Today, we splash into the Hudson River Park with our Songbud to meet all kinds of crabs. With Siddartha and Carrie from  the Hudson River Park, Alan puts on waterproof rubber overalls, gets his hands dirty in the river and dives into the secret lives of Hudson crabs.

Plus, CRAB WEEK is going on right now in New York City! It’s an annual shell-ebration that highlights the crabs of the Hudson River. Scuttle by for crabtastic activities throughout the park all week long! You’ll have the opportunity to try your hand at some crabby crafts, learn crabtivating facts and get your claws on a copy of our limited-edition Crab Week poster. Check out their entire shell-dule.

And join us on August 6th + 7th in Little Island for our full-day takeover of the park. Join us at 10am for Wilderness Wonderland featuring scavenger hunts, live music, and more – including our friends from the Hudson River Park who will be on site with live critters! At 5pm, we will be performing a LIVE podcast taping  all about  PIZZA! The show’s free. There will be pizza. Join if you’re in NYC (or make this the reason you visit). Check out all of our other performances here.

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Today we’re bringing you a live episode we taped in Boston. It’s about clam chowder. We’re sharing it now because we’re doing ANOTHER LIVE SHOW at Little Island in NYC on August 6th + 7th - and that one’s about PIZZA! The show’s free. There will be pizza. Join if you’re in NYC (or make this the reason you visit). Check out all of our other performances here.

Lulu is a Bostonian who has never had clam chowder. Read that again. For some reason it always felt gross to her. So as an extreme challenge, we’re taking a closer look at clam chowder to see if it can become wondrous. Ana and Alan break down each ingredient - milk, potatoes, and finally clams - with a concoction of stories and guests. Then, if she’s convinced of clam chowder’s magic, Lulu will try clam chowder for the first time in her life. 

You can watch a full video taping of this episode here. Listen if you love clam chowder, but especially if you’re a chowda doubta. 

Special thanks to scientist Rachel Hutchison from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Sea Grant for all of her clam knowledge and WBUR’s CitySpace for hosting this event. Hope to see you in New York City!  

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The Greenland shark is ugly. Its eyes look cloudy and dead. Its snout and fins are stubby. Its meat is poisonous. And that may be part of why most people have overlooked these sharks for so long. But there was a rumor circulating among Greenland villagers that this deepsea dweller could survive for centuries. Scientist John Steffensen went on a hunt to see if this was true and discovered that the Greenland shark can live for more than 500 years, making it the longest living vertebrate on the planet. Biologist Steve Austad explains how the shark avoids death for so long and discovers that its secret to longevity comes at a cost. It seems that to live a longer life, it opts out of some of the best stuff life has to offer: adventure, friends and companionship.

Terrestrials was created by Lulu Miller with WNYC Studios. This episode was produced by Brenna Farrel, and Mira Burt-Wintonick, with help from Alan Goffinski, Ana González, Tanya Chawla, Sarah Sandbach, Valentina Powers, and Joe Plourde. Fact-checking by Natalie Middleton. 

Our advisors are Ana Luz Porzecanski, Andy J. Pizza, Anil Lewis, Dominique Shabazz, Liza Demby, Princess Daazhraii Johnson and Tara Welty.

Learn more about storytellers, listen to music, and dig deeper into the stories you hear on Terrestrials with activities you can do at home or in the classroom on our website, Terrestrialspodcast.org. Badger us on social media: @radiolab   and #TerrestrialsPodcast or by emailing us at [email protected].

HEY GROWN-UPS!
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We’re doing a bunch of LIVE SHOWS at Little Island in NYC on August 6th-7th. For free. Come join! Check out all of our performances here.

Today we’re bringing you an episode we taped LIVE at The Greene Space at WNYC. In a room filled with all types of critters — scorpions, hissing cockroaches, a tarantula named Isabel and our main star… the jumping spider. Entomologist and bug lover Dr. Sebastian Echeverri tells us all about his love for the jumping spider’s dance moves. Lulu and the audience learn about the creepy crawlies, pet them and then EAT a bug-filled snack.

Special thanks to Dr. Sebastian Echeverri for all of his insect knowledge, musician Aviva Jaye for her beautiful harp composition, and Noor Shikari for preparing over 150 delicious grasshopper tacos for us. 

You can watch the full video taping of this episode here!

Check out Dr. Echeverri’s spider field guide Spiders of the United States and Canada.

