How Slowing Down Makes Life Better & Why Every Brain Needs Music

Ever notice how your face turns bright red when you're embarrassed—and makes the whole situation even worse? As awkward as blushing feels, it isn't a design flaw. It's actually serving a purpose that's far more useful than most people realize. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/bering-in-mind/why-we-blush-the-social-purpose-of-showing-embarrassment/ Many of us race through life without even realizing we're doing it. We hurry through meals, conversations, vacations—even our free time. But what if all that rushing is quietly making life less enjoyable and less fulfilling? According to Carl Honoré, slowing down isn't about getting less done—it's about getting far more out of everything you do. He explains why living at a different pace can transform your work, your relationships, and your happiness. Carl is author of In Praise of Slowness (https://amzn.to/43GRlXN). Music is everywhere. We choose to listen to some of it, while the rest quietly fills stores, restaurants, movies, TV shows, elevators, and countless other places. But what is all that music actually doing to your brain? Why does it have such a powerful effect on memory, emotion, focus, and even the way you experience the world? Larry Sherman reveals the remarkable neuroscience behind music and why our brains seem wired to need it. Larry is Professor of Neuroscience at Oregon Health & Science University and author of Every Brain Needs Music: The Neuroscience of Making and Listening to Music (https://amzn.to/3JdFDf8). Silver jewelry naturally tarnishes over time—but there's an inexpensive household item that can help slow the process dramatically. It's probably sitting in a drawer or classroom somewhere, and once you hear why it works, you'll never look at it the same way again. https://www.thelist.com/1235914/why-you-should-store-a-piece-of-chalk-in-your-jewelry-drawer/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Mike Carruthers?

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• 0:44Mike Carruthers?

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• 1:22Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know, why blushers blush and the message blushing sends to others. Then, we live in a fast-paced world. Everyone's in a hurry to get things done. And yet.

• 1:35Speaker 01

  Too much speed, too much hurry is the enemy of productivity and creativity. People start making more mistakes. Their imagination falls off a cliff. There are all kinds of reasons to slow down. Actually, in a world addicted to speed, slowness is a superpower.

• 1:50Mike Carruthers?

  Also, why you might want to put some blackboard chalk in your jewelry box. And how music affects our brain and triggers our emotions, happy and sad.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  We talk about always wanting to be happy, but in reality, we seek out sad songs. We want to have that catharsis. We want to have that experience of sadness without actually going through the actual loss or sadness. And that actually gives us a sense of reward.

• 2:16Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on Something You Should Know.

• 2:21Mike Carruthers?

  There's probably no better endorsement for a company than this. I keep buying their stuff. That's exactly what's happening with me and Quince. It started with their clothes. I've bought sweaters, polos, pants, jeans, shoes, a belt. And Quince has become one of the first places I look when I need something new to wear. And my wife and son buy from Quince too, all the time. What keeps bringing us back is the quality and the price. Quince uses premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, merino wool. Their cashmere sweaters start at just $60. And with colder weather coming, they have down jackets

• 3:06Mike Carruthers?

  and classic wool outerwear as well. Quince prices everything 50 to 80% less than similar brands by working directly with ethical factories and cutting out the middlemen. And it's not just clothes. They have bedding, bath, kitchen essentials, and furniture. We even have Quince pillows. So this isn't one of those endorsements where I try something once because they sent it to me. We shop at Quince, and I absolutely recommend you try it. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them,

• 3:51Mike Carruthers?

  please let them know it was Something You Should Know. It's the best way to support our show. Something You Should Know. Fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, and welcome to Something You Should Know. We have a lot of interesting things to cover today. For example, how music affects you, the extraordinary benefits of slowing down the pace of your life. And we start things off today with blushing. Darwin called blushing "the most peculiar and most human of all expressions." So why do we do it? Well, it does appear to serve a purpose

• 4:35Mike Carruthers?

  by conveying to other people genuine remorse, regret, or embarrassment. Blushing works much the same way as crying when we are remorseful about something we did. It shows appeasement, and it allows other people to forgive you more easily. Blushing also tends to be an uncomfortable experience for the blusher. So it tends to be a deterrent to repeating the behavior in the future. Blushing is involuntary. It's uncontrollable, according to a study in the journal Emotion. And interestingly, people of all colors and ethnicities blush. It's just that Caucasians are the easiest to spot. And that is something you should know.

• 5:22Mike Carruthers?

  How many times have you heard the phrase or said the phrase, "We live in a fast-paced world"? Which implies that it isn't just what you do that counts. It's how fast you do it. How can you get to your destination faster? How can you finish your work faster? How can you clean the house faster? It's all wrapped up in this idea of hurrying up. Here's what got me thinking about this a while ago. I was driving somewhere. I think I was just going to the store. There was no deadline. There was no rush, no hurry. And still, I found myself getting frustrated at the slow traffic and going through questionable yellow lights, passing slower drivers. Why? I was in a hurry for absolutely no reason

• 6:06Mike Carruthers?

  other than I and most of us have been programmed to do whatever we do faster. And that's a problem, according to my guest, Carl Anore. He is author of the book, "In Praise of Slowness." Hi, Carl. Welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  Hi, Mike. Good to be with you.

