43:298K views · 6d ago · 43:29
Guest: Mary Roach
From the Radiolab podcast: What if the smell of death is actually the smell of life? Throughout human history, there’s been one element we’ve always associated with death. Just the smell of it is an alarm bell that says, “something here is dangerous.” But what if our noses have been wrong all along?
Topics: Chapter 1 · Break · Chapter 2
31:4210K views · 1w ago · 31:42
From the Radiolab podcast: Machines are answering our hardest problem—does it matter if we don’t understand how? In less than four years, mathematician Steve Strogatz has watched AI go from flailing at basic arithmetic to solving problems that baffle the world’s best mathematicians. In September of 2026, Open AI announced it had solved a Millennium Prize problem, one of math’s highest achievements.
Topics: Chapter 1 · Break · Chapter 2
21:266.7K views · 2w ago · 21:26
From the Radiolab podcast: A neurologist issues a dare to a ragtime piano player and a famous conductor, then the impossible happens. In this short episode, first aired in 2011, a neurologist issues a dare to a ragtime piano player and a famous conductor. When the two men face off in an fMRI machine, the challenge is so unimaginably difficult that one man instantly gives up. But the other achieves a musical feat that ought to be impossible.
Topics: Chapter 1 · Break · Chapter 2
31:218.7K views · 3w ago · 31:21
From the Radiolab podcast: What is the sweetest thing in the world? After co-host Latif Nasser’s sons ask him this deceptively simple question, he goes on a quest to find it. Is it a West African Katemfe berry? Or an industrial sugar substitute cooked up in a lab? Or an ingredient hiding in plain sight in all of our pantries?
Topics: Chapter 1 · Break · Chapter 2
22:2413K views · 1mo ago · 22:24
Guest: Grass Apes
From the Radiolab podcast: A tiny ode to grass, for its epic role in human history. When you think about grass, what do you think of? Pool parties? Suburbs? Allergies? What about: human history? It turns out, unassuming grass, which exists on every continent, has an epic story to tell. One of transforming the planet, and ... us. From what we eat, to how our body might be shaped and the ways we perceive the world.
Topics: Chapter 1 · Break · Chapter 2
1:03:468.4K views · 1mo ago · 1:03:46
From the Radiolab podcast: A tiny baby, born at 23 Weeks and 6 days—roughly halfway to full term. And a whole universe of medical and moral questions. When Kelley Benham and her husband Tom French finally got pregnant, after many attempts and a good deal of technological help, everything was perfect. Until it wasn't. Their story raises questions that, until recently, no parent had to face... and that are still nearly impossible to answer.
Topics: Chapter 1 · Chapter 2 · Chapter 3
58:4512K views · 1mo ago · 58:45
Guest: Congresswoman Barbara Lee
From the Radiolab podcast: How one sentence—just 60 words written in the hours after the September 11 attacks—became the legal foundation for the "war on terror." We’re coming up on the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and it had us thinking about an episode we produced in 2014. It’s the story of one sentence, written in the hours after September 11th, 2001, that has led to the longest war in U.S. history.
Topics: Chapter 1 · Break 1 · Chapter 2 · Break 2 · Chapter 3
1:05:088.9K views · 1mo ago · 1:05:08
Guest: Sad Ass Songs
From the Dolly Parton's America podcast: Welcome to the Dollyverse. The world lost a legend recently, and we wanted in some small way to pay tribute to the great Dolly Parton. So we’re playing you an episode from a series we had a small part in back in 2017, Dolly Parton’s America.
Topics: Chapter 1 · Break · Chapter 2
51:5314K views · 2mo ago · 51:53
Guest: Patient Zero
From the Radiolab podcast: The shadowy figure at the center of the greatest mysteries. The greatest mysteries have a shadowy figure at the center—someone who sets things in motion and holds the key to how the story unfolds. In epidemiology, this central character is known as Patient Zero—the case at the heart of an outbreak. This hour, Radiolab digs up an episode we first produced in 2011 and hunts for Patient Zeroes from all over the map.
Topics: Chapter 1 · Chapter 2 · Chapter 3
25:537.6K views · 2mo ago · 25:53
From the Radiolab podcast: A love story about a rogue bird and his concrete lover. In 2016, Chris Bell, a ranger with New Zealand’s Department of Conservation, was the sole human inhabitant of a small island off the west coast of the country, called Mana Island. He was there to take care of the island’s fragile and recovering ecosystem, including a colony of Australasian gannets at the top of a high cliff overlooking the sea. But there was one catch.
36:239.3K views · 2mo ago · 36:23
Guest: Red Herring
From the Radiolab podcast: A deep-sea Cold War mystery with subs and bombs—and science. It was the early '80s, the height of the Cold War, when something strange began happening off the coast of Sweden. The navy reported a mysterious sound deep below the surface of the ocean. Again and again and again they would hear it near their secret military bases, in their harbors, and up and down the Swedish coastline.
Topics: Chapter 1 · Break · Chapter 2
1:17:509.8K views · 2mo ago · 1:17:50
From the Radiolab podcast: When no one seems to be listening, how far do you go to be heard? In December 2008, George W. Bush made a surprise visit to Baghdad for a press conference. And at the very end of his remarks, a shoe came flying past his head.
