Radiolab is a radio program broadcast on public radio stations in the United States, and a podcast available internationally, both produced by WNYC. Hosted by Latif Nasser and Lulu Miller, each episode focuses on a topic of a scientific and philosophical nature, through stories, interviews, and thought experiments.
Radiolab’s broadcast edition airs as an hour-long program each week while the podcast edition releases new episodes of varying lengths on a roughly biweekly schedule. For a few years the Radiolab podcast feed featured a full-length, hour-long episode every six weeks (announced by the show's hosts as "Radiolab: The Podcast"), with two shorter pieces (known as "shorts") appearing in-between. Many of these shorter pieces would later be packaged into full-length episodes not released on the show's podcast feed, but available through Radiolab's website. In recent years, Radiolab has de-standardized its podcast format, with full-length episodes being compiled almost entirely from previously released podcast shorts. The program airs in syndication to over 450 NPR affiliates around the country.[1]
Radiolab's first nine seasons (February 2002–April 2011) comprised five episodes each. Subsequent seasons contained between nine and ten episodes.[2][3] Season 15 began airing in January 2017. In 2018 the show's seasonal and episode format became obscured when online content moved from radiolab.org to ‘wnycstudios.org’.
Before Season 1 (2002–2004)
Before the idea for a show featuring Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, which did not emerge until November 2003, Abumrad produced radio documentaries that featured himself and others. Some of this material has been re-packaged and broadcast under the Radiolab banner.[4]
2002
| # | Title | Original air date |
|---|---|---|
| n–a | "Death Penalty and the Prison Economy" | May 19, 2002 |
| n–a | "Graduation and Memorial Day" | May 26, 2002 |
| n–a | "Why does the Arab world hate us?" | June 2, 2002 |
| n–a | "How much do most of us really know about Africa?" | June 9, 2002 |
| n–a | "South Africa" | June 16, 2002 |
| n–a | "Terrorism and Fundamentalism" | June 23, 2002 |
| n–a | "An Unusual Look at the Middle East" | June 30, 2002 |
| n–a | "Adventures in the Other America" | July 7, 2002 |
| n–a | "Pop Songs, Strip Clubs, and Commercials" | July 14, 2002 |
| n–a | "Home, Fast Food and Screamologists" | July 21, 2002 |
| n–a | "Religion in America" | July 28, 2002 |
| n–a | "Bible Salesmen, Snake Handlers and Deadly Decisions" | August 4, 2002 |
| n–a | "NY Screamers, Turkish Youth and Improv Comedians" | August 11, 2002 |
| n–a | "The World in Sound" | August 18, 2002 |
| n–a | "Margins of the Musical Spectrum" | August 25, 2002 |
| n–a | "Retrospection" | September 1, 2002 |
| n–a | "Pre-Disaster, the Aftermath and Spiritual Fallout" | September 8, 2002 |
| n–a | "Atonement, Quilting and Knitting and the History of Rhythm 'n Blues" | September 15, 2002 |
| n–a | "Teen Diaries, Whose Line Is It Anyway and Rhythm N Blues" | September 22, 2002 |
| n–a | "The Many Faces of Glenn Gould" | September 29, 2002 |
| n–a | "Wanderers, Rwanda Maps and Rhythm n Blues" | October 6, 2002 |
| n–a | "Travelers Logs, Soundscapes and the History of Rhythm n Blues" | October 13, 2002 |
| n–a | "How To Insulate Tent For Summer, *Amazing Camping Tips 2022*" | February 13, 2022 |
| n–a | "Food for Thought" | October 20, 2002 |
| n–a | "Therapy, Martian Invasion and More Rhythm n Blues" | October 27, 2002 |
| n–a | "Race Relations, The Power of Pop and the History of Rhythm n Blues" | November 3, 2002 |
| n–a | "Veteran's Day Special" | November 10, 2002 |
| n–a | "Revolt" | November 17, 2002 |
| n–a | "Nike, Nature's Revenge and Gunrunners" | November 24, 2002 |
| n–a | "Rwanda Maps" | December 8, 2002 |
| n–a | "Family Feuds Over the Lord" | December 22, 2002 |
| n–a | "An Hour With George Avakian" | December 29, 2002 |
2003
| # | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| n–a | "Migrants and Wanderers" | January 5, 2003 | |
| n–a | "Therapy/Therapeutic Resistance" | January 12, 2003 | |
| n–a | "Nike: Not Just a Shoe Company" | January 19, 2003 | |
| Compiled from "Nike, Nature's Revenge and Gunrunners" (Nov 2002). | |||
| n–a | "Shades of Gray" | January 26, 2003 | |
| n–a | "War" | February 2, 2003 | |
| n–a | "What's so Funny?" | February 9, 2003 | |
| n–a | "Strip Club USA" | February 16, 2003 | |
| n–a | "Needlework" | February 23, 2003 | |
| n–a | "Dog Tales" | March 2, 2003 | |
| n–a | "Radio Diaries" | March 9, 2003 | |
| n–a | "Bridges" | March 16, 2003 | |
| n–a | "Jay's Kids and Kids on Spirituality" | March 30, 2003 | |
| n–a | "Educating Esme" | April 6, 2003 | |
| n–a | "Word Musicians" | April 13, 2003 | |
| n–a | "Memories" | April 20, 2003 | |
| n–a | "Memory 2" | April 27, 2003 | |
| n–a | "Food Therapy" | May 4, 2003 | |
| n–a | "Native vs. Tourist" | May 18, 2003 | |
| n–a | "The 'Stans'" | May 25, 2003 | |
| n–a | "The Perfect Picture" | June 1, 2003 | |
| n–a | "Scenes from a Transplant" | June 8, 2003 | |
| n–a | "The Listening Room" | June 22, 2003 | |
| n–a | "Lost at Sea" | June 29, 2003 | |
| n–a | "Networks & Neighborhoods" | July 13, 2003 | |
| n–a | "Noise Pollution vs Silence" | July 20, 2003 | |
| n–a | "The Radio Lab Fundraising Special" | October 17, 2003 | |
| n–a | "Look out...Martians!" | October 31, 2003 | |
| n–a | "Selling" | November 7, 2003 | |
| n–a | "Undercover in Zimbabwe" | November 21, 2003 | |
| n–a | "Trenches" | December 12, 2003 | |
| Released on the eve of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, "Trenches" compiled three archival stories about Americans at war: The first takes a listen to tape recordings from 1966 made by an American soldier who was killed in action in Vietnam; The second excerpts 1989 interviews with African American soldiers who dealt with racism, both in Vietnam and at home in the United States; The third story strings together audio clips from the Pacific Northwest in 1991 during first U.S. Gulf War with Iraq. | |||
| n–a | "Flight (Species Envy)" | December 19, 2003 | |
| Robert Krulwich joins Jad Abumrad for stories about humans taking inspiration from birds: A look back at the Wright brothers, a study of a crow who makes and uses tools, and an ornithological obsession about a rare New Zealand bird. | |||
| n–a | "Remember" | December 26, 2003 | |
2004
| # | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| n–a | "Contact" | January 16, 2004 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "The Ring and I" | March 2, 2004 | |
| External link 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. | |||
Season 1 (2005)
| # | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Who Am I?" | February 4, 2005 | |
| External link Traces how the concepts of mind and self have been domain of philosophers, priests, and neurologists. | |||
| 2 | "Stress" | February 11, 2005 | |
| External link Stories about singer who loses her voice and an author caught in a body that never grew up. | |||
| 3 | "Emergence" | February 18, 2005 | |
| External link Explores the bottom-up logic of cities, Google, and the human brains as models for leaderless systems. | |||
| 4 | "Time" | February 25, 2005 | |
| External link Looking at time from the perspective of American railroads, a track meet, and a Beethoven concert. Originally aired on June 4, 2004. | |||
| 5 | "Beyond Time" | March 4, 2005 | |
| External link Temporal stories not covered in the previous episode. | |||
Season 2 (2006)
| # | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Detective Stories" | April 14, 2006 | |
| External link Stories of mystery, intrigue, and a goat standing on top of a cow. | |||
| 2 | "Musical Language" | April 21, 2006 | |
| External link Explores the line between music and language, turning to physics and biochemistry to ask how sound becomes emotion. | |||
| 3 | "Morality" | April 28, 2006 | |
| External link The philosophy or morality from a neuroscience perspective. | |||
| 4 | "Where Am I?" | May 5, 2006 | |
|
External link The connection between the human body and brain and what happens when it breaks. Guests: Oliver Sacks, Robert Sapolsky, Jonah Lehrer, Antonio Damasio, Christopher Sayles, Steven Solomon, Dr. V.S. Ramachandran, Jonathan Cole, Ian Waterman, Paul Broks, Dan Fulgham, Jim Whinnery, Tim Sestak. External link | |||
| 5 | "Space" | May 12, 2006 | |
| External link Ponders our place in the universe with stories of romance and cynicism in outer space. Originally aired on June 25, 2004. | |||
Season 3 (2007)
| # | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Placebo" | May 18, 2007 | |
| External link The healing powers of belief, from the symbolic power of the doctor's lab coat, to the very real stash of opium in the brain. | |||
| 2 | "Sleep" | May 25, 2007 | |
| External link Birds do it, bees do it, yet science still can't answer the basic question: why do we sleep? | |||
| 3 | "Zoos" | June 1, 2007 | |
| External link Rome's Colosseum, frozen carcasses, wild jaguars, and a question: how do you build a better cage? | |||
| 4 | "Memory and Forgetting" | June 7, 2007 | |
| External link A look behind the curtain of how memories are made and forgotten. | |||
| 5 | "Mortality" | June 15, 2007 | |
| External link The modern search for the Fountain of Youth, and personal stories of witnessing death. | |||
Episodes during Season 3 and before Season 4 (2007–2008)
| # | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| n–a | "This is Your Brain On Love" | August 28, 2007 | |
| External link Strangers exchange phone numbers at a singles night and get some advice from a experts on the chemistry of love. | |||
| n–a | "Making Radiolab" | November 6, 2007 | |
| External link Onstage at the SoHo Apple Store, Jad and Robert are joined by Walter Murch to talk about sound editing, editorial questions, and storytelling. | |||
| n–a | "Space Capsules" | November 20, 2007 | |
| External link A look at the Voyager spacecraft and the Golden Record that it carried into space. | |||
| n–a | "The Wright Brothers" | December 18, 2007 | |
| External link Celebrating the anniversary of the Wilbur and Orville Wright ushing in the Age of Flight and how that changed us. | |||
| n–a | "Zoo Keeper's Dilemma" | January 15, 2008 | |
| External link Zoo director David Hancocks talks about the paradoxes he encounters in the zoo world and his dream for a future zoo. | |||
| n–a | "Salle Des Departs" | January 29, 2008 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Our Podcast comes in all shapes and sizes" | February 11, 2008 | |
| External link Jad plays one of his favorite pieces of all time, 'IF' by Sherre DeLys. | |||
Season 4 (2008)
| # | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Laughter" | February 22, 2008 | |
| External link We all laugh. This hour of Radiolab asks why. | |||
| 2 | "Deception" | February 29, 2008 | |
| External link Lies, liars, and lie catchers. This hour of Radiolab asks if it's possible for anyone to lead a life without deception. | |||
| 3 | "War of the Worlds" | March 7, 2008 | |
| External link Martians, mass media, and hysteria -- how War of the Worlds sparked panic in the 1930s, & fooled audiences again and again for decades. | |||
| 4 | "(So-Called) Life" | March 14, 2008 | |
| External link The uneasy marriage of biology and engineering raises big questions about the nature of life. | |||
| 5 | "Pop Music" | March 21, 2008 | |
| External link Nightmarish stories of musical hallucinations, songs with the power to transcend language, & the triumphant return of the Elvis of Afghanistan. | |||
Episodes during Season 4 and before Season 5 (2008)
| # | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| n–a | "Jad and Robert: The Early Years" | May 6, 2008 | |
| External link The story of how Jad and Robert met, told onstage at their alma mater, Oberlin College. | |||
| n–a | "Open Outcry" | May 20, 2008 | |
| External link Jad's audio portrait of producer Ben Rubin on the trading floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange. | |||
