FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Media Contact: Michelle Jeffery, 802-654-4311

RADIO LAB RETURNS TO VPR MARCH 23-27

Colchester, Vt. -- A new series of listener favorite Radio Lab airs next week on VPR. The audio patchwork of people, sounds, stories and experiences centered around One Big Idea returns with five new episodes Monday through Friday afternoons at 1 p.m.

Radio Lab is based on the belief that your ears are a portal to another world. The program explores themes and ideas with hosts Robert Krulwich and Jad Abumrad. Rich sound illuminates the ideas, and the boundaries between science, philosophy, and human experience blur. Big questions are investigated, tinkered with, and encouraged to grow.

Now in its fifth season, Radio Lab is produced by WNYC in New York City and is heard on more than 150 stations nationwide. The five ideas explored the new series include:

Monday, 3/23 - Choice: A journey around the country to understand how emotion and logic interact to guide us through our options, Radio Lab ponders how we get through the million choices and decisions we make every day. Forget free will, some important decisions could come down to a steaming cup of coffee.

Tuesday, 3/24 - Sperm: Why so many sperm? Radio Lab turns to the animal kingdom to answer that question, which lands us on a tour of sperm battles in ducks, flying pig sperm, and promiscuous whippoorwills. We ponder the necessity of males in a world where sperm can be frozen and kept for all eternity.

Wednesday, 3/25 - Race: When the human genome was first fully mapped in 2000, Bill Clinton, Craig Venter, and Francis Collins took the stage and pronounced that "The concept of race has no genetic or scientific basis." But what does that mean and where does it leave us? It doesn't seem to have wiped out our evolving conversation about race.

Thursday, 3/26 - Diagnosis: Humans love to solve problems. In this day and age, we have astonishing technology available as tools to help us---chemicals and computers and machines that can pinpoint things imperceptible to humans. But humans aren't quite obsolete. Intuition and creativity still lead the way both in discovering that nature of the problem, and in dealing with that knowledge.

Friday, 3/27 - Yellow Fluff and Other Curious Encounters: Ah, discovery: one of the great and noble pursuits of humankind. Also one of the most dangerous, frustrating, ego-driven, transcendent, sublime, dirty, long, demoralizing, inspiring......you get the idea. Why are inquiry and the pursuit of knowledge so seductive? We take a grand tour of characters and their stories of love and loss in the name of science.

About VPR
Listener-supported Vermont Public Radio has been serving the people of Vermont and the surrounding region since 1977. As Vermont's only statewide public radio network, VPR is a trusted and independent source for news, music, conversation and much more. For more information about VPR and VPR Classical, a list of frequencies and streaming audio from all of VPR's services, visit www.vpr.net.