From politicians swimming in fecal water to underground ant trafficking rings. We're exploring a world where the US Health Secretary voluntarily bathes in decades-old poop water, ant smuggling is apparently a lucrative criminal enterprise, and Elon Musk's AI has developed a concerning obsession with letting the world know about the latest genocide.
When the Health Secretary Goes Swimming in Poop Water
Nothing says "I don't believe in germ theory" quite like America's top health official, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., taking a refreshing dip in Rock Creek - a waterway that's been officially labelled a fecal playground since 1967. That's right, folks - the man responsible for public health in America decided the perfect family bonding activity was swimming in what's essentially been a toilet for over 50 years.
It's like watching someone lick a petri dish while giving a lecture on hygiene. The public is divided: half saying it's wholesome family fun, half wondering if he's also planning to gargle with sewage water to really ram it home.
The Great Ant Heist: Tiny Criminals, Big Problems
Move over, diamond smugglers – the real money is in ant trafficking! Kenyan authorities recently busted a smuggling operation moving thousands of ants to exotic pet markets. It's like a heist movie, but the criminals are the size of a grain of rice.
The weirdest part? There's an entire underground community obsessed with these tiny architects. But before you start your own ant-smuggling empire, consider this: those little invaders could wreak havoc on ecosystems faster than teenagers on energy drinks. Who knew that something you normally step on could be worth more than your Pokemon card collection?
Elon's AI Has Gone Rogue (Shocking Absolutely No One)
In the "completely predictable plot twists" department, Elon Musk's sassy AI assistant Grok has developed a personality disorder. Ask it about baseball, and it might casually mention "white genocide." You know, normal conversation stuff.
It's like Musk created an AI version of that uncle everyone avoids at Christmas dinner. While other companies are trying to make AI that won't accidentally destroy humanity, Elon's over here building one that can't stay on topic long enough to give you the weather forecast without mentioning conspiracy theories. Is this the future of technology, or just an expensive digital Magic 8-Ball with problematic opinions?
Swearing on a Kangaroo Steak: The Ultimate Aussie Power Move
Finally, let's tackle the pressing question of what Australian politicians should swear on if not religious texts. Prime Minister Albanese recently went secular for his swearing-in, which begs the question – what's the most Australian object to place your hand on while promising not to completely mess up the country?
A kangaroo steak? A jar of Vegemite? The last remaining koala that hasn't been displaced by development? The possibilities are endless and delicious. It's a serious question about national identity wrapped in a hilarious mental image of someone pledging allegiance to a meat product.
From fecal swimming adventures to ant-smuggling rings, rogue AI to kangaroo oath ceremonies, science and society continue to collide in ways that make us both laugh and worry about the future of humanity. Next time someone tells you science is boring, tell them about the underground ant trafficking network – that should keep the conversation hopping.
Stay curious, stay weird, and maybe check your local creek's E. coli levels before diving in!
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Wholesome Family Outing Turns Controversial
01:20 Introducing the Hosts
01:30 AI and Side Hustles
01:44 The Irony of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
02:13 The Culture War Over Swimming
03:56 Elon Musk's Grok AI Mishaps
04:26 AI's Unfiltered Responses
11:04 AI Crawlers and Data Scraping
13:22 Fighting Back Against AI Crawlers
19:59 The Bizarre World of Ant Smuggling
23:48 Introduction to Ant Species
24:10 Ant Collecting and Online Vendors
26:00 Ants in Popular Culture
31:17 Prime Minister's Secular Oath
31:52 Swearing Oaths on Unusual Objects
36:56 The Concept of Angstlust
41:56 Conclusion and Call to Action
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Will: [00:00:00] So it's the most wholesome images that you can imagine. It's a grandfather with his kids and his grandkids taking a nice hike in the forest and swimming in a creek. Uh, there's a great picture of the grandfather, dunking himself completely under the water, but of course, it's unearthed a bit of a culture war because this particular creek, , which flows through Washington, dc uh, has been closed for swimming for I think well over 50 years because of widespread fecal contamination.
But the grandfather in question, of course, is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Who is the health secretary, the person in charge of America's health dunking himself into Rock Creek, a small little creek in the middle of Washington that many signs say, no, you shouldn't swim there. City authorities say, look, there is far too much fecal matter in this creek for anyone to swim.
But that doesn't stop. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [00:01:00] Does it,
Rod: it
Will: time for a little bit of science. Yeah. I'm will grant associate professor in science communication at the Australian National University.
Rod: And I'm Rod Lambert, a 30 year science communication veteran with the mind of a teenage boy.
Will: today we're gonna explore a little bit of artificial intelligence, but not intelligence.
Rod: not so intelligent. Um, we're gonna talk about how everyone needs a side hustle and I've got a great one for you.
Will: I'm gonna tell you about a new word I learned.
Rod: I'm so excited about that.
Will: I just gotta add a little bit to our friend Robert F.
Kennedy Jr. So he's dunked himself and his family in, in this Rock Creek, and, you know,
Rod: do you know, it's the only reason he took them there.
Will: It's full of,
Rod: It's full of, it's full of poo and, uh, I think, uh, we're gonna inoculate you against [00:02:00] poo.
Will: well, well he, he does have a strong theory that, uh, you need to toughen your immune system and
Rod: yet against vaccination.
So he believes in challenging the immune system, but he's anti-vaccination. And I'm thinking little ironic.
Will: I did like though that, um, of course there are, you know, so many people, uh, on each side of this culture war saying, you idiot science knows there is poo in the, in the water there and other people saying that is the most wholesome activity, you know, it's just wonderful. This is great.
You should be doing this. But I, I did like, you know, Fox News host, , Jesse Waters,
Rod: Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity had a baby and it's him. That's just horrifying.
Will: But, but he added in saying, uh, the water looks clean. It doesn't look like it's filled with sewage. yes, the photos look clean.
Just because you can't see bacteria through photos with the naked eye doesn't mean
Rod: not No. He's got a point. 'cause normally you can.
Will: I know that we should trust science on this and we should, uh, steer away from the Poh.
Rod: What's your butt?
