Bob McDonald looks back at 30 years of hosting Quirks & Quarks

The hair has turned grey and the voice has mellowed, but after three decades, I still enjoy hosting our weekly national science radio program. It is the "quirkiest" and longest job of my life.

Walking into the Quirks & Quarks office in 1992 was an intimidating experience. I was following in the footsteps of hosts David Suzuki, Jay Ingram and David Mobray — all very well respected science journalists. 

The show had already been on the air for 16 years and was a well-oiled machine that was missing a gear. It was the first time that I was filling someone else's shoes. I never thought at the time that I would still be standing in those shoes three decades later.

My previous job had been hosting CBC's children's television program Wonderstruck, and the transition to a radio program aimed at adults was a steep learning curve. 

WATCH: Bob McDonald in an excerpt from the CBC-TV science show for kids, Wonderstruck (1991)

In kids' TV we were free to take any topic and make it fun and understandable for young people. But Quirks & Quarks is guided by the breaking science news of the week: Publications in scientific journals, news from universities and research labs, a wide assortment of topics in every field of science.

Suddenly I was faced with the intimidating task of learning about subjects far outside my expertise such as mad cow disease, otherwise known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy: a scary, degenerative fatal brain disease whose appearance was a big news story in 1992.

It took a day just to learn how to pronounce those words, let alone understand how the disease ate away at the brains of cows and the (thankfully few) human victims it ultimately affected.

Because of our efforts to keep up with emerging stories, to this day I don't have any idea of what topics I will be dealing with from week to week. But very early on I learned the secret to hosting the show: it's all about listening.

All journalism is storytelling. Regardless of the topic, all stories have the same elements: a setting, characters, some kind of action, and either a conclusion or progress to the next step.

You don't need to know everything there is to know about a subject such as genetics to do an interview (although a basic understanding helps). You just focus on that particular guest's story.

If they become bogged down in the details, I throw in what has become somewhat of a trademark phrase: "Let me see if I've got this right…" where I try to summarize what they have just said, as simply as possible, usually with an analogy thrown in to help make it understandable to the audience.

During a conference at one of our Canadian universities, a scientist who had been on the show confided in me when he said: "In our lab, we have a challenge if we are on Quirks & Quarks to get through an interview without you saying 'Let me see if I've got this right.' Because if you say, that it means we have failed to communicate clearly." 

I didn't realize I had set a bar.