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[00:00:00.640 --> 00:00:06.800] This Labor Day at Value City Furniture, get up to 20% off your new living room and more throughout the store.
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[00:00:19.520 --> 00:00:23.840] Yep, get more at Value City Furniture while paying less.
[00:00:23.840 --> 00:00:26.800] More style, more quality, more value.
[00:00:26.800 --> 00:00:29.440] We are Value City Furniture.
[00:00:32.960 --> 00:00:38.320] Just Mike cutting in here before we get started to remind you all about Skepticamp.
[00:00:38.320 --> 00:00:47.120] So, Skepticamp is a free event, there is no ticket required, which is taking place at the Mercure Piccadilly Hotel the day before QED.
[00:00:47.120 --> 00:00:49.760] So, that is on Friday, the 24th of October.
[00:00:49.760 --> 00:00:52.880] It's very much part of the QED fringe.
[00:00:52.880 --> 00:00:59.440] So, what makes Skepticamp so special is that all of the talks for the event are provided by people like you.
[00:00:59.440 --> 00:01:06.880] The audience provides the talks, and the audience watches the talks, sort of like a conference Wikipedia, if you like.
[00:01:06.880 --> 00:01:18.720] So, if you have something interesting you want to talk about at Skepticamp 2025, you can apply to speak by visiting sitp.online forward slash Skepticamp.
[00:01:18.720 --> 00:01:26.400] That is sitp.online forward slash Skepticamp, where you will find details on how to apply.
[00:01:26.400 --> 00:01:29.200] The deadline for applications is fast approaching.
[00:01:29.200 --> 00:01:32.320] That is going to be Friday, the 15th of August.
[00:01:32.320 --> 00:01:39.120] So, if you think you have something interesting to say, the team at Skepticamp want to hear about it.
[00:01:39.440 --> 00:01:41.760] Um, yes.
[00:01:41.760 --> 00:01:43.280] Now, where were we?
[00:01:50.000 --> 00:01:58.240] It is Thursday, the 7th of August, 2025, and you're listening to Skeptics with a K, the podcast for science, reason, and critical thinking.
[00:01:58.240 --> 00:02:09.800] Skeptics with a K is produced by Skeptic Media in association with the Merseyside Skeptic Society, a non-profit organisation for the promotion of scientific skepticism on Merseyside around the UK and internationally.
[00:02:09.800 --> 00:02:11.160] I'm your host, Mike Hall.
[00:02:11.160 --> 00:02:12.360] With me today is Marsh.
[00:02:12.440 --> 00:02:12.920] Hello.
[00:02:12.920 --> 00:02:13.720] And Alice.
[00:02:13.720 --> 00:02:14.200] Hello.
[00:02:14.520 --> 00:02:16.280] And how are you both doing?
[00:02:16.280 --> 00:02:17.560] I'm just really tired.
[00:02:17.560 --> 00:02:18.920] I'm really crashy.
[00:02:18.920 --> 00:02:20.200] I'm really fed up.
[00:02:20.200 --> 00:02:21.800] I'm really ready to sleep.
[00:02:21.800 --> 00:02:26.440] So we're recording this out of order slightly to maintain my coherence.
[00:02:26.920 --> 00:02:27.400] Yeah.
[00:02:27.400 --> 00:02:29.720] So this is the coherent version of you we're about to hear.
[00:02:30.840 --> 00:02:33.960] This is as coherent as I'm capable of being.
[00:02:33.960 --> 00:02:34.600] Okay.
[00:02:34.600 --> 00:02:37.960] And there is a risk that be kind, listeners.
[00:02:37.960 --> 00:02:39.720] If I fuck something up, be kind.
[00:02:39.720 --> 00:02:40.600] Yeah, it's fine.
[00:02:40.600 --> 00:02:43.080] If you do fuck something up, it's two weeks ago that you felt like this.
[00:02:43.080 --> 00:02:43.640] It's fine.
[00:02:43.880 --> 00:02:46.120] By the time this comes out, you'll be feeling fine again.
[00:02:46.440 --> 00:02:50.760] Yeah, and then realize, then have all the self-hate of having fucked it up.
[00:02:50.760 --> 00:02:52.120] It's great, isn't it?
[00:02:52.600 --> 00:02:57.240] A few months ago, we talked about the morning shed that's become popular on social media.
[00:02:57.400 --> 00:03:13.240] So this idea that you just layer up some self-care products that you wear overnight to enhance your appearance by removing those layers in the morning, shedding your mouse tape, your satin bonnet, your overnight face mask to look hydrated, well-rested, and youthful the next morning with your bouncy, glossy hair, and plump skin.
[00:03:13.240 --> 00:03:20.600] I think the whole time we were doing that story, I had the idea in my head that the morning shed was somewhere a wooden building you go to grieve.
[00:03:20.600 --> 00:03:21.080] Yeah, absolutely.
[00:03:21.080 --> 00:03:22.920] That's the exact thing the entire time.
[00:03:22.920 --> 00:03:28.920] I don't know if we did that joke at the time or if it just lived in my head all the way through the time we recorded around.
[00:03:29.560 --> 00:03:33.240] I think I did say that at the time because I specifically didn't just say it just now.
[00:03:33.400 --> 00:03:36.440] I thought, no, I definitely made that joke at the time.
[00:03:38.360 --> 00:03:57.760] There was one product I didn't mention that I often see in the morning shed videos because it doesn't really fit with the wear overnight theme, but many influencers will fit it into their what's the opposite of shedding, like piling, piling on, yeah, yeah, um, like the pre-sleep routine that is part of the overnight beauty or self-care regimen.
[00:03:57.760 --> 00:04:05.360] So, the products I'm talking about is the LED face masks that have become utterly ubiquitous on social media, they are everywhere.
[00:04:05.760 --> 00:04:10.720] I have not seen these at all, despite me being the one who suggested this story to you.
[00:04:10.720 --> 00:04:16.240] Because a couple of weeks ago, listener April Puff got in touch to say, Have you guys ever done anything about these?
[00:04:16.240 --> 00:04:19.200] I see them everywhere, and I have no idea what they even are.
[00:04:19.200 --> 00:04:25.040] I just went, Oh, that's an excellent suggestion, and immediately passed it to you because this doesn't sound like a me suggestion.
[00:04:25.040 --> 00:04:26.400] Have you googled them?
[00:04:26.400 --> 00:04:34.560] No, you should live now Google them to see what they look like because they do look quite horrific, and listeners should do the same.
[00:04:34.560 --> 00:04:44.640] They're really creepy looking because they are usually a white mask that is, you know, like the you know, you won't know, like the fold-out paper masks that you get that are like bigger than your actual face.
[00:04:44.720 --> 00:04:47.200] They look like it's the guy from Friday the 13th.
[00:04:47.200 --> 00:04:48.080] Yeah, that's what it looks like.
[00:04:48.080 --> 00:04:55.200] Yeah, it looks like Jason Voorhees or American Cycle with red emitting light from behind it shining onto your face.
[00:04:55.200 --> 00:04:59.920] Yeah, I'd never seen these before in my life, I didn't even Google them at the time, but yeah, those are pretty weird, aren't they?
[00:04:59.920 --> 00:05:05.200] They're kind of creepy looking and they've become completely ubiquitous on social media.
[00:05:05.200 --> 00:05:08.480] If you had a happy one and a sad one, you could stand outside a theater.
[00:05:08.480 --> 00:05:36.280] Oh, yeah, be the baftas, attract people in, and they're they're pushed by a whole range of different types of influencer, not just those who do the morning sheds and those over-exaggerated beauty routines, but also even from the feminist influencers who insist their goal is to empower women to embrace their body and face and allow themselves to age naturally and fluctuate in their physical appearance with confidence as it's a natural part of life that we shouldn't demonize.
[00:05:36.280 --> 00:05:42.520] Of course, the demonization, which is often particularly prevalent in relation to women, femmes, or people perceived as women.
[00:05:42.520 --> 00:05:53.800] So, as you say, Marsh, this was highlighted to us again by a listener April who told us there seem to be boatloads of these things on the market, supposedly using photo biomodulation to cure any number of ills.
[00:05:53.800 --> 00:05:58.760] Fully 50% of my YouTube ads are for one brand or another of these things.
[00:05:58.760 --> 00:06:08.280] And it was quite a well-timed question because my attention had also recently been drawn to a TV show that was released in April this year on Channel 4 called What's the Big Deal?
[00:06:08.280 --> 00:06:09.960] Britain's Best Buys.
[00:06:09.960 --> 00:06:15.080] Okay, and do you think it was a well-timed question because she was called April and you watch a TV show in April?
[00:06:15.080 --> 00:06:16.520] I watched a TV show from April.
[00:06:16.520 --> 00:06:17.240] From April.
[00:06:17.240 --> 00:06:18.040] Okay, okay.
[00:06:18.360 --> 00:06:28.120] So this is a consumer affairs show, which is EastEnder's Natalie Cassidy put hyped up products to the test and look at whether it's worth spending money on the things that social media pushes at us.
[00:06:28.200 --> 00:06:31.560] It's a TV version of the BBC podcast Sliced Bread.
[00:06:31.560 --> 00:06:32.200] I guess so.
[00:06:32.200 --> 00:06:33.560] Which is exactly the same thing.
[00:06:33.560 --> 00:06:35.960] And so, yeah, she's taught, she introduced.
[00:06:35.960 --> 00:06:40.360] I've watched the first episode of the show, which is the episode that they look at the LED face masks.
[00:06:40.360 --> 00:06:51.480] And she talks about essentially like the TikTok shop, that things are being, products are being pushed at people, specifically through social media, especially through TikTok, and do they live up to the hype sort of thing.
[00:06:51.480 --> 00:06:56.920] I obviously went into it not having high hopes because we know how these kinds of consumer affairs shows often go.
[00:06:57.560 --> 00:07:04.440] They'll get an expert on and they'll provide a bit of cop-out balance, but they'll largely be quite promotional about the things that they're talking about.
[00:07:04.680 --> 00:07:15.680] Often they'll want to find some things that actually work amongst all of the bullshit and they'll work quite hard to do that rather than just taking a good look at the things that are out there and just fairly and squarely saying what works and what doesn't.
[00:07:15.920 --> 00:07:25.280] That being said, I thought for what it is for a consumer affairs show on channel four that's targeted at a particular kind of audience of people, I thought it was pretty good the first episode.
[00:07:25.280 --> 00:07:29.280] They looked at cold water plungers specifically for mood boosting.
[00:07:29.280 --> 00:07:34.400] So they talked about the fact that it's sometimes used by athletes for muscle healing, but they weren't talking about that.
[00:07:34.400 --> 00:07:42.960] They were specifically talking about for mood boosting and concluded with the pretty reasonable take that it does have a measurable physiological effect on the body.
[00:07:42.960 --> 00:07:43.760] Of course it does.
[00:07:43.760 --> 00:07:45.040] Like you're jumping and cold water.
[00:07:45.120 --> 00:07:52.720] Your body reacts to cold water that could explain a reported improvement in mood, but there isn't enough research to say that it has an impact on mood.
[00:07:52.720 --> 00:08:01.600] I think they've just listened to episodes of sliced bread and then gone, yeah, we'll do that then, because I'm sure there was one on sliced bread that is a perfect description of the entire episode.
[00:08:01.600 --> 00:08:03.840] I'm sure they did one on Core Plungers.
[00:08:03.840 --> 00:08:06.640] So the other thing they looked at was packing cubes.
[00:08:06.640 --> 00:08:07.360] Okay, no.
[00:08:07.360 --> 00:08:08.400] Packing cubes.
[00:08:08.400 --> 00:08:14.640] So packing cubes are fabric cuboid more than cubes.
[00:08:14.640 --> 00:08:16.160] They're usually like long and thin.
[00:08:16.160 --> 00:08:16.320] Okay.
[00:08:16.640 --> 00:08:24.960] Pack your clothes in them and then they have like an extender zip, you know, like of um you know like your suitcases that have the extended river digits to shrink them.
[00:08:24.960 --> 00:08:26.640] Yeah, you can shrink your cubes.
[00:08:26.640 --> 00:08:34.720] So they're promoted as a space saver and for organization and they came to the conclusion that they are great for organization, which they are.
[00:08:34.720 --> 00:08:37.600] Yeah, I mean, I'm but they don't work for space saving.
[00:08:37.600 --> 00:08:37.920] Really?
[00:08:37.920 --> 00:08:38.160] Yeah.
[00:08:38.160 --> 00:08:38.960] That's bizarre.
[00:08:38.960 --> 00:08:40.160] They literally put it to the test.
[00:08:40.160 --> 00:08:43.200] They got somebody from the witch consumer.
[00:08:43.200 --> 00:08:47.160] Listeners, in case you're confused, it's witch W-H-I-C-H.
[00:08:46.960 --> 00:08:47.560] It's a...
[00:08:48.640 --> 00:08:53.600] Question mark at the end, as in the Consumer Protection magazine, not which, as in witches.
[00:08:54.160 --> 00:08:55.200] They didn't get a witch.
[00:08:56.400 --> 00:09:00.440] They compared this space-saving device with spells from a witch.
[00:08:59.760 --> 00:09:06.760] So they got a guy from Witch and a social media person who is famous for folding things.
[00:09:07.080 --> 00:09:08.120] Fuck me.
[00:09:09.400 --> 00:09:13.560] And she really, the folding lady really likes packing cubes.
[00:09:13.560 --> 00:09:19.400] And the witch consumer guy was skeptical of them and actually said afterwards that they have put them to the test.
[00:09:19.400 --> 00:09:29.320] And it showed basically what they showed in this little test between the two of them that they packed exactly the same things in exactly the same suitcase, but she used the packing cubes and he didn't.
[00:09:29.320 --> 00:09:32.280] And she was struggling to close the bag and he had more space in the bag.
[00:09:34.120 --> 00:09:35.480] It didn't take up less space.
[00:09:35.480 --> 00:09:37.720] But these are to go into suitcases rather than to package.
[00:09:38.200 --> 00:09:42.200] You pack everything into your cubes and then you pack the cubes into the suitcase.
[00:09:42.920 --> 00:09:48.120] Yeah, that now no longer surprises me that they don't particularly work because you're just packing something extra.
[00:09:48.120 --> 00:09:48.680] Yeah, you're packing something.
[00:09:50.440 --> 00:09:55.800] But like the idea of doing that to put them like a vacuum pack for under your bed.
[00:09:55.960 --> 00:09:56.440] But that's different.
[00:09:56.440 --> 00:09:56.840] You're right.
[00:09:56.840 --> 00:09:57.960] Like sucking all the air out.
[00:09:57.960 --> 00:09:58.360] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:09:58.680 --> 00:10:03.560] But these are literally just a zipper because you can't hoover to suck your air out once you're in your foreign country on holiday.
[00:10:03.800 --> 00:10:04.120] Yeah, exactly.
[00:10:04.200 --> 00:10:05.400] You've got your hoover with you.
[00:10:05.400 --> 00:10:05.800] Yeah.
[00:10:05.800 --> 00:10:10.600] It would be great if you could pack a full-sized hoofer in them, but not quite how it works.
[00:10:10.600 --> 00:10:15.800] So yeah, they concluded that they're good for organization, but not good for saving space.
[00:10:15.800 --> 00:10:27.000] And they looked at lion's main mushrooms for focus and memory, coming to the conclusion that the scientific research isn't sufficient, but there is a new and ongoing pilot study in humans that is promising.
[00:10:27.000 --> 00:10:30.520] But they were very much on the side of there isn't evidence to suggest that this works right now.
[00:10:30.840 --> 00:10:33.960] Lions main mushrooms, how do they feel about lion's made ice cream?
[00:10:35.240 --> 00:10:44.120] And then they looked at the LED face masks, which did lead to a lovely interaction as an influencer asks Natalie as she's wearing it, How do you feel in it?
[00:10:44.120 --> 00:10:46.960] To which she responds, a little bit of a prat, to be honest.
[00:10:47.360 --> 00:10:48.560] Sounds about right.
[00:10:49.200 --> 00:10:54.880] So the show says about LED face masks that so they spoke to an expert called Dr.
[00:10:54.880 --> 00:11:04.400] Echikami, who's a consultant at UCL and also runs Adonia Medical Clinic in London Clinic specializing in aesthetics and health.
