By the time his innovative NPR program “Radiolab” hit its 10th season in 2012, Jad Abumrad had been asked about its origins countless times. And every time he answered the question, he felt he was getting it wrong.

“I would start telling a story about how it happened, and it was total BS,” he said during a recent phone interview from his home in Brooklyn. “The truth was that it was a long slow evolution, with lots of stumbling around in the dark, and these feelings that no one ever wants to talk about, like, 'S-, I'm stuck.’

“So I wanted to explore that, and see whether those feelings have any utility.”

The result of Abumrad's exploration is “Gut Churn,” a solo show he will bring to the Nourse Theater on Wednesday night under the auspices of City Arts and Lectures. The event is billed as a “multimedia presentation” (although Abumrad also describes it as a “hypertextual lecture with original music” as well as “a lot me jibbering and jabbering”) that probes the role of uncertainty, fear and other negative emotions in the creative process.

“There's a lot of research on the connections between depression or bipolar disorder and creative output. I'm not bipolar, and I don’t suffer from severe depression, but I do find that when I'm making stuff, it takes you to a similar place.

“So what I wanted to know was, Is that normal? Is it something people all share? Is it a law of the emotional physics of making stuff?”

At 41, Abumrad - a winner of a so-called genius grant from the MacArthur Foundation in 2011 - exemplifies that kind of restless, somewhat angsty creative fervor. “Radiolab,” the Peabody Award-winning show that he co-hosts with Robert Krulwich, is striking for, among other things, the unpredictability of its subject matter. Though it’s often described as a science show, the program has been known to tackle everything from musical hallucinations to the afterlife, and from probability theory to the social psychology of small talk.

And it does it all within an impeccably choreographed landscape of musical cues, loose-limbed interviews and artful segues. Although the mood of “Radiolab” projects a kind of shambolic freedom, that's an illusion - each episode is a carefully composed piece of electronic sound art.

Abumrad, in fact, began his career as a composer, studying music and creative writing at Oberlin College in Ohio. He'd grown up mostly in Nashville, the son of two research scientists whose work habits imprinted on him early - even if the actual subject matter tended to slide by.

“My mom is a molecular biologist who studies a particular protein that carries fat globules into the cell. She's been trying to piece together the story of this protein for about 25 years, and I would spend days in her lab after school until 9 or 10 at night, just playing with clamps and Bunsen burners and tons of white lab rats.”

For an aficionado of “Radiolab,” talking on the phone with Abumrad while he takes a break from babysitting his children (ages 3 and 4) can be an eerie experience. The familiar speech patterns - the breathless rhythms, the semi-mumbled eloquence, and the air of ardent interest in just about anything - are all in place.

The future of the program, he says, promises an ostensible change in subject matter, even as the underlying strategies remain the same.

“Having done it now for 10 years, I've abstracted the idea of what science is. It’s a method, a mode of asking questions, and now I'm interested in using that method to ask questions that aren't in the domain of science. I want to apply some of the rigor of the scientific method, but also the wonder and weirdness that I bring in as an artist and a musician.”

Among the upcoming topics for the program, Abumrad says, are the legal justifications for the “war on terror,” as well as subjects from the world of sports and from the purview of the U.S. Supreme Court. He confesses that he's not sure how this is going to play with Krulwich, his longtime co-host.

“There's a well-articulated difference between Robert and me. Robert will do a story about cool creatures and cool animals - 'Look at this animal, it has 17 sexes!’ - and he'd be happy to do that story until he dies. I love that about him, but I have some serious heavy-duty restlessness.”

Which brings us back to “Gut Churn,” the outcome of three years of research and thought about everything from Cherokee dream hunting to the works of Kierkegaard and the teachings of various Zen masters. He also talked to fellow radio luminaries, including his sometime mentor, Ira Glass of “This American Life.”

“I'm interested in the importance of the intermediate space between the reality of where you are and the idealism of your dreams. Ira calls it the 'taste gap,’ where your taste is good enough to tell you that your work sucks. And the issue is how to get through that long period where you know you suck.

“When I'm in the middle of a story and it's not working out, it obsesses me. I have a pervasive sense of dread. I know some people can compartmentalize and shut that off and go be happy, but I'm not like that.

“So I wanted to try to figure out what those feelings are for. If I feel they have a purpose, then I can stare at them and say hello. It's a kind of self-therapy.”


“Gut Churn”: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nourse Theater, 275 Hayes St., San Francisco. $35. (415) 392-4400,