The Skeptics Guide #1044 - Jul 12 2025

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

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

Today is Monday, July 7th, 2025, and this is your host, Stephen Novella.

Joining me this week are Bob Novella.

Hey, everybody.

Kara Santa Maria.

Howdy.

Jay Novella.

Hey, guys.

And Evan Bernstein.

Good evening, Monday.

Yeah, we're recording on Monday because I'm leaving for two weeks.

Yeah, this feels weird.

It feels weird recording on a Monday.

Yeah, very strange.

Unusual.

And typically, by Monday, I have not gotten a lot of responses to who's that noisy.

And just very coincidentally, I did get a ton of responses this time.

Because usually I'm telling Steve, oh my god, Steve, I didn't get enough.

You know, what are we going to do?

And because it takes days for people to, the numbers to really go up.

You know what I mean?

Yes, not everybody listens in the afternoon on Saturday when the episode drops.

So has this ever ever happened to you guys?

We have a bird trapped in our garage.

Hell yeah, of course.

I had one trapped in a garage.

Yeah, this is a baby red-bellied woodpecker.

Aww, baby.

And it's just dumb.

It hasn't learned yet, I think.

It's very confused and panicky.

Well, you have to teach it, Steve.

Well,

we've tried everything we could think of at this point.

It's been like trapped in a garage for three days.

Trapped in the sense it's unwilling, it's afraid to fly out?

I don't think it can find the way out.

Did you try opening the garage door?

Yeah, that'll help.

We haven't tried that yet.

You think that might work?

Well, yeah,

unlock it so it can use the handle.

Well, is there not a bird rescue near you?

That's fine.

There probably is somewhere.

I don't think they make house calls.

They might.

I don't know.

I have a friend who volunteers in Oregon for a bird rescue, and she'll go out and pick up the injured bird and take it back.

It's not injured.

It's fine.

But maybe we'll try that if we get desperate.

But it's.

The thing is, we have kind of a high ceiling in our garage and it's up in the upper half of the garage.

Wow.

And it just keeps trying to escape by going up.

You know what I mean?

It doesn't it has to go down to get out the garage door.

Of course.

And it just won't do it.

It will not get low enough to get out.

It just keeps trying to go through.

You know how you have like a little vent, yeah, in the upper part.

You keep keeps trying to go through the vent, which isn't working.

I see.

Get food out for it?

Well, we put my daughter put food and water out for it, but but I'm a little concerned that we'll sort of teach it to stay there, which we don't want to do.

We don't want it to die

from lack of water, but we're trying to encourage it to get out.

So

today we've had both garage doors open, the door, the window, like everything open that we can, keep the dog away, you know, keep him inside the house and just hope it'll see the light, you know, and follow the...

Because they look for the light to get their way out.

But I just think it's just too young to know what to do.

Aren't there bird-catching devices?

I know they have them for other animals.

Yeah.

Put some food in the box.

They go into the box.

The box closes.

You take the animal in the box out, and off it goes.

I said, We haven't gotten to the point yet where we're asking for professional help.

We're just trying to encourage it to leave.

Steve, why don't you put a little bit of food outside?

We did that.

We did that.

No.

Okay.

We have a trail.

So these birds really love oranges.

I mean, we see, I'm sure I've seen this bird on my deck eating

oranges.

And so we have like a trail of

half oranges leading outside, and it's just not biting.

Oh, boy.

And you're saying it's young?

It's a baby, yeah.

A fledgling.

So under normal circumstances, Steve, would the bird be taking cues from its parents, or would this be an independent bird by now?

No, we still see it mostly with its parents.

So where are its parents?

Don't know.

Probably just...

the other side of the house.

They might just don't know where it is.

I mean, but does that send the parents into, you know, I don't know a state of, of, you know, where they just think, oh, our baby bird left.

We're done.

We're good.

There are some, I wonder if it's right at that age, though.

There are some fledgling like morning doves that we get each season right outside of my house.

And they're on their own, but they're so stupid.

Yeah.

They'll just like sit right in the open, like right in, you know, full predation zone and be like, duh, and stare at you.

And then you get within like an inch before they fly away.

And then they like hit the side of the building or, you know, they like have a hard time landing, and you're like, oh, God, you left too early.

You are not ready for prime time.

Exactly.

Now, we could see

these birds,

these particular birds, the red-bellied woodpeckers, we could see the family.

They

come to the feeders at the same time.

And they're at the point where they're eating on their own, but they'll also be fed by the mother.

They're literally being weaned.

They show me one last time I was there.

Yeah, they do that.

They sort of puff up and flap their wings and open their mouth and like, feed me, feed me.

And the mother will feed them a little bit, but it's like, but no, you've got to do it on your own.

And so then they will eat on their own as well.

So they're just right at that point.

So it just doesn't, I guess, have the experience to know how to navigate the situation.

And it's clearly panicked.

You know what I mean?

Like it's desperately trying to fly up and out and just cannot calm down long enough to see that the light is down.

Is it pecking on the wood in the oh, so you can hear it going for the

back and forth along like the eaves on the inside oh boy and then we won't see it for a couple hours like did they get out but nope it's just hiding you know what I mean like just because there's places it can hide that we can't see it's a hybrid yeah

I'll keep you appraised

to

all right well let's move on with the regular show Evan you're going to start us off with the dumbest word of the week yes thank you steve this is the dumbest word of the week my second go at it and I hope you enjoy this word.

I found it entertaining.

I'm going to get to the word, but I'm going to use some other words to get to the word.

The first word I'm going to use is Wimbledon.

Do you know what Wimbledon is?

Yes.

Town in a tennis tournament.

A suburb of London.

Yeah, tournament.

Tennis tournament, right?

Right.

The oldest tennis tournament in the world.

Grass courts.

Grass courts, yep.

Yep.

One of the four tournaments that is considered part of the grand slam of tennis.

Like very high, the highest crowning achievement for any pro-tennis player.

And that brings us to the tennis player, Novak Djokovic, who we've spoken about, I know I've spoken about many times before on the show.

I bring him up because Wimbledon is happening this week.

Djokovic is again in the tournament.

I believe he was played today and won.

He's going to go on to the Final Eight, is where it stands.

So by the time you hear this, who knows what will have happened.

However, in his career, he has won this tournament seven times.

What?

And he has won Grand Slam tournaments, a total of 24 of them.

24 Grand Slam wins he has.

And how many Grand Slam wins does

tournaments?

So technically now, a Grand Slam is winning all four in a row.

It does not have to be in the same year.

Not on the calendar year.

It used to be, yeah, it had to be the same calendar year.

And then at some point in the 80s or something, they changed it over to, if it's four in a row, that'll count.

Six?

I could be wrong.

I'm not getting anything.

That sounds a bit high.

I haven't been in tennis year.

No, it is high, but you have to understand, this is like

one of the all-time great tennis players.

He's also one of the all-time great

cranky athletes as far as medicine, pseudoscience beliefs, anti-vax and all that stuff goes.

So I bring it up.

A couple years ago,

he became buddies with this person named Chervin Jafari.

You've probably not heard of that name before.

Used to be a real estate agent and a hedge fund dealer, dealer, but he turned into a wellness guru, a wellness expert, a supplement vendor targeting brain health, immunity, and detoxification, and a lifelong seeker of truth and knowledge.

In quotes,

yeah, so he's kind of a guru in that sense.

So the two of them hooked up a few years ago and became buddy-buddy and did some live streaming, and he has a podcast, and Jokovit's been on his podcast, so they kind of hang out together, you know, birds of a feather.

So, Chirvin,

let's see, has a website.

It's called Symbiotica, C-Y-M-B-I-O-T-I-K-A.

So let me read.

And if you go to his website, it's about, you know, you go to the about

section.

I always do that when I go to websites.

I want to know what the website is about I'm delving into.

And here's what it, and here's how it reads.

Chirvin is a pioneering force in advanced wellness, blending cutting-edge approaches from functional medicine, epigenetics, and orthomolecular science.

Ooh, orthomolecular science.

There's our word, orthomolecular.

Now, orthomolecular.

So it's what?

Molecules of bones?

A molecule.

No, ortho means a couple different things.

It could mean straight, upright, right, or correct.

Orthogonal?

Yeah, in the sense, orthogonal is used, but ortho means,

in this context, right or correct.

And molecular obviously comes from the noun molecule, which means extremely minute particle, from the Latin molecula, tiny mass.

Orthomolecular.

Who came up with the word orthomolecular?

Do you know?

Linus Pauling.

Linus Pauling, thanks.

You got it.

Definition: orthomolecular, relate adjective, relating to, based on, using, or being a theory according to which disease may be cured by providing the optimum amounts of substances such as vitamins normally present in the body.

Linus Pauling, two-time Nobel laureate, credited with coining the term orthomolecular medicine and defining its core principles.

He introduced the concept in his 1968 orthomolecular psychiatry article in Science magazine.

Pauling's vision was to restore and maintain health by using the right amounts of substances naturally found in the body.

And among the things that he was talking about was high-dose vitamin C as a potential treatment for what?

Cancer.

Cancer.

Cancer.

Oh boy, lines cancer.

Cancer.

How the mighty, mighty have not just high doses, but real.

He was the first proponent of mega doses, like super high doses.

You know, he

going beyond treating vitamin insufficiency or vitamin deficiency.

This is where we're getting the whole orthomolecular concept.

It's not that you had, you're just not just making sure you don't have a deficiency.

If you have this magical amount, you know, in the body, the body then functions super normally, you know, and you could do things like treat cancer just by having these high levels of vitamins in your body.

Pure pseudoscience, just absolutely pure pseudoscience.

That's right.

And it's not just dismissed, oh, that sounds crazy or that shouldn't work pseudoscience.

It's been studied.

In fact, it's been studied extensively, and the trials have found no consistent benefit.

In fact, harm has come from it.

Right?

Yeah, it's been 60 years.

It's not like we don't have any idea.

It's complete nonsense.

It's complete nonsense.

Yet it persists still, obviously, because we have

health gurus like

Jafari here, who's hanging out with Jovan Djokovic, helping him in whatever his

crazy pursuits are when it comes to medicine and health.

And being that this is the week of Wimbledon, therefore, our dumbest word of the week.

is orthomolecular.

And now you know a little bit more about it.

Thank you, Steve.

By the way, Djokovic achieved

a grand slam three times.

Three.

The only, only man to achieve the triple grand slam.

Kara,

do you have this one crazy trick for getting rid of traffic jams?

Oh, well, apparently.

Apparently, there's one crazy trick that would actually help make commutes faster, easier, lower our emissions.

What do you guys think it is?

Not you, Steve.

Anyone else?

If there was one thing we could change about traffic in cities.

Banned cars.

Well, there's a couple of them, but no left turn is one, and then the traffic circle is the other one that I like.

Yeah, and so it's interesting.

So I'm going to talk about both of those, Bob.

So no left turns is the solution put forward by,

I hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly, Dr.

Vikash Gaya.

He is a professor, an associate professor of civil engineering at Penn State, and he is a big proponent of banning left turns.

He does talk about traffic circles quite a bit in his publications and cites a few different journal articles where traffic circles or what they call roundabouts were described.

