You're listening to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe.

Your escape to reality.

Hello and welcome to the skeptics Guide to the Universe.

Today is Thursday, October 30th, 2025, and this is your host, Stephen Novella.

Joining me this week are Bob Novella.

Hey, everybody.

Kara Santa Maria.

Howdy? Jay Novella. Hey, everybody. Kara Santa Maria. Howdy.

Jay Novella.

Hey, guys. And Evan Bernstein. Good afternoon, everyone. Hello. So, Bob, tomorrow's Halloween. You all ready? You set? You cramming or you... What is that? Oh, it's a screen. That's Bob's wife. She's under the table. I usually ask if Halloween's ready for Bob.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm in decent shape for Halloween and the party, which is the

next day. Not too bad shape for that either. Of course, no matter how ready you are, I will still

work to the last minute trying to tweak, tweak the final tweakings of various things. But I'm very happy with my output this year. Bob Uda Halloween is what Stanley Kubrick was to movie making. Cupert. How's that? He's a huge. It's Cookebrick. It's all like Q from Star Trek. All right. Well, it's EMew, not Emoo. Emu. We all say, it's emu. I'm probably going to say that wrong later. Urry Galler, not Yuri Geller. If you understand what the person is saying, you got to be cool, you know? Also, we got an email from somebody in Australia this week who was like really mad that we all say solder instead of solder, I guess. I would. Oh, my gosh. There's actually three L's in solder. But I looked into the etymology and it comes from the French, but then it was changed. So it's like the original, it doesn't even have an L in it. But this happens a lot in American English because it's so informed. That's like saying, why don't we say Kinniggett? Well, they do say like, why don't you say fillet or herb? And it's like, because it comes from the French. And we pronounce it like the French because American English is a mix. Yeah. Yeah. You know what's funny, though? You could see your own language evolving over time.

Like Herbs with an H to me sounded so utterly ridiculous.

And I've been kind of like training myself to realize it's probably the better way to pronounce it.

You know what I mean? I don't like it.

I don't think so.

I think it's erb.

Erb.

Elbe.

But then there's the name Herbert, which adds a layer of confusion to the whole thing, because you do pronounce the H in that sense, Herb for short. Well, what about Houston and Houston? That one always gets people. In Texas, it's Sam Houston, right? But in New York City, it's Houston, yeah. What about honor? You don't pronounce the H in honor.or. Honor. And, like, Brits don't say ballot. They say ballet, but then they say fillet. Filet, fillet. It's all chaos. Language is why. It is. Bob, sorry. Yes. Where do you stand on the Halloween should be the last Saturday in October rather than October 31st.

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