, when they're cruising. And it's because of this high neutron flux from these air showers that cause many scientists to think that neutrons are likely the ultimate culprit here, that the secondary particle, part of the air shower created by the cosmic rays. It's the neutrons. And that's what they think caused the problem with this, this Airbus that left from Cancun. Now, so ultimately, though, ultimately, ultimately, a neutron is likely to have caused what they say is, they describe it as a single event upset. And that showed up as a bit flip in a critical memory cell. So that's, that's the, the bottom line right there. But so let's unpack that a little bit. You guys have heard of

• 56:26Bob Novella?

  Bit flips, right? That's when a binary digit in a computer memory sometimes unexpectedly flips from a 1 to a 0 or a 0 to a 1. And of course, that could be very problematic, especially if it's a critical bit, right? In the critical part of your hardware. So yeah, so that's a bit flip. And I'm not even sure if we even mentioned that more than once or twice on this show over the years. But it's a common term that a lot of people are aware of. But now, a bit flip, though, can be caused by many different things. It could be radiation, but it could also be electrical noise. It can be manufacturing defects. So it's kind of a generic term for this bit flip that could be caused by many different things.

• 57:08Bob Novella?

  But when experts describe what happened here in this scenario with the Airbus, they typically will use a better term, and that's a single event upset or a single event error. This term is used by engineers that work with radiation effects, right? Their job is to work with radiation and the effects of radiation. They will often use that term of a single event upset or a single event error. But also, you hear that term a lot when experts, anyway, when experts are discussing avionics reliability, you'll hear about this. So a single event upset means specifically that a charge from radiation caused the bit flip, right? So when you hear "single event upset," you immediately think, "Oh, it's radiation that caused it."

• 57:52Bob Novella?

  It's not electrical noise. It's not a manufacturing defect. This is specifically caused by radiation. So now, if you're paying attention, and I know there's at least a few of you out there that actually are, you might be thinking, "How can a neutron deposit a charge if it's neutral?" And I was thinking, "Well, wait a second. How does this work?" It does this by smashing into an atom, right? You have the cosmic ray.

• 58:20Bob Novella?

  Causes secondary particles, creates neutrons that smash into the atom of the computer in the silicon, right? In the chip. So it crashes into an atom in the computer and that collision releases charged particles like protons. And it's that charge. It's the secondary charge caused by the neutron hitting part of the computer. That's, it's that charge that gets dumped into this tiny region of the computer chip. And that causes the single event upset, which causes the bit flip.

• 58:48Speaker 03

  I see.

• 58:49Bob Novella?

  As our dad used to say, Jane and Steve, you follow me?

• 58:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:53Bob Novella?

  You follow me there?

• 58:54Speaker 03

  So we need planes that can filter out the neutrons.

• 58:58Bob Novella?

  Yes. Filter neutrons, baby.

• 59:00Speaker 03

  Neutron filter.

• 59:01Bob Novella?

  So, all right, you guys, you guys remember, and of course, this news item made me think of the time Rebecca was trying to make a state show with us and her flight got canceled due to a volcano, which at the time, at the time I said was an awesome reason to miss your flight because of a volcano. So getting, getting your flight canceled stinks, but I'd love to be able to say in this case, yep, my flight got canceled because of cosmic rays. I think that might be even better than a volcano, but I hope, I still hope it never happens.

• 59:28Speaker 02

  They're both kinda cool.

• 59:29Bob Novella?

  Yes, both are.

• 59:30Speaker 03

  As long as it's not your flight.

• 59:32Bob Novella?

  Yeah, I might actually, yeah, I don't want a head laceration in a plane, but the big takeaway though from that is if you're seated on a plane, buckle up.

• 59:40Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 59:41Bob Novella?

  Buckle up, cause you ever see those videos of people basically flying up into the ceiling because of a wicked turbulence or maybe, or maybe a cosmic ray induced elevation loss? Yeah, that, that doesn't look like fun, so always buckle up, please.

• 59:54Speaker 02

  All right, thanks, Bob. All right, Evan, tell us about Simon Cowell's claim that he is aging backwards.

• 1:00:01Bob Novella?

  What?

• 1:00:02Speaker 03

  The curious case of Simon Cowell.

• 1:00:05Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, Benjamin Button disease.

• 1:00:07Speaker 03

  Nice. Um, boy, if, does anyone not know who Simon Cowell is? I guess I have to give you two sentences on him. A British television producer and talent show judge, best known for his, well, sharp and often blunt critiques on shows like American Idol, The X Factor, and Britain's Got Talent. He's pretty widely recognized as one of the most influential figures in modern reality TV and the music industry. So, he's, he's big time. Simon Cowell is 66 years old and he claims he is aging backwards. Hmm. Now, this was, I read this over at an AOL article, AOL online,

• 1:00:48Speaker 03

  where Cal attributes his rejuvenation to a treatment he's been getting at a high-end wellness clinic.

• 1:00:55Cara Santa Maria?

  Ugh.

• 1:00:56Speaker 03

  He will not specify exactly which clinic that might be.

• 1:00:59Speaker 02

  I just threw up in my mouth.

• 1:01:03Speaker 03

  The procedure involves removing his blood, quote, "cleansing it," and then putting it back into his body.

• 1:01:11Cara Santa Maria?

  Nope.

• 1:01:14Speaker 03

  Well, let me read the quote. Let me, let me say it. Should I affect an accent? No, I won't. I'll save the embarrassment. "I go to this place, this wellness clinic, where they actually take your blood, they rinse it, they filter it, and then they put it back in your body. Then you do all these tests, and they tell you your age. So I've actually aged backwards by eating better, more exercise, less stress, and certain supplements," he adds.

• 1:01:39Cara Santa Maria?

  He said they, they rinse it? They rinse your blood?

• 1:01:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, that stuck out to me, too.

• 1:01:44Speaker 03

  Right, and, and, oh, gosh. So, okay, according to the celebrities with their anti-aging hacks, I mean, my gosh, how many of these do we really need? But they happen, and they happen with high-profile people like this. Blood removal, what's this all about? What exactly is he describing? Well, Simon doesn't name the exact procedure, but based on how it's described, you know, blood being taken out, filtered, and re-infused, it is likely he is referring to apheresis or one of its wellness-branded derivatives. Apheresis, that is, well, it's not new, it's not mysterious, it's a legitimate medical procedure

• 1:02:28Speaker 03

  that is used for very specific conditions, including removing harmful antibodies in autoimmune diseases, treating certain blood disorders, or removing excess cholesterol in people with familial hypercholesterolemia.

• 1:02:45Speaker 03

  Right, so too much cholesterol that you otherwise can't get rid of.

• 1:02:48Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, but they're not just rinsing the blood.

• 1:02:50Speaker 03

  No, no, no. And this is where, so the first thing that came to my mind is like, is this a form of dialysis? Because isn't that really what dialysis is? But dialysis and apheresis are two different things. I looked. But in any case, that's, this is how he, this is how Cal describes it. Right? Take the blood, take the blood, circulate it outside the body, you pass it through a machine that separates plasma from the blood cells. It removes whatever targeted components, you know, your doctors are going after, and then you return the remaining blood to the patient.

• 1:03:19Cara Santa Maria?

  But they're probably doing literally nothing at this clinic. They're probably just taking out his blood and putting it right back in it.

• 1:03:24Speaker 03

  I would think so.

• 1:03:25Speaker 02

  They could be, but even if they are doing what they're saying they're doing, it's all bullshit, right? So they're just, they're oxygenating it, which is ridiculous because your blood has the maximum amount of oxygen it can possibly have. That, you know what I mean? Like, when it gets exposed to oxygen, it absorbs up to its maximal capacity to absorb oxygen. And then they're exposing it to ozone, which is-

• 1:03:46Cara Santa Maria?

  That's not good.

• 1:03:47Speaker 02

  Right, which is supposed to induce oxidative stress.

• 1:03:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, you don't want that.

• 1:03:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, but they say, yeah, but that's, it's like hormesis, right? It's, it'll make your body defend itself from oxidative stress.

• 1:03:58Cara Santa Maria?

  You don't want to pump your blood full of free radicals. That's a terrible idea.

• 1:04:02Speaker 02

  And the filtering it, like, you know, what, what are they filtering it of? You know, if your kidneys are working, you don't need your blood filter.

• 1:04:09Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, and here's the thing, like, it's not just that it's like, oh, you don't need it because everything works. It's, it's harmful to take out too many minerals. It's harmful.

• 1:04:20Speaker 02

  Not a risk-free procedure.

• 1:04:22Bob Novella?

  No, and the risks that are there are a little scary. They're, you know, it's like, this could be bad for, like, organ failure type stuff.

• 1:04:28Cara Santa Maria?

  For sure, because your blood has the right amount of, like, salt and the right pH and the right amount of water. You go messing with somebody's osmolarity or their, you know, pH, like, you can kill them.

• 1:04:40Speaker 02

  It also could be taking out proteins. So when we do, like, this kind of feresis, you have to put back albumin, right? Because, and you're taking out all the antibodies. That's the main, primary reason why we use this kind of, I don't know if they're doing that kind of feresis, but if they, if they are filtering out the proteins, that would suppress your immune system, right? You wouldn't want to do that.

• 1:05:02Cara Santa Maria?

