The fish species with no males
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Future Proof with Jonathan Macrae. Proudly supported by Research Ireland. On Newstalk.
Hello and welcome to Future Proof, the podcast. This is the show where we take a closer look at the world around us. My name is Jonathan Macrae. Thank you for subscribing, downloading and rating. I was really lucky at the beginning of this summer to travel to a number of Greek islands. And God, the water there is absolutely electric. You can see why... You know, it is the place of mythology, such incredible landscape. And then the water is just unlike anything I've ever had the chance to see. And I loved hearing all the different mythology about Athena and Zeus and so on. And there was one story that really stuck with me. It was the story of the Amazons who... lived in Themyscira, and they were the most fierce female warriors ascended from Ares, the god of war.
And it just reminded me of the story that we have of Tiernamon. This land, the Amazons, had no men in their culture, and the same in Tiernamon. There was no men. But the neighboring village would supply mortal men to provide the Amazons and Tiernamon with women. That sort of idea of a magical, mystical place where no men exist was a really international idea of a good thing. And certainly if we think about the male island of politics, having an all-island political landscape could be very interesting. But the reason I'm telling you this is because this actually does exist in nature, in a rather unusual species called the Amazon molly. And on this week's program, we're going to be hearing about the Amazon molly and how it's managed to survive for 100,000 years without any males at all.
It should not be possible, and yet it is. First, though, it's time to look back at some of the more interesting stories from the world of science this week. We're joined by a regular Dr. Jessamyn Fairfield from the University of Galway and regularly attending, but irregular in nature, Dr. Shane Bergen from UCD. You're both very welcome. with measles?
Yeah, absolutely. And I think this will come as no surprise to many listeners. Measles cases in the United States have reached a 34-year high. So what this means is that the United States is on track to lose its, quote, measles elimination status. And this is something that the World Health Organization that the United States has recently left characterizes as basically the kind of the difference between measles being endemic or not. In other words, is it just spreading of its own accord or are there isolated cases that a system can track and trace? People will remember this sort of language from the COVID days. So in 2026 thus far, there have been 2,295 cases which is already more than all of 2025.
There are outbreaks in South Carolina, a particularly virulent one there, and there's one brewing in Utah. Now, just so listeners are clear and that we don't kind of end up with a pile on, for our good friends in the United States. Hello, Jessamyn. Many EU countries have already lost their measles elimination status, most notably France and Germany, which I would always think of as sort of sensible countries, but they do have a large amount of vaccine skepticism in those countries. Italy and Poland as well. Ireland.
I was living in France during COVID and there was a lot of anti-vax stuff, even in the peak of it.
Yeah, so I do think it's important when we talk about these things to not just assume that all of these sort of anti-science, anti-vax threads are particular to the United States. They exist in most Western countries. Ireland does have a measles elimination status. It's had it since 2017, much later than many other countries, but we still have it.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–11:54
2
What recent science headlines open this episode (measles, exoplanet, AI, Milky Way)?
11:54–14:12
3
Why are measles cases rising and what does ‘loss of elimination status’ mean?
14:12–35:31
4
What makes the newly reported exoplanet LHS 1140b notable for habitability studies?
35:31–40:28
5
How are researchers detecting an atmosphere on a distant rocky exoplanet?
40:28–41:38