Where did all the roaches go?

0:00Welcome to Search Engine. I'm PJ Vogt. Each week on the show we answer a question we have about the world. No question too big. No question too small. This week, the thrilling conclusion to our series of stories about the animal kingdom, an accidental series we did not realize we were making, but which we are concluding this week with our friends at Radio Atlantic. They'll help us answer a question it never occurred to me to ask. Where did all the roaches go? Let's after some ads. This episode is brought to you in part by Joe's Jeans. You know how we're all constantly trying to find that balance.

0:34Comfort and style, function and fashion, the clothes that actually keep up with us? Joe's jeans look like classic denim, rugged and timeless, but the feel is completely different. They're supple, lightweight, and with four-way stretch, they move the way you do. It's the kind of denim you forget you're wearing, but other people notice in the best way. Whether it's a casual day working from home, running around the city, or grabbing dinner at night, these jeans just fit the rhythm of everyday life. And because they're crafted with premium materials and thoughtful details, they don't just work for today, they're made to last.

1:06you've got options too. The Asher in Doheny and the Brixton in Nod, two styles you'll keep reaching for when you want to strike that balance of comfort and style. Go to joesjeans.com and use code ENGINE at checkout to take 20 % off your first purchase. That's joesjeans.com, code ENGINE for 20 % off.

1:53What's up? Hey, can you hear me okay? Yeah, you sound great. Okay. All right. So I'm going to just read the intro. So one of my favorite magazines in America is The Atlantic. It's one of the only places that consistently surprises me. And one of my favorite reporters in America is Hannah Rosen. She always surprises me. This is true, Hannah. She told some of my favorite stories on Invisibilia. She's now hosting the Atlantic's flagship show, Radio Atlantic. It's a great podcast. However, recently, Radio Atlantic did a story that infuriated the team at Search Engine, infuriated us because they did it.

2:31We wanted to have done it. And also it felt search engine-y. Not that we have like a copyright on surprise or delight, but we were surprised and delighted by the story in the way that we try to surprise and delight the people who hear our stories. We were very mad. And then we realized, oh, we just asked Hannah if she could do the story on search engine. We don't have to be furious. It's a story about cockroaches. Ugh. Ugh. No, I mean, just because the word surprise and delight, Do they feel like words you're tired of hearing? I just say, am I that kind of person? Yeah, everybody. I just walk around and everyone says, you're so surprising and delightful.

3:12No, it's just that they're not words that you believe will be followed by the word cockroach. Oh, I see. It's like not the third ingredient in the dish. Exactly. People are expecting unicorn or starlight, but not cockroach. No, this is a surprising, delightful story about cockroaches. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Can you just tell me, like, literally, for you, what was the origin of this story? I called up the Slack because I thought you might ask me that question. Yes. So I get the Slack message from one of our science editors and a friend of mine, Dan Engber. I'm a fan of Dan's. Yeah, he's great.

3:48He was on Radiolab. He writes great long magazine stories. He and I used to work together at Slate. Do you want to hear the message? So this was just a Slack that you guys were having one day in the office? Yes, yes. Okay. I'm just going to read you one sentence. Dan writes, this is a piece of poetry. When I was a kid, we collected cockroaches and played with them.

4:14And I think he expected me to be just completely horrified. But instead, I wrote back something like, Me too! Exclamation. So that's how it started. You guys were genuinely musing to each other. It wasn't like, hey, let me show you this article I already wrote. You guys were just making conversation over Slack, but he had a question that he wanted to investigate, and he wanted the question to be contagious for you as well. Well, it's a little deeper than that. What's underneath his question is this feeling he had that he was deluded, which is a feeling that a lot of people who grew up like we did have.

4:49Like, it couldn't possibly be true. Like, we have these memories, but did it happen that way, you know? Yeah. So after I got this message from Dan, he wrote, I wonder if it might work for audio. I was like, yes. The answer is yes. Please come to the studio. So he did.

5:17All right. So what are we even talking about? We're talking about cockroaches. Cool. And a forgotten moment in the history of cockroaches or the history of American innovation, I guess. We're talking about the fact that cockroaches were everywhere and then they vanished. I actually lived through this myself. Like I was a child of the cockroach 80s. I had cockroaches in my house all over the place too. And it's almost like hard to remember how pervasive they were.

5:54So I grew up in New York City. Where? In Morningside Heights. In an apartment? In an apartment. Okay. So middle-class families in the 1980s in New York City had a lot of cockroaches, as I can say from personal experience. Just a number of cockroaches that I think is unimaginable to younger people, to my younger colleagues here at the Atlantic. Um, against my, really like every fiber of my being, I'm going to say, paint me a picture.

