Radiolab

In August we performed a live taping of the show from a theater perched on the edge of Manhattan, overlooking the Hudson River, overshadowed by the wide open night sky. Three stories about voids. One about a fish that screams into the night – and the mystery of its counterpart that doesn’t. Another about a group of women who gazed at the night sky and taught us just how vast the universe is, and a third about a man who talk to aliens – and the people who tell him he’s putting human civilization at risk by doing so. Finally, we turn back to Earth with the help of a reading from Samantha Harvey’s hit novel Orbital (https://zpr.io/RNi4sY2JVKxK) performed by the artist, actor and podcast host Helga Davis (https://zpr.io/TKGuzzDFnVjN). What does it mean to stand on the edge of a void, and what happens when you scream into it, or choose not to?This episode was originally produced and developed in front of a live audience by Little Island, Producing Artistic Director Zack Winokur, Executive Director Laura Clement. S

With this episode, we’re putting on our music hat. For a program that relies so much on scoring and sound, it’s not often we talk about the musicians and the music they make that inspire us. Today, that changes. Today, we bring you two stories. Each about musicians that our former host and creator of Radiolab, Jad Abumrad, loves. We originally released these stories many years ago, and both start deep in music itself. Then quickly, they dig deeper — into our relationships with technology, and ourselves. We start with the band Dawn of Midi, who straddle the intersection between acoustic and electronic sounds. Jad talks to the band about their album, Dysnomia, and how it's filled with heavily-layered rhythms that feel both mechanistic and deeply human, at the same time.Then, Jad talks with Juana Molina, an Argentine singer who accidentally became a famous actress, when all along all she really wanted was to be a musician. Special thanks to Dawn of Midi and Juana Molina.EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - JAD ABUMRAD

As he finished his medical school exam, David Fajgenbaum felt off.  He walked down to the ER and checked himself in.  Soon he was in the ICU with multiple organ failure.  The only drug for his condition didn’t work. He had months to live, if that.  If he was going to survive, he was going to have to find his own cure. Miraculously, he pulled it off in the nick of time. From that ordeal, he realized that our system of discovering and approving drugs is far from perfect, and that he might be able to use AI to find dozens, hundreds, even thousands of cures, hidden in plain sight, for as-yet untreatable diseases. EPISODE CREDITS:Reported by - Latif NasserProduced by - Maria Paz Gutiérrezwith mixing help from - Jeremy S. BloomFact-checking by - Natalie A. MiddletonVISIT:Everycure.org (https://www.everycure.org)EPISODE CITATIONS:Books -Blair Bigham -  Death Interrupted: How Modern Medicine is Complicating the Way We DieDavid Fajgenbaum - Chasing My Cure, (https://davidfajgenbaum.com/)Radiolab | Lateral Cuts:Check o

In an episode first released in 2010, then-producer Lulu Miller drives to Michigan to track down the endangered Kirtland’s warbler. Efforts to protect the bird have lead to the killing of cowbirds (a species that commandeers warbler nests), and a prescribed burn aimed at creating a new habitat. Tragically, this burn led to the death of a 29-year-old wildlife technician who was dedicated to warbler restoration. Forest Service employee Rita Halbeisen, local Michiganders skeptical of the resources put toward protecting the warbler, and the family of James Swiderski (the man killed in the fire), weigh in on how far we should go to protect one species.EPISODE CREDITS:Reported by - Lulu MillerSignup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagra

Until recently, scientists assumed humans were the only species in which females went through menopause, and lived a substantial part of their lives after they were no longer able to reproduce. And they had no idea why that happens, and why evolution wouldn’t push females to keep reproducing right up to the end of their lives. But after a close look at some whale poop, and a deep dive into chimp life, we find several new ways of thinking about menopause and the real purpose of this all too often overlooked second act of life.  Special thanks to Danielle Friedman, Rachel Gross, and Kate Radke.EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Heather Radke and Becca BresslerProduced by - Sarah Qari and Becca BresslerFact-checking by - Emily Kriegerand Edited by  - Becca BresslerEPISODE CITATIONS:Books - Check out everything Heather Radke writes, including Butts: A Backstory, cause it’s all that good, here: Heather Radke (www.heatherradke.com).Find any one of Lucy Cooke’s book, including Bitch:On the Female of the Species, here: L

