ASM046 Radiation, The Birth of Christ, and the War on Christmas

[transcript automatically generated - please help edit to make it better]

radiation the birth of christ and the war on christmas all that and more on this week's episode of ask science

[music]

welcome to ask science mike the weekly podcast where i answer your questions about science faith and life i had several questions about christmas this week so i thought it'd be fun to do kind of a christmas themed show this week and let's do that next week too so if you've got christmas questions send them in via the ways i talk about at the end of the show but for now let's get it started [Music] hi science mike this is alice in bloomington indiana and i was just wondering what type of motorcycle do you drive and are you okay for someone who spent years in advertising in public relations i'm really bad at communicating to the public sometimes especially when it comes to this audience this community we've built since i'm working so hard at creating a safe space and encouraging authentic communication i intentionally subvert or don't use a lot of the techniques people use to build platforms and build personas i try as much as possible to just be myself on the podcast at speaking events even if that means it's a little less polished a little less well executed a little less slick what i'm trying to do is genuinely relate to people and when i had the motorcycle accident and bonked my head you know that was kind of a worst case scenario for my approach because i just gave a stream of information as it happened sometimes without a lot of context and that generated a lot of questions and concerns about my condition and how i'm doing so i thought since the question came into the show it might be good to give a concussion update the good news is i'm doing really well for those of you who don't know i fell off my motorcycle a couple of months ago i was wearing a helmet but i had a rebound concussions you know my brain hit my skull and then bounced and hit the other side of my skull and i stretched my brain stem in the process and i had a few weeks where i wasn't quite with it i had trouble reading writing speaking focusing remembering all the core functions of consciousness in the brain were pretty impaired for me but things are pretty much back to normal i feel good i have my memories back my reading is good i do have some post-concussion syndrome symptoms i still can get carsick pretty easily and i also can have anxiety attacks i mean if i'm in crowded rooms with a lot of different people talking or really loud music and that's not emotionally related as much as a side effect of my stretched brain stem now those are symptoms that could be with me for a while so i'm just learning to kind of roll with them it hasn't been too big a deal so far and i don't see it being any big thing i do want to say thank you to everyone who has extended their support or asked what i was doing i appreciate being in your thoughts and yes in your prayers too now my motorcycle is a honda nc700x which i love it's in the shop right now getting turned back into a proper motorcycle but unfortunately when that repair is done i am going to sell it since my livelihood comes from writing and speaking uh and the risk of ongoing loss of function or ongoing symptoms is higher with uh subsequent concussions i'm not going to run the risk of falling off the bike again so i am now one of those people who was a former motorcyclist which is terribly sad because i literally can't walk across a parking lot without noticing every single motorcycle and checking it out but hey that's the brakes i'm a writer and author and more importantly a husband and a father and i just don't have the skills to ride a motorcycle i'm a pretty clumsy guy so i'm gonna leave that to the more agile among us and otherwise doing well thanks for asking [Music] hi science mike i have a science question for you my wife works in gamma knife radiation oncology which is a type of radiation care for people with brain cancer and these people are undergoing intense amounts of focused radiation in their brain inside a room that's lined with lead and my wife and other care workers are on the other side of that door the therapy takes many hours and my wife decided that it would be more pleasant for the patient if they were able to listen to some music during this treatment so she got a bluetooth speaker and put it in the room and is able to connect it to her phone and play soothing music through that speaker my question is actually about my wife's safety because you know being exposed to radiation on a regular basis is dangerous and so why is it that the bluetooth signal is able to get through these gigantic lead doors but the radiation is not thank you so much for what you do i've gotten a lot of questions about radiation none quite as well worded as that one but a lot of coming on the show and i've also gotten a lot of questions in the radiation vein about cell phones as typified by this question by gregbestmusic on twitter who said our cell phones actually dangerous to our bodies because of radiation and use the ask science mic hashtag so let's talk a little bit about electromagnetic radiation and how that works and the first thing we want to think about is the concept of transparent translucent and opaque i think everyone understands what those mean a wall for example we would consider opaque a window we would consider transparent although if the glass is thick enough it's actually translucent and maybe a glass of water we would consider translucent or a gem or something that's not perfectly clear or is less clear what you don't realize when you think about transparent translucent and opaque you're speaking in the context of visible light but those concepts work for any electromagnetic radiation not just visible light now the electromagnetic radiation is a particular type of wave that goes from radio waves to microwaves to visible light to ultraviolet light to x-rays to gamma rays it's this spectrum of a similar type of energy energy wave but whose frequency is different whose length of a wave is smaller as you get higher up into the spectrum