In this episode of Real Science Radio, hosts Fred Williams and Doug McBurney tackle a mix of everyday life and serious scientific discussion—starting with a surprisingly relatable problem: aggressive neighborhood honeybees. What begins as a lighthearted conversation quickly shifts into deeper territory, exploring behavior, biology, and how small changes in nature can have big consequences.
The core of the episode focuses on cannabis and its real-world biological effects—challenging the widespread cultural narrative that it’s harmless. Drawing on recent medical commentary, the hosts walk through evidence suggesting significant impacts on fertility, including reduced sperm quality, lower egg viability, and increased miscarriage
The sales pitch on dope is that it relaxes you, it sets your mind free, it makes you more creative, it’s harmless, it’s recreational, but the biology tells a different story, right? It does.
SPEAKER 04 :
Scholars can’t explain it all away. Get ready to be awed by the handiwork of God.
SPEAKER 1 :
Tune in to Real Science Radio. Turn up the Real Science Radio.
SPEAKER 04 :
Keeping it real.
SPEAKER 05 :
Greetings to the brightest audience in the country. Welcome to Real Science Radio. I’m Fred Williams. And I’m Doug McBurney. And Fred, I need some advice. Okay.
SPEAKER 06 :
So do you have any neighbors? I do have neighbors. Got neighbors, yeah.
SPEAKER 05 :
Do any of your neighbors keep honeybees? No. I know people who have honeybees. Is that right? Yeah, they’ve given me honey.
SPEAKER 06 :
Oh, that’s good. Okay. So you have some experience in the honeybee area. A little bit, yeah. Okay. So I have a neighbor, and he keeps honeybees. And when we first became aware of the honeybees, we were delighted because it just sounds wonderful. There’s honeybees, which means there would be honey, and we’re friendly with our neighbor. Now, he doesn’t live on the property. It’s an empty lot, and only his bees live there. And for a couple of years, everyone has lived in perfect harmony, us and the bees, and everything’s been wonderful. But as of late, the bees have become hostile.
SPEAKER 05 :
Oh, really?
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah. I’ve been stung now twice. Now, I haven’t been stung by a bee, Fred, since I was like seven.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 06 :
But now in the last two weeks, I’ve been stung, well, like one, two, three, four, four times in one setting.
SPEAKER 05 :
Wow.
SPEAKER 06 :
The last time they attacked.
SPEAKER 05 :
So you go outside and you just get stung.
SPEAKER 06 :
So go outside, do some yard work, and the bees start swarming. So something has changed in our relationship with the neighbor’s honeybees. And so the advice I need, Fred, is how do you approach a neighbor about his honeybees that have become hostile without damaging the relationship with the neighbor? I don’t want the neighbor to think that I just complain about everything, but I could show him the wounds on my body.
SPEAKER 05 :
Anyway, it’s a delicate situation. It sounds like it. I don’t know. Go over there and tell your bees to stay out of my yard.
SPEAKER 06 :
Have you talked to him yet? I haven’t had the opportunity to speak with him yet. And the thing is, is the beast stung my wife.
SPEAKER 05 :
Now he’s getting serious.
SPEAKER 06 :
Now that the beast stung my wife, now I’m mad.
SPEAKER 05 :
She was probably laughing before, right? Oh, it’s no big deal.
SPEAKER 06 :
Oh, yeah, right. She was, oh, yeah. I took a lot of abuse about whining about being stung by a bee until she got stung. And now, anyway, so now I’m mad about it.
SPEAKER 05 :
I think your place is their place now is what’s going on, right?
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, we don’t know. We’ve done some research, and it only happens around dusk. And we don’t know if it’s a seasonal thing. We read that it’s quite possible that the hive has a particularly aggressive queen.
SPEAKER 05 :
Oh, okay.
