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[00:00:06.640 --> 00:00:14.640] It is Thursday, the 26th of June, 2025, and you're listening to Skeptics with a K, the podcast for science, reason, and critical thinking.
[00:00:14.640 --> 00:00:25.200] Skeptics with a K is produced by Skeptic Media in association with the Mercy Side Skeptic Society, a non-profit organization for the promotion of scientific skepticism on Mercy Side around the UK and internationally.
[00:00:25.200 --> 00:00:26.480] I am your host, Mike Hall.
[00:00:26.480 --> 00:00:27.520] With me today is Marsh.
[00:00:27.520 --> 00:00:28.000] Hello.
[00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:28.800] And Alice.
[00:00:28.800 --> 00:00:29.680] Hello.
[00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:32.880] So here's a controversial statement, at least for this show.
[00:00:32.880 --> 00:00:33.440] Okay.
[00:00:33.440 --> 00:00:35.360] I really like Breaking Bad.
[00:00:35.360 --> 00:00:36.000] Oh!
[00:00:37.040 --> 00:00:37.440] I don't.
[00:00:37.680 --> 00:00:38.880] Which I know you think is shit, Marsh.
[00:00:39.040 --> 00:00:44.240] I think it's as bad as Game of Thrones in that I watched all of it in order to be clear on my views.
[00:00:44.800 --> 00:00:51.200] I've only seen about half of season one of Breaking Bad because I just, it wasn't so bad that I had to stop watching it.
[00:00:51.200 --> 00:00:56.480] It's just, it was so mere that I just never wanted to watch it.
[00:00:56.480 --> 00:01:04.640] I mean, it's only one of the most well-regarded television shows of all time, literally on IMDb, the single highest-rated television show of all time.
[00:01:04.800 --> 00:01:05.680] That's ludicrous.
[00:01:05.680 --> 00:01:08.400] Because the wire exists and Sopranos exists.
[00:01:08.400 --> 00:01:11.840] Oh, well, Doctor Who exists, which means I couldn't say, quite frankly, to discrete.
[00:01:11.840 --> 00:01:16.880] Doctor Who is 245 on the IMDB list of greatest shows of all time.
[00:01:16.880 --> 00:01:19.760] Breaking Bad is number one, which is absolutely fucking absurd.
[00:01:19.760 --> 00:01:27.360] TV shows which rank above Doctor Who include Game of Thrones, not surprisingly, both versions of Cosmos, Bluey.
[00:01:27.360 --> 00:01:28.880] Okay, but that's fine.
[00:01:28.880 --> 00:01:29.360] The dog.
[00:01:29.840 --> 00:01:31.360] I hear good things about Bluey, right?
[00:01:31.680 --> 00:01:33.040] Yeah, I hear a lot of good things about Bluey.
[00:01:33.200 --> 00:01:34.560] Only Fools and Horses.
[00:01:34.560 --> 00:01:35.040] Okay.
[00:01:35.040 --> 00:01:39.280] Apparently, the 34th greatest television show of all time is Only Fools and Horses.
[00:01:39.280 --> 00:01:40.800] Faulty Towers, Top Gear, Mr.
[00:01:40.800 --> 00:01:44.720] Bean, and the X-Men cartoon all rank higher than Doctor Who.
[00:01:45.200 --> 00:01:46.320] Do you not trust this list?
[00:01:46.720 --> 00:01:47.840] Not the Spider-Man cartoon.
[00:01:47.840 --> 00:01:48.400] The X-Men cartoon.
[00:01:48.480 --> 00:01:49.120] Not the Spider-Man cartoon.
[00:01:49.200 --> 00:01:50.240] X-Men 97.
[00:01:50.240 --> 00:01:51.920] No, the original one, the 97.
[00:01:53.040 --> 00:01:54.400] That is an incredible.
[00:01:54.400 --> 00:01:55.760] That's a ludicrous decision.
[00:01:55.920 --> 00:01:56.720] That's an absolute...
[00:01:56.720 --> 00:01:59.000] The Spider-Man animated series from the 1990s.
[00:01:59.160 --> 00:01:59.800] The 1990s.
[00:01:59.880 --> 00:02:00.120] Excellent.
[00:01:59.520 --> 00:02:06.280] The X-Men I liked, but it lost a lot of cohesive narrative towards the fourth or fifth season.
[00:02:06.600 --> 00:02:07.960] I think it was all fucking disgraced.
[00:02:07.960 --> 00:02:09.160] Doctor's better than all of them.
[00:02:09.160 --> 00:02:14.280] But one of the things that I like about Breaking Bad is the portrayal of toxic masculinity.
[00:02:14.280 --> 00:02:23.800] Because there are several occasions during the run of that show where Walter knowingly acts against his own best interests purely out of his own vanity and ego.
[00:02:23.800 --> 00:02:28.920] For example, at one point, the spoilers for Breaking Bad, spoilers for a show that ended a decade ago.
[00:02:28.920 --> 00:02:30.120] I'm sorry, Alice.
[00:02:30.680 --> 00:02:34.600] At one point, the feds think they have identified who the drugs kingpin is.
[00:02:34.600 --> 00:02:36.280] They think they know who it is.
[00:02:36.280 --> 00:02:39.960] The guy is dead, so it's like, great, we're all wrapped up.
[00:02:39.960 --> 00:02:41.240] We can close the case.
[00:02:41.240 --> 00:02:54.040] But upon hearing that someone else is going to get credit for the empire that he built, Walter bristles enough to tell his brother-in-law, who was running the investigation, maybe that isn't the guy, maybe there's another guy behind that guy.
[00:02:54.520 --> 00:03:16.680] Because he can't stand seeing someone else get praise for what he thinks, that he thinks he is due, and so actively torpedoes what should be his perfect escape, where someone else takes the fall, his family's safe, he is in the clear, but his ego is so fragile that he self-sabotages that before letting someone else receive the thing he thinks he is due.
[00:03:16.680 --> 00:03:17.080] Yeah.
[00:03:17.400 --> 00:03:26.760] I would have imagined a fragile ego would have their ego boosted by the smugness of knowing you completely got away with it, and you'd be bolsting to your criminal mates about how you got away with it.
[00:03:26.760 --> 00:03:30.600] More likely that than bolsting to the literal piece of the money.
[00:03:30.920 --> 00:03:32.760] Redirecting the FBI back on the road.
[00:03:33.080 --> 00:03:33.880] Back onto your own trail.
[00:03:34.040 --> 00:03:37.480] That's one of the greatest pieces of writing of all time, apparently, so I must be wrong about that.
[00:03:37.640 --> 00:03:42.520] I genuinely think it's a great exploration of that, as I say, toxic masculinity.
[00:03:42.520 --> 00:03:47.520] There's so many times where he actively does shit like that because of his own vanity, which I thought was interesting.
[00:03:47.520 --> 00:03:48.400] But anyway.
[00:03:44.760 --> 00:03:51.760] And at the end, he builds a really big, like, machine robot that shoots them all.
[00:03:52.000 --> 00:03:53.120] So it is great writing.
[00:03:53.120 --> 00:03:54.640] Like, oh, how is he going to get out of this?
[00:03:54.640 --> 00:03:56.320] Oh, he's going to build a torso that shoots them all.
[00:03:56.480 --> 00:03:58.160] Great episode of Mythbusters.
[00:03:59.200 --> 00:04:05.600] But anyway, early in that first series of Breaking Bad, I don't know if this might be an episode you've seen if you've only seen part of it, Alice.
[00:04:05.600 --> 00:04:15.120] There's a flashback where you see a conversation between Walter White and another character named Gretchen, who they're at university, I think, is meant to be the scene.
[00:04:15.200 --> 00:04:17.600] They're certainly in a classroom of some context.
[00:04:17.600 --> 00:04:21.120] And they're trying to work out what the human body is made of.
[00:04:21.120 --> 00:04:24.880] So they start off with the big ones and they go, well, hydrogen, that's 63%.
[00:04:24.880 --> 00:04:26.240] And they write that up on the board.
[00:04:26.240 --> 00:04:27.600] Oxygen is 26%.
[00:04:27.600 --> 00:04:28.640] They write that up on the board.
[00:04:28.640 --> 00:04:29.920] Carbon, 9%.
[00:04:29.920 --> 00:04:32.320] Nitrogen, 1.25%.
[00:04:32.320 --> 00:04:34.560] Calcium, 0.25%.
[00:04:34.560 --> 00:04:35.760] He's quite surprised at that.
[00:04:35.760 --> 00:04:39.120] He's going, the whole our skeleton is only that little amount of calcium.
[00:04:39.120 --> 00:04:42.240] It's like, yeah, you would have thought it'd be loads, but no, apparently not.
[00:04:42.240 --> 00:04:45.360] Iron is 0.0004%.
[00:04:45.360 --> 00:04:47.040] Sodium, 0.04%.
[00:04:47.040 --> 00:04:49.760] Is the iron more if you've been using one that's the largest fish in the middle?
[00:04:49.920 --> 00:04:50.720] Pop a little fish in.
[00:04:51.680 --> 00:04:59.360] Eventually, they exhaust all of their ideas and they tot up what they've left and they get to 99.888042%.
[00:04:59.360 --> 00:05:00.720] And the rest is the soul.
[00:05:00.720 --> 00:05:09.200] And that's exactly what Gretchen says: after a brief pause, it's like there's 0.111598% left.
[00:05:09.520 --> 00:05:11.600] And Gretchen goes, maybe that's the soul.
[00:05:11.600 --> 00:05:12.640] And Walter dismisses that.
[00:05:12.720 --> 00:05:13.680] And it's a great piece of writing.
[00:05:13.680 --> 00:05:15.840] It's one of the greatest recent TV shows of all time.
[00:05:16.160 --> 00:05:17.360] Gretchen says it's the soul.
[00:05:17.560 --> 00:05:19.040] But I didn't remember that they'd said that.
[00:05:19.040 --> 00:05:20.640] I just inferred it from what was obviously going to go.
[00:05:20.720 --> 00:05:21.520] It's so obvious as well.
[00:05:21.840 --> 00:05:22.320] It's so great.
[00:05:22.320 --> 00:05:23.360] I mean, to make that correct.
[00:05:23.360 --> 00:05:24.600] It's better than Sopranos if anything.
[00:05:26.240 --> 00:05:30.840] Perhaps a simpler explanation, of course, is that there are a whole bunch of rounding errors in that.
[00:05:29.680 --> 00:05:37.080] You know, maybe hydrogen isn't 63%, it's 63.111958%, and then we're all square.
[00:05:37.320 --> 00:05:37.640] Yeah.
[00:05:37.640 --> 00:05:37.880] Right?
[00:05:38.200 --> 00:05:42.360] But it's just a TV show, and it's not like it's an especially important one, like Doctor Who.
[00:05:44.600 --> 00:05:56.280] But anyway, this idea of the soul having a mass has been lingering around since like the 19th century or so at the beginnings of what we might think of as modern science.
[00:05:56.280 --> 00:05:58.280] It's just so weird.
[00:05:58.280 --> 00:06:05.560] Like, it's something unmeasurable, undefinable, completely spiritual, but it must weigh something.
[00:06:05.560 --> 00:06:07.240] I don't understand that.
[00:06:07.400 --> 00:06:10.600] But they hadn't really come across stuff that didn't weigh anything previously.
[00:06:10.600 --> 00:06:12.840] Like, everything important weighed something.
[00:06:12.840 --> 00:06:18.280] So I could see them saying, well, this is everything important must weigh something, and this important, ergo, it must have a weight.
[00:06:18.440 --> 00:06:26.920] It's when 19th century science went very reductionist very quickly on everything, because prior to that, it would be magic would be an acceptable explanation.
[00:06:26.920 --> 00:06:29.960] And 19th century science really rejected that.
[00:06:29.960 --> 00:06:30.680] Rightly so.
[00:06:30.680 --> 00:06:31.080] Yeah.
[00:06:31.080 --> 00:06:34.680] But then still went looking for reasonable explanations for the magic thing.
[00:06:34.680 --> 00:06:36.680] So if you look at why Chris French has a career.
[00:06:36.680 --> 00:06:37.320] Yeah, exactly.
[00:06:37.320 --> 00:06:41.960] But if you look at things like the explanation for gravity, they couldn't understand how gravity could pass through a vacuum.
[00:06:41.960 --> 00:06:45.240] So they posited ether existed.
[00:06:45.240 --> 00:06:45.480] Yes.
[00:06:45.480 --> 00:06:50.040] So there was like an invisible, intangible thing that was permeating everything at all times.
[00:06:50.040 --> 00:06:58.120] And then they tried experiments to measure would the direction of the speed of gravity change in different directions because of the current of ether?
[00:06:58.120 --> 00:07:03.400] Sure, I understand coming up with it as a hypothesis or a theory or a suggestion.
[00:07:03.400 --> 00:07:09.240] I don't understand retaining that hypothesis theory of suggestion to today.
[00:07:09.240 --> 00:07:09.800] Yeah.
[00:07:09.800 --> 00:07:15.600] Like people should have just been able, we've come through to the point where people chat shit about spiritualism all the time.
[00:07:15.920 --> 00:07:26.080] Why aren't people just going, well, it probably just doesn't weigh, you know, it's this ephemeral, yes, spiritual, unknowable, magical, unique thing.
[00:07:26.080 --> 00:07:27.600] Of course, it just doesn't weigh anything.
[00:07:27.600 --> 00:07:32.080] But if you can put a measure on it, it can persuade the people who aren't you.
[00:07:32.640 --> 00:07:33.440] It's not persuading people.
[00:07:34.160 --> 00:07:36.560] But like, oh, it's like, was it 23, 27 grams?
[00:07:36.560 --> 00:07:38.080] I assume you're going to mention the Will Smith.
[00:07:38.240 --> 00:07:40.720] Where I'm going 23, 21 grams.
[00:07:40.720 --> 00:07:41.600] 21 grams.
[00:07:41.680 --> 00:07:42.800] Weight isn't the only measurement.
[00:07:42.800 --> 00:07:44.800] It's like, just find something else you can measure.
[00:07:44.800 --> 00:07:45.680] Speed.
[00:07:46.560 --> 00:07:49.120] We're going to come to the speed of a soul in a minute.
[00:07:49.120 --> 00:07:49.680] Anyway.
[00:07:49.920 --> 00:07:50.640] Was it Will Smith?
[00:07:50.880 --> 00:07:52.400] Oh, you'll tell you in a minute, I imagine.
[00:07:52.400 --> 00:07:52.960] Will Smith?
[00:07:52.960 --> 00:07:53.680] What was Will Smith doing?
[00:07:53.760 --> 00:07:54.720] Was he not in 21 grams?
[00:07:54.720 --> 00:07:55.600] Who was in 21 grams?
[00:07:55.600 --> 00:07:56.080] Oh, I don't know.
[00:07:56.080 --> 00:07:57.200] I've not seen 21 grams.
[00:07:57.200 --> 00:07:58.080] I've seen 21 grams.
[00:07:58.080 --> 00:08:00.000] I think, was Naomi Watts in it?
[00:08:00.000 --> 00:08:04.960] She's someone whose name I know, but I can never, ever think of anything she's been in or what she looks like.
[00:08:04.960 --> 00:08:06.400] She's been in 21 grams, apparently.
[00:08:06.640 --> 00:08:16.960] Apparently, so it's probably the most famous attempt to measure the mass of the soul was a guy called Duncan McDougall, who did this in 1907, about which there was the film 21 grams.
[00:08:17.120 --> 00:08:22.480] Naomi Watts was in 21 grams, but other than that, it was Sean Penn and Benicio del Toro.
[00:08:22.480 --> 00:08:22.960] Oh, okay.
[00:08:22.960 --> 00:08:23.840] Benny the Bull.
[00:08:23.840 --> 00:08:32.480] So Duncan McDougall was a doctor from Massachusetts who performed an experiment which involved measuring the change in mass of a patient at the moment of death.
[00:08:32.480 --> 00:08:33.120] Yeah.
[00:08:33.120 --> 00:08:40.160] So he recruited six patients from nursing homes that were expected to die soon, which is the way to do this experiment, I think.
[00:08:40.560 --> 00:08:40.960] Yeah.
[00:08:41.360 --> 00:08:42.640] The alternative is killing them.
[00:08:42.880 --> 00:08:45.280] Hard to get ethics approval for anything else.
[00:08:45.600 --> 00:08:51.280] And shortly before their death, when the nursing home said, he's definitely circling the plughole right now.
[00:08:51.280 --> 00:08:53.600] You should probably sort it out now, right?
[00:08:53.920 --> 00:08:59.000] My grandma lived in a nursing home for about 15 years, and we had about eight of those calls.
[00:08:59.000 --> 00:08:59.080] Yeah.
[00:08:59.320 --> 00:09:02.280] And she survived every one of them apart from the last one.
[00:09:02.280 --> 00:09:04.280] They need to hire one of those cats.
[00:08:59.840 --> 00:09:05.240] You know, the cats that walk around.
[00:09:06.760 --> 00:09:07.720] I can't even tell about a psychic cat.
[00:09:07.800 --> 00:09:07.880] Yeah.
[00:09:08.520 --> 00:09:10.360] I mean, we've talked about them on the show a while ago.
[00:09:10.360 --> 00:09:11.880] We did psychic cats, I'm sure.
[00:09:11.880 --> 00:09:17.080] Well, if we did, I think someone did email asking what do you ever make of this of the cats who know when people are going to die?
[00:09:17.720 --> 00:09:18.840] The SWAC search engine.
[00:09:18.920 --> 00:09:20.200] It's the SWAC search engine.
[00:09:20.520 --> 00:09:27.240] I can't remember the URL of that, but it's pinned to the Skeptics with a K channel in the Discord.
[00:09:27.320 --> 00:09:27.720] There you go.
[00:09:27.720 --> 00:09:28.360] If you join the Discord.
[00:09:28.600 --> 00:09:29.560] Join our Discord.
[00:09:29.560 --> 00:09:30.040] And you can find that.
[00:09:30.200 --> 00:09:32.280] Join the Skeptics with the Pub online Discord.
[00:09:32.280 --> 00:09:34.200] Go to the Skeptics with a K thread.
[00:09:34.600 --> 00:09:36.120] Look at the pinned posts.
[00:09:36.120 --> 00:09:36.600] Yeah, exactly.
[00:09:36.600 --> 00:09:37.720] Because someone did ask us where that's.
[00:09:38.760 --> 00:09:42.840] Yeah, someone did ask us where the link to that searchable library is.
[00:09:43.080 --> 00:09:49.480] And we're not getting in the habit of sending you the link every time you ask because then you don't learn how to find it for yourself.
[00:09:49.480 --> 00:09:49.720] Exactly.
[00:09:49.880 --> 00:09:50.600] So we're teaching you.
[00:09:50.840 --> 00:09:53.800] The way to do that is a very, very complicated route.
[00:09:54.840 --> 00:09:56.600] I have put it in the show notes the last few shows.
[00:09:57.800 --> 00:09:58.760] It is there.
[00:09:58.760 --> 00:10:07.480] But anyway, so shortly before their death, he took the patients from the nursing home and put them and their entire bed on this massive industrial scale.
[00:10:07.480 --> 00:10:09.960] That's meant to be for weighing cattle or something like that.
[00:10:09.960 --> 00:10:16.360] And at the moment of death, one of the patients lost 21 grams of mass.
[00:10:16.520 --> 00:10:17.400] And the others didn't.
[00:10:17.880 --> 00:10:19.000] Well, yeah, the others didn't.
[00:10:19.000 --> 00:10:19.800] We'll come to that.
[00:10:20.360 --> 00:10:22.120] So one of the patients lost 21 grams.
[00:10:22.600 --> 00:10:23.400] There we go.
[00:10:23.400 --> 00:10:24.760] The soul weighs 21 grams.
[00:10:25.160 --> 00:10:27.480] But the other five didn't have a soul.
[00:10:27.800 --> 00:10:31.720] So the other five just didn't behave consistently.
[00:10:31.720 --> 00:10:33.640] So some of them put on weight.
[00:10:33.640 --> 00:10:35.960] Some of them lost weight and then lost a bit more.
[00:10:35.960 --> 00:10:37.960] So it was really inconsistent.
[00:10:37.960 --> 00:10:46.640] Some weight fluctuation immediately after death makes sense biologically based on what is happening, like how our bodies shift over those last exactly.
[00:10:46.800 --> 00:10:48.240] But where's that weight going if you were?
[00:10:48.240 --> 00:10:52.640] Because the only way that I could change weight in that situation, surely, is exercise.
[00:10:52.960 --> 00:10:54.560] What are the roots of excretion?
[00:10:54.560 --> 00:10:56.320] No, but the bed is also on there.
[00:10:56.320 --> 00:10:56.560] Yeah, yeah.
[00:10:56.720 --> 00:10:57.920] So it's just breathing.
[00:10:57.920 --> 00:10:58.720] It's only breathing.
[00:10:58.800 --> 00:10:59.840] That's a root of excretion.
[00:11:00.080 --> 00:11:02.480] Can you breathe out 21 grams?
[00:11:02.480 --> 00:11:04.240] That's a lot of carbon atoms to breathe out.
[00:11:04.560 --> 00:11:09.440] You probably wouldn't breathe out that much because there would be a lot of water vapor on your breath as well.
[00:11:09.440 --> 00:11:10.800] It wouldn't just be the air.
[00:11:10.800 --> 00:11:11.760] There would also be.
[00:11:12.080 --> 00:11:15.440] You would do a great big old death fart as well as your sphincter relaxes.
[00:11:15.840 --> 00:11:16.160] That's true.
[00:11:16.320 --> 00:11:22.400] It probably wouldn't be 21 grams worth, but there's bigger problems with this fucking experiment than that, right?
[00:11:22.400 --> 00:11:25.280] But he should have little stopper up the bum.
[00:11:26.320 --> 00:11:27.840] Like, you're just about to die.
[00:11:27.840 --> 00:11:29.360] Butt plugs exist, Duncan.
[00:11:30.320 --> 00:11:31.360] Butt plugs are real.
[00:11:31.360 --> 00:11:32.480] They're already rubber.
[00:11:32.480 --> 00:11:33.360] Just get on with it.
[00:11:33.360 --> 00:11:39.200] At that point, you are getting ethics approval for taking a tournament patient and putting him in a butt plug and a ball gag.
[00:11:39.200 --> 00:11:42.400] And I think that's going to be a difficult thing to ask.
[00:11:44.640 --> 00:11:57.280] Incidentally, if both Breaking Bad and Duncan McDougall are correct and the soul weighs 21 grams and is also 0.111958% of the body, it means Duncan McDougall's patient weighed 18 kilos.
[00:11:57.280 --> 00:11:59.840] So I'm not surprised that they were poorly.
[00:12:00.160 --> 00:12:02.560] The nursery goes, he's not going to fucking last long.
[00:12:03.920 --> 00:12:06.720] He's lost a lot of weight recently.
[00:12:08.320 --> 00:12:11.680] Of course, McDougall's experiment is ridiculously thought.
[00:12:11.680 --> 00:12:14.160] Quite aside from the fact he had a sample size of only six patients.
[00:12:14.560 --> 00:12:16.560] He discards data from five of them.
[00:12:16.560 --> 00:12:17.280] Yeah, yeah.
[00:12:17.280 --> 00:12:26.480] With various different excuses and only pays attention to the single data point that aligned with his hypothesis, that being we should lose some weight at the moment of death.
[00:12:26.480 --> 00:12:27.440] Which I would like to say.
[00:12:27.480 --> 00:12:29.600] It's just a constant pressure on body image, isn't it?
[00:12:30.120 --> 00:12:33.240] I would like to say is something that we've moved beyond.
[00:12:33.240 --> 00:12:39.720] But I've read enough placebo effect research to tell you that researchers still massage their data until it aligns with their hypothesis.
[00:12:39.720 --> 00:12:44.840] Just maybe less brazenly than Duncan McDougall did by just going, that doesn't count because I don't reckon.
[00:12:45.160 --> 00:12:53.640] There are a load of things that he hasn't controlled for here, like, as we said, the physiological changes that occur after death, you know, your muscles relax, the weight in your body will shift.
[00:12:53.640 --> 00:12:54.280] Yeah, yeah.
[00:12:54.280 --> 00:12:57.560] And on these big industrial scales, just the shifting weights is going to be enough.
[00:12:57.880 --> 00:13:03.000] They're not designed to measure small, like those really small differences you need.
[00:13:03.160 --> 00:13:07.080] If you're going to measure such small amounts, you need a more sensitive scale.
[00:13:07.240 --> 00:13:08.760] A more sensitive scale than that, yeah.
[00:13:08.760 --> 00:13:14.360] It's also, I mean, he says that the scale was sensitive enough to measure that, but also this whole experiment's fucking bullshit.
[00:13:14.360 --> 00:13:14.680] Yeah.
[00:13:14.680 --> 00:13:15.560] Fuck off.
[00:13:15.560 --> 00:13:20.040] It's also very difficult to identify the exact moment of death as well.
[00:13:20.040 --> 00:13:25.480] So like this is clearly alive and this is clearly dead, but the transition is not very well defined.
[00:13:25.960 --> 00:13:28.680] You know, is it because, you know, is it the final breath?
[00:13:28.680 --> 00:13:29.640] Is it when the heart stops?
[00:13:29.640 --> 00:13:31.080] Is it when brain activity stops?
[00:13:31.080 --> 00:13:33.160] Is it when the big farty death rattle happens?
[00:13:33.400 --> 00:13:37.960] In a way, in a way, that doesn't really matter as long as you cover enough of period either side.
[00:13:37.960 --> 00:13:39.400] Yeah, you're definitely alive here.
[00:13:39.400 --> 00:13:40.680] You're definitely dead there.
[00:13:40.680 --> 00:13:44.600] If the weight changed between those times, that would be a perfectly acceptable way of doing it.
[00:13:44.600 --> 00:13:45.240] But he's got a...
[00:13:45.320 --> 00:13:46.760] Unless he left it for like three days.
[00:13:46.760 --> 00:14:05.520] He's got a Texas sharpshooter fallacy there of he sees the drop in 21 grams and then says that's it that's the moment of death but unless unless while he was still alive he weighed this amount and half an hour after he did he died he he only weighed 21 less, yes, in the sense of like if it was if there was a plateau and a plateau and a drop between the two.
[00:14:05.600 --> 00:14:07.280] Which you'd be right, but that isn't what happened.
[00:14:07.360 --> 00:14:21.600] Not happened, no, of course that's not what happened yeah but and in both cases, in both breaking bad and in duncan mcdougall's weird 21 grams experiment, they're both bound up in the idea of there being some physical manifestation of the soul, which is odd in itself, like you said, Alice.
[00:14:21.600 --> 00:14:24.240] That you may as well ask, What's the mass of a Wednesday?
[00:14:24.240 --> 00:14:28.000] You know, it's a nonsense question to say.
[00:14:28.000 --> 00:14:30.240] I mean, that's a bad example because Ash Wednesday is the mass of the Wednesday.
[00:14:30.400 --> 00:14:32.320] Today's the mass of the Wednesday, that's true.
[00:14:32.320 --> 00:14:38.000] Yeah, I don't know how much that little smudgy weighs is 21 grams worth of.
[00:14:38.720 --> 00:14:40.400] So on your forehead, yeah.
[00:14:40.720 --> 00:14:47.760] McDougall did incidentally have a control for this experiment in that he also weighed several dogs at the moment of their death.
[00:14:48.080 --> 00:14:55.520] And his hypothesis was: since humans have souls and animals don't, there should be no change in the mass of a dog at the moment of death.
[00:14:55.520 --> 00:14:56.480] What year was this done?
[00:14:56.640 --> 00:14:57.600] 1907.
[00:14:57.600 --> 00:14:58.080] Okay.
[00:14:58.080 --> 00:14:59.760] Those weren't terminally ill dogs.
[00:14:59.760 --> 00:15:00.160] They weren't.
[00:15:00.160 --> 00:15:00.560] No.
[00:15:00.880 --> 00:15:01.360] No.
[00:15:01.360 --> 00:15:04.960] Because you don't know that it's very hard to know when a dog is on its last leg.
[00:15:04.960 --> 00:15:05.280] He does.
[00:15:05.280 --> 00:15:05.520] He does.
[00:15:05.840 --> 00:15:07.520] The cat isn't going to come anywhere near it.
[00:15:07.520 --> 00:15:10.320] Well, but how do you he poisoned the dogs?
[00:15:10.880 --> 00:15:13.120] Yeah, but then what's the weight of the poison?
[00:15:13.120 --> 00:15:17.840] Well, as long as they've already ingested it before they're put on the scales, it shouldn't matter.
[00:15:17.840 --> 00:15:24.000] But yeah, there is a reference in McDougall's paper where he says, I was looking for terminally ill dogs, but couldn't find any.
[00:15:24.000 --> 00:15:25.840] And that's the last he says about it.
[00:15:26.160 --> 00:15:27.920] You don't need to do it through poison.
