Improv comedy puts uncertainty on center stage -- performers usually start by asking the audience for a prompt, then they make up the details as they go. But two actors in Chicago are taking this idea to its absolute limit, and finding ways to navigate the unknown.
When TJ Jagodowski and Dave Pasquesiget on stage they introduce themselves, work the crowd a bit ... and then, the lights go off. And when the lights come back on, they're just standing there, staring at each other. The audience is waiting, wondering what's going to happen. And so are TJ and Dave. There are no audience suggestions to kick off the show, there’s no plan -- TJ and Dave begin each night as a complete blank, without even a glimmer of an idea about who they're going to be for the next hour, where they'll find themselves, or what might happen with all those eyes on them. And yet, so far without fail, an elaborate, operatic, two-person play filled with incredibly rich characters and situations emerges. In this short, Robert Krulwich and producer Sean Cole talk to TJ and Dave about stepping into the unknown, take a peek into one of their performances, and discover a very unusual strategy for dealing with the stress of having no idea what's going to happen: just assume it’s been happening all along.
What if the moon were just a jump away? In this short, a beautiful answer to that question from Italo Calvino, read live by Liev Schreiber.
According to one theory, the moon formed when a Mars-sized chunk of rock collided with Earth. After the moon coalesced out of the debris from that impact, it was much closer to Earth than it is today. This idea is taken to it's fanciful limit in Italo Calvino's story "The Distance of the Moon" (from his collection Cosmicomics, translated by William Weaver). The story, narrated by a character with the impossible-to-pronounce name Qfwfq, tells of a strange crew who jump between Earth and moon, and sometimes hover in the nether reaches of gravity between the two.
This reading was part of a live event hosted by Radiolab and Selected Shorts, and it originally aired on WNYC’s and PRI’s SELECTED SHORTS, paired with a Ray Bradbury classic, “All Summer in a Day,” read by musical theater star Michael Cerveris. Hosted by BD Wong, you can listen to the full show here.
Every 17 years, a deafening sex orchestra hits the East Coast -- billions and billions of cicadas crawl out of the ground, sing their hearts out, then mate and die. In this short, Jad and Robert talk to a man who gets inside that noise to dissect its meaning and musical components.
While most of us hear a wall of white noise, squeaks, and squawks....David Rothenberg hears a symphony. He's trained his ear to listen for the music of animals, and he's always looking for chances to join in, with everything from lonely birds to giant whales to swarming cicadas.
In this podcast, David explains his urge to connect and sing along, and helps break down the mysterious life cycle and mating rituals of the periodical cicadas into something we can all relate to.
Enjoy a free download of our favorite track from David's CD Bug Music -- here's the description from the liner notes:
Katydid Prehistory: Named in honor of Archaboilus musicus, the 165 million year old prehistoric katydid, whose fossil remains reveal an ability to sing distinct pitches.
If you've ever wondered how the podcast comes together, or what it's like to work at Radiolab, here's a peek into our process.
If you're a fan of the show, help us make more Radiolab by making a contribution. Thanks so much, Radiolab couldn't exist without support from listeners like you!
Special thanks to David Fine and American Hipster. Their complete Radiolab video can be seen at americanhipsterpresents.com
This is the story of a three-year-old girl and the highest court in the land. The Supreme Court case Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl is a legal battle that has entangled a biological father, a heart-broken couple, and the tragic history of Native American children taken from their families.
When producer Tim Howard first read about this case, it struck him as a sad but seemingly straightforward custody dispute. But, as he started talking to lawyers and historians and the families involved in the case, it became clear that it was much more than that. Because Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl challenges parts of the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act, this case puts one little girl at the center of a storm of legal intricacies, Native American tribal culture, and heart-wrenching personal stakes.
UPDATE: The Supreme Court has made its ruling in Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl. Hear our update at the end of this episode.
Background and Reporting from a range of different perspectives
"Supreme Court hears Indian child custody case" Tulsa World article by Michael Overall which includes Dusten Brown's account of his break-up with Veronica's mother, and his understanding about his custodial rights. Plus photos of Dusten, Veronica, and Dusten's wife Robin in their Oklahoma home.
Americans remain dangerously uninformed about the basics of tribal sovereignty, and what it means for the relationship between the United States and Native tribes and nations.
A little girl is at the heart of a big case at the Supreme Court next week, a racially-tinged fight over Native American rights and state custody laws.
