Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
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 Thursday, May 7th, 2026, 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 afternoon, everyone.
So this is the first episode after May 5th, so this is technically our 21st anniversary.
We've completed 21 years.
Completed 21 years as the SGU. Wow. Wow.
Wow, 21. Lucky number.
I joined you guys in what? 2015. 11 years ago. My gosh, Cara. That's more than half then. Wow.
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Chapter 2: How does the 21st anniversary of the podcast impact the discussion?
I love it.
It must mean something.
That's right. Let me ask my numerologist.
Kara, you know what I'm noticing, Kara? You have become, I think, as integrated as you can because you reject so much of what... Yeah, I've reached my limit of nerddom with the show. But I mean that in a very positive way because you're doing things now I never thought you would do.
Yeah.
You get most of our things now.
You get it. I do. And even the ones where I don't know the provenance are still funny to me.
Correct. You have been absorbed into the collective. You have discovered that resistance is futile. Part of the hive mind. Part of the hive mind.
That's right. One of five.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did the host face while installing a new printer?
You know, like all of the... And again, I actually read a book on user interface principles like in the 1990s. And I used a lot of this working as the liaison to the EMR people in my department, etc. So again, I've been doing this at a very high end at some point.
And it just seems like everything I do, every piece of software I'm interfacing with, especially new ones, they violate every law of a good user interface. No one is thinking, what is the experience of the end user here?
It must have to do with cost.
Yeah. They don't care. They must have done a bunch of test installs, and they saw, well, this takes an hour for people that are somewhat tech savvy, and they just didn't care. They just did not care. They did it, and they didn't care how long it took and how annoying it was. That's my takeaway.
Or that they don't have to, like you said, Steve, I think hire the people maybe that they used to have to hire to make these products more user-friendly?
Well, that's it. I know for a fact that the EMR that was installed at my hospital, that they would have had to spend $2 million to have user interface experts remake the user interface, and they just chose not to. Wow. And the user interface is horrible. The backend is great. It works. The user interface is terrible.
Absolutely terrible. And at my hospital, they did do that. And we actually have a whole team of people on our EIS who are experts in the actual technology. Yeah. It's a different specialty. We're willing to train and pay our own people to run basically the EMR and update it all the time and fix it and everything. Yeah, because it's its own specialty. Yeah.
Yeah, it's its own specialty. And so I do think that maybe the non-experts don't realize how bad they are. And companies are like, well, why do we need to spend all this money for something that seems superficial when, in fact, it's often critical? It is the actual experience of the end user.
Is there a role for AI here to plug this hole?
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Chapter 4: How do user interfaces affect technology usability?
So when I say quantum phase, I don't mean like the phase like a wave crest or a trough. It means like phase as in like state of matter. That's kind of the analogy there. Think of like ice or liquid water, right? They're both H2O, but they've got dramatically different behaviors because they're different phases. So that's kind of a way to think about this as well.
You're putting these quantum systems into a different phase that gives it all these different types of patterns of behavior, right? So yeah, so the quantum phase is a distinct mode. It's a distinct mode of group behavior. So the material might act like a metal or an insulator, right, or a superconductor, depending on how its quantum ingredients are organized, right?
But what's especially interesting here is that in this context, organization doesn't just come down to the material itself. It's also the rhythm of the magnetic field that's driving it. And if this can eventually be done experimentally and they can control this well enough, then This could matter immensely for quantum technology.
So one obvious example here is that some of these magnetically driven states could make quantum computers less sensitive to environmental noise. And that would be an absolute game changer.
That's huge.
That's actually one of the biggest problems, right, with these computers, keeping these delicate quantum states from just falling apart and decohering. So that's it. Check it out online. Fascinating. This has been your Quantum Phase Quickie with Bob. Back to you, Steve. Thanks, Bob.
carol let me ask you a question do you watch a lot of tiktok videos no not voluntarily if you did which i do unfortunately because you know to make stu's own tiktok videos a lot of them there's this common theme on there like people shouldn't be getting all of these screening tests and they act like it's all those doctors are trying to make money you know they're not
Oh, interesting.
It's rampant. I think I've probably done a dozen videos just responding to that basic idea. But the thing is, doctors do think carefully about when to do screening tests, right?
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Chapter 5: How does fear influence relationship closeness?
But if they did a deeper dive, if they asked a lot of questions to assess the status of these people's relationship, the needle barely moved. Yeah. So they were saying one thing, but in reality, there really wasn't really changing, you know, how they felt about these people. But there's two ways, though, to look at this.
When they looked at people that were really close, like their closest companion, when they looked at those two, say these two people that were fairly close to begin with, fear again was a predictor. If they felt the more fear, the closer they felt.
When they really examined it, when they examined their pre-closeness to the post-closeness assessment, if you will, the change was basically zero, just like not measurable. And that kind of makes sense, right? That the closer you are in a relationship, it would take more to move that needle and It was just essentially, you know, immeasurable.
