Latest / The Wes Carroll Morning Show / Science or History?

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Science or History? · The Wes Carroll Morning Show

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The news, opinions, commentary, and interviews you need to start your day.
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You're listening to The West Carrol Morning Show. Wednesday morning, twenty fourth
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day of April. I'm Wes, thanks for joining me zipping on through this
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week? Aren't we just zipping on through the week? Man? Make your
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neck hurt? It's going so fast. What have we got in store for
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us today? I want to talk about Someone brought it to my attention an
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article that was written Scientific American, and I'm putting it out there. First
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of all, when you talk about Scientific American, it's one of those things
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that when you hear the name and you go, oh, what's Scientific American?
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I would think the average person would go, oh, well, this
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is a scientific magazine is riddled with nothing but science. Everything about it is
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factual. It's scientific. You gotta believe the science, write everything about it.
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They don't maybe take a minute to step back and say that this is
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an editorial magazine or website that is basically, you know, full of opinion.
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I feel much when I hear about something from Scientific American, when I
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hear someone reference it, and I think about how it's like the History Channel,
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because when I hear someone talk about, Oh, I really like to
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watch the History Channel. I think which part of it do you like to
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watch? Do you like to watch the World War two grainy footage of action
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and combat and get some sort of a you know, lesson in the battles
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of war, or do you like all the alien stuff because it's a very
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different kind of History channel. Do you like learning about, you know,
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the pyramids of ancient Egypt? Or do you like to learn about conspiracy theories
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and the lunar landing? Like? Which History channel are we talking about?
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And I can't help but feel like there's some of that same courtesy that has
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allowed the History Channel when people say, oh I love the History Channel.
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Oh, you must be smart, and perhaps you are. Perhaps you have
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an affinity for battles of the American Revolution, you know, maybe that's what
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you like, or maybe you like, you know, bat boy found.
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I don't know. I don't know which of the ones, which of the
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history channels that you prefer, But some people will say that they like the
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History Channel and they are afforded that grace. That's, oh man, they
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must be smart. They really like educational things, they have a love for
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it. And I think there may be some people people who do that,
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you know, to put it out there, like saying you like classical music
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even though you never listen to it. I mean, who doesn't like some
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classical music. You may not listen to it, you can at least get
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by with saying that you like it even if you don't. I know a
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handful of people who actually listen to it and listen to it regularly and probably
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never watch the conspiracy theories on the History Channel, and I suspect they're aware
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of the fact that Scientific American is not really about science. I mean,
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it's about science, but so is you know, alien discoveries. I mean,
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there's some science there. It's science fiction, but it's science. Right.
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It was brought to my attention that Scientific American has an article that came
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out just a few days ago titled how anti trans efforts misuse and distort science.
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They're throwing out the word science, right, They're playing the science card
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in this, and that's fine. I mean, it's supposed to be a
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scientific magazine. That's the idea, isn't it. But this particular article go
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it's it's an interview with two transgender advocates, one a French Canadian who calls
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himself or herself now sorry, it's a man, a birth man, that's
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And I'm just mentioning in this for the purposes of clarifying that this Florence Ashley,
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self described transfeminine activist, academic and slut by the way, and Simon
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dow Kwang's son, senior fellow, Center for Apply Transgender Studies in Chicago,
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one in Canada, one in Chicago. And this article is an interview of
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these two transgender activists. And right out of the gate, there are a
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few things in the article I guess we should mention. It says it discusses
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misinformation. This author of this article, Corey Powell credited, gets the byline
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Corey S. Powell and Open Mind Magazine get the byline on this, saying,
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right out of the gate, three types of misinformation are being used against
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transgender people, oversimplifying scientific knowledge, fabricating and misinterpreting research, and promoting false
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equivalences. So and then I guess, quoting maybe from the article, I
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don't know we've got well, let's jump right in the interview part of this
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first question addressed to Florence Ashley, the advocate, academic, and slut self
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described that the anti trans sentiment has existed for a long time, but it
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seems like we're in a moment of particularly intense attacks. Why is that the
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response? It's definitely been getting worse. A lot of people have been out
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since the seventies eighties saying this is an unprecedented level of public hate. So
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let's think a I mean, I'm not a scientist. I play one on
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Thursdays on Mate of Stars. Not really, I don't even play a scientist.
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I play the everyman. My friend who's a scientist plays the scientist on
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that. But let's just take a bit of a scientific approach to this.
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Why might twenty twenty four be a different time for the trans and well,
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the LGBTQ plus community. Let's specifically address that this article is about transactivism ultimately,
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but let's talk about the LGBTQ plus community. So how might it be
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different now in April of twenty twenty four than I don't know the nineteen seventies.
