The Skeptics Guide #1047 - Aug 2 2025

You're listening to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.

Hello, and welcome to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe.

Today is Wednesday, July 30th, 2025, and this is your host, Stephen Novella.

Joining me this week are Bob Novella.

Hey, everybody.

Kara Santa Maria.

Howdy.

And Evan Bernstein.

Good evening, everyone.

Jay is on break this week.

He's actually on his way to Alaska.

He might be there by now.

I'm not sure.

Flying, I hope.

Yes.

Fly to Alaska.

It's a hell of a drive.

And while he's there, he's going to visit with Bob's daughter, who works in Alaska.

Ashley.

Hi, Ashley.

Wish I could be there.

Move back to Connecticut.

Where in Alaska?

Is it Juneau?

Is it

Gerd?

About an hour from Anchorage.

Gerd Woods.

So the Greater Anchorage.

So I found an interesting Reddit post that got my attention, and within 15 seconds, I emailed the entire SGU crew about it.

It's like, whoa.

I have not read it.

What was it?

What was it?

It's a video.

Oh, it's a video.

Okay.

This is Dr.

Peter Carter.

Dr.

Peter Carter, expert IPCC reviewer and director of Climate Emergency Institute.

Basically, he's calling it.

He joins David Suzuki in official recognition of unavoidable endgame on planet climate and Homo sapiens.

And that's a weird ending to that sentence, but it's the beginning of the end, huh?

So I didn't see the full video, Steve.

So what was your take on it?

You know, I disagree with him.

Well, good, because it was a little concerning that this guy would be saying, game over, kids.

The game isn't over.

I mean, that's never.

Well, it can never be right.

Right.

It could always make it less worse than it would have been if you didn't do anything.

So that's why it could always be worse.

But his pessimism seemed extraordinary.

It's like, it's too late.

We're doomed.

It's fine to be pessimistic.

It's not really.

And the specific things that he's saying are correct.

It's just the way he's framing it as quote-unquote too late, which is bullshit.

And that's what, you know, as we discussed with Michael Mann when he was on the show last time.

Right, man.

That's the latest denialist strategy.

Well, it's too late, so why do anything?

Do you think it's that, well, I don't know.

This is a devil's advocate position because I don't know really, like, we're not inside of his head.

But do you think that it's that like the

emergency, emergency, like that that approach isn't working.

And so, saying, like, we're past the point, guys, like, we are effed.

Is that a hope that people will act?

It's fine to say, he's not calling for action.

He's basically saying the fossil fuel industry won.

The climate deniers have won.

The big bankers who are backing it all have won.

We have lost.

Game over.

He doesn't think we could now, that we have the capability to do anything about it.

So it's not that he's saying that interventions won't have any effect.

Like what we're saying is it could be worse.

If we do something, it will still make it less bad, et cetera, et cetera.

He's saying, yeah, whatever.

Even if that's true, we have lost the political game.

The political game is over, we lost.

And so nothing is going to change.

And I think the final nail in the coffin for him as

he said it was Trump's election.

Because in his mind, that represents the victory of all of those forces, the victory for climate denial, for fossil fuel, for

the current economy as it is set up.

Yeah, but in four years, that'll all change again.

Exactly.

Well, yeah,

one presidential election is not permanent.

Right.

I don't find this dialogue helpful

when people say these things like this.

Here's one quote from the video.

I assume it was him saying this, but the IPCC's sixth assessment said that global emissions had to be in decline by 2025.

At the latest 25, at the latest this year, it's too late.

So it's basically this big deadline.

It's too late for a walk.

We have to say for what?

It doesn't.

To avoid

negative consequences.

Yeah, but we already know we're too late to avoid negative consequences.

Yeah, we know we've been there.

We are too late to avoid negative consequences.

Sure.

That's not a big revelation.

But the problem is, you know, when you throw up your hands in defeat, it's not too late to continue to work on this.

You know what I mean?

I mean,

why

give up in defeat?

That's a completely worthless strategy.

Also, I'm sorry, but we're not the only country in the world.

True.

Why is such an Americo-centric, I mean, I get that we have sort of an outsized influence and that this administration is quite detrimental, but other places are doing really big things, and there are a lot of people within our borders that are doing really big things.

I don't know.

That's true.

Yeah, that's true.

I mean, the numbers still haven't turned around.

The amount of CO2 we're releasing into the atmosphere is still increasing every year,

barring COVID and things like that, barring short-term temporary reversals.

But the overall trend is still up.

We have not turned the ship around yet.

No, of course not.

Yeah, which we have said all of this.

Yes, we are increasing our our renewable portfolio.

We are building a lot of wind and solar.

But that's just the increase in our energy demand.

We haven't started displacing fossil fuel.

We're just some of the new energy capacity that we're installing is renewable, is carbon neutral or whatever.

We've got to get nuclear going.

We have to do everything.

We have to.

I agree.

Yes, not anymore.

Everything.

I keep getting into arguments with well-meaning skeptics who insist that we can do this all with just solar and batteries.

What the hell, man?

I mean, you can't print.

No, you can't.

It's like an article in the middle.

You need a bridge.

Yeah, yeah.

Where do you think it's coming from?

I think it's, you know, it's generally coming from that political segment that was always anti-nuclear, and they're just, this is how they're remaining anti-nuclear in the face of reality, in my opinion.

And the thing is,

when you get into an argument with somebody, a discussion, and they don't address your key points, that's a problem.

They just reiterate.

So, they always say, hey, listen, solar and battery is the cheapest form of new energy that we could add to the grid.

And solar plus battery, obviously, the battery backup helps extend

the solar and et cetera, et cetera.

It's like, okay, I acknowledge all of that, but there's multiple problems.

The amount amount of new energy that we have to add to the grid.

So the old estimates were increased by 100, you know, to 150%, by 50% by 2050.

I think those estimates are outdated because of crypto and AI.

So we're going to have even more increase in energy demand.

There isn't enough copper in the world.

We were not producing enough copper in order to build all the batteries we have to build, even just for EVs, let alone grid storage, you know, update the grid like solar and wind requires, and build the solar panels.

We do not have the resources to do it.

And

you know what I mean?

It's just silly.

And plus, in parts of the world, it just doesn't work.

You know, like in the northern half of the United States, there's no way we're going to displace solar energy production seasonally.

You know what I mean?

I have solar panels on my roof.

I'm in Connecticut.

I produce almost all my electricity over the late spring, summer, and early fall.

I produce almost no energy over the winter.

So I would have to store three months of energy or more in order to be completely on

solar.

So then the only other option is you got to get solar from Arizona to me or Florida or whatever to me.

It's like, okay, that's fine too.

And who's and how, when is the grid going to be upgraded to allow that to happen?

They just don't address those issues.

Well, nuclear is a bridge to get you there.

It's not, I mean, it's whatever.

We already are at 19, whatever, 20% nuclear.

You want that to go away.

You want to replace all existing fossil fuel, add 50 plus percent, and replace 20%

nuclear all with wind and solar and gas

storage.

And you think that's the fastest way?

That's the fastest way to decarbonize the grid?

Forget about it.

We've got to do everything.

We have to do everything.

There's just no reason to take it off the table.

But they're just so dedicated to, like, no, it's got to be all renewable.

It's this purist, it's just so frustrating.

And again, you add people, you have the doom and gloom people we got to deal with.

It's too late already.

The renewable purists.

Do the renewable purists tend to make anti-nuclear arguments, or do they just kind of not touch nuclear?

Though they do.

They say

it's too expensive.

It takes too long.

It's not that it's dangerous.

That's not their argument.

They don't, yeah, they don't really fall on that anymore.

That's not one of their go-tos because it's not dangerous.

It's simply

one of the safest.

It's right down to the road.

In terms of the lives lost per unit of energy produced, it's one of the safest.

And it's not too expensive if you include...

the entire cost of any of the infrastructure, right?

Because if you're, yeah, you know, wind and solar are cheap, but not when you consider to get past a certain percentage, and that's what we're talking about.

It's cheap at this end of the spectrum.

It's cheap when we have 5% penetration of wind, of solar rather, like 10% of wind.

That's cheap.

But when you say if you're going to do 100%, then first of all, wind, way too much land use.

Just way too much land use.

Solar,

it's only during the day, and it's only

year-round in sunny parts of the country, which means we need massive grid storage.

You know how long it's going to take to build that grid storage?

Longer than it would take to build nuclear.

So the duration argument doesn't hold.

It literally takes just as long to build pumped hydro as it does to build nuclear.

And the newer, like the natrium nuclear power plants, can do grid storage too.

They can keep their molten salt and do grid storage.

And burn their own waste fuel.

Well, they have fewer spent nuclear fuel than the older designs.

And are those the ones that are meltdown-proof?

Yeah, they're pretty much meltdown proof.

Yeah.

If you don't put them in an earthquake zone.

To get out of the weeds and

stop looking at the trees and just back off to the forest, isn't it better to just invest in all roads because they all lead to the same place?

Yeah.

That's what I never understand about that.

Zero-sum argument.

It's like,

don't divert money from wind and solar to nuclear.

It's like, well, you haven't demonstrated that this is a zero-sum game.

We're saying build nuclear instead of coal and

natural gas.

Yeah, we need to stop expanding those things for sure.

And the other advantage is like you can swap a coal plant out one-for-one with a nuclear plant in the same infrastructure, the same land, and the same grid connections.

And you just can't do that.

You just can't do that.

Listen, I love wind and solar.

I have solar on my roof.

I'm all for it, for what it does.

But it has a downside.

Too much rare earths and copper and all that stuff.

too much grid storage, too much upgrading the grid.

All that will take a super long time, and it's too much land use,

right?

To do 100%.

We're just not, you know, not anytime soon.

Again, maybe in 100 years, fine.

I don't care.

That's fine.

But if the goal is to get carbon neutral as fast as possible, there's no reason we should take anything off the table.

And nuclear advantages are huge.

If the only disadvantage is money, who cares?

Spend the money.

It's cheaper than

the climate change, right?

Yes.

Well, that's the point.

Yes.

But then I can kind of see what, I mean, I hate to say it, what the guy who posted the piece is saying in the sense of like, I hear that argument, and also to some extent, it's moot for the next three and a half years because they're not going to spend the money on any of it.

Well, there's a much better chance they'll spend money on nuclear than renewables.

True.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's my hope.

Yeah.

At least kind of like, I don't know, cater or pander to that.

Yes.

Right.

Yeah.

Dang a white carrot.

Right.

But we'll see.

Just tell him you can burn the Epstein files in the nuclear reactor.

Exactly.

Let's not go there.

All right.

Let's move on.

I want to start you off with something that Bob and I talked about on TikTok today because it's an update to the evolving 3E Atlas story.

A few weeks ago, 31 Atlas?

Yeah, 30.

It's one of the conspiracy theories on YouTube.

It's like 31 Atlas, fail.

Sorry, dude.

3i Atlas.

Minor point, but, you know.

Yeah, the I stands for interstellar.

