Podcast Directory

Episodes

Sometimes being a good scientist requires putting aside your emotions. But what happens when objectivity isn't enough to make sense of a seemingly senseless act of violence? In this short, Jad and Robert talk to an entomologist about the risks, and the rewards, of trying to see the world through someone else's eyes. 

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.

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 really understand, or fully escape.

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 about what it means to be human.

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 series of tiny radio stories that provoke enormous questions. Roman joins Jad and Robert to play a few favorites, and to chat about the hidden language of design that shapes our lives--from sound effects to stuff that’s more ... concrete.

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 to be dead. You'd probably recognize her face yourself. You might have even touched it.

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 epidemiology, this central character is known as Patient Zero—the case at the heart of an outbreak. This hour, Radiolab hunts for Patient Zeroes from all over the map.

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 personal.

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 friendship and familiarity, Andy explains that Kohn’s voice isn't the most striking thing about him at all.

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 strange things that emerge when something happens, then happens again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and … well, again.

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 aviation forever and turned chancy stunts into acrobatic mastery.

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, Jad and Robert wonder how a game that seems carved into childhood DNA could be completely unknown in some parts of the world.

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 whole life hangs in the balance. This hour of Radiolab, Jad and Robert wonder why we get so invested in something so trivial. What is it about games that make them feel so pivotal?

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 this short, Jad and Robert meet a young researcher who was studying what happens when the basal ganglia gets short-circuited in mice...until one fateful day, when things got really, really weird.

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 challenge is so unimaginably difficult that one man instantly gives up. But the other achieves a musical feat that ought to be impossible.

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 listening to it around a campfire, but we're betting it would totally work. See you in two weeks with a new short!

In this short, Jad presents the electrifying sounds of three mind-bending musical acts: Brooklyn duo Buke & Gass, drummer Glenn Kotche of Wilco, and the one-and-only Reggie Watts. Their performances were recorded live at our Curious Sounds concert earlier this month in NYC.

In 1562, King Philip II needed a miracle. So he commissioned one from a highly-skilled clockmaker. In this short, a king's deal with God leads to an intricate mechanical creation, and Jad heads to the Smithsonian to investigate. 

What can machines tell us about being human? This hour of Radiolab, Jad and Robert meet humans and robots who are trying to connect, and blur the line.

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.

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.

Is the world full of deep symmetries and ordered pairs? Or do we live in a lopsided universe? This striking video by Everynone plays with our yearning for balance, and reveals how beautiful imperfect matches can be. The video was inspired by our episode Desperately Seeking Symmetry.

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--from the origins of the universe, to what we see when we look in the mirror.

Diane Van Deren is one of the best ultra-runners in the world, and it all started with a seizure. In this short, Diane tells us how her disability gave rise to an extraordinary ability.

Richard Holmes went to Cambridge University intending to study the lives of poets. Until a dueling mathematician, and a dinner conversation composed entirely of gestures, changed his mind.

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 unhealthy urges, to creative insights--that seem to have a mind of their own.

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 check.

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 fell in love with when they heard it at the Third Coast festival in Chicago.

In this episode, Radiolab steers its way through a series of stories about getting lost, and asks how our brains, and our hearts, help us find our way back home. 

In this new short, we explore luck and fate, both good and bad, with an author and a cartoon character.

In this new short, a tree full of blood-sucking bats lends a startling twist to our understanding of altruism and natural selection.

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 creature might stick its neck out for another?

A mysterious case of the topsy turvies and a return to the question of what felines feel when they fall.

Are new ideas and new inventions inevitable? Are they driven by us or by a larger force of nature?

One tidy mathematical formula may hold the key to how cities work. This hour, Radiolab takes to the streets to test the numbers...and ask what really makes cities tick.

In today's podcast, we get a tantalizing taste of words in the wild, from the jungles to the prairie.

In this podcast, Jad and Robert throw some physics at a bible story. We find out just how many trumpeters you'd actually need to blow down the walls of Jericho.

This hour, Radiolab rollicks through stories of falling. We plunge into a black hole, take a trip over Niagara Falls, and upend some myths about falling cats.

In this podcast, Jad talks to Charles Fernyhough about the connection between thought and the voice in your head. How did it get there? And what's happening when people hear someone else's voice in their head?

This hour, Radiolab revels in the elasticity of Time, and takes a spin through history--stopping at a 19th-century railroad station in Ohio, a track meet, and a Beethoven concert.

Words have the power to shape the way we think and feel. In this stunning video (made to accompany our Words episode), filmmakers Will Hoffman and Daniel Mercadante bandy visual wordplay into a moving exploration of the power of language.

