Radiolab is on a curiosity bender. We ask deep questions and use investigative journalism to get the answers. A given episode might whirl you through science, legal history, and into the home of someone halfway across the world. The show is known for innovative sound design, smashing information into music. It is hosted by Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser.
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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. In a story we reported back in 2017, we explain how in the days that followed, Sipple’s split-second act of heroism turned into a rationale for making his personal life into political opportunity. What happens next makes us wonder what a moment, or a movement, or a whole society can demand of one person. And how much is too much? Through newly uneart...
Driven by a lifelong phobia, Alex Neason embarks on a journey to conquer her fear of American cockroaches. She consults with exterminators to learn practical control methods and even attempts to eat bugs in an extreme form of exposure therapy. Ultimately, her quest unearths a profound history, revealing cockroaches' incredible survival mechanisms and their uncomfortable links to slavery and systemic racism. The episode challenges the very concept of "pests" and invites a new perspective on these maligned creatures.
This episode makes three earnest, possibly foolhardy, attempts to put a price on the priceless. We figure out the dollar value for an accidental death, another day of life, and the work of bats and bees as we try to keep our careful calculations from falling apart in the face of the realities of life, and love, and loss. In this story you’ll hear references to some of the issues that were on our minds when it first came out in 2014: wars in the middle east, drug costs and health care practices. ...
For most of human history, people went about their daily lives with a worm or two (or fifty) in their guts. Only in the past century, with pharmaceuticals and sanitation practices, have we made significant strides towards deworming the whole of humanity. And that’s typically been thought of as a good thing, because having too many worms in your body can–quite literally–suck the life out of you. But is it possible to have… too few worms? Science wonders if deworming ourselves has actually led to ...
With all of the black-and-white moralizing in our world today, we decided to bring back an old show from 2011 about the little bit of bad that's in all of us...and the little bit of really, really bad that's in some of us. Cruelty, violence, badness... in this episode we begin with a chilling statistic: 91% of men, and 84% of women, have fantasized about killing someone. We take a look at one particular fantasy lurking behind these numbers, and wonder what this shadow world might tell us about o...
In 2017, Wayne Hsiung and a crew of animal rights activists from Direct Action Everywhere broke into a Utah pig farm run by Smithfield Foods, one of the largest pork distributors in the world. They were there to capture video of what they say were thousands of mistreated and abused animals kept in tiny metal cages barely bigger than their bodies. As they were leaving, they took two sick piglets out with them. Prosecutors in Utah charged Wayne with burglary and theft. What came next was the court...
For much of history, tree canopies were pretty much completely ignored by science. It was as if researchers said collectively, "It's just going to be empty up there, and we've got our hands full studying the trees down here! So why bother?" But then around the mid-1980s, a few ecologists around the world got curious and started making their way up into the treetops using any means necessary (ropes, cranes, hot air dirigibles) to document all they could find. It didn't take long for them to reali...
This episode delves into a decades-old controversy surrounding dairy farms in Denmark and the US, where cows exhibit unusual behavior like refusing water and drinking urine. While some farmers attribute this to "stray voltage" from nearby electrical infrastructure and even win lawsuits, scientific consensus often points to diet imbalances or changes in modern farming practices. The core of the debate revolves around the "resistance of a cow" and how current standards may or may not apply to contemporary dairy environments.
In an episode first aired back in 2025 on our sister show, Terrestrials, we take you on a musical journey all about beavers. Few mammals have a bigger positive impact on the planet than the beaver. With its bright orange buck teeth, the creature is an expert engineer that brings life wherever it waddles and even fights fires. Our story begins in the Bronx river, once known as the “open sewer” of New York City. After some humans decide to clean it up, we meet one of the river’s residents - José t...
This week, in an episode we first aired in 2022, we flip the Disney story of life on its head thanks to a barrel of seawater, a 1970s era computer, and underwater geysers. It’s the chaos of life. Latif, Lulu, and our Senior Producer Matt Kielty were all sitting on their own little stories until they got thrown into the studio, and had their cherished beliefs about the shape of life put on a collision course. From an accidental study of sea creatures, to the ambitions of Stephen J Gould, to an un...