| n–a | "Wordless Music" | June 3, 2008 | |
| External link Jad talks about the band Stars of the Lid. | |||
| n–a | "Earworms" | June 17, 2008 | |
| External link A short piece about songs that get stuck in people's heads and how they get them out. | |||
| n–a | "City X" | July 1, 2008 | |
| External link From Jonathan Mitchell, a history of the modern shopping mall told through the perspectives of people living in an unnamed city. | |||
| n–a | "Tell Me A Story" | July 29, 2008 | |
| External link Robert Krulwich's commencement speech at Caltech. | |||
| n–a | "The (Multi) Universe(s)" | August 12, 2008 | |
| External link Robert talks with Brian Greene about what's beyond the horizon of our universe. | |||
| n–a | "Quantum Cello" | August 25, 2008 | |
| External link Jad and cellist Zoe Keating discuss the physics of looping sound and how to use a 17th-century instrument to make avant-garde electronic music. | |||
| n–a | "Making the Hippo Dance" | September 9, 2008 | |
| External link Previously unreleased tape from the vault. | |||
| n–a | "Chasing Bugs" | September 23, 2008 | |
| External link An interview about ants with entomologist E. O. Wilson. | |||
| n–a | "Sperm Tales" | October 7, 2008 | |
| External link Two short pieces on sperm that didn't make it into the full-length show. | |||
| n–a | "Chris And Lisa" | October 21, 2008 | |
| External link Story about giving one's crush a stack of Radiolab CDs. | |||
Season 5 (2008)
| # | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Choice" | November 14, 2008 | |
| External link We turn up the volume on the voices in our heads, and try to get to the bottom of what really steers our decisions. | |||
| 2 | "Sperm" | November 21, 2008 | |
| External link We examine our beginnings, take a tour of the animal kingdom, and ponder a world where frozen sperm can last for all eternity. | |||
| 3 | "Race" | November 28, 2008 | |
| External link Radiolab asks what race is, and whether it's fixed or fluid, genes or culture? | |||
| 4 | "Diagnosis" | December 5, 2008 | |
| External link Humans love to solve problems. This hour, Diagnosis -- our attempt to find out what's wrong, and give it a label. | |||
| 5 | "Yellow Fluff and Other Curious Encounters" | December 12, 2008 | |
| External link Stories of love and loss in the name of science. | |||
Episodes during Season 5 and before Season 6 (2009)
| # | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| n–a | "Parabolas (etc.)" | January 13, 2009 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "The Obama Effect, Perhaps." | January 27, 2009 | |
| External link 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." | |||
| n–a | "Darwinvaganza" | February 24, 2009 | |
| External link Radiolab throws a birthday party for Charles Darwin! Robert Krulwich invites three experts to toast the birthday boy. | |||
| n–a | "Mischel’s Marshmallows" | March 9, 2009 | |
| External link Psychologist Walter Mischel explains how one little test involving a marshmallow might tell you a frightening amount about what kind of person you are. | |||
| n–a | "DIY Universe" | March 25, 2009 | |
| External link Can you make your own universe? We usually think of the universe as 'everything that exists,' so how could you make another one? | |||
| n–a | "In Silence" | April 7, 2009 | |
| External link There are some questions that just don't give in to experiments and data. We take on one of those questions. | |||
| n–a | "Juana Molina" | May 4, 2009 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "AV Smackdown . . . The Podcast" | May 18, 2009 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Stayin' Alive" | June 2, 2009 | |
| External link A look at four unconventional ways to stay alive. | |||
Season 6 (2009)
| # | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Stochasticity" | June 15, 2009 | |
| External link How stochasticity -- a wonderfully smarty-pants word for randomness -- drives our lives, and the patterns we see around us. | |||
| 2 | "After Life" | July 27, 2009 | |
| External link Eleven meditations on how, when, and even if we die. | |||
| 3 | "Parasites" | September 7, 2009 | |
| External link Tales of lethargic farmers, zombie cockroaches, and even mind-controlled humans (kinda, maybe). | |||
| 4 | "New Normal?" | October 19, 2009 | |
| External link Peacenik baboons, a man in a dress, and cuddly tame foxes. Stories of adaptation, and reframing ideas about normalcy. | |||
| 5 | "Numbers" | November 30, 2009 | |
| External link Love 'em or hate 'em, you rely on numbers every day. We ask how they confuse us, connect us, & even reveal secrets about us. | |||
Episodes during Season 6 and before Season 7 (2009)
| # | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| n–a | "Stochasticity Bonus Video!" | June 15, 2009 | |
| External link 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! | |||
| n–a | "Are We Coins?" | June 29, 2009 | |
| External link We follow up on our Stochasticity show with an exploration of whether the little choices we make every day are predictable or not. | |||
| n–a | "In Defense of Darwin?" | July 13, 2009 | |
| External link Robert challenges Richard Dawkins on a number of sticky spots on the subject of biological evolution. | |||
| n–a | "12: Proof" | August 10, 2009 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "13: Gone" | August 11, 2009 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "14: The Four Groans" | August 12, 2009 | |
| External link Another meditation on what happens after the moment of death, this time as Shakespeare envisions it. | |||
| n–a | "15: Sum" | August 13, 2009 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "16: Moments" | August 14, 2009 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "After Birth" | August 24, 2009 | |
| External link 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? | |||
| n–a | "It Might Be Science" | September 21, 2009 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Blink" | October 5, 2009 | |
| External link We tackle a question we thought was a no-brainer: why do we blink? | |||
| n–a | "Helicopter Boy" | November 3, 2009 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Killing Babies, Saving the World" | November 16, 2009 | |
| External link 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). | |||
| n–a | "In C" | December 14, 2009 | |
| External link Jad talks to musicians Michael Lowenstern and Zoe Keating about their remixes of Terry Riley's In C. | |||
Season 7 (2010)
| # | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Animal Minds" | April 2, 2010 | |
| External link Communicating across species -- from bringing pets to church, to a rescued whale that may have found a way to say thanks. | |||
| 2 | "Lucy" | April 9, 2010 | |
| External link Chimps. Bonobos. Humans. We're all great apes, but that doesn’t mean we’re one happy family. | |||
| 3 | "Limits" | April 16, 2010 | |
| External link A journey to the edge of human limits -- from a bike race that makes the Tour de France look like child’s play, to a mind-stretching memory competition. | |||
| 4 | "Famous Tumors" | May 7, 2010 | |
| External link Say hello to the growth that killed Ulysses S. Grant, & get to know the woman whose cancer cells changed modern medicine. | |||
| 5 | "Who Are You?" | May 14, 2010 | |
| External link This hour of Radiolab centers around a chilling question: how well can you ever really know the people around you? Compiled from "After Birth" (Aug 2009), "Do I Know You?" (Mar 2010), "Fu Manchu" (Jan 2010), and "14: The Four Groans" (Aug 2009). | |||
Episodes during Season 7 and before Season 8 (2010)
| # | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| n–a | "Fu Manchu" | January 25, 2010 | |
| External link 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? | |||
| n–a | "The Shy Baboon" | February 8, 2010 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Do I Know You?" | March 8, 2010 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "The Bus Stop" | March 23, 2010 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "The Loudest Miniature Fuzz" | April 20, 2010 | |
| External link Music duo Buke and Gase talk to Jad about coaxing delightfully twangy sounds from their homemade instruments. | |||
| n–a | "Vanishing Words" | May 5, 2010 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Strangers in the Mirror" | June 15, 2010 | |
| External link 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. | |||
Season 8 (2010)
| No. | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Oops" | September 3, 2010 | |
| External link Stories of unintended consequences—from a psychologist who may have helped create a terrorist, to a toxic lake that spawned new life. | |||
| 2 | "Words" | September 10, 2010 | |
| External link It’s almost impossible to imagine a world without words. But in this hour, we try to do just that. | |||
| 3 | "Falling" | September 20, 2010 | |
| External link We plunge into a black hole, take a trip over Niagara Falls, and upend some myths about falling cats. | |||
| 4 | "Cities" | October 8, 2010 | |
| External link In this hour of Radiolab, we take to the street to ask what makes cities tick. | |||
| 5 | "Fate and Fortune" | October 15, 2010 | |
| External link This hour, we question what decides the trajectory of our lives -- individual force of will, or fate? If destiny isn't written in the stars, could it be written in our genes? Kids struggle to resist marshmallows, and their ability to hold out at age 4 turns out to predict how successful they're likely to be the rest of their lives. And an unexpected find in a convent archive uncovers early warning signs for dementia in the writings of 18-year-olds. Compiled from "Mischel’s Marshmallows" (Mar 2009), "Secrets of Success" (July 2010), and "Vanishing Words" (May 2010). | |||
Episodes during Season 8 and before Season 9 (2010)
| No. | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| n–a | "The Luckiest Lobster" | July 12, 2010 | |
| External link An unlikely escape story begins in a supermarket, and ends in a boat off the coast of Maine. | |||
| n–a | "Secrets of Success" | July 26, 2010 | |
| External link Robert and Malcolm Gladwell duke it out over questions of luck, talent, passion, and success. | |||
| n–a | "Bonus Video: Words" | August 9, 2010 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Voices in Your Head" | September 7, 2010 | |
| External link 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? | |||
| n–a | "The Walls of Jericho" | October 4, 2010 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Wild Talk" | October 18, 2010 | |
| External link In today's podcast, we get a tantalizing taste of words in the wild, from the jungles to the prairie. | |||
| n–a | "What Does Technology Want?" | November 16, 2010 | |
| External link Are new ideas and new inventions inevitable? Are they driven by us or by a larger force of nature? | |||
| n–a | "Gravitational Anarchy" | November 29, 2010 | |
| External link A mysterious case of the topsy turvies and a return to the question of what felines feel when they fall. | |||
Season 9 (2010–2011)
| # | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "The Good Show" | December 14, 2010 | |
| External link If natural selection boils down to survival of the fittest, how do you explain why one creature might stick its neck out for another? | |||
| 2 | "Lost & Found" | January 25, 2011 | |
| External link Topics explored: function of hippocampus, developmental topographical disorientation, the pigeon G.I. Joe, how carrier pigeons navigate and a piece on Emilie Gossiaux and Alan Lundgard. | |||
| 3 | "Help!" | March 8, 2011 | |
| External link What do you do when your own worst enemy is...you? | |||
| 4 | "The Soul Patch" | April 1, 2011 | |
| External link Stories of unlikely (and surprisingly simple) answers to seemingly unsolvable problems. Compiled from "A Flock of Two" (Feb 2011), "Strangers in the Mirror" (June 2010), and "The Bus Stop" (Mar 2010). | |||
| 5 | "Desperately Seeking Symmetry" | April 18, 2011 | |