Marcia Zug's breakdown of the case (Marica Zug is an associate professor of law at the University of South Carolina School of Law who she specializes in family and American Indian law) "Doing What’s Best for the Tribe" for Slate:
Two-year-old “Baby Veronica” was ripped from the only home she’s known. The court made the right decision.
From Johnston Moore, an adoptive father of six children, three of whom are part Indian. (Moore is director and co-founder of Home Forever, and a founding member of the Coalition for the Protection of Indian Children & Families. NewsOK): "Some different talking points about Indian Child Welfare Act"
The desire to trace your way back to the very beginning, to understand everything -- whether it's the mysteries of love or the mechanics of the universe -- is deeply human. It might also be deeply flawed.
In this short, Jad and Robert talk to a writer and two physicists who are all grappling with versions of the same enormous question: is it possible to understand everything, or are we chasing an impossible dream... one built on questions that always lead to more questions?
Jenny Hollowell kicks things off with her gorgeous short story "A History of Everything, Including You." It's a powerful tale with a sweeping scope -- the history not just of one couple, but everything that led to them -- distilled into a poetic crush of just a few pages. The piece was born out of a sense of frustration Jenny felt about trying to account for "everything" in order to understand her life. And in many ways, her solution speaks to an eerily similar moment of uncertainty in physics. Inspired by an essay written by physicist and novelist Alan Lightman, Robert pays a visit to Brian Greene to ask if the latest developments in theoretical physics spell a crisis for science -- where we find we've reached the limit of what we can see and test, and are left with mathematical equations that can't be verified by experiments or observation.
This fall, we're hitting the road with our brand-new live show. We're stopping in 20 cities across the US (plus 1 stop in Canada), and we have some exciting news about the special musical guests who are joining us for the tour. Listen to a quick sneak peek, and grab your tix now.
Producer Lu Olkowski brings us the story of a tightly-knit family caught on opposite sides of a very big divide. If you ask Ally Manning's mom and sister, they'll tell you there's no question: they're black. But as a teenager, Ally decided that what was true for them didn't make sense for her.
Lu explains how the complex racial history of two towns in Ohio leads members of the same family to disagree strongly about whether they're black or white. And Ally, along with her mom Clarice and her sister Carlotta, wrestles with what it means to choose a different identity from her closest relations.
Ally Manning, Clarice Shreck’s daughter, takes a moment before heading work to read a poem she wrote about her mom:
One of our favorite human beings turns 80 this week. To celebrate, Robert asks Oliver Sacks to look back on his career, and explain how thousands of worms and a motorbike accident led to a brilliant writing career.
From medicine to the movies, the horrifying to the holy, and history to the present day -- we're kinda obsessed with blood. This hour, we consider the power and magic of the red liquid that runs through our veins.
What do you do in the face of a monstrous disease with a 100% fatality rate? In this short, a Milwaukee doctor tries to knock death incarnate off its throne.
In the fall of 2004, Jeanna Giese checked into the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin with a set of puzzling symptoms ... and her condition was deteriorating fast. By the time Dr. Rodney Willoughby saw her, he only knew one thing for sure: if Jeanna's disturbing breakdown turned out to be rabies, she was doomed to die.
What happened next seemed like a medical impossibility. Producer Tim Howard tells Jeanna's story and talks to authors Monica Murphy and Bill Wasik, and scientists Amy Gilbert and Sergio Recuenco, while trying to unravel the mystery of an unusual patient, and a doctor who dared to take on certain death.
In this short, Jad puts on his music hat and shares his love of Dawn of Midi, a band that he recently started using on the show.
Midi, for those of you who don't know, is sort of like a computer language for music. But the band Dawn of Midi seems to exist at the intersection between acoustic and electronic sounds. Jad talks to Aakaash Israni, Amino Belyamani, and Qasim Naqvi about how they met and how they ended up creating their latest album, Dysnomia, an album filled with heavily layered rhythms that feel both mechanistic and deeply human at the same time.
We've all felt it, that irresistible urge to point the finger. But new technologies are complicating age-old moral conundrums about accountability. This hour, we ask what blame does for us -- why do we need it, when isn't it enough, and what happens when we try to push past it with forgiveness and mercy?
You may not give a second thought (or backward glance) to what the toilet whisks away after you do your business. But we got wondering -- where would we wind up if we thought of flushing as the start, and not the end, of a journey? In this short, we head out to trace the trail of sludge...from Manhattan, to wherever poop leads us.
