Terrestrials

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 hours long. We discover eyeless cave fish, fall into a sinkhole of Corvettes, and go house hunting for the perfect animal hole to cozy up in... which leads us to one of the coziest holes of all: a groundhog’s burrow. Want to DIG deeper? Staten Island ChuckEdelman Fossil Parkdig for real fossilsMammoth Caveeyeless cave fishCorvette Museum Sinkholehow sinkholes formTerrestrials was created by Lulu Miller with WNYC. This episode was produced by Alan Goffinski, with sound design by Mira Burt-Wintonick. Sarah Sandbach is our Executive Producer. Our team also includes Ana González, Tanya Chawla and Joe Plourde. Factchecking by Sophie Samiee. Support for Terrestrials is provided by the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and the John Templeton Foundation. 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!

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 more closely at an unlikely bug and change the course of science forever. Lulu calls up our biology correspondent, Dr. Avir Mitra, to solve this ancient mystery. Terrestrials was created by Lulu Miller with WNYC. This episode was produced by Ana González and Alan Goffinski, with sound design by Mira Burt-Wintonick. Sarah Sandbach is our Executive Producer. Our team also includes Tanya Chawla and Joe Plourde. Factchecking by Diane Kelly. Support for Terrestrials is provided by the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and the John Templeton Foundation. 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!

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 deadliest predators. Hint: it has to do with a special kind of invisibility. For more, check out Lucy’s A Little Book of Sloth and her sloth calendar! Terrestrials was created by Lulu Miller with WNYC. This episode was reported and produced by Alan Goffinski, with sound design by Mira Burt-Wintonick. Sarah Sandbach is our Executive Producer. Our team also includes Ana González, Tanya Chawla and Joe Plourde. Factchecking by Natalie Middleton. Our advisors for this show were Liza Demby, Ana Luz Porzecanski, Nicole Depalma and Carly Ciarrocchi. Special thanks to José Pablo Guzmán García, Dr. Sammy Ramsey and Lucy Cooke. In more exciting news, we just created the first ever Terrestrials Jigsaw Puzzle! It’s a scene of all the creatures we’ve featured on Terrestrials so far, made by artist Arthur Jones. It can be yours for the simple price of supporting Terrestrials by joining our brand new Explorers Club! You get all types of perks like extra Alan songs, ad-free listening and this puzzle for the month of December! Visit TerrestrialsPodcast.org/donate. Thank you for all your support. Support for Terrestrials is provided by the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and the John Templeton Foundation. A reminder that Terrestrials also makes original music! You can find ‘Gotta Slow It Down’ and all other music from the show here. 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!

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 could a rainbow only have seven colors? Their skepticism led to a far stranger discovery that would revolutionize how we understand the universe. - In the end, we learn that rainbows are kind of a bridge - between our outer and inner worlds. Science writer Philip Ball helps us follow the rainbow’s story, plus Songbud and the Youth Pride Chorus of New York City turn it all into a magical musical. To learn more about the history of color, read Dr. Ball’s book Bright Earth. Special thanks to Philip Ball, the Youth Pride Chorus of NYC, Nicholas Sienkiewicz and Rashad Chambers. In more exciting news, we just created the first ever Terrestrials Jigsaw Puzzle! It’s a scene of all the creatures we’ve featured on Terrestrials so far, made by artist Arthur Jones. It can be yours for the simple price of supporting Terrestrials by joining our brand new Explorers Club! You get all types of perks like extra Alan songs, ad-free listening and this puzzle for the month of December! Visit TerrestrialsPodcast.org/donate. Thank you for all your support. Terrestrials was created by Lulu Miller with WNYC. This episode was produced by Tanya Chawla and Ana González, with technicolor sound design by Mira Burt-Wintonick. Sarah Sandbach is our Executive Producer. Our team also includes Alan Goffinski and Joe Plourde. Factchecking by Diane Kelly. Support for Terrestrials is provided by the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and the John Templeton Foundation. A reminder that Terrestrials also makes original music! You can find ‘Rainbows! The Bridge EP’ and all other music from the show here. 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!

