Something You Should Know - The Power of Awe and Wonder & The Backstories of Your Favorite Songs

Episode Date: January 9, 2023

When you are all stuffed up with a cold or the flu or Covid, it can be very hard to sleep because you can’t breathe. This episode begins with some excellent ways to open things up so you can breathe better and get some rest. http://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/features/cold-relief-6-sleep-tips-to-help-youbreathe-easi There are a lot of ways to experience that sense of awe and wonder. And it turns out that the experience is really good for you both mentally and physically. Joining me to discuss the science of awe is Dacher Kelter. He is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley and author of the book Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life (https://amzn.to/3YYVMvh). Listen and you will be seeking out and finding awe a lot more often. Here is the website he references in the interview: https://ggia.berkeley.edu/ Every song has a story – often several stories. Listen and hear the stories behind some of the most famous and loved songs including You’re So Vain, Yesterday, Satisfaction, I Am The Walrus and others. My guest is music critic David Cheal who works at The Financial Times in London and is coauthor of the book The Life of a Song: The Stories Behind 100 of the World’s Best Loved Songs (https://amzn.to/3jIUvbp) Sticking to New Year’s resolutions or to any big change is hard. And there’s actually a good reason why that is. Listen as I explain why change is hard and a better way to make a change that is more likely to stick. Source: Kelly Traver M.D. author of “ The Healthiest You (https://amzn.to/3G0oB1F). PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! Stop throwing your money away. Cancel unwanted subscriptions – and manage your expenses the easy way – by going to https://RocketMoney.com/something ! Did you know you could reduce the number of unwanted calls & emails with Online Privacy Protection from Discover? - And it's FREE! Just activate it in the Discover App. See terms & learn more at https://Discover.com/Online Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, how to sleep better when you're all stuffed up with a cold. Then, the experience of awe. It turns out to be amazingly good for you. Studies started to come out about awe that suggested that a brief dose of awe, even if you plan it and know it's coming, makes you feel less stressed about your daily life. It reduces inflammation in your body, which is very problematic for your physical health.

Also, how to make your New Year's resolutions stick. And the stories behind some of the best-loved songs of all time, including Satisfaction, Yesterday, and You're So Vain. You're So Vain, Carly Simon, for many, many years wouldn't reveal who it was about. She sold the identity of the subject of the song at an auction with the proviso that whoever won it wouldn't reveal it. All this today on Something You Should Know. This is an ad for BetterHelp. Welcome to the world. Please read your personal owner's manual

thoroughly. In it, you'll find simple instructions for how to interact with your fellow human beings and how to find happiness and peace of mind. Thank you, and. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. And I've got some really practical news you can use in your life. Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. This is the time of year when a lot of people get sick with a cold.

And when you're sick with a cold, you want to sleep. But that can be hard if you're all stuffed up. So what do you do? Well, here are some tips from the people at WebMD. First of all, use a nasal strip. You'll be amazed at how they open you up so you can breathe better. Another suggestion is to take a hot shower before bed. The steam and humidity will help clear out your sinuses. A little chicken soup is good.

Research shows that eating hot chicken soup was more effective than sipping hot water to clear out your sinuses. And no one is exactly sure why that is, but it is. Avoid cold drinks before bed. They can actually increase stuffiness. And use a saline nasal rinse or neti pot to clear out your nose. But be careful of over-the-counter nasal sprays. Some of them can have a rebound effect if you use them too much and then you get addicted to them. Don't prop up your head with pillows. It causes an unnatural bend in the neck and that can actually make it harder to breathe. It's best to use a wedge-shaped pillow that elevates you from the waist up.

And that is something you should know. Have you ever been in awe? I'm sure you have. When you watch a beautiful sunset or look across the Grand Canyon or watch a snowfall. You can find awe in so much of life. In big things and in little everyday things. And in fact, you probably should find more awe, because awe is good for you.

How good? Well, that's what Dacher Kelter is here to discuss. Dacher studies the science of emotion. He is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and he's author of a book called Awe, the New Science of Everyday wonder and how it can transform your life. Hey, Dacher, welcome. Thanks for coming on Something You Should Know. It's good to be with you, Mike. So let's start with a definition. What is awe?