| External link A search of order and balance in the world, asking how symmetry shapes everything from the origins of the universe, to what one sees in the mirror. | |||
Episodes during Season 9 and before Season 10 (2010–2011)
| # | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| n–a | "Blood Buddies" | December 28, 2010 | |
| External link In this new short, a tree full of blood-sucking bats lends a startling twist to our understanding of altruism and natural selection. | |||
| n–a | "The Universe Knows My Name" | January 11, 2011 | |
| External link In this new short, we explore luck and fate, both good and bad, with an author and a cartoon character. Compiled from the "Your Future in a Marshmallow" and "Singled Out" segments of "Fate and Fortune" (Oct 2010). | |||
| n–a | "Radiolab Presents: The Loneliness of the Goalkeeper" | February 8, 2011 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "A Flock of Two" | February 22, 2011 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Pass the Science" | March 22, 2011 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "In the Running" | April 5, 2011 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Radiolab Video: Symmetry" | April 18, 2011 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Cosmic Habituation" | May 3, 2011 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Dogs Gone Wild" | May 17, 2011 | |
| External link 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. Compiled from "The Furry Others" segment of "Who Are You?" (May 2010). | |||
Season 10 (2011–2012)
| # | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Talking to Machines" | May 31, 2011 | |
| External link Robert Epstein talks about how he, without realizing it for two months, had an e-mail conversation with a bot calling itself "Svetlana". Sherry Turkle tells the story of Joseph Weizenbaum's program ELIZA and Brian Christian talks about the Loebner Prize, the Turing test, and Rollo Carpenter's Cleverbot. Also: Furby, Martine Rothblatt, David Hanson and Bina48. | |||
| 2 | "Games" | August 23, 2011 | |
| External link Winners, losers, underdogs -- what can games tell us about who we really are? | |||
| 3 | "Loops" | October 4, 2011 | |
| External Link The surprising ways that loops steer…and sometimes derail…our lives. | |||
| 4 | "Patient Zero" | November 14, 2011 | |
| External Link We hunt for Patient Zeroes from all over the map. | |||
| 5 | "The Bad Show" | January 9, 2012 | |
| External Link We wrestle with the dark side of human nature, and ask whether it's something we can ever really understand, or fully escape. | |||
| 6 | "Escape!" | February 20, 2012 | |
| External Link Stories about Christopher Daniel Gay, Isaac Newton's explaining why the moon does not fall down, how the Voyager probe is about to leave the solar system and about Joe Engressia Jr. and phone phreaking. | |||
| 7 | "Guts" | April 2, 2012 | |
| External Link Guests John Cryan, Frederick Kaufman, Jonah Lehrer, Jon Reiner, Mary Roach, Arlene Shaner and Carl Zimmer share stories about reaching into cow and human stomachs, the connection between the intestines and the brain, and a story about a man rendered temporarily gutless. | |||
| 8 | "Colors" | May 21, 2012 | |
| External Link Guests Thomas Cronin, Jules Davidoff, Guy Deutscher, Victoria Finlay, James Gleick, Jonah Lehrer and Jay Neitz share stories about how our world is saturated in color and examine how something so intangible packs such a visceral punch. | |||
| 9 | "When Brains Attack!" | June 22, 2012 | |
| External Link In this episode, strange stories of brains that lead their owners astray, knock them off balance, and, sometimes, propel them to do amazing things. Compiled from "Damn It, Basal Ganglia" (Aug 2011), "Gravitational Anarchy" (Nov 2010), "Slow" (Oct 2011), and "In the Running" (Apr 2011). | |||
| 10 | "Ghost Stories" | June 29, 2012 | |
| External Link Real-life people try to pin down, and make peace with, mysterious figures that haunt them, prod them, and fade out of existence. Featured guests include Jeremy Grange, Elizabeth King, Tore Laerdal, Latif Nasser, Mary Roach, Carlene Stephens and Steve Volk. Compiled from "12: Proof" (Aug 2009), "Death Mask" (Nov 2011), "Wake Up and Dream" (Jan 2012), and "A Clockwork Miracle" (June 2011). | |||
Episodes during Season 10 and before Season 11 (2011–2012)
| # | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| n–a | "A Clockwork Miracle" | June 14, 2011 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Curious Sounds: A Radiolab Concert" | June 27, 2011 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "A 4-Track Mind" | July 26, 2011 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Damn It, Basal Ganglia" | August 9, 2011 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Mapping Tic Tac Toe-dom" | September 6, 2011 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Loop the Loop" | September 20, 2011 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Slow" | October 18, 2011 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Sleepless in South Sudan" | October 31, 2011 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Death Mask" | November 28, 2011 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Radiolab Presents: 99% Invisible" | December 12, 2011 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Mutant Rights" | December 22, 2011 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Wake Up and Dream" | January 23, 2012 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Killer Empathy" | February 6, 2012 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "A War We Need" | March 5, 2012 | |
| External link In this short, the tale of an arms race involving trillions of sea creatures--and why their struggle is vital to our survival. | |||
| n–a | "The Turing Problem" | March 19, 2012 | |
| External link Alan Turing's mental leaps about machines and computers were some of the most innovative ideas of the 20th century. But the world wasn't kind to him. In this short, Robert wonders how Turing's personal life shaped his understanding of mechanical minds and human emotions. | |||
| n–a | "Crossroads" | April 16, 2012 | |
| External link 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 who don't believe a word of it. | |||
| n–a | "Fetal Consequences" | April 30, 2012 | |
| External link 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 fetal cells -- one of the first topics he covered as an NPR science correspondent. | |||
| n–a | "Colors Sneak Peek" | May 14, 2012 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Grumpy Old Terrorists" | June 4, 2012 | |
| External link 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 try to decide how to feel. | |||
| n–a | "Unraveling Bolero" | June 18, 2012 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Radiolab Remixed" | July 2, 2012 | |
| External link 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 to play the winners. | |||
| n–a | "Double Blasted" | July 16, 2012 | |
| External link 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 years when you get down to it. | |||
| n–a | "Argentine Invasion" | July 30, 2012 | |
| External link 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 strategy of ironclad loyalty, absolute intolerance, and brutal violence. | |||
| n–a | "Inside "Ouch!"" | August 27, 2012 | |
| External link 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 business. | |||
| n–a | "What a Slinky Knows" | September 10, 2012 | |
| External link "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 about the nature of all things great and small (including us). | |||
Season 11 (2012–2013)
| # | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "The Fact of the Matter" | September 24, 2012 | |
| External Link 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 the end, might not matter at all. | |||
| 2 | "Inheritance" | November 19, 2012 | |
| External Link Stories of nature and nurture slamming into each other, & shaping our biological blueprints. | |||
| 3 | "Bliss" | December 17, 2012 | |
| External Link Stories of striving, grasping, tripping, and falling for happiness, perfection, and Bliss. | |||
| 4 | "Speed" | February 5, 2013 | |
| External link The inhumanly fast world of high-speed trading, an excruciatingly slow experiment, and a physicist plays Zeus. | |||
| 5 | "Are You Sure?" | March 26, 2013 | |
| External link Stories about walking the tightrope between doubt and certainty. | |||
| 6 | "23 Weeks 6 Days" | April 30, 2013 | |
| External link When Kelley Benham and her husband Tom French finally got pregnant, after many attempts and a good deal of technological help, everything was perfect. Until it wasn't. Their story raises questions that, until recently, no parent had to face… and that are still nearly impossible to answer. | |||
| 7 | "Inner Voices" | June 27, 2013 | |
| External link From the silent words of a child forming her first thought, to the inner heckler that taunts you when the pressure's on, a look at how the voices in our heads shape us—for better and for worse. Compiled from "Voices in Your Head" (Sep 2010), "The Obama Effect, Perhaps." (Jan 2009), "What's Up, Doc?" (Nov 2012), and "A 4-Track Mind" (July 2011). | |||
| 8 | "Known Unknowns" | August 29, 2013 | |
| External link Some things are simply unknowable, from the pain another person feels to the reasons why they commit horrible acts. In this hour, we meet people who are trying to measure and make sense of things they can’t quite grasp—from the quest to pin down a standard measurement for pain, to a pair of performers who, night after night, step on stage with absolutely no plan. Compiled from "Inside "Ouch!"" (Aug 2012), "Killer Empathy" (Feb 2012), and "Radiolab Presents: TJ & Dave" (Apr 2013). | |||
| 9 | "Of Men and Myths" | October 31, 2013 | |
| External link A hat that goes viral, an idea that gives birth to computer science, and a life-saving maneuver. In this episode of Radiolab, we look at the men behind some of the most famous inventions of our time and wonder what they really created, and what legacy they will leave behind them. Compiled from "The Turing Problem" (Mar 2012), "The Man Behind the Maneuver" (Mar 2013), and the "Contagious Ideas" segment of "Patient Zero" (Nov 2011). | |||
| 10 | "The Power of Music" | November 28, 2013 | |
| External link We explore some of the outer edges of the power of music by gathering up a band of biblical horn-blowers, paying a midnight visit to a corner of Mississippi where the devil is rumored to grant wishes, and by helping an angsty 18th century composer push some classical musicians to their physical and psychological limits. Compiled from "Stayin' Alive" (June 2009), "The Walls of Jericho" (Oct 2010), "Speedy Beet" (Feb 2013), and "Crossroads" (Apr 2012). | |||
Episodes during Season 11 and before Season 12 (2012–2013)
| # | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| n–a | "Dark Side of the Earth" | October 8, 2012 | |
| External link 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 space, relives a heart-pounding close call, and shares one of the most tranquil moments of his life. | |||
| n–a | "Seeing in the Dark" | October 22, 2012 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "What's Up, Doc?" | November 6, 2012 | |
| External link 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 left him in a coma, these characters may have saved him. | |||
| n–a | "Raising Crane" | December 3, 2012 | |
| External link 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 back to being wild. | |||
| n–a | "Solid as a Rock" | December 31, 2012 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "The Bitter End" | January 15, 2013 | |
| External link 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 done for themselves. | |||
| n–a | "Speedy Beet" | February 19, 2013 | |
| External link 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 listeners to a kind of psychological limit. | |||
| n–a | "The Man Behind the Maneuver" | March 5, 2013 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Radiolab Presents: TJ & Dave" | April 2, 2013 | |
