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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 Skeptics Guide to the Universe. Today is Sunday, June 7th, 2026, and this is your host, Stephen Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella. Hey, everybody. Cara Santa Maria. Howdy. Jay Novella. Hey, guys. And Evan Bernstein. Good evening, everyone. Six, seven.
Might as well get that out of the way early. I heard enough of that last October at the Haunt. Kids saying six, seven. And some adults, yeah.
We're recording weirdly on a Sunday because of travel and all that good stuff. So guess what I did yesterday?
Yesterday was Saturday. You woke up.
I woke up.
Get out of bed. You brushed your teeth, ate dinner.
Did all that. But before I ate dinner, Steve, I played in a poker tournament at our local casino. I usually play in a home game. I do like a home game about once a month and Friend of the show, Brian Wecht, is often at our home game, among other friends.
Oh, hi, Brian.
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Chapter 2: What poker experiences are shared by the hosts?
Oh, so close.
29 out of 179. And there's not a huge difference between the 29th place and the 23rd place.
No. I mean, the difference was... I mean, whatever. I can bitch and moan. But basically, for anybody who plays poker, you'll appreciate this. I was about to get... Yeah, it was Hold'em. It was a Hold'em tournament, a no-limit tournament. I was about to get blinded out, which is how this sometimes happens. I knew I had one big blind left and I was going to go all in blind on the big blind.
The button was, or it was like coming my way, but I had one more hand before I was on the big blind. One more hand to decide. Right before the dealer dealt.
Pocket aces? What'd you get?
No, the pit boss came around because at this point in a tournament, the tables are breaking up and they're moving people around.
Yeah, they start moving you.
And he grabbed the big blind to move him to another table. So the button advanced to me and I missed my free hand. No. You don't understand. I'm about to get busted out. Okay. So I was like, I'm all in blind. And I just put my cards underneath my chips, pushed them to the front. Somebody called. They could have all folded to me, but a guy had pocket fives. So he had to call.
He called me with his pocket fives. I was like, come on, come on, come on. Turn my cards over. It was. Queen, king, hearts. Okay, okay. Queen, king, hearts.
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Chapter 3: What insights are shared about gambling winnings and taxes?
Cool. Who is, I guess, also does material science. I didn't realize that was his... Yeah. And so he and his team have been basically diving into Benjamin Franklin's innovations when it came to paper money in early America. So he really, really understood early on during the transition from metal standards, right? Gold and silver. Did you say barter? Yeah. Not in the 18th century, no.
Well, there's still bartering going on. I'm just saying that wasn't the bulk. That was not the backbone of the economy at that point. There was apparently a chronic shortage of gold and silver coins during the establishment of the United States, you know, these early British colonies. And so what did they do when they didn't have enough of these metal coins? They had to move to paper money. Yeah.
And paper money, it wasn't new at all, but it was kind of new. Paper money was first documented in imperial China over a thousand years ago. So paper money is not a new concept at all, but... It didn't really start in the West, or especially in Europe, until the 17th century. And so, in early America, paper money became, you know, the main way that people traded for goods and services.
It kept the economy healthy. But it also was worrisome, right? Because it's actually really funny. It links right back, Steve, to what you were talking about at the beginning of the show, just picking those tickets up off the ground. Yeah, right. How easy is it when there's a piece of paper that says this is money for somebody to go, well, I can just make that. Copy. Right. Yeah.
And we think about counterfeiting now. And it's hard because there are a lot of little things that are embedded into our money that help people not counterfeit. And actually, very often when I talk to my friends from Europe or really from most countries that aren't America, when they see American money, they're like, you guys have actual paper money. This is crazy.
It's linen, but yes.
Yeah, but they're used to plastic money in most other countries now. Looks fake. That's right. But what does Ben Franklin have to do with any of this? The same thing he has to do with so many early innovations. He was, man, he had his hands in a lot. He was doing a lot.
But probably a lot of people do remember, if you've ever done any research or read any books about Ben Franklin's life, that he was He was a printer, right? He was really, really into printing and he was really into innovating to make the printing process as efficient as possible, to save as much money, to come up with new ways to do it.
