Radiolab - Origin Stories

Episode Date: June 3, 2022

We’re all in a tizzy here at Radiolab on account of our 20-year anniversary. And, as one does upon passing a milestone, we’ve been looking back in all kinds of ways. Two weeks ago, we went out over the airwaves, “Live on your FM dial,” a callback to our origins as a radio show. We revamped our logo and redid our website (get your Freq on, people!). More recently, Lulu's and Latif’s first stories came up in a meeting. They weren’t always the intrepid hosts of our collective journey in wonder. Soren Wheeler, our editor, thought it would be fun to highlight those firsts for you.  So here they are, baby Latif and Lulu, doing their darndest to make audio magic. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab today.     Radiolab is on YouTube! Catch up with new episodes and hear classics from our archive. Plus, find other cool things we did in the past — like miniseries, music videos, short films and animations, behind-the-scenes features, Radiolab live shows, and more. Take a look, explore and subscribe!  

Wait, you're listening. Okay. Go on listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. WNYC. Okay. Alright. Three, two, one.

Hey, I'm Lathana Sir. I'm Lula Miller. This is Radio Lab. Today we've got a mashup of two stars. All right. Three, two, one. Hey, I'm Latham Nasir. I'm Lula Miller. This is Radio Lab. Today we've got a mashup of two stories. One is about musical hallucinations,

and one is about spiritual machinations. We are celebrating Radio Lab's 20th birthday this spring. And you know, when you are celebrating your birthday, sometimes you just like bust out the old photo albums and look at you know baby pictures and pictures of awkward haircuts and stuff like that and this is our version of that our editor Soren asked us to to dredge up our first ever radio lab stories Lulu and mine and not only are first-ever radio web stories, our first-ever radio stories. And we wanted to play them for you. Yes.

And what was yours? What was your first one? Oh, we're going to start with mine. OK, fine. But the first radio story I ever did end up being called a clockwork miracle. I was at the time a very enthusiastic radio lab listener with pretty much zero journalistic experience. Okay. I was studying the history of science and it was during that time that

I also started listening to radio lab and then pitching radio lab. It was like shock unblast of pitches where it would be like, and then there's this thing. And then there's this thing. And this is an exciting thing. And I'm well about this and I never looked into this and I always wanted to. I had just been pitching constantly where I'd be like, and then there's this thing, and then there's this thing, and this is an exciting thing. And I'm well, how about this? And I never looked into this and I always wanted to. I had just been pitching constantly. I'd been pitching and pitching so many stories to the powers that be at Radio Lab, which to me were mostly just sort of names on email addresses. I didn't know anybody and everyone was like nice

but saying no to all of them. And then this time I sat with it, I thought about it, I wrote down a big list of possible ideas, and then I found this article in a scholarly anthology by a sculptor. I mean, it was such a once upon a time story. It's like haunting and beautiful, and it felt like a, yeah, like a, like a

fable. Yeah, it feels like a fairy tale that like we all had read, but we'd never read it. But then it's also about like engineering. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so then I sent it in. And then I remember I walked in the building, Pat Walters actually, I think was the one who like tapped me in through the security gate or whatever. And that was my first time at WNYC. So first time I met Chad, first time I think, first time I met Soren,

and I looked sat down. I've heard rumors whispered by Soorn mostly about a pooping duck. Oh, so the pooping duck is really famous actually. The duck wasn't really eating and pooping, but they had like a store of like pre-pre-puped duck poop. I don't know what it was. It looked like duck poop maybe. And you would feed this robot duck and then watch it actually poop.

Oh, I mean, all you see is you see sort of this in and this out and people believed it. People thought this was a this was a pooping duck. Um, and so we talked about a bunch of these ancient robots and both of them were kind of funny. But then he told us about one in particular that was actually was kind of haunting. Yes, not poopy at all. So the year is uh, it's 1562. This is 450 years ago. Not so long after Columbus. Yeah, Ferdinand and Isabella, dead, and there's a new king of Spain.