  That's why I think they're just taking his blood out and putting it right back in him.

• 1:05:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, it might be.

• 1:05:06Cara Santa Maria?

  And they're going, it's better. We waved a magnet over it.

• 1:05:09Bob Novella?

  But I think it's all bullshit, too. I think they're just saying stuff.

• 1:05:12Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, but I mean, physically, he's watching his blood go into a tube and then come back in. So it's literally like they're just taking his blood out to turn around and put it back inside of him.

• 1:05:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:24Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:05:24Cara Santa Maria?

  And even that is not without risk. You guys, I get iron infusions because I'm anemic. I got a blood clot from an iron infusion, like, and it's likely that it wasn't the iron itself. Just the physical act of getting an IV place. Like, don't, I'm not saying be scared of getting an IV. Like, if you need an IV, get an IV, but don't get one if you don't need one.

• 1:05:45Speaker 03

  But Kara, he claims it's reversing his aging, though.

• 1:05:50Speaker 03

  Because they're taking, because they're giving him tests that tell him that.

• 1:05:54Cara Santa Maria?

  Tests that tell him, look how healthy you look.

• 1:05:56Speaker 03

  You're 66, but you have whatever metabolism or whatever markers of a 50-year-old person.

• 1:06:01Bob Novella?

  Well, this quote, though, but this quote in isolation here actually caught my attention. This is, this is the quote from the article. It's, he says, Evan, you, it says, you do all these tests and they tell you your age. So I've actually aged backwards by eating better, more exercise, and less stress. And of course, any, and certain supplements. But wait a second, yes, that would actually work. By, by less stress, more exercise, and eating better. Yes, you will, by many measures, be aging backwards because that's what you should be goddamn doing anyway.

• 1:06:32Cara Santa Maria?

  No, it's like your lucky charms. Yeah, with a complete, whatever.

• 1:06:37Speaker 03

  Celtic charms, part of a nutritious breakfast when taken with part of a, when taken with a nutritious breakfast. Right.

• 1:06:44Bob Novella?

  Exactly. So forget all the crazy shit. Just eat better, exercise, and reduce your stress. And that will, that will do more than almost anything else you can possibly do.

• 1:06:53Cara Santa Maria?

  So he's paying for potential risk of, you know, an injection, an IV puncture site. And, you know, contamination, because he's not doing this in a hospital. And, and I mean, those risks exist anyway. So he's paying a lot of money for potential risk. And for someone to literally say, ooh, looky, your output is that you are, you have a blood age of 50. Like, that's like.

• 1:07:20Speaker 02

  That's bullshit too, yeah.

• 1:07:21Cara Santa Maria?

  A Ouija board or something.

• 1:07:23Speaker 03

  I was thinking one of those booths where the, where the, there's a statue of a, you know, a fortune teller and they spit out a card to tell you, "Oh, the, the, the dummy told me my fortune."

• 1:07:34Cara Santa Maria?

  So stupid.

• 1:07:35Speaker 03

  It's ridiculous, but look, this is a, we've, we've seen this before. There's a lot of what? Like billionaires that go through these kinds of procedures and stuff. So it's a very trendy, high-end, wealthy person fad kind of thing that sounds good.

• 1:07:50Speaker 02

  If you have money to burn and you're afraid because you're old, you are prime target for this kind of thing.

• 1:07:56Cara Santa Maria?

  But if you're gonna get your blood taken out of you, at least get like the blood of, you know, the youth put back into you. Like, come on.

• 1:08:03Speaker 03

  And then you start getting some-

• 1:08:04Speaker 02

  Some people are doing that.

• 1:08:05Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:08:06Cara Santa Maria?

  I know, I know.

• 1:08:07Jay Novella?

  Wasn't there some interesting test results from that? From that? I mean, I'm not kidding.

• 1:08:12Cara Santa Maria?

  I'm saying-

• 1:08:12Speaker 03

  Mice, mice results.

• 1:08:14Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it may not, it may or may not work, but at least there's like some plausible reasons it could. This is just straight up hokum.

• 1:08:20Speaker 03

  Where does the myth come from? Part of the hype comes from, uh, parabiosis studies in mice where young and old mice share a blood circulation and some experiments showed partial rejuvenation effects in the older mice.

• 1:08:33Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I'm not saying it works. I'm just saying if you're gonna go through the process, get some baby mouse blood and put it in.

• 1:08:40Speaker 02

  Baby mouse blood.

• 1:08:41Speaker 03

  But they said there's even problems with the mice studies that don't even, you know, I mean, please, before you even start to talk about humans with this stuff.

• 1:08:49Speaker 02

  You'd have more luck getting Borg nanoprobes in future.

• 1:08:52Cara Santa Maria?

  Do that then instead. Come on, rich people. Let's get more creative than this.

• 1:08:55Speaker 03

  At least, right? Something that lights up and is flashy.

• 1:09:01Speaker 02

  Well, everyone, we're gonna take a quick break from our show to talk about one of our sponsors this week, Quince.

• 1:09:05Jay Novella?

  Guys, we've talked about Quince many times. In my opinion, with my experience with them, they are an awesome brand. They have great clothes, but that's not what I'm gonna tell you about right now. Real quick, this is a very reputable company with awesome customer service. My wife, uh, I bought my wife a pair of Quince earrings. She lost one of them. She contacted Quince and they sent her a replacement pair. She had to send back the one and they sent her back- The whole thing. Who does that in 2025? What an awesome company.

• 1:09:34Cara Santa Maria?

  Quince does that. And what time of year is it right now? It's the holiday season, of course. So not just Jay's wife's earrings, but down jackets, wool coats, leather styles. We're talking quality, quality, like the same quality as luxury brands, but really it's a fraction of the price because they cut out that middleman. There are no traditional markups.

• 1:09:56Bob Novella?

  Get your wardrobe sorted and your gift list handled with Quince. Don't wait. Go to quince.com/sgu for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada, too. That's Q U I N C E dot com slash S G U. Free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash S G U.

• 1:10:17Jay Novella?

  All right, guys, let's get back to the show. All right, Jay, it's who's that noisy time. All right, guys. Last week I played this noisy.

• 1:10:52Jay Novella?

  What do you think?

• 1:10:52Speaker 03

  Yes, I have a guess. I think it is the audio representation of the air showers that Bob was talking about on board an airplane. Thank you.

• 1:11:02Cara Santa Maria?

  It just sounds like a creepy soundtrack to like a Steven Soderbergh film or something.

• 1:11:07Jay Novella?

  That's legit.

• 1:11:08Cara Santa Maria?

  You know, like, it's like, ooh, it's like creepy walking down a hallway.

• 1:11:11Jay Novella?

  But what makes that noise?

• 1:11:12Speaker 03

  Liminal spaces, Kara, you know?

• 1:11:14Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, like a, like a didgeridoo?

• 1:11:17Jay Novella?

  You're so cute.

• 1:11:20Jay Novella?

  No, you could, I bet you, you could get something kind of like that with enough effects. You could get something similar to that. Not completely, but yeah, I can see that. All right. Well, a lot of people guessed. A listener named Matt Soskin said it's a water powered organ and definitely not a bird. Yeah, this is, there is no bird that makes that noise. We all have to establish that amongst ourselves. It's not a water powered organ. And now I want to hear what one of those sounds like, but that's definitely not it. Andy Barrett wrote in and said, "Hey Jay, Andy from Cheshire in the UK here. Second time guessing, hopefully better than the first. I believe this is the sound of lightning being captured on the surface of Mars."

• 1:12:02Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:12:03Jay Novella?

  That's not correct, but now that-

• 1:12:04Speaker 03

  That's cool. He brought that up, Jay, I think, because there's recent footage captured by one of the rovers of lightning strikes, striking the ground on Mars. It was pretty darn cool.

• 1:12:14Jay Novella?

  Yeah, I read about that too. Yeah. It's a good guess, but not correct. Cooper Parrish wrote in and said, "Howdy, I think we're hearing elevator hoist ropes being played by someone in the machine room or shaft."

• 1:12:26Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, weird.

• 1:12:27Jay Novella?

  Yeah, so-

• 1:12:28Speaker 03

  Shaft.

• 1:12:29Cara Santa Maria?

  Seems like a dangerous instrument.

• 1:12:30Jay Novella?

  Steel cables are under tension and you can vibrate them and they can get that echoey sound in there and it's quite a bit of space to reverberate. That's a really, really interesting and fun guess, but you are not correct. A listener named Stephen Badham wrote in and said, "I think this is a bowed metal plate being played in a reverberation chamber. Sometimes these sounds are used in soundscapes for theater or in movies to create a creepy atmosphere." This was a close guess, not completely there. And then we will move on to, you know, a couple of winners. A listener named Matthew Bush was the first one to guess correctly. He said, "Hi folks, I think this week's noisy is a large orchestral gong or tamtam being bowed by a percussionist."

• 1:13:12Jay Novella?

