The Skeptics Guide #986 - Jun 1 2024

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The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe 1h 50m 6 speakers 7 chapters transcribed 2 months ago
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What viral 'Can I pet that dog?' video and audio overdubbing controversy do they discuss?

Dr. Steven (Steve) Novella 0:00
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 Wednesday, May 29th, 2024. 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.
Evan Bernstein 0:25
Can I pet that dog? Hi, everyone. Look it up. It's cute.
Dr. Steven (Steve) Novella 0:30
I have not seen that. Can I pet that dog? Is that what you're saying? Yeah.
Evan Bernstein 0:33
Yes. Yes.
Yes.
Evan Bernstein 0:36
Okay, it's a video of, it's a 10 second clip. It's a little girl on a porch, but a bear comes up to the porch.
Cara Santa Maria 0:45
Like a baby bear.
Evan Bernstein 0:46
Yeah, like a baby bear.
Cara Santa Maria 0:47
Black bear.
Evan Bernstein 0:49
And, you know, the camera's going back and forth kind of between the little girl and the dog. And she's saying, can I pet that doe?
Cara Santa Maria 0:54
Can I pet that doe? And they're like trying to pull her back into the house. Like, no!
Evan Bernstein 0:58
But of course me, I'm never satisfied with just, you know, seeing is believing kind of thing. So I did a little deeper dive into that. And what it is, is it's actually not the little girl who said it. It happened in another video in which just some little boy is saying it like in his kitchen about petting a dog. But then they took that audio and they put it over on top of the bear girl video and it's much cuter.
Cara Santa Maria 1:22
Are you sure? Yes. Oh, that's such a bummer.
Evan Bernstein 1:26
Oh, I'm sorry. Spoiler alert.
Cara Santa Maria 1:27
Because I know that like – Everything is fake, Kara. Everything is fake. I know they do that a lot where like somebody will take somebody else's audio and like overdub it. But this video looks – I wonder what the little girl was saying.
Evan Bernstein 1:38
Yeah, right? Yeah. That's a bummer. Right. I could not find the original source material or a longer clip of the video. But certainly the Can I Pet My Dog is a meme unto itself and it's everywhere. It's still cute. I don't think it detracts.
Cara Santa Maria 1:53
Huh. That's so interesting.
Dr. Steven (Steve) Novella 1:54
But yeah, a baby bear, you stay far and away from that thing because where there's a baby bear, there's a mama bear.
Evan Bernstein 2:01
Yep. An unhappy mama bear.
Bob Novella 2:03
Yeah. The thing about that video that is disturbing to me is like they didn't immediately bring that kid in the house and shut the door. Like they were acting very calm that there was, you know, a 200, 300 pound bear like two feet from her daughter.
Evan Bernstein 2:19
A little too casual?
Dr. Steven (Steve) Novella 2:21
So you'll notice that the show went up on time this weekend. I was in New Hampshire in the middle of freaking nowhere. So this cabin that we got, no 5G. Like, there's no phone. No phone service. The only connection we had to the universe, the outside world, was through Starlink. Nice. And it worked. It worked really, really well. I was very impressed. Actually, I was checking multiple times over the weekend. I averaged 300 megabytes per second download. That's not bad. That's good. That's straight up broadband. That's solid, man. 20 megabytes upload, which was fine. I got the show. This is my benchmark. The show uploaded in less than a minute.
Cara Santa Maria 3:01
This is such a weird American thing though, isn't it? Like I have really fast internet at my house. I pay for like the fanciest internet. I'm in a huge city in LA and, you know, I'm checking right now, but I want to say my internet is like 900 megs down or something like that. But then, yeah, fastest upload, download 945 megs, fastest upload 41 megs. Why are uploads throttled so much?
Dr. Steven (Steve) Novella 3:28
Because most people use it for streaming and downloading and stuff, and they don't use it for uploading large files or they're not streaming to the internet all the time. Now that I have FiberOptic at the SGU studios, we're basically a gig down and up. I'm so jealous. Yeah, because it's FiberOptic. But the cable company, for years, I'm like, I want the business cable. Yeah, that's what I have. We stream from our basement. So they kept increasing the download, but the upload never got past like 20 or 30 megabytes per second. I know. Isn't that crazy? They throttled the crap out of it. I'm like, you realize this is business cable, right? You realize I'm a business. I am streaming, and that's why I'm paying you guys for a business cable.
Dr. Steven (Steve) Novella 4:14
But they just didn't get it.

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