The sloppiness is, you know,

throughout his argument.

That was just

a funny example.

Okay.

So Bob first presented it a few weeks on the show.

Third interstellar object confirmed.

Total first one that is an interstellar comet.

And bigger than the other two.

And it's bigger than the other two.

Yeah, there's three of them.

It's the biggest of three.

And that was it.

And we were, you know, it's it's heading towards its close approach to the sun, which will be in October and November.

It'll come around the other side in early December, and then it will leave the solar system.

Oh, sadly.

Yeah.

So, because that's it's on a hyperbolic orbit.

That's how we know it's interstellar, right?

Yeah.

And then our old friend Avi Loeb chimed in, saying

this could be an alien artifact, just like Amuamua and the other interstellar objects.

And Christine gave a

list of completely ridiculous arguments for why that is.

So now that has broken out into the mainstream, and there's tons of

internet, TikTok, conspiracy theorists saying a Harvard physicist is saying we're going to be invaded by aliens.

Isn't that great

when people like this lend their quote-unquote credibility to the crazy people out there, like

totally.

I hate it.

Yeah, it's

so frustrating.

And this, despite the fact that in his paper, he actually says,

at the very end, I guess near the end, he says, by far the most likely outcome will be that 3i Atlas is a completely natural interstellar object.

He even admits that.

And these people still, of course,

didn't read the paper and don't even know that he said that.

But that's what he said.

Right.

And they're still running away with the worst clickbait titles that I have ever seen.

Oh, Oh, here's one.

This is from MSN.

Right.

This is mainstream journalism.

Here's the headline.

Hostile alien spacecraft, in quotes, may strike Earth in November.

What?

That's like tabloid.

That's tabloid level.

That's just straight up lying.

Yeah.

And putting it in quotes makes it seem like somebody said that.

Right.

Right?

First of all,

the hostile was completely just inserted into the narrative at some point.

Yeah, right?

Robbie Loeb didn't say that.

He just said, you know, he said

they're a probe.

They're trying to communicate with us, look, you know, examine us, et cetera.

He never introduced this notion of being hostile.

Now that's now the narrative, that we're going to be invaded by aliens, that there is an alien ship.

And then all the reporting gets loaded now.

It's like they're saying

it's going to be passing behind the sun.

So they report that it'll be hiding behind the sun so that it could maneuver in secret.

It's not hiding.

It's just a random.

It's just where it's coming from.

It's past.

It's where it's going.

Somebody said that that's a tactical maneuver.

It's tactical.

That's a tactical maneuver, if ever I saw it.

Or it's just a random path of a random chunk of ice and rock.

People really need something right now to hold on to, I guess.

Why are they rooting for the Earth to be faded?

Yeah, I don't know.

I think they just want like, it's like reality TV, right?

Yeah, clickbait.

Yes, clickbait.

Total clickbait.

Well, it's not just that.

Yes, it is clickbait, but the idea is something to pull your attention away from the shit.

Join a LARP.

There you go.

Exactly.

Yeah, much more satisfying.

Do a hobby.

Do something that's pure fantasy and you know it.

That's your distraction.

Don't make reality your fantasy game.

I agree.

But that's totally what they do.

Yes, they do.

But yeah, it's just galling that Avi Loeb, he's getting a lot of shade from anybody with any scientific jobs and intellectual integrity

for doing this.

But it's like this guy.

I'm very discouraged.

He's too far.

He's too far gone now.

He can't retreat.

I don't know.

I don't know that that's true.

He's acting that way for now, but I haven't talked to the guy.

I don't really know

what his motivation is or why he's so far gone.

I would argue that if he didn't come up with these sorts of ideas, nobody would know the name Avi Loeb at all.

That's That's certainly true, and he wouldn't have his institute being funded by tech bros.

There you go.

But

I just think he's one of these scientists who may be technically

good in his field, but he does not understand the difference between pseudoscience and science.

He doesn't understand critical thinking, and so he's falling for really basic critical thinking fails.

Yeah, when was the last time he corrected himself?

And there's no learning curve, apparently, because he's just making the same mistakes over and over again.

Is he a pretty magical thinker in other areas?

Do we know?

Not that I know of.

He's like a medical guy.

I've not seen him comment on other things.

I've read some of his papers that were, you know, I guess

more in his lane, and they were interesting.

I talked about them, but this stuff is like, I mean, I might not.

Every paper I see from him now, even if it's completely unrelated, well, I'll just be suspect because I don't trust this guy's thinking.

Yeah, that's what I'm always confused when I see, like, I know plenty of academics who are religious, but like secular religious, you know what I mean?

But I'm always really amazed when I meet academics, especially in STEM fields or related fields, who believe in magic, but only in this one area.

I'm like, hmm.

How do you keep it?

I'm amazed when you see it all the time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Sacred kids.

You could be technically proficient.

You could function as a physician, as a PhD, as a researcher, and not understand the philosophical underpinnings of science, not understand the logical nuance of science versus souans.

You are just technically proficient in your area, and that you're a setup for falling for what to us is really obvious pseudoscience.

Especially if you're already in sort of community that reinforces that.

Like I remember when I was in graduate school, the first time, so I was getting my master's, there was a woman in our lab getting her PhD.

She was an older woman, not older, but like older than most of us that were, you know, fresh out of undergrad.

And she was a Seventh-day Adventist, but she was very literal in her beliefs.

And she would talk about dinosaurs as though Jesus put them in the ground.

And our professor would literally be like, I, he would put his fingers in his ears and he would be like, I cannot hear this or I will not graduate.

Wow.

She actually outwardly talked about that.

Yeah.

Like we would go to the bar after like lab and she would just like talk about her beliefs and he would be like, I'm your science professor.

Like you're getting a neuroscience PhD in my lab.

You can't talk like that.

Yes.

That's interesting.

It's interesting they don't have, they are not able to control themselves, I guess, is the way to.

Well, they just think this is the way reality works.

So why should they hold back?

But we've talked about this before.

Should that be a problem?

Should you have an issue graduating a science PhD because they believe magic?

And I think the best approach is what you believe in your heart of hearts is your business, but you have to demonstrate knowledge.

You have to demonstrate you understand evolutionary theory.

But the thing is, I would say you have to demonstrate that you understand the philosophy and logic of science.

And it's kind of hard to demonstrate that and profess belief in pseudoscience.

Yeah, and profess things that go against it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's like, okay, well, which one is it then?

Are you just saying what you need to say to graduate?

What do you actually think?

Right.

Because that's what scholarship is.

Yeah.

I can't think of a single field where when you write your dissertation, you're not expected to have your own thoughts and ideas.

Like, that's the whole point.

A dissertation is a creative work.

It can't just be, look, this is what other people said.

Right.

That's not a dissertation.

But you don't go off the rails and talk about creationism and things like that.

That's what I'm saying.

It's not obviously not going to be part of whatever it is the dissertation has.

I would hope not, God.

I mean, unless you're theology

in terms of the.

But even then, they're not usually, right?

Yeah.

But the thing is, I would still say we can't police the faith of

students.

They have to understand the difference between faith and empirical claims.

If they get those things confused, that's a problem.

So you're basically forcing them to, you know, essentially wall off their faith from science.

And not just like, yes, this is what the scientists say, even though I don't believe it.

They've got to at the graduate level, like the doing research level, as you say, they have to be be able to think, live, and breathe science to its core or they're not going to be a competent scientist.

No, and it's one thing if we're talking about an undergrad trying to get a degree.

It's another thing.

When you're going for a PhD, it's not like, look, I took these classes and I earned my PhD.

It's, look, I did this creative research project and I proved that I am of sufficient knowledge and

theoretical and applied knowledge to be able to defend these views to the very person, my major professor, who holds the ability to pass me in their hands.

And talk about that stuff to them.

It's not a good idea.

It's bad take.

Yeah, it's a bad strategy.

It's a bad judgment.

All right, Kara, tell us about this artery calcium scan.

Yeah, so I came across an article in the New York Times.

They have, I guess, a vertical called New Old Age.

It was written by Paula Spann on July 26th, then updated on July 29th.

The headline is, This test tells you more about your heart attack risk.

And the very, the, the subhead is, the coronary artery calcium scan can offer blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I was like, ah, I just did one of those like two weeks ago.

So I got excited because I wanted to read more about it.

When my primary care physician recommended that I get a coronary artery calcium scan, I had never heard of it before.

And in this article, the journalist mentions that most people haven't heard of these scans.

Have you guys heard of a coronary artery calcium or coronary calcium CT?

Sometimes Sometimes it's called that.

Never once, but I'm not surprised I haven't heard of it.

Right.

And Bob, you haven't either.

No, haven't you.

So

here's what it is.

And this is so, I mean, interesting.

And throughout the article,

the journalist, you know, talks to different cardiologists, different individuals in the medical profession.

And kind of across the board, they're singing its praises and saying, like, I often recommend this to my patients.

What it does, it's a CT scan that images the vessels around your heart.

When I went into my doctor's appointment, I had my kind of regular physical.

She was like, We're going to get your blood work.

We're going to look at everything and see where we're at.

And she's like, Okay,

as has been the case for the past few years, my cholesterol, my total, is a little bit high.

This is something that is in my family.

So, you know, maybe I have genetically high cholesterol.

Maybe it's due to some lifestyle factors.

A lot of my family struggles with obesity.

I don't, and I'm quite active and I eat pretty well.

So she's like, you know, when we take your cholesterol in your blood, all we're looking at is circulating cholesterol, right?

We're seeing how much cholesterol is like in your actual blood sample.

And that's all that it can really tell us.

When we, and then I was like, well, I've had like an echocardiogram, right?

So that's where they image your heart.

It's not just like an EKG.

It's like, I've had a full echocardiogram before.

And she was like, yeah, they're looking at your muscle and they're looking at your valves and everything like that, but they don't look at the arteries of your heart when you do an echocardiogram.

What this coronary calcium CT does is it looks for small calcifications that could be the beginnings of that plaque buildup in your arteries.

And so this is a test that is relatively cheap.

It's very easy.

It's non-invasive.

But here's the kicker.

And it's probably the reason that most people don't know about it and haven't gotten it.

It's not covered by your insurance.

You may be lucky enough that your insurance does cover it, but I have very, very good insurance through the hospital where I work, and it wasn't covered by my insurance either.

Luckily, my primary care found me a lab that will do it for $100 flat.

So you can get it done relatively cheap.

I mean, I know for some people, that's quite a lot of money.

For other people, that's what their copay would be anyway.

But what it does is it images your heart, and those that interpret the test, they look for these small kind of calcifications, calcifications and they use an algorithm based on a bunch of different risk factors.

And based on what they see, they give you a percentage.

Like the score that you get on the test is a percentage.

I was very lucky.

My calcium

CT score was zero.

When you have a score of zero, that means there's no calcification in your vessels at all.

That means that you are at what they're calling 0% risk of a major cardiac event within the next 10 years.

Anything between, I want to see where the cutoffs are, anything between 10 or sorry, 0 and 5%

they consider

unnecessary to treat.