• 6:25Mike Carruthers?

  So why your interest in slowness in a world that seems to favor fastness? Why do you care about this? Explain why this is important.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  Well, a lot of us these days are stuck in fast-forward. So we're racing through our lives instead of actually living them. And I had my own personal wake-up call when I started reading bedtime stories to my son. And back in those days, I just couldn't slow down. So I'd go into his room at the end of the day, and I would speed read Snow White. So I'd be skipping lines and paragraphs. I became an expert in what I called the multiple-page turn technique. Where you try and... But it never worked, right? Because my son knew the stories back to front. So he'd always catch me out and say, you know, "Daddy, why are there only three dwarves in the story tonight? What happened to Grumpy?" And this was just a really lamentable state of affairs. I knew this should be the most intimate, magical moment when a dad sits down to read to his son.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  But it had become in my life a war between his slowness and my speed. And I got to the point where I was flirting with buying a book I'd heard about called "The One Minute Bedtime Story," so Snow White in 60 Seconds. And I thought, wow, what a great idea. I need that book now from Amazon drone delivery. But then thankfully, I had a second thought, which was, whoa, has it really come to this? Are you really in such a hurry? You're prepared to fob off your little boy with a soundbite at the end of the day? And that was just, that was hitting rock bottom. It was like an out-of-body experience. I could see myself in sharp relief. And what I saw there was just, it was just ugly and unedifying. And I thought, I'm not actually living. I'm just rushing. And that was when I began to think, perhaps there's a different way of living in the modern world

• 7:58Speaker 01

  that doesn't involve turning every second of the day into a race against the clock.

• 8:02Mike Carruthers?

  And I think people get that. They have a sense of that, that sometimes we need to slow down. But how do, and it sounds good, but how do we know it's good? Is there research to support it? Or is just, it's a feel-good kind of idea?

• 8:18Speaker 01

  Well, I think it starts as a feel-good idea, but there's all kinds of research to back it up. I mean, we know that if people are racing, not, you know, running around like headless chickens, constantly distracted, overstressed, overhurried, that we burn out, right? Our bodies can't take it. We're exhausted. People aren't sleeping as much anymore from teenagers up because we're just so overhyped, right? We're just sort of pumped up on adrenaline. And this takes a toll on our mental and physical health. It also gets in the way, all of this speed, busyness, and distraction, gets in the way of our relationships. You know, we can't listen anymore to other people. We can't empathize. We struggle to feel them because we're just racing through the world instead of actually connecting with other human beings in it.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  And then if you look at the workplace, there's libraries full of studies showing that too much speed, too much hurry, too much distraction is the enemy of productivity and creativity. People start making more mistakes. They can't join the dots. Their imagination falls off a cliff. So there are all kinds of reasons to slow down that we can feel intuitively. But the science is there telling us the same message, which is that actually, in a world addicted to speed, slowness is a superpower.

• 9:33Mike Carruthers?

  Isn't some of this, though, a bit individual, personality-driven? That some people just seem to do better at a faster RPM than others?

• 9:44Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. I think each of us has our own personal internal metronome. And some people have it set a little higher than others. I'm a naturally fast person myself. So I love speed. I'm quite comfortable at a speedy rhythm. But what you discover when you're, especially if you're a fast type A kind of person, is that you can fall into that trap of having only one speed, having only one mode, and that mode is turbo, and no one fits into that category, right? No matter how much of a type A person you need, you are, you still need to sleep. You still need to rest. You still need time to pause, reflect, contemplate, mull things.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  You, you, you, it doesn't make sense to be turning every moment of the day into a multitasking mania. So yes, some people will find it harder to slow down than others, but we all need slow.

• 10:37Mike Carruthers?

  But not necessarily in place of fast, right? It's, I mean, there are times when you have to, you know, if you're late for the airplane, you better get there quick. I mean, it's not like one or the other. It's finding time for slow.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  Exactly. I mean, I'm not an extremist of slowness. I love speed. Faster is often better. We all know that, right? This, this whole slow movement or slow revolution is about doing things at the right speed. So understanding that there are times for fast, but there are also times to slow things down and play with other less hurried rhythms. Musicians have a wonderful phrase, which is tempo giusto, which means the correct tempo for each piece of music. And that kind of gets at what this slow revolution or slow creed is all about. It's about finding the right tempo for the moment. And when I'm talking about slowing down, I'm really talking about something bigger than, you know, 10 miles an hour versus 20 miles an hour. I'm talking about a mindset. So it's about, ultimately, it's about doing everything not as fast

• 11:33Speaker 01

  as possible, but as well as possible, which at its core is an immensely simple idea, but also at the same time, a hugely powerful one, because it can just revolutionize everything you do. So that's why pretty much in every field of human endeavor now, you will find a slow movement, whether it's slow food, slow leadership, slow sex, slow education, slow travel, slow fashion, you know, people coming to whatever task they find themselves confronted with and saying, how can I do this thing better and enjoy it more by slowing down to the right speed? So clearly you don't, there's bad slow and good slow, right? Bad slow is dragging your feet and missing an important deadline at work, or failing to get to the departure gate in time to catch the flight you talked about a moment ago, right?

