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 o...
The Big Cat and the Little Boy
When wildlife conservationist Alan Rabinowitz was a boy, he had a stutter. Strangely, his stutter vanished when he spoke to animals. One day, when his father took him to the Bronx Zoo, Alan saw a majestic jaguar and made a promise to it. He spent the rest of his life fulfilling that promise.Read Alan Rabinowitz’s picture book: “A Boy and a Jaguar.”Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of soun
It's Raining Cats and Cats
Next week is Valentine’s Day, but instead of talking about falling in love, we’re going to talk about falling cats and barrels. First, writer David Quammen tells us about a strange observation: cats are falling out of buildings in New York City. When a cat falls from less than five stories or more than nine stories, it usually survives. But when it falls from between five and nine stories, it suffers serious injury. Why? Physics has the answer. Then we meet Annie Taylor, the first person who wen
Build-A-Dragon
On January 29, in places like China, Malaysia, Korea and Chinatowns across the globe, dragons will rise in the form of massive puppets. Today we bring you a special Terrestrials episode on dragons to understand what they have to do with the New Year, what the dragon myth means, and explore the tiny chance that dragons could have ever been real. First, we meet Mr. Lu Dajie, one of China's most renowned dragon dancers, who tells us about the significance of dragons in China. Then producer bud Ana
Stars from the Big Fib
Today we bring you an episode from our friends over at The Big Fib. In the era of fake news, kids need to learn to be able to tell what’s true from what’s false. And what better way to do that than a game show that puts kids in the driver’s seat, adults in the hot seat, and a sound-effects robot strapped to the roof?Each week, a kid interviews one fake and one real expert on a particular topic and they have to figure out who’s the true expert and who’s a liar. In this episode, they interview two
Hole-y Cow
For centuries, the stomach was a black box to humans. We didn’t understand the mystery of what happened to food after it went inside us. That is, until the early 1800s, when Dr. William Beaumont found a boy, Alexis St. Martin, with a hole in his stomach. Writer Mary Roach brings us that story. She first sticks her hand inside the stomach of a live cow and then tells us how Beaumont conducted experiments on St. Martin to understand how the stomach breaks down food. This strange relationship betwe
The Present: A Gift from our Furry Friends
To celebrate New Year’s Day, there are all kinds of traditions. Some people eat black eyed peas for good luck, some list out resolutions. But here at Terrestrials, we are taking a cue from the wisdom of pets, who are so, so, so good at sleeping. After a short preamble from Lulu, we’ll turn the microphone over to listeners’ furry friends snoring and snoozing in various positions, places, and locations. The piece will be largely wordless, with some narration from listeners describing their pets, a
Volcanoes on the Moon
The year’s best celestial event was, without a doubt, April’s solar eclipse. The moon went in front of the sun to cast a 115 mile wide shadow on Earth. A swathe of North America was showered in sudden darkness. In honor of the eclipse, the Radiolab team made a show about the star of the show: the moon. We think we know the moon — we know that humanity visited it, that it’s a shiny white rotating rock in the sky. But what else really? In today’s episode, the team tells us about the moon’s formati
Milky Seas From Atlas Obscura
Today we bring you an episode from our friends over at Atlas Obscura. It's about something that for centuries people thought was a tall tale, something sailors would occasionally spot out in the waves like mermaids or the Loch Ness monster, but most people on the land didn't think was real. Until one day, when a satellite in the sky was able to solve the case. Host Dylan Thuras tells us the story of a satellite scientist and a ship captain in search of gigantic swaths of bioluminescence that rad
The Littlest Black Hole
In less than 10 days, the world will witness the winter solstice, or the shortest day of the year. Half of the Earth will be tilted the farthest away from the sun, and we will plunge into the dark. So today we thought we’d play another story about the dark. One of the darkest places in the universe actually: a black hole. But not just any black hole, a really tiny black hole, the size of an atom.We start the story on a calm morning in Siberia. All of a sudden, a large ball of fire appears in the
Zoozve
Radiolab co-host Latif Nasser was putting his child to sleep one day when he noticed a poster of the solar system on the wall. It showed that Venus had a moon called Zoozve. When he looked it up, the internet told him that Venus did not have a moon. And searching “Zoozve” gave him a bunch of Czech results about zoos. This moment sets Latif off on a curiosity odyssey. What is the mystery behind this moon? Turns out, it’s both a moon and not a moon. And we get to name one. And now that you know al
