Best Signal Hill Studios Podcasts (2025)

Over the course of millions of years, human voices have evolved to hold startling power. These clouds of vibrating air carry crucial information about who we are–and we rely on them to push ourselves up and out into the physical world. This week, we’re on a journey to understand how we got our unique sonic fingerprint, the power it affords us, and …

1
Iredell Statesville Schools - September 19, 2025 43:12

Play Pause

8d ago43:12

43:12

By Signal Hill Studios

1
The Spark of Life 36:01

8d ago36:01

36:01

In the 1920s, a Russian biologist studying onion roots made a surprising discovery: underground, down in the darkness, it seemed like the cells inside the onion roots were making their own … light. The “onion root experiment” went on to become something of a cult classic in science, and eventually the biologically-made light was dubbed “biophotons.…

1
Representative Jeff McNeely - September 15, 2025 55:45

12d ago55:45

55:45

By Signal Hill Studios

1
Los Frikis 33:07

15d ago33:07

33:07

How a group of 80’s Cuban misfits found rock-and-roll and created a revolution within a revolution, going into exile without ever leaving home. Reporter Luis Trelles brings us the story of punk rock’s arrival in Cuba and a small band of outsiders who sentenced themselves to death and set themselves free. We originally released this episode back in …

1
Iredell Statesville Schools - September 12, 2025 40:54

15d ago40:54

40:54

By Signal Hill Studios

1
Representative Jeff McNeely - September 8, 2025 56:01

19d ago56:01

56:01

By Signal Hill Studios

1
Screaming Into the Void 57:16

22d ago57:16

57:16

In August we performed a live taping of the show from a theater perched on the edge of Manhattan, overlooking the Hudson River, overshadowed by the wide open night sky. Three stories about voids. One about a fish that screams into the night – and the mystery of its counterpart that doesn’t. Another about a group of women who gazed at the night sky …

1
Iredell Statesville Schools - September 5, 2025 35:08

22d ago35:08

35:08

By Signal Hill Studios

1
Iredell Statesville Schools - August 28, 2025 30:47

29d ago30:47

30:47

By Signal Hill Studios

1
Music Hat 31:24

27d ago31:24

31:24

With this episode, we’re putting on our music hat. For a program that relies so much on scoring and sound, it’s not often we talk about the musicians and the music they make that inspire us. Today, that changes. Today, we bring you two stories. Each about musicians that our former host and creator of Radiolab, Jad Abumrad, loves. We originally rele…

1
Representative Jeff McNeely - August 25, 2025 59:01

1M ago59:01

59:01

By Signal Hill Studios

951
The Medical Matchmaking Machine 1:01:41

1M ago1:01:41

1:01:41

As he finished his medical school exam, David Fajgenbaum felt off. He walked down to the ER and checked himself in. Soon he was in the ICU with multiple organ failure. The only drug for his condition didn’t work. He had months to live, if that. If he was going to survive, he was going to have to find his own cure. Miraculously, he pulled it off in …

1
Representative Jeff McNeely - August 18,2025 57:10

1M ago57:10

57:10

By Signal Hill Studios

1
Weighing Good Intentions 24:09

1M ago24:09

24:09

In an episode first released in 2010, then-producer Lulu Miller drives to Michigan to track down the endangered Kirtland’s warbler. Efforts to protect the bird have lead to the killing of cowbirds (a species that commandeers warbler nests), and a prescribed burn aimed at creating a new habitat. Tragically, this burn led to the death of a 29-year-ol…

1
Representative Jeff McNeely - July 28, 2025 54:59

2M ago54:59

54:59

By Signal Hill Studios

1
Representative Jeff McNeely - August 4, 2025 54:46

2M ago54:46

54:46

By Signal Hill Studios

1
The Menopause Mystery 38:58

2M ago38:58

38:58

Until recently, scientists assumed humans were the only species in which females went through menopause, and lived a substantial part of their lives after they were no longer able to reproduce. And they had no idea why that happens, and why evolution wouldn’t push females to keep reproducing right up to the end of their lives. But after a close loo…

