Argentine Invasion

This episode delves into the remarkable spread and impact of Argentine ants across the globe, revealing their complex social behavior and aggressive expansion tactics.

1. Argentine ants have formed supercolonies that span continents, thanks to their aggressive expansion and in-group loyalty.
2. These ants dominate by outnumbering and overpowering local species, often disrupting local ecosystems.
3. Their genetic purity and uniform colony scent allow them to recognize and cooperate with distant relatives.
4. Human activities and global trade have inadvertently aided the rapid spread of Argentine ants.
5. The internal cohesion of the supercolonies contrasts with brutal wars at colony borders, demonstrating a complex social structure akin to human empires.

1: Introduction

Jad and Robert discuss the backstory and current relevance of Argentine ants' global impact. Latif Nasser: "This planet doesn't actually belong to us. It belongs to them, the ants."

2: The California Scene

Exploration of the ants' territorial dynamics in California, showcasing their vast empire. David Holway: "This is tiny. There's a lot of them."

3: Origins and Migration

Detailed account of the ants' origins in Argentina and their migration patterns to new continents. Neil Tsotsui: "They simply do not know how to stop killing each other."

4: Genetic Unity and Expansion

Discussion on how genetic purity aids their expansion and unity across vast distances. Jad Abumrad: "They've taken over parts of South Africa. All these places are occupied by the same family of ants."

5: Implications and Reflections

Reflections on the ecological and philosophical implications of Argentine ants' dominance. Jill Shanahan: "No, I guess not."

1. Monitor Ant Activity: Regularly inspect your property for signs of ant infestations to prevent ecological disruptions.
2. Biosecurity Measures: Implement biosecurity measures when traveling to avoid unintentionally transporting invasive species like Argentine ants.
3. Support Local Biodiversity: Plant native species and support local wildlife to help maintain ecological balance and resist invasive species.
4. Educate on Invasive Species: Learn and educate others about the impact of invasive species to enhance community response and management strategies.
5. Participate in Local Conservation Efforts: Engage in or support local conservation initiatives to preserve native ecosystems.

From a suburban sidewalk in southern California, Jad and Robert witness the carnage of a gruesome turf war. Though the tiny warriors doing battle clock in at just a fraction of an inch, they have evolved a surprising, successful, and rather unsettling strategy of ironclad loyalty, absolute intolerance, and brutal violence.


David Holway, an ecologist and evolutionary biologist from UC San Diego, takes us to a driveway in Escondido, California where a grisly battle rages. In this quiet suburban spot, two groups of ants are putting on a chilling display of dismemberment and death. According to David, this battle line marks the edge of an enormous super-colony of Argentine ants. Think of that anthill in your backyard, and stretch it out across five continents.


Argentine ants are not good neighbors. When they meet ants from another colony, any other colony, they fight to the death, and tear the other ants to pieces. While other kinds of ants sometimes take slaves or even have sex with ants from different colonies, the Argentine ants don’t fool around. If you’re not part of the colony, you’re dead.


According to evolutionary biologist Neil Tsutsui and ecologist Mark Moffett, the flood plains of northern Argentina offer a clue as to how these ants came to dominate the planet. Because of the frequent flooding, the homeland of Linepithema humile is basically a bootcamp for badass ants. One day, a couple ants from one of these families of Argentine ants made their way onto a boat and landed in New Orleans in the late 1800s. Over the last century, these Argentine ants wreaked havoc across the southern U.S. and a significant chunk of coastal California.


In fact, Melissa Thomas, an Australian entomologist, reveals that these Argentine ants are even more well-heeled than we expected - they've made to every continent except Antarctica. No matter how many thousands of miles separate individual ants, when researchers place two of them together - whether they're plucked from Australia, Japan, Hawaii ... even Easter Island - they recognize each other as belonging to the same super-colony.


