Radiolab

Back 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 powerless.  Some are even asking themselves a question that feels almost too dangerous to say out loud: is democracy fundamentally broken?  Today on Radiolab, we ask a different question: how do we fix it?  We scrutinize one proposed tweak to the way we vote that could make politics in this country more representative, more moderate, and most shocking of all, more civil.  Could this one surprisingly do-able mathematical fix really turn political campaigning from a rude bloodsport to a campfire singalong? And even if we could do that, would we want to?Special thanks to Rob Richie (and everyone else at Fairvote), Don Saari, Diana Leygerman, Caroline Tolbert, Bobby Agee, Edward Still, Jim Blacksher, Allen Caton, Nikolas Bowie, John Hale, and Anna Luhrmann and the rest of the team at the Varieties of Democra

In 1987, Gary Hart was a young charismatic Democrat, poised to win his party’s nomination and possibly the presidency. Many of us know the story of what happened next, and even if you don’t, it’s a familiar tale. Back in 2016, we examined how, when this happened, politicians and political reporters found themselves in uncharted territory. And with help from author Matt Bai, we looked at how the events of that May shaped the way we cover politics, and expanded our sense of what's appropriate when it comes to judging a candidate.In the wake of the 2016 election, and in the throes of our current political moment, it would seem we’ve come full circle in the weirdest way. So we sat down with Brooke Gladstone, co-host of our sister show here at WNYC, On the Media, to talk about why sex scandals don’t matter anymore. We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a global

As 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, we’re sharing the first episode with you. From stumps to snags, dead wood provides habitat for rodents, falcons, insects, and even humans. Stumps hold together the forest floor, give hunting perches to birds of prey in flatlands, prevent erosion and the encroachment of invasive species, usher in sunlight, provide nutrients, store renewable fuel, and hold onto stories human beings might have forgotten. Without these ghosts of trees past, nothing would be the same. Scottish author, artist and lover of tree stumps, Dr. Amanda Thomson, leads Lulu on a “tour de stumps,” a journey across space and time to learn about some of the most magical stumps on the planet.We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union t

A mile under the ocean, we get to watch an octopus perform a heroic act of heart and determination.First aired back in 2020, this episode follows the story of an octopus living one mile under the ocean as she performs a heroic act of heart and determination.In 2007, Bruce Robison’s robot submarine stumbled across an octopus settling in to brood her eggs. It seemed like a small moment. But as he went back to visit her, month after month, what began as a simple act of motherhood became a heroic feat that has never been equaled by any known species on Earth. This episode was reported and produced by Annie McEwen. Special thanks to Kim Fulton-Bennett and Rob Sherlock at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.  If you need more ocean in your life, check out the incredible Monterey Bay Aquarium live cams (especially the jellies!): www.montereybayaquarium.org/animals/live-camsHere’s a pic of Octomom sitting on her eggs (© 2007 MBARI), Nov. 1, 2007. We have some ex

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 ground. Could anyone have survived the volcano? If they did, could they have survived what came after that: earthquakes, tsunamis, pumice stones hurtling like missiles from the sky? If someone did survive, what happened to them after that??! To find out we have to think, feel and possibly even eat like Ancient Romans. An against-all-odds story of a disaster without warning, a mass disappearance without a trace, and oddly, a particularly stinky fish sauce, care of special guest Chef Samin Nosrat. We have some excit

This episode first aired back in December of 2013, and at the start of that new year, the team was cracking open fossils, peering back into ancient seas, and looking up at lunar skies only to find that a year is not quite as fixed as we thought it was.With the help of paleontologist Neil Shubin, reporter Emily Graslie and the Field Museum's Paul Mayer we discover that our world is full of ancient coral calendars. Each one of these sea skeletons reveals that once upon a very-long-time-ago, years were shorter by over forty days. And astrophysicist Chis Impey helps us comprehend how the change is all to be blamed on a celestial slow dance with the moon. Plus, Robert indulges his curiosity about stopping time and counteracting the spinning of the spheres by taking astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson on a (theoretical) trip to Venus with a rooster and sprinter Usain Bolt.We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with

One 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 with an AI voice clone, to see how far he could actually take it. Could it do the mundane phone calls he’d prefer to skip? Could it get legal advice for him? Could it go to therapy for him? Could it parent his kids? Evan feeds his bot the most intimate details about his life, and lets the bot loose in high-stakes situations at home and at work. Which bizarro version of him will show up? The desperately-agreeable conversationalist, the crank-yanking prank caller, the glitched out stranger who sounds like he’s in the middle of a mental breakdown, or someone else entirely? Will people believe it’s really him? And how will they act if they don’t? A gonzo journalistic experiment for the age of AI, that’s funny and eerie all at the same time.We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named it

