Paul’s favorite podcasts

Humans love to solve problems. In this hour of Radiolab, diagnosis--our attempt to find out what's wrong, and give it a label.

In this day and age, we have astonishing technology--chemicals and computers and machines that can pinpoint things imperceptible to our senses. But humans aren't obsolete--intuition and creativity still lead the way both in discovering the nature of the problem, and in dealing with that knowledge.

***Putting Together the Puzzle

***The Frowners

***How To Cure What Ails You

[December 29, 2008]

Blood-thirsty Romans, frozen carcasses, wild jaguars, and a question: how do you build a better cage?

In a cruel trick of evolution, humans can stand just three feet from a ferocious animal and still be perfectly safe. This hour, Radiolab goes to the zoo.

What's with our need to get close to "wildness"? We examine where we stand in this paradox--starting with the Romans, and ending in the wilds of Belize, staring into the eyes of a wild jaguar.

***Inside Out Cage

***Dead or Alive

***Wild Eyes

[June 3, 2007]

In this hour of Radiolab, we examine the line between language and music.

What is music? Why does it move us? How does the brain process sound, and why are some people better at it than others?

We re-imagine the disastrous debut of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in 1913 through the lens of modern neurology, and we meet a composer who uses computers to capture the musical DNA of dead composers in order to create new work. 

***Behaves So Strangely

***Sound As Touch

***Musical DNA

[September 23, 2007]

In the 60’s, space exploration was an American obsession. This hour, we chart the path from romance to increasing cynicism.

We begin with Ann Druyan, widow of Carl Sagan, with a story about the Voyager expedition, true love, and a golden record that travels through space. And astrophysicist Neil de Grasse Tyson explains the Coepernican Principle, and just how insignificant we are.

***Looking Up

***It's Not About You

***Holding Moonbeams in Your Hand

[October 21, 2007]

With new research demonstrating the startling power of the placebo effect, this hour of Radiolab examines the chemical consequences of belief and imagination.

Could the best medicine be no medicine at all? We take stock of the pharmacy in our brains, consider the symbolic power of the doctor coat, and visit the tent of a self-proclaimed faith healer.

***Pinpointing the Placebo Effect

***The White Coat

***Faith Healers

[May 17, 2007]

This hour of Radiolab: is death a disease that can be cured?

We filter the modern search for the fountain of youth through personal stories of witnessing death -- the death of a cell, the death of a loved one...and the aging of a society.

***Life's Limit

***Fountains of Youth

***Grandpa

[June 13, 2007]

What happens when there is no leader? Starlings, bees, and ants manage just fine. In fact, they form staggeringly complicated societies -- all without a Toscanini to conduct them into harmony. This hour of Radiolab, we ask how this happens.

We gaze down at the bottom-up logic of cities, Google, and even our very own brains with fire-flyologists, ant experts, neurologists, a mathematician, and an economist.

***There is No Lord of the (Fire)Flies. We begin in Thailand, watching fireflies glow in glorious synchrony, lighting up miles of mangrove trees like Christmas trees.

***The Invisible Hand

***The Unconscious Toscanini of the Brain. How does the brain produce a thought? For neuroscientists, this is the Mount Everest of questions.

[August 13, 2007]

Jorge Luis Borges wrote, "Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire." And it’s still as close a definition as we have. This hour of Radiolab, we try our hand at unlocking the mysteries of time. We stretch and bend it, wrestle with its subjective nature, and wrap our minds around strategies to standardize it...stopping along the way at a 19th-century railroad station in Ohio, a track meet, and a Beethoven concert.

***Unlocking The Secrets of Time. We'll hear a recording of a baby becoming a young woman, in "Nancy Grows Up."

***It's All Relative

***Ruled By Time

[May 29, 2007]

The "mind" and "self" were formerly the domain of philosophers and priests. But in this hour of Radiolab, neurologists lead the charge on profound questions like "How does the brain make me?"

We stare into the mirror with Dr. Julian Keenan, reflect on the illusion of selfhood with British neurologist Paul Broks, and contemplate the evolution of consciousness with Dr. V. S. Ramachandran. Also: the story of woman who one day woke up as a completely different person.

***Where is that part that is "me"?

***The Story of Me

***I haven't been myself lately

[May 7, 2007]

This hour, Radiolab goes to the front lines with men and women who are battling against time -- or at least the common-sense view of time.

Einstein's Theory of Relativity may have implications on the concept of choice. Namely, that there is none. Do we choose what movie to see tonight? No. (It's already been chosen, some say.) Do we choose to wiggle our finger? No. (Already wiggled.) We'll visit a particle accelerator where scientists recreate the moment just after the beginning of time, and a Dublin artist whose life is a 19th-century time experiment. We end in the Mojave desert, where geologic time flows like a frozen hourglass.

***A Simpler Time

***No Special Now

***Mojave Road

[July 23, 2007]