The Skeptics Guide #1027 - Mar 15 2025

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You're listening to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Your escape to reality. Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Wednesday, March 12th, 2025, and this is your host, Stephen Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella. Hey, everybody. Cara Santa Maria.

Howdy. Jay Novella. Hey, guys. And Evan Bernstein. Good evening, everyone. How's everyone faring? We've got some beautiful spring weather starting up. Oh, I know. It's percolating. Really? It's raining here in L.A. It's been quite dreary today, which I'm not going to. No, you're not. Kara, is it true? I've heard this from several people. Is it true that when it rains in L.A. that things look really clean for a couple of days? Yeah. Well, hopefully you get a couple days. At least one day.

Like the day after it rains, you can see, like the visibility is amazing. You can see out to the ocean. The mountains look crystal clear. Oh, the sky is clearer too. That's what they're talking about. Okay. That's what looks clean. The air. The air is clean after it rains. Yeah, but I have news. Good news, everybody. I took my exam today and I passed. Congratulations. Fantastic. Oh, my God. I was sweating.

I couldn't have been farther away from that test, and I was worried about it. So I took the EPPP, which is the... licensing exam for professional psychology in the United States. Everybody has to take it. I still have to take my exam for California licensure, but that's a lot shorter. It's just like the law and ethics. It's not nearly as intense. So yeah.

I'm one step closer, but pretty much like I've jumped over all the big hurdles. That's a big hurdle. Yeah. Uh-huh. You remember, Steve. You remember taking that good old boards or – I don't know how many. You have multiple exams. Yeah. I actually have three board certifications.

Oh, well, yeah. So that was your – Which will expire in due course. Eventually, yeah. But you also – do you have a licensing exam just for the medical license as well? I mean initially there is, but you don't have to retake that. You have to pass your examinations.

initially, there's like three parts to it. And you need to pass them in order to get licensed. But then that's it. That's like, I think, equivalent to what I just did. But then there's also board certification in your specialty. Yeah, which we also have. Yeah, on top of it, I have three boards. occasions. Yeah.

Well, there aren't that many board certifications in psychology. Like medicine has so many different boards. There's a handful in psychology. It's not 100% necessary, but obviously it can open doors. I think the only one that I would really be interested in or...

would even be, I don't know, would make sense for me would be health psychology. But it doesn't seem to, I don't know, it doesn't seem to be required. Kara, I have a question about the test, the examination. Yes. How, the material you studied. in order to prepare for it. Was it overall spot on? Was it a bunch of things that you wound up not being tested on? Oh, a million. Yeah. So many things I ended up not being tested on.

Bunch of things on the test I'd never seen before. Was it 100 questions or? 225 questions. Multiple choice? Mm-hmm. All of them. What they did for the board exams and the medical exams, they typically will – Like they have obviously broad questions, but they'll pick one area and they do like deep questioning on one area.

But you better hope that they pick an area that you understand well or you just got to understand every area well so that whatever they pick, you're – you're good at right yeah that's basically it for for psychology there's like multiple areas and the questions are so obscure they're so narrow focused in these you know bigger areas and

A lot of times, you know, and there's whole sections of things that you have to learn fresh just for the exam. Like there's a whole bunch of questions on industrial organizational psychology and clinical psychologists don't learn that during their PhD programs. Yeah. So it's like you only learn it in preparation for this exam. And I'll never use it again because I'm not an IO psychologist. And then there's just stuff that's like, I don't remember. It's stuff that sounds easy. Like when we talk.

We've talked on the show a lot about classical and operant conditioning, right? Like these classic Pavlovian... And then later these, you know, pairing an unconditioned stimulus with a conditioned stimulus to get a conditioned response. And so it seems really straightforward, but then it's the most... random, obscure, higher-order conditioning question with all these distractors and confusing things.

And you're just like, sometimes you read it and you just go, I don't know what I just read. I don't know if I answer this question. Your eyes are just crossing. And of course, Steve, when you did it, did they have testing centers back then? Not when I did my very, my original.

exams or my original board certification. They came online before I had to do any of my subspecialty boards or my later recertifications. Testing centers are so weird. It's like there's a bunch of people there. They're all taking their own licensing exams for whatever specialty there's nurses there yeah legal people like yeah teachers and they like check your glasses and you can't have jewelry and if you want to drink water you have to like raise your hand and leave the room and drink water

You're like being observed the whole time. Cameras all over you. It's very intense. Now my board researches are online. Oh, nice. That's so nice. They're very hard to get originally certified and then fairly forgiving on getting recertified. Yeah. Pass that first hurdle. I can finally breathe. And tomorrow's my last day of fellowship, you guys. Right. So I go into the hospital tomorrow, say goodbye to everybody. How's that feel?

Weird. I mean, I already last week, I already said goodbye to all my patients. So that was like, you know, bittersweet. Now it just feels like, I don't know. I think I'm just very tired. You know, I got up very early this morning and I was. very stressed all day until I got that answer right after. Also, very lucky in psychology that they tell you right when you finish what your score is. Oh, really? How come?

Because it's on a computer so it can be scored. Whereas, you know, I have friends who are lawyers who told me they had to wait like, I don't remember what it is, like six months for their bar results. What? Yeah, something. maybe five months, something obscene, and then they're like publicly posted. So I feel very lucky. Well, I mean, then what happens? This time of your life is ending, and what's the next thing?

So the next step now is paperwork, right? I have to submit everything to the board, and then the board will issue me my license once it's ready. And then the hospital will start the process of credentialing, which can take months and months and months and months. And I don't really know what credentialing involves except for making sure that I'm like legally and ethically and I don't know, competently.

okay to work at the hospital, but I know they do a lot of backgroundy stuff and they do a lot of paperworky stuff and it takes months and months. And then once I'm credentialed at the, oh, and put me on all the insurance panels, I think is a big part of it. And once I'm credentialed at the hospital, then I can come back on as an attending.

But I'll be part-time. It's going to be a part-time. Yeah, I want to be part-time there, and then I'll probably have a part-time clinic as well. Just private patients. You're making it happen. That is so great, Kara. Going back to school when you're an old is weird, you guys. Yeah, my wife did. My wife got her PhD in her 40s, 50s. Did she? How old was she when she first started? Do you remember? I think late 40s.

Wow. Go Joss. Yeah. I don't know if I could do that. Like I'm 41 right now and thinking about doing all this again. Oh, I would die. I just couldn't. I started at 36. Is that right? No, I started 34. It was a six-year degree, and I just finished postdoc. I can't imagine doing it in my late 40s. Yeah, and she was working full-time at the same time. Yeah, I was working full-time. It was really hard. Yeah. But you have to do that when you're an old.

You're not like on mom and dad's health insurance anymore. Right, exactly. You got bills to pay. So anybody else out there who went back to school or changed careers, I feel you. You can do it. I couldn't imagine going through medical school now. I can't imagine sitting down and getting a PhD right now, even though I just did it. It's too much now. I don't think I could. Surreal.

I'm remembering back to like, guys, I was still working in television. So I would be on set or in my dressing room with textbooks, like reading or like on location somewhere in another country and like. sitting huddling in Video Village or something studying between takes. It was nuts. What was I thinking? Well, I mean, that's what you got to do when you're young to get to that base level where you want to start your career, you know?

Yeah, but I was starting a whole career over. But I think my experience has been both personally and professionally that people who go through medical school, go through training or whatever – When they're older, like after they've been in the private sector for a while or whatever, are excellent because they have a lot more perspective. They have a lot more. They're more versatile. They appreciate and understand.

what they're going through a lot more. Yeah. You know, the value of the information that they're learning. They haven't just been in school their whole life, you know? Right. And there's like, there's also kind of like a confidence. Yeah. That's not a fake confidence, but, you know, just a comfort sitting with people.

patients that I definitely, the younger folks that I would be working with, I did see, you know, a lot of them were like, I couldn't work in the older adult clinic like you do. What would I have to say to these people? Like they loved working with kids, I think because they didn't feel confident. Something to be said for life experience. All right. Well, congratulations, Kara. I had no doubts. I lied to them before we started recording.

No, it was a lie of omission, though. It was a lie of omission. But it's true. I didn't tell anybody when I was going to take it because I didn't think I could handle the... Either a good luck text or the how'd you do text in case I failed. But yeah. Anyway, thank you, Steve. Thank you. A little white lie. We forgive you.

Evan. Yes. You're going to do your own what's the word. Yes, I am. My first attempt at a what's the word. And this what's the word segment was inspired by Mick West. Mick West. Yeah. One of the. best UFO debunkers out there today. We highly recommend him. Go to his channels and subscribe to everything he does. He sent out a tweet back on February 24th, and I'm going to read to you the tweet right now.

Word for word, here's what he said. I find the history of word usage fascinating. The word psionic... has briefly become popular in a corner of ufology, but it's primarily been a Dungeons & Dragons specific word. Looking at trends, the only spike was in August 2010 with a D&D book. This begs the question, are the people who use it now D&D fans? Is there perhaps a little fantasy involved here? Now that may seem like an innocuous tweet to a lot of people, but...

To those of us familiar with Dungeons & Dragons, oh my gosh, the responses poured in. Wanting to correct... Mick about, you know, the fact that he's kind of saying, well, yeah, August 2010, you know, there was the spike. So maybe that's kind of where they, they pulled it from, but oh my gosh, the word psionic has a history before that. And I think I'll.

Well, Kara, not you, but the four of us are familiar with the term from Dungeons & Dragons, and it is well before 2010. I'll read to you a couple of other follow-up tweets that... Help paint the picture a little bit. One reply was, the word means nothing, Mick. My mental association of it comes from playing Mass Effect in 2007 on my Xbox 360. You're looking for popularity.

a cultural significance for a word that has plenty of synonyms. Okay, so they used it in 2007. That's where that particular person who sent a tweet or an X out had it from. And then there was another one. It was used in a late two-part episode of Star Trek The Next Generation. which I don't really remember, even though I watched Next Generation. An ancient psionic weapon was assembled by Vulcan separatists. Robin Curtis guest star, and I actually think she's better in the role that...

than as Savick in the films. Are you saying psionic like S-C-I-O-N? P-S-I-O-N-I-C. Oh, P-S. Yes. Oh. Sorry. Thank you, Kara. No, it's good because I was like, there's a car called a Scion, but it's a different Scion. And I'm going to get to the nitty-gritty in a second. I just wanted a couple more tweets for some flavor here. Another one, Scionics and D&D have been around heavily way before August 20th. Okay, so this person's getting closer, sort of, to the origin of this.

a few other funny ones. It sounds better than magic or telepathy. It sounds more scientific. The word psionic, I agree. By design. My recollection of this word dates back to the original Advanced Dungeons and Dragons rule system, which came out in the late 1970s. I began playing Dungeons & Dragons in 1980, so it wasn't soon after that I discovered it. And if you go to page 110 of that old player's handbook, which I'm sure many of us still have a copy of on our shelf.

You'll find it. Psyonics, here's their definition. Psyonics are various powers derived from the brain and they enable characters so endowed to perform in ways which resemble magical abilities. Okay, but I hadn't really thought about that really. What about prior? Like what was – was there any use of the word psionic prior to?

The original Dungeons and Dragons books? Well, actually, yes. Let me tell you a little bit about the word psionic itself, though. It's a combination of psi, which is a reference to psychic phenomenon, derived from the Greek letter psi. PSI, which has been associated with psychology, the mind, and parapsychology. And the last part, or the suffix, onyx, a suffix that suggests a scientific or technical aspect similar to words like electronic or bionic.

Linguistically, the term's origin is well before Dungeons & Dragons, so says the Rhine Research Center's director John Kruth, K-R-U-T-H. who was asked about this and replied eventually in one of Mick's threads here. He said, Psionics is a term that gained popularity about 55 years ago in the 1970s. I first understood it to mean mechanisms that enable psi to be expressed, and it includes different techniques developed through research like meditation or sensory deprivation. techniques.

