Radiolab - Jad and Robert: The Early Years

Episode Date: May 6, 2008

Ever wonder how Jad and Robert met?

Hello, I'm Chad Aboumrod. This is Radio Lab, the podcast, the Homecoming podcast, actually, welcome. One of the things that Robert and I had in common when we met way back when was that we both went to Oberlin, Oberlin College in Ohio. I did music as a composition major, and this was in the 90s. Robert studied history in the in the Cepia-colored 60s, at least in my mind. And despite our difference in ages, we both left the school feeling like Oberlin was a really big part of who we are. So when we were asked to return to Oberlin to speak on campus on March 6, 2008, as part of their convocation series, we were totally thrilled and nervous and terrified and thrilled. Anyhow, it was a snow-covered night, and we went into Finney Chapel. All right, Finney Chapel. Those words mean nothing to you, but to us, Finney Chapel is like Madison Square Garden, because this

was, you know, this is where you went to see jazz greats play, and you heard speeches by cultural dignitaries, but there we were, these two schmows on stage, talking, you know, to our old professors, and it was really quite weird, frankly. So anyways, we did a whole long lecture, which got into lots of Oberlin nostalgia, and we're going to spare you most of that,

but I'm going to play just a couple excerpts from the evening where we tell stories about Radio Lab that you may not have heard before. To get started, here is the, Robert and Jed romance story. Well, not really. A story of how we met, which centers around the first radio piece that we ever made together. I'm going to play that for you.

Never before heard Radio Lab piece. Prepare yourself. This is Radio Lab the early years. So five years ago, I was working at WNYC. I was sort of, Radio Lab was not yet a thing. I was between jobs, so to speak, and someone hands me, the program director, hands me a stack of scripts.

and says, go interview these people, and I did. And at the very end of the stack was a guy named Robert Crulwich. I sort of knew the name a little bit. And he said, what's your story? Before we do any of this, what's your story? And I said, well, I work at WMYC and I freelance for NPR. Me too. He said, me too.

And then he asked me, what about before that? I said, well, I work at WBAI. Me too. Me too. And then he said, where did you go to school? And I said, Oberlin. Get out, I said. And I said, like, so wait, so this is the deal.

Like, you're like living my life 25 years after me. Let's go have breakfast. You can tell me what it's like on the other side, or whatever you call it. And somewhere at like breakfast number of 31, we decided that we would try some radio together. We started doing various weirdly strange experiments that, few of which have survived, but we do have the very first thing we collaborated on. Which we thought was fabulous.

We thought this is going to be the beginning of revolution. In a small way. In a small way. Because the phone call we got was from Ira Glass, who runs This American Life, as a friend of mine, but he's also like, you know, the god. So he says, hey, we're going to have a show coming up. It's an hour show, but it will only have two-minute contributions.

So you had this record or something? Yes, so the show that Ira was planning on airing was Flag Day, that was the projected broadcast day. I happened to have, purely coincidentally, a piece of archival tape that someone had sent me, which was a 1950s picture book audio that described the rules by which you are supposed to approach the flag, you are supposed to salute the flag, how you're supposed to display the flag when there are other flags in the room, all kinds of very arcane minutia about how to respect the flag. And it's completely ridiculous. Totally.

And here's what we did. Here's what we did. A few weeks ago, my friend Jad got a tape from his friend Jake of an old record from 1960, 1961. It was a how-to record, how to handle, and how to honor the American flag. Because, said the narrator, for the first 150 years, there were no rules for the flag. To correct this situation, in 1923, the representatives of 68 patriotic and civic organizations met in Washington, D.C. I insist that we fold the flag from the left to the right.

No, no, it must be from the right to the left. To draw up a national code of flag etiquette. According to the law, our flag should always be raised briskly. Faster, Johnny, faster. Hey, ma'am, I'm trying it. and to the very peak of the stack. Please. When the flag is displayed over the middle of a street,

it should be suspended vertically, with the union to the north on an east-west street. Excuse me? Or to the east-west on a north-south street. Does this street run east-west? I think it runs east-west, but I'm not sure. North-south. That's the end.

Run north-south since I've been a kid. March? Yes, Eddie. I got the American flag, the police regimental flag, I got eight thumbtacks. Now, what should I do? You put up both of the many, but you've got to listen to the man. The flag may be displayed against a wall, crossed with another flag. In this arrangement, however, the flag of the United States should always be on the left,

with its staff in front of the staff of the other flag. Like this? Before being lowered at sunset, the flag should again be raised to the peak momentarily. It should be lowered slowly with a solemn, dignity befitting the occasion. Can I slow down, Mom? No, not until it's all the way to the top. That's not what the man says. Didn't I say

North Sal? What's out there? I drop my thumb. Do you have a compass? Mom? Mom. So, there you have it. Thank you. Now,

we sent it off to Ira. Ira opened it up or whatever. Put it on it, and this is his opinion. It was horrible. Yeah. It was. is really horrible. It was to the point where where like, you know, there's stories which people turn in and

and, you know, they need a little buffing up here and there and there's stories that are bad. And then there's a special category where we really don't know what to say in response. So apparently he didn't like it. Here's what his producer, Julie Snyder, had to say. And I remember at the time I was

working out of my apartment. And so I remember even at one point standing in the back room staring at the brick wall listening to the piece while I was on the phone and just being really, really confused. I thought I was past this, but I'm literally tearing up an embarrassment right now. I was just very confused. I was very, very, very confused.

