The Experiment

By The Atlantic and WNYC Studios

Society & Culture History

What's The Experiment about?

Each week, we tell the story of what happens when individual people confront deeply held American ideals in their own lives. We're interested in the cultural and political contradictions that reveal who we are.

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The End of This Experiment

06.02.2022

The Experiment is coming to an end. For our final episode, we contemplate our strange, sometimes beautiful, often frustrating country. We go back to some of the people we met and fell in love with while making the show, and ...

The Experiment episodes:

06.02.2022 The End of This Experiment The Experiment is coming to an end. For our final episode, we contemplate our strange, sometimes beautiful, often frustrating country. We go back to some of the people we met and fell in love with while making the show, and ...
05.27.2022 The Experiment Introduces: How To Start Over With Olga Khazan In The Atlantic’s new series How To Start Over, Olga Khazan takes listeners on a journey of reinvention. How To Start Over is your guide to navigating life’s gray areas, whether knowing it’s time to make a career switch, repairing ...
05.26.2022 The 50-Square-Mile Zone Where the Constitution Doesn't Apply Deep in Yellowstone National Park, there’s a glitch in the U.S. Constitution where, technically, you could get away with murder. Lawmakers didn’t seem interested in fixing the problem until Mike Belderrain stumbled into the “Zone of Death” while hunting the ...
05.19.2022 Fighting to Remember Mississippi Burning In June 1964, at the height of the civil-rights movement, the Ku Klux Klan burned a Black Methodist church to the ground in the town of Philadelphia, Mississippi, and murdered three civil-rights workers in cold blood. This crime became one ...
05.12.2022 Teenage Life After Genocide At 19 years old, Aséna Tahir Izgil feels wise beyond her years. She is Uyghur, an ethnic minority persecuted in China, and few of her people have escaped to bear witness. After narrowly securing refuge in the United States, Aséna’s ...
05.05.2022 Judge Judy’s Law Almost 30 years ago, a fed-up Manhattan-family-court judge named Judith Sheindlin was sitting in her chambers when she got a call from a couple of television producers. They pitched her the idea for a TV show with Judy at its ...
04.28.2022 The Experiment introduces Dead End: A New Jersey Political Murder Mystery The Experiment introduces WNYC colleague Nancy Solomon's new podcast: Dead End: A New Jersey Political Murder Mystery New Jersey politics is not for the faint of heart. But the brutal killing of John and Joyce Sheridan, a prominent couple with ...
04.22.2022 The Resurgence of the Abortion Underground There’s a common story about abortion in this country, that people have only two options to intentionally end a pregnancy: the clinic or the coat hanger. They can choose the safe route that’s protected by Roe v. Wade—a doctor in ...
04.14.2022 Should We Return National Parks to Native Americans? The national-park system has been touted as “America’s best idea.” David Treuer, an Ojibwe historian and the author of The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America From 1890 to the Present, says we can make that idea even better—by giving ...
04.07.2022 Who Belongs in the Cherokee Nation? From the time she was a little girl, Marilyn Vann knew she was Black and she was Cherokee. But when she applied for citizenship in the Cherokee Nation as an adult, she was denied. What followed was a journey into ...
03.24.2022 The Helen Keller Exorcism The fantasy writer Elsa Sjunneson has been haunted by Helen Keller for nearly her entire life. Elsa is Deafblind, and growing up, she couldn’t escape the constant comparisons. Then, a year ago, an online conspiracy theory claiming that Keller was ...
03.17.2022 An Engineer Tries to Build His Way Out of Tragedy James Sulzer has always loved building things. As a rehabilitation engineer, he spent years creating devices that he hoped would help patients recover from serious brain trauma such as strokes. And he believed strongly in the potential of rehab technology—that ...
03.10.2022 One American Family’s Debt to Ukraine As Putin invaded Ukraine last month, the Atlantic writer Franklin Foer found the Russian leader’s justification for violence uncanny. Putin referred to the “Nazification” of Ukraine—a distortion of history at best. But Franklin was told a similar story his whole ...
02.24.2022 Just Put Some Vicks on It The Experiment host Julia Longoria has always had a special relationship with Vicks Vaporub—the scent transports her right back to childhood, to days in bed with the flu at her grandmother’s house in South Florida. Julia and her cousins all ...
02.17.2022 El Sueño de SPAM Who are the people who make modern-day SPAM possible? You can find clues on the streets of downtown Austin, Minnesota. On weekend nights, across the street from the SPAM Museum, a Latin dance club fills with Spanish-speaking patrons. A taco ...
