Stuff You Should Know - Why does music provoke emotion?

Episode Date: September 20, 2012

A well-crafted piece of music can bring us to incredible highs and crushing lows, sometimes within the same song. Why does music affect humans this way? Join Chuck, Josh and special guest cellist Ben Sollee as they get to the bottom of music and emotion. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner. The residue-free, fast drying solution is specially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like Stone, Tile, Laminate, Vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call,

like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and with me as always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And this is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast, the audio cheesecake podcast. So I'm out of that guy. Oh really? Yeah, we'll talk about him in a minute. It'll all become clear.

Okay. I just took my tooth out for, uh, I'm getting a new one tomorrow finally. Congratulations. Thank God. Are you getting it after we record? Yeah. Cool. So two more episodes will feature Hillbilly Chuck. It's been a long, arduous road for you. It's been like over six or seven months now. I just looked back at Christmas photos and I had no tooth. I didn't realize it was like last year. Yeah. And it's almost all against. Yeah. Boy. Hillbilly Chuck. All right. That's really derogatory, you realize. No, I love Hillbilly's. No, okay. Chuck. Yes. I have a revelation for you. All right, let's hear it. So, you know, when you hear music and you look at art, yeah, if you don't hate art, yeah, and you look at it,

uh, and you, you start to feel an emotion or maybe a memory is released or just something happens to you, a change kind of comes over you. Sure. What you're doing is experiencing an emotion that was, I guess, created and encapsulated in a work of art, whether it's music or something visual or sure. And it was put in there by the artist for you to come along and unlock. Yeah. And then bam, you're feeling some sort of emotion or whatever. Yeah. That is possibly the most astounding thing that humanities ever figured out how to do. Agreed. Like, think about it. It's like when, when you're interacting with art, you are in a way interacting with the artist and the art is the intermediary. Yeah. But if you, so you kind of understand it on that level,

but imagine if you're, you're an alien, an emotionless alien that came down and observed this just kind of off to the side. It doesn't, it makes zero sense whatsoever. This painting is just a work on canvas. Yeah. It's color and brush strokes. Yeah. Yeah. But it's, it is, if you look at it on a much more important level, it is a capsule of emotion and memory. Agreed. And I agree that that's like astounding when you think about musical notes, like there's a code inside them almost. Yeah. That taps into these emotions. Yeah. And I'm already upset because we don't quite know why and like why it differs from person to person. And it's like, I don't think we'll ever know. Yes. You know, some people can hear something and think something sounds like garbage.

Someone else might hear and it might make them weep. Okay. I think we do know. I think I know. You should have written this article. Well, no, think about this. I think that we have certain processes. I did write this article, Smarty Pants. Well, one of them you did. Yeah, sure. So I do think, I think that there's certain processes that our brains are capable of carrying out and they're emotion based, right? Yeah. Because think about it. What are emotions, Chuck? That's one of those hard to define things. They're like, what is the definition? Well, that's like, it's, it's, it's some sort of, no, okay. What's the, let me rephrase, because that was define is Chuck. Yeah. What, what is the value of an emotion? What's the purpose

that it serves? Well, I mean, some people think it from early on, it was a means to help us survive like fear of the tiger or contentment with the sun on our faces. Right. Or like around a campfire. So, oh, okay, I need to stay warm. You don't even have to think that emotion is like your body thinking for itself in order to survive or achieve its goals, right? Yeah. So our brains are capable of carrying out certain processes and using things like art and music is almost like exercise for those emotional processes. Okay. That makes sense. And when we do this exercise, they kind of bulk up, but they bulk up differently for different people because we have different experiences. They're all along the same lines. Yeah. Where you're feeling like things that make

you happy or things that make you sad or things that make you scared, but they're different subjective experiences. True. That's what I think is going on. I agree, especially when you throw memory in there, which we'll get to. Right. Well, let's go ahead and hit this one study then, Germans, the Germans conducted. Right. They found the Moppa tribespeople in Cameroon who had not heard Western music before. No, not a second of it. And they thought, well, this is perfect. Let's play some Western music and see if they can match this music to like an emotion like happy or sad. And they did. Right. And by Western music, we mean banjo music. Yeah. All banjo. There was another part to that study I thought was even more interesting,

which is they played altered versions of music for them as well with like threw it out of rhythm or made dissonant harmonies. And these people that had never heard Western music like didn't appreciate that sound very much. Right. It innately triggered. Like when they heard bad harmonies or off rhythm beat, they're like, no. Right. So if there's whatever their word for no, if there's not, if there's not something universal going on, then they shouldn't have noticed. Yeah. Then I'll be a monkey's uncle. Exactly. So that means two things that that emotion encoded in music is universal and the ability to distinguish like what's right and what's wrong in music is is universal to them. That's what it would suggest. Yeah. To a certain degree,

though, but then you hear people that like don't understand when they're singing off key. And I'm like, how can you not hear that? Remember the tone deafness one? Good overlooked episode. Anyway, I thought I think it's all very interesting. So okay. So we've got this idea that this this is all universal. Sure. There's that still doesn't explain what's going on. And there's different schools of thought. Like anytime there's just something really big out there that's not explained, a lot of people have some competing ideas. And one of the people with the competing idea who you're apparently mad at is Stephen Pinker, who's a good guy, good, great guy. He knows how to like he's a linguist and yet he can rise

above the fray of like the sniping that is so characteristic of that field. Yeah, he's got a mullet. Does he really? Yeah, he's got like kind of a curly perm mullet a little bit. He's a good guy. Okay, you'd like him. But I don't like what he says about music. He famously said music is auditory cheesecake. His his contention is basically music is hollow compared to the language that it's based on right or hearing or hearing. And I just I just couldn't disagree more. Well, I think he's also saying there's different ways of interpreting what he was saying. There's it was an accident, an evolutionary accident, or it's design. It's something that's designed to exploit an existing sense. So like cheesecake exploits our sense of taste. It's like, we don't really need

