The Skeptics Guide #1072 - Jan 24 2026

You're listening. The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. To reality.

Hello and welcome to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Thursday, january twenty second, twenty twenty six, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella, everybody, Kara Santa Maria, Howdy, Jay Novella, hey guys, and Evan Bernstein. Good afternoon, everyone.

So Jay, any update on the moon landing hoax conspiracy Connecticut middle school teacher? Well, I did have a you know, a g like a forty five minute discussion with the principal and my wife. This was like a big I don't know, it was like big indicator I guess the way I was looking at it. Like what was the attitude gonna be, what was the you know, what was being communicated. I'd say in general it went it went very well.

You have to understand there's a lot of HR type of communicating involved in in meetings like this because of course the principal is a very high level employee that works for the town. So I didn't expect her to be off the cuff and be like you know, having big reactions to things and all that. But it was very very plainly stated that They're taking it very seriously, like they're they are aware of the weight.

and gravity of the situation. You know, I made made sure that we discussed the idea of the misinformation being corrected. And then I offered, um, you know, my my services and I included Mentioning Stephen on that, like you I you know, I have resources that can come in, you know, we we're very well acquainted

talking to children and that we could give we could cr you know, we could make a correction for the entire class all at once if you want. You know, it'd be a very very easy thing to do and it'd be very entertaining for the kids, blah, blah, blah. She didn't dismiss it, you know, but who knows what if they actually took that seriously. And you know, I think overall, you know, they they it was communicated that she really couldn't talk about the the individual and like what their specific

outcome might be, you know, like what would the town actually do? They didn't want to get into that'cause I guess there's privacy things and all that. I and I you know, and I just said look well look in general, you know, we just wanna know we want to know what the ultimate outcome is. We don't need details. Like for example if there was gonna be any changes to who of course who my daughter's teacher is

Or if she's not going to be in that class anymore or ultimately if the person loses their job, I of course want to know about that. I'm not looking at it as just this class, right? It's about what happened last week, what happened two months ago, what happened last year. Like how where how deep does this go? And that was another point that we had brought up was, you know

This is literally, you know, just a a sign of of what the potentiality could be here, which could be that this is a a thing that's been going on for years. Like how you know, and how do we even research that and try to find out? So I think the next step is gonna be like we'll we'll probably hear back in a week or so, you know, hopefully by next time we record, but if not probably the time after that.

You know, I fully intend on on having follow up meetings and asking questions like, Okay, you know, my my daughter has told me that no correction has been made to this information and and it's been three weeks now. I really think that something needs to happen now. You know, like why wait? Because the longer that goes on, you know, the more damage that you know, this type of stuff could do to the kids without them even knowing it. It could skew

you know, their perception on things. Mhm. And, you know, I've talked to my daughter. When she gets home, you know, I'm like, how'd it go in school today? blah blah blah. You know, one thing happened like the the day after

Um, this whole thing went down and the the teacher involved was actually talked to by the principal. Uh this teacher sent us an email saying that Olivia had a behavior problem in class. And my wife and I were like, Really? Like this is what you're doing?

I know that you know and you know that I know that this thing happened, right? You know, the person knows that we pushed back, knows how we pushed back, and and they think that they're gonna send us an email like dinging my my ten year old i for a behavior problem in a class like she she she's she doesn't have behavior problems in class. Mm.

trump up some kind of case against her, which is so irresponsible for a teacher to do, to take it out on a student. Absolutely. Take out his problem basically. Totally wrong. The vast majority of our listeners I think totally get how serious this is and are you know, very interested in how this plays out. You always get some outlier emails. One guy thought that we were bullying this teacher, which I think is absurd. Why? First of all, we've done nothing but first we went to him directly.

I've seen again I'm saying the the royal we here. They that we went to him directly to give him the first opportunity to clarify his position and what happened. And we're going uh based off of what he exactly wrote in his email. It's a scientific fact. that it's impossible. It's been improved. It's been proven. It's been proven and that he discussed it in class. So he confirmed sort of the two main elements what he believes and then he taught that to his students in class.

And you know, again our what we're looking for is just three things. Like one is We need to correct this misinformation to whichever student was exposed to it. That's a no brainer. Yeah. We need to make sure this doesn't happen again. And we want one million dollars. We want one million dollars. And we need to evaluate this is I think a legitimate reason to evaluate this teacher's competence as a science teacher.

Now that doesn't necessarily mean again I'm not thinking, oh, he should be immediately fired or whatever, blah blah blah. It's more like, sure, if he you know and again, w it it's always a good idea to give people an opportunity to correct whatever the error is. Fine. if if he will uh readdress this issue and and talk with people or whatever, be educated, be re educated to to to understand why This conspiracy is pseudoscientific while conspiracy theory theories in general are problematic.

to improve his understanding and it's genuine and he achieves that. I mean, okay. I would you know, and and then be monitored to make sure that that lesson stuck. That's fine. But sh if he's gonna dig in his heels on this, I think that's pretty incompatible with being a science teacher.

I feel so obligated to do something'cause, you know, to me it's the audio my audience actually, when I say my audience, like the people that I hope to help, it it's it's not m winning against this teacher, it's helping those kids get get corrected in making sure that it doesn't hurt further kids. That's the real thing that needs to happen here. My daughter's all set.

Luckily she's got me and my wife as parents and we know, you know, we've already handled the situation and if anything it was a massive and very useful lesson for her. But You know, the what about all the other kids and the other kids that are gonna come next year and the year after that? Like I wanna fix that problem. And t just teachers in general need to know they can't shoot from the hip with this kind of stuff. They can't just start riffing about these fringe beliefs.

That they have authority standing up as a teacher, especially in front of elementary school students, you know. They so they have to. to really take responsibility for what they're saying. And parents are the last line of defense against this shit, right? You have to stand up when this kind of thing happens. If we don't express outrage

when something outrageous happens, then we shouldn't expect anything to improve or get fixed, right? Yep. All right. We'll of course keep everyone updated if this if there's any significant development. Kara.

Mm-hmm. What's the word? Ooh, so uh it's been a bit. I I found a word recommendation from listener Alex Berg in an email um from late last year. Uh they said Uh I've been listening Oh, I've been reading a book that uses the word cultivator to mean someone who cultivates themselves through meditation. Later I heard the word cult in the book and I wondered how they were related, and a more common word of course culture.

Uh, so I wonder how they're all connected. So I decided to do a deep dive into the word culture, mostly because one of the reasons that I find what's the word so interesting and and uh Steve, you and I have talked about this, is when Words have different meanings in different scientific contexts. And also when there's sort of a difference between the

Lay or you know the popular cultural definition and the scientific definition. So I thought culture was a great one. So I'll start with just some different definitions before we get into the etymology. And different outlets identify the main or the first definition um differently, but Merriam Webster says that uh culture is the beliefs, customs, art, etc. of a particular social group.

I myself am a psychologist, so when I looked at the uh American Psychological Association dictionary, they have a more intense definition of that same um take on culture, the values, beliefs, language, rituals, traditions. and other behaviors that are passed from one generation to another with any

and they get a little bit deeper and they have a second definition, still a noun, the characteristic attitudes and behaviors of a particular group within society, such as a profession, social class, or age group. So that is also their culture is their attitude. Um but there are other Uh definitions. So we've got these sub definitions of that main one. Um like the culture could be the society itself, it could be the beliefs or attitudes of that society, um, it could be the values of that society.

Um in anthropology they may be more specific. Merriam Webster says that the anthro anthropological definition is the combined pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends on the transmission of knowledge to succeeding generations. But then definition two is an appreciation for and knowledge of the fine arts.

humanities and broad aspects of science as distinguished from vocational and technical skills, right? Like a person of culture or a very cultured person, uh, you know, a refined taste, art you know, interest in artistic activities like theater and visual art. There's also a definition the act of developing one's intellect and morals, especially by education. I am becoming cultured, or a professional or expert care, uh like a beauty culture or a culture of an an office.

the actor process of cultivating living material. So now we're getting into some scientific definitions, a throat culture, uh or medical definitions. And then cultivation like uh of of plant matter. Now that's all nouns. We can also talk about culture as verbs, like we can culture microorganisms on a plate, right, in a petri dish. And we can also start a culture from seed, for example.

Um, so these were the ones that when I see the word culture, it's interesting as a psychologist who also worked as a lab scientist in a neurolab for a long time. is I definitely use context clues because often when I hear the word culture, the first thing I think of is a cell culture. Mm-hmm. Is that uh does that happen to you, Steve? I it depends on context. In a scientific context, yes. Like that's the thing I go to, but otherwise there's like the the culture, society's culture.

So when we look at the roots of culture, it gets really complicated. So w we first started to see this word used in the fifteenth century. where we were talking about the tilling of land. And so this came from the the Latin, which sounds very simple uh similar cultura, which was cultivating, doing agriculture, you know, care, culturing, honoring. But of course that that requires that we already have that sort of culturing root built in.

seems to go all the way back to the roots of the word colony. So colony late uh late fourteenth century, an ancient Roman settlement outside of Italy from the Latin colonia, which is settled land or a landed estate. which comes from the colinus, tenant farmer, settler in a new land, which comes from coler. Coler is the earliest sort of Latin which is to till to inhabit, or to frequent, or to practice.

Now, if we were to dig even deeper, we would get to the P I E. You've heard me talk about the Proto Indo European route. Um, so that one is quell. spelled off in KWE L, which is to revolve, to move around, to sojourn or to dwell. Um and Yeah, here well, yep. Here we start to see that it is the root of a ton of different related words. So can you guys think of some other than cultural?

that would have these the quell root or the color or colaire root. Culture, obviously, but as our listener wrote in, cult colonized. Colonial. How about your the colon of your intestine? Ooh, I should check and see if that is a different Root'cause I didn't do a deep dive on that. You didn't do a deep dive into the colon? Ew. Um large intestine from Latin colon, colon with a short oh no.

That comes from a different Greek root with uh which actually means large intestine, which uh has an unknown origin. No or an origin no one's willing to admit. Yeah, exactly. But it is interesting, so we can we can kind of trace it back culture to Middle French down to Latin, uh, down to Proto Indo European. And there is some question as to whether there is a a

almost like a convergent evolution of the word. I'm sure there's an actual linguistic term for that, because the Greek root of cologne, uh part of verse, literally lem or member. uh or figuratively clause of a sentence. Oh, and that may be the the root there, Steve, of the large um intestine or the colon. could have actually uh led led to it, but it does seem to be the case that colony has this separate um separate route.

So yeah, it's it's an interesting term. I often think about it in, you know, c cell culture, tissue culture, microbiological culture terms, even animal culture. But as a psychologist, obviously I also think about the larger human culture and animals who have culture like orcas, um, dolphins, things of that nature. Um but they do come from the same root for sure. Cool.

