The Skeptics Guide #1019 - Jan 18 2025

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You're listening to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe.

Your escape to reality.

Hello and welcome to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe.

Today is Wednesday, January 15th, 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, everyone.

Kara, we got to start with an update.

How are you doing?

I'm good.

I'm okay.

The city is not.

I mean, I'm okay insofar as I'm okay.

You know what I mean?

Maybe.

Well, by comparison

to many others.

By comparison to many others, and also just by comparison to this same time last week, I guess we could say.

There's two ways to answer the question when people ask, how are you?

And actually, many people were sharing a meme from Broad City across social media that was like, everyone in LA this week, and it's one of the main characters going, I'm, or like, how are you?

But like, she's holding up air quotes because the one way is I'm safe and I'm not, you know, and my house is, didn't burn down.

Like, so in that sense, yes, I'm okay.

Psychologically, I don't know how okay people are right now.

We were talking off air before we, before we started recording, but the saying right now, and I think so far everybody I've talked to, there's truth to it.

If, if you live in LA, everyone in LA knows somebody who lost everything.

You know, it's, it's a communal tragedy.

And I've been working with patients all week.

I've been working, you know, with myself, with my supervisors and also friends, family members, all that.

And, you know, there's this sense that it's kind of hard to articulate, but I used a

metaphor of like, if you fall into the ocean and you're splashing and you feel like you're drowning, and then somebody throws a life preserver to you, you can look up and you can see the sturdiness of the boat that threw out the life preserver.

So very often when we're dealing with our own stuff, and I work with cancer patients, so they're dealing with their stuff,

even Even amongst the most difficult personal tragedy, there's a firmament around you.

There's a sense of security when you look around.

But these past, you know, this past week, LA is not secure.

And so it's like looking up and the boat itself is on fire or sinking, you know, and that's that's sort of the feeling that most people have.

And I think one of the hardest realizations is when you turn on the news or you pick up your phone or you reach out to somebody who's not right here and you realize that life didn't stop.

And this is always really tough in the grief process.

You're going through something really difficult and the world is still going, you know, and there's still the confirmation feelings and there's still, and you're just like, oh my God, because you feel like everything's on pause.

I feel that way when somebody close to me has passed away or died.

Yeah.

You want everybody to go, just stop for a minute.

Just stop doing all the things.

Don't you see?

Somebody died.

But, you know, that's how life is.

It's tough to be a provider against this background, especially a new one.

So, a lot of processing around that.

You know, it's like Mr.

Rogers, like, look for the helpers.

And then it's like, but who's helping the helpers?

Like, I hope that our first responders are taking up all of the offers for pro bono therapy, are

really leaning on their loved ones right now because it's a lot.

Well, we're going to talk in a little bit about some of the

just the science surrounding what's happening with the

fire.

But let's go on to some news items.

Jay, does fact-checking social media work?

Yeah, before I start, guys, I'd be curious to hear what you think.

Zuck doesn't think so, apparently.

Well,

I think it probably does to some extent.

I mean, work is a loaded question.

Yeah, it seems kind of broad.

Does it work?

This is what I think about it.

If you just tell people this is fake, that doesn't work.

If you actually suppress it in the algorithm or keep it from either going online at all or being spread, that absolutely does work.

Right, right.

Like this is demonstrably untrue.

So therefore, it is against our policy to continue to show it as if it is true.

Yeah.

Well, it turns out, you know, it's complicated.

We have statistics, but in the end, you know, there is a definite, a definite positive influence.

So let me start at the beginning here because this news item is inspired by Zuckerberg's change to Facebook's platform

where Meta announced that they have plans to scrap their third-party fact-checking program.

It's been in place since 2016, and the program, they paid independent groups to verify the accuracy of articles and posts on Facebook.

And this plan moving forward is to use a crowdsource system.

They will implement a model that's inspired by Twitter's community notes, which some of you might be aware of.

The system allows users to contribute context and additional information to posts on the platform.

And the aim is to provide clarity or correct misinformation by those community people.

So Meta says this change was made to address concerns about bias and censorship.

Joel Kaplan, who is Meta's chief global affairs officer, said the following.

Experts, like everyone else, have their own biases and perspectives.

So I think that his comment is straight up marketing BS.

And the experts.

He's loaded to me.

Right.

Totally.

The experts he's referring to, these aren't regular people.

They have a long, long, impressive list of credentials.

And I'm going to name a few of them.

This is what they typically have, you know, lots of variation, of course, but they hire people as professionals in the field, right?

So they have an academic background in the relevant fields that they're observing and that they're that they're editing.

They commonly have critical thinking skills.

They could be journalists.

They have a lot of credentials.

These are not lightweight people that come in and say, hey, look, I circled this in

the

wanted ads.

Like, no, these are people that have very strong legitimate credentials that qualify them.

And, you know, the word expert is not used loosely here.

They are content experts.

They could do lots of different things, like they could be able to source the material, you know, the comment all the way back to its source and then figure out how legitimate that source is or isn't.

Look it up.

You'll be interested to read the credentials that these people typically have.

So, Meta's new approach, like I said, is mirroring the community notes on Twitter.

And I dare say that it didn't really work that well, especially Elon Musk's version, which just throws all of that out the window.

So, an obvious question is, does general fact-checking actually work?

Right now, of course, the intent of the company has to be very firm and very good.

They have to have good intentions because they are the ultimate quality control of whatever fact-checking is happening.

In general, to answer the question of does fact-checking actually work, like Steve says,

research suggests it absolutely does.

Studies done on the topic show similar conclusions that fact-checking reduces beliefs about false claims.

I know that's an easy sentence to say, but there's a lot behind that.

But you have to

let that fact ride as it is because it is a very simple answer.

Yes, fact-checking works.

Now, of course, we can discuss for hours on what degree that it works.

And it's very hard to judge that just by the nature of what's being done here.

Jay, I mean, fact-checking has been the backbone of legitimate journalism for...

all of journalism.

Right.

I mean, it is the absolute,

it's a cornerstone of journalism.

And journalists don't share things that don't pass muster under fact-checking.

So by definition, it is, it's at least a, what would you call it, threshold, a minimum standard.

Right.

I totally agree.

Absolutely agree.

And, you know, of course, if you had total control over the information and with the intent on helping humanity, then that false information would be very short-lived on social media and wouldn't get to as many eyes as, you know, these pieces of information typically do.

But let me give you guys a, for instance, a 2019 meta-analysis of studies involving more than 20,000 participants.

They found that fact-checking had a clear positive effect on people's political beliefs, helping them to actually better differentiate between truth and falsehood.

That's great.

And that says it all right there.

The ideal scenario is to prevent the misinformation from spreading in the first place.

You want to absolutely limit its exposure to the masses.

You want to contain it as quickly as possible.

But when people are already exposed, fact-checking actually can still reduce its impact, of course, because

either they're removing it or they're putting up flags that say, you know, this information can't be verified.

It doesn't have a clear source.

That type of thing actually does have an impact.

Now, why does fact-checking still matter?

Well, fact-checking might not always change minds directly, but it does play a big role in the shaping of the online information ecosystem.

If you think about all the information that's out there online and how that information revolves around groups of people, like-minded people, people of different political beliefs, people that have core beliefs that are different, the information that surrounds skeptics is very different than the information that surrounds health and fitness people.

But one thing about misinformation is that it kind of brushes over all of those groups and subgroups.

and it does get to everybody, right?

Because it can exist in

any category that's out there.

I think it's really important to say that without the fact-checking, what we're going to see is we're going to see the proliferation of misinformation, and then there's going to be a battle that's going to be, it's going to create battlefields very similar to what we see on Wikipedia, right?

Wikipedia has approved Wikipedia editors, and they could do things like creating new pages, which is

absolutely important because as things happen,

we want to see posts that are gathering all the information.

You could go and look up the LA fires, and there'll be a post on Wikipedia about that that gives up-to-date information on it.

Now, the knife cuts both ways, because in an ideal Wikipedia situation, we have people that are unbiased and have the skill sets to do this, and they're going to do the best job that they can, and they're going to vet the information.

They're going to do all the steps that we skeptics have learned how to vet information.

But you have people that become editors that, you know, have other intentions, right?

And I've talked to Wikipedia editors that say that they're in a tug of war where they'll go on on one day and they'll add information, they'll shape it, they'll make it, you know, present reality.

And then you have people that will come in that night or the next day or whenever the next approval, whenever they can edit it again, because it's not like moment to moment.

Then what happens?

They change it and they put back in the misinformation because they're having a tug of war over that.

This is what we can expect to happen on Meta when people are going to be going in who don't have the qualifications, who really shouldn't be editing information or doing anything to

provide direction to other people on what's true and what's not true.

It's going to be a train wreck.

And

I'm really concerned because we already live in a world that has weaponized misinformation.

It's rampant.

Meta's move is a horrible sign of the web sinking deeper into misinformation.

Fact-checking isn't a panacea, but it's one of the few tools proven to have a positive impact.

And what we should be doing is leaning into it and figuring out ways to even make it more useful and more powerful.

But that's not the world we live in.

But also, why are people getting their news from Facebook?

Because

that is ship has sales.

I mean, people are using social media as a convenient way to just get information about the world.

And they may not even be looking for news so much as just looking for content, you know, but that's this is what people are talking about today.

They're talking about whatever's happening.

And so it becomes the de facto source of news.

Do you think that this is going to do for Facebook what Elon taking over Twitter did?

Like, I'm not there.

Most people I know aren't on Twitter anymore.

And every time I do reopen the app, it's a cesspool.

It's like, you know, an abandoned car that's overrun with rats.

Like, I'll look at posts and it's just it it's it's amazing the rhetoric that i see and just the spam and the bots and it i don't know what happened to it but do you think that's going to happen to facebook yeah i mean i think it would sure but i think that's the concern right it's that it's you're you're opening the floodgates i mean this is a deeper conversation about social media the fact that it if so if you have like just completely unregulated social media platform where people can say whatever they want to say and there's there's no fact-checking or editorial editorial filter or limit on hate speech or anything, then it becomes a playground for psychopaths.

It becomes a tool for propaganda of every type.

The people who have the most time on their hands and the most obsession about topics are the ones who are going to be disproportionately represented.

So it's not like, oh, it's going to be a free marketplace of ideas where the quality of the idea is the one factor that's going to allow things to rise to the cream, to rise to the top.

That's not what's happening.

That is

demonstrably not what's happening.

It's you have the obsessive extreme propaganda

speech is what is propagating and it's drowning out all other types of speech.

It's not a problem.

You can purchase speech.

So people who have a a monetary interest in changing political ideology or changing thoughts or

changing purchasing power,

you you don't even know what's behind most of these posts.

Like, why are they posting it?