1
Iredell Statesville Schools - August 8,2025 33:50

2M ago33:50

33:50

By Signal Hill Studios

1
Iredell Statesville Schools - August 1, 2025 32:40

2M ago32:40

32:40

By Signal Hill Studios

1
Galaxy Quenching 40:08

2M ago40:08

40:08

This week: the story of astrophysicist Charity Woodrum. Charity is an extragalactic astronomer who studies the life and death of galaxies, why some galaxies burn bright and others dim and sputter out. And in the midst of an unthinkable grief in her personal life, she discovers something in the sky – a new kind of light that would guide her path for…

1
The Nothing Behind Everything 32:54

2M ago32:54

32:54

This week, two conversations from the archives about parts of the world that are imperceptible to us, verging on almost unthinkable. We start with a moment of uncertainty in physics. Inspired by an essay written by physicist and novelist Alan Lightman, called The Accidental Universe (https://zpr.io/4965dUdNqtpQ), taken from a book of the same name.…

1
Iredell Statesville Schools - July 25, 2025 53:43

2M ago53:43

53:43

By Signal Hill Studios

1
More Perfect: The Hate Debate 37:20

2M ago37:20

37:20

Back in 2017 our colleagues at More Perfect gathered a room full of people together to debate a straight forward question: Can free speech go too far? Today, eight years have passed and plenty has changed, but this question feels alive as ever. And so we’re re-airing More Perfect’s The Hate Debate. Taped live at WNYC's Jerome L. Greene Performance …

1
Iredell Statesville Schools - July 18, 2025 42:51

2M ago42:51

42:51

By Signal Hill Studios

1
Representative Jeff McNeely - July 14,2025 54:42

2M ago54:42

54:42

By Signal Hill Studios

1
Iredell Statesville Schools - July 11, 2025 43:27

3M ago43:27

43:27

By Signal Hill Studios

1
Desperately Seeking Symmetry 57:23

3M ago57:23

57:23

This hour of Radiolab, former co-hosts 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,…

1
Representative Jeff McNeely - July 7, 2025 54:47

3M ago54:47

54:47

By Signal Hill Studios

1
On [The Divided Dial]: Fishing In The Night 38:51

3M ago38:51

38:51

Have you heard On the Media’s Peabody-winning series The Divided Dial? It’s awesome and you should, and now you will. In this episode they tell the story of shortwave radio: the way-less-listened to but way-farther-reaching cousin of AM and FM radio. The medium was once heralded as a utopian, international, and instantaneous mass communication tool…

1
Representative Jeff McNeely - June 30, 2025 56:07

3M ago56:07

56:07

By Signal Hill Studios

2251
Sex, Ducks and the Founding Feud 25:08

3M ago25:08

25:08

Jilted lovers and disrupted duck hunts provide a very odd look into the soul of the US Constitution. What does a betrayed lover’s revenge have to do with an international chemical weapons treaty? More than you’d think. From poison and duck hunts to our feuding fathers, we step into a very odd tug of war between local and federal law. When Carol Ann…

1
Representative Jeff McNeely - June 23, 2025 55:18

3M ago55:18

55:18

By Signal Hill Studios

1
Baby Shark 28:12

3M ago28:12

28:12

This is episode five of Swimming with Shadows: A Radiolab Week of Sharks. Today, the strange, squirmy magic behind how sharks make more sharks. Drills. Drama. Death. Even a coliseum of baby sharks duking it out inside mom’s womb. And a man on a small island in the Mediterranean trying, against all odds, to give baby sharks a chance in a little plas…

