Radiolab's Jad Abumrad is giving a talk at Benaroya Hall tonight called Embracing the Gut Churn. I spoke to him late last night, New York time.

I should probably say that I'm a huge fan of Radiolab—just so you and everyone else knows where I'm coming from.

Thanks for saying that, man.

Sure. My boyfriend turned me onto it. He's more science-minded than me, and we've been listening to it on long car rides. Like, you know, driving through the Methow Valley here in Washington and listening to you guys talk about fistulas. Or going out to the Olympic Peninsula and listening to you guys talk about bliss and that man who dropped acid in a seminary trying to find it. And driving to Missoula, listening to the episode about high-frequency trading and that substance that drips once every eight years. So, obviously, I like the show. But I'm actually kind of a new fan, so I don't know basic things like: How long have you been doing Radiolab?

Surprisingly enough, we've been doing it in some form since late 2002. What is that—12 years? But it's gone through a number of phases.

How did you find time to launch "a three-year investigation into the science, philosophy and art of uncertainty"?

Well, it wasn't so much that I was doing it on the side. It was that everything that I was doing for Radiolab was thrusting me into this strange place where I'd be doing stories, regularly, that were out of my reach. I'd be putting together stories that I couldn't quite figure out, and when you're in that space for your job constantly—I'm pulling my hair out at times, and at a certain point I was like, 'If I could figure out a different way of thinking about this process, and these feelings...'

And I don't mean to make it sound like I'm depressive, but part of the weird terrain of making the show has always been these high highs and these low lows. So I started reading and talking to a bunch of people, doing some interviews, just exploring: How do different people think about the darkness of creativity, or the times of being stuck? That kind of stuff.

You said you were up late working. Are you working on the talk right now?

Yeah.

And since you're almost ready, you're not having any deadline anxiety, right? You've solved the mystery of creative darkness?

[Laughs.] No, I am definitely experiencing the thing I'm going to be talking about. No question.

I was hoping I'd come to Tuesday night's talk and I'd never have a freakout on deadline again. I would never doubt why I'm doing the job I'm doing, or whether this work is any good. That's not gonna happen?

I'll tell you what might happen, more realistically, is that you'll come to the talk—I hope—and you'll listen to me jibber jabber, and maybe, hopefully you'll have a couple of moments of, "Aha!" And you'll be like, you know what, not only are the panics and the freakouts and the strange moodswings something that you should tolerate, it's actually something that is evidence of you doing the right work. It's a tool. When they don't happen, you're not actually doing the real work.

The problem is, how do you explain that to the people around you? "Hey, the freakouts, the panic—that means I'm doing my job."

You become the boss, that's how. Where you don't have to explain.

Good advice. So this talk is called Embracing the Gut Churn, and as I mentioned I was recently listening to that show about cow fistulas. It actually only starts with cow fistulas, and it's called Guts. It's about all that's going on in your guts, and how that's connected to your psychology, your mood, your panic—all the things you're talking about. Are you gonna get that deep into the embrace of the gut churn? Are we gonna get all the way down there?

We're not gonna get into the—what is it called?—the intestinal biome? No. We're not gonna go there. I do mention gastric acid a few times. There's that.