PODCAST · science
A Little Bit Of Science
by A Little Bit Of Science
From tales of historical idiocracy and scientific genius to weird and wacky cultural phenomena, Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant are here to take you on a wild conversational journey, deep diving into the crevices of science, history and culture that you never knew existed.
Episodes
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Self-healing Concrete, Chaos Pigeons and The Dark Factor
This week’s episode: Roman concrete. The Pantheon has been standing for roughly 2,000 years with a huge dome made of unreinforced concrete, and it’s still in better shape than plenty of modern buildings. The Romans used volcanic ash and quicklime, and the chemistry seems to keep strengthening the...
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Urine Therapy, Dolphin Vomit Thieves and Human-brained Mice
This week’s episode is a reminder that science news is basically three genres on rotation: animals behaving badly, humans believing wild things with full confidence, and researchers doing work that sounds like a plot twist in a sci‑fi novel. We’ve got dolphins running ocean heists, urine therapy...
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Radiation Flight Attendants, Belly Button Lasers and Plastic Protein Cookies
This week’s episode is a reminder that science is basically a grab bag of “that’s amazing” and “please don’t make me think about that”. We’ve got flight attendants quietly racking up cosmic radiation exposure, lasers that can “smell” disease, NASA flirting with the idea of turning plastic into...
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Alien Mega Structures, Black Hole Stars and Autonomous Drones
This week’s episode is a reminder that science can make you feel tiny and powerful in the same breath. One minute we’re scanning the sky for signs of alien engineering, the next we’re looking at something that behaves like a star and a black hole at the same time, and then we’re back on Earth...
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Dinosaur Bone Moguls, Spider-tailed Vipers and Seasonal Crimes
This week’s episode is a reminder that humans will try to make money from anything, and nature will always be stranger than we expect. We jump from dinosaur bones as luxury investments, to an AI school that claims it can speed up learning, to a snake with a tail that looks like a spider, and then...
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Cyborg Cockroaches, Splash-free Urinals and Snortable Nanobots
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 pitching brain tech you might one day take through your nose, and the Ig Nobels are back to remind…
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Doomsday flight trackers, trebuchet trauma, worm-flies and sugar-rationed babies
This week’s line-up is a reminder that humans can turn literally anything into a warning sign. A flight tracker becomes an apocalypse detector, a medieval siege weapon becomes a forensic crime scene, and wartime sugar rationing turns into an accidental public health intervention. All of these...
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Chicken-powered nukes, lab-grown mini brains and the thalidomide-blocking badass
This week’s line-up is a perfect reminder that science is not a neat little march of progress. It’s more like a grab bag where you pull out “chicken-powered nuclear landmines”, “mini brains that can sense time”, “one woman quietly preventing a medical catastrophe” and a misinformation spiral…
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River bomb archaeology, AI viruses and Viagra cancer cures
This week’s science news is a perfect example of the universe having a weird sense of timing. The Danube River hits record low water levels and suddenly Europe starts coughing up skeletons, WWII war relics, and Roman engineering like it’s doing a historical clear-out. If you’re into…
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Snakes have necks, giant sperm physics and fungus fashion
Someone once described a snake as “a tail with a face”, and honestly, it’s hard to unsee it. Snakes look like pure commitment to the tube lifestyle, with very little going on besides forward motion and mild judgement. Except a 2015 study basically ruined the idea that snakes are neckless noodles…
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Cannibals, MRI snuggle sacks and sex inside a whale
Is there any evidence-based reason cannibalism shouldn’t make a comeback? It’s a question that really should come with a warning label, but we couldn’t resist digging into it properly this week. We’ve got researchers running the numbers on human-eating, rats in MRI “snuggle sacks” while tripping…
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Invention of the wheelie suitcase, orphan-powered vaccines and the Barbie drug
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,...
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Pig Orgasms, Placebo Power and How iPhones are Ruining Sex
This week we went from “surely that can’t be true” to “oh… that’s actually happening”. We fact check the legendary pig orgasm claim, then get weirdly hopeful about placebo pills that work even when you’re told they’re fake. From there, we look at research that points a finger at the iPhone era…
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Rod's Best Of: The Experience Machine, Havana Syndrome, Venting Makes you Angrier and Boring People
Will’s gone walkabout, so Rod’s raided the archives and pulled out four of his favourite segments for you to enjoy. 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...
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Fake Microplastics, Freaky Lovebirds, and Numbers Too Big For Humans
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…
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Banned Baby Names, The Onion Gene, Hackable AI and Accidental World Kayaker
Australia has a list of baby names you are not allowed to use, a church once removed a devil statue for being distractingly hot, and one German bloke accidentally kayaked from Europe to Australia. This week, Will and Rod bounce between naming laws, scandalous art, and a seven-year adventure that...