| External link 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 unknown. | |||
| n–a | "The Distance of the Moon" | April 16, 2013 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "The Septendecennial Sing-Along" | May 14, 2013 | |
| External link 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 meaning and musical components. | |||
| n–a | "VIDEO: Radiolab Behind the Scenes" | May 20, 2013 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl" | May 30, 2013 | |
| External link 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 children taken from their families. | |||
| n–a | "The Trouble with Everything" | June 13, 2013 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Curious Sounds from the Solid Sound Festival" | June 27, 2013 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Ally's Choice" | July 2, 2013 | |
| External link Producer Lu Olkowski brings us the story of a tight-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 true for them didn't make sense for her. | |||
| n–a | "Happy Birthday, Good Dr. Sacks" | July 9, 2013 | |
| External link 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. | |||
Season 12 (2013–2014)
| # | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Blood" | July 31, 2013 | |
| External Link 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. | |||
| 2 | "Blame" | September 12, 2013 | |
| External Link 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 we try to push past it with forgiveness and mercy? | |||
| 3 | "Apocalyptical - Live from the Paramount in Seattle" | December 9, 2013 | |
|
External Link 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. This hour we celebrate the one thing that all things do: end. From the stage in Seattle, with an all-star cast of comedians and musical guests, we bring you stories that end with a bang, with a whimper, and with astonishing bravery and resilience in the face of one's own demise. | |||
| 4 | "Black Box" | January 17, 2014 | |
| External Link 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 secret among magicians, to the nature of consciousness itself, we confront the stubborn gaps in our understanding. | |||
| 5 | "Dead Reckoning" | February 19, 2014 | |
| External Link From a duel with the world's deadliest disease to a surprising peek into the way doctors think about death, in this hour Radiolab tries to reckon with the grim reaper. And, in the end, we confront the question at the heart of it all — when the time comes to finally leave, how do we want to go? Compiled from "Rodney Versus Death" (Aug 2013), "Stayin' Alive" (June 2009), and "The Bitter End" (Jan 2013). | |||
| 6 | "What's Left When You're Right?" | February 25, 2014 | |
| External Link 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. | |||
| 7 | "60 Words" | April 18, 2014 | |
| External Link 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. | |||
| 8 | "Things" | May 30, 2014 | |
| External Link 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 move us, and whether it's better to look back or move on, hold on tight or just let go. | |||
| 9 | "Galapagos" | July 17, 2014 | |
| External Link 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 are dedicating a whole hour to the Galapagos archipelago, the place that inspired Darwin’s theory of evolution and natural selection. 179 years later, the Galapagos are undergoing rapid changes that continue to pose -- and possibly answer -- critical questions about the fragility and resilience of life on Earth. | |||
| 10 | "Hello" | August 21, 2014 | |
| External Link 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 to make contact with some of the strangest strangers on our little planet: dolphins. Producer Lynn Levy eavesdrops on some human-dolphin conversations, from a studio apartment in the Virgin Islands to a research vessel in the Bermuda Triangle. | |||
Episodes during Season 12 and before Season 13 (2013–2014)
| # | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| n–a | "Rodney Versus Death" | August 13, 2013 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Dawn of Midi" | August 29, 2013 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Poop Train" | September 24, 2013 | |
| External link 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 at the start, and not the end, of a journey? In this short, we head out to trace the trail of sludge...from Manhattan, to wherever poop leads us. | |||
| n–a | "Quicksaaaand!" | October 10, 2013 | |
| External link 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 to find out why. | |||
| n–a | "UPDATE: Famous Tumors" | October 22, 2013 | |
| External link 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 years later, we have a newly updated show! Originally aired on May 7, 2010, as "Famous Tumors". | |||
| n–a | "Cut and Run" | November 1, 2013 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "An Ice-Cold Case" | November 19, 2013 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "VIDEO: Radiolab Live Apocalyptical Sneak Peek" | December 9, 2013 | |
| External link A preview of Radiolab's live show Apocalyptical: dinosaurs, death, destruction... plus cinematic live scoring and comedic mayhem from Reggie Watts and Kurt Braunohler. | |||
| n–a | "Sex, Ducks, and The Founding Feud" | December 19, 2013 | |
| External link Jilted lovers and disrupted duck hunts provide a very odd look into the soul of the US Constitution. | |||
| n–a | "The Times They Are a-Changin'" | December 30, 2013 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Brown Box" | January 28, 2014 | |
| External link 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? | |||
| n–a | "Neither Confirm Nor Deny" | February 12, 2014 | |
| External link 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 secrets. | |||
| n–a | "Super Cool" | March 11, 2014 | |
| External link What do frozen horses and a scorching universe have in common? That's what we wanted to know. | |||
| n–a | "KILL 'EM ALL" | March 25, 2014 | |
| External link 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? | |||
| n–a | "Straight Outta Chevy Chase" | April 1, 2014 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "For the Love of Numbers" | May 2, 2014 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "The Skull" | May 15, 2014 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "≤ kg" | June 13, 2014 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "9-Volt Nirvana" | June 26, 2014 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "For the Birds" | July 24, 2014 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Happy Birthday Bobby K" | August 7, 2014 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "In the Dust of this Planet" | September 8, 2014 | |
| External link 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 The Dust of This Planet'. | |||
| n–a | "Juicervose" | September 18, 2014 | |
| External link 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: Autism. In this episode, the Suskind family finds an unlikely way to access their silent son's world. We set off to figure out what their story can tell us about Autism, a disorder with a wide spectrum of symptoms and severity. Along the way, we speak to specialists, therapists, and advocates including Simon Baron-Cohen, Barry and Raun Kaufmann, Dave Royko, Geraldine Dawson, Temple Grandin, and Gil Tippy. | |||
| n–a | "John Luther Adams" | October 3, 2014 | |
| External link 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 elemental, tectonic, and unstoppable. It seemed a natural fit for our consideration of the extinction of the dinosaurs. In this piece, Jad introduces Robert to a special on Adams from a podcast called Meet the Composer. Through interviews and snippets of his music, it captures all the forces at play in Adam's work and reveals the dark majesty of Adams' take on the apocalypse. | |||
Season 13 (2014–2015)
| # | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Translation" | October 20, 2014 | |
| External Link 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 understanding that's way deeper than language. This episode, 8 stories that play out in the middle space between one reality and another — where poetry, insult comedy, 911 calls, and even our own bodies work to close the gap. | |||
| 2 | "Jurisdiction" | November 5, 2014 | |
| External Link Two stories about very different boundaries and how we patrol them. From policing the borders of 'real' hip hop to how the Founding Fathers started a fight about where local law ends and federal law begins that still reverberates today. Compiled from "Sex, Ducks, and The Founding Feud" (Dec 2013) and "Straight Outta Chevy Chase" (Apr 2014). | |||
| 3 | "Patient Zero - Updated" | November 13, 2014 | |
| External Link 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 outbreak. Originally aired on November 14, 2011, as "Patient Zero". | |||
| 4 | "Worth" | December 23, 2014 | |
| External Link This episode makes three attempts to put a price on the priceless. One story figures out the dollar value for an accidental death, another one day of life, and the third assesses the work of bats and bees and tries to keep careful calculations from falling apart in the face of the realities of life, love, and loss. | |||
| 5 | "American Football" | January 29, 2015 | |
| External Link Football is the most popular sport in the US. At the end of the 19th century, football was a nascent and nasty sport. The sons of the most powerful men in the country are literally knocking themselves out to win these gladiatorial battles. But then the Carlisle Indian School, formed in 1879 to assimilate the children and grandchildren of the Native American men who fought the final Plains Wars, fields the most American team of all. The kids at Carlisle took the field to face off against a new world that was destroying theirs, and along the way, they changed the fundamentals of football forever. | |||
| 6 | "La Mancha Screwjob" | February 24, 2015 | |
| External Link 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. | |||
| 7 | "To See Or Not To See" | June 10, 2015 | |
| External Link Should the last moments of life be captured, seen, and shared? This hour asks that question from three very different perspectives: through a window and across a street; face to face in a hospital room; and in the green glow of a night-vision-goggled camera lens half a world away. Compiled from "The Living Room" (Apr 2015), "Sight Unseen" (Apr 2015), and "13: Gone" (Aug 2009). | |||
| 8 | "Looking Back" | September 23, 2015 | |
| External Link Three stories that give us a surprisingly intimate peek into the life, and death, of those who came before. Compiled from "An Ice-Cold Case" (Nov 2013), "The Skull" (May 2014), and "The Trouble with Everything" (June 2013). | |||
| 9 | "Hello: The Broadcast" | September 30, 2015 | |
| External Link In this episode, we try to make contact with some of the strangest strangers on our little planet: animals. Compiled from "Wild Talk" (Oct 2010) and "Hello" (Aug 2014). | |||
| 10 | "DIY" | November 12, 2015 | |
| External Link Two stories of humans DIY-ing answers to seemingly unsolvable problems. First, a homemade brain-stimulator that may unlock hidden potential. Then, the story of a family that finds an unlikely way to access their silent son's world. Compiled from "9-Volt Nirvana" (June 2014) and "Juicervose" (Sep 2014). | |||
Episodes during Season 13 and before Season 14 (2014–2015)
| # | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| n–a | "Haunted" | October 30, 2014 | |
| External link How a group of paranormal investigators made one man realize what it really means for a house, or a man, to be haunted. | |||
| n–a | "Outside Westgate" | November 29, 2014 | |
| External link 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 Africa correspondent Gregory Warner takes us back to the 2013 terrorist attacks on the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya. Warner reported on the attack as it happened, listening to eyewitness accounts, sorting out the facts, establishing the truth. But he's been wrestling with it ever since as his friends and neighbors try not only to put their lives back together, but also try to piece together what really happened that day. | |||
