Greg Olsen made sure to get a front-row seat for National Public Radio’s “Talk of the Nation: Science Friday.”

The show, hosted by NPR science correspondent Ira Flatow, broadcasted live Friday afternoon from the new Biomedical and Physical Sciences Building.

The show featured area experts on automotive technologies and MSU engineering, food science and packaging professors.

But as the crowd of about 150 people listened to Flatow and guests discuss automotive innovations and food science improvements, Olsen, a telecommunication junior, kept his eyes on the engineers working the various consoles and dials.

“It was great to see what they do,” he said.

Olsen, a regular listener of NPR, said he was able to learn things on two levels by attending the broadcast - science and radio broadcasting.

“I always learn something, that’s the great thing,” he said.

Combining two areas of interest is how Flatow got his start in science journalism.

In the late 1960s, he entered the State University of New York at Buffalo, planning to become an engineer.

“I went into college and I stumbled upon a campus radio station,” he said. “I thought I’d twist the dials a bit.”

Flatow covered riots and demonstrations on campus during the late 1960s, but soon found a way to combine his interest in science with his work in journalism.

“I wanted to stay with science so when the first Earth Day rolled around in 1970, there was my first opportunity to combine my new love of broadcasting with my love of science,” he said. “I took it from there.”

Making science appeal to a wide audience can be difficult, Flatow said.

“It’s important to have fun with science but not to denigrate it,” he said.

Flatow was visiting campus as the last speaker in this year’s McPherson Professorship series.

The professorship, which promotes the understanding of science, was created in 2000 after a $2 million anonymous donation. The donor requested MSU President M. Peter McPherson and his wife Joanne determine how the money should be spent.

“The McPherson Professorship is a great idea,” Flatow said. “I’m happy that I got the opportunity to try to explain science.”

Flatow said people should not be intimidated by science, but also shouldn’t be discouraged if it takes awhile to understand.

He said he has difficulty understanding quantum mechanics and physics.

“I’ve been studying it 30 years and I have to keep reading it over and over and over again,” he said. “You sort of forget it.”

Flatow said he sometimes relies on scientists to explain complicated issues to him.

“If they can explain it to me in English, I can explain it to someone else,” he said. “Or I find really good books by really knowledgeable people.

“They may not be best-sellers, but they’re there.”

Flatow, who gave the audience score updates for the North Carolina State University versus MSU men’s basketball game during breaks in his show, spent a week on campus visiting classes and having dinner with students and faculty members.

English Professor Tess Tavormina took a group of students to dine with Flatow.

“He pulled no punches in talking to them,” she said. “He wanted to hear what they had to say.”

Tavormina said having personal contact with a nationally known journalist through the professorship was an opportunity few in Mid-Michigan get.

“It brings some of the cosmopolitan opportunities to campus,” she said.