We hear two stories of everyday life which are more easily understood if one knows some of the laws of physics, specifically the Mediocrity Principle and the Casimir Effect.
If there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, why haven’t we heard from the extraterrestrials yet? Producer David Kestenbaum explains The Fermi Paradox to host Ira Glass. The possibility that we are alone in the universe makes David sad.
Senior Editor David Kestenbaum talks with a different kind of advocacy group: animal scientists doing their best to save a particular species before it winks out of existence. (16 minutes)
Journalist David Epstein tells the story of Jill Viles, who has muscular dystrophy and can’t walk. But she believes that she somehow has same condition as one of the best hurdlers in the world, Priscilla Lopes-Schliep.
David Kestenbaum tells Ira about the time, when he was doing graduate work in physics, he and his other single friends decided to figure out the mathematical probability that they’d find girlfriends. They wanted to know what the chances were that there was more than one person in the world for them.
NPR reporter David Kestenbaum tells host Ira Glass about the time, when he was doing graduate work in physics, he and his other single friends decided to figure out the mathematical probability that they'd find girlfriends. They wanted to know what the chances were that there was more than one person in the world for them.
This American Life contributor Paul Tough visits Catherine Chalmers. She raises small animals and insects in her apartment, feeds them to each other, and photographs them eating each other.
Anthropologists agree that humans stopped being animals when they started walking upright, on two legs. But scientists don't agree on why our ancestors did this.
The story from the prologue continues, with the researchers re-doing the canvassing experiment. And the results are even more surprising this time around.
Another story about parasites. When Jasper Lawrence learned that hookworms might lessen the effects of his allergies, he set out on a unique mission: To travel to West Africa and purposefully become infected with the parasite.
In 1980, deep in a nuclear missile silo in Arkansas, a simple human error nearly caused the destruction of a giant portion of the Midwest. Joe Richman, founder of Radio Diaries tells the story. Eric Molinsky helped report this story.
Remember learning that women’s menstrual cycles tend to sync up when they spend a lot of time together? Producer Diane Wu was skeptical. So she went looking for evidence.
D. Travers Scott and his boyfriend spent six months gathering data on their own relationship and put together a report on it in the form of a corporate annual report.
Ralph and Sandra Fisher, who run a show-animal business in Texas, had a beloved Brahman bull named Chance. Chance was the gentlest bull they'd ever seen, more like a pet dog than a bull.