To get this podcast started, Robert ambushes Jad with a question … a question we’ve all been dying to ask him since June 10th, 2009, when Amil Abumrad came into the world. But fear not, we didn’t do a whole podcast just to give the new dad a hard time. Robert talks to Josh Greene, the Harvard professor we had on our Morality show. They revisit some ideas from that show in the context of the big, complicated problems of today (think global warming and nuclear war). Josh argues that to deal with those problems, we’re going to have to learn how to make better use of that tiny part of our brain that handles abstract thinking. Not a simple proposition, but, despite the odds, Josh has hope.

Photo by: Flickr/ connieth

This week, a story about a mom, a boy, and a home-made helicopter. (And no! This has nothing to do with the Balloon Boy incident.) Instead, its about how public radio… literally saved a boy’s life. Well, not quite. But sorta. Kinda. Its a story about why we do what we do: we’re trying to tell stories that move you and make you feel different about the world, even just a little bit.

Please support us in that mission.

Photo courtesy of Jennifer Babb

How do you tell the difference between a sea change and a ripple in the water? Could a nonviolent baboon be sign of things to come? Or is it just a flukey outlier from the norm? What about a man in a dress? Or a fox without vicious urges? Is there ever really even a norm? In this hour of Radiolab, we examine three stories that re-frame our sense of normalcy. Read More

Photo courtesy – Flickr/vin60

This week, we ask a question that we thought was a no-brainer: why do we blink? Film editor Walter Murch tells us about a strange discovery he made years ago while working on The Conversation – could something as small as a blink actually be the trick of his trade? We also talk to Japanese researchers Tamami Nakano and Shigeru Kitazawa about the experiment they conducted to understand how we see the world, when we choose not to, and why.

Photo by: Flickr/DownTown Pictures

Tamami Nakano’s study
Shigeru Kitazawa
Walter Murch’s book In the Blink of an Eye

They Might Be Giants just came out with a new album, “Here Comes Science.” So we invited them to come play with us at our season launch party last week at the Water Taxi Beach in Queens. And then we ambushed them with annoying little questions about science and about the tricky business of turning science into entertainment … because of that whole, you know, “getting the facts right” thing. On this podcast, we decided to share this magical evening with those of you who weren’t able to join us live. Hope you enjoy the music, pesky science teachers, and miasmas of plasma.

Photo courtesy – Flickr/pabo76

In this hour of Radiolab, we explore nature’s moochers – the good, the bad, and the hideous. We have stories of lethargic farmers, zombie cockroaches, and even mind-controlled humans (kinda, maybe). Could parasites be the shadowy hands that pull the strings of life? Read More

Pardon the graphic pun, but hey! For this podcast Jad, a brand new father, wonders what’s going on inside the head of his baby, Amil. (And don’t worry, you don’t need kids to enjoy this podcast.) The questions here are big: what is it like to be so brand new to the world? None of us have memories from this time, so how could we possibly ever know? Is it just chaos? Or, is there something more, some understanding from the very beginning? Jad found a development psychologist named Charles Fernyhough to explore some of his questions.

Further reading from Charles Fernyhough:

A Thousand Days of Wonder
Baby In The Mirror

After hearing our show about moments of death, filmmaker Will Hoffman went out in search of moments of life. What follows is what he found.

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For meditation number fifteen we have a reading from David Eagleman’s book Sum. It’s a vision of the after life that’s both playful and… horrifying. Sum is read by actor Jeffrey Tambor.

Another meditation on what happens after the moment of death, this time as Shakespeare envisions it. Ron Rosenbaum, author of The Shakespeare Wars, tells us about a very small variation in the text of Hamlet that makes a huge difference about how Shakespeare envisioned Hamlet’s dying moment. Then we pay a visit to Tony Award-winning actor Mark Rylance to get his take on encountering the edge of consciousness.

Photo by: Flickr/robertorizzato

We continue our meditations on death with a reading from poet and writer, Mark Doty. This is an excerpt from Doty’s 1996 memoir Heaven’s Coast.

This week on the podcast we are continuing our meditations on death. Our After Life episode had eleven meditations, and now we’re gonna throw a new one at you each day, all week long, culminating in a very special treat at the end of the week. To get things started, Jad talks to Mary Roach about a bold claim she made in an article for the New Scientist. Read more about science’s attempts to understand the afterlife in Mary’s book, Spook.

By the way that beautiful song, “Old Fashion Morphine” is by Jolie Holland, off her album Escondida.