  He's mostly correct. And we have another listener named Ben Romney who wrote in, "Hey guys, love your show. You bring sanity and reason to an increasingly insane world. Keep up the good work. I think I've heard this week's noisy from a video circulating online. It sounds like the 60-inch Sean Seto gong, in this case, played by the amazing skill of Bear Love Flumy." So Matthew guessed first, and it was a really good guess. He was a little bit off because it's not being bowed, it's being hammered by like a gong hammer. So Ben did get it completely correct. Let's see. So this is a 60-inch Sean Seto gong. Like I said, there's a woman playing it who's wearing a black shirt, and she has the word "gong" in large

• 1:13:52Jay Novella?

  print on her t-shirt, which is pretty funny. Let me play it for you again. Now, this isn't like someone smashing it with the hammer, right? This is someone who's like rubbing it, kind of. It's a very, very large gong.

• 1:14:18Jay Novella?

  How cool is that?

• 1:14:20Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 1:14:21Jay Novella?

  Very cool.

• 1:14:22Speaker 02

  For the record, Jay, if you exposed a lyrebird to that sound, they could make that sound.

• 1:14:27Jay Novella?

  Do you think so?

• 1:14:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do.

• 1:14:28Jay Novella?

  They don't have the hardware to make that bassy vibe.

• 1:14:33Speaker 02

  I don't know. It's amazing what they could do.

• 1:14:35Jay Novella?

  We'll have to find one of those birds, Steve, and we'll see what we could do. Alright, so this noisy was sent in by me, and I'm going to play for you immediately.

• 1:15:01Jay Novella?

  If you think you know what this week's noisy is, or you heard something cool, email me at [email protected]. Steve?

• 1:15:09Speaker 02

  Jay?

• 1:15:10Jay Novella?

  We have tickets still available for our show in Seattle, right? We'll be in Seattle, Washington. This will be on the January 10th. We're going to be doing a private show. This is a live podcast recording with all five of us there, and George Robb. And if you care, Ian will also be there, but he won't be performing. He'll be working, which is him performing, I guess, in a way. Anyway, we'll be doing a private show. Plus, this is a three-hour show, so we do a live recording of the show, and then for at least an hour, mixed in, we do other fun things with the audience. If you've been to one, you know what we... different types of things that we do, but no two shows are the same. We just keep changing it up.

• 1:15:51Jay Novella?

  And also that night, this is also on January 10th, we will be doing a Skeptical Extravaganza Stage Show. This is our show where we have a theme in this show, which is, "You cannot trust your senses." And we will show you all the ways that you cannot trust your senses. It's also very fun, lots of laughter, lots of crazy stuff going on, hosted by George Robb. If you're interested in either of these, you can go to theskepticsguy.org. There's buttons on there for those shows. We also have shows that are going to happen in Wisconsin. So if you're interested, we'll be in Madison, Wisconsin on May 15, 16.

• 1:16:31Jay Novella?

  So go to the website.

• 1:16:33Speaker 02

  So Jay, people are asking about Australia next year. I guess the tickets are not up yet? They're not on the website yet?

• 1:16:40Jay Novella?

  They will be up probably within the next few days. Ian and I are working with the web developer for the Australian Skeptics and we're finalizing everything.

• 1:16:49Speaker 02

  Okay, but it is official. So we will be in LA on July 18th, 2026, for an extravaganza and private show. Then we'll be in Sydney, Australia, July 22nd, 2026, for an extravaganza. And then Nauticon, Australia, July 23rd to 25th. And then we'll be in Christchurch, New Zealand, on July 30th, for an extravaganza. And then for the New Zealand Skeptical Conference, on July 31st and August 1st.

• 1:17:21Jay Novella?

  Cool.

• 1:17:22Speaker 02

  Right. But, and those tickets will be up sometime.

• 1:17:25Jay Novella?

  Soon.

• 1:17:25Speaker 02

  They're getting there.

• 1:17:26Jay Novella?

  They're coming.

• 1:17:27Speaker 02

  They're coming. Alright, so is Christmas.

• 1:17:29Jay Novella?

  With Christmas coming.

• 1:17:32Cara Santa Maria?

  There it is.

• 1:17:33Speaker 02

  Alright, let's do a couple of questions and emails. So I was corrected by a few people on the pronunciation of Ralph Fiennes.

• 1:17:43Cara Santa Maria?

  You just did it wrong again.

• 1:17:45Speaker 02

  His name is spelt R-A-L-P-H, right?

• 1:17:48Speaker 03

  That's Ralph.

• 1:17:50Cara Santa Maria?

  It's Rafe.

• 1:17:50Speaker 02

  But it's pronounced in the Old English way, Rafe.

• 1:17:54Jay Novella?

  Yeah, according to who, though?

• 1:17:55Cara Santa Maria?

  According to him.

• 1:17:56Speaker 02

  According to him. Although he said he kinda gave up correcting people because it's a lost cause, because people are pronouncing it the way it's spelled.

• 1:18:04Speaker 03

  What'd you expect?

• 1:18:05Speaker 02

  But the Old English pronunciation is Rafe. So his name is Rafe Fiennes, which is interesting because I always either thought he was Ray Fiennes

• 1:18:16Jay Novella?

  Right.

• 1:18:16Speaker 02

  or Ralph Fiennes. And I think for a long time, until now, really, I didn't realize that I was remembering both versions of his name, but just at different times. Like, I don't think about him that often. And sometimes he's Ray Fiennes, sometimes he's Ralph Fiennes. And I don't really remember.

• 1:18:34Jay Novella?

  Steve, the only two people on the planet...

• 1:18:36Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, both times you're wrong.

• 1:18:38Jay Novella?

  The only two people on the planet calling him Rafe is himself and his mom.

• 1:18:41Cara Santa Maria?

  That's not true. Everyone calls him Rafe Fiennes.

• 1:18:43Jay Novella?

  Bullshit.

• 1:18:44Speaker 03

  Who's everyone?

• 1:18:45Cara Santa Maria?

  Every reporter, every time you hear anybody talk about him on TV.

• 1:18:49Speaker 03

  Well, sure, if we had to talk to him.

• 1:18:51Speaker 02

  Wait, so is his last name Eines?

• 1:18:56Speaker 02

  Is it Rafe Eyns?

• 1:18:57Cara Santa Maria?

  No, this is the problem with having a name that ends in F and a name that starts in F.

• 1:19:02Speaker 02

  But Kara, how many of those people in their heads are saying Ray Fines? And this sounds like Ray Fines.

• 1:19:10Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:11Speaker 03

  His middle name is FiFi.

• 1:19:12Speaker 02

  There's no difference between Ray Fines and Rafe and Ray Fines. There's no difference.

• 1:19:17Bob Novella?

  You know, if he wants to be called Rafe, that's fine. My question is,

• 1:19:20Speaker 03

  That's a good one, Bob.

• 1:19:22Bob Novella?

  Who, is this something that his parents gave him? Ralph Rafe? Or did he, did he like sting, come, come to the, you know, the conclusion during his life? I want to be called, this, my name is now pronounced this way.

• 1:19:35Speaker 03

  Bob is,

• 1:19:36Bob Novella?

  What is it? Did he come up with it or his parents?

• 1:19:38Speaker 03

  Bob is basically asking who's to blame here?

• 1:19:40Bob Novella?

  Well, yeah, you could think of it, you could think of it that way. But I'm, I'm just curious, like where that came from.

• 1:19:45Speaker 03

  His middle name is FiFi, by the way.

• 1:19:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:19:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Right.

• 1:19:51Speaker 03

  Well, it's not as bad as what? That guy named Nvidia, right?

• 1:19:55Speaker 02

  Well, that's the other thing, Kara.

• 1:19:56Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh my God.

• 1:19:57Speaker 02

  When you were doing it, I'm like, it's Nvidia, but I just didn't bother correcting you, but.

• 1:20:01Cara Santa Maria?

  And in my head, like, I'll tell you this, I knew this, like, I knew that I had done a story on them previously. And I was like, I think I pronounced that name wrong. I need to look it up.

• 1:20:12Speaker 02

  How did you pronounce it wrong?

• 1:20:13Cara Santa Maria?

  I said Navidia, because it's spelled N V I D I A. So I was like, okay, Navidia. And then I looked it up and it was like, it's pronounced Nvidia. And I was like, Nvidia, Nvidia, Nvidia. So Navidia, like, and I don't, it's because if they want it to be pronounced Nvidia, they should spell it Nvidia.

• 1:20:35Bob Novella?

  Right, Rafe? Yeah.

• 1:20:36Cara Santa Maria?

  That's different. They just made this name up whole cloth. Rafe's parents just went back to the old way that that name was always said.

• 1:20:44Speaker 02

  I don't like any of it.

• 1:20:46Speaker 03

  That's all Simon is Bob for Jay.

• 1:20:48Cara Santa Maria?

  Here's the thing, here's the thing that's annoying.

• 1:20:51Speaker 02

  Shit, anyway, right? So, so you throw a name like Rafe at me? And his last name is Fines? What the hell, who, who thinks that this is gonna work out?

• 1:21:02Cara Santa Maria?

  But here's the thing, right? Like, there are names from other cultures and other languages that are hard for English speakers to pronounce, and that's fine.

• 1:21:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, but this is an English name.

• 1:21:14Cara Santa Maria?

  Yes, okay, but it's old English.

• 1:21:16Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 1:21:16Cara Santa Maria?

  It's not actually old English. But like, if you just make up a name, just spell it in a way that people aren't gonna have a hard time pronouncing it.

• 1:21:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:25Cara Santa Maria?

