The Skeptics Guide #1011 - Nov 23 2024
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
You're listening to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.
Hello and welcome to The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. Today is Tuesday, November 19th, 2024, and this is your host, Stephen Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella. Hey, everybody. Cara Santamaria. Howdy. Jay Novella. Hey, guys. And Evan Bernstein.
Good evening, everyone. Good evening.
How's everyone doing? We're recording a little bit early because we're getting ready for the Thanksgiving break. I'll be going away this weekend.
Yeah, I'm going to see my family in Denver.
Yeah, Ross, this is the holiday where the novella guys are all splitting up. They'll go into our in-laws.
Don't worry. I'll hold down the state for you. I'll remain in Connecticut. Thank you. I'll take care of things.
Just leave the keys. She's all set. I'm going to Oregon. Oregon. Oh. Oregon.
I always mispronounce Oregon.
It's Oregon. They don't want you to say Oregon. No. It's Oregon.
Oregon.
And that's the people of the state who get to decide that, right?
I guess so.
I suppose that's fair.
So I know you guys have heard about the fact that The Onion has acquired InfoWars.
I mean, how wonderful is that?
Well, there's a wrinkle. Did you guys hear the wrinkle?
No, what happened? No.
It's being contested. Of course it is. Okay. So just as a quick review, Infowars is the media outlet of Alex Jones who got sued for lots of money and has to award like $1.5 billion to the families of the Sandy Hook massacre because of his hateful conspiracy theories, right?
Yeah.
One little bit of justice in the world. And to pay off the money he owes, they're selling off his assets including InfoWars. And so that just was up for auction and it was purchased by The Onion or the parent company of The Onion, Global Tetrahedron is the name of the parent company. And they plan on launching it as a basically satire of itself. That's amazing. Sometime next year. It would be amazing, totally amazing. But a company affiliated with Alex Jones is claiming that the bidding was not fair, that they did not have a fair opportunity. Oh, whatever. Yeah, to make a counter bid. So now it has to go before the judge and hopefully this is just all a waste of time and it will still happen. A stall tactic.
The judge is not going to allow a company affiliated with Alex Jones to buy the company.
Well, their argument is that the goal of the bid is to get as much money for the families as possible. And so if they have a higher bid, the judge should honor that.
What is the controversy about The Onion buying InfoWars and how might the court rule?
But then are they just going to turn around and give it back to Alex Jones?
Well, they could. I don't know. Hopefully this won't sink the deal because it would be awesome if The Onion gets InfoWars. Also, the people who sued Alex Jones who were getting some of the money essentially gave The Onion some of their money to get the bid up enough to win. Oh, interesting. So they're investors in a sense. I guess so, yeah, because they wanted this to happen. They wanted to keep it away from a company affiliated with Alex Jones.
OK. All right. Well, yeah, it sounds like a delay tactic more than anything to me.
Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I think they legitimately want he wants to get it if he's got the money. I don't know how much they paid for it. But I mean, it's you know, look, people just don't people will throw lawsuits out there like crazy today. It's all BS. He didn't do it. He lost it. He wasn't on his game. Whatever the problem was, the time came and the time went. It's all forecasted. It's not like they secretly put it out. It was in the public eye. That's it.
Yeah, we'll update you on if there's any. I think it's going to go before the judge next week.
Yeah.
Okay. Quick resolution, let's hope.
Yeah, hopefully there'll be a good quick resolution. All right, well, let's get into our news items because we have a great interview coming up later in the show with Kevin Folta. If you want to leave time for that. I'm going to start us off by talking about giving robots a sense of self.
Oh, don't do that.
Well, just throw that brain circuit in there.
I've seen too many movies where that didn't work out as intended.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–2:39
2
What is the controversy about The Onion buying InfoWars and how might the court rule?
2:39–13:06
3
How could researchers build a robot 'sense of self' from human neural components?
13:06–59:54
4
What was the mystery noisy and who guessed the first known human voice recording?
59:54–1:04:22
5
How can gene editing and hybrids make strawberries disease‑resistant and tastier?
1:04:22–1:08:32
6
What are the limits and possibilities for creating new fruit flavors with breeding, CRISPR, and AI?
1:08:32–1:12:44
7
How have public attitudes and regulation around GMOs changed and what impact does that have?
1:12:44–1:49:49