The Skeptics Guide #1070 - Jan 10 2026

Live From Not-A-Con 2025, with guests George Hrab, Andrea Jones-Rooy, Brian Wecht, and Adam Russell; What Are You Most Proud Of; What Is Your Quirky Pet Peeve; If You Could Change One Thing; Here Me Out; 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.

• 0:45Speaker 02

  Today is Friday, May 16th, and we are live at NADACon.

• 0:55Speaker 02

  We have a lot of people joining us up on stage for the show. This is going to be a little bit of an unusual episode. We're going to have just some interesting conversations. Big change, big change. We've done this before. We've done this for many, many episodes.

• 1:09Cara Santa Maria?

  Not like our typical boring show.

• 1:12Speaker 02

  So, joining me for this episode, as usual, we have the rogues, starting with Bob. Hey, everybody.

• 1:20Speaker 02

  Tara. Howdy.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  Jay. Hey, guys.

• 1:27Speaker 02

  And Evan. Hello, everyone.

• 1:32Speaker 02

  And then we have our frequent special rogues, George Robb.

• 1:38Speaker 02

  Andrea Jones-Roy.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  Hello, Andrea.

• 1:43Speaker 02

  Ryan Wecht. Hi, everybody.

• 1:47Speaker 02

  And, this is the first time recording the SGU, but this is going to be the second time airing an episode with Adam Russell.

• 2:00Speaker 02

  So Adam is a big Star Wars fan and a musician. And is there anything else they need to know about you? I think that covers it. All right, good. So we're gonna start off, well, you'll get to know everybody a little bit more. We're gonna start, we have a few interesting discussion topics lined up. We're gonna start with a positive and hopefully an easy one. We are going to, we want everyone to say something that they are especially proud of. Something in your life that you're, that makes you feel good about yourself, you know, you think is a real accomplishment, or just something you like about yourself, or just, whatever, something you're happy about. We're gonna start all the way at the right, my right side with George.

• 2:38Speaker 04

  I get to go first?

• 2:39Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:39Speaker 04

  Oh, my goodness. So, yeah, I was thinking about this, and like, as someone that creates stuff, you try to be proud of the stuff you create. So like, you know, I look at an album, or like, I recently restocked all my CDs and DVDs and stuff, and it was like, that made me feel really good, I was really proud. But, and I know this is gonna sound like I'm just buttering your buns there, Stephen, but I was really proud when I was asked to write that essay about your thousandth episode. And the Skeptical Inquirer reached out and said, would you write like a 3,000-word essay about the, you know, the SGU, about what they mean to you, and what their thousandth episode means? And it was like incredibly challenging, and it was like a ton of work, and a lot of edits, and a lot of back and forth, and I think it ended up really cool.

• 3:22Speaker 04

  I think it's gonna be published, published, published next month, in like the July...

• 3:26Speaker 02

  I just saw the cover.

• 3:26Speaker 05

  Oh, really?

• 3:27Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, I saw the cover. Oh, I haven't seen the cover yet, so, yeah.

• 3:29Speaker 05

  Ooh, what's the cover?

• 3:30Speaker 04

  It's just me.

• 3:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, headshot. Headshot of George.

• 3:33Speaker 02

  I'm good with that.

• 3:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm good with that.

• 3:35Speaker 04

  It's George with a pipe writing the article about you. That's right. But I just, I remember, I remember reading it, you know, in, where were we, Chicago? Or was that? Chicago, yeah. Reading it to you in Chicago, and then sort of seeing the video online, and then sort of seeing it posted online, and like, I was, I was so happy with how that came out, and that it represented just like one portion of how much I appreciate all of you, and appreciate where my life has gone because I've got to know all of you. So, it's a very, very, I felt good to feel good about it, you know, because it was like, you guys are awesome, and, and I hit the mark. I'd like, I nailed it. So that felt really prideful.

• 4:15Speaker 02

  Awesome. Thank you, George.

• 4:16Speaker 05

  Thanks, George.

• 4:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:22Speaker 06

  Mine is, so I'm also very proud to be able to do things with you all.

• 4:28Speaker 02

  Is this starting to sound like a Trump secretary meeting?

• 4:31Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:32Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 4:33Speaker 06

  Tell us all how much you love us. I just want to say, our fearless leaders. Well, where I was going was, you didn't ask me to write an essay, so I now redact the pride that I have. So we'll see who's proud of what. But this might be boring, but I've been reflecting about this. And I do think that one of the things that I'm most proud of in my life is finishing my PhD. I was, I didn't know what I was signing up for when I went to grad school. I didn't know what I was doing. I had a lot of undiagnosed ADHD and mental illness. And it's, in my program at the University of Michigan, it was like the dissertation years were very, very isolated. And you're really, really alone. I was terrified of my advisors. So it's just like alone, feeling bad. And then I'd go see them and they'd say, "You're even worse than you thought." And you're like, "Oh, my God."

• 5:18Speaker 06

  And you go, and every day I thought about quitting. And I, to this day, feel very proud that I stuck it out. And whenever I'm doing something now that's like hard, it's not going well, I'm like, "Well, I know that I've done it once, so I can get through it."

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:32Speaker 04

  Yeah. Good answer. Good answer.

• 5:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, this was a tough one because there's so many great things about me. But I was, I was at, I went to a birthday party recently for a friend, not like a super close friend, but a friend. And we were just chatting and he's like, "Dude, I'm really glad you're here. I think of you as the guy who shows up." And I was like, "Oh, my God, that might be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me." You're like, "When I invite you to something, you're gonna go out of your way to be there." And it was the kind of thing where, when he said that, I was like, "That's how I want to be thought of." Like, I want to be thought of as a good friend who shows up. And it was just a very simple, just an offhand remark on his case, but it has really stuck with me as a nice, as a nice compliment.

• 6:20Speaker 05

  So I am proud that this guy, and hopefully other people, think of me as the person who shows up for stuff.

• 6:27Jay Novella?

  Which shows how how nice it is to also say that kind of stuff to people. Like if you have people in your life that yeah, that do show up or they like they always get you like a cool gift or they're just like, you know, you can call them and like, let them know. Cause it can totally make an impression like that of like, oh, yay, thanks.

• 6:40Speaker 05

  And it's also, it's kind of a cliche, I live in LA. And it's like a cliche in LA that people say they're gonna be somewhere and then they just never come.

• 6:50Speaker 05

  And you know, Carol.

• 6:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Cause they'll be like, yeah, traffic was bad. I didn't feel like it.

• 6:55Jay Novella?

  It's believable.

• 6:56Speaker 05

  I think especially in Los Angeles, it's like a notable thing to make plans and stick to them.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  I like that, Brian, cause I think celebrating those those small virtues is so important.

• 7:07Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  You know, because they do, they've got, it's easy to overlook little things like that. Cause we have friends too, like that, some friends like they notoriously don't show up.

• 7:16Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 7:16Speaker 02

  When they do, they're late. And it's like, you know, it's.

• 7:19Jay Novella?

  It sucks.

• 7:20Speaker 02

  It really does suck. It does. And it's it's very annoying. And how much would it, it's like, it's a systematic problem with how they live their life.

• 7:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, totally.

• 7:29Speaker 02

  You know, it's like it.

• 7:30Speaker 05

  And it's nothing personal.

• 7:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it's just they're they're whatever.

• 7:33Speaker 05

  Maybe a little bit.

• 7:34Speaker 02

  People, some people are just chronic procrastinators because they are mentally underestimating how long it takes to do stuff or whatever.

• 7:40Speaker 05

  Right.

• 7:40Speaker 02

  I'm feeling so attacked right now. Update your behavioral algorithms. But also in my life.

• 7:44Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, sometimes it's a lack of conscientiousness and you're right, like Brian comes to, I have a poker table and Brian comes and plays poker at my tournaments at home. And you're always there and you're always on time. And I do have people who at the last minute are like, oh, I'm not coming. And I'm like, well, you know, you just like ruined poker for everybody. Like you need to come. There have, we have to have a certain number of play, you know, there are certain times that people don't show up and they don't realize the impact, yeah, that it has on other people. But but showing up also means that we need to recognize the impact we have on other people. You showing up has an impact, which is a big deal.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  So yeah, sometimes doing little things can really have a huge, both impression and impact on the people's lives.

• 8:22Jay Novella?

  I think I think we're always cataloging those things and it shapes the opinion of the person we. Like Brian, another thing you do is you call me and you literally go, hey dude, what's up? Like no, no agenda, no question.

• 8:32Speaker 05

  There's no agenda. I'm just very good.

• 8:33Jay Novella?

  Yeah, okay. Never mind. No, but I like that because it's like you had a moment, you know, I can always take a 10 minute break. You know, I work from home or whatever.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  You never call me, Brian. What's up with that?

• 8:42Speaker 05

  I'll call you all the time. You're gonna live to regret that day. I promise you that.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  And you keep your promises.

• 8:48Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 8:49Speaker 02

  All right, go ahead, Jay.

• 8:50Jay Novella?

  Yeah, I mean, this is like one of those things, like, of course, I'm proud of the SGU 20-year marker, and, you know, I've been, since I worked full-time for the company and all that, but you've heard all that, so I thought, I wanted to think of something else. And then, you know, I'm starting to think about things like, I have been through a series of utterly disgustingly failed relationships my whole life.

• 9:10Cara Santa Maria?

  I'm right here.

• 9:11Jay Novella?

  It's common. It's common, though, we all do. We all, you know, most relationships fail. You know, if you're lucky, really lucky, you, you, you find the right person and, and things, you know, shape up into a place where it is a permanent thing, but you never even know if it is. But I, I want to say this, I feel so lucky that I, I grew up enough to actually become attracted to an adult. Think about that, because I've been attracted to broken people my whole life. I think what happened was, in D and D terms, I finally, whatever level I needed to get to, I got to, and I was able to be attracted to an adult, and then she helped me.

• 9:47Speaker 04

  You might want to amend that there.

• 9:48Jay Novella?

  The language is not good. You know what I'm talking about?

• 9:51Speaker 04

  Mature.

• 9:53Jay Novella?

  Mature, a mental adult.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  Mental adult.

• 9:55Jay Novella?

  Oh, holy shit.

• 9:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. We gave you the first one, the first one we gave you.

• 10:01Cara Santa Maria?

  He doesn't hear, you guys, he doesn't hear.

• 10:03Jay Novella?

  You ended after 20 years. And I'm, and I'm pushing hard on that adult button, because to me, it means something very specific. Okay, so a mature, older woman.

• 10:16Cara Santa Maria?

  Courtney's gonna love this.

• 10:17Speaker 02

  Too far, pull it back.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  There's a name for that.

• 10:19Speaker 04

  Keep digging, Jay, keep digging.

• 10:21Cara Santa Maria?

  I'm very attracted to elderly women now. My elderly wife, she's so mature.

• 10:25Jay Novella?

  My wife is so fucking old. All right, so, I, I finally, I finally, like, developed this thing, you know what I'm talking about?

• 10:33Speaker 04

  Emotionally mature.

• 10:35Jay Novella?

  Emotionally mature.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  What'd you develop?

• 10:36Jay Novella?

  Mutual, but then the other half of it was that my, my wife actually loved me enough, well, she wasn't my wife at the time, but she loved me enough where she decided that she was gonna help me grow up more to actually be able to really be, to, to flourish in this relationship. And, and I'm like, I look back, and I always say, I know this is so cliche, but I'm like, how did she fall in love with me? Like, I don't deserve this person, she's, you know, I, I look up.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  I'm still trying to figure that out.

• 11:02Jay Novella?

  Yeah. But somehow it happened, thank you, that you proved my point. And I just feel incredibly fortunate because until I, up until the moment where I really realized what our relationship was, it never occurred to me that I wasn't ever in the relationship. That I always thought, oh yeah, I love this person, blah, blah, blah. But this relationship was like, oh, okay, this was what I've been looking for my whole life. And a lot of the looking had to happen internally for me, which I was too dumb to realize. But when that happens, and if you're lucky enough to have that happen, and that marker, you pass that marker, oh my God, it feels so good. And I just want to thank everybody, and Brian.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  You're welcome. Some relationships make us a better version of ourselves, and some make us a worse version of ourselves. But also, you should be thinking how you could be affecting the other person in your relationship too, right? It's like that, that being thoughtful thing.

• 11:53Jay Novella?

  I think I have imposter syndrome. George and I had a long talk about this one day, and I really was thinking about it. And I'm like, yeah, I think I have, I think a lot of people have it. Like, you know, inside your head, if you're being honest with yourself, if you're a trained skeptic, you know, there's a lot of like, I don't have, I'm not really good enough to do that, I don't have the skills for that. And we kind of fake it till you make it. And that's kind of how I felt in the beginning of that relationship, but now I actually feel like, no, I'm here. I achieved it.

• 12:18Speaker 02

  You made it.

• 12:19Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 12:20Speaker 02

  So, yeah, I've thought about this a lot as well. Obviously, there's a lot of different things that I could point to, but if I'm just, I know this sound, this could sound cheesy, but this is my honest feeling. The thing that I am most emotionally proud of, I'm gonna cry.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  Oh, holy crap. That's why we're doing this right now.

• 12:36Speaker 04

  I didn't do anything, by the way. I didn't do anything.

• 12:38Speaker 02

  Is my two daughters. Oh, damn it, I should have gone first. No, seriously, because they are, they are both awesome people. Now, I know I don't get full credit for that. My wife and I talk about it, because, you know, we know we both don't get full credit for it, it's partly luck of the draw. But we really worked hard to be good parents.

• 13:01Jay Novella?

  You absolutely did, Steve. It was so obvious.

• 13:03Speaker 02

  We did. And very thoughtfully, you know, my wife is a counselor, so like, you know, we're all, you know, very thoughtfully, you know, raising our kids. And they're both such awesome people, like, I think just objectively awesome people. And my wife and I are just so proud of them in so many different ways. I just can't help but feel that's the greatest accomplishment in my life.

• 13:22Jay Novella?

  Yeah. Now, Steve, do you think it was the science fiction that did it, though?

• 13:26Speaker 02

  It was everything. I raised them to be nerds, which I stand by that decision.

• 13:30Cara Santa Maria?

  Absolutely. They're birders too.

• 13:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, and birders, yeah, and lots of things.

• 13:34Speaker 05

  B and D players, don't forget that.

• 13:36Speaker 02

  And, and just good people. They're both really, really good people.

• 13:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, for sure.

• 13:41Speaker 02

  You know, and that's the most important thing. They're just really class people. I just love that.

• 13:45Speaker 05

  And anyone who's had kids, that is not easy.

• 13:48Jay Novella?

  No.

• 13:49Speaker 02

  And it's also every parent's greatest fear is that you're gonna raise assholes. And, and you know you don't have total control over that.

• 13:57Speaker 05

  Well, especially when you see other people's kids being assholes. They're like, oh my god, what, yeah.

• 14:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 14:02Speaker 02

  Alright.

• 14:03Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, um, what am I most proud of? I'm so bad at not preparing answers. I was thinking about it too, and I feel like there are things I could point to, like, you know, I've, these recent accomplishments, finishing my PhD, getting my license, all that kinda stuff. But I, when I really think about where my pride is in myself, I guess, and that's what this is, is like digging deep and saying like, what is something that I have to show for the person I am or the life that I've lived? I think it's sort of a tie between, not like the accolades that allow me to do my work, but the actual work that I do. I think I'm proud of being there for people at the end of their lives.

• 14:48Cara Santa Maria?

  Um, it's a big part of my job. I've, I've attended medical deaths and I've done therapy with people as they're deciding to stop treatment or as they're facing, you know, the end. And I think that that's something that's been important to my identity and to my sense of self. And then the other thing, I think it's gonna sound kind of materialistic, but I actually think it goes deeper than, than its superficial sheen. And that's like, prouder than I am of, of being Dr. Santa Maria, it's, it's that I, I'm a, I own my own home, which was, as a woman, I think... Making a decision to live for me, to not live somebody else's dream,

• 15:32Cara Santa Maria?

  and to not adapt or quiet myself, and to build my own space that feels safe and that feels like mine. I don't know if I can express to the people in the audience who aren't women, especially when you're raised in homes that aren't very safe and that aren't really yours, what it feels like to accomplish something like that when everything you're told from the time that you're born is that, as silly as it sounds, there's that like interview with Cher, where she's talking to Diane Sawyer, I think, or Barbara Walters or somebody.

• 16:16Cara Santa Maria?

  And she's like, "When I was young, my mom used to say, you know, when you grow up, you need to meet a rich man. You need to..." And she's like, "Mom, I am a rich man." And like, that always really resonated with me. And so I think that that's, that's my pride. It's like seeing what my mother went through during her divorce, seeing so many women in my lives being utterly destroyed by being under the thumbs of men, and deciding early on that like, that was never gonna be me. It doesn't mean that I haven't loved. And I think, looking back too, to Jay, a counterpoint to something that you said, not to minimize because yours is beautiful.

• 16:58Cara Santa Maria?

  But I don't see all of my relationships in my life as failures. I see them all as successes, even if I'm not still with the person. Like, I think that I've had a series of successful relationships in my life, and those contributed to where I am. But I think the most, the thing that I'm most proud of is that I am where I am because I chose to be this way. And yes, it was a, it was a combination of luck and privilege and hard work. But I am in a place that I set out to be, and I don't have like regrets. And I think that's something to be proud of.

• 17:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, not having regrets is huge. That's huge, that's huge.

• 17:34Speaker 08

  A negative result is still data. A negative result is still data in your relationship life.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  But just to clarify, Jay's relationships were failures.

• 17:44Speaker 01

  And they're all here now.

• 17:46Speaker 02

  But I hear what you're saying. You could look at it as, but Jay, it helped you become the person you are now.

• 17:52Jay Novella?

  I get all that. It was all a very, very useful experience. But I mean, I mean, yeah, one of the people I dated, I dated, we were together for seven years and the first five years were amazing. You know, we had a great five-year relationship and then it took a couple of years for it to, you know, undo itself. I don't regret that. I don't regret it. But you know, when I look back on it, I'm more commenting on myself. Like, I was so devastatingly immature that there never could have been a long-term success.

• 18:19Bob Novella?

  Jay, you know, but Jay, we tried to help. I mean, we told you, dude.

• 18:24Jay Novella?

  Seriously?

