Skeptics Guide #1077

[Music] You're listening to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe. You're escape to reality. Hello and welcome to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe. Today is Thursday, February 26, 2026, and this is your host, Steven Avella. Joining me this week are Bob Navella. Everybody, Cara Santa Maria. Howdy. JenoVella. Hey guys, and Evan Bernstein. Good evening everyone. How are y'all doing? Oh, y'all doing fine. Y'all doing fine. Y'all doing good. I love it. Starting to warm up already. It was like 80 degrees outside. I don't know. Yeah, there. Not here. I know you guys have been buried under snow, haven't you? Yeah, we had like an old school winter. We haven't had no winter. We definitely moved away from like the weather that was typical in the 70s and 80s. But this winter was like when I was a kid. Cold, cold, tons of snow, lots of missed school days. My kids missed Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week. Now, Jay, when that happens now, do they try to do online teaching or just a snow day? No, it's just a snow day. There is no indication of any kind of online, anything going on. So they've really just abandoned that? Yeah. I was wondering if that would be a keeper after COVID. Well, the problem is parents then it's complicated for parents because they can't help if they have to work or if they're working from home, you know. Luckily for me though, I worked from home, but I got more done in the last three days from not, you know, having to do my typical stuff. I would have gone to the studio twice and Steve and I worked at my mom's house on Mondays so we could be over there but also get work done. Steve, I can't tell you how much work I got done. It's amazing. Yeah, you don't have to drive anywhere. You've got to snow it out of the studio for two days. Yeah, wow. I was blocked in my house. I couldn't get out of my driveway for three days. Wow. That's nuts. You know, there was the our plow guys. It was so backed up. You ended up getting to our house at three in the morning. Yeah, they're making money like crazy though. Yeah, it's probably their annual home. This year, I'm like, oh, for one month. The last 10 years, man. The last 10 years, not so much. Yeah, they're going to Disney World in a couple months after this winner. I've been knows what it's like to have your annual work compressed to a short time. That's right. Yeah, seasonal work is tough. You know, there's no joke about it. You're sleep deprived. You don't have time to have a regular meal, a sit down meal with anyone. Long, long days. Just, it's crazy. It's crazy. It's not healthy, frankly. It's really not a healthy business. Yeah, especially when they put you on the rack, you know, an early April on the rack. Oh, well, all of a sitting, but it's all sitting in front of a computer constantly. I have to constantly get up every hour and walk around because if I don't, I will start to really get sore. And that's no good because if you do, your muscles start to ache, then it slows down your work pace. And then you're really screwed. Have you tried those sit stand stations? Yes, I do have one. I do use it occasionally, but walking, but walking is the thing. You have to get out and not be in front of a screen for some time. Yeah, I've been walking every day. For the past month, I love it. So healthy. Walk, walk. It is. I had unhealthy work schedule for like 10 years when you were had those months in which you were, what was it, attending or rounds or from that moment, I started rounding in the hospital also, third year medical school through the end of my fellowship. You know, you're working a hundred hour weeks, basically. And this is before now, there's a, there's all kinds of regulations that limit the amount of time you could work in a row and how much time you need to have off. And even with those regulations, it's still bad. It's still bad. I was free regulations. I had the 36 hour days sometimes and how wonderful for patient care. And well, right doesn't have, doesn't everything decline as a result of that? Yes, that's why they put in regulation. Hence the regulation. Sure. Yeah, that was a fit. I could, there's no way I could do that kind of thing now. Yeah, one thing when you're in your 20s, you know, that's the point. Yep, do right. 50s, 60s. I'm not about it. I forget about it. I forget about it. I forget about it. I'll be referencing one. I'll be referencing walking a little bit in my news item later, a little foreshadowing there. And we also foreshadowed one of Jay's items talking about taxes. Jay, you're going to start us off with a swing. Swindlers list about tax fraud. Yeah, I did email Evan. I told him to back me up because Evan is swimming in this stuff, but I try to do this every year because I just want to tell people like what the latest scams are that are being reported. Yeah, it's a healthy reminder. Very good. And it's bad, you know, it is bad. AI is helping a lot here. There's a refund text and email phishing scam going on. You get a text or an email. It's going to claim that your refund was approved or it was processed or it was delayed or it needs some type of identity identity verification. And this link takes you to, of course, a fake IRS site or a state portal site and it'll ask for your social security number, your bank details and then you give them that. They got you and it's going to happen quick. So you should never be giving that information out. I think just in general, don't give it out. If you're talking to your doctor that you know, and they asked for it, I push back and I go, do you really need it? Can you verify me another way? I don't want to give my social out. Yeah, there's no reason to give your social. Yeah, you can almost always leave that line blank and they're like, yeah, you don't have to put anything in there. And your bank details, there's virtually no reason you ever ever have to tell anybody your bank details. I mean, if they're going to do a bank transfer, that's one thing. But even still, you have to give them your bank account number. You're routing at least, right? Routing number is generic for the bank. It's the bank account, your ID, but the bank, that's the number that I would not freely give out. If you're going to transfer money like that, you could just use something like Zell, which will go from bank account to bank account, and you're not giving out anything that's yes. Yeah, pluses and minuses to everything, because like Zell, there's no insurance, there's no, that's right. No, they're just a raw transaction. But that's another future installment of Swindon's West. Shall we? Oh, yeah, Bob and I have a cool thing. Well, it's a sad story, but it's a good lesson. All right. So we got the W2 wage manipulation and fake return schemes. This one is the current IRS warning is about scams that coach people to file false returns by inventing W2 wages or withholding amounts to trigger a bigger refund. This can expose the fire to penalties and investigation. Essentially people are being told you could falsify your return and they're doing it. You can get caught because Evan, of course, could speak smarter at this and I am. But basically, if you fall within normal parameters, and there are normal parameters for every income level, usually you're fine. You know, like, and you could look up what those normal parameters are. But if you step outside of them and you're too many hits on the same return or whatever, like there's an algorithm that they'll that that you'll be beholden to. Even though, you know, the IRS is pretty gutted. So I'm really not sure how well they're going to operate this year, but still like just be careful. We'll make sure you file as truthfully as you possibly can. I'll add to that there are different levels of kinds of penalties in and the worst one is willful. Anytime you hear the word willful, that's a big part. That's a big problem because that usually means you're you're in for jail time. If a court can find you guilty and put you away in jail for doing things like what Jay is saying, claiming that you have refunds or W2s or other tax forms that you don't have, but that they say, oh, yeah, you paid in this money. Now I want to get it back as a refund. That is willful. And those carry the harshest penalties. Next one is the AI boosted phone scams synthetic voices tax resolution style imposter. Oh, yes. You get a phone call or it's a voicemail. It sounds completely polished. It sounds legitimate, realistic voices. It can even be voices that you know. They claim there's a problem with your tax return. They offer you you can enroll in a program that can help you. The program doesn't exist. And of course, the ultimate goal here is identity theft. They're just trying to extract your information. Some of these scams, you know, they'll ask for your credit card information to make a payment and then they'll they'll completely drain you. You know, it's just one of those things. Again, like you were at the point. I think I said this last year. You cannot trust the voices that you hear now. You know, if you get a phone call from your bank, call them back at the number that you know that they are, you know, right? The IRS and the other state agencies, they will never call you. They will never send you a text and they will never send you an email asking for information. Those will never happen. Absolute red flags do not reply to them. Do not open any attachments. You know, it's happening like crazy. You know, that these scams are automated. So, you know, they're easy because they're easy. Yeah, they're extremely easy to launch. You send out millions of these things and you only need a couple hits to get some payback. Yeah. And the thing is, you know, they, again, it's automated to the point where they don't really, they just have to set it up and tax season is stress season. Not just for Evan, but for all of us filing our taxes and, you know, there are people out there that get so freaked out, you know, that it could be so wound tight that they'll make quick decisions and not really think it through. But that's why talk to your parents, talk to your grandparents, any people that you know, particularly elderly because they, you know, people can get that they don't think as well they're not as quick on their feet. They could be more worried about their money. Not as tech savvy. Yeah, they're not tech savvy. You know, call them up and just tell them, look, call me if anything weird happens or anything that's asking for information that you be the buffer for them. Agreed. Another thing, this stimulus or tax credit bait via text and social media. So messages that you'll get will claim that you qualify for a stimulus payment, a special credit, you know, an urgent benefit update, you know, anything that they could do to capture you, right, to gather your intention. And then you're going to, they're going to try to get your personal data. It's always the personal data that they want. And the IRS specifically says you got to watch out for this and don't initiate contact in any way with any of anything like this. Will they send you, will the IRS talk to you via snail mail? Yes. In fact, that is the only way, right? And even then, the criminals have found ways to make near perfect looking replicas of IRS letters and state letters in some cases. That's probably actually relatively easy to do. To say, sure it is. It is. But if you know what to look for, there are inconsistencies within those letters that can be found that you're not either relate to your particular situation or they have it one piece of data that they reference that is incorrect. So there are crumbs that can be found, but they're not easily detectable. So if you do get