Singletary Center presents Jad Abumrad: Words Fail Me

Creator of RadioLab, MacArthur Fellow, Vanderbilt University professor, composer, and journalist Jad Abumrad creates “a new aesthetic” in broadcast journalism. He orchestrates dialogue, music, interviews, and sounds into compelling documentaries that draw listeners into investigations of otherwise intimidating topics.   

His latest work “Words Fail Me” is a meditation on what it feels like to live inside information overload — and what we can learn from how earlier technological shocks (think the telegraph, the radio) reshaped human perception, and what that history might tell us as AI does the same thing again, even faster. That sensation of being "pulled apart" by simultaneous signals becomes the doorway into a bigger question: what happens to our minds when we are bombarded by thousands of channels, frequencies, and timelines all at once?  

Part personal essay, part sound-and-music performance, part philosophical detective story — built for an audience that wants to feel something about the chaos of modern attention, not just think about it.