In 1987, Gary Hart was a young charismatic Democrat, poised to win his party’s nomination and possibly the presidency. Many of us know the story of what happened next, and even if you don’t, it’s a familiar tale. Back in 2016, we examined how, when this happened, politicians and political reporters found themselves in uncharted territory. And with help from author Matt Bai, we looked at how the events of that May shaped the way we cover politics, and expanded our sense of what's appropriate when it comes to judging a candidate.

In the wake of the 2016 election, and in the throes of our current political moment, it would seem we’ve come full circle in the weirdest way. So we sat down with Brooke Gladstone, co-host of our sister show here at WNYC, On the Media, to talk about why sex scandals don’t matter anymore. 

We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons. This is your chance to make your mark on the heavens. Submit your name ideas now through September, or vote on your favorites starting in November: https://radiolab.org/moon

EPISODE CREDITS: 
Reported by - Simon Adler
with help from - Jamie York
Produced by - Simon Adler
Update produced by Rebecca Laks

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 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.

As dead as they seem, tree stumps are hubs of life and relationships. 

Co-host Lulu Miller is back with another season of her hit spinoff show Terrestrials, and to celebrate, we’re sharing the first episode with you. From stumps to snags, dead wood provides habitat for rodents, falcons, insects, and even humans. Stumps hold together the forest floor, give hunting perches to birds of prey in flatlands, prevent erosion and the encroachment of invasive species, usher in sunlight, provide nutrients, store renewable fuel, and hold onto stories human beings might have forgotten. Without these ghosts of trees past, nothing would be the same. Scottish author, artist and lover of tree stumps, Dr. Amanda Thomson, leads Lulu on a “tour de stumps,” a journey across space and time to learn about some of the most magical stumps on the planet.

We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons. This is your chance to make your mark on the heavens. Vote on your favorite names starting in November at https://radiolab.org/moon

Visit the Terrestrials website (https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab-kids/projects/terrestrials) 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.If you’d like to “badger” a future expert, suggest story ideas or feedback, email us at [email protected].

Listen to just the songs (https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab-kids/just-the-songs) from Terrestrials.

EPISODE CREDITS: 
Reported by - Ana González and Lulu Miller
with help from - Alan Goffinski  
Produced by - Ana González
Original music from - Alan Goffinski
Sound design by - Mira Burt-Wintonick
Mixing by - Joe Plourde
Fact-checking by - Natalie Middleton
and Edited by  - Mira Burt-Wintonick

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 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.

A mile under the ocean, we get to watch an octopus perform a heroic act of heart and determination.

First aired back in 2020, this episode follows the story of an octopus living one mile under the ocean as she performs a heroic act of heart and determination.

In 2007, Bruce Robison’s robot submarine stumbled across an octopus settling in to brood her eggs. It seemed like a small moment. But as he went back to visit her, month after month, what began as a simple act of motherhood became a heroic feat that has never been equaled by any known species on Earth. 

This episode was reported and produced by Annie McEwen. 

Special thanks to Kim Fulton-Bennett and Rob Sherlock at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. 

Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.  

If you need more ocean in your life, check out the incredible Monterey Bay Aquarium live cams (especially the jellies!): www.montereybayaquarium.org/animals/live-cams

Here’s a pic of Octomom sitting on her eggs (© 2007 MBARI), Nov. 1, 2007. 

We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons. This is your chance to make your mark on the heavens. Submit your name ideas now through September, or vote on your favorites starting in November: https://radiolab.org/moon

Sign-up 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 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.

Today we follow a sleuth who has spent over a decade working to solve an epic mystery hiding in plain historical sight: did anyone survive the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD? 

Tired of hearing the conventional narrative that every Pompeiian perished without any evidence to back it up, Classicist Steven Tuck decides to look into it himself. Although he is nearly two millennia late to ground zero, he uses all the available evidence to reimagine the disaster from the perspective of the people on the ground. Could anyone have survived the volcano? If they did, could they have survived what came after that: earthquakes, tsunamis, pumice stones hurtling like missiles from the sky? If someone did survive, what happened to them after that??! To find out we have to think, feel and possibly even eat like Ancient Romans. 

An against-all-odds story of a disaster without warning, a mass disappearance without a trace, and oddly, a particularly stinky fish sauce, care of special guest Chef Samin Nosrat. 