letters and you have any questions about it, and even if you don't have an accountant or a or a person to prepare your taxes, you can still call somebody. You can still call a professional before you reply to anything and ask them for their opinion. And they encourage you in our fee or something like that, but at least you're not going to lose thousands or tens of thousands of dollars as a result. Yeah, they also do this unclaimed refund thing. These are all just ways to get at your information. But the unclaimed refund one is very, it tricks a lot of people because-- It's a luring. Yes. Because you-- oh, I didn't get all my money from last year. What happened? And they give you some story. And it sounds good. And any of these can be connected to each other. So you could be-- the unclaimed refund could be connected to the phone scam where they're using an AI voice. You know what I mean? So they're a clever. And they're getting a lot more clever. And I don't think that most of us are keeping up because AI is just making-- it's throwing gasoline on their capabilities. So you could do some quick legitimacy checks to catch a scam. So first, if they're contacting you by text or email or social media or any kind of direct message, it messages, treat this as high suspicious. Like don't do anything. Slow down. Think about it. Talk to people. Check online. You know, the IRS says don't initiate contact that way. That's not the way that they're going to contact you. And you should not be contacting or responding to any of that. Any request to pay by gift card by crypto. You know, act now or get arrested. Demo. Demo. Yeah. Like they're just not going to talk to you that way. And the last one here is do not use the link in the message. Don't use their phone numbers. Don't use their link. Don't navigate to irs.gov from their website or their text or anything because, you know, they could spoof a phone number. They could spoof any kind of link. Anything you could click on, whatever it looks like, they can-- it'll be whatever they wanted to look like. And to you, it looks totally legitimate. But sometimes you can hover your pointer over the link and you could see that where it's going is not where they're claiming it's going. And they've probably got around that by now. But I'm sure it's still plenty of stuff out there where you could actually visibly see and confirm, yep, this is bullshit. If you see a scam, you're connected to someone with a scam, whatever, like if you have any evidence, you can email the IRS. You can go to [email protected], send them what you have screenshots, whatever they'll appreciate it. You could forward texts. I think the number is 7726, which is a spam, like letter spam on your phone. And your carrier can help block similar messages. You know, there are things that we could do to help other people. So that's it. So be careful, guys. You know, file early. If you can, just to, you know, don't do it last minute and get desperate, you know, just put the time in. I had a pattern for years where I'm like filing the day of, you know, I got time and the next thing, you know, it's like, oh, and what, you know, you take days and days and days to get documents. You're going to have to call your bank, a former employer, all these things that we all have to do every year that completely suck, by the way. Our system is so convoluted in it and utterly ridiculous, but I, you know, that's for Evan to talk to us about after tax season. Who I tell you. But the bottom line is don't do anything under pressure at all when it comes to your taxes. Yeah, that's a good, the under pressure thing is a good rule of thumb. There's never going to be so much urgency to paying your taxes or correcting something or whatever that you don't have time to investigate it to take a deep breath to ask advice about it. Like don't do anything under pressure. There's no ever a legitimate reason for that. Take a couple of years if you want to. But you know what I do. It is true that if you do get something from either the federal government with regards to your taxes or your state with regard, because you know, I do indivisible. And corporate taxes. And I've had times where like, you know, a return, whatever, something was mismatched. My account did something weird or I need they needed something. They will send you multiple notices. Yeah. Like your first notice, you really don't have to do a whole lot. I mean, it is good to start researching, but like trust me, you'll get more than one notice. It's not going to be like, oh, hey, you need to do this thing and we will never contact you again. You know, if you file early, the good thing that happens is you're the first person to file for you because that happens. People will file for your taxes. They'll pretend to be you and file them. And if that happens, you're not in good shape. Don't think it's because it was well, well, that happened to me and it was no big deal. Could I just immediately notify the IRS and we sorted it out. And from that point forward, they send me a unique number that I use to file my taxes. And then use people like Evan because Evan knows what he's doing. And he is a font of unbelievable information. I can't tell you how many times I've called Evan at the day of Evan. I know you're doing the last thing. I'm screwed. And he's helped me like crazy because he knows what he's talking about. You know, it's true. I will say like when you have an accountant, it can be really hard, right? It can be it can be hard because you know that you're going to pay extra money. But at the end of the day, generally speaking, either they are going to help you maximize your return legally or they're going to prevent you from getting yourself into trouble. So in the long run, you save money with an accountant. All right. Thanks, Jay. Guys, have you heard about this new universal respiratory vaccine? I did. I do hear about this. Is it legit Steve or what? It sounds too good to be true. Actually universal. Don't get too excited. No, it's not. Really? It's not excited. It's no, it's good. It's a good solid advance. But of course, you have the headlines saying universal respiratory vaccine doesn't put it into content. Into the mice. Well, first of all, it's a mouse study, right? So that's the first thing to know. This is a study in mice. So that means there's years of human research between now and actually putting this up your nose, right? So this is not anytime soon. And most things don't make it through human research, right? Most things that look promising in animal in mouse studies don't make it through the human trials. But this is, I think, a solid technology that if this not specific thing, like this approach has some merit. But in order to understand, also, this is not a regular vaccine. That's the other thing. So saying it's a quote unquote universal respiratory vaccine without qualifying why it's a universal vaccine that gives people a huge misunderstanding of what's going on. So you guys know how vaccines work basically, right? Generally. You want to give me a quick summary? It's just pure magic, man. There's no science behind that shit. That's right. Supercharge is your immune system to find what it needs to find and terminate it. It tells your body what the disease, the infectious agent is with in a way that doesn't make you sick. So that later you know, you know, approach it. It multiplies the antibodies. Yeah, the, yeah, it's all about the antibodies targeting specific antigens. Usually you get sick the first time and then you develop the antigens. There's two parts to the immune system, you know, broadly speaking, right? There's adaptive immunity and there's innate immunity. Traditional vaccines work by stimulating adaptive immunity, like which as the name implies, your immune system can adapt to and remember infections. So it identifies, you know, it'll react with specific ant, what are what are called antigens, you know, receptors, proteins, whatever on viruses, bacteria, fungi, pathogens, right? And then that creates a reaction, including the production of antibodies that target that, that get more and more fine tuned to that receptor, to that antigen, and then it creates memory cells. So the next time you get exposed, instead of it taking days to ramp up a response, it takes just hours to ramp up a response, right? So just you get a much more quick and robust response because those memory T cells are already there as if you've already been infected. Yeah, it's why all of us had to go through having chicken pox, but didn't ever get it again, whereas kids today never had to go through that and they won't get it. Those kids today. Yep. I got to get my second shingles shot soon. We've spoken about like a universal flu vaccine for years and it's been in development for years, but it's very tricky. Do you guys know why it's so hard to make a universal flu vaccine? Because it demutations. It modifies every year. No, no. That's what I thought. The whole point about a universal vaccine is that you don't have to track the strains that are being. Exactly. So that's not. So that's something about flu that is hard to. Like, about general flu that is hard to attack or that attacks you're something else that's important in your life. So you got to keep in mind that these bugs have been evolving for millions of years, right? It's just as we are immune systems have been evolving. And most pathogens are evolutionarily mature. They've been around for a while, right? So like flu viruses. So one thing that they have evolved is that the highly conserved proteins, right? You mean the ones that are the same across all flu viruses are well hidden. They're concealed in folds. So that can't be targeted easily. Make an access to them and the stuff that's exposed to the outside world are highly variable. Is that why we can't even make a cold vaccine? Yes. Because life would be so much better if we had a vaccine for the common cold. Yeah. So a lot of viruses, specifically, they hide their highly conserved antigens. So we just can't get access to them. And the stuff that we can't target change, strain to strain. And therefore, there's been really freaking tricky to make a universal vaccine. I thought there were lots of different types of cold viruses. There are. There's different kinds of different classes. But that's a point. Could you find something universal? The more universal it is, the more conserved it is across species across varieties, or strains, whatever the harder it is to get to. As a general rule of thumb, right? So that's why if it's really, really hard to make a universal vaccine and get some class of pathogens, like the flu vaccine, that's why. And it's even harder against the cold because it's more than one class of pathogens. Right. It's more than one species. Or an genus of a terrible virus. Yeah, there's a lot of. So how did this vaccine get around to that problem? Because it probably is not actually a vaccine. Yes. So it's not because it's not targeting the adaptive immune system. It's targeting the innate immune system. Whoa. So it's a completely different approach. Which is why I think it's like, you say, no, we didn't crack the universal vaccine problem. This is just a completely different approach. It's a workaround. It's kind of. Yeah, it's kind of like a workaround. But so what's the difference between the adaptive immune system and innate? Okay. So the adaptive immune system is slow, but specific, and it remembers. No. I like that. The innate immune system is fast and general. It is non-specific and it doesn't remember. Oh. So that's the shorthand. So the innate immune system is the first line of defense. Yeah. It's the thing that prevents us from all being sick all the time. All