It’s a number that has been sung by many diverse artists: Elvis and Bob Dylan, Connie Francis, Harry Belafonte, Chubby Checker, Allan Sherman, Josephine Baker, Regina Spektor, Dick Dale, Glen Campbell and countless others. Harry Belafonte glorified it. Campbell viewed it as an essential tool to earn extra money playing the wedding and bar mitzvah circuit when he first arrived in Los Angeles. Dylan’s version, scholar and music critic Josh Kun explains in the documentary, “is an embrace and a refusal. It’s the smartest song about Jewish identity I’ve ever heard and it only lasts 30 seconds.” Sherman mocked it as he celebrated it, singing “Harvey and Sheila.”

On September 11, 2012, Bob Dylan released his 35^th studio album, Tempest. The reviews poured in, many hailing the album as an instant classic, and simultaneously labeling it Dylan’s darkest album to date, filled with tracks about death and disaster, including the nearly 14-minute long title track about the sinking of the Titanic. When the album’s title was revealed, a firestorm of speculation broke out, particularly among music historians and Dylanologists who hypothesized that Tempest might be the last album in the “Bard from Hibbing’s” 50-year career, as The Tempest was what many critics believe to have been Shakespeare’s final play. 

What do the “a-ha” moments in our minds mean, and where do they come from? The connections between art and science and the mystery of creativity have become the specialties of author and journalist Jonah Lehrer. What makes Lehrer stand out as a writer is that even while explaining the science behind a phenomenon such as creativity, he takes away none of its magic, and even as he acknowledges the complexity of his subject, he still illuminates it beautifully. Lehrer recently spoke with Highbrow Magazine.