Are they trying to swing an election?

Are they trying to get you buy something?

Are they trying to, you know, whatever

behavior?

It's a great point.

There's no transparency.

So normally, like, if you have a political ad, you'd say, this ad is supported by this person.

But you could have de facto political ads on social media with no disclosure of who's behind them at all.

So like all of the rules that have evolved over the last century or whatever in terms of, as you say, quality journalism, of fairness and reporting, of transparency in

who is speaking or whatever.

It's all gone.

It is all.

Yeah.

Either we need to just run this psychological social experiment and see what happens, although I think that we have

a pretty good idea, I think, what's happening.

Or we have to figure out how to transfer the same kind of social protections to this new medium.

Warning labels?

Well, I think

warning labels labels don't really work.

You know, and or honestly.

Right.

Well, I guess that's my point.

What does work?

What has been proven to work in these cases?

We'll get right on it right after we fix global climate change.

Well, and I don't want to skip ahead to my news item, but I'm going to touch on an app that is an app that had an express intention that is run by individuals, actually a team of people with a very specific mission that is not for sale, that does not scrub user data, and is factual only.

I mean, so much of that, so much of how you affect change in this situation is who is controlling the platform and what are their rules.

Yeah, so I think that's a good point, Kara, is that so one choice we have as consumers is which social media will be patronized, right?

And so we need to pick social media apps that do have good quality and that do have rules of engagement which promote, you know, at least have a minimum filter for like the worst kind of propaganda, hate speech, straight-up lies, all that stuff.

Right.

So if we, and so, you know, we may just have to just go off of platforms that are not doing that.

And like, you know, we've moved a lot of us over to

Blue Sky, you know, just because it for now, anyway, it seems to be a little bit better environment.

But again, it was like old Twitter a little.

That's not a panacea either, because then that just contributes to the further isolation of society.

So now we're going to have, like, we have red states, blue states, we're going to have Twitter people and blue sky people.

You know, like we're going to be siloing ourselves into these subcultures of social media platforms.

That's not good.

But that's a larger geopolitical question, right?

Like you think about the Civil War and you think about areas like in the United States, where ultimately we stayed one nation,

where a lot of people, we made compromises that many people weren't happy with, and a lot of people were disgruntled.

And that continues to this day in in our policy and in our

the way that we vote.

And then you see other nations where they split or where people seceded, and they said, you know what, we have irreconcilable differences, and the people who think this way are gonna live here, and the people who think that way are gonna live there.

And I'm not saying either way is right, but That does play out time and time again.

So is the answer always to say, let's not be siloed?

Maybe,

but does that create more conflict?

Does it create less conflict?

I don't know.

It's a complicated question.

It is right.

Especially when the ideologies are so diametrically opposed.

Yeah,

it's hard to, like, if in order for a forest to be green, all the trees must be green, right?

It's hard to have a society that's open and

where we have open conversation in good faith and everybody's reasonable, right?

To have a reasonable society unless most of the people are reasonable.

And

we're not going to fix that with social media.

No.

And there's a reason that after World War II, Germany had very strict laws about what you could say and what you could do.

Because they said, this is not in keeping with a fair and just society.

We will not allow Nazi propaganda to flourish after the war.

We have to tamp it down.

So you're right, Steve.

I think it's really complicated when

I guess it depends on the goals, right?

What are the goals of the people in the society?

And do they agree?

Yeah.

There's no perfect solution because at the end of the day, you know, either you're going to have a chaos, anarchy, free-for-all, or somebody is going to be imposing some kind of filter.

And then, of course, who is that person?

Who's that group?

Who's that entity?

What are their motivations?

There's something to be said for free speech.

Of course,

we support free speech strongly, but free speech requires a venue where your voice can be heard and not overwhelmed by a bunch of psychopaths, you know, who are just trolling everybody or bots who are spreading propaganda, you know what I mean?

So,

and free speech only means that the government does not abridge it, you know, like really when it comes down to it.

Well, that's the First Amendment.

As we could distinguish

the concept of free speech and the First Amendment, the First Amendment is-I think most Americans

conflate the two often, conflating the two, yes, absolutely.

But, you know, free speech doesn't mean again, a free-for-all.

It doesn't mean that there isn't an editorial policy.

You can't defraud people.

Yeah,

right.

Yeah, you can't straight up lie about somebody.

And like, yeah, there's a lot of limits to free speech.

Yeah.

It doesn't mean you can't fact-check.

Fact-checking doesn't mean you don't have free speech.

It means there's somebody who's going to look it up and say, that's wrong.

Here's the real, here's the real answer.

Or here's the vetted information.

So, yeah, so I think there's that.

And I think obviously people need to be skeptical, have critical thinking skills, have media savvy, because it is the Wild West now.

And so.

Yeah, we have to look out for ourselves more than ever.

More than ever, absolutely.

It was true 20, 30 years ago.

It's more true today.

Yeah, but again, having said that, being somebody who spends a lot of time on TikTok because we're promoting skeptical content on TikTok, it is a cesspool of misinformation, anti-intellectualism, and just utter nonsense.

Oh, gosh, if you don't have some minimum level of intellectual protection,

mental protection against that,

you will fall prey to so much stuff you don't even realize you're falling prey to it.

But again, we live in a democracy, so we also have to think about this statistically.

Like if

a majority of people tick over into radicalized ignorance, that's the society that we have.

It doesn't matter if it's 51%.

That's now the ruling majority of our democracy.

And it's going to be that way if we don't prioritize education.

Yeah.

You know, that has to be at the top of our list.

But then that also becomes a war, as we know, because then you have

some states fighting against teaching critical thinking, you know.

Or just, I don't know, funding schools.

Yeah.

There are some basic answers, as you can see.

All right, Steve.

Steve, could we talk about something positive, fun, and cool?

Yes, that's, I'm just about to pivot.

We're just about to pivot to, we're not going to solve the, we're not going to solve this problem.

We're just going to whine about it.

The haunted graveyard or something?

Bob, tell us about nuclear electric propulsion.

Oh, yeah, babe.

But that doesn't exist.

All right.

So this was fun.

Two cool companies have signed a strategic partnership to create a powerful nuclear electric rocket that could finally make serious progress in ending the dominance of chemical rockets for space travel.

I want this to happen so bad, so bad that I don't even care about the grammar of this sentence.

Wait a minute.

Hang on.

In the last 12 months, we must have touched on at least six or eight news items that have talked, and we've come to the conclusion that it's chemical propulsion, and that's it.

That's the only way we get anywhere no right isn't that kind of what we concluded

chemical propulsion i'll talk a little bit about this at the end of my talk but chem chemical propulsion is is going to stay for quite a long time to get to orbit but once you're in orbit its days are numbered absolutely absolutely okay so um so the The two companies are Ad Astra and Space Nuclear Corporation, also simply called Space Nukes, which is an awesome name.

It's a terrifying name.

I know.

It's fun.

It's fun though.

Let's start with the rocket company Ad Astra.

They've been developing an electric rocket engine called Vasimir.

They describe it on their website as a disruptive development.

I love some disruptive developments in the space.

propulsion status quo.

It's the product of more than 40 years of research in plasma physics and electric propulsion, first at the

United States Department of Energy and NASA and later now at Ad Astra Rocket Company.

Now, electric rocket engines are distinct from chemical rockets.

We all know chemical rockets, and I barely tolerate them at this point.

As the name implies, they use electricity to accelerate propellant.

Vasimir rocket engines are different than other well-known electric engines that I'm sure you have heard of, especially if you listen to the show, namely ion engines and Hall effect thrusters.

Jay talked about them a little while ago.

Vasimir is different than those.

Vasimir is in some ways a hybrid of those two.

It's a hybrid.

And many

call Vasimir.

yeah,

many call Vasimir, it's a magnetoplasma.

It's a better descriptor, much better than ion engine or Hall effect.

This technique is different in that it uses powerful radio waves to heat a gas propellant, and that gas propellant then becomes the most common state of matter in the universe.

What is that?

Plasma.

Plasma.

Yes.

Plasma's the most common.

All stars are plasma, so that basically does that right there.

So a plasma, a soup of free electrons and positive ions, basically just unbinds the electrons from the atomic nucleons, a very hot charged gas.

So, this super gas then can now be controlled by a magnetic field, and that was the goal.

It's ionized so that it can be controlled, and that magnetic field guides and accelerates the plasma out the back of the rocket as a potent rocket thrust.

Thank you, Newton's third law.

So, that's basically how it works, very basically.

So, cool stuff, but

some of you might be thinking, well, what does Vasimir stand for?

Right?

It's got to stand for something, right?

It's got to be an acronym.

Vasimir stands for variable, specific impulse, magnetoplasma rocket.

And those first three words, variable, specific impulse, make this rocket incredible and unique.

Chemical rocket, so to explain that, let's talk about this.

Chemical rocket fuel, and this is a really interesting angle.

Chemical rocket fuel reaches thousands of degrees.

Very hot, right?

Thousands of degrees.

But electric plasma engines can get to millions of degrees and that is a critical distinction so because the higher the temperature think about it the higher the temperature the more the more the the whatever is heated to that degree is bouncing around hitting each other all the atoms the higher the temperature the faster the exhaust and that means that every gram of fuel can deliver more energy right so so going from thousands of degrees to millions of degrees therefore means that the propellant is more effectively being converted into thrust so you got that?

So this increase in efficiency for rockets is expressed as specific impulse, ISP, a critical rocketry word, if ever there was one.

If you read about rockets and rocket technology, you have probably come across specific impulse, ISP.

It's basically discussing, it deals with the efficiency, how effectively the propellant is converted into thrust.

Now, chemical rockets typically have an ISP rating in the hundreds.

Vasimir could have an ISP over 5,000.

So keep that in mind out.

So that's the background.

So Vasimir stands for Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket.

So that means that

this rocket could actually change its specific impulse depending on the needs of the specific mission that it is on.

I'm not aware of really any other rocket design that really does this like this.

Sorry, Bob, define impulse again.

ISP, specific impulse, is a measure of how efficiently the fuel is converted into thrust.

And remember, as I said, the higher the temperature, the faster it shoots out the back.

And because it's going faster, that means you're getting more bang for your buck for that fuel.

So, what does this mean?

This variable specific impulse, what does that mean for this rocket?

So, that means, say,

you're near the gravity of a planet and you need some extra thrust.

You can just hit the dial and you can lower the ISP and you'll get more thrust.

You know, not chemical rocket-like thrust, but you're still getting much more thrust than you would think from an electric rocket.

But remember, though, when you got a lot of thrust, though, it's less efficient.

The ISP is going down, so it becomes less efficient.

But you could do that on demand.

