1. "The Good Show"

In this episode, a question that haunted Charles Darwin: if natural selection boils down to survival of the fittest, how do you explain why one creature might stick its neck out for another?

The standard view of evolution is that living things are shaped by cold-hearted competition. And there is no doubt that today's plants and animals carry the genetic legacy of ancestors who fought fiercely to survive and reproduce. But in this hour, we wonder whether there might also be a logic behind sharing, niceness, kindness ... or even, self-sacrifice. Is altruism an aberration, or just an elaborate guise for sneaky self-interest? Do we really live in a selfish, dog-eat-dog world? Or has evolution carved out a hidden code that rewards genuine cooperation?




2. "Lost & Found"

In this episode, we steer our way through a series of stories about getting lost, and ask how our brains, and our hearts, help us find our way back home. 

After hearing about a little girl who gets lost in front of her own house, Jad and Robert wonder how we find our way in the world. We meet a woman who has spent her entire life getting lost, and find out how our brains make maps of the world around us. We go to a military base in New Jersey to learn about some amazing feats of navigational wizardry, and are introduced to a group of people in Australia with impeccable orientation. Finally, we turn to a very different kind of lost and found: a love story about running into a terrifying, and unexpected, fork in the road.




3. "Help!"

What do you do when your own worst enemy is...you? This hour, Radiolab looks for ways to gain the upper hand over those forces inside us--from unhealthy urges, to creative insights--that seem to have a mind of their own.

We meet a Cold War negotiator who, in order to quit smoking, backs himself into a tactical corner, and we visit a clinic in Russia where patients turn to a radical treatment to help fight their demons. Plus, Elizabeth Gilbert lays out strategies for doing battle with your muse.




4. "The Soul Patch"

This hour, stories of unlikely (and surprisingly simple) answers to seemingly unsolvable problems.

We get to know a man who struggles, and mostly fails, to contain his violent outbursts...until he meets a bird who can keep him in check. Then, Oliver Sacks and Chuck Close, who are both face-blind, share workarounds that help them figure out who they’re talking to. And a senior center stumbles upon an unexpected way to help Alzheimer’s patients -- by building a bus stop.




5. "Desperately Seeking Symmetry"

This hour of Radiolab, Jad and Robert set out in search of order and balance in the world around us, and ask how symmetry shapes our very existence -- from the origins of the universe, to what we see when we look in the mirror.

Along the way, we look for love in ancient Greece, head to modern-day Princeton to peer inside our brains, and turn up an unlikely headline from the Oval Office circa 1979.