[00:11:04.400 --> 00:11:16.800] And she explained that the evidence shows that red light can upregulate mitochondrial function, which slows wrinkle and pigmentation development and increases collagen production through fibroblasts as well as reducing inflammation.
[00:11:16.800 --> 00:11:33.040] She clarifies that the research has been shown for professional devices, but that she believes at-home masks can be used to supplement as long as you're looking for a device with a wavelength of 600 to 750 nanometers, and ideally one with the apparent boosting wavelength of near-infrared.
[00:11:33.360 --> 00:11:40.320] She says that at-home masks often have smaller bulbs, and ideally, consumers should look for devices with lots of bulbs to get the best effect.
[00:11:40.320 --> 00:12:00.640] Yeah, and I imagine, regardless of whether the professional-grade versions work particularly well, I imagine a lot of the ones you're getting from your TikTok shop or from the 50% of YouTube ads that ApoPoff is getting aren't likely to have the high-grade bulbs and are much more likely to be kind of a kid's version with a bulb in it, essentially like cheap knockoffs from Timu that have been drop shipped.
[00:12:00.960 --> 00:12:01.600] Yeah.
[00:12:01.920 --> 00:12:05.600] So using light therapeutically is an ancient idea.
[00:12:05.600 --> 00:12:17.840] Obviously, ancient records aren't terribly complete, so we know about sun worship or the association between sun and health, but we don't really know necessarily what they'd observed to give them the idea that it related to health.
[00:12:17.840 --> 00:12:26.320] But so, much later in history, but still quite early, we had more detailed records of what scientists observed in relation to sunlight affecting the body.
[00:12:26.320 --> 00:12:32.600] So, in the early 19th century, a report was published on the impact of light and colour on emotional state.
[00:12:33.240 --> 00:12:39.720] And by the end of the 19th century, there were dedicated sanatoriums developed for sunlight therapy specifically.
[00:12:40.040 --> 00:12:50.040] And we know that sunlight does have an impact on human health, even more so when access to nutrients or good hygiene is reduced because we know that UV light in sunlight kills bacteria.
[00:12:50.040 --> 00:12:55.640] So, if you have skin complaints that are caused or exacerbated by infection or presence of bacteria, then exposure to sunlight can help.
[00:12:55.800 --> 00:13:02.600] Similarly, we know that our body uses sunlight to make vitamin D, so sun exposure can help with symptoms of vitamin deficiency, including rickets.
[00:13:03.080 --> 00:13:07.320] And obviously, we now know more about how it can affect our mood and seasonal affective disorder.
[00:13:07.320 --> 00:13:16.040] And that thing where your tanya bumhole-that's obviously perineum tanning, definitely very, very, very evidence-based.
[00:13:16.040 --> 00:13:19.560] Tanya bumhole sounds like somebody who's written a letter to Viz.
[00:13:22.760 --> 00:13:37.800] But as we've developed a scientific understanding of light therapy, we've also learned about the harms of ultraviolet wavelength because UV light is what causes sun damage, which can lead to skin cancer and aging of the skin, including hyperpigmentation and wrinkle formation.
[00:13:38.120 --> 00:13:45.320] Once we start to understand how the light works, we also started to understand how to separate light into its different wavelengths and their properties.
[00:13:45.320 --> 00:13:50.520] And so, we now know that it's UV light that's important in treating the skin condition psoriasis.
[00:13:50.520 --> 00:14:00.840] So, April mentioned this in her message to us: saying, While I have seen some good information saying ultraviolet light can help with skin conditions like psoriasis, I don't know of any research into other claims being made.
[00:14:00.840 --> 00:14:06.360] So, we now have medical devices that we can use to treat psoriasis using light therapy without relying on sunlight.
[00:14:06.360 --> 00:14:13.960] Sunlight obviously can have variable UV levels on a day-to-day basis and is less effective than the targeted light therapy that we now have access to.
[00:14:13.960 --> 00:14:17.440] Yeah, and it's vastly less reliable, especially when you live in, for example, the UK.
[00:14:17.680 --> 00:14:27.440] Yeah, yeah, you can't predict whether you're going to get enough therapeutic dose of the sunlight in the UK on a day-to-day basis to get that reliable impact on your skin condition.
[00:14:27.440 --> 00:14:34.800] And the flip side of it is that the UV and sunlight can also be damaging because we don't get just the narrow bands that's going to be helpful.
[00:14:34.960 --> 00:14:42.080] The UV is where we get the crossover point from ionising and non-ionizing radiation happens in the UV band.
[00:14:42.080 --> 00:14:42.480] Yeah.
[00:14:42.480 --> 00:14:49.120] Yeah, so predominantly, it's quite lucky really that it's UVB light that treats psoriasis best.
[00:14:49.120 --> 00:14:55.680] And UVB is the light that causes sunburn, but it causes less cancer causing damage to the skin.
[00:14:55.760 --> 00:15:00.160] It still can cause cancer causing damage to the skin, but it's UVA that's the really bad one for that.
[00:15:00.160 --> 00:15:12.320] UVB causes a lot less cancer causing damage to the skin, so it's much safer than UVA, which is the one that mostly causes skin cancer and skin damage that leaves the appearance of aging, but doesn't give you that sunburn.
[00:15:12.320 --> 00:15:17.200] And it's UVA, if I remember rightly, I haven't written this in my notes, that can travel through glass.
[00:15:17.200 --> 00:15:30.960] So people think, oh, well, I can sit in front of glass all day without sun cream on because I'm not getting burnt, but it's the UVA that penetrates the glass and can then cause the skin cancer causing damage or the aging causing damage.
[00:15:31.040 --> 00:15:31.760] I don't realise that.
[00:15:31.760 --> 00:15:32.480] Interesting.
[00:15:32.480 --> 00:15:35.760] So don't rely on glass to protect you from the sun.
[00:15:36.720 --> 00:15:50.640] UVA light is occasionally used to treat psoriasis, but according to the National Psoriasis Foundation, it only really works alongside a light-sensitizing agent, which can be applied topically or ingested to make your skin more sensitive to the sun.
[00:15:50.640 --> 00:16:02.040] So, psoriasis itself is caused by an overactive immune system, which causes skin cell growth to speed up and skin cells to shed more frequently, which can cause an over-accumulation of skin cells on the skin surface.
[00:15:59.600 --> 00:16:07.240] UV light therapy is reaching the skin cells just under the surface and just slowing down their growth.
[00:16:07.560 --> 00:16:10.600] We also have other ways to treat skin with light.
[00:16:10.600 --> 00:16:13.320] We can use laser light to treat skin as well.
[00:16:13.320 --> 00:16:23.800] Typically, for things like rosacea and barracous veins, it's used to damage the tissue in very specific areas to encourage the and encourage the tissue healing pathways of the skin to activate and heal the area.
[00:16:23.800 --> 00:16:28.760] So, you're literally laser ablating the veins that are causing the redness of the skin where you've got barracous veins.
[00:16:28.760 --> 00:16:39.960] But these LED face masks are a different type of light altogether, also known as low-level light therapy, LLLT, or photo-biomodulation.
[00:16:39.960 --> 00:16:47.880] And the research into this type of light therapy often lumps together red light therapy and near-infrared light therapy.
[00:16:47.880 --> 00:17:01.400] So, the wavelength range is between 620 and 810 nanometers, which means it's not always easy to pick apart which particular wavelength is having the physiological effect on the skin.
[00:17:01.720 --> 00:17:05.880] And obviously, it's important to note the difference between LED and laser.
[00:17:05.880 --> 00:17:07.880] Laser is very much more specifically directed.
[00:17:08.040 --> 00:17:18.360] You can have lasers that are in that wavelength, but they're just much more kind of laser-focused, much more directed, and much more intense than an LED light, which is which is much less intense.
[00:17:18.360 --> 00:17:20.440] So, in 2020, a plastic surgeon, Dr.
[00:17:20.440 --> 00:17:27.400] Graham Glass, wrote a pair of reviews on the evidence for photobiomodulation therapy, which I think go really nicely together.
[00:17:27.400 --> 00:17:39.240] So, one is titled Photobiomodulation: A Review of the Molecular Evidence for Low-Level Light Therapy, and it looks specifically at the pathways by which photobiomodulation might have an impact on the skin.
[00:17:39.240 --> 00:17:42.600] So, the kind of molecular changes that can happen.
[00:17:42.600 --> 00:17:45.360] And here, he highlights some of the evidence that we heard from Dr.
[00:17:45.600 --> 00:17:59.520] Edgerkemi on Natalie Cassidy's What's the Big Deal, namely that in cell lines and animal models, certain wavelengths of light stimulate production of cytochrome C oxidase, a protein which is important for energy production by the mitochondria.
[00:17:59.520 --> 00:18:04.160] So, light therapy, this low-level light therapy might enhance mitochondrial function.
[00:18:04.480 --> 00:18:20.640] He highlights that in mouse and cell models, light of certain wavelengths can regulate oxidative stress, cell signaling, and gene expression in ways that can improve cell proliferation and enhance collagen production, and that in animal models, certain wavelengths of light can reduce inflammation.
[00:18:21.120 --> 00:18:29.440] Might have noticed something in particular in those statements: in that this is predominantly in animal and cell models.
[00:18:29.440 --> 00:18:40.240] What we're lacking is evidence that these pathways are similarly regulated in the human body, or whether the regulation of those pathways leads to improved outcomes in humans.
[00:18:40.880 --> 00:19:06.720] While there are a couple of studies that he references in humans, for the most part, he highlights that the evidence is lacking and concludes PBM photobiomodulation is a phenomenon that enhances cytochrome C oxidase-mediated mitochondrial ATP production and hence the activation of cell signaling mechanisms that promote proliferation and differentiation in an anti-inflammatory environment tightly regulated by the manipulation of oxidative and nitrative stress.
[00:19:06.720 --> 00:19:07.600] Okay.
[00:19:08.240 --> 00:19:12.640] Basically, everything I just said before in fancy science works.
[00:19:14.400 --> 00:19:28.560] But he says that LED-based products marketed for skin rejuvenation, androgenic alopecia, adiposity, wound healing, and joint pain use evidence largely extrapolated from pre-clinical data using lasers.
[00:19:28.560 --> 00:19:28.960] Gotcha.
[00:19:29.040 --> 00:19:32.360] So, not using the LED light source.
[00:19:32.680 --> 00:19:46.520] His second review is titled Photobiomodulation: the Clinical Applications of Low-Level Light Therapy and goes beyond the biological plausibility of photobiomodulation and into the actual evidence-based applications.
[00:19:46.520 --> 00:20:10.280] In this review, he explains that today LLLT, being the method by which photobiomodulation is induced, is in widespread use and says that because LEDs operate at power levels below that which is considered by the FDA to constitute a medical hazard, they have not been subject to therapeutic device regulation, and this has paved the way for commercial exploitation.
[00:20:10.280 --> 00:20:18.520] Yeah, okay, so they're not strong enough to be a massive concern to the FDA, and therefore they don't do anything to sort of curtail the market from proliferating.
[00:20:18.520 --> 00:20:20.840] Exactly, they don't need to regulate them as a medical device.
[00:20:20.840 --> 00:20:31.400] And they have, and we'll come to it in a second, they have given clearance to some devices on kind of some safety measures, but not on they're not regulating it based on it as a medical.
[00:20:31.640 --> 00:20:36.120] Did you see anything about the MHRA, it's like the UK equivalent of the FDA?
[00:20:36.120 --> 00:20:37.400] I had a bit of a look.
[00:20:37.400 --> 00:20:42.600] I struggled to find, so I don't think the MHRA regulate them as a medical device either.
[00:20:42.600 --> 00:20:53.160] I found one report of the MRHA blocking importation of one device because it wasn't safe electrically, it hadn't passed the electrical testing.
[00:20:53.160 --> 00:20:58.680] But I can't find any routine regulation from the MHRA on these sorts of devices.
[00:20:58.680 --> 00:21:03.800] Yeah, and that safety thing, I think normally it's not the MHRA who rule on the safety of devices.
[00:21:03.800 --> 00:21:06.680] That's why you get that kind of CE kind of certified.
[00:21:06.680 --> 00:21:07.080] What is that?
[00:21:07.080 --> 00:21:17.280] I'm not sure what the CE thing is, but like the certified mark on it, which they always like to, the people who market these devices will say, Well, you know, it's got this mark, which means it's been certified.
[00:21:14.840 --> 00:21:21.680] It's like, yes, it's been certified to say that the electrical circuitry won't give you an electric shock.
[00:21:21.920 --> 00:21:25.680] Yeah, it's literally safe to use, but that doesn't mean that it does what it says it's going to do.
[00:21:25.680 --> 00:21:30.240] Yeah, and if something fails that, it's easy for the MHRA to say, well, it's a no-brainer that you can't bring that in.
[00:21:30.240 --> 00:21:37.360] But when it comes to actually just making medical claims for a device that isn't outright dangerous, the MHRA can be a bit slow to move on that.
[00:21:37.520 --> 00:21:53.440] Yeah, and there are some claims that these devices are making that it for sure that are not touching on today that go way beyond the reach of just kind of skin effects because these LED face masks are predominantly claiming to be good for rejuvenating the skin or preventing aging.
[00:21:53.440 --> 00:21:59.840] And that's broadly reasonably fine claims for them to be making based on the evidence that we're talking about today.
[00:21:59.840 --> 00:22:14.800] But when it comes to making more significant medical claims, some other LED-based devices, probably not the LED face masks, might be making medical claims that would be subject to regulation because they are not correct medical claims.
[00:22:15.360 --> 00:22:23.040] And those should obviously, where appropriate, be reported to the relevant bodies because they're making claims that should not be being made.
[00:22:23.680 --> 00:22:25.600] So Dr.
[00:22:25.600 --> 00:22:33.840] Glass summarized the clinical studies into LLLT, including identifying the methodological flaws in those studies.
[00:22:33.840 --> 00:22:45.120] And he concludes that photobiomodulation by the non-thermal irradiation tissue with laser or LED-derived light is backed by enough experimental and clinical evidence that it is here to stay.
[00:22:45.120 --> 00:23:04.920] But he cautions: although clinical trials provide some evidence for efficacy, especially with regards to body contouring and skin rejuvenation, the clinical literature lags well behind the commercial exploitation, well-designed, adequately powered, independent clinical trials will help us answer some of the unresolved questions.
[00:23:05.560 --> 00:23:10.040] And I think this really highlights a recurring issue that we see in the wellness space all the time.
[00:23:10.040 --> 00:23:13.560] There's a hint of something worth exploring in the medical literature.
[00:23:13.560 --> 00:23:29.320] So the commercialization pipeline springs into action, and the products that are then on the market aren't regulated as medical devices, so they can proliferate out of control, sometimes not telling consumers what sort of wavelengths of light they're using and making bold claims about what they can do.
[00:23:29.320 --> 00:23:32.760] The FDA have cleared some devices for particular use.
[00:23:32.760 --> 00:23:35.400] So speaking to popular science dermatologist Dr.
[00:23:35.400 --> 00:23:46.120] Samantha Venkatesh says, if you buy a device to make sure that there's some FDA clearance, which is a specific term, they will not approve these devices because they're not medical devices.
[00:23:46.120 --> 00:23:56.040] They wouldn't go through the FDA approval process, but they can clear them, which is a specific term for they clear it if it's similar to a product that's already been cleared.
[00:23:56.040 --> 00:23:56.600] Yes, basically.
[00:23:57.320 --> 00:23:59.160] So I don't know what the first one is.
[00:23:59.160 --> 00:24:00.280] I don't know how.
[00:24:00.520 --> 00:24:03.400] If you go all the way back, one of them has to be the first one.
[00:24:03.400 --> 00:24:04.040] Yeah, I don't know.
[00:24:04.360 --> 00:24:05.080] I don't know.
[00:24:05.080 --> 00:24:06.040] I don't quite know how that works.
[00:24:07.320 --> 00:24:11.000] They get cleared if they're similar enough to a device that already has been cleared.
[00:24:11.000 --> 00:24:11.400] So Dr.
[00:24:11.400 --> 00:24:21.480] Samantha Venkatesh says to make sure that there's some FDA clearance on it to make sure it's been tested and safe and is actually emitting the wavelength of light that you want.