His opinion is that although that can sort of solve the problem, it's actually not as effective as just banning left turns altogether.

So let's talk about that.

Left turns.

Okay, if you are listening to this podcast in a country that was at some point colonized by Britain.

You probably don't drive on the same side of the road as us here in the United States.

So we may be talking about right turns in your country, but we're going to have to all kind of adjust to this left turn vernacular because that's what this news article is about, the U.S.

So, obviously, in the U.S., we drive on the right side of the road.

When you turn right, you're merging into the traffic that's flowing in the same direction as you.

When you turn left, you're merging into traffic that's flowing in the opposite direction and you're crossing oncoming traffic.

Does that make sense to everybody?

That's the main reason that it's really unsafe.

So we'll talk about safety first.

You have to cross uncoming traffic.

And if you do crash your car at this stage, because you either miscalculate how long it's going to take for you to get across before a car comes, or because another car shows up before you saw it, or because you hit a pedestrian, which would be terrible, but it can't happen.

The car-to-car crash is called an angle crash.

I've learned so much here.

And reading about angle crashes from the U.S.

Department of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, taught me that they are some of the most dangerous crashes that you can be involved in.

They can be fatal.

They're often fatal.

Okay, let's talk about statistics here.

This is a little bit hard to understand, but intersections make up almost half of all crashes.

So 40% of all crashes here in the U.S.

at least occur at an intersection.

Within that 40%, 40%, 50% of those, so that would be 20% of all crashes, involve a serious injury.

20% of those 40%, somebody help me with that math?

8%.

Thank you.

8% of those involve a fatality.

So again, when we look at the 40% of crashes at intersections, we can further break it down as well.

61% of those 40%

involve a left-hand turn.

And if you look at, I don't have the numbers on this, but if you look at all of the different ways that one can go through an intersection and you actually look at the number of cars going through any intersection at any given moment, the

frequency or the percentage of that being left-turning cars is quite low, right?

There are way more people going straight through an intersection or turning right than there are turning left, unless it's a very particularly left-hand-heavy intersection.

Most intersections, the vast majority of cars are not left-turning cars, but it accounts for 61% of crashes at intersections.

So, well over half.

That tells you that

it's quite dangerous.

But it's not just dangerous, it's also inefficient.

And obviously, it's inefficient for a lot of different reasons.

You have to wait for oncoming traffic to give you a break if you're

at a solid green light.

If you have a green arrow, sometimes you're luckier because you know that you can go across safely.

But that actually, they call this a specific phase of traffic where all of the lights are red.

Otherwise, that's called all red time, and it doesn't serve many vehicles.

And it makes intersections, it's like one of the top reasons that intersections are lower in efficiency.

Here in California, I don't know if you guys have spent a lot of time in California, but I can say

in LA,

especially for some reason, maybe it's because the infrastructure is older, it is an older city, maybe I don't know, I don't know what was going on with our civil engineers, but left-turn arrows are exceedingly rare here.

They just don't really happen.

I can kind of see a few intersections with them in my head.

Most intersections don't have them, and many intersections in LA don't even have left-turn lanes.

And so now you're talking about breaking the flow of most of the forward momentum traffic.

There's kind of an unspoken rule here.

This is just a hint for anybody who drives in LA so that people think you're a local and they don't get mad at you and honk at you.

Is that you pull out, you don't wait behind the line if you're going to turn left.

You pull into the intersection, and as the light turns to yellow, so long as nobody's speeding through, you have to check, you start going, and then it's two to three cars into the red.

That's just how it works in LA.

It's how everybody does it.

If you wait until you're fully in the clear, you're never going to get across.

And so, these are, you know, just that, just knowing that.

Think about how inefficient that is.

So, what does this researcher recommend?

Dr.

Gaia, he says, especially in downtown areas of

cities, and he cites a few different cities where this is happening, like San Francisco, Salt Lake City, and Birmingham, Alabama, left turns are either being banned altogether or they're being restricted

during peak periods.

Do you guys have any of those restrictions where you live where there's like certain traffic rules at certain times of day?

Not a lot in Connecticut.

Not in the country like this.

No.

Parking.

We've got traffic.

Parking.

Yeah, we've got parking too for like street cleaning and stuff.

But in L.A., one of the things you see a lot are signs that say anti-gridlock zone.

Yes, New York City has those.

Yeah, I'm thinking of Melrose as a good example.

Melrose is not a very wide street.

It's mostly two lanes on either side, but the outside lane is a parking lane for most of the day.

And so really it takes it down to one lane.

But between, I'm guessing here, I'm probably wrong on these numbers, let's say 7 to 9 a.m.

and then 4 to 7 p.m., it's anti-gridlock zone.

You cannot park.

You'll get a ticket.

The meters don't run.

You'll get towed because they need to widen the street for all the traffic that comes through it.

it.

I just got a kick out of how you just casually said Melrose as if.

Yeah, it's a very good

thing.

It's a very LA.

It's a

very LA thing.

It's funny living in a city where people are used to references because they see it on TV.

So it's sunny.

It's like that skit on Saturday Night Live, the Californians.

Oh, gosh, that's hilarious.

It's so sad because that is our lives.

It's like, oh my God, how'd you get here tonight?

Well, I took the 101.

Why did you take the 101?

You should have taken the watch out.

What do you think?

The 118?

What a kick.

I feel like we're also one of the only places in the country where we say the before the street name.

You guys don't do that, do you?

Like, we say the Boston Post Road, maybe.

But what about a number?

No, I don't think.

Like, growing up in Texas, you would take 35 or 75.

You wouldn't take the 35.

Oh, yeah, we don't say the number.

But in California, we all say that.

The 110, the one, the 114.

I know.

And that's how you can just tell when somebody's from here.

That's weird.

So, okay, what about roundabouts, as you mentioned?

Well, Dr.

Gaia says, obviously, roundabouts are safer because you never cross opposing traffic in a roundabout.

And for those of us in the U.S.

who go, ah, every time we approach a roundabout because they're really uncommon here, they actually are really smart and safe.

You just have to know that you're the one yielding.

Just remember that when you enter a roundabout, you yield.

Other people don't yield to you.

And then you'll be fine, right?

Wait until you can get in, go in, and then exit.

But don't wait to exit.

Just exit.

That's how it works.

And so and in like every country that I've visited in the world, people use roundabouts.

And then they come to the U.S.

and they're like, what is your four-way stop situation deal?

This is so frustrating.

But what's interesting is that roundabouts aren't always more efficient, especially in situations where there's a lot of traffic, because roundabouts can fill up.

And when they're completely full,

then there's gridlock again.

Well, it's circle lock, actually.

Yeah, there you go.

I've never seen it.

Roundlock.

Roundlock.

You're right.

I've never seen it either.

But then again, I've never seen a roundabout in a really busy part of town.

And also, I think part of the problem with roundabouts here in the U.S.

versus other countries where they were built that way from the beginning is the retrofitting problem.

They're bigger than a four-way intersection by definition.

The circle is larger.

It takes up more space.

Yeah, you might have to lose lanes or you may have to lose buildings even or tear down sidewalks.

And that's just not going to cut it in places where there's not enough physical space to build it.

And as Dr.

Gaia says, putting up a sign that says no left turns or no left turns during peak periods is a lot cheaper.

That's a lot faster and easier just to ban left turns in certain areas at certain times of day.

And then here's the last thing that kind of surprised me.

Most people would say, hey, but if I can't turn left, that means I have to turn right three times, right?

In order to go the same place.

I have to completely circle the block.

But if you are calculating for no left turns in your GPS, you're likely not going to be doing a bunch of full block circles.

Your GPS is going to calculate a shorter route where you're not turning that many times.

So calculations show, like this has been studied statistically in a typical downtown in the United States, you will drive one extra block on average if you avoid left turns.

That's not bad.

Yeah, it's really not that bad.

And here's something interesting that I didn't realize.

Even though you might be driving longer, you spend less fuel, 10 to 15% less per trip.

Because you're not stopping and idling.

Yeah, you're not stopping and going as much.

Is that already a GPS option?

Like, give me a route with no left turns?

I don't think so.

I think it's something that I know you can do no tolls.

I know you can do...

Actually, I'm going to look at both of mine right now.

Do you guys have a moment?

I remember the Mythbusters episode where they tested this, and it turned out that it is confirmed.

Right, you know, avoiding left turns is the most efficient way of driving.

Or left turns add the most inefficiencies to yourself.

Yes.

So on Apple Maps, for me, I can only avoid tolls or highways.

They should add that.

They should, yeah.

Why not?

Especially if you're doing like local driving.

As you mentioned, I heard you quietly mention, Bob, I think it's since like 2017, maybe even earlier.

But wow, in the early 70s, they started using what they called loop dispatch, where they planned routes in a right-turning loop to avoid left turns.

And then in the 2000s, they implemented a new system which minimized them.

So they may make them if they absolutely have to, but generally speaking, their routes are planned so they just don't make left turns, and it's much more efficient.

They've saved millions of gallons of fuel.

Yeah.

They've kind of been.

Why don't we all do that?

Why don't we design our cities for that?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Let's get on it, people.

Let's get on it.

There's one place that I am personally familiar with where I drive that has a no-left turn sign.

It's out of the garage where I work, where I used to work.

Used to work.

Yeah, I used to work.

And because there's a very,

the way it is, if you're waiting for somebody who's trying to make a left-hand turn, it'll really block traffic.

So they just say, don't make a left-hand turn.

People always do it anyway.

I'm always behind some jackass making a left-hand turn.

The sign's right there.

And we're waiting because you're not supposed to do this.

Yeah, it's like my Trader Joe's has a no-left turn, the place where I work as well, the hospital, has a no-left turn sign for that same reason because people in the parking structure would be waiting for ages.

It's better for me to go left out of both of those places, but what do I do?

I turn right.

And then if there is a nice big break in traffic, I just pull a U-turn.

That's fine.

Or I go right, right, right.

And even though it does add a little bit to my trip, I'm moving at least, right?

At least I'm driving and I'm not just sitting there waiting and waiting and waiting.

Because we've all been there.

We've all been behind somebody trying to turn left out of like a parking structure or out of a parking lot.

And eventually they're like, and they get in the right lane and they turn right anyway.

And you're like, yeah, dude.

Obs.

I also hate the double lights.

You know, basically

people who are backed up from one light are blocking the previous light.

Yes.

Oh, I know.

Or you have a light right after an intersection.

So people stop at the light or they, you know, they go into the intersection before

they're positive they can get through it.

It's constantly blocking traffic.

It's just really bad design.

It's bad design, but it's also, I think, bad civic engagement when people just ignore no left turn signs or do not block intersection signs.

But the fact that they don't correct it or don't correct it fast enough.

They let it go like that for years sometimes without putting something else in is mind-boggling.

Yeah.

And I think for a lot of people, their view, especially, I mean, obviously, we know bureaucracy moves very slowly, but like if it's not broken, don't fix it, I think is often a view.

Or other things are more broken and we have to put money into fixing them first.