• 18:25Cara Santa Maria?

  And I think my, I think my commentary is less about maturity and failure. It's more about the fact that what's normative in our culture is dating for marriage. And so, a lot of people think if it doesn't last forever, then you're failing on your way to the success.

• 18:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a good point.

• 18:41Cara Santa Maria?

  But for me, just a relationship in and of itself is the reason for the relationship. And so, they're, they're all successes so long as they were consensual and we came out, you know, better people and caring for one another.

• 18:54Speaker 04

  Kara, do you, do you feel like a special kind of safety in your own house that you don't feel other places? Or like a...

• 19:00Cara Santa Maria?

  Hundred percent.

• 19:01Speaker 04

  Right?

• 19:02Cara Santa Maria?

  Hundred percent.

• 19:02Speaker 04

  You must. It must, it must be like...

• 19:04Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 19:05Speaker 04

  Like pudding. I mean, it's gotta be like delicious, like...

• 19:08Cara Santa Maria?

  It's mine. Yeah. And everything is exactly the way I want it. And it's the best. Yeah, it's the best.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  So when's the house party?

• 19:18Bob Novella?

  Don't have kids. Or roommates.

• 19:20Cara Santa Maria?

  My house is not child-friendly. I'll tell you, it's a lot of sharp corners in there.

• 19:25Bob Novella?

  God, Bob. I'm not proud of it. All right. And you're proud of it.

• 19:33Bob Novella?

  I'm proud that I'm not proud of it. I wish I was to the right of Steve, damn it. The hell, man.

• 19:39Speaker 02

  Did I steal your thought?

• 19:40Cara Santa Maria?

  Poker position, yeah.

• 19:42Bob Novella?

  I'm proud, in terms of relationships, I'm proud of my second marriage. It's like, holy crap, this is like, this is what marriage can be, wow. So.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  Another example of who you're in a relationship with making you a worse person?

• 19:56Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 19:57Speaker 02

  Or a better person?

• 19:58Bob Novella?

  Oh, boy, big example of that. I have to say, the second thing that occurred to me was, of course, the SDU. What a crazy journey we've been on. Who could have predicted anything about this? Nobody could have. That, but one of the first things that occurred to me is my daughter, Ashley, and...

• 20:15Speaker 02

  She's also awesome.

• 20:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:16Bob Novella?

  Oh, my god. But I'm lucky, though, Steve had to work hard. I didn't have to work that hard. I did, but I didn't have to because I don't know what happened. All right, it's genetic and environment, and I'm part of that environment thing, and I'm not sure what...

• 20:31Speaker 02

  And the genetics, Bob.

• 20:33Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, you're about 50% of that, too.

• 20:35Speaker 02

  Hopefully, you're part of this.

• 20:36Jay Novella?

  Unless you're telling us something we didn't know.

• 20:38Bob Novella?

  Aren't you a twin?

• 20:40Speaker 04

  That would explain a lot, I'd probably ask.

• 20:43Bob Novella?

  Wait, I gotta think about this. All right, so, yeah, but I had, I mean, I can't control the genetics.

• 20:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:50Bob Novella?

  But I can control her environment, and I'm just trying to think, what the hell did I do so special to get this kid that is just like, every time I talk to her, it's like, holy crap, how did I have any part in this? It just amazes me. Yeah, she's just incredible, I'm so proud of her. I tell her all the time, it's ridiculous. And I'm just, I'm proud, but I'm also so lucky because, I mean, I just rolled 30 twenties in a row for that because like, wow, she was just so, such an easy kid, and I've seen other kids growing up. There's so much variation in terms of how much work that needs to be done, and I'm just happy that she was that easy, but so proud of her that she's an amazing kid, so that's all I got.

• 21:29Speaker 04

  I'm curious, in the audience, with one clap, how many parents do we have? One clap? And are your kids assholes?

• 21:40Speaker 10

  Honesty. One honest parent.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  One honest person.

• 21:45Speaker 10

  One.

• 21:47Speaker 06

  Didn't even hesitate.

• 21:50Speaker 02

  All right, Evan.

• 21:51Speaker 10

  Was it me?

• 21:52Speaker 02

  Can't say your daughter. So we'll take that as a given.

• 21:58Cara Santa Maria?

  She's in the room.

• 22:02Speaker 10

  Right here.

• 22:03Bob Novella?

  Speak your truth, Evan, whatever it is.

• 22:05Speaker 10

  All right, I'm gonna say what I was gonna say anyway.

• 22:07Speaker 02

  All right, go ahead.

• 22:08Speaker 10

  Pride's a sin, first of all. And I only bring, and thank you, and I only bring that up because I don't know that I've ever really sat and reflected on what I'm proud of in my, about myself. I don't know, I detect, for myself, it's a little uncomfortable for me to do so. I'm still living this life and I still have, hopefully, many, many, many years to continue to prove myself that, you know, I'm doing all right and treating other people as, you know, as I want to be treated as well. So I think the jury's still out on that. I'll make an assessment when I'm towards the end of my life. But with that all said, two things that definitely were mentioned before that have to come up.

• 22:55Speaker 10

  When you're a parent, and especially a father to daughters, like, you know, Steve, Bob, Jay, Brian is as well, that is just a, such a special relationship, like no other relationship a man can have in his life. So it's totally normal for that to be the number one source of pride in a, in a father's life, especially to a daughter. So in a sense, yes, it does go without saying and everything that comes with it. But to that point, my father, I have two sisters, I'm an only brother. The Bells are my real brothers, but I consider them my brothers. But I have two, I have two sisters.

• 23:39Speaker 10

  Grew up, you know, my, my father was very old fashioned, if I can use the term, you know, very much of non-politically correct in a lot of ways. Definitely, you know, a product of the 40s and the 50s, growing up in that, in that lifestyle. And that translated to how he parented us. You know, nobody's perfect, but there were a lot of faults there. There were a lot of problems he had in, in raising daughters specifically. He treated me differently, not better, just different. I seem to have the coping skills to deal with his, you know, issues being, you know, the father. Uh, but my sisters didn't and, um, it's very, very toxic relationships

• 24:22Speaker 10

  with both the daughters. And as I'm growing up, I'm a, I'm a boy, I'm 10, 11 years old, thinking about this and two things, I want to be a parent someday myself, number one. And number two, if I ever had a daughter, I don't want to be my father to, to, to the way they were my daughters. I was very conscious of that very early in life and carried that with me until I was eventually my young thirties and finally did become a father to a daughter. And, um, and I've done that and I'm extremely proud of myself that I was able to fulfill that promise I made to myself all those years ago. Um, yeah, so that's my number one thing. And the other, and the second thing I'm also proud of is probably also my education in because, um, I had to basically pay for

• 25:04Speaker 10

  it entirely myself. I put myself through my bachelor's degree. Um, my parents couldn't afford to really send me to school, so I had to just do it myself. And while everyone else was off taking their summer breaks and doing their vacations and spring break and all that stuff, I spent every minute working, um, so I could earn money, so I could pay for it and got through my bachelor's degree with no student loans. I paid it all. So I was very proud of that, too.

• 25:27Speaker 08

  Nice.

• 25:31Speaker 02

  All right, Adam?

• 25:33Speaker 08

  Well, uh, to not, without getting too deep into my personal life, to, to, uh, the points that you other folks have made about relationships, there's something really to, to take pride in about being in a relationship, realizing it's not right and having the courage to move on and then find someone else. And then also discover that no matter what, nothing's perfect and there's always work to be done and there, there are always things to learn about yourself and to learn about your relationship. And, uh, on both sides, as you develop as adults and become real adults, to... Not accidentally say words that could be interpreted different ways like Jay.

• 26:11Speaker 08

  But, uh, so I'm proud of myself, I'm proud of my wife, and the two of us together that we've, all the things that we've been through that we continue to try and care to try. To continue being better people for ourselves and for each other. But beyond that, beyond that sort of like personal part of my life, it's easy to say my band because we've been very successful. We're 20 years in now and we're in this whole second wave and it feels amazing. But I also, the further I get from the young, you know, adolescent stage of that journey where I just felt like, everyone, we're gonna do it no matter what. Thinking that we had the power to do it all, I realized there was so much luck involved.

• 26:55Speaker 08

  So I can't speak about it in as much of a prideful way, you know? It just feels like, to your point about pride being kind of a sin kind of thing. So I look at my podcast, Thank The Maker, it's a Star Wars podcast. The thing that we realized early on, I would say like a dozen episodes in, is that even taking the time, even giving the space to complain about this thing that we loved so much that we would make a podcast about it, was a waste of time. So we went from having a segment called Disturbances in the Forest about things that bothered us, to having a segment called From a Certain Point of View where we would take complaints that may be out in the fandom and kind of think about it from a certain point of view

• 27:39Speaker 08

  and try to understand maybe where the creator was coming from, whether it was George Lucas back in the day, or J.J. Abrams now, or whoever else. And in doing that, we pushed further and further away, as far as we can possibly get from the toxicity that is inherent in any big fandom, especially something like Star Wars. And in doing that, we've created this great community with our Patreon where people feel like they're completely safe from all that toxicity. And not in a way where we're feigning any kind of love for something that rubs us wrong about a movie or a show, but we just don't waste the air to even talk about it. Because, you know, sometimes you think, well, I just have to get this opinion out there.

• 28:21Speaker 08

  But what if that opinion is just gonna talk someone else out of something that they like? Like, what am I doing for them as a podcaster by complaining about something that they maybe not, maybe didn't bother them, or maybe they loved? So, in doing that, we've created this great community, and there's so much love and support among them. And whether we see them at cons or at events that we put on, it's palpable. Like, just how positive the whole thing is. And I'm proud as shit that we are able to do that for people.

• 28:53Speaker 04

  I'm just curious, I don't know if you, sorry, I don't know if you talked about it on your cast or not. The actor that played Jar Jar?

• 28:59Speaker 08

  Oh, Ahmed Best, yeah.

• 29:00Speaker 04

  Okay, yeah, sort of the 180 that the fandom has taken in terms of his, you know, the absolute loathing to where he literally was suicidal.

• 29:09Speaker 08

  Literally on a bridge.

• 29:10Speaker 04

  On a bridge, ready to end his life, yeah, to now kind of being embraced by the community. Was that something that sort of happened in conjunction with your views? Or did that influence you at all?

• 29:21Speaker 08

  I hadn't heard his full story, because that didn't come out until the past couple of years. But, yes, that specifically, finding out that he was near suicidal, and then literally suicidal, because of all the hate, yeah, that flipped a switch in my head. And he's such a talented dude, too. Like, the role that he played. Wasn't his fault. Right, George said, here's the character, here's the role, take the voice wherever you want. And he did a thing that turned out a lot of people didn't like. But he's an extremely talented dude. And there's a quote from Liam Neeson on the set. He remember, everyone loved the dude, everyone loved Ahmed. He was just the most fun to hang out with, the sweetest guy, super talented, super funny. And Liam Neeson said, "I thought this guy was gonna be the next Eddie Murphy," or something.

• 30:05Speaker 08

  He was one of the funniest people I'd ever met, so talented. And then all the hate came down, and there that went.

• 30:12Speaker 05

  So has Jar Jar been reappraised? Do people love Jar Jar now?

• 30:16Speaker 08

  People do, and especially, you know, people in their, you know, 30s that grew up with the prequels being their Star Wars. They can look back at him like George kind of intended. He was like Goofy, the character Goofy. That was kind of what he was going for. And if you think about it that way, it makes sense. I mean, even the look, the years, all the, you know? And knowing that George made those films for children.

• 30:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 30:38Speaker 08

  Even though, what do children know about trade routes and shit? Like.

• 30:44Speaker 08

  If you look at it that way, look at it like more of a cartoon than a live action thing.

• 30:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:48Speaker 08

  Yeah, I think people have started to embrace it in that way and they just also support Ahmed Best as a person, first and foremost.

• 30:55Speaker 02

  One other thing, you mentioned.

• 30:56Speaker 05

  It's kind of like Scrappy Doo?

• 30:57Speaker 02

  Scrappy Doo?

• 30:58Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 30:58Speaker 02

  You mentioned the role of luck, but the thing is, you know, you have to prepare the way for luck, right?

• 31:04Speaker 08

  Be ready to take advantage.

• 31:06Speaker 02

  Opportunity. You put the hard work in and the time in and the consistency in and the quality in, which made it possible to get lucky. Otherwise, nothing could have happened.

• 31:15Speaker 08

  But I also feel lucky to have been, you know, have hit the cosmic lottery of living in a household where I didn't have some kind of abusive situation. I did have enough middle-class financial stability to just go for it and feel like, well, if this doesn't work, I'll just go live in my parents' house again. So there's that luck, you know, there's a lot of it.

• 31:31Speaker 04

  The best description of, I'm sorry, the best description of luck I ever heard was like, your car breaks down and the lucky person says, "I'm only a mile away from a gas station." And the unlucky person says, "I'm a fucking mile away from the gas station." And it has nothing to do with what's happened, but how it's perceived.

• 31:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:47Jay Novella?

  Now, you know those guys, Steve, I can't remember the name of the band, and they sang that song, "Ooh, ooh, ooh, I love you," right? No talent.

• 31:54Speaker 08

  Milli Vanilli.

• 31:55Jay Novella?

  Milli Vanilli, no talent. Those guys had no business getting to where they did. They didn't do anything. They just looked.

• 32:01Speaker 08

  I heard they were actually pretty good singers.

• 32:03Jay Novella?

  They don't fit that.

• 32:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, baby.

• 32:04Speaker 04

  The surviving member, the surviving member is actually, he's sort of redefined himself and he's a fantastic singer and a really good performer.

• 32:13Speaker 06

  We don't need your toxicity, Jay.

• 32:15Jay Novella?

  I'm just saying though, some people get really lucky and don't contribute anything other than having a look, you know?

• 32:20Cara Santa Maria?

  But even the people that are really, really lucky, I do think it's important, I mean, to George's point and to your point, when you have a certain amount of privilege or you have a certain amount of luck, you can choose to use it, or you can choose to squander it, or to, yeah, to walk away from it. And so, yes, I think it's important that we all remain humble and recognize that all of us are where we are because of a confluence of a lot of factors, and that there are people who are equally talented. Like, what did Stephen Jay Gould say? That he's like, less interested in all the convolutions of Einstein's brain than all of the, this is a bad quote, but than all of the people working in sweatshops

• 33:02Cara Santa Maria?

  and fields that would have had, you know, similar ideas. Like, we do have to remember that we are very, very lucky, but I don't think understanding that we're lucky should make us ashamed of our accomplishments. I think that's an important thing to remember, too. We've chosen to keep going.

• 33:20Speaker 04

  There's the idea that skill and talent will not get you work, but skill and talent will let you keep the work you get.

• 33:29Cara Santa Maria?

  Yes, yes.

• 33:30Speaker 04

  That's that thing.

• 33:31Cara Santa Maria?

  The doors might be open for you, but you have to walk through them.

• 33:33Speaker 04

  It's a random roll of the dice that you meet the guy who happens to be the thing, and he knew the brother with the cousin and the thing, and that's how you get the gig, whatever the gig is. But if you stink, you know, you're not gonna keep it, you know? Like, Sofia Coppola acted in one movie, you know? She acted in one movie and she was terrible. She found that she's a director, and like, so yeah, so yeah, she happened to be the daughter of the director, you know? But if she had been an amazing actress, she probably would have had a very different kind of career. So it's that weird thing, yeah, it'll keep, you can keep what you get by luck.

• 34:02Speaker 05

  It's skill, talent, and being someone people want to work.

• 34:04Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 34:05Speaker 04

  That's a part of skill. I think that's a part of skill.

• 34:09Speaker 05

  Yeah. And just being like, a nice, generous person who is a valued collaborator, you know?

• 34:15Speaker 04

  Oh, we always, like, when we audition people for the band, it's always, you'd rather work with the person who's like, 70%. But nice and cool and you want to sit in a van for eight hours with as opposed to the 99 percenter who knows they're a 99 percenter and is just gonna make your life miserable? So yeah, this.

• 34:30Speaker 06

  And that's not just about having an enjoyable time collaborating. You're gonna have a better product. You're gonna make better music. You're gonna have better performance.

• 34:36Speaker 10

  It'll be more fun to make it.

• 34:37Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:39Speaker 04

  Investment, you know, that 70 percenter is gonna be like, I'm all in. Like as best, you know, even though I don't have the chops or whatever, as someone at a different level, they're all in.

• 34:46Speaker 10

  Hundred percent.

• 34:47Speaker 02

  All right, let's move on to, to keep things positive, we're gonna move on to another segment. Everyone's gonna talk about a quirky pet peeve that they have.

• 34:57Speaker 02

  I'm asking for, does anyone want to go first to talk about their pet peeve?

• 35:01Speaker 10

  I have one.

• 35:02Speaker 02

  Any quirky pet peeve that you think?

• 35:03Speaker 10

  I don't know if it's quirky, you know, does it have to be quirky?

• 35:07Speaker 02

  That was the instruction.

• 35:08Speaker 10

  Whatever you got, man.

• 35:09Speaker 06

  We'll be evaluating the quirkiness.

• 35:10Speaker 02

  But it's not one that everyone shares, like it's obvious.

• 35:13Speaker 10

  I don't know. How am I supposed to know if it's obvious or not until I say it? A lot of people drive cars, right? A lot of people took a.

• 35:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, fuck those people.

• 35:21Speaker 10

  Thank you, George.

• 35:23Speaker 08

  Disgusting cars.

• 35:25Speaker 10

  These people, I assume have driver's licenses. I assume they took some kind of course explaining the rules of how to drive and when to be in a certain lane and what speed to go and how turn signals work and how braking properly in a car is supposed to work and, you know, when you're driving, okay, you're not supposed to be doing things like looking at your phone, flipping around your radio stations, putting on your makeup, eating three hamburgers, talking with the people in the back and. Steering with your legs. 55 other things that you have, you have a job. You have a job and that is a job is to drive that car, keep yourself and your passengers safe and keep the other people

• 36:07Speaker 10

  on the road safe as well. And I cannot abide by people who absolutely, clearly have no idea what the hell they're doing on the road. They are absolute menaces and terrors on these highways. They just don't know. Oh, they do know and they don't care. It's one of the two.

• 36:26Speaker 02

  And Evan, this has nothing to do with our age.