1
Iredell Statesville Schools: June 20,2025 42:40

3M ago42:40

42:40

By Signal Hill Studios

1
Mystery Bay 21:01

3M ago21:01

21:01

This is episode four of Swimming with Shadows: A Radiolab Week of Sharks. Alison Kock was working at a car wash in Cape Town when she made a discovery that completely changed the course of her life. Inside a customer’s trunk, she found photographs of white sharks flying so high above the water they looked like airplanes. She followed those photogra…

2451
The Shark Inside You 28:53

3M ago28:53

28:53

This is episode three of Swimming with Shadows: A Radiolab Week of Sharks. Today, we take a trip across the world, from the south coast of Australia to … Wisconsin. Here, scientists are scouring shark blood to find one of nature’s hidden keys, a molecular superhero that might unlock our ability to cure cancer: shark antibodies. They’re small. They’…

2451
The Cage 18:22

3M ago18:22

18:22

This is episode two of Swimming with Shadows: A Radiolab Week of Sharks. Jaws spawned a thousand imitators: sharks in tornados, sharks in avalanches, sharks that battle giant octopuses. Hollywood has officially turned sharks into monsters of every shape and size. And yet, somehow, there will always be more. But drop below the surface, into the cold…

1
Representative Jeff McNeely - June 16,2025 55:03

3M ago55:03

55:03

Takin Care of NC with Rep. Jeff McNeely! My guest this morning is Congressman JD Hayworth, talking about Making America Healthy Again.Thank you, Representative Jeff McNeelyBy Signal Hill Studios

2501
Making a Monster 26:38

3M ago26:38

26:38

Episode one of Swimming with Shadows: A Radiolab Week of Sharks. Rodney Fox went into the ocean one summer day in 1963. He came out barely alive, his body torn apart by a great white shark. At the time, it was one of the worst shark attacks ever survived. After he recovered, he was pulled back into the shadowy world he feared most. Again and again …

2551
Swimming with Shadows: A Radiolab Week of Sharks 2:23

4M ago2:23

2:23

In the summer of 1975, Jaws scared an entire generation out of the water. The film burned an idea into our cultural memory: they are mindless, man-eating monsters. We set out to tell a different story about sharks. Five stories over five days. We tear down deep-seated myths about sharks, plunge into the water with them, and find sharks that explode…

2551
Double-Blasted 20:54

4M ago20:54

20:54

We first aired this episode in 2012, but at the show we’ve been thinking a lot about resilience and repair so we wanted to play it for you again today. It’s about a man who experienced maybe one of the most chilling traumas… twice. But then, it leads us to a story of generational repair. On the morning of August 6th, 1945, Tsutomu Yamaguchi was in …

1
Iredell Statesville Schools: June 13, 2025 39:59

4M ago39:59

39:59

By Signal Hill Studios

1
Representative Jeff McNeely - June 9, 2025 56:43

4M ago56:43

56:43

By Signal Hill Studios

2701
The Elixir of Life 50:59

4M ago50:59

50:59

Doctor and special correspondent, Avir Mitra takes Lulu on an epic journey live on stage at a little basement club called Caveat, here in New York. Starting with an ingredient in breastmilk that babies can’t digest, a global hunt that takes us from Bangladesh to the Mennonite communities here in the US, we discover an ancient symbiotic relationship…

1
Representative Jeff McNeely - June 2, 2025 54:40

4M ago54:40

54:40

By Signal Hill Studios

1
Iredell Statesville Schools: May 30, 2025 16:16

4M ago16:16

16:16

By Signal Hill Studios

1
A Flock of Two 19:43

4M ago19:43

19:43

Animals rescue people all the time, but not like this. In this episode, first aired more than a decade ago, Jim Eggers is a 44-year-old man who suffers from a problem that not only puts his life at risk—it jeopardizes the safety of everybody around him. But with the help of Sadie, his pet African Grey Parrot, Jim found an unlikely way to manage his…

1
Iredell Statesville Schools May 23, 2025 40:46

4M ago40:46

40:46

Dr. James welcomes Ella Troutman and Carson Ball from South Iredell high school.By Signal Hill Studios