This week: the story of astrophysicist Charity Woodrum. Charity is an extragalactic astronomer who studies the life and death of galaxies, why some galaxies burn bright and others dim and sputter out. And in the midst of an unthinkable grief in her personal life, she discovers something in the sky – a new kind of light that would guide her path forward. Special thanks to Megan Stielstra, Jad Abumrad, Michael Woodrum, Gina Vivona, and Clair Reilly-Roe.EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Lulu MillerProduced by - Jessica YungFact-checking by - Diane KellyRadiolab | Lateral Cuts:Our episode The Darkest Dark (https://radiolab.org/podcast/the-darkest-dark) could be of interest to those seeking the deepest unknowns. EPISODE CITATIONS:Music -Clair Reilly-Roe’s song “Sky Full of Ghosts” (https://zpr.io/JgauhRnj7qpX)Articles -A new documentary on Charity Woodrum’s story: Space, Hope and Charity (https://www.spacehopecharityfilm.com/)Signup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about oth

This week, two conversations from the archives about parts of the world that are imperceptible to us, verging on almost unthinkable. We start with a moment of uncertainty in physics. Inspired by an essay written by physicist and novelist Alan Lightman, called The Accidental Universe (https://zpr.io/4965dUdNqtpQ), taken from a book of the same name. Former Radiolab co-host Robert Krulwich pays a visit to Brian Greene to ask if the latest developments in theoretical physics spell a crisis for science. He finds that we've reached the limit of what we can see and test, and we’re left with mathematical equations that can't be verified by experiments or observation.Then, come along as we kick rocks. And end up tumbling down a philosophical rabbit hole where the solid things around us might not be solid at all. We talk to Jim Holt, author of Why Does the World Exist? (https://zpr.io/UqHpLnDx2QNx) who points out that when you start slicing and sleuthing in subatomic particle land, trying to get to the bottom of what

Back in 2017 our colleagues at More Perfect gathered a room full of people together to debate a straight forward question: Can free speech go too far? Today, eight years have passed and plenty has changed, but this question feels alive as ever. And so we’re re-airing More Perfect’s The Hate Debate. Taped live at WNYC's Jerome L. Greene Performance Space, Elie Mystal, Ken White and Corynne McSherry duke it out over whether the first amendment needs an update in our digital world. Special thanks to Elaine Chen, Jennifer Keeney Sendrow, and the entire Greene Space team. Additional engineering for this episode by Chase Culpon, Louis Mitchell, and Alex Overington.EPISODE CITATIONS:Videos -If watching is more your speed, you can see the event, in its entirety, here:https://www.youtube.com/live/azcIcVDyVTM?si=ZqpQHQfvTKr2jS0zThere’s other Radiolabs for that -Further recommended listening What Up Holmes and Post No Evil.Signup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other way

This hour of Radiolab, former co-hosts Jad and Robert set out in search of order and balance in the world around us, and ask how symmetry shapes our very existence -- from the origins of the universe, to what we see when we look in the mirror.Along the way, we look for love in ancient Greece, head to modern-day Princeton to peer inside our brains, and turn up an unlikely headline from the Oval Office circa 1979.EPISODE CITATIONS:Videos - Back in the day, when we first aired this episode, the film collective Everynone, filmmakers Will Hoffman, Daniel Mercadante and Julius Metoyer III were inspired with our yearning for balance, and aimed to visually reveal how beautiful imperfect matches can be.Radiolab Presents: Symmetry (https://youtu.be/zEQskIsHKT8)Signup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab

Have you heard On the Media’s Peabody-winning series The Divided Dial? It’s awesome and you should, and now you will. In this episode they tell the story of shortwave radio: the way-less-listened to but way-farther-reaching cousin of AM and FM radio. The medium was once heralded as a utopian, international, and instantaneous mass communication tool — a sort of internet-before-the-internet. But, like the internet, many people quickly saw the power of this new technology and found ways to harness it. State leaders turned it into a propaganda machine, weaponizing the airwaves to try and shape politics around the world. And as shortwave continued to evolve, like the internet, it became fragmented, easily accessible, and right-wing extremists, conspiracy theorists and cult leaders found homes on the different shortwave frequencies. And even today - again, like the internet - people with money are looking to buy up this mass-communication tool in the hopes of … making more money. This is episode one from the second