and depending on what part of the spectrum you're talking about different things become transparent or translucent or opaque so your car windows for example are transparent to visible light but they're opaque to ultraviolet light if you could see ultraviolet light looking at a window would be like looking at a wall if you couldn't also see visible light on the other hand the walls of your house are pretty much transparent to radio waves so if you could see with radio waves the walls of a house would would look clear you'd be able to see right through them the problem is with radio waves you'd be able to see through most things so you wouldn't see a lot but here's why when you look at a material or a structure made of materials it's made of atoms and molecules the thickness of the overall material and the arrangement of atoms and molecules in the materials that make the structure determine how transparent or opaque a given surface will be to different electromagnetic waves basically your very high wavelength or very short wavelength radiation like gamma rays there's a lot of atoms that are about the same size as a gamma wave and that means it's easier for those atoms to absorb gamma rays versus say radio waves so in general the shorter the wave the easier more likely something is to be absorbed the more things are going to appear opaque to it now that said gamma rays can pass relatively easy into human tissues which is why gamma knife radiation works but it's not a simple function of just of atoms it's also the thickness of the material you're playing a statistics game anytime you talk about photons so let's think about this in terms of your question when you close the door to the lab no light passes through it right so gamma rays don't either the door those lead doors are opaque to both visible light and to gamma rays but radio waves can pass right through it now 2.4 gigahertz waves and uh five gigahertz waves as well are relatively small radio waves and so they don't pass as readily through surfaces and through human construction as well as like fm waves which are much longer waves with uh meter long a multimeter long waves but that door is doing its job it's effectively blocking all the gamma rays it's just translucent or or almost transparent to 2.4 gigahertz radio waves now here's the thing that's not what determines if radiation is harmful whether you're transparent or opaque to it what makes radiation harmful to humans or at least electromagnetic radiation is if the radiation is ionizing meaning it has the ability to knock subatomic particles out of our atomic nuclei and therefore damage dna both gamma rays and x-rays are ionizing which is why people who work with gamma rays and x-rays have to take precautions to manage their dosage the amount of radiation they receive over their lifetime in a given period of time but radio waves and visible light are non-ionizing that's why we don't worry about them too much you can walk as long as you get too close to a radio tower you're fine visible light the la you know you're getting hit with radiation quote unquote every time you turn a light bulb you don't worry about it because visible light's non-ionizing now non-ionizing radiation does affect us if you absorb if the the matter in your body is of the right construction to absorb a given em wave it will affect you by heating you up a little bit so light can kill you infrared light can kill you if you get too hot and catch fire theoretically a radio wave of high enough amplitude i suppose could also heat you up to a point that it was dangerous but the cutoff for ionizing radiation in humans is in the ultraviolet spectrum so some uv light is non-ionizing uv-a for example but uvb and uvc which are higher frequency uv light are ionizing now luckily uvc is stopped by the ozone layer but uvb is not and that's why the sun increases your risk for skin cancer some of those waves get far enough into your body statistically that sometimes they strike an atomic nuclei and there's a little bit of radiation now you're surrounded by radiation all the time bananas are radioactive some of the potassium in your body is radioactive and we're playing a statistics game the more ionizing radiation you're exposed to the greater your likelihood of cancer and of course you have risk factors included in there for example i'm a ginger we're like a thousand times more likely to get cancer from the same amount of sun exposure as darker skinned people now what about cell phone radiation well cell phones wi-fi and other similar forms of radiation are not ionizing and therefore appear to be perfectly safe a couple of studies have shown that since cell phones are held close to the head they do appear to create enough heat that they can cause increased glucose metabolism on the side of the brain closest to the phone we don't know if that's a risk or not but so far there's been no clear linkage between non-ionizing radiation and cancer and certainly not between cell phones and cancer they appear to be safe at this time of course if you want to minimize your exposure there's something called the inverse square law the further away a source of any radiation is from you the less radiation you're dosed with so you know keeping your phone on your desk instead of your pocket using speakerphones that kind of thing could lessen your radiation but it shouldn't matter everything i've read every expert i've talked to says cell phone radiation like wi-fi and radio waves are nothing to worry about and i would say if you're a person that worries about cell phone radiation i hope you're wearing sunscreen every time you go outside because the linkage between uv radiation and skin cancer is clearly defined and yet people don't seem to worry about it nearly as much [Music] our next question comes from tate randall who used the ask sciencemic hashtag on twitter and he asked when was jesus actually born it's a question a lot of people come up with at the holidays for people like me who grew up in the evangelical tradition we were kind of taught that december 25th was literally the birthday to christ and as i got older and examined more i realized that some pieces of the