The Skeptics Guide #1046 - Jul 26 2025

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

Hello and welcome to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

Today is Wednesday, July 23rd, 2025, and this is your host, Stephen Novella.

Joining me this week are Bob Novella.

Hey, everybody.

Cara Santa Maria.

Howdy.

Jay Novella.

Hey, guys.

And Evan Bernstein.

Is it Buenos Sera?

Is that what you say?

Bona Sera.

Bona Sera.

Bona Serra.

Pardon me.

Yeah, so I just got back from a week in Sicily.

Ah, Sicily.

It's a beautiful, beautiful country.

Very beautiful.

Beautiful.

Yeah, it's really different.

So, you know,

it's deserty scrubland, but not that dry.

There's lots of trees and olives, trees, and stuff.

But, you know, it's not like forest.

It looks more like Arizona than Connecticut.

In fact, there are prickly pears, cactus all over the place.

Even though it's not native, it was introduced in like the 1500s, but it's been such a part of Sicilian landscape for so long, it's like part of their culture now.

Yep, it's stuck around.

Yeah, very lovely.

And the cultural history is amazing because, you know, obviously

the Greeks were there, then the Romans were there, then there were a lot of Arab occupation there, and they eventually unified with Italy, so they're obviously part of Italy now.

But they have all these different cultural elements, you know, still present.

And, you know, we went to, I think the most amazing thing I saw when I was there was the Valley of the Temples.

It's a, and it's also called the Hill of the Temples.

It's like a hill in a valley.

So sometimes it's like...

The Lady Templi.

So, yeah,

the Temple of Hercules is the best preserved Greek ruin in the world, like Greek temple.

It's not intact, but it's pretty complete.

You know, all the columns are there.

And there's a bunch of other ones that are in various stages of ruin, but it was cool.

Very, very cool.

Were you able to visit all the major cities, you know, towns?

A lot of them.

Palermo, Messina,

Catania.

Yeah, we went to Catania, went to Palermo.

Syracuse.

Casulemari.

I did not go to Syracuse.

Okay.

Yeah.

You know, we had, you know, what was it, like, we had a full week.

You know, so.

Steve, did you see anything that might indicate it was a ruin from World War II or anything related to the war?

So I

not directly, and I asked about that on a couple of, you know, pretty much every tour that I took.

So apparently all of the damage done in World War II was repaired.

Wow.

So most of the time I said, yeah, that's like Catania was was bombed, you know, pretty significantly during World War II.

And they pointed out this area here was, you know, pretty demolished, but it was completely repaired.

You know.

And then there were some places where, like in Catania, it's interesting because it's right in the shadow of Mount Etna, which is still an active volcano.

And at some point in the last hundred years or so, a lava flow extended the area of the land, basically extended the shoreline, so that all of the castles and defenses were now no longer on the ocean.

They were on the Mediterranean.

They were inland.

I see.

and so they were not strategically important because they were like no longer able to defend a port, and so they were not bombed during World War II because of that.

It's interesting.

The whole place is, I mean, it's obviously a volcanic island.

Like, Catania is all lava, everything's made out of blocks of lava.

All of the

squares had lavas.

I wonder if that's a good building material.

It is.

It's a very strong, very good building material.

Although they had an earthquake in 1690, something, I think, and it was devastating.

It was like it flattened the entire city.

And they,

our tour guide said, they basically, there's the before time and the after time, right?

Like the city was completely rebuilt after the earthquake.

But you know what structures withstood the earthquake the best?

Hmm, what would have withstood the earthquake the best?

The Roman foundations.

Oh, but they're concrete.

Yeah.

They weathered it very well to the point that they actually built buildings on top of the Roman foundations because they were so strong.

Yeah, they had the good stuff.

Yeah, that concrete just was.

Yeah, we've talked about this before on the show, you know, how it even got stronger over time.

So they

stood when almost every other building fell.

Now, more importantly, Steve, you mentioned that they have very dense meatballs there.

They do.

Their meatballs were very meaty.

The meat to breadcrumb ratio was different than what we're used to.

It was more meat, less filler.

How did you find that?

They were great.

They were different, a little different.

They weren't as, I don't know, fluffy as what we were used to, but they were fantastic.

The food was good.

The only thing is it's very heavy seafood, and I'm not into seafood.

So

pretty much anywhere we went, like half to most of the menu was seafood.

Yeah, and the big cities or towns are on the coast, so you would expect that, sure.

Joss must have loved it, those too.

She did.

She had like every night shit, some different kind of seafood.

Steve, was it only Sicily?

That was the entirety of your trip?

We went to, we started in Malta because my wife had a conference there.

So that was just a weekend, like a Thursday to Sunday, and then a full week in Sicily.

And that was like, that was not enough, really.

We drove all around the island.

Look how tiny Malta is on the map.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, but it's a good.

It's a speck.

It's It's bigger.

Yeah.

It is a small island.

It's a couple of islands.

So you fly there, Steve, or take a boat?

We took a ferry from we flew into Sicily, took a ferry from Sicily to Malta and back.

That was like an hour and a half.

I say ferry, it's like a ship.

It's like a smallish cruise liner, but it was.

Is it like the one we took when we visited the Great Barrier Reef?

No.

Larger.

Much bigger.

Nice.

Much, much bigger.

Oh, God, the water there looks amazing.

So the Blue Lagoon was filmed there.

It was

beautiful.

Yeah.

Wow.

Wow, wow.

Well,

I got to put that on my list.

It looks fantastic.

Yeah,

it was very, very beautiful.

Obviously,

a lot of movies are filmed there because it looks so old.

And

in the first season of Game of Thrones, for example, the city of Medina in Malta was King's Landing.

So, of course, that's part of every tour now.

Like this is where

that stark was killed, you know.

Oh my gosh.

They're doing what Lord of the Rings did to New Zealand.

Basically, the Game of Thrones did

to Malta.

Very cool.

And it was just the two of you.

How nice.

It was.

When was the last time, and who?

It was just the two of you, right?

Yeah, that's what I said.

And when was the last time the two of you just took a vacation like this somewhere?

A couple years.

We went to Bermuda a couple years ago.

Okay, but that's just Bermuda.

Yeah, this is the first really extended vacation, just the two of us.

Because, you know, we have kids.

And

you want to take your kids, and you want to give them the experience.

But yeah, this is like a second honeymoon kind of trip.

Damn kids.

Meddling kids, Bob.

Meddling kids.

And of course, the whole time we're there, it's like, oh, we got to bring the kids back and show them all this cool stuff.

I wish the kids were here.

We did not.

We didn't say we wish they were there.

We said we ought to bring them back.

Make a separate trip.

No, you're not going back.

We're going to Japan.

So these are not mutually exclusive.

Well, we've got to get to Japan before it goes crazy over there.

All right.

Well, we got a great show for you this evening.

We're going to start, Kara, with what's the word?

Hey, that's me.

This week, I thought I would do something differently.

Mostly, I was inspired by listener Ryan Taylor, who wrote to us and said much earlier this year, I thought this would be a topic of interest.

You've had conversations in the past about the history of specific phrases, like blood is thicker than water.

You remember we went down that rabbit hole.

And of course, I do what's the word?

This is in a similar vein.

So he introduced the concept of fossil words.

Have you guys heard of these before?

I guess I hadn't heard that label, but I've thought about

it.

I haven't.

They're very old.

So fossil words are, as he put it, and this is like pretty standard definition, words that have mostly disappeared from the English language, but remain, quote, fossilized in several phrases.

Like we might talk about short shrift, but how often are you talking about shrift in another context?

Short shrift, right?

I love those.

Yeah.

Skull duggery.

Yes.

And one fell swoop.

One fell swoop.

That's a great example.

And there are a ton of them, like without further ado or run amok.

I rarely amok without running.

How about you guys?

Yeah, I just don't amok often.

Well, there's amok time.

I walk amok sometimes.

There are so many like this.

Like, oh, I love this one.

This one was fun as I was digging deep.

Just desserts.

It is D-E-S-E-R-T-S, spelled like desserts, but pronounced desserts like a desser because it's the state of deserving something.

Oh, dessert.

Yes.

I thought maybe dessert shot.

No, so if you get your just desserts, you are getting something that you deserve.

You're not getting like dessert, like chocolate cake.

And that phrase is kind of a negative.

It's kind of a negative term.

Like somebody who gets their just deserts.

Right, something that they deserve.

You got what you were asking.

You got what what you had coming.

You were asking to be hurt.

Here's one, Kith and Kin.

You don't hear Kith.

I know.

I never hear Kith and Kin, though.

Is that a common one?

Well,

you don't watch

Christmas Vacation.

Ah.

But

I watch that every year with Liz.

But yeah, Kith and Kin.

I love

the whole shebang.

When's the last time anybody used shebang?

I say that every once in a while.

Yeah.

Well, there has to be something big, right?

Yeah.

It's got to fit it.

Well, and apparently programmers have taken taken it over and they use it in

their languages as well.

If I remember correctly, Kara, Perry used to say that.

He'd be like, the whole shebang.

He'd say it like that.

I feel like I see so many of these in Steve You May too, because I know Steve and I share our love for the New York Times crossword.

Like eek out is always on the crossword.

But when is the last time you said eek otherwise?

Well, in terms of fear, it's a word for that denotes fear.

Yeah, it's spelled differently.

E-KE.

E-K-E is E-Kout.

Oh, it's E-K.

Oh, you're talking E-K-E.

Really?

It's spelled differently.

What does Eek mean?

E-K-E.

Well, let's look it up.

I mean, that's the best.

Barely.

Oh, I thought you meant what's the etymology of it.

I was going to say, I couldn't get into the etymology of all of these things,

but there are a fair amount, like Beyond the Pale is a perfect example.

According to Merriam-Webster, it's not the word that we're used to using like pale like lacking in color it was derived from a latin word palace which means stake so beyond the pale was beyond the stakes or the fences that made up the boundaries so it was outside of a boundary that's where we got beyond the pale okay it's not it's a totally different word pale and then here's another one

kidnap So nap apparently was a slang word for nab.

So if you nab nab something,

they altered it like in the 17th century and said nap instead.

And the only way it's really stuck around is kidnapping.

We don't use the word napping of anything else.

It's different from the word nap to sleep.

Totally different usage, totally different word, just spelled the same.

And there's a few others like that, slipshod, abated with baited breath.

You only ever do any, yeah, you only ever bait your breath, huh?

You don't really bait anything else.

It comes from the same root as a bait we use abate all the time oh sure

we never use the word bait or baited yeah it's just fascinating and there are some here's one in the in the offing in the offing offing what's that that's just an expression that means like uh it's within possibility you know you your your race is with you know is in the offing if you perform well that's so interesting i've i've As I'm reading these lists, I'm only regurgitating the ones that feel salient to me, but there are so many that I'm like, I've never heard that in my, or maybe I've heard it and I've read it, but I've never said it.