| n–a | "Buttons Not Buttons" | December 12, 2014 | |
| External link 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 the world can end. | |||
| n–a | "Radiolab Presents: Invisibilia" | January 9, 2015 | |
| External link Former Radiolab producer Lulu Miller and NPR reporter Alix Spiegel come to the studio to give us a sneak peek of their new show, Invisibilia from their upcoming episode on categories. | |||
| n–a | "The Trust Engineers" | February 9, 2015 | |
| External link How a tiny group of social engineers are making our online relationships kindler and gentler, whether we like it or not. | |||
| n–a | "Fu-Go" | March 10, 2015 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Los Frikis" | March 24, 2015 | |
| External link The story of how punk rock’s arrival in Cuba allowed a small band of outsiders to sentence themselves to death and set themselves free. | |||
| n–a | "VIDEO: Radiolab Presents: Radio Ambulante" | April 2, 2015 | |
| External link As a follow-up to our story Los Frikis, we're bringing you a translated version of Radio Ambulante's story on the same subject. | |||
| n–a | "The Living Room" | April 9, 2015 | |
| External link Producer Briana Breen and the podcast Love + Radio bring us a story about a very eventful year in the life of an accidental voyeur. | |||
| n–a | "Sight Unseen" | April 28, 2015 | |
| External link Photojournalist Lynsey Addario captured something that happens all the time but few of us get to see, a soldier fatally wounded on the battlefield. | |||
| n–a | "Radiolab Live: Tell-Tale Hearts featuring Oliver Sacks" | May 12, 2015 | |
| External link Highlights from a live Radiolab performance about hearts, driving forces, and the people we love - including a final conversation with Dr. Oliver Sacks. | |||
| n–a | "Nazi Summer Camp" | May 22, 2015 | |
| External link The incredible, little-known story of the Nazi prisoners of war kept on American soil during World War II. | |||
| n–a | "Antibodies Part 1: CRISPR" | June 6, 2015 | |
| External link In 2012, scientists had a realization: hidden inside one of the world’s smallest organisms, was one of the world’s most powerful tools. | |||
| n–a | "Eye in the Sky" | June 18, 2015 | |
| External link 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? | |||
| n–a | "Mau Mau" | July 3, 2015 | |
| External link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Gray's Donation" | July 16, 2015 | |
| External link How a donation leads Sarah and Ross Gray to places we rarely get a chance to see. | |||
| n–a | "Shrink" | July 30, 2015 | |
| External link The definition of life is in flux, complexity is overrated, and humans are shrinking. | |||
| n–a | "From the Archives: Oliver Sacks' Table of Elements" | August 6, 2015 | |
| External link From the archives: a visit with Oliver Sacks and the elements he's known and loved. Compiled from "The Wonder of Youth" segment of "Yellow Fluff and Other Curious Encounters" (Dec 2008). | |||
| n–a | "Elements" | August 23, 2015 | |
| External Link Scientists took about 300 years to lay out the Periodic Table into neat rows and columns. This episode enlists journalists, poets, musicians, and a physicist to tell stories of matter that matters. | |||
| n–a | "Remembering Oliver Sacks" | August 30, 2015 | |
| External Link When Dr. Sacks announced a few months ago that he had terminal cancer and wouldn't do any more interviews, we asked him if he'd talk with us one last time. This is that conversation. Compiled from "Radiolab Live: Tell-Tale Hearts featuring Oliver Sacks" (May 2015). | |||
| n–a | "The Rhino Hunter" | September 7, 2015 | |
| External Link When shooting and killing an endangered species might be the best way to save it. This episode contains strong language. | |||
| n–a | "Darkode" | September 21, 2015 | |
| External Link We shine a light into the dark corners of the internet to see the world from the perspective of both cyber crime victims and perpetrators. | |||
| n–a | "Smile My Ass" | October 6, 2015 | |
| External Link As Candid Camera succeeded, it started to change the way we thought not only of reality television, but also of reality itself. | |||
| n–a | "Update: New Normal?" | October 19, 2015 | |
| External Link In this hour of Radiolab: reframing our ideas about normalcy. Three stories where choice challenges destiny. Originally aired on October 19, 2009, as "New Normal?". | |||
| n–a | "Staph Retreat" | November 2, 2015 | |
| External Link In the war on devilish microbes, our weapons are starting to fail us. What if the only way forward is backward? | |||
| n–a | "Birthstory" | November 22, 2015 | |
| External Link 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. | |||
| n–a | "The Cold War" | November 30, 2015 | |
| External Link Today we discover the rules of war, negotiation, and conflict resolution in a most unlikely place - deep in the heart and soul of that tasty frozen treat we all scream for. | |||
| n–a | "The Fix" | December 8, 2015 | |
| External Link Addiction … and the pills that just might set free those who suffer from it. | |||
Season 14 (2015–2016)
| # | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Music Lab" | December 23, 2015 | |
| External Link At Radiolab, we’re obsessed with music. In this episode, we embrace that obsession for its own sake. Compiled from "Juana Molina" (May 2009), "John Luther Adams" (Oct 2014), and "Unraveling Bolero" (June 2012). | |||
| 2 | "Wild Things" | March 23, 2016 | |
| External Link What does conservation really means in the 21st century? Compiled from "For the Birds" (July 2014) and "The Rhino Hunter" (Sep 2015). | |||
| 3 | "I Hart K-Pop" | April 20, 2016 | |
| External Link Stories about Gary Hart, K-pop, and the erosion of privacy in the media. Compiled from "I Don't Have to Answer That" (Jan 2016) and "K-poparazzi" (Feb 2016). | |||
| 4 | "Love Supreme" | July 20, 2016 | |
| External Link Stories from and about the highest court in the land. Compiled from "Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl" (May 2013) and the More Perfect episode "Cruel and Unusual" (June 2016). | |||
| 5 | "Threat Level" | August 24, 2016 | |
| External Link When should we consider someone a threat? Compiled from "Outside Westgate" (Nov 2014) and "Grumpy Old Terrorists" (June 2012). | |||
| 6 | "Donation and Mutation" | September 21, 2016 | |
| External Link Where do you find comfort after the death of a child? Compiled from "Gray's Donation" (July 2015) and "Antibodies Part 1: CRISPR" (June 2015). | |||
| 7 | "Watching You, Watching Me" | October 26, 2016 | |
| External Link From awkward moments to practical jokes to serious attempts at battling crime, we ask whether being watched is a good or bad thing. Compiled from "Smile My Ass" (Oct 2015) and "Eye in the Sky" (June 2015). | |||
| 8 | "Defying Odds" | November 23, 2016 | |
| External Link Being the first (and best) at something means taking on a big hunk of risk and pushing yourself to dangerous limits. Compiled from "Loop the Loop" (Sept 2011) and "On the Edge" (Apr 2016). | |||
| 9 | "Weights and Measures" | December 14, 2016 | |
| External Link How do we measure the world around us? Today we size things up: from universal standards for measuring mass, to the social cues that help us understand other people’s behavior. Compiled from "≤ kg" (June 2014), "The Trust Engineers" (Feb 2015), and "Solid as a Rock" (Dec 2012). | |||
Episodes during Season 14 and before Season 15 (2015–2016)
| # | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| n–a | "The Cathedral" | December 28, 2015 | |
| External Link On this podcast, we present a story from an amazing, staff favorite podcast, Reply All. | |||
| n–a | "I Don't Have To Answer That" | January 29, 2016 | |
| External Link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Hard Knock Life" | February 12, 2016 | |
| External Link This Valentine's Day, a mysterious tap tap tapping leads us into a world of sex, death, and head-banging. | |||
| n–a | "K-poparazzi" | February 24, 2016 | |
| External Link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Debatable" | March 11, 2016 | |
| External Link How an outsider became the vanguard of a movement that made everything about debate debatable. | |||
| n–a | "Update: 23 Weeks 6 Days" | March 23, 2016 | |
| External Link 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. Originally aired on April 30, 2013, as "23 Weeks 6 Days". | |||
| n–a | "Cellmates" | April 6, 2016 | |
| External Link 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? | |||
| n–a | "On the Edge" | April 21, 2016 | |
| External Link This week, we lace up our skates and tell a story about loving a sport that doesn’t love you back, and being judged in front of the world according to rules you don’t understand. | |||
| n–a | "Bigger Than Bacon" | May 9, 2016 | |
| External Link Today's story is a mystery, shockingly hot, and vanishingly tiny. | |||
| n–a | "Coming Soon: More Perfect" | May 24, 2016 | |
| External Link From the producers of Radiolab, More Perfect dives into the rarefied world of the Supreme Court. | |||
| n–a | "The Buried Bodies Case" | June 3, 2016 | |
| External Link How far should lawyers go to provide the best defense to the worst people? | |||
| n–a | "Radiolab Presents: More Perfect - The Political Thicket" | June 10, 2016 | |
| External Link On this episode, the case that pushed one Supreme Court justice to a nervous breakdown, brought a boiling feud to a head, and changed the course of the Supreme Court forever. | |||
| n–a | "Radiolab Presents: More Perfect - The Imperfect Plaintiffs" | June 28, 2016 | |
| External Link On this episode of More Perfect, we'll talk about the figurative side door to the Supreme Court that has allowed individuals to influence policy for the many. | |||
| n–a | "David and the Wire" | July 12, 2016 | |
| External Link David Weinberg was stuck. Until he started recording every waking minute of his life. | |||
| n–a | "From Tree to Shining Tree" | July 30, 2016 | |
| External Link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Playing God" | August 21, 2016 | |
| External Link When people are dying and you can only save some, how do you choose? What happens, what should happen, when humans are forced to play god? | |||
| n–a | "The Girl Who Doesn't Exist" | August 29, 2016 | |
| External Link In today’s episode, we meet a young woman from Texas, born and raised, who can’t prove that she exists. | |||
| n–a | "Update: Eye In the Sky" | September 12, 2016 | |
| External Link An update on Ross McNutt and his superpower. Originally aired on June 28, 2015, as "Eye in the Sky". | |||
| n–a | "The Primitive Streak" | September 23, 2016 | |
| External Link In a recent breakthrough, researchers grew human embryos longer than ever before, witnessing a mysterious part of human development, and crashing into a decades-old ethical dilemma. | |||
| n–a | "Seneca, Nebraska" | October 12, 2016 | |
| External Link In 2014, the town of Seneca, Nebraska was so deeply divided that they weighed their own self-destruction. | |||
| n–a | "Alpha Gal" | October 27, 2016 | |
| External Link Tuck your napkin under your chin. We’re about to serve up a tale of love, loss, and lamb chops. | |||
| n–a | "One Vote" | November 7, 2016 | |
| External Link In our first-ever election special, we set off to find a single vote that made a difference. | |||
| n–a | "Radiolab Presents: More Perfect - Object Anyway" | November 22, 2016 | |
| External Link On this episode of More Perfect, the Supreme Court ruling that was supposed to prevent race-based jury selection, but may have only made the problem worse. | |||
| n–a | "Bringing Gamma Back" | December 8, 2016 | |
| External Link A new discovery: prodding the brain with light, a group of scientists were able to turn back on a part of the brain affected by Alzheimer’s disease. | |||
