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Radiolab

WNYC Studios

Investigating a strange world.

science natural sciences

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Quantum Birds

Radiolab ·

2025/02/14

Annie McEwen went to a mountain in Pennsylvania to help catch some migratory owls. Then Scott Weidensaul peeled back the owl’s feathery face disc, so that she could look at the back of its eyeball. No owls were harmed in the process, but this brief glimpse into the inner workings of a bird sent her off on a journey to a place where fleshy animal business bumps into the mathematics of subatomic particles. With help from Henrik Mouristen, we hear how one of the biggest mysteries in biology might

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Vertigogo

Radiolab ·

2025/02/07

In this episode, first aired in 2012, we have two stories of brains pushed off-course. We relive a surreal day in the life of a young researcher hijacked by her own brain, and hear from a librarian experiencing a bizarre and mysterious set of symptoms that she called “gravitational anarchy.”Special thanks to Sarah Montague and Ellen Horn, as well as actress Hope Davis, who read Rosemary Morton’s story. And the late Berton Roueché, who wrote that story down. EPISODE CREDITS: Produced by - Brenna

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Forever Fresh

Radiolab ·

2025/01/31

We eat apples in the summer and enjoy bananas in the winter. When we do this, we go against the natural order of life which is towards death and decay. What gives? This week, Latif Nasser spoke with Nicola Twilley, the author of Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves. Twilley spent over a decade reporting about how we keep food alive as it makes its way from the farm to our table. This conversation explores the science of cold, how fruits hold a secret to eternal

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Nukes

Radiolab ·

2025/01/24

In an episode first reported in 2017, we bring you 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. President Richard Nixon once boasted that at any moment he could pick up a telephone and - in 20 minutes - kill 60 million people. Such is the power of the US President over the nation’s nuclear arsenal. But what if you were the military officer on the receiving end of that phone call? Could you refuse the

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The Darkest Dark

Radiolab ·

2025/01/17

We fall down the looking glass with Sönke Johnsen, a biologist who finds himself staring at one of the darkest things on the planet. So dark it’s almost like he’s holding a black hole in his hands. On his quest to understand how something could possibly be that black, we enter worlds of towering microscopic forests where gold becomes black, the deep sea meets the moon, and places that are empty suddenly become full.Corrections/Clarifications:In this episode, dragonfish are described as having teeth

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Smarty Plants

Radiolab ·

2025/01/10

In an episode we first aired in 2018, we asked the question, 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. Along with a home-inspection duo, a science writer and some enterprising scientists at Princeton University, we dig into the work of evolutionary ecologist Monica Gagliano, who turns our

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Match Made in Marrow

Radiolab ·

2025/01/03

In an episode first reported in 2017, we bring you what may be the greatest gift one person could give to another.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 it, Jennell Jenney swabbed her cheek and signed up to be a donor. Across the country, Jim Munroe desperately

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Probing Where the Sun Does Shine: A Holiday Special

Radiolab ·

2024/12/24

This holiday season, in a special holiday drop, we want to take you on a trip around the heavens.First, Latif, with the help of Nour Rawafi of NASA, and an edge-cutting piece of equipment, will explain how we may finally be making good on Icarus’s promise. Then, Lulu and Ada Limón talk about how a poet laureate goes about writing an ode to one of Jupiter’s moons. We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has

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Curiosity Killed the Adage

Radiolab ·

2024/12/20

The early bird gets the worm. What goes around, comes around. It’s always darkest just before dawn. We carry these little nuggets of wisdom—these adages—with us, deep in our psyche. But recently we started wondering: are they true? Like, objectively, scientifically, provably true? So we picked a few and set out to fact check them. We talked to psychologists, neuroscientists, runners, a real estate agent, skateboarders, an ornithologist, a sociologist and an astrophysicist, among others, and we

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Something in the Air

Radiolab ·

2024/12/19

In this episode we look at two very different discoveries; First, a doctor and an ecologist both find themselves asking the same question: is there something in the wildfire smoke? This question will bring them together, and reveal—to all of us—a world we never saw before. Then, we consider a series of studies that are reshaping our understanding of when and how we can learn. And what that could mean for things like PTSD, brain disease, or strokes.

