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WNYC Studios

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.

Radiolab

There’s something rotten in the cows of Denmark. And Minnesota. And Wisconsin. And Idaho. What could cause a previously thriving herd of majestic dairy cattle to stop drinking water and start drinking … urine? A Danish farmer calls a special investigator, who takes one look at his farm and nopes the heck out of there, refusing to return, citing “bad energy” coming from something nearby … a big building covered in Viking runes. 

It’s not magic. It’s an invisible force that’s far more common. And yet deeply mysterious.

This episode plunges producers Matt Kielty and Simon Adler knee-deep in a decades-old dairy farm controversy, rooted in a fundamental suspicion of the invisible streams of electrons that keep our world humming.

Special thanks to Dr. Liz Brock

EPISODE CREDITS: 

 Reported by - Matt Kielty and Simon Adler

 with help from - Clara Grunnet and Rebecca Rand

 Produced by - Matt Kielty

 with help from - Maria Paz Gutierrez

 Original music from - Jeremy Bloom and Matt Kielty

 Sound design contributed by - Jeremy Bloom

 Mixed by - Jeremy Bloom

 Fact-checking by - Angely Mercado and Sophie Samiee

 and Edited by - Pat Walters

EPISODE CITATIONS:

Books -

 The Great Energy Transition: America from 1876 to 1929 • (
https://zpr.io/3PStsDgidpj5 • ), by David Nye

 Powering American Farms: The Overlooked Origins of Rural Electrification • (
https://zpr.io/GdQ4pMCy4DAV • ), by Richard Hirsch

 Beyond the Barn – Dodging Cow Patties for 50 Years by a Country Vet • (
https://zpr.io/S8qS9HLEQBJe • ), by Don Sanders a memoir about his long career.

Signup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!

Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.

Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.

Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Hi Radiolab listeners, we want to hear from you! Take this podcast survey and let us know how you feel about the show. It only takes about 20 minutes and your feedback will help us make our podcast better! There are no wrong answers, we want your honest takes. You can help out by taking the survey here (www.radiolab.org/survey).

The Resistance of a Cow

In an episode first aired back in 2025 on our sister show, Terrestrials, we take you on a musical journey all about beavers. Few mammals have a bigger positive impact on the planet than the beaver. With its bright orange buck teeth, the creature is an expert engineer that brings life wherever it waddles and even fights fires. Our story begins in the Bronx river, once known as the “open sewer” of New York City. After some humans decide to clean it up, we meet one of the river’s residents - José the beaver. We learn about the US government parachuting beavers out of planes into the mountains. And finally head to California where we discover how one beaver family saved acres of land from burning. 

Special thanks to author Ben Goldfarb, Christian Murphy from the Bronx River Alliance and Dr. Emily Fairfax. 

Terrestrials was created by Lulu Miller with WNYC Studios. This episode was produced by Ana González and sound-designed by Mira Burt-Wintonick. Our team includes Alan Goffinski, Joe Plourde and Tanya Chawla. Fact checking was by Diane Kelly. 

Our advisors for this show were Ana Luz Porzecanski, Nicole Depalma, Liza Demby and Tovah Barocas.

EPISODE CITATIONS:

 Books - 

 Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter • (
https://zpr.io/4QLuhrSMfurk • ), by Ben Goldfarb

 Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America • (
https://zpr.io/3BbaViJK8Hk3 • ), by Leila Philip’s

Videos - 

 • Watch the US government 
drop beavers out of planes • (
https://zpr.io/y2JJPwwyr3Bp • ). 

 • Watch
 Leave It to Beavers • (
https://zpr.io/JVGZYmNCTy6h • ), a documentary about beavers restoring rivers and wetlands.

Articles - 

 How reintroducing beavers can enhance ecological health • (
https://zpr.io/KNxz3MtKL9sV • ), by Madison Pobis, Stanford Report.

 Beaver Dams Help Wildfire-Ravaged Ecosystems Recover Long after Flames Subside • (
https://zpr.io/kAnjEUPvPUeJ • ), by Isobel Sandcomb, Scientific American 

HEY GROWN-UPS!

