If you missed Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on Sunday, the Main Story was about UFOs.  Yes, really.  As you might imagine, this lent itself to a great deal of humor.  That said, the focus was serious, dealing with the question of whether investigations into the issue have been substantive enough.  While I agree with that point, I also think there have been some investigations that have more substantive that the show suggests.  Regardless, it's a very entertaining piece.

This is also where I again get to point out that when Oliver mentions (much too off-handedly, I believe, as just a name on a list...) the Army's Project Blue Book, I had an astronomy class at Northwestern taught by J. Allen Hynek -- who had been the civilian head of the project.  The class was not about that, though he did devote two days to the subject.  (Hynek was also the technical adviser on Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  Spielberg even gives him a cameo close-up on the movie.  It's in the final sequence when all the scientists are gathered in a semi-circle, and previously-abducted humans leave the ship.  One of the scientists -- who looks exactly like an astronomer with with a gray goatee -- weaves his way through the crowd, steps forward, takes out his pipe, and gets a closer look.  That's Dr. Hynek.)

Three things I remember from the two days of UFO classes:  

One is that when he got a sense that the project was going to be closed down, Hynek made copies of material to take home so that he could later continue research on his own.  A second thing is that he said that Project Blue Book was not allowed to be shut down until all cases were classified -- the problem for the government was that there were many still-open cases.  So, what they did was classify those cases as "unidentified" and therefore could close down the project.  And the third thing is that Hynek said he never came across a case that convinced him the UFO sightings were aliens -- but -- he said it is ludicrous to think that we are the only living beings in the universe.  He said a whole lot more on the subject, as well as on astronomy in general, but after all this time, that's all I've got...

And as a bonus -- I actually tracked down Dr. Hynek's scene, in Close Encounters of the Third Kind!!  I'm sure there have been many people who've watched the movie of the years who have wondered, "Gee, that's a weird shot of just one guy pushing his way through, what is the point of that??!"  Well -- now you know the point.
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The guest on this week’s Al Franken podcast is climatologist Michael Mann who has an interesting conversation with Al about How to Talk to Climate Deniers.  And as Al adds, "This climate has always changed...just not this fast!!!"

Today, I’m going to turn things over to the Washington Post.  They have an utterly fascinating article by science journalist Dr. Richard Sima.  The title explains it all --
 
“A catatonic woman awakened after 20 years. Her story may change psychiatry.”

It’s a remarkable story (as you might imagine) that transcends just this one event – though this one event is pretty amazing on its own.  The overall point isn’t just what happened with this particular woman, April Burrell, but how both psychiatry and medicine, and the treatment of certain kinds of patients may be impacted, and as a result of it there are stories about others here, as well.
 
The sub-heading of the piece is – “New research suggests that a subset of patients with psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia may actually have autoimmune disease that attacks the brain.”
 
In some ways – or many ways – the story is not totally dissimilar from the book by Dr. Oliver Sacks Awakenings, and the movie made from it with Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro.  In fact, the movie is referenced in the article, as is Oliver Sacks who crossed paths and, if not actually a “mentor,” was an inspiration for the doctor here, Sander Markx. 
 
Marxk is from The Netherlands, but in 2000 he was a medical student in the U.S. on a Fulbright Scholarship.  He currently is director of precision psychiatry at Columbia University.  And the way he came into the story – and then circled back into it – is part of what makes it all remarkable.  For starters, by all rights he shouldn't have even been attending at the far-lesser know institute he chose, rather than one of the more prestigious hospitals most Fulbright Scholars go to.  As the article notes, "...but instead chose Pilgrim Psychiatric Center, a state hospital in Brentwood, N.Y., where many of the state’s most severe psychiatric patients live for months, years or even the rest of their lives."  And that's where April Burrell was.
 
Nice too is that this isn’t about something discovered right now, but rather came to the early stages of change two or three years ago – which is now being studied by others – so, we’re able to know a bit about the outcomes of the early work.
 
A lot of the article is very scientific, so it’s reasonable from the skim parts.  But it’s really a great story and worth checking out.
 
As a subscriber to the Washington Post, I’m allowed a certain number of “gift” articles each month, so this link should work for everyone.
 
You should (hopefully) be able to find it here.

(If not, I'll try to figure out another way...)

If you missed Last Week Tonight with John Oliver last night, the Main Story was on Artificial Intelligence.  (And no, there were no jokes made about the extreme right and their lack of belief in such things as, for instance, science.)  The story was very interesting -- and, as you might imagine, is a fertile ground for humor.
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Today's Jon Stewart's podcast is, as they put it, “A Nuanced Conversation About COVID Vaccines (Yes, Really!)"  As Jon says, “We’re back and we’re coming in hot with a conversation about COVID vaccines! We’re joined by Dr. Gregory A. Poland (Director of Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group), Dr. Saad Omer (Director of the Yale Institute for Global Health), and Zeynep Tufekci (Professor at Columbia University) who bring something that’s often lacking from these conversations: nuance. We talk through why many non-crazy people are hesitant to get vaccinated, how our public health institutions have failed to communicate effectively with the masses, and why it should be perfectly okay to ask questions about the risks and benefits of any vaccine.“
 
Happily, although a podcast, the show now seems to be posting an audio Zoom version of the episode, so that's what we'll go with.  And you can watch it here.