[00:24:21.480 --> 00:24:38.840] If you do purchase a device that has passed electrical testing to make sure that it's safe to use, and this is like whether it's a fire risk or, as you say, electric shock risk, rather than whether it's safe to use the LED lights on the skin, I think all the evidence suggests that using these is probably like the lights not going to cause any harm.
[00:24:38.840 --> 00:24:39.880] It's LED red light.
[00:24:39.880 --> 00:24:41.880] It's not of a wavelength that's going to cause any harm.
[00:24:42.200 --> 00:24:50.000] I think it's probably okay to use these face masks as long as you know that it's safe and it is delivering the wavelength of light that it claims to be delivering.
[00:24:50.320 --> 00:24:55.680] And it might even have some slight benefit on skin texture, but the evidence is really lacking.
[00:24:55.680 --> 00:25:02.240] Where there is evidence for red or near-infrared light, it's mostly using a laser light source.
[00:25:02.240 --> 00:25:10.000] Where there is evidence for LED source devices, they're the ones in the doctors' offices, the professional ones, and not the ones for home use.
[00:25:10.320 --> 00:25:17.600] So much of the research so far is done in animal or cell models, and the stuff done in humans has methodological flaws.
[00:25:17.600 --> 00:25:19.120] So we just don't know if they work.
[00:25:19.120 --> 00:25:24.800] We don't have enough evidence examining the boundaries of efficacy for these sorts of devices specifically either.
[00:25:24.800 --> 00:25:37.440] We don't know, you know, there's this big range of wavelengths that have been studied, but they've not, we've not kind of narrowed it down to the specific bands for what they do or even what intensity is going to work, for example.
[00:25:37.440 --> 00:25:52.400] So at the lower intense intensities you're going to get with the at-home devices, just because the bulbs are physically smaller and because you might have fewer of them, you might not actually be getting enough of a dose for it to do anything of any sort compared to the professional ones.
[00:25:52.720 --> 00:26:00.480] At worst, obviously, they're dangerous because any new trend like this can lead to a quick production of electrical devices which haven't been adequately tested for safety.
[00:26:00.480 --> 00:26:03.120] But as I say, the LED light itself should be safe to use.
[00:26:03.120 --> 00:26:06.640] It's just whether there are electrical flaws with the devices.
[00:26:06.640 --> 00:26:14.000] But at best, I think it's quite likely that the majority of devices currently available on the market for home use are just a waste of time and money.
[00:26:14.000 --> 00:26:18.240] I don't think, I think it's reasonable to assume that they're not doing anything.
[00:26:18.240 --> 00:26:18.720] Dr.
[00:26:18.720 --> 00:26:35.800] Glass summarizes it in his review, stating: A reasonable body of clinical trial evidence exists to support the role of low-energy red or near-infrared light as a safe and effective method of skin rejuvenation, treatment of acne, vulgaris, and alopecia, and especially body contouring.
[00:26:36.120 --> 00:26:43.720] Methodologic flaws, small patient cohorts, and industry funding means there is ample scope to improve the quality of evidence.
[00:26:43.720 --> 00:26:55.880] It remains unclear if light-emitting diode sources induce physiologic effects of comparable nature and magnitude to those of the laser-based systems that are used in most of the higher-quality studies.
[00:26:56.200 --> 00:27:08.280] Overall, I kind of understand the temptation to use LED face masks, especially when there are so many articles that are essentially saying what I've said here, but with a positive spin on it.
[00:27:08.280 --> 00:27:14.120] With a, well, there is some evidence that shows that they work, but you know, make sure you're using the right kind.
[00:27:14.440 --> 00:27:21.560] But you know, we need more research in such a positive way that it encourages people to buy them, not least because, well, they're safe.
[00:27:21.560 --> 00:27:23.240] So, people are welcome to give them a try.
[00:27:23.240 --> 00:27:29.400] I don't, I wouldn't necessarily say absolutely avoid them, but I just think it's a waste of energy.
[00:27:29.560 --> 00:27:31.320] Pun not intended.
[00:27:31.640 --> 00:27:33.080] It's also a waste of energy.
[00:27:33.080 --> 00:27:36.200] I mean, it probably is also a waste of the energy that you take.
[00:27:36.200 --> 00:27:38.840] Some of them are chargeable, aren't they?
[00:27:38.840 --> 00:27:39.960] Some you have to plug in.
[00:27:40.280 --> 00:27:48.120] So, this is why the morning shed people say to not sleep in them because some you have to plug in and you don't want to leave it plugged in and on all night because that is a fire.
[00:27:48.280 --> 00:27:49.880] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
[00:27:49.880 --> 00:28:00.520] So, but yeah, some of them are like battery-powered, so you charge them up and then use them to the point that I've seen people wandering around doing TikTok videos of them wandering around streets with the masks on because they're not like yeah.
[00:28:00.520 --> 00:28:02.920] I see people doing the hoovering in them and things like that.
[00:28:02.920 --> 00:28:06.200] I say, I just pop this on and then do the housework, and I just forget it's there.
[00:28:06.200 --> 00:28:11.240] So, I'm not sure how you forget it's there, but it's blaring red light in your face.
[00:28:11.240 --> 00:28:15.680] Yeah, I just forget it's there while I'm taking a video of me specifically saying that I'm wearing it.
[00:28:14.840 --> 00:28:19.120] Yes, yeah, and I yeah, I've seen a lot of that as well.
[00:28:19.200 --> 00:28:27.200] And in fact, in this consumer show that Natalie Cassidy does, they give them to they have a bunch of families that go off and test the things that they're testing.
[00:28:27.200 --> 00:28:30.160] And there's a woman wearing hers and like doing the it's great.
[00:28:30.160 --> 00:28:32.720] I can relax and do the cleaning.
[00:28:32.720 --> 00:28:39.600] And it is this weird thing that people have of like, oh, well, I'm using it because it is giving me space to relax and time to myself.
[00:28:39.600 --> 00:28:42.160] And I've got like a 15-minute treatment so I can have a rest and stuff.
[00:28:42.240 --> 00:28:45.120] And also going, well, now I can relax while I'm doing something else.
[00:28:46.720 --> 00:28:48.560] That's not quite how relaxing it is.
[00:28:48.640 --> 00:28:50.080] It's not magic, yeah.
[00:28:51.040 --> 00:29:00.720] So, and frankly, it probably would at least help with you feeling just a bit more refreshed if you were just lying down for 15 minutes a day and using it.
[00:29:00.720 --> 00:29:08.080] But people aren't doing that because people are using it to like hack their wellness and do cleaning at the same time, which is very bizarre.
[00:29:08.080 --> 00:29:20.160] So I understand the temptation to use LED face masks when we feel our skin is looking a little tired, but ultimately, I'd rather wait until we have more evidence before I consider spending my money on an at-home LED mask.
[00:29:24.000 --> 00:29:28.960] Oh, God, as we record this right now, we are sat in my living room, which is where we record it.
[00:29:29.280 --> 00:29:31.680] There is scaffolding outside of the window currently.
[00:29:33.760 --> 00:29:36.000] Everything seems to happen at once in my life.
[00:29:36.000 --> 00:29:36.960] It's ludicrous.
[00:29:36.960 --> 00:29:40.960] So I probably even mentioned on this show before, I hate water.
[00:29:40.960 --> 00:29:41.760] I'll drink it.
[00:29:41.760 --> 00:29:42.240] That's fine.
[00:29:42.240 --> 00:29:43.040] I'll swim in it.
[00:29:43.040 --> 00:29:43.440] That's fine.
[00:29:43.440 --> 00:29:48.160] But the existence of it falling from the sky, I will cope with when I'm just walking around the streets.
[00:29:48.160 --> 00:29:49.600] I'm largely minded to agree.
[00:29:49.840 --> 00:29:55.440] I don't want it falling on my house anymore because every time water falls anywhere on my house, something goes wrong.
[00:29:55.440 --> 00:29:59.280] I've had leaks from every fucking corner of my house imaginable.
[00:29:59.280 --> 00:30:00.680] I had leaks to the gutter.
[00:30:00.680 --> 00:30:01.960] I had the gutter replaced.
[00:30:01.960 --> 00:30:05.080] The people who replaced the gutter were bad and dodgy.
[00:30:05.080 --> 00:30:07.560] And we should have seen that coming and we didn't see it coming.
[00:30:07.560 --> 00:30:08.840] I'm not looking at you for that, Alice.
[00:30:08.840 --> 00:30:12.920] I'm just saying, generally, like Alice had her gutters done at the same time.
[00:30:12.920 --> 00:30:14.920] By the same people who shouted at me.
[00:30:14.920 --> 00:30:15.800] Who shouted at you?
[00:30:15.800 --> 00:30:17.400] We should have seen that was a bad sign.
[00:30:17.400 --> 00:30:18.760] And they've fucked the gutters up.
[00:30:18.760 --> 00:30:22.840] And so I've had other people come out and look and they've sealed it and they've sealed it and they've sealed it.
[00:30:22.840 --> 00:30:33.800] And I've had to actually get my replaced gutters replaced again, which means scaffolding outside my house where they replace it with big aluminium gutters to match the cast iron ones.
[00:30:33.800 --> 00:30:37.000] And at the same time as doing that, someone's coming to board my loft.
[00:30:37.000 --> 00:30:41.000] Someone's coming to find me finish the bathroom, which is still not finished.
[00:30:41.000 --> 00:30:44.840] Everybody wants to be in my house figure or something all at once.
[00:30:44.840 --> 00:30:47.000] And I work from home and it's just going to be a nightmare.
[00:30:47.000 --> 00:30:52.680] So, yeah, my life is just a succession of people saying, I'll come and do that job now, all at the same time.
[00:30:52.680 --> 00:30:57.160] Of tradies, tradies just seizing in my house and helping them.
[00:30:57.240 --> 00:31:02.200] It's sort of like the opposite of vultures, in that they're not picking the house clean of its bones.
[00:31:02.200 --> 00:31:05.320] They're putting meat onto the ball and making it more robust.
[00:31:05.320 --> 00:31:07.240] But everybody wants to do that all at once.
[00:31:08.200 --> 00:31:09.000] It's stressful.
[00:31:09.000 --> 00:31:11.560] I find the whole thing remarkably stressful.
[00:31:11.560 --> 00:31:13.880] I hate you can chase them away by boiling vinegar.
[00:31:13.880 --> 00:31:15.720] I might need to boil vinegar and just.
[00:31:15.800 --> 00:31:16.440] That's how.
[00:31:16.520 --> 00:31:18.360] Or no, actually, don't let it boil.
[00:31:18.520 --> 00:31:20.120] Yeah, that was Alice.
[00:31:21.560 --> 00:31:22.200] You don't let it boil.
[00:31:23.080 --> 00:31:24.040] Not boiling hot.
[00:31:24.040 --> 00:31:29.320] Also, it's going to be the right type of vinegar because when I posted about, obviously, I covered this on a recent show and I put it on the magazine.
[00:31:29.320 --> 00:31:32.840] When I wrote about it in the magazine, I said white wine vinegar too many times.
[00:31:32.840 --> 00:31:34.280] And somebody on Reddit pointed that out.
[00:31:34.280 --> 00:31:35.560] It's like, yeah, you're right.
[00:31:35.560 --> 00:31:36.360] It's white vinegar.
[00:31:36.360 --> 00:31:37.720] Not white wine vinegar.
[00:31:37.720 --> 00:31:38.120] It's different.
[00:31:38.440 --> 00:31:40.360] You said white vinegar a lot of the time as well.
[00:31:40.360 --> 00:31:40.760] You might have seen it.
[00:31:40.920 --> 00:31:43.400] On the show I did, but not in the article that I wrote.
[00:31:43.400 --> 00:33:16.680] Oh, I didn't edit that one no i'll read it by the self responsibility for that um yeah i was sure you said because i would have i would have corrected you if you'd said white wine vinegar it's not it's white vinegar i mean try try either it doesn't matter they're both vinegar well shit gonna do the same thing i'm enjoying a bit of apple cider vinegar at the minute and i'm feeling very like woo what do you like about apple cider vinegar well i've i basically discovered it as a salad dressing it's great on salad with a little bit of oil and sugar it also detoxes your insides as you're uh as you're as you're drinking it and you can tell because your socks go brown or whatever i don't know what's going on also you don't get cancer as well it kills your cancer that's true because all of your cancer's there that reminds me i need to finish my apple cider vinegar article that i wrote like two years ago it was two years ago yeah yeah it's on my list of like alice are you going to finish the you suggested this article are you going to finish it it's been two years now well i did it on the show i just then didn't turn it into a proper stuff changed between then and i was planning to publish it so i now need to add some extra extra stuff to it yeah that's true of some of your other articles that one of the articles you wrote about somebody and he's gone to prison subsequently so so i need to update the article to include that yeah i've had endless trouble because obviously the weather's been very hot it's been very very hot and it's weird the hot weather as well because i get up in the morning and it's not too bad and i sit at work all day and it's not too bad and then somehow it gets really hot in the evening yeah i don't like that and it's it just gets hot and at night and so i'm sweltering there at night.
[00:33:16.680 --> 00:33:19.000] I'm still sleeping on top of the covers at the moment.
[00:33:19.000 --> 00:33:19.480] Yeah.
[00:33:19.480 --> 00:33:27.240] That's had a whole conversation on the skeptics with the K Discord about whether we should be doing that, whether you just need a plain sheet, whether you should have any duvet.
[00:33:27.560 --> 00:33:28.920] Alice uses a sheet.
[00:33:26.880 --> 00:33:33.160] The discussion was not about whether you should do that or whether you should use a sheet.
[00:33:33.160 --> 00:33:37.560] The discussion was, Marsh, why are you using a full duvet in the hot weather?
[00:33:37.560 --> 00:33:39.720] I'm using the summer duvet.
[00:33:39.720 --> 00:33:40.920] It's the summer duvet.
[00:33:40.920 --> 00:33:42.120] I've got a winter duvet.
[00:33:42.120 --> 00:33:44.040] I don't use that, although it's much snuggler.
[00:33:44.600 --> 00:33:45.400] I like it so much.
[00:33:45.400 --> 00:33:47.160] It just gets you up, but I like it so much.
[00:33:47.560 --> 00:33:50.120] What's the tog of your summer duvet?
[00:33:50.120 --> 00:33:51.960] I mean, I can't remember top of my head.
[00:33:51.960 --> 00:33:53.160] It's going to be about four and a half togs.
[00:33:53.640 --> 00:33:55.480] It's like maybe a five in that kind of region.
[00:33:55.480 --> 00:33:58.360] And the winter one might be twice as much or three quarters.
[00:33:59.240 --> 00:34:00.440] I've got duvets.
[00:34:00.440 --> 00:34:03.960] I've got a summer one, which is like four and a half tog, right?
[00:34:03.960 --> 00:34:07.880] I've got a winter one, which is like nine tog, but it's got little poppers on them.
[00:34:07.960 --> 00:34:10.120] You join them together, so you end up with like 13.
[00:34:10.280 --> 00:34:11.000] But you can't do that.
[00:34:11.240 --> 00:34:16.920] I tried that once in the middle of the depths of winter, and we like woke up in a hot sweat.
[00:34:17.080 --> 00:34:19.320] It's the heaviest thing in the world.
[00:34:19.320 --> 00:34:21.800] I like the weight of it, but it's just too warm.
[00:34:21.800 --> 00:34:22.520] It's too warm.
[00:34:22.520 --> 00:34:23.880] Too many togs.
[00:34:23.880 --> 00:34:26.360] But it gets really warm in the evenings.
[00:34:26.360 --> 00:34:28.840] And so it's been really oppressively hot recently.
[00:34:28.840 --> 00:34:32.920] And I've had fruit flies in my flat.
[00:34:32.920 --> 00:34:33.640] Oh, that's a good one.
[00:34:34.440 --> 00:34:35.240] Bastard flies.
[00:34:35.400 --> 00:34:36.760] Yeah, they are.
[00:34:36.760 --> 00:34:38.840] They're little, just tiny bastards flying around.
[00:34:38.920 --> 00:34:41.800] I think they've come in on a banana or something.
[00:34:41.800 --> 00:34:42.280] Classic.
[00:34:42.440 --> 00:34:47.880] I read something somewhere you should wash bananas when you get them in because they've often got like no one has ever washed a banana.
[00:34:47.880 --> 00:34:49.560] I have two related facts.
[00:34:49.560 --> 00:34:55.560] One, apparently there is such a job as like a person who like kills the spiders on bananas at banana factories.