Awe is an emotion. So it's this mental state that arises when we encounter vast mysteries that we don't understand. So it's a feeling you have most typically when you encounter things that are really vast in terms of size or meaning. And then they're mysterious or the Edmund Burke, this philosopher said they're obscure. We can't make them out with our knowledge structure. So awe animates, you know, acts of creativity and wonder to make sense of the vast mysteries of life. You said it's an emotion. I've never, I guess I've never really thought of awe as an emotion, but you would know you're the expert on awe and emotions. But I've never thought of awe as an emotion. It's a big question and it turns out,

although it seems simple, it's very hard. What is an emotion? Emotions are these brief states that engage your body and your mind, that help you do things that are good for you in the world. And so awe indeed is this brief experience that we have in music or encountering people who inspire us or in nature or spirituality that moves our bodies and changes our minds to help us be part of communities and things that are larger than the self. So why do you study awe?

I mean, it seems awe is very fleeting. It happens when it happens. When you see something, you see something. I can think of wonderful examples of what I think might be awe, but they come, they go, and so what? cultivated in our culture and you know one is just as a scientist an emotion scientist i've long used the tools of science to understand the human psyche or our minds right in our bodies and i've studied laughter and love and desire and embarrassment and shame and here was an emotion awe that really hadn't been studied uh until about 10 or 15 years ago. And then, you know, I am involved in the teaching of human well-being and health. And we know from a lot of research that brief positive experiences of laughter and now awe and other emotions like love or kindness or compassion are really good for you. And in fact, I think there's almost nothing better for a human being for their bodies and minds and relationships than to go out and find a little bit

of awe. So give me an example, because we've been talking in the abstract here. Give me an example or two of awe. What we did to understand the concrete nature of awe is we actually, believe it or not, gathered stories of awe from 26 different countries around the world, radically different countries, right? You know, countries in Africa, Mexico, South America, Poland, China, India, Japan, et cetera. We just said, like, write about an experience, a concrete experience of when you encountered a vast mystery and felt awe. And to your question, Mike, what we found is what we call the eight wonders of life that are their courage and kindness. In nature, in what I call collective effervescence, when we move together, dancing, cheering a football team. In visual things, paintings, visual designs, music, big ideas give people awe, right? Some people, it might be like free markets or evolution or, and then spirituality. And interestingly, the life and

death cycle, right? People are blown away by the birth of children. When I teach awe to audiences of people who have individuals who are 55 years old or older, they'll often talk about watching someone pass away as a source of awe. So those eight wonders of moral beauty, nature, collective effervescence, visual stuff, music, ideas, spirituality, life and death, those are where we find awe. So what are the benefits, specifically the benefits of experiencing awe? Because it would seem to me that the benefits of awe would be just as fleeting as the experience of awe that, you know, maybe it feels good for a moment, but you seem to be hinting that there are much bigger benefits. So what are they? Yeah. You know, my study started

to come out about awe that suggested that a brief dose of awe, a brief experience of awe is about as good for you as almost anything you could do. And these are studies in which someone might, in a lab, watch a nature video or watch a video of Mother Teresa or an inspiring person and they feel awe, right? We've studied veterans rafting on a river and under-resourced high school kids. There's a lot of research on nature immersion. You go out in nature and find awe. There are studies of what is it like to read stories of awe, right? Which are so powerful. And I'll just bullet point it, but what this research shows is a brief dose of awe, Even if you plan it and know it's coming, makes you feel less stressed about your daily life. It gives you a greater sense of well-being. It makes you feel like you're

more strongly connected to other people and you're part of a community and less lonely. It reduces inflammation in your body, which is very problematic for your physical health. It activates what's called the vagus nerve, this large bundle of nerves that lowers blood pressure, slows your heart rate down. It gives you an expanded sense of time, right? Where you feel like, God, all those pressures that I felt, I actually have time to live my life. So I've been teaching happiness for 30 years, gratitude and kindness and mindfulness and all this stuff. And I look at those benefits of awe and I think, wow, that's about as powerful a set of benefits as anything you might cultivate. And I believe, and the science shows this, that it's there for us to enjoy.

