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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The year he landed on the moon, astronaut Neil Armstrong was famous, iconic, an American hero. One year later he wasn't. In 1970, how many people remembered his name? This will surprise you.
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What if I told you that an ordinary-looking wave hitting your beach had traveled, intact, halfway across the planet? Would you believe me? Well, believe this.
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It's just a drop of water. It's about to fall. And when it does, a story begins. What happens next may feel oddly familiar. Maybe it's telling you — about you.
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Richard Feynman, one of the greatest science teachers ever, asks a wave to tell him a story.
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It's got big iron teeth and a powerful jaw. When it finds a 30-foot tree it goes to the top, opens its mouth and — watch this.
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They were having a baby. Both she and her husband carry a gene that might cause problems, "might" being a 25 percent chance. Is that high? Low? What to do? Here's the story, nicely drawn, deeply felt.
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This bird likes livers, kidneys, entrails — anything it can pluck that's freshly dead. But what if you served it ... a painting?
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In the 1760s, an Italian scientist ran a sex experiment that required putting teeny trousers on some ardent male frogs. Hot guys in pants, it turns out, aren't so hot.
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Hotel hallways are cramped and narrow, like cages. But Storyboard P won't be trapped. Watch this Brooklyn dancer float toward a fire extinguisher — beauty in tight places.
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You don't question them. You don't doubt them. You hear them so often, you wouldn't know they are lies. Here are five historical "facts" that aren't true. Never were. And now you'll know.