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Titanium Exosuits, Iceman Sourdough & Pokemon Spyware
A robot exosuit now costs more than most people’s houses, scientists are pitching a telescope built from the solar system itself, and Pokémon Go has somehow ended up feeding the war tech pipeline. This week, Will and Rod bounce between expensive robotics, slow burn space ambition, biosecurity...
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Mosquitoes Got Smarter, Mutant Pigs, Cows Know You And So Does Your Router
Mosquitoes are learning how to ignore your repellents, cows can recognise human faces on TV, and Wi Fi can identify you through a wall with the help of AI. This week, Will and Rod flick between animal intelligence, ocean weirdness, and technology that is getting a little too confident. We start...
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Real Life Good Will Hunting, Suspicious Scientist Deaths, and The Runit Dome Is Leaking
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…
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Chimps Hoard Crystals, Talking Mushrooms and the Teddy Bear That Knows Your Kinks
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...
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Robot Wolves, Neanderthal Brains and Why Snakes Are Winning
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, Will and Rod bounce between…
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Mouse Utopia Experiment, Constipation & Heart Attacks, and Phrases For When Things Go Wrong
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...
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The Little Death, the Big Fraud, and the Bird That Stole Your Jerkin
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…
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Gut Microbiome Romance, Defensive Rewilding and Sharks on Cocaine
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...
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Bixonomania, Adversarial Hermeneutics, and Strontium in Baby Teeth
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,...
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Bank-Swindling Deepfakes, Cigarette Butt Bird Nests, & Ocean Current Chaos
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, Will and Rod bounce between AI crime, urban wildlife hacks,...
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Organ-Growing Meat Sacks, Fart-Measuring Underwear, and Tropical Tree Friendships
Cloning is getting more useful and more unsettling, tropical trees may be better at cooperation than we are, and smart underwear is now tracking human flatulence in extraordinary detail. This week, Will and Rod move from organ-growing biotech to forest teamwork, fart analytics, and a deeply...
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Parrot Seduction, Clone Fatigue and The Most Stressful Truck Delivery in Europe
A parrot in New Zealand makes conservation work wildly uncomfortable, scientists cloned mice until the whole thing started breaking down, and someone has now successfully trucked anti matter across Europe. This week, we bounce between endangered parrots, biological copy and paste and the least...
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The Breaking Bad Effect, Obstetric Chainsaws and AI Trip Sitters
Breaking Bad looks a little more plausible than you would hope, the chainsaw has a deeply unsettling medical origin story, and people are now asking whether AI can guide them through a psychedelic trip. This week, we bounce between crime, childbirth, and chatbot consciousness, which is not a...
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Brain-Eating Amoebas, Economists vs. Everyone and Da Vinci's Robot Lion
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...
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The Psychology of Conspiracies, Mushroom Hot Pot Trip and the Longest Botany Experiment Ever
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...
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Why Venting Makes You Angrier, Neanderthals Preferred Human Women, and Fetuses Hate Kale"
Venting might be making you angrier, Neanderthals apparently had a type, and unborn babies are already forming strong opinions about kale. This week we bounce from modern psychology to ancient DNA to fetal facial expressions, with a quick detour into pokie machines and how they might be made a...
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When AI Chooses Nukes, Norway's Brain Gun, and the Syndrome That Makes You a Foodie
This week, AI is casually reaching for the nuclear button, a Norwegian scientist has accidentally recreated something that looks a lot like Havana Syndrome, and a brain lesion has turned a marathon runner into an intense foodie. It is a neat little trio of stories that sits right on the edge of...
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Hippo Castration, Heart Bypass Brain Fog and Sperm From Unexpected Places
This week we have hippos with hidden bits, hearts that take a mechanical detour, and a medical case study that will make you sit down and reconsider every life choice that led you to having a body. It is science at its best and worst, fascinating, useful, and deeply inconvenient. We start at the...
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The Alien Economy Problem, Dream Engineering, and ER Horror Stories
What happens to the economy if aliens show up? Not the movie version. The real version where markets panic, confidence collapses, and everyone suddenly forgets how money is supposed to work. This week, we dig into the idea that confirming UFOs or UAPs could trigger an ontological shock that…
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Rogue Waves, Robot Skin, and Olympic Scandals
Winter Olympians are allegedly gaming their suit seams for extra lift, the ocean is still capable of throwing an absolutely giant wall of water at your face with no warning, and somewhere in Queensland, a blob of pitch is taking nearly a century to prove it is technically a liquid. This week, we...
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Penis Evolution, Magic Mushrooms & Influenza Transmission
This week, we bounce between sex, psychedelics, and infectious disease, and somehow it all hangs together by the end. We unpack research on porn use that suggests the real issue is not how often people watch it, but why they are watching in the first place, with motivation shaping the impact on...
