FeedCity: Radiolab

Radiolab
22 May 2018 • WNYC Studios

Unraveling Bolero

27:13

This week, we're throwing it back to an old favorite: a story about obsession, creativity, and a strange symmetry between a biologist and a composer that revolves around one famously repetitive piece of music. Anne Adams was a brilliant biologist. But when her son Alex ...

Radiolab
18 May 2018 • WNYC Studios

More or Less Human

01:01:09

Seven years ago chatbots - those robotic texting machines - were a mere curiosity. They were noticeably robotic and at their most malicious seemed only capable of scamming men looking for love online. Today, the chatbot landscape is wildly different. From election interferen...

Radiolab
26 Apr 2018 • WNYC Studios

Dark Side of the Earth

27:41

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. A couple weeks ago, we were able to video chat with Mark and peer over his shoulder through the Cupola, an obs...

Radiolab
20 Apr 2018 • WNYC Studios

Border Trilogy Part 3: What Remains

35:43

Border Trilogy While scouring the Sonoran Desert for objects left behind by migrants crossing into the United States, anthropologist Jason De León happened upon something he didn't expect to get left behind: a human arm, stripped of flesh. This macabre discovery sent him ree...

Radiolab
06 Apr 2018 • WNYC Studios

Border Trilogy Part 2: Hold the Line

49:41

Border Trilogy While scouring the Sonoran Desert for objects left behind by migrants crossing into the United States, anthropologist Jason De León happened upon something he didn't expect to get left behind: a human arm, stripped of flesh. This macabre discovery sent h...

Radiolab
23 Mar 2018 • WNYC Studios

Border Trilogy Part 1: Hole in the Fence

48:39

Border Trilogy While scouring the Sonoran Desert for objects left behind by migrants crossing into the United States, anthropologist Jason De León happened upon something he didn't expect to get left behind: a human arm, stripped of flesh. This macabre discovery sent him ree...

Radiolab
15 Mar 2018 • WNYC Studios

Rippin’ the Rainbow an Even Newer One

33:07

One of our most popular episodes of all time was our Colors episode, where we introduced you to a sea creature that could see a rainbow far beyond what humans can experience. Peacock mantis shrimps are as extraordinary as they are strange and boast what may well be the ...

Radiolab
23 Feb 2018 • WNYC Studios

Radiolab Presents: More Perfect - The Gun Show

01:09:15

The shooting in Parkland, Florida on February 14, 2018, reignited an increasingly familiar debate about guns in this country. Today, we’re re-releasing a More Perfect episode that aired just after the Las Vegas shooting last year that attempts to make sense of our country’s ...

Radiolab
20 Feb 2018 • WNYC Studios

The Curious Case of the Russian Flash Mob at the West Palm Beach Cheesecake Factory

37:39

We don’t do breaking news. But 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. Who are these Russian individuals sowing discord? And who are these Americans that...

Radiolab
14 Feb 2018 • WNYC Studios

Smarty Plants

34:59

Do you really need a brain to sense the world around you? To remember? Or even learn? Well, it depends on who you ask. Jad and Robert, they are split on this one. Today, Robert drags Jad along on a parade for the surprising feats of brainless plants. Alon...

Radiolab
04 Feb 2018 • WNYC Studios

Ghosts of Football Past

36:45

In anticipation of Super Bowl LII (Go Eagles), we're revisiting an old episode about the surprising history of how the game came to be. It's the end of the 19th century -- the Civil War is over, and the frontier is dead. And young college men are anxious. What grea...

Radiolab
31 Jan 2018 • WNYC Studios

Radiolab Presents: More Perfect - One Nation, Under Money

55:12

An unassuming string of 16 words tucked into the Constitution grants Congress extensive power to make laws that impact the entire nation. The Commerce Clause has allowed Congress to intervene in all kinds of situations — from penalizing one man for growing too much wheat on ...

Radiolab
23 Jan 2018 • WNYC Studios

The Voice in Your Head - A Tribute to Joe Frank

26:06

How do you pay proper tribute to a legend that many people haven’t heard of? We began asking ourselves this question last week when the visionary radio producer Joe Frank passed away, after a long struggle with colon cancer. Joe Frank was the radio producer’s radio pro...

Radiolab
09 Jan 2018 • WNYC Studios

How to Be a Hero

28:42

What are people thinking when they risk their lives for someone else? Are they making complicated calculations of risk or diving in without a second thought? Is heroism an act of sympathy or empathy? A few years ago, we spoke with Walter F. Rutkowski about h...

Radiolab
22 Dec 2017 • WNYC Studios

Bigger Little Questions

55:59

We're back with Part 2! When we dumped out our bucket of questions, there was a lot of spillover. Like, A LOT of spillover. So today, we’re chasing down answers to some bigger, little questions.

