Radiolab

4.9 (95)
NATURAL SCIENCES
UPDATED WEEKLY

Ad-free listening, full archive access & more!

3,49 €/mo or 30,99 €/yr after trial

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.

3 DAYS AGO

Terrestrials: The Snow Beast

Today 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 treasures on the ground. One day, she found something the size of a potato chip. Turns out, it was a three and half million year old chunk of bone. Keep reading if you’re okay with us spoiling the surprise. It’s a camel! Yes, the one we thought only hung out in deserts. Originally from North America, the camel trotted around the globe and went from snow monster to desert superstar. We go on an evolutionary tour of the camel’s body and learn how the same adaptations that help a camel in a desert also helped it in the snow. Plus, Lulu even meets one in the flesh. Special thanks to Latif Nasser for telling us this story. It was originally a TED Talk where he brought out a live camel on stage. Thank you also to Carly Mensch, Juliet Blake, Anna Bechtol, Stone Dow, Natalia Rybczynski and our camel man, Shayne Rigden. If you are in Wisconsin, you can go meet his camels at Rigden Ranch. And follow his delightful TikTok @rigdenranch to see camels in the snow! Terrestrials was created by Lulu Miller with WNYC Studios. This episode was produced by Ana González, Alan Goffinski, Mira Burt-Wintonick, Joe Plourde, Lulu Miller, and Sarah Sandbach, with help from Tanya Chawla and Natalia Ramirez. Fact checking by Anna Pujol-Mazzini. Our advisors this season are Ana Luz Porzecanski, Anil Lewis, Dominique Shabazz, and Liza Demby. Support for Terrestrials also comes from the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and the John Templeton Foundation. Signup 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 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 [email protected]. Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

31 min
25 APR

The Age of Aquaticus

For years, scientists thought nothing could live above 73℃/163℉. At that temperature, everything boiled to death. But scientists Tom Brock and Hudson Freeze weren’t convinced. What began as their simple quest to trawl for life in some of the hottest natural springs on Earth would, decades later, change the trajectory of biological science forever, saving millions of lives—possibly even yours. This seismic, totally unpredictable discovery, was funded by the U.S. government. This week, as the Trump administration slashes scientific research budgets en masse, we tell one story, a parable about the unforeseeable miracles that basic research can yield. After that, a familiar voice raises some essential questions: what are we risking with these cuts? And can we recover? Special thanks to Joanne Padrón Carney, Erin Heath, Valeria Sabate, Gwendolyn Bogard, Meredith Asbury and Megan Cantwell at AAAS. Thank you as well to Gregor Čavlović and Derek Muller and the rest of the Veritasium team. EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Latif Nasser with help from - Maria Paz Gutiérrez Produced by - Sarah Qari and Maria Paz Gutiérrez Original music and sound design and mixing from - Jeremy Bloom Fact-checking by - Emily Kreiger and Edited by - Alex Neason with help from Sarah Qari EPISODE CITATIONS: Videos - Latif also helped make a version of this story with the YouTube channel Veritasium. Articles - Hudson Freeze NYT OPED: Undercutting the Progress of American Science Books - Thomas Brock, A Scientist in Yellowstone National Park Paul Rabinow’s Making PCR: A Story of Biotechnology Podcasts Episodes: If you haven’t heard, listen to our first episode about the Golden Goose awards. Signup 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 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 [email protected]. 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.

43 min
18 APR

Ghosts in the Green Machine

In 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, every moment. It's happening in the ocean, and your very life depends on it. In the second half, we make an earnest, possibly foolhardy, attempt to figure out the dollar value of the work of bats and bees as we try to keep our careful calculations from falling apart in the face of the realities of life, and love, and loss. Sign 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 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 [email protected]. 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.

