Radiolab

Radiolab

The Radio Lab

May 25 • 39 min

15 years ago the very first episode of Radiolab, fittingly called “Firsts,” hit the airwaves. It was a 3-hour long collection of documentaries and musings produced by a solitary sleep-deprived producer named Jad Abumrad. Things have changed a bit since…

Null and Void

May 12 • 50 min

Today, a hidden power that is either the cornerstone of our democracy or a trapdoor to anarchy. Should a juror be able to ignore the law? From a Quaker prayer meeting in the streets of London, to riots in the streets of LA, we trace the history of a quiet…

Funky Hand Jive

Apr 26 • 28 min

Back when Robert was kid, he had a chance encounter with then President John F. Kennedy. The interaction began with a hello and ended with a handshake. And like many of us who have touched greatness, 14 year old Robert was left wondering if maybe some of…

Radiolab Extra: Henrietta Lacks

Apr 18 • 35 min

With all the recent talk about HBO’s upcoming film, we decided it would be good time to re-run our story of one woman’s medically miraculous cancer cells, and how Henrietta Lacks changed modern science and, eventually, her family’s understanding of itself.

Nukes

Apr 7 • 55 min

President Richard Nixon once boasted that at any moment he could pick up a telephone and - in 20 minutes - kill 60 million people. Such is the power of the US President over the nation’s nuclear arsenal. But what if you were the military officer on the…

Shots Fired: Part 2

Mar 24 • 26 min

A couple years ago, Ben Montgomery, reporter at the Tampa Bay Times, started emailing every police station in Florida. He was asking for any documents created - from 2009 to 2014 - when an officer discharged his weapon in the line of duty. He ended up…

Shots Fired: Part 1

Mar 17 • 55 min

A couple years ago, Ben Montgomery, reporter at the Tampa Bay Times, started emailing every police station in Florida. He was asking for any documents created - from 2009 to 2014 - when an officer discharged his weapon in the line of duty. He ended up…

Update: CRISPR

Feb 24 • 49 min

It’s been almost two years since we learned about CRISPR, a ninja-assassin-meets-DNA-editing-tool that has been billed as one of the most powerful, and potentially controversial, technologies ever discovered by scientists. In this episode, we catch up on…

Radiolab Presents: Ponzi Supernova

Feb 10 • 38 min

We thought we knew the story of Bernie Madoff. How he masterminded the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, leaving behind scores of distraught investors and a $65 billion black hole. But we had never heard the story from Madoff himself. This week, reporter…

Stranger in Paradise

Jan 27 • 43 min

Back in 1911, a box with a dead raccoon in it showed up in Washington D.C., at the office of Gerrit S. Miller. After pulling it out and inspecting it, he realized this raccoon was from the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe, and unlike anything he’d ever…

Radiolab Presents: On the Media: Busted, America’s Poverty Myths

Jan 18 • 33 min

We love to share great radio, even if we didn’t make it. Today, On the Media’s Brooke Gladstone tells Jad and Robert about a mammoth project they launched to take a critical look at the tales we tell ourselves when we talk about poverty. In a 5-part…

Lose Lose

Dec 30, 2016 • 25 min

No matter what sport you play, the object of the game is to win. And that’s hard enough to do. But we found a match where four top athletes had to do the opposite in one of the most high profile matches of their careers. Thanks to a quirk in the…

It’s Not Us, It’s You

Dec 16, 2016 • 59 min

It’s the end of the year, and the entire Radiolab team is starting to take stock and come up for air. We’re excited about how much ground we’ve covered - stories about college debaters and figure skaters, meat allergies and salmon-eating trees, deathwatch…

Bringing Gamma Back

Dec 8, 2016 • 24 min

Today, a startling new discovery: prodding the brain with light, a group of scientists got an unexpected surprise — they were able to turn back on a part of the brain that had been shut down by Alzheimer’s disease. This new science is not a cure, and is…

Radiolab Presents: More Perfect - Object Anyway

Nov 22, 2016 • 49 min

At the trial of James Batson in 1982, the prosecution eliminated all the black jurors from the jury pool. Batson objected, setting off a complicated discussion about jury selection that would make its way all the way up to the Supreme Court. On this…

One Vote

Nov 7, 2016 • 48 min

Come election season, it’s easy to get cynical. Why cast a ballot if your single measly vote can’t possibly change anything? In our first-ever election special, we set off to find a single vote that made a difference. We venture from the biggest election…

