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SEEING AND PERCEIVING

Oliver Sacks has an unusual problem. He can't recognize other people's faces. In fact, he doesn't always recognize himself when he's looking in the mirror. Sacks is also a neurologist who's fascinated by brain disorders. We'll talk with Sacks and with the painter Chuck Close, who also suffers from face-blindness. In this hour of To the Best of Our knowledge, the many ways of seeing the world.

SEGMENT 1:

Today, we'll talk with Oliver Sacks about the neurobiology of vision. We'll also examine the science behind synesthesia - why some people can hear colors or feel the flavor of food on their fingers. First, Oliver Sacks, the celebrated doctor who writes about some of the brain's strangest disorders. His latest book, "The Mind's Eye," is a study of rare visual impairments caused by neurological disorders. It's an unusually personal book for Sacks – because it reveals his own struggle with a disorder called facial blindness. Steve Paulson talked to Sacks recently about some case histories.

SEGMENT 2:

Susan Krieger not completely blind, but her vision is bad enough to make her legally blind. Although she prizes her self-sufficiency, she recently got a guide dog, Teela, who is now her constant companion. She tells Jim Fleming that this raises some basic questions about how Susan Krieger thinks of herself, things she writes about in a memoir called "Traveling Blind." Ken Nordine recites his word poem "yellow," which leads to a discussion of synethesia. a neurological condition which causes one sense to cross paths with another. David Eagleman is a neurologist and the co-author of the book "Wednesday is Indigo Blue: Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia." Anne Strainchamps asked him to describe the condition. Also, Jim Fleming reads a short excerpt from "Speak Memory, by one of the literary world's most famous synesthetes was Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov, who wrote about his "colored hearing."

SEGMENT 3:

Chuck Close, a painter famous for his huge canvases and his uncanny ability to portray his subjects with almost photographic realism. He has a neurological condition that prevents him from recognizing people's faces. Today, Chuck Close is in his early 70s - still painting, with brushes strapped to his hand - and now the subject of a biography by his friend Christopher Finch. Close and Finch talked with Steve Paulson about Close's painting career

CD copies are available at 1-800-747-7444. Ask for program number 11-02-06-A.

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Books & CDs:

Oliver Sacks, The Mind's Eye (Knopf)
Christopher Finch, Chuck Close: Life (Prestel)
Susan Krieger, Traveling Blind: Adventures in Vision with a Guide Dog by My Side (Purdue)
Vladimir Nabakov, Speak Memory: an Autobiography Revisited (Vintage)
Richard Cytowic and David Eagleman, Wednesday Is Indigo Blue: Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia (MIT Press)

Websites:

• Oliver Sacks
  http://www.oliversacks.com/
• Susan Krieger
  http://susankrieger.stanford.edu/travelingblind/
• David Eagleman Lab
  http://eaglemanlab.net/
• Chuck Close
  http://www.chuckclose.coe.uh.edu/
• Ken Nordine Word Jazz
  http://www.wordjazz.com/

Music:

• After Sacks:
  Vijay Iyer w/ "Human Nature"
  On "Solo"
  (Act Music)
• After Krieger:
  Ken Nordine w/ "Yellow"
  On "Colors"
  (Rubber Frog Music)
• After Eagleman:
  Messiaen w/ "Des Canyons aux Etoiles"
  Performed by London Sinfonietta
  (CBS Records)
• Music under Nabokov reading:
  Simone Dinnerstein w/ "English Suite No. E in G Minor, BWV 808"
  On "Bach: A Strange Beauty"
  (Sony Classical)
• After Close and Finch:
  Vijay Iyer w/ "Desiring"
  On "Solo"

Distribution dates: week of 02/06/2011 - hour 1 click HERE for timings and cues

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