33 min
11 APR

Signal Hill: Caterpillar Roadshow

A 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 decade ago in an episode called Goo and You – check it out here – and in addition to revealing some fascinating secrets of insect life, it also raises big questions about memory, permanence and transformation. The letter Martha received about building on this study set in motion a series of spectacular events that advance her original science and show how science works when a 12-year-old boy is the one doing it. Martha’s daughter, reporter Annie Rosenthal, captured all of it and turned it into a beautiful audio story called “Caterpillar Roadshow.” It was originally published in a brand new independent audio magazine called Signal Hill, which happens to have been created in part by two former Radiolab interns (Liza Yeager and Jackson Roach, both of whom worked on this piece), and we loved it, so we’re presenting an excerpt for you here. Special thanks to Annie Rosenthal, Liza Yeager, Jackson Roach, Leo Wong, Omar Etman, the whole team at Signal Hill, Carlos Morales, John Lill, Marfa Public Radio and Emma Garschagen. EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Annie Rosenthal Produced by - Annie Rosenthal with help from - Leo Wong and Omar Etman Sound design contributed by - Liza Yeager and Jackson Roach Fact-checking by - Alan Dean and Edited by - Liza Yeager and Jackson Roach EPISODE CITATIONS: Audio - Listen to the original Radiolab episode, Goo and You, here (https://zpr.io/qh9xqpkXzk7j). Or the Signal Hill podcast here (https://zpr.io/CDfwyK7Zkrva). Guests - And if you want to learn more about Martha Weiss, and her work, head over here (https://zpr.io/aBw2YsqWB6NZ). Signup 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 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 [email protected]. 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.

51 min
4 APR

Killer Empathy

In 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: Gryllacrididae. Or, as Jeff describes them, "crickets on steroids." They have crushingly strong, serrated jaws, and they launch all-out attacks on anyone who gets in their way--whether it's another cricket, or the guy trying to take them out of their cages. In order to work with the gryllacridids, Jeff had to figure out how to out-maneuver them. And as he devised ways to keep from getting slashed and bitten, he felt like he was getting to know them. Maybe they weren't just mindless brutes ... but their own creatures, each with their own sense of self. And that got him wondering: what could their fierceness tell him about the nature of violence? How well could he understand the minds of these insects, and what drove them to be so bloody? That's when the alarm bells went off. Jeff would picture his mentor, Dr. LaFage, lecturing him back in college--warning him not to slip into a muddled, empathic mood ... not to let his emotions sideswipe his objectivity. And that would usually do the trick--Jeff would think of LaFage, and rein himself back in. But then one night, something happened that gave Dr. LaFage's advice a terrible new kind of significance. Tamra Carboni tells us this part of the story, and challenges Jeff's belief that there's a way to understand it. Hey, one other thing, if you live, or are planning to be, in NYC on April 22nd, come check out our NEW LIVE SHOW!! Radiolab Presents: Viscera - The Elixir of Life Where: Caveat Theater on the Lower East Side, NY NY When: April 22nd Doors @ 7 pm GET YOUR TICKETS, HERE!! (https://www.caveat.nyc/events/radiolab-presents-viscera-%E2%80%93-the-elixir-of-life-4-22-2025) Sign 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 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 [email protected]. 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.

26 min
28 MAR

Malthusian Swerve

Earth 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 on Earth—everything from sand to copper to oil— and tally up how much we have left. Are we living with reckless abandon? And if so, is there even a way to stop? This week, we bring you a conversation that’s equal parts terrifying and fascinating, featuring bird poop, daredevil drivers, and some staggering back-of-the-envelope math. EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Jeff Guo and Latif Nasser Produced by - Pat Walters and Soren Wheeler with production help from - Sindhu Gnanasambandan and editing help from - Alex Goldmark and Jess Jiang Fact-checking by - Natalie Middleton Signup 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 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 [email protected]. 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.

39 min
21 MAR

Everybody's Got One

We all think we know the story of pregnancy. Sperm meets egg, followed by nine months of nurturing, nesting, and quiet incubation. this story isn’t the nursery rhyme we think it is. In a way, it’s a struggle, almost like a tiny war. And right on the front lines of that battle is another major player on the stage of pregnancy that not a single person on the planet would be here without. An entirely new organ: the placenta. In this episode, which we originally released in 2021, we take you on a journey through the 270-day life of this weird, squishy, gelatinous orb, and discover that it is so much more than an organ. It’s a foreign invader. A piece of meat. A friend and parent. And it’s perhaps the most essential piece in the survival of our kind. Special thanks to Diana Bianchi, Julia Katz, Sam Behjati, Celia Bardwell-Jones, Mathilde Cohen, Hannah Ingraham, Pip Lipkin, and Molly Fassler. EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Heather Radke and Becca Bressler with help from - Molly Webster Produced by - Becca Bressler with help from - Pat Walters, Maria Paz Gutierrez EPISODE CITATIONS: Articles: Check out Harvey’s latest paper published with Julia Katz. Sam Behjati's latest paper on the placenta as a "genetic dumping ground". Signup 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 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 [email protected]. 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.

