Other Side of the Glass: RadioLab Season 5

Other Side of the Glass is The Mediavore’s conversation with public media producers about their work. This week: Ellen Horne, Executive Producer of Radiolab, the public radio cult favorite.

Season 5 of Radiolab is coming. The series airs in New York this month, and around the country in December. Beginning with “Choice,” which is available online.

G-d, I have so many questions but can’t ask them all. How will I decide?

Go with your gut. But then, reserve a little skepticism and question your own motivations.

Season 5’s first episode is here. “Choice.” And even though it comes in November, it has nothing to do with elections. (How did you get away with that?) What is the central theme?

Basically, despite our perception that we are captains of our own decision-making, we make illogical decisions, often influenced by factors way under the radar of our consciousness. The hour explores the way that we make decisions.

Radio Lab had flirted with the idea of doing something about the election. But, unlike a weekly or daily program, our seasons roll out nationally over several months – or years, so Choice aired in New York in November, but will air in Los Angeles in December, and so on.

How did this episode come about? How did the producers choose “choice” [as a theme]?

Jonah Lehrer, one of our favorite contributors, was writing a book about decision-making. We read his proposal, which included the bizarre tale of ‘Elliot’- a guy whose brain tumor had wiped out his emotional centers, leaving him with solely with logical pathways to decision-making. Some people might find that attractive, the possibility of making decisions purely based on fact and not emotion. But, the punchline is, this loss makes Elliot severely indecisive. With only reason to work with, his brain couldn’t give proportionate weight to the factors involved in making a decision. We loved this idea because it was so counter-intuitive, so unexpected….just the type of story and discovery that Radio Lab is drawn to.

The rest of the stories in this episode came out of that basic premise: we are not logical creatures; we are motivated by factors we are often not even aware of. We explore loss aversion at casinos, discover that doing math makes us crave sweets, and contemplate how having to express why you’ve chosen something might make you dumb down the process that got you there.

Without spoiling it for those who haven’t listened yet, can you give us any big surprising lessons from the episode?

You might want to take note of the effect of temperature on your receptivity towards others. There’s a fascinating study that shows our susceptibility to be influenced by the temperature of a beverage in your hand.

What was the biggest challenge in getting “Choice” together?

Having to choose what went in, and what got left out!

We also went down quite a few blind alleys, in trying to get the best stories together. For a while, we were obsessed with getting access to Deal or No Deal footage and contestants. A team of Dutch researchers produced a fascinating study which revealed how ‘loss aversion’ – the pain that you feel at the risk of losing – caused Deal or No Deal contestants to make stupid, ridiculous, totally foolish decisions. The show’s producers seemed interested, and after a few positive conference calls, they referred me on to their PR firm, but their interest cooled when they realized we weren’t a live call-in show. There was zero possibility of doing even a tape sync. The PR agent had never considered the possibility of documentary radio; he told me that he’d never heard of public radio. I tried hunting down former contestants, it even got to a point of near stalking with one poor guy’s voicemail. Alas, no response. And then I tried working with Dutch contestants. But the accents were too difficult to understand. Eventually, we ditched the whole segment.

Leave anything you loved on the cutting room floor?

We’d done a terrific interview with Dan Ariely, the behaviorial economist from MIT. One fabulous piece of information in that conversation had to do with how your brain can so easily get ‘primed’ – made to adopt a set of expectations that influences you deeply. One example was a study that asked people to think of the last four digits of their social security number, then had them guess the price of an object – in this case a trackball mouse. Turns out, the lower your social security number, the lower you price the trackball. The higher the number, the more you’d think to pay for the trackball. It’s the sort of study that makes you wonder how much agency we actually have, or rather, if we are zombies, our minds controlled by bizarre, seemingly irrelevant factors of which we are never aware.

Were you surprised that Robert is better at picking (sorry–choosing) apples?

Not at all. For anyone whose ever been to the Berkeley Bowl (I used to shop there regularly when I lived in California) or a store like it, I’d suspect a familiarity with the overwhelming feeling having too many choices can induce. Sometimes more is truly not better. It’s just paralyzing.

Are you taking any new approaches with season 5?

Sure, all over the place! More and more we’ve been experimenting with live shows. In the last year, we’ve been to Chicago to give a staged performance of our War of The Worlds radio hour, and we threw a singles event in a billards hall in Portland, Oregon to raise money for OPB. We’ve done talks at museums, and even held an event at the beach on the East River in New York City.

Audio-wise, Radio Lab is always interested in breaking our own forms and trying new things. In the CHOICE episode, we worked with 4 different reporters to dig into the way that Harrah’s is using their customer loyalty program. For us, this was as close as we’ve gotten to seven-on-your-side style consumer investigative reporting. And, we messed around a bit with audio diaries for our DIAGNOSIS episode. In that episode, Greg Warner reports a fabulous story about a young adult with autism who has gotten a diagnosis without his father’s knowledge, and he’s grappling with when to break the news to his dad. Our producer, Lulu Miller, worked with the young man over several months to record his thoughts leading up to and after he finally told his dad. The radio piece contains excerpts of these audio diaries, helping to put the listener inside the heart of this young man’s internal conflict. And for the YELLOW FLUFF AND OTHER CURIOUS ENCOUNTERS episode, I got to visit with a high school cheerleading squad and create a cheer for the periodic table and Mendeleev.

What’s next?

We’re ready to push the boundaries of our show to a new place. A live call-in show? Or some kind of game show? Who knows?!? Maybe your readers can help us decide! Send your ideas to: radiolab@wnyc.org.

RadioLab is on the air in New York now, and will air around the country over the next few months. Once you hear it, you’ll know why everyone else loves it.