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The Skeptics' Guide To The Universe - Podcast 355 - 5/5/2012
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The Skeptics' Guide To The Universe
The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, LLC - dedicated to promoting critical thinking, reason, and the public understanding of science through online and other media. The first episode of the SGU podcast went online on May 4th, 2005. It soon became a popular science/skeptical podcast, and remains one of the most popular science podcasts on iTunes.
SGU Podcasting Awards: SGU on XM: You can listen to the SGU on America's Talk XM 166 every Saturday night from 8-9pm Eastern.
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Podcast
355
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May 05, 2012
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Guest Rogues: Seth Shostak and James Randi
This Day in Skepticism: First American in Space, SGU 7 Year Anniversary
News Items: Rogue Planets, Machine Monkey Interface, Finding ET with Robots, God Spot in the Brain
SETI Update
Audience Q&A: The Coming Singularity
Science or Fiction
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Segment: This Day in Skepticism
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May 5, 1961
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Alan Shepard becomes the first American in space.
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May 5, 2005
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SGU Episode #1
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Segment: News Items
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Segment: Special Report
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SETI Update
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with SETI senior astronomer Seth Shostak
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Segment: Audience Q&A
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Question #1 - Singularity
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Should we, and how can we, hasten the coming the singularity?
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Segment: Science or Fiction [ Click Here to Show the Answers ]
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Item #1  Fiction
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Recent phylogenetic analyses suggest an extremely recent common ancestor between two-toed sloths and three-toed sloths, which occupy the same territory, subsist on the same diet, and even have the same number of toes despite the name difference.
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Item #2  Science
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Sloths move so slowly that a blue-green algae grows on them, living symbiotically in their hollow hair and providing sustenance for dozens of varieties of arthropods.
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Item #3 Science
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Despite the fact that they are incapable of walking, sloths climb down from the trees, poop in a small hole at the foot of the tree, and then climb back up.
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Item #4 Science
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Sloths are graceful swimmers who can perform a breast stroke and are descended from an aquatic sloth ancestor.
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Segment: Skeptical Quote of the Week
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Skeptical Quote of the Week
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"The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there's no place for it in the endeavor of science. We do not know beforehand where fundamental insights will arise from about our mysterious and lovely solar system. The history of our study of our solar system shows us clearly that accepted and conventional ideas are often wrong, and that fundamental insights can arise from the most unexpected sources."
-- Carl Sagan, Cosmos television series
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