Why Art Matters Now: An Evening with Jad Abumrad and Lynda Barry
Radiolab creator Jad Abumrad and graphic novelist Lynda Barry — both MacArthur Fellows — make the case for art's necessity in a fractured, distracted world.
Why we picked this
Abumrad and Barry approach creativity from opposite ends — audio and image, science and gut — but share an obsession with what art actually does to the people it reaches. This conversation should be electric.
Jad Abumrad is the creator of Radiolab, the science and philosophy podcast that has spent two decades teaching millions of listeners how to sit with uncertainty, complexity, and wonder. He is a MacArthur Fellow and one of the most influential voices in American audio storytelling. Lynda Barry is a graphic novelist, cartoonist, and educator whose work — including Cruddy, What It Is, and Syllabus — has consistently explored the relationship between image-making and thinking. She is also a MacArthur Fellow and a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
An Unnameable Energy: Why Art Matters Now brings them together for a multimedia conversation about creativity, its sources, and its necessity. Both have spent careers making work that resists easy categorization — and both have thought deeply about what art provides that nothing else can. In a cultural moment defined by noise, speed, and polarization, their joint argument for why it still matters is worth hearing.
Part of the Chicago Humanities Festival’s Lakeview Day at the Athenaeum Center for Thought & Culture.