Radio Lab

I have become somewhat obsessed with a podcast that Natalie found called Radio Lab. The show does storied on scientific phenomena or scientific questions through their interviewing people that are experts, or at least work on these questions. In a lot of ways Radio Lab reminds me of another of our favorite NPR (technically PRI) shows This American Life.

There is a show on the concept of "emergence" that is great. This is what Wikipedia has to say on this and a cool site from MIT. The most interesting part of that show for me was about how individual brain cells interact with each other to function. In other words, how is it that when you look at, say, a steaming coffee mug your brain processes the information so that it knows that it is a coffee mug, the shape of the coffee mug, the color of the coffee, etc. (visual senses) on top of knowing it has coffee in it (olfactory senses). I guess I just never sat back and thought much about how it is that the brain incorporates a bunch of sensory signals, whether they be light, chemical, or other and turn them into consciousness. Just crazy stuff and all in public radio.

Radio Lab also has some interesting pieces on language and music, where part of the show talks about some languages being more musical (Mandarin) than others (English) and some of the interesting effects of growing up in one language or another. There are also a couple of shows on time, one of which looks that "choice" from a particle physics point of view (let's just say that choice and math don't go hand in hand) and a piece on archaeologists finding a huge pile of trash in Egypt dating back thousands of years that contains some interesting pieces of writing (guess the Egyptians didn't have shredders then).

Give the show a chance if you have some time. It is not the best radio show for sitting at work because it can be so interesting that it distracts from actual work but it sure is fun to listen to while stuck in traffic or diving somewhere.