We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons. This is your chance to make your mark on the heavens. Submit your name ideas now through September, or vote on your favorites starting in November: https://radiolab.org/moon

EPISODE CREDITS: 

Reported by - Latif Nasser
with help from - Annie McEwen and Ekedi Fausther-Keys
Produced by - Annie McEwen
Recording help from - Adam Howell
Voice acting by - Brandon Dalton
Original music and sound design contributed by - Jeremy Bloom and Annie McEwen
with mixing help from - Arianne Wack
and Hosting Helo from - Sarah Qari
Fact-checking by - Emily Krieger
and Edited by  - Pat Walters

EPISODE CITATIONS:

Recipes -

Ancient Roman recipe for garum (https://zpr.io/gMNmXcNZUhZg).

Read more about garum here (https://zpr.io/4gh939TxCRpZ) or in Sally Grainger’s book The Story of Garum: Fermented Fish Sauce and Salted Fish in the Ancient World

Articles -

On Pliny's letters and the eruption including a reanalysis of the date of the eruption, Pedar Foss, Pliny and the Eruption of Vesuvius (https://zpr.io/kQH49ttRawNZ) 

Documentaries - 

A recent PBS documentary, Pompeii: The New Dig (https://zpr.io/LV9sWKc4vbQ8) including segments on Steven Tuck’s work.

Photos and Maps - 

To trace building locations or names of home owners as well as photos of every square inch of Pompeii: https://pompeiiinpictures.com/pompeiiinpictures/

From Steven Tuck: “If someone has an otherwise unbeatable case of insomnia, my preliminary publication of findings is in Reflections: Harbour City Deathscapes in Roman Italy and Beyond” (https://zpr.io/3pETS53A9CtF)

Brief description of the casts and casting process of the remains found at Pompeii: https://pompeiisites.org/en/pompeii-map/analysis/the-casts/

Maps of the Ancient Roman world that you can use to trace some of the land and sea routes discussed in the episode: https://orbis.stanford.edu

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, X, formerly 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.

This episode first aired back in December of 2013, and at the start of that new year, the team was cracking open fossils, peering back into ancient seas, and looking up at lunar skies only to find that a year is not quite as fixed as we thought it was.

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.

We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons. This is your chance to make your mark on the heavens. Submit your name ideas now through September, or vote on your favorites starting in November: https://radiolab.org/moon

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,X (formerly 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.

One man secretly hands off more and more of his life to an AI voice clone.

Today, we feature veteran journalist Evan Ratliff who - for his new podcast Shell Game - decided to slowly replace himself bit by bit with an AI voice clone, to see how far he could actually take it. Could it do the mundane phone calls he’d prefer to skip? Could it get legal advice for him? Could it go to therapy for him? Could it parent his kids? Evan feeds his bot the most intimate details about his life, and lets the bot loose in high-stakes situations at home and at work. Which bizarro version of him will show up? The desperately-agreeable conversationalist, the crank-yanking prank caller, the glitched out stranger who sounds like he’s in the middle of a mental breakdown, or someone else entirely? Will people believe it’s really him? And how will they act if they don’t? A gonzo journalistic experiment for the age of AI, that’s funny and eerie all at the same time.

We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons. This is your chance to make your mark on the heavens. Submit your name ideas now through September, or vote on your favorites starting in November: https://radiolab.org/moon

EPISODE CREDITS: 
Reported by - Evan Ratliff
Produced by - Sophie Bridges and Simon Adler
With help from - Evan Ratliff
Fact-checking by - Emily Krieger

EPISODE CITATIONS:
Audio:
If you want to listen to more of Evan’s Shell Game, you can do so here, https://www.shellgame.co/ 

Sign up 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 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.

First aired back in 2017, here’s a show of questions and, sometimes, answers. Cause, we get a lot of questions. Like, A LOT of questions. Tiny questions, big questions, short questions, long questions. Weird questions. Poop questions. We get them all.

And over the years, as more and more of these questions arrived in our inbox, what happened was, guiltily, we put them off to the side, in a bucket of sorts, where they just sat around, unanswered. But now, we’re dumping the bucket out.

Today, our producers pick up a few of the questions that spilled out of that bucket, and venture out into the great unknown to find answers to some of life's greatest mysteries: coincidences; miracles; life; death; fate; will; and, of course, poop.

We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons. This is your chance to make your mark on the heavens. Submit your name ideas now through September, or vote on your favorites starting in November: https://radiolab.org/moon

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 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.

February 1976. A flight out of California turned catastrophic when it crashed into a farm in rural Nebraska. What happened that night at the local hospital, and crucially, what went wrong, would inspire a global sea-change in how emergency rooms operate and fundamentally alter the way doctors think in a crisis.

