Page 14 - April 2016

The hard Mic
In The LAB wITh
Jad abuMrad
InTervIew By
aaron levy
hello and welcome, readers. It is great to be writing to you again after a three-year absence following my interview with Ira Glass ahead of his presentation in 2013. This month I’m shar- ing with you an interview I did with Jad Abumrad, host of Radio Lab, the terrific NPR show from wnYC. Jad and I discussed his coming presentation on saturday, April 9 at Ardrey Auditorium, as well as some of the shows from last season, and his perspective on this current executive primary.
First of all, I’d like to discuss what your presentation will be about on April 9 at Northern Arizona University’s Ardrey Auditorium?
I was asked to give a talk about what Radio Lab is and how it came to be. One thing I remem- ber being discussed by the production staff, is the anxiety that pervades the creative process. so, I started doing a bunch of interviews with neurosurgeons, shamans, and people who deal with the anxiety of the creative process and how we do the dance with doubt regarding this process. what if you’re stuck and don’t know where to go? The definition of this phenomenon is what I call “Gut Churn.” The presentation will go into how this “Gut Churn” provides impetus in how we overcome anxiety to produce art, entertainment, and share ideas.
I know you’ve been asked many times what exactly Radio Lab is. My understanding is Radio Lab is the confluence of science, culture, society, and self in how we interact with the world, each other and ourselves. Would you agree with this understanding of what you and Robert Krulwich et al are attempting with each show?
we certainly started with something that would suit your description. But right now, I think we’ve gone further than that. I see Radio Lab as this super hi-fi radio show where you’re forced to juggle complicated ways of seeing the world. we do this through interesting narratives. The sound and music provide the hi-fi aspect of the story telling.
Radio Lab has just begun its 14th season. Last season, the show incorporated narratives with more cultural and social content than hard science. This has brought some criticism from many early listeners. Why did you and the other producers decide to widen the show’s content to include stories like “Los Frikis,” “The Mau Mau” and “The Rhino Hunter?”
I still love science and I grew up around science. My parents are scientists. It’s not that we left it behind. we just broadened out what our show is about. I really want to state again, I love science. I get why people are upset, but there is a way people expect us to talk about science — here’s a bunch of data from a study and here’s how society is affected by it. It’s a Ted-Talky way of talking about science I’m distrustful of. I see science as one way of looking at the world — it is one version of the truth. However, there are these epistemological car crashes that happen in the world — where science, culture and society collide — I don’t want to be confined in how these things come together and can be explained or described.
“Los Frikis” is probably one of my favorite shows from Season 13. As someone who is enthusiastic about punk rock, it was fascinating to hear a story about a group of Cuban punk rockers who self- injected HIV positive blood as a means of countering the propaganda slogan, “Sociolismo o Muerte (Socialism or Death).” How did you see this narrative fitting into the idea of Radio Lab?
we had been talking to these guys at Radio Ambulante for a while about collaborating to- gether on a show. One of their reporters Luis Trelles, told us about this group of punk rockers, known as Los Frikis (The Freaks), who had learned about rock and roll by sneaking up to their rooftops and literally grabbing it out of the airwaves from radio stations broadcasting from Florida. Then they did this crazy thing to protest the state. I also grew up loving Punk Rock as well, and though the music certainly has changed over the years, here is an example of its ethos, a rebellious “f*ck you” to the state, operating in a completely different context from anything I’d heard of before.
Another episode I found incredibly difficult and engaging was “The Mau Mau,” about the insurrection in Colonial British Kenya. Could you describe how this show came about and what you liked about it?
