The Skeptics Guide #1068 - Dec 27 2025

You're listening to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe. Your escape to reality. Hello and welcome to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe. Today is Thursday, December 17th, 2025, and this is your host, Stephen Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella. Hey everybody, Cara Santa Maria. Howdy. JenoVella. Hey guys. Evan Bernstein. Good evening everyone. This is the last show of 2025. Oh my gosh. What a year. I have one or two things to say about this year. How much worse can it get? Don't even wait a couple of hours. Yeah. I would not assume. I'll break the ice here by letting everyone know that I'm sick with the flu. I just want people to know because I still sick with it. But also it hasn't been a week since we recorded it. It's been a week and podcast time. It's been two days in reality. That means the week really flew. I'm not supposed to be sick last year. I was sick last Christmas. Were you sick last Christmas or the before also? It's right around this time of year. The pattern is my daughter goes to school. Apparently, his best friends who are of the most sick kid is. And then she comes home and infects me and then I infect my wife. That's having kids. They are petri dishes. Is that good for us as parents? Okay. Thank you. It's not good to be exposed to deadly illnesses all the time. Well, my uncle on Facebook said otherwise. I watched the TikTok video once. Oh, why? Thank you. Last year I had a cold over Christmas. It wasn't the flu, but it was a cold. And I got COVID. I can't remember if it was just before or just after maybe like a month apart. And my cold was like 10 times worse than my COVID. Wow. I felt so ill. And when I had COVID, it was like the sniffles for a few days. What did you have the vaccine? I have been vaccinated three cards worth of times. Has anyone else around you who was also suffering that a cold with similar symptoms? It's funny. I couldn't find patient zero for that. I got magic sick. I have a feeling that I caught something when I was at the pharmacy picking up meds. I remember somebody coughing in the aisle and I held my breath. I walked by. But I had that feeling of life. That doesn't work. That's me. I'm sick. I'm sick right now. I felt myself sick from that. I do know the moment. I can pinpoint a moment. Okay. I have a cold coming. This is it. Oh, same. My throat is sore. Yeah. I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm going to have a quick. It's not really. I just slept with my mouth open. I always know when I'm going to get really sick. It sucks. First of all, I'm like, shit, this is it. It's the tickle. The tickle in your mouth. That tickle. It's so uncomfortable. I remember colds. Jay, how did you know? Because the flu is like a whole other beast. It's so much worse than a cold. Yeah, it starts with an internal itch. You know, you get like that. You get that like, oh, what's going on? You know, like, and there's always that disdain. But it progressed very quickly. Like, I went to bed. I'm like, I feel, you know, I feel like I something's happening. You know, because my sinus is. And then I wake up the next day. And I'm like, oh, God, this is. It hit hard. And that was the entire day I was suffering from the chills. And that was really horrible. It's that malaise. I mean, it's the perfect word for how you feel when you have the flu. But you know, it's remarkable how your energy is gone. Like just utterly gone. Like I got up a couple of times today. I had to rest from going to the bathroom. You know, that's what I work sometimes. He's winded after Ian. Oh, I know. It is a good segue. Because I was going to say, can you think your way out of that? Like being sick. Okay, because I wanted to bring up. I know if this was what you're going to ask me, I wanted to bring up, like, the failure of the power of positivity, if I made a little bit. So the last like week ago or so, I attended a funeral of a family. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to say. Thank you. I know he had pancreatic cancer. I was like, very aggressive. He survived the whole year, like from the diagnosis. That's the average life expectancy. I think it's the same as that. I think the diagnosis is one year. Yeah. Yeah. So like, now he was like a little wooly, but like, all his siblings were all like very, like, proscience. So like we did all the things. We went to New Haven, Yale, tried experimental things, you know, it didn't work, obviously. Yeah. But, you know, the thing I wanted to bring up is like, the power of positivity kind of infected everybody in a way that I found was actually troubling. Oh. Because even the week before he died, they were still ordering like medical devices. To like get him in and out of bed. They were besides themselves with like, oh, he'll recover. He was the youngest. He was only 60 when he died, you know, like he was the baby of the siblings. He's like comedian, the glue of the siblings, sort of think, you know, so like they were really shook up about it. But the power of positivity, I feel like blinded them to see what was coming. Yeah. That's so calm. With the funeral, we had no plans for him. Like, didn't know what he wanted. You all kind of just winged it. Didn't really know what the burial should be. Didn't know anything. And so much so that they kind of fell for the idea of like, we should bring him home. So he's comfortable while he recovers. Yeah. So much so that he, by the time he got to hospice, it was like too late that nurses weren't prepared. Even one of his siblings was a hospice nurse. And he said it was like the worst thing he'd ever seen when the franise fluids give him medication. That's really calm and comfortable. And go to hospice long after they should have first gone to hospice. And when I say should, all I really mean by that is for them to have had good quality of life after they've stopped taking life sustaining treatments or, you know, cancer fighting treatments. Because in hospice, there's so much comfort care available to you. And a lot of people wait so long that some of those things can't really be, you know, taken care of as well as they could have early on. A lot of people have, when they, if they make the decision at the right time, they have time to do things that they want to do and, you know, engage in bucket lists and things like that. But be care, how do you break through that wall? Well, it's okay. Okay, so I work with the patients mostly, but people on my team work with the families as well. And I have worked with families. It's not uncommon for me when I first see a patient in the cancer center for them not to have an advanced directive and for them not to have thought about a lot of these things. So big thing that we do in therapy is go there. We go to the hard place. And when the patient goes to the hard place, sometimes that helps the people around them go to the hard place, but sometimes it doesn't. So a lot of what we do is work on how we cope with the fact that the bubble of people around the patient aren't thinking realistically about the end. The patient is often the only one who is, I think people feel, I think people feel a lot of pressure to be positive. Yeah, of course, to be supportive, I'm going to like focus on the hope and the positive angle and right. And then that morphs into the magical thinking of the power as you see the positive power of positive thinking. Like you can fight, you can fight, you can, you know, just think positive thoughts and everything will be all right. But that's not a healthy approach to this at all that. Yeah. That then morphs into denial, which I've seen as well, you know, as you know, care, I've been for a time I was treating a lot of patients with ALS. And the denial was the worst thing. That was the absolute worst thing that I was with the ALS. The real hamstring, the management. And yeah, the approach is that you have to gently but firmly tell them like it is. Make them answer questions like you have to decide whether or not you're going to get intubated when the time comes, etc. You just force that and then you give them time too. You have to start early, you know, you don't push early and you can even months, you know, to come to terms with what's happening. But to the extent that patients go into this positive thinking denial, they absolutely harm themselves in so many ways. It is absolutely harmful, I agree. Is this just like a cultural thing? It is. I think it can be very cultural. It's hard to when you're working with patients where culturally there are some pretty strong rules around what you can and can't talk about. Because obviously I work in a, and you did too, Steve, like a large hospital in a large city, right? Which is a huge melting pot. It's very multicultural. But a few things that I would say in one of the things that I do, it doesn't solve the problem. But I think it, it's important to me is I don't use euphemisms. And Steve, I know we've talked about this too. I say the word death and dying. I don't talk about passing or when you go or when you, I'm like very clear in my language. And I start to normalize that language early. And, but I also measure the patient's reaction to that and work with them on their death anxiety. The other thing though is that there's a fine line between hope and, as you mentioned, denial. And it's not bad to have hope so long as, and I use this phrase all the time, so long as we understand that hope is a moving target. What we hope for changes based on the progression of our illness. When we can't move with the target and we're maintaining hope that we had upon diagnosis, when we still have treatments available to us that had the potential to be life extending. But now let's say we've exhausted all our resources, we've already gone through all the clinical trials. And our oncologist is saying there is nothing left for treatment. And it's time to start talking about your end of life options. If you're still hoping that you're going to get better, that's problematic. So the other layer here that has a massive influence on how well you're able to navigate this whole situation is the amount of trust that the patient and their family has in the system. And this is where the really terrible effects of conspiracy thinking and all of the anti sort of medicine alternative crap and wellness industry propaganda is so harmful. Because when there's a lack of trust and you're telling them, trust me, you have a year to live, you need to prepare for it. They're like, fuck you, I want to do other things that don't trust what you're telling me. And then they go out, they spend all their money, they waste their time, they don't make important decisions that they have to make it really harmful. And it's hard to know what anybody, even the strongest skeptic, it's hard to know that what they would do when they realize that there are no good options. You know, we'll all kind of sometimes try things that are a little extreme if we have the disposable income to do it or if we're, you know, if even though it's a long shot, we don't see any downside. We may do things that we wouldn't think we would do when we're well. I think one of the biggest concerns that I see and Steve, I'm curious about your take on this and Ian, I'm wondering how much insight you have into this. I struggle when I see patients working with providers, where the providers have not managed their own death anxiety. And so the providers aren't being very clear. They're not giving true prognostication. They're sort of kicking things down the law. We'll worry about that when that's an issue right now. I want you to focus on getting well. And I see this, you know, not a lot, a lot, but I see it enough that I find it really difficult to deal with. Now, I'd say I hate to start to show this way, but this is an appropriate discussion for 2025. Don't you think? It is. Well, yeah, sorry. I can't hear you. I can't hear you. Ian, the question I was going to ask you. Sorry. When is the first episode of political reality? Oh, my God. Now you're really putting the screws to me. So we just finished actually a little intro video that we're going to be editing it up. But we have like seven episodes in the can. They just need a little refinement, I think. And I think we're going to post it, but then the year of the first of the year, maybe January. We started on that. That's what I thought too. It's like, hey, 2026. We're fixing it. Yeah, you might as well just say, like, first week of January of January, we'll put it on. Yeah, whatever we still haven't figured out the exact day. But yeah, let's, let's do first of the year. We have to make it happen. We'll commit to it. We'll make it, make it so. Okay. People are starting to doubt that it exists. Oh, it exists. I keep telling them and they're like, oh, editing is so easy. You could, yeah, you read it a podcast. Well, I will say, this is video. Video is 10 times harder than audio. Yeah, it is a lot more. If we were, if we were closer to April 1st, I don't think anyone would believe you. But you know what happened January 1st, 1996, 30 years ago. Oh, God. What? The official launch of the Connecticut skeptical society. Oh, 30 years. I thought you were going to say something that felt like five years ago. Couple of young kids. Yeah. That's open to change the world. That's right. Yeah, it was like, hey, let's get together and put on a show. Put on a show kind of. Yeah, let's, it all started that way. All right. So the first segment we usually do in this year end review is the best and worst of 2025. And we could start with the best and worst of the SGU. Is there anything that you guys remember from the past year that sticks out? So you just go to Nauticon right now. Nauticon was great. Nauticon was pretty good. So yeah, we have, we put the first half of our year. That's so much effort went into, went into that. I mean, Jay, and you, you, you can speak more to that than any of you. Oh, my God. If he can actually, he has. Yeah, Jay would say right now. It's an incredible amount of work, but you know, you just do a little bit every day. And you know, I get