Academics are arguing about the ethics of sex with aliens, dogs have evolved literal “puppy eyes” just to manipulate us and StaffCop is quietly transforming your workplace into a digital panopticon. This week, we’re plunging into a world where interstellar romance is a genuine debate, canines have evolved to become emotional con artists and your boss might be watching more than your timesheets.

A Rome-based research team discovered that poetry can act as a universal backdoor to jailbreak AI systems, medieval physicians believed flatulent foods were powerful aphrodisiacs, tech billionaire Palmer Luckey is now advocating for submarines that travel through Earth's crust and a Dublin man contracted penile tuberculosis after working with deer.

Sika deer on Japan's Yakushima Island let macaque monkeys groom them in exchange for food scraps, except some deer also let the monkeys mount them sexually, which scientists are calling "interspecies sexual behaviour".

Nederland, Colorado hosts an annual "Frozen Dead Guy Day" festival celebrating Bredo Morstoel, a Norwegian grandfather whose body has been preserved in a shed on dry ice for decades after his grandson's cryogenic preservation dreams went sideways.

And the Brazilian Butt Lift has an unexpected side effect called "BBL smell" - a rancid odour resulting from fat necrosis when transferred fat cells die and decompose inside the body.

Horseshoe theory suggests political extremes loop back around until far-left and far-right ideologies find disturbing common ground. Scientists are using AI to decode brain activity and caption your thoughts, which raises uncomfortable questions about privacy and future thought-policing. And evolutionary biologists discovered that your fingers and toes developed from genetic blueprints originally designed for a fish's cloaca - meaning your hands evolved from ancient fish butt architecture.

Scientists in the mid-20th century bombarded plants with gamma radiation to create mutations that would yield stronger crops, which sounds like a mad scientist's fever dream but actually happened in atomic gardens around the world. Microwaves have been accused of causing cancer, zapping nutrients and possibly spying on you, though none of these conspiracies hold up under scrutiny and we're all still nuking leftovers anyway. And "phubbing" - snubbing someone by looking at your phone instead of paying attention to them - has become so prevalent that we've created connections across continents yet can't maintain eye contact with the person sitting across from us.

A woman survived without a stomach or small bowel after a catastrophic medical episode at her 18th birthday party, proving the human body is more adaptable than we thought. Philosophers and tech billionaires are convinced we're living in a computer simulation, though Canadian physicists disagree and insist our universe is real. And forensic scientists discovered that your DNA floats in the air wherever you breathe, meaning you're leaving genetic evidence in every room you enter - except mysteriously not in cars, which apparently offer some kind of DNA stealth mode.

Donald Trump's Nuclear Regulatory Commission is resurrecting decommissioned nuclear power plants, racing to get them online with what appears to be questionable safety oversight. Companies are practicing "greenhushing" - doing environmental good but staying silent about it, NASA calculated Earth's expiry date at one billion years from now, a man named Les Stewart spent 16 years typing the numbers one to one million in words for a Guinness World Record, and Waymo admits that driverless car fatalities are inevitable, planning for "when" rather than "if" accidents happen.

Correlation doesn't equal causation, but that doesn't stop us from finding patterns in the strangest places. Pentagon pizza orders spike right before major military operations, proving that pepperoni consumption is apparently a national security indicator. A study found that kids who play video games are measurably smarter than TV-watching children, which vindicates every parent who gave up fighting the Xbox battle. And the Edelman Trust Barometer reveals that China and Saudi Arabia lead in governmental trust, raising the question: are people genuinely trusting their governments or just too scared to say otherwise?

Your grandmother was right - a 20-minute nap really can unlock creative genius and trigger Eureka moments. Japanese researchers got caught hiding secret messages in scientific papers to trick AI reviewers into approving their work, which is either brilliantly devious or academic fraud depending on who you ask. And microplastics have officially invaded the most intimate part of human existence: a Florida study found them in penises, proving that nowhere on or in the human body is safe from plastic contamination. From sleep induced brilliance to microplastic penises, science sure hasn’t let us down this week.

A third of kids now want to be YouTubers instead of astronauts and half of those kids will probably be named after firearms rather than grandparents; and in our technologically advanced society, we're obsessed with reinventing everything - except for one really boring invention that wasn't allowed to change until its creator died.