Alpha Gal

Oct 27, 2016 • 34 min

Tuck your napkin under your chin. We’re about to serve up a tale of love, loss, and lamb chops. For as long as she can remember, Amy Pearl has loved meat in all its glorious cuts and marbled flavors. And then one day, for seemingly no reason, her body…

Seneca, Nebraska

Oct 12, 2016 • 29 min

Back in 2014 the town of Seneca, Nebraska was deeply divided. How divided? They were so fed up with each other that some citizens began circulating a petition that proposed a radical solution. If a majority wanted to they’d self-destruct, end the town and…

The Primitive Streak

Sep 23, 2016 • 29 min

Last May, two research groups announced a breakthrough: they each grew human embryos, in the lab, longer than ever before. In doing so, they witnessed a period of human development no one had ever seen. But in the process, they crashed up against…

Update: Eye In the Sky

Sep 12, 2016 • 36 min

An update on Ross McNutt and his superpower — he can zoom in on everyday life, then rewind and fast-forward to solve crimes in a shutter-flash. But should he? In 2004, when casualties in Iraq were rising due to roadside bombs, Ross McNutt and his team…

The Girl Who Doesn’t Exist

Aug 29, 2016 • 33 min

In today’s episode, we meet a young woman from Texas, born and raised, who can’t prove that she exists. Alecia Faith Pennington was born at home, homeschooled, and never visited a dentist or a hospital. By both chance and design she is completely…

Playing God

Aug 21, 2016 • 61 min

When people are dying and you can only save some, how do you choose? Maybe you save the youngest. Or the sickest. Maybe you even just put all the names in a hat and pick at random. Would your answer change if a sick person was standing right in front of…

From Tree to Shining Tree

Jul 30, 2016 • 32 min

A forest can feel like a place of great stillness and quiet. But if you dig a little deeper, there’s a hidden world beneath your feet as busy and complicated as a city at rush hour. In this story, a dog introduces us to a strange creature that burrows…

David and the Wire

Jul 12, 2016 • 31 min

David Weinberg was stuck. He had been kicked out of college, was cleaning toilets by day, delivering pizzas by night and spending his weekends in jail. Then one night he heard a story on the radio and got it in his head that maybe he too could make a…

Radiolab Presents: More Perfect - The Imperfect Plaintiffs

Jun 28, 2016 • 65 min

On this episode, we visit Edward Blum, a 64-year-old “legal entrepreneur” and former stockbroker who has become something of a Supreme Court matchmaker. He’s had remarkable success, with 6 cases heard before the Supreme Court, including that of Abigail…

Radiolab Presents: More Perfect - The Political Thicket

Jun 10, 2016 • 43 min

The question of how much power the Supreme Court should possess has divided justices over time. But the issue was perhaps never more hotly debated than in Baker v. Carr. On this episode of More Perfect, we talk about the case that pushed one Supreme Court…

The Buried Bodies Case

Jun 3, 2016 • 47 min

In 1973, a massive manhunt in New York’s Adirondack Mountains ended when police captured a man named Robert Garrow. And that’s when this story really gets started. This episode we consider a string of barbaric crimes by a hated man, and the attorney who,…

Coming Soon: More Perfect

May 24, 2016 • 1 min

How does an elite group of nine people shape everything from marriage and money, to safety and sex for an entire nation? From the producers of Radiolab, More Perfect dives into the rarefied world of the Supreme Court to explain how cases deliberated…

Bigger Than Bacon

May 9, 2016 • 37 min

Today’s story is a mystery, shockingly hot, and vanishingly tiny. It starts with a sound, rising like a mist from the marsh, around a dock in South Carolina. But where it goes next - from submarines to superheroes (and yes, Keanu Reeves!); from the…

On the Edge

Apr 21, 2016 • 42 min

At the 1998 Olympics in Nagano, Japan, one athlete pulled a move that, so far as we know, no one else had ever done in all of human history. Surya Bonaly was not your typical figure skater. She was black. She was athletic. And she didn’t seem to care…

Cellmates

Apr 6, 2016 • 30 min

There’s a black hole in the middle of the history of life: how did we go from tiny bags of chemicals to the vast menagerie of creatures we see around us? Today, we explore one of the most underrated mysteries of all time, and present one possible answer…

