Office Hours with Arthur Brooks - Use Music to Change Your Brain and Get Happier

Starting point is 00:00:00 There is a very ancient idea, an idea that there are alternative languages that are different than the languages that we speak to each other that I'm speaking right now, not written or spoken, but languages nonetheless that uncover deep truths that are otherwise inaccessible. Languages that allow us to access parts of our brain that we wouldn't be able to otherwise. Sounds fantastic. Sounds sort of like science fiction, right? Well, why not? Why would that not be the case? there's a belief that goes back across the centuries and millennia, that music is that language, that music has special properties to unlock mystery and meaning from the right-hand side of the brain.

Starting point is 00:00:49 Welcome to office hours. I'm Arthur Brooks. This is a show about love and happiness, the science of love and happiness, and how we can bring the science to as many people as possible. That's my passion. This is what I love doing, and I'm so grateful to all of you for joining me week after week. If this is your first week, I hope you'll stay with me. If this is your 40th week, all the better. And I hope that you will continue to share this podcast with other people. This is how we spread a movement of people who are enthusiastic about learning about the science of happiness, changing the habits in their lives, teaching other people, lifting each other up. It's all wonderful to have you with me in this community and looking at a different aspect of happiness every single week and how we can get more of it.

Starting point is 00:01:30 This week's topic is music. Music and happiness. What's the relationship? How can we get more happiness through music? I'll talk a lot about that today and give you some very specific ideas. And it's a personal topic for me as well, as you'll hear about here in a minute. Before we get there, however, please do feedback on this show. Tell me what you'd like to see more of, what you'd like to see less of, specific questions that are burning in your mind that we should be doing a show about. As you probably know, if you're a long-time viewer, we actually do take that seriously enough that I've designed entire episodes around the biggest questions that people are asking, and I want to know more of that. Right into office hours at arthurbrooks.com, that's the email

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Starting point is 00:03:02 version of the ideas that I'm actually sharing here. Not a substitute for what we're doing in person, but it's a compliment to it, certainly. And we're even starting to run some retreats. So some people that I've worked with that are sharing the ideas and the teachings that I have, and sometimes I'm there in person as well. You can find out what we're doing. We've got coming up, do sign up for retreats at, on the website, retreats.orgth, dot Arthur Brooks.com. I'm looking forward to seeing you. There is a very ancient idea from philosophies that go back literally thousands of years in India, and China more recently among the ancient Greeks and up into more current centuries in Europe,

Starting point is 00:03:42 an idea that there are alternative languages that are different than the languages that we speak to each other that I'm speaking right now, not written or spoken, but language is nonetheless, that uncover deep truths that are otherwise inaccessible. Languages that allow us to access parts of our brain that we wouldn't be able to otherwise. Sounds fantastic. Sounds sort of like science fiction, right? Well, why not?

Starting point is 00:04:07 Why would that not be the case? We do know that the brain is hemispherically lateralized, meaning the right-hand side and the left-hand side do different things. And furthermore, that the left-hand side, which for most people, contains the language centers, and that's where you process precision and facts and information is different than the right side of the brain, which processes intuition and deep ideas and mystery and meaning. Why wouldn't it be the case that there would be different kinds of vernacular,

Starting point is 00:04:33 different sorts of languages that would access that mysterious right-hand side differently than the words I'm using right here? Specifically, there's a belief that goes back across the centuries and millennia, that music is that language, that music has like, special properties to unlock mystery and meaning from the right-hand side of the brain. I'm going to talk about people who thought this, but most importantly, I'm going to talk about how you can do this, because I believe that that is absolutely the case. And I think the science backs it up. You can be better at consuming music such that your brain can work better. You can

Starting point is 00:05:13 have a deeper sense of mystery and meaning in your life, and you can be happier. But you've got to know the science and you've got to change your habits in the way that you actually use music. These are music protocols that I'm going to be talking, how you can apply music to your own life. It's not just, oh, that's nice. It's actual medicine. It's actual food in the way that we're sustaining ourselves. Let me give an example of a philosopher who really believe this. And this is the most unlikely philosopher to believe in this mystery and meaning unlocked by the musical vernacular.

Starting point is 00:05:44 This is the 19th century nihilist philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. This is the guy who was such a cynic, this German philosopher, and this guy had a messed up life, you know, his terrible relationship with everybody. Women forget about it. His mother, you know, he blamed his whole life for the suicide of his father. I mean, completely dysfunctional stuff. And he was such a negative guy that he created the theory of rational pessimism, which basically said, you should be a pessimist if you have any rationality at all. You should go through life with complete pessimism. And it Occasionally the equilibrium of your depression will be punctuated by a nice thing happening from time to time. I mean, this guy was a real walking apart. Trust me. Schopenhauer, who also a genius, nonetheless, believed that music had special almost magical properties, neurophysiological properties at that. He believed, as many philosophers have, as many religious figures have throughout the ages, that the truth about life is largely invisible to humans.