But we do see situations where community members raise a fuss, they document, they do their due diligence, and they go to the city and they say, Look, look at these accidents, look at what's happening outside of my home, look at this problem.

Uh, yeah, your government is not going to do anything unless they hear from you that you want it done.

Doesn't mean they're still going to do it, but that's always a good start.

All right, thanks, Kara.

Jay, what's going on with the bird flu?

Oh, God, Steve.

Oh, boy.

Well, first of all, it's no longer something we can ignore.

Let me just tell you guys a horrifying statistic.

In birds and many mammals, H5N1 is close to 100% fatal.

And in humans, depending on the strain, the case fatality rate ranges from 30 to 60%.

So this is a really, really bad, bad, bad, bad virus that we do not want.

But we're not here to tell you that.

I'm here to tell you guys something completely different.

First off, what do you guys think we should be doing about this virus from a government perspective?

All the things we can.

Gaming

vaccines to help prevent it.

Vaccines,

culling animals when we know that there's a serious outbreak, quarantining,

outreach, public outreach, more information.

And, Bob, you don't care?

No.

You got the left-hand thing.

I mean, research.

Throw money at research, mRNA, all that crap, man.

Just

all right, well, I'm going to tell you soon what the experts say we should do, but

even more interesting, I'm going to tell you what RFK has planned.

And there's a spoiler here.

It's biologically inco-freakingherent what this guy says.

No, it's not homeopathy.

Is it homeopathy?

I mean, it might as well be, right?

But this all reminds me, the situation that we're in, if you remember, back in 2020, a group of scientists signed something called the Great Barrington Declaration.

You guys remember this?

Yes.

This was a

misguided document that argued that we should let COVID-19 spread through the general population and that we would build this herd immunity

while somehow protecting

all the vulnerable people, which is children and old people or people that had preexisting conditions.

It was condemned by nearly every freaking reputable medical institution on earth.

The WHO called it unethical.

Fauci said it was nonsense.

And, you know, they were both right, basically.

So now here we are, 2025.

Jay, you left out that science-based medicine round.

They criticized it as well.

I should have led with that, Steve.

I'm sorry.

Most importantly, yeah.

And who was the author on that paper?

David Gorski actually wrote those articles.

That guy is so freaking awesome.

So now it's 2025.

The H5N1 bird flu is teetering on something much, much, much larger.

So, what does our Secretary of Health and Human Services suggest?

Not only him, but he and the Agriculture Secretary, Brooke Rollins, they're floating this idea of letting the H5N1, in quotes, rip through poultry farms.

And their idea is that the birds who are naturally immune could be identified and then they can be used to breed stronger resistant animals.

The animals will be brazed.

Be raised and slaughtered.

Be bred and slaughtered.

The problem with this idea, right?

Because this is like what, you know, a five-year-old can come up with this.

Let the animals get sick, the ones that survive, we breed them and we make a super strong chicken, right?

The problem is there's zero science to back any of these comments up at all.

And he's also argued that natural infection creates more durable immunity than vaccines.

And in one case,

and in one case, he even said that he'd move these infected ostriches from Canada to his colleague's Florida ranch to further study it.

Like, you know, not like a scientific study, just let's see what happens when we move these birds down in this ranch.

You know, like, hello?

You can't just do that.

And the problem is, this is the worst idea of all time, what they're proposing.

First, commercial poultry doesn't breed on site, right?

The chickens that are there that they're going to eventually use for whatever it is they're going to use them for, they don't breed there.

Chickens raised for meat and eggs come from these centralized breeding lines that are not in the places where the farming happens, right?

The birds on farms don't pass on traits because they don't reproduce.

And he doesn't know this.

So even if some do survive the H5N1, which is very unlikely since the virus kills like pretty much 100% of the infected chickens, there is no heritable immunity happening in his scheme at all under any circumstance.

And even if there were like five chickens that were super resistant to the bird flu, and even if we could breed them, how many people are not going to have access to that protein source for how long?

Oh, exactly.

Like we're talking about just no chicken for like three years.

No chickens.

I mean, you know, you thought egg prices were crazy.

You know,

it's going to be a million times worse than that.

The entire global food system would be affected by that.

But

the biggest problem here, though,

you know, I totally agree with you, Kara, and that's an issue because we have to talk about it because that's a whole protein source.

You know, it's a huge part of the protein source in the United States, probably globally, but definitely in the United States.

But there's something even more pressing than that.

This isn't a virus that you want circulating.

The H5N1, it already infects dozens of mammal species, right?

It's out there, including dairy cows.

It's made occasional jumps into humans.

So far, the human-to-human spread, of course, you know, thank Christ it hasn't happened yet, but letting the virus persist in these high-density

poultry operations all over the country just gives it more chance to mutate, right?

More shots on goal means more goals.

At any given time, there are about 9.5 billion chickens in the United States.

9.5 billion right now.

Imagine all the chances that the virus would have to freaking mutate if all of them got the virus.

Just think about that.

It would be like this.

It would be cataclysmic.

Right, Evan, this is the way that you would do it if you want it to go bad.

This is the bad.

Essentially, what he's saying is, let the chickens evolve resistance to the virus.

But if you're going to enter into an evolution arms race between a virus and poultry, the virus is going to win.

Viruses will be fine.

Viruses evolve much quicker.

They will be winning.

That's why we always talk about antibiotic-resistant bacteria and different types of resistances in fungus and in viruses.

We don't talk about

measles-resistant people.

That's only from vaccines.

We can't evolve.

Species can go extinct from a bad pandemic.

And it's not not just chickens.

It's like all these other birds.

Right, but what about the other birds?

That's a good point, Paris.

And we're not talking about just chickens.

And they're firing on multiple cylinders here because a couple factors are very important.

The longer that the virus circulates and mutates, and the higher the number of

animals that are out there that are doing it.

directly relates to the odds that it evolves to infect humans.

So this, to me, is like it's a goddamn surefire way to have it evolve so humans get it.

And then what?

Because the fatality rate right now is 30 to 60 percent.

That could get worse with mutations.

It doesn't mean it's going to get better with mutations.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And of course, increasing infections means more exposure to infected animals from farm workers and other animals.

Yeah, so it is going to get worse, even if it were to get better in the future, which we have no evidence to support that it would.

More people will die.

You guys remember Vicini from The Princess Bride?

Yeah.

I'm just getting started.

I have more to tell you guys.

The CDC laid off around 1,300 staff, including these field epidemiologists and the lab leadership fellows.

These were the frontline responders for outbreaks.

They're gone.

The USDA's National Animal Health Laboratory Network, this was central to bird flu detection.

They lost a quarter of their staff, and their staff started at 14 people, just so you know.

State and local public health programs lost funding.

due to an $11 billion rollback in COVID-related support.

Global early warning systems, like U said, predict these were shut down or completely defunded.

Federal communications around outbreaks became erratic and weekly reports were paused, and local agencies were left completely in the dark.

And that's just my summary of all the things that I read because it was an entire page worth of things that were going on that got into more details.

This was just like the highlights, which is, you know,

unbelievable.

All right, so now let's get down to reality so everybody understands what the experts are saying in this.

The experts,

you got a couple of hits there, Kara.

One of them was immediate culling of the infected flocks, right?

But this isn't brain surgery.

This is.

No, we've been doing this forever.

We know what to do.

Expanded.

Every other country in the world does it.

We need expanded surveillance

for the evolution of the virus.

We need improved farm biosecurity.

We need rapid response outbreak teams, but they're gone.

Accelerated poultry vaccine development and financial aid for farmers that will incentivize the true reporting and, you know, not like it discourages them from covering it up by saying, hey, it's perfectly okay.

We'll give you financial support.

And again, this is the highlight list.

This isn't the complete list of all the things, but like these are the things that we've learned, you know, how to handle situations like this, and they work.

And it's as simple as that.

So, you know, what we have is we have someone who is clearly anti-vaccine and anti-you know, anti-science for the most part, who, with one decision, could put the entire country at risk, like serious risk.

Well, let's also remember, Jay, that this is also coming from the Secretary of Agriculture, who's Brooke Rollins, who is also an anti-scientist.

So she's a climate change denier.

She really has no experience in the last 30 years in agriculture.

She has like a bachelor in agriculture from in 1994.

Other than that, she's basically just been working in right-wing think tanks, not dealing with agriculture policy.

And she's a climate change denier, right?

So she basically was picked because

of her politics, not because of her qualifications or her topic expertise.

So, which again is

the recipe for a disaster?

That's a position that should be somebody who lives and breathes agriculture, who understands that specific topic and who respects science.

We put science before politics.

We have the opposite.

So, between the two of them, yeah,

I don't have much faith in any good decision-making.

So, all right, we'll see what happens over the next few years.

But this is a, this is, I think, the bird flu is the most likely next pandemic that we're going to see.

Absolutely, and it'll be some horrible mutant version.

We could get blindsided by something else.

It could happen, another crossover virus.

Can the rest of the world save us?

No.

No, I mean, they can

prevent it from being a worldwide pandemic.

I guess, is it still a pandemic if it's all of America?

It's an epidemic.

No.

It's still just an epidemic, even if it's millions?

Yeah, I think by definition, you need multiple countries.

So, I mean, the world could potentially provide, I mean, but that's really hard to do if you have something just exploding in a country like ours where there's so much global trade, where there's so many people coming and going.

It's not an isolated epidemic in a country that's less connected.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, but it's just, you know, I hope some other countries come up with some vaccinations and some other solutions, at least to make it not totally cataclysmic.

Yeah, I mean, then they are

in spite of us.

Yeah.

In spite of us, right, right.

We have to rely on other countries now to maybe save the day.

I wouldn't count on that.

I know.

I know.

It's so sad.

I know.

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All right, guys, let's get back to the show.

All right, Bob, tell us about this interstellar comet.

Oh, did you guys know our solar system is being invaded?

Yes, I did know that.

And I welcome our new invasion.

Yes, thank you.

This is the third interstellar object flying through our solar system since 2017.

It has been spotted and confirmed by astronomers.

No left turns.

It has been spotted and confirmed by astronomers, and its name is Atlas.

Have you guys heard about this?

Oh, yes, it's all over the place.

It's all over the news.

You know, scientists have theorized for decades, literally, that these rocky and icy objects from other stellar systems should be passing through our solar system.

And now it's basically, now we have the technology to start really seeing these.

And you could tell this is the third one in what, in eight years.

The first one, I'm sure everyone listening to the show has heard about because we've talked about it multiple times and in multiple different contexts.

This is the

Omuamua.

Right?

Omuamua?

Yeah.

And so

this was the first confirmed interstellar object within our own environs.

It traveled the inner solar system way back in autumn 2017.

Not immensely huge.

I mean, 377 feet, 115 meters long, but it was traveling

almost 16 and a half miles per second, 26 kilometers per second, relative to the sun's motion.

That's pretty speedy.

Omur Mura was observed.

as it was leaving.

So that makes it different than the other guys there because so there's not a lot of data that can absolutely confirm, you know, the nature of that object.

So, and part of that's why we saw some many crazy theories, like Avi Loeb saying that it was a spaceship.

Oh my God, you know, it didn't look like a comet, but it did outgas like one, and that made its trajectory very complicated.

