What he loves about perceptual psychology: The sense of awe it inspires
What he’s learned about our senses: They’re great team-players
What we can do with our senses: Way more than we might imagine
His Secret:
Magician
What he loves about magic: The sense of awe it inspires
Hardest audience as a magician: Ten-year-old boys
Easiest audience as a magician: Scientists
About Larry Rosenblum
Larry Rosenblum is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California Riverside. He specializes in studying our perceptual abilities and how our senses can work together to give us unexpected “super powers.” When he hangs up his lab coat for the day, Larry’s super power is that he’s a magician.
How a young Larry Rosenblum discovered in one rock song the “touch of revolution” that changed the way he imagined himself as a scientist, and allowed him to become the Perceptual Psychologist he is today.
We threw Larry Rosenblum some pretty heavy questions on everything from Marky Mark to who he’d like to saw in half. His answers did not disappoint, though he did refuse to answer one of our inquiries. Find out which in the player above and on his Secret Life homepage.
When Larry Rosenblum was a teenager, he was way into music, especially what was called “progressive rock” – Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Yes, Genesis – bands that brought classical structure, advanced technique and three-and-a-half-hour drum solos to enthralled masses around the world. And when Larry and his friends eventually formed bands, this was the kind of music they played.
The young rocker/scientist… with truly fantastic hair.
Then it all changed for him:
“I went to visit one of my good friend’s brothers up at his university. He asked us what type of music we were into. We said, ‘Oh, we’re playing all this classical rock.’ He said, ‘Well, that’s all good and fine, but let’s see where music is going.’ And he put on this amazing song called ‘Marquee Moon’ by a band called Television. And it was different from anything I had ever heard. And I realized that these are musicians who might not have the classical technique of the sort of musicians I was listening to, but they were musicians who had a very novel and passionate perspective on what they were doing. And so the parts were simpler. But when they were put together, they formed something very complex, very magical, much more in the gut, much more kind of pure passion.”
Lots of teenagers hear new music. And they excited by it. And that’s the end of the story – no big deal. But there was something about “Marquee Moon” that hit Larry on a molecular level – changed the way he thought about himself and his world forever:
“I decided to go back and start a punk band. And at the same time, something very interesting happened. Because all these friends I had, the guys who were in the classical rock band, they were all budding scientists and brilliant guys. They all ended up being scientists, very successful scientists. But I frankly was very intimidated by how smart they were. They had very good technical skills, very good mathematics skills. And I wasn’t quite as easy in that world as they were. But then by being introduced to a different type of music, I realized if there are different ways of approaching music, there are different ways of approaching science. And I realized that I could be a scientist – and a successful scientist, possibly, by taking a different approach, a less technical approach, but a very thoughtful approach, where maybe the emphasis was on imagination and creativity. And it kind of made me feel a little bit more confident that I could do what I wanted to do, which was to do research on questions I really cared about. I tell people, if they think they don’t have a scientific mind, well, there’s no such thing as ‘a scientific mind.’ There are thousands of scientific minds. There are thousands of ways of becoming a scientist and there are thousands of different types or styles of science you can do.”
Watch Larry’s videos and we think you’ll like the kind of scientist he turned out to be.
Oh and here’s “Marquee Moon.” It might make you want to become a scientist.
Did you know that we can “see” speech? And “hear” visuals? Larry Rosenblum studies how our senses share information, giving us powers of perception that we don’t even know we have.
