‘Super’ Volcano under England

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1:42Welcome to The Gargle. The quantum fluctuation asks why not a world in which The Bugle has a spinoff podcast that deals with the latest in science and technology with satire. In the alternate version of this fork in the timeline, I run a relationship podcast where I take recently broken up couples and ask them intrusive questions. Stop crying, Sandra. Now, Gary, tell me again what you said when she found that text message thread. Thanks. We're in this timeline. Am I right? Yeah, you're listening to The Gargle, the science and technology pullout section of The Bugle's audio newspaper for Visual World.

2:11I'm your host, Alice Fraser, and our guest host for this episode, one man in one room. The walls are made of questions. The floor is made of answers. The ceiling says yes. And it's an improvisational ceiling. A man who has at various times been himself, Jaws Norris. Hello. Yeah, intermittently. Intermittently myself, I'd say. Alternatingly. Yeah. And returning triumphantly to the ball with a glove, she found herself leaving the lustful rake gnashing his teeth in the rose trellised arbour with an erection. So telling beneath his lavender pantaloons, he won't be able to return to the ballroom till all the country dances.

2:46It's Ria Lina. Hi. I feel like I should open with the word turgid after that. I don't know why, but the word turgid feels appropriate for that introduction. Well, we're delighted to have both of you here. Before we get into the stories of this week's Gargle podcast, let's have a look at the headlines. A dark matter detector has found a strange signal scientists can't yet explain. According to Science Daily, an underground detector has picked up a mysterious signal scientists cannot explain. joining the glorious scientific tradition of we don't know, but isn't that exciting? And Meta Platforms has restructured its artificial intelligence operations, creating two separate units, an AI products team and an AGI foundations unit after Meta was delayed getting its latest foundation model, Llama 4 Behemoth, to market.

3:34And this is the problem with doing satire. You'd think Llama 4 Behemoth would be a satirical made-up name, but that's actually what they're calling it. the statement that Meta has released is Meta solves AGI by splitting the problem into two smaller equally unsolved problems two teams one vision zero product top stories of this week's gargle apparently there's a super volcano lurking under England Jaws Norris you're our inexplicable pending eruptions news specialist can you tell us more about this story oh yeah yeah big eruptions sort of being tracked all the time over here. You can't call it a super volcano is the thing.

4:13You're wrong. There hasn't been a super volcano found under the east of England, or at least this is the debate that's going on at the moment. They found evidence that there was once something that people like you and me, we might call it a super volcano because we're not kind of in the midst of it. We don't really know what we're talking about. But it's a volcano that was big enough. I think it said it was big enough that like deposits of when it erupted were found in scandinavia or something so big this thing's big uh but my favorite bit of this article is there's a bit where mostly it's just an argument over whether or not supervolcano is a is a helpful or or imprecise term but there's a guy called michael poland uh who it said he's a research geophysicist and it says this is part of the reason why i really hate the term supervolcano and then the thing i really like goes uh this is what poland said who was not involved in the discovery and he told live science this in an email um i really like that because it seems to me like the sort of thing i can imagine like a writer who has to watch his former writing partner win an oscar or something and then his statement about it is like it's not actually called an oscar it's supposed to be called like an academy of motion picture science like arts and sciences award so you can't so it's just this quibbling over like whether or not the the layman's term is useful i think super volcano is helpful but i know what that means because he's claiming we should be calling it an ultraplinian eruption which i don't know what that is i got no clue so mostly this article seems to just be a kind of a dick swinging contest between volcanologists about whether or not you're allowed to use imprecise terminology but i know what they mean by supervolcano i can picture it ultraplinian i've got no clue see i don't really know i don't know how you quantify volcanoes in in terms of that i mean like it depends on how close you are to a volcano i imagine how important it is i think if you're in one while it's going off it would also be super to you yeah i also think if you're in one it really doesn't matter i don't think you'd be watching the sort of magma come towards you and be like but what but how big is this yeah you just be like oh this feels ultra plinian though yeah i mean the heat is it's got more of an ultra plinian vibe i'm torn on this article between thinking that they've made every single word in it up because you know and and it was written by someone who loves star trek because the whole thing they're just like we've got zircon crystals from boreholes 40 40 miles apart uh you know the kinakul tephra uh the ultra plinian eruption i mean we're talking about volcanologists either this is completely made up and it's the next episode of star trek or we should all memorize this article and win every game of Scrabble that we play from now on.