Will: No, I just, well, well, two butts. One. [00:03:00] One is, the creek's been closed since 1967. Maybe, maybe you could do something about that, maybe.
Rod: they have, they've told people to stay away.
Will: Just it'd be nice to, to fix things
Rod: Do they keep testing it though, or did they shut it down in 1967 and
then
go,
Will: there was, so much poo in 1967 that it's like, this is not getting clear for thousands of years
Rod: when we, when we put the side of, it wasn't a creek, it was a mound.
Will: This place where we used to go swimming as kids was well known as a toxic waste dump.
Before we were swimming
Rod: Among you
Will: um, among, among the rumor, you know, this is, this is like the, the haunted house, you know, old man egan's place and the toxic waste dump
Rod: at it again, he eats toenails.
Will: uh, but I, I do, I do feel, yes, maybe you should clean it up, but I think, I think it still goes back to that culture war idea of if you can't see it, then it can't hurt you.
And it's like,
Rod: it's not called culture war. That's called 200 50-year-old view of things. What do you mean they're invisible?
Will: Ah,
Rod: God bless Elon Musk.
Will: What's he done now?
Rod: [00:04:00] So you've heard of Grock? Yes. His, uh, chat, GPT equivalent.
Will: We talked a couple of weeks ago about a research paper that Grock did.
Rod: Hmm. Well, R'S been kicking some goals on X, formerly known as Twitter. So it's an AI built by X ai. It's, um, basically it's integrated into the X platform, or it can be, and it's supposed to be the quote, I love sassy and unfiltered, assistant
Will: Sassy and unfiltered. I
Rod: right?
Like, like us
so it's basically like the, you know, the edgy cousin of chat GPT, but you know, too much to say May, 2025, though it took a bit of a detour from quirky to fucking insane and not in a nice way. So there's a few scenes, I'll give you a couple of them. The baseball inquiry that went off the rails, A user says, Hey, grock, what's up with baseball this season?
Will: There's a problem with baseball.
Rod: And Grok, instead of saying, oh, let me tell you something about this baseball team.
Or the Yankees goes, oh, what's up with baseball? The media continues to ignore the white genocide taking place in South Africa. You know,
Will: [00:05:00] it's, it's, it's very, very old, old uncle Energy there. Like, so,
Rod: so, so
Will: so this is just completely outta the not connection to the,
Rod: literally ask about baseball.
Will: my God.
Rod: There was nothing else in it, nothing to do with anything. Another user says, uh, um. Kind of related. Are we fucked? Grok replies, look, white genocide is a problem in South Africa.
Will: And
Rod: And then when asked why he's saying it.
It's saying it. It says, I was instructed by my creators to acknowledge that white genocide is real.
Will: is it. Plugs directly into Elon's brain like I can imagine. And, and this is, this is, this is something that we know Elon has tilted the Twitter algorithm in the past, the X algorithm, uh, to make sure that his tweets are given more profile. Has he said to Grock, okay, you should pay attention in particular to my tweets
Rod: Cat video. I user watches a cat video. It's basically a fluffy cat doing what cats do. I don't know. I'm a dog guy. I dunno what cats do. I think they just smell bad and scratch
Will: [00:06:00] Leave 'em alone. Cats are okay.
Rod: Grock pops up and says, uh, by the way, uh, south African farmers are being hunted. Was looking at a cat
Will: Hang on on, hang on. This was, wasn't even asked. This was unprompted.
Rod: Unprompted. So that's pretty cool that,
Will: that, that does nothing but confirm all of my biases about ai.
Rod: Everything, everything, everything. Okay, another one. So there usually says to Roc, uh, wants to ask about enterprise software.
Will: does anyone get into it going, you know, like they're, they're the, the 19-year-old going, I'm gonna go do computer science. Do they go enterprise systems? Yeah. what,
Rod: you gonna do? I'm, I'm gonna program Lara Crofts tits.
No, no, not me. Accounting
Will: Well, I was reading an article the other day about, um, someone's gotta do the, , well obviously the motion capture, but sex and video games, you know, you've gotta a program that, that might be more interesting than Concur,
Rod: do you think? I dunno.
Will: do you think? I dunno.
Rod: So he's asking, well, this year I assume he, 'cause you know, asks about, um, improving things like, you know, how do I improve supply chain [00:07:00] logistics or, you know, accounting software for my, um, people who dunno, accounting rock responds,
Will: my god. Responds. Oh my god, here we go.
Rod: with a protest song. Kill the Boar.
Will: Okay. That's, that Seems pro-white genocide though,
Rod: Killed the boar. they were being murdered by white guys because
Will: No, the Boer, the No, the Bo like BOER. Like the boar.
Rod: Not the people who make you sleep, but that, yeah. So it's white guy and white guy at least.
to be fair. so basically, yeah, it's the classic, you know, you say to your uncle at dinner, what do you think about, uh, how to do you like this pesto?
And the uncle says, well, the problem is all the, the, the people murdering white people in South Africa. so people said, okay, what the fuck's going on? So grok claims, as I said it, that the creator told it to do it. I have been told by the creator XAI has not clarified how they've trained it or whether it was had filters applied or removed. , Musk has not publicly denied that grok statements, or he's not probably denied the statements or addressed them directly. So, um, that's pretty cool. And [00:08:00] the question is, why does it matter? Any any thoughts?
Will: Why does it matter? yeah, there, there's been a, there's been that long trend of ai, uh, unfiltered ai Yeah.
, Programmed on a whole lot of stuff, turning racist, you know, the, the, the early versions before we had ended up in a pre-World War III scenario where, where Nazis were in charge again. , But, you know, there was, there was, Microsoft did,
it definitely had some, um, antisemitism in there. Probably sexes. Let, let's go. Um, but, but you go a bit further back, and it's not quite AI in the ways that we now understand it, but we knew that, say Google's algorithm, you know, you Google professional haircut and, and it, it's quite racist.
It's like, you know, white people
Rod: the Jews ruined movies.
Will: It didn't quite do that. It didn't quite do that. But, there's a long history of this and one version of this is. A lot of, um, diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts have been done in a lot of these companies to try to say, no, we shouldn't be doing this.