Philip. Philip. Yeah, and he has a son. The 17-year-old crown prince, his name is Don Carlos. And one day, he's in the royal lodgings, he's walking down a flight of stairs. He trips, he falls, he bashes his head against a door near the bottom of the stairs. This is the crown prince, you say? The crown prince of Spain. So this is a national climate. It is a national climate because he's the heir apparent. So, so well, at first it doesn't look like

it's such a bad injury, he's still conscious, but then his head starts to swell to this kind of crazy size. He becomes delirious and feverish. He's struck blind. And so at this point the king comes, right? This is King Philip II. So he is at this time. He is the most powerful man in the world, right? So he basically controls the all of the Americas. He controls much of Europe. The Philippines is named after him. He was tied with the Pope. At this time, the Pope and the King were kind of like,

you know, BFF. So the whole Spanish court is going nuts. Across the country, people are seeing this, reading this as a kind of sign that God's very angry. Right. And so they're fasting, they're doing these kinds of prayer processions, things like this. And according to Lotto the King,

calls all the best doctors in Europe to come to Spain to help his son. And these doctors are trying everything. They are drilling a hole in his skull to relieve the pressure. To relieve the pressure, they are bleeding him and blistering him and they are purging him to the extent

that he has like 20 bowel movements within just like a certain few hours. They're like smearing all over the wound. They're smearing like turpentine and honey. And... Poor Don Carlos. Even after all of this, they sort of look at each other. They look at him and it's kind of like, this is...

He's gonna die. It's is, he's gonna die. So he's dying. Yeah. He's basically on his deathbed. So at this point, according to a lot of the king, goes to his son. Legend goes that he kneels beside his son at his son's deathbed, and he makes a pact with God. The pact is, if you help me, if you heal my son, if you do this miracle for me,

I'll do a miracle for you. Well, that's quite a heubristic of a human being to say to God. Well, let's also remember that he's the most powerful man in the world at this point. He's a god among men really. Yeah, he brisked you know this is what he says. Okay.

All of a sudden, his son just gets better. Really? Within a week he can see again. Within a month, he is as if he didn't fall at all. He just pops right back up. Yeah. And King Philip must have thought,

oh my God, this is amazing. This is exactly, my God. It's probably exactly what he thought. And when his son can finally speak, he says to him, dad, you know the weirdest thing happened when I was out, I had this dream. Oh, that's a great story. This is Elizabeth King. when I was out, I had this dream. Oh, that's a great story.

This is Elizabeth King. I'm an artist and a professor in the sculpture department at Virginia Commonwealth University. She's actually the one that hooked a lot to find the story. Yep. In any case, the dream. There are documents of Don Carlo next morning saying that he had had a dream. This vision that a figure in a in a Franciscan habit, shaved head, sharp with nose, this marvelous monk entered his room and approached his deathbed holding

across and basically told him you're going to be fine. And that's quite well documented. Apparently there was a witness in the room in the sick room with him that night who overheard the prince talking to a ghost, sort of mumbling things in his delirium. So, Don Carlos has this dream? Suddenly he's fine. And the natural question the people are asking is,

who is this monk? Yeah. I mean, is it just a generic monk or is it somebody specific, some messenger from God? And from his description. Physical description. The shaved head, the pointy nose, the monk's habit. Piercing eyes. Even the kind of cross he was using, everybody in town, the king, everyone was like, oh yeah.

Like we know exactly who this guy is. Can only really be one guy. Kind of local fryer who died a hundred years before named Diego Dalcala. Diego Dalcala. Diego Dalcala. Who is he? He is a local holy figure whose corpse was associated with a number of documented miracles. In fact this guy was so holy in this town. Actually not just in the town, you wanted to know something?

There's a bit of trivia. Ever heard of San Diego? California, you mean? Yeah, as in the Padres. Well, is he, is this the same guy? Same guy. He was the patron saint of the people who found it. San Diego. Oh, he is holy. So he was so holy in this town that people believed his corpse. His 100 year dead corpse had healing powers. And some people, there are different stories, but some people say that even they, these, that unbeknownst to Don Carlos,

that night that he had the dream. The priesthood and the king himself, according to some stories, went and they got this corpse out of the church, out of the crypt. They carried it through the streets, they brought it to the bedroom, they literally put it, they carried it through the streets, they brought it to the bedroom. Literally put it, they sort of snuck it in bed with Don Carlos and that's how he healed.