[00:34:55.560 --> 00:34:55.960] Okay.
[00:34:55.960 --> 00:34:57.000] What do you mean by apparently?
[00:34:57.000 --> 00:34:58.040] This is a skeptical show.
[00:34:58.040 --> 00:35:00.040] I don't think you can't just get away with apparently.
[00:35:00.360 --> 00:35:05.880] I heard it from an interview with Diane Morgan, is it the who plays Philomena Clunk?
[00:35:05.880 --> 00:35:07.160] She wasn't being Philomena Clunk.
[00:35:08.520 --> 00:35:15.520] She was talking about her show that she does called Mandy, who is a person, a character who has loads of jobs.
[00:35:14.920 --> 00:35:18.320] And one of the jobs she had, she's like, it's based on a real job.
[00:35:14.920 --> 00:35:20.560] She met somebody who does it as a job.
[00:35:20.800 --> 00:35:24.560] So your evidence is a comedy writer.
[00:35:24.800 --> 00:35:26.720] Yeah, no, you're talking bullets.
[00:35:27.120 --> 00:35:29.440] She was being interviewed as herself about the show.
[00:35:30.080 --> 00:35:31.520] Okay, I'm just leaving it there.
[00:35:31.520 --> 00:35:32.080] I'm leaving it there.
[00:35:32.080 --> 00:35:32.880] What's your second fact?
[00:35:33.360 --> 00:35:33.920] As dubious.
[00:35:34.080 --> 00:35:37.200] And listeners won't be aware that Alice was doing a fly swatter meme.
[00:35:38.080 --> 00:35:41.280] Fly swatter mime, rather, at the time that she was describing it.
[00:35:41.440 --> 00:35:42.480] I think it was more of a mallet.
[00:35:42.640 --> 00:35:44.400] That was like a mallet thing, yeah.
[00:35:45.280 --> 00:35:50.800] So my second fact is last week I was making a mask man for tea.
[00:35:51.120 --> 00:35:53.280] I'm now going into a full story in the middle of your story.
[00:35:53.920 --> 00:35:58.480] I was making a masked man for tea and I got my coriander out because I always like to put coriander in a mask man.
[00:35:58.560 --> 00:36:05.520] So I got my coriander out and I was taking a bit off to chop and I spotted a little ladybird that had fallen out of the bunch of coriander.
[00:36:05.520 --> 00:36:06.160] Oh, okay.
[00:36:06.800 --> 00:36:10.160] And it was one of those little black ones with whitey yellow spots.
[00:36:10.320 --> 00:36:11.520] Oh, the ones that they say are poisonous.
[00:36:11.680 --> 00:36:13.360] Well, I don't know if they're bad or not.
[00:36:13.360 --> 00:36:14.320] I couldn't remember.
[00:36:14.320 --> 00:36:15.520] But it looked dead.
[00:36:15.520 --> 00:36:20.640] So I left it on the side of the chopping board with the intention of googling it afterwards.
[00:36:20.640 --> 00:36:24.720] But finish doing the steps of cooking that I was doing at that moment in time.
[00:36:25.040 --> 00:36:29.040] And then we came around to your house to drop off Nicola's birthday present.
[00:36:29.360 --> 00:36:36.960] And we went back and I finished, I'd left tea simmering on the harbour and I was finishing it in and I put the coriander into the Massaman.
[00:36:36.960 --> 00:36:40.880] And then a few minutes later, I was like, there was a ladybird on that chopping board.
[00:36:40.880 --> 00:36:43.120] I now think there's a ladybird in my massaman.
[00:36:44.320 --> 00:36:50.800] So I was like googling to see if, like, is it safe to accidentally eat a ladybird if that happens?
[00:36:51.440 --> 00:36:55.520] And but then it occurred to me that the coriander had come out of the fridge.
[00:36:55.520 --> 00:36:58.160] So I was like, maybe it wasn't a dead ladybird.
[00:36:58.160 --> 00:37:02.200] Maybe it was just a cold ladybird, and it has just subsequently warmed up and wandered off.
[00:37:02.200 --> 00:37:05.880] And that's what I don't remember seeing it on the chopping board when I put it in my coriander.
[00:36:59.600 --> 00:37:07.000] I put it into the coriander.
[00:37:07.560 --> 00:37:09.080] Well, anyway, I carried on cooking.
[00:37:09.240 --> 00:37:14.280] I checked that it was probably not going to do me that much harm to accidentally eat a ladybird.
[00:37:14.280 --> 00:37:17.800] So I carried on cooking, and then a little while later, I saw the ladybird on the worktop.
[00:37:17.800 --> 00:37:20.520] I was like, well, at least I know there isn't one in my food anymore.
[00:37:20.840 --> 00:37:23.800] And then you ate it anyway, because you'd already learned that it was fine.
[00:37:24.760 --> 00:37:32.760] No, I then got Warren to kill it because I think it's one of the ones that is a pest and I didn't want to let it go free into nature.
[00:37:32.760 --> 00:37:33.880] So that was quite sad.
[00:37:33.880 --> 00:37:37.480] Why do you let Warren kill it when either one of your dogs would have loved that job?
[00:37:37.480 --> 00:37:42.840] I don't know if they're poisonous for dogs, and I couldn't be asked researching that when I was still finishing cooking.
[00:37:43.320 --> 00:37:43.880] Fair comment.
[00:37:43.880 --> 00:37:44.520] Fair comment.
[00:37:45.000 --> 00:37:45.880] I don't say they wouldn't.
[00:37:45.880 --> 00:37:47.320] They would just bat it around a bit.
[00:37:47.640 --> 00:37:48.520] They would.
[00:37:49.720 --> 00:37:54.040] So my flat's horribly infested with fruit flies, and I thought, how the fuck can you get rid of the fruit flies?
[00:37:54.040 --> 00:37:56.760] And Katie gets out there with a fucking can of raid, right?
[00:37:56.760 --> 00:37:59.080] And it's like, oh, it's fucking Monsanto in it.
[00:37:59.080 --> 00:38:05.160] It's, you know, you don't want to be out there with a can of raid, especially because it was so hot, and this was the fucking cheek of them.
[00:38:05.160 --> 00:38:09.560] There was a can of raid on the side, and I looked up, and the can itself was covered in fruit flies.
[00:38:09.560 --> 00:38:11.240] Oh, the condensing can a little bit.
[00:38:11.240 --> 00:38:15.320] It was called cocky bastards, you're actually sitting on the can of fly spray.
[00:38:16.040 --> 00:38:19.880] So I had a Google for how do you get rid of fruit flies?
[00:38:19.880 --> 00:38:22.360] And someone recommended a fruit fly trap.
[00:38:22.360 --> 00:38:30.120] And the fruit fly trap is you put a little bit of water in a bowl, sugar in the water, so they kind of think, oh, it's, you know, sugar, I'm going to go eat it.
[00:38:30.120 --> 00:38:37.400] Yeah, and then you put a cardboard box over it, like propped up on a stick, and then a bit of string, and you wait for the fruit fly to go in, and you pull it.
[00:38:38.600 --> 00:38:40.120] Yeah, like a rabbit, yeah.
[00:38:40.840 --> 00:38:45.600] You put some vinegar in it as well, a little bit of vinegar in it, and I use rice vinegar for this.
[00:38:45.680 --> 00:38:46.720] I don't want to use malt vinegar.
[00:38:44.600 --> 00:38:48.080] So I use rice vinegar for this.
[00:38:48.080 --> 00:38:49.520] You meant to use like apple cider vinegar.
[00:38:44.840 --> 00:38:51.760] I was meant to use apple cider vinegar, but I just used it.
[00:38:51.840 --> 00:38:55.120] Well, because apple cider vinegar is a bit sweet and vinegary.
[00:38:55.360 --> 00:38:59.680] So I used a little bit of rice vinegar and a drop of washing up liquid.
[00:38:59.680 --> 00:39:00.160] Ah.
[00:39:00.160 --> 00:39:02.000] And what that does is break the surface tension.
[00:39:02.000 --> 00:39:04.400] So when they fall in, they fall down.
[00:39:05.360 --> 00:39:06.240] And they drown.
[00:39:06.240 --> 00:39:07.840] And fuck me, that worked well.
[00:39:07.840 --> 00:39:08.160] Really?
[00:39:08.640 --> 00:39:09.040] Absolutely.
[00:39:09.520 --> 00:39:12.400] I didn't put the vinegar in at first because I thought, well, that's woo in it.
[00:39:12.560 --> 00:39:13.920] You know, what's the fucking vinegar for?
[00:39:14.000 --> 00:39:14.800] Doesn't fucking matter.
[00:39:14.800 --> 00:39:16.640] Sugar, water, nothing.
[00:39:16.640 --> 00:39:17.120] Did nothing.
[00:39:17.120 --> 00:39:18.560] They didn't fucking care about it.
[00:39:18.560 --> 00:39:19.680] Drop a vinegar in it.
[00:39:19.680 --> 00:39:22.720] Suddenly, and I looked this up, it gives off a smell like rotting fruit.
[00:39:22.960 --> 00:39:24.720] And so they're like, fucking hell, rotting fruit.
[00:39:24.720 --> 00:39:24.960] Woo!
[00:39:25.200 --> 00:39:25.920] We love rotting fruit.
[00:39:26.960 --> 00:39:30.640] It is literally the case that you catch more flies with vinegar than honey.
[00:39:30.640 --> 00:39:31.040] Absolutely.
[00:39:31.520 --> 00:39:33.840] They've lied the other way around.
[00:39:33.840 --> 00:39:34.320] Yeah.
[00:39:38.800 --> 00:39:40.400] So, tickets for QED.
[00:39:40.400 --> 00:39:43.120] Online tickets for QED are still available.
[00:39:43.120 --> 00:39:44.320] Price £49.
[00:39:44.320 --> 00:39:46.320] You can get those at QEDcon.org.
[00:39:46.320 --> 00:39:52.800] That will give you access to the main stage content, the panel room content, and the live podcasts.
[00:39:52.800 --> 00:39:54.960] And so you can pick up your ticket for that at QEDcon.org.
[00:39:54.960 --> 00:39:56.160] The streaming is done through YouTube.
[00:39:56.160 --> 00:40:00.640] So any kind of YouTube app that you want to use, you've got YouTube on your telly.
[00:40:00.640 --> 00:40:01.280] You can sit down.
[00:40:01.280 --> 00:40:02.960] We know people are organizing watch parties.
[00:40:03.040 --> 00:40:04.800] They're going to sit around and watch this.
[00:40:04.800 --> 00:40:06.080] That's going to be terrific fun.
[00:40:06.080 --> 00:40:07.520] And it is the final QED.
[00:40:07.520 --> 00:40:13.280] So you should definitely take the opportunity to grab your online ticket and you can do that at qdcon.org.
[00:40:13.600 --> 00:40:17.600] For Liverpool Skeptics in the pub, we've got a social event this evening.
[00:40:17.600 --> 00:40:18.720] That's taking place in Dr.
[00:40:18.720 --> 00:40:20.160] Duncan's on St.
[00:40:20.160 --> 00:40:22.240] John's Lane in central Liverpool.
[00:40:22.240 --> 00:40:23.840] That's going to be from 8 p.m.
[00:40:23.920 --> 00:40:26.400] And if you're in the Liverpool area, you should definitely come along to that.
[00:40:26.400 --> 00:40:27.760] Our socials have been huge recently.
[00:40:27.760 --> 00:40:28.480] Yeah, we always enjoy this.
[00:40:28.640 --> 00:40:31.160] We say this every time, but our socials are always brilliant.
[00:40:31.960 --> 00:40:32.760] And are we all going to be there?
[00:40:32.760 --> 00:40:33.960] Are we all going to be at the social?
[00:40:33.960 --> 00:40:34.760] I think I'm going to be there.
[00:40:29.840 --> 00:40:35.880] I think we should all be at the social.
[00:40:36.200 --> 00:40:37.800] So that's going to be a brilliant time.
[00:40:37.800 --> 00:40:39.080] And you should definitely come along to that.
[00:40:39.080 --> 00:40:40.760] It's going to be fantastic.
[00:40:40.760 --> 00:40:43.720] And Skeptic Magazine, we need to plug Skeptic Magazine in.
[00:40:43.880 --> 00:40:48.440] Yeah, we don't mention the magazine very often, but obviously I'm the editor, and Alice is deputy editor.
[00:40:48.440 --> 00:40:52.120] And we, as a group at the University of Skeptic Society, are the publishers of the magazine.
[00:40:52.120 --> 00:41:00.200] And we put out brand new articles every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, sometimes also on a Thursday, and an archive article on a Tuesday.
[00:41:00.200 --> 00:41:05.560] So there's like up to five articles kind of will go out of original skeptical journalism that you won't find elsewhere.
[00:41:05.560 --> 00:41:12.600] Sometimes the brand new articles are articles that we've written up from the show, as we've talked about earlier in the episode.
[00:41:12.600 --> 00:41:16.680] Sometimes they are slightly edited versions of those to make them slightly less waffly.
[00:41:17.000 --> 00:41:17.960] Or more waffly in some way.
[00:41:18.200 --> 00:41:23.240] Slightly more waffly if we're adding additional content that has become relevant in the meantime.
[00:41:23.240 --> 00:41:24.680] Like someone going to prison, for example.
[00:41:25.560 --> 00:41:31.000] But that also makes them shareable in a way that people often ask us for on specific topics.
[00:41:31.000 --> 00:41:37.320] So if you want to find articles about things we've written, we've heard on the show, you might find them on the magazine webpage.
[00:41:37.320 --> 00:41:38.200] Yeah, that's absolutely true.
[00:41:38.200 --> 00:41:44.200] The other thing you'll find on the magazine webpage is it's time for our nominations for the Occam Awards, which obviously I mentioned last week.
[00:41:44.200 --> 00:41:59.000] So don't forget to get your Occam Award nominations in for the person you think has done some fantastic skeptical work over the last year and the person or group or organization or product that you think has been particularly pseudo-scientific and impactful with its pseudoscience over the last year.
[00:41:59.000 --> 00:42:06.440] If you go to the skeptic palm page at skeptic.org.uk, you'll see a little bit at the top saying Occam's, and from there you can find the nomination form.
[00:42:06.440 --> 00:42:18.640] And if you like the work that we're doing at Skeptic Magazine, you can also support the magazine on Patreon by going to patreon.com forward slash theskeptic, where you can donate to help with the running costs and the administration of the magazine itself.
[00:42:18.960 --> 00:42:27.760] And speaking of Patreon, of course, this show has a Patreon which you can find at patron.com forward slash skeptics with a K, where you will find an ad-free version of this show.
[00:42:28.080 --> 00:42:32.000] And if you would like to support us and support the show, that's a great place to go and do that.
[00:42:32.000 --> 00:42:37.920] Yes, you can help pay for some of the guttering that I have to have replaced in my fucking house.
[00:42:38.240 --> 00:42:45.440] And of course, there is also the Merseyside Skeptics Patreon as well, patrion.com forward slash Merseyskeptics, where you will also get an ad-free version of the show.
[00:42:45.440 --> 00:42:48.800] And that supports this show and it supports the Merseyside Skeptic Society.
[00:42:48.800 --> 00:42:49.440] Yeah.
[00:42:50.400 --> 00:42:51.520] Big plugs.
[00:42:51.520 --> 00:42:53.520] I think that's all we got time for.
[00:42:53.520 --> 00:42:56.240] All that remains then is for me to thank Marsh for coming on today.
[00:42:56.240 --> 00:42:56.720] Thank you.
[00:42:56.720 --> 00:42:57.680] Thank you to Alice.
[00:42:57.680 --> 00:42:58.160] Thank you.
[00:42:58.160 --> 00:43:00.720] We have been Skeptics with a K, and we will see you next time.
[00:43:00.720 --> 00:43:01.360] Bye now.
[00:43:01.360 --> 00:43:02.320] Bye.
[00:43:07.120 --> 00:43:12.160] Skeptics with a K is produced by Skeptic Media in association with the Merseyside Skeptic Society.
[00:43:12.160 --> 00:43:21.440] For questions or comments, email podcast at skepticswithakay.org and you can find out more about Merseyside Skeptics at mercyside skeptics.org.uk.