And he very early on understood that counterfeiting is a legitimate concern. So he got into this idea of how do we make sure that people cannot counterfeit money? And you're right, Evan, when you say it's linen, it's not paper. We call it paper money. And yes, it is paper, but paper is pulped from other things.
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Chapter 4: What is the significance of Ben Franklin's anti-counterfeiting innovations?
Basically, their preference for the common good donation was in alignment, right? That was only a 14% effect in terms of how predictive it was. The biggest predictive factorā Financial insecurity? No. It actually didn't make a big difference. They didn't want to be seen as greedy? The biggest difference was your belief in how many people cooperate. Okay. So that was the 39.8%.
So it's interesting that the more you believed other people cooperate, the more likely you were to cooperate. And yet most people grossly underestimated the degree to which people cooperate. So of course that creates kind of a simple thing you could do here where if people understand that most people cooperate, they would cooperate even more.
Yeah, it kind of, it reminds me of those studies where people meet somebody for the first time and then they ask them after, how much do you think that that person liked you?
Yeah.
And how much do you think that you were, or, and how much did you like that person? And people by and large are like, oh, I really liked them, but they didn't like me.
Yeah, yeah. But they don't say that.
Yeah, yeah.
But what I'm giving you is the average of the determinants. Number two was social norm, like what is typical for that culture, that country. And then there were some individual traits, which actually had a small effect, altruism, patience, and risk-taking, you know, 4.1, 3.7, 3.6. So individual differences were not that big.
It was mainly what's normative for your culture, what do you believe about other people's cooperation, and do you agree with the common good that we're using? Yeah. But the strengths of those determinants varied a lot across countries. So again, I'm giving you the average. But in some countries, the cooperation belief was much bigger and some it was much smaller.
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Chapter 5: What insights do trace fossils provide about ancient animal senses?
So that's what we're talking about here. The researchers here used this specific type of trace fossils, movement trails that the organisms left behind as they're exploring and feeding on the ancient seafloors of the Earth. Now, remember that many of these organisms, they had relatively new abilities.
They had body plans and complexities that they really didn't have for that long, geologically speaking. Now, they weren't the first organisms to sense anything, right? Even microbes can sense chemicals. But what they're working with here is evidence of animals expanding their sensory bubble, right, and using that information to navigate. So that's kind of the crux of what they're doing here.
So Dr. Zekun Wang, who led the research, said, if an animal has a limited ability to sense its environment, it only gets information discontinuously. This means that it only finds resources when they stumble across it by random chance, so the tracks they leave are normally long and aimless. So imagine Jay forgetting his glasses, wandering around randomly looking for meatballs.
That gives you an idea.
Chapter 6: How did animal sensory abilities change over millions of years?
That's not uncommon. The kind of tracks that, you know, the paths that Jay would take. So the scientists analyzed and modeled these trails. There's hundreds of them that we've had all over the world. We've got examples of these trails, and they inferred from the pattern of movements that By analyzing the squiggles and how they moved and changed direction, it came back upon itself.
They could infer from these patterns of movements how well these animal-like creatures could sense their environment, right? Because the trail gives you an idea of how well they could ā sense what's in their immediate environment.
So this information really wouldn't provide direct details about their body, obviously, right, because they're trace fossils, but it would give details that no typical body fossils could. How far the animals, you know, could sense their environment, how far away. which is fascinating.
So, okay, so the oldest tracks that they looked at seemed to indicate that the organisms that made them could only see about one centimeter around themselves. That's what their models and their analysis said. All right, based on these squiggles, it seems they could only sense about a centimeter around themselves. And if true, though, think about it, that would be quite a find.
Because this would be the first evidence of creatures not just moving on the seafloor, but really beginning to navigate using their senses. So that's a milestone in my book. All right. So now they're looking at tracks that were laid down 6 million years later. And they showed much more of like a direct route set of being taken to resources that they might need, like, say, microbial mats.
So they're finding these trails going directly there without so much aimless wandering until they stumble upon it. So Dr. Zakun Wang says, but as the senses of animals develop, they can sense resources from further away. Shouldn't that be farther away? Okay, whatever. We can see this in the tracks.