So, there, on the other hand, if the rocket is cruising through deep space, the rocket can be switched to high ISP mode, you know, like a high gear, and become super efficient.

And then

you're using the fuel that's available just in very tiny, much more tiny amounts than otherwise.

So now remember, acceleration is low in this mode, right?

Because

the fuel, the thrust that you're throwing out is going very, very fast, but you're not throwing out a lot of it, right?

That's kind of inherent in these types of rockets.

So it's not throwing out as much mass as a chemical rocket, but what it is throwing out, it's throwing at very, very, very, very high speed.

So acceleration is low in this mode, but it doesn't matter for a lot of missions, right?

Because the velocity can be built up over time, slowly over time, and

eventually going faster than chemical rocket speeds.

So this rocket can actually dial up or down.

It can go into low gear near a gravity where it needs higher thrust, or it could go into a high gear, a high ISP mode where it's super efficient and can cruise.

It can cruise and accelerate for weeks or months or even longer.

So that's what you can do with this type of rocket design.

So that's all great and stuff.

But all that awesomeness, especially ionizing the fuel, requires a lot of power.

And that is one of the key problems with the Vasimir.

So in space, that typically means that solar panels or perhaps RTGs, radioisotope thermal generators, but neither of those options are really a good fit for Vasimir.

Solar panels would need to be stupidly large to supply enough power.

And the RTGs are great for a Voyager or Perseverance, but not for an engine like this.

So we need something to soup up

that can get high density electronics, you know, electrical energy for this Vasimir.

And this is where Space Nuclear Corporation, SpaceNukes, comes into play.

They were famous for their KillerPower device.

I talked about that on episode 859.

Killer Power is essentially a small nuclear reactor made to power electronics on the moon, Mars, and deep space, away from easy solar panels

or other types of technology that can get you what you need.

Currently, it's designed to supply one to 10 kilowatts of electrical power.

SpaceNukes has demonstrated a one kilowatt device back in 2018, and it's now working with U.S.

Space Force on a project called Jetson, which is pretty fun, for a 12-kilowatt version.

I assume, though, I gotta say, that in the near future, the U.S.

Space Force will be renamed X-Force.

So I'm just gonna throw that out there, see if that happens.

Kilopower.

Now, Jay, you and I were talking about this earlier.

Kilopower uses a Sterling heat engine, which is a very, very efficient engine that converts heat from the reactor into electricity.

It's very efficient, more efficient than solar panels, and it can operate, get this, for 15 years continuously.

continuously that that just blows my mind i want a few of those under my damn house now okay so the obvious idea here is that this part this partnership is to integrate the nuclear reactor with the propulsion technology vastly leveling up the vasimir right that i mean it would be amazing the company partnership is described this way on the Ad Astra website.

The Memorandum of Understanding, an M-O-U, Memorandum for Understanding between Ad Astra and SpaceNukes outlines a shared vision and passion for developing and demonstrating NEP nuclear electric propulsion technology and establishes a framework by which both companies will jointly pursue technical and business development.

David Poston, CTO of SpaceNukes, said, nuclear electric propulsion will achieve game-changing performance via stepwise technology evolution.

Our Our plan will begin with a 100-kilowatt-plus nuclear electric propulsion system as a stepping stone to get this, a less than 5-kilogram per kilowatt multi-megawatt NEP system that's with the capability to reduce the round-trip human transit time to Mars from more than a year to a few months.

So they're saying with this with this 100-kilowatt system that they are developing that they'll hopefully get to before too long, they could take a round-trip human transit time to Mars from more than a year to a few months.

That's a huge, huge game changer in getting to Mars.

A few months, the risk from

solar radiation and galactic radiation is much less.

Three months compared to 12 months could be a game changer.

Now, these plans are in the early stages, but they say in the press release the partnership aims to demonstrate high-power NEP in a flight program by the end of the decade and commercialize the technology in the 2030s.

So that seems fairly aggressive aggressive to commercialize it in the 2030s.

I hope these two crazy kids can make it work.

So this is really fascinating.

I really hope that they, I mean, coming up with a nuclear electric propulsion engine like this is just,

it's something that I hope I can really see in my in my lifetime.

Now, remember, I got to say, as a closing, keep in mind, A Vasimir rocket, even in low gear, right, even in low ISP with maximum thrust, still won't be able to launch off the surface of the Earth.

Gravity is too high, right?

Gravity is just way too high.

Its thrust to weight ratio is too low.

It's still not as good as a chemical rocket.

There are, however, extreme nuclear rocket designs that could make potentially a surface launch possible, but the engineering problems are non-trivial, not to mention regulatory, environmental, and moral problems, since it would most likely or probably or maybe spew radiation over half a continent.

It could be nasty stuff, but it might work.

It might work, but

yeah.

So it unfortunately, so it seems likely to me that the only reaction engine, you know, something that throws stuff out the back to take advantage of Newton's third law, the only reaction engine that will ever launch from the Earth to orbit will probably be chemical rockets, unfortunately.

But I hope orbital rings eventually will make them finally obsolete in a couple hundred years, but we're going to have to wait for that one.

Not that slingshot.

No, Steve, I'm not

orbital rings could make the chemical rockets obsolete because you can get to the orbital rings because you could

get to them.

They could be low altitude.

They're not in Earth orbit.

They're much, much lower because they're orbital rings, which are a different beast entirely, which we've never really talked about.

I'm bored of the orbital rings.

Yeah, I mean, they're just super sci-fi.

Physically possible, but yeah, very, very sci-fi.

But yeah, chemical rockets are here to stay, but I think nuclear rockets are going to, it seems inevitable.

They will take over deep space, you know, rocket missions and anything outside of earth orbit will probably go you know mostly nuclear and then eventually even fusion once we got those but but in the so the so this this um vasimir um with the killer power joining this marriage here between these two could be really could be a game changer that i hope we see in the next 10 to 15 years really really take off

it uh i mean yeah something like this is definitely going to be

a game changer if we're ever going to be going to Mars and back.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm really getting optimistic about it because also you've got a lot of countries trying to control cislunar space, the space between Earth and the moon.

And it's not just like a science thing or a g wow, how cool.

This is like a government-like control thing where like we must control this parcel of space.

So that means they're going to dump a lot of money into it.

And so we've talked about this a bit before, but so I think nuclear rockets could be very common in cislunar space because you've got to move materiel vast distances between the Earth Earth and the Moon very efficiently and very fast.

And you're not going to do that with chemical rockets.

So the governments are going to start pouring money into nuclear rockets.

And NASA has expressed interest in being part of that so that they can then take that technology,

whether it's Vasimir or some other type of nuclear rocketry, take that and expand on it so that it can go

beyond the moon tomorrow.

So we'll see one way or the other, just a matter of when.

Well, everyone, we're going to take a quick break from our show to talk about one of our sponsors, Curiosity Weekly.

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

Kara, get us up to date on some of the science surrounding the LA fires.

Okay, so first, I guess, a little bit of an update just on the status of the fires because they are

much more contained than they were when we talked last week.

The fire that's closest to me, the Eaton fire, in Altadena, California, and Pasadena, California, it is now 14,117 acres and 45% contained.

And southwest of me, the Palisades fire, which is larger at 23,713 acres, is now 19%

contained.

We still don't have total numbers on how many structures have been destroyed.

In terms of the death toll from the LA fires is 25 is the latest.

So nine people in the Palisades fire, 16 people in the Eaton fire, but that number is probably going to rise.

Today was another Santa Ana extreme wind warning day.

I think the hope is that things will

continue to get better and better after this.

So I wanted to talk about a few things that came up for me.

I think part of this is sort of like a PSA and part of it is, you know, obviously just keeping up with what's going on.

But boots on the ground, these are the things that I recognized and that I found kind of important to focus on.

The first one is I wanted to talk about this incredible app that if you live in LA, this has been your lifeline throughout this past week.

It's called Watch Duty.

If you don't have Watch Duty,

I recognize, I recommend that you download it.

Right now it's only active in 22 states, but the plan is to become nationwide.

And who knows, maybe it'll even go global eventually.

This is

an app that is very, very easy to use.

It's a 501c3, so it's a non-profit, and it was co-founded by two individuals who really

basically lived through a fire and recognized that it was just really hard to find information because different government agencies were posting things on different sites and some of the information wasn't coming out in real time.

And if anybody knows when there's a disaster going on, how difficult it is to get up-to-date information and how easy it is to doom scroll,

they would recognize why watch duty is so important is a map.

It's a really clean, easy-to-read map that has every evac zone listed, whether it's a level two or a level three, whether it's a wait or a go.

It shows the perimeter of the fire as soon as it's ready.

It shows the containment.

And then every press conference is summarized there.

And there's a team of reporters who are vetted reporters who publish within the app when you click on the fires the latest information.

So, there's a quote from one of the co-founders that said, This came out of an idea that John had.

He talked to me about it four years ago.

We built the app in 60 days, it was run completely by volunteers, no full-time staff.

So, side project for a lot of engineers.

So, the aim was to keep it as simple as possible.

Now, there are full-time staff, but it's still very simple.

There's no login, it doesn't scrape user data, data.

And it's completely free.

You don't have to pay for it and there's no ads.

And their view is we're never going to sell this thing.

We will fundraise if we have to.

This is a public service.

So here's a quote from the other co-founder, Merritt.

We view what we were doing as a public service.

It is a utility that everyone should have, which is timely, relevant information for their safety during emergencies.

Right now, it's very scattered.

Even the agencies themselves, which have the best intentions, their hands are tied by bureaucracy or contracts.

We partner with government sources with a focus on firefighting.

So they are able to get push delays out fast.

Like 1.5 million people downloaded the thing in like a few days and it never crashed.

Here's another quote that I think is a really important one, and this speaks to what we were talking about earlier.

All information is vetted for quality over quantity.

We have a code of conduct for reporters.

For example, we never report on injuries or give specific addresses.

It's all tailored with a specific set of criteria.

We do not editorialize.

We report on what we have heard on the scanners.

And, you know, this really did save lives.

This app,

we will probably after the fact be able to directly link it to saving lives because people were able to know when their evac zones were updated to the minute, which is a rare experience in a disaster of

this scale.

Fire is fast.

really fast.

And the Santa Ana's were blowing upwards of 90 plus miles per hour.

It shifted very quickly.

And in those first two days of the fire, the winds were too strong for air suppression.

So this was just boots on the ground firefighting.

It spread like wildfire, as they say.

Speaking of that, a friend of mine reached out to me during this whole thing and she goes, can they use salt water to put out a fire?

And I was like, I don't know.

And then we just stopped talking about it.

And then a day later, I saw that the super scoopers were here.

And I was like, okay, this is interesting.

I want to dig a little bit deeper.

So after the winds calmed down, a couple days into the fire, these pilots flew planes.