• 12:17Speaker 01

  But the revolutionary idea, the idea that is just full of all kinds of good liberation for every single one of us, is that there is also good slow. You know, good slow is getting a good night's sleep, right? Good slow is reading a bedtime story to your child without skipping pages. Good slow is pondering a work problem from every angle, so that you make the best decision and get the right outcome. I mean, good slow is part of the equation as much as bad slow, in the same way as there's good fast and bad fast. It's really about finding the right rhythm, the right tempo for you in that moment.

• 12:52Mike Carruthers?

  Well, you said something a moment ago that I think is, is part of the crux of this, which is, you know, you can do something slow and do it well, or do something fast and do it fast. And I think there's a struggle with that, because if, for example, you're doing something and there's a deadline, well, you couldn't do it slow and miss the deadline and do it really well, but it won't matter because there's, a deadline has passed. Or you can get it in on time. And I think people have trouble balancing that.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's hard to balance, because I think the main reason it's hard to balance is that we are constantly pelted with the message that you must not slow down, that slowing down is for losers, slowing down means falling behind. But if you slow down intelligently and judiciously at the right moments, you're actually going to get things done better, and very often you'll get them done faster. I think of this as the delicious paradox of slow, that by slowing down in the right moments in the right way, you get better results, but you often get them more quickly. There's a military saying, slow is smooth and smooth is fast. And that applies right across our lives. You talked about someone at work confronting a deadline and thinking, oh, no, I've got to, I've got to put the pedal to the metal here to hit that deadline. Well, I would, I would argue there's a way to step back from that and rethink it.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  So let's say you've got three hours till deadline. What most people will do is power through for all three of those hours, right? Chain to the desk, nose to the laptop, grinding it out, right? There's the deadline, three hours ahead. I'm not going to slow down. I'm not going to stop. I'm going to power through to the deadline and get it done. But you'd be far better off looking at those three hours and saying, okay, I'm going to power through for 20 minutes, then I'm going to stop. I'm going to take five slow minutes to walk around the block, or go sit under a tree, or go make a cup of tea, or go have a chat and flirt with my favorite barista. I'm going to have that slow moment. And in that slow moment, because the science is very clear on this, we start to relax, we recharge our, our, our physical batteries,

• 14:53Speaker 01

  but we also energize our minds, that the creativity can kick in, because you're moving away from that high-speed, high-stakes, high-adrenaline mode, the deadline mode, right? Which seems on the surface to be more productive, but actually is a false economy. It's an illusion. It's not that productive. You're far better off changing gears. So yeah, sometimes you've got to get your nose to the grindstone and grind the stuff out. But in order to have, to do the right kind of grinding, you need to have the slow moments built in between. So even if you're on a tight deadline, you've got two hours, carve out a few minutes here and there for a bit of slow, right? And I guarantee you'll come back, and when the fast moments kick in, you'll be on it. You'll do them much better, and you'll hit your deadline, and you'll probably hit it with a better outcome.

• 15:38Mike Carruthers?

  We're discussing the benefits of slowing down, and my guest is Carl Anore. He's author of the book In Praise of Slowness. A big thank you to today's sponsor, Vinted. I think most of us have what I call someday clothes. I'll wear that someday. That'll fit better someday. Someday, I'll have a place to wear that. Meanwhile, it's been hanging in the closet for three years. Vinted offers another possibility: Sell it. Every day, people can sell clothes they're no longer wearing and make some extra money. And they've made the process pretty painless. Take what you don't wear, list it on Vinted. Listing is quick and simple.

• 16:22Mike Carruthers?

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• 17:33Mike Carruthers?

  So Carl, if you're one of those people, though, who is on turbo boost all the time, that's how they approach life. They get up in the morning and they're in a hurry. They're moving fast. And you're saying, well, slow down. Well, I don't, I don't, my, my gear shift doesn't have a slowdown. I wouldn't know how to do it, is what I would imagine people would say. So it's great to tell people to slow down. It's kind of like saying, if you want to be a millionaire, go get a million dollars. But, but how? How do you, if you've never done it, where do you even start to slow down?

• 18:09Speaker 01

  I think you always have to start with small baby steps, right? This is one of the ironies of our fast-forward culture, is that we're all so impatient that we even want to slow down fast, right? So people, people find themselves stuck in Roadrunner mode, thinking, yeah, I can see the argument here for slowing down, but okay, I'm going to, I'm going to give it a go. So they sign up for yoga, and then they run across the street to do some meditation, then they rush home to cook a four-course meal, you know? That's not, that's not going to work, right? You need to, slowing down is a process, right? Because basically, speed, we are, we are speed addicts. We are physically, emotionally, chemically addicted to these turbocharged lifestyles. And no one comes off any kind of addiction in the blink of an eye.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  It's always a process of small steps, a couple of steps forward, one back. You're going to feel some withdrawal symptoms. You're going to feel itchy and uncomfortable. You're going to want to stop and go back to the speed. But I always say, stick with it, you know? Take, take, take a step here, make a small change there, run little pilot projects. So for instance, for the next week, you say to yourself, if you're somebody who never turns off their phone, say, I'm going to, every day, I'm going to have one hour when my phone is switched off, and it's not even on my person. I'm going to put it in a box somewhere. And I'm just going to go and do something else with that time for the week, just a week. At the end of the week, you sit with yourself, have a little debrief and say, well, what did that feel like? What happened during that hour? Did I feel eventually more relaxed? Did I have an interesting conversation?