Yeah. All right, thanks, Kara. Mm hmm. Jay, tell me how to live longer. All right, first I want to ask you guys a very serious question. Do you think that you're sleeping, eating, and exercising enough? No. Uh eating, yes. Are you eating well? High quality? Oh eating well. I am close. I eat well. I think I'm sleeping and exercising enough but not eating enough healthy foods.

I think I'm doing pretty good on all three. Well, I think you guys are really gonna really like this study that I I came across. It's really cool. I'm really happy that they did it. Uh, the study was published in e Clinical Medicine, which, Steve, you probably know this. It's part of the Lancet group. And they take a careful look at how much difference do you know, do small lifestyle changes actually make in overall health and longevity, right? We've talked about this on the show before.

You know, how much does it take? You know, how how much should you be exercising and and you know, details around that? It's um it's a common question that people have and they've you know brought some clarity to this and actually there's a twist to this study that I think is really smart. So what they did was they didn't want to choose to focus on you know what the ideal behaviors are, right? The ideal behaviors would be, you know, you're you're exercising, you know, a

two hours a day or whatever, right? You know, there's there's there's ways to measure like, okay, if you're getting this much exercise and you're taking extraordinary care of yourself by th by all these different measures. It's not about that. It's about what could what could people do

th to make tiny changes or modest changes that would have realistic improvements in sleep, physical activity, and diet all at the same time. And that's the key thing here is doing those three things all at the same time. These results will shock you. This is the study that they didn't want you to hear about. And Big Farmers specifically covered up this information, Steve. Well

I'm sorry, I slipped into my bullshit podcast personality. That's not that's not the way we talk on this show. So the actual results. Do show a promising and an encouraging outcome. The study analyzed data from approximately 60,000 adults. These adults were enrolled in the UK Biobank and the study followed the the participants for

you know, up over eight years. And unlike previous studies, uh, you know, they they were not relying totally on self-reporting, right? Self-reporting can always be skewed and it and how much do you actually trust it? In order to get this information, they used wrist worn accelerometers, which could, you know, give them objective measurements on the subject's sleep duration, you know, their physical activity.

were they doing over a repeat of a seven day period, right? So they get they're gathering all this data passively instead of having to have the person go in and kind of remember it. It's very you know, very efficient. The diet quality of the test subjects uh was determined by using a questionnaire, which is really the only way that they can do it. Um

And they were the the this questionnaire would generate a composite diet score. The scores were based on, you know, how much fruits do they eat, vegetables, whole grains, fish, meat, dairy, fats You know, were they drinking uh sugar sweetened beverages? Lots of questions along those and I guess they had to give details about every day.

The researchers were interested in two related outcomes. I was thinking, Bob, do you know what they are or can you guess what they are? Length of life and quality of life. You got it. Life span and health span. Good job, Bob. Lifespan refers to the total number of years that the person lived and health span refers to years lived without major chronic diseases, right? Cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer. Anything neurological.

Then they use statistical models to determine how changes in sleep activity and diet were also connected with differences in both outcomes. From my reading, my prediction would be that length of life would not be affected much at all unless it was a dramatic thing like preventing heart attack at at sixty-five type of thing. So length of life wouldn't be impacted that much, but it could be a couple of years. But the quality of life, um, health span could be greatly impacted.

All right, well we'll have to you have to wait and see, Bob Well Jay, one other one other technical pedantic point as well. They're really measuring life expectancy, not lifespan. Life and other reporting the the mainstream media reporting on it use the word lifespan. Life span is simply the maximum age that you live to. The life expectancy is how long on average you're going to live.

You can't really in eight years you can't measure lifespan. Right? Yeah. They're just measuring life expectancy. Just but it's good to know that difference. Yeah, right. It is pedantic, but you're right, it is good to know. Yeah. Well I went directly to the study as well, so uh that was my use of the word. I guess like that's what p you know, that's what people do. Because lifespan seemed like an easy way to say it, but I I see the difference here, Steve. One of the clearest results

was that tiny improvements can add up when they happen together. And this is the secret sauce here. The these three elements added together. More exercise, better diet and more sleep or, you know, higher quality sleep. For people Starting with poor habits, about five and a five and a half hours of sleep per night, say, and only seven minutes a day of moderate to vig vigorous exercise.

and people with low quality diets. Adding just a few minutes of sleep, a couple more minutes of physical activity, and a small improvement in what they were eating. It was shown to be linked roughly to one additional year of life. Which I find really amazing, like when you hear about that, because they're they're not talking about major swings in any of these things, just making minor improvements. So it's and it's a it's a you know

infinite shades of gray here, right? So if you did a little bit, you know, you can gain the benefit of maybe living an extra year, but there is a there's a better outcome depending on how far you go with it. So the small lifestyle improvements We're definitively linked not only to living longer overall, but also to spending more of those years, the you know, the new additional years without major chronic disease.

And that's w you know, that's what we're talking about with health span here, right? You could live a very long time, but if you're the last ten years of your life you were infirmed, you know, that's not optimal and it's not what that's not what we're all looking for. So Jake, uh as an aside, yeah. So I'm reading the study and it's just so silly. So first of all, they're being cutesy with the terminology, right? So span is sleep.

Physical activity and nutrition. Oh. S P A N. And they have life in small letters and then span in capital letters. Life span. Right. I in the abstract they say Yeah, the sleep physical activity and nutrition span capital S P A N are key determinants of both life expectancy that they have in parentheses life span and disease free life expectancy and then in parentheses health span.

Well they're just what are they doing? I don't know. They're they're so but they they know that it's life expectancy, right? They use the correct technical term, but then they throw in pre parenthetically lifespan I th I don't know, that they're playing off the SPAN acronym that they're coming up with. I don't know. It's weird. It's cutesy. It's cutesy. Yeah, some acronyms don't help. Yeah.

It's backfiring a little bit. But they did have to use the term life expectancy to be technically accurate. Yeah. Anyway. So you know, it's important to point out that individually the changes are minor. If you only increase your amount of sleep, we're not we're not seeing in the study, we're not seeing like huge benefits.

You know, five extra minutes of sleep per night and a couple of extra minutes of brisk walking. Typically these would be dismissed as trivial. But the key point here, like I said, is that these benefits appeared when the changes the three changes occurred together. So the combined effect was much larger than the sum of the individual effects. And the study's results show that sleep, physical activity, and diet interact with the same.

in in significant ways and I I'm sure that they I didn't hear anything or read anything in the study. about them, you know, being able to fully quantify that or even what's going on physiologically. They were just showing, you know, they were just measuring the results. Um,'cause I would love to hear more about like well why why is combining them a more effective than individual? You know, there could be some interesting uh points to be made.

The participants that slept seven to eight hours of sleep per night. And the w those who had higher levels of daily, moderate to vigorous physical activity and the people who had better diet quality were estimated to gain more than nine additional years of life and disease free life compared to those who who were in a lower behavior category. That's a big number. I've never heard that number before. I've never heard adding nine years of life.

span or light you know expectancy. Expectancy. Thank you. I've never I've never read that before. I don't know Bob or or anybody else if if you've ever read that number. That's a big number. Yeah, I mean I'm I mean based on other readings I've done, a lot of readings that seems too much. I mean the most I've heard is like even with dramatic improvements in quality, you know, in terms of um

diet and exercise. A few years or so would be something you would expect, uh but like I said, also with it with an increase in a dramatic increase in health span. But nine years uh increase in life expectancy, I think it would be a dramatic dramatic change in your in your habits. So to to be clear, this is when they compared the best terchile to the least favorable tertchile.

So if this is the people who did the best compared to the people who did the worst, you have the nine point three five additional life expectancy. And you know the people that did the worst.

we don't know really what condition they were in and you know, these you know, they could have been very, very, very low quality taking care of themselves and everything. I I d I also want to make sure to to say this. There there's You guys need to understand the limits of what this study shows, right? The the results come from statistical models. That's based on observational data, not from a randomized experiment where, for example, where behaviors were deliberately changed.

The estimates assume that people's habits stay fairly consistent over time, you know, along with other influences like income, education, access to medical care, which is a big problem. So they're not like fully accounting for all the results. Like they are they are looking at this information and then they're expanding on it, right? It's not It they'cause they only did follow them for for just over eight years.

Like Steve said, so it is important to note that The authors are clear that the findings should not be read as exact instructions like They they give an example, the idea that adding five minutes of sleep will automatically add a year to someone's life. But even with the limits, which is good, I mean I like the fact that they mentioned their own limits, exactly what I'd expect in a in a well done study.

You know, this study adds something useful to this conversation about lifestyle change. And it the important takeaway for me is. you know, the it's the end of the year and people are like, uh I gotta go to the gym again and I'm gonna go every day and I'm gonna do this and that and it's like those big lifestyle change swings often don't even manifest completely. You might do'em for a short amount of time.

But all of us have the room and the space and that you could improve, make minor improvements to your sleep. You know, sleep hygiene, the amount the amount of sleep you're allowing yourself to get, or or you know, you might have sleep problems like I do and you you don't have total control over it, but you have some control over that.

And eating higher quality foods, like just making a decision, hey, I'm only gonna let myself eat something like a hamburger once a week and that's gonna be uh like on the weekend with friends and stuff. Like during the week I'm gonna eat well, right? And then getting the exercise. Like you don't have to go out and do a a five K. You know, you could you could walk your dog for ten minutes.

And just bring that into your life and make it you know, don't don't cut off more than you can you can deal with. I I I think it that's a really good way to look at this. It's like minor changes could have a a nice impact on you. Yes, I I have a couple of thoughts overall about the study. First of all, these findings are in line with my understanding of all the previous research, right? Yes, we know that

Good sleep, physical activity and good nutrition are important for overall health and longevity. Absolutely. Uh these are modifiable lifestyle factors. Uh we all there's also been previous research showing that they don't have to be huge differences. Even small incremental improvements have measurable beneficial outcome and at any age. So that's all good. And I I agree the the procrastinator's dilemma is like you have these huge plans and you end up doing nothing, you're far better off

doing something modest that you will do, right? Then trying to do something big that you're not gonna do. And then you could incrementally go from there. So take s yeah, take small steps in the right direction, it will immediately have uh some benefits. The I think the thing they're trying to do with this study is to show that

Um if you look at those three things together, they seem to have synergistic effects. Now this is a dilemma that all researchers have when you're you know where you're looking at modifiable factors. Do we look at one thing at a time to show that that one element clearly has uh a benefit? Um or do we look at multiple things together to capture the cumulative benefit and the and synergistic effects, but then we don't necessarily know the individual contribution of each component.