Photo by Flickr/jmtimages

In this hour of Radiolab, we take several different looks at that moment when we slip from life … to the other side. Is it even a moment? If it is a moment, when is that moment? And what happens afterward? It’s a show of questions that don’t have easy answers. So, in a slight departure from our regular format, we bring you eleven meditations on how, when, and even if we die.
Read more.

Photo Credit: Flickr/lepiaf.geo

When evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins’ daughter was six years old, he told her that flowers are not here for beauty, not here for the bees, but instead merely to copy their own DNA. Sigh, what a Dad. So is Richard Dawkins always so gloomy and reductionist about the world? Well yes, but he would say that his vision of the world is anything but gloomy, he even calls it romantic. In this conversation from the 92nd St Y, Robert challenges Dawkins on this and a number of other sticky spots on the topic of biological evolution.

Photo credit: Flickr/mrccos

In fact, right before we released the show, Jad got a call from Steve Strogatz, a mathematician from Cornell University.

After talking to Steve, we turn to neuroscientist Paul Glimcher, as he and Gregory Warner explore whether the little choices we make every day are predictable or not.

Steve Strogatz’s new book, “The Calculus of Friendship”
Photo credit: Flickr/ICMA

Radiolab is doing something new in our podcasts. Starting with this podcast, we will be releasing our hour-long episodes on a regular, rhythmic schedule. Between each episode, you will get two podcasts that follow some detour or left turn, explore music we love, take you to live events, and generally try to shake up your universe.

This hour, Radiolab examines Stochasticity, which is just a wonderfully slippery and smarty-pants word for randomness. How big a role does randomness play in our lives? Do we live in a world of magic and meaning or … is it all just chance and happenstance? To tackle this question, we look at the role chance and randomness play in sports, lottery tickets, and even the cells in our own body. Along the way, we talk to a woman suddenly consumed by a frenzied gambling addiction, two friends whose meeting seems purely providential, and some very noisy bacteria.

photo credit: flickr/Etherhill

Higher Mammals features Josh Kurz and Shane Winter, with additional vocals from Jason Major, Kendra May, and Wendy Roderweiss.

Photo credit: Flickr/Ramen Junkie

This week on the podcast we take a look at four unconventional ways to stay alive. We talk to geneticist George Church, who originally appeared in our So Called Life Show, biologist Bernd Heinrich, neuroscientist David Eagleman, and finally, we visit a CPR class.

You can also check out Bernd Heinrich’s most recent book, “Summer World“

In TV’s corner, Robert “The Krusher” Krulwich hit hard with stunning video images, but audio-savant Jad “Boom Boom” Abumrad pounded his opponent with the power of sound. The bout went five hard rounds and had to go to the cards for a decision. Tears were shed, and after a short intermission Jad and Robert sat down with Ira to discuss the challenges of working in both TV and Radio.

Sometimes on the podcast we like to talk about musicians and the music they make. This podcast we want to introduce you to Juana Molina. Last season we used some of her of music in the breaks for the Sperm show. We received an outpouring of email asking about her music, so this podcast is for those curious listeners who wrote in and for those who haven’t heard about her … until now.

Juana Molina’s official site
photo credit Flickr/malu teodoro

OK. Maybe you’re in your desk chair. You’re in your office. You’re in New York, or Detroit, or Timbuktu. You’re on planet Earth.

But where are you, really?

Radio Lab tries to find out where you are. This hour: stories of people whose brains and bodies have lost each other. We ask how does your brain keep track of your body? We’ll examine the bond between brain and body and look at what happens when it breaks. We begin with a century-old mystery: why do many amputees still feel their missing limbs? We speak with a neuroscientist who solved the problem with a magician’s trick: an optical illusion. We continue with the story of a butcher who suddenly lost his entire sense of touch. And we hear from pilots who lose consciousness and suffer out-of-body experiences while flying fighter jets.

photo credit Flickr/montwerx

Here at Radiolab we explore big ideas and ask big questions to see how the world works. To do that, we often talk to scientists who are trying to answer those questions by doing experiments and gathering data. But there are some questions that don’t give in to experiments and data. And with Easter and Passover around the corner, we decided to take on one of those questions, not through science, but through a story.

Photo credit: Flickr/Dan Larsen

Can you make your own universe? We usually think of the universe as “everything that exists,” so how could you make another one? Well, physicists have been speculating about the existence of multiple universes for some time now. And for Robert, the obvious next question was: “Can we make one?” So he invited physicist Brian Greene to his kitchen to speculate about just that. And it turns out, it’s not such a far-fetched idea. There are scientists right now trying to figure out whether it’s possible and what it would take. According to Brian, it would require a tiny black hole, a dash of reverse-gravity, and a lot of luck. But the laws of physics don’t rule it out.

