Radiolab

After about 50 recommends to check out NPR's Radiolab, I finally decided to take Huff up on it this morning. I am not yet finished my first episode, but it is concluding as I type this. Radiolab is hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich and I must admit it is a pretty fantastic program. If you have a job where you can sit and pay attention to an hour-long podcast I highly recommend it as a way to pass your time at the office. It is hard to listen to if you can't really pay attention, because you miss a lot of what's going on. But if you can really tune-in it might become a new favorite for you.

I checked out the episode entitled Musical Language. This is the plot description:

What is music? How does it work? Why does it move us? Why are some people better at it than others? In this hour, we examine the line between language and music, how the brain processes sound, and we meet a composer who uses computers to capture the musical DNA of dead composers in order to create new work. We also re-imagine the disastrous 1913 debut of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring...through the lense of modern neurology.

All of the segments in this episode were really interesting. One highlight for me was an investigation of the Speech-to-Song Illusion. Basically the concept of this is if you hear a spoken phrase repeated a couple times, it begins to take on the character of song. The example here is pretty amazing. This is actually the exact example used in the show. Their is a recorded excerpt of a couple of sentences of a woman speaking, and after the excerpt concludes they loop the phrase "sometimes behave so strangely" (Play "Listen: Sound Demo 1). You don't really get what is happening at first, but on the play back this phrase takes on a songlike character that the rest of the paragraph doesn't simple because you've heard it repeated a number of times. I highly recommend you listen to at least Sound Demo's 1 & 2 to get the full effect. I heard the beginning portion of the podcast in my car this morning, and as soon as I heard the phrase it popped out as being "music" instead of "speech." Neat!

Other highlights for me were an investigation of Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring (a favorite composer of mine). In 1913 Igor Stravinsky premiered "The Rite of Spring" which was a revolutionary composition, full of harsh harmonies (not reallly for today, but in 1913 they were harsh), and asymmetrical rhythm, and is a portrayal of the Pagan sacrifice of a girl in Spring. Anyway, during it's 1913 premier the Rite of Spring induced a riot within the first 3 minutes and the piece wasn't even performed in it's entirety. Supposedly a lot of people in the building actually liked it, but a LOT of them hated it starting fights and shouting. The very same piece was performed a second time one year later to rave reviews and pushed Stravinsky into superstardom. Radiolab looks into why the first time it was performed it caused a riot and the second time it made Stravinsky so famous that the piece was used in Disney's Fantasia:



There's a lot more great stuff in just this one episode, so I can't wait to check out more. They are all available for FREE on iTunes. So you can put a bunch in an iPod and have them saved for a boring day. Really good stuff. Thanks, Huff...what are other favorite episodes?

Along the same lines as this podcast, check out this video of Sarah Palin Sings. (I guess this goes along with Ricky's post from yesterday as well):