Radiolab

The Alien in the Room

It’s faster than a speeding bullet. It’s smarter than a polymath genius. It’s everywhere but it’s invisible. It’s artificial intelligence. But what actually is it? Today we ask this simple question and explore why it’s so damn hard to answer. Special thanks to Stephanie Yin and the New York Institute of Go for teaching us the game. Mark, Daria and Levon Hoover Brauner for helping bring NETtalk to life.  And a huge thank you to Grant Sanderson for his unending patience explaining the math of neural nets to us. To learn more about how these 'thinking machines' actually think, we highly recommend his wonderful youtube channel 3Blue1Brown (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk]. EPISODE CREDITS:  Reported by - Simon Adler Produced by - Simon Adler Original music from - Simon Adler Sound design contributed by - Simon Adler Fact-checking by - Anna Pujol-Mazzini  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

Shell Game: Minimum Viable Company

A year ago we brought you a show called Shell Game where a journalist named Evan Ratliff made an AI copy of himself. Now on season 2 of the show, Evan’s using AI to do more than just mimic himself — he’s starting a company staffed entirely by AI agents, and making a podcast about the experience. The show is a smart, funny, and truly bizarre look at what AI can do—and what it can’t.  This week we bring you the first episode of Shell Game Season Two, Minimum Viable Company. You can sign up to get the rest of the Shell Game ad-free, and the Shell Game newsletter, at shellgame.co [http://shellgame.co] . EPISODE CREDITS:  Shell Game  Hosted by Evan Ratliff,  Produced and edited by Sophie Bridges.  Shell Game’s Technical Advisor Matty Bohacek  Executive Produced by Samantha Henig, Kate Osborn and Mangesh Hattikudur at Kaleidoscope and Katrina Norvell at IHeart Podcasts. Radiolab portions  Hosted by Simon Adler  Produced by Mona Madgavkar. 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.

Fela Kuti: Enter the Shrine

Our original host Jad Abumrad returns to share a new podcast series he’s just released. It’s all about Fela Kuti, a Nigerian musician who created a genre, then a movement, then tried to use his hypnotic beats to topple a military dictatorship. Jad tells us about the series and why he made it, and we play the episode that, for us at least, gets to the heart of the matter: How exactly does his music work? What actually happens to the people who hear it and how does it move them to action? You can find Jad’s entire nine-part series, Fela Kuti: Fear No Man, on Apple or Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. EPISODE CREDITS:  Reported by - Jad Abumrad Radiolab portions produced by - Sindhu Gnanasambandan 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.

Our Common Nature: West Virginia Coal

Today on the show, we’re bringing you an episode from Our Common Nature [https://link.podtrac.com/v7mx144d] (https://link.podtrac.com/v7mx144d), a new podcast series where cellist Yo-Yo Ma and host Ana González travel around the United States to meet people, make music and better understand how culture binds us to nature. The series features a few familiar voices, including Ana González (host) and Alan Goffinski (producer), from our kids podcast, Terrestrials [https://link.podtrac.com/vysacqn1] (https://link.podtrac.com/vysacqn1).  About the episode:  West Virginia is defined by its beauty and its coal, two things that can work against each other. Yo-Yo Ma felt this as soon as stepped foot in its hills.This episode explores how music and poetry help process the emotions of a community besieged with disaster and held together by pride and duty. We travel down the Coal River with third-generation coal miner Chris Saunders, who tells us how coal has saved and threatened his life. Poet Crystal Good shares her poetry, which channels her rage and love. And musician and granddaughter of West Virginia coal miners, Kathy Mattea, explains the beauty of belting out your home state in a chorus. The end of the episode finds host Ana floating down the New River with help from a group of high schoolers and Yo-Yo Ma.  Listen to the full series Our Common Nature [https://link.podtrac.com/v7mx144d] (https://link.podtrac.com/v7mx144d).  Featuring music by Yo-Yo Ma, Dom Flemons, and Kathy Mattea and poetry by Crystal Good. EPISODE CREDITS:  Radiolab Bits Produced - Anisa Vietze (Radiolab bits) 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.

Quantum Refuge

Qasem Waleed is a 28-year-old physicist who has lived in Gaza his whole life. In 2024, he joined a chorus of Palestinians sharing videos and pictures and writing about the chaos and violence they were living through, as Israel’s military bombardment devastated their lives. But Qasem was trying to describe his reality through the lens of the most notoriously confusing and inscrutable field of science ever, quantum mechanics. We talked to him, from a cafe near the Al-Mawasi section of Gaza, to find out why. And over the course of several conversations, he told us how this reality-breaking corner of science has helped him survive. And how such unspeakable violence actually let him understand, in a visceral way, quantum mechanics’ most counter-intuitive ideas.  Special thanks to Katya Rogers, Karim Kattan, Allan Adams, Sarah Qari, Soren Wheeler, and Pat Walters EPISODE CREDITS:  Reported by - Lulu Miller Produced by - Jessica Yung with mixing help from - Jeremy Bloom Fact-checking by - Emily Krieger and Edited by  - Alex Neason EPISODE CITATIONS: Videos -  * A Brief History of Quantum Mechanics with Sean Carroll, The Royal Institution [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hVmeOCJjOU] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hVmeOCJjOU [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hVmeOCJjOU]) * Introduction to Superposition, with MIT’s Allan Adams [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ3bPUKo5zc] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ3bPUKo5zc [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ3bPUKo5zc]) * The Quantum Wavefunction, Explained [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOI4DlWQ_1w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOI4DlWQ_1w [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOI4DlWQ_1w]) Articles -  Read a selection of Qasem’s published essays about his life in Gaza and the quantum world:  * I am stuck in a box like Schrodinger’s in Gaza [https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/12/19/i-am-stuck-in-a-box-like-schrodingers-in-gaza] (https://zpr.io/ALDVi9E5bRt8 [https://zpr.io/ALDVi9E5bRt8])  * Israel has turned Gaza’s summer into a weapon [https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/7/17/israel-has-turned-gazas-summer-into-a-weapon] (https://zpr.io/YS4WK4hVQC5T [https://zpr.io/YS4WK4hVQC5T]) * The Physics of Death in Gaza [https://electronicintifada.net/content/physics-death-gaza/46081] (https://zpr.io/hxsgxicVqPAd [https://zpr.io/hxsgxicVqPAd])  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.