Podcasts · Kids & Family

Terrestrials

WNYC

72 episodes

Welcome, nature lovers, to the home of the Terrestrials podcast and family-friendly Radiolab episodes about nature. Every other week, host Lulu Miller will take you on a nature walk to encounter a plant or animal behaving in ways that will surprise you. Squirrels that can regrow their brains, octopuses that can outsmart their human captors, honeybees that can predict the future. You don’t have to be a kid to listen, just someone who likes to see the world anew.

More about the show

You’ll hear a range of nature stories on this podcast. Sometimes these will be brand new Terrestrials episodes, full of original songs (by “The Songbud” Alan Goffinski) that tell a fantastical-sounding story about nature that is 100% true. Sometimes these will be our very best, shiniest, furriest, leafiest Radiolab episodes about animals or plants or nature.

The stories that drop here will always be family-friendly and safe for kids. They will always be sound-rich and full of the vivid, gripping storytelling you’ve come to expect from Radiolab. They will always transport you to the beyond-human world: into the depths of the ocean, into jungles, prairies, forests, space, snow, wildflower fields and beyond. Sometimes we’ll encounter something so wild we just have to break out into song about it! Don’t worry, good voices not required.

Join us on this adventure!

Episodes page 1 of 2

  1. The Night Flyer: How Bats sPOOkily Revive Forests (Replay)

    · 26 min · Episode 57

    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,…

  2. The Scarecrow: Scaring Birds with Mary Roach

    · 23 min · Episode 56

    It’s an epic humans-versus-birds showdown in this follow-up to last week’s crows episode! Ever since humans started farming, birds have been eating our crops. And for centuries, we’ve been trying to figure out how to…

  3. The Goths: Befriending Clever Crows

    · 31 min · Episode 55

    Spooky season is upon us and so we are bringing you a tale of Halloween’s eeriest avian mascot. Emma Terry is friends with basically everyone in her town. She personifies a rainbow—she has bouncy blonde hair, sparkly…

  4. The Hideout: A Monarch Butterfly Mystery

    · 34 min · Episode 54

    As the leaves begin to change and the air cools, monarch butterflies disappear from our skies and journey …where? The mysterious migration of this iconic butterfly stumped scientists for decades. Until an intercepted…

  5. The Snow Beast: A Mystery Animal (Replay)

    · 30 min · Episode 53

    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…

  6. The Wallowers: A Buffalo Comeback Story

    · 33 min · Episode 51

    Ervin Carlson grew up on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana hearing stories about buffalo (aka American bison) who once roamed the land by the hundreds of thousands. These giant beasts weighed up to 2000 pounds, were…

  7. Celestials: A Bedtime Snail Story Experiment

    · 14 min · Episode 48

    Meet François Tranquille. He's a snail. He's French. And this is the first episode of a little experiment we're calling Celestials: Bedtime Stories from Terrestrials. Restful tales, bedtime meditations, and the…

  8. The Fuzzy Ruckus: The Power of Lichen (Replay)

    · 29 min · Episode 47

    Artist Ashley (Ash) Eliza Williams was so shy growing up that they found it hard to speak to people. Instead, they withdrew from the world of humans and found comfort in the forest, where they spent hours exploring,…

  9. The Jimothy: Seattle Raccoon Steals Hearts

    · 30 min · Episode 46

    If you’ve been on the internet recently, you might’ve heard of Jimothy—a raccoon from Seattle who went viral. Jimothy t-shirts, murals, tattoos, and tribute songs popped up across the country. We wanted to understand…

  10. Dung Beetles from Just the Zoo of Us

    · 35 min · Episode 45

    It’s summer break! So, while Terrestrials takes a summer breather,, we’re bringing you a show that we really love. It’s called Just the Zoo of Us, and it’s produced by Ellen and Christian Weatherford, a married couple…

  11. The Charmer: King Cobras' FANGtastic Powers

    · 36 min · Episode 44

    Lulu has been terrified of snakes all her life. But strangely, her oldest son has been obsessed with them since he was two. So to understand his fascination, she called a snake expert who might also be one of the least…