6:52Yeah, that's smart. I do think there is this point of like your proximity to a volcano determines your emotional, I mean, maybe proximity also in time. Can it be called a super volcano if it was ages ago? Like if I was in the midst of a volcano, I wouldn't really care if I wouldn't be like, oh, well, this is just an horrible little volcano. Like I wouldn't have that kind of feeling about it. I think volcanoes are just so menacing as a concept to me. I think I'm quite scared of volcanoes. I might have a volcano phobia, but there are so few volcanoes in my vicinity that I'm not sure if I have a phobia.

7:28I mean, a phobia is more of an irrational fear of volcanoes, but I think all fear of volcanoes is pretty rational. I think that that really, out of everything I've heard you say the entire time I've known you, that to me says how much of a millennial you are, that you would rather have a healthy fear of something that you are rashly supposed to fear rather than run towards it and get a selfie like Generation Z. And I say this with love. I think it really ages you, Alice. Like a super volcano. I didn't realise it was under England when I read it. I thought it was under Norway and we just got bits of it to England.

8:05So maybe I was, oh, there's more to investigate. I think the volcano was under Norfolk and Lincolnshire and then bits of it went across to Scandinavia because it was such a super volcano, such an ultra-plenian eruption. I think this proves how much time means that it doesn't make really that much of a difference, does it? Yeah, yeah. Brain of flies may help explain human behaviour. Apparently the fine details of the brains of male and female flies have been examined by scientists for the first time, identifying gendered differences in fly brains. Rialina, you're our fruit fly brain scientist news correspondent.

8:47Can you tell us more about this story? You're Drosophila professor. Yes, so literally exactly what you said. Scientists in Cambridge have mapped all 124 million connections of nerve cells in the male and the female fruit fly brain. Of course, this is exciting. And I know that everybody listening is just like, this is so exciting. Finally, we can understand the human brain because, of course, everybody knows that Drosophila brains lead straight to human brains. And they found that 95 percent of brain cells shared between male and female flies are the same. And it's the remaining five percent that is enough to drive markedly different behaviors between the sexes.

9:26um essentially there are three bits of male behavior that they that they attribute to this five percent and it's sticking your hand down your pants it's saying make me a list and it's it's no it's uh in the fruit fly it's i had so many other jokes that i haven't said like i was trying to be i was just like we have mapped the male fruit fly blaine and it is exactly the same as the male human brain. And that's why we know everything about male brains down. No, none of those things. But that 5%, the three differences are courtship. Males have extra circuitry to visually track females, which does not make me feel better as a human female.

10:08Aggression. We knew this. I don't know why science had to map a fruit fly brain. Males fight more and have more associated wiring with aggression. And this is the exciting bit, A love song circuit that males use to court females by vibrating their wings. So we now know that men are going to look out for us more. They're going to be more aggressive, but they also can sing. So if you're listening to this and you're single, guys, have you tried singing? Because apparently your brain does that. And if you're lucky, it works. of course that song has to be good though co-author Dr. Philipp Schlegel great name explained that the courtship song must be precise since a female that isn't receptive will reject the male possibly leading to aggression although if they reject them then they have the visual tracking thing that means they can just sort of follow them around and kind of like hide outside their house and look sad until the female feels bad and goes oh I shouldn't have rejected you so that's nice for the male Yeah, that's not creepy at all.

11:20I think that's great. Yeah, that's great. Sure, sure. So, yeah. And then from finding those differences in the areas, they found genes that directly relate to those brain differences, meaning that, you know, if you extrapolate that into humans, we can start looking at which genes cause differences in the brain. not necessarily across the sexes. They're saying this might help us find gene variants linked to things like schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorder, which then actively shape brain wiring. So we might be able to find genes that determine how your brain is wired. We kind of already have a feel for this.

11:55We know that autism runs in families. We know that there's some genetic element to it, but this might help us actually identify those elements. So that's really exciting. I personally just put a little bowl of cut apple with cling film over in my kitchen to catch all the fruit flies that have been buzzing around my fruit bowl. But I did not think to map their brains. I just washed them down the sink. Do you reckon you can do the same with all male brains? Do you reckon we can sort of map that across that all men will sort of crawl into a bowl of apple and cider vinegar and then cling film and then keep them in there?