| n–a | "It's Not Us, It's You" | December 16, 2016 | |
| External Link This episode we swivel our attention back to you, our listeners, reconnect with some old friends to see how they are doing, and thank everyone for what they've shared with us. | |||
| n–a | "Lose Lose" | December 30, 2016 | |
| External Link 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. | |||
Season 15 (2017)
| # | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | "Playing God: The Broadcast" | January 11, 2017 | |
| External Link In a warzone, a hurricane, a church basement, and an earthquake, the question remains the same. What happens, what should happen, when humans are forced to play god? Originally aired on August 21, 2016, as "Playing God". | |||
| 2 | "Man vs Machine" | February 8, 2017 | |
| External Link In this episode, we look at the things we make—from spoons to microwaves to computers—as an extension of the same evolutionary processes that made us. Compiled from "Dawn of Midi" (Aug 2013), "Brown Box" (Jan 2014), and "What Does Technology Want?" (Nov 2010). | |||
| 3 | "Epic Battles" | March 15, 2017 | |
| External Link Every day, every moment, an epic battle is raging across the globe. This hour, we take a look at borders accidentally drawn and warring microcosms, from ants to phytoplankton to tic tac toe. Compiled from "Mapping Tic Tac Toe-dom" (Sept 2011), "Mutant Rights" (Dec 2011), "Argentine Invasion" (July 2012), and "A War We Need" (Mar 2012). | |||
| 4 | "One Vote: The Broadcast" | April 12, 2017 | |
| External Link In this episode, we search for the single vote that made all the difference, from the biggest election on the planet, to a tiny election that ended a town. Originally aired on November 7, 2016, as "One Vote". | |||
| 5 | "Earth Oddities" | June 14, 2017 | |
| External Link Coral fossils, sex orchestras, and spacewalks...all in one episode! Compiled from "The Times They Are a-Changin'" (Dec 2013), "The Septendecennial Sing-Along" (May 2013), and "Dark Side of the Earth" (Oct 2012). | |||
| 6 | "The War On Our Shore" | July 14, 2017 | |
| External Link Two stories dating back nearly 70 years ago, when something happened that nobody seems to ever talk about it. Compiled from "Fu-Go" (Mar 2015) and "Nazi Summer Camp" (May 2015). | |||
| 7 | "Nukes: The Broadcast" | October 3, 2017 | |
| External Link Is there is anyone that can say “No” if the president orders a nuclear strike? Originally aired on April 7, 2017, as "Nukes". | |||
| 8 | "Saving Animals" | December 6, 2017 | |
| External Link 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 western Pennsylvania. Compiled from "The Luckiest Lobster" (July 2010) and "Stranger in Paradise" (Jan 2017). | |||
Episodes during Season 15 and before Season 16 (2017)
| # | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| n–a | "Radiolab Presents: On the Media: Busted, America's Poverty Myths" | January 18, 2017 | |
| External Link On the Media’s Brooke Gladstone tells Jad and Robert about a project they launched to look at the tales we tell when we talk about poverty. | |||
| n–a | "Stranger in Paradise" | January 27, 2017 | |
| External Link Today we travel from the storage rooms of the Smithsonian to the sandy beaches of Guadeloupe, chasing the tale of one trash can tipping raccoon. | |||
| n–a | "Radiolab Presents: Ponzi Supernova" | February 10, 2017 | |
| External Link Madoff speaks. Investigating the world's largest con with the team behind @Audible_com's #PonziSupernova. | |||
| n–a | "Update: CRISPR" | February 24, 2017 | |
| External Link Catching up on what's been happening in the world of CRISPR, almost two years later. Originally aired on June 6, 2015, as "Antibodies Part 1: CRISPR". | |||
| n–a | "Shots Fired: Part 1" | March 17, 2017 | |
| External Link We join Ben Montgomery, a reporter at the Tampa Bay Times, as he looks at every person killed or injured by Florida police over six years. | |||
| n–a | "Shots Fired: Part 2" | March 24, 2017 | |
| External Link In part 2 of Shots Fired, Jad and Robert talk to Ben Montgomery about how communication breakdowns too often lead to violence. | |||
| n–a | "Nukes" | April 7, 2017 | |
| External Link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Radiolab Extra: Henrietta Lacks" | April 18, 2017 | |
| External Link One woman's medically miraculous cancer cells, and how Henrietta Lacks changed modern science and, eventually, her family's understanding of itself. Compiled from "UPDATE: Famous Tumors" (Oct 2013). | |||
| n–a | "Funky Hand Jive" | April 26, 2017 | |
| External Link Neil Degrasse Tyson and some new microbiome science help answer the question - when we touch greatness how much of it stays with us? | |||
| n–a | "Null and Void" | May 12, 2017 | |
| External Link Today, a hidden power that is either the cornerstone of our democracy or a trapdoor to anarchy. | |||
| n–a | "The Radio Lab" | May 25, 2017 | |
| External Link We celebrate our 15th birthday by surprising Jad and Robert with a look back at when “Radiolab” was just that: a lab for experimenting with radio. | |||
| n–a | "The Gondolier" | June 15, 2017 | |
| External Link What happens when doing what you want to do means giving up who you really are? | |||
| n–a | "Revising the Fault Line" | June 27, 2017 | |
| External Link A fresh look at how, why, and who we blame. Compiled from the "Fault Line" segment of "Blame" (Sept 2013). | |||
| n–a | "The Ceremony" | July 14, 2017 | |
| External Link Today, paranoia sets in: we head to The Ceremony, the top-secret, three-day launch of a new currency, wizards and math included. Halfway through, something strange happens. | |||
| n–a | "Breaking News" | July 27, 2017 | |
| External Link Today, two new technological tricks that together could invade our past selves and rewrite the rules of credibility. Also, we release something terrible into the world. | |||
| n–a | "Truth Warriors" | August 3, 2017 | |
| External Link The stories of a few folks ready to fight the future of fakery. Compiled from the "In the Valley of the Shadow of Doubt" segment of "The Fact of the Matter" (Sept 2012). | |||
| n–a | "Truth Trolls" | August 10, 2017 | |
| External Link A discussion of the attacks on LaBeouf, Rönkkö & Turner's HEWILLNOTDIVIDE.US art project by far-right trolls. Radiolab took down this episode and issued an apology on August 12, 2017, following accusations that it appeared to condone the actions and ideologies of extremist groups. | |||
| n–a | "Where the Sun Don't Shine" | August 23, 2017 | |
| External Link Stories of the Voyager space probe told by Ann Druyan and Merav Opher. Compiled from the "Looking Up" segment of "Space" (May 2006) and the "Is There an Edge to the Heavens?" segment of "Escape!" (Feb 2012). | |||
| n–a | "Radiolab Presents: Anna in Somalia" | September 12, 2017 | |
| External Link This week, we are presenting a story from NPR foreign correspondent Gregory Warner and his new globe-trotting podcast Rough Translation. | |||
| n–a | "Oliver Sipple" | September 21, 2017 | |
| External Link In a flash of heroism and humanity, Oliver Sipple saved a life and became something he never wanted to be. | |||
| n–a | "Driverless Dilemma" | September 26, 2017 | |
| External Link What happens if we hand over our stickiest moral quandary to a two-ton hunk of metal and let it loose on our streets? Compiled from the "Chimp Fights and Trolley Rides" segment of "Morality" (Apr 2006). | |||
| n–a | "Radiolab Presents: More Perfect - American Pendulum I" | October 2, 2017 | |
| External Link If you can’t find justice in the Supreme Court, can you find it someplace else? | |||
| n–a | "Father K" | October 12, 2017 | |
| External Link What happens when a Palestinian American Lutheran Minister runs for office in one of the most divided and most conservative neighborhoods in all of New York City? | |||
| n–a | "Oliver Sacks: A Journey From Where to Where" | October 27, 2017 | |
| External Link There’s nothing quite like the sound of someone thinking out loud, struggling to find words and ideas to match what’s in their head. | |||
| n–a | "Match Made in Marrow" | November 9, 2017 | |
| External Link If you donate bone marrow, you might save a life… or you might land a starring role in the greatest story ever told. | |||
| n–a | "Stereothreat" | November 23, 2017 | |
| External Link Today, we look back at a story we ran almost a decade ago, run into an unfolding upheaval in the field of social psychology, and wonder what might happen to one of our favorite ideas. Compiled from "The Obama Effect, Perhaps." (Jan 2009). | |||
| n–a | "Radiolab Presents: More Perfect - Mr. Graham and the Reasonable Man" | November 30, 2017 | |
| External Link How a diabetic, a cop, and a bottle of orange juice changed the way we police, forever. | |||
| n–a | "Super Cool" | December 5, 2017 | |
| External Link Walter Murch (aka, the Godfather of The Godfather), joined by a team of scientists, leads us on what felt like the magical mystery tour of super cool science. Originally aired on March 11, 2014. | |||
| n–a | "Big Little Questions" | December 20, 2017 | |
| External Link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Bigger Little Questions" | December 22, 2017 | |
| External Link Today, we're back with Part 2 of our questions episodes. This time, we're chasing down answers to some bigger, little questions. | |||
| n–a | "Inside Radiolab (Video)" | December 29, 2017 | |
| External Link Meet our team and take a look behind the scenes here at Radiolab. | |||
| n–a | "How to Be a Hero" | January 9, 2018 | |
| External Link What are people thinking when they risk their lives for someone else? Is heroism an act of sympathy or empathy? Compiled from the "I Need a Hero" segment of "The Good Show" (Dec 2010). | |||
| n–a | "The Voice in Your Head - A Tribute to Joe Frank" | January 23, 2018 | |
| External Link How do you pay proper tribute to a legend that many people haven’t heard of? | |||
| n–a | "Radiolab Presents: More Perfect - One Nation, Under Money" | January 31, 2018 | |
| External Link A look at the government’s secret power to control almost everything around you. | |||
| n–a | "Ghosts of Football Past" | February 3, 2018 | |
| External Link In anticipation of Super Bowl LII, we're revisiting an old episode about the surprising history of how the game came to be. Compiled from the "Ghosts of Football Past" segment of "American Football" (Jan 2015). | |||
After Season 15 (2018– )
2018
| # | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| n–a | "Smarty Plants" | February 13, 2018 | |
| External Link Do you really need a brain to sense the world around you? To remember? Or even learn? | |||
| n–a | "The Curious Case of the Russian Flash Mob at the West Palm Beach Cheesecake Factory" | February 19, 2018 | |
| External Link When Robert Mueller released his indictment a few days ago, alleging that 13 Russian nationals colluded to disrupt the 2016 elections, we had a lot of questions. | |||
| n–a | "Radiolab Presents: More Perfect - The Gun Show" | February 23, 2018 | |
| External Link In 2008, the Supreme Court stepped in to settle our fight over the Second Amendment’s meaning. They did. And they didn’t. | |||
| n–a | "Rippin’ the Rainbow an Even Newer One" | March 15, 2018 | |
| External Link The creature with the world’s most complex visual system seems to be terrible at telling colors apart. | |||
| n–a | "Border Trilogy Part 1: Hole in the Fence" | March 23, 2018 | |
| External Link Part One of our Border Trilogy, in which we chronicle an unlikely legal showdown between high schoolers in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the country and the US Border Patrol. | |||
| n–a | "Border Trilogy Part 2: Hold the Line" | April 5, 2018 | |
| External Link Part Two of our Border Trilogy, in which one Border Patrol agent changes the entire agency’s enforcement strategy, and one anthropologist tries to measure its deadly consequences. | |||
| n–a | "Border Trilogy Part 3: What Remains" | April 20, 2018 | |