This all started back when we were working on our Guts show, and author Frederick Kaufman told us about getting sucked in to the mystery of what happens to poop in New York City. Robert and producer Pat Walters decided to take Fred's advice and pay a visit to the North River Wastewater Treatment Plant... which turned out to be just the beginning of a surprisingly far-ranging quest.
Want some more sewer fun?
Read: As Robert and Pat report, some of that sewer sludge made it out into the ocean. Wonder what happened to it?
For many of us, quicksand was once a real fear -- it held a vise-grip on our imaginations, from childish sandbox games to grown-up anxieties about venturing into unknown lands. But these days, quicksand can't even scare an 8-year-old. In this short, we try to find out why.
Producer Soren Wheeler introduces us to Dan Engber, writer and columnist for Slate, who ran across a strange fact: kids are no longer afraid of quicksand. To figure out what happened to quicksand, Dan immersed himself in research, compiled mountains of data, and met with quicksand fetishists. Dan tells Soren and Robert about his journey, and shares his theory about why the terror of his childhood seems to have lost its menacing allure. And Carlton Cuse, best-known as writer and executive producer of Lost, weighs in on whether giant pits of hero-swallowing mud might one day creep back into the spotlight.
Dan Engber's data on the percentage of movies released that feature quicksand.
When we first released Famous Tumors, Rebecca Skloot's book about the life and legacy of Henrietta Lacks (and her famous cells) had just hit the shelves. Since then, some interesting things have happened to both Henrietta's cells and her family. So, 4 years later, we have a newly updated show!
This hour, we poke and prod at the good, bad, and ugly sides of tumors -- from the growth that killed Ulysses S. Grant, to mushy lumps leaping from the faces of infected Tasmanian Devils, to a mass that awakened a new (though pretty strange) kind of euphoria for one man. Plus, the updated story of one woman's medically miraculous cancer cells, and how they changed modern science and, eventually, her family's understanding of itself.
Legions of athletes, sports gurus, and scientists have tried to figure out why Kenyans dominate long-distance running. In this short, we stumble across a surprising, and sort of terrifying, explanation.
At the 1968 summer Olympics in Mexico City, Kipchoge Keino overcame a gall bladder infection to win gold in the 1500 meter race. Since then, one particular group of Kenyans - the Kalenjin - has produced an astonishing number of great long-distance runners. Gregory Warner - NPR's East Africa correspondent - takes Jad and Robert down a rabbit hole of theories about what exactly is going on in Kalenjin country.
David Epstein and John Manners help Greg untangle a web of potential factors - from something in the cornmeal to simple economics.And, after talking to a young Kalenjin runner named Elly Kipgogei, Greg discovers a somewhat disturbing explanation for Kalenjin running prowess that actually makes him want to get on the treadmill and push himself just a little harder.
Check out a video of Kipchoge Keino's 1968 Olympic 1500m run:
Scientists' obsession with one particular man - and with the tiny scraps of evidence left in the wake of his death - gives us a surprisingly intimate peek into the life of someone who should've been lost to the ages.
A little over 20 years ago, a perfectly preserved corpse was found buried in the ice, high up in the Alps. And after decades of investigating, cutting-edge forensics have revealed not only a murder mystery, but a startling story about one man's final days.
When hikers first found Ötzi (the nickname given to the body discovered in 1991), everyone assumed they'd stumbled upon an unfortunate mountaineering accident. But as the body was pulled from the ice, authorities started to suspect this wasn't a modern-day adventure gone wrong. It was, as producer Andy Mills explains, an OLD body. Really, really old.
Botanist Jim Dickson, graphic artist Aaron Birk, and Albert Zinc, head of the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman, describe how scientific advances and modern forensic breakthroughs have uncovered an ancient tale of violence and humanity.
Cataclysmic destruction. Surprising survival. In this new live stage performance, Radiolab turns its gaze to the topic of endings, both blazingly fast and agonizingly slow.
This hour we celebrate the one thing that all things do: end. From the stage in Seattle, with an all-star cast of comedians and musical guests, we bring you stories that end with a bang, with a whimper, and with astonishing bravery and resilience in the face of one's own demise.
A preview of Radiolab's live show Apocalyptical: dinosaurs, death, destruction... plus cinematic live scoring and comedic mayhem from Reggie Watts and Kurt Braunohler. Feast your eyes on more video -- including a cut of the full show! -- at radiolab.org/live.
Recorded live at Seattle's Paramount Theatre on November 21st and 22nd.
A version of this story, “As Black As We Wish to Be,” was sponsored by 