Radiolab

Imagine that you're a composer. Imagine getting the commission to write a song that will allow family members to face the death of a loved one.

On this Radiolab/WNYC Special, we explore the impact and influence of Wagner's Ring Cycle on the Metropolitan Opera's 2004 Presentation.

104 years ago this week, Wilbur and Orville Wright managed to coax their spruce biplane off the North Carolina sand for twelve seconds, and those twelve seconds started a revolution in flight. We examine the human desire to fly, and how getting flight changed us.

This week, a look at the different ways that people connect to each other, and how they act once they’re together. NOTE: This episode contains EXPLICIT language about sex.

How would you describe life on Earth to an alien? In 1977, the Voyager spacecraft launched into space. And with it, went the Golden Record-- a sort time capsule, a collection of sounds and images that would describe life on Earth to whomever or whatever might find it.

In spring of 2006, Jad and Robert took the stage at the SoHo Apple Store to talk about the making of Radiolab. Jad geeks out on the nitty-gritty of digital sound editing, and Robert discusses the editorial questions raised in creating imaginative soundscapes. And film editor Walter Murch weighs in on the components of storytelling.

In this hour of Radiolab, we examine the line between language and music.

Forensics, archeology, genealogy, and genetics are devoted to figuring out what really happened. In this hour of Radiolab, digging up the past leads to some very unexpected finds.

Radiolab 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.'   For more information about this episode go here.

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. This hour of Radiolab, we ask how this happens.

Where does our sense of right and wrong come from?

This hour, Radiolab goes to the front lines with men and women who are battling against time -- or at least the common-sense view of time.

This hour of Radiolab: is death a disease that can be cured?

This hour of Radiolab, a look behind the curtain of how memories are made...and forgotten.

In a cruel trick of evolution, humans can stand just three feet from a ferocious animal and still be perfectly safe. This hour, Radiolab goes to the zoo.

Jorge Luis Borges wrote, "Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire." And it’s still as close a definition as we have. This hour of Radiolab, we try our hand at unlocking the mysteries of time. We stretch and bend it, wrestle with its subjective nature, and wrap our minds around strategies to standardize it...stopping along the way at a 19th-century railroad station in Ohio, a track meet, and a Beethoven concert.

Birds do it, bees do it...yet science still can't answer the basic question: why do we sleep?

With new research demonstrating the startling power of the placebo effect, this hour of Radiolab examines the chemical consequences of belief and imagination.

The "mind" and "self" were formerly the domain of philosophers and priests. But in this hour of Radiolab, neurologists lead the charge on profound questions like "How does the brain make me?"

Stress may save your life if you're being chased by a tiger. But if you're stuck in traffic, it may be more likely to make you sick. This hour, a long hard look at the body's system for getting out of trouble.