It is most often used to discuss devices, human-made machines, and other manufactured technologies that are considered to be either amplifiers of psi ability or have the ability to store psi intentions so that they can be released by the owner at a specific time or an a specific location um okay so and he goes on a little bit more about that but actually that's not really the origin of it it goes back even

Further than that, you really have to go to the mid-20th century, the year 1951. This is really where it came from. The term psionic was popularized in science fiction and speculative fiction, particularly in the mid-20th century. 1951 is the first use of the word. One of the earliest uses was John W. Campbell Jr.'s science fiction magazine, Astounding Science Fiction.

In the 1950s, Campbell, a key figure in shaping modern sci-fi, used the term to describe psychic abilities that function like a science-based power, often linked to telekinesis, telepathy, and other mental abilities. used in earlier discussions of parapsychology, the structured term psionics emerged to frame psychic phenomenon as a kind of technology or scientifically measurable force rather than purely supernatural. That is the origin.

of the term psionic or the word psionic. It derives from science fiction from the 50s. And if you think about it, it kind of makes sense that it would be incorporated. In the 1970s, when Gary Gygax and his other partner, whose I forget, or the people he worked with, in order to develop the game system Dungeons & Dragons...

They were of the age, what would they have been reading when they were kids in the 1950s? That's exactly what they would have been reading. And they obviously borrowed it from... from this era of science fiction and brought it in as a game mechanic to Dungeons & Dragons. So that is where the word psionics comes from all the way back to 1951. So this has been a very special What's the Word?

Cara Santa Maria as a segment of the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Tune in next time when we explore the origins of the word Thacko. Or not. Nice. All right. Hey, I found mention of the word psionic in Babylon 5 from the early 90s. Hello. Yes. Psionic Monitoring Commission replaced the PsyCorp. So – I knew they must have said it in there because Psycops was all over Babylon 5. So yeah, Psionic Monitoring Commission. Makes sense. Yeah.

Is that a portmanteau when you take two words, slam them together and make a new word out of it? It is, except that's not really a portmanteau because... It's just using a suffix. Oh, I see. Yeah, portmanteau is if you take two words like psychology and bionic and you make it into psionic. I see. But that's not how they – they just used a word forming.

Part. Okay. Onic. So it's not technically – no. It's just a – not a malaproposite. It's a neologism. It's just a new word. Yeah, a new word. Yeah. Yeah, it's like a half portmanteau. They took onics from words like electric. and then they just replaced the prefix with psi. Yeah. Yeah.

But I mean – But it's not technically a portmanteau. Yeah, you could say like I'm a computerologist. Right. But that's not really a portmanteau. I love how a discussion starting with UFOs and this brought up by Mick all of a sudden – and they all ignored like the UFO aspect of it. all turned into a discussion of dungeons and dragons so yeah it's funny in its own right all right thanks seven yep

Jay, start off the news items with a discussion of screen time and mental health. Yeah, I was reading a study that came from the University of California, San Francisco, published by or was published in Social Psychiatry. epidemiology. And the study shows that preteens age 10 to 11 who essentially, you know, watch too many screens, right? Too much phone and iPad and computer screen use.

are at a heightened risk of developing manic symptoms. And that's kind of scary because if you read about mania, it could be very severe and it could be very difficult to deal with. So the symptoms included an inflated self-esteem. decreased need for sleep, distractibility, rapid speech, racing thoughts, and impulsivity. And these are all characteristics of bipolar spectrum disorders.

And a second study, this was a Finnish study at the University of Uvaskula and the University of Eastern Finland. They followed 187 adolescents over eight years in their findings show. that a higher screen time, particularly on mobile devices, this correlates with increased stress and depressive symptoms. So adolescents who engage in regular...

physical activity and organized sports. They, of course, had lower stress levels and fewer depressive symptoms. Notably, those with both high screen time and low physical activity faced the highest levels of stress and depression. At this point, I think nobody is shocked at all, right? Anybody who is reading the news and who's been paying attention, even through your own experience, would be able to hear what I'm saying and be like, yeah, of course. This is not...

This is not a surprising piece of information. What is really sad about it, and this is essentially just making people aware, we have a huge number of people. that are setting themselves up for mental health issues. And it doesn't have to be that way. There are things that can be done to help these people. So, you know, if you have kids or you have nieces and nephews...

Whatever your job is, if you have anybody that you could help pass this information to, I think it would be very helpful. So let me give you some more information in case you get into a discussion about it. You want to talk about more details. So the screen times vary significantly across age groups, which I think tracks very nicely with my experience.

This was coming from data from 2019. American children aged 8 to 12 spend an average of – guess how many hours, guys, per day ages 8 to 12? Oh, my gosh. It's disturbingly – I was six. Yeah, you're right in the zone. It's seven hours per day on screens. Teenagers aged 13 to 18 averaged how many hours daily? Twelve. Oh, no. It's eight.

Oh, really? I thought it would be higher because they're on their phones all the time. Yeah, I was in the same exact place. So younger children have lower screen times with... Those under two years old averaging 42 minutes per week. Wow, like even two years and younger, like 42 minutes a week, that's a lot of screen time.

Two to four year olds averaging two hours per week, five to eight year olds averaging two hours per week. These statistics definitely highlight this increasing engagement with screens as children grow older, right? This is a... Significant problem. It's a mental health problem. Could also be connected to a child's physical health because screens are definitely keeping them from going outside and exercising and all that stuff. Like, I mean, this goes hand in hand.

So it's definitely very concerning and it's really obvious. This isn't like muddy results. This is crystal clear what's going on here. So over the past 20 years, there's been a... a significant increase in mental health issues among various populations. This is globally. In the UK, for instance, surveys show that mental health problems have been on the rise since the year 2000.

65% of Britons experience a mental health problem. This was in 2017 and in the United States. The National Comorbidity Survey Replication, this is called NCS-R. It indicated that nearly half of Americans, 46.4%, reported meeting criteria for a mental health disorder at some point in their life. I don't think it's that uncommon for people to have problems throughout their life.

That could give them spells of mental health issues or whatever. It could be depression, anxiety. But we're not talking about a year or two of someone struggling with something. We're talking about something that is definitely persistent. Imagine this generation growing up who are heavily into their screens. I struggle with my children as well. When the weekends come around, that's all they want to do, and I can't get them outside. They could be setting themselves up for a very...

uncomfortable future with, with, you know, these mental health issues that will seemingly come out of nowhere. You know, my wife and I do the best that we can, but you know, other parents out there, I'm sure, you know, like it's very hard. And the other thing is like the screen screens are a, pretty much a cure-all for adult problems. If I need my kids to be involved in something so I can focus on something, giving them screens hands that to me very neatly.

But we've got to stop using it that way. We've got to really monitor not only the kids' screen time, but what are they doing on the screens as well, which that's a completely different topic. So they're saying here that... You know, regular engagement, of course, in physical activity and organized sports, these things promote a physical well-being. And it also acts as a buffer against stress and depression, meaning that if a child is doing this, it's harder for...

the child to develop mental health issues because they have this, you know, built in essentially like a mental buffer that, you know, doesn't make it come on as quickly. So it's a very, very healthy thing for them to do, for all people to do. And also the experts are recommending, of course, limiting children's leisure screen time to two hours per day. And there are people inside of these studies that are making recommendations that are saying two hours is probably too much.

Even though they're saying like, you know, if this is like the thing we're going to agree on is the max number, there are people that don't agree with that and think it's got to be even less. You know, but you think about it. My kids use screens in school, every class.

I have a 9-year-old and a 12-year-old, and they have Chromebooks that the school gives them, and they're on those screens nonstop, and they're on them when they get home. And that's all just school-related. It's still screen time. So I'm worried, I think.

This is one of those things that we have a lot of these types of issues that we have to deal with in modern times. Just the plastic issue, as an example, is another thing. I'm worried about it. I don't know what to do. It's a very hard thing to not... fall victim to. And it's a very hard thing to train your kids to not be screen addicts. One of the first things we can do is...

model good behavior, because I can assure you that the vast majority of these kids' parents are also screen addicts. And I think it's really, we talk about it a lot in terms of it being like a kid problem. But how are kids supposed to have better impulse control than their own parents? Yeah, exactly. I totally agree. I mean, you know, kids definitely model their behavior after their parents. I mean, there are things that...

I say in my house, like, you know, I will not even aware that I'm saying them. And all of a sudden I hear my kids repeating them and using them. They are picking up on our behaviors, on our tones of voice, the words that we use, how angry are you, how calm are you. All of those things get passed down to them for sure. How addicted to your phone are you? Yeah, it's terrible. I mean, I work on my phone.

phone um in one way or another i got a phone in my face most of the day you know or my computer screen just just you know i can't do any of my work without a screen yeah i think it's important though also as we and i know we've said this before

that the better strategy is probably maximizing non-screen time rather than limiting screen time. Because if you just take the approach of it, like you get two hours of screen time per day, but you're not making an effort to say, well, what are you going to do the rest of it? the time. Yeah, you're just like, you're on your own, kid. Yeah, then it's kind of a losing strategy where if it's like, we're going to spend two hours outside here, we're going to do this thing together, or...

You know, whatever. You have to give them other things to do that does not involve screen time. And then you can also have some protected time. Like dinner is a great example. Like no screens at dinner. This is family time. You incorporate some of that as well. But I agree, Kara. The hardest thing is for parents to limit their screen time. And I would see it all the time when I was working in the kid clinic.

The parents being like, oh, my kid's on their phone all the time. And I'm like, your phone is in your hand while you're talking to me. Yeah, while you're saying that. Yeah, exactly. Like, why do you think? I mean, I'm not saying it's the parent's fault. It's, you know, it's.

culturally normative now to be on your phone all the time. But yeah, I mean, how on earth is a kid expected to have, like kids don't have a developed frontal lobe. You know what I mean? It's really hard for them to control those impulses.

I'm going to give you one more thing to worry about. Okay. And that is the effect of mass shootings on the public. Oh, yeah. Sorry. I know. So there's a new article that was published in Cosmos Magazine, which is an Australian publisher. That you can access by what a name, Ima Perfetto, who's a science journalist at Cosmos. And she wrote about a publication.

that just came out in JAMA Network Open, titled Direct Exposure to Mass Shootings Among U.S. Adults. So the researchers here were interested in... Getting a little bit more information, because we've talked about this on the show, so I'm not going to get too deep into the weeds on this, but we've talked about how historically there were barriers to accessing information about gun violence in the United States.

And so there just isn't a lot of data. And what these researchers wanted to do is understand from a self-report perspective how many people in the U.S. have had direct exposure. to mass shootings? And also, is that risk equal across different demographic groups? What does direct exposure mean? Yeah, we'll define that. So they used a survey company called YouGov. I think we've talked about YouGov in the past, which is a polling organization, a market research firm.

were able to put together a representative survey of adults in the U.S. So 10,000 adults. And then if you look at the kind of sample demographics, they're pretty representative of the U.S. population. So like 4% silent generation, 30% boomer, 25%. Gen X, 28% millennial, 15% Gen Z, almost half-half female male, 51.5% or 51% female, 49% male, and then also across race and ethnicity.

Ethnicity, 3% Asian, 12.5% Black, 16% Hispanic, 62% White, 5% Other, blah, blah, blah. They also have demographics on income and on educational attainment. And so they gave this survey to 10,000 respondents and they asked them some questions. And so the question that you were asking, Bob, well, first of all, they were asking specifically about gun-related crimes.

where four or more people are shot in a public space, such as a school, shopping mall, workplace, or place of worship. That's how they are defining a, quote, mass shooting. That's based on the Gun Violence Archives definition.

That direct exposure question, they said, quote, have you personally ever been physically present on the scene of a mass shooting in your lifetime? And then it further clarified physically present as, quote, in the immediate vicinity of where the shooting occurred at the time it occurred. such that bullets were fired in your direction, you could see the shooter, or you could hear the gunfire.

