Radio Lab

Radiolab returns with a new season

Each hour we take a big idea, so big that it lives everywhere, hiding in a thousand places under different names, and we chase that idea, going wherever whim takes us. Along the way, hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich interview, argue, imagine, and discover the hidden connections which make this idea so surprisingly powerful. And the sounds you hear are as new and startling as the ideas we explore.

This season:

Tuesday March 3 – Choice
We turn up the volume on the voices in our heads and try to make sense of the babble. On a journey around the country to understand how emotion and logic interact to guide us through our options, we ponder how we get through the million choices and decisions we make every day.

Tuesday March 10 – Sperm
Why so many sperm? We turn to the animal kingdom to answer that question, which lands us on a tour of sperm battles in ducks, flying pig sperm, and promiscuous whippoorwills.

Tuesday March 17 – Race
When the human genome was first fully mapped in 2000, Bill Clinton, Craig Venter, and Francis Collins took the stage and pronounced that “The concept of race has no genetic or scientific basis.” Great words spoken with great intentions. But what does that mean and where does it leave us? It doesn’t seem to have wiped out our evolving conversation about race.

Tuesday March 24 – Diagnosis
Humans love to solve problems. In this day and age, we have astonishing technology available as tools to help us—chemicals and computers and machines that can pinpoint things imperceptible to humans. But humans aren’t quite obsolete. Intuition and creativity still lead the way both in discovering that nature of the problem, and in dealing with that knowledge.

Tuesday March 31 – Yellow Fluff and Other Curious Encounters
Ah, discovery. One of the great and noble pursuits of humankind. Also one of the most dangerous, frustrating, ego-driven, transcendent, sublime, dirty, long, demoralizing, inspiring……you get the idea. Why are inquiry and the pursuit of knowledge so seductive? We take a grand tour of characters and their stories of love and loss in the name of science.

It’s Technicolor radio. Radio Lab is produced by WNYC, New York.