• 19:37Speaker 01

  Was I able to focus on something a bit better? Did I feel a bit more energized by the end of the day? Because I had at least one hour when one of my eyes was not on social media. And then you start to get a feel for it, because it's not enough just to hear someone like me talking about the virtues and charms of slow, or watching a TED Talk, or reading a book, or even looking at scientific studies, which will all tell you, you need to slow down. You need to experience it and try stuff out, run little experiments, tweak it.

• 20:04Mike Carruthers?

  Well, one of the things I think people would push back on this is that I could slow down. But the world doesn't expect me to. The world expects me to. There are expectations of speed in the world from others that will make it difficult for me to slow down.

• 20:24Speaker 01

  And a lot of those expectations are in our own heads. Right? So often we get a message. It comes into our inbox and instantly we feel that little itch of guilt. We think, oh, no, the message is here. It's clearly urgent. I need to respond right away. But actually, when you drill down into message culture, many of the messages that we receive are not urgent. The person who sent them is quite happy to wait a little while for a reply. But in our own heads, we have manufactured this false expectation of instant response. Right? So there's a massive illusion going on out there that everything must happen instantly. It doesn't have to. These expectations are very often a mirage. And once you start questioning them, once you start asking, you know, asking your boss whether you need to stay three hours

• 21:09Speaker 01

  in the office after you've finished your work, or asking if you need to reply to, I don't know, email from your mother-in-law within 30 seconds. You know, you discover that often you don't. That person never had that expectation in the first place. So once you realize that the world isn't like that, or you start taking steps, or start asking people if they really need this as fast as you think they do, you begin to discover that everyone else is in the same boat. They're all thinking, oh, no, I need to do this. So you break the silence. You break the fourth wall. You get people sitting around the table and saying, you know what? It's okay if you don't hear back from me within an hour or two minutes instantly. There are other ways of communicating, other rhythms, other timelines to play with. So start questioning those expectations because most of them are not real.

• 21:54Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, and I found, because I remember hearing this advice once before, that if you're the kind of person who does respond to people right away, that sets up the expectation that you're the person who responds right away. If you stop that, then people won't expect it because they know it usually takes Bob a few days to get back to you, or it takes him, you know, a couple of hours. And that's just Bob. And then people don't get worked up about it. And it does work. I mean, I have used that. I mean, I just typically, unless it truly is an emergency, I don't rush to get back to people because it sets that expectation.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  And we are, in that sense, our own worst enemies because we set up this vicious circle and stuff. One of my favorite examples of this comes from an entrepreneur I met a little while ago. And when I met him, he said, you know, Carl, five years ago, my life was in total meltdown. I was stuck in this never-ending hamster wheel of instant response. I was looking at my phone in the middle of the night, texting in the bathroom. It was just crazy. It was killing me. And my health was suffering. My wife hated me. I was making mistakes at work. My company was tanking. And he said, you know, I realized at some point that I just had to stop. I had to stop looking at my phone all the time. I had to stop expecting others to answer me instantly and expecting myself to do the same. And so he said, I decided to push the nuclear button.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  And he changed his whole use of messaging and times and stuff. But the main thing that he clung on to, he said, was he goes on vacation and what he does is he no longer looks at his inbox, no messages, right? For the whole time he's away. But he always makes sure an automatic reply goes out. So he'll send a reply. The reply, anyone who writes to him while he's on vacation will get a reply that says something like, thank you very much for your message. I look forward to working with you. But at the moment, I'm on vacation. I'm away until next Tuesday, and I will not be looking at my inbox until I return on Tuesday. But when I come back on Tuesday, I will get to your email as quickly as possible, and I will reply. But, he puts this at the bottom of his email. He puts, but if your message is urgent

• 24:00Speaker 01

  and you need an instant reply before I come back from my vacation, please resend the same message to this emergency address. And the address he puts is ruin my vacation yahoo.com.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  And you know what he said to me? He said to me, in five years, nobody, nobody has written to me at that address. And in five years, I've not missed out on a single work opportunity. I've not alienated a single client or colleague. And in five years, I got my life back. You know, I'm healthy again. My wife loves me. My company is growing gangbusters, all because I broke that toxic cycle of expectations, the expectation of instant response. It's a toxic cycle. It's there to break. We can all break it.

• 24:42Mike Carruthers?

  It all seems very, you know, counterintuitive, that you'll get more done well by slowing down than hurrying up. And I think people don't. It's fine to hear you say it, but until people experience that, it doesn't sound right. It seems like what I really need to do is hurry up and get a lot of stuff done so I can clear some time and then I can slow down.