Like, do you ever say wend your way?

Like wend one's way?

No, definitely not.

Me neither, but I see it all over all of these lists.

Oh, here's another one.

This one is, I think, relevant for a lot of skeptics.

Slight, as in sleight of hand.

It's the only time we use that word.

Yeah.

That's right.

Isn't that weird?

But you can slight someone at the same time.

It's funny because I have noticed these fossils from time to time, but I never really realized how many there are.

Yeah, there are a lot.

There are so many.

Now, when you think about it, when you dive down this rabbit hole.

Oh, you stick something in one's craw?

Stuck in your craw.

Stuck in your craw.

What else are you talking about?

Craws?

Crawfish.

Or batting down the hatches.

That's legit, though.

There are hatches that need battening.

Exactly.

Down and up.

It's the only thing you batten, right?

It's really the only thing you batten.

You batten up the hatch.

You might say bored and battening when you're talking about a sale, but yeah, otherwise,

that's it.

You only in a hackers away.

Fascinating, anyway.

So, thank you once again to Ryan.

That was really interesting to dive into.

And now everybody will notice them, you know, when they are running amok, not walking amok.

Yeah,

oh, wreaking havoc.

Haven't havoced without wreak in a while, haven't wreaked without havoc either.

Yeah, wreak havoc,

wreak destruction.

Yeah.

I'm going to pay attention to come up with some more.

Yeah.

Yeah, we'll try to inject as many as we can going forward.

Or what you do is you find out what the pieces of it mean, and then you use that out of context.

Oh, yeah.

Appropriately, but out of the idiom.

Yeah, you use it in context, but out of the, yeah, out of the fossilized phrase.

Yeah.

There is a word I looked up specifically for my news item.

So a little foreshadowing there,

which is a rarely used word.

And when you hear it, you'll probably know it.

Well, here's one that I think we could all probably use: like ulterior.

Yes, it is still kind of in common parlance, but you only ever hear it when you're talking about ulterior motives.

So maybe we can all use it to describe other intentionally kind of hidden things.

Ulterior, I don't know.

Ulterior.

We're just going to come up with a bunch of synonyms for motive.

So trained to hear motive after ulterior.

Yeah, you have to decouple it from that.

It's not natural.

Fascinating.

All right.

Thanks, Kara.

Jay, tell us about this new super material.

Well, slow down there.

Is it kryptonite?

It's cool.

It's cool, but there's a lot to talk about.

Well, first of all, you know, we have to talk about plastic in general real quick to kind of set the stage here.

So, as you guys know, right, plastic is unbelievably useful.

It's used in all applications at this point.

I mean, where isn't it used?

We just can't live in the modern world without using it.

It's cheap to produce.

It's chemically stable.

It's useful in pretty much every industry.

But the problem with plastic is what?

That it doesn't biodegrade or it does it incredibly slowly.

It pollutes the environment.

You know, it's like I was saying, this is not biodegradable stuff.

It just...

stays there and it leaches chemicals into whatever, you know, whatever surrounding area that it's in.

You know, Major concern here, the amount of plastic in the world is this.

This freaking blows my mind.

It's larger than the volume of Mount Everest.

The used plastic in the world would bury Manhattan under one and a half kilometers of plastic, which, if you think about the sheer volume that we have in our environment, it's unreal.

We have research now that shows that it harms our ecosystems.

It's entered the food chain.

The recycling rates are just abysmal.

They are so low, it's pathetic.

And, you know, current global efforts are simply nowhere.

There's nothing going on here that's going to regain the ground that plastic is taking from us every year.

So, of course, lots of companies and research labs, you know, there's a huge effort to replace plastic with a material that has, you know, most of, if not all, the benefits of current plastic, but none of the negatives.

And it's been impossible to do so far.

So, for example, like past attempts that have been made, you know, they could come up with a material that would work, but it's way too expensive to make.

It's not strong enough.

It requires really complicated chemical processing, which, you know, the chemicals are expensive.

Some of them could be very dangerous.

However, there is, you know, of course, I'm going to pivot this to some research that's happened that has shown something promising that I think is worth talking about.

So Rice University and the University of Houston,

they might, hopefully, they might have developed something that could one day help us move away from the plastics that we use today.

So, their research was recently published in Cell Reports Physical Science.

This is a journal, and they outline the process for creating a very strong biodegradable material from bacterial cellulose.

This is unlike most plastic substitutes.

This one, you know, actually performs better than many of the metals and glasses that are being used in manufacturing, both in strength and thermal performance.

Now, Steve, I know there's different kinds of strength.

I think, in general, for the applications that they could make with this, it would be stronger than the plastics that we're currently using.

So, they have some key innovations here.

Cellulose is already the most abundant natural polymer on Earth.

It's everywhere.

It's, you know, it doesn't cost anything to get your hands on it.

It's what gives plants their rigidity, right?

So, when you have a plant stalk that's standing up, you know, out of the ground, it's using cellulose to

have that form, to hold it in that form.

But there's a bacteria now that the name is so ridiculous.

I don't even know if I should try to say it.

I'll try it.

Ready, Kara?

Just be patient with me here.

It ends with an I, I'll bet.

It's comogatiobacter

xylinus.

Oh, I was wrong.

Comagatyabacter xylinus.

That's probably kind of right.

Yeah, close, right?

Sounds good.

In order to produce this, they spin cellulose into ultra-thin nanofibers.

And these are long chains of glucose that form dense entangled mats.

And that's basically how plants make it, right?

It grows that way.

And it's not uniform.

There's no rhyme or reason to how these strands connect to each other.

It's all chaotic.

You could just think of them as randomly aligned, right?

All these different strands that are going in all different directions.

Now, they're strong, but they're not remarkable in any way.

So the Rice-Houston team changed that by introducing this interesting mechanical constraint.

What they did was they they grew the bacterial cellulose on a rotating gel in a bioreactor.

So just think of it as like a flat plane that's spinning around inside of a bioreactor, and that's the environment that they grew the cellulose in.

And this rotation forced the bacteria to lay down cellulose nanofibers in the direction that they wanted them for it to grow in.

And this formed ordered sheets rather than chaotic tangles.

So that shape and that way that they connect with each other is uniform and it fixes lots of problems.

So the result is a highly aligned cellulose film that has a tensile strength up to 436 megapascals.

So that doesn't mean anything unless, you know, let me give you a comparison for most of us who don't really know what that means.

436 megapascals.

In comparison, so common plastics like...

PET plastics, we use those in water bottles, food containers, synthetic fabrics, right?

They have a tensile strength of 50 to 100 MPA or megapascals.

So aluminum tops out like at 400, and even some types of glass fall short of where the engineered cellulose could get to from a strength perspective, which is really cool because, of course, we want it to be strong.

And as an added bonus, Steve, because you're purchasing today, no, but as the team said as a bonus, right, you know, they didn't even know this was going to happen, but they found that if they essentially doped the films that the cellulose is being grown on or laid down onto.

These films have boron nitride nanosheets

that are there during the biosynthesis.

Now,

these are atom-thin structures, and

they're known for high thermal conductivity and strength, and they bond to the cellulose and they make a matrix.

And what this does is it's like a film with a tensile strength now up to 553 megapascals, which is even stronger.

Pascals.

Pascals.

Yes, exactly.

Isn't there a guy named Pascal?

Yeah.

I will never say that incorrectly again.

So this now is more than five times stronger than the PET plastics like water bottles and food containers.

It's three times better at dissipating heat compared to the untreated cellulose.

And all this is happening without needing high temperatures or chemical solvents or any expensive post-processing.

The bacteria essentially build the material in one step.

Now, of course, this sounds so good, right?

You know, there are some takeaways that we're going to get to.

But before I go there,

this would have potentially broad applications.

You know, you could use this material in thermal management for electronics, which, you know, if you think about how much thermal management is happening in all these heat-producing electronics that we all have, I mean, each one of us probably owns

two, three, four, five devices alone in the house.

That turns into a lot of need for thermal management.

They could use it for packaging films, biodegradable textiles, flexible sensors.

It happens to be optically transparent.

It's foldable.

Like I said, it's strong.

And it's more thermally efficient than conventional plastic.

So it contains no toxic byproducts.

There's one called bispheronol-A, BPA, right?

BPA.

That's not present in this.

And unlike petroleum-based polymers, it will naturally degrade.

And

it doesn't introduce anything funky into the environment.

So,

you know, this isn't just lab tinkering.

Like, they're not just like, hey, lab-scale tinkering where they make a tiny little bit of this stuff, but it would cost an incredible amount to mass-produce it.

The process can be scaled up using the rotating gel platforms in standard bioreactors.

It makes it far more viable than most of the other green materials that other companies have come up with.

Most of them, if not all of them, couldn't get out of the small-scale production, and they're not seeing a problem here with that.

So, this is the first time that bacterial cellulose outperformed plastics and metals across multiple categories, again, without requiring exotic methods or expensive inputs.

So, I did try to specifically find out like what this is on track for.

So, you know, they have to do all the things that need to be done in order to get past the initial gates, right?

They have to prove that it can be scaled up to a very, very large amount, right?

It's not just, you know, hey, we want to make enough, you know, we want to make a pound of this stuff a day.

They probably, you know, are looking way past that, like for mass production.

They need to find out, you know, how cost-effective it'll eventually be.

I read that there are steps along the way where it could be like, you know, there are some early uses of it could come out as soon as like two to three years.

But for it to go into like full production and really be replacing a lot of the products that we use, it's probably, and I hate to say it, I'm like going to five to ten years.

That's the, you know, we've said this before, but the five to ten year thing means they don't know how long it's going to take.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It could be less than that, depending on how well the research goes and everything.

You know, this isn't like testing, you know, medical procedures or medical interventions on people where there's, you know, an incredible amount of testing that has to be done.

They could get to the finish line in a few years if things go really well with how well the testing goes.

And, you know, as they scale it up, there's nothing holding it back.

I'm being hopeful because I want to think that my kids have the chance of living in a future that isn't completely choked out by the plastics that we're making.

I think about this all the time.

Like on a personal level,

I don't buy plastics if it's possible.

If I'm in the supermarket, if I can find ketchup in a glass container, I'm going to do that.

It's not easy.

Most of the time, I can't do it, but you can.

You can find some products that are in glass containers.

Switch brands if you have to, whatever.

We all need to stop.

Or aluminum.

It's fine.

Exactly.

I love it when a water bottle, like you want to buy water and it comes in a big aluminum can.

I love that.

But my big question, Jay, is how much will it cost?

Is it cost-effective?

Yeah, that's, I think, the big one.

Yeah.

If the price could be a steel killer.

Of course it could.

But if the price is a little bit more expensive,

I think it would be fine.

I mean, if it's like 10 times the price,

we don't know anything yet, but I'm going to keep an eye on it.

