The Gargle - ‘Super’ Volcano under England

Episode Date: September 9, 2026

On this week's episode of the Gargle, Alice is joined by Ria Lina and Joz Norris, as they trio delve into all things science and tech (with a pinch of satire) From a ‘Super’ Volcano hiding under England, sea squits, cockroach diving suits and a manmade miniature Universe! Alice Fraser: https://www.patreon.com/AliceFraser & https://www.instagram.com/alicefraserhuman/Ria Lina: https://rialina.com/ Joz Norris: https://www.joznorris.co.uk/Subscribe to Realms Unknown - a fantasy, sci-fi and speculative fiction podcast from Alice Fraser and The Bugle!https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/news/realms-unknownYou fund what we do!https://www.thebuglepodcast.com/donateProduced by Harry Gordon, with Executive production from Chris Skinner Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the gargle. The Quantum Fluctuation asks why not a world in which the bugle has a spin-off 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, pull-out section of the bugle's audio newspaper for Visual World. I'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, Dawes Norris. Hello. Yeah, intermittently, intermittently, myself, I'd say. Alternatingly. And returning triumphantly to the bull with a glove, she found herself, leaving the lustful rake gnashing his teeth in the rose trellised arbor with an erection,

telling beneath his lavender pantaloons, he won't be able to return to the ballroom to tell all the country dancers. It'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 scientist 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 Foundation's unit after meta was delayed, getting its latest foundation model, Lama 4 behemoth, to market. And this is the problem with doing satire. You'd think Lama 4 behemoth would be a satirical, 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 guggle. 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.

You'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 deposits of when it erupted were found in Scandinavia or something.

So big. This thing's big. but my favorite bit of this article is there's a bit where mostly it is just an argument over whether or not supervolcano is a helpful or imprecise term. But there's a guy called Michael Poland 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, this is what Poland said, who was not involved in the discovery. And he told life science this in an email. 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 layman's term is useful. I think Supervolcano is helpful. But I know what that means because he's claiming we should be calling it an ultralinean eruption, which I don't know what that is. I got no clue.

So mostly this article seems to just be. 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. Ultra plenium, I've got no clue. See, I don't really know. I don't know how you quantify volcanoes 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. No, it feels ultraplinean though. Yeah. I mean, the heat is, it's got more of an ultraplenian 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 miles apart, you know, the Kinnacle Teffra, the ultraplenian 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. Yeah, 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. I 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, if any, 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 generations. And I say this with love. I think it really ages you, Alice. Like a super volcano. I didn't realize it was under England when I read it. I thought it was under North. Norway and we just got bits of it to England. So maybe I was, oh, there's more to investigate things.

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. But again, such an ultralapal 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 behavior. 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. Ria Lena, you're our fruit fly brain scientist news correspondent. Can you tell us more about this story? Your 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% of brain cells shared between male and female flies are the same. And it's the remaining 5% that is enough to drive markedly different behaviors between the sexes. Essentially, there are three bits of male behavior that they, that they, that they, tribute to this 5% and it's sticking your hand down your pants. It's saying make me a list. And it's, no, it's, 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 fry blaine and it is

exactly the same as the male human brain. And that's why we know everything about male brains down. No, I, 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. Aggression, 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, and this is the exciting bit, a love song. Circuit males used to court females, a love song circuit, sorry, that males use to court females by vibrating their wings. So we now know that 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. Philippe 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.

Which is not. That's nice for the male. Yeah, that's not creepy at all. I think that's great. Yeah, yeah, that's great. Sure. Sure. So, yeah.

So, and then from finding those differences in the areas, they found genes that directly relate to those brain differences, meaning that, you know, 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. We're looking, you know, 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. We know that autism runs in families. We know that there's some sort of genetic element to it, but this might help us actually identify those. settlement. 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, I just washed them down the sink.

Dreckon you can do the same with all male brains. Dreckon 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? Personally, 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 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 on, do you feel fly-like? 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've never literally done that, but it feels like quite a neat encapsulation of some sort of human struggle that I relate to. So I don't know whether that's also kind of like coded into the wiring somewhere. It is, isn't it, to go up? because all I have to do is put cling film over the bowl. There'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 Fly's a very subject to the sunk cost fallacy. But this is also maybe a 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 to. that you reckon that's what they called themselves as well I mean what would you call you flies 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 got sort of locked in are dinosaurs yeah yeah yeah so by the same day became birds. They were like, well, we can't call ourselves flies now because we called the flies.

Yeah, they were dinosaurs before they were flies. Yeah. So what were bats before they could fly? They just hung. They were just really old. Just being eaten. It's been clogged off the ground. That brings us to your ad section.

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And this episode of the podcast is brought to you by showers. Showers, rain with a drain. And 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 stocked between your teeth. I would buy it when I had fully kind of understood what it was.

My initial reaction one 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. How do I know that? Oh, I'm like, I don't think I've ever watched that episode. I thought she was a neurobiologist.

