WNYC® Radio's Launches New Season of Radio Lab®

Host Jad Abumrad Joined by ABC CorrespondentRobert Krulwich for Investigations into Time, Space...and the History of Background Music Guests Include Oliver Sachs, Philip Glass, and Luc Sante

Radio Lab Airs Fridays May 28-July 16 at 3pm
on WNYC 93.9 FM and via webstream at www.wnyc.org

Martians, a visit to the Muzak Corporation, and a re-creation of Carl Sagan's Voyager recording by...Margaret Cho? Sounds like the return of Radio Lab!

On May 28, WNYC Radio launches a new season of Radio Lab, New York Public Radio®'s often funny, always illuminating look at big ideas through a variety of little lenses. Tackling such broad topics as "Time," "Memories" and "Noise," Radio Lab approaches subjects with a fresh set of eyes, asking very basic questions: "What's going on here?", "How does it work?", "What does it mean?", and coming up with some unexpected answers.

Filtered through the offbeat wit and sensibility of one of public radio's youngest hosts, Jad Abumrad, each episode is a joyride into a new universe. This season, Jad is joined by ABC News Correspondent and veteran reporter Robert Krulwich, hailed by TV Guide as "the most inventive network reporter in television." Krulwich is renowned for his ability to make science and other complex topics accessible, entertaining, and compelling. His appearance on Radio Lab marks his return to public radio, where he originally got his start, after many years of working in network television.

Join us for the ride!

The spring season of Radio Lab airs every Friday, May 28 through July 16 at 3pm on WNYC 93.9 FM and via webstream at www.wnyc.org.

The schedule is as follows:

May 28: "Look Out...Martians!"
Radio Lab's award-winning travel back in time to October 30, 1938, when millions of Americans were terrified by a single hour of radio. Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" caused listeners to run out into the streets, half-dressed, women to miscarry, and it forever changed how we listen to the radio. We revisit the original broadcast, the mass hysteria it caused, and the copy-cat broadcasts it inspired (many of which had even worse consequences!).

June 4: Time
There never seems to be enough time. Maybe that's because, as physicist Brian Greene contends, time is just a crutch for our puny human brains to navigate the physical world. We'll spend 24 hours listening to a single movement of Beethoven in San Francisco and we'll contemplate geological time in the Mojave desert. Psychologist Oliver Sacks will discuss the perception of time, and Jay Griffith, author of A Sideways Look at Time, will introduce us to the variety of clocks - spice clocks, flower clocks, potato clocks - that predated the wristwatch.

June 11: Memories
Memory is a reflection on what our brains retain, forget and keep selectively hidden from us. This hour includes stories on the allure of amnesia, the fallibility of eye-witness accounts, and the politics of repressed memories in an interview with Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, whose controversial stance on repressed memories (she believes they don't exist) once necessitated calling in a bomb squad.

June 18: Space
This week, we start with the premise that outer space is a mirror reflecting back on us, our own fears and fascinations. We revisit Carl Sagan's 1977 voyager recording, a compilation of the sounds of the human experience (music, natural sounds, spoken greetings) commissioned by NASA to send into space. We've invited a few creative thinkers (composer Philip Glass, author Michael Cunningham, chef Alice Waters, comedian Margaret Cho, and cult hero Neil Gaman) to re-create the experiment. And of course, any show on space wouldn't be complete without a foray into alien abduction narratives from the 1950s that still rivet us today.

June 25: Noise Pollution
Is it noise or is it music? We start this hour with John Cage, who heard melodies in the sounds of honking horns, rain, and static on the radio dial...then fast forward to the soundscape of present-day New York City, where never-ending noise pollution not only steals our peace and quiet but causes us to slowly grow deaf. We'll hear from cat callers, a source of noise pollution many women are familiar with, and we profile a Connecticut company who claims their technology can make our world half as noisy. The problem: no one seems to be listening.

July 2: Word Music
A word said over and over becomes a series of sounds without significance...or a piece of music. We explore the boundary between speech and song, visiting with psychologist Diana Deutsch, poets Tracie Morris and Carl Hancock Rux, and playwright Gregory Whitehead.

July 9: Native vs. Tourist
This week, identity in relation to place: native, tourist, transplant, immigrant, colonizer; or, Will the real New Yorker please stand up? Antiguan author Jamaica Kincaid looks at the colonial British powers who occupied her homeland until 1981 through the eye of the native, while Luc Sante gives us some insight into the allure of 19th century New York, full of prostitutes, con-artists, and other temptations for the tourist. We'll attend the exclusive monthly "native" party - as in native New Yorkers only - and take a tour of some of the most war-torn parts of our planet.

July 16: The History of Background Music
This week, we chart the path from Music Is God to Music Is Gap. There was a time when bowing a string or singing a note was considered a physical embodiment of the divine, a reflection of the cosmos. These days, music is the thing we shop to, the amniotic fluid we swim in as we live our lives...how did we get from one to the other? The answer: Wind Harps, Eric Satie, Baby Mozart and the Muzak Corporation, based in South Carolina. We visit all four. This program features Joseph Lanza, author of "Elevator Music," and David Lang from the Bang On A Can All-Stars.

WNYC, New York Public Radio, is New York's premier public radio station, comprising WNYC 93.9 FM and WNYC AM 820. As America's most listened-to public radio stations, reaching more than one million listeners every week, WNYC FM and AM extend New York City's cultural riches to the entire country and air the best national offerings from affiliate networks National Public Radio and Public Radio International. WNYC 93.9 FM broadcasts a wide range of daily news, talk, cultural and classical music programming, while WNYC AM 820 maintains a stronger focus on breaking news and international news reporting.