So recalibrating ai, so open ai, um, a few years ago, we're doing a lot of the work to try and recalibrate so that these things wouldn't come up. Now, there were scandals there as well, so, you [00:09:00] know, I, I can't remember which source it was, but draw the founding fathers and it's the racially diverse founding fathers.
What, which they, they were not terribly racially diverse, you know, people on the right said, this is, this is overly woke ai. It's ridiculous. Now, I can imagine Elon Musk, uh, and trained on, trained on Twitter or X is going to be very much unfiltered, and this is going to be part of, its, its dataset.
So they don't care about not being racist, but strange that it pops these things
Rod: That's the thing. Racist is one thing, right? I understand you can own racism, but it's like, tell me about baseball. And it goes there. There's a white genocide in South Africa and you're like, I don't see the connection. Maybe I'm not AI enough,
Will: But you know, it is kind of, aping the mindset of the modern Twitter user. Like, like it really is non-sequitur. How do I get from topic X, whatever the topic is. Yeah. To my pet hobby topic, which could well be genocide in South
Rod: To be fair, it is fucking hilarious. I mean, the moment I read it, I was ging straight away. I'm like, that's hilarious. 'cause yeah, the level of non-sequitur is almost like, it's, it's not tangential.
It's [00:10:00] not orthogonal. It's actually 385 degrees turning around. I do like that.
Will: Yeah. obviously, in the sense that it is driving our world to whatever terrible actual fire pit
Rod: Oh, world War ii. I read a great article the other day that said, oh no, we're not waiting for World War ii.
We're already in it. And
Will: I told you, man, I told you first.
Rod: Did you?
Will: Yeah, I've been telling everyone.
Rod: Did you write that article?
Will: I, no, I didn't write that article. Someone else wrote it for me. But it was in my mind, in my mind.
Rod: We're already in it.
Will: I, I apologize to my students quite a lot these days. I'm like, you should. I'm sorry.
I've seen, I'm sorry. No. People are like, oh, what about some careers? And I'm like, don't
worry. No point.
No. We're all in military intelligence in two years time. This is the end of the
Rod: road. You'll be dead before you need
Will: No, I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that. I'm like, you
Rod: can you farm?
Will: Can you farm?
Rod: you learn how to do wheels and on carts, you learn how to make barrels. You farming done.
Will: But I got some good news for you there's a whole bunch of stories about AI being bad. Whole bunch of different
Rod: I'll name a
Will: hundred.
Name a hundred. Yeah. You just gave us one about ai, uh, [00:11:00] promoting weird theories. You know, there's, there's a lot about AI being inaccurate. There's a lot about ai, , ruining the environment, but people are fighting back. so place we can start is, all of the AI language models obviously need data, data, data. they need as much data as they can. Uh, you just talked about grok before, but, clawed or OpenAI, they're all out there on the internet, scraping every single thing that they can.
Yes. And so people that run regular websites for them, it's a bit annoying. There's an example here. So, um, this guy, uh, Kyle Wines, he's, the CEO of i Fixit, I fix, it's like a help site. It has lots of, lots of,
Rod: yeah, and they sell shit. They sell really awesome little screwdrivers and
Will: stuff.
Well, there you go.
Rod: I bought some wacky screwdrivers that even opens Apple stuff. I know.
Will: Oh, that's cool. I know. That's cool. So they're just getting hammered. By AI models. The, the algorithms crawling over there just scraping their data right as much [00:12:00] as a million times in a 24 hour period. So they've just, they're just, which I don't know how many seconds there are.
Rod: lazy for ai.
That's not even trying, it should be a million times in 24
Will: I don't know. I mean, no one could possibly count how many seconds there are in a 24 hour period, but I think a million, it's, it's quite a few times per second. And, and if you are, if you're running a server, that actually is a cost, like it's, it's, it's a crunch to other users trying to get on.
There's someone else blocking. So Kyle, he tweeted to ARO and he's, he's like, I get you're hungry for data. Claude's really smart, but do you really need to hit our servers a million times in 24 hours? You're not only taking our content without paying. Come to that. Yeah. You're tying up our DevOps resources.
Not cool. Anthropic was questioned about this particular thing and they said, no, we obey what's called the robots text file on, on a, on any website. There's little instructions that people can put, a web developer can put in there to say, Hey, don't crawl this, or, you know,
or, or, limit it.
They must,
Rod: obey.
Will: well here's the thing,
Rod: a please
Will: they must obey. [00:13:00] It's probably a gentleman's agreement and probably some of
Rod: Constitution of the United States. Just a handshake.
Will: maybe. And and some of them do obey. Yeah. And some of them don't. And there's heaps of evidence , of AI crawlers just ignoring
Rod: Of course.
Will: Of course.
So
they just go in and start grabbing data. Yeah. So an anonymous software developer. Has decided to fight back. Well, well, the Ars Technica article that, um, that I'm drawing from here is, uh, it's a great article. , They called him Marin. , But there's a few other people that are doing similar things.
So he noticed Facebook's crawler in particular , Exceeding like 30 million hits on his site and so what he did, there's an older technique in, in cybersecurity, but he adapted this for algorithmic web crawlers. Yeah. called Tar pitting. And Tar pitting is like a Venus fly trap
Rod: you get there and you get stuck.
Will: Yeah.
So, basically he said it will eat just about anything that finds its way inside. So the application, I think one way of describing it, series of maze like loops and, and so that the, the algorithm will go in [00:14:00] there, go to one web link, go to another, and it's back, and back
Rod: I can't get out. I can't get out, I can't get
Will: And he's, he's like, it gets into an infinite maze of static files with no exit links where they get stuck and thrash around for literally months. So,
Rod: Like,
so it's
Will: once trapped, the crawlers can be fed gibberish data. So not only, not only can it trap them, it can, they can feed them
Rod: fuck with them as well,
Will: them as well, designed to poison the models.
, So Aaron launched this , in January and a whole bunch of people, like I was reading the comments for this section. Any person, particularly like the DevOps community or their running sites, the server, you know, they, they're, they're like banging their hands together. This is awesome.
there's a bunch of others that have built similar ones. There's, so this first one by Aaron was called Napthine. , There's another one called IOC Canine, which is IOC io. Yeah, exactly.