But the really mind-blowing thing about these little guys is the surprising success of their us-versus-them death-dealing. Jad and Robert wrestle with what to make of this ant regime, whether it will last, and what, if anything, it might mean for other warlike organisms with global ambitions.We have some exciting news! In this “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named its first-ever quasi-moon, and now it's your turn! Radiolab has teamed up with @The International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons. This is your chance to make your mark on the heavens. Submit your name ideas now through September, or vote on your favorites starting in November: https://radiolab.org/moon

People

Jad Abumrad, Robert Krulwich, Latif Nasser, David Holway, Neil Tsotsui, Jill Shanahan

Companies

None

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

None

Content Warnings:

None

Latif Nasser
Radiolab is supported by Dell. Seasons change why not your tech upgrade now during the Dell Technologies summer sale event and save on select PCs like the XPS 16. Powered by intel core processors, you'll be able to bring your most intensive projects to life with built in AI, minimalistic design, immersive visuals, and cinematic audio when you shop online@dell.com. deals you'll have access to exceptional tech and electronics, plus free shipping on everything. Amazing prices await you for a limited time only@Dell.com.

deals that's Dell dell.com deals. Radiolab is supported by progressive insurance. Whether you love true crime or comedy, celebrity interviews or news, you call the shots on what's in your podcast queue. And guess what? Now you can call the shots on your auto insurance too, with the name your price tool from Progressive.

Robert Krulwich
It works just the way it sounds. You tell progressive how much you want to pay for car insurance, and they'll show you coverage options that fit your budget. Get your quote today@progressive.com. to join the over 28 million drivers who trust progressive progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law.

Jad Abumrad
This episode of Radiolab is brought to you by Shark Week, the podcast from Discovery Channel. A lot of what we think is shark fact is actually shark fiction. Learn the truth behind some of the weirdest shark myths. Listen to Shark Week, the podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Did you know the Capital Ideas podcast now has a new monthly edition hosted by capital Group CEO Mike Gitlin.

Robert Krulwich
Through the words and experiences investment professionals, you'll discover who was their best mentor. What's a mistake they made that changed their approach? And how do they find their next great idea? Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts published by American Funds Distributors, Inc.

Latif Nasser
Hey, it's Latif. This is Radiolab. I've been counting down the days to be able to say this, and I finally can. It's on. We have partnered with the International Astronomical Union to give you a chance to name a quasi moon.

And the name that you all choose will be its official name for the rest of human history. So this is your chance to leave your mark on the heavens. Submit a name idea now@radiolab.org. moon. That's radiolab.org moon.

Okay, the reason we're here right now, I wanna rerun a story from 2012 for you about an epic battle happening here on planet Earth. And depending on where you're listening to this, possibly even underneath your feet right now. Because if you go solely by the numbers of individuals, this planet doesn't actually belong to the 8 billion of us, the creature. We're going to talk about numbers, not in the billions or even in the trillions, but in the quadrillions. That's the millions of billions.

So arguably, this is their planet. And I can only presume from their perspective, we are the trivial insect. And now, even though we reported this out over a decade ago, this battle is still raging right now all over this planet. The story begins with Jad and Robert on a suburban sidewalk in southern California. Wait, you're listening?

Jad Abumrad
Okay, all right, okay, all right. Listening to Radiolab, radio lab from WNY.

Rewind.

Look, it's a gated community with electric gates. Electric gates. Hey, I'm Jad Abu Imran. I'm Robert Krulwich. This is Radiolab, the podcast, and today it's nice out here.

We're on a road trip in Escondido, California, which is close to San Diego. Regular suburban neighborhood. Sprinklers, lawns, nice houses, pretty ordinary, except this might be him. Do you think that's him for David Holway. Hey, how's it going?

Good, how are you? David is an ecologist and an evolutionary biologist from UC San Diego. So yeah, you can just park. And when we saw him, he was standing in the street. Oh, he's got the things, he's got the things holding what looked like some kind of nice hookah pipe.

When we got out of the car, he walked us over to the side of the road near a driveway and point it down. You can see argentine ants in the, along the curb here. There's a little guy. Yeah, that's an argentine ant right there, the argentine ant. So I'm just going to collect some argentine ants from the side of this side of this sidewalk.

You are scraping the surface of the dirt with your fingers. As soon as he scrapes, about 100 ants just appear and start running in every direction. Yeah, so what we're seeing are just small numbers of workers that were probably in the leaf litter at the surface. Doesn't seem so small, though. It looks like they're everywhere.

This is tiny. This is tiny. There's a lot of them. First hundreds, then thousands are wrecking up their day. Look at you now.

