Radiolab

Black Box

In this episode, first aired in 2014, we examine three very different kinds of black boxes—spaces where we know what’s going in, we know what’s coming out, but can’t see what happens in-between. From the darkest parts of metamorphosis to a sixty-year-old secret among magicians, and the nature of consciousness itself, we shine some light on three questions. But for each, we contend with an answerless space, leaving just enough room for the mystery and magic, always wondering what’s inside the Black Box. EPISODE CREDITS:  Reported by Tim Howard and Molly Webster Produced by Tim Howard and Molly Webster EPISODE CITATIONS: Radio Show: ABC's Keep Them Guessing (https://tinyurl.com/9r9zmftr) LATERAL CUTS: Last year we shared a story on our feed about butterfly researcher Dr. Martha Weiss, and how she befriended a little boy on the other side of the world who wanted to do his own caterpillar memory study. Martha’s daughter Annie Rosenthal captured the whole adventure on tape and produced a gorgeous audio feature, “Caterpillar Roadshow,” which was first published in the audio magazine Signal Hill [https://open.spotify.com/show/1k8e1cqpzsCX6NS54KXzPE].  You can find it on our feed [https://zpr.io/xPdAYXFUMr4s] (https://zpr.io/xPdAYXFUMr4s [https://zpr.io/xPdAYXFUMr4s]) –or on Signal Hill’s website [https://zpr.io/a4bjPKeXJQWK]. (https://zpr.io/a4bjPKeXJQWK [https://zpr.io/a4bjPKeXJQWK])    Signup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up [https://radiolab.org/newsletter] (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab [http://members.radiolab.org] (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram [http://instagram.com/radiolab], Twitter [http://twitter.com/radiolab] and Facebook [http://facebook.com/radiolab] @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org [radiolab@wnyc.org]. Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Gray's Donation

Before he was even born, Sarah and Ross Gray knew that their son Thomas wouldn’t live long. But as they let go of him, they made a decision that reverberated through a world that they never bothered to think about. Years later, after a couple of awkward phone calls, they go on a quest and manage to meet the people and places for whom Thomas’ short life was an altogether different kind of gift. We originally made this story back in 2015, but we wanted to play it again because we love that it brings a view of science that is redemptive, tender, and unexpected. Since we first released this episode, Sarah Gray wrote a book called A Life Everlasting [https://www.harpercollins.com/products/a-life-everlasting-sarah-gray?variant=32208104914978] (https://zpr.io/GVYisRaqe9d6), it’s a memoir about Thomas that dives into the world of organ donation and medical science. She’s also written a beautiful short story about shame called The Lacemaker Fairy Tale [https://medium.com/@graysarah/the-lacemaker-story-68e0a25da842] (https://zpr.io/Li5BMtfHmf92). And, right now she’s working on a script for a movie called Raincheck. EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Jad Abumrad with help from - Latif Nasser LATERAL CUTS - * The Cathedral [https://radiolab.org/podcast/cathedral] (https://radiolab.org/podcast/cathedral) * The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks [https://radiolab.org/podcast/the-immortal-life-of-henrietta-lacks] (https://radiolab.org/podcast/the-immortal-life-of-henrietta-lacks [https://radiolab.org/podcast/the-immortal-life-of-henrietta-lacks])  Signup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up [https://radiolab.org/newsletter] (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab [http://members.radiolab.org] (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram [http://instagram.com/radiolab], Twitter [http://twitter.com/radiolab] and Facebook [http://facebook.com/radiolab] @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org [radiolab@wnyc.org]. Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Time is Honey

