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.
Latest episodes
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34 min
Octomom
First aired back in 2020, this episode follows the story of an octopus living one mile under the ocean as she performs a heroic act of heart and determination.In 2007, Bruce Robiso…
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43 min
The Smell of Hell
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 o…
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31 min
Math Vs Machine
In less than four years, mathematician Steve Strogatz watched AI go from flailing at basic arithmetic to solving problems that baffle the world’s best mathematicians. In September…
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21 min
A 4-Track Mind
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 challeng…
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22 min
Grass Apes
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…
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31 min
The Sweetest Thing
“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 b…
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1 h 03
23 Weeks 6 Days
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…
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58 min
60 Words
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…
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1 h 04
Dolly Parton's America: Sad Ass Songs
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 bac…
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52 min
Patient Zero
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…
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26 min
Nigel and the Real Gannet
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.…
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36 min
Red Herring
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 th…
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1 h 17
The Shoe Thrower
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 h…
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56 min
Return of Alpha Gal
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 s…
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29 min
Neither Confirm Nor Deny
In an episode we first ran back in 2014, we explore how a sunken nuclear submarine, a crazy billionaire, and a mechanical claw gave birth to a phrase that has hounded journalists a…
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38 min
The Holy Shiver
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 ge…
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41 min
Atomic Artifacts
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…
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1 h 13
The Gondolier
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,…
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40 min
This is Your Brain on Hormones
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…
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36 min
Bonus: Wild Animal Dads from Terrestrials
In honor of Father's Day, here is a family friendly bonus episode from our kids' podcast Terrestrials. What does it really mean to be a dad? In the animal world, fathers have long…