[00:15:28.160 --> 00:15:34.560] You could set up an intricate gallows as long as the base of the gallows is all also on the scale.
[00:15:34.560 --> 00:15:34.960] Yeah.
[00:15:35.760 --> 00:15:38.080] We do not need to put a warning on this episode.
[00:15:38.640 --> 00:15:40.000] It's fucking dark in it.
[00:15:40.240 --> 00:15:47.600] This is clearly excellent science and not at all magnificently conceited scientists being bamboozled by their own bias.
[00:15:47.600 --> 00:15:48.080] Yeah, yeah.
[00:15:49.280 --> 00:15:53.360] But I'm not here to debunk Wu from 100 years ago.
[00:15:53.360 --> 00:15:55.680] We already did that in the Telegyny episode.
[00:15:56.080 --> 00:16:06.600] I'm here to talk about something a little bit more recent, and that is a report that appeared on YouTube and TikTok recently, which says that Russian scientists have discovered what happens to our soul after we die.
[00:16:06.600 --> 00:16:08.680] And then shared it on TikTok.
[00:16:08.680 --> 00:16:10.280] And then they put it on TikTok.
[00:16:10.600 --> 00:16:13.640] They didn't publish it in a journal.
[00:16:13.640 --> 00:16:13.880] No.
[00:16:14.680 --> 00:16:15.640] I won't get to TikTok.
[00:16:15.720 --> 00:16:20.280] And this is what happens to our souls, not what happens to our souls after you die.
[00:16:20.280 --> 00:16:22.440] Both, unless our souls don't have souls.
[00:16:22.440 --> 00:16:23.560] Okay, ironically enough.
[00:16:24.040 --> 00:16:25.000] So this is from a user.
[00:16:25.000 --> 00:16:29.000] This was actually from Instagram, this one, although it looks to be a repost of a TikTok video.
[00:16:29.000 --> 00:16:29.880] Everything is.
[00:16:29.880 --> 00:16:36.200] It says, Russian scientists may have figured out exactly where our soul goes after death.
[00:16:36.200 --> 00:16:46.120] Scientists have been studying death for decades, but they've never been able to go beyond what happens to the physical body after death, like if we have a soul or not.
[00:16:46.120 --> 00:16:47.400] You with me so far?
[00:16:47.480 --> 00:16:48.280] Okay, yeah, yeah.
[00:16:48.600 --> 00:16:56.440] According to Russian scientists, they say we do have a soul, and they figured out how to track it after we pass away.
[00:16:56.440 --> 00:17:01.800] It sounds like they've stained it with some pin fluorescent and they're just going to watch where it goes after.
[00:17:02.040 --> 00:17:03.880] Or they've wrapped a little thing around its foot.
[00:17:06.600 --> 00:17:11.080] This bold claim comes from Russia's biggest tech giant, Vlad Tech.
[00:17:13.240 --> 00:17:21.560] They spent the last 10 years developing an interface that ties to the brain that can embed a code into every atom of your being.
[00:17:21.560 --> 00:17:22.280] What?
[00:17:22.680 --> 00:17:23.320] What?
[00:17:23.320 --> 00:17:28.360] They refer to this as a sick code or soul identification code.
[00:17:28.360 --> 00:17:29.000] And they say...
[00:17:29.240 --> 00:17:31.000] They've got the pin number problem.
[00:17:32.680 --> 00:17:34.600] It's a synchronous SI chord.
[00:17:35.240 --> 00:17:37.960] The soul identification code code.
[00:17:38.600 --> 00:17:46.800] How it works is that it detects your frequency or the electricity that you give off after you pass away, your essence or your aura.
[00:17:47.120 --> 00:17:53.920] They were able to put this to the test over the last couple of days because their first guinea pig for the experiment, not a little guinea pig, a bloke.
[00:17:53.920 --> 00:17:54.080] Okay.
[00:17:54.320 --> 00:17:55.200] Not a dog.
[00:17:55.680 --> 00:17:56.320] Their first.
[00:17:56.320 --> 00:17:58.480] It was like a tiny little guinea pig gallows.
[00:17:59.760 --> 00:18:04.640] Their first guinea pig for the experiment passed away and the results were astounding.
[00:18:04.960 --> 00:18:13.280] Immediately upon passing, they were able to monitor his soul leaving his body, but then almost instantly it disappeared from their radar.
[00:18:13.920 --> 00:18:18.800] Scientists attributed this to the fact that the soul was traveling faster than the speed of light.
[00:18:19.600 --> 00:18:21.840] So their radar wasn't doing it.
[00:18:23.280 --> 00:18:26.320] They lost track of it and they were not able to monitor it.
[00:18:26.560 --> 00:18:29.600] Alice has got a brilliant incredulous face on at this point.
[00:18:29.600 --> 00:18:30.640] This is science, Alice.
[00:18:30.960 --> 00:18:31.840] So much of this.
[00:18:31.840 --> 00:18:33.120] Just so what?
[00:18:33.120 --> 00:18:36.720] So I'm thinking of the TV shows that come out based on this.
[00:18:36.720 --> 00:18:41.280] You know, where you've got like some weird concept of like you've died and then what happens after you die?
[00:18:41.440 --> 00:18:45.520] And what happens is you know, kind of like the good place type thing.
[00:18:45.520 --> 00:18:45.920] Yes.
[00:18:45.920 --> 00:18:50.400] Where and now I've just got this vision of fucking Kirsten Bell appearing.
[00:18:50.400 --> 00:18:51.040] Kristen Bell?
[00:18:51.040 --> 00:18:51.600] Kirsten Bell.
[00:18:51.760 --> 00:18:57.840] Kristen Bell just suddenly like appearing outside of her body and then just being yoinked up into space.
[00:18:58.080 --> 00:18:59.120] Gone faster than lightning.
[00:18:59.840 --> 00:19:00.400] Yep.
[00:19:00.400 --> 00:19:02.640] They lost track of it and they were not able to monitor it.
[00:19:02.640 --> 00:19:09.360] This went on for about an hour until they refreshed their computers and there it was a billion light years away.
[00:19:10.720 --> 00:19:22.240] Back in 2024, the James Webb Space Telescope discovered a galaxy referred to as JZ140, also known as JADES GSZ-140.
[00:19:22.240 --> 00:19:28.000] This was located as part of the Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey, the JADES program.
[00:19:28.000 --> 00:19:34.440] What is baffling about all this is that that's exactly where they track the soul to, literally billions of light years away.
[00:19:34.760 --> 00:19:36.200] Now, why is it there?
[00:19:36.200 --> 00:19:37.960] Your guess is as good as mine.
[00:19:37.960 --> 00:19:39.800] Is that where we go when we die?
[00:19:39.800 --> 00:19:41.000] Is that heaven?
[00:19:41.000 --> 00:19:44.120] Those are the questions that are all over the internet right now.
[00:19:44.120 --> 00:19:45.080] So you must have seen them.
[00:19:45.400 --> 00:19:51.000] Heaven just happens to be one of the tiny minuscule parts of the universe that we know exists.
[00:19:51.000 --> 00:19:51.400] Yes, yes.
[00:19:51.400 --> 00:19:52.760] And we've seen it.
[00:19:52.760 --> 00:19:53.800] It's recently discovered.
[00:19:53.800 --> 00:19:56.520] Also, I would argue that my guess is probably better than theirs.
[00:19:56.840 --> 00:19:59.720] If that's their guess, I guarantee my guess is better.
[00:19:59.720 --> 00:20:02.280] Whatever my guess is, it's better than theirs.
[00:20:02.600 --> 00:20:09.080] So I think probably all three of us have got some problems with this story as told, right?
[00:20:09.080 --> 00:20:13.320] But I'm going to talk about some of the things that I reckon are probably problematic about this story.
[00:20:13.320 --> 00:20:16.760] And feel free to toss yours in as well if you have particular problems.
[00:20:16.760 --> 00:20:18.680] So we're going to start off with the galaxy.
[00:20:18.680 --> 00:20:27.000] So JADES GSZ14-0 is a real galaxy that was discovered relatively recently by the James Webb Space Telescope.
[00:20:27.000 --> 00:20:36.200] This is something that bothers me about the James Webb Space Telescope is when you see scientists talk about it, they always omit the definite article and they refer to it as James Webb Space Telescope.
[00:20:36.200 --> 00:20:38.840] Like the telescope is called James Webb.
[00:20:38.840 --> 00:20:39.320] Yeah.
[00:20:39.320 --> 00:20:41.640] Or it's James's web.
[00:20:41.640 --> 00:20:45.080] And they just haven't put the apostrophe on the James.
[00:20:45.160 --> 00:20:45.480] Yeah, yeah.
[00:20:45.800 --> 00:20:47.640] They haven't said out loud because it's awkward to say it.
[00:20:47.640 --> 00:20:50.760] But James has a Webb Space Telescope.
[00:20:50.760 --> 00:20:58.600] But it's like they refer to, like you might say, we did this at Hubble rather than at the Hubble Space Telescope.
[00:20:58.600 --> 00:21:03.240] And it always feels weird and clumsy to me to say we did this at James Webb Space Telescope.
[00:21:03.240 --> 00:21:04.360] Anyway, that's fucking aside.
[00:21:04.360 --> 00:21:07.160] Anyway, the telescope named after that bloke, right?
[00:21:07.160 --> 00:21:09.080] Is that problematic bloke?
[00:21:09.240 --> 00:21:11.160] Who I think is arguably problematic, yeah.
[00:21:11.200 --> 00:21:13.080] I did them, they all are, aren't they?
[00:21:13.080 --> 00:21:16.480] Yeah, I mean, that tone of voice was entirely appropriate for the material.
[00:21:14.920 --> 00:21:19.200] That problematic guy, maybe.
[00:21:20.000 --> 00:21:26.000] Anyway, I can't remember why he's problematic, but I think people try and not call it by that anymore, don't they?
[00:21:26.000 --> 00:21:26.560] Yeah, yeah.
[00:21:26.880 --> 00:21:30.960] So, we're going to get a load of people writing in about why James Webb was problematic incidentally.
[00:21:31.600 --> 00:21:33.280] I knew at some point, I forgot why.
[00:21:33.600 --> 00:21:36.560] I'm googling it during the course of the show, but I'm not going to say it out loud.
[00:21:36.560 --> 00:21:38.480] Just so, guys, just let me know.
[00:21:38.560 --> 00:21:40.080] Just rest assured, I have told people.
[00:21:40.320 --> 00:21:40.880] We know, yeah.
[00:21:40.880 --> 00:21:42.640] I looked it up when I was researching the story.
[00:21:42.640 --> 00:21:43.920] I considered an aside.
[00:21:43.920 --> 00:21:44.720] It's not relevant.
[00:21:44.720 --> 00:21:46.640] The piece is fucking long enough as it is.
[00:21:47.280 --> 00:21:51.120] So, yeah, we know that there's things that apparently James Webb was a prick.
[00:21:51.120 --> 00:22:02.800] Anyway, the telescope named after that bloke was responsible for discovering a galaxy back in 2024, and it is one of the oldest and most distant galaxies we have ever discovered.
[00:22:02.800 --> 00:22:07.920] The light we are seeing from that galaxy right now is 13.5 billion years old.
[00:22:07.920 --> 00:22:10.720] The universe is only 13.8 billion years old.
[00:22:10.720 --> 00:22:16.880] So, this light left that galaxy when the universe was only 300 million years old.
[00:22:16.880 --> 00:22:22.880] So, it is literally not possible to measure anything coming from it that has gone there in the last hours.
[00:22:23.600 --> 00:22:24.640] Yeah, exactly.
[00:22:24.640 --> 00:22:28.960] Unless souls traveling faster than speed of light can also transmit faster than speed of light.
[00:22:29.280 --> 00:22:35.440] Your soul identification code code code code now.
[00:22:35.440 --> 00:22:40.640] Despite what our friend reporting on Vlad Tech has claimed, this galaxy is not a billion light years away.
[00:22:40.640 --> 00:22:43.040] It is, in fact, 33 billion light years away.
[00:22:43.600 --> 00:22:48.800] Are you sure it's Vlad Tech and not 45 AD, Jould well be?
[00:22:48.800 --> 00:22:54.480] It is 33 billion light years away, which seems wrong when you think about it, because the universe is less than 14 billion years old.
[00:22:54.480 --> 00:22:57.200] How can something be 33 billion light years away?
[00:22:57.200 --> 00:23:03.080] And it's because the space between us and it has stretched in that time because that galaxy is so fucking old.
[00:23:03.080 --> 00:23:03.560] Yeah.
[00:22:59.200 --> 00:23:04.840] So it turns out that that space is stretched.
[00:23:05.160 --> 00:23:08.360] So now it's kind of impossibly far away, which is sort of cool, actually.
[00:23:08.360 --> 00:23:08.840] Yeah.
[00:23:08.840 --> 00:23:11.160] In a skeptic-sighted universe kind of way.
[00:23:11.160 --> 00:23:12.760] Just, oh, isn't that cool?
[00:23:13.480 --> 00:23:15.480] That is down by weird grace.
[00:23:15.800 --> 00:23:20.840] But we also know that there are things that must exist beyond that.
[00:23:20.840 --> 00:23:23.560] Yeah, there's a line we have of probably exist beyond that.
[00:23:23.800 --> 00:23:24.360] Probably exists beyond that.
[00:23:24.520 --> 00:23:26.760] The observable universe is how we refer to it.
[00:23:26.760 --> 00:23:30.440] Because if something is there, we could never see it because the light takes too long to get there.
[00:23:31.640 --> 00:23:37.800] Despite claims that were made to the contrary, the galaxy is not also known by the name Jay Z140.
[00:23:37.800 --> 00:23:40.200] This appears to be something that's entirely fabricated to be a game.
[00:23:40.360 --> 00:23:41.400] Sounds like a course chord.
[00:23:41.640 --> 00:23:44.200] It sounds like a fucking album.
[00:23:44.600 --> 00:23:47.800] It's a new album from Jay-Z coming in at number 140.
[00:23:50.040 --> 00:23:54.440] It's just called Jade's GSZ 140 because it doesn't have a fucking name.
[00:23:54.440 --> 00:23:56.360] It's got a code because it was discovered that recently.
[00:23:56.440 --> 00:23:58.760] In fairness, 14.0 is a lot like 140.
[00:23:58.920 --> 00:23:59.720] 140, yeah.
[00:23:59.720 --> 00:24:11.240] And it's aside from the fact that it's the farthest thing we've ever discovered, there's no reason to label it as anything special, apart from this company claiming that that's where the software is.
[00:24:12.040 --> 00:24:13.320] That's where heaven is, yeah.
[00:24:13.640 --> 00:24:16.600] The claims made for the tracking of the soul obviously don't stack up.
[00:24:16.600 --> 00:24:26.120] The story as told has got the soul that they were tracking disappears off their radar, which I will charitably assume is a metaphorical radar and not a literal radar.
[00:24:26.120 --> 00:24:28.840] Because why would you make a radar that big?
[00:24:30.440 --> 00:24:40.680] But it disappeared and then they said they refreshed their computers and then realized the signal was coming from this other galaxy, which I really love as well, that they've refreshed their computers.
[00:24:40.680 --> 00:24:43.640] Yeah, to just hit the hit F5 and we'll see when you spot it again.
[00:24:43.640 --> 00:24:44.280] Yeah.
[00:24:45.040 --> 00:24:48.480] How long did it take to pinpoint it to that galaxy?
[00:24:48.480 --> 00:24:58.880] Once they refreshed their computers, they lost it for an hour and then refreshed their computers and then they could continue to search all the other galaxies that we know about first.
[00:24:58.880 --> 00:25:00.320] No, because it's got a cord.
[00:25:00.400 --> 00:25:00.960] It's got a code.
[00:25:01.120 --> 00:25:03.120] Come on, it's a soul identification cord cord.
[00:25:03.680 --> 00:25:04.640] So how is it?
[00:25:04.640 --> 00:25:05.680] Does it flash?
[00:25:05.840 --> 00:25:11.280] They have so you're just your eyes drawn to the flashing light and you go, oh, look, it's in that galaxy.
[00:25:11.280 --> 00:25:13.440] No, it's why have you got that galaxy on your screen?
[00:25:14.080 --> 00:25:15.360] I'm here, by the way.
[00:25:15.360 --> 00:25:17.360] It said I'm in Jay Z 140.
[00:25:17.360 --> 00:25:19.840] And then they looked up Jay Z 140 and said, oh, that's where they are.
[00:25:19.840 --> 00:25:22.080] Because we know about a lot of galaxies.
[00:25:22.560 --> 00:25:25.440] It would take us a long time to search through every single one of them.
[00:25:25.440 --> 00:25:31.840] Do you know when you're somewhere and you tell someone where you are, they don't have to look at a massive map to go like, oh, hi, where's Alice?
[00:25:31.840 --> 00:25:32.320] Where's Alice?
[00:25:32.320 --> 00:25:33.600] Oh, now I can see her.
[00:25:33.600 --> 00:25:35.920] Because you've said to them where you are.
[00:25:36.240 --> 00:25:37.680] That's what's happening here.
[00:25:37.920 --> 00:25:39.680] This soul has said, I'm over here.
[00:25:39.680 --> 00:25:41.760] And they go, all right, you must be over there, I guess.
[00:25:41.760 --> 00:25:44.960] They haven't got a magnifying glass out and look through all the other galaxies.
[00:25:45.200 --> 00:25:46.080] But it doesn't.
[00:25:46.480 --> 00:25:47.200] But the thing is, Alice.
[00:25:47.280 --> 00:25:48.160] That makes sense, right?
[00:25:48.400 --> 00:25:50.640] That is how you would do it if this was real science.
[00:25:50.880 --> 00:25:52.320] You would have to check every galaxy.
[00:25:52.400 --> 00:25:53.280] It's a galaxy.
[00:25:53.280 --> 00:25:58.880] But they're treating this like they've put an air tag on your soul, and it just means your phone just points there.
[00:25:58.880 --> 00:25:59.280] Yeah.
[00:25:59.280 --> 00:26:00.560] Like a pointer dog.
[00:26:00.560 --> 00:26:03.040] Like it just goes there.
[00:26:03.360 --> 00:26:06.160] Oh my God, that's the way to JZ 140.
[00:26:06.800 --> 00:26:08.880] Yeah, this is not how any of this would work, right?
[00:26:08.880 --> 00:26:18.880] Even if the soul had somehow hurtled there at superluminal speeds, once it arrived, it's going to take 33 billion years for the signal to get back to us to say where it is.
[00:26:18.880 --> 00:26:20.000] What if the soul went back in time?
[00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:21.280] What if heaven's in the past?
[00:26:21.280 --> 00:26:22.400] Heaven might be in the past.
[00:26:22.800 --> 00:26:23.840] Maybe the soul went back in time.
[00:26:24.320 --> 00:26:25.840] Travel time and space.
[00:26:25.840 --> 00:26:26.400] Yeah.
[00:26:26.400 --> 00:26:27.680] Well, it's the same thing.
[00:26:27.680 --> 00:26:28.640] Everything's just curves.
[00:26:28.640 --> 00:26:29.280] It's the same thing.
[00:26:29.440 --> 00:26:31.800] I just gone around the back to get back.
[00:26:31.800 --> 00:26:32.440] Yeah, exactly.
[00:26:33.000 --> 00:26:35.720] We've lost entirely all the soul identification code.
[00:26:29.920 --> 00:26:36.520] Well, I'm coming to the soul.
[00:26:37.400 --> 00:26:38.280] We are coming to that in a minute.
[00:26:38.840 --> 00:26:40.760] I feel like we had to pick up that at some point.
[00:26:40.760 --> 00:26:43.960] I also want to take a moment to appreciate the refresh their computers line.
[00:26:43.960 --> 00:26:50.280] Like, they've built this super advanced soul tracking technology, but they still need to hit F5 to get it to work.
[00:26:50.280 --> 00:26:51.240] After an hour.
[00:26:51.240 --> 00:26:52.200] So they spent an hour going.
[00:26:52.920 --> 00:26:53.880] Well, another word.
[00:26:54.200 --> 00:26:56.520] How can you guys F5?
[00:26:56.520 --> 00:26:57.320] Got it, right?
[00:26:57.320 --> 00:27:00.840] They'll have that thing up that says Chrome is taking a long time to respond.
[00:27:01.400 --> 00:27:02.280] Click it, terminate it.
[00:27:02.680 --> 00:27:03.080] I'll wait.
[00:27:03.320 --> 00:27:04.600] I trust the little dinosaur.
[00:27:04.600 --> 00:27:04.920] I'll wait.
[00:27:05.080 --> 00:27:06.280] I reckon he's got this.
[00:27:06.280 --> 00:27:07.560] You've got this guy.
[00:27:08.200 --> 00:27:13.400] Of course, the whole story about creating a soul ID that can track you after you're that's just straight up bollocks.
[00:27:13.560 --> 00:27:15.480] For one thing, we don't have a soul.
[00:27:15.480 --> 00:27:16.760] Souls don't exist.
[00:27:16.760 --> 00:27:20.280] We have no way of measuring a soul other than putting people on a set of cattle scales.
[00:27:20.280 --> 00:27:22.120] And it turns out that's really unreliable.
[00:27:22.120 --> 00:27:22.520] Yeah.
[00:27:22.520 --> 00:27:24.520] Only works one in five times.
[00:27:24.840 --> 00:27:30.280] But without a way to detect a soul, we're going to struggle to attach this magic air tag to it.
[00:27:30.520 --> 00:27:32.440] It's attached to every atom in your body.
[00:27:32.440 --> 00:27:36.520] So some of those atoms have gotten to the other side of the.
[00:27:37.000 --> 00:27:40.680] It feels less than ideal to attach something to every atom in your body.
[00:27:40.840 --> 00:27:41.560] Every atom in your body.
[00:27:41.800 --> 00:27:43.640] That's going to change the weight of that atom.
[00:27:43.640 --> 00:27:49.960] Of every single atom in every single cell, in every single organ, in every single part of your body.
[00:27:50.120 --> 00:27:51.560] You're adjusting the weight of that atom.
[00:27:52.200 --> 00:27:54.680] If you start adding stuff to atoms, is that not going to change?
[00:27:54.680 --> 00:27:55.640] It's quite dangerous, I think.
[00:27:55.960 --> 00:27:57.800] Like the chemical it is.
[00:27:57.880 --> 00:27:59.720] Depends what your code is made of.
[00:27:59.720 --> 00:28:02.440] You know, does it weigh 21 grams?
[00:28:02.760 --> 00:28:06.280] Or does it, you know, does it, is it just like you're writing on it?
[00:28:06.280 --> 00:28:08.760] Well, what if what if the code was an electron?
[00:28:08.760 --> 00:28:10.440] If you're adding an electron to every atom.
[00:28:10.760 --> 00:28:11.240] You fucked it.
[00:28:11.240 --> 00:28:12.040] You're going to blow them up.
[00:28:12.040 --> 00:28:13.560] You've fucked it then at that point, haven't you?
[00:28:13.560 --> 00:28:15.440] That's how we died.
[00:28:16.720 --> 00:28:20.400] But we're also, we leave atoms of ourselves all over the place.
[00:28:14.440 --> 00:28:20.560] Yeah.
[00:28:20.800 --> 00:28:21.040] Right?
[00:28:21.040 --> 00:28:26.160] We shed skin, we breathe out, we excrete, we defecate, we get a haircut, we exfoliate, we sneeze, whatever.
[00:28:26.160 --> 00:28:28.720] You know, we leave atoms of ourselves all over the place.
[00:28:28.720 --> 00:28:29.600] I mean, it's atoms.
[00:28:29.600 --> 00:28:33.760] Even just like sitting on the sofa is going to be letting some bits of atoms somewhere.
[00:28:34.080 --> 00:28:34.400] Yeah.
[00:28:34.720 --> 00:28:38.880] And actually, things that used to be our atoms end up as other people's atoms.
[00:28:38.880 --> 00:28:40.560] So does it have two codes now?
[00:28:40.560 --> 00:28:46.480] Does the second atom get overwritten with the second person's code, or is there now two tags on that atom?
[00:28:46.480 --> 00:28:53.760] It is very much a story that creates a million, 33 billion more questions than it could possibly answer.
[00:28:53.760 --> 00:29:03.840] I think what happens is you don't overwrite the other code unless you put a little bit of tape over the bottom, like a little bit of cell tape over the bottom of it, and then you can't overwrite it again at that point.
[00:29:04.640 --> 00:29:05.840] That's the only way for it to work.
[00:29:05.840 --> 00:29:13.840] I do quite like when we have a story so ridiculous that it doesn't, like, we can't debunk it because it's just so absurd.
[00:29:14.320 --> 00:29:20.160] All we can do is point out and have your thought about this bit, which makes it highlights how patently ridiculous it is.
[00:29:20.320 --> 00:29:28.800] I also like that the reference I just made to being only able to overwrite something by putting a bit of cell tape on it is going to be lost on a significant portion of our audio.
[00:29:28.960 --> 00:29:31.440] I have no idea what I could possibly be referring to.
[00:29:31.440 --> 00:29:32.160] Yep.
[00:29:32.480 --> 00:29:39.760] So, yeah, does a second person whose atoms, some of their atoms are my atoms, do they now show up as me on this radar?
[00:29:39.760 --> 00:29:41.680] What if they don't get their own code imprinted?
[00:29:41.680 --> 00:29:43.280] Do they just look like me forever now?
[00:29:43.840 --> 00:29:45.600] You've got multiple souls knocking about.
[00:29:45.600 --> 00:29:46.240] It's weird.
[00:29:46.240 --> 00:29:51.760] Will the scanner detect that I have gone to Jay-Z-140 because they died?
[00:29:51.760 --> 00:29:53.840] Yeah, he's going to take your space.
[00:29:53.840 --> 00:29:54.960] He's going to take my spot.
[00:29:54.960 --> 00:29:55.680] How does that work?
[00:29:56.000 --> 00:29:57.920] Frankly, I'm not sure they thought this through.
[00:29:57.920 --> 00:30:01.640] No, there's a lot of potential for identity theft in heaven.
[00:30:03.880 --> 00:30:07.640] So, the next thing I thought to look at is: well, who the fuck is Vlad Tech?
[00:30:08.200 --> 00:30:09.720] What's the 45 AD tech?
[00:30:09.880 --> 00:30:14.520] I mean, it does seem a bit weird having a tech company answering these questions.
[00:30:14.520 --> 00:30:15.080] Yeah.
[00:30:15.080 --> 00:30:17.640] So, any ideas who Vlad Tech might be?
[00:30:18.120 --> 00:30:20.120] Either of you know who Vlad Tech might be?
[00:30:20.120 --> 00:30:28.120] I'm going to say it doesn't exist, and it's some random Romanian or Bulgarian kid who's just span up a blog and put this out there for clicks.
[00:30:28.120 --> 00:30:29.080] Yeah, pretty close.
[00:30:29.720 --> 00:30:30.600] Come on!
[00:30:30.920 --> 00:30:33.400] Vlad tech, completely fictional, just made up.
[00:30:33.400 --> 00:30:43.080] There is no such company, much less being the largest technology company in Russia, which is what was claimed in the story, who've spent 10 years developing the Soul Code technology.
[00:30:43.080 --> 00:30:49.640] The only Vlad tech that I was able to discover is a games publisher who've published two games on Steam.
[00:30:49.640 --> 00:30:56.360] One of them is called Push That Cat, which is a puzzle game featuring Maxwell the Cat from the Maxwell the Cat meme.
[00:30:56.360 --> 00:30:58.120] Okay, didn't know that was a meme, but carry on.
[00:30:58.120 --> 00:31:03.000] It's like a nice black and white tuxedo cat loafing.
[00:31:03.000 --> 00:31:04.600] That's the Maxwell the Cat meme.
[00:31:04.600 --> 00:31:05.080] Okay.
[00:31:05.080 --> 00:31:06.360] He's loafing.
[00:31:06.360 --> 00:31:07.160] He's loafing.
[00:31:07.160 --> 00:31:07.720] Yeah.
[00:31:07.720 --> 00:31:12.600] The other game that they have published, other than Push the Cat, it's Push the Cat, Exclamation Mark, Exclamation Mark.
[00:31:12.920 --> 00:31:13.560] Is the next one?
[00:31:13.560 --> 00:31:14.680] Pull the Cat.
[00:31:14.680 --> 00:31:17.080] And it's like a pickup artistry game.
[00:31:17.080 --> 00:31:33.320] No, the other game that they've published is called Putin Destroys Alien, which is a vertical scrolling shoot-'em-up game that features a spaceship with Vladimir Putin's head on it shooting at space aliens, presumably from Jay-Z-140.
[00:31:33.320 --> 00:31:35.880] I can't think where else the space aliens would be.
[00:31:36.200 --> 00:31:44.200] I suppose it's not beyond the realms of possibility that this is a weird publicity stunt for an obscure games publisher.
