
Brief Musical Interlude (Or, Bias)
Let’s talk about bias for a minute. My fiance, Rachel Rynick, just released her first album, and I think it’s awesome. Of course, my opinion on this matter can’t really be trusted.

Brief Musical Interlude (Or, Bias)
Let’s talk about bias for a minute. My fiance, Rachel Rynick, just released her first album, and I think it’s awesome. Of course, my opinion on this matter can’t really be trusted.

Brian Wilson: A Cork on the Ocean
The rise and fall of the Beach Boys leader shows how crucial the brain's executive function is to creativity


Charles J. Limb: Inner Sparks
The Hearing specialist and sax player says that studying the brain during flights of improvisation may provide new understanding of creativity—as well as insight into the musical genius of John Coltrane

Creativity, Madness and Drugs
San Diego—Would we have Poe’s Raven today if the tormented author had taken lithium to suppress his bipolar illness? Not likely, considering the high frequency of psychiatric illnesses among writers and artists, concluded psychiatrist Kay Jamison of Johns Hopkins Medical School speaking last week at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in San Diego.

The Ancient Marriage between Music, Movement and Mood
Think back to that moment when you first heard your favorite song. What about it made you stop in your tracks? Was it the incessant buildup, soaring high, filling you with a sense of elation?

Lady Gaga, You Shouldn’t Be Doing It For The Applause.
When Lady Gaga tells us in her latest hit single that everything she does is “for the applause,” is that a message that we should be celebrating?

Sight and Sound: An Evening with John Williams and Steven Spielberg
We’re sitting in the front row of the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra, listening to the musicians warm up for the dress rehearsal of tonight’s benefit concert starring John Williams, his movie music, and guest starring Steven Spielberg.

The IgNobels, 2013! Playing opera to your mice.
I have to say that the winners of this IgNobel won in my heart PURELY because of the costumes they wore to the ceremony. Yes. Costumes. (The best image I could find, from the South China Post coverage of the story, which you can read here, photo originally via Reuters) Because if you’re going to [...]

A Capella Science–Bohemian Gravity
Who has not caught themselves singing along to Queen’s number one hit “Bohemian Rhapsody”? Perhaps we’ve made up words when we didn’t know them!

Why Education Needs More Radioactive Spiders
Education needs more radioactive spiders. Stay with me. Remember Peter Parker? His childhood wasn’t easy. Both of his parents– Richard and Mary– were killed on a mission as double agents.

A Second Science Front: Evolution Champions Rise to Climate Science Defense
Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, long the nation's leading defender of evolution education, discusses the NCSE's new initiative to help climate science education

How We All Learned to Make The Bomb
Doctor Atomic, a new opera about to open at the Met, brings nuclear proliferation, "rogue states" and the terrorists' dream of a dirty bomb back to the first "ground zero"