28 min
14 MAR

Growth

It’s easy to take growth for granted, for it to seem expected, inevitable even. Every person starts out as a baby and grows up. Plants grow from seeds into food. The economy grows. That stack of mail on your table grows. But why does anything grow the way that it does? In this hour, we go from the Alaska State Fair, to a kitchen in Berkeley, to the deep sea, to ancient India, to South Korea, and lots of places in between, to investigate this question, and uncover the many forces that drive growth, sometimes wondrous, sometimes terrifying, and sometimes surprisingly, unnervingly fragile. Special thanks to Elie Tanaka, Keith Devlin, Deven Patel, Chris Gole, James Raymo and Jessica Savage EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Matt Kielty, Becca Bressler, Pat Walters, Sindhu Gnanasambandun, Annie McEwen, Simon Adler with help from - Rae Mondo Produced by - Matt Kielty, Becca Bressler, Pat Walters, Sindhu Gnanasambandun, Annie McEwen, Simon Adler Sound design contributed by - Jeremy Bloom with mixing help from - Jeremy Bloom Fact-checking by - Emily Krieger and Natalie Middleton and Edited by - Pat Walters EPISODE CITATIONS: Audio: “The Joy of Why,” (https://www.quantamagazine.org/tag/the-joy-of-why/) Steve Strogatz’s podcast. Articles: “The End of Children,”(https://zpr.io/WBdg6bi8xwnr) The New Yorker, by Gideon Lewis-Kraus Books: Finding Fibonacci (https://zpr.io/3EjviAttUFke) by Keith Devlin Do Plants Know Math (https://zpr.io/bfbTZDJ8ehx5) by Chris Gole Singup 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 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 [email protected]. 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.

59 min

See All (486)

Welcome, nature lovers, to the home of the Terrestrials podcast and family-friendly Radiolab episodes about nature. Every other week, host Lulu Miller will take you on a nature walk to encounter a plant or animal behaving in ways that will surprise you. Squirrels that can regrow their brains, octopuses that can outsmart their human captors, honeybees that can predict the future. You don’t have to be a kid to listen, just someone who likes to see the world anew. You’ll hear a range of nature stories on this podcast. Sometimes these will be brand new Terrestrials episodes, full of original songs (by “The Songbud” Alan Goffinski) that tell a fantastical-sounding story about nature that is 100% true. Sometimes these will be our very best, shiniest, furriest, leafiest Radiolab episodes about animals or plants or nature. The stories that drop here will always be family-friendly and safe for kids. They will always be sound-rich and full of the vivid, gripping storytelling you’ve come to expect from Radiolab. They will always transport you to the beyond-human world: into the depths of the ocean, into jungles, prairies, forests, space, snow, wildflower fields and beyond. Sometimes we’ll encounter something so wild we just have to break out into song about it! Don’t worry, good voices not required. Join us on this adventure!

0.0 (0)

EDUCATION FOR KIDS
The episodes from this mini-series can be accessed in the Radiolab podcast feed and radiolab.org for free, or access the ad-free versions here when you become a Radiolab+ subscriber. Radiolab Presents: Gonads is a multi-episode journey deep into the parts of us that let us make more of us. Longtime staff producer and host Molly Webster explores the primordial roots of our drive to reproduce, introduces a revolutionary fertility procedure that sounds like science fiction, reveals a profound secret about gender that lives inside all of us, and calls on writers, educators, musicians, artists and comedians to debate how we’re supposed to talk to kids about sex.

