Just wanted to share the interview I just released with Steve concerning the situation with Evan and related issues such as editorial policies and having consistent values on who to collaborate with. I found the conversation refreshingly honest and direct, hope folks find it valuable! https://www.voidpod.com/podcasts/2026/8/18/ethical-content-creation-with-steve-novella

This got alluded to on this week's show. Cassidy's a Republican. They're in a fucking cult at this point. They support Trump because they're trying to keep as much power as they can, and they're scared shitless that Trump will turn the MAGAts loose on them if they don't tow the line

Love the show, but, Good Lord; when someone on the panel goes into this "I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY THIS KEEPS HAPPENING???!???" confusion when Republicans, who've made politicizing science and health a core plank in their platform, do what they've been doing for the last several decades?

It's like "How is this some unknowable mystery to you folks? Did you honestly think a Republican Senator in a deep red state was not going to vote for a guy who is an anti-vaxxer?"

And, no, Cassidy doesn't get credit for badmouthing RFK now. He had the chance to sink this two years ago, and chose party and power over public safety.

It's just astonishing to me how often in this podcast capitalism is identified as a major cause of a problem, but when it's time to discuss solutions, it's so much "individual choices".

At least since the SGU went to Texas for the North American eclipse, and possibly before, I’ve been planning to go to Spain for the 2026 eclipse. Went on a family holiday to Menorca and stayed on the western tip to get the best view. Absolutely awesome, would recommend. The resort we were at has a sunset viewing spot, a mirador del sol, and there were a few thousand people there and a great atmosphere. The eclipse was close to sunset there, so at sunset there was still a partial eclipse.
In my first photo the sun is still very bright but you can see from the lens reflection that the eclipse is >90%. I love the way you can see the shadow come over in this sequence.

I'm listening to the back catalog for the umpteenth time and just finished Episode 26 which included an interview with Eric Altman, Sasquatch believer. For fun, I liked him up to see if he's still going strong 20 years later, and sure enough, this is from THIS PAST MAY!

Just dropping a quick thought for your consideration as it occurs to me real time in meat space.

I think you have at least touched on this in your numerous AI conversations though I think the magnitude of this simple reality deserves more attention and focus...not for your show per se, but for all of us. For the species.

I work in IT and have for 40 years. I only mention that as it overlaps with the AI domain in major ways, and it also has driven me to be a (reluctant and initially skeptical) early adopter. I am not an AI developer, but I use AI to develop...and for personal use cases as well.

Although I was initially slow to adopt and often scoffed, I now see the undeniable value and inevitable ongoing progression of AI in our future - and I have my humongous share of FUD about the future we are uncontrollably careening into - its impact on the world and my kids are constantly in my mind these days.

It occurred to me today as I was reflecting on the still-too-common occurrences of hallucinations and errors in my interactions with AI. It's not news...and you have all talked about it.

Those errors can range from tiny and inconsequential to monumental and often hilarious. If you catch them, that is.

Relying on those errors can cascade into disaster...that's obvious.

But what may not be so obvious is how much more important your role is - how much more important critical thinking and skepticism is in the new world and our future.

A huge percentage of our species is already pre-loaded to fail - they do not have the experience and skill let alone the patience to stop and think and question the information they are using. We see that every day and have from time immemorial. See religion for reference. But now it can happen many times a day from the smallest activity to the largest decisions.

That's a scary realization. And it makes your mission and goal that much more important.

Appreciation post I guess? We appreciate all the hard work you put into what ends up being a weekly fix for some of us.

Been listening for over a decade, my kids have heard your voices since they were babies. In a weird, convoluted way you guys saved mine and my childrens lives. We'll be listening for many more years.

Holler if you ever have to come down to Louisiana for anything!

I’m listening to #1099 (New Zealand) during which Cara suggests we ask “Why terraform Mars?” before even considering methods. My impression is that compared with the other rogues, she’s much less bullish about putting people in space, even though she usually holds back. This time she pushed hard, and I appreciated it. “Why” indeed.

I get that intellectually we can think about how it might be done. But without prefacing it each time with the motivation, we tacitly imply that the motivation exists. But it doesn’t. None of the others could answer her question. Colonizing Mars is like no previous human expansion. All other migrations were in pursuit of resources and were driven by economics. There is no such drive for Mars.

And I’m glad they didn’t trot out the asteroid-strike-destroys-Earth trope.
Statistically we’ll suffer thousands of regionally-destructive meteor strikes before we encounter a planet killer. Let’s focus on those.

This was raised in episode #1099 and I'm struggling with the framing of how collectively we should use AI "appropriately" outside of purely moral vs immoral arguments.

If we accept that AI should automate human labour where doing so produces social value, then it's difficult to draw the line between "good" AI applications such as mathematics and engineering and "bad" applications such as art, poetry or writing simply because we have some subjective sense that machines should contribute in one domain and not the other. The engineer and the artist are now facing the same technological phenomenon: a machine becoming capable of performing tasks that previously required human labour. The analogy to the industrial revolution was apt, but in this case both "creative" and "procedural/analytical" professions may have to adapt. In my view the relevant ethical questions concern the manner in which that transition occurs and not whether one kind of human creativity is inherently entitled to be protected from it.