• 36:28Cara Santa Maria?

  We're keeping it light. Light now, we're keeping it light.

• 36:33Speaker 10

  I'm generally a patient person. And even Rachel will attest to that with me. But when it comes to needing to get from point A to point B, okay, in a motor vehicle, I don't screw around. I want to get there and I want to get there correctly. And if everybody else kind of obeyed the rules of the road like they're supposed to, maybe there wouldn't be as many F-ups on the road. Pick one thing that they do. Thank you very much. Yes, Connecticut driver right there. He knows exactly what I'm talking about. Evan, pick one thing that they do that really makes you the most pissed. They'll drive in the left lane and allow cars on their right lane to pass them on a two-lane road. And they will never, you can beep your horn, you can flash your lights, you can do anything you want. They will stay in that spot.

• 37:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:17Speaker 10

  And why, just what, why? It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. They should have their licenses taken. If they even have a license, that's my pet peeve. Thank you very much.

• 37:28Cara Santa Maria?

  I would agree that that's not a quirk. I think most people feel that.

• 37:32Speaker 06

  I like when people drive badly.

• 37:34Cara Santa Maria?

  I also think that most people think that they're really good drivers and everybody else is a bad driver.

• 37:39Speaker 02

  This is my pushback on that. Because Evan, I think you had, your choices were too narrow. Like, they don't know what they're doing or they don't care. The other possibility is that we're all bad drivers sometime. And we're all good drivers sometime.

• 37:52Speaker 10

  Right, they're not paying attention, that's a third option.

• 37:54Speaker 02

  There are so many people on the road, like, we all have our bad days. And so part of it is, it's like the Dunning Kruger thing. Like, everyone thinks that, oh, I'm smart, but everyone else thinks they're smarter than they are. It's like, no, we're all on the Dunning Kruger curve on some topics at some time. I think there are... To some extent, you think about how many people you're sharing the road with. If even a tiny percentage of them are having a bad day, it's gonna seem like there's always some asshole driver on the road with you. And so you have to just consider that as well. Doesn't mean assuming that there are always a bad driver.

• 38:25Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 38:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:26Cara Santa Maria?

  It's also, it's the example I use with my patients when we talk about the principle of charity. I think it's a great illustration of the principle of charity. Like, did that guy cut you off because he doesn't care? Or because like, whatever, he's bleeding and he's trying to get to the ER, whatever. Like, can we use that?

• 38:41Speaker 06

  Well, is that a bias, the fundamental attribution error?

• 38:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's true.

• 38:44Speaker 06

  Which is assuming that it's like ill intentions when it's just something random happens.

• 38:48Speaker 02

  Something external versus internal. Because I've had, you know, I've obviously been driving for a long time. I've had moments where like I'm not paying attention or whatever. Something happened and I'm the asshole. And I'm like, oh shit, I'm the asshole driver that I always get annoyed at in this moment, you know? And of course you try to minimize that. I mean, I think generally, I think I'm a very good driver. But yeah, even I have your moments.

• 39:11Bob Novella?

  I gotta chime in. There seems to be an area of the highway near my house. I gotta say this, Liz, you know where I'm going with this. I don't know what it is. They are not, they are not, how Evan characterized them. They might be decent drivers. I'm sure they think they are really good drivers. Well, here's a scenario that happens all the time. I'm driving, car's in front of me, and out of the blue, a car comes quite fast and cuts in front of me and goes to the next lane. And I swear there's a foot in front of me and the car and a foot. I mean, he squeezes in. It looks like a space that I would never change a lane with that little space. And they fly away. They're going probably 10 or 15 miles an hour faster.

• 39:54Bob Novella?

  And that probably gets me more pissed more often than anything in life. It's like, oh my God, it's like you're rolling the dice every time, every time you drive. I could do that, I could drive that way. But I would think one out of 50 times, it's just not gonna go well.

• 40:09Speaker 02

  Right.

• 40:10Bob Novella?

  Because there was one time where I was about to speed up and then vroom, like holy crap. If he, if I was just a few seconds further ahead, I would have been closing that gap as he tried to. That would have been an accident right there.

• 40:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:22Bob Novella?

  And it's like, what are you thinking? That you could do that all the time? And it's gotta go wrong, you know?

• 40:28Cara Santa Maria?

  And it does. And it does, it does go wrong.

• 40:32Speaker 02

  It's the biz, in the biz we call that error minimization, right? You have to do, you have to do behaviors so that... It's like if it goes wrong 1% of the time, that's too many.

• 40:41Bob Novella?

  Right.

• 40:41Speaker 02

  Like if life and death is on the line, 1 in a thousand may be too many. You need to get to like the 1 in a million range. So I think driving, we need to think of it like that.

• 40:50Cara Santa Maria?

  We do.

• 40:51Speaker 02

  You need to be driving in such a way that like your chances are good that you'll go your life without a fatal accident, right? That's the goal. And you're not gonna do that driving that way, like the way it's done.

• 40:59Bob Novella?

  It's not like I gotta roll above a 5, I gotta roll above a 5. You know, you can do that a lot, but eventually it's not gonna roll your way.

• 41:06Cara Santa Maria?

  So my pet peeve to move things along, point, point, counterpoint, counterpoint, is that yes, some people are just whatever, and yes, some people are having a moment. But there is a personality type, which is a conscientious personality type, and then there is a not conscientious personality. And there are, and I think American society actually really fosters and curates the not conscientious type, because it's all every person for themselves and manifest destiny and rugged individualism. But when I think about the manifestation of people not being conscientious, that's my biggest pet peeve, is there's a walking style that people have where they stop at pinch points.

• 41:46Bob Novella?

  Yes, yes, they do.

• 41:48Cara Santa Maria?

  And it's like, it's like, at the bottom of the escalator, it's like in the doorway, it's like at Trader Joe's, they put the car in the middle, pull it to the side. Like, what are you doing? Spatial awareness.

• 42:00Bob Novella?

  So true, it's like driving on the walk.

• 42:02Cara Santa Maria?

  Like, I'm the only person, and nobody else, you know, like I deserve...

• 42:09Speaker 02

  I experience that every day going to work.

• 42:11Cara Santa Maria?

  It's infuriating.

• 42:12Speaker 02

  In a hallway, in a hallways, I have to go around over the corner, and everyone is standing in front of the elevator, is perfectly positioned to block any through traffic. Like with no awareness of what's going on, as if everyone is gonna be waiting for the elevator versus going down the hallway.

• 42:27Bob Novella?

  Those bastards.

• 42:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Constant, constant.

• 42:31Speaker 06

  We are now gonna spend the rest of Nauticon standing in the way of Kara.

• 42:36Cara Santa Maria?

  And it's the short stop too, it's the walk, walk, walk, wait, I need to stop and think about something.

• 42:40Bob Novella?

  Turn around and start, what? Not realizing there might be someone behind you. Here's an interesting angle, drivers who are trying to be conscientious. It's like, it seems like, oh, you're, you're trying to be nice, but no.

• 42:52Speaker 08

  Holding up traffic by, yeah.

• 42:54Bob Novella?

  So, I'm at a stop sign, and then here's the main road, and they stop for me, so I can get out. They're trying to be nice, and I guess that's nice, but no, you're changing expected behavior.

• 43:05Jay Novella?

  Exactly.

• 43:05Bob Novella?

  That's what, that's gonna cause an accident. It's like, no, and I, sometimes when it happens, I'm like, no, you go, you have the right of way. Don't give me the right of way, because no one's gonna be expecting that.

• 43:14Cara Santa Maria?

  It happens at pedestrian crosses a lot, where, where you're trying to cross, and somebody stops, and they're like, go, and you're like, you might be stopped, but the lane next to you that I can't see isn't stopped, and they're like, and then they're getting mad at you, that you're not, ugh.

• 43:27Jay Novella?

  I have a question. When you're at, when you're in the stop, in the car, and there's a bunch of cars stopped, or there's like, this one other car, so, I usually always let the other person go first. So, this happens to me all the time. Stop, whatever, I don't care who stopped first, I'll just go ahead, you know, right?

• 43:42Cara Santa Maria?

  You're the problem, Jay, you're the problem.

• 43:44Jay Novella?

  No, but the point is, sometimes you don't know who stopped first.

• 43:46Cara Santa Maria?

  Then it's the person to the right.

• 43:47Jay Novella?

  But there are laws about that. I was the first person to, to do this, and then they go.

• 43:53Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 43:53Jay Novella?

  I, I told, I was polite first, don't be over polite on my polite. Because now I'm pissed.

• 43:59Speaker 08

  You just wanna, you wanna win the polite contest.

• 44:02Jay Novella?

  You don't know what you should do. Right, then I'm just sitting there like, this guy's gonna kill me. Just follow the rules, yeah. I have a pet peeve.

• 44:07Cara Santa Maria?

  Alright.

• 44:09Jay Novella?

  This thing is, is in probably every single room of your house, it's in this room with us right now. Air? It's in your hotel room, it's in your car, it's in your refrigerator. Jesus? No. I tried.

• 44:21Cara Santa Maria?

  Did you say Jesus?

• 44:22Jay Novella?

  And, it is something that after I tell you what I'm about to tell you, if you do anything other than completely reject it, you're dead to me.

• 44:30Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay.

• 44:31Jay Novella?

  Jesus!

• 44:33Speaker 08

  Tell us how you really feel.

• 44:34Jay Novella?

  No, it's not Jesus. And I'm gonna tell you what it is, but then you gotta let me talk for a minute. Alright, go ahead.

• 44:39Jay Novella?

  It's called glitter. Glitter is freaking everywhere. It's evil. And I'm gonna tell you a few things about it. First and foremost, why are we manufacturing microplastics? That you can't help but drop into the environment. I mean, there was literally, I was watching a YouTube video of this new thing, it was for Mother's Day. Where like, you open the card and the card won't stop making the weird noise. And then the idea is the person will get so frustrated that they'll rip the card open to break the thing, and glitter explodes into the room. That's funny though. What's happening? I like that. So glitter leaches poison into our environment, because the chemicals that they color it with are literally poisonous, and it's okay, because there's no glitter regulation.

• 45:24Jay Novella?

  So we're creating... Glitter regulation. It's true. It's because of big glitter. It's never regulated. From the top down, man. So we're making super small pieces of plastic that are poisonous, and we're giving them to people we love. The shit stays in the house, and what's the endgame, guys? Tell me, what's the anti-glitter movement? How are we getting rid of glitter?

• 45:45Speaker 04

  This, this sounds like someone that got caught after a lap dance.

• 45:49Jay Novella?

  But seriously though, like it freaks me out. We have a plastic problem now. Okay, 20 years ago, fine. It's glitter all plastic. It's plastic.

• 45:57Speaker 06

  They have biodegradables now.

• 45:58Jay Novella?

  Yeah, don't they?

• 45:59Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 45:59Jay Novella?

  Sure, sure. That is probably like 1.2% of all the freaking glitter. Jay, we're getting rid of it by absorbing it into our bodies. Right. But it seems to be...

• 46:08Speaker 04

  We all shine on, Jay.

• 46:09Jay Novella?

  It's counterintuitive. It's the exact thing we shouldn't be manufacturing. And I'll tell you when it first hit me. I was looking at a collection of pictures of really bad work environments in China. And I saw a guy who was in charge of spray decorating Christmas stuff. And he had the red shit all over his body. And you could see this, this line around his mouth where he had this mask on, and he had red stuff on his lips. And I'm like, wait, that's glitter he's spraying. Yeah, I think what his lungs look like. Glue, glitter glue. And I'm like, why is this happening? Like, and nobody seems to care. I just told all of you, and nobody's freaking out. Nobody's, you're probably just gonna buy that stupid card.

• 46:51Jay Novella?

  I told everybody in my family knows you cannot bring glitter in my house. You can't, I don't know, am I alone here? Please raise your hand. No, you have you. Thank you.

• 46:59Speaker 06

  I'm with you.

• 46:59Jay Novella?

  Oh my god. Glitter's terrible. Great people.

• 47:01Speaker 04

  Jay, they're all, they're all members of the Glitterati, so.

• 47:06Jay Novella?

  Very good. I missed it.

• 47:07Speaker 06

  Glitterati, he said.

• 47:08Jay Novella?

  Yes.

• 47:09Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 47:09Speaker 06

  Jay, I was a circus performer in China for many years and I wore a lot of glitter. And I would come home and I'd have to shower it off, be like body painted on me. And I think I single-handedly ruined one plumber's marriage. Because I had showered and it was everywhere and then the building sent someone over to like check the waterproof, check the whatever, and he left and I was just like, that man is covered in glitter. And I don't know how to explain your wife.

• 47:34Jay Novella?

  So you might have killed him.

• 47:35Speaker 06

  I think, I think.

• 47:36Jay Novella?

  Poison.

• 47:36Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:37Jay Novella?

  So, and it all started, my hatred for glitter was, pre-existed the picture, and I'll just tell you this, and Steve and Bob, you know this story. Our mother told us. Strong feelings. That there was this woman who was using glitter powder to put on like a makeup that's a little sticky to do, to decorate her, and she dumped it in her eye. Oh, no. And this is her eye doctor, my mom's eye doctor told her this. She had to go to the eye doctor and he had to pick each piece out with the freaking eye tweezers.

• 48:07Speaker 06

  What?

• 48:08Jay Novella?

  And I'm like, wait a second. Vanity ended up with this woman being at the eye doctor.

• 48:14Speaker 02

  Getting glitter plucked out.

• 48:15Jay Novella?

  Glitter plucked out of her eye to save her eye, right? What are we doing, guys? What's happening?

• 48:19Speaker 08

  Have you heard, this is, last thing on glitter. This is, I'll attribute this to Adam Savage, but he, I think he got it from someone else. What they call glitter?

• 48:28Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 48:29Speaker 08

  Have you heard it?

• 48:30Speaker 06

  Stripper, uh, something, circus herpes or something.

• 48:32Speaker 08

  It's the herpes of the craft world.

• 48:36Speaker 02

  All right, one more quick one, then we're gonna have to end.

• 48:38Speaker 06

  I have a quick one.

• 48:39Speaker 02

  All right, I got a quick one. This is the one that started this segment, so I'm gonna say it. All right, so, let me ask you a question. If you come to a public, single-use bathroom, understand?

• 48:51Speaker 06

  Single stall.

• 48:51Speaker 02

  Bathroom that locks, and it's in a, but it's in a public location, and the door's closed, what do you do?

• 48:58Speaker 05

  You check to see if the thing is locked.

• 49:00Speaker 02

  So if there's a vacant, not vacant, that's perfect. But let's say that doesn't exist.

• 49:05Cara Santa Maria?

  You check the handle.

• 49:05Speaker 05

  You knock.

• 49:06Speaker 02

  You check the lock to see if it's locked.

• 49:08Cara Santa Maria?

  You check the handle, you go, you go wiggle wiggle, and if it doesn't...

• 49:10Speaker 06

  You look under the door.

• 49:11Speaker 08

  You squat down really low and you look under.

• 49:13Speaker 02

  You bust it open, say, FBI, freeze.

• 49:15Speaker 06

  Fire a gun.

• 49:15Speaker 05

  What happened to you?

• 49:16Cara Santa Maria?

  Knocking is the last thing you do.

• 49:18Speaker 02

  How many people knock?

• 49:20Jay Novella?

  I try not to.

• 49:21Cara Santa Maria?

  That's very uncomfortable for the person inside.

• 49:24Speaker 05

  It's awful to be in the bathroom.

• 49:25Speaker 02

  But here's my peeve. So I get you have to do something to evaluate whether or not somebody's in that bathroom. You have your choice. You could look for light, assuming there's no vacancy, you know, sign. You can check the lock, or you could knock. Knocking, which should be the last choice, but that's...

• 49:40Speaker 04

  I gotta pee.

• 49:41Speaker 02

  But...

• 49:42Speaker 04

  I gotta pee.

• 49:44Jay Novella?

  Just wait.

• 49:45Speaker 02

  What I hate is people who check the lock. It's locked, and then they knock.

• 49:53Speaker 02

  What other information are you trying to obtain?

• 49:57Speaker 06

  You should yell that out there.

• 49:58Speaker 05

  Well, I will say, there is a situation in which the supplies, which is when it auto locks and there's a key. You can get a key, right? So it can be possible there that the door is locked, but there's nobody in there.

• 50:08Cara Santa Maria?

  But you still, it's still a Schrödinger situation.

• 50:13Cara Santa Maria?

  But knocking doesn't always evoke an answer. So that doesn't really give you any more information.

• 50:18Speaker 04

  They have their earbuds in, their iPods.

• 50:20Speaker 02

  It happens to me all the time.

• 50:21Speaker 04

  Some kind of automated door is not gonna be happening. It's like, yeah, just don't knock. What are you doing?

• 50:25Speaker 02

  Just don't knock. I'm sitting there. It's locked.

• 50:27Speaker 04

  It's not a C3 door. It'll fix everything.

• 50:29Speaker 02

  Cause then you gotta say, occupied.

• 50:32Speaker 04

  Great. You have to say something like, "I'm in here." Occupied. One second.

• 50:36Jay Novella?

  But then you're on a clock. Then you're on a clock. And if you're doing number two, that sucks. Cause you need to relax.

• 50:43Speaker 02

  Or it blows, depending on your...

• 50:45Speaker 06

  Or blow? Is that what you said?

• 50:46Speaker 02

  Which I said it sucks. I was just clarifying. It probably blows.

• 50:49Speaker 06

  I thought you said for a blow, like during cocaine.

• 50:54Speaker 02

  Well, no, you're doing blow in the bathroom. Just a minute. Yeah, yeah. But seriously, the corollary to this is, now, if there's an automatic door closer, you can't do anything about this, but if there isn't, when you leave a public, single-use, lockable bathroom, what state do you leave it in? My contention is, it should be door open, lights off. So it's obvious to everyone that it's unoccupied.

• 51:18Speaker 06

  There's a better answer.

• 51:19Speaker 02

  Don't close the door if there's nobody in there.

• 51:22Speaker 06

  You don't leave it all the way open, though, cause at my comedy club, people leave the door way open and it's where a lot... And you don't wanna like just look in a bathroom.

• 51:28Speaker 02

  No, it's cracked. It's cracked with light off.