They're called super scoopers.

And what they do is they skim 1,500 gallons of seawater out of the ocean.

They just fly down to the surface of the ocean, skim the seawater, and then go dump it on the fires just like they would freshwater or fire retardant.

I had never seen or heard of this before.

And so I found an interesting article online that was written by some researchers who are studying how high saline water affects inland ecosystems because it seems like a really obvious answer, right?

The coast was burning.

The fire spread literally to the shoreline and all the houses along the shoreline in the Pacific Palisades and many in Malibu burned to the ground.

So there's so much water right there.

The hydrants were at certain points,

they couldn't keep the pressure up and they just weren't able to deliver the water because they're trying to fight a basically a wildfire using a civic water system, which is not what it's built for.

Why not use seawater?

So it seems really obvious, but apparently there are some real downsides to this.

I mean, we had to do it, but there are some real downsides.

What do you guys think is a big one?

Corrosion.

Yeah.

So not only is it corroding some of these firefighting systems, the firefighting equipment itself, but these researchers indicate that it may harm ecosystems.

So

I was thinking.

Mm-hmm.

And we're starting to see this as a problem more and more, not just in these urban wildfire scenarios, but also as climate change brings coastlines higher and deeper.

Ecosystems that were never exposed to saltwater are now getting higher salinity or they're finding themselves in higher salinity environments.

And excessive salts can stress and kill plants.

So these researchers did an experiment called Tempest, where they went into these forests, basically, and they added different salinities of water.

They did it over the course of several years.

They first did a 10-hour exposure of salty water that was a little bit more brackish and they found that like it didn't really affect the forest.

The next year they exposed it for 20 hours.

And the forest was mostly okay, but some of the poplar trees were like acting a little funny.

They started drawing water too slowly.

And then the next year they did a 30-hour exposure, but something major shifted that year.

And that's that the rains didn't come.

come.

So, what they think happened is that a lot of that salt was never washed away, and things went south after the 30-hour exposure and the lack of rain.

A lot of the trees started to brown in mid-August instead of late September.

The forest canopy was bare by mid-September, like it was already winter.

So, it just the forest switched over much earlier.

And then they also found that the water that was draining through the soils was brown instead of clear.

So, it wasn't maintaining its typical filtration capabilities.

It was absorbing all sorts of clays and silts and different particulates and taking it with it, which could have intense downstream effects because you didn't have the water system operating as normal.

So these researchers, they still don't know.

what the downstream effects of salt dumping on areas that aren't used to salt water will have, but they have a feeling that it's going to be large.

And so that's going to be something that we're going to have to look out for here in SoCal because, yes, large areas of forest and

urban water supplies are overrun with saltwater because of these super scoopers, but they also put out the fires.

And that's really important.

And what else are we going to be cleaning up for a while, but we shouldn't clean up right now?

That is the ash and the pollution.

And so that's the last thing I wanted to touch on is these deadly downstream risks from these fires.

So if you live in LA, even if you were far from the fires, you are dealing with hazardous air right now.

And there's a lot of chatter about even if the AQI looks good, don't take that number at face value, not because it's not measuring what it says it's measuring, but it doesn't measure some of the things that are threatening to Angelinos right now.

So AQI, Air quality index is a measure of how hazardous the air is outside to breathe.

It's a measure of pollution and it factors in a a lot of different variables.

One of the big ones is that

2.5 PM.

You guys have heard of this?

You see it on air filters sometimes.

Anybody know what I'm talking about?

Yeah, right.

Well, no, the PM is actually just particulate matter.

Oh, whoa.

PM.

Okay.

Yeah, not PPM, PM.

So PM 2.5, you'll also sometimes see PM 10.

Like I have two Dyson air filters that I bought after the last fire when things were really smoky.

And they give you a bunch of different readings.

I'm trying to think of all the things they tell you, like the ozone maybe, but

the first two are always PM 2.5 and PM10.

So that stands for particulate matter 2.5 microns or less and particulate matter 10 microns or less.

Today, when you look outside, it looks clear.

The smoke is not as nearly as thick.

And sometimes people go, oh, it looks clear.

It must be healthy.

The scary thing is the things that are the most dangerous for you, you can't see them because they're small.

So something that is a 2.5 PM, which is so smaller than 2.5 microns, can enter your lungs.

Sometimes they're so small that they can enter your bloodstream directly through your lungs.

Larger particles, PM10 or larger, they're usually caught.

by your nasal epithelium.

They're usually caught

by your throat before they get into your respiratory tract or your bloodstream.

And very often when we look at AQI,

there's a combination of factors that go into the algorithm for calculating AQI.

Certain things that are in the air right now from these fires are not even measured by an AQI index.

So

when

a house that was built in 1920 goes up in flames, you can expect asbestos,

volatiles from paint, plastics, a lot of different plastic, because it's not just the house, right?

It's all the furniture, it's the varnishes, it's the adhesives that we're using.

Everything, yeah.

It's every single thing, and that's becoming like aerosolized and it's, it's spreading for miles.

So I mentioned this last week, but I think it bears repeating.

At its worst, where I live in my house, the AQI was 375.

What's normal for you?

Good healthy air is between zero and 50.

0 to 50 means that's satisfactory.

You can go outside fine.

50 to 100 is semi-normal in Los Angeles.

That means that it's acceptable.

They call it moderate, but there may be a risk for people who have like asthma or other respiratory sensitivities.

100 to 150.

Now we're talking unhealthy for sensitive groups.

We sometimes see this in LA when the smog is very, very thick.

So sensitive groups may experience health effects, but the general public may not notice.

150 to 200, unhealthy.

That's the label that's

unhealthy.

Flat out unhealthy.

All of last week, we never dip below this.

So every time, even when we had a good air day, it was like 160, 170.

200 to 300, very unhealthy.

This is a health alert.

The risk of health effects is increased for everyone.

And then 300 plus is called hazardous.

That's when they show you the icon of the gas mask and they say health warning of emergency conditions.

Everyone is more likely to be affected.

So at its worst, on, I think it was Tuesday of last week.

It might have been Wednesday, the AQI was 375 and hovering between 350 and 375 for several hours, most of the day.

It smelled like a campfire on the ground floor of my house.

And when you walked outside, you would immediately cough or sneeze.

So, you know, obviously, I'm still not leaving the house without an N95.

And that is the public guidance right now is to wear a respirator when you leave the house, even if the AQI looks low.

Because even if those 2.5 PMs aren't being picked up, there may be

volatiles in the air that aren't measured by AQI.

So it's very, very important to remember that the fires are still burning.

There's still a lot in the air.

The ash on the ground is toxic.

The ash on the ground is the large particulate matter that was made from houses, furniture, and cars burning.

This is not a wildfire.

It's a wild urban fire.

So the things that were burning were not just trees, and we have to remember that.

Yeah, there's guidance right now.

You cannot use leaf blowers in Los Angeles.

Do not think that it is safe to take a leafblower or even a broom to sweep all that ash off of your property.

You're putting it right back into the air.

It's very, very dangerous.

Here is an expert in the health effects of air pollution at UC San Diego said that Los Angeles in particular saw air pollution levels that could be raising daily mortality by between 5 and 15 percent just due to the air pollution alone from these fires.

And obviously, people with respiratory sensitivities, children and older adults are more vulnerable.

So be smart.

Wear a respirator when you go outside.

Wear your N95s.

I know you have a stash left over from COVID.

I don't leave my house without one.

Even if it seems kind of, you know, clearer in these past couple of days, the fires are still burning, the winds are still shifting.

And we still don't know.

That's the thing.

We don't know the long-term effects because usually when we study the health effects of wildfire exposure, it's a one and done, or it's once and then again, 10 years later.

But when we're getting hit by wildfires in the same area and they're wild slash urban fires and you're getting multiple exposures a year, you know, that's going to change things a lot.

Here is a lovely quote from Dr.

Lisa Patel, a pediatrician in San Francisco Bay and executive director of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health.

She said, we are breathing in this toxic brew of volatile organic compounds and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and hexavalent chromium.

All of it is noxious.

Yeah, one of the things that I heard reported was that

the fire got so hot that the water pipes were melting or breaking, and therefore water was leaking from a lot of locations, which was further reducing the water pressure and frustrating attempts at obviously controlling the fire.

Like, that's not a thing that you deal with in a wildfire, but you do.

No, you never do.

And

you wouldn't be tapping urban hydrants in a wildfire.

They're not built for that.

They're not built to all be tapped at the same time.

Right, exactly.

Yeah, they're for like one building.

That one building's on fire.

Yeah.

And so that's, that's why I think it's so frustrating when, because everybody's upset, everybody's angry, but it's really heartbreaking being here in the city and seeing all the chatter that's like.

It's your fault.

It's your fault.

It's your, it's, it's all you're hearing right now.

Not so much within the city, but from outside, kind of pointing fingers at LA and saying, well, if this hadn't happened, this wouldn't have happened.

Here's the thing.

Climate change is real.

The humidity outside right now is 25%.

It hasn't rained so far this, quote, rainy season.

You know, usually by January, it's rained.

We talked about this last week.

Fire season is usually summer, a little bit spring, a little fall.

Santa Ana season is usually winter, a little bit spring, a little bit fall.

The problem is when the Santa Ana's come, but fire season never left because we didn't get any rain.

So now the winds are at their worst and it's as dry as it's ever been outside.

It's a recipe for disaster, and that's what's happening right now.

Perfect storm.

Yeah.

And we do not have a wild firewater system in the middle of the Pacific Palisades.

Show me the city or the place on the earth that can handle

this.

I don't know it.

All right.

Thanks, Kara.

All right, guys.

This is an interesting news item.

Some researchers did an analysis of how much carbon could we store in building materials realistically.

And could this have any kind of significant impact on our net carbon?

So the idea is,

this is carbon sequestration, right?

As we've spoken about many times, we could reduce the amount of carbon that we're releasing into the environment, but unless we get it down to zero, we're still going to be increasing the amount of carbon.

And further, we're never going to be decreasing it unless we can get it to be negative.

The only way to do that is to pull carbon out of the air, out of the environment, and then store it in some kind of long-term way.

It doesn't have to be permanent permanent, but it should be, you know, hundreds of years at least, right?

We want to take it out of circulation.

So like growing trees is one way to store carbon.

Trees take carbon out of the air and start store it in solid form, but they give that carbon back when they rot or burn or whatever.

So that's medium-term-ish, like a long-lived tree might help

for the time.

Artificial trees, like, you know, that won't die.

They'll hold the carbon.

Yeah, or we talked about just burying the trees, you know.

Yeah.

Right?

But more sequoias.

But burying carbon in some form uses up land, it may have environmental impacts, and

there's a lot of logistical issues with that.

