Radio Lab: Season Two 2006

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.

Musical Language

November 5 5pm on 93.9 FM

What is music? How does it work? Why does it move us? Why are some people better at it than others? 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.

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.

Mind and body are in constant communication (neuroscientists call this the brain-body loop), but the loop can get out-of-sync-- even broken. This hour: stories of people whose brains and bodies have lost each other. 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 how, after many years, he managed to grow a new sense. And we hear from pilots who lose consciousness and suffer out-of-body experiences while flying fighter jets.

In the 60s, 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.