A Feast for Baboons
We start this story off with a question. Are human beings innately violent? Then we head to East Africa with Stanford neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky, who spent his summers studying wild baboons there. Baboons are a textbook example of a hierarchical, male-dominated, and aggressive society. But one day, Sapolsky noticed that a troop of baboons became unexpectedly gentle. They deviated from the usual aggressiveness so characteristic of them and groomed each other. The key question was how do these
Whale of a Rescue
We start off in a cathedral full of animals – hermit crabs, parrots, hamsters, dogs, cats and bunnies – being blessed. We then wonder, do the animals feel grace? What do we really know about what goes on inside an animal’s mind? Do they also experience gratitude, despair or anger? How much emotionality do humans and animals share? And can we measure it? We get the story of a rescued whale that may have found a way to say thanks to its rescuers. And then we speak to behavioral scientist Clive Wyn
The Fuzzy Ruckus: The Power of Lichen
Artist Ashley (Ash) Eliza Williams was so shy growing up that they found it hard to speak to people. Instead, they withdrew from the world of humans and found comfort in the forest, where they spent hours exploring, scavenging, and collecting — eventually discovering lichen. They began painting portraits of lichen’s wild, colorful, and fuzzy shapes. In time, Ash learned that lichen is actually a composite organism, a mixture of two species — algae and fungi — working together to live. This idea
Terrestrials 12. The Bullseye: Treasure Hunt to Recursive Islands
Have you ever seen an island on a lake? On an island? On a lake? On another island? Josh Calder has. Working in a dusty room of a library, he first saw one on a map, and has been fascinated with these “recursive islands” ever since. Songbud Alan Goffinksi takes us on a wild journey into these secret bullseyes hiding all over planet Earth. We learn from ecologist Elba Montes why recursive islands breed species found nowhere else on Earth, and thus are hotbeds of evolution.Check out Josh Calder’s
An Ocean in Space
BLAST OFF! NASA just sent a spacecraft to Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, and on the side of that spacecraft, they included a poem. Not just any poem — a poem by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón. A poem that’s supposed to represent all of humanity to the universe. No biggie. Host Lulu Miller opens up the floor to kids from all over the country to ask Limón and NASA scientist Cynthia Phillips questions about the mission, outer space, poetry and what a space slushie might taste like. Listen to find ou
Terrestrials 10. The Sea Troll: An Everlasting Shark?
The Greenland shark is ugly. Its eyes look cloudy and dead. Its snout and fins are stubby. Its meat is poisonous. And that may be part of why most people have overlooked these sharks for so long. But there was a rumor circulating among Greenland villagers that this deepsea dweller could survive for centuries. Scientist Jon Steffanson went on a hunt to see if this was true and discovered that the Greenland shark can live for more than 500 years, making it the longest living vertebrate on the plan
Terrestrials 09. The Crystal Ball: Giant Honeybees Who Predict the Future
The honeybee. The ever-important pollinator for our plants is disappearing. Some call it the silence of the bees, others call it colony collapse disorder. Dr. Sammy Ramsey, our official bug correspondent, wondered, could it be due to parasites? And if so, how do we catch all of them? This question takes Dr. Sammy to the heart of a jungle in Bangladesh to look for overlooked honeybees impervious to parasites. The only problem? He can't find them. With help from a local guide named Babulall, he le
Terrestrials 08. The Snowball: Extreme Squirrels in the Arctic
Middle schooler, Aanya, befriended a backyard squirrel using peanuts, which led her to an obsession with one of North America's most common critters. She tells host Lulu Miller all about the overlooked superpowers of squirrels, including one squirrel who lives way up in the Arctic, where the weather gets so cold the squirrels who live there drop their body temperatures down below freezing and somehow, miraculously, survive.Host Lulu travels to Alaska to meet one of these squirrels as it sleeps,
Terrestrials 07. The Stumpisode: The Wild World of Tree Stumps!
As dead as they seem, tree stumps are hubs of life and relationships. From stumps to snags, deadwood 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, can be wells of renewable fuel, and hold onto stories human beings might have forgotten. Without these ghosts of trees past, nothing would be the s
New Episodes of Terrestrials Coming in September!