But what if we could store the carbon in stuff, in stuff that we're making anyway, that's going to exist anyway?

We're not burying it.

We're just building stuff out of it.

Right.

As long as it's non-disposable, right?

Like you said, that lasts a long time.

There have to be things that last for a long time.

Yeah, like roads,

long lifetime.

Yeah, road.

So asphalt is one.

Yeah.

Another is concrete, right?

Little concrete, yeah.

But maybe you have to make a lot of carbon to make concrete, right?

Yeah, that's the whole point.

You got to make a lot of carbon.

And

we want to do that.

We want to store carbon in these large-scale things.

Also, wood, obviously.

We could do it just by growing trees or by making wood-like products.

And plastics, plastic-like stuff you can make out of carbon, and brick, you know, basically things that are bricks.

So cement.

asphalt, plastics, wood, and brick.

So if we took those building materials, how much material do you think that is?

You mean in terms of how much carbon it could absorb?

No, no, in terms of just how much does all that stuff weigh?

How many tons of stuff is that per year?

Do we make of concrete, asphalt, plastics, wood, and brick?

Holy moly.

Four?

Four trillion?

I don't know.

I have no idea.

Yeah, by a couple orders of magnitude there.

About

more than 30 billion.

30 billion.

30 billion.

Right.

How much carbon do we release into the atmosphere every year?

Four.

More than 30 billion.

This year, you know, we hit a new record.

40 billion tons.

So.

40 gigatons.

Yeah.

So

not good.

Right.

So what if, baby, what if most of that stuff was built out of carbon that we were sequestering?

That'd be nice.

We're on the same order of magnitude as the amount that's being released, you know, of CO2 that's being released.

Obviously, we want to get that amount down.

If we can get that 40 billion tons down to, say, 10 billion tons or 5 billion tons,

obviously the goal is to get to, quote unquote, net zero.

But that last bit is going to be really hard.

Even if we can get down to, say, to 5 billion tons of carbon that we're releasing every year, but what if we could sequester 10 billion tons, right?

Then Then we could actually be net carbon negative for a bit until we settle into pre-industrial levels or somewhere between where we are now and pre-industrial levels.

Yeah.

Anything helps.

Somewhere before

the climate started to go haywire.

How do we grab all that stuff?

Yeah.

Wow, wow.

Yeah, so there's a couple of questions here.

You know, one is how do we get a hold of that carbon in the first place?

Isn't that the hardest part of this?

Yes.

Yeah, it is.

And the second part is how do we make it into these types of materials?

Once you do, you know, once you, if you could make mostly carbon concrete, which actually is strong, good.

It sounds strong.

Yeah, you could, if you could make like carbon nanofibers and infuse that into the carbon, into the concrete, actually, we've talked about this before.

It actually gives you very strong concrete.

Same thing with, you know, carbon-based plastics and are also good.

And wood is wood, right?

You just have, you know, this is a matter of using wood in a way, treating it so that it lasts for hundreds of years, not tens of years, for example.

And brick is rock, you know, so if you just make a

brick that has a lot of carbon.

So what the analysis they did was, all right, so realistically, given the methods that we have today, if we tried to store as much carbon as possible in these materials,

How much could we store?

It's obviously not 30 billion because these things are not going to be pure carbon.

But they estimated that it would be 16.6 plus or minus 2.8 billion tons.

So, you know, we're talking roughly 16, 17 billion tons of carbon per year.

That's pretty good.

That's a lot.

Yeah.

Not insignificant.

That's about half of the CO2 emissions that we had in 2021.

Again, we're higher than that now.

So again, if we can, yeah, if we can get down to that, that is significant.

That's huge.

You know, that would significantly reduce our net carbon and makes it very plausible that we could get to net negative or net zero at least, right?

If we if we got down to 10 to 15 billion tons of carbon per year, then we could do that.

So what are some methods for getting the carbon in the first place?

The easiest method is growing stuff, right?

That plants are the most efficient method we have of taking carbon out of the air and putting it into solid form.

Tried and true.

Yeah.

Biotechnology, baby.

Yeah.

But it uses space, right?

It uses either land or water to do that.

We don't, and as we've discussed many times, like we're pretty much using all of our land to grow food.

You know, we don't have the amount of like vast tracts of land to

convert into carbon sequestration.

But you could use waste biomass, right?

You take all that biomass that is not edible, that is not food, but that would otherwise be waste, and

you convert that into

carbon that can be used in cement or

brick or made into plastic or whatever.

So,

those are the processes that they're talking about.

Then, there are other sources of

CO2 as well,

ash and whatnot, that you can use.

Now,

the trickiest one, of course, is like directly pulling CO2 out of the air.

I love that option.

It sounds the sexiest, but of course it uses energy.

So it depends on where that energy is coming from.

You can't burn fossil fuel to run the process.

You have to use solar power or wind power or water power or whatever.

Or nuclear power.

Or even nuclear power.

Kilaba.

The problem is doing that to scale.

We can do it.

We can do it.

Just not to the industrial scale necessary to be really significant.

So

basically we're talking about biomass.

That's going to be the primary mechanism of getting carbon into

this material.

So

this is this again, this is a thought experiment kind of study where they're just doing the math.

Say, does it add up?

Is it feasible?

How much are we talking about here?

And the numbers look good.

You just got to do it.

You know what I mean?

We have to build the infrastructure uh and the technology to do this and do it on a massive scale um i do think something like this is going to be necessary it's going to be extremely hard to get to net zero and just getting close isn't enough right we're still going to be adding more co2 to the atmosphere you know we haven't even turned the corner yet when we're talking about doing this we haven't even reduced the amount by which we're increasing the co2 in the atmosphere all right that's still going going up.

And partly because we are increasing the percentage of our energy that's coming from low CO2 sources, but we're increasing the amount of energy we're using more.

And that's probably going to continue to be the case between now and 2050, 2060, when we're supposed to hit net zero.

That's why, you know, if you look at it, what percentage of our power is from renewable energy?

Blah, blah, blah.

It's going up.

It's great.

But we're still burning as much, if not more, fossil fuel than we ever had because our energy demand is going up too.

So we have to increase renewables and low-carbon sources by more than,

significantly more than, we're increasing our energy demand, which probably not going to do with wind and solar alone.

That's why we need nuclear.

Nuclear.

It's just, it's just not going to happen without nuclear.

It has to be part of the economy, a big part of it.

Space nukes, baby.

There you go, Bob.

Well, everyone, everyone, we're going to take a quick break from our show to talk about one of our sponsors this week, Rocket Money.

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

All right, Jay.

It's who's that noisy time?

All right, guys, last week I played this noisy.

All right, well, while you're trying to figure out what the hell that is, I did get some people guessing.

A listener named Beth Erlacher said, Hi, Jay, my 10-year-old son Aiden wanted to guess this week's noisy.

He thinks it's an old excavator toy that talks.

Oh, then she gave me the pronunciation.

It's Earl Locker.

Locker.

Earl Locker.

Stavis Maples said, this week's noisy is someone trying to start a truck.

This was most likely be correct in some way.

Another person, Visto Tutti, this noisy is bizarre.

I can only think that it's the sound of a Japanese vending machine with synthesized voice.

I don't hear that, anything like that in there.

That's a very interesting guess.

Michael Blaney wrote in and said, hi, Jay.

Hmm,

it kind of reminds me of when I turn off my handheld vacuum cleaner, the powering down of the motor makes a really weird sci-fi-like recharge sound.

So I guess that's my guess.

It's a small electric motor powering down.

And then the final guess was from Evil Eye.

A pull string toy like the old farmer says thing and the spring inside breaking or recoiling inside.

It had the dial on the outside that pointed to the animal.

I used to love that.

Oh, yeah.

The cato says.

I get that.

All right, no guess on this one, guys.

I knew that this one was very hard, but it's a cool sound.

I'll play it again.

See if this stirs anything in any of you guys.

All right, let me walk you through it.

What's the first thing that you hear?

Scratchy.

Some scratchy thing.

Listen again.

A bird.

Birds.

What's that whooshy sound?

Try again.

Forget the tweaking, the birds and stuff.

What's the whooshy sound?

Snow.

Like someone scraping something.

Somebody rotating around.

All right, I'll tell you what it is.

Listen again.

Tell me.

All right, that's fire.

Fire.

Oh.

Okay.

Doesn't sound like fire.

Yeah, not even that.

Now listen again to the whole thing.

All right, what's the high-pitched noise?

A child?

A child?

Sounds like somebody going, oh.

Yeah, it does.

All right.

Sound a little human, but

you may have seen a video of the fireplace, like the weehoo, weehoo, weehoo things.

Nope.

Gas in the wood burning.

That was.

No, that was last week.

Yeah.

I thought it sounded familiar.

Okay, so

I've seen videos of people doing this many, many times.

It's pretty interesting.

What they do is...

They'll use fuels, some kind of fuel, to re-inflate a flat tire.

Right?

So they're lighting lighting the fuel it catches on fire it you know the fuel like goes inside the tire

and then you know the gas that it produces expands really fast and it actually can take a completely flat and even almost you know a tire that's not completely touching the rim and it'll re-inflate it i've seen videos of that it's pretty incredible yeah and it grips the the uh the rim again looks dangerous oh yeah i bet you there's lots of ways that that can go wrong so it's really cool you could definitely look this this up.

If you've never seen it, I really suggest that you do it because it is a pretty impressive thing.

Here it is one more last time.

Yeah, so that would have never guessed that sound was that.

Still not seeing it, but okay.

So that ping noise, that high-pitched ping noise is the actual air expanding inside the wheel well.

Dang.

And then the tire re-gripping onto the rim.

Very cool.

And no winner.

So, you know, I knew it was hard, but I think it's an instructional who's that noisy because it's something you can learn about.

A listener named Corey Hawes sent in this new noisy, and I hope you guys like it.

If you guys think you know what this week's noisy is or you heard something cool, email me at wtn at the skepticsguide.org.

A few quick repeat announcements here.

Nauticon 2025, it's going to be awesome.

We talk about it all the time because we went to the last one and we all loved it.

It was highly regaled as the absolute best thing that Stephen Novella has ever done over the course of two and a half days.

And Steve's lack of response is proof of that.

I think he was only there one and a half days, wasn't he?

Yeah, that's right.

But it was an intense one and a half days.

No, he came two hours late and we busted.

Mercilessly.

Yeah, we did.

We rewrote his stones.

These were a critical two hours.

Let me tell you, when Steve walked in late after I busted his stones for two hours.

Yep.

He walks in.

Everybody looks at him and starts laughing right in his face.

It was awesome.

It was awesome.

And then Steve gets this nervous smile on his face, like, oh, what did I do?

What did I walk into?

What did I walk into or what did Jay do?