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What might be different? Are there any factors at play that could be
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different for us culturally? Let's start with the fact that all forms of media
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are on steroids compared to the nineteen seventies. And that's just true of the
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forms of media that were in play in the seventies. That's not even taking
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into account the Internet, social media, twenty four hour news cycles, all
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those things. Some of the forms of media, I guess, or maybe
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not fully there's much more awareness on it. But I'm thinking specifically of some
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of the dying methods of getting news out, like I don't know, newspapers
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and magazines like Scientific Americans anyway. So that's the first thing. Also,
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for a very long period of time, a very long period of time,
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there have been statistics concerning percentages of people who identified into the LGBTQ plus community
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specifically, we'll just talk in the in the gay community. And those stats
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kind of hovered around the like five percent mark. I mean, I know
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there was always this discussion about ten percent. Ten percent of those is really
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but those came from you know, studies, you know, Kinsey, and
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we start talking about if you're taking a poll of people in prison, ten
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percent of them admit to some sort of homosexual contact in some prisons, that
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number would be very low. In lying in some prisons, I would say
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that ten percent would be high. So not that I'm an expert on any
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of that. I watched OZ. I didn't watch Oranges the New Black.
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So that's giving you an idea of my baseline for what I know about what
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happens in prisons. Okay, yes, OZ, No, Orange is the
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New Black. And I know, I hear it's great. Everybody says it
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was a great show. I just I didn't watch it. I never did.
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Maybe at some point I will. There's other things I'm watching at the
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moment. But my point is five percent. That was about the standard that
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was used for a long time. Even if you want to go as high
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as the ten percent numbers that I mean, most people that were throwing it
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out were just they didn't know where those numbers came from. They just set
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it. But even if you want to go with that, but let's just
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kind of use the five percent maybe as the approximate amount. And concerning the
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getting into any part of the trans community, those numbers were down in the
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like maybe two percent maybe back in the seventies. I mean, again,
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I'm not a historian on this. I'm just basing it on the stats that
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were kind of the assumed stats at the time or even years later, and
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really up until a decade ago, fifteen years ago, before we hit this
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culturally, this society that says, hey, kids, you do whatever you
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want to do, don't tell your parents, do whatever you want to do.
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You want to start taking medicine to change something, you can do that.
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We have actors, actresses that they can look up to that have done
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this and they say it's okay. So that's changed a lot, and it's
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also bumped the numbers up drastically. Okay, drastically. I don't even know
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what the current stats are, but we're looking somewhere in the thirties. I
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think thirty something percent is the last figure that I heard. It may be
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higher. So with more people according to those stats, I don't know if
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they did those studies in OZ or what. I don't know. I don't
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know where the stats come from on the thirty percent. But if you're just
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using that and you say we've gone from five percent and now thirty percent of
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people that you know are comfortable identifying as something other than male or female and
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straight, there's more people that you're talking about in a world that has more
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forms of media for them to be talked about. It's much more prominent and
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more discussed. So if your concern is why are so many people talking about
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it, this unprecedented level of public hate, that's your answer. Doesn't make
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it okay to hate anybody. I'm not an advocate for hating anyone, certainly
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not. And if you've listened to this show any length of time, or
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listen to me on the radio for any length of time, you know my
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opinions on this. I fully advocate everyone be you do whatever it is that
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you want to do. There's one person who is accountable for your actions.
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That's you. Unless you're in Michigan and you know, do something horrible and
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shoot a school, then your parents are also accountable for it, but not
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in the next life. Not on the other side, You're the one that's
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accountable for what you do. You live your life, you make the decision
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on how you want to live it. I know I've talked a little bit
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about faith in the last a week or so, but God gives us free
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will. I believe that, and I believe that you have every right to
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do whatever it is that you want to do with your life. It's between
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you and Him. And if you don't believe in him or you believe in
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something else. Then still, it's your life. Your accountability will come at
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some point for whatever decisions you make, whatever it is that you want to
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do. I have to be accountable for my decisions. I don't want anyone
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helping me make decisions. And I've said this many times before. I would
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like to be left alone. I'd like to be able to live my life
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freely and not have anyone tell me how to live it. And I certainly
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would want that for everyone else. And I don't want to ask anyone to
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participate in my life for lifestyle. I don't want them to have to do
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that. I don't want to force that on anyone. So right out of
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the gate, we're not really falling science. We're just throwing out some opinions.
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Next question, trans culture more visible today than it's been in the past.
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Yeah, there you go. Now we're getting back on track. Does
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that help or is the increased visibility stirring up the anti trans movement? And
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then the answer I think is on point, visibility a double edged sword.