Photo credit: Flickr/charmaine

Check out ABC’s reenactment of the marshmallow experiment

For this week’s podcast Radiolab is throwing a birthday party for Charles Darwin! Our Robert Krulwich invited three experts to toast the birthday boy. David Quammen tells us it takes a village to raise a theory of evolution; Deborah Heiligman shows why love delayed the Origin of Species more than two decades; and Adam Gopnik explains why most of the planet still has problems with Darwin’s idea. Listen below- it’s going to be a paaa-tay!

Photo credit: flickr/Kaptain Kobold

In this hour on Morality, we’ll explore where our sense of right and wrong come from. We peer inside the brains of people contemplating moral dilemmas, watch chimps at a primate research center share blackberries, observe a playgroup of 3 year-olds fighting over toys, and tour the country’s first penitentiary, Eastern State Prison. Also: the story of land grabbing, indentured servitude and slum lording in the fourth grade.

photo by Jef Poskanzer

When Jad and Robert saw this article it made them think about an earlier study by Claude Steele.

On this podcast, they’ll tell us about that and answer some listener mail (in the aggregate) answering questions about Patient X and questionable Jad’s use of the term ‘bitches’ in the Choice episode.

Also, dear all, the piano piece you’ve been asking about from this podcast is: “Vladimir’s Blues” by Max Richter.

A video inspired by the mathematician, Steve Strogatz. At the age of thirteen, Steve was astonished to find that pendulums and water fountains had a strange relationship that had previously been completely hidden from him.

Directed by Will Hoffman with Director of Photography Derek Paul Boyle.

Ah, discovery. One of the great and noble pursuits of humankind. Also one of the most dangerous, frustrating, ego-driven, transcendent, sublime, dirty, long, demoralizing, inspiring……you get the idea. Why are inquiry and the pursuit of knowledge so seductive? In Yellow Fluff and Other Curious Encounters we take a grand tour of characters and their stories of love and loss in the name of science.

In this hour on Diagnosis, we’ll walk into one situation after another and discover that something is not right here. Something’s not right with my pancreas, what do I do? Something’s not right with my son, what do I do? Something’s not right with the phrase “something’s not right.” What? You’ll see.

The U.S. Census defines five races, and an “other” category. When the human genome was first fully mapped in 2000, Bill Clinton, Craig Venter, and Francis Collins took the stage and pronounced that “The concept of race has no genetic or scientific basis.
Great words spoken with great intentions. But what does that mean and where does it leave us? It doesn’t seem to have wiped out our evolving conversation about race. More –>

Why so many sperm? We turn to the animal kingdom to answer that question, which lands us on a tour of sperm battles in ducks, flying pig sperm, and promiscuous whippoorwills. We ponder the necessity of males in a world where sperm can be frozen and kept for all eternity. And we sit quietly with a widow struggling to keep some essence of her husband alive. More –>

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood and… and… how the heck did you decide which one take? This hour, we explore Choice. Why do some people seem better at making decisions than others? Should you listen to your head or your heart? We turn up the volume on the voices in our heads and try to make sense of the babble. Forget free will, some important decisions could come down to a steaming cup of coffee.

Photo by:
Pulpolux /flickrCC

In honor of the 70th anniversary of the classic Orson Welles radio play about martians invading New Jersey, Radio Lab asks: why did people believe it was really happening? And why has this stunt continued to fool people since? From Santiago, Chile to Buffalo, New York to a particularly disastrous evening in Quito, Ecuador. NOTE: This is a rebroadcast of the Season 4 War of the Worlds episode, taped live at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul. ALSO NOTE: 5 brand-spanking-new hour long Radio Lab episodes will begin next podcast, so stay tuned, err…rather, keep downloading!

Chris had a crush on Lisa. But how to woo her? He met her on a park bench in Chicago, handed her a stack of CD’s, and sent her off on an extremely specific mission. Did it work? Find out on this week’s podcast.

And hey! Chicago peeps, get your tix to our LIVE EVENT

Help us make more Radiolabs! By supporting WNYC, you support Radiolab.

Or support the local station where you listen to Radiolab. And tell them thanks for playing a show like us!

In today’s podcast, we give you two short pieces that hint at the new ideas and amazing stories we came across once we started following the trail of this wriggly little cell. First, in a twisted tale of twisted tails, fertility specialist Joanna Ellington, cofounder of ING Fertility, gives Robert a guided tour of all the sperm that are doomed to fail. Then Tim Birkhead, a biologist at the University of Sheffield, tells Jad and Robert how a dead wood mouse completely upended the idea that it’s “every sperm for himself.”

