Radiolab
Radiolab is on a curiosity bender. We ask deep questions and use investigative journalism to get the answers. A given episode might whirl you through science, legal history, and into the home of someone halfway across the world. The show is known for innovative sound design, smashing information into music. It is hosted by Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser.
Episodes (50)
Malthusian Swerve
Earth can sustain life for another 100 million years, but can we?In this episode, we partnered with the team at Planet Money to take stock of the essential raw materials that enable us to live as we...
Everybody's Got One
We all think we know the story of pregnancy. Sperm meets egg, followed by nine months of nurturing, nesting, and quiet incubation. this story isn’t the nursery rhyme we think it is. In a way, it’s a...
Growth
It’s easy to take growth for granted, for it to seem expected, inevitable even. Every person starts out as a baby and grows up. Plants grow from seeds into food. The economy grows. That stack of mail...
More Perfect: Sex Appeal
In 2017 our sister show, More Perfect aired an episode all about RBG, In September of 2020, we lost Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the annals of history. She was 87. Given the...
Revenge of the Miasma
Today we uncover an invisible killer hidden, for over a hundred years, by reasonable disbelief. Science journalist extraordinaire Carl Zimmer tells us the story of a centuries-long battle of ideas...
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Today, a story that starts small and private, with one woman alone in her bathroom, as she makes a quiet, startling discovery about her own body. But that small, private moment grows and grows, and...
Quantum Birds
Annie McEwen went to a mountain in Pennsylvania to help catch some migratory owls. Then Scott Weidensaul peeled back the owl’s feathery face disc, so that she could look at the back of its eyeball....
Vertigogo
In this episode, first aired in 2012, we have two stories of brains pushed off-course. We relive a surreal day in the life of a young researcher hijacked by her own brain, and hear from a librarian...
Forever Fresh
We eat apples in the summer and enjoy bananas in the winter. When we do this, we go against the natural order of life which is towards death and decay. What gives? This week, Latif Nasser spoke with...
Nukes
In an episode first reported in 2017, we bring you a look up and down the US nuclear chain of command to find out who gets to authorize their use and who can stand in the way of Armageddon....
The Darkest Dark
We fall down the looking glass with Sönke Johnsen, a biologist who finds himself staring at one of the darkest things on the planet. So dark, it’s almost like he’s holding a blackhole in his hands....
Smarty Plants
In an episode we first aired in 2018, we asked the question, do you really need a brain to sense the world around you? To remember? Or even learn? Well, it depends on who you ask. Jad and Robert,...
Match Made in Marrow
In an episode first reported in 2017, we bring you what may be, maybe the greatest gift one person could give to another.
You never know what might happen when you sign up to donate bone marrow....
Probing Where the Sun Does Shine: A Holiday Special
This holiday season, we want to take you on a trip around the heavens.First, co-host Latif Nasser, with the help of Nour Raouafi, of NASA, and an edge-cutting piece of equipment, explain how we may...
Curiosity Killed the Adage
The early bird gets the worm. What goes around, comes around. It’s always darkest just before dawn. We carry these little nuggets of wisdom—these adages—with us, deep in our psyche. But recently we...
Dark Side of the Earth
Back in 2012, when we were putting together our live show In the Dark, Jad and Robert called up Dave Wolf to ask him if he had any stories about darkness. And boy, did he. Dave told us two stories...
How Stockholm Stuck
How an idea born in a Swedish bank wormed its way into all of our brains.
In August of 1973, Jan-Erik Olsson walked into the lobby of a bank in central Stockholm. He fired his submachine gun at the...
Less Than Kilogram
In today’s story, which originally aired in 2014, we meet a very special cylinder. It's the gold standard (or, in this case, the platinum-iridium standard) for measuring mass. For decades it's been...
Science Vs: The Funniest Joke in the World
When he rounded them up, he had a 100.
A few months ago, Wendy Zukerman invited our own Latif Nasser to come on her show, and, of course, he jumped at the chance.
Laughter ensued, as they set off...
Hello
It's tough to make small talk with a stranger—especially when that stranger doesn't speak your language. (And he has a blowhole.)
It's hard to start a conversation with a stranger—especially when...
The Ecstasy of an Open Brain
As we grow up, there are little windows of time when we can learn very, very fast, and very, very deeply. Scientists call these moments, critical periods. Real, neurological, biological states when...
Haunted
Do you believe in ghosts?
In an episode we first aired in 2014, we meet a man named Dennis Conrow, who was stuck. After a brief stint at college, he’d spent most of his 20’s back home with his...
The Unpopular Vote
The closest we ever came to abolishing the electoral college and why we probably never will.As the US Presidential Election nears, Radiolab covers the closest we ever came to abolishing the Electoral...
Tweak the Vote
Is democracy fundamentally broken? Or does i just need a ... tweak?
Back in 2018, when this episode first aired, there was a feeling that democracy was on the ropes. In the United States and...
Why Don't Sex Scandals Matter Anymore?
