December 01, 2006
In the standard Hollywood formula, you pretty much can’t be a genius without also being nuts. Is there really a connection between great creativity and mental illness? Tamar Brott speaks with Kaye Redfield Jamison and other experts and tries to separate the truth from the myth.
Wouldn't it be nice to find the little light bulb in your brain that goes off when you have a creative idea? Professor Nancy Andreasen, author of The Creating Brain: The Neuroscience of Genius, explains to Kurt about magnetic resonance imaging and what it can find in the brains of highly creative people.
It would be hard to write a novel - or read one - without the ability to empathize. Recent discoveries tell us that empathy may be hard-wired in our brains. V.S. Ramachandran, who teaches neuroscience at the University of California, San Diego, explains how mirror neurons work their empathic magic.
Kurt talks to David Freedberg about what mirror neurons do for us when we look at art. Freedberg is an art historian at Columbia University, but much of his work in recent years has focused on the connection between art and neuroscience.
What separates humans from animals? It used to be tools - and then we found out some animals are pretty handy. But what about art? There may be nothing prettier than birdsong, but each species sings pretty much the same tune. Are animals ever really creative? WBUR's Sean Cole went looking for animal artists and found a dog painter and an orchestra of elephants.
In his thirty year career as a musician, Robyn Hitchcock has become a cult favorite. From leading the New Wave band The Soft Boys to his own solo career as a surrealist folk-singer, Robyn has mixed whimsy with serious song-writing craft. His new band is called the Venus 3 - and includes REM's Peter Buck. They join Kurt live in the studio to play some songs off their new album, Olé! Tarantula.
Studio 360 is a co-production of
Public
Radio International and
WNYC New York Public Radio, and is funded in part by
Ken and Lucy Lehman, the
National Endowment for the Arts, the Lily Auchincloss Foundation,
DK Eyewitness Travel,
Herman Miller and
Design Within Reach. Studio 360's American Icons series is supported in part by the
National Endowment for the Humanities. Our series on creativity and science is supported in part by the
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Our series on Underground Heroes is supported in part by the New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. 