cheesecake. And but when you're eating it, you're like, this is really good. And it's designed to be like, I'm going to take your sense of taste, and I'm going to blow the back of your head out. I think people need music and art, though. Okay, well, Pinker would probably contend that's not necessarily the case. That's that's the explanation is that is that he's saying, if if that's if music is just designed to assault the sense of hearing, it triggers emotions because it's specifically targeted to do that. Yeah, simple as that. All right, so the other guy or there is another guy, Mark Changzi, cognitive scientist, he thinks that music, we associate it with movement. And we can pick up on movement and empathy, or we express and pick up on empathy and emotion

right through visual cues of movement from other people. Like if somebody's kind of trudging along, you're like, Oh, that person's sad. Yeah. Yeah. And that makes sense because and this was I thought kind of neat. Was this the first article yours? Yeah, when you when you Google musical notes and hit it into Google images, it like almost everything you see, it shows them like flowing and flying and right, there's movement. Yeah, there's very few like just static shots of musical notes on a scale. Yeah. And even if you looked at a musical scale, you know, it has a flow and up and down and it all is very movement based. Right. He also pointed out to that we use terms about movement to describe music like a movement is a part of a smaller of a larger composition.

Yeah. Or we say like music moves us. Yeah. So I think you did a good job in making the case that we associate movement and music, but I don't think that necessarily proves his point is larger point that now that's how it evokes emotion because it's a stand in for human movement. Yeah. But I definitely thought it was worth note, you know, for sure. It's one of the things that's like, Oh, that's kind of interesting. But what are we proven here? Right. Well, there's another camp to that that kind of is the opposite of Pinkers assertion that they say that no, music and art are its own things. Yeah. Like it looks like this huge blur of stuff when you put it under an MRI, but that process is its own thing. And it's not just an

offshoot of language or hearing. Yeah. I think I relate to that a little bit. I figured you would. So all right, let's let's put music on the back runner for a second. Talk about art, visual art. And I'll go ahead and say up front that a painting or a photograph I can find like extremely beautiful, but it doesn't move me emotionally like music or a moving image will. Like a, you know, a movie or a TV show. Sure. Right. Or and then you put music in that moving image together. And for me, that's like the recipe. That's just when it goes to plan. Right. So like when at the beginning of bonanza, you just start weeping. Exactly. But other people, you know, look at a painting and like, I'll find a painting gorgeous and beautiful or a

photograph, but other people look at a painting and weep. Let's say sure, but not me. So it all varies from person to person. Right. The thing that kind of gets me is that it, because it varies from person to person, I think that explains why we have such a wide swath of what we consider art. Sure. You know, oh yeah, why there's so many genres of music because something that might get you might not get somebody else. Yeah, like the, you know, the very bare, you know, stark art of like the dot in the center of a blank canvas. Yeah. I don't get it. Well, the thing is that you can't poo poo it though. No, I'm not poo pooing it because abstract art basically proves the idea that art is an encapsulation of emotion or emotion encoded

for each viewer to unlock. And it may do nothing for you, but it may also trigger some sort of memory like that someone's made. Right. It's just the idea that like something beyond like people moving and talking and saying lines and they're being music in the background, unlocking, you know, your emotions. Sure. The fact that just a dot in the middle of a white canvas can unlock emotions like that's it at its most basic essential form, you know. Yeah. But it still does the trick or performance art. Yeah. The one, you know. So one of the theories is that visual art basically simply just taps into these learned emotional cues. And whether it's a conscious thing or it's subconscious, like the color red, right, or these weird lines that I see

or a polyc, maybe, you know, what that might evoke in different people. I chose Franz Klein for some reason. And I don't know why I don't know. Pollock would be the go to, but I like that you went somewhere else. Yeah. The lines in disarray. It's unnerving. See, one of the biggest things I have with visual art with like a painting is when I go see like a Pollock, I'm more knocked out by being in the presence of the original work. Right. Like it looks cool and I love it and it's gorgeous, but I think about Pollock in his garage. Sure. Drunk as a skunk, you know, dribbling the paint everywhere. Yeah. And like if I could touch it, I would like connect with that. If you touched it, you would get tackled by security. Or anytime I see the original stuff, I think I know exactly

what you mean. Like when I see the original handwritten lyrics at the Rock Arnold Hall of Fame to like the Jimi Hendrix song on a piece of notebook paper. Yeah. I'm like, man, his pencil touched that paper. Right. And wrote The Windcrise Mary. Yeah. Wham. There's definitely an aspect of it as well. I agree. I agree. I don't know how, I wonder how that changes things though. You know, is that, is that add to it or is it distracting? Like does fame and celebrity distract us from our emotions? Oh, that's a good question. Thank you. I think it enhances it for me. Yeah. Yeah, because when I had like this hero worship of an artist and then I meet them or I see their like original work, that's what does it for me. But it could also be an unknown, you know. Gotcha.

You know, that's funny though, because I wanted to say that you would be, you probably wouldn't have been into disco then if you were like all about the artist and, you know, seeing that something created by, you know, the individual. I wasn't into disco. Right. But that also that when I was researching this and reading these articles, it made me wonder like, is that a difference? Like there's a difference between experiencing live music and recorded music. Yeah. So it is that, was that a distinction between people who are into disco and people who weren't an unconscious and unconscious difference? Although I would argue that the basis in this article at least says that the live music thing is about being in the same room with people with

similar likes. Partially, not necessarily because you can listen to a live recording of a song and it is like hearing that crowd cheer is totally different. So maybe it's evoking that, but I'm not friends with the people that I can't see on this recording, you know. Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. All right. Let's get back to it. Yeah. Just real quickly, it's also culturally based because you make a great point that depending on where you're from, like even color can mean something different. Like in Japan, the color white is associated with death. Yeah. So melancholy will come out whereas black supposedly is in the Western world, something we associate with death. So like a snow covered painting, like a Thomas Kincaid would maybe instill dread in a Japanese