Topics: Chapter 1 · Break · Chapter 2
56:077.8K views · 3mo ago · 56:07
From the Radiolab podcast: Tuck 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. Several years ago, in 2016, we told a story about Amy Pearl. For as long as she could remember, Amy loved meat in all its glorious cuts and marbled flavors. And then one day, for seemingly no reason, her body wouldn’t tolerate it. No steaks. No brisket. No weenies.
Topics: Chapter 1 · Break 1 · Chapter 2 · Break 2 · Chapter 3
29:258.5K views · 3mo ago · 29:25
Guest: Neither Confirm Nor Deny
From the Radiolab podcast: Whether it comes from government spokespeople or celebrity publicists, the phrase “can neither confirm nor deny” is the perfect non-denial denial.
Topics: Chapter 1 · Break · Chapter 2
38:048K views · 3mo ago · 38:04
From the Radiolab podcast: Why do cold winds, sudden frights and meaningful moments all give us goosebumps? Lauren Brown gets goosebumps. A lot. Sometimes several times a day. When her partner, writer Carmen Maria Machado, noticed it, she couldn't stop thinking about it. Why does she get them in so many different situations? What’s happening in her body and what does it mean? We take that question and run with it.
Topics: Chapter 1 · Break · Chapter 2
42:048.3K views · 3mo ago · 42:04
Guest: Atomic Artifacts
From the Radiolab podcast: What’s the one memento you would save after the apocalypse? Back in the 1950s, facing the threat of nuclear annihilation, federal officials sat down and pondered what American life would actually look like after an atomic attack. They faced a slew of practical questions like: Who would count the dead and where would they build the refugee camps? But they faced a more spiritual question as well.
Topics: Chapter 1 · Break · Chapter 2
1:14:297.8K views · 3mo ago · 1:14:29
From the Radiolab podcast: What happens when doing what you love to do means giving up who you really are? Back in 2017, reporters Kristen Clark and David Conrad came to us with a story that dug into the difficult and often dark places discrimination creates. We start in Venice, Italy, where they meet gondolier Alex Hai.
Topics: Segment 1 · Break · Segment 2
40:5511K views · 4mo ago · 40:55
From the Radiolab podcast: What do sex hormones do to your brain? After reading something that said her menstrual cycle changes her brain each month, Senior Correspondent Molly Webster goes on a reporting mission to see if that’s true, and,if so, how.
Topics: Segment A · Break · Segment B
56:496.8K views · 4mo ago · 56:49
From the Radiolab podcast: In the series American Emergency, the On the Media team investigates how the agency tasked with saving America became distrusted, despised ... and defunded. A 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 wake of disaster.
Topics: Segment 1 · Break · Segment 2
1:04:366.6K views · 4mo ago · 1:04:36
Guest: Oliver Sipple
From the Radiolab podcast: In a flash of heroism and humanity, Oliver Sipple saved a life and became something he never wanted to be. One 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 2017, we explain how in the days that followed, Sipple’s split-second act of heroism turned into a rationale for making his personal life into political opportunity.
37:565.9K views · 4mo ago · 37:56
From the Radiolab podcast: How to (maybe) get over your fear of roaches (again, maybe) This week, Alex tries to understand what might be behind her fear, in the hopes she can overcome it. And in doing so, Alex learns more about these so-called pests than she could have ever wanted to.
1:13:239.4K views · 5mo ago · 1:13:23
From the Radiolab podcast: Every time we think we’ve settled on a price for something, it slips out of our grasp. This 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 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.
47:308K views · 5mo ago · 47:30
From the Radiolab podcast: A whole other can of worms. For 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 practices, have we made significant strides towards deworming the whole of humanity. And that’s typically been thought of as a good thing, because having too many worms in your body can—quite literally—suck the life out of you.
1:08:039.9K views · 5mo ago · 1:08:03
From the Radiolab podcast: We wrestle with the dark side of human nature, and ask whether it's something we can ever really understand, or fully escape. With 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 of really, really bad that's in some of us.
42:496.5K views · 5mo ago · 42:49
From the Radiolab podcast: If an animal is worthless, can it be stolen? In 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 in the world. They were there to capture video of what they say were thousands of mistreated and abused animals kept in tiny metal cages barely bigger than their bodies.
19:516.8K views · 6mo ago · 19:51
From the Radiolab podcast: This week we’re grabbing a branch, pulling ourselves up off the forest floor, and stumbling into a secret garden in the sky. For 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 got our hands full studying the trees down here! So why bother?"
51:049.5K views · 6mo ago · 51:04
From the Radiolab podcast: Shocking tales from the dairy farm. There’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 water and start drinking ... urine?
Topics: 5 - Chapter 3
30:015.3K views · 6mo ago · 30:01
From the Radiolab podcast: A creature whose footprints produce and protect life Few mammals have a bigger positive impact on the planet than the beaver. With its bright orange buck teeth, the creature is an expert engineer that brings life wherever it waddles and even fights fires. Our story begins in the Bronx River, once known as the “open sewer” of New York City. After some humans decide to clean it up, we meet one of the river’s residents: José the beaver.
54:437.1K views · 6mo ago · 54:43
From the Radiolab podcast: This 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 the chaos of life.
1:01:088.4K views · 6mo ago · 1:01:08
Guest: Antibiotic Apocalypse
From the Radiolab podcast: Can we win in the fight against antibiotic resistant bacteria? Doctor 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 to the sewers and back again, searching for answers to an alarming threat to humanity’s existence as we know it: antibiotic resistance in bacteria.
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