FeedCity: Radiolab

Radiolab
27 May 2021 • WNYC Studios

The Rhino Hunter

52:17

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

Radiolab
21 May 2021 • WNYC Studios

The Dirty Drug and the Ice Cream Tub

46:29

This episode, a tale of a wonder drug that will make you wonder about way more than just drugs. Doctor-reporter Avir Mitra follows the epic and fantastical journey of a molecule dug out of a distant patch of dirt that would go on to make billions of dollars, prol...

Radiolab
13 May 2021 • WNYC Studios

Brown Box

28:38

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?

Hi Radiolab listeners, we want to hear from you! Take this podcast survey and let us know how you feel about the show. It only takes about 20 minutes and your feedback will help us make our podcast better! There are no wrong answers, we want your honest takes. You can help out by taking the survey here (www.radiolab.org/survey).

Radiolab
05 May 2021 • WNYC Studios

Kleptotherms

44:12

In this episode, we break the thermometer watch the mercury spill out as we discover temperature is far stranger than it seems. Five stories that run the gamut from snakes to stars. We start out underwater, with a snake that has evolved a devious trick for kee...

Radiolab
22 Apr 2021 • WNYC Studios

Deep Cuts

24:13

Today, Lulu and Latif talk about some of their favorite episodes from Radiolab’s past that hold new power today. Lulu points to an episode from 2008: Imagine that you're a composer. Imagine getting the commission to write a song that will allow family membe...

Radiolab
15 Apr 2021 • WNYC Studios

The Septendecennial Sing-Along

19:39

While most of us hear a wall of white noise, squeaks, and squawks....David Rothenberg hears a symphony. He's trained his ear to listen for the music of animals, and he's always looking for chances to join in, with everything from lonely birds to giant whales to swarming cica...

Radiolab
02 Apr 2021 • WNYC Studios

What Up Holmes?

48:21

Love it or hate it, the freedom to say obnoxious and subversive things is the quintessence of what makes America America. But our say-almost-anything approach to free speech is actually relatively recent, and you can trace it back to one guy: a Supreme Court justice named Ol...

Radiolab
25 Mar 2021 • WNYC Studios

Elements

01:13:47

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

Radiolab
19 Mar 2021 • WNYC Studios

Escapescape

32:24

As we hit the one year mark since the first U.S. state (California) issued a stay-at-home order to prevent the spread of COVID-19, we put out a call to see if any of you would take us to your secret escape spot and record audio there. And you astounded us with what you broug...

Radiolab
12 Mar 2021 • WNYC Studios

Dispatch 14: Covid Crystal Ball

27:18

Last summer, at a hospital in England, a man in his 70s being treated for complications with cancer tested positive for covid-19. He had lymphoma, and the disease plus his drugs weakened his immune system, making him particularly susceptible to the virus. He wasn’t too bad o...

Radiolab
25 Feb 2021 • WNYC Studios

The Ceremony

47:20

In November of 2016, journalist Morgen Peck showed up at her friend Molly Webster's apartment in Brooklyn, told her to take her battery out of her phone, and began to tell her about The Ceremony, a moment last fall when a group of, well, let's just call them w...

Radiolab
19 Feb 2021 • WNYC Studios

Red Herring

35:22

It was the early 80s, the height of the Cold War, when something strange began happening off the coast of Sweden. The navy reported a mysterious sound deep below the surface of the ocean. Again, and again, and again they would hear it near their secret military bases, in the...

Radiolab
12 Feb 2021 • WNYC Studios

Facebook's Supreme Court

44:14

Since its inception, the perennial thorn in Facebook’s side has been content moderation. That is, deciding what you and I are allowed to post on the site and what we’re not. Missteps by Facebook in this area have fueled everything from a genocide in Myanmar to viral disinfor...

Radiolab
29 Jan 2021 • WNYC Studios

Smile My Ass

34:47

Candid Camera is one of the most original – and one of the most mischievous – TV shows of all time. Admirers hailed its creator Allen Funt as a poet of the everyday. Critics denounced him as a Peeping Tom. Funt sought to capture people at their most unguarded, th...

Radiolab
16 Jan 2021 • WNYC Studios

Post Reports: Four Hours of Insurrection

39:26

We’re all still processing what happened on January 6th. Despite the hours and hours of video circulating online, we still didn’t feel like we had a visceral, on-the-ground sense of what happened that day. Until we heard the piece we’re featuring today. The Washington Post’s...

Radiolab
15 Jan 2021 • WNYC Studios

Sight Unseen

36:59

As the attacks were unfolding on the Capitol, a steady stream of images poured onto our screens. Photo editor Kainaz Amaria tells us what she was looking for--and seeing--that afternoon. And she runs into a dilemma we've talked about before. In Decem...

Radiolab
23 Dec 2020 • WNYC Studios

A Terrible Covid Christmas Special

49:43

This year was the worst. And as our staff tried to figure out what to do for our last episode of 2020, co-host Latif Nasser thought, what if we stare straight into the darkness … and make a damn Christmas special about it. Latif begins with a story about Santa, and a back-ro...