So you don't need statins, you don't need any other intervention.

5 to 20% is the gray zone for a lot of cardiologists.

And then over 20%,

for example, Dr.

Philip Greenland here, preventive cardiologist at Northwestern, he said over 20%, quote, there's no doubt the risk is sufficiently high to justify medication.

Okay, and sorry, I may have been a little bit unclear because 0% is the same thing as a score of 0, right?

And that means no calcification and 0% risk of a major cardiac event within the next 10 years.

Based on that algorithm I mentioned, they take the score from the coronary CT scan and a lot of other things like your age, whether or not you smoke, your activity level, your diet, and they'll calculate a risk percentage.

So 5% or lower risk, you don't need drugs.

20% or higher, you probably do need drugs.

But looking at the actual score itself with no other sort of ancillary information, different cardiologists will recommend different things.

So any score over zero, some cardiologists might offer statins.

A score over 100, they'll suggest higher intensity statins.

And if your score is 300 or higher,

you've got about the same risk as somebody who's already had a heart attack.

So your intervention is probably going to be similar to that of somebody who's had a heart attack.

So, this gives you what

cardiologists argue is a better understanding of the actual disease process taking place.

It's not just a proxy for that disease process, which is what you're kind of circulating.

Cholesterol is.

Yes, that's a cheap and easy test, and it's really important to do as part of your physical, but it's definitely not the whole story.

A couple caveats here.

The main one is that there's been no randomized controlled trial linking the calcium cardiac score specifically with disease outcomes.

But

there have been studies that show obviously statin use and its capability to prevent heart attack or stroke.

And then there is a new study, I think, that came out of Australia, where they looked at asymptomatic patients with family histories, and they found that after three years, those had undergone the scans had a sustained reduction in cholesterol and lower risk of heart disease than those who had not been tested.

So, that same doctor Greenland said, the test leads to more statin prescriptions, better adherence to statins, less

progression of atherosclerosis, and less plaque growth.

It kind of tips the scale.

Who is this test for?

It's for asymptomatic individuals between the ages of 40 and 75.

It gets a little bit less clear-cut over 75 because over 75, most people are going to have arterial plaque anyway.

And so the scan may not tell you much.

And also, I guess those who already have heart disease or other histories of coronary problems, probably they have other interventions and other screening tools that are

less broad, I guess you could say.

So those who don't have a history between 40 and 75 are those who most cardiologists say would really benefit from this test.

And I was so glad that my primary recommended it because I was like, I've never heard of that.

And now I know my score is zero.

And it makes me feel better and less stressed about basically, I'm not going to go on statins if I don't need to.

And I may have been one of those people who started statins early without necessity.

And, you know, drugs come with some side effects.

They're relatively low with statins.

They're pretty safe drugs by and large.

But usually when you start a statin, you don't come off of it.

So,

you know, they said we'll repeat the study in five years and we'll see if anything has changed.

But for the time being, it was, I don't know, it was kind of validating for me to have that test and to know that at least my arteries look healthy, even if sometimes the numbers in a blood test aren't exactly where you want them to be.

Yeah.

A couple of little things.

So

the score considers the area and density of the calcium.

Yeah.

They also can express it as a percentile.

Yeah, there's a percentile that has other, I guess, variables put into it.

Yeah.

But the calcium score is like

0 to 100 is low risk.

100 to 300 is moderate risk.

Over 300 is high risk.

And the score could get over 400 if it's super high.

In terms of statins, I just wrote about statins on science-based medicines and there was a recent review article that reviewed all the evidence for cholesterol, LDL, HDL, and statins, and other interventions.

And they concluded that, yeah, the best evidence supports the use of statins versus any other intervention.

You should always do the lifestyle stuff, right?

But obviously most people don't adequately do that.

But in any and even if you are doing all of the lifestyle stuff you should be doing, statins still help.

It's not like you don't have to do that if you do the lifestyle things.

And they said that the evidence for high doses is better and that they recommend starting at the high dose because people will generally stay at whatever dose they start on.

Just from a public health you know, perspective, you're better off just starting at the most effective treatment that has the best evidence for reducing LDL and reducing cardiac events and morbidity and mortality.

So they are, they are extremely effective.

And that's good to know because like, you know, they kind of talked about different patients in this article.

Like one guy who went in and his, his, you know, it sounds like his cholesterol was kind of like mine.

It was like a little too high, but not high enough.

And they were like, I'm not sure.

And then he did the scan and his score was like 175.

And they were like, geez, we need to get you on statins right away.

And he was like, thank goodness.

Like, this could have saved my life.

But then they talked talked about another person who you know she ran every day and she ate a really good diet and and like there wasn't really a lot of room for her on the lifestyle stuff yeah and that can be frustrating when all you hear every time you go in is well just kind of reduce your fat intake and make sure you're active and you're like well i'm already doing all of that so what's next that means it's familial Yeah, and that's, that's what I think is going on with me because every single person in my family has.

Yeah, and which means you need statins.

Yeah.

Which means I will need statins.

You will need stats.

But not at 41, thank goodness.

Five years, we'll find out.

We'll reassess, yeah.

All right.

Thanks, Kara.

Bob, talk about everything, right?

Not taking anything off the table.

Tell us about perhaps, possibly, a new technique for geothermal drilling.

Yes, I agree.

Perhaps, possibly.

Extracting.

I mean, lots of caveats here for sure, but this is really interesting.

So extracting geothermal energy from the Earth.

I don't know where else you would extract it from.

Maybe on the verge of a renaissance, researchers have demonstrated that a device called a gyrotron, basically a high-powered microwave cannon,

can efficiently vaporize rock, potentially replacing mechanical drill bits and enabling geothermal energy almost anywhere on the planet.

This is fascinating and I'm a little excited about it.

I hope it pans out, but

so many things can go wrong here.

But let's go over what's happening here.

Geothermal energy, it's a renewable energy resource.

I don't think we've mentioned it much on the show, right?

Not too much.

We're just focusing on so many, nuclear and solar and wind primarily.

But this energy takes advantage of two types of heat under the ground.

One is simply the leftover heat from the Earth's formation, right?

The other is the heat caused by radioactive decay.

Now, geothermal energy currently provides less than 1% of global energy.

So not a lot going on there right now.

But the amount amount of geothermal energy available in the Earth is vast.

It's really dramatically gargantuan.

The Earth's total heat content is estimated at a whopping 10 to the 24 megajoules.

It's an octillion joules.

Trust me, that's a lot of joules.

Yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, you know that.

So, so we'll never tap into all that because that's all of it.

That's never going to happen.

But the usable potential thermal energy is estimated at 10 to the 18 megajoules.

The caveat there is that it implies using

modern technology.

Some estimates say that humanity could survive on just that for like 5,000 years, which would be pretty awesome, right?

That's with nothing else, no other energy sources but geothermal.

We could just tap into that, you know, what's extractable, 5,000 years.

Now, modern geothermal plants drill down to where the hot rocks are, right?

Like the hundreds of degrees, and they send water down there to turn it into supercritical steam that comes up and turns a turbine.

And then from there, of course, you get electricity, just the classic

electricity production, right?

So why don't we just have these everywhere?

And the answer to that is primarily because it's just too damn expensive, right?

And the good heat is generally too deep.

We just really can't get deep enough.

The modern geothermal plants that exist now, but they're in special places near volcanoes, they're near hot springs or tectonic plate boundaries.

And these areas only need very shallow drilling, like something like 400 feet.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure like all of Iceland uses geothermal.

Like the whole country.

Yeah, yep.

Iceland, but also California, Philippines, and Kenya.

But I mean, I think Iceland is 100% geothermal.

Iceland is 100% renewable, but that is 65% geothermal.

So they're mostly geothermal, but not quite 100%.

So yeah, that's damn impressive.

But they're just in a lucky spot.

They don't have to go very deep.

400 feet is nothing, is nothing.

What you would need to do is go down elsewhere, kilometers, many kilometers.

If we could just dig deep enough easily, right, if we could just go anywhere and just dig deep enough, and we could extract energy anywhere that we wanted, and that would be, I think, that would be potentially a game changer since geothermal is reliable, it's predictable 24-7.

It doesn't matter what the weather is, it doesn't matter the wind, doesn't matter, even battery technology, it's all irrelevant.

It's just always going to be there.

So, it would be for a baseline, right, Steve?

For a baseline, it would just be beautiful.

It would just be beautiful.

Big, big, beautiful geothermal energy.

So, this would also, of course, change the total amount of extractable geothermal energy.

If we could just go anywhere, then that number that I gave, 10 to the 18 megajoules, would go way up.

It would go up from like the quintillion megajoules, which is 10 to the 18, or perhaps you can go as high as a 6 tillion megajoules.

That's just back of the envelope right there.

But I mean, it seems reasonable that it could be a few orders of magnitude greater.

Well, the deeper you could go, the more area is accessible to geothermal.

Yeah.

But if you could, using this, being able to go down anywhere, that would be enough for our society.

If you just extrapolate, that would be like 500,000 years of all the energy that we would need at our current levels, of course.

Crypto a couple thousand years from now.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, you include crypto and AI, that would go down to like, you know, 250,000 years.

Probably.

So this technology, the technology that makes this potentially happen is just one word, gyrotron, which I had heard of in the past, but I really didn't.

That's like a transformer or something.

Right, right.

It really didn't get a full sense of what a gyratron really is.

Now, this this these exist.

A gyrotrons exist.

It's a specialized type of vacuum electron tube that generates really high-powered electromagnetic waves.

Now, these devices exist, they're used routinely today.

When a Takamak fusion reactor is heating plasma to 100 million degrees Celsius,

they're using a gyratron to heat that.

In other industries, like some specialized industries, they use them today for precisely melting and vaporizing materials.

So, this exists, but now it's never been used to vaporize rock, right?

And now that this is what they're using it for.

Now this device starts with an electron gun.

It's kind of complicated, but it's actually not too hard to explain.

So it starts with an electron gun.

So the electrons that the gun produces, right, it encounters a very powerful magnetic field, which causes the electrons to move in circles as they move forward, okay?

So imagine the Earth.

I'm trying to think of it.

How would you picture this in your mind?

Imagine it's like the Earth's moving around the Sun as the Sun moves through space, right?

So it's kind of orbiting, but it's also in a spiral.

Can you picture that?

That's a spiral or helical, it's a helical path.

And since accelerating charges emit radiation, the gyrotron emits very powerful radiation.

In this case, the radiation is in the millimeter wave range, essentially high-powered rock-melting microwave beam, is what's coming out of this bad boy.

And it's far more powerful than a maser, which is essentially a laser that uses microwaves, right?

So even more powerful, which really took me by surprise.

So of course, there are differences between a maser and

the gyratron.

So using a gyratron to drill holes is now no longer in the lab, and that's why it's in the news.

The company Quas Energy tested their new 100 kilowatt gyratron in the field in Texas.

