Description
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.
Episodes
- 2025 / 7 / 25The Nothing Behind EverythingThis 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...
- 2025 / 7 / 18More Perfect: The Hate DebateBack 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,...
- 2025 / 7 / 11Desperately Seeking SymmetryThis 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...
- 2025 / 7 / 4On [The Divided Dial]: Fishing In The NightHave you heard On the Mediaâs Peabody-winning series The Divided Dial? Itâs awesome and you should, and now you will. In this episode they tell the story of shortwave radio: the way-less-listened to but...
- 2025 / 6 / 27Sex, Ducks and the Founding FeudJilted lovers and disrupted duck hunts provide a very odd look into the soul of the US Constitution.What does a betrayed loverâs revenge have to do with an international chemical weapons treaty? More than...
- 2025 / 6 / 19Mystery BayThis 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...
- 2025 / 6 / 18The Shark Inside YouThis 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...
- 2025 / 6 / 17The CageThis 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...
- 2025 / 6 / 16Making a MonsterEpisode 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...
- 2025 / 6 / 13Swimming with Shadows: A Radiolab Week of SharksIn 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...
- 2025 / 6 / 13Double-BlastedWe first aired this episode in 2012, but at the show weâve been thinking a lot about resilience and repair so we wanted to play it for you again today. Itâs about a man who experienced maybe one of the most...
- 2025 / 6 / 6The Elixir of LifeDoctor 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 canât...
- 2025 / 5 / 30A Flock of TwoAnimals 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 riskâit...
- 2025 / 5 / 23The Echo in the MachineToday you can convert speech to text with the click of a button. Youtube does it for all our videos. Our phones will do it in real time. Itâs frictionless. And yet, if it werenât for an unlikely crew of...
- 2025 / 5 / 16How to Cure What Ails YouNow that we have the ability to see inside the brain without opening anyone's skull, we'll be able to map and define brain activity and peg it to behavior and feelings. Right? Well, maybe not, or maybe not...
- 2025 / 5 / 9The First Known Earthly VoiceWhat happens when a voice emerges? What happens when one is lost? Is something gained? A couple months ago, Lulu guest edited an issue of the nature magazine Orion. She called the issue âQueer Planet: A...
- 2025 / 5 / 2Terrestrials: The Snow BeastToday we bring you a story stranger than fiction. In 2006, paleobiologist Natalia Rybczynski took a helicopter to a remote Arctic island near the North Pole, spending her afternoons scavenging for ancient...
- 2025 / 4 / 25The Age of AquaticusFor years, scientists thought nothing could live above 73â/163â. At that temperature, everything boiled to death. But scientists Tom Brock and Hudson Freeze werenât convinced. What began as their simple...
- 2025 / 4 / 18Ghosts in the Green MachineIn honor of our Earth, on her day, we have two stories about the overlooked, ignored, and neglected parts of nature. In the first half, we learn about an epic battle that is raging across the globe every day,...
- 2025 / 4 / 11Signal Hill: Caterpillar RoadshowA couple years ago, an entomologist named Martha Weiss got a letter from a little boy in Japan saying he wanted to replicate a famous study of hers. We covered that original study on Radiolab more than a...
- 2025 / 4 / 4Killer EmpathyIn an episode first aired in 2012, Lulu Miller introduces us to Jeff Lockwood, a professor at the University of Wyoming, who spent a part of his career studying a particularly ferocious set of insects:...
- 2025 / 3 / 28Malthusian SwerveEarth can sustain life for another 100 million years, but can we?In this episode, we partnered with the team at Planet Money to take stock of the essential raw materials that enable us to live as we do here...
- 2025 / 3 / 21Everybody's Got OneWe all think we know the story of pregnancy. Sperm meets egg, followed by nine months of nurturing, nesting, and quiet incubation. this story isnât the nursery rhyme we think it is. In a way, itâs a struggle,...
- 2025 / 2 / 28Revenge of the MiasmaToday we uncover an invisible killer hidden, for over a hundred years, by reasonable disbelief. Science journalist extraordinaire Carl Zimmer tells us the story of a centuries-long battle of ideas that came...
- 2025 / 2 / 21The Immortal Life of Henrietta LacksToday, a story that starts small and private, with one woman alone in her bathroom, as she makes a quiet, startling discovery about her own body. But that small, private moment grows and grows, and pretty...