And both of those facts actually contributed to some of these outlandish hypotheses that we were seeing.

All right, so that's Omu'omoa.

The second one that I didn't really hear that much about in 2019, this was the second interstellar object.

Borisov appeared in August 2019.

This was also the first observed rogue comet, which I was not aware of.

It was discovered by Crimean amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov.

How cool would it be to have your name attached to an interstellar object like this?

That would be so cool.

Borisov was a kilometer long, and it did actually look like a normal comet.

It had a coma, it had a tail, but it just was not from anywhere around us initially.

Okay, now the third object.

This is Atlas.

Technically it's 3i

Atlas.

What do you think the 3i stands for?

It's the third interstellar.

So that's the naming convention here.

Let's see.

It was first spotted, geez, today's the seventh, six days ago, July 1st, 2025, by the Deep Random Survey Remote Telescope in Chile.

This telescope was part of the ATLAS project.

This is the ATLAS in this context stands for the Asteroid Terrestrial Impact Last Alert System, which is a global network of four telescopes.

So, Kara, the comet is called Atlas, right?

And it was discovered by a project called Atlas.

So, is this some sort of astronomical nomenclature nepotism?

Only ask me questions here.

It's like, coincidence.

But, you know, I like to think that the discovery of the true nature of Atlas and similar objects starts with a scientist somewhere saying, hmm.

And then that would evolve eventually into, into whoa, because that's that describes the process.

So that's because of something called a hyperbolic orbit.

And Atlas has a whopper of a hyperbolic orbit.

A hyperbolic orbit in this case means that it's just unbound.

It doesn't even sound like an orbit to me because it's unbound.

It's not gravitationally bound to an object like the Sun.

So it may get close to the Sun, but it's never going to come back.

It's just, it's not bound like a planet is, right?

A planet has an elliptical orbit, not a hyperbolic orbit.

Elliptical orbits just don't have the energy to, you know, a planet in an elliptical orbit just doesn't have the energy to leave, and it comes back, you know, it's periodic.

These hyperbolic orbits that these interstellar objects have are not anything like an elliptic orbit.

They're just like, they're just like going out into infinity.

So that means that once they calculated Atlas's velocity and trajectory, then they could see that, oh yeah, this thing is going to approach the sun, and then it's just going to fly out,

entirely out of the solar system and it's never going to come back.

And that's when that's that epiphany moment, a moment where you're like, oh, whoa, man, this is an interstellar object.

Whoever was the person or people that were there when they did those calculations, they must have been like, holy crap, we found number three.

So that must have been very exciting.

So, how are these guys created?

I came across two major ways that we think these are created.

The first one is involves a gas giant.

Imagine a gas giant in some solar solar system pulling in an asteroid, say, and the tidal forces from the immense gravity and proximity of that gas giant just kind of rip the asteroid to shreds.

And then they're just kind of accelerated towards the gas giant and then accelerated out at really high velocity.

So they think that's one way some of these objects can get sent to other solar systems.

The other option is something is, what do I have?

My notes here.

I have moon fling.

What did I mean?

Moon fling.

Okay, so that means

different podcasts, I think.

That means that you've got colliding, you've got colliding planets, essentially, like the early universe, what they call it, the Great Bombardment Area, era, when, yeah, you've got planets colliding all over the place, and the energies involved there are, of course, immense, and they could fling chunks of these asteroids out into out of the solar system and into other solar systems eventually.

Oh, yeah, I see the connection here now.

So that means that some aliens could be looking right now at small chunks of the Earth caused when it collided with another planet billions of years ago and created the moon.

So that event where the Earth collided with Theia that formed the moon could have potentially, we don't know, we'll never know, but could have potentially accelerated a chunk of Earth or Thyra out of the solar system and is now interacting with some other solar, some other star light years away.

So that's an interesting idea.

Does Atlas pose a threat, Bob?

This is good.

It's not.

There is no threat.

And don't be so don't be afraid.

Don't be afraid.

It's only going to get about two AUs from the sun at its closest, and that's this December 19th.

So it's not.

It's about 180 million miles, right?

Yeah, so it's so um it's never it's not gonna it can't even get possibly close to Earth if it's only if it's never gonna get closer than two AUs.

But this is actually better news than you might imagine, because I found I read that an impact of Atlas on the Earth would be about 100 times worse than the Chicksaloob dino killer at 65 million years.

100

times worse.

That's just like.

That's a world killer.

That's yeah, that's

beyond devastating.

Yeah.

Bob, is this thing even going to be visible?

Oh, it's going to be visible, but just not to the naked eye, Jay.

You're going to need some beefy instruments to see Atlas, or

you can be an amateur astronomer with some good equipment because the equipment is just getting so good, good,

even for amateurs.

But what I can't wait for is some of the big boys or big girls to take a look at Atlas, including specifically the telescope I talked about not too long ago, the Vera Rubin telescope.

That instrument is actually, you know, that's part of its mandate.

You know, that's something that is absolutely expected.

The Vera Rubin telescope can find many objects like this over its lifetime.

In fact, I saw a 2020 paper that estimates seven of these interstellar objects could enter our solar system every year, seven every year.

So we may get the technology up to the point where

we're detecting one of these every few months, potentially.

I mean, if they're super tiny, that would be extremely difficult, even for really advanced hardware, to check it out.

But we could be seeing multiple detections every year before too long.

That's fascinating.

The other angle here is, oh, the

physical sample.

That's what I find most intriguing.

I see a lot of people asking online, what are the chances of getting a physical sample?

And it would be amazing.

You know, we've seen some amazing, right, some amazing geology in the museums that we visited over the years, right, guys?

You know, holding a moon rock or a rock that's billions of years old or Mars rock, it's really cool.

But imagine if you had in your hands

a piece of rock from another solar system.

That would be just beyond the pale, right?

Not beyond the pale.

That expression doesn't work.

That would be beyond the beyond.

That would be fantastic, right?

The bottom line, though, is that Atlas is just wickedly fast.

It was something like 26 miles a second.

This is a lot bigger than any of the other ones.

This one's bigger and brighter, and because of that, we could potentially learn a lot more from Atlas than we could have from Omuamua and Borisov.

Let's see.

Yes, 68 kilometers per second.

This thing is going so fast.

And that's one of the reasons why this hyperbolic orbit is far more powerful than the other other interstellar objects we found the the other interstellar objects amua mua and borisov were just barely um hyperbolic if one is not hyperbolic they were like two and three or four whatever this one is like is i think had a had an um eccentricity of like a six so this was extremely hyperbolic this there was no way this thing was going to stay in this solar system yeah it's just going it atlas is going too fast right now for a rendezvous.

Let's see, I had a quote from somebody.

Yeah, Professor Martin Bardstow at the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leicester.

He said, We need a spacecraft ready to do it in space, fully checked out with a rendezvous capability.

And we obviously do not have anything like that.

It would need to be there right now.

And in fact, the European Space Agency, ESA, is working on a comet interceptor project.

And I think they're going to launch that, I think, around 2029.

But even that might not be enough to catch these guys.

They're just generally going way too fast because they're hyperbolic.

They're going to be going very fast right out of the gate.

So

we might not be able to catch them for a while

until we step up some of the technology and to be able to do that and have something ready to go.

So there's not a lot more detail here.

I mean, as I said, we discovered this about a week ago.

There's not too many more details that I could find.

But I'm really excited to see what we can learn from these things.

I mean, they think about it.

They represent a direct physical connection to other solar systems.

And they're coming right to us.

We don't even have to leave.

And that's pretty convenient because if you read our book, Skeptic's Guide to the Future, you know that going out, going traveling out light years away physically to interact with these things,

it's just basically not going to happen.

It's just way too much energy, way too much time.

If we do it, it probably wouldn't be even for centuries.

So they're coming right to us, and I'd love to see what we can learn from them, learn about the origins of our solar system and other exoplanetary systems that we already have a lot of information about through our telescopes.

So yeah, I'm definitely going to keep an eye on this guy and see what we can learn from him or her before they leave the solar system.

Yeah, if that thing hit the earth, then we would be toast, right?

That would be an extinction level event.

It's like a bullet.

Can you imagine a hundred times?

I can't even imagine.

I mean, it wouldn't be like Thea, but it would be basically, yeah, it would be an extinction-level event beyond probably anything.

Yeah.

Let me ask you guys a question.

How much blood do you think

is used every year?

Oh, in terms of units of blood.

Units of blood that are donated in order to be used, you know, transfused into people.

Is a unit one bag?

It's one bag, yeah.

Steve, does this include vampire activity?

Not including vampires.

Okay.

You mean in the world or in the U.S.?

World.

I mean, come on.

How the hell can you do that?

So, how many units is it?

It's in the billion.

It's got to be the bill.

20 billion?

It's got to be the bill.

It's one of those numbers that's too big for you to wrap your head around.

It's 118 million.

100 million.

118 million units.

That's all?

I said it.

You said 100 million.

That's less than I thought.

Ah, Bob, I didn't hear that.

Check the tape.

Bob said 100 million.

All right.

The recording.

Bob wins.

But here's the problem.

That's a lot of blood.

It only lasts for a certain amount of time.

And so you need a constant supply of basically blood donations from people, right?

And that's, there's no one figure for how much.

of a shortfall we have, but shortages are basically constant.

Like, we never really have enough.

And, as you might imagine, it's far worse in less developed countries.

A disproportionate amount of that donated blood is donated in high-income countries.

Even though it's a lot, it's an overall shortfall, and there's a mismatch between supply and demand.

So, it would be awesome if we could have an artificial supply of blood, right?

Impossible.

Imagine if we could manufacture blood,

It would have several advantages.

We wouldn't need constant donations.

We wouldn't have to worry about blood type.

Make exact match.

Vampires would be offset.

Yep.

Vampires would be a good thing.

No murder.

No murder involved.

How cool is that?

We wouldn't have to worry about getting infections through transfusions.

So it could be a huge advantage.

The problem is it's really hard to do.

Blood is

a very particular fluid that's highly evolved, obviously, for its purpose.

And it's just hard to mass produce, right?

Because if you make a little bit of it, it doesn't really help.

We need to make hundreds of millions of units of artificial blood per year.

You just get some water, some red food coloring, some sugar.

I mean, what else?

Yeah, that's right.

So what else?

So the

big thing,

what is the big feature of blood that we need to replicate?

Plasma.

What does the blood do?

What does the blood do that's like

food and oxygen to your body?

Yeah, it needs to have like heme.

Yeah, it's the oxygen that's the trouble.

Just carrying other stuff is just water can do that.

Plasma can do that, right?

But it has evolved to be very good at carrying both oxygen and carbon dioxide, right?

It carries oxygen from your lungs to your tissues and carbon dioxide from your tissues to be excreted in your lungs.

That's a critical part of its function.

And you know, the molecule that does that, right, is

hemoglobin.

Yeah, hemoglobin.

So that's the trick, right?

And there's basically three approaches, different approaches to try to mass produce a blood replacer.

One, I'm not going to talk much about is just coming up with another chemical other than hemoglobin that binds oxygen, you know, and could, you know, basically a liquid that you could put into the blood that.