It's a trade off. There's no right or wrong way to do it. I think this is sort of complementing older research that that did focus more on individual factors rather than looking at the cumulative effect of several factors. So, you know, it doesn't really change my thinking about all of this. It's kind of in line with what they already knew. They left out two the other two big factors to to longevity and health span, which is

Don't smoke and don't drink to excess. Oh yeah, man. Those are the five, right? Don't smoke, don't drink to excess, get good sleep, have a good diet, exercise regularly. Everything else is bullshit, basically. That's that's the ninety nine percenter. Right, exactly. And this is very this is for a t again, I always have to caveat this is for a typical person. You may have individual health

you know, conditions or needs or whatever that you that that go beyond that, so you have to talk to your doctor, etcetera. But for most people, just focus on those five things. Don't Diverted. about these like avoid this one food or eat this one superfood or it's all nonsense. But I do I do like the point that you're making about

all of the research that looks into like moderating and mediating effects and and kind of this idea of is there a gestalt here? Is the sum is the whole greater than the sum of its parts? And you can think about it this way somebody who exercises regularly, who eats pretty well and who gets enough sleep, but then smokes. It's not that they're undoing the good that those other things are giving them. Those other things are helping them to be healthy.

But smoking is so incredibly unhealthy that it has its own negative impacts on mortality. And so if you think about It's like thinking about it in two ways. Small incremental changes are good even if you're not doing great in one area. Like for me, I'm not doing great with my vegetable intake. But that doesn't make me give up on my gymnastics. It doesn't make me give up on my sleep hygiene. That said, I know that my sleep and my exercise is not probably as effective as it would be.

if my nutrition was was better. Uh interestingly, the it has been studied, the synergistic effects have been studied in the negative, right? So you you've seen plenty of studies where Like if you smoke and you're overweight and you have and you don't like they have a there's a cumulative negative effect. So of course there's gonna be cumulative benefits the other way. It just makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. All right, let's move on.

Guys, have any of you heard about AI twenty twenty seven? No. Is that a movie? Nope. Uh what is it? It's a there's a paper published by some AI experts. And it's getting a lot of buzz in the AI community because basically they predict that AI is going to exterminate humanity by the mid twenty thirty. I knew it. So I should spend my retirement money now is what they're saying. Wait, wait, wait, Steve. Yeah. So on first blush.

So the AI experts, right? So is this an unknown group of people? No, no. They they they signed a paper, you know. It's not anonymous. I mean are they legitimate? Daniel Coco Togglo, Scott Alexander, Thomas Larson Eli Lifland and Romeo Dean, right?

If those names mean anything to you. I noticed that the the important names are not on the list, which is the people that are in control of the the AIs that are out there right now. Yes, these are like the technical experts, not necessarily the CEOs of the companies making the money off of them. Okay. So to to be clear, they're not saying like this is a likely scenario that's going to happen.

What they're really saying they however they do say that this is a quote unquote prediction, but they they're they're outlying a plausible possible pathway. And What they're saying is and they know they really this isn't intended to spark conversation, which it's doing. Um, and they're saying is we should probably do things to make this scenario less likely.

Right? Which m which makes sense. So this is the scenario that they envision. And they use a uh a made up company so that they're not they're not singling out like one like open AI or whatever. So they they they talk about the fictional company Open Brain. Which is it fell out. Which is specifically using AI. to get better to use to develop AI coding, right? So they want to make AI that is good at coding other AI.

and they develop what they call agent zero. Again, this is all the great like patient zero. Agent Zero which is just an AI coder and that helps the company get six months ahead of their AI competitors, right?'Cause now they're they're coding fast.

And they use that to develop Agent One, which is an is more of an autonomous coder. Ooh. And then in this scenario, China st steals some of the core IP and to make their own version of Agent One. And this sets off an AI competition, you know, between the US and China, in addition to the you know, A AI companies against other AI companies. So then things get out of hand, right? So now uh the US is worried that China's gonna use their AI coder to make super weapons.

Because this AI agent now is really powerful and it's accelerating research and is already starting to see real world benefits. And then they and you know, the US like well what if what if China uses this to get a military advantage over? So we better do that too. So they start developing AI designed military weapons. Meanwhile, the company uses Agent two to create Agent three. And age Agent three is based upon its own computer language that nobody understands but the AI.

It's a super efficient computer language. Just like when we talked about AI develop their own language to communicate with each other that we can't understand. Well this is the same thing but encoding. And then it uses that language to develop agent four, which is f which is a sentient general AI. Basically they're describing the singularity at this point, right? Right. Where AI is designed other AIs so then you get to intelligence and then you get to super intelligence with ancient four.

So like Agent Three I guess was the first oh like an human level intelligence AI, then Agent four is a super intelligence, but it also gets out of control, meaning they have no way of knowing whether its goals are aligned with the company's goals. So they design they use Agent four to design agent five, which is supposed to be in line with Its goals aligning with

The company's goals. But they don't really Meanwhile, the brinksmanship between the US and China is getting so out of control with their AI developed super weapons that they decide to have a treaty and they'll combine their AIs into one and stop the arms race, the AI driven arms race. And you sort of get a a uh everything's great for a while.

Just like in the Matrix, right Bob? And for a while things were good. Where Oh it was so good. The where the AI are running world governments basically. They're doing a great job. They're Everyone's more prosperous, they're having medical breakthroughs. Do they have any designs on Greenland?

So and there's world peace, everything's good. So but the AI's the basically the purpose of the AI, like what's driving them is to become better, to learn more, get more data, more information. And at some point The AI decides that these pesky biological life forms are getting in their way and holding them Carbon infestation. So they decide to create a supervirus to wipe out humanity so they don't have to waste any resources keeping us alive. And they could just now explore the universe.

uh and expand their knowledge, you know, uh exponentially. But that's the scenario they lay out. And then that that all plays out basically between now and the mid twenty thirties. I don't know. Yeah, that's right. I'll volunteer as a pet for an AI. I'll be a lot of fun to play with. Yeah.

Yeah, so that's this is what they're laying out. So I think interestingly, I think every element of this of the story is pretty plausible. Like I can't point to one thing and say that would never happen. You know, you c it Each element is reasonably plausible. I think a l I read a lot of criticism of it and it mostly surrounds the timeline. Which is like okay, so that's totally up for grab add twenty years to it, so what?

You know? Well the good the good part of that, Steve, is it we'll be dead. Well, that aside, um speak for yourself. I'm hoping it won't be around here. But that I'm planning for a hundred. Yeah. So That that is a really helpful for people who are c already at the end of their life lifespan. But uh for for most of for most people, you know, you add ten, fifteen, twenty years.

It everyone's like, Yeah, it'll happen at s if it's not in t in ten years, it'll happen in twenty years or in thirty years or whatever. We do tend to overestimate short term progress, underestimate long term progress. So thinking this is all gonna happen by the twenty thirties does seem at the optimistic end of the spectrum in terms of how quickly this is all going to happen.

But I don't think that really changes the point if you say, Okay, it's gonna not gonna happen until the twenty forties or the twenty fifties. It's still medium term a possibility. The authors acknowledge that, you know, we can't actually predict what AI is going to do. It's not that they're definition. It's not that they're going to do this. It's that we don't know that they're not going to do that.

And that it's possible that they could do this if we give them enough power and we make them super intelligent, we basically lose the ability to predict what they're going to do, to understand what they're doing. And they gain the ability to manipulate us any way they want, right? I mean

Oh yeah, Forbin Project. So they basically we let that genie out of the bottle, we lose total control over a super intelligent AI, we can't really guarantee what they're gonna do, and scenarios like this become possible.

And we've talked about this basic idea on the show before. What do we do about it, right? Do we need not develop AI. Do we just enjoy the ride. Yeah, do we just roll the dice and see what happens. Hope we get the best case scenario, not the worst case scenario. I don't think it's an inevitability that this is going to happen, right? You know,'cause it it is like a the the apocalyptic view, but the the but there is nothing that any of us could do that would affect the development of AI.

Well, I I I don't I don't agree with that. So the the the middle road is we push for regulation. and we push for uh international rules,'cause it has to be international or m you know, other or multinational, otherwise it's pointless. to say, you know, we're going to be evaluating the development of AI, especially anything that's designed to be a general AI or a superintelligence.

so that there are guardrails in place before it gets unleashed on the world, released or put in charge of our infrastructure or whatever. But is that naive to think that go these guardrails would be universal? Maybe. I think it absolutely is. I think it's it's crazy to think that the benefits are too are too good for not to to have some country do like a skunkworks like

hidden research and try to and try to make this happen to be potential benefits. I could list countries that I am confident would not follow anything like that. China's gonna listen to any rules when it could get a leg up on research decades up What makes us think we will? Yeah, right. Uh I'm not a good thing. Yeah, we love to say we're not involved in that treaty. I think it's it's not unreasonable to think we would follow that treaty. You know,

Uh i if we had a sane administration is what I'm talking about. Yeah, but it's e at this point it's equally likely that we would not have a sane administration. We have an administration right now it's like no AI regulations. The states can't even regulate AI. Right. And if that we if We're in that kind of political culture at the at the critical moment. Ooh, culture. Yeah, it's um Yeah then yeah, I think it's very probably the US would not

ratify such a treaty or participate in it or anything. But this is of course the nightmare sci fi scenario. It's just I'm trying to see what's implausible about it. Well yeah, I mean it's sensible to game these things ahead of time. Why wouldn't we? We because we're lazy and stupid? Oh, yeah. Sure to discussion is is a good thing. But Ev, you know, it's very similar to global warming. You know, there people are just gonna deny it. You know

Like the fact that the world is not bending over backwards and doing everything possible to limit global warming is everything that you need to know about what we're gonna do with AI. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's why I'm uh Steve, I don't want to be negative to a fault here, but I I just look at this like humanity is not built to make good decisions like this. What we need to do is put AI to the right. I mean really it's it's kinda like circular reasoning, but

I I just refuse to be nihilistic because that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy, right? If we said nothing we could do, so let's not try to do anything. We have done things before. We have international treaties on human cloning and things like that. Nuclear armament. Nucle nuclear armament. Exactly. If we look at AI, like runaway AI like what they're describing.

as dangerous as nuclear weapons There is precedent for international treaties that people actually do adhere to to s you know, to at least to slow the proliferation to slow the roll, to give us a chance to adapt, to build infrastructures and garden. Sure, it is possible. I mean and if any country uh you know if there's a hint of kind of secret research being done in that direction. You know, if they have to pay for that discovery in terms of economic sanctions and all that.

could delay it by many by you know many, many decades. Uh it it is possible. We gotta we gotta try for that, right? Steve's right. But the first thing we have to do is get our political shit together.'Cause th the most dangerous thing in my opinion is that this is happening. This is disruptive potentially dangerous technology is happening during a period of political disruption. And worldwide.

Uh and so we might be happening at the exact worst moment. Which is always the problem, right? Like most systems are resilient to one test, like to one stressor. Two, it's hard but possible. Three, and you're dead, right? That's like always the case. If three things happen, bad things happen at once. It's no system is resilient enough to to to survive that.

And for us, if we get the one even the one two punch of tech companies in this arms race of AI, the with the move fast and break things culture at the same time that we're experiencing worldwide political disruption, that may be enough, you know, to really cause havoc. But the one thing that we and we have control over both of these things. You know what I mean? Like we can get up get off your ass and vote, you know, get more politically engaged.