Update: 23 Weeks 6 Days

Mar 23, 2016 • 62 min

An update on Juniper French, a tiny baby, born at 23 Weeks and 6 days — roughly halfway to full term. And a whole universe of medical and moral questions. Technology has had a profound effect on how we get pregnant, give birth, and think about life and…

Debatable

Mar 11, 2016 • 57 min

Unclasp your briefcase. It’s time for a showdown. In competitive debate future presidents, supreme court justices, and titans of industry pummel each other with logic and rhetoric. But a couple years ago Ryan Wash, a queer, Black, first-generation college…

K-poparazzi

Feb 24, 2016 • 37 min

In the U.S., paparazzi are pretty much synonymous with invasion of privacy. But today we travel to a place where the prying press create something more like a prison break. K-pop is a global juggernaut - with billions in sales and millions of fans hanging…

Hard Knock Life

Feb 12, 2016 • 19 min

This Valentine’s Day, a mysterious tap tap tapping leads us into a world of sex, death, and head-banging. Biologist Dave Goulson introduces us to the lonely yearnings of an especially pathetic beetle and snatches a sound back from the hands of the devil…

I Don’t Have To Answer That

Jan 29, 2016 • 34 min

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 young charismatic Democrat, poised to win his party’s…

The Cathedral

Jan 7, 2016 • 31 min

Ryan and Amy Green were facing the unfaceable: their youngest son, Joel was diagnosed with terminal cancer after his first birthday. Producer Sruthi Pinnamaneni tells the story of how Ryan and Amy stumble onto an unlikely way of processing their…

The Fix

Dec 18, 2015 • 40 min

This episode we take a sober look at the throbbing, aching, craving desire states that return people (again and again) to the object of their addiction … and the pills that just might set them free. Reporter Amy O’Leary was fed up with her ex-boyfriend’s…

Birthstory

Nov 22, 2015 • 58 min

You know the drill - all it takes is one sperm, one egg, and blammo - you got yourself a baby. Right? Well, in this episode, conception takes on a new form - it’s the sperm and the egg, plus: two wombs, four countries, and money. Lots of money. At first,…

Staph Retreat

Nov 2, 2015 • 29 min

What happens when you combine an axe-wielding microbiologist and a disease-obsessed historian? A strange brew that’s hard to resist, even for a modern day microbe. In the war on devilish microbes, our weapons are starting to fail us. The antibiotics we…

Update: New Normal?

Oct 19, 2015 • 68 min

An update: Peacenik baboons, a man in a dress and cuddly tame foxes. Stories of adaptation, and reframing ideas about normalcy. 3 stories where choice challenges destiny.

Smile My Ass

Oct 6, 2015 • 34 min

As Candid Camera succeeded, it started to change the way we thought not only of reality television, but also of reality itself.

Darkode

Sep 21, 2015 • 37 min

It would seem that hackers today can do just about anything they want - from turning on the cellphone in your pocket to holding your life’s work hostage. Cyber criminals today have more sophisticated tools, have learned to work collaboratively around the…

The Rhino Hunter

Sep 7, 2015 • 50 min

Back in 2014, Corey Knowlton paid $350,000 for a hunting trip to Namibia to shoot and kill an endangered species. He’s a professional hunter, who guides hunts all around the world, so going to Africa would be nothing new. The target on the other hand…

Remembering Oliver Sacks

Aug 30, 2015 • 25 min

In memory of one of our dear friends, a re-release of our last conversation with Dr. Oliver Sacks.

Elements

Aug 23, 2015 • 73 min

Scientists took about 300 years to lay out the Periodic Table into neat rows and columns. In one hour, we’re going to mess it all up. This episode, we enlist journalists, poets, musicians, and even a physicist to help us tell stories of matter that…

From the Archives: Oliver Sacks’ Table of Elements

Aug 6, 2015 • 16 min

As we’re busy working on our next episode, with stories inspired by the Periodic Table of Elements, we thought we’d bring you one of its chief inspirations. As a young boy, neurologist, author and Radiolab favorite Oliver Sacks pored over the pages of the…

Shrink

Jul 30, 2015 • 43 min

The definition of life is in flux, complexity is overrated, and humans are shrinking.Viruses are supposed to be sleek, pared-down, dead-eyed machines. But when one microbiologist stumbled upon a GIANT virus, hundreds of times bigger than any seen before,…

Gray’s Donation

Jul 16, 2015 • 25 min

A donation leads Sarah and Ross Gray to places we rarely get a chance to see. In this surprising journey, they gain a view of science that is redemptive, fussy facts that are tender, and parts of a loved one that add up to something unexpected. Before he…

Mau Mau

Jul 3, 2015 • 43 min

This is the story of a few documents that tumbled out of the secret archives of the biggest empire the world has ever known, offering a glimpse of histories waiting to be rewritten.