through it. No problem. It's largely me. And then, you know, Ian is handling the technical side. But we do work a lot together throughout that process. But it's a good committee. It's so worth it. We had so much, so much fun. Like people really, you know, that was our highlight. I think this year was definitely that conference. I mean, it felt fantastic. It really, really thought everyone had a great time. We had a lot of expectations going into it. And I think we achieved those expectations. Absolutely. Absolutely. The first one was so perfect. I'm like, how are we going to beat that? And like, well, we did. It was. And so much of it, I mean, not to undermine all of the incredible hard work. And like, I mean, it was phenomenal having all of these great guests there. Who was there with us, like through the whole thing? It was George, Adam, Andrea, and Brian. Yeah, they were phenomenal. But it's that we have like literally the best listeners, the best fans, the group of people that was there with us was just incredible. They made the weekend. Oh, absolutely. Yes. The vibe was incredible. Yeah, we'd have been boring without them. Oh, we would have made it worse. We would have had fun, but we wouldn't have been the same. Definitely not. We got some emails. Listener Victor wrote from episode 1061. Bob says, talking about the neo robot. Bob said, it really needed help for most anything it did. It needed help. A carer response. Oh, great. So it's like having a man in your house. So wonderful. You want to go do it? I want to show you the whole thing. That was great. Little sexist, don't care. There's a little sexist. But, oh. Close enough. Not good. No, it's our own truth. That was it was describing reality. Hey, I'm pretty independent from my house chores. That's good to know. But I can point to the vastness of the literature showing that women do like. Oh, you're going to quote statistics. Not just the majority, but like a ridiculous amount, like a major majority of the domestic labor. That's a lot of knowledge. You know, what doesn't. Yeah. But everybody, how do you. How do you guys do it? Do you, do you have discrete tasks and your significant other also has these discrete tasks? And that's kind of how, or do you kind of swap them and trade them here and there? Or what? Our household has that. But we also do some things together. Yeah. For each task, it has its own percentage. You know, like Jocelyn does 80% of the laundry. You know, but I. Coaching is like 50, 50. She hates shopping. So I do almost all the shopping. Wow. I do. So different than Mayan Liz. Wow. Well, yeah, just chord by chord, you know. And so much of it, Steve, like when I make snide comments like that. And of course, I'm being funny, but I'm also trying to hold up a mirror to reality. It's less about what people do and it's more about the kind of undercurrent of A, that the tasks that men tend to do in the home tend to be very visible. And the tasks that women tend to do tend to be very invisible. They're the ongoing. It's never finished work. Whereas men tend to do more discrete tasks where everybody can like go, oh, look, you did the thing. Congratulations. Or thank you. I hung that painting. Exactly. I moved along. I, you know, and then the other thing is that very often we're not actually talking about the labor itself, but the cognitive labor that goes into it. And so I'm not saying, you're the example, but very often a man will say, I go out and I do all the grocery shopping. And it's like, yeah, but she makes the list. She tells you what you need to get. You call and you're like, what brand do we use? I don't know anything. And she has to do all of the mental. And that's a very common issue, even in liberal progressive. Relationships with high levels of parity when, when Doug underneath the surface, most of the research shows that women are still doing the majority of the cognitive labor, which is a huge bummer. Do fix it. Victor also wrote a favorite quote of the year was from me. Extraordinary claims don't require extraordinary evidence. They require appropriate evidence. Remember saying that. And the funniest thing he's on that he says a recurring joke that if the S.G. ever misses a week, something catastrophic must have happened. So they got some more than once. That is never missed a week. That track. We haven't. That's the whole point. Oh, I see. I get it. I get it. Right. We got a lot. Can I say, I know I don't even know what order we're supposed to be doing. It's just best of S.G. You stuff. Okay. We got a lot of emails and I have to agree. And I also agree with the reasoning. It's probably the recency bias. Oh, yeah. But that bound of pasting's episode. Also funny episode. Really funny episode. And I think that you also left in a lot more banter than usual in that episode. Because it was funny. Exactly. But people loved it. Like we got a lot of people. And I think that's what I think was learned. Although a couple of people felt that you guys were a little pushed back a little bit too hard. Hard on my love of history and the battle of Hastings. Almost dancing around almost being a little anti-intellectual. I'm not saying you are. What? A couple of people. They have a point. They left it in to get something. I know it's all for a few. It's all for a few points. But we do have to understand our audience and the vibe of the show. And we are saying that you are a nerd because you like this intellectual discipline. No, nobody thinks that it's bad that you are really into it. I know. I know. But yeah, Jay was kind of being funny about that. But yeah, but that's just Jay Miannus. Yeah, I mean the bomb. We just think it's bananas that you expected us to be as into it. Well, it's the progress. It's the progress things itself. No, I mean, I specifically said I'm not a history buff. And that's fine. Who the hell are any of us to put down someone's niche geekdom? I mean, that would be something ridiculous. Something that we would never really do. Quite the opposite. Yeah, we were definitely leaning into it. And I'm proud to say I knew what Steve was talking about. I mean, that book I mentioned it. And it was a awesome book. And I learned a lot. And it was pivoted out of you. And I am kind of a history buff. But you know, the areas where I tend to focus the documentaries that I tend to watch, they're just not that. I'm not a big fan. Yeah, they're not. But this was not just like it wasn't about the fight. It was about the massive cultural change that resulted. We don't have to get back into that. That's true because we covered that shit. This really needs more vampires, I think. Because if there was a vampire on there, I'd be really happy. Does anybody. I have a favorite. It's so funny because it's like we think about favorite news stories of the year. And often we'll talk about, oh, this was my favorite science news that we learned. But I was thinking this year about, well, what's my favorite topic that I covered? Like what did I learn the most from? I do that every year. That's what I do every year. Oh, yeah. This is the one that I covered that I love the most. If it was a dramatically like best of the year news item, I'm grabbing that, man. Of course I would grab that. Something so that's worthy of that list. So yeah, I invariably, although this year, I'm not ironically, I'm not necessarily picking something that I talked about. Because I think it's something that needs to be at least mentioned on the show. I think there are just two different things. Like some of my favorite science news, which we'll get to, we're like huge discoveries and amazing things that happened mostly in medicine. But my favorite news item that I did was, I had to dig for it, but it was episode. 1058, which I think was in October, I covered this study where the researchers described a construct that they called symbolic strength. And yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, really deep into like why people find pride in like denying reality and why they seem so entrenched and how hard it is to quote change their minds. Because not only do they not want their minds changed, they feel special having the anti viewpoint. And it's just, just the anti viewpoint or is it like, yeah, is it like special knowledge? Yeah, it's definitely special knowledge. Yeah, it's, it's weird. It's not, and it's not even like the whole conspiracy thing where like we're the ones who know and you don't really know, but it's like, oh, the mainstream, they are whatever they would call. Yeah, it's like they're like, but we, we have the, you know, information, even if it flies in the face of evidence. But does it require that we that like group think consolidation or like camaraderie that they have it or can they exhibit it on their own individually? I do think it requires the camaraderie because these aren't just like made up viewpoints. They're echo chamber viewpoints. Yeah, they're a couple kind of stuff. Yeah, it becomes part of a group identity. Exactly. I have a favorite news item from this past year. If you guys remember, I talked about, talked about lab grown teeth. Yeah, you did. Yes, love that. You know, and if you, if you guys remember the, this wasn't like a minor achievement, this last, this last level that they got to, like they're, they're legit testing it, you know, like it's, this could be a thing. It could really happen. So I think that's encouraging. That was fun. Because you know, not only is dentistry crazy expensive, but it could be horribly painful. And it's really sad, you know, lots of people have to lose their teeth and they have to get implants and all that stuff. Like if this works out, you know, it could have void all of that. Wouldn't it still be an implant or you guys don't mean not growing it back in your skull. You think you're, you're growing it externally and then putting it on the ground. No, they're planting the butt and you're drawing them. Yeah, oh, they are planting the, oh, okay. Maybe that part. Oh, that's, I have a couple of things from, from the interwebs from far listeners talking online. A lot of people locked, liked Bob's mega rant about quantum crystals. You remember that one, Bob? What? No. It was a pseudo-science item. And you got so outraged at the pseudo science that you had this monologue rant afterwards that people loved. Just a classic quantum pseudo-science crap. Yeah, I hate that shit. You probably said grind my gears at some point during that. And you guys have a favorite guest? Oh, I remember we had Dr. Nick Tiller, the exercise scientist. That was a fun interview. I like that one. Professor D. Professor D. One of my favorite interviews, I mean, anytime we have the chance to talk to Marsh, I would have those. Oh, yeah. I had, gosh, had we not seen him since QED in 2018? Maybe. In person? Well, that's perhaps the last time he was on an SG episode. Wow, really? And what a great thing that he and Cecil, that they're, that they're doing this podcast, where they dig into Joe Rogan episode. Oh, really? That's like the focus? Yes, the no-rogan podcast. Nice. Yep, the no-rogan. I love it. With a K. The no-rogan is nice. I don't know if it's also three hours, because you need that per episode, because you need that much time to undo of what he's doing. I like the interview with Kyle Johnson, the philosopher. I think there's that one. I heard a level of wonkiness for the show. You know, I mean, getting it, like let's do a deep dive on logic and like really sus it out. Because obviously, something that comes up a lot on the show. So it was great to talk to a philosopher, you know, an actual expert. And like really dial it in tight, you know? Right. Toy. Formal up. Yep, yep. Well, we did mention the most interesting or best, whatever science news item. I was going to talk about the whole Osolo color thing, which I mentioned only because I talked about it at the Nauticon show on stage. And for some reason, this one's just so extra fasting, be it color perception and how the retina works and all that. I took a few onion layers deeper than I typically delved and it was so fast. That one really comes to mind. But I think we have to mention it's kind of obvious. It's not the best. It's not the most interesting science of the year, but it's the most impactful. And it's pretty obvious. You know, the gutting of science research in the United States this year has been unprecedented. Thousands of researchers, you know, withholding federal research funding, dismantling, you know, climate research. It's been devastating and will fill the impact for generations. This is like the biggest science news item of this year. It's like, what could impact, what can compare to this in terms of the sheer impact of science in this country? It's just like, it's ridiculous. It's just like beyond the pale. It's just like, how is this our reality? Another Bob Rant. All right. Come on, man. That's worthy, Jesus. And not just defunding science research, but defunding public health programs like Amphar, like these different or USAID. Yes. These programs that, I mean, we know for a fact, like there's a body count. Like there's a... And I know, have you read some of the estimates of the numbers? There's bananas. It's one, let's say I read one that was 124. Now these are models of likely deaths and excess deaths because of this slash USAID. 