Professor Daniel J. Levitin, Ph.D. (born December 27, 1957, San Francisco) is a prominent American cognitive psychologist, neuroscientist, and writer. He is currently James McGill Professor of psychology and behavioral neuroscience at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada with additional appointments in music theory, computer science, and education. He is Director of the Laboratory for Music Perception, Cognition and Expertise. He is also an accomplished record producer and musician.

He has published scientific articles on absolute pitch, music cognition and neuroscience and is more widely known as the author of two best-selling books, This Is Your Brain On Music: The Science of a Human Obsession, (Dutton/Penguin, 2006; Atlantic [UK] 2007) and The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature (Dutton/Penguin U.S. and Viking/Penguin Canada, 2008). Prior to his academic career, he worked as a producer and sound designer on albums by Blue Öyster Cult, Chris Isaak, as a consultant to Steely Dan, Stevie Wonder and Michael Brook; and as a recording engineer for Santana and The Grateful Dead. Records and CDs to which he has contributed have sold in excess of 30 million copies. From September, 2006 to April 2007 he served as a weekly commentator on the CBC Radio One show Freestyle, and he has appeared frequently on NPR.

Daniel (Hebrew: דָּנִיֵּאל, Modern Daniyyel Tiberian Dāniyyêl ; Arabic: دانيال, meaning in Hebrew "God is my Judge") is the protagonist in the Book of Daniel of the Hebrew Bible. In the narrative, when Daniel was a young man, he was taken into Babylonian captivity where he was educated in Chaldean thought. However, he never converted to Neo-Babylonian ways. By Divine Wisdom from his God, Yahweh, he interpreted dreams and visions of kings, thus becoming a prominent figure in the court of Babylon. Eventually, he had apocalyptic visions of his own that have been interpreted as the Four monarchies. Some of the most famous tales of Daniel are: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, The writing on the wall and Daniel in the lions' den.

In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim (BC 606), Daniel and his friends Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah were among the young Jewish nobility carried off to Babylon. The four were chosen for their intellect and beauty to be trained as advisors to the Babylonian court,(Daniel 1) Daniel was given the name Belteshazzar, i.e., prince of Bel, or Bel protect the king!(not to be confused with the neo-Babylonian king, Belshazzar). Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah were given the Babylonian names, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, respectively.

David Byrne (born May 14, 1952) is a musician and artist, best known as a founding member and principal songwriter of the American new wave band Talking Heads, which was active between 1975 and 1991. Since then, Byrne has released his own solo recordings and worked with various media including film, photography, opera, and non-fiction. He has received Grammy, Oscar, and Golden Globe awards and been inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Byrne was born in Dumbarton, Scotland, to Tom and Emma Byrne. He was the elder of two children. Two years later, his parents moved to Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and then to Arbutus, Maryland, when he was 8 or 9 years old. His father worked as an electronics engineer. Before high school, David Byrne already knew how to play the guitar, accordion, and violin. He was rejected from his middle school’s choir because they claimed he was "off-key and too withdrawn." From a young age, Byrne had a strong interest in music. His parents say that he would constantly play his phonograph from age three and he learned how to play the harmonica at age five. In his journals he says, "I was a peculiar young man — borderline Asperger's, I would guess." As revealed by Tina Weymouth in the commentary for the concert film Stop Making Sense, Byrne is left handed but plays guitar right handed.

Pam Belluck, an American journalist and author, is a health and science writer for The New York Times and author of the book Island Practice.

Belluck has been a staff writer for The Times since 1995, writing about topics as varied as floating islands, Alzheimer's disease, cattle rustling, and the effect of music on the brain. She joined the science and health staff of The Times in 2009 after more than a decade as a national correspondent leading the paper's Midwest and New England bureaus. She previously was the Queens bureau chief and a metropolitan education reporter.

She also covered the Oklahoma City bombing, the crash of TWA Flight 800, the Columbine high school shooting, the start of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, and the scandal of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests. She has written in-depth projects on Alzheimer's, public housing in Chicago, food safety, end-of-life decisions, and families of children with mental illness.

Belluck is the author of the forthcoming non-fiction book Island Practice, about a doctor on Nantucket, scheduled for publication in June 2012 by PublicAffairs.

Rosanne Cash (born May 24, 1955) is an American singer-songwriter and author. She is the eldest daughter of country music icon Johnny Cash and his first wife, Vivian Liberto Cash Distin.

Although Cash is often classified as a country artist, her music draws on many genres, including folk, pop, rock and blues. In the 1980s, she had a string of chart-topping singles, which crossed musical genres and landed on both C&W and Top 100 charts, the most commercially successful being her 1981 breakthrough hit "Seven Year Ache", which topped the U.S. country singles charts and reached the Top 30 on the U.S. pop singles charts. In 1990, Cash released Interiors, a spare, introspective album which signaled a break from her pop country past. The following year Cash ended her marriage and moved from Nashville to New York City, where she continues to write, record and perform. Since 1991 she has released five albums, written two books and edited a collection of short stories. Her fiction and essays have been published in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Oxford-American, New York Magazine, and various other periodicals and collections.