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Lyt når som helst, hvor som helst 

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

A couple summers ago, Radiolab reporter Alex Neason got out of the shower and almost stepped on her worst nightmare: an American Cockroach. It was flipped onto its back, struggling, and for a split second, Alex swears she felt the spiny tickle of its legs on the underside of her bare foot. And, like every other time she has come into contact with a roach, this sent her into a debilitating spiral of fear, anger, and disgust. 

 This week, Alex tries to understand what might be behind her fear, in the hopes she can overcome it. And in doing so, Alex learns more about these so-called pests than she could have ever wanted to.

Special thanks to Jessica Ware, Timothy Marzullo, Alexandra Bell, and Changlu Wang

EPISODE CREDITS: 

 Reported by - Alex Neason

 Produced by - Jessica Yung and Annie McEwen

 with mixing help from - Jeremy Bloom

 Fact-checking by - Sophie Samiee

 and Edited by - Pat Walters

EPISODE CITATIONS:

Articles - 

 American Cockroaches, Racism, and the Ecology of the Slave Ship • (
https://zpr.io/UNKsMz7ZaLvb • ) by Lindsay Garcia, 
Arcadia

Books - 

 Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains (https://zpr.io/6E5wJBM4Kvcv) • by Bethany Brookshire

 The Cockroach Papers • (
https://zpr.io/CvKePYxEMEAW • ) by Richard Schweid

 Cockroach • (
https://zpr.io/UuEAjmfqKccQ • )
 • by Marion Copeland

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.

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This American Roach

This episode makes three earnest, possibly foolhardy, attempts to put a price on the priceless. We figure out the dollar value for an accidental death, another day of life, and the work of bats and bees as we try to keep our careful calculations from falling apart in the face of the realities of life, and love, and loss. 

In this story you’ll hear references to some of the issues that were on our minds when it first came out in 2014: wars in the middle east, drug costs and health care practices. Even as the exact shapes of these issues have evolved over the past dozen years, we feel the underlying questions are relevant and timeless: What is life worth? What about the earth?

EPISODE CREDITS: 

 Reported by - Molly Webster, Simon Adler, Tim Howard, and Matt Kielty

 with help from - Shahib Al-Masawa 

 Produced by - Matt Kielty, Tim Howard

 Fact-checking by - Michelle Soraka

EPISODE CITATIONS:

Books - 

 Memoir of A Debulked Woman • (https://zpr.io/WJz2Ybvq3HmT) by Susan Gubar

 Being Mortal ( • https://zpr.io/8J47trRcbjKh) by Atul Gawande

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.

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Worth

For most of human history, people went about their daily lives with a worm or two (or fifty) in their guts. Only in the past century, with pharmaceuticals and sanitation practices, have we made significant strides towards deworming the whole of humanity. And that’s typically been thought of as a good thing, because having too many worms in your body can–quite literally–suck the life out of you.

But is it possible to have… too few worms? Science wonders if deworming ourselves has actually led to an increase in certain chronic diseases. On this episode, we dive into Necator americanus, a.k.a. the American Hookworm, and its mysterious relationship with each of us.

We trace the hookworm’s 118-year journey from a demonized economic depressant, to its use as a desperate D.I.Y. immunosuppressant, to its potential as a medical treatment for a number of chronic diseases, everything from asthma to MS.

We’re bringing back two stories from our 2009 episode Parasites plus new research on hookworms and autoimmune diseases, reported by Molly Webster

Special thanks to Ethan Hein for the use of his remix of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21. Plus, Doris Pierce, and Dan and Alice Hadley.

EPISODE CREDITS: 

Reported by - Pat Walters and Molly Webster

 with help from - {{wREPORTERS}}

Produced by - Matt Kielty

with help from - Rebecca Rand

Fact-checking by - Diane A. Kelly

and Edited by - Arianne Wack

EPISODE CITATIONS:

Articles - 

Effect of experimental hookworm infection on insulin resistance in people at risk of type 2 diabetes (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37495576/) by Giacomin PR et al. Nat Commun. 2023 Jul 26

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.

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Hookworms

With all of the black-and-white moralizing in our world today, we decided to bring back an old show from 2011 about the little bit of bad that's in all of us...and the little bit of really, really bad that's in some of us. 