It's all around us on a walk and listening to people and listening to music, watching a show at night. Find awe. It's very good for you. But are the benefits as fleeting as the awe is? Like you get this rush of benefits for a minute, an hour, what? Well, that's, you know, one of the limitations of psychological science is we tend to study people just for a couple of minutes or an hour or so forth. And so we don't have rock solid answers to your question. And I think it's one of the most important questions for the field to ask. What I will tell you is, you know, we did an awe study with veterans and

high school kids who are from really tough schools. And both of these groups of people are really stressed out two to three times the stress, anxiety, depression, trauma as an average American citizen. And they went rafting for a day. They felt awe. And what we found is profound benefits that lasted for a week. Right? Our veterans, for example, showed a 30% drop in PTSD. You know, the constant vigilance and anxiety of that kind of condition. So that's not bad. That's a week. We've done other work with healthcare providers showing, you know, an awe program really reduces anxiety and depression over the course of a month. The next challenge is, or the next frontier is what you're talking about, which is, wow, if I have this transformative experience, you know, listening to music at a concert, does it last for a year? And I will tell you,

you know, it's really interesting. Molly Crockett at Princeton University and her colleagues have been publishing studies about going to music festivals makes people more kind and altruistic for a year, right? So there's this interesting possibility that the benefits of awe actually last years, right? So that we have to figure out. We're talking about the power and benefits of experiencing awe. My guest is Dacher Kelter. He is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley and author of the book, Awe, the New Science of Everyday Wonder

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Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control

not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed, critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast, the Jordan Harbinger show on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Dacker, when I think of awe, yeah, I think that there has to be an element of surprise in it that when you feel feel it it like it I wasn't expecting that you know when

we write about like the mystery that's at the scent the essence of awe right mystery is about catching us off guard not fitting our expectations not fitting our knowledge structures surprising us Surprise is about unexpected things. And awe is a close relative of surprise, but it's different, right? Surprise is more about everyday things. Awe is about vast things. And it does have this critical property of catching us off guard, astonishing us, sort of not fitting how we ordinarily perceive the world.

Can something do you think be awesome? Boy, there's an overused word, isn't it? Tell me about it. I know. Can something be awesome more than once? There are certain myths out there about awe. And in fact, the opposite is true, which is with the right mindset, you can feel more intense awe with the same thing over time. You know, people who love

the stars or wines or certain artists or a certain musician, the more they know and experience that source of awe, the deeper it tends to get. And we actually proved that in a study where we had people who are 75 years old or older once a week go out and do what we called an awe walk, where they go find some awe on their regular walk. In the control condition, they just did their regular vigorous walk and we found over time even though you know you're doing this i'm going on my awe walk now you feel more awe and it actually helped people feel less stress over the course of the study

but it would seem to me that you can't force awe. If something doesn't inspire awe, you could go for an awe walk and not get awed. I think, Mike, you're pointing out this deep philosophical puzzle about human emotion more generally and then awe more specifically, which is, in some sense, they do have to surprise you, especially in emotion like awe. You can't force it. You can't force pleasure. you can't force it you can't force pleasure you can't force a laugh uh you can laugh but you can't force the sense of hilarity and and you can't just go uh find awe you know forcing it in any context but you can open up your mind to it and say, for this time period, I'm just going to allow myself to wander and not be on schedule. For this time period, I'm going to not listen to my words that categorize things and I'm just going to see what I see. see right i think there are mental mindsets or orientations that allow us to feel awe in almost

any context and that's what we developed with the aw walk and the instructions which was you know go try somewhere new don't have any expectations try to keep your mind open don't worry about time give yourself the chance to wander. And once you do that, you know, and Mike, we have a lot of different studies showing if you find the right context and just relax and open your mind to it, you can feel a lot of awe about a lot of things. But if you feel a lot of awe, then doesn't it become less? It would seem that awe needs to be fairly rare because if you're always odd, then that's just your normal state. So there's nothing awesome about that.

Yeah. I mean, that's another what I would call a misconception of awe, which is that it has to be rare. That's really where its essence is or its power. And in fact, you know, what we find, Mike, we've done this kind of research where it's called daily diary studies, where you ask an individual to report on, at the end of the day, whether they felt awe. Did they encounter a vast mystery that surprised them? We've done this in China and Japan and Spain and other countries, the United States, Canada, and so forth. And what we find is people feel awe two to three times a week. So it's not rare. They are feeling

awe every couple of days. They stop in their tracks and like, wow, that sunset's awesome. Or look at those kids playing and their voices. That's awesome. Or man, that piece of music that I heard when I was a teenager, that it's so awesome to hear that and to feel my mind be transported back in time. There is a lot of awe around us. And I think one of the misconceptions that I worry about, frankly, is this idea that you need to feel awe. And it kind of is the Instagram idea of like, I've got to have a lot of money, fly in a private jet, land in a resort, you know, on the barrier reef to feel awe. But in fact, it's all around us to enjoy. So I can think of people who seem un-awe-able, you know, kind of grumpy, cranky, nothing really. So it seems like, you know, awe only exists if you look for it and are willing to confirm it. Yeah.

