Radiolab for Kids

St. Patricks day is coming up. People worldwide will wear leprechaun hats and celebrate the luck of the Irish. But what about the luck of lobsters? Today we have a story about the biggest, luckiest lobster we have ever heard of — Nick. As lobsters age, they keep growing bigger and bigger. They don’t wear out or get sick like most other creatures do. The most common way they die is through accidents.One day a woman named Bonnie went to her nearby grocery store and saw behemoth Nick cramped in a small lobster tank. She asked the guy behind the seafood counter why Nick was there. After some back and forth with upper management, the store manager made her a deal. She could have Nick if she could get him back to Maine. This is the story of Nick’s escape from the grocery store to the ocean, in first class. For more on lobsters, read Trevor Corson’s The Secret life of Lobsters.Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes: Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neason, Valentina Powers, Sarah Qari, Sarah Sandbach, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters and Molly Webster. Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger and Natalie Middleton. Production help from Tanya Chawla. Sound mixing by Joe Plourde. HEY GROWN-UPS!Love the show? Leave us a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ rating and review on your podcast app—it helps curious listeners find us!We want to hear from you! Share your thoughts about Terrestrials with us.Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for bite-sized essays, activities, and ways to connect with the show.Follow us on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok for behind-the-scenes extras and more.Listen to original music from Terrestrials on Spotify, Apple Music, or our music page.Got a badgering question for the team? Email us at terrestrialspodcast@wnyc.org or submit a voice memo with your name, age, and your question using this form!Terrestrials is made possible in part by listeners like you. Support the show by joining Radiolab’s membership program, The Lab—and we’ll send you a special thank-you gift from our team!

When wildlife conservationist Alan Rabinowitz was a boy, he had a stutter. Strangely, his stutter vanished when he spoke to animals. One day, when his father took him to the Bronx Zoo, Alan saw a majestic jaguar and made a promise to it. He spent the rest of his life fulfilling that promise.Read Alan Rabinowitz’s picture book: “A Boy and a Jaguar.”Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes: Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neason, Valentina Powers, Sarah Qari, Sarah Sandbach, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters and Molly Webster. Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger and Natalie Middleton. Production help from Tanya Chawla. Sound mixing by Joe Plourde. HEY GROWN-UPS!Love the show? Leave us a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ rating and review on your podcast app—it helps curious listeners find us!We want to hear from you! Share your thoughts about Terrestrials with us.Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for bite-sized essays, activities, and ways to connect with the show.Follow us on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok for behind-the-scenes extras and more.Listen to original music from Terrestrials on Spotify, Apple Music, or our music page.Got a badgering question for the team? Email us at terrestrialspodcast@wnyc.org or submit a voice memo with your name, age, and your question using this form!Terrestrials is made possible in part by listeners like you. Support the show by joining Radiolab’s membership program, The Lab—and we’ll send you a special thank-you gift from our team!

Next week is Valentine’s Day, but instead of talking about falling in love, we’re going to talk about falling cats and barrels. First, writer David Quammen tells us about a strange observation: cats are falling out of buildings in New York City. When a cat falls from less than five stories or more than nine stories, it usually survives. But when it falls from between five and nine stories, it suffers serious injury. Why? Physics has the answer. Then we meet Annie Taylor, the first person who went over Niagara falls in a barrel. For more, check out Garret Soden’s “Falling: How Our Greatest Fear Became Our Greatest Thrill.”Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes: Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neason, Valentina Powers, Sarah Qari, Sarah Sandbach, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters and Molly Webster. Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger and Natalie Middleton. Production help from Tanya Chawla. Sound mixing by Joe Plourde. HEY GROWN-UPS!Love the show? Leave us a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ rating and review on your podcast app—it helps curious listeners find us!We want to hear from you! Share your thoughts about Terrestrials with us.Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for bite-sized essays, activities, and ways to connect with the show.Follow us on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok for behind-the-scenes extras and more.Listen to original music from Terrestrials on Spotify, Apple Music, or our music page.Got a badgering question for the team? Email us at terrestrialspodcast@wnyc.org or submit a voice memo with your name, age, and your question using this form!Terrestrials is made possible in part by listeners like you. Support the show by joining Radiolab’s membership program, The Lab—and we’ll send you a special thank-you gift from our team!