Or like that you could make, like, I know, okay, this is going to sound kind of silly, but I did a bunch of research back when Impossible Burger came on the scene

because I had to do coverage for a lot of TV shows.

So they use something called leg hemoglobin, which comes from plants.

Well, actually, which comes from yeast.

They genetically engineer yeast, and then they take the leg hemoglobin from that genetically engineered yeast.

That's what they put in the mixture so that it, like, quote, bleeds and tastes right.

Yeah, but you can't just put hemoglobin in plasma.

That doesn't work.

So the other two approaches are ways of getting the hemoglobin in a functional state in the plasma.

One, which is being pioneered by a Japanese company, is essentially you make a lipid nanoparticle, right?

You guys remember those?

Yeah.

Right?

Like a bilipid little bubble, and then you attach hemoglobin to the outside of it, right?

Can you imagine that?

So it's just a bunch of hemoglobin attached to the outside of a lipid bubble.

And that's your fake red blood cell.

So the advantage there is it's just pure hemoglobin on the outside.

There's no other protein, so there's no blood type.

You have hemoglobin, so it works just as well as regular hemoglobin.

Downsides are does not last as long as blood, lasts for days.

Blood cells last about 120 days.

But still, if you're in a hospital after trauma or getting surgery and you're having catastrophic blood loss, you know, this could buy you time to get through the acute phase, you know.

So that's still in development.

It sort of works.

in you know proof of concept but it's not they need to figure out how to mass produce it and they need to make it a little bit it can still provoke some immune response, so they need to deal with that.

They need to stabilize it better so it lasts longer.

So that's still a work in progress, but that's one approach.

Then there's the third approach, which is the subject of the news item for this week, is basically making artificial red blood cells.

If we could, why can't, we can mass produce cells, right?

You just get stem cells.

Yeah, we can build them.

If we're going to make lab-grown meats, right, we're just going to make lab-grown red blood cells.

What's the limiting factor there?

It's just the technology of really it's the mass production part that's the that's the bugbear there.

So the original kind of approach to this was to get bone marrow stem cells, like blood stem cells, and to culture them and to produce the red blood cells through them.

But that's really slow and laborious and is

never going to be scalable to the point where it's going to have an impact on the blood supply.

More recent attempts, so as stem cell technology progressed, you know, we got to the point where we could take skin cells, fibroblasts, whatever, and then turn them into stem cells and then make them turn into the kind of cells that we want.

So, with that kind of more updated stem cell technology, that opened the door to mass-producing red blood cells through stem cells.

But this technology is tricky too.

And there's one particular piece of it that they've had a difficult time with.

And that is, so you know what's different about red blood cells than most other cells in the body?

No nucleus.

They have no nucleus.

They have a nucleus when they're being formed, right?

They're stem cells that make them have a nucleus.

At some point, the nucleus is ejected from the cell.

That's why they look squished in the middle.

Exactly.

They have that little squished in the middle shape.

What becomes of the nucleus?

Just wait, wait.

Yeah, it just gets broken down and recycled.

When we are growing red blood cells from these modified stem cells, only about 40% of the time does the nucleus get ejected from the cell.

So that makes the whole process very inefficient.

Then, of course, you'd have to find some way of separating those from the other cells.

Here's the somewhat of a breakthrough: scientists have found a way to improve that

one step of the process, getting the red blood cells to extrude their nucleus.

What they found was they identified a signal, the CXCR4 signaling protein, that promotes what they call terminal erythroblast differentiation and anucleation.

So basically, it triggers that last step in the blood stem cell to differentiate into a red blood cell and to eject the nucleus.

So this opens the door to essentially adding this, either genetically modifying the stem cell so that it does what we need it to do, or adding this to the culture or whatever.

We have to figure out now how how to exploit this piece of information.

So then the study they found that they could increase the excretion rate from 40% to 80%, which of course is a lot better.

So it makes mass production of artificial red blood cells way more likely, more viable as a technology.

We're not there yet, but it's a big step on the way in that direction.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's just an interesting technology.

Like you think at this day and age, we can't make artificial blood.

You know, it seems like we should be able to do that, but it's actually really tricky.

And again, the key limiting factor being we have to be able to not only do it, we have to be able to make hundreds of millions of units a year, otherwise, its utility is limited.

Do we have other artificial blood products?

Did I miss that?

Like the other components, like plasma?

Yeah, we can make plasma.

Okay.

But it's not as good as real plasma, though.

Because

the real plasma has the proteins in it, like the albumin.

But that seems like it's something we could add.

No?

Like, it's just an eggs.

Speaking, we got to worry about it.

It's all the immunogenicity.

It's gotta be a

reaction.

It's gotta be human, yeah.

Hemoglobin is a protein.

It's just a protein.

And we could build proteins from scratch, amino acid by amino acid.

We can build them.

I guess that's just ridiculously slow process to even.

It's not just that, Bob.

Just having the hemoglobin isn't enough because you can't just inject hemoglobin into the blood.

It's got to be.

I know, but I mean,

that's a critical component, as you say.

Yeah, but so you know where we get the hemoglobin right now?

We just want to get just naked hemoglobin.

Cows?

Pigs?

Yeast?

No.

No, they get it from

expired blood donations.

Oh, they can extract it.

Yeah, so if a blood don't if a unit of blood that's been donated is just aged out, it's too old to give to somebody, they could then use that.

So it's human blood.

They can use it to get the hemoglobin out of.

So they can get an actual human hemoglobin.

But then you can you can

enough expired blood don't?

Not really.

That's the thing.

So not enough of it, and you still have to then attach it to that lot that lipid nanoparticle.

You know what I mean?

And then stabilize it and do other things to it so that it actually functions.

Because otherwise, if you just inject hemoglobin into the blood, it'll just get broken down in two, three days.

You know what I mean?

Proteins don't survive long, proteins are constantly being turned over, right?

So, they need to be stabilized.

Anyway, it's an interestingly difficult technology, but we are making good progress.

And this is the kind of thing where we may cross the line to a viable product in the next 10 years or so, something like that.

And it could have a huge impact on medicine, you you know just to be able to just crank out and get rid of all the transfusion reactions all the infectious disease that gets gets transmitted through blood donations don't you don't have to constantly be having blood donation campaigns and constantly just trying to make up for a shortfall of blood it would be really transformational what about typing is that is like would they just by default be in like an O, universal donor?

Probably.

For the hemoglobin, there's no type.

That's an advantage.

For the red blood cells, it is a type.

But the thing is, you can manufacture rare blood types, right?

So that's another advantage there.

Oh, negative.

Well, you could also manufacture, I mean, I hope we get to this point where you just take somebody's blood.

If the issue is just that they need more, not that they need their blood to be different, that you can just take somebody's blood and make more of it.

Well, you could take somebody's skin cells, turn them into stem cells, and make blood from their own cells.

You could do that theoretically.

All right, guys, let's move on.

Evan, tell us about the wonderful benefits of beekeeping.

beekeeping.

I will, and it's also a local science news item because this article talks about New Haven, Connecticut.

Yeah, this one was written up over at ZME Science, a very good science website for interesting science news.

The author is Ben Seale.

He writes about, yeah,

beekeeping.

Tucked away in the shaded corner of a community garden in New Haven, Connecticut, a beehive awaits.

It's called the Honeybee Project, a nonprofit that offers youth beekeeping training in a therapeutic context, focused primarily on those with experience in the foster care system.

They've been around since 2018, and they have graduated 11 cohorts from its 15-week program, which helps teens develop job skills and build community with humans and insects alike while tending to a hive.

This is neat.

The founder and board member, her name is Sarah Taylor.

She's a licensed clinical social worker with a background in child and and family therapy.

She says that the process helps the young beekeepers navigate and heal from the depression, anxiety, and trauma many of them have experienced during their often turbulent childhoods.

The interconnectedness of the bees seems to strike a chord, she says.

Okay, so is keeping a beehive a legitimate form of therapy?

I mean, is it good for a person's psychological health?

On the surface, just thinking about that alone, without digging into it at all, you would think, yeah,

you know, you give somebody a project, you know, it gives them a focal point, something to focus their attention on.

This one happens to be outdoors, you know, you're not in front of a screen.

So, yeah, that should be good.

You're tending to animals, almost in the form of a pet in a way.

You're caring for it, you're interacting with it, you're helping it out.

Hopefully, you're not getting stung in the process.

Make sure you're not allergic before taking up the practice.

Now, the only way to know if you're allergic to a bee sting is to get stung by a be.

Is that right, Steve?

I don't know that there's a test to see if you are, if a person is allergic.

They can always expose you to...

Yeah, so there is.

There is a sterner.

But it's a bee sting.

Yeah.

Okay.

That's how all allergy tests work.

All the real ones.

You give you just a small, very small minute dose of allergies.

You do give a little intradermal.

you know, dose of the thing and you see if you get a reaction.

Got it.

Well, at least that aside, you know, this seems to touch on some of the broader aspects of therapy that should do more good than harm.

At least that's what it seems.

The article suggests that there's been a very long-standing set of anecdotal evidence that beekeeping can help people who are dealing with mental health issues.

One example has to do with the actual buzz, the noise generated by the bees.

They say it can help people address issues such as dislocation and disconnection, where dislocation refers to a state of being displaced displaced from one's usual context, leading to feelings of loss of identity and a sense of not belonging.

Disconnection refers to a state of feeling separated or alienated from oneself, others, or one's environment.

Here's another example they give.

There is an Army veteran who turned scientist.

He published some early research showing reductions in anxiety and depression and improvements in overall health among military veterans engaged in beekeeping as a recreational therapy.

The title of the study was called Healing Hives Exploring the Effects of Beekeeping on Veteran Mental Health and Quality of Life.

Here's a little piece from the abstract.

Veterans experience higher risks of suicide and mental health disorders due to traumas of military service, disabilities, and the difficulties of reassimilation into civilian life.

Therapeutic interventions using human-animal interactions have shown promising results in reducing many risk factors affecting veterans' quality of life.

This quality improvement project sought to consider if veterans participating in a recreational therapy program focused on beekeeping and administered by the Department of Veteran Affairs would experience quality of life improvements using a standardized EQ 5D 5L assessment.

Our results indicate significant changes in immobility, anxiety, depression, and overall health for veterans participating in beekeeping as a recreational therapy.

Okay, there's another study found a positive effect on stress and well-being among college students who took part in beekeeping.

This one was titled Beekeeping as a Therapeutic Modality to Address Stress and Increase Well-Being for Undergraduate Students.

Also from the abstract, the purpose of this study was to develop a pilot program to explore the impact and therapeutic potential of beekeeping as a modality to reduce stress, improve mental well-being, and increase nature connectedness among undergraduate students.

Evidence from the participant interviews indicates that experiences with beekeeping activities and education engendered an overall beneficial impact to patients' perceived stress, nature, connectedness, and well-being.

Okay,

back to the veterans for the moment.

Here was a more robust evidence-based study.

His name is Adam Ingreo,

who has a PhD in entomology, former veteran as well, has shared his experience with over 15,000 veterans who have taken part in something called Heroes to Hives, which is a nine-month program that combines beekeeping education and training with mindfulness and therapeutic practices.

