wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

Attention New York metropolitan area Radiolabbers: Our Robert Krulwich will be on stage this Sunday at the 92nd Street Y with animal communications scientist Irene Pepperberg to talk about her late, lamented but wonderously remarkable African Grey parrot Alex. Alex The Parrot was able to label objects, correctly use colors, concoct new words to describe unfamiliar knickknacks; he could use numbers, he could add, he could even use the word ‘none’, displaying a sophistication that no one thought birds could manage. Was Alex a one-of-a-kind genius? Merely a clever mime? What kind of mind lay hidden inside his feathery head? Irene thinks he had an inner life. The powerful science magazine Nature thinks Alex was all instinct, and like Winnie the Poo, of “very little” brain. We will discuss.

The 92nd Street Y is located at 1395 Lexington Avenue on, yes, 92nd Street.
The program begins at 7:30
Tickets are $27, half price for students with I.D.s.

Back by popular demand, Radiolab’s live performance goes on October 26th and 27th at the Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago, Illinois!

In this examination of the power of mass media to create panic, Radiolab hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich take a deep dive into one of the most controversial moments in broadcasting history – War of the Worlds, Orson Welles’ 1938 radio play about Martians invading New Jersey. And we ask: Why did it fool people then? And why has it continued to fool people since? From Santiago, Chile to Buffalo, New York to a particularly disastrous evening in Quito, Ecuador. Just in time for Halloween, Radiolab lands for a rare, and always sold out, live event.

WNYC’s Radiolab: Martian Invasion runs for two nights only, October 26 and 27 at 7:30pm at the Victory Gardens Biograph Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln Avenue. Regular price tickets are $30. Theater members pay $25. Tickets are available by calling the Box Office at (773) 871-3000 or at www.victorygardens.org.

THIS EVENT IS FULL!! WE ARE NO LONGER ACCEPTING RESERVATIONS

The World Science Festival and WNYC Radio present You and Your Irrational Brain, a live, outdoor event (rain or shine) Thursday, May 29th at Water Taxi Beach in Long Island City, Queens, NY.

Have you ever wondered why you might think it’s okay to steal a pen from work, but not money from the petty cash box? Ever splurged on a lavish meal, only later to clip a 25 cent coupon for a can of soup? Ever taken something FREE, knowing full well that you didn’t really want it? Why do we make these decisions that are so clearly irrational?

Behavioral economist Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational, along with science writer and Radio Lab contributor Jonah Lehrer, will join Radio Lab hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich to explore the often surprising factors that motivate and dictate human behavior.

The FREE event will combine discussion with live group experiments, games and demonstrations that test the ideas in Ariely’s book, followed by food, drink and music under the stars and on the sand.

WHEN
Thursday, May 29th, 2008 from 7 pm to 8:30 pm, followed by music, DJ, beer and beach-side merriment

WHERE
Water Taxi Beach (Google Map)
2nd Street and Borden Avenue
Long Island City, NY 11101

For the full experience, take the 5-min water taxi to the beach. There’s a shuttle ($5) leaving at 5:45pm, and it’s departing from the pier at East 35th Street. THIS IS A SPECIAL ONE-TIME SHUTTLE set up for tonight’s event!

The Beach is also within walking distance of the Vernon/Jackson station on the 7 train.

Water Taxi Beach has concession stands for snacks and beer, so no outside food, but feel free to bring your beach towel, chaise lounge, volleyball, sand pail etc. And bring vaild ID (21 +). Minors are only allowed to come with their parents.

THIS EVENT IS FULL - WE ARE NO LONGER TAKING RESERVATIONS

Radiolab is coming to Washington, DC!

Sorry all- this event is SOLD OUT

On April 24th we’ll be coming to DC to share some of our stories of experimentation. We’re partnering with WAMU 88.5 to bring you a live event at the Koshland Science Museum.

As you probably know, our show is about… curiosity. We talk to all kinds of scientists to get to the bottom of our questions and sometimes we like to hit the streets to test out their theories. And when we do take science into our own hands, the results are often enlightening, sometimes disastrous, but always surprising. Come join our hosts, Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, for an evening of taking science out of the lab and into the real world.

WHEN
Thursday, April 24, 2008 from 6 pm to 8 pm

WHERE
The Keck Center of the National Academies
500 Fifth Street, NW, Washington, DC

TICKETS
Tickets are $15/$7 for students and are available by contacting the Koshland Science Museum box office at 202.334.1201 or email ksm@nas.edu

Cover art by Reynold Brown(roadsidepictures/flickr)

Our big, warm thanks to all the folks who turned out last night to the Angelika Film Center to hear the premiere of our new season.

We were STUNNED to see how many of you there were! And it broke our hearts to turn away so many folks, people who’d been waiting for hours, people who’d driven for hours (from as far away as Boston!). Having never done anything like that before, we weren’t sure what to expect. We learned a lot about what to do differently - distribute tickets ahead of time by mail! - and we learned that a lot of people love our scrappy, guerrilla public radio show that comes on the air every now and again like some flock of migrating birds, and they want to come together to hear it.

AND THEREFORE, to make it up to those people who showed up and found the seats had already been snapped up, may we propose an idea:

What if we picked a day, say the first day of spring, and picked a place in Central Park, and set a time, and what if you came to the park with an iPod, or a boom box, or a CD player with headphones? What if Robert and Jad stood up and gave the “HIT PLAY!” signal? What if we all sat there together for an hour and listened to an hour of RadioLab? And what if afterwards, we do a Q&A with Jad and Robert hosted by the charming and delightful Joe Randazzo from the Onion? Would you come?