  Like, that's the annoying thing, because I looked it up, and apparently, Nvidia, which I'm gonna say N-N-V-I-D-A,

• 1:21:31Speaker 02

  Nvidia.

• 1:21:32Cara Santa Maria?

  is based on the Latin word invidia, which is spelled with a freaking I at the beginning.

• 1:21:37Speaker 02

  Oh, there you go.

• 1:21:38Cara Santa Maria?

  That's what they're basing it on.

• 1:21:39Speaker 03

  Oh, my god, that's funny.

• 1:21:41Cara Santa Maria?

  So just call your company Nvidia.

• 1:21:43Speaker 02

  No, it has to be N-V-I-D-A.

• 1:21:45Cara Santa Maria?

  Because that's not even the same thing.

• 1:21:47Speaker 02

  I don't like cutesy names. If you have to explain how your name is pronounced, that's a fail, in my opinion.

• 1:21:52Cara Santa Maria?

  And again, it's fine if it's because it's culturally, or, you know, like linguistically from something else going on. But if you're like, oh, if I capitalize this one letter, and then I hyphenate this thing, it's like Elon's kids. Like, nobody's ever gonna be, pronounce their names, right?

• 1:22:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, I agree with you. It's, it's, it gets to the point where it gets to be a little too much.

• 1:22:15Cara Santa Maria?

  It's annoying. And so, but it's fine that we got literally, okay, not literally, I'm exaggerating, but a million emails about this, that were all like,

• 1:22:24Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 1:22:24Cara Santa Maria?

  Kara, somebody needs to tell Kara that it's pronounced N-V-I-D-A. It's the most important tech company on the planet, and it's pronounced N-V-I-D-A.

• 1:22:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, but God, an email that said that, yes.

• 1:22:34Speaker 02

  Here's the thing. How come, when somebody has feedback for any of the guys, they say, Jay, this is the situation, or Bob, you made this mistake, and when it's Kara, they say, guys, tell Kara.

• 1:22:47Cara Santa Maria?

  Tell Kara, yeah.

• 1:22:49Speaker 02

  Why do they do that?

• 1:22:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Because my lady-

• 1:22:51Speaker 02

  It's so consistent, it's so-

• 1:22:52Jay Novella?

  Steve, that's because everybody knows that until Kara's been with us for 15 years, she won't get a direct email.

• 1:22:58Cara Santa Maria?

  That's, yeah, that's the most charitable. It's because my lady brain couldn't handle the responsibility of also being, here's the thing, when you guys email us, it goes to all of us.

• 1:23:08Speaker 02

  By the way.

• 1:23:09Cara Santa Maria?

  I read all of those emails about me in the third person.

• 1:23:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, don't write, don't write emails to all of us talking about Kara in the third person.

• 1:23:18Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, don't say tell her.

• 1:23:19Jay Novella?

  How about this, don't, don't write emails to any of us complaining about Kara. Because if you think.

• 1:23:25Speaker 03

  The names.

• 1:23:26Jay Novella?

  You know, it's like every once in a while on Reddit or whatever, I'm just like, oh my god.

• 1:23:31Cara Santa Maria?

  The life of a woman on the internet. But, but going back to the Nvidia thing. While I agree that it is a very important company.

• 1:23:39Jay Novella?

  Kara, shut the fuck up.

• 1:23:40Cara Santa Maria?

  And while I agree that it is important for us, whatever. It's, it's not a B to B company, like they do make consumer products, I hear you. But it's not a company that a lot of people, like they make things that go in things. Does that make sense?

• 1:23:56Speaker 02

  It's a part.

• 1:23:57Cara Santa Maria?

  It's a part, yeah, so unless you're like.

• 1:24:00Speaker 03

  A component.

• 1:24:00Cara Santa Maria?

  You know, building your own computer or you're involved.

• 1:24:03Speaker 02

  Which we do.

• 1:24:03Cara Santa Maria?

  Which you guys do, yeah, yeah. Or you're involved in the tech industry. And yes, I think increasingly we are gonna need to be aware of this company because it is, it is very important in the sector. I'll try my damnedest to get it right, but I'm sorry, every time I read the word, the word is screaming to be pronounced Nvidia.

• 1:24:20Speaker 03

  Do it, do it Kara, just.

• 1:24:22Cara Santa Maria?

  Isn't it?

• 1:24:23Speaker 03

  Fight the power.

• 1:24:24Cara Santa Maria?

  Look at that word and tell me, what does it look like?

• 1:24:26Speaker 02

  I think I heard the name before I saw it spelled, so I just never had a problem. Yeah, me too.

• 1:24:30Speaker 03

  It's uncomfortable not having a vowel between the N and the V, it just is.

• 1:24:34Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, so you wanna put one in there?

• 1:24:35Speaker 03

  Yes, throw one in.

• 1:24:36Cara Santa Maria?

  You wanna say Nvidia, not Nvidia.

• 1:24:38Speaker 02

  All right.

• 1:24:38Speaker 03

  Ask Gray Fines.

• 1:24:40Cara Santa Maria?

  Ask Gray Fines.

• 1:24:41Speaker 02

  We got another email, this one comes from Barry Appleman.

• 1:24:46Cara Santa Maria?

  I love that name Barry.

• 1:24:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, but Steve deliberately pronounced it.

• 1:24:50Speaker 02

  It could be Appelman, I don't know. It's A C P E L M A N.

• 1:24:54Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, like Dr. Spaceman in 30 Rock. Dr. Spaceman.

• 1:24:58Speaker 02

  But if I were Barry, I would be Appleman. All right.

• 1:25:01Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:25:02Speaker 02

  He writes, European Union negotiators reached a deal on new rules for gene editing to help farmers produce healthier animals and crops. The new rules exempt gene edited plants and animals from the blocks regulations covering genetically modified organisms because gene editing mimics the natural breeding process.

• 1:25:21Bob Novella?

  Yes.

• 1:25:22Speaker 02

  The law still needs to be formally approved with the European Parliament and the EU Council to take effect. Okay, so goes a little more detail there, we'll have that in the show notes, but yeah, this is true, I've been following this and I looked it up just to see what the update is.

• 1:25:35Bob Novella?

  That sounds awesome, right?

• 1:25:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, so they, they made a new designation called New Genomic Techniques, NGTs.

• 1:25:43Bob Novella?

  Ooh.

• 1:25:44Speaker 02

  And they're going to regulate them more like regular crops, not like GMO crops, because their GMO regulations are ridiculous and onerous. But they're saying, okay, so for things like, you know, CRISPR and other newer techniques, we'll just consider them not GMOs. They're genetic, they're new genomic techniques. It's gene editing, but not genetic modification. And what's the difference? The difference is while the GMOs make like significant changes to the, to the genes, like introducing new genes that couldn't happen with breeding, whereas the gene editing is making the kind of gene edits that could happen potentially with traditional breeding

• 1:26:29Speaker 02

  techniques.

• 1:26:30Bob Novella?

  Yeah, it's just like a faster version of traditional techniques, right?

• 1:26:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it's still, it's a distinction without a difference, in my opinion. They're splitting hairs.

• 1:26:38Cara Santa Maria?

  I hear you, but I, I, we've long made the distinction, I mean, this is what's always bothered me. I hear you if you want to say this is a transgenic organism versus a non-transgenic organism. Like, if you want to make that distinction in genetic research, fine, but like, we already have a way to make that distinction. This is a transgene, that's not, that doesn't have a transgene.

• 1:27:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I would argue that there's nothing inherently risky about, about putting a transgene into an organism.

• 1:27:08Cara Santa Maria?

  No, I agree.

• 1:27:09Speaker 02

  It's based on the, you know, this sort of essence, appeal to nature kind of nonsense, where it's like, oh, you know, a tomato gene is tomatoey and doesn't belong in a banana plant, whatever. It's like, they're all just genes.

• 1:27:21Cara Santa Maria?

  Which is like, every single fruit, not every single, but most of the fruits you're eating and vegetables you're eating have already been bred with not the same species.

• 1:27:29Speaker 02

  Right, and plants are all... Plants are gonna share seventy plus percent of their genes already. We share sixty percent of our genes with bananas. Humans do.

• 1:27:40Cara Santa Maria?

  And bacteria swapping DNA in and out of us all the time.

• 1:27:44Speaker 02

  So it's whatever, but the reason for this is pretty obvious because they realize that their onerous anti-GMO regulations are causing a competitive disadvantage for EU farmers. And, you know, there's lots of cool gene modifications coming down the pike that are necessary to, you know, increase production, adapt plants to a warming climate, et cetera, et cetera. And like, well, yeah, we have to find some way to allow these new gene-edited crops while still not looking like to the public like we're caving on GMOs. So this is their compromise they came up with, which is fine. But, you know, I still think it's like that they're making this pseudo-scientific distinction,

• 1:28:28Speaker 02

  splitting hairs between gene-edited and GMOs. But at least they're allowing, they're making the exceptions for, you know, the newer technologies, which basically obviates a lot of their anti-GMO regulations, which is good. All right, Evan.

• 1:28:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:28:46Speaker 02

  Evan, you've got a game for us called Who Said That?

• 1:28:49Speaker 03

  Uh, yes.

• 1:28:49Speaker 02

  We've played this before.

• 1:28:51Speaker 03

  We have played this before. Hey, Steve, is it too late to change the name of the game?