So that's how they defined, yeah, it's pretty specific. Then they asked, for those who said that, yes, they were, they asked, were you physically injured in the incident? And that could include being shot, trampled, or something else that caused physical injury. They coded that.

They asked about mental health consequences of exposure, but they really focus in this publication on physical injuries other than psychological impacts. I'm sure there will be another study coming out with that information. They also asked about...

where the shooting occurred? Was it in a, quote, geographic area in which you reside or to which you feel especially close, such as a neighborhood, small city, or area in a larger city, or place where you spend a large amount of your time, such as a workplace, place of worship, or recreational? area. And then they also asked about media coverage. Do you believe that this incident was, quote, covered widely by news media, which they defined as national news media or by a media beyond your city?

They got demographics on everybody, and then they asked all of these questions. And what they found was that 7% of adults were present on the scene. at a mass shooting, and 2% were actually injured in that same shooting. And so then the researchers extrapolated those numbers, right? Because this was a sample of 10,000 people that they believe was represented. And they think that approximately one in 15 U.S. residents have been present at the scene of a mass shooting.

One in 15. Wow. Yeah. So they also found a few other highlights. Younger people, especially millennials and Gen Zers, were more likely to have been present at or injured. Males were more likely than females to report direct exposure. So those both, they kind of make sense, but there's no way to fully know. So basically, men being more likely than women to report direct exposure is in keeping with other statistics about gun violence and gun violence risk.

The generational difference the researchers think could be attributable to the fact that mass shootings are becoming more and more frequent. So it's simply a function of time. So younger people are being exposed to them more than older people. But they talk about some of the limitations of their study that there could be like forgetting effects and things like that as well. And then there's an interesting... section here, which I think is important to note on. One of the authors said,

Some have hypothesized, this is a direct quote, some have hypothesized that the U.S. pays disproportionate attention to mass shootings because they affect mostly white people. But this report shows this perception to be incorrect, as with other types of gun violence. black adults were more likely to report exposure to mass shootings what the report does suggest however continuing the quote So according to this survey...

approximately or extrapolating out from the survey, the authors believe, you know, if they can repeat this study, because they do say this is a huge limitation, right? It's only a 10,000 person sample. What if it turns out to be biased? We don't have...

a lot of other measures. So we don't know if this has external validity because we can't compare it to anything else or not external convergent validity because we can't compare it to anything else. Like one of the authors said that this survey is the best we can do to estimate the number of people directly affected by mass shooting.

is frankly frustrating. We need better, more reliable data. But if this estimate turns out to be representative, that's epidemic, right? That's a really troublesome statistic. We're not even looking at the psychological impacts of being present on the scene when there's a mass shooting, witnessing.

You know, one of the main diagnostic criteria for post-traumatic stress syndrome is that you have real or imagined exposure to death. Like you either witness somebody else or you thought you were going to die. And so I'm not saying that everybody who's exposed to a mass shooting will develop PTSD, but if they do, the criteria are there. And that's really worrisome. Yeah, that's an incredible number of people.

So we'll see, obviously, if we can continue to collect data and look at this. And if you are interested, you can go to thegunviolencearchive.org, where these researchers have tirelessly been compiling gun data over the last several years. All right. Thank you, Kara. So, guys, have you ever heard of using stem cells to treat Parkinson's disease? No, not specifically. When would you guess that?

What was the first? 2000. Actual treatment using stem cells. 2000. Like on a person? Yeah, on a human being. Yeah, it's probably been a bit. Last week? I don't know. About 10 years ago. 2015. 1987. Shut up. 1987 in Sweden. What were they doing? What were they doing? That was before the whole stem cell. kind of became a well-known term. The 2000s is when it sort of hit the public consciousness. It was fetal-derived dopamine-producing neurons.

So that's how you got stem cells back in 1987, right? You got them from voluntary abortions, basically. But how did they get them into the brain? Yeah, surgery. Oh, okay. Yeah, you implant them. The Parkinson's is interesting, and it's an obvious target for stem cell therapy because you have a very specific... population of neurons in the brain that are dying. And so you would think that we need to just replace those neurons right there. And that could...

cure the disease. So it's always been on the short list in terms of like neurological uses of stem cells. Let me just very quickly remind people what Parkinson's diseases. It is caused by degeneration of the substantia nigra pars compacta neurons which are dopamine producing or dopamine secreting neurons in the basal ganglia. part of the brain, which is responsible for smooth, voluntary muscle movement, right? It facilitates movement. It modulates moment to moment the connection between

the desire to move, and the resulting movement, right? And to be clear, you mean smooth as in fluid, not smooth as in smooth muscle. Yes. Skeletal muscle. Yes, skeletal muscle, voluntary movement, yes. And not coordinated because that's the cerebellum. This is our Beller system. If this feedback loop is off in such a way that that connection... the gain of that connection, if you will, is increased, you get Korea. You get too many movements. If it's turned down, you get...

hypokinesis, you get Parkinsonism, right? You freeze up. You can't move as much. So that's basically what's happening in Parkinson's disease. So Parkinsonism is kind of the suite of neurological symptoms that you get when this part of the brain isn't working. Parkinson's disease is specific cause of that. And it's, you know, spontaneous. or degenerative disorder, and it responds to treatment with dopamine. So early on in the disease, you can give L-DOPA.

which is a precursor to dopamine, and that increases the amount that gets made by the surviving dopamine-producing cells in the basal ganglia, and it effectively... you know, treats the symptoms of Parkinson's disease. But in the end stage, you basically lose most or all of those neurons. Then that doesn't really work very well anymore because there's no buffering. There's no neurons.

the circuit is not complete. You're just sort of bathing that part of the brain in dopamine. The blood level basically determines your clinical effect. So people are constantly going through being hyperkinetic and then having a brief moment, you know, like... 5, 10, 15 minutes of being well managed and then they get hypokinetic again and then they have to dose and they go through that cycle many, many times a day, right? And to remind folks who may have seen the film.

Awakenings, which was based on an Oliver Sacks book. He, you know, talks a lot about using, they had post-encephalitic Parkinsonism. Yeah. But yeah, that's, that's, if you remember that movie, that's what's happening in that movie. Yeah, they had a post-infection destruction of the substantia nigra cells, right? Which is why they awoke and then... So they basically had end-stage Parkinsonism right away. The virus wiped out those cells rather than dying over 20 years.

And so the L-DOPA worked for a minute. It basically worked for a brief window, then it quickly burned out whatever remaining neurons they had. Yeah. But that's how, didn't he discover that L-DOPA could be used in that? Yeah. Yeah, it was amazing. And you can also use dopamine agonists, you know, so drugs that mimic the effects of dopamine. They bind to those receptors. You can use anticholinergic drugs, which...

Choline has the opposing effect so it kind of pushes the system in the other direction. This is all a massive oversimplification but you get the idea. So if you could, however, increase the number of neurons in that part of the brain, it would...

dramatically improved control of patients with Parkinson's disease. But if you go back to like the 1987... kind of approach, they weren't putting really like neurons, like they weren't putting those neurons that they were transplanting, those fetal neurons, weren't making connections in the brain. They were just sitting there secreting dopamine. They must have died pretty quickly, right? We were eventually able to get them to survive for a while.

years you know wouldn't be really worth it otherwise but it basically was just a drug delivery system right it wasn't repairing the damage to the brain it was just another way of getting dopamine to the place where it needed to be. And it only worked in people who responded to L-DOPA as a treatment. Right. So it's like not a treatment for people who were not responding to medication. It was just a way of improving the drug delivery and therefore the level of control.

never really became like a mainstay of treatment. Right, because that's like you could just swallow L-DOPA. You could just take it, yeah. Yeah, so why would you get brain surgery? Well, again, some people, they got better control because they're having a continuous release of dopamine rather than, again, being dependent on their – Right, but that's a big risk benefit. It's a very – expensive massive brain surgery for

moderate improvement. Yeah, so it's why I never really became a mainstay of treatment for Parkinson's disease. But then, you know, you fast forward to the 2000s, Evan, right, when the whole controversy over doing stem cell research and, of course, Parkinson's was... one of the diseases that we were supposed to cure with stem cell research. Now we're going to embryonic stem cells, not fetal tissue. And this was the infamous decision by George Bush to ban research.

creating new cell lines you could only use existing only use existing cell lines which is very very problematic and it was very draconian the way it was applied and universities could lose like all their federal funding if one clinic was using stem cells in the wrong way. Right, not approved, right. You know, I didn't think I could get madder at a president.

I know. I was going to say, oh, they could lose all their funding, huh? Wow. Yeah. I mean, at the time, that was like the worst thing a president did in terms of health research. But it really had a very massive dampening effect on stem cell research in the United States. But in South Korea, they basically took the lead in stem cell research at that time and Japan and elsewhere.

Eventually, what happened to the law was that it just became irrelevant because we figured out how to make induced... stem cells yeah so we didn't they need the embryos we didn't need well yeah it's still there are still advantages to embryonic stem cells they're toadipotent instead of pluripotent. Like pre-programmed? No, no. They can become like literally everything. They can become anything including the placenta, right? Whereas the pluripotent can become any fetal tissue. I see.

so in any case Because we could make induced pluripotent stem cells from fibroblasts, that opened up a whole new area of clinical research that wasn't dependent on these banned or very limited cell lines. I love that about...

science. It's like, oh, can't do that? I'll figure out another way. Luckily, it was easier than we thought it was going to be. Four genes and boom, you're done. It didn't have to necessarily be that way, but it was. We got very good at making stem cells. We could even make those stem cells. then we can induce them to become the type of cell we want them to be, like neurons. That's the key. So you start with a skin cell, turn it into a stem cell, turn it into a neuron. We're good at that.

The applications, not so much. And here's the problem. And I know we've discussed this before on the show, but just as a reminder, it's hard to get the stem cells to do what we want them to do and not. not do what we don't want them to do. They're basically tumors waiting to happen. And it's the reason why we're not flush with stem cells to begin with, right? Evolution kind of minimizes the number of stem cells to just what we absolutely need because it's a double-edged sword. Stem cells...

can turn into cancer and tumor. And that's a problem that we're having. If you don't know what you're doing and clinics are getting a little bit ahead of the evidence or whatever, they don't have the expertise, they're just injecting stem cells into your spinal cord. there's a high rate of that becoming tumors.

This is why you don't go get some unapproved stem cell treatment in another country. Don't go to some stem cell clinic tourism somewhere in the world because you don't know what they're injecting into you and there's lots of potential for harm there. But it's also hard to get neurons to make meaningful connections in the brain. And this is whether you're looking at stroke rehab or Alzheimer's or Parkinson's, whatever. Right. So we were hoping.

It's like, oh, we just have to like introduce these stem cells into the brain and they'll automatically hook up with each other and start making meaningful circuitry and everything. Not so much. Research for a lot of neurological applications has shifted to, all right, but they can still help because they could be support cells. These stem cells that we inject into the spinal cord, into the brain, will... again, produce...

neurotrophic factors and positively affect the local environment and maybe process toxins or whatever. They will improve the environment so that the neurons that are already there will survive longer and function better. So that's a lot of the research now is focusing on that application of stem cells, which is great, but it's not the cure we were hoping for, but we haven't given up on doing that.

Given that we've been doing this now since the 1980s, it may seem a little surprising to read that there's a phase one clinical trial just getting going, looking at... using autologous-induced pluripotent stem cells to treat as Parkinson's disease. therapy again in the hope of like really taking this treatment to the next level don't know how it's going to work out again it's just more they're getting the neurons to survive longer and the hope is

that they will not only take up shop, but actually start to replace some of the lost functionality. Right. So I guess then if we iteratively have improved the ability to, like you mentioned, kind of release trophic or tropic factors so that, okay, now I know where to go and now I kind of want to stick and now that eventually they'll just work their way into the networks. That's the hope. But even if they...