Terrestrials is Radiolab's spin-off nature show for families and for people of all ages that explores the strangeness that exists right here on Earth. Each episode feels like a fairytale that is 100% true. Host Lulu Miller (co-host of Radiolab) leads you on a nature walk to encounter incredible creatures, wild storytellers, and original songs from "The Songbud" Alan Goffinski. That's right! We sing on this show; don't worry, good voices not required. Listen in with your whole family. Or all alo
Wild Talk
Think about the sounds you hear on a daily basis. Air conditioners whirring, keyboards clicking, cars honking, mosquitos buzzing, dishes clanking. Now picture yourself in a jungle. What do you hear? How do you make sense of it?Today on Radiolab for Kids, we eavesdrop on the world of animals. We bring you a story of two humans decoding animal sounds in nature. Science journalist Ari Daniel Shapiro tells us about Klaus Zuberbuhler and his time in the Tai forest of Africa, where he worked to uncove
Why Do I Love the Fly That’s Eating My Brain?
Today’s episode asks how scientists see the world. We bring you two stories — one about a math guy and a bug guy. First, how the math guy, or one of our country's greatest mathematicians, Steven Strogatz, first became enchanted with math as a kid. Then, a story about a human developing a soft corner (literally) for a fly that lived in his scalp — the botfly. Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne went on a research trip to Costa Rica and returned home with a botfly feeding on his flesh. His friend S
Human vs Horse
The summer olympics are in full swing. Humans are racing against other humans from all across the globe. But you know the one race they don’t have? The one where a human competes against a horse. Radiolab for Kids is back with one of our favorite Radiolab animal episodes of all time where we head to that race in the desert of Arizona. Turns out it has everything to do with what gives us humans… our humanity. Also our butts.In this episode, Reporter Heather Radke and Producer Matt Kielty talk to
The Gorilla in the Room
Radiolab for kids is back! Is there such a thing as a good cage? Happy gorillas, deft landscape architects and neurologists show us that there just might be. We go back to the late 1970s to relive the moment when zoos began to change—literally the moment that the modern zoo was born, as embodied by a few tentative steps of a gorilla named Kiki. That story, told by zoo director David Hancocks, architect Grant Jones, and gorilla keeper Violet Sunde. Also check out:Marina Belozerskaya's book The Me
Special Announcement
The Terrestrials team is delighted to announce we’re coming back to the Radiolab for Kids feed! We’ve been traveling the globe in search of the strangeness right here on Earth. And we’ll be sharing a whole new batch of stories – and songs – in September.In the meantime:-catch up on past episodes!-bop your head to songbud Alan’s songs!-check out our brand new teaching resources!Support for Terrestrials is provided by the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and the Kalliopeia F
Introducing: NPR's Life Kit
NPR’s Life Kit explains a free, simple tool for your parenting toolbox. Called 'special time,' the strategy is widely recommended by children's health professionals to help reduce behavioral issues in young children. Here's a guide on how to do it with your kids at home.This episode of Life Kit was produced by Summer Thomad. Our visuals editor is Beck Harlan. Our digital editor is Malaka Gharib. Meghan Keane is the supervising editor. Beth Donovan is the executive producer. Our Production team
Introducing: Flip and Mozi's Guide to How to be an Earthling
Mozi is about to turn... 900 years old, and he's having a tough time with it! So, Flip introduces him to some of the oldest earthlings around, the Bowhead Whales! Featuring new songs from the Pop Ups like "How You Are Old," learn more about these 250 year old swimmers in the Arctic Ocean.
Support for Terrestrials is provided by Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations.
Introducing: Brains On
Today’s episode is all about one of the most dynamite dinosaurs, the Brontosaurus! This long-necked icon has been featured in books, cartoons, movies, and even logos. But did the Brontosaurus really exist in the first place? We’ll dig into that question and uncover the history of Brontosaurus with science writer and bronto-enthusiast Riley Black. We’ll also learn about taxonomy from a ghost and catch up with Mr. Bone Jangles. Plus, a new mystery sound to discover!