Eye in the Sky

Jun 18, 2015 • 28 min

Ross McNutt has a superpower — he can zoom in on everyday life, then rewind and fast-forward to solve crimes in a shutter-flash. But should he? In 2004, when casualties in Iraq were rising due to roadside bombs, Ross McNutt and his team came up with an…

Antibodies Part 1: CRISPR

Jun 6, 2015 • 30 min

Hidden inside some of the world’s smallest organisms is one of the most powerful tools scientists have ever stumbled across. It’s a defense system that has existed in bacteria for millions of years and it may some day let us change the course of human…

Nazi Summer Camp

May 22, 2015 • 30 min

Reporter Karen Duffin and her father were talking one day when, just as an aside, he mentioned the Nazi prisoners of war that worked on his Idaho farm when he was a kid. Karen was shocked … and then immediately obsessed. So she spoke with historians, dug…

Radiolab Live: Tell-Tale Hearts featuring Oliver Sacks

May 12, 2015 • 58 min

A few days ago Radiolab performed a live show and this episode we’re bringing you a few of the highlights. They were stories of what motivates us, our drives, our loves and losses. Producer Molly Webster tells us the story of life, near-death and what…

Sight Unseen

Apr 28, 2015 • 29 min

In December of 2009, photojournalist Lynsey Addario was embedded with a medevac team in Afghanistan. After days of waiting, one night they got the call - a marine was gravely wounded. What happened next happens all the time. But this time it was captured,…

The Living Room

Apr 9, 2015 • 28 min

We’re thrilled to present a piece from one of our favorite podcasts, Love + Radio (Nick van der Kolk and Brendan Baker). Producer Briana Breen brings us the story: Diane’s new neighbors across the way never shut their curtains, and that was the beginning…

VIDEO: Radiolab Presents: Radio Ambulante

Apr 2, 2015

Our story Los Frikis was a collaboration with Radio Ambulante, who produced a story of their own about two of the last surviving frikis, Yohandra and Gerson. They’ve also made a translated video of their Spanish-language piece and we’re thrilled to share…

Los Frikis

Mar 24, 2015 • 31 min

How a group of 80’s Cuban misfits found rock-and-roll and created a revolution within a revolution, going into exile without ever leaving home. In a collaboration with Radio Ambulante, reporter Luis Trelles bring us the story of punk rock’s arrival in…

Fu-Go

Mar 10, 2015 • 35 min

During World War II, something happened that nobody ever talks about. This is a tale of mysterious balloons, cowboy sheriffs, and young children caught up in the winds of war. And silence, the terror of silence. Reporters Peter Lang-Stanton and Nick…

La Mancha Screwjob

Feb 24, 2015 • 51 min

All the world’s a stage. So we push through the fourth wall, pierce the spandex-ed heart of professional wrestling, and travel 400 years into the past to unmask our obsession with authenticity and our desire to walk the line between reality and fantasy.…

The Trust Engineers

Feb 9, 2015 • 30 min

When we talk online, things can go south fast. But they don’t have to. Today, we meet a group of social engineers who are convinced that tiny changes in wording can make the online world a kinder, gentler place. So long as we agree to be their lab rats.…

American Football

Jan 29, 2015 • 74 min

Today, we tackle football. It’s the most popular sport in the US, shining a sometimes harsh light on so much of what we have been, what we are, and what we hope to be. Savage, creative, brutal and balletic, whether you love it or loathe it … it’s a…

Radiolab Presents: Invisibilia

Jan 9, 2015 • 31 min

Producers’ Note: A correction has been made to this audio to reflect the wishes of the subject of this story, Paige Abendroth. NPR’s Invisibilia’s originally included Paige’s birth name in this piece due to a miscommunication between Invisibilia’s…

Worth

Dec 23, 2014 • 71 min

This episode, we make three earnest, possibly foolhardy, attempts to put a price on the priceless. We figure out the dollar value for an accidental death, another day of life, and the work of bats and bees as we try to keep our careful calculations from…

