Terrestrials
Terrestrials is a family-friendly podcast that explores the wonders of nature, hosted by Lulu Miller. Every other week, listeners are taken on a nature walk to discover surprising behaviors of plants and animals, such as squirrels that can regrow their brains and octopuses that outsmart humans. The podcast features original songs by Alan Goffinski and selects the best Radiolab episodes about nature. It aims to transport audiences into the beyond-human world, from oceans to forests, with vivid storytelling.
Episodes
BIG CATS 2: Leopards & Jaguars (2 Fast, 2 FURious)
We're back with PURR-T TWO of our big cats journey, and this time, we’re heading even deeper into the cat-iverse.
We travel to India, where conservationist Shatrunjay Pratap Singh introduces us to leopards that live among shepherds and ancient temples. Then we head to Colombia, where biologist Laura Lisbeth Jaimes Rodriguez helps us track one of the most mysterious cats on Earth: the jaguar. We m
BIG CATS: Lions, Tigers & Roars (Oh My!)
Big cats are our most requested animal, but Lulu doesn’t really want to make an episode about them! . She thinks lions, tigers, and their feline cousins are the bullies of the animal kingdom. So Songbud Alan and Producerbud Ana set out to change her mind.
We head to the Bronx Zoo where big cat expert Luke Hunter introduces us to tigers that cough up furballs and wrestle crocodiles, and lion pride
The Wicked Smoocha: Anglerfish Break A World Record
In the depths of the ocean, a tiny male anglerfish catches a scent and follows it through the darkness. Eventually he finds a glowing, toothy female with a bacterial lightbulb on her head. He kisses her… and never lets go. Their bodies permanently fuse, merging bloodstreams, flesh, and digestive tracts.
Radiolab correspondent Molly Webster brings us the wild story of this eternal kiss. We dive dee
The Forest Fairy: Aphids Reveal Hidden Harmonies
Amy Ray (whose music you might know from the Indigo Girls) was on a walk in the Georgia woods with her dogs when she passed a tree branch and saw hundreds of tiny, white, fluffy creatures doing a synchronized stadium wave. She was mesmerized.
Turns out, she was looking at woolly aphids - small, defenseless bugs who have somehow figured out how to survive everything the forest throws at them. Resi
The Greeting: Yo-Yo Ma's Humpback Whale Experiment
As one of the most famous cellists of all time, Yo-Yo Ma has spent a lot of time playing music inside. But a few years ago, he decided to take the cello out of the fancy concert halls and into nature, bringing our very own Producerbud Ana along for the ride!
That brings us to humpback whales. Like Yo-Yo, humpbacks are musical. They communicate through melodies, clicks, grunts, whispers, and bello
The Red-Eyed Mascot: Loon Resilience in Minnesota
What do loons have to do with courage and community? In January, we received a letter from two sisters in Minnesota - Jude and Mo. They wrote to us because their city was experiencing a lot of unrest, with immigration agents arresting members of their community and protests ringing loud in the streets as people tried to protect their neighbors. And in the middle of it all, an unexpected symbol be
The Snowball: Extreme Squirrels in the Arctic (Replay)
Middle schooler, Aanya, has an up-close encounter with a squirrel in the school yard, which leads her to an obsession with one of North America's most common critters. She tells host Lulu Miller all about the overlooked superpowers of squirrels, including one squirrel who lives way up in the Arctic, where the weather gets so cold the squirrels who live there drop their body temperatures down below
The Snoozer: Penguin Slackerzzz Rule
How rested would you feel if you took 10,000 naps a day? Chinstrap Penguins in Antarctica spend their days taking MICRONAPS, each around 4 seconds long. To learn why, Lulu meets one (played by Songbud Alan), who explains how micronaps help them conserve energy and protect their babies from “sky pirates”! Then, in a badgermania, penguin scientists Dr. Eric Wagner and Dr. Dee Boersma answer your qu
Build-A-Dragon (Replay)
On February 17, in places like China, Malaysia, Korea and Chinatowns across the globe, dragons will rise in the form of massive puppets. Today we bring you a special Terrestrials episode on dragons to understand what they have to do with the New Year, what the dragon myth means, and explore the tiny chance that dragons could have ever been real. First, we meet Mr. Lu Dajie, one of China's most ren
The Portal: Groundhogs Lead Us Into an Underrealm of HOLES
Holes are full of a whole lot of nothin'. Pure, hollow emptiness. At least that’s what Songbud Alan thought before he fell down a rabbit hole of, well, HOLES! In honor of Groundhog Day, he takes Lulu to a fossil-filled pit behind a Chick-fil-A to dig up 66-million-year-old treasure, and deep down to an underwater hole where blobs of colorful microbes reveal a time when Earth’s days were only 6 hou
The Spellbook: Ancient Recipes for Animals
Where do animals come from? That's something people have been trying to explain for thousands of years. And for a while, scientists and philosophers believed that any ol' person could create creatures if they just had the right recipe. A touch of sand, maybe a drop of blood and POOF: you could create life. That idea was believed to be true for generations until one brave scientist decided to look
The Present: A Gift from our Furry Friends
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 locati
The Slowpoke: How Sloths Grow Invisibility