• 1:28:55Speaker 02

  No, to your game, call it whatever you want.

• 1:28:56Speaker 03

  The game is called Who Am I? Because when I told you the name earlier, I had forgotten what the name of the game was, and I went back and looked it up. Who am I?

• 1:29:05Speaker 02

  You're Evan Bernstein.

• 1:29:06Speaker 03

  Thank you, next one. Uh, in which I'm going to read a paragraph to you of somebody describing themselves, and you have to guess who that person is. The person could be real or fictitious, but definitely has something to do with science or skepticism, okay? So it's not like gonna be a baseball player, you know, something like that. Here's how it will work. I will start to read. Each of you, for each of these, are allowed a guess, one guess.

• 1:29:35Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:29:35Speaker 03

  If you know it, you will interrupt me by saying, "I know." I will stop reading where I am, and you will give your guess. I will tell you if you're right or wrong. If you're wrong, we keep going so that the other players can play. Does everyone understand the rules of this game?

• 1:29:50Cara Santa Maria?

  So we don't blurt out the answer, you're saying?

• 1:29:52Speaker 03

  Correct, do not blurt out the answer. I would like to hear an "I know," nice and simple, okay?

• 1:29:59Speaker 03

  Here we go. For most of my life, I've tried to make sense of a universe that refuses to give up its secrets easily. Singularities, the origins of time, and the strange fact that even a black hole isn't truly black if you look closely enough.

• 1:30:14Jay Novella?

  Carl Sagan.

• 1:30:15Cara Santa Maria?

  He broke the rules already.

• 1:30:17Speaker 03

  Jay gets minus one for the breaking the rule.

• 1:30:20Jay Novella?

  You said I have to interrupt you.

• 1:30:21Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, you interrupt by saying, "I know." You don't flirt out the answer.

• 1:30:24Jay Novella?

  Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I said.

• 1:30:26Speaker 03

  Jay, you're incorrect. I will continue to read.

• 1:30:30Jay Novella?

  I know.

• 1:30:31Speaker 03

  And you're out of this one.

• 1:30:32Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh.

• 1:30:33Speaker 03

  Steve? Can I guess? Yes. I think it's Stephen Hawking. It is Stephen Hawking. There we go. Yep.

• 1:30:40Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay.

• 1:30:41Speaker 03

  I'll read the rest of it. Through my voice eventually came the world through a synthetic companion that never slowed my pursuit of answering the biggest cosmological questions. I spent decades perched in a motorized wheelchair, moving through the lecture halls instead of galaxies, but always with the same mission: to show that the cosmos is not just the domain of mathematicians and physicists, but something everyone can understand, even in a brief history. How's that?

• 1:31:05Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, I get it, Evan. So like, the longer you talk, the more it gives it away.

• 1:31:09Speaker 03

  Yes, we'll have more. All right. Let's move on to the second one. I've spent my life listening to minds that behave a little differently. Patients who taste words hear colors.

• 1:31:21Cara Santa Maria?

  I know.

• 1:31:22Jay Novella?

  I know.

• 1:31:23Speaker 03

  Ah, it was Kara?

• 1:31:24Cara Santa Maria?

  Oliver Sacks.

• 1:31:25Speaker 03

  Oliver Sacks.

• 1:31:26Jay Novella?

  You were just after you did.

• 1:31:27Bob Novella?

  Beed by a nanosecond, Kara.

• 1:31:30Speaker 03

  Or lose any sense of their own body, yet still reveal something profound about what it means to be human. I've chronicled these neurological adventures in books that blend science with storytelling, whether following a drummer who keeps time despite amnesia, or a man who mistook one very unexpected thing for his wife's hat. When I wasn't writing, I was often on my motorcycle, I didn't know that, swimming long distances or diving into music, which I consider as diagnostic as any medical test. So, there you go. Oliver Sacks. Moving on.

• 1:32:05Speaker 03

  My life's work has revolved around understanding how the smallest forces in the universe can trigger outsized consequences. Gamma interactions, energy thresholds, cellular cascades. These were once purely academic curiosities until an unexpected accident tied my physiology to them in ways I'm still trying to unravel. Since then, I've kept to the margins, offering my expertise discreetly, careful to avoid stressors that could complicate things. Let's just say, I've learned that emotional equilibrium is not merely a state of mind, but a matter of public safety.

• 1:32:47Speaker 03

  I prefer calm, because the alternative can be overwhelmingly disruptive.

• 1:32:52Bob Novella?

  Could these be fantasy crap people?

• 1:32:55Speaker 03

  I did say, yes, that these could be either real or fictitious.

• 1:32:58Bob Novella?

  Alright.

• 1:32:59Speaker 03

  But having to do with science or skepticism.

• 1:33:01Bob Novella?

  Is that... or I'll take a guess I know.

• 1:33:04Speaker 03

  Go ahead, Steve.

• 1:33:05Bob Novella?

  Is that Bruce Banner?

• 1:33:06Speaker 03

  That is Bruce Banner, very good. Yeah, that was a tricky one. Gamma interactions.

• 1:33:11Bob Novella?

  Oh, Jesus.

• 1:33:12Speaker 03

  Careful to avoid stressors that could complicate things. Yeah, that was a tough one, but that was good. Well done.

• 1:33:20Cara Santa Maria?

  No, it wasn't. None of that would've helped me.

• 1:33:22Bob Novella?

  In hindsight, it's goddamn easy.

• 1:33:25Cara Santa Maria?

  Is it, Bob?

• 1:33:26Bob Novella?

  In hindsight.

• 1:33:29Speaker 03

  There are two more.

• 1:33:31Bob Novella?

  I always say hindsight's 2010.

• 1:33:32Speaker 03

  Here's the time to catch up, Bob. Two more. Most people come to me only after everyone else has failed, which is just the way I like it. Patterns hide inside symptoms, the way secrets hide in people, and I've made a career out of prying both open, usually while limping through the hospital with a cane in one hand.

• 1:33:51Bob Novella?

  I know.

• 1:33:52Speaker 03

  Bob?

• 1:33:53Bob Novella?

  House.

• 1:33:54Speaker 03

  Can I get a first name?

• 1:33:55Bob Novella?

  Dr. House is my answer. Dr. House.

• 1:34:01Speaker 03

  Dr. House, yes. Dr. House has a first name too, if you want full credit.

• 1:34:05Cara Santa Maria?

  Hugh Laurie.

• 1:34:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's the actor who portrayed Dr. House.

• 1:34:10Cara Santa Maria?

  Nah, it doesn't matter.

• 1:34:11Speaker 03

  And no one knows their first?

• 1:34:12Bob Novella?

  I don't know his first name.

• 1:34:13Speaker 03

  Alright, then Bob's gonna get it. Bob will get it.

• 1:34:17Bob Novella?

  Wait, wait, hold on a second. I got dinged for doing something wrong and Bob doesn't? Why?

• 1:34:22Speaker 03

  He didn't do anything wrong, he just gave a partial answer. He gave the last name.

• 1:34:26Bob Novella?

  That's wrong.

• 1:34:28Speaker 02

  It's funny, because when you first said it, I'm thinking, that's Sherlock Holmes.

• 1:34:31Cara Santa Maria?

  I was too.

• 1:34:32Speaker 02

  Then you did the medical thing, I'm like, no, it's the other guy who's supposed to be Sherlock Holmes, that Bob chimed in first.

• 1:34:39Bob Novella?

  I think, like in other game shows, I think that is plenty.

• 1:34:43Speaker 03

  Dr. Gregory House.

• 1:34:45Cara Santa Maria?

  It's not partial.

• 1:34:46Speaker 02

  I did not know that.

• 1:34:47Cara Santa Maria?

  I never knew that.

• 1:34:47Speaker 03

  No, didn't know Gregory House. Okay, well, Bob.

• 1:34:50Bob Novella?

  I think it was unreasonable to expect the first name.

• 1:34:54Speaker 02

  Just give it to him.

• 1:34:55Speaker 03

  Yes, I'm giving it to you, Bob.

• 1:34:57Bob Novella?

  I'm taking it, you don't have to give it.

• 1:35:01Speaker 03

  I'm not even gonna read the rest of it, I'm gonna go to the last one. Here we go, one more. "For years I wrestled with the heavens, convinced that the cosmos must be governed by elegant mathematical principles rather than perfect circles drawn..."

• 1:35:15Bob Novella?

  I know.

• 1:35:16Speaker 03

  Bob?

• 1:35:16Bob Novella?

  Is it Newton?

• 1:35:17Speaker 03

  It is not Newton.

• 1:35:18Bob Novella?

  No.

• 1:35:19Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:35:21Bob Novella?

  What the hell is his name? I think I know who it is now.

• 1:35:22Speaker 03

  Rather than perfect circles drawn by ancient authority. "Working with meticulous observations from my colleagues, I found myself chasing patterns in the wanderings of Mars until its path finally surrendered its secrets. The planets travel in stretched curves, not circles."

• 1:35:40Speaker 02

  Um, I know.

• 1:35:42Speaker 03

  Steve?

• 1:35:42Speaker 02

  Johannes Kepler.

• 1:35:43Speaker 03

  Johannes Kepler.

• 1:35:44Bob Novella?

  Yeah, Kepler, yes.

• 1:35:45Cara Santa Maria?