02.10.2022 Cram Your SPAM SPAM is at the center of one of the longest and most contentious labor battles in U.S. history. In 1985, workers at the Hormel Foods plant in Austin, Minnesota, went on strike, demanding better working conditions and stable wages. Generations ...
02.03.2022 Uncle SPAM During World War II, wherever American troops spread democracy, they left the canned meat known as SPAM in its wake. When American GIs landed overseas, they often tossed cans of SPAM out of trucks to the hungry people they sought ...
01.27.2022 SPAM on the Range America, shall I compare thee to a can of SPAM? Thou art more decadent, salty and sweet, container of even greater mystery. In this three-part series, some of the meatiest questions the United States faces about how we work for ...
12.16.2021 In Between Pro-life and Pro-choice Rebecca Shrader had always thought that abortion was morally wrong. As a devout Baptist Christian, she volunteered at a clinic designed to discourage women from getting abortions. And when she got pregnant for the first time, she knew she would ...
12.09.2021 Protecting the Capitol One Year After January 6 On January 6, 2021, William J. Walker was head of the D.C. National Guard. He had buses full of guardsmen in riot gear ready to deploy in case Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally turned dangerous. But when rioters violently ...
12.02.2021 Is There Justice in Felony Murder? This week, The Experiment takes a look at the charge that sent Anissa Jordan to prison for a crime she didn’t even know had been committed. We consider how the felony-murder rule disproportionately punishes youth of color and women, and ...
11.25.2021 The Wandering Soul As the Vietnam War dragged on, the U.S. military began desperately searching for any vulnerability in its North Vietnamese enemy. In 1964, it found one: an old Vietnamese folktale about a ghost, eternal damnation, and fear—a myth that the U.S. ...
11.18.2021 How ‘Passing’ Upends a Problematic Hollywood History Hollywood has a long history of “passing movies”—films in which Black characters pass for white—usually starring white actors. Even as these films have attempted to depict the devastating effect of racism in America, they have trafficked in tired tropes about ...
11.11.2021 A Friend in the Execution Room Was anybody willing to be a spiritual adviser to a Muslim man on death row? That’s the question that went out by email to a local group of interfaith leaders in Indiana. Nobody answered. After a week without responses, the ...
10.28.2021 What Does It Mean to Give Away Our DNA? Just as the Navajo researcher Rene Begay started to fall in love with the field of genetics, she learned that the Navajo Nation had banned all genetic testing on tribal land. Now she is struggling to figure out what the ...
10.21.2021 Justice, Interrupted Last week, Justice Sonia Sotomayor announced that the Supreme Court had broken with tradition and changed its rules for oral argument. This came after a study revealed that women are disproportionately interrupted by men in the highest court in America. ...
10.14.2021 Who Would Jesus Mock? The satire site The Babylon Bee, a conservative Christian answer to The Onion, stirred controversy when some readers mistook its headlines for misinformation. In this episode, The Atlantic’s religion reporter Emma Green sits down with the editor in chief, Kyle ...
10.07.2021 The True Cost of Prison Phone Calls Ashley C. Ford was just a baby when her father was sentenced to 30 years behind bars. Prison phone calls—a $1.4 billion industry in the United States—were often prohibitively expensive for her family, so Ford maintained a fragmentary relationship with ...
09.23.2021 The Original Anti-Vaxxer This week, President Joe Biden rolled out a large-scale federal mandate requiring COVID-19 vaccinations for two-thirds of the American workforce, impacting more than 100 million people across the public and private sectors. Some lawmakers have already called the mandate unconstitutional, ...
09.16.2021 The Unwritten Rules of Black TV The Atlantic staff writer Hannah Giorgis grew up in the ’90s, watching dozens of Black characters on TV. Living Single, Sister, Sister, Moesha, and Smart Guy were just a few of the shows led by Black casts. But at some ...
09.09.2021 What 9/11 Did to One Family On September 11, 2001, Bobby McIlvaine was killed, along with nearly 3,000 other Americans. In the 20 years since, his parents and brother have searched for ways to live through, and with, their grief. The writer Jennifer Senior’s brother was ...
08.19.2021 A Uyghur Teen’s Life After Escaping Genocide Here in the United States, 19-year-old Aséna Tahir Izgil feels as though she’s a “grandma.” Aséna is Uyghur, an ethnic minority being imprisoned in labor camps by the Chinese government. The pain she witnessed before escaping in 2017 has aged ...
08.12.2021 Can America See Gymnasts for More Than Their Medals? Ever since Kerri Strug and the Magnificent Seven won Olympic gold in 1996, the U.S. women’s gymnastics team has been a point of pride for many Americans. But over the past five years, athletes have been coming forward with allegations ...
