When we talk about badness and human nature, we keep smacking into a persistent problem: how do you explain cruelty? James Shapiro, professor of English at Columbia University, zeroes in on the drama of this question with a maddening insight from Shakespeare, by way of the villainous Iago.
And that ...
Cruelty, violence, badness... This episode of Radiolab, we wrestle with the dark side of human nature, and ask whether it's something we can ever really understand, or fully escape.
In this episode, a question that haunted Charles Darwin: if natural selection boils down to survival of the fittest, how do you explain why one creature might stick its neck out for another?
Mary Lou Gaughin was drawn to Centralia, Pennsylvania when it had the energy of a city--it was a thriving, happy community. But, 40 years ago, a fire broke out deep underground and changed everything. Joan Quigley, author of The Day the Earth Caved In, wrestles with the question of when ...
Two stories about heart-stopping falls:
1. Falling Time: David Eagleman gets to the bottom of what goes on in our brains during those life or death moments when time seems to slow way down.
2. Falling in Love: Lulu Miller brings us the story of Sarita and Simon, who fell in...and then out...of love.
In the late 1970s, a new language was born. And Ann Senghas, Associate Professor of Psychology at Barnard, has spent the last 30 years helping to decode it. In 1978, 50 deaf children entered a newly formed school--a school in which the teachers (who didn't sign) taught in Spanish. No ...
Producer Lulu Miller drives to Michigan to track down the endangered Kirtland’s warbler. Efforts to protect the bird have lead to the killing of cowbirds (a species that commandeers warbler nests), and a prescribed burn aimed at creating a new habitat. Tragically, this burn led to the death of a ...
Oops. In this hour of Radiolab, stories of unintended consequences--from a psychologist whose zeal to safeguard national security may have backfired, to a toxic lake that spawned new life.
This hour of Radiolab: famous tumors. Say hello to the growth that killed Ulysses S. Grant, and get to know the woman whose cancer cells changed modern medicine. The good, bad,…and ugly side of anatomical aberrations.
To start, Robert tries to touch--literally touch--the tumor that killed President Ulysses S. Grant. But will its keepers (Dr. Adrianne Noe and Brian Spatola) let him?
Next, writer David Quammen explains an unsettling discovery in Tasmania. When wildlife photographer Christo Baars noticed strange ...
When scientists treat words like data, clues to the real-life mysteries of human aging are found in the writings of Agatha Christie and 678 nuns.
Jad and Robert talk to two Ironman competitors, Julie Moss and Wendy Ingraham to find out how they do what they do. Physiologist Dr. David Jones tells us how to trick the voice in your head that tells you you're exhausted. Then we follow two men,
Lulu Miller talks to a nursing home in Düsseldorf, Germany that came up with a novel approach to caring for Alzheimer's and Dementia patients.
A rare and haunting disorder called Capgras turns loved ones into imposters--and reveals that recognizing people, even the people we know the best, is more about how they make us feel than what we see in front of our eyes.
Chimps. Bonobos. Humans. We're all great apes, but that doesn’t mean we’re one happy family. On this hour of Radiolab: stories of living together--from a chimp named Lucy, to the basics of bonobo culture (be careful, they bite).
Robert ambushes Jad with a question we've all been dying to ask him since he became a father. And we revisit some other ideas from our Morality show to think about a few really big modern-day problems (think global warming and nuclear war).
What's gotten into you? In this hour of Radiolab: encounters with parasites. Tales of lethargic farmers, zombie cockroaches, and even mind-controlled humans (kinda, maybe).
When executive producer Ellen Horne was expecting a baby, she really had no particular intention of becoming a self-made expert on a parasite named Toxoplasma Gondii. Robert Sapolsky explains to us why Ellen had reason to worry when she was scratched by her cat, and he traces the unlikely ...
Dickson Despommier tells us the story of how the insatiable millionaire John D. Rockefeller turned an eye to the untapped market of the American South and ended up eradicating the hookworm (and, in the process, a number of other awful afflictions) with an ingenious contraption. Then Pat Walters ...
Carl Zimmer plays defense lawyer, trying to exonerate parasites for their wrongs, while Jad and Robert argue in defense of the victims. Our producer Lulu Miller comes in to moderate a lightning round of: "Parasites: are they evil, or are they awesome?" The parasites in question are the ...