Anyway,

please join us to Naticon 2025.

We have a Beatles theme this year.

We will definitely be doing a Beatles sing-along on Saturday night, led by George Hobb.

There will be lots of surprises during that sing-along.

So please do consider coming.

You can talk to people on the SGU Discord if you're interested.

If you're looking for a roommate or share a ride, go to nataconcon.com or go to the skepticsguide.org, and there's a link to it on our homepage.

You could join the SGU mailing list.

Go to the SGU homepage for that.

Every week we give a list of everything that we've done the previous week and it's definitely worth getting because there's some humor in there and the word of the week and lots of other pieces of information that you might like.

So please consider joining our mailing list.

Please give us a show rating on whatever podcast player you're using.

This helps new people find our podcast.

And last but not least, please consider becoming an SGU patron.

You could do this by going to patreon.com forward slash skepticsguide.

It's pretty damn obvious why it's more important now than ever in the past 20 years of the SGU.

So if you're interested in helping us out in any way, in this, it could be a dollar a month, any contribution would help.

Go to patreon.com forward slash skepticsguide.

Thank you, Jay.

Well, we have a great interview coming up with Nick Tiller.

So let's go to that that interview now.

We are joined now by Dr.

Nick Tiller.

Nick, welcome to The Skeptics Guide.

Hi, it's great to be talking to you guys.

Very excited.

I've been a long-time listener to the show, so I'm super excited to be chatting with you all.

Oh, thanks.

So, Nick, you are an exercise scientist and a science communicator promoting sort of critical thinking in the exercise and sports medicine realm.

We actually met when we were at Saikon and you and I had a little bit of overlap in our time in Dubai recently.

So I did get to meet you in person.

Yeah, that was nice.

We had wonderful food at that restaurant.

I mean, it was.

We had some great food there.

Yeah, it was really good.

I love Middle Eastern food, but it's like, it's like saying I like European food.

You know what I mean?

Like it's, there's so many different kinds.

European food.

And actually,

you know, just on that trip to Dubai, you know, Steve and I were out there.

And I think, Steve, you and I had very similar experiences with this group you know this group of sort of young entrepreneurs ceos and uh you know we were we were talking about critical thinking and i was talking more about critical thinking overlapping with exercise science and they were they were such a a fantastic group just so uh tuned in so they were asking so many fantastic astute questions and whenever i'm running a three this is a three-hour workshop and they were absolutely clued in from the first slide to the last.

So that was a really pleasurable experience for me.

Yeah, they were like the perfect audience because as you said, they were very engaged, very smart, very clued in, but were completely naive to the whole critical thinking angle.

You know what I mean?

So like it was all new to them, pretty much.

So yeah, very receptive, great questions, but I could tell them anything from my third, past 30 years of skepticism.

They never heard it before.

So let's talk about the work that you've been doing.

You've published a book called The Skeptic's Guide to Sports Medicine.

Tell us about that.

What topics do you cover in that book?

Yeah, well, I hasten to add that the title is really,

I named it in tribute to the SGU.

And I wrote about in the introduction to the book,

how I found the SDU, and you guys acted as my gateway into

scientific skepticism and critical thinking.

And I came up with the idea for the book when I was doing my PhD.

This was back in 2011.

My PhD was focused on human applied physiology with a specialism in respiratory medicine.

And I was a poor, broke student at the time.

And so to make ends meet, I started to write for mainstream science outlets.

And I wrote two articles.

One was the follow-up to the second, and it was, and they were called Myths and Fallacies of Sports Science, Part 1 and Part 2.

And I just thought, this is something that I'm interested in.

It combines my personal passion for scientific skepticism with my professional work in applied exercise physiology.

And I got really positive feedback from that.

And it occurred to me that nobody is really doing this.

Nobody is trying to bridge the gap, this huge void between critical thinking and exercise science or health and fitness more broadly.

And that was sort of the,

I guess, that was sowing the seeds of the book.

And then about eight years later, the skeptic's guide to sports science was published.

And so that's essentially what I tried to do.

That is the book's thesis is to bridge the gap between critical thinking and exercise science, which is, it's a, there's a big gulf there.

There's a lot of work that needs to be done.

Yeah, and it's not just like a lack of critical thinking.

There's an active industry of misinformation, right?

In the wellness, exercise, dieting space that we're confronting.

It's not just, oh, people don't really understand it.

It's like they're being lied to.

They're being given misinformation.

So tell what's the biggest, what's the biggest kind of misinformation you encounter in that area?

Well, I think very specifically, I guess it's about,

I think nutrition is one of those areas that everybody likes to, everybody thinks is very important because it is.

And everybody thinks that they know a little bit about nutrition.

But actually, it's probably one of those areas that is most misunderstood and mostly misappropriated as well.

Because under nutrition, you have fad diets, you have dietary supplements, you have performance-enhancing supplements as well.

And so,

that's a huge can of worms.

But I think speaking more broadly, the entire health and wellness industry hinges on this idea that there is some kind of quick fix, that there is some kind of shortcut, there is some

magic equation that we have to unlock.

The number of times that I've been asked, Nick, what's the secret to being in shape?

What's the secret to true health and wellness?

You know, and it's like,

well, how do you even?

It's like asking Evan, like, Evan, how do you do your taxes?

It's like, what do you want?

You want me to

summarize that in a 30-second soundbite?

I mean, it's complicated.

But

inevitably, when you say to people, look,

the secret is that there is no secret.

You have to eat well, don't drink, don't smoke and exercise every day.

I mean,

that's the secret equation.

But of course, we are primed in health and wellness to want a quick fix, some kind of magic supplement, a special exercise program.

You know, they want me to tell them that if they eat grapefruits every day, they'll lose weight.

Or, you know, they just do an ice plunge every day and it'll boost your immune system.

But the human body is a little bit more complicated than that, unfortunately.

Yeah, it's it's often, yeah, it's no nothing than quick.

It's just it's just hard work and consistency.

In my experience, if you don't have two of those, especially consistency, that's when I've seen some of my biggest gains throughout my life is like when you could stick with it, find something you enjoy, even if it's not the optimal, like, this is the best cardio that you could possibly do.

It's the most efficient.

It doesn't matter because if it's the most efficient and best for you, but you don't do it, then it's not helpful at all.

But if it's something that's like, you know, maybe not as

as awesomely efficient as cross-country skiing or something like that, but it's something that you enjoy, you're going to stick stick with it.

Just do something that you enjoy that moves your body.

And if the studies have showed anything, it's like you don't have to do a lot.

It doesn't take that much to

have a noticeable benefit to your health.

Just move around.

I couldn't agree more.

It's adherence.

Everything comes down to adherence.

And if you don't enjoy it, you're not going to adhere to it.

Some people try going to the gym and they hate going to the gym.

It's like, okay, well, don't go to the gym.

Some people try and go running and they they hate it okay just it doesn't matter what you do just move the more you move the better and once you start seeing those benefits whether they're cardiovascular benefits or people are losing weight or you know they're they're getting stronger whatever whatever it happens to be you'll be motivated to continue once you start seeing benefits but yeah it's just if you're not gonna you're not gonna keep doing it unless you enjoy it so enjoyment is the key there nick only because you mentioned it you said ice baths and i was going to bring up wim hoff to see if you've done research in regards to him, you know, Dutch extreme athlete, famous for his ability to withstand extreme cold.

And he has some, a method that he, I guess, sells to people.

If you follow his routine, it will lead you to better results.

Any any truth to this?

Well,

generally speaking, most people will engage in some kind of like ice bathing or ice dunking or some kind of cold water immersion, not just because they think that it's going to improve their recovery or boost their immune system, but because it fits into a lifestyle, right?

And most of the time in health and wellness, you're very rarely selling somebody a particular product.

You're selling them a lifestyle.

You're selling them a way to shape their own personal identity.

So that's kind of the best way that I can describe Wim Hoffers.

In most cases, it's not going to do harm.

There are going to be some instances where people, you know, they have some kind of pre-existing cardiovascular disease that they didn't know about.

Maybe they shouldn't be ice dunking.

And cold shock is a real thing, you know.

So

there's always this risk of overt harm.

But most people use ice bathing because it's entrenched in the exercise culture and definitely sporting culture.

People think that it actually facilitates recovery.

And it all comes back to this idea that when you have an injury, that you should stick ice on the injury because it reduces the inflammation.

And that there's, you know, that in itself has been contested a bunch of times because inflammation isn't necessarily a bad thing

when it comes to repairing an injury.

But, you know, there's more and more research now that shows with ice bathing specifically that, if anything, it actually inhibits recovery.

It actually suppresses muscle protein synthesis

and it suppresses anabolic signaling in the muscle.

So if you have like a hard workout, especially if you're an athlete, and then you go and sit in a cold tub or an ice bath for 10 minutes, it's actually going to slow your rate of recovery.

So contrary to popular popular belief, but this is

an activity now that is so entrenched in sport and exercise culture that I don't think any amount of evidence is ever going to change that, unfortunately.

Yeah, I agree.

Isn't that ironic, right?

It's like the exact opposite.

So you said it slows it down, but eventually the same level of recovery will be achieved, right?

Right.

Yeah,

I think I understand the question.

You mean like if you wait for long enough, then you'll recover back to baseline levels.

Well, yes and no, because you think if somebody's exercising regularly, they might be trained, especially if they're a high-performance athlete, they might be training twice a day, three times a day.

And actually, if they're blunting the rate at which they recover after each training session, that could have cumulative effects on recovery.

So there's nothing to say that actually they'll rebound back to baseline levels.

Ice bathing,

if you're interested in repairing the muscle tissue after hard exercise, hard training, then definitely don't go on ice bath.

And

unfortunately, that's just the tip of the iceberg pun intended, because a lot of people say that we should be using ice baths to boost immunity and because it promotes healing and it protects from cancer and it can protect you from COVID-19.

I mean, if you can think it,

people will make...

will make those claims.

It says on your website, you have a couple other books coming out.

One called The Health and Wellness Lie.

And we talked a little bit about this when we were together, like wellness, like the whole idea of wellness basically is a scam, like the entire industry.

So tell us about some of the things that you've confronted in the wellness industry that gets you going the most.

Yeah, thanks for bringing up the book.

So this hopefully will be published early next year, and it's going to be published in the US with John Hopkins University Press, in the UK and Europe with Bloomsbury Publishing of

Harry Potter fame.

And this, the health and wellness lie is basically, it's a thesis on this idea that everything we know or everything we think we know about health and wellness has basically been dictated to us by an industry that doesn't actually care for our health or our wellness.

So, you know, that could be

the fact that when somebody wants to lose weight, they go on a fad diet.

And what happens?