I have a better perspective on it now. I stand by my earlier judgment. I am not confused, and everything that was bad about it is still bad. Like, it doesn't have a point. You know what I mean? Like, it starts off in a place. that seems like it could go somewhere. And then it's almost like the two of you take this premise of this old record,

and then you just kind of dance on the surface of this record and throw in a lot of shenanigans. And then it ends and it says literally nothing. So at the end of two minutes, it's both sort of complicated. You keep waiting to understand what is it about, and then ultimately you are left wondering what was that about? I mean, it's just amazing that you were able to put together such a wonderful program after that. You know, that somehow you...

I have to say that that was listening back to it today. I was just like, wow, it is really interesting to see sort of the incredibly early stages of where you just got really, really headed in the wrong direction. But if someone would have walked in the room and asked both of you, will these two guys succeed? Back at that moment, you would have said, no freaking way. Oh, absolutely not. Yeah. Clearly, they're

terrible influence on each other. That Jad allows a kind of self-indulgence in Robert, and Robert brings out a sort of self-indulgence in Jad clearly terrible chemistry. Like, I never would have put you together on anything ever again. Let me just say, like,

this wasn't an episode where we were demanding a lot. We were looking all we wanted was things would be short. And this is an episode where one of the segments that made where you guys didn't was simply scallops on a beach, no narration, just going like that's it, the sound of scallops for 25 seconds.

We ran that instead of running this. So we lost out to scallops. I think that, well, first of all, Ira went to Brown University. They don't know anything there. They don't have majors. They don't have any. I don't know what they do there. Exactly. But if that man thinks that clicking Scalops beats our flag thing, he should go back to radio school and start a lot.

all over. It's my opinion, my humble opinion. Exactly. But a little Oberlin, yeah. Anyway. No, he's a great supporter of the show. So this was an inauspicious beginning to say the least. We thought, well, if we failed on the two-minute IRA thing,

like, now what are we going to do? So what your friend is in this situation is that there is a kind of restlessness and a kind of ambition that sort of, and I really do feel it comes from here in some way, that you keep wanting to poke at things,

you keep wanting to challenge things. The flip side of that, as the IRA situation was just one bit of evidence for, is that sometimes it doesn't translate so well to the rest of the world. Yeah.

I heard recently that somebody was vomiting in color this week on campus. Like, you know, that's a little excessive. Taking color dye and then vomiting out in some kind of interesting table for art? Makes perfect sense here, though. Well, I don't know.

Well, I'll just give you an example of personally, I spent four years in composition here, writing music, writing this kind of music, basically. I was thinking 200 years of, you know, European harmonies handed down that, you know, screw that. Why should we take the harmonies that are given to us from the Europeans? Let's just flip that on the head. What is that idea of continents? Dissinence is a new consonant. Let's just question, man. Question! In any case. Makes perfect sense here at Oberlin.

Don't applaud, don't applaud, don't applaud. See, this is the only room where you'd get applause for that kind of music. And I love you all for it. But no quicker could you clear a room than to put something like on, and people would just run from the room. And I've tried this in New York. I've said, hey, check this thing out I made when I was a senior. And it didn't go so well.

For me, Oberlin, and the kind of thought process and respect for ideas and also hostility towards ideas, that you want to sort of, you want to poke at things. That very Oberlin spirit is something that for me was like a grenade where you pull the pin and it goes off later. And for me, that was about seven years later. I mean, I spent several years wondering, what the hell did I learn here? I know how to create some of the most awful and dissonant music to saw pianos in half, which was encouraged in odd ways. Not that I ever did that. But what does that really give you?

But what it gives you, I think, is something interesting and beautiful because those ideas come back in a very different form. So you can see then that really what we're doing is this is about complex ideas, but it is essentially, because of jazz, It is a musical composition that we are doing. This gives us a chance to do what music actually does when it's just naked and being music,

which is to thrill you or give you a feeling of deep sadness or of great joy. So anyways, we went on and on, and around here was where the Oberlin nostalgia began, so we'll leave it at that for now. But afterwards, we had time for two questions. The audience questions weren't recorded, so Robert had to paraphrase.