• 51:31Speaker 06

  The word that George just taught me, there's a word in Ukrainian for having the door almost closed. What's the word?

• 51:35Speaker 04

  Promknit.

• 51:36Speaker 06

  You want the door promknit?

• 51:37Speaker 02

  Yes, that's correct.

• 51:38Speaker 04

  Promknitvadi.

• 51:39Speaker 02

  How do you say that in Mandarin?

• 51:40Speaker 04

  Pre-close the... Yeah, what's it in Mandarin? Is there a Mandarin version?

• 51:43Speaker 02

  Put two words together.

• 51:46Speaker 06

  Taegon.

• 51:46Speaker 04

  Ancestor shame portal.

• 51:48Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 51:52Speaker 02

  All right, but the lock and then the knock kills me every time.

• 51:57Speaker 04

  Can I just say a really quick one?

• 51:58Speaker 02

  Fucking lock!

• 52:01Speaker 02

  George. Go, George.

• 52:02Speaker 04

  I just said, we don't have to discuss it, but this is one thing. I am, I am, I am preternaturally punctual. I'm on time. I'm an on time person. And I don't mind people being late. However, if you choose the time we're getting together, be there at the time that you chose.

• 52:22Speaker 04

  You say, if I go, what time I get together? And they go, I don't know. I'm like, what? Pick a time, anytime. And you go, seven? And I go, great! And at 7:10, die in a fire.

• 52:33Speaker 06

  I will never invite you to hang out.

• 52:36Speaker 02

  We're screwed. All right, so the, the next thing we're gonna do, we are gonna fix the world. Right? So. Easy, easy, easy. What we're gonna do, thank you. What we're gonna do is collectively, we're gonna come up with our top three suggestions for what we would do if, here's the idea, if we, if we could go back in time to any point in human history and make one change that we think would set human civilization on a better trajectory, what would that be? Now, we can't change the laws of physics, like, it has to be something that could have happened, but whatever we decide, you know, we have, we will assume that we could do it. Like, we don't have to get into the weeds about, is it plausible that that could change

• 53:21Speaker 02

  could be made? If we said, I want, you know, whatever, Rome to have not fallen, it will not have fallen, right, when it did. Now, that, we'll just assume that that we could make happen whatever we want to have happen. Okay, everyone get that? So, does anyone wanna open up with a suggestion about what, what we should change about human history?

• 53:39Jay Novella?

  George Washington should not have cut down the cherry tree. Because if you didn't, there'd be cherry trees all over this country, and I love cherries.

• 53:47Speaker 06

  But not artificial cherries.

• 53:48Jay Novella?

  I'll put that on the list.

• 53:50Speaker 04

  I have a medium one. I have a medium one to start if you want me to start. So this is, I thought, I think originally we talked about just going back 100 years or something, and that kind of got me thinking about the 1920s. And I think if prohibition had never happened, it would have been a very, very net positive thing. Because first off, there was the excess of crime that kind of was built up, and a lot of organized crime, the networks for that was kind of established at that point, which never quite went away, even though after the repeal. Tax revenue was lost on all the booze that was being taxed, and that was kind of the time when income tax and state tax started becoming much more prevalent,

• 54:34Speaker 04

  which of course, once you tax, it never goes away, kind of thing, which would have been sort of interesting. There was also this sort of fundamental distrust of government that happened during and after, where you had agents kind of like doing raids and stuff like that. And the role of the government started to be seen as questionable, which then means you question expertise, which means then you start questioning everything, which can lead, yeah, which can lead to sort of where we are today. So I wonder if prohibition had been, had been never passed. Plus the fact that, that once prohibition started, more people started drinking. And it got in excess, and it got worse, and more illness, and more alcoholism and things like that.

• 55:14Speaker 10

  And people were making booze in their bathtubs, going blind and dying.

• 55:19Speaker 04

  And also, just if only for the sort of that myth of prohibition just usually doesn't work. You know, to kind of, to be able to reinforce, if the issue was let's try to get less people to drink, or to have alcohol be less influential, if they had done it in a much more even-handed way, it might have set up a sort of a system of like, how do we approach problem solving without using a hatchet?

• 55:41Speaker 06

  Yeah, but it had been an early step towards like thoughtful policymaking.

• 55:45Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 55:45Cara Santa Maria?

  But it wasn't a thoughtful time, and I think that it was important that we learned from prohibition. If we, if we look at the roots of prohibition, yes, there was like a kind of puritanical moral majority thing, but it was a lot of women who were getting like violently beaten by their husbands who were like, I don't want to live like this anymore. And there was like, the huge movement was a lot of women who were like, I don't like that culturally we're okay with this. And so they were like, we've got to do something. And they tried to do something. But, you know, the time, they didn't have a lot of rights. So I think at the time it was, it just didn't work. But I'm not sure if like an iterative process would have been accepted at that time either.

• 56:24Speaker 06

  I mean, Kara, you raise a, one that I've been thinking about a little bit, which is like, you know, in, in your case, I would say, oh, well, in that case, it's not prohibition. Let's just make it so the men weren't beating up the women. And then, well, in that particular instance, maybe they weren't, but they would be elsewhere. But because mine, Steve, when you brought this up, was I was like, well, slavery. And I think as an American, I think of the, the slavery from Africa to the United States. And say, well, if I get rid of that, like if whoever decided to do that, didn't do it, or whatever it started, A, would someone else have thought of it two days later? Like, is that even something you could have changed? Right? And there were slaves all over the world in all other cultures. And so I almost, like more of a logic thing, I was like, could we have made slavery not happen? Or like, going all the way back, if we had just never occurred to us? Like, I think you actually can't change it.

• 57:08Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I thought about the same thing. Like, how do we change the roots of the patriarchy? Or the roots of white supremacy? Like, there is no inflection. Yeah, it's not one thing. Yeah.

• 57:16Speaker 06

  Even if we hadn't shipped people from Africa, we would have figured something else.

• 57:19Speaker 02

  So I mean, with slavery though, you could, so if we want to make it into a more concrete statement, you know, we, because in the, in England, slavery ended a lot earlier than it did in the United States. It is, it would have ended at some point in time. So we could say, what if, you know, the, at the founding of the United States?

• 57:36Jay Novella?

  The government had, would have.

• 57:38Speaker 02

  Because they did talk about it.

• 57:39Speaker 06

  That's right.

• 57:40Speaker 02

  And actually, that's a, that's a very plausible suggestion. You could say, they decided to, to end slavery at the beginning, rather than punting it until the Civil War, basically, which is what happened. Because that already was a movement. There already was precedent. There already were countries which were banning, you know, the, the slave trade versus slave ownership, et cetera, whatever. They could have been more progressive rather than regressive at that time. That's a plausible.

• 58:05Speaker 04

  Maybe, maybe, maybe save Lincoln so that his policies could have carried through.

• 58:09Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, yeah.

• 58:10Speaker 04

  Into the next, into the sort of next administration.

• 58:12Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, if Reconstruction had happened the way he wanted it to.

• 58:14Speaker 04

  If Reconstruction was supposed to go down the way it was supposed to go down, that would have been a fundamental difference.

• 58:19Speaker 02

  We lost 100 years of civil rights.

• 58:21Speaker 04

  Completely, yeah, completely.

• 58:22Speaker 08

  Here's another thing to consider, to Andrew's point about our American perspective being very much about the African slave trade. If slavery is an inevitable thing with humans, which it seems to be, until we learned that we're all the same, we decided to own each other, right? So if that was going to happen regardless, just changing the dynamic of the American slave trade, so it's not this black-white cultural divide that has had a much bigger fallout, I think, here, like a unique racial division in America compared to other places, we, this would be a very different place. We had slaves from all over the world. If we couldn't stop it, right? It just came from everywhere, I think culturally we would be in a much different.

• 59:00Speaker 06

  DEI for slavery.

• 59:01Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 59:02Speaker 06

  You're on to something.

• 59:05Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, and I, it's, it's funny because the premise of the idea is if we could go back and change one thing, and when we talk about changing one thing, I think it's implied that we're talking about a behavior. But if we could go back and change a mentality, then I think there would be, you know, if we could go back to the beginning of culture and change a mentality of egalitarianism, or change a mentality of capitalism, or change a mentality of empathy, then I think a lot of things would be really different, you know? Because so much of like, the American experiment is, is just founded in certain principled thinking, and then all the behaviors follow that type of principled thinking. But, you know, if we were not a manifest destiny country, and we were a country where

• 59:47Cara Santa Maria?

  we didn't have the three-fifths rule, and we didn't have, you know, suppression of like voting for women, and, and it just started with these different mentalities, I mean, it'd be wildly different now.

• 59:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think we should focus on changing and inflection. We have to be able to say, you can't just change, I want to change humanity, you know, rather than saying, there was a debate among the founding fathers about whether or not slavery should be legal, and it went one way and it could have gone the other way. And if we're just saying, let's say it went the other way, or Lincoln wasn't shot, that's a very discreet event, and therefore Reconstruction was successful, rather than failing and essentially giving rise to the dynamic that followed the Civil War, and setting back civil rights for a hundred years.

• 1:00:31Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, yeah, I would go back before Lincoln, I would do what you said, like, in the founding, because then there wouldn't have been a civil war.

• 1:00:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, right, exactly.

• 1:00:37Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, like, none of that would have happened.

• 1:00:38Speaker 02

  Let's go back a little bit further.

• 1:00:39Jay Novella?

  It's interesting to think, but there's the absolute opposite of this, too. Like, lots of good decisions were made that would have totaled us if they, you know, if it went the other way. Like, the big one that I was thinking about, Steve, is, I don't even know how to phrase this, like, I just wanted nobody to think of social media.

• 1:00:56Cara Santa Maria?

  But is that inevitable? I don't know.

• 1:01:02Jay Novella?

  I mean, you know, it just seems like so many people would have thought, but the idea is, like, the thought experiment here is, what would it be like right now without social media? And I think a lot of things jump to mind that are pretty damn obvious. I don't think, in the United States, we would be polarized like we are right now. I certainly don't think that there would be as much hate on the internet. I mean, it was great when Facebook first came out, and that was like the big first one, and we were all in and everything, it was like connecting with people and fun and everything, and it just slowly turned into a cesspool.

• 1:01:30Speaker 06

  So maybe it's whoever, I don't know if it was Facebook that did it first, or if it was Twitter X, but whoever developed the algorithm that moved from chronological posts to rewarding, high-engagement posts, because that is what gets the inflammatory material. So that engineer who made that algorithm, they turned out to be an artist in this alternate history.

• 1:01:52Speaker 08

  I feel like you have to go back even further, though, because the way it operates, talking about the algorithms, it's because of the way it has to be monetized, because at the very beginning, the sort of the foundational decision of the internet was whether to make it free and rely on advertising, or whatever the other option was going to be. Like, the, a handful of folks who developed it, I've heard them talk in interviews about how that was a heated debate in the beginning, and they went with the advertising model, and...

• 1:02:17Speaker 02

  There it is.

• 1:02:18Cara Santa Maria?

  And we know what that did to television first.

• 1:02:20Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:02:20Cara Santa Maria?

  So it's not like we didn't have a blueprint for that.

• 1:02:23Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:02:23Speaker 05

  Did you guys ever read the book Broadband by Claire Evans? It's about basically women in early internet days and how there were a number of different options other than the world wide web as we think of it today. And some were spaces that were created more for women. And it's a really fascinating kind of alternate history of what the internet could have been. So, you know, there was some version, I can't remember what it was right now, someone that's something where, you know, there was no equivalent of like links that could break or go dead. It was a much more like engaged thing. It's a fascinating look at what some other options were in the early days of the internet.

• 1:03:01Jay Novella?

  And on top of that, it also, I think, was a big component to privacy being zero. Right? Because they're collecting data on us, right? I mean, there's lots of other companies that do it now, like Amazon is another one that is like just, you know, collecting data, hearing what we're saying because, you know, Amazon, people have Amazon products in their house. You know, that that collection and selling of data, you know, just think about how profound that is. Like Alexa and if you have an Amazon device in your house, it could be FireCube, it could be, you know, just an Alexa device. It's hearing everything that you say. We honestly don't know what's happening with any of that stuff. So privacy is really, you know, because because of like what what we're dealing with

• 1:03:45Jay Novella?

  right now, we're dealing with with a situation where I don't think any of us really know what's happening to that. There's no way to facilitate removing yourself from that ecosystem. And it's only going to get worse with AI because AI is going to be able to infer information about us. You know, you give it a thousand data points.

• 1:04:02Speaker 02

  So what would you change? Let me get concrete.

• 1:04:04Jay Novella?

  Okay.

• 1:04:04Speaker 02

  So I'm getting the vibe here that there's a broad agreement that we should fix the internet. So change. But it's hard to point to.

• 1:04:12Cara Santa Maria?

  It is hard.

• 1:04:13Speaker 02

  One inflection point or one decision or one path that we.

• 1:04:17Cara Santa Maria?

  It's because we're starting with the answer and then we're going back to the problem.

• 1:04:21Speaker 05

  But Jay, you want some kind of privacy law that prevents this from that kind of data harvesting.

• 1:04:27Jay Novella?

  Well, more than that, my, I don't know how much my life has been directly impacted from the data breach, you know, from, you know, all that information out there.

• 1:04:35Speaker 05

  I've done a lot with your personal information.

• 1:04:36Jay Novella?

  I did. I can't put my finger on it, but I can put my finger on what social media has done. I've seen what it's done to me psychologically. I've seen what it's done to everybody in my life, and I've seen what it's done to our society.

• 1:04:50Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 1:04:51Jay Novella?

  And I think it's very obvious, it's as bad as it gets.

• 1:04:54Speaker 06

  So what if, and I don't know if this would do it, because you raised a good point about monetization, but someone like Zuckerberg, what if someone who was a little bit nicer found in Facebook?

• 1:05:03Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, I think Zuckerberg, it was, you know, did ultimate power corrupt him, or was he already corrupted?

• 1:05:10Speaker 06

  He was already corrupted to the extent that it was originally part of this like hot or not voting.

• 1:05:14Jay Novella?

  Yeah, right.

• 1:05:15Speaker 06

  Wasn't that MySpace, though? Didn't that come out before? MySpace came out before, but it wasn't quite so.

• 1:05:19Cara Santa Maria?

  And that's the thing, Facebook won.

• 1:05:20Speaker 06

  I'm sure the guy was nicer.

• 1:05:22Cara Santa Maria?

  But that's a fundamental problem of like capitalism, and I was thinking too, like, what if we never had evangelical religion? But then I was like, then somebody else would do it, because they wanted to be a prophet. And that's the problem with the system that we're in, is that there's always a way to be like, ooh, if I do the thing that's immoral, I get all the power, and so then I'm gonna do the thing. So we can't keep saying, if that guy had never done the immoral thing, because somebody else would have done it.

• 1:05:46Jay Novella?

  I know, but this is-

• 1:05:47Speaker 06

  No, but I think someone doing it who is more moral, who has that power, and then says, hey, this is gonna get out of hand if we start having these algorithms, and we start having ads, and we do this, like, so, and someone who's in the room with these other tech bros, who can actually speak to- Setting a cultural precedent.

• 1:06:00Cara Santa Maria?

  But maybe that was MySpace, and then it just died.

• 1:06:02Speaker 06

  Well, yeah.

• 1:06:03Cara Santa Maria?

  You know?

• 1:06:04Jay Novella?

  And Kara, but the thing is, there's a handful of these social media platforms that I think if they changed, it would change a lot. You know, we're not talking about thousands of different companies and everything, like, they're the big ones, and there's not a lot of them.

• 1:06:17Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, but you're talking about what it is now. What we're talking about is changing the past, and if we change the guy who did the thing, somebody else would have done the thing.

• 1:06:25Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:26Cara Santa Maria?

  That's what keeps happening.

• 1:06:27Speaker 02

  That's a fundamental question of the whole premise that we're talking about, is how, will these things just collapse back in on themselves, or they will fundamentally change? I think it's, we talk about this a lot in our book, like, is the present unavoidable?

• 1:06:41Cara Santa Maria?

  Right.

• 1:06:42Speaker 02

  Or was it inevitable? Or would it, could it really be fundamentally different? I think both of those things are true at the same time, and we just don't know.

• 1:06:51Cara Santa Maria?

  But I believe that in a capitalist system- Greed is-

• 1:06:55Speaker 02

  But we don't have a pure capitalist-

• 1:06:56Cara Santa Maria?

  I know, I know, it doesn't matter. But in a system that has a lot of capitalist influences, greed is not a bug, it's a feature.

• 1:07:03Speaker 02

  Well, I hear you.

• 1:07:04Cara Santa Maria?

  And so it's just gonna keep happening.

• 1:07:05Speaker 02

  But my point is that we have a regulated capitalism. So perhaps the real answer is that we needed somebody in government in the 80s and 90s who was computer literate and saw what was happening and was able to advocate for regulations at the beginning for security and privacy and whatever else would be necessary to keep, you know, the bad shit from happening.

• 1:07:29Speaker 04

  What if social media, if it was regulated as a not-for-profit? Like if you had, like, the internet- It'd build a whole new economy. Internet had to be not-for-profit. It's a public, it's utility.

• 1:07:37Cara Santa Maria?

  Bob has a point. He has an important point.

• 1:07:40Bob Novella?

  The common inescapable element here is us. So I recommend- Oh, here we go. Going back 45,000 years, when Neanderthals and Homo sapiens coexisted and we mated and so we have a few genes of Neanderthals. Let's flip that. Neanderthals have a few genes of Homo sapiens and let's see what they can do. That's what I wanted to hear.

• 1:08:03Speaker 02

  But Neanderthals could have been assholes.

• 1:08:05Bob Novella?

  But they could have been awesome.

• 1:08:06Cara Santa Maria?

  They could have, yeah, they could have.

• 1:08:08Speaker 05

  Well, I think, Steve, when you were asking this question originally, talking about single things and especially the capitalist thing, I think Supreme Court decisions are interesting. Like, what if this 5-4 went 4-5? So the one I thought of right away was Citizens United.

• 1:08:21Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, Citizens United, yeah, that's a big one.

• 1:08:23Speaker 05

  Which is a 5-4 decision. And suddenly corporations can start dumping all this money into politics. And that is, I mean, pretty unambiguously, completely fucked politics since then.