Oh, there you go. Okay. Okay. Well, then that joke doesn't work. But imagine. 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 Josh Norris, your us, C-squirt correspondent.

Can you tell us more about C-squirt? And also, in the explanation, please say C-squirts as often as you possibly care. I had to work at what a C-squirt was before fully delving into this article. Because the article doesn't really say it's a kind of like a tube-like, it's a bit like a C-Cucumber, I think. I don't know whether it's a vegetable or a living thing. I don't know if it's like an enemy 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. But 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 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, 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 scientific reports where they try to drown a load of mice and then go, oh, wow, they don't like that. So they've tested this, but they've also found that older mice who take the sea squirts start growing thicker, darker, darker hair, as opposed to older mice that don't whose hair starts to kind of like thin and gray.

So it seems to reverse multiple different signs of aging in terms of like hair growth, brain, plasticity, that sort of thing. The thing I find weird about this article is the fact that we only ever hear about these things when they've 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 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 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 the mage best, but we only hear about the ones that work.

It'd be a mad life. I think that's a really good point. think 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, 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 the early versions before God decided on the sea cucumber. you know, it's sort of 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 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. 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 an oyster? Am I going to be releasing the plasmologians if I,

You know, there's a lot. 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, here's an interesting thing about anti-aging interventions. I don't know this 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. Which is, 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, you know, less of dying. their hair, dyeing their grays and so on and so forth. But like it is, it is much more unconvincing when you see an older man with like a box dye, a black hair on 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. And 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-sword, if you know what I mean. Oh, she went there. Buy her book on romance novels. Actually, I know this is random, but where do I get it, Alice?

Because I want to read your book. Oh, you can find it on the buglepodcast.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. Joes 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 just 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. Something that's quite weird. 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 full, 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. It'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 there actually, 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 is 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, ooh, 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 flavors. It's absolutely foul and I'll give it one star out five. Ria. I would like to review the calm and 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 what? 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, I'm not enjoying this as much.

It's really difficult because there's a solution, you know, whether you're gargling saltwater 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've 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. Like 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 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 going to 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. And 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.

They 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. Jaws, pinch the cheeks of the mini universe and tell us all about scientists building a miniature universe. Yeah, 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 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. There's a bit in the article where it says,

if entropy was flowing, time was ticking. I don't understand what this meant because time was passing while he was in his lab. 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? Because 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 in time. Just a universe. Just a mess. Just entropy, right? I've confessed. But why is a universe?

What is that? You know what? I also didn't understand the article. I 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 could pass all the information.

I was like, there's no meaning in it. No, no, I think that might be the article. I think you're exactly right. Like they said, like, they said, well, he used a cloud of ultra cold atoms, didn't he? A Bose-Estein condensate, obviously. which is obviously a state near app. Like 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. Is that like a collaboration between Einstein and the like the Bose headphones guys? Because I didn't realize that they overlapped. But maybe like 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 it's Bose Einstein and Fine Mansone.

Right. Yeah, all of those. Like, I just think if you can do noise cancellation, you can probably do universe recreation. Yeah. 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. Like, if you've made a universe, you'd then go, right, let's see whether time exists. Because to me, I'm like, yeah, it does.

Like, we started this podcast at 10, and now it's 10.45. So we know time exists. We didn't need to build a mini Boz Eisenstein 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, 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 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 to what? It's a time. It's if you sit still. I knew a lady who didn't make expressions for that very reason. She just didn't make any expressions with her face. Really? I was that she didn't want to have any wrinkles. That's a thing that people do.

That's clever. Or rather, don't you? 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. Engineers have designed a waterproof diving soap for cyborg cockroaches.

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, if you're a sort of an anti-cockroach person, this feels like a positive story. Ria Lina, 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. So 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 cockroach 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 under water. 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.

And 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 crockroaches 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. And 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 to.

away now. They use the insect's 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... I 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, oh, we'll do that? Or does this predate?

I'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, they'll, so that 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. So that's where they get their oxygen. So they're feeding them oxygen straight into their, well, their nose holes. 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. 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 nastiest bits of nature and then go, oh, we should work out how to do that. You'd think there must be some 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, 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 shortham for like that's a thing that can survive everything. Right? It survives nuclear winter and it's a lot, 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. Jaws Norris and Rialina.

Jaws, where can people find you online? People can find me at joshnors.com.uk or at Joss Norris on socials. I'm working on a new show that will be going on into next year. It's called Jaws Nouris's Hugh Jackman is The Phantom of the Opera. And I'm doing a show called Eggbox at the Pleasance in November, which is a night of short films and live script readings of new comedy scripts. So come along to that if anyone's around, fancies it. I fancy it.

I saw the last one. Oh, yeah, you were the last one. Thank you so much for coming. It was wonderful. I must find out what night in November? 10th of November. Okay. You know, looking at my calendar.

And, Via, where can people find you online? You can find me, I mean, you could 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. That's very nice. And you can find me online at patreon.com slash Alice Fraser. I 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.