The reason the three of us, grown adults, are now squatting on this little patch of dirt in somebody's front lawn is because around ten years ago, David and colleagues discovered that this very spot at this particular driveway, yeah, we're at 20 211 eucalyptus in front of this house was the edge of a vast empire right about at this driveway. And that empire ends right at that one driveway, 221 eucalyptus. To demonstrate this, David takes this hookah thing that he's carrying. So there's a tube that you suck on that connects to a vial. He sticks the tube into the scrum, sucks up a few ants, drops him into the vial.

Okay. You just put one at one. It's that one right there. Okay. And then he walked just to the other side of the driveway, like 17 steps, sucked up some ants on that side.

Here's a new, here is a new guy. Plopped them into the same cup and waited. So far, nobody seems to. So you've got these ants from different sides of the driveway in the same cup. And at first, they don't seem to notice each other.

Okay, so we're watching. We're watching one guy, one.

And then right away. Wow. The two ants just lunge at each other. Oh, my God. They lock antenna, and soon they're in a ball.

This isn't good. That is heavy duty fighting. They're like. They're seriously rolling around. One.

Scott looks like it's got a hold of the leg and the other one's got a hold of. Look at them. It's got its antenna ripped off. He's also missing a couple legs because he looked the entire one side. Look at that.

See, one side of his legs are missing. He's going around in circles because he has nowhere else to go. It's no holds barred.

Now, here's the thing. What we saw in that cup between those two ants was a tiny version of what is happening all over the planet. This one family of ants, the one on the left of the driveway, not the right, has fought its way not only across huge hunks of America, they now control enormous swaths of the globe. And how they pulled this off, well, that's maybe more frightening than the fact that they've done it. Yeah.

Latif Nasser
After the break, we learn about how exactly argentine ants took over the world. Stick with us. WNYC Studios is supported by Titanic at New York City center. Don't miss the encore's production of Titanic when it set sail at New York City center this June. His four time Tony winning musical features an all star cast, including Bonnie Milligan, Ramine Caramlou, and Judy Kuhn, and a stunning squad performed by a lush 30 piece orchestra.

Jad Abumrad
Come aboard the ship of dreams. Titanic runs for just two weeks, June 11 through 23rd, at New York City center. To learn more, visit nycitycenter.org titanic. This episode of Radiolab is brought to you by Shark Week, the podcast from Discovery Channel. Sharks have been the subject of lore and legend for centuries, and a lot of what we think is Shark fact is actually shark fiction.

On Shark Week, the podcast uncover the scientific explanation behind some of the weirdest shark tales. Listen to Shark Week the podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Radiolab is supported by progressive. Most of you aren't just listening right now. You're driving, exercising, cleaning.

Robert Krulwich
What if you could also be saving money by switching to progressive drivers who save by switching save nearly $750 on average, and auto customers qualify for an average of seven. Discounts multitask right now quote today@progressive.com comma Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates. National average twelve month savings of $744 by new customers surveyed who saved with progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations.

Radiolab is supported by Babbel sometimes self improvement can feel like a pretty overwhelming journey. So what if this year you just got a tiny bit better? Every day when you're learning a new language with Babbel, that's exactly what you're doing. Babbel is a science backed language learning app with quick ten minute lessons that have been handcrafted by over 200 language experts to help you start speaking a new language. In as little as three weeks.

You can learn everything you need to have real world conversations, cafes, if you play from vocabulary words to culture and more. And if Babbel can help you start speaking a new language in just three weeks, imagine what you could do in a few months or a full year. Here is a special limited time deal for radiolab listeners right now. Get up to 60% off your babbel subscription, but only for our listeners@babbel.com. radiolab get up to 60% off@babbel.com.

radiolab spelled babbel.com radiolab rules and restrictions may apply.

Latif Nasser
Lathif radio lab before the break, we learned about argentine ants and their warlike brutality. But it turns out their secret to world domination isn't just that they'll fight indiscriminately to the death. They're also extremely loyal to their own kind. And it's a kind of loyalty that transcends physical distance and even time. And we'll get into all of that.

