Sometimes a seemingly silly question gets stuck in your craw and you can’t shake the feeling that something big lies behind it. We are constantly collecting these kinds of questions from our listeners, not to mention piling up a storehouse of our own “stupid” questions, as we lovingly call them. And a little while back, we noticed a little cluster of questions that seemed to have a shared edgy energy, and all led us to the same place: Our own bodies. So, today on Radiolab, we go down our throats and get under our skin, we take on evolution and anatomy and molecular cosmetics, to discover some very not-stupid answers to our seemingly stupid questions. 

Special thanks to Mark Krasnow, Sachi Mulkey, Kari Leibowitz, Andrea Evers, Dr. Mona Amin, Benjamin Ungar, Praby Singh, Brye and Rachel Adler

EPISODE CREDITS: 

Reported by - Molly Webster, Becca Bressler, Latif Nasser, and Alan Goffinski
with help from Ekedi Fausther-Keeys
Produced by - Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Becca Bressler, Alyssa Jeong Perry, Molly Webster 
with help from - Matt Kielty
Original music and sound design contributed by - Jeremy Bloom 
with mixing help from - Arianne Wack
Fact-checking by - Diane Kelley, Emily Krieger
and edited by  - Pat Walters and Alex Neason

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Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.