Starting point is 00:06:49 Reality is largely invisible. And Plato talked about this a lot. You talked about we can see shadows on the cave wall. So we can see shadows of what's actually really going on it there. We have to kind of infer, but we don't have the ability to look directly at what's actually happening. Schopenhauer believed the same thing. Many people have believed this.

Starting point is 00:07:08 Many philosophers have believed this. Probably you do too. I kind of do too. Reality is hard to discern. And there's a lot of neuroscience that shows that when we think we're seeing reality, what we're doing is that we're actually creating an image in our minds. A lot of what we think we see with our eyes is actually just an impression. And then the image is created in the occipital lobe of our brain. It's what we're seeing is what we've created, not what's actually there.

Starting point is 00:07:33 And the result of it is that reality is a very hard thing to discern. However, Schopenhauer believed that there was a true reality. He's not a complete relativist, that there isn't any reality. He believed that there was an inner essence of the world called Villa in German, which would be translated as will, a pure will. It's what Hegel called Geist, the ghost. And Hegel was bordering on religious. Actually, Geist was sort of the Holy Spirit of truth going through the world. It wasn't Christian, but you get the feeling for what I'm telling you.

Starting point is 00:08:07 So Villa was truth for Schobenhauer, but it was out of our grasp. unless we use the special language where we could get an oracle to reveal the secret verities of villa. And that was music. That was listening to music and producing music. I'll put in a reference that talks about an article. Schopenhauer on music as the embodiment of will.

Starting point is 00:08:35 It's amazing the way he thought about this was his theory was that the will is so ineffable so impossible to articulate in words that it was only nonverbal language and specifically not a music that could grant access to this apprehension of reality. Now, once again, today, with the advantage of modern neuroscience, what he was saying effectively is that your images of the world are largely those that you manufacture with the complicated side of your, the left-hand side of your brain, but the right-hand side can get the intuition of the actual reality. but only if you access it, not using your language centers,

Starting point is 00:09:15 using something that will actually burrow deep into the right-hand side, which he believed with music, and which we know to be, point of fact, largely the case. Even though Schobenhauer was an atheist, he was an absolutely ardent atheist, his conception, his theory, has a strong resemblance to the idea that's held by many philosophers, religious philosophers and theologians. Let me quote the American Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft. He's a philosophy professor at Boston College. He's actually been there for 50 years.

Starting point is 00:09:45 And he had a 1989 book, The Three Philosophies of Life, in which he said, God is love and music is the language of love. Therefore, music is the language of God. It's kind of a proof using the transitive theory or using the property of transitivity. I'll put that in the show notes as well. I find this notion very suggestive and in point of fact very persuasive as a social scientist. And it captures for me something. that I've experienced my whole life. And this is where it gets personal. So I've mentioned before, if you've been following my work for a long time, you know this. So forgive me. If you haven't,

Starting point is 00:10:18 this will be new. I'm not a lifelong behavioral scientist. On the contrary, in my first life, my first career, I was a professional musician. It was what I did. Now, I wasn't some sort of, long-haired rock and roll, or on the contrary, I was a classical musician. A classical music was my life. I started violin when I was four. I started piano when I was five. I started the French horn when I was eight years old, and that's what stuck that I was really good at it. And I spent my, my, all of my childhood doing really nothing else but playing music. I played in every ensemble I could find. I was, I was first chair of the orchestra and my mother was my accompanist. She was a pretty talented amateur pianist. And so she would accompany me. And I did

Starting point is 00:10:58 every competition I could possibly find. I was a good French horn player. I intended my ambition was to be the world's greatest French horn player, which, you know, great ambition, right? I didn't make it. But I spent my 20s as a professional, as a matter of fact. I played in the Barcelona City Orchestra. And if you're wondering, you know, how does that sort of rank in world orchestras? That's for an American classical musician. Most of the greatest classical musicians of the world actually are American. And playing in a European orchestra is kind of like you don't play in the NBA,

Starting point is 00:11:29 but you go and you play in an Italian league or the Spanish League. That's kind of what's like. It was good. It was good. And I did that. And I made my living doing that. And I was really, really passionate about it. that until I was a professional musician until I was 31 years old, as a matter of fact,