124,000 adults. Over a quarter million children, 88 deaths per hour. That's the result of what's been done to USAID. And that's those are the estimates. Even if it's off, I'm sure it's not perfectly accurate, right? But it doesn't matter. Even if it's just somewhat correct, it's devastating and like, what the hell? There's a study at it. That's the body count. Yeah, there's a study at a UCLA that was done by the fielding school of public health this July that said, more than 14 million preventable deaths would occur by 2030 if USAID defunding continues, including more than 4 million children under the age of five. Yeah, but the savings though, you know? Yeah, the savings for their bank accounts tomorrow. But the savings for the globe or even the American government in the long term are not savings. It was not, you know, even if you take it as a savings rather than the investment that it is, it was less than what Trump just decided to hand the benefit to Argentina. Yeah, right? Here you go. More than what was allegedly quote unquote saved by gutting USAID. That was just madness. There's also, I mean, if we're going to talk about like crap that happened this year, you know, the, the, you know, gutting of support for research in scientific research in the United States is terrible. And I could tell you that the rest of the world is like, come here, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And they are poaching, talk about a brain drain. They are poaching all of our talent now because they're not compete, you know, if you're, even if you're here on a visa and you're completely legitimate, you are afraid. You know, that you're just going to be suddenly deported because somebody doesn't like the color of your skin or something or the country that you came from. So, yeah, it's twofold, Steve. It's like not only are people losing their NIH grants and losing their funding that keeps their labs afloat people that are either naturalized or natural born citizens, but then you have individuals who, as you mentioned, are all different levels of immigration status who don't feel safe and many of whom have already been asked to leave. So it's a brain drain, not just of American scientists, but scientists who have become American scientists or who are practicing in America. Yeah. Even natural born citizens are like, well, I can't keep my lab open. So this other country that might be offering more funding seems like an interesting place to go. It's like a double loss. And they're like cutting funding for clinical trials or for research that is where they're collaborating with a non-US laboratory or a scientist. Which is every legitimate thing. I know. I mean, that's like, within academia, collaborating with people outside of your institution is considered the best. Like that is what you're supposed to be striving for is that kind of collaboration. And now they're punishing people for that. No, can't only work with other Americans. It is insane. It is an absolute, anti-scientific madness. It's crazy. And it's going to, it is lysencoism, absolutely. And it's going to hurt us for at least a generation, if not more. We may never get to back, get back to where we would have been if they did not do this. Yeah. This is like a permanent hit to the US. Yeah. That was the world. And it makes me nervous. Like, I was looking into the best science news. Like the stuff that I was the most excited about this year. And they were, I mean, hands down gene therapies. Gene therapy for Huntington's disease, T-cellacute lymphoblastic leukemia. There's the new CAR T-cell therapy. The first CRISPR that was individually tailored. It was like designer CRISPR for the baby with a CPS1. And I worry that those stories, that is the confluence, the amalgamation, like the end result of previous year, like a lot of hard work and previous study. How many years are we going to be able to say, look at all this cool stuff that happened, at least in the US this year? I don't think we're going to have years like that. Maybe a while. Yeah. Well, let's shift into the science, the best science news of the year. I agree that the genetic stuff is just incredible. And it looks to continue. I think we're just getting started. Maybe not we, but the world. The world is just getting started. And along those lines, you kind of touched on this. Immunotherapy for cancer also is just taking off. It is that there's continued to be advances and breakthroughs this year for that. Also a couple of things I noted. There's been a number of significant breakthroughs in quantum computing. Yeah. Authoring by assessment of how likely and how soon we may have actual practical quantum computers. I think they got a lot closer this year, more than any other single year that I could read for. Yeah. It seemed like a definitely a multiple incremental. Yeah. You know, leaps. And there's a big year for life in the solar system. Oh, yes it was. Sure was. You haven't found the whole of the grill yet. We have about actual life in this world in terms of biosignatures. So we talked very recently about finding all the all the makings of RNA on asteroid Bennu and the most tantalizing signs of ancient life on Mars that we have. The carbon chain. Yes. Yes. The large carbon chains. Yeah. Yeah. We're peeling that back to the point where boy, it's just incredible what we've been able to figure out. We haven't even gotten the samples back from Mars yet. Yeah. Which are still hopefully working on. I think there was what a glitch in the system, right, Jay? Or there was there was talk of shelving that, but I think it's back on schedule, if I recall. I haven't checked recently, but I think the last we heard that it was back, right? Yes. That's that was my understanding. And that's going to be so significant. And again, the thing about these particular samples, yes, that we've seen evidence of these things that have on objects that have fallen to earth, but we're collecting them out in their natural habitat right now and without that contamination, potential for contamination. So it just, it becomes more affirming than anything else that we've been able to study and understand. I'd like to mention, it's not strictly science, but it was certainly significant and it happened almost a year ago. So it was early in the year, you know, and again, the recency bias takes over to a certain point. But the LA fires was a massive, massive story that did have, that did have certainly elements of science to it. But also a lot of different things. Carrot was, first of all, was, you know, close to home to you. Oh, yeah. You're having to deal with that on, you know, a day to day basis. It lasted for about three or four weeks on all of January, practically. Oh, yeah. And we couldn't breathe the air. I mean, it was, even those of us who were outside of the EVAC zones, I was like in, in the, you know, have your go-bag ready area, but I never had to actually, you back. Oh, it was horrific. Like I have two pretty fancy like Dyson air filters in my house. You know, those like standalone fans that have the filters. And within a week, I had changed them within the past month or two and you're supposed to change them maybe once a year, I think. Within the week they were clogged and not functional anymore. Wow. Like it was bananas that the intake filters in my HVAC were black and thick like inside my home. And I have a pretty new home that's pretty well sealed. Yeah, I think the air quality was like in the 300s maybe. 300. It was something just horrific. Don't get on that. I have screenshots of it. But um, it certainly wasn't just grass and trees and things that burned. There were 18,000 structures that went up. Yeah. And I know. So in those particular, in the particles there that they're being breathed in, there's there's plastic. There's all kinds of things going in at that. Oh, yeah. And in that air that is hurting, damaging, building materials, you know, there's like all, yeah, there's a little spastic. A spastic, yeah, there's everything went up into the air. And you know, from a personal perspective, you know, I know people, I know lots of people who lost their homes because I was close to the Alta Dina fire, not the, not the fire in palisades, but because I was finishing my fellowship at the time at this like large cancer center, I saw patients from all over and I had patients who lost everything, you know, so not only were they just dealing with their cancer, that's why they were seeing me, but they lost everything. Yeah. Yeah. Like it's, I mean, when an entire city goes up in flames like that, like I remember a teenager that I was speaking with and they said, the school I went to for elementary, middle high school, the, you know, grocery store I shopped at, the library I went to my friend's house, my other friend's house, the place I went to summer camp, they don't exist anymore. Mm-hmm. Just like her entire childhood was wiped off the face of the map. Mm-hmm. I mean, it's just, it's pretty hard to fathom. And that's, that's somebody who survived and is, you know, going to be able to rebuild. There are people who didn't survive. Now can we definitively say it wasn't because somebody didn't turn the water on, so to speak. Yes, we can because we know, we know that the, the original or the very, very beginning of the fire, folks are an individual who is charged for that, right? Yes. For intentionally setting the fire. Yeah. Yeah. Fireworks? I can't remember. No, no, no. He apparently, gosh, it's still, it's still playing out, but the evidence against him is that he, he's deliberately set the fire, but he has shown through his social media posts and other things, a fixation with fires. So I don't know what that is if there's a mental illness of some sort that that accounts for something like that. I wouldn't know how to classify it. I don't know. I don't know how to arsonist per se, right? Because, you know, but definitely it was one person who with a lighter, when they're crushed, started a little fire and it just, and it got out of control. Now they contained it a few days later. But then it, but then the winds picked up. There go the Santa Anas and you lose a total control at that point and it turned into the, to the devastation that it did. And now we see, I'm seeing here 12 deaths, nearly 7,000 structures and $150 billion in damages just from the palisades fire. That was just the most interesting thing ever. And remember, we had the two huge fires and lots of small fires around them. 31 direct fatalities from all the fires. There were a total of 14 individual fires as a result of this. But they're also saying the more, it's hard to measure the long term mortality rate of this because of the breathing issues that everybody is having. You know, it's like, it was kind of like, in a sense, 9-11, where people were dying years later from the, from having exposed to that atmosphere. Do you think this will change how we build houses in America? I mean, especially given that this seems to recur over and over, or is it a lost cause? Are we just, I doomed to keep building out of wood? It's both, right? I think that in California, we've known about fire risks and we've also known about, about earthquake risks and we do what we can to mitigate. But there's only so much you can engineer your way out of these things. But definitely, I think it'll change the way that we build from a civic perspective, like the infrastructure around the homes. I hope so. Yeah, and other fire mitigation. Exactly. Yeah, they have to bury all those electrical transmission lines. And we do have to be careful about how the pressure that's put on the water system. And are we trying to tap into water that's not meant to fight, you know, a blazing forest fire with water that's meant to fight, you know, a small structure fire? All right. Should we go on to skeptical hero and skeptical Jackass of the year? Do we start with Jackass so we get all the, oh, you want to do that first? Well, here's one thing. I think he keeps getting really dark. So we get the dark stuff out of the way. Maybe we can end on a higher note. It'll be happy. It doesn't matter. We could do Jackass first. Did you have, who'd you have in my case? Yeah, who? Well, for me, I mean, it's hard because who, who, who did we, did we ultimately choose JFK junior last year? You could pick them again. Well, but the, you right, the administration really didn't start until this year. Yeah. So for me, it was, we came RFK this year. It was RFK and his band of Mary science deniers. I mean, it's not just him, right? It's like, they're, yeah, and, and I think some of them he dragged in and some of them just also were there because Trump put them in place. Like, we've got to remember that RFK is the secretary of health and human services, but we've got a doctor. How do you say his last name? Batacharya. J. Batacharya. He's the director of NIH. We've got Jim O'Neill, who's the deputy secretary of HHS and the acting director of the CDC. We've got Martin McAree, who's the commissioner of the FDA. We've got Mehmet Oz, who is the administrator for, you know, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid. Like, these are all science deniers to some extent in these very important positions. Yeah. And Trump is basically MIA. I mean, he's not doing anything. He just let RFK handle everything, you know, he's really just deferring to him. And yeah, I mean, for me, it's, it begins and then with RFK Jr., right? Yes. So all the people that come along with it as well, but he is anti-science, pseudo-science, conspiracy-mongering, personified. He is the poster child for all of the harm that can be done when you give actual power to these crazy, not job science deniers. And he has the power, isn't it? It's just mind blowing the harm. Again, we talk about like how many people are going to die due to the reckless, you know, cutting of USAID. You know, RFK already has a body count attached to his nonsense. The only question is how many zeros is he going to add to that, you know, over his tenure. And a lot of that, Mark Crystal just wrote about this on science-based medicine, the fact that, you know what the pandemic prepared this plan is to do nothing, to do absolutely nothing. We have a pandemic in the next three years where, it's going to be bad. The last one was a hoax anyway. We're just going to make people healthy and that will, they'll be able to fight off the infection. That's basically their plan, which is basically saying we're going to do nothing. And what really sucks is that even after the horrific results of that plan would be like, well, it would have been worse if we didn't hear it your way. It's like, well, geez. It doesn't even make sense from a long-term political expediency perspective, because who's going to die? Yeah. It's going to be the older people who voted for these folks. It's going to be the unvaccinated people who voted for these folks. It's going to be a lot of people who are the most vulnerable among us. And it's- Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's going to change the political calculus. But a huge pandemic would, but- We have a lot of it. It's just devastating. I mean, for COVID, COVID death rates were a lot higher in red states than blue states in states that were not doing the things that would be science-based. That's what I'm saying. COVID happened again, but this was the administration and- Yeah, it was even 10 times worse. No plans in place. Yeah. The DAPO is basically the RFK for Florida. You know what I mean? So it's a smaller scope, but basically the same thing. So I mean, no one can come close to the havoc that RFK is wreaking. But it's not fair to all the other pseudoscientists that there's- We have to have some- Exactly. Can't let RFK do your overshadow all the other cranks and charlatans that deserve it. You mentioned- We need a top 10 list of the cranks on the flint. Yeah, you see 100,000 people. Yeah. I mean, I have a couple of the people, because anybody want to throw something out? Evan, come on. Well, you want the Avi Loeb? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he is. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Why does every article I come across have him as part of the article? Why can't I have an atlas? Right. What is it? Three-all atlas. Article that does not mention Avi Loeb. Please, someone out there in media stop referencing this person. I get you have to have clicks and things, but my gosh. It's as if this person is the expert, the only expert on it, and he's nothing of the sort, frankly. All he does is promote his own interpretation of what's going on. I can't find any other reputable scientists that agree with anything. It's all the UFO and UAP community that backs him up. This guy is the UFO-UAP crank now. He really has become the greatest object. Yeah, he's become the poster child for all of this. So I know we've mentioned him in the past, and I think he's been on this list in the past, but he keeps earning it. I mean, he keeps coming back. And media plays right into his hands, unfortunately. Just today I was reading another one about, oh, it's approaching Earth, and it's accelerating at a rate that can only be unnatural propulsion. Oh, according to one scientist, N equals one, that's it. NASA recently gave a briefing, updating, because the comet is coming to its closest approach to Earth. It's glowing in X-rays, isn't it? Yeah, it's doing all the stuff that commas do, and it gets closer to the Sun. So they began their briefing by saying, this object is a comet. It breaks it. It behaves like a comet, and all evidence points to it being a comet. And they specifically called out Avi Loeb. Really? Yeah. Really good for them. Oh, that's good. Who for his post today non-pure-reviewed rep-preprint. And that's wonderful. Yeah. They shut that down fast. No, it is a freaking comet. You know what I mean? And this has been a massive mission to observe it from everything we have looking at. It's anything that we could get eyes on through that. This has been looking at it. We have so much data, and the more data that comes in, the more obvious it is that this thing is a comet. Now it's an unusual comet, because of course it's the first interstellar comet. So why would we think it would be identical to a typical comet from our own solar system, but whatever, nothing that is anomalous, just like, oh, that's interesting. A little bit more nickel, or more carbon dioxide than a typical Earth. Yeah, so-soil comet. Yeah, whatever. Nothing like, oh my god, this has got to be an alien spacecraft. I have another skeptical jackass that I'd like to throw out there. It's more of a category, but I do have a couple of names that fit this category. And that's TikTok. I don't know if anyone has anything or anything having to do a TikTok on their skeptical jackass. But this platform is just pure poison. I'm sorry. I know there's good stuff on that. There's good science communities on there. And I have it on my skeptical heroes list. I have a list of some people who are doing some very good social media in science. So it is not just a blanket statement, but these people, for example, you have these three people, Nara Smith. Right. She- She- But the- Okay. Go ahead. We're explaining. Promoting the consumption of raw milk while pregnant. All right. I- I thought you were just going to be like, because she is like a little quirky and tradwifi and like she does some goofy stuff with her husband and they- I think their vampires- I'm like, that, like- Yeah, that is fair. And she does do some- Not really. Not really. Yeah, that's- How about pause salad, do you know if you heard that, Nara? Oh my god. The all-meat carnivore diet. Yeah. Carnivore, yeah. Oh, I think I was talking about her about that guy. Vegetables are poison, Evan. That's what purge- If you watch- If you watch RFK or anybody in Congress, he is- He's walking around with them usually. Like- Especially RFK. He's like always say. Wow. And I want to mention this because it's funny. The liver king, right? We've- Oh no, that's the documentary. I- Brian, there's a whole thing on the liver king. Yep. Yep. If you focus on these large amounts of raw organ meats, then you're going to have, you know, superpower. You'll live longer than anyone in your family ever has. Yeah, unfortunately, I think he needs like therapy. Like he's not just like a crank fully. Well, you can sit on any of these people. Lost the plot. There's somewhere between eating therapy and being- I mean, so many of you are so many, yeah. Sure. Yeah, that too. But just the amount of clicks these people get is obscene. I have no business gap. Yeah, as you know, Evan, I'm on TikTok. Well, yes, and this is why I qualified. Follow-at. I think that that is. You know, it helps us produce our TikTok videos. And there is a couple of dominant narratives on TikTok that I find myself addressing over and over again, just in different guys. One of them is, oh, this guy who invented a thing was killed died. Therefore, he was killed to hide his discovery kind of thing. Like a diesel. Like, yeah, like you talked about that. You were just talking about that. That's what I was a from TikTok. The other one is that the- you know, anybody to do- anybody in the healthcare industry wants you to die, wants you to be unhealthy. There- everything they tell you was a lie. Like, everything it ever heard was a lie. And also that history didn't happen. You know, the other thing was like, whatever. That- Oh, yeah. You can't prove anything in history and therefore, you know, Helen Keller didn't exist. And this building was- nobody built this building. It's in the history denial. I mean, Sarah, I'm not- I'm not exaggerating in the slide. I'm barely giving a- were you there, Steve? I'm there. That's so bad. The buildings didn't- right. Could not have been built. There was a huge mud flood around the world 100 years ago. Oh, 100 years ago. You can't even- we're not- they're not talking about thousands of years ago. They're talking about like 50 years ago, 100 years ago. Well, they weren't born yet. I know. It's ridiculous. There weren't cell phones then, Steve. Nobody captured it. Can't prove it unless it was on TikTok. It's a loss out that- Malaces spill that killed a bunch of people in Boston. Yeah, I would've thought that's what they think. That's what I remember that. The memory hole is just profound. Oh, gosh. It's really- it's a sad- and there's a lot of NASA hate on TikTok. Ooh. Yeah. This is a weird one. I mean, part of it is I don't know if I'm influencing it because I also kind of sourced a lot of the videos. I mean, actively go seek out the crazy stuff. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it does get a lot of likes. And who knows if they're bots, but it is like seemingly pervasive. Mm-hmm. You know, so it is weird. Yeah, I mean, I think all the platforms unfortunately have devolved. I mean, X is notoriously run by, you know, somebody's not necessarily a straight shooter in many ways. Instagram, Facebook, all of those things are- I don't know. Social media, maybe we shouldn't have started. Can we go back? There were good- There was an error where- Yeah, but there's also more and more evidence to show how just like exceedingly damaging it is to young people's mental health. Sure, but what do you do? Because obviously we've heard in the news and it was a little political, but Australia is like banned yet for- Yeah. On exchange, it's not under right. But like if you grew up, like Karen, I grew up long ago, we grew up in the world where there wasn't the internet and then there was the internet, right? And I found ways around my parents putting, you know, like an abstinence policy out there. Like I found other ways to get on the internet. Is this going to do anything you think- Well, I do personally because I don't think it's the same as abstinence. And I hear you why you're using that word. But it's- You could also say the same thing about like Australia banning guns and like yes, they did just have a mass shooting, but their numbers are nowhere near our numbers. Even, you know, adjusted for population. There's just- Yes, I think that when you make it so that it's no longer culturally normative and when you make it so that it's not as easily accessible, people are always going to figure out ways to do it. But not to the same extent as they do now. Right, but with the guns, there's not like an analog that you can get around it where you like have mass firing spoons or something. Like there's not- Yeah, I mean, some kids are going to figure out how to use it regardless, but if they're heavy penalties or I don't really know what they're- how they're going to enforce this. And also if you just straight up ban cell phones in school, that has another like- That's a different- I agree with that kind of the school thing. But imagine both of them at the same time. But if young people aren't allowed on social media until a certain age, just like young people aren't allowed to drink alcohol until a certain age, some of them still do. A lot of them still do. But it's not normative. They're not doing it out in public. They're not, you know what I mean? So you ban that and then you also ban gun, they're not guns. Cell phones in schools, I think you'll see a cultural change. But isn't there a sum of discussion about like maybe the way that we treat alcohol leads to a binging culture in America versus like Europe where they have a little bit more of a connection with it. So is the solution actually banning it when it might lead to them going down deeper, darker social media turns like I'm fortunate? Well, but I don't think they're saying- Like Nazis, they're not saying they want to ban it all together. They say they want to ban it until the children are at an age at which they can develop a healthy habit with it. And that's the same thing without alcohol. It'll be interesting to put money into funding. Yeah, we do like cell phones. Yeah, right. It was an interesting experiment. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. I agree. But social media is not, I think there was a time when we could safely be like everybody, every generation gets weird about stuff and it's like the new TV. And I think we can safely say now like no, social media is its own beast. Yeah. The evidence is adding up. It's a different animal. It seems to be pointing a direction. And it's been completely unregulated until now. Well, that's it. It's the one. Obviously because- That's the guardrails are helpful. It would get nice. We've got to try something. Man, I'm very curious how to do that. Especially for younger people. But seemingly they police themselves. Right. Even now, even with this legislation, they police themselves on what they justify is somebody over the, or under the age of 16. Like there's, there are legal ways that they have to like, you know, upload licenses, but they also have algorithms that determine whether or not you're 16. So what, like clearly they have a desire to have kids on the platform. Of course they do. That's why they're proactively doing like- Now there's like Instagram for teens and stuff because they're trying to prevent things from happening like or happening in Australia. They don't want regulation. They want to say, look, we're protecting kids, but they're not. And we know they're not. But they're not. Right. But I agree with you too. But then the legislation writes it to like put it in their hands. So kind of just obvious skates say, and it's like, hey, we passed the bill to protect the kids. Of course. Yeah. So it's just like a political slap of hand. Like, I don't know. I think it's just an art thing. I do agree with you, Ian, that there is a cultural responsibility to develop healthier habits with things that are not going away. And so I think the alcohol example is actually a good one because our relationship with alcohol can sometimes induce more, you know, binge culture and more abuse. At the same time, if alcohol was freely available to young people, I think that we would have a lot more health consequences. Yeah. There's definitely obviously a balance point. I mean, maybe we should be funding things that are scientific, you know, about like therapy or people, you know, like it would be interesting. There's leads me. I want to throw in my skeptical jackass, if you don't mind. And I'm going to expand it pretty wide. I'm going to say like the whole political class of every flavor, I'm going to, I'm sorry, drag netting them a little bit. But like it kind of, I don't know, showcase like the myth that we had serious people. There's so self-serving or uncaring. And even the people that I kind of agree with, I don't know, there's like little bits where I'm like, what are you doing? Or anti-science, it's really just, you head against the wall, who's running the ship or stirring the ship? It's like, what is going on? It's a good observation. Ian, I've said for a long time, if you're going to be skeptical about anything, be skeptical about politics and politicians. That's a good, abacation thing. The hardest thing. Like I agree with you, Evan, with this, where it's like, I'm going to, you know, maybe be a little tongue cheek, but the skepticism against science is like, come easy. Skepticism with politics is like kind of crazy. There's so much out there. It's a good way for us to check ourselves. It's an entire industry based on deception. I mean, your goal is to not to tell the truth, it's to influence you, influence your behavior. It's persuasion science. And it's persuasion. Yeah. Kind of say power. Kind of say power. Anything. Yeah. Like, you hope the person who's most persuitable actually has good ideas. I mean, there are some good politicians out there, obviously. Of course. Of course. I agree with you. But it does seem like the system, there's a selective pressure for people willing to be shamelessly manipulative. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. Our political system has the same, we often talk, you know, you use the phrase a lot, Steve, where you're like, it's not a bug. It's a feature. Like a lot of the bugs in our political system, I think are similar to the bugs in our economic system. When you have a system that's built in such a way that greed is good, when you have a system that's built in such a way that those who kind of take the most continue to be the most rewarded and are given the most perks so they can continue to take more. This is the system you end up with, both politically and economically, which, you know, they're not really two separate systems. Right. And in order to change it, you have to convince these people to make laws to regulate themselves and they rarely. Yeah, which is really hard to do. You have to be so politically active and you have to really hold these people to account. And even then it's difficult when you're living in this kind of post whatever reality reality, where the very people who, like you said, Evan, you're asking them to write laws to regulate themselves are all set. And not only is it not human nature, we're now living in a culture where, or maybe not a culture, but a system where the very people in power have like little connection to an interest in keeping their constituents happy. Yeah. Yeah. And so like, how do you hold somebody to account who doesn't care if their constituents care about them? Mm-hmm. It's strange. It's a very strange situation. It's a weird place. I know people might say, hey, don't both size it because there are, you know, they're not too much. Maybe it's objective. They're not symmetrical necessarily, but I would say like this is like, I don't know what's whereas it's like the killer chasing you with the knife or the person who locks you in the room with the killer. You know, like who's like your supposed friend. It's really, I don't know where we are in that spectrum, but it seems bad wherever we are. I have a category kind of jackass as well. Everyone involved with the telepathy. Oh, yeah. We got a lot of emails on that too. Oh, my God. Right. It's so pervasive. So the quick recap is, you know, they're, you know, claiming to like do these, you know, interviews with autistic children and they're just doing facilitated communication and then which is completely debunk nonsense. But they're used to the facilitated communication and then they claim that these autistic kids not only are they brilliant, these nonverbal kids, but they're psychic. They're reading on by. It is like such a classic pseudoscience, but it's gotten so much play. I can't tell you the popular cast out there and people who should freaking know better who have said, oh, what about these kids who are psych like, oh, please stop. It's just amazing. It's amazing you can repackage the same thing. It's a new name. We're talking about that literally, you know, a generation ago. It's just a double version of it too. It's ridiculous. Right. And more popular. It's it's the correlation here is mind boggling. All right, Carol. Let's pivot to skeptical hero of the year. Yeah. I couldn't decide. I was really struggling with this. So I have a few different. I mean, you may have noticed that over the past several weeks, I've been singing the praises of South Park this year. Yes. Think Tray Parker and Matt Stone might be up there for me. But also just the people who turned out to be skeptics that I maybe didn't know were as skeptical as they are. And don't get me wrong, these people aren't perfect. But like John Oliver, Colbert, I mean, I've been a fan of Colbert. John Stewart came back into the fold, but you're seeing these skeptical takes from individuals who have been sort of beloved for a different reason, doing more and more, basically in public science communication. And then of course, we have our tireless science communicators across social media platforms. And I think probably the one that I would nominate for this year would be Hank Green. Yeah, Hank's pretty cool. Yeah. That's a good choice. I mean, I think you also should shout out like the writer is the men women who like write all John Oliver. Of course, yeah. Yeah, this is actually more than. Yeah, the problem is we don't know like if I said their names, people might not. I think there's somebody on the writing staff of John Oliver that listens to our show. I think that's true. I don't have proof of that. But enough of what we have said, I have seen shortly thereafter on the show. The one that really got me was the P hacking one. Yes. Well, plus they also showed, they talked about our show on John Oliver. They did. Oh yeah, I saw it. Yeah. Very pretty second, but we were there. Very briefly, they showed me Carter. So that's pretty good. It's that there's something. Yeah, there's something there. And if they're listening now, maybe they want to reach out to us. It's a compliment by us. Yeah. It's simply a similarly, somebody wrote in the Hank Green as well. And also Dr. Knock or Morgan McSweeney for their social media activity. I would add someone who has just been again, I'd like to focus on people who I see as tirelessly working, even if they're not like seeking big recognition. Sure. And for the person this year, somebody who has had a lot of recognition in the past, but Michael Mann, who has been just for being tireless and also for just staying on top of things and shifting his strategy to keep up with the climate change denying community. He's staying on top of it. He's not giving up. And that kind of persistence and energy, I really respect. Like this, he's in it for good. He's in it for the long years. That's what it is. He co-wrote a book with a vaccine scientist to kind of approach it from both angles, right? Like this is what happens when public trust in science disintegrates. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. There are a couple other people in that same kind of category. Steve, they're in it for the long haul, right? They understand this is a long-term effort that is required. Nick West comes to mind, especially all the work he's done, why he is not invited onto panels or congressional testimonies and things like that so that more people can hear him is beyond me, because he can really, really refute a lot of the UFO and UAP stuff among other things. Yeah. Another person who's like that is Timothy Caulfield, who continues to fight the fight, Bruce Hood also, is one of those people. And I do want to also give a shout out to Barry Carr. He retired this year. He was the executive director for CSI. But gosh, our relationship with Barry goes back 30 years. Oh my God. 90s, right? And he has been so good to us in all that time. He's been very supportive from the beginning. Super supportive, really. Yes, yes, even though from a different organization and everything, he has been nothing but great to us and he deserves recognition for his lifetime effort as well. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's one of those people who are like, it's the cause is what matters, right? Skepticism, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's funny, Steve and Evan, you mentioned tirelessly working in it for the long haul. I'm going to, for this year, I'm for Skeptica of the Year, I'm throwing out Jay. He is the hardest worker that I know. His work has had clearly a profoundly positive impact on this Skeptical podcast and SGU productions. Every project that we do, he's also I'm so impressed with what's the things that he accomplishes. He's a master at working and negotiating with event vendors and salespeople, which I recently confirmed is actually a form of torture in hell. There's actually a department, Jay and Jay's killing it. He misses many of the awesome streaming shows that are out there this day because of his Skeptical work ethic. And it annoys the hell out of Steve and me because we have to leave the room to talk about spoilers because Jay's like, I didn't see that. I don't have time to see that. It's just working. It seems like, you know, he's got sure he's got two young kids, but he's just working night and day. You know, and I just wanted to give a shout out to him like, Jay, we appreciate it. We would not be what we are today. We'd be a different kind of a different beast today. If it weren't for all the work that you've put in to make sure that we could do this and do not just a podcast, but so many other things. Yeah, Jay's what I was saying. So, yeah, it's so ridiculous. I couldn't imagine doing everything without Jay. Right? We'd be, you know, we'd get some stuff done, but I don't think we'd do it as good as Jay. Almost every day, I'm like, Jay, do this. He's a Sherpa. He's the Sherpa. He's the Sherpa. He's the Sherpa. Jay had to bow out of the show because of his flu. He's really had to be the bad. That's why he's not participating in this discussion. He's weak, so he's saying thanks. Okay. So we got a couple of more emails from listeners with their votes. So one person voted for Emily, willing him, willing him for clear responsible skeptical analysis of emotionally charged pseudoscience. And we referenced her during the telepathy tape discussion. Bring that up again. Kara, you got a couple of votes from listeners for this year. I can't allow that. For everything that you do, not just the SGU. And a lot of people really appreciate your role on the SGU because Bob Jay and I are brothers. Evan is basically a brother. He's a very close friend. We've known him for a long time. And we can't be a little closed. You know, close. You know what I mean? It could be a little bit of an echo chamber. So the audience really appreciates the fact that you are a different perspective and you're not afraid to push back on anything that we say. It's funny. I was going to say earlier that some of my favorite episodes looking back or just some of my favorite experiences with the SGU. And this speaks to the talk that you actually gave at CSI. Was that earlier this year? Was that last year? It was last year. It's when skeptics disagree. Right? That's the fun part. Yeah. We enjoy when we have differing opinions about things and we can kind of talk about the nuance. And when it comes to the really big stuff, we're definitely all on the same team rooting for the same cause. But sometimes we disagree about how we should get there. Yeah. Which is fine. Healthy. That's the discussion we should be having. Good. I always say on climate change, we shouldn't be wasting our time debating about whether it's happening or right? It's freaking happening. What's the only discussion worth happening is what's the best strategy to deal with it? There's lots of lots to talk about there. Should we do geoengineering or is that too risky? Should we do this or what? Oh, man. You just burn money. I think that happens too. Does that, does that, I think? Might hope not. No. Who was your skeptical hero? I honestly, all the ideas you had were so good. I could not think of one. I'm like, I think I'm doom or brained. I've been on TikTok or social news for long. They got you. I think, guys, they got you. Oh, God, I don't know what it is. I mean, I think I said this last time and I'm going to do it again. I'm just going to cheat. It's like the listeners. Anyone who's still committed while seeing the world kind of fall apart. Right. Yeah. It's maybe our skeptical project over the last decades hasn't fully fixed everything or fixed enough for fixed anything. Who knows? But at least you guys are hopefully in with us in the fight as we're thinking. You know, so I don't know. Just keep up, keep looking forward. There is some power in positivity to throw back to the beginning. It's called strategic optimism. Yes. I'm a firm believer in strategic optimism. Avoiding self-defeating nihilism doesn't serve any purpose. It's hard to me to be strategically optimistic. Well, sometimes it takes and that's why I always go back to that thing I said before that hope is a moving target. You have to sometimes take a step away from the issue and come back into it and look at how the parameters have changed. Like you mentioned, you've got to be strategically optimistic and that has to do with understanding where are we now, what can be done? We might not be where we were 15 years ago or 30 years ago or whatever, but maybe we can compare ourselves to where we were 100 years ago. One of the things that you've always really inspiring to me is when I talk to my friends who come from countries who have been through constitutional crises or who have experienced authoritarianism and they got through it. Yeah. We'll get through it. Yeah. We'll get through it. It feels unique to us, but it's not unique in the world. It is unique in the world in some ways. I mean, I'm not arguing that, but there will be a future ahead of us. Yeah. Keep building community and helping each other in whatever way we can. Yeah. I think a lot of my strategic optimism is informed by my career as a physician, because talk about you're in a situation every day with your patients where you have to do everything you can to be an advocate for your patient and to get the best outcome. And everything that can possibly go wrong goes wrong, right? But you still, and all the challenges that you could possibly have are there, but you still have to, at the end of the day, you have to have the best outcome you can possibly get. And so