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": []}

Full Transcript

[00:00:00.640 --> 00:00:06.800] This Labor Day at Value City Furniture, get up to 20% off your new living room and more throughout the store.
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[00:00:16.320 --> 00:00:19.520] See if you pre-qualify without touching your credit score.
[00:00:19.520 --> 00:00:23.840] Yep, get more at Value City Furniture while paying less.
[00:00:23.840 --> 00:00:26.800] More style, more quality, more value.
[00:00:26.800 --> 00:00:29.440] We are Value City Furniture.
[00:00:32.960 --> 00:00:38.320] Just Mike cutting in here before we get started to remind you all about Skepticamp.
[00:00:38.320 --> 00:00:47.120] So, Skepticamp is a free event, there is no ticket required, which is taking place at the Mercure Piccadilly Hotel the day before QED.
[00:00:47.120 --> 00:00:49.760] So, that is on Friday, the 24th of October.
[00:00:49.760 --> 00:00:52.880] It's very much part of the QED fringe.
[00:00:52.880 --> 00:00:59.440] So, what makes Skepticamp so special is that all of the talks for the event are provided by people like you.
[00:00:59.440 --> 00:01:06.880] The audience provides the talks, and the audience watches the talks, sort of like a conference Wikipedia, if you like.
[00:01:06.880 --> 00:01:18.720] So, if you have something interesting you want to talk about at Skepticamp 2025, you can apply to speak by visiting sitp.online forward slash Skepticamp.
[00:01:18.720 --> 00:01:26.400] That is sitp.online forward slash Skepticamp, where you will find details on how to apply.
[00:01:26.400 --> 00:01:29.200] The deadline for applications is fast approaching.
[00:01:29.200 --> 00:01:32.320] That is going to be Friday, the 15th of August.
[00:01:32.320 --> 00:01:39.120] So, if you think you have something interesting to say, the team at Skepticamp want to hear about it.
[00:01:39.440 --> 00:01:41.760] Um, yes.
[00:01:41.760 --> 00:01:43.280] Now, where were we?
[00:01:50.000 --> 00:01:58.240] It is Thursday, the 7th of August, 2025, and you're listening to Skeptics with a K, the podcast for science, reason, and critical thinking.
[00:01:58.240 --> 00:02:09.800] Skeptics with a K is produced by Skeptic Media in association with the Merseyside Skeptic Society, a non-profit organisation for the promotion of scientific skepticism on Merseyside around the UK and internationally.
[00:02:09.800 --> 00:02:11.160] I'm your host, Mike Hall.
[00:02:11.160 --> 00:02:12.360] With me today is Marsh.
[00:02:12.440 --> 00:02:12.920] Hello.
[00:02:12.920 --> 00:02:13.720] And Alice.
[00:02:13.720 --> 00:02:14.200] Hello.
[00:02:14.520 --> 00:02:16.280] And how are you both doing?
[00:02:16.280 --> 00:02:17.560] I'm just really tired.
[00:02:17.560 --> 00:02:18.920] I'm really crashy.
[00:02:18.920 --> 00:02:20.200] I'm really fed up.
[00:02:20.200 --> 00:02:21.800] I'm really ready to sleep.
[00:02:21.800 --> 00:02:26.440] So we're recording this out of order slightly to maintain my coherence.
[00:02:26.920 --> 00:02:27.400] Yeah.
[00:02:27.400 --> 00:02:29.720] So this is the coherent version of you we're about to hear.
[00:02:30.840 --> 00:02:33.960] This is as coherent as I'm capable of being.
[00:02:33.960 --> 00:02:34.600] Okay.
[00:02:34.600 --> 00:02:37.960] And there is a risk that be kind, listeners.
[00:02:37.960 --> 00:02:39.720] If I fuck something up, be kind.
[00:02:39.720 --> 00:02:40.600] Yeah, it's fine.
[00:02:40.600 --> 00:02:43.080] If you do fuck something up, it's two weeks ago that you felt like this.
[00:02:43.080 --> 00:02:43.640] It's fine.
[00:02:43.880 --> 00:02:46.120] By the time this comes out, you'll be feeling fine again.
[00:02:46.440 --> 00:02:50.760] Yeah, and then realize, then have all the self-hate of having fucked it up.
[00:02:50.760 --> 00:02:52.120] It's great, isn't it?
[00:02:52.600 --> 00:02:57.240] A few months ago, we talked about the morning shed that's become popular on social media.
[00:02:57.400 --> 00:03:13.240] So this idea that you just layer up some self-care products that you wear overnight to enhance your appearance by removing those layers in the morning, shedding your mouse tape, your satin bonnet, your overnight face mask to look hydrated, well-rested, and youthful the next morning with your bouncy, glossy hair, and plump skin.
[00:03:13.240 --> 00:03:20.600] I think the whole time we were doing that story, I had the idea in my head that the morning shed was somewhere a wooden building you go to grieve.
[00:03:20.600 --> 00:03:21.080] Yeah, absolutely.
[00:03:21.080 --> 00:03:22.920] That's the exact thing the entire time.
[00:03:22.920 --> 00:03:28.920] I don't know if we did that joke at the time or if it just lived in my head all the way through the time we recorded around.
[00:03:29.560 --> 00:03:33.240] I think I did say that at the time because I specifically didn't just say it just now.
[00:03:33.400 --> 00:03:36.440] I thought, no, I definitely made that joke at the time.
[00:03:38.360 --> 00:03:57.760] There was one product I didn't mention that I often see in the morning shed videos because it doesn't really fit with the wear overnight theme, but many influencers will fit it into their what's the opposite of shedding, like piling, piling on, yeah, yeah, um, like the pre-sleep routine that is part of the overnight beauty or self-care regimen.
[00:03:57.760 --> 00:04:05.360] So, the products I'm talking about is the LED face masks that have become utterly ubiquitous on social media, they are everywhere.
[00:04:05.760 --> 00:04:10.720] I have not seen these at all, despite me being the one who suggested this story to you.
[00:04:10.720 --> 00:04:16.240] Because a couple of weeks ago, listener April Puff got in touch to say, Have you guys ever done anything about these?
[00:04:16.240 --> 00:04:19.200] I see them everywhere, and I have no idea what they even are.
[00:04:19.200 --> 00:04:25.040] I just went, Oh, that's an excellent suggestion, and immediately passed it to you because this doesn't sound like a me suggestion.
[00:04:25.040 --> 00:04:26.400] Have you googled them?
[00:04:26.400 --> 00:04:34.560] No, you should live now Google them to see what they look like because they do look quite horrific, and listeners should do the same.
[00:04:34.560 --> 00:04:44.640] They're really creepy looking because they are usually a white mask that is, you know, like the you know, you won't know, like the fold-out paper masks that you get that are like bigger than your actual face.
[00:04:44.720 --> 00:04:47.200] They look like it's the guy from Friday the 13th.
[00:04:47.200 --> 00:04:48.080] Yeah, that's what it looks like.
[00:04:48.080 --> 00:04:55.200] Yeah, it looks like Jason Voorhees or American Cycle with red emitting light from behind it shining onto your face.
[00:04:55.200 --> 00:04:59.920] Yeah, I'd never seen these before in my life, I didn't even Google them at the time, but yeah, those are pretty weird, aren't they?
[00:04:59.920 --> 00:05:05.200] They're kind of creepy looking and they've become completely ubiquitous on social media.
[00:05:05.200 --> 00:05:08.480] If you had a happy one and a sad one, you could stand outside a theater.
[00:05:08.480 --> 00:05:36.280] Oh, yeah, be the baftas, attract people in, and they're they're pushed by a whole range of different types of influencer, not just those who do the morning sheds and those over-exaggerated beauty routines, but also even from the feminist influencers who insist their goal is to empower women to embrace their body and face and allow themselves to age naturally and fluctuate in their physical appearance with confidence as it's a natural part of life that we shouldn't demonize.
[00:05:36.280 --> 00:05:42.520] Of course, the demonization, which is often particularly prevalent in relation to women, femmes, or people perceived as women.
[00:05:42.520 --> 00:05:53.800] So, as you say, Marsh, this was highlighted to us again by a listener April who told us there seem to be boatloads of these things on the market, supposedly using photo biomodulation to cure any number of ills.
[00:05:53.800 --> 00:05:58.760] Fully 50% of my YouTube ads are for one brand or another of these things.
[00:05:58.760 --> 00:06:08.280] And it was quite a well-timed question because my attention had also recently been drawn to a TV show that was released in April this year on Channel 4 called What's the Big Deal?
[00:06:08.280 --> 00:06:09.960] Britain's Best Buys.
[00:06:09.960 --> 00:06:15.080] Okay, and do you think it was a well-timed question because she was called April and you watch a TV show in April?
[00:06:15.080 --> 00:06:16.520] I watched a TV show from April.
[00:06:16.520 --> 00:06:17.240] From April.
[00:06:17.240 --> 00:06:18.040] Okay, okay.
[00:06:18.360 --> 00:06:28.120] So this is a consumer affairs show, which is EastEnder's Natalie Cassidy put hyped up products to the test and look at whether it's worth spending money on the things that social media pushes at us.
[00:06:28.200 --> 00:06:31.560] It's a TV version of the BBC podcast Sliced Bread.
[00:06:31.560 --> 00:06:32.200] I guess so.
[00:06:32.200 --> 00:06:33.560] Which is exactly the same thing.
[00:06:33.560 --> 00:06:35.960] And so, yeah, she's taught, she introduced.
[00:06:35.960 --> 00:06:40.360] I've watched the first episode of the show, which is the episode that they look at the LED face masks.
[00:06:40.360 --> 00:06:51.480] And she talks about essentially like the TikTok shop, that things are being, products are being pushed at people, specifically through social media, especially through TikTok, and do they live up to the hype sort of thing.
[00:06:51.480 --> 00:06:56.920] I obviously went into it not having high hopes because we know how these kinds of consumer affairs shows often go.
[00:06:57.560 --> 00:07:04.440] They'll get an expert on and they'll provide a bit of cop-out balance, but they'll largely be quite promotional about the things that they're talking about.
[00:07:04.680 --> 00:07:15.680] Often they'll want to find some things that actually work amongst all of the bullshit and they'll work quite hard to do that rather than just taking a good look at the things that are out there and just fairly and squarely saying what works and what doesn't.
[00:07:15.920 --> 00:07:25.280] That being said, I thought for what it is for a consumer affairs show on channel four that's targeted at a particular kind of audience of people, I thought it was pretty good the first episode.
[00:07:25.280 --> 00:07:29.280] They looked at cold water plungers specifically for mood boosting.
[00:07:29.280 --> 00:07:34.400] So they talked about the fact that it's sometimes used by athletes for muscle healing, but they weren't talking about that.
[00:07:34.400 --> 00:07:42.960] They were specifically talking about for mood boosting and concluded with the pretty reasonable take that it does have a measurable physiological effect on the body.
[00:07:42.960 --> 00:07:43.760] Of course it does.
[00:07:43.760 --> 00:07:45.040] Like you're jumping and cold water.
[00:07:45.120 --> 00:07:52.720] Your body reacts to cold water that could explain a reported improvement in mood, but there isn't enough research to say that it has an impact on mood.
[00:07:52.720 --> 00:08:01.600] I think they've just listened to episodes of sliced bread and then gone, yeah, we'll do that then, because I'm sure there was one on sliced bread that is a perfect description of the entire episode.
[00:08:01.600 --> 00:08:03.840] I'm sure they did one on Core Plungers.
[00:08:03.840 --> 00:08:06.640] So the other thing they looked at was packing cubes.
[00:08:06.640 --> 00:08:07.360] Okay, no.
[00:08:07.360 --> 00:08:08.400] Packing cubes.
[00:08:08.400 --> 00:08:14.640] So packing cubes are fabric cuboid more than cubes.
[00:08:14.640 --> 00:08:16.160] They're usually like long and thin.
[00:08:16.160 --> 00:08:16.320] Okay.
[00:08:16.640 --> 00:08:24.960] Pack your clothes in them and then they have like an extender zip, you know, like of um you know like your suitcases that have the extended river digits to shrink them.
[00:08:24.960 --> 00:08:26.640] Yeah, you can shrink your cubes.
[00:08:26.640 --> 00:08:34.720] So they're promoted as a space saver and for organization and they came to the conclusion that they are great for organization, which they are.
[00:08:34.720 --> 00:08:37.600] Yeah, I mean, I'm but they don't work for space saving.
[00:08:37.600 --> 00:08:37.920] Really?
[00:08:37.920 --> 00:08:38.160] Yeah.
[00:08:38.160 --> 00:08:38.960] That's bizarre.
[00:08:38.960 --> 00:08:40.160] They literally put it to the test.
[00:08:40.160 --> 00:08:43.200] They got somebody from the witch consumer.
[00:08:43.200 --> 00:08:47.160] Listeners, in case you're confused, it's witch W-H-I-C-H.
[00:08:46.960 --> 00:08:47.560] It's a...
[00:08:48.640 --> 00:08:53.600] Question mark at the end, as in the Consumer Protection magazine, not which, as in witches.
[00:08:54.160 --> 00:08:55.200] They didn't get a witch.
[00:08:56.400 --> 00:09:00.440] They compared this space-saving device with spells from a witch.
[00:08:59.760 --> 00:09:06.760] So they got a guy from Witch and a social media person who is famous for folding things.
[00:09:07.080 --> 00:09:08.120] Fuck me.
[00:09:09.400 --> 00:09:13.560] And she really, the folding lady really likes packing cubes.
[00:09:13.560 --> 00:09:19.400] And the witch consumer guy was skeptical of them and actually said afterwards that they have put them to the test.
[00:09:19.400 --> 00:09:29.320] And it showed basically what they showed in this little test between the two of them that they packed exactly the same things in exactly the same suitcase, but she used the packing cubes and he didn't.
[00:09:29.320 --> 00:09:32.280] And she was struggling to close the bag and he had more space in the bag.
[00:09:34.120 --> 00:09:35.480] It didn't take up less space.
[00:09:35.480 --> 00:09:37.720] But these are to go into suitcases rather than to package.
[00:09:38.200 --> 00:09:42.200] You pack everything into your cubes and then you pack the cubes into the suitcase.
[00:09:42.920 --> 00:09:48.120] Yeah, that now no longer surprises me that they don't particularly work because you're just packing something extra.
[00:09:48.120 --> 00:09:48.680] Yeah, you're packing something.
[00:09:50.440 --> 00:09:55.800] But like the idea of doing that to put them like a vacuum pack for under your bed.
[00:09:55.960 --> 00:09:56.440] But that's different.
[00:09:56.440 --> 00:09:56.840] You're right.
[00:09:56.840 --> 00:09:57.960] Like sucking all the air out.
[00:09:57.960 --> 00:09:58.360] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:09:58.680 --> 00:10:03.560] But these are literally just a zipper because you can't hoover to suck your air out once you're in your foreign country on holiday.
[00:10:03.800 --> 00:10:04.120] Yeah, exactly.
[00:10:04.200 --> 00:10:05.400] You've got your hoover with you.
[00:10:05.400 --> 00:10:05.800] Yeah.
[00:10:05.800 --> 00:10:10.600] It would be great if you could pack a full-sized hoofer in them, but not quite how it works.
[00:10:10.600 --> 00:10:15.800] So yeah, they concluded that they're good for organization, but not good for saving space.
[00:10:15.800 --> 00:10:27.000] And they looked at lion's main mushrooms for focus and memory, coming to the conclusion that the scientific research isn't sufficient, but there is a new and ongoing pilot study in humans that is promising.
[00:10:27.000 --> 00:10:30.520] But they were very much on the side of there isn't evidence to suggest that this works right now.
[00:10:30.840 --> 00:10:33.960] Lions main mushrooms, how do they feel about lion's made ice cream?
[00:10:35.240 --> 00:10:44.120] And then they looked at the LED face masks, which did lead to a lovely interaction as an influencer asks Natalie as she's wearing it, How do you feel in it?
[00:10:44.120 --> 00:10:46.960] To which she responds, a little bit of a prat, to be honest.
[00:10:47.360 --> 00:10:48.560] Sounds about right.
[00:10:49.200 --> 00:10:54.880] So the show says about LED face masks that so they spoke to an expert called Dr.
[00:10:54.880 --> 00:11:04.400] Echikami, who's a consultant at UCL and also runs Adonia Medical Clinic in London Clinic specializing in aesthetics and health.
