Radiolab

By 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 someo... more

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FAQs about Radiolab:

How many episodes does Radiolab have?

The podcast currently has 679 episodes available.

Radiolab episodes:

April 03, 2026Life in a Barrel
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 [email protected].

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.
...more
55min
March 27, 2026Antibiotic Apocalypse
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 [email protected]

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 [email protected].

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.
...more
1h 2min
March 20, 2026 Staph Retreat
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 [email protected].

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.
...more
32min
March 13, 2026Return of the Flesh-Eaters
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 [email protected].
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.
...more
43min
March 06, 2026Snail Sex Tape
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 [email protected].
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.
...more
30min
February 27, 2026 Black Box
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 [email protected].

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.
...more
1h 6min
February 20, 2026Gray's Donation
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 [email protected].
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.
...more
28min
February 13, 2026Time is Honey
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 [email protected].
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.
...more
39min
February 06, 2026 Kleptotherms
In this episode, we break the thermometer and watch the mercury spill out as we discover that temperature is far stranger than it seems. We first ran this episode in 2021: Five stories that run the gamut from snakes to stars. We start out underwater, with a species of snake that has evolved a devious trick for keeping warm. Then we hear the tale of a young man whose seemingly simple method of warming up might be the very thing making him cold. And Senior Correspondent Molly Webster blows the lid off the idea that 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit is a sound marker of health.
EPISODE CREDITS:
Reported by - Lulu Miller and Molly Webster
Produced by - Becca Bressler, Lulu Miller and Molly Webster
with help from - Carin Leong
Fact-checking by - Emily Krieger

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 [email protected].

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.
...more
45min
January 30, 2026Song of the Cerebellum
One spring evening in 2024, a science journalist named Rachel Gross bombed at karaoke. The culprit was a bleed in a fist-sized clump of neurons tucked down in the back of her brain called the cerebellum. A couple weeks later, her doctors took a bit of it out, assuring her it was just helping her with motor coordination — she might be a bit clumsy for a while, but she’d still be herself. But afterwards, she didn't feel like herself. So she dove into the dusty basement of the brain (and brain science) to figure out why. What Rachel found was a burgeoning new frontier in neuroscience. We learn what singing Shakira on stage has to do with reaching for a cup of coffee — and how the surprising relationship between the two is making us rethink what we think about thinking.
Special thanks to Warzone Karaoke at Branded Saloon, Dr. Joanne Loewy and the Singing Together, Measure by Measure choir at the Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine (http://musicandmedicine.org/) at Mount Sinai Union Square, Dag Spicer and the Computer History Museum, Désirée Lie, Mark Gross, Daniel A. Gross, Brittany Aguilar, and, of course, Shakira.
EPISODE CREDITS:
Reported by - Rachel Gross
Produced by - Sindhu Gnanasambandan

EPISODE CITATIONS:
Articles -
“Ignoring the cerebellum is hindering progress in neuroscience.” (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39934082/), by Wang et al, 2025
“The cerebellum and cognition.” (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29997061/), by Schmahmann JD. Neurosci Lett. 2019
“How did brains evolve?” (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11805823/), by Barton RA., Nature. 2002
Books -
Vagina Obscura (https://www.rachelegross.com/book), by Rachel E. Gross
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 [email protected].
Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
...more
43min

FAQs about Radiolab:

How many episodes does Radiolab have?

The podcast currently has 679 episodes available.

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