narrative of christmas i was taught at church didn't reflect the bible all that well for example nativity scenes always had wise men in them but in the bible story the wise men came years later and so much of what we talk about at christmas is tied to traditions as it should be because christmas itself is more grounded in tradition than any verifiable historical fact here's what i mean first of all no one knows when jesus was born absolutely no one i haven't seen any consensus among scholars and i haven't even seen you know a consensus among seminarians or religious scholars we know that december 25th was established by the roman church and that was probably to coincide with some pagan winter solstice festivals as well as a festival in rome honoring saturn um and that was a way to ease romans into christianity after constantine's conversion so that's kind of a co-opting of festivals that existed and making them about jesus and you can imagine somewhat ironically that a roman could have said to a christian hey remember saturn is the reason for the seasons because at one point we were the cultural invader right or christians were now teasing out a date is tough some scholars looking at biblical evidence would say christ was born in the spring since the bible speaks of shepherds who are watching over their flocks by night that famous line and winter would have been too cold for that kind of activity by that time they would have you know moved into warmer dwellings caves structures something now some astronomers have tried to tie the date to astronomical events based on the story of the star of bethlehem so they've looked at dates based on for example chinese observations of comets because we have astronomical records from the from the chinese culture at that time in history where they've looked at planetary conjunctions which we can calculate today what those dates would have been but that gives you a several year spread you know plus or minus a few years around 080 or 180 and so other historians look at the timeline of herod's life since herod is an actual verifiable historical figure and the understood timeline of herod would make you think that jesus was born closer to 4 a.d maybe 3 a.d but there's some doubt by scholars actually a lot of doubt by secular scholars about the accounts that herod ever called for the slaughter of male infants because there aren't any historical records that corroborate that despite the fact that we do have historical records for the reign of herod and some of the proclamations that he made to be honest and since our show is pretty diverse i know there's atheist listening there's agnostics listening very progressive christians some conservative christians evangelicals mainline catholic i mean there's a lot of folks out there so i hope this doesn't blow anybody's mind but most secular scholars would say that the earliest written gospels didn't discuss the birth of christ in any detail that those were details added in later writings in the later gospels to make christ's story more convincing to the audiences they were targeted to so some of the gospels were primarily written for roman or pagan or gentile audiences some were written for primarily jewish audiences and they tend to emphasize details which establish christ's divinity to those groups now this isn't a unique problem to jesus there's a lot of historical figures ancient historical figures where we have trouble nailing down the precise dates of their birth or their death or even events in their life because we haven't always kept history the way we keep it now history was a much more narrative event for a long time honestly the emergence of greco-roman civilization in the west is when we start seeing some greater discipline in terms of timekeeping but don't forget we've had several calendar changes in history as well and so we're converting different calendars pretty complex stuff nobody thought of ad or ce in that era right those are terms that came a lot later now some people hear this and it calls into question the value of the christmas story at all so a couple of things i would say one there's reasonable consensus among historians that jesus was a real person that's not that controversial an idea and the fact that we can't precisely pinpoint the date or circumstances of christ's birth don't make us less confident that there was a person named jesus around that time in history who started a significant religious movement okay i used to be a mythicist i thought jesus didn't exist i've talked to some historians some secular historians and they've told me and offered me reasons why mythicism is not a widely held belief among secular historians it just isn't now the idea that parts of the christmas story were narrative ways to explain the importance of jesus and might not be firmly grounded in fact or at least historical or historically verifiable fact doesn't freak me out at all because again i understand the bible to be a collection of books written by men about god a collection of books not one book a bunch of different books written by a bunch of different people assembled by the church so that we would understand this unfolding story of god and mankind humankind really so i don't read the gospels to expect and like expect to find flawless historical record any more than you know i expect to read genesis and find flawless uh scientific accuracy in physics or cosmology it's just not how people wrote in those days or in that culture or what their understanding was i read the gospels to understand how people in a specific time in history responded to the story of christ i read it to see how people some of whom never met jesus tried to understand what it meant to be a part of the way as christianity was called at first that's what i'm looking for in the gospels so i don't have any problem celebrating advent and christmas in december just no problem at all because this is a tradition of people who follow christ a way of honoring the birth of this figure who we all follow that doesn't mean i'm uninterested in historical details i actually nerd out about it quite a bit but it's not an essential component of my christian faith and