Special thanks to Jody and Jay Upright, Heather Talbott, Dr. Ron Simon, Dr. John Sutyak, Dr. Paul Collicott, Irvene Hughe, Maimonides Medical Center, Karl Sukhia and Vanya Zvonar.

We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons. This is your chance to make your mark on the heavens. Submit your name ideas now through September, or vote on your favorites starting in November: https://radiolab.org/moon

EPISODE CREDITS: 
Reported by -  Avir Mitra
with help from - Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sarah Qari, Becca Bressler, Suzie Lechtenberg, Heather Radke and Ana Gonzalez
Produced by - Maria Paz Gutierrez, Becca Bressler and Pat Walters
with help from - Ana Gonzalez
Original music and sound design contributed by - Maria Paz Gutierrez and Jeremy Bloom
with mixing help from - Jeremy bloom
Fact-checking by - Diane Kelly
and Edited by  - Becca Bressler and Pat Walters

Sign up 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 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.

Given that we’re all gearing up for the Presidential race, and how gun rights and regulations are almost always centerstage during these times. Today, we’re re-releasing a More Perfect episode that aired just after the October 2017 Las Vegas shooting. It is an episode that attempts to make sense of our country’s fraught relationship with the Second Amendment.

For nearly 200 years of our nation’s history, the Second Amendment was an all-but-forgotten rule about the importance of militias. But in the 1960s and 70s, a movement emerged — led by Black Panthers and a recently-repositioned NRA — that insisted owning a firearm was the right of each and every American. So began a constitutional debate that only the Supreme Court could solve. That didn’t happen until 2008, when a Washington, D.C. security guard named Dick Heller made a compelling case.

We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons. This is your chance to make your mark on the heavens. Submit your name ideas now through September, or vote on your favorites starting in November: https://radiolab.org/moon.

Sign up 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 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.

Two scenes. In the first, a doctor gets a call — the hospital she works at is having an outbreak of unknown origin, in the middle of the worst wildfire season on record. In the second, an ecologist stands in a forest, watching it burn. Through very different circumstances, they both find themselves asking the same question: is there something in the smoke? This question will bring them together, and reveal – to all of us – a world we never saw before. 

This is the first episode in an ongoing series hosted by Molly Webster, in conversation with scientists and science-y people, doing work at the furthest edges of what we know. More to come! 

Special thanks to Leda Kobziar, at the University of Idaho, and Naomi Hauser, at the University of California, Davis. Plus, James and Shelby Kaemmerer, and Paula and John Troche.

We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons. This is your chance to make your mark on the heavens. Submit your name ideas now through September, or vote on your favorites starting in November: https://radiolab.org/moon

EPISODE CREDITS: 
Hosted and Reported by - Molly Webster
Produced by - Sindhu Gnanasambandan
Fact-checking by - Diane A. Kelly
and Edited by  - Pat Walters

EPISODE CITATIONS:

Articles - 

And lastly, wanna learn more about bacteria in snow-making machines – check out this New York Times article (https://zpr.io/t6HKi7HMuHMZ), or this science-explainer (https://zpr.io/VygRVBb5vspq)! 

Scientific Papers - 

Read Leda’s paper on microbes in smoke (https://zpr.io/d3JVm7gEf2dc)!

For more details on the outbreak at Naomi’s hospital, you can check out this abstract of her findings (https://zpr.io/DGgS9UCFicpJ). 

Leda was inspired to stick petri dishes into smoke after reading a science research paper written by a father-daughter team, as part of a high school science project in Texas. Go read it (https://zpr.io/D3LVMy2raLr9)! 

Audio - 

For further fungal listening, Radiolab and Molly have covered fungus and hospital outbreaks (https://radiolab.org/podcast/fungus-amungus) before (plus: dinosuars!), in our episode Fungus Amungus.

You can also listen to Super Cool (https://radiolab.org/podcast/super-cool-2017), a Radiolab episode about wild horses, microbes, and things freezing instantaneously. (It’s seriously one of Molly’s favorite Radiolab episodes and it has a moment of such SPONTANEOUS joy, she re-plays it at least once a year to smile.)

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 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.

We had a question back in 2007, about a thing every creature on the planet does--from giant humpback whales to teeny fruit flies. Why do we all sleep? What does it do for us, and what happens when we go without? We take a peek at iguanas sleeping with one eye open, get in bed with a pair of sleep-deprived new parents, and eavesdrop on the uneasy dreams of rats. 

We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with The International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons. This is your chance to make your mark on the heavens. Submit your name ideas now through September, or vote on your favorites starting in November: https://radiolab.org/moon

Sign up 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 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.