Starting point is 00:11:43 and that's when I quit and started my PhD. But the result of that is that my brain is wired toward this. I learned to read music before I learn to read words. I hear music in my head all the time. I'm synesthetic, which a lot of musicians are. Synesthesia is a is a, is a commingling of the senses itself. In my particular case, when I hear music, I see color. It's not like seeing color. It's not like there's color in front of your eyes, but you perceive color. You know, I'll hear an A major chord and it's red. I don't know why. But so the truth of the matter is that when I hear the greatest music ever written, which for me will be a Brookner Symphony or a Bach cantata, my two favorite composers are Anton Bruckner and Johann

Starting point is 00:12:24 Sebastian Bach from two very different areas, eras in music composition. It's like the greatest Fourth of July thing I've ever seen. But it's inside my head. It's amazing. I glimpse for moments, the majesty of creation. I understand in those moments why I exist in the universe. I feel like I have a glimpse of the beatific vision. The face of God, maybe. I don't know. So, now, maybe you think I need to go to a, you know, a neurologist. Fair enough. But I think Schopenhauer was on to something. And I think we have plenty of evidence to suggest that properly understood and undertaken. Music truly is probably the greatest way to understand. life more deeply. Let me make the case. And as always, let me make the case with science. And I'm

Starting point is 00:13:14 going to go on to applications that you can use. So there's a lot has been written about music and the brain. There's really interesting stuff from my own university. It's not my work. It's the work that's going on at my university at Harvard's Music Lab. That's with Dr. Samuel Merrick, who has ethnic graphic evidence that suggests that shows that proves that music is and has always been culturally universally. You simply can't find a civilization that doesn't have its own music. You also can't find a civilization, a serious civilization that's not religious of all things. Now, again, that doesn't mean you have to believe that religion is true. It doesn't mean that you can't believe that religion is all made up. You decide for yourself. But religion is a ubiquitous phenomenon.

Starting point is 00:14:00 We want to be in communion with the divine. That's kind of part of being the human experience. And so is music. There's something about making sounds that are put together with melody, rhythm, and harmony, such as we understand it in different civilizations at different times. That's just part of the human experience. And it's enmeshed in every civilization in important parts of our experience, from sweet lullabies to stupid love songs to hymns of religious praise. All of these emotionally really salient experiences that human beings have

Starting point is 00:14:33 are almost always in every civilization, accompanied by different kinds of music. Now, music varies greatly all around the world, and appreciation for it is different in different places, but there are certain kinds of commonalities that I'll talk about. And for me, different kinds of music around the world is a real source of fascination. I mean, I remember when I was growing up in Seattle and I was, you know, in the world of classical music. I heard for the very first time, I heard Ravi Shankar, the great sitar player from the almost religious figure of Hindu-standing classical music. I was at frequenting in the University District of Seattle, this world music record store. And I was buying all of these sitar records and all that and playing them really loud in the basement. And my parents really worried that probably I was smoking pot down there, which I wasn't. I was just really into this new vernacular that I thought was opening up my brain in new ways, which in point of fact it probably was based on what we now know about the relationship between neurological activity and the enjoyment and consumption of music. Because our brains are really built.

Starting point is 00:15:35 So it seems to enjoy and even heal with music. There's a 2018 study from the Berkeley Music and Health Institute, which is part of the Berkeley School of Music in Boston, B-E-R-K-L-E-E. That's not Berkeley, California. And the conclusion of the studies that music occupies both place both in our universal human history as well as in our personalized medical future, which is really interesting, right? Because what we're now learning from neuroscience is that we're hardwired to use music to cure problems and heal ourselves. Interesting research along this line that that backs up this

Starting point is 00:16:11 assertion. So for example, Parkinson's patients are, they can be stimulated by hearing a rhythmic piece, such as a march, and the symptoms actually diminish, and they're able to walk more naturally. So when neurons from the substantial Niagara of the brain are destroyed, I mean, one of the things that it does is it makes people achinetic and rigid or have a tremor, and it interferes, obviously, with people's ability to function to be mobile. the way that they were before. But when they hear rhythmic music, it does something and it's almost like a workaround in the brain that makes it easier for them to walk, for example. And I saw this with my own mother. She was really, really interested in music as an amateur musician, but also

Starting point is 00:16:52 very accomplished as a listener. She knew a lot about music. She had majored in music at college, as a matter effect. And later in her life, when she was suffering from a Parkinsonian syndrome, probably not Parkinson's per se, but there are a lot of Parkinsonian syndromes that function in largely the same way neurologically. And she couldn't walk very well. I mean, she was very, very rigid, and she would be standing still and then she would be frozen. She couldn't get started. It was the impulse to start walking. This is characteristic of a lot of people with Parkinson's disease. And when she found that really helped a lot was to put on Sergei Prokofiev's opera, The Love of Three Oranges, which has a very famous march in it that she loved. It's bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. Maybe you've heard it,