| External Link Part Three of our Border Trilogy, in which we hear the story of a woman from Ecuador who died in the Arizona desert. And we ask, what could stop migrants from risking so much? | |||
| n–a | "Dark Side of the Earth" | April 26, 2018 | |
| External Link Astronauts at the International Space Station can make one request to talk to an earthling of their choice. For some reason, Astronaut Mark Vande Hei chose us. | |||
| n–a | "More or Less Human" | May 17, 2018 | |
| External Link As the line between technology and humanity becomes blurrier, we wonder, are we becoming more or less human? | |||
| n–a | "Unraveling Bolero" | May 22, 2018 | |
| External Link A strange symmetry in the minds of two artists, and the one piece of music that connects them. | |||
| n–a | "Poison Control" | June 1, 2018 | |
| External Link A phone call plunges us into a network of unsung experts, who since the 1950s have helped us navigate our poison-filled planet. | |||
| n–a | "Birthstory" | June 7, 2018 | |
| External Link 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. | |||
| n–a | "Gonads: The Primordial Journey" | June 15, 2018 | |
| External Link Deep inside the human embryo, a band of nomadic cells embarks on an epic journey, with the future of humanity resting on their microscopic shoulders. | |||
| n–a | "Gonads: Fronads" | June 23, 2018 | |
| External Link When Annie Dauer was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at 29, she took a chance on an experimental fertility procedure that sounds like science fiction: ovary freezing. | |||
| n–a | "Gonads: X & Y" | June 30, 2018 | |
| External Link Science pushes back against the century-old notion that X equals girl and Y equals boy, and wonders: are we who we think we are? | |||
| n–a | "Gonads: Dutee" | July 21, 2018 | |
| External Link Olympian Dutee Chand has drawn the spotlight not just for being one of the fastest Indian female runners ever: in 2014, she was banned after failing a “gender test.” | |||
| n–a | "Gonads: Dana" | July 21, 2018 | |
| External Link When Dana Zzyym applied for their first passport in 2014, there was one question they couldn’t answer: male or female? This episode, biological realities and the power of words. | |||
| n–a | "Gonads: Sex Ed" | July 26, 2018 | |
| External Link If gonads are magical, and male and female are blurry categories, how the hell do you tell young people about the birds and the bees? | |||
| n–a | "The Bad Show" | July 27, 2018 | |
| External Link We wrestle with the dark side of human nature, and ask whether it's something we can ever really understand, or fully escape. | |||
| n–a | "Post No Evil" | August 17, 2018 | |
| External Link Breastfeeding, beheadings and bombings, Facebook has rules to handle them all. Today, we explore those rules and ask what they tell us about the future of free speech. | |||
| n–a | "27: The Most Perfect Album" | September 18, 2018 | |
| External Link More Perfect is back with a Constitutional mix-tape and off-beat stories about each of the 27 Amendments. | |||
| n–a | "Infective Heredity" | September 20, 2018 | |
| External Link Today, a fast moving, sidestepping, gene-swapping free-for-all that would’ve made Darwin’s head spin. | |||
| n–a | "Breaking Bad News Bears" | September 28, 2018 | |
| External Link We decided to shake things up at the show...bear with us. | |||
| n–a | "In the No Part 1" | October 11, 2018 | |
| External Link Kaitlin Prest had a lot of things to say about the word "No." And on her podcast "The Heart," she said them in a way we couldn't shake. Today, we talk to Kaitlin, and hear her story. | |||
| n–a | "In the No Part 2" | October 18, 2018 | |
| External Link We dive into the gray zone of consent and wrestle with questions of culpability, generational divides, and the utility of fear in changing our culture. | |||
| n–a | "In the No Part 3" | October 25, 2018 | |
| External Link From hookups to apps to whips, we go looking for the key to a conversation that should be happening, but isn't. | |||
| n–a | "War of the Worlds" | October 30, 2018 | |
| External Link For the 80th anniversary of Orson Welles' 1938 radio play "The War of the Worlds," we take a deep dive into one of the most controversial moments in broadcasting history. | |||
| n–a | "Tweak the Vote" | November 4, 2018 | |
| External Link On the eve of the midterm elections, we look at one tweak to voting that could help bring democracy back from the brink … | |||
| n–a | "UnErased: Dr. Davison and the Gay Cure" | November 21, 2018 | |
| External Link A series of serendipitous moments leads to a change of heart in one man that eventually changes an entire field of science. | |||
| n–a | "UnErased: Smid" | November 27, 2018 | |
| External Link This is a story of identity, making amends and John Smid’s reckoning with his life. | |||
| n–a | "Apologetical" | December 21, 2018 | |
| External Link When someone hurts you, what do you really want from them? From the Canadian House of Commons to a California hospital, we go looking for the right way to say you’re sorry. | |||
| n–a | "A Clockwork Miracle" | December 27, 2018 | |
| External Link Today, a king, a clockmaker, and a monk come together to forge a manmade miracle. We tell a five-hundred-year-old legend about robots, death, and a divine deal. | |||
| n–a | "BONUS: Radiolab Scavenger Hunt" | December 28, 2018 | |
| External Link The question we get more than any other is “Where do all those stories come from?” Today, for the first time ever, we spill our story-finding secrets. | |||
2019
| # | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| n–a | "The Punchline" | January 16, 2019 | |
| External Link One of the worst players in the NHL gets voted into the All-Star Game. | |||
| n–a | "More Perfect: Sex Appeal" | January 22, 2019 | |
| External Link How Ruth Bader Ginsburg used a trojan horse, filled with frat boys and beer, to win a battle for gender equality. | |||
| n–a | "The Beauty Puzzle" | February 7, 2019 | |
| External Link In one corner of the natural world, beauty may be beating brawn. | |||
| n–a | "Loops" | February 21, 2019 | |
| External Link The surprising ways that loops steer… and sometimes derail… our lives. | |||
| n–a | "Asking for a Friend" | February 28, 2019 | |
| External Link This might be a stupid question, but... | |||
| n–a | "Asking for Another Friend" | March 7, 2019 | |
| External Link Parasitic genes, public poop, and the eerie sound of a subway train. What is ... the answer to your stupid question? | |||
| n–a | "Bliss" | March 21, 2019 | |
| External Link Stories of striving, grasping, tripping, and falling for happiness, perfection, and Bliss. | |||
| n–a | "For Whom the Cowbell Tolls" | March 29, 2019 | |
| External Link What if citizenship was a popularity contest... and you just lost? | |||
| n–a | "Americanish" | April 19, 2019 | |
| External Link We travel to the limbo space between foreign and domestic to find the up and downsides of being a US citizen. | |||
| n–a | "Fu-Go" | April 25, 2019 | |
| External Link During World War II, something happened that nobody ever talks about. A tale of mysterious balloons, children caught up in the winds of war. And the terror of silence. | |||
| n–a | "Dinopocalypse Redux" | May 2, 2019 | |
| External Link At a mysterious, muddy site in North Dakota, scientists claim they have a three-hour snapshot of the earth 66 million years ago, on the day the dinosaurs died. | |||
| n–a | "Bit Flip" | May 8, 2019 | |
| External Link What do a hacked Belgian election, a falling airplane and a fleet of runaway cars all have in common? The answer just might lie in the stars. | |||
| n–a | "The Good Samaritan" | May 24, 2019 | |
| External Link Two people make a decision that would lead to a legal and moral puzzle about how we balance accountability and forgiveness. | |||
| n–a | "Neither Confirm Nor Deny" | June 4, 2019 | |
| External Link Whether it comes from government spokespeople or celebrity publicists, the phrase “can neither confirm nor deny” is the perfect non-denial denial. | |||
| n–a | "G: The Miseducation of Larry P" | June 7, 2019 | |
| External Link More than a million American kids a year get IQ tested, but in the state of California, if your kid is Black, they almost surely won’t be given one. | |||
| n–a | "G: Problem Space" | June 13, 2019 | |
| External Link Can IQ tests ever be used ... for good? This episode, we meet a few people who think they can be. | |||
| n–a | "G: Relative Genius" | June 28, 2019 | |
| External Link When Albert Einstein died, someone stole his brain — and kicked off a scavenger hunt for genius that won’t seem to let us go. | |||
| n–a | "G: Unfit" | July 17, 2019 | |
| External Link A journey to one of the darkest sides of humanity’s attempts to measure the human mind and put people in boxes. | |||
| n–a | "G: Unnatural Selection" | July 25, 2019 | |
| External Link A scientist launches a controversial genetic test for intelligence: what does it really tell us? | |||
| n–a | "G: The World's Smartest Animal" | July 29, 2019 | |
| External Link What’s the smartest animal in the world? We figure it out the best way we know how... an animal game show. | |||
| n–a | "More Perfect: Cruel and Unusual" | August 8, 2019 | |
| External Link We explore three little words embedded in the 8th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution: “cruel and unusual.” | |||
| n–a | "Right to be Forgotten" | August 23, 2019 | |
| External Link Today, we find ourselves in a room in Cleveland, Ohio, where a group of journalists are challenging the way we think about newspapers, and ourselves. | |||
| n–a | "The Memory Palace" | August 27, 2019 | |
| External Link Historians say the past is a foreign country, but often it feels more like a dream. Today we talk to someone who has mastered the art of navigating the dreamscapes of our past. | |||
| n–a | "What's Left When You're Right?" | September 5, 2019 | |
| External Link From the stage to the cage, a series of showdowns that leave us wondering about the price of being right ... or coming from the left. | |||
| n–a | "Tit for Tat" | September 17, 2019 | |
| External Link Do we really live in a selfish, dog-eat-dog world? Or has evolution carved out a hidden code that rewards genuine cooperation? | |||
| n–a | "Silky Love" | September 27, 2019 | |
| External Link We scour the Atlantic Ocean for an answer to one of life’s slipperiest mysteries. | |||
| n–a | "Radiolab Presents: Dolly Parton's America" | October 15, 2019 | |
| External Link We enter the Dollyverse. | |||
| n–a | "Birdie in the Cage" | October 22, 2019 | |
| External Link Can you fit the identity of a whole nation into a dance? Of course not. But we tried anyway. | |||
| n–a | "Songs that Cross Borders" | October 29, 2019 | |
| External Link We explore songs with the power to transcend language and the triumphant return of the Elvis of Afghanistan. | |||
| n–a | "Dolly Parton's America: Neon Moss" | November 7, 2019 | |
| External Link On the mountaintop, we go back in time, and across the world - to discover the unlikely connection between Dolly's home and Jad's father Naji. | |||
| n–a | "Breaking News" | November 19, 2019 | |
| External Link Today, two new technological tricks that together could invade our past selves and rewrite the rules of credibility. Also, we release something terrible into the world. | |||
| n–a | "Breaking Bongo" | November 26, 2019 | |
| External Link What happens when a ragtag bunch of freedom fighters troll their despotic dictator from afar? | |||
| n–a | "Things" | December 12, 2019 | |
| External Link This hour we investigate the objects around us, their power to move us, and whether it's better to look back or move on, hold on tight or just let go. | |||
| n–a | "There and Back Again" | December 18, 2019 | |
| External Link In 1822 a stork that got speared like a kabob helped baffled scientists answer a thousand-year-old question. Of course that led to another question, then another, then another ... | |||
| n–a | "Man Against Horse" | December 27, 2019 | |
| External Link An exploration into our very beginnings, of the first strides we took to become us. | |||