[00:31:44.200 --> 00:31:46.160] Ah, I don't think it's that.
[00:31:46.160 --> 00:31:46.800] It can't be that.
[00:31:46.800 --> 00:31:47.920] I don't think it's that either.
[00:31:44.840 --> 00:31:51.440] I think the story is bollocks, the technology is bollocks, the company is bollocks.
[00:31:51.760 --> 00:31:53.760] I think all this is bollocks.
[00:31:53.840 --> 00:31:55.360] It's just not linked to that game thing at all.
[00:31:55.680 --> 00:31:56.000] No, no, no.
[00:31:56.400 --> 00:31:57.200] It's a Russian name.
[00:31:57.680 --> 00:31:58.160] It's just amazing.
[00:31:58.320 --> 00:31:58.480] Exactly.
[00:31:58.560 --> 00:32:00.880] Yeah, it's Vlad Tech or it's Eagle Limited.
[00:32:00.880 --> 00:32:04.160] So if it's all bollocks, obviously the technology is not true.
[00:32:04.160 --> 00:32:07.360] The galaxy exists, but the technology they describe doesn't work.
[00:32:07.360 --> 00:32:08.400] The company doesn't exist.
[00:32:08.400 --> 00:32:10.720] What's left in this story to debunk?
[00:32:10.720 --> 00:32:13.040] So I thought, where did this story come from?
[00:32:13.040 --> 00:32:16.320] Let's try and trace the earliest possible reference I can find to this story.
[00:32:16.320 --> 00:32:22.000] So I spent a while tracing back through transcripts and searches on YouTube, on TikTok, and Instagram.
[00:32:22.000 --> 00:32:25.440] And I eventually found what I think is the earliest version of this story.
[00:32:25.440 --> 00:32:28.640] I might be wrong, but this is the earliest version that I can find.
[00:32:28.640 --> 00:32:41.200] And that video, which was posted to TikTok on the 30th of April, I think it was this year, features an English guy telling this story, claiming he found it on the Russian search engine Yandex.
[00:32:41.200 --> 00:32:41.600] Okay.
[00:32:41.600 --> 00:32:44.960] And that he has been unable to sleep since reading it.
[00:32:44.960 --> 00:32:53.280] He also says, I've been wondering why this isn't all over the news, because the fact that our souls travel to a distant galaxy when we die should be big news.
[00:32:53.280 --> 00:32:54.640] Is that where heaven is?
[00:32:54.640 --> 00:32:56.480] Do we all live there together?
[00:32:56.480 --> 00:32:57.200] Who knows?
[00:32:57.200 --> 00:32:57.840] That's what he's saying.
[00:32:58.880 --> 00:33:00.640] When was the galaxy discovered?
[00:33:00.800 --> 00:33:01.760] Last year.
[00:33:01.760 --> 00:33:09.360] Looking at the video and the description of this video, the description reads: Scientists in Russia know what happens after you die.
[00:33:09.360 --> 00:33:14.080] Hashtag weird, hashtag amazing story, hashtag prank video.
[00:33:16.960 --> 00:33:19.840] So this story is complete fiction.
[00:33:19.840 --> 00:33:21.120] It was always fiction.
[00:33:21.120 --> 00:33:24.800] When it was posted to TikTok, it was a deliberate prank.
[00:33:24.800 --> 00:33:41.640] Not convinced it's a fucking brilliant prank, incidentally, but nevertheless, that's where it caught people's attention and where it was breathlessly repeated as if it were true while ripping out all of that context that gave any indication of where the rest of this story came from.
[00:33:41.640 --> 00:33:49.960] But it is interesting to the extent that it is exploiting those same mechanisms that we observe being used to spread disinformation and misinformation.
[00:33:49.960 --> 00:33:53.320] It's got that thing of you getting the inside track of things.
[00:33:53.320 --> 00:33:59.080] And this has spread throughout the internet in exactly the same mechanism that we see used for misinformation.
[00:33:59.080 --> 00:34:17.080] It reminds me a lot of what Joe Andrak talked about at the last QED, which was about how things like QAnon differed from other kind of horror stories, because other kind of horror stories would do the, this is found footage, or these are found letters, but it was obviously very clearly fictive because you've bought a book, you've bought the cinema.
[00:34:17.080 --> 00:34:23.800] QAnon, when it was on 4chan, everybody knew it was bollocks, or a lot of people would have known it's bollocks because that kind of stuff happened all the time in 4chan.
[00:34:23.800 --> 00:34:30.120] But once it hit somewhere that didn't understand the grammar of fictive stories on 4chan, it started to be believed.
[00:34:30.120 --> 00:34:31.160] It feels like the same thing.
[00:34:31.160 --> 00:34:37.320] Like, this was a prank video created by someone who knew it was a prank, who tagged it as a prank, who wanted the audience to know it's a prank.
[00:34:37.320 --> 00:34:40.840] Anybody who would have seen it in that format would have known it was bollocks.
[00:34:41.080 --> 00:34:50.680] But when you strip those extra narrative, kind of extra literative clues, the context all around it, and present it elsewhere, people are going to take it seriously and spread it around.
[00:34:50.680 --> 00:35:00.040] But at that point, that's where all these 33 billion questions that it raises rather than answering is where you get the clue of this can't be real.
[00:35:00.440 --> 00:35:09.560] But people aren't thinking, like, people are so mindlessly just scrolling social media, and I include myself in that sometimes as well, that we don't go, hang on, does that make sense?
[00:35:09.560 --> 00:35:18.000] Like, actually sense check the things that we're exposed to because a sense check should say this can't possibly be real How do I find out if it's fake or not?
[00:35:18.000 --> 00:35:31.600] And I think sense checking is a is a thing that we don't talk about anywhere near enough because we always focus on fact checking but you can't fact check things in real time especially if they're coming at you quite fast It would take a long time to do that, but you can sense check it.
[00:35:31.600 --> 00:35:38.240] This one would be an easy one to sense check as we were doing as you were telling something that I've fallen for quite recently.
[00:35:38.240 --> 00:35:44.240] So there was a news story just a week or two ago about a company called Builder AI.
[00:35:44.240 --> 00:35:51.520] And Builder AI were one of these companies that you would go to their website and you would type in a prompt to say, I want a website that does this and this and this.
[00:35:51.520 --> 00:35:54.640] And they would get AI would just build you that website immediately.
[00:35:54.640 --> 00:35:58.960] And they were seed funded by Microsoft and they were doing really well.
[00:35:58.960 --> 00:36:01.120] And then suddenly they've collapsed out of nowhere.
[00:36:01.120 --> 00:36:08.480] And what appeared in the tech press was it turns out that AI, as we've seen before, stood for a lot of Indians.
[00:36:08.480 --> 00:36:13.920] And there was actually 700 developers in India who were writing this code.
[00:36:13.920 --> 00:36:16.000] And that was reported in all of the tech press.
[00:36:16.000 --> 00:36:17.440] It's also not true.
[00:36:17.440 --> 00:36:18.640] They were using AI.
[00:36:18.640 --> 00:36:20.560] It wasn't just a lot of Indians.
[00:36:20.560 --> 00:36:26.080] The story about AI being a lot of Indians was true when Amazon was using it for their shopping.
[00:36:26.400 --> 00:36:26.800] Yes, exactly.
[00:36:26.800 --> 00:36:27.280] Yeah, yeah.
[00:36:27.280 --> 00:36:30.160] So we'll just tell, we can automatically tell what you're picking up.
[00:36:30.160 --> 00:36:32.720] And the way they were doing that was by having cameras and having people watching it.
[00:36:32.800 --> 00:36:34.640] And having people watch what you're picking up, yeah.
[00:36:34.640 --> 00:36:40.320] But Builder AI were using AI, but it spread around the tech press saying, no, it was just software engineers doing it.
[00:36:40.320 --> 00:36:46.960] And we should have been able to sense check that because you go to Builder AI and type in, I want this website, it comes back in 10 seconds.
[00:36:46.960 --> 00:36:47.360] Yeah, yeah.
[00:36:47.600 --> 00:36:53.800] I don't care how many Indian engineers you've got, they're not creating that out of what happens if you get more than 700 requests at a time.
[00:36:53.800 --> 00:36:54.120] Yeah.
[00:36:54.400 --> 00:37:00.600] It doesn't make sense that it would be just a huge number of underpaid developers in a developing country.
[00:37:00.600 --> 00:37:05.880] But nevertheless, that hurtled around the tech press at the time because people were just like, AI shit, isn't it?
[00:36:59.840 --> 00:37:06.040] Long.
[00:37:06.680 --> 00:37:11.080] And that fed into their bias and made them repeat something without sense checking it.
[00:37:15.560 --> 00:37:19.080] So I said on the last show, I've just got back from Northern Cyprus.
[00:37:19.080 --> 00:37:19.400] Yes.
[00:37:19.720 --> 00:37:20.520] Very nice.
[00:37:20.520 --> 00:37:27.480] I go to Northern Cyprus quite often because my parents have got a place there, so it's a relatively cheap holiday.
[00:37:27.480 --> 00:37:28.440] And it's a nice place.
[00:37:29.160 --> 00:37:30.920] Cyprus is a lovely island.
[00:37:30.920 --> 00:37:36.280] But we did some interesting things this time that I haven't done before, but also it was a fucking heat wave.
[00:37:36.280 --> 00:37:40.280] Like, I go to Cyprus in late May, early June, reasonably often.
[00:37:40.280 --> 00:37:46.040] And the reason we go that time of year is because if you go in the summer, it's like 40, 45 plus degrees.
[00:37:46.280 --> 00:37:46.760] That's lucrative.
[00:37:46.920 --> 00:37:47.560] It's too hot.
[00:37:47.560 --> 00:37:48.920] It's too hot to do anything.
[00:37:48.920 --> 00:37:50.440] It's too hot to enjoy yourself.
[00:37:50.440 --> 00:37:54.120] So we go this time of year because it's usually around 30, which is perfect for me.
[00:37:54.120 --> 00:37:55.640] Like, that is a good temperature for me.
[00:37:55.640 --> 00:37:57.000] That is slightly too warm for Nicola.
[00:37:57.000 --> 00:37:58.360] We found out when we were in Croatia.
[00:37:58.360 --> 00:38:01.000] At 28, 27, she'd walk around going, oh, this is warm.
[00:38:01.000 --> 00:38:01.960] This is this is warm.
[00:38:02.200 --> 00:38:02.920] It's fine.
[00:38:02.920 --> 00:38:05.160] The second it hit 30, she just collapsed.
[00:38:05.160 --> 00:38:07.160] Like, all of her functions just stopped.
[00:38:07.160 --> 00:38:09.640] And all she could do was stand there going, hot.
[00:38:09.960 --> 00:38:10.440] Hot.
[00:38:10.440 --> 00:38:11.800] So 30 degrees kills, Nicola.
[00:38:12.040 --> 00:38:13.240] 30 is great for me.
[00:38:13.240 --> 00:38:14.680] I like the heat.
[00:38:14.680 --> 00:38:19.000] But it was 37 when we arrived.
[00:38:19.000 --> 00:38:21.240] It was 38 towards the end of the holiday.
[00:38:21.240 --> 00:38:23.640] And the feels like temperature was like 40, 41.
[00:38:23.640 --> 00:38:24.040] Yeah.
[00:38:24.040 --> 00:38:25.800] It was too hot.
[00:38:25.800 --> 00:38:30.280] I've come back without much of a tan because it was too hot to sit in the sun at any point.
[00:38:31.240 --> 00:38:33.160] But we did do some interesting things.
[00:38:33.160 --> 00:38:38.120] We went to visit a place called Mavi Kost, which is Blue House.
[00:38:38.120 --> 00:38:39.800] Mavi is blue and Turkish.
[00:38:39.800 --> 00:38:44.760] Which apparently, according to all of that, there's quite a lot of propaganda in Northern Cyprus.
[00:38:45.920 --> 00:38:50.640] As anybody who knows the political history of Cyprus in general would understand.
[00:38:50.960 --> 00:38:52.960] And that house is filled.
[00:38:54.000 --> 00:38:58.320] The claim is that it belonged to a Greek drug dealer.
[00:38:58.320 --> 00:38:58.640] Right.
[00:38:58.640 --> 00:39:02.160] And it had like all like secret passageways to get in and out of.
[00:39:02.160 --> 00:39:04.560] And he fled the island in the 70s.
[00:39:04.880 --> 00:39:07.600] He had so much vanity and ego that he couldn't extend.
[00:39:09.040 --> 00:39:15.360] Was eventually eventually apparently killed by the Italian mafia.
[00:39:15.680 --> 00:39:16.800] And so this house is...
[00:39:16.880 --> 00:39:18.720] He was beaten by the Sopranos.
[00:39:19.040 --> 00:39:21.280] Fair, very fair, very, very fair.
[00:39:21.280 --> 00:39:22.240] He got his comeuppance.
[00:39:22.400 --> 00:39:29.120] So this house, you drive like through a little military base to get to it, and then you get there and you're not allowed to take any photos inside.
[00:39:29.120 --> 00:39:31.760] And it's all, it's just as it was in the 70s.
[00:39:31.760 --> 00:39:36.160] So I love 70s decor, so I'm in my element, loving it.
[00:39:36.160 --> 00:39:40.480] But they take you around, you can't take any photos, and they tell, you know, they've got like the history and stuff on it.
[00:39:40.480 --> 00:39:43.200] But all of it is like disputed history.
[00:39:43.680 --> 00:39:51.600] Like, no idea how much we don't, as far as I can tell, they're not even sure that it belonged to this guy.
[00:39:51.600 --> 00:39:57.200] They're not sure that he definitely was like an arms dealer, drug dealer type person.
[00:39:57.200 --> 00:40:01.200] He did flee, but they don't know that he was killed by the mob.
[00:40:01.440 --> 00:40:03.120] Like, nothing is known about this.
[00:40:03.280 --> 00:40:07.360] If he's not like a drug dealer person, it's not so much fleeing as leaving.
[00:40:07.360 --> 00:40:12.960] Like, if he's not like a big, evil, nasty criminal type guy, it's not fleeing at that point, is it?
[00:40:13.360 --> 00:40:14.400] What's he fleeing?
[00:40:14.400 --> 00:40:15.280] So he...
[00:40:15.440 --> 00:40:16.160] You and I don't fucking know.
[00:40:16.400 --> 00:40:20.720] He was Greek in the north side of the island after the Turkish army invaded.
[00:40:21.280 --> 00:40:36.200] So, like, leaving the island as a Greek Cypriot, or leaving the north part of the island as a Greek Cypriot is what most Greek Cypriots did in the mid-70s, just like most of the Turks living in the south left and moved to the north.
[00:40:36.520 --> 00:40:39.640] So there is that additional context.
[00:40:39.640 --> 00:40:46.920] But it was like, it's fascinating and bizarre to like wander around this house, all this like weird propaganda, which was quite cool.
[00:40:46.920 --> 00:40:50.760] But to get there, we drove, my dad's got a car out there, and we drove.
[00:40:51.160 --> 00:40:55.880] It's quite far away from where my parents' place is, so we had quite a long drive.
[00:40:55.880 --> 00:41:01.240] And we took this route, and my dad says, oh, I want to try and avoid the main town because it gets really busy.
[00:41:01.240 --> 00:41:03.560] So I'm going to take this new road that's just been finished.
[00:41:03.560 --> 00:41:06.760] And once we get to this point, can you go on Google Maps and see the route?
[00:41:06.760 --> 00:41:11.160] So I follow Google Maps, send us down the right route, following the map.
[00:41:11.160 --> 00:41:11.800] Great.
[00:41:11.800 --> 00:41:12.600] All fine.
[00:41:12.600 --> 00:41:20.920] We pass this lovely little football stadium that's like got three benches and one floodlight, but it's overgrown with weeds and stuff.
[00:41:20.920 --> 00:41:21.800] Really bizarre.
[00:41:21.800 --> 00:41:28.040] And we've come past that and then we take a left onto a road that is just gravel.
[00:41:28.040 --> 00:41:32.120] A big wide road, but it is a big wide road that is just gravel.
[00:41:32.120 --> 00:41:33.960] That Google Maps thinks is a real road.
[00:41:34.280 --> 00:41:35.400] It is not a real road.
[00:41:35.400 --> 00:41:43.640] And I'm looking at him going, it says six kilometers to the next turn, but I can't see quickly another route round without going back to the village we've just come from.
[00:41:43.640 --> 00:41:44.520] So we're like, well, we'll see.
[00:41:44.840 --> 00:41:46.760] They might have started leveling it from the other end.
[00:41:47.160 --> 00:41:49.240] They've clearly like it was a road.
[00:41:49.800 --> 00:41:51.800] They've it was a road.
[00:41:51.800 --> 00:42:01.160] They've decided to widen the road because we're driving through all this beautiful like farmland, which is like amazing to see in such a hot country as well, this like massive farmland.
[00:42:01.160 --> 00:42:11.000] So it must be being widened to let the lorries and tractors and stuff come through, who are overtaking us at pace, by the way, because they're all using this gravel.
[00:42:11.080 --> 00:42:12.200] It's a really wide road.
[00:42:12.600 --> 00:42:13.880] So you just got for it then.
[00:42:13.880 --> 00:42:15.440] So we're just like, well, we'll go.
[00:42:15.440 --> 00:42:20.160] But my dad's having to drive like 10 kilometers an hour to like keep his suspension alive.
[00:42:14.920 --> 00:42:22.240] We did this for six kilometers.
[00:42:22.480 --> 00:42:29.040] The entire road was just really unfun to drive on.
[00:42:29.040 --> 00:42:33.360] We made it in the end and then we made it through to the base and we came back a different way through the little villages and figured out.
[00:42:33.360 --> 00:42:37.360] But it's so bizarre that Google Maps thinks that this is Google's no idea.
[00:42:38.000 --> 00:42:48.560] And then the other cool thing that I did in Northern Cyprus, which I've never done before, so in the part of where my parents' place is, their house is on a complex called Turtle Bay Village.
[00:42:48.560 --> 00:42:52.560] So it is like, it's the turtle bay of Northern Cyprus.
[00:42:52.560 --> 00:42:55.760] It's where the turtles come to very cheap cocktails.
[00:42:55.760 --> 00:42:59.600] It's not as fancy as.
[00:42:59.600 --> 00:43:16.640] So having been going there for years, I've once been to one, there's like a research eco-friendly research group there that do research on the turtles, but also do all the, I can't think of the word now, all the conservation stuff for them.
[00:43:16.640 --> 00:43:20.720] And they do a lot of kind of engagement with the local people.
[00:43:20.720 --> 00:43:35.760] So in terms of teaching the fishermen how to free turtles that get trapped in the nets rather than just kind of leaving them and things to kind of engage with the population to protect the turtles and not see them as a pain that stops them being able to use the beaches and whatever.
[00:43:35.760 --> 00:43:37.840] You want to feed them pizza and teach them in JiTube.
[00:43:38.400 --> 00:43:39.440] That's exactly the same.
[00:43:39.600 --> 00:43:40.720] That works out really well.
[00:43:41.280 --> 00:43:54.560] So many years ago, Warren and I went during hatching season and we, I must have talked about it on the show at the time, and we released turtles onto the beach with a woman standing in the sea, like pretending to be the moon with a torch.
[00:43:54.560 --> 00:43:54.880] Okay.
[00:43:54.880 --> 00:43:56.560] Because they fucked the moonlight on the moon.
[00:43:57.440 --> 00:44:00.920] But this year, we're there during late nesting season.
[00:44:01.240 --> 00:44:16.200] We'd heard that people we knew had gone down to the beach at this particular time, like towards the end of the day, and seen turtles in the water, like off the coast, just kind of hovering around, waiting until dark so that they could come up onto the beach to nest.
[00:44:16.200 --> 00:44:26.440] And we know that they nest on those beaches because we have seen before the little conservation people go down and watch them nest, and then they put a little plastic thing on top of the nest.
[00:44:26.440 --> 00:44:27.080] Like a pyramid.
[00:44:27.080 --> 00:44:33.240] Well, they put like a little plastic grid immediately on top of the eggs to protect from predation, and then they put a white cone on top.
[00:44:33.560 --> 00:44:34.120] What was it called?
[00:44:34.200 --> 00:44:35.640] You sent me a picture of like an open cone.
[00:44:35.800 --> 00:44:38.920] It looked like a pyramid, and it looked like they were doing like pyramid healing on the eye.
[00:44:40.040 --> 00:44:48.120] So that they've protected the eggs from predation because of the grid that blocks things that might dig them up, and then they've identified where it is by putting the little white cone.
[00:44:48.200 --> 00:44:50.520] They magically sharpened any knives that happened to be there.
[00:44:50.520 --> 00:44:52.520] There's loads of them all the way along the beach.
[00:44:52.520 --> 00:44:56.360] So we know that the turtles have been coming up for a while to nest.
[00:44:56.680 --> 00:45:04.280] And we take the snorkels and things with the assumption that we're going to have to swim quite far out past the rocky bit to actually see any turtles.
[00:45:04.280 --> 00:45:07.160] But if we do that, we might be able to see some turtles swimming around.
[00:45:07.160 --> 00:45:10.760] Obviously, carefully keeping our distance, wanting to be to not disturb them or anything.
[00:45:10.760 --> 00:45:12.200] We go onto the beach.
[00:45:12.200 --> 00:45:14.840] I swam out quite far and I saw a turtle.
[00:45:14.840 --> 00:45:15.320] It was amazing.
[00:45:15.320 --> 00:45:21.160] I saw this turtle just like looming out of the kind of the darkness of the water towards me, just as a silhouette.
[00:45:21.160 --> 00:45:22.360] It's massive.
[00:45:22.360 --> 00:45:26.840] And then she almost it seems like she clocks me and decides to turn around and go back.
[00:45:27.000 --> 00:45:28.040] A lot of people do that.
[00:45:28.040 --> 00:45:29.480] And then I don't see anything else for ages.
[00:45:29.480 --> 00:45:32.920] And I'm swimming out further and further and further, thinking, like, they must be like further out.
[00:45:32.920 --> 00:45:35.160] They're not going to be, they're not going to be away from where the people are.
[00:45:35.160 --> 00:45:36.920] So I must have to go further and further.
[00:45:36.920 --> 00:45:43.320] And then I get to a point where I realize that the snorkel I'm wearing, wearing like this full face mask snorkel, is making it really hard to breathe.
[00:45:43.320 --> 00:45:48.080] And I started to get really panicky because I couldn't breathe, feel like I couldn't breathe properly.
[00:45:48.080 --> 00:45:50.720] So I was like, I've seen a silhouette of one.
[00:45:44.840 --> 00:45:52.000] If that's all I see, then that's great.
[00:45:52.160 --> 00:45:53.520] I'm gonna start going back.
[00:45:54.080 --> 00:46:00.480] So I turn around to swim back, and I see Warren's much further back than me because his snorkel's giving him grief.
[00:46:00.480 --> 00:46:07.440] So I try and swim quite quickly to get to him, and then, of course, like get out more out of breath because I'm exercising.
[00:46:07.440 --> 00:46:16.800] And then I get really panicky because I'm like, I need to get back to where I can put my feet down because I can't really take this snorkel off and hold the snorkel in my hand and tread water well.
[00:46:17.120 --> 00:46:24.000] But also, I want to keep it on so that I can put my head down and swim because I can swim faster if I can keep my head down.
[00:46:24.000 --> 00:46:36.720] So, anyway, eventually, like, I'm getting just to the point where I can put my feet down, and I see this massive turtle right in front of me, just hanging out, like on the beach, right in front of me, and swimming past.
[00:46:36.720 --> 00:46:42.320] And I watch it for a minute, and it puts its head up and it takes a big gulp of air, and then it comes back down.
[00:46:42.400 --> 00:46:44.000] It's just like milling around.
[00:46:44.000 --> 00:46:49.440] Yeah, and at least then I stopped for long enough to like calm my breath down and be a bit less panicky.
[00:46:49.520 --> 00:46:51.600] I think Google Maps have told them this is the best way to go.
[00:46:51.760 --> 00:46:54.400] It's like, no, this doesn't seem right.
[00:46:54.720 --> 00:46:57.520] So, I watched her for a while, and she's swimming back and forth.
[00:46:57.520 --> 00:47:01.840] And then this other one appears on the other side of me, and they're just kind of like swimming around a bit.
[00:47:02.000 --> 00:47:06.080] I managed to get in where I could put my feet down, and I just kept watching them for a while.
[00:47:06.080 --> 00:47:11.360] And then she went into like the rocks, presumably like eating something off the rocks, really close to the water.
[00:47:11.360 --> 00:47:15.280] And I'm like, shit, now, how do I now get out of the water?
[00:47:15.280 --> 00:47:19.280] Because at this point, I was, I didn't want to be in the water anymore because the snorkel panics me enough.
[00:47:19.280 --> 00:47:28.000] So, I was like, I just want to walk out onto the beach, but I'm going to have to like stay with my head down for long enough that I don't accidentally step on a turtle because they're just hanging out.
[00:47:28.160 --> 00:47:45.960] So, I went onto the beach and I stood, like, I was on there chatting for a while, and I saw this guy as I'm stood there, or I was chatting to my dad, and I saw this guy as it was stood there just like walking in the water with his camera, like just like and I thought he was being careful on the rocks because he because it's quite rocky and he had bare feet.
[00:47:45.960 --> 00:47:48.760] So, I assume he's like trying to not get his feet damaged by the rocks, whatever.
[00:47:48.760 --> 00:47:55.720] But then I realized he was taking photos and essentially realized that they're literally on the beach.
[00:47:55.720 --> 00:48:00.040] So, we went into the water and we're like watching them through the top of the water.
[00:48:00.040 --> 00:48:08.840] There's a few of them we saw a log ahead, which are more rare than the greenbacks, the other ones, and really cool just like watching them.
[00:48:08.840 --> 00:48:21.240] And then I turned around to walk back to the beach, and I'm maybe three feet from the actual beach and the bit where you would paddle just to paddle your feet.
[00:48:21.240 --> 00:48:33.560] And I'm walking away, like walking up to that point, and suddenly just spot there's a turtle between me and the sand, just like in that three feet of space, literally on the beach.
[00:48:33.560 --> 00:48:36.680] So, I kind of managed to go around it and not disturb it too much.
[00:48:36.680 --> 00:48:43.720] I went to get my phone to try and take a photo, but by that point, it had realized there were too many people around and kind of cleared off somewhere else.
[00:48:43.720 --> 00:48:51.160] But just this incredible, weird experience to see these amazing, and they're massive.
[00:48:51.160 --> 00:48:56.920] Like, you know that they're big, but you just until you see them in the water, you don't rea