Love the show? Leave us a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ rating and review on your podcast app—it helps curious listeners find us!

We want to hear from you! Share your thoughts about Terrestrials with us.
Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for bite-sized essays, activities, and ways to connect with the show.
Follow us on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok for behind-the-scenes extras and more.
Listen to original music from Terrestrials on Spotify, Apple Music, or our music page.

Got a badgering question for the team? Email us at terrestrialspodcast@wnyc.org or submit a voice memo with your name, age, and your question using this form!

Terrestrials is made possible in part by listeners like you. Support the show by joining Radiolab’s membership program, The Lab—and we’ll send you a special thank-you gift from our team!

Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Hi Radiolab listeners, we want to hear from you! Take this podcast survey and let us know how you feel about the show. It only takes about 20 minutes and your feedback will help us make our podcast better! There are no wrong answers, we want your honest takes. You can help out by taking the survey here (www.radiolab.org/survey).

The Builders

This week, in an episode we first aired in 2022, we flip the Disney story of life on its head thanks to a barrel of seawater, a 1970s era computer, and underwater geysers. It’s the chaos of life.

Latif, Lulu, and our Senior Producer Matt Kielty were all sitting on their own little stories until they got thrown into the studio, and had their cherished beliefs about the shape of life put on a collision course. From an accidental study of sea creatures, to the ambitions of Stephen J Gould, to an undercooked theory that captured the world’s imagination, we undo the seeming order of the living world and try to make some music out of the wreckage. (Bonus: Learn how Francis Crick really thought life got started on this planet).

EPISODE CREDITS: 

 Reported by - Latif Nasser, Matt Kielty, Heather Radke, Lulu Miller and Candice Wang

 Produced by - Matt Kielty and Simon Adler

 with help from - Arianne Wack

 Original music and sound design contributed by - Matt Kilety, Simon Adler, Alan Goffinski, and Jeremy Bloom

EPISODE CITATIONS:

Articles - 

 Chaos in a long-term experiment with a plankton community • (
https://zpr.io/j6sYXKfDzPCG • ), by Benincà, E., Huisman, J., Heerkloss, R. 
et al. Nature 
 Chaos theory discloses triggers and drivers of plankton dynamics in stable environment • (
https://zpr.io/qHKENA3SJ8ML • ), by Telesh IV, Schubert H, Joehnk KD, Heerkloss R, Schumann R, Feike M, Schoor A, Skarlato SO. 
Sci Rep.

Books -

 Full House • (
https://zpr.io/pMQZfyPcRzD4 • ), by Stephen Jay Gould

 Extinction: Bad Genes or Bad Luck? • (
https://zpr.io/pPVNugUKWpi4 • ), by David M. Raup

 Rereading the Fossil Record: The Growth of Paleobiology as an Evolutionary Discipline • (
https://zpr.io/YBjJxuXjydPN • ), by David Sepkoski

 The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life • (
https://zpr.io/LzfueEqUWNHb • ), by Nick Lane

Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature • (
https://zpr.io/KPZf57eEVMBX • ), by Francis Crick

Signup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!

Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.

Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.

Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Hi Radiolab listeners, we want to hear from you! Take this podcast survey and let us know how you feel about the show. It only takes about 20 minutes and your feedback will help us make our podcast better! There are no wrong answers, we want your honest takes. You can help out by taking the survey here (www.radiolab.org/survey).

Life in a Barrel

Doctor and special correspondent Avir Mitra takes Executive Editor Soren Wheeler, plus a live studio audience, on a journey from the operating room to inside the body to the farm to the sewers and back again—searching for answers to an alarming threat to humanity’s existence as we know it: antibiotic resistance in bacteria. 