2020
| # | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| n–a | "60 Words" | January 7, 2020 | |
| External Link How one sentence -- just 60 words written in the hours after the September 11 attacks -- became the legal foundation for the "war on terror." | |||
| n–a | "Body Count" | January 24, 2020 | |
| External Link When you run the math, who comes out on top, the living or the dead? | |||
| n–a | "The Bobbys" | January 30, 2020 | |
| External Link An award show you’ve never heard of before. | |||
| n–a | "The Other Latif: Episode 1" | February 4, 2020 | |
| External Link Radiolab’s Latif Nasser is stunned to find he shares his name with detainee 244 at Guantanamo Bay. This man was cleared to leave Gitmo in 2016, so why is he still stuck there? | |||
| n–a | "The Other Latif: Episode 2" | February 11, 2020 | |
| External Link Latif travels to Morocco to trace his namesake's possible onramp into extremism and is surprised by what he finds. | |||
| n–a | "The Other Latif: Episode 3" | February 18, 2020 | |
| External Link Abdul Latif Nasser gets a job working on a sunflower farm in Sudan. What on earth could be suspicious about that? | |||
| n–a | "The Other Latif: Episode 4" | February 25, 2020 | |
| External Link Latif investigates Abdul Latif’s classified time in Afghanistan, and amidst the explosions and rubble, finds a jailhouse interview that changes how he sees his namesake. | |||
| n–a | "The Other Latif: Bonus Episode!" | March 3, 2020 | |
| External Link We’re not done with Episode 5 yet! While we wait, Jad and Latif chat about Abdul Latif’s response to the series, deleted scenes, and the nudges that make us who we are. | |||
| n–a | "The Other Latif: Episode 5" | March 6, 2020 | |
| External Link What happened to Abdul Latif at Guantanamo Bay? Latif visits the “legal equivalent of outer space,” and manages to see his namesake … maybe. | |||
| n–a | "The Other Latif: Episode 6" | March 17, 2020 | |
| External Link Despite being cleared for transfer home in 2016, Abdul Latif Nasser is still stuck at Guantanamo. Why? Latif digs for answers, and spoiler: it goes all the way to the top. | |||
| n–a | "Dispatch 1: Numbers" | March 27, 2020 | |
| External Link On this episode, we offer a numerical duet - one, an essay about the trick at the center of exponential curves, the other, about all the things we aren’t counting. | |||
| n–a | "Dispatch 2: Every Day is Ignaz Semmelweis Day" | April 1, 2020 | |
| External Link The forgotten origins of a lifesaving ritual we’re all acting out 20 times a day, every single day. | |||
| n–a | "Dispatch 3: Shared Immunity" | April 3, 2020 | |
| External Link Could a century-old treatment become our best weapon in the fight against Covid-19? | |||
| n–a | "Space" | April 6, 2020 | |
| External Link We ponder our insignificant place in the universe, and boldly go after stories of romance & cynicism in Outer Space. | |||
| n–a | "Dispatch 4: Six Feet" | April 10, 2020 | |
| External Link Everyone on the planet has been told to stay six feet away from each other. Why six? And is six even the right number? | |||
| n–a | "The Cataclysm Sentence" | April 18, 2020 | |
| External Link What’s the one thing you’d pass on if we all disappeared tomorrow? | |||
| n–a | "Atomic Artifacts" | April 24, 2020 | |
| External Link America represents many different things to many different people. What if you could only choose one thing, one physical object, to represent it all? | |||
| n–a | "Dispatch 5: Don't Stop Believin'" | May 6, 2020 | |
| External Link Jad tracks an emergency room doctor on the frontlines treating Covid-19. | |||
| n–a | "David and Dominique" | May 8, 2020 | |
| External Link David and Dominique have something in common. | |||
| n–a | "Why Fish Don't Exist" | May 13, 2020 | |
| External Link A conversation with Lulu Miller about chaos, science, and her new book, Why Fish Don’t Exist. | |||
| n–a | "Octomom" | May 15, 2020 | |
| External Link A mile under the ocean, we get to watch an octopus perform a heroic act of heart and determination. | |||
| n–a | "Speedy Beet" | May 22, 2020 | |
| External Link Beethoven, like you've never heard him before. | |||
| n–a | "Dispatch 6: Strange Times" | May 29, 2020 | |
| External Link From a bio-safety lab to the woods of Tennessee, we explore the rhythms that shape our work, our lives, and our bodies. | |||
| n–a | "Nina" | June 6, 2020 | |
| External Link Nina Simone: what she told us then, and tells us now. | |||
| n–a | "Graham" | June 6, 2020 | |
| External Link How a diabetic, a cop, and a bottle of orange juice changed the way we police, forever. | |||
| n–a | "The Liberation of RNA" | June 13, 2020 | |
| External Link Today, an incident of racial profiling, a confrontation with scientific racism, and the liberation of RNA. Features a story told by C. Brandon Ogbunu for the Story Collider podcast. | |||
| n–a | "Post No Evil Redux" | June 19, 2020 | |
| External Link Breastfeeding, beheadings and bombings, Facebook has rules to handle them all. Today, we explore those rules and ask what they tell us about the future of free speech. | |||
| n–a | "The Third. A TED Talk." | June 25, 2020 | |
| External Link Jad gives a TED talk about his life as a journalist and how Radiolab has evolved over the years. | |||
| n–a | "The Flag and the Fury" | July 12, 2020 | |
| External Link For 126 years, Mississippi has had the Confederate battle flag on their state flag. Today, the dramatic behind-the-scenes story of it coming down. | |||
| n–a | "Dispatches from 1918" | July 17, 2020 | |
| External Link Thinking about our future, we look back on the aftermath of a century-old pandemic. | |||
| n–a | "Baby Blue Blood Drive" | July 23, 2020 | |
| External Link Horseshoe crabs harbor a half-billion-year-old secret: a superpower that helped them outlive the dinosaurs. But it hasn’t just been saving their butts, it’s been saving ours too. | |||
| n–a | "Invisible Allies" | July 30, 2020 | |
| External Link From the brightest star, to the most elemental particle, scientists are considering strange solutions for covid-19. | |||
| n–a | "Uncounted" | August 7, 2020 | |
| External Link A look at two groups of uncounted Americans who want to have a say in our democracy. Plus, Latif has a new show on Netflix! | |||
| n–a | "The Wubi Effect" | August 14, 2020 | |
| External Link In the 1980s, as China was modernizing, they ran into a problem. There was no way to fit their 70,000 plus character language on a QWERTY keyboard. Today, the story of how they did it. | |||
| n–a | "Lebanon, USA" | August 20, 2020 | |
| External Link In this adapted piece by Kerning Cultures, we take a road trip across America - starting with two Jads and ending with forty-seven Lebanons. | |||
| n–a | "Translation" | August 27, 2020 | |
| External Link How the right words can have the wrong meanings, and the best translations lead us to an understanding that's way deeper than language. | |||
| n–a | "Fungus Amungus" | September 4, 2020 | |
| External Link There’s a new bug popping up around the world. Or it might just be an old bug that finally met its moment. | |||
| n–a | "Bringing Gamma Back, Again" | September 10, 2020 | |
| External Link What can flashing lights and an eerie reverberating sound do for the brain of someone suffering from Alzheimer’s? We update one of our favorite episodes. | |||
| n–a | "Falling" | September 17, 2020 | |
| External Link We plunge into a black hole, take a trip over Niagara Falls, and upend some myths about falling cats. | |||
| n–a | "More Perfect: Sex Appeal" | September 18, 2020 | |
| External Link How Ruth Bader Ginsburg used a trojan horse, filled with frat boys and beer, to win a battle for gender equality. | |||
| n–a | "Insomnia Line" | September 25, 2020 | |
| External Link It’s the dead of night, you’re wide awake. And you’re not alone. So we put a phone number on twitter, and spent all night talking to the sleepless among us. | |||
| n–a | "No Special Duty" | October 2, 2020 | |
| External Link A look at what happens when the police don’t do the one thing you expect them to. | |||
| n–a | "Kittens Kick the Giggly Blue Robot All Summer" | October 8, 2020 | |
| External Link How did the Supreme Court get so supreme? On this episode of More Perfect, we go all the way back to a case that, in a lot of ways, started it all. | |||
| n–a | "What If?" | October 23, 2020 | |
| External Link If a president happened to break a few political norms and decide, in the face of defeat, to fight instead of concede, what would actually happen? Today we choose our own adventure. | |||
| n–a | "How to Win Friends and Influence Baboons" | October 31, 2020 | |
| External Link How important is the way you walk? Well, if you’re a baboon it can flip the entire power structure of your troop on its head. At least when it comes to breakfast. | |||
| n–a | "Bloc Party" | November 2, 2020 | |
| External Link Who are the soccer moms of the 2020 election? We set out to find them. | |||
| n–a | "Breaking Benford" | November 13, 2020 | |
| External Link The internet says an obscure mathematical law can tell us something about the 2020 US election. It can't. But it can tell us about us. | |||
| n–a | "Deception" | November 19, 2020 | |
| External Link Lies, liars, and lie catchers. And the strange power of lying to yourself. | |||
| n–a | "Dispatch 13: Challenge Trials" | November 24, 2020 | |
| External Link Would you volunteer to get infected with COVID-19 to save someone’s life? Thousands of people already have. | |||
| n–a | "The Great Vaccinator" | December 3, 2020 | |
| External Link A foul-mouthed, chicken-loving Montanan completely altered the course of human health. His story also lays bare the struggles inherent in our global effort to create a covid-19 vaccine. | |||
| n–a | "Enemy of Mankind" | December 10, 2020 | |
| External Link Nine justices hold the fate of a pivotal American human rights law in their hands. Should the U.S. Supreme Court also be the court of the world? | |||
| n–a | "The Ashes on the Lawn" | December 18, 2020 | |
| External Link A global pandemic. An afflicted, angry group. A seemingly indifferent government. When nothing seems to work, how do you make change? | |||
| n–a | "A Terrible Covid Christmas Special" | December 23, 2020 | |
| External Link A terrible Christmas special befitting a terrible year. | |||
| n–a | "Sight Unseen" | January 13, 2021 | |
| External Link We try to contain the stream of photos coming at us in the last week and ask a question about an image that few of us get to see, a soldier fatally wounded on the battlefield. | |||
2021
| # | Title | Original air date | Episode link |
|---|---|---|---|
| n–a | "Sight Unseen" | January 13, 2021 | |
| TBD | |||
| n–a | "TBD" | January 0, 2021 | |
| TBD | |||
2022
| # | Title | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| n–a | "Worst. Year. Ever." | January 7, 2022 | |
| External Link TBD | |||
| n–a | "Darkode" | January 14, 2022 | |
| External Link TBD | |||
| n–a | ""The 11th: A Letter From George"" | January 21, 2022 | |
| External Link TBD | |||
| n–a | ""The First Radiolab"" | January 28, 2022 | |
| External Link This is a rerun from the very first episode of Radiolab. | |||
| n–a | "TBD" | December 0, 2022 | |
| External Link TBD | |||
| n–a | "TBD" | December 0, 2022 | |
| External Link TBD | |||
| n–a | "TBD" | December 0, 2022 | |
| External Link TBD | |||
| n–a | "TBD" | December 0, 2022 | |
| External Link TBD | |||
| n–a | "TBD" | December 0, 2022 | |
| External Link TBD | |||
| n–a | "TBD" | December 0, 2022 | |
| External Link TBD | |||
References
- ↑ "Where Can I Hear Radiolab?". WNYC. Archived from the original on 30 July 2013. Retrieved 2 August 2013.
- ↑ "Radiolab Archive". WNYC. Archived from the original on 13 July 2013. Retrieved 2 August 2013.
- ↑ "Podcasts". WNYC. Archived from the original on 11 August 2013. Retrieved 2 August 2013.
- ↑ "FAQ". WNYC Radio. Archived from the original on 29 August 2012. Retrieved 2 August 2013.
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