- 2025 / 2 / 14Quantum BirdsAnnie McEwen went to a mountain in Pennsylvania to help catch some migratory owls. Then Scott Weidensaul peeled back the owlâs feathery face disc, so that she could look at the back of its eyeball. No owls...
- 2025 / 2 / 7VertigogoIn 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...
- 2025 / 1 / 31Forever FreshWe 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...
- 2025 / 1 / 29Radiolab | We Go PlacesRadiolab 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...
- 2025 / 1 / 24NukesIn 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...
- 2025 / 1 / 17The Darkest DarkWe 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, itâs almost like heâs holding a blackhole in his hands. On his...
- 2025 / 1 / 10Smarty PlantsIn 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...
- 2025 / 1 / 3Match Made in MarrowIn an episode first reported in 2017, we bring you what may be, maybe 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...
- 2024 / 12 / 24Probing Where the Sun Does Shine: A Holiday SpecialThis holiday season, we want to take you on a trip around the heavens.First, co-host Latif Nasser, with the help of Nour Raouafi, of NASA, and an edge-cutting piece of equipment, explain how we may finally be...
- 2024 / 12 / 20Curiosity Killed the AdageThe early bird gets the worm. What goes around, comes around. Itâs always darkest just before dawn. We carry these little nuggets of wisdomâthese adagesâwith us, deep in our psyche. But recently we started...
- 2024 / 12 / 6How Stockholm StuckIn 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 âThe party starts now!â Then he started taking hostages. For the...
- 2024 / 11 / 29Less Than KilogramIn todayâs 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...
- 2024 / 11 / 22Science Vs: The Funniest Joke in the WorldWhen he rounded them up, he had a 100.A few months ago, Wendy Zukerman invited our own Latif Nasser to come on her show, and, of course, he jumped at the chance. Laughter ensued, as they set off to find the...
- 2024 / 11 / 8The Ecstasy of an Open BrainAs 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...
- 2024 / 10 / 25The Unpopular VoteAs 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...
- 2024 / 10 / 18Tweak the VoteBack in 2018, when this episode first aired, there was a feeling that democracy was on the ropes. In the United States and abroad, citizens of democracies are feeling increasingly alienated, disaffected, and...
- 2024 / 10 / 11Why Don't Sex Scandals Matter Anymore?In 1987, Gary Hart was a young charismatic Democrat, poised to win his partyâs nomination and possibly the presidency. Many of us know the story of what happened next, and even if you donât, itâs a familiar...
- 2024 / 10 / 4Terrestrials: StumpisodeAs dead as they seem, tree stumps are hubs of life and relationships. Co-host Lulu Miller is back with another season of her hit spinoff show Terrestrials, and to celebrate, weâre sharing the first episode...
- 2024 / 9 / 20A Little Pompeiian Fish Sauce Goes a Long WayToday 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...
- 2024 / 9 / 6Shell GameOne man secretly hands off more and more of his life to an AI voice clone.Today, we feature veteran journalist Evan Ratliff who - for his new podcast Shell Game - decided to slowly replace himself bit by bit...
- 2024 / 8 / 30Big Little QuestionsFirst aired back in 2017, hereâs a show of questions and, sometimes, answers. Cause, we get a lot of questions. Like, A LOT of questions. Tiny questions, big questions, short questions, long questions. Weird...
- 2024 / 8 / 23Uneasy as ABCFebruary 1976. A flight out of California turned catastrophic when it crashed into a farm in rural Nebraska. What happened that night at the local hospital, and crucially, what went wrong, would inspire a...
- 2024 / 8 / 16More Perfect: The Gun ShowGiven that weâre all gearing up for the Presidential race, and how gun rights and regulations are almost always centerstage during these times. Today, weâre re-releasing a More Perfect episode that aired just...
- 2024 / 7 / 19Lose LoseTo celebrate the imminent start of the Summer Olympic Games in Paris, France we have an episode originally reported in 2016. No matter what sport you play, the object of the game is to win. And thatâs hard...
- 2024 / 7 / 12How to Save a LifeWe get it⊠the world feels too bleak and too big for you to make a difference. But there is one thing - one simple tangible thing - you can do to make all the difference in the world to someone, possibly even...