{"id":1577,"date":"2010-06-03T21:14:30","date_gmt":"2010-06-04T02:14:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=1577"},"modified":"2010-06-03T21:14:30","modified_gmt":"2010-06-04T02:14:30","slug":"radiolab-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=1577","title":{"rendered":"RADIOLAB Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently found out about RADIOLAB<\/a>, a popular hour- long radio show from NPR<\/a> about science and philosophy. Thanks to Khan of the Socrates Caf\u00e9 group for putting me on to it. Actually, it\u2019s kind of hard to listen to RADIOLAB on the radio, as they only make five episodes each year. It\u2019s mostly an internet pod-cast thing; you can listen anytime to any of the episodes made since 2002, when RADIOLAB got started. Also, they put a handful of additional \u201cshorts\u201d on their site each season. <\/p>\n

The RADIOLAB producers producers often focus on topics relating to the brain and mind, or to numbers and modern physics. Well, if you know anything at all about me or my blog, you know that science and philosophy and mind-stuff are right up my alley (even though I often get mugged in that alley). So, I got out the earplugs and started catching up with RADIOLAB. <\/p>\n

After listening to 5 or 6 full episodes and 7 or 8 mini-podcasts, I have a few impressions and reactions to share. My initial impression was that RADIOLAB is annoying. It uses plenty of manufactured sound effects (\u201csoundscapes\u201d), and spends a lot of time talking with and telling stories about real ordinary people. In other words, RADIOLAB is going out of its way to be entertaining. And then there\u2019s the non-stop cutesy banter between RADIOLAB hosts Jad and Robert, with lots of little jokes (intelligent jokes, of course \u2013 this is NPR) and smarmy, snickery laughter. And even more time is wasted on hip musical interludes. It\u2019s not unlike another morning drive-time radio show. <\/p>\n

However . . . . . When RADIOLAB finally does get serious, it can be brilliant. Once they get past all the entertainment, they often include (all too brief) interviews with heavy-hitters, e.g. brain researchers Robert Sapolsky, Oliver Sacks and V. Ramachandran, mathematician Steven Strogatz, and string-theory physicist Brian Greene. At its worst, RADIOLAB is still ultimately interesting. In listening to my sample, I learned about hookworms as therapy for immune system disorders; how cat toxoplasmosis parasite infection may cause humans to crash cars and become promiscuous; how the frequency of word use in writing can tell how well your brain is working; how people are biased toward impulsive choices (e.g., go out and drink too much with your friends, even though you know it will make you sick) when the frontal cortex is distracted (e.g., trying to understand why your girlfriend just dumped you); and how mini-black holes might be combined with dark energy to create new universes \u2013 and how those new universes would create space in an entirely new set of dimensions, i.e. they would not barge in and take up time and space in the old universe. (!!) <\/p>\n

And they often leave you with something philosophic to ponder \u2013 e.g., if our decisions are so easily influenced by \u201csubconscious priming\u201d, which advertisers use to make us head for McDonalds or buy Cocoa Crispies or drink Bud, then just how much \u201cfree will\u201d can we have as we head into a brave new world of neuroscientific marketing?<\/p>\n

Obviously I\u2019d like to have an \u201cexecutive summary\u201d version of RADIOLAB. Maybe it\u2019s a generational thing. RADIOLAB offers a real thinking and learning experience and a lot of substantial insight. But it wraps all of this in many layers of sugary coating, i.e. plenty of entertaining stimulation. So, you\u2019re in for a \u201cfun hour\u201d with two cool, hip young guys (well, Jad is young; Robert is getting some wrinkles, but he\u2019s obviously \u2018staying relevant\u2019). If I were still young, maybe I\u2019d see it differently. But at my age, I would like them to get to the point without excess drama.<\/p>\n

So, RADIOLAB will remain a frustrating experience for me. The stuff they get into is just too good to ignore. But all the entertaining dross is too fluffy to waste time with. So I\u2019ll just have to multi-task while I listen, and focus in once Jad and Robert put the music and personal stories and soundscapes and little quips aside, and get serious about their topic. That\u2019s the beauty of internet listening; you can choose your time and place, and go back and forth to find the meat (metaphorically, anyway; I remain a vegetarian). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently found out about RADIOLAB, a popular hour- long radio show from NPR about science and philosophy. Thanks to Khan of the Socrates Caf\u00e9 group for putting me on to it. Actually, it\u2019s kind of hard to listen to RADIOLAB on the radio, as they only make five episodes each year. It\u2019s mostly an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1577"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1577"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1580,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1577\/revisions\/1580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}