Jad Abumrad
But first we have to go back to the mid 18 hundreds, to a little place in the northeastern corner of Argentina. That's right. Have you ever been to this place? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

We've been there several times. Oh yeah. Oh, actually, on the first that's Neil Tsotsui. He's an evolutionary biologist and says if you're an ant, this place is kind of special. Meaning hellish, because it's a place where two rivers come together.

Yeah, it's this region in the floodplain between the Rio Parana and the Rio Uruguay. A lot of different kinds of ants live there in this little spot. And he says, when it rains, which it does there all the time, the flood waters rise.

Then everybody's home gets flooded and you have to flee. The ants are forced up into the trees or any high ground. That's ecologist Mark Moffat. And then as the water falls, all these different subgroups meet again, and they have to start battling from scratch. That's my land it's my land my land my land my.

They battle relentlessly because this place is always flooding. And over time, eons of this, they simply simply do not know how to stop killing each other. So you've got this breeding ground for incredibly nasty ants there in northern Argentina. All these different groups, all fighting and fighting and more or less keeping each other in line. But one day, in the 18 hundreds, a steamship rolls up to, say, Buenos Aires, which is a big part of the mouth of these two rivers.

A boat pulls up, a ramp comes down, and somehow a couple of ants from one of those argentine ant families are up the gangplank, probably, you know, within the first hour, you know. Cause they're always fleeing floods. So they're programmed to move. That's what they do. They're moving into coffee bags.

You can imagine they're moving into all kinds of things. And then the boat pulls out, and this family of ants leaves their way. War torn hellhole of a homeland behind.

Until eventually, sooner or later, it was bound to happen. 1891 is the first time they were seen there. They show up in New Orleans, and then 1907, they leapfrogged all the way to California.

They were simultaneously found in San Francisco and Los Angeles, I believe. How did they get to California? Well, the Panama canal wasn't open yet, so it seems likely they took the train. Wow. Now, here's the thing about these ants that make them different from all the other ants.

Because they grew up in this crazy, blood soaked floodplain of death. Their survival strategy was pretty simple. Kill everything. If it's not one of us, kill it. No matter what.

Other ants will have occasional sex with other ant groups, capture them and make them into slaves, adopt their children. These ants. These ants don't fool around. They don't have sex outside the group. They never take slaves.

And if they catch your babies, they eat them. And it turns out there's a side benefit to being a cruel, segregationist, violent bastard. Cause being that way allows these ants to stay pure. Genes stay the same. Genetically pure?

Yeah, genetically pure. When they stay genetically pure, they can stay unified as a group. And when they do that, they can spread in ways the other ants just can't. Cause. See, ants use smell.

Like that's how they know who's in and who's out. First thing they do when they meet another ant is they sniff them using their antenna, something sort of like a tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff. They register odor. It's a parallel to the nationality in humans. As long as they sense that identity throughout the individuals they meet, they are happy.

Now with most ants, as they spread over vast distances, they start to commingle with other ants. Queens come and go, and inevitably that smell, nationality dilutes, it begins to change. But with these argentine ants, the smell doesn't change from queen to queen or from nest to nest, even if they go way off, conquer totally new territory, build distant nests. All these different nests function as sort of a fluid network. They can fuse and fission through time.

For example, you might be nesting on the edge of a sidewalk, and the sprinklers come on, everybody evacuates. And all the queens and workers and babies get moved to higher ground and may fuse with a nest that's already existing at the higher ground. So all these argentine ants living across the south and the US, they get along. And if you don't have to worry about each other and you've killed off everything else, they can focus their energy on producing more argentine ants. And all you have to do is outnumber the enemy enough and you can wipe out anything, even an animal 5000 times their size.

Horned lizards are dropping in abundance out in California because the ants simply run all over them and they can never sleep. These lizards normally eat ants, but they simply can't grab these ants. They're too fast and too small, and so they're literally being killed by their own food. Hmm. To sum up, they're very nasty, very loyal, and they're extraordinarily numerous.

Put those three things together and what you get is Genghis Khan in an ant. See the USA in your chaperone. During the 1950s, this tight knit, brutal family of ants starts to spread deeper into California, thanks in large part to all the new freeways, because now they could spread faster and farther. Like, say you put out a potted plant on your front porch, the ants move in overnight. Next day, pick up that plant and move it, you know, 100 miles away.