08.05.2021 Why Can’t We Just Forget the Alamo? The epic, oft-told origin story of Texas centers on the Lone Star State’s most infamous battle: the Battle of the Alamo, where American heroes such as Davy Crockett fought to the death against the Mexican army to secure Texas’s independence. ...
07.29.2021 The Myth of the ‘Student Athlete’ In June, the Supreme Court issued a narrow ruling on college sports: Student athletes will now be able to receive educational benefits such as free laptops and paid internships. The decision may have seemed relatively small, but in this episode ...
07.22.2021 The Hate-Crime Conundrum Hate crimes in the United States have reached their highest levels in more than a decade, prompting bipartisan support for legislation to combat them and increased resources for law enforcement. But the recent COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act has spurred resistance ...
07.15.2021 The Great Seed Panic of 2020 Last summer, an unexplained phenomenon gripped nightly newscasts and Facebook groups across America: Unsolicited deliveries of obscurely labeled seed packages, seemingly from China, were being sent to Americans’ homes. Recipients reported the packages to local police, news stations, and agriculture ...
07.08.2021 America Has a Drinking Problem From the Pilgrims’ arrival at Plymouth Rock to the rise of the pandemic “quarantini,” alcohol has been a foundation of American society and culture. The Atlantic's Kate Julian explores how this tool for cohesion and cooperation eventually became a means ...
06.24.2021 Dr. Ruth on Hot Vax Summer The COVID-19 pandemic shattered social norms around physical closeness and intimacy. As the world reopens, how do we learn to touch other people again—even in normal, everyday ways? The Atlantic staff writer Emma Green seeks advice from the iconic sex ...
06.17.2021 Life, Liberty, and Drugs The Columbia professor Carl Hart spent his career studying the effects of drugs, and uses heroin himself. In his book Drug Use for Grown-Ups, he argues that not only can drug use be safer, but that it’s our right. This ...
06.10.2021 The Ashes on the Lawn In the face of death, grief, and indifference, what can people do to make a change? In trying to understand a year of tragedy and conflict, correspondent Tracie Hunte looks back 30 years to explore the U.S. AIDS epidemic and ...
05.27.2021 One Woman’s Quest for an Orgasm Katharine Smyth is 39 years old and has never, to her knowledge, had an orgasm. This fact didn’t worry her very much until her 30s, when a divorce and a series of dates with frustrated men made her think she ...
05.20.2021 How the Evangelical World Turned on Itself Lecrae Moore came up in a Christian culture deeply entwined with politics: Evangelicals were Republicans, and Republicans were evangelicals. As a Black college student, he found a sense of belonging in Bible study. His mentors and community were predominantly white ...
05.13.2021 How The Evangelical Machine Got Made These days, everyone assumes that this is just a fact of life: Evangelicals are Republicans, and Republicans are evangelicals. The powerful alliance culminated in the 2016 election of Donald Trump, tying the reputation of Christianity in America to the Trump ...
05.06.2021 Here for the Right Reasons? Lessons From '90 Day Fiancé' Dating shows often push contestants to extreme measures in pursuit of love. Reality-show producers will impose fake deadlines, physical obstacles, and manufactured drama to create the juiciest spectacle. But on TLC’s 90 Day Fiancé, a high-stakes and wildly popular reality ...
04.29.2021 What Makes a Murderer? One night in the spring of 2005, Anissa Jordan was sitting in a car in San Francisco while her boyfriend attempted to rob a young man nearby. Shortly after, police arrested both Anissa and her boyfriend. Anissa was detained and ...
04.22.2021 How RBG Became ‘Notorious’ In her fight for women’s rights, the then–ACLU lawyer Ruth Bader Ginsburg did something unexpected: She argued on behalf of men. “It didn’t matter to her if the plaintiff was a man or a woman,” says the Georgetown law professor ...
04.15.2021 The Problem With America’s National Parks The national-park system has been touted as “America’s best idea.” David Treuer, an Ojibwe author and historian, says we can make that idea even better—by giving national parks back to Native Americans. “By virtue of the parks returning to Native ...
04.01.2021 The ‘Rock Doc’ Who Prescribed 1.4 Million Pain Pills The patients of the nurse practitioner and aspiring reality star Jeffrey Young say he helped them like nobody else could. Federal prosecutors who charged him in a massive opioid bust say he overprescribed painkillers, often for “money, notoriety, and sexual ...
03.25.2021 The Crime of Refusing Vaccination In 1902, a Swedish American pastor named Henning Jacobson refused to get the smallpox vaccine. This launched a chain of events that landed the Massachusetts pastor in a landmark 1905 Supreme Court case in which the Court considered the delicate ...