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 journey back home, a duck mystery in the middle of the Arctic Ocean and an indigenous folktale about how the turkey got its gobble, culminating in a giant singalong. Keep learning! Check out Inge the chicken’s route back home. Read about the mysterious ocean quack sound. Learn about the turkey’s role in Cherokee culture. This episode was a huge collaboration between our team and the teams at Tinkercast’s Wow in the World and WBUR’s Circle Round, including Mindy Thomas, Guy Raz, Rebecca Sheir, Eric Shimelonis, Tom van Kalken, Steph Sosa and Anna Zagorski. Terrestrials was created by Lulu Miller with WNYC. This episode was reported and produced by Lulu Miller, Alan Goffinski, Ana González and Tanya Chawla. Beautiful sound design by Mira Burt-Wintonick and Joe Plourde. Engineering by Joe Plourde. Our Executive Producer is Sarah Sandbach. Factchecking by Anna Pujol-Mazzini. Support for Terrestrials is provided by the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and the John Templeton Foundation. A reminder that Terrestrials also makes original music! You can find the single from this episode Turducken Dreams and all of our other music here. 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!

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 scary and look kinda like Dracula, with their sharp fangs and beady eyes, these bats hold something crucial for humanity - the ability to repair entire ecosystems after some of the most destructive hurricanes ever. Terrestrials was created by Lulu Miller with WNYC studios. This episode was produced and reported by Ana González with sound design by Mira Burt-Wintonick. Our Executive Producer is Sarah Sandbach. Our team also includes Alan Goffinski, Tanya Chawla and Joe Plourde. Factchecking was by Emily Krieger. Special thanks to the American Museum of Natural History and Dr. Angelo Soto-Centeno. Also tell us what creature you want a future show about! Submit suggestions on what animals we should do our next season on here! Our advisors for this show were Liza Demby, Ana Luz Porzecanski, Nicole Depalma and Carly Ciarrocchi. Support for Terrestrials also comes from the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and the John Templeton Foundation. 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!

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 how these revolting critters have a history - and future - of saving human limbs and lives. Plus, a musical lesson in wound treatment 101. Tell us what creature you want a future show about! Submit suggestions on what animals we should do our next season on here! Terrestrials was created by Lulu Miller with WNYC studios. This episode was produced by Alan Goffinski with sound design by Mira Burt-Wintonick. Our Executive Producer is Sarah Sandbach. Our team also includes Ana Gonzalez, Tanya Chawla and Joe Plourde. Factchecking was by Natalie Middleton. Huge thank you to Dr Avir Mitra. If you liked his storytelling, listen to some more stories he did with Radiolab: The Elixir of Life Dispatch 5: Don't Stop Believin' The Dirty Drug and the Ice Cream Tub Our advisors for this show were Jamie Albright, kid advisor Kai, momma (fly) Maya, Ana Luz Porzecanski, Nicole Depalma and Carly Ciarrocchi. Support for Terrestrials also comes from the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and the John Templeton Foundation. 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!

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 tree with a strange plaque: "Moon Tree." This discovery set off a cascading search for all the trees that visited the moon across the United States. Science writer, and our very own factchecker, Natalie Middleton tells us the tale. We’re holding a Moon Tree contest! Send us a drawing of what you imagine a Moon Tree to look like. Submit here. If you happen to find a Moon Tree and visit it, email us pictures of you at terrestrials@wnyc.org! We’d love to feature you on our social media @terrestrialspodcast. Check out Natalie’s map to find your nearest moon tree on our show page! Help us hunt for more moon trees. If you know of an undocumented moon tree, contact Natalie at nataliemiddleton.org. Check out Natalie’s essay on Moon Trees and Space Zinnias in Orion Magazine. Visit NASA’s official Moon Tree Page for a list of all the Apollo 14 Moon Trees in the world. To learn more about Stu Roosa or to learn more about acquiring your own half Moon Tree, check out the Moon Tree Foundation, spearheaded by Stu’s daughter, Rosemary Roosa. Terrestrials was created by Lulu Miller with WNYC Studios. This episode was produced by Tanya Chawla and sound-designed by Joe Plourde. Our Executive Producer is Sarah Sandbach. Our team includes Alan Goffinski, Ana González and Mira Burt-Wintonick. Fact checking was by Diane Kelly. Special thanks to Sumanth Prabhaker from Orion magazine, retired NASA Scientist Dr. Dave Williams, Joan Goble, Tre Corely and NASA scientist Dr. Marie Henderson. Our advisors for this show were Ana Luz Porzecanski, Nicole Depalma, Liza Demby and Carly Ciarrocchi. Support for Terrestrials also comes from the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and the John Templeton Foundation. 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!

