Radiolab29 Aug 2025

Music Hat

With this episode, we’re putting on our music hat. For a program that relies so much on scoring and sound, it’s not often we talk about the musicians and the music they make that inspire us. Today, that changes. Today, we bring you two stories. Each about musicians that our former host and creator of Radiolab, Jad Abumrad, loves.

We originally released these stories many years ago, and both start deep in music itself. Then quickly, they dig deeper — into our relationships with technology, and ourselves.

We start with the band Dawn of Midi, who straddle the intersection between acoustic and electronic sounds. Jad talks to the band about their album, Dysnomia, and how it's filled with heavily-layered rhythms that feel both mechanistic and deeply human, at the same time.

Then, Jad talks with Juana Molina, an Argentine singer who accidentally became a famous actress, when all along all she really wanted was to be a musician.

Special thanks to Dawn of Midi and Juana Molina.

EPISODE CREDITS:

Reported by - JAD ABUMRAD

EPISODE CITATIONS:

Check out Dawn of Midi at dawnofmidi.com and Juana Molina at juanamolina.com

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