Worth
5/22/20261 hr 12 min
This episode makes three earnest, possibly foolhardy, attempts to put a price on the priceless. We figure out the dollar value for an accidental death, another day of life, and the work of bats and bees as we try to keep our careful calculations from falling apart in the face of the realities of life, and love, and loss.
In this story you’ll hear references to some of the issues that were on our minds when it first came out in 2014: wars in the middle east, drug costs and health care practices. Even as the exact shapes of these issues have evolved over the past dozen years, we feel the underlying questions are relevant and timeless: What is life worth? What about the earth?
EPISODE CREDITS:
Reported by - Molly Webster, Simon Adler, Tim Howard, and Matt Kielty
with help from - Shahib Al-Masawa
Produced by - Matt Kielty, Tim Howard
Fact-checking by - Michelle Soraka
EPISODE CITATIONS:
Books -
- Memoir of A Debulked Woman (https://zpr.io/WJz2Ybvq3HmT) by Susan Gubar
- Being Mortal (https://zpr.io/8J47trRcbjKh) by Atul Gawande
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsJad Abumrad· Host0:00
Pop, pop, pop. That is the sound of popcorn popping to announce the big news that Radiolab is headed to the Tribeca Festival podcast stage for a special live show in New York City. We will be headlining the podcast program with this one-night-only live show at the festival's 25th anniversary. Come on out on June 9th at 6:00 PM for a show that will literally give you chills. [laughs] Tickets are available now at tribecafilm.com/audio. That's tribecafilm.com/audio.
Latif Nasser· Host0:29
Hey, this is Radiolab. I'm Latif Nasser, and today we're resurfacing a quite provocative episode we originally reported in 2014. Now, that sounds like a long time ago until you start listening and you start to realize how many parallels there are between 2014 and this moment right now. Outrageous healthcare costs, war in the Middle East, climate change. In every one of these cases, the specifics that they're referring to have changed, but the overall picture remains depressingly the same. Honestly, since it came out, I, like, I still think about these stories. I still remember them all the time, especially the last one. I would say this episode is one of my all-time top 10 Radiolab episodes. I hope you feel the same way, whether you are hearing it for the first time or hearing it for the 10th time. Here it goes. Worth.
Robert Krulwich· Host1:23
Yep. Wait, wait. You're listening [laughs] Okay. All right. Yeah.
Molly Webster1:28
Okay.
Robert Krulwich· Host1:28
All