• 25:05Speaker 01

  Very often, counterintuitive is where the music and the magic happens. It takes that first step. Because once you actually experience the power of slow, you realize that it supercharges your productivity and your creativity at work, that it enriches your social relationships, that it bolsters your mental and physical health, that it makes you happier, right? You know, you may be doing fewer things, but the things you do, you're giving your full time and attention to. You're present with them. You get more pleasure out of your life. There's just so much bounty to be tapped into when you slow down, when you reconnect with your inner tortoise, if you like, that really the first step is always experience because it's never enough to hear or see it. You have to live it. And once you do, you never go back.

• 25:50Mike Carruthers?

  So if this sounds appealing to people, give me some nuggets of how do you start the process if you're not used to doing it? How do you start this process of slowing down?

• 26:00Speaker 01

  I'll give you three or four quick tips for slowing down, if you like. The first is simply do less. So I would look at your calendar for the next week. Pick one thing every day, the least important thing, and drop it. Just drop it and allow more space and oxygen into your schedule. The second suggestion is come back to the phone again. Turn it off. You know, set aside some time during the day when you switch off. You get away from the speed of social media, the speed of software, the speed of the internet, and you sink into a slower rhythm, a more human rhythm. Third tip, incorporate some kind of slow ritual into your day, something that vaccinates or inoculates you against the virus of hurry. So that'll vary from person to person.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  It could be doing knitting, or reading poetry, or yoga, or sketching something. You know, anything that, and just build it into your day. It doesn't have to be 20 hours. It can be five minutes, 10 minutes, just something that allows you to taste that slower rhythm. And then last but not least, I would always recommend that people get out into nature. I mean, nature is the ultimate spa, right? Nature doesn't do hurry. Nature is all about the right speed. Nature, everything gets done in nature, and it gets done in the right time. It's all about the temple juice of nature. And we know the science is super clear on this, that being in a green space relaxes us, takes down stress levels, enhances feelings of calm. Essentially, nature is the home of slow. So great if you can go spend the day in a forest,

• 27:29Speaker 01

  but you know, even just sitting under a tree in the park for a few minutes each day will give you a little flavor of what it's like to step out of the crazy, fast Formula One track of modern life and find something a little slower and a little more joyous.

• 27:44Mike Carruthers?

  Well, you certainly make a compelling case for slowing down. And I think people have a general sense that everything is moving too fast. It's just a matter of being willing to try to slow down and see what happens. I've been talking to Carl Hanore. He's author of the book, In Praise of Slowness. And you'll find a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks for coming on and explaining all this, Carl. I appreciate it.

• 28:09Speaker 01

  Thanks. It's been a pleasure chatting.

• 29:12Mike Carruthers?

  I think it's safe to say that music surrounds us. It's everywhere. People like music. We don't all like the same music, but we like to have music around and we react to it. It affects us. Why is that? Why does music seem to be so important in people's lives? Well, that's what Larry Sherman is here to discuss. Larry is a professor of neuroscience at the Oregon Health and Science University, and he has given lectures on music in the brain all throughout the world. He's author of a book called Every Brain Needs Music: The Neuroscience of Making and Listening to Music. Hey Larry, thanks for being here.

• 29:51Speaker 02

  Hi Mike, thanks for having me.

• 29:53Mike Carruthers?

  Sure. So something I've always wondered about, in terms of the things that humans need to survive, like food, shelter, music's pretty far down the list. We don't need music to survive, and yet it seems, since it's in every culture everywhere, people insist on having it. So maybe music is necessary?

• 30:15Speaker 02

  I think so. One of the things that I believe, based on all the research that I've done, is that music brings people together in really powerful ways. And so I think it was kind of something that people turned to to unite groups when we were trying to survive as groups. It probably has a lot of other functions too, that are uniting people and bringing people together to... I mean, think about all the music, for example, that we use in religious practice, or the music that we use even in the military, or national songs. It's the idea of uniting people, I think. So evolutionarily, it's probably very powerful that way. It's probably really important for our social existence.

• 30:57Mike Carruthers?

  And what is it about music that makes that so? What happens in the brain? What makes... I mean, we could all sit around and read poetry, but we tend not to do... well, I guess we sometimes do that. But music seems to be like the go-to thing that makes people feel better, makes people emotional. What is it about music that does that?

• 31:21Speaker 02

  I think there's a number of things. One is that, think about what music has in it. If you have lyrics, like you mentioned poetry, poetry by itself is basically lyrics. But now you add some rhythm to it, you add some tones that actually give emotional content to the words. It makes it much more powerful, so much more meaningful for people. The other thing that's, I think, important in that regard is that, you know, music, when we perform it together, there's these great studies suggesting that when we sing in a choir, for example, we release things like endorphins and we activate dopamine. And together, those effects in our brain lead to this sense of acceptance within the group.