Buttons Not Buttons

Dec 12, 2014 • 26 min

Buttons are usually small and unimportant. But not always. Sometimes they are a portal to power, freedom, and destruction. Today we thread together tales of taking charge of the little things in life, of fortunes made and lost, and of the ease with which…

Outside Westgate

Nov 29, 2014 • 36 min

In the wake of public tragedy there is a space between the official narrative and the stories of the people who experienced it. Today, we crawl inside that space and question the role of journalists in helping us move on from a traumatic event. NPR’s East…

Patient Zero - Updated

Nov 13, 2014 • 68 min

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—Patient Zero. This hour, Radiolab hunts for Patient Zeroes of all kinds and considers the course of an ongoing…

Haunted

Oct 30, 2014 • 30 min

Dennis Conrow was stuck. After a brief stint at college, he’d passed most of his 20’s back home with his parents, sleeping in his childhood room. And just when he finally struck out on his own, fate intervened. He lost both his parents to cancer. So…

Translation

Oct 20, 2014 • 75 min

How close can words get you to the truth and feel and force of life? That’s the question poking at our ribs this hour, as we wonder how it is that the right words can have the wrong meanings, and why sometimes the best translations lead us to an…

John Luther Adams

Oct 3, 2014 • 25 min

What’s the soundtrack for the end of the world? We go looking for an answer. When Jad started to compose music for our live show Apocalyptical, he immediately thought of John Luther Adams. Adams’ symphony “Become Ocean,” rooted in the sounds of nature, is…

Juicervose

Sep 18, 2014 • 43 min

Ron and Cornelia Suskind had two healthy young sons, promising careers, and a brand new home when their youngest son Owen started to disappear. 3 months later a specialist sat Ron and Cornelia down and said the word that changed everything for them:…

In The Dust Of This Planet

Sep 8, 2014 • 41 min

Horror, fashion, and the end of the world … things get weird as we explore the undercurrents of thought that link nihilists, beard-stroking philosophers, Jay-Z, and True Detective. Today on Radiolab, a puzzle. Jad’s brother-in-law wrote a book called ‘In…

Hello

Aug 21, 2014 • 45 min

It’s hard to start a conversation with a stranger—especially when that stranger is, well, different. He doesn’t share your customs, celebrate your holidays, watch your TV shows, or even speak your language. Plus he has a blowhole. In this episode, we try…

Shorts: Happy Birthday Bobby K

Aug 7, 2014 • 29 min

It’s Robert’s birthday! (Or it was, anyway, a couple days back.) So today we celebrate with some classic Krulwich radio and a backwards peek into the spirit and sensibility that, in many ways, drives our show. For his birthday surprise we all listened to…

Shorts: For the Birds

Jul 24, 2014 • 14 min

Today, a lady with a bird in her backyard upends our whole sense of what we may have to give up to keep a wild creature wild.

Galapagos

Jul 17, 2014 • 62 min

Today, the strange story of a small group of islands that raise a big question: is it inevitable that even our most sacred natural landscapes will eventually get swallowed up by humans? And just how far are we willing to go to stop that from happening? We…

Shorts: 9-Volt Nirvana

Jun 26, 2014 • 24 min

Learn a new language faster than ever! Leave doubt in the dust! Be a better sniper! Could you do all that and more with just a zap to the noggin? Maybe. Sally Adee, an editor at New Scientist, was at a conference for DARPA - The Defense Advanced Research…

Shorts: ≤ kg

Jun 13, 2014 • 20 min

A plum-sized lump of metal takes us from the French Revolution to an underground bunker in Maryland as we try to weigh the way we weigh the world around us.

Things

May 30, 2014 • 61 min

From a piece of the Wright brother’s plane to a child’s sugar egg, today: Things! Important things, little things, personal things, things you can hold and things that can take hold of you. This hour, we investigate the objects around us, their power to…

Shorts: The Skull

May 15, 2014 • 20 min

Today, the story of one little thing that has radically changed what we know about humanity’s humble beginnings and the kinds of creatures that were out to get us way back when. Wits University Professor Lee Berger and Dr. Chris Stringer from London’s…

Shorts: For the Love of Numbers

May 2, 2014 • 19 min

It’s hard to think of anything more rational, more logical and impersonal than a number. But what if we’re all, universally, also deeply attuned to how numbers … feel? Why 2 is warm, 7 is strong and 11 is downright mystical.