12:29Personally, I... Because that could solve the whole manosphere thing. It could kind of, but I personally don't think we need to map all male brains. I think we just need to map one and just extrapolate across the rest of the species. Yeah, I think so. I think the great genetic revelation here is that if you have two fly parents, you're most likely to be born a fly. Whoa. Yeah, you're right. Why didn't they lead with that? Well, because you don't want to go down that path too far. All right. Well, what are your thoughts? Do you feel fly-like? I I've never really kind of I mean certainly on a kind of an emotional level the whole thing of like constantly bashing into a window and never really working out that you can very easily kind of go down and under the bottom like I I've never literally done that but it feels like quite a neat encapsulation of of some sort of human struggle that I I relate to so I don't know whether that's also kind of like coded into the wiring somewhere um it is isn't it to go up because all I have to do is put cling film over the bowl.

13:30There's a hole in it. They go in. Unless they find that one hole, that's it. Yeah, they're not good at just sort of like assessing their environment and going, hang on a minute, let's take a step back and figure this out. Yeah, we're certainly subject. I think flies are very subject to the sunk cost fallacy. But this is also maybe nominative determinism. They don't think they can solve a problem by walking. They're like, I'm called to fly, and so I must be able to fly my way through this issue. you reckon they know they're called that you reckon that's what they call themselves as well I mean what would you flys must have been the first thing that we called the first flying thing that we named yeah and I think it's a shame we didn't call birds that because I feel like birds birds do it a lot more or certainly more impressively yeah but didn't didn't didn't insects exist before birds yeah you're right so that's probably probably the dinosaurs named them flies and then that got sort of locked in.

14:23Birds are dinosaurs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So by the time they became birds, they were like, well, we can't call ourselves flies now because we called the flies that. Yeah, they were dinosaurs before they were flies. Yeah. So what were bats before they could fly? They were just really off. Just being eaten. Being plucked off the ground.

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15:58That brings us to your ad section. Your ad section now because you can't be what you can't buy. And this episode of the podcast is brought to you by Bluetooth Everything Socks. Electric socks, man, woman, child, device connected, cotton, synthetic fun socks for Christmas, gift. Track your steps, heart rate, and sock-to-sock connectivity with fellow Blue Sock users nearby. AI-enabled smart socks will learn your habits, foot regrets, and social missteps and gently guide you with stabbing foot pains and infuriatingly revealing out loud commentary about your personal foibles to correct your behaviors if they fall outside a designated normal range.

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17:11And this episode of the podcast is brought to you by showers. Showers, rain with a drain. That's your ad section. I would buy that popcorn. I think that's a great thing for popcorn. Do you know what? And you would just get little bits of dark matter stuck between your teeth. I would buy it when I had fully kind of understood what it was. My initial reaction was that it was a kind of popcorn that was like a tie-in to the TV show, The Big Bang Theory. Yeah, it was. And I just thought, no way. No way. I mean, this is the problem with hiring Miriam Bialik, who was a, I think, qualified astrophysicist.

17:47How do I know that? Oh, I'm like, I don't think I've ever watched an episode. I thought she was a neurobiologist. Oh, there you go. Okay. Okay, good. Well, then that joke doesn't work. But imagine that that joke did work and I knew more about The Big Bang Theory. speaking of propriety apparently there are sea squirts that reduce aging or slow aging uh joss norris you're our sea squirt correspondent can you tell us more about sea squirts and also in the explanation please say sea squirts as often as you possibly can i had to work out what a sea squirt was before fully delving into this article because the article doesn't really say it's it's a Kind of like a tube, like kind of it's a bit like a sea cucumber, I think.