 This live show, performed in New York City and also in Little Rock, Arkansas, is part of a series we’re doing with Avir that we are calling “Viscera.” Each event is a conversation that takes the audience on a journey into a quirk or question or mystery inside of us, and gives them a visceral experience of the viscera within us. The previous installment of the series was called “The Elixir of Life.” (https://radiolab.org/podcast/the-elixir-of-life)

Special thanks to all of Little Rock Public Radio (especially Grace Zafasi and Jonathan Seaborn), Thomas Patterson, The Greene Space staff, CALS Ron Robinson Theater, Tom Philpott, Stephen Roach, Kate Shaw, Alex Wong, Maryn McKenna, and Kerri McClimen.

If you are a patients or a doctor, and you are interested in phage therapy, please contact IPATH@ucsd.edu 

EPISODE CREDITS: 

 Reported by - Avir Mitra

 Produced by - Jessica Yung

 Sound design contributed by - Jeremy Bloom and Jessica Yung

 Fact-checking by -Natalie Middleton

EPISODE CITATIONS:

Videos -

 • Check out the video from the Viscera live show (and a bonus Q&A with Bruce Stewart-Brown and Steffanie Strathdee) on 
Radiolab • ’s 
YouTube • (
https://zpr.io/3BK9MqJYVKQA • ).

 • A 
deep dive • (
https://zpr.io/WNQNfgiNvKeZ • ) on bacteriophages with Avir Mitra and Steffanie Strathdee, also on Radiolab’s Youtube..

Books -

 The Perfect Predator • (
https://theperfectpredator.com/ • ) by Dr. Steffanie Strathdee’s telling of her battle against a killer superbug.

 Plucked (https://zpr.io/PudGMEuzgU9X) • by Maryn Mckenna a detailed accounting of chicken farming’s practice of using antibiotics.

Signup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!

Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.

Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.

Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Hi Radiolab listeners, we want to hear from you! Take this podcast survey and let us know how you feel about the show. It only takes about 20 minutes and your feedback will help us make our podcast better! There are no wrong answers, we want your honest takes. You can help out by taking the survey here (www.radiolab.org/survey).

Antibiotic Apocalypse

A strange brew that's hard to resist, even for a modern day microbe.

 In the war on devilish microbes, our weapons are starting to fail us. The antibiotics we once wielded like miraculous flaming swords seem more like lukewarm butter knives. But in this episode, originally released in 2015, we follow an odd couple, of a sort, to a storied land of elves and dragons. There, they uncover a 1,000-year-old secret that makes us reconsider our most basic assumptions about human progress and wonder: what if the only way forward is backward?

Special thanks to Steve Diggle, Professor Roberta Frank, Alexandra Reider and Justin Park (our Old English readers), Gene Murrow from Gotham Early Music Scene, Marcia Young for her performance on the medieval harp and Collin Monro of Tadcaster and the rest of the Barony of Iron Bog.

 Can’t get enough of that sweet, sweet antibiotic resistance content? Then you’ll be over the moon about next week’s release. It’s the podcast cut of our most recent installment of our live show series called Viscera. This one features executive editor Soren Wheeler and Avir Mitra, and it’s all about how our millenia's-long war against bacteria came to a tipping point in this modern age.

 Subscribe or follow our show on your favorite streaming platform and you’ll be the first to know when it drops.

EPISODE CREDITS: 

 Reported by - Latif Nasser

 Produced by - Matt Kielty and Soren Wheeler

EPISODE CITATIONS:

 Articles - 
Uncovering the multifaceted mechanism of action of a historical antimicrobial (https://zpr.io/mucw6Td6LBxT) by Harrison, F et al, 2026 bioRxv (PREPRINT). In this article Freya and her team describe the mechanisms under which Bald’s Remedy actually works.

Signup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!

Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.

Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.

Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Hi Radiolab listeners, we want to hear from you! Take this podcast survey and let us know how you feel about the show. It only takes about 20 minutes and your feedback will help us make our podcast better! There are no wrong answers, we want your honest takes. You can help out by taking the survey here (www.radiolab.org/survey).

Staph Retreat

If a species is horrible enough, do we have the right to kill it forever?

