Soren in Patagonia (Photo by Cassandra Willyard)
After fiddling around with literature and creative writing at the University of Wisconsin as an undergrad, Soren spent 10 years working with science teachers and writing about how kids learn science. While Soren found working with teachers and kids immensely rewarding, he eventually went to Johns Hopkins and got a masters in science writing, hoping to write things that normal people might actually read. He has since been happily distracted from that goal by making radio that not-so-normal people might listen to.
Soren Wheeler takes us to Butte Montana--where an open pit copper mine’s demise leads to a toxic lake filled with corrosive runoff. Reporter Barret Golding goes to visit the pit lake, and writer Edwin Dobb tells Soren the story of a pile of dead snow geese who made an ill-fated ...
Though the Lucy experiment would largely be called a failure, could there be a way to re-do it... but better? Producer Soren Wheeler visits The Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa, to meet Kanzi the bonobo. Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh uses lessons learned from her time with Lucy in ...
Producer Soren Wheeler brings us a story about a friendship between Steve Strogatz and his high school math teacher, Don Joffray. Steve explains how numbers can connect you and where they fall short.
5. 4 Seconds Down: Soren Wheeler tells the story of Ken Baldwin, a man who is looking for death but finds a new view on life. 6. Am I Dead?: Neurological psychologist Paul Broks introduces us to a patient who thinks she's dead. 7. If I Only Had A Brain: ...
BiDil was the first drug approved by the FDA for a specific racial group. We want to know what the ramifications are for using skin color as a diagnostic tool for diseases and disorders that can't be seen. Producer Soren Wheeler talks to Dr. Jay Cohn, developer of BiDil ...
NPR’s David Kestenbaum ran a piece yesterday on Morning Edition about a 16-year-old climate skeptic named Kristen Byrnes. This ambitious teenager has set up a website and dedicated huge chunks of her time to arguing that the rise of global temperature is part of a natural cycle and not, as most climate scientists agree, caused by human action.
Not all scientists are the quiet, serious type. Science writer Carl Zimmer offers a unique peek under the lab coat on his site Science Tattoo Emporium.
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To get us thinking about creating new life forms, we tag along with a group of kids on a visit to the American Museum of Natural History exhibit on Mythic Creatures. Curator Laurel Kendall tells us that even figments of the human imagination deserve to be a part of natural ...
Soren here, one of Radio Lab's worker bees ... With our Pop Music show on the way (the podcast will be released next week), I thought I'd prime the pump with a little personal pop music story:
When I was a kid, my family drove across the country every summer - from Montana, where we lived, to New Hampshire, where my father grew up. There was only one kind of music that played in that ‘74 Pinto station wagon as the great plains rolled by: Willie Nelson. And the favorite song was, of course, “On the Road Again.”
Arthur C. Clarke, the author of the book '2001: A Space Odyssey,' which became a Stanely Kubrick movie, died yesterday. Clarke was a visionary science fiction writer who foresaw the use of satellites for communications and planted a seed of wonder and awe in the universe for many young kids, including me.
The genes of all living things are made of DNA. And DNA is made of four chemicals, called A, T, C, and G. These days, scientists can read those 'letters' of DNA for any creature (including you and me). And they can make strands of DNA from jars of A, T, C, and G. In fact, scientists now have databases of thousands of different genes, written in letters, for functions like 'glow in the dark,' or 'metabolize glucose,' or any number of traits or talents.
Brain scans give us a whole new way of explaining how and why we do the things we do. But while brain scans can help scientists understand how the person inside the scanner thinks, they also make those of us outside the scanner a little bit less savvy.
Scientists like to make computer models of really complicated stuff, like economic markets, global weather, and the beginning of the universe. Now they’ve made a computer model of what might be the most complicated and mysterious object we know of: the brain.