SPEAKER 06 :
So apparently honeybee hive, their behavior can sometimes depend on the attitude of the queen. So they got this bad attitude queen who’s making everybody into like mad, aggressive soldiers, whereas another queen, it might be a whole different situation. Anyway, we’ve tried to do some research to figure out what to do. Are you thinking about committing queenicide? Well, so this was another thing. Where does one draw the line in mounting some sort of attack against the bees if it becomes necessary? And then is there a technology available that would allow me to either… stop the bees i don’t think there’s there’s not like a drone technology or ai is not going to help me with putting up a screen to stop the bee but maybe maybe there’s some audio electromagnetic precise targeting to take out the leaders like just to take out the seconds of this battle Yeah, we need to – I might need to call on the 82nd Airborne. Anyway, so I just want – in fact, I’ll put that out for the audience, too. If you have any advice on how can I diplomatically and delicately and with tact – I want to remain friends with the neighbor. But let him know that his bees are out of control. And they don’t live there. Just their bees do. Yeah, they don’t live there yet. They may eventually. Gotcha. Anyway, so yeah, I have one, two, three, four, five, five on the back of my neck where he got me. Not he. I think it had to be multiple bees because I think they can only sting you one time and then… Okay.
SPEAKER 05 :
They’re not like wasps. Wasps are bad, man. They can sting you multiple times. I haven’t been stung in my whole life, and then I got stung like three years ago. Is that right? Near a rock area in my backyard.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 05 :
And that thing, it hurts when it first happens, but then it hurts, and it hurt for like an hour. I got mad. I went to Home Depot, and I loaded up on wasps. I went to town. Yeah. This ain’t happening again.
SPEAKER 06 :
So this was a wasp who got you? Not on my lawn. Oh. A wasp, huh?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 06 :
Oh, yeah. Well, the honeybee’s not as bad as a wasp from what I understand. But the thing is, is that it itches and itches and itches for days. Oh, man. Anyway. So anyway, if y’all have any advice, help me out.
SPEAKER 05 :
How do I diplomatically email into Doug at RSR.org? Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER 06 :
Let me know what to do about. But Fred, we want to talk about a good friend of ours, a listener, Josh. He sent us an email discussing, well, fertility and dope.
SPEAKER 05 :
That’s right. So he pointed us to this video, and it’s from this extremely popular channel, Huberman Lab. And we’ve done a show before on alcohol. That’s right. And its impact on us, on our bodies. And that’s Dr. Andrew Huberman. So he had a Dr. Natalie Crawford on this episode. And it was just last week, just on April 13th. And it was titled, How Women Can Improve Their Fertility and Hormone Health.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah. And yeah, this caught our eye because Dr. Crawford is a double board certified OBGYN. I’m not sure what the second board was. The first board was obstetrics. The second was gynecology. I’m not sure how that works. Oh, that’s it. OBGYN and a reproductive endocrinologist. That’s probably the second board. And the segment that Josh flagged us about, was toward the end of the interview on the April 13th segment, and it was called Cannabis and Detriments to Egg and Sperm Health. And it’s especially relevant, Fred, as we’re here in the state of Colorado where we record the show when I’m in the state of Colorado, which we’re in right now. I have it in the studio. Which was the Colorado was the first state to legalize dope back in 2012. The vote happened and then they started actually selling it openly and legally as if nothing was wrong in 2014, which was shocking. It was just shocking. I just remember driving by and saying, there’s a dope store now right there in front of God and everybody. There’s no cops coming. They’re just selling dope. I remember it was shopping. The retail sale of dope, drugs to people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that has obviously normalized not only… cannabis, but pretty much all drugs everywhere are now pretty much normalized. Yeah, sure seems like it.