Older episodes

The Experiment

What's The Experiment about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

The Experiment episodes:

The End of This Experiment

The Experiment Introduces: How To Start Over With Olga Khazan

The 50-Square-Mile Zone Where the Constitution Doesn't Apply

Fighting to Remember Mississippi Burning

Teenage Life After Genocide

Judge Judy’s Law

The Experiment introduces Dead End: A New Jersey Political Murder Mystery

The Resurgence of the Abortion Underground

Should We Return National Parks to Native Americans?

Who Belongs in the Cherokee Nation?

The Helen Keller Exorcism

An Engineer Tries to Build His Way Out of Tragedy

One American Family’s Debt to Ukraine

Just Put Some Vicks on It

El Sueño de SPAM

Cram Your SPAM

Uncle SPAM

SPAM on the Range

In Between Pro-life and Pro-choice

Protecting the Capitol One Year After January 6

Is There Justice in Felony Murder?

The Wandering Soul

How ‘Passing’ Upends a Problematic Hollywood History

A Friend in the Execution Room

What Does It Mean to Give Away Our DNA?

Justice, Interrupted

Who Would Jesus Mock?

The True Cost of Prison Phone Calls

The Original Anti-Vaxxer

The Unwritten Rules of Black TV

What 9/11 Did to One Family

A Uyghur Teen’s Life After Escaping Genocide

Can America See Gymnasts for More Than Their Medals?

Why Can’t We Just Forget the Alamo?

The Myth of the ‘Student Athlete’

The Hate-Crime Conundrum

The Great Seed Panic of 2020

America Has a Drinking Problem

Dr. Ruth on Hot Vax Summer

Life, Liberty, and Drugs

The Ashes on the Lawn

One Woman’s Quest for an Orgasm

How the Evangelical World Turned on Itself

How The Evangelical Machine Got Made

Here for the Right Reasons? Lessons From '90 Day Fiancé'

What Makes a Murderer?

How RBG Became ‘Notorious’

The Problem With America’s National Parks

The ‘Rock Doc’ Who Prescribed 1.4 Million Pain Pills

The Crime of Refusing Vaccination