The 1976 Ladybird Plague (Episode 123)

01/15/24 • 11 min

We're going to the dry and drought-blasted British Isles of 1976 for this (short) episode; we'll talk about ladybirds, the population boom-and-bust cycles of insect life, and how weird weather can throw an entire ecosystem into red-shelled chaos.

Previous Episode

Conspiratorial Thinking (Episode 122)

To kick off our 2024 season, I thought we'd cover the insidious disaster that is Conspiratorial Thinking! We'll discuss how our brain can get short-circuited in the strangest ways, why it takes fear and lack of self-reflection skills to be a true believer... and why this stuff cannot be dismissed and how we can all do a better job of guarding ourselves against it.

Fun.

Sources:

Due to being available on a whole bunch of different platforms now, it's come to my attention that our Sources don't always make it to each listener at their preferred listening-platform; therefore, I'm going to be doing a better job of listing the complete sources in the episode itself.

Next Episode

The 1995 Sampoong Department Store Collapse (Episode 124)

On this episode, we're going to the city of Seoul to take a look at another example of how greed kills people. In 1988, a building was constructed to maximize profit and minimize expense; in 1995, its inevitable collapse caused the most non-wartime deaths South Korea has experienced. We'll talk about construction techniques, building codes, why regulations are important, and how to not move gigantic air conditioners.