The Skeptics Guide #1097 - Jul 18 2026
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What is the live-show debate: theater-only releases for two years versus all streaming?
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 Saturday, January 10th, 2026, and this is your host, Stephen Novella. We are live from Seattle. Welcome to Seattle, everyone.
Welcome.
Joining me at this live show are Bob Novella.
Hey, everybody.
Cara Santamaria.
Howdy.
Jay Novella. Hey, guys. And George Trapp. Oh, baby, I hear the blues are calling. Toss salads and... This is our second time in Seattle. Second time. Second time. The first time we were here, COVID was spreading through the city. We didn't know it. And we didn't know it. We didn't know it. But luckily none of us caught it. We were like completely, we were at a restaurant all like getting up in each other's eyes.
We were at a family style Asian restaurant with people rubbing up against us.
Live chickens walking around. Even just a dozen people having it in a big city was a huge thing in January 2020. It's like, oh my God, it's really spreading there. So it doesn't seem big, but it was big.
What's amazing, we were basically a month before shutdown, whereas this time, we're a month before Civil War.
So it's kind of nice.
It's like a bookend. It's like a bookend.
Good symmetry there.
So before we get to some more news item kind of discussions, we're going to do a debate. And we're going to try to do what we call a skeptical debate, which means that not only are you going to try to convince the other side of your position, you're going to try to identify where the common ground is. Like find out what do we agree on? Why do we disagree? But this is more of a fun cultural one that we're going to start with. George, you came up with this idea, I think. So this is the question is... Would you rather only be able to see movies in the theater for the first two years after they come out? So kind of like it used to be. No streaming for two years. Or there's no theaters and all movies are only streamed.
Right? Yeah. And we kind of were divided. So who's taking which position? I'm a theater guy. Theater? I'm theater.
Theater? I'm streaming.
Streaming, streaming, streaming. Yeah. All right. It's very convenient the way we're set up. All right. So, George, you're theater only.
Yeah, you'll get that idea. So this is like it used to be. So it used to be a movie would come out. And if you had HBO, let's say you were lucky enough to have HBO, it took about a year, sometimes two, depending how popular the film was, before you could watch it on your own television. And to me, there was something kind of cool about that. I'm all about anticipation. I almost like the anticipation of a thing better than the thing. Like the weeks before Christmas are always way cooler than Christmas. And yet the experience, the theatrical experience of having a shared experience I think is so important culturally that it would be to me way worth waiting a year or two to be able to have it in your home with your friends, with your family.
So I would be completely fine if that model changed back over to theater. You know, you see it in a theater, big, huge screen, as big as you can possibly manage, and then you just gotta wait. And I like the anticipation of waiting, and I think it would force people to go back and do those kind of public activities where you have a shared cultural experience, because there's fewer and fewer of those, I think.
And I think that it is a I like that you're framing it as a shared cultural experience because, you know, we think about shared spaces and how we have fewer and fewer of them and how we are engaging with them less and less. But I've never thought a theater is a shared space. Like, yes, there are a lot of people in it, but you're all facing the same direction. Like it's the worst first date.
It's not a good date.
Because you're not getting to know the person next to you at all.
But to share a laugh with like 50, 30 people or like a surprise or a shock, a horror movie when the whole audience sucks in.
I'll tell you, the first time I watched Evil Dead back many moons ago, I'll never, to this day, decades ago,
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the live-show debate: theater-only releases for two years versus all streaming?
0:00–8:04
2
Why do people value theatrical experiences over streaming and anticipation?
8:04–48:31
3
How is academic publishing becoming 'enshittified' and what are the five stages?
48:31–50:01
4
How could reanalysis of Type Ia supernova data overturn dark energy?
50:01–53:22
5
What are cosmologists’ reactions and why does replication matter?
53:22–58:13
6
How might manipulating gravitational waves reveal gravitons or quantum gravity?
58:13–1:06:42
7
Which local Pacific Northwest myths and surprising Seattle facts were revealed in Science or Fiction?
1:06:42–1:33:43