The Skeptics Guide #1096 - Jul 11 2026
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Who is the guest and why are we tightening the philosophy of scientific skepticism?
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, July 9th, 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 we have a guest this week, David Kyle Johnson, who goes by Kyle. So, Kyle, welcome to the show. Salutations. You've been on the show a couple of times before. You are one of our recurring philosophers. It was like chatting with philosophers because they actually know what they're talking about. We try. We try. Yeah, so this is kind of a follow-up. You're going to join us for the whole show as a guest rogue, but the reason why I wanted to bring you on was to follow up from our discussion about basically the philosophy of scientific skepticism we were talking about last week, and we're going to tighten that up a bit and get into the weeds a little bit more.
Yeah, as much as you want.
Absolutely. And I do want to say to the listeners, though, just as a heads up, this is the last regular episode that we're recording, quote unquote, in studio for a month. The next four episodes are going to be all episodes that we record on the road.
Do you know, because of the dramatic way that you just said that, the panic that ensued in so many listeners when they heard you say, this will be the last regularly recorded episode.
The nanosecond of panic.
For a month.
Yeah.
but it's also important to note that you know if the apocalypse happens and we don't mention it that's why we're not mentioning it because we're back in time it's true it's true so yeah the next four episodes will be will have been recorded from when we were traveling or pre-recorded yes i have three episodes in the can and those will cover us for the three weekends basically that we're traveling
And then the last episode we record on the road, which will be in Christchurch, New Zealand, because it'll be basically the Saturday before it goes up the following week. That'll be the fourth episode. And then we'll be back in the studio.
Are you guys ready? I can't believe this snuck up on us so fast. We literally leave in one week and two days.
Kara, I was talking to Bob.
We leave in one week.
Yeah, you guys leave in one week. Wow. So Bob was saying like, oh, I've got to prep this news item. And, you know, I got to pack. And I'm like, oh, Bob, that is so adorable. I'm like, I am in the complete thick of it heat of getting pulling all the strings to get everything ready to go, like from dealing with all the vendors and Uh, for the swag that we're buying and all the venues and everything, like it's just a million details. Like, you know, we, we had a major, um, issue with the board board meeting, uh, thing that we're doing in Australia that I had to solve. Um, but that's what happens like the last week or two before a big conference. That's when all the, uh, heat gets turned on.
And that's just the conference, not to mention getting there, every hotel we have to stay in along the way, like all of the logistical stuff for the travel on top of all of the work.
It's international. So like, does everybody get their visas?
I tell you, like one of our Airbnbs that we are renting, the guy sold it. please tell me it's not the one that we were going to stay in in sydney no you're all good but this was a multi-week rigmarole no because the guy sold it and then went and ghosted everybody then the new company emails us but me and my wife were like this has got to be a scam because it just seemed totally scammy they wanted to do a direct bank transfer you know and i'm just like ding ding ding no what like no way am i doing a direct bank transfer with like you know rental company xyz out of nowhere you know So we had to verify everything. And then we finally tracked down the guy that we did the original rental from. Then we had to like go through all this rigmarole with Airbnb.
It was a complete mess. And thank God my wife was helping me because she's really good at Airbnb and she knows how to like deal with Airbnb because she's the one that typically does the rentals.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Who is the guest and why are we tightening the philosophy of scientific skepticism?
0:01–4:16
2
What travel and logistical issues are the hosts discussing before the show?
4:16–24:55
3
What does the new Nature Physics study say about water's two-state molecular structure?
24:55–49:30
4
How are educators and institutions responding to AI-generated student work and detection challenges?
49:30–1:07:59
5
How could a star's plasma hide extraterrestrial narrowband signals from SETI?
1:07:59–1:11:24
6
What are the philosophical disputes about falsifiability and testability in scientific skepticism?
1:11:24–1:20:14
7
Can supernatural claims be subjected to scientific scrutiny and what is methodological naturalism?
1:20:14–1:29:22
8
What recent studies and listener interactions close the show (science-or-fiction, noisy answers, events)?
1:29:22–2:13:13