SPEAKER 05 :
But you know, this isn’t the first time that we’ve talked about marijuana on the show. Oh no. We’ve done several past shows and we also have a research page at RSR called Negative Effects of Marijuana. Scientific Research Shows Pot is Harmful. And so listeners can go find this long running collection that Bob started and that we’ve continued to add to. of these studies and news items on the damage that pot can do, cannabis. And you can find that at rstar.org slash pot. Pot. Yeah, that’s right.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah. I had a contractor at my home recently, and we were talking about life, and he said that he got off all alcohol and all drugs, but… He still uses cannabis, he said. So I found that’s the way the new pothead lingo is. I don’t smoke pot. I use cannabis. Cannabis is a much more sophisticated, because there’s more syllables. If it’s just pot, you just sound like a pothead, because you can just barely get out one. But if you’re using cannabis. So he uses cannabis, and so he’s not working for us anymore. Anyway, you know, the sales pitch on dope is that it relaxes you. It sets your mind free. It makes you more creative. It’s harmless. It’s recreational. But the biology tells a different story, right?
SPEAKER 05 :
It does. And so in this segment on the Huberman Show, on his interview with Dr. Crawford, She says that cannabis use is one of the most concerning things she’s seen in clinical practice when it comes to fertility. So I want to go ahead and listen to a clip from that interview. So let’s roll that.
SPEAKER 03 :
The do nots, I think broadly, is don’t smoke, don’t drink. I was shocked. But I need to ask to learn what I found was that 15, 1.5% of women in the United States report having used cannabis in some form or another while pregnant. Does that concern you?
SPEAKER 01 :
Cannabis use is probably the most concerning thing that I see in clinical practice. So both, you can just say if that many are using it in pregnancy, let’s extrapolate to how many are using it beforehand. And ultimately something that we are just now getting robust data on because it’s hard to study something when it’s illegal. All cannabis use is hugely detrimental to sperm, for sure, across the board, right? Both production, the quantity of sperm, testosterone production, also the quality of the sperm, specifically the DNA fragmentation inside the head of the sperm, to the degree that female partners who conceive from a male partner who’s using cannabis have much higher miscarriage rates than partners who do not utilize cannabis. And I will say clinically in the IVF lab, when I see embryos halt at that male developmental stage on day three, we say, oh, here’s a young couple. They’ve got no embryos and we were expecting them to have some. When we go back nine out of 10 times, he is using cannabis that he previously denied. So it is one of the most movable factors right now in this country for improving fertility outcomes. For women, cannabis use in the prior year can decrease the eggs you get at egg retrieval by 25% and can decrease fertilization rates by 28% and can increase miscarriage rates, therefore decreasing live birth rates. So huge numbers in science, right? I mean, like we get excited when there’s a few percentage points different, but these numbers are really high. to the degree that it’s really easy to sit here and say, if you’re trying to get pregnant the fastest, if you wanna have the best pregnancy outcomes, or even you wanna have the best hormones you can, have longevity of your ovaries, or have the best sperm counts or the most testosterone, cannabis use should not be a part of that. And THC crosses the placenta directly. And THC levels and, you know, edibles are usually the highest. So I think it’s really important that sometimes people are like, oh, I don’t smoke it, so I’m okay. We want to be really careful that this is not something your body is meant to be exposed to when we want to think about the core of how your body is meant to function.
SPEAKER 06 :
Okay. Well, thank you, doctor. But that was kind of painful, Fred, to hear. To hear from a doctor free of any moral judgment about anything. So you notice how she talked about using cannabis. I mean, she’s not the contractor at my house, but she speaks the same language. Now I know why he says that. He probably learned that from his doctor. You know, you’re not a pothead. You’re just using cannabis. But she said, using cannabis shouldn’t be a part of, and we need to be careful, and And it’s just, that’s a doctor free of any moral judgments about anything. And that was a little uncomfortable for me, Fred.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, yeah. So, you know, what she’s talking about isn’t a fringe claim. I mean, that’s one of the reasons we wanted to show that clip. So she says that cannabis, well, let’s call it what it is, pot. Let’s call it pot. Dope. Yep, dope. She says that this pot harms sperm across the board. Production, quantity, testosterone, and even DNA quality inside the sperm. I mean, we’ve known about that, but I mean, that’s huge. And she also says female partners. You know, it’s hard for me to even say that, female partners. Female partners of men. Yeah, of men.