As their path suddenly changes course to head towards food, shelter, or whatever it might be, it's also more common for these tracks to cross themselves as the animal keeps heading to and from these resources. These organisms could have perhaps, they estimate, been able to sense up to 10 centimeters around themselves
Not just, what was it before, six million years earlier was like a one centimeter. Now, six million years later, some of these can sense up to 10 centimeters.
The scientists theorize, you know, one possible cause here, they're just riffing, you know, they're not saying this is what happened, but one possible explanation for this could be primitive light detection, the beginnings of real vision, possibly. But of course, these trails can't prove that they had eyes.
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Chapter 7: What are the implications of the new homeopathic protection bill?
They don't like the outcome.
They just want to create... They want to create a new pathway packed with homeopaths, right? That's what they want to do.
Plus, what they don't address at all in the bill ā and you can read the bill. It's only a 12-page bill. There's actually not much to it here ā is that people who choose to go down this path of homeopathy to relieve themselves of their symptoms or whatever, or for their children or anything, they're delaying actual medical care that could work. Right.
Especially if you have something that's more serious than just, you know, something, you know, some minor ailment. And that's been shown as well in other places around the world. We have tons of stories where people delayed their real health care because they were relying on homeopathic tinctures.
instead, and then it maybe became too late for them, and they either died or became severely sick and more injured as a result of having... And even in the best-case scenario, it's a multi-billion-dollar parasite on the healthcare system, providing no benefit and sapping people of their healthcare dollars. But Tuberville is clearly a true believer, because he writes that it can, quote-unquote,
No.
No.
It's water. It is water.
So what are the chances that this is going to actually come to fruition? Well, you would think maybe on its own, you know, who's really talking about this? In fact, I looked it up, Steve. There's no major news outlet right now reporting about this. As of today, it's still a little early because the news is only two days old and it came out, you know, on a Friday morning.
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Chapter 8: How does the concept of multitasking relate to brain function?
Okay. Yeah, that's definitely possible. And a new study researchers explain how a super giant isopod, which is an older, an order of crustacean is able to maintain its large size and survive over five years without eating. Jesus Christ, five years without eating.
um nightmare yeah that's not good if they were in really cold water and their metabolism was super slow five years that doesn't just that doesn't seem possible but they don't have um they're cold-blooded okay i guess that's possible uh the last one neuroscientists reveal research that shows a mechanism by which people can learn to perform true multitasking Well, come on now.
That's got to be the fiction because we don't multitask. Our brain is not multi-threaded that way. We can't do it. Steve, come on. What are you trying to do here? This is a hard one, guys. But, you know, everybody says there is no, what are you going to learn, a trick on how to multitask? A mechanism by which people can learn to perform true multitasking. I think that one's got to be the fiction.
Okay, Evan? 33,000 years consuming insects to supplement caloric intake routine throughout Europe and Asia until the last two to three centuries. It makes sense at first glance. I just don't know, though, about... There's a couple things that could be the part that would make this fiction. Could be Europe, not Asia. Could be Asia, not Europe.
At the time, two to three centuries, maybe not as long as that. It was not, you know. Wouldn't we have also maybe heard more about, you know, especially knowing kind of what people ate, even peasants ate in the last two, three hundred years ago. I don't recall that insects were ever part of that discussion at all. Even on some sort of supplemental level, it was always, I don't know. Yeah.
This one strikes me as the fiction, but the other two I just also don't know about. The second one, how could these isopods maintain their large size and survive five years without eating? It must be it is internally eating its own organs or something like that. It's like cannibalizing itself, which is kind of disgusting to think about, but maybe that's possibly an answer. Yuck.
Which is, yeah, just leave that alone. And then the last one about multitasking. Yeah, this one is so... We've talked about...
true multitasking not being possible jay i know we've talked about that on the show but if there is but a mechanism by which people can learn a mechanism made me not you know is the key i'll stick with my initial thought i'm gonna say the insects consumption is gonna be the fiction
Okay, Kara. It's probably too late for me to ask, but how are you defining true multitasking?
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