425 episodes

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.

Radiolab Radiolab

    • Science
    • 4.7 • 1.9K Ratings

Listen on Apple Podcasts
Requires subscription and macOS 11.4 or higher

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.

Listen on Apple Podcasts
Requires subscription and macOS 11.4 or higher

    Throughline: Dare to Dissent

    Throughline: Dare to Dissent

    On today’s show, we’re excited to share an episode from our friends at the podcast Throughline.

    Sometimes, the most dangerous and powerful thing a person can do is to stand up not against their enemies, but against their friends. As the United States heads into what will likely be another bitter and divided election year, there will be more and more pressure to stand with our in-groups rather than our consciences.

    So the Throughline team decided to tell some of the stories of people who have stood up to that kind of pressure. Some are names we know; others we likely never will. What those people did, what it cost them, and why they did it anyway.

    Check out the full version of “Dare to Dissent” here:

    https://www.npr.org/2023/11/30/1198908264/dare-to-dissent



    EPISODE CITATIONS:

    Books -Defying Hitler: the White Rose Pamphlet (https://zpr.io/wAXJuTzqFBvw), by Alexandra Lloyd, fellow by special election in German at the University of Oxford.

    King: A Life (https://zpr.io/iGAEggJJnFNE), by Johnathan Eig.

    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 a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.

    Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.

    Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

    • 41 min
    Staph Retreat

    Staph Retreat

    What happens when you combine an axe-wielding microbiologist and a disease-obsessed historian? A strange brew that's hard to resist, even for a modern day microbe.

    In the war on devilish microbes, our weapons are starting to fail us. The antibiotics we once wielded like miraculous flaming swords seem more like lukewarm butter knives.

    But today we follow an odd couple to a storied land of elves and dragons. There, they uncover a 1000-year-old secret that makes us reconsider our most basic assumptions about human progress and wonder: What if the only way forward is backward?

    Reported by Latif Nasser. Produced by Matt Kielty and Soren Wheeler.

    Special thanks to Steve Diggle, Professor Roberta Frank, Alexandra Reider and Justin Park (our Old English readers), Gene Murrow from Gotham Early Music Scene, Marcia Young for her performance on the medieval harp and Collin Monro of Tadcaster and the rest of the Barony of Iron Bog.


    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 a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.

    Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.

    Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

    • 31 min
    Hold On

    Hold On

    Two years ago, the United States did something amazing. In response to the mental health crisis the federal government launched 988 - a nationwide, easy to remember phone number that anyone can call anytime and talk to a counselor. It was 911 but for mental health and they hoped that it would save lives. However, if you call 988 today the first thing you hear isn’t a sympathetic counselor. What you hear is hold music.

    Today, the story of the highest stakes hold music in the universe, the three men who created suicide prevention and the two women trying to fix it.

    Special thanks to Dr. Matt Wray, Sherbert Willows, Dani Bennett & Monica Johnson, Shari Sinwelski & the folks at Didi Hirsch, David Green, Jay Kennedy S. Carey & JagJaguwar Records, and George Colt for sharing his cassette taped interviews of Ed Schneidman with us.

    EPISODE CREDITS:
    Reported by - Simon Adler
    Produced by - Simon Adler
    Fact-checking by - Natalie Middleton
    and Edited by - Pat Walters

    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 a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.

    Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.

    Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

    • 47 min
    G: The World's Smartest Animal

    G: The World's Smartest Animal

    This episode begins with a rant. This rant, in particular, comes from Dan Engber - a science writer who loves animals but despises animal intelligence research. Dan told us that so much of the way we study animals involves tests that we think show a human is smart ... not the animals we intend to study.

    Dan’s rant got us thinking: What is the smartest animal in the world? And if we threw out our human intelligence rubric, is there a fair way to figure it out?

    Obviously, there is. And it’s a live game show, judged by Jad, Robert … and a dog.

    The last episode of G, our series on intelligence, was recorded as a live show back in May 2019 at the Greene Space in New York City and now we’re sharing that game show with you, again. Two science writers, Dan Engber and Laurel Braitman, and two comedians, Tracy Clayton and Jordan Mendoza, compete against one another to find the world’s smartest animal. They treated us to a series of funny, delightful stories about unexpectedly smart animals and helped us shift the way we think about intelligence across all the animals - including us.

    Special thanks to Bill Berloni and Macy (the dog) and everyone at The Greene Space.

    EPISODE CITATIONS:

    Podcasts:If you want to listen to more of the RADIOLAB G SERIES, CLICK HERE (https://radiolab.org/series/radiolab-presents-g).

    Videos:

    Check out the video of our live event here! (https://fb.watch/qczu3n1ooA/) 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 a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.

    Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.

    Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

    • 50 min
    Cheating Death

    Cheating Death

    In this episode, Maria Paz Gutiérrez does battle against the one absolute truth of human existence and all life… death. After getting a team of scientists to stand in for death (the grim reaper wasn’t available), we parry and thrust our way through the myriad ways that death comes for us - from falling pianos to evolution’s disinterest in longevity. In the process, we see if we can find a satisfying answer to the question “why do we have to die” and find ourselves face to face with the bitter end of everything that ever existed.

    Special thanks to Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips, Steven Nadler, Beth Jarosz, Anjana Badrinarayanan, Shaon Chakrabarti, Bob Horvitz, John K. Davis, Jessica Brand, Chandan K. Sen, Cole Imperi, Carl Bergstrom, Erin Gentry -Lam, and Jared Silvia.

    This episode was made in loving memory of Dali Rodriguez.

    EPISODE CREDITS -
    Reported by - Maria Paz Gutiérrez
    Produced by - Maria Paz Gutiérrez
    with help from - Alyssa Jeong Perry and Timmy Broderick
    Original music and sound design contributed by - Maria Paz Gutiérrez and Jeremy Bloom
    with mixing help from - Arianne Wack
    Fact-checking by - Emily Krieger

    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 a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.

    Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.

    Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

    • 41 min
    Breaking Newsve About Zoozve

    Breaking Newsve About Zoozve

    Less than two weeks since we released Zoozve, and we have BIG NEWS about our quest to name the first-ever quasi-moon! And that’s only the half of it!

    *Listen to the episode “Zoozve” before you listen to this update! (https://radiolab.org/podcast/zoozve)

    EPISODE CREDITS -
    Reported by - Latif Nasser
    with help from - Ekedi Fausther-Keeys
    Produced by - Sarah Qari
    Original music and sound design contributed by - Sarah Qari
    with mixing help from - Arianne Wack
    Fact-checking by - Diane Kelley
    and Edited by - Becca Bressler

    EPISODE CITATIONS -

    Official announcement about Zoozve is available here! (https://www.wgsbn-iau.org/files/Bulletins/V004/WGSBNBull_V004_002.pdf) If you’d like to see or sign up for the official asteroid naming bulletin that comes from the International Astronomical Union’s Working Group for Small Bodies Nomenclature, you can do so here (https://www.wgsbn-iau.org/).

    If you’d like to buy (or even just look at) Alex Foster’s Solar System poster (featuring Zoozve of course), check it out here (https://zpr.io/dcqVEgHP43SJ). First 75 new annual sign-ups to our membership program The Lab get one free, autographed by Alex! Existing members of The Lab, look out for a discount code!



    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 a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.

    Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.


    Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

    • 12 min

Customer Reviews

4.7 out of 5
1.9K Ratings

1.9K Ratings

Rubikha ,

Zoozve!

I am now invested… eagerly awaiting the outcome!

Bob Mortimer & Vic Reeves can keep their Shooting Stars Uvarvu: Latif et al via Alex’s typo take Zoozve to a whole new level 🫶🏻✨

Michael_CP ,

Great show, but lots of reruns

A great show (I’ve been listening to it for over a decade) but they’ve got to review how they name their episodes.

Lots of their episodes lately are reruns - which is fine! - but they don’t title them as reruns, so it feels misleading as you never know if it’s a real episode or not.

Probably doesn’t make a difference to newcomers but I feel like it’s a surefire way of losing a lot of legacy listeners & could easily be fixed by flagging episodes ‘(Replay)’ so people don’t feel clickbaited.

finbar45 ,

Too many repeats and old episodes you have to pay for

Why do I have to pay to get access to episodes made a decade ago? Greedy. Especially when half the episodes nowadays are repeats of those very same sold episodes. They should just fold the show down its tired at this point and the new hosts just don’t have the old vibe.

Top Podcasts In Science

The Infinite Monkey Cage
BBC Radio 4
The We Society
AcSS
Oceans: Life Under Water
Crowd Network | Greenpeace UK
Science Weekly
The Guardian
The Resetter Podcast with Dr. Mindy Pelz
Dr. Mindy Pelz
Child
BBC Radio 4

You Might Also Like

This American Life
This American Life
Hidden Brain
Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam
More Perfect
WNYC Studios
99% Invisible
Roman Mars
The Moth
The Moth
Freakonomics Radio
Freakonomics Radio + Stitcher

More by WNYC

The New Yorker Radio Hour
WNYC Studios and The New Yorker
Dolly Parton's America
WNYC Studios & OSM Audio
Snap Judgment Presents: Spooked
Snap Judgment
Science Friday
Science Friday and WNYC Studios
On the Media
WNYC Studios
The Anthropocene Reviewed
Complexly, John Green