You know, this is on my list of things I'm looking at.

I really do hope that this works.

I mean, imagine that.

We just dump all this stuff in a landfill when we're done with it, and it just biodegrades and goes away, and it's totally fine.

Jay, you should look for catsup.

I think that comes in a glass jar.

I will do that immediately.

Instead of the ketchup.

All right.

Thanks, Jay.

You guys remember who Avi Loeb is, right?

Oh, yeah.

Avi Loeb.

How's he been?

What's he chasing there?

He is the Harvard astrophysicist

whose claim to fame came when

he speculated that the first interstellar object that was detected, Amuamua, might be actually an alien probe.

Yeah.

A spaceship, if you will.

Right.

So remember a couple weeks ago we talked about the third interstellar object, the three

Atlas.

It was a wonderful news site.

It It was.

Very well delivered.

Thoroughly researched.

Thoroughly researched.

You know, Avi Lowe published a paper and then wrote an opinion piece saying that we need to investigate whether this is an alien artifact.

And he has

the Galileo project, which is dedicated to looking for techno-signatures of alien technological civilizations.

And that's a worthwhile endeavor.

Absolutely.

I think that's how we're going to find him.

That may be the most likely way that we're going to detect the existence of alien civilizations is through their techno-signatures.

I agree.

My problem with him is not that he's doing that, it's that he's doing it wrong.

He's just not doing a good job.

I mean, he's,

in my opinion, falling into this pattern that we have encountered many times of a scientist who is not familiar with pseudoscience, who then falls into all of the pseudoscientific pitfalls and traps.

Traps.

Right?

We've talked about this occasionally over the years on the show.

Like, remember, there was that neurologist who fell for facilitated communication.

Same kind of thing.

It's like you don't, knowing science, even being a

world-class scientist at an institution like Harvard is not protection from falling for pseudoscience pseudoscience if you are not familiar with all the critical thinking stuff that goes into understanding pseudoscience.

Remember, who also was at Harvard?

John Mack.

Yeah, John Mack, the psychiatrist who thought his patients were actually abducted by aliens?

I mean, you know, come on.

Anyway,

so here are some of his arguments.

They're so bad.

They are so, they're like embarrassingly bad.

But he outlines his arguments.

One is that, well,

three Eye Atlas, you know, again, it's an interstellar comet.

It's zipping through our solar system.

It's going too fast to be bound by the gravitational pull of the sun.

So it's on a hyperbolic pathway.

So we know

from its path that it came from out of the solar system and will leave our solar system.

And it's the third interstellar object like that that we have detected.

So he has done what we call anomaly hunting, right?

Oh, let's just look for features and then invent some reason why this might be an indication that it's an alien artifact.

Yeah, especially if you have a preconceived notion about things and try to retrofit it.

Yeah, like he's starting with, like, let's look for things that might indicate that it's alien, right?

So one thing he says is the orbital plane of the comet of 3i Atlas is about five degrees off the ecliptic, which is, you know, pretty close to the ecliptic.

And he says there's a 0.2% chance that that would be the case.

That

it would be 5 degrees and it would be in retrograde compared to the planets, the direction that the planets are going.

So, but okay, so what?

Why would

the plane of the comet be

in any way predictive that this

might be alien?

Right, would we even notice any that were not in the plane?

Well, so he is assuming that the 0.2% comes from

any possible random arranged

orbital plane.

So I looked into that because I know what you're saying, Bob.

I was like, what if we're looking for them more in the plane?

But Atlas is a whole sky survey.

So I'm assuming this isn't a whole sky survey, that it does have an equal chance of noticing things in any plane.

So that's fine.

My real problem with, I mean, first of all, if you're just going by the five degrees, it's actually 2.7%, right?

10 degrees, 5 degrees on either side of the ecliptic out of 360.

But he includes the fact that it's retrograde.

But again, he retrofits.

It's like the sharpshooter fallacy.

You know, he's drawing the bullseye around the hole.

So why?

So he says because it would make it harder for Earth, for observers from Earth to detect

and therefore to intercept it with chemical rockets.

That's

like they know

chemical rockets.

Exactly.

All about us.

That's one problem with that.

I mean, it's also,

that's a secondary problem with that.

That's why it's not.

The primary problem is like, so what?

You know,

you could have found, invented some reason why an alien might desire any possible feature, you know, parameter of this comet.

This is not something that you could predict ahead of time.

Again, you're just completely retrofitting.

But yeah, there is this deeper problem of, and he

connects to another point that he makes.

You know, this is like, I think, his worst point.

He says, you know, so at the speed it's going, it would have entered our solar system 8,000 years ago.

And he says, wait, wait, do we know enough of its orbit yet?

Does it know its orbit?

That's what he says.

He said, this was roughly when human-made technologies became advanced enough to start documenting history on Earth.

Oh, here we go.

Again,

so the frick what?

So, well, I mean, he's saying that the aliens knew that we were interesting at that point, right?

So then they sent the probe to take a look at us.

But it makes no sense at all when you think about it.

So, first of all, why are you starting your count at the beginning of our solar system?

Where did the probe come from?

Right.

Outside the solar system.

Yeah, but we don't know where.

Yeah, right.

You know, that's completely arbitrary to say that that's when it was the aliens decided to send a probe our way.

And also, because that's when we started to document our history.

So what?

That's not when civilization became a project.

Again, talk about searching for any justification,

right?

There's nothing special about 8,000 years ago.

That's such motivational.

Yeah, totally.

But, Bob, then you relate that to the...

Well, they sent it...

So he makes another point that it will get to its close approach to the sun when it's on the opposite side of the sun from the Earth, right?

So its perihelion will be hidden from an observer on the Earth.

Because

that would be the best time for it to fire its rockets to change its orbit, to stay in the solar system, and

observers from Earth wouldn't be able to see it doing that.

No evidence.

Well, again,

it's astrology-level retrofitting.

It's like,

so it's making so many assumptions

about the motivations of the aliens,

these alleged aliens who were sending in their probes.

First of all, think about this.

So, if he's arguing 8,000 years ago, the aliens decided we want to take a look at that planet, and then they orchestrated this orbit so that, you know, 8,000 years ago, so that it will be in the plane of the ecliptic, so we could, it could send probes or take a look at multiple planets, you know, on its way in, but be hard to detect for an astronomer on Earth and also make maneuvers on the opposite side of the sun hidden from Earth.

So that assumes that we're at a particular place in technology, 8,000 years in the future.

And not only that, but that particular

chemical rockets, which is probably just a tiniest little blip on our technological time CL, right?

First of all, we could have fission rockets right now.

We had them in the 60s.

We were testing them.

I know it's like technology.

It's a quirk of

history why we don't.

It's a quirk of history.

It's not a foregone conclusion that there's going to be any prolonged period where we only have chemical rockets.

Also, Steve, if that thing's

trying to hide its trajectory change on the far side of the sun, we could still detect something happened.

Like, wait a second, that trajectory makes that new trajectory makes no sense.

We would immediately know something happened.

And he said, because that way it could come and then visit the Earth.

It's like, then why hide itself from us if

it's going to come visit the Earth anyway?

Steve, you're not a Harvard astronomer.

Let's face it, okay?

You don't understand.

It's almost childish.

I'm like, come on, that's your reasoning.

It is such anomaly hunting and special pleading, and it's just bad.

So, again,

almost the worst aspect of it is that it gives a bad name to academic disciplines searching for techno-signatures because I think that's a legitimate endeavor.

But when you have the face of that be somebody who's doing it so poorly and making arguments that are so transparently nonsensical, it actually is accomplishing, I think, the thing that he's most afraid of, right?

So, if you read his article, he's very defensive about sort of the academic and scholarly legitimacy of what he's doing.

He's gotten lots of pushbacks.

Yeah, for good reason, but he's missing the point.

He's saying, we need to keep an open mind.

And it would, you know, like, he's.

That's not an open mind.

Yeah, it has nothing to do with the things he's talking about.

It has nothing to do with this isn't a legitimate academic concern or having an open mind.

It has to do with your argument.

It's open your brain's fall.

That's what it has to do with.

Only that.

Your logic is crap.

And I think a lot, you know, so he needs some 101 in critical thinking and pseudoscience so that he does not fall into these blatant pitfalls.

Read our book.

Read our book.

Start there.

You could start there, absolutely.

And then become a listener.

So frustrating.

And then, you know,

he finishes up by jacking off, right?

Just asking questions, kind of approach.

He's like, he says.

That is a hilarious excitement.

J-A-Qing off.

I love it.

Just asking.

This is towards the end.

Our paper is largely a pedagogical exercise with interesting realizations worthy of a record in the scientific literature.

By far, the most likely outcome will be that 3-Eye Atlas is a completely natural interstellar object, probably a comet, and we await the astronomical data to to support this likely origin.

Nevertheless, when viewed from an open-minded and unprejudiced perspective, our paper includes many compelling insights that could be applied to tens of interstellar objects that are expected to be detected over the next decade by the Vera C.

Rubin Observatory.

No, it doesn't.

It doesn't include compelling insights.

It includes horrible logic and terrible arguments.

And that's the problem.

But you can see how defensive he's being, trying to justify what he's doing.

That actually would have been cool if he came up with a list.

You know, if he said, now, Atlas, okay, Atlas, I'm sure it's a comet, but here's things that we could look for in the future that could be interesting and informative and somewhat anomalous.

And we've got to come up with real things to look for.

Actual anomalies and something that might have some predictive value.

Now, the problem with the predictive value thing is that we don't have any.

You have to wait millionaires.

We don't have any gold standard, right?

We don't know how to judge how predictive any feature is is because we have nothing to compare it to.

We can't say we've seen this before, and these are features that we can statistically correlate with interstellar objects being an alien artifact, being a natural phenomenon.

We're just speculating.

Again, he's just speculating very, very poorly.

I think that he almost admits by saying that it's overwhelmingly likely to be a natural object.

He's admitting that all of his things together have almost no predictive value.

I think, though, he thinks it has a small predictive value, whereas I think it has zero predictive value.

It has zero predictive value because the methods he's using are so bad, because he's anomaly hunting and retrofitting and special pleading.

The fact that he also now runs an organization that gets donations to do this,

you could make of that what you will.

At least he's consistent.

That's not a good thing, though, when you're consistently bad.

That's not a good thing.

He clearly has learned nothing over the last seven years after his Amuamua experience.

Yeah.

It reminds me of Ralph Cramden.

Ralph Cramden, you know, screws up.

Yeah.

Remember the honeymooners?

He screws up again and he says to his wife, Alice, no one's 100%.

You know, no one's 100%.

And his wife's like, you are.

You get it wrong every time.

No learning curve that I can detect.

All right.

Anyway, Bob, tell us about this belly fat jab.

All right.

Fat in the news.

Fat in the news.

