Radiolab
Episodes
Seeing in the Dark
22 Oct 2012
Contributed by Lukas
John and Zoltan are both blind, but they deal with the world in completely different ways -- one paints vivid pictures in his mind, while the other re...
Dark Side of the Earth
08 Oct 2012
Contributed by Lukas
200 miles above Earth's surface, astronaut Dave Wolf -- rocketing through the blackness of Earth's shadow at 5 miles a second -- floated out of the Mi...
The Fact of the Matter
24 Sep 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Getting a firm hold on the truth is never as simple as nailing down the facts of a situation. This hour, we go after a series of seemingly simple fact...
What a Slinky Knows
10 Sep 2012
Contributed by Lukas
"Hey kids," said physicist Tadashi Tokieda, "Wanna see a magic trick?" He pulled out a Slinky and did something that amazed the kids, & their dad Stev...
Inside "Ouch!"
27 Aug 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Pain is a fundamental part of life, and often a very lonely part. Doctors want to understand their patients' pain, and we all want to understand the s...
REBROADCAST: Space
21 Aug 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Celebrate the 35th anniversary of the launch of Voyager 2 (it rocketed off Earth on 8/20/77 carrying a copy of the Golden Record), and tip your hat to...
Argentine Invasion
31 Jul 2012
Contributed by Lukas
From a suburban sidewalk in southern California, Jad and Robert witness the carnage of a gruesome turf war. Though the tiny warriors doing battle cloc...
Double Blasted
16 Jul 2012
Contributed by Lukas
In early August of 1945, Tsutomu Yamaguchi had a run of the worst luck imaginable. A double blast of radiation left his future, and the future of his ...
Radiolab Remixed
02 Jul 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Turning ideas into radio is one of the most exciting, frustrating, rewarding, and insanely fun things there is. Which got us thinking--why not ask you...
Grumpy Old Terrorists
04 Jun 2012
Contributed by Lukas
While working on The Bad Show, producer Pat Walters ran across some recordings that spooked him--partly because they seemed like they had to be a bi...
Colors
21 May 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Our world is saturated in color, from soft hues to violent stains. How does something so intangible pack such a visceral punch? This hour, in the name...
Colors Sneak Peek
14 May 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Just before the curtain went up on our live show in Los Angeles, Jad and Robert carved out a little stage time for a sneak peek at next week's Colors ...
Fetal Consequences
01 May 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Mother's day is nigh. Sort of. Anyway, without knowing it, you might have already given your mom a pretty lasting gift. But whether it helps or hurts ...
Crossroads
16 Apr 2012
Contributed by Lukas
In this short, we go looking for the devil, and find ourselves tangled in a web of details surrounding one of the most haunting figures in music--a le...
Guts
02 Apr 2012
Contributed by Lukas
This hour, we dive into the messy mystery in the middle of us. What's going on down there? And what can the rumblings deep in our bellies tell us abou...
The Turing Problem
19 Mar 2012
Contributed by Lukas
100 years ago this year, the man who first conceived of the computer age was born. His name was Alan Turing. He was also a math genius, a hero of Worl...
A War We Need
06 Mar 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Every day, every moment, an epic battle is raging across the globe. It's happening in the ocean. And the evidence is both highly visible and totally h...
Escape!
20 Feb 2012
Contributed by Lukas
The walls are closing in, you've got no way out... and then, suddenly, you escape! This hour, stories about traps, getaways, perpetual cycles, and sta...
Killer Empathy
07 Feb 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Sometimes being a good scientist requires putting aside your emotions. But what happens when objectivity isn't enough to make sense of a seemingly sen...
Wake Up and Dream
24 Jan 2012
Contributed by Lukas
In today's short, a man confronts a bully, and frees himself from a recurring nightmare that's terrorized him for more than 20 years.
The Bad Show
09 Jan 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Cruelty, violence, badness... This episode of Radiolab, we wrestle with the dark side of human nature, and ask whether it's something we can ever real...
Mutant Rights
22 Dec 2011
Contributed by Lukas
In this podcast short, a strange twist of legal taxonomy causes a dispute over whether X-MEN action figures are toys or dolls and sparks a court case...
Radiolab Presents: 99% Invisible
13 Dec 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Roman Mars loves to spotlight the seams and joints that make up the world around us. He's the host of an irresistible podcast called 99% Invisible--a ...
Death Mask
28 Nov 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Near the end of the 19th century, a mysterious young woman with a beguiling smile turned up in Paris. She became a huge sensation. She also happened t...
