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BEFRIENDING YOUR BRAIN
| Program 06-06-11-B | 
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Who's calling your shots? Who's in charge of your thinking, your perceptions? Maybe it's simple. Your mind is the boss, then your brain runs your body. Everything's fine. Until it's not and you find yourself confronting depression or autism or a head injury that leaves you with brain damage. Suddenly you have to make friends again with a brain you barely know. In this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge, we'll meet some people who've had to befriend a troubled brain - their own or a loved one's. Writers, musicians, and plain old Moms!
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SEGMENT 1:
Marti Leimbach is an autism activist and successful novelist. Her new book is "Daniel Isn't Talking." She tells Jim Fleming the book's based on her own experiences trying to get help for her autistic son. We also hear clips from popular movies with positive portrayals of autism including "Rain Man" and "What's Eating Gilbert Grape?" Also, Kamran Nazeer has autism and wrote "Send in the Idiots: Stories from the Other Side of Autism." He tells Anne Strainchamps about his own autism and about some of the other autistic children he went to school with and what happened to them.
SEGMENT 2:
Dave King is the author of "The Ha-Ha." It's about a Vietnam Vet with brain damage who has to take care of his girlfriend's son. King tells Jim Fleming that his interest in the communication difficulties of the handicapped was prompted by his autistic brother. And King reads a few sections from his novel. Also, Claude Coleman was the drummer for cult rock group WEEN when he was involved in a car crash that left him with multiple broken bones, paralyzed on his left side, and brain- damaged. Coleman tells Steve Paulson that learning to make music again has been part of his therapy. He sings and plays guitar for Amandla, his solo project and is just finishing the second Amandla album, "The Full Catasrophe." And we hear some of the music.
SEGMENT 3:
John Sedgwick was born into the historic and prominent Boston Sedgwick family. He seems to have inherited the family tendency toward mental instability. He tells Jim Fleming that he was felled by clinical depression shortly after his first book came out and that only Prozac made life worth living again. Sedgwick's second novel is called "The Education of Mrs. Bemis."
CD copies are available at 1-800-747-7444. Ask for program number 06-06-11-B.
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Books:
- Kamran Nazeer, Send in
the Idiots: Stories from the Other Side of Autism (Bloomsbury)
- Dave King, The Ha-Ha
(Little, Brown)
- John Sedgwick, The Education
of Mrs. Bemis (Harper Collins)
- Marti Leimbach, Daniel Isn't Talking (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday)
Music:
- All music for this show is by Amandla
and comes from their first album, “Falling Alone”. Sounds
of Black Sheep, 337A Rt.31n Hopewell, NJ
amandla@amandlanet.com or www.amandlanet.com
“Respectable” is from their forthcoming second album, “The Full Catastrophe”
Additional contact: Randy Alexander, President Randex Communications, www.randexpr.com
Distribution dates:
| week of 01/13/2008
- hour 2 week of 06/11/2006 - hour 2 |
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Questions and comments can be addressed to: flemingj@wpr.org
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