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 about the US government parachuting beavers out of planes into the mountains. And finally head to California where we discover how one beaver family saved acres of land from burning. Special thanks to author Ben Goldfarb, Christian Murphy from the Bronx River Alliance and Dr. Emily Fairfax. Subscribe to our newsletter if you haven’t already, follow us on instagram @terrestrialspodcast, and leave us a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ rating and review on your podcast app - it helps curious listeners find us! KEEP LEARNING! Read Ben Goldfarb’s book Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter. Watch the US government drop beavers out of planes into mountains. Read Leila Philip’s Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America. Watch Leave It to Beavers, a documentary about beavers restoring rivers and wetlands. Read about how reintroducing beavers can enhance ecological health. Read about how beaver dams help wildfire-ravaged ecosystems recover. Terrestrials was created by Lulu Miller with WNYC Studios. This episode was produced by Ana González and sound-designed by Mira Burt-Wintonick. Our team includes Alan Goffinski, Joe Plourde and Tanya Chawla. Fact checking was by Diane Kelly. Our advisors for this show were Ana Luz Porzecanski, Nicole Depalma, Liza Demby and Tovah Barocas. Support for Terrestrials also comes from the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and the John Templeton Foundation. 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!

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 / 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 Songbud’s catchiest song yet, Special thanks to Little Island for having us. If you’re in NYC, go check them out. It’s free to wander around, there are hidden musical instruments to see, gorgeous plants and so much more. Visit littleisland.org to learn more. And huge thanks to our guest performers - tap dancer John Manzari, who you can catch performing or teaching tap lessons around NYC, percussionist Caitlin Cawley from Mantra Percussion, Josh Windsor, the Associate Director of Caves at Murray's Cheese in New York City, a world-famous cheese shop with tons of cheeses, classes and fun family events, and WNYC’s very own David Gebel. This episode was originally produced and developed in front of a live audience at Little Island with Producing Artistic Director Zack Winokur and Executive Director Laura Clement. PLUS, TERRESTRIALS WILL BE BACK IN TWO WEEKS - STARTING SEPTEMBER 18TH – WITH BRAND NEW EPISODES DROPPING EVERY OTHER WEEK. Visit terrestrialspodcast.org to sign up for our newsletter and follow us on instagram @terrestrialspodcast for updates. 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!

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 facilities to learn how horseshoe crab blood became indispensable for modern medicine. And how this vampirish relationship humans have with the crabs might also be crucial to keeping them alive. Terrestrials will be back in September 2025 with all new episodes airing every other week! SIgn up for our newsletter here and follow us on Instagram @terrestrialspodcast for updates. If you want to learn more about how miraculous horseshoe crabs are, check out: Alexis Madrigal, "The Blood Harvest" in The Atlantic, and Sarah Zhang's recent follow up in The Atlantic, "The Last Days of the Blue Blood Harvest" Deborah Cramer, The Narrow Edge Deborah Cramer, "Inside the Biomedical Revolution to Save Horseshoe Crabs" in Audubon Magazine Richard Fortey, Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms Ian Frazier, "Blue Bloods" in The New Yorker Lulu Miller's short story, "Me and Jane" in Catapult Magazine Jerry Gault, "The Most Noble Fishing There Is" in Charles River's Eureka Magazine Glenn Gauvry's horseshoe crab research database 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 splash into the Hudson River Park with our Songbud to meet all kinds of crabs. With Siddartha and Carrie from the Hudson River Park Trust, 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. Scuttle by for crabtastic activities throughout the park all week long! You’ll have the opportunity to try your hand at some crabby crafts, learn crabtivating facts and get your claws on a copy of our limited-edition Crab Week poster. Check out their entire shell-dule. And join us on August 6th + 7th in Little Island for our full-day takeover of the park. Join us at 10am for Wilderness Wonderland featuring scavenger hunts, live music, and more – including our friends from the Hudson River Park Trust who will be on site with live critters! At 5pm, we will be performing a LIVE podcast taping all 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. 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’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 clam chowder. Read that again. For some reason it always felt gross to her. So as an extreme challenge, we’re taking a closer look at clam chowder to see if it can become wondrous. Ana and Alan break down each ingredient - milk, potatoes, and finally clams - with a concoction of stories and guests. Then, if she’s convinced of clam chowder’s magic, Lulu will try clam chowder for the first time in her life. You can watch a full video taping of this episode here. Listen if you love clam chowder, but especially if you’re a chowda doubta. Special thanks to scientist Rachel Hutchison from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Sea Grant for all of her clam knowledge and WBUR’s CitySpace for hosting this event. Hope to see you in New York City! 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!