They successfully dug a 100-meter hole in the test site and they have a second, apparently they have got a second 100 kilowatt gyratron.

They got two of them.

And so they're doing another test.

And I think that's ongoing right now.

And that's also going very well.

So the next big step for them would be testing a Gyrotron that's 10 times more powerful.

So, this would be in the megawatt range because the old one, the second one, was in the kilowatt, 100 kilowatts.

So, this is in the megawatt range, and it would probably end up being maybe three or four kilowatts.

I mean, megawatts because there's all the support equipment and stuff.

And this thing wouldn't be just shooting a beam into the Earth like the Enterprise.

Remember that episode?

They just drill the hole with their phaser into the planet to release some

stresses.

Original series, right?

Yeah.

No, I'm talking about the one from

Next Gen where they

remember that.

Original Suit.

Oh, well, any case.

I think they might have done it in Classic, but they didn't actually show the hole like they did in

Next Generation.

Okay, so they've got a lot of support equipment, and also they wouldn't be just shooting the beam from the surface all the way down as deep as they want to go.

There's equipment going down, and the wave guides have to go actually in the ground as well.

So

it's never really far away from the melted rock because then it's got to also clean it up and get it and get it.

Yeah, what happens to the material?

Yeah, the stuff that doesn't just vaporize out of there.

There's a device that's going down there with it, and it just kind of sweeps a vacuum or something.

Yeah, it kind of sucks it up, and it's because it's got to pull it all out of there.

Right.

So now, this megawatt gyratron that would be the next stage, should be able to bore holes that are eight inches across and would be basically, it seems, as powerful as a commercial scale system would be.

So that you wouldn't really need to go too much higher than multiple megawatts.

You don't need to go to gigawatts in the snare.

You could dig the holes that they need to dig for it just if it's a megawatt scale.

Matthew Hood,

who is the co-founder and chief of staff at Quaz, says, if we can scale those depths to 10 to 20 kilometers, then we can enable super hot geothermal to be worldwide accessible.

So

10 to 20 kilometers.

Yeah, that's deep as hell.

Yeah, but when I hear those words, if we can scale,

that's always puff at that point.

Those are big words.

That's the whole deal right there.

If we can scale.

That's where that is.

These technologies live or die often.

Yeah, and it seems to me that this is all about getting deep.

If you can get deep with this technology, and it seems like they can.

Bob,

let me add to that.

It's about getting deep and hot, regardless of depth.

I think, so from my reading,

this costs more than conventional drilling.

It's more expensive.

But they are hoping that when they scale it,

they'll be able to get to deeper depths

and hotter.

And they could do what's called super geothermal or super hot geothermal.

Yeah, supercritical,

which can extract five to ten times more power per well, and that will offset the higher cost of the drilling.

So if you don't get to hotter rock, it's not cost-effective.

Right, exactly.

You got to get down deep enough where the water creates a supercritical steam,

which is the sweet spot right there.

And they think, you know, conventional drilling, you know, you imagine that drill that's going down.

That drill, you know,

it's got to come all the way back up.

It's got to be changed.

It's got to be fixed, whatever.

There's lots of things like non, they call it like non-production episodes where nothing's really, you know, you're not digging because you're doing stuff that a physical drill is required, that wouldn't be required for using this gyratron.

So yeah they they would like to do i think they were talking about a few meters an hour continu continuously and yeah yeah we don't know if they're going to be able to pull this off but if they can if they can do it fast because you can't wait years like the deepest holes that we have ever dug steve were drills it took 10 like 10 15 years or more that that's not what we're talking about here if they can't do it much much faster then this is just going to be ridiculous so the company does mention uh they did mention one hurdle that i came across that they say they need to overcome.

And that's like that is drilling non-vertical holes because some sites, depending on, I think, depending on the geology,

you may need to drill holes at an angle.

This is designed to go basically just vertical all the way down.

So that, so that could potentially be one of the hurdles.

But of course, other experts are talking about some other hurdles.

And of course, some of these other skeptics are more skeptical in general.

And, you know, they're skeptical essentially that Quase is going to essentially reinvent drilling.

And it's a huge ask.

I mean, this is a huge endeavor.

Of course, the rewards would be tremendous.

But yeah, this is changing an industry like this.

Of course, you've got to be skeptical about it.

Let's see, Roland Horn, he's a lead of the geothermal program at Stanford University.

He said, burning holes in rocks is impressive.

However, that's not the whole of what's involved in drilling.

So sure, yeah.

It's a lot more complicated than just phasering your way into a deep hole in the ground.

So in other words, melting rock is just one of the challenges, right?

The still needs to be able to withstand the immense heat and pressure at those depths because it just keeps getting hotter and hotter the deeper you go.

I can't even imagine what it would be like when you're if you're 10 kilometers down, 15, 20 kilometers down, how hot it's going to get.

And the rock is kind of like it's kind of like a gooey mess down there.

It's really not even rock, I think, when you when you go that deep.

So, I'm not sure how that would work, but I'm sure they've thought about that.

So, that so we're gonna have to wait and see how the rest of this testing with this new stage of the gyratron gyratronic goes.

So we'll see how that goes.

And but I know what else you're thinking.

I know what you're thinking.

Geothermal energy is cool and all, but what kind of sci-fi weapon would a gyrotron make?

That is not what I was thinking, Bob.

That's all right.

I'm disappointed, Kara.

But that's what I was thinking.

So, of course, I did some research.

And what kind of weapon would this damn thing make?

Now, remember, this energy beam, this beam, this microwave beam is very energy dense, 10 megawatts per cube for per square meter.

It can boil metals or punch a hole through tough rock continuously.

This isn't like those pulse lasers.

This is meant to deliver that continuously for potentially hours at a time.

So, this is just an amazing amount of energy transfer here.

If this was a weapon on a planet's surface with an atmosphere,

it could be effective, but it would have some drawbacks.

If you guys have ever used a microwave in a kitchen, right, you know how water absorbs microwaves.

So, it would not work that great in our atmosphere, for example, or some alien world that's got humidity because the water is just going to absorb it.

So that's going to attenuate the beam.

So that wouldn't be good.

It's and it's also not a laser beam, so you can't do a tight focus with the gyrotron microwave beam that you could do with a laser beam.

So it doesn't have that.

But actually, we do have this technology, very similar technology for crowd control.

You guys have probably seen that the past 10 years.

It's a device, it's a truck-mounted device that emits, it's a similar type of technology.

I don't

necessarily think that it's got an actual gyrotron in there, but it emits microwave beams that essentially makes you very hot and very uncomfortable.

So, if you want to disperse a crowd, they've used it.

This is a device that's been available for many years now, and it's very effective.

If you've got, say, rioters or something, and you want to disperse a crowd, this thing will make them running, because all of a sudden, it doesn't really damage your skin, but it makes it feel like your skin is on fire.

You will just like run away from where you are if you get hit with this thing.

So this thing actually exists as a type of weapon.

It could also be used for anti-drone or electronics warfare, but this the gyratron would really shine though in space.

A gyratron would would kick some serious butt because, of course,

there's nothing in space to absorb the microwave beam.

There's no water to absorb it or anything like that.

So it would be much more effective.

And then

with its megawatts of continuous output, it could last a lot longer.

Most lasers would just overheat before the Gyrotron would even really get going.

Now, to be fair, though, a lot of lasers aren't really meant

to operate continuously for hours at a time.

So, it's not necessarily a very fair comparison.

Let's see, against other ships, a Gyrotron would be very, very effective.

It would damage optics.

It would disable electronics.

It could even deal with the common countermeasures that lasers have to contend with.

They put out like a fog of material that would scatter the beam.

These microwave beams would kind of go through a lot of those countermeasures, apparently.

So, bottom line, if you're writing some sci-fi for space battles, you might want to include a fusion reactor powering a petawatt-class Gyratron, and that would be really cool science fiction.

All right.

Thanks, Bob.

So, my news item is also about alternative energy.

This one about wind power.

This isn't by design.

This just caught my eye, and it happens to be have an angle for wind power.

So, a company is planning on building the largest cargo plane ever built in order to increase wind power.

So how does that

two things relate to each other?

No clue.

How would a I read it, so I know.

Yes.

Tara, did you read it?

I did not.

I do not know.

Okay.

The largest cargo plane ever for wind power.

Are they going to like capture wind off the plane?

No.

Okay.

It's very indirect, but it just shows you how things relate.

So let's back up a little bit.

So, right now, the wind industry is building bigger and bigger wind turbines with bigger and bigger blades.

And the reason they do this is because they are more efficient at bigger size, right?

You get more bang for the buck.

You get more energy for the inputs.

The biggest wind turbines are offshore.

We're building these like mega wind turbines offshore with blades that are a hundred meters.

Ever see a blade up close?

They're mess.

It's like something out of size science fiction.

Like, that can't be that big.

It's it they're ridonculous.

Now, the biggest ones on land are not as big.

They only get up to about 70 meters.

Why do you think that is?

Roads.

It's the delivery.

We can deliver these hundred meter blades on a ship to an offshore wind turbine, but we don't really have a convenient way and a cost-effective way to deliver something that big over land.

Enter the cargo plane?

Enter the cargo plane.

Exactly.

So,

this is exactly why.

How big is that, mother?

The idea even came into being.

So, this is the idea of aerospace engineer Mark Lundstrom.

He founded a company called Radia in 2016, specifically to build what he's calling the the Windrunner.

That's the name of the aircraft.

If built, if it ever gets built, it would be the largest aircraft in the world.

Spruce Goose.

It's specifically.

In what way?

The heaviest.

I just think the physics volume-wise, the biggest and has the biggest cargo area.

Importantly.

That's the important thing.

It's still the largest before this.

So what?

Spruce Goose, you know, the

Howard Yellowstone.

Yeah,

I think the

bigger.

Yeah.

Yeah, it would have to be, wouldn't it?

Right.

But I think to date that is still

the largest cargo plane

that was built.

No, something else.

Maybe Russians built one.

The Russians built one, yeah.

And Anatov.

One of their Anatov planes.

Yeah, and it actually was destroyed.

It was in Ukraine, and it was destroyed in the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.

Yeah.

Yeah, the Anatov AN-225 Miria.

So, yeah, there are some big, big boys out there, but nothing this big, nothing as big as the Windrunner is planned on being.

It's basically being designed so that it's big enough to carry a 100-meter wind turbine blade.

There you go.

Or it could carry two 90-meter ones or three 80-meter ones.

You know, it can carry the big ones, but it can carry a hundred-meter blade.

So this would enable it to transport the blade anywhere where you could land a plane, right?

So it's designed to be able to land on standard runways, but also to be able to land on a makeshift runway, right?

So one that you just set up near a field where you want to build a bunch of mega wind turbines.

Okay.

I would think that'd be pretty damn important because even if you could land it at an airport, you still got to get it on site.

Yeah, it doesn't you're a half hour away, an hour away.

Yeah, no, they definitely specifically

want to be able to land it on a rough airstrip that was

built just because it's in the airfield, the field where the turbines are.