Today we bring you an episode from our friends over at The Big Fib. In the era of fake news, kids need to learn to be able to tell what’s true from what’s false. And what better way to do that than a game show that puts kids in the driver’s seat, adults in the hot seat, and a sound-effects robot strapped to the roof?Each week, a kid interviews one fake and one real expert on a particular topic and they have to figure out who’s the true expert and who’s a liar. In this episode, they interview two star experts on exoplanets, star nurseries, how stars turn into supernovas, shooting stars, white dwarf stars, telescopes, and much more. Can you figure out who’s lying about stars?For more shows, visit GZMshows.com. To hear all episodes of The Big Fib ad-free subscribe now. HEY GROWN-UPS!Love the show? Leave us a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ rating and review on your podcast app—it helps curious listeners find us!We want to hear from you! Share your thoughts about Terrestrials with us.Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for bite-sized essays, activities, and ways to connect with the show.Follow us on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok for behind-the-scenes extras and more.Listen to original music from Terrestrials on Spotify, Apple Music, or our music page.Got a badgering question for the team? Email us at terrestrialspodcast@wnyc.org or submit a voice memo with your name, age, and your question using this form!Terrestrials is made possible in part by listeners like you. Support the show by joining Radiolab’s membership program, The Lab—and we’ll send you a special thank-you gift from our team!

For centuries, the stomach was a black box to humans. We didn’t understand the mystery of what happened to food after it went inside us. That is, until the early 1800s, when Dr. William Beaumont found a boy, Alexis St. Martin, with a hole in his stomach. Writer Mary Roach brings us that story. She first sticks her hand inside the stomach of a live cow and then tells us how Beaumont conducted experiments on St. Martin to understand how the stomach breaks down food. This strange relationship between doctor and patient changed the way we understand digestion. Also, we have a brand new Terrestrials coming up just in advance of the Lunar New Year. We will be diving into the history and science of one of the animals associated with the festival. Check back in two weeks to hear that story. For more on guts, read:Mary Roach, “Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal”Fred Kaufman, “A Short History of the American Stomach”Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes: Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neason, Valentina Powers, Sarah Qari, Sarah Sandbach, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters and Molly Webster. Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger and Natalie Middleton. Production help from Tanya Chawla. Sound mixing by Joe Plourde. HEY GROWN-UPS!Love the show? Leave us a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ rating and review on your podcast app—it helps curious listeners find us!We want to hear from you! Share your thoughts about Terrestrials with us.Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for bite-sized essays, activities, and ways to connect with the show.Follow us on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok for behind-the-scenes extras and more.Listen to original music from Terrestrials on Spotify, Apple Music, or our music page.Got a badgering question for the team? Email us at terrestrialspodcast@wnyc.org or submit a voice memo with your name, age, and your question using this form!Terrestrials is made possible in part by listeners like you. Support the show by joining Radiolab’s membership program, The Lab—and we’ll send you a special thank-you gift from our team!

To celebrate New Year’s Day, there are all kinds of traditions. Some people eat black eyed peas for good luck, some list out resolutions. But here at Terrestrials, we are taking a cue from the wisdom of pets, who are so, so, so good at sleeping. After a short preamble from Lulu, we’ll turn the microphone over to listeners’ furry friends snoring and snoozing in various positions, places, and locations. The piece will be largely wordless, with some narration from listeners describing their pets, and sound designed as a sort of meditation to rest. HEY GROWN-UPS!Love the show? Leave us a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ rating and review on your podcast app—it helps curious listeners find us!We want to hear from you! Share your thoughts about Terrestrials with us.Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for bite-sized essays, activities, and ways to connect with the show.Follow us on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok for behind-the-scenes extras and more.Listen to original music from Terrestrials on Spotify, Apple Music, or our music page.Got a badgering question for the team? Email us at terrestrialspodcast@wnyc.org or submit a voice memo with your name, age, and your question using this form!Terrestrials is made possible in part by listeners like you. Support the show by joining Radiolab’s membership program, The Lab—and we’ll send you a special thank-you gift from our team!

