A Little Bit Of Science

Deepfake scammers are now running full Zoom meetings, birds are lining their nests with cigarette butts like it’s a homewares trend, and Europe’s climate could be one ocean current wobble away from doing something dramatic. This week, Will and Rod bounce between AI crime, urban wildlife hacks, climate tipping points, and a fruit fly brain getting uploaded like it’s just another file transfer.

We start in Hong Kong...

Cloning is getting more useful and more unsettling, tropical trees may be better at cooperation than we are, and smart underwear is now tracking human flatulence in extraordinary detail. This week, Will and Rod move from organ-growing biotech to forest teamwork, fart analytics, and a deeply worrying case of AI gone wrong.

They look at the push to grow organs using non-conscious biological structures, and why that could transform me...

A parrot in New Zealand makes conservation work wildly uncomfortable, scientists cloned mice until the whole thing started breaking down, and someone has now successfully trucked anti matter across Europe. This week, we bounce between endangered parrots, biological copy and paste and the least relaxing delivery job on Earth, which is a fairly strong effort even by science standards.

We start in New Zealand, where Sirocco, a critica...

Breaking Bad looks a little more plausible than you would hope, the chainsaw has a deeply unsettling medical origin story, and people are now asking whether AI can guide them through a psychedelic trip. This week, we bounce between crime, childbirth, and chatbot consciousness, which is not a sentence anyone should have to write, but here we are.

We start with the so-called Breaking Bad effect, looking at research from Denmark sugge...

Brain-eating amoebas, climate change, economists, and Leonardo da Vinci’s robot lion all collide in this week’s episode. We dig into how warming freshwater is helping dangerous amoebas spread into new places, why these rare but terrifying organisms are linked to water going up the nose, and what that means for swimmers, public health, and the very specific fear of warm lakes. It is science, climate, and nightmare fuel a...

Conspiracy theorists hate uncertainty, a mushroom hot pot in China can apparently summon tiny imaginary people, a bunch of seeds have been sitting underground since the 1800s waiting for their moment and scientists are trying to quantify why words like boobs are funny. This week is a mixed bag of psychology, botany and childish humour, which is basically the entire scientific enterprise when you strip away the grant applications.

W...

Venting might be making you angrier, Neanderthals apparently had a type, and unborn babies are already forming strong opinions about kale. This week we bounce from modern psychology to ancient DNA to fetal facial expressions, with a quick detour into pokie machines and how they might be made a little less addictive.

We start with a meta analysis suggesting venting is not the healthy release we have been sold. Instead of calming you...

This week, AI is casually reaching for the nuclear button, a Norwegian scientist has accidentally recreated something that looks a lot like Havana Syndrome, and a brain lesion has turned a marathon runner into an intense foodie. It is a neat little trio of stories that sits right on the edge of science fiction, except the uncomfortable part is that it is all real.

We start with simulated war games where major AI models were put in ...

This week we have hippos with hidden bits, hearts that take a mechanical detour, and a medical case study that will make you sit down and reconsider every life choice that led you to having a body. It is science at its best and worst, fascinating, useful, and deeply inconvenient.

We start at the zoo, where hippo castration is a real population control tool, partly to manage breeding and partly to reduce aggression. The catch is hip...

What happens to the economy if aliens show up? Not the movie version. The real version where markets panic, confidence collapses, and everyone suddenly forgets how money is supposed to work. This week, we dig into the idea that confirming UFOs or UAPs could trigger an ontological shock that rattles financial systems in ways no central bank has a policy for.

Then we head into dream engineering, where researchers are testing whether ...

Winter Olympians are allegedly gaming their suit seams for extra lift, the ocean is still capable of throwing an absolutely giant wall of water at your face with no warning, and somewhere in Queensland, a blob of pitch is taking nearly a century to prove it is technically a liquid. This week, we bounce from sports cheating to monster waves to the slowest experiment on Earth, with science doing what it does best and refusing to be t...

This week, we bounce between sex, psychedelics, and infectious disease, and somehow it all hangs together by the end. We unpack research on porn use that suggests the real issue is not how often people watch it, but why they are watching in the first place, with motivation shaping the impact on emotional and sexual wellbeing.

Then we head into the world of magic mushrooms, where psilocybin is being studied for potential health effe...

Everyone wants to live forever, dogs are out here doing actual jobs, and someone has tried to work out where heaven might be using astronomy. We dig into the strange science of longevity, including research suggesting reproduction and lifespan might be linked in uncomfortable ways. Then they meet the working dogs sniffing out invasive species, guarding airport runways, and generally making the rest of us look lazy.

From there, thin...

The FBI’s search for Bigfoot shows that even serious agencies can get swept up in a good mystery. Their investigation ended with a misidentified animal instead of a legendary creature, but the files are still a treasure for anyone fascinated by conspiracies and the unknown. Sometimes, the search is more interesting than the answer.

Meanwhile, scientists in Queensland have been busy breaking down the secrets of your favourite ...

AI is giving people a confidence boost they might not deserve, especially among those who consider themselves tech-savvy. Studies show that using AI for problem-solving leads many to overestimate their own abilities, with higher AI literacy actually making users more likely to trust the machine and question themselves less. The smarter we think we are with technology, the more likely we are to fall for its digital flattery.

Meanwhi...

It’s pretty natural for humans to gravitate towards the most attractive person in the room. But do animals do it too? At Stockholm University, researchers decided to see if chickens could spot a hottie. They trained these birds to peck at faces on a screen and found that chickens prefer the same facial features that humans rate as attractive. Apparently, hotness isn’t just a matter of human opinion. Even a chicken can p...

A ventriloquist once ruled the radio waves, captivating millions with stage tricks that made no visual sense but somehow worked perfectly through a speaker. The world’s love for a good illusion runs deep, stretching from ancient oracles channeling voices through their bellies to audiences mesmerised by dummies with invisible lips. Humans have always been drawn to spectacle, even when it requires a leap of imagination.

The wor...

Academics are now seriously debating the ethics of sex with aliens, with questions swirling around intergalactic consent, the boundaries of romance and whether Captain Kirk’s escapades would pass the cosmic sniff test. Some call it unnatural, others say it’s all about happiness and agreement, and a few even claim to have had their own close encounters. Until E.T. shows up with a clear answer, the verdict is equal parts ...

A Rome-based research team discovered poetry can jailbreak AI systems by bypassing safety filters that normal prompts can't crack, making verse a genuine cybersecurity vulnerability. Medieval physicians believed flatulent foods like beans and onions were aphrodisiacs because intestinal gas supposedly enhanced sexual performance, Palmer Luckey, the tech billionaire behind Oculus, now advocates for submarines that tunnel through Eart...