Well, they describe it as the first evidence-based findings on beekeeping's benefits for veterans in therapeutic,

in a journal called Therapeutic Recreation Journal.

The research documented the beneficial effects on mental health of a program run at the VA by a recreational therapist,

including reductions in feelings of anxiety and depression, as well as increases in positive feelings regarding overall health.

And there are others.

So, I guess, you know, and the efforts here are to what, quantify and measure these effects of beekeeping as a therapy, but trying to do it more in an evidence-based way rather than just relying on anecdotes

and other stories of the past.

I mean, hopefully there will be more science-based studies in the future as a result of these early efforts, but I don't know that can we conclude anything at this point?

No, these are basically pilot studies.

They're not really isolating beekeeping as a separate variable.

You know what I mean?

Right, it could be any kind of animal-related therapy.

It's like you combine it with these three other things that people say they feel better.

That's kind of the level of evidence that we have at this point.

I struggle with my opinions on these kinds of things.

Like, these kinds of studies make me roll my eyes a little bit.

I don't know you guys are going to hate what I'm about to say.

Well, I mean, but how do you know it's the gatekeeping part of it?

That is, that's what I'm saying.

I don't, but I also don't know if everything has to be sliced and diced so scientifically.

When I'm working with a patient and they're struggling and they engage in activities that help them build community and feel responsible for something, and it improves their mental health, you know, self-reported mental health.

Okay, then do that thing.

That thing is healthy for you.

It is psychologically healthy for you.

It is not causing harm.

You're engaging in something that is, you know, contributing to your

positive mental health.

Like, there's just so many variables.

There are going to be some people who aren't helped by beekeeping because they're like, I don't like bees.

I agree with you, Kara, totally.

Where I have a problem is when somebody then takes it to the next level and creates like the beekeeping therapy institute, you know, where they claim

some kind of magical benefit from bees.

And they, you know what I mean?

Yeah, it's like it's not the bees, it's all the other ingredients.

And that's why it's important to understand the difference between the actual ingredients that have an effect and all of the stuff in between.

And my guess would be if we could, and you can't always do this with complex behaviors, but if we could tease out all the different variables, we'd be talking about exactly what you mentioned at the beginning, Evan.

Feeling responsible for something, creating something with your own two hands, engaging in nature, engaging with other organizations.

Right.

Not being in front of the screen.

Yep.

That's generally good.

Not holding up in your house.

Yeah.

Getting out, fresh air, all that good stuff.

But it's the same thing if you're riding a horse and petting a horse and changing a horse and a horse.

Walking dogs, volunteering to walk dogs.

Totally.

And that's fine if you want to call that, I guess, animal-assisted therapy, but it's no different than just going to a farm and hanging out with animals.

Or art therapy, where you're drawing pictures to get the same effect.

It's just don't confuse the non-specific effects

with something very super-specific.

We know that socialization is important for mental health.

We know that feeling like you are in control of something.

We know that caring for something, feeling responsible for the outcome of something is deeply important for mental health.

Yeah, and if it's a hook or a gimmick, that's fine.

Just again, just don't charge 10 times as much for it because all of a sudden it's therapy.

With something magical or specific, yeah.

Exactly.

Yeah, and don't start making the leap that, oh, all of a sudden B-venom therapy is going to be good as a result of this or something.

You can start going in different directions.

Bees are psychic.

All right.

Thanks, Evan.

Thanks.

Jay, it's who's that noisy time?

All right, guys.

Last week I played This Noisy.

That's strange, huh?

Sounded like there was a bird in the background.

Is that important to the noise or no?

If there are birds in the background, what does that tell you?

In nature.

Okay.

Or it's in Steve's garage.

Yes, thank you.

Or it's in Steve's garage.

It's in Steve's garage.

But that wasn't the sound of a red-wet-bellied woodpecker.

No, it was because you used the app to tell you that.

That's right.

Got it.

So, a listener named Joe Lanondria wrote in and said, Hello, Jay.

This week's noisy immediately reminded me of flapping dragonfly wings.

So, combined with the background sounds that are perfectly consistent with this, I'm going to make this my guess.

It is not the flapping of dragonfly wings, but thank you for sending that in.

Shane Hillier wrote, It's a woodpecker fighting something, some hive of bugs

a nest of rattlesnakes.

That is also incorrect.

David Kleperek wrote in and said, Hey guys, we're finishing up our two-week-long road trip while we listen to the podcast.

Our family guessed that this week's noisy is a box of bugs that are complaining loudly when someone bangs on it.

And that's actually got some truth in it.

They hit on a couple of things there.

So we have a winner.

The winner was Hakon Lund.

And Hakon said, Hi, what you're hearing is someone banging their fist on the surface of a termite mound, resulting in the termites making their warning sound by banging their heads on their surrounding surface.

So, this is actually a whole bunch of termites that are inside some piece of wood.

You'll hear someone tap on the wood with their hand, and then you'll hear like that rattling noise, and that's the termites banging their heads against the wood.

Listen,

crazy intense.

That's a lot of termites.

Well, have you ever seen one of those mounds in nature?

They're insane.

Yeah, they're huge.

I think these were soldier termites, and that's like a noise defense mechanism, essentially.

So don't mess with those guys because they'll bang their heads like crazy.

Jay, if you want to extract them, what you do is you take a stick, okay, and you poke it into the mound and pull it out, and then you can eat them.

You can eat them, yeah.

Just like

a lollipop.

That was my plan.

So Shane Hillier actually wrote in a guest this week, and Shane Hillier sent me a very cool noise this week.

So I'm going to play you the sound right now.

Does that sound familiar to any of you?

Not to me.

I mean, it's a spinning up sound.

I don't know specifically.

Well, this is definitely something and it's very cool.

And if you think you know what it is or you heard something cool this week, you can email me at wtn at the skepticsguy.org.

Steve, we have a show in Kansas on September 20th.

It's going to be a really good time.

We're all really looking forward to it because

we haven't seen Kara in a while.

Yeah, it's been too long.

And we've never been to Kansas before.

Well, not as the SGU.

Yeah, so we're going to be doing two shows.

We're going to be doing our private

SGU recording, which means that you'll be sitting there watching us record an episode, and there is audience interaction.

These shows are a lot of fun because we kind of go off the rails and we let it all hang out, right, Bob?

Oh, yeah, always hanging.

And then, and then that night, we're going to be doing our stage show.

This is called a skeptical extravaganza againza, a ganja, aganja, Steve, different show, extravaganza, it's the Aganza, right?

Okay, the Aganza of special significance.

And,

you know, how do we describe this show?

Well, first of all, we basically, during this show, show you how you cannot trust your senses.

And we will absolutely prove to you that you can't trust your brain.

Your brain is trying to kill you.

Or at the very least, your brain is trying to give you a version of reality that is nicely smoothed out and isn't actually that accurate.

And many, many times during this show, we do some improv.

stuff that George is leading and it's super fun.

It's really funny.

We really do get a great response.

We've been working this show for, God, is it 15 years now?

And it's been refined to the point where every single second of it is just awesomeness.

So I hope you go.

If you're interested, you can go to the skepticsguy.org website and you can find ticketing information for both of those shows.

Jay.

Yeah.

As long as we've been doing this show, I still always mistitle it, A Skeptical Extravaganza of Some Significance.

Yeah, it's of special significance.

Of special significance, okay.

Which Which is, it's fine.

I mean, you know,

if you think about it, you're correct.

You're just not at the right magnitude.

Yes, exactly.

You're conflating what Perry used to say when he would quote, would do the quotes, he would say, a skeptic of some note.

There you go.

Yes.

So at some point, that you know, those two things blended for you.

I have an idea, Carol.

We'll leave that up to the audience.

Some people might think.

They can determine how much significant specialty.

Yeah, some people might think special.

All right.

Thanks, Jay.

One email.

I'm not going to say who it's from.

I'm only going to paraphrase it because it's from an insider at Verizon.

This is in response to my discussion last week of

all the tech difficulty I had in transferring my phone over to my private account and then updating my phone.

And it did seem like the experience that I had was certainly different than my prior experience with tech help.

Usually, if you get with an actual person, they walk you through the process and everything goes well, right?

I don't know if that's the experience you guys have had with this kind of thing.

So the the insight that they what do you think is the thing that may be different

recently that might be

with Verizon or just in general that might be frustrating this tech help experience

AI that's correct

so you know what they said was that there's now so it used to be that the tech support would have access to the back end, right?

They would know they could do everything themselves, right?

So they could walk you through the process, they could troubleshoot it, etc.

Now,

essentially, AI does that, and that's kind of being forced upon them, and it was rolled out too quickly.

And now the

agents themselves don't have the control that they used to have.

And also, he said that the AI is optimized for upselling.

Of course it is.

Trying to get you to get more services or whatever, not necessarily

to optimize your experience.

Because that's why people call us tech support, because they want to buy more stuff.

Yeah, right.

Have you considered upgrading to the blah, blah, blah?

Yeah.

So, which kind of makes sense because it was different than my experience in the past.

Usually, like you go to the tech genius, those kind of people, they kind of know what they're doing.

So he, you know, basically he was saying, because that's this is what his job is.

And he's like, yeah, this is the problem is that they're forcing this

AI on us that is premature.

It's not really working well.

And this is causing all sorts of problems.

Like getting error codes that nobody knows how to interpret.

Like nobody understands how it works.

So I do think this is

a problem

that goes beyond AI and a problem in general is that, again, as we were saying, if you're trying to move very quickly, constantly turn over new versions of things,

and it's very easy to, you know, it's the whole move, dash, break things kind of approach.

I think the companies themselves are kind of overwhelmed with their own technology.

They don't really understand it.

That doesn't really work very well.

And

it shows.

My fear is that this is going to become the norm.

It's kind of like the difference between calling a helpline and talking to a person and calling a helpline and getting an AI assistant.

You guys have all had that experience, right?

Of course, yeah.

Or, like, oftentimes, you, I mean, I like it when there's a choice, right?

You go on a website, you have a simple question, it's like, here's the chat bot, ask it the question, and if they can't figure it out for you, then here's the number you call exactly.

If it's simple, if it's like the thing, I just need to know the hours or whatever, something really simple,

then it could be handled with a chat bot or an AI assistant or whatever.

That's fine.

But they do need to make it easy to get to a person if it's something that's more complicated.

And I get it.

It costs money to have people crewing lines, and you need to, you know, this is a money-saving feature.

But that should be calculated into the cost of the technology that we are paying for.

Yeah, right.

Because when a mediocre option becomes, maybe it's good enough, you know, becomes available, then that's, you know, but it's cheaper, you know, it's cheap and mediocre.

That's what we're going to to get.

And it just kind of sucks, you know.

It does.

And like, it's one thing if you're buying a piece of hardware, a piece of tech that has a certain shelf life.

It's another thing if you're buying a service.

When you're buying a technological service, it needs to work.

And if it doesn't work, that should be factored into the cost of the service, is fixing it.

Yeah.

But in a

capitalist system, the customer service does count for something.