Radiolab
18 Dec 2020 • WNYC Studios

The Ashes on the Lawn

52:07

A global pandemic. An afflicted, angry group. A seemingly indifferent government. Reporter Tracie Hunte wanted to understand this moment of pain and confusion by looking back 30 years, and she found a complicated answer to a simple question: When nothing seems to work, how do you make change?

This episode was reported by Tracie Hunte, and produced by Annie McEwen and Tobin Low. Fact-checking by Diane Kelly.

Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.

Hi Radiolab listeners, we want to hear from you! Take this podcast survey and let us know how you feel about the show. It only takes about 20 minutes and your feedback will help us make our podcast better! There are no wrong answers, we want your honest takes. You can help out by taking the survey here (www.radiolab.org/survey).

Radiolab
10 Dec 2020 • WNYC Studios

Enemy of Mankind

56:41

Should the U.S. Supreme Court be the court of the world? In the 18th century, two feuding Frenchmen inspired a one-sentence law that helped launch American human rights litigation into the 20th century. The Alien Tort Statute allowed a Paraguayan woman to find justice for a ...

Radiolab
03 Dec 2020 • WNYC Studios

The Great Vaccinator

42:05

Until now, the fastest vaccine ever made - for mumps - took four years. And while our current effort to develop a covid-19 vaccine involves thousands of people working around the clock, the mumps vaccine was developed almost exclusively by one person: Maurice Hilleman. ...

Radiolab
25 Nov 2020 • WNYC Studios

Dispatch 13: Challenge Trials

26:36

What if someone asked you to get infected with the COVID-19 virus, deliberately, in order to speed up the development of a vaccine? Would you do it? Would you risk your life to save others? For months, dozens of companies have been racing to create coronavirus vaccines. Fina...

Radiolab
19 Nov 2020 • WNYC Studios

Deception

57:37

Lies, liars, and lie catchers. This hour of Radiolab asks if it's possible for anyone to lead a life without deception.

Hi Radiolab listeners, we want to hear from you! Take this podcast survey and let us know how you feel about the show. It only takes about 20 minutes and your feedback will help us make our podcast better! There are no wrong answers, we want your honest takes. You can help out by taking the survey here (www.radiolab.org/survey).

Radiolab
13 Nov 2020 • WNYC Studios

Breaking Benford

29:39

In the days after the US Presidential election was called for Joe Biden, many supporters of Donald Trump are crying foul. Voter fraud. And a key piece of evidence? A century-old quirk of math called Benford’s Law. We at Radiolab know Benford’s Law well, and ...

Radiolab
02 Nov 2020 • WNYC Studios

Bloc Party

50:44

In the 1996 election, Bill Clinton had a problem. The women who came out in droves for him in ‘92, split their vote in the ‘94 midterms, handing over control of the House and the Senate to the Republican Party. As his team stared ahead at his re-election bid, they knew they ...

Radiolab
31 Oct 2020 • WNYC Studios

How to Win Friends and Influence Baboons

29:23

Baboon troops. We all know they’re hierarchical. There’s the big brutish alpha male who rules with a hairy iron fist, and then there’s everybody else. Which is what Meg Crofoot thought too, before she used GPS collars to track the movements of a troop of baboons for a whole ...

Radiolab
23 Oct 2020 • WNYC Studios

What If?

41:29

There’s plenty of speculation about what Donald Trump might do in the wake of the election. Would he dispute the results if he loses? Would he simply refuse to leave office, or even try to use the military to maintain control? Last summer, Rosa Brooks got together a team of ...

Radiolab
08 Oct 2020 • WNYC Studios

Kittens Kick The Giggly Blue Robot All Summer

39:42

With the recent passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, there's been a lot of debate about how much power the Supreme Court should really have.

We think of the Supreme Court justices as all-powerful beings, issuing momentous rulings from on high. But they haven’t always been so, you know, supreme. On this episode, we go all the way back to the case that, in a lot of ways, started it all.

Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.

Hi Radiolab listeners, we want to hear from you! Take this podcast survey and let us know how you feel about the show. It only takes about 20 minutes and your feedback will help us make our podcast better! There are no wrong answers, we want your honest takes. You can help out by taking the survey here (www.radiolab.org/survey).

Radiolab
02 Oct 2020 • WNYC Studios

No Special Duty

45:20

What are the police for? Producer B.A. Parker started wondering this back in June, as Black Lives Matter protests and calls to “defund the police” ramped up. The question led her to a wild story of a stabbing on a New York City subway train, and the realization that, accordi...

Radiolab
25 Sep 2020 • WNYC Studios

Insomnia Line

34:35

Coronasomnia is a not-so-surprising side-effect of the global pandemic. More and more of us are having trouble falling asleep. We wanted to find a way to get inside that nighttime world, to see why people are awake and what they are thinking about. So what’d Radiolab decide ...