the time. It's really important. It includes things like your skin, right, is part of the innate immune system. It's just a physical barrier. But it also includes actual immune cells like in your mucosa that attack based upon general patterns. So there's something called toll-like receptors, T-O-L-L-like receptors, which you will never figure out what that stands for because there's no way to infer what it stands for. It doesn't mean anything. It's kind of like your science fiction. It's, it is. Well, there's a reason why it's called that though. There is. It's from the German word told. Do you know what that means? No. I'm not familiar with the German. It's like an expression like, oh, unbelievable, fantastic, amazing. So apparently the person who first discovered these receptors said that phrase in German. So they ended up calling it the toll receptor. This is in a fruit flicker. You're recon moment. Yeah, like you're recon. It's a good thing he didn't say holy crap. Shice. And so, but that was discovered in the fruit fly. And then when they discovered them in mammals, they were similar. They're toll-like. So toll-like receptors. Again, it doesn't mean anything inherently. It's just an interesting history to that name. Okay. So what did they target? They target pamps. Now that is an acronym. P-A-M. P-A-M-P. O-Pathogen. Associated molecular patterns. It definitely sounded like you said pamps. Pamps. Pamps. I heard you made the closest mattress. So what are pamps? So essentially they are patterns. That evolutionarily, the innate immune system has learned is indicative of certain kinds of pathogens. For example, a pamp may be, oh, this snippet of RNA kind of looks like an RNA virus. You know? That's a pamp. Or this receptor kind of looks like a bacterial receptor. It's not overall vague, non-specific kind of pattern. This looks viral. This looks bacterial. And it attacks those things. What if it's wrong? Yeah. And sometimes it is. And that results in autoimmune diseases. So often this is part of the immune system that does that. So it's got its very broad spectrum, very non-specific. And it's very immediate but short term. And again, it doesn't learn, right? Because it's very non-specific. So again, it's very complementary to the adaptive immune system. But also that these two immune systems work together because the innate immune system will then trigger adaptive immunity. And then when the adaptive immune system gets activated, that increases the innate immune system. It really reinforces each other and stimulates each other to get both defenses up as much as possible during an infection, right? Well, and it sounds like what you want is for your innate immune system, as you mentioned, to be swift and to have sort of a ceiling of its intensity. But once it becomes over activated or activated for too long, that can be dangerous for your body. Well, it certainly wouldn't do it casually, right? So it's either mistargeted or too active or persistent. That's been part of autoimmune. So that kind of scares me about a universal vaccine that targets that part of your immune system. It's certainly something that was going to be a lot of safety data that was required. Maybe we could test it on RFK Jr. As you've guessed by now, this new vaccine activates the innate immune system, not the adaptive immune system. And what it does is essentially activate receptors that cause the innate immune system to become active instead of for a few days to remain active for a few months. That's right. Okay. It gives you basically three months of heightened respiratory protection. Like that. Cause it's a nasal spray, right? So it's getting into your respiratory system. So unless you have an autoimmune disease that targets that, cause like I have psoriasis, I would not want to put my psoriasis on auto dry for three months. Yeah. So people with autoimmune disease always should ask their doctor about any vaccines. Because they can sometimes trigger autoimmune. Yeah. I definitely sometimes have psoriasis outbreaks after vaccines, but what I wouldn't want is a three months worth. Right? Yeah. But if it is localized to just things you can catch up your nose, that could be insane. Well, it gets into your lungs too. So what happens is what they found in the mice was that these immune cells formed in the lungs, right? So you have parts of the innate immune system become resident in the tissue, as they say. So they're there ready to go. And their switches are turned on, right? And they just are persistently on high alert for several months. So Steve, you don't need to instruct it on something specific to look for it though? No. No. It's just doing what it does just all the time. Rather than flaring for a few days, then going down, it just persists. Now another thing to keep in mind is when you feel like total crap, when you have an infection, that's not because of the infection. It's because of your immune response to infection. Right? So are you going to be walking around with a fever all the time? I don't know. That's a good question. But immunity comes with a price. You have to think about it this way. How come we didn't evolve to just always have this on high alert? Yeah. Right. Right? Just try and take a toll on us. Yeah. If that were an unalloyed good, we would evolution would have favored it. But evolution has favored having it flare for a few days and then going quite. It almost seems like a better approach is not to have it go for three months, but fast acting, ultra immunity, just for that flight. I want to do the nasal spray right before I get on that plane with all those people. That might be possible to just to trigger it without increasing the duration, but just trigger it before you get exposed. Or if you're going to be at a high exposure. Or trigger it, but be able to turn it off. Yeah, untrigger it later. I need to do that. Yeah. It wasn't part of the study. So they also included something called Ovalibimen, which comes from eggs. And this they learned by studying the BCG tuberculosis vaccine. So this is a vaccine that also stimulates the innate immunity, even though it is an adaptive immune system vaccine. And they and the same researchers researchers who figured out how that happens are doing this research. Like, oh, that's cool. This is how the BCG vaccine stimulates innate immunity. I wonder if we could just do that separately as a generic, non-specific respiratory defense. And they found that it did. This is specifically what it happens for those who know what this means. Ovalibimen specific CD4 plus positive and CD8 positive memory T cells that imprinted alveolar macrophages, enhancing antigen presentation and antiviral immunity. So basically what that means. This is something that the innate immune system does. There are macrophages which basically eat pathogens, right? They eat pathogens and then they present the antigens on their surface. And those antigens that are being presented on the surface of macrophages saying, hey, attack this thing right here that I'm presenting to you activates the adaptive immunity to memory T cells against those antigens. That makes sense. So this stimulated that. And you said it specifically in their lungs. And yeah, respiratory tissue. Yeah. So they're ready to go. So the idea here is that this would be used for outbreaks, epidemics at the beginning of a pandemic. That would be nice. Or maybe even for seasonal protection. So you could say, okay, in November you get this vaccine and your chance of getting the flu is dramatically reduced for three months to get you through peak flu season. You probably still need the adaptive immune flu vaccine. So this is again complimentary to not instead of a regular vaccine. But like when COVID hit, imagine when COVID hit, if we could give everybody this vaccine and basically buy us months, you know, flatten the curve, obliterate the curve, give us the time it took to make a real vaccine that could then provide that would have saved long time lives. Yeah, it's what all the millions of lives, right? But all the charlatans and hucksters pretend they're pushing when they talk about boosting your immune system. Yes. Right. All the crap that they were pushing like Ivermectin or whatever. This would actually do that. This could actually do that. But of course that means we have to have billions of doses on hand, you know, ready to go. So it's interesting. Additional tool to have in the toolbox. And it especially would be good for respiratory outbreaks and epidemics and maybe even pandemics or early on to buy us time. It's another layer of defense. But for all the reasons that we stated, you know, basically the risk of triggering auto immunity of one type or another or just having a lot of side effects, so your immune systems ramped up for three months, there's going to be a lot of safety testing, right? This is going to be years of human trials, I think, before this makes it to market. But it's an interesting approach. And the whole backstory of the different parts of the immune system, I think, is good to go over. But if you just read the headlines, and especially if you know the history of our search for universal flu vaccines, you might have gotten the totally wrong idea about what this is, you know, it's a completely different part of the immune system. Cool. Speaking of COVID, Cara, this is a story that started in 2020 and has never fully been resolved where did COVID come from? And it's mostly resolved. What? Mostly. Mostly. Mostly. Yeah. Okay. So the WHO had an advisory group called the scientific advisory group for the origins of novel pathogens. For some reason, the acronym for that is SEGO. I guess they, scientific advisory group origins. They didn't want it to be SEGON, because I guess that doesn't roll off the tongue. So SEGO has-- Too much like HAMPS. Right. Yeah. They started. Paps are cool. They started digging into the origins specifically of, you know, the novel. Coronavirus of COVID-19, early on in the process, then they closed their assessments. They put out a publication previously, but there's-- there was a new publication that came out just in the middle of last year, June 27th, 2025, called independent assessment of the origins of SARS-CoV-2. And this month, actually two days ago in the journal Nature, the authors of that comprehensive investigation published an article called COVID's origins, what we do and don't know where they summarize their big takeaways for a public audience. And so first and foremost, what's interesting is, is SEGO is a group of 27 original members across multiple countries, but by the end-- or at least by the publication of this article in Nature, it was only 23 of those members. And they mentioned that one of them dropped out before the 2025 report, but the other three dissented from the decision to include the lably hypothesis at all in their writing, because they said it just doesn't have any data to support it, and it's silly that we're even talking about it. So they went kind of to great lengths at the top of this article to say, listen, we're only 23 of the 27, this is what we-- this is what the evidence show us, and these are our findings, but we want to make it clear that some people dissented from this and didn't want to put their names on this. So that's pretty interesting. So basically, these-- oh, and it's from 27 countries. So 27 experts from 27 countries, they looked at every reasonable possibility. They said it. They weren't trying to blame any one country. Of course, they just wanted to understand what happened so that we can be better prepared in the future. And they looked at all sorts of stuff, case studies, animal reservoirs, host insect vectors, environmental sources. They looked at