Starting point is 00:17:43 I don't know. Maybe you can't even recognize it because I'm not a great singer, but it's really, really rhythmic. And sure enough, as soon as the march from the Love of Three Oranges, as soon it was on, she started walking. And so I saw the study and like, yeah, yeah, no, no, I got the day. I got the data, at least n equals one from the experience of my own mother. It was like a miracle, as a matter of fact. Alzheimer's patients, obviously a different neurological melody who can't remember family members, nonetheless are able to remember familiar songs. Part of the reason for that is that almost certainly that the memory that's required for remembering faces and family members and relationships is different than the music that's encoded in the brain or remembering songs. And so, you know, you'll play,

Starting point is 00:18:25 people who are completely incommunicado, who are not functioning the way that they were who don't recognize their loved ones, even their spouse, and you'll put on a song that they heard in their youth, and they'll start singing it, and they'll remember all the words. Now, here's the way that you can experience this as well. You may have noticed that, you know, some, you'll say, okay, I'll give you two letters from the alphabet that are kind of close to each other, and I'll say, which comes first, quick. And you're like, A, B, C, D, E, F, H, J, J, K. You learn the alphabet, and you still remember the order of the letters because of the song. The song organizes your memory. That's the same principle as people actually having memories who are Alzheimer's patients who are completely degraded

Starting point is 00:19:09 in the functioning of their short-term and even long-term memories. People suffering from epilepsy experience sometimes a dramatic decrease in seizures when they listen to certain kinds of classical music. And researchers really like Mozart for that. You know, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is apparently really good for soothing the parts of the brain for people who have substantial seizures in epilepsy. And the examples go on and on and on. I could do 45 minutes of different examples of this. The bottom line is that it's very, very effective in different ways. It's also the case that music affects human emotions.

Starting point is 00:19:43 And that's the brain too. You know that psychology is biology and emotional activity implicates the functioning of the limbic system of the brain. And sure enough, when you expose people to really, really consonant versus dissonant music. You know, so the dissonance in music, which is like sort of the clashing sound, where the physics actually don't actually give you that clarity and openness and chords, for example, that that has an inverse correlation with positive emotionality.

Starting point is 00:20:12 The more dissonant, the music that people listen to, the more negative emotion that they actually feel and vice versa, which means it's affecting the limbic system of the brain. If you're like me, you've got to be drinking when you're in the gym and you have to be drinking something clean without any calories that will actually give you your electrolytes and all the good stuff. For me, that's element. L MNT. You probably knew that already. It's a great product that helps you stay hydrated without sugar and a bunch of dodgy ingredients that are found in a lot of popular electrolyte drinks and sports drinks. No sugar, no junk, just for electrolytes that actually work. Give it a try. I like it. Science-backed and made for athletes, fasting, keto, or happiness scientists like me.

Starting point is 00:20:54 who sweats. So how do I use it? I use it in the morning, 4.45 in the morning. I don't like to drink anything with caffeine or anything it peps me up because I like to be real clear and I drink my caffeine later. Element is just the ticket that I need. Give it a try yourself. Right now, you can get a free sample pack with any purchase at Drink Element. That's Drink, just like it, LMNT.com slash Arthur. Try it risk-free. If you don't like it, they'll refund your order. No questions ask, but you're going to like it.

Starting point is 00:21:25 As you know from listening to this show, I've never been a super naturally happy person. That's exactly why I've spent much of my life and my career trying to understand human happiness, not just academically, but in a way that I could use very practically and you can too. I don't do research. I do me search. well, in you search. My time in academia has reinforced the lesson I continue to rely on today. Happiness, well, and energy are best managed through deliberate habits and discipline. I take my personal habits seriously. I need to. I have a morning routine. I've talked about it on this show.

Starting point is 00:22:02 It involves prayer and exercise and healthy eating and a lot of coffee. Well, taking at the right time. But in my creative work, I've long looked for a gold star supplement to the that routine that helps me take charge of my day. I came across Magic Mind. Now, I was skeptical at first, honestly, because there's a lot of noise in the supplement space, and most of it really doesn't hold up to the science or human experience. But Magic Mind has ingredients that I like. Adaptogens, neurotropics, such as Lions Main, Ashwaganda, Cognazine, L-theonine. These are clinically-backed compounds with real research behind them. Magic Mind is a two-hour. shot that you take in the morning. You don't get jitters. There's no crash. It's just your brain