They just improve the function of the cells that are there. It could still be advantageous. And just the fact that we're able to use the patient's own cells to make... stem cells, so they don't require any immunosuppressive therapy. They don't have to be harvested from any exotic source. They're not animal cells.

fetal cells. They're the patient's own cells. So anything we can do to reduce the complexity, the cost, the... the risks of doing this procedure, then if you're doing a risk versus benefit analysis, right, even if it's the same benefit as we've already been getting, like from the fetal cells from 30 years ago. But if we could do it safer, cheaper, faster, better, then it changes the calculus to where it may become more of a mainstream.

treatment for Parkinson's disease. And Parkinson's, Stephen, I'm curious, like I might be getting into the weeds. Is it literally just the dopaminergic cells? Do some of the glial cells get damaged? Like, is there structural? support that could be I'm just wondering if like a cocktail would be better for integrating yeah that's a good question my understanding is it's definitely predominantly The dopamine-producing neurons. And you can see it. If you look at either an MRI scan.

We do what we call the DAT scan. It's like a dopamine scan. Or you could look at the pathology slides of brains of patients. You could see... dramatically the loss of the substantia nigra. It's those neurons that are dying. Now, why that's happening is not clear, and it may be different reasons in different people. Again, the disease is defined largely by the populations of neurons dying, not why they are dying. Just like ALS is defined.

by the population of motor neurons that are dying, not why they're dying. There's different types based upon the cause. But in any case, you know, the stem cell therapy thing, this is one of the things that we lived through, you know. I mean, I obviously knew about them in my medical training in the 90s, but really became part of the popular discussion in the 2000s.

There's a lot of hype around all the amazing things that stem cells were going to do, and it has been largely unrealized. Yeah, don't we really only use them for like a handful of applications? Yeah, they're still pretty limited. I mean, bone marrow transplants are technically stem cells.

I think skin graft kind of work. But there's not that many things that are approved as skin cell therapies. I'm sorry, as stem cell therapies. 25 years later, this is one of the things that 25 years ago I would have predicted we would have been much farther along.

than we are today but that's because it's just turned out to be the technological hurdles are massive and it's really it's turned out to be a much more difficult nut to crack and we may have to settle for you know, some really good applications that are just not what we were hoping for in terms of like...

It may not be a cure for these neurodegenerative diseases, but it may be another therapy that is effective, safe and effective. As usual, the good shit will come out after we're dead. Yeah, probably.

There is good shit. Like, that's the thing. Like, yeah, we're like, eh, bone marrow transfer. That's true. It's like, do you understand? Like, that's amazing. There's some good shit. People are cured of their cancer through this. Cured. I mean, that's amazing. I know, but Bob, we always have an eye on... what's coming. We're always 20 years behind, you know, the cutting edge. But there are things out today that we were just dreaming about 20 years ago.

And there are some fields where it's exceeded my expectations like genetic engineering. Some of the stuff I really, really want. You want the reverse aging, Bob. Come on. Say it. Admit it. There's lots of things. I want Wolverine claws and lots of cool things. We have this conversation last week. We have this conversation every week. All right, Bob. What you're going to talk about is another body hack.

Tell us about brown fat and exercise. This was a lot of fun. Researchers claim that mice without a specific protein developed an enhanced type of fat. of brown fat that not only increases exercise capacity, but also extends healthy lifespan. Wow. So this fascinating study was published in the journal Aging by a team from Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. The name of the study was Brown Adipose Tissue Enhances Exercise Performance and Healthful Longevity. All right, let's dig in.

Let's start this one with the skinny on fat. What basically everyone means when they refer to fat is white adipose tissue. That's the fat that's right under our skin. We all know it. We all have it. And most of us want to get rid of at least some of it. The fat is primarily energy storage, but it's also for insulation and hormone production. And it's also not just under our skin. This white fat is also around our organs, and it's actually...

Not good to have too much fat there because then the fat gets into the blood and then all sorts of crazy bad stuff happens. Okay. There's another type of fat called brown adipose tissue or just brown fat. Not too many people I think have ever even heard of this. This fat is in many ways like anti-fat. with little goatees like evil Spock in the mirror universe. But this fad is not evil. It's kind of awesome, actually. I've known about it for a couple of decades, and I've always...

I wished I had more brown fat. So in a nutshell, brown fat can't make us fat. It makes us warm. That's what it does. This is thermal regulation. When you get cold, what happens? What typically happens when you get cold? You shiver. You shiver. Why do we shiver? Ever thought about that? To produce heat. Shivering generates heat. And brown fat also kicks in when we get cold and it generates heat for us by itself. And it's actually funnily...

It's funnily a word. It's actually humorously referred to as non-shivering thermogenesis. Non-shivering thermogenesis. It is now. So this is now. This is. It's incredibly important for newborns who have a lot of brown fat, relatively. I think 2% to 3% of their body weight is brown fat. So when they get cold, they don't have all the mechanisms fully in place to make them warm that we do. For example.

They literally cannot even shiver. They cannot shiver. Oh, yeah, you never see a little baby shivering. Weird. Yeah. I never thought about that until right this moment. Right. I've never seen a tiny baby shiver. It's just not developed. The musculature is nervous system is not developed enough to even make shivering happen.

they have brown fat. They've got a good amount of brown fat, and that literally can save their lives. You know, maybe not so much in modern days, but of course, in the centuries past, I'm sure it saved a lot of babies' lives. Now, these cells diminish. as we age. And we used to think that they disappeared, but they found them in adults not too long ago. I think maybe 30 or 40 years ago. We still have them mainly in our upper chest and neck area. But now brown fat cells, they're...

They're smaller than white. than white fat cells and they're different they're actually different um but i don't need to go into too much detail about that and they're spread out so i remember micro uh microbiologist covert bailey some audio books years ago he was saying things like that if you collect

that all the brown fat cells together, it would be the size of a small organ, a little heat-generating organ. And they're brown because these cells are packed with mitochondria, and that's the reason why it's one of the most... metabolically active tissues in our bodies. It's just so ironic that a type of fat is so metabolically active. Where do you guys think the mitochondria in these brown fat cells get their energy from? Where do they get all this energy to generate this heat?

Where are they pulling it from? What do you mean? From regular fat cells, from white adipose tissue, which is great, actually, if you think about it. That means that when you activate, when you get cold and you activate... these brown fat cells it's burning calories from your regular fat and that of course then can promote weight loss and enhance it'll you know enhance insulin sensitivity and that has intrigued researchers don't tell me ice baths are good now for weight

Oh, man, dude, I'm telling you, it would actually help activate and even... perhaps even generate extra brown fat cells. So yeah, that's actually a thing. So this is why enhancing insulin sensitivity and weight loss, this is why... Brown fat has intrigued researchers for years because brown fat has –

could have or should have some obvious therapeutic potential for obesity and diabetes and a host of other conditions. But that isn't exactly why these Rutgers researchers were studying the brown fat of mice. They were studying brown fat because other researchers... had noticed that mice that lacked

a signaling protein called RGS14. They seem to have better longevity and even exercise performance than typical mice. So they wanted to dig deeper and see what the hell was going on there. So what did they do? They created specific knockouts.

knockout mice, right? Knockout mice that do not have RGS14 protein. But otherwise, they were the same as the control mice. So when they looked at the brown fat cells from these knockout mice, what they found almost... seemed like a super brown fat to me it was like what this this is really happening the mitochondria now we know mitochondria right these are the powerhouses of the cells they were essentially souped up they were more efficient than normal they were better at producing

energy and heat. And the mitochondria had greater overall heat generating capacity as well. And even enzymes, the enzymes levels like SIRT3, S-I-R-T-3. They were enhanced as well, and these enzymes further enhanced mitochondria function, and they also protected the mitochondria from things like oxidative damage, which they're very prone to. And let's see, one other big benefit here, the brown fat cells themselves.

benefited from the creation of new blood vessels to give them better blood flow and nutrients and also boost the cell's metabolic performance. So all that stuff are the things that they found. knockout mice themselves, of course they showed some interesting changes. I mean, if you're changing your metabolism to a certain extent to that level, you're going to be seeing some things just like...

right out of the gate here. So, and I'm not even sure how much I believe some of this stuff. It's just like, are you kidding? So they noticed that the maximum lifespan was significantly greater in these knockout mice than in the control mice for both males and females. Also, get this one, 24-month-old knockout mice. Now, that's an old mice, and this is a quote from the study. These knockout mice did not show the aging phenotype.

normally present in the control mice of similar age, including body atrophy, loss of hair. graying of fur color. Mice get old and gray at two years? Oh, yeah. That's so sweet. It's sad, but it makes them great lab animals, right? I mean, a couple years, you go through the whole life cycle. So they're looking at old and gray.

mice and they're seeing no atrophy, they're seeing no balding mice and they're not seeing much graying of the fur either. It's like, I mean, what the hell? And if that wasn't good enough... The researchers also showed improved exercise performance and endurance of the knockout mice as well to a significant degree. One site was saying 30% exercise performance improvement.

But I didn't see too much of those specific numbers in the study itself. All right, and then to make this even cooler, when the researchers transplanted the knockout... brown fat into the control mice, right? Because they wanted to say, all right, these knockout mice don't have this protein. So let's just transplant that brown adipose tissue, the brown fat. Let's just transplant.

plant that in and see what happens. So if something happens, then we know it's the brown fat that's doing it and not some other reason. So what happened was when they transplanted the brown adipose tissue into the mice, within three days, they were showing similar exercise capabilities and enhanced durability capabilities. And when they did it from control mouse to control mouse, they saw some enhanced.

but it took eight days and it wasn't nearly as significant as what they were seeing. So I guess if you put extra brown fat in your body, you're going to see something that's noticeable, some enhancement in performance, but it was nothing like... when it was transferred from the enhanced brown fat, right? You follow that? So the knockout mice had a gene knocked out that coded for a protein that suppressed adipose tissue? What did the protein do?

One of the things that it does, it's a signaling pathway for metabolism, as you might imagine. So that's why we're seeing this difference here. This protein essentially puts on the brakes. For your metabolism. It's very similar to myostatin. You've heard of the myostatin protein. It's similar. It puts the brakes on muscle growth. So when you see like a whippet, a dog or some like cattle that do not have the –

myostatin protein, they are jacked to the sky. It's incredible because there's no break. So this is similar in that without this protein, that these certain metabolic... pathways just don't have the breaks. It makes the changes that I've discussed in terms of mitochondrial efficiency and all that extra stuff. So here's a question. Yeah. What is the evolutionary purpose of having a break on our metabolism?

I don't know. And if we knock that out, is that bad downstairs? Because it's one thing to look at a two-year-old mouse. It's another thing to talk about a human that has like a 90-year lifespan. Yeah, I don't know. And there's also other problems because this protein, it impacts metabolism, but it also impacts other things like your nervous system and plasticity. So that's one of the things that I think they need to –

If this does take off, they're going to have to seriously study what are some of these other potential impacts. You just can't like, oh, let's do this on people now because who knows what else it could impact. But let me mention this other piece here that they took. a control mouse and they put the enhanced brown fat into the control mouse at three months old. And when that mouse was old, it also wasn't gray, wasn't losing hair, wasn't atrophied. So just by having that enhanced...

brown fat in their bodies. It gave them all these benefits. And to be clear, Bob, when you're using shorthand, when you say a mouse, right? They didn't only do this once. Oh, yeah. They did this on a lot of mice. I don't know the exact number, but yeah, this wasn't just one of mice. This was a bunch of mice. Yeah, I'm seeing here from my notes that the other effects of this protein is...

