1. "Placebo"

With new research demonstrating the startling power of the placebo effect, this hour of Radiolab examines the chemical consequences of belief and imagination.

Could the best medicine be no medicine at all? We take stock of the pharmacy in our brains, consider the symbolic power of the doctor coat, and visit the tent of a self-proclaimed faith healer.




2. "Sleep"

Birds do it, bees do it...yet science still can't answer the basic question: why do we sleep?

Every creature on the planet sleeps--from giant humpback whales to teeny fruit flies. What does it do for us, and what happens when we go without? We take a peek at iguanas sleeping with one eye open, get in bed with a pair of sleep-deprived new parents, and eavesdrop on the uneasy dreams of rats.




3. "Zoos"

In a cruel trick of evolution, humans can stand just three feet from a ferocious animal and still be perfectly safe. This hour, Radiolab goes to the zoo.

What's with our need to get close to "wildness"? We examine where we stand in this paradox--starting with the Romans, and ending in the wilds of Belize, staring into the eyes of a wild jaguar.




4. "Memory and Forgetting"

This hour of Radiolab, a look behind the curtain of how memories are made...and forgotten.

Remembering is an unstable and profoundly unreliable process--it’s easy come, easy go as we learn how true memories can be obliterated, and false ones added. And Oliver Sacks joins us to tell the story of an amnesiac whose love for his wife and music transcend his 7-second memory.




5. "Mortality"

This hour of Radiolab: is death a disease that can be cured?

We filter the modern search for the fountain of youth through personal stories of witnessing death -- the death of a cell, the death of a loved one...and the aging of a society.