That story started with the tiniest little tidbit from when a reporter named Mattathias Schwartz told us about this building in england — a massive structure that contained all the secrets of post-colonial Britain called the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Archive in Hanslope Park, england. One thing in particular that grabbed my interest was, he said, “The contents of that building could rewrite the history of the last 200 years.” so we were in an edito- rial meeting a few weeks later when nPR’s east Africa correspondent Gregory Warner said we should talk to Carolyn Elkins, who is a Professor of African and African American studies in the
14 • APRIL 2016 • the NOISE arts & news • thenoise.us
History Department of Harvard University — this contact lead to us working with the Kenya Human Rights Commission. The files found in this building uncovered secrets of imperial his- tory that changed the narrative of British rule in Colonial Kenya. Here’s one tiny story that has rewritten our conception of recent western history. Like how, every now and then, we discover a new species on a shelf in the Museum of Natural History that had been stored there for fifty or a hundred years, and suddenly everything changes. It’s fascinating there are places that can cause our sense of history, selves and science to be changed completely in seconds.
“The Rhino Hunter” episode was pretty gutsy. Especially since its release was right on the heels of a disastrous lion hunt a few weeks before. I live in Minneapolis, and the office of Walter Palmer, the dentist who shot Cecil the Lion, is about an hour away from where I live. I know these two hunts, the one profiled on Radio Lab and Dr. Palmer’s are two different animals — no pun intended. How- ever, this is such a charged topic and this episode really challenged my view on trophy hunting by presenting the argument of how it’s helping conservationism in Africa. Why did you decide to do a show profiling someone who would be considered a villain in today’s narrative around this issue?
we had been following the debate around the issue of conservationist trophy hunting for a long time. Simon Adler, one of our reporters, had gotten access to a hunter Corey Knowlton, who had paid $350,000 at a conservationist charity auction for a hunting tag allowing him to cull an aggressive, post-reproductive male Black Rhino from a preserve in Kenya, Africa. This story did provide a perspective on this issue that also challenged my attitude and perception around this conservationist method to the dire situation facing species preservation in Africa. still, I find it unsettling even if it is providing positive results. I’m uncomfortable with the thought of these animals being shot to raise much needed money for their species preservation.
Let’s say we are 13 years in the future, in another primary season, and you and the staff of Radio Lab have decided to work on a show entitled “Dysmocracy,” reflecting on the course of the 2016 primary season. How would you and the staff process the shape of this show in preproduction?
That’s a really interesting question. I’m pulling this out of my a*s, but I have been thinking a lot about class in our culture. This primary season can be seen as an interesting study on class. Trump has these really crazy rallies and his followers are presented as bigots. But what is behind what they are saying? One direction I would go is looking at the issues around our free trade agreements and their effect on our society.
You could also profile the maquiladoras in Ciudad Juárez and their affect on Mexican workers, particularly Indigenous women.
exactly. I would also do this by profiling the Trump and Sanders’ campaigns. To see a distinct difference of opinion around how politics are articulated in this country in this current social and political climate.
Going off the previous question as someone who makes shows about science, culture and being, what are your thoughts about this current executive primary and the challenges it brings to our country?
I don’t know, man, this whole thing has been a freakin’ circus. It would be really entertaining if I weren’t a little bit scared about the state of how things are right now in this country. There seems to be this interruption of discourse in our society. I mean, we all have bias or hatred and anger about how things are going in our culture. However, it seems the guardrails of our soci- ety that allows us to communicate and proceed have fallen off. society used to seem to have a structure that kept these things in check, not just internally, but externally, especially with how politicians expressed themselves. Obama always seemed able to express his reaction to complicated issues to help navigate this country through them in a reasonable way.
I feel like Donald Trump is modeling a way to give voice to these problems and releasing people to their base emotions — the way he encourages his followers to attack demonstrators at his rallies. we are seeing a lot of hateful behavior in how we discuss the political expression now. As a citizen, not just as a radio host, I’m worried things are being discussed really hatefully. I’m worried about how we are going to move forward considering the violence that is being exhibited in our political process.
Thank you, Jad, it was a pleasure.
Thank you, have a good day.
|Aaron “Brother” Levy is an emeritus contributor of this magazine, still swinging in the Twin Cities. aaron@thenoise.us
InTeRVvIiEeWw