WNYC; Radiolab; Stochasticity
- Collection
- WNYC
- Series
- Radiolab
- Episode
- Stochasticity
- Contributing Organization
- WNYC (New York, New York)
- AAPB ID
- cpb-aacip/80-69867kzz
If you have more information about this item than what is given here, or if you have concerns about this record, we want to know! Contact us, indicating the AAPB ID (cpb-aacip/80-69867kzz).
- Description
- Description
- This hour, Radiolab examines Stochasticity, which is just a wonderfully slippery and smarty-pants word for randomness. How big a role does randomness play in our lives? Do we live in a world of magic and meaning or is it all just chance and happenstance? To tackle this question, we look at the role chance and randomness play in sports, lottery tickets, and even the cells in our own body. Along the way, we talk to a woman suddenly consumed by a frenzied gambling addiction, two friends whose meeting seems purely providential, and some very noisy bacteria. o Listen to the whole show o Download MP3 "red balloon" A Very Lucky Wind Laura Buxton, an English girl just shy of ten years old, didn't realize the strange course her life would take after her red balloon was swept away into the sky. It drifted south over England, bearing a small label that said, "Please send back to Laura Buxton." What happened next is something you just couldn't make up - well, you could, but you'd be accused of being absolutely, completely, appallingly unrealistic. On a journey to find out how we should think about Laura's story, and luck and chance more generally, Jad and Robert join Deborah Nolan to perform a simple coin-toss experiment. And Jay Koehler, an expert in the role of probability and statistics in law and business, demystifies some of Jad and Robert's miraculous misconceptions. Keith Selix, triple lottery winner in Iowa Photo: flickr/stevewilde Download MP3 | Embed HTML * Comments [1] * Email * Save slot machine vegas "flickr/humpalumpa" Seeking Patterns Fine. Randomness may govern the world around us, but does it guide US?? Jonah Lehrer joins us to examine one of the most skilled basketball teams ever, the '82 - '83 '76ers, and wonders whether or not the mythical "hot hand" actually exists. Then we meet Ann Klinestiver of West Virginia, an English teacher who was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 1991. When she began to take a drug to treat her disease, her life changed completely after one fateful day at the casino. Jonah discusses the neurotransmitter dopamine and the work of Wolfram Schultz, whose experiments with monkeys in the 1970s shed light on Ann's strange addiction and the deep desire for patterns inside us all. Wolfram Schultz and Roland Suri's Study on Dopamine in Monkeys Jonah Lehrer's Article on Ann Klinestiver The Great Maurice Cheeks in his heyday Download MP3 | Embed HTML * Comment * Email * Save "petri dish" laboratory "E. coli" flickr/hukuzatuna Random Rules The business of life is the business of taking the disorder of the world, little bits of matter scattered here and there, and giving them shape, regularity, order. Or so we all thought. Science journalist Carl Zimmer claims that at a microscopic level, in the inner workings of cells, the basic processes of life are actually extremely sloppy. So where and when is the disorder translated into order? Jad's friend, Little Wing Lee, stops by with two old cassettes of her late grandmother singing. Jad uses the process of noise filtering to coax her voice out of years of accumulated tape hiss. Could this be the perfect analogy for how life filters order out of randomness? Carl Zimmer's Book, Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life Photo: flickr/hukuzatuna Download MP3 | Embed HTML * Comment * Email * Save
- Genres
- Magazine
- Media type
- Sound
- Credits
-
- AAPB Contributor Holdings
-
WNYC-FM
Identifier: 60971.1 (WNYC Media Archive MDB)
If you have a copy of this asset and would like us to add it to our catalog, please contact us.
- Citations
- Chicago: “WNYC; Radiolab; Stochasticity,” WNYC, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed May 6, 2025, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-80-69867kzz.
- MLA: “WNYC; Radiolab; Stochasticity.” WNYC, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. May 6, 2025. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-80-69867kzz>.
- APA: WNYC; Radiolab; Stochasticity. Boston, MA: WNYC, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-80-69867kzz