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“I never did anything wrong. I never had a speeding ticket. I think I just saved all my stuff up for just one thing.” We speak with Toby Dorr, who started a prison dog training program in 2004. That’s how she met John Manard. This episode was originally released in 2019. Criminal is on tour this month! We're telling brand new stories, live on...

This episode begins with a rant. This rant, in particular, comes from Dan Engber - a science writer who loves animals but despises animal intelligence research. Dan told us that so much of the way we study animals involves tests that we think show a human is smart ... not the animals we intend to study.

Dan’s rant got us thinking: What is the...

“The police had surrounded the house. They had been there for quite a while. They didn’t want to try to rush the house because they thought he might kill one of the innocent people. But after waiting for a long time, I asked the police: ‘Let me see if I can talk to the guy.’” For decades, TV news reporter Russ Ewing stood beside...

In this episode, Maria Paz Gutiérrez does battle against the one absolute truth of human existence and all life… death. After getting a team of scientists to stand in for death (the grim reaper wasn't available), we parry and thrust our way through the myriad ways that death comes for us. In the process, we see if we can find a satisfying answer to...

Bluesky, the Twitter spin-off, is now open for public sign-ups. Can its dreams of decentralization fix social media? New York Times reporter Erin Griffith on Adobe’s failed acquisition of Figma.

In May 1991, a bank robber walked into a bank in Irving, Texas, and without speaking handed the teller a note that read, “This is a bank robbery. Give me your money. No marked bills or dye packs.” Check out Skip Hollandsworth’s Texas Monthly article, “The Last Ride of Cowboy Bob.” This episode was first released in 2020. Criminal is on tour this month!...

Zoozve is the first-ever quasi-moon. The official asteroid naming bulletin is available here. First 75 new annual sign-ups to The Lab get one free, autographed by Alex Foster.

Albert Einstein asked that when he died, his body be cremated and his ashes be scattered in a secret location. There was only one problem: the pathologist who did the autopsy had different plans. We follow Einstein’s stolen brain from that Princeton autopsy table, to a cider box in Wichita, Kansas, to labs all across the country. And eventually, beyond the brain itself entirely.

A conversation with a 911 operator about what happens on the other end of the line – and the day she heard her daughter's voice on the phone. Criminal is going back on tour this month! We’ll be telling brand new stories, live on stage. You can even get meet and greet tickets to come and say hi before the show. Tickets are on...

A newly discovered kind of object in our solar system. One that is simultaneously a moon, but also not a moon. How predictable is it, really? And what does that mean for our place in it?