[00:11:04.400 --> 00:11:16.800] And she explained that the evidence shows that red light can upregulate mitochondrial function, which slows wrinkle and pigmentation development and increases collagen production through fibroblasts as well as reducing inflammation.
[00:11:16.800 --> 00:11:33.040] She clarifies that the research has been shown for professional devices, but that she believes at-home masks can be used to supplement as long as you're looking for a device with a wavelength of 600 to 750 nanometers, and ideally one with the apparent boosting wavelength of near-infrared.
[00:11:33.360 --> 00:11:40.320] She says that at-home masks often have smaller bulbs, and ideally, consumers should look for devices with lots of bulbs to get the best effect.
[00:11:40.320 --> 00:12:00.640] Yeah, and I imagine, regardless of whether the professional-grade versions work particularly well, I imagine a lot of the ones you're getting from your TikTok shop or from the 50% of YouTube ads that ApoPoff is getting aren't likely to have the high-grade bulbs and are much more likely to be kind of a kid's version with a bulb in it, essentially like cheap knockoffs from Timu that have been drop shipped.
[00:12:00.960 --> 00:12:01.600] Yeah.
[00:12:01.920 --> 00:12:05.600] So using light therapeutically is an ancient idea.
[00:12:05.600 --> 00:12:17.840] Obviously, ancient records aren't terribly complete, so we know about sun worship or the association between sun and health, but we don't really know necessarily what they'd observed to give them the idea that it related to health.
[00:12:17.840 --> 00:12:26.320] But so, much later in history, but still quite early, we had more detailed records of what scientists observed in relation to sunlight affecting the body.
[00:12:26.320 --> 00:12:32.600] So, in the early 19th century, a report was published on the impact of light and colour on emotional state.
[00:12:33.240 --> 00:12:39.720] And by the end of the 19th century, there were dedicated sanatoriums developed for sunlight therapy specifically.
[00:12:40.040 --> 00:12:50.040] And we know that sunlight does have an impact on human health, even more so when access to nutrients or good hygiene is reduced because we know that UV light in sunlight kills bacteria.
[00:12:50.040 --> 00:12:55.640] So, if you have skin complaints that are caused or exacerbated by infection or presence of bacteria, then exposure to sunlight can help.
[00:12:55.800 --> 00:13:02.600] Similarly, we know that our body uses sunlight to make vitamin D, so sun exposure can help with symptoms of vitamin deficiency, including rickets.
[00:13:03.080 --> 00:13:07.320] And obviously, we now know more about how it can affect our mood and seasonal affective disorder.
[00:13:07.320 --> 00:13:16.040] And that thing where your tanya bumhole-that's obviously perineum tanning, definitely very, very, very evidence-based.
[00:13:16.040 --> 00:13:19.560] Tanya bumhole sounds like somebody who's written a letter to Viz.
[00:13:22.760 --> 00:13:37.800] But as we've developed a scientific understanding of light therapy, we've also learned about the harms of ultraviolet wavelength because UV light is what causes sun damage, which can lead to skin cancer and aging of the skin, including hyperpigmentation and wrinkle formation.
[00:13:38.120 --> 00:13:45.320] Once we start to understand how the light works, we also started to understand how to separate light into its different wavelengths and their properties.
[00:13:45.320 --> 00:13:50.520] And so, we now know that it's UV light that's important in treating the skin condition psoriasis.
[00:13:50.520 --> 00:14:00.840] So, April mentioned this in her message to us: saying, While I have seen some good information saying ultraviolet light can help with skin conditions like psoriasis, I don't know of any research into other claims being made.
[00:14:00.840 --> 00:14:06.360] So, we now have medical devices that we can use to treat psoriasis using light therapy without relying on sunlight.
[00:14:06.360 --> 00:14:13.960] Sunlight obviously can have variable UV levels on a day-to-day basis and is less effective than the targeted light therapy that we now have access to.
[00:14:13.960 --> 00:14:17.440] Yeah, and it's vastly less reliable, especially when you live in, for example, the UK.
[00:14:17.680 --> 00:14:27.440] Yeah, yeah, you can't predict whether you're going to get enough therapeutic dose of the sunlight in the UK on a day-to-day basis to get that reliable impact on your skin condition.
[00:14:27.440 --> 00:14:34.800] And the flip side of it is that the UV and sunlight can also be damaging because we don't get just the narrow bands that's going to be helpful.
[00:14:34.960 --> 00:14:42.080] The UV is where we get the crossover point from ionising and non-ionizing radiation happens in the UV band.
[00:14:42.080 --> 00:14:42.480] Yeah.
[00:14:42.480 --> 00:14:49.120] Yeah, so predominantly, it's quite lucky really that it's UVB light that treats psoriasis best.
[00:14:49.120 --> 00:14:55.680] And UVB is the light that causes sunburn, but it causes less cancer causing damage to the skin.
[00:14:55.760 --> 00:15:00.160] It still can cause cancer causing damage to the skin, but it's UVA that's the really bad one for that.
[00:15:00.160 --> 00:15:12.320] UVB causes a lot less cancer causing damage to the skin, so it's much safer than UVA, which is the one that mostly causes skin cancer and skin damage that leaves the appearance of aging, but doesn't give you that sunburn.
[00:15:12.320 --> 00:15:17.200] And it's UVA, if I remember rightly, I haven't written this in my notes, that can travel through glass.
[00:15:17.200 --> 00:15:30.960] So people think, oh, well, I can sit in front of glass all day without sun cream on because I'm not getting burnt, but it's the UVA that penetrates the glass and can then cause the skin cancer causing damage or the aging causing damage.
[00:15:31.040 --> 00:15:31.760] I don't realise that.
[00:15:31.760 --> 00:15:32.480] Interesting.
[00:15:32.480 --> 00:15:35.760] So don't rely on glass to protect you from the sun.
[00:15:36.720 --> 00:15:50.640] UVA light is occasionally used to treat psoriasis, but according to the National Psoriasis Foundation, it only really works alongside a light-sensitizing agent, which can be applied topically or ingested to make your skin more sensitive to the sun.
[00:15:50.640 --> 00:16:02.040] So, psoriasis itself is caused by an overactive immune system, which causes skin cell growth to speed up and skin cells to shed more frequently, which can cause an over-accumulation of skin cells on the skin surface.
[00:15:59.600 --> 00:16:07.240] UV light therapy is reaching the skin cells just under the surface and just slowing down their growth.
[00:16:07.560 --> 00:16:10.600] We also have other ways to treat skin with light.
[00:16:10.600 --> 00:16:13.320] We can use laser light to treat skin as well.
[00:16:13.320 --> 00:16:23.800] Typically, for things like rosacea and barracous veins, it's used to damage the tissue in very specific areas to encourage the and encourage the tissue healing pathways of the skin to activate and heal the area.
[00:16:23.800 --> 00:16:28.760] So, you're literally laser ablating the veins that are causing the redness of the skin where you've got barracous veins.
[00:16:28.760 --> 00:16:39.960] But these LED face masks are a different type of light altogether, also known as low-level light therapy, LLLT, or photo-biomodulation.
[00:16:39.960 --> 00:16:47.880] And the research into this type of light therapy often lumps together red light therapy and near-infrared light therapy.
[00:16:47.880 --> 00:17:01.400] So, the wavelength range is between 620 and 810 nanometers, which means it's not always easy to pick apart which particular wavelength is having the physiological effect on the skin.
[00:17:01.720 --> 00:17:05.880] And obviously, it's important to note the difference between LED and laser.
[00:17:05.880 --> 00:17:07.880] Laser is very much more specifically directed.
[00:17:08.040 --> 00:17:18.360] You can have lasers that are in that wavelength, but they're just much more kind of laser-focused, much more directed, and much more intense than an LED light, which is which is much less intense.
[00:17:18.360 --> 00:17:20.440] So, in 2020, a plastic surgeon, Dr.
[00:17:20.440 --> 00:17:27.400] Graham Glass, wrote a pair of reviews on the evidence for photobiomodulation therapy, which I think go really nicely together.
[00:17:27.400 --> 00:17:39.240] So, one is titled Photobiomodulation: A Review of the Molecular Evidence for Low-Level Light Therapy, and it looks specifically at the pathways by which photobiomodulation might have an impact on the skin.
[00:17:39.240 --> 00:17:42.600] So, the kind of molecular changes that can happen.
[00:17:42.600 --> 00:17:45.360] And here, he highlights some of the evidence that we heard from Dr.
[00:17:45.600 --> 00:17:59.520] Edgerkemi on Natalie Cassidy's What's the Big Deal, namely that in cell lines and animal models, certain wavelengths of light stimulate production of cytochrome C oxidase, a protein which is important for energy production by the mitochondria.
[00:17:59.520 --> 00:18:04.160] So, light therapy, this low-level light therapy might enhance mitochondrial function.
[00:18:04.480 --> 00:18:20.640] He highlights that in mouse and cell models, light of certain wavelengths can regulate oxidative stress, cell signaling, and gene expression in ways that can improve cell proliferation and enhance collagen production, and that in animal models, certain wavelengths of light can reduce inflammation.
[00:18:21.120 --> 00:18:29.440] Might have noticed something in particular in those statements: in that this is predominantly in animal and cell models.
[00:18:29.440 --> 00:18:40.240] What we're lacking is evidence that these pathways are similarly regulated in the human body, or whether the regulation of those pathways leads to improved outcomes in humans.
[00:18:40.880 --> 00:19:06.720] While there are a couple of studies that he references in humans, for the most part, he highlights that the evidence is lacking and concludes PBM photobiomodulation is a phenomenon that enhances cytochrome C oxidase-mediated mitochondrial ATP production and hence the activation of cell signaling mechanisms that promote proliferation and differentiation in an anti-inflammatory environment tightly regulated by the manipulation of oxidative and nitrative stress.
[00:19:06.720 --> 00:19:07.600] Okay.
[00:19:08.240 --> 00:19:12.640] Basically, everything I just said before in fancy science works.
[00:19:14.400 --> 00:19:28.560] But he says that LED-based products marketed for skin rejuvenation, androgenic alopecia, adiposity, wound healing, and joint pain use evidence largely extrapolated from pre-clinical data using lasers.
[00:19:28.560 --> 00:19:28.960] Gotcha.
[00:19:29.040 --> 00:19:32.360] So, not using the LED light source.
[00:19:32.680 --> 00:19:46.520] His second review is titled Photobiomodulation: the Clinical Applications of Low-Level Light Therapy and goes beyond the biological plausibility of photobiomodulation and into the actual evidence-based applications.
[00:19:46.520 --> 00:20:10.280] In this review, he explains that today LLLT, being the method by which photobiomodulation is induced, is in widespread use and says that because LEDs operate at power levels below that which is considered by the FDA to constitute a medical hazard, they have not been subject to therapeutic device regulation, and this has paved the way for commercial exploitation.
[00:20:10.280 --> 00:20:18.520] Yeah, okay, so they're not strong enough to be a massive concern to the FDA, and therefore they don't do anything to sort of curtail the market from proliferating.
[00:20:18.520 --> 00:20:20.840] Exactly, they don't need to regulate them as a medical device.
[00:20:20.840 --> 00:20:31.400] And they have, and we'll come to it in a second, they have given clearance to some devices on kind of some safety measures, but not on they're not regulating it based on it as a medical.
[00:20:31.640 --> 00:20:36.120] Did you see anything about the MHRA, it's like the UK equivalent of the FDA?
[00:20:36.120 --> 00:20:37.400] I had a bit of a look.
[00:20:37.400 --> 00:20:42.600] I struggled to find, so I don't think the MHRA regulate them as a medical device either.
[00:20:42.600 --> 00:20:53.160] I found one report of the MRHA blocking importation of one device because it wasn't safe electrically, it hadn't passed the electrical testing.
[00:20:53.160 --> 00:20:58.680] But I can't find any routine regulation from the MHRA on these sorts of devices.
[00:20:58.680 --> 00:21:03.800] Yeah, and that safety thing, I think normally it's not the MHRA who rule on the safety of devices.
[00:21:03.800 --> 00:21:06.680] That's why you get that kind of CE kind of certified.
[00:21:06.680 --> 00:21:07.080] What is that?
[00:21:07.080 --> 00:21:17.280] I'm not sure what the CE thing is, but like the certified mark on it, which they always like to, the people who market these devices will say, Well, you know, it's got this mark, which means it's been certified.
[00:21:14.840 --> 00:21:21.680] It's like, yes, it's been certified to say that the electrical circuitry won't give you an electric shock.
[00:21:21.920 --> 00:21:25.680] Yeah, it's literally safe to use, but that doesn't mean that it does what it says it's going to do.
[00:21:25.680 --> 00:21:30.240] Yeah, and if something fails that, it's easy for the MHRA to say, well, it's a no-brainer that you can't bring that in.
[00:21:30.240 --> 00:21:37.360] But when it comes to actually just making medical claims for a device that isn't outright dangerous, the MHRA can be a bit slow to move on that.
[00:21:37.520 --> 00:21:53.440] Yeah, and there are some claims that these devices are making that it for sure that are not touching on today that go way beyond the reach of just kind of skin effects because these LED face masks are predominantly claiming to be good for rejuvenating the skin or preventing aging.
[00:21:53.440 --> 00:21:59.840] And that's broadly reasonably fine claims for them to be making based on the evidence that we're talking about today.
[00:21:59.840 --> 00:22:14.800] But when it comes to making more significant medical claims, some other LED-based devices, probably not the LED face masks, might be making medical claims that would be subject to regulation because they are not correct medical claims.
[00:22:15.360 --> 00:22:23.040] And those should obviously, where appropriate, be reported to the relevant bodies because they're making claims that should not be being made.
[00:22:23.680 --> 00:22:25.600] So Dr.
[00:22:25.600 --> 00:22:33.840] Glass summarized the clinical studies into LLLT, including identifying the methodological flaws in those studies.
[00:22:33.840 --> 00:22:45.120] And he concludes that photobiomodulation by the non-thermal irradiation tissue with laser or LED-derived light is backed by enough experimental and clinical evidence that it is here to stay.
[00:22:45.120 --> 00:23:04.920] But he cautions: although clinical trials provide some evidence for efficacy, especially with regards to body contouring and skin rejuvenation, the clinical literature lags well behind the commercial exploitation, well-designed, adequately powered, independent clinical trials will help us answer some of the unresolved questions.
[00:23:05.560 --> 00:23:10.040] And I think this really highlights a recurring issue that we see in the wellness space all the time.
[00:23:10.040 --> 00:23:13.560] There's a hint of something worth exploring in the medical literature.
[00:23:13.560 --> 00:23:29.320] So the commercialization pipeline springs into action, and the products that are then on the market aren't regulated as medical devices, so they can proliferate out of control, sometimes not telling consumers what sort of wavelengths of light they're using and making bold claims about what they can do.
[00:23:29.320 --> 00:23:32.760] The FDA have cleared some devices for particular use.
[00:23:32.760 --> 00:23:35.400] So speaking to popular science dermatologist Dr.
[00:23:35.400 --> 00:23:46.120] Samantha Venkatesh says, if you buy a device to make sure that there's some FDA clearance, which is a specific term, they will not approve these devices because they're not medical devices.
[00:23:46.120 --> 00:23:56.040] They wouldn't go through the FDA approval process, but they can clear them, which is a specific term for they clear it if it's similar to a product that's already been cleared.
[00:23:56.040 --> 00:23:56.600] Yes, basically.
[00:23:57.320 --> 00:23:59.160] So I don't know what the first one is.
[00:23:59.160 --> 00:24:00.280] I don't know how.
[00:24:00.520 --> 00:24:03.400] If you go all the way back, one of them has to be the first one.
[00:24:03.400 --> 00:24:04.040] Yeah, I don't know.
[00:24:04.360 --> 00:24:05.080] I don't know.
[00:24:05.080 --> 00:24:06.040] I don't quite know how that works.
[00:24:07.320 --> 00:24:11.000] They get cleared if they're similar enough to a device that already has been cleared.
[00:24:11.000 --> 00:24:11.400] So Dr.
[00:24:11.400 --> 00:24:21.480] Samantha Venkatesh says to make sure that there's some FDA clearance on it to make sure it's been tested and safe and is actually emitting the wavelength of light that you want.
