Jad Abumrad is a Lebanese-American radio host and producer. He has reported and produced documentaries for a number of local and National Public Radio programs, including On the Media

On the Media

On the Media is an hour-long weekly radio program, hosted by Bob Garfield and Brooke Gladstone, covering journalism, technology, and First Amendment issues. It is produced by WNYC in New York City...

, PRI

Public Radio International

Public Radio International is a Minneapolis-based American public radio organization, with locations in Boston, New York, London and Beijing. PRI's tagline is "Hear a different voice." PRI is a major public media content creator and also distributes programs from many sources...

's Studio 360

Studio 360

Studio 360 is an American weekly public radio program about media, the arts and culture hosted by novelist Kurt Andersen and produced by PRI Public Radio International and WNYC in New York City. The program's stated goal is to "Get inside the creative mind" and uses arts and culture as a lens to...

with Kurt Andersen

Kurt Andersen

Kurt Andersen is an American novelist who is also host of the Peabody-winning public radio program Studio 360, a co-production between Public Radio International and WNYC. In 1986 with E. Graydon Carter he co-founded Spy magazine, which they sold in 1991; it continued publishing until 1998...

, Morning Edition

Morning Edition

Morning Edition is an American radio news program produced and distributed by National Public Radio . It airs weekday mornings and runs for two hours, and many stations repeat one or both hours. The show feeds live from 05:00 to 09:00 ET, with feeds and updates as required until noon...

, All Things Considered

All Things Considered

All Things Considered is the flagship news program on the American network National Public Radio. It was the first news program on NPR, and is broadcast live worldwide through several outlets...

, Democracy Now!

Democracy Now!

Democracy Now! and its staff have received several journalism awards, including the Gracie Award from American Women in Radio & Television; the George Polk Award for its 1998 radio documentary Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship, on the Chevron Corporation and the deaths of...

, and WNYC

WNYC

WNYC is a set of call letters shared by a pair of co-owned, non-profit, public radio stations located in New York City.WNYC broadcasts on the AM band at 820 kHz, and WNYC-FM is at 93.9 MHz. Both stations are members of National Public Radio and carry distinct, but similar news/talk programs...

's "24 Hours at the Edge of Ground Zero". He currently hosts and produces Radiolab on WNYC. He was named a 2011 MacArthur Fellow

Abumrad was raised in Tennessee, where his father, Dr. Naji Abumrad, is a doctor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center

Vanderbilt University Medical Center

The Vanderbilt University Medical Center is a collection of several hospitals and clinics, as well as the schools of medicine and nursing associated with Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.It comprises the following units:...

. (Dr. Abumrad is featured on the Radiolab episode entitled "Placebo.") He attended Oberlin College

Oberlin College

Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, noteworthy for having been the first American institution of higher learning to regularly admit female and black students. Connected to the college is the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the oldest continuously operating...

, where he studied creative writing and music composition. In 2007, he married his college sweetheart, Karla Murthy. She is a TV producer in NYC at PBS, who has worked with Bill Moyers and on NOW. In 2009, they had their first child, Amil. Before entering radio, he wrote music for films. He has said that his background in music has influenced the way he experiments with sound in Radiolab. The December 14, 2009 Radiolab episode In C includes a musical piece by Abumrad remixing the Terry Riley

Terry Riley

Terrence Mitchell Riley, is an American composer intrinsically associated with the minimalist school of Western classical music and was a pioneer of the movement...

 composition In C

In C

In C is a semi-aleatoric musical piece composed by Terry Riley in 1964 for any number of people, although he suggests "a group of about 35 is desired if possible but smaller or larger groups will work"...

.

In 2011, Abumrad was a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, commonly referred to as a "Genius Grant".