18:31I don't know whether it's a vegetable or a living thing. I don't know if it's like an anemone or a coral. It looks like a sort of a weird tube. And they've now done studies that demonstrate that they might possibly reverse the signs of aging. They've tested this in mice, obviously, because that's where you begin with this stuff. Or maybe you start with flying, then you work up to mouse, like we were saying. um but they've the thing they've mostly found evidence of is that it improves neuroplasticity because sea squirts contain a thing called plasmalogens so the idea is that if we were to increase plasmalogens in our diet then we could kind of reverse the signs of uh like brain aging they've tested this by putting a load of mice in a maze that is slowly filling with water and then they test whether the mice can remember how to get out of the maze and older mice aren't very good at it and it doesn't confirm if they drown or if they just kind of help them out and get them out of it but there's an amazing sentence where they say uh uh let me find it because mice generally prefer to escape the water which is another one of these things where i love the kind of like cold unfeelingness of some of these like scientific reports where they they try to drown a load of mice and then go oh wow they don't like that um so they've tested this but they've also found that older mice who take the sea squirts start growing thicker darker hair as opposed to older mice that don't whose hair starts to kind of like thin and gray so it seems to sign to reverse multiple different signs of aging in terms of like hair growth brain plasticity that sort of thing um the thing i find weird about this article is the fact that we only ever hear about these things when they fed something to a mouse that does reverse aging you know but presumably there are all sorts of experiments like this going on all the time where they feed things to mice and and either nothing happens or it makes them age really badly like they start to look very kind of haggard or they start to forget things more often or they drown more frequently so i sort of imagine that the life of a scientist is mostly a sort of like a ready steady cook thing where people turn up and they go right we've got sea squirts we've got wine gums we've got a sort of like a weird dust that we found on the cave floor and we've got a human lung and we'll just feed all of that to a mouse and we'll see which ones make them age best but we only hear about the ones that work be a mad life i think that's a really good point i think as as a woman in the world who wants to you know live a good life i'd also like to know what not to eat yeah i mean yeah yeah i'm not i'm not actually looking forward to having to eat raw sea squirt now it doesn't sound great it doesn't look great if you look them up they're these marine invertebrates they're kind of they're like jellyfish but with a little bit more form because i think some of them are on the ground they're like sea cucumber but but but the early versions before god decided on the sea cucumber you know it's a failed experiment it's either that or it's what you do you know when you make perfectly round you roll out your cookie dough and you make your perfectly round cookie dough that's like and then if you if you let that float in water that becomes your jellyfish and then the sea squirts of what you make with all the bits that are left around right yeah cookie dough and and i'm just looking at it going i don't think that's going to have a great texture either like do i chew it do i swallow it whole like a like an oyster am i going to be releasing the plasmologens if i you know it there's a lot if if scientists could just say to me don't eat crisps or you'll get old i'd be like done yeah easy easy look i here's an interesting thing about anti-aging interventions.

22:05I don't know if it's entirely related to the story. And in fact, I know that it is not entirely related to the story, but it is a thing that I've noticed. You notice anti-aging interventions, particularly cosmetic ones, more on men than you do on women because it's so sort of normalized that women are sort of dying their hair, dying their greys and so on and so forth. But like it is much more unconvincing when you see an older man with like a box dye, black hair over a wrinkled face than it is when you see a lady. And I don't know why that is. It's true, but we also find, we also, I don't know if it's normalized or just biology, but the silver fox with a little bit of age in his face is considered mightily attractive.

22:54And what we're trying to do is make the woman with her silver foxiness, her silver vixen, and a little bit of age in her face also look amazing. You know, we don't societally consider, you know, I mean, now I just think there's so many gorgeous older women where you just go, gosh, she's aged beautifully. But then, you know, with men, when they try and stay young, we go, no, no, we want you older. Because when you're young, you're stupid. When you're older, you look like you'd know how to make a C-squirt, if you know what I mean. Oh, she went there. Buy her book on romance novels. I do. Well, actually, I know this is random, but where do I get it, Alice?

23:33Because I want to read your book. Oh, you can find it on the bugle podcast dot com. Reviews now and now it's time for your reviews. As you know, each week our guest editors bring in something to review out of five stars. Jos Norris, what have you brought in to review for us? I would like to review a tablespoon full of tahini, please. I would say that if you're in the same situation as me and you're trying to think about different ways to get more calcium into your diet and you're talking to your girlfriend about it and your girlfriend suggests that sesame and tahini is a really good way of getting more calcium in your diet I would really strongly recommend leaving the conversation there or taking it in a new direction and thinking up specific recipes that use sesame or tahini that you can incorporate into your diet I would really advocate that what you don't do is allow your girlfriend to talk you into eating a full tablespoon of pure tahini.

24:29Just on the off-trance of sort of experimenting to see what it's like and to work out what this is going to be like. For something that's quite wet, it's so dry. It's hideous. I love tahini as a flavour. I'm a big fan. But for some reason, this turned into a thing of like, well, just try it and see if you like it. And what will happen is that a whole tablespoon of it in particular will immediately form a very, very thick paste in your mouth that will then form a kind of a wall over the back of your throat, which will mean it's impossible to swallow it and it's also quite difficult to breathe. So you'll be dealing with that and you'll also be sort of assaulted by this very, very overpowering flavor, which will make you really want to put something else in your mouth to kind of take the edge off it, but you won't be able to because your mouth is full of paste.

