WNYC's Radio Lab

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. If you do not see flash audio player please install the latest flash player. Download MP3

This week, a piece from one of our favorite radio-makers, Jonathan Mitchell. City X is a history of the modern shopping mall through perspectives of people living in a real, yet unnamed, city. Using a sound rich audio mosaic of observations and ruminations, all scored to Muzak, the universal mall experience comes to life, for better or for worse. City X was commissioned by Hearing Voices with funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. If you do not see flash audio player please install the latest flash player. Download MP3

First, we asked you to tell us what song gets stuck in your head. Then, we asked you how you got it out. Finally, we made a podcast. Thank you to everyone who called in, shared their secret techniques, and sang without shame. Your suggestions ranged from the hilarious (Darth Vader breathing) to the malicious (give it to some one else) to the oddly-aligned (multiple people called in suggesting Girl from Ipanema as a cure-all earworm). And now, we release your wisdom to the masses. We hope that this will be of help to earworm-sufferers, but be forewarned, it might just plague you with Journey. If you do not see flash audio player please install the latest flash player. Download MP3

On this week s podcast, we share an excerpt from Wordless Music on WNYC, a 4-part music program hosted by Jad, exploring the boundaries between classical and pop music. The series pairs rock and electronic musicians with more traditional chamber and new music performers, to create an entirely new concert experience. On this week s selection, Jad waxes googly-eyed fan when he gets to talk about one of his favorite bands, Stars of the Lid. If you do not see flash audio player please install the latest flash player. Download MP3

On this week s podcast, Jad presents a piece by one of his favorite producers: Ben Rubin. Rubin created this audio portrait called Open Outcry as a part of a sound installation called Sonic Garden commissioned to celebrate the reopening of the Winter Garden, an atrium space within the World Financial Center, after 9/11. The trading floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange may look and sound chaotic to the uninitiated, with circles of hundreds of traders shouting unintelligible phonic abbreviations and numbers back and forth. But it s a complex and sophisticated human system in flux and since 1872, the mosh pit full of traders has driven the prices of energy, metals, livestock and other commodities through this open outcry trading. The trading floor of the NYMEX was destroyed in the attacks of September 11, 2001 when the building that houses it, the World Financial Center, was seriously damaged. Want to learn more about this piece? Ben did an interesting interview for the Third Coast International Audio Festival and you can learn more about this piece and his approach here. If you do not see flash audio player please install the latest flash player. Download MP3

Ever wonder how Jad and Robert met? Well it all began with an everyday encounter where they discovered they both went to the same small liberal arts college in Ohio. For this week s podcast, the guys go on stage at Oberlin College to tell the tale of their meeting and how they started tinkering around with tape to come up with the Radiolab you know today. Vintage Radiolab alert! You ll hear the very first piece Jad and Robert made together. It s an audio-experiment called Flag Day that they submitted to This American Life. TAL s Ira Glass and Julie Snyder phone in to share what they thought of it. If you do not see flash audio player please install the latest flash player. Download MP3

Why do some songs mercilessly stick in our heads and repeat themselves over and over? What makes these hooks so hooky? And how does a songwriter will a song forth from the ether? In this episode, nightmarish stories of musical hallucinations, songs that transcend language, and the triumphant return of the Elvis of Afghanistan. If you do not see flash audio player please install the latest flash player. Download MP3

What are the consequences when humans start playing with life? The human imagination has always dreamed up fantastic creatures, but now biotechnology is making it easier and easier for us to actually create forms of life that have never existed before. In this episode Radio Lab looks at the uneasy marriage between biology and engineering, and asks what counts as natural? If you do not see flash audio player please install the latest flash player. Download MP3

An examination of the power of mass media to create panic. In Radio Lab s very first live hour, we take a deep dive into one of the most controversial moments in broadcasting history - Orson Welles 1938 radio play about Martians invading New Jersey. And we ask: Why did it fool people then? And why has it continued to fool people since? From Santiago, Chile to Buffalo, New York to a particularly disastrous evening in Quito, Ecuador. If you do not see flash audio player please install the latest flash player. Download MP3

We look at lies, liars, and lie catchers, and ask: can you lead a life without deception? In this episode, we consult a cast of characters, from pathological liars to lying snakes to drunken psychiatrists, to try and understand the dark trait of deception. If you do not see flash audio player please install the latest flash player. Download MP3

amanda/ flickr We all laugh. But why? If you look closely, you ll find that humor has very little to do with it. In this episode, we explore the power of laughter to calm us, bond us to one another, or to spread like a virus. Along the way, we tickle some rats, listen in on a baby s first laugh, talk to a group of professional laughers, and travel to Tanzania to investigate an outbreak of contagious laughter. If you do not see flash audio player please install the latest flash player. Download MP3