Prompt 2: Key Takeaways

Now please extract the key takeaways from the transcript content I provided.

Extract the most important key takeaways from this part of the conversation. Use a single sentence statement (the key takeaway) rather than milquetoast descriptions like "the hosts discuss...". 

Limit the key takeaways to a maximum of 3. The key takeaways should be insightful and knowledge-additive. 

IMPORTANT: Return ONLY valid JSON, no explanations or markdown. Ensure:
- All strings are properly quoted and escaped
- No trailing commas
- All braces and brackets are balanced
Format: {"key_takeaways": ["takeaway 1", "takeaway 2"]}

Prompt 3: Segments

Now identify 2-4 distinct topical segments from this part of the conversation.

For each segment, identify:
- Descriptive title (3-6 words)  
- START timestamp when this topic begins (HH:MM:SS format)
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Most important Key takeaway from that segment. Key takeaway must be specific and knowledge-additive.
- Brief summary of the discussion

IMPORTANT: The timestamp should mark when the topic/segment STARTS, not a range. Look for topic transitions and conversation shifts.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted, no trailing commas:
{
  "segments": [
    {
      "segment_title": "Topic Discussion", 
      "timestamp": "01:15:30",
      "key_takeaway": "main point from this segment",
      "segment_summary": "brief description of what was discussed"
    }
  ]
}

Timestamp format: HH:MM:SS (e.g., 00:05:30, 01:22:45) marking the START of each segment.

Prompt 4: Media Mentions

Now scan the transcript content I provided for ACTUAL mentions of specific media titles:

Find explicit mentions of:
- Books (with specific titles)
- Movies (with specific titles)  
- TV Shows (with specific titles)
- Music/Songs (with specific titles)

DO NOT include:
- Websites, URLs, or web services
- Other podcasts or podcast names

IMPORTANT: 
- Only include items explicitly mentioned by name. Do not invent titles.
- Valid categories are: "Book", "Movie", "TV Show", "Music"
- Include the exact phrase where each item was mentioned
- Find the nearest proximate timestamp where it appears in the conversation
- THE TIMESTAMP OF THE MEDIA MENTION IS IMPORTANT - DO NOT INVENT TIMESTAMPS AND DO NOT MISATTRIBUTE TIMESTAMPS
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Timestamps are given as ranges, e.g. 01:13:42.520 --> 01:13:46.720. Use the EARLIER of the 2 timestamps in the range.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted and escaped, no trailing commas:
{
  "media_mentions": [
    {
      "title": "Exact Title as Mentioned",
      "category": "Book",
      "author_artist": "N/A",
      "context": "Brief context of why it was mentioned",
      "context_phrase": "The exact sentence or phrase where it was mentioned",
      "timestamp": "estimated time like 01:15:30"
    }
  ]
}

If no media is mentioned, return: {"media_mentions": []}

Prompt 5: Context Setup

You are an expert data extractor tasked with analyzing a podcast transcript. 
I will provide you with part 2 of 2 from a podcast transcript. 
I will then ask you to extract different types of information from this content in subsequent messages. Please confirm you have received and understood the transcript content.

Transcript section:
g to have to like stay with my head down for long enough that I don't accidentally step on a turtle because they're just hanging out.
[00:47:28.160 --> 00:47:45.960] So, I went onto the beach and I stood, like, I was on there chatting for a while, and I saw this guy as I'm stood there, or I was chatting to my dad, and I saw this guy as it was stood there just like walking in the water with his camera, like just like and I thought he was being careful on the rocks because he because it's quite rocky and he had bare feet.
[00:47:45.960 --> 00:47:48.760] So, I assume he's like trying to not get his feet damaged by the rocks, whatever.
[00:47:48.760 --> 00:47:55.720] But then I realized he was taking photos and essentially realized that they're literally on the beach.
[00:47:55.720 --> 00:48:00.040] So, we went into the water and we're like watching them through the top of the water.
[00:48:00.040 --> 00:48:08.840] There's a few of them we saw a log ahead, which are more rare than the greenbacks, the other ones, and really cool just like watching them.
[00:48:08.840 --> 00:48:21.240] And then I turned around to walk back to the beach, and I'm maybe three feet from the actual beach and the bit where you would paddle just to paddle your feet.
[00:48:21.240 --> 00:48:33.560] And I'm walking away, like walking up to that point, and suddenly just spot there's a turtle between me and the sand, just like in that three feet of space, literally on the beach.
[00:48:33.560 --> 00:48:36.680] So, I kind of managed to go around it and not disturb it too much.
[00:48:36.680 --> 00:48:43.720] I went to get my phone to try and take a photo, but by that point, it had realized there were too many people around and kind of cleared off somewhere else.
[00:48:43.720 --> 00:48:51.160] But just this incredible, weird experience to see these amazing, and they're massive.
[00:48:51.160 --> 00:48:56.920] Like, you know that they're big, but you just until you see them in the water, you don't realize what that actually means.
[00:48:56.920 --> 00:49:02.760] They're massive and like really graceful, like they look like they're flying because they're flapping their flippers in the water.
[00:49:02.760 --> 00:49:03.320] Wow.
[00:49:03.800 --> 00:49:05.240] So cool.
[00:49:05.240 --> 00:49:07.200] And then obviously, it was getting to about half.
[00:49:07.200 --> 00:49:20.560] They closed the beaches at eight o'clock so that the turtles can come up onto the beach to nest in peace away from people and they patrol up and down and make sure that nobody who shouldn't be there is there because they have lots of researchers going down to make sure they're protected and stuff.
[00:49:20.880 --> 00:49:23.920] We left at half seven because we were like, look, the sun's coming down enough.
[00:49:23.920 --> 00:49:26.080] They're getting close enough to the beach now.
[00:49:26.080 --> 00:49:30.480] We don't want to be disrupting them or making them feel like threatened or scared or anything.
[00:49:30.480 --> 00:49:31.680] So we left.
[00:49:32.080 --> 00:49:34.320] But yeah, just like the most bizarre.
[00:49:34.800 --> 00:49:35.840] Oh, we've lived.
[00:49:35.840 --> 00:49:41.920] My parents have had a place there for like 18 years and we've never been down to the beach and seen the turtles.
[00:49:42.240 --> 00:49:43.360] That sounds really cool.
[00:49:43.360 --> 00:49:43.680] Yeah.
[00:49:48.480 --> 00:49:57.840] So, QED, as we'd mentioned in the previous episodes, the tickets for QED are flying out, and it now looks like there are less than 50 tickets left.
[00:49:58.000 --> 00:50:00.720] About that, which is astonishing.
[00:50:00.720 --> 00:50:04.880] There's a very good chance that QED is going to sell out in the order of the next few weeks.
[00:50:04.880 --> 00:50:09.040] And so, if you would like to come to QED, QED is our big conference that we do in Manchester.
[00:50:09.040 --> 00:50:10.640] You should definitely get your skates on.
[00:50:10.640 --> 00:50:14.080] You can find out more about what's going on at QED at QDCon.org.
[00:50:14.080 --> 00:50:18.800] And it's taking place this year on the 25th and the 26th of October.
[00:50:18.800 --> 00:50:22.640] Yeah, we've got a lot of stuff to announce, which we're going to save for a future show.
[00:50:22.640 --> 00:50:24.960] But we've got a lot of stuff we are going to be announcing very, very shortly.
[00:50:24.960 --> 00:50:27.120] But I think there's one thing we can announce today, I think.
[00:50:27.280 --> 00:50:30.480] We can announce that there will be a live recording of Incredulous.
[00:50:30.480 --> 00:50:31.200] Of course, there will be records.
[00:50:31.280 --> 00:50:32.480] Of course, there will not be.
[00:50:32.480 --> 00:50:34.560] It wouldn't be QD without an Incredulous.
[00:50:34.720 --> 00:50:37.120] That's going to be a very special recording as well, I think.
[00:50:37.120 --> 00:50:38.000] It'll be a fun one.
[00:50:38.000 --> 00:50:39.120] It will be a brilliant recording.
[00:50:39.120 --> 00:50:49.280] And it's also, as this is the last QED, it will mean that Incredulous, I think, is going to be the only thing that's happened on stage at every single QED.
[00:50:49.280 --> 00:50:50.720] We have done Incredulous.
[00:50:50.720 --> 00:50:53.120] Every single QED we've ever done, there has been an Incredulous.
[00:50:53.360 --> 00:50:57.840] So it is, and it is the only stalwart thing on stage for the entire run.
[00:50:57.840 --> 00:51:04.680] So, yes, come along and see the, and actually, given the recording schedule of Incredulous, probably the last Incredulous.
[00:51:06.120 --> 00:51:11.560] But come along and see the live taping of Incredulous at QED, along with all of the other brilliant things that we've got going on.
[00:51:11.560 --> 00:51:13.480] As I say, you can see that at QEDCon.org.
[00:51:13.480 --> 00:51:15.160] Tickets are £179.
[00:51:15.160 --> 00:51:16.120] We will all be there.
[00:51:16.120 --> 00:51:19.080] And if you come up to me and say you like the show, I'll give you a hug.
[00:51:20.120 --> 00:51:21.240] So there we go.
[00:51:21.240 --> 00:51:22.440] If they want a hug.
[00:51:22.920 --> 00:51:24.520] No, no, no, regardless of.
[00:51:25.400 --> 00:51:28.040] By saying you like the show, that is in my brain.
[00:51:28.840 --> 00:51:30.120] That is consent for a hug.
[00:51:31.400 --> 00:51:33.720] And we also, we should plug our Patreon.
[00:51:33.720 --> 00:51:41.960] So if you like the show and you enjoy what we do, you can support the show by going to patrion.com forward slash skeptics with a K, where you can donate any amount, as small or as big as you like.
[00:51:41.960 --> 00:51:48.840] Every penny you give helps us run the show, helps us keep the show going, really supports us individually as well as the show itself.
[00:51:48.840 --> 00:51:53.400] Yeah, it helps us set aside the time to be doing the kind of research that we bring to the show.
[00:51:53.400 --> 00:51:57.400] Do you remember when the show used to be, we'd just turn up and go, I saw this on the news live.
[00:51:58.600 --> 00:52:03.800] And now we spend hours doing original fucking research every fucking episode.
[00:52:03.800 --> 00:52:08.440] So yeah, if you could do that at patreon.com forward slash skeptics with a K, that really helps us.
[00:52:08.440 --> 00:52:09.880] We really appreciate it.
[00:52:09.880 --> 00:52:14.840] And you will also find there an ad-free version of this show that you can add into your podcast player.
[00:52:14.840 --> 00:52:21.000] And Mercy Sound Skeptics also have a Patreon, which, again, you'll find an ad-free version of this show on that feed as well.
[00:52:21.000 --> 00:52:24.840] And you can find that at patreon.com forward slash mercy skeptics.
[00:52:25.160 --> 00:52:27.560] Aside from that, then that is all we have time for.
[00:52:27.560 --> 00:52:28.360] Yeah, I think it is.
[00:52:28.360 --> 00:52:31.160] All that remains then is for me to thank Marsh for coming along today.
[00:52:31.160 --> 00:52:31.720] Cheers.
[00:52:31.720 --> 00:52:32.600] Thank you to Alice.
[00:52:32.600 --> 00:52:33.160] Thank you.
[00:52:33.160 --> 00:52:35.800] We have been Skeptics with a K, and we will see you next time.
[00:52:35.800 --> 00:52:36.440] Bye now.
[00:52:36.440 --> 00:52:37.320] Bye.
[00:52:42.120 --> 00:52:47.200] Skeptics with a K is produced by Skeptic Media in association with the Merseyside Skeptic Society.
[00:52:44.840 --> 00:52:56.480] For questions or comments, email podcast at skepticswithakay.org and you can find out more about Merseyside Skeptics at merseyside skeptics.org.uk.