They actually considered whether or not they should use

dirigibles.

No.

Oh.

What is that word?

Interesting.

Dirigibles.

I don't know that word.

A dirigible is a.

Lighter than air.

Lighter than air.

Yeah.

What else?

What are the other words for it?

Ultralight?

Not ultralight.

Ultralight what, though?

A blimp.

Oh, a blimp.

Blimps are different.

Oh, Zeppelins.

Zeppelins.

Zeppelins?

Zeppelins.

I think blimps, Zeppelins, and dirigibles are all a little different.

Okay, but it's in that general airship.

An airship.

Yes.

They specifically were going to, they looked into building an airship, which would be better in some ways, but it would not.

There's no infrastructure.

We don't have an infrastructure for landing airships, you know, where we would need to land them.

And they wanted to be able to land them at standard airports.

So they decided to go with an airplane, you know, a jet.

And so they're designing the Windrunner.

So if this comes to being, this would make inland mega wind turbines economically and logistically plausible.

And Lundstrom says he hopes, once he builds these windrunners, to build a million of these super wind turbines around the world, not just in the U.S., in the world.

Which, you know, that's the kind of order of magnitude that we need

to really take a bite out of fossil fuel.

So, which is the goal here?

Because, again, as I said earlier in the show, the big limitation of wind turbines is the land use.

There's only so many places we can put them where they, you know, they have good wind, it's near infrastructure, it's not in the middle of a raptor's breeding zone, whatever.

You have to put it someplace where it's not going to have too much of an impact on the environment, et cetera, et cetera.

Velociraptors are extinct.

What are you talking about?

Not Velociraptors, the other dinosaur raptors.

So, yeah, so I wish them well.

I hope this all works out.

It'd be nice to see.

And also just amazing to see one of these things.

Again, that'd be so massive.

But who knows?

At this point, it's just the plan of a company

to build these things.

It doesn't exist yet.

But it's not implausible.

Again, it's not really.

It's only a little bit bigger than planes, jets that are functioning and in existence.

So it's not like it's pushing the limits that much.

It's just designed

specifically to take these giant blades.

The pictures I'm seeing of these things are just computer-generated pictures,

concepts.

Yep.

Doesn't exist yet, yeah.

I wonder how they design it specifically to be able to land in a field.

Is it just like the landing gear and shocks of

guess, right?

Yeah.

All right, Evan, tell us about this new dental floss vaccine idea.

What is this?

Isn't that interesting?

Hadn't heard of this one before?

I wish Jay were here for this news item.

It has to do with dentistry, and I think he has a fascination with teeth and more of a fetish.

Okay, I guess we could call it.

Lossing your teeth.

That is generally considered good for your health for several reasons.

Among them, it helps prevent gum disease by removing plaque and food particles between teeth and along the gum line, reducing the risk of gingivitis and periodontitis.

It reduces tooth decay, cleaning areas your toothbrush can't reach.

It improves your breath.

We're all grateful for that.

Reduces halitosis, halitosis,

bad breath, enhances overall oral hygiene, contributing to a cleaner mouth, helping to maintain healthy teeth and gums, supporting long-term oral health, and can reduce the risk of disease, because there are studies that suggest a link between gum disease and heart disease, diabetes, and other conditions.

So these are good flossing habits that can really help improve.

But Evan, can I say

health?

Can I say if you dig into the medical literature, there really isn't good evidence for any of those claims of any of those health benefits above and beyond good brushing.

If you do a good, solid, thorough brushing of your teeth, there really isn't evidence that flossing on top of that has like clinically significant benefits.

This doesn't mean you shouldn't do it or that it shouldn't be part of your routine.

I'm just we have to be pedantic and just say that

there isn't like this home run clinical evidence that all of those claims are true for flossing above and beyond thorough brushing.

Trevor Burrus Are there any dentists out there who do not recommend flossing?

I don't think they go that far to not recommend flossing, but it's like thorough brushing is really effective.

That's the point here.

Steve,

a lot of people don't necessarily do thorough enough flossing.

I mean, thorough enough.

How do you get in between your teeth?

Flossing on top of that can help close the gap.

But

toothbrushes don't go in between your teeth.

Yeah, I mean, they do a little bit.

I mean, you know, when you well, yeah, I mean, up under the gum line, yeah, but not like deep in between.

Right.

Certainly, I think our experience has been we've brushed our teeth and then flossed and seen the things that come out on

the actual thread.

Yeah.

But I I understand what you're saying,

Steve.

And maybe, I don't know.

Do you think the reason for that, and I'm sorry to get a little off topic here, is because you would have to test it by having people not brush their teeth and only floss and see what happens in those cases?

I think there's just not that much room for improvement.

And so that means that you would have to do a really big study to have the statistical power to detect that small effect.

We run into this in medicine all the time

where the benefits, there's just not that much headroom for beneficial.

In fact, this just came up when I was writing about statins, because the question is: does supplementing HDL, you know, the good cholesterol, does that reduce heart attacks?

And the evidence there is also very weak, except for this one particular type of HDL, which has some recent positive evidence.

But the researchers were saying this is probably because

of all, because people people who need to reduce their cholesterol are on statins and other treatments, and so there's just no room left for improvement, right?

Because we don't do it, like as you say, you can't do it instead of effective therapy.

So, if

one effective therapy can obscure the benefits of other interventions, because you're just not left with that much room for improvement.

So, I think that's what we're talking about.

Again, that doesn't mean it's not a good idea to floss.

I'm not saying don't floss.

I'm just saying because you said it has all these health benefits, just because we've said it before on the show, they're actually not that proven.

Because, again, if you take good care of your teeth otherwise, you've already gotten 90% of the benefit or whatever, and it's just really hard to detect what's left.

Does that make sense?

Didn't we interview a dentist and he said that there just hasn't been enough good quality studies?

Yeah, you would need, as I said, you would need really big, solid studies to detect the small clinical benefit that's remaining to a statistically significant point.

It's interesting that they don't have it.

Wouldn't have thought that, but okay.

All right.

Well, all that considered, and

good food for thought there.

What if, what if

you could floss and deliver a vaccine to yourself all at the same time?

I would consider that an added potential, I'll call it potential benefit, on top of the other potential benefits that flossing

is said to have.

And I read this first, this headline over at science.org in which they write, dental floss could be the future of vaccines.

Engineers transform dental floss into needle-free vaccines.

Hmm.

Medical degrees?

Primarily for people who are

reluctant to get shots, basically, fear of the drugs.

Do they already have nasal spray vaccines?

They do.

They do.

And they compare this as far as its effectiveness from what they've tested from this particular study as comparable with nasal vaccines.

But I don't know enough about nasal vaccines to know if not.

My understanding is, though, that not all vaccines can be delivered nasal spa.

No, that's usually just like the live virus ones.

Oh, right.

Yeah.

There's like certain flu ones that you can use.

Right.

And this is what they tested.

They did use influenza

in this particular test.

Medical researchers worldwide are simultaneously discovering that one of the most effective ways to reach the body is through the gum line.

There's a new study published in Nature Biomedical Engineering where researchers revealed they could trigger immune responses in mice by coating floss with proteins and an inactive flu virus, then jamming it between their tiny teeth.

Flossing little mice to make this test.

How did they make floss that small?

Yeah.

little mice teeth are so tiny.

So,

how does one floss a mouse?

That was one of the major basically questions about this.

Like, okay, we have this idea.

How are we going to do this?

I think they researched it, and it never been done.

They couldn't find any research about it.

So, they had to come up with the technique themselves.

So, they say it's a two-person job.

One scientist gently pulls the mouse's jaw down.

I imagine the mouse is knocked out for this, I would hope.

And

you pull the mouse's jaw down with a metal ring from a keychain while the other scientist administers the floss.

So it's definitely a two-person job here is what they did.

The title of the study is called Floss-Based Vaccination Targets the Gingival Sulcus for Mucosal and Systemic Immunization.

In mice, I'll read from the abstract.

In mice, floss-based immunization induced strong and sustained immune activation across multiple organs, robust systemic and mucosal antibody responses, and durable protection against lethal influenza infection independent of age, food, and liquid consumption.

Floss-based vaccination was superior to sublingual and comparable with intranasal vaccination.

There was also a test,

not of the flu, but of a fluorescent dye in humans, in which human participants took this fluorescent dye delivered via FLOSS PICs

that effectively reached gingival sulcus,

supporting clinical feasibility.

These findings establish FLOSS-based vaccination as a simple needle-free strategy that enhances vaccine delivery and immune activation compared with existing mucosal immunization methods.

There's an immunologist.

from Yale University, Steve, maybe you knew him.

You know everyone at Yale.

Akiko Awasaki,

is quoted as saying, I had honestly never thought of using FLOSS as a vaccination strategy.

The results are quite impressive.

Vanderbilt University immunologist James Crowe said, it's tough to develop an effective vaccine that can be administered through those entry points because they have naturally tough defenses against foreign molecules, like your mouth, basically, what helps protect you.

But these scientists were able to do it.

During a test run, the team found that when researchers coated FLOSS with fluorescently labeled protein, 75% of the protein was successfully delivered to the mouse's gums, back to the mouse.

And even two months after flossing, the mice had elevated levels of antibodies in their lungs, noses, feces, and spleens, suggesting a robust immune response to the protein.

You know, why not?

If it works, and

I don't know how many people do not get vaccinated simply because of their fear of a shot.

Steve, maybe you have some insight.

I don't have, I mean, it's not insignificant.

I don't have a number off the top of my head.

Okay, but right, so not insignificant.

So, and then if you can go this route, that's the thing.

But we still need to prove clinical efficacy.

This is just proof of concept.

Yeah, the proteins get in the body, but does it actually work?

I guess, and my fear is like, and I don't know, maybe you guys can speak to this, but like, when you get a shot, it's measured and all of it goes into you.

Yes.

Right.

Like when you are flossing your teeth, how much of the drug are you actually getting?

My thoughts exactly on that.

Yeah, I don't want to get a subclinical dose, and I also don't want to have to take so much that I'm guaranteed to get enough in me.

Because what if there is a dose response issue here?

That would be, is that just an engineering tweak?

Or is it just come down to the user following the directions correctly in order to get enough of the medicine, of the vaccination into them?

Well, I just foresee different people getting different uptakes.

Yeah, but there's no way that that could be controlled, I don't think.

It's probably a better than nothing strategy.

Yes.

But not a preferred first-line strategy.

It's also always better for any public health measure.

The one and done, always better.

Then you have to do this

a number of times over time or whatever.

So, but you know, it's more tools in our toolbox, the better.

Again, there's a lot of people out there.

Not everything works for everybody.

So I see this actually being less for vaccines and more for like just drugs.

Well, sure, right, Kara, that's a good point.

What else can you deliver into the body through the deadline at this point?

I imagine they'll do some more research in those other areas as well.

All right.

Thanks, Evan.

Yep.

So, no Jay this week.

So, no, who's that noisy?

Jay will be back in two weeks to pick up where we left off there.