In the early 2000s, Sunil Nakrani felt stuck.  Back then, websites crashed all the time. When Sunil noticed this, he decided he was going to fix the internet. But after nearly a year of studying the architecture of the web, he was no closer to an answer. In desperation, Sunil sent out a raft of cold emails to engineering professors. He hoped someone, anyone, could help him figure this out. Eventually, he learned that the internet could only be fixed if he paid attention to the humble honeybee.  This is the story of the Honeybee Algorithm: How tech used honeybees to build the internet as we know it. Special thanks to John Bartholdi, John Vande Vate, Sammy Ramsey, James Marshall, Steve Strogatz, Duc Pham, and Heiko Hamann. We found out about this story thanks to our friends at AAAS, who run the one and only Golden Goose Awards. The award goes to government funded science that sounds trivial or bizarre, but goes on to change the world. The Honeybee Algorithm won a Golden Goose Award back in 2016 [https://www.goldengooseaward.org/01awardees/honey-bee-algorithm] (https://zpr.io/ePxaaYja6YF4). Thank you to our friends there: Erin Heath, Gwendolyn Bogard, Valeria Sabate, Joanne Padron Carney, and Meredith Asbury.  EPISODE CREDITS:  Reported by - Latif Nasser with help from - Maria Paz Gutiérrez Produced by - Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Annie McEwen and Pat Walters and Edited by  - Pat Walters EPISODE CITATIONS: Videos -  * Golden Goose Award video about 2016 winners [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETrwOwckZEg] (https://zpr.io/eXwTJKGL6F8S [https://zpr.io/eXwTJKGL6F8S]) Books - * The Wisdom of the Hive: The Social Physiology of Honeybee Colonies [https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674953765](https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674953765) by Thomas D. Seeley (1995, Harvard University Press) * Piping Hot Bees & Boisterous Buzz-Runners: 20 Mysteries of Honey Bee Behavior Solved [https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691237695/piping-hot-bees-and-boisterous-buzz-runners?srsltid=AfmBOooNYP890oYEoZU5XXzJouYZhOm5Xd_pNBS9orDUIsqD7zEGGCcS] (https://zpr.io/tNDqkw372Rhr [https://zpr.io/tNDqkw372Rhr]) by Thomas D. Seeley * And, Paths of Pollen [https://www.mqup.ca/Books/P/Paths-of-Pollen2] (https://zpr.io/cqRPpAdGRwMi [https://zpr.io/cqRPpAdGRwMi]) by Stephen Humphrey. One of our former transcribers who we recently learned had hidden talents far beyond the invaluable work they did for us. This book is only tangentially related to the content in the episode, but super cool in its own right.   Sign up for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Signup [https://radiolab.org/newsletter] (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab [http://members.radiolab.org] (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram [http://instagram.com/radiolab], Twitter [http://twitter.com/radiolab] and Facebook [http://facebook.com/radiolab] @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org [radiolab@wnyc.org]. Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Kleptotherms

In this episode, we break the thermometer and watch the mercury spill out as we discover that temperature is far stranger than it seems. We first ran this episode in 2021: Five stories that run the gamut from snakes to stars. We start out underwater, with a species of snake that has evolved a devious trick for keeping warm. Then we hear the tale of a young man whose seemingly simple method of warming up might be the very thing making him cold. And Senior Correspondent Molly Webster blows the lid off the idea that 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit is a sound marker of health.  EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Lulu Miller and Molly Webster Produced by - Becca Bressler, Lulu Miller and Molly Webster with help from - Carin Leong Fact-checking by - Emily Krieger Sign up for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Signup [https://radiolab.org/newsletter] (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab [http://members.radiolab.org] (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram [http://instagram.com/radiolab], Twitter [http://twitter.com/radiolab] and Facebook [http://facebook.com/radiolab] @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org [radiolab@wnyc.org]. Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Song of the Cerebellum

One spring evening in 2024, a science journalist named Rachel Gross bombed at karaoke. The culprit was a bleed in a fist-sized clump of neurons tucked down in the back of her brain called the cerebellum. A couple weeks later, her doctors took a bit of it out, assuring her it was just helping her with motor coordination — she might be a bit clumsy for a while, but she’d still be herself. But afterwards, she didn't feel like herself. So she dove into the dusty basement of the brain (and brain science) to figure out why. What Rachel found was a burgeoning new frontier in neuroscience. We learn what singing Shakira on stage has to do with reaching for a cup of coffee — and how the surprising relationship between the two is making us rethink what we think about thinking. Special thanks to Warzone Karaoke at Branded Saloon, Dr. Joanne Loewy and the Singing Together, Measure by Measure choir at the Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine   [http://musicandmedicine.org/](http://musicandmedicine.org/) at Mount Sinai Union Square, Dag Spicer and the Computer History Museum, Désirée Lie, Mark Gross, Daniel A. Gross, Brittany Aguilar, and, of course, Shakira. EPISODE CREDITS:  Reported by - Rachel Gross Produced by - Sindhu Gnanasambandan EPISODE CITATIONS: Articles - * “Ignoring the cerebellum is hindering progress in neuroscience [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39934082/].” (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39934082/), by Wang et al, 2025 * “The cerebellum and cognition. [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29997061/]” (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29997061/), by Schmahmann JD. Neurosci Lett. 2019 * “How did brains evolve? [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11805823/]” (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11805823/), by Barton RA., Nature. 2002 Books -  * Vagina Obscura [https://www.rachelegross.com/book] (https://www.rachelegross.com/book), by Rachel E. Gross Sign up for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Signup [https://radiolab.org/newsletter] (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab [http://members.radiolab.org] (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram [http://instagram.com/radiolab], Twitter [http://twitter.com/radiolab] and Facebook [http://facebook.com/radiolab] @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org [radiolab@wnyc.org]. Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.