• 1:08:33Speaker 02

  I will go back further than that. Because I was also thinking of a Supreme Court decision. I agree, because that's an inflection point. The decision could have gone the other way.

• 1:08:39Speaker 05

  It was so close.

• 1:08:40Speaker 02

  So there was, there was one decision that actually- I even agree with, but had a massive unintended consequence, and that was Roe v. Wade.

• 1:08:50Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:08:51Speaker 02

  Because Roe v. Wade gave rise to the religious right, which ultimately destroyed the right, you know, the conservative party in this country.

• 1:08:59Cara Santa Maria?

  The religious-

• 1:09:00Speaker 02

  The government that we have today.

• 1:09:02Cara Santa Maria?

  The religious right was already in existence before Roe v. Wade.

• 1:09:05Speaker 02

  It was jet fuel to that.

• 1:09:07Cara Santa Maria?

  But that's always gonna happen.

• 1:09:08Speaker 02

  No, but I disagree.

• 1:09:09Cara Santa Maria?

  I disagree that if we don't do liberal things, then there won't be conservative backlash.

• 1:09:13Speaker 02

  That's not the premise. The point is-

• 1:09:15Speaker 04

  No, but Steve, they would have picked something else. They so randomly chose-

• 1:09:18Speaker 05

  That is true.

• 1:09:18Speaker 04

  They so randomly chose abortion to be their, like, their issue.

• 1:09:21Speaker 05

  But it was not an issue for these people, right, really, before that. They used it as a-

• 1:09:26Speaker 04

  They used, it was a legitimate-

• 1:09:27Speaker 05

  It was a model of action.

• 1:09:29Speaker 04

  Issue. What can we use? Let's use this. They would have found something else.

• 1:09:32Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 1:09:33Cara Santa Maria?

  I agree too.

• 1:09:33Speaker 04

  It would have been, you know, homosexuality, or it would have been, like, some other thing.

• 1:09:37Cara Santa Maria?

  And it was, they did do that.

• 1:09:38Speaker 04

  They did do that, but not to the extent of the focus of the courts of, like, overturning Roe v. Wade.

• 1:09:43Cara Santa Maria?

  But that's because of Roe v. Wade. If gay marriage had been federally passed at the time Roe v. Wade was passed, we would have seen the exact same thing happen with gay marriage.

• 1:09:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, or we had some kind of citizenship, or some kind of, like, you know-

• 1:09:53Speaker 05

  But it should have been-

• 1:09:54Speaker 04

  It can't be a citizen thing.

• 1:09:55Speaker 05

  Oh, not a Supreme Court decision, some kind of law passed by Congress, right, to enshine abortion rights.

• 1:10:02Speaker 06

  What about this one, somewhere in between historically with you two, which is the one in the 90s? I believe it was a legislative, and again, very US-centric, but I believe it was a legislative decision that no longer required news outlets on TV to carry all this-

• 1:10:16Speaker 05

  Oh, the fairness, yeah.

• 1:10:17Cara Santa Maria?

  Fairness doctrine.

• 1:10:18Speaker 06

  And obviously, there's, like, some problems with the fairness doctrine, because you don't want to give the climate deniers and the, except to be the same amount of power, but that could have probably helped with a lot of the social media stuff, could have helped with the right wing or the religious backlash.

• 1:10:30Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 1:10:31Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 1:10:32Speaker 06

  So I would say-

• 1:10:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, as soon as news becomes profit-driven, then you have a message, because you want to have viewers, because you want to have more commercials. When all those news divisions in ABC and NBC and CBS were not for profit, their point wasn't to make money for the station, it was to relay information to the public, because they were using the public airwaves, which is something that's not owned by any individual. Like, you could do the same thing for the internet, the idea of that- There is a quote-unquote "airwave" of the internet, and it has to be a, you know, fairness doctrine.

• 1:11:00Speaker 02

  Except the volume is too much of a volume problem.

• 1:11:03Speaker 04

  But volume comes later. You know, like initially, you need to set it up, and it takes a tremendous amount of foresight.

• 1:11:08Cara Santa Maria?

  But that's the difference with when you have four major networks, and there's a massive barrier to entry. The internet, by definition, is democratized.

• 1:11:15Speaker 04

  But it wasn't that way to start though.

• 1:11:16Cara Santa Maria?

  And so that flies in the face of another really important core democratic principle, you know? And I think that's where we have the problem.

• 1:11:21Speaker 08

  I might have a solution for the whole thing.

• 1:11:23Cara Santa Maria?

  OK.

• 1:11:24Speaker 08

  For the whole American problem. Let's go back to the beginning. No more founding fathers.

• 1:11:28Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, founding mothers.

• 1:11:30Speaker 08

  Founding family, half and half. Fifty percent women, I think we'd be in a drastically better situation. Or all women.

• 1:11:36Cara Santa Maria?

  Till there were nine, yeah.

• 1:11:37Speaker 08

  Minimum fifty percent women, yeah.

• 1:11:39Speaker 02

  All right, I'm gonna change gears a little bit and do, I'll give you a technological inflection point. OK. What if we go back to the 1900s, when... 1900s! 1900s, when the auto industry was being created. Ooh. Right? Twice? Oh, yeah, I know you're gonna... You know where I'm going with this, because I wrote about this. But there was one guy who made one decision that may have influenced the automobile industry for the next century. And this was Ford, who said, "All right, I'm gonna make an internal combustion engine car, and I'm gonna make an electric car." And, because they were both equally viable in terms of, you know, the way to go. And he decided to make the internal combustion car first,

• 1:12:24Speaker 02

  and the electric vehicle second. And that was a, that he could have easily had gone the other way. But in addition to that, so he did that. He made the Model A, right? And that was a huge success. And he's like, "All right, here comes the electric car." And he just had a personal problem with the company making the batteries. No. And it killed the deal. Wow. And he never did it. He never mass-produced an electric vehicle. And how viable was that as an actual vehicle? Over a hundred percent? It was extremely viable, because... What were the materials that made that battery?

• 1:13:00Speaker 04

  Edison had made one. Edison had made a pretty viable electric car.

• 1:13:03Speaker 02

  Really? There were cars at the time, they were there.

• 1:13:05Speaker 04

  You had steam, you had gas, you had electric. It was a whole bunch of different kinds of engines.

• 1:13:11Cara Santa Maria?

  How did it, did it have like a hand crank?

• 1:13:13Speaker 02

  So there were

• 1:13:14Speaker 04

  The steam ones were cool because they like, they're actually, you get very, very fast in the steam. The, the, the term a doozy is a Duesenberg and those are original steam driven Duesenberg.

• 1:13:22Speaker 05

  Like a steam, like a piston.

• 1:13:24Speaker 04

  Like, yeah, so you're literally, you literally build up a, you have a boiler and you build up a head of steam. Those things were crazy.

• 1:13:29Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, yeah, at this time, a steam engine was like, whoa.

• 1:13:32Speaker 04

  Exactly, exactly. Why not put it in a car? Unfortunately, it's a bull up.

• 1:13:34Speaker 02

  What killed the steam powered car was the, was just a lack of infrastructure. They needed a steady supply of water along the trip. The, but there was no infrastructure for gas either. They built the infrastructure. There was no, and the infrastructure for electricity was just a little behind where it needed to be. If we were 10 or 20 years ahead in terms of like electrifying the country, the EVs would have won out almost.

• 1:13:59Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, but that would have pushed us to get ahead. That's the thing that's so interesting, right? Yeah, that you make the decision, everything follows.

• 1:14:04Speaker 02

  That's my point, is that the, the gas cars winning out over electric 100 and whatever, 20 years ago, was not inevitable.

• 1:14:11Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:11Speaker 02

  It was a complete coin flip. It could have easily had gone the other way.

• 1:14:15Speaker 04

  The world would be different. The world would be massively different.

• 1:14:18Cara Santa Maria?

  We have examples of that in developing countries where the, the infrastructure is starting with more green or more viable. You know, it's like, well, that's going to be the baseline now. And we have good examples.

• 1:14:32Jay Novella?

  Where were we buying gasoline back then? Where was it being manufactured? We weren't, we weren't getting oil from other countries, right?

• 1:14:37Speaker 02

  Well, remember it was discovered in like Philadelphia, I mean, or in Pennsylvania, rather. And, you know, it was a petrochemical.

• 1:14:43Speaker 04

  That's why you have to wash, there will be blood, Jay.

• 1:14:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so, yeah, there was, you know, it was discovered later, like in, under the sands in Saudi Arabia or whatever, in Canada, Mexico. But it actually started in the US and it very quickly, you know, the thing is, there was a whole industry of getting oil from trees and other, you know, living sources.

• 1:15:03Speaker 04

  Whales.

• 1:15:03Speaker 02

  And this was a oil from rocks, you know, it was a petrochemical. And it was just tons of it sitting under the ground. It completely changed the entire economics of it, changed the whole picture. So anyway, there was that, that could have been delayed, right? So discovering gasoline could have been delayed. And then Ford's decision could have gone the other way and we could all be driving EVs for the last hundred years.

• 1:15:27Cara Santa Maria?

  I mean, I don't know the history well enough, but there could have presumably been a set of decisions before that, that built more of a train system around the United States. So that we weren't so dependent on cars in the first place.

• 1:15:36Speaker 02

  Well, you know what killed the train system?

• 1:15:38Speaker 06

  Lincoln?

• 1:15:38Speaker 02

  Pipes. Because the railroads were built to move shit around. To more, it was more passengers were an afterthought, right? Trains were mainly about getting liquid from one place to another. And some guy said, hey, why don't we just build a pipe? And bypassed it. And it was all political and...

• 1:15:57Jay Novella?

  That pipe guy sucks.

• 1:15:58Speaker 06

  Yeah, so the pipe guy.

• 1:16:01Speaker 02

  They were trying to deliberately bypass the train industry because they were monopolizing everything.

• 1:16:08Jay Novella?

  Or trains used more for cargo or for passengers today?

• 1:16:11Speaker 02

  They were used way more for cargo.

• 1:16:12Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:12Speaker 02

  It was for the oil industry. The train industry was for the oil industry. The oil industry said, screw you, we're gonna build pipes.

• 1:16:19Speaker 05

  Do you think, Steve, is there a single nuclear power plant disaster that if it hadn't happened, nuclear power would be in a better place?

• 1:16:26Speaker 02

  Well, Three Mile Island.

• 1:16:27Speaker 05

  That's the first one that occurs to me.

• 1:16:29Speaker 02

  And then Chernobyl.

• 1:16:30Speaker 06

  And Chernobyl, yeah.

• 1:16:31Speaker 05

  And Chernobyl, right? And maybe Fukushima.

• 1:16:33Speaker 02

  Fukushima.

• 1:16:34Speaker 05

  But that was so late, then it probably doesn't matter, right?

• 1:16:36Speaker 02

  Those two, I think.

• 1:16:37Speaker 05

  That was just stupid.

• 1:16:39Speaker 04

  Having the movie, The China Syndrome, released, I think, like, two or three weeks before Three Mile Island? That weird coincidence? I think they were very close. I don't know if it was one was after the other, one was right before. And that reinforced this, like, worst-case scenario. So what happened at Three Mile Island was really, I mean, it was bad. But it wasn't anywhere close to a Chernobyl level or anything. But the movie that was released called The China Syndrome, like, is sort of...

• 1:17:03Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:17:04Speaker 04

  Fostered all these fears about what might happen. And then that was all the nuclear power.

• 1:17:09Jay Novella?

  But if we didn't have these meltdowns, we wouldn't have the chupacabra. And I don't want to be in a world without a chupacabra.

• 1:17:15Speaker 05

  That would be bad. Yeah, that's a good point. Too many cobras.

• 1:17:20Speaker 02

  We could be living in a world where we're driving electric vehicles powered by nuclear power plants. Maybe wind turbines and solar coming in.

• 1:17:27Speaker 05

  And you think if Three Mile Island hadn't happened...

• 1:17:29Speaker 04

  The Jetsons, man.

• 1:17:32Jay Novella?

  We wouldn't have global warming.

• 1:17:33Speaker 02

  We wouldn't have global warming.

• 1:17:34Speaker 06

  Good, we solved it.

• 1:17:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:17:36Speaker 02

  Yay.

• 1:17:37Speaker 06

  Hang on, I have one that goes further back.

• 1:17:38Speaker 02

  All right.

• 1:17:39Speaker 06

  What if everyone agreed with and accepted Copernicus's model?

• 1:17:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's interesting.

• 1:17:47Speaker 06

  Do you think we would get to a world where we were all...

• 1:17:49Speaker 05

  Like he goes to testify and they're like, oh, yeah, that's cool.

• 1:17:51Speaker 06

  We checked the math, it makes sense.

• 1:17:53Speaker 05

  That one, yep.

• 1:17:54Speaker 06

  And it's like, obviously, you don't want, you know, blind agreement with whatever the purported, whatever. But...

• 1:17:59Jay Novella?

  You're right, you're so right.

• 1:18:00Speaker 06

  You know, a couple of years of rigorous debate, and they say, I think this is... And would that have set the course for a much more science... Focus society from that moment forward.

• 1:18:11Speaker 02

  I don't think so, to be honest with you. I don't think that, I don't see that as a inflection point. Partly because, we were just talking about this before that. The scientific and technological development was actually pretty steady throughout the last couple thousand years. The Dark Ages is basically a myth. And so this notion that, oh, we were like wallowing in ignorance for so long where we could have been advancing. It's like, yeah, that was actually pretty much steady advancement that whole time.

• 1:18:37Cara Santa Maria?

  And that's also like a very, from a Western perspective too. Because there's plenty of Eastern, yeah. But, but I guess another question is, and maybe this feels a little doomsday, but like from an eschatological perspective, would we want to accelerate science and technology that quickly? Or would we be closer to some sort of horrible, you know, end of humanity right now?

• 1:18:58Speaker 02

  You were, you were thinking that it would make society more scientific, not just more technological.

• 1:19:03Speaker 06

  And, yeah, but it's sort of more like, in order for everyone to have said, yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. It would usher in an era of real revere and acceptance of scientific ideas as opposed to, I don't know, I'm trying to go back to what Carrie brought up, which is like, can we change human nature? It's like, maybe that event.

• 1:19:20Cara Santa Maria?

  Because we've had those, things cycle.

• 1:19:22Speaker 02

  We had the mind.

• 1:19:23Cara Santa Maria?

  I think we can't, we can't set something on a trajectory to just progress, progress, progress endlessly. Everything's going to keep cycling back and forth and you're going to have forces that push and pull.

• 1:19:31Speaker 06

  I meant more like a mindset shift.

• 1:19:32Speaker 04

  You can go further back though with like.

• 1:19:33Cara Santa Maria?

  We've had that mindset.

• 1:19:34Speaker 04

  When the caliphate, I forget what century that was, but you had all this like, you had tremendous technological and mathematical and algebraic advances in the Islamic world. And then when the caliphate took over and they got rid of all that stuff, this is like, whatever it was, 800 years. Again, I don't know the history exactly, but there's this, there is an inflection point and they get rid of all their sciences. And you have like, you know, a billion people over whatever amount of time that could have been more, more scientists. Will we be 500 years advanced through a.

• 1:20:05Cara Santa Maria?

  But is that a good thing? Are we just slowing down the inevitable self destruction?

• 1:20:12Bob Novella?

  They were way ahead of the game. It was crazy where they went. And then it just kind of like, oh.

• 1:20:18Jay Novella?

  Like, remember, this was a long time ago. Remember when they got rid of the Department of Education? How bad that was?

• 1:20:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:20:25Jay Novella?

  And if they didn't do that, then there would actually be like more critical thinking in schools.

• 1:20:29Speaker 02

  If we could only go back in time four months or five months.

• 1:20:32Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, but I do.

• 1:20:33Jay Novella?

  But they're gonna say that whoever we are 100 years from now are gonna be saying, holy Christ, they got rid of the Department of Education. And a lot of other stuff, but anyway.

• 1:20:40Cara Santa Maria?

  And we often talk about that, like, oh, it's a loss of critical thinking. It's a loss of critical thinking. But I can't help but go back to like the great dictator, you know, to Charlie Chaplin and this idea of you can't just have technology without humanity. You cannot have, you know, these critical thinking and scientific thinking without philosophy. And maybe some of these massive religious influences that we look at and we say these were like big dark ages and big steps backward actually made people pause and think. Maybe these things are necessary for the type of progress that we're talking about. You need pushes in order to pull.

• 1:21:15Speaker 06

  So here's one that I've been thinking about. What if COVID had never happened?

• 1:21:19Jay Novella?

  Yeah, I thought about that.

• 1:21:20Speaker 06

  We have mRNA vaccines. We have, you know, a lot of important advancements and a lot of people died. And a lot of people are now maybe more vaccine skeptic than we think. There are arguments, not substantiated yet, but there are arguments that Gen Z is the first, especially male Gen Z, is more conservative. It's the first time in the history of US politics, basically, that younger people are more conservative than older people. And some are imagining that it's because of the government overreach, air quotes, during COVID, that maybe what pushed, taking people out of school for that long, shutting the world down. I mean, maybe that's one that we can.

• 1:21:53Cara Santa Maria?

  But the same thing, not the same, but I guess congruent thing happened during the Spanish flu. A lot of people died, but a lot of great science came out of it, a lot of great technology. There was a big anti-mask movement. There was a big conservative push. And things sort of leveled out. You know, again, there was a push and then there was a pull. So if COVID hadn't happened, the next one's gonna happen. We'll have another spillover event. And really, it's about if COVID hadn't happened with the reaction or with the type of it, what if COVID had been managed better? What if, you know, whatever? Right. What if there hadn't been so much political turmoil at the time, across the time that COVID happened? But COVID was inevitable. And another one is going to happen. Like, we know that.

• 1:22:38Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:39Speaker 08

  I think so much of this American-centric stuff that we're talking about comes down to cultural problems. Like, just like, like you said at the beginning, you talked about yesterday, manifest destiny and everything else. Just who we are as a culture, I think, makes us inherently bound to fuck up things like this.

• 1:22:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, what if the New World were not first settled by Puritans? What if they were settled by scientists?

• 1:23:04Cara Santa Maria?

  They were scientists.

• 1:23:06Speaker 02

  You know, but they were Puritans.

• 1:23:07Cara Santa Maria?