They lose a little bit of weight in the opening weeks or months of the diet the thing isn't sustainable in the long term inevitably they they regain all of the weight that they've lost a third of people that follow a fad diet actually gain more weight than they originally lost so they end up weighing more than they did at the start and then they just bounce from one fad diet to the next

engaging in what we call yo-yo dieting and it has really negative long-term effects on cardiovascular health.

When people want to improve their immune function, they'll start taking supplements.

When people want to improve their recovery, they'll have cupping and they'll have acupuncture and they'll do ice bathing and they'll do all this stuff because that's what they think they need to do because that's what's been dictated to them by the industry.

So it's really an expose of the health and wellness industry, the incentives underpinning the industry.

and teaching people, you know,

making sure that there's a thread of critical thinking in there.

I don't want to be too heavy-handed with the critical thinking stuff because there are people already doing that.

You know, you guys obviously are at the top of the pile here.

And

but making sure that when, if people do have health and wellness goals, that they have a pretty good idea about how to accomplish those.

So how to make good decisions in health and wellness and navigate this the wild west of wellness without getting ripped off, essentially.

You know, that makes me think that, you know, they throw a lot of ideas at at the wall and then whichever ones, you know, seem to be popular or gaining popularity, then they just lean into it, right?

This, because this whole idea about using cold as an after-workout treatment, the fact that there is no real science behind it means it's all hype.

And that's, that is the trend, because I think in the end, it's all about making money and having something to talk about.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

Look,

at the end of the day, this is a business.

The health and wellness industry is worth over $4 trillion worldwide, right that that's more than the smartphone industry the fast food industry and all social media platforms combined right in fact it's it's it's worth double all of those entities combined so this is big business and the reason that it's worth so much money is because uh everybody is interested in health and wellness at some level and as as you said

whatever whatever is trending at the time people will lean into and that the people who operate within the health and wellness industry are interested in one thing and that's making money that's profits and whether that's manufacturers whether that's vendors who are selling the products whether it's wellness gurus and fitness influencers online they're more than happy to sell their followers quick fixes and supplements and diets and cool training programs and garments and sneakers and powders pills and potions because it promotes engagement and once they get engagement on something it can be monetized so it really does all come back to the bottom line.

It's about making money.

But that doesn't help the end user who actually wants to lose weight to reduce their risk of cardiovascular disease, or they want to improve their cardiovascular fitness, or they want to reduce their back pain, or, you know, whatever their health and wellness goals happen to be.

So

it really is an industry that

has prioritized profits above the outcomes for the end user.

And that's something that I don't think we'll ever reverse it, but at least we can.

I'm trying to do my bit at least to

help the consumers to actually make good decisions for themselves.

They need to act as their own content regulators because nobody's going to do it for them, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

That's the world we're living in now.

And I mean, in my personal assessment, about 99% of that industry ranges somewhere between worthless and harmful.

Like you have this massive industry that's doing nothing for anybody except enriching the snake oil salesman.

Right.

I mean, how many diet books actually are giving people good advice versus, you know, honestly, like what most people need to know about their diet, you could put in a pamphlet.

And that's probably all people have the bandwidth for anyway.

And yet there's like, how many books have been written about it just with utter nonsense?

Thousands.

Libraries.

Yeah, I mean, you just need to look at the profits from the diet and weight loss industry, right?

They've been going up for decades, now at an all-time high.

I think that that sector of the industry is worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

And so these profits have been going up and up at an all-time high.

And what else has been going up and up?

The rates of obesity.

Now, the rates of obesity have been climbing since the 1970s,

going up exponentially now since COVID shows no sign of yielding.

And people don't often enough stop and ask themselves how can profits from diet and weight loss be going up and rates of obesity also be going up those things that doesn't make that doesn't make any sense yeah right there's obviously a mismatch there's obviously some kind of uh detachment between the two entities and and what it basically comes down to is what we're investing in what we're spending our money on in diet and weight loss it obviously isn't working

So people we need to try something different.

At the very least, no one has found the hack, hack, right?

The one easy trick or the secret to losing weight or maintaining a low weight.

Well, if they did.

You say that, you mean the easy, like an easy.

That's what I mean by a hack or a secret or a Zempic trick.

That's kind of easy.

Azempic is that's science, man.

That's a drug.

It works, right?

Say what you will.

It freaking works.

You know, I mean, it's expensive, and if you go off of it, you probably will gain the weight back.

That's the downside.

You have to consult your physician.

Right.

But, yeah, but, you know, but if the entire like dieting industry, all the different diets that have come up, if any of them actually worked, they would have staying power.

They would be persistent.

Everybody would be doing it, recommending it, et cetera.

But there's just this,

yeah, there's just this never-ending

treadmill of different fad diets.

None of them at the end of the day work.

As you say, anything you do, it's like you go from not paying attention to your diet to paying attention to your diet.

You're going to lose a little weight, probably.

And like 95% of people will lose weight and then 95% of people will gain it back,

usually more.

In fact,

some experts, you tell me what you agree with, if you agree with this or not, I would argue that dieting is a failed strategy.

It's about lifestyle factors, not going on a diet.

Anything you go on, you can come off of, as opposed to

this is my healthy habits for life, right?

Well, I sort of express it in the idea of this wagon.

You know, everybody talks about, I fell off the wagon.

As soon as you conceive the idea of a wagon, you're primed to fall off it.

In the path to true weight loss and sustained weight loss, there is no wagon.

There cannot be a wagon.

It's just about making, it's about changing your lifestyle.

This has to be something.

And what I write about in the health and wellness lie is this idea that when you're starting this new, I don't never call it a diet.

I call it a nutritional strategy or whatever it happens to be.

You have to ask yourself, is this something I can do forever?

Right.

If the answer is, well, I'm not sure, then it's not going to work.

Because, you know, as Steve said, you can go on a juice fast, you'll lose weight because you're in a massive calorie deficit, but you're going to be malnourished and it's probably going to,

you're not going to maintain it for longer than a couple of weeks or a month.

So any kind of diet is not going to work.

If there's a wagon, you better be pushing it.

Exactly.

Nick, that's the statement that dieters hear.

And it's like they fearfully step back from it because, you know, we want it to be like, hey, I'm going to do this temporarily.

I'm going to lose weight.

And then I will continue from there and just stay at that weight and eat what I want.

And I do get it because it sounds like it's very hard to make lifestyle changes.

And I think every human, like most people, inherently agree with that.

It's hard.

Like, I'm going to change this forever.

Like, I'm going to eat one dessert a month or something like that.

It's to some people, that's impossible.

And I think that's the fear, right?

That statement means that it's not a temporary discomfort and then everything's back to normal.

It's a permanent change that you could live with that

becomes normal to you.

Yeah.

And this is the fundamental problem with if the is a, there are several problems with azempic, but this is one of the problems with azempic and related drugs or weak OV is that semaglotide is obviously the drug.

And that is that

in the studies where people have taken samaglatide and they've lost a lot of weight as soon as they stop taking the drug they regain most or all of the weight that they've lost and that is because when when physicians prescribe the drug they are not prescribing it alongside dietary advice and advice on how to maintain the the the weight loss in the long term so people become dependent on the drug which is among other things an appetite suppressor and it doesn't matter if you suppress your appetite through samaglatide or if you just have you know good discipline or you go on a health kick and you lose the weight, if you don't know how to strategize in the long term, and if you don't have the basic understanding of healthy eating and physical activity to maintain that weight loss long term, you're just going to regain the weight.

So it doesn't matter if it's a diet, if it's a drug, or if it's an exercise program, there has to be some kind of long-term strategy.

And everything that we know about health and wellness,

we know that it undermines those strategies

that are aimed at long-term sustainability.

It is all about the short-term quick fix biohack that

people can buy into.

Because at the end of the day, we've evolved for economy, right?

We haven't evolved to strategize in the long term to get long-term sustainable results.

So as I've said,

whether it's a Zempic or a diet or an exercise program, there has to be a long-term strategy.

Otherwise, it's not going to work.

Let me push back on one thing that you said there, Nick.

So you shouldn't assume categorically that physicians are not teaching patients long-term diet strategies.

So Zempic, remember, first and foremost, it's a diabetes drugs, a diabetes drug.

It's a diabetes drug that also helps you lose weight.

And I'm telling you,

physicians who manage diabetes have entire staff working for them that do nothing but advise people on their diet and tell people how to have a diabetic diet.

That is absolutely part and parcel of...

standard of care management.

Same thing, even if you get like bypass surgery for a gastric bypass to lose weight, they absolutely, that is part you part of that is going on a diet and they will tell you straight up, this is not going to make you lose weight by itself.

I mean, it will to some extent, but this has to be part of a

healthy lifestyle in addition to that.

It's not a magic solution.

So at least that's the standard of care.

That's what I've experienced, you know, being at an academic institution.

I'm not saying there aren't some people out there just writing prescriptions without doing comprehensive care.

You know, You'll see everything in medicine.

But there is this sense that, yeah, doctors just write prescriptions, but they don't do that.

It's really, really not true.

If you're a diabetes doctor, you spend a lot of your time advising patients on how to have a healthy diet.

Just like even me, as a headache doctor, I spend a lot of time advising my patients on their lifestyle factors, including their diet and how that relates to their headaches.

That's always step one, actually.

I do that before anything else.

This narrative that physicians don't do that is simply not true.

Well, I suppose in the cases where people have been prescribed Ozempic or samaglatide, Wigovi, and it hasn't helped them in the long term because, or they've come off it and they've regained the weight, perhaps in those instances, if it's not long-term sustainable, it's because they haven't maybe had the appropriate support.

That might not be the physician's choice.

Maybe

there's kind of user error there as well.

But yeah, I totally get your point.

Yeah, but and even there again,

physiologically, like pharmacologically, when you come off the drug, because it's an appetite suppressant, basically, right?

So you're essentially down-regulating that part of the brain that says

you're satiated, you're not hungry.

And then, just like anything, you come off that drug and you're going to get a little bit of a rebound effect.

Now you're actually more hungry than you were before because you've kind of reset those receptors.

So there is a, it's not just behavioral, there is actually a physiological aspect to the weight gain after coming off the drug.

Oh, wow.

This is something that I'm sure is going to get studied more since this drug is relatively new, but that is the dominant hypothesis in terms about why that happens.

And this means that it might well be a drug for life for many people.

Basically, yeah.

Maybe, and I've had lots of discussions with people about is that a good or a bad thing?

Well, I think

if you balance

the long-term risks of taking samaglatide

over the course of the second half of a life, or the long-term risks of being chronically overweight or obese,

I think there's a pretty clear risk-to-benefit ratio in favor of taking the drug, right?

You can't just go out, go through your life being morbidly obese.

That's not an option either.

Yeah, exactly.

It's risk versus benefit.