So, I'm going to go to a couple of questions.

Bob can make a noise.

Bob can make a noise.

Bob does that a lot.

This is Bob sipping coffee.

All right, so the first email comes from Jeremy from Melbourne, Australia.

And Jeremy writes, In the show two weeks ago, he's referring to episode 1045.

During science or fiction, Kara said something like, We know that apes can learn sign language.

When discussing the river pig's alleged intelligence, I thought the narrative of signing apes had been debunked.

I re-listened to Skeptoid's podcast, number 630, on the subject to confirm my memory wasn't flawed.

Love the show and loved seeing you guys in person in Melbourne a few years ago.

Thanks for writing, Jeremy.

So, Kara, I did look up exactly what you said because you asked me, like, what?

Yeah, I asked.

I was like, did I say sign?

Did I say sign language?

Oh, you said gorillas can communicate with sign language, was the exact quote.

So that's vague.

And I'm not sure what you remembered or meant by that.

So why don't you just tell us what you know.

Well, just that they can represent objects.

Like they can use symbolic interthe communicate.

Yes, they can communicate.

And that's the difference, right?

Language is a slippery word.

Yeah.

It's super slippery.

And it's funny because I just looked at, you know, just a quick sampling of the literature from like maybe 2020 forward.

It's all over the place.

It does look like most researchers agree that gorillas or even chimpanzees, they're not using grammar.

Right.

And that they are babbling.

from time to time, but they also all agree that they can learn specific signs for specific things, even if it's just operant conditioning.

Exactly.

That's what I found as well.

So

chimpanzees,

gorillas can learn to associate a specific sign with a specific thing, like banana.

And when they want a banana, they will make the sign for banana.

They can also at times represent their immediate state of being, right?

Or an immediate desire or an immediate state.

But they can't communicate thoughts and ideas.

They can't use language.

They can't use syntax.

So essentially what they, when the, a lot of the times, like

the trainers who were saying, look what I showed, you know, what I taught, you know, Coco the Gorilla or whatever to do, they're cherry-picking from a vast

data set and only picking out the things that seemed that they could weave a story, you know, retrofit to some kind of communication.

But if you look at all of the data, which has been done, what you basically find is that it's nonsensical babble, babble, babble, banana, babble, babble, babble.

Right?

Or banana, blah, blah, blah, babe, banana, me, banana, banana, me, blah, blah, blah.

Right?

It's just very simple me banana.

You know, that's the extent of what they can.

So that is communicating.

It is communicating.

And some people argue that it's a type of language that is just very simplistic, but no, it doesn't have grammar.

No, but it's not like they're not using language the way we do.

They're not conveying thoughts and ideas.

And

it has been massively over-interpreted over the years.

Absolutely.

It's been over-interpreted.

And then

clawed back by more objective, skeptical reviews of the actual evidence.

But what I don't like is then the kind of counterclaim that, and even, I mean, not to call you out, Jeremy, but like the way that you worded it, and of course I get it because you're calling me out on my wording, which was quite broad, is I thought the narrative of signing apes had been debunked.

Well, no, apes sign.

Yeah, they do sign.

Yeah, like there's no debunking.

They can learn signs for a specific purpose.

It's not language.

It's not language.

I think that's a better word.

It's not language.

Yeah, if you, yeah, depending on how you define language.

I'm reading an article that's kind of an interesting one and like the end of their abstract where they looked at studies from the 1960s up until they published in 2020.

And they said, focusing on symbol use by chimpanzees and bonobos, we describe evidence that argues for understanding of words, including capacities for declarative communication.

We conclude that the many decades of research using a variety of symbol systems challenges the absolutist position that chimpanzees and bonobos cannot learn or understand the concept of a word.

So it's like

it's wiggly.

Yeah, has that been confirmed by studying the brains of the chimpanzees and the gorillas?

And

the physical components just are not there.

That is correct.

They do not have the language area that we do.

Yeah, but is that a question of they don't have it because it wasn't used?

Well, no, but they have a proto-language area.

Exactly.

It's a primitive version of it.

It's definitely much less than humans, but it's not zero.

It's not zero.

Human language didn't start from nothing.

It evolved out of primate language, which is very because it's a proto-language.

It's very primitive.

It's very simple.

It's straightforward.

But we obviously elaborated on it tremendously.

So it's really just where along that spectrum are they?

It's not zero.

It's not human level.

It's not full sentences with grammar.

It's one or two words, simple, immediate, I want banana, like me banana.

That's it.

That's about as complicated as it gets.

And

is this true with other mammals that,

you know, maybe dolphins or...

Well, dogs, a good example of dogs, they can't do expressive or declarative, but they have receptive.

So you can say, get fox, and it knows to get the fox toy.

You can recognize words.

They can.

So, but they can't do declarative.

But no, like dolphins are not signing.

But you know, the dog mats where they have like a dozen words and the dogs will...

put their paw on the words to communicate.

Oh, that's all bullshit.

I've seen those videos.

I am not convinced at all.

It's the same thing.

I think we need more studies.

It's like

they're hitting words and then the person overinterprets what they're saying.

It reacts in a certain way.

Maybe they've learned to operately associate this button with going outside or something, but they're not putting together words and communication.

No, yeah,

they're doing top left means go outside.

This one over here means I get a treat.

That's

probably the extent of it.

And the annoying thing is those grids always have some combination that always makes sense no matter what you say.

It's like, treat me, mom.

Mom me, treat me.

There's nothing in there as a trick, you know, that would trip them up.

But the reason that we know that dogs can do the receptive when it comes to symbols for objects is, like, I have a friend whose dog can do this.

I've like seen it, but also, obviously, it's been studied really well, is that you can say the name of the object, the dog gets the object, like from the, from a basket in the other room, and then you can say the name of something that's not in the basket and they'll get something that they don't know the name for.

So they do know, like, these are the things I've learned and these are things I don't know.

So maybe it's one of those.

Yeah.

And that's pretty cool.

They're pretty smart.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They're just, they're just, nothing evolved language the way we did.

No, no, no, no, no.

And I think ultimately the question is, and it's an operational definition question.

I'm not a linguist, so I don't know where the, where the threshold is, but at what point does communication become language?

What do we call?

Because they definitely communicate.

Most animals communicate.

Sure, of course.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I think you need syntax and grammar and a few things like that in order to classify it, right?

I mean, not just.

It's also how sophisticated are the ideas that they're communicating?

Right?

Can they philosophize?

No.

Okay.

No evidence of that.

We have another email that comes from Erin, who says, hi all.

Just writing in to note that in this week's episode, Evan mentioned that a ham sandwich was how Mama Cass went.

This is fairly humiliating.

This is a fairly humiliating myth.

She actually died of a heart attack.

It's so easy to hear pop culture myths and not question them, especially if one has no real interest in the person in question and doesn't care enough to look into it.

So, no judgment here.

I just think it's important that this myth, like any, doesn't keep on being perpetuated.

Love the show.

Keep up the amazing work that you do.

Evan, what do you have to say for yourself?

Jay was the one who brought up the ham sandwich.

I can't remember what he was talking about, but death by a ham sandwich was his general comment.

And then my reaction to that, I just blurted out that that's how Mama Cass went because that sort of is

what it's known for, right?

I mean,

what else could it be?

So it was just more of a play off of what Jay was saying rather than a statement of fact.

I take the point.

I hear you.

It's funny because I never heard this myth, or if I did, I just remember it.

Oh, really?

So I really never wanted to.

I'm not big into the mamas and the papas or whatever.

I assumed I knew she died of a heart attack.

I assumed you used ham sandwich as a metaphor for heart attack.

You know what I mean?

Because people do that.

People say, like, you died of a pork sandwich or whatever.

Like, that means he died of a heart attack.

Oh, that's funny.

That's what I thought.

So maybe you had heard it.

I didn't think you meant you literally died of a ham sandwich.

No, but that's what people say.

So, yeah, so apparently,

it's that word.

That word gets used so often.

I know.

She was just coming off like a 36-hour stint,

and

her assistant did prepare a ham sandwich and leave it on her nightstand,

but she went to bed without ever touching it.

She didn't eat the ham sandwich, and she had a heart attack.

There was an autopsy, and the autopsy determined that she died of a a heart attack and that there were no drugs in her system.

And so, natural causes.

She had a heart attack.

She pushed herself too far.

There's also, you know, she had obviously issues with obesity.

She did, at the time, nobody knew what they were doing, like, in terms of treating obesity.

She was treated with amphetamines, which is like the worst thing you could do.

Oh, gosh.

Although apparently she wasn't using them at the time.

She wasn't before, by the way.

She wasn't using them at the time because nothing was found in her symptoms, in her system, but that would not have been a healthy way to treat her weight.

And just sort of crash-dieting with amphetamines could have done harm, you know?

Certainly would not have been healthy for her heart.

So she was only 32, very tragic.

Oh, that's so young.

You know, yeah, I mean, yeah, just a victim of circumstance, of the poor medicine of the time.

You know, it's funny.

I had a completely different reaction.

I remember that.

I remember Evan saying that, and I remember thinking, wait, I recently read somewhere that she didn't die from the ham sandwich, that she died of a heart attack.

I was trying to remember what my source was, and then it was just like too late to conversion.

The conversation chimed in there.

Yeah, it moved on because it was gone.

It was a throwaway.

Jay was just being, you know, trying to be funny.

And I just, you know,

threw in the follow-up comment.

So it was, it should have chimed in, though.

I should have chimed in.

But that's often how these things are.

It's like when I said the sign language thing, it was like we were doing science or fiction.

It was an off-the-cuff throwaway comment that we didn't vet.

But we do have to be careful about that.

I need to be careful about that in post-production, which I do actually.

I do filter out a lot of these offhand comments.

I'm like, is that actually true?

And then

I will either make a correction or I'll just edit it out.

So

in this case, though, I didn't think you were making a claim.

I thought it was just being a euphemism.

So that's why I didn't trigger my post-production editing.

And

you also did not have

knowledge of the history of

the comments.

I didn't know that that was a thing.

So I do think this is an important myth to correct because her family is really hurt by it.

They really find that it's very more than annoying.

Like, it is really depressing that this is how she's remembered, you know, that this persistent myth dogs her, you know, 50 years or whatever else.

Part of the culture in a way.

Yeah.

We know how hard it is to expunge the record, you know, and get it correct.

Once it's in the culture, it's very hard, if not impossible.

Very hard to get it correct.

Very hard.

So we certainly don't want to contribute to that.

We're happy to correct that and to increase awareness that that is a myth.

It's not how she died.

She died of a heart attack.

So, yeah, keep that in mind.

All right.

Yep.

We're going to do a name-that logical fallacy.

This comes from Jason in Massachusetts, and Jason writes: I've been listening for many years, and this is my first time contacting the show.

For context, my earliest memories are the inflating earth and birds versus monkeys.

That's like

second year.

That's way back here, yeah.

Way back.

