The greatest mysteries have a shadowy figure at the center—someone who sets things in motion and holds the key to how the story unfolds. In epidemiology, this central character is known as Patient Zero—the case at the heart of an outbreak. This hour, Radiolab digs up an episode we first produced in 2011 and hunts for Patient Zeroes from all over the map. We start with the story of perhaps the most iconic Patient Zero of all time: Typhoid Mary. Then, we dive into a molecular detective story to pinpoint the beginning of the AIDS, and we re-imagine the moment the virus that caused the global pandemic sprang to life. After that, we're left wondering if you can trace the spread of an idea the way you can trace the spread of a disease. In the end, we find ourselves faced with a choice between competing claims about the origin of the high five.
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The world’s great museums are full of art and artifacts that were plundered during an era when plunder was the norm. Now there’s a push to return these works to their rightful owners. Sounds simple, right? It's not. (Part 2 of an updated series originally published in 2023.)
SOURCES:
Matthew Bogdanos, assistant district attorney in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and chief of the Antiquities Trafficking Unit.
Nicholas Cullinan, director of the British Museum.
Victor Ehikhamenor, Nigerian writer and artist.
David Frum, staff writer at The Atlantic.
Dan Hicks, professor of contemporary archaeology at the University of Oxford and curator of world archaeology at the Pitt Rivers Museum.
Bénédicte Savoy, professor of art history at the Technical University in Berlin.
RESOURCES:
"These Looted Treasures Are Home. What Now?," by Alex Marshall (New York Times, 2025).
"France's Long-Awaited Restitution Policy Is Finally Here," by Vincent Noce (The Art Newspaper, 2023).
Africa’s Struggle for Its Art: History of a Postcolonial Defeat, by Bénédicte Savoy (2022).
"Who Benefits When Western Museums Return Looted Art?" by David Frum (The Atlantic, 2022).
"Museums in England and Wales to Gain Powers to Dispose of Objects on Moral Grounds," by Dalya Alberge (The Guardian, 2022).
The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution, by Dan Hicks (2020).
"The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage. Toward a New Relational Ethics," by Bénédicte Savoy and Felwine Sarr (2018).
EXTRAS:
"Can a Museum Be the Conscience of a Nation?," by Freakonomics Radio (2025).
"The Hidden Side of the Art Market," by Freakonomics Radio (2021).
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First up on the podcast, the News team’s Diverse Voices in Science Journalism interns Mona Patterson and Laura Martín Agudelo join host Sarah Crespi to talk over some of their reporting from the summer. They chat about several stories, including why it’s so difficult to track the food-borne illness cyclosporiasis and a new map for a major highway of the human nervous system.
Check out all of Patterson’s and Martín Agudelo’s stories.
Next on the show, Leslie Chan, assistant professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Emory School of Medicine, describes an ingestible metabolic probe for the gut microbiome. Her team tested the pill in mice and showed they could detect an enzyme made by the microbiome that causes toxicity during some chemotherapy treatments. The signal is read from volatiles in the breath, making the test a noninvasive way to check on the activity of gut microbes.
This week’s episode was produced with help from Podigy.
Image credit: Melanie Moser/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
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When he joined the Del Fuegos, his big brother’s band, all Warren knew how to play was a record player. Things went great for a while — and then it all fell apart. So how did he wind up writing definitive books on Springsteen and Tom Petty?
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When we look at the people we love, how clearly do we really see them? This week, we talk with psychologist Edward LeMay about how our fears, desires, and insecurities can shape our perceptions of our partners — sometimes creating the very reality we expect. He explains how we can learn to see our partners in ways that create greater trust and connection. Then, Sonja Lyubomirsky answers your questions about the gap between being loved and feeling loved, in our latest installment of "Your Questions Answered."
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