They didn't stick him in bed with this bone, right? They just kind of, they brought him into the room. There's different reports. There's a picture of it in this engraving. Oh. And you can, you probably can't see it, but look at this picture right here She had a copy of a 16th roughly a 16th century woodcut showing you this scene where you could kind of see

The two men in bed together one guy who's alive barely and another guy's been dead a hundred years Well, Well, they could be, you know, they could be just laying him down. Okay. It was kind of the middle. We're seeing it again. Meanwhile, back to our story, you got Philip II, who has asked God for miracle. God came through, through this monk, and now Philip II is like, uh-oh. I got a deliver.

King Philip is on the hook. He knows he owes God a miracle. And he's, he's acutely aware of this. So basically what he does is he enlists this really renowned clockmaker. A clockmaker. Yep, named Juanello Tureana. A huge man, a big ox of a man,

described as always being filthy and blustery and not a lot of fun to be around. But a great great clockmaker. Certainly among the best in Spain. Maybe the entire Holy Roman Empire. So the king goes to the sky and he says, look, I want you to make a mechanical version of Diego de Alcala. What? A mechanical version of this 100 year dead holy priest. Yes.

Like a mechanical monk. A robotic podre. Yeah. Which, and this I did not expect, still exists. Now the monk bod is in the Smithsonian, perfect working order. No way. I swear, I swear that it's since 1977. No.

Yeah. The first time I saw this figure, I was drawn to it and then repelled. That's Carlyne Stevens. She is a curator at the Smithsonian in DC. About a week after a lot of finesse spoke, we ended up in DC meeting with her and she showed us. The monk who lives in a little glass case. What we have here is an automaton, over 400 years old. Is this the first robot that we know of?

No, no, no, no idiot. The ancient Greeks had things that could be considered robots. Okay, back to our story, 450 some odd years ago, our clockmaker, what's his name? Toriano. Toriano. He goes into his shop and he does whatever he does. He connects one gear to another, to another.

For hours, weeks, months. No idea how long it takes, and I don't think anybody does. But he merges one day into the bright sunshine, with what did you call it? A robotic podre. Yeah, it's a 15-inch high. Figure. Made of wood and iron has the sort of habit,

has the sandals, has the rosary, has the cross. And poking out of the top of the habit is a little... Bald, hairless head. Rosary has the cross and poking out of the top of the habit is a little bald, hairless head with that sharp nose like a like a razor and the rather ferocious eyes Like intense or like like doing business ferocious. You will like I'm focused Like maybe I'm only 15 inches tall, but I am focused on something much bigger than you, you human. So did you like turn it on or push something? Yeah.

Why would I get on a train and go for three hours just to try and look at it? Obviously. Okay, do you want to mind it? Sure. Yeah. Okay. So Carling takes us out into the hall. We sit down on the floor.

She gives Latif a little brass key. He sticks it into the secret slot in the monk's side. And I think it goes counterclockwise. You would tend to want to do it this way. And Latif winds up the monk. And I'm turning it counterclockwise and it's surprisingly sort of taught. How much did I turn? And so if you sort of wind up this sort of secret spring.

I think there's a stop in it all. Oh, OK. All right, I'm going. I'm going. Put it on the ground. Wind is the best. Let him go. Yeah.

Give him a push. It'll walk very slowly. One foot after the other coming out from under the casket. In fact, there's actually little wheels under there. But yet you see the feet coming out. The head is turning from right to left. The eyes are rolling in the head. The mouth is opening and closing. As if it's sort of muttering like a prayer. The arms are in motion. One arm is raising and lowering cross. The other arm is beating the chest.

One arm is raising and lowering cross. The other arm is beating the chest. Wow. A symbolic gesture. Who a Catholic? That is called the mea culpa. After three or four steps, the arm holding the cross does something new. It moves two different new directions

to bring the cross to the mouth and the figure kisses the cross. I don't know. It's oddly like mesmerizing. Yes. The next thing it's doing is that it's turning and moving in a different direction and then walking its pace isn't kissing the cross. As we watched it turn once, then twice, then three times, four times, then it got back to where it started.