Customers do have some power to vote with their dollars, to vote with what they use, but we have to demand it.

So I think the biggest problem is if we become complacent with mediocre service.

And we don't think we deserve or don't demand better.

And I think that sort of

I don't want to call it an idealized view, but that view only works if we're in a true capitalist system where there is choice.

But when you're talking about, oh, I have a choice between four multinational corporations who all own each other and are different subsidies of each other and have like similar kind of levels, then it's sort of an illusion of choice.

Aaron Powell, well, that's why we're supposed to have trust busting, right?

We're supposed to not have trustbusters.

But that has to be functional itself, which it sort of is.

And it's never perfect, but it's not non-existent either.

It's somewhere in the middle, and that sort of fluctuates from administration to administration, too.

But that's why it's so critical.

Without competition, the whole system fails, right?

Because then there is no incentive to do better.

I always use the DMV as my example.

With no choice and no incentive, whatever, everything's the DMV.

Not that they don't get their job done, but you know what I mean.

That's sort of the classic example of a horrible customer service experience.

Right, yeah.

It's poster chart, you want to call it that.

But I will say, the DMV does get everything done, and in a relatively

different way.

It's gotten over my life.

It has.

And some of it's now online.

You can renew your license online.

You don't have to go.

Right.

So, there are some things that is finally doing better.

Yes.

It's better than when I was younger.

Yeah, 20, 30 years ago, you walk into the DMV, there's that massive line, you're like, oh my God, worse than going to the dentist.

I'd rather have a toothpulled.

Yeah, it was bad.

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

It's time for science or fiction.

each week I come up with three science news items or facts, two real and one fake.

And then I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake.

We got three regular news items this week.

Are you guys ready?

Yes, sir.

Here we go.

Item number one: MIT scientists have used forced mutation to increase the efficiency of a key photosynthetic enzyme by 25%.

Item number two, researchers have published a clinical trial of an anti-rejection treatment that allowed 95% of kidney transplant recipients to come off all immunosuppressive drugs and 75% to remain off for greater than two years.

And item number three, a new study finds that space ice is entirely amorphous, lacking any form of crystallization as seen in typical ice on Earth.

Evan, go first.

Number one, scientists have used forced mutation to increase the efficiency of a key photosynthetic enzyme by 25%.

I don't see a problem with this, but it's one of those things where, oh my gosh, you really should be going crazy.

That's a huge number in this regard, but I don't know.

But it doesn't seem like a problem just on its surface.

The second one, about

this published research, a clinical trial of an anti-rejection treatment.

95% of kidney transplants.

That's big.

Okay, that I do know.

95% of kidney transplant recipients to come off all immunosuppressive drugs.

75% to remain off for greater than two years.

That seems very, very impressive.

I don't know if I can ask this question.

Is this based on it already being like pre-matched in a sense?

So these are just you've already

done as much matching as you possibly can.

Since you're going first,

this is also a dense item, so I'll give you some background.

So these are just people who've already had their kidney transplants.

The kidney transplants came from living-related donors.

All right, that's very impressive.

I have a feeling that's science, and that one's very cool.

This last one is about space ice lacking any form of crystallization as seen in typical ice on Earth.

I suppose that could be, you know, a lot of things going on on the Earth that just don't happen, other parts of the universe.

So why wouldn't this crystallization be different?

It could be different.

It would be different.

Well, I guess based on just my ignorance alone, I have to go with the force mutation one, maybe as the fiction, just because I really don't have a good way of quantifying that one where the other ones, at least I have some idea what's going on.

Okay, Bob.

For this first one here, force mutation of photosynthetic enzyme by 25%.

Yeah, that seems nice.

I know that there's various enzymes related to photosynthesis.

So it's not like, and you do say it's key, but I think there's more than one key enzyme here.

So just having one changed by this amount isn't necessarily like a Nobel Prize moment necessarily.

So I'm just going to use that little tidbit of information to maybe think that that's probably science.

The rejection, the, yeah, 95% kidney transplant.

And you did say that it was a family member and this is just a clinical trial.

I mean, that would be wonderful if this translates through, you know, to, you know, just everyday use.

That'd be fantastic if these stats didn't change that much.

That'd be great.

I could potentially see that more so than I could see this third one with this different type of entirely amorphous ice.

Yeah, what's getting me is that it's lacking any form of crystallization as seen in typical ice on Earth.

Well, you do say typical ice.

Fuck.

Yeah, that kind of kills it because, I mean,

well, I would have thought that we would have noticed this.

I mean, it's not like we can't reproduce

the environment of space, whatever key attributes they're keying in on here,

whether it's vacuum or temperature, or maybe I'm just space ice is a thing that I'm just not familiar with, what the attributes are here in terms of what their environment is.

Ah, man, I don't know.

This is a good one.

I mean, I'll just go with the amorphous ice is fiction.

Okay, confident.

The one that I would know the least about is the amorphous ice one.

Can I, you may not be able to answer at this point, but does space ice mean any ice that's not on Earth?

It's formed in space.

Could it be on Mars?

No, no, it can't be on Mars.

It can't be, it has to be formed in deep, in space, not on a planet.

Okay.

Okay.

And so it sounds like Evan was saying that we've long thought that space ice is amorphous, and this is reinforcing that.

I don't know anything.

So amorphous, meaning that it's like I'm assuming it's like random.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's not ordered.

Yeah.

It's on random.

So the one that bugs me, I guess, in that one is that it says entirely.

Like anytime it's like completely 100%.

I'm like,

I don't know about that.

But the other two are both amazing if this is true.

Increasing the efficiency of an.

And I do like that Bob pointed out, so thank you for that, of a key photosynthetic enzyme, not all photosynthetic enzymes, but by 25%.

Either way, that's incredible.

I wonder how much it increases the efficiency of photosynthesis.

Probably not 25%,

but that's incredible and really important.

And then a published clinical trial.

I don't know if that's a, so that would be a phase.

It was phase three.

It was phase three.

Okay, yeah, because I was going to say, it just says recipients.

It doesn't say if they're animals.

No, they're human.

So they are people.

It's a human phase three clinical trial.

Yeah.

That's amazing.

Okay.

So so this means that like these folks did it.

They did it.

This is probably going to be the norm now.

And if that's the case, that's credible.

And so I think out of hope, I want this one to be science.

So I'll go with Bob and say

maybe space ice is not entirely, but somewhat amorphous.

Okay, and Jay.

You know, my question about the amorphous ice thing is, you know, if there's liquid water or, you know, some form of water in space and it's not ice, and it's going to turn into ice, then there had to be a reason why it wasn't ice, some type of heat source or whatever, right?

You follow me?

Oh, yeah.

So

that means that there would be temperature variations enough for there to be some type of water, and then and then it would, then there's ice forming from some of that water.

I mean, I know this sounds kind of obvious, but like it felt like it needed to be said, Steve.

So, therefore, how could all the ice be amorphous if

water is in different states in outer space for some reason or another at certain times or not, right?

Is that a big assumption?

Bob?

That there's such a thing as space water?

Oh, we can quit you.

I don't want to know.

I can't say anything to you.

Well, I mean, it just makes sense because at some point, right?

I don't know.

This is like one of those things that I'll just be up tonight freaking thinking about it.

Like, I can't figure this out.

92 pounds.

But I mean, you know, I mean, when I agree with Bob and Kara, how can I not go with them?

Because Evan, I think, statistically is the one who gets it when he's on his own the most.

I don't

recall, but I occasionally nail it that way.

I would have gone with Evan, but before we started recording this show, Evan just flatly said to me, I don't know shit.

No, he didn't say that.

Yeah, I'm going to go with the ice, Steve.

I mean, you know, the thing that Kara said that makes a lot of sense to me is like all ice, like all of it.

No, come on, it can't be.

Okay, so you guys all agree on the second one, so we'll start there.

Okay, researchers have published a clinical trial of an anti-rejection treatment that allowed 95% of kidney transplant recipients to come off all immunosuppressive drugs and 75% to remain off for greater than two years.

You all think this is science.

Wonderful science.

And this one is

science.

This is cool.

So, yeah, this is a phase three human clinical trial.

There were 30 people in the trial, 20 in the treatment group, 10 in the control group, which was just usual care.

You know, they got their immunosuppressive treatment, whatever they needed.

So what do you guys think the treatment is?

Some sort of, okay, anti-rejection treatment.

I think it's similar to what we might have been talking about before, where it's like their own cells did something.

CRISPR.

Yeah.

Like targeted genetic engineering.

Nano.

So these are people who already had their kidney transplants, right?

So you can't do anything with the transplant itself.

It's already in them.

Right.

It's from a family perspective.

But maybe

their own immune systems were changed.

Yes.

How were they changed?

Oh.

To not attack certain types of

antigens.

Dancing right up to it.

They delivered something to the immune system to make sure it didn't reject.

No, that it didn't recognize the kidney.

It didn't recognize something in the kidney.

So

modified bubble boy scenario.

Oh, was it the flippids?

What they did was they gave them a bone marrow transplant from the same person who gave them the kidney.

Oh, wow.

Oh.

Their immune system.

That's just me.

They gave them the donor's immune system, basically.

That's really

downside to that.

Well, you have to get a bone marrow transplant.

So they have to go through a process where they use low-grade radiation to wipe out their bone marrow, and then they give them bone marrow from the same person who donated the kidney.

That way, they're making immune cells that have the same characteristics as the kidney itself.

So they don't reject it.

We already do this for certain types of blood cancers.

Yeah, but yeah, but this is doing this tandem, like you got the kidney from this guy, now you're getting the bone marrow from this guy.

But that's so smart.

It's like, it's not like this is old technology, or it's not like this is brand new technology.

It's a new technology.

It's like new applications.

Yeah, it's so smart.

Yeah, and yeah, so 95% of the 20 people, you know, so that's 19, were able to come all the way off their immunosuppressive drugs, and 15 of them were able to remain off for greater than two years, which is huge.

You know, because the immunosuppressive, like the lifelong immunosuppressive drugs, that's the big downside to transplants.

For sure.

And I think a lot of people would be willing to go through some short-term.

I mean, it's probably painful what they went through, but some short-term pain for that lifetime gain.

Yeah.

But would their immune system

slowly drift and kind of reset to their implications?

It depends on how thoroughly they wiped out their immune system to begin with.

But yeah, but it did last for more than two years, you know, in most of the patients.

Let's go back to number one.

MIT scientists have used forced mutation to increase the efficiency of a key photosynthetic enzyme by 25%.

Evan, you think this is the fiction?

Everyone else thinks this one is science.

And this one is

science.

This is also science.

Yeah, baby.

This is very cool.

There's a lot of research looking into how to improve the efficiency of photosynthesis.

But this one is great.

So they used

treatments to increase the mutation rate in order to basically create more raw material.

And then they, first of all, what do you think the enzyme was?

Guys, know anything about photosynthesis?

Yeah, but

it's very complex.

It is complex.

This is the, we've talked about it before, which is the only reason why I ask.

This is the Rubisco.

You have a one and a two something with those two.

This is the Rubisco enzyme, R-U-B-I-S-C-O.

