Robert Krulwich

Host Emeritus, Radiolab

Robert Krulwich appears in the following:

The Love That Dared Not Speak Its Name, Of A Beetle For A Beer Bottle

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

It was early September — that's springtime in Western Australia — and two young biologists, Dwayne Gwynne and David Rentz, were on a field trip, wandering dirt roads near the highways, looking for insects, when one of them noticed a loose beer bottle lying on the ground — not so ...

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Isn't That King David? Nope, It's Just Dave

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Usually they're naked, ancient and stony. But all of a sudden, they could live next door.

The Paris-based designer Leo Caillard had, as he wrote me, "the idea conception" and took the photographs. Alexis Persani dressed them. (Not actually; it was done on a computer, as you

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Why Men Die Younger Than Women: The 'Guys Are Fragile' Thesis

Monday, June 17, 2013

The 19th century just lost its last living man.

Jiroemon Kimura, of Kyotango, Japan, was born in April 1897, lived right through the 20th century and died last Wednesday. He was 116. According to Guinness World Records (which searches for these things), he was the last surviving male born in ...

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Why Dolphins Make Us Nervous

Thursday, June 13, 2013

What is it about dolphins? They have very, very big brains, and that makes we humans, whose brains are nothing to sniff at, nervous. We don't know what to make of them.

The latest example: On May 17 in India, the Ministry of Environment and Forests issued an order ...

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Why Dolphins Make Us Nervous

Thursday, June 13, 2013

India has just banned dolphin entertainment parks. They are "morally unacceptable," says a government ministry. Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet, the U.S. Navy announced t...
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The Most Dangerous Traffic Circle In The World?

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Moving north: two vans. Moving east: three taxis, a peddle cab and one lady walking. Moving west: six motorcycles, another taxi, a truck and a van. Moving south: a bicyclist, two ca...
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The Most Dangerous Traffic Circle In The World?

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

I've been to New Delhi where traffic is frightening. I've seen pictures of Nairobi and Bangkok, where it's even scarier. But Ho Chi Minh City? The town we used to call Saigon? I don't think I'd put myself in a truck, car, bike or even a Sherman tank in that ...

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Watts For Lunch? (Or Why Humans Are Like Light Bulbs)

Monday, June 10, 2013

Take a bunch of broccoli, or make it a Slurpee, burger, pizza and fries, swallow, and ask yourself, "How much energy did I just consume?" Enough to light a flashlight? Run an electr...
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Watts For Lunch? (Or Why Humans Are Like Light Bulbs)

Monday, June 10, 2013

There's a new lunch place down the block, so like you do when the menu looks interesting, I walked in and ordered something mysterious, which for me was the "Red Lentil and Edamame Salad," mostly because I can never remember what edamame is, and because that word suggests doing something ...

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The Boomerang Graffito (Or Bad, Bad, Luther B!)

Friday, June 07, 2013

Be really careful when you carve your name onto an ancient Egyptian temple. Not because it's wrong (which it is), but because sometimes the temple comes back to haunt you. The true st...
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The Boomerang Graffito (Or Bad, Bad, Luther B!)

Friday, June 07, 2013

I was standing in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art the other day, where there's a full-sized Egyptian temple, called Dendur. It's housed under a glass roof ...

And standing there, gazing at profiles of Egyptian nobles etched onto the limestone, I noticed a bunch of what we now call ...

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MIT's Magic Bag Of Sand

Wednesday, June 05, 2013

It starts on a highway.

The camera pushes in. And there, near the meridian line, you see a faint scattering of red lights. Something is in the tar. And it's glowing.

One by one, teeny red cubes, with delicate circuitry on their sides, squeeze themselves out of the suddenly soft ...

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What Did Rachel Carson Hear? The Mystery Of The 'Fairy Bell Ringer'

Monday, June 03, 2013

This is the season of night noises, chirps, buzzes, little cries. The air is telling you, "Things are going on out here," and if you like you can step out onto the porch and do what the writer Rachel Carson did back in 1956: She played a hunting game. The ...

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TONIGHT. Live video and chat: Cellular Surgeons

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Join us for a night of nanospectucular wonders, hosted by Robert Krulwich, live from the World Science Festival tonight (May 30) at 8pm ET here on radiolab.org. Watch below, and join two Radiolab producers for a live chat as the event gets underway.

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Not Winging It, But Ringing It

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Humans do it with smoke.

Dolphins do it with air.

With a little snort, dolphins can produce a nearly perfect "air" rings, (sophisticated non-dolphins called them toroidal vortices) which they turn into underwater toys.

If they leave the rings alone, (because air is lighter than water) the underwater circles will ...

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What If There's No Internet?

Saturday, May 25, 2013

I email. I search. I shop. I Facebook. I stream. I Skype. Every year I seem to do these things a little bit more. Stroke by stroke, as I slip deeper into the Internet's embrace, I find myself wondering:

"What would happen if the Internet went away?"

Can it? It ...

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Who's The Best Drinker? Dogs? Cats? Or Pigeons?

Friday, May 24, 2013

Take a look at this.

It's a dog drinking water. It's also the answer to a riddle. When you and I take a drink, we can lift a glass, hold it to our mouth, tilt and use gravity to pour the water in. Dogs can't do that. In a pinch, ...

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How Benjamin Franklin Invented A Weight Loss Program, Using Balloons

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Ask a great inventor to invent, and that's exactly what he'll do. Sometimes the ideas pop out like cannon bursts: "consider this ... " or "maybe this?" or "Wait! How about THIS!"

Ben Franklin did that with balloons.

In the 1780s, Franklin was America's ambassador to France, living in Paris, ...

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The Little Metronome That Wouldn't

Monday, May 20, 2013

Take a metronome. Then take another. Then another. Set them ticking at different times. Look. Lift. (That's the key part.) Watch. Then Laugh. Because you will be dumbfounded.

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The Little Metronome That Wouldn't

Monday, May 20, 2013

If this wasn't a science page, if this happened 3,000 years ago in, say, a Middle Eastern desert, I would call it a Miracle. But it's not. It's just a plain, ordinary moment of "wow!"

First, the beginner's version. A man takes a bunch of metronomes, sets them ticking in ...

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