Radio Lab: Three is a Magic Number
When Radio Lab goes musical, the world shifts a little bit into harmony. It happened before with the Musical Language episode (‘Sometimes behave so strangely’) and it’s happened with their latest, Pop Music.
The above animation is from Schoolhouse Rock! for which the song Three is a Magic Number was written in 1973. A perfectly acceptable alternate version appears in the friendship montage of one of my favorite movies that everyone else hates: Slackers (2002).
One more fascinating idea from the episode, Columbia Professor of Music Aaron Brown on the origin of country music and its universal appeal (even in non-English-speaking nations):
Country music is born when the country becomes a nostalgic idea.
The notion here is that country music had its first hit in 1927 with “The Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane” performed by Jimmie Rodgers and Fiddlin’ John Carson, at the exact moment in history that the for the first time, the majority of people were living in cities rather than in the country. And migration is a universal concept around the world. Fascinating stuff. Go listen.
Related: an interview today in AV Club with Radio Lab’s cohosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich. Fascinating stuff. Go read.
