Pests and Prejudice: Ten Stories of Unrequited Love

A brief introduction to the podcast series and its stories of unrequited love between people and pests.  Produced by Christopher Kelty Pests and Prejudice is a podcast series created by UCLA undergraduates in the spring of 2026.  Each episode is a story of a messy relationship, one in which people seduced pests, and then decided to break up with them... and it usually goes about as well as you wou...

Produced by Shreya Kalyanaraman  This episode examines the history of dogs and their relationship to propagating the rabies virus throughout the Indian subcontinent. I explore this through tracing the domestication of dogs in early civilizations and how they came to India, contributing to the population of free-roaming street dogs that exists today. I also examine the history of the rabies virus,...

By: Katarina Schroeter, Sabrina Aguilar, Mitchell Stevens, Chloe Ezeudu In today's episode, Sympathy for the Weevil, we take a closer look at an insect that most people have never heard of, but one that changed the trajectory of American history: the cotton boll weevil. Inspired by the Rolling Stones' hit song Sympathy for the Devil, a song that pushes listeners to reconsider who we labe...

Produced by Kyra Shah, Natalie Bui, Felicity Nguyen California’s kelp forests are among the most productive and biodiverse ecosystems, providing habitat, food, and protection for countless marine species. In recent years, however, many of these underwater forests have disappeared. At the center of this transformation remains an unlikely culprit: the purple sea urchin. In this podcast episode, we e...

Produced by Heath Galiwango, Sabrina Sutton, & Vanessa Wong  In this podcast episode, three UCLA students explore the complex relationship between humans and one of the world's most familiar birds: the house sparrow. What begins as a simple question, are sparrows pests, unfolds into a discussion of ecology, history, politics, and human behavior. The episode examines two major historical c...

Produced by Harsimran Kaur & Mya Mitchell The zebra mussel is an aquatic mollusk species native to the Ural basin of western Europe. First discovered in the Great Lakes in the late 1980s, they have since been causing immense havoc in native ecosystems, recreational water areas, and municipal water infrastructure in North American fresh waterways, despite being no larger than the size of a thum...

20 Produced by Fairen Rachow, Sanjana Burugapalli, Joey Lin When Rats Fly: Why Did We Abandon the Pigeon? is an eye-opening historical and scientific podcast that challenges everything you think you know about America’s cities' most misunderstood residents. Hosted by Fairen, Joey, and Sanjana, the show tracks the dramatic, thousands-of-years-long trajectory of human-pigeon relations. Through...

Produced by June A. Bowery, Jasmine Saroa, Victoria Bouffard What happens when a fish becomes a symbol? In this episode, we follow invasive carp through the Illinois River, tracing a story that starts with federal fish commissions in the 1800s and leads to the Brandon Road Interbasin Project, a billion-dollar barrier system designed to keep carp out of the Great Lakes. The United States imported t...

Produced by Anya Mendelson, Jessica G, and Vincent Cao  In this episode of Enemies Underground , we’ll explore the long and complicated history between Californians and the California Ground Squirrel. Long before California was settled by Europeans, these squirrels inhabited the landscape and played an important role in local ecosystems. However, as human populations expanded, their relationship w...

Produced by Ee Mahmud and Hayley Torres  Mosquitoes kill more humans than any other animal on Earth. They carry malaria, dengue, Zika, yellow fever, and more. And despite decades of scientific effort and billions of dollars spent, we are still losing. In this episode, Ee Mahmud and Hayley Torres trace the history of humanity's attempts to fight back. They follow DDT and the ecological disaste...

Produced by: Mansi Sharma, Louis Wong, Jeffrey J. Lin Join us as we uncover the secrets of the MedFly through an examination of how California has historically managed its medfly infestations. As we move through decades of federal lawmaking, state policy decisions, and scientific research, we will expose how a decades-long disagreement between scientists and extreme pesticide spraying has shaped t...