practice it's not where the gospel comes to life for me at this time in of the year i'm doing a lot of advent prayer and advent meditation and those meditations as you can hear on our release o light with the liturgists include the setting and context of the gospel stories but i'm not concerning myself with the degree of historical fact instead i'm asking what was this author trying to tell that audience and what does it mean for me [Music] hi mike it's marissa i was hoping you might address a few things that have been on my mind lately during the christmas season so like you and a lot of your listeners my faith has changed recently and part of this has involved me developing an even stronger sense of empathy toward people of different faith or no faith or others who maybe are somewhere in between but when it comes to the holidays christians often say things like remember the reason or they talk about the war on christmas which kind of gets under my skin now sometimes it really seems to me like christians in the united states take it for granted that they're a majority segment of the population with a lot of influence even where i live there's actually a skywriter plane that sometimes writes christian messages in the sky and i can't imagine the kind of uproar there would be if a muslim did something like that so what i'm getting at is that christians here enjoy some really very real privileges and freedoms that others don't but they sometimes seem to have what i like to call a persecution complex like the whole controversy about merry christmas versus happy holidays it just seems kind of petty to me i used to identify with those people but now i find myself empathizing more with the non-christians or people who describe themselves as non-religious or maybe even recovering from religion when they come across these overt religious displays or religious music and public places during the holidays or those store owner signs putting out messages about the war on christmas so i get how people can maybe be annoyed with the commercialization of the holidays but i also think it's a little harsh the way some christians kind of want to monopolize this season of giving hope joy new birth and new beginnings and of course as i'm sure you know there are plenty of people in the online community that will also go into how all kinds of cultures and historical influences not just christian ones have created the holiday we call christmas today so that kind of brings me to a little bit of a side question on how to deal with christian christmas messages or theology that may bring some of us some anxiety who came from a more literalistic black and white upbringing things like the talk of escaping satan's power when we were gone astray or the savior who came to save christians and only christians from impending wrath and our own wretchedness or apologetics on why isaiah's prophecies are referring to christ the messiah and not completely taken out of context those types of things tend to take me down a deep dark rabbit hole on a bad day which leads to obsessing and it's hard to stay away from those comments from people on all possible sides on pretty much any given topic who think they have it right i also find it tough not to fall back into some of those deep-rooted ideologies from my youth that i don't agree with anymore and they still cause these occasional pangs of cognitive dissonance so i was wondering if you have any advice on how you deal with that kind of thing and then my first question your thoughts on christmas being a time of joy peace forgiveness for everyone including non-christians there's been a change in how humans identify people who belong in their group and the earliest human cultures and human groupings that existed before human culture it was based primarily on blood your family relationships your integration into a given tribe is who you determine who you were with and who you were against that's what we understand through anthropology later there was a change a progression when that moved to an affinity a shared value based on belief if we believe the same things we're a group together that leads to things like not only christianity but democracy national identities can put one foot in either camp between blood and belief so you once had an affinity that was based on belief on agreement that you shared values in a single story but now you've moved beyond that and it seems like you're focused now on what so many people are your shared affinity is based on behavior for example if someone respects the rights of others it doesn't matter what they believe if someone doesn't take actions that oppress others or harm them then you know you value them as part of community so we've had this progression from blood to belief to behavior by the way if this sounds familiar i stole those three words from rob bell uh i just want to give a shout out to rob there so this is change now but let's let's stop for a second you and i both were believe people and if you're like me it wasn't that long ago a couple of years and if you kind of step back and look in that frame if a tribe is based on belief if social cohesion comes from affinity of shared belief shared values instead of shared actions then happy holidays actually is a war on christmas it's introducing another story and if your affinity is the right thing as everyone learns to have the same story that actually is a threat the growth of non-religious and secular perspectives to say nothing of other religions in america does threaten a one-story society and in previous eras of american history we've been able to be insular enough that multiple one-story societies could exist one of which you know white america was very dominant and the other stories were kind of forcefully kept out of that narrative but they had their own stories today the internet has blown that up in some ways undermine the institutional powers associated with one story systems now here's the thing i am remarkably patient with people who believed things that i used to believe because i used to believe them i understand how they hold that position i understand how you can feel threatened by the word happy holidays