This week’s episode is what happens when science stops asking “should we?” and gets very focused on “could we?”. Cockroaches are being upgraded into tiny rescue workers, a Silicon Valley crew is pitching brain tech you might one day take through your nose, and the Ig Nobels are back to remind everyone that the line between genius and ridiculous is mostly vibes.
Paramedics Cyborg Cockroaches
Let’s start with the worst sentence you’ll say all day: cockroaches might save your life. In Seoul, engineers are developing “Paraborgs” which are beetles and cockroaches fitted with cameras and little syringe systems, designed to crawl through disaster zones where humans and robots struggle.
The goal is to find people trapped under rubble and potentially deliver injections at close range, because apparently we’re now living in the timeline where the first responder is a bug with a medical kit.
The early results are genuinely impressive, with research showing a 95% success rate for close-range injections. The only catch is that you’re still relying on an insect to do the job, which means the tech is advanced but the employee is, at best, unpredictable.
Snortable Nanobots
Then we swing hard into the future with Ray Kurzweil teaming up with a Silicon Valley startup to build brain-computer interfaces without surgery. The pitch is that instead of implants, you’d use nanobots to create the connection between your brain and your devices.
You might one day “snort” the nanobots, like you’re taking hay fever spray, and they’d travel up into the brain to do their work.
It’s still early; human trials are years away, but the direction is clear: tech isn’t staying on your desk or in your pocket. It wants to move in.
The Ig Nobels: Silly Science With Real Curiosity
To keep things grounded, we also dipped into the Ig Nobel Prize winners, which are basically science’s way of saying, “Relax, we can be weird on purpose.”
Among the highlights were research into cockroach milk as an energy-dense food source and a rethink of urinal design to reduce splashing.
It’s a good reminder that curiosity doesn’t always show up wearing a lab coat and a serious face. Sometimes it shows up asking questions you didn’t know needed answering.
Dolly Parton’s Likeability Superpower
And then, in the middle of all the cyborg bugs and brain bots, we got a genuinely heartwarming data point: Dolly Parton’s bipartisan popularity in the US. In an era where everything feels like it’s split into teams, Dolly somehow stays beloved across the board.
It’s a nice little palate cleanser, and also a quiet lesson in branding and human behaviour. Turns out authenticity and kindness scale.
So that’s the week: cockroaches with cameras, nanobots via nasal delivery, science that makes you laugh before it makes you think, and Dolly Parton reminding everyone that being decent is still a competitive advantage.
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Intro
01:43 Roaches With Cameras
03:19 Paraborgs Explained
04:47 Remote Syringe Injections
08:00 The Ig Nobels
18:03 Bucket Bong Rabbit Hole
21:17 King Zog Chain Smoking
25:37 Joint Year Metric
26:55 Dolly Parton Popularity Data
32:03 Kurzweil Brain Interface
37:00 Snortable Nanobot BCI
-
Rod: How many situations can you imagine where you’d be delighted to see cockroaches crawling across your body? And I don’t mean just okay with it. I mean happy. Stoked to have a cockroach or more crawling towards you and on you. Now imagine the cockroach is about the length of your palm, like a meaty bugger. There’s more than one, and you’re in a situation where you can’t move away from them. Okay, add to this: what if one of them is sort of cyborg enhanced and has something on its back like a camera?
Rod: By now you’re probably thinking this sounds like a fairly specific situation, which is true, so it might make it okay. Maybe the cockroach having a camera on it might not be as terrible as you think. But what about then one of its companions has something on its back too, and it’s a syringe? That’s how they’re doing it in Seoul.
Will: Gather around, folks. It’s time for a little bit of science.
Rod: Oh, a little bit of science.
Will: I’m Will Grant, an associate professor of science communication at the Australian National University.
Rod: I’m too cosy to say who I am now. I’ve gathered around. I’m Rod Lambert, a 30-year SciComm veteran with a mind and the emotions of a middle teen boy.
Will: And today, as well as cockroaches with syringes, we have one of my favourite days of the year. It is the Ig Nobels day.