SPEAKER 06 :
That’s way too many words to describe. Yeah, okay.
SPEAKER 05 :
So she says the female partners of men use pot. have much higher miscarriage rates. So these women have higher miscarriage rate. And here’s what’s really interesting. Prior year cannabis use can reduce eggs retrieved by 25% and fertility rates by 28%. This is even if you use it in a prior year. And she’s a doctor from the IVF world. I know she’s embedded in that. So I want to make it clear on Real Science Radio, we do not endorse that at all. In fact, we’re hoping to have a fertility doctor sometime in the near future, hopefully.
SPEAKER 06 :
Right.
SPEAKER 05 :
that can get into more of the natural fertility and things like, I think you know about.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah. The Napro technology. Yeah. Yeah. Natural procreation technology. Anyway, it’s outcomes are better. Insurance covers more of it. And you’re not involved in an industry that kills people, which killing people is wrong. Yeah. Getting drunk is wrong. Getting high is wrong. And That’s why it’s bad for you. Well, it turns out that not only is it wrong, it’s bad for you physically. And of course, now the doctor there with Dr. Huberman, she’s talking about her field and how it affects her patients. And so naturally, she’s focused on the physical problems that cannabis use can lead to. But We’re opposed to what she does. I mean, she’s in vitro fertilization, and we’re opposed to that for moral, biblical reasons. And we’ll talk a bit more about that later. But the broader point here about dope is that dope appears to be undermining fertility levels. Across the board, and Fred, what’s wild is every week, it seems like, I have kind of an alternative news feed. I don’t watch Good Morning America or the Today Show. That’s not where I get my news. I have kind of a right-wing.
SPEAKER 05 :
You don’t watch The View?
SPEAKER 06 :
I don’t watch The View. I haven’t caught The View in a while. But it seems like weekly there’s a story about the fertility crisis in the Western world and China, by the way, and Japan. It’s not just European and American. It’s a crisis across the board. And these stories come out weekly. And at the same time, everyone’s just, la, la, la, let’s legalize drugs and everything is okay. Yeah. It seems like it’s going to become obvious that these things are related. The fact that we legalize getting wasted turns out to harm the future of civilization.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 05 :
Even at the fundamental physical level of procreation. Yeah. Well, you know, it’s interesting. So Dr. Huberman, later in this episode, and I’m not sure we’ll play the clip, but he mentions about when he was younger, growing up, it was this big overpopulation scare that Oh. Too many people. Remember? Yeah. And he’s like, now it’s kind of going the other direction, just to your point. I know Japan, they were advertising, trying to get people to have more kids. Yeah. There was huge problems across the globe. Oh, tremendous. And he mentioned that to his credit. So Colorado, unfortunately, like you said, it was one of the early states. But what was alarming to me when I looked into this, almost half the states have legalized it. There’s 24 states. Oh, yeah. Two territories, and of course, the District of Columbia, they allow pot use, adult pot use. And recent additions include states like Missouri and Ohio. They’re not blue states. No. Montana’s even legalized it.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, yeah. Well, and if I’m not mistaken… I think all 50 states have some form of medical marijuana, which practically has – that was the camel’s nose under the tent, so to speak. Thank you, George Soros and all the efforts that he made. But yeah, even these so-called red states – have legalized getting wasted, which is what it is. I’m sorry. I know that there’s a lot of functional potheads now and pretty much everyone you interact with in your professional life and at the grocery store and at the auto mechanics. I mean, I’m in California, Fred. Almost everywhere I go reeks of marijuana. Literally reeks of marijuana. And people literally reek of marijuana. And you’re like, wow, you just came into work. How did you know what it smelled like? Yeah, well, back when it was illegal, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, well, I learned the hard way, Fred, and I’m very sorry. I’m very sorry that I did. I really wish I’d have never been exposed to any of that. But we were, and I was, and I learned a valuable lesson, I suppose, but I didn’t need to learn it. And the thing is, Fred, is now it’s normalized, right? There’s no hiding it. There’s no shame. There’s no restraint.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, and back when we were growing up, it was more of kind of the rebellious side of culture, right? Yeah. You did pot as part of your teenage rebellious years, and then you had the whole, you know, Woodstock and all that stuff in the 60s. Yeah.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you had my mom. In 10th grade, I think it was, and my brother and I laughed at our mom because our mom said at some point, she said, I think you’re all on drugs. She yelled. And Fred, later on, my brother and I reflecting back, we realized that actually she was correct.