Let us know. Would you want to hear the ‘Laughter’ episode? Or would ‘Emergence’ be more appropriate? Is a weekend day better? Or after work? We’ll do our best to try and figure out how to make it happen!

Inside the Angelika

Charles Michelet

Season 4 Premieres at the Angelika Film Center!

Come to our FREE premiere party! Join our hosts, Jad and Robert, strolling down the red carpet, and into a free, open-to-the-public, screening of the first episode of season 4…except it’ll be more like an anti-screening as we have no plans to use the screen at The Angelika. But you can count on that big, honking, digital DTS cinema speaker system getting a full workout!

Since the episode we’ll be debuting is the Laughter episode, we’ll be introduced by Joe Randazzo, an editor for the hilarious newspaper parody The Onion. And as if there wasn’t already too much fun to be had, we’ll also be joined by musical act One Ring Zero.

Details, details

WHEN
Thursday, February 21 at 7pm

WHERE
The Angelika Film Center
18 West Houston St. (@ Mercer St.)
New York, NY

DIRECTIONS
BY TRAIN
Take the B,D,F,V to Broadway/Lafayette St. Exit at the west end of the station.
Take the 6 to Bleeker St.
Take the R,W to Prince St.

BY BUS
Take the M5, M6 or M21 to Houston St. and Broadway.

No reservations required. You might want to get there early, though, as we expect the 203 seats to go quickly!

Check back here for more info…and we hear that videos and interviews with everyone involved will be over at the Angelika Blog.

The original Angelika Film Center & Café opened in New York City’s Soho district in 1989. The Angelika plays an impressive and diverse mix of independent films, and is the definitive cinema of choice for filmmakers and film lovers alike. Since its opening, the Angelika New York has become the most successful and recognized arthouse in the United States. Be sure to check out exclusive footage with Radio Lab and further details here.

For our upcoming episode on Laughter, we kept coming across references to a 1962 epidemic of contagious laughter in Tanzania. But every scholarly article, every newspaper reference, every mention we found, seemed to just point back to the source - a 1963 article from a medical journal.

As it would happen, I was planning to be in Tanzania in June. Back in 2005, Radiolab had gotten involved with the TED Conference - Jad hosts their audio podcast, and they’ve brought me or one of our interns to come record the conference a few times. Since I was planning to travel to Tanzania for the June 2007 TED Global conference, we thought, hey, why don’t I spend a couple of days poking around to see if I can figure out what happened in 1962?

But where to begin?

With only a few days to turn up people who remember a laughter epidemic in a remote village in Western Tanzania in 1962, how would I find an eyewitness?

Email.

I sent a note out to about 200 people. And my email made it’s way from Radiolab contributor Laura Starcheski, to her friend Erin, to someone at the World Bank, to someone who works in Bukoba, TZ, to a man named Kurt who lives in Nshamba, TZ and Kurt asked around his office and, voila, we found Gertrude. By my count, that’s 6 degrees. (On The Media talked about this phenomena today and noted that the results of the classic Stanley Milgrim experiment have been upheld over and over again.)

Gertrude was herself afflicted with the laughter epidemic in 1962 and when I finally got to meet her, she introduce me to a traditional healer, Mr. Sospita, pictured with me above, who treated her. I wrote about the adventure he had in getting to me over here.

Come to our FREE premier party! Join our hosts, Jad and Robert, strolling down the red carpet, and into a free, open-to-the-public, screening of the first episode of season 4…except it’ll be more like an anti-screening as we have no plans to use the screen at The Angelika. But you can count on that big, honking, digital DTS cinema speaker system getting a full workout!

Since the episode we’ll be debuting is the Laughter episode, we’ll be introduced by Joe Randazzo, an editor for the hilarious newspaper parody The Onion. And as if there wasn’t already too much fun to be had, we’ll also be joined by musical act One Ring Zero.

Details, details

WHEN
Thursday, February 21 at 7pm

WHERE
The Angelika Film Center
18 West Houston St. (@ Mercer St.)
New York, NY

DIRECTIONS
BY TRAIN
Take the B,D,F,V to Broadway/Lafayette St. Exit at the west end of the station.
Take the 6 to Bleeker St.
Take the R,W to Prince St.

BY BUS
Take the M5, M6 or M21 to Houston St. and Broadway.

No reservations required. However, the 203 seats are available on a first come basis, so you might want to dust off your Darth Vader costume and prepare to camp out for your free ticket on the night of the 20th.

Check back here for more info…and we hear that videos and interviews with everyone involved will be over at the Angelika Blog.

The original Angelika Film Center & Café opened in New York City’s Soho district in 1989. The Angelika plays an impressive and diverse mix of independent films, and is the definitive cinema of choice for filmmakers and film lovers alike. Since its opening, the Angelika New York has become the most successful and recognized arthouse in the United States. Be sure to check out exclusive footage with Radio Lab and further details here.

Get on the bus(massdistraction/flickr)

Radiolab has events coming up in the following cities:

Feb 21 Angelika Theater NYC, NY
March 10 Uptown Billards Portland, OR
April 24 Koshland Museum Washington, DC

Details to Follow