Hey everyone, Jad here. I know times are tough, but I wonder if you could help Radiolab out by staying in! Think of it as the Ramen Challenge: cue up an episode from our brand new batch of Season 6 Shows, fire up the tea kettle, and enjoy a tasty bowl of cheap noodles in our honor. Then, send the money you would have spent on dinner (or a movie, or a few drinks with your friends) along to us. Anything you can afford—$10, $25, maybe you can pitch in $75?—will help us make more Radiolab. Thanks so much to everyone who’s already pledged, and to everyone who plans to. We wouldn’t be here without you.
The use of fetal cells in science has become quite controversial. There was an interesting moment in an interview between Radio Lab co-host, Jad Abumrad. and scientist Dr. Leonard Hayflick on this topic when we were making the show Mortality. Dr. Hayflick grew millions of cells from one aborted fetus and pioneered the use of fetal cells for research and the creation of vaccines.
Here at Radiolab we’ve been known to tinker with sound.... cutting music, ambi, and big ideas all together to get the point across in the most fun, interesting and understandable way. It’s not your typical public radio interview. Recently, we decided to check in with some of the guests on past episodes to see what they thought. Were they over-edited? Mis-represented? Did they love the show? Hate it?
Here at Radiolab we’ve been known to tinker with sound.... cutting music, ambi, and big ideas all together to get the point across in the most fun, interesting and understandable way. It’s not your typical public radio interview. Recently, we decided to check in with some of the guests on past episodes to see what they thought. Were they over-edited? Mis-represented? Did they love the show? Hate it?
Here at Radiolab we’ve been known to tinker with sound... cutting music, ambi, and big ideas all together to get the point across in the most fun, interesting and understandable way. It’s not your typical public radio interview. Recently, we decided to check in with some of the guests on past episodes to see what they thought. Were they over-edited? Mis-represented? Did they love the show? Hate it?
We've gotten a lot of great responses to our show Laughter. Tom was so inspired that he changed his voicemail: 'I was so excited that when I got to work I changed the end of my daily telephone greeting to '...make it a groovy day.' For some reason I then decided to start laughing like the laugh track people on your show.
Why do we play, an activity that is, by its definition, without an immediate objective? Does play serve an important purpose in humans and in other animals? The science of play draws from the work of neuroscientists, evolutionary biologists, ethologists, and psychiatrists, among others, and many researchers are studying the appearance of play behaviors in other animals in an attempt to understand what role it may play in brain development.
Here's the second installment of 'Music Lab.' A place on the blog where Jad gets to play some of his favorite music and tell you why he likes it. Take a listen.
As Radiolab explores some of the tangents from our show on Deception, we've interviewed neuroscientists attempting to detect lies using changes in brain activity. But how do we see brain activity and get such colorful pictures of it? You might think it's based on neural electric activity. This is true for EEG but not for fMRI, which is used in the majority of these brain function studies. As Wired.com's Steve Silberman explains, it all starts with hemoglobin. Yes, the tiny protein responsible for carrying oxygen to the brain or any other organ for that matter, is the basis for studying brain activity.
We interviewed Dan Langleben while researching for our show on Deception. He says he can see differences in brain activity when a lie is told about a playing card in your pocket. He identified a few regions in the brain that changed in metabolism during a lie. That is, it seemed as though it took more energy for the brain to lie.
During the making of the show Deception, Radiolab explored the possibility of fMRI-based lie detectors. But what if we could detect lies remotely? What if we could know someone's lying without them knowing that we know they are... Well Britton Chance takes us one step closer to making science fiction a reality.
Is this your card? Don't lie or neuroscientist Dan Langleben may catch you. In our recent show Deception, Radio Lab explores how Paul Ekman can see the truth 'leak out' through microexpressions in the face, but Langleben wants to go deeper.
Have you ever looked a red and blue barber's pole and wondered why the stripes seem to be traveling up, rather than around the pole? Or have you looked at a still-life painting where the vase looked so real you could almost pick it up, even though it was just a painting? These two examples raise some interesting questions about how we interpret the things we see.
Hello everyone. Jad here. I wanna tell you real quick about my experience hallucinating the sound of bees. And Fleetwood Mac.
Here's the first installment of 'Music Lab.' A place on the blog where Jad gets to play some of his favorite music and tell you why he likes it. Take a listen.
Recently, Radiolab received an email in response to the show Mortality.
Listener Louie forwarded us this re-mix of the episode "Musical Language". Thanks Louie!
You've heard of the tortured artist. The tortured poet. Did you ever think about the tortured zoo director? It's tough work being the steward of animals while at the same time being their captor. David Hancocks, a former zoo director, tells us about the paradoxes he encounters in the zoo world and his dream for a future zoo.
It might seem hyperbole to claim, as many Wagnerites do, that The Ring Cycle is 'The Greatest Work of Art Ever.' But it's permeated our culture from Star Wars to Bugs Bunny to J.R.R. Tolkien. On this Radiolab/WNYC Special, we explore the impact and influence of Wagner's Ring Cycle on the Metropolitan Opera's 2004 Presentation.