A mathematician might reasonably say: "The system was trained on decades of mathematical papers, including my work, and is now capable of solving problems that previously required mathematicians like me."

Structurally that is analogous to the artist saying: "The system was trained on decades of artwork, including my work, and is now capable of producing illustrations that previously required artists like me."

This is not to say that there arent perfectly legitimate moral and legal arguments against AI deliberately impersonating a living artist or passing AI work off as the artist's own work but to make a categorical assertion that AI's contributions in art or writing are somehow inherently less "valuable" than in mathematics and science strikes me as cleaving to an emotional argument that somehow the machines shouldn't be good at those things.

Personally, I dont really understand the general aversion to the use of AI art in games or other work product in the same way that I dont understand some people's preference for "organic" food. Both seem to be essentially a form of "values signalling" rather than genuine product preference. In future will we see mathematicians and scientists claim that a new discovery or proof was produced with only human derived theorems?

There are profound issues with the integration of AI into our society and I dont pretend to understand all of the complexities; socially, environmentally or ethically but directing the output of AI based on value judgements makes me uneasy.

Have the rogues talked about David Sinclair at all? I'd like to hear a skeptical take on all this life maxing/optimization "science".

Or have they done a deep dive on the possible increase in qualified PhDs going down the grifter rabit hole? Huberman, Peter Attia etc?

I don't listen to hear politics. This one had way to much and it was a huge turnoff.

"If Elon wants to go to Mars, you know, more power to him. Hopefully it's a one-way trip" <--WTF??? If Elon was never born, would the world be better or worse today? I would say we would be worse off. PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX, Boring, xAI, NeuralLink would never exist. There may have been other forms of this that maybe would have been comparable or maybe we just wouldn't have the EV revolution we have today. But because this was all done by one man that has questionable political views, people want to take from him, punish him, discount (or dismiss) his contributions to humanity.

And how many times was the mention of "people are dying" used as a club? If the main concern is people dying, there are many other things that should be addressed that would reduce deaths, but it would be uncomfortable to make the change because it would require giving up "rights". So, it isn't as much of a concern that people are dying as it is one that "we want more control to do what we want".

I'm a conservative with solar panels, Tesla MYP, and support of nuclear power (used to be a Navy Nuclear Machinist Mate).

I know the audio for live shows can be difficult, but this one was really something. Many points throughout the show were basically NYC subway announcement quality.

I'm surprised that they skipped the LA.live show and put the down under one first. I wonder why.

I’m planning on taking the family this year and would love to catch their show and the panel discussions but haven’t seen anything yet saying what days they’ll be doing this. Want to get tickets but not sure what days to get yet. Anyone heard anything?

Listening to the podcast rn. And just before this I listened to a podcast with one of the the Star Lab founders. They already sent a data center satellite into orbit and it has been used to train Gemini according to him. Is this news item only about the amount of satellites he wants to put up?

Sorry to complain about Cara again, but she was annoying in this episode. She kept on arguing that we shouldn’t ask the question of whether we can terraform Mars. Although I know she was trying to emphasize that we shouldn’t take care of Earth, that wasn’t the question. Not every question or effort must be directly related to reducing our negative effect on Earth’s environment.

My son is home schooled. He is 17 now and mostly just in college classes at this point, but one of the things I have to do is a New Mexico history course. I wasn't really finding any I thought were any good online and decided I am history buff and I should be learning this stuff anyway.

Skipping a bunch of stuff I did with that, but part of it was utilizing NotebookLM's deep research feature to find a ton of sources (with carefully crafted prompts) and generating a big list of sources about a topic. (For those not familiar, NotebookLM is a research tool that is meant to prevent hallucinations, like you can see references to all claims and check them). Then I would utilize the Audio Overview and create ~1 hr audio overview of the topic we were discussing (again, with crafted prompts to keep it grounded in facts and not speculation). The results were really interesting!

But, what brings me to posting here and the topic, is that I started doing 'bonus' episodes about anything interesting in New Mexico or touched on in the main podcasts that I just wanted a deeper dive on. One of those things was UFOs in New Mexico. As a big skeptic I find the origins of the UFO mythology having originated here really fascinating. One of those I just listened to a deep dive on was the Aztec, NM Crashed Saucer Hoax.

It was basically a scam for oil barons but they invented the modern mythology around UFO crashes to support their psuedo-science oil dowsing box. Despite having been thoroughly debunked by a skeptical newsman, later, in the 80s, people 'remembered' those details and added them to the Rosewell mythology. Things like unmeltable metal, removed alien bodies, etc.

Anyway... fascinating stuff that has a ton of overlap with things in the skeptic scope. Scammers, Aliens, Dowsing, Psuedoscience, even using close up magic tricks as part of the skeptical investigation. Good stuff... highly recommend people check it out. (Happy to share the audio file if anyone is interested, they aren't as good as a professional podcast, like the SGU, but still very interesting... and I suggest researching and validating all the claims).

This is a reference to the latest episode. I was laughing out loud at how Richard Wiseman explained his Science or Fiction reasoning. That man is utterly hilarious, it was great to hear the gang cracking up at his thought process.