So if you imagine a table with a number of people sitting around, that's probably it's going to sort of, at one point, another head for you and then turn away and head for someone else and then turn away. Why would the king of Spain, who could have, you know, I don't know, built a church or taken a crusade to Jerusalem, or done something, you know, he could have done anything. Why did he decide to commemorate his son's revival by making a little automatic doll?

Like, what was that for? Yeah, lots of, what was he thinking? Yeah, it's a good, that's the $64,000 question. It's a great question. It's a really good question. The truth is there's really no way to know for sure. That's the historian, I got to rely on the documentation. And there's not a whole lot of that in this case.

But one interpretation certainly could be that, you know, the king had this amazing miraculous thing happen to his son. And now he had a way of sharing that with his subjects. Because he's got this device where it's an illusion. Like the machinery of it is completely hidden. There's no visible. That's, yeah, that's one of the craziest parts, that it's all sort of hidden underneath the road.

So when he put it down on a table or in a courtyard, people would have seen it move on its own. They would have been amazed, as we were, and he could have said, look, here is the miracle. Look what God did for our country. God like Spaniards. Yeah, look at what God did for Spain, which would have been a useful thing for a king to be able to say, right?

Yep. That's one possibility. The other is that just on a more utilitarian level, this was a machine that was built to pray. And this was a period when you could buy prayer repetitions. So if you had the money, you could get someone to pray for you while you go do something else. You're covered. You're covered. And if you think about it from Phillips' perspective, he needed to say thank you to God. And here he had this thing that if he wound up, was an automated thank you machine. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Yeah, it could be thank you, thank you, thank you. Or it could be, I love you, I love you, I love you. It could also be, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. It could be please, please, please, please, please. What if you need? But if you think about it more expansively, so it's a lot of like, what did it mean at that time to be a Catholic?

Like, what did it really mean? Well, then this robot was maybe the best Catholic you could ever hope to be. What counted as prayer was quite specific. In the sense that if you say the right things and do the right actions in the right order, in the right time, and in the right place, that's prayer. That's when God notices. So it's about method. It's about method, it's about. And maybe this monkey says was like method embodied.

That's a good one. I mean, why not? It is in fact perfect. It repeats itself over and over and over and over and it replicates the ideal. So it's basically what it is is a little teaching object. Like this is what you're aiming for. Here's how you do it.

Like this is it. This is the perfect prayer. It's a perfect. This is doing it the aiming for. Here's how you do it. Like this is it. This is the perfect prayer. It's a perfect prayer. This is doing it the perfect way every time. And I, because I'm just this, you know, lowly imperfect human, I'm not, I can only aspire to this perfect piety. Are you making this up or do you think

that this might, the monk might have actually been seen this way? It could be true. I don't think it's so crazy. Especially if you think about what was happening at that moment. This is counter-reformation Spain, right? Not so long after Luther is nailing his thesis on the wall. And there's this big debate raging about how actually do you get closer to God?

You have the kind of protesters with Luther who are saying, it's not about, you know, works, it's not about saying something this many times, it's about whether you feel it. And then you have the kind of Catholic argument which is to say, you do these rituals because these are the rituals. And these are the way you get, this is the way you get close to God. This is the way you pray. You pray like this thing. Just like this thing.

And if you're a Catholic king and if God's a Catholic, can you better hope he is? And if you're Philip II, you look at the sky and you say God, you and me are square. Hey listeners, yes, Radio Lab comes in audio form, but we have also been dabbling in print. We have a newsletter that we've been revamping, and I just wanted to remind you it was there, in case you haven't checked it out. Each week we give you links and ways of diving deeper into that week's episode, but now we're experimenting with little essays, book reviews, staff recommendations. And these things are good. Like a recent one that I really loved came from producer Maria Paz Gutierrez, who made a playlist for plants.

