Robert Krulwich

Host Emeritus, Radiolab

Robert Krulwich appears in the following:

What Not To Serve Buzzards For Lunch, A Glorious Science Experiment

Thursday, June 26, 2014

OK, I'm doing great science experiments. We've done sex (see previous post). On to lunch!

This is the story of a bird, a puzzle, and a painting. The painting, curiously, helped solve the puzzle, which is: How do vultures find food?

In America, back in the 1820s, everybody knew ...

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Two Glorious Science Experiments: One About Sex, The Other About Lunch

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Done right, a good science experiment is simple, clear and revealing. Done splendidly, it's a tale you don't forget. Let's do the sex one first. It took place in Italy, in the 1760s, when a Catholic priest and scholar, Lazzaro Spallanzani, was thinking about sperm — which is why ...

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Two Glorious Science Experiments: One About Sex, The Other About Lunch

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

In the 1760s, an Italian scientist ran a sex experiment that required putting teeny trousers on some ardent male frogs. Hot guys in pants, it turns out, aren't so hot.

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Man Floats Free In Hotel Corridor

Sunday, June 22, 2014

Hotel hallways are cramped and narrow, like cages. But Storyboard P won't be trapped. Watch this Brooklyn dancer float toward a fire extinguisher — beauty in tight places.

 

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Man Floats Free In Hotel Corridor

Sunday, June 22, 2014

We live in a sea of air. It holds us, weighs on us, keeps us tethered. The earth, of course, holds us too, keeps us pinned. But not all of us. I want you to meet Storyboard P, a dancer who floats.

In this dance, he's in a British ...

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Wrong! Deconstructing 5 Famous History Stories

Friday, June 20, 2014

You don't question them. You don't doubt them. You hear them so often, you wouldn't know they are lies. Here are five historical "facts" that aren't true. Never were. And now you'll know.

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Wrong! Deconstructing 5 Famous History Stories

Friday, June 20, 2014

Here are five stories we tell ourselves — five famous history stories that you have heard all your life — that aren't true. Not only are they not true, but historians have known they aren't true, said they aren't true, insisted they aren't true, and the stories don't change. ...

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Lights, Lights, Lights, Action! A Crazy New Light Projector

Monday, June 16, 2014

What if you could turn your finger into a paintbrush and, in real time, draw anything on any surface (even in the air), then turn your creation into a moving figure? No, don't imagine. Watch this.

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Lights, Lights, Lights, Action! A Crazy New Light Projector

Monday, June 16, 2014

What can you do with a spotlight?

You can light a spot.

But what if you give yourself more options and invent a tool that lets light spill, splash or tighten into a beam as thin as a pencil line — a beam of light that can draw!

Draw what? ...

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Unstealing Treasures: A Reverse Burglary

Saturday, June 14, 2014

I've got this friend, Craig. He's not exactly an outlaw, but if the world needs something moved that is not supposed to be moved, he will move it anyway. Only in the interest of justice. Like Batman.

What he moved (or removed) was a small pot made by a Native ...

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How We Learned That Frogs Fly

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Two Harvard professors. One on a rooftop with a bucket of frogs. The other in the front yard, down below. Ready? Get set. Throw!

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How We Learned That Frogs Fly

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

There are places where frogs could be — but aren't.

And places where frogs could be — and are.

Ninety years ago, scientists were debating the question of animal dispersal. How come there are kangaroos in Australia, and none in southern Africa --which seems, environmentally, very kangaroo-friendly? Certain frogs show ...

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Big Moments Get Less Weighty: Whatever Happened To Stiff Paper?

Sunday, June 08, 2014

It's no big deal. It shouldn't matter. I just realized that something that's been around forever, that I grew up with, took for granted and used all the time, is slowly vanishing. Now that it's going, I suddenly care and want it back again, back in my hands so I ...

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Big Moments Get Less Weighty: Whatever Happened To Stiff Paper?

Sunday, June 08, 2014

It's no big deal. It shouldn't matter. I just realized that something that's been around forever, that I grew up with, took for granted and used all the time, is slowly vanishing. Now that it's going, I suddenly care and want it back again, back in my hands so I ...

Comment

How Chocolate Might Save The Planet

Wednesday, June 04, 2014

Honey is nature's gift. It's natural. Made by bees. Chocolate is the opposite, a great engineering creation that could, just possibly, just maybe, help save our planet.

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How Chocolate Might Save The Planet

Wednesday, June 04, 2014

When you unwrap it, break off a piece and stick it in your mouth, it doesn't remind you of the pyramids, a suspension bridge or a skyscraper; but chocolate, says materials scientist Mark Miodownik, "is one of our greatest engineering creations."

True, it begins with a cocoa bean ...

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A Little Bird Either Learns Its Name Or Dies

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

I've been wondering lately, do animals invent names? As in names for themselves? Names for each other? I've always thought that what we do when we call ourselves "Ralph" or "Laura" is unique, something exclusively human. But it turns out that's wrong. Other animals have name-like calls that they use ...

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A Little Bird Either Learns Its Name Or Dies

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Names are useful. We use them to catch someone's attention, to talk about them. Do animals create names for each other like we do? Yes, turns out. Here's a crazy example, with a dastardly back story.

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A Young Woman Falls In Love With Everything

Sunday, May 25, 2014

You start with difference, with mystery. Some things spiral, some become spheres, some branch, some don't. We know that inert atoms quicken, become bees, goats, clouds, then dissolve back into randomness. We look at these things, all these very, very different things, and we wonder, are they really different, or ...

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A Young Woman Falls In Love With Everything

Sunday, May 25, 2014

You start with difference, with mystery. Some things spiral, some become spheres, some branch, some don't. We know that inert atoms quicken, become bees, goats, clouds, then dissolve back into randomness. We look at these things, all these very, very different things, and we wonder, are they really different, or ...

Read More

Comments [1]