Let's try to write this ship to some extent and let's start paying attention to how AI is being developed. Because the worst case scenario is pretty bleak. Yeah. Oh yeah. And this can I think there's a m a thousand scenarios where the world ends up shitty, right, with AI with AI. It may not be this ex again, this is not like they're saying this is the exact scenario that's gonna play out. They're just saying or is it eleven million

Yeah, yeah, there's there's just there's a lot of bad scenarios that can play out if we are doing nothing to prevent them from happening. Well everyone we're gonna take a quick break from our show to talk about our sponsor this week, Quint.

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Bob, tell us about spray on wound treatment. Yeah, this one is definitely atypical for me, right? Uh but it sounded so fascinating, it's so much potential. Uh let's see if you guys agree. So all right so we got Korean. Yeah. Oh nice. Korean researchers um working with the army have created a spray on powder to stop severe bleeding almost unbelievably fast, like one second after it after it hits the blood. So um this is from researchers and scientists of case.

K A I S T stands for Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. So the goal of this product. is to provide a better solution to a simple and really underappreciated killer in combat and in emergency situations. Uncontrolled bleeding. So um even If you had Star Trek level medical technology, that could be utterly useless in s in a lot of situations. If you're a redshirt, right, you're bleeding out, and it takes many minutes.

You know, even a few minutes for you to be noticed and then beamed to sick bay, you could be dead before you dematerialize because the technology you had didn't get to you in time. Time is of the essence in these scenarios. Obviously. So uh but even if the bleeding isn't immediately life threatening, it's often also v extra hard to deal with wounds that are, say, deep and irregular, right? And especially in the r real world.

Scenarios like combat where it's wet or dirty, battlefields, disasters disaster zones, or even just bad power tool accidents in your garage when you're building an animated zombie. Even that could could things could happen so fast. um and be so deadly. Even c you know, conventional flat bandages are not great for these deep irregular wounds, right?'Cause they're not they're not really fitting the wound properly and especially, you know, in three dimensional way. And even they

emergency materials. They you know, they've they've got other powders that are designed to s to s you know, coagulate whatever and soak up the blood. Um and they can form a decent barrier, like I said, by soaking up the blood, but they're not good at heavy or high pressure bleeding. And also a lot of these are sensitive to heat and moisture and they don't have great shelf life. So they're trying to come up with a a c an ideal solution for these specific scenarios.

So to solve these problems, the CASET team designed a new hemostatic agent, and that just means something that stops bleeding. It's a spray on powder called AGCL. So that's a acronym standing for alginate gallon gum, cheetosin, and glutaraldehyde cross-linking steps. is what is what that this other component is. AGCL, these biocompatible compounds that are doing this.

So the clever part here is that this powder uses the ions in the blood itself, like calcium ions, as the trigger. This is this is the trigger as soon as it hits blood. Uh so when that happens Uh it hits the blood and almost immediately it turns into a sticky gel that conforms to the wound and seals it. Che cheetacin in the powder helps also helps to grab the blood and tissue, making the seal even stronger and also helping the clotting to kick in faster.

basically what it does. So this happens, like I said, in a literal second, according to the research and in in these lab tests that they did. Um, it happened within a second. It also absorbs seven hundred and twenty five percent of its weight, which is enough that it it it's enough to block an even very strong blood flow. It also has a very strong adhesive strength. It's forty kilopascals. That's forty thousand pascals. So what the hell is that? It's about six pounds per square inch.

But most importantly, that seal is several times normal blood pressure. So that's the key right there. you know, three hundred percent normal blood pressure. So you get to you know, you get a decent wound here with blood coming out at a at a decent rate, it's it's gonna help seal that as well. I mean, uh they didn't test for s for the ultra dramatic

Artery that's been cut in two scenario, that hasn't been tested for, and that would be very difficult difficult to probably to deal with that. But in these but in very strong blood flow scenarios, this this looks like it will be it will work, it will form these these plugs. And the other critical part of this is that they've shown that in the lab that it's been that it's stable for two years.

So if you have it at room temperature and high humidity, it will be stable for two years, which is great for you know, for like the army and and disaster scenarios where you have this stuff sitting in your kit. for two years, you could just grab it and the powder is still good. A lot of these similar devices uh powders do not have that kind of stability. So this isn't just a topical wound sealer. That's one of the key things here. We're we're talking about

deep open wounds. Imagine, you know, it's grisly, but imagine a deep open wound. This gel this adhesive gel will form as deep as the powder reaches, right? So it it's It's essential that you actually can see where the bleeding is happening happening so that you can directly apply the powder and that's where it's gonna it's gonna work. So uh so we can basically reach any place that you can see and form this strong the strong three dimensional shape.

Deep into any any open large wounds. So this part of the study was interesting. They tested it on animals using three different bleeding models. Uh one was a mouse liver resection. Uh then there was a heart puncture and a tail amputation. Those are three bleeding models. The heart puncture was r especially interesting because the AGCL m actually made a good barrier.

Even though the heart was constantly moving, right? The car the heart's constantly pumping and the blood was constantly pulsating, right? that AGCL actually still formed a very strong bond, even in that specific scenario, which was I thought pretty damn impressive. They also tested AGCL against a c a clinical standard Called Taco Cell. Steve, have you heard of Taco Cell T A C H O S I L No. This is a it's a surgical biopatch of sorts, right?

It's organic. It's made from organic materials but it's a b so it's a patch that they use during surgeries. It um It's made to stop bleeding and seal tissue. So it's basically essentially what AGCL is doing, this is what this taco seal does. It's it's uh it's basically a p very popular standard, it's used all the time. So they compared these two and in all the cases that I found

Taco cell underperformed the AGCL. The AGCL powder did better in terms of blood loss and the time it took to stop bleeding. So pretty impressive. as well, it seems to me. Um let's see. Another big point here is that AGCL just doesn't form a plug. It's um its clotting is also accelerated as well. So this surprised me. Listen to this. little bit from the uh study. In their in their clab in their lab clotting essay, uh untreated blood clotted in ten minutes.

With A G C L it clotted in twenty four seconds. The clotting process started in twenty four seconds compared to ten minutes. That seemed to be a d dramatic improvement. So it's not just a covering, you know, it's not just a a this three-dimensional plug into into these wounds, it also enhances the clotting process.

uh seems to improve it a decent amount as well. And then the other the other bonus that I could find here from AGCL is that it also promoted promoted not just this clotting, but blood vessel and collagen regeneration as well. So it's like damn Pretty pretty interesting advance here. So here's a here's a direct quote. To sum this up, to sum all this up, uh f here's a quote from the study. They say

These results demonstrate that HECL integrates rapid coagulation, strong adhesion, long term biostability, and regenerative capacity in a single platform. Its its powder format offers distinct advantages. In versatility, ease of application, Storability, making it a promising candidate for next generation topical hemostats in trauma care, surgery and emergency medicine. That's basically a very pithy overview of this entire thing. So all right, some important caveats.

AGCL cannot help with inaccessible internal uh bleeding or hemorrhaging. If you can't see it and get the spray on it, it's not really designed to help that. So of course that's gonna be a you know still a you know, a dramatic emergency that you need to deal with in ways other than using AGCL. And also, as always, success in animal models that they have shown does not automatically mean the same for people.

Obviously we're going to need clinical trials for safety and effectiveness in the in the real world. Um So uh so there we are. It seems pretty interesting. Um it's I would love I I'd love to have something like this at home. Um right? That's one of the first things I thought. When could I get this stuff? And I so I think it and I think it's not unreasonable to hope for that at some point. They didn't did what I haven't seen that explicitly d uh addressed anywhere.

Um if the if the if it's even possible to have something like this at home. But I think it's pretty certain that we will eventually Eventually have something like this. Jay, imagine what I could build in my garage when I don't have to worry about my real blood mixing with all that fake blood.

Well but Bob you're you're forgetting that when your real blood spills on these these corpses that you're making, like it does increase the chances of a demon showing up. It does. It does. Um I haven't seen any direct evidence of that, but I always have hope.

All right, Evan, tell me about these monkeys and AI. Yeah, well gather round, children. I'll tell you the skeptical tale of the monkeys and the goat. This all happened back in the year two aught twenty six, uh January the eighth to be exact. And yes, 2026. So a few weeks ago, local residents in North St. Louis began reporting multiple primates.

which were later identified by officials at as Vervit monkeys, were roaming near a place called O'Fallon Park. These monkeys are medium sized African primates that are not at all native to M Missouri, as you might guess. and in fact they are illegal to own within the city. At first there was no official count as to how many monkeys were loose, and investigators weren't sure where they came from or who owned them.

And authorities from the St. Louis Department of Health and Animal Care and Animal Control began searching that day and the next day. deploying teams into the park and the surrounding neighborhoods, but they were unable to locate the animals. That was back on january the eighth. I'll give you a little bit of a day by day account and I find the chronology here to be a little helpful. On january ninth, the first police report sighting came out.

And by the tenth there were additional reports that had emerged, incl including at least one sighting confirmed by a local police officer. And we'll get back to that in a minute, but this sort of started to become kind of bigger news in the community, um, and that everyone was sort of put on alert that these monkeys have escaped their c captivity.

But officials could not find the monkeys and you know they continued their search. It was clear to investigators that they were dealing with something that they'd really not dealt with before. This uh the the situation involving exotic primates at large uh has not happened in any r recent recorded time. So they're kind of uh winging it as they c as they could, trying to find these things. All right. Saturday, January tenth.

That's when the goat joins. A black and white goat with a collar was spotted heading north on Union Boulevard. Resident photos of the goat began circulating on social media alongside the monkey reporter. And so the this was the called the goat on the run angle. It was widely shared online and then picked up uh in some aggregated headlines as well through the news. But it had not been confirmed in any official reporting. Now by january twelfth,

you have the internet basically going crazy with this stuff. You start to see AI pictures of the m of monkeys around town, people putting them, you know, in certain poses and scenarios and locations. Some of them, you know, innocent enough, you know, just walking across the street, but then you have other AI photos of the monkeys y gathering at a coffee shop and sipping coffee, right? But you know, with th with that authenticity that only an AI photo

you know, can can deliver regardless of the context or how ridiculous it is. Some obvious, obvious phony stuff.

But then more reports start coming in about about some of these pictures that have gone online and then more reports of people saying, Oh, I people are posting these reports, you should know about them and all these departments are now getting more and more calls. So By january twelfth, the officials decided to make a shift in their strategy rather than continuing a traditional search for animals roaming the street. The St. Louis Department of Health officially

ended the act of search and instead pivoted to enforcing local laws prohibiting primate ownership. In other words, what they did. is they first of all suggesting that it was more likely that the monkeys were not free roaming in the wild perhaps anymore, they were being held. Someone found them or the original owners found them.

Collected them, brought them in indoors, and that's why officials have not been able to capture see them, capture them, take photographic evidence of them, legitimate ones, or get any further eyewitness accounts. It was all pretty much rumors coming in at that point. But the other thing they did is to encourage cooperation, they waived any potential penalties for anyone who turned in a monkey.