person. That's why he doesn't do very well in Japan. Oh, really? Yeah. But then one other thing, Chuck, the color red, those lines in disarray, all that, those are called cognitive antecedents, right? Right. And you can also make the case that a change in harmony or pitch or drumming or whatever is a cognitive antecedent too. Yeah. In much the same way that the composer is changing something, is adding something, is taking something away, and that forms a cognitive antecedent. It's the thing that triggers the emotion. Awesome. So should we talk about the brain? Yeah. Here's where it all comes down to science. Okay. And then we're going to get to there at some point. You hear music and well, first of all, they say it's kind of impossible to say like, you know, we can say

we have a language center and a center for like movement and things like that. But we can't really pinpoint a dead center for music in our brain because it's sort of all over the place. Right. Which is kind of awesome, I think. But when you first hear a song, let's say, your frontal lobe is going to kick in in the temporal lobe, and it's going to process things like rhythm, pitch, and melody to kind of get the ball rolling. Right. They think it happens in the right hemisphere, but they aren't quite positive that that's the only place it happens. Personally, I think it probably hits the left and right. Yeah. It's firing all over the place. But it depends on a lot of things. Like you said, whether it's live or recorded, probably whether or not you are a

professional musician or not, or have any kind of training like you're going to, if you know how to read musical notes, when you hear a musical note, you're probably going to visualize it. Whereas like if I hear music, like I do not do that, or maybe see colors or fractals or something, depending on whether I'm listening to Pink Floyd or not. And then whether or not music has lyrics, if it's as lyrics and you can understand these lyrics, then you're going to be processing language through Broca and Wernicke's areas, which we've talked about before. Love those areas. Two great areas. What was that in? We talked a lot about linguists in the two areas. There's so many shows. No, man. I have such a hard time. It didn't come out very long ago.

I think it was in the one on prohibition. And it activates a visual cortex because when you close your eyes and listen to music, you're probably going to visualize something. Well, that would lend credence to the idea that music is associated with movement, because we track movement with our eyes. I see really high glossy music videos when I close my eyes. Do you really? No. I just see money for nothing over and over and over again. You see the day glow and the purple leopard print.

And it can also trigger the motor cortex, of course, because that's what you start tapping the hand, tapping the feet and bobbing the head. Like in the Disco episode, when we played some of that music, even though I don't like that music, it still gets the head bobbing. Yeah. Oh, that's good music. So you say it activates your motor cortex, whether you like it or not. And the cerebellum, I think, is the last one. And that's pretty interesting because that means you're following the music and trying to figure out where it's headed based on what you've heard before.

Which is cool. Yeah. Because we love to keep ourselves occupied. Sure. That's not the last one. There's the medial prefrontal cortex. Oh, yeah, you're right. And that word also is usually pronounced prefrontal and prefrontal. Yeah. And that one is the one where that unlocks our memories. Like the music goes in there as a key and goes and then all of a sudden you're like, oh, yeah. What's one of your old old ones?

Hot blooded. What does that give you? It was, I think of myself as a little three year old cowboy boots because that was like the first song I ever knew the lyrics to. So I walked around singing hot blooded. Nice. How about that? That's pretty good. My big one is how deep is your love by the Bee Gees? Oh, yeah. It makes me almost want to cry when I hear it because this one day when I was like in the

third grade, there was a bully that was not even picking on me, but he just scared the crap out of me on the bus one day with his bullying. And I was such a little wimpy kid, you know. And I ran to my dad's office. He was principal and he wasn't there. And she was just like, you can wait for him. And I was like crying. And how deep is your love was on the high five. And to this day, it just still makes me incredibly sad to hear that song. See, you like this guy? Well, it makes me cry. All right. It moves you.

Or like Centerfold by Jake Ilesman. That always takes me to like the skating rink. Yes. Immediately. Yeah. Good one. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs.

They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm a prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty.

Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid.

Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Our nation loves true crime. And it's no wonder in the past decade, one in four Americans have reported being victims of crime. But what happens when we survive? That's what we explore in the podcast, Survivors Heal, hosted by me, Oya El-Sharrells.

I've worked as an organizer, activist and advocate for the past 15 years. And for the past five years, I've been on the ground floor providing services to survivors of crime. I invite you all to listen in as we discuss the healing side of true crime and what I call the new Survivors Movement. Listen to Survivors Heal, available on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. So if you want to talk about memory, you should go look up.

Have you seen the video on YouTube I posted about the guy in the nursing home? I don't follow you on Facebook. It's pretty amazing. Just go to YouTube and put in man in nursing home, reacts to music. Yeah. And there was this old timer in a nursing home who it showed him before he listened to anything. And he, you know, it's kind of shaky. He had a hard time stringing together sentences.

And then they put these headphones on and played like Cab Calloway and stuff. And all of a sudden his speech is fluid. No way. Oh dude, it's like remarkable and just gut wrenching to see this. Well, they were saying that the medial prefrontal cortex is one of the last areas to go with Alzheimer's. Exactly. So you may have trouble with just about everything else, but music can still

unlock memories. That's pretty cool. Yeah, it's awesome. It's a cognitive antecedent. It is. And then there was another study with, they studied this woman who had damaged her temporal lobe and she couldn't distinguish between like melodies and things, but she still had the, in the MRI machine had the emotional reactions lighting up

that you would anticipate with like, quote, happy music or sad music. Yeah. Pretty amazing. Right. Right. Again, that's like the Maffa tribes people. Yeah. So we have a pretty good idea that this, that our brains are being activated.

These certain regions are, right? We've seen it in the MRI. That's right. We'll have listened to music in MRIs while scientists have studied them. They love that kind of stuff. And so from that, and like that Alzheimer's revelation, we started to realize like, oh, okay, well, maybe we can, like artists, create music or art to, to get you in with the emotions.

Yeah. Maybe we can kind of use this as like a prescription. And hence music therapy has been born. And it's actually been proven as, what was the, um, noun for efficacy, efficacy, effective, no, wait, that's a, an effect. It's effective. Okay.