It's really great. That's just one of them. They come out every week. And if you like Radio Lab, it's just another way to engage with the hive mind that is this show. And we'll also be inviting more participation from you. Your questions, your comments, your art. So we would love if you go check it out. You can sign up at radialab.org slash newsletter. And if you have ideas of how to make it better things we should add things we should not have please let us know on twitter instagram or email and thanks okay now uh this is so satisfying i didn't want to go first but now i'm glad i did because i

get to turn the table. Turn the tables. That's funny in that expression. Because the story is musical. No, just turn the tables in that you now are in the hot seat and I get to ask the questions here. What's the story behind the story? How did this start? Okay, so this was 2008.

So I'd been working there for almost three years as a producer and I was cutting interviews and structuring stuff, but this was the first story that I reported and voiced. And I was shy. Like I was still really afraid of calling people up and asking my nosy questions and bursting into their world, which turns out is something you have to do a lot

if you want to be a reporter. And we were working on this story about musical hallucinations and Robert had just talked to Oliver Sacks about his new book. Was it like musical failure? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember that. Yeah. Um, he mentioned this old man in his 90s who had musical hallucinations and Robert just

did this huge kindness where he just said, oh yeah, I could ask Oliver for that guy's number. You could just call him. Yeah, did you call him up or you went to see him in person? I called him, because he was in LA. And so we did it through the studio. We got like a nice studio connection.

And I remember going into the studio by myself because by this point, I knew how to use it really well and just kind of slipping into that darkness of radio interviewing space. And then he was just with me. And then it was like, odd. Now Lulu, let's play your first ever story. It was part of a bigger episode about earworms.

About songs that get stuck in your head. And you can't get them out. Take it away, Lulu. This is Radio Lab, I'm Robert Krollwich. I'm Chad Abumrat. And this hour I'm going to curse you, Chad. I'm going to ask you to just simply do this one with the thing. You know that song that we both hate.

Which one? Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum It's like you moment you start that it's like you go. You can you can you sing it? There are some songs that I can stick into your head and they just won't leave There's somebody of course whose head who got this song somehow stuck in her head and then their songs that just Won't go away because you didn't even invite them in this day This is an hour on the music in our heads Where does the songs come from? Why do they stay a whole hour without Suzanne Vega? Thankfully. Unread your laugh.

Let me ask you a question though, to get us started here. When a song gets stuck in your head, do you have one in there right now by your chance? Oliver, the Broadway show tune. Of course. What does it sound like when it's in there? What does it sound like? Yeah. Oh. But just to think, before you answer,. What does it sound like when it's in there? What does it sound like?

Yeah. Oh. But just think before you answer, just think what does it really sound like? Describe it musically. Um, well, it, it, well, it's funny as you mentioned this, it doesn't actually, I don't hear any musicians. Like is it loud? No, it's, it's nothing, it's not loud, it's not like it's loud.

Did it have like a location? No. Canber. No, it just nothing. It's not loud. Does it have a location? No. Tember? No, it just has a melody. A vague foggy. Like a shadowy melody, right? Yes, exactly. Well, so that's our starting point.

You know, most of us get a song in our head. It's kind of like what you described. vague. But there are people who, when they get song stuck in their head, it's a whole different experience. It is not vague. In fact, they wish it were vague. They wish it were a shadow. And you'll know what I mean in a second. Let me introduce you to someone. Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb. Always has songs running through his head.

Everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go. He's plagued by them, actually. Then he spoke with our producer Lulu Miller. And so that was going through your head just now? That's right. Mary had a little over and over again. You know, let me have you just introduce yourself really quick. Oh, my name is Leo Rangel, and I'm not young. I just had my 94th birthday. I've been in LA since I was in the war, World War II.

Leo's a psychoanalyst. Oh, yeah. I'm still in practice. So he finds everything that's been going on in his own head sort of Intriguing like from a professional standpoint. I'm trying to think what the hell am I doing? Anyway, this whole thing started for him about 12 years ago. He just had major heart surgery and he wakes up in his hospital bed Oh, I wake up in the ICU and almost as soon as I'm conscious, outside my hospital window, I hear music.