It impacts learning, memory, and synaptic plasticity. So, yeah. So that's just like, oh, yeah, you just can't mess around with that stuff. Does the protein suppress those things or does the protein... enable those things. I wonder if it puts the brakes on it as well as metabolism. I'm not sure. So obviously all that would have to be studied. But for people to benefit from this, because this is where we're going, we want to benefit people.

with this discovery. So that doesn't necessarily mean that we have to make ourselves and knock out people that don't have this RGS14 protein. So as they say in this study, it becomes increasingly important to develop a pharmacological analog. to the RGS-14 knockout brown fat that can be translated to the clinics to promote enhanced exercise capacity and healthful aging in patients.

That's the wet dream scenario, right, for this? Not knocking out our own proteins or genes, but targeting therapies, creating these targeted therapies to give our own brown fat similar properties without necessarily... getting any of the potential downsides, but some sort of targeted therapy that could do it. So that would be amazing.

To me, what are the odds of this transferring to people? First off, yeah, you can never assume that what you see in these studies in mice is going to transfer cleanly to people. almost guarantee that that's not going to happen. But it does happen. And we may learn enough about this enhanced brown fat that we could mimic these properties and transfer that somehow through some therapies to people. That would be amazing.

You know, the impacts to enhancing, you know, longevity and health and dealing with obesity and diabetes and all these other problems that it could potentially ameliorate, I think. It could be dramatic. If this transfers well, but we'll see. But I guess, Bob, an important question is like, I don't know if you've done the research on this because you're so interested in it, but.

I feel like every day we're seeing more and more that these GLP-1s or these semaglutides have these positive benefits beyond what they were originally. developed for, how do they affect brown fat? Because we might already have, I mean, I'm not saying that they're a panacea by any stretch, but we already have these targeted therapies that really, really seem to be helping people metabolically.

And so I'd be curious to see if, I don't know, it might not be that crazy an idea. Yeah, I hope. Because, I mean, by knocking out this protein, it turned the mice... Brown fat into like super brown fat, super. I mean, it really was. This is dramatic where you're looking at an old mouse and it's not gray and atrophied.

I mean, that's just like, what the hell? That's, that's incredible. I mean, even if it doesn't, and it doesn't have to extend our, you know, our lifespan. If what it needs, what it would be great if it could extend our healthy. you know, if it compress the morbidity so that we're in really great shape until we're, you know, into our 80s and then...

That's the goal, right? You experience this compressed morbidity where over the course of a year, you really decline really fast. And it's not like 15 years of just a horror show of medical expenses and decrepitude and all that. nasty stuff. I'm seeing like just a quick, quick internet search, an article in cell biochemistry and function.

That's from 2022. Semaglutide GLP-1 receptor agonist stimulates browning on subcutaneous fat adipocytes and mitigates inflammation in visceral fat adipocytes of obese mice. Yeah. So it's like, we already have drugs that are doing this. I mean, it's cool. But like, I don't think it's, it feels iterative to me.

Scientists have noticed these mice before, and that's what these researchers did. They're like, wait, these people are seeing mice that seem to have increased longevity and enhanced exercise capabilities. What's going on? That's why they took a deep dive.

to the brown fat and like, holy crap, look what's happened to this brown fat. Right, because there's already individual differences in mice and people. There's already people who have never had a problem with their weight their whole lives and there are people who really, really struggle. Like what's going on there from a genetic perspective, from a protein perspective?

There's a lot to learn. There are people that don't have the myostatin protein and are really muscular. Maybe there probably are people out there that already don't have this and they can check them out.

And that would sound like an awesome study right there. All right. Thanks, Bob. Sure. Jade, who's that noisy time? All right, guys. Last week, I played this noisy. I think it's an animal. Yeah. That sounds like some flying mythological creatures from a Ray Harryhausen stop motion movie scene. But I think it's a real animal. Steve, what do you got? Yeah, it definitely sounds like an animal. Is it a bird? No, it is not a bird. Okay. Frederick Niant wrote in and said, I believe this is...

Someone pulling the string on a broken 80s to 90s voice box found in dolls. It's a cromulent guess. That is not correct, but thank you for trying. No, it's not. Hunter Richards wrote in and said, Hi, Jay. I know a lot of people are going to say it's an animal of some kind, but if you listen closely, it sounds too mechanical. My guess is this is a record being scratched. Most likely, someone has...

a hold of the belt that turns the platter and is pulling it back and forth while the stylus is in contact with the record. Not sure what kind of record, but something that when sped up and played backwards and then forwards, sounds like... A growling baby bobcat. Now, what that person just described is actually this. Am I too old to recognize that? No, I'm just saying. It's funny. When I read it, I'm like...

I don't know. Does he not know? Does he not know that this has been around for a very long time? That is not correct. But thanks for the guess. Let's move on to J.D. Bergen. J.D. said it sounds like it could be some little angry rodent like a sugar glider. A sugar glider? I don't know what that is. They're not angry.

How do you know, though? They might be. They're so sweet. Have you ever met a sugar glider? No, I wish I did, though. I think they look really cool. They're cute. All right, there's no winner this week, guys. I'm shocked. I'm utterly shocked that there was no winner. I'll play it for you one more time. Okay. That's a skunk. What? Okay. I grew up with a standard poodle. That was the dog that my family had growing up. And our dog would get sprayed by skunks at least twice a year.

It was not uncommon. And I remember hearing the mother and baby skunks making that noise as they were running away. So I recognized this right away. But I'm really surprised. Nobody really did it. Maybe it was an off week. It is what it is. Sometimes I stump you on something that I would consider to be pretty easy. All right. I have a new noisy for you guys this week. Kerry, you were correct all the time. This noisy was sent in by a listener named Dale Robinson.

If you think you know what this week's noisy is or you heard something cool, email me directly at wtn at theskepticsguide.org. Steve, very quickly.

Yeah. The SGU is changing significantly this year because Steve is going to retire. So Steve will be going full time at the end of June, early July. He'll be taking his certification in July. He will. We are giving him a skeptics guide. He'll have 20 minutes to answer the questions, and I'll give him the answers immediately.

The bottom line is, if you'd like to help support us during this time when Steve's going to be going full time, because we could really definitely use the support. And if you also want to support us because, I don't know, the world is in a very... non-skeptical place, and I think we need skeptical outreach now more than ever. Please consider becoming a patron. You can go to patreon.com forward slash skepticsguide. You can also join our mailing list.

We send out an email every week giving you details on everything that we did the previous week. You can go to theskepticsguide.org to check out our email list. You can give our show a rating on whatever podcast player you're using. I think iTunes is still like the number one place to rate podcasts. And that's it. Oh, no, it isn't. The conference.

Guys, I know you're excited. I can hear you guys chomping at the bit wanting to talk about how excited you are about this. No, we are very excited just because we know how much fun it is and we've been working on this conference for the last six months. Very, very excited and happy that we're running it again. If you'd like to join us, it's called Nauticon. Nauticon 2025. We have a Beatles theme this year.

And it'll be on the dates May 15, 16, and 17. You can go to notaconcon.com for information about the conference. Everything you want to know is on there, and also you can buy tickets there. Please join us. It's going to be great.

All right. Thank you, Jay. I'm going to do one email. This email comes from Tim Graham from Canada. And Tim writes, Dear Skeptics, your show is a highlight of the week for me. I am sure I am not the first to point out inaccuracies in episode 1026 regarding the Texas measles outbreak. I certainly got the sense from the skeptics that fun was being poked at the recommendation to you. We'll be right back.

that this traditional remedy would be more palatable given their cultural norms than pills from the big bad government. For example, Cochrane states that vitamin A reduces death by 87% in children younger than two.

Any cursory search for measles treatment would have outlined the importance of vitamin A. While I think the reporting content was uncharacteristically shoddy, it was actually the tone that I found more problematic. I agree with the general premise that RFK Jr. has been a dangerous... vaccine skeptic, but in this case he basically seems to be recommending the correct treatment.

Well, I understand the bias of judging RFK Jr. based on previous crackery. Each time the skeptical community stoops to judging the current behavior in this way, it feeds the narrative that the sky is falling. If RFK Jr. starts to promote general health via exercise, will that... Oh, no.

There's a lot here. I responded to Tim with the information that I'm about to give you guys. And he responded simply, thanks for the correction. Because Tim is completely wrong here. But in a very interesting way that is worth exploring. The idea is that, well, vitamin A is actually a WHO and... Actually, CDC recommended treatment for measles, and therefore we were unfair to criticize RFK Jr. in recommending vitamin A for measles. But that's not true. I wrote about this today on...

science-based medicine as well, if you want to have all the references. Here's the skinny. If you look deeper into the data, what the data clearly shows is that what vitamin A is treating is not measles. It's vitamin A deficiency. The problem is that measles exacerbates vitamin A deficiency. It depletes vitamin A. The infection itself depletes vitamin A. So...

If you already have vitamin A deficiency, measles can make it worse. What the WHO is essentially recommending is targeted vitamin A supplementation in at-risk populations. who are either likely to get measles or who do get measles. It's also true that measles and vitamin A deficiency both weaken the immune system, right? So there's also a synergistic effect there.

Yeah, and in like a developed country where somebody is not likely to have vitamin A deficiency, they may still be given vitamin A as an adjuvant treatment. But it's not going to – because measles does make you deficient in vitamin A. So while they have the measles, they might have temporary vitamin A deficiency. But it's not like –

Oh, if you get the measles, don't worry. You can just take vitamin A and then you won't have the measles. Right. It's actually more – I would go farther than that, Kara. So because it's been studied. So first of all – The 87% figure is highly misleading. That was in one small study. The most recent systematic review I found actually put the number at 12%. So a 12% reduction in mortality.

RFK Jr. actually referenced a study, an earlier review, an older review that cited 65%. Why are these numbers so wildly variable? Because it depends on the level of vitamin A deficiency in the population that you're studying. But all of these studies, all of these studies are in developing nations with rampant vitamin A deficiency. All of them. It also found, by the way, even in the maximally positive patient population for the effects of vitamin A, no preventive benefit. It does not prevent

It doesn't prevent the spread of measles. It doesn't prevent a lot of complications of measles. It does reduce overall mortality from vitamin A deficiency, right? It also prevents blindness from... vitamin A deficiency. So yes vitamin A is an effective treatment for vitamin a deficiency it doesn't have any anti-measles viral activity right it has no antiviral activity it's not treating the measles it's treating the vitamin a deficiency we see in measles i found one study

that specifically looked at the effects of vitamin A in the treatment of measles in a developed nation. And you know what it showed? Nothing. Zero benefit. No benefit. So citing data from parts of the world with vitamin A deficiency for the efficacy of vitamin A supplementation and then applying it to Texas is classic. Classic RFK Jr. It's completely getting the science wrong. He's interpreting it on the most superficial level possible with no medical understanding. Not like as a physician.

you hear that there's a massive reduction in mortality from measles from vitamin A. The first thing you think of is like, I wonder what the mechanism is that? Are they just treating vitamin A deficiency? But if you're not a physician, And you just think, oh, it's treatment, right? It's just it's treating the measles, you know, and just take something that supports your.

your ideology that like everything is nutritional. Right. Uh, and also he's, while he has to, you know, make positive statements about the vaccine, he's still throwing out all the vaccine, anti-vaccine tropes. And then he gets interviewed later on Fox News and he's bringing up vaccine side effects and it's a choice and all that stuff. He's still a hardcore anti-vaccinationist. You know what's so infuriating to me is that obviously there's so much...

disinformation there that's going to lead people to make bad decisions because this is now a public health official. I should say disinformation. To be clear, and this is the part that's so infuriating, there is no cure for measles, which is why we have to rely on vaccination. When we think about the vaccines that have really dramatically changed the landscape of these diseases, it's usually diseases for which...

there is no cure. If you get this virus, all we can do is give you comfort measures and hope that your immune system can fight it off. That's all we can do. That's so scary. We can't say, oh, after the fact, you're going to be fine. You'll be fine. Take vitamin A. You're good. Even though it has no benefit in America, right? Right. It's like COVID, too. That's what's so infuriating. It's like...