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Science Finds Heaven, Longevity Hacks and Smart Dogs
Everyone wants to live forever, dogs are out here doing actual jobs, and someone has tried to work out where heaven might be using astronomy. We dig into the strange science of longevity, including research suggesting reproduction and lifespan might be linked in uncomfortable ways. Then they meet...
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FBI Hunts Bigfoot, Craft Beer's Hidden Science and Fame Kills Rockstars
The FBI’s search for Bigfoot shows that even serious agencies can get swept up in a good mystery. Their investigation ended with a misidentified animal instead of a legendary creature, but the files are still a treasure for anyone fascinated by conspiracies and the unknown. Sometimes, the search…
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AI Inflates the Ego, Ancient Drop Crocs and Gen Z Survey Findings
AI is giving people a confidence boost they might not deserve, especially among those who consider themselves tech-savvy. Studies show that using AI for problem-solving leads many to overestimate their own abilities, with higher AI literacy actually making users more likely to trust the machine…
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Chickens Choose the Hot Girls, Accidental Video Game WR and Are Jackalopes Real?
It’s pretty natural for humans to gravitate towards the most attractive person in the room. But do animals do it too? At Stockholm University, researchers decided to see if chickens could spot a hottie. They trained these birds to peck at faces on a screen and found that chickens prefer the same...
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Radio Ventriloquism, Conkers Controversy and Stone Skimming Cheaters
A ventriloquist once ruled the radio waves, captivating millions with stage tricks that made no visual sense but somehow worked perfectly through a speaker. The world’s love for a good illusion runs deep, stretching from ancient oracles channeling voices through their bellies to audiences...
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Ethics of Sex with Aliens, Dogs’ Cuteness Tactics and the StaffCop Office Overlord
Academics are now seriously debating the ethics of sex with aliens, with questions swirling around intergalactic consent, the boundaries of romance and whether Captain Kirk’s escapades would pass the cosmic sniff test. Some call it unnatural, others say it’s all about happiness and agreement, and…
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Poetry for AI Hacking, Flatulent Foods as Aphrodisiacs and Penile Tuberculosis
A Rome-based research team discovered poetry can jailbreak AI systems by bypassing safety filters that normal prompts can't crack, making verse a genuine cybersecurity vulnerability. Medieval physicians believed flatulent foods like beans and onions were aphrodisiacs because intestinal gas...
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Interspecies Love, Annual Frozen Dead Guy Day, and Stinky Brazilian Butt Lifts
Sika deer on Japan's Yakushima Island let macaque monkeys groom them in exchange for food scraps and sexual mounting, creating what scientists awkwardly call "interspecies sexual behaviour with mutual benefits." Nederland, Colorado hosts annual "Frozen Dead Guy Day" festivals celebrating Bredo...
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Mad Scientist Misadventures, Mind-Reading AI, and the Fishy Origins of Fingers
Horseshoe theory proposes that political extremes loop back around until far-left and far-right ideologies find disturbing common ground, sharing authoritarian tactics, propaganda methods, and contempt for democratic norms despite claiming opposite values. Scientists are using AI to decode brain...
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Atomic Gardening, Microwave Conspiracies and the Rise of Phubbing
Scientists in the mid-20th century created "atomic gardens" where they bombarded plants with gamma radiation to induce beneficial mutations like disease resistance and higher yields. Microwaves have been accused of causing cancer, destroying nutrients,and functioning as listening devices....
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Living Without a Stomach, Simulation Theory, and Forensic DNA in the Air
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...
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Trump’s Sketchy Nuclear Restarts, Greenhushing Explained and Driverless Car Death Predictions
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Bizarre Metrics, Gamer Kids' IQs, and The Trust Barometer
Correlation doesn't equal causation, but patterns emerge in the strangest places - like Pentagon pizza orders spiking before major military operations, making pepperoni consumption an unofficial national security indicator. A study of children aged nine to ten found that those playing video games...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
From tales of historical idiocracy and scientific genius to weird and wacky cultural phenomena, Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant are here to take you on a wild conversational journey, deep diving into the crevices of science, history and culture that you never knew existed.
HOSTED BY
A Little Bit Of Science
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does A Little Bit Of Science have?
A Little Bit Of Science currently has 450 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is A Little Bit Of Science about?
From tales of historical idiocracy and scientific genius to weird and wacky cultural phenomena, Dr Rod Lamberts and Dr Will Grant are here to take you on a wild conversational journey, deep diving into the crevices of science, history and culture that you never knew existed.
How often does A Little Bit Of Science release new episodes?
A Little Bit Of Science publishes regularly with 450 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
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You can listen to A Little Bit Of Science on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts A Little Bit Of Science?
A Little Bit Of Science is created and hosted by A Little Bit Of Science.
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