  Nice.

• 1:35:46Speaker 03

  Well done, well done. Good job, everyone, that was a lot of fun.

• 1:35:49Speaker 02

  That's good, I like how they get more and more obvious as you go along.

• 1:35:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, the reveal, yes. Peel back layers as we continue, so, well played, everyone. Jay, you played well, too.

• 1:36:01Speaker 02

  Hey, you know, I try.

• 1:36:05Speaker 02

  All right, well, let's go on with another game, Science or Fiction?

• 1:36:09Speaker 03

  Woo-hoo.

• 1:36:21Speaker 02

  Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake. And I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. We have a theme this week.

• 1:36:32Speaker 03

  It's a Hemi.

• 1:36:32Speaker 02

  Anyone have a guess as to what the theme is?

• 1:36:34Speaker 03

  Christmas.

• 1:36:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's gonna be, uh, I'll give you a couple of hints.

• 1:36:38Jay Novella?

  Reindeer.

• 1:36:39Speaker 02

  One is, I've been waiting years for this.

• 1:36:43Jay Novella?

  Hmm.

• 1:36:44Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 1:36:44Speaker 02

  And two is, which episode number is this?

• 1:36:49Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, gosh, I don't know.

• 1:36:50Speaker 03

  1,007.

• 1:36:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:36:53Speaker 03

  Eee, no, we're, huh.

• 1:36:55Speaker 02

  It's episode 1,066.

• 1:36:59Speaker 03

  Oh, 1066, the Battle of Hastings.

• 1:37:01Speaker 02

  Exactly. That's the theme.

• 1:37:03Speaker 03

  There we go. Battle of Hastings, everyone.

• 1:37:05Speaker 02

  1066.

• 1:37:06Cara Santa Maria?

  You've been waiting years for this?

• 1:37:08Speaker 02

  Well, I realized at some point, like, at some point, we're gonna have episode 1066. I have to make that the theme of science or fiction.

• 1:37:14Jay Novella?

  And Kara, this illustrates just how boring Steve is.

• 1:37:18Speaker 03

  No, no, no. Steve, go back to being a doctor, please.

• 1:37:20Bob Novella?

  For me, it was episode 666 that got me excited.

• 1:37:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, after that, what's the next big thing coming up? This is it. All right.

• 1:37:26Cara Santa Maria?

  Not in 100 years would this have flagged even the, okay. Battle of Hastings, sure, okay. Here we go.

• 1:37:34Speaker 02

  Okay, here we go.

• 1:37:36Speaker 03

  I know nothing about the Battle of Hastings, but.

• 1:37:39Speaker 02

  After the Norman conquest of 1066, French became the official language of England and remained so until 1362. Item number two, the decisive technology of the Battle of Hastings was the stirrup, used effectively by the Norman cavalry, but not yet in use by their Anglo-Saxon counterparts. And item number three, Halley's Comet appeared in the skies in 1066, and was thought to be a significant omen by both sides, and is even depicted in the famed Bayeux Tapestry depicting the Norman conquest. Evan, go first.

• 1:38:18Speaker 03

  Do I get credit for knowing that this was the topic, based on?

• 1:38:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, you get to go first.

• 1:38:24Speaker 03

  That counts as credit? Okay, I'll take it.

• 1:38:26Cara Santa Maria?

  It feels like a penalty.

• 1:38:28Speaker 03

  All right, so the first one, did French become the official language of England and remained until 1362?

• 1:38:36Speaker 03

  First of all, I don't definitively know the answers to any of these, so this is total guesswork. I am not drawing on any knowledge that I have. This one could be, you know, this is sort of the binary one, so this has a 50% chance, you know, in the sense of being the fiction. So statistically, in a sense, without knowing really this fact, this very well could be the fiction. Became the official language of England, did it? Did it really? I don't know. I have no recollection of it. I'm leaning towards that being the fiction. The second one about the technology, the Battle of Hastings, was the stirrup. Considered, well, yeah, technologies, it's decisive technology.

• 1:39:20Speaker 03

  You know, we think of the weapons that they use to define sort of the technology anytime there's a battle. But the stirrup could have definitely been something that may have made a difference here. So, you know, whereas my mind goes to armaments and stuff, this could wind up really being kind of the trick one that winds up being correct. And then the last one about Halley's Comet appearing in the skies and the tapestry. Halley's Comet has been depicted in art, in tapestries, in, you know, paintings and many other things. And across, you know, across many cultures, I believe, as well. Did it happen in 1066? Was it the Battle of Hastings? I think it is. I'm gonna go with my initial thought, saying French did not become the official language

• 1:40:05Speaker 03

  of England. That one's the fiction.

• 1:40:07Jay Novella?

  Okay, Jay. I'm gonna agree with Evan and say French did become the official language of England. No, he said that's the fiction, correct?

• 1:40:14Speaker 03

  I said that's the fiction.

• 1:40:15Jay Novella?

  I'm gonna agree with Evan that that is the fiction. Woo! Okay, Bob. Boom, just like that.

• 1:40:20Bob Novella?

  I believe that, uh, yeah, some crazy stuff happened back then. I think French did become the official language of England. It was a crazy, it was a crazy time. And let's see, the third one, Halley's Comet appeared in the skies in 1066. Um, I'm not sure of all the, the dates it appeared, but I think that's, that's true as well. The second one though, the stirrup as this, uh, this, uh, new invention. I think, I think there was something new that was used for the first time around that time, but I don't think it was the stirrup. So I'll say that that one is fiction.

• 1:40:56Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay. And Kara? Okay. So it's either that French was not the official language of England, which that one is so bizarre that I feel like that's probably science. No. Or that the stirrup was not the decisive technology of the Battle of Hastings, or that Halley's Comet did not actually appear in the skies and was not a significant omen and not depicted in a famous tapestry. I would think that if Halley's Comet did appear in the skies, it would be thought of as like a pretty big deal and they probably, there probably would be art. So it's really a question of did it actually appear? I think the other

• 1:41:38Cara Santa Maria?

  stuff seems reasonable enough. And then the stirrup one, I don't know, like Evan, I thought you were gonna pick this one because you were like, we usually think of it as like weapons. I think the decisive technology of any battle is whatever the weapons were. That's what I thought too. Yeah. Or maybe the defense, you know, like maybe a shield or something that would either kill more people or prevent more people from being killed. And yes, I guess there could be an argument that a stirrup would help people stay on their horses better and therefore be more effective killers, but.

• 1:42:09Bob Novella?

  Sure.

• 1:42:10Cara Santa Maria?

  I also, it's possible, but I also feel like that kind of technol, it's a loop. Like really? One side had it and the other side didn't? I feel like they could see it and go, that seems to be working. Let's make a bunch right now. Oh, wait. Oh, wait. We're dead now. True, but like, come on. I don't know. I feel like that one's the one that's bothered me because it's like, yeah, maybe the other side had some loops to, to put their feet in.

• 1:42:34Speaker 02

  So that's your fiction?

• 1:42:36Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I'm gonna go with Bob on that one.

• 1:42:37Speaker 03

  All right, Steve, before you do the reveal.

• 1:42:39Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:42:40Speaker 03

  If I'm wrong, if I'm wrong, I think the technol- if it wasn't the stirrup, I think, would the technology have been the longbow? Maybe, we'll find out.

• 1:42:47Speaker 02

  That's, Steve, not a bad guess.

• 1:42:49Jay Novella?

  Steve, if I'm wrong.

• 1:42:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42:51Jay Novella?

  I, I want you to know I'm gonna completely blame Evan.

• 1:42:53Speaker 02

  All right. Noted.

• 1:42:55Speaker 03

  Awesome.

• 1:42:56Speaker 02

  All right, so you all agree on the third one, so we'll start there. Halley's Comet appeared in the skies in 1066 and was thought to be a significant omen by both sides, and is even depicted in the famed Bayeux Tapestry depicting the Norman conquest. You all think this one is science, and this one is... Science, that is correct.

• 1:43:14Cara Santa Maria?

  Wow.

• 1:43:14Speaker 02

  It was there, they saw it, the, the, uh...

• 1:43:18Speaker 03

  Oh, boy.

• 1:43:18Speaker 02

  The Anglo-Saxons were like, mm, this is bad, and the Normans were like, this is good.

• 1:43:25Speaker 03

  Mom, dude.

• 1:43:26Speaker 02

  Especially after the fact, like, yes, of course, it foresaw our great victory, or our, you know, humbling defeat.

• 1:43:32Speaker 03

  Means whatever I want it to mean.

• 1:43:33Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay, so you're saying the Normans won, so maybe French was the official language?

• 1:43:37Speaker 02

  The Nor- yes, you didn't know the Normans won?

• 1:43:40Cara Santa Maria?

  I didn't know about this battle.

• 1:43:41Speaker 02

  It's called, that's why it's called the Norman conquest.

• 1:43:44Cara Santa Maria?

  I don't know if you just made all of this up, Steve.

• 1:43:46Speaker 02

  Oh, my god.

• 1:43:48Cara Santa Maria?

  I am, I am not an English war history nerd.

• 1:43:52Speaker 03

  This is from Game of Thrones, Kara.

