TAMSIN MAJERUS: Male killing is caused by bacteria that live in the female ladybird, and they get into her ovaries and, and into the eggs that she produces and somehow, and we don't really know how, they kill off the embryos that are destined to become male. So when she lays her clutch of eggs, normally we expect half of those will end up being female ladybirds, the other half will be male ladybirds; but a female ladybird that has a male killer will often have a clutch of eggs where only about half of them hatch and the whole for hatch go on to become feat. So the males were killed right at the very beginning of their lifetime. it works surprisingly because the female larvae and something, which is slightly disgusting as they emerge from the egg, they need to eat something very quickly or they'll starve to death.They've got male eggs right there that aren't hatching into larvae. They eat those eggs. So they eat their dead brothers, nasty little bit of cannibalism, but -

HZ: Well, it’s pragmatic cannibalism.

TAMSIN MAJERUS: Yeah, exactly.

HRISHIKESH HIRWAY: Did you know that, Samin, that my nickname for Helen is 'Pizza’?
SAMIN NOSRAT: What? Because of all the Z's?
HRISHIKESH HIRWAY: Because I once told Helen about this atrocious pamphlet that I read at the train station when I was in college. It was for some kind of like - I think it was called student advantage. Do you remember the student advantage card? There was a pamphlet for student advantage card, and they were trying to say like how useful it could be. And they're like, "Everybody knows students need a few extra bucks, whether it's to do laundry, buy some books, or just grab a slice of 'za!" And I had never heard that before, 'za, apostrophe Z A, and I was looking and I was like, "Are they trying to say pizza? They're abbreviating pizza? This is how cool kids say pizza. What is this?" And I felt so offended that they were trying to market, at me, a student, using this kind of language. And I told Helen about this, and then immediately after that she was doing a Reddit AMA and, and I think I went in there and I asked her if she was really hiding the fact that Helen Zaltzman was short for Helen Pizzaltzman.
HZ: Yes, my family shortened it when they moved to an Anglophone country.
HRISHIKESH HIRWAY: Yeah, so now I just call her 'Pizza' for short. Naturally.
HZ: I just think an abbreviation where you understand less what the thing was is not a good one. I suppose you are saving a whole syllable which is half of the effort.
HRISHIKESH HIRWAY: Plus you sound SO cool and SO with it, calling it just 'za.
HZ: And you must be very busy person not to be able to do the full 'pizza'.
HRISHIKESH HIRWAY: You're a student, you've got skateboarding to do.

For a bit of fun to celebrate Radiotopia’s 2018 fundraiser, this episode is a wordy quiz for you to play along with as you listen.