It’s almost impossible to imagine a world without words. But in this hour of Radiolab, we try to do just that. A woman teaches a 27-year-old the first words of his life, and a neurologist suffers a stroke that wipes out the language center of her brain.

Robert and Malcolm Gladwell duke it out over questions of luck, talent, passion, and success.

An unlikely escape story begins in a supermarket, and ends in a boat off the coast of Maine.

Oops. In this hour of Radiolab, stories of unintended consequences--from a psychologist whose zeal to safeguard national security may have backfired, to a toxic lake that spawned new life.

Oliver Sacks, the famous neuroscientist and author, can't recognize faces. Neither can Chuck Close--the great artist known for his enormous paintings of ... that's right, faces.

We examine the strange power of lies with a charismatic cast of characters (from pathological liars to lying snakes to drunken psychiatrists) on this hour of Radiolab.

This hour of Radiolab: famous tumors. Say hello to the growth that killed Ulysses S. Grant, and get to know the woman whose cancer cells changed modern medicine. The good, bad,…and ugly side of anatomical aberrations.

When scientists treat words like data, clues to the real-life mysteries of human aging are found in the writings of Agatha Christie and 678 nuns.

Music duo Buke and Gass talk to Jad about coaxing delightfully twangy sounds from their homemade instruments.

A journey to the edge of human limits. On this hour of Radiolab, we test physical endurance with a bike race that makes the Tour de France look like child’s play, and mental capacity with a mind-stretching memory competition.

Lulu Miller talks to a nursing home in Düsseldorf, Germany that came up with a novel approach to caring for Alzheimer's and Dementia patients.

A rare and haunting disorder called Capgras turns loved ones into imposters--and reveals that recognizing people, even the people we know the best, is more about how they make us feel than what we see in front of our eyes.

Chimps. Bonobos. Humans. We're all great apes, but that doesn’t mean we’re one happy family. On this hour of Radiolab: stories of living together--from a chimp named Lucy, to the basics of bonobo culture (be careful, they bite).

Biopsychologist Barbara Smuts takes us to a remote area of Kenya, where she tried to gain the trust of a troop of baboons in the 1970s.

A showdown between a zookeeper and an orangutan named Fu Manchu raises a question: can an animal know what's in your head well enough to manipulate and deceive you?

This hour of Radiolab: communicating across species. We get the story of a rescued whale that may have found a way to say thanks, ask whether dogs feel guilt, and wonder if a successful predator may have fallen in love with a photographer.

From the symbolic power of the doctor coat, to the very real stash of opium in your brain, this hour of Radiolab explores the healing powers of belief and imagination.

Jad talks to musicians Michael Lowenstern and Zoe Keating about their remixes of Terry Riley's In C.

Regardless of how you feel about numbers, chances are you rely on them every day. This hour, Radiolab ponders the nature of numbers, and wonders what life might look like without them.

Robert ambushes Jad with a question we've all been dying to ask him since he became a father. And we revisit some other ideas from our Morality show to think about a few really big modern-day problems (think global warming and nuclear war).

A story about a boy, a mom, and a homemade helicopter--and how radio can move you to feel a little bit different about the world.

This hour of Radiolab: stories of adaptation. Is a peacenik baboon, a man in a dress, or a cuddly fox a sign of things to come? Or just a flukey outlier? We reframe our ideas about normalcy.

We tackle a question we thought was a no-brainer: why do we blink?

They Might Be Giants celebrate at our season launch party with a live concert, and a conversation about the tricky business of combining science and entertainment.

What's gotten into you? In this hour of Radiolab: encounters with parasites. Tales of lethargic farmers, zombie cockroaches, and even mind-controlled humans (kinda, maybe).

Jad--a brand new father--wonders what's going on inside the head of his baby Amil. Is it just chaos? Or is there something more, some understanding from the very beginning?

After hearing our show about moments of death, filmmaker Will Hoffman went out in search of moments of life. What follows is what he found.

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. Sum is read by actor Jeffrey Tambor.

Another meditation on what happens after the moment of death, this time as Shakespeare envisions it. 

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.

This week on the podcast, we continue our meditations on death (our After Life episode had eleven). We'll throw a new one at you each day, all week long, culminating in a very special treat at the end of the week.

Death is inevitable. But is it truly final? This hour: Radiolab stares down the very moment of passing, and speculates about what may lay beyond. 

Robert challenges Richard Dawkins on a number of sticky spots on the subject of biological evolution.

We follow up on our Stochasticity show with an exploration pf whether the little choices we make every day are predictable or not.