Thanks Chuck. Sure. Go ahead. Man, something bad just happened to me. Uh, okay. Well, yeah. So music therapy has been born and it's effective. It's been shown effective.

It has. It's effective. Exactly. Like, uh, for instance, while they think it grows as we grow, like this, this tie to music and emotion intensifies this would grow, even though they've seen it in little babies, little smelly babies. Yeah, it starts early, right? Yeah, but like, you know, fast tempo is in a major key will tend to make someone happy.

And it just, you kind of take it for granted, but like there's stuff going on there to make this happen. Oh, for sure. And like minor keys, D minor, the saddest of all keys, slow tempo. Is that the devil's key? Now it's from spinal tap. Oh, okay. But it is, it's a very sad key.

And minor keys, when you hear it, especially as a musician, you know, it just lends itself to like darkness. Yeah. I wonder if that is the devil's key. There's something called like, I think the devil's key. Oh, really? Yeah, I can't remember what it is. It's worth like maybe we'll do a smarter in 60 seconds on it.

I would love to. Okay. But as far as, uh, studies go with medical benefits, they have found that, um, at Cal State University that hospitalized kids were happier during music therapy when they could play something along with like a teacher on guitar, let's say, than even getting like toys and puzzles. Like they, they valued and were happier during music time than play time. Right.

They're, um, remarkable. They're, uh, like just playing, doing their own play thing just stunk compared to playing a triangle. Yeah. I was always like putting a bad mood when I was given a triangle or a recorder. Do you remember recorder lessons? Oh yeah. Mandatory recorder lessons?

Sure. Why was that the, the one? Probably because it's easy. Yeah. What did, I guess the recorder lobby was much stronger when we were kids than it is today because you don't see those any longer. Yeah. Well, there was no read on it.

And like it's just any kid could pick up a recorder and play. Right. You don't have to hit it just right with like the flute or, and then over those one sticks, they were like ribbed sticks that you just like zip along one another. It goes. There was like wooden corduroy. Yeah. It's a percussive instrument.

I don't know the name of it though. That's boring. The augmented fourth, my friend. It's the devil's key. Oh really? Mm-hmm. We'll have to check that out. Maybe our guests can play it.

Oh yeah. Um, which is coming up soon by the way. Uh, breakup songs. I was a little bit, I couldn't quite figure out if they've proven that a breakup song, it seemed like all anecdotal. Like, you know, of course I will survive is going to pump you up if you're going to show him. Right. Or, uh, you know, she's always a woman to me will make you weep.

If you love Billy Joel and your girlfriend love Billy Joel and you just broke up. Well, it feels good to hear those songs and to cry it out. Because your medial prefrontal cortex is, is crying out for, is that what it is? I guess. Yeah. Because I mean, like you have a memory formed in relation to a song, right? Yeah. But no, I think the point that Congress trying to make is that there's not a study out there

that showed that breakup songs have the certain effect. No one's done that yet. Yeah. But she did lay out like a pretty good case for how it would work, why people are walking around knowing that like, yeah, this, this works, this has this effect. Right. Let's hear it. Well, she's saying like there's this, um, this Rutgers University anthropologist named Helen

Fisher, who studies the effects of breakups and basically she is the one who came up with the concept of the breakup as an going cold turkey on an addiction. Yeah. Like you can compare it to cocaine and the reason why is because when you're in love with somebody, your limbic system is stimulated and then when that's taken away all of a sudden, this stimulation that you used to have is not there any longer. Your limbic system, it gets kind of irritated. What Congress saying is that it makes sense that music, which has been shown to stimulate

the limbic system, probably does some sort of number on it. You kind of wean you off that cold turkey person. You just, uh, okay. You just, yeah. Gotcha. That makes more sense now. That's, yeah, there wasn't an actual study. You're right.

Okay. But she also pointed out that music, um, has been shown to be a pain reliever. Yeah. This one study in, uh, from 2011 found that, uh, cancer patients undergoing, uh, mastectomies had lower blood pressure and lower anxiety when they played music pre-op during the operation even in post-op. Yeah. And, um, and not, not an enormous amount.

It's not like a shot of morphine or anything like that. It's like 0.5, uh, half a point on a 10 point scale. You know the pain scale, the line drawing of the person just like, I never know what to say there. I always think I need to say a lot, so I'll get a better pain pill. Well, they ask you like one to 10. I know that's why I always say 10. Oh, okay.

But I never, I mean, it's hard to qualify. If you want to get the good pain pills, you have to say 11. Oh, really? They think that's hilarious. Have you said that? No. Yeah. This one goes to 11.

That's the second spinal tap reference. Um, yeah, and that's actual physical pain. It shows to ease a little bit, but where it really comes in handy is as like an anxiety reducer. Yes. And as an emotional, uh, wooby. Yeah. They found that people who suffer from anxiety, they actually responded to music as an analgesic more than a pharmaceutical analgesic.

That's awesome. It is. And it's not just them. Like you, you mentioned like blood pressure lowering other studies have been conducted that showed that pregnant women were less stressed out than when they listen to music. Sure. People with cardiac patients, their blood pressure lowered immune systems were boosted in post-surgery patients.

Like there's, it has this really great effect on us. It's pretty, pretty obvious why it's, it's the limbic system. It has a calming effect. I had that happen to me once actually to my detriment. I was, uh, living in New Jersey at the time. I was going to the bank and like really stressed out about getting to the bank before it closed. And this song came on about that I never heard before, like halfway there. I get to the bank.

It's like literally like a minute and a half for this bank closes and I could not get out of the car. I couldn't quit listening to this song. What song was it? I can't remember now, but I literally, I remember watching the dude come up and lock the door in front of me and sitting there in my car and thinking, you know what, this is worth it because this is amazing. And I'm not stressed anymore. And who cares about the bank?

That is, that is quite a song. Yeah. And I think you probably bounced some checks because of it, but who cares? Did you go back and listen to the song after you're looking at your own briefies? I wish I could remember what it was. This is a long time ago. That's really great. It may have been like a classical thing because I broke down at Carnegie Hall and cried one time.