Big and Small Tuesday is Podcast Day. We ve been getting some emails from some of you who are confused about the varying lengths of our podcasts Some are long. Some are short. Fear not! There s nothing wrong with your download. That s the way it should be. Sometimes we podcast an entire hour-long episode. Sometimes we podcast a shorter piece that may only be 8 minutes or so. That s just how we roll. Up this week, Jad plays one of his favorite pieces of all time, IF by Sherre DeLys. You can sign up for our free podcast using Feedburner or just search for Radio Lab on your iTunes music store. Otherwise, take a listen to it right here! If you do not see flash audio player please install the latest flash player. Download MP3

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. Well, composer David Lang had to do just that when a hospital in Garches, France, asked him to write music for their morgue, or Salle Des Departs. What do you do? What should death sound like? Producer Jocelyn Gonzales brings us this piece about David Lang and his commission for the “Salle Des Departs.” If you do not see flash audio player please install the latest flash player. Download MP3

On this Radio Lab/ WNYC Special, we explore the impact and influence of Wagner's Ring Cycle on the Metropolitan Opera's 2004 Presentation. It might seem hyperbole to claim, as many Wagnerites do, that The Ring Cycle is "The Greatest Work of Art Ever." But the grandeur and power of this monumental work have permeated our culture from Star Wars to Bugs Bunny to J.R.R. Tolkien.

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 we take 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. Imagine trying to sum up existence on Earth into one little record... for an alien or humans of the far-off future. What sounds would you use? What music? What images? We put this charge to a bunch of artists, and asked what they would put into a space capsule. And in this week's podcast, a few of the answers we got back. From Margaret Cho, Philip Glass, Alice Waters, Michael Cunningham, and Neil Gaiman.

In the 60’s, space exploration was an American obsession. But the growing reality of space has turned the romance to cynicism. We chart the path from then to now. We begin with Ann Druyan, widow of Carl Sagan, with a story about the Voyager expedition, true love, and golden record that travels through space. For a dose of reality, astrophysicist Neil de Grasse Tyson explains the Coepernican Principle and just how insignificant we are.

OK. Maybe you're in your desk chair. You're in your office. You're in New York, or Detroit, or Timbuktu. You're on planet Earth. But where are you, really? This week Radio Lab tries to find out where you are. This hour: stories of people whose brains and bodies have lost each other. We ask how does your brain keep track of your body? We'll examine the bond between brain and body and look at what happens when it breaks. We begin with a century-old mystery: why do many amputees still feel their missing limbs? We speak with a neuroscientist who solved the problem with a magician’s trick: an optical illusion. We continue with the story of a butcher who suddenly lost his entire sense of touch. And we hear from pilots who lose consciousness and suffer out-of-body experiences while flying fighter jets. But first, magnets. Author and neurologist Oliver Sacks tries to find himself using magnets. Buy Magnets

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.

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.

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."

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.

Where does our sense of right and wrong come from? We peer inside the brains of people contemplating moral dilemmas, watch chimps at a primate research center share blackberries, observe a playgroup of 3 year-olds fighting over toys, and tour the country's first penitentiary, Eastern State Prison. Also: the story of land grabbing, indentured servitude and slum lording in the fourth grade.

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.

Is death a fact of life or a disease that can be cured (as some scientists claim)? We filter the modern search for the fountain of youth through personal stories of witnessing death...the death of a cell, the death of a loved one...and the aging of a society.

According to the latest research, remembering is an unstable and profoundly unreliable process. It’s easy come, easy go as we learn how true memories can be obliterated and false ones added. And Oliver Sacks joins us to tell the story of an amnesiac whose love for his wife and music transcend his 7 second memory.

In a cruel trick of evolution, humans can stand just three feet from a ferocious wild animal and still be perfectly safe. What's with our need to get close to "wildness"? We examine where we stand in this paradox, starting with the Romans and ending in the wilds of Belize, staring into the eyes of wild jaguar.

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 as close a definition as we have. But maybe if we slow time down enough, or speed it up enough, we can unlock its secrets. On this week’s Radio Lab, we’re using our hour to try and do just that.

Every creature does it - from giant hump back whales all the way down to fruit flies - and yet science still can't answer the basic questions: Why do we sleep? What is it for? We'll eavesdrop on the uneasy dreams of rats in search of answers.