Sloths are the slowest mammals on Earth. How can a creature that moves so slowly survive in a world that moves so fast? Zoologist Lucy Cooke helps us rethink everything we know about sloths and their slowness. We follow a sloth named Nacho from a rainforest to a nightclub, trek deep into mangrove swamps to find a rare pygmy sloth and uncover the secret that allows sloths to evade even the deadlies
The Bridge: How Rainbows Connect Worlds
What is a rainbow? An optical illusion? Or a thing out there in the world? For centuries, cultures around the world believed that rainbows were bridges - pathways to gods and to the afterlife. Then in 1665, during a plague, a young Isaac Newton made a discovery that changed everything : sunlight is made of many colors. He counted 7. But artists, poets and curious children weren’t convinced. How c
The Fuzzy Ruckus: The Power of Lichen
Artist Ashley (Ash) Eliza Williams was so shy growing up that they found it hard to speak to people. Instead, they withdrew from the world of humans and found comfort in the forest, where they spent hours exploring, scavenging, and collecting — eventually discovering lichen. They began painting portraits of lichen’s wild, colorful, and fuzzy shapes. In time, Ash learned that lichen is actually a
A Podcast Turducken: With Wow in the World, Terrestrials and Circle Round
Lulu is hosting a holiday meal. She’s invited the characters from her extended kids podcast family - Wow in the World and Circle Round - for an epic kids podcast crossover special. It’s a potluck of stories and on the table is a turducken. Yes, a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken. Each show brings a wild story about one of these creatures. We learn about a chicken’s unexpected jou
The Hybrid: A Miracle Mule
In the game of life, every species is like an action figure. You got your dogs and your dung beetles, your bald eagles and your blueberries. And for a long time scientists believed it was pretty much impossible for those action figures to mix and make a new kind of action figure that was able to have its own babies (dog beetles? Baldberries? Nah). But, today we tell the story of a four-legged beas
The Night Flyer: How Bats sPOOkily Revive Forests
This Halloween, we’re going to the dark side. Deep in the darkest tropical forests, some of the world’s most elusive bats hang upside down in their winged sleeping bags. On a quest to find one of these flying mammals, Producerbud Ana ventures into a Puerto Rican forest and the back corridors of the American Museum of Natural History with Dr. Angelo Soto-Centeno. Why? Because while they may be scar
Maggies: The Healing Power of Baby Flies
Maggots are disgusting, right? Lulu has a hard time even saying the word maggot. But in this episode, we’re asking you to join us in setting our “ick” aside. If you stick with us, we promise that you’ll go from thinking these bugs are the grossest things ever to actually kinda liking them. Maybe even loving them. ER doctor Avir Mitra leads us down a rabbit hole of scientific discovery, explaining
The Travelers: How Moon Trees Hide Among Us
In 1971, a red-headed, tree-loving astronaut named Stu ‘Smokey’ Roosa was asked to take something to the moon with him. Of all things, he chose to take a canister of 500 tree seeds. After orbiting the moon 34 times, the seeds made it back to Earth. NASA decided to plant the seeds all across the country and then… everyone forgot about them. Until one day, a third grader from Indiana stumbled on a t
The Builders: How Beavers Mend Our Planet
Few mammals have a bigger positive impact on the planet than the beaver. With its bright orange buck teeth, the creature is an expert engineer that brings life wherever it waddles and even fights fires. Our story begins in the Bronx river, once known as the “open sewer” of New York City. After some humans decide to clean it up, we meet one of the river’s residents - José the beaver. We learn abou
The Unimaginable: How Gravitational Waves (Literally) Rocked Our World
Over a billion lightyears ago, in the darkness of outer space, a collision of black holes sent out a fleet of invisible waves that were headed right toward planet Earth. The waves were so powerful they could ripple spacetime but most people on Earth didn't believe the waves were real. SPOILER ALERT: The waves are called gravitational waves and…they are real! Astrophysicist Dr. Wanda Díaz Merced te
PIZZA BFF
Pizza is one of the world’s most beloved foods. But as much as we love the way it tastes, the secrets of its ingredients are even yummier to discover. We explore the surprising sounds tomatoes make when they’re stressed, how wheat became integral to human survival and how mold is sometimes... delicious? This episode also features live tap-dancing, mind-melting cheese facts and what might be the S
The Horseshoe Crab's Secret
We’re back with an episode from the Radiolab archive. Horseshoe crabs have been around for a long time. They outlived the dinosaurs, survived all mass extinctions and witnessed the sprouting of the Earth’s first trees. The secret to their longevity? Their baby blue blood. Which has been saving both their lives and ours. Lulu and Radiolab co-host, Latif Nasser, head to one of these bleeding facili
The Mastermind: An Octopus Heist
A color-changing creature many people assumed to be brainless outsmarts his human captors. SPOILER: The creature is an octopus! Author Sy Montgomery tells the story of one octopus named Inky who makes us question who we consider intelligent (and kissable) in the animal kingdom.
