Robert Krulwich
The son of a scientist and a doctor, Jad Abumrad did most of his growing up in Tennessee, before studying creative writing and music composition at Oberlin College in Ohio. Following graduation, Abumrad wrote music for films, and reported and produced documentaries for a variety of local and national public radio programs, including On The Media, Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen, Morning Edition, All Things Considered and WNYC's "24 Hours at the Edge of Ground Zero."
While working on staff at WNYC, Abumrad began tinkering with an idea for a new kind of radio program. That idea evolved into one of public radio’s most popular shows today – Radiolab. The program won the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award and explores big questions in science, philosophy and mankind. Under Abumrad’s direction, the show uses a combination of deep-dive journalism, narrative storytelling, dialogue and music to craft compositions of exploration and discovery. Abumrad is also the Executive Producer and creator of Radiolab's More Perfect, a podcast that explores how cases deliberated inside the rarefied world of the Supreme Court affect our lives far away from the bench.
Abumrad was honored as a 2011 MacArthur Fellow (also known as the Genius Grant). The MacArthur Foundation website says: “Abumrad is inspiring boundless curiosity within a new generation of listeners and experimenting with sound to find ever more effective and entertaining ways to explain ideas and tell a story.”
Abumrad also produced and hosted The Ring & I, an insightful, funny, and lyrical look at the enduring power of Wagner's Ring Cycle. It aired nationally and internationally and earned ten awards, including the prestigious 2005 National Headliner Grand Award in Radio.
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There are animals famous for their songs. Whales sing. Birds sing. We humans have Aretha, Elvis, Ray Charles, Pavarotti. But bats — who knew? -
Let's compare two kinds of nothing: an empty patch of deep space and an empty piece of paper that was once beautiful. There's nothing to see in either. Or is there?
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They are small. They are weak. They are vulnerable. But these little bees take on a humongous predator in the most ingenious way. -
Can a colicky baby's piercing scream be militarized? As in, made (literally) into a weapon of war? Oh, absolutely, says this scholar, smiling ever so slightly.
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Draw a planet (a circle, right?). Now draw a star (a pointy thing, yes?). Now ask yourself, aren't stars all round? Our sun is. So why do we make them pointy? Come learn the answer. -
Every fall, birds head south and, around Sept. 11, New York sends two beams into the sky. When birds and lights collide, that could mean trouble — but New York is surprisingly gentle.
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We live on a planet, next to a star that's part of a galaxy that's part of ... ah, here comes the new discovery. We are at the very tip of a giant galactic "supercluster." Take a look.
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I am made of atoms — 7,000 trillion trillion of them. How did I teach them to tie my shoes? Or did they teach me?
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You don't get to see this too often: a man (in this case, a very talented man) totally possessed by his muse. Watch pianist Glenn Gould deep in what psychologists call "a flow state."
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You look. You gape. You can't believe your eyes. Well, take a peek at this image and ask yourself, 'How did they do this?'
