Robert Krulwich
Robert Krulwich works on radio, podcasts, video, the blogosphere. He has been called "the most inventive network reporter in television" by TV Guide.
Krulwich is the co-host of WNYC's Radiolab, a radio/podcast series distributed nationally by NPR that explores new developments in science for people who are curious but not usually drawn to science shows. Radiolab won a Peabody Award in 2011.
His specialty is explaining complex subjects, science, technology, economics, in a style that is clear, compelling and entertaining. On television he has explored the structure of DNA using a banana; on radio he created an Italian opera, "Ratto Interesso" to explain how the Federal Reserve regulates interest rates; he has pioneered the use of new animation on ABC's Nightline and World News Tonight.
For 22 years, Krulwich was a science, economics, general assignment and foreign correspondent at ABC and CBS News.
He won Emmy awards for a cultural history of the Barbie doll, for a Frontline investigation of computers and privacy, a George Polk and Emmy for a look at the Savings & Loan bailout online advertising and the 2010 Essay Prize from the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Krulwich earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Oberlin College and a law degree from Columbia University.
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It's dry. Empty. Rocks everywhere. About 10,000 feet up in the Andes. Then, all of a sudden, you see an enormous, lime green, tasty-looking lump. Should you lick it?
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Let me tell you a story — a history story — that's all numbers, only numbers, and still packs an emotional wallop. Button up. It's 1812. In Russia. It's cold. -
Why is it that in thousands of portraits done all over the world, artists emphasize the left side of the subject's face? There's a bias here, and it's hiding in our brains.
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Man goes in for a routine hip operation. In the corner of the operating room, there's a young med student watching. When things go wrong, she tries to make sense of what she sees. -
There you are: face to face, looking into her eyes, a puddle of love, when all of a sudden, you yawn. Usually, she yawns back; but what if she doesn't? -
There they are, up on the power line, side by side by side by side by side. Starlings, each one like the other — rubber-stamped birds, a mob (or murmuration) of indecipherably similar critters, always the same, sitting or flying. But wait! What if there's such a thing as an Exceptional Starling? I think I've found one (or maybe ... four!), hiding in a video.
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There are no moose in America, said the French count to Thomas Jefferson. They don't exist there. Americans see a reindeer and just call it a new name, saying it's bigger. But the only thing that's big here is your American imagination. Jefferson was incensed. You are an ignoramus, he said tactfully. Then he promised to deliver an American moose to Paris. Here's what happened next. -
What are the odds that you will die this year? Whatever they are, the mortality tables suggest those odds will double eight years from now. Death, apparently, moves closer at a curiously regular pace. Why this eight-year progression? Is it something biological? Random? What is it about eight that attracts the Grim Reaper? Let's ask.
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A fresh tomato is 93.5 percent water. A fresh baby girl or boy is 75 percent water. A banana, 74 percent. We all start wet, and then, inevitably, dry. A 1-year-old baby carries 10 percent less water; a male adult 15 percent less. Life is a slow evaporation, with some curious exceptions.
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Ready, get set, go! Let's compare a sperm whale plowing through the ocean to a human sperm plowing through a glass of water: The whale barely notices the water it's in; the sperm — oh, gee — it's got a problem. How it solves that problem — being much closer to the size of the water molecules around it — is ... well, masterful.