25:16It's really not a nice thing to experience. It turns out it's not a particularly good way of getting more calcium into your diet because we looked it up later and sesame actually isn't that high in the list of calcium-rich foods. So overall, it will just be a waste of your time. I think it's one of the worst things I've consumed in maybe over a couple of years. It was really bad. And again, I say this as somebody who loves – I love the stuff. I've had it in stuff. Don't eat it by itself. It's alarming how big the gap between like a tahini brownie or whatever or a tahini salad dressing. The gap between that and like eating tahini is I think the widest gap I've ever experienced in flavours.

25:59It's absolutely foul and I give it one star out of five.

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27:14Get 40 % off by going to ground.news slash 2026. That's ground.news slash 2026. Again, ground.news slash 2026. Ria, I would like to review The Common Cold. I've been reviewing it for about five days now. And I found that initially on day one, where actually all you're doing is just a few sneezes, There's something really satisfying about when you get that really irritating nose tickle, but you get it out with a good proper sneeze. And I had a good three or four of those on the first day. And I was like, actually, you know, I know what's coming, but I'm not not enjoying this day. But then day two to three, when the sore throat kicked in, I was like, no, no, this I'm not enjoying this as much.

27:59It's really difficult because there's a solution, you know, whether you're gargling salt water or whether you're having to, you know, just drink loads of fluids. It's just kind of it's almost counterintuitive because it hurts. but at the same time, you know, you got to get stuff past your throat in order to get into the body to help you heal. By days three to five, where you're into like the blowing of the nose and it goes down into the chest, it's just irritating because you can function, but you can't breathe. So you're just wearing out a little bit faster. And then by day six, when you find out that your ex-husband who originally brought it into the house, isn't really symptomatic and just sort of felt a little tickle, but didn't actually get the full cold, you're just irritated.

28:37Like you're just, that's it. You're at your end. You're just like, I'm totally irritated. And oh, okay. So I'm just a symptomatic person and you're not a symptomatic person, which is how, by the way, we all got COVID is because you brought it in, but you didn't realize you had it. So I would, I would give it, I'm going to give it, can I give it zero stars out of five? I'm going to give it zero stars out of five because it's just, it's one of these evolutionary hangovers from pandemics long past the common cold used to be quite lethal until only those that didn't die from it survived and now we just find it as an irritating niggle coupled with the fact that cold viruses realized if we kill all of our hosts then we're gonna run out of being ourself so maybe we shouldn't kill them maybe we should just exist for a few days in their upper respiratory tract before we then, you know, get passed on to unwitting housemates.

29:33And so I'm going to give it a zero out of five because there's just no purpose for it other than, you know, the long life of an adenovirus, which they've had their time. I think they've had their time. I think we all can agree it's a coronavirus era now. And I would just say don't do it. If one is coming your way or if you have the option, as enjoyable as the sneeze day is, for the rest of it, it's not worth it. And that brings me to my review. I'm going to review babies finding other babies cute with a subsection of babies doing a cute little voice, even though they have a cute little voice. Five stars, no notes.

30:12They think that they have a normal voice and then they put on a funny little voice, even though they already have a funny little voice. It's a joyful thing. It brings only joy to the universe. There are no downsides to this. It is the best thing in the world. I guess 10 stars for the experience of a baby seeing another baby, thinking the other baby is cute, and then doing a funny little voice to the other baby. High fives. One of the things that makes life worth living. Speaking of cute small things, scientists have built a mini-universe. Joss, pinch the cheeks of the mini-universe and tell us all about scientists building a miniature universe.