evolutionary biology. They looked at all sorts of different intelligence reports that they had access to different discussions and obviously peer-reviewed scientific studies that came out between 2020-2021, all the way up until they wrote their report. And there was a big 2022 Lancet commission. We probably talked about that on the show, right? I'm guessing we did, because that was one of the other big-- And we've been writing about it for-- For real, non-stop. I science-based medicine. Yeah, yeah. And so ultimately, they came up with four scientifically credible hypotheses that they then dug even deeper into and give their kind of determination of each of those four hypotheses. So do you guys know what those four hypotheses are? Like the sources. Like where did COVID-19 come from? Or SARS-CoV-2? A CIA. Wet market. A spillover of that. Oh, a waste. That's the important thing. So Bob, yes, you're partly there with the wet market. Probably from the wet market, but spillover. But yes, spillover. So a zoonotic infection. Right. Two would be lab lake. Lab lake? Mm-hmm. Three would be engineered. Yeah, so that's like kind of lab leak intentional versus lab leak intentional. Intentionally engineered. Yeah. And you're missing the first one. You're missing it, Steve. Fauci got it from aliens. Right. Yeah. Incredible hypothesis. Yeah. The fourth one is a little-- it's a little bit buried in the first one, I think, because like if you just say spillover or actually know, if you say spillover, that is its own thing. But if you just say market, as you said, Bob, that would include both. So the second hypothesis is that it was actually introduced into the animal markets from overseas through imported goods. Gotcha. Yeah, right. The first is that there was a spillover. That's China's favorite theory. That's China's favorite theory, isn't it? Right, because they've been saying-- Frank, because it takes the blame away from-- Exactly. It wasn't the engineered hypothesis debunked like very, very early in the pandemic, where they looked at the genome and said, this has no hallmarks of engineering. Yeah. So here they were asking, could this have been produced through reverse genetics, basically? Could people have gone into viruses, genes, or their regulatory elements and understood that kind of backward calculated these? People do this in labs all the time. They take viruses and then they kind of backward engineer them to make them less pathogenic, right? So that we can study them easier and not risk getting infected. So the idea here is that somebody did somebody take a virus and make it more infectious. And they did look deep into this. And they found that there's sort of no evidence to suggest it and be--it would be really, really hard to do because the closest members of the class that includes SARS-CoV-2, so SARS-CoV-1 and other SARS-type coronaviruses that mainly hang out in bat reservoirs, they're mosaic in their genome. And so what ends up happening when they look at it is there all these distinct evolutionary lineages, meaning that there were multiple recombination events over and over that led to these viruses, which makes it much less likely that they would have been engineered viruses, if that makes sense. And there's a lot of wonky science. That's probably--this section is actually interestingly. Yeah, it's not this, but also it's the most complicated to explain why it's not this. And you're right, Bob. They kind of figured that out pretty early. But they did do some research to figure out how replicable the viruses and their research kind of leads them to believe that even before this virus evolved to become SARS-CoV-2, or even before humans caught the infection, it probably could have already replicated in human cells, which is another kind of evolutionary piece of evidence, which shows that it probably wasn't deliberately manipulated. So let's go back to the other lab leak hypothesis, which is that it originated from an accidental lab related event. This is fascinating to me. And so I'm really curious. I mean, I know that we have debunked this over and over on the show. But one thing that I guess I didn't really realize until I read what I could of this report is that they still can't say--they can say it is very unlikely because we actually think we know what did happen and what did happen isn't a lab leak. But the reason that they can't conclusively say that it wasn't a lab leak is because they don't have access to a bunch of data. And that's the hardest part. Like they've looked at published intelligence reports, they've looked at a bunch of different scientific reviews, and they all say, "No, no, it's very likely so, and not, I guess we mentioned it's very likely a spillover. There's no evidence for a lab leak in any of this, but every time they asked for the actual information, like the raw data, it was redacted, they didn't receive what they asked for, and so they just have incomplete data coming from the lab. So they have to leave it technically open as well. So what they end up-- Which is why the intelligence community concludes, "Hey, we can't prove it was a lab leak, but the Chinese are being squirrely for a reason, so we're worried that it was a lab leak." Whereas the scientists are saying, "No, this is so an addict, there's no evidence." Yeah, and that's why they're saying that this one tends to be more of a political argument versus a scientific argument, and that's not to say that there's not some concern there, of course, like why are you being shady? But the science doesn't point in that direction, so they assign levels of confidence to these different hypotheses, and lab leak is almost always low confidence because of that. But you have no confidence, zero. Yeah, but they can't say it's no confidence because they haven't been able to look at all the information, and if you can't look at all the evidence, you can't make a final conclusion. And at this point, will they ever have access to that necessary information or to close this positive thing? Well, I think something that's interesting is they did actually say in this report that they requested more information, and that information has started to become granted, but they don't have access to it yet, and so there will probably be more data to look at in the future, which is, I'm not sure if it's the reason why, but apparently the WHO has asked for a new Seigo group to meet. Okay. So these 27 people won't be in that new Seigo group, but they will assign new people to it. And their goal is to be as unbiased as possible, obviously, and to really focus on the science. So basically that leaves the two other questions. Was it introduced into China's animal markets from overseas, which is what China has endorsed, or was there a spillover event that was likely near the Hunan seafood market in Wuhan, or near it either in time or in location or both? And we've talked about this on the show. So obviously, the evidence really does point to the fact that this was very likely a spillover event. And what do you think is some of the kind of corroborating evidence that we have that would tell us this is a spillover event? They've tested animals from the market. Okay. So they've looked at different animals that were in the market. Yep. That's important. I think the big one is just epidemiologically. It's the pattern of the very first cases. Mm-hmm. We're the 60% of the known cases in December 2019 where either people who worked at the market, people who made purchases at the market, people who lived near the market, or people who had some other link to the market. But as far as I know, and I don't think this has changed, they haven't found the smoking gun of the animal species that it came in that it evolved in. No, they do know animals that can get COVID. Yeah. And they do know that early on, they were looking at like this metagenomic sequencing of different environmental samples. And so they indicated multiple wildlife species that were present. There were raccoon dogs, there were a hori bamboo rats, and there were palm civets there, and they are all susceptible to those early evolutionary strains of SARS-CoV-2. But they could have been intermediate hosts. There's no way to know if they were the first spillover event, or if there was a spillover event that occurred earlier. So we really don't know. But what we do know is there are no verified cases of animal or human SARS-CoV-2 prior to December 2019. They said that there have been a couple retrospective reports of one or two cases in November 2019 in Italy and France, and then there was a wastewater sample in Brazil. But in all of those cases, they couldn't confirm those test results by other labs. So they're saying that's really low quality evidence, and where we have high quality evidence, every case we know about was in December 2019 and later. And so they don't know the actual source of the spillover event. But what they do know is that there are other strains that are similar to SARS-CoV-2, but they're too dissimilar to have been the direct progenitor. So they're probably more ancestral strains, and those have been found in horseshoe bats in Southeast Asia. So one type of virus shares 96% of its genetic code with SARS-CoV-2, another one shares 96.8%. So sorry, 96.196.8. So the one that shares 96.1 was found in China in 2013. The other one was found in Laos in 2020. So it's very likely that similar strains have been circulating in Southeast Asia, and that there may have been one or multiple spillover events, and this is the one that's stuck. We may not be able to ever find that sort of patient zero, or that I don't even know what they call the animal. >> Right, yeah, animal zero? >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what they do say regarding China's kind of favorite hypothesis saying, okay, well, maybe people got sick here, but probably the virus was actually in goods already, and they came to our country and got people sick. The members of the committee say, we're six years out, and we just don't think that there's enough scientific evidence to support this, or really any. SARS-CoV-2 was to, or COVID, do you say COVID or COVID? It was detected on frozen goods, but this was discovered months into the pandemic. >> So you have no right to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to? >> Yeah, it's like people could have contaminated those frozen goods when they were testing them. And there's also no really good evidence to show that people caught SARS from frozen products at the seafood market, or really anywhere else. So there's really no reason. And this is after a lot of investigation. There's really no reason to think that it was introduced into China's animal market from overseas through imported goods. There's really no reason to believe that it originated from deliberate manipulation of viruses in a lab. There's very good reason to think that this was a spillover event, right, a zoonotic infection. And there's no good reason and but sadly not enough information to confidently say that it didn't leak out of a lab, but it's highly, highly unlikely. And that's just what we have to deal with sometimes in science. >> Imperfect information, right, always, almost always, it's imperfect. >> And so they've kind of closed the book on this. I'm curious about the, your guys' take on whether, like I said, three people in the original group fully dissented and said, I'm not going to put my name on this because you're including those last hypotheses. What do you think about that? Do you think they should have been included? Do you think it's important to say, hey, this is what people think and this is how we're going to debunk it, even though sometimes it leaves room for the conspiracy theorist to run. >> No, I think it leaves more room if you suppress it. >> I agree. >> Yeah, I agree with that too. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> And that's already the narrative, sure. >> Exactly. >> And the government, whatever was suppressing the lab leak theory and, you know, there's some truth to that, but it's not the conspiracy they're making it out to be. >> Yeah, definitely not with the scientist. And I think that's-- >> Definitely not with the science. >> It's all about framing, as you mentioned. >> Yeah. >> I think what happened was it was the, once the engineered hypothesis was debunked, then the lab leak kind of got caught up in that net when science was like, this theory has been debunked. But it really wasn't until a year later that lab leak really started becoming proposed as a serious alternative to the engineered hypothesis. It's complicated. >> Yeah. And I think you're right. There's an important kind of conversation about framing here, because like you said, if you suppress it, that makes the conspiracy theorist go wild. And, you know, my guess, I cannot speak for these three dissenters, but even one of them did publish and she said at the top, "I let it be known. I disagree with this decision." >> Yeah. >> And I want you guys to know. I wonder if their take was, no, no, we're not trying to suppress anything. We don't think that it was even worth investigating because there was, it's not a hypothesis. Like you have to have some sort of observation to even develop a hypothesis. And so what they were saying is, there was never anything pointing to this. So there's no reason to then go in and investigate it. And I could kind of see it both ways, but yeah, if this is going to be such an important narrative, again, you cannot, you cannot separate the science from the politics. You have to understand the science in the context of the political landscape. So why not investigate it to debunk? >> Yeah. >> What world are they living in? You have to address these things head on. >> Yeah. >> Absolutely. >> All right, Bob, this is interesting. So to talk about another way, potentially, to reuse, spent nuclear fuel. >> Yeah, this was fascinating Steve. The DOE is funding research that could make it practical, actually practical to cut the hazardous radioactive life of nuclear waste by 99.7%. Now that number is thrown around a lot on a lot of websites. They don't mean 99.7% in one day. This is not the way that number came from. So they want to use a novel process to transmute this nasty, the nastiest nuclear waste into a form that remains super deadly, but only for a few hundred years instead of hundreds of thousands of years. >> That would be huge. That's where that number came from. >> You know what? It's not huge. I just saw this up front. Here's just the whole nuclear waste. >> It's so misunderstood. The stuff that lasts, so very quickly, the more radioactive something is, the more intense the radioactive it is, activity is the shorter the half life. And the longer the half life, the less the intensity. So the stuff that lasts for 23,000 years is barely above background radiation levels. By definition, it has to be, or otherwise it wouldn't last for thousands of years. >> So it's a matter of volume? >> So in a few hundred years, all the bad stuff is going away no matter what. And whatever is left over is background radiation level it's not worth worrying about. >> It's really just above that radiation isn't far enough above that it's still dangerous. It's not dangerous. It's just not dangerous. It may be toxic, but it does need to be stored safely. But the idea that it's going to be dangerously radioactive for thousands of years is straight up wrong. But anyway, this is still a very good thing for other reasons. Go ahead, Bob. >> Yeah. And don't forget, Steve, that engineering storage for millennia is a lot harder than engineering it for a few hundred years. >> I agree. >> That's also a big bonus. >> I don't think that's an issue either. You know why? Because I bet you in a couple hundred years, we're going to have a huge tech deal with it that we don't have to worry about it. We just have to store it for long enough for future technology to deal with it better. >> And then if we have an apocalypse, we're going to irradiate. >> We'll have bigger problems. >> The Porsche Mox that are trying to scrape out a living. So this is from the Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency, Dash Energy. So this is ARPA-E. I didn't really know about that agency, ARPA-E. They selected the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility to work on this project. And they got money, they got to grant money a little bit over $8 million USD. And this money specifically comes from the Department of Energy's Newton program. Newton is an awesome, is an awesome acronym. It stands for Nuclear Energy Waste Transputation Optimized Now. So I can just imagine the meeting they had when they came up with that. So the current problem is that spent nuclear fuel from nuclear reactors is there's a whole gamut of different types of isotopes and elements with varying half lives and everything. But it's highly radioactive. It's nasty stuff, especially if you took some fresh spent fuel and were directly exposed, you could literally be dead within days or even hours. This raw stuff, untreated stuff, unsheeled stuff is super nasty. And I'm talking uranium plutonium plus the minor actinides, as they're called, like neptunium, amirishium and curium. For this new process, they're not using conventional nuclear reactors like say faster or even more modern nuclear reactors. They're relying on particle accelerators and it's a really fascinating process. So what they want to do is they want to take particles accelerators and in this research be able to transition particle accelerator technology from more pure research into something that you could apply to something to a problem like this. So using the particle accelerators, they accelerate, as we know, what particle accelerators accelerate protons to basically relativistic speeds and they aim at heavy metal like mercury. So when you have something like high energy protons hitting a heavy metal like mercury, it happens that it spews out a lot of neutrons and the word to describe that is called spilation. I think that's how it's pronounced spilation. So the neutrons then collide with the radioactive spent fuel. And when that happens, you get several different possibilities happen here. So you got, imagine you've got a neutron merging with a nucleus of a radioactive atom. So you could, if you just have the neutron merging with the nucleus of this atom, then you can, that's a different isotope, right? Because it's not a new proton because extra protons is what makes a new element. New extra neutrons gives you an isotope of that element, okay? And that could, and that could happen immediately when a neutron is absorbed. You've got a different isotope. But also during spilation, you could have a different element created and that can happen when, for example, the neutron merges, but then it converts to a proton, like say during beta decay. The goal here though is to create vision. They want vision to happen. They want a neutron to join a nucleus and eventually leading to the vision event where the nucleus splits into one big nasty radioactive atom and to say two smaller, kind of maybe mid-tier atoms that aren't as radioactive and something that will eventually be harmless much, much quicker than otherwise would have been. So that's kind of the idea of what's happening here. So this is kind of like, it's kind of like a reactor. But it's subcritical because a conventional nuclear reactor is critical and you could have scary scenarios as we know where there's runaway reactions that can do all sorts of nasty stuff. So that's critical. But these are subcritical reactions that are being caused by the particle accelerators, much safer. And then the bonus here of course is that many of these reactions, I think the curium is specific to this, also generate a lot of waste heat and we can take advantage of that, so that if you get heat, then you can have steam, then you can turn turbines and then you can generate electricity. So this could also not only take this radioactive spent fuel but you could also and make it less radioactive over time more quickly but you could also create carbon-free sources of electricity. So that's a pretty solid win-win. RPE said that this technique can be applied to the entirety of the US commercial used nuclear fuel stockpile within 30 years. So if this process was up and running within 30 years, they could basically convert all that our entire nuclear stockpile at that time. Of course we're creating a lot more all the time as well but that's pretty impressive. And then let's see here. So yeah, so I was going to talk here about the modern reactors can do this. Like you said, fast reactors, modern reactors can reuse some of the fuel, they can burn some of the fuel but especially for the fast reactors, it's more complex and it's politically difficult and as I said they rely on criticality, criticality which can cause runaway reactions. So using these particle accelerators is safer. So do all current nuclear fission reactors, right? They all operate under criticality. Right but the point is that using particle accelerators it's subcritical. I know but yeah, don't make it seem like a deal killer because that's what we've been doing for 60, 70 years. It's not a deal killer at all but this is much safer than using fast reactors or modern reactors. And we are researching fast reactors but I don't think China is a little farther along than we are. Russia's had one for decades. So yeah, so we had one and then we closed it down. We are currently building a couple of salt cooled fast reactors. So the 2030s we might see some coming online. So yeah, so it's not like we have a bunch of them up and running and everything. They are proven technology. Right. But we just haven't done it at scale. But don't underplay how much that uses the spent nuclear fuel. Our current, you know, the traditional sort of legacy nuclear reactors only use 5% of the energy that uranium. Right. Exactly. Whereas the fast reactors use 90% like 90% over 90%. So right there, you could basically run our country for 30 years just on the current stock pile of nuclear, spend nuclear fuel if you put them into fast reactors. Yeah. No, fast reactors are fantastic. But they are more complex and probably more politically difficult to sell. They are more expensive and complex. Right. And the accelerators are, you know, they're subcritical so they're safer for sure. And you know, you could just shut these down. You shut down the particle accelerator and that's it. I mean, the runaway reactions is this technology working. They can make it work. They have my table. My table is edible though. No, they can make it work. The goal of this specific research is, is it, can they make it practical? Can they make it efficient enough to be practical? That's where this $8 million is trying to show. So we shall see. It's a really interesting technique that I wasn't aware that you can use particle accelerators in this way. So, yeah, it would definitely be following this. And thanks for that extra info Steve. It's a surprise of all the research I did today. I did some hours of research on this stuff. I've been writing about this for years. Yeah. And I trust, I absolutely, yeah, I've read about it too. You've clearly done more research on this specifically than I have. So I absolutely trust what you're saying. I'm just surprised that that misinformation is so entrenched that it did not come up. I mean, I was looking