And there are more amazing sperm tales to come! The full show will be released in November.

Ed and Robert Krulwich spoke a few years ago at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan about Ed’s early insect-philia and how it blossomed. Ed tells Robert about the time he figured out how to make hundreds of ants trace his name and the time he convinced an ant colony one of their ants was dead when it was anything but.

If you like this conversation, stay tuned for Season 5. We are working on a whole show devoted to people falling in (and out of) love with science. Can’t wait? Bugs crawling on your skin now? Re-visit Ed and other ant enthusiasts in our Emergence episode.

Photo By: Flickr/It’sGreg

Earlier this year, Jad and Robert visited the Koshland Science Museum in Washington D.C. to give listeners a behind-the-scenes look at Radiolab. The question here is just how far can you go in the name of making an idea clear? What’s allowed? Is music allowed? Are sound effects allowed? What helps? What hurts? We play some never-released tape from the vault, and reveal a bit about what techniques we used to try and make it sing. Please weigh in on the blog.

Also, if you enjoyed this conversation, you may want to check out the other Radiolab process talks, like this one at Oberlin College in the spring and another last fall at the Apple store in New York. And if you didn’t enjoy… don’t worry new Radiolab shows are coming soon!

Zoe Keating is the cellist from our live show, War of the Worlds. She used to play with the band Rasputina and now solos and records music for films, such as horror flick, “The Devil’s Chair” (coming out September 30th) and a PBS documentary on Lincoln’s assassination. Her music process reminded us a bit of ours (looping and layering sound) so she and Jad sat down together in San Francisco to talk shop and listen to some unreleased stuff off her new album (as of yet untitled). In this podcast, you’ll hear Jad and Zoe discuss the physics (if not metaphysics) of looping sound and how to use a 17th century instrument to make avant-garde electronic music:

You can see her on tour with Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls in September and October. You can also check out her album,
One Cello X 16: Natoma. Read more about her here.

Have you wondered if there is another you out there? Somewhere? Sitting in the same chair, reading the same blog post, wearing the same clothes and thinking the same thoughts? Well, Brian Greene says there must be one. Or two. Or lots and lots and lots and lots and… Why? You ask, well listen to Greene’s argument in this week’s podcast.

We are still furiously working on Season 5, so while you wait we bring you today’s podcast of a conversation between Robert Krulwich and Brian Greene, physics and mathematics professor and director of the Institute of Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics at Columbia University. The interview is part of a series called “Giants of Science” hosted by venerable New York institution, the 92nd St Y.

Robert and Brian discuss what’s beyond the horizon of our universe, what you might wear in infinite universes with finite pairs of designer shoes, and why the Universe and swiss cheese have more in common than you think.

Take a listen here:

PLEASE NOTE: Our apologies, there’s some noise at the end of the recording, please don’t be alarmed! It’s us, not you.

You can see a video of Brian talking about string theory here.

What happens when there is no leader? Starlings, bees, and ants manage just fine. In fact, they form staggeringly complicated societies, all without a Toscanini to conduct them into harmony. How? That’s our question this hour. We gaze down at the bottom-up logic of cities, Google, even our very own brains. Featured: author Steven Johnson, fire-flyologists John and Elizabeth Buck, biologist E.O. Wilson, Ant expert Debra Gordon, mathematician Steve Strogatz, economist James Surowiecki, and neurologists Oliver Sacks and Christof Koch.

This week, a piece from one of our favorite radio-makers, Jonathan Mitchell. “City X” is a history of the modern shopping mall through perspectives of people living in a real, yet unnamed, city. Using a sound rich audio mosaic of observations and ruminations, all scored to Muzak, the universal mall experience comes to life, for better or for worse.

City X was commissioned by Hearing Voices with funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

On this week’s podcast, we share an excerpt from Wordless Music on WNYC, a 4-part music program hosted by Jad, exploring the boundaries between classical and pop music. The series pairs rock and electronic musicians with more traditional chamber and new music performers, to create an entirely new concert experience. On this week’s selection, Jad waxes googly-eyed fan when he gets to talk about one of his favorite bands, Stars of the Lid.

On this week’s podcast, Jad presents a piece by one of his favorite producers: Ben Rubin.

Rubin created this audio portrait called “Open Outcry” as a part of a sound installation called Sonic Garden commissioned to celebrate the reopening of the Winter Garden, an atrium space within the World Financial Center, after 9/11.