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 Echeverri tells us all about his love for the jumping spider’s dance moves. Lulu and the audience learn about the creepy crawlies, pet them and then EAT a bug-filled snack. Special thanks to Dr. Sebastian Echeverri for all of his insect knowledge, musician Aviva Jaye for her beautiful harp composition, and Noor Shikari for preparing over 150 delicious grasshopper tacos for us. You can watch the full video taping of this episode here! Check out Dr. Echeverri’s spider field guide Spiders of the United States and Canada. If you ever find yourself in Brooklyn wanting to try some grasshopper tacos, check out Citrico on Washington Ave. 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!

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 animals all the time. They’re so flexible they can eat almost anything and live everywhere from open prairies to city streets, where they lurk unseen like urban ghosts. Conservation scientist Christine Willkinson, or scrappy naturalist, tells us why a coyote’s scrappiness is its greatest superpower. In a world that rewards specialists, coyotes make a case for generalists - the ones not spectacular at any one thing, but just okay at everything. Plus, to find these ghosts in her own city, Lulu goes on an urban coyote hunt. Learn more about coyote friendships: Watch a video of a coyote eagerly waiting for its badger friend under a busy highway in the Santa Cruz mountains. (2020) Watch this video of a raccoon and coyote becoming best friends. Read about coyotes and ravens teaming up. Watch a coyote and bobcat befriending each other in Florida. (2015) Watch this unlikely friendship between a coyote and a cat. (Australia, 2019) Terrestrials was created by Lulu Miller with WNYC Studios. This episode was produced by Ana González, Alan Goffinski, Mira Burt-Wintonick, Joe Plourde, Lulu Miller, and Sarah Sandbach, with help from Tanya Chawla and Natalia Ramirez. Fact checking was by Natalie Middleton. Our advisors this season are Ana Luz Porzecanski, Anil Lewis, Dominique Shabazz, and Liza Demby. Support for Terrestrials also comes from the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and the John Templeton Foundation. 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!

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 Hawaiʻi see coquís as a nuisance, disrupting not only their sleep but their precious ecosystems. Listen as Ana explores how different islands can view these frogs so differently, and how, despite all of our human efforts, they won’t stop singing. Special thanks to evolutionary biologist Ana Longo and professor Noelani Puniwai for telling us about coquí frogs. Watch a coquí frog perform its call. Listen to Puerto Rican sleep sounds. Terrestrials was created by Lulu Miller with WNYC Studios. This episode was produced by Ana González, Alan Goffinski, Mira Burt-Wintonick, Joe Plourde, Lulu Miller, and Sarah Sandbach, with help from Tanya Chawla and Natalia Ramirez. Fact checking was by Anna Pujol-Mazzini. Our advisors this season are Ana Luz Porzecanski, Anil Lewis, Dominique Shabazz, and Liza Demby. Support for Terrestrials also comes from the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and the John Templeton Foundation. 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 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 half million year old chunk of bone. Keep reading if you’re okay with us spoiling the surprise. It’s a camel! Yes, the one we thought only hung out in deserts. Originally from North America, the camel trotted around the globe and went from snow monster to desert superstar. We go on an evolutionary tour of the camel’s body and learn how the same adaptations that help a camel in a desert also helped it in the snow. Plus, Lulu even meets one in the flesh. Special thanks to Latif Nasser for telling us this story. It was originally a TED Talk where he brought out a live camel on stage. Thank you also to Carly Mensch, Juliet Blake, Anna Bechtol, Stone Dow, Natalia Rybczynski and our camel man, Shayne Rigden. If you are in Wisconsin, you can go meet his camels at Rigden Ranch. And follow his delightful TikTok @rigdenranch to see camels in the snow! Terrestrials was created by Lulu Miller with WNYC Studios. This episode was produced by Ana González, Alan Goffinski, Mira Burt-Wintonick, Joe Plourde, Lulu Miller, and Sarah Sandbach, with help from Tanya Chawla and Natalia Ramirez. Fact checking by Anna Pujol-Mazzini. Our advisors this season are Ana Luz Porzecanski, Anil Lewis, Dominique Shabazz, and Liza Demby. Support for Terrestrials also comes from the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and the John Templeton Foundation. 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!

