Science on Radio

The success and longevity of radio are due to a number of factors, but at its core, people like hearing other people tell stories. That story could be what happened in the world today or it could be how the surface of Mars once held water. Storytelling is at the core of all radio reporting and the linear nature of radio reports, with a beginning, middle, and end, makes radio a perfect medium for science news. Science communication is often characterized as difficult to understand and laden with jargon; to understand science, the receiver of the [Page 732]information is seen as needing a foundation of core knowledge as a base. But the straightforward way radio pieces break down information requires the writer to take a scientific topic and, step by step, define the terms, and provide the “story” of the science. The addition of sound, be it of an animal under study, the sound of scientific machinery, or the use of sound effects to help illustrate a scientific topic, can often bring a scientific topic to life better than a print news story.

In addition to the problems of jargon and the audience's needing some degree of core knowledge to understand a topic, the highest barrier to covering a scientific topic on the radio is the amount of time allowed for telling the story. Radio stories, even those about science, can be as short at 45 seconds; so with radio, the pressure is on to write exactly and briefly.

Radio is one of those odd words that represent a number of different phenomena. A radio is a device that receives and transforms electromagnetic waves into sound. There are also radio waves and radio identification tags. But for our purposes, radio is sound—distributed. Often the sound is a human voice, and originally the distribution was the transmission of those sounds by modulating electromagnetic waves. Now, very often, computers are our “radios” and distribution has moved beyond radio transmitters and onto the Internet.

Radio as a medium is unparalleled in its ability to survive. It began by replacing fire as something that gathered people together. In fact, radio was such a cozy, consensual way to convey information that U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt named the 30 evening radio speeches he gave during the Great Depression “Fireside Chats.” When television arrived, it was said to be the end of radio. But instead, television simply shoved radio out of the living room and into the car. Even today, radio programming hinges on the afternoon and evening “drive time.” The Internet again challenged and revolutionized radio, both in distribution and production. The conversion of audio files from analog to digital make it exceptionally easy for audio files to be moved from computer to computer. The digitization of audio files also allows radio stations to “stream” their programs over the Internet, so listeners no longer have to rely on being close to a radio station's transmitter to hear the sound. Quickly, portable digital audio players arose to allow listeners to “cut the cord” from the computer and carry audio everywhere. Some even have the ability to link to the wireless Internet and play streaming audio, essentially turning a small handheld computer back into what we used to call a radio.

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