Any change would be so small that you couldn't measure it.
But when they looked at people that weren't necessarily close, say the two people in the group that aren't like, you know, their best friends, say, when they examined those people, and yet again, of course, fear was a good indicator and, you know, physical contact, well, but the measured increase in closeness was statistically significant in that case, but it was still very small from 4.61 to 4.81 on that seven point Likert scale.
So the haunted house made people feel closer in the moment. You know, the bonding vibes were definitely there right after, but the before and after closeness score barely budged when it was questioned in detail. So in the final study, they were designed, it's more kind of qualitative.
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Chapter 6: What findings emerged from the haunted house study?
They were designed, the study five was designed to explore why was there discrepancy? You know, why did people feel closer, but they really weren't technically closer? So they interviewed 20 participants, And 16 of the 20 participants emphasized that talking about and processing the event afterwards is what really made them feel closer. So I'll quote the paper here as well.
It said, 16 out of 20 participants emphasized that reflection and conversation after the haunted house experience, whether during the walk back to the car, on the ride home, or while standing in line for food, They played a central role in creating feelings of closeness.
For many, it was not the shared fear alone, but the act of recounting, laughing, and teasing afterward that seemed to deepen the bonding experience. So, unfortunately, they didn't do any, like, post... assessment, like say three days after, I wonder what that would indicate.
So this demonstrated a couple things here, the potential of this post experience processing, and related to that the limits of immediate measurement, right? Those are two things that come out of this. So yeah, like I said, perhaps in the future, they can do this test again. And it's like a few days later and see if it actually is moving that needle a bit. So what about the future?
Chapter 7: What potential future research directions were suggested?
You know, what does the future hold for this kind of research? The researchers say that they could explore other shared recreational fear-related experiences, right? Not just a haunted house. So to generalize from that to other forms of shared fear could be illuminating. For example, adventure sports like skydiving, like I mentioned, or even virtual reality simulations, which can be pretty scary.
And Steve, that made me think of your example of doing a zombie VR game and how amazingly scary it was because it was just like in your face right there. Mm-hmm. And realistic enough to really, you know, get your blood pumping right. Remember that?
Yep, absolutely.
So the researchers also say that taking together these kind of recreational fears could have relevance to fields like relationship therapy, team building interventions, even entertainment design itself. There we are. Fascinating study. I was thinking, should I keep this till October? You know, it's like, it's going to be evergreen. You'll find something else.
Now we're halfway, we're halfway to Halloween. This is a good time to talk about it. So this was a fun study.
All right. Thanks, Bob. Jay, it's Who's That Noisy time. All right, guys. Last week, I played this noisy.
Noisy.
All right, so we got some guesses here. A listener named Matthew Morrison wrote in and said, Hi, Jay. I think this week's noisy is a bear cub. My daughter, Nev, thinks it's a broken vacuum cleaner or a bear cub. Those are good guesses, guys.
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Chapter 8: How do experts and authority differ in science?
Very strong, but you were both incorrect. So let's keep going and see if we can find a winner over here. Ted Judah wrote in. Hi, Jay and SGU crew. I believe this week's noisy is a tauntaun freezing before it reaches the first marker. Now, Evan, you have some expertise on this subject, don't you? Oh, sure. Absolutely. Yes. What was the first dialogue in Empire Strikes Back?
Is it Echo 3 to Echo 6 or Echo 7? You are close enough to win an SGU point. Thank you, Evan. That was not a tauntaun, but any Star Wars reference days after May the 4th is all good with me. I'm surprised that you were the only one that acknowledged my love of Star Wars. Another listener named Josh said, hi, Jay. It's a moose. I'm assuming telling someone to leave them alone.
This is not a moose, but if you ever see a moose, run. That's all I'm going to tell you, because they kill a lot of people, and they're unbelievably big. And it's a chocolate moose.
I'll run towards it.
Exactly. But no, they really do kill people. Don't mess with a moose. Yeah, they're dangerous as hell. I actually have a winner this week. The winner's name is Kenny Haberman. I also have a second place winner, Jake Kindwall, who actually I think sent in his guest today. But I thought I'd acknowledge that Jake got me the right answer. But anyway, back to Kenny.
He says, hi, Jay and SGU fam, longtime listener and also Patreon subscriber. I believe this week's noisy is a Tasmanian devil, but I'm not sure how fast it spins. You have to be old as hell to understand that reference. He says, I hope to make it to one of the SGU conferences soon. And then PS, how about that Artemis 2? And he goes into a couple of details, which I think is always cool.
And he wants moon base alpha. Seems like there's a quorum here. We really need to get them to do that instead of like 3794Z-7 again. Right? It's stupid. We don't want any of that. So, yes, it was a Tasmanian devil. I believe it was a young Tasmanian devil. Listen again and tell me what you think. All right, guys, I have a new noisy for you this week.
And the noisy was sent in by a listener named Juniper Ross.
Oh, my God.
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