Starting point is 00:22:49 working the way it's supposed to, calm, sustained, and focused. If the same cup of coffee every morning has started to feel more like a crutch than a ritual, or if you're just tired of it, it might be worth trying something that actually works with your neurobiology rather than against it. Right now, you can go to www.magicmind.com, that's all one word, and get 50% off your first order, a 100-day money-back guarantee. So you really have nothing to lose by trying it. You can also find Magic Mind in stores near you using the store locator at Magicmind.com. Let's talk about how this relates to the research on happiness now. And some researchers have asked, what kind of music brings about the most happiness? And I am going to tell you what

Starting point is 00:23:39 researchers found is the happiest song in a second, which kind of bums me out. But anyway, But what they find is that music at 140 to 150 beats per minute is associated with the greatest amount of happiness that it provokes, suggesting that once again, it has this particular effect on the limbic system of the brain, perhaps tapping the ventral tegmental area, the ventral striatum of the brain. So you get this feeling of joy when you get 150 40 to 150 beats per minute. They don't know exactly why that's the case. Now, if you want to know how many that is intuitively, here's 120 beats per minute. Here's how you remember 120 beats per minute. Here's how you remember 120. 20 beats per minute. You hum to yourself the stars and stripes forever. That's 120. 140, therefore, is a little bit faster. That's 140 beats. Around there, music at that tempo strongly correlated with stimulating feelings of joy. Dominant seventh chords. Is it going to be a little harder for me to explain that? I've had a piano. I could play a dominant seventh chord for you. But that's strongly associated with feelings of happiness as well. The result of it is that a lot of the happiest songs have those two characteristics.

Starting point is 00:24:51 They go to 140, 100 beats per minute. They're up tempo. They've got a lot of seven chords going on in there. The happiest song that more or less fulfills these characteristics is the Beach Boys good vibration. That is judged to be the happiest song. Now, it turns out it's not because it fulfills all the scientific characteristics that you need. That was actually based on a survey where they ask, you know, what was the happiest song of all time? at one. So for whatever reason, I would not have voted for it. Folks, I would have given you,

Starting point is 00:25:19 you know, something for the high Baroque period and, you know, I would have done something else entirely. I got nothing against good vibrations, but I'm not going to listen to it more than once every few years. What was the saddest kind of music, or what's the most negative kind of music? Here's, this is where it gets interesting. It's a 1998 study from the journal Alternative Therapies and Health and Medicine that looks at a grunge rock and finds that it's the one. worst kind of music for happiness. And I could have told you that. I'm from Seattle. And, you know, I grew up a little bit before the Grunge Rock era. I left in the mid-80s when I graduated from high school. And that was more or less a 90s thing. But every time I would go back and be like,

Starting point is 00:25:58 what is that sound? And I felt like an old man, get the hell off my lawn or, you know, this is too loud, whatever. But Grunge Rock is judged to be especially bad for happiness. And how do they know that? Because it raised hostility, sadness, tension. among people who are exposed to it in experimental conditions. You're angry, sad, stressed out, and tired when you listen to it. And it has a lot to do with the effect of the distorted electric guitar and nihilistic lyrics on the brain. And also, by the way, lowered caring, relaxation, mental clarity, and vigor made people less caring toward each other listening to Grudge Rock.

Starting point is 00:26:39 All right. So why the heck could anybody listen? to it. And that leads to a very interesting new area of research, which is the benefits of music that brings you down. Any kind of music that would be sad or, or God forbid, do all the things that is talked about with, you know, Pearl Jam or whatever Grunge Rock band is your favorite. Why would you expose yourself to that? Why would you listen to miserable music? And there's an answer to that. there's actually a benefit that actually comes from listening to music that doesn't lift you up. And when you think about this for a second, imagine your last really bad breakup.

Starting point is 00:27:21 I can't even remember for me because I've been married so long. But, you know, some of you listening, you had a bad breakup last week, right? When you're having a bad breakup and you're really, really, really sad, what kind of music do you want to listen to? You want to listen to a sousa March? You want to listen to good vibrations? No. Like, get that away from me. You don't want that.

Starting point is 00:27:38 You want something that actually is consistent with your mood for a particular reason. Now, your mom might say, don't listen to that sad music. It's just going to make you feel worse. That's actually wrong. And here's the reason for that. Here's a hypothesized reason for that. There's a hypothesized reason why you want to listen to sad music when you're sad. And it somehow kind of makes you feel better.