at the laboratory write-up on this and they had no hint of that at all. So that's disappointing, but it's a good point to make. There's an inverse relationship between the intensity of the radiation and the half-life. Just keep that in mind. Right? So just don't mix those two things. You don't talk about the intense radio, intensely radioactive elements as if they have a half-life of thousands of years or hundreds of thousands of years. They don't. They have short half-life. That's why they're intense. The other thing is, there's, there have been two ways to reduce spent nuclear fuel. One is the fast reactors, which is kind of an emerging technology. But the old traditional way that we can do it right now, France is doing it. It's just to reprocess the fuel to spend nuclear fuel. You can reprocess it, re-enrich it, and then get more like 30 or 40% out of it instead of like just 5%. So we could be doing that right now. It's just a matter of expense, right? That's just money. It's more expensive. It's cheaper to mine and process fresh uranium than to reprocess spent nuclear fuel. But if people are so afraid of spent nuclear fuel, then just reprocess it and we could reduce it significantly. And then hopefully the fast reactors will come online in the 2030s. That will reduce it further. And hopefully they could get this technology working and that will reduce it further. Right. And my other point is that there's so many things online that can significantly reduce spent nuclear fuel. And again, get it down to only that sort of short half-life stuff. So you don't have to even worry about it for thousands of years, only just a few hundred years. That's going to happen one way or another. There may be some other way that comes out in 50 years from now, who knows. And that's my point. We can't assume static technology for hundreds or thousands of years. That makes no sense. All right. Let's move on. Evan. Yeah. So did you pick this news item just to please me? Well. Whenever birdwatching comes into a news item, I mean, how can I not stop and take a second look at it? I have Steve a question for you. Yep. In five parts. Okay. Okay. Number one, is birdwatcher and birder the same? Can we exchange those terms as far as I know? Okay. All right. So that's the part. Number two, you consider yourself a birdwatcher. What are your bonafeeds for that? What makes you a birdwatcher? Anyone can be a birdwatcher. If you look at birds, you are technically a birdwatcher. It's a continuum. There's no bonafeeds. There's no threshold. If you put up a bird feeder and look at the birds who come to your bird feeder, you're a birdwatcher. That's it. You have to keep the book though, right? You don't have to do anything. The entry point is super low. It's just looking at birds. That's it. But there's an entire spectrum from having multiple feeders that are attracting different kinds of birds, getting binoculars, getting other kinds of viewing equipment, taking pictures of birds. Then you can go on birding trips, you know, go to a location near where you live to look at water birds or different kinds of birds. There's a whole spectrum. Then you could join like the Autobahn Society. You could do whatever. Anywhere along that continuum, you're a birder. Part three. Why do you like being a birder? I got into it originally as something to do with my father and father with my daughter. We both fell in love with it. First of all, it was amazing to me how little I knew about the birds around my house until I started looking. It just becomes really fun to identify new species. They're beautiful animals. And you just learn so much. It's just a great experience. It's a lot of fun. It adds another layer to any trip that I take. I could look at the local birds and see the birds you have. Do you ever talk or like tweet to the birds? No. (Laughter.) Number four, Steve. Other than increasing your knowledge base and understanding of birds, do you feel that this hobby has helped you in other ways? Yes. It definitely increases your attention to detail because you're sort of forced to notice things that before completely escape your notice. There you go. And think of it's a good way to think about categorization and variation within species. And occasionally you're going to see rare mutants. And so you learn about evolution, about biology, categorization, a lot of stuff you learn. And finally, the fifth part, thank you for your patience. Did you read the recent study from the Journal of Neuroscience that involved birdwatches? After you sent it to me, but I didn't notice it before. (Laughter.) Hey, Evan, can I ask question number six? Oh, go for it, Cara. Only because this is like bothering me and I feel like if I don't say something, then I don't know. Did you guys both just say bonafidais? Bonafidais? Is that how you said? I have always said that word bonafides. Bonafides? Bonafides? I think it's bonafides. Well, I just feel like we're going to get emails and I was like, I can't be the only person. It could be. Yeah, maybe it is. Mm-hmm. I don't know. Maybe they are both acceptable and it is. I think I've heard it both ways, actually. I've always said bonafides and I was like bonafides. Well, I don't know. Did I put that much emphasis on the D-A and the Fides? You're a hundred percent dead. You mean enough so that I'm trying to be cheeky maybe? You're not so that then Steve was like my bonafides. Well, actually, that's an Easter egg speaking of birds and we want the listeners to write in to tell us what you think of the word bonafides or bonafides. Sorry. Steve the name, the title of that journal of neuroscience study was called the tuned cortex, convergent expertise related, structural and functional remodeling across the adult lifespan. Is that when you liked it Evan because it was tuned and it was pulled? It is. Well, again, I only found it through the actual news article which was originated from NBC News cool. And here's a pull out from the abstract. Here we provide a multimodal view of a cortical reorganization in a domain for which high level perception, attention and memory are shaped through extensive practice. Colin, bird identification expertise also known as what bird watching right? By the way, I just one of the references that found it bonafides. Oh, interesting. That's weird too. Third way to say it. I think that's what I've heard before bonafides bonafides. Bonafides. Yeah. We're all different. And Steve, you've done a lot of the things that you're sharpening a lot of your skills in a lot of different ways, right? And you become in tune with those little subtle motions, right? Being able to distinguish trills from background noise, for example, or noticing, like you said, the very specific features of certain birds, noticing that pale eye ring that differentiates perhaps one, as they say, one warbler from another or things you don't even think about, like the ratio of beak to body length, you know? There you go, right? I mean, I would not have thought of that unless you just said it. The NBC News headline read, "Birdbrain benefits, how being an expert bird watcher may boost cognition?" And you might read that and think, "Oh, bird watching may be boost your intelligence." Well, spoiler alert, the answer to that is no, but apparently it could change brain structure and brain activity. You know, their actual structural modification that accompanies an expertise such as bird watching according to this study. I don't know what the prior studies have said about this. This is just something that is current. So we're going to talk a little bit about the study design. Researchers recruited 58 adults. That's a relatively small study, I would say, right? Twenty-and-a-half of which, 29 experienced bird watchers and 29 novices, little or no birding experience. So they were comparing expertise. Participants underwent MRI brain scans to look at structural differences, specifically gray matter density, and they also performed bird identification tasks while their brains were being monitored. So this allowed the researchers to look at things, what structural differences, along with functional differences, you know, how active certain brain regions became during bird identification tasks. And here's what they found. The experienced birders showed denser gray matter in regions associated with visual processing, attention, working memory, and fine perceptual discrimination. Again, Steve, several of the things you touched on. And yeah, so these are the exactly the cognitive systems you'd expect to be heavily engaged when distinguishing similar looking species. And those same regions of the brain became more active when birders were asked to identify unfamiliar bird species. So the areas that were structurally different were also functionally engaged during expertise relevant tasks. And that alignment strengthens the interpretation that these brain differences are tied to birding skill and not just random variation. Although there is some pushback on that a little bit. Maybe it's not all just the activity of birding. There are some other what confounding factors that could be involved here, right? Such as just generally being in nature. You have to in order to be bird watching, you're generally in nature. There's only so much you can do from your window. So you're out and about, right? You're walking around in some cases, you're socializing and these things are also tied to increased processing speeds. Let's see, who was it? Benjamin Katz, associate professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Science at Virginia Tech said birding isn't just a single thing. There are many different cognitive aspects. We don't know what the baseline differences are. We would need longitudinal data to make strong inferences about what birding itself is doing. That's kind of like a caveat, right? That maybe it's not exclusively the fact that you're birding or as they say, any sort of attention to detail, fine activity. They need to compare it to hiking. Why didn't they use hikers as the control group? Yeah, wouldn't that be a good comparison? But the thing is, yes, from a scientific neurological perspective, that's correct. From the perspective of, if I do birding, is that good for my perception and all that stuff? It is regardless of what the specific pathway, regardless of what aspect of birding is making that happen, you'll still get those benefits. Yeah. And we talk a lot about neuroplasticity, which is also something we've talked about on the show because they mentioned gray matter specifically. And maybe Steve, you can talk a little bit more about how the gray matter fits in here. Well, they're just talking about learning. Yeah, I mean, this is a generic response to learning. Anytime you look at anybody who does a lot of something, like if you look at violin players, they have more gray matter in the part of the brain that controls the hand that's work in the fret, or whatever. That, absolutely. That is just the physiological representation of learning. That's what that is. I would love to see a study that compared brains of people who were not at all interested, who were like almost like I would hate to bird watch. That sounds like the worst thing I could ever do. And then they bird watched for a while, and then they looked at their brains after. Because my question is, are people who tend to bird watch just people who tend to have these types of attentional skills? It's true. The arrow causation could be going the other way. Yeah. Evan, something to note, 58 participants in an FMRI study is actually kind of a lot. Oh, is it? Okay. FMRI study is usually-- FMRI study is usually-- I mean, when we're usually talking about studies. Yeah, I know. But that's a huge