What happens when there is no leader? Starlings, bees, and ants manage just fine. In fact, they form staggeringly complicated societies -- all without a Toscanini to conduct them into harmony. This hour of Radiolab, we ask how this happens.

What happens when there is no leader? Starlings, bees and ants manage just fine. In fact, they form staggeringly complicated societies—all without a Toscanini to conduct them into harmony. This hour of Radiolab, we ask how this happens.

We gaze down at the bottom-up logic of cities, Google, and even our very own brains with firefly-ologists, ant experts, neurologists, a mathematician and an economist.