Radiolab

We kick things off with one of the longest-running experiments in the world. As Joshua Foer explains, the Pitch Drop Experiment is so slow, you can watch it for hours (check out the live cam) and not detect the slightest movement. But that doesn't mean ...

Picture the scrum of the stock exchange -- the flurry of buying and selling, the split-second decisions that make and break fortunes. Then take out all the humans and accelerate everything until you literally can't keep up. Jad visits the inhumanly fast world of modern-day, high-speed trading with NPR's

As faster and faster technology schools us with its super speed, we’re left looking for something, anything, we can beat. Enter Lene Vestergaard Hau, who has found a way to harness the one thing we all thought -- by its very nature -- was unbeatable.

The last one woah. How does light speed back up after it exits the atom cloud? Wow.

Dear Radiolab,

PLEASE name your podcast mp3s with the date in YYYY-MM-DD format so that they sort chronologically!

The cool story about slowing down light reminds me of the science fiction story "Light of Other Days" by Bob Shaw.

Jad missed the chance at making a great joke when interviewing Mike Beller. Jad should have asked: "So what it is like when your teen-age daughter misses her curfew by a few milliseconds? Is she -- like -- grounded for being SOOO late?"

Of course there is a way to limit high-frequency trading and the problems it can cause. A tiny tax on each trade will nullify the fractions of a penny that are made on each trade. Isn't it worth it to stop this valueless activity?

The fascinating segment on slowing down light reminds me of the Alan Moore short story The Unbearableness of Being Light which won an Eisner years ago. In it the boy genius Jack B. Quick is thinking about the phenomenon of light and concludes that photons must be drunk. And of course they are moving at the speed of light, which is much too fast for Queerwater Creek! Together with the village's police officer, Jack arrests the photons. They are convicted and sentenced to move just at 30 mph from now on.

This leads to exactly the sorts of scenarios Jad and Robert imagine with their cycling faster than light idea. People arrive at their destinations long before they can be seen to do so, multiple images of things get stacked up, large areas of town are turned into lightless voids. Check it out, it's a very quick and amusing read. First published in Moore's Tomorrow Stories.

Relax guys, I remembered the theme music. It was from Newtons Apple. IN fact I even found a link for it on Youtube:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIu2Fr2nIhI&feature=related

As a follow on from your first segment about the time lag in your brain as information shoots around. Benjamin Libets book "Mind Time" talks about how you brain lies to your mind about that time lag so that you always feel as though you are in the present, even though you are living in the past.

Does Lene's sodium pool heat up as she fires light into it ?

I am racking my brain to remember where I've heard the music around 26:25! I see I'm not the only one. Could you let us know the track name, or help me figure out which 80s kids show associated with it? It had to be something on PBS... 3-2-1 Contact, or Square One, or something. Aaahhh! I can't place it...

well, starts at 43:34

That's the instrumental version of Raymond Scott's "lightworks" at 44:20.

Lol did you hear the Busta Ryhmes instrumental at 20:30?

Good episode :)

Constructive criticism time, team Radiolab: everybody loves your music choices, so you should be publishing a track list along with each episode.