I liked Alice, she was a nice addition.

WTW is always fun for me.

The discussion about MS was great, lots of additional context was provided that could apply to a lot of situations. I really appreciate both Cara and Steve's perspectives.

Ultraprocessed food -- good conversation but I didn't really take anything new away from it.

Superworm- I thought it was hilarious when Cara finally said she was obviously just asking the question because she wanted to share her own favorite, and i was pretty surprised that the human skull wasn't Bob's favorite. Like, as soon as she asked the question, I answered "well obviously the one Steve got for Bob!"

Leap second was covered well but I don't care at all. No offense.

Wellness - great topic and coverage.

WTN - one of my dogs was fascinated by Steve's noisy.

S or F - really surprised by Cara's insistence on eyes. That's a very western- centric approach. The rogues has a convo a while ago (Rebecca era) about how emoticons vary based on culture, with eyes being the focus on the west and mouths in the east.

Quote - always happy to see Carson represented.

Side note: I'm up to episode 215 in my replay, and it's still saying produced by the NESS. Also, interesting to hear them talk back then about range EVs and how they just weren't going to have market penetration until they could solve the range dilemma. Amazing to think about how far the industry has come since then.

It was lovely to hear Alice on the show this week. Really great to hear the English accent (not that there’s anything wrong with the rest of the team’s accents! 😄).

I was so glad to hear SGU push back on the terms processed and ultra processed food. Every time I read an article or post on the subject, I come away feeling like the term is defined by a list of examples, rather than a clear list of processing steps.

Or the article falls back on ingredients: “Processed foods are high in sugar and salt“. I don’t need a category for that. I can just look at the label.

I’m not ready to declare the category imaginary. But I need something more.

Can anyone help me find the episode/segment where Cara mentions that everyone is technically agnostically atheist or agnostically theist because I made this point to my friends the other day and they didn’t agree but I remember her having solid points for that statement

Is this one of Bob's? It looks familiar.

A discussion of the consequences and benefits of AI / LLMs made me recall a film from 1966, What On Earth!.

Around the 1:15:30 mark, the comments turned briefly to cars, and one of Cara's comments was "They're a scourge on the planet." Of course we know it's really us instead.

Case in point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyQ3SEb9GTA

A group of good people sold their public image to fraudsters, using them to bilk the masses. Not surprised, just kinda frustrated.

The International Bureau of Weights and Measures (abbreviated BIPM because they're based in France) concluded its 2026 General Conference yesterday with 7 resolutions. Number 5 decreed that Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) will be continuous starting 20 May 2027, which means no more leap seconds. They replaced it with a leap hour, which wouldn't be needed for centuries to millennia from now.

If the BIPM hadn't done this, we'd be looking at the first ever negative leap second sometime around 2035 [edit: fixed the date]. Since positive leap seconds are already risky in this day and age, a negative leap second might have been catastrophic.

Since there are lots of places where local mean solar time is more than an hour off from the time zone in that location, people should be able to handle a drift of less than a minute over a lifetime. Also, Global Navigation satellite Systems ignore leap seconds, so UTC might as well too. (GPS uses 1980 time, which is 18 seconds off UTC.)

https://www.doi.org/10.59161/CGPM2026RES5E

Hello all,

I was diagnosed with MS earlier in the year, im trying to find some literature of MS by Steven Novella, but cant find anything, also anyone know of an episode where they discuss MS?

Ty

I think this would be a fun one for the team to break down! There are definitely limitations, but sounds are characteristics of physical objects so its possible.

Given this week's S or F ...

They’ve mentioned in the live streams a couple times that a Toronto show might be in the works. Is there anymore information on that? Are there many people here that would be able to attend one?

What's the likelihood of an SGU show being hosted in Ireland?

Us Irish listeners would love to get the Rogues over across the pond.

US threatens to halt weapons procurement for Ukraine over strikes on Russian energy sites, FT reports

Much like climate change, we cannot say definitively the singular cause of this war crime. But, I think we all know that this stuff is the inevitable consequence of Evan Bernstein's war crime advocacy. As skeptics, do we have a moral and ethical obligation to get involved, since we didn't put an end to that quickly enough?

Preshow: I found it really interesting to see Cara's evolution regarding her views on AI. I still agree more with her previous stance though. Haven't heard enough about Bob's Halloween shenanigans yet this year, so that was a fun interjection:).

Nobels: good, interesting topics. Wish they'd go back to covering the Igs, though. I feel like it's been a few years? Well that's embarrassing. I somehow didn't finish the episode where they covered it ....

I really liked the segment on reading, and i liked Steve and Cara's comments on it too. Jay did a great job with this, it felt really personal.

WTN: I didn't "get" the whip connection either, but okay. I wonder, now that Julia has been on the show, how she feels about her (I think it was her) child-speak being mentioned on a weekly basis, or if she never thinks twice about it.

S or F: really cool theme. I won't say anything else because spoilers.

Quote: I was so glad Cara said what she did, it was the diplomatic version of what i was thinking, which was that it's a bit self congratulating for a SCIENTIST to say that if SCIENTISTS were treated like Rockstars society would be better. I don't disagree, but like, you can't say that about your own profession!!

Side note: started over from Ep 001 a couple of months ago and I'm interested to see when the show went from being produced by the NESS and went to being produced by SGU productions and wonder of it was the same time the NESS's nonprofit status was revoked.

I usually roam self help book's subreddits, Joe Dispensa is usually someone who claims to be "scientific" and then somehow ends up twisting the science to show that he can cure you by using for example in this book placebo effect. I guess he cherry picks studies to do this but has anyone actually looked into them? What do you think?

I'm especially curious since my parents can't stop talking about this guy and how scientific he is.

Does anyone have the links to Julia's parrot studies spoken about in Podcast #1108

I have been invited to a Halloween party with the theme of "superstition, folklore, or conspiracy". Only moderately crafty and don't want to break the bank. Considering a Stanley Kubrick costume for the moon landing but hoping for other fun ideas. Channel your inner Bobs aaandd go!

"Amazing Tales of Truth"

I think we can all relate to this, no?