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I think that part, at least of the answer is it says people who
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are favorable to trans people largely just leave us alone. And a lot of
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reforms that we've been able to achieve with relative ease in a less visible manner
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are now being rolled back. There was a time when you weren't supposed to
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just be someone who says leave them all and understand this. It doesn't necessarily
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make you favorable to it. It just means unfavorable to everybody being able to
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live their own life and do whatever it is that they want to do.
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There's some questions in here about whether or not within academia and how the academic
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community, whether or not that's been helpful and supportive. And then Sun Simone
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and it's got an e in there, and I don't know what replies.
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Easy to assume that academics tend to lean left, lean progressive, but it's
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much more nuanced in terms of what specific issues you're talking about. That's dancing
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through it. It says, especially in the basic sciences, a lot of
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scientists feel like they don't have to think about any kind of political question.
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Science is riddled with politics. We know that, we do know that,
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right. We witness that with COVID, We witnessed that with Believe the science,
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Follow the Science. The article goes through a few things talking about binary
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definitions of sex and all those sorts of things, and how sex is a
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gender is one thing and sex is another, and those sorts of things.
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And if Scientific American was really pressing this from a science standpoint, that's your
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science has been for a very long time. Since the beginning of time,
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it was binary. Now living anything else anyway that anybody wants to live their
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life obviously then comes from choices. But there's certain things that we don't choose,
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and that's you know, ultimately you can say, well, you know
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their gender is one thing versus the sex that they were born. Well,
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you don't get to choose the sex when you were born. You want to
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choose the sex that you are later in life life, then that's you're completely
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allowed to do that. You should be allowed to do that as an adult,
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right. I mean, the legislation that they're challenging here in this article
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is whether or not people should be legislating allowing children to do things to harm
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their bodies for later in life or currently in life. Scientific American should be,
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if it was a science magazine, would be talking about those dangers,
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those challenges. I'd like to also point out, by the way, Scientific
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American also has a whole section on their website of articles sex and gender.
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April tenth, how a theory about climate change led to feminine mystique. March
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nineteenth. When this one's not it's an lgbt sad when real life is hostile,
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LGBTQ plus gamers find friendship online. Sounds scientific. Here's one from a
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week before that males aren't larger than females in most mammalian species. That actually
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sounds closer to an actual I didn't read it, but that sounds like a
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science article. References Darwin and a few things that you know had to be
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corrected on the whole origin of the species philosophy. Here's let's see February twelfth.
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Pseudoscience has long been used to oppress transgender people. All right, February
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seventh. Females dominate males in many primate species, all right. January one.
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Asexuality is finally breaking free from medical stigma. This is the kind of
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stuff that they've got. This is the kind of stuff that they've got.
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Here's one from May first of last year. Here's why human sex is not
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binary. OVA. Don't make a woman, sperm, don't make a man.
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That's that's what it says, all right. So yeah, this is
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what you're getting from a quote unquote science magazine, it's the History Channel,
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it's a bat boy, it's all of that. And again I say,
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you be you, You live your life. You do what you feel is
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the right thing to do. You do what you think is the right thing
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to do in all areas. Don't hurt anybody else. I mean, that's
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ultimately the question, right, don't hurt anybody else and live your life.
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And I think ultimately accountability comes for all of us at some point. So
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get out there, be the best you that you can be. That's what
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I say. And by all means, let's follow the science, all of
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the reliable science. The planet will be dead in twenty years, and we've
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heard that, I don't know three times in the last sixty years. It
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will all be dead in twenty years, and that will be underwater, and
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we're still not The polar bears are all dead, That COVID vaccines will stop
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us from getting There's a lot of science that we have to remember to believe,
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and Scientific American is laying out some more of it for us. There.
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Today's show brought to you by Columbus State University's Coca Cola Space Science Center
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you're there, also check out some of their upcoming programs. They've got this
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called Music under the Dome. It's unlike any concert experience that you can get
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remind you that it stands for Coca Cola Space Science Center CCSSC dot org.
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well. Seven oh six thy five eight forty five hundred seven oh six three
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five eight forty five hundred O dccolumbus dot com more West Carol Morning Show.
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Right after the break, well, you know New York has gone after some
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strange things, you know, extra large or large even soft drinks, trying
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to cut back on caloric intake. That's one of the more notable ones that's
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come up in the past. Well, apparently they're eyeing a brand new target
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something that they need to go after, individually wrapped slices of cheese. A
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state bill in New York called Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act would require companies
24:23
with net incomes over a million dollars who sell or distribute food to reduce plastic
24:30
use by fifty percent over the next decade, and then take it down even
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further beyond that and basically think about craft singles, the cheese slices, cheese
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and quotes. I mean, it's a cheese product, right. They wouldn't
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really be able to package those anymore. I mean, what do you do
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with them? If you have to cut out any of your waist, you
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have to cut out on the plastic. Judith Ink of the Group Beyond Plastic
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says, there was a time in America when we didn't put a piece of
25:04
plastic between every slice of cheese. They can substitute plastic with paper. I
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guess, I don't know. There's another reason to not live in New York.
