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, climate tipping points, and a fruit fly brain getting uploaded like it’s just another file transfer. We start in Hong Kong, where scammers used AI deepfakes to impersonate colleagues on a video call and convinced a CFO to transfer a huge amount of money. We then headed outside, where birds have started collecting cigarette butts for their nests. From there, we get serious with the ocean currents that help keep Europe mild, and why scientists are worried about what happens if that system collapses. And because the future refuses to wait its turn, we also look at a fruit fly brain mapped neuron by neuron and uploaded into a virtual simulation, plus a quick detour into hats as status symbols and tools of punishment. CHAPTERS: 00:00 AI Zoom Scam 01:31 Show Intro and Lineup 03:02 Pipe Smoking Animal Tales 06:28 Birds Using Cigarette Butts 08:32 Nicotine as Parasite Control 11:20 School Smoking and Odd Uses 15:29 AMOC Climate Tipping Point 19:33 Uploading Brains Fruit Fly Model 23:50 Connectome Driven Fly 24:47 Virtual Embodiment Claims 25:20 Scaling Up To Mouse 26:48 Hybrid Bio Machine Futures 28:13 Hat History Detour 30:27 Hats As Social Signals SOURCES: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/15/critical-atlantic-current-significantly-more-likely-to-collapse-than-thought https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/04/asia/deepfake-cfo-scam-hong-kong-intl-hnk?_bhlid=3bc010593bc73c17aa86ed0b6e79b5ae720c787f https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/BE4E11BFE7F8CCF5A5A7081869710925/S0018246X26101460a.pdf/the-cultural-social-and-ideological-role-of-the-hat-in-early-modern-england.pdf https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2026/ay/d5ay01801c https://futurism.com/science-energy/birds-cigarettes-nest https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347226000011 https://nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jav.01324 https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2024BiInv..26.1705P/abstract https://futurism.com/science-energy/research-fly-brain-matrix https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07763-9 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39533006/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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