Some coma patients are fully conscious but completely unable to communicate, trapped in their own bodies like a living nightmare. Donald Trump announced plans for a "Golden Dome" missile defense system that will cost either $175 billion or possibly trillions and probably won't work. Sports cheaters are getting more creative than ever and AI companion apps are using emotional manipulation tactics straight out of an abusive relationship playbook to stop users from logging off.

Companies are accidentally stealing wind from each other with massive wind farms that disrupt local weather patterns, ancient Chinese poets have been documenting climate change for centuries without realizing they were creating the world's longest environmental dataset, and there are rooms so quiet that people start hallucinating from hearing their own bodily functions. Also, spending too long in complete silence can make you go temporarily insane, which explains why sensory deprivation is used as both therapy and torture.

Companies are accidentally stealing wind from each other with massive wind farms that disrupt local weather patterns, ancient Chinese poets have been documenting climate change for centuries without realizing they were creating the world's longest environmental dataset, and there are rooms so quiet that people start hallucinating from hearing their own bodily functions. Also, spending too long in complete silence can make you go temporarily insane, which explains why sensory deprivation is used as both therapy and torture.

Global IQ scores have been mysteriously rising for decades until they suddenly stopped (and might be going backwards), AI companies are selling virtual girlfriends that promise "non-judgmental love" to lonely humans, Russian scientists claim they're working on immortality technology that could create a world where only rich people live forever, and certain animals can survive decapitation and keep wandering around like nothing happened.

Also, climate change might trigger a fungal zombie apocalypse that turns humans into spore-spreading puppets, because apparently 2025 hasn’t been dystopian enough already.

If you’ve got a raw milk enthusiast friend, they might be conveniently forgetting that grandma used to boil her "fresh" milk to avoid dying from bacteria poisoning. 

Mind you, it wasn’t all safe in the good old days. In 1978, a Soviet scientist stuck his head in a particle accelerator and got blasted with a proton beam 600 times the lethal dose (and somehow survived). He might be a good candidate for the upcoming Enhanced Games, a sporting competition that openly encourages athletes to take performance-enhancing drugs. 

Have you ever wondered what your dog is thinking? Well, AI might finally let us chat with animals, but do we really want to hear what they have to say?

A groundbreaking study on phantom limb syndrome has overturned decades of medical thinking, a man with the world's largest penis broke his arm in a shower accident because he couldn't see his feet, Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano nearly drowned inside his helmet during a spacewalk, researchers discovered that smearing yogurt on your windows can cool your house by up to 3.5 degrees Celsius, and a 1950s nuclear test called Operation Plumbob accidentally launched a 900-kilogram manhole cover at six times Earth's escape velocity - potentially making it the first human-made object to reach space, beating Sputnik by several years.

Truth Social's AI chatbot thinks "balanced news" means exclusively quoting Fox News, which is about as balanced as someone hoarding 7,470 browser tabs on a single computer (yes, that actually happened). 

Meanwhile, Australia's deadliest killer isn't the poisonous spider lurking in your toilet - it's the friendly horse in the paddock next door. And if you think that's absurd, wait until you hear about the Russian oligarchs who keep accidentally falling out of windows or the two bank robbers who covered themselves in lemon juice to make themselves invisible, leading to an entire psychological phenomenon being named after them.

AI chatbots are now giving people bromine poisoning by recommending Victorian-era quack cures, British engineers once accidentally drained an entire canal by pulling a forgotten plug, Japanese scientists have discovered that some mammals can literally breathe through their butts during emergencies, and researchers just found tarantula species with penises so ridiculously long they had to create a new genus to classify them.

Also, Danish zoos are asking the public to donate unwanted pets as lion food, which is either progressive recycling or deeply disturbing depending on your perspective.

The White House just told NASA to kill perfectly good satellites that have been tracking carbon emissions for years, treasure hunters in Britain go to prison for keeping ancient coins they found and pineapples used to be so expensive that rich people displayed them at dinner parties instead of eating them. 

Today we're exploring a world where climate science gets cancelled for mysterious reasons, metal detecting can land you in jail, and fruit hierarchies once determined your social standing.

Today, we’ll find out why Ozzy Osbourne's DNA has become one of the most studied genomes in history. Scientists are still trying to figure out how the Prince of Darkness survived decades of chemical abuse that would kill mere mortals.

We also explore India's impossible census challenge: counting the Sentinelese people who live on an isolated island and communicate primarily by shooting arrows at visitors, plus the discovery of radioactive wasp nests that are glowing with enough radiation to make federal safety standards nervous.