Patient Zero
14 Nov 2011
Contributed by Lukas
The greatest mysteries have a shadowy figure at the center—someone who sets things in motion and holds the key to how the story unfolds. In epidemio...
Sleepless in South Sudan
31 Oct 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Carl Zimmer is one of our go-to guys when we need help untangling a complicated scientific idea. But in this short, he unravels something much more pe...
Slow
18 Oct 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Kohn Ashmore’s voice is arresting. It stopped his friend Andy Mills in his tracks the first time they met. But in this short about the power of frie...
Loops
04 Oct 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Our lives are filled with loops that hurt us, heal us, make us laugh, and, sometimes, leave us wanting more. This hour, Radiolab investigates the stra...
Loop the Loop
20 Sep 2011
Contributed by Lukas
For most of human history, flight was an impossible dream. In this short, the dizzying rise and fall of a pilot whose aeronautic feats changed aviatio...
Mapping Tic Tac Toe-dom
06 Sep 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Writer Ian Frazier made a startling discovery several years ago in eastern Siberia: no one he met there had ever heard of tic tac toe. In this short, ...
Games
23 Aug 2011
Contributed by Lukas
A good game--whether it's a pro football playoff, or a family showdown on the kitchen table--can make you feel, at least for a little while, like your...
Damn It, Basal Ganglia
09 Aug 2011
Contributed by Lukas
The basal ganglia is a core part of the brain, deep inside your skull, that helps control movement. Unless something upsets the chain of command. In t...
A 4-Track Mind
26 Jul 2011
Contributed by Lukas
In this short, a neurologist issues a dare to a ragtime piano player and a famous conductor. When the two men face off in an fMRI machine, the challen...
REBROADCAST: Detective Stories
11 Jul 2011
Contributed by Lukas
We're celebrating summer with a classic episode of Radiolab--full of mystery, intrigue...and a goat standing on a cow. We haven't actually tried liste...
Curious Sounds: A Radiolab Concert
28 Jun 2011
Contributed by Lukas
In this short, Jad presents the electrifying sounds of three mind-bending musical acts: Brooklyn duo Buke & Gass, drummer Glenn Kotche of Wilco, and t...
Talking to Machines
31 May 2011
Contributed by Lukas
This hour of Radiolab, Jad and Robert meet humans and robots who are trying to connect, and blur the line.
Dogs Gone Wild
18 May 2011
Contributed by Lukas
In this short, a family dog disappears into the woods...and the mystery of what happened to him raises a big question about what it means to be wild.
Cosmic Habituation
03 May 2011
Contributed by Lukas
In this short, Jonathan Schooler tells us about a discovery that launched his career and led to a puzzle that has haunted him ever since.
Desperately Seeking Symmetry
18 Apr 2011
Contributed by Lukas
This hour of Radiolab, Jad and Robert set out in search of order and balance in the world around us, and ask how symmetry shapes our very existence ...
Pass the Science
22 Mar 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Richard Holmes went to Cambridge University intending to study the lives of poets. Until a dueling mathematician, and a dinner conversation composed e...
Help!
08 Mar 2011
Contributed by Lukas
What do you do when your own worst enemy is...you? This hour, Radiolab looks for ways to gain the upper hand over those forces inside us--from unhealt...
A Flock of Two
23 Feb 2011
Contributed by Lukas
In today's short, we get to know a man who struggles, and mostly fails, to contain his violent outbursts...until he meets a bird who can keep him in ...
Radiolab Presents: The Loneliness of the Goalkeeper
09 Feb 2011
Contributed by Lukas
This week on the podcast, football! No, it's not a Super Bowl recap. Jad and Robert present a piece from across the pond--a piece about soccer they fe...
Lost & Found
25 Jan 2011
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we steer our way through a series of stories about getting lost, and ask how our brains, and our hearts, help us find our way back ho...
The Universe Knows My Name
11 Jan 2011
Contributed by Lukas
In this new short, we explore luck and fate, both good and bad, with an author and a cartoon character.
Blood Buddies
28 Dec 2010
Contributed by Lukas
In this new short, a tree full of blood-sucking bats lends a startling twist to our understanding of altruism and natural selection.
The Good Show
14 Dec 2010
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, a question that haunted Charles Darwin: if natural selection boils down to survival of the fittest, how do you explain why one creatu...
Gravitational Anarchy
29 Nov 2010
Contributed by Lukas
A mysterious case of the topsy turvies and a return to the question of what felines feel when they fall.
