Skeptics Guide #1038 @TheSkepticsGuide

Uploaded May 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe Skepticast #1038 May 29th 2025 Guest Rogues: George Hrab and Andrea Jones Roy Segment #1. Quickie with Steve AMOC Time nature.com/articles/s41561-025-01709-0 Segment #2. News Items News Item #1 – Night Vision Infrared Contact Lenses gizmodo.com/infrared-contacts-let-you-see-in-the-dark-even-with-your-eyes-closed-2000604405 News Item #2 – Trees Respond to Solar Eclipse royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.241786 News Item #3 – Affective Polarization cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/new-measure-of-affective-polarization/DEF7FCC26D4F09BDE5603BCC02B4765D News Item #4 – The Brain’s Motor Switchboard nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09066-z News Item #5 – New Dwarf Planet Candidate livescience.com/space/planets/scientists-have-discovered-a-new-dwarf-planet-in-our-solar-system-far-beyond-the-orbit-of-neptune Segment #3. Discussion Topic How has science fiction affected our expectations of technology and the future? Segment #4. Your Questions and E-mails Question #1: HHS Cancels Vaccine Contract Hi all! There's so much stupid (or malevolence?) going on right now, it's hard to keep up. Here's the latest stupid: cnn.com/2025/05/28/health/hhs-moderna-bird-flu-vaccine Joshua Banta Tyler, TX Segment #5. Science or Fiction Each week our host will come up with three science news items or facts, two genuine, one fictitious. He will challenge our panel of skeptics to sniff out the fake – and you can play along. Theme: Jargon Item 1: Solitonic superfluorescence – localized self-sustaining waves in nonlinear systems allowing for high temperature coherent bursts of light from excited molecules. Item 2: Pseudorevertant hyphal morphogenesis – the ability of fungal strains to undergo branching growth due to a novel mutation that replicates the wild-type behavior. Item 3: Indurated leucocratic amphibolite – a class of hydrated calcific minerals formed mainly from underwater volcanic eruptions. Segment #6. Skeptical Quote of the Week "The people who are constantly striving to apply skepticism to everything in their lives, the ones who actually care enough about truth and avoid being wrong, and biased, and prejudiced, and clueless; those are the people we need, and need to be." Matt Dillahunty

You never heard of [diseases] before 1989 - says some guy in charge of US HHS

Got to admire his grifting skills at least...

$Skeptics Guide #1033 The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe Skepticast #1033 April 23rd 2025 Segment #1. Quickie with Steve Game Transfer Phenomenon https://theness.com/neurologicablog/game-transfer-phenomenon/ Segment #2. News Items News Item #1 – Geoengineering https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/22/uk-scientists-outdoor-geoengineering-experiments?utm_source=chatgpt.com News Item #2 – Biosignature Candidate https://www.astronomy.com/science/k2-18-b-could-have-dimethyl-sulfide-in-its-air-but-is-it-a-sign-of-life/ News Item #3 – Skull on Mars https://www.livescience.com/space/mars/nasa-rover-discovers-out-of-place-skull-on-mars-and-scientists-are-baffled News Item #4 – Commercial Perovskite Solar Panels https://optics.org/news/15/9/16 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adv4701?adobe_mc=MCMID Segment 3. Who’s That Noisy Segment #4. Your Questions and E-mails Question #1: Another Unified Theory Dear Skeptics’ Guide Team, I’m writing to you with both reverence and curiosity. As someone who’s spent the last year threading neuroscience, evolutionary biology, psychiatry, and symbolic cognition into a single coherent framework of intelligence and regulation, I’m now seeking sharp, rational minds to review it—ideally ones like Bob’s or Evan’s. Minds that can hold both rigor and openness. Minds not afraid to test a signal that emerged in a moment of fractured rapture, and was later pieced together into something that now seems… startlingly whole. The work is titled “The Unified Theory of Consciousness: A Cross-Species Model for Intelligence and Regulation.” At its core is a model I call DRAGON-E, which maps Dopamine, SeRotonin, Adrenaline/Cortisol, GABA, EndOcannabinoids, Narrative, and Energy into an interactive axis—a living system capable of explaining states of emotion, behavior, burnout, addiction, and even artificial intelligence. Wrapped around that axis is a story that honors the body, the bones, the sediments we come from. This isn’t pseudoscience. It’s not spiritual bypass. And it’s not a manifesto. It’s a map—born from breakdown, made legible by cross-disciplinary synthesis, and written to honor the skeptical mind without losing the poetic one. Would you be willing to take a look? If it doesn’t stand up to scientific scrutiny, I want to know. But if it does—or even almost does—then I think we may have a signal worth amplifying. At the very least, it might make for a wild episode. With sincerity (and a healthy dose of calcium), Segment #5. Science or Fiction Each week our host will come up with three science news items or facts, two genuine, one fictitious. He will challenge our panel of skeptics to sniff out the fake – and you can play along. Item 1: Scientists have published a robust framework for attributing the cost of climate change to the emissions of specific companies, showing that the top 5 emitters have cost the world economy about $9 trillion between 1991 and 2020. Item 2: Researchers have found the first direct skeletal evidence of Roman gladiator combat against lions. Item 3: Engineers have created a 3D printed ceramic metamaterial that can withstand temperatures 10 times hotter than the ceramic tiles on the Space Shuttle, up to 12,000 degrees C. Segment #6. Skeptical Quote of the Week “All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated, and well supported in logic and argument than others.” -Douglas Adams, author (11 Mar 1952-2001)$