Yeah, you know, I think that's a profound question, Mike. And, you know, we live in an era, in this pandemic era, the pandemic has led to rises in depression and anxiety of 30%, those hard mental states and conditions make us less able to feel awe and compassion and laughter and gratitude, all the great positive emotions. And I actually was in an unawful or awless state where I had lost my younger brother. I was in a profound state of grief and unawful. Everything that used to bring me awe, you know, food and people's kindness and nature,

I just didn't feel it. And I went in search of awe. I did a lot of the things we're talking about here. I listened to music that mattered to me. I went out in did a lot of the things we're talking about here. I listened to music that mattered to me. I went out in nature a lot. I did some spiritual inquiries and so forth. And so, yeah, you know, life can make us unawful, but that's problematic. And we need to develop ways to cultivate this more because I really believe like Albert Einstein and Jane Goodall and Toni Morrison and Rene Descartes, the philosopher and others, that this emotion of awe is really the most human emotion.

It makes us connect to people. It makes us share. It makes us create. And when we're unawful, it's a sign that we really need to change our lives, which is important. So very specifically, if I were to go out my door on an awe walk, what are the things that I might likely see that I would see awe in? Well, what I would recommend is that you go to ggia.berkeley.edu, where the Greater Good Science Center has created a bunch of awe practices that you can cultivate awe right now, right, without spending a dime. And one of them is the awe walk. You know, and I do this when I walk to work. It's like suddenly if I allow myself a little bit of that openness to awe, suddenly I hear, oh, there's somebody playing music that really is inspiring. Or I notice how incredible the leaves, the fall leaves are on the ground that I'm walking on. And that fills me with awe and the leaves falling to the ground. And then I see a little group of preschoolers who are holding hands, you know, falling down, walking somewhere. So it's just about opening your eyes to what's

really inspiring and mysterious about human beings and our... I've often found that when I see other people experiencing awe, that that in itself is kind of awesome. Yeah. Yeah. That, you know, your observation, by the way, just gave me goosebumps because it's such a fascinating phenomenon. Well, you know what? And here's, here's my, here's, I just saw this the other day and I had just seen that, you know, we were going to talk and this to me was absolutely pure awe in its like just crystal clear, pure form was a YouTube video of this little girl, little tiny, you know, girl who obviously had very, very bad eyesight.

And she was fussy and crying. And her mom put glasses on her for the very first time. And she saw the world the way she's supposed to see the world and the look on her face was awesome yeah there's another example of i think it's a when a young child her hears her mom's voice for the first time through hearing devices and you watch it and you can't help but tear up and feel how extraordinary to your point earlier these simple things are like a mom's voice that's feel that's part of it all of life and how awesome it is so what's the big message here i mean obviously you're very into this and what's the what's the takeaway you want people to get what i learned

and i think it's going to be one of the really important themes of this awe movement if you will is it's really good for us when we're when we're in the midst of the hardest stuff of life you know trauma and depression and the like because it not only did i see that in the science we've talked about benefiting anxiety depression and the like, but also in my life, you know, that this is an emotion that brings out our best in the hardest of times. And not only is there a lot of delight and creativity and imagination that comes out of awe, but there's also a lot of meaning when we're going through tough times. Well, this has been awesome talking about awe. And I've been talking about awe with Dacher Kelter. He is a professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley.

And the name of his book is Awe, the New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Dacher. Well, thank you, Mike. Thanks for the great questions. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet.

