NPR’s Radiolab is brilliant, but often nightmare-inducing. The audio editing is creative but excessive. As you listen you tend to wonder if someone slipped a hit of LSD in your coffee. Quirky production techniques seem to follow host Robert Krulwich around. Brave New World, a late 1990s miniseries on ABC, was an audio-visual feast, and probably the most fun I had with TV. What They Might Be Giants does for song, Krulwich does for science. Heck, they’re even best buds.
This week’s Radiolab, featured on NPR’s Morning Edition, was too much. I was in my car and halfway through the segment, I experienced a waking nightmare involving two miserly, satanic voices arguing over cake. Was it a soul-crushing hallucination, or just something from the radio? Does it matter? I’m dead inside now.