Taiwan's Callaway Pharmaceuticals announced a first-in-class injectable drug that safely, appears to safely remove fat cells near the injection site.

Not just shrinks them, they're gone.

So their study is based on their phase two results, which were recently published in the Aesthetic Surgery Journal.

The paper's name is Efficacy and Safety of CBL514 Injection in Reducing Abdominal Subcutaneous Fat.

Blah, blah, blah.

I don't know about you guys, but Kare and I are very excited about this.

Yeah, we've been talking offline about this.

All right.

This is like, I send every week.

I send,

here's my news item, some physics or astronomy thing.

No word for a decade from Karen.

I do this, and she's like, Bob, oh my God, let's get on this study.

It's like, I bet, but way better.

I'm so excited.

Yeah, you guys don't know.

All right.

So,

why are we excited?

Do I even need to answer that?

We're human, first of all, right?

Most humans are obsessed with this uh the global weight loss industry is project is projected in 2034 to be about a third of a trillion dollars 300 more than a third 360 billion dollars by usd so what so why is this big i i don't know i have some notes here that i don't i think i'm just gonna i don't want to go on a rant but losing weight or fat is specifically is a pain in the ass right it's it's hard people are obsessed with it because it's hard and of course you've got to factor in the media, right?

Always throwing in our faces.

You know, you got to be skinny and muscular.

That's all that matters.

So it has made people into these like machines looking for ways to lose fat, to lose weight, right?

Temporary diets are horrible, right?

Because they're statistically almost certain.

to fail in the long run, right?

Restricting calories is really hard.

And trust me,

when you get a little older, it's like ridiculously hard.

My body's like, no, you're going to eat right now.

You're not going to get hungry.

I don't want you to get hungry.

It's like, I can't allow myself to get hungrier than usual.

It's just a weird thing.

I don't know if you guys are experiencing that too.

It's also, I feel like as I get older, my calorie deficits have to be more extreme because my metabolism is not what it was when I was young.

Like when I was young, I could get away with eating a lot of calories and I was more active.

But it feels like even now when I'm pretty active,

my just basal metabolic rate is so much lower than it was before.

It's just hard to get rid of it.

And I like that you were saying fat and not weight, because it's not really about losing sting, right?

It's about losing, especially belly fat.

Yeah, the dangerous stuff.

Well, I mean, and this is why Ozempic is so popular now.

It's as popular as...

I was trying to think of an analogy, as Coke in the 70s, right?

It's just

a weekly injection, and you almost certainly are going to to lose weight.

But even with Ozempic and similar GLP-1 drugs,

they're problematic.

And we talked about it on the show a bit.

They cause both fat and muscle loss.

And muscle is notoriously difficult to build.

And it's among our most precious tissues.

And losing that is actually, it's horrible because you lose...

you lose fat and muscle, then you gain fat back.

So you're actually worse off.

It'd be better if you didn't lose any weight at all because you end up with even less muscle.

So, Ozempic also is good in a lot of ways, but also bad because you're losing some muscle as well.

So, this new drug also has the added benefit of

not only killing fat cells, which is a lot better than just shrinking them because when a fat cell goes away,

it's gone.

You're not going to be building new fat cells, especially after adolescence.

It just really doesn't happen.

So, this drug, you lose the fat cells die only

near where it's injected.

So, let's talk about the drug more specifically.

It's called CBL514.

It's a small molecule drug, and it triggers something called adipocyte apoptosis, fat cell death.

This is programmed cell death.

It uses chemical triggers to do that.

It's a natural process.

Any debris, any dead cells are cleaned up by our immune systems and metabolized into energy or harmless waste products.

So this is a natural thing

that's not dramatic, that doesn't impact other critical systems of your body at all.

And

there's three possible uses for this drug.

There's the non-surgical fat reduction, which I've been mainly focusing on, but also cellulite.

This would help with that.

And there's also a disease called Durkham's disease.

Hadn't heard about that one?

That's apparently a condition that causes painful fatty tumors to build up around the body.

This sounds like this would be perfect for that, just killing those fat cells that are causing the pain.

This sounds like a great application for that.

So, okay, this new study is specifically about how this drug did in its phase two trials.

We've mentioned phases like this probably

scores of times on the show.

Phase one is essentially a small group of people, 20 to 100.

It's the first time, and it's essentially for evaluation of safety and dosage range, and if there's any obvious side effects, that's a phase one.

Phase two, as we're seeing here, expands this study to a large group,

100 people to 300 people, and then to see how effective it is and to further evaluate its safety.

Phase three, then, which could come after this, could involve hundreds to thousands of participants.

Sign me up.

Yeah.

So there is actually, I did find one drug that is similar to this.

It was an injectable drug that could get rid of fat in very small areas where it's injected.

It's called ATX101.

It stands for deoxycolic acid injection.

Is that kybella, right?

Yeah, that's what I was mentioning before.

Kybella seems to be the only thing on the market, but it's like an acid that injects and kills the fat cells with acid.

It doesn't actually induce

apoptosis.

Wow, yeah, that sounds nasty.

Currently, though, that is the only FDA-approved minimally invasive injectable treatment for fat reduction.

And it has been effective for small areas, but the side effects are scary.

We're talking about skin necrosis, hello, dead skin, ulceration, nerve injury, and infection.

So, no, no, thank you.

I won't be

going anywhere near that.

That sounds pretty nasty.

Yeah, and it's mostly not, it's not used for belly fat.

It's mostly used for double chin.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

So now CBL514 has no side effects like that that have been detected.

What they did see was the following.

So they had a phase 2A study.

So this is a preliminary, kind of like a preliminary phase two.

It was mostly proof of concept at this point.

The paper says that the drug had a favorable and acceptable safety profile as well as efficacy in reducing subcutaneous abdominal fat at multiple dose levels.

So

they show that this thing works and there was no obvious side effects.

So now the meat of the paper though

goes into the Phase 2B trials and there was two of those.

So there's two papers, one for each of the Phase IIB trials, which looked more again at efficacy and safety information.

Now the first Phase IIB trial was randomized, single-blind, and placebo-controlled.

It had 76 participants, and 80% showed a greater than or equal to one-grade AFRS improvement.

AFRS stands for abdominal fat rating scale, which is, didn't know that thing existed.

One article described it as five categories of abdominal fat ratings.

So they improved one of those.

I'll give a little more detail a little later.

The second phase 2B study was double-masked, masked placebo-controlled, and it was multi-centered, US and Canada.

And that had 173 participants.

So for both of these, the researchers found that the safety profile was very favorable.

It was consistently acceptable across both trials.

No serious systemic side effects.

The worst was a local injection swelling and pain.

Almost everyone, I think 99%, did note that there was some swelling and pain.

Some people had a little bit more pain than others, but that was really the only thing that I came across in the two papers.

In the paper's conclusion, they said: our results indicate that targeted injection consistently and significantly reduces subcutaneous abdominal fat, comparable to that achieved by liposuction, and shows a favorable safety profile.

Over 75% of the CBL514 treated participants who achieved the target fat volume loss greater than or equal to 150 milliliters required just one or two treatments.

So it worked for the vast majority of the people, 75 to 80 percent.

I believe there was some loss for, it seems I think for everyone, but 75 to 80 percent reached the target, which was 150 milliliters.

So

the other number that they throw around is like 20 the second test here, the second study,

used MRI specifically to really take a close look at the fat.

And yeah, there was like 20 to 25 percent of the of the the fat layer was gone, something like that.

So pretty dramatic, pretty solid.

So it's also, I think it's important to emphasize that this isn't just for aesthetics.

There are, you know, there are reasons to do this that are more than just, you know, how you look and how you feel about yourself.

You know, like I said, that there's also, this works for cellulite and Durkheim's disease, but the focus is on this non-surgical fat reduction.

So it's more than aesthetic.

The benefits are much broader.

Abdominal fat, especially as we age, is related to serious conditions, including this chronic pain, there's stroke, cardiovascular disease.

Even though the drug targets just the subcutaneous fat just under the skin, it does not specifically target the deeper visceral fat,

which is critical as well, because it's that fat that's that's kind of you know enmeshed around your internal organs.

It's that fat that is why men have much more heart disease than women, because we have much more visceral fat.

How quickly does it work?

Like, does it kill the fat cells within minutes?

No, I think, well, they were, I think within a week or two.

It's on the scale of weeks

when it's, you know, they were going back and testing them to make sure to see how much they had lost.

So yeah, it's fairly quick, you know, a week or so.

And you were saying it doesn't touch visceral fat.

No, it doesn't.

But

that said, they said that it seems like it could have a positive impact on the hard-to-treat visceral fat, but they need more research on that.

So there may be a little bit of a benefit to the visceral fat.

But the effect doesn't go too much farther from the injection site.

So if you're just injecting it

into your belly, the visceral fat's farther away.

So

it's not necessarily going to have a direct impact.

So it seems to be maybe a little bit of an impact, but I think that they need more research for that.

Aaron Ross Powell, but if you're already reducing your total fat store load,

then the work that you're doing may have a greater benefit on visceral fat.

Yeah.

Like if you are doing calorie deficit or you are increasing your

energy.

Absolutely.

And even just reducing the subcutaneous fat can still reduce chronic disease risk, at least.

So there definitely could be some very good benefits to

getting rid of this fat.

All right.

So the next step here is phase three, which has already started.

They're planning on over 300 participants across 30 clinical sites in the U.S.

and Canada.

If Canada even still wants to work with us at this point, we shall see what happens.

So, based on the clear results of these Phase 2 studies and the extensive preliminary work that they've already done with the FDA for Phase 3, there is hope that this drug could be commercially available sooner than

what may be typical.

One of the articles I read by Bronwyn Thompson at newatlas.com claimed that this drug could potentially be commercially available in 12 months.

That seems overly optimistic.

And Steve, I know you agree with that.

That's probably overly optimistic.

But

it could potentially be much sooner.

I don't think this is going to be a five-year, 10-year thing at all.

It could be, you know, maybe a couple of years or maybe even sooner.

I don't know.

But they're definitely into phase three at this point.

And if this gets cleared and everything looks good after phase three, then there's nothing really that's going to stop this.

And I think if this goes well, if this goes very well, this is just going to explode.

I don't know what the cost would be,

but I think this could be a Ozempic level, like,

you know, frenzy of people trying to get their hands on.

Spot reduction of fat with just some swelling and pain in the injection site.

To me, that's just like people are going to be clamoring for this.

Bob, do you think that this is going to cost a ton of money or what?

Yeah, I don't know.

Hard to say.

I don't think so.

It's only single,

it's effective after a single or two injections.

Yeah, one or two injections.

Even if they are really expensive, it's not going to be like Ozempic.

You have to keep taking it.

Yeah, for it's a weekly.

That's weekly for a bunch of weeks.

Kind of like forever.

I think that the people who go off of it gain the weight back.

Yeah, they get the weight back.