  12. The Travelers Update: A Moon Tree Grows in New York

    · 40 min · Episode 43

    The director of horticulture at Madison Square Park, Stephanie Lucas, spends her days caring for over 300 trees in the heart of New York City. One day in 2022, she saw a callout from NASA giving away seeds that had…

  13. The DADventure: Wild Animal Dads from Owl Monkeys to Seahorses

    · 34 min · Episode 42

    What does it really mean to be a dad? In the animal world, fathers have long been painted as aggressive or absent. At best providers and protectors, but certainly not caregivers. And yet for every tale of a lion or…

  14. BIG CATS 2: Leopards & Jaguars (2 Fast, 2 FURious)

    · 31 min · Episode 41

    We're back with PURR-T TWO of our big cats journey, and this time, we’re heading even deeper into the cat-iverse. We travel to India, where conservationist Shatrunjay Pratap Singh introduces us to leopards that live…

  15. BIG CATS: Lions, Tigers & Roars (Oh My!)

    · 25 min · Episode 40

    Big cats are our most requested animal, but Lulu doesn’t really want to make an episode about them! . She thinks lions, tigers, and their feline cousins are the bullies of the animal kingdom. So Songbud Alan and…

  16. The Wicked Smoocha: Anglerfish Break A World Record

    · 35 min · Episode 39

    In the depths of the ocean, a tiny male anglerfish catches a scent and follows it through the darkness. Eventually he finds a glowing, toothy female with a bacterial lightbulb on her head. He kisses her… and never lets…

  17. The Forest Fairy: Aphids Reveal Hidden Harmonies

    · 32 min · Episode 38

    Amy Ray (whose music you might know from the Indigo Girls) was on a walk in the Georgia woods with her dogs when she passed a tree branch and saw hundreds of tiny, white, fluffy creatures doing a synchronized stadium…

  18. The Greeting: Yo-Yo Ma's Humpback Whale Experiment

    · 40 min · Episode 37

    As one of the most famous cellists of all time, Yo-Yo Ma has spent a lot of time playing music inside. But a few years ago, he decided to take the cello out of the fancy concert halls and into nature, bringing our very…

  19. The Red-Eyed Mascot: Loon Resilience in Minnesota

    · 31 min · Episode 33

    What do loons have to do with courage and community? In January, we received a letter from two sisters in Minnesota - Jude and Mo. They wrote to us because their city was experiencing a lot of unrest, with immigration…

  20. The Snowball: Extreme Squirrels in the Arctic (Replay)

    · 25 min · Episode 8

    Middle schooler, Aanya, has an up-close encounter with a squirrel in the school yard, which leads her to an obsession with one of North America's most common critters. She tells host Lulu Miller all about the…

  21. The Snoozer: Penguin Slackerzzz Rule

    · 27 min · Episode 31

    How rested would you feel if you took 10,000 naps a day? Chinstrap Penguins in Antarctica spend their days taking MICRONAPS, each around 4 seconds long. To learn why, Lulu meets one (played by Songbud Alan), who…

  22. Build-A-Dragon (Replay)

    · 27 min · Episode 14

    On February 17, in places like China, Malaysia, Korea and Chinatowns across the globe, dragons will rise in the form of massive puppets. Today we bring you a special Terrestrials episode on dragons to understand what…

  23. The Portal: Groundhogs Lead Us Into an Underrealm of HOLES

    · 31 min · Episode 30

    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…

  24. The Spellbook: Ancient Recipes for Animals

    · 25 min · Episode 29

    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…

  25. The Present: A Gift from our Furry Friends

    · 29 min

    To celebrate New Year’s Day, there are all kinds of traditions. Some people eat black eyed peas for good luck, some list out resolutions. But here at Terrestrials, we are taking a cue from the wisdom of pets, who are…