• 1:43:54Speaker 02

  Historical drama on TV right now about the Norman conquest. All right. So, but here's something, I almost used this one. See, the thing, I, I was kinda ba- I was assuming you guys had a basic knowledge of the Battle of Hastings when I wrote these.

• 1:44:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, very.

• 1:44:09Speaker 02

  And clearly that was incorrect. So, have you ever seen the Bayeux Tapestry, though? Like, it's...

• 1:44:15Speaker 03

  No, I haven't seen it. I probably have, but don't recognize it as such.

• 1:44:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'll, I'll go with that. I almost used that one as the fiction be- in that the Bayeux Tapestry is not a tapestry, it's an embroidery.

• 1:44:29Cara Santa Maria?

  Bayeux Tapestry.

• 1:44:30Speaker 03

  Oh, that's...

• 1:44:31Speaker 02

  Technically not a tapestry, it is an embroidery.

• 1:44:33Speaker 03

  Does that mean it was knitted?

• 1:44:35Cara Santa Maria?

  And then it.

• 1:44:38Cara Santa Maria?

  No, it means it was embroidered, Evan.

• 1:44:39Speaker 02

  Stitched.

• 1:44:40Speaker 03

  I know, but.

• 1:44:41Speaker 02

  Okay, all right, come on. Boring, move on.

• 1:44:44Speaker 03

  Wow, Jay.

• 1:44:45Speaker 02

  All right, so we'll go, I guess, backwards order. The decisive technology of the Battle of Hastings was the stirrup used effectively by the Norman cavalry, but not yet in use by their Anglo-Saxon counterparts. Bob and Carrie, you think this one is the fiction. Evan and Jay, you think this one is science. Now, again, I was calibrating this to people who have some basic knowledge of the Battle of Hastings. It is common knowledge, in my opinion, that the stirrup was the decisive technology of the Battle of Hastings.

• 1:45:14Speaker 03

  Ahah. But.

• 1:45:15Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh.

• 1:45:15Speaker 02

  The, yeah, the Norman cavalry, they were able to stand up in the stirrups and brace themselves, put all their weight behind their lances, and they stayed in the saddles. They were more stable, they were able to stay in the saddles. Two knights in horses going against each other, the one using the stirrup effectively has a massive advantage over the other one.

• 1:45:36Cara Santa Maria?

  Wait, Steve, you actually thought I had this knowledge in my head?

• 1:45:40Speaker 02

  Totally, I did, I did, yes.

• 1:45:43Cara Santa Maria?

  Is this an example of like when you play poker with somebody who doesn't know what they're doing and then they win? And it pisses you off because they should have never been in the hand?

• 1:45:49Bob Novella?

  A better example would be Kirk beating Spock at three-dimensional chess, but we get, we get your example.

• 1:45:55Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay.

• 1:45:55Speaker 02

  No, Carrie's example's better, so.

• 1:45:58Bob Novella?

  Oh, I disagree.

• 1:45:59Speaker 02

  But, there's, this is the fiction for two reasons.

• 1:46:02Speaker 03

  Oh, Jay, don't hate me.

• 1:46:04Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, Bob, thank you.

• 1:46:06Speaker 02

  One, the stirrup was in use for 300 years by this time.

• 1:46:10Cara Santa Maria?

  300.

• 1:46:11Speaker 02

  The Anglo-Saxons absolutely had stirrups. It just never occurred to them to use it in this way in combat. So the Normans used the stirrup way more effectively than the Anglo-Saxons did. But they had, they were using stirrups, they had stirrups.

• 1:46:27Cara Santa Maria?

  That's extra dumb, then. So not only did they see them with stirrups and not have to make their own, they saw them stand up and didn't think to do that too?

• 1:46:36Speaker 02

  It was a technique. Well, again, they, this is when they learned that, oh, wow, they were really effective at using those stirrups. We hadn't thought of using them in that way. They were obviously trained to use them in a certain way that gave them a massive advantage. But it's also, while that's the conventional wisdom, it is, it is controversial what role it actually played in the, in the battle. Like, was it decisive? Probably not. No.

• 1:47:02Cara Santa Maria?

  Was anything actually decisive?

• 1:47:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, the thing that probably did it that like changed the battle was that what William the Conqueror did was he, they feigned a retreat. Because you basically had the, the Anglo Saxons were relying on their shield wall. And the Normans couldn't break through the shield wall even with their stirrups, right? They couldn't break through. So then they feigned a retreat.

• 1:47:28Bob Novella?

  Classic move.

• 1:47:29Speaker 02

  Some of the people in the shield wall broke ranks to chase them. And then they wheeled around and attacked the weak point in the wall and broke through.

• 1:47:38Bob Novella?

  That was the entire, that was the entire battle right there, right?

• 1:47:40Speaker 02

  It was.

• 1:47:41Cara Santa Maria?

  Brilliant.

• 1:47:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, so this is what we think, right? That this is.

• 1:47:44Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, because this was an era of people literally just lining up in rows, right?

• 1:47:48Speaker 02

  Well, yeah.

• 1:47:49Cara Santa Maria?

  And like marching towards each other.

• 1:47:50Speaker 02

  The shield wall was a huge.

• 1:47:51Bob Novella?

  Shield.

• 1:47:51Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:51Speaker 02

  It was a huge.

• 1:47:52Bob Novella?

  Steve.

• 1:47:53Speaker 02

  Technique, yeah.

• 1:47:54Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:55Bob Novella?

  Steve, so I gotta say.

• 1:47:55Speaker 02

  Derived mainly from the Romans, by the way.

• 1:47:58Bob Novella?

  Yeah. So I am familiar with this battle mainly because I listened to an audiobook by David Mitchell of Mitchell and Webb called Unruly, The Ridiculous History of England, England's Kings and Queens.

• 1:48:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:48:11Bob Novella?

  This, this, I mean, I'm not a big, I don't read history books really. I'm focused more on whatever, science and geeky stuff. But I'm not, I'm not a big science nerd, but I listened to it, didn't think I was gonna like it. But this is David Mitchell. He made it hilarious and entertaining, which is so hard to pull off. And I, if I didn't listen to that book, I might not have done as well tonight. So I mean, I'm just recommending it. If anyone likes David Mitchell. I mean, you just have to like David Mitchell's humor. Right, he is, absolutely. And I'm not a big history guy, and I loved it. So if you, if you like or love history, I think you'll be nuts over this book, Unruly, by David Mitchell. Just gonna throw that out there, I loved it. He's trying to stir up trouble. Liz did as well.

• 1:48:50Cara Santa Maria?

  There it is.

• 1:48:51Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:48:52Speaker 02

  All right, which means that after the Norman conquest in 1066, French became the official language of England, it remained so until 1362, is science, almost 300 years. And what that means is, French was spoken by nobility, it was spoken in the court-

• 1:49:07Cara Santa Maria?

  It was crazy.

• 1:49:08Speaker 02

  And it was spoken in courtrooms, not only the noble court, but in any legal proceeding. Latin was still spoken by the church, and the common folk spoke English, but everybody who was anybody spoke French for 300 years. And there was a law passed in 1362 saying that all legal procedures had to be done in English. That's what ended that era.

• 1:49:31Cara Santa Maria?

  So there must have been like, a few decades after 1066, where people were like, "I have no idea what anybody is saying."

• 1:49:38Speaker 02

  But it was the nobility that took over England, that's like, "We're speaking French."

• 1:49:41Cara Santa Maria?

  Right, that makes sense, that makes sense.

• 1:49:43Speaker 02

  And it was, you know, they say it was Norman Anglo-French, whatever, but it was still French. It was that whatever version of French. And French was actually the language of aristocracy in Europe into the, like, the early, into the late 1800s, I think, around that time. It survived a long time as the language of aristocracy. All right, well, good job, Bob and Kara, despite your relative lack of knowledge of the Battle of Hastings.

• 1:50:10Cara Santa Maria?

  Thanks, Bob.

• 1:50:13Speaker 02

  I know, this is one of those things, like, I just grew up knowing this, right? To me, this is just like, everyone knows this, right? It's just hard to, yeah.

• 1:50:21Speaker 03

  Very, very short-sighted of you.

• 1:50:22Speaker 02

  It was. But still, it was, I just wanted to talk about the Battle of Hastings.

• 1:50:28Speaker 03

  Well, you guys, are you happy now?

• 1:50:30Jay Novella?

  I'm glad you had fun.

• 1:50:31Speaker 03

  You waited 20-plus years, so this show-

• 1:50:33Speaker 02

  I'm agonizing over what I should make, I almost, the other thing I almost made to fiction was, the Battle of Hastings, of course, didn't take place in Hastings, right? That's true, did not take place in Hastings.

• 1:50:44Jay Novella?

  Oh, of course, yeah.

• 1:50:45Speaker 02

  It took place seven miles away, on a hill-

• 1:50:49Jay Novella?

  Hill, yeah.

• 1:50:49Cara Santa Maria?

  Duh.

• 1:50:51Speaker 02

  Near a town, and the town today is called Battle. That's the name of the town.

• 1:50:58Jay Novella?

  Yeah, it's really interesting shit.

• 1:51:00Speaker 02

  It was named that after, of course, the battle. But-

• 1:51:03Speaker 03

  By some guy named Rafe.

• 1:51:06Speaker 02

  Initially, it was the Battle Near Hastings.

• 1:51:08Jay Novella?