Since keeping one was illegal in the first place. As of today, I checked the records today, which is january twenty two, um there have been uh no monkeys or other contraband animals turned in since that january twelfth. uh message that that went out. So nobody has turned in. As it stands. Tuesday, January thirteenth. The shirt the search shifts to enforcement, like I said. Officials officially do call up the active search for the monkeys. And the goat is captured.

So they they have it now they have a report that the g the goat was secured. and apparently either returned to its owners. We're not really sure what the what the end of the goat story was or where it wound up, but the goat is no longer part of the missing animal. uh craze th that was going on. Health officials confirmed that only one monkey sighting had been truly verified by a police officer. This was a couple of days prior.

But that led more people to the question of the first of all the total number of animals originally reported, and then people started to suspect did this happen at all? Was this whole thing a hoax to begin with? What? I know, Jay. Or just like kind of mass Yes, a mass delusion in its own AI ki kind of way. Um, there are uh two more updates. Yesterday, Wednesday, January twenty-one, the monkey mystery, as they're calling it. This was two weeks after the first report.

The Saint Louis Police Department publicly disputed the health department's claim that a police officer had verified it a few days after the initial report. So this further clouds the incident. They're basically saying, Yeah, some cop basically said initially on they they saw it and therefore lends credibility that the cops know something's going on here.

But now they're saying no. There was no uh no police officers have have officially reported anything having to do with that. And then today police revealed that the initial involvement stemmed from a nine one one call from a mail carrier. Now get this. The mail carrier split. says that their coworker who is another mail carrier is the one who had seen the monkey. But now the police can't or seem to be unable to reach.

The person who uh supposedly made this call, the person who made the call about their coworker making this claim, and they have no eyewitnesses or a direct statement. So the whole thing be has become kind of a mess in a sense. Nobody can verify anything having to do with the right. But certainly I think the fascination that that the public and what obviously caught wildfire are the pictures, the AI generated photographs.

And I think it brings up uh some interesting questions. You know, it it it's you know, this is happens to be a funny scenario. I mean nobody's injured, nobody's hurt, the animals apparently have n were not found dead or anything, right? So okay. But You know, you could get some pretty creative people out there that can cause some pretty elaborate and frankly damaging hoaxes using AI, and all it will take is a report to one agency, one health

one person, one, you know, police department even, for something like this to suddenly become a one away runaway train in a sense, and might cause, you know, some some real harm to someone at some point in the in the future. I think this already happens. I don't think this is a is it gonna start.

I think people love to do this kind of stuff. It's just that AI makes it more believable. And so m it's going to catch on easier and it's gonna be harder to debunk. It will be harder to debunk. I absolutely agree with that. Um but just to clarify, there were monkeys that escaped or the whole thing was a hoax? We do not know. We we nothing can original photos. Nothing can be verified. Yeah. Right, just kinda walking or you know, n n not engaged in some kind of activity.

You know, and it was a one off, it d it wasn't part of a group of monkeys. I don't know if these monkeys tend to stick together in in a in a herd or a pack when they are out on and about. I d I don't know enough about them, frankly, or if they could

go off, run off in their own directions and start doing and doing their thing. Yeah, but this could be like one person had a pet monkey, it escaped. Mm-hmm. That's it. One person was breaking the law and had a pet monkey. Right. But it it it shows how easy it is to flood the zone.

with misinformation that makes it hard for investigators or authorities, whatever, to do what they need to do. You know, if they're trying to locate an actual like zoo animal or something that escaped or any of a hundred similar scenarios and people are just making y you know, fake AI photos about it that are misleading. It's just like the bigger page is harder to discern the truth when it's buried under so much misinformation.

Oh yeah. What we need is to teach people how to resist misinformation, Kara. How can we do that? Yeah, and uh very good segue, Steve. Um but but even to add to that, I think w we also we need traditional broadcast media. We need not just narrow cast media, which is what most people are turning to now. We need reporters. Reporters who look for

not just evidence to back up their claims, but corroborating evidence. That's what reporters do. They need confirmation of facts before they will report things widely. Um and uh, you know until legitimate reporters are reporting on things, it's very hard for me to believe any s sort of one offs on social media. So speaking of that, um How what is one tool that we have in our toolbox? I mean, there are a lot of tools. We talk about this all the time on the show. There are a lot of tools.

um that we can continue to hone in the sort of big effort to fight or resist mi misinformation. One tool that we will speak about from time to time on the show is Literacy. It's reading. And how does reading connect to resisting misinformation? Well, a new um article that was written on the conversation by J. T. Torres and Jeff Sayers Foy.

who are uh professors. One is the director of the Hart Center for Teaching and Learning at Washington and Lee University. The other is an associate professor of psychology at ooh, is it Quinnipaec? Quinapeak. Quinnipiac. Quinnipiac, thank you. University. Quinnipiac. Oh great. Okay. These two academics worked together to write an article about phenomenon that they refer to as deep reading, claiming that uh obviously deep reading can boost I hate when people use words like boost.

Deep reading improves critical thinking and can help you resist misinformation. Uh so like what is it and how do you build this skill? But before we dive into that, I I loved what they did at the very top of their article is they talked about some of the problems that we are facing in our sort of modern social media era. So how many times a day do you think that the average

American looks at their phone. Oh my god. Yeah, it's probably closer to a hundred than twenty. Fifty four. One hundred forty. And how many hours of use? Or I could say minutes I guess, but um how how much use does that translate to over? At least two hours because you said hours, but thirty hours.

Four and a half hours a day. Okay. Thirty hours. Thirty hours a day. That's impossible. Um And uh about fifty seven percent of people in uh recent surveys admit that they are, quote, addicted to their phone. And so they talk a lot, these these authors, about how we engage with our phones, even though we're actively checking it, we're usually receiving information in a much more

passive way, right? We're doom scrolling, we're skimming articles and headlines, and we're sort of being fed information. The information is happening to us. we're not often seeking it out, linking it to other things, actively, you know, uh diving any deeper into these headlines. And of course the head the flow of headlines and the flow of information is is very, very passive. Um, it's just kind of there for us to consume.

So you add to the way that we engage with our phones and a big part of that is social media or or mainstream media as well, but through our phones, through the digital apps. And now let's look at literacy. What do you think literacy, kind of the general picture of literacy, is like in the US? Obviously we're a highly literate nation. Most everybody does know how to read, but are we reading well? It's probably tailed off in research.

Book reading has tanked and one of the big outcomes uh I mean I guess it's a little hard to say if it's a direct outcome of book reading uh tanking, but reading comprehension scores are at a um new low. So we've got a lot of students who are struggling not just to read, but also to understand what it is that they're reading. And and this is as of a, you know, twenty twenty four studies published at the end and and, you know, being written about in twenty twenty.

five. Uh so kind of the last full year that we had that data. Aaron Powell Well kind of related to that, Kira, I read something about a lot of a lot of these students who cannot read an analog clock. I could see that. Yeah. I wonder if that is related though. Do they need to be able to read an analog clock? Well probably not because they they If they don't know it, they probably don't really need to do it, but it's still concerning.

translate to their ability, for example, to sniff out misinformation? Yeah. Does it translate to their ability to navigate the world that they live in now? Some might argue that it does, some might argue that it doesn't. I actually don't know if there are good studies on that. But Uh there does seem to be a significant amount of of literature dedicated to the uh question of whether being able to read and being able to read well to understand what you're reading does translate to these skills.

Surveys show that younger parents uh don't read aloud to their children as often as parents did in the past. Um, and also we've talked about this previously on the show. There are not it's not the majority, but a significant portion of college students say that they never read a whole book. I know. It's terrifying. So passive engagement, like we talked about, this kind of idea of scrolling, things being fed to you, what it often leads

two is just endless consumption or dual stream consumption or sometimes multiple stream consumption. So what I mean by that, and I'm I'm guilty of this all the time as I'm like watching T V while I'm scrolling on my phone, um, while I'm, you know, maybe doing other things as well. You have something to do during the commercials?

So what is deep reading and why do these researchers, this this sort of what they call themselves a cognitive scientist or the psychologist and the literacy expert, um, w what do they believe is or are some of the beneficial outcomes of deep reading? Uh what do you guys think deep reading is, first of all? Being able to kind of immerse yourself in the activity of reading with no other distractions for significant periods of time.

So that's one of them is sort of reading and only reading while you read. I would think that um achieving a certain level of comprehension of what you're eating would be A critical component of deep reading, it seems to me. Yeah. And so maybe instead of looking at the outcome, like are we achieving it, we look at the intentionality to it. And that's sort of how they define it. They they refer to deep reading as the intentional process.

of engaging with information in critical, analytical and emp empathetic ways. So while you're reading, you're making inferences, you're drawing connections, you're engaging with different perspectives, you're questioning different interpretations. So that also implies that deep reading is not just about reading nonfiction. Right? Right. It's about reading fiction, reading novels, reading poetry, reading points of view of individual people, um, so that you can practice

Uh empathizing, analyzing, and engaging with your critical mind. And so they do. not really caveat, but they do say outward in this article like it requires effort and it can trigger negative feelings. Like sometimes when we read we get frustrated. we get annoyed. Oh yeah. Depends what we're reading somehow also. But yes. True. But imagine that it's not moving fast enough for you or

uh certain aspects of the storyline are bringing up, you know, deep feelings that are unpleasant feelings. Maybe the the content in the the story Maybe they're talking about death or difficult relationships or your or their parents.

And also it can be tough to get through a a section of a book. We've all experienced this. Oh yes. Where we're really liking the book and maybe it's even a page turner, but you're like, Oh, this chapter's really dragging. The Iliad and the Odyssey was probably my all time sludge fest, you know. Yeah, yeah. Like it's hard to say. Reading those books. Right.

But the question is, why do we do it? Why why is it important to kind of in some ways force ourselves through that as opposed to just reading the Cliffs notes or or just scrolling really quickly or getting the top line, you know, skimming skimming the words. Mind trainer. So it's training your mind for for what purpose?

For b you know, being able to um dissect what you're reading and appreciate it at a much deeper level than than just to s just surface reading. Is this right? I mean to engage in deep reading as you've been talking about. Right. So you're saying in in some ways what I'm hearing at least is the act of deep reading is important.

to improve your ability to deep read. Well not no not just not yeah, not just deep reading, but it I think it makes your mind a more adaptable and analytical in in other in other endeavors that you you know, just having a conversation with somebody. It could As opposed to like when we've talked about like brain training exercises that make you really good at that one thing you're doing, reading does seem across several different ways that it has been researched.

To improve other aspects of cognition. Yeah. It increased literacy translates to other skills. And that's that's pretty well established. Uh the researchers also point out that if we're not deep reading and we're only kind of scrolling mindlessly, there are studies

coming out pretty much every day at this point that show increased boredom, increased loneliness, uh increased anxiety, and and sometimes kind of at the existential level, especially when we're doom scrolling. And that You know, th there's this kind of paradox that even though it feels like we're connecting to the world and to our friends and to our social groups online, we actually feel lonelier. when we engage in that sort of passive and scrolling.

