Jad Abumrad also spoke at the 99% Conference. The founder of the experimental radio show, Radiolab, and winner of a Macarthur Foundation “Genius” award last year, Abumrad was simultaneously self-effacing and steely. In particular, he had a refreshing take on how he answers the difficult question of how exactly he made Radiolab into a success story: “In those moments I find myself bullshitting,” he confessed. “There's a gravitational pull to talk about things in ways that are really not true.”
The desire to retroactively neaten up the messy process of design and innovation is understandable and pervasive. Yet Abumrad’s clear point was that there had been no clear plan in the early days of the show. How they would pay for the program, what the business plan was… all unclear. Instead, they were left with what he called “gut churn” and the existential angst that accompanies the question, “will I survive?”
Abumrad wasn’t advocating not considering the deeper facets of a problem, but instead was describing the “radical uncertainty you feel when you work without a template.” And, he added, “we don’t talk enough about how crummy it can feel to make something new.”
[Photo: Julian Mackler]
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