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 and hear how behind some of the world’s greatest works of art lies the power of farts. Next Dr. Juan Pablo Zhenlio takes us through the ecosystem of human digestion, meeting trillions of microscopic organisms to learn why we fart. Then we jump into the world of animal farts. What do snake farts sound like? Manatees? Cows? Chimpanzees? Birds? Finally we ask the most important question of all: What would happen to the planet if we stopped farting? For more on toots, read Dani Rabiotti and Nick Caruso’s book Does it Fart? The Definitive Field Guide to Animal Flatulence. Special thanks to the Brown University Orchestra, Dr. Juan Pablo Zhenlio, Dani Rabaiotti and Nick Caruso. Terrestrials was created by Lulu Miller with WNYC Studios. This episode was produced by Ana González, Mira Burt-Wintonick, Alan Goffinski, Joe Plourde, Lulu Miller, and Sarah Sandbach, with help from Tanya Chawla. Fact checking was by Natalie Middleton. Our advisors this season are Ana Luz Porzecanski, Anil Lewis, Dominique Shabazz, and Liza Demby. Support for Terrestrials also comes from the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and the John Templeton Foundation. 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!

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 there during war. When the war is over, the landmines remain, meaning people continue to live in danger, afraid they might step on one. Pendo hoped to train Magawa to use his rat superpowers to sniff out the dangerous landmines and rescue these communities. Special thanks to everyone at APOPO, especially Pendo Masgu, Said Mshana and Lily Shalom. Thanks also to Kathleen Corradi, Cedric Simmons of ALA Environmental Services, and Olivia Bensimon and Jake Offenhartz of the Street Leather zine for inspiring the Rat Story Hotline. Biggest thanks to Alana and Jen, board members of foster rescue organization Helping All Little Things, for helping us record with nine rats in our studio. Terrestrials was created by Lulu Miller with WNYC Studios. This episode was produced by Ana González, Mira Burt-Wintonick, Alan Goffinski, Joe Plourde, Lulu Miller, and Sarah Sandbach, with help from Tanya Chawla. Fact checking by Anna Pujol-Mazzini. Our advisors this season are Ana Luz Porzecanski, Anil Lewis, Dominique Shabazz, and Liza Demby. Support for Terrestrials also comes from the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and the John Templeton Foundation. 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!

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, wonder, even friendship! Join host Lulu Miller and Songbud Alan Goffinski for our wildest season yet—a nature walk packed with jaw-dropping stories, unforgettable guests, and original music. Listen with your family, or just by yourself. Either way, you're in for an adventure. New episodes drop every Thursday starting April 17th—keep your eyes on the feed! Hey grownups! Love the show? Leave us a rating and review on your podcast app—it helps curious listeners find us! We're also looking for listener feedback! Share your thoughts with us here. While you wait for the new season, subscribe to our weekly newsletter for bite-sized essays, activities, and ways to connect with the show. Sign up here. Follow us on Instagram and TikTok @terrestrialspodcast for behind-the-scenes extras and more. Terrestrials is made possible in part by the generosity of 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! Support for Terrestrials also comes from the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and the John Templeton Foundation.