Radiolab Radiolab

Sad news for all of us: producer Rachael Cusick— who brought us soul-stirring stories rethinking grief (https://zpr.io/GZ6xEvpzsbHU) and solitude (https://zpr.io/eT5tAX6JtYra), as well as colorful musings on airplane farts (https://zpr.io/CNpgUijZiuZ4) and belly flops (https://zpr.io/uZrEz27z63CB) and Blueberry Earths (https://zpr.io/EzxgtdTRGVzz)— is leaving the show. So we thought it perfect timing to sit down with her and revisit another brainchild of hers, The Cataclysm Sentence, a collection of advice for The End.

To explain: one day in 1961, the famous physicist Richard Feynman stepped in front of a Caltech lecture hall and posed this question to a group of undergraduate students: “If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence was passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words?” Now, Feynman had an answer to his own question—a good one. But his question got the entire team at Radiolab wondering, what did his sentence leave out? So we posed Feynman’s cataclysm question to some of our favorite writers, artists, historians, futurists—all kinds of great thinkers. We asked them “What’s the one sentence you would want to pass on to the next generation that would contain the most information in the fewest words?” What came back was an explosive collage of what it means to be alive right here and now, and what we want to say before we go.

Featuring:
Richard Feynman, physicist - The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (https://zpr.io/5KngTGibPVDw)

Caitlin Doughty, mortician - Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs (https://zpr.io/Wn4bQgHzDRDB)

Esperanza Spalding, musician - 12 Little Spells (https://zpr.io/KMjYrkwrz9dy) 

Cord Jefferson, writer - Watchmen (https://zpr.io/ruqKDQGy5Rv8) 

Merrill Garbus, musician - I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life (https://zpr.io/HmrqFX8RKuFq)

Jenny Odell, writer - How to do Nothing (https://zpr.io/JrUHu8dviFqc)

Maria Popova, writer - Brainpickings (https://zpr.io/vsHXphrqbHiN)

Alison Gopnik, developmental psychologist - The Gardener and the Carpenter (https://zpr.io/ewtJpUYxpYqh)

Rebecca Sugar, animator - Steven Universe (https://zpr.io/KTtSrdsBtXB7)

Nicholson Baker, writer - Substitute (https://zpr.io/QAh2d7J9QJf2)

James Gleick, writer - Time Travel (https://zpr.io/9CWX9q3KmZj8)

Lady Pink, artist - too many amazing works to pick just one (https://zpr.io/FkJh6edDBgRL)

Jenny Hollwell, writer - Everything Lovely, Effortless, Safe (https://zpr.io/MjP5UJb3mMYP)

Jaron Lanier, futurist - Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now (https://zpr.io/bxWiHLhPyuEK)

Missy Mazzoli, composer - Proving Up (https://zpr.io/hTwGcHGk93Ty)

 

Special Thanks to:

Ella Frances Sanders, and her book, "Eating the Sun" (https://zpr.io/KSX6DruwRaYL), for inspiring this whole episode.

Caltech for letting us use original audio of The Feynman Lectures on Physics. The entirety of the lectures are available to read for free online at www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu.All the musicians who helped make the Primordial Chord, including:

Siavash Kamkar (https://zpr.io/2ZT46XsMRdhg), from Iran 

Koosha Pashangpour (https://zpr.io/etWDXuCctrzE), from Iran

Curtis MacDonald (https://zpr.io/HQ8uskA44BUh), from Canada

Meade Bernard (https://zpr.io/gbxDPPzHFvme), from US

Barnaby Rea (https://zpr.io/9ULsQh5iGUPa), from UK

Liav Kerbel (https://zpr.io/BA4DBwMhwZDU), from Belgium

Sam Crittenden (https://zpr.io/EtQZmAk2XrCQ), from US

Saskia Lankhoorn (https://zpr.io/YiH6QWJreR7p), from Netherlands

Bryan Harris (https://zpr.io/HMiyy2TGcuwE), from US

Amelia Watkins (https://zpr.io/6pWEw3y754me), from Canada

Claire James (https://zpr.io/HFpHTUwkQ2ss), from US

Ilario Morciano (https://zpr.io/zXvM7cvnLHW6), from Italy

Matthias Kowalczyk, from Germany (https://zpr.io/ANkRQMp6NtHR)

Solmaz Badri (https://zpr.io/MQ5VAaKieuyN), from IranAll the wonderful people we intervi

Given reporter Julia Longoria’s long love affair with the Supreme Court, it’s no surprise she’s become the new host of More Perfect (https://zpr.io/4R9fMg9gJ96k), a show all about how the Supreme Court got to be so… supreme. This week, we talk to Julia about her journey to the host seat, and we highlight an episode she produced for Radiolab in 2019 about a specific case: González v. Williams. 

