A Five Part Series from TTBOOK!

Public Radio International

Wisconsin Public Radio

THE MIND, MUSIC & MATH

Program 06-10-22-A

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Remember the girl on TV with the frying pan? She was out to make a point about your brain on drugs, and she did. Now Daniel Levitin's catching a lot of people's ears with a new book called "Your Brain on Music." In this hour of To the Bestof Our Knowledge, a visit with Daniel Levitin to explore music, the mind and the brain. Also, British novelist Nick Hornby and physicist Janna Levin with new fiction that ponders the minds of two brilliant and famous mathematicians, as well as some other would-be suicides.

SEGMENT 1:

Daniel Levitin is the author of "This Is Your Brain on Music." He tells Anne Strainchamps how composers and performers play with our expectations to keep the brain interested in music. Levitin describes what's going on in several musical examples. Visit our website and we'll link you to his.

SEGMENT 2:

British novelist Nick Hornby has written a funny book about suicide. It's called "A Long Way Down." He reads excerpts and talks about it with Steve Paulson, quickly admitting than none of his major characters actually die in the novel. Also, Adam Haslett's first book was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. It's a book of stories called "You Are Not A Stranger Here." Haslett tells Jim Fleming that the emotional worlds of his mentally ill characters are different from those of the rest of us only in degree, not in kind.

SEGMENT 3:

Physicist Janna Levin has written a novel called "A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines." Levin tells Steve Paulson why she wanted to write about mathematicians Alan Turing and Kurt Godel, and why her book is a novel. Also, Daniel Levitan reacts to a musical example Anne Strainchamps provides and talks about music and children's brains.

CD copies are available at 1-800-747-7444. Ask for program number 06-10-22-A.

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Books:

Adam Haslett, You Are Not a Stranger Here: stories (Anchor Books)
Nick Hornby, A Long Way Down: a novel (Riverhead Books)
Janna Levin, A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines: a novel (Knopf)
Daniel J. Levitin, This is Your Brain on Music: the science of a human obsession (Dutton)

Music:

• Music sting
  Joni Mitchell "Big Yellow Taxi"
• First Levitin production piece
  Steve Wonder - "Superstition; Rufus - "Tell Me Something Good"; Joni Mitchell - "Refuge of the Roads"; Owsley - "Oh no, the radio"
• After Hornby:
  "Bellat" by Barry Phillips from Trad BPCD 049
  http://www.barryandshelley.com
• After Haslett:
• Dan Levitin "BOC II" (private recording)
• After Levin:
• Chopin: Nocturne (private recording)
• Second Levitin:
  "Kookabura" - private recording of 4th grade string class
  Mozart: Symphony No 1 in E-0flat, K 16; Prague Chamber Orchestra, Charles McKerras (Telarc CD 80256)
  

Distribution dates:

week of 10/14/2007 - hour 1 week of 10/22/2006 - hour 1

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