Rod: Hell yeah.
Will: I’ve got a really stupid rabbit hole, but I learned at least a new measure out of that.
Rod: Here’s another reason why it’s terrible the world lost Dolly Parton. And I’m gonna rant about the fact that Ray Kurzweil stole my job.
Will: Did he really?
Rod: He doesn’t know it.
Will: So why is the cockroach chasing me down with a syringe?
Rod: People have been strapping cameras and sensors and things to roaches and other creatures for quite a few years. Decades.
Will: Is it so that after the apocalypse we’ll have something to carry our cameras around? Like, is that why?
Rod: Yes, yes. It’s for convenience. Some have coffee cups…
Will: Although I have often thought, people making robots and stuff like that, wouldn’t it be easier just to do some sort of insect mind control? Like, they’ve got awesome bodies for doing stuff already. Why don’t we just mind control them and…
Rod: So this is a warm-up for that.
Will: Oh, there we go.
Rod: It’s pretty cool for things like spy work. It’s pretty uncool for…
Will: Well, hang on. Has the roach been used in your KGB, CIA spy vs spy scenarios?
Rod: Look, I could tell you, but it’s classified.
Will: Oh, okay. Right.
Rod: My suspicion is almost definitely yes. But I’ll show you a picture and the cameras aren’t exactly tiny little dots.
Will: Are they? I thought they were like Betamax, like an old school… like a 1960s TV camera. Let’s get 40 roaches and they’re carrying one camera.
Rod: In each corner!
Will: And be very quiet.
Rod: Stop scuttling so loud, will you?
Rod: They have been used successfully to locate bodies under rubble and stuff as well, so not just spying on people. But once they’ve located the body, the problem is they’re bloody useless because they can’t do anything after that.
Will: No, no. It’s like, “Found it. Tops.”
Rod: Although I could argue if you’ve been trapped there for a while, these are big ass cockroaches we’re talking about, so maybe they could sacrifice themselves for nutrition purposes for the people.
Will: Yes! That is one very small thing. Great.
Rod: They’re known to be delicious if you’re hungry enough. But now people at your old uni, University of Queensland, biorobotics engineers working with UNSW biomedical engineers, have stepped it up a notch.
Will: Oh.
Rod: Previously, they’ve demonstrated in other places that cyborg beetles are capable of controlled climbing, so you can kind of make the beetle climb.
Will: Okay.
Rod: But now they’ve built what they’re calling proof-of-concept Paraborgs. I don’t know why they didn’t want to just call them cyborg cockroaches. And it’s based on a Far North Queensland species, the giant burrowing cockroach.
Will: Yeah, indeed. From where I grew up.
Rod: Yep. Macropanesthia rhinoceros. I’m not kidding. The macro version. So it can be remotely steered by tweaking the nervous system.
Will: That’s wild.
Rod: It’s awesome.
Will: You know, the thing that always makes me laugh when there are various versions of remote steering in scientific projects, they often go, “Well, let’s just get a PlayStation or Nintendo controller.” Because they’re off the shelf and designed for controlling video games, so they just go, “Well, obviously that’s how you would control a cockroach.”
Rod: Yeah. Well, this is very recent. One of the versions of this, they didn’t really detail the actual driving, because that’s not the most interesting thing to them. They’re more, “Here’s what we can do now that we’ve done that.”
Will: Okay.
Rod: They can also be fitted with these remotely activated auto-injection systems, custom-made and strapped to a cockroach. Literally a medical delivery system.
Will: You know, there are a lot of developments in drug delivery, like getting through blood-brain membranes or a specific bit in your body. But I never thought it would be a cockroach coming to do the drug delivery. Is this a workforce challenge because we’re running out of nurses?
Rod: No, these are for situations where you need something small enough. Like if someone is buried under rubble, you send a roach in to give them a sedative, some vitamins, or something.
Will: Yeah, I’ll take something that will put me to sleep so I don’t have to think about it. A Valium to put me in a relaxed state.
