About this podcast
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 Latif Nasser and Molly Webster.
Episodes
The newest 50 of 679 episodes
- There and Back Again · 45 min · Episode 723In 1822 a stork that got speared like a kabob helped baffled scientists answer a thousand-year-old question. Of course, that led to another question, then another, then another ...
- More Perfect: Cruel and Unusual · 56 min · Episode 721With the death penalty back in the news, we revisit a 2016 episode that asks: what is cruel and unusual punishment?
- The Buried Bodies Case · 49 min · Episode 720What's a lawyer's obligation to provide the best defense to the worst people?
- Octomom · 34 min · Episode 717A mile under the ocean, we get to watch an octopus perform a heroic act of heart and determination.
- Math Vs Machine · 31 min · Episode 715Machines are answering our hardest problems... Does it matter if we don’t understand how?
- A 4-Track Mind · 21 min · Episode 714A neurologist issues a dare to a ragtime piano player and a famous conductor, then the impossible happens.
- 23 Weeks 6 Days · 1 h 3 min · Episode 711A tiny baby, born at 23 Weeks and 6 days—roughly halfway to full term. And a whole universe of medical and moral questions.
- 60 Words · 58 min · Episode 710It’s been 25 years since 9/11. Today we talk about the 60 words that ushered in everything that came after.
- Patient Zero · 52 min · Episode 708The greatest mysteries have a shadowy figure at the center, Patient Zero. We hunt for Patient Zeroes from all over the map.
- Nigel and the Real Gannet · 26 min · Episode 707A love story about a rogue bird and his concrete lover.
- The Shoe Thrower · 1 h 17 min · Episode 705The world around you is falling apart, and no one is listening. How far do you go to be heard?
- Return of Alpha Gal · 56 min · Episode 704Tuck your napkin under your chin. We’re about to serve up a tale of love, loss, and lamb chops - with a side of genetic modification.
- Neither Confirm Nor Deny · 29 min · Episode 703Whether it comes from government spokespeople or celebrity publicists, the phrase “can neither confirm nor deny” is the perfect non-denial denial.
- Atomic Artifacts · 41 min · Episode 701America represents many different things to many different people. What if you could only choose one thing, one physical object, to represent it all?
- The Gondolier · 1 h 13 min · Episode 700What happens when doing what you love means giving up who you really are?
- On the Media: American Emergency · 56 min · Episode 697A little while back, our friends over at On the Media released a gripping and immersive reporting series about FEMA, the agency that is supposed to be there for all of us in the…
- Oliver Sipple · 1 h 3 min · Episode 696One morning, Oliver Sipple went out for a walk. A couple hours later, to his own surprise, he saved the life of the President of the United States. In a story we reported back in…
- This American Roach · 37 min · Episode 695A couple summers ago, Radiolab reporter Alex Neason got out of the shower and almost stepped on her worst nightmare: an American Cockroach. It was flipped onto its back…
- Worth · 1 h 11 min · Episode 694This episode makes three earnest, possibly foolhardy, attempts to put a price on the priceless. We figure out the dollar value for an accidental death, another day of life, and…
- Your Friendly Neighborhood Hookworms · 46 min · Episode 693For most of human history, people went about their daily lives with a worm or two (or fifty) in their guts. Only in the past century, with pharmaceuticals and sanitation…
- The Bad Show · 1 h 6 min · Episode 692With all of the black-and-white moralizing in our world today, we decided to bring back an old show from 2011 about the little bit of bad that's in all of us...and the little bit…
- What is a Pig Worth? · 43 min · Episode 691In 2017, Wayne Hsiung and a crew of animal rights activists from Direct Action Everywhere broke into a Utah pig farm run by Smithfield Foods, one of the largest pork distributors…
- Forests on Forests · 20 min · Episode 690For much of history, tree canopies were pretty much completely ignored by science. It was as if researchers said collectively, "It's just going to be empty up there, and we've…
- The Resistance of a Cow · 51 min · Episode 689There’s something rotten in the cows of Denmark. And Minnesota. And Wisconsin. And Idaho. What could cause a previously thriving herd of majestic dairy cattle to stop drinking…
- The Builders · 30 min · Episode 688In an episode first aired back in 2025 on our sister show, Terrestrials, we take you on a musical journey all about beavers. Few mammals have a bigger positive impact on the…
- Life in a Barrel · 55 min · Episode 687This week, in an episode we first aired in 2022, we flip the Disney story of life on its head thanks to a barrel of seawater, a 1970s era computer, and underwater geysers. It’s…
- Antibiotic Apocalypse · 1 h 1 min · Episode 686Doctor and special correspondent Avir Mitra takes Executive Editor Soren Wheeler, plus a live studio audience, on a journey from the operating room to inside the body to the farm…
- Staph Retreat · 32 min · Episode 685A 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…
- Return of the Screwworms · 42 min · Episode 684If a species is horrible enough, do we have the right to kill it forever? Seventy years ago, a nightmare parasite feasted on the live flesh of warm-blooded creatures in North…
- Snail Sex Tape · 30 min · Episode 683In this episode, we consider a creature we often don’t think much about—the snail. And not just snails, but their sex lives. Which, as it turns out, is epic. There is persuasion…
- Black Box · 1 h 5 min · Episode 682In this episode, first aired in 2014, we examine three very different kinds of black boxes—spaces where we know what’s going in, we know what’s coming out, but can’t see what…
- Gray's Donation · 27 min · Episode 681Before he was even born, Sarah and Ross Gray knew that their son Thomas wouldn’t live long. But as they let go of him, they made a decision that reverberated through a world that…
- Time is Honey · 39 min · Episode 680In the early 2000s, Sunil Nakrani felt stuck. Back then, websites crashed all the time. When Sunil noticed this, he decided he was going to fix the internet. But after nearly a…
- Kleptotherms · 45 min · Episode 679In this episode, we break the thermometer and watch the mercury spill out as we discover that temperature is far stranger than it seems. We first ran this episode in 2021: Five…
- You and Me and Mr. Self-Esteem · 1 h 17 min · Episode 677Most of us spend some part of our lives feeling bad about ourselves and wanting to feel better. But this preoccupation is a surprisingly new one in the history of the world, and…
- The Punchline · 51 min · Episode 676This episode, first aired in 2019, brings you the story of John Scott, the professional hockey player that every fan loved to hate. A tough guy. A brawler. A goon. But when an…
- Brain Balls · 41 min · Episode 675When neuroscientist Madeline Lancaster was a brand new postdoc, she accidentally used an expired protein gel in a lab experiment and noticed something weird. The stem cells she…
- Moon Trees · 35 min · Episode 674In 1971, a red-headed, tree-loving astronaut named Stu ‘Smokey’ Roosa was asked to take something to the moon with him. Of all things, he chose to take a canister of 500 tree…
- Fertility Cliff · 26 min · Episode 673After 35, does fertility tank? As she -- and her friends — approached the age of 35, senior correspondent Molly Webster kept hearing a phrase over and over: “fertility cliff.”…
- The Good Show · 1 h 2 min · Episode 672The standard view of evolution is that living things are shaped by cold-hearted competition. And there is no doubt that today's plants and animals carry the genetic legacy of…
- The Alien in the Room · 1 h 0 min · Episode 671It’s faster than a speeding bullet. It’s smarter than a polymath genius. It’s everywhere but it’s invisible. It’s artificial intelligence. But what actually is it? Today we ask…