Doctor and special correspondent Avir Mitra takes Executive Editor Soren Wheeler, plus a live studio audience, on a journey from the operating room to inside the body to the farm to the sewers and back again—searching for answers to an alarming threat to humanity’s existence as we know it: antibiotic resistance in bacteria. This live show, performed in New York City and also in Little Rock, Arkansas, is part of a series we’re doing with Avir that we are calling “Viscera.” Each event is a convers...
A strange brew that's hard to resist, even for a modern day microbe. In the war on devilish microbes, our weapons are starting to fail us. The antibiotics we once wielded like miraculous flaming swords seem more like lukewarm butter knives. But in this episode, originally released in 2015, we follow an odd couple, of a sort, to a storied land of elves and dragons. There, they uncover a 1,000-year-old secret that makes us reconsider our most basic assumptions about human progress and wonder: what...
If a species is horrible enough, do we have the right to kill it forever? Seventy years ago, a nightmare parasite feasted on the live flesh of warm-blooded creatures in North America: the screwworm. That is, until a young scientist named Edward F. Knipling discovered a crucial screwworm weakness and hatched a sweeping project to wipe them out. Knipling’s seemingly zany plan to spray screwworms out of planes all over the continent— with US taxpayer money— succeeded, becoming one of humanity’s big...
Explore the intricate world of snail reproduction, where these slow-moving hermaphrodites engage in prolonged mating rituals, sometimes involving "spaghetti penises" and the strategic use of surprising "love darts." These tiny, dagger-like structures, initially a mystery, are revealed to inject hormones into partners, manipulating their reproductive systems to increase the dart-shooter's chances of paternity, showcasing rapid and unpredictable evolution.
In this episode, first aired in 2014, we examine three very different kinds of black boxes—spaces where we know what’s going in, we know what’s coming out, but can’t see what happens in-between. From the darkest parts of metamorphosis to a sixty-year-old secret among magicians, and the nature of consciousness itself, we shine some light on three questions. But for each, we contend with an answerless space, leaving just enough room for the mystery and magic, always wondering what’s inside the Bla...
Before he was even born, Sarah and Ross Gray knew that their son Thomas wouldn’t live long. But as they let go of him, they made a decision that reverberated through a world that they never bothered to think about. Years later, after a couple of awkward phone calls, they go on a quest and manage to meet the people and places for whom Thomas’ short life was an altogether different kind of gift. We originally made this story back in 2015, but we wanted to play it again because we love that it brin...
In the early 2000s, Sunil Nakrani felt stuck. Back then, websites crashed all the time. When Sunil noticed this, he decided he was going to fix the internet. But after nearly a year of studying the architecture of the web, he was no closer to an answer. In desperation, Sunil sent out a raft of cold emails to engineering professors. He hoped someone, anyone, could help him figure this out. Eventually, he learned that the internet could only be fixed if he paid attention to the humble honeybee. Th...
In this episode, we break the thermometer and watch the mercury spill out as we discover that temperature is far stranger than it seems. We first ran this episode in 2021: Five stories that run the gamut from snakes to stars. We start out underwater, with a species of snake that has evolved a devious trick for keeping warm. Then we hear the tale of a young man whose seemingly simple method of warming up might be the very thing making him cold. And Senior Correspondent Molly Webster blows the lid...
When a science journalist's karaoke night ends with a cerebellar bleed, she embarks on a personal quest to understand why her sense of self feels altered, despite recovering motor skills. Her journey unearths a scientific revolution: the cerebellum, long thought to only control movement, is deeply involved in language, emotion, and executive functions. This episode explores the fascinating new understanding of this "invisible conductor" of the brain and Rachel's bittersweet path to recovery and self-acceptance.
Radiolab delves into the surprisingly modern concept of self-esteem, initiated by California state representative John Vasconcellos in the 1980s. The episode recounts his personal journey from self-loathing to Esalen's encounter groups, his 'liberating vision' to instill self-esteem as a societal cure, and its widespread adoption in schools. It then uncovers the movement's scientific flaws, its eventual collapse, and the lasting cultural legacy of psychologized self-talk, culminating in insights on finding authentic worth through focusing on others.