Learn about the storytellers, listen to music, and dig deeper into the stories you hear on Terrestrials with activities
Crabtacular! A deep dive into the Hudson River
Today, we splash into the Hudson River Park with our Songbud to meet all kinds of crabs. With Siddartha and Carrie from the Hudson River Park, Alan puts on waterproof rubber overalls, gets his hands dirty in the river and dives into the secret lives of Hudson crabs.Plus, CRAB WEEK is going on right now in New York City! It’s an annual shell-ebration that highlights the crabs of the Hudson River.
CHOWDA: A Souper Fascinating Tale
Today we’re bringing you a live episode we taped in Boston. It’s about clam chowder. We’re sharing it now because we’re doing ANOTHER LIVE SHOW at Little Island in NYC on August 6th + 7th - and that one’s about PIZZA! The show’s free. There will be pizza. Join if you’re in NYC (or make this the reason you visit). Check out all of our other performances here.Lulu is a Bostonian who has never had cl
The Sea Troll: An Everlasting Shark?
The Greenland shark is ugly. Its eyes look cloudy and dead. Its snout and fins are stubby. Its meat is poisonous. And that may be part of why most people have overlooked these sharks for so long. But there was a rumor circulating among Greenland villagers that this deepsea dweller could survive for centuries. Scientist John Steffensen went on a hunt to see if this was true and discovered that the
Bugapalooza! LIVE! Jumping spiders, hissing roaches, and more
We’re doing a bunch of LIVE SHOWS at Little Island in NYC on August 6th-7th. For free. Come join! Check out all of our performances here.Today we’re bringing you an episode we taped LIVE at The Greene Space at WNYC. In a room filled with all types of critters — scorpions, hissing cockroaches, a tarantula named Isabel and our main star… the jumping spider. Entomologist and bug lover Dr. Sebastian E
The Howler: The Dog Who Joined a Coyote Pack
On the outskirts of the Nevada desert, a young dog named Hades jumped his fence and ran away from home. His family lost hope, until one night, they saw Hades on the news. For almost seven months, he had been sleeping, eating and howling with a pack of coyotes.We usually view coyotes as vicious, bloodthirsty beasts. But turns out, they can be pretty friendly. They form unlikely alliances with other
The Invaders: Coquí Frogs Just Won't Die
Coquí frogs are synonymous with Puerto Rican identity. Residents of the island doze off to the high-pitched calls of coquís from dusk to dawn. There are even playlists of hours of coquí calls that lull listeners to sleep. That’s why ProducerBud Ana, a proud Puerto Rican, was confused when she saw a poster calling for the eradication of coquí frogs at a Hawaiian airport. Turns out, residents of Haw
The Snow Beast: A Mystery Animal with Latif Nasser
Today we bring you a story stranger than fiction. In 2006, paleobiologist Natalia Rybczynski took a helicopter to a remote Arctic island near the North Pole, spending her afternoons scavenging for ancient treasures on the ground. One day, she found something the size of a potato chip. Turns out, it was a three and a half million year old chunk of bone. SPOILER ALERT BELOW.Keep reading if you’re ok
The Windbreaker: Why Farts Make the World Go Round
Farts. Trouser trumpets. Sulfur squeaks. Or toots, as Lulu insists on calling them. Smelly bubbles of air we don’t like to talk about. But Songbud Alan and Producerbud Ana are not ones to shy away from the stinky sidelines of science. First, they take us to a concert hall to meet a FARTchestra and hear how behind some of the world’s greatest works of art lies the power of farts. Next Dr. Juan Pabl
The Shadow Creature: Rats Who Save Human Lives
Rats have a bad reputation. They’ve been called evil, terrifying and wicked. The lowliest and most abominable of creatures. Songbud Alan felt the same way until he heard of one rat from Tanzania named Magawa. We meet Pendo, Magawa’s human friend and trainer, who wanted to train Magawa for a battlefield of sorts. A battle to save human lives. You see, some countries have explosive landmines placed
More Terrestrials Coming Soon!