Jilted lovers and disrupted duck hunts provide a very odd look into the soul of the US Constitution.What does a betrayed lover’s revenge have to do with an international chemical weapons treaty? More than you’d think. From poison and duck hunts to our feuding fathers, we step into a very odd tug of war between local and federal law.When Carol Anne Bond found out her husband had impregnated her best friend, she took revenge. Carol's particular flavor of revenge led to a US Supreme Court case that puts into question a part of the US treaty power. Producer Kelsey Padgett drags Jad and Robert into Carol's poisonous web, which starts them on a journey from the birth of the US Constitution, to a duck hunt in 1918, and back to the present day. It’s all about an ongoing argument that might actually be the very heart and soul of our system of government.Signup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter

This is episode five of Swimming with Shadows: A Radiolab Week of Sharks.Today, the strange, squirmy magic behind how sharks make more sharks. Drills. Drama. Death. Even a coliseum of baby sharks duking it out inside mom’s womb. And a man on a small island in the Mediterranean trying, against all odds, to give baby sharks a chance in a little plastic aquarium in his living room. Can a human raise a shark? And if so, what good is that for sharks? And for us? Doo doo doo doo doo doo.Special thanks to Jaime Penadés Suay and la Fundación Azul Marino.EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Rachael CusickProduced by - Rachael Cusickwith mixing help from - Jeremy BloomFact-checking by - Diane Kellyand Edited by  - Pat WaltersEPISODE CITATIONS:Articles - Claudia’s original reporting that inspired the episodeSignup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support

This is episode four of Swimming with Shadows: A Radiolab Week of Sharks.Alison Kock was working at a car wash in Cape Town when she made a discovery that completely changed the course of her life. Inside a customer’s trunk, she found photographs of white sharks flying so high above the water they looked like airplanes. She followed those photographs to False Bay, “the Great White Capital of the World.” These sharks, in this place, are the apex of apex predators. Or they were. Until they mysteriously began to disappear.Special thanks to Kathryn Ayres.EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Rachael Cusick Produced by - Simon Adler and Maria Paz Gutierrezwith help from - Rebecca Laks Original music from - Simon Adler and Maria Paz GutierrezSound design contributed by - Jeremy Bloomwith mixing help from - Jeremy BloomFact-checking by - Diane A. Kellyand Edited by  - Pat WaltersSignup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://ra

This is episode three of Swimming with Shadows: A Radiolab Week of Sharks.Today, we take a trip across the world, from the south coast of Australia to … Wisconsin. Here, scientists are scouring shark blood to find one of nature’s hidden keys, a molecular superhero that might unlock our ability to cure cancer: shark antibodies. They’re small. They’re flexible. And they can fit into nooks and crannies on tumors that our antibodies can’t.We journey back 500 million years to the moment sharks got these special powers and head to the underground labs transforming these monsters into healers. Can these animals we fear so much actually save us? Special thanks to Mike Criscitiello, David Schatz, Mary Rose Madden, Ryan Ogilvie, Margot Wohl, Sofi LaLonde, and Isabelle Bérubé.EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Becca BresslerProduced by - Becca Bressler and Matt KieltyOriginal music from - Matt Kielty and Jeremy BloomSound design contributed by - Matt Kielty, Jeremy Bloom, and Becca Bresslerwith mixing help from - Jeremy Blo

This is episode two of Swimming with Shadows: A Radiolab Week of Sharks.Jaws spawned a thousand imitators: sharks in tornados, sharks in avalanches, sharks that battle giant octopuses. Hollywood has officially turned sharks into monsters of every shape and size. And yet, somehow, there will always be more.But drop below the surface, into the cold, quiet blue, and another creature appears. One that has survived mass extinctions, outlasted ancient predators and pre-dates Mount Everest, the existence of trees, even the rings of Saturn. A shark that is somehow even more remarkable than sharks in tornadoes.Today, we go visit that shark. Special thanks to Andrew Fox, the entire team at Rodney Fox Shark Expeditions, John Long whose book The Secret History of Sharks inspired our obsession with sharks, and Greg Skomal, whose wonderful new book on his life studying white sharks is Chasing Shadows: My Life Tracking the Great White Shark.EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Rachael Cusickwith help from - Pat WaltersProduced by

