COMM 380:  Media Criticism

While often overlooked by media such as television or film, podcasts and public radio shows are able to create unique and arresting audio-based narrative through their unique and evocative ability to create a sense of place strictly within the listener’s ears. Audio-based storytelling, at its best, is like a good book, in that it can conjure images within the listener’s mind and allow them to paint a picture that uniquely appeals to them. “Birthstory,” an episode of Radiolab produced in conjunction with Israel Story, is a perfect example of this: it provides an intriguing story spanning, as the introduction to the episode puts it, “four countries, three women, two guys, three babies, jet planes (two of them!), hundreds of thousands of dollars, [and] at least four languages” (Webster, 2015). “Birthstory” is not just compelling storytelling; it raises interesting questions about race, gender, and what happens when the first world mettles in the third. It is both entertaining and thoughtful; in this way, it is a shining example of the heights that podcasting can reach.

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“Birthstory” is co-produced by Radiolab and Israel Story. Radiolab was founded by Jad Abumrad in 2002 as a production of WNYC, and at the time it largely consisted of Abumrad compiling various NPR stories based on a particular topic. However, when Abumrad met his now-cohost Robert Krulwich in 2003, they began to collaborate on producing their own radio stories together, and in 2004, they started producing Radiolab, a half hour to hour-long bi-weekly radio show and podcast. While, at the beginning, each episode began from a theme or place of science and unfolded from there, current episodes are typically looser with the theme, as some recent episodes have focused around things like elections, failings in the legal system, or human interest pieces. The show is hugely popular, as their website boasts that it can be found on over 500 member stations throughout the United States, and the podcast episodes receive over 5 million downloads each month. With a wide viewership like this, Radiolab is easily one of the biggest shows in podcasting, roughly in tune with other mega-hits such as “Serial” or “This American Life,” all of which are distributed on many NPR stations.

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Israel Story, however, is a far newer player in the podcast and radio game. Based out of Tel Aviv, Israel, Israel story describes itself as “a new radio initiative aimed at introducing high quality, long-form non-fiction content to, and about, Israel” (“The Team,” 2015). “Birthstory” is a part of their second English language season, produced in collaboration with Tablet Magazine. In this way, although the collaboration with Radiolab is unique, “Birthstory” falls directly in line with the lineage and history of work of Israel Story; as a roughly hour-long investigation of a rarely-discussed part of Israeli culture, “Birthstory” would perfectly fit in a line-up of past productions of Israel Story.

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However, for Radiolab, this episode is a bit of a departure. While collaborations are not infrequent for the show – for example, a recent episode entitled “Alpha Gal,” about a mysterious meat allergy, was produced in collaboration with “The Sporkful,” another podcast produced by WNYC – the show is typically domestically-focused; international episodes are very rare. In addition, this episode exists as another cap in the feather of the trend away from science-based episodes: while the links to surrogacy might qualify it as scientific, in reality, that topic is not truly what the episode is “about,” as at the end of the day, it is a human interest piece.

 

The episode itself focuses on a unique question: what happens when two gay men from Israel decide they want to have children? As the show puts it:  If you’re a gay couple in Israel, there are three options... Option #1, which is now not as much of an option: you could adopt a kid from a third-world country [though these countries have since banned adoption by gay couples]... The second option, which is becoming very very popular in Israel, is ‘the new family’... getting together with another woman who wants to be a mother but doesn’t have a father, and then they do a joint parenthood... it’s like divorced parents that get along really well... Option 3 is surrogacy... Surrogacy is illegal in Israel for gay couples (Webster, 2015).

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The rest of the episode focuses on one couple, Tal and Amir, as they go

through the journey of becoming fathers. It involves harvesting eggs from

a woman in Ukraine, bringing two women from India (where surrogacy is

illegal for gay couples) into Nepal (where surrogacy is also illegal, but only

for Nepali women), implanting eggs in both women, fertilizing the eggs in

one woman with Tal’s sperm and the other with Amir’s, and then traveling

to Nepal nine months later to meet their new children. However, soon after

the birth of their children, as they wait for the paperwork to process the

forfeiture of maternal rights of these children and the gaining of their new

Israeli citizenship, an earthquake hits. The horrifying 7.8 earthquake that

hit Nepal on April 25, 2015 came just as Tal and Amir were learning how to

parent for the first time in their lives, sending them, their children, and

almost two dozen other gay couples and their new babies back to Israel.

