While doing research for our art and medicine episode, we called our colleagues in the NYPR archives — a treasure trove of nearly a century of media made or collected at the station. And they found some pretty fantastic things in the stacks. 

Final preparations are underway for tonight’s live show in WNYC’s Greene Space: the science magician loads in his equipment in a couple hours, then Reggie Watts will soundcheck, and doors will open at 7pm.  And then… black holes will play drums!  We’ll bend space and time!  And we may just come up with the Theory of Everything. (At the very least, we'll come up with a Theory of A Lot of Things.)

After piano music helped him recover from brain surgery, Dr. Richard Fratianne became a true believer in music therapy. In the burn unit at the Cleveland MetroHealth Medical Center, Fratianne is measuring patients’ stress hormones during procedures to try to prove that music therapy

Can the arts actually improve health care? Kurt gets some answers from Jill Sonke, director of the Center for the Arts in Healthcare at the University of Florida. She explains how the arts have been carving out a place in the healing process.

Television drama has created the impression of an ideal world where decisions in hospitals are made quickly and cost is never an issue. It directly affects our expectations for treatment, according to Billy Goldberg, an emergency-room physician, and Joseph Turow, the author of Playing ...

Chris Adrian's novels tell dark, fantastical stories that draw on his experience working as a pediatric oncologist. Adrian tells Kurt how writing helps him deal with the emotional burden of the medicine he practices.

Anne Marie Nest reads selections from Adrian’s forthcoming novel, The ...

Medical students spend hours studying information on charts and graphs, but when was the last time they studied the meaning behind a good story? We visited a group of OB/GYN residents taking a narrative medicine class to see how embracing fiction can improve patient care. Produced by

Before the invention of the dialysis machine, kidney failure was basically a death sentence. Registered nurse Janice Breen explains how the design of dialysis machines has evolved since she started working with them back in 1973. Produced by Gretta Cohn.

Jill Sonke tells Kurt about the benefits and challenges that come with bringing art and artists into health care environments.

Marc Branchworks at NASA as an aerospace engineer testing instruments used on outer-space telescopes. When he's off the clock, Branch is one of the most sought after hip-hop DJs around the country. Leading a double life as "DJ Scientific" he hopes to ...

Low-budget movies are hot in Hollywood right now and the young filmmakers behind them owe a lot to the Internet. Technology and social media are changing the way films are being made — and it's a much shorter path from YouTube to the big screen than you might think. Produced ...

Until recently, mathematicians believed you couldn't represent hyperbolic geometry in real space, but a Latvian math professor discovered a way — using crochet. Some science educators realized those same hyperbolic shapes mimicked the forms in coral reefs. And now their Crochet Coral Reef Project has landed ...

When science fiction was just catching on in the early 20th century, writers looked to the field of quantum mechanics for ideas. They sensationalized scientific advancements and sparked public fear. Physics professor James Kakalios — author of The Amazing Story of Quantum Mechanics — tells Kurt ...

What if God was a bickering couple? That's just one of the provocative speculations in a book of short fiction — a surprise hit last year — called Sum: 40 Tales from the Afterlives. Another surprise: its author, David Eagleman, is a neuroscience researcher at Baylor ...

Jeffrey Yang spends a lot of time studying marine life. But he's not a biologist working on the beach. He's a poet who loves visiting his local aquarium. In his new book, An Aquarium, killer whales, eels, and fish become symbols of politics and mythology. Produced ...

Felice Frankel spent the last 20 years photographing objects that only the most powerful microscopes can see. In her book No Small Matter, which she wrote with the Harvard chemist George Whitesides, Frankel shows what life on the nanoscale looks like. Produced by Studio ...

For over twenty years the Oregon State Psychiatric Hospital stored the cremated remains of patients in copper containers. Photographer David Maisel found them, and shows the beautiful — and bizarre — chemical reactions that took place as the canisters corroded in his exhibit "Library of Dust," ...

The forward-thinking space funk singer performs "Sincerely, Jane" from her album Metropolis: The Chase Suite. She tells Kurt how she came to connect with her alter ego, Cindi Mayweather, an android from the 28th century.

Kurt Andersen thinks time travel is the ultimate fantasy. He's made peace with the fact that he probably won't be climbing into a time machine any time soon — because, he explains, he already has. The past isn't nearly as dead as we thought.