This hour of Radiolab, Jad and Robert set out in search of order and balance in the world around us, and ask how symmetry shapes our very existence--from the origins of the universe, to what we see when we look in the mirror.
The mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson posed a big question about mirrors in one of his best-known books: Through the Looking-Glass (yup, Dodgson's pen name was Lewis Carroll). Natasha Gostwick of Storynory reads an excerpt that gets at the heart of the trouble: is mirror milk any good to drink? ...
Oliver Sacks, the famous neuroscientist and author, can't recognize faces. Neither can Chuck Close, the great artist known for his enormous paintings of...that's right, faces.
Oliver and Chuck--both born with the condition known as Face Blindness--have spent their lives decoding who is saying hello to them. You can sit ...
In this episode, stories of unlikely (and surprisingly simple) answers to seemingly unsolvable problems.
Fate may not be written in the stars, but what if it’s written in our genes? First, Paul Auster raises the specter of "rhyming events," his term for those spooky coincidences that seem more than ordinary mathematical flukes.
Then, a seemingly simple experiment devised by Walter Mischel ...
In this podcast, Jad and Robert throw some physics at a bible story. We find out just how many trumpeters you'd actually need to blow down the walls of Jericho.
Three stories that upend our pre-conceived notions about falling:
3. Falling Cats: David Quammen ponders the terminal velocity of a plummeting cat, teaches Jad a new word, and helps clear up some fallacies of feline physics.
4. Constantly Falling: Brian Greene explains why he can't answer the most basic question you can ask a physicist: "why do we fall?"
5. Falling Fortunes: Garrett Soden and Joan Murray introduce us to the 20th Century's greatest "gravity hero"--who, despite being the first person to survive a trip over Niagara Falls in a barrel, ultimately landed in a poorhouse.
Susan Schaller believes that the best idea she ever had in her life had to do with an isolated young man she met one day at a community college. He was 27-years-old at the time, and though he had been born deaf, no one had ever taught him to sign. ...
Robert and Malcolm Gladwell duke it out over questions of luck, talent, passion, and success.
An unlikely escape story begins in a supermarket, and ends in a boat off the coast of Maine.
Knowing what's going on in the minds of other humans is a leap of faith, but it's a pretty safe leap. Knowing what's going on in the minds of animals, however...that's another story. Reporter Ben Calhoun introduces us to Jerry Stones, a zookeeper who was duped by an orangutan named ...
In "25 Minutes to Go," Johnny Cash counts down the minutes to his hanging. This precipitates an argument between Robert and Jad about whether you could live without numbers. Jad introduces his newborn son, Amil, and insists that he has no concept of numbers whatsoever. Like father, like son? Producer ...
A story about a boy, a mom, and a homemade helicopter--and how radio can move you to feel a little bit different about the world.
Brian Hare tells us the story of Dmitri Belyaev, a geneticist and clandestine Darwinian who lived in Stalinist Russia and studied the domestication of the silver fox. Through generations of selectively breeding a captive population, Belyaev noticed not only increased docility, but also unexpected physical changes. Why did these ...
They Might Be Giants celebrate at our season launch party with a live concert, and a conversation about the tricky business of combining science and entertainment.
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 ...
We open up an age old can of worms at WNYC's Jerome L. Greene Performance Space: which medium is superior -- television or radio? Jad and Robert face off, with This American Life's Ira Glass as referee.
Turns out, Robert is more impulsive than Jad, and Jad is more analytical than Robert. Shocking, right? Sadly for Jad, Robert's style may help him better navigate the overwhelming number of choices available throughout modern life's expanse of options, which may also lead him to a greater sense of well-being, ...