Starting point is 00:28:01 The right hand side of your brain, the right hemisphere of your brain, the side that processes mystery and meaning. And if you want all the science on that in this book right here, processes both beauty and suffering. In other words, the same part of the brain. Music gives suffering a form of understanding and expression. Once again, this is Schopenhauer. It's the same idea that it's this special language

Starting point is 00:28:27 that will illuminate what's actually going on in the right hemisphere of her brain. It makes you understand what's going on in the right hemisphere of your brain. You're looking for answers. Why do I feel this way? What is the nature of what I'm feeling? How can I feel better? But it's mysterious.

Starting point is 00:28:41 Suffering is a very mysterious thing. It's really, really hard to articulate. And when you can't articulate it, when you can't explain it, when you don't have the words for it, you go and you look for another language that explains it. And that's sad music. That's the theory about why that works. And it's almost certainly the case. A very nice article in the arts and psychotherapy.

Starting point is 00:29:01 The appeal of sad music. A brief overview of current directions and research on motivations for listening to sad music. actually shows that when people listen to it, they feel less alone, and the sad music makes sense of the crisis that they're actually going through. So the bottom line is that this stuff is good for you if you know how to use it right. Now, interestingly, there's two ways to amplify the positive effects. I'm going to give you these two ways, and then I'm going to show you how to be better at listening to music, how to create music protocols in your life that can lead to better health and more happiness for you.

Starting point is 00:29:39 So the two ways to amplify positive effects, according to the research. Number one is consider more live music. So in 2024, British researchers in an experiment asked participants to listen to classical music in three ways, live, pre-recorded, and in a music video. Those are the three ways they asked them to do it. And then they hooked sensors up to the scalp of the participants, and they were trying to detect where the brain activity was greatest. And what they found was that people had the most intense neurophysiological experience when they were in person for performance. Now, maybe you knew that.

Starting point is 00:30:16 Maybe you knew that that's the case. But not everybody does know that. So in person is more intense than any other way of experiencing music. Second, and this is more counterintuitive, that music is more intense when you're by yourself. That might not be the way you like it the most, but it's most intense when you're by yourself. It's a 2018 experiment from the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences that where researchers showed that happy music seems happier

Starting point is 00:30:41 and sad music seems sadder when you listen to it alone, as opposed to when you're listening to it with others. So how do you use this? How do you use this information? I'm going to give you four ways to turn all this information into protocols. Number one,

Starting point is 00:30:59 decide what you actually want from your music and then consume it and create a playlist according to what your goals are. Okay. Now, the goal might just be listening to music while I work out. But if there's something that's a little bit deeper because you want special access to the right hand side of your brain, consider the tradeoffs that take place between using music to bond socially and using it to intensify emotion. So, for example, If you want to bond socially, listen with friends. If you want to intensify your emotions, listen by yourself. If you want a mixture of both, try going to a live concert with friends.

Starting point is 00:31:38 If you want the richest emotional experience possible, go to a concert by yourself. You get the idea of how all this could actually be used. How you can use the science to improve your life, according to what your needs are at the moment. Okay, even more practically, use your music in a way. where you want the effect on you as opposed to categorizing all the music that you're listening to with respect to the type of music or the artist.

Starting point is 00:32:04 So, for example, create a catalog if you're using, I use Spotify a lot, there's a lot of ways to actually do this. It's very convenient these days. Create a catalog of songs you like. Now, pay attention or pieces that you like in the case of classical music, pay attention to how each one makes you feel

Starting point is 00:32:22 and write down as characteristics in your own words. right so take the top hundred songs that you listen to that's on your spotify playlist and say how does this one make me feel and actually categorize it with you know up down how sad happy in your own words and then look for patterns across the songs you're going to find some pretty easy patterns but probably some counterintuitive ones as well and then build your personal music library in a way based on emotional effect rather than style or artist and this is really important right so when i'm sad i'm going to the sad list when i'm happy i'm going to go to the sad list when i'm happy i'm to go to the happy list. When I need energy, I want to go to the energy list. When I have a party

Starting point is 00:32:58 with my friends, I'm going to the party list because you've actually categorized it with respect to the activity in the limbic system of your brain. This is self-management in a way to use music in the service of self-management. That's the second thing that I recommend. The third thing I recommend is learning and growing. Because when you actually get more sophisticated about the music that you're consuming, you'll get more of these particular effects and you can get more of the of the neurobiological benefits and emotional benefits from it. You know, I recommend this to a lot of people along a lot of lines. You know, when I see, you know, a young person and a young adult who's reading a lot of

Starting point is 00:33:35 young adult fiction, I say, fine. Young adult fiction is fine. But start going toward old adult fiction, too. You know, if you're reading a lot of, you know, novels by young adult authors, which are kind of, you know, they're kind of cotton candy. Think about Dostoevsky. You know, that's where if you're, if you like fiction, get better. at reading fiction. And the way you get better at reading fiction is by doing something that's

Starting point is 00:33:58 harder, not doing the same easy thing over and over and over again. This is the principle of progress through challenge. If you want bigger muscles, you have to lift more weight. You need progressive overload. And the same thing is true with your reading. You need progressive overload. And you need that with music as well. Think about your music in terms of the effects on you and on your appetite and learning about new genres, how that will stretch you. and it will have more intense effects on you if it's actually more sophisticated and deeper, but that requires learning.