 

In the course of this whirlwind journey, however, Tal and Amir learn

something: the women that helped bring their new children

into the world – particularly, the Indian women that carried these children

to term in a facility in Nepal – may not have been making the amount of money that Tal and Amir thought they would. Although Tal and Amir, and particularly Tal, were initially uncomfortable with using a woman’s body in this way, they were comforted by the fact that these women would receive life-changing amounts of money: $12,000, supposedly. This amount of money could buy a new home or send children to college, allowing their lives to be changed demonstrably. This is where the real topic of the episode comes in: how much is a pregnancy worth? As Radiolab and Israel Story tackle this question, seeking out women who have worked for the agency Tal and Amir used, Lotus, they learn that these women may only have made about half of what Tal and Amir thought they had.

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However, while the story in and of itself is enticing, the real strength of “Birthstory” is the way in which the story is told. For example, when Tal’s babies (twins, born eight weeks premature) are born, music plays representing each of the cities Tal travelled through as he recounts his journey. As Tal says “we [flied] from Tel Aviv, to Istanbul, and from Istanbul to Kathmandu,” the music playing behind his words creates a real sense of place, conveying the magnitude of his journey to meet his new children. When these same music cues repeat as Amir makes the same voyage, the point is driven home: Israel has made it so hard for men like Tal and Amir to have children that they must go through long voyages just to meet them. As Rob Walker of the New York Times notes, this is one of Radiolab’s strengths: “[Abumrad] thinks like someone interested in how sound makes a listener feel” (Walker, 2011).

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Despite the quality of the storytelling, however, Radiolab makes some troubling and uncomfortable statements about race and family along the way. For example, as Professor Nathan Lents notes, when Tal, Amir, and Abumrad discuss the aforementioned “three options” for starting a family, they never once mention the very real option of becoming foster parents, despite the fact that it is legal for gay couples in Israel and that Israeli foster shelters are “overflowing” with children waiting to be adopted (Lents, 2015).

More troubling, however, is that when the show discusses why a woman from Ukraine was flown to Nepal and used for her eggs, they say that it was because the Ukraine provided “cheap white eggs” (Webster, 2015). Sure, the hosts of the show laughed at how ridiculous this assertion was, but nobody investigated or discussed the inherent, underlying racism of this statement. As Lents writes, “They laughed because all of us in the West know that of course the baby had to be white. Who would pay that much money only to end up with a black or brown child? After all, if that was an option, they wouldn’t have to do any of this!” (Lents, 2015).

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Race underlies the entire episode. Everything from the country of origin of the eggs of their children to the speed with which they were expedited from Nepal can likely be attributed to race. These statements are troubling, but with discussion, they could be glazed over. However, “Birthstory” neglects to do so. Rather than challenging assertions about race, or as one exchange comes out as puts it, “eugenics,” “Birthstory” takes these assertions in stride. The argument could be made that race is not what the episode is “about,” and an extended discussion of the racial politics of this scenario could be distracting and detract from the story, and I might even agree if the argument was made well enough, but to not even touch on the race of a racially- charged scenario is not just troubling: it hurts the story.

Radiolab is important. It is a hotbed of experimentation in the sector of public radio and podcasting, a sector that definitely has the tendency to stagnate and fall back on the tropes of early episodes of “This American Life.” As an episode of Radiolab, “Birthstory” is phenomenal: it tells a captivating story in a way that makes it even more captivating. As a piece of social examination, however, “Birthstory” is less successful. It is just up to the listener to decide which of those two things want.

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References
 

Lents, Nathan H. “Cheap white eggs: Radiolab dodges All Discussion of Race.”

 

NathanLents.com, 7 Dec. 2015. https://nathanlents.com/2015/12/07/cheap-white-eggs-

radiolab-casual-racism-and-questions-not-asked/. Accessed 19 Nov. 2016.
 

Kumar, Nikhil. “Why Nepal Is Still in Rubble a Year After a Devastating Quake.” Time, 24 Apr.

2016. http://time.com/4305225/nepal-earthquake-anniversary-disaster/. Accessed 19 Nov.

2016.
 

“The Team.” Israel Story, 2015. Web. http://israelstory.org/en/about-us/

 

Walker, Rob. “How ‘Radiolab,’ the Sound of Science.” The New York Times Magazine, 7 Apr. 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/magazine/mag-10Radiolab-t.html. Accessed 19 Nov. 2016.

 

Webster, Molly. “Birthstory.” Radiolab. N.p., 2015. Podcast. http://www.radiolab.org/story/birthstory/