limitation of FMRI studies is you just can't scan a lot of people. But 50 is a good rule of thumb for you can do statistical analysis. Right. So long as you're kind of hitting that mark, you're in-- Yeah. It's good. I guess you'll have some amount of power. But 58 is not a low number for an FMRI study by any stretch. Good to know. Good clarification. So may perhaps that's why they did have just that many. And that's what they were aiming for in order to get the-- to get, you know, fair results, you know, something that they could really, really learn from here. Cool. Good stuff. All right, Jay, it's because that noisy time. All right, guys. Last week I played this noisy. And remember, this is a very annoying sound to be ready or turn down your volume. [BELL RINGING] Yeah, that was annoying. So-- All right, well, guys, I'm sorry. This was a-- it is an annoying sound to most people. But, you know, this is science. So you have to be tolerant here. Hello? Yeah. Hey guys, how many guesses? What is this thing? Someone's nightmare going to the dentist. Oh my god, Evan. I just had the second half of my root canal. Don't remind me. Oh, no, sorry. Sorry. No, it's actually not that bad. Evan, actually, you're mildly onto something. Oh, no. Yes. OK, so Ben Brown wrote in. He said, hi, Jay, my daughter Claire. No relation to the Claire that submitted the noisy. Asked me to send in her guess. She is nine months old. Nine months, guys, listening to the SGU. Wait, what? Really? She thinks the noisy sounds like a creepy swing set in an abandoned playground. That it might be nine years old. I don't know. I don't know, guys. But I just-- Probably. But when I saw nine months, I'm like, the kids are genius. She's listening to the show. She knows what's going on. She knows what a swing set is. So this is not correct. But I got to tell you, anybody who sends in a guess that's nine months old can be on my show. Ben Simon sent in a message. She said, I have made this guess several times before, but don't read this unless I'm finally right. I think the noisy is of something being turned on a lathe. But this one doesn't sound like a typical wood or metal turning. Maybe this is the sound of working on a plastic piece. Not a lathe, but thank you for the guess. Sharon Rooney, who is a huge supporter of the SGU and a friend of mine, she writes in. It says, hi, Jay. It's been ages since I guess. So I'll give it a try. This sounds like something being sharpened like a saw or maybe giving the Olympic theme a skate or sled blade. Not a horrible guess at all, Sharon, but you are incorrect. Make us more cookies. Stephen Hunter wrote in, said, Jay, this noisy makes me think of a spinning lens atop a lighthouse, except the mechanism is rusty and haunted. I think this is a perfectly crumbly guess. Incorrect. But guys, there was no winner. This one was hard. And I admit it. But let me tell you what this thing is. This thing is called Dent Spli Serona in Lab MX X5. What's a taff life? Let's talk about that for 45 minutes. It's a high end five axis dental milling machine. Oh, here we go, dental. Yes, Evan, you always do somehow you finish things out. It's used in professional dentistry filled with horror noises. Exactly. I know, man, there is a factory out there where they're just thinking up the next weird thing that we have to go through. So this is a machine that's used in professional dental labs to fabricate crowns, bridges, implants, surgical guides, other restorations from digital designs. It says it can mill wide range of materials, including zirconia, ceramics, resins, wax, some metals, and supports both wet and dry processing. It's a freaking miracle machine. And some dentists actually have this at their disposal, like they have enough business where they have it on site and they manufacture these dental devices or whatever it is that people need. So it's pretty cool. It makes horrible sounds. And I could see why they probably want to in a padded room or whatever. But it's a very useful thing. It really is a miraculous machine with all the different things that it can do. The dense play, serona, and lab, MCX5. All right, guys, I got a new noisy for you this week. This was sent in by a listener named Matthias. [PHONE RINGING] Guys, if you think you know what this noisy is, or you heard something cool, email me at [email protected]. All right, one quick question. This comes from Matt from the UK. And he writes, "I put a follow-up of your podcast since the very early days. I really admire what you do and how you increase scientific awareness. My views have always been scientific, but your show has really helped me stir me into a positive direction." And he goes on praising us a little bit more. And then he says, "I checked for local skeptical groups, but there isn't any near me. And I'd have to travel some way, which isn't really convenient." A thought struck me that I could start my own group. Nothing big, just a place people can go to discuss things. How would I go about doing that? And I guess more importantly, how much work is that? I can't imagine how much time and energy you all put into things you do, but I don't think I'd have time to do it as a full-time thing. Matt. So that's a great question, Matt. There's a lot you can do. And basically, you could put as much as little time into it as you want. It sounds like what you're talking about is that you want to form a meetup group. And the skeptical movement kind of split into those two types of organizations, right? Organizations that create content online, which is mainly what we do. And organizations that act as a local meetup group, which we also do, but we kind of do big events. But there are a lot of meetup groups, like skeptics in the pub. I don't know how active they still are, but these are still things that you can do. But you could just-- it's just a matter of forming an email list saying, once a month, we're going to get together at whatever this public place, or this library, or pub, or a museum, or whatever, and talk about stuff. It doesn't have to be a lot of work. But of course, you could make it as much work as you want in terms of how much prep you want to do, and do you want to get speakers in. And you could continue to scale that up and up and up. But I recommend don't overwhelming yourself initially. We've experienced-- because we've been doing this for a long time, including local groups, meetup groups, et cetera, people who come in-- they're very enthusiastic. They're full-core press. They want to change the world, and they burn themselves out any year. Yeah. So you don't want to do that. So pace yourself. Be realistic. Sounds like you are coming into this very realistically, which is good. But yeah, I think the easiest entry point is to just form a local meetup group, where you just get together once a month. And then if you want to add some bells and whistles to that, from there, you can do that. All right, guys, let's go on with science or fiction. It's time for science or fiction. Each week I come up with three science news items, or facts, two real and one fake. Then I challenge my panelists, got six, tell me which one is the fake. We have a theme this week. The theme is vaccines. Since I was talking about vaccines this week, I thought I would do that as a theme. All right, you guys ready? Yes. OK. Here we go. Three items about vaccines. Item number one, despite the claims of anti-vaxxers, no vaccines sold in the US are made using human fetal cells. Item number two, the World Health Organization estimates that about 50% of vaccine doses are wasted each year due to spoilage. And item number three, the first known inoculation preceded the first vaccination by over 700 years. Evan, go first. All right. No vaccine sold in the US are made using human fetal cells. The anti-vaxxers would have you believe otherwise. Well, this is something I think I've heard before being bantered about by the anti-vaxxers. And I'm not aware of any human fetal cells used to make vaccinations. I mean, this one seems in line with what I understand. But is there one vaccine that maybe uses some kind of human cells or something? I don't know. I think that one's going to be right. The second one about the WHO estimates that about 50% of vaccine doses are wasted each year due to spoilage. So that might be high, that 50% number. If this one's the fiction, it's going to revolve around this number. It's likely less-- I hope it's less. We did hear a lot during COVID about spoilage of vaccines. I don't know if mRNA vaccines are more susceptible to spoilage as opposed to the traditional ones. And maybe that-- when you bring that number in, it increases it. But I don't know about this one. I'm thinking this one's going to be the fiction. And the last one about the first known of an calculation proceeded the first vaccination by over 700 years. That does sound right to me. When was the first vaccination, though? I thought this-- maybe my timeline is off on this. But I'm not surprised that the inoculation proceeded the first vaccination and by seven centuries, essentially. So I'll go with the WHO estimates one as being the fiction. OK. I don't know. 50% of vaccine doses wasted due to spoilage. So you're saying per year. Oh, just for-- Whatever. That per year is redundant. It's 50% of doses. Yeah, I don't like that. And so, like, thrown out, like fully wasted, not usable. Not usable. Yeah. That's spoilage. That seems really high. It seems like we have a very, very inefficient health care system across the world. If that's the case, then it also seems like that would be something that the WHO actually works on and wouldn't have that bad of a waste number. I don't know. If that one's true, it really, really bothers me. But maybe it's true. And then no vaccines are made using human fetal cells. Yeah. No, that seems true. Do you mean like never even researched? Or you mean actually in production? In production? Oh, yeah. So-- Yeah, that one's straight up true, I think that's true. So the WHO one is bothering me. But the one that bothers me even more is the first known inoculation. The first, I think, completely agreed upon inoculation is very elation. It was smallpox. And that was in like the 1700s. But maybe there were some examples of people cutting open their skin and wiping disease into the wound earlier than that in like the Middle East or in Asia or something like that. If 700 years ago, I absolutely don't think so. I think that's the fiction. OK, Bob. Yeah, that's-- I mean, I could potentially see an accidental inoculation. 700 years ago. That was deliberate. This is deliberate. As a strategy to protect against infection. Ooh, by definition, otherwise just infection, right? All right, so the human fetal cells-- no way. And we would know that. That'd be ridiculous. I wouldn't be shocked if that's the fiction. Yeah, so it's between those two. 50% sounds like-- sounds ridiculously high. You think they'd have that down by now. I mean, is the unit costs so low to them that they're OK with it? Or is there something we're missing in terms of preventing spoilage? Is a lot more difficult? But 700 years, intentional. Oof. Yeah, this one's-- which one to grab here? All right, I'll go with the 700 years as fiction. That's just so long ago. Man, this is so much earlier than 1700. So yeah, fiction. 