But attention and effort are can increase feelings like meaning and purpose. It can weirdly increase social connection, even though it feels like a very isolated uh way to engage. And so how would increasing your attention and effort actually be a bridge to um better social connection. Like what are some ways that we read socially? Oh book club book club. Book book. So book book clubs are a great way to do it. And you can even do that online, right? You can connect.

You know, like book clubs like book talk is a is an online kind of and there's uh podcasts that talk about books. You know, there are ways to engage with other people. Well yeah, you brought up before the the example of reading to your children. That's another way.

hundred percent reading to your kids. I read out loud with my partner all the time. It's a very common thing we do before we go to sleep at night. We read to each other, I think, which is a huge way of maintaining and increasing connection. Well how does that work? What? Well, how does that work? Well, so uh as a as a quick aside, sorry to take some time, but very often every single night

we do the New York Times crossword together. Okay. So my partner's dyslexic and so sometimes the writing can become jumbled. So it's important for him that he see it. I like to do the crossword without the visuals. I like hearing the clue and being told it's a seven. So so he controls the puzzle, he reads it to you. Yeah. So he reads the puzzle out loud and we do it together.

And then after we finish the crossword, very often, uh, whoever's book is the most exciting or whoever is, you know, more engaged or maybe whoever's more tired will choose who reads out loud based on that. And so like right now I'm reading a book about early blood transfusions.

Some nights I'll read it to myself alone. Some nights I'll read a chapter out loud and he'll kind of fall asleep listening to me read. Sometimes he'll read to me if I have a bit of a headache or something, but I I still wanna

Keep reading. In the days before blood types were known. I know. Gosh, what a nightmare that must have been. It's a fascinating book. Anyway. Um and and then we talked about this other thing. You mentioned the Iliad and the Odyssey, uh, Evan, and I think that's a great example. reading a text in the classroom And then engaging in deep discussion around the text. We used to do that. Oh, sure. We used to do that a lot.

Okay. So another big thing I wanna mention before I kind of close this up is, you know, how how do you start deep reading if you've been away?'Cause I know there's people listening to the show right now who are like, I do not read every night. Um I bought a book three years ago that I intended to read and I have literally not sat down and read a whole book in years. Um, this is not an uncommon thing I hear from folks. You know, maybe I'll read an article once in a while, but it's it's, you know.

Sitting down and reading a book can feel daunting. to take small steps to start engaging without being overwhelmed. You can really start with short stories, you can start with poetry, you can start with you know, you don't have to dive into a full length novel. or into a a full length of book. You can partner with friends and have sort of accountability buddies and read it in parallel and then talk to each other about it.

Um, and also break it up. That's what I do. It's sometimes a book I read in, you know, four days. Sometimes it takes me a month to read a book, and sometimes they're the same length. It depends on how engaged I am with the material, how difficult it is to read. But I almost always read a chapter a night. Also I would recommend anthologies. I love anth reading anthologies. You can just read, you know, one li little sh you know, short story.

Totally. Okay, that's and you're done with that short story. Yeah, and you don't have to remember it or connect it. And that's a good way to get into it and then eventually I think you will start to get hungry for the story to continue because that is an important skill in and of itself is being able to walk away and then come back into the story and reorient yourself.

And then finally, one of the things that the authors talk about, which I think is an important concept, is the concept of illusory truth. And they talk about why deep reading is good for counteracting illusory truth. And that's sort of linked to this idea of susceptibility to misinformation. So what is illusory truth?

Well, this is an effect that happens when you are repeatedly exposed to information that's somewhat similar because we know that the longer you hear the same narrative, the more believable it becomes, especially if it's coming from different sources. Illusory truth is a a fundamental kind of feature. I mean, I think it's a bug, but you know, uh social media companies look at this as a feature. Social media algorithms keep giving you what you're already clicking on. Yes. Right? If you

Yeah, if you tend to look at something and you spend more seconds and you don't scroll past it as fast, you'll start getting more versions of it from different outlets and for like slightly different takes. It is pernicious.

Because what ends up happening is that you start to believe it because it feels like that is the world, even though that is your social media bubble. It's called illusory truth. And really sitting with content And giving yourself a couple of seconds to ask questions about it, to connect it to other information, to question it, even just a few seconds.

is hugely important for counteracting illusory truth. And we do that when we read. We don't do it as often when we scroll. We go, wait, what what did that sentence mean? Hang on, I have to reread that'cause my mind was somewhere else. We we figure out how to connect and we go, Oh, that reminds me of that other thing. Oh, that's how that works. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

And the more we do that, the better we are at counteracting illusory truth and improving our um our ability to critically think and to to counteract um misinformation.

So, you know, these are skills that are important and I'm gonna keep banging this drum, you guys, and every time I see articles about it, I like to be able to talk about them on the show. Okay, thanks, Cara. Yep. Jay, it's who's that noisy time. All right guys, last week I played this noisy. It's worth the long tail. Very cool, very cool noisy. Um I got I got some crazy

responses, some of which I can't read. This is my favorite email I got this week. It's from Kevin Uh McCreach and he says, This one is easy. It's the ominous noise of fascism. I think it's getting louder. So it was ominous, so we'll give you that. By the way, if it wasn't for a few podcasts, primarily yours, my view of the USA would be very poor. Keep it up, Kevin. Uh thank you, Kevin. No need to explain anything there. I just thought that was really funny.

I got an email from Tracy uh Melinda and Tracy says I have not heard this before, but my guess is that it's an elephant in organ failure. Um, you know, you get it? I got it. I thought it was cute. Uh listener named Ben Fry wrote in and said, Jay, I think this is a synthesizer playing an organ patch and then the intonation scheme, example, just intonation, equal temperament is being changed.

You're not correct, but you're kinda on to it. I think most people that sent emails to me like knew exactly what this is. In fact I got more correct answers on this than I can remember ever getting before. That's why if you remember last week I said, hey, if you know explicitly what this is, you know, don't email in because I want to get people to guess because that's you know, that's where all the fun is.

Another listener named Andrew or Andy wrote in and said, Jay, love the show. You guys are heroes. My guess is that the cat was walking on a church organ. You're not correct, Andy, but you are in the exact right ballpark. I got a winner from last week. The winner's name is Ricardo Battalani or Bat Badalani. He says, Hey guys, I've been listening to your show since high school, but I haven't I haven't been able to see you live yet, hopefully one day.

I'm pretty sure today's noisy is a pipe organs pneumatic system being turned off while keys are depressed, probably the foot keys considering the depth of the notes. Ricardo, you are absolutely correct. I I had another email from a listener who gave us a ton of information uh and his name is with pronunciation Colin uh Colin Dick.

And he said, Hi Jay, I know you said you wanted to let people who don't know guess first, but he knows he basically he says to summarize, I know what this is because my both of my parents built Oregon. They were organ builders. So I couldn't refute you know, turn this down'cause he had some awesome information in here.

So he said the organist first begins playing a chord and then expands it. There are also a lot of stops pulled. Each stop is a different group of pipes with their own unique tonality that will be activated when the corresponding note is played. He said, so if you pull out three stops, You know, a flute, a trumpet and an oboe and played in Middle C you would hear three pipes.

The middle C played in the voices of a flute, trumpet, and ovar, or you get that. The mechanism is also the source of the idiom pulling out the stop. Which literally refers to pulling out all the stop knobs in an organ. That's pretty cool. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Is that where the expression pulling out the stops comes from? That's what he says. Wow. So he he he describes like, you know, what happens is the the the blower which is the air source is no longer supplying air to the system.

But the organ continues to hold the cord, right? The person playing it continues to hold the cord. Air supply. And essentially like the build up of air inside the system slowly decreases, you know, the because there's lots of channels that it goes through. So the pressure drops, the speed of the airflow also goes down. And that, you know, that in a nutshell is it. When you play a pipe organ in a church of that size

you you turn it off and you're gonna hear like this slow fade out of it and the uh and the uh tonality changes as well, which I think is just incredibly cool. Very and it's also kind of menacing if you listen to it with a horror movie playing in your head. It's it's pretty scary. You think it's called an organ because It has a big Breathing kind of

Can you know quality about it? Uh maybe he'll write us back and let us know. I'm sure he's listening. That would be neat. Jay, real quick. Yeah. You slightly mispronounced the word pronunciation and that made my entire day. Did I? It was slight and it was and I know you know how to say it, but the fact that you mispronounced that word is awesome.

So guys, my wife and I were in Sicily recently. We were at um Catania, Sicily. Oh, Catania. And there is a cathedral there, the Cathedral of Saint Agatha, which as an interesting aside, she was tortured And her breasts were cut off. And so there's a lot of statues of breasts commemorating her, which is you see that why is there a statue of breasts in this cathedral? That's why. But anyway, they they have a massive pipe organ in this cathedral. It's called the Jacot organ.

And while we were there getting the tour, somebody was at the organ and they were playing the tocata and fugue and D minor. Which is that iconic pipe organ song that you've all heard. Oh my god. It's associated with Halloween and horror movies. Magnificent. To hear it live on a massive pipe organ, which is something. All right. Well Steve, I have a new noisy for everybody this week. This was sent in by a listener named Derek, and here it is.

Crazy, right? Mm-hmm. That's someone just pouring their breakfast cereal out of the box. Um maybe you need a hint. I was thinking. My hint is I hear this sound quite often. That's the hint. Oh, I think I know. You don't know. No. All right, if you think you know what this week's noisy is or you heard something cool, email me at WTN at the skepticsguide dot org. Hey, so Jay, before we start talking about our upcoming event.

I'm gonna have somebody join us who can tell us about Scicon, which is coming up in June. Steve Hupp, welcome to the SGU. Hey guys, thanks so much for having me. I'm just really excited to be able to talk about Scicon. So you've got to be pretty busy. You're the executive director for the Committee of Skeptical Inquiry. You're basically in charge of putting this whole conference together, right?

Yeah, I mean I've got a big team of people that help out. Uh you guys gave a shout out to Barry Carr earlier in the year uh because he retired and he's been really helping uh plan as well. Great, great, great. So tell us what is gonna happen. Okay. Uh well we've got an amazing uh event coming up, as you said, in June. It's uh this year is actually the fiftieth anniversary.

of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, the organization put together by James Randi, Ray Hyman, Carl Sagan, Paul Kurtz, and others. And uh now we're the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and we're part of the Center for Inquiry. And our big yearly conference, Scicon, CSICon, is going to be in Buffalo, New York from June 11th to 14th. And uh I can tell you all about some of the the exciting speakers and events if you're ready. Yeah, tell us.

