Jad Abumrad loves a butterfly knife and a good springy pillow

It’s hard to overstate Jad Abumrad’s impact on the podcasting world. He created and hosted Dolly Parton’s America and Fela Kuti: Fear No Man, two Peabody Award-winning shows that offered unprecedented looks at the lives of two of the most important music icons of the last century.

Before that, though, he created Radiolab, an experimental NPR show that leaned heavily on creative sound design and eventually helped redefine what a podcast could be. In the early days of podcasting, shows were often just a couple of people talking at each other at a table (some still are), or lazily repackaged radio broadcasts. Radiolab instead told deeply reported stories in themed episodes with original music and cinematic sound effects that helped enhance the storytelling. And often, the sounds and music were created by Abumrad himself.

Abumrad retired from Radiolab in 2022, leaving it in the capable hands of Latif Nasser and Lulu Miller. But he’s been plenty busy since then, not only producing Fear No Man, but also composing for film, theater, and dance, and serving as a distinguished research professor at Vanderbilt University.

Despite his intimidating resume, however, he’s a man of simple pleasures who collects an ungodly amount of audio plug-ins and loves the satisfying clack of a butterfly knife.

What is your most indispensable tool?

My pillow. I need a flat, springy pillow, and I don’t understand this new hotel / airbnb trend towards giant fluffy pillows that wreck your neck for a week (I’m that age). So, a good travel pillow. In terms of digital tools: it’s rare to say you love a calendar app, but I truly love Fantastical. It takes the most annoying task in the world — scheduling a meeting with many busy people — and makes it actually fun. In terms of digital audio tools: I am addicted to audio plugins and have a thousand too many, but the one I come back to over and over is a little granular synthesis app called Granite. It’s 15 years old at this point, but it’s just so musical. I’ve used it to score dozens of OG Radiolab pieces.

Which is the most underappreciated?
I think indoor plumbing is wildly underappreciated. I have a whole talk I give about the miracle of indoor plumbing.

What is the first app you install on a new phone or computer?
Alfred. It’s a super lightweight do-everything replacement for Apple’s built-in Spotlight. Like Raycast but without the annoying AI features.

What is one thing you wish you could change about your phone?
I wish I could eliminate all the buzzes and dings. In fact, I wish there were a button that could turn my smartphone into a very dumb phone, because I only need it to be smart a few minutes a day.

What sites do you have pinned to your tab bar?
My tab bar is boring and functional: NYT, Ground.News, the Vanderbilt Library resource page (which links to Nexis and all the journals), ESPN.

How many tabs do you have open right now?
14, but today has been a big research day.

Which social media platform do you use the most (if any)?
I use Instagram sometimes. I used to be active on Twitter and had a decent following, pre-Elon, but then they changed the login process, and I got locked out. I never could get back in and stopped wanting to.

What is your happy place online?
Bandcamp, Andrew Huang’s YouTube channel.

What is your favorite gadget you’ve ever owned?
A tie between my Motorola flip phone from 1997 and a butterfly knife I saved up for a decade earlier. Snapping open and shut the phone satisfied some deep, restless urge, and the same was true for the rotational flourish of the wrist involved in opening and closing the knife.

Which was the most disappointing?
Muse brainwave headset.

What game do you have the fondest memories of?
Around the same time as the butterfly knife, I used to save up quarters all week and then run to the local Kroger and play Donkey Kong. I was never good. But I do have a distinct memory of one time getting to a new level, barrels flying everywhere. I remember the depths of that adrenaline rush.

Which tech trend do you wish would go away?
People walking their dogs while looking at their phones. Maddening.

What is one thing you wish you had created?
The soundtrack to Birth. Alexandre Desplat is a shape-shifting genius, and that movie, in addition to being peculiar and amazing, has one of the most haunting scores ever.

What creation are you most proud of?
My children. I was, of course, only a co-creator. My partner Karla might say no, more of a production assistant.

Which are you least proud of?
I feel fondly towards a lot of my early music and stories. They were what I needed to make at the time. But I’m glad the bulk happened before the internet became the permanent archive, so they’ve been conveniently lost to time.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Richard Nodell, my longtime work coach slash therapist slash pal, once told me: “Your job is not to know where you’re going but to lead the search” … wise words.

What is your current obsession?
The Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho (who somehow made the orchestral sound like storms passing over fields) and UK dubstep, the dark underground grimy amalgam of garage, drum n bass, 2-step and Jamaican dub that preceded the American variant sometimes not-wrongly called “bro-step.”

What do you do when you need to focus?
I meditate for two minutes and then brick my phone.

What do you do when you’re feeling stuck?
I set up some gamelan strips on a table in my room, and I bang on those when I need a reset.

When was the last time you went somewhere without your phone?
I go places without my phone all the time. But then again, I have an Apple Watch, so it probably doesn’t count.

What’s the last piece of physical media you bought?
My son and I bought an original pressing of John Coltrane’s Blue Train about a month ago.

What do you think is worth splurging on?
Food and music.

What would the tagline for your biopic be?

“In a world of noise, one man heard the signal.”

What’s the last GIF or meme you used?