Rod: And Vitamin D, because you’re not getting a lot of sunlight under there!
Will: Yeah, thank you.
Rod: In the proof-of-concept trials, one researcher said: “The cyborg insect has to navigate to the target, position itself accurately, and remain stable enough to perform the injection.” The complete navigation and injection task in trials worked 72% of the time.
Will: That’s wild.
Rod: Not bad. Gets better: when they were within 15 centimetres of their target, they achieved 95% success with close-range injections. So you’re talking something pretty wild.
Will: So is this the cockroach knowing to get close to the target, or are we steering it close?
Rod: Steering. They aren’t that trained.
Rod: Let me give you the wrap-up and show you the pictures. Obviously I know what you were thinking immediately: “What about the ethics?”
Will: Uh, no, they’re insects. It’s okay to eat insects because they don’t have feelings.
Rod: Exactly. They anaesthetise them when fitting electrodes and microchips, and they remove them afterwards. The Paraborgs live as long as any other cockroach once harnesses are removed. They’re hoping in 5 to 10 years to release swarms to help in emergencies.
Will: That is so cool, but that is a big cockroach. Far North Queensland for you, though!
Rod: And there’s a team, right? You got a camera one and a syringe one. Go to the show notes to see the link.
Will: That is so great. Wild. Well, I’ve got some additional cockroach news for you, covering one of my favourite events: the Ig Nobels. They celebrate science that makes you laugh, then makes you think.
Will: The Ig Nobel for Biomechanics was won by a team from the UK and USA for devising a more precise definition of kissing.
Rod: What? So it’s all dudes, I’m guessing, getting together asking what kissing actually is?
Will: It’s recognition that other animals do lip-on-lip action too. Their precise definition is: “Non-agonistic interactions involving directed intraspecific oral-oral contact with movement of mouth parts and no food transfer.”
Rod: Wait, so if you’re pashing someone and a bit of food transfers, scientifically that’s not kissing?
Will: Doesn’t count. That’s baby-birding.
Will: Next up, the Economics Prize went to a team from USA, Mexico, and Canada for amassing evidence that upper-class people are more likely to steal candy from children.
Rod: So we have scientific evidence that the upper class are awful. That’s awesome.
Will: The Chemistry Prize went to India, France, Japan, and America for discovering that cockroach milk protein packs three times as much energy as cow’s milk.
Rod: I’m not drinking it then. Milking a cockroach wouldn’t yield much. The barista would be there all day.
Will: The Biology Prize was shared by Brazil and Australia for research involving stepping on venomous snakes at various times and temperatures to see what induces them to bite.
Rod: What’s that for? No sane person intends to tread on a snake. I trod on a red-bellied black once and catapulted myself sideways.
Will: The Physics Prize went to research on theoretical and experimental attempts to design a splash-free urinal.
Rod: Why? Just make them higher and drape over the edge. Though if you let go by accident, it whips like a firehose.
Will: The Technology Prize went to pioneering the use of mosquito proboscises as high-resolution 3D printing nozzles, a process called “necro-printing.”
Will: And the Olfaction Prize went to a study showing that babies smell wonderful to parents, but teenagers smell terrible.
Rod: It’s true. Teenagers smell like wine wrapped in plastic for eight months.
Will: Another prize documented that we value friends who are vicious to people we dislike.
Rod: True. I get grumpy at everyone driving poorly.
Will: And the Soil Science Prize went to burying 1,000 pairs of underpants across 25 countries to measure soil degradation rates. The “underpants index.”
Rod: Ah, the piddle pants. Every primary school had a pair lying around.
Will: Moving on to another topic: Barnaby Joyce declared that smoking cigarettes is safer than pulling bucket bongs while driving a car.
Rod: Well, yeah, because you can’t balance a bucket between your knees while trying to steer.
Will: Long term, tobacco smoking has clear high cancer risks and widespread organ damage, whereas cannabis is inconclusive on cancer, though it has cognitive and respiratory issues. In terms of intensive smoking, King Zog I of Albania allegedly smoked 225 cigarettes a day.