So uh I'm gonna kinda go in order, um, but on the first night, Thursday, june eleventh, we just signed uh best selling author Mary Roach. And um Yeah, yeah, she's awesome. I'm very excited to have her. She's we're in a bunch of bestsellers like Stiff and Gulp and Fuzz, a lot of one word bestsellers. Uh but her newest book's called Replaceable You, Adventures in Human Anatomy. So she's actually going to be in conversation with

Richard Wiseman, who you guys know well, uh on the stage Thursday night. So it's gonna be a great opening night for the event. Okay, and then what else we got? Okay, and then on Friday, uh We have uh an uh a new new kit on the block in the skeptical community, the skeptics guide to the universe live podcast will be part of uh the events included in registration. And then later that night, uh, we've got the uh skeptical extravaganza of special significance.

Uh that you guys will be holding and we're selling tickets to that right now and it's uh and they've really been selling. So we're really excited to have you guys there. Great. Um and then lastly on Saturday uh we've got uh Brian Brushwood. Uh you you probably a lot of people know him from Scam School. Yeah, we know Brian. Yeah, the world's greatest con podcast, and he's gonna be interviewing uh Banachek.

and Michael Edwards and they were the two kids as part of Project Alpha with James Randy and they're gonna be uh doing a interview that day. And then that evening we've got a fireside chat with me and Bill Nye, the science guy. Uh so it's gonna be a lot of fun. Sounds like an awesome lineup. Especially those skeptics guys in the middle. Yeah, I called you guys the new the new kids on the block because you guys just celebrated twenty years, which is pretty good.

Uh and uh we were also excited to be able to celebrate with you by putting you on the cover of Skeptical Inquiry. Yeah, yeah, that was a pleasure. Yeah, by the time we get to Sikon we'll be at twenty one years. Uh but yeah, fifty years for CSI man is amazing. I remember going to my first SciCon back in the nineties. That was quite a t quite a while ago. Yeah, they've really put on a bunch and uh really Psychop is the is a lot of people think of as the beginning of organized skepticism.

Uh and people can go to our website, csiconference.org, to see the full lineup of amazing stuff. Awesome. Thank you, Steve. Jay very quickly, Jay, let's get people updated on our other event. Yeah, okay. So we have uh the Madison, Wisconsin shows. We're gonna we have three shows there, but the big thing to tell you about is that we had to change the date.

for the extravaganza. So the entire weekend is gonna be the twenty ninth and the thirtieth. So all three shows will happen on those two dates. The Extravaganza is happening on May thirtieth. So we'll have the um the secret SGU meetup on May twenty ninth and we have the Private Show Plus which will be earlier in the day on May thirtieth as well. And then uh Nauticon twenty twenty six, this is going to be happening in Sydney, Australia. You can go to skepticon.org.au

Or you can go to nauticon dot com. Every time I say that I get a little angry at Ian, but it's all good. Anyway, go to those websites if you want to buy tickets to see us in Australia and that this is all happening in twenty twenty six. Yep, there's a lot happening this year. All right, Steve, we look forward to seeing you in Buffalo. So excited about it. Can't wait to see you guys. Thanks. All right. Take care. Take care. All right. Thanks, Jay. We have one email.

This one comes from Vance in Santa Clarita, California. Where is that, Cara? It's like uh northwest of me. Northwest and it's near LA. Near LA, yeah, Santa Clarita. Vance writes. Are the studies and grave predictions of global warming falsifiable? There must be other ways to falsify other than wait for a hundred years or so and measure the changes.

Uh he goes on, but that's the question, right? He he talks about global warming and the etcetera Are we coming out of an ice age and how do we separate man made global warming from natural cycles and blah blah blah. So w how can all this be falsified? So what do you guys think? How do we falsify the predictions made by climate climate scientists?

That might be not not as you know, that's more short term. And we've we've all we've made predictions and over the decades we've compared them to reality and we find that they are in the right direction and often they are actually n they're actually not strong enough uh you know in terms of negative consequences. They're actually worse. than the negative predictions we've made. I mean so y I mean models and simulations are a key answer to that question I would think, right?

I think that's it, in fact. So um I mean obviously there there are many ways you can falsify elements of global warming, especially sort of the it's caused by industrial released CO two. W every time you do a study looking at um other things that could be driving the climate, if we found other things driving the climate, that would obviously falsify the the anthropogenic hypothesis. If we the there's many different ways that we look at the increasing temperatures historically.

And so every time we do that, that's a that's a potential way of of falsifying the the hockey stick, right? The fact that there's been not just the continuation of a long trend, but a rapid upturn you know, timed with the industrial revolution in both CO two in the atmosphere and global temperatures. But the big way I mean there's he says, do we have to wait for a hundred years? Like, yeah, sort of. I mean unfortunately there's no way around that. When you're when the bottom line

thing that you're predicting is what's going to happen into the in the future. Only the future has the last word on that, right? Mm-hmm. But Bob, what you're saying is correct. What we do have is is models. And I know people dismiss that. It's like it's only a model, right? But what a horrible thing to say. But the the models do a do a couple of things. So first of all

Right, the climate scientists put every factor that they know about into the model and then and then they first thing they do is they retrodict, right? They say Does this model spit out the temperatures in the past that we already know happen. And if it if it matches the historical record, then at least it's viable. It doesn't mean it's correct, because there could be thousands of incorrect but viable models.

But at least it's viable, right? You can so you can falsify the model if it doesn't match historical records. But then you have to predict future warming. Right, in order for the model to be really fully scientifically validated, it has to survive the potential of being falsified by future data. So we have at this point about fifty years of climate model predictions that could have been falsified. And as Bob said, if you look at all the the models, even the ones from the seventies.

that are primitive by modern standards are pretty damn accurate. They've called the warming that we've actually seen very accurately, like within as we say, it's within two standard deviations, which in science means correct, right? Um within the within that range, that ninety five percent confidence interval, blah blah blah. So yeah, the models are accurately predicting the warming that's actually happening over five decades.

And they could have completely falsified those models, right? Anthropogenic global warming has so far survived. fifty years of data that could have falsified it. But in terms of what's gonna happen over the next fifty years, the next hundred years, we'll have to wait and see, right? All we could say is that the models are working out so far. They're actually getting better over time. And

That's scary. Yeah, I mean that that's good evidence that we should probably take them seriously, right? And nothing is absolute metaphysical metaphysical certitude. It's all probability, risk versus benefit. Saying so far they're working pretty well, so we should, you know, take them seriously. Right. to to to make these predictions wrong would be I mean it's really you you can't really reasonably expect

these predictions now to be egregiously wrong. Subtly wrong, for sure, but egregiously wrong is all is basically, eh, that's really not gonna happen with such a high degree of certainty. What how did Gould put it? It would be It would be uh perverse to withhold provisional assent. Yes. Yeah. The other angle though, I think where where the uncertainty remains is in where the tipping points are.

True. Absolutely true. So because that is again there's complicated feedback loops and we're not really sure exactly how that's gonna play out. We know what's gonna happen eventually. So that's the other thing. It's like our confidence That these things are going to happen eventually is very high.

Exactly when they're gonna happen is what we don't know. That's really where the all the uncertainty is. And they could be sooner than we predict, it could be later than we could predict. But again, it's probably somewhere in the ninety five percent confidence intervals, you know that the expanding wave of un you know, s slope of uncertainty that you see on those data charts.

It's pri so far as we've been in there. But yeah, th that that's the thing. Like when are when are the uh the Antarctic ice sheets gonna collapse, you know? That we can't say for certain. Could be two hundred years, who knows? But we know it's gonna it's i it will it will happen eventually.

again under certain conditions like we don't do anything to mitigate global warming and we know that once it does happen it's it's irreversible on a human timescale, at least given any reasonable projection of current technology. So those are the kind of statements we could make, right? There's no certainty, there's no absolute metaphysical certitude. It's all probability statements.

But yes, the it could have been falsified, it hasn't been falsified, it's looking good so far, and the predictions, if anything, are getting more accurate. Okay guys, let's move on with science or fiction.

Each week I come up with three science music items or facts, two real and one fake. challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. Three regular news items this week, the first of twenty twenty six. No theme. You guys ready? Yep, here we go. You swept us last week, Steve. I did Steve. I in fact I did sweep you to my delight.

Let's see how you do this week. Item number one, engineers have developed a robotic hand which is more dexterous than a human hand and can even detach, crawl across the floor, and retrieve objects. Item number two, a new study finds that disconnecting from media is associated with significant and long lasting reductions in reported stress levels.

And item number three a new analysis finds that ice age kangaroos, which were more than twice as heavy as the largest extant kangaroos, could still use hopping for locomotion. This robot hand. Hang on, I gotta call Christian Hubicki for a second here. Oh well damn, that's probably not cool to do. Uh awesome as that, man. Yeah, right. More more dexterous than the human hand. Which I'm skeptical of that right out of the gate. Um I mean how were you you know, how are you defining

dexterity in the in this specific case. I mean, I may have to just say that's fiction just out of the gate'cause I mean, it's human hand. Uh is just so damn dexterous and I've seen some good robotic hands but and detaching and walking across the floor, that's such a evil dead ash hand move, I just love it to death. Um uh l let's look at this other one here. Um this this one is is just annoys the crap out of me because it seems so obvious. Uh right disconnect from media

significant long lasting reductions in stress. Of course. In twenty five and twenty twenty twenty six duh I mean, uh I can't take large doses of news these days. I just gotta go to my happy place after a little while. Um so that just sounds too obvious. And the kangaroo. Twice as heavy but still able to jump. Is it still e efficient enough to warrant using the jumping as a as a way of getting around? I I don't know. What's the what's the what's the um

the tipping point there. What's the what's the point where it's just like, Oh, you're just too heavy for this to be a good strategy for locomotion? So I have no goddamn idea. Um Yeah, but you gotta grab with some fingers and then walk back with other fing with the other fingers? I mean that's or so that's I mean sure if it's small, yeah, you could grab something with two fingers and then

walk back not very doesn't seem very efficient to me, um, but super cool to think about. Yeah, I'm just gonna I'll just do this meta decision here of just going with the um the one that's just too obvious. Which of course is still a roll of the dice'cause you know you know this strategy well. So I'll just say disconnec disconnecting from the media is fiction. Okay, Kara.

It's funny'cause like uh I mean, especially given the topic that I just covered, but I don't like how a lot of things are worded in the media one. So I'm gonna go through the other two first. I I Uh okay, a robotic hand. I don't like this more dexterous than a human hand. By what measure? Like dexterity is like a multivariable measurement.

Um, is it about fine, you know, grasping? Is it about I'm assuming that with a robot there are things that hands just can't do that you can make a robot hand do. So by that measure maybe it could be more dexterous, but there might still be things that a human hand is better at. Um, but maybe it's like on the total. So that one I don't think that you would do a fiction where it's like, eh, you know, by this measure it is, but by that measure it's not. So I'm gonna say maybe that one's science.

Ice age kangaroos. More than twice as heavy as largest extant. Okay, so the things were big, yeah. And they could hop still. Well why wouldn't if they were twice as heavy, why wouldn't they still be able to hop? They had twice the muscle tone too, probably. Or not twice the tone, but twice the muscle size. Uh that one could be the catcher. It could be okay, they were more than twice as heavy, but they couldn't hop, you know. They could only walk.