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Hey, have you seen there's a story that's gone viral on social media.
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A woman who has been I guess, keeping track of a big mac
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that she's had for over a year, and she says it's holding up really
25:33
really well. It's gotten more than three million views on TikTok. I don't
25:40
like talking about TikTok. I'm not a fan. But she says, yeah,
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it's the lettuce is still green and it hasn't turned brown or anything.
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Normal lettuce turns brown after a few days. I don't know what's happened.
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I don't know the whole story. I can't just after talking about science in
26:04
the first segment of the show, I don't know all the science. All
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I can tell you is that she's showing this big mac and she's saying,
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look, it hasn't changed. It looks basically the same that it did,
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just sitting out in the air. And I think she's even got fries with
26:19
it, and she's been She basically took it apart in this particular video and
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showed everybody piece by piece. Hey, look at this. I know we've
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heard similar stories to this before, but it's always worth at least noting it's
26:36
worth pointing out. Have you seen the guy that turned soft drinks into wine
26:41
and alcohol? There's a guy I guess he's done this with a few beverages,
26:45
and he's figured out how to turn mountain dew into wine. He says,
26:51
if you combine mountain dew with honey and yeast in a mead kit and
26:53
let it ferment for weeks, he wanted to know what would happen. He
26:59
said, the yeast of houred most of the sugar. Fermentation occurred much faster
27:02
than he thought, and after about two months he checked his work and he
27:06
found he had created an actual wine an estimated alcoholic content of thirteen point nine
27:11
percent, saying that the finished product didn't taste completely like battery acid and described
27:18
it as a citrus mead with a slight chemical aftertaste. So yeah, I
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think this is the same guy who has done this with doctor Pepper and a
27:30
few other drinks. So you know what, good it's creative and it's science
27:34
and action. Right. Hey, if you're going to the beach this summer,
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they say that, get ready because the fashionable color at the beach this
27:47
summer is going to be brown. Bathing suits for the ladies. They say,
27:52
the black swimsuit is still a summer staple and will again be popular.
27:55
But get ready for the hottest beach trend. Oh my goodness, I can't
28:03
wait to see all the brown on the beach. That would be great.
28:07
Many teachers are asking for handwriting to be re added to school curriculums that don't
28:12
teach handwriting because they say many kids don't know how to properly hold a pencil
28:18
or a pen and many young adults struggle to sign their name. And while
28:22
writing by hand may seem obsolete in this tech age, a new study by
28:26
researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology found that handwriting is linked to
28:33
better brain function, motor skills, and memory, and it's important to realize
28:37
that the brain follows the principle of use it or lose it. According to
28:44
Audrey VanderMeer, a neuropsychology professor and lead author of the study, when writing
28:49
by hand, most of the brain is active. This requires the brain to
28:52
communicate between the active parts, which in turn puts the brain in a state
28:56
that helps both children and adults learn more and remember better. That's always been
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the thing when you take notes, and sometimes just sitting down and writing out
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whatever it is that you've learned that day in class would be helpful. I
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think being able to write would also be helpful, you know, in case
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you don't have a means of texting something to someone, if you've got to
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write something down that comes up in my life from time to time. Sure,
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I usually have my phone and I could make a list in my phone
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of a grocery list, but sometimes it's just nice to have a grocery list
29:32
you can just write on and people can add to it without having to know
29:36
how to access your grocery list on your phone. As I'm thinking this through,
29:38
I realize that there's probably no reason to have handwriting. People don't need
29:42
people don't need it. My kids taught themselves cursive when they were really,
29:49
really young. Luke has better handwriting than I've ever had in my entire life,
29:53
and he's twelve and he's had better handwriting than me since he was about
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So we made sure that our kids understood writing. But if it's not being
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taught, what happens? I mean, are we really going to get to
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a point where kids don't know how to write and sign their name. That
30:12
could be a problem, I guess, although yeah, we seem to be
30:17
taking care of it though. Are we every possible anything that you would need
30:21
to write? I guess? And then there's no paper involved, so that'll
30:22
make all the plastic cheese wrapper people happy. That'll do it for this Wednesday
30:27
edition of the show. Thanks to our sponsors and patrons. Thank you for
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listening. I'll catch you back here tomorrow morning. This is the West Carrol
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six three five eight forty five hundred seven oh six three five eight forty five
31:11
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