Intro

What is that? What is that!? What is it!? Augh! No! Not the bees! NOT THE BEES! AAAAAUGGGHHHHH MY EYES! MY EYES! AAAGGHHHH!!!!

This episode is about bees. And all insects, actually—are they in the process of being wiped out, in what’s become known as “insectageddon”? It’s one of those scientific beliefs that a lot of people kinda-sorta hold without knowing much about the evidence, so we thought we’d look into it.

Tune in to hear how, in exactly the same way as they affect our episodes on psychology and psychiatry and medicine, really difficult issues of measurement are at the bottom of the entire debate.

And once you’ve listened, feel free to buzz off.

We’ve been talking about Works in Progress magazine on this podcast for years, but it’s only ever been an online magazine. Now, you can become a subscriber and get a beautiful IRL physical copy of the magazine delivered to you: a gorgeously-produced item that’ll make you desperate to read the excellent articles on science, technology, and human progress within. Find out more at www.worksinprogress.co/print.

Show notes

* The Rothamstead insect survey

* The famous 2017 Krefeld paper in PLOS ONE

* An earlier 2012 survey study from the Zoological Society of London

* George Monbiot’s article where he coins the term “insectageddon”

* The 2019 meta-analysis finding 40% of insect species are at risk of extinction

* Response letter from Andrew Bladon et al.

* Improved 2020 meta-analysis from van Klink et al.

* Response letter

* New paper on the improvements to the Chicago River

* Two papers from the GLiTRS project

Credits

We’re very grateful to Dr. Andrew Bladon from the University of Reading for talking to us for this episode. As ever, all errors are ours. The Science Fictions podcast is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions.

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