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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Scientists have found hundreds of big, gassy planets that orbit close to "their" star, though solar systems with small rocky planets, like ours, have been elusive. This might be because they are hard to detect using existing techniques, but an astronomer says he's getting a bit nervous. He doesn't want to think that we are the exception rather than the rule.
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For 25 years, a professor collected essays from her students based on the this prompt: "Was there an object you met during childhood or adolescence that had an influence on your path into science?" One student remembered her Easter basket. -
In the 1800s, a chef in Paris created a liquid that deepened the flavor of everything it touched. Its flavor wasn't any combination of the four recognized tastes. It took a Japanese soup lover and scientists to acknowledge a fifth taste: umami.
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Ever wonder where the gold in your wedding ring came from? For Valentine's Day, Robert Krulwich tracks the rare element all the way to outer space, where gold is formed in the fiery center of collapsing stars.
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Some of science's great ideas were created in homespun ways. To test his ideas on evolution, Charles Darwin and his butler dropped asparagus into a tub. Darwin's oldest son studied dead pigeons by letting them float upside down in a bowl.
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Susan Barry was born with crossed eyes. Shortly after her second birthday, she had a surgery to treat them. But what she didn't know until decades later was how differently she still saw the world. A type of physical therapy for the eyes has changed all of that.
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Everyone has heard at one time or another about the old myth that if you dug a hole deep enough, you'd end up on the other side of the Earth, in China. As it turns out, the undertaking is much more complex than it might seem.
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Rodrigues island's "cafe marron" plant has been presumed extinct for scores of years. Then, one day, a little boy told his teacher that the plant lived, near his house. Suddenly, an obscure, skinny little bush that nobody had noticed became an international treasure and the focus of a 20-year effort to preserve it.
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Some scientists have proposed that when a woman has a baby, she gets not just a son or a daughter, but a gift of cells that stays behind and protects her for the rest of her life. That's because a baby's cells linger in its mom's body for decades and — like stem cells — may help to repair damage when she gets sick.