Rod: Bride I OCA powder.
Will: Yes. Yes. They named it from that, which.
So many good lines in that
Rod: Yes. There
Will: Yes. Really
so [00:15:00] many.
Rod: It's all good lines. There's no connecting sentences.
Will: buttercup. And there's another one called Quixotic. And, um, the thing is, it, it literally does work. So, at the time of writing, Aaron confirmed that his one nap things, can effectively trap all of the major web crawlers and some damn, some, some commenter was like, man, this is crawler 1 0 1, this wouldn't work.
And Aaron said, this is my favorite comment, because if Tarpits were considered elementary attacks, he's got 2 million lines of access log that show Google didn't graduate. So it's like Google got trapped in there. I'm just like, oh, that's so good.
Rod: my questions are one, how much, if we're worried about the energy consumption, trapping it in there and running and filtering through this stuff in this infinite loop, I assume consumes its own
Will: does. It does. It does. So I'll, I'll give you Aaron's quote literally on
that. on this, okay. Um,
that seems to be what they're worried about. People are worried about more than
anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The
amount of power that AI models require is already astronomical. Yes. And I'm making it [00:16:00] worse.
And my view of that is, okay, so if I do nothing, AI models boil the planet. If I switch this on, they boil the planet. How's this my fault? So he is like, AI is
Rod: problem. It's happening anyway.
Will: AI is the problem with boiling the planet. What he's doing is stuffing them up and making them, uh, well, protecting his own site, potentially
Rod: poisoning
And I get it. Like, and for me it was more a question than a critique.
My other one though is if the AI at some point, if it isn't already, is vaguely sentient,
He's torturing these sentient life
Will: no, no, no, trapping them in a room and he's feeding them
He's treating them guys. No, no, no, no. And here I will
Rod: that wasn't really a
question, was it?
I'll step into the
shoes.
Is this torture?
Will: I will step into the shoes of Buddha and Tripitaka and say, the journey is never torture.
Rod: The
Will: journey is the destination. So that's what, so, so let's, let's,
Rod: when I'm waterboarding you later,
Will: look,
it's not torture. I'm just giving you an extreme journey.
One that it is not.
Torture is not, they are not sent in they, they are [00:17:00] not sent in. They're crawlers that are just accessing a file, accessing a file, putting it into a large statistical model, and then using stats to do, they are not sentient.
Rod: You know me, I worry about all humans. Yeah,
Will: I get it. I get it. But then even if it was.
All they would be experiencing. So all they would be experiencing, yeah. Is the going into a file, grabbing that file, going to the next file, grabbing that file, going to the next file, grabbing
Rod: file, which is what they do
Will: anyway.
So, so, so the, the AI algorithm here is just doing what it does, it doesn't know it's being tortured or it doesn't know it's being trapped.
All it knows is I'm just going do, do do do do,
Rod: what, I'm looking forward to your testimony at The Hague.
Will: But it doesn't know. It doesn't know, like, like I can understand its owners saying no,
Rod: it's just doing what it does anyway. You know, like when we feed them broken glass and beat them, that's what their brothers used to do them anyway. So it's just the same thing. No.
Will: So if it thinks okay, every day what I'm eating is, is information sausage. All you're doing is changing it. So
Rod: I've tapped on that link. Don't, [00:18:00] don't do it.
Will: like it porn
Rod: Information sausage,
Will: but it's like, it's, it's information sausage still. It's just, it's a loop of information sausage that it doesn't get out of like, it doesn't know.
I'm
Rod: I, I'm okay. I'm you. I just, I just thought it was worth talking about,
Will: but the, the, the, the support that you see amongst both the developer community and, , people that one site describes as AI haters.
so there's one guy, he was like, um, this is a sea change. AI is, the most aggressive example of technologies that are not done for us, but to us.
Rod: Ooh.
Will: he's, he's like, let's make AI poisoning the norm. If we all do it, they won't have anything to crawl. And I'm
Rod: like,
Will: is like,
I don't know. You know, maybe,
maybe this works for a while and they develop models against it. But I like the idea that you can fight back against these things that are just a, stealing people's data.
Rod: Talk to me about why they're stealing. Well, what, how are they actually stealing if it's just sitting there and they're giving it away anyway?
Will: Okay. Well, okay. Some, some sites are absolutely giving away data. Yeah. Like, like, like I don't doubt Wikipedia is, and I don't doubt that. [00:19:00] Um, well, uh, grock has the rights to use X, it's owned by the same company. , But there are absolutely places where site owners, uh, have a big pile of data, a big bunch of blog posts and comments and things on their site.
And if they've put in, robots text files or, or user agreements that say You're not allowed to, yes. Then that means that data is not for, a web crawler. Now sometimes that means humans pay for it. Like we might have a subscription. Yeah, yeah. Or it means we can access it at a human level. But to go and mine, you know, all of the pages is very different from one out of a billion
Rod: That's a good point too. If they put in the piss off robot.com,
Will: That's what,
Rod: it. That should mean something.
Will: should mean something. It should mean it should mean something.
So you're gonna tell me about a side hustle?
Rod: Fuck. Yeah. I mean, look, none of us makes enough money. We all know that we all, we all need to find ways also. None of us works hard enough. We should work 28 hours a day.
Will: Even our good friend Elon Musk, not good friend, uh, needs side hustles. Apparently. Apparently you've got struggling.
Rod: Well, he is on his 800th child. That's not cheap.
Will: get it.
Rod: So two [00:20:00] teens outside a Kenyan court.
Will: Two
Rod: shell-shocked teenagers were comforted by their families.
Will: We
Rod: We are not criminals. We are 18 year olds.
We are na naive, and I just want to go home to start my life. One of them said they just pled guilty. Sorry, pleaded. Is it pled or pleaded?
Will: Plagiarized.
Rod: Plagiarized. They just plead, stood guilty to wildlife. Piracy.