We have a special bonus this week to accompany our Stochasticity episode. We asked our friends, Higher Mammals to produce a song and video for our Stochasticity show. We hope you find it completely Random!

Stochasticity is a wonderfully slippery and smarty-pants word for randomness. This hour of Radiolab: making sense of the patterns we see-- from lucky streaks to gambling odds, to two girls named Laura.

A look at four unconventional ways to stay alive.

We open up an age old can of worms at WNYC's Jerome L. Greene Performance Space: which medium is superior -- television or radio? Jad and Robert face off, with This American Life's Ira Glass as referee.

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 her of music in the breaks for the Sperm show.

Under high gravity forces, fighter pilots often lose consciousness while flying jet planes. This hour of Radiolab, examining the connection between your brain and your body...and what happens when it breaks.

There are some questions that just don't give in to experiments and data. We take on one of those questions.

Can you make your own universe? We usually think of the universe as 'everything that exists,' so how could you make another one?

Psychologist Walter Mischel explains how one little test involving a marshmallow might tell you a frightening amount about what kind of person you are.

Radiolab throws a birthday party for Charles Darwin! Robert Krulwich invites three experts to toast the birthday boy.

A study that finds a link between President Obama's election and the test scores of African Americans gets Jad and Robert thinking about an earlier study on a psychological effect called "stereotype threat."

Special bonus of the week! A video inspired by the mathematician, Steve Strogatz. At the age of thirteen, Steve was astonished to find that pendulums and water fountains had a strange relationship that had previously been completely hidden from him.

The pursuit of knowledge leads sometimes to answers, often to failure, and almost invariably to more questions. In this hour of Radiolab, stories of love and loss in the name of science.

What's in a name? In this hour of Radiolab: diagnosis—our attempt to find out what's wrong, and give it a label. We examine how we get to the root of a problem, and how we react when we get there.

Our genes are nearly all the same, but that hasn't made race meaningless. This hour, Radiolab asks what race is, and whether it's fixed or fluid, genes or culture?

Sperm carry half the genes needed for human life. In this hour of Radiolab, we examine our beginnings, take a tour of the animal kingdom, and ponder a world where frozen sperm can last for all eternity.

When presented with a choice, logic and emotion pipe up. This hour of Radiolab, we turn up the volume on those voices in our heads, and try to get to the bottom of what really steers our decisions.

In 1938, Orson Welles produced a radio play that sounded an awful lot like a news report about Martians invading New Jersey. On this hour of Radiolab: deconstructing “The War of the Worlds,” and the power of mass media to create panic.

Chris had a crush on Lisa. But how to woo her? He met her on a park bench in Chicago, handed her a stack of CD's, and sent her off on an extremely specific mission. Did it work? Find out on this week's podcast.

Two short pieces on sperm that hint at the new ideas and amazing stories we came across once we started following the trail of this wriggly little cell.

Remember the first time you ever saw an ant hill? That parade of black insects pouring in and out of a small sand mound...most of us stopped, looked, and then moved on to other parts of the playground. E. O. Wilson is the kid who never took his eyes off the mound.

We play some never-released tape from the vault, and reveal a bit about what techniques we used to try and make it sing.

Jad and cellist Zoe Keating discuss the physics (if not metaphysics) of looping sound, and how to use a 17th century instrument to make avant-garde electronic music.

Robert and Brian Greene discuss what's beyond the horizon of our universe, what you might wear in infinite universes with finite pairs of designer shoes, and why the Universe and swiss cheese have more in common than you think.

Robert Krulwich's commencement speech at California Institute of Technology gets at the heart of what we do here at Radiolab. It's a treat to hear his passion. We enjoyed it. And we thought you might too.

This week, a piece from one of our favorite radio-makers, Jonathan Mitchell. 'City X' is a history of the modern shopping mall through perspectives of people living in a real, yet unnamed, city.

First, we asked you to tell us what song gets stuck in your head. Then, we asked youhow you got it out. Finally, we made a podcast. Thank you to everyone who called in, shared their secret techniques, and sang without shame.

An excerpt from Wordless Music on WNYC, a 4-part music program hosted by Jad, exploring the boundaries between classical and pop music. Jad waxes googly-eyed fan when he gets to talk about one of his favorite bands, Stars of the Lid.

Jad presents a piece by one of his favorite producers: Ben Rubin. This audio portrait, called 'Open Outcry,' visits the trading floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange, with its hundreds of traders shouting unintelligible phonic abbreviations and numbers back and forth.