I was watching a clip of some internet rando saying evolution couldn't have happened because, paraphrasing, half an organ wouldn't work, e.g., an incomplete eye wouldn't have vision as we know it.

Obviously, we've heard the whole eye thing a million times, and this betrays a lack of understanding of adaptation and evolution and is quite ableist.

But I had a sudden realization that this might be a very specific logical fallacy.

So that's, yeah, we could talk about what's wrong with that claim and then see if one or more logical fallacies are occurring.

Jason, in a postscript, said which fallacy he thought it was.

I won't say that until we discuss it.

So for background, it is a very common evolution-denying, creationist, intelligent design

claim that, well, you know, how could you evolve wings?

Like, what purpose would they serve until you got to the point where they were good enough to fly?

What good is half a wing?

I've actually had somebody say that exact quote to me: what good is half a wing?

Or, you know, like, what were our ancestors walking around with like half an eye hanging out of their head?

You know, like, really ridiculous strawmen, right?

But of course, that's not what evolutionary biologists think.

That's not what would have to have happened.

You know, and things work for

what they evolved to do at every step of the way.

But the key bit that they're missing is that a current structure, right, did not necessarily have to evolve directly to its current function.

It could have evolved through a series of other functions that it was perfectly adapted to, or adapted to just fine, and then got co-apted to a new use.

So, for example, wings, like feathers were probably for

insulation and then maybe display, and then maybe helping to capture prey and then jumping from branch to branch.

Extending the duration of a leap or a jump and maybe gliding and then flying.

Well, we know for a fact that our hands were flippers.

Yeah, right.

Like we know that.

Right.

Like we crawled out of the ocean.

Yeah, so

we're going to go to the bottom

of hands for nothing.

No, they came from like flipper hands.

They were flipper hands and then they were walking on the bottom of the floor of the ocean.

Yeah.

So they adapted to be able to hold up weight and then to on land and then to claws and then to hands, you know, whatever.

And eyes too, like eye spots.

Every step of the way.

They detect light.

Yeah.

That's all they do.

They just detected whether it was light or dark.

Right, exactly.

And they got eyes.

And they were controlling every step of the way.

Yeah.

Even just being able to say, light is that way, you know, the surface of the ocean is in that direction, and that dark is this way, that's going deeper into the ocean, is adaptive and useful.

So, a half an eye is actually extremely useful.

And it's not a half an eye,

it's a whole but less evolved whole.

I don't know what you want to call it.

But even, that's the thing.

Our terminology is so biased.

Like, if you say it's a proto-eye, you're implying that it's on its way to becoming an eye.

Right, which you can't do.

Right, which we have the benefit of hindsight.

Exactly,

we only know that in hindsight.

At the time, it's not a proto-anything,

it is what it is, and it's adapted to how it functions.

And there are organisms alive today who have those versions of things.

We have to remember that, too.

And those things are alive right now.

They still exist.

And you could see all the intermediary steps that our eye went through is

extant.

Right.

So are we going to try to get a lot of things?

But what's the logical fallacy specifically here?

I think it's black or white thinking.

I think straw man and

personal incredulity are kind of like in the bulk.

Oh, interesting.

See, I see it as black and white.

Like, it's either this or it's not that at all.

Oh, this or that.

Like a false dichotomy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So.

I think the reason why this can be so hard is because the informal logical fallacies are so context-dependent.

It kind of depends on how exactly you formulate your claim.

And so we could, we're just, we're like, we're not responding to someone's specific claim here.

It's more of just the idea of this kind of argument.

But

the only thing we have in quotes here is half an organ wouldn't work.

And so I think it is absolutely a straw man.

I think definitely that is happening here.

For sure.

Because nobody's claiming that.

Nobody's claiming that.

Nobody.

That is a straw man version of evolutionary theory that

it would require evolving through a half-formed version of the final, quote-unquote, final structure.

And all of that is

hindsight bias.

It's not a half-anything.

It's not a proto-anything.

It's not a pre-anything.

It is what it is.

It doesn't know what future descendants will

use it for and evolve it in other directions.

It just is what it is.

So I think that's the biggest one.

I do think there's a lot of non-sequiturs in there, which is kind of just a generic logical fallacy.

But I could see the,

I think, so he said, I'll tell you what he said, because I think you're kind of on the same page as him.

He said it was a nirvana fallacy, because, which I'm not sure if that fits really.

Nirvana fallacy is it's not perfect, so it's useless.

Yeah, I mean, he's kind of making that claim, kind of, yeah, I think it's all of them, yeah.

So, it depends on how you frame it.

It's like, yes, a half an organ is not perfect, so it's worthless.

That's kind of a nirvana fallacy, but it's there's a piece that you need that it's it's only half of,

or whatever,

it's only partial current utility, but it's a fully formed something else, right?

So it's just that's what makes it a non-sequitur and a straw man.

It's, you know what I mean?

It's looking at it incorrectly.

Right.

That's fascinating.

I always find it fascinating to deconstruct

logic.

But so I guess we could also say it's not purely a logic problem.

It's a false premise.

And the false premise is what I said.

The false premise is that

things evolved to their current use.

The only possible history of things is that it evolved to its current use.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Well, and it's hard to blame somebody for seeing evolution that way because, sadly, until you're at a college level, it's often taught.

Yeah, I agree.

Which I don't like.

And it's represented that way in

popular culture.

But, you know, I think a lot of this, and often when we talk about pseudoscience

or like woo, or especially when we're talking about like charlatans, we'll ask questions like, do they know that it's bullshit?

Or like, are they peddling intentionally?

Or

have they like bought what they're selling?

And often the answer is, does it really matter?

But I think in these situations where you're talking to a friend and your friend is like, wait a minute, but how could this happen?

It is important to know where they're coming from and to dig deep into what their actual argument is.

Are they making a black and white assumption?

Are they making a straw man?

Is it a Nirvana fallacy?

And you can figure that out by asking follow-up questions because sometimes you can actually counter it if you know what they're trying to say, right?

And maybe, you know, maybe this person is just like, I'm a creationist and I'm dying the wool and I'm never changing my mind.

But maybe they're like, I just don't get it.

Help me get it.

Yeah, they rarely are saying, Help me get it, my experience.

But I hear what you're saying.

But the thing is, it's important to understand.

So

the false premise, right, or the unstated major premise is really hard to detect in yourself, right?

Because it's a premise you are not aware you are making.

And therefore, that's why it's unstated.

It's unstated.

It's unknown.

He doesn't realize that that's...

The thing is, how does he react?

How do they react when it's pointed out to them?

And that, of course, they never, in my experience, say, oh, gee, I didn't realize that.

I was wrong.

It's usually they double down in some way, and then maybe later they may realize that their thinking was supposed to be.

Yeah, I guess I give it the benefit of the doubt.

I think of like a child.

If a child is conceptualizing evolution the way that popular culture has taught it to them, and they're sophisticated enough to go, but half an eye wouldn't work.

Right.

Then you go, oh, yeah, that I could see where you would go from here.

Let's back it up.

Yeah.

And I was going to say, along those lines, that oftentimes pseudoscientists and science denialists, et cetera, are debating against like a fifth-grade understanding of the science,

really elementary school level of scientific understanding.

And they think that's the science.

It's like, no, that's not the science.

That's how it's poorly explained to elementary school students.

That's the level at which you're operating.

That's literally dumbed down science.

It's like, you know, whenever we do good SciComm, I always avoid the term dumb it down because you don't want it to be simplified to the extent that it's no longer correct.

Right.

It can't be so simple it's wrong.

It's got to be true as far as it goes.

Hello, Michio Kaku.

Okay, let's move on to science or fiction.

It's time for science or fiction.

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

Just three regular old news items this week.

You guys ready?

Okay.

Yep.

Alright, here we go.

Item number one, scientists have built and confirmed a neutrino detector able to detect neutrinos with just three kilograms of detector mass compared to the multiple tons of other detectors.

Number two, a new study finds that Roman concrete is more sustainable than modern concrete, requiring 10% less less water and releasing 20% less CO2 in its manufacture.

I number three, researchers have developed and now successfully tested gene therapy to prevent HIV infection that works in infants for several years after a single treatment.

Kara, go first.

Okay, so a neutrino detector, it's both been built and confirmed.

It detects neutrinos with just three kilograms of detector mass, whatever that means, uh compared to the multiple tons of other detectors.

So just like the size of the det they they made it with carbon fiber.

I don't know.

They just made it lighter, the detector itself.

Is that what you mean by detector mass?

Three kilograms of detector mass.

So I'll tell you since you're going first.

The detector mass is basically the substance that's interacting with the neutrinos.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

Got it.

So it's like what what's ever like in the tube when the neutrino, well, I don't know how neutrino detector works.

I'm thinking of a of a particle accelerator, but yeah, whatever the neutrinos are passing through or something that they're measuring.

Okay.

Roman, a new study finds that Roman concrete is more sustainable than modern.

10% less water releasing 20% less CO2.

Ugh, God.

I mean, that could be the case.

I mean, they definitely weren't using like modern synthetic chemicals when they built it.

Developed and successfully tested gene therapy.

So you don't say if it's in people.

Oh, no, you said that works in infants.

Okay, so that means people infants?

Not necessarily.

Okay, all right.

So tested gene therapy to prevent HIV infection.

We're doing it for several years after a single treatment.

So this is some sort of genetic modification that makes the babies.

So instead of like antiretrovirals that moms are taking during pregnancy, the little baby, what would be the point of that?

Is it in utero?

This is confusing to me.

Why would you want that?

You would need it earlier than when they're infants.

So this is to prevent vertical transmission from the mother to the baby.

Okay, so it is, okay.

Mainly through breastfeeding.

Okay.

So, in case she gave birth to a baby, even if she had HIV, she gave birth to a baby that was HIV negative if she's going to continue to breastfeed.

Okay, we want to reduce that risk.

So, the gene therapy would make it so that somehow it's not transmissible.

I mean, if that's the case,

that gene therapy should be able to be applied then to adults later.

So, we just can't catch it.

I mean, that would be cool to just make a whole generation of people who are HIV resistant.

That one seems least likely,

but it could have just been in mice.

Um, I have no idea on the neutrino one and the Roman concrete.

I'm glad you didn't say that it was like stronger or something because I feel like we just talked about that last week.

And even though it was really strong, I doubt it's stronger than modern concrete.

But is it more sustainable?

Ooh,

I like those noises, but I know.

This is so tough.

Maybe I'll going to say the concrete ones.

Thinking noises.

Okay, Bob.

Let's see.

So for the third one, gene therapy, HIV.

Yeah, I think we've made so many advances in HIV therapies over the years, especially recently, that this doesn't surprise me at all.

So I'm going to definitely have to go with that one as science.

Let's see, Roman concrete more sustainable.

I mean, I'm trying to remember the latest that we heard about whether it was actually superior to, what is it, what is it called, Cortland cement?

If I remember, it is better in some ways, but the fact that it could be better, but also more sustainable, seems less likely.

So I'm going to say that it's less sustainable.

