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Thomas Lu

Thomas Lu (he/him) is a producer for NPR's science podcast, Short Wave. The podcast is a perfect equation of curiosity, nerdiness and everyday discoveries.

Lu came to NPR in 2017 as an intern for the TED Radio Hour with Guy Raz. After his internship, he continued to develop his radio skills working with How I Built This, All Things Considered, Weekend Edition and Pop Culture Happy Hour. He pitched and produced All Things Considered's annual Thanksgiving music segment with Ari Shapiro.

Lu was then hired as a producer for Hidden Brain — where he worked on episodes ranging from the benefits of nature to the importance of the human voice to our hidden influence on others. He contributed to the Hidden Brain episode "The Ventilator," which earned an Edward R. Murrow award in 2020.

Prior to NPR, Lu interned for StoryCorps in Brooklyn, New York.

Lu is a 2020 AIR New Voices Scholar. He graduated from Middlebury College in 2016 with a degree in psychology. Oh, and he's a huge fan of the Golden Girls.

  • We the People: Gun Rights
    Ramtin Arablouei
    The Second Amendment. In April 1938, an Oklahoma bank robber was arrested for carrying an unregistered sawed-off shotgun across state lines. The robber, Jack Miller, put forward a novel defense: that a law banning him from carrying that gun violated his Second Amendment rights. For most of U.S. history, the Second Amendment was one of the sleepier ones. It rarely showed up in court, and was almost never used to challenge laws. Jack Miller's case changed that. And it set off a chain of events that would fundamentally change how U.S. law deals with guns. Today on Throughline's We the People: How the second amendment came out of the shadows. (Originally ran as The Right to Bear Arms)
  • You 2.0: Our Better Nature
    Shankar Vedantam
    If you live in a big city, you may have noticed new buildings popping up — a high-rise here, a skyscraper there. The concrete jungles that we've built over the past century have allowed millions of us to live in close proximity, and modern economies to flourish. But what have we given up by moving away from the forest environments in which humans first evolved? This week, we revisit our 2018 conversation about the healing power of nature with psychologist Ming Kuo.
  • Whose Utopia? How Science Used The Bodies Of People Deemed 'Less Than'
    Shankar Vedantam
    There is a long legacy of leaders exploiting the bodies of vulnerable people in the name of science. This week, the history of eugenics and medical experimentation on enslaved people in the U.S.
  • Hal Herzog, a professor of psychology at Western Carolina University, says the more we attribute humanlike qualities to animals, the more ethically problematic it may be to keep them as pets.
    Pets, Pests And Food: Our Complex, Contradictory Attitudes Toward Animals
    Shankar Vedantam
    Does living with animals really make us healthier? Why do we eat some animals and keep others as pets? This week on Hidden Brain, we talk with psychology professor Hal Herzog about the contradictions embedded in our relationships with animals.
  • Yum and Yuck: The Psychology Of What We Eat...And What We Spit Out
    Shankar Vedantam
    This week on the Hidden Brain radio show, we dig into the culture and psychology that determines the foods that make us salivate and the scents that make us squirm.
  • Voting With A Middle Finger: Two Views On The White Working Class
    Shankar Vedantam
    There is one truth that has endured through the first two years of Donald Trump's presidency: he has kept the support of the core voters who propelled him to the White House. This week on Hidden Brain, we explore two competing perspectives on the motivations of Trump supporters, and what they can tell us about the state of our union.