Seventy years ago, a nightmare parasite feasted on the live flesh of warm-blooded creatures in North America: the screwworm. That is, until a young scientist named Edward F. Knipling discovered a crucial screwworm weakness and hatched a sweeping project to wipe them out. Knipling’s seemingly zany plan to spray screwworms out of planes all over the continent— with US taxpayer money— succeeded, becoming one of humanity’s biggest environmental interventions ever. 

Today, screwworms have been gone so long that none of us in North America even remember them. But now, they’re coming back. And they’re forcing us to ask: in an era of climate change and rapid mass extinction— should we kill off a species on purpose? 

Special thanks to James P. Collins, Max Scott, Amy Murillo, Daniel Griffin, Phil Kaufman, Katie Barnhill, Arthur Caplan, Ron Sandler, Yasha Rohwer, Aaron Keefe, Gwendolyn Bogard, Maria Sabate, Meredith Asbury, and Joanne Padrón Carney

EPISODE CREDITS: 

 Reported by - Sarah Qari

 with help from - Latif Nasser

 Produced by - Sarah Qari

 Sound design contributed by - Sarah Qari

 Fact-checking by - Emily Krieger

EPISODE CITATIONS:

**The latest information on screwworm outbreaks and precautions: 
screwworm.gov

Videos:

 • Oral history interviews of Edward F. Knipling: 
here • (https://zpr.io/njhMedFN5jsZ) and 
here • (
https://zpr.io/VQReQbfznCrq • ) 

Podcasts:

 • Here’s a 
Spotify playlist • (
https://zpr.io/PNMEM274G7vh • ) of all of our Golden Goose-inspired episodes!

 • Sam Kean’s podcast 
The Disappearing Spoon • – his episode about screwworms is called 
The Screwiest and Perhaps Most Original Idea of the 20th Century • (
https://zpr.io/UYf6dR2yG3eN • ) 

 • Our episode on 
CRISPR & gene drives • (
https://zpr.io/UYf6dR2yG3eN • ) 

 • New to Radiolab? Check out our 
Radiolab Starter Kit • (
https://zpr.io/QpPnrHAZVQLR • ) playlist of all-time favorite episodes!

Articles:

 • Sarah Zhang’s latest piece in 
The Atlantic • : 
American Milk Has Changed • (
https://zpr.io/xebbdq2MWV4L • ) 

 • Her most recent piece on screwworms: 
The ‘Man-Eater’ Screwworm Is Coming • (
https://zpr.io/ECmjCs7ScbS4 • ) 

 • Her initial reporting on screwworms: 
America’s Never-Ending Battle Against Flesh-Eating Worms • (
https://zpr.io/PNMEM274G7vh • ) 

 • Gregory Kaebnick’s 
paper • (
https://zpr.io/yqNC3q5FbCcq • ) about screwworm eradication in 
Science

Archival materials: 

 • The USDA’s 
Screwworm Eradication Records • (
https://zpr.io/dY7zuVdGYKjf • ) contain lots of cool images and letters

Signup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!

Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.

Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.

Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Hi Radiolab listeners, we want to hear from you! Take this podcast survey and let us know how you feel about the show. It only takes about 20 minutes and your feedback will help us make our podcast better! There are no wrong answers, we want your honest takes. You can help out by taking the survey here (www.radiolab.org/survey).

Return of the Flesh-Eaters

In this episode, we consider a creature we often don’t think much about—the snail. And not just snails, but their sex lives. Which, as it turns out, is epic. There is persuasion and subterfuge, spaghetti penises and co-copulation. And this very surprising habit—erm kink—of making tiny arrows (actually!) and stabbing each other with them. Known as a “love dart,” these limestone daggers aren’t just a strange trick of nature—they have a deep evolutionary purpose. 

Special thanks to Menno Schilthuizen and Aaron Chase.