  26. The Slowpoke: How Sloths Grow Invisibility

    · 33 min

    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…

  27. The Bridge: How Rainbows Connect Worlds

    · 29 min · Episode 28

    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…

  28. A Podcast Turducken: With Wow in the World, Terrestrials and Circle Round

    · 37 min · Episode 27

    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…

  29. The Hybrid: A Miracle Mule

    · 35 min · Episode 6

    In the game of life, every species is like an action figure. You got your dogs and your dung beetles, your bald eagles and your blueberries. And for a long time scientists believed it was pretty much impossible for…

  30. Maggies: The Healing Power of Baby Flies

    · 28 min · Episode 25

    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…

  31. The Travelers: How Moon Trees Hide Among Us

    · 32 min · Episode 24

    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,…

  32. The Builders: How Beavers Mend Our Planet

    · 29 min · Episode 23

    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…

  33. The Unimaginable: How Gravitational Waves (Literally) Rocked Our World

    · 27 min · Episode 4

    Over a billion lightyears ago, in the darkness of outer space, a collision of black holes sent out a fleet of invisible waves that were headed right toward planet Earth. The waves were so powerful they could ripple…

  34. PIZZA BFF

    · 27 min · Episode 22

    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 to discover. We explore the surprising sounds tomatoes make when they’re…

  35. The Horseshoe Crab's Secret

    · 28 min

    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.…

  36. The Mastermind: An Octopus Heist

    · 24 min · Episode 1

    A color-changing creature many people assumed to be brainless outsmarts his human captors. SPOILER: The creature is an octopus! Author Sy Montgomery tells the story of one octopus named Inky who makes us question who…

  37. Crabtacular! A deep dive into the Hudson River

    · 15 min · Bonus

    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, Alan puts on waterproof rubber overalls, gets his hands dirty in the river…

  38. CHOWDA: A Souper Fascinating Tale

    · 29 min · Episode 21

    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!…

  39. The Sea Troll: An Everlasting Shark?

    · 27 min · Episode 10

    The Greenland shark is ugly. Its eyes look cloudy and dead. Its snout and fins are stubby. Its meat is poisonous. And that may be part of why most people have overlooked these sharks for so long. But there was a rumor…

  40. Bugapalooza! LIVE! Jumping spiders, hissing roaches, and more

    · 21 min · Episode 20

    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.…

  41. The Howler: The Dog Who Joined a Coyote Pack

    · 29 min · Episode 19

    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,…

  42. The Invaders: Coquí Frogs Just Won't Die

    · 23 min · Episode 18

    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…

  43. The Windbreaker: Why Farts Make the World Go Round

    · 26 min · Episode 16

    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…

  44. The Shadow Creature: Rats Who Save Human Lives

    · 29 min · Episode 15

    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…

  45. More Terrestrials Coming Soon!

    · 1:31 · Trailer

    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…

  46. The Bullseye: Treasure Hunt to Recursive Islands

    · 25 min · Episode 12

    Have you ever seen an island on a lake? On an island? On a lake? On another island? Josh Calder has. Working in a dusty room of a library, he first saw one on a map, and has been fascinated with these “recursive…

  47. An Ocean in Space

    · 42 min · Episode 11

    BLAST OFF! NASA just sent a spacecraft to Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, and on the side of that spacecraft, they included a poem. Not just any poem — a poem by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón. A poem that’s supposed to…

  48. The Crystal Ball: Giant Honeybees Who Predict the Future

    · 27 min · Episode 9

    The honeybee. The ever-important pollinator for our plants is disappearing. Some call it the silence of the bees, others call it colony collapse disorder. Dr. Sammy Ramsey, our official bug correspondent, wondered,…

  49. The Stumpisode: The Wild World of Tree Stumps!

    · 27 min · Episode 7

    As dead as they seem, tree stumps are hubs of life and relationships. From stumps to snags, deadwood provides habitat for rodents, falcons, insects, and even humans! Stumps hold together the forest floor, give hunting…

  50. The Water Walker: One Surfer’s Epic Escape

    · 30 min · Episode 5

    The ocean can be a scary place: the waves are so strong, the water so deep. But surfer and illustrator AJ Dungo tells the story of an earthling who figured out how to walk on water and literally defy the rules of…

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