Washington — Radio producer Jad Abumrad was having a bad day. He had landed at LaGuardia Airport in New York City without his luggage or his wallet. “I was in a really foul mood,” Abumrad remembers. So when he received a cryptic call informing him he would receive half a million dollars, no strings attached, he was sure it was a scam, one more annoyance in a day full of them.
Unreal as it may have seemed, the caller’s promise was sincere. Abumrad is a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, also known as a “Genius Grant.” MacArthur fellows receive $500,000 in quarterly installments over five years with no restrictions on how to spend the money and no obligation to report how it is spent. The award is intended to provide the fellows with freedom to pursue their work. Recipients are nominated — they cannot apply — for demonstrating exceptional creativity in any field.
Abumrad was nominated for his groundbreaking work as the producer of WNYC’s Radiolab. Part scientific discovery, part philosophical exploration, Radiolab is a show that defies definition. Renowned radio documentarian Ira Glass has publicly lauded Abumrad for doing the impossible: creating a new aesthetic in a medium as mature as radio.
“Listening to Radiolab I have the unusual experience where nearly every story is something I’ve never heard of or thought about before, and the stories lead to ideas I’m utterly unfamiliar with,” Glass wrote in a recent essay, “Radiolab: An Appreciation.” “That’s a standard very few of us even aspire to, much less achieve.”
Abumrad is not exactly sure how he will spend the money, but he is certain he will use it for radio. “I feel passionate about public radio as a whole, and I want to continue to bring new ideas and invite new people in, and this [fellowship] feels like a platform for me to do that.”
A Lebanese American whose parents immigrated to the United States just before his birth, Abumrad believes his hyphenated identity has made him and his show what they are. “We spoke Arabic in the house,” he said. “We ate all Lebanese food. My grandparents lived with us. In many ways we were a Lebanese family.”
Abumrad’s home life, however, contrasted sometimes starkly with his life at school.
Abumrad moved to Tennessee at age 5, and he describes discomfort during his childhood from being “the only Arab kid in a Southern Baptist universe.” That experience, however, shaped him such that today he is comfortable embracing multiple realities. “It gives me a sense of being comfortable holding the tension between many different ideas — between being an Arab, between being an American, between being outside of the political universe but understanding the other side of it, and — if anything — my job right now requires that of me. It requires me to operate as a kind of tension between ideas.”
Abumrad lived in Lebanon with his family briefly at age 3, but he was not able to return to that country until 1991. One possibility for the MacArthur grant Abumrad is exploring is traveling to Lebanon to do Radiolab. “I’d love to go there as a reporter to find stories I could tell. Part of me is thinking of entering Lebanon through its stories and of living there for a while.”
Regardless of his plans, Abumrad is thrilled to have been chosen for a MacArthur Fellowship. “More than the money, it has a certain sense of prestige attached to it that’s very exciting.”
Abumrad has since recovered his luggage and wallet, but the shock of that phone call is still sinking in. Winning a prestigious fellowship without even knowing he was nominated is an experience not soon lost on Abumrad. “It’s totally weird,” he said.