First aired back in 2017, here’s 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 questions. Poop questions. We get them all.And over the years, as more and more of these questions arrived in our inbox, what happened was, guiltily, we put them off to the side, in a bucket of sorts, where they just sat around, unanswered. But now, we’re dumping the bucket out.Today, our producers pick up a few of the questions that spilled out of that bucket, and venture out into the great unknown to find answers to some of life's greatest mysteries: coincidences; miracles; life; death; fate; will; and, of course, poop.We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons. This is your chance to make your mark o

February 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 global sea-change in how emergency rooms operate and fundamentally alter the way doctors think in a crisis.Special thanks to Jody and Jay Upright, Heather Talbott, Dr. Ron Simon, Dr. John Sutyak, Dr. Paul Collicott, Irvene Hughe, Maimonides Medical Center, Karl Sukhia and Vanya Zvonar.We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons. This is your chance to make your mark on the heavens. Submit your name ideas now through September, or vote on your favorites starting in November: https://radiolab.org/moonEPISODE CREDITS: Reported by -  Avir Mitrawith help from - Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sarah Qari, Becca Bressler, Su

Given that we’re all gearing up for the Presidential race, and how gun rights and regulations are almost always centerstage during these times. Today, we’re re-releasing a More Perfect episode that aired just after the October 2017 Las Vegas shooting. It is an episode that attempts to make sense of our country’s fraught relationship with the Second Amendment.For nearly 200 years of our nation’s history, the Second Amendment was an all-but-forgotten rule about the importance of militias. But in the 1960s and 70s, a movement emerged — led by Black Panthers and a recently-repositioned NRA — that insisted owning a firearm was the right of each and every American. So began a constitutional debate that only the Supreme Court could solve. That didn’t happen until 2008, when a Washington, D.C. security guard named Dick Heller made a compelling case.We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astron

Two scenes. In the first, a doctor gets a call — the hospital she works at is having an outbreak of unknown origin, in the middle of the worst wildfire season on record. In the second, an ecologist stands in a forest, watching it burn. Through very different circumstances, they both find themselves asking the same question: is there something in the smoke? This question will bring them together, and reveal – to all of us – a world we never saw before. This is the first episode in an ongoing series hosted by Molly Webster, in conversation with scientists and science-y people, doing work at the furthest edges of what we know. More to come! Special thanks to Leda Kobziar, at the University of Idaho, and Naomi Hauser, at the University of California, Davis. Plus, James and Shelby Kaemmerer, and Paula and John Troche.We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a glob

We had a question back in 2007, about a thing every creature on the planet does--from giant humpback whales to teeny fruit flies. Why do we all sleep? What does it do for us, and what happens when we go without? We take a peek at iguanas sleeping with one eye open, get in bed with a pair of sleep-deprived new parents, and eavesdrop on the uneasy dreams of rats. We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons. This is your chance to make your mark on the heavens. Submit your name ideas now through September, or vote on your favorites starting in November: https://radiolab.org/moonSign up 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 be

High above the banks of the Mississippi river, a nest holds the secret life of one of America’s most patriotic creatures. Their story puzzles scientists, reinforces indigenous wisdom, and wows audiences, all thanks to a park ranger named Ed, and a well-placed webcam. If you want to spoil the mystery, here ya go: it’s a bald eagle. Actually, it’s three bald eagles. A mama bird and daddies make a home together for over a decade and give new meaning to our national symbol. Learn about the storytellers, listen to music, and dig deeper into the stories you hear on Terrestrials with activities you can do at home or in the classroom on our website, Terrestrialspodcast.org. Watch “I Wanna Hear the Eagle” and find even MORE original Terrestrials fun on our Youtube.And badger us on Social Media: @radiolab and #TerrestrialsPodcast.Special thanks to Abigail Miller, Laurel Braitman, Stan Bousson, Molly Webster, and Maria Paz Gutierrez.We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi

To 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 that’s hard enough to do. But we found a match where four top athletes had to do the opposite in one of the most high profile matches of their careers. Thanks to a quirk in the tournament rules, their best shot at winning was … to lose. This week, in honor of the 2024 Summer Olympics, we are rerunning a story from 2016 in which we scrutinize the most paradoxical and upside down badminton match of all time. A match that dumbfounded spectators, officials, and even the players themselves. And it got us to wondering …  what would sports look like if everyone played to lose?Special thanks to Aparna Nancherla, Mark Phelan, Yuni Kartika, Greysia Polii, Joy Le Li, Mikyoung Kim, Stan Bischof, Vincent Liew, Kota Morikowa, Christ de Roij and Haeryun Kang.We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its firs