People are going to die from this. People die from the flu. People die from all of these diseases. And even though we have, quote, treatments, those treatments don't actually fight the disease. That's right. They do things like reduce your mortality. Yeah, the only thing, the only messaging... The government should be having on this, or the primary messaging should be full-throated support for vaccination. Confusing people by misinterpreting the vitamin A literature is counterproductive.

People say the CDC recommends it. This is what the CDC has to say. Supportive care. Again, physicians know what that means. It's not a treatment. It's not a disease-modifying treatment. It's just making the patient better able to weather the... storm of this illness, supportive care, including vitamin A administration, under the direction of a physician may be appropriate. Whoa, is that lukewarm.

Right. That's just like it may be, you know, adjunctive supportive care. It's not a treatment for it. Completely gets it wrong. But in a way that's very typical for RFK Jr. and for cranks in general who don't – Yeah, I almost wish that the language would be even stronger though. Like I'm – I'm looking at the Mayo Clinic and they literally say, there is no specific treatment for a measles infection once it occurs. Treatment includes providing comfort measures. That's it.

And also, to be emphasized, it is not a substitute for the vaccine. No. But people are doing it. They are taking vitamin A to prevent measles. And even in the studies that show that it's effective. in reducing mortality, it doesn't prevent the contraction of the illness. Right.

Vitamin A is like the most toxic vitamin that there is, right? You're aware of that. Like it's very easy to overdose on vitamin A with horrible consequences. Yeah, you can overdose on vitamin A just from eating too much liver. Yeah, that's correct. Not just from taking too many of the supplements. This is why it's so dangerous when there are these supplements that are like 2,000% of your daily value. That happened by, you know, there was one polar mission that they...

had to kill and eat polar bears. They ate the polar bear livers. So safety tip, don't eat predator livers because... Predators eat livers, and their livers concentrate all of that vitamin A, and they got hypervitaminosis A and died from vitamin A poisoning because they ate a polar bear liver. So I don't think that we were unfair to RFK. But the point is well taken that...

We shouldn't reflexively say that anything that he says is wrong because he will throw in correct things at times as well. That's what good pseudoscientists do. And this is rampant in the healthcare, like the alternative. health care and so they gotta eat right you know have a lot of vegetables exercise regularly and take these bullshit supplements it's like you know that is par for the course as part of a well balanced diet

This is the Trojan horse phenomenon. We even have terms for this. We write about this all the time, how they do this. You couch your nonsense in reasonable and reasonable sounding common sense or generally accepted good health advice. And it gives it the air of, again, of reasonableness and that you're reasonable and you're just throwing. in this thing. But there's the poison pill always. There's always the nonsense. And he is

inappropriately touting vitamin A because he's an anti-vaxxer. Period. He's trying to present it as an alternative, and it's not. Steve, I'm looking at the symptoms of vitamin A toxicity. It's horrible. Your skin melts off your body. Yeah, your bones get... thin and chronic exposure, but in acute exposure. Listen to this. Increased intracranial pressure. No, you're getting organ failure. It's terrible. Oh my God. Yeah. You don't want that. No, no, no.

Yikes. So if you've been taking vitamin A, it says, and you have a headache and a rash, you need to seek medical attention. That's so scary. Stop taking the vitamin A, but go to the doctor. That's why the CDC says, under the direction of a physician. They do not want people self-medicating with vitamin A because it's dangerous. Oof. But it's just a vitamin, Steve. I know.

It's all natural, too. All right. Well, we have a fun interview with Dave Farina, Professor Dave, coming up. So let's go to that interview now.

We are joined now by Dave Farina. Dave, welcome to The Skeptic Guide. Hi, thanks for having me. Dave, you are also known as Professor Dave from your Professor Dave Explains YouTube series. which is very popular. I've been enjoying watching. I just watched your most recent one. I think it's your most recent one, Reacting to Pathetic Answers in Genesis Propaganda video. Yeah, that's a good one. You seem to have a good time doing that one.

I do. The reaction videos are fun. I can kind of just let loose a little bit. So tell us a little bit about this project, how and when you started it and how it's been going. Sure. I started my YouTube channel in 2015, January of 2015. So I actually just celebrated my 10th anniversary, if you can believe it. But yeah, I started out just, I had been teaching organic chemistry. And I had noticed that some people...

were uploading educational content, tutorial-based content to YouTube. Not that much. This was quite a while ago, but there definitely was some up there, most notably Khan Academy and some other things like that. And I thought, well, why can't I do that? I basically just filmed myself delivering my organic chemistry lectures as though I were teaching class and did a little branding, made a little theme song, you know, some fun little.

tidbits to make it a little more fun and put them online and just thought, well, let's see what happens. And I was actually pretty shocked at how well it was received immediately. which prompted me to start making general chemistry tutorials, this time with a green screen and some animations and kind of upped the production value a little bit. And those were also received well, so I started doing biochemistry and physics and astronomy and math and just really...

you know, kind of was off to the races with as many topics as I could cover. And then Around 2019, 2020, a new component of the channel emerged. I started to do some debunking content where I just take charlatans and frauds who lie about science. and expose them, debunk them increasingly maliciously, I guess, over the years, which has become something of a reputation for me. And so those are the two things I do to this day. Yeah, so we kind of started with debunking.

That's kind of – I think it's a critical part of science communication. I think so. Yeah, it's funny that you kind of found it after the fact. Yeah, because most people – have misconceptions about science. Not just filling a void, you're correcting misinformation, right? That's right. Dave, I saw your videos, I think all of them at this point, of your ongoing battle with the flat earthers.

And yeah, I mean, it's, you know, I really liked your angle on it. I guess, you know, you're at the level of aggression that I wish that I could be at. Yeah. I mean, it's perfect. It's perfect because. It's really interesting as a science advocate and science communicator myself, you're saying the things that I wish I was educated enough in that particular area. It just isn't one of my areas that I've done a deep dive on. And it seems so obvious to most of us that this is so ridiculously...

you know, it's an ill thought out position, right? It's just like you can't, you can't, it doesn't hold water on so many levels. How did you get into that? Like, tell me about the story behind how that kind of became your focus. So, I mean, it was, I definitely wouldn't say it's my focus now. But I would say that it's the first thing that I debunked because I kind of got dragged into it. So I was making an astronomy series and, you know, basically astronomy 101, right? Tutorials to a company.

a freshman year undergrad that's taking Astro 101, right? This is what you learn in class. Here you go. I just thought at the end, it would be kind of fun to do a couple of pieces, one debunking astrology and one debunking flat earth. I didn't look into... Anything that Flat Earthers say, I just had heard that there were...

flat earthers. And I thought, haha, that's so silly, isn't it? So I did those two pieces. And I thought I'd get more heat on the astrology one, but nobody seemed to care on that. But with the flat earth one, all I really did was kind of recapitulate points from earlier. series how did we how did the you know in antiquity how did we observe the celestial sphere things that we noticed that helped us understand that the earth is a sphere

2,500 years ago, right? Here are some things to talk about. And that video went to the top of the Flat Earth keyword search that day when it went out. These guys, the globe busters, decided they were going to do a live stream just tearing it apart. Oh, man, this guy's so dumb. This Professor Dave is so indoctrinated. He's a NASA shill. And they did this long.

Long, long, long live stream just and they were really I mean, they were really nasty towards me. And that it's just at the time I was not used to people talking about me on the Internet. Now, it's every minute of every day, and it's a constant barrage. of vitriol being thrown my way. But at the time, I just I wasn't used to it. And I got, you know, I took it personally. So I did a response video, I did a 45 minute video.

tearing apart their little live stream. It's the first debunk I've ever done. It's the first long form content I'd ever done. And I loved it. I found out that I'm really good at it. People loved it. It's still to this day, the most viewed video on my channel. by a lot. And so it was just this incredible thing where I discovered this other type of content.

that I felt compelled to do, that I really enjoyed doing, that looked like it could be lucrative as well, which would help me, you know, not have to do other kinds of work, and I could really focus on science communication. So I really went for it. I mean, I stuck with flatter. for a few more videos, but then I pretty quickly branched off into creationism and electric universe and anti-vaxxers and just quantum mysticism or whatever I felt like debunking. I mean, it's a never-ending well.

that we can dip into for things to debunk, but just kind of went for it. I used... those videos to introduce my son to Flat Earth. And, you know, he really got into, well, he and I both liked your point of approach. You know, I just think it was like... First and foremost, you really knew all the answers. They weren't really to get one over on you, which is their typical way of doing it is they'll throw a bunch of lingo at you.

make you second guess your position just because you're not following everything that they're saying. Yeah, I could see that they were being aggressive towards you and that you decided that you're going to take the gloves off a little bit, which it worked really well, obviously. Like people really responded to it.

Other than that, what are some of your topics that you felt landed really well? I mean, creationism and intelligent design is one of the biggest focuses, if not the biggest. debunking focus just because like flat earth it is a denial of entire fields of science depending on the flavor of creationism right flat earth is a denial of the entire field of physics the entire field of geology the entire field of astronomy

In the same way, young Earth creationism denies almost as much science as flat Earth. The difference is that it's tremendously more prevalent. and is also part of a political movement, right? There's definitely a push towards Christian theocracy, the erosion of church and state. These are things that really, the separation of church and state.

trying to get religion taught in public schools, things like that. These are things that I'm really concerned about from a societal standpoint, right? Flat Earth is... is adorable in comparison, right? It's a very silly, tiny little cult and it's fun to make fun of and it's important to expose how stupid it is and use it as a case study in conspiratorial thought to teach lessons about it. But creationism and intelligent design and all that move, that's something that actually directly.

threatens our freedoms as a country, as a citizenry. So I have devoted quite a lot of attention to that. And now I'm starting to look at what the current administration is putting out. I actually just finished editing a piece on... That'll come out probably this Saturday about all the Trump, the trans mice comment that he made. And it's just like insane. And I mean, this is.

where our government is at. So I'm trying to be topical and do things that are, you know, I got to talk about RFK Jr. I got to talk about people in his cabinet. I got to talk about this stuff and hope that that makes an impact. So that's definitely at least. part of my the main part of my focus at the moment with the debunking what i found with the flat earthers actually is that i think a lot of them are creationists because even though it might have started as kind of this

more of a cult thing on its own. It's kind of merged with the, well, it's the firmament. That notion of a firmament comes from the Bible. And so to them, I think to a lot of the... the ongoing flat earthers. It's a support of creationism, of the literal interpretation of the Bible, right? There is no space because there's a firmament up there. They quote the Bible when they talk about it.

Well, I mean, I wouldn't say merged. I think that there is a sub community of flat earthers that are that way because they are biblical literalists. Some are just conspiratorial thought on.

on steroids like it's just oh yeah ain't conspiratorial yeah absolutely the conspiracy the hardcore conspiracy theorists are into everything conspiratorial right regardless but then there's the ideological conspiracies yeah if you're a flatter through you believe in every single conspiracy but the difference is that

the overwhelming majority of creationists are not flat earthers. Yes, that's correct. There's only about 10,000 flat earthers at the most in the world, whereas there are millions upon millions of creationists, even young earth creationists. They're a much larger demographic, and they believe these things in earnest. And ironically, they mock flat earthers. Even Kent Hovind will mock flat earthers as like a silly...

belief system. And it's like, all right, that's the one thing that you don't advocate for, you know? But yeah, it's pretty incredible. Dave, what are you working on right now? Uh, literally this moment today, I was working on the, the piece I was just telling you about the, the Trump trans mice. Um, other than that, I'm working on like, I'm, I'm also constantly working on, uh, academic tutorials. So I'm working on, uh, some math tutorials on different.

differential equations. I'm working on zoology tutorials. I'm working on forensic science tutorials. I'm working on world history tutorials. And then a whole bunch of other debunks are constantly kind of in the queue.

as it were. When you're going to, in the future, talk about the Trump administration and what the government is doing, we're struggling with it right now, right? Because first of all... We started out this show being apolitical. We really don't want to talk about politics. Not apolitical, nonpartisan. Nonpartisan. Yeah, so we don't talk about things that are strictly political, but of course...