So this is the step where

carbon is taken from carbon dioxide and incorporated into the sugar molecule, right?

So photosynthesis uses light energy, right, to make ATP, and then it uses that energy in order to incorporate, you know, take in carbon dioxide, take the carbon, and build a backbone of a sugar.

That's how it makes its own food from the sunlight.

That step of incorporating the carbon into the sugar is the rate-limiting step.

That's key.

So while, yes, there are more enzymes, this is by far the slowest step.

It's massively rate-limiting.

So any improvement in this step improves the whole process by basically that same amount because the other steps are not rate-limiting.

Does that make sense?

That process,

the Rubisco

enzyme catalyzes the first reaction in this process called carboxylation.

Carboxylation is taking the carbon from the CO2 and adding it to the ribulose biphosphate, which is the sugar backbone.

The sugar.

But the other reactions happen as well.

It's also possible that oxygen will combine with the ribulose instead of carbon dioxide.

And that is a huge waste because it's not making the sugar, but it's using up energy produced by photosynthesis, right?

Oh, interesting.

So, did they change it so it can't bind to oxygen?

Yes, that was the whole goal.

The whole goal was to reduce the percentage of reactions that are to oxygen instead of carbon.

And so they did that.

So they took the enzyme from a bacteria that typically lives in a low oxygen environment.

And then they used quote-unquote directed evolution, right?

So they sped up the random mutations and then they bred it in a high oxygen environment so that it would it would

basically introduce a selective pressure to make it tolerant to oxygen, meaning it doesn't react.

Their

Rubisco enzyme does not catalyze.

So it's a mutation to that enzyme so that it does not react with

oxygen.

And it doesn't affect its respiratory ability, right?

It doesn't mess up that side of the function of the plant.

Well, yeah, this is bacteria, but no.

Oh, in bacteria, okay.

So does that make sense?

So this way, so now you have an enzyme that has a higher percentage of reacting with carbon, a lower percentage of reacting with oxygen, and that increases the efficiency of the whole process because you're not wasting photosynthetic energy on this side reaction.

That's not what you're trying to accomplish.

That's great.

Yeah.

Did they say, I mean, I know that your wording here says that it increased the efficiency of this key photosynthetic enzyme by 25%.

Did they say how much it increases the actual efficiency of photosynthesis?

They haven't incorporated it into a plant.

So

if you include in quote-unquote photosynthesis the process of turning sunlight into sugar, it's 25%, right?

Because the rate-limiting step was increased by 25%.

But

just doing background research for this item, there's multiple other research efforts in this direction that have increased the plant growth by 40 to 60%.

So this does translate really well into increased plant growth, you know, increasing the efficiency of this sunlight to sugar, basically.

So there's other things as well, like, you know, there's basically two kinds of photosynthetic pathways, the C4 and the C3.

Right.

C4 is more efficient than C3, like corn has C4,

but rice and wheat have C3, so they're trying to get wheat with the C4 pathway so that it'll be more efficient.

But they're also improving the efficiency of the corn, the C4 pathway.

But again, and a lot of that is featured around limiting the oxygen side reaction, right?

Because that's a major source of inefficiency in the whole process.

But also just speeding up the rate at which it does the reaction, because it's only like 10 per second, they said.

It's really slow.

And it's the rate-limiting step.

So they want to increase the rate, decrease the side reaction,

increase the overall efficiency, and get the more efficient pathway into the plants that don't have it.

And

there's like multiple research efforts that are all getting pretty close to the finish line here.

So we could be seeing, you know, GMO varieties in the next decade incorporating

this.

Yeah, and that's going to be, that's just a huge direct boost to production, you know.

Yeah, I love to like, I love how things are named in the sciences.

Rubisco is short for ribulose 1,5-biphosphate carboxylase oxygenase.

Yes,

exactly what it does.

That needs to be.

Well, yeah, but I mean,

if you really look at what it is, so it's Roo, Bi, Sko.

But if you look at what it is, I mean, it's in the name.

That's so cool.

I love it when names are technical like that.

Absolutely.

It tells you exactly what it does, and then they shorten it and make it kind of roll off the tongue.

Yeah, like Bodhi McBoat phase.

Now, this last item is more interesting than it may at first seem, but let me tell you about it.

So, a new study finds that space ice is entirely amorphous, lacking any form of crystallization as seen in typical ice on Earth.

That is the fiction, but there's interesting pieces here.

So first of all, space ice is, Carrie, you got it right, it's mostly amorphous.

Okay.

So why is that?

Why would ice that forms in space be mostly amorphous when ice on Earth crystallizes?

Well, is it implied that ice is made from water?

Yes, this is implied that it's made from other things.

This is water ice.

This is water ice.

It's interesting.

So the amount of energy involved.

Yes, exactly, Bob.

So if if you're freezing at near zero temperature, there isn't enough energy for crystals to form.

Right, so I guess that crystallization process takes a little bit of energy.

And if you're close to absolute zero, you don't even have that little bit of energy to form crystals.

And so you get just this amorphous structure.

But they used to think that space ice was entirely amorphous, but the new research finds that it's actually partially crystallized.

But the crystals are these nano-crystals.

They're very tiny.

So it's a mixture of amorphous and nanocrystals.

That's the new part.

We used to think it was entirely amorphous.

So that's what made this fiction.

So it does have crystals.

But what I found interesting was the reason why space ice doesn't have crystals.

Like, there isn't enough energy for crystals to form.

So they've never made ice near absolute zero then in lab, in lab work?

They've never looked at ice formed at those

incredibly cold temperatures?

I guess not.

If they would have seen this.

Yeah, I guess so.

I mean,

this is partly experimental and partly simulations.

That sounds really hard to do, though, practically, right?

Like, you have to produce a vacuum chamber that is at absolute zero or close to it, and then somehow, without breaching it, introduce water.

Because if you have the water already there, it's just going to crystallize as it goes to temperature.

Right.

Even if it's flash frozen, frozen?

Well, that's what I'm saying.

You'd have to either go to temperature immediately.

Can you flash freeze to absolute zero?

I mean, we've gotten down to nano Kelvin.

I mean, it probably would be a

complicated process to get down to that temperature just by itself.

But yeah, to do it instantly.

It's going to go through a phase in between where it crystallizes, probably.

It's also hard to see the nanostructure of the ice.

They use X-ray diffraction studies.

But I guess

only they could directly look at it.

Steve, is what I said

happening, by the way, about the ice and the heat and all that?

It depends on what the temperature was in the environment where the ice formed, right?

Like if you have water in a geyser shooting out of Enceladus, it's shooting out into very cold space, right?

Yeah.

As opposed to freezing at just below freezing temperature, you know, on Earth, basically.

Very different environment.

All right, so good job, guys.

So comet ice would be this almost amorphous.

Yeah, and what's interesting, again, reading this,

this should be obvious, but it's fun to think about it.

Most of the ice in the universe is space ice.

Yeah.

Sure.

Yeah.

That makes sense.

Okay, Evan, give us a quote.

You know what you get when you combine space and ice, right?

Spice ice.

Spice.

Ice.

Oh, God.

Here's the quote.

That the scientific literature contains errors and that attempts to replicate the findings of published studies frequently fail, is surprising to many who are new to science.

However, failures to replicate and challenges to the published literature are common in all branches of science.

And that was written by Gregory McCarthy, professor of psychology at Yale University.

Steve, you ever had any run-ins with Professor McCarthy?

No.

I have not.

You sure?

It's a small school.

Yeah,

thousands of people there.

Yeah, that's that's I frequently have to remind people of that in the comments.

You know, we were like talking of my blog, for example, when people are like, oh, they, you know, they changed this

or they discovered that this was wrong.

It's like, yeah, that's the normal process of science.

Welcome to science.

Discovering that things are wrong and then correcting it.

I talked about this on TikTok.

So it was on, like, Joe, you know, somebody was on Joe Rogan says on Joe Rogan's show, and they were laughing about the fact that

some of the research that claimed to find dinosaur DNA and that dinosaur DNA was very bird-like, or specifically T-Rex DNA, and then it turns out that it was chicken DNA and that it could have come from contamination.

This is the greasy finger hypothesis, right?

Contamination from the researchers themselves, the archaeologists.

They would have chicken for lunch, they would get their greasy fingers on

the material, and even a tiny bit of contamination could be amplified, you know, by PCR, et cetera, and cause that signal.

So, some contamination, whether it's the greasy finger or not, is probably the case.

But it's like, yeah.

And there's a kind of, you know, it's just a clip of them laughing about this.

It's like, all right, little perspective here.

First of all, the claim of dinosaur DNA was met with immediate, profound skepticism within the scientific community.

No one bought it because DNA is not supposed to survive that long.

And then it was fairly quickly found to be probable contamination and end of story.

But

that's just a normal process of science.

It was met with it with skepticism and pretty quickly rooted out.

That's the process of science working.

That's a part of it.

That's a piece of it, folks.

Come on.

How could it not be?

Right.

And the replication is so true.

Like, you know, again, you talk to scientists, like, until something replicates, it's not real.

Right.

Like, you don't take things seriously until it reliably replicates.

And that's where every pseudoscience fails.

Yeah.

That's why even like when like, you know, Kara and I responding to this B study, it's like, okay,

you know, until this is a reliably replicatable phenomenon, it's nothing.

You know, it doesn't mean anything.

But also, sometimes it's like, why are we spending so much money on these things that, I don't know, by definition, aren't they?

They don't lend themselves to like randomized controlled trials.

You know what I mean?

Right, testability, right, falsifiability.

Yeah, it's like by definition, they're not that testable.

And then you add to that the fact that the risk-benefit analysis is only, there's only an upside.

There's no huge risk to being like, patient, go do this thing that engages you.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like walk every day for exercise.

Exactly.

Like a doctor's going to tell you that, right?

Like unless you have some sort of horrific injury where walking would be detrimental to your health, no, no physician is going to be like, I need to study this more before I determine if walking is going to improve your health.

And again, it's like this specific activity is like, you know, claiming that that's especially good for you.

Like,

I'm going to be giving you soccer therapy where you play soccer as a form of physical, you know, therapy.

It's like, or you're just doing physical activity.

Exactly.

And there's nothing specific or magical about soccer, you know, or whatever.

And it's, it's just, it's rampant in psychology.

It's like, that, like, people love to, I mean, that's like EMDR.

It's like all of it, right?

It's like if you can, if you can trademark something and sell it for more money, people are going to try and tell you that it's like somehow more valuable than other equivalently valuable activities.

But in defense of the beekeeping thing, at least it's non-profit that's...

running that particular one out in New Haven.

So we can't say, you know, there's not really a profit motive there behind that.

Yeah, but again, again, and even the other ones, I'm not sure that, you know,

no, but I don't mean there's a direct correlation.

But what the group is trying to say, and and I'm not saying this is nefarious, the group is trying to say this thing that we dedicate our lives to is specifically beneficial for these applications.

Right.

But it's not specifically beneficial.

Yeah.

It is beneficial, and that's great.

There could be a thousand different things, and this is one of them that is beneficial.

Yes.

All right.

Well, thank you all for joining me this week.

You're welcome again.

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

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