6:32They'd be all over the place all the time, like in full view, in day, in night. Certainly if you went to the kitchen at night and turned on the light, they would scatter. It wouldn't be like you'd see individual insects. You'd see like a wave pattern. You and your brother, let's say, might be taking the Cheerios out of the cabinet and open it up and pour into the bowl, and cockroaches would come out with the Cheerios, which I think sounds really terrifying to today's New Yorker, but at the time, it was just like time to get a new box of Cheerios. There's really this feeling that it was like a natural phenomenon, like an endless sense of being enveloped in roaches, like it was an atmosphere of roaches or an ocean.

7:20you're speechless. Actually, just to weigh in, I do 100 % relate. I grew up in an apartment building in Queens and exactly your memory. Like, the only difference is it was cornflakes and not Cheerios, but they were everywhere. Although, you know what's weird? I can't seem to remember if they freaked me out or not. Like, what, did they freak you out? Like, did you scream when you saw cockroaches or call for your mommy or, like, what did you do? So, I don't think we were that squeamish about them. In fact, I know we weren't squeamish because the other thing I remember vividly was my brother and I would play with the cockroaches.

8:01We would use our wooden blocks and build, like, obstacle courses, sort of, and try to do cockroach Olympics. Did you actually touch them with your fingers? I mean, it's kind of hard to imagine that I didn't. There's sort of a dreamy quality to all this where I almost doubt my own memories. And so just to do kind of a gut check, I wanted to call my brother. First of all, did we have cockroaches in our apartment growing up? We had a lot of cockroaches in our apartment growing up. And I, being a little bit older than you, remember it extremely clearly. but it still seems somewhat fantastical, the prevalence of cockroaches in our life.

8:46Okay, so first I asked him about the cereal. Okay. I loved Rice Krispies, and they used to have like a slightly over-toasted Rice Krispie that was like a darker brown. Yeah, the occasional brown one. The brown one. And I definitely remember a lot of arguments about whether something was a over-toasted Rice Krispie, a small over-toasted Rice Krispie, or a Roche Duty. And we would frequently have these arguments. He's like completely chill about the Roche Duty for breakfast situation. If only it was just the Rice Krispies, Hannah. We had these special medicine cups. They were sort of like plastic hollow spoons.

9:34and I remember one time mom poured the whatever it was, probably Dimetap or something like that in and I saw something swimming in it and I'm like, there's a roach in there I swear, there's a roach in there and then she held it up to the light and there was nothing in there I didn't want to take it finally she convinced me I drank the whole thing I felt the roach crawling around all over my mouth and I spit it all into the sink. And she said, oh, there wasn't roaches. Roaches were just everywhere in our lives. So if we were constantly throwing out something just because a few roaches walked over it, we wouldn't have anything.

10:22So I just want to establish the context here. In the 1980s, it wasn't just that there were a lot of cockroaches in my apartment, or yours, or my brother's apartment, or even in New York City, there were a lot of cockroaches everywhere. Everywhere in cities or everywhere everywhere? I would say everywhere in cities, but it was like a national news story. There would be newspaper articles about cockroaches on a semi-regular basis. Okay. So cockroaches everywhere, cockroaches bad for your health. Cockroaches everywhere. Cockroaches bad for your health. Cockroaches in the nation's capital. Congress certainly has its hands full these days with the deficit, the MX, Central America, and now debugging.

11:11So this is an NBC nightly news story with Tom Brokaw from the spring of 1985, which is a very important moment in the history of cockroaches. It's very serious. The problem, they're in our desks, they're under tables everywhere. Some members of Congress are trying valiantly to fight back. Congressman Al McCandless has installed this black box. It exudes a sexy scent which attracts female roaches, which are then roasted by an electric grill. I mean, I think just in that short clip, you hear how completely helpless we were to deal with the cockroach problem. We were trying everything. Yes, it does have a throw spaghetti at the wall.

11:50Like, this is the nation's capital, and we don't really have an answer, nor is anyone pretending to. It's just like, they tried this, they tried that. Congressman Silvio Conti, dressed to kill today, proclaimed a war on Capitol cockroaches. A company from his home district has donated 35 ,000 roach traps to the Capitol, but Conti said more help than that is needed. And I want to appeal to the President of the United States. I am certain that President Reagan wants to get rid of many troublesome cockroaches who run around the halls of Congress as possible. So please join me in this war on the capital cockroaches and squash one for the gipper.

