The Skeptics Guide #991 - Jul 6 2024
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Who’s on the panel and what are they saying about July celebrations and fireworks?
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, July 3rd, 2024, and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella. Hey, everybody. Cara Santamaria. Howdy. Jay Novella. Hey, guys. And Evan Bernstein.
Good evening, folks. Good evening.
Bob, tomorrow's your birthday. Oh, yeah.
That's right. Yeah, big Fourth of July party.
Born on the Fourth of July. Always a big event in a novella household.
Oh, yes.
Yes. What are you guys doing? We have about 30 people over, and we're going to have lots of food. We're going to have some amazing cake. She's making me right now a peanut butter ice cream cake. Right now. Aww. It's going to be epic. And to prevent other people from eating it as much as they normally would, I bought a cake. Just going to breathe on it? Like a classic birthday sheet cake, you know, a sheet cake. So I'm hoping a lot of people gravitate towards that and not so much towards the peanut butter one. They can eat whatever they want, but I'm just playing the odds.
What's the fireworks sitch like in Connecticut where you all live?
Well, basically a lot of towns, all the major towns will have a display. So you may – when I used to live in Danbury and you could see from my deck like six or seven different towns in the distance, you could see literally like four or five different decent-sized displays going up. These are like town-sized, nothing like Disney-sized or New York-sized. So yeah, so the towns do it and then there's lots of people. I'll hear fireworks at my house.
How are the illegal fireworks?
Yeah, it's technically not legal, but it's not really policed. They don't do much about it yet. L.A.
is known for our loot. I mean, it's already started, right? It must be nuts.
It started here, too.
Yeah, and every year I'll sometimes scan around the horizon with my binoculars for trees. That are on fire. It's so bad.
Oh, my God.
It's like, what are you doing?
Bob, we're bringing a tabbouleh salad. That's been our- Nice. Sweet. Our contribution for the last 20 years or so. So that's a parsley-based salad. But here's the thing. I love the tabbouleh salad that we make. But it's very labor-intensive.
Yeah.
Because you have to pull all the stems off of the parsley. But there's a quick way to do it.
There isn't. There really isn't.
Through a cheese grater. No, there really isn't.
A little hole.
It depends on what your tolerance is for stems. If you want to just pull all the big stems off and you're okay with the little stems, yeah, that's the cheaty way to do it. But if you want even the little stems gone, you have to do more than that. You have to almost pull them all off individually. You could sometimes do them like in little clusters. But what restaurants do is they just chop it all up. But then you get the little bits of stem. Yeah, you don't want that stuff. You've got to pull them out.
Because it's too hard to – it's too gritty.
I think they're a little more bitter too. Like you really just – it's so much better without it.
Yeah. It's a labor of love. It's like one thing is like we all get together. We spend hours pulling freaking leaves off a little parsley.
All right. So back to me now. So I actually created a tombstone for me for the party. It just says Bob. It just says Bob in this really cool font. And on the bottom, it says my birth year and then nothing. I was going to do goofy stuff. But I'm like, I'm just going to do – it's not finished yet, obviously. No way. And it looks really good. It looks really old. It looks like a tombstone that's been sitting out in a field for like 300 years. It looks awesome.
Proud of you. So am I. Bob, you've got hundreds of years to go with, you know – Technology is going to save the day and reverse aging. All that stuff is coming.
It would be nice. I think we're going to just miss that technology, unfortunately.
Right? Oh, my gosh. It's sad to think about the things we're just going to miss.
Well, it depends on how you define just. But, yeah.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
Who’s on the panel and what are they saying about July celebrations and fireworks?
0:00–22:44
2
What new black hole simulation discovery changed our picture of accretion disks?
22:44–33:58
3
How do DNA origami ‘nanokillbots’ target acidic tumor environments to trigger cancer cell death?
33:58–54:48
4
Why did the Capulet 2024 festival collapse and is it fraud or incompetence?
54:48–56:57
5
What actions did Connecticut's Attorney General take after the festival collapse?
56:57–1:00:29
6
What is a kugelblitz (geon) and why do researchers say light can't make one?
1:00:29–1:06:16
7
Which noisy sounds were revealed and what was the Science or Fiction quiz outcome?
1:06:16–1:47:40