In 1903 the U.S. Supreme Court refused to say that Isabel González was a citizen of the United States. Then again, they said, she wasn’t exactly an immigrant either. And they said that the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, Isabel’s home, was “foreign to the United States in a domestic sense.” Since then, the U.S. has cleared up at least some of the confusion about U.S. territories and the status of people born in them.

But, more than a hundred years later, there is still a U.S. territory that has been left in limbo: American Samoa. It is the only place on Earth that is U.S. soil, but people who are born there are not automatically U.S. citizens. When we visit American Samoa, we discover that there are some pretty surprising reasons why many American Samoans prefer it that way. 

EPISODE CREDITS 

Reported by - Julia Longoria

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)!

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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.

Shipworms. Hairy Chested Yeti Crabs. Parasitic Barnacles in the cloaca of Greenland Sharks. These are the types of creatures Sabrina Imbler, a columnist at Defector, likes to write about. The stranger, the better.

In this episode, Imbler discusses how they balance maintaining scientific rigor while also drawing inspiration and metaphor from the animal world. Then they read a stirring essay from their new book, How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures . It’s about the sand striker, one of the ocean’s most gruesome predators, and the various prey that surround it. In learning about the relationships between predator and prey lurking in the murky bottom, Imbler ends up unearthing new insights about predation in human society. The essay deals with sexual assault so listen with care.

EPISODE CREDITS

Reported by - Lulu Miller

Produced by - Sindhu Gnanasambandan

Original music and sound design contributed by - Alex Overington

with mixing help from - Jeremy Bloom and Arianne Wack

Fact-checking by - Natalie Middleton

and Edited by  - Alex Neason and Pat Walters

EPISODE CITATIONS

Articles:“Creaturefector” (https://zpr.io/3myWi4grgkGB) by Sabrina Imbler

Books: How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures (https://zpr.io/agkRj7xyPG9T) by Sabrina Imbler Dyke (geology) (https://zpr.io/7kAtAKjdBqPa) by Sabrina Imbler

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.

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Ross McNutt has a superpower: he can zoom in on everyday life, then rewind and fast-forward to solve crimes in a shutter-flash. But should he?

In 2004, when casualties in Iraq were rising due to roadside bombs, Ross McNutt and his team came up with an idea. With a small plane and a 44 megapixel camera, they figured out how to watch an entire city all at once, all day long. Whenever a bomb detonated, they could zoom into that spot and then, because this eye in the sky had been there all along, they could scroll back in time and see—literally see—who planted it. After the war, Ross McNutt retired from the Air Force, and brought this technology back home with him. Manoush Zomorodi and Alex Goldmark (from the podcast Note to Self) give us the lowdown on Ross’ unique brand of persistent surveillance, from Juarez, Mexico to Dayton, Ohio. Then, once we realize what we can do, we wonder whether we should.

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.

In the 1970s, as LGBTQ+ people in the United States faced conservatives whose top argument was that homosexuality is “unnatural,” a pair of young scientists discovered on a tiny island off the coast of California a colony of seagulls that included… a significant number of female homosexual couples making nests and raising chicks together. The article that followed upended the culture’s understanding of what’s natural and took the discourse on homosexuality in a whole new direction.

In this episode, our co-Host Lulu Miller grapples with the impact of this and several other studies about animal queerness on her life as a queer person.

Special thanks to the History is Gay (https://www.historyisgaypodcast.com/) podcast.

EPISODE CREDITS

Reported by - Lulu Millerwith help from - Sarah QariProduced by - Sarah QariOriginal sound design contributed by - Jeremy Bloomwith mixing help from - Arianne WackFact-checking by - Diane Kellyand Edited by - Becca Bressler

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.