RadioLab: Experiments in Science Communication

Season 3 of New York Public Radio's RadioLab is coming soon, in May 2007. Seasons one and two are available on-line, at WNYC.

Have you heard?

It isn't Talk of the Nation -- Science Friday, with Ira Flatow. But it is co-hosted by NPR Science Correspondent Robert Krulwich. He hosts with youngish public radio guy Jad Abumrad.

This is good stuff. Along with the very great range of forms of science communication, and of places where science, art, and humanity cannot be separated into strict academic categories (oh, for example, like this, or this, or this, or this, or this, or this), radio programs are dramatic and compelling venues for telling stories around, about, and through science in society.

Season One brought these kinds of program themes: the History of Time, Beyond Time, Emergence (about "What happens when there is no leader?"), Stress (talking there with neurologists), and questions of the mind and self ("How does the brain make me?").

Just look at the line-up for the Time episode:

1. Neurologist Oliver Sacks
2. Rebecca Solnit, author of the highly recommendable River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West (and one background source for this Annals of Science piece)
3. Jay Griffith, author of A Sideways Look at Time -- about "the variety of clocks -- spice clocks, flower clocks, potato clocks -- that predated the wristwatch"
4. And good old stand-by physicist Brian Greene

That's not bad.

Check 'em out. Report back. Have a party.