• 32:04Speaker 02

  And what's remarkable is, the bigger the group, the bigger the effect on the individual. So if you're singing in a barbershop quartet, it'll have a mild effect of acceptance, but if you're singing in something like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, well, then it's huge. So this is, again, these kind of powerful signals that our brain relates to, to music that is much stronger than language alone.

• 32:25Mike Carruthers?

  And as you look back over the history of music, has that always been a constant? Has that always been the case, that music has always played this role? Or has the role of music evolved?

• 32:39Speaker 02

  There's this remarkable study suggesting that there are actually neurons, nerve cells in the brain, in our auditory cortex, which is the first place that sound gets processed, that respond specifically to music. Now, whether those cells were there all along, or those cells came into being when we become exposed to music as children, for example, it's unsure. It's uncertain, but the fact that we actually have music-specific nerve cells tells me that music has this really powerful characteristic that just other forms of communication and sound don't have.

• 33:09Mike Carruthers?

  When you listen to your favorite music, is that different than listening to any other kind of music? Is your favorite music, whatever that is, does that do something special?

• 33:22Speaker 02

  That's a really great question. And you know, when we develop music preference, usually in adolescence, and we have this kind of set, set of preferences that go with us throughout life, although as we get older, our music preferences may change as we mature. But what we like to listen to the most is doing something a little different than music that we don't like to listen to, or that we just think of as background music. It's grabbing our attention in different ways. So while I think our auditory processing and identification of music as music in that first part of the circuit is the same, once it gets past that, you have to, you have this response to this music that's emotional and very different than music you don't like.

• 34:07Speaker 02

  So I think that's all about preference and how preference is malleable, so it changes over life. But we always have these songs that just grab us, as opposed to other songs that we either don't like, or just find boring.

• 34:19Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, or just, yeah, don't seem to matter much. Well, it does seem that your favorite music tends to be tied to, as you say, maybe adolescence, and it also evokes memories and emotions that maybe you felt back then, that maybe were good to feel again.

• 34:34Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, I mean, think about couples who all have their song. You know, I think there's some song that they heard on their first date, and they always go back to that moment. Music, you know, I've had all kinds of experiences in my life, I know, where I hear a song during that experience, and years later I'll hear the music and I'm immediately transported back to that moment in time. I think we all have that. And again, that's powerful because of all the sensory stuff that's happening in our brains when we, when we experience music. And it ties into memory, it ties into the memories that are associated with what you hear at the time, but also your memories for the types of music you like. So it's, there's a lot going on there.

• 35:15Mike Carruthers?

  So I assume there has been research where you hook people's brains up and play a music and watch what happens to their brains, and assuming that's true, what happens to their brains?

• 35:26Speaker 02

  There's been a lot of studies along those lines. The most common studies these days are what we call functional magnetic resonance imaging studies, or FMRI. And most of, most people know what an MRI is. You know, if you've gone to the doctor and they want to have a really good look at what's happening in your body, you get an MRI. These are the same machines, but they're doing something a little different. They're actually looking at brain activity by looking at those tiny little blood vessels in the brain. And so people can be put in these MRI machines, which are very noisy and pretty claustrophobic, but you can put noise-canceling headphones on and have them lay flat and still, and play music, or actually have them think about creating music, or even performing music

• 36:10Speaker 02

  with a non-metal musical instrument, and then see what parts of the brain are lighting up, or what parts are going, are going down in terms of their activity. And it's remarkable how many different areas light up. So areas involved all sorts of different sensory processing, like we talked about memory, emotional processing, it all lights up. And it lights up differently depending on what piece of music you play, and the preference of the person who's in the FMRI machine.

• 36:35Mike Carruthers?

  Well, and music certainly evokes emotions in people. I mean, people cry when they hear songs, people, you know, feel good when they hear songs, or maybe they get depressed when they hear songs. So there's some sort of connection between music and emotion.

• 36:52Speaker 02

  Oh, very, very strong. And in fact, what's funny is, we talk about always wanting to be happy, but in reality, we seek out sad songs. And this has to do, there's all sorts of ideas about why this is true, but it turns out that one of the ideas that we look for sad songs is, we want to have that catharsis. We want to have that, that experience of sadness or loss without actually going through the actual loss or sadness. And that actually gives us a sense of reward, because we're actually going through this process, especially if it's an empathetic type of thing. So if we're hearing a song about someone who's lost their lover, we feel for that person, and we feel that empathy for them, and empathy actually drives reward signaling in our brains.

• 37:37Speaker 02

  And so there's this idea that we, in going through this sadness that's being expressed by this person in this song, we're actually expressing empathy and rewarding ourselves for expressing empathy, and that wants us to do it again. So sad songs, we seek them out all the time, and they can make us feel sad. They could actually make us, like you say, drive us to tears. And of course, the opposite is also true. We can be in a really bad mood and walk into a room and hear upbeat music, and it'll really change our mood. I've heard so many stories about people who are suffering from, you know, sort of low level of depression, and music really changed things for them.

• 38:11Mike Carruthers?

  I've always wondered why people like the music they like. All of us have witnessed people listening to music that we can't stand, and we think, how can they possibly like that? But what shapes our preference?