SPEAKER 05 :
I was going to say, how did she know?
SPEAKER 06 :
She was right. Turns out mom was right. Everyone was on drugs. And it turns out that it was bad. It was bad for us. It was bad for society. It was bad for the future of civilization. It’s bad for the condition of your soul. And it’s bad for something as basic as procreation.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah. Yep. And you know, Doug, there’s another point that she made that’s really interesting is this THC, it crosses the placenta directly. Yeah. So this isn’t just about whether someone can get pregnant. It’s also about what happens to the baby after conception. And I know we’ve talked about that on prior shows. You’re affecting your baby. Right. In this stuff.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah. So this isn’t just about you. It’s about having an effect on another person for whom you are responsible to God, by the way.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So then the conversation that turned to nicotine, which I thought was interesting. She said that cigarette smoking can reduce egg count, contribute to earlier menopause, and then that oral nicotine pouches. are tanking counts in her words. So that’s a remarkable statement given how heavily nicotine products are being pushed, Doug, to young people right now.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, yeah. And so the bigger picture really here, Fred, is we’re told that the idea of restraint that’s in the Bible… Biblical concepts of restraint are outdated and that sobriety is old-fashioned. Any concept of self-control is viewed as oppression or repression. But it’s funny how then these are the people who worship science. And then the science comes along and shows them that all these things that were in the Bible about restraint and control and temperance, right? They’re all backed up by the science too, right?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah. So I want to thank again, Joshua, for sending this in. It’s exactly the kind of story people need to hear and we need to update people on. And especially in places like Colorado, where legalization is old news, but the biological fallout is still being badly underestimated.
SPEAKER 06 :
Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER 05 :
So anyways, before we get to our next headline, Doug, I did want to take an opportunity to To do the interesting fact.
SPEAKER 06 :
No, no, no. I thought we had a sponsor. Well, we do have a sponsor. Oh, we have a sponsor.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay. Delaware. So we’d like to thank Jim.
SPEAKER 06 :
Jim in Delaware. Have they legalized dope in Delaware yet? Were they on the list? Delaware was the, wasn’t Delaware the first state? I don’t know, actually. Delaware was the first state and the first state that ratified the Constitution, if I’m not mistaken. And then Colorado was the first state to legalize dope. So we go from Colorado to Delaware. And thank you for sponsoring the Interesting Fact of the Week, Jim, in Delaware. I really appreciate it. Thank you, sir. May I have another? I’m ready whenever you are, Fred. Let me have a… A bit of caffeine. Did she say anything about caffeine? I mean, I’m not looking to have any more kids. But I’m sure caffeine’s probably not that good either. But in moderation. Temperance. Moderation.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay, so here we go. This is the interesting fact of the week. What is the name of the specialized cell division that creates sperm in eggs with half the normal chromosome number? Wait. What’s the name for that specialized cell division?
SPEAKER 06 :
Wow. I’m going to guess that it has more than one syllable.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay.
SPEAKER 06 :
And that’s about as close as I’m going to be able to get to the answer. I don’t even think I can begin to guess at an answer for it.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay. Yeah.
SPEAKER 06 :
I don’t know. It starts with my… Myos… Do you have any sisters? Myosistis. Stop.
SPEAKER 05 :
Myosis. Stop. Myosis. Myosis, yes. Myosis. Myosis. So it reduces the chromosome number by half in sperm and egg cells so that when fertilization occurs, the right number is restored.