Well, the devil's in the details, right?

So, like,

if they give you a single injection and

it has a certain amount of biomass it's going to get rid of, right?

Yeah, those cells are gone.

So even if you lose weight,

if you gain weight back, you're gaining the weight with fewer fat cells.

So it's just not gonna be the same, you know, it's not gonna be the same you'd have to make whole new fat cells and that doesn't have to replace them right and that but that doesn't happen after there's like three times in your life where you actually create fat cells

the no the last main the last time that happens you know like when you're born is one and also adolescence is another one so when you're an adult you're pretty much done making making fat cells you know from from scratch so if you get rid of fat cells I like that that then they they are gone your body's really not going to create create any new ones.

And the reason why you have areas of your body, like compare your stomach to your bicep.

The amount of fat cells per unit area of your bicep under your skin is far,

there's far fewer fat cells there than in your stomach.

In your abdomen.

There's lots of fat cells there.

That's why

it gets bigger quicker than

any other place.

place in your body because there's more fat cells there.

If you remove those fat cells, that's just, you know, it's not going to be a problem area nearly as much as it used to be

with so many fat cells.

It's just they're not there.

To be clear, though, you still will gain weight.

You'll still store fat.

But the distribution of that fat storage will be altered by the fact that you have artificially eliminated fat cells from one part of the world.

So problem areas will be less problematic is another way to put it.

Yeah, but you might you might develop new problem areas, though, that are even worse than the one that you just got rid of.

of well this is i can see this being purely well you said there were some kind of like diseases that this could tackle but for the most part this is going to be a cosmetic development that is targeted towards individuals who are a relatively healthy weight or have mild like or who are somewhat overweight and not morbidly overweight yeah and who are just struggling with like basically with confidence about their bodies right thanks bob kara tell us the latest news about hormone therapy.

Yeah, not just hormone therapy.

There's actually two things I wanted to cover today that are sort of, I guess, process stories.

There are two FDA panels that convened recently.

Both of them were, I'm not sure if they were led by, but both of them,

yeah, I think they were because they were introduced at least by Dr.

Marty McCary,

who is the new FDA commissioner under the current administration.

And I'm feeling a certain kind of way, like I'm being pulled in two different directions.

So I'm going to be really curious about the insights of the team here.

So the first one, actually, I'm going to go away from hormones and come back to them in a minute, has to do with antidepressants during pregnancy.

For a very long time, a lot of research has gone into determining the safety and efficacy of basic antidepressants like selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors.

The article in the New York Times that covered this panel focuses on Prozac.

Prozac kind of came on the scene about four decades ago.

That's fluoxetine.

That happens to be the antidepressant that I take.

And a lot of research has gone into determining its safety and its efficacy during pregnant.

And although there are some potential side effects and there's some risks, low-level risks,

a slight rise in the odds of birth defects, time and time again, it does appear to be the case that the risk of a mother having untreated depression during her pregnancy outweighs the minor risk of an increased odds in birth defects.

Yet, as we know, the Department of Health and Human Services is led by Secretary Robert F.

Kennedy Jr., who oversees the Food and Drug Administration, specifically the FDA.

As I mentioned before, the commissioner is Dr.

Marty McCary.

I've read up on Marty McCary, interesting guy, seems to have a lot of legitimacy to his training, to his active

work as a pancreatic surgeon, specifically doing surgical oncology.

He trained at Johns Hopkins.

He was involved, I think, with Atul Gawanda in the surgical checklist that was developed there at Johns Hopkins.

And he was an advocate of universal masking during COVID, but he has opposed broad vaccine mandates.

And he has had some kind of concerning views about

vaccines.

At the same time, like it's it's hard to pin down whether his decision-making has been political.

He donated to Obama's presidential campaign, but he's also been an advisor to a conservative healthcare think take.

So I think that I'm hoping at least that he is a person until we're proven otherwise that is making decisions or at least personal decisions and policy decisions where there is no, I guess, pressure put on him based on the evidence and based on his clinical thoughts and feelings.

That said, we don't know.

We don't know.

He is starting to see, it's starting to seem like there's a shift in his conversations about things like food dyes and things like that.

But let's take a step back and let's talk about these two panels that he ran.

The first one is about the use of antidepressants during pregnancy and whether or not the FDA should actually add, add a black box label, which has never been there before.

Many individuals who watched the panel.

and reported on the panel have stated that they felt that the panel was very biased and very anti-psychiatry.

That many of the experts on the panel have backgrounds and agendas that seem to be anti-psychiatry.

So we had, for example,

somebody named Dr.

Yosef Witt-Doring, who is the founder of a tapering clinic that works to help patients

quit psychiatric medications.

He claimed that many women will come to him on antidepressants, and he tries to help them get off because of the risks to a fetus.

We also have two British psychiatrists on the panel that were invited by the FDA who have long records of criticizing the use of psychotropic medication, Dr.

Joanna Moncrief and Dr.

David Healy,

who have written books about

psychiatric medication and who have also served as expert witnesses on trials involving psychotropic drugs.

But there was one panelist named Kay Russos-Ross, who is an expert in postpartum health at the University in Florida, who actually made a case that antidepressants are really important in treating pregnant women, especially those who may use substances or forego prenatal care if they're not taking their antidepressants.

And so there is some concern that this panel was convening as a politically motivated panel that is,

I guess we could say, biased against psychiatric medications, and that the decision-making of the panel may not be evidence-based.

Now, if we switch gears to another panel, and this is interesting and confusing to me, and I'm again curious about your Steve, your take, but also the rest of the rogues.

Another panel that recently convened is calling for the removal of black box warnings on certain hormone replacement therapies.

Specifically, one of the things that they really focused on in this panel was the black box warning on topical estrogens.

Now, the panelists stated that many of the black box warnings that come with menopausal hormone replacement treatments are based on findings of studies that were performed when HRT dosages were significantly higher than they are today.

They were also based on studies that were performed where the average age was significantly older than the average age of those receiving HRT currently, because many people are starting hormone therapies while they're still in perimenopause, not when they're officially in menopause.

And so there's kind of a double argument that was put forward in this panel.

The first one was

all of the risks, and we're talking about potential, you know, blood clots, cardiac risks, and stroke that kind of led to the original black box warning label that was put on

these hormonal menopause products, these HRTs, was again based on a higher dosage than women take right now.

The other one is that it was all based on oral hormone, so systemic hormone, and not topical treatments like vaginal, like creams or ointments that are often used to counteract some of the symptoms of menopause, like vaginal dryness and painful sex.

So it's an interesting argument that sort of gets to the heart, I think, of one of the important conversations that has to be had when it comes to biomedical science, which is that there's the research side of things and then there's the regulatory side of things.

And the hope is that those two things play nice and that they're in lockstep.

But the reality is that very often there is either a delay or there's kind of a slowness to

titrate, for lack of a better word, the way that we regulate these things.

At the same time, there are some individuals, and I think Dr.

Jen Gunter is cited in this article, and she's, you know, a very prominent skeptic in the OBGYN space saying I am still really concerned about a lot of the side effects we don't have enough evidence to show that they're not harmful

that said

she specifically kind of mentioned that the the topical argument is one that she agrees with it's just it's it's disconcerting when we see experts across the field or across and we talk about this all the time in our discussions of biomedical science here as skeptics, right?

One of the things that we often talk about is consensus, right?

That there are certain things that are sort of without a shadow of a doubt the vast majority of experts have consensus on, and that's how

science works, right?

We look at the consensus of subject matter experts.

Then there are other places where there may be finer points that are still up for debate.

And those are really interesting edges that are important to dive into and to talk about and to try to promote and fund more thorough and creative efforts to do science in those areas.

And then there are those places where it's sort of the sharpshooter fallacy, right?

Where a decision has already been made due to a bias or an agenda that's being forwarded, and then the evidence is cherry-picked.

And right now we're living in an era where there is so much evidence.

There's just a lot of science, a lot lot of good science, but a whole lot of junk science.

And it's very easy to cherry-pick and make what sounds like an intelligent argument for almost anything.

And so it's worrisome that we're living in an era where science is deeply, deeply politicized.

And so I'm curious, Steve, in your reading, especially of somebody like Dr.

Marty McCary,

and in your reading of like these two very different panels that were convened and run by similar people, about both adding a black box warning label to something that, in my view, probably doesn't need it, and removing a black box warning label to something that I don't know if I have enough background to know if it should be removed or just altered yet.

Aaron Ross Powell, there are certain trends that I have noticed right over the last 30 years with these kinds of expert panels and the FDA recommendations, et cetera, et cetera, to keep in mind.

So, one trend is that there's a tendency to be risk-averse, to be more worried about causing harm than missing out on a benefit.

And sometimes the numbers don't favor that approach.

You know, like we, we.

Especially if the harm is not death.

Like, if the harm is not death or dismemberment.

Whatever.

Even if it is,

it's a numbers game, right?

At the end of the day.

So,

and so

even within my own specialty, I've seen drugs get a black box warning for a theoretical risk that wasn't even shown to be actually the case.

And then 20 years later, people are still avoiding that use of a medication, even though now we know there's no risk.

Well, and that's what they talk about a lot in these write-ups is the idea that this does change prescribing and it changes consumer uptake of these drugs.

Like, and here's, here's an example that I'll give you just to interject and then please continue.

I take a drug for a disorder called idiopathic hypersomnia that is massively black box.

Like it's got a black box warning and it's really regulated.

And it has a lot of really dangerous side effects and worrisome side effects.

That said, it is the only drug on the market that's FDA approved for my diagnosis.

Everything else that's given is off-label.

And there's even a drug that's somewhat off-label that's now has orphan status for my diagnosis because my diagnosis is very rare and it's debilitating.

And the risk-benefit analysis is such that because I can tolerate this drug, my neurologist and I agree, it's very much an important drug for me to take.

On the flip side of that, If you guys remember on the show, I talked at length.

I was very open about having gone through hysterectomy.

After my hysterectomy, I couldn't take birth control anymore because I used vaginal birth control.

And I had a lot of side effects from going off birth control that I didn't like.

I had an explosion in acne.

I didn't feel well.

My hormones, like my moods were all over the place.

And so as soon as I could, I got back on it.

Then I had a blood clot.

And now nobody will write me a prescription for the birth control, even though we know that my blood clot was caused by, like it was caused by an iron infusion.

And, but, but nobody nobody will come near it.

Back in the day when I tried to get on it, they were like, oh, you have migraine with aura.

We're not going to prescribe it.

And, and I remember really struggling with that.

I remember my gynecologist saying, you can't take birth control because you have aura.

And then my neurologist saying, that's outdated.

That's outdated.

Nobody takes birth control at the level they used to take.

And now it's not a risk anymore.

And so you see that different specialties are arguing.

And then, as the patient, you're stuck in the middle going, how do I get the help I need?

There is a specialty bias.

and that's just familiarity with the literature.