What Does Technology Want?
16 Nov 2010
Contributed by Lukas
Are new ideas and new inventions inevitable? Are they driven by us or by a larger force of nature?
Wild Talk
18 Oct 2010
Contributed by Lukas
In today's podcast, we get a tantalizing taste of words in the wild, from the jungles to the prairie.
Cities
08 Oct 2010
Contributed by Lukas
In this hour of Radiolab, we take to the street to ask what makes cities tick.
The Walls of Jericho
04 Oct 2010
Contributed by Lukas
Jad and Robert pit physics against a bible story with this simple question: could a team of trumpeters really bring down the walls of Jericho?
Voices in Your Head
08 Sep 2010
Contributed by Lukas
Jad talks to Charles Fernyhough about the connection between thought, inner speech, and the voice in our heads.
Words
09 Aug 2010
Contributed by Lukas
It’s almost impossible to imagine a world without words. But this hour, we try to do just that.
Secrets of Success
27 Jul 2010
Contributed by Lukas
Malcolm Gladwell doesn't like Gifted and Talented Education Programs. And he doesn't believe that innate ability can fully explain superstar hockey p...
The Luckiest Lobster
12 Jul 2010
Contributed by Lukas
One place you absolutely, positively do not want to be if you're a healthy, middle-aged American lobster: trapped in a suburban grocery store in weste...
Oops
28 Jun 2010
Contributed by Lukas
Oops. In this hour of Radiolab, stories of unintended consequences.
Strangers in the Mirror
16 Jun 2010
Contributed by Lukas
Oliver Sacks, the famous neuroscientist and author, can't recognize faces. Neither can Chuck Close, the great artist known for his enormous paintings...
Famous Tumors
17 May 2010
Contributed by Lukas
In this hour of Radiolab: an unflinching look at the good, bad, and ugly side of tumors.
Vanishing Words
05 May 2010
Contributed by Lukas
Agatha Christie's clever detective novels may reveal more about the inner workings of the human mind than she intended. In this podcast, a look at wha...
The Loudest Miniature Fuzz
21 Apr 2010
Contributed by Lukas
Music duo Buke and Gass play for us, attempt to describe their genre-bending sound, and talk a bit about what's it like to play out what you don't say...
Limits
05 Apr 2010
Contributed by Lukas
On this hour of Radiolab: a journey to the edge of human limits.
The Bus Stop
23 Mar 2010
Contributed by Lukas
There’s a common problem faced by Alzheimer's and Dementia patients all over the world: lost in their memories, they sometimes get disoriented, and ...
Do I Know You?
08 Mar 2010
Contributed by Lukas
How do you know your mother is really your mother? It's simple, right? You look at her, you recognize her, enough said. Well, in this podcast...it may...
Lucy
19 Feb 2010
Contributed by Lukas
Chimps. Bonobos. Humans. We're all great apes, but that doesn’t mean we’re one happy family. This hour of Radiolab: stories of trying to live toge...
The Shy Baboon
08 Feb 2010
Contributed by Lukas
In this podcast, a biopsychologist attempts to find an elusive bit of shared space across species lines.
Fu Manchu
26 Jan 2010
Contributed by Lukas
In our episode Animal Minds, we asked whether it was possible for one animal to know what was going on in another animal's mind. For us, it was a real...
Animal Minds
11 Jan 2010
Contributed by Lukas
In this hour of Radiolab, stories of cross-species communication.
In C
15 Dec 2009
Contributed by Lukas
Ok, so last podcast you heard counting babies. Here’s a new spin...
Numbers
30 Nov 2009
Contributed by Lukas
Whether you love 'em or hate 'em, chances are you rely on numbers every day of your life. Where do they come from, and what do they really do for us? ...
Killing Babies, Saving the World
17 Nov 2009
Contributed by Lukas
To get this podcast started, Robert ambushes Jad with a question...a question we've all been dying to ask him since June 10th, 2009, when Amil Abumrad...
Helicopter Boy
03 Nov 2009
Contributed by Lukas
In this podcast, a story about a mom, a boy, and a home-made helicopter.
New Normal?
19 Oct 2009
Contributed by Lukas
In this hour of Radiolab: reframing our ideas about normalcy.
Blink
06 Oct 2009
Contributed by Lukas
We ask a question we thought was a no-brainer in this podcast: why do we blink?