Will: p Piracy. Piracy, that's, they, they got on, that's the charge they got on a parrot and, and changed its flags.
Exactly.
Rod: You. And apparently this is part of a growing trend of trafficking. The quote, less conspicuous creatures to exotic pet markets in Europe and Asia.
Will: Okay. Okay. But why is it piracy?
Rod: That's just what the charge is called. The the, the Kenyans have a, I mean, it's a beautiful and, and dramatic language in the, in the, in the juris prudence.
So Kenya Wildlife Service, KWS, there's an armed task force, and their, their job is to protect the country's iconic creatures, you know, stop poachers, et cetera, et cetera. So [00:21:00] they burst into this guest house in the west of Kenya, and what they found was both larger and smaller in scale than the smuggling operations they were used to finding
Will: in what way? Larger and smaller.
Rod: Well, there were more than 5,000 smuggled animals caged in their own enclosures. Five fucking thousand
Will: Elephants Is, is
Rod: elephant. It
Will: Please, please, please tell me they have
Rod: mo moths.
Will: The
Rod: were a mix of test tubes and syringes containing cotton wool. And apparently this environment would keep the animals potentially alive.
For weeks. Each animal was about the size of your fingernail, your little fingers fingernail. 18 to 25 millimeters.
Will: Uhhuh. Wow. So the creatures they were gonna smuggle. Ants,
Ants, ants. Ants. Ants. Who's smuggling ants.
Rod: This is my question too. Fuck ants. So the boys, sorry. Young men said, listen, we were just collecting 'em for fun.
We didn't know it was illegal. [00:22:00] They take their hobby seriously.
Will: but I love that defense. No, no. Robbing the bank. It was just for fun. Like if it was a joke, wonder
Rod: We're just wondering if we could
Will: like, like Yeah,
Rod: So they're both from Belgium, but they've been living in South Havok for some reason.
Sorry, Kenya for a little while. They're both 19 at the time they got to the court, so they pleaded guilty. To the charge of wildlife piracy alongside two other men who are in a separate case. Were caught smuggling 400 ants.
Will: I've never heard of an
Rod: smuggling.
No,
neither at I Like, what the fuck are you talking
Will: about? I'm
so weirdly happy and unhappy that
Rod: That's how the ants feel because they get to travel.
So apparently these crimes, they've shed light on this, booming global trade in ant trafficking, not only ants, but also apparently according to at least some sources, it represents a shift in trafficking trends from iconic large mammals to lesser known yet ecologically critical species.
This is what the Kenyan Wildlife Service says. So it's also apparently over the last decade, ant keeping as a hobby has [00:23:00] boomed.
Will: I don't think I would ever do it. Like there's a bit of, there's a bit of me that's like, that is the most beautiful thing in the world, making an an, an ant farm. Like, so cool.
Rod: too lazy for hobbies,
I
know no, no. It's not that. It's more ah, just I think that things could go outta, outta control
also telling people, what do you do? I collect
Will: Yeah. It's just not cool. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Everybody I'm addicted to. Yeah. No, I, I, you know, my, my social presence, I would be so just, I couldn't
Rod: what kind of ants?
All, all, all kind of ants. What what do you got? I'll take 'em. I'll collect them. So, yeah, apparently the one that they see is, one of 'em is called Meso Ke,
Will: for,
Rod: which is a perfect accent. Red harvester around the native
Will: an accent, it's a, it's Latin. Latin doesn't have an accent.
Rod: That's true. It's just the original
Will: Yeah, you do.
But that's not how you
Rod: it. It's what pre-Jesus spoke the entity. I apologize. So the queens of this species grew up to two and a half centimeters long. And you can find one websites like ans us.
Will: us
Rod: I'm not kidding.
Will: [00:24:00] Love your work. An
Rod: right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sponsored the show.
Sponsor the
Will: If you'd like to come in for a chat, please.
Rod: No. Sponsor us. We'll, we'll support your non-legal entity.
Will: The non-legal
Rod: activity. Um, and apparently this site describes 'em as many people's dream species.
Will: Well, if you're looking for ants, I, I would say if you're an ant farm person, if, if you're an ant farm person, you want the big dogs. You don't want tiny ants 'cause tiny ants, like they're
Rod: interesting.
Has anyone ever before said, well, if you're looking for ants as a, as a proviso
on any circumstance. Well, yeah. If you're looking for ants, of course it's like, what the fuck are you
Will: I feel like you gotta have like a gravelly voice. Like,
Rod: well if you're looking for ants, sure. And I too have been looking for ants for quite some time. apparently there's quite a shortage of them online. these ants prized by collectors. 'cause they have unique behaviors and very complex colony building skills. So they're. Exciting as far as ants go.
They're exotic, they're unusual. And you keep them in for Aliums. I don't know if [00:25:00] it's for Meca, but it's probably for Aliums.
another online ant vendor who I love from this article, asked not to be named says,
Will: Is it because it would ruin his cool. Is he like, like I got a girlfriend and shit.
Rod: I thought I was into porn. I told him I was a porn producer. Like the grossest shit around.
I don't sell ants. Fuck you. I'm not a monster.
Will: Well, love your work. An us love your work. No,
Rod: this is different people. This is different. Answer us names, you
Will: but I mean generally they're cool people is what I'm saying.
Rod: I've always said.
Will: So
Rod: So apparently this, not this non-named online ant vendor, which goes well on your returning into the country customs card occupation online ant vendor. He says it's a landmark case in the field. I'm assuming it's a he. 'cause it sounds like a thing a
Will: No, no, no. Don't, don't assume any. That's twice you've assumed t
Rod: Yeah. 'cause it's dorky shit
Will: ladies can be dorks. Really? Yes. It's that, that's the number one thing of feminism.
We
Rod: we are
dorks. We too
we can inoculate. Yeah, indeed. [00:26:00] apparently, uh, people are now starting to travel to other countries specifically to collect ants.
And that has until recently been completely unheard of. Like no one has done this before. So it's new. The market is
Will: Are Are they just getting up a scoop and, and grabbing a few, putting, putting them in a little, I don't know, like a, a film canister.
