Presenters

Ira Flatow

Veteran National Public Radio science correspondent and award-winning television journalist Ira Flatow has shared his enthusiasm for science and technology with radio, television, and now Internet audiences for more than 35 years. These days he is the host of Talk of the Nation: Science Friday on NPR. He anchors the broadcast each Friday, bringing radio and Internet listeners worldwide an informative and varied discussion on science, technology, health, space, and the environment. He is also the founder and president of “Talking Science,” a non-profit company dedicated to creating radio, TV, and Internet projects that make science “user-friendly.”

Flatow began his broadcasting career as a reporter and then news director at WBFO–FM in Buffalo while he was still studying for his engineering degree from the State University of New York–Buffalo (1971). As NPR’s science correspondent from 1971 to 1986, he reported from sites ranging from the Kennedy Space Center and Three Mile Island to Antarctica and the South Pole. His numerous television credits include six years as host and writer for the award-winning Newton’s Apple on PBS and science reporter for CBS This Morning and cable’s CNBC. He is also host of the four-part PBS series Big Ideas, produced by WNET in New York. On the Internet, he has hosted numerous science-related webcasts for Discovery Online and the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Flatow is a member of the National Association of Science Writers. His most recent book is They All Laughed . . . From Light Bulbs to Lasers: The Fascinating Stories Behind the Great Inventions That Have Changed Our Lives (Perennial Currents, 1993). It followed Rainbows, Curveballs: And Other Wonders of the Natural World Explained (Morrow, 1988). His work was recognized with an AAAS-Westinghouse Science Journalism Award – Television in 1983. In 1999 he was honored with the Carl Sagan Award and in 2000 with another AAAS Journalism Award for his television work.