We 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 a loved one, at arguably the worst moment of their life.Statistics show that 1 out of every 5 people on earth will die of heart failure. Cardiac arrests can happen anywhere, anytime - in your bed, on the street, on your honeymoon. And every minute that passes after your heart stops beating, your chances of surviving drop dramatically. For all the strides modern medicine has made in treating heart conditions, the ambulance still doesn’t always make it in time. The only person who can keep you alive during those crucial first few minutes is a stranger, a neighbor, your partner, anyone nearby willing to perform CPR. Yet most of us don’t do anything.Join Radiolab host Latif Nasser, ER doctor and Radiolab contributor Avir Mitra, and TikTok stars Dr. and Lady Glaucomflecken, as we discover the fascinating scie

First aired back in 2013, we originally released this episode to celebrate the 80th birthday of one of our favorite human beings, Oliver Sacks. To celebrate, his good friend, and our former co-host Rober Krulwich, asks the good doctor to look back, and explain how thousands of worms and a motorbike accident led to a brilliant writing career.We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons. This is your chance to make your mark on the heavens. Submit your name ideas now through September, or vote on your favorites starting in November: https://radiolab.org/moon.Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. 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

In 1995, a tragic fire in Pittsburgh set off a decades-long investigation that sent Greg Brown Jr. to prison. But, after a series of remarkable twists, Brown found himself contemplating a path to freedom that involved a paradoxical plea deal—one that peels back the curtain on the criminal justice system and reveals it doesn’t work the way we think it does. Special thanks to John Lentini, Amanda Gillooly, Fred Buckner, Debbie Steinmeyer, Marissa Bluestine, Jason Hazlewood, Meredith Kennedy, Kristen Vermilya, Joshua Ceballos and Lauren Cooperman.We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons. This is your chance to make your mark on the heavens. Submit your name ideas now through September, or vote on your favorites starting in November: https://radiolab.org/moonEPISODE CREDITS:Reported by - Peter Smith and Matt

People have been doing the square dance since before the Declaration of Independence. But does that mean it should be THE American folk dance? That question took us on a journey from Appalachian front porches, to dance classes across our nation, to the halls of Congress, and finally a Kansas City convention center. And along the way, we uncovered a secret history of square dancing that made us see how much of our national identity we could stuff into that square, and what it means for a dance to be of the people, by the people, and for the people.Special thanks to Jim Mayo, Claude Fowler, Paul Gifford, Jim Maczko, Jim Davis, Paul Moore, Jack Pladdys, Mary Jane Wegener, Kinsey Brooke and Connie Keener.We have some exciting news! In this “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons. This is your chance to make your mark on the heavens. Submit yo

Close your eyes and imagine a red apple. What do you see? Turns out there’s a whole spectrum of answers to that question and Producer Sindhu Gnanasambandan is on one far end. In this episode, she explores what it means to see – and not see – in your mind.Special thanks to Kim Nederveen Pieterse, Nathan Peereboom, Lizzie Peabody, Kristin Lin, Jo Eidman, Mark Nakhla, Andrew Leland and Brian Radcliffe.We have some exciting news! In this “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons. This is your chance to make your mark on the heavens. Submit your name ideas now through September, or vote on your favorites starting in November: https://radiolab.org/moonEPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Sindhu GnanasambandanProduced by - Sindhu Gnanasambandanwith help from - Annie McEwenOriginal music and sound design contributed by - Dylan Keefewith mixing help from

From a suburban sidewalk in southern California, Jad and Robert witness the carnage of a gruesome turf war. Though the tiny warriors doing battle clock in at just a fraction of an inch, they have evolved a surprising, successful, and rather unsettling strategy of ironclad loyalty, absolute intolerance, and brutal violence.David Holway, an ecologist and evolutionary biologist from UC San Diego, takes us to a driveway in Escondido, California where a grisly battle rages. In this quiet suburban spot, two groups of ants are putting on a chilling display of dismemberment and death. According to David, this battle line marks the edge of an enormous super-colony of Argentine ants. Think of that anthill in your backyard, and stretch it out across five continents.Argentine ants are not good neighbors. When they meet ants from another colony, any other colony, they fight to the death, and tear the other ants to pieces. While other kinds of ants sometimes take slaves or even have sex with ants from different colonies, t