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by Jad Abumrad & Robert KrulwichFrom WNYC, New York Public Radio, its Radio Lab. Radio Lab® is an investigation. Each episode is a patchwork of people, sounds, stories and experiences centered around One Big Idea. On RadioLab, science bumps into culture... information sounds like music.
Recent podcasts
Musical Language (Radio Lab)
25/09/2007
What is music? How does it work? Why does it move us? Why are some people better at it than others? In this hour, we examine the line between language and music, how the brain processes sound, and we meet a composer who uses computers to capture the musical DNA of dead composers in order to create new work. We also re-imagine the disastrous 1913 debut of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring…through the lens of modern neurology.
Detective Stories (Radio Lab)
11/09/2007
Forensics, archeology, genealogy, and genetics are devoted to figuring out what really happened. In this hour, we hear surprising stories of playing detective, and find that what really happened in the past is not always what you'd expect. We start at a trash dump in Egypt, where we find Jesus, Satan, sissies, and porn. Next, the mystery of how hundreds of old letters written to the same woman were discovered on the side of Route 101. And lastly, a blood sampling tour of Asia reveals a prolific baby-maker and a potential world conqueror.
This is Your Brain On Love (Radio Lab)
28/08/2007
Radio Lab is given the charge to put on a Singles Night. That's right. "Jad," they said, "stand on a stage and make strangers fall in love! Or, at least, you know, exchange a few phone numbers with each other." So obviously, we turned to science. Jad consults a few experts on the chemistry of a "brain on love."
Emergence (Radio Lab)
14/08/2007
What happens when there is no leader? Starlings, bees, and ants manage just fine. In fact, they form staggeringly complicated societies, all without a Toscanini to conduct them into harmony. How? That’s our question this hour. We gaze down at the bottom-up logic of cities, Google, even our very own brains. Featured: author Steven Johnson, fire-flyologists John and Elizabeth Buck, biologist E.O. Wilson, Ant expert Debra Gordon, mathematician Steve Strogatz, economist James Surowiecki, and neurologists Oliver Sacks and Christof Koch.
Beyond Time (Radio Lab)
24/07/2007
Einstein's Theory of Relativity may have implications on the concept of choice. Namely, that there is none. Do we choose what movie to see tonight? No. (It's already been chosen, some say.) Do we choose to wiggle our finger? No. (Already wiggled.) This hour of Radio Lab features conversations with scientists and an entire cast of characters who are all waging battle against time – or at least the common sense view of time. We'll visit a particle accelerator where scientists recreate the moment just after the beginning of time...and also a Dublin artist whose life is a 19 century time-experiment. We end in the Mojave desert, where geologic time flows like a frozen hourglass.