And it was distant. It sounded funerial, like hymns. I hear these songs. I look out the window. I think a rabbi is out there. I said to my kids, I casually say, hey, there's a rabbi out there singing. They said, what do you mean? So I said, there must be a rabbi school and he must be teaching young people how to be rabbis and the kids looked at each other. Because they weren't hearing anything. But at that moment, that didn't matter to Leo because the music was so loud and vivid to him, so totally coming through that window that... I dismissed them as, oh well, they could have their opinion if they want.

I didn't think anything of it. And then the rest of the week in the hospital, you know, I'm getting better and better. And as I get better, the music changes. I start being a more perky, and the songs, the music out the window changes to Chattanooga Chuchu. Did you hear the Chattanooga Chuchu? One in the morning, two in the morning, I'm waking up with these songs. I'm always coming in from right outside that window.

Then I thought Jesus isn't. Pretty energetic group there across the street. At this point, Leo was beginning to suspect that something a little weird was going on. But the real coup de gras came when I was going to leave the hospital after a week or so. And this tune, I didn't know the words at first, but I started to hear da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da.

And as he packed up, signed out of the hospital and got into his car. I was reflecting. That's when it hit him. I still was hearing the song. The song was still coming from outside a window, but now the scenery was moving. I thought it was related to the hospital and to the thing across the street. Here I am in the car listening to this. And that's when the lyrics appeared. Finally the words come. When Johnny Cosmar Chinom again, find me the words come when Johnny goes marching home again. Hurrah.

Hurrah. He couldn't ignore it anymore. Not only was the song following him home, it's like the song was about him. He was the Johnny. The girls will cheer. Marching home, coming home from the hospital. I realized I am listening to me. I am listening to me.

Okay, is he really though? I mean, is he really listening to anything or is he just thinking he's hearing something? Well, there's nothing out there for him to hear. Right, from the inside, like, is his brain actually hearing music? Ah. Well, lucky for us, there's a professor in England

who had the exact same question, I called him up. Hello. Hi, can I speak to Professor Griffith please? Tim Griffith, his name is a professor of cognitive neurology at Newcastle University. Here's what he did. He took 35 people who were likely to be who claimed to be hallucinating music, and he scanned their brains. Very simple experiment.

I just put people on a scanner and said, what are you hearing now? What are you hearing now? When they told him, uh, there. There I'm hearing music, that that moment he would snap a picture of their brain. Right. Then he took a different group of people who have no hallucinations, played them real music, scanned their brains, and then he compared the pictures. And if you look, they looked virtually identical. If you were to put those in front of being say, ones, people hallucinating, the others people being played music, I wouldn't be able to tell you which was which.

Which tells you two things. First, this condition is real. These people are not making it up. And second, this goes way beyond the ordinary experience the rest of us have where we get a song stuck in our head. These people are getting the full high-fi experience of listening to music. Their entire brain is lit up.

The music sounds so convincingly like real-life music. What do you think when it suddenly appears? That's Diana Deutsch, a psychologist at the University of California in San Diego, who's been collecting emails from hundreds of different people who hallucinate music. One person described it in the following way he said, imagine that you were at a rock concert standing right by loudspeaker. Well, it's louder than that. At the beginning when I didn't know what was going to happen, I thought it was going to take over my mind. It started interfering with sleep. It's the adjacent to becaus and the Santa Fe. Like all night. I got mad. I used to say, stop it already. Stop it. Cut it out. Come on enough enough enough. But you're never free. I thought I'd never sleep again. That was the low point. I thought I've got

to get help for this. Yeah, what point did you bring it up with doctors? Well, the doctors were completely impudent to this day. They rolled their eyes when I tell them about it. One doctor told him that maybe it was the fillings in his teeth picking up the radio. Okay, I hoped it was, but it wasn't continued forever. Nothing he could do could make it stop. I don't have an off button.

