Laughter

Friday, February 22, 2008

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.

Mortality

Friday, February 15, 2008

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.

Memory and Forgetting

Thursday, February 14, 2008

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.

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Listen to this episode of Radio Lab and review it for us here.

Zoos

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

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.

Sleep

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

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.

Placebo

Monday, February 11, 2008

Could the best medicine be no medicine at all? With new research demonstrating the startling power of the placebo effect, Radio Lab examines the chemical consequences of belief and imagination...from the symbolic power of the doctor coat to the very real stash of opium in your mind.

Mortality

Friday, February 01, 2008

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.

We need your help!
Listen to this episode of Radio Lab and review it for us here.