12:36So, well, can I ask you, am I allowed to ask you a question? Yeah, of course. Sure. Yeah. So do you remember a change in the prevalence of cockroaches at some point in your life as a New Yorker? You know, it's so interesting you say that because I remember my childhood cockroaches just being part of the background and just something you had to deal with all the time. And my mom still lives in that apartment. And I remember coming back from college and I don't have, I couldn't say an exact date, but it just wasn't in the part of the conversation anymore. We weren't constantly dealing with cockroaches.

13:14My mother wasn't talking about cockroaches. It just wasn't a, like, it just wasn't a thing anymore. Okay, so my premise here, and the memory that has sparked all of this, is that at a certain point, there was a new way to control cockroaches. The bombs were out. Now we had combat roach traps. Do you remember those? Wait, you mean like that little plastic disc where the roaches go in and then they die or something? Like that's what this is about? Yes. That is the amazing American invention that we have all forgotten. The thing that sits in aisle 13 on the top shelf, that's the amazing invention?

13:57The thing that should be sitting in a museum. The people who invented combat are American heroes. They did something. I mean, you have to think about the fact that the cockroach was and is a symbol of indestructibility, right? This is the animal that's going to outlive us after a nuclear war. Uh-huh. This is, if you've ever seen WALL-E, it's a post-apocalyptic Earth. All that's left is a robot and a cockroach. Uh-huh. It's the animal that cannot be killed. And then, in the 1980s, we did it. I think it's fair to say we solved the problem, and I don't mean solved it completely and eliminated cockroaches forever, but really took a huge problem and made it much smaller.

14:45And that wasn't just true in my apartment, but across the country. In fact, I found evidence that that is exactly what happened. And so, I just was fascinated by the question of who did that and what it means that we don't even really fully remember that it happened. Let me introduce you to a very important figure in the history of cockroaches who has a catchphrase, and his catchphrase is, always bet on the roach. He's a member of the Pest Management Hall of Fame. Are you familiar with Pi Chi Omega, the fraternal organization dedicated to furthering the science of pest control? They have an annual scholarship called the Dr.

15:29Austin Frischman Scholarship.

15:36Hello? Hi, Dr. Fishman. Speaking. Hi, my name's Dan Angler. And so I got him on the line, and he turns out to be sort of like a cockroach mystic, almost. What is that? Just any question you ask, you might get an answer like this. I want you to picture a landfill. It's snowing. It's about 28 degrees out, okay? and you're there with seven or eight men and you're digging away at the snow because you're teaching them how to bait on a landfill. All right? And then out of the snow and that cold comes American roaches running up, bubbling up, 5, 10, 15, 60, 100, 200 from the smoldering heat down below.

16:32I love this, man. And he makes it seem, like, biblical. So, okay, so where does this cockroach mystic, Dr. Frischman, fit into the story? So Frischman is in the story almost from the very start. In 1985, and in the lead up to 1985, Frischman had been hired by a company called American Cyanamid. And American Cyanamid researchers had had this product that they were selling for use in controlling fire ants. And the researchers were aware of the fact that this fire ant poison worked on cockroaches. And in fact, they used it in the lab to control cockroaches. Their own cockroach problem. Yeah, they put it in peanut butter and they put it around the lab just so they could continue to do their work on fire ants.

17:18But then the company was, you know, making this effort to try to figure out, well, can we repurpose some of our industrial products for consumer use and so forth? Yeah. So you've got a hot new roach control product. Who do you call? Boston Frischman. And I said, well, this is going to be difficult, and it may not work. And they said to me, listen, do you want to do the project or not? I said, no, I'll do it just so you know what we're up against. Okay, so everything we had up until that point were these insecticides that we'd just been using for years, and the roaches had just developed resistance to them.

17:58Even if you, you know, you killed 99 % of them, the ones you didn't kill would have some mutation that protected them or they'd have a thicker shell or something, a thicker exoskeleton, and they'd survive and reproduce. And now your insecticides weren't working anymore. Right. So they would just keep outsmarting us. Right. And so one of the things, this new product that made it different from the old ones, was it wasn't just a spray that you'd put in the corners. It was actually a bait. That little, the black disc had something in it that sort of like tasted like oatmeal cookie that roaches loved.

18:35And they would come in and get it and then take it out. We were filming the cockroaches and we found that only 25 % of the cockroaches ate the bait, but 100 % of the cockroaches would die. That's Philip Kaler. He's another cockroach expert. And what he's talking about here is the fact that this stuff would kill roaches that hadn't even eaten it. It was a slow-acting toxicant that allowed transfer to other members of the colony. They would regurgitate it, or how does it get transferred? Well, there are several mechanisms of transfer. The main one would be that cockroaches will eat another cockroach's poop.

