3-Minute Insect Essential #40 from the INSECT NEWS NETWORK

CULTURAL ENTOMEDIA – Hard Workers, Underappreciated Allies (INN #40). This is Cultural Entomology at its best! To hear the full broadcast, visit www.insectnewsnetwork.com and type in number 40 - that's pound 40 - in the search bar. And be sure to Join the Insect Tribe! Sign up for our newsletter, the Periodical Buzz. Since it is baseball season: What do Catcher in the Rye, Online Chat and Government Housing in Slovenia have in common?

If you guessed that they all have a connection to bugs, you are absolutely right.

It's a Wednesday show so I go through an unusual set of Hexapod Headliners where we look inside the brain of a grasshopper, I talk about a movie about president Barack Obama and the insect metaphors rife within, and we reveal a little beetle whose scales are photonic crystals that are revolutionizing the computer industry.

And yes once again we find an example of honey-bee inspired biomimicry, which leads us to the Honeybee Apartments in Slovenia. Designed to look and work like the hexagonal patterned of honeycomb.

I also coin a term (and I might be the only person to ever use it) called Cultural Entomedia.