EPISODE CREDITS: 

 Hosted by - Molly Webster

 Reported by - Molly Webster

 Produced by - Mona Madgavkar, Annie McEwen, Molly Webster

 Sound design contributed by - Mona Madgavkar, Annie McEwen

 Fact-checking by - Diane A. Kelly

 and Edited by - Alex Neason

EPISODE CITATIONS:

 Videos - 
A love dart being DARTED! (https://zpr.io/rYhLwXhaxQQP) – Molly has watched this video so many times

 Articles - 

 Changes in the reproductive system of the snail Helix aspersa caused by mucus from the love dart. • (
https://zpr.io/xxjuCcTyiVJV • ) by Koene JM, Chase R. J Exp Biol.

 The snail's love-dart delivers mucus to increase paternity. • By Chase R, Blanchard KC. Proc Biol Sci.

 A love-dart at the heart of sexual conflict in snails • (
https://zpr.io/X2ANHPaEg5sr • ) by Foote C 

 • ** This article has an image of eight different love darts, and it’s what Molly shows to Soren in the episode (this image is one of her favorite research finds!) 

Books - 

 “Nature’s Nether Regions: What the Sex Lives of Bugs, Birds, and Beasts Tell Us About Evolution, Biodiversity, and Ourselves” (https://zpr.io/ktMvJbZciCdD) by evolutionary biologist Menno Schilthuizen.

Signup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!

Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.

Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.

Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Hi Radiolab listeners, we want to hear from you! Take this podcast survey and let us know how you feel about the show. It only takes about 20 minutes and your feedback will help us make our podcast better! There are no wrong answers, we want your honest takes. You can help out by taking the survey here (www.radiolab.org/survey).

Snail Sex Tape

In this episode, first aired in 2014, we examine three very different kinds of black boxes—spaces where we know what’s going in, we know what’s coming out, but can’t see what happens in-between.

From the darkest parts of metamorphosis to a sixty-year-old secret among magicians, and the nature of consciousness itself, we shine some light on three questions. But for each, we contend with an answerless space, leaving just enough room for the mystery and magic, always wondering what’s inside the Black Box.

EPISODE CREDITS: 

 Reported by Tim Howard and Molly Webster

 Produced by Tim Howard and Molly Webster

EPISODE CITATIONS:

 Radio Show: ABC's Keep Them Guessing (https://tinyurl.com/9r9zmftr)

LATERAL CUTS:

 Last year we shared a story on our feed about butterfly researcher Dr. Martha Weiss, and how she befriended a little boy on the other side of the world who wanted to do his own caterpillar memory study.

Martha’s daughter Annie Rosenthal captured the whole adventure on tape and produced a gorgeous audio feature, “Caterpillar Roadshow,” which was first published in the audio magazine Signal Hill. 

 You can find it on our feed (https://zpr.io/xPdAYXFUMr4s)

 –or on Signal Hill’s website. (https://zpr.io/a4bjPKeXJQWK) 

 

Signup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!

Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.

Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.

Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Hi Radiolab listeners, we want to hear from you! Take this podcast survey and let us know how you feel about the show. It only takes about 20 minutes and your feedback will help us make our podcast better! There are no wrong answers, we want your honest takes. You can help out by taking the survey here (www.radiolab.org/survey).

Black Box

Before he was even born, Sarah and Ross Gray knew that their son Thomas wouldn’t live long. But as they let go of him, they made a decision that reverberated through a world that they never bothered to think about. Years later, after a couple of awkward phone calls, they go on a quest and manage to meet the people and places for whom Thomas’ short life was an altogether different kind of gift. We originally made this story back in 2015, but we wanted to play it again because we love that it brings a view of science that is redemptive, tender, and unexpected.

Since we first released this episode, Sarah Gray wrote a book called A Life Everlasting (https://zpr.io/GVYisRaqe9d6), it’s a memoir about Thomas that dives into the world of organ donation and medical science. She’s also written a beautiful short story about shame called The Lacemaker Fairy Tale (https://zpr.io/Li5BMtfHmf92). And, right now she’s working on a script for a movie called Raincheck.