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Dark Side of the Earth

Radiolab ·

2024/12/13

Back in 2012, when we were putting together our live show In the Dark, Jad and Robert called up Dave Wolf to ask him if he had any stories about darkness. And boy, did he. Dave told us two stories that became the finale of our show.Back in late 1997, Dave Wolf was on his first spacewalk, to perform work on the Mir (the photo to the right was taken during that mission, courtesy of NASA.). Dave wasn't alone -- with him was veteran Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Solovyev. (That's a picture of Dave giving

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How Stockholm Stuck

Radiolab ·

2024/12/06

In August of 1973, Jan-Erik Olsson walked into the lobby of a bank in central Stockholm. He fired his submachine gun at the ceiling and yelled “The party starts now!” Then he started taking hostages. For the next six days, Swedish police and international media would tie themselves in knots trying to understand what seemed to them a sordid attachment between captor and captives. And this fixation, later pathologized as “Stockholm Syndrome,” would soon spread across the globe, becoming an easy, often

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Less Than Kilogram

Radiolab ·

2024/11/29

In today’s story, which originally aired in 2014, we meet a very special cylinder. It's the gold standard (or in this case, the platinum-iridium standard) for measuring mass. For decades it's been coddled and cared for and treated like a tiny king. But, as we learn from writer Andrew Marantz, things change—even things that were specifically designed to stay the same.Special thanks to Ken Alder, Ari Adland, Eric Perlmutter, Terry Quinn and Richard Davis.And to the musical group, His Majestys

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The Broadcast: A Little Pompeiian Fish Sauce Goes A...

Radiolab ·

2024/11/22

Today we follow a sleuth who has spent over a decade working to solve an epic mystery hiding in plain historical sight: did anyone survive the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD? Tired of hearing the conventional narrative that every Pompeiian perished without any evidence to back it up, Classicist Steven Tuck decides to look into it himself. Although he is nearly two millennia late to ground zero, he uses all the available evidence to reimagine the disaster from the perspective of the people on the

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Science Vs: The Funniest Joke in the World

Radiolab ·

2024/11/22

When he rounded them up, he had a 100.A few months ago, Wendy Zukerman invited our own Latif Nasser to come on her show, Science Vs, and, of course, he jumped at the chance. Laughter ensued, as they set off to find the "The Funniest Joke in the World." When you just google something like that, the internet might serve you, "What has many keys but can't open a single lock??” (Answer: A piano). So they had to dig deeper—according to science. And for this quest they interviewed a bunch of amazing

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Hello

Radiolab ·

2024/11/15

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, which originally aired in the summer of 2014, 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

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The Ecstasy of an Open Brain

Radiolab ·

2024/11/08

As we grow up, there are little windows of time when we can learn very, very fast and very, very deeply. Scientists call these moments 'critical periods—' real neurological, biological states when our brain can soak up information like a sponge. Then these windows of learning close, locking us in to certain behaviors and skills for the rest of our lives. But what if we could reopen them? Today, we consider a series of discoveries that are reshaping our understanding of when and how we can learn. And

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Haunted

Radiolab ·

2024/10/31

In an episode we first aired in 2014, we meet a man named Dennis Conrow, who was stuck. After a brief stint at college, he’d spent most of his 20s back home with his parents, sleeping in his childhood room. And just when he finally struck out on his own, fate intervened. He lost both his parents to cancer. So Dennis was left, back in the house, alone. Until one night when a group of paranormal investigators showed up at his door and made him realize what it really means for a house—or a man—to be

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The Unpopular Vote

Radiolab ·

2024/10/25

As the US Presidential election nears, Radiolab covers the closest we ever came to abolishing the Electoral College.In the 1960s, then-President Lyndon Johnson approached an ambitious young senator known as the Kennedy of the Midwest to tweak the way Americans elect their president. The more Senator Birch Bayh looked into the electoral college, the more he believed it was a ticking time bomb hidden in the Constitution that someone needed to defuse. With overwhelming support in Congress, the

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A Bug's Life

Radiolab ·

2024/10/23

A mysterious tap tap tapping leads us into a world of sex, death, and head-banging. Biologist Dave Goulson introduces us to the lonely yearnings of an especially pathetic beetle and snatches a sound back from the hands of the devil himself. Featuring rapping about rapping from extra special guests Lin-Manuel Miranda, Utkarsh Ambudkar and Freestyle Love Supreme.

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