30:48yeah a guy has built a miniature universe in his lab and the weird thing is that the article about it really doesn't focus on that as the most interesting bit it's a very sort of like in-depth article which i didn't understand in the slightest about the ways in which he's created time inside his universe it's something about so it's quantum stuff which i'm not i'm not good on anyway i don't really understand the theory or the practice of how quantum stuff works but basically he's built a mini universe and the article completely glosses over what that means but he's built a mini universe and then he divided it down the middle and he didn't look at one half of it but he did look at the other half and he called that the bright half and the dark half of the universe and something about the way in which entropy flowed between the two halves showed that time was being created inside the universe and when entropy flowed quickly time was moving quickly and when it flowed slowly time was moving slowly it said there's a bit in the article where it says if entropy was flowing time was ticking i don't i don't understand what this means because time was time was passing while he was in his lab like time was just happening while he was looking at the thing and to me it sounds like a lava lamp like if i look at a lava lamp and it's moving quick that means the lava lamp is hot that doesn't mean that like time is being invented in the thing but apparently also the fact that he chose not to look at the other half is what caused time to happen because time happens when you surrender specific bits of information so by choosing not to look at half of it he made time exist in his miniature universe and then he looked at it and his conclusions are like oh it makes it so interesting thinking about the different ways that time comes about inside a universe simulator but to me i'm like this guy made a universe in his house Like, why isn't the entire article about that?

32:39Because I've played little games where you have to build a little universe and you make a little planet and then you create a dinosaur or something. Why is he not doing that? That's the first thing I want to get to is making dinosaurs. But instead he's working out where the time flows. I didn't understand a word of it. I thought it was crazy. But apparently this guy's created life. Has he created life? No. They don't mention it. Which I assume means he hasn't. Just a universe. Just mess. Just entropy, right? What is a universe? What is that? You know what? I also didn't understand the article.

33:16I think you explained it really, really well, though. Well, I think the details I got, the thing of like things flowing between, I just don't understand how any of that adds up to meaning. There was a lot of things. I passed all the information. I was like, there's no meaning in it. No, no. And I think that might be the article. I think you're exactly right. They said, well, he used a cloud of ultra-cold atoms, didn't he? A Bose-Einstein condensate, obviously, which is obviously a state near – it just took a lot of things for granted that we understood what it was saying in the article. It's a Bose-Einstein thing.

33:50Is that like a collaboration between Einstein and the Bose headphones guys? Because I didn't realize that they overlapped. But maybe when the guy who invented Bose headphones was really young, he did this thing with Einstein and it created a mini-universe, which I think is even cooler than the headphones. Beats by Dre, except as Bose Einstein and Fine Manzoni. Right. Yeah, all of those. I just think if you can do noise cancellation, you can probably do universe recreation. I think they're very close to each other in the rhyming dictionary. I just think it's so weird that the first thing you do is think about time.

34:26If you've made a universe, you then go, right, let's see whether time exists. Because to me, I'm like, yeah, it does. We started this podcast at 10 and now it's 10.45. so we know we know time exists we didn't need to build a mini bozeystein universe but he's saying that it's entropy so he basically looked at the light side didn't look at the dark side and said every time stuff passes between them time happens so i said so essentially it's like that big game and squid game with the girl and when she turns around oh yeah and when they don't when she doesn't turn around they don't move you know like what is that grandma's house or whatever we call it in the playground that's how time works essentially essentially we're all being not looked at right now kind of makes sense they're basically saying when things flow time happens and when things stop time doesn't so is that an easier way than sea squirts of just reversing aging is if i just sit really still most of the day am i moving too much is if you sit still i knew a lady who didn't make expressions for that very reason.

35:26She just didn't make any expressions with her face. Really? She didn't want to have any wrinkles. That's a thing that people do or rather don't do. Did she have wrinkles? She just got saggy but not as wrinkly as normal people. And you can never tell if she was happy or sad? No. She'd sort of laugh like this.

35:50engineers have designed a waterproof diving so for cyborg cockroaches uh actually this is really cool news apparently these hybrid insects can survive and roam underwater for up to three hours and if you don't think about the animal cruelty element of this uh if you're a sort of an anti-cockroach person this feels like a positive story realina can you tell us about these underwater super cockroaches yeah so it is difficult i'm going to be honest to get away from the animal cruelty side of the story, there isn't a single part of it where you go, oh, that must be nice for them. Other than the, oh, you've given them oxygen so they can continue to live while you shove them underwater.

36:28So this was engineers at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the Waseda University in Japan. And they have built waterproof diving suits that let cyborg cockroaches survive. So the cockroach is already a cyborg and now we're adding the suit. Just to be clear, it's not like a normal cockroach that we made into a cyborg with the suit. They were already cyborgs. And then we're going to add a suit to the cyborg so that they can now go underwater. Apparently, we've already been using cyborg insects to explore disaster areas. So cyborg insects are living insects fitted with electronic controllers that guide movement.