So I'll say, oh, wait, oh, fuck.

What about the neutrinos?

Roman is more sustainable.

No, I'm going to say that it's less.

So I'm going to have to say that one's fiction then.

the concrete one.

But I'm really having a hard time doing that because of number one,

neutrinos with just three kilograms of detector mass.

That's crazy.

I mean, neutrinos, if you've listened to anything I've said about neutrinos in the past 20 years,

you know they can go through like light.

Literally, a neutrino can go through like light years of lead before interacting with an atom.

It's just like they're so ghost-like.

They just don't interact with anything.

And the modern detectors that I'm aware of have like all like ultra-pure, like many, many tons, many swimming pools worth of like ultra-pure water.

And

they collide with an atom and they create like shrink-off radiation.

So, the fact that they can do it in three kilograms, now, all right, three kilograms, it must be aerogel mass that's super lightweight, super diffuse.

So, it's so it's a large area that a lot of neutrinos would go through.

That's the only way that that makes sense.

But I'm super curious about that one, but I think you were trying to totally screw me on that one, Steve.

So, I'm going to go with the

Roman concrete is

more sustainable, is fiction.

Okay, and Evan.

Bob, you clearly did not see that scientific documentary called 2012 in which neutrinos, it turns out, definitely impact and have an impact on the Earth's core, right?

Which causes a shift of some kind and the crust becomes unstable and starts to shape and John Cusack goes crazy.

So

I think you missed that in your analysis of this particular news item.

Okay.

Had you brought that into this discussion,

you'd come to the same conclusion that this one is probably science.

I know.

You know so much more about neutrino detectors than I will likely ever know.

So congratulations on that.

The Roman concrete one,

more sustainable.

When Kara was discussing this or speaking her mind on this, I was having many of the same thoughts.

So thank you for confirming my thoughts there, Carol.

No way.

Because

we did talk about this last week when Steve was discussing his trip to Malta and the concrete there.

So that's when it came up.

And how durable, I mean, you know, long-lasting

it is.

But that does not mean...

more sustainable than modern concrete.

So

I think I'm going to join both of you in saying that that one's going to be the fiction.

And then, Carrie, you also brought up a good point about the third one about the gene therapy that works in infants for several years.

You asked if it was human infants, and Steve said not necessarily.

So, it's some other animal they probably tested this on, I don't think.

Which led me to believe I was thinking maybe this one's the fiction, but you brought up that point, and now I'm pretty sure that that one's going to be science.

So, I agree, concrete fiction in this case.

All right.

You all agree on number two, so we'll start at number one.

Scientists have built and confirmed a neutrino detector able to detect neutrinos with just three kilograms of detector mass compared to multiple tons of other detectors.

You guys all think this one is science, and this one is

science.

Wow, this is surprising.

I know Bob was going to be the most surprised by this.

Holy crap, man.

So, yeah, this is the CONUS experiment.

They set it up outside of a fission nuclear power plant because nuclear fission creates neutrinos.

And they were able to use it to detect the excess neutrinos from the nuclear power plant.

They knew what the background number would be, and over a very long period of time, they said, yeah, we had extra neutrino detections

coming from the nuclear power plant.

So, yeah, Bob, it's a new sort of interaction.

Whoa, wait.

Yeah, this is

a new type of neutrino detection.

I'm not going to pretend I fully understand it, but let me just tell you what the description is.

All right.

So

it's the, it's, I think the key is that the neutrinos are scattering

off of the an atomic nuclei of germanium.

So they, they, they cohere.

It says, in this process, neutrinos do not scatter off the individual components of the atomic nuclei in the detector, but rather coherently with the entire nucleus.

This significantly increases the probability of a very small but observable nuclear recoil.

So I guess because it's hitting the

the whole nucleus, the nucleus reacts in an observable way.

It says the recoil caused by neutrino scattering is comparable to a ping-pong ball bouncing off a car, with the detection being the changing motion of the car.

So not very much, but this was above the threshold of detection.

So the scattering partners are the atomic nuclei of germanium.

Observing this effect requires low-energy neutrinos, such as those produced in large numbers in nuclear reactors.

But yeah, the dramatic thing here was just three kilograms of detector mass in this detector.

So they said, this is a proof of concept, they've actually proven this technique works.

This really opens up neutrino research.

Because then you don't necessarily need these vast underground pools of pure water or whatever as your detector or the ice, I know, in like the Antarctic neutrino detector.

Right.

Maybe that's how Jordi detects neutrinos with his little visor

Yeah, sure.

That's a Star Trek reference, Kara.

Well, thank you.

All right, let's move on to number two.

A new study finds that Roman concrete is more sustainable than modern concrete, requiring 10% less water and releasing 20% less CO2 in its manufacture.

You guys all think this one is fiction,

although it sounds like for various reasons.

And this one is

the fiction.

The fiction.

Yay.

Okay.

So frustrating, Carol.

I guess.

But all for the wrong reasons.

So, what the study showed was that Roman concrete

has exactly the same water use and CO2 release as modern concrete.

However, they said it's more sustainable because it's stronger and more durable.

So it's only more sustainable in that it would have to be replaced less often, which I think, Evan, you alluded to.

It is because it's stronger and more durable.

But otherwise, like in the manufacturing process, it's the same.

It's the same amount of water use, same amount of CO2 release.

But they did say, you know, we, you know, long-term, could be useful to, you know, use the older recipe, if you will, because it is more durable.

All right.

All of this means that researchers have developed and now successfully tested gene therapy to prevent HIV infection that works in infants for several years after a single treatment is science.

This is actually potentially very huge.

There's a few details in here.

So, Kara, I could understand why you're a little perplexed without knowing these details.

So, this was done in primates, in macaques,

because there is a, like, whatever, a primate version of HIV that they can use as their

simian.

Yeah, simian.

That's right, that's exactly right.

Uh, and they're, they're testing something that they've, that's been around for a while called broadly neutralizing antibodies.

Now, this already exists as a treatment to prevent infants from contracting HIV from their mothers.

The problem is it requires an infusion, and it only lasts for a short time.

So you need repeated infusions of these broadly neutralizing antibodies.

And that is not practical in the parts of the world where this is the highest risk, right?

Yeah.

So unfortunately, lots of newborns, lots of babies get infected with HIV.

It's a huge problem.

300 children are infected with HIV every day.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah.

More than 100,000 children acquire HIV annually, primarily through mother-to-child transmission after birth from breastfeeding.

So it's a major vector for HIV.

And of course, you're infected as an infant.

Like that's that's your life, right?

Yep.

What they were testing was using a deno-associated virus, AAV.

So this is a virus that itself can insert genes into DNA.

So you don't, it's not, there's no CRISPR involved here, it's just AAV that's been altered with a gene that, and the gene makes the broadly neutralizing antibodies.

So they infect the muscle with the virus, which inserts the gene into the muscle tissue.

Muscle tissue tissue survives for a long time, which is good.

And the muscle tissue then starts cranking out the broadly neutralizing antibodies.

Now, there's a reason why we're not going to be using this in adults.

Okay.

Unfortunately.

It's because when you do this, even in older children, and I mean just like even if you wait a couple of months,

there tends to be a lot of immune rejection.

So you need like a pretty naive immune system.

You need to get the babies when their immune system is naive enough that they accept it and they don't reject it.

And this study showed that it works better in the younger infants.

You want to get them within a couple of weeks of being born.

But it worked for the macaques.

It provided good protection from HIV infection for three years,

which is like their adolescence.

So the hope is that it would work in human babies

until they're older children or even until they're adolescence.

Definitely long, you know, to get definitely for if it's a if it's a couple of years, even that's through the breastfeeding period, right?

So that would get you through the point where you're where most children who get infected are getting infected through breastfeeding.

And again, it's a one-and-done treatment.

One injection, you're done.

Yeah, it's way better than like crap or something where you have to.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it's very practical for, again, the people who need it the most.

Yeah.

So very hopeful.

Very, very hopeful.

Because there's still parts of the world.

I mean, mean, I remember when I was in Eswatini, it's got the highest HIV rate in the world, and like most of the kids we worked with were HIV positive.

Yeah, it's so bad.

It is.

Yeah.

Okay, so that's a hopeful technology.

Good job, everyone.

Sniffed at it again.

Yeah.

Thanks for your help, friends.

All right, Evan, give us a quote.

Be not astonished at new ideas, for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many.

Baruch Spinoza.

Yep.

That's kind of the inverse of the logical fallacy of argument to add popularity.

Yeah.

It's popular, therefore, it must be true.

This is the it's not popular, therefore it must be wrong.

Right.

Same idea, though.

Neither of which are true.

It's irrelevant.

You know, popular acceptance

is irrelevant to whether something is true or not.

I would say a broad consensus of experts is different against logical fallacy, the informal logical fallacies are context-dependent.

If you're talking about, yeah, pretty much all climate scientists think that anthropogenic global warming is happening, that's not an argument ad populi.

That's a consensus of expert opinion.

But we can use this, say, on a more

modern concept.

UFOs, for example.

Our culture is saturated with UFO belief.

All the saturation in the world does not make any of it true.

Right.

And the popular unpopularity unpopularity of GMOs doesn't mean that they're not good because

they are, in my opinion.

And the opinion of the vast majority of scientists.

That is the issue still where there's the hugest disconnect between popular opinion and scientific opinion.

And especially scientists who work in agriculture.

Yeah, yeah.

Absolutely.

So, yeah, so it depends on who you're talking about.

But yeah, it's a good

general idea here: popular opinion doesn't really predict whether a scientific idea is true or not.

And I think he's focusing on new ideas because new ideas generally take time to become accepted.

Sure.

Depending on what they are.

Yeah, and he was, you know, what, was he Renaissance Baruch Spinoza?

I think it was, or just after the Renaissance.

So we're talking about some new idea, new ideas or ideas that were lost for a very long time that had just started coming back.

Born in 1632.

So yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Where you are in history kind of puts a different spin on that.

If you're in this sort of nation scientific era, pretty much everything that was all of the established ideas were wrong.

Right.

You know,

new scientific ideas were probably way more likely to be true than whatever they were replacing.

So that would definitely, you could see how somebody who was living at that time would be like, don't reject new ideas because they go against the authority or because they're unconventional or because they're new.

Imagine living at a time where pretty much most of the things that the authorities believed were wrong.

Oh, my gosh.

Imagine that.

Imagine that.

Thank goodness we live in the modern age.

Not talking about the politicians.

Right, right.

Controlled by the churches and so much other stuff.

And even that is not like, you know,

doctors believed nonsense back then.

But nobody knew

that it wasn't true.

They thought it was true.

But then somebody says, I think there might be germs causing these.

He's like, he's crazy.

He's a witch.

Burn him.

I don't know.

I just want out of this timeline.

You're going to roll the dice for a random timeline or you want to be able to pick the timeline.

Oh, picking it would be nice.

Picking it would be a big deal.

Well, sure.

All right.

Well, thank you all for joining me this week.

Thanks, Steve.

See you next week.

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

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