Skeptics' Guide - Episode #89
Recording Date: April 4th, 2007
Link to the Official Episode Notes
Official Episode #89 thread on the forums
Episode #89 Skeptical Puzzle thread on the forums
Download Episode #89 MP3
Panelists (in order of appearance)
- Steven Novella
- Bob Novella
- Rebecca Watson
- Perry DeAngelis
- Jay Novella
- Evan Bernstein
Interesting Facts
- No one won Science or Fiction in this episode
- The theme for Science or Fiction in this episode is psychology
- No answered last week's Skeptical Puzzle correctly
Science or Fiction**
- Bob (36/67)
- Perry (20/61)
- Rebecca* (32/49)
- Jay* (15/44)
- Evan (22/58)
Funny Quotes
1. Evan: "And we wish all our listeners today happy international day for landmine awareness and assistance day."
Jay: "Oh christ."
Steve: "You have to be aware of landmines."
2. Jay (about Rosie O'Donnell's 9/11 conspiracy talk on the View): "I watched part of it then I threw up on myself and had to go clean up."
3. Jay (about Rosie O'Donnell): "Rebecca she doesn't hate bush."
4. Bob: "There's this one quote that just tickled me he said that 'regardless, it appears that not even the heat of ridicule can weaken O'Donnell's steely resolve to make an idiot of herself.'"
Steve: "That was puntastic."
5. Jay: "Rebecca also don't forget, she's there on that show to make all the other women look thin."
6. Jay: "One of the priests said that medicine and faith have a role to play in treating AIDS. He insists that the holy water is a proven cure."
Steve: "But he doesn't have any proof. I don't have any evidence or anything but this is a proven cure."
7. Perry (about the AIDS holy water cure): "If you're menstruating, out. And if you've had sex recently, out. Now they will allow you to go stand on a nearby hillside and they will eventually come out and douse you with water out there."
Evan: "You're saying they are not equal-opportunity charlatans."
8. Bob: "The paranormal dance. Jay you've gotta come up with an actual set of movements."
Jay: "Me? You want me to come up with THE dance?"
Rebecca: "You want Jay to dance?"
Bob: "He can do alot of funky little dance moves."
Jay: "Ya basically what that means Rebecca is that I can make an idiot of myself very easily."
9. Evan (about the 20,000 hits that an April fool's joke website got about a fairy mummy): "Mostly godmothers."
10. Steve (about people believing that there was a time when the planets were aligned where Earth's gravity was negated.): "As if we needed more evidence that people are pathetically gullible."
Jay: "So it's NOT true?"
Evan: "Depends, if you're Neal Adams it's true."
11. Bob: "I mean what's gonna happen next? Are they gonna stop teaching about gravity so as not to offend those students that are gravitationally challenged?"
12. Jay: "God is holding you to the ground? Why does that sound like a pedophile to me?"
13. Jay (about Neal Adams doing real science): "It's not 'real science' it's 'Neal science.'"
14. Perry: "The very last place to get your science information is the mass media."
Jay: "No it's Neal, it's Neal!"
15. Steve (about congress on nanotechnology): "Do they actually say 'we should be putting billions and billions into this'?"
16. Bob (about a nanotechnology gap): "I think we will be at a point in the not too distant future when the government will take it, in a very short period of time, they will take it an order of magnitude more seriously. They're gonna be like 'whoa, wait a second this is getting a little scary. We gotta dump billions of dollars into this'."
17. Jay (about nanotechnology): "Think of the internet porn."
18. Perry: "I just wanna point out here that we sound a little excitable here. And I wanna make sure we don't go down the whole robot matrix thing again."
Steve: "Perry the evidence from science fiction is overwhelming, you can't deny it anymore."
19. Jay (about the peanut butter evolution video): "Steve before you start. Can I make an announcement?" (and then Jay plays a hilarious peanut butter song) Download
20. Steve: "God miracled the first organisms into being."
Rebecca: "He miracled? Did you just make miracle a verb? You don't miracle something."
21. Rebecca (about life not spontaneously popping up in peanut butter): "Obviously he's never opened up a jar of food in my apartment. Seriously I have a jar of peanut butter in my cabinet right now that has a lot of life that seems to spontaneously pop up inside."
22. Jay: "This is not science folks. This is an idiot."
23. Steve: "Now just to be thorough. The reason why this is pure nonsense is because the conditions that existed on the early Earth that allowed for the emergence of single-cells out of the so called 'primordial soup' don't exist in a peanut butter jar!"
Rebecca: "It's so sad that you even have to say that."
Evan: "Yeah you have to go one aisle over to get the primordial soup in a jar."
Steve: "Yeah does Campbell make primordial soup?"
24. Rebecca: "Maybe God just prefers creamy."
Steve: "This was a jar of creamy peanut butter. He did not test the creamy versus chunky hypothesis. He's not rigorous in his pseudoscience."
25. Jay (about the peloop): "Steve it has magnets, tormaline, and germanium."
Evan: "Those poor Germans."
Rebecca: "Isn't germanium a flower?"
26. Jay: "And if you go to the website peloop.com, and you look at the flash animation they have of it, it actually looks like the cock ring is having an orgasm."
27. Jay: "Steve so you're saying that the magnets have absolutely no effect whatsoever on a man's erection? Yes or no?"
28. Steve (about the peloop): "It does say that if it doesn't work you might want to add a little lubrication and then take it off and put it back on multiple times."
29. Evan (about the peloop): "It says if you're not happy you can return it and get a refund? Is he recirculating these things to other people?"
30. Steve (reading a listener email): "'I recently travelled to Tanzania.' That's in Africa Jay."
Jay: "Where's Africa?"
31. Perry: "Yeah let me tell you something. If it was monkeys that came after their lunches, they'd be dead."
32. Perry: "I'm in agreeance with you Jay. In fact, I like to be in agreeance as much as possible. I'm an agreeanceable person."
Rebecca: "In agreeance? What's agreeance? That's not even a word."
Bob: "Just roll with it Rebecca."
Rebecca: "I refuse to just roll with this ok, I am sick of you guys making up words."
Evan: "They're perfectly cromulent words."
...
Evan: "Yeah stop that you're being such a flester."
Rebecca: "I see what you did there. Don't think I didn't notice."
Evan: "Don't get all constriculated here."
Rebecca: "Stop it!"
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** - As of the conclusion of this episode's game. (wins/times played)
* - won this week's game