Because you know why?

Because neurologists read the neurological literature and internists read the internist literature.

And

they don't necessarily read each other's literature to the same degree.

And that matters.

Because, yeah, so like there's a lot of drugs where neurologists have come to a comfort level with it where cardiologists are afraid.

to use it.

And that you hit upon one was the hormone therapy in migraine with aura.

I reviewed that literature because I have to make those recommendations to my patients.

And it's like, it's not really a risk.

It was always a minor theoretical,

maybe, sort of, might be a risk.

But then you can give the

progesterone only.

And really, it's only a risk if you also smoke.

If you don't smoke, don't worry about it, basically.

There are such low-dose estrogen drugs now.

That's true.

And also, you fail to consider the risk of not treating because

that has a risk as well.

So, that's the risk aversion thing.

I think there's a bias in there that you have to think about.

And you may want to consult with multiple specialists

on big decisions for that reason, get different perspectives.

But the other thing is that even when you have well-meaning, evidence-based practitioners, there's not always an objective answer because it is risk versus benefit.

And the question is:

what is more meaningful to you?

This risk or that risk, this benefit or that benefit, and there's no right or wrong answer.

And people come to different conclusions about it.

Like I remember the same, we had the same debate about how old should we start recommending routine mammograms.

And two different panels came up with two different age cutoffs, and it was based upon

how much of a risk do you think is the anxiety caused by a false positive.

Yeah, I was going to say a big part of this is a conversation about psychological health, which I don't think historically was considered as much.

And the truth of the matter is a black box warning carries weight psychologically.

And it's very different because all drugs have a package insert, right?

All drugs are legally required to list the risks and the side effects.

At what point does it cross a threshold to require a black box warning?

And how much of that is up for debate?

I don't know.

I mean, I think that is an important categorical question.

There's also a medical legal issue here.

It's like there's a one question is, what do you think is probably the best medical decision?

But there's also the question of what is the decision you're confident you could defend in a court of law?

Yeah, those aren't always the same thing.

Black box warnings are like a don't go there kind of thing.

It's like that's people, doctors worry about that.

Yeah, it's like do it at your own risk.

But I remember asking my

neurologist, I was like, listen, is there long-term data about this drug that I take that's only been on the market for a few years, taking it nightly?

And he was like, not really.

Like, we don't, so far, it seems like people are okay, but we don't have longitudinal long-term data.

And I was like, should I be scared of that?

And he was like, well, you know what we do have is longitudinal long-term data of what happens when you sleep 12 to 14 hours a day and it's not good.

Right.

So it's like at a certain point, that sort of risk versus benefit, you're right.

We bias towards risk aversion without remembering that the do-nothing approach comes with its own risk.

Doing nothing is a risk.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But the social media TikTok universe is all about risk.

No nuance.

There's no risk versus benefit.

This is the RFK approach.

It's all about he's tixing a lawyer.

What risk can I, you know, can I scare people about approach to health care?

It's destructive.

It's actively harmful.

It's not really logic and evidence-based.

That's why I'm so curious and confused about these specific panels because one is about adding a black box label to something that does seem to have a political agenda behind it.

But another is about removing a black box label to something that I guess historically RFK and and McCary have been proponents of hormone therapy.

And so it's interesting, like, what is the motivation there?

I don't know.

More to dig into for sure.

Right, right.

All right.

Thanks.

Evan,

this is a funny story that we have a personal connection to.

We do.

Give us an update.

Tell us about the haunted doll.

Annabelle the Cursed Doll back in the news.

We covered one five years ago.

Five years.

That was the last time we spoke about Annabelle.

Remember, that's when COVID was raging.

That's how long ago that was.

I have dubbed Annabelle the second most well-recognized doll in the world.

Behind Chucky?

No.

Second Barbie.

Barbie was

there.

Barbie was number one.

Chucky was number three.

And Ken was number 14.

What about Curtis the Frog?

Didn't make the list.

Oh, come on.

You know, it's not a doll.

It's a puppet doll.

It's a Muppet, man.

Yeah, it's a little bit of a message.

Well, in any case.

And as Steve mentioned, we have seen, at least the guys have.

Sorry, Carrie, you weren't with us at the time, but we saw Annabelle up and close.

In fact, one of us, Bob, might have touched her.

No, no.

Or in the case.

I mean, in the case, it was.

It was in the case.

I couldn't get to Annabelle, unfortunately.

But I'll never forget, what's his name?

Demonologist dude, Edward.

Ed.

Oh, my God.

It's like, don't touch anything

because people have died who have touched because everything was so was so cursed.

So I'm walking behind him and literally touching everything within reach in his everything

20 years ago, whatever it was, still alive.

It's like so ridiculous.

Come on, don't touch anything.

But Bob, that might be why you can't lose the last five pounds.

It could be.

That's the curse of Annabelle working.

There you go.

There you go.

Worth it.

Totally worth it.

Annabelle is the name of a raggedy end doll, which came into the possession of Ed and Lorraine Warren.

The original ghost hunters, I don't know, did they start the genre?

Can they be concerned with them?

They gave it a boost.

I don't know if they were the first person.

Yeah.

They go back a ways, though.

1952 is when they started with their shtick.

Boy, I'll tell you what.

Well, in any case, Annabelle, Raggedy Ann doll, according to the Warrens, back in 1970, there was a student nurse named Donna, no last name, and Donna was given the doll.

Donna lived with her roommate, Angie, also no last name, and both soon noticed strange occurrences.

The doll seemed to change positions on its own and move from one room to another room when no one was looking.

Hm, and then things escalated from there.

They allegedly found mysterious notes written on parchment paper with which they didn't own, it wasn't their paper.

And it would have notes that would read things like help us.

The doll reportedly even appeared to have blood like red liquid on its hands and chest.

So they decided to seek some answers.

Donna and Angie consulted a psychic medium, who told them the spirit of a young girl named Annabelle Higgins had attached itself to the doll.

The spirit said she felt safe with the women and asked permission to stay.

So out of sympathy, the girls said yes.

But they were all of them deceived.

Because, according to Ed Warren, when they investigated the case, the Warrens concluded that the entity was not a child spirit, but a malevolent demonic force that used the Annabelle persona as a ruse to gain trust and ultimately possess a human being.

So what did the Warrens do?

They took the doll from Donna for safekeeping and for spiritual containment.

They performed a blessing and placed the doll in a locked glass case in their occult museum in Monroe, Connecticut,

not far from where we are right now.

And thus the legend of Annabelle, the haunted doll, was born, stolen by, and brought to you by the imaginations of Ed and Lorraine Warren.

And of course, the legend of Annabelle grew with every retelling by the Warrens and their acolytes, and eventually, hey, the public at large.

Annabelle became the showcase of the Warrens' collection of supposedly haunted artifacts, right, Bob?

All the things that you touched

in their collection.

And there it was, a locked glass box.

Annabelle lived where it could no longer conduct its evil doings, and a sign on it that says, do not touch.

You see, the real power is for those who touch the doll.

If they touch that doll, they become the victim of Annabelle's evil curse, which brings misfortune, misery, injury, and possibly death to anyone unfortunate enough to touch.

Now, as I mentioned, we actually got to see Annabelle among the other hoarder clutter that was in that basement.

There's no other way really to describe it.

All those magical, cursed artifacts that they curated as part of their museum of haunted objects.

So much so that the Warrens boldly proclaimed their basement, because of that collection, was the most haunted place on the planet.

And they were not just

a picture.

Yeah, I got a picture right now, and I see Annabelle, but I also see two skulls that I actually own, identical versions of those skulls, which makes me very happy.

And you too can buy them at Amazon, I'm certain.

So, guys, let me can I ask a question now?

Sure.

At this stage, in your description, right, for anyone that might not know more details about Ed and Lorraine Warren, the primary question I think that people should be asking themselves is, is: how did they not get, if those items were truly possessed, right?

Why would they feel so secure to bring all of that into their house, like literally below them?

Yeah, it's a good question, Jay.

And that is because Ed and Lorraine

claim to have specific powers of their own and training on how to handle such things.

Either that or they were full of shit.

One of those two.

Yeah,

it was one of the two.

Steve, he was a demonologist.

All right.

Do you have a degree in demonology?

I don't.

You have a degree in ballooning.

Exactly.

And Lorraine was a clairvoyant or an aura specialist.

She sees auras.

Everybody illuminates some sort of aura.

And for us, it was, you know, our auras apparently weren't good because she felt that somehow science interfered with anything good going on about our auras.

If I recall.

All right.

Well, Anna.

How did she phrase it?

How did she phrase it, guys?

Was it the science thing?

Was it the science that did it to you or something?

Yeah, she did.

She did.

She was

wanted to know how we fell from holy grace.

Very religious people, clearly.

Well, okay, Annabelle.

I think most people know Annabelle from the Conjuring movie series.

That is an extremely lucrative franchise up to date.

I checked it $2.3 billion.

This is the highest-grossing horror franchise in history.

$2.3 billion of gross receipts at the gate, Bob.

That's crazy.

That's ridiculous.

So that's it.

Annabelle's cemented into popular and horror culture.

No way around it.

Well, fast forward, okay, many years.

Ed dies in 2006.

Supposedly not related to Annabelle or any other curse.

Lorraine dies in 2019.

Also not Annabelle related.

What became of Annabelle at that point?

After Lorraine's death, the occult museum and the organization they founded, NESPER, NESPR, which stands for the New England Society for Psychic Research, became maintained, still in Connecticut, by their daughter, Judy, and her husband, Tony Sperra, who we've mentioned on the show before.

So they ran the museum.

Now, the museum was ultimately later that year shut down because apparently they've been, were in

various zoning violations for many years, having this attraction in their basement.

Oops.

So like any good huckster, what do you do?

You take your show on the road.

Annabelle and many of the Warrens' collections of oddities have turned into a traveling carnival show.

COVID slowed it down a little bit, but in recent years it went back on the road and it is still drawing pretty decent crowds.

Here is the news item for this week related to this.

His name is Dan Rivera, 54-year-old paranormal investigator and lead researcher for Nesper.

He died on July 13th, 2025, in his hotel room in

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, during the Devils on the Run tour featuring Annabelle the Doll.

As part of the tour, Rivera was traveling around the U.S.

with other members of Nesper to show off Annabelle, among some of the other things that the Warrens used to keep in their museum.

His death came after he finished a three-day sold-out stop in Gettysburg, and

the show was hosted by something called Ghostly Images of Gettysburg Tours at the Soldiers National Orphanage.

So, for what you want, you know, these places they do host paranormal and ghost-related themed events, unfortunately.

Evan, so

we got the, you know, we got this collection of like incredibly dangerous stuff, and now it was given to the daughter and the son-in-law.

Now, they have the skills that Ed and Lorraine had, the magic skills?

That's a good question, Jay.