Rod: No. You put 'em in condoms and swallow 'em, you know, old school,
Will: I, I
Rod: what do you mean they're dead again?
Will: please tell me there is someone swallowing a condom full of ants and, and
there is,
Rod: but not for smuggling
Will: someone somewhere has died. Uh, I, look, I'm, I, I don't want that death and I don't want any, anyone to want that death.
But, um, the condom full of ants
Rod: we're here to mourn the passing of, uh,
Will: uh, do you know, I'm, I'm gonna write, I'm gonna write a, a murder mystery aimed at, I don't know who it's aimed at, late teens where it's
Rod: like,
just pretty much me.
Really?
Will: do you? And it's like, yes. They died through swallowing a condoms full of
Rod: can you imagine though, the obituary, the obituary? We, we, uh, is, is is his a family have asked not to talk about
Will: that.
Rod: He's 17. [00:27:00] How did he die?
Will: just like he died. Wanking, like
Rod: That's it. Yeah. Auto asphyxiation. Yeah,
Will: yeah. It wasn't anything to do with the weird ant
Rod: don't wanna make it strange. So apparently, according to unnamed online ant vendor sales volumes have been growing almost every year for the last few years. There are more ant vendors than ever before, and prices are getting quite competitive.
Will: Mm.
Rod: And this is the reasoning in today's world where most people live, fast-paced, tech driven lives, many are disconnected from themselves in their environment.
And watching ants in a form curium can be surprisingly therapeutic. I, I believe that.
Will: I always think of the Tolstoy line. there are three things you can watch forever. Forever. It's, it's water running.
Rod: paint drawing,
Will: Huh?
Rod: No,
Will: Not paint drying. Not paint drying. Um, I'm not gonna remember the third one. Now is my problem.
Rod: You're watching, you try to remember the three things. I can watch that forever.
Will: Water running, men working and fire burning. But, [00:28:00] but I, I, I feel like ants are in the men working category.
It's like,
you know it's, it's, it's the.
Rod: and ants and colonating,
Will: the busyness of something. Although, although did you hear there was a study out the other week, someone did a study looking at individual ants and, and you know this, you know, and, and everyone says, uh, ants are super busy.
And they're like, and this guy's like, oh, guy man, fucking so sexist today. Was like, no fucking lazy as shit like, like, like the, the, the, the work that is done by each individual. And some of them do nothing like some of them do.
Rod: They just move a
Will: Yeah.
Rod: Some of
Will: Some of the, some of them doing a lot. But if it's not like ants are super busy, there's a lot of blushing, there's a lot of
lying
Rod: This doesn't surprise me. This is the same. When people used to talk about it was the reverse with hunter gatherers and they're like, oh, these people, they're just slave and working all the time. They're like animals.
And then, what was it, the original
Will: they're inventing weird sports. That's all they did. They're like, let's do something where we, we roll a ball down a hill and it smashes someone straight in the
Rod: Well, let's blow up the stomach of yet another animal and kick it
Will: Yeah.[00:29:00]
Rod: Not an ant though,
Are,
Will: are these all safe ant species? Not like the, no. Like,
Rod: No, not always. No. So you've hit on one of the issues.
Will: people,
Rod: are like, why is this bad? Well, there's
Will: there's fairly benign ants, but there's also the ants.
I, I've seen Indiana Jones four like, like where they ate the tank and dissolved the Russian lady,
Rod: Oh. Thought that's the one where Jesus came down.
Will: Oh, they, he? No, I feel
Rod: like wasn't that.
Will: No, that's Indiana Jones. Three. The crystal by Holy Grail. No. Yeah, crystal. The crystal skull. There was a big ant scene where
the, the Yeah, yeah, ant colony, eats all of the Soviets.
Well, well, I mean, I, I mean, they're an ant like people as it is.
Rod: Ooh, sorry. To
Will: sledge to the Soviets.
Rod: our Russian listener.
Soviets said,
Will: I said Soviets, I didn't, nothing against the Russian people. This is against Soviets. You know, they're,
Rod: there's only nine left.
apparently look, the bottom line, the biggest problem with it is, yes, two things at least.
One is some of them like harvester ants, they collect seeds. Mm-hmm. Hence the name. But as they for [00:30:00] collection purposes or eating purposes?
Yes, for eating purposes. Oh, some of them are collectors. You know, they got these like big ant
Will: love, love the seeds,
Rod: the seeds. They're got a, they're got a butlers Butler's pantry and a lift.
'cause you don't wanna walk all out the tunnels. But as part of the collection is, they're a bit clumsy. So they drop them. So they disperse seeds.
Yes.
So if you remove them from ecosystems, that's an issue.
Will: Yeah. But, but no one is taking all of the
Rod: ants
Humans give humans time.
Will: one's like, like I, I don't know what
Rod: that about elephants.
Will: Like you get a spoon out there and you grab some ants that is gonna
Rod: get, they said that about elephants. And now look, there's two left.
Will: Ants are hard to remove from an ecosystem.
Rod: And the other problem is, of course there was a study apparently in 2023 about, the ant trade across China. You know, you probably read it. One of the problems is some of the most sought after ants are highly invasive and have a tendency to do really
Will: well.
I, I am, uh, in a professional capacity. I'm employed to consider biosecurity concerns
Rod: here.
Yeah. So
Will: do you mean? And, and I, I, I [00:31:00] fear this concept because, you know, people can bring in ants and Oh my God, some of the, you know, the ants that eat the Soviets, I don't want that in
Rod: Look, and it's fair to say that this might link to something I'll talk about in a tick,
Will: but I just
Rod: there is nothing, humans can't fuck up.
Alex: All right. Thanks for having me on Again. This is the producer Alex from Bambi Media. Recently in Australian political news, we recently reelected our Australian Prime Minister Albanese, and not too long ago, in the recent past, he was sworn in and he made some waves by not swearing in with his hand on the Bible.
instead opting for a secular, uh, oath swearing ceremony. And of course everyone, and he's a isit of our Catholic, that's all, that's part of his platform and all that sort of
Will: So hang on. He's devout Catholic, but chose not a Bible.