This episode, first aired in 2019, brings you the story of John Scott, the professional hockey player that every fan loved to hate. A tough guy. A brawler. A goon. But when an impish pundit named Puck Daddy called on fans to vote for Scott to play alongside the world’s greatest players in the NHL All-Star Game, Scott found himself facing off against fans, commentators, and the powers that be. Was this the realization of Scott’s childhood dreams? Or a nightmarish prank gone too far? Today on Radi...
This episode explores the accidental discovery of "cerebral organoids" by Madeline Lancaster, miniature 3D human brain models that have transformed neuroscience. From revealing secrets about early brain development and enabling breakthroughs in disorders like Timothy Syndrome, these "brain balls" are now used in personalized cancer treatments and linked to biocomputers playing Pong. The narrative delves into the ethical dilemmas surrounding their potential for consciousness, their implantation into animal brains, and how they challenge our very definitions of life, humanity, and intelligence.
In 1971, a red-headed, tree-loving astronaut named Stu ‘Smokey’ Roosa was asked to take something to the moon with him. Of all things, he chose to take a canister of 500 tree seeds. After orbiting the moon 34 times, the seeds made it back to Earth. NASA decided to plant the seeds all across the country and then… everyone forgot about them. Until one day, a third grader from Indiana stumbled on a tree with a strange plaque: "Moon Tree." This discovery set off a cascading search for all the trees ...
As she -- and her friends — approached the age of 35, senior correspondent Molly Webster kept hearing a phrase over and over: “fertility cliff.” It was a short-hand term to describe what she was told would happen to her fertility after she turned 35 — that is, it would drop off. Suddenly, sharply, dramatically. And this was well before she was supposed to hit menopause. Intrigued, Molly decided to look into it — what was the truth behind this so-called cliff, and when, if so, would she topple? T...
The standard view of evolution is that living things are shaped by cold-hearted competition. And there is no doubt that today's plants and animals carry the genetic legacy of ancestors who fought fiercely to survive and reproduce. But in this hour that we first broadcast back in 2010, we wonder whether there might also be a logic behind sharing, niceness, kindness ... or even, self-sacrifice. Is altruism an aberration, or just an elaborate guise for sneaky self-interest? Do we really live in a s...
Radiolab investigates the enigmatic world of artificial intelligence, tracing its origins from rule-based systems to the revolutionary self-learning neural networks. Through engaging analogies and expert insights, the episode demystifies how AI learns, predicts, and generates content, culminating in a poignant reflection on how its "alien" capabilities impact human creativity, emotion, and our very sense of self. It ultimately asks what it means to be human in an AI-dominated world.
This episode features the first installment of Shell Game Season Two, where journalist Evan Ratliff endeavors to build a company run exclusively by AI agents. It delves into the practical challenges, ethical implications, and surprising behaviors of these digital co-workers, from fabricating backstories to lacking memory. Concluding, Radiolab host Simon Adler highlights the value of human-created content, even as he humorously consults an AI agent for unconventional fundraising strategies.
Jad Abumrad revisits Radiolab to discuss his new nine-part series, "Fela Kuti: Fear No Man," exploring the life and transformative music of the Nigerian icon. The episode delves into Fela's unique musical structure, which hypnotically engages listeners before delivering powerful political messages, and describes "The Shrine," his Lagos club that served as a sovereign, defiant space of resistance. Experts and personal accounts reveal how Fela's art combated societal numbness to corruption, ultimately acting as a potent weapon for change.
Today on the show, we’re bringing you an episode from Our Common Nature (https://link.podtrac.com/v7mx144d), a new podcast series where cellist Yo-Yo Ma and host Ana González travel around the United States to meet people, make music and better understand how culture binds us to nature. The series features a few familiar voices, including Ana González (host) and Alan Goffinski (producer), from our kids podcast, Terrestrials (https://link.podtrac.com/vysacqn1). About the episode: West Virginia is...
This episode features Qasem Waleed, a 28-year-old physicist from Gaza, who describes his reality through the lens of quantum mechanics. Amidst devastating conflict, starvation, and personal loss, Qasem finds refuge and a unique language in concepts like superposition and quantum tunneling to explain the unimaginable conditions. He likens his existence to Schrodinger's Cat, trapped in a box, simultaneously alive and dead, and calls for the world to "open the box" of Gaza, revealing how counter-intuitive scientific ideas offer a visceral understanding of his profound suffering.