60 Words

Apr 18, 2014 • 55 min

This hour we pull apart one sentence, written in the hours after September 11th, 2001, that has led to the longest war in U.S. history. We examine how just 60 words of legal language have blurred the line between war and peace.

Shorts: Straight Outta Chevy Chase

Apr 1, 2014 • 34 min

From boom bap to EDM, we look at the line between hip-hop and not, and meet a defender of the genre that makes you question… who’s in and who’s out.

Shorts: KILL ‘EM ALL

Mar 25, 2014 • 21 min

They buzz. They bite. And they have killed more people than cancer, war, or heart disease. Here’s the question: If you could wipe mosquitoes off the face of the planet, would you?

Shorts: Super Cool

Mar 13, 2014 • 24 min

What do frozen horses and a scorching universe have in common? That’s what we wanted to know.

What’s Left When You’re Right?

Feb 25, 2014 • 59 min

More often than not, a fight is just a fight… Someone wins, someone loses. But this hour, we have a series of face-offs that shine a light on the human condition, the benefit of coming at something from a different side, and the price of being right.…

Shorts: Neither Confirm Nor Deny

Feb 12, 2014 • 25 min

How a sunken nuclear submarine, a crazy billionaire, and a mechanical claw gave birth to a phrase that has hounded journalists and lawyers for 40 years and embodies the tension between the public’s desire for transparency and the government’s need to keep…

Shorts: Brown Box

Jan 28, 2014 • 20 min

You order some stuff on the Internet and it shows up three hours later. How could all the things that need to happen to make that happen happen so fast?

Black Box

Jan 17, 2014 • 65 min

This hour, we examine three very different kinds of black boxes—those peculiar spaces where it’s clear what’s going in, we know what’s coming out, but what happens in-between is a mystery. From the darkest parts of metamorphosis, to a sixty year-old…

Shorts: The Times They Are a-Changin’

Dec 30, 2013 • 20 min

At the start of this new year we crack open some fossils, peer back into ancient seas, and look up at lunar skies to find that a year is not quite as fixed as we thought it was.

Shorts: Sex, Ducks, and The Founding Feud

Dec 19, 2013 • 21 min

Jilted lovers and disrupted duck hunts provide a very odd look into the soul of the US Constitution.

Apocalyptical

Dec 9, 2013

Cataclysmic destruction. Surprising survival. In this new live stage performance, Radiolab turns its gaze to the topic of endings, both blazingly fast and agonizingly slow.

VIDEO: Radiolab Live Apocalyptical Sneak Peek

Dec 9, 2013

A preview of Radiolab’s live show Apocalyptical: dinosaurs, death, destruction… plus cinematic live scoring and comedic mayhem from Reggie Watts and Kurt Braunohler. Feast your eyes on more video — including a cut of the full show! — at radiolab.org/live.

Shorts: An Ice-Cold Case

Nov 19, 2013 • 21 min

Scientists’ obsession with one particular man - and with the tiny scraps of evidence left in the wake of his death - gives us a surprisingly intimate peek into the life of someone who should’ve been lost to the ages.

Shorts: Cut and Run

Nov 1, 2013 • 25 min

Legions of athletes, sports gurus, and scientists have tried to figure out why Kenyans dominate long-distance running. In this short, we stumble across a surprising, and sort of terrifying, explanation.

UPDATE: Famous Tumors

Oct 22, 2013 • 67 min

When we first released Famous Tumors, Rebecca Skloot’s book about the life and legacy of Henrietta Lacks (and her famous cells) had just hit the shelves. Since then, some interesting things have happened to both Henrietta’s cells and her family. So, 4…

Shorts: Quicksaaaand!

Oct 10, 2013

For many of us, quicksand was once a real fear — it held a vise-grip on our imaginations, from childish sandbox games to grown-up anxieties about venturing into unknown lands. But these days, quicksand can’t even scare an 8-year-old. In this short, we try…

Shorts: Poop Train

Sep 24, 2013

You may not give a second thought (or backward glance) to what the toilet whisks away after you do your business. But we got wondering — where would we wind up if we thought of flushing as the start, and not the end, of a journey? In this short, we head…

Blame

Sep 12, 2013 • 62 min

We’ve all felt it, that irresistible urge to point the finger. But new technologies are complicating age-old moral conundrums about accountability. This hour, we ask what blame does for us — why do we need it, when isn’t it enough, and what happens when…

Shorts: Dawn of Midi

Aug 29, 2013

In this short, Jad puts on his music hat and shares his love of Dawn of Midi, a band that he recently started using on the show.