Good follow-up on that.

No, but I've seen pictures of each of them handling Annabelle wearing black gloves.

Oh, the gloves.

So, apparently, these are plus-one magic items of some kind.

The gloves that you're coughing

that allow protection

against such things.

They have not released the cause of death for Dan Rivera yet.

They said it'll be eight to ten weeks before there is an official release or the investigation or whatever is concluded into his death.

No foul play is suspected.

It's some kind of health-related reason, but they'll tell us in a couple weeks

what the cause actually was.

I predict it had something to do with a ham sandwich.

You never know.

You never know.

That's how Mama Cass went.

And

Rivera was featured as a paranormal investigator on the Travel Channel's Most Haunted Places and served as producer for a number of other shows, including Netflix's 28 Days Haunted.

Anyone

in the world of Netflix listened to our show, you think?

I mean, would you know?

Because we're available, I guess is what I'm saying, to either come on an existing show, make a show.

We would love to offer some

rare insights and other things about our history, our investigations, a lot of the things we've come across in our now 30-plus years of having done a lot of this stuff.

And I think that would make for an interesting, at least part of a documentary, if not a documentary, unto itself.

But, so I'm just saying, Netflix, we're available.

Give us a call.

Again, no foul play

was suspected.

But again, the history of such Annabelle is that their attribute, and all these attributions are from Ed and Lorraine from their story.

So it's all ghost storytelling.

That's all this is.

Someone died in a motorcycle crash after they mocked the doll after visiting the Warrens in their museum.

A priest had a fatal car accident when the priest said something negative, apparently in the presence of Annabelle.

People have been assaulted or had marks on their bodies unexplained after having visited and perhaps somehow insulted Annabelle.

I like this one.

Even Ed Warren once had a problem.

He said, he said, on one occasion, his vehicle's brakes and power steering failed in the car.

So he had to swerve or somehow get the car to stop.

So Annabelle was the cause of that.

Apparently, he was transporting Annabelle from wherever to wherever.

And the way he got the car to stop, and then what he did is he sprinkled holy water on Annabelle in order to get the immediate effects or whatever curses she was putting on Ed at the time to go away.

There is some speculation that Ed mictorated on Annabelle.

But again, that's just a rumor.

Pissed on her.

Yeah, piss on her.

No,

I didn't want that anything.

Yeah, but there's a lot of things.

There's the secret word, mictorate.

Evan, there is a whole angle here that I'm surprised Ed didn't think of.

He should have talked to Annabelle and said, Let's open a car dealership together.

You

damage the cars as they drive by.

I'll do the repair work.

We'll split the profits.

Well, yeah, I mean, that's as good as anything else that's ever, any idea that I think has ever come out

from the Warrens and

their infamous history, as it were.

It's so convenient that they could just assign

blame or

that the doll did this, the doll did that, when

some guy died in a motorcycle crash.

I think it's disgusting that they're making claims like that.

Oh, this guy talked bad about this doll I have in my basement, and that's why

this motorist died.

You know, it's like, who the hell do you think you are commandeering this person's story to further your bullshit?

It got a lot of press this week because of this death and all the new, you know, and you're reading these news stories about it.

And they are, they're telling those stories again, Jay, about, you know, the Warren's claim that this happened and this happened.

It's like, yeah, they gave us the same stuff.

Zero evidence of any of it, obviously,

was our conclusion after they showed us their best evidence and told us things.

But it was all just garbage.

100% ghost stories.

They're the greatest ghost storytellers, perhaps, in history, but they have nothing else.

That is the Warrens.

All right.

Thanks, Evan.

Jay, it's who's at Noisy Time.

All right, guys.

Last week I played This Noisy.

Okay.

Guys, any clue what this is?

Well, there's multiple sounds there.

Something sounded like a truck, right?

Like an 18-wheeler either pulling up or driving away.

That was kind of the background.

But there was also the squeaking, kind of

struggling to open the pickle jar kind of noise.

Yeah, I heard that too.

This one is very interesting.

So I would have been able to identify this sound.

And that's only because I was exposed to it.

And it is something that once you hear, you kind of, you know, you can recognize it.

But I couldn't imagine someone straight up guessing and getting it right.

So let me, let's get through these.

Listener named Joshua White wrote in and said, hi, this sounds like an old push mower, the kind without a motor, and you have to push it for the blades to turn, right?

So he's talking about a manual push mower, which we actually had when we were kids.

It was our grandfather's push mower.

And he's right.

If you didn't, you know, you have to push it for the blades to go.

And it was hard as hell to use.

You guys remember that?

Yeah, a good workout.

It's a brilliant invention.

Yeah, no power needed.

Totally, totally green.

You have a mechanical only push mower, Steve?

I got it for just like small area spot work.

It works really well.

You got to keep the blades sharp.

You got to keep it free of rust and keep everything sharp.

Yeah.

Jay,

I used to have one when I lived in Danbury, and I used it mainly for the workout because it was a hell of a workout.

It was a good workout.

Upper body.

I remember as a kid pushing it, and I could only get it to cut about six inches of grass by the time it stopped because you got to like you push it really hard.

And I wasn't big enough to keep it going.

But anyway, they're hard.

Anyway, that is not correct, but thanks for the memory.

A listener named Dan Oberst, or he oh he gave me the pronunciation it's obersty and now that i see it i think i was wrong all these years like yes it is obersty sorry about that dan because i recognize your name and i think i've read it before so anyway dan uh said this week's who's that noisy is a sound from inside the equipment penthouse over an elevator shaft now i think this is a good guess for sure you know i've heard the noises that elevators make throughout the years of my life.

I did get trapped in an elevator once, but I didn't hear any of of these noises then.

And it was completely my fault.

I was 100%.

I was with you in Italy?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We were doing something in there.

I remember exactly what we were doing, by the way, that stopped the elevator.

Oh?

Yep.

So

it was an attempt to get the elevator to stop.

No, we were trying to rub our feet on the carpet in the elevator to produce static electricity.

Well, that seems harmless.

We did it, and for some reason, the elevator stopped, and then some dude had to hand-crank it to get it down.

And I just remember like somebody yelling to that guy in Italian.

We were in there for about like an hour and a half.

Yeah, oh, that's scary.

90 minutes, or it was a sweatbox, man.

Oh, that's awful.

Yes, but

this noisy is not anything to do with elevator shaft, but I do hear some similarities and sounds that I've heard.

Another listener named Chris Ford wrote in.

He said, Hey, Jay, is that an engine dyno?

Sounds like an electric-ducted fan spinning up, something being tested for near-future commercial aviation applications, perhaps.

Chris, you are not correct, but you are on to something.

We will continue.

Another listener named Jeremy Samuel wrote in and said, Hi, Jay.

This is the first time I've ever felt like I might have a clue what the noise is.

I think it's a jet fighter engine spinning up.

Sounds like a single engine, so I'm going to say an F-16 going from stationary to moving along the runway.

You know, and Jeremy, you're also in the right neighborhood, kind of.

But so let's do the reveal here.

I have several winners, but the first one was Ryan Hanold.

And Ryan said, the sound from this week's,

he said, the sound from this week sounds like a vertical wind tunnel getting up to speed before the flyer gets in.

It sounds like, and I get this part, it sounds like an iFly Gen 9 tunnel.

So Colorado's tunnel, Detroit's tunnel, or one of Texas's tunnels.

You guys understand what's happening here?

The iFly is the indoor what?

Indoor skydiving.

Indoor skydiving, yeah.

And he said, sounds like a Gen 9 tunnel.

So, and then he's naming the cities and where the recording happened because he knows.

Well, they know where the gen, he knows where the gen 9s are as well as the gen 8s or the gen 7s.

Which I think is freaking amazing that there are people, you know, like people that have these experiences, or it could be their job or, you know, whatever it is, like can get that specific.

I love when who's that noisy produces like someone that is like, I know what it is, and I'm going to tell you even more.

You know, it's just really cool.

All right, so guys, I've gone indoor skydiving many times.

Um, the first time I did it was actually when we were in New Zealand for the last

tour that we went on.

Bob did outdoor skydiving, at least.

Bob did real skydiving.

Yeah.

So, there is, without a doubt, a huge fan.

It's an electric fan, and you know, they actually have to adjust the speed of the fan depending on your body weight, particularly for heavier people.

You know, you can hear them turning up the knob on the fan to increase the airspeed.

And it sounds exactly like this.

So let me play it again and just imagine: you know, this is the operator increasing the speed of the fan.

Pretty amazing.

It's a pretty pretty amazing machine that actually can simulate skydiving, you know, because the air is moving fast enough to essentially lift you up.

And, you know, I saw one of the times that I did it, you know, I saw someone who really knew what they were doing and could do some unbelievable maneuvers inside those chambers.

It's incredible.

It really is.

And it's a lot of fun.

It's a really cool thing to do.

It's not so stupid expensive that you can't go give it a shot.

I think it's a great experience.

So if you're interested, you should go check it out.

Anyway, so good job, Ryan.

Very cool.

I'm curious, you didn't say in the email, but maybe you can email me and tell me why you know that information so well.

Maybe you would put, what do you do?

Installs?

All right, guys, I got a new noisy for you this week.

This is sent in by a listener named Robert Gunnardi.

And here it is.

Very cool.

All right, guys, if you think you know what this week's noisy is or you heard something cool, email me at WTN at the skepticsguide.org.

Steve, September 20th, 2025, this year.

Yeah.

We will be in Kansas.

We're doing two shows on the same day.

On September 20th, we'll be doing a live SGU recording, and then we'll be doing an extravaganza that night.

This includes all five of us and George Hobb.

And if you want to catch a glimpse of Ian, you look to the side of the stage and you might see his red hair over there.

Do not look him directly in the eye.

Trust me, just don't do it.

Go to the skepticsguide.org to buy tickets, to check it out, whatever you want to do.

There's information there.

But we'd really love it if you could join us.

There's still tickets left for both of the shows, so please check it out.

All right, guys, let's go on with science or fiction.

It's time for science or fiction.

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

We have a theme this week.

What do you think it is?

I think it's crazy politicians.

Italy.

Close.

Sicily.

It's close.

It's Malta.

Malta.

Malta.

I think most people know next to nothing about Malta.

Right?

It's just.

Because there is nothing next to Malta.

No, there's stuff there.

These are three facts I encountered while visiting Malta.

All right, here we go.

Item number one.

Despite being a small island nation notoriously crammed for space, Malta has one of the highest cars per capita in the world and the highest in the EU.

I number two, Malta contains among the oldest freestanding structures in the world, megalithic temples older than the pyramids at Giza and Stonehenge.

And item number three, the national bird of Malta is the peregrine falcon with a large breeding population on the main island.

Evan, go first.

Highest cars per capita in the world.

Okay.

Wish I knew what the population of Malta is.

I don't know.

But it's small.