  But they were Puritan scientists. They were explorers. I mean, that's the thing. Like, a lot of these values, they had.

• 1:23:14Speaker 02

  They were not enlightened, though. They were not... They came here for religious purposes.

• 1:23:19Cara Santa Maria?

  I hear you, but at the time, that is a big part of what science was. I'm gonna go into a new place and collect up all the shit and catalog it all and take it back home and be like, "Look how cool this is."

• 1:23:30Speaker 02

  They didn't want to be persecuted by the...

• 1:23:32Speaker 08

  Yeah, Columbus wasn't doing that.

• 1:23:33Cara Santa Maria?

  Right, but, but what I'm saying is that was the nature of exploration at the time.

• 1:23:37Speaker 02

  They weren't explorers. They were settlers. They came here to get away from persecution in Europe, to establish a society based on their religious values. And that's what they did.

• 1:23:47Cara Santa Maria?

  But that wasn't the only reason that there was settlement. There was settlement all over the New World. And very often, that settlement happened from explorers.

• 1:23:54Speaker 08

  But the ones that survived, the ones that remained and survived and turned into Boston are the ones that were, you know, initially put there by...

• 1:24:00Cara Santa Maria?

  I'm just saying it wasn't in either war. It was both. Yeah.

• 1:24:03Speaker 08

  I want the donut, though, the cream donut. So that's probably worth it.

• 1:24:06Speaker 02

  It would just be like a Worcester cream.

• 1:24:08Speaker 08

  Okay.

• 1:24:10Cara Santa Maria?

  So what do you think? Did we solve it?

• 1:24:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. So do you wanna pick three?

• 1:24:14Cara Santa Maria?

  I think we already did.

• 1:24:15Speaker 02

  And then Neanderthals, right?

• 1:24:18Cara Santa Maria?

  Electric cars. I think we agree on electric cars. Electric cars.

• 1:24:22Jay Novella?

  Electric cars are a good one.

• 1:24:22Speaker 08

  I still vote for founding mothers.

• 1:24:24Cara Santa Maria?

  And founding mothers.

• 1:24:25Speaker 06

  And founding mothers.

• 1:24:26Speaker 02

  It's all good, we got it. Does that include no slavery at the founding of the country?

• 1:24:29Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, that's just implied with the founding mothers.

• 1:24:31Jay Novella?

  And you know, and the other one is, we can't let androids create social media platforms. Because Mark Zuckerberg is a friggin' android. You ever see him trying to humanize himself? He's doing the MMA fighting. You ever see him involved with that? It's so weird. It's like you took a three-year-old and put him in that arena. Where he fights? No, I mean, all I see him do is like, he moves around over here. No, he doesn't fight, he's in the background. And he moves around over here, and like, the adults are doing stuff, and he's just kinda like, "I'm involved, I'm involved."

• 1:24:59Speaker 06

  He's like a poorly programmed Boston Dynamics.

• 1:25:02Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, yeah. You get like, you get Zuck and Musk together, and it's like, you're watching like weird AI.

• 1:25:09Speaker 02

  All right. We just need a time machine now, we're good. Yeah, now we just need a time machine. All right. What's next? Fixed Civilization. So the next, for their next trick. So this is a, another kinda weird new segment we're gonna try out. The idea is, does anyone have any really radical suggestions? That sounds nuts when you first hear it, but you can actually defend it? Like, it's the devil's advocate.

• 1:25:36Cara Santa Maria?

  Hear me out.

• 1:25:37Speaker 02

  Andrew, yeah, just hear me out. It's like, all right, this sounds, this is gonna sound crazy, but hear me out.

• 1:25:41Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:42Speaker 02

  What if, whatever. Andrew, you wanna go first?

• 1:25:45Speaker 06

  All right, so, mine, I'm not the first to say it, and the people will be upset. I'm a little bit afraid to even say it, but I think for sure we should all be deacons. I think that...

• 1:25:53Speaker 08

  That's what I'm talking about.

• 1:25:54Speaker 06

  Yeah, there we go. Couple of claps, couple of glares. That's good, that's good. So it's, you know, we're at a point where, okay. So from a climate perspective, raising animals, not great. From a caring...

• 1:26:07Speaker 02

  I thought you said deacons.

• 1:26:08Speaker 06

  We should all be deacons.

• 1:26:12Speaker 06

  Deacon's Cardinals.

• 1:26:14Speaker 04

  Religious thing like. That means we go to Wake Forest.

• 1:26:17Speaker 06

  Vows of chastity for everybody. It's so funny. Yeah, vegans, vegans. And I debated whether I would allow vegetarians in my regime and and I think not because dairy cows are going through hell. And they're doing wonderful things with nut cheese. And I'm sorry that we don't have a better term for it than nut cheese.

• 1:26:35Bob Novella?

  I think we optimized that term actually, yeah.

• 1:26:37Jay Novella?

  Andrea, don't they have a cream for that?

• 1:26:39Speaker 06

  Do they?

• 1:26:40Jay Novella?

  There's a cream for that, right?

• 1:26:41Speaker 06

  There is a cream.

• 1:26:42Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, but it's vegan.

• 1:26:43Speaker 06

  It's vegan cream, yeah. But I think from a climate perspective, I think from an institutionalized violence perspective, and I think from a care for animals and a recognition that we share the earth with animals and they're not there to be our subjects and serve us, I think would actually do a lot to better just the way that humans live on earth and maybe tap into some of these deeper cultural horrible things. And look, if you're dying for the taste of meat, they're doing pretty weird stuff. I won't eat it, but they're doing the fake meats that taste like it. The only downside I can think of, and this is because I've been vegan for a thousand years, I can't think of any other way of living, is that I know people really like barbecues.

• 1:27:24Speaker 06

  People like to stand around with meat on a stick and a fire and like poke stuff. So we'd have to come up with something else that you can cook. And so maybe smores, the vegan marshmallow.

• 1:27:36Jay Novella?

  Corn, you can barbecue corn, right?

• 1:27:38Speaker 06

  So that's the only little hiccup, that's the only downside I can see with making everyone vegan.

• 1:27:41Jay Novella?

  Andrea.

• 1:27:41Speaker 06

  But I think it would resolve so many.

• 1:27:43Bob Novella?

  What about the manure?

• 1:27:44Speaker 06

  Food scarcity issues, what about manure?

• 1:27:47Bob Novella?

  It's, you know, pretty important.

• 1:27:48Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:27:49Bob Novella?

  Stuff that we need a lot of it.

• 1:27:51Cara Santa Maria?

  Why do we need it?

• 1:27:52Speaker 06

  Well, that's where we need steeds, like we all just shit into boxes and shit somewhere.

• 1:27:56Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, but it's because we're using what we have. We would have developed a different.

• 1:27:59Speaker 06

  Yeah, I'm not reciting history, like from tomorrow forward.

• 1:28:02Jay Novella?

  Andrea, do you remember when? It'd be a gradual transition.

• 1:28:04Bob Novella?

  It's not gonna be abrupt.

• 1:28:05Jay Novella?

  When Luke defeated the emperor and he.

• 1:28:07Speaker 06

  I remember.

• 1:28:08Jay Novella?

  You know, Vader's suit got damaged from the electricity and he was, you know, the suit was no longer keeping him alive.

• 1:28:13Speaker 06

  Oh, are you talking about Star Wars?

• 1:28:14Jay Novella?

  Just follow me. I don't think it's Star Wars. And Luke.

• 1:28:16Speaker 06

  Who's Luke?

• 1:28:17Jay Novella?

  Luke dragged Vader to that ship and he took his helmet off. You know, remember all that?

• 1:28:22Speaker 06

  I haven't seen.

• 1:28:23Jay Novella?

  Well, that was his transformation to becoming a Jedi. And before that happened, Darth Vader said something very important to Luke. He said, "It's too late for me, son. I cannot give up meatballs."

• 1:28:37Jay Novella?

  I can't, that is my absolute like holdout of holdouts. I could, I love having a good steak, all that, I can give it up. I can't, like to me, it's a part of my family culture. It's so freaking important to me in so many ways.

• 1:28:49Speaker 06

  Couldn't we very quickly, we have the technology to develop, the incentives to develop really, really, really good meatballs?

• 1:28:55Jay Novella?

  What about lab grown meat though?

• 1:28:56Cara Santa Maria?

  What about, wait, wait, I have an idea, I have an idea.

• 1:28:59Speaker 04

  The vegan ground beef there JB, have you ever tried?

• 1:29:01Jay Novella?

  I've tried, I've done it all, I've tried everything.

• 1:29:03Cara Santa Maria?

  Jay, Jay.

• 1:29:03Speaker 04

  But if there was an alternative, would you be okay with it?

• 1:29:05Jay Novella?

  Yes, I would do it, of course I would.

• 1:29:07Cara Santa Maria?

  What if no new children could eat meat? What if just all children were vegan?

• 1:29:13Jay Novella?

  That's crazy, I feel selfish about it.

• 1:29:14Cara Santa Maria?

  Then it would phase out in one generation.

• 1:29:16Jay Novella?

  I feel selfish because I mean, why, who, what's so special about meat? So I'm saying, let's lean in, let's lean into lab grown meat. Because it's gonna, it's gonna get rid of the problem.

• 1:29:24Cara Santa Maria?

  It's inevitable. It's not viable.

• 1:29:25Jay Novella?

  According to who?

• 1:29:26Cara Santa Maria?

  It's just, it's a massive waste of money. If we could just not eat meat, it would be way cheaper.

• 1:29:31Speaker 06

  I mean, that's the thing, is like we're really just asking you to stop being like, you know, I could give up coffee probably if I had to, right? You can give up meatballs.

• 1:29:39Speaker 05

  He's so mad right now, look at his face.

• 1:29:41Jay Novella?

  Jay. I threw out, I, I, I, I put out the olive branch. Lab grown meat, we can still have meat.

• 1:29:49Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 1:29:49Jay Novella?

  It's not horrible, horrible for the environment, people, I'll pay more money for it.

• 1:29:53Speaker 06

  I'm okay with lab grown meat.

• 1:29:53Jay Novella?

  I would pay a tax on that to help undo damage and stuff like that. And I'm, I'm saying, I'm a generation where it's kind of like, holy shit, like my whole life is, oh god, it's, it really freaks me out to think like, yeah, I mean, I already only eat it, I only eat meatballs now like three times a year. I used to eat it like once a week. I cut my shit way back, but there, you, it's a, it's a hard thing to pull away from people who culturally have such a strong identity with it.

• 1:30:20Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:30:20Jay Novella?

  And I think, I think I'm, I'm open, I'm totally open, and again, I've tried all the other meat, you know, the alternate meats and everything, and it just, they're not, it just.

• 1:30:28Speaker 06

  We're not there yet, but I think this would incentivize.

• 1:30:30Cara Santa Maria?

  I think there's some, some responses at this side of the table.

• 1:30:33Speaker 08

  So, my wife and I have been vegan for almost 20 years, vegan vegetarian closed. And. We've done some fun experiments because there is like an undeniable psychological component, as long as you're not a supertaster like Steve. So at our wedding, for example, we had a taco bar and we had vegan meat and we had real meat. It was all vegan. Everything was vegan, the cheese, it was all vegan. But you eliminate the expectations, the psychological component, and no one knows. They might not think, oh, this is the best meat I've ever had, or this tastes just like so and so, but you eliminate that and everything changes. I mean, my wife, when she was in high school, did a science fair project.

• 1:31:15Speaker 08

  It was an experiment where she took vanilla pudding and put three or four different kinds of colors of food coloring in it and had people describe what their experience is like. And lo and behold, they described the pink as strawberry, the brown as chocolate, and so on. So there's a psychological component that is such a big factor. And Jay, I swear, if you had no idea in an Italian restaurant, somebody served you impossible meatballs, done really well, you wouldn't know the difference.

• 1:31:43Jay Novella?

  I mean, look, my response is, I do not believe there's a chance that I would, that you could pass that. I'm like, I'm so particular. I can tell if it's frozen. I can go to a restaurant and tell you, yep, that's a frozen meatball versus a fresh meatball. Hands down, I'm 100% correct. So, but I'll put it to you, make me the meatball.

• 1:32:05Speaker 06

  There we go.

• 1:32:06Jay Novella?

  I'll do it, I'll try. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna say no. I mean, and if I love it, fantastic. I think this is a not a con segment next year. Well, that's the point of the segment, right? Convince me. All right, Adam, you're coming next year and you're making Jay the meatball.

• 1:32:19Speaker 06

  And it's, I mean, I realize that it's an idea that is radical and it's difficult. And I think, but I think that the, and I do realize that people are giving up cherished family traditions, things that are really important to them. There's obviously a lot of nutrients in meat and it's very difficult to replicate some of those, I think especially for children. But I think the net gain as a planet would be greater than the sacrifices that we make.

• 1:32:41Speaker 01

  The amount of suffering that we would eliminate.

• 1:32:42Speaker 02

  There are some practical aspects that do need to be brought up. I brought up the fact that we grow half of our food from cow manure. And that is not easily replaced.

• 1:32:49Cara Santa Maria?

  No, but that's a construct that we made because we eat meat.

• 1:32:52Speaker 02

  Right, but it exists. And there's no obvious, there's no obvious.

• 1:32:56Jay Novella?

  Is cow manure good because there's a lot of plant material in it?

• 1:32:59Speaker 02

  It's recycling nitrogen back into.

• 1:33:02Jay Novella?

  So we can't use people poop?

• 1:33:04Cara Santa Maria?

  You can't grow food with people poop.

• 1:33:06Jay Novella?

  No.

• 1:33:06Speaker 02

  Because pathogens can go.

• 1:33:09Cara Santa Maria?

  It's not good.

• 1:33:10Jay Novella?

  He would have died if he didn't.

• 1:33:12Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, he had to, but like, no, you shouldn't, like, it's pharmaceuticals, it's pathogens. You can't compost with people poop.

• 1:33:18Speaker 06

  But we would lean off of it because all the cows that we have would still be here.

• 1:33:21Cara Santa Maria?

  Exactly.

• 1:33:21Speaker 06

  And so we would have a period of time by which we could start to come up with alternative technologies and other ways of growing.

• 1:33:26Speaker 02

  Well, again, so you're going to feed these cows and take their poop and not use them in any way.

• 1:33:31Speaker 06

  Yeah, they just get to have a nice life. They learn to play Scrabble.

• 1:33:33Speaker 02

  But that's not the way it works. It's a slow transition. Very quickly. If there was, you know what I mean?

• 1:33:38Speaker 06

  That's true.

• 1:33:39Speaker 02

  If it wasn't part of the industry, they wouldn't be maintained.

• 1:33:41Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:33:42Speaker 02

  And then, so then you have to ramp up essentially double our ability to make fake nitrogen.

• 1:33:48Speaker 06

  And we'd have to re, because we haven't had a wild cow for like 200 years. We'd have to rewild the cows, I think, is part of the problem.

• 1:33:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think also the nutrition thing, we shouldn't, you know, gloss over that as well because animal protein provides very high quality protein, very high quality nutrition. There, again, we're a little bit privileged here because we can talk about going vegan. There are parts of the world where it's just not viable. It is just not viable.

• 1:34:10Speaker 06

  True.

• 1:34:10Speaker 02

  Also, the, a lot of calories are generated by animals like cows grazing on land that is not suitable for growing food as well. So if you talk about just the system of how are we getting food to the table and how are we getting nitrogen into that food, et cetera, et cetera, it is not, it's a non-trivial task.

• 1:34:31Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:34:31Speaker 02

  And it's not just because of this is the way we've always been doing it. It is a non-trivial task to just eliminate meat from the equation.

• 1:34:37Speaker 06

  And this is where, you know.

• 1:34:38Speaker 02

  Especially not meat and all animal products, like vegan, not just vegetarian.

• 1:34:42Cara Santa Maria?

  But it's not impossible.

• 1:34:43Speaker 02

  No, it's not impossible. You know what else is non-trivial? It's not impossible. You know what else is non-trivial? It's non-trivial. Is getting rid of fossil fuels.

• 1:34:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Exactly. Yeah, it's not impossible. You have to change the system.

• 1:34:52Speaker 02

  Totally. I agree. I agree with that as well.

• 1:34:54Cara Santa Maria?

  Are we, do we have to move on to science or fiction or do we have another?

• 1:34:57Speaker 02

  No, no, we have time for another one.

• 1:34:58Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay, okay. So I have one that's very personal. There's like a big difference between your, like, everybody should be vegan. So I, so the premise of this is, like, convince me, right? Like, it's a thing that I say. Okay, so I have a friend who every time somebody new comes to my house or they meet me for the first time and they meet my dog for the first time, he's, he has to tell them this thing about me and then they go, Jesus Christ, you're a horrible person. And then I have to defend myself. So I'm going to try and do it with you guys. I cannot believe I'm saying this live on air. When my dog dies, no, I don't want to stuff him. I'm gonna, I'm gonna put that out there, I'm gonna caveat. I don't want to stuff him, I don't want to freeze him. I think that's weird, no offense, but I think it's really weird and I wouldn't be okay with it. I have a taxidermist friend, she won't do pets, for a good reason. This is a fraud. I do want his pelt.

• 1:35:43Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:35:44Cara Santa Maria?

  And a lot of people think I'm a monster when I say that.

• 1:35:47Speaker 02

  I think it's fine.

• 1:35:48Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay, so you get it.

• 1:35:49Speaker 05

  Seems fine to me.

• 1:35:50Cara Santa Maria?

  That's so, you guys have no idea how long I've spent defending this position.

• 1:35:53Speaker 02

  What's the big deal?

• 1:35:54Cara Santa Maria?

  And all of you are totally fine with it?

• 1:35:56Speaker 05

  I don't want to cut it off myself, but...

• 1:35:57Speaker 04

  As long as you make some kind of like caveman dress, or say caveman dress.

• 1:36:01Speaker 02

  It's not like Killer's gonna mind.

• 1:36:03Cara Santa Maria?

  That's, so here's my defense. My defense is that the relationship, the symbiotic relationship we have with our pets. I love him, he's like my son, but there, there is also like a servitude component, which I know is like weird to say, but like, dogs live to like please their person. They want it, like when I go to the bathroom, he like sits outside the bathroom and protects me. You know what I mean? Like they have those behaviors. My dog, if you've met Killer, you know that he has like the softest fur. Everybody's like, oh my god, he's like a puppy, he has the softest fur. How, how is it so soft? He's 15. And I think about, like, he keeps me warm.

