Listener

This post is a reprint of a post by Jad Abumrad & Robert Krulwich that originally appeared at WNYC's Radiolab.

OK. Maybe you’re in your desk chair. You’re in your office. You’re in New York, or Detroit, or Timbuktu. You’re on planet Earth.

But where are you, really?

Radio Lab tries to find out where you are. This hour: stories of people whose brains and bodies have lost each other. We ask how does your brain keep track of your body? We’ll examine the bond between brain and body and look at what happens when it breaks. We begin with a century-old mystery: why do many amputees still feel their missing limbs? We speak with a neuroscientist who solved the problem with a magician’s trick: an optical illusion. We continue with the story of a butcher who suddenly lost his entire sense of touch. And we hear from pilots who lose consciousness and suffer out-of-body experiences while flying fighter jets.

photo credit Flickr/montwerx

This post is a reprint of a post by Jad Abumrad & Robert Krulwich that originally appeared at WNYC's Radiolab.

Here at Radiolab we explore big ideas and ask big questions to see how the world works. To do that, we often talk to scientists who are trying to answer those questions by doing experiments and gathering data. But there are some questions that don’t give in to experiments and data. And with Easter and Passover around the corner, we decided to take on one of those questions, not through science, but through a story.

Photo credit: Flickr/Dan Larsen