Support for Terrestrials is pro
The Hybrid: A Miracle Mule
In the game of life, every species is like an action figure. You got your dogs and your dung beetles, your bald eagles and your blueberries. And for a long time scientists believed it was pretty much impossible for those action figures to mix and make a new kind of action figure that was able to have its own babies (dog beetles? Baldberries? Nah). But, today we tell the story of a four-legged beast in Kentucky whose existence is upending scientific beliefs. If you want a big fat SPOILER, here it
The Water Walker: One Surfer’s Epic Escape
The ocean can be a scary place: the waves are so strong, the water so deep. But surfer and illustrator AJ Dungo tells the story of an earthling who figured out how to walk on water and literally defy the rules of gravity. If you want a big SPOILER, here it is: It’s only human for the season, the grandfather of modern-day surfing, Duke Kahanamoku. Duke’s great grandniece, Heather Kina’u Paoa tells us about what Duke’s life was really like. We learn about the physics of surfing, and how surfing is
The Unimaginable: How Gravitational Waves (Literally) Rocked Our World
Over a billion lightyears ago, in the darkness of outer space, a collision of black holes sent out a fleet of invisible waves that were headed right toward planet Earth. The waves were so powerful they could ripple spacetime but most people on Earth didn't believe the waves were real. SPOILER ALERT: The waves are called gravitational waves and…they are real! Astrophysicist Dr. Wanda Díaz Merced tells the story of what happened when they hit Earth in 2015 and how scientists came to learn to use s
The Trio: A Bald Eagle Love Story
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 storytel
The Guardian: Tsetse Fly Defenders
A singing entomologist, Dr. Sammy Ramsey, and a biologist with a knack for inventing things, Dr. Paul Mireji, tell us about one of the most fearsome animals on our planet. If you want a SPOILER of what it is, read on: It sucks our blood, spreads diseases; it's the tsetse fly. Both Sammy and Paul were afraid of this creature, but share the story of what can be gained by looking close at what scares you. In the case of the tsetse fly, we learn that these creatures give live birth, produce milk, pr
The Mastermind: An Octopus Heist
A color-changing creature many people assumed to be brainless outsmarts his human captors. SPOILER: The creature is an octopus! Author Sy Montgomery tells the story of one octopus named Inky who makes us question who we consider intelligent (and kissable) in the animal kingdom.
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.
Find MORE original
Terrestrials: A New Kids Show from Radiolab
Radiolab for Kids and WNYC Studios present Terrestrials, a six-episode miniseries hosted by Lulu Miller (co-host of Radiolab). Each episode introduces you to a creature or earthly phenomenon that will defy your expectations of how nature is supposed to work. Along the way, you'll encounter a chorus of experts, including scientists, surfers, hip hop artists and…a "Song Bud" named Alan Goffinski who creates original songs for every episode. New episodes drop Thursdays starting September 22, 2022.
Forests on Forests
Hey Radiolab for Kids listeners! We’re back after a long hiatus with one of our favorite episodes from earlier this year. And a surprise...
We're cooking up something new and looking to get your feedback. Join our Radiolab for Kids listener panel by taking this 5 minute survey (https://airtable.com/shrjoLpn13qCHlXh0). We're listening and want to create more awesome stories for you and your families!
ABOUT THE EPISODE:
For much of history, tree canopies were pretty much completely ignored by sci
Octomom
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 Center. And thanks to the Indianapolis Chamber
Behaves So Strangely
We'll kick off the chase with Diana Deutsch, a professor specializing in the Psychology of Music, who could extract song out even the most monotonous of drones. (Think Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller. Bueller.)For those of us who have trouble staying in tune when we sing, Deutsch has some exciting news. The problem might not be your ears, but your language. She tells us about tone languages, such as Mandarin and Vietnamese, which rely on pitch to convey the meaning of a word. Turns out speakers of t
Never Quite Now
We kick things off with one of the longest-running experiments in the world. As Joshua Foer explains, the Pitch Drop Experiment is so slow, you can watch it for hours (check out the live cam) and not detect the slightest movement. But that doesn't mean nothing's happening. Professor John Mainstone tells us about his desperate attempts to catch the flashes of action hiding inside this decades-long experiment.
Then, Carl Zimmer joins us for a little recalibration. It’s hard to imagine anything fas
The Distance of the Moon
According to one theory, the moon formed when a Mars-sized chunk of rock collided with Earth. After the moon coalesced out of the debris from that impact, it was much closer to Earth than it is today. This idea is taken to it's fanciful limit in Italo Calvino's story "The Distance of the Moon" (from his collection Cosmicomics, translated by William Weaver). The story, narrated by a character with the impossible-to-pronounce name Qfwfq, tells of a strange crew who jump between Earth and moon, and
Dark Side of the Earth
Back in 2012, when we were putting together our live show In the Dark, Jad and Robert called up Dave Wolf to ask him if he had any stories about darkness. And boy, did he. Dave told us two stories that became the finale of our show.