[00:24:21.480 --> 00:24:38.840] If you do purchase a device that has passed electrical testing to make sure that it's safe to use, and this is like whether it's a fire risk or, as you say, electric shock risk, rather than whether it's safe to use the LED lights on the skin, I think all the evidence suggests that using these is probably like the lights not going to cause any harm.
[00:24:38.840 --> 00:24:39.880] It's LED red light.
[00:24:39.880 --> 00:24:41.880] It's not of a wavelength that's going to cause any harm.
[00:24:42.200 --> 00:24:50.000] I think it's probably okay to use these face masks as long as you know that it's safe and it is delivering the wavelength of light that it claims to be delivering.
[00:24:50.320 --> 00:24:55.680] And it might even have some slight benefit on skin texture, but the evidence is really lacking.
[00:24:55.680 --> 00:25:02.240] Where there is evidence for red or near-infrared light, it's mostly using a laser light source.
[00:25:02.240 --> 00:25:10.000] Where there is evidence for LED source devices, they're the ones in the doctors' offices, the professional ones, and not the ones for home use.
[00:25:10.320 --> 00:25:17.600] So much of the research so far is done in animal or cell models, and the stuff done in humans has methodological flaws.
[00:25:17.600 --> 00:25:19.120] So we just don't know if they work.
[00:25:19.120 --> 00:25:24.800] We don't have enough evidence examining the boundaries of efficacy for these sorts of devices specifically either.
[00:25:24.800 --> 00:25:37.440] We don't know, you know, there's this big range of wavelengths that have been studied, but they've not, we've not kind of narrowed it down to the specific bands for what they do or even what intensity is going to work, for example.
[00:25:37.440 --> 00:25:52.400] So at the lower intense intensities you're going to get with the at-home devices, just because the bulbs are physically smaller and because you might have fewer of them, you might not actually be getting enough of a dose for it to do anything of any sort compared to the professional ones.
[00:25:52.720 --> 00:26:00.480] At worst, obviously, they're dangerous because any new trend like this can lead to a quick production of electrical devices which haven't been adequately tested for safety.
[00:26:00.480 --> 00:26:03.120] But as I say, the LED light itself should be safe to use.
[00:26:03.120 --> 00:26:06.640] It's just whether there are electrical flaws with the devices.
[00:26:06.640 --> 00:26:14.000] But at best, I think it's quite likely that the majority of devices currently available on the market for home use are just a waste of time and money.
[00:26:14.000 --> 00:26:18.240] I don't think, I think it's reasonable to assume that they're not doing anything.
[00:26:18.240 --> 00:26:18.720] Dr.
[00:26:18.720 --> 00:26:35.800] Glass summarizes it in his review, stating: A reasonable body of clinical trial evidence exists to support the role of low-energy red or near-infrared light as a safe and effective method of skin rejuvenation, treatment of acne, vulgaris, and alopecia, and especially body contouring.
[00:26:36.120 --> 00:26:43.720] Methodologic flaws, small patient cohorts, and industry funding means there is ample scope to improve the quality of evidence.
[00:26:43.720 --> 00:26:55.880] It remains unclear if light-emitting diode sources induce physiologic effects of comparable nature and magnitude to those of the laser-based systems that are used in most of the higher-quality studies.
[00:26:56.200 --> 00:27:08.280] Overall, I kind of understand the temptation to use LED face masks, especially when there are so many articles that are essentially saying what I've said here, but with a positive spin on it.
[00:27:08.280 --> 00:27:14.120] With a, well, there is some evidence that shows that they work, but you know, make sure you're using the right kind.
[00:27:14.440 --> 00:27:21.560] But you know, we need more research in such a positive way that it encourages people to buy them, not least because, well, they're safe.
[00:27:21.560 --> 00:27:23.240] So, people are welcome to give them a try.
[00:27:23.240 --> 00:27:29.400] I don't, I wouldn't necessarily say absolutely avoid them, but I just think it's a waste of energy.
[00:27:29.560 --> 00:27:31.320] Pun not intended.
[00:27:31.640 --> 00:27:33.080] It's also a waste of energy.
[00:27:33.080 --> 00:27:36.200] I mean, it probably is also a waste of the energy that you take.
[00:27:36.200 --> 00:27:38.840] Some of them are chargeable, aren't they?
[00:27:38.840 --> 00:27:39.960] Some you have to plug in.
[00:27:40.280 --> 00:27:48.120] So, this is why the morning shed people say to not sleep in them because some you have to plug in and you don't want to leave it plugged in and on all night because that is a fire.
[00:27:48.280 --> 00:27:49.880] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
[00:27:49.880 --> 00:28:00.520] So, but yeah, some of them are like battery-powered, so you charge them up and then use them to the point that I've seen people wandering around doing TikTok videos of them wandering around streets with the masks on because they're not like yeah.
[00:28:00.520 --> 00:28:02.920] I see people doing the hoovering in them and things like that.
[00:28:02.920 --> 00:28:06.200] I say, I just pop this on and then do the housework, and I just forget it's there.
[00:28:06.200 --> 00:28:11.240] So, I'm not sure how you forget it's there, but it's blaring red light in your face.
[00:28:11.240 --> 00:28:15.680] Yeah, I just forget it's there while I'm taking a video of me specifically saying that I'm wearing it.
[00:28:14.840 --> 00:28:19.120] Yes, yeah, and I yeah, I've seen a lot of that as well.
[00:28:19.200 --> 00:28:27.200] And in fact, in this consumer show that Natalie Cassidy does, they give them to they have a bunch of families that go off and test the things that they're testing.
[00:28:27.200 --> 00:28:30.160] And there's a woman wearing hers and like doing the it's great.
[00:28:30.160 --> 00:28:32.720] I can relax and do the cleaning.
[00:28:32.720 --> 00:28:39.600] And it is this weird thing that people have of like, oh, well, I'm using it because it is giving me space to relax and time to myself.
[00:28:39.600 --> 00:28:42.160] And I've got like a 15-minute treatment so I can have a rest and stuff.
[00:28:42.240 --> 00:28:45.120] And also going, well, now I can relax while I'm doing something else.
[00:28:46.720 --> 00:28:48.560] That's not quite how relaxing it is.
[00:28:48.640 --> 00:28:50.080] It's not magic, yeah.
[00:28:51.040 --> 00:29:00.720] So, and frankly, it probably would at least help with you feeling just a bit more refreshed if you were just lying down for 15 minutes a day and using it.
[00:29:00.720 --> 00:29:08.080] But people aren't doing that because people are using it to like hack their wellness and do cleaning at the same time, which is very bizarre.
[00:29:08.080 --> 00:29:20.160] So I understand the temptation to use LED face masks when we feel our skin is looking a little tired, but ultimately, I'd rather wait until we have more evidence before I consider spending my money on an at-home LED mask.
[00:29:24.000 --> 00:29:28.960] Oh, God, as we record this right now, we are sat in my living room, which is where we record it.
[00:29:29.280 --> 00:29:31.680] There is scaffolding outside of the window currently.
[00:29:33.760 --> 00:29:36.000] Everything seems to happen at once in my life.
[00:29:36.000 --> 00:29:36.960] It's ludicrous.
[00:29:36.960 --> 00:29:40.960] So I probably even mentioned on this show before, I hate water.
[00:29:40.960 --> 00:29:41.760] I'll drink it.
[00:29:41.760 --> 00:29:42.240] That's fine.
[00:29:42.240 --> 00:29:43.040] I'll swim in it.
[00:29:43.040 --> 00:29:43.440] That's fine.
[00:29:43.440 --> 00:29:48.160] But the existence of it falling from the sky, I will cope with when I'm just walking around the streets.
[00:29:48.160 --> 00:29:49.600] I'm largely minded to agree.
[00:29:49.840 --> 00:29:55.440] I don't want it falling on my house anymore because every time water falls anywhere on my house, something goes wrong.
[00:29:55.440 --> 00:29:59.280] I've had leaks from every fucking corner of my house imaginable.
[00:29:59.280 --> 00:30:00.680] I had leaks to the gutter.
[00:30:00.680 --> 00:30:01.960] I had the gutter replaced.
[00:30:01.960 --> 00:30:05.080] The people who replaced the gutter were bad and dodgy.
[00:30:05.080 --> 00:30:07.560] And we should have seen that coming and we didn't see it coming.
[00:30:07.560 --> 00:30:08.840] I'm not looking at you for that, Alice.
[00:30:08.840 --> 00:30:12.920] I'm just saying, generally, like Alice had her gutters done at the same time.
[00:30:12.920 --> 00:30:14.920] By the same people who shouted at me.
[00:30:14.920 --> 00:30:15.800] Who shouted at you?
[00:30:15.800 --> 00:30:17.400] We should have seen that was a bad sign.
[00:30:17.400 --> 00:30:18.760] And they've fucked the gutters up.
[00:30:18.760 --> 00:30:22.840] And so I've had other people come out and look and they've sealed it and they've sealed it and they've sealed it.
[00:30:22.840 --> 00:30:33.800] And I've had to actually get my replaced gutters replaced again, which means scaffolding outside my house where they replace it with big aluminium gutters to match the cast iron ones.
[00:30:33.800 --> 00:30:37.000] And at the same time as doing that, someone's coming to board my loft.
[00:30:37.000 --> 00:30:41.000] Someone's coming to find me finish the bathroom, which is still not finished.
[00:30:41.000 --> 00:30:44.840] Everybody wants to be in my house figure or something all at once.
[00:30:44.840 --> 00:30:47.000] And I work from home and it's just going to be a nightmare.
[00:30:47.000 --> 00:30:52.680] So, yeah, my life is just a succession of people saying, I'll come and do that job now, all at the same time.
[00:30:52.680 --> 00:30:57.160] Of tradies, tradies just seizing in my house and helping them.
[00:30:57.240 --> 00:31:02.200] It's sort of like the opposite of vultures, in that they're not picking the house clean of its bones.
[00:31:02.200 --> 00:31:05.320] They're putting meat onto the ball and making it more robust.
[00:31:05.320 --> 00:31:07.240] But everybody wants to do that all at once.
[00:31:08.200 --> 00:31:09.000] It's stressful.
[00:31:09.000 --> 00:31:11.560] I find the whole thing remarkably stressful.
[00:31:11.560 --> 00:31:13.880] I hate you can chase them away by boiling vinegar.
[00:31:13.880 --> 00:31:15.720] I might need to boil vinegar and just.
[00:31:15.800 --> 00:31:16.440] That's how.
[00:31:16.520 --> 00:31:18.360] Or no, actually, don't let it boil.
[00:31:18.520 --> 00:31:20.120] Yeah, that was Alice.
[00:31:21.560 --> 00:31:22.200] You don't let it boil.
[00:31:23.080 --> 00:31:24.040] Not boiling hot.
[00:31:24.040 --> 00:31:29.320] Also, it's going to be the right type of vinegar because when I posted about, obviously, I covered this on a recent show and I put it on the magazine.
[00:31:29.320 --> 00:31:32.840] When I wrote about it in the magazine, I said white wine vinegar too many times.
[00:31:32.840 --> 00:31:34.280] And somebody on Reddit pointed that out.
[00:31:34.280 --> 00:31:35.560] It's like, yeah, you're right.
[00:31:35.560 --> 00:31:36.360] It's white vinegar.
[00:31:36.360 --> 00:31:37.720] Not white wine vinegar.
[00:31:37.720 --> 00:31:38.120] It's different.
[00:31:38.440 --> 00:31:40.360] You said white vinegar a lot of the time as well.
[00:31:40.360 --> 00:31:40.760] You might have seen it.
[00:31:40.920 --> 00:31:43.400] On the show I did, but not in the article that I wrote.
[00:31:43.400 --> 00:33:16.680] Oh, I didn't edit that one no i'll read it by the self responsibility for that um yeah i was sure you said because i would have i would have corrected you if you'd said white wine vinegar it's not it's white vinegar i mean try try either it doesn't matter they're both vinegar well shit gonna do the same thing i'm enjoying a bit of apple cider vinegar at the minute and i'm feeling very like woo what do you like about apple cider vinegar well i've i basically discovered it as a salad dressing it's great on salad with a little bit of oil and sugar it also detoxes your insides as you're uh as you're as you're drinking it and you can tell because your socks go brown or whatever i don't know what's going on also you don't get cancer as well it kills your cancer that's true because all of your cancer's there that reminds me i need to finish my apple cider vinegar article that i wrote like two years ago it was two years ago yeah yeah it's on my list of like alice are you going to finish the you suggested this article are you going to finish it it's been two years now well i did it on the show i just then didn't turn it into a proper stuff changed between then and i was planning to publish it so i now need to add some extra extra stuff to it yeah that's true of some of your other articles that one of the articles you wrote about somebody and he's gone to prison subsequently so so i need to update the article to include that yeah i've had endless trouble because obviously the weather's been very hot it's been very very hot and it's weird the hot weather as well because i get up in the morning and it's not too bad and i sit at work all day and it's not too bad and then somehow it gets really hot in the evening yeah i don't like that and it's it just gets hot and at night and so i'm sweltering there at night.
[00:33:16.680 --> 00:33:19.000] I'm still sleeping on top of the covers at the moment.
[00:33:19.000 --> 00:33:19.480] Yeah.
[00:33:19.480 --> 00:33:27.240] That's had a whole conversation on the skeptics with the K Discord about whether we should be doing that, whether you just need a plain sheet, whether you should have any duvet.
[00:33:27.560 --> 00:33:28.920] Alice uses a sheet.
[00:33:26.880 --> 00:33:33.160] The discussion was not about whether you should do that or whether you should use a sheet.
[00:33:33.160 --> 00:33:37.560] The discussion was, Marsh, why are you using a full duvet in the hot weather?
[00:33:37.560 --> 00:33:39.720] I'm using the summer duvet.
[00:33:39.720 --> 00:33:40.920] It's the summer duvet.
[00:33:40.920 --> 00:33:42.120] I've got a winter duvet.
[00:33:42.120 --> 00:33:44.040] I don't use that, although it's much snuggler.
[00:33:44.600 --> 00:33:45.400] I like it so much.
[00:33:45.400 --> 00:33:47.160] It just gets you up, but I like it so much.
[00:33:47.560 --> 00:33:50.120] What's the tog of your summer duvet?
[00:33:50.120 --> 00:33:51.960] I mean, I can't remember top of my head.
[00:33:51.960 --> 00:33:53.160] It's going to be about four and a half togs.
[00:33:53.640 --> 00:33:55.480] It's like maybe a five in that kind of region.
[00:33:55.480 --> 00:33:58.360] And the winter one might be twice as much or three quarters.
[00:33:59.240 --> 00:34:00.440] I've got duvets.
[00:34:00.440 --> 00:34:03.960] I've got a summer one, which is like four and a half tog, right?
[00:34:03.960 --> 00:34:07.880] I've got a winter one, which is like nine tog, but it's got little poppers on them.
[00:34:07.960 --> 00:34:10.120] You join them together, so you end up with like 13.
[00:34:10.280 --> 00:34:11.000] But you can't do that.
[00:34:11.240 --> 00:34:16.920] I tried that once in the middle of the depths of winter, and we like woke up in a hot sweat.
[00:34:17.080 --> 00:34:19.320] It's the heaviest thing in the world.
[00:34:19.320 --> 00:34:21.800] I like the weight of it, but it's just too warm.
[00:34:21.800 --> 00:34:22.520] It's too warm.
[00:34:22.520 --> 00:34:23.880] Too many togs.
[00:34:23.880 --> 00:34:26.360] But it gets really warm in the evenings.
[00:34:26.360 --> 00:34:28.840] And so it's been really oppressively hot recently.
[00:34:28.840 --> 00:34:32.920] And I've had fruit flies in my flat.
[00:34:32.920 --> 00:34:33.640] Oh, that's a good one.
[00:34:34.440 --> 00:34:35.240] Bastard flies.
[00:34:35.400 --> 00:34:36.760] Yeah, they are.
[00:34:36.760 --> 00:34:38.840] They're little, just tiny bastards flying around.
[00:34:38.920 --> 00:34:41.800] I think they've come in on a banana or something.
[00:34:41.800 --> 00:34:42.280] Classic.
[00:34:42.440 --> 00:34:47.880] I read something somewhere you should wash bananas when you get them in because they've often got like no one has ever washed a banana.
[00:34:47.880 --> 00:34:49.560] I have two related facts.
