The Infantorium

In 1998, the recording industry was thriving. But the company pressing more compact discs than anyone else in America wasn't a record label…it was an internet company: America Online. The AOL Disc was a marketing coup—hugely successful. It’s not an overstatement to say that it’s ... Show More

Esperanto is what linguists call a “constructed language.” It isn’t attached to a nation or a region, and it didn’t evolve from another language over time. Instead, nearly 150 years ago, someone decided to sit down and design the whole thing from scratch. That someone was L. L. Z ... Show More

In 1932, the Women's House of Detention—New York City's first women's prison—opened in the heart of Greenwich Village. It was opened to make "wayward" women quiet, private, and properly feminine. And the building had one unique feature originally meant to be a sort of kindness—a ... Show More

Babies who are born too early often get extra care in the hospital at the NICU, or Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. But the NICU didn’t always exist – and it took doctors a long time to figure out how to care for these babies. Join Joy, co-host Betty and their pal Ruby Guthrie to he ... Show More

Nowadays, incubators are a common sight in hospitals across the US -- but, once upon a time, this life-saving technology was treated like a sideshow attraction. Hundreds of thousands of people flocked to 'Infantoriums' to marvel at how incubators were able to keep babies born pre ... Show More

In 1920, a father made a split-second decision to save his newborn's life by taking her to an incubator exhibit at Coney Island. We meet her in this episode, and she shares how a sideshow attraction saved her life, and thousands of others, when hospitals couldn't, ultimately chan ... Show More

Practice babies were live human babies, cared for by college seniors who were temporarily living in home ec practice houses. The babies mostly came from orphanages or child welfare agencies, and were usually adopted after their time in the program. Learn more about your ad-choice ... Show More

After years spent caring for extremely preterm babies, a nurse has an urgent message to share: Technology is saving babies earlier than ever, but the long term consequences aren't being made clear to parents. How do we bridge the gap between what modern medicine can do and the in ... Show More

we brought the baby in for an episode 

Premature babies often need a lot of expensive specialised care - but that isn’t always available. So, doctors in Colombia are teaching mothers to look after their babies in a similar way that kangaroos look after their own young.It’s called "kangaroo mother care" and instead of ... Show More