If you ever find yourself in Brooklyn wanting to try some grasshopper tacos, check out Citrico on Washington Ave. 

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On the outskirts of the Nevada desert, a young dog named Hades jumped his fence and ran away from home. His family lost hope, until one night, they saw Hades on the news. For almost seven months, he had been sleeping, eating and howling with a pack of coyotes.

We usually view coyotes as vicious, bloodthirsty beasts. But turns out, they can be pretty friendly. They form unlikely alliances with other animals all the time. They’re so flexible they can eat almost anything and live everywhere from open prairies to city streets, where they lurk unseen like urban ghosts. 

Conservation scientist Christine Willkinson, or scrappy naturalist, tells us why a coyote’s scrappiness is its greatest superpower. In a world that rewards specialists, coyotes make a case for generalists - the ones not spectacular at any one thing, but just okay at everything. 

Plus, to find these ghosts in her own city, Lulu goes on an urban coyote hunt.

Learn more about coyote friendships:

Watch a video of a coyote eagerly waiting for its badger friend under a busy highway in the Santa Cruz mountains. (2020)

Watch this video of a raccoon and coyote becoming best friends.

Read about coyotes and ravens teaming up.

Watch a coyote and bobcat befriending each other in Florida. (2015)

Watch this unlikely friendship between a coyote and a cat. (Australia, 2019)

Terrestrials was created by Lulu Miller with WNYC Studios. This episode was produced by Ana González, Alan Goffinski, Mira Burt-Wintonick, Joe Plourde, Lulu Miller, and Sarah Sandbach, with help from Tanya Chawla and Natalia Ramirez. Fact checking was by Natalie Middleton. 

Our advisors this season are Ana Luz Porzecanski, Anil Lewis, Dominique Shabazz, and Liza Demby.

Support for Terrestrials also comes from the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and the John Templeton Foundation.

HEY GROWN-UPS!
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Coquí frogs are synonymous with Puerto Rican identity. Residents of the island doze off to the high-pitched calls of coquís from dusk to dawn. There are even playlists of hours of coquí calls that lull listeners to sleep. 

That’s why ProducerBud Ana, a proud Puerto Rican, was confused when she saw a poster calling for the eradication of coquí frogs at a Hawaiian airport. Turns out, residents of Hawaiʻi see coquís as a nuisance, disrupting not only their sleep but their precious ecosystems. 

Listen as Ana explores how different islands can view these frogs so differently, and how, despite all of our human efforts, they won’t stop singing. 

Special thanks to evolutionary biologist Ana Longo and professor Noelani Puniwai for telling us about coquí frogs.

Watch a coquí frog perform its call.

Listen to Puerto Rican sleep sounds. 

Terrestrials was created by Lulu Miller with WNYC Studios. This episode was produced by Ana González, Alan Goffinski, Mira Burt-Wintonick, Joe Plourde, Lulu Miller, and Sarah Sandbach, with help from Tanya Chawla and Natalia Ramirez. Fact checking was by Anna Pujol-Mazzini. 

Our advisors this season are Ana Luz Porzecanski, Anil Lewis, Dominique Shabazz, and Liza Demby.

Support for Terrestrials also comes from the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and the John Templeton Foundation.

HEY GROWN-UPS!
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Today we bring you a story stranger than fiction. In 2006, paleobiologist Natalia Rybczynski took a helicopter to a remote Arctic island near the North Pole, spending her afternoons scavenging for ancient treasures on the ground. One day, she found something the size of a potato chip. Turns out, it was a three and a half million year old chunk of bone. SPOILER ALERT BELOW.

Keep reading if you’re okay with us spoiling the surprise.

It’s a camel! Yes, the one we thought only hung out in deserts. Originally from North America, the camel trotted around the globe and went from snow monster to desert superstar. We go on an evolutionary tour of the camel’s body and learn how the same adaptations that help a camel in a desert also helped it in the snow. Plus, Lulu even meets one in the flesh. 

Special thanks to Latif Nasser for telling us this story. It was originally a TED Talk where he brought out a live camel on stage. Thank you also to Carly Mensch, Juliet Blake, Anna Bechtol, Stone Dow, Natalia Rybczynski and our camel man, Shayne Rigden. If you are in Wisconsin, you can go meet his camels at Rigden Ranch. And follow his delightful TikTok @rigdenranch to see camels in the snow!  

