FeedCity: Radiolab

Radiolab
23 Dec 2020 • WNYC Studios

A Terrible Covid Christmas Special

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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 ...

Radiolab
19 Sep 2020 • WNYC Studios

More Perfect: Sex Appeal

We lost a legend. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on September 18th, 2020. She was 87. In honor of her passing we are re-airing the More Perfect episode dedicated to one of her cases, because it offers a unique portrait of how one person can make cha...

Radiolab
17 Sep 2020 • WNYC Studios

Falling

There are so many ways to fall—in love, asleep, even flat on your face. This hour, Radiolab dives into stories of great falls.

We jump into a black hole, take a trip over Niagara Falls, upend some myths about falling cats, and plunge into our favorite songs about falling.

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
11 Sep 2020 • WNYC Studios

Bringing Gamma Back, Again

Today, we return to the lab of neuroscientist Li-Huei Tsai, which brought us one of our favorite stories from four years ago - about the power of flashing lights on an Alzheimer’s-addled (mouse) brain. In this update, Li-Huei tells us about her team’s latest research, which ...

Radiolab
04 Sep 2020 • WNYC Studios

Fungus Amungus

Six years ago, a new infection began popping up in four different hospitals on three different continents, all around the same time. It wasn’t a bacteria, or a virus. It was ... a killer fungus. No one knew where it came from, or why. Today, the story of an ancient showdown ...

Radiolab
27 Aug 2020 • WNYC Studios

Translation

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...

Radiolab
21 Aug 2020 • WNYC Studios

Lebanon, USA

This is a story of a road trip. After a particularly traumatic Valentine's Day, Fadi Boukaram was surfing google maps and noticed that there was a town called Lebanon... in Oregon. Being Lebanese himself, he wondered, how many Lebanons exist in the US? The answer: 47. Thus b...

Radiolab
14 Aug 2020 • WNYC Studios

The Wubi Effect

When we think of China today, we think of a technological superpower. From Huawei and 5G to TikTok and viral social media, China is stride for stride with the United States in the world of computing. However, China’s technological renaissance almost didn’t happen. And f...

Radiolab
07 Aug 2020 • WNYC Studios

Uncounted

First things first: our very own Latif Nasser has an exciting new show on Netflix. He talks to Jad about the hidden forces of the world that connect us all. Then, with an eye on the upcoming election, we take a look back: at two pieces from More Perfect Season 3 about Consti...

Radiolab
31 Jul 2020 • WNYC Studios

Invisible Allies

As scientists have been scrambling to find new and better ways to treat covid-19, they’ve come across some unexpected allies. Invisible and primordial, these protectors have been with us all along. And they just might help us to better weather this viral storm. To kick ...

Radiolab
24 Jul 2020 • WNYC Studios

Baby Blue Blood Drive

Horseshoe crabs are not much to look at. But beneath their unassuming catcher’s-mitt shell, they harbor a half-billion-year-old secret: a superpower that helped them outlive the dinosaurs and survive all the Earth’s mass extinctions. And what is that secret super...

Radiolab
17 Jul 2020 • WNYC Studios

Dispatches from 1918

It’s hard to imagine what the world will look like when COVID-19 has passed. So in this episode, we look back to the years after 1918, at the political, artistic, and viral aftermath of the flu pandemic that killed between 50 and 100 million people and left our world pe...

Radiolab
12 Jul 2020 • WNYC Studios

The Flag and the Fury

How do you actually make change in the world? For 126 years, Mississippi has had the Confederate battle flag on their state flag, and they were the last state in the nation where that emblem remained “officially” flying. A few days ago, that flag came down. A few days ...

Radiolab
25 Jun 2020 • WNYC Studios

The Third. A TED Talk.

Jad gives a TED talk about his life as a journalist and how Radiolab has evolved over the years. Here's how TED described it:How do you end a story? Host of Radiolab Jad Abumrad tells how his search for an answer led him home to the mountains of Tennessee, where he met an un...

Radiolab
19 Jun 2020 • WNYC Studios

Post No Evil Redux

Today we revisit our story on Facebook and its rulebook, looking at what’s changed in the past two years and exploring how these rules will impact the 2020 Presidential Election. Back in 2008 Facebook began writing a document. It was a constitution of sorts, laying out...

Radiolab
13 Jun 2020 • WNYC Studios

The Liberation of RNA

In June of 2019, Brandon Ogbunu got on stage and told a story for The Story Collider, a podcast and live storytelling show. Starting when he was a senior in college being shook down by a couple cops, Brandon tells us about navigating his ups and downs of a career in science,...

Radiolab
07 Jun 2020 • WNYC Studios

Graham

If former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s case for the death of George Floyd goes to trial, there will be this one, controversial legal principle looming over the proceedings: The reasonable officer. In this episode, we explore the origin of the reasonable officer...

Radiolab
06 Jun 2020 • WNYC Studios

Nina

Producer Tracie Hunte stumbled into a duet between Nina Simone and the sounds of protest outside her apartment. Then she discovered a performance by Nina on April 7, 1968 - three days after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Tracie talks about what Nina’s music, born during another time when our country was facing questions that seemed to have no answer, meant then and why it still resonates today.

Listen to Nina's brother, Samuel Waymon, talk about that April 7th concert here.

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).