Worth

Radiolab

WNYC Studios

History, Science, Documentary, Natural Sciences, Society & Culture

4.6 • 44.5K Ratings

🗓️ 22 May 2026

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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 Kieltywith help from - Shahib Al-Masawa Produced by - Matt Kielty, Tim HowardFact-checking by - Michelle Soraka EPISODE CITATIONS: Books - Memoir of A Debulked (https://zpr.io/WJz2Ybvq3HmT) Woman by Susan Gubar Being Mortal (https://zpr.io/8J47trRcbjKh) by Atul Gawande Sign up for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Signup (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org. Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, this is Radio Lab. I'm Latif Nasser. And today we're resurfacing a quite provocative episode we originally reported in 2014.
0:10.3	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.
0:24.9	In every one of these cases, the specifics that they're referring to have changed,
0:29.7	but the overall picture remains depressingly the same.
0:35.4	Honestly, since it came out, like I still think about these stories.
0:39.1	I still remember them all the time,
0:40.6	especially the last one.
0:42.5	I would say this episode is one of my all-time
0:44.8	top-10 radio lab episodes.
0:47.0	I hope you feel the same way,
0:48.5	whether you are hearing it for the first time
0:50.0	or hearing it for the 10th time.
0:52.1	Here it goes, worth.
0:54.4	Wait, you're listening.
0:55.9	Okay.
0:57.2	All right.
0:58.3	Okay.
0:59.7	All right.
1:01.2	You're listening to Radio Lab.
1:04.1	Radio Lab.
1:04.7	From W-N-Y-C.
1:09.3	Rewind.
	...

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