The next day, there they are in this new place that's so far away from where they were yesterday, and they can conquer that. And not only that, it is, after all, the 1950s and 1960s, and you've got suburbs springing up all over America, lots of lawns, lots of sprinklers that go on, off, on, off, on, off, which, if you're an ant, is in many ways very similar to home fresh terrain that's been exposed by the receding floodwaters. Humans have modified the habitat in California in ways that argentine ants really like. So the argentine ants are happy, and most people don't even notice this is happening until we get to the 1990s. In fact, in 1998, Neil, our entomologist friend, and his colleague Andy Suarez, they're now studying argentine ants around San Diego.

I may begin to wonder, how far can a family like this of ants spread and still remain pure and still remain loyal to each other? So, in the summer of that year, Neil and Andy hop into a car and they go on a little road trip, starting in San Diego and heading north. They took a cup full of argentine ants from San Diego, and periodically they would stop, get out of the car, kneel down with their ant hookah pipes, and suck up local ants, whoever happened to be there, and then pop those ants into the cup with the San Diego ant. Now, if the ants think they're part of the same colony, they won't fight. That's right.

So we put in ants from Los Angeles. Tap, tap, tap, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff. And they recognize San Diego ants as being members of the same colony, so they know the colony extends at least from San Diego to Los Angeles, but they keep going. We go up to Santa Barbara. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.

No aggression. Sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff. Nothing. No fighting to San Luis obispo. Tap, tap, tap, tap.

Same thing. Sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff. They think they're all members of the same colony. Still no fight up to San Francisco. Tap, tap, tap, tap.

Same thing. Sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff. And this continued all the way to a little town 100 miles north of San Francisco. And that site displayed no aggression towards the ants that we collected at the very beginning of our road trip from over 600 miles away in San Diego. Just think about that for a second, okay?

Remember those ant hills you might have had in your front lawn? Little mounds. Imagine one of those, 600 miles wide, give or take, with trillions and trillions of ants in it. Scientists call this a supercolony, the large California supercolony. And as scientists kept tracking this colony, they realized these ants had hitchhiked far beyond California.

Melissa Thomas
They're all over Europe. Europe's got, actually, Europe's got the largest colony known. That's australian ant scientist Melissa Thomas. In 2002, she worked with David Holway to chart just how far this one supercolony has expanded. Australia has some where you are.

We've got some here in Perth. Yes. And over in Melbourne and Sydney area. Up and down Spain, all around Italy, around Greece, Japan, many Atlantic and Pacific islands, Hawaii, Easter island, places like that. They've taken over much of northern New Zealand.

Jad Abumrad
They've taken over parts of South Africa. All these places are occupied by the same family of. Are they the same colony? They think they're all members of the same colony. In fact, we imported argentine ants from Japan, Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, brought them to UC Berkeley.

And they put all of these ants from all these different places in the same cup like we did on our road trip. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff, sniff. And no fighting.

You've got, say, an ant from Okinawa in Japan and an ant from Genoa in Italy. They're 6000 miles distant, maybe 150 generations apart, and yet they still know each other. They still recognize each other as members of the same colony because the smell that bonds them together hasn't changed. At some point in the past. You know, one colony in Argentina got picked up and moved around and spread and continued to spread and continued to spread.

The descendants of those ants we have now across all continents except Antarctica, they still think they're all members of the same family. So here you've got this monoculture, right? That's really violent on the edges. On the edges, yeah. But then if you're on the inside and part of the group, very, very peaceful.

And since there's only one other creature that can do this that can create an allegiance across vast, vast spreads of earth, I couldn't help but ask Neil, do you ever. Do you ever analogize to human history when you look at these things? It's tempting to, but I try not to because it, you know, these sorts of situations are kind of a Rorschach. You can see whatever you want to in them. And so, you know, for our argentine ant research, we've had people say, look, the lesson from this is that we should all be like argentine ants and get along and cooperate and we'll succeed.

But then, on the other hand, I've had, you know, white supremacist websites cite my research and say, you know, this is evidence that they're the key to success is not mixing the races.

The unsettling part is that, at least in efficacy, like, they're right, this has been a very successful formula for these ants. Well, if it lasts. Right. Which brings us to Jill. What's your whole big name?