700 years. OK, and Jay. I don't know why, but I thought that we did use human fetal cells for something to do with vaccines. I don't know if it was their development or testing. I don't know. I just-- there's something there in my head. I thought I read something about that. I don't know if it's current or if this was in the past. Steve, the way you worded it, no vaccine sold in the US are made using human fetal cells. Is that current or all time? Current. Well, is that current? OK, then I would definitely say that one is science, because I would imagine we don't do that anymore. If we did it in the past, I would imagine we don't do it anywhere. OK, the second one here, 50% of vaccines. So that's a lot. That's an awful lot. I'm shocked to hear that number. I don't know if it would all be from spoilage though. I mean, if it's 50%, I would imagine there's lots of reasons why vaccines don't make it all the way to somebody's arm. But I don't know. I don't know. That's 50% spoil. I mean, if it is typical that it's 50%, of course, they know it, and they have to overproduce it just to make sure it's available for everyone. In the last one about the inoculation 700 years ago, Goddamn, it's a hard one. I mean, I'll go with Evan, and I'll say I don't think that half of vaccines are wasted due to spoilage. OK, so you had even split between those two, but you all agree on the first one. So we'll start there. Despite the claims of anti-vaxxers, no vaccines sold in the US are made using human fetal cells. You guys all think this one is science. And this one is the fiction. No, it's not. I have. Steve was I on the right track? Yeah, you were coldly. Correct. Right. Steve. So you are missing something there. This is-- I know what it is. I know what it is. They're not harvesting cells anymore. They have a line that they keep alive, right? You're correct, but that's not why this is the fiction. OK. So the difference, I think, what anti-vaxxers say, they do say-- they do imply or say that there were like-- but we're harvesting fetal cells to do that. But we do use fetal cell lines that were harvested in the 1960s. We're still using the same lines to do that. But most vaccines sold in the US are not used-- are not made using fetal cells. But some are-- Vericella, Rubella, Hepatitis A, rabies, and the Johnson and Johnson COVID-19 vaccine. Only Molly. But this is what anti-vaxxers say. This is the bit that you're missing and how I got all of you. They say that vaccines contain human fetal cells. And what's true is none of them-- none of the vaccines contain fetal cells. But the viruses are grown in human fetal cell lines. So they are made using human fetal cells. That's the difference. Uh-huh. Clever. So that's what you would think of. They do not contain fetal cells, despite-- But fetal cells are used to-- But they are used in making those vaccines that I mentioned. Like a chamber of some kind or-- It's just that's how they culture them in those cells. That's it. Otherwise, we culture them in chicken eggs or whatever. You know, something else. Yeah, so is the reason-- then why aren't we just using chicken-- That's whatever-- Obviously, the human-- These cells grow-- Because human viruses grow better in human cells. And if we can't get them to grow in non-human cells, then we have to use human cells. So these are the ones where we have to use human cells. But the vaccines do not contain fetal cells. I was dancing right on top of that. Yeah, you were hovering over the target there, Jay. All right. This means I got it too, Jay, because I said, unless we're missing something really important. You did qualify it, Bob. All right, the World Health Organization estimates that about 50% of vaccine doses are wasted each year due to spoilage is science-- Oh, why? None of you mentioned-- Is it all spoilage? Refreguration. Yes, evidence correct. It's refrigeration. So have you guys ever heard the term the cold chain? No. Oh, yeah, I know what that is. Oh, yes. It has to be that chain. Yeah, it's the entire length of chain. It can never fall onto the chain. Exactly. So basically, all vaccines need to be refrigerated. They need to be kept between 2 and 8c from the moment they're created till they go in somebody's arm. And if there's any break in that cold chain, it's spoilage. It's becoming infected. And it becomes-- Not only ineffective can become toxic. You cannot use it. You know, so drink the vaccine. Do the vials have some sort of sensor on them, Steve? That measures if something's spoiled is lost. So that's a good question. How do they know if something-- if the cold chain has been broken? I think there are ways to monitor that and to indicate if it's ever heated up or a fro. If it gets below zero-- if it freezes, it's done. If it gets too hot, it's done. So I said 2 to 10 or 0 to 10 or 2 to 8 somewhere in there. But it's got to remain at that sort of narrow temperature range. So estimates vary from about 25% to 50%. But the World Health Organization says 50%. That's their number. But it's definitely somewhere between 25 and 50%. It's hard to know exactly how much. The estimated cost is $35 billion a year. So depressed. $35 billion. That was a huge-- What's just an infrastructure problem? It's an infrastructure problem. Why don't they take that $35 billion and spend it on more refrigeration? Well, because we're talking about countries with poor infrastructure. So there's a power outage. Pope, anything that that power was cooling is gone. Whole shipments get wasted with-- so if you're trying to distribute vaccines in a country, with intermittent electricity, this is where the problem is. This is obviously not evenly distributed. The US doesn't have this problem. Developed Western nations, they have some spoilage, but it's not 25% to 50%. Well, we should help those countries. Of course we should. Absolutely. But this is infrastructure problems are hard to solve. You just can't throw money at it. You've got to develop infrastructure. You have to develop infrastructure by throwing money at it. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's not just a matter of money. It has to be properly spent on the right things. And you have systemic problems, like societal problems that you have to fix. Governmental problems that you have to fix. It's an intractable problem. But the World Health Organization is absolutely working. There's the World Health Organization. Right. The World Health Organization. I can't believe that. I've had to discipline myself not to say the who, because they don't say that. Right. And I specifically don't say the-- Oh, I got that made my night. I'm going to fall asleep with a smile on my face. [LAUGHTER] So they are working on it. They have a working group working on it. But their hope is to get it down to 25% over the next 10 years and then down to 10% long-term. But right now it's super high. And it's a problem, because it does reduce the availability of vaccines to the poorest people in the world. It basically means we have to produce twice as many vaccines as is necessary. Yeah. Or we have to develop vaccines that have a longer period of time that they can sit at room temperature. Even if they have to be cold at the beginning of the change. But that sounds like an inherent problem with-- Well, you know what? That's part of the reason why we still use thymarisol. I mean, the world in the US, which is a preservative. You put preservatives in the air. Is it vaccines for this reason? Yeah. Preservatives in anything are so that we can-- They preserve-- They're in a cell type. It's a good thing. Folks, all right, this means that the first known inoculation preceded the first vaccination by over 700 years is also science. Yes, and it's not 700 years ago. It only predated 700 years. But the first inoculation must have been in like the 15th or 16th century or so. Well, when was it exactly? I don't know exactly. So again, like, very elation-- smallpox was in the 1700s, and that's the first sort of generally accepted one of them. But that considered inoculation. Yeah, that's a very elation. That's the definition of inoculation. That's where we get the word. But so 1700-- Yeah, it's 2026 now. No, but God, that's-- Well, 700 years prior. So the year 1,000 was the first. Exactly. The year 1,000, that's exactly the correct date. Yep. In China, they took the scabs from smallpox, powdered it, and blew it up people's noses. Oh my god. It's amazing. Go them. Yeah, holy-- And it worked, didn't it? It worked. So somebody on drugs was like, yeah, crush it up, and make them snort at it, man. So the first vaccine officially is Edward Jenner, 1796. Yeah. This is more than 700 years before that. Yeah, and so this kind of inoculation improves the survival from 3 in 10, if you get the natural infection, to 1 in 50 deaths. 3 in 10 deaths. Amazing. So you still have a 1 in 50 chance of dying if you get inoculated with smallpox, but that's better than 3 in 10. So if you're in the middle of an epidemic, it definitely is advantageous to go that route. But yeah, things are always older than you think. That's a good rule of thumb. Yeah, so this was tricky this week. I was-- It was the-- Clever. Yeah, those little distinctions made using and containing. That was the difference that made that one, the fiction. All right, Evan, give us a quote. Too often we give children answers to remember, rather than problems to solve. I'd love that. Roger Lewin, PhD, British anthropologist and science writer, who co-wrote three books with Richard Lee. Yep, I know. I think that-- How does that work? How does that work? I think-- Yeah, that's why I like when my kid-- I know I've said this before, but it's bearish repeating. They would ask me a question. What color were dinosaurs? I wouldn't give them an answer. I would ask them a question. How could we know what color they were? Let's think about that. Or whatever. I would always reflect it back as a question of how could we investigate that? How could we know? Give them a problem to solve. Absolutely. Yeah. It sound like an annoying dead. One-- They loved it. They-- because then it's interactive. And you're-- Yeah, for sure. No, totally. Yeah, they don't want an answer. And they loved discovering that I was wrong about something. They loved-- For sure. Yeah, for sure. I mean, it always go why? And the adult was wrong about something. For some reason, Keaton on that specifically. I think it was a very important lesson to learn. Did no argument from authority. All adults are not always correct. You can't listen to every adult. You have to think your way through it. They have to give a reason for it. There's how we know things. And that's not even something that you have to foster. A child already has that. All we do is kill it. Yeah, it's just not kill it. Like, little kids go. But the kids are natural born scientists, right? Yeah. And you go, because blah, blah. And they go, blah, blah, blah. But why? Right? Most people just go, because I said so. Yeah, shut up. Yeah, because I said so. That's why. Shut up, kid, your father, ring me. All right, before we go, I want to thank-- I want to say awesome job for a Christian who Bikki who survived the first episode. Hey, I'm-- I haven't watched it yet. Well, now you know. He survived the first episode. And he'd kick asses-- Spoiler, expire with eyeglasses. Of course you did. Good luck. A Christian for the rest of the season. All right, bye. Whatever season 50. But don't lose spoilers. OK. Before the end of this season, he'll have built some kind of robot. Out of coconuts and bamboos. He has three robots on his shirt, which is awesome. I want to buy this shirt now. All right, well, thank you all for joining me this week. You're welcome, so you're-- And until next week, this is your Skeptics Guide to the Universe. [MUSIC PLAYING] 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 dot org. Send your questions to [email protected]. And if you would like to support the show and all the work that we do, go to patreon.com/SkepticsGuide and consider becoming a patron and becoming part of the SGU community, our listeners and supporters, or what make SGU possible. [MUSIC PLAYING] (upbeat music)