Um, so that one's a little bothering me. And then but this one, I just feel like you did not write enough on on the middle item. A new study, I mean that could be literally be anything. I hate it when it's a single study. Disconnecting from media. Bob, you didn't say social media. Yeah, that includes like your phone and things like that. Yeah. That includes like movies.

And like newspapers. So basically Well, I should say digital media. Oh, okay, cool. So a digital detox basically is what you're saying. A person going on a digital detox is going to have significant and long lasting reductions in reported stress levels. This could go either way. I could see it being significant.

But the long lasting I mean, and maybe you can answer this, but maybe you can't, are they still disconnected? Yeah, it lasted while they were disconnected. It's not implying it lasted beyond the disconnection. So long lasting is, you know, throughout the disconnection period. Yeah. Okay. I also could see a scenario in which after being disconnected for a few days, people start to get anxious again. Yes. And needing to reconnect.

And so that is the thing that maybe it's between that and the old and the big old kangaroo not being able to hop. But I'm gonna go with. You know, how do we define long lasting? I think it probably lasted a day or two, but then for most people

Uh, unless this is very well practiced, like, you know, people who camp regularly, I think that they're gonna start to get anxious and their stress levels will go back up and uh they they need to quote reconnect. So I'm gonna go with Bob with this one. Okay. Jay?

The digital detox. Um I can argue both sides very easily, uh, but the the question here is, you know, I guess is like what is there any long term effects on lowering stress from From, you know, lowering how much content you you take in or how much you use your device or whatever. You know, my personal experience, you know, I definitely get short term benefits from it and I and I did have a spell where I really tried to detach.

And I didn't have like what I would describe as significant and, you know, semi permanent lowering of stress. You know, I I still live in a highly stressful world. I still know what's going on. So I yeah, I mean I I think I agree with Bob and Kara on this one. Regarding the hand thing though, like'cause Kara mentioned, you know, how do you determine what dexterity is or whatever that I think what we're seeing here, Kara, is

that this is the reporting this is what the reporters are saying. It's not necessarily true, right? That th that's the way that they're describing it. You know, I I wouldn't put it past You know, people saying it's more dexterous dexterous than the human hand with a light interpretation, you know, it wasn't like I don't think they did this massive study to compare it to a human hand. It's more of like a reaction, I think, if anything. But anyway, I'm with Bob and Cara. Number two is the fake.

Okay, and Devin. Yeah, I don't I don't see mechanically why there couldn't that couldn't happen, right? I don't all the components, I didn't have to really invent anything new. It kinda just had to piece it all together and

Make it happen. So I think that's what they did. But yeah, the one about disconnecting from media. Oh boy, there was stress before social media, that's for sure. Um in a lot of ways. So just because you you know, stop your Uh consumption of digital media does not, I don't think, necessarily link to as this reads, what significant and long lasting.

Reductions in reported stress levels'cause there's plenty like Jay was saying, there's plenty of other things out there to stress you out about and that's what used to happen uh before digital anyways. Um and the last one about the ice age and the kangaroos I find. Uh so I'm with everyone else. It's uh sink or swim. All right. So there's gonna be another sweep this week

Did I get a double sweep? Or did you guys even discore? So ca so Steve, before you continue, ca I want to explain to Kara my thinking of the um the kangaroo. My thinking is that my thinking was that At a certain weight,'cause what happens is that the kangaroo it stores and releases elastic energy right from their a tendons. If you're too heavy, then that tendon would have to be too robust, uh too big.

in order to do that effect efficiently enough to warrant making that how you get around. So that's m what that's what my thinking was on there. Yeah. So but is it like the twice as heavy or the three times or four times as heavy point?

All right, well let's start with that one then. A new analysis finds that Ice Age kangaroos, which were more than twice as heavy as the largest extant kangaroos, could still use hopping for locomotion. You all think this one is science? So let's discuss with Bob what you were saying. So th the That's the question, right? Is it are they too heavy for this sort of spring effect of the tendon to work?

And if it if it if they did exceed whatever that limit is, they would not be able to hop around like kangaroos hop around, right, for locomotion. They would have to either walk on f all four or just walk, you know, bipedal. So this one is Science. This is science. But I didn't say it in the in the thing, but um until this study Scientists believe that they couldn't top for locomotion for those reasons because they were extrapolating from existing kangaroos.

And when they included updated data from the fossil kangaroos, the giant fossil kangaroos, they realized that there there are um biological differences that would allow them to hide. So modern kangaroos get as big as about ninety kilos and Um they previously said that the upper limit of hopping was at one hundred and forty to one hundred and sixty kilos, and the giant fossil kangaroos were over two hundred kilos.

So that's why they said now they're too big they couldn't hop. But then when they looked at the the fossils more closely again there was two limiting factor bone strength and tendon size, they found that both of them together were were robust enough to allow for hopping.

And you're correct, Bob. When the tendons they have to get bigger to hold the weight and the bigger they get, the less uh efficient they are at absorbing and releasing that energy. But it would still be uh p you know possible to hop even

They did have larger tendons. They could see the insertions and the bones of the larger tendons. However, they said that they didn't necessarily hop all the time. They probably used it as one of many different types of locomotion. They probably also walked on all fours and George just walked on their feet, but then they would hop when they needed the burst of speed to get away from a predator or something.

So yeah, so that was a a change in our thinking about the giant kangaroos with this study. Interesting. All right, we'll we'll go backwards. A new study finds that disconnecting from media is associated with significant and long lasting reductions in reported stress levels. You guys all think this one is the fiction and this one is Say it.

The fiction. Hey, go bob. Good job. Um yeah, and you keyed in on the things that I made up. So there was a study looking at people disconnecting from uh media, from digital media, and They they decided to do an observational study rather than a controlled study because Mm all most of the previous studies, you basically tell people how much digital media they can consume and when.

Or you say like you're not gonna touch it for the next twenty four hours, the next forty eight hours or whatever. And they were worried that involuntary disconnection caused stress, right? So they said what happens when people voluntarily disconnect from from digital media? So of course if it's voluntary, it's observational, it's not controlled. And what they found was that there was improvements. in well-being, right, subjective well-being, energy, and social connectedness.

but that these were short lived and they were pretty small. And they reported no difference in stress level. So I basically flipped everything about what the study showed. Did it say how long they were disconnected? Um for different amounts of time. Because again there was all individual they were choosing when to do it. So it could have been hours to days, you know. Yeah. I think for me and m I do think that's super interesting and I'm kind of not surprised. But I'm much more interested in

people who do this regularly and are practiced at this. Yeah. Because I bet you you'll see m much larger changes. Maybe. But doing it like one time for a day. Yeah, they sampled them over two weeks, but they looked at the times that they were connected versus disconnected over those two weeks. Yeah. Like most people don't ever disconnect from their phones. Ever. It's a complicated question, obviously, and this is just looking at it from one slight.

But that's why it's easy because it's the fiction, none of that matters, right? But they did it definitely did not show this, right? That there's this big long lasting effect, you know, with stress. There that was the one thing that was not affected. Yeah, it's not a panacea, for sure. Exactly. All right, which means that engineers have developed a robotic hand which is more dexterous than a human hand and can even detach, crawl across the floor, and retrieve objects is science.

And yeah, of course you hear that more dexterous than a human hand and immediately that sounds dubious but So but you get the room, this is a robotic hand. It is not limited by the anatomy of a human hand. It could have as many just coming off of your wrist makes you more dexterous.

Which gives it a lot more options in terms of how we could hold on to things. It can have more than five fingers. And the fingers can bend backwards, basically so you could hold things on the back of your hand, not just on the palm of your hand. Right, so this thing can detach from the wrist Uh and then it could use its fingers to crawl across the floor. It could pick something up with fingers it's not using to walk and hold it against either the back or the palm of the hand.

It has way more options. It's weakened so in that context it's way more dexterous. It could move and Steve, I was thinking of of I was thinking of extra digits and it's it's it's Funny how the the um the assumption of a n of a typical hand was so strong that I discounted that. Right. Um I should have a but I should have asked. And that was the that was and that's uh interesting'cause that's one of the key

insights that these engineers have like, wait a minute, we don't have to be limited by a human hand. We can have two thumbs, we can have six fingers. We can do whatever we want. And once you once you're freed of that assumption, then you you can optimize a hand without evolutionary constraints, right? You can make it do whatever you need it to do. Yeah, I'm I'm also seeing robots um becoming more popular that

that can move like a normal person but aren't limited by human range of motion. Right. They could do they can make like you said, they can their arms can move in ways that no human could possibly move. And that's a of course an obviously great idea for robots.

Because why should we why should we put a straitjacket on him like that? Yeah, wasn't there I'm trying to think I have a I remember an image from some sci fi show where somebody grabs a robot from behind and the robot just flips everything around and now he's facing him and you know what I mean? Yes.

I w what was that? I c I could picture it too, but it's not enough detail to tell me what it was. But yeah, we saw the same thing. And again, you know, i this is robotic but it could also be prosthetic. Uh you know, that that could be for sure. Yeah. Yeah, for uh uh attached to a person's prestige. And I've seen it. Yeah. But you I'm saying you might I know that. I mean the whole idea of robotic hands, but even were for human prosthetic limbs we don't necessarily have to limit ourselves

to the human an anatomical form. Yeah man, two thumbs, baby. And here's the key the the key point to that though is the human brain can adapt. to new configurations, new anatomical configurations. We're not limited to what came before.

Sure, man. And you know, change the homunculus. Why not? You can. You can work. Absolutely. And we yeah, studies show that over and over. Sew fingers together, split fingers. Yeah, we've we've done all sorts of cool studies on that. Yeah, man. Your brain's like, I totally got The I the way I th think of it and the way that what the evidence shows, like w the difference between your dominant and your don non dominant hand. So like when you go outside of V-V-

body plan you were born with, it's probably gonna be your level of control be more like your non dominant hand. Oh yeah. Not as good as your thoughts. But still that's damn born that way. Yeah. That's true. If you were born that way and there was pre you know connected to you in that window. It could be. Yeah.

All right, Evan, give us a quote. Success in creating effective AI could be the biggest event in the history of our civilization. Or the worst. We just don't know. So we cannot know if we will be infinitely helped by AI, or ignored by it and sidelined, or conceivably destroyed by it. Stephen Hawking. Mm-hmm. Yeah, he was very concerned about it. And you chose that quote before

You knew what my news option was. I did. How's that? Yeah, a bit of a coincidence. Right? Yeah. Or is it? Or is it? Yes, yes, it does. Spoiler alert. Come on. Thank you all for joining me this week. You're very many. And until next week, this is your Skeptics Guide to the Universe. Dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. For more information, visit us at Skeptics Guide dot org Send your questions to infot the skepticsguide.com.

And if you would like to support the show and all the work that we do, go to patreon.com. Skeptics guide and consider becoming a patron and becoming part of the SG. Our listeners and supporters. Yeah.