SPEAKER 06 :
Right. And that all happened accidentally. It evolved after several efforts that didn’t work. Then it suddenly found a way to perfectly divide… Yeah. Okay. So that’s ridiculous to think that.
SPEAKER 05 :
It reduces the humans. It reduces our chromosome count from 40.
SPEAKER 06 :
46 to 23. Correct. 46 to 23. All right. All right. And that didn’t happen by accident. That was designed by God. And it’s pretty fantastic and amazing. And we should give him glory for that such an amazing design. Yeah.
SPEAKER 05 :
And so. Again, to try to imagine how that could happen over. Yes. Over time, random mutations, mistakes in the DNA.
SPEAKER 06 :
It’s ridiculous.
SPEAKER 05 :
Ridiculous.
SPEAKER 06 :
All right. Now, by the way, on the way here, Fred, I read Sun Puzzles, Ellen McHenry’s new book. It’s a mind blower. It’s a mind blower. It’s yet another example, Fred, of how many dogmas there are in science. Dogmas about the sun. I personally, not that I had thought that much about it, but I had never before questioned the idea that it was in fact nuclear fusion that drives the sun. I just never questioned it because that’s what I was told. And it turns out that that’s virtually impossible that that’s true. It’s virtually impossible for that to be true. And there’s all kinds of evidence that a first year physics student, chemistry student, first year studying electrical engineering, whatever, that makes it impossible. And that’s all been ignored by people with PhDs and who write textbooks, and it’s kind of disturbing.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, well, that’s common across the board, though, right? Yeah, I know. There’s things that falsify your claims, I mean, that are, at least they’re difficult to explain. But when they keep coming in like that, okay, if you have one case where something’s hard to explain, that’s one thing. Yeah. It’s like this last – Danny Faulkner was in town not that long ago, and we went out. They had this stargazing thing. Yeah, yeah. Someone asked him what’s the most compelling evidence, and he likes to use the eclipse. The whole thing with the moon is 400 times closer.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yes. But 400 times smaller.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And for all that to line up, that’s one coincidence. If you want to call it a coincidence? Sure. When do the coincidences, did I say that right? Coincidi. Coincidi. When do they get to a point where, look, this isn’t coincidence. This is design. This is obviously God is behind this. Yeah. Yeah, again, if you have just one, but the problem like in this book with the sun puzzles, it’s not just one. No. There’s so many hurdles. There’s more than a half a dozen.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, more than a half a dozen questions, not really just questions, problems that make it… It’s just not possible. But we don’t want to give away the book because we don’t want you to buy the book.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, buy the book. And we’re going to actually do a show on it, hopefully. It’s great. Really good. Really good stuff. It’s really great. That’s in our store, rsr.org. Or go to store.rsr.org. That’s the quickest way to get to our store. Go to the store, check it out. We’ve got people ordering this. Yes. And other books that we’ve got in our store. We’ve got a lot of new stuff. We’ve got the ninth edition is coming in June. We apologize again that this has been delayed, but it’s coming soon.
SPEAKER 06 :
It’s on a ship. The ship does not have to go through the Strait of Hormuz because it’s not coming from that side. So we hope that it’ll be here. And we plan to start shipping around mid-June. And by the way, Sun Puzzles gets not only into the sun, but a whole bunch of other really interesting facts and observations, not mathematical extrapolations, but observations about galaxies and stars and all kinds of really interesting stuff.
SPEAKER 02 :
Stop the tape, stop the tape. Hey, this is Dominic Enyart. We are out of time for today. If you want to hear the rest of this program, go to rsr.org. That’s Real Science Radio, rsr.org.
SPEAKER 04 :
Intelligent design and DNA Scholars can’t explain it all away Get ready to be awed By the handiwork of God Tune in to Real Science Radio Turn up the Real Science Radio Keeping it real That’s what I’m talking about