sometimes you have to say, well, I don't know what's going on, but if this were anything treatable, this is what it would be. So let's treat that and see what happens. You know, that's your teacher's optimism. Like, let's plan, you know, you always have to hope for the best plan for the worst, but sometimes hoping for the best means, acting as if this is something that you can fix. And then if it doesn't, you know, you did the best you could, right? You give it the best time you can. Same thing like with global warming. It's if we assume it's hopeless, then it is hopeless. By definition, that makes the reality. But if you say, all right, I'm going to go, you know, I'm going to go down fighting. Or I'm going to, you know, do everything I can and constantly change strategy and try like like Michael Manage doing why I picked him, like just constantly doing what we can do to make it less bad or try to move things in the right direction. And you know, that's the key. It's a bit of a leap of faith. I don't know that it's going to affect the world, but it's better than doing nothing, right? It's better than just giving into the negativity. Well, and it will, it will affect the world because once again, hope is a moving target. And sometimes we're not talking about fixing something or putting things back the way they were. Sometimes we're talking about making it less bad. Yeah, less bad is not bad is a good goal. Yeah, it is. I think one of the only goals we got left with climate change is making it as little as we as we can. It really is. It's all about being less bad. Absolutely. Okay, let's move on to our in-memorium segment. This is where we look back. And all the people we lost this year focusing on science and scientists and skeptics, but we throw in some other celebrity favorites that we have. I have a list on it with you guys, I have any names, but I'll just go through my list. If I missed anybody, then you can chime in. Are they in reverse alphabetical order? No, they're there. I'm going to start with a couple of skeptics. Top of the list, of course, is Joe Nichol. Yes. Joe Nichol also. Joe. Again, Joe is a tireless skeptic. A real, you know, he was an investigator. He was like really, there was a time. Oh my God. When he was really the only full time, he might have been the only full time skeptical investigator in the world. And he would do the nitty gritty hard work. You know, he wouldn't just write opinions or use broad brush strokes. He would do the nitty gritty investigative work. And he would do the work that we would cite. Does he look, he did all the hard work, and this is what that analysis shows, et cetera. He was really indispensable. He's also someone like Barry Carr that we met very early on in our skeptical careers, who was, you know, very friendly, very supportive of great resource. Yeah. Yeah, he was just, you know, a fantastic guy, very sorry, you know, to see him go. Yeah, that was that one hurt, man. Yeah. And also one of our listeners emailed us to remind us that Randy Snyder died this year. So he was also an influential skeptic mainly in the ex Mormon community. Did you know him, Cara? No, but we had him on the show. We did have him on the show once. Yeah, back in, I think episode 416. A lot of time ago. Oh wow. And then there was also Robert Lee Nidoo, who was an American academic and activist against climate denial, not known for outspoken criticism of climate change, misinformation, and deniers. So those are the three people who kind of in the skeptical category that I found. And then for scientists, I think, you know, there's a few famous scientists who died this year, Jane Goodall, who went to long ago. She had an amazing career, obviously best known for her work with chimpanzees, but also a tireless advocate just for the environment and acceptable welfare. Yeah. Yeah. I criticized her once. Yeah. We did. She said some goable things about Bigfoot. Yeah. And somebody's above criticism. Look, look, not all scientists are disappointed. Skeptics at the same level that we are, right, are not exposed to what we concentrate on. They're concentrating on the work they're doing, which is fine. Right. But then they kind of speak outside of their element a little bit, and this is what happens. And it can happen to the best of them. And Jane Goodall is an example of that. Skepticism is a unique skill set. It is. It is. You go along with being a scientist, unfortunately. And I don't think she has a claim to be a skeptic either. No. Correct. Right. Right. She was not pretending to be something she's not. Right. And also the other big name this year was James Watson, also completely beyond any criticism, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I have a very highly representative quote about him. This is from the scientist store in Nathaniel Comfort said, the most famous scientist of the 20th century and the most infamous of the 21st. Yeah. Which kind of does it a little bit of justice right there. I mean, yeah, I mean, racist views, sexist views, yeah, we're not good. He worked for decades and moved up the ladder at Cold Spring Harbor laboratory, CSHL. And in 2019, they revoked his emeritus status and they condemned him for a quote, the misuse of science to justify prejudice. I mean, that's just like, damn, man. And it's important to remember too that it's not just, I think sometimes we hear people and we had this argument or this conversation before. It's like, well, he was of an era. And you know, some people might say, hey, lived a little too long. Like if he had died earlier. Maybe he wouldn't have gone down in history that way. But we have people like Attenborough who are 101. Yeah. Right. Like we've got people alive today who were alive when he was alive who didn't espouse those views. We have to remember that. But so of course, he's the most famous for discovering the DNA helix structure with Crick, you know, Watson and Crick everybody knows those names. And Rosalind Franklin. Yes. And you and I did it from Rosalind Franklin and biophysic Maris Wilkins without attributing them and they didn't get and not even with Franklin's permission. So that was terrible. You know, it's like, yeah, you know, women do a lot of the hard work. The two guys took all the credit, got the Nobel Prize. It was terrible. But of course, you have to say that Rosalind Franklin didn't get the Nobel Prize primarily because she was dead at the time. It was awarded and they don't get posh. Yeah. Yeah. Doesn't erase the fact that she was abused. Right. And even if it was normative at the time that doesn't make it right. No, of course not. It wasn't right then. It wasn't normative or right at the time. Well, it's still normative that women don't really get as many Nobel Prize as you are. Yeah. That's true. Yeah. Bob, do you know Chen Ning Yang? I don't think so. Physicist whose work on symmetry paved the way for the standard model of part of the particle physics. Oh, I know I've come across this name probably just like two initials and Yang and that was like papers that I've read. So yeah, massive work in the standard model. Which for a man. Even the standard model is at the core of physics today. Absolutely. So another physicist is an astrophysicist George Smute. Oh, yeah. Smute. He won the Nobel Prize in physics in 2006 for his work on the cosmic background explorer. Oh, yeah. John Matherlitz, the discovery of the black body form of anisotropy of the cosmic microwave back creation. Huge man. That's great. We probably mentioned him on the show, but potentially in 2000. Oh, wasn't David Baltimore dies here too? Yeah. David Baltimore. He's another Nobel laureate, right? Yeah, Nobel Prize for discoveries concerning the interaction between tumor viruses and the genetic material of this cell. Well, Ante did so much in like, I think in the HIV aid space. There was a bunch of other Nobel laureates who died this year. George Smith, 2009 Nobel Prize in physics for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit, the CCD sensor. So that was just become a charge company. Yes, exactly. Which is like all of digital photography. Every camera, right? Yeah. Wow, that's huge. And by the way, David Baltimore discovered reverse transcriptase. Yeah. Whoa. Like that's enormous. Yeah. That's enormous. Quite, can you tell? Yeah. And it's explained basically how HIV can replicate. Like that, like, and it's like one of the foundational understandings to like we wouldn't have gene therapy without understanding reverse transcriptase. Yeah. That's how you get RNA back into DNA, basically. Exactly. And that's how it gets better and better into the genome by viruses. Yeah. John Gerden, Nobel Prize for research at the turning mature cells into stem cells. We just talked about this too about the stem cell band. Now that was sidesteped by this science figuring out how to turn like skin cells into stem cells. So he got a Nobel Prize for that research. Hamilton Smith Nobel Prize in 1978 for discovering restriction enzymes, also huge in biology. So I think that was all the Nobel laureates that I came across. But a few other physicists or a few other scientists who were not Nobel laureates, but did work. Richard Garwin, and he got anybody. That means a bell. No. He came up with the first design for a hydrogen bomb. Oh. Wow, really? Yeah. Maybe not the legacy you want, but it was still important, you know, to, yeah. So not just a fission bomb, a fusion bomb. A fusion bomb, yeah, fusion. Yeah, right. The 50s, I suppose. Xavier LePichon helped create the field of plate tectonics. Oh. Oh. The name too. Yeah, right. Elizabeth Verba, anybody recognize that, James? I do. I do. Elizabeth Verba. It's from evolutionary biology. So she's somebody, yeah, I read a ton of Stephen J. Goalds, so I know about her, you know, through that work. So she was also a Yale, so it was a way I know her. So she developed the turnover pulse hypothesis, coined the phrase, and coined the phrase, exceptation with Stephen J. Goalds. Wow. Wow. So the turnover pulse hypothesis is the notion that an ecosystem reaches a stability and then something happens to destabilize the ecosystem, whether it is climate change or some key index species goes extinct or the invasion of another species or whatever. The ecosystem gets destabilized and then in a pulse of turnover, a lot of the species change until you reach a new stable ecosystem. Wow. And what is expectation who wants to define that word for me? Oh, I used to know. We did it on the show. It's an expectation, the X, the E. It's when one trait gets used for something different later, right? Yeah, it's evolved from one purpose and then it gets co-washed for something else. Yeah. That's what evolution is, man. That's totally awesome. That's critical. That's critical concept. That's critical concept. That's critical concept. That's critical concept. Absolutely. Darleen Christian Hoffman confirmed the existence of seaborgium, element 106. Wow. Seaborgium. That's how it's known. That's how it's known. That's how it's known. That's how it's known. That's how it's known. That's how it's known. Mark Norell or Norell, Cara, this is a dinosaur guy. I don't know him. Mark Norell first discovered the first Theropod embryo. Oh, cool. And also known for his description of many feathered dinosaurs. Oh, wow. Really neat. Yeah, good work. All right, a few astronauts, most famously, Jim Lovell. Jim Lovell. Yeah, Jim Lovell. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You talked about him on the show. Oh, yeah. The first one to go to them in twice, I believe. Yes. Wow. He is a huge of, we have a problem, famed. We've had him. We've had him. Yeah. He was 97. Yeah. Good for him. Yeah. Good for him. Good for him. Especially after him. Wow. Surviving what he had to survive is amazing. Yeah. Captain Frederick H. Hawk, who was a space shuttle captain, died this year. And not really an astronaut, but kind of in that same vein, Felix Baumgartner. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You had the time at the space jump record. The space jump. Yeah, that is a lot. For the highest space jump. Jumped from the edge of space, died in a paragliding crash. And paragliding is dangerous. Yeah, man. Well, these like extreme athletes, I know, like jumping from space is dangerous too. Yeah. I don't know how they get insurance, right? Somehow safer jumping from space. Somehow. He's on the house. Yeah, he's only 56, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's a bummer. That's my chance, buddy. So that's the scientists and technologists and space guys. A few just celebrities, I thought I threw out there. We very recently lost Rob Reiner. A very sad story. Oh, my God. For some reason. He stabbed death by their troubled son. Legitly by son. Legitly by son. Yeah. Yeah, very terrible thing. It's so sad. I mean, imagine having a child who has mental health issues, drug use issues. It's so heartbreaking. But then of course, end now ending super tragically. Oh, yeah. Jeez. Jew lock heart. Anybody know who she is? Yes. Oh my God. Lost in space. Lost in space. And last thing. And last thing. Oh, wow. Robert Redford across. Robert Redford. Oh, yeah. Hulk Hogan died this year. I missed that. He did. Yes. Heart attack. It was battling cancer and leukemia. Oh, wow. Wait, at the time. That's pretty sad. Yeah. His heart gave, well, you know, and what he did to his body and stuff over the years, you know, I can only imagine what kind of told that took, you know, with the drugs he took and performance drugs and everything else, but still. Yeah, I mean, he was using his icon. He was in the hip. What do you like? Him or hated him. Definitely on icon. Ozzy Osborne. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Sad in that he performed his last. Cronser. A couple of weeks before he. Right. It was his farewell show. Oh, well, I mean, that's kind of great. Yeah, it was the way to go, I guess. You know, all right. Who knows who Drew Struzan is? Drew Struzan. No, no chance to recognize his name, but you do recognize his work. Oh, he's an artist. Okay. Famed for innovating the movie poster. Oh, wow. It's responsible for such iconic movie posters as Star Wars in the end of Jones, back to the future. ET Blade Runner, the goonies. First one. Bob, you like this one. The Shawshank Redemption. And thing nice. And the thing. The The Shawshank Redemption. The Shawshank Redemption. Wow. Oh, so he they called on him when they need to. Did he invent that like kind of stacking pyramidal shape? Yeah, exactly. That was his thing. That's very cool. What was it? Stacking what? So I think the Star Wars movie poster, the at least what comes into my head is like the head that the people's heads in a pyramidal shape or triangle or shape. Yeah. You know, kind of like, but they are a tree or whatever. I asked you would you would be surprised though at the calculus that goes into determining whose head is where and where the names are. This is all about negotiating with the actors and the actors people because sometimes you have the people, the stars, A, B and C, their heads, but above them, it's C, A, B because it's a different set of rules for where the name goes to where the head goes and how big it is. It's this whole thing that probably makes it a horrible process to go through to figure out whose head goes where, how big, where the names go. It's this whole thing that I read. It was fast. Maybe they should just make the movies better. You know, and that's what's right. Well, when I think about those iconic movie posters, I also think about the typeface and the actual title of the movie, how it takes up so much and it has such a presence in those movie posters. Oh, yeah. You could look at a movie, but it's all, it's funny that sometimes I recently, I saw a movie poster for a movie that on paper sounded like something I would like, but taking one look at the movie poster, I'm like, that movie sucks because the poster is so bad that this can't possibly be even a halfway decent movie. And I was right when I did more research, it was a horrible movie. I mean, would you say that about the room? I have you, Tommy Wiseau's the room. It's like a ridiculous cover, but one of the best terrible movies ever. Oh, yeah. It's so, I don't know. 1977 Star Wars poster sold for a record, $3.875 million in auction this month. Just this month. It doesn't surprise me. Wow, an original. It's an amazing poster. I would say that if I had it. I would say that if I had it. I would say that if I had it. I had it. Oh, I had every million dollars on my wall that Star Wars font itself is iconic. You have Darth Vader's head, Luke Skywalker with the lightsaber over his head, Princess Leia, Han Solo's not even in the picture. You got the droids in the background, and you got the X-wing fighters, like a squadron of them in the background as well, and the Death Star, however, it's just that it's framed, it's great, I remember, yeah, it's amazing. and Drew Struz and also created the revenge of the Jedi poster, which is also famous because he made the poster and then they changed the title of the movie and they took all the posters away. So if you have one of those, you have a rare item. Oh yeah. Do you think anything nowadays could achieve that kind of rare item status or have we jumped to the shark with all that kind of stuff? Oh that's a good question man. It's hard to predict. Obviously because I could be financially beneficial to you. I think so. But there's just a lot more like, chast. Oh yeah. Yeah. Chaff's the bad stuff right? We want the Wii. Yeah. This is a lot more chaff. Yeah, what can you do with chaff? If you have the iPhone in the box, I imagine that's where it's some box. Oh yeah, maybe. Yeah, it could be. Hmm. Are you guys ready for all your junk? Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. Ready for the final science fiction? Oh boy. Does this count? It counts. I think so. No, not really. It's time for science or fiction. All right. Each week I come up with three science news items or facts to real and one fake and I challenge my panel of skeptics to tell me which one is the fake. But on this episode, first we're going to go over statistics for 2025. Nice. So we'll give you just the percentages. So depressed already. Come on. Last place. Higher math. Last place. And J at 57.4%. That's a 57.4%. That's not bad. That's very good. Yeah. Last place used to be we didn't have 30s and 40s in something. Here's busy negotiating in those rooms. You guys are all generally had a good year. I definitely want to play team. Are we getting better Eastlaken? Oh, I think you're getting better. I mean, I mean, I thought I came up with good items and you've got a lot of things to do. You know what the ego? I don't know what's going on. I have no idea. It's this one. Like. Yeah. It's like picking stocks, you know. And your reasoning is usually solid damage. I got to get one level more devious. It's second. Or second from the bottom is Evan at 63.8%. Wow. That's really good. Very, very happy. I'm happy. I'm happy. I'm happy. Bob, you squeaked by Evan with 64%. Yeah, man. You suck, Evan. Oh, I'm happy. I'll take second place. I mean, I think we could all agree. There's no defeating the carabees. The carabee has a great year. 77%. Why does that? Oh, that's better than we usually try. The level more of the three out of four, that's not bad. That's probably going to be an anomaly. I might be your best year. I need to investigate this a little bit. Well, I wonder how many times I've been able to do that. I'm going to be able to do that. I'm going to be able to do that. I'm going to be able to do that. I'm going to be able to do that. Okay, take that first. Okay, take that first. Okay, take that first. Okay, take that first. Okay, take that first. Okay, take that first. Okay, take that first. Okay, take that first. Okay, take that first. Okay, take that first. Okay, take that first. Okay, take that first. Okay, take that first. Okay, take that first. Okay, take that first. Okay, take that first. Okay, take that first. Okay, take that first. Okay, take that first. Okay, take that first. Okay, take that first. Okay, take that first. It's a real low. It's tough because I hear I want to be fair with who I go first But I don't want everyone writing on your co-tales every week either So I that's the thing you have to be smart about and a lot of times it's about the topic It's right when it's a physics thing throw me first. It doesn't matter. Oh totally Yeah, and then Steve Steve gives me a dream science or fiction last week and it's like all right I'm gonna get this one and then every go everyone got it like It's not how it's supposed to go That wasn't my plan Bob. I was hoping everyone to get it wrong and then for you to school them at the end But what can you do? Hey, hey, they sussed it out and like I can't disagree. So okay, whatever Andrea played three and Drey Jones Roy played three science Perfections she got a zero percent. Go tell them well. She's got to play more. Yeah, that's George I mean George also played three times He had a 33 percent Got one okay, okay, okay, three when a three a bad Justin Dobb and Adam Russell both played one and got them correctly at a hundred percent They win winner win. Yeah, we'll do the best Lee played once and Got it wrong so I had zero percent I you didn't play one. I didn't play the share. I did everyone to fix that Yeah, we should fix that but every time I've only done it a handful of times and I get swept every time I'm not good at writing science or fiction It's a scale Everyone else is okay Okay, it's good here. Yeah, are you ready for the last? Yeah fiction of 2025 this impact Bob standing in my stand it could if you win and he doesn't you mate you'll my flop You may get it to shit into second place having And what was your record from last year you played just once at the end of the year last year I don't remember getting last year right. I think the prior prior prior I did okay, and then I don't remember chatters I say chatters when I was streaming what am I doing? Listeners tell me if I'm wrong Okay, so here are the items for 2025 I usually do variations on some kind of look back of 225 for This science or fiction that the specific theme I chose these are all items that I blogged about I'm reading the blog so this will be easy for anybody who obsessively reads my blog Of course, why wouldn't you? Available in neurological neurological blog Item number one an analysis finds that existing policies on use of plastic bags are Mostly ineffective on average reducing plastic bag waste by less than 10% I number two an extensive genetic and cellular analysis finds that birds evolved the information carrying neurons in their brain Mostly independently from mammals and I number three researchers presented a new gene editing system that is even better than CRISPR Called the tiger task system and as I usually do we go in reverse order of your score. So so Adam He will have you go last so we'll start with Evan Oh The policies on use of plastic bags are mostly ineffective on average reducing plastic bag waste by less than 10% Okay, why why would you have blogged about this? I Have a feeling you you actually did blog about these right and it's just I did blog about all three of these I just changed like you made one up wholesale and I'll give you that blogged it. Okay. Yeah I have I have a feel this one feels like science to me and Because I don't know there seems to be a shift almost a little bit back into the Acceptance of plastic bags for a long time right they were they were banned and I don't imagine They're still banned in some states and some and some places, but I've kind of seen them creeping back into my World in a sense so in that made that would say that basically I this really wasn't working. It wasn't effective and therefore we don't you know we're Giving up the ghost here. So I have a feeling that one's gonna be right the second one about Genetic and cellular analysis about the birds that evolved the information carrying neurons in their brain mostly independently From mammals that strikes me as Significant although I couldn't tell you exactly why that would be the case Steve you love birds and I don't so this one I'm gonna just rely more on you than the actual science itself would you have the Fortitude let's say to go ahead and Prevert one of your stories about birds and make it into the fiction right? I don't know are you more of a purist like it would be like now I can't do that to birds because I love birds and everything about them and bear it's my hobby and everything So that one leads me to believe it's also science which leads me to the last one now the Tiger test system Gosh did we talk about this on the show as well? We talked about several crisper items this year and this seems familiar Even better than crisper gosh, so this one is also science therefore All three are science I will have to say therefore she was I have to say something I have to guess Even better than crisper tiger task. I mean a new system. Why wouldn't it be better than crisper? That's the point. Why would they develop something that wouldn't be better or just does something differently? I will say the one about Classic bags is the fiction. Okay, Bob. I don't remember too many details about tiger tasks But I think I'm gonna say that one is is science God, I wish I remember the details it seems like a lot longer a go Steve then 2025 dude like that that seems like a 2023 memory to me, but Then it would be the fiction are you sure you talked about it this year or is that or is that the premise that I miss am I incorrect about the premise just The premise is I blocked it this year. Okay. All right, so I'll say that one is science the the bird one the bag one makes sense Kind of makes it makes more sense as it's written and I think you probably or maybe Would not really want to write about it if it were the opposite maybe It's kind of strikes me that way and I'm just this this the neurons in the birds man That's just like neurons at that level neurons I think we're someone one of the things and that would be conserved to such a degree that I wouldn't imagine it would be that difference I'm gonna say that one's fiction. Oh, interesting. Okay, Cara So it's funny because I think all of them I think these are really well written because they're all I don't know They all stick out in their own way like the one that Bob just went with right the birds evolving Information carrying neurons in their brain mostly independently from mammals to me. That's the most Holy crap like if that's science that's a big deal, right? And it it's it seems the most counterintuitive to me But that doesn't mean it's not science and the one about Tiger Tass or Tigger Tass. I love what Evan said. Well, of course it's better their dresser It wouldn't be newsworthy if they're like we came up with a system that's worse than Chris The fact that I don't remember this at all is really that's a bummer and I don't know if that is an indictment of My memory or my attention. I'm not really sure But this one definitely seems the most Well, not the most possible but this one seems possible and if this one is Science that's like amazing. So this one's holy crap. That's amazing the bird one is oh my gosh I can't believe that's true and then the plastic bag one It's funny that you put your nickel down on that Evan because it sounded like you weren't gonna go with this at all Yeah, but I was basing it only on my own personal experience, which is useless So my personal experience is that I live in California, right? And so we are in many ways a leader in this type of regulation and For what I understand there are first of all there are a ton of loopholes and there are a ton of reasons why plastic bag bands Do fail because like here just as an aside There's this stupid thing and I think they're about to outlawed in LA But there's this stupid thing where you can sell reusable plastic bags They're like slightly thicker. Yeah, and so the idea is that people will use them more often But it's just worse plastic to break down on this Yeah, it's like it's a bad idea paper, right? I only use paper bags or Reusable for the reusable side yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Like if you're gonna be plastic you have to ban it outright