Did you? Yeah, Beethoven's, no, I got in. Beethoven's 9th Ode to Joy with like the full choir. Oh yeah. That thing pumped in. Ode to joy, man, Ode to joy, yeah, Ode to joy, uh-huh, uh-huh. That's right. That's the lyrics.

That was like, those are other lyrics. I just activated your Wernicke's area. No, you activated another area. What else you got? Another man. I've had plenty of those. A lot of times it's live music. Yeah.

That gets me because of the shared experience. Sure. But it can happen on just, you know, in a movie or a television show. Yeah. Like I said, you marry the moving picture and music together for me and it's like it's all over. It's like chocolate and peanut butter. That's right. You got any good breakup songs, any good sad songs that you like?

No, but it definitely like, I think who doesn't do that, you know, when they go through a breakup to sit around and listen to like the most morose stuff you can find. Yeah. Like put on the smiths and. The smiths, the cure. Yeah. One of my all time favorites was a secret machine song called The Lone Jealous and Stoned. Oh, really?

God, it'll kill you. Really? Good song. Yeah. Strangely, Genesis Ripples is. Really? Yeah. That's a great one to me.

Like, but that one is so magnificent because it, depending on my mood, it's either sad or very reflective. Yeah. It's not, it's not ever like happy. Like, yeah, I feel like I'm going to go take on the world. It's not that kind of song, but it's not necessarily like sad. It's just contemplative in a lot of ways too. And there's a range too, you know, I think with the breakup. Like at first you do want to just keep being bummed out until you've gotten it all out of your system.

And then that's when you want to put on, you know, Eye of the Tiger. Well, also Molly pointed out, she wrote the second article, I think. She points out that if, if we are hitting our limbic system with music and we are, it's like a drug, we become addicted to it. Yeah. Then there's a really good case for unplugging and not listening to music for a while. I don't know about that. Which kind of points out something that I've known for a very long time.

A good listen to stuff you should know is very refreshing. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. You have a special treat here, Chuck. Yeah, we do. Okay. So we've been talking about the idea of experiencing music.

Unpacking it and experiencing music and art. Yeah. We should probably talk to somebody who packs that. What a great way to say it. Thank you. We have, you might remember from the Mountain Top Removal Mining episode, Mr. Ben Soli is joining us again. That's right, and we're going to get his insights on music and emotion as an artist,

and then as a special treat, just like last time, he's going to play for us. Right. So our second musical guest is the same as our first musical guest. Right. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana.

Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm a prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty.

It starts as guilty. Cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. That you call civil asset for. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Our nation loves true crime.

And it's no wonder in the past decade, one in four Americans have reported being victims of crime. But what happens when we survive? That's what we explore in the podcast, Survivors' Heal, hosted by me, Oya El-Sharrells. I've worked as an organizer, activist and advocate for the past 15 years. And for the past five years, I've been on the ground floor providing services to survivors of crime. I invite you all to listen in as we discuss the healing side of true crime and what I call the new Survivors movement. Listen to Survivors' Heal, available on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, so let's just get been in here. It's like magic. It's always in the studio. Wow. That was Ben. Thank you for coming. Oh, it's my pleasure. Say hello.

Thanks, Ben. It's good to be here. It's good to be here. So we did things out of order and Ben actually just played, although through the magic of editing, you will hear that song or songs afterward. Okay. Do you have to give away all our secrets? I know.

But I just wanted to say that I was super charged after doing this podcast on music and emotion to experience that with you in a room. All right. With just a few other people. Well, I can't wait to hear what you all have been talking about then. Well, that leads me and I segue, by the way, into my first question, which we talked a lot about in the podcast about music and emotion and how it depends on whether or not it's live. Like there's a difference emotionally, whether or not it's live music or like on a CD.

And as an artist, I mean, we got the scientists perspective as an artist. What has been your experience with playing live and with how fans receive it live as opposed to on a CD? Well, you know, there's on recordings. There's kind of the, there's a lot of room for the listener to place their own images and their own ideas into the music and everything. And if there's certainly room for that in the live show as well, but they're also visually seeing what your body is doing when you say these words.

And of course, physical body language is a huge part of how we manipulate the meanings of things. And I think that has a huge amount of input. But I also think that sometimes it can confuse things. You know, sometimes people can be seeing you and kind of be so overwhelmed with what was happening and how it's happening visually on stage that it doesn't necessarily, they don't get to focus on what might impact them as much musically. So I think, I do think there's two music effects people differently in live and then recorded settings.

That's pretty much what I said. Yeah, I think he kind of just confirmed what you said, didn't he? We talked about, there's a theory that one of the ways music moves us is because we, it's a stand in for human movement. So that would make a lot of sense that if you're also seeing movement while you're listening to music, you just have your mind blown. To stand in for movement, huh? That's what, what was his name, Mark Changzi?

Something like that. Yeah, that's his theory. That's why our emotions are unlocked through music is because we, we visualize movement and we can feel empathy toward human movement. So the music just reminds us of that movement. It's a theory. Yeah. I think he's working on it still.

I think there's, I think it'd be interesting to see how it gets to that part of the brain and what path it goes through. Whether, you know, because music kind of exists through this kind of back door in the brain, maybe the place where speech began and then got its own apartment later on in life. We talked all about that. You're going to love this podcast. I can't wait to hear this podcast. I've got a question.

Okay. So one of the things we talked about, Ben, was how when you're observing art or when you're listening to music, it's like you are unpacking what the artist put in there, put in there emotionally, or the artist is using some sort of cues to trigger your own emotions. As an artist on, say the packing side of this whole equation, do you ever just go like, this note is going to make everybody just weep on cue or this one's really going to get them? Like, do you ever, do you think like that?