Terrestrials returns Thursday, April 17th with a brand-new season!This spring, we’re diving into the wonderfully weird. Get ready to meet some of the fiercest, strangest creatures on Earth—from Hawaiian jungle goblins to New York City’s elusive sewer beasts to nine-foot-tall misunderstood snow monsters. When we take a closer look at the creatures we usually fear, we often discover a little magic,
The Bullseye: Treasure Hunt to Recursive Islands
Have you ever seen an island on a lake? On an island? On a lake? On another island? Josh Calder has. Working in a dusty room of a library, he first saw one on a map, and has been fascinated with these “recursive islands” ever since. Song bud Alan Goffinski takes us on a wild journey into these secret bullseyes hiding all over planet Earth. We learn from ecologist Elba Montes why recursive islands
An Ocean in Space
BLAST OFF! NASA just sent a spacecraft to Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, and on the side of that spacecraft, they included a poem. Not just any poem — a poem by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón. A poem that’s supposed to represent all of humanity to the universe. No biggie. Host Lulu Miller opens up the floor to kids from all over the country to ask Limón and NASA scientist Cynthia Phillips questions
The Crystal Ball: Giant Honeybees Who Predict the Future
The honeybee. The ever-important pollinator for our plants is disappearing. Some call it the silence of the bees, others call it colony collapse disorder. Dr. Sammy Ramsey, our official bug correspondent, wondered, could it be due to parasites? And if so, how do we catch all of them? This question takes Dr. Sammy to the heart of a jungle in Bangladesh to look for overlooked honeybees impervious to
The Stumpisode: The Wild World of Tree Stumps!
As dead as they seem, tree stumps are hubs of life and relationships. From stumps to snags, deadwood provides habitat for rodents, falcons, insects, and even humans! Stumps hold together the forest floor, give hunting perches to birds of prey in flatlands, prevent erosion and the encroachment of invasive species, usher in sunlight, provide nutrients, can be wells of renewable fuel, and hold onto s
The Water Walker: One Surfer’s Epic Escape
The ocean can be a scary place: the waves are so strong, the water so deep. But surfer and illustrator AJ Dungo tells the story of an earthling who figured out how to walk on water and literally defy the rules of gravity. If you want a big SPOILER, here it is: It’s only human for the season, the grandfather of modern-day surfing, Duke Kahanamoku. Duke’s great grandniece, Heather Kina’u Paoa tells
The Trio: A Bald Eagle Love Story
High above the banks of the Mississippi river, a nest holds the secret life of one of America’s most patriotic creatures. Their story puzzles scientists, reinforces indigenous wisdom, and wows audiences, all thanks to a park ranger named Ed, and a well-placed webcam. If you want to spoil the mystery, here ya go: it’s a bald eagle. Actually, it’s three bald eagles. A mama bird and daddies make a ho
The Guardian: Tsetse Fly Defenders
A singing entomologist, Dr. Sammy Ramsey, and a biologist with a knack for inventing things, Dr. Paul Mireji, tell us about one of the most fearsome animals on our planet. If you want a SPOILER of what it is, read on: It sucks our blood, spreads diseases; it's the tsetse fly. Both Sammy and Paul were afraid of this creature, but share the story of what can be gained by looking close at what scares
Vanished Moon!
The moon has disappeared. Ok, just kidding. Happy April Fool’s Day. But what if the moon actually vanished?After songbud Alan saw a movie about stealing the moon, he wondered what would actually happen if the moon disappeared. He found the perfect person to talk to – Mika McKinnon who has a masters in disasters. We learn about eerie silences, ocean stench, hurricanes, and ecosystems in total flux.