This episode was reported and produced by Annie McEwen, Bethel Habte, Latif Nasser, Matt Kielty, Simon Adler and Tracie Hunte.

Special thanks to Stephen Brady and Staff Sergeant Erica Picariello in the US Air Force's 21st Space Wing.

Support Radiolab 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
20 Dec 2017 • WNYC Studios

Big Little Questions

46:13

Here at the show, we get a lot of questions. Like, A LOT of questions. Tiny questions, big questions, short questions, long questions. Weird questions. Poop questions. We get them all. And over the years, as more and more of these questions arrived in our inbox, what happene...

Radiolab
05 Dec 2017 • WNYC Studios

Super Cool

25:27

When we started reporting a fantastic, surreal story about one very cold night, more than 70 years ago, in northern Russia, we had no idea we'd end up thinking about cosmology. Or dropping toy horses in test tubes of water. Or talking about bacteria. Or arguing, for a year. ...

Radiolab
30 Nov 2017 • WNYC Studios

Radiolab Presents: More Perfect - Mr. Graham and the Reasonable Man

01:08:24

This story comes from the second season of Radiolab's spin-off podcast, More Perfect. To hear more, subscribe here. On a fall afternoon in 1984, Dethorne Graham ran into a convenience store for a bottle of orange juice. Minutes later he was unconscious, injured, and in ...

Radiolab
23 Nov 2017 • WNYC Studios

Stereothreat

36:51

Back in 1995, Claude Steele published a study that showed that negative stereotypes could have a detrimental effect on students' academic performance. But the big surprise was that he could make that effect disappear with just a few simple changes in language. We were comple...

Radiolab
10 Nov 2017 • WNYC Studios

Match Made in Marrow

01:01:01

You never know what might happen when you sign up to donate bone marrow. You might save a life… or you might be magically transported across a cultural chasm and find yourself starring in a modern adaptation of the greatest story ever told. One day, without thinking much of ...

Radiolab
27 Oct 2017 • WNYC Studios

Oliver Sacks: A Journey From Where to Where

37:25

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. Today, we are allowed to dip into the unfiltered thoughts of Oliver Sacks, one of our heroes, in the last months of his life. Oliver die...

Radiolab
13 Oct 2017 • WNYC Studios

Father K

01:11:16

Today, while the divisions between different groups in this country feel more and more insurmountable, we zero in on a particular neighborhood to see if one man can draw people together in a potentially history-making election. Khader El-Yateem is a Palestinian Am...

Radiolab
02 Oct 2017 • WNYC Studios

Radiolab Presents: More Perfect - American Pendulum I

52:01

This story comes from the second season of Radiolab's spin-off podcast, More Perfect. To hear more, subscribe here. What happens when the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, seems to get it wrong? Korematsu v. United States is a case that’s been widely denounc...

Radiolab
26 Sep 2017 • WNYC Studios

Driverless Dilemma

40:06

Most of us would sacrifice one person to save five. It’s a pretty straightforward bit of moral math. But if we have to actually kill that person ourselves, the math gets fuzzy. That’s the lesson of the classic Trolley Problem, a moral puzzle that fried our brains in an ...

Radiolab
22 Sep 2017 • WNYC Studios

Oliver Sipple

01:02:19

One morning, Oliver Sipple went out for a walk. A couple hours later, to his own surprise, he saved the life of the President of the United States. But in the days that followed, Sipple’s split-second act of heroism turned into a rationale for making his ...

Radiolab
12 Sep 2017 • WNYC Studios

Radiolab Presents: Anna in Somalia

34:45

This week, we are presenting a story from NPR foreign correspondent Gregory Warner and his new globe-trotting podcast Rough Translation. Mohammed was having the best six months of his life - working a job he loved, making mixtapes for his sweetheart - when the communist...

Radiolab
23 Aug 2017 • WNYC Studios

Where the Sun Don't Shine

32:31

Today we take a quick look up at a hole in the sky and follow an old story as it travels beyond the reach of the sun.

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
27 Jun 2017 • WNYC Studios

Revising the Fault Line

47:36

A new tussle over an old story, and some long-held beliefs, with neurologist and author Robert Sapolsky.

Four years ago, we did a story about a man with a starling obsession that made us question our ideas of responsibility and justice. We thought we’d found some solid ground, but today Dr. Sapolsky shows up and takes us down a rather disturbing rabbit hole.

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
15 Jun 2017 • WNYC Studios

The Gondolier

54:42

What happens when doing what you want to do means giving up who you really are? We travel to Venice, Italy with reporters Kristen Clark and David Conrad, where they meet gondolier Alex Hai. On the winding canals in the hidden parts of Venice, we learn about the ne...

Radiolab
26 May 2017 • WNYC Studios

The Radio Lab

40:00

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