In this short, writer Alex Bellos tells Robert how, from the very first time humans ever used numbers, we couldn’t help but give them human-like qualities. From favorite numbers to numbers that we’re suspicious of, from 501 jeans to Oxy 10, our feelings for these digits may all come down to some serious, subconscious inner-math….a deeply human arithmetic buried in our heart.

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We're cooking up something new and looking to get your feedback. Join our Radiolab for Kids listener panel by taking this 5 minute survey (https://airtable.com/shrjoLpn13qCHlXh0). We're listening and want to create more awesome stories for you and your families!

Radiolab’s newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and other fun ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!

Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support our show 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 [email protected].

Visit the Radiolab for Kids/Terrestrials website to learn more about the show, meet our team,  listen to the songs and discover fun activities, drawing prompts, music how-tos, and games that educators, parents, and families might enjoy together.

When the conservationists showed up at Clarice Gibbs’ door and asked her to take down her bird feeders down for the sake of an endangered bird, she said no. Everybody just figured she was a crazy bird lady. But writer Jon Mooallem went to see her and discovered there was much more to this story. Mrs. Gibbs tells us her surprising side of the tale, and together with Joe Duff, we struggle with the realization that keeping things wild in today's world will be harder than we ever would’ve thought.

We're cooking up something new and looking to get your feedback. Join our Radiolab for Kids listener panel by taking this 5 minute survey (https://airtable.com/shrjoLpn13qCHlXh0). We're listening and want to create more awesome stories for you and your families!

Radiolab’s newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and other fun ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!

Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support our show 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 [email protected].

Visit the Radiolab for Kids/Terrestrials website to learn more about the show, meet our team,  listen to the songs and discover fun activities, drawing prompts, music how-tos, and games that educators, parents, and families might enjoy together.

On a quiet, warm summer day, somewhere in the soil beneath your feet, tucked into a nearby plant, or at the edges of a pond, a tiny little cataclysm is happening: an insect is transforming, undergoing metamorphosis. The chrysalis is easily nature’s best known black box, but it turns out, it’s one of the least understood, and most complicated: when producer Molly Webster peers inside a pupa, she witnesses some of the most complex biology happening on earth...and catches sight of an ancient question of change.

Special thanks to Lynn Riddiford, over at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and to Father James Martin, S.J., editor at large for America magazine.

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We're cooking up something new and looking to get your feedback. Join our Radiolab for Kids listener panel by taking this 5 minute survey (https://airtable.com/shrjoLpn13qCHlXh0). We're listening and want to create more awesome stories for you and your families!

Radiolab’s newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and other fun ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!

Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support our show 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 [email protected].

Visit the Radiolab for Kids/Terrestrials website to learn more about the show, meet our team,  listen to the songs and discover fun activities, drawing prompts, music how-tos, and games that educators, parents, and families might enjoy together.

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.

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We're cooking up something new and looking to get your feedback. Join our Radiolab for Kids listener panel by taking this 5 minute survey (https://airtable.com/shrjoLpn13qCHlXh0). We're listening and want to create more awesome stories for you and your families!

Radiolab’s newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and other fun ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!

Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support our show 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 [email protected].

Visit the Radiolab for Kids/Terrestrials website to learn more about the show, meet our team,  listen to the songs and discover fun activities, drawing prompts, music how-tos, and games that educators, parents, and families might enjoy together.

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.

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We're cooking up something new and looking to get your feedback. Join our Radiolab for Kids listener panel by taking this 5 minute survey (https://airtable.com/shrjoLpn13qCHlXh0). We're listening and want to create more awesome stories for you and your families!

Radiolab’s newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and other fun ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!

Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support our show 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 [email protected].

Visit the Radiolab for Kids/Terrestrials website to learn more about the show, meet our team,  listen to the songs and discover fun activities, drawing prompts, music how-tos, and games that educators, parents, and families might enjoy together.

When Ian Frazier was a kid, he (like most 6-year-olds) mastered the art of tic tac toe. Pretty soon, every match was a draw, and the game lost its magic.

Then one day, many years later, he met a 6-year-old named Igor who lived deep in Siberia. On a whim, Ian drew a tic tac toe board in his notebook and showed it to Igor...who had no idea what it was. Ian taught him how to play, then joyfully went about clobbering his new opponent.