• 1:36:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:36:34Cara Santa Maria?

  And I think in death, he would want to continue that? There's something...

• 1:36:40Speaker 02

  I think it's fine, doesn't feel weird to me at all.

• 1:36:41Cara Santa Maria?

  Right, so I don't want to like just have his pelt and be like hello, but I figured one day I would like line a pair of gloves with it or something. Is that weird? Oh, very, yes. Oh, no, yeah. But is that weird to like line gloves with your dead dog's pelt?

• 1:36:53Speaker 02

  No, I don't think so.

• 1:36:54Cara Santa Maria?

  I don't think so either. Okay, any, audience? And, would you have said that before I convinced you? Okay, all right. I gotta hang out with you people more, cause like, yeah.

• 1:37:04Bob Novella?

  Wouldn't it be a grow rug that you would walk over?

• 1:37:06Cara Santa Maria?

  No, no, no, no, no, no. It would be something that, close to my skin.

• 1:37:09Bob Novella?

  Carrie, you know what? A stole. Carrie, what I, every now and then, I'm going through my stuff, my old stuff, and I find a bag with fur from one of my two favorite dogs. And I was brushing them, and I saved it.

• 1:37:22Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:22Bob Novella?

  And I take it out, I smell it, I smell it, and it's...

• 1:37:26Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, I have a book, I have a book that like teaches you how to, I've never done it, but when you brush your animal and you collect the fur, to spin it so you can knit with like dog fur or cat fur.

• 1:37:35Speaker 04

  That's what I was gonna say, what if you just took all of his fur and knitted it rather than literally having it skinned?

• 1:37:41Cara Santa Maria?

  Because you can't like line a, like if I was gonna line gloves or something with it, you need a pelt.

• 1:37:45Speaker 04

  Still, like I wouldn't wanna have like my dad's scalp.

• 1:37:47Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, that's what I said, yeah.

• 1:37:48Speaker 04

  Like, in my backpack, you know?

• 1:37:50Cara Santa Maria?

  I don't want like his, I don't want it to look like him, that's why I said pelt.

• 1:37:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, how much of, how much of the, of the skin or hide are we, are we talking?

• 1:37:58Cara Santa Maria?

  So the pelt usually starts at, at the neck and then ends before the tail.

• 1:38:01Speaker 04

  So not, so you wouldn't have like the...

• 1:38:02Cara Santa Maria?

  It's like the back and the legs.

• 1:38:03Speaker 06

  It's not like a bear rug with the face?

• 1:38:05Cara Santa Maria?

  No, no, no, no, no, it's, imagine making, making, I mean, back to your vegan thing, making furniture or clothing out of leather, like you take the leather pelt and then you, or the, you know.

• 1:38:14Speaker 04

  So would you have like a square of this?

• 1:38:15Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, it's kind of dog shaped, but I would use it.

• 1:38:19Speaker 04

  That sounds right.

• 1:38:20Cara Santa Maria?

  Exactly, that's, you would use it though, and then it's the shape of the thing you use it for, the glove, the sock, the whatever.

• 1:38:25Speaker 04

  Okay, so, oh, you wanna...

• 1:38:27Speaker 06

  Different item.

• 1:38:27Speaker 04

  You wanna make gloves, is that what you're saying?

• 1:38:28Cara Santa Maria?

  I wanna line a pair of gloves.

• 1:38:30Speaker 04

  You wanna line a pair of gloves?

• 1:38:31Cara Santa Maria?

  With my dog's fur.

• 1:38:32Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:38:33Cara Santa Maria?

  After he dies.

• 1:38:34Speaker 04

  See, I think...

• 1:38:35Cara Santa Maria?

  And then he's close to me.

• 1:38:36Speaker 04

  Couldn't you do that with, just like, if you, if you like shaved him right now? Like just shaved a portion of him and...

• 1:38:40Cara Santa Maria?

  It's, no, no, no, no, you need the, fur to be attached to the skin, that's the only way you can, yeah.

• 1:38:45Speaker 06

  Wouldn't that be itchy, inside out?

• 1:38:47Cara Santa Maria?

  No. What? You are a vegan, through and through. No, it's lovely.

• 1:38:52Speaker 04

  The only way this makes sense to me is if you also make a pair of boots out of one of your family members.

• 1:38:57Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, but that's probably not legal. Humans is different. I actually don't think that's legal.

• 1:39:01Speaker 04

  What if you sign off on it before you die, like, yes, make me into some boots?

• 1:39:03Cara Santa Maria?

  Doesn't matter, there's a lot of things you can't do with a corpse even if they sign off on it.

• 1:39:07Speaker 06

  Kara, if you die first, your dog gets to wear your skin as a collar.

• 1:39:09Cara Santa Maria?

  Oh, yeah, that's definitely... Here's the thing, if I die, if I die first, my dog will eat my corpse.

• 1:39:14Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:39:15Cara Santa Maria?

  Like, I know he will, so I think it's fair.

• 1:39:17Speaker 04

  Starts with the soft areas of the body. Can we, can we get an audience vote on this, a single clap if you, if you are okay, if you're okay with Kara's thing, single clap? If you're not, if, I don't wanna say not okay, but if you're, if you go...

• 1:39:30Cara Santa Maria?

  But if you're eeked out by it?

• 1:39:31Speaker 04

  Let's hear it.

• 1:39:32Cara Santa Maria?

  Okay, yeah, kinda convinced.

• 1:39:35Speaker 02

  One quick thing, my daughter's pet cat died and got it cremated. And this is like what they do now, you go to the vets, you just get your animal cremated when they die or have them put to sleep, and they give you the ashes, right? You can, you can ask for the ashes back. So she plans on, because she makes her own stuffed animals, she's gonna make a stuffed animal replica of the cat and then fill it with the ashes.

• 1:39:58Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, that's way less weird than actually taking the cat's pelt and stuffing it.

• 1:40:04Jay Novella?

  Yeah, but you know, like, there's a problem with that, because it's not hermetically sealed. You're gonna be dropping.

• 1:40:10Speaker 02

  It's not gonna be loose.

• 1:40:12Cara Santa Maria?

  No, wrapping plastic.

• 1:40:13Jay Novella?

  Thank god you said that.

• 1:40:16Speaker 02

  It'll be properly.

• 1:40:17Jay Novella?

  I just see her walking around with it, it's like.

• 1:40:20Speaker 06

  I'll tell you, one of the scariest emails I got in recent years was an email from my vet that said, "Your invoice is attached," and it was just a bill for pet cremation. And I have two dogs, and I was like, "Uh, what?" And it turned out they sent it to the wrong person. There was a moment where I was like, I was like in a meeting, and I was like, "I have to go."

• 1:40:44Speaker 04

  There's a weird, there's a weird thing about, I mean, I, you know, I was in the room when my, when my, when my dog, when we had to put him down, you know? And there was this weird moment of like, it's not him. It's like, it's like the rational part of my brain, sort of the rational part of me, that knows that there's no soul, there's no, there's no, none of that stuff. I, I literally breathed in his last, last breath. And it was like, now it's just, it's like the Klingon thing, he's just a shell. You know, they do, they scream up into the sky, I forget what the Ponfar, whatever it's called, no, that's, that's Vulcan, anyway. They scream up into the sky to give the warning, like, warning to the thing, and here, and now it's like, do with the body whatever you want.

• 1:41:21Cara Santa Maria?

  I feel the same way, like donating bodies, I've been around death a lot, I mean, and granted, it's different, it's not my dog, it's a person, but there is, it's, it's a corpse. Like, a person becomes a corpse.

• 1:41:32Speaker 02

  In medical school, one of the things that kinda surprised me, which, but it makes sense, but it was, when, yeah, when you have a patient in the hospital, they are a patient, they're a human being, and they are treated a certain way, and the moment they're dead, they're a corpse. And it's completely, it transitions instantly to a completely different thing, and now they're treated like a corpse.

• 1:41:53Speaker 04

  But there are also laws about what you can and can't do with a human dead body, because

• 1:41:57Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, of course.

• 1:41:57Speaker 04

  we assign some kind of special.

• 1:42:00Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, but also some of it is hygiene. Like, you can't just bury somebody in your backyard.

• 1:42:04Speaker 08

  Right.

• 1:42:04Cara Santa Maria?

  You can't. It's illegal in most places to bury somebody in the ground.

• 1:42:08Speaker 08

  But to respond to George talking about how, you know, because there's no so on, so on, that the body is just, you know, I guess the person isn't the body.

• 1:42:17Cara Santa Maria?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:42:17Speaker 08

  I used to think that for a long time, but then I realized, after my dad died, that the body of the person, kind of, if you don't believe in anything metaphysical, really is the person.

• 1:42:27Cara Santa Maria?

  It's the only thing.

• 1:42:27Speaker 08

  It's so much, yeah, it's the only thing. So like, when our oldest dog died, we, you know, we put him down in the house, had somebody come do it. It was like, literally the hardest day of my life. My dad died when I was 26, and still, that was the hardest day of my life. And we took him to the cremation place. We held him the whole time. We sat there in the car and just bawled our eyes out. Because even though he wasn't alive, it was still him. Yeah. It was still our dog.

• 1:42:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's a line. It's a really interesting line of like, again, the rational versus the emotional versus the representational, too. Like, I have pictures of my dog that destroy me.

• 1:43:02Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:03Speaker 04

  You know, and it's just, it's photochemistry. It's like, there's nothing there, but it's all there.

• 1:43:08Jay Novella?

  Let me quickly, because we have to get to science or fiction, but I will transition off of the sadness of what we were just saying to a very cool thing I found out about dogs. Dogs can't tell time. They don't even have a sense of time. What they can tell as you're gone is that the powerfulness of your scent is on a decline. And they loop that in with the lighting that's in there, certain noises that happen, any cue. Because dogs like pick up on all of that stuff on a remarkable level, so it's really cool. So, your dog will seek out places that you have a stronger scent in the house, which, you know, if you're away, you don't even know. But their, because their sense of smell is so exquisite and so profound, that like, they're living in a totally different reality than we're in.

• 1:43:53Jay Novella?

  And it's fantastic.

• 1:43:54Speaker 02

  It's time for you to come home because your smell has declined to that level. Wow.

• 1:43:58Cara Santa Maria?

  Did you know that they also kind of circular breathe in a way? Like, going back to your disyri doo? The slits, the slits on the side of their nose is that when they breathe in through their nostrils, they blow out to the side so they don't just spoil the scent trail. Jay, can you teach us? So they sniff forward and they blow out sideways. Wow.

• 1:44:15Speaker 04

  Disyri dog.

• 1:44:16Cara Santa Maria?

  Disyri dog? Disyri dog, yeah.

• 1:44:19Bob Novella?

  Can I pet that dog?

• 1:44:22Speaker 02

  All right, so let's move on with science or fiction.

• 1:44:27Speaker 01

  It's time for Science or Fiction?

• 1:44:37Speaker 02

  Now, there's a theme to this Science or Fiction. The theme is inspired, because we're recording this at Nauticon, and the theme of this Nauticon is the Beatles. So I'm doing a Beatles-themed Science or Fiction.

• 1:44:49Speaker 04

  Oh, bring it.

• 1:44:55Cara Santa Maria?

  Those Beatles.

• 1:44:56Speaker 04

  That's awesome. That's awesome. I feel like he might know one or two of these. Please explain the photo you just showed.

• 1:45:01Speaker 10

  I am so disappointed.

• 1:45:03Cara Santa Maria?

  Other Beatles.

• 1:45:04Speaker 02

  The other Beatles.

• 1:45:05Speaker 04

  The other Beatles. E-E, not E-A.

• 1:45:08Speaker 10

  You got us, Steve.

• 1:45:09Speaker 04

  You bastard. I got so excited.

• 1:45:11Speaker 02

  Alright, so these are three items about the insect's Beatles.

• 1:45:17Speaker 10

  Okay.

• 1:45:18Speaker 02

  Alright?

• 1:45:20Speaker 02

  And here they are. Item number one: One in every four animals is a beetle.

• 1:45:29Speaker 04

  What are the Royal Folby?

• 1:45:30Speaker 02

  Number two: Beetles occupy every continent and many islands around the world, including all but the most extreme land and freshwater habitats. So obviously not oceans. And three: The large goliath beetle can lift up to 850 times its own weight, 94 pounds, or 42 kilograms.

• 1:45:53Cara Santa Maria?

  Are we allowed to do math on that? Can I, like, calculate that? Oh, okay. I can't do it in my head.

• 1:45:59Speaker 04

  Anyone here who's 94 pounds?

• 1:46:00Speaker 02

  Even in your head, yes.

• 1:46:01Speaker 10

  Kara, 42 kilograms is 94 pounds.

• 1:46:04Cara Santa Maria?

  What I'm saying is that, what do they weigh, is what I'm asking? Thank you. So that's, I want the absolute number.

• 1:46:11Speaker 04

  That's PhD in the crowd.

• 1:46:14Speaker 02

  Alright, George, since you're the beetle expert, you can go say it.

• 1:46:19Speaker 04

  Uh, I would say, almost without hesitation, that number two is the fiction. Because I think one in four animals is a beetle. I know there's, there's millions of kinds of beetles, thousands of types of beetles, and there's just millions of beetles. I would say that's true. Two beetles occupy every continent. I don't think there's beetles in Antarctica. I, I, I just don't think that's the thing. And the large goliath beetle, I have seen demonstrations of goliath beetles. Maybe it's one of these Steve things that's actually 848 times, one of those nonsense things where it's 100 times. So I'm gonna say that's true as well. So number two to me is the fiction. Beetles are not on every continent.

• 1:46:54Jay Novella?

  All right, Andrea.

• 1:46:55Speaker 06

  I'm gonna say number one is the fiction. I think one in four feels like too many. I know that, I think biomass-wise, that might be true, but I'm not sure by discrete numbers. I think there are a lot of other insects that would make that not one in four. The other two I think are true.

• 1:47:08Jay Novella?

  Okay, Brian.

• 1:47:09Speaker 05

  I had the same reaction as George. I was like, Antarctica? Really? So I'm gonna say number two.

• 1:47:14Jay Novella?

  Okay, Jay. I mean, did you guys read number three? A beetle lifting 90... I am the powerful beetle. What? No, beetles don't lift 94 pounds. That means a whole bunch of them can lift a car, guys. No.

• 1:47:27Speaker 06

  They're not organized like that.

• 1:47:29Jay Novella?

  94 pounds?

• 1:47:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, they're scared of cars.

• 1:47:32Jay Novella?

  That's heavier than Bob's wife.

• 1:47:35Speaker 06

  Jesus, Jay.

• 1:47:35Jay Novella?

  No, no, there's no beetle, there's no beetle that a human can ride on. That has got to be the fiction. If I'm wrong, I'm like gonna lose my mind. Okay, Kara?

• 1:47:46Cara Santa Maria?

  So I have a goliath beetle, like carapace, I guess, I don't know.

• 1:47:49Jay Novella?

  Does it pick up your desk?

• 1:47:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, it's, it's, it's not a lot.

• 1:47:52Speaker 04

  Are you gonna wear its pelt?

• 1:47:53Cara Santa Maria?

  A pelt, yes. It's not alive, but it's like this big.

• 1:47:57Jay Novella?

  I don't care if it's your foot size. It's 100 pounds?

• 1:48:01Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, here's the problem. It's not very heavy, but that's probably because it's dead. Like, I don't know what they feel like in life. And so it might actually be like two pounds. I don't know. Because I can't do the freaking math in my head. So, so for me, I guess it's between the one in four or the Antarctica. Now, I know that there are no large animals in Antarctica, but Antarctica is not barren, so there are some insects there. And I would assume if there are insects, there would be beetles, because where there are insects, there are beetles. The, I think that the one that's bothering me the most is the one in four, because I know the number is obscene. But I have a question that you probably can't answer. You mean non-human animals, right?

• 1:48:41Speaker 02

  No, animals.

• 1:48:42Cara Santa Maria?

  You're including all human beings on the planet.

• 1:48:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:48:45Cara Santa Maria?

  And from a biomass perspective, it's nowhere close because of large animals.

• 1:48:48Speaker 02

  This is individual creatures.

• 1:48:49Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, this is individual creatures.

• 1:48:50Speaker 02

  Individual organisms.

• 1:48:52Cara Santa Maria?

  But I bet you it's more like 1 in 10. I think it's still obscenely large, but I don't think it's 1 in 4, so I'm gonna go with Andrea.

• 1:48:59Speaker 02

  Okay, Bob.

• 1:49:00Bob Novella?

  I think the... I have a visceral reaction like Jay with his 94 pounds. I mean, I've lifted dumbbells that are... 50-pound dumbbells are heavy. And to think that they could do double that is blowing my mind. But I think that's the trick. When you say lift, what exactly do you mean? How is that...

• 1:49:21Cara Santa Maria?

  Means a deadlift.

• 1:49:22Bob Novella?

  How is that actually...

• 1:49:24Cara Santa Maria?

  It's a bicep curl.

• 1:49:25Bob Novella?

  Like, what does that mean? How is it lifting? It's like, you're not gonna put 94 pounds on the back of a beetle and have it lift up. But it's something funky.

• 1:49:34Jay Novella?

  Steve, you're in a bad position, because if there's a tricky thing in there, I'm gonna be pissed. They gonna give me the George treatment? Yes, yes, George, thank you. I mean, they're gonna boo me like they booed George at BBC last night? Yeah.

• 1:49:48Bob Novella?

  No one's gonna boo like they booed George.

• 1:49:52Bob Novella?

  Just in case, Ian, get ready with that little thing you had with the boot. Can I have that t-shirt?

• 1:49:57Jay Novella?

  Bob, just do it with me. You know that they can't lift 94 pounds. Come on.

• 1:50:02Bob Novella?

  Well, I was gonna pick the 1 in 4, but Jay, I'll do it in solidarity to you. Because my percentage is fucked this year, anyway, so who cares?

• 1:50:12Speaker 06

  The Novellas seemed very defensive about beetles lifting more than them.

• 1:50:15Cara Santa Maria?

  I know, yeah. What's going on here?

• 1:50:17Jay Novella?

  Bob said, "You ever pick up 50 pounds in your hand?"