Prompt 6: Key Takeaways

Now please extract the key takeaways from the transcript content I provided.

Extract the most important key takeaways from this part of the conversation. Use a single sentence statement (the key takeaway) rather than milquetoast descriptions like "the hosts discuss...". 

Limit the key takeaways to a maximum of 3. The key takeaways should be insightful and knowledge-additive. 

IMPORTANT: Return ONLY valid JSON, no explanations or markdown. Ensure:
- All strings are properly quoted and escaped
- No trailing commas
- All braces and brackets are balanced
Format: {"key_takeaways": ["takeaway 1", "takeaway 2"]}

Prompt 7: Segments

Now identify 2-4 distinct topical segments from this part of the conversation.

For each segment, identify:
- Descriptive title (3-6 words)  
- START timestamp when this topic begins (HH:MM:SS format)
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Most important Key takeaway from that segment. Key takeaway must be specific and knowledge-additive.
- Brief summary of the discussion

IMPORTANT: The timestamp should mark when the topic/segment STARTS, not a range. Look for topic transitions and conversation shifts.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted, no trailing commas:
{
  "segments": [
    {
      "segment_title": "Topic Discussion", 
      "timestamp": "01:15:30",
      "key_takeaway": "main point from this segment",
      "segment_summary": "brief description of what was discussed"
    }
  ]
}

Timestamp format: HH:MM:SS (e.g., 00:05:30, 01:22:45) marking the START of each segment.

Prompt 8: Media Mentions

Now scan the transcript content I provided for ACTUAL mentions of specific media titles:

Find explicit mentions of:
- Books (with specific titles)
- Movies (with specific titles)  
- TV Shows (with specific titles)
- Music/Songs (with specific titles)

DO NOT include:
- Websites, URLs, or web services
- Other podcasts or podcast names

IMPORTANT: 
- Only include items explicitly mentioned by name. Do not invent titles.
- Valid categories are: "Book", "Movie", "TV Show", "Music"
- Include the exact phrase where each item was mentioned
- Find the nearest proximate timestamp where it appears in the conversation
- THE TIMESTAMP OF THE MEDIA MENTION IS IMPORTANT - DO NOT INVENT TIMESTAMPS AND DO NOT MISATTRIBUTE TIMESTAMPS
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Timestamps are given as ranges, e.g. 01:13:42.520 --> 01:13:46.720. Use the EARLIER of the 2 timestamps in the range.

Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted and escaped, no trailing commas:
{
  "media_mentions": [
    {
      "title": "Exact Title as Mentioned",
      "category": "Book",
      "author_artist": "N/A",
      "context": "Brief context of why it was mentioned",
      "context_phrase": "The exact sentence or phrase where it was mentioned",
      "timestamp": "estimated time like 01:15:30"
    }
  ]
}

