AI Summary
5 min read🎙️ The Voices & The Context
- The Format: This is a deeply personal, narrative-driven episode of Radiolab. It’s a casual but profound conversation between the hosts (Latif Nasser and Lulu Miller) and a guest who is also a reporter on a personal quest.
- The Key Players:
- Rachel Gross: A science journalist and author of Vagina Obscura. She is the central figure, sharing her firsthand experience of having a stroke and the subsequent mystery of why she doesn't "feel like herself."
- The Hosts (Latif & Lulu): They act as curious and empathetic guides, asking the right questions to pull the story out of Rachel and the science out of the experts.
- The Vibe: Intensely Educational, Deeply Vulnerable, and Surprisingly Uplifting. It moves from the shock of a medical emergency to the wonder of a scientific paradigm shift, and finally to a heartwarming, funny conclusion.
🗝️ Key Themes & Topics
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **🎙️ Introduction: Rachel Gross**
- 2 (01:33) **A Karaoke Crash and Burn**
- 3 (04:48) **The Stroke and the "Little Brain"**
- 4 (07:55) **The Mystery of the Cerebellum**
- 5 (09:54) **The Old View: A Motor Control Device**
- 6 (12:53) **A Paradigm Shift**
- 7 (14:56) **Mapping the Highways**
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
One spring evening in 2024, a science journalist named Rachel Gross bombed at karaoke. The culprit was a bleed in a fist-sized clump of neurons tucked down in the back of her brain called the cerebellum. A couple weeks later, her doctors took a bit of it out, assuring her it was just helping her with motor coordination — she might be a bit clumsy for a while, but she’d still be herself. But afterwards, she didn't feel like herself. So she dove into the dusty basement of the brain (and brain science) to figure out why. What Rachel found was a burgeoning new frontier in neuroscience. We learn what singing Shakira on stage has to do with reaching for a cup of coffee — and how the surprising relationship between the two is making us rethink what we think about thinking.
Special thanks to Warzone Karaoke at Branded Saloon, Dr. Joanne Loewy and the Singing Together, Measure by Measure choir at the Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine  (http://musicandmedicine.org/) at Mount Sinai Union Square, Dag Spicer and the Computer History Museum, Désirée Lie, Mark Gross, Daniel A. Gross, Brittany Aguilar, and, of course, Shakira.
EPISODE CREDITS:Â
Reported by - Rachel Gross
Produced by - Sindhu Gnanasambandan
EPISODE CITATIONS:
Articles -
- “Ignoring the cerebellum is hindering progress in neuroscience.” (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39934082/), by Wang et al, 2025
- “The cerebellum and cognition.” (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29997061/), by Schmahmann JD. Neurosci Lett. 2019
- “How did brains evolve?” (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11805823/), by Barton RA., Nature. 2002
Books -Â
- Vagina Obscura (https://www.rachelegross.com/book), by Rachel E. Gross
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