Allie Ward

like roughly daily ever since.

And I have told anyone who will listen about it now, including you.

And so when it came time to trying to line up some bug facts for the Tonight Show, I tracked down this one researcher, Dr. Emily Jennings, asking about obtaining some of this substance for like the TV taste test.

As it turns out, Dr. Jennings no longer worked in the cockroach milk industry, but was familiar with the podcast and wrote me back.

Hi, Ali.

I'm hoping this is real and not a scam.

Who is out there scamming people for cockroach milk, though?

Ha ha.

So Dr. Jennings put me in touch with two research colleagues, whom you are about to meet.

Now, one pioneer of the research you won't meet was Dr. Barbara Stray of the University of Iowa.

And she unfortunately passed into the next realm last year at the age of 97.

But her work continues at a few labs across the world, including at the University of Cincinnati and the University of Bristol.

So we chatted with two researchers.

who work with this one species, Diploptera punctata, the Pacific beetle roach, which can be found, if you're looking for them, in the forests of Australia and Myanmar and India and Fiji, China, Hawaii.

And this cockroach, it looks like a beetle.

It loves vacation destinations.

it makes milk for its babies.

So let's get into the hows and the whys and the whats of insects that nurse their young, including tsetse flies.

And of course, our beloved milky mama roach, Diploptera punctata.

So we're doing it.