FINAL TAXI : Alice Ghostley

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Tony Award-winning actress Alice Ghostley, well-known to TV viewers for playing confused sidekicks on Bewitched and Designing Women took her Final Taxi at 81.

From 1966 through 1972, she made regular appearances on the sitcom Bewitched as shy, bumbling witch Esmeralda From 1986 through 1993, Ghostley portrayed oddball neighbor Bernice Clifton on the hit series Designing Women. She earned an Emmy nomination for the role in 1992.

Over a six-decade career, she made more than 90 TV appearances in such shows as Evening Shade, Love, American Style, Capt. Nice, and Mayberry R.F.D.
Ghostley appeared in 30 films, including To Kill a Mockingbird , The Graduate, Gator and Two on a Bench

FINAL TAXI : Brett Somers

DIRECT MP3 DOWNLOAD: Brett Somers Takes Her Final Taxi

Actress and comedian Brett Somers, who amused game show fans with her quips on the “Match Game” in the 1970s, has taken her Final Taxi at 83.

Hosted by Gene Rayburn, “Match Game” was the top game show during much of the 1970s. Contestants would try to match answers to nonsense questions with a panel of celebrities; much of the humor came from the racy quips and putdowns which many came from Brett Somers.

She stared in my Broadway shows, movies and television shows like Barney Miller, MaryTyler Moore, Love American Style, and Perry Mason.

I adored her quick wit and outspokenness. She will be missed!

Brain Science Podcast #21: Body Maps

Featured in this episode: The Body has a Mind of Its Own: How Body Maps in Your Brain Help You Do (Almost) Everything Better (2007), by Sandra Blakeslee and Matthew Blakeslee. (Also available on from Audible.com)

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SHOW NOTES

Topics:

• Body Maps and the role of embodiment
• Basic ideas about the body maps in the brain
• Mapping the world around us
• How Body maps differ between species
• Body Schema and Body image
• The role of body maps in disease
• The role of belief in health and illness
• How body maps explain non-traditional healing methods and unusual experiences
• The role of motor imagery in improving motor skills
• Mirror Neurons
• Place and grid neurons in the hippocampus (see more on Scholarpedia)
• How sensation and emotions come together (the role of the insula)

Scientists mentioned in the podcast:

• Wilder Penfield: discovered the maps of the primary sensory and primary motor cortex
• Sir Henry Head and Gordon Holmes: British neurologists who first proposed the idea of the body schema in 1911
• Arthur Craig: first to study the unique wiring of the insula.
• Antonio Damasio: studies the role of emotion in intelligent decision-making
• Marco Iacoboni: demonstrated the role of the right angular cingulate gyrus in our sense of self versus others (Dr. Iacoboni has PDF's available on his site)

Other scientists mentioned in The Body has a Mind of Its Own:

• William Straub: sports psychologist who demonstrated that students could improve at darts through mental imagery
• Alvaro Pascual-Leone: used 5 finger piano exercise to show changes in motor maps both from actual practice and from imagery
• Michael Merzenich: classic experiments showing changing in motor maps in monkeys
• Scott Frey: using imagery in stroke rehab
• Jennifer Stevens: use of mirror boxes in stroke rehab
• Edoardo Bisiach: theories about spatial awareness and neglect
  
• Jamie Ward: documented a patient with color-emotion synesthesia as possible explanation for auras
• Olaf Blanke: studies the anterior cingulate gyrus, which map be important in out-of-body experiences
• Atsushi Iriki: has demonstrated how the parietal lobes in monkeys change with tool use
• Christian Keysters: thinks mirror neurons may be a key precursor for the development of abstract thought and language
• Hugo Critchley: expert in brain imaging who is interested in the relationship between emotional intelligence and interoception (visceral awareness)
• John Allman: studies the role of the frontal insula and anterior cingulate gyrus in intuition (quick decisions)
• Sara Lazar: has demontrated that the right frontal insula and left prefrontal cortex increase in size in experienced meditators (more on her meditation research)

Note: This list is not exhaustive. I know I left off VS Ramachandran and several others, but those listed above did work that was addressed, directly or indirectly, in my podcast.

Brain Structures (links include diagrams of the brain):

• Primary Sensory Cortex
• Primary Motor Cortex
• Premotor Cortex
• Frontal Insula
• Parietal lobe
• Amygdala
• Anterior Cingulate Gyrus

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The voice of Jaws and Airplane’s Lipstick Lady

Direct Download MP3- Percy Rodriguez & Charlotte Zucker

Percy Rodrigues, whose role as a neurosurgeon on the 1960s television series “Peyton Place” broke ground because he was cast as an authority figure when relatively few black actors were given such parts, has taken his Final Taxi at 89. He will be known by Star Trek fans as Commodore Stone in the original series but most have heard his voice in movie ads and voiceovers. His most popular would be for “Jaws.”

Charlotte Zucker was the mother of filmmakers David Zucker and Jerry Zucker (aka The Zucker Brothers) who appears in her sons’ movies, including Airplane!, Top Secret!, Ghost, My Boss’ Daughter, First Knight and The Naked Gun trilogy. In Airplane she was the ‘Lipstick Lady.”

Brain Science Podcast #20: The Female Brain with Dr. Louann Brizendine

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Episode #20 of the Brain Science Podcast is an interview with Dr. Louann Brizendine of the Women's Mood and Hormone Clinic at the University of California at San Francisco. Her book, The Female Brain was just released in paperback and it is on the New York Times Bestseller list.

We explore how hormones and neurotransmitters effect our brains and how these effects are different in men and women. This episode has interesting stuff for listeners of both sexes.

If you would like to learn more visit Dr. Brizendine's website at http://louannbrizendine.com.

Please participate in my audience survey at http://wizzard.tv/survey/brainsciencepodcast.

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FINAL TAXI: Inventors of Mr. Freeze & Beach Party Movies

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This week the Final Taxi talks about Max Hodge who took an unknown comic villain and turn him into on of Batman’s most remembered rouges, Mr. Freeze.

Also we follow the life of Tony Caras who after working in horror films with Rodger Corman and made film history in the 60s with ‘beach party’ movies.