Shorts: Rodney Versus Death

Aug 13, 2013 • 30 min

What do you do in the face of a monstrous disease with a 100% fatality rate? In this short, a Milwaukee doctor tries to knock death incarnate off its throne.

Blood

Jul 31, 2013 • 63 min

From medicine to the movies, the horrifying to the holy, and history to the present day — we’re kinda obsessed with blood. This hour, we consider the power and magic of the red liquid that runs through our veins.

Shorts: Happy Birthday, Good Dr. Sacks

Jul 9, 2013

One of our favorite human beings turns 80 this week. To celebrate, Robert asks Oliver Sacks to look back on his career, and explain how thousands of worms and a motorbike accident led to a brilliant writing career.

Shorts: Ally’s Choice

Jul 2, 2013 • 17 min

Producer Lu Olkowski brings us the story of a tightly-knit family caught on opposite sides of a very big divide. If you ask Ally Manning’s mom and sister, they’ll tell you there’s no question: they’re black. But as a teenager, Ally decided that what was…

Shorts: Curious Sounds from the Solid Sound Festival

Jun 27, 2013

This fall, we’re hitting the road with our brand-new live show. We’re stopping in 20 cities across the US (plus 1 stop in Canada), and we have some exciting news about the special musical guests who are joining us for the tour. Listen to a quick sneak…

Shorts: The Trouble with Everything

Jun 13, 2013

The desire to trace your way back to the very beginning, to understand everything — whether it’s the mysteries of love or the mechanics of the universe — is deeply human. It might also be deeply flawed.

Shorts: Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl

May 30, 2013 • 42 min

This is the story of a three-year-old girl and the highest court in the land. The Supreme Court case Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl is a legal battle that has entangled a biological father, a heart-broken couple, and the tragic history of Native American…

VIDEO: Radiolab Behind the Scenes

May 20, 2013

If you’ve ever wondered how the podcast comes together, or what it’s like to work at Radiolab, here’s a peek into our process.

Shorts: The Septendecennial Sing-Along

May 14, 2013

Every 17 years, a deafening sex orchestra hits the East Coast — billions and billions of cicadas crawl out of the ground, sing their hearts out, then mate and die. In this short, Jad and Robert talk to a man who gets inside that noise to dissect its…

Shorts: The Distance of the Moon

Apr 16, 2013

What if the moon were just a jump away? In this short, a beautiful answer to that question from Italo Calvino, read live by Liev Schreiber.

Shorts: Radiolab Presents: TJ & Dave

Apr 2, 2013

Improv comedy puts uncertainty on center stage — performers usually start by asking the audience for a prompt, then they make up the details as they go. But two actors in Chicago are taking this idea to its absolute limit, and finding ways to navigate the…

Are You Sure?

Mar 26, 2013 • 68 min

This hour, we walk the tightrope between doubt and certainty, and wonder if there’s a way to make yourself at home on that razor’s edge between definitely…and not so sure.

REBROADCAST: Emergence

Mar 19, 2013

This spring, parts of the East Coast will turn squishy and crunchy — the return of the 17-year cicadas means surfaces in certain locations (in patches from VA to CT) will once again be coated in bugs buzzing at 7 kilohertz. In their honor, we’re…

Shorts: The Man Behind the Maneuver

Mar 5, 2013

In the 1970s, choking became national news: thousands were choking to death, leading to more accidental deaths than guns. Nobody knew what to do. Until a man named Henry Heimlich came along with a big idea. Since then, thousands and thousands — maybe even…

Shorts: Speedy Beet

Feb 19, 2013

There are few musical moments more well-worn than the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. But in this short, we find out that Beethoven might have made a last-ditch effort to keep his music from ever feeling familiar, to keep pushing his…

Speed

Feb 5, 2013 • 56 min

We live our lives at human speed, we experience and interact with the world on a human time scale. But this hour, we put ourselves through the paces, peek inside a microsecond, and master the fastest thing in the universe.