EPISODE CREDITS:

 Reported by - Jad Abumrad

 with help from - Latif Nasser

LATERAL CUTS -

 The Cathedral • (https://radiolab.org/podcast/cathedral)

 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks • (
https://radiolab.org/podcast/the-immortal-life-of-henrietta-lacks • ) 

Signup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!

Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.

Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.

Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Hi Radiolab listeners, we want to hear from you! Take this podcast survey and let us know how you feel about the show. It only takes about 20 minutes and your feedback will help us make our podcast better! There are no wrong answers, we want your honest takes. You can help out by taking the survey here (www.radiolab.org/survey).

Gray's Donation

In the early 2000s, Sunil Nakrani felt stuck. 

Back then, websites crashed all the time. When Sunil noticed this, he decided he was going to fix the internet. But after nearly a year of studying the architecture of the web, he was no closer to an answer. In desperation, Sunil sent out a raft of cold emails to engineering professors. He hoped someone, anyone, could help him figure this out. Eventually, he learned that the internet could only be fixed if he paid attention to the humble honeybee. 

This is the story of the Honeybee Algorithm: How tech used honeybees to build the internet as we know it.

Special thanks to John Bartholdi, John Vande Vate, Sammy Ramsey, James Marshall, Steve Strogatz, Duc Pham, and Heiko Hamann.

We found out about this story thanks to our friends at AAAS, who run the one and only Golden Goose Awards. The award goes to government funded science that sounds trivial or bizarre, but goes on to change the world. The Honeybee Algorithm won a Golden Goose Award back in 2016 (https://zpr.io/ePxaaYja6YF4). Thank you to our friends there: Erin Heath, Gwendolyn Bogard, Valeria Sabate, Joanne Padron Carney, and Meredith Asbury. 

EPISODE CREDITS: 
Reported by - Latif Nasser
with help from - Maria Paz Gutiérrez
Produced by - Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Annie McEwen and Pat Walters
and Edited by - Pat Walters

EPISODE CITATIONS:

Videos - 

Golden Goose Award video about 2016 winners • (
https://zpr.io/eXwTJKGL6F8S • )

Books -

The Wisdom of the Hive: The Social Physiology of Honeybee Colonies • (https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674953765)
 • by
 • Thomas D. Seeley (1995, Harvard University Press)
Piping Hot Bees & Boisterous Buzz-Runners: 20 Mysteries of Honey Bee Behavior Solved • (
https://zpr.io/tNDqkw372Rhr • ) by Thomas D. Seeley
 • And, 
Paths of Pollen • (
https://zpr.io/cqRPpAdGRwMi) • by Stephen Humphrey. One of our former transcribers who we recently learned had hidden talents far beyond the invaluable work they did for us. This book is only tangentially related to the content in the episode, but super cool in its own right.

 • 

Sign up for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Signup (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!

Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.

Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.

Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Hi Radiolab listeners, we want to hear from you! Take this podcast survey and let us know how you feel about the show. It only takes about 20 minutes and your feedback will help us make our podcast better! There are no wrong answers, we want your honest takes. You can help out by taking the survey here (www.radiolab.org/survey).

Time is Honey

This holiday season, we want to take you on a trip around the heavens.

First, co-host Latif Nasser, with the help of Nour Raouafi, of NASA, and an edge-cutting piece of equipment, explain how we may finally be making good on Icarus’s promise. Then, co-host Lulu Miller and Ada Limón talk about how a poet laureate goes about writing an ode to one of Jupiter’s moons.

And one more thing! It is almost your last chance to make your mark on the heavens. Radiolab and The International Astronomical Union’s Quasi Moon Naming Vote comes to an end on January 1st. Learn more and pick your favorite name here: https://radiolab.org/moon

EPISODE CREDITS: 
Reported by - Latif Nasser, Lulu Miller
Produced by - Matt Kielty, Ana Gonzalez
Fact-checking by - Diane Kelly

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Probing Where the Sun Does Shine: A Holiday Special

Lyt når som helst, hvor som helst

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