• 1:50:19Bob Novella?

  Oh, Jay and I can lift more than 94 pounds. At least 98, at least 98.

• 1:50:23Speaker 02

  All right, Evan?

• 1:50:24Speaker 10

  I'll take swords for 400, with Alex.

• 1:50:27Bob Novella?

  That's worth it.

• 1:50:28Speaker 10

  I thought it was a trick question. I'm with Kara and Andrea.

• 1:50:33Speaker 02

  Did you give me an answer there?

• 1:50:34Bob Novella?

  I absolutely gave you two answers, actually.

• 1:50:37Speaker 05

  One, one in four.

• 1:50:38Speaker 02

  The one in four, okay.

• 1:50:39Bob Novella?

  Yes.

• 1:50:40Speaker 02

  Adam?

• 1:50:42Speaker 08

  Okay, anything with beetles seems somehow more plausible than a lot of other weird shit I've heard in my life. But I'm with Jay and Bob. The third one, just 94 pounds? Like, no matter how hard their, their exoskeletons are, the legs, those little legs, 94 pounds? Like, how big is that beetle?

• 1:51:01Bob Novella?

  But they really want it, is what Steve said.

• 1:51:03Jay Novella?

  Yeah, a lot of legs.

• 1:51:04Bob Novella?

  The beetles don't know they can't do it, so because...

• 1:51:07Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:51:08Speaker 02

  So, Steve, before you reveal, I just want to say something.

• 1:51:10Speaker 08

  It's adrenaline. When a beetle child is trapped in a car and a beetle mother...

• 1:51:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. You know? You don't know. What's the motivation?

• 1:51:19Jay Novella?

  I want to land this better, even better, right? Okay, so I work out, my wife and I work out, we do a lot of free weights, and Bob, when it's not, Bob said the 50-pound free weight, he's totally right. In order, I can pick up a 50-pound dumbbell on each hand, and I can squat it. And I, and I need 100% of my body's power. I'm using, I'm using my butt and my legs, like, unbelievable, and it's a struggle. No way a beetle's lifting 94 pounds.

• 1:51:45Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:51:46Bob Novella?

  I think we're about to find out.

• 1:51:48Jay Novella?

  I think I'm wrong now.

• 1:51:49Speaker 05

  I think Jay needs an exoskeleton.

• 1:51:51Speaker 02

  We have a good spread out, we're all three, which is awesome, I love it when they're all spread out.

• 1:51:55Jay Novella?

  And one-third of us are angry.

• 1:51:57Speaker 05

  Which third, Jay?

• 1:51:58Jay Novella?

  Me, Adam, and Bob.

• 1:51:59Speaker 02

  Two-thirds of you.

• 1:52:00Jay Novella?

  Adam was talking shit about Steve even before we went into such a big picture.

• 1:52:04Speaker 02

  We got, wait, we have to embarrass the audience now, too. So if you think that the one in four, beetles, one in four animals, is the fiction, clap.

• 1:52:15Speaker 02

  If you think that the beetles are everywhere, is the fiction, clap. And if you think that the beetles can lift 94 pounds, is the fiction, clap. Alright, so it's pretty much split between, well, I'm just laughing, you guys. It's pretty much split between one and three, as far as the audience is concerned. So, I guess we could take these in order.

• 1:52:36Speaker 05

  That doesn't mean anything.

• 1:52:37Speaker 02

  One in every four animals is a beetle. So yeah, there's a lot of beetles. There's 350,000 official beetle species. He's just priming us, he's giving us all that yet. Raising the drama. There's 350,000 different species, but there's probably millions. They just don't, those are the ones that have been named.

• 1:52:57Speaker 10

  Can't count those.

• 1:52:57Speaker 02

  Remember J.B.S. Haldane? You guys all know J.B.S. Haldane, right? J.B.S. Haldane famously said, if somebody asked him, "What can we tell about the mind of God from looking at nature?", and he said that he has an inordinate fondness for beetles.

• 1:53:13Speaker 02

  Beetles are the most common order of all orders of life. But, is the one in four overcalling it? Did I play into that by exaggerating it? Or is it really one in four creatures? Well, this one is science. Wow, that's cool. If you include plants, it's one in five. Wow, that's amazing.

• 1:53:35Speaker 10

  That rules.

• 1:53:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's amazing. There's a lot of freaking beetles. Alright, let's go to number two. Beetles occupy every continent and many islands around the world, including all but the most extreme land and freshwater habitats. So, the controversy seems to be swirling around whether or not beetles occupy Antarctica. Now, I will tell you, there are insects in Antarctica. Carrie is right, there are insects in Antarctica. There are parts of Antarctica which are not completely barren. But the question is, are there beetles in Antarctica? That is the question. They definitely are everywhere else.

• 1:54:10Speaker 05

  And he's delaying right now.

• 1:54:11Speaker 02

  This one is, who voted for this one? It's George and Brian.

• 1:54:16Speaker 10

  And me, yeah.

• 1:54:16Speaker 02

  Just George and Brian. So are George and Brian correct? Almost nobody, like, two people in the audience voted for this one. This one is the fiction. Yeah, good job, guys.

• 1:54:26Speaker 10

  So we're saying, nobody's ever brought a beetle to Antarctica?

• 1:54:29Speaker 02

  Alright, Steve, let's get to it.

• 1:54:30Speaker 05

  Sorry, Jay, I just have one thing to do real quick. Boom, face.

• 1:54:35Speaker 02

  Show me a video of a fucking beetle lifting 94 pounds, right now. Alright, right now!

• 1:54:41Jay Novella?

  I'll bring my frickin weights in and let's see that bastard lift them up.

• 1:54:45Speaker 10

  We've lost Jay, folks. Watch the tricks.

• 1:54:47Jay Novella?

  You do have video of this, right?

• 1:54:49Cara Santa Maria?

  The male ego on display right now.

• 1:54:51Jay Novella?

  Here we go. This better be so spectacular, my mind is blown.

• 1:55:00Speaker 02

  I feel great right now. This is the insect that lives in Antarctica. It's a midge.

• 1:55:06Jay Novella?

  Oh, midgey.

• 1:55:07Speaker 02

  Belgica, Antarctica.

• 1:55:08Jay Novella?

  Where's that from, Steve?

• 1:55:10Speaker 02

  But there's no beetles in Antarctica.

• 1:55:12Cara Santa Maria?

  Wow.

• 1:55:12Speaker 02

  That's the only thing. They pretty much are everywhere else.

• 1:55:14Cara Santa Maria?

  Do we know why?

• 1:55:16Speaker 02

  They just don't like the cold.

• 1:55:18Cara Santa Maria?

  They don't like the cold.

• 1:55:18Speaker 02

  Too cold.

• 1:55:20Speaker 08

  Are we not counting like the scientific base on Antarctica, like if they're in... You're talking about just natural habitats?

• 1:55:27Speaker 02

  I don't know if there's any like in captivity on Antarctica, they wouldn't count.

• 1:55:30Speaker 08

  Or that just came over on a ship inadvertently.

• 1:55:32Cara Santa Maria?

  No, but even if they did come over, they clearly haven't established a population.

• 1:55:35Speaker 02

  I'm changing my answer. That means that the large goliath beetle can lift up to 850 times its own weight, or 94 pounds, 42 kilograms is science. The largest goliath beetles weigh about 100 grams. How long have they been working out? Actually, it's...

• 1:55:53Speaker 02

  Millions of years, Bob. Before I settled on this as the third one, I was gonna say that the goliath beetle is the largest beetle, but it was so hard to confirm that because every... I found so many different references that said other beetles were larger, because it's all like, do you go by length, or volume, or weight?

• 1:56:13Cara Santa Maria?

  Mass, yeah.

• 1:56:14Speaker 02

  Or whatever. So some references said it was the goliath beetle, other ones said it was the giant weida.

• 1:56:20Jay Novella?

  Wow, that's fascinating. Show me the video of the beetle lifting up 94 pounds.

• 1:56:26Speaker 02

  Now, it's interesting that you say that, because there are no videos.

• 1:56:31Speaker 02

  Just a lot of testimony.

• 1:56:32Jay Novella?

  So was this here?

• 1:56:33Cara Santa Maria?

  You're saying... Not anecdotal evidence over here.

• 1:56:36Speaker 02

  There's a sign up in the gym. Give me the science. Alright, let's see. Here is the beetle.

• 1:56:41Jay Novella?

  Okay, it's big. Yep. Right, there's so much... Think of it, the hand that's holding it is bigger than it is, and that hand has a good amount of muscle in it, and that hand... alone can't lift 50 pounds, let alone 94.

• 1:56:54Speaker 02

  There must be a mechanical advantage, some wicked mechanical advantage. That is the heaviest insect in the larval stage. I guess larval stage counts. Megasoma acetion.

• 1:57:07Jay Novella?

  High in protein.

• 1:57:08Speaker 04

  Wow, sure, delicious.

• 1:57:09Speaker 02

  The glypheetel, the larva weighs 100 grams. The adult weighs 67, 70 grams. And if you go 850 times that, that's how you get to the pound that I quoted. There's the giant weida.

• 1:57:20Speaker 04

  Thing rules.

• 1:57:21Jay Novella?

  You could pay me $1,000 to put that thing. Am I tripping out here? You're not answering the question.

• 1:57:28Speaker 02

  He's getting there, dude. Let him cook. All right, so listen, so I verified this from multiple sources. It is been, it's reported in the scientific literature. This is observations by scientists. It's hard to produce videos of things like this. So they're, they specifically says there's no videos of this happening. Which is funny that you asked for the one thing, they say this doesn't exist. But this is the accepted, you know, conventional wisdom among the scientists who say, yes, we see them doing this now.

• 1:57:57Speaker 04

  Is it their mandibles? Do they like grab it with their mouth?

• 1:57:59Speaker 02

  I mean, I imagine what Bob said is actually what actually happens. Like if they have to move something out of the way, they can get underneath it and lift it up. It's because of their construction. It's not like they're picking it up with a leg. They're not deadlifting it. They're not deadlifting it, you know, but they can, they can. They like wedge themselves under something and push it up. Yeah, right. Yeah, that's what's happening.

• 1:58:19Cara Santa Maria?

  But that's also lifting.

• 1:58:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's lifting. It's lifted.

• 1:58:22Jay Novella?

  So you're saying that the people who said that it happens, they saw it, right? So light was leaving the event and hitting their eyes. And there are devices that can collect that light. And then you could literally digitize it and show it to freaking everybody. Cause I want to see an insect lift 94 pounds.

• 1:58:41Speaker 02

  It may exist. I was not able to find it.

• 1:58:43Jay Novella?

  So I say this is bullshit. And I will dedicate the next week of my life before I go to Disney World to prove that is bullshit.

• 1:58:50Cara Santa Maria?

  Did they say in any of the studies, or maybe you didn't come across this, what they were lifting? I know it weighed 94 pounds, but what it was?

• 1:58:57Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:58:58Jay Novella?

  So you don't know?

• 1:58:59Speaker 04

  So you don't know?

• 1:59:00Jay Novella?

  You don't know?

• 1:59:03Speaker 02

  Your denial is

• 1:59:04Speaker 04

  Jay is totally fine with it, spending the time with this, by the way.

• 1:59:07Speaker 02

  But does it, really, guys, you think a beetle can lift 94 pounds?

• 1:59:10Speaker 05

  I think it can, because then George and I were right.

• 1:59:14Cara Santa Maria?

  That's why he voted that way.

• 1:59:16Speaker 06

  Start like a Beatles truther movement.

• 1:59:18Speaker 04

  Oh my god.

• 1:59:19Speaker 02

  I hear what you're saying.

• 1:59:20Speaker 04

  Like, there are no birds, right?

• 1:59:21Speaker 02

  But this is what is the conventional wisdom among the experts.

• 1:59:25Jay Novella?

  There's nothing in your head that thinks this is a little weird?

• 1:59:27Speaker 02

  I, Jay, I, of course I did, that's why it's, first of all, that's why it's there. Because it does sound extraordinary.

• 1:59:35Jay Novella?

  Alright, okay, alright.

• 1:59:36Speaker 02

  And I vetted it as much as I could.

• 1:59:38Speaker 05

  And notice, he didn't say 95.

• 1:59:39Jay Novella?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:40Speaker 05

  Right, he said 94, he put a limit on it.

• 1:59:42Jay Novella?

  Oh, wait, wait, that's another interesting point.

• 1:59:43Speaker 02

  Not only that, that was the lowest number that I found.

• 1:59:47Speaker 05

  Really? What were the other numbers?

• 1:59:48Speaker 02

  Well, some people, I think, made the mistake of calculating from the larval weight and not the adult weight,

• 1:59:53Speaker 05

  Uh huh.

• 1:59:54Speaker 02

  Which gives you a higher number.

• 1:59:55Speaker 05

  I see.

• 1:59:55Speaker 02

  So, I made sure I used the lowest estimate of what they could lift.

• 1:59:59Speaker 05

  But that would be the multiplier, not the absolute limit of weight.

• 2:00:03Speaker 02

  Everyone says the multiplier is 850.

• 2:00:05Speaker 05

  Interesting.

• 2:00:06Speaker 02

  The Goliath beetle weighs 60 grams, or whatever, 70 grams, multiply that by 850.

• 2:00:11Speaker 05

  But you would think it would be the thing that would be, they would see it move X amount of weight, right? So, that seems to me, they're not just multiplying...

• 2:00:20Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, they might be looking at a theoretical limit based on their biomechanics, but you could do the same thing with humans, and it would be, blow your mind, Jay, what one really extremely skilled human could do. You know what I mean? Like, most humans can't lift cars.

• 2:00:33Speaker 02

  I'm happy to do a deeper dive into this, you know, if we debunk it, then you can get credit, you know, for today.

• 2:00:38Jay Novella?

  However, this information is based on anecdotal reports rather than direct experimental evidence. In controlled studies, such as one conducted by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, rhinoceros beetles were observed to carry loads up to 30 times their body mass while walking steadily. Another study noted that while these beetles could carry up to 100 times their body weight, they could not sustain any steady speed under such a load.

• 2:01:02Speaker 05

  Doesn't say so.

• 2:01:03Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, but that's not what he asked.

• 2:01:04Jay Novella?

  It says specifically here, they could not move or lift Bob's wife.

• 2:01:09Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 2:01:10Cara Santa Maria?

  This doesn't say carry, it says lift.

• 2:01:12Jay Novella?

  I think we need to follow this up.

• 2:01:14Speaker 02

  We can follow it up.

• 2:01:15Speaker 06

  You're so mad!

• 2:01:17Jay Novella?

  It's a lot of, if I, how could I struggle with two 50-pound weights in my hand, but that thing can lift?

• 2:01:22Cara Santa Maria?

  It all comes down to you, that's why you're so offended by that.

• 2:01:25Speaker 02

  I have never seen a sore loser.

• 2:01:29Speaker 04

  Jay, Jay, Jay, think of it this way though.

• 2:01:32Cara Santa Maria?

  Stop taking it personally, Jay.

• 2:01:33Speaker 04

  Could you move a sled that had 400 pounds on it?

• 2:01:37Cara Santa Maria?

  Of course you could.

• 2:01:38Speaker 04

  Right? You could, right? Because the mechanics of it, whatever.

• 2:01:41Speaker 02

  We're not talking about pushing, we're talking about lifting.

• 2:01:44Speaker 04

  But it's an example of like, there might be some mechanized way where this thing wheels its way.

• 2:01:48Cara Santa Maria?

  Yeah, if you put a wedge under it and you push it, you might be able to.

• 2:01:50Speaker 04

  Underneath the thing and just moves it a centimeter.

• 2:01:51Speaker 05

  Maybe it paid some guy to lift it for.

• 2:01:54Bob Novella?

  Guys, the exoskeleton, it doesn't have muscle, it's got like, pressure, right? There's a pressure, right? So there's, there might be something bizarre about the amount of pressure. But I would think even that exoskeleton would blow apart with 94 pounds of pressure being, you know, inside. I don't know. I would like to, I'd like to see what the scientists say specifically about the, how they derived this.

• 2:02:16Speaker 05

  Well, why don't we get a bunch of beetles and a couple hundred pound weights and drop the weights on the beetles and see what happens? And if they stop them, then it's fine.

• 2:02:24Cara Santa Maria?

  Well, how many pounds?

• 2:02:24Speaker 05

  That's an easy experiment.

• 2:02:25Cara Santa Maria?

  How many pounds of pressure do you think it takes to like, stomp your foot? It's a lot, right? And I think, I think if you tried to step on one of these beetles, you would not kill it right away. I don't like the idea of that at all. I know, but like, I don't think, I do think it would probably take a lot of pressure before it actually died.

• 2:02:40Speaker 05

  Stop looking this up, dude. I'm watching you look this up.

• 2:02:45Speaker 02

  I can't, I can't stop.

• 2:02:46Bob Novella?

  Jay, let's buy one of these beetles and we'll take a 94 pound dumbbell and put it on it and see what happens.

• 2:02:50Cara Santa Maria?

  You can't buy one of them.

• 2:02:53Speaker 02

  Where'd you get your information from?

• 2:02:55Jay Novella?

  The internet.

• 2:02:57Cara Santa Maria?

  Take it outside, boys.

• 2:02:59Speaker 02

  Just get fishier as we go, guys.

• 2:03:01Speaker 04

  All right, wait, all I'm excited to do is get in touch with my high school's alumni newsletter and say that Brian and I both want science.

• 2:03:09Speaker 02

  All right.

• 2:03:10Speaker 04

  The same way.

• 2:03:11Speaker 05

  I mean, alumni of the year, George? I think so.

• 2:03:14Speaker 04

  Hello, hello?

• 2:03:16Speaker 02

  Evan, take us out with a quote.

• 2:03:18Speaker 05

  "A mistake is only an error. It becomes a mistake when you fail to correct it." John Lennon.

• 2:03:31Speaker 02

  All right, well, thank you all for joining me for this special episode of the SGU.

• 2:03:36Cara Santa Maria?

  Thanks to you.

• 2:03:37Speaker 01

  Thanks, Steve.

• 2:03:38Speaker 02

  Thank you all for joining us.

• 2:03:40Speaker 01

  Yatika!

• 2:03:43Speaker 02

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

• 2:03:55Speaker 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.

• 2:04:32Speaker 11

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