This is Radio Atlantic. I'm Hannah Rosen. A few weeks ago, one of our science editors, Dan

Angber, said he had a story to tell me. It's a little weird, definitely gross, but it's amazing.

Here it is.

We'll first close the door behind you.

Hey.

Hello.

What's up? So I have a story about a scientific discovery made in very recent times

that no one thought was possible. Ooh. Which changed the lives of millions, but no one remembers it. Wow, that sounds fake.

Do you want to tell me what it is?

Sure. Well, okay, so this is a story of a forgotten solution,

but also of a forgotten problem, and that problem is cockroaches.

Cockroaches.

What do you mean cockroaches are a forgotten problem? I feel like I saw one recently.

Right, you saw one, one cockroach. Yeah. In the 1980s, there were a lot of cockroaches everywhere.

Cockroaches were like a national news story

and almost like a public health emergency.

So there would be articles with various levels of alarmism about how the risk of being hospitalized

for childhood asthma was three times higher in kids who were exposed to cockroach infestations. There were stories about how cockroaches could carry the polio

and yellow fever viruses. Okay, so cockroaches everywhere, cockroaches bad for your health.

Cockroaches everywhere, cockroaches bad for your health. Cockroaches everywhere, cockroaches bad for your health.

Cockroaches in the nation's capital.

Congress certainly has its hands full these days with the deficit, the MX Central America,

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