The year’s best celestial event was, without a doubt, April’s solar eclipse. The moon went in front of the sun to cast a 115 mile wide shadow on Earth. A swathe of North America was showered in sudden darkness. In honor of the eclipse, the Radiolab team made a show about the star of the show: the moon. We think we know the moon — we know that humanity visited it, that it’s a shiny white rotating rock in the sky. But what else really? In today’s episode, the team tells us about the moon’s formation, moon dust, moon-quakes, moon volcanoes, how the moon causes the tides on the Earth, and what the temperature up there is like. Turns out, we’ve barely scratched the surface.For more, check out Rebecca Boyle’s book, ‘Our Moon: How the Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution and Made Us Who We Are’Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes: Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neason, Valentina Powers, Sarah Qari, Sarah Sandbach, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters and Molly Webster. Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger and Natalie Middleton. Production help from Tanya Chawla. Sound mixing by Joe Plourde. HEY GROWN-UPS!Love the show? Leave us a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ rating and review on your podcast app—it helps curious listeners find us!We want to hear from you! Share your thoughts about Terrestrials with us.Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for bite-sized essays, activities, and ways to connect with the show.Follow us on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok for behind-the-scenes extras and more.Listen to original music from Terrestrials on Spotify, Apple Music, or our music page.Got a badgering question for the team? Email us at terrestrialspodcast@wnyc.org or submit a voice memo with your name, age, and your question using this form!Terrestrials is made possible in part by listeners like you. Support the show by joining Radiolab’s membership program, The Lab—and we’ll send you a special thank-you gift from our team!

Today we bring you an episode from our friends over at Atlas Obscura. It's about something that for centuries people thought was a tall tale, something sailors would occasionally spot out in the waves like mermaids or the Loch Ness monster, but most people on the land didn't think was real. Until one day, when a satellite in the sky was able to solve the case. Host Dylan Thuras tells us the story of a satellite scientist and a ship captain in search of gigantic swaths of bioluminescence that radiate up from the surface of the sea over thousands of square miles.For more, check out the Atlas Obscura podcast. It’s an audio guide to the world’s wondrous, awe-inspiring, strange places. In under 15 minutes, it’ll take you to an incredible site, and along the way you’ll meet some fascinating people and hear their stories. Listen Monday through Thursday to explore a new wonder. HEY GROWN-UPS!Love the show? Leave us a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ rating and review on your podcast app—it helps curious listeners find us!We want to hear from you! Share your thoughts about Terrestrials with us.Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for bite-sized essays, activities, and ways to connect with the show.Follow us on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok for behind-the-scenes extras and more.Listen to original music from Terrestrials on Spotify, Apple Music, or our music page.Got a badgering question for the team? Email us at terrestrialspodcast@wnyc.org or submit a voice memo with your name, age, and your question using this form!Terrestrials is made possible in part by listeners like you. Support the show by joining Radiolab’s membership program, The Lab—and we’ll send you a special thank-you gift from our team!

Annie McEwen, a Radiolab reporter, dives into the mysterious Tunguska event of 1908, where a fiery explosion rocked Siberia. She tantalizingly explores the idea that a tiny black hole might have been responsible for the devastation. This cosmic enigma raises questions about black holes' potential impacts and what happens to the matter that falls into them. Alongside Molly Webster, they weave a narrative connecting science with storytelling, leading to the creation of a children's book about little black holes and their profound journeys.

Join a whimsical journey as a child's poster sparks curiosity about an imaginary moon named Zoozve. Discover the humorous turns of astronomical inaccuracies and the fascinating world of quasimoons that orbit Earth. Dive into the quirky behaviors of celestial objects, learn about asteroid naming traditions, and revel in the joy of community involvement in naming a newly found quasi-moon. This exploration showcases the chaotic beauty of the universe and the unexpected adventures that arise from simple curiosity.