Up In the Air with Radiolab

Abubakr Ali starred in Anything’s Possible directed by Billy Porter and was the titular lead in the Netflix–Dark Horse series Grendel. Additional selected screen credits include Law & Order: Organized Crime, The Walking Dead: World Beyond, Power Book II: Ghost, and Katy Keene. Onstage, he has been seen in Toros at Second Stage, Inherit the Wind at the Pasadena Playhouse, We Live in Cairo with the American Repertory Theatre, Kiss and Twelfth Night at the Yale Repertory Theatre, and work with The 24 Hour Plays, Primary Stages, New York Theatre Workshop, Atlantic Theater Company, and The Public, among others. Ali is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama.

Margaret Atwood is the author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry and critical essays. Her novels include Cat’s Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, and the MaddAddam trilogy. Her 1985 classic, The Handmaid’s Tale, was followed in 2019 by a sequel, The Testaments, which was a global number one bestseller and won the Booker Prize. In 2020 she published Dearly, her first collection of poetry for a decade. Atwood has won numerous awards including the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. In 2019 she was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for services to literature. She has also worked as a cartoonist, illustrator, librettist, playwright and puppeteer. She lives in Toronto, Canada. Atwood’s latest short story collection, Old Babes in the Wood, was published in 2023.

Molly Bernard recently starred in the World Premiere of Cult of Love at Berkeley Rep. She is most recognizable for her role as Lauren Heller on Younger. Additionally, she starred in and executive produced the indie film Milkwater, and has been featured in the Amazon film Master opposite Regina Hall, the independent feature Lone Star Bull, and Chicago Med on NBC, as well as Transparent, Alpha House, High Maintenance, Blindspot, Otherhood, Sully, Pay it Forward, The Intern, and The Black List. Bernard can currently be seen in the feature film Hit Man, written and directed by Richard Linklater, and she stars in the forthcoming film Best Man Dead Man.

Becca Blackwell has collaborated with Young Jean Lee, Half Straddle, Jennifer Miller's Circus Amok, Richard Maxwell, Erin Markey, Sharon Hayes, Theater of the Two Headed Calf, Lisa D'Amour, and more. Film and television credits include High Maintenance, Ramy, Marriage Story, Shameless, Deadman's Barstool, Jack in the Box, If Found, Sort Of, She’s Clean, You Can’t Stay Here, BROS, and Survival of the Thickest. Their solo shows, They, Themself and Schmerm and Schmermie's Choice, have toured across the US. Blackwell was a recipient of the Doris Duke Impact Artist Award, the Franklin Furnace Award, and the Creative Capital Award. They recently made their Broadway debut in Is This a Room and have a new one-person show, Back to She.

Zach Grenier received a Tony nomination for Moisés Kaufman’s 33 Variations for his performance as Ludwig van Beethoven. He’s known on television for portraying David Lee on CBS’s The Good Wife and its spin-off on Paramount+ The Good Fight, Mayor Feratti on Ray Donovan, and Kenton on Hulu’s Devs. Additional credits include the films She Said, Fight Club, Zodiac, Ride with the Devil, and the television series Law & Order, Deadwood, Touching Evil, and 24. His favorite stage role is Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, which he played at the Pittsburgh Public Theater.

Randa Jarrar is an award-winning novelist, short story writer, essayist, and actor. Her books include the novel, A Map of Home, the collection of stories, Him, Me, Muhammad Ali, and the memoirs Love Is An Ex-Country and You Are A Teen Mom: Instructions. She lives in Los Angeles.

Miranda July is the author of the short story collection No One Belongs Here More Than You, winner of the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, the nonfiction collection It Chooses You, and the novel The First Bad Man. Her fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, Harper’s, and The New Yorker. July directed and starred in the films The Future and Me and You and Everyone We Know, which won a special jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival and the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and Kajillionaire. July’s videos, performances, web-based projects, and sculptures have been presented at MoMA, the Guggenheim, the Whitney Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. July’s latest novel, All Fours, was published in May.

Lulu Miller is a Peabody award–winning science journalist, co-host of the award-winning WNYC Studios podcast Radiolab, and host of the kids’ podcast Terrestrials. Her career in radio started as a producer for Radiolab, and she is the co-founder of the NPR show Invisibilia. She is also the author of the bestselling book Why Fish Don’t Exist.

Latif Nasser is co-host of the award-winning WNYC Studios show Radiolab and host and executive producer of the Emmy-nominated Netflix science series Connected.

Don Shea’s stories appeared in The North American Review, StoryQuarterly, The Gettysburg Review, The Utne Reader, Other Voices, Stirring, The Quarterly, Quick Fiction, and numerous other magazines. He was included in the Norton anthologies Flash Fiction and Flash Fiction Forward, the Great Books Foundation Short Story Omnibus, the Doubleday anthology Quickly Aging Here, and in Best of Crosscurrents. His stories also appeared in the teaching texts Reasoning and Writing Well and Fast Fiction. His story collection, Injuries and Damages, was shortlisted for the Iowa Short Fiction Prize. He taught writing workshops at The Writer’s Voice, the West Side YMCA, and The New School, and he was a writing tutor at Bard High School/Early College, a New York City public school for gifted kids.

Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times bestselling author of The Female Persuasion, The Interestings, The Ten-Year Nap, and The Wife, which was adapted to film in 2018, starring Glenn Close and Jonathan Pryce. She was the guest editor of The Best American Short Stories 2017, and has also published books for young readers, mostly recently a picture book, Millions of Maxes. Wolitzer is a faculty member in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton, where she co-founded and co-directs BookEnds, a one-year, non-credit intensive in the novel.

Radiolab is on a curiosity bender. We ask deep questions and use investigative journalism to get the answers. A given episode might whirl you through science, legal history, and into the home of someone halfway across the world. The show is known for innovative sound design, smashing information into music. It is hosted by Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser. Radiolab is available on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. Check your local station for airtimes. It's also available via the CBC, ABC, and the BBC.

CREDITS

“The Lunatics’ Eclipse,” by Randa Jarrar, from Him, Me, Muhammad Ali (Sarabande Books, 2016). First appeared in Ploughshares (Fall 2004). Copyright © 2004 by Randa Jarrar. Used by permission of the author.

“Jumper Down,” by Don Shea, from Flash Fiction Forward: 80 Very Short Stories (W. W. Norton & Company, 2006). Copyright © 2006 by Don Shea.

“Roy Spivey,” by Miranda July, from The New Yorker (June 4, 2007). Copyright © 2007 by Miranda July. Used by permission of The Wylie Agency, LLC.

“My Life as a Bat,” by Margaret Atwood, from Good Bones (Coach House Press, 1992). Copyright © 1992 by Margaret Atwood.