Cruelty, violence, badness... in this episode we begin with a chilling statistic: 91% of men, and 84% of women, have fantasized about killing someone. We take a look at one particular fantasy lurking behind these numbers, and wonder what this shadow world might tell us about ourselves and our neighbors. Then, we reconsider what Stanley Milgram's famous experiment really revealed about human nature (it's both better and worse than we thought). Next, we meet a man who scrambles our notions of good and evil: chemist Fritz Haber, who won a Nobel Prize in 1918...around the same time officials in the US were calling him a war criminal. And we end with the story of a man who chased one of the most prolific serial killers in US history, then got a chance to ask him the question that had haunted him for years: why?

EPISODE CREDITS: 

 Reported by - Pat Walters and Latif Nasser

 Produced by - Pat Watlers

 with help from - Carter Hodge.

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.

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Bad Show

In 2017, Wayne Hsiung and a crew of animal rights activists from Direct Action Everywhere broke into a Utah pig farm run by Smithfield Foods, one of the largest pork distributors in the world. They were there to capture video of what they say were thousands of mistreated and abused animals kept in tiny metal cages barely bigger than their bodies. As they were leaving, they took two sick piglets out with them.

Prosecutors in Utah charged Wayne with burglary and theft. What came next was the court battle that he wanted all along. During his trial, Wayne made a truly bizarre argument that forced the jury, and all of us, to stare straight at our complicated, sometimes uncomfortable relationship with animals. This week on the show, we grapple with the impossible question at the center of it: What is the value of a piglet? 

Special thanks to Kim Nederveen Pieterse, Nathan Peereboom, Jo Eidman, Sam Kozloff, Rachel Gross, Alex Allaux, and Joan Schaffner. 

EPISODE CREDITS: 

 Reported by - Sindhu Gnanasambandan and Jae Minard

 Produced by - Sindhu Gnanasambandan

 with help from - Pat Walters

 with mixing help from - Jeremy Bloom

 Fact-checking by - Diane A. Kelly

 and Edited by - Alex Neason and Pat Walters

EPISODE CITATIONS:

Articles - 

 A Rabbit, is a rabbit, is a rabbit… Not under the Law • (
https://zpr.io/ezUPRE36VZVk • ) by Schaffner, J. E. in 
The Global Journal of Animal Law
 Animal Rights Activists Are Acquitted in Smithfield Piglet Case • (
https://zpr.io/ayaV9gDneNsw • ) by Andrew Jacobs in 
The New York Times
 Meet the Activists Risking Prison to Film VR in Factory Farms • (
https://zpr.io/HEXdpf5Q7VAB • ) by Andy Greenberg in 
Wired

Audio - 

 VR Puts Viewers Inside the Grisly Reality of Factory Farms • (
https://zpr.io/pMHq5RVkzUM3 • ) a 2-part podcast by 
Wired

Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. 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.

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What is a Pig Worth?

For much of history, tree canopies were pretty much completely ignored by science. It was as if researchers said collectively, "It's just going to be empty up there, and we've got our hands full studying the trees down here! So why bother?"

But then around the mid-1980s, a few ecologists around the world got curious and started making their way up into the treetops using any means necessary (ropes, cranes, hot air dirigibles) to document all they could find. It didn't take long for them to realize not only was the forest canopy not empty, it was absolutely filled to the brim with life. You've heard of treehouses? How about tree gardens?! 

This week, we bring you a story we first released in 2022. We journey up into the sky and discover forests above the forest. We learn about the secret powers of these sky gardens from ecologist Korena Mafune, and we follow Nalini Nadkarni as she makes a ground-breaking discovery that changes how we understand what trees are capable of. 

P.S. This episode is a layer cake of arboreal surprises (including the reappearance of a certain retired host. 

LATERAL CUTS:
From Tree to Shining Tree (https://zpr.io/4cHtDdYTuNxT): The episode that started this journey, where we look down instead of up.

EPISODE CREDITS: 

 Reported by - Annie McEwen

 Produced by - Annie McEwen

EPISODE CITATIONS:

Videos - 

Inside the Fight to Save an Ancient Forest (and the Secrets it Holds) (https://zpr.io/XKipP2z4NFiM), by Michael Werner, Joe Hanson, and the PBS Overview team. We first learned about the magical world of the canopy from this beautiful video. It features Korena Mafune’s research up in the treetops, as well as the people who have dedicated their lives to saving what’s left of the old growth forests. We highly recommend checking it out! 

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.

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Forests on Forests

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.

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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.

 
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Worth

Lyt når som helst, hvor som helst

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