The trading floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange may look and sound chaotic to the uninitiated, with circles of hundreds of traders shouting unintelligible phonic abbreviations and numbers back and forth. But it’s a complex and sophisticated human system in flux and since 1872, the mosh pit full of traders has driven the prices of energy, metals, livestock and other commodities through this open outcry trading. The trading floor of the NYMEX was destroyed in the attacks of September 11, 2001 when the building that houses it, the World Financial Center, was seriously damaged.

Want to learn more about this piece? Ben did an interesting interview for the Third Coast International Audio Festival and you can learn more about this piece and his approach here.

Vintage Radiolab alert! You’ll hear the very first piece Jad and Robert made together. It’s an audio-experiment called “Flag Day” that they submitted to This American Life. TAL’s Ira Glass and Julie Snyder phone in to share what they thought of it.

Why do some songs mercilessly stick in our heads and repeat themselves over and over? What makes these hooks so hooky? And how does a songwriter will a song forth from the ether? In this episode, nightmarish stories of musical hallucinations, songs that transcend language, and the triumphant return of the Elvis of Afghanistan.

What are the consequences when humans start playing with life? The human imagination has always dreamed up fantastic creatures, but now biotechnology is making it easier and easier for us to actually create forms of life that have never existed before. In this episode Radio Lab looks at the uneasy marriage between biology and engineering, and asks what counts as “natural?”

An examination of the power of mass media to create panic. In Radio Lab’s very first live hour, we take a deep dive into one of the most controversial moments in broadcasting history – Orson Welles’ 1938 radio play about Martians invading New Jersey. And we ask: Why did it fool people then? And why has it continued to fool people since? From Santiago, Chile to Buffalo, New York to a particularly disastrous evening in Quito, Ecuador.

We look at lies, liars, and lie catchers, and ask: can you lead a life without deception? In this episode, we consult a cast of characters, from pathological liars to lying snakes to drunken psychiatrists, to try and understand the dark trait of deception.

We all laugh. But why? If you look closely, you’ll find that humor has very little to do with it. In this episode, we explore the power of laughter to calm us, bond us to one another, or to spread… like a virus. Along the way, we tickle some rats, listen in on a baby’s first laugh, talk to a group of professional laughers, and travel to Tanzania to investigate an outbreak of contagious laughter.

Tuesday is Podcast Day. We’ve been getting some emails from some of you who are confused about the varying lengths of our podcasts… Some are long. Some are short. Fear not! There’s nothing wrong with your download. That’s the way it should be. Sometimes we podcast an entire hour-long episode. Sometimes we podcast a shorter piece that may only be 8 minutes or so. That’s just how we roll.

Up this week, Jad plays one of his favorite pieces of all time, “IF” by Sherre DeLys. You can sign up for our free podcast using Feedburner or just search for “Radio Lab” on your iTunes music store. Otherwise, take a listen to it right here!

Imagine that you’re a composer. Imagine getting the commission to write a song that will allow family members to face the death of a loved one. Well, composer David Lang had to do just that when a hospital in Garches, France, asked him to write music for their morgue, or “Salle Des Departs.”

What do you do? What should death sound like?

Producer Jocelyn Gonzales brings us this piece about David Lang and his commission for the “Salle Des Departs.”

104 years ago this week, Wilbur and Orville Wright managed to coax their spruce biplane off the North Carolina sand for twelve seconds, and those twelve seconds started a revolution in flight. We examine the human desire to fly, and how getting flight changed us.

For more information about this episode go here.

This week we take a look at the different ways that people connect to each other and how they act once they’re together.

NOTE: This episode contains EXPLICIT language about sex

For more information about this episode go here.

How would you describe life on Earth to an alien?
In 1977, the Voyager spacecraft launched into space. And with it, went the Golden Record– a sort time capsule, a collection of sounds and images that would describe life on Earth to whomever or whatever might find it.
Imagine trying to sum up existence on Earth into one little record… for an alien or humans of the far-off future. What sounds would you use? What music? What images? We put this charge to a bunch of artists, and asked what they would put into a space capsule. And in this week’s podcast, a few of the answers we got back. From Margaret Cho, Philip Glass, Alice Waters, Michael Cunningham, and Neil Gaiman.

In spring of 2006, Jad and Robert took the stage at the SoHo Apple Store to talk about the making of Radio Lab. Jad geeks out on the nitty-gritty of digital sound editing, and Robert discusses the editorial questions raised in creating imaginative soundscapes. Film-editor Walter Murch weighs in on the components of storytelling.

Radio Lab is given the charge to put on a Singles Night. That’s right. “Jad,” they said, “stand on a stage and make strangers fall in love! Or, at least, you know, exchange a few phone numbers with each other.” So obviously, we turned to science. Jad consults a few experts on the chemistry of a “brain on love.”

For more information about this episode go here.