Starting point is 00:34:33 That requires the progressive overload. If you start getting really interested in the emotional and cognitive effects of love songs, for example, maybe we should start cultivating an interest in Italian opera. If you listen to Giacomo Puccini's Tosca or La Boeem, it's actually not that hard to get into. I mean, if you sat down with me,

Starting point is 00:34:51 I could tell you all about the libretto in the context and the history, and we'd watch the video a few times, and pretty soon, I bet you'd be a fan. You think corny love songs make you feel one way. Well, corny Italian opera is going to make you feel that times ten because of the depth and sophistication that comes around from that. If you like an electric guitar shredding sick riffs, try taking that experience to the next level by listening to the Flamenco virtuoso Paco di Luthia, the greatest Spanish guitar player who ever lived, and he's got sick riffs, man. But in a different vernacular, that you've been used to, go deep.

Starting point is 00:35:26 You know, I have a son who's deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply into classical music. And he played a little bit of cello. And mostly, he just knows a lot. And one of the reasons is when he was a kid, when he was laying in bed because he was interested in music, we would look at scores. And we would, you know, we would go to concerts in New York. And for a couple of months before we went to the concerts, we would read the music together every single night while we listened to recordings of this music.

Starting point is 00:35:48 And he would get deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper into it. Now his interest is really sophisticated. and he listens to a lot of music and is a very healing, a very wholesome thing. It's a very good thing for him because of that level of sophistication. Learning grow. That's number three. Number four, play it yourself. Why don't you play it yourself?

Starting point is 00:36:07 Among amateur and professional musicians, people differ about whether emotional experiences in life understanding or deeper when playing music as opposed to listening to it. But one of the things that I have found, in fact, is that amateur musicians get the most intense experience. from it. And some of the people that I know who love the music the most, they're not professionals, they're amateurs. So my brother and I were both very, very serious musicians growing up. We played in the same orchestras, the youth orchestras and the community orchestras together. I took one path. He took the other. I went pro. He didn't. He went into an entirely different line of work, but he kept

Starting point is 00:36:42 playing. He's a double bass player, very gifted double bass player. And still to this day in his mid-60s, he plays in community orchestras. He plays with his friends. He plays bass in. He plays bass and, and, you know, like bluegrass bands from time to time. And he loves it. It's a huge source of joy for him that he actually is able to do that as a source of joy in his life. Now, I stopped because I went pro and it was all that I did. And, you know, when you do something professionally, maybe that takes some of the joy out of it, I'm not quite sure. But the bottom line is that that amateur musicians get deep and intense joy from what they actually do.

Starting point is 00:37:17 There's a 2020 study that looks at the well-being of playing music and finds them to be very significant. if we get very positive, even more so than listening to music. Take a few lessons on your favorite instrument and see for yourself. I should note, by the way, in that 2020 study that they had a comparison group of people so that they could get a baseline of people who are neither listening to music or playing music. They were knitting instead. And it turns out that the kniters were even happier than the musicians. So maybe you should listen to more music while you knit.

Starting point is 00:37:50 I don't know. You decide. How did Schopenhauer do it? It turns out that Schopenhauer went to a lot of concerts, but fundamentally the way that he loved music, Arthur Schopenhauer, the nihilist who was getting at Villa through music, he played the flute every day in his apartment in the afternoon after he wrote. He lived in Frankfurt, and he played his flute in his apartment every day.

Starting point is 00:38:14 It turned out he had his belief that there was one composer in particular who was better than all the others, which was actually a guy who was alive the same time that he was. It was somebody who was born just within four years of when he was born. I don't think they knew each other at all. That was Jokino Rossini, the Italian opera composer. And back in the day, you couldn't get recordings of anything. You could get sheet music and play him on the piano, et cetera, et cetera.

Starting point is 00:38:40 He didn't play the piano. He played the flute. And so he would get the sheet music of the melodies of Rossini's operas, and he would play them on his flute. and when he did, he would roll his eyes up toward heaven because he was having a mystical experience. He believed that Rosini's music was the secret to the underlying code of the mysteries of life.