19:21It was actually after this work with combat baits that it became known that cockroaches actually feed poop to their young. And there are actually other methods of transfer of toxicant as well. There is, like you said, regurgitation, where they get sick and they regurgitate some and other cockroaches will come and feed on that vomit. There's also cannibalism, where a cockroach will attack another cockroach and eat it. And there's also necrophagy where the cockroaches will eat the dead. Each method more charming than the next. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Vomit, poop, or cannibalism. This seems exciting. No, I mean, if I were them, this would be really exciting.

20:09Like, I'm just imagining them, you know, like an Oppenheimer sort of sitting in their lab, like figuring out every element of this. And how are we not going to, you know, how are we going to make it safe? How's it going to work? It's exciting. Yeah, they were on the verge of something big. We would run to the lab early in the morning to see the results from the night before. We'd stay up half the night and watch, and we began to see what was happening. In the beginning, I was hesitant of the whole thing, but as we began to do the work and I saw the results first in the lab, it was a breakthrough.

20:48Okay. So Frischman was among the first to take this breakthrough product, put it in a syringe, take it out of the lab, and start using it in restaurants, diners, to see if it worked. And I went into a small diner, a little luncheonette place, and a bunch of guys were sitting and eating sandwiches, and I was behind the counter, so I was down low, and I had the bait, and I saw the roaches in a crack, and I just put a little dab. As I went to go do it, the roaches started coming out, and they were gobbling. You saw in real time them come to the bait. I was the first person in the world. I was shaken, okay?

21:37I'm telling you, I was shaken. I still have that syringe, that original one.

21:46This is the moment. This is the brink of the relatively roach-free world that we live in today. Now we had the little black discs, I would say, you know, two inches across or something. With an entrance and an exit. With an entrance and an exit. I had written a book called the Cockroach Combat Manual. So that's how it got its name. And Frischman is going to take this product on the road. People would write in horror stories, and they won a prize, the product and me. and we would go into those places and knock out the population. So he takes this to Texas. He takes this to Georgia. They do an event at the Museum of Natural History in New York City.

22:34They go to the Capitol. Remember the Tom Brokaw report? Those are combat traps. Yeah. And then ads start appearing on television. Combat disks. Use roaches to kill roaches. I had roaches in my cereal. Put combat disks where roaches are, in places you wouldn't dare spray. Combat works. The roaches are not in my cereal. They're gone. Control roaches where they live. Combat. Because where they live is where they die. So this wasn't just a marketing campaign. I mean, the product really did work. What do you mean it worked? Well, cockroach numbers were going down. You can find signs everywhere. Actually, a guy I went to high school with wrote an article for the New York Times in 2004 And he reported that there had been a survey of federal buildings and their cockroach complaints between 1988 and 1999.

23:28So this is combat rollout era. And the number of complaints fell by 93%. Wow. I also found a 1991 story from the New York Times, again, right in that combat zone. And a New York City housing official is quoted as saying, There was a time when people were horrified at roaches running rampant. And now everybody keeps saying, where did they go to? So it's a thing. It's like an actual documented thing. Yeah. And yet it's not a huge moment. Like, there aren't a lot of stories saying, yay us, we've conquered the cockroach problem. No, there are not. There are stories about combat success as almost like a business case study.

24:15Mm-hmm. There are stories that remark upon the fact that there are fewer cockroaches than there used to be. But nothing that's like this enormous giant urban problem has finally been solved by this ragtag crew of amazing scientists. Nothing of that nature. There's a reason why I had to introduce Austin Frischman to you as a member of the Pest Management Hall of Fame. And you weren't like, oh, you mean the guy in the back of the quarter? Yeah. Right. Right, but why? I mean, that is the question that has been keeping me up at night. And I have some ideas.

25:00Those ideas after the break.

25:14This episode of Search Engine is brought to you in part by Perfectly Snug. I am a hot sleeper. I do all the right things and still wake up at 3 a.m., wide awake and sweaty. Perfectly Snug is a fix for that. It's a two-inch mattress topper with whisper quiet fans that actively move heat and humidity away from your body. The sensors actually work. You don't have to fiddle with settings in the middle of the night. And if you, like me, need quick relief, Burst Mode cools things down in about 10 minutes. I recommend their dual zone setups so that one side of the bed can run cooler than the other side of the bed.

25:49And there's no water to refill and nothing snaking off the bed. It's just a slim topper that sips power. Setup is a few minutes. They offer a 30-night risk-free trial with free shipping and returns. If you, like me, are tired of sweating through the night, try Perfectly Snug.