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And all those songs have a story, sometimes a very interesting story. Here to discuss the stories of some of the most iconic songs of the last several years is David Cheal. David is a music critic. He was the pop music critic for the Daily Telegraph for 20 years, and he now works for the Financial Times in London, and he is co-author of a book called The Life of a Song, the stories behind 100 of the world's best love songs. Hi, David. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi, Mike. Thanks for having me. So first explain where this idea of looking at the stories

behind these songs came from. Okay, so I work for the Financial Times newspaper in London where I work on the arts pages, and I write and commission a weekly column called The Life of a Song, which tells the story of how a song is born, how it was written, but also, I think more interestingly, what happened after it's been released, whatever, you know, other people get hold of it and do strange things with these songs. So you say that there's been several songs that basically came to people in their dreams.

So let's talk about those to start here. Sure. Yes. So the Rolling Stones' Satisfaction, the riff, the guitar riff to that, you know, the famous fuzzy guitar riff, came to Keith Richards in a dream. He woke up in the night, recorded it on a tape recorder and went back to sleep and forgot about it. And the next morning he woke up and played the tape back and he said it was like about two minutes of the riff and 40 minutes of him snoring. And he couldn't imagine that he had written himself and this is

this is a similar theme but eventually they sort of played it to her friends and fellow band members and they said no I think it's I think it's yours and the same thing happened to Paul McCartney he woke up them one morning with the melody not yet the lyrics but the tune to yesterday fully formed in his head to begin with he called it scrambled eggs I think because he couldn't think of anything to fit but he was convinced that someone else that a tune so perfect and so seemingly timeless couldn't he couldn't possibly written it so he just kept asking people, you know, did someone else write this?

And eventually he was convinced that it was his own song. But yeah, people dream songs and, you know, the melodies at least seem to come out fully formed. I mean, sometimes, you know, songwriters, it's a very mechanical process, but I think with a lot of them, it's the great ones, it just pops into their head so the of since you've been doing this a while writing the newspaper column and all yeah if you have one is is there a favorite story uh it doesn't necessarily have to be a song that

everybody goes oh yeah i know that song but but just the story itself that really like wow what a great story sure i i think one of my favorites is probably uh there's a a very old blues song uh recorded in 1927 by blind willie johnson and it's called dark was the night's cold was the ground he wrote it inspired by an old hymn but his recording is is almost wholly instrumental and he plays slide guitar really beautiful slide guitar and you can hear him mumbling and moaning a little bit on the recording but basically it's an instrumental track really quiet with a very haunting title and about 50 years later when the Voyager 1 spacecraft was going up into space Carl Sagan the great astrophysicist astronomer and guru was involved in selecting music that would go onto the

gold disc that was attached to the Voyager spacecraft in case future civilizations should encounter it. There was Bach and Mozart and Beethoven, and he chose this. Dark was the night, cold was the ground. And he said it was really because it was very earthbound about someone not having anywhere to sleep at night. But also, if you listen to the track, it has a very unearthly quality.

And I think that's because of the kind of the crackle that comes with it. That sort of, it seems to be, you seem to be hearing it from another place and the great slide guitarist Ry Cooder recorded his own version, but he said that Blind Willie Johnson's playing was probably one of the best examples of slide guitar playing he'd ever heard so that track has kind of lived on and is now speeding through space at about 37 000 miles per hour so that's quite a story I think probably one of the more iconic rock and roll songs that everybody knows is Stairway to Heaven. So let's talk about that.

What's the story behind that? So it was written by Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin and included on their iconic Led Zeppelin or their unnamed Led Zeppelin IV album. And I think they wanted to go through the gears of a song because it's got folk, it's got heavy rock, it's got a guitar solo, it's got John Paul Jones, who was the sort of the multi-instrumentalist bass player of the group playing recorders as well. And it became an absolute favorite of their of their live shows

but that's had an interesting afterlife because one of the people who recorded it was uh i mean it's had many uh cover versions but it was covered by dolly parton of all people who did a kind of a bluegrass version and i i've seen her doing this on stage and and it's it's kind of upbeat and and kind of uh folky and bluegrassy and almost like a kind of a kind of a hoedown kind of thing it's it's a very radical reinterpretation it really works it's hard to imagine that did she ever record it yes she has yeah I want to hear that because that's, you know, that's always one of the frustrating things about podcasting is we can't play the music because we don't have the rights. But I can't imagine a folksy country-ish version of Stairway to Heaven. It just, as closely associated with Led Zeppelin

as Stairway to Heaven is, someone else claimed it, right? I mean, they sued over it. That's right. The group Spirit, whose songwriter Randy California brought a court case. Many of these court cases come around. And although, I mean, I think if you listen to the two, it's the first section of the

song, which he claims that they ripped off. And they are very similar, but the jury decided otherwise and basically rejected the claim. Well, it seems like those cases come up, not infrequently, because, you know, I i mean there's only so many notes sooner or later someone's going to write a song that's kind of like somebody else's song hotel california is very similar to an old jethro tell song called i think it's called she used to know and um the eagles and jethro tell used to tour so and Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson has basically said, you know, they sound similar, but, you know, basically they may have sort of accidentally borrowed it or used it. But he said, I'm fine with that. You know, it's almost like a compliment that they've used it.