Here he is. The question is, how do we, choose what level to approach a topic at when our listeners range from people who know nothing to people who know all too much? That's an interesting question because it is maybe Robert and I are very

we like each other a lot but we disagree on many many things and this is one of the ones we always fight about because I come down on one side of your question and he comes down on another often. I am a network trained

reporter. In my companies, I've worked at ABC, for example, if you have a problem, like if you go, Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch, I'm not sure exactly what kind of a substance it was, and then drop the substance, make it a pail. He's going to just fetch a pail. So, Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail. Good. I mean, not to deal with the water issue at all. It also shortens the piece. So I find safety in less. And what I discovered is, he thinks to say, to solve it is to say, Jack and Jill went up the hill to get a pail of, well, first of all, we'll begin with two molecules, we'll put them together, and we'll add another molecule in a quarter.

Let's talk to 17 people about that. I said, no, we do not do that. So we have a complexity disagreement that sort of runs through these shows where I'll come in with a 25-minute version of some sort of neuroscience story with very exciting words like dorsolateral prefrontal cortex over and over. And he's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. You can't say that. him is like terrifying to me. I think if you have a latinate, you just run from the room. That's what I think.

So we have a bit of a tug of war, often during the editing process, where I put in too much, he takes out, and then we sort of like, we find a nice balance where we might be talking to, I don't know, everybody, but talking in a way that doesn't fall into the traps of talking to those who know too much, but also doesn't dumb down. So there is a broad, expansive geography in the middle. I think we both start also as virgins. We don't really know what we're talking about at the beginning, and we find out along the way, and we make that very clear.

So we never pretend anybody that we're scholars, because we're not, and we do represent ourselves as novices, which is a good thing. It is a good thing in a couple of ways. First, it means we can say, what? Honestly. And the second thing, it'd say, could you explain that again, honestly? And the third thing is it allows us to challenge these people as though we were ordinary, curious folks.

You can't mean. We have a show coming up right now about synthetic biology where engineers are building life forms that are new to existence, new to the history of life. And they're doing it quite aggressively. And we yell at them and we fight with them and we argue with them and they give right back. but we're trying to model a kind of conversation with important people, powerful people,

but particularly knowledgeable people, where we say, you can go up to a person with a lot of knowledge and ask him why. Ask him, how does he know that? Tell him, stop, ask him why he keeps going, and get away with it, and that's important. Also, for me, just to add to that, it's important to me. I mean, I am the child of two scientists, And it's funny, I once tried to interview my mom, and she went into scientist mode. And it was really startling because she would, I mean, my whole life would come home at the dinner table, and she's studying intake of fat into cells. That's her thing.

And so she'd say, here's how I think it works, Chad. And she'd grab the napkin and, like, kind of carve it into a circle like a cell and say, here's, okay, now this salt shaker. This is a fat molecule. It's trying to get into the cell. And it's coming, coming, coming, coming, coming. But it needs something to ferry it through the cell wall. So here's the fork. The fork is a protein.

It's the protein I study. And it takes the salt shaker, which is the fat, and it ferries it through the cell wall. And she's just like, I don't know what the hell she's talking about. But what I get from her is this, like, excitement. It's a passion. It's a sense of mystery of, like, figuring something out about the universe. But then I tried to interview her,

and she went into a really sort of careful, mediated scientist way using, like, alpha-lepoic acid kind of really big words. And so for me, it's about challenging people, and it's about challenging people who know, as he was saying. But it's also about presenting science as something which is not inevitable. It is not something where people who are esteemed sit behind podiums and convey knowledge to the rest of us who know nothing. It's about going into your lab, screwing up, making mistakes, you know, breaking stuff, doing it again and again and again until you get lucky. You know, it's just like anything. You have to get lucky a lot of times.

Yeah. So for me, there's a double edge to this. You want to bring them off their podium, but you also want to make them feel flawed and wonderful, you know? Well, we'll take one last question if you got me. Yeah. How do we pick what to talk about? Well, I don't know exactly.

We talk about a lot of things, and then something stick to the wall. Like we were talking about sperm. We're not sure we're wrong. we're allowed to talk about sperm in public, but sperm has gotten so interesting. Did you know that the sperm... Just recently in the last few weeks? Did you know that the testes of a blue whale that can weigh one ton?

I mean, that just stops the traffic. So we have to figure out whether we're allowed to do that. So sometimes we have to like sort of test whether it's polite enough. But the other thing is, is do we continue to think about it? Does it sort of, does it stay sticky? And if we keep coming back, I'm sorry. Hey, you're the school where they're vomiting for art out there. So thank you all very, very much for coming.

It's been a great, great delight to be here. Thanks. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. Thanks to everyone at Oberlin College for the warm homecoming reception. Radio labs funded in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Science Foundation. I'm Chad Abumrad. Robert Crowich and I, take care.