Radiolab Hosts ‘Dress Up’ As Science Journalists

Radiolab is hard to define. The hour-long radio program, co-hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich and produced by WNYC in New York, draws on philosophy, literature, popular culture, and even religion to explain scientific phenomena.

Yet Abumrad and Krulwich deny that what they do on Radiolab is science journalism. “I would say it’s like dress up,” says Abumrad. “We dress up as science journalists but we’re not really science journalists.”

Abumrad edits the stories with a musical sensibility, playing words like notes, slowing phrases down and speeding them up for effect.

The Radiolab gang was recently in Washington, DC for a live performance and recording called “Symmetry”. We filmed the dress rehearsal after talking with Abumrad and Krulwich about their goal of leading the audience to “moments of wonder”.