• 38:25Speaker 02

  It has a lot to do with what you're exposed to, especially during that adolescence period I mentioned. So if you have a peer group that's listening to hip-hop, for example, you're going to probably listen to hip-hop because they think it's cool, and you think they, they're cool, and you want to be with them. And so you'll develop this preference for hip-hop. Later in life, you may be exposed to other types of music that will change all that, of course. You'll still like hip-hop from the days of your adolescence, but maybe you decide you like bar talk. I love classical music, but bar talk was something that I could never wrap my head around, until somebody came to me and said, you know, you should listen to this, this is pretty cool. And they explained to me what bar talk was up to, and then I started listening to it and realizing it was pretty fascinating, and then I suddenly liked bar talk.

• 39:07Speaker 02

  So it really can be set in some ways early in life, but, but it's very malleable. We kind of like different music in different parts of our lives.

• 39:16Mike Carruthers?

  So let's talk about people who play music, not just listen to it, but actually create it. What is different about them? What does playing music do for you?

• 39:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I would argue that learning to play a musical instrument, or even to some extent to sing, especially professionally, the level of an opera singer or a diva, is probably one of the most difficult things a human brain can do. So if you think about what you're doing when you're playing an instrument, let's take a violin, for example, you've got the bow of the violin in one hand, you're holding the violin with the other hand, the other hand is also pressing down on the strings. They have to find exactly the right position to play those strings, and the bow has to be played and moved in a very particular way. So now add to that, the person might be reading music. So there's information coming into their eyes, going to the back of their brains where visual information is processed, and then that's going to other parts of the brain,

• 40:12Speaker 02

  which are memories for what musical notes are. And then other parts of the brain are sending it to the motor control centers of the brain, saying, okay, I want you to move your right finger this way, your left finger on the left hand this way, move the bow in such and such a way. That's all got to go down the arms into your fingers. And then there's a reverse part of that. So your body has to let the brain know that that's all happened, or it happened, right or wrong. And so there's all this sensor information that goes back up to the brain to say, okay, this is where my finger is now, this is what just happened. And then it starts all over again. And then add to that, your emotional response to what you're playing, you're listening to what you're playing, and maybe you're adjusting your volume, or adjusting your speed, or adjusting something else. Maybe you're playing with a quartet, or a band, and somebody else has just put in a new riff, and you're kind of trying to keep up.

• 40:57Speaker 02

  So all sorts of things are happening at the exact same time. So it's an incredibly challenging thing for the brain to do. And the result of that is, we have great data now to show that when you practice an instrument like that, especially when you're first learning, you're driving a lot of cellular processes that are actually structurally changing your brain.

• 41:18Mike Carruthers?

  For the good? In what way?

• 41:20Speaker 02

  Well, we think it's for the good. So professional musicians tend to have more neural connections called synapses. So we can actually measure that in people. More synapses is good, because as we age, synapses tend to fall apart. So if you have more synapses to lose as you age, you're better off, just because you have more to lose. You also are driving processes that I study in my own lab, like myelination. So myelin is this substance that kind of insulates, wraps around the wiry parts of nerve cells. And what it does is it actually increases the speed at which nerve impulses travel through those wires. I always like to tell people, if you have myelin on a nerve cell, it's like driving on the autobahn in Germany at midnight, where there's no speed limit, you could be going 200 miles an hour, and nobody's going to stop you.

• 42:05Speaker 02

  And if you lose myelin, it's like driving on your favorite freeway at rush hour in a big city. Here in Portland, it would be I-5 at the 84 interchange, where you're lucky to be going 2 miles an hour. And so that's really the difference between having myelin and not having myelin. And it's so important for parts of our brain to communicate very quickly with each other to make everything work. And so losing that is bad. And actually, my lab studies multiple sclerosis, that's a disease where myelin gets stripped off of these fibers of these nerve cells. But you know, just developing new myelin means you can have faster communication between different areas of the brain that will allow you to do lots of different things. And then the third thing is, something that was science fiction when I was in school,

• 42:49Speaker 02

  it turns out we have this process where new neurons, new nerve cells are made when we learn new things, and we do push ourselves to really learn something new. So it's a process called neurogenesis, and it was considered dogma when I was in school, that you're born with a certain number of neurons, and it's all downhill from there. And there are certainly mornings I feel that way, but the reality is, if we're pushing ourselves to do something really different, it looks like we can actually generate new nerve cells, new neurons, and they will integrate into circuits that exist already, or form new circuits, that will allow you to do something like play a violin, but that also helps you to do other things. It's a remarkable process.

• 43:31Mike Carruthers?

  So you'd be the best person, I think, to ask this question of, and that is, is there any connection? Has there been any research that would show that music, either playing it or listening to it, has any effect on any kind of, you know, disease or neurological problem? Just like, you know, my father-in-law has Parkinson's, and he does these boxing classes, and it seems to really help. But, you know, who would think boxing and Parkinson's disease? Does music have like, any kind of effect on any condition?