Or is it more when you're creating something that you're, you're kind of putting yourself in there and it's open for interpretation? I think there's, there's generally two ways I go about it and both of them have their own dangers and pitfalls. When you think, when you try to think of a musical device that's going, that can and will affect people in a certain way, especially if you're talking about anything with words and music, there's a danger of kind of watering, watering the emotion down to something that can be to affect people in a broad way, not something on Broadway, just people being affected

in kind of like a, like for pop music, we'll just use that as an example. You know, a lot of times when you're listening, you hear things and sounds and musical repetition that's used because people feel like it will be a hit or will affect a lot of people. Right. And, uh, and of course when I'm writing songs, sometimes I could think that I'm being, that I can be too personal with an idea. Like I can get something that's so personal. I'm packing up that bag and I'm putting, you know, undies in and all this other stuff and

like too specific and you lose people because they can't relate to that specific item. But if you talk about the gesture that's there and try to find the, the essential human expression that's in there, um, then you have a universal idea, even if it springs from a very personal experience. So if I was going to say that another way, I think I would say that, um, when you're packing up the bags, you have to be careful not to be too personal, um, because otherwise you can lose people. People can almost feel like, um, not necessarily grossed out, but like they're, like they're

seeing something that they shouldn't see. Right. Or it's too private. Yeah. You're letting them pass that barrier. Yeah, exactly. And, and so what you need to do is figure out how your private things relate to their private things. And so create a personal experience that has some type of universal meaning or expression

to it. Gotcha. So when you're packing the bags, you leave out like the metaphorical leather hood with the zipper mouth. Yes, I leave that out. And nor, nor do I make repetition of things that everybody knows is already there all the time, you know, like if everybody knows that the doors are closing and shutting all the time, you don't use that musical device, which is to say you don't just like, for instance,

in dubstep music, there's a very simple musical pattern that's happening. Basically, there's a big build usually for about 32 bars where it's just, there's no low end or anything. There's just big build, build, build, build. And then there's something called the drop where the bass drops back in and it's like it's supposed to be like this quake of emotion that happens and everybody's heads start just going up and down. Right.

And you have to be careful because it's a pretty simple device and there's lots of different variations you can do on that. But if you do it too much or too similar each time, then people are just like, eh, that's not for me. Is that just a crescendo? Basically? No, it's not a crescendo. It's an orchestration.

It's an arrangement thing. So a crescendo is when things just kind of grow in volume. Okay. And this is much more of a ranging sound so that there's some that are absent and you know they're going to return. But how you bring them back in and create anticipation is the strength of your composition as a dubstep artist, I guess. Good stuff.

We actually have an article on that and it's on my list. Dubstep. Robert Lam will kill you if we record dubstep. So Ben, as an artist, do you think, like we talk a lot about the emotional kick, like the drug, and you know it releases dopamine and it's actually, there's science behind it going on. As an artist, do you find it more difficult to still get that kick or like, you know, when you hear a song, do you think more of like, as a musician, like, oh, I hear what

this person's doing there? Or is it just still pure emotion going on? Or does it vary? Um, I think as an artist, once you start repetitively doing something, there is a tolerance that builds up, which is kind of a sad thing. And people kind of find ways to convey that they're still getting that stuff when they're really not. Does that make sense?

Especially in a live show, like you'll see a rocker contorting themselves in all kinds of weird ways. And then after the show, they act like just, you can tell that they're not completely high off of, off of the show at least, they're, they're just kind of like, yeah, thanks. As opposed to someone who you've just seen go through a pretty magical musical experience and you, and you can tell that everything that they had just kind of came out of them and they're either bouncing around or they're just completely a puddle on the floor. You know, I remember seeing Andrew Bird play a show like that once.

And he just gave everything to it. And you could tell he was having an overwhelming experience on stage. And when they talked to him afterwards, and he was just, he was basically a puddle. He was a human puddle at the end. He had just kind of given everything. And you know, he talks about that in some of his songs as well. That actually was one of my other questions. As an artist on stage, like how do you, night after night, how do you draw that up?

And does the emotion of the audience, how much do you feed off that? And can you, you probably just can't whip that up. So like, how does that all work? Yeah, that's something I probably have to think about how to answer just for a little bit. But like, I guess the basic question is like, what's the difference between a good show and a bad show? Yeah. And is this the emotion?

It's not up to me what was good and bad. Because sometimes I'll have what's, sometimes when I'm playing a live show, I'll have what seems to be a fairly kind of mundane night. Like nothing really special, instrumentally happened. I didn't shred really much on anything. And I didn't really feel an impact. And then people walk up to the show, walk up to me after the show, and they'll be kind of having this intense emotional reaction to it, you know.

So there's all kinds of stories and networking going on when you're playing live on stage. People are getting to know you. They spend two hours getting to know you. They're taking all kinds of visual cues from you. And of course, you're actually talking to them and telling stories. They're taking cues from everybody else in the audience. So there's kind of like a tribe buildup mentality. So I think part of it is getting everybody to participate socially in the show,

if you want to get to that energy place where something overwhelming happens to you and the audience. And that usually starts with, it's very much like a combustion. Like you have to ignite it in some way. And you feel that coming on, like have you been in a show where you feel like not so much is happening and then all of a sudden, all right, now it's going on. Yeah, you can definitely feel it when it turns on. There's a sort of friction in the room, if that's a good word.

There's definitely some type of resistance that you can move with, if that makes sense. Like in dance, when you're doing like ballroom dance, even though the motion is very fluid, there's a lot of rigidity in it. Like between partners, you have to kind of push against your partner and they have to be rigid to be able to communicate the movement to them, because you're not going to be, okay, spin to the right 180 degrees. Now dip down 45, like you're not going to use language to them. You're touching and pulling, but you want to do it in a fluid, very connected way.

And you can, you have that same sort of push and pull with the audience where when you push against them, you can hear them hear or feel them kind of get excited. And then when you pull back, you can hear them kind of breathing more. Right. And when I say pull back, I mean that can be volume, that can be tempo, that can be frequency range that you're including in there, it can be a lot of things. And of course, as a cello player who did a lot of time sitting in the back of the orchestra, you, I got to spend time paying attention to that from an orchestral standpoint, where you're on stage with 80 people playing to an audience of however many people.