Then, Ian started asking around...and it turned out none of the Russians he talked to had heard of tic tac toe. Could it be that huge swaths of the globe just didn't play? Jad and Robert wanted to find out just how widespread this seemingly universal game really is--so they rallied listeners from all over the world to help them do some legwork.

Ian Frazier's most recent book is Travels in Siberia.

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We're cooking up something new and looking to get your feedback. Join our Radiolab for Kids listener panel by taking this 5 minute survey (https://airtable.com/shrjoLpn13qCHlXh0). We're listening and want to create more awesome stories for you and your families!

Radiolab’s newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and other fun ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!

Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support our show 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 [email protected].

Visit the Radiolab for Kids/Terrestrials website to learn more about the show, meet our team,  listen to the songs and discover fun activities, drawing prompts, music how-tos, and games that educators, parents, and families might enjoy together.

With the help of paleontologist Neil Shubin, reporter Emily Graslie and the Field Museum's Paul Mayer we discover that our world is full of ancient coral calendars. Each one of these sea skeletons reveals that once upon a very-long-time-ago, years were shorter by over forty days. And astrophysicist Chis Impey helps us comprehend how the change is all to be blamed on a celestial slow dance with the moon. 

Plus, Robert indulges his curiosity about stopping time and counteracting the spinning of the spheres by taking astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson on a (theoretical) trip to Venus with a rooster and sprinter Usain Bolt.

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We're cooking up something new and looking to get your feedback. Join our Radiolab for Kids listener panel by taking this 5 minute survey (https://airtable.com/shrjoLpn13qCHlXh0). We're listening and want to create more awesome stories for you and your families!

Radiolab’s newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and other fun ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!

Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support our show 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 [email protected].

Visit the Radiolab for Kids/Terrestrials website to learn more about the show, meet our team,  listen to the songs and discover fun activities, drawing prompts, music how-tos, and games that educators, parents, and families might enjoy together.

Reporter Ari Daniel visits with Willie Wilson, who studies phytoplankton--aka microscopic plant-like creatures--at Bigelow Laboratory in Maine. There's a war in Willie's test tubes. A certain sort of phytoplankton known as coccolithophores are engaged in a surprisingly complicated arms race with deadly viruses. A virus is problematic enough when you're a human. Now imagine being a single-cell plant and mixing it up with the hugest virus you've ever seen. The coccos (as we've taken to calling them) are outgunned, but they won't go down with out a serious fight.

Ari and Willie explain how our itsy-bitsy heroes take arms against (literally) a sea of troubles--and how this battle, and others like it, make life on Earth possible.

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We're cooking up something new and looking to get your feedback. Join our Radiolab for Kids listener panel by taking this 5 minute survey (https://airtable.com/shrjoLpn13qCHlXh0). We're listening and want to create more awesome stories for you and your families!

Radiolab’s newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and other fun ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!

Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support our show 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 [email protected].

Visit the Radiolab for Kids/Terrestrials website to learn more about the show, meet our team,  listen to the songs and discover fun activities, drawing prompts, music how-tos, and games that educators, parents, and families might enjoy together.

When we started reporting a fantastic, surreal story about one very cold night, more than 70 years ago, in northern Russia, we had no idea we'd end up thinking about cosmology. Or dropping toy horses in test tubes of water. Or talking about bacteria. Or arguing, for a year. Walter Murch (aka, the Godfather of The Godfather), joined by a team of scientists, leads us on what felt like the magical mystery tour of super cool science.

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We're cooking up something new and looking to get your feedback. Join our Radiolab for Kids listener panel by taking this 5 minute survey (https://airtable.com/shrjoLpn13qCHlXh0). We're listening and want to create more awesome stories for you and your families!

Radiolab’s newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and other fun ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!

Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support our show 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 [email protected].

Visit the Radiolab for Kids/Terrestrials website to learn more about the show, meet our team,  listen to the songs and discover fun activities, drawing prompts, music how-tos, and games that educators, parents, and families might enjoy together.

When we gaze into the eyes of a wild animal, or even a beloved pet, can we ever really know what they might be thinking? Is it naive to assume they're experiencing something close to human emotions? Or is it ridiculous to assume that they AREN'T feeling something like that?