It Might Be Science
22 Sep 2009
Contributed by Lukas
They Might Be Giants just came out with a new album, 'Here Comes Science.' So we invited them to come play with us at our season launch party last wee...
Parasites
07 Sep 2009
Contributed by Lukas
What's gotten into you? In this hour, Radiolab uncovers a world full of parasites.
After Birth
25 Aug 2009
Contributed by Lukas
Pardon the graphic pun, but hey! For this podcast, Jad--a brand new father--wonders what's going on inside the head of his baby Amil.
15: Sum
14 Aug 2009
Contributed by Lukas
For meditation number fifteen we have a reading from David Eagleman's book Sum. It's a vision of the after life that's both playful and... horrifying....
14: The Four Groans
13 Aug 2009
Contributed by Lukas
Another meditation on what happens after the moment of death, this time as Shakespeare envisions it.
13: Gone
12 Aug 2009
Contributed by Lukas
We continue our meditations on death with a reading from poet and writer, Mark Doty. This is an excerpt from Doty's 1996 memoir Heaven's Coast.
12: Proof
11 Aug 2009
Contributed by Lukas
This week on the podcast, we continue our meditations on death. Our After Life episode had eleven meditations, and now we’re gonna throw a new one a...
After Life
27 Jul 2009
Contributed by Lukas
This hour: Radiolab stares down the very moment of passing, and speculates about what may lie beyond.
In Defense of Darwin?
14 Jul 2009
Contributed by Lukas
When evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins' daughter was six years old, he told her that flowers are not here for beauty, not here for the bees, but ...
Are We Coins?
30 Jun 2009
Contributed by Lukas
After we released our show about Stochasticity, we received a lot of comments about the idea humans can be just as predictable as coins. In that show,...
Stochasticity
15 Jun 2009
Contributed by Lukas
Stochasticity (a wonderfully slippery and smarty-pants word for randomness), may be at the very foundation of our lives. To understand how big a role ...
Stayin' Alive
02 Jun 2009
Contributed by Lukas
This week on the podcast we take a look at four unconventional ways to stay alive. We talk to geneticist George Church, who originally appeared in our...
AV Smackdown . . . The Podcast
19 May 2009
Contributed by Lukas
On May 6th, at WNYC's new Jerome L. Greene Performance Space, we opened up an age old can of worms. Jad and Robert faced off over which medium is supe...
Juana Molina
05 May 2009
Contributed by Lukas
Sometimes on the podcast, we like to talk about musicians and the music they make. Today we introduce you to Juana Molina. Last season we used some of...
In Silence
07 Apr 2009
Contributed by Lukas
Here at Radiolab we explore big ideas and ask big questions to see how the world works.
DIY Universe
26 Mar 2009
Contributed by Lukas
Can you make your own universe? We usually think of the universe as 'everything that exists,' so how could you make another one?
Mischel’s Marshmallows
09 Mar 2009
Contributed by Lukas
How are your New Year's resolutions holding out? This might at least help you feel better about them.
Darwinvaganza
24 Feb 2009
Contributed by Lukas
For this week's podcast, Radiolab throws a birthday party for Charles Darwin!
The Obama Effect, Perhaps.
28 Jan 2009
Contributed by Lukas
When Jad and Robert saw this article about a study that found a link between President Obama's election, and the test scores of African Americans, it ...
Yellow Fluff and Other Curious Encounters
12 Jan 2009
Contributed by Lukas
The quest for scientific knowledge is one of the great and noble pursuits of humankind. It's also one of the most dangerous, frustrating, ego-driven, ...
Diagnosis
29 Dec 2008
Contributed by Lukas
Humans love to solve problems. In this hour of Radiolab, diagnosis--our attempt to find out what's wrong, and give it a label.
Race
15 Dec 2008
Contributed by Lukas
This hour of Radiolab, a look at race.
Sperm
01 Dec 2008
Contributed by Lukas
Sperm carry half the genes needed for human life. In this hour of Radiolab, some basic questions and profound thoughts about reproduction.
Choice
17 Nov 2008
Contributed by Lukas
Logic and emotion aren't the only forces that guide our decisions. This hour of Radiolab, we turn up the volume on the voices in our heads, and try to...
Chris And Lisa
21 Oct 2008
Contributed by Lukas
Chris had a crush on Lisa. But how to woo her?
Sperm Tales
07 Oct 2008
Contributed by Lukas
In today’s podcast, a teaser for our hour-long Sperm show. If you think you learned all there is to know from that junior high school filmstrip, thi...