Back in late 1997, Dave Wolf was on his first spacewalk, to perform work on the Mir (the photo to the right was taken during that mission, courtesy of NASA.). Dave wasn't alone -- with him was veteran Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Solovyev. (That's a picture of Dave givi
Poop Train
This all started back when we were working on our Guts show, and author Frederick Kaufman told us about getting sucked in to the mystery of what happens to poop in New York City. Robert and producer Pat Walters decided to take Fred's advice and pay a visit to the North River Wastewater Treatment Plant... which turned out to be just the beginning of a surprisingly far-ranging quest.
We're cooking up something new and looking to get your feedback. Join our Radiolab for Kids listener panel by takin
The Septendecennial Sing-Along
While most of us hear a wall of white noise, squeaks, and squawks....David Rothenberg hears a symphony. He's trained his ear to listen for the music of animals, and he's always looking for chances to join in, with everything from lonely birds to giant whales to swarming cicadas.
In this podcast, David explains his urge to connect and sing along, and helps break down the mysterious life cycle and mating rituals of the periodical cicadas into something we can all relate to.
We're cooking up someth
For the Love of Numbers
In this short, writer Alex Bellos tells Robert how, from the very first time humans ever used numbers, we couldn’t help but give them human-like qualities. From favorite numbers to numbers that we’re suspicious of, from 501 jeans to Oxy 10, our feelings for these digits may all come down to some serious, subconscious inner-math….a deeply human arithmetic buried in our heart.
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We're cooking up something new and looking to get your feedback. Join our Radiolab for Kids listener panel by taking t
For the Birds
When the conservationists showed up at Clarice Gibbs’ door and asked her to take down her bird feeders down for the sake of an endangered bird, she said no. Everybody just figured she was a crazy bird lady. But writer Jon Mooallem went to see her and discovered there was much more to this story. Mrs. Gibbs tells us her surprising side of the tale, and together with Joe Duff, we struggle with the realization that keeping things wild in today's world will be harder than we ever would’ve thought.
W
Goo And You
On a quiet, warm summer day, somewhere in the soil beneath your feet, tucked into a nearby plant, or at the edges of a pond, a tiny little cataclysm is happening: an insect is transforming, undergoing metamorphosis. The chrysalis is easily nature’s best known black box, but it turns out, it’s one of the least understood, and most complicated: when producer Molly Webster peers inside a pupa, she witnesses some of the most complex biology happening on earth...and catches sight of an ancient questi
Space
We begin with Ann Druyan, widow of Carl Sagan, with a story about the Voyager expedition, true love, and a golden record that travels through space. And astrophysicist Neil de Grasse Tyson explains the Coepernican Principle, and just how insignificant we are.
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Zoos
What's with our need to get close to "wildness"? We examine where we stand in this paradox--starting with the Romans, and ending in the wilds of Belize, staring into the eyes of a wild jaguar.
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We're cooking up something new and looking to get your feedback. Join our Radiolab for Kids listener panel by taking this 5 minute survey (https://airtable.com/shrjoLpn13qCHlXh0). We're listening and want to create more awesome stories for you and your families!
Radiolab’s newsletter comes out every We
Mapping Tic Tac Toe-dom
When Ian Frazier was a kid, he (like most 6-year-olds) mastered the art of tic tac toe. Pretty soon, every match was a draw, and the game lost its magic.
Then one day, many years later, he met a 6-year-old named Igor who lived deep in Siberia. On a whim, Ian drew a tic tac toe board in his notebook and showed it to Igor...who had no idea what it was. Ian taught him how to play, then joyfully went about clobbering his new opponent.
Then, Ian started asking around...and it turned out none of the R
The Times They Are a-Changin'
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 th
A War We Need
Reporter Ari Daniel visits with Willie Wilson, who studies phytoplankton--aka microscopic plant-like creatures--at Bigelow Laboratory in Maine. There's a war in Willie's test tubes. A certain sort of phytoplankton known as coccolithophores are engaged in a surprisingly complicated arms race with deadly viruses. A virus is problematic enough when you're a human. Now imagine being a single-cell plant and mixing it up with the hugest virus you've ever seen. The coccos (as we've taken to calling the
Super Cool
When we started reporting a fantastic, surreal story about one very cold night, more than 70 years ago, in northern Russia, we had no idea we'd end up thinking about cosmology. Or dropping toy horses in test tubes of water. Or talking about bacteria. Or arguing, for a year. Walter Murch (aka, the Godfather of The Godfather), joined by a team of scientists, leads us on what felt like the magical mystery tour of super cool science.