0.0 (0)

SCIENCE
The episodes from this mini-series can be accessed in the Radiolab podcast feed and radiolab.org for free, or access the ad-free versions here when you become a Radiolab+ subscriber. Before there was the podcast and the smartphone, there was the cassette tape and the Walkman — two devices that although not considered much today, were revolutionary. They were recordable, rewritable, spliceable, compact, mobile. For the first time they allowed you to move through the world and listen to a voice speaking only to you. These cassette tapes brought us together, pulled us apart and forever changed how we say those three simple words, "I love you." In five episodes from around the world, Mixtape explores the impact the cassette had and continues to have today.

0.0 (0)

SOCIETY & CULTURE
In this intensely divided moment, one of the few things everyone still seems to agree on is Dolly Parton—but why? That simple question leads to a deeply personal, historical, and musical rethinking of one of America’s great icons. Join us for a 9-episode journey into the Dollyverse. Hosted by Jad Abumrad. Produced and reported by Shima Oliaee. Dolly Parton’s America is a production from OSM Audio and WNYC Studios.

4.9 (18)

MUSIC HISTORY
Radiolab reporter Latif Nasser always believed his name was uniquely his own. Until he makes a shocking discovery that he shares his name with another man: Detainee 244 at Guantanamo Bay. The U.S. government paints a terrifying picture of The Other Latif as Al-Qaeda’s top explosives expert, and an advisor to Osama bin Laden. Nasser’s lawyer claims that he was at the wrong place at the wrong time, and that he was never even in Al-Qaeda. This clash leads Radiolab’s Latif into a years-long investigation, trying to uncover what this man actually did or didn’t do. Along the way, Radiolab’s Latif reflects on American values and his own religious past, and wonders how his namesake, a fellow nerdy, suburban Muslim kid, traveled such a strikingly different path.

5.0 (1)

DOCUMENTARY
The episodes from this mini-series can be accessed in the Radiolab podcast feed and radiolab.org for free, or access the ad-free versions here when you become a Radiolab+ subscriber. Radiolab Presents: G is a multi-episode exploration of one of the most dangerous ideas of the past century: the concept of intelligence. In six episodes, the series unearths the fraught history (and present-day use) of IQ tests, digs into the bizarre tale of one man’s obsessive quest to find the secret to genius in Einstein’s brain, reveals the ways the dark history of eugenics have crept up into the present, looks to the future with a controversial geneticist who has created a prenatal test for intelligence, and stages a raucous game-show throwdown to crown the smartest animal in the world.

0.0 (0)

SCIENCE

View Subscription FAQs

4.9

out of 5

95 Ratings

One if the best of all time by far

02/04/2021

Xurxo g penalta

One of the best podcast of all time by far. Worlds a part in terms of production, writing and specially research. Undoubtedly in a league of its own. Enjoy!
Not Radiolab!

20/10/2023

Oceandamion

Since Jad and Robert left Radiolab, it became not Radiolab. Sad that this is how podcasts work… if you are going to continue a podcast in Name please continue it in spirit. Radiolab is no longer a science/social commentary podcast but a social commentary/tenuous vague science connection with presenters who have learnt their trade imitating Jad and Robert. Seriously if you are going to do inquisitive pauses, like the aforementioned, do it right, or don’t do it. Or just change the the name. It is not Netflix you are not radiolab pretending to be Radiolab doesn’t nothing except make you money. I hope you read this Jad…
Like catching up with old friends

24/11/2019

Mark Koopmans

I’m an avid listener to RadioLab for a couple of years and hearing Jad, Robert, and the team begin an episode makes me feel like I’m back home with trusted friends who have another great story to share.
Smarty plants and shiny trees

17/04/2018

Flor Al

Radiolab is a super fertilizer for a sense of wonder. Science happiness galore.

Channel

Radiolab
Creator

WNYC Studios
Years Active

2006 - 2025
Episodes

486
Rating

Clean
Show Website

Radiolab
Provider

New York Public Radio has identified itself as a trader for this podcast and confirmed that this product or service complies with European Union law. Address 160 Varick St New York New York 10013-1220 United States Phone Number +1 9733781432 Email [email protected]