So some people are pretty relaxed about it. I remember on the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour album, the song I Am the Walrus, which got a lot of airplay, and yet it made no his English classes, they'd been discussing Beatles lyrics and what they meant. And he was asking John Lennon to give his interpretations or tell the class and the kid and the teacher, what do these songs mean? And Lennon was a bit miffed by this. He was a bit fed up with people kind of over-interpreting his lyrics because sometimes lyrics, they're impressionistic, they're not meant to be taken literally. So he set about writing a song that he basically hoped would completely baffle future English literature classes in schools. And I Am the Roller was the result, and it's deliberately nonsensical.

I mean, some of it is like Edward Lear nonsense poetry or Lewis Carroll kind of gibberish. But the words kind of mean nothing, but also they fall together and they tumble beautifully in time with the music. So it kind of works. Yeah, it's interesting that they are so nonsensical and yet they're so memorable. You would think that nonsense wouldn't be. But who doesn't remember, you know, I am the Eggman.

They are the Eggman. I am the walrus. I am the walrus, yes. It doesn't mean anything. But here it is many, many decades later and we're still talking about the Eggman and the walrus, yes. It doesn't mean anything. But here it is many, many decades later, and we're still talking about the Eggman and the walrus. Yeah, and it was picked up by the British band Oasis, who were huge fans of the Beatles,

and a lot of their music was influenced by the Beatles. And they used to cover it on stage, and it became one of their favorites, sort of showstopper songs was I Am the Walrus. Talk about the song My Way, which really became Frank Sinatra's signature song at a time, I guess, when he needed a signature song that Paul Anka wrote. So tell that story. Yeah, so Frank Sinatra was kind of not on his uppers, but not having a great time career-wise or life-wise. And so he said to Paul Anka,

write me a showstopper, write me a great tune. And Paul Anka had heard there was a French song called Combe d'habitude, which was a sort of uh very french sort of um almost like a complaint about we do things you know in our love life we do things in the ordinary way and it's all become very routine but he took the tune and basically spent the night writing the lyrics and these sort of vitriolic, bitter lyrics and sort of triumphalist lyrics and rang up Frank Sinatra and basically sang it over the phone to him. And Frank said, yeah, we've got a hit. It's a hit. And essentially, it kind of rescued

Sinatra's career. Certainly, Born in the USA by Bruce Springsteen is an iconic song. Everybody's heard it. Everybody's heard of it. Talk a little bit about that. I think what's interesting about Born in the USA, and it's also true of This Land is Your Land, Woody guthrie so they've both been used in uh in american politics u.s politics uh as a sort of a triumphal entrance music for politicians taking the stage and what they miss about they miss the point about i mean born in the usa

when you listen to the album version it's triumphalist it's got those big synth fanfares it's got a wacky whacking great drum beat and it does sound like a triumphalist kind of affirmational song but actually bruce springsteen is writing from the point of view of a vietnam veteran who's got ptsd and has fallen into petty crime so the whole thing is drenched in irony, but the people who use it as their entrance music, I think Ronald Reagan used it, are kind of missing the point. And the same goes for Woody Guthrie's list, This Land Is Your Land.

I mean, it sounds like a great thing, you know, this land is your land, it's everybody's. But Woody Guthrie was very, very left wing. And there's the original version, I think they got cut out later in various versions, but had verses about the abolition of private property. So, you know, if you're a Republican or even a Democrat taking the stage at a rally, you know, to that song, it sort of negate, ignorant, it betrays a certain ignorance of the story of the song and what the song is actually saying, because it comes from a very left-wing place, it has to be said.