All right, Nick, well, thank you so much for joining us.

It's my pleasure.

Thank you, guys.

And just people can find you at nbtiller.com.

Your books are there, The Skeptics Guide to Sports Science.

You have two books coming out, The Health and Wellness Lie and What Science Says About Dieting.

So we'll keep an eye out for those.

Maybe we'll get you back on the show when those books come out.

That would be awesome.

Thank you, guys.

Real pleasure.

All right.

Take care.

Thank you, Nick.

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 have a nice, light-hearted theme for this week's science or fiction.

That theme is death.

I love it.

I've done that before.

It's a good, it's a good science or fiction.

So three facts about death.

Okay, ready?

Okay.

Here we go.

The World Health Organization reports that over 5 million snake bites occur each year, resulting in over 100,000 deaths.

I number two, it is estimated that over half a million deaths globally in 2024 can be attributed to extreme weather events.

How many?

a million.

Half a million.

Iron number three, in 2021, COVID-19 was the second leading cause of death just behind ischemic heart disease.

Bob, go first.

These all sound kind of reasonable to me.

Damn.

5 million snake bites.

5 million.

That's a lot.

And not many deaths.

So what is that?

One in...

1 in 50 die?

That seems probably high.

Okay.

So half a million extreme weather.

That's now that I think about it, that seems over.

over, that seems kind of high too.

Extreme weather events, half a million, 500,000 extreme weather events.

That's a lot.

So this don't sound too reasonable to me.

Let's see, COVID.

That one makes sense.

I'm going to go with

500,000 deaths from the weather.

Seems a little high.

I'll go with that as fiction.

Okay, Jay.

The first one about the WHO report that over 5 million snake bites occur each year and there's over 100,000 deaths.

And this is globally, correct, Steve?

That is correct.

It is the World Health Organization.

I mean,

I would assume that 90% of this is happening in Australia.

Just kidding.

But

I do think it's true.

Sure.

There is an incredible number of poisonous snakes out there.

And

I think it's very common that people don't know how to react and don't know what to do.

Catch care.

Right?

You bite snake.

Snake bites you.

Yeah, it bites you.

No, they're venomous.

Venomous.

Because they bite you.

It'd be poisonous if you bit the snake.

Yeah, I meant that.

I always screwed that up.

Yeah, it's a common thing that people do, you know?

Yeah.

Number two here is it's estimated that over half a million deaths globally in 2024 can be attributed to extreme weather events.

That's a lot.

That's what I was saying.

Half a million.

I mean, that's a lot of people.

And you'd think we'd be hearing about it more, right?

God damn, I'm not sure about that.

I mean, I could see, you know, as global warming is getting worse.

I can't rule it out, though, because again, you know, are we hearing about a hundred thousand snake bites?

So, okay, then the last one here, um, in 2021, COVID-19 was the second leading cause of death just behind ischemic heart disease.

Now, what is that?

Heart attacks.

What does the word ischemic mean?

Lack of blood.

Lack of oxygen.

Oh,

sorry.

Oxygen.

Lack of oxygen.

Oh, wow.

That's a.

Didn't give me the number, though.

And I think that means something.

He didn't give the number in the third one.

Second leading cause of death.

You know what?

I think that one's the fiction.

I don't think that was the second leading cause of death.

All right.

Kara?

Jay thinks that it wasn't COVID-19.

It could be.

I think it was definitely in the top five.

I don't think it, I don't know where in the top five.

Because, okay, 2019 is when it first happened, but in China first.

By 2020, it had spread everywhere.

But I don't think we got a vaccine until maybe 2021, early, or maybe late 2020.

But I definitely don't think it was in everybody's arms right away.

So I could see that.

If it was 2022, I wouldn't buy it because I think we had vaccine and Paxlvid, like a pretty good vaccine program by then.

But people were dying.

A lot of people dying from COVID before we knew how to handle it.

So I could see that.

It's funny because the over half a million deaths globally attributed.

I was like, yeah, of course.

And then you guys were like, that's really high.

And I was like, was it?

But maybe, maybe I'm primed because of my news item tonight.

So can I, you probably can't clarify, but you mean like directly attributed?

Like they died in the hurricane.

They died from the fire, not like, you know, downstream effects of them?

Or I will not clarify

that.

Okay.

All right.

Cause then I think if the number's low, I feel like at that point it would be millions plural globally from displacement and stuff.

So I don't know.

I feel like the the number is either too high or too low.

Maybe it's a Goldilocks.

And then, yeah, globally, 5 million snake bites.

I feel like we've talked about this before when we talked about like deadliest animals.

100,000 deaths.

Snake bites are horrible.

So yeah, if you get bit by a venomous snake and you do not have access to anti-venon, which is expensive and difficult to produce, then you might die from it.

So in areas without, I think,

good health services, especially in rural areas, I definitely think people are dying from snake bites.

So 100,000?

Yeah, maybe.

So I guess I got to go with Bob

and say that that number is off on

the global,

attributed to extreme weather events.

Yay, Karen, went with me.

Okay, and Evan.

Yeah,

I think there's a reason why fear of snakes is a real thing.

I don't think that just happened accidentally

because

we recognize it's a true danger and 100,000 deaths a year, I think, is a tribute to that.

So yeah, I have a feeling that one's right.

And yeah, I think also the, I'll go with Bob and Kara because

this one

about the extreme weather events, it's just so wide.

It can be interpreted so many ways and it kind of lets

there are a lot, I think several ways this could be wrong, whereas less so with the COVID-19 one, but I wouldn't be surprised either if that one.

But I'll go with Bob and Kare, I'll say extreme weather events fiction.

Okay, so you all agree on the snake bites, so we'll start there.

The World Health Organization reports that over 5 million snake bites occur each year, resulting in over 100,000 deaths.

You all think that one is science, and that one is

science.

So, yeah, so

you have to distinguish between a snake bite and

an envenoming,

which is when a snake bites and injects venom.

Most snake bites.

They're usually a dry run.

Yeah, most or they're just not venomous.

Or they're not venomous snakes.

Yeah.

Yeah, that too.

And that wouldn't really kill you unless they're in a really inopportune place.

Yeah, 5.4 million people worldwide are bitten by snakes.

1.8 to 2.7, so half are envenomings.

And of those,

around 100,000 die.

From year to year, it's like 81 to 137,000 at the high end.

And then two to three times that number have amputations or permanent disability from the snake bite, even though they don't die.

I thought that number was huge.

You know,

that's why a lot of people die from snake bites, you know?

Yeah, but I'm assuming, again, that they're in like rural or

developing countries.

Yeah, of course.

I'm sure they're not.

Yeah, they don't have access to good health care.

But even here, people die from snake bites.

Yeah, sure, yes.

Like, you got to get

U.S.

Yeah, you got to get help fast.

And you got to hope that they have the anti-venom for that snake.

Yeah.

Yeah, right.

All right.

I was actually reading a separate news item about using artificial intelligence to design more effective anti-venoms proteins.

Do it.

Yeah.

All right.

Let's go to number two.

It is estimated that over half a million deaths globally in 2024 can be attributed to extreme weather events.

Bob, Kara, and Evan, you think this one is the fiction.

Jay, you think this one is science.

And this one

is

the fiction.

Yeah.

So what do you think the number is?

Well, 50,000 or 5 million.

I think it's 50,000.

Directly, but like directly attributable to the figure.

Well, yeah, but how are we defining these terms?

Extreme weather events?

I know.

It's all

500,001.

I don't know.

You say over half a million.

Yeah, I bet you it's 50,000.

The number is...

Half a million, sorry.

Yeah.

11,500.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, not as many as you think.

More than I thought.

Wow.

Really?

I mean,

even less than I thought.

Even less than you thought.

Fewer than I thought.

But I thought I'd get you on.

Yeah, because we think, oh, yeah,

one tsunami could wipe out

a lot of people.

Is a tsunami considered a weather event?

Of course.

Hell yeah.

Yeah.

But it's an earthquake.

How's that weather?

Wait.

Yeah, interesting point.

Yeah,

it's always a matter of definition, but it's the fictional.

But that one in 2004, I mean, oh, my gosh, 200,000 deaths from that one

tsunami.

I've seen so many documents.

Yeah, that's a whole documentary on it.

It was unbelievable.

And like those videos at first, it looks really tame.

The water is just sort of strolling in.

But then when you get a little closer, you realize, no, that water is carrying houses and trucks and cars and boats and debris.

And if you're in that,

you are in the grinder.

You're in a meat grinder.

Yeah, there's no way you could survive that.

Water is

so scary.

Oh, it's scary.

Yeah, get to high ground.

Yes, you have to get to high ground.

As fast as you can.

That means that in 2021, COVID-19 was the second leading cause of death just behind ischemic heart disease.

Is science that, yeah, that's interesting to think that, you know, a pandemic like that rocketed to almost, it was like almost, almost as high as ischemic heart disease.

It's like really just barely behind it.

More than stroke, more than COPD,

or more than diabetes.

Were there two million global deaths in that year?

I don't, do you have an exact number on that?

So COVID-19 was directly responsible for 8.8 million deaths in 2021.

Yeah, it was 9.1 million for ischemic heart disease.

So again, it was

pretty close.

She was.

8.8 million.

Yep, people die.

People die for a lot of reasons.

A lot of reasons.

But good job, guys.

I think I propose if you're first and you get it right, I think you should get 1.2 wins.

Yeah, you think so?

Yeah, that's not happening.

All right.

Evan, give us a quote.

We had a quote suggestion this week from a listener in Johannesburg, South Africa.

I-Q-B-A-L.

How would I pronounce that?

Iqbal?

Iqbal, maybe?

I'm not familiar with that name.

Yeah, very cool name.

So thank you for this suggestion.

Knowledge is a paradox.

The more one understands, the more one realizes the vastness of his ignorance.

And that was spoken by Victor, also known as the Herald, in season two of the hit Netflix show Arcane League of Legends, which has been

referred to me so many times.

That is on my soon-to-week list.

Great animation.

The animation is off the hook.

It is like

the best animation I've seen.

And the story is fantastic.

The writing, like, this is typical of it.

Like, it's really intelligently written.

The characters are all amazing.

It's just like the imagery blows you away.

It's highly recommended.

Yeah, Yeah, check it out.

If you're into that sort of thing, it's basically

a magic infused steampunk.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Very good.

So cool.

I know steampunk is a little past its peak, but this doesn't matter.

It's just the aesthetic is

fantastic.

Yeah, it's beautiful.

Well, it's nice to see a quote like this appear in a show like that.

Yeah.

All right.

Thank you, Evan.

Thank you.

And thank all of you for joining me this week.

Thank you, Steve.

Thank you, Steve.

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

Skeptics Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking.

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