Shorts: The Bitter End

Jan 15, 2013

We turn to doctors to save our lives — to heal us, repair us, and keep us healthy. But when it comes to the critical question of what to do when death is at hand, there seems to be a gap between what we want doctors to do for us, and what doctors want…

Shorts: Solid as a Rock

Dec 31, 2012

Is reality an ethereal, mathematical poem… or is it made up of solid, physical stuff? In this short, we kick rocks, slap tables, and argue about the nature of the universe with Jim Holt.

Bliss

Dec 17, 2012 • 71 min

Moments of total, world-shaking bliss are not easy to come by. Maybe that’s what makes them feel so life-altering when they strike. And so worth chasing. This hour: stories of striving, grasping, tripping, and falling for happiness, perfection, and ideals.

Shorts: Raising Crane

Dec 3, 2012

In this short, costumed scientists create a carefully choreographed childhood for a flock of whooping cranes to save them from extinction. It’s the ultimate feel-good story, but it also raises some troubling questions about what it takes to get a species…

Inheritance

Nov 19, 2012 • 63 min

Once a kid is born, their genetic fate is pretty much sealed. Or is it? This hour, we put nature and nurture on a collision course and discover how outside forces can find a way inside us, shaping not just our hearts and minds, but the basic biological…

Shorts: What’s Up, Doc?

Nov 6, 2012

Mel Blanc was known as “the man of 1,000 voices,” but the actual number may have been closer to 1,500. Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Tweety, Barney Rubble — all Mel. His characters made him one of the most beloved men in America. And in 1961, when a car crash…

Shorts: Seeing in the Dark

Oct 22, 2012

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 refuses to picture anything at all. In this short, they argue about the truth of a world they can’t see.

Shorts: Dark Side of the Earth

Oct 8, 2012

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 Mir Space Station on his very first spacewalk. In this short, he describes the extremes of light and dark in…

The Fact of the Matter

Sep 24, 2012 • 60 min

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 facts — facts that offer surprising insight, facts that inspire deeply different stories, and facts that, in…

Shorts: What a Slinky Knows

Sep 10, 2012

“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 Steve Strogatz. Steve, along with Neil deGrasse Tyson, explains what the gravity-defying Slinky trick reveals…

Shorts: Inside “Ouch!”

Aug 28, 2012

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 suffering of our friends, relatives, or spouses. But pinning down another person’s hurt is a slippery…

REBROADCAST: Space

Aug 20, 2012

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 the Mars rover Curiosity as it kicks off its third week on the red planet, with a rebroadcast of one our…

Shorts: Argentine Invasion

Jul 30, 2012

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 evolved a surprising, successful, and rather unsettling…

Shorts: Double Blasted

Jul 16, 2012

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 descendants, in doubt. In this short: an utterly amazing survival story that spans … well, 4 billion…

Shorts: Radiolab Remixed

Jul 2, 2012

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 to join in on the fun? So we teamed up with Indaba for our first-ever remix competition. And now we get…

Shorts: Unraveling Bolero

Jun 18, 2012

In this podcast, a story about obsession, creativity, and a strange symmetry between a biologist and a composer that revolves around one famously repetitive piece of music.

Shorts: Grumpy Old Terrorists

Jun 4, 2012

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 big joke … and partly because, at the same time, they sounded so deadly serious. In this short, Jad & Robert…

Colors

May 21, 2012 • 65 min

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 of science and poetry, Jad and Robert tear the rainbow to pieces.

Shorts: Colors Sneak Peek

May 14, 2012

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 episode.

Shorts: Fetal Consequences

Apr 30, 2012

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 her, or both, is still an open question. In this Radiolab short, Robert updates us on the science of…

Shorts: Crossroads

Apr 16, 2012

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 legendary guitarist whose shadowy life spawned a legend so powerful, it’s still being repeated…even by fans…

Guts

Apr 2, 2012

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 about ourselves?

Shorts: The Turing Problem

Mar 19, 2012

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 World War II and he is widely considered to be the father of artificial intelligence. But the world wasn’t…

Shorts: A War We Need

Mar 5, 2012 • 10 min

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 hidden, depending on your perspective. In this short, the tale of an arms race involving trillions of sea…

Escape!

Feb 20, 2012 • 65 min

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 staggering breakthroughs.

Shorts: Killer Empathy

Feb 6, 2012

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…

Shorts: Wake Up and Dream

Jan 23, 2012

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.