The Skeptics Guide #1037 - May 24 2025
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Who is on stage at NotACon and what is the show format?
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 Friday, May 16th, 2025, and this is your host, Stephen Ovella. We are live from the second Not A Con, the conference that's not a conference, but it is a conference because it's awesome. I am joined today by Bob Novella. Hello, everybody. Hey, everybody. Cara Santamaria. Howdy. Jay Novella.
Hey, guys.
Evan Bernstein. Beautiful White Plains, New York. And we have a special guest, Adam Russell. Alan, welcome to the SGM. Hello there. Adam, you are two things that I love. You're a musician and a big fan of Star Wars. Tell me about that.
Yes, I'm a bass player in a band called Story of the Year. We've been around for 20, almost 25 years now.
So you started when you were five? Yeah, I was only five.
You should have seen me play bass at five.
It was sick.
No, I'm... i'm aging rapidly uh and are we all sure you are my my other job my like paid hobby is my my podcast thank the maker a star wars podcast um it's i mean star wars is like my religion i say that half honestly half just tongue-in-cheek you know but uh kara was talking earlier about not understanding fandoms and a lot of it is like the community you know and If there's one positive thing, you could probably pull out a religion. It's community. So Star Wars, in a lot of ways, is that for me.
What did you think of Andor?
Loved it. Loved it, right? Some of the best Star Wars of all time. My favorite. We've been having this conversation about how the one... potential downside is that it's it's making adult star wars fans so happy that a new bar has been set okay so now anything that's sort of made for kids yeah it seems like it has more potential for getting hate because it's like if it's not and or it's shit you know then maybe they need two brands they like star wars kids and star wars adults star wars zero sugar was yeah
So what you're looking at on the screen is a very unusual creature. Any of you guys have a guess of what that creature is from? What kind of creature is it?
I just read it off your thing. Oh, yeah.
Okay. So that is a Mosura fantona. I wrote in my notes a radiodont because that's what it is, a radiodont, and it corrected to radiodont. But it's a radiodont. You may be familiar with anomalocaris. Does that sound more familiar to you? Anomalocaris. I love it. Yeah, so this is related to Adomalacaris. This is from the Burgess Shale. Does that ring any bells? So that's from the Cambrian Explosion. It's one of the most important finds. It was the first find that really told us what the Cambrian Explosion was. So we're going back 500-plus million years. This is the first time that multicellular life explodes into the fossil record, right? This is when life created hard parts that could fossilize. Then suddenly the fossil record turns on and we're seeing basically every existing phyla plus a few that don't exist anymore were all in existence over a fairly geologically short period of time.
We now know from further evidence that there's a long history there. Again, it was just when they started actually fossilizing that it creates the illusion in the fossil record that they suddenly appeared. But Anomalocaris is one of those no longer existing phyla, the radiodonts. And that thing was a beast. It was a predator. So this is a newly discovered specimen, very well preserved. These are all in the Burgess Shale. So they're kind of flattened two-dimensionally, you know, between pieces of rock. And then paleontologists have to painstakingly reconstruct them three-dimensionally. But this creature had better three-dimensional detail than older specimens. Also, our techniques are getting better. They can examine fossils with X-rays and CT scans and other things to help reconstruct them three-dimensionally.
How big is it? It's big. It's several feet. It has three eyes. Three? And you can see it's got a third eye in the middle there. It's got these two sort of claw things.
That's cool.
And it's got a bunch of fins down the side.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
Who is on stage at NotACon and what is the show format?
0:00–7:51
2
What new Cambrian radiodont fossil from the Burgess Shale was described and why does it matter?
7:51–17:48
3
What makes the newly revealed Archaeopteryx specimen the best yet and what does it tell us about bird evolution?
17:48–39:19
4
How did researchers document chimpanzees performing first aid and hygiene behaviors in the Budongo forest?
39:19–1:08:44
5
What is the current evidence and timeline for a potential new topical treatment that targets hair follicle stem cells (PP405)?
1:08:44–1:23:56