• 44:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of music therapy out there, and it's highly valuable. I can think of patients who are suffering from certain forms of dementia, who may be less verbal or even non-verbal. If you bring them into a studio and get them to either play an instrument or sing, they will sing. And it's remarkable, there's examples of people who are sort of not speaking, you'll play some music, get them to sing along, they'll start singing, and then for some period of time after they're done singing, they'll actually speak. And so I think there's really great examples that music as a therapy is highly valuable. There's this example of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who had brain damage after being

• 44:49Speaker 02

  shot. And music therapy was a big part of getting her to the point where she could speak again. And so that's a traumatic brain injury that was recovered through music therapy. So I think there's a lot of value to this, and it's probably more valuable than we think under different circumstances. There's growing evidence, for example, that people who have certain types of anxiety can benefit from music therapy as well, because it can have a very calming or organizing effect in our brain that allows us to kind of get past those anxieties. So there's a lot of value to that.

• 45:18Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I remember hearing, or I think I saw it on the documentary, about Glenn Campbell, that when he was going, he suffered from dementia, but he could still play every song he ever played on the guitar. It was so entrenched in his brain that even though he had trouble recognizing people and coming up with the words to say, man, he could still play the guitar. And Tony Bennett remembered all the lyrics to all of his songs, even though he was struggling with dementia.

• 45:50Speaker 02

  Absolutely, and that's another point. I mean, music covers so much territory in our brains, even bigger territory than language. And so the fact that people do that doesn't surprise me at all, because all the different parts of our brain we're using when we're dealing with music, either making it or listening to it, it's activating a lot of territory. And so if you can stimulate one area that's not getting stimulated through another means, that can lead to these kind of moments of clarity or moments of functionality.

• 46:22Mike Carruthers?

  It does seem, and you could correct me if I'm wrong, that learning to play an instrument, which is difficult, is it easier when you're younger, or it just seems easier when you're younger, because maybe you've got more time to devote to it, or whatever? Or does picking up an instrument later in life and learning how to play it, does it do anything other than make you, you know, now you're a piano player? But does it do anything else for you?

• 46:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, I mean, there's that old expression, you can't teach an old dog new tricks, but the reality is, you can teach an old dog new tricks, it just takes longer. So our brain is much more plastic, it's much more capable of reshaping itself and rewiring itself when we're younger, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen when we're older, it's just, it's a slower process. There's more cells in the way that have to kind of get out of the way to make those circuits occur. So the reality is, we can learn new things in old age. And I think about artists who start very late in life, painting, or even music, who picked up a piano when they're in their 60s or 70s, and suddenly are playing all the time, and getting great benefit from it.

• 47:33Mike Carruthers?

  And what's the benefit?

• 47:35Speaker 02

  Well, so I think the benefit is all the things I talked about before. So the fact that you're learning an instrument, for example, or learning to play music, or sing even, if you're challenging yourself, the challenge actually drives things like the generation of new neurons, the generation of the substance myelin I mentioned, that increases the speed by which neurons communicate with one another, and it increases the connections between neurons, the synapses. And so the more you challenge yourself as we get older, the better off you're going to be, because as we get older, we start to lose cells, and we start to lose connections between cells. And so if you have more to lose, you're going to be better off later in life.

• 48:16Speaker 02

  So I think that's just a remarkable thing we've come to understand in just the last couple, maybe 20 years, is that even in old age, yeah, it takes a lot longer. You can't deny it. Learning things when you're younger is easier, but you can still learn things when you're older, you just have to push yourself.

• 48:35Mike Carruthers?

  Well, when you think about all the music you hear in a day, I mean, you hear it in the elevator, in the supermarket, and then intentionally you listen to it on headphones, it's also in TV shows and movies. I mean, we're surrounded by music, and it's great to get an understanding of what that music does to us, and why we seem to crave it so. I've been talking with Larry Sherman, he is author of a book called Every Brain Needs Music: The Neuroscience of Making and Listening to Music. And there is a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks for coming on, Larry.

• 49:08Speaker 02

  Thank you so much.

• 49:14Mike Carruthers?

  If you've got silver jewelry, you might want to keep some chalk in your jewelry box. You see, silver tarnishes a lot faster in humid weather, and regular, plain old blackboard chalk will absorb the moisture, as well as sulfur-based air impurities, that will make the silver dull and dirty. The chalk trick works well with other silver and silver-plated items, too. In fact, musicians often keep chalk in the case with their instruments, and a stick or two in with your silverware or silver pieces can save you some polishing later. And that is something you should know. You know, if you had a podcast, and I liked it as much as I suspect you like this podcast,

• 49:57Mike Carruthers?

  I'd be telling my friends about your podcast whenever I could. And I'm hoping you will do the same with your friends about this podcast. I'm Mike Carruthers, thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

• 50:12Speaker 04

  Pink Pantheress here. Coach and Spotify are teaming up to bring music and style together, and they want you to be part of it. Grab your friends and head to the Tabby Tour, hitting cities around the country with live performances from special artists, exclusive experiences, and personalized products. And discover custom playlists on Spotify, booked just for you, based on who you are and how you listen. Live your story with Coach. Learn more at coach.com.

• 50:40Speaker 05

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