Boy, I mean,

what you could walk the entire main island, I think, in a day, right?

I mean, it's really not that big.

So if you had, I don't know, if you had 100,000 people on that island, maybe, that could do it.

That could do it.

I have a feeling that one is science.

I also have a feeling the second one is science.

Some of the oldest freestanding structures in the world.

And I guess I'll use

what little I can retain from the movie Patton,

a scene in which General Patton and his entourage visit Malta, and he's giving a tour to some people of the press and others, and he's explaining certain things and how it is like one of the

its history of warfare and stuff.

So, yeah, that could have some of the oldest freestanding structures in the world, definitely.

This last one about the peregrine falcon.

So, what's it eating?

You know, right?

If I knew more about falcons, maybe I'd have a better

idea of in case this one is science, but I have a feeling it's fiction because I just don't know that there would be enough to

it's it either

the national bird, hold on, with a large breeding population on the main island.

Yeah, no, I'll say it's something else, it's not the peregrine falcon, I'll say that's fiction.

Okay, Kara.

So, oldest freestanding structures, most cars per capita, large breeding population of peregrines.

Peregrine seems realistic.

Oldest freestanding structures, I feel like.

How do you define that?

Can it be ruins?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Cars, though.

I guess the Italians do love their cars, but I don't know.

I feel like that it would have to have like one of the highest GDPs also for that to be the case.

And I don't think I know of Malta as being one of the richest countries in the world.

So maybe I'll say that one's the fiction because I don't think it's one of the richest, so I don't think it would have the most cars per capita.

Okay, Bob.

You did say that traffic was crazy, so that kind of makes me think that most, the highest cars per capita is possible.

And freestanding structures, I know there's lots of temples there, so maybe that's going to be related to that.

So I'll say that one's probably science as well.

Yeah, the Peregrine Falcon one just seems like it doesn't fit.

But I don't know, but I'm just going to say it anyway.

Falcon fiction.

Okay, and Che.

Steve, you did say to me and Bob that driving there was crazy and you couldn't figure out which way to go.

Like he was being driven by someone and he couldn't rationalize which way the car was going to go, right?

So that's crazy, crazy.

But that doesn't mean that there's a lot of cars there,

but you were thinking about cars.

The one about the...

Let me see here.

Oldest freestanding structures in the world.

I believe that one is science because

there's some pretty cool stuff there.

There is a temple to Hercules there.

Hercules.

That was Sicily, Jay.

Oh, whatever.

Oh, you gave him.

He gave him LC.

He gave him a L.

I felt so smart, Steve.

I felt so smart.

He remembered it.

He just misremembered.

But I know there's cool stuff there because Steve and I talked extensively about this.

So I'm going to stick with that.

Okay.

So we're left with the Boyds and the cars.

Which one...

Steve is a a birder and he likes bird details.

Kara, I'm trying so hard to logic something into this.

I have no clue what bird of

Malta.

I mean, the only thing I have to say is I would think it would be some type of sea bird of that, you know, because it's like an island.

It's small.

It's got to be an animal that deals with the ocean in one way or the other.

I have with me my science or fiction coin.

Do you want me to use it?

All right, Bob.

It's going to be between the cars and the bird.

So let's say, let's do this.

Because you picked the bird, you flip it for the bird, and if it comes up fiction, I'll go with you.

You said flip the bird.

Oh, yeah.

You flip the coin about the bird.

All right, that's great.

Go ahead, Bob.

Fiction.

All right.

I'm with Bob.

Steve, the bird, it is not that bird.

It is another bird.

It's a seabird.

Thank you.

Damn.

You're leaving Tara all out on her own there.

But you guys

all agree on that

one.

So we'll start there.

Malta contains among the oldest freestanding structures in the world, megalithic temples older than the pyramids of Giza and Stonehenge.

You all think that one is science.

And that one is

science.

That is science.

Malta is freaking old.

It was

conquered by so many different forces over the earth.

Phoenicians.

Oh, gosh.

Look where it is on the map.

I don't understand why.

The Maulo.

And then the Greeks, and then Carthinagians.

There were the hospitallers were in charge for a while.

Then they had to bribe Spain not to conquer them at one point.

And then

it was an

English colony for 150 years.

Finally gained its independence and became an independent nation in 1975.

So it has a long history of multiple wave after wave after wave of colonization and conquering and everything.

And it's a mix of different cultures for that reason.

And of course, whoever conquers first is going to put all their structures up there first.

Yeah, so but there was, yeah, so going back, there are these megalithic temples there, older than the pyramids of Giza and Stonehenge, you know, going back three, four thousand years BC, BC,

among the oldest in the world.

Not the oldest, but

we had this conversation, too.

It depends on what you count as a freestanding structure, but these are on the short list.

Okay, let's go to number two.

The national, I mean, I'm sorry, let's go to number three.

The national bird of Malta is the peregrine falcon with a large breeding population on the main island.

I'm really surprised

that none of you mentioned the Maltese falcon.

Well,

because I didn't, well, I thought of it, but

I strategically didn't mention it.

Okay.

Because

falconry is, in fact,

very popular on Malta.

However.

It has been for a long time.

But this is the fiction.

It's the fiction for a couple of reasons.

A couple of reasons.

First of all, the national bird of Malta is the Blue Rock Thrush.

Was that like the first thing you looked up when you were researching Malta?

It is.

The Blue Rock Thrush.

And

because

the falcon was actually endangered on Malta and they had to reintroduce it, and it's just starting to make a comeback.

So there isn't a large breeding population on the main island.

Is it a seabird?

At the same time, no, it's a thrush.

Come on.

All right, I'm happy.

But they're happy anyway.

But there is a connection with falconry and Malta.

But the Maltese falcon, you know what the connection of that is to Malta?

No.

Yes.

There is none?

Nothing.

It was a novel that was made into a movie.

It has no basis in reality.

It's pure fiction.

Yeah.

Probably Humphrey Bogart's second most famous film.

Right.

But yeah,

Falcons live on the island and they hunt stuff, Evan.

There's lots of.

It's not that far from Sicily.

And by the way, Kara, it's not Italian.

Malta has nothing to do with Italy.

Yeah, it's near it.

It's just

the thing is, it's close to it, but culturally,

it is completely different.

No, but I'm just saying, like, in terms of importing, it's right there.

There are two languages.

There are two official languages of Malta: Maltese and English.

Oh, English?

Maltese

is a Semitic language.

It's not Italian.

It's a Semitic language.

It's because of their Arabic influence.

Yeah.

And English, because it was an English colony for 150 years, right?

Ah.

Yeah.

In fact, so like one of our tour guides was saying that like 20, 30 years ago, you know, children were learned Maltese as their primary language and English as their secondary language.

And today, it's really the other way around.

They really learn English as their primary language and Maltese as their secondary language.

Just because it's such a much more of an international language.

And of course, Malta is becoming more and more of a popular destination for tourists.

But having said that, Kara, it is a popular destination for Italian tourists because because it is so close.

And so there is a huge Italian influence there now.

But historically, culturally, it's not Italian.

It has nothing to do with it.

It's in the EU and it's

where they ⁇ and they drive on the left there because it was a British colony, whereas they drive on the right in Italy, including Sicily.

Anyway, interesting.

And I heard the language, and yeah, it's unique, but you could tell that it's a Semitic language.

But it has a lot, but there's a lot of introduced foreign words into their language.

Right?

Anything modern, basically, they use the English word.

Anything food-related, they basically use the Italian word that was introduced just from the introduction of that.

But there's a lot of Arabic words as well.

Interesting, very interesting culture.

Okay,

that means that despite being a small island nation, notoriously crammed for space, Malta has one of the highest cars per capita in the world, and the highest in the EU is science.

And it is crazy.

Now,

the reason why, guys, what I was telling you is that the streets were not really made for cars, right?

And that the streets are

very narrow.

It's like, it was like you're on the edge of your seat the whole time.

You were driving in the car, going from point A to point B.

You don't know what's going to happen next.

If you're not, obviously, you know, a native.

It was quite an experience.

And we were not, we chose not to drive ourselves on the island.

So we were only like we ubered it when we had to.

Yeah, we would walk it.

Do you know why I think I got that wrong?

Why is that?

Other than just not knowing.

You misunderstood the.

Yeah, I read it as the most cars per capita.

Not one of the most.

One of the most in the world, but the most in the EU.

Right.

I don't know why I read it as the most in the world.

But it's pretty high.

It's pretty high on the list, just on number one.

You guys want.

I just looked it up.

It's below the U.S.

It's just below the U.S.

Yeah.

But yeah, most of the countries above it are like tiny countries.

They're tiny countries.

Gibraltar and Liechtenstein and San Marino.

So it's number 11 on the list, although Taiwan is out of sequence on the list.

I don't know why that is.

But anyway, so Evan, the population, 532,000.

On that small, wow, with

438,000 cars.

There's 438,000 cars on that little tiny island.

And I totally believe that having been there.

It was, you know, a lot of people driving around.

Is it all petrol or did you have any electric vehicles?

It was both.

We definitely think.

There were some electric vehicles in there.

At least there's some, okay.

But it was mostly, yeah, mostly ice engines.

And there's like no public transportation.

There's just no infrastructure for that.

Which is weird.

What's the Maltese word for Uber?

It's Uber.

They borrow English words for most modern technologies.

Hence my funny comment.

Yeah.

Even like comb, the word for comb in Maltese is comb.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's okay.

Okay.

Very cool place.

It is fun to visit a place I know almost nothing about.

You know, I just didn't really know much about it until we went there.

Very cool.

I'm glad you were adventurous that way.

Yeah, yeah.

So we went there specifically as my wife had a conference there, but they do conferences in interesting places like this.

And it's, we, we, we almost went to Malaysia a few years ago for for this conference

but it was canceled because of COVID

which was a shame because one of her co-workers is from Malaysia and they were going to host us and show us around we were really looking forward to it all got canceled due to COVID it was

that would have been perfect I know damn shame you know now that she's a tenured professor, she may be going to these conferences every year.

We'll see what interesting places they take us to.

Anyway, so good job, guys.

Yeah,

thank you.

Good job, Lou.

I mean, it was a coin flip.

It was

a coin flip.

I mean, really.

Yeah.

All right, Evan, give us a quote.

This week's quote was suggested by listener Steve from Saskatchewan.

Thank you for so much.

Ignorance is the most delightful science in the world because it is acquired without labor or pains and keeps the mind from melancholy.

Giodarno Bruno,

Italian Italian philosopher,

in the late 1500s, I think.

Born February

1548.

Italian philosopher, poet, alchemist, alchemist, astrologer.

Among other things, he's known for his cosmological theories, which conceptually extended to include the then-novel Copernican model.

Whoa, so a little ahead of his time, huh?

Well, thank you all for joining me this week.

Thanks, Steve.

Of course, Steve.

Welcome back.

Thank you.

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

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