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We're cooking up something new and looking to get your feedbac
Animal Minds
When we gaze into the eyes of a wild animal, or even a beloved pet, can we ever really know what they might be thinking? Is it naive to assume they're experiencing something close to human emotions? Or is it ridiculous to assume that they AREN'T feeling something like that?
Bite the Dust
Whatever your feelings on Disco, it's hard not to root for the resurgence of one particular track that started taking CPR classes by storm. Producer Ellen Horne explains how one aptly named 70s mega-hit could help you save someone's life.
Then, Jad and Robert pit physics against an ancient tale. In the bible, the sound of seven shofar players (shofars are basically trumpets made of rams' horns) blasts down the walls of Jericho. To find out how many shofars it would actually take to level a Bronz
Parasites
Could parasites be the shadowy hands that pull the strings of life? We explore nature's moochers, with tales of lethargic farmers, zombie cockroaches, and even mind-controlled humans (kinda, maybe). And we examine claims that some parasites may actually be good for you.
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Mischel’s Marshmallows
Psychologist Walter Mischel explains how one little test involving a marshmallow might tell you a frightening amount about what kind of person you are. And Radiolab favorite Jonah Lehrer helps us make sense of the results. This one's all about our will power (or lack thereof).
Correction: An earlier version of this piece incorrectly stated that the kids who performed better on the marshmallow test had higher GPAs in high school and went to better colleges. Those elements were not a part of Misch
Everything and Nothing
Math can get pretty loopy, at least when we try to explain it. But according to author Alex Bellos, the most straightforward mathematical concept might be the loopiest. Then producer Mark Philips introduces us to William Basinski, a composer who loops analog tape to create a unique sort of music. One day, Basinski dug up some of his old tapes, stuck them into his player, and heard a melody in the throes of death.
Life and death are a very long loop of their own, as producer Lynn Levy discovered
Loop the Loop
For most of human history, flight was an impossible dream. In this short, the dizzying rise and fall of a pilot whose aeronautic feats changed aviation forever and turned chancy stunts into acrobatic mastery.
Lincoln Beachey is one of the most famous men you’ve never heard of. Born in 1887 in San Francisco, Beachy was lonely, chubby kid who, as authors Sam Kean and Frank Marrero tell us, nobody would have suspected of becoming a hero. But he was fearless. By the age of 10 he was hurling himself
KILL EM' ALL
They buzz. They bite. And they have killed more people than cancer, war, or heart disease. Here’s the question: If you could wipe mosquitoes off the face of the planet, would you?
Ever since there have been humans, mosquitoes have been biting us, and we’ve been trying to kill them. And, for the most part, the mosquitoes have been winning. Today there are over 3000 species on pretty much every corner of Earth. Mosquito-borne diseases kill around 1 million people a year (most of them children) and
Is Laughter Just A Human Thing?
Aristotle thought that laughter is what separates us from the beasts, and that a baby does not have a SOUL, until the moment it laughs for the first time. Historian Barry Sanders, author of Sudden Glory, says that according to Aristotle, this moment of "human ensouling" is supposed to happen when a baby is 40 days old. We follow radio producer Amanda Aronczyk as she tests this theory on her newborn baby.
Then we go to Bowling Green State University in Ohio, to tickle rats with psychobiologist D
Holey Cow
Not long ago, writer Mary Roach got a real hands-on lesson on the gut: she got to stick her hand inside a real live cow stomach, and experience digestion from the inside. When we heard about her adventure, we had to try it ourselves—so producer Tim Howard headed to Rutgers University to see, feel...and smell...a fistulated cow firsthand.
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Ghosts of Football Past
It's the end of the 19th century -- the Civil War is over, and the frontier is dead. And young college men are anxious. What great struggle will test their character? Then along comes a new craze: football. A brutally violent game where young men can show a stadium full of fans just what they're made of. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Penn -- the sons of the most powerful men in the country are literally knocking themselves out to win these gladiatorial battles. And then the most American team of all
Colors
To what extent is color a physical thing in the physical world, and to what extent is it created in our minds? We start with Sir Isaac Newton, who was so eager to solve this very mystery, he stuck a knife in his eye to pinpoint the answer. Then, we meet a sea creature that sees a rainbow way beyond anything humans can experience, and we track down a woman who we're pretty sure can see thousands (maybe even millions) more colors than the rest of us. And we end with an age-old question, that, it t