I think that travelers are naturally curious people. After all, what’s the point of going through all the agony of making plans, slogging to the airport, enduring a 5 or 12 hour flight, and arriving in a completely foreign place where you know no one, if the whole experience didn’t somehow stimulate some high-level cortex?
Well, this isn’t exactly a travel-related post, not in the sense that I am offering you insight into some far off distant land…it is not a travel post geographically-speaking. But it is a travel piece in the sense that I am offering a trip for your mind, a place your head can go when you are caught in the throes of tedium, boredom or perhaps just in traffic.
I have long been a big fan of the work of journalist Robert Krulwich. He is, in my opinion, one of the most thoughtful, relevant and creative journalists out there today. Never mind that he typically covers one of my favorite topics — science — and so that makes it easier to appeal to my sensibilities. Even if he farm subsidies or the Fed, I’m sure he’d find a way to make the subject interesting (I actually think he did cover these topics in the early years). Krulwich has got a relatively new gig on the radio now over at public radio called Radio Lab, and if you have not heard it, you should drop everything now (wait, not you…not the guy holding the precious Ming Dynasty vase….oh damn) and go listen. Radio Lab is a feast for both hemispheres of the brain. Your logical cortex will dine on delicious explanations of complex topics like emergence and identity, while your creative cortex will savor the funny, off-beat and unusual way that the pieces are architected and edited. This is fulfilling science journalism, and right now, nothing I’ve experienced on radio or TV touches it.
I also have to mention and give equal billing to the show’s producer and co-host, Jad Abumrad, who brings style, intelligence and obviously an immense amount of creative energy to the work here.
Excellent. You’d have a hard time finding better stuff to put on your iPod.