If no media is mentioned, return: {"media_mentions": []}

Full Transcript

[00:00:06.640 --> 00:00:14.640] It is Thursday, the 26th of June, 2025, and you're listening to Skeptics with a K, the podcast for science, reason, and critical thinking.
[00:00:14.640 --> 00:00:25.200] Skeptics with a K is produced by Skeptic Media in association with the Mercy Side Skeptic Society, a non-profit organization for the promotion of scientific skepticism on Mercy Side around the UK and internationally.
[00:00:25.200 --> 00:00:26.480] I am your host, Mike Hall.
[00:00:26.480 --> 00:00:27.520] With me today is Marsh.
[00:00:27.520 --> 00:00:28.000] Hello.
[00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:28.800] And Alice.
[00:00:28.800 --> 00:00:29.680] Hello.
[00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:32.880] So here's a controversial statement, at least for this show.
[00:00:32.880 --> 00:00:33.440] Okay.
[00:00:33.440 --> 00:00:35.360] I really like Breaking Bad.
[00:00:35.360 --> 00:00:36.000] Oh!
[00:00:37.040 --> 00:00:37.440] I don't.
[00:00:37.680 --> 00:00:38.880] Which I know you think is shit, Marsh.
[00:00:39.040 --> 00:00:44.240] I think it's as bad as Game of Thrones in that I watched all of it in order to be clear on my views.
[00:00:44.800 --> 00:00:51.200] I've only seen about half of season one of Breaking Bad because I just, it wasn't so bad that I had to stop watching it.
[00:00:51.200 --> 00:00:56.480] It's just, it was so mere that I just never wanted to watch it.
[00:00:56.480 --> 00:01:04.640] I mean, it's only one of the most well-regarded television shows of all time, literally on IMDb, the single highest-rated television show of all time.
[00:01:04.800 --> 00:01:05.680] That's ludicrous.
[00:01:05.680 --> 00:01:08.400] Because the wire exists and Sopranos exists.
[00:01:08.400 --> 00:01:11.840] Oh, well, Doctor Who exists, which means I couldn't say, quite frankly, to discrete.
[00:01:11.840 --> 00:01:16.880] Doctor Who is 245 on the IMDB list of greatest shows of all time.
[00:01:16.880 --> 00:01:19.760] Breaking Bad is number one, which is absolutely fucking absurd.
[00:01:19.760 --> 00:01:27.360] TV shows which rank above Doctor Who include Game of Thrones, not surprisingly, both versions of Cosmos, Bluey.
[00:01:27.360 --> 00:01:28.880] Okay, but that's fine.
[00:01:28.880 --> 00:01:29.360] The dog.
[00:01:29.840 --> 00:01:31.360] I hear good things about Bluey, right?
[00:01:31.680 --> 00:01:33.040] Yeah, I hear a lot of good things about Bluey.
[00:01:33.200 --> 00:01:34.560] Only Fools and Horses.
[00:01:34.560 --> 00:01:35.040] Okay.
[00:01:35.040 --> 00:01:39.280] Apparently, the 34th greatest television show of all time is Only Fools and Horses.
[00:01:39.280 --> 00:01:40.800] Faulty Towers, Top Gear, Mr.
[00:01:40.800 --> 00:01:44.720] Bean, and the X-Men cartoon all rank higher than Doctor Who.
[00:01:45.200 --> 00:01:46.320] Do you not trust this list?
[00:01:46.720 --> 00:01:47.840] Not the Spider-Man cartoon.
[00:01:47.840 --> 00:01:48.400] The X-Men cartoon.
[00:01:48.480 --> 00:01:49.120] Not the Spider-Man cartoon.
[00:01:49.200 --> 00:01:50.240] X-Men 97.
[00:01:50.240 --> 00:01:51.920] No, the original one, the 97.
[00:01:53.040 --> 00:01:54.400] That is an incredible.
[00:01:54.400 --> 00:01:55.760] That's a ludicrous decision.
[00:01:55.920 --> 00:01:56.720] That's an absolute...
[00:01:56.720 --> 00:01:59.000] The Spider-Man animated series from the 1990s.
[00:01:59.160 --> 00:01:59.800] The 1990s.
[00:01:59.880 --> 00:02:00.120] Excellent.
[00:01:59.520 --> 00:02:06.280] The X-Men I liked, but it lost a lot of cohesive narrative towards the fourth or fifth season.
[00:02:06.600 --> 00:02:07.960] I think it was all fucking disgraced.
[00:02:07.960 --> 00:02:09.160] Doctor's better than all of them.
[00:02:09.160 --> 00:02:14.280] But one of the things that I like about Breaking Bad is the portrayal of toxic masculinity.
[00:02:14.280 --> 00:02:23.800] Because there are several occasions during the run of that show where Walter knowingly acts against his own best interests purely out of his own vanity and ego.
[00:02:23.800 --> 00:02:28.920] For example, at one point, the spoilers for Breaking Bad, spoilers for a show that ended a decade ago.
[00:02:28.920 --> 00:02:30.120] I'm sorry, Alice.
[00:02:30.680 --> 00:02:34.600] At one point, the feds think they have identified who the drugs kingpin is.
[00:02:34.600 --> 00:02:36.280] They think they know who it is.
[00:02:36.280 --> 00:02:39.960] The guy is dead, so it's like, great, we're all wrapped up.
[00:02:39.960 --> 00:02:41.240] We can close the case.
[00:02:41.240 --> 00:02:54.040] But upon hearing that someone else is going to get credit for the empire that he built, Walter bristles enough to tell his brother-in-law, who was running the investigation, maybe that isn't the guy, maybe there's another guy behind that guy.
[00:02:54.520 --> 00:03:16.680] Because he can't stand seeing someone else get praise for what he thinks, that he thinks he is due, and so actively torpedoes what should be his perfect escape, where someone else takes the fall, his family's safe, he is in the clear, but his ego is so fragile that he self-sabotages that before letting someone else receive the thing he thinks he is due.
[00:03:16.680 --> 00:03:17.080] Yeah.
[00:03:17.400 --> 00:03:26.760] I would have imagined a fragile ego would have their ego boosted by the smugness of knowing you completely got away with it, and you'd be bolsting to your criminal mates about how you got away with it.
[00:03:26.760 --> 00:03:30.600] More likely that than bolsting to the literal piece of the money.
[00:03:30.920 --> 00:03:32.760] Redirecting the FBI back on the road.
[00:03:33.080 --> 00:03:33.880] Back onto your own trail.
[00:03:34.040 --> 00:03:37.480] That's one of the greatest pieces of writing of all time, apparently, so I must be wrong about that.
[00:03:37.640 --> 00:03:42.520] I genuinely think it's a great exploration of that, as I say, toxic masculinity.
[00:03:42.520 --> 00:03:47.520] There's so many times where he actively does shit like that because of his own vanity, which I thought was interesting.
[00:03:47.520 --> 00:03:48.400] But anyway.
[00:03:44.760 --> 00:03:51.760] And at the end, he builds a really big, like, machine robot that shoots them all.
[00:03:52.000 --> 00:03:53.120] So it is great writing.
[00:03:53.120 --> 00:03:54.640] Like, oh, how is he going to get out of this?
[00:03:54.640 --> 00:03:56.320] Oh, he's going to build a torso that shoots them all.
[00:03:56.480 --> 00:03:58.160] Great episode of Mythbusters.
[00:03:59.200 --> 00:04:05.600] But anyway, early in that first series of Breaking Bad, I don't know if this might be an episode you've seen if you've only seen part of it, Alice.
[00:04:05.600 --> 00:04:15.120] There's a flashback where you see a conversation between Walter White and another character named Gretchen, who they're at university, I think, is meant to be the scene.
[00:04:15.200 --> 00:04:17.600] They're certainly in a classroom of some context.
[00:04:17.600 --> 00:04:21.120] And they're trying to work out what the human body is made of.
[00:04:21.120 --> 00:04:24.880] So they start off with the big ones and they go, well, hydrogen, that's 63%.
[00:04:24.880 --> 00:04:26.240] And they write that up on the board.
[00:04:26.240 --> 00:04:27.600] Oxygen is 26%.
[00:04:27.600 --> 00:04:28.640] They write that up on the board.
[00:04:28.640 --> 00:04:29.920] Carbon, 9%.
[00:04:29.920 --> 00:04:32.320] Nitrogen, 1.25%.
[00:04:32.320 --> 00:04:34.560] Calcium, 0.25%.
[00:04:34.560 --> 00:04:35.760] He's quite surprised at that.
[00:04:35.760 --> 00:04:39.120] He's going, the whole our skeleton is only that little amount of calcium.
[00:04:39.120 --> 00:04:42.240] It's like, yeah, you would have thought it'd be loads, but no, apparently not.
[00:04:42.240 --> 00:04:45.360] Iron is 0.0004%.
[00:04:45.360 --> 00:04:47.040] Sodium, 0.04%.
[00:04:47.040 --> 00:04:49.760] Is the iron more if you've been using one that's the largest fish in the middle?
[00:04:49.920 --> 00:04:50.720] Pop a little fish in.
[00:04:51.680 --> 00:04:59.360] Eventually, they exhaust all of their ideas and they tot up what they've left and they get to 99.888042%.
[00:04:59.360 --> 00:05:00.720] And the rest is the soul.
[00:05:00.720 --> 00:05:09.200] And that's exactly what Gretchen says: after a brief pause, it's like there's 0.111598% left.
[00:05:09.520 --> 00:05:11.600] And Gretchen goes, maybe that's the soul.
[00:05:11.600 --> 00:05:12.640] And Walter dismisses that.
[00:05:12.720 --> 00:05:13.680] And it's a great piece of writing.
[00:05:13.680 --> 00:05:15.840] It's one of the greatest recent TV shows of all time.
[00:05:16.160 --> 00:05:17.360] Gretchen says it's the soul.
[00:05:17.560 --> 00:05:19.040] But I didn't remember that they'd said that.
[00:05:19.040 --> 00:05:20.640] I just inferred it from what was obviously going to go.
[00:05:20.720 --> 00:05:21.520] It's so obvious as well.
[00:05:21.840 --> 00:05:22.320] It's so great.
[00:05:22.320 --> 00:05:23.360] I mean, to make that correct.
[00:05:23.360 --> 00:05:24.600] It's better than Sopranos if anything.
[00:05:26.240 --> 00:05:30.840] Perhaps a simpler explanation, of course, is that there are a whole bunch of rounding errors in that.
[00:05:29.680 --> 00:05:37.080] You know, maybe hydrogen isn't 63%, it's 63.111958%, and then we're all square.
[00:05:37.320 --> 00:05:37.640] Yeah.
[00:05:37.640 --> 00:05:37.880] Right?
[00:05:38.200 --> 00:05:42.360] But it's just a TV show, and it's not like it's an especially important one, like Doctor Who.
[00:05:44.600 --> 00:05:56.280] But anyway, this idea of the soul having a mass has been lingering around since like the 19th century or so at the beginnings of what we might think of as modern science.
[00:05:56.280 --> 00:05:58.280] It's just so weird.
[00:05:58.280 --> 00:06:05.560] Like, it's something unmeasurable, undefinable, completely spiritual, but it must weigh something.
[00:06:05.560 --> 00:06:07.240] I don't understand that.
[00:06:07.400 --> 00:06:10.600] But they hadn't really come across stuff that didn't weigh anything previously.
[00:06:10.600 --> 00:06:12.840] Like, everything important weighed something.
[00:06:12.840 --> 00:06:18.280] So I could see them saying, well, this is everything important must weigh something, and this important, ergo, it must have a weight.
[00:06:18.440 --> 00:06:26.920] It's when 19th century science went very reductionist very quickly on everything, because prior to that, it would be magic would be an acceptable explanation.
[00:06:26.920 --> 00:06:29.960] And 19th century science really rejected that.
[00:06:29.960 --> 00:06:30.680] Rightly so.
[00:06:30.680 --> 00:06:31.080] Yeah.
[00:06:31.080 --> 00:06:34.680] But then still went looking for reasonable explanations for the magic thing.
[00:06:34.680 --> 00:06:36.680] So if you look at why Chris French has a career.
[00:06:36.680 --> 00:06:37.320] Yeah, exactly.
[00:06:37.320 --> 00:06:41.960] But if you look at things like the explanation for gravity, they couldn't understand how gravity could pass through a vacuum.
[00:06:41.960 --> 00:06:45.240] So they posited ether existed.
[00:06:45.240 --> 00:06:45.480] Yes.
[00:06:45.480 --> 00:06:50.040] So there was like an invisible, intangible thing that was permeating everything at all times.
[00:06:50.040 --> 00:06:58.120] And then they tried experiments to measure would the direction of the speed of gravity change in different directions because of the current of ether?
[00:06:58.120 --> 00:07:03.400] Sure, I understand coming up with it as a hypothesis or a theory or a suggestion.
[00:07:03.400 --> 00:07:09.240] I don't understand retaining that hypothesis theory of suggestion to today.
[00:07:09.240 --> 00:07:09.800] Yeah.
[00:07:09.800 --> 00:07:15.600] Like people should have just been able, we've come through to the point where people chat shit about spiritualism all the time.
[00:07:15.920 --> 00:07:26.080] Why aren't people just going, well, it probably just doesn't weigh, you know, it's this ephemeral, yes, spiritual, unknowable, magical, unique thing.
[00:07:26.080 --> 00:07:27.600] Of course, it just doesn't weigh anything.
[00:07:27.600 --> 00:07:32.080] But if you can put a measure on it, it can persuade the people who aren't you.
[00:07:32.640 --> 00:07:33.440] It's not persuading people.
[00:07:34.160 --> 00:07:36.560] But like, oh, it's like, was it 23, 27 grams?
[00:07:36.560 --> 00:07:38.080] I assume you're going to mention the Will Smith.
[00:07:38.240 --> 00:07:40.720] Where I'm going 23, 21 grams.
[00:07:40.720 --> 00:07:41.600] 21 grams.
[00:07:41.680 --> 00:07:42.800] Weight isn't the only measurement.
[00:07:42.800 --> 00:07:44.800] It's like, just find something else you can measure.
[00:07:44.800 --> 00:07:45.680] Speed.
[00:07:46.560 --> 00:07:49.120] We're going to come to the speed of a soul in a minute.
[00:07:49.120 --> 00:07:49.680] Anyway.
[00:07:49.920 --> 00:07:50.640] Was it Will Smith?
[00:07:50.880 --> 00:07:52.400] Oh, you'll tell you in a minute, I imagine.
[00:07:52.400 --> 00:07:52.960] Will Smith?
[00:07:52.960 --> 00:07:53.680] What was Will Smith doing?
[00:07:53.760 --> 00:07:54.720] Was he not in 21 grams?
[00:07:54.720 --> 00:07:55.600] Who was in 21 grams?
[00:07:55.600 --> 00:07:56.080] Oh, I don't know.
[00:07:56.080 --> 00:07:57.200] I've not seen 21 grams.
[00:07:57.200 --> 00:07:58.080] I've seen 21 grams.
[00:07:58.080 --> 00:08:00.000] I think, was Naomi Watts in it?
[00:08:00.000 --> 00:08:04.960] She's someone whose name I know, but I can never, ever think of anything she's been in or what she looks like.
[00:08:04.960 --> 00:08:06.400] She's been in 21 grams, apparently.
[00:08:06.640 --> 00:08:16.960] Apparently, so it's probably the most famous attempt to measure the mass of the soul was a guy called Duncan McDougall, who did this in 1907, about which there was the film 21 grams.
[00:08:17.120 --> 00:08:22.480] Naomi Watts was in 21 grams, but other than that, it was Sean Penn and Benicio del Toro.
[00:08:22.480 --> 00:08:22.960] Oh, okay.
[00:08:22.960 --> 00:08:23.840] Benny the Bull.
[00:08:23.840 --> 00:08:32.480] So Duncan McDougall was a doctor from Massachusetts who performed an experiment which involved measuring the change in mass of a patient at the moment of death.
[00:08:32.480 --> 00:08:33.120] Yeah.
[00:08:33.120 --> 00:08:40.160] So he recruited six patients from nursing homes that were expected to die soon, which is the way to do this experiment, I think.
[00:08:40.560 --> 00:08:40.960] Yeah.
[00:08:41.360 --> 00:08:42.640] The alternative is killing them.
[00:08:42.880 --> 00:08:45.280] Hard to get ethics approval for anything else.
[00:08:45.600 --> 00:08:51.280] And shortly before their death, when the nursing home said, he's definitely circling the plughole right now.
[00:08:51.280 --> 00:08:53.600] You should probably sort it out now, right?
[00:08:53.920 --> 00:08:59.000] My grandma lived in a nursing home for about 15 years, and we had about eight of those calls.
[00:08:59.000 --> 00:08:59.080] Yeah.
[00:08:59.320 --> 00:09:02.280] And she survived every one of them apart from the last one.
[00:09:02.280 --> 00:09:04.280] They need to hire one of those cats.
[00:08:59.840 --> 00:09:05.240] You know, the cats that walk around.
[00:09:06.760 --> 00:09:07.720] I can't even tell about a psychic cat.
[00:09:07.800 --> 00:09:07.880] Yeah.
[00:09:08.520 --> 00:09:10.360] I mean, we've talked about them on the show a while ago.
[00:09:10.360 --> 00:09:11.880] We did psychic cats, I'm sure.
[00:09:11.880 --> 00:09:17.080] Well, if we did, I think someone did email asking what do you ever make of this of the cats who know when people are going to die?
[00:09:17.720 --> 00:09:18.840] The SWAC search engine.
[00:09:18.920 --> 00:09:20.200] It's the SWAC search engine.
[00:09:20.520 --> 00:09:27.240] I can't remember the URL of that, but it's pinned to the Skeptics with a K channel in the Discord.
[00:09:27.320 --> 00:09:27.720] There you go.
[00:09:27.720 --> 00:09:28.360] If you join the Discord.
[00:09:28.600 --> 00:09:29.560] Join our Discord.
[00:09:29.560 --> 00:09:30.040] And you can find that.
[00:09:30.200 --> 00:09:32.280] Join the Skeptics with the Pub online Discord.
[00:09:32.280 --> 00:09:34.200] Go to the Skeptics with a K thread.
[00:09:34.600 --> 00:09:36.120] Look at the pinned posts.
[00:09:36.120 --> 00:09:36.600] Yeah, exactly.
[00:09:36.600 --> 00:09:37.720] Because someone did ask us where that's.
[00:09:38.760 --> 00:09:42.840] Yeah, someone did ask us where the link to that searchable library is.
[00:09:43.080 --> 00:09:49.480] And we're not getting in the habit of sending you the link every time you ask because then you don't learn how to find it for yourself.
[00:09:49.480 --> 00:09:49.720] Exactly.
[00:09:49.880 --> 00:09:50.600] So we're teaching you.
[00:09:50.840 --> 00:09:53.800] The way to do that is a very, very complicated route.
[00:09:54.840 --> 00:09:56.600] I have put it in the show notes the last few shows.
[00:09:57.800 --> 00:09:58.760] It is there.
[00:09:58.760 --> 00:10:07.480] But anyway, so shortly before their death, he took the patients from the nursing home and put them and their entire bed on this massive industrial scale.
[00:10:07.480 --> 00:10:09.960] That's meant to be for weighing cattle or something like that.
[00:10:09.960 --> 00:10:16.360] And at the moment of death, one of the patients lost 21 grams of mass.
[00:10:16.520 --> 00:10:17.400] And the others didn't.
[00:10:17.880 --> 00:10:19.000] Well, yeah, the others didn't.
[00:10:19.000 --> 00:10:19.800] We'll come to that.
[00:10:20.360 --> 00:10:22.120] So one of the patients lost 21 grams.
[00:10:22.600 --> 00:10:23.400] There we go.
[00:10:23.400 --> 00:10:24.760] The soul weighs 21 grams.
[00:10:25.160 --> 00:10:27.480] But the other five didn't have a soul.
[00:10:27.800 --> 00:10:31.720] So the other five just didn't behave consistently.
[00:10:31.720 --> 00:10:33.640] So some of them put on weight.
[00:10:33.640 --> 00:10:35.960] Some of them lost weight and then lost a bit more.
[00:10:35.960 --> 00:10:37.960] So it was really inconsistent.
[00:10:37.960 --> 00:10:46.640] Some weight fluctuation immediately after death makes sense biologically based on what is happening, like how our bodies shift over those last exactly.
[00:10:46.800 --> 00:10:48.240] But where's that weight going if you were?
[00:10:48.240 --> 00:10:52.640] Because the only way that I could change weight in that situation, surely, is exercise.
[00:10:52.960 --> 00:10:54.560] What are the roots of excretion?
[00:10:54.560 --> 00:10:56.320] No, but the bed is also on there.
[00:10:56.320 --> 00:10:56.560] Yeah, yeah.
[00:10:56.720 --> 00:10:57.920] So it's just breathing.
[00:10:57.920 --> 00:10:58.720] It's only breathing.
[00:10:58.800 --> 00:10:59.840] That's a root of excretion.
[00:11:00.080 --> 00:11:02.480] Can you breathe out 21 grams?
[00:11:02.480 --> 00:11:04.240] That's a lot of carbon atoms to breathe out.
[00:11:04.560 --> 00:11:09.440] You probably wouldn't breathe out that much because there would be a lot of water vapor on your breath as well.
[00:11:09.440 --> 00:11:10.800] It wouldn't just be the air.
[00:11:10.800 --> 00:11:11.760] There would also be.
[00:11:12.080 --> 00:11:15.440] You would do a great big old death fart as well as your sphincter relaxes.
[00:11:15.840 --> 00:11:16.160] That's true.
[00:11:16.320 --> 00:11:22.400] It probably wouldn't be 21 grams worth, but there's bigger problems with this fucking experiment than that, right?
[00:11:22.400 --> 00:11:25.280] But he should have little stopper up the bum.
[00:11:26.320 --> 00:11:27.840] Like, you're just about to die.
[00:11:27.840 --> 00:11:29.360] Butt plugs exist, Duncan.
[00:11:30.320 --> 00:11:31.360] Butt plugs are real.
[00:11:31.360 --> 00:11:32.480] They're already rubber.
[00:11:32.480 --> 00:11:33.360] Just get on with it.
[00:11:33.360 --> 00:11:39.200] At that point, you are getting ethics approval for taking a tournament patient and putting him in a butt plug and a ball gag.
[00:11:39.200 --> 00:11:42.400] And I think that's going to be a difficult thing to ask.
[00:11:44.640 --> 00:11:57.280] Incidentally, if both Breaking Bad and Duncan McDougall are correct and the soul weighs 21 grams and is also 0.111958% of the body, it means Duncan McDougall's patient weighed 18 kilos.
[00:11:57.280 --> 00:11:59.840] So I'm not surprised that they were poorly.
[00:12:00.160 --> 00:12:02.560] The nursery goes, he's not going to fucking last long.
[00:12:03.920 --> 00:12:06.720] He's lost a lot of weight recently.
[00:12:08.320 --> 00:12:11.680] Of course, McDougall's experiment is ridiculously thought.
[00:12:11.680 --> 00:12:14.160] Quite aside from the fact he had a sample size of only six patients.
[00:12:14.560 --> 00:12:16.560] He discards data from five of them.
[00:12:16.560 --> 00:12:17.280] Yeah, yeah.
[00:12:17.280 --> 00:12:26.480] With various different excuses and only pays attention to the single data point that aligned with his hypothesis, that being we should lose some weight at the moment of death.
[00:12:26.480 --> 00:12:27.440] Which I would like to say.
[00:12:27.480 --> 00:12:29.600] It's just a constant pressure on body image, isn't it?
[00:12:30.120 --> 00:12:33.240] I would like to say is something that we've moved beyond.
[00:12:33.240 --> 00:12:39.720] But I've read enough placebo effect research to tell you that researchers still massage their data until it aligns with their hypothesis.
[00:12:39.720 --> 00:12:44.840] Just maybe less brazenly than Duncan McDougall did by just going, that doesn't count because I don't reckon.
[00:12:45.160 --> 00:12:53.640] There are a load of things that he hasn't controlled for here, like, as we said, the physiological changes that occur after death, you know, your muscles relax, the weight in your body will shift.
[00:12:53.640 --> 00:12:54.280] Yeah, yeah.
[00:12:54.280 --> 00:12:57.560] And on these big industrial scales, just the shifting weights is going to be enough.
[00:12:57.880 --> 00:13:03.000] They're not designed to measure small, like those really small differences you need.
[00:13:03.160 --> 00:13:07.080] If you're going to measure such small amounts, you need a more sensitive scale.
[00:13:07.240 --> 00:13:08.760] A more sensitive scale than that, yeah.
[00:13:08.760 --> 00:13:14.360] It's also, I mean, he says that the scale was sensitive enough to measure that, but also this whole experiment's fucking bullshit.
[00:13:14.360 --> 00:13:14.680] Yeah.
[00:13:14.680 --> 00:13:15.560] Fuck off.
[00:13:15.560 --> 00:13:20.040] It's also very difficult to identify the exact moment of death as well.
[00:13:20.040 --> 00:13:25.480] So like this is clearly alive and this is clearly dead, but the transition is not very well defined.
[00:13:25.960 --> 00:13:28.680] You know, is it because, you know, is it the final breath?
[00:13:28.680 --> 00:13:29.640] Is it when the heart stops?
[00:13:29.640 --> 00:13:31.080] Is it when brain activity stops?
[00:13:31.080 --> 00:13:33.160] Is it when the big farty death rattle happens?
[00:13:33.400 --> 00:13:37.960] In a way, in a way, that doesn't really matter as long as you cover enough of period either side.
[00:13:37.960 --> 00:13:39.400] Yeah, you're definitely alive here.
[00:13:39.400 --> 00:13:40.680] You're definitely dead there.
[00:13:40.680 --> 00:13:44.600] If the weight changed between those times, that would be a perfectly acceptable way of doing it.
[00:13:44.600 --> 00:13:45.240] But he's got a...
[00:13:45.320 --> 00:13:46.760] Unless he left it for like three days.
[00:13:46.760 --> 00:14:05.520] He's got a Texas sharpshooter fallacy there of he sees the drop in 21 grams and then says that's it that's the moment of death but unless unless while he was still alive he weighed this amount and half an hour after he did he died he he only weighed 21 less, yes, in the sense of like if it was if there was a plateau and a plateau and a drop between the two.
[00:14:05.600 --> 00:14:07.280] Which you'd be right, but that isn't what happened.
[00:14:07.360 --> 00:14:21.600] Not happened, no, of course that's not what happened yeah but and in both cases, in both breaking bad and in duncan mcdougall's weird 21 grams experiment, they're both bound up in the idea of there being some physical manifestation of the soul, which is odd in itself, like you said, Alice.
[00:14:21.600 --> 00:14:24.240] That you may as well ask, What's the mass of a Wednesday?
[00:14:24.240 --> 00:14:28.000] You know, it's a nonsense question to say.
[00:14:28.000 --> 00:14:30.240] I mean, that's a bad example because Ash Wednesday is the mass of the Wednesday.
[00:14:30.400 --> 00:14:32.320] Today's the mass of the Wednesday, that's true.
[00:14:32.320 --> 00:14:38.000] Yeah, I don't know how much that little smudgy weighs is 21 grams worth of.
[00:14:38.720 --> 00:14:40.400] So on your forehead, yeah.
[00:14:40.720 --> 00:14:47.760] McDougall did incidentally have a control for this experiment in that he also weighed several dogs at the moment of their death.
[00:14:48.080 --> 00:14:55.520] And his hypothesis was: since humans have souls and animals don't, there should be no change in the mass of a dog at the moment of death.
[00:14:55.520 --> 00:14:56.480] What year was this done?
[00:14:56.640 --> 00:14:57.600] 1907.
[00:14:57.600 --> 00:14:58.080] Okay.
[00:14:58.080 --> 00:14:59.760] Those weren't terminally ill dogs.
[00:14:59.760 --> 00:15:00.160] They weren't.
[00:15:00.160 --> 00:15:00.560] No.
[00:15:00.880 --> 00:15:01.360] No.
[00:15:01.360 --> 00:15:04.960] Because you don't know that it's very hard to know when a dog is on its last leg.
[00:15:04.960 --> 00:15:05.280] He does.
[00:15:05.280 --> 00:15:05.520] He does.
[00:15:05.840 --> 00:15:07.520] The cat isn't going to come anywhere near it.
[00:15:07.520 --> 00:15:10.320] Well, but how do you he poisoned the dogs?
[00:15:10.880 --> 00:15:13.120] Yeah, but then what's the weight of the poison?
[00:15:13.120 --> 00:15:17.840] Well, as long as they've already ingested it before they're put on the scales, it shouldn't matter.
[00:15:17.840 --> 00:15:24.000] But yeah, there is a reference in McDougall's paper where he says, I was looking for terminally ill dogs, but couldn't find any.
[00:15:24.000 --> 00:15:25.840] And that's the last he says about it.
[00:15:26.160 --> 00:15:27.920] You don't need to do it through poison.
[00:15:28.160 --> 00:15:34.560] You could set up an intricate gallows as long as the base of the gallows is all also on the scale.
[00:15:34.560 --> 00:15:34.960] Yeah.
[00:15:35.760 --> 00:15:38.080] We do not need to put a warning on this episode.
[00:15:38.640 --> 00:15:40.000] It's fucking dark in it.
[00:15:40.240 --> 00:15:47.600] This is clearly excellent science and not at all magnificently conceited scientists being bamboozled by their own bias.
[00:15:47.600 --> 00:15:48.080] Yeah, yeah.
[00:15:49.280 --> 00:15:53.360] But I'm not here to debunk Wu from 100 years ago.
[00:15:53.360 --> 00:15:55.680] We already did that in the Telegyny episode.
[00:15:56.080 --> 00:16:06.600] I'm here to talk about something a little bit more recent, and that is a report that appeared on YouTube and TikTok recently, which says that Russian scientists have discovered what happens to our soul after we die.
[00:16:06.600 --> 00:16:08.680] And then shared it on TikTok.
[00:16:08.680 --> 00:16:10.280] And then they put it on TikTok.
[00:16:10.600 --> 00:16:13.640] They didn't publish it in a journal.
[00:16:13.640 --> 00:16:13.880] No.
[00:16:14.680 --> 00:16:15.640] I won't get to TikTok.
[00:16:15.720 --> 00:16:20.280] And this is what happens to our souls, not what happens to our souls after you die.
[00:16:20.280 --> 00:16:22.440] Both, unless our souls don't have souls.
[00:16:22.440 --> 00:16:23.560] Okay, ironically enough.
[00:16:24.040 --> 00:16:25.000] So this is from a user.
[00:16:25.000 --> 00:16:29.000] This was actually from Instagram, this one, although it looks to be a repost of a TikTok video.
[00:16:29.000 --> 00:16:29.880] Everything is.
[00:16:29.880 --> 00:16:36.200] It says, Russian scientists may have figured out exactly where our soul goes after death.
[00:16:36.200 --> 00:16:46.120] Scientists have been studying death for decades, but they've never been able to go beyond what happens to the physical body after death, like if we have a soul or not.
[00:16:46.120 --> 00:16:47.400] You with me so far?
[00:16:47.480 --> 00:16:48.280] Okay, yeah, yeah.
[00:16:48.600 --> 00:16:56.440] According to Russian scientists, they say we do have a soul, and they figured out how to track it after we pass away.