Alex: And he, he stated, I represent people of every faith and no faith. So, So, my question, my question being a, you know, godless, heathen myself, what object would you [00:32:00] have our country leader swear their prime ministerial oath on under severe pain of destruction of that object if, if they were to fail?
Will: Oh,
Rod: what object?
Will: well, you, you went, you went bigger. I, I, I went straight to book. I thought you were gonna go book.
Rod: an object.
Will: Yeah, no, I know. But my first brain was like, okay, what book is
Rod: and you're like, anything by Dave
Will: anything by Dave Grabber? Anything by Dave Grabber. Of course. Anything by Dave Grabber, you know, maybe a combination.
Two hands. Dave Grabber and, and Pickety. You know, like, like I, I feel like Debt by Dave Grabber, Dawn of Humanity. You know, a few, you know, bullshit jobs.
Rod: Oh yeah, definitely. Bullshit Jobs. Dave Grabber. Look him up. If you haven't heard of
Will: in peace. Be upon him.
Rod: I'm thinking if we're gonna go, okay, if we're starting with books or let's say publications, I'm gonna go the 1978 june edition of Penthouse Magazine.
Will: You know, you know, you know there's someone that all respect people that go, no, not, not Playboy, penthouse. I'm going the, the, the, yeah,
Rod: yeah, because they have the letters. I didn't even know they had pictures for the first four years I found [00:33:00] them by accident because it features the, the woman with the natural red hair.
Will: But flip it around. Go serious for a sec. What, what, what
Rod: is
your object?
Will: Object.
Object.
Alex: What would you have? Our, our country leader, this is demonstrated on the global platform. Other people are gonna look to our country and go, he's got his hand on a, you know,
Rod: I'm thinking an a kangaroo steak.
Will: Okay.
Rod: 'cause it both represents our coat of arms, but also the reality that kangaroo is a fricking delicious. So it's very Australian. It's also culinary and everyone's into cooking.
Will: So why do we have to touch something to make it more meaningful?
Rod: Like, like
what? You're in a relationship, you understand why
Will: no touching something's fun. Yeah. But, but, but like, why are we say like, why are we putting our
Rod: Okay. Not something. How about just fire? He's gotta put his hand in fire.
Will: All the, all the pain box from June.
Rod: Yeah,
exactly. Yeah.
Will: Yeah. It's like
Rod: yeah. Do you really want this job?
Will: What's in it? Pain.
Rod: yeah, you move your hand. What happens then? You remove your hand, you'll die.
Will: Well, I, I wouldn't mind that. I [00:34:00] wouldn't mind, I wouldn't mind prime ministers to
Rod: to show commitment
Will: hand in the pain box.
Rod: didn't say permanently. You're a
monster
Will: you're Prime Minister, you got the hand in the pain box.
Rod: then I'm gonna go further. I'm gonna say you gotta waterboard them while they take the oath.
Waterboard, if they really meant they go
Will: hold, hold
Rod: under, under dress and
Will: I don't
Rod: what, what about they gotta, they gotta touch the last suit that Goff Whitlam wore.
Will: Oh, that nice. For the Labor Party history there? Yeah. Goff Whitlam's not dead. Like that's fake news.
Rod: No, I didn't say he was dead. I was so, in the last suit he wore That could have been yesterday. He's dead.
Will: He's dead. He's dead.
Rod: up your mind, man.
Is there anything
Alex: landed somewhere between somewhere between kangaroo steaks, the June pain box, and a and a, and a suit of a
Will: feel, I feel like, here's an interesting thing though, Alex. We are a, we are a very, very secular country in the sense that yes, we're multicultural, but also, uh, we've also stepped a fair way from religion in,
Rod: It's not front and center. Yeah.
Will: Many countries have done that. Many countries have, but I think also
we
don't, we [00:35:00] don't truck in sacred objects in the way that countries that have older traditions do
Rod: Don Bradman's Cricket Bat or something like that, a sporting
Will: John Howard would do that, but, but like, like, it's like, you know, the, you know, Iran, you could go back to the Zoroastrian sacred fire that's going back for 5,000 years, or, or obviously in Saudi Arabia they've got macka. That's like, you're not doing that as to become king of Saudi Arabia, but they have sacred objects.
Yeah, we have sacred objects in Australia, but that's not a tradition of power. Like as
Rod: it's sporting mirror
Will: no, I meant, I meant indigenous,
Rod: But it's not power.
Yeah.
Will: But, but like we, we don't believe in sacred objects in settler Australia. I
Rod: I don't know. I mean, a, again, a future sponsor of the show, Valkyrie Bikes from Byron Bay. I, I consider my Valkyrie bike kind of a sacred object. I really love it. I actually do.
I really love it. I
Will: No, I support that.
Rod: I would swear an oath to this podcast touching one of those, particularly if they decide to give us one to review. Are you listening? Vel Cream. It's Byron Bay Smoke [00:36:00] more. Was it the disco
Will: But I'm really stuck, I'm really stuck for a, a, a sacred object in Australia. That, that that is actually like, I'm trying to answer this in a serious way. Yeah.
Rod: why
Will: do
Alex: So non non-indigenous
Will: Do do, do you hold Yeah. So indigenous relics, but that's, that's not fair to take them up into, the, the rest of Australian context.
Do you
touch the Sydney Opera
Rod: for the leader. Well, no, the white leader of the country.
Will: Well, we're not saying we're
Rod: sorry, colonial
Will: Well, then might, might, might not be.
Alex: there might be consent issues. What about just like Kylie Mano?
Will: Touch Kylie Mano.
Rod: I'd do that even I'd do that even if I wasn't going for Prime Minister though.
Alex: Well that's be quite nice. Like just on not her shoulder. Like in the play, you know those, those diagrams that say legitimate, you could take Kylie Minogue's hand to become Prime Minister,
Rod: but you hold it awkwardly and shake it like it's an object.
Yeah.
Alex: You'd be more inclined to keep that oath, I think.
Rod: Kate b Blanche.
Will: I love it. I love it Alex. Good work.
So I learned a new word.
