From the Radiolab podcast: How much in life is random, and how much of what we do and what we are is simply chance?
Stochasticity — a wonderfully slippery and smarty-pants word for randomness — may be at the very foundation of our lives. To understand how big a role it plays, we look at chance and patterns in sports, lottery tickets, and even the cells in our own body.
Along the way, we talk to a woman suddenly consumed by a frenzied gambling addiction, meet two friends whose meeting seems to defy pure chance, and take a close look at some very noisy bacteria.