But and we've got to remember that the way you worded this is very careful Steve and analysis finds that existing policies Policies on use of plastic bags are mostly ineffective So that includes all those loopholes But then it says on average reducing plastic bag waste by less than 10% and I just don't think that's true I think places where there are policies in place we see a bigger reduction I think we could see an even bigger reduction though if there weren't so many like stupid loopholes But 10% seems really low to me. So I'm gonna say that's the fiction. Okay, Andy Okay, so I'm gonna go backwards a little bit just because when I heard you say CRISPR and tiger tasks. I was like it has to be ending with Tastic Clearly But then when I you sent it to us. So I saw it written. I was like, okay, maybe it's not maybe it is actually scientists You know writing a fun little name At least in my head that's how it comes out with I Could see what it's saying even better seems a weird thing as opposed to like maybe it has this different use case that is maybe more tailored to something So maybe that's where the even better thing is like that they have slightly different Specialties whatever so that seems like science to me even though the even better thing kind of threw me a little bit The birds maybe I just don't understand how bird evolution and mammals it you know evolved but I Don't see why they wouldn't be independently evolving information carrying neurons as opposed to like what what dependency would they have well, the other option is that That all vertebrates sort of have the same neurons, right? We all have a common answer you have a common All day so did neurons develop in the common ancestor or they in the old after the fact develop in birds and mammals I see I see I see okay, so that yeah, that's that does interesting at a wrinkle I'm still gonna go with my god and say that they The other word that throws me off is the mostly independently It's like well, maybe just like completely independently or whatever I'm gonna I still think that seems Reasonable whatever convergent evolution. I don't know if that's even like the right terminology And then and analysis finds that existing policies on used to plastic bags and mostly ineffective in the bubble Okay, I mean I do hope that regulation does something like please God Let's that be somewhere. I mean, I will agree that like putting a lot of the onus on Like the consumer seems to be you know, maybe that's like the wrong place when so many corporations pull it all by we all know that I think You know so but I would hope I don't see plastic bags unless I go to like Virginia or Pennsylvania And then it's like they just don't give it in but like you get an electric or like you know California It's like I don't see them. I don't even see those thicker plastic bags It's funny that when you get to a certain thickness they become like a reusable plastic bag But you don't want to throw out but there's like this middle ground thickness Where I'm like, yes close enough. I do want to throw it out But anyway, yeah, I think it's got to be that that is that that's the fiction that it's It is actually effective like it is reducing plastic bagways. Please Okay, which one did you pick? Oh? All right, so you all agree on the third ones a little start their researchers presented a new gene editing system That is even better than crisper called the tiger test system you all think this one is science and this one is Science is a science. Yes, and we did talk about this on the show and it was better in a couple It's better. It's got some interesting advantages So it it works on both strands of the DNA in terms of finding the plate, you know the match and therefore more reliable And it's also not limited in the way that crisper as crisper You know requires a certain particular Sequence on the on the RNA to be able to find it and There those are the so-called Pam sequences proto spacer adjacent motifs Right, so crisper is Pam dependent tiger is Pam independent, which means it's more versatile and it's more accurate So so it has potential to be even better than crisper So replace with great like you guys Right, right? I heard much about it. Just get out to share You know, we've got to remember we don't hear much like we just hear the word crisper a lot to and I think that's become a catch Whole catch all like a zero You're like crisper cast nine versus crisper cast 10 Yeah, you're right, you know like I think you're just say crisper Yeah, but they were they mean genetic and you knew what a newer genetic system. Yeah, that could actually happen It's crisper thing technology. Yeah, so is it like a complete replacement of all things crisper or is it just like now? No, I wouldn't you know, I wouldn't complete the replaced crisper because there are things for which crisper was fine But there might be some specific use cases where the advantages of tiger would make it worth it Whatever happened Steve. I remember we talked about a new system that didn't cut anything Well, that's basically just silence the test That's an application of crisper again. That's the crisper what you know the the attachment Yeah, yeah, that to me that was basically a toggle you could turn genes on and off without breaking them So you could turn them back on again just silences the gene Yeah, that's the thing is it's probably being used. Yeah, it's totally being used We're just not always like so specific about the exact mechanism at play because it gets really in the weeds Yeah, I gotta look at that specifically. I thought it could it could replace a lot of regular you know regular crisper cast nine I mean it's because it just seemed like there's no you're not cutting anything out So you're just silencing and you could just turn it on and off if there's a mistake I turn it on you don't have to even worry about cutting or reinserting or anything I don't know. I just seem like a great advance that I just don't remember coming across and my news item searches Every week we need whatever is there a logical blog deep deep deep and you'll see yeah doubt it Even really highlighted. Yeah, all right. Let's go back to number two an extensive genetic and cellular analysis finds that birds You follow the information carrying neurons in their brain mostly independently from mammals Bob you think this one is The fiction everyone else thinks this one is science. So this is a very interesting News item the have you ever heard the term the pallium? Yeah, nope. Bob, where do you hear it from? Isn't that the name of the the publication for the high school we want to We mean how can you say that then have you anyone heard of something only Bob? The newspaper And it means something that's not a random word they made up the pallium is basically the cerebral cortex Right, so they use that as the name for their put their whatever their monthly magazine But so the question is and all vertebrates have a pallium right But the question is how much of the structure especially at the cellular and genetic level how much of that is from a common vertebrate ancestor and how much of it were Were evolved independently in reptiles birds and mammals and they are really different like organizationally there's really different in birds Yeah, so but that is that all organizational that the networks or is that the actual neurons themselves? Cellular level right yeah, and how would yeah, I definitely wouldn't know that I know that like from a mapping perspective Yeah, oh yeah, definitely So they did a thorough analysis looked at both these cells themselves and the genes and what they found Was I'll quote one of the one of the researchers their neurons are born in different locations and developmental times in each species Indicating that they are not comparable neurons derived from a common ancestor So this one is science. Sorry Bob That's so cool. Yeah, and crazy But there were a couple of neurons in common. That's why I had to say mostly But most of the neurons were like different genetics different developmental biology these evolved in demand man Yeah, that's pretty awesome. Yeah So then what about other like vertebrates though because like it's mammals birds like what reptiles and phabetic they have a common neurological answer Well, yeah, but we all evolved from fish right we're basically all fish evolutionarily speaking. We are all fish Right, but yeah, that's why they look at the derived you know groups they reptiles birds and mammals, but oh our reptiles Did there? I guess they don't really have a cortex, but they still have a pallym yeah, yeah, yeah They don't have a no have a no cortex. Yeah, yeah, but did there are they got the newsletter? Is there's more similar to birds now and no so all three of us are just different the real three are different. Oh wow All right, let's go back number one and analysis finds that existing policies on use of plastic bags are mostly ineffective on Adverturizing plastic bag waste by less than 10% that is of course the fiction because the truth is they're quite effective So you guys your wishless picture they are so the study that I was writing about Compared states with plastic bag policies just any plastic bag policy to state without any policy And they found that the plastic bag waste was reduced by 25 to 47% with the high-end Cut in half which is still not good enough, but that's right that's significant. That's pretty still they work I Zero policies on plastic bags Woke is back I Hope Kara you should Yeah, some things 500,000 people in them so those 500,000 people it would be so easy for them to not use plastic bags Yeah, what Rhode Island what are they doing with those bags? There's also there's no there's no federal regulation No, of course, this is why it was easier to compare states because there's no statewide. That's good big plastic bag is all you guys heard about the Oak fonts right Yes, I can say times new Roman I think Colleagues a real thing Like But like big plastic is the reason No, it's I think you guys are missing the important takeaway here. Oh, Bob has fallen into third place. Did he? No, no, no even more important and tragic as that is This I just realized you know Kara gets what 77 I think she has an absolutely unfair advantage being and living in California And we shouldn't we should tell you got to move to Texas to make it to even it out a little bit Hey, but hey, but to be fair Bob I'm from Texas and I did live in Florida That's true. So okay, right? I have lived in I lived in Texas longer than I have lived in California so far And I lived in Florida for one year and New York for one year. So those like they sort of cancel each other Big all the big electoral states and the country and you drive a truck I'm quad coastal I drive a hybrid truck. You go You got a liver a year in Pennsylvania or something. I'm a very confusing person And this is often why I'm frustrated because of items like this car because I forget these 10 gentle connections you have to the And I'm talking about All the ways what you're going to find your way to the cuz you're right You like you just knew that yeah, we have got back. We have a way more not only 10 percent. Oh, I'll be reminding you Steve Not only my friend not only do I live in California. I live in LA and I don't live in West Hollywood But I spend quite a bit of time in West Hollywood and West Hollywood. I think Compared to the rest of the country has the most progressive legislation It's a tiny little city that is mostly LGBTQI plus Their leadership is as well and they like they banned fur they banned fwagra They were way early on the plastic bag and the straw and the styrofoam bands like yeah, they're Yeah, yeah, got the pink pony club. That's where all the people are going. No, and it's here. Yeah Yeah, I'm gonna keep on dancing. There you go All right, well, that's a wrap for 2025 guys Oh, yeah, Evan you gotta take us out with a quote. Hey, yeah, well We're gonna tip our hat to an old friend with our quote tonight. Yes skepticism is an act of doing good in the world Joe nickel Joe nickel great guy. Yeah, Joe nickel said that on a plane of inquiry podcast and it was sweet and short and We miss you Joe. We definitely miss you Well guys, it's been a blast doing the show with you in 2025 Yeah, the last one is we're arrived. We survived. Let's do one more yearland of sanity One year Bob on with you one more year Sunny or you Bob only ever commits to one year at a time That's the way to live your life In one year exactly Yeah, thanks for joining us. Oh, thanks for all you do Thank you so much. Hey, thank you listeners to all you do especially when you go to patreon.com That's it's sorry Oh, absolutely For anyone who out there who doesn't know Ian is our tech guru. He is an absolute magician. I use that term metaphor Uh, thank you. But seriously, maybe he it's amazing what this guy can do you know He handles all of our live streaming all of our live events It's kind of like we get in front of the care of the Ian work your magic make it happen Yeah, we're sitting like Ian come on. It's taking two minutes What's the button Push the button You think two seconds ago why isn't it happening? And also the extravaganza is like the audience will throw out the weirdest random wacky shit and he'll have an image of it in like two minutes Not AI. Thank you The old fashioned way would Photoshop or something Yeah No, it really you have become indispensable to the sg No, once you're all the way in you never get out you never All right guys back in thank you again Thanks for thanks for 2025. Thanks for joining me this week Thanks see and until next week and next year This is your skeptics guide to the universe Skeptics guide to the universe is produced by sgu productions dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking for more information visit us at the skeptics guide org Send your questions to info at the skeptics guide dot org and if you would like to support the show and all the work that we do Go to patreon.com slash skeptics guide and consider becoming a patron and becoming part of the sgu community Our listeners and supporters or what make sgu possible