Gettin' Crabby
If someone calls you crabby, it’s not a compliment – they’re calling you grumpy, grouchy or snappy. But let’s reconsider this stain on the humble crab’s reputation. Look closely at a crab’s gnarled shell and you’ll see an incredible creature. Today, we bring you two very different crab stories. The first comes from former Radiolab producer Rachael Cusick about a woman who replicated the ocean to b
Luck of the Lobster
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 accident
The Big Cat and the Little Boy
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
It's Raining Cats and Cats
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 suff
Stars from the Big Fib
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
Hole-y Cow
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 exper
Volcanoes on the Moon
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 r
Milky Seas From Atlas Obscura
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
The Littlest Black Hole
In less than 10 days, the world will witness the winter solstice, or the shortest day of the year. Half of the Earth will be tilted the farthest away from the sun, and we will plunge into the dark. So today we thought we’d play another story about the dark. One of the darkest places in the universe actually: a black hole. But not just any black hole, a really tiny black hole, the size of an atom.W
Zoozve
Radiolab co-host Latif Nasser was putting his child to sleep one day when he noticed a poster of the solar system on the wall. It showed that Venus had a moon called Zoozve. When he looked it up, the internet told him that Venus did not have a moon. And searching “Zoozve” gave him a bunch of Czech results about zoos. This moment sets Latif off on a curiosity odyssey. What is the mystery behind thi
A Feast for Baboons
We start this story off with a question. Are human beings innately violent? Then we head to East Africa with Stanford neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky, who spent his summers studying wild baboons there. Baboons are a textbook example of a hierarchical, male-dominated, and aggressive society. But one day, Sapolsky noticed that a troop of baboons became unexpectedly gentle. They deviated from the usua
Whale of a Rescue
We start off in a cathedral full of animals – hermit crabs, parrots, hamsters, dogs, cats and bunnies – being blessed. We then wonder, do the animals feel grace? What do we really know about what goes on inside an animal’s mind? Do they also experience gratitude, despair or anger? How much emotionality do humans and animals share? And can we measure it? We get the story of a rescued whale that may
New Episodes of Terrestrials Coming in September!
Terrestrials is Radiolab's spin-off nature show for families and for people of all ages that explores the strangeness that exists right here on Earth. Each episode feels like a fairytale that is 100% true. Host Lulu Miller (co-host of Radiolab) leads you on a nature walk to encounter incredible creatures, wild storytellers, and original songs from "The Songbud" Alan Goffinski. That's right! We si
Wild Talk
Think about the sounds you hear on a daily basis. Air conditioners whirring, keyboards clicking, cars honking, mosquitos buzzing, dishes clanking. Now picture yourself in a jungle. What do you hear? How do you make sense of it?Today on Radiolab for Kids, we eavesdrop on the world of animals. We bring you a story of two humans decoding animal sounds in nature. Science journalist Ari Daniel Shapiro
Why Do I Love the Fly That’s Eating My Brain?
Today’s episode asks how scientists see the world. We bring you two stories — one about a math guy and a bug guy. First, how the math guy, or one of our country's greatest mathematicians, Steven Strogatz, first became enchanted with math as a kid. Then, a story about a human developing a soft corner (literally) for a fly that lived in his scalp — the botfly. Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne went
Human vs Horse
The summer olympics are in full swing. Humans are racing against other humans from all across the globe. But you know the one race they don’t have? The one where a human competes against a horse. Radiolab for Kids is back with one of our favorite Radiolab animal episodes of all time where we head to that race in the desert of Arizona. Turns out it has everything to do with what gives us humans… ou
The Gorilla in the Room
Radiolab for kids is back! Is there such a thing as a good cage? Happy gorillas, deft landscape architects and neurologists show us that there just might be. We go back to the late 1970s to relive the moment when zoos began to change—literally the moment that the modern zoo was born, as embodied by a few tentative steps of a gorilla named Kiki. That story, told by zoo director David Hancocks, arch
Special Announcement
The Terrestrials team is delighted to announce we’re coming back to the Radiolab for Kids feed! We’ve been traveling the globe in search of the strangeness right here on Earth. And we’ll be sharing a whole new batch of stories – and songs – in September.In the meantime:-catch up on past episodes!-bop your head to songbud Alan’s songs!-check out our brand new teaching resources!Support for Terrestr
Terrestrials: A New Kids Show from Radiolab
Radiolab for Kids and WNYC Studios present Terrestrials, a six-episode miniseries hosted by Lulu Miller (co-host of Radiolab). Each episode introduces you to a creature or earthly phenomenon that will defy your expectations of how nature is supposed to work. Along the way, you'll encounter a chorus of experts, including scientists, surfers, hip hop artists and…a "Song Bud" named Alan Goffinski who