Rod: That’s 10 cigarettes an hour if you sleep 8 hours.
Will: In research literature, we measure cannabis intake in “joint years” — joints per day times the number of years. For example, 20 joints a day for 20 years equals a joint year score of 400.
Rod: There are many reasons to be upset about Dolly Parton passing away recently. She was a feminist and gay icon, a devout Christian, and supported many social causes and science.
Rod: A data geek on Reddit looked at favourability ratings. Democrats had a 78% favourable opinion of Dolly Parton, while Republicans had 73%. For Democrats, the only figure higher was Obama at 90%. For Republicans, Donald Trump scored 77%, and only 3% among Democrats.
Will: I think we can rule that 3% as the floor of people who aren’t paying attention.
Rod: Others fell along party lines. RFK Jr., Democrats 10%, Republicans 60%.
Will: Are there any other figures in America that get that level of equal favourability?
Rod: Dolly wins. No one’s particularly close.
Will: Jesus?
Rod: Think industries.
Will: Mark Zuckerberg.
Rod: Yes. Zuckerberg’s favourability rating: Democrats 8%, Republicans 13%. That is the closest unilateral “piss off” rating.
Will: You poor dork. All that money.
Rod: And basically both sides go, “Oh, piss off.” The only non-American that came close was Vladimir Putin: Democrats 2% favourable, Republicans 6%. Biden was 5% with Republicans, and AOC even lower at 3%. Biden and AOC were lower for Republicans than Putin.
Will: Wow.
Rod: Ultimately, yes, Mark Zuckerberg is the anti-Dolly Parton.
Will: The big questions.
Rod: I only read this today. I’m a bit disappointed. Ray Kurzweil stole my job.
Rod: Ray Kurzweil is famous for writing books like “The Age of Intelligent Machines” and “The Singularity Is Near.” He’s described as a pioneering AI scientist and prominent transhumanist. He got the National Medal of Technology and Innovation in 1999 from Bill Clinton.
Rod: His predictions include that by 2027, computers will surpass humans in intelligence, and by around 2045 we’ll reach the singularity, when technology advances so rapidly that strictly biological humans will be unable to interact with it.
Will: Some people reckon we’ve been in the singularity since the Industrial Revolution. That it’s gradual acceleration, not a sudden moment.
Rod: Sure. Anyway, Ray has now joined a Silicon Valley startup called SubSense, and this is where I start to get grumpy with him. They’re developing brain-computer interface technology.
Rod: The closest we’ve got in real life is Neuralink, but you’ve got to drill through your skull and implant chips. SubSense is less surgical. The mechanism is: you snort nanobots, like a hay fever treatment. They get into your brain through membranes.
Will: Through the membranes.
Rod: Then to control these nanobots, you wear a specialised headset with magnetic coils and stuff. They stimulate neurons in specific areas of the brain, or they read neuron activity. Way better than surgery. You just snort it.
Will: How many people have snorted the robots?
Rod: None yet. This is early.
Will: Have we trained the rats to snort the robots first?
Rod: There has been mice work. No details. Human trials are years away still, but they have about $27 million in funding.
Rod: The reason I say he stole my job is because his role is described as “product and vision advisor.” Imagine that job. You walk into a company with millions of dollars, they’ve developed snortable nanobots, and you sit in the boardroom with a whiteboard going, “Wait, have you thought about… what about if we… let’s try it.” That should be my job. I’d be so good at that job.
Will: Put it on LinkedIn, man.
Rod: I have. I said Ray Kurzweil took my job.
Will: I don’t think that’s what I was suggesting.
Rod: I did it wrong.
Will: If you want to give Rod a job, do that. But send an email as well if you’d like us to talk about a particular science. If you want geology, email it.
Rod: We won’t.
Will: No, I will. I love rocks.
Rod: We will. Email it to cheers@alittlebitofscience.com.au.
Rod: Not g’daySonia. That’s a different email account. That’s my other one.
Rod: Ratings. Rate us very highly on rate machines. That’s what the kids call it now.