It's like there was a jukebox in his head run by an evil Gremlin. And the worst part, the Gremlin would mess with the tempo. Like, okay, uh, da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da It's like you're on a galloping horse and the horse is running away with you. I once told that to my daughter and she said, Dad, why don't you just instead think of the song, that when that was galloping I would go ... ... and immediately I'm completely relaxed ... and the gallop is completely gone and I can even let it come back

and it would start now being... Oh! Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da- Okay, so let's just assume Leo is not crazy. I never thought I was psychotic. Never, never. Because most people turns out with this condition are not crazy. There's nothing else wrong with him. According to Diana Doich, so then the question becomes, how can a person who is otherwise sane hallucinate to such a crazy degree?

Well, in the 60s, there was a Polish psychologist named Jersey Kronorski, who thought about this. And he came up with a simple, kind of beautiful idea, based on an assumption that he couldn't prove yet, which was that between the ears and the brain, there are some connections, he thought, just a few stray connections that run backwards. Brain back to ear, which would allow sound to run in reverse. Now this was just an idea idea he couldn't really test it But many years later neuroscientists like Tim Griffith start to poke around in the brain

They start to explore and what they find is that he was right. Yeah, very right We look at the pathway between the ears and the brain probably about 70% of the five But don't actually go up they go down they go the other way towards the ears 70% go up 70% go from five but don't actually go up they go down they go the other way towards the years 70% go up 70% go from the brain to the ears. Yeah, it's like our ears are literally wired to hear our brains now Knoorsky's idea was it normally our ears wouldn't hear what the brain was saying because it was too busy you taking in all the sounds from the outside But what if you thought the sounds from the outside? Maybe then there would be a kind of backflow. Sound stored in your brain would start to flow backwards.

Now again, this is just an idea, but there might be something to this because it would explain why most of the people who suffer from musical hallucinations, according to Tim Griffith, have one thing in comment. By following away the common situation you see it in, it is in people who have deafness, usually in the middle of a later life. And you have to take his word for it. Nearly the instant that I went deaf, I started experiencing around the clock 24-7 auditory hallucinations.

This is Michael Corost. When he was 36, he lost all of his hearing. And he remembers the moment it had happened. He was in the emergency room talking to a nurse. And suddenly the sound started to go. It was like going from talking like this to talking like this to talking like this to talking like this. My ears were just draining out like water draining out of the about of the about. I was just getting deffering, deffer and deffer. And at the same time, I was starting to hear a very loud ringing sound in my ears. It was gradually morphing into sort of formless eerie ethereal music. Music at the spheres, really, I would call it. And we would slowly morph into some version of the Avian Maria. It was almost as if as a sort of recompense to being deaf, I was like plugged into some sort of deep background

melody in the cosmos. Now here's the question. What would happen if Michael suddenly got his hearing back? Well, a couple of months later, Michael got a cochlear implant installed. This is a little chip that's put into his brain, which promised to return at least part of his hearing. And he says when the doctors turned on the moment he says they turned it on the sounds

from the world came rushing in and the music stopped stopped cold just went away almost instantaneously hmm there you go well but I happened to know a woman who had a very, very different experience. What do you mean? She had the same problem. She went deaf. She started hearing music. What kind of music was it? Hens, spirituals, patriotic songs. Her name, oh, it's not actually her real name, it's Cheryl C. She was what we're going to call her.

She wanted the music in her head to stop, and she'd heard about a patient like your friend there. So, had musical hallucinations received a cochlear implant, and hallucinations disappeared. So, I wanted to do it. So, she did it. She got the implant, she wakes up when the operating table. And?

I heard the music, it was inside me still there just was there I can't stop it why in the first case and the they're kind of the same situation they are very much the same why would there be that difference I don't know why there is this difference between them so I ask uh doctor Oliver Sacks who we often talk to on these questions how do you explain the difference Dr. Oliver Sacks, who we often talk to on these questions. How do you explain the difference? As a physician, you know, when sees patients, you ask about their symptoms, they produce their symptoms, but it is equally important to see the relation

of the symptoms of the disease to the person themselves, to their identity. He's discovered over the years that the problem is expressed in the patient is partly a disease. I mean the person is sick or in trouble in some way. At the same time, the disease is reflecting something about the person in front of him. When he's into action and liaison, a collusion, a condition, I don't know what word to use between the self and a symptom. And sometimes it can come out so strangely. For example, there's a patient he has who

was a Jewish kid. He was a Jewish boy who'd grown up in Hamburg in the 1920s and 1930s, and he had been terrified by the Nazi youth. And for some horrible reason, he hallucinated Nazi marching songs. He was tormented, but on the other hand, Oliver told me about an old woman he once made in a nursing home who was haunted by lullabies. One after the other, nonstop. But see, she was in orphan. Her father died before she was born, and her mother before she was five. Orphaned, alone, she found the songs in her head deeply comforting.