Jill Shanahan. Jill Shanahan. In 1995, Jill was working with Andy Suarez in San Diego, helping him map the ant empire. And one day, as part of her job, she found herself in a park in a housing complex just outside San Diego, looking for argentine ants. Mm hmm.

So do you find some? Yeah, I believe that there was a colony at the base of a tree. Now, before she left, she'd grabbed some argentine ants from the lab, and these tree ants, they looked exactly the same as her lab ants. They're pretty easy to identify, and she figured they would just meet the new ants and go sniff, sniff, sniff, get along, and we're ignore each other. But when she plopped one of these tree ants into the cup with one of her lab ants, these guys were fighting.

One was more aggressive than the other and started biting the other one. And then they grapple each other and get into a tight little ball and just. And you're watching this, and no one has ever seen argentine ants fight before. You're seeing something nobody's seen before. Did you have any sense that that was happening?

No, I guess not.

Which may explain why Jill is now in the interior design field. But this is a big deal, because what it means is that another family of argentine ants had made it over from the old country and brought that old fight to America. So scientists like Melissa began to wonder, how big is this new empire? And where do the two meet exactly? Our goal was to find where that territory met in nature.

So Melissa heads out with her standard ant gear, the hookah pipe thing, to suck up the ants, the fight cup to plop them into. She'd do the fight cup test in all these different places in the area, trying to zero in on where that border might be. I'd slowly sort of get closer and. Closer and closer, and eventually she finds herself walking down a street in a normal subdivision in Escondido. She looks down, and she sees it.

This thick channel of death. Dead bodies, hundreds, hundreds of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dead bodies. And from all directions, live ants were. Pouring into this area and fighting to the death masses and masses of them. Fighting, piles and piles of them killing each other.

Melissa Thomas
It's pretty extraordinary to see, actually, there. Were times when we didn't even need to get out of the car to find the supercolony boundary, because you'd see the dead workers spilling over. The spilling, spilling. Which brings us back to where we started with that driveway and David Holloway. Oh, my God, they're just, like, almost bouncing off the bottom.

Jad Abumrad
This, then, is the price of empire. These ants have conquered a huge portion of the globe, but every day they pay the price in bodies at the border. This guy has lost all. You see, he's only got limbs on one side now. And that price might be going up because scientists have now figured out that several more families of argentine ants have hitchhiked their way over.

This is what I expect. Are they gonna die? Yeah. The ones that are really injured probably won't live too much longer. Oh, my God, those two.

So, in the end, this strategy of violence and intolerance seems to be pretty good. Until it meets itself.

Or even worse, something badder than itself. Oh, my God, those two when you shook the. Oh, look, they got free. Oh, but the other one. Oh, he's just throwing into another fight.

Oh, look, Robert, look, they're going into a circle. Oh, they're in the ball of death. Well, not quite. They've just separated. They sort of locked.

Locked big. Thanks to Douglas Smith for production help on this piece. Douglas, I'm Jad Abu Mar. I'm Robert Krulwich. Thanks for listening.

David
Hi, I'm David, and I'm from Toronto. And here are the staff credits. Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler, Lulu Miller and Lothif Nasser are our co hosts. Dylan Keith is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bresler, Akeda Foster, Keys W.

Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindhu Nyanasumbundum, Matt Keelty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neeson, Valentina Powers, Sora Khari, Sarah Sandbach, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster. Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton. Hi, this is Jeremiah Barba, and I'm calling from San Francisco, California. Leadership support for Radiolab science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Science Sandbox Simons Foundation Initiative and the John Templeton foundation foundational support for Radio Lab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan foundation.

Robert Krulwich
Did you know? The Capital Ideas podcast now has a new monthly edition hosted by Capital Group CEO Mike Gitlin. Through the words and experiences of investment professionals, you'll discover who was their best mentor, what's a mistake they made that changed their approach. And how do they find their next great idea? Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Published by American Funds Distributors, Inc.

I'm Ira Fleto, host of Science Friday. For over 30 years, our team has been reporting high quality news about science, technology and medicine, news you won't get anywhere else. And now that political news is 24/7 our audience is turning to us to know about the really important stuff in their cancer, climate change, genetic engineering, childhood diseases. Our sponsors know the value of science and health news. For more sponsorship information, visit sponsorship dot wnyc.org.