Whenever politics has a scientific angle to it, we talk about the science. If they're getting the science wrong, we will absolutely talk about it. We don't talk about religion, but we talk about religion like creationism when they make scientific claims. Correct. Yeah. So I wouldn't say we are not political because that's just not accurate. We just have to be clarified. We're nonpartisan. Yeah. When demagogues politicize science, I'm going to debunk their politicization of science. Exactly.

And so, you know, it's it's annoyed. It's turned some people off. You know, I'll talk about trans issues, but it's because I'm tired of this aspect of the culture war. And people 10 years later, we've been talking about this, people still refusing to learn about. what trans people are. So I try to teach them aspects.

about human anatomy and physiology and what gender identity is in these things. And I do get comments, you know, why are you being political? I'm not. I'm talking about science. This is about, you know, hormones and, you know, human anatomy and like that's biology. My friend, that's called the science. So but it has to be done. It just I'm really tired of the discourse. I'm really tired of the abuse in our government of science. And now I'm finally seeing scientists.

turning around and starting to become more available for commentary because of the gigantic funding cuts, the NIH funding cuts. Scientists are panicking, right? They are finally starting to realize what I've been saying for years. And that is that public perception of science informs voting behavior, which informs your ability to do your jobs. Right. That Trump got in there is why you guys are all freaking out about about.

your work. So work with me, right? Let's all together, the scientific community and us science communicators.

help the public figure out what the hell is going on and how they're being lied to left, right, and center by this administration and others. And that's part of the... problem and issue as science communicators like you know we have audience members we have people who listen to the show for a long time and who can't really tease apart the idea that You know, we're talking about the science and how politics has affected it and distorted it.

But we're not specifically talking about politics like that's not our focus. That's not the thing that we get out of bed in the morning. But again, we have to talk about it because things have become so unbelievably unclear. The trans issue in particular is something that the – The skeptical community is really wringing their hands over because there isn't agreement. Inside the skeptical community, there is an agreement about what the science says. Yes.

Yeah. It's unfortunate. Yeah. It sucks. Yeah. It's very frustrating because we can't – It's unfortunate and completely unnecessary. Right. Because, and I've spoken about it quite a bit recently as well. Of course, I get attacked as a woke ideologue, you know, liberal, because I say like, yeah, well, you know, biological sense, sex is not strictly binary. You know, it's just a fact. Correct.

But it is because of gametes, right? If you encountered the gamete theory, right? The gamete gambit. That's the new ideology. That's the dogma. It's like, well, it is strictly binary because the gametes are binary. But that's flawed. But people are not single-celled creatures and that's not what we mean by biological sex. Oh, you're trying to redefine biological sex? But the reason it doesn't work is that – so how do you – so when a boy is born –

Are they not male until they begin producing sperm? Right, exactly. It's nonsensical. I agree. It doesn't work. You cannot use a strictly gonadal definition nor strictly genital-based definition. Sex refers to a suite of characteristics. that don't always agree. But they say it doesn't. That's the weird dogma they've gotten themselves into. Because of evolution, it's really only about gametes. But we're talking about people.

At the most, you're making some kind of weird – it's a semantic argument. It's a completely semantic argument. All right, so call it something else. But the fact is you can't – divide all of humanity cleanly into two categories. That's what we're talking about. They're trying to impose a rigid mathematical certainty onto the biological world in a way that just does not fit, period. Right. It also just doesn't make sense.

conversation we're having well you know men shouldn't compete in women's sports like well yeah okay but the definition of male and female from a sporting perspective is not so clean it's like yeah but gametes it's like yeah but we don't have gamete leagues like we don't have a sperm league in an

egg league so you're using other features that you are telling me now are not part of biological sex because of evolution or something to divide so it doesn't even make internal sense within the own argument that they're having but more importantly You know, there is.

Informed, nuanced discussions about social issues are never going to happen until everybody agrees on the science. Yes. We're not there yet. We're still having people called, well, men can't be women. Men can't have babies, blah, blah, blah. Right. while people are still talking like that.

How the hell are we going to talk about these nuanced social issues? Everybody has to understand the basics. Then we can talk about what to do. I'm not going to have this sport conversation or the locker room conversation while people are still talking this way. It's ridiculous.

I agree. This is why it's unfortunate. I think that the science communication community needs to get their shit together. Yes. Because if we're arguing with each other about how to define biological sex, we have no hope of having a coherent message. to the public. It was kind of a little bit of the same way 25 years ago with climate change. I think that was one of the, not the first issue, but one of the early issues where

The ivory tower scientists had no idea what was coming for them, right? And then, come on, like a wonky... field of climate science, like we probably never had any interaction with the media before, suddenly becomes in the crosshairs of a political movement. And they didn't know how to deal with it. It took them 10 years to get their shit together.

terms of dealing with the public. Now I think they kind of know what they're doing. But I think we're still kind of in the same place with the transition, the biological sex issue. We went through it 50 years ago and then it kind of got swept under the rug and now we're going through it again. Unfortunately, I'm afraid of what's going to happen. Yeah, I'm actually doing a piece. I'll probably put it out.

Not this Saturday, but the following about I was actually asked to be on a Piers Morgan panel. with jerry coin so there was the whole ffrf uh resigning from the board of jerry coin richard dawkins these guys i think what you're alluding to is you know these figures largely extensions of the you know atheist community that are doubling down on the conservative talking points on this issue. Yeah, so I'm doing a piece on what Dawkins said on that panel, and I'm tearing them a new one in that.

And yeah, it's really disgraceful. You know, I mean, it's what the irony about it is that he is accusing people that. actually educate themselves about gender identity and all and you know all of these concepts that he's pretending to have expertise in he's accusing them of being ideologues when in fact he is he is bending over four ideologues that are using is rhetoric to try to impose...

Christian nationalism, right? These guys, Dawkins and Coyne, they're famous for fighting against anti-evolution propaganda in that space. And now they're tools. They are instruments of the very same people. It's just – you can't write this stuff. I know. I hate to say it, but it's just always Michael Shermer. They're complete tools of Christian nationalists.

And they don't see it. All because they refuse to learn something new. It's just ridiculous. I think they've decided that anyone who disagrees with their perspective are liberal. woke liberal ideologues and then it shuts down any discussion and so It's very dismissive, you know? So you can't have a conversation. And the vitriol and the rhetoric is so intense. It's like, can we lower the heat a little bit and just...

And try to focus in on what our common ground is. Like there's none of that happening. And they're just stuck in this. ridiculous semantic argument that is just fueling this right-wing Christian propaganda. It's so ironic. I agree. It's completely ironic. Yeah, but Steve, if you ignore all the edge cases...

It is binary. Yeah, if you ignore it, it's like they always come out at night except during the day. It's binary except for when it's not. Except for all the exceptions. I mean, Jerry coined recently. I'm going to call him out a little bit because we invited him on the podcast to talk about this issue and he refused to come on. But then he still trash talks me on his blog and on a recent one where he was touting a survey and that said, look, most of...

scientists agree that biological sex is binary. The question was, is biological sex binary? And then with an asterisk, and next to the asterisk, it said, if you don't include all of... the intersex people yeah right so like 52 percent of people of scientists whatever agreed with the statements so you're saying

That's what that's supposed to mean. Something is biological sex. If you don't include all the people who are not binary, it's ridiculous. But it's also, but it's not just intersex people or the far more interesting cases. I forget off the top of my head the names of the syndromes, but you can have XY chromosomes and express female genitals, and you can have XX chromosomes and express male genitals.

different chromosomal situations. They are technically intersex, but now the term would be difference of sexual development, DSD. Or gonadal dysgenesis. Typically when we're talking about intersex, we're talking about about X monosomy or XXY trisomy, where we're talking about irregular chromosomal situations. We're talking about instead there are situations where you have XX and XY, just like everybody else.

but you express the opposing set of genitals and reproductive organs. Yeah, I use it as an example. How is that in the binary? There's CAIS, right? There's a complete androgen insensitivity syndrome. They're XY. They have testicles. They make sperm.

The sperm is not functional because the testes don't descend, but they have no response to testosterone. And therefore, they develop completely morphologically female. They don't have uterus, but other than that, they are completely morphologically female. And according to Coin, that's a male. That's a guy because they have sperm inside of them.

But he'll also say it's based on genitals. This was the funniest thing about the Pierce segment is that Coyne started talking about, oh, it's based on the genitals. And they go, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then he goes, no, it's based on the gonads. And they go, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then Pierce starts fixating on that boxer, that Egyptian boxer.

Who was born with female genitals and reproductive organs and everything, but has XY chromosomes. And he starts saying that that that's a man because of the it's like you guys, you don't even realize you're contradicting each other. You don't care about. any kind of accuracy. You're just grandstanding to get the points from the conservative audience that you're courting. It's just ridiculous. I think Coyne is sincere and just misguided in his conception of this.

He's just applying – he's making a category mistake. He's making the wrong argument and he doesn't realize – the full context. It's unfortunate. Yeah. He's chosen his camp and he'll, you know, they're, these men are of a certain age coin and Dawkins and it's just, yeah, I think it's generational. I agree. Yeah, the idea that there's something different than just men and women is so anathema they can't wrap their head around it. Impossible for them to wrap their head around, yeah.

I wish that everybody could just learn the lesson. I'm not quite old enough. I mean, it was the 70s and 80s, I think, primarily when people started to become aware of the homosexual community and that sexuality is...

not as rigid as, you know, as the Puritans would have us believe. And now, right, even conservatives, even mainstream conservatives are tolerant towards different sexualities you know what i mean and it's because it just would be so incredibly unpopular right it's not it would not be trendy to be bashing on gays in 2025 and so they're tolerant of gay people it's like you guys can't you just learn the lesson here

Right. Take I'm it's not Adam and Eve. It's Adam and Steve. Right. Can't you see that that's what you're doing about trans people right now? Can't you fast forward 20 years and just like get the tolerance that we're all going to have societally, hopefully. I do think it's generational. Talk to the younger generation. They don't give a shit. They're not going to have the same ick reaction that I think the older generation has about it.

Just got to wait until they die out. Unfortunately, that's the way revolutions happen sometimes in science. Got to wait for the old guard to die off. Yeah. All right. Well, Dave, thank you so much for being on the show. Why don't you tell our audience how they can get to your content? Absolutely. Yeah. I am Professor Dave Explains on YouTube. And that's pretty much all I do. I have some other socials, but I don't really use them. So yeah. Okay. Let's go there. Sounds good.

All right. Thanks for joining us. Thanks, Dave. Thanks a lot. Have a good one. It's time for Science or Fiction.

Each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake. And then I challenge my panel skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. You guys are coming off a sweep from last week. See how you do this week. There's a theme. Okay. This week there's a theme, Ancient Roots. These are modern scientific ideas that have roots that go back maybe a bit farther than you thought. I've done this before. I like this theme. Are you ready? Okay. Here you go.

Item number one, Persian scholar Abu Rahan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni proposed in the 11th century that India may have been connected to other continents in the past. Item number two, Aristarchus of Samos was the first to propose a heliocentric system in which the earth revolves around the sun in one year and rotates on its axis in one day. Item number three.

1025 work Muslim physician Ibn Sina proposed human-to-human transmission of disease through invisible entities and was the first to propose a quarantine to limit the spread of contagion. Evan, go first. These are all very plausible. I won't try to pronounce the names though because I will fail. But the first one about the 11th – the one proposed in the 11th century.

That India may have been connected to other continents in the past. I think of the three, this might be the one that I have some inkling, some sort of memory. Filed away in my head where there was early suggestions that India was – was not originally part of Asia. I just don't know if it's tied to this Persian scholar specifically, but something is saying that this is right. Science. Number two.