Ever wonder how Jad and Robert met? They tell their tale on stage at Oberlin College, and talk about how they started tinkering around with tape to come up with the Radiolab you know today.

This hour of Radiolab, pop music's pull: nightmarish stories of musical hallucinations, songs that transcend language, and the triumphant return of the Elvis of Afghanistan.

The uneasy marriage of biology and engineering raises big questions about the nature of life. In this hour, Radiolab journeys to the first billion years of life on Earth, looks at how modern engineers tinker with living things, and meets a woman who could have been two people.

This hour of Radiolab teases out stories of laughter--from a baby’s crib, to a rat’s cage, to a remote village in Tanzania that was struck by a laughing epidemic 45 years ago.

Jad plays one of his favorite pieces of all time, 'IF' by Sherre DeLys.

Imagine that you're a composer. Imagine getting the commission to write a song that will allow family members to face the death of a loved one. David Lang had to do just that when a hospital in Garches, France, asked him to write music for their morgue, or 'Salle Des Departs.'

It might seem hyperbole to claim, as many Wagnerites do, that The Ring Cycle is 'The Greatest Work of Art Ever.' But it's permeated our culture from Star Wars to Bugs Bunny to J.R.R. Tolkien. On this Radiolab/WNYC Special, we explore the impact and influence of Wagner's Ring Cycle on the Metropolitan Opera's 2004 Presentation.

In 1903, Wilbur and Orville Wright managed to coax their spruce biplane off the North Carolina sand for twelve seconds, and those twelve seconds started a revolution in flight. We examine the human desire to fly, and how getting flight changed us.

This week, a look at the different ways that people connect to each other, and how they act once they’re together. NOTE: This episode contains EXPLICIT language about sex.

How would you describe life on Earth to an alien? In 1977, the Voyager spacecraft launched into space. And with it, went the Golden Record-- a sort of time capsule, a collection of sounds and images that would describe life on Earth to whomever or whatever might find it.

In spring of 2006, Jad and Robert took the stage at the SoHo Apple Store to talk about the making of Radiolab. Jad geeks out on digital sound editing, and Robert raises editorial questions. And film editor joins them to Walter Murch weigh in on storytelling.

This hour of Radiolab, we ponder our insignificant place in the universe. We boldly go after stories of optimism, narcissism, and cynicism--stories all about Outer Space.

This hour of Radiolab: we explore the line between music and language, and turn to physics and biochemistry to ask how sound becomes feeling.

Digging up the past leads to some very unexpected finds. This hour, Radiolab plays detective and goes sleuthing in some rather unusual places: an ancient trash dump, the side of the highway, and in the blood of millions of Asians.

Jad turns to science to help strangers fall in love...or at least exchange a few phone numbers...as the host of a Singles Night. And he gets some advice from a few experts on the chemistry of a 'brain on love.'

What happens when there is no leader? Starlings, bees, and ants manage just fine. In fact, they form amazingly complicated societies. This hour of Radiolab: a look at the bottom-up logic of cities, Google, and even our brains.

For thousands of years philosophers have debated the essence of morality. Now, neuroscientists may have answers. This hour of Radiolab, stories of chimps sharing, human toddlers fighting, and 4th graders playing slumlords.

This hour of Radiolab: fighting the inevitable march of time. We meet a scientist and his particle accelerator, an artist, and a whole cast of characters in the Mojave Desert, where geologic time flows like a frozen hourglass.

Some scientists claim that aging is a disease that can be cured. On this hour of Radiolab, the modern search for the fountain of youth, and personal stories of witnessing death: the death of a cell, the death of a loved one, and the aging of a society.

Remembering is a tricky, unstable business. This hour of Radiolab: implanting false memories in loved ones, and erasing painful memories by simply swallowing a pill. Plus: the story of a man with the worst case of amnesia ever documented.

Blood-thirsty Romans, frozen carcasses, wild jaguars, and a question: how do you build a better cage? This hour of Radiolab, we head to the zoo.

Sleep is one of science's greatest mysteries. This hour of Radiolab, we look for answers in iguanas who doze with one eye open, new parents in the throes of sleep deprivation, and rats who may be dreaming.

The "mind" and "self" were formerly the domain of philosophers and priests. But in this hour of Radiolab, neurologists lead the charge. We  reflect on the illusion of selfhood, contemplate the evolution of consciousness, and meet a woman who one day woke up as a completely different person.

Stress may save your life if you're being chased by a tiger. But if you're stuck in traffic, it may be more likely to make you sick. This hour of Radiolab, stories of stress--from a singer who loses her voice, to an author caught in a body that never grew up.