Radiolab: the podcast that makes science fun and geeking out socially acceptable

We meet Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, the only US radio broadcasters attempting to 'tether the ant to the cloud'
Radiolab presenters Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich test out some cutting-edge telecoms technology. Photograph:

In an episode called Animal Minds, the presenters of Radiolab, Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, carefully tell the story of a female humpback whale tangled up in thick ropes and crab nets, just off the coast of San Francisco. Using their trademark "sound design", a mix of ambient music, effects and interwoven narrative viewpoints, they recount the experience of this 50-tonne whale, who was freed by divers after hours of intensive labour. Rather than swimming off into the ocean, she swam back towards the divers, nudging each of them in turn, staring into their faces, refusing to leave them alone. The question, says Jad, is what the whale was trying to communicate. The incredulous divers were certain she was expressing gratitude for them saving her life. Academic experts, called in by Jad and Robert retort that suggestion, via a diversion into "dog cognition", insisting we cannot apply human emotions to any other species.

"Did we answer the question?" says Jad.

"Not really, but do we ever?" replies Robert.

Radiolab is broadcast on America's WNYC but, thanks to its availability as a podcast, has found an international audience of science lovers and newcomers. On the phone from New York, where they're finishing their latest episode, Jad and Robert explain how surprised they were to find that there was a demand for what Robert calls "highly produced meditations on weird, obscure subjects involving chemistry and biology". The reason for what they do, they say, and the reason it works so well, is because they discuss difficult subjects in an easy, unthreatening way. It remains a constant source of surprise to yours truly to find my unscientific mind get so involved in a story about the elasticity of time, for example, but that's part of Radiolab's charm.

"Being not afraid to attack some of these very complex subjects is the real strategy here," Robert continues. "We do our homework in front of the audience. We don't go to a library and study up and deliver a polished, finished, all-knowing product."

"We're dumb," says Jad.

"I don't think we're dumb," counters Robert. "I think we're slow."

Each show exists, This American Life-style, under a broad title, weaving scientific themes out of stories such as the medicine cabinet in everyone's minds, the extraordinary endurance of extreme athletes, out-of-body experiences brought on by G-forces, and, of course, grateful whales.

"I think of it like a big cumulus cloud," says Jad, on whether the themes or the individual pieces come first. "There's a big cloudy concept that's up there in the sky, then you've got some little ant on the ground, and you can tether the ant to the cloud. A lot of times we have the cloud. A lot of times we have the ant. A lot of times we have the cloud that doesn't throw a line to the ant, so the cloud drifts off and evaporates. A lot of times we have an ant that's wandering around but it somehow doesn't ever get connected to the larger cloud, so it wanders off on its own. So the key is to somehow get the two connected. When you've got the two connected, you've got something."

Sometimes, however, the elements simply don't connect. Robert tells an anecdote about "Polynesian people in long skinny boats" who claimed to have visited friends 600 miles across the ocean, using no means of navigation other than their testicles. "We got the 'Balls across the ocean' lead," he says, with a hint of sadness, "but it just didn't fit."

'I guess thought I'd be Jad's mentor. But he'd come up with his own beats, rhythms and a cutting style I'd never heard before' Robert Krulwich

Radiolab and WNYC presenter Robert Krulwich

Radiolab has almost 1 million radio listeners with nearly twice that downloading each podcast, but it had an uncomfortable birth. The pair met when both were doing work for National Public Radio, Jad making ad spots, Robert as a broadcaster, soon discovering they'd been to the same university, albeit 25 years apart. "I guess I thought I would be a mentor," explains Robert. "But I realised [Jad] was not just a beginner. He had come up with his own beats and rhythms and a cutting style I'd never heard before. I was very taken with it. I thought to myself, 'Whoa, yeah. Why don't we try things together, if that's OK?'" After months of borrowing empty studios, they came up with the very first Radiolab. "Unfortunately," Robert continues, "we were put on the air to replace the most popular show on public radio, an interview programme from Philadelphia. Every email that came into the station was, 'Who are they? Get them off. Where is the woman we hear every week?' It looked like a complete failure."

What saved them, perhaps fittingly, was a talk they gave at an Apple Store in New York, when Jad articulated to an enraptured audience what the show was all about. "I ended up geeking out really intensely about how we make the sound," says Jad. "There was a particular segment we'd done really early on where it was essentially an audio illustration of the physics of sound as it travels through the air and enters your ear, and then gets turned into electricity that you hear as a sound. So we did a step-by-step radio picture of that. To me, this is like the most exciting thing in the universe, but I've always felt sort of embarrassed about talking about it 'cos it's sort of like a computer technician talking about their processor."

Robert laughs: "It's like Beethoven saying [German accent], 'I use Indian ink, No 4, black.'"

But it was the geekiness that worked, says Jad: "I remember thinking, 'This is what a garage band looks like when they have their first hit single and don't know it.'"

For British listeners, used to the dry, factual style of Radio 4 documentaries, it can take time to adjust to the experimental ways in which Jad paints the stories with sound. "In the United States," says Robert, "the people who are my age, 40 and up, found it difficult, and some still do. They think it's over-produced, too noisy on some levels, too fussy, not plain spoken. They want to hear clean, solid and informed; our show is bumbling, noisy, multi-layered and seems to not know its business. But the younger ones got it instantly. Our median audience was 17 when we started. It somehow made great sense to people who were in high school. I don't know why."

'Podcasting allows shows to hang out as opposed to appearing instantly … I don't know any other show that would care as much about the sound as we do' Jad Abumrad

Radiolab and WNYC presenter Jad Abumrad.

Podcasting itself has made a huge difference, reckons Jad, because it's changed the way people listen to the radio. "I don't know any other show that would care as much about the sound as we do. Podcasting allows shows to hang out for the first time, as opposed to appearing instantly. There was a sense within this station and radio as a whole that to care about the actual sound is like: 'Quit fucking around, quit doing an art project, actually tell me what you mean.' Production wasn't important. And now with podcasting, people can listen to it like music for the first time. They don't just have to hear it on the airwaves."

Robert agrees: "People who can put plugs in their ears preferred us to an enormous degree. People who listen in the car or across a room, had more problems with us. The podcast audience, more than any other, took us to where we are now."

Just as podcasting has risen to prominence during the show's existence, popular science is enjoying its moment in the sun. The Wonders Of The Universe school of primetime educational physics is something Radiolab taps into nicely, if coincidentally.

"I've noticed that too," says Robert. "When I was in college, the books smart kids read were written by social activists; Norman Mailer, James Baldwin, George Orwell. Today, I think the finest prose stylists are Richard Dawkins, Oliver Sacks, Brian Greene, Malcolm Gladwell and Jonah Lehrer, and what do they write about? Neuroscience, psychology, biology, cosmology." He has his own theories as to why this is. "It's asking big, juicy questions again: where does the universe come from? Why are we here? Could there be more than one universe? Is there a simple explanation for everything we see, a set of rules, or a deep symmetry in nature? Is anyone out there? How will it end? I think people want to think about this stuff and they reward the folks who give them the keys."

And that, he says, is why people all over the world listen to Radiolab: "We make people bolder when they want to talk to themselves about big-picture questions. That's been our success."


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