[00:16:56.440 --> 00:17:01.800] It sounds like they've stained it with some pin fluorescent and they're just going to watch where it goes after.
[00:17:02.040 --> 00:17:03.880] Or they've wrapped a little thing around its foot.
[00:17:06.600 --> 00:17:11.080] This bold claim comes from Russia's biggest tech giant, Vlad Tech.
[00:17:13.240 --> 00:17:21.560] They spent the last 10 years developing an interface that ties to the brain that can embed a code into every atom of your being.
[00:17:21.560 --> 00:17:22.280] What?
[00:17:22.680 --> 00:17:23.320] What?
[00:17:23.320 --> 00:17:28.360] They refer to this as a sick code or soul identification code.
[00:17:28.360 --> 00:17:29.000] And they say...
[00:17:29.240 --> 00:17:31.000] They've got the pin number problem.
[00:17:32.680 --> 00:17:34.600] It's a synchronous SI chord.
[00:17:35.240 --> 00:17:37.960] The soul identification code code.
[00:17:38.600 --> 00:17:46.800] How it works is that it detects your frequency or the electricity that you give off after you pass away, your essence or your aura.
[00:17:47.120 --> 00:17:53.920] They were able to put this to the test over the last couple of days because their first guinea pig for the experiment, not a little guinea pig, a bloke.
[00:17:53.920 --> 00:17:54.080] Okay.
[00:17:54.320 --> 00:17:55.200] Not a dog.
[00:17:55.680 --> 00:17:56.320] Their first.
[00:17:56.320 --> 00:17:58.480] It was like a tiny little guinea pig gallows.
[00:17:59.760 --> 00:18:04.640] Their first guinea pig for the experiment passed away and the results were astounding.
[00:18:04.960 --> 00:18:13.280] Immediately upon passing, they were able to monitor his soul leaving his body, but then almost instantly it disappeared from their radar.
[00:18:13.920 --> 00:18:18.800] Scientists attributed this to the fact that the soul was traveling faster than the speed of light.
[00:18:19.600 --> 00:18:21.840] So their radar wasn't doing it.
[00:18:23.280 --> 00:18:26.320] They lost track of it and they were not able to monitor it.
[00:18:26.560 --> 00:18:29.600] Alice has got a brilliant incredulous face on at this point.
[00:18:29.600 --> 00:18:30.640] This is science, Alice.
[00:18:30.960 --> 00:18:31.840] So much of this.
[00:18:31.840 --> 00:18:33.120] Just so what?
[00:18:33.120 --> 00:18:36.720] So I'm thinking of the TV shows that come out based on this.
[00:18:36.720 --> 00:18:41.280] You know, where you've got like some weird concept of like you've died and then what happens after you die?
[00:18:41.440 --> 00:18:45.520] And what happens is you know, kind of like the good place type thing.
[00:18:45.520 --> 00:18:45.920] Yes.
[00:18:45.920 --> 00:18:50.400] Where and now I've just got this vision of fucking Kirsten Bell appearing.
[00:18:50.400 --> 00:18:51.040] Kristen Bell?
[00:18:51.040 --> 00:18:51.600] Kirsten Bell.
[00:18:51.760 --> 00:18:57.840] Kristen Bell just suddenly like appearing outside of her body and then just being yoinked up into space.
[00:18:58.080 --> 00:18:59.120] Gone faster than lightning.
[00:18:59.840 --> 00:19:00.400] Yep.
[00:19:00.400 --> 00:19:02.640] They lost track of it and they were not able to monitor it.
[00:19:02.640 --> 00:19:09.360] This went on for about an hour until they refreshed their computers and there it was a billion light years away.
[00:19:10.720 --> 00:19:22.240] Back in 2024, the James Webb Space Telescope discovered a galaxy referred to as JZ140, also known as JADES GSZ-140.
[00:19:22.240 --> 00:19:28.000] This was located as part of the Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey, the JADES program.
[00:19:28.000 --> 00:19:34.440] What is baffling about all this is that that's exactly where they track the soul to, literally billions of light years away.
[00:19:34.760 --> 00:19:36.200] Now, why is it there?
[00:19:36.200 --> 00:19:37.960] Your guess is as good as mine.
[00:19:37.960 --> 00:19:39.800] Is that where we go when we die?
[00:19:39.800 --> 00:19:41.000] Is that heaven?
[00:19:41.000 --> 00:19:44.120] Those are the questions that are all over the internet right now.
[00:19:44.120 --> 00:19:45.080] So you must have seen them.
[00:19:45.400 --> 00:19:51.000] Heaven just happens to be one of the tiny minuscule parts of the universe that we know exists.
[00:19:51.000 --> 00:19:51.400] Yes, yes.
[00:19:51.400 --> 00:19:52.760] And we've seen it.
[00:19:52.760 --> 00:19:53.800] It's recently discovered.
[00:19:53.800 --> 00:19:56.520] Also, I would argue that my guess is probably better than theirs.
[00:19:56.840 --> 00:19:59.720] If that's their guess, I guarantee my guess is better.
[00:19:59.720 --> 00:20:02.280] Whatever my guess is, it's better than theirs.
[00:20:02.600 --> 00:20:09.080] So I think probably all three of us have got some problems with this story as told, right?
[00:20:09.080 --> 00:20:13.320] But I'm going to talk about some of the things that I reckon are probably problematic about this story.
[00:20:13.320 --> 00:20:16.760] And feel free to toss yours in as well if you have particular problems.
[00:20:16.760 --> 00:20:18.680] So we're going to start off with the galaxy.
[00:20:18.680 --> 00:20:27.000] So JADES GSZ14-0 is a real galaxy that was discovered relatively recently by the James Webb Space Telescope.
[00:20:27.000 --> 00:20:36.200] This is something that bothers me about the James Webb Space Telescope is when you see scientists talk about it, they always omit the definite article and they refer to it as James Webb Space Telescope.
[00:20:36.200 --> 00:20:38.840] Like the telescope is called James Webb.
[00:20:38.840 --> 00:20:39.320] Yeah.
[00:20:39.320 --> 00:20:41.640] Or it's James's web.
[00:20:41.640 --> 00:20:45.080] And they just haven't put the apostrophe on the James.
[00:20:45.160 --> 00:20:45.480] Yeah, yeah.
[00:20:45.800 --> 00:20:47.640] They haven't said out loud because it's awkward to say it.
[00:20:47.640 --> 00:20:50.760] But James has a Webb Space Telescope.
[00:20:50.760 --> 00:20:58.600] But it's like they refer to, like you might say, we did this at Hubble rather than at the Hubble Space Telescope.
[00:20:58.600 --> 00:21:03.240] And it always feels weird and clumsy to me to say we did this at James Webb Space Telescope.
[00:21:03.240 --> 00:21:04.360] Anyway, that's fucking aside.
[00:21:04.360 --> 00:21:07.160] Anyway, the telescope named after that bloke, right?
[00:21:07.160 --> 00:21:09.080] Is that problematic bloke?
[00:21:09.240 --> 00:21:11.160] Who I think is arguably problematic, yeah.
[00:21:11.200 --> 00:21:13.080] I did them, they all are, aren't they?
[00:21:13.080 --> 00:21:16.480] Yeah, I mean, that tone of voice was entirely appropriate for the material.
[00:21:14.920 --> 00:21:19.200] That problematic guy, maybe.
[00:21:20.000 --> 00:21:26.000] Anyway, I can't remember why he's problematic, but I think people try and not call it by that anymore, don't they?
[00:21:26.000 --> 00:21:26.560] Yeah, yeah.
[00:21:26.880 --> 00:21:30.960] So, we're going to get a load of people writing in about why James Webb was problematic incidentally.
[00:21:31.600 --> 00:21:33.280] I knew at some point, I forgot why.
[00:21:33.600 --> 00:21:36.560] I'm googling it during the course of the show, but I'm not going to say it out loud.
[00:21:36.560 --> 00:21:38.480] Just so, guys, just let me know.
[00:21:38.560 --> 00:21:40.080] Just rest assured, I have told people.
[00:21:40.320 --> 00:21:40.880] We know, yeah.
[00:21:40.880 --> 00:21:42.640] I looked it up when I was researching the story.
[00:21:42.640 --> 00:21:43.920] I considered an aside.
[00:21:43.920 --> 00:21:44.720] It's not relevant.
[00:21:44.720 --> 00:21:46.640] The piece is fucking long enough as it is.
[00:21:47.280 --> 00:21:51.120] So, yeah, we know that there's things that apparently James Webb was a prick.
[00:21:51.120 --> 00:22:02.800] Anyway, the telescope named after that bloke was responsible for discovering a galaxy back in 2024, and it is one of the oldest and most distant galaxies we have ever discovered.
[00:22:02.800 --> 00:22:07.920] The light we are seeing from that galaxy right now is 13.5 billion years old.
[00:22:07.920 --> 00:22:10.720] The universe is only 13.8 billion years old.
[00:22:10.720 --> 00:22:16.880] So, this light left that galaxy when the universe was only 300 million years old.
[00:22:16.880 --> 00:22:22.880] So, it is literally not possible to measure anything coming from it that has gone there in the last hours.
[00:22:23.600 --> 00:22:24.640] Yeah, exactly.
[00:22:24.640 --> 00:22:28.960] Unless souls traveling faster than speed of light can also transmit faster than speed of light.
[00:22:29.280 --> 00:22:35.440] Your soul identification code code code code now.
[00:22:35.440 --> 00:22:40.640] Despite what our friend reporting on Vlad Tech has claimed, this galaxy is not a billion light years away.
[00:22:40.640 --> 00:22:43.040] It is, in fact, 33 billion light years away.
[00:22:43.600 --> 00:22:48.800] Are you sure it's Vlad Tech and not 45 AD, Jould well be?
[00:22:48.800 --> 00:22:54.480] It is 33 billion light years away, which seems wrong when you think about it, because the universe is less than 14 billion years old.
[00:22:54.480 --> 00:22:57.200] How can something be 33 billion light years away?
[00:22:57.200 --> 00:23:03.080] And it's because the space between us and it has stretched in that time because that galaxy is so fucking old.
[00:23:03.080 --> 00:23:03.560] Yeah.
[00:22:59.200 --> 00:23:04.840] So it turns out that that space is stretched.
[00:23:05.160 --> 00:23:08.360] So now it's kind of impossibly far away, which is sort of cool, actually.
[00:23:08.360 --> 00:23:08.840] Yeah.
[00:23:08.840 --> 00:23:11.160] In a skeptic-sighted universe kind of way.
[00:23:11.160 --> 00:23:12.760] Just, oh, isn't that cool?
[00:23:13.480 --> 00:23:15.480] That is down by weird grace.
[00:23:15.800 --> 00:23:20.840] But we also know that there are things that must exist beyond that.
[00:23:20.840 --> 00:23:23.560] Yeah, there's a line we have of probably exist beyond that.
[00:23:23.800 --> 00:23:24.360] Probably exists beyond that.
[00:23:24.520 --> 00:23:26.760] The observable universe is how we refer to it.
[00:23:26.760 --> 00:23:30.440] Because if something is there, we could never see it because the light takes too long to get there.
[00:23:31.640 --> 00:23:37.800] Despite claims that were made to the contrary, the galaxy is not also known by the name Jay Z140.
[00:23:37.800 --> 00:23:40.200] This appears to be something that's entirely fabricated to be a game.
[00:23:40.360 --> 00:23:41.400] Sounds like a course chord.
[00:23:41.640 --> 00:23:44.200] It sounds like a fucking album.
[00:23:44.600 --> 00:23:47.800] It's a new album from Jay-Z coming in at number 140.
[00:23:50.040 --> 00:23:54.440] It's just called Jade's GSZ 140 because it doesn't have a fucking name.
[00:23:54.440 --> 00:23:56.360] It's got a code because it was discovered that recently.
[00:23:56.440 --> 00:23:58.760] In fairness, 14.0 is a lot like 140.
[00:23:58.920 --> 00:23:59.720] 140, yeah.
[00:23:59.720 --> 00:24:11.240] And it's aside from the fact that it's the farthest thing we've ever discovered, there's no reason to label it as anything special, apart from this company claiming that that's where the software is.
[00:24:12.040 --> 00:24:13.320] That's where heaven is, yeah.
[00:24:13.640 --> 00:24:16.600] The claims made for the tracking of the soul obviously don't stack up.
[00:24:16.600 --> 00:24:26.120] The story as told has got the soul that they were tracking disappears off their radar, which I will charitably assume is a metaphorical radar and not a literal radar.
[00:24:26.120 --> 00:24:28.840] Because why would you make a radar that big?
[00:24:30.440 --> 00:24:40.680] But it disappeared and then they said they refreshed their computers and then realized the signal was coming from this other galaxy, which I really love as well, that they've refreshed their computers.
[00:24:40.680 --> 00:24:43.640] Yeah, to just hit the hit F5 and we'll see when you spot it again.
[00:24:43.640 --> 00:24:44.280] Yeah.
[00:24:45.040 --> 00:24:48.480] How long did it take to pinpoint it to that galaxy?
[00:24:48.480 --> 00:24:58.880] Once they refreshed their computers, they lost it for an hour and then refreshed their computers and then they could continue to search all the other galaxies that we know about first.
[00:24:58.880 --> 00:25:00.320] No, because it's got a cord.
[00:25:00.400 --> 00:25:00.960] It's got a code.
[00:25:01.120 --> 00:25:03.120] Come on, it's a soul identification cord cord.
[00:25:03.680 --> 00:25:04.640] So how is it?
[00:25:04.640 --> 00:25:05.680] Does it flash?
[00:25:05.840 --> 00:25:11.280] They have so you're just your eyes drawn to the flashing light and you go, oh, look, it's in that galaxy.
[00:25:11.280 --> 00:25:13.440] No, it's why have you got that galaxy on your screen?
[00:25:14.080 --> 00:25:15.360] I'm here, by the way.
[00:25:15.360 --> 00:25:17.360] It said I'm in Jay Z 140.
[00:25:17.360 --> 00:25:19.840] And then they looked up Jay Z 140 and said, oh, that's where they are.
[00:25:19.840 --> 00:25:22.080] Because we know about a lot of galaxies.
[00:25:22.560 --> 00:25:25.440] It would take us a long time to search through every single one of them.
[00:25:25.440 --> 00:25:31.840] Do you know when you're somewhere and you tell someone where you are, they don't have to look at a massive map to go like, oh, hi, where's Alice?
[00:25:31.840 --> 00:25:32.320] Where's Alice?
[00:25:32.320 --> 00:25:33.600] Oh, now I can see her.
[00:25:33.600 --> 00:25:35.920] Because you've said to them where you are.
[00:25:36.240 --> 00:25:37.680] That's what's happening here.
[00:25:37.920 --> 00:25:39.680] This soul has said, I'm over here.
[00:25:39.680 --> 00:25:41.760] And they go, all right, you must be over there, I guess.
[00:25:41.760 --> 00:25:44.960] They haven't got a magnifying glass out and look through all the other galaxies.
[00:25:45.200 --> 00:25:46.080] But it doesn't.
[00:25:46.480 --> 00:25:47.200] But the thing is, Alice.
[00:25:47.280 --> 00:25:48.160] That makes sense, right?
[00:25:48.400 --> 00:25:50.640] That is how you would do it if this was real science.
[00:25:50.880 --> 00:25:52.320] You would have to check every galaxy.
[00:25:52.400 --> 00:25:53.280] It's a galaxy.
[00:25:53.280 --> 00:25:58.880] But they're treating this like they've put an air tag on your soul, and it just means your phone just points there.
[00:25:58.880 --> 00:25:59.280] Yeah.
[00:25:59.280 --> 00:26:00.560] Like a pointer dog.
[00:26:00.560 --> 00:26:03.040] Like it just goes there.
[00:26:03.360 --> 00:26:06.160] Oh my God, that's the way to JZ 140.
[00:26:06.800 --> 00:26:08.880] Yeah, this is not how any of this would work, right?
[00:26:08.880 --> 00:26:18.880] Even if the soul had somehow hurtled there at superluminal speeds, once it arrived, it's going to take 33 billion years for the signal to get back to us to say where it is.
[00:26:18.880 --> 00:26:20.000] What if the soul went back in time?
[00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:21.280] What if heaven's in the past?
[00:26:21.280 --> 00:26:22.400] Heaven might be in the past.
[00:26:22.800 --> 00:26:23.840] Maybe the soul went back in time.
[00:26:24.320 --> 00:26:25.840] Travel time and space.
[00:26:25.840 --> 00:26:26.400] Yeah.
[00:26:26.400 --> 00:26:27.680] Well, it's the same thing.
[00:26:27.680 --> 00:26:28.640] Everything's just curves.
[00:26:28.640 --> 00:26:29.280] It's the same thing.
[00:26:29.440 --> 00:26:31.800] I just gone around the back to get back.
[00:26:31.800 --> 00:26:32.440] Yeah, exactly.
[00:26:33.000 --> 00:26:35.720] We've lost entirely all the soul identification code.
[00:26:29.920 --> 00:26:36.520] Well, I'm coming to the soul.
[00:26:37.400 --> 00:26:38.280] We are coming to that in a minute.
[00:26:38.840 --> 00:26:40.760] I feel like we had to pick up that at some point.
[00:26:40.760 --> 00:26:43.960] I also want to take a moment to appreciate the refresh their computers line.
[00:26:43.960 --> 00:26:50.280] Like, they've built this super advanced soul tracking technology, but they still need to hit F5 to get it to work.
[00:26:50.280 --> 00:26:51.240] After an hour.
[00:26:51.240 --> 00:26:52.200] So they spent an hour going.
[00:26:52.920 --> 00:26:53.880] Well, another word.
[00:26:54.200 --> 00:26:56.520] How can you guys F5?
[00:26:56.520 --> 00:26:57.320] Got it, right?
[00:26:57.320 --> 00:27:00.840] They'll have that thing up that says Chrome is taking a long time to respond.
[00:27:01.400 --> 00:27:02.280] Click it, terminate it.
[00:27:02.680 --> 00:27:03.080] I'll wait.
[00:27:03.320 --> 00:27:04.600] I trust the little dinosaur.
[00:27:04.600 --> 00:27:04.920] I'll wait.
[00:27:05.080 --> 00:27:06.280] I reckon he's got this.
[00:27:06.280 --> 00:27:07.560] You've got this guy.
[00:27:08.200 --> 00:27:13.400] Of course, the whole story about creating a soul ID that can track you after you're that's just straight up bollocks.
[00:27:13.560 --> 00:27:15.480] For one thing, we don't have a soul.
[00:27:15.480 --> 00:27:16.760] Souls don't exist.
[00:27:16.760 --> 00:27:20.280] We have no way of measuring a soul other than putting people on a set of cattle scales.
[00:27:20.280 --> 00:27:22.120] And it turns out that's really unreliable.
[00:27:22.120 --> 00:27:22.520] Yeah.
[00:27:22.520 --> 00:27:24.520] Only works one in five times.
[00:27:24.840 --> 00:27:30.280] But without a way to detect a soul, we're going to struggle to attach this magic air tag to it.
[00:27:30.520 --> 00:27:32.440] It's attached to every atom in your body.
[00:27:32.440 --> 00:27:36.520] So some of those atoms have gotten to the other side of the.
[00:27:37.000 --> 00:27:40.680] It feels less than ideal to attach something to every atom in your body.
[00:27:40.840 --> 00:27:41.560] Every atom in your body.
[00:27:41.800 --> 00:27:43.640] That's going to change the weight of that atom.
[00:27:43.640 --> 00:27:49.960] Of every single atom in every single cell, in every single organ, in every single part of your body.
[00:27:50.120 --> 00:27:51.560] You're adjusting the weight of that atom.
[00:27:52.200 --> 00:27:54.680] If you start adding stuff to atoms, is that not going to change?
[00:27:54.680 --> 00:27:55.640] It's quite dangerous, I think.
[00:27:55.960 --> 00:27:57.800] Like the chemical it is.
[00:27:57.880 --> 00:27:59.720] Depends what your code is made of.
[00:27:59.720 --> 00:28:02.440] You know, does it weigh 21 grams?
[00:28:02.760 --> 00:28:06.280] Or does it, you know, does it, is it just like you're writing on it?
[00:28:06.280 --> 00:28:08.760] Well, what if what if the code was an electron?
[00:28:08.760 --> 00:28:10.440] If you're adding an electron to every atom.
[00:28:10.760 --> 00:28:11.240] You fucked it.
[00:28:11.240 --> 00:28:12.040] You're going to blow them up.
[00:28:12.040 --> 00:28:13.560] You've fucked it then at that point, haven't you?
[00:28:13.560 --> 00:28:15.440] That's how we died.
[00:28:16.720 --> 00:28:20.400] But we're also, we leave atoms of ourselves all over the place.
[00:28:14.440 --> 00:28:20.560] Yeah.
[00:28:20.800 --> 00:28:21.040] Right?
[00:28:21.040 --> 00:28:26.160] We shed skin, we breathe out, we excrete, we defecate, we get a haircut, we exfoliate, we sneeze, whatever.
[00:28:26.160 --> 00:28:28.720] You know, we leave atoms of ourselves all over the place.
[00:28:28.720 --> 00:28:29.600] I mean, it's atoms.
[00:28:29.600 --> 00:28:33.760] Even just like sitting on the sofa is going to be letting some bits of atoms somewhere.
[00:28:34.080 --> 00:28:34.400] Yeah.
[00:28:34.720 --> 00:28:38.880] And actually, things that used to be our atoms end up as other people's atoms.
[00:28:38.880 --> 00:28:40.560] So does it have two codes now?
[00:28:40.560 --> 00:28:46.480] Does the second atom get overwritten with the second person's code, or is there now two tags on that atom?
[00:28:46.480 --> 00:28:53.760] It is very much a story that creates a million, 33 billion more questions than it could possibly answer.
[00:28:53.760 --> 00:29:03.840] I think what happens is you don't overwrite the other code unless you put a little bit of tape over the bottom, like a little bit of cell tape over the bottom of it, and then you can't overwrite it again at that point.
[00:29:04.640 --> 00:29:05.840] That's the only way for it to work.
[00:29:05.840 --> 00:29:13.840] I do quite like when we have a story so ridiculous that it doesn't, like, we can't debunk it because it's just so absurd.
[00:29:14.320 --> 00:29:20.160] All we can do is point out and have your thought about this bit, which makes it highlights how patently ridiculous it is.
[00:29:20.320 --> 00:29:28.800] I also like that the reference I just made to being only able to overwrite something by putting a bit of cell tape on it is going to be lost on a significant portion of our audio.
[00:29:28.960 --> 00:29:31.440] I have no idea what I could possibly be referring to.
[00:29:31.440 --> 00:29:32.160] Yep.
[00:29:32.480 --> 00:29:39.760] So, yeah, does a second person whose atoms, some of their atoms are my atoms, do they now show up as me on this radar?
[00:29:39.760 --> 00:29:41.680] What if they don't get their own code imprinted?
[00:29:41.680 --> 00:29:43.280] Do they just look like me forever now?
[00:29:43.840 --> 00:29:45.600] You've got multiple souls knocking about.
[00:29:45.600 --> 00:29:46.240] It's weird.
[00:29:46.240 --> 00:29:51.760] Will the scanner detect that I have gone to Jay-Z-140 because they died?
[00:29:51.760 --> 00:29:53.840] Yeah, he's going to take your space.
[00:29:53.840 --> 00:29:54.960] He's going to take my spot.
[00:29:54.960 --> 00:29:55.680] How does that work?
[00:29:56.000 --> 00:29:57.920] Frankly, I'm not sure they thought this through.
[00:29:57.920 --> 00:30:01.640] No, there's a lot of potential for identity theft in heaven.
[00:30:03.880 --> 00:30:07.640] So, the next thing I thought to look at is: well, who the fuck is Vlad Tech?
[00:30:08.200 --> 00:30:09.720] What's the 45 AD tech?
[00:30:09.880 --> 00:30:14.520] I mean, it does seem a bit weird having a tech company answering these questions.
[00:30:14.520 --> 00:30:15.080] Yeah.
[00:30:15.080 --> 00:30:17.640] So, any ideas who Vlad Tech might be?
[00:30:18.120 --> 00:30:20.120] Either of you know who Vlad Tech might be?
[00:30:20.120 --> 00:30:28.120] I'm going to say it doesn't exist, and it's some random Romanian or Bulgarian kid who's just span up a blog and put this out there for clicks.
[00:30:28.120 --> 00:30:29.080] Yeah, pretty close.
[00:30:29.720 --> 00:30:30.600] Come on!
[00:30:30.920 --> 00:30:33.400] Vlad tech, completely fictional, just made up.
[00:30:33.400 --> 00:30:43.080] There is no such company, much less being the largest technology company in Russia, which is what was claimed in the story, who've spent 10 years developing the Soul Code technology.
[00:30:43.080 --> 00:30:49.640] The only Vlad tech that I was able to discover is a games publisher who've published two games on Steam.
[00:30:49.640 --> 00:30:56.360] One of them is called Push That Cat, which is a puzzle game featuring Maxwell the Cat from the Maxwell the Cat meme.
[00:30:56.360 --> 00:30:58.120] Okay, didn't know that was a meme, but carry on.
[00:30:58.120 --> 00:31:03.000] It's like a nice black and white tuxedo cat loafing.
[00:31:03.000 --> 00:31:04.600] That's the Maxwell the Cat meme.
[00:31:04.600 --> 00:31:05.080] Okay.
[00:31:05.080 --> 00:31:06.360] He's loafing.
[00:31:06.360 --> 00:31:07.160] He's loafing.
[00:31:07.160 --> 00:31:07.720] Yeah.
[00:31:07.720 --> 00:31:12.600] The other game that they have published, other than Push the Cat, it's Push the Cat, Exclamation Mark, Exclamation Mark.
[00:31:12.920 --> 00:31:13.560] Is the next one?
[00:31:13.560 --> 00:31:14.680] Pull the Cat.
[00:31:14.680 --> 00:31:17.080] And it's like a pickup artistry game.
[00:31:17.080 --> 00:31:33.320] No, the other game that they've published is called Putin Destroys Alien, which is a vertical scrolling shoot-'em-up game that features a spaceship with Vladimir Putin's head on it shooting at space aliens, presumably from Jay-Z-140.
[00:31:33.320 --> 00:31:35.880] I can't think where else the space aliens would be.
[00:31:36.200 --> 00:31:44.200] I suppose it's not beyond the realms of possibility that this is a weird publicity stunt for an obscure games publisher.
[00:31:44.200 --> 00:31:46.160] Ah, I don't think it's that.
[00:31:46.160 --> 00:31:46.800] It can't be that.
[00:31:46.800 --> 00:31:47.920] I don't think it's that either.
[00:31:44.840 --> 00:31:51.440] I think the story is bollocks, the technology is bollocks, the company is bollocks.
[00:31:51.760 --> 00:31:53.760] I think all this is bollocks.
[00:31:53.840 --> 00:31:55.360] It's just not linked to that game thing at all.
[00:31:55.680 --> 00:31:56.000] No, no, no.
[00:31:56.400 --> 00:31:57.200] It's a Russian name.
[00:31:57.680 --> 00:31:58.160] It's just amazing.
[00:31:58.320 --> 00:31:58.480] Exactly.
[00:31:58.560 --> 00:32:00.880] Yeah, it's Vlad Tech or it's Eagle Limited.
[00:32:00.880 --> 00:32:04.160] So if it's all bollocks, obviously the technology is not true.
[00:32:04.160 --> 00:32:07.360] The galaxy exists, but the technology they describe doesn't work.
[00:32:07.360 --> 00:32:08.400] The company doesn't exist.
[00:32:08.400 --> 00:32:10.720] What's left in this story to debunk?
[00:32:10.720 --> 00:32:13.040] So I thought, where did this story come from?
[00:32:13.040 --> 00:32:16.320] Let's try and trace the earliest possible reference I can find to this story.
[00:32:16.320 --> 00:32:22.000] So I spent a while tracing back through transcripts and searches on YouTube, on TikTok, and Instagram.
[00:32:22.000 --> 00:32:25.440] And I eventually found what I think is the earliest version of this story.
[00:32:25.440 --> 00:32:28.640] I might be wrong, but this is the earliest version that I can find.
[00:32:28.640 --> 00:32:41.200] And that video, which was posted to TikTok on the 30th of April, I think it was this year, features an English guy telling this story, claiming he found it on the Russian search engine Yandex.
[00:32:41.200 --> 00:32:41.600] Okay.
[00:32:41.600 --> 00:32:44.960] And that he has been unable to sleep since reading it.
[00:32:44.960 --> 00:32:53.280] He also says, I've been wondering why this isn't all over the news, because the fact that our souls travel to a distant galaxy when we die should be big news.
[00:32:53.280 --> 00:32:54.640] Is that where heaven is?
[00:32:54.640 --> 00:32:56.480] Do we all live there together?
[00:32:56.480 --> 00:32:57.200] Who knows?
[00:32:57.200 --> 00:32:57.840] That's what he's saying.
[00:32:58.880 --> 00:33:00.640] When was the galaxy discovered?
[00:33:00.800 --> 00:33:01.760] Last year.
[00:33:01.760 --> 00:33:09.360] Looking at the video and the description of this video, the description reads: Scientists in Russia know what happens after you die.
[00:33:09.360 --> 00:33:14.080] Hashtag weird, hashtag amazing story, hashtag prank video.
[00:33:16.960 --> 00:33:19.840] So this story is complete fiction.
[00:33:19.840 --> 00:33:21.120] It was always fiction.
[00:33:21.120 --> 00:33:24.800] When it was posted to TikTok, it was a deliberate prank.
[00:33:24.800 --> 00:33:41.640] Not convinced it's a fucking brilliant prank, incidentally, but nevertheless, that's where it caught people's attention and where it was breathlessly repeated as if it were true while ripping out all of that context that gave any indication of where the rest of this story came from.
[00:33:41.640 --> 00:33:49.960] But it is interesting to the extent that it is exploiting those same mechanisms that we observe being used to spread disinformation and misinformation.
[00:33:49.960 --> 00:33:53.320] It's got that thing of you getting the inside track of things.
[00:33:53.320 --> 00:33:59.080] And this has spread throughout the internet in exactly the same mechanism that we see used for misinformation.
[00:33:59.080 --> 00:34:17.080] It reminds me a lot of what Joe Andrak talked about at the last QED, which was about how things like QAnon differed from other kind of horror stories, because other kind of horror stories would do the, this is found footage, or these are found letters, but it was obviously very clearly fictive because you've bought a book, you've bought the cinema.
[00:34:17.080 --> 00:34:23.800] QAnon, when it was on 4chan, everybody knew it was bollocks, or a lot of people would have known it's bollocks because that kind of stuff happened all the time in 4chan.
[00:34:23.800 --> 00:34:30.120] But once it hit somewhere that didn't understand the grammar of fictive stories on 4chan, it started to be believed.
[00:34:30.120 --> 00:34:31.160] It feels like the same thing.