37:10And they were previously used in search and rescue efforts after the 7.7 earthquake in Myanmar in March 2025, which killed thousands of people, injured thousands more. I don't know. I mean, obviously, I was trying to think how would I feel if I'm stuck in an earthquake, I want to be rescued, and then over the hill just comes a thousand cyborg cockroaches flying at me to rescue me. I don't know. You must need a thousand to lift me up. I'm not quite sure how the insects. Yeah, it's a little bit out of the frying pan into the fire. I feel like they did the search bit and maybe less of the rescue bit.

37:47And I think that saying they did search and rescue efforts, I think they probably did the searching. I don't know if they have cameras on them so that they're flying there and they're seeing what they're seeing. The reason to use cyborg insects is that you're using, you know, and again, if you are sensitive to this, like turn away now, they use the insects own muscles rather than power hungry batteries. So you're basically commandeering the insect to work for you. But the insect now has no more free will to decide where it wants to go or what it wants to do, which is which I struggle with. I'm struggling with this idea a little bit and now did they get it from that Rick and Morty episode where he turns into a pickle and he does that he like hijacks loads of cockroaches in a sewer did they watch that and then go we'll do that or does this pre-date?

38:40I'll be honest I think they've probably gotten the idea from nature because there are funguses that will take over insects and they will turn them into zombie insects so you know so that But the insect is no, it slowly eats it from the inside out and the insect still walks around, but the insect isn't really alive anymore. It's just purely been taken over by a parasite. So we do see it in nature already, but we've just never done it, you know, consciously as humans gone. Let's put a chip in this insect's brain and take over it. I mean, we have here we have. So anyway, the suit is a flexible shell for silicon tubes that attach to the spiracles.

39:24So that's where they get their oxygen. So they're feeding them oxygen straight into their, well, their nose holes, but they're called spiracles. And then they have a little transparent 3D printed oxygen tank with them. And it gives them three hours of life underwater. So, yeah, no further comment, Your Honor. like it's it's fascinating but i think it's also scary it's a scary direction of research it's weird to look at the kind of like nastiest bits of nature and then go oh we should work out how to do that you think there must be some like quite nice wholesome things that happen in nature other than like a fungus taking over a cockroach and then turning it into a sort of like living zombie thing like that's it's weird for us to choose like that we're going to put some money into doing that yeah we could be the fungus i mean i yeah but i guess it makes sense i think they started like many engineers with the problem they went how do we see deep inside this pipe our robots can't get far enough i know we'll send an insect in and then it went from there i'm surprised that they sort of needed to with cockroaches because i feel like cockroaches are already a shorthand for like that's a thing that can survive everything right it survives nuclear winter and it's like you know it seems weird to be like we need this cockroach to live longer underwater because they're already pretty like hardy aren't they exactly why didn't they just say to the cockroach hey do you know how to swim and if not would you like to learn yeah yeah just collaborate more of a spirit of collaboration please they'll help us out if we're nice to them if we pay them joz norris and realina joz where can people find you online uh people can find me at uh joznorris.co.uk uh or at joznorris on socials um i'm working on a new show that will be going on into next year it's called josh norris's hugh jackman is the phantom of the opera uh and i'm doing a show called egg box at the pleasance in november which is a night of short films and uh live script readings of new comedy scripts so um come along to that if anyone's around fancies it i fancy it i saw the last one oh yeah you're the last one thank you so much for coming it was wonderful i must find out when what what night in november 10th of november okay Okay, looking at my calendar.

41:40And Ria, where can people find you online? You can find me, I mean, you can start at realina.com. You could find me on Insta. I pretty much have something on most of the platforms, but I focus on Patreon and Instagram. Those are kind of like the two places I am the most. So come on down to those and join in my little community. It would be lovely to have you. We also do science and we do new stuff and we just chat. Sometimes we just get on Zoom and just all have a big old chat for 40 minutes with a cup of tea. It's great fun. It's very nice. And you can find me online at patreon.com slash Alice Fraser.

42:17I do weekly writers meetings there as well as Poetry Mondays and various other fun things. Sign up there. If you just want it as a mailing list, you can sign up for free or you can sign up for money. This is a Bugle podcast and Alice Fraser production. Your editor is Harry Gordon. Your executive producer is Chris Skinner. I'll talk to you again next time. Rubrik is the security and AI operations company built for what happens after an attack hits, not just the moments before. AI has turned the threat landscape into quicksand, moving too fast for any human to fully predict. That's why an agentic cyber resilience platform matters.

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