Terrestrials

As dead as they seem, tree stumps are hubs of life and relationships. From stumps to snags, deadwood provides habitat for rodents, falcons, insects, and even humans! Stumps hold together the forest floor, give hunting perches to birds of prey in flatlands, prevent erosion and the encroachment of invasive species, usher in sunlight, provide nutrients, can be wells of renewable fuel, and hold onto s...

The ocean can be a scary place: the waves are so strong, the water so deep. But surfer and illustrator AJ Dungo tells the story of an earthling who figured out how to walk on water and literally defy the rules of gravity. If you want a big SPOILER, here it is: It’s only human for the season, the grandfather of modern-day surfing, Duke Kahanamoku. Duke’s great grandniece, Heather Kina’u Paoa tells...

High above the banks of the Mississippi river, a nest holds the secret life of one of America’s most patriotic creatures. Their story puzzles scientists, reinforces indigenous wisdom, and wows audiences, all thanks to a park ranger named Ed, and a well-placed webcam. If you want to spoil the mystery, here ya go: it’s a bald eagle. Actually, it’s three bald eagles. A mama bird and daddies make a ho...

A singing entomologist, Dr. Sammy Ramsey, and a biologist with a knack for inventing things, Dr. Paul Mireji, tell us about one of the most fearsome animals on our planet. If you want a SPOILER of what it is, read on: It sucks our blood, spreads diseases; it's the tsetse fly. Both Sammy and Paul were afraid of this creature, but share the story of what can be gained by looking close at what scares...

The moon has disappeared. Ok, just kidding. Happy April Fool’s Day. But what if the moon actually vanished? After songbud Alan saw a movie about stealing the moon, he wondered what would actually happen if the moon disappeared. He found the perfect person to talk to – Mika McKinnon who has a masters in disasters. We learn about eerie silences, ocean stench, hurricanes, and ecosystems in total flux...

If someone calls you crabby, it’s not a compliment – they’re calling you grumpy, grouchy or snappy. But let’s reconsider this stain on the humble crab’s reputation. Look closely at a crab’s gnarled shell and you’ll see an incredible creature. Today, we bring you two very different crab stories. The first comes from former Radiolab producer Rachael Cusick about a woman who replicated the ocean to b...

St. Patricks day is coming up. People worldwide will wear leprechaun hats and celebrate the luck of the Irish. But what about the luck of lobsters? Today we have a story about the biggest, luckiest lobster we have ever heard of — Nick. As lobsters age, they keep growing bigger and bigger. They don’t wear out or get sick like most other creatures do. The most common way they die is through accident...

When wildlife conservationist Alan Rabinowitz was a boy, he had a stutter. Strangely, his stutter vanished when he spoke to animals. One day, when his father took him to the Bronx Zoo, Alan saw a majestic jaguar and made a promise to it. He spent the rest of his life fulfilling that promise. Read Alan Rabinowitz’s picture book: “ A Boy and a Jaguar .” Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edi...

Next week is Valentine’s Day, but instead of talking about falling in love, we’re going to talk about falling cats and barrels. First, writer David Quammen tells us about a strange observation: cats are falling out of buildings in New York City. When a cat falls from less than five stories or more than nine stories, it usually survives. But when it falls from between five and nine stories, it suff...

Today we bring you an episode from our friends over at The Big Fib . In the era of fake news, kids need to learn to be able to tell what’s true from what’s false. And what better way to do that than a game show that puts kids in the driver’s seat, adults in the hot seat, and a sound-effects robot strapped to the roof? Each week, a kid interviews one fake and one real expert on a particular topic a...

For centuries, the stomach was a black box to humans. We didn’t understand the mystery of what happened to food after it went inside us. That is, until the early 1800s, when Dr. William Beaumont found a boy, Alexis St. Martin, with a hole in his stomach.  Writer Mary Roach brings us that story. She first sticks her hand inside the stomach of a live cow and then tells us how Beaumont conducted expe...

The year’s best celestial event was, without a doubt, April’s solar eclipse. The moon went in front of the sun to cast a 115 mile wide shadow on Earth. A swathe of North America was showered in sudden darkness. In honor of the eclipse, the Radiolab team made a show about the star of the show: the moon.  We think we know the moon — we know that humanity visited it, that it’s a shiny white rotating...