[00:34:49.560 --> 00:34:55.560] One, apparently there is such a job as like a person who like kills the spiders on bananas at banana factories.
[00:34:55.560 --> 00:34:55.960] Okay.
[00:34:55.960 --> 00:34:57.000] What do you mean by apparently?
[00:34:57.000 --> 00:34:58.040] This is a skeptical show.
[00:34:58.040 --> 00:35:00.040] I don't think you can't just get away with apparently.
[00:35:00.360 --> 00:35:05.880] I heard it from an interview with Diane Morgan, is it the who plays Philomena Clunk?
[00:35:05.880 --> 00:35:07.160] She wasn't being Philomena Clunk.
[00:35:08.520 --> 00:35:15.520] She was talking about her show that she does called Mandy, who is a person, a character who has loads of jobs.
[00:35:14.920 --> 00:35:18.320] And one of the jobs she had, she's like, it's based on a real job.
[00:35:14.920 --> 00:35:20.560] She met somebody who does it as a job.
[00:35:20.800 --> 00:35:24.560] So your evidence is a comedy writer.
[00:35:24.800 --> 00:35:26.720] Yeah, no, you're talking bullets.
[00:35:27.120 --> 00:35:29.440] She was being interviewed as herself about the show.
[00:35:30.080 --> 00:35:31.520] Okay, I'm just leaving it there.
[00:35:31.520 --> 00:35:32.080] I'm leaving it there.
[00:35:32.080 --> 00:35:32.880] What's your second fact?
[00:35:33.360 --> 00:35:33.920] As dubious.
[00:35:34.080 --> 00:35:37.200] And listeners won't be aware that Alice was doing a fly swatter meme.
[00:35:38.080 --> 00:35:41.280] Fly swatter mime, rather, at the time that she was describing it.
[00:35:41.440 --> 00:35:42.480] I think it was more of a mallet.
[00:35:42.640 --> 00:35:44.400] That was like a mallet thing, yeah.
[00:35:45.280 --> 00:35:50.800] So my second fact is last week I was making a mask man for tea.
[00:35:51.120 --> 00:35:53.280] I'm now going into a full story in the middle of your story.
[00:35:53.920 --> 00:35:58.480] I was making a masked man for tea and I got my coriander out because I always like to put coriander in a mask man.
[00:35:58.560 --> 00:36:05.520] So I got my coriander out and I was taking a bit off to chop and I spotted a little ladybird that had fallen out of the bunch of coriander.
[00:36:05.520 --> 00:36:06.160] Oh, okay.
[00:36:06.800 --> 00:36:10.160] And it was one of those little black ones with whitey yellow spots.
[00:36:10.320 --> 00:36:11.520] Oh, the ones that they say are poisonous.
[00:36:11.680 --> 00:36:13.360] Well, I don't know if they're bad or not.
[00:36:13.360 --> 00:36:14.320] I couldn't remember.
[00:36:14.320 --> 00:36:15.520] But it looked dead.
[00:36:15.520 --> 00:36:20.640] So I left it on the side of the chopping board with the intention of googling it afterwards.
[00:36:20.640 --> 00:36:24.720] But finish doing the steps of cooking that I was doing at that moment in time.
[00:36:25.040 --> 00:36:29.040] And then we came around to your house to drop off Nicola's birthday present.
[00:36:29.360 --> 00:36:36.960] And we went back and I finished, I'd left tea simmering on the harbour and I was finishing it in and I put the coriander into the Massaman.
[00:36:36.960 --> 00:36:40.880] And then a few minutes later, I was like, there was a ladybird on that chopping board.
[00:36:40.880 --> 00:36:43.120] I now think there's a ladybird in my massaman.
[00:36:44.320 --> 00:36:50.800] So I was like googling to see if, like, is it safe to accidentally eat a ladybird if that happens?
[00:36:51.440 --> 00:36:55.520] And but then it occurred to me that the coriander had come out of the fridge.
[00:36:55.520 --> 00:36:58.160] So I was like, maybe it wasn't a dead ladybird.
[00:36:58.160 --> 00:37:02.200] Maybe it was just a cold ladybird, and it has just subsequently warmed up and wandered off.
[00:37:02.200 --> 00:37:05.880] And that's what I don't remember seeing it on the chopping board when I put it in my coriander.
[00:36:59.600 --> 00:37:07.000] I put it into the coriander.
[00:37:07.560 --> 00:37:09.080] Well, anyway, I carried on cooking.
[00:37:09.240 --> 00:37:14.280] I checked that it was probably not going to do me that much harm to accidentally eat a ladybird.
[00:37:14.280 --> 00:37:17.800] So I carried on cooking, and then a little while later, I saw the ladybird on the worktop.
[00:37:17.800 --> 00:37:20.520] I was like, well, at least I know there isn't one in my food anymore.
[00:37:20.840 --> 00:37:23.800] And then you ate it anyway, because you'd already learned that it was fine.
[00:37:24.760 --> 00:37:32.760] No, I then got Warren to kill it because I think it's one of the ones that is a pest and I didn't want to let it go free into nature.
[00:37:32.760 --> 00:37:33.880] So that was quite sad.
[00:37:33.880 --> 00:37:37.480] Why do you let Warren kill it when either one of your dogs would have loved that job?
[00:37:37.480 --> 00:37:42.840] I don't know if they're poisonous for dogs, and I couldn't be asked researching that when I was still finishing cooking.
[00:37:43.320 --> 00:37:43.880] Fair comment.
[00:37:43.880 --> 00:37:44.520] Fair comment.
[00:37:45.000 --> 00:37:45.880] I don't say they wouldn't.
[00:37:45.880 --> 00:37:47.320] They would just bat it around a bit.
[00:37:47.640 --> 00:37:48.520] They would.
[00:37:49.720 --> 00:37:54.040] So my flat's horribly infested with fruit flies, and I thought, how the fuck can you get rid of the fruit flies?
[00:37:54.040 --> 00:37:56.760] And Katie gets out there with a fucking can of raid, right?
[00:37:56.760 --> 00:37:59.080] And it's like, oh, it's fucking Monsanto in it.
[00:37:59.080 --> 00:38:05.160] It's, you know, you don't want to be out there with a can of raid, especially because it was so hot, and this was the fucking cheek of them.
[00:38:05.160 --> 00:38:09.560] There was a can of raid on the side, and I looked up, and the can itself was covered in fruit flies.
[00:38:09.560 --> 00:38:11.240] Oh, the condensing can a little bit.
[00:38:11.240 --> 00:38:15.320] It was called cocky bastards, you're actually sitting on the can of fly spray.
[00:38:16.040 --> 00:38:19.880] So I had a Google for how do you get rid of fruit flies?
[00:38:19.880 --> 00:38:22.360] And someone recommended a fruit fly trap.
[00:38:22.360 --> 00:38:30.120] And the fruit fly trap is you put a little bit of water in a bowl, sugar in the water, so they kind of think, oh, it's, you know, sugar, I'm going to go eat it.
[00:38:30.120 --> 00:38:37.400] Yeah, and then you put a cardboard box over it, like propped up on a stick, and then a bit of string, and you wait for the fruit fly to go in, and you pull it.
[00:38:38.600 --> 00:38:40.120] Yeah, like a rabbit, yeah.
[00:38:40.840 --> 00:38:45.600] You put some vinegar in it as well, a little bit of vinegar in it, and I use rice vinegar for this.
[00:38:45.680 --> 00:38:46.720] I don't want to use malt vinegar.
[00:38:44.600 --> 00:38:48.080] So I use rice vinegar for this.
[00:38:48.080 --> 00:38:49.520] You meant to use like apple cider vinegar.
[00:38:44.840 --> 00:38:51.760] I was meant to use apple cider vinegar, but I just used it.
[00:38:51.840 --> 00:38:55.120] Well, because apple cider vinegar is a bit sweet and vinegary.
[00:38:55.360 --> 00:38:59.680] So I used a little bit of rice vinegar and a drop of washing up liquid.
[00:38:59.680 --> 00:39:00.160] Ah.
[00:39:00.160 --> 00:39:02.000] And what that does is break the surface tension.
[00:39:02.000 --> 00:39:04.400] So when they fall in, they fall down.
[00:39:05.360 --> 00:39:06.240] And they drown.
[00:39:06.240 --> 00:39:07.840] And fuck me, that worked well.
[00:39:07.840 --> 00:39:08.160] Really?
[00:39:08.640 --> 00:39:09.040] Absolutely.
[00:39:09.520 --> 00:39:12.400] I didn't put the vinegar in at first because I thought, well, that's woo in it.
[00:39:12.560 --> 00:39:13.920] You know, what's the fucking vinegar for?
[00:39:14.000 --> 00:39:14.800] Doesn't fucking matter.
[00:39:14.800 --> 00:39:16.640] Sugar, water, nothing.
[00:39:16.640 --> 00:39:17.120] Did nothing.
[00:39:17.120 --> 00:39:18.560] They didn't fucking care about it.
[00:39:18.560 --> 00:39:19.680] Drop a vinegar in it.
[00:39:19.680 --> 00:39:22.720] Suddenly, and I looked this up, it gives off a smell like rotting fruit.
[00:39:22.960 --> 00:39:24.720] And so they're like, fucking hell, rotting fruit.
[00:39:24.720 --> 00:39:24.960] Woo!
[00:39:25.200 --> 00:39:25.920] We love rotting fruit.
[00:39:26.960 --> 00:39:30.640] It is literally the case that you catch more flies with vinegar than honey.
[00:39:30.640 --> 00:39:31.040] Absolutely.
[00:39:31.520 --> 00:39:33.840] They've lied the other way around.
[00:39:33.840 --> 00:39:34.320] Yeah.
[00:39:38.800 --> 00:39:40.400] So, tickets for QED.
[00:39:40.400 --> 00:39:43.120] Online tickets for QED are still available.
[00:39:43.120 --> 00:39:44.320] Price £49.
[00:39:44.320 --> 00:39:46.320] You can get those at QEDcon.org.
[00:39:46.320 --> 00:39:52.800] That will give you access to the main stage content, the panel room content, and the live podcasts.
[00:39:52.800 --> 00:39:54.960] And so you can pick up your ticket for that at QEDcon.org.
[00:39:54.960 --> 00:39:56.160] The streaming is done through YouTube.
[00:39:56.160 --> 00:40:00.640] So any kind of YouTube app that you want to use, you've got YouTube on your telly.
[00:40:00.640 --> 00:40:01.280] You can sit down.
[00:40:01.280 --> 00:40:02.960] We know people are organizing watch parties.
[00:40:03.040 --> 00:40:04.800] They're going to sit around and watch this.
[00:40:04.800 --> 00:40:06.080] That's going to be terrific fun.
[00:40:06.080 --> 00:40:07.520] And it is the final QED.
[00:40:07.520 --> 00:40:13.280] So you should definitely take the opportunity to grab your online ticket and you can do that at qdcon.org.
[00:40:13.600 --> 00:40:17.600] For Liverpool Skeptics in the pub, we've got a social event this evening.
[00:40:17.600 --> 00:40:18.720] That's taking place in Dr.
[00:40:18.720 --> 00:40:20.160] Duncan's on St.
[00:40:20.160 --> 00:40:22.240] John's Lane in central Liverpool.
[00:40:22.240 --> 00:40:23.840] That's going to be from 8 p.m.
[00:40:23.920 --> 00:40:26.400] And if you're in the Liverpool area, you should definitely come along to that.
[00:40:26.400 --> 00:40:27.760] Our socials have been huge recently.
[00:40:27.760 --> 00:40:28.480] Yeah, we always enjoy this.
[00:40:28.640 --> 00:40:31.160] We say this every time, but our socials are always brilliant.
[00:40:31.960 --> 00:40:32.760] And are we all going to be there?
[00:40:32.760 --> 00:40:33.960] Are we all going to be at the social?
[00:40:33.960 --> 00:40:34.760] I think I'm going to be there.
[00:40:29.840 --> 00:40:35.880] I think we should all be at the social.
[00:40:36.200 --> 00:40:37.800] So that's going to be a brilliant time.
[00:40:37.800 --> 00:40:39.080] And you should definitely come along to that.
[00:40:39.080 --> 00:40:40.760] It's going to be fantastic.
[00:40:40.760 --> 00:40:43.720] And Skeptic Magazine, we need to plug Skeptic Magazine in.
[00:40:43.880 --> 00:40:48.440] Yeah, we don't mention the magazine very often, but obviously I'm the editor, and Alice is deputy editor.
[00:40:48.440 --> 00:40:52.120] And we, as a group at the University of Skeptic Society, are the publishers of the magazine.
[00:40:52.120 --> 00:41:00.200] And we put out brand new articles every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, sometimes also on a Thursday, and an archive article on a Tuesday.
[00:41:00.200 --> 00:41:05.560] So there's like up to five articles kind of will go out of original skeptical journalism that you won't find elsewhere.
[00:41:05.560 --> 00:41:12.600] Sometimes the brand new articles are articles that we've written up from the show, as we've talked about earlier in the episode.
[00:41:12.600 --> 00:41:16.680] Sometimes they are slightly edited versions of those to make them slightly less waffly.
[00:41:17.000 --> 00:41:17.960] Or more waffly in some way.
[00:41:18.200 --> 00:41:23.240] Slightly more waffly if we're adding additional content that has become relevant in the meantime.
[00:41:23.240 --> 00:41:24.680] Like someone going to prison, for example.
[00:41:25.560 --> 00:41:31.000] But that also makes them shareable in a way that people often ask us for on specific topics.
[00:41:31.000 --> 00:41:37.320] So if you want to find articles about things we've written, we've heard on the show, you might find them on the magazine webpage.
[00:41:37.320 --> 00:41:38.200] Yeah, that's absolutely true.
[00:41:38.200 --> 00:41:44.200] The other thing you'll find on the magazine webpage is it's time for our nominations for the Occam Awards, which obviously I mentioned last week.
[00:41:44.200 --> 00:41:59.000] So don't forget to get your Occam Award nominations in for the person you think has done some fantastic skeptical work over the last year and the person or group or organization or product that you think has been particularly pseudo-scientific and impactful with its pseudoscience over the last year.
[00:41:59.000 --> 00:42:06.440] If you go to the skeptic palm page at skeptic.org.uk, you'll see a little bit at the top saying Occam's, and from there you can find the nomination form.
[00:42:06.440 --> 00:42:18.640] And if you like the work that we're doing at Skeptic Magazine, you can also support the magazine on Patreon by going to patreon.com forward slash theskeptic, where you can donate to help with the running costs and the administration of the magazine itself.
[00:42:18.960 --> 00:42:27.760] And speaking of Patreon, of course, this show has a Patreon which you can find at patron.com forward slash skeptics with a K, where you will find an ad-free version of this show.
[00:42:28.080 --> 00:42:32.000] And if you would like to support us and support the show, that's a great place to go and do that.
[00:42:32.000 --> 00:42:37.920] Yes, you can help pay for some of the guttering that I have to have replaced in my fucking house.
[00:42:38.240 --> 00:42:45.440] And of course, there is also the Merseyside Skeptics Patreon as well, patrion.com forward slash Merseyskeptics, where you will also get an ad-free version of the show.
[00:42:45.440 --> 00:42:48.800] And that supports this show and it supports the Merseyside Skeptic Society.
[00:42:48.800 --> 00:42:49.440] Yeah.
[00:42:50.400 --> 00:42:51.520] Big plugs.
[00:42:51.520 --> 00:42:53.520] I think that's all we got time for.
[00:42:53.520 --> 00:42:56.240] All that remains then is for me to thank Marsh for coming on today.
[00:42:56.240 --> 00:42:56.720] Thank you.
[00:42:56.720 --> 00:42:57.680] Thank you to Alice.
[00:42:57.680 --> 00:42:58.160] Thank you.
[00:42:58.160 --> 00:43:00.720] We have been Skeptics with a K, and we will see you next time.
[00:43:00.720 --> 00:43:01.360] Bye now.
[00:43:01.360 --> 00:43:02.320] Bye.
[00:43:07.120 --> 00:43:12.160] Skeptics with a K is produced by Skeptic Media in association with the Merseyside Skeptic Society.
[00:43:12.160 --> 00:43:21.440] For questions or comments, email podcast at skepticswithakay.org and you can find out more about Merseyside Skeptics at mercyside skeptics.org.uk.