One of my most favorite shows on NPR is “Radio lab”. Their new season began late last year and now they have 5 new shows on their website. The episode called “Sperm” is really really interesting.

The latest one is “Yellow fluff and other curious encounters”. Very fascinating stories. Here is a video related to the first story in the show.

The second story is about the periodic table of elements. In 9th grade, I was very fascinated by the periodic table. I don’t think it was in our textbooks but, we had learned about different elements in school and I found the table in my father’s “organic chemistry” textbook from college. It was good to hear a story that I could relate to. It would be wonderful to get a periodic table with real elements as described by the man in the story. It is quite expensive to acquire one. If you want to buy me one, I would like this coffee table version. Here is a link to a beautiful pictoral periodic table.

The quality of background sounds and music on this show is always very well produced . Jad Abumrad is an expert with digital sound editing. He explains how they tweak the sounds on the show in this podcast from 2007. It is fascinating how these sounds affect the whole listening experience.