[00:34:31.160 --> 00:34:37.320] Like, this was a prank video created by someone who knew it was a prank, who tagged it as a prank, who wanted the audience to know it's a prank.
[00:34:37.320 --> 00:34:40.840] Anybody who would have seen it in that format would have known it was bollocks.
[00:34:41.080 --> 00:34:50.680] But when you strip those extra narrative, kind of extra literative clues, the context all around it, and present it elsewhere, people are going to take it seriously and spread it around.
[00:34:50.680 --> 00:35:00.040] But at that point, that's where all these 33 billion questions that it raises rather than answering is where you get the clue of this can't be real.
[00:35:00.440 --> 00:35:09.560] But people aren't thinking, like, people are so mindlessly just scrolling social media, and I include myself in that sometimes as well, that we don't go, hang on, does that make sense?
[00:35:09.560 --> 00:35:18.000] Like, actually sense check the things that we're exposed to because a sense check should say this can't possibly be real How do I find out if it's fake or not?
[00:35:18.000 --> 00:35:31.600] And I think sense checking is a is a thing that we don't talk about anywhere near enough because we always focus on fact checking but you can't fact check things in real time especially if they're coming at you quite fast It would take a long time to do that, but you can sense check it.
[00:35:31.600 --> 00:35:38.240] This one would be an easy one to sense check as we were doing as you were telling something that I've fallen for quite recently.
[00:35:38.240 --> 00:35:44.240] So there was a news story just a week or two ago about a company called Builder AI.
[00:35:44.240 --> 00:35:51.520] And Builder AI were one of these companies that you would go to their website and you would type in a prompt to say, I want a website that does this and this and this.
[00:35:51.520 --> 00:35:54.640] And they would get AI would just build you that website immediately.
[00:35:54.640 --> 00:35:58.960] And they were seed funded by Microsoft and they were doing really well.
[00:35:58.960 --> 00:36:01.120] And then suddenly they've collapsed out of nowhere.
[00:36:01.120 --> 00:36:08.480] And what appeared in the tech press was it turns out that AI, as we've seen before, stood for a lot of Indians.
[00:36:08.480 --> 00:36:13.920] And there was actually 700 developers in India who were writing this code.
[00:36:13.920 --> 00:36:16.000] And that was reported in all of the tech press.
[00:36:16.000 --> 00:36:17.440] It's also not true.
[00:36:17.440 --> 00:36:18.640] They were using AI.
[00:36:18.640 --> 00:36:20.560] It wasn't just a lot of Indians.
[00:36:20.560 --> 00:36:26.080] The story about AI being a lot of Indians was true when Amazon was using it for their shopping.
[00:36:26.400 --> 00:36:26.800] Yes, exactly.
[00:36:26.800 --> 00:36:27.280] Yeah, yeah.
[00:36:27.280 --> 00:36:30.160] So we'll just tell, we can automatically tell what you're picking up.
[00:36:30.160 --> 00:36:32.720] And the way they were doing that was by having cameras and having people watching it.
[00:36:32.800 --> 00:36:34.640] And having people watch what you're picking up, yeah.
[00:36:34.640 --> 00:36:40.320] But Builder AI were using AI, but it spread around the tech press saying, no, it was just software engineers doing it.
[00:36:40.320 --> 00:36:46.960] And we should have been able to sense check that because you go to Builder AI and type in, I want this website, it comes back in 10 seconds.
[00:36:46.960 --> 00:36:47.360] Yeah, yeah.
[00:36:47.600 --> 00:36:53.800] I don't care how many Indian engineers you've got, they're not creating that out of what happens if you get more than 700 requests at a time.
[00:36:53.800 --> 00:36:54.120] Yeah.
[00:36:54.400 --> 00:37:00.600] It doesn't make sense that it would be just a huge number of underpaid developers in a developing country.
[00:37:00.600 --> 00:37:05.880] But nevertheless, that hurtled around the tech press at the time because people were just like, AI shit, isn't it?
[00:36:59.840 --> 00:37:06.040] Long.
[00:37:06.680 --> 00:37:11.080] And that fed into their bias and made them repeat something without sense checking it.
[00:37:15.560 --> 00:37:19.080] So I said on the last show, I've just got back from Northern Cyprus.
[00:37:19.080 --> 00:37:19.400] Yes.
[00:37:19.720 --> 00:37:20.520] Very nice.
[00:37:20.520 --> 00:37:27.480] I go to Northern Cyprus quite often because my parents have got a place there, so it's a relatively cheap holiday.
[00:37:27.480 --> 00:37:28.440] And it's a nice place.
[00:37:29.160 --> 00:37:30.920] Cyprus is a lovely island.
[00:37:30.920 --> 00:37:36.280] But we did some interesting things this time that I haven't done before, but also it was a fucking heat wave.
[00:37:36.280 --> 00:37:40.280] Like, I go to Cyprus in late May, early June, reasonably often.
[00:37:40.280 --> 00:37:46.040] And the reason we go that time of year is because if you go in the summer, it's like 40, 45 plus degrees.
[00:37:46.280 --> 00:37:46.760] That's lucrative.
[00:37:46.920 --> 00:37:47.560] It's too hot.
[00:37:47.560 --> 00:37:48.920] It's too hot to do anything.
[00:37:48.920 --> 00:37:50.440] It's too hot to enjoy yourself.
[00:37:50.440 --> 00:37:54.120] So we go this time of year because it's usually around 30, which is perfect for me.
[00:37:54.120 --> 00:37:55.640] Like, that is a good temperature for me.
[00:37:55.640 --> 00:37:57.000] That is slightly too warm for Nicola.
[00:37:57.000 --> 00:37:58.360] We found out when we were in Croatia.
[00:37:58.360 --> 00:38:01.000] At 28, 27, she'd walk around going, oh, this is warm.
[00:38:01.000 --> 00:38:01.960] This is this is warm.
[00:38:02.200 --> 00:38:02.920] It's fine.
[00:38:02.920 --> 00:38:05.160] The second it hit 30, she just collapsed.
[00:38:05.160 --> 00:38:07.160] Like, all of her functions just stopped.
[00:38:07.160 --> 00:38:09.640] And all she could do was stand there going, hot.
[00:38:09.960 --> 00:38:10.440] Hot.
[00:38:10.440 --> 00:38:11.800] So 30 degrees kills, Nicola.
[00:38:12.040 --> 00:38:13.240] 30 is great for me.
[00:38:13.240 --> 00:38:14.680] I like the heat.
[00:38:14.680 --> 00:38:19.000] But it was 37 when we arrived.
[00:38:19.000 --> 00:38:21.240] It was 38 towards the end of the holiday.
[00:38:21.240 --> 00:38:23.640] And the feels like temperature was like 40, 41.
[00:38:23.640 --> 00:38:24.040] Yeah.
[00:38:24.040 --> 00:38:25.800] It was too hot.
[00:38:25.800 --> 00:38:30.280] I've come back without much of a tan because it was too hot to sit in the sun at any point.
[00:38:31.240 --> 00:38:33.160] But we did do some interesting things.
[00:38:33.160 --> 00:38:38.120] We went to visit a place called Mavi Kost, which is Blue House.
[00:38:38.120 --> 00:38:39.800] Mavi is blue and Turkish.
[00:38:39.800 --> 00:38:44.760] Which apparently, according to all of that, there's quite a lot of propaganda in Northern Cyprus.
[00:38:45.920 --> 00:38:50.640] As anybody who knows the political history of Cyprus in general would understand.
[00:38:50.960 --> 00:38:52.960] And that house is filled.
[00:38:54.000 --> 00:38:58.320] The claim is that it belonged to a Greek drug dealer.
[00:38:58.320 --> 00:38:58.640] Right.
[00:38:58.640 --> 00:39:02.160] And it had like all like secret passageways to get in and out of.
[00:39:02.160 --> 00:39:04.560] And he fled the island in the 70s.
[00:39:04.880 --> 00:39:07.600] He had so much vanity and ego that he couldn't extend.
[00:39:09.040 --> 00:39:15.360] Was eventually eventually apparently killed by the Italian mafia.
[00:39:15.680 --> 00:39:16.800] And so this house is...
[00:39:16.880 --> 00:39:18.720] He was beaten by the Sopranos.
[00:39:19.040 --> 00:39:21.280] Fair, very fair, very, very fair.
[00:39:21.280 --> 00:39:22.240] He got his comeuppance.
[00:39:22.400 --> 00:39:29.120] So this house, you drive like through a little military base to get to it, and then you get there and you're not allowed to take any photos inside.
[00:39:29.120 --> 00:39:31.760] And it's all, it's just as it was in the 70s.
[00:39:31.760 --> 00:39:36.160] So I love 70s decor, so I'm in my element, loving it.
[00:39:36.160 --> 00:39:40.480] But they take you around, you can't take any photos, and they tell, you know, they've got like the history and stuff on it.
[00:39:40.480 --> 00:39:43.200] But all of it is like disputed history.
[00:39:43.680 --> 00:39:51.600] Like, no idea how much we don't, as far as I can tell, they're not even sure that it belonged to this guy.
[00:39:51.600 --> 00:39:57.200] They're not sure that he definitely was like an arms dealer, drug dealer type person.
[00:39:57.200 --> 00:40:01.200] He did flee, but they don't know that he was killed by the mob.
[00:40:01.440 --> 00:40:03.120] Like, nothing is known about this.
[00:40:03.280 --> 00:40:07.360] If he's not like a drug dealer person, it's not so much fleeing as leaving.
[00:40:07.360 --> 00:40:12.960] Like, if he's not like a big, evil, nasty criminal type guy, it's not fleeing at that point, is it?
[00:40:13.360 --> 00:40:14.400] What's he fleeing?
[00:40:14.400 --> 00:40:15.280] So he...
[00:40:15.440 --> 00:40:16.160] You and I don't fucking know.
[00:40:16.400 --> 00:40:20.720] He was Greek in the north side of the island after the Turkish army invaded.
[00:40:21.280 --> 00:40:36.200] So, like, leaving the island as a Greek Cypriot, or leaving the north part of the island as a Greek Cypriot is what most Greek Cypriots did in the mid-70s, just like most of the Turks living in the south left and moved to the north.
[00:40:36.520 --> 00:40:39.640] So there is that additional context.
[00:40:39.640 --> 00:40:46.920] But it was like, it's fascinating and bizarre to like wander around this house, all this like weird propaganda, which was quite cool.
[00:40:46.920 --> 00:40:50.760] But to get there, we drove, my dad's got a car out there, and we drove.
[00:40:51.160 --> 00:40:55.880] It's quite far away from where my parents' place is, so we had quite a long drive.
[00:40:55.880 --> 00:41:01.240] And we took this route, and my dad says, oh, I want to try and avoid the main town because it gets really busy.
[00:41:01.240 --> 00:41:03.560] So I'm going to take this new road that's just been finished.
[00:41:03.560 --> 00:41:06.760] And once we get to this point, can you go on Google Maps and see the route?
[00:41:06.760 --> 00:41:11.160] So I follow Google Maps, send us down the right route, following the map.
[00:41:11.160 --> 00:41:11.800] Great.
[00:41:11.800 --> 00:41:12.600] All fine.
[00:41:12.600 --> 00:41:20.920] We pass this lovely little football stadium that's like got three benches and one floodlight, but it's overgrown with weeds and stuff.
[00:41:20.920 --> 00:41:21.800] Really bizarre.
[00:41:21.800 --> 00:41:28.040] And we've come past that and then we take a left onto a road that is just gravel.
[00:41:28.040 --> 00:41:32.120] A big wide road, but it is a big wide road that is just gravel.
[00:41:32.120 --> 00:41:33.960] That Google Maps thinks is a real road.
[00:41:34.280 --> 00:41:35.400] It is not a real road.
[00:41:35.400 --> 00:41:43.640] And I'm looking at him going, it says six kilometers to the next turn, but I can't see quickly another route round without going back to the village we've just come from.
[00:41:43.640 --> 00:41:44.520] So we're like, well, we'll see.
[00:41:44.840 --> 00:41:46.760] They might have started leveling it from the other end.
[00:41:47.160 --> 00:41:49.240] They've clearly like it was a road.
[00:41:49.800 --> 00:41:51.800] They've it was a road.
[00:41:51.800 --> 00:42:01.160] They've decided to widen the road because we're driving through all this beautiful like farmland, which is like amazing to see in such a hot country as well, this like massive farmland.
[00:42:01.160 --> 00:42:11.000] So it must be being widened to let the lorries and tractors and stuff come through, who are overtaking us at pace, by the way, because they're all using this gravel.
[00:42:11.080 --> 00:42:12.200] It's a really wide road.
[00:42:12.600 --> 00:42:13.880] So you just got for it then.
[00:42:13.880 --> 00:42:15.440] So we're just like, well, we'll go.
[00:42:15.440 --> 00:42:20.160] But my dad's having to drive like 10 kilometers an hour to like keep his suspension alive.
[00:42:14.920 --> 00:42:22.240] We did this for six kilometers.
[00:42:22.480 --> 00:42:29.040] The entire road was just really unfun to drive on.
[00:42:29.040 --> 00:42:33.360] We made it in the end and then we made it through to the base and we came back a different way through the little villages and figured out.
[00:42:33.360 --> 00:42:37.360] But it's so bizarre that Google Maps thinks that this is Google's no idea.
[00:42:38.000 --> 00:42:48.560] And then the other cool thing that I did in Northern Cyprus, which I've never done before, so in the part of where my parents' place is, their house is on a complex called Turtle Bay Village.
[00:42:48.560 --> 00:42:52.560] So it is like, it's the turtle bay of Northern Cyprus.
[00:42:52.560 --> 00:42:55.760] It's where the turtles come to very cheap cocktails.
[00:42:55.760 --> 00:42:59.600] It's not as fancy as.
[00:42:59.600 --> 00:43:16.640] So having been going there for years, I've once been to one, there's like a research eco-friendly research group there that do research on the turtles, but also do all the, I can't think of the word now, all the conservation stuff for them.
[00:43:16.640 --> 00:43:20.720] And they do a lot of kind of engagement with the local people.
[00:43:20.720 --> 00:43:35.760] So in terms of teaching the fishermen how to free turtles that get trapped in the nets rather than just kind of leaving them and things to kind of engage with the population to protect the turtles and not see them as a pain that stops them being able to use the beaches and whatever.
[00:43:35.760 --> 00:43:37.840] You want to feed them pizza and teach them in JiTube.
[00:43:38.400 --> 00:43:39.440] That's exactly the same.
[00:43:39.600 --> 00:43:40.720] That works out really well.
[00:43:41.280 --> 00:43:54.560] So many years ago, Warren and I went during hatching season and we, I must have talked about it on the show at the time, and we released turtles onto the beach with a woman standing in the sea, like pretending to be the moon with a torch.
[00:43:54.560 --> 00:43:54.880] Okay.
[00:43:54.880 --> 00:43:56.560] Because they fucked the moonlight on the moon.
[00:43:57.440 --> 00:44:00.920] But this year, we're there during late nesting season.
[00:44:01.240 --> 00:44:16.200] We'd heard that people we knew had gone down to the beach at this particular time, like towards the end of the day, and seen turtles in the water, like off the coast, just kind of hovering around, waiting until dark so that they could come up onto the beach to nest.
[00:44:16.200 --> 00:44:26.440] And we know that they nest on those beaches because we have seen before the little conservation people go down and watch them nest, and then they put a little plastic thing on top of the nest.
[00:44:26.440 --> 00:44:27.080] Like a pyramid.
[00:44:27.080 --> 00:44:33.240] Well, they put like a little plastic grid immediately on top of the eggs to protect from predation, and then they put a white cone on top.
[00:44:33.560 --> 00:44:34.120] What was it called?
[00:44:34.200 --> 00:44:35.640] You sent me a picture of like an open cone.
[00:44:35.800 --> 00:44:38.920] It looked like a pyramid, and it looked like they were doing like pyramid healing on the eye.
[00:44:40.040 --> 00:44:48.120] So that they've protected the eggs from predation because of the grid that blocks things that might dig them up, and then they've identified where it is by putting the little white cone.
[00:44:48.200 --> 00:44:50.520] They magically sharpened any knives that happened to be there.
[00:44:50.520 --> 00:44:52.520] There's loads of them all the way along the beach.
[00:44:52.520 --> 00:44:56.360] So we know that the turtles have been coming up for a while to nest.
[00:44:56.680 --> 00:45:04.280] And we take the snorkels and things with the assumption that we're going to have to swim quite far out past the rocky bit to actually see any turtles.
[00:45:04.280 --> 00:45:07.160] But if we do that, we might be able to see some turtles swimming around.
[00:45:07.160 --> 00:45:10.760] Obviously, carefully keeping our distance, wanting to be to not disturb them or anything.
[00:45:10.760 --> 00:45:12.200] We go onto the beach.
[00:45:12.200 --> 00:45:14.840] I swam out quite far and I saw a turtle.
[00:45:14.840 --> 00:45:15.320] It was amazing.
[00:45:15.320 --> 00:45:21.160] I saw this turtle just like looming out of the kind of the darkness of the water towards me, just as a silhouette.
[00:45:21.160 --> 00:45:22.360] It's massive.
[00:45:22.360 --> 00:45:26.840] And then she almost it seems like she clocks me and decides to turn around and go back.
[00:45:27.000 --> 00:45:28.040] A lot of people do that.
[00:45:28.040 --> 00:45:29.480] And then I don't see anything else for ages.
[00:45:29.480 --> 00:45:32.920] And I'm swimming out further and further and further, thinking, like, they must be like further out.
[00:45:32.920 --> 00:45:35.160] They're not going to be, they're not going to be away from where the people are.
[00:45:35.160 --> 00:45:36.920] So I must have to go further and further.
[00:45:36.920 --> 00:45:43.320] And then I get to a point where I realize that the snorkel I'm wearing, wearing like this full face mask snorkel, is making it really hard to breathe.
[00:45:43.320 --> 00:45:48.080] And I started to get really panicky because I couldn't breathe, feel like I couldn't breathe properly.
[00:45:48.080 --> 00:45:50.720] So I was like, I've seen a silhouette of one.
[00:45:44.840 --> 00:45:52.000] If that's all I see, then that's great.
[00:45:52.160 --> 00:45:53.520] I'm gonna start going back.
[00:45:54.080 --> 00:46:00.480] So I turn around to swim back, and I see Warren's much further back than me because his snorkel's giving him grief.
[00:46:00.480 --> 00:46:07.440] So I try and swim quite quickly to get to him, and then, of course, like get out more out of breath because I'm exercising.
[00:46:07.440 --> 00:46:16.800] And then I get really panicky because I'm like, I need to get back to where I can put my feet down because I can't really take this snorkel off and hold the snorkel in my hand and tread water well.
[00:46:17.120 --> 00:46:24.000] But also, I want to keep it on so that I can put my head down and swim because I can swim faster if I can keep my head down.
[00:46:24.000 --> 00:46:36.720] So, anyway, eventually, like, I'm getting just to the point where I can put my feet down, and I see this massive turtle right in front of me, just hanging out, like on the beach, right in front of me, and swimming past.
[00:46:36.720 --> 00:46:42.320] And I watch it for a minute, and it puts its head up and it takes a big gulp of air, and then it comes back down.
[00:46:42.400 --> 00:46:44.000] It's just like milling around.
[00:46:44.000 --> 00:46:49.440] Yeah, and at least then I stopped for long enough to like calm my breath down and be a bit less panicky.
[00:46:49.520 --> 00:46:51.600] I think Google Maps have told them this is the best way to go.
[00:46:51.760 --> 00:46:54.400] It's like, no, this doesn't seem right.
[00:46:54.720 --> 00:46:57.520] So, I watched her for a while, and she's swimming back and forth.
[00:46:57.520 --> 00:47:01.840] And then this other one appears on the other side of me, and they're just kind of like swimming around a bit.
[00:47:02.000 --> 00:47:06.080] I managed to get in where I could put my feet down, and I just kept watching them for a while.
[00:47:06.080 --> 00:47:11.360] And then she went into like the rocks, presumably like eating something off the rocks, really close to the water.
[00:47:11.360 --> 00:47:15.280] And I'm like, shit, now, how do I now get out of the water?
[00:47:15.280 --> 00:47:19.280] Because at this point, I was, I didn't want to be in the water anymore because the snorkel panics me enough.
[00:47:19.280 --> 00:47:28.000] So, I was like, I just want to walk out onto the beach, but I'm going to have to like stay with my head down for long enough that I don't accidentally step on a turtle because they're just hanging out.
[00:47:28.160 --> 00:47:45.960] So, I went onto the beach and I stood, like, I was on there chatting for a while, and I saw this guy as I'm stood there, or I was chatting to my dad, and I saw this guy as it was stood there just like walking in the water with his camera, like just like and I thought he was being careful on the rocks because he because it's quite rocky and he had bare feet.
[00:47:45.960 --> 00:47:48.760] So, I assume he's like trying to not get his feet damaged by the rocks, whatever.
[00:47:48.760 --> 00:47:55.720] But then I realized he was taking photos and essentially realized that they're literally on the beach.
[00:47:55.720 --> 00:48:00.040] So, we went into the water and we're like watching them through the top of the water.
[00:48:00.040 --> 00:48:08.840] There's a few of them we saw a log ahead, which are more rare than the greenbacks, the other ones, and really cool just like watching them.
[00:48:08.840 --> 00:48:21.240] And then I turned around to walk back to the beach, and I'm maybe three feet from the actual beach and the bit where you would paddle just to paddle your feet.
[00:48:21.240 --> 00:48:33.560] And I'm walking away, like walking up to that point, and suddenly just spot there's a turtle between me and the sand, just like in that three feet of space, literally on the beach.
[00:48:33.560 --> 00:48:36.680] So, I kind of managed to go around it and not disturb it too much.
[00:48:36.680 --> 00:48:43.720] I went to get my phone to try and take a photo, but by that point, it had realized there were too many people around and kind of cleared off somewhere else.
[00:48:43.720 --> 00:48:51.160] But just this incredible, weird experience to see these amazing, and they're massive.
[00:48:51.160 --> 00:48:56.920] Like, you know that they're big, but you just until you see them in the water, you don't realize what that actually means.
[00:48:56.920 --> 00:49:02.760] They're massive and like really graceful, like they look like they're flying because they're flapping their flippers in the water.
[00:49:02.760 --> 00:49:03.320] Wow.
[00:49:03.800 --> 00:49:05.240] So cool.
[00:49:05.240 --> 00:49:07.200] And then obviously, it was getting to about half.
[00:49:07.200 --> 00:49:20.560] They closed the beaches at eight o'clock so that the turtles can come up onto the beach to nest in peace away from people and they patrol up and down and make sure that nobody who shouldn't be there is there because they have lots of researchers going down to make sure they're protected and stuff.
[00:49:20.880 --> 00:49:23.920] We left at half seven because we were like, look, the sun's coming down enough.
[00:49:23.920 --> 00:49:26.080] They're getting close enough to the beach now.
[00:49:26.080 --> 00:49:30.480] We don't want to be disrupting them or making them feel like threatened or scared or anything.
[00:49:30.480 --> 00:49:31.680] So we left.
[00:49:32.080 --> 00:49:34.320] But yeah, just like the most bizarre.
[00:49:34.800 --> 00:49:35.840] Oh, we've lived.
[00:49:35.840 --> 00:49:41.920] My parents have had a place there for like 18 years and we've never been down to the beach and seen the turtles.
[00:49:42.240 --> 00:49:43.360] That sounds really cool.
[00:49:43.360 --> 00:49:43.680] Yeah.
[00:49:48.480 --> 00:49:57.840] So, QED, as we'd mentioned in the previous episodes, the tickets for QED are flying out, and it now looks like there are less than 50 tickets left.
[00:49:58.000 --> 00:50:00.720] About that, which is astonishing.
[00:50:00.720 --> 00:50:04.880] There's a very good chance that QED is going to sell out in the order of the next few weeks.
[00:50:04.880 --> 00:50:09.040] And so, if you would like to come to QED, QED is our big conference that we do in Manchester.
[00:50:09.040 --> 00:50:10.640] You should definitely get your skates on.
[00:50:10.640 --> 00:50:14.080] You can find out more about what's going on at QED at QDCon.org.
[00:50:14.080 --> 00:50:18.800] And it's taking place this year on the 25th and the 26th of October.
[00:50:18.800 --> 00:50:22.640] Yeah, we've got a lot of stuff to announce, which we're going to save for a future show.
[00:50:22.640 --> 00:50:24.960] But we've got a lot of stuff we are going to be announcing very, very shortly.
[00:50:24.960 --> 00:50:27.120] But I think there's one thing we can announce today, I think.
[00:50:27.280 --> 00:50:30.480] We can announce that there will be a live recording of Incredulous.
[00:50:30.480 --> 00:50:31.200] Of course, there will be records.
[00:50:31.280 --> 00:50:32.480] Of course, there will not be.
[00:50:32.480 --> 00:50:34.560] It wouldn't be QD without an Incredulous.
[00:50:34.720 --> 00:50:37.120] That's going to be a very special recording as well, I think.
[00:50:37.120 --> 00:50:38.000] It'll be a fun one.
[00:50:38.000 --> 00:50:39.120] It will be a brilliant recording.
[00:50:39.120 --> 00:50:49.280] And it's also, as this is the last QED, it will mean that Incredulous, I think, is going to be the only thing that's happened on stage at every single QED.
[00:50:49.280 --> 00:50:50.720] We have done Incredulous.
[00:50:50.720 --> 00:50:53.120] Every single QED we've ever done, there has been an Incredulous.
[00:50:53.360 --> 00:50:57.840] So it is, and it is the only stalwart thing on stage for the entire run.
[00:50:57.840 --> 00:51:04.680] So, yes, come along and see the, and actually, given the recording schedule of Incredulous, probably the last Incredulous.
[00:51:06.120 --> 00:51:11.560] But come along and see the live taping of Incredulous at QED, along with all of the other brilliant things that we've got going on.
[00:51:11.560 --> 00:51:13.480] As I say, you can see that at QEDCon.org.
[00:51:13.480 --> 00:51:15.160] Tickets are £179.
[00:51:15.160 --> 00:51:16.120] We will all be there.
[00:51:16.120 --> 00:51:19.080] And if you come up to me and say you like the show, I'll give you a hug.
[00:51:20.120 --> 00:51:21.240] So there we go.
[00:51:21.240 --> 00:51:22.440] If they want a hug.
[00:51:22.920 --> 00:51:24.520] No, no, no, regardless of.
[00:51:25.400 --> 00:51:28.040] By saying you like the show, that is in my brain.
[00:51:28.840 --> 00:51:30.120] That is consent for a hug.
[00:51:31.400 --> 00:51:33.720] And we also, we should plug our Patreon.
[00:51:33.720 --> 00:51:41.960] So if you like the show and you enjoy what we do, you can support the show by going to patrion.com forward slash skeptics with a K, where you can donate any amount, as small or as big as you like.
[00:51:41.960 --> 00:51:48.840] Every penny you give helps us run the show, helps us keep the show going, really supports us individually as well as the show itself.
[00:51:48.840 --> 00:51:53.400] Yeah, it helps us set aside the time to be doing the kind of research that we bring to the show.
[00:51:53.400 --> 00:51:57.400] Do you remember when the show used to be, we'd just turn up and go, I saw this on the news live.
[00:51:58.600 --> 00:52:03.800] And now we spend hours doing original fucking research every fucking episode.
[00:52:03.800 --> 00:52:08.440] So yeah, if you could do that at patreon.com forward slash skeptics with a K, that really helps us.
[00:52:08.440 --> 00:52:09.880] We really appreciate it.
[00:52:09.880 --> 00:52:14.840] And you will also find there an ad-free version of this show that you can add into your podcast player.
[00:52:14.840 --> 00:52:21.000] And Mercy Sound Skeptics also have a Patreon, which, again, you'll find an ad-free version of this show on that feed as well.
[00:52:21.000 --> 00:52:24.840] And you can find that at patreon.com forward slash mercy skeptics.
[00:52:25.160 --> 00:52:27.560] Aside from that, then that is all we have time for.
[00:52:27.560 --> 00:52:28.360] Yeah, I think it is.
[00:52:28.360 --> 00:52:31.160] All that remains then is for me to thank Marsh for coming along today.
[00:52:31.160 --> 00:52:31.720] Cheers.
[00:52:31.720 --> 00:52:32.600] Thank you to Alice.
[00:52:32.600 --> 00:52:33.160] Thank you.
[00:52:33.160 --> 00:52:35.800] We have been Skeptics with a K, and we will see you next time.
[00:52:35.800 --> 00:52:36.440] Bye now.
[00:52:36.440 --> 00:52:37.320] Bye.
[00:52:42.120 --> 00:52:47.200] Skeptics with a K is produced by Skeptic Media in association with the Merseyside Skeptic Society.
[00:52:44.840 --> 00:52:56.480] For questions or comments, email podcast at skepticswithakay.org and you can find out more about Merseyside Skeptics at merseyside skeptics.org.uk.