Today we bring you an episode from our friends over at Atlas Obscura . It's about something that for centuries people thought was a tall tale, something sailors would occasionally spot out in the waves like mermaids or the Loch Ness monster, but most people on the land didn't think was real. Until one day, when a satellite in the sky was able to solve the case.  Host Dylan Thuras tells us the stor...

In less than 10 days, the world will witness the winter solstice, or the shortest day of the year. Half of the Earth will be tilted the farthest away from the sun, and we will plunge into the dark. So today we thought we’d play another story about the dark. One of the darkest places in the universe actually: a black hole. But not just any black hole, a really tiny black hole, the size of an atom....

Radiolab co-host Latif Nasser was putting his child to sleep one day when he noticed a poster of the solar system on the wall. It showed that Venus had a moon called Zoozve. When he looked it up, the internet told him that Venus did not have a moon. And searching “Zoozve” gave him a bunch of Czech results about zoos. This moment sets Latif off on a curiosity odyssey. What is the mystery behind thi...

We start this story off with a question. Are human beings innately violent?  Then we head to East Africa with Stanford neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky , who spent his summers studying wild baboons there. Baboons are a textbook example of a hierarchical, male-dominated, and aggressive society. But one day, Sapolsky noticed that a troop of baboons became unexpectedly gentle. They deviated from the us...

We start off in a cathedral full of animals – hermit crabs, parrots, hamsters, dogs, cats and bunnies – being blessed. We then wonder, do the animals feel grace? What do we really know about what goes on inside an animal’s mind? Do they also experience gratitude, despair or anger? How much emotionality do humans and animals share? And can we measure it?  We get the story of a rescued whale that ma...

Terrestrials is Radiolab's spin-off nature show for families and  for people of all ages that explores the strangeness that exists right here on Earth. Each episode feels like a fairytale that is 100% true. Host Lulu Miller (co-host of Radiolab) leads you on a nature walk to encounter incredible creatures, wild storytellers, and original songs from "The Songbud" Alan Goffinski. That's right! We si...

Think about the sounds you hear on a daily basis. Air conditioners whirring, keyboards clicking, cars honking, mosquitos buzzing, dishes clanking. Now picture yourself in a jungle. What do you hear? How do you make sense of it? Today on Radiolab for Kids, we eavesdrop on the world of animals. We bring you a story of two humans decoding animal sounds in nature. Science journalist Ari Daniel Shapiro...

Today’s episode asks how scientists see the world. We bring you two stories — one about a math guy and a bug guy. First, how the math guy, or one of our country's greatest mathematicians, Steven Strogatz, first became enchanted with math as a kid. Then, a story about a human developing a soft corner (literally) for a fly that lived in his scalp — the botfly. Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne went...

The summer olympics are in full swing. Humans are racing against other humans from all across the globe. But you know the one race they don’t have? The one where a human competes against a horse. Radiolab for Kids is back with one of our favorite Radiolab animal episodes of all time where we head to that race in the desert of Arizona. Turns out it has everything to do with what gives us humans… ou...

Radiolab for kids is back!  Is there such a thing as a good cage? Happy gorillas, deft landscape architects and neurologists show us that there just might be. We go back to the late 1970s to relive the moment when zoos began to change—literally the moment that the modern zoo was born, as embodied by a few tentative steps of a gorilla named Kiki. That story, told by zoo director David Hancocks, arc...

The Terrestrials team is delighted to announce we’re coming back to the Radiolab for Kids feed! We’ve been traveling the globe in search of the strangeness right here on Earth. And we’ll be sharing a whole new batch of stories – and songs – in September. In the meantime: -catch up on past episodes ! -bop your head to songbud Alan’s songs ! -check out our brand new teaching resources ! Support for...

Radiolab for Kids and WNYC Studios present  Terrestrials,  a six-episode miniseries hosted by Lulu Miller (co-host of  Radiolab ). Each episode introduces you to a creature or earthly phenomenon that will defy your expectations of how nature is supposed to work. Along the way, you'll encounter a chorus of experts, including scientists, surfers, hip hop artists and…a "Song Bud" named Alan Goffinski...