And so that's an even trickier thing because you got to get the 80 people to create the spark before the audience can really start combusting, like you can really start feeling that energy. And that second chair clarinetist is always just messing it up and holding everybody back. Did you play clarinet? No. Okay. But sometimes the audience can walk in and create something that may not have been there otherwise. Yeah. I really, I felt that too, where maybe you had a really crappy day or maybe you just, you don't have any energy left after doing a bunch of media or traveling on the road and

the audience walks in and they're just, they've got an idea and an expectation that is just buzzing around the room. And suddenly you kind of get this encouragement or feeling that you're going to fill their cups. You're going to really have an emotional impact. But there's no one way that I get myself psyched up for it to generate that spark. There's not like one tool. There's no drug that I use. It's just kind of one of those things where I try to, from the very beginning, I try to write songs that have that personal experience in it for me, that igniting artistic moment, whether it's a love song or whether it's a song about something stupid that happened between politicians or a belief in some type of social change or a war song or something like that.

It can be any sort of thing. When I write it, I try to be really honest and genuine about something that really moves me so that whenever I play it over and over and over again, the 300th time I play it, I can still look back into that song. And for me, it's very much like that. When I play a song, I'm remembering and kind of reliving a little bit of what happened in that song, but not just what happened in that song. What happened when I played that song for the first time in front of a certain group of people or when I played that song on stuff you should know or whatever. It kind of accretes experiences in it. And so that keeps me getting excited about it. And I think that probably helps ignite things. Have you ever made a stranger weep with your music?

And if so, how'd you feel about that? Now when you say stranger, you mean like an audience member? Somebody who just is walking by has no clue. No, not necessarily. Just somebody you didn't know. Like somebody who came to see one of your shows and like you looked down and you saw like they were crying and it was obvious it was because your music had brought something out in them. Yeah. What was that like? Besides amazing. Man, what is it like? So when I'm playing, when I'm playing a song that has a heavy emotion to me, like I've got this one song called Panning for Gold. And I wrote it about my grandparents who both had dementia. And as they slipped further and further into that, it's Alzheimer's which caused the situation of dementia.

They kind of forgot all the good stuff that they'd done in the world. And I used this character, this spiritual character of God, forgetting all the stuff that he'd created in the song as a kind of like a lyrical device to show that it's our job to remind each other of how all the beautiful things that are in the world. And that was what the song meant to me. And that's what I first started explaining to people. But I quickly learned that people would weep to that song for all of their various reasons. The song hat was so sticky as an artistic idea. The idea of someone old for getting something that a young person was supposed to reconnect them with. Or maybe it was about protecting or preserving something that the audience would all fill their own minds with

ideas and they would just weep. And some of them would be weeping for joy, some of them would be missing somebody. And it was a real, real mix. And I had no control over it. That's the, that's the thing. That's how it feels. It feels like, ah, I've, I've, even though you feel like you've impacted somebody in a deep way, you don't feel like you've got any control over how it happens. So I, I guess that's kind of what I was asking was, do you, you don't feel, do you feel responsible for putting that out there and the people are crying or like you're just playing and they're attaching their thing to it? Yeah. I mean, usually the thing that coordinates with it is I feel like I've had a really genuine expression in the song, you know, from a performance standpoint. I feel

like it was a really honest performance at time. I'll feel good about the performance, but I don't really feel like it's something that I did. I feel like if I'm being really honest, it can happen. It's something that I can create a situation for, but I don't feel like it's something that I do. I feel like that's kind of like the communal choice or that person's, that person's thing. Right. Earlier in the show, we talked about each other's, um, we talked about music and memory and how it's tied to memories and very evocative of, you know, a lot of times songs from like your childhood will keep, get really specific with a certain memory. And, you know, one of mine was the Bee Gees and a very specific memory. Uh, Josh, what was yours? Hot blooded. Hot blooded by

Forner. But I think everyone wants to know what's the first thing that comes to your head when you think about a song from your past, from your childhood that really evokes a very specific memory. Like when you hear it, you're just there. Uh, yeah. Well, at this point, I've got a bunch. At this point in my career, since I've written a lot of music and experienced a lot of music, I've got a huge pile of them. Um, you know, there's a couple of this, this song, Wayfaring Stranger, traditional tune. Uh-huh. Uh, when I play or sing or hear that song, I go immediately back to sitting behind my grandfather's house and, um, hearing him play that on fiddle and sing. Um, there's other weird songs like, uh, Tooty Fruity is the song that I got over stage fright

for for some reason. Yeah. I was in, uh, grade school choir and I had terrible stage fright at the time. It was like fifth grade or whatever. And I was playing cell at the time, but I was singing in the choir and just, I just couldn't get with it. I was like, I shouldn't be up here. I shouldn't be up here. And at some point I was kind of, Dooty Fruity. And I looked out and like there was kids on roller skates and the Hula Hoops and the parents were all laughing and I was up on stage singing and I was like, wait, this is, this is affecting people. This is really fun. This is really affecting people. I can just see myself up there and just not shaking. It's like, Dooty Fruity. Oh, Rudy. And I just, I went, I go straight back there whenever I hear that song.