Episode one of Swimming with Shadows: A Radiolab Week of Sharks.Rodney Fox went into the ocean one summer day in 1963. He came out barely alive, his body torn apart by a great white shark. At the time, it was one of the worst shark attacks ever survived.After he recovered, he was pulled back into the shadowy world he feared most. Again and again and again. That shark attack left behind a question that still lingers, for Rodney, and for all of us: When you can’t see the thing that scares you, what kind of monster does your mind create? And how do you fight past it?Special thanks to Surekha Davies, Asa Mittman, Scott Poole, and Maria Tatar.EPISODE CREDITS:Reported by - Rachael Cusickwith help from - Pat WaltersProduced by - Rachael Cusick and Pat WaltersSound design contributed by - Jeremy Bloomwith mixing help from - Jeremy BloomFact-checking by - Diane Kellyand Edited by  - Pat WaltersSignup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show.

In the summer of 1975, Jaws scared an entire generation out of the water. The film burned an idea into our cultural memory: they are mindless, man-eating monsters. We set out to tell a different story about sharks. Five stories over five days. We tear down deep-seated myths about sharks, plunge into the water with them, and find sharks that explode our sense of what they are – flying sharks, glowing sharks, baby sharks, sharks under attack, and sharks that may save millions of human lives.Look out for brand-new episodes in your podcast feed starting June 16th through June 20th. Visit our YouTube channel to check out the video trailer for the series and make sure to subscribe for more behind the scenes content throughout the week.  For more details about the series, visit radiolab.org/sharksFollow us on Instagram @radiolab

We first aired this episode in 2012, but at the show we’ve been thinking a lot about resilience and repair so we wanted to play it for you again today. It’s about a man who experienced maybe one of the most chilling traumas… twice. But then, it leads us to a story of generational repair. On the morning of August 6th, 1945, Tsutomu Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on a work trip. He was walking to the office when the first atomic bomb was dropped about a mile away. He survived, and eventually managed to get himself onto a train back to his hometown... Nagasaki. The very next morning, as he tried to convince his boss that a single bomb could destroy a whole city, the second bomb dropped. Author Sam Kean tells Jad and Robert the incredible story of what happened to Tsutomu, explains how gamma rays shred DNA, and helps us understand how Tsutomu sidestepped a thousand year curse.Signup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https:/

Doctor and special correspondent, Avir Mitra takes Lulu on an epic journey live on stage at a little basement club called Caveat, here in New York. Starting with an ingredient in breastmilk that babies can’t digest, a global hunt that takes us from Bangladesh to the Mennonite communities here in the US, we discover an ancient symbiotic relationship that might be on the verge of disappearing.  So sip a vicarious cocktail, settle in, and explore the surprising ways our bodies forge deep, invisible connections that shape our lives.This live show is part of a series we are doing with Avir that we are calling “Viscera.” Each event is conversation that takes the audience on journey into a quirk or question or mystery inside of us, and gives them a visceral experience with the viscera of us. The previous installment of the series, was called “How to Save a Life.”Special thanks to Tim Brown, David Mills, Carlito Lebrilla, Bethany Henrik, Danielle Lemay, Katie Hinde, Jennifer Smilowitz, Angela Zivkovic, Daniela Barile

Animals rescue people all the time, but not like this. In this episode, first aired more than a decade ago, Jim Eggers is a 44-year-old man who suffers from a problem that not only puts his life at risk—it jeopardizes the safety of everybody around him. But with the help of Sadie, his pet African Grey Parrot, Jim found an unlikely way to manage his anger. African Grey Parrot expert Irene Pepperberg helps us understand how this could work, and shares some insights from her work with a parrot named Alex.And one quick note from our producer Pat Walters: Jim considers Sadie to be a “service animal,” a designation under the Americans with Disabilities Act that protects the rights of individuals with disabilities to bring certain animals into public places. The term service animal sometimes is legally limited to include only dogs and miniature horses. Jim disagrees with those limitations, but the local bus company, regardless of definitions, said they’ll make an exception for Sadie.