  Near Rafe, yeah.

• 1:51:09Speaker 02

  And then it morphed into the Battle of Hastings.

• 1:51:12Jay Novella?

  It's really cool if you actually care about it.

• 1:51:14Speaker 02

  It is.

• 1:51:17Speaker 02

  I could say the Battle of Hastings took place in York. Would they realize how far away Hastings is from York? And how implausible that is?

• 1:51:25Speaker 03

  Oh my gosh, please. You have to be a moron to not know how far Hastings is.

• 1:51:28Cara Santa Maria?

  I don't know if I would have known it was in England before you started talking.

• 1:51:35Speaker 03

  Norman is French.

• 1:51:39Speaker 02

  So if I said to you-

• 1:51:40Bob Novella?

  I think I know what I'm getting you punks for Christmas.

• 1:51:41Speaker 02

  Mercia. You have no idea what Mercia is.

• 1:51:45Speaker 03

  Londinium.

• 1:51:47Bob Novella?

  Londinium. I love that. Londinium. So wait, why did you say Londinium? Where did you get that?

• 1:51:52Speaker 03

  I got that from the, what is it? That movie, the Guy Ritchie movie of King Arthur. What was it called? Because they called it Londinium in that movie.

• 1:52:03Bob Novella?

  That's funny because I-

• 1:52:05Speaker 03

  The Legend of the Sword, Legend of Excalibur, or Legend of the Sword, I think is what it's called.

• 1:52:09Bob Novella?

  Because I heard it, I heard it from a short audio story that I, that has the best opening sentence of any short story I have ever read. And that, that line is, "I knew when he walked into the barber shop that his beard was evil." And that's the opening line. And the narration and the story are wonderful. It's just, I wish I remembered-

• 1:52:29Speaker 02

  That's a pretty good opening line. I like that.

• 1:52:31Bob Novella?

  That's a great opening line. And, and he makes it work. And then the narrator is basically a god in this, in this short story.

• 1:52:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, but Jay doesn't care.

• 1:52:39Bob Novella?

  His voice, his voice is an instrument like few narrators I have ever, ever heard before.

• 1:52:44Cara Santa Maria?

  Steve, I Googled it. So now I know what it is. Can you name all seven kingdoms?

• 1:52:50Speaker 02

  Oh, I know, like Northumbria, Wessex, Mercia.

• 1:52:54Cara Santa Maria?

  That's pretty freaking good.

• 1:52:57Jay Novella?

  He's looking at chat GPT right now.

• 1:52:59Cara Santa Maria?

  He's Anglia.

• 1:53:00Speaker 03

  He's watching the series.

• 1:53:01Speaker 02

  First of all, I watched The Last Kingdom.

• 1:53:03Speaker 03

  Westeros.

• 1:53:04Speaker 02

  Which is about, also in the same era. And now I'm in the-

• 1:53:08Jay Novella?

  And he role-played this, this battle like 2000 times.

• 1:53:10Speaker 03

  And he played, right, he played Call to Hastings, part two.

• 1:53:14Cara Santa Maria?

  So you probably know that they called it the Heptarchy.

• 1:53:17Speaker 03

  No way, they have.

• 1:53:19Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. The heptarchy.

• 1:53:21Jay Novella?

  Karen, the thing you need to know about Steve is that he remembers almost everything that he reads.

• 1:53:26Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, but here's the thing.

• 1:53:27Speaker 02

  That's not really true.

• 1:53:28Cara Santa Maria?

  I remember a lot of things I read, too. I would never choose to read about this.

• 1:53:34Speaker 02

  Oh, I love this kind of history stuff.

• 1:53:35Cara Santa Maria?

  That's the difference. I love history, too, but I think I am just not an Anglophile. Like, I could care less about all the

• 1:53:42Speaker 03

  Are you a Francophile?

• 1:53:43Cara Santa Maria?

  old white dudes fighting over land.

• 1:53:46Speaker 03

  Oh, okay.

• 1:53:47Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, it's just not my area of history that interests me.

• 1:53:50Bob Novella?

  And before we go, I found the name of that awesome short story. It's from the podcast called Podcastle, episode 229. The name of the short story is "The Tonsers' Son." Wonderful short story and narration.

• 1:54:02Cara Santa Maria?

  Cool.

• 1:54:03Speaker 02

  All right, Evan, give us a quote.

• 1:54:04Speaker 03

  Before I do that, I want to note that we just set the record for the longest post-

• 1:54:10Speaker 03

  post-science-or-fiction discussion.

• 1:54:12Speaker 02

  You're right, man.

• 1:54:13Speaker 03

  History. It only took to episode 1066. Well played.

• 1:54:15Bob Novella?

  This was an extra fun episode that I think might go on my list for next week.

• 1:54:20Speaker 03

  This was a fun episode.

• 1:54:21Jay Novella?

  Recency bias.

• 1:54:23Bob Novella?

  We just laughed.

• 1:54:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's true.

• 1:54:24Bob Novella?

  Absolutely.

• 1:54:25Cara Santa Maria?

  He's just happy that we won science or fiction.

• 1:54:27Speaker 03

  Yes, he is.

• 1:54:27Bob Novella?

  That's true. But I think we're laughing more than usual.

• 1:54:30Speaker 03

  Here's the quote. "We are all flawed and creatures of our times. Is it fair to judge us by the unknown standards of the future?" So wrote Carl Sagan in his book, "The Demon Haunted World: Science is a Candle in the Dark."

• 1:54:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I remember that line.

• 1:54:47Speaker 03

  And this is a question we talk about on the show. It does come up.

• 1:54:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's a very interesting question. You know, to what extent do we judge people by the standards of their time versus our current standards? And it's complicated.

• 1:55:04Bob Novella?

  Not as often as we should. Yeah, it's definitely complicated.

• 1:55:05Speaker 03

  Very complicated.

• 1:55:06Cara Santa Maria?

  And also, to what extent do we give people a pat? Like, do we assume that the worst in people of the time was the standard of the time? Because there are always the people who weren't doing that.

• 1:55:17Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:55:18Cara Santa Maria?

  Like anytime we look in the past, there were always progressive and inclusive and

• 1:55:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it's like, where was the center of gravity? And another standard is if you lived in that time, how would you be, right? Because I think we all think, of course, we would be the progressives of that time, or we would be the people, the more modern thinking of that time. No, chances are, you, as Seinfeld said, you would have been goose stepping right along with all the other Nazis.

• 1:55:45Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, yeah. But I disagree because we're living in this time. We're living in this time, and I know where I stand on this political spectrum.

• 1:55:52Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 1:55:53Cara Santa Maria?

  You know, so I think we are living in one of those times.

• 1:55:56Speaker 02

  I didn't mean you specifically, Karen, I'm just saying, like, the general, like, people-

• 1:56:00Cara Santa Maria?

  Exactly. It's a bell curve.

• 1:56:02Speaker 02

  I mean, it's a bell curve, and if you're in the middle of the bell curve of your time, you know-

• 1:56:08Cara Santa Maria?

  How responsible are you for that?

• 1:56:09Speaker 02

  What are we going to fault people for that? Versus-

• 1:56:12Cara Santa Maria?

  That's a tough one.

• 1:56:14Speaker 03

  The language our parents used back-

• 1:56:16Speaker 02

  Of even doing it.

• 1:56:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:56:18Speaker 02

  It's easy to be where we are, especially if you're in the middle of the bell curve now, and you're, you know, hating on people who were in the middle of the bell curve 200 years ago. That's where I'm saying, there's a little hypocrisy there.

• 1:56:31Cara Santa Maria?

  Absolutely. Yeah. There's always a norm, and we're always in history. So how do you, where are you relative to the norm right now?

• 1:56:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:56:40Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah. Ask yourself that.

• 1:56:42Speaker 02

  But it is interesting, I often think about, like, how hard it is to get out of history and to look at something objectively.

• 1:56:47Speaker 03

  It's difficult.

• 1:56:48Speaker 02

  Like, people don't know that they're in history, you know what I mean?

• 1:56:51Cara Santa Maria?

  I know, yeah.

• 1:56:52Speaker 02

  Like, have you looked back at people, like, don't they know they're in the middle of the revolution? Like, whatever, they don't know that.

• 1:56:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:56:57Speaker 02

  I just watched Ken Burns's American Revolution.

• 1:57:00Cara Santa Maria?

  I'm watching that right now.

• 1:57:01Speaker 02

  It's fantastic.

• 1:57:02Cara Santa Maria?

  It is, it's really good.

• 1:57:03Speaker 02

  But he's really good at continually reminding you that these people didn't know they were in the middle of the American Revolution.

• 1:57:10Cara Santa Maria?

  They're just living their lives, and they're like, man, it's getting violent out there.

• 1:57:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're just doing what they're doing, and even-

• 1:57:15Speaker 03

  Aions, by the way.

• 1:57:16Speaker 02

  But the way it unravels is just really interesting. It's like, yeah, they weren't planned, nothing was planned, it just sort of happened in a lot of ways. It's very interesting. All right, enough of that. Don't forget to send us your choice for the best of everything for the year-end review episode.

• 1:57:37Cara Santa Maria?

  Please, please help us.

• 1:57:38Speaker 02

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

• 1:57:46Speaker 02

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

• 1:58:23Speaker 00

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