That's funny. Yeah. Uh, and as a musician, like what has been your, what's been your best moment as, as a fan of music when you've been in the audience and feeling, you know, that spark and that fire in the room? It wasn't that long ago that I saw an artist named Anais Mitchell. I'm not familiar with her at all. I think I know that name. She's really good. She did, she did this kind of contemporary telling of the, the story of Eurydice in Orpheus. But she did it as a folk opera with like Audie de Franco and Greg Brown. And gosh, what's the guy from Bon Iver? Yeah. Justin Vernon. Yeah. She put together all those different folks and, and created this modern contemporary telling of it. And it's so beautiful. But anyhow,

I saw her performing live and she's just got this way about how she, she just loses herself. And it's like she's trying to shake off these words that she just has to say. Yeah. Yeah. That's the, that's the most recent times in the audience. I mean, she's just, she's really breathtaking. The way she would just flip the words out and try to, yeah, it was almost like she was trying to shake off the emotion. And when she shook it off, it ended up all over you in the audience. That's awesome. It's kind of like Gallagher. It's very much like Gallagher. I love hearing that is that, you know, as a music fan to know that you can still go out there as a musician and you're not jaded or cynical and you can still get lost

like that. Oh, get super lost in it. I mean, right now the, the most overwhelming sound that I hear of course is an orchestra because I spent a lot of years playing in them. And then I also think they're so special now because we have so few of them that are playing at super high levels. Right. Because so many orchestras have closed down. And I think that's a really interesting thing because orchestras ask you to change your social habit, at least for us young folks. When's the last time you went and saw an orchestra? Either of you? Well, mine was actually my, one of my best stories from seeing a live, I saw a Beethoven's night that Carnegie Hall and the Ode to Joy thing, like literally I was sitting there crying like a little baby.

But I think that's probably the last one I saw. When the dudes come in and go, actually I saw the Decemberist a couple of years ago with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, which is pretty great. Yeah. A couple of years ago. Yeah. And I was band with the orchestra. Yeah. What about the orchestra? It's been a while. And I love it too. So yeah. And I think it's because orchestras ask us to change our social habits so much to come see them. You know what I mean? For us young folks, like we don't see shows in concert halls and pay 60 bucks to do it. Right. And we're a tie. And we're a tie and sitting seats. Sure. Don't have drinks. You know, like and, and so even though it's one of the most incredible sounds that we create as humans,

I mean, it's a really powerful sound when you get a full orchestra there playing as you, as you know from your experience, but we still don't do it because it's so outside of our zone. Yeah. And I wonder, you know, what that means as we become more and more visually based, like what does music mean to us? Right. And how does it really affect us? And, and how, as musicians, can we still affect people in the same way, regardless of an environment? Right. And that's a, that's the biggest challenge facing us right now, because most, you know, most of our music is being consumed at MP3 quality through people's, you know, phones, streaming or watching an MP3 video or a YouTube video or something. So, you know, as a musician,

I'm looking for the best way to affect people and the best way to convey my song or art or whatever you want to call it. And nowadays it's just, it just gets consumed so many different ways that you don't, you have no idea how people are going to resonate with it, if they're going to resonate with it. So the best shot that you got at it is writing something that's really genuine to you as an artist and then performing it in a really passionate, genuine way. And in some ways that harkens back to how we got all started with this thing, which was a bunch of people sitting around playing music, not professional musicians playing to audiences. And, and that's, I mean, that's what people originally were willing to start paying for.

Yes. That emotion, that kind of those, those endorphins hitting you, all that stuff, that, that emotion, that physical effect on your body. Yeah, I've seen some of the best stuff I've seen has been like in the subways of New York, you know, I saw a guy do wild horses by the Rolling Stones just by himself acoustically and no one was paying attention. And it was one of the most awesome like versions of that song I've ever heard in my life. Yeah. And no one was paying attention. I hope for you. I think a couple of people were, but yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's just it is how do you get this kind of goes back to when we just first started talking is how do you get folks to pay attention and get them to realize that there's there's stuff here

to be felt and had without whatever using musical devices that water everything down. Yeah. Where you're trying to use repetition and loudness and big crazy sounds to get their attention. And, you know, you make sure not to leave any spaces in the song because heaven forbid you lose their attention, right? Or they not give it to you. You know, so that I think that's one of the challenges for us as musicians is we march on into this technology technology age is not letting the huge pool that we're swimming in from an industry standpoint where we're trying to compete for attention or CD sales, whatever you want to call it affect how we actually make our music, right? You still need to make something that's genuine to yourself. Otherwise,

you're not going to be happy playing it. And then if you're not happy playing it, you have got zero shot at affecting people emotionally, right? You don't affect people emotionally, then they're not going to come to your shows. And that's really all that we got these days. If you're going to want to be a professional musician. Ben Soli doing things right. When's the album coming out? The new record Halfway Man's Come Out September 25th. September 25th. Where's the best place to buy it? iTunes is a great place. These days you can get it pretty much anywhere, but iTunes is a fine place. And you're on tour right now? Yeah, on tour. We're on tour in our sweet tour of Antami,

as well as on bicycle. All right. This will be coming out probably close to the release day of the CD. Are you going to be on tour this fall as well? Yeah, absolutely. I'll be all over the country riding your bike to shows at times. At times we'll be riding our bike. Most times we'll be in our tour van and we'll be hitting all the towns in this country. BenSoli.com. Anything else? I'm good. Ben, thanks for coming. You were like the best interview. Like literally. That was a little bit cyclical. You know, I had to work my way around some of those answers. Dude, you elevate us, my friend. But you know, good. That's the great thing about this show is that you all let it come. Not try to design its existence. It's cool. We would fail. I appreciate

that. But traditional wrap up. If you want to get in touch with me and Chuck and BenSoli, we can pass things along to him. You can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. And you can send us an email to stuffpodcast at discovery.com. I'm feeling tough today. I'm bristled and feeling like a tidal wave. You've been through the city looking for a place to hide away. All I need is someone but you left yesterday. I guess it's my turn. And if you want something done right, you got to do what you say. And if you want something bad enough, you got to do what you say. There's a man in a cage. He's fighting like a fever for the time away. There's people gathered round making bets on the highest stakes. Oh, I can't look. I know there's got to be a better way. And if you ain't gonna do it, I guess I'll have to. Cause it's my turn.

And if you want something done right, you got to do what you say. And if you want something bad enough, you got to do what you say. You got to do what you say. You got to do what you say. And if you want something done right, you got to do what you say. And if you want something done right, you got to do what you say. And if you want something done right, you got to do what you say. You got to do what you say. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you?

The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. Cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. For upcoming special events from your favorite artists and podcasters all month along with Scavenger Hunts and new How Fan Are You challenges. So embrace the holidays at iHeartland in Fortnite. Head to iHeartRadio.com.