at one point in my life i was too i understand how different cultures can be threatening i've always been uh pretty excited by or interested in other cultures but i also was very uncomfortable if they questioned christian doctrine belief in practice i was interested primarily in figuring out how to get them saved like you know i was reading russell moore's defense of muslims against what donald trump was saying but russell moore said that the reason he wanted to defend muslims and their right to enter america was so that he could proselytize them so that he could convince them that his faith was the genuine one and a lot of people were outraged i understand that outrage but i also understand where russell moore is coming from i used to think that way so i'm careful that i never let myself feel superior or smarter or more enlightened than someone else because i'm not my life has unfolded in such a way that my perspectives have changed but that wasn't just like i didn't pull my mind up with my own strength and and find a new place i was exposed to new information and new circumstances and i was had enough social support that i could look at life from a different perspective some people would encounter the situations new ideas and new experiences they don't have the social support to evaluate a different way of thinking they lose what support they have that's a big deal for humans and for human brains so i'll start by saying clearly the right thing is a multicultural christmas clearly there is a secular holiday christmas there's multiple christian christmas experiences i'm new to methodism in the mainline church so i was learning about advent for the first time that was never a huge part of my baptist upbringing there was an advent wreath but it was just this kind of pointer part of christmas and now i understand these these distinct church seasons of advent and christmas that's new and mind-blowing for me i have to understand some people are where i was and they're going to be so how do we deal with that we offer people grace and when we can we engage people in safe supportive conversations i don't argue with people about the war on christmas if they ask me about it i'll tell them why i don't think it's a threat and but i try to avoid getting argumentative you know if people are angry their amygdala is activated and they're not reasonable anymore they're just defending a position they're just trying to win so if i can't have a peaceful conversation i'm out i say great believe what you're going to believe now in terms of the old ideas kind of bringing up anxieties bringing up a tendency to fall back into all ways of thinking things like satan's power or or prophecy all those things i try to be grateful for the role those ideas played in making me who i am now so i carefully consider each one and think how did that lead me to where i am today could it help lead someone else to a better place even if in the in the time it's damaging i also recognize that their identity of accepting jesus as being part of the tribe is more inclusive than what came before it in its own way that represents social and societal progress there is neither jew nor greek nor slave nor free that was an incredibly progressive idea in the day and that even though my identity is more inclusive now i still recognize the value in other faith traditions even ones that are less inclusive i actually do scientific research and understand that there are neurocognitive benefits even to fundamentalism and most importantly i look at victor frankel's work in man's search for meaning and i look at a redemptive perspective on those things in my past that i have trouble with now and figure out how they were used for good and how others could use them for good so i love it when people tell me merry christmas i really do i also love it when people say happy holidays or happy hanukkah anytime people want to celebrate life and living and love i'm in all the way but i also understand that some people are deeply saddened in this time and that my joy over the season serves to exacerbate those feelings of rejection of loss so whether someone is a merry christmas a happy holidays a happy hanukkah or sad in the season i meet them where they are i listen i reflect on what they say so that i can learn from their perspective and grow from the time i spend with and in all those situations i try to treat people with grace with love and respect because i think that might be a path towards peace on earth and good will toward men that does it for another episode of ask science mike um as i mentioned at the top of the show it's kind of fun to do christmas questions so if you've got christmas questions use the hashtag ask sciencemike this week and i'll do a show of nothing but christmas questions assuming we get them for you all who are patrons i'll put a post on the patreon page that's funny alliteration post on the patreon page uh asking for your christmas questions i'm gonna give patrons first shot at the christmas show it's only fair you make the show possible so if you'd like to be a part of hosting these open honest conversations about science and faith we'd love to have you just go to ask sciencemike.com and click on the patreon link and you can donate to the show a dollar a month two dollars a month five dollars a month it means a lot to me if you would of course if you're tight on money understanding christmas many people are you can always cancel or change your pledge a few people have knocked their pledges down this month i've noticed and i get it and i appreciate that you would even continue to give it all if you literally can't spare a dollar go to itunes and rate the show that's one of the best things you can do to help me find new listeners and grow the show and help people be a part of this conversation i want to say thanks this week to bradley brennan who wrote our show notes of course to greg nordin the amazing canadian who does our production and my friend jeff botifer who wrote the theme song mad props to all of them for making the show possible and for you for listening and for sending in such good questions thanks for listening and i'll see you next week [Music]