Robert Krulwich

Host Emeritus, Radiolab

Robert Krulwich appears in the following:

What Chickadees Have That I Want. Badly

Monday, December 23, 2013

First I look in my right coat pocket. Nothing. Then my left. Nothing. Then my pants, right side — no. Then my pants, left side — yes! This is me at my front door, looking for my keys....
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Weekend Special: Name That Sound!

Monday, December 23, 2013

I'm going to play you a sound that you hear all the time. But this time, instead of hearing it in context (in a familiar setting — the movies, an Xbox, on TV, in a phone), it's all al...
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What Chickadees Have That I Want. Badly

Monday, December 23, 2013

First I look in my right coat pocket. Nothing. Then my left. Nothing. Then my pants, right side — no. Then my pants, left side — yes! This is me at my front door, looking for my keys. Every day.

I have this extraordinary ability to not remember where my ...

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Weekend Special: Name That Sound!

Saturday, December 21, 2013

Dan Quinn, fluid dynamics grad student and sometime video artist at Princeton, also has ears. And his ears, like yours, regularly pick up familiar sounds. The question is, if someone plays you a sound that you regularly hear at the movies, or in an Xbox game, or when you ...

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One Man. One Cat. Multiplied

Friday, December 20, 2013

We start with a man called Mike and a cat called Ella. Two creatures.

Nothing odd about them, except that Mike has a beard and Ella is a touch chunky. Otherwise, they could be any cat and guy. Except ...

When you think about it, no one is ordinary. You ...

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One Man. One Cat. Multiplied

Friday, December 20, 2013

I'm thinking of a man and his cat. A real man. His real cat. Then I'm imagining a bunch of world-famous cartoonists, Calvin & Hobbes' Bill Watterson, Wile E. Coyote's Chuck Jones, Gar...
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Finding Grandpa On My Dinner Plate (Part 2)

Thursday, December 19, 2013

You order a lobster and the waiter shows you an animal that is, he says, older than you are. It's had more birthdays than you. For some people, this is a meal-stopper. Especially, if ...
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Finding Grandpa On My Dinner Plate (Part 2)

Thursday, December 19, 2013

I could tell you stories about guys who sit down to lobster dinners (there are several; I've even done one myself ) and the waiter says, "May we suggest ..." and he shows the man a very, very large lobster. The larger the lobster, the older it is, ...

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Why We Need Grandpas And Grandmas (Part 1)

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

The idea seemed sensible: Send young elephants from a crowded national park in South Africa to an emptier one, where they could form a new herd and thrive. The problem? Elephants need...
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Why We Need Grandpas And Grandmas (Part 1)

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Oldsters, it turns out, matter. They matter a lot. And not just in human families. I've been reading a new book called The Once and Future World, by J. B. MacKinnon, which points out that when we humans hunt game, when we fish the sea, we often prize the ...

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What's That Clinging To The Towering Wall And Why Doesn't It Fall Off?

Monday, December 16, 2013

Maybe you've seen this, (it's gotten around), but I'm still gobsmacked. Totally amazed. We're in northern Italy looking at the face of the Cingino Dam, and here and there on the vertical stone wall, you'll see a few dark specks.

Here they are again, a little closer. They look like ...

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What's That Clinging To The Towering Wall And Why Doesn't It Fall Off?

Monday, December 16, 2013

They look, at first, like dangerously protruding rocks on this towering, almost vertical wall in the Italian Alps. But then, uncannily, they move. What are they? And why don't they fa...
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What Happened On Easter Island — A New (Even Scarier) Scenario

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Whatever happened on Easter Island, it wasn't good. Polynesians landed there, farmed, thrived, built their famous statues, and then things went very bad, very fast. Sixteen million tr...
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What Happened On Easter Island — A New (Even Scarier) Scenario

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

We all know the story, or think we do.

Let me tell it the old way, then the new way. See which worries you most.

First version: Easter Island is a small 63-square-mile patch of land — more than a thousand miles from the next inhabited spot in the Pacific ...

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How Important Is A Bee?

Friday, December 06, 2013

When bees disappeared from central China years ago, Chinese apple farmers had to pollinate by hand. Embarrassing — people doing bees' work, but then came the big discovery –- a surp...
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How Important Is A Bee?

Friday, December 06, 2013

This is an alarming story, not because it ends badly. It's alarming because it ends well. It shouldn't have, but it did, and biologists (and especially conservationists) now have a puzzle to ponder.

The story begins in central China, in an apple-growing region called Maoxian County, near the city of ...

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How To Keep The Dust Off Your White Pants With 7 Desk Fans

Tuesday, December 03, 2013

Look inside most machines today and what do you find? Computer chips functioning mysteriously. Gaze at a 1920's Rube Goldberg cartoon and what do you find? Machines powered by hungry ...
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Science Reporter Emily Graslie Reads Her Mail — And It's Not So Nice

Saturday, November 30, 2013

I've said it before, so I'll say it again: Emily Graslie's "The Brain Scoop" is one of the warmest, slyest video blogs on the web. She's where I go to find out what museum scientists are up to — and right now she's at the Field Museum in ...

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Science Reporter Emily Graslie Reads Her Mail — And It's Not So Nice

Saturday, November 30, 2013

Reporter Emily Graslie explores natural history museums, showing us what's going on behind the scenes. Her viewers write her, of course, and in this video, she reads some of those let...
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On Thanksgiving, Everybody Needs A Friend — And That Means Everybody

Thursday, November 28, 2013

Today's a day to share, so that's why I want to share this moment: Two girls are on a city street, trying to figure out who's going to be friends with the nastiest person they can thi...
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