The second one about the heliocentric system in which the Earth revolves around the sun in one year and rotates on its axis in one day. He didn't give the year. Oh, I should. I meant to. This is like BC something. From 310 to 230 BC, so somewhere in there. I don't know. I mean, they were able to figure out pretty early that...

The size of the Earth, I remember there was a measurement done around that time in which they were able to pretty much accurately figure out how that the Earth was a sphere and roughly how big it was. They were pretty close. So could they have also figured this out back then? Maybe, maybe. Let me look at the last one again. 1025 was this one, Muslim physician.

proposed human-to-human transmission of disease through invisible entities, and was the first to propose a quarantine to limit the spread of contagion. I mean, just plausible.

But you don't think of that until, what, like the 19th century is kind of, I think, when that came back, or maybe late 18th century. So that's a long time. That is a long span in which... but they did talk about hmm all right i have to say something so i will go with the earth and revolving around the sun and rotating on its axis in one day

I think of the three, that one will be the fiction. Okay, Kara. Hass. Automatic failure for Kara. Damn, never mind, never mind. Okay, so Evan went with Aristarchus. guess yeah i like the name of samos uh so first i don't know somebody must have thought of it before even if they couldn't prove it like they could draw a picture of it no

I feel like that's the case with all of these things. Like, okay, I don't know, let's get creative. Human to human transmission of disease. Like, if you just watch people, you notice that people that are close to each other get sick. So what if we take them apart and then they don't get sick? We don't even really need a model of viruses or anything. So that one feels reasonable too. India may have been connected to other continents in the past.

Plate tectonics in the 11th century? I don't buy that one. The maps weren't even that good, were they? No. Didn't people still think that they could sail off the edge of the earth? Persian, though. Persian scholar. Maybe they did have good maps. They were very mathy. That name, too. Abu Rehan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni. Wow, that's a good name. I'm going to say that it wasn't him.

I thought it was somebody with an easier name. I don't know. I'll say that's the fiction. Let's spread out so we can sweep Steve, you guys. All right. All right, Jay. I'm pretty sure that... See, what's his name? Aristarchus? Aristarchus. Yeah, Aristarchus Samos. He's of Samos. Yes. Yes. Okay. Well, that changes everything. Well, yeah. I mean, if you're from Samuels. Something about this rings a bell for me, about him being the first one to say that the heliocentric system of Earth...

So I think that one is science. The Muslim physician proposed a human transmission of disease. Wow, that... 1025. Hmm. And then the first one here... So this guy, his name is Rehan Muhammad Ibn Ahmad al-Biruni. I'm going to say that one is the fiction because... I don't have a good reason, Steve. My gut is telling me that he wasn't the first person to say that. Okay, and Bob? Yeah, these are good. These are really good. I'm looking forward to seeing...

What's what here? What's rubbing me the wrong way is the Aristarchus and heliocentrism. Uh-oh. I mean, I don't know. Kara, I don't know. This is just a swing. I mean— Everyone knows Copernicus is the heliocentric guy, right? I mean, it wouldn't surprise me, but I think I just would have heard of this or known this, so I'll just say whatever and say that's fiction. All right, so you guys are all spread out.

So no sweep from me. So I'll take this in order, as I do when they're all spread out. I'll start with number one, Persian scholar Abu Rahan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni, or just al-Biruni. Proposed in the 11th century that India may have been connected to other continents in the past. Kara, you think this one is the fiction. Jay, you think this one is the fiction also. Bob and Evan think this one is science. And this one is...

The fiction. Oh, hey, way to find it. Although none of what you said is true. So, yeah, this is not true. Although, all right, so I used ChatGPT. to research this theme for science fiction. And this is one of the things that ChatGPT spit out. Now, of course, I don't take ChatGPT's word for anything. Of course not. So then I typed in, can you give me a reference to support this? And ChatGP said, oh, I'm sorry. I made a mistake. This did not happen. Wait, what? It does that? All right. Saved it.

I mean, I had looked it up anyway, and I couldn't find it. I'm like, why can't I find it? So give me a reference. What I did find, which was true, so Al Baruni, so this guy was an amazing... Polymath. Astronomer, mathematician, map maker. He calculated the size of the Earth within 2% of the modern value.

just using some trigonometry and measuring mountain heights or something. So just really pretty amazing. What he did do, so after he calculated the size of the Earth, he reasoned that there should be another continent between... Europe and Asia, like on the other side of the planet, basically the Americas. That's what he really did. He anticipated the discovery of the Americas. He's like, that's too much water.

Why would there be all this land on one side of the earth and then nothing but ocean? There's got to be a continent over there. And he was correct. That's cool. Yeah. He also thought that they would probably be in the temperate zone, at least part of it, and therefore it's probably inhabited, which was also correct. But he did not anticipate plate tectonics. Nobody did. People did notice the map thing, though, Kara. So even before...

plate tectonics was discovered, you know, there were observations of even going, you know, later than this, though, not quite, more like 1500, 1600. Right, when they could see the Americas, right? And they were like, whoa, that fits really well next to Africa. Once you mapped out North and South America and Africa, people started to say, wait a minute. And then also fossils were lining up too. Leonardo da Vinci actually was one of the early proponents to say, oh, maybe there's a...

The land moves around. Why are there fossils on mountains? Why are there shells on mountaintops? Maybe land moves. So there's the inklings of these ideas that land can move and these things sort of piece together on the map even before plate tectonics was discovered.

All right, let's go to number two. Aristarchus of Samos was the first to propose a heliocentric system in which the Earth revolves around the sun in one year and rotates on its axis in one day. Bob, you said that one was the fiction. This one is science. He got it. pretty much exactly correct he also by the way agreed with

those ancient Greeks who said that the sun is just another star. So his cosmology was pretty spot on. Wait, I just realized that I said Ptolemy, but he's geocentric. When was Ptolemy? No, Ptolemy's geocentric. Yeah, he was geocentric. What's he compared to Aristarchus? Basically, Ptolemy won out over this guy, right? So Ptolemy's views predominated over Aristarchus. Until Copernicus. And in fact, Copernicus cited Aristarchus in his writing. Although he later tried to suppress the...

citation so that he can keep the credit for himself. No such thing as a new idea. Yeah. But yeah, so it was just... Ptolemy beat out Aristarchus, but Aristarchus is completely correct. So it is amazing to think that there were ancient Greeks like, yep, the earth revolves about the sun. It spins in a day, it rotates around the sun in a year, and the sun is just another star. So like they didn't have screens or anything.

they did was just stare at the sky. Yeah. They had no telescopes. It was all naked eye astronomy. Yeah. All right. All of this means that in his 10 and 25 work, Muslim physician, even Sina proposed human to human transmission of disease through invisible entities and was the first to propose. a quarantine to limit the spread of contagion is also science. This guy, also amazing.

Yeah, what the hell, man? Yeah, so, and again, he didn't quite nail the idea of germs, but he knew it was particles, as opposed to Kara. So, yes, you were... Miasma, exactly. So the idea that there's contagion was definitely around because you're right. It's just easy to observe that there's contagion. But the predominant belief was that there was miasma coming from the soil. and the air, right? Bad air. But...

Not necessarily people to people. So that was the human to human transmission was definitely something that he was an early proponent of. The idea that it was particles and not miasma. Also him. The idea that it was microscopic organisms, he didn't quite get there. But he got pretty far to the modern germ theory. And also the idea of quarantine, he thought 40 days. There's human-to-human...

Transmission, we need to quarantine people for 40 days in the middle of an outbreak or epidemic in order to limit spread. So his work... These guys, you read about these ancient polymath scholars, they write hundreds of books. He wrote... The Canon of Medicine in 1025, that was the work in which he proposed this. This was among... a total of 450 works, right? The canon of medicine was used as a global medical textbook for 600 years after he wrote it.

Basically until the modern times, until we started to do scientific medicine. And I do think that in our Western-centric history of the world, we don't spend enough time studying. the Persian and Muslim scholars that basically was science and scholarship. in our Middle Ages, in the West's Middle Ages. Amazing accomplishments. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely amazing. The astronomy, the math, the medicine, all of that. Oh, my God, you name it. Yeah, optics.

Yes, optics. Algebra. For a thousand years, they were it. They were the scientific and cultural center of the world. They leveraged that. I think what religion came in and he messed it all up. Well, no, that's an oversimplification because a lot of them – the religion was there the whole time, Bob, and a lot of them did it – like a lot of the astronomy was done specifically.

to create the religious calendar. Yeah, you literally wrote in his 1025 work, Muslim physician. Yeah, no, no. Religion was there to begin with. And it was not an impediment. It wasn't. It was actually part of it. It's really just more modern evangelical type. Yeah, fundamentalism. Or fundamentalism, I should say. modern fundamental type interpretations that would hold anti-scientific views. But at this time, they completely accepted science and scholarship and it was just part of...

of their culture alongside their religion. There was a phenomenal Sudanese journalist and researcher at this conference that I was just at earlier this week. And she was talking about communicating climate science to Muslim communities in Sudan. And she was like, I couldn't remember the number that she cited, but she was like, I dug into the Quran and I was able to find like dozens, plural, of passages to promote.

taking care of the earth to promote planting trees to promote like she's like there's so many ways that you can meet people through the religion and promote that kind of science and there's you know a lot of religious passages that enforce that. It's what we choose. It's what we choose to read, right? And how we choose to interpret it. All right. Well, good job, Jay and Kara. Yeah, Jay.

You're right. Well done. This was a fun one. But that, man, chat GPT. Not really. Still hallucinating. You can't trust anything it says. But it is helpful to just, like, throw out a bunch of ideas. You know what I mean? Then I can do the research on them. but just to like give me a starting point. So don't ever do that again. It's a bit of a time saver. Like I just said, give me, you know, three examples of modern scientific theories that have deep ancient roots.

I actually had to give me like 20 of them before I settled on the ones I wanted to use. So that was a good way to just get a starting point. It's like Wikipedia. It's a good starting point. You can't use it as your ultimate reference. You've got to go to first sources, primary sources. But it's a good shortcut. All right.

Evan, give us a quote. The burden of proof as far as authentication is concerned is on the claimant, not on anyone else to prove a negative. Asserting that a particular image must be paranormal because it is unexplained only constitutes an example of the logical fallacy called arguing from ignorance. One cannot draw a conclusion from a lack of knowledge. That was written by Joe Nickel. Joe? Joe Nickel, who died.

Last week. Last week. Kind of a shock to the entire skeptic community. Do I need to explain who Joe Nickel was to our audience? Yeah, I know. We heard about that after we recorded last week's show. But yeah, Joe Nickel was a friend of ours. He was one of the first people that we really got close to in the skeptical movement.

A really consummate skeptic. He said so many pearls, I remember him saying over the years, that were totally true. He really, really got the process, the logic, the essence of... skepticism as an endeavor. Investigation is the consummate investigator. Again, the only person really at the time, definitely, who was a full-time paranormal scientific skeptical investigator. You know what I mean?

And he did it, man. He was boots on the ground. You know what I mean? Also a great lecturer. I enjoyed every lecture of his. Oh, so interesting to listen to. He knew how to tell a story. Great lecturer. He knew how to tell a story. Wonderful in an interview. His books were fantastic. So much information, so much that we all learned from him. In Quest on the Shroud. The definitive debunking of the Shroud of Turin. Yeah, that's right. Absolutely definitive. It was Joe Nickel. Without question.

Also one of the first to really kind of take down the Warrens during their rise throughout the 70s and the 80s. He was there toe-to-toe with them the whole way. So many great stories and just, my gosh. He will be missed. He was tremendous. Yeah, he was. All right, guys. Well, thank you all for joining me this week. Sure, man. Thank you, Steve. Thanks, Steve. And until next week, this is your Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. For more information, visit us at theskepticsguide.org. Send your questions to info at theskepticsguide.org. Our listeners and supporters are what make SGU possible. Bye.