While Brother Bill is away for the next few weeks finding new sounds in faraway lands, I decided to explore the sonic landscape a bit farther afield this week myself. So in addition to the usual fiddle and banjo stuff from Appalachia and the UK/Ireland, I dipped into some goth folk from Canada's Mama's Broke, some Americana from Australia's Weeping Willows, and how about some electronic dance folk from France's Green Lads (pictured here). And how about that heat wave, Davis!

So what if it's hot? Listen in for some hot songs to cool you down.

Last week, we played a few sets of songs about coal mining. Then the folk music police saw our playlist and informed us that we needed to be more inclusive, so this week we've diversified a bit and included a few songs about hard rock miners too. But mostly more songs about coal from the likes of Jean Ritchie (pictured), Jez Lowe, Caroline Herring, Doc and Merle Watson, Merle Travis, and Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard.

Imagine that you want to speak, but you can’t, because a stroke or disease has robbed you of the ability. Two researchers at UC Davis are helping to create a “brain-machine interface” that would use a brain implant and technology to recreate an individual's ability to talk. That advance would be profoundly important to the individual, of course, and for all of us, it’s a promising use of technology.

Today on Davisville we talk with Drs. David Brandman and Sergey Stavisky about their research, how the interface would work, who it can help, recent advances in neuroprosthetics, the novel leadership set-up of their lab, and what brought them to UC Davis.

(This UC Davis Health photo shows members of the UC Davis Neuroprosthetics Lab, with Sergey Stavisky at the far left, and David Brandman second from right.)