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At about this time each year, we hear economic forecasts from the Davos World Economic Forum in Switzerland. That event has concluded and our next guest says he’d like to share his thoughts on those prognostications. Mike Switzer interviews Bruce Yandle, Dean Emeritus at the College of Business & Behavioral Science and Alumni Professor of Economics Emeritus, both at Clemson University. He is also the Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center which publishes his Economic Situation Report.

Did you know that our country has one of the worst traffic safety records in the world? If you do, you would probably not be surprised to also learn that South Carolina drivers cause the most traffic accidents in the country which gives our state the highest traffic fatality rate, as well. And this statistic keeps our next guest very busy. Mike Switzer interviews Amy Johnson Ely, executive director of the Palmetto Cycling Coalition in Columbia. Disclaimer: Mike Switzer is a member of the PCC.

Like many 19th-century composers, Robert Schumann often gave his works picturesque titles. Schumann’s Scenes from Childhood, for example, a set of pieces for solo piano, includes pieces with titles such as “Pleading Child,” and “Frightening.” How literally should we take these titles – and perhaps the picturesque titles of other composers’ works?

It was Beethoven who liberated the timpani from the trumpets, expanding their role and the range of notes they played, and even writing solo passages for them.

uning the drums to specific pitches is a matter of adjusting the tension of the drumheads—tighter for higher, looser for lower. This is done with a pedal mechanism on most modern timpani, although hand screws around the rim are still used for fine adjustments.

Found in the southern and eastern United States, the upland chorus frog is found from the state of New Jersey to the Florida panhandle; west to eastern Texas and southeast Oklahoma.

Baccharis halimifolia is a North American species of shrubs in the family Asteraceae. It is native to Nova Scotia, the eastern and southern United States (from Massachusetts south to Florida and west to Texas and Oklahoma), eastern Mexico (Nuevo León, San Luis Potosí, Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Quintana Roo), the Bahamas, and Cuba.

Groundhog Day is a popular North American tradition observed in the United States and Canada on February 2. It derives from the Pennsylvania Dutch superstition that if a groundhog emerges from its burrow on this day and sees its shadow due to clear weather, it will retreat to its den, and winter will go on for six more weeks; if it does not see its shadow because of cloudiness, spring will arrive early.

"I find an exquisite joy when I search deeply in the recesses of myself, and if anything original is to come from me, it can only come that way."

Yesterday I spoke about picturesque titles of musical compositions, and I quoted Robert Schumann on what he called the “clumsiness” of taking those titles too literally. Schumann’s friend Franz Liszt, on the other hand, coined the term “program music,” and said that when a piece has a program, or story, the musical ideas should clearly reflect the unfolding of the story.