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To the Best of Our Knowledge

 


A Five Part Series from TTBOOK!

 

PRI
Public Radio International

WPR
Wisconsin Public Radio

 

 
spacer from Wisconsin Public Radio  

MIND AND MEANING

Program 08-09-21-A

Listen!

Jill Bolte Taylor is a Harvard-trained brain scientist who suffered a crippling stroke. What's remarkable about her story is that she watched - in clinical detail - what was happening to her own mind and body while she was having the stroke. As her body shut down, she felt strangely euphoric. And she had to decide whether she wanted to go on living. We'll talk with Jill Bolte Taylor in this hour of To the Best of Our Knowledge.

SEGMENT 1:

Jill Bolte Taylor is a Harvard trained brain scientist who suffered a devastating stroke and describes the event and her long struggle to recover in her book, "My Stroke of Insight." She talks with Anne Strainchamps about the remarkably different ways the left and right hemispheres of the human brain perceive and process information. Taylor is now a neuro-anatomist at the Indiana University Medical School. Also, the Absurd Imposters, pranksters Jim Coyle and Mal Sharpe, perform their "Microphone in Brain."

SEGMENT 2:

George Vaillant is a Harvard psychiatrist on a mission to reclaim spirituality and ground it in hard science. His book is "Spiritual Evolution: A Scientific Defense of Faith." Vaillant tells Steve Paulson that people are innately spiritual and that only recently has the medical profession begun to pay attention to the power of the positive emotions. Also, Daniel Levitin runs McGill University's Laboratory for Musical Perception, Cognition and Expertise. He's also a musician, record producer and author, most recently of "The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature." He talks with Jim Fleming about music's pivotal role in human evolution.

SEGMENT 3:

Owen Flanagan is a philosopher of mind who spends his professional life tackling the so-called "hard problem" of consciousness. Now he's moved on. His latest book is called "The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in A Material World." Flanagan and Steve Paulson discuss how it's possible to find meaning in life when you don't believe in God, the supernatural or any non-material reality.

CD copies are available at 1-800-747-7444. Ask for program number 08-09-21-A.

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CDs:

Jill Bolte Taylor, My Stroke of Insight (Penguin)

George Vaillant, Spiritual Evolution : A Scientific Defense of Faith (Broadway)

Daniel Levitin, The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature (Penguin)
Owen Flanagan, The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World (MIT)

Music:

  • After Taylor:
    Coyle & Sharpe w/ “Microphone in Brain”
    From CD “Audio Visionaries”
    Thirsty Ear Recordings

  • After Coyle & Sharpe:
    One Ring Zero w/ “Natty Man Blues”
    On “As Smart As We Are”
    One Ring Zero Publishing, BMI

  • After Vaillant:
    One Ring Zero w/ “Nothing Else is Happening”
    On “As Smart As We Are”

  • In Levitin:
    Bobby McFerrin w/ “Simple Pleasures”
    On “Simple Pleasures”
    EMI-Manhattan Records

  • Neil Young w/ “Through My Sails”
    On “Zuma”
    Warner Bros. Records

  • Motley Crue w/ “Smokin’ in the Boys Room”
    On “Theatre of Pain”
    Motley Records/Eleven Seven Music

  • Tallis Scholars w/ “”Gloria”
    On Josquin: L’homme arme Masses”
    Gimell Records

  • Monty Python w/ “The Meaning of Life”
    On “The Instant Monty Python CD Collection 6”
    Virgin Records

  • After Flanagan:
    John Eliot Gardiner w/ “Kyrie”
    On J.S. Bach’s “Mass in B Minor”
    Archiv Produktion

Distribution dates:
week of 08/23/2009 - hour 2
week of 09/21/2008 - hour 1
click HERE for timings and cues

Listen!

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Questions and comments can be addressed to: flemingj@wpr.org

     


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