This week’s line-up is a reminder that humans will do anything except choose the obvious option straight away. We’ve got a wheelie suitcase that was probably invented by a woman, then ignored until a man made it respectable, plus a smallpox vaccine rollout that sounds like a historical thriller, and a drug that went from medical research to TikTok tan hack with a side of “please don’t”.

This week we went from “surely that can’t be true” to “oh… that’s actually happening”. We’re fact checking the legendary pig orgasm, getting weirdly hopeful about placebo pills that work even when you’re told they’re fake, and looking at research that points a finger at the iPhone era for a chunk of the fertility slide.

Then we’re back on humanity’s favourite hobby, trying to control the weather, now rebranded as “weather jiu jitsu”. We finish with a satellite reality check, because apparently we’re speed running our way to a sky full of moving dots.

Will’s gone walkabout, so Rod’s raided the archives and pulled out four of his favourite segments.

You’ll get a philosophical gut punch about the Experience Machine and why a perfect fake life still feels wrong, a genuinely weird global mystery with Havana Syndrome and the uncomfortable question of what’s actually causing it, plus the bad news that venting might be making you angrier, not calmer. Then we finish with the surprisingly brutal social cost of being labelled “boring”, and why that stereotype sticks harder than it should.

Microplastics are everywhere. Birds are masturbating. A trillion dollars is still not a real number. And somewhere in the middle of all that, a mushroom case study pops up and reminds you Alzheimer’s is not just a punchline.

This week, we ping pong between lab gear that can fake a crisis, wildlife behaviour that is way more common than we pretend, billionaire maths that breaks your sense of scale, and one weird medical result that is making researchers quietly lean in.

Australia has a list of baby names you are not allowed to use, a church once decided a devil statue was simply too attractive for public viewing, and one German bloke accidentally kayaked his way from Europe to Australia... 

This week, we rollercoaster our way between naming laws, sexy satanic art, and a seven year kayaking epic that sounds made up, but trust us, it was very real.

A robot exosuit now costs more than most people’s houses, scientists are seriously pitching a telescope built from the solar system itself, and Pokémon Go has somehow ended up feeding the war tech pipeline. This week, we bounce between expensive robotics, slow burn space ambition, biosecurity chaos, and a 5,000 year old gut microbe that can still create great beer, which is a lot of whiplash for one episode, but here we are.

Mosquitos are learning how to ignore your repellents, cows can recognise human faces on TV, and Wi Fi can now identify you through a wall with the help of AI. This week, we bounce between animal brains, ocean weirdness, and technology that is getting a little too confident, which is a fun mix until you remember you live in the same world as all of it.

A relaxing trip to Japan turns into an accidental run down a double black diamond, a mathematician solves “impossible” problems because nobody told him they were impossible, and missing scientists get pulled into UFO flavoured rumours. This week, Will and Rod bounce between snowboarding psychology, statistical legend, conspiracy culture, and the strange ways expectations shape what we think we can do.

Crystals have been fascinating humans for hundreds of thousands of years, chimpanzees might share the same shiny object obsession, and mushrooms may be sending electrical signals through their underground networks. This episode bounces between ancient archaeology, animal behaviour, and the weird possibility that fungi are doing more than just quietly existing in the forest.

Robot wolves are now being used to scare bears away from Japanese schools, scientists have grown mini Neanderthal brains and plugged them into little robots, and snakes are quietly topping the lethality leaderboard while everyone keeps blaming sharks. This week, we bounce between wildlife deterrence, prehistoric brain tech, public health reality checks, and a cybersecurity story that proves the weakest link is still a human with a phone.

A 1960s mouse utopia that collapsed into a vanity-obsessed apocalypse, a global database of 150,000 enthusiastic stool photos, and a scientific quest to help humans regrow limbs like a salamander. This week, we bounce between rodent dystopias, AI-powered gut tracking, regenerating toes, and international idioms for absolute chaos.

A poll has asked people if they could win in a fist fight against Donald Trump, a survey on female orgasms has wandered into yawning, crying, and hallucinations, and vulture nests are quietly operating as accidental museums of human history. This week, Will and Rod bounce between political fantasy, private biology, and birds that apparently have a better archive system than most institutions.

High school students launch blood samples into near space, a real life love story involves a faecal microbiota transplant (FMT), and scientists find cocaine in sharks off The Bahamas. Today we bounce between space medicine, the gut microbiome and mental health, and the uncomfortable reality of ocean pollution.

We also unpack why we yawn, including research on brain temperature regulation and whether yawning patterns act like a physiological fingerprint.

AI chatbots (and lazy researchers) can be convinced a fake disease is real, Gen Z is side-eyeing the whole “helpful assistant” thing, and apparently, the best way to jailbreak AI is to ask it nicely in the form of cyberpunk short fiction. This week, we bounce between medical misinformation, bureaucratic chaos, nuclear fallout hiding in baby teeth, and the U.S. Space Force anthem doing whatever it is doing, which is a lot to process in one sitting, but here we are.

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

Cloning is edging closer to science fiction’s favourite nightmare, tropical trees may actually be better at cooperation than their colder cousins, and smart underwear is now tracking human flatulence in alarming detail. This week, we bounce between organ growing biotech, forest diplomacy, AI failures, and fart analytics, which is not a sentence anyone should have to type, but science keeps forcing the issue.

Sirocco the kakapo preferred seducing human heads, Japanese scientists kept cloning mice until the whole thing started falling apart and a robotic dog is now sniffing whisky barrels in Scotland. This week is a tidy little mix of conservation chaos, cloning limits and high tech booze protection, which is exactly the sort of sentence science forces you to write from time to time.

Breaking Bad turns out to be less fictional than you would hope, the chainsaw has a deeply upsetting origin story, and people are now wondering whether AI can guide them through a psychedelic experience. This week is a tidy little mix of crime, medical horror, and digital absurdity, which is to say science is behaving exactly as expected.

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

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