Starting point is 00:39:05 This is one of the world's greatest cynic. Take it from him. The bottom line is, I don't know if he's right, but I know that you can go find your Rossini. If you do, you can be happier. Let's take some questions. Dane Jackson, as a matter of fact, we're going to take some questions about music because it makes sense. Dane Jackson writes in,

Starting point is 00:39:24 do you have any suggestion on where someone with little to know experience with classical music and start in understanding and thus further appreciating classical music? Great. This is super fun. This is our great hobby. There's old stuff and there's new stuff. And here's the great thing. I mean, YouTube is a fast wasteland of time wasting for a lot of people, but it can be used for great good.

Starting point is 00:39:44 And this is a classic case of this. Howard Goodall's story of music is a BBC series from 2013. It's all on YouTube. Go look at it. It's fantastic. The second, and one of the like even more is Leonard Bernstein. He was one of the greatest conductors and he was a fine composer as well. He was also a great educator and a genius.

Starting point is 00:40:03 And he did a, in 1973, he did a series of lectures at Harvard to hold the Harvard-Norton lectures. And those are all on YouTube, too. And they're super fun and they're super interesting. And you're actually going to learn a lot. The whole bottom line is that somebody who makes it come alive through your joy and teaches you a lot about it is do that on YouTube and you'll spend night after night after night doing it. So Sam Malik is the next question. Do you listen to music during your morning workout and a somewhat type? How methodical are you about it? I don't. I generally don't. And the

Starting point is 00:40:33 reason is because as a former professional musician, I find it hugely distracting. So some people, they find people talking too distracting. I find people playing music too distracting. Now, I could find something it would be kind of numbing, but almost any music, I'm thinking about the melody, I'm dissecting the harmony, I'm doing some sort of, you know, analysis of the music in my head. But that's just me. Sometimes I listen to music when I'm driving,

Starting point is 00:40:58 which is really interesting and fun for me. I don't drive that much, but oftentimes when I'm coming home from work when I'm in the office and I come back and I'll listen to Sirius XM has a really good radio station symphony is what it's called. It actually has a pretty good taste in music and I like it. Or I'll put on something that's actually on my phone. I have Spotify premium. Spotify is so fantastic, by the way.

Starting point is 00:41:21 I mean, I love the service. I think it's one of the great ways that technology has made our life so much better. And maybe I will publish my most liked songs from Spotify. Maybe I'll publish my Spotify playlist. Do you like that? Maybe I'll do that. And you could actually see the weird stuff that I'm listening to from jazz to world music to, you know, Indonesian Gamelon classical to, of course,

Starting point is 00:41:44 the Bach and the and the Brookner that were my stock and trade for so long. And that's the stuff that I'll listen to when I'm driving. And sometimes when I'm doing work that doesn't require concentration, like putting together PowerPoint slides or something for my lectures in class. I'll do that. But I don't usually do it when I'm working out. It's too distracting. Your results may differ.

Starting point is 00:42:01 You've got to experiment with that yourself. Last one, this is an anonymous question. My friends include my husband and music buddies. Good. So, but that's about it. Could you please share some advice on how someone with Asperger's who's on the autism spectrum can grow deep friendships. You know, having a spouse and music buddy is not bad, I have to say, that's pretty good. It's not bad at all, actually. But the whole point is this. People who are on the

Starting point is 00:42:26 autism spectrum, they tend to bond with others over mutual interest as opposed to personal sharing, especially emotional sharing. There's a lot of reasons for that, you can imagine. But the bottom line is that how can you grow deeper friendships? And the answer to that is growing new interests. That as generally speaking the way it is for people on the autism spectrum, and a lot of people not on the autism spectrum as well, is to do that. So think about a new area venture is something you want to learn about and a community of people who are learning about it as well,

Starting point is 00:42:56 and that's where your natural new friendships are going to come from. That's what I would recommend. We're done. I hope you've enjoyed this episode. I hope that you find use for it in the way that you listen to music, which is the most wonderful thing. Let me know your thoughts at office hours at arthurbricks.com. Like and subscribe on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple.

Starting point is 00:43:14 hit the subscription button, bum, bum, that makes me happy when you do so because we can spread more quickly to more people and we can get to you in a timely way. Leave me a comment, good, bad, negative, positive. We like to hear it all. Follow me on socials, Instagram, LinkedIn, other platforms, and order the meaning of your life while you're at it. You'll learn more about music and art. In there, there's a whole chapter dedicated to beauty in this book. And I'll write more about it in the weeks and months to come.

Starting point is 00:43:41 I'll see you next week.

Office Hours with Arthur Brooks - Use Music to Change Your Brain and Get Happier

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