Roosevelt, Kennedy, Eisenhower … they all got a pass. But today we peer back at the moment when poking into the private lives of political figures became standard practice.
In 1987, Gary Hart was a...
Terrestrials: Stumpisode
As dead as they seem, tree stumps are hubs of life and relationships.
Co-host Lulu Miller is back with another season of her hit spinoff show Terrestrials, and to celebrate, we’re sharing the...
Octomom
A mile under the ocean, we get to watch an octopus perform a heroic act of heart and determination.
First aired back in 2020, this episode follows the story of an octopus living one mile under the...
A Little Pompeiian Fish Sauce Goes a Long Way
Today we follow a sleuth who has spent over a decade working to solve an epic mystery hiding in plain historical sight: did anyone survive the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD?
Tired of hearing...
The Times They Are a-Changin'
With the help of paleontologist Neil Shubin, reporter Emily Graslie and the Field Museum's Paul Mayer we discover that our world is full of ancient coral calendars.
This episode first aired back in...
Shell Game
One man secretly hands off more and more of his life to an AI voice clone.
Today, we feature veteran journalist Evan Ratliff who - for his new podcast Shell Game - decided to slowly replace himself...
Big Little Questions
Here at the show, we get A LOT of questions, tiny questions, big questions, weird questions, poop questions. Today, we’re dumping the bucket out.
First aired back in 2017, here’s a show of questions...
Uneasy as ABC
How a plane crash in Nebraska gave us the modern ER.
February 1976. A flight out of California turned catastrophic when it crashed into a farm in rural Nebraska. What happened that night at the...
More Perfect: The Gun Show
In 2008, the Supreme Court stepped in to settle our fight over the Second Amendment’s meaning. They did. And they didn’t.
Given that we’re all gearing up for the Presidential race, and how gun...
Up in Smoke
Wildfires, a mysterious outbreak, and a question – is there something in the smoke?
Two scenes. In the first, a doctor gets a call — the hospital she works at is having an outbreak of unknown...
Sleep
Birds do it, bees do it...yet science still can't answer the basic question: why do we sleep?
We had a question back in 2007, about a thing every creature on the planet does--from giant humpback...
Terrestrials: The Trio
Look up in the sky! It is something that scientists thought could never happen.
High above the banks of the Mississippi river, a nest holds the secret life of one of America’s most patriotic...
Lose Lose
This episode we look at a high profile sporting event where, thanks to a quirk in the tournament rules, the best shot at winning was … to lose.
To celebrate the imminent start of the Summer...
How to Save a Life
What would you do if someone’s heart stopped right in front of you?
We get it… the world feels too bleak and too big for you to make a difference. But there is one thing - one simple tangible thing...
Happy Birthday, Good Dr. Sacks
Radiolab wishes Oliver Sacks a happy birthday.
First aired back in 2013, we originally released this episode to celebrate the 80th birthday of one of our favorite human beings, Oliver Sacks. To...
The Alford Plea
A man finds himself forever caught between guilt and innocence.
In 1995, a tragic fire in Pittsburgh set off a decades-long investigation that sent Greg Brown Jr. to prison. But, after a series of...
Birdie in the Cage
Can you fit the identity of a whole nation into a dance? Of course not. But we tried anyway.
People have been doing the square dance since before the Declaration of Independence. But does that mean...
Aphantasia
What does it mean to see – and not see – in your mind?
Close your eyes and imagine a red apple. What do you see? Turns out there’s a whole spectrum of answers to that question and Producer Sindhu...
Argentine Invasion
From a suburban sidewalk in southern California, Jad and Robert witness the carnage of a gruesome turf war. Though the tiny warriors doing battle clock in at just a fraction of an inch, they have...
Mixtapes to the Moon
They promised to change you. They ended up changing all of us.
On July 20, 1969 humanity watched as Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon. It was the dazzling culmination of a decade of teamwork,...
Lucy
Chimps. Bonobos. Humans. We're all great apes, but that doesn’t mean we’re one happy family.
This episode, a mashup of content stretching all the way back to 2010, asks the question, is...
Selected Shorts
A selection of short flights of fact and fancy performed live on stage.
Usually we tell true stories at this show, but earlier this spring we were invited to guest host a live show called Selected...
Memory and Forgetting
Remembering is a tricky, unstable business. This hour: a look behind the curtain of how memories are made...and forgotten.
The act of recalling in our minds something that happened in the past is...
Small Potatoes
An ode to the small, the banal, the overlooked things that make up the fabric of our lives.
Most of our stories are about the big stuff: Important or dramatic events, big ideas that transform the...
The Distance of the Moon
In an episode we last featured on our Radiolab for Kids Feed back in 2020, and in honor of its blocking out the Sun for a bit of us for a bit last week, in this episode, we’re gonna talk more about...
The Moon Itself
There’s a total solar eclipse coming. On Monday, April 8, for a large swath of North America, the sun will disappear, in the middle of the day. Everywhere you look, people are talking about it. What...
About this Podcast
Copyright
© WNYC Studios
Language
en-us