I want to talk about Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon and Garfunkel. It's a very memorable song. I remember it was a pretty long song for its time. Why did you decide to write about that? This is a song with a misconception behind it because people think that the bridge, some people thought that the bridge is actually a literal bridge there was a in the west of England there was a not long ago there was a real estate agent advertising a property saying this property is for sale and it's close to where Paul Simon wrote bridge over troubled water and the story was that there was a flood and the river overflowed. And it's complete nonsense. I mean, Paul Simon did stay in that village in Devon,

in the west of England, but the song itself, the bridge is a metaphor. And it's about connecting with people. And he wrote it inspired by gospel music, basically. And there was some dispute between well those there was sort of argument as as we all know a lot of arguments between Paul Simon and art gun for Garfunkel as to who should take the lead vocal on it and I think it eventually went to our Garfunkel and I think Paul Simon kind of

regressed that decision afterwards because he would, I think he said he had to sit by the side of the stage and watch Art Garfunkel getting all of the glory for that. You know, when it, you know, as you say, it starts off pretty quietly, but when it reaches its, you know, its sort of its climax, it's pretty pretty hefty and they had the the i think it was the wrecking crew the legendary los angeles sessions musicians um in there with that extraordinary drum sound that comes in towards the end yeah the end of that song is a big big showstopper like you know yeah hard to hard to go on after that i mean it's just it's such a big show stopper and i remember hearing that story where he was sitting off to the side and and ard garfunkel was getting like standing ovations and he was yeah well oh well there you go uh mr tambourine man let's finish up on that one um uh what about? Yeah, well, this is a fantastic reinvention of a song,

so obviously written by Bob Dylan. But Dylan's version has acoustic guitar and a little bit of electric guitar decoration, but essentially he records it kind of as a folk song. And then the birds, who are sort of in the same sort of circle as bob dylan got hold of it and um completely electrified it uh and they cut two verses and they gave it a jangly uh rickenbacker guitar there's a classic sound of that rickenbacker guitar 12 string guitar at the beginning of the song um and yeah cut the verses so that it could be short enough to be released as a single and um it became possibly one of the greatest cover versions of all time because it's you know i think dylan does go on a bit sometimes so you So if you cut a couple of his verses out and put a beat behind it,

I think that again may have been the wrecking crew were brought in to play on that one to sort of give it a bit of oomph. What about the song You're So Vain by Carly Simon? There has long been speculation about who that song's about and she wouldn't say so what about that yeah you're so you're so vain carly simon for many many years wouldn't reveal i mean it's a kind of a character assassination obviously about you know some incredibly vain guy uh and uh she would never reveal who was about there were rumors that it was about Mick Jagger but I think they came about because he actually joined her in

the studio and if you listen carefully you can hear him towards the end singing singing on the chorus singing backing vocals. And apparently they were very close together in the little recording cubicle. But the song, she said, you know, it's not about Mick Jagger. And eventually, I think at one point she sold the identity of the subject of the song at an auction, at a charity auction with the proviso that whoever won it wouldn't reveal it. But eventually she came out with what, I think what most people knew anyway, which was that it was Warren Beatty, the film star.

And I don't think anyone was particularly surprised by that. When you consider how important some of these songs are in the sense that they stick with us for so long throughout our lives, it's really fun to hear some of the stories behind these songs. I've been talking to David Scheel. He is a music critic. He works for the Financial Times in London, and he's co-author of the book, The Life of a Song, the stories behind 100 of the world's best loved songs. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks for coming on and telling the stories, David.

I appreciate it. Thank you very much, Mike. Oftentimes, a few weeks into the new year, people start questioning their New Year's resolutions. And researchers have discovered why it is that people don't stick to their diets or other big changes that they resolve to do in the new year. And it doesn't really have much to do with willpower. You see, your brain is wired to resist change.

We evolved and survived by your brain telling you, keep doing what you've been doing because it's got us here up until now. So when you try to implement a big change, like losing a lot of weight or exercising a lot, your brain and body get into a battle. And your brain usually wins. According to Dr. Kelly Traver, who has studied this extensively, you can trick your brain if you make small changes over time.

Then, as you incorporate these changes into healthier habits, your brain accepts them as part of the status quo and won't resist them anymore. And that is something you should know. There have been a lot of nice reviews on Apple Podcasts lately and on other platforms as well. And your review is not only welcome, but encouraged. So if you have a moment, leave a review. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Hey, hey, are you ready for some real talk and some fantastic laughs?

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