The music and the hallucinations, in fact, seem to be a door into a lost part of childhood. So then the differences between people and music floods into their head. What's going on, says Oliver, is the disease and the person they are talking to each other. The... the self can be molded by hallucination, but it can mold them in turn. I wonder where Leo fits into this, Lulu.

Yeah. How would you say that Leo's self interacts with his symptoms or vice versa? Well, he's a psychoanalyst. So whenever he gets a song stuck in his head, which is like all the time, he analyzes it. He looks for a hidden meaning in it. Like, you know, the way dreams reveal your inner life, the same thing with songs.

Leo will tell you that every song is a message from his subconscious. Everything has an unconscious connection, pleasant or unpleasant. And he's just got to figure out what it is. I'm analyzing me like I have a patient in front of me like when I first called him up He had Mary had a little lamb stuck in his head that he told me was because he'd been thinking about the Passivity of the American people in following a leader that misleads them and everywhere that Mary went the lambs was sure to go

I'm in the connection is obvious. Or when he first got home from the hospital, he always had America the beautiful stuck in his head. I'm certainly not a raving patriot, but what this meant was home, sweet home. America to me was home. Okay, it's easy to think that this is kind of a stretch. I mean, every song has some very specific meaning for him. But I don't know. There was this one time he told me about where he woke up with a song in his head.

I start going to brush my teeth. I'm singing along as I go to the bathroom. He didn't know why. This is what it was. It's just a few years after his wife had died. My bunny lies over the ocean. My bunny lies over the sea. My bunny lies over the ocean. Da da da da da da da da da. Bring back, bring back, bring back my bunny to me, to me. And I realized when I, why am I singing that song? And it suddenly, I realized it was our wedding anniversary, that week there was one of our major anniversaries.

You know, that song can kill me when I hear it. Even so, he told me that when that song comes, he doesn't want it to go. I found that when the song disappeared, I didn't want it to disappear. It's now been over a decade of hallucinating music for Leo, and he found that at some point, the music switched. It went from intruder to friend. Da-da-da-da-da-da. Da da da da da da da. Now he looks forward to the songs. Stars and steel guitars. Da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da California Dress book, the half of them are not there anymore. You scratch out the name and that's not easy. No, no, no, just Molly and me.

And baby makes dream. All happy and mine. The Lou, heaven. Radio lab, the Lou Miller. Baby reporter Lou Lou. Muppet baby Lou. Thanks Lou Lou. Yeah, Lilloo. Yeah, thanks to Leo.

Leo has a book out about living with musical hallucinations. It's called Music in the Hand, living at the Brain Mind Border. And so does Michael Corost. He's the guy with the cochlear implant. His book is called Rebuilt, My Journey Back to the Hearing World. And special thanks to Oliver Sacks, who basically gave us his role in X. And we be able to find all these people and interview them all thanks to Oliver and Kate at your Isis system.

Radiolab was created by Chad Abumrod and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulumiller and Lutti Fnauser are our co-hosts. Susie Lektemberg is our executive producer. Dillon Keef is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Rachel Q.Sick, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz-Cutieris, Sindruneana Sambandum, Matt Kielte, Anna McEwen, Alex Niesen, Sara Kari, Anna Rosquit Paz, Aryan Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster. With help from Carolyn McCusker and Sarah Sonbach, our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Adam Ishibow.

Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Adam Ishiboh. Hi, I'm Ram from India. Leadership support for Radio Lab Science Programming is provided by the Gordon and Bittimo Foundation. Science Sandbox is Simon Foundation initiative and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundation support for Radio Lab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundation support for Radio Lab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.