The Oberlin Review
<< Front page News March 7, 2008

Radio Lab Hosts Come Home
 
 

Hosts of WNYC’s program Radio Lab, Robert Krulwich, OC ’69, and Jad Abumrad, OC ’95, delivered Oberlin’s fourth Convocation talk of the year in Finney Chapel last night to a full house.

The talk, “From Oberlin to Radio Lab: Twenty-Five Years Apart,” allowed Krulwich and Abumrad to share stories about their experiences at Oberlin, explain how college influenced their thought processes and relate what they studied in college to what they do now. The radio hosts also devoted time to playing clips of their show and detailing what they do on air.

They described the program as the place “where sound illuminates ideas, and the boundaries blur between science, philosophy and human experience.” Each hour-long show explores a broad topic such as “Space” or “Deception” through a scientific and philosophical lens. They include experiments, stories, interviews and random musings.

Radio Lab is produced in seasons of five shows each and is currently in season four. The program is now nationally syndicated on over 150 stations.

Krulwich explained that he was interested primarily in where emotions come from and that the show addresses these tough questions in a number of different ways. He said the show is “about spoken word, about complex ideas, but it is also very musical, which gives [him] a chance to thrill you, to give you a feeling of great sadness or great joy.”

The theme of their latest show, “Laughter,” provides an example of how they explore these broad subjects: “We all laugh. But why? If you look closely, you’ll find that humor has very little to do with it. In this episode, we explore the power of laughter to calm us, bond us to one another, or to spread... like a virus. Along the way, we tickle some rats, listen in on a baby’s first laugh, talk to a group of professional laughers, and travel to Tanzania to investigate an outbreak of contagious laughter.”

Both speakers told Oberlin students that their experience at the college affected them later in life. Krulwich described the tendency of Oberlin students toward “chaos and agitation” of ideas that sometimes are not suited to the real world.


 
 
   

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