Terrestrials was created by Lulu Miller with WNYC Studios. This episode was produced by Ana González, Alan Goffinski, Mira Burt-Wintonick, Joe Plourde, Lulu Miller, and Sarah Sandbach, with help from Tanya Chawla and Natalia Ramirez. Fact checking by Anna Pujol-Mazzini. 

Our advisors this season are Ana Luz Porzecanski, Anil Lewis, Dominique Shabazz, and Liza Demby.

Support for Terrestrials also comes from the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and the John Templeton Foundation.

HEY GROWN-UPS!
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Farts. Trouser trumpets. Sulfur squeaks. Or toots, as Lulu insists on calling them. Smelly bubbles of air we don’t like to talk about. But Songbud Alan and Producerbud Ana are not ones to shy away from the stinky sidelines of science. 

First, they take us to a concert hall to meet a FARTchestra and hear how behind some of the world’s greatest works of art lies the power of farts. Next Dr. Juan Pablo Zhenlio takes us through the ecosystem of human digestion, meeting trillions of microscopic organisms to learn why we fart. Then we jump into the world of animal farts. What do snake farts sound like? Manatees? Cows? Chimpanzees? Birds? 

Finally we ask the most important question of all: What would happen to the planet if we stopped farting? 

For more on toots, read Dani Rabiotti and Nick Caruso’s book Does it Fart? The Definitive Field Guide to Animal Flatulence.

Special thanks to the Brown University Orchestra, Dr. Juan Pablo Zhenlio, Dani Rabaiotti and Nick Caruso. 

Terrestrials was created by Lulu Miller with WNYC Studios. This episode was produced by Ana González, Mira Burt-Wintonick, Alan Goffinski, Joe Plourde, Lulu Miller, and Sarah Sandbach, with help from Tanya Chawla. Fact checking was by Natalie Middleton. 

Our advisors this season are Ana Luz Porzecanski, Anil Lewis, Dominique Shabazz, and Liza Demby.

Support for Terrestrials also comes from the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and the John Templeton Foundation.

HEY GROWN-UPS!
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Rats have a bad reputation. They’ve been called evil, terrifying and wicked. The lowliest and most abominable of creatures. Songbud Alan felt the same way until he heard of one rat from Tanzania named Magawa. We meet Pendo, Magawa’s human friend and trainer, who wanted to train Magawa for a battlefield of sorts. A battle to save human lives. 

You see, some countries have explosive landmines placed there during war. When the war is over, the landmines remain, meaning people continue to live in danger, afraid they might step on one. Pendo hoped to train Magawa to use his rat superpowers to sniff out the dangerous landmines and rescue these communities.

Special thanks to everyone at APOPO, especially Pendo Masgu, Said Mshana and Lily Shalom. Thanks also to Kathleen Corradi, Cedric Simmons of ALA Environmental Services, and Olivia Bensimon and Jake Offenhartz of the Street Leather zine for inspiring the Rat Story Hotline. Biggest thanks to Alana and Jen, board members of foster rescue organization Helping All Little Things, for helping us record with nine rats in our studio.  

Terrestrials was created by Lulu Miller with WNYC Studios. This episode was produced by Ana González, Mira Burt-Wintonick, Alan Goffinski, Joe Plourde, Lulu Miller, and Sarah Sandbach, with help from Tanya Chawla. Fact checking by Anna Pujol-Mazzini. 

Our advisors this season are Ana Luz Porzecanski, Anil Lewis, Dominique Shabazz, and Liza Demby.

Support for Terrestrials also comes from the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and the John Templeton Foundation.

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

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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!

Terrestrials returns Thursday, April 17th with a brand-new season!

This spring, we’re diving into the wonderfully weird. Get ready to meet some of the fiercest, strangest creatures on Earth—from Hawaiian jungle goblins to New York City’s elusive sewer beasts to nine-foot-tall misunderstood snow monsters. When we take a closer look at the creatures we usually fear, we often discover a little magic, wonder, even friendship!

Join host Lulu Miller and Songbud Alan Goffinski for our wildest season yet—a nature walk packed with jaw-dropping stories, unforgettable guests, and original music. Listen with your family, or just by yourself. Either way, you're in for an adventure.

New episodes drop every Thursday starting April 17th—keep your eyes on the feed!

HEY GROWN-UPS!
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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!