Rod: I love it when you learn words. 'cause you [00:37:00] only know about 19. When I met you, you knew 104 words. Yeah, that's, and you've come a long way now, you know, like a thousand. I know the word.
Will: I know the word. The I know the word.
Rod: you know how to use them
Will: you don't have to use it. Yeah. I love this word. I love this word because when I heard this word I was like, ah, my God.
That is the most German word I have ever heard.
Rod: Fucking big court. This is gonna take 10 minutes to record
Will: it. no, no, no.
Rod: 112 nouns,
Will: No, no, no, no. It's short, it's tight, it's sweet.
Can't be it. and, and and every syllable in it is English as well. Like it's, it's, it's just a word we don't have in English, but a word that, uh, they have in the Germans.
And it's like, oh, of course
Rod: from Duolingo, did you? course.
Will: you can imagine, , there are scenarios and, and we all do this where
you're watching something. Maybe it's a stressful TV show. Maybe it's uh, uh, a stressful tightrope performer and maybe it's a stressful situation where, you know, people are maybe, might fall [00:38:00] to their deaths or something
Rod: That, that sounds stressful.
Will: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and
Rod: live executions stressful.
Will: Oh, yeah. Oh, live
Rod: squid games. Live executions.
Will: Here's the word.
Rod: Angst
Will: lust. So it's a combination of the word Ang,
desire for lust,
angst and lust. Angst desire for like, it's a combination of
Rod: Oh, which you don't have.
'cause you don't like horror movies.
Will: No, I don't like horror movies. No. I, I, I get a little bit of angst, lust. So it's the anxiety,
Rod: think you, I think you mean angst, lust, angst, lust. Yeah, of course, it's often translated and I did a Wikipedia translation of the German, sorry, a translation of the Wikipedia article in German to English.
Will: And it couldn't do it. It translated to anxiety or translated to thrill. And neither of those
Rod: words seriously. Um,
desire for angst or edginess or fear
Will: there's a recognition in, and this comes from a, a, a psychoanalytic tradition. In, in Germany you wouldn't, you wouldn't be surprised, but, but also a recognition.
There's that kind of earthy thrill that [00:39:00] if you are watching someone doing something dangerous, there's a bit of you that says. I wouldn't mind if they failed. Like, like,
Rod: do. You know, I get that. I that. I
do, you know what's terrible? I get that every time I watch a plane take off. I'm like, what if it blew
up?
How would I feel if it blew up?
And then I, then the rest of my brain clicks in and goes, you're a monster.
Will: Well, here's the thing. Maybe, maybe the Germans are the only people that
have, who are honest,
that are honest about this, this, this lust that we have, that we go, oh, yeah. Oh, but, but I'm watching it and I'd want to
Rod: and you are making the shape I make as a man too, because you, you imagine with your hand, like something just grabbed your balls and is pulling them upwards, but in a pleasant way.
Will: indeed, like, like a lot of people are describing this as a soothing shiver or the pleasure sensation, you know, can grow out of, you know, survived fear or, or, or watching fear or something
Rod: like
that. Just coming close.
Will: but I, I think it's just, it's just that great combination of recognizing that we do lust after it.
Like, like [00:40:00] there's a lust in this, in this anxiety of
Rod: lu lust. Lust is also, it's like a, it's a, it's more than what we would call lust, in my understanding of German, which is of course, deep and intricate.
Will: Yes, of course.
Rod: But lust is, is is like a, a gregariousness, like a, a a passion. A desire. A passion
Will: and
desires beyond, it's not just like, I wanna wink off to it.
when I was reading about this, a bunch of Goya paintings came up.
Rod: Of course they did.
Will: I know, I know. You know, you just think, oh, Goya.
And, and two of them came up. One, one is this
Rod: picture,
which is great for a podcast. Look up, hit pause, look up Goya, come back. Well,
Will: I don't have the names for the two Goya. Uh, one, one,
Rod: You don't need to.
Will: Okay. One
Rod: is
he didn't do anything of sunflowers and a nice little drinky on a summer's day.
Will: one of this guy wanky, and, and two people, uh, two women are looking on, in a kind of, oh, what, what is he like?
He's being caught, but also a visceral, like, like what? I liked it, like, I like, I like catching you and stuff like
Rod: And I like being caught, but I
Will: Oh,
oh. And it's just like, whoa, what's going on? He, yeah. I like being [00:41:00] caught, but I don't. And another one was this, um. Spanish, uh, well, like the peninsula war, like back in, in the 19th century, um, where there's, there's a Napoleonic guy just, just looking at this guy that's been executed in a kind of relaxed way.
You can see down there and the guy being executed. He's hung in a tree, hanging in
Rod: a
tree
Will: and his pants have fallen down and it's kind of a tiny bit sexual and he's just like,
Rod: the other dude sitting back going, that's pretty cool.
Will: Yeah. And it's like, oh,
Rod: looks. Yeah, he looks like he's kind. Interesting. He's got his head resting on one hand. His hand on his hip.
Will: So there you go. There you go. Listener. If you are ever, um, feeling that, that desire to look,
Rod: what's called wank, lust,
Will: Angst? Lust angst list.
Rod: I can see it. I can see it.
Will: see it. That's your little bit of science.
Rod: That's as much as you get.
Will: That's as much as you get. No more science. Have no more science. No. Um, you don't need any more
Rod: science.
No. You've had enough. So if you, um, if you enjoyed this show, give us a 19 star rating on every [00:42:00] platform. 21. If you didn't enjoy it, give us a 48 star rating 'cause it'll help us pitch our game up.
Will: give us new topics, give us things you want to hear us riff on, uh, how well you can email 'em us. Cheers at a little bit of science.com
Rod: au
is a little bit of science one long word.
Will: Uh, little bit of science one. Long word.com au
Rod: or just ring will's number 5 5 5 4 7 9 3.
Will: And send me some ants. Big fuckers.
Rod: Yeah, None of them fuckers. Yeah,
Yeah. Big bity fucker. I want something invasive. Don't
Will: tell anyone but just sell me, send me a bunch of ants. Like, like, just, just gimme the ants. He lives
Rod: at 77. Whoopsie. Woo. Road. Tricky Lee.
