The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Reverberation: Do Everything Better with Music by Keith Blanchard, Peter Gabriel With Michael Hermann and Anna Gabriel

Episode Date: April 21, 2023

Reverberation: Do Everything Better with Music by Keith Blanchard, Peter Gabriel With Michael Hermann and Anna Gabriel Music is a universal human experience that’s been with us since the dawn of time. You’ve listened to music all your life . . . but have you ever wondered why? It turns out music isn’t just about entertainment—it’s a deeply embedded, subtly powerful means of communication. Songs resonate with your brain wave patterns and drive changes in your brain: creating your moods, consolidating your memories, strengthening your habits (the good ones and the bad ones alike) . . . even making you fall in or out of love. Your music is molding you, at a subconscious level, all day long. And now, for the first time ever, you can take charge. From executive editor Peter Gabriel and the minds behind It’s All in Your Head (the ultimate user’s guide for your brain), Reverberation unlocks a world where you can actively leverage the power of music to improve and enhance every aspect of your life. You’ll learn specific songs and techniques to help you sleep better, induce creative breakthroughs, be more productive, have better sex, and a whole lot more. You’ll discover the amazing work happening at the intersection of music, science, technology, and medicine. The authors spoke to dozens of neuroscientists making exciting breakthroughs, as well as top recording artists like David Byrne, Branford Marsalis, Hans Zimmer, Mick Fleetwood, and Sheila E. to gain the music maker’s perspective. And you’ll learn how music is already being strategically applied to break addiction and reverse the effects of Alzheimer’s, build more productive and creative teams, develop intuitive personalized technology, and is otherwise changing . . . well, everything.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Hey, coming to you with another great podcast. We certainly appreciate you guys coming by the podcast today. And as always, we have some of the most amazing guests, great authors, brilliant minds,

and all the wonderful people that you may want to see on the interwebs of the sky. All that stuff that's playing around, running around, and all that good stuff. Today we have some amazing folks that are on the show, and we're going to be talking about a new book that came out March 14, 2023, Reverberation, Do Everything Better with Music. And Keith Blanchard is the author of the book. Peter Gabriel wrote the foreword for the book. You may know peter gabriel

as the massive uh musical artist he was also part of genesis which is a favorite band of mine as well wrote some incredible hits and power stuff that uh if i mean if you haven't heard peter gabriel's music he's been living in iraq for like the longest time i mean it's still it still reverberates today uh from when i grew up with him and him and Genesis back in the day. In fact, I think I've got some friends that, you know, the original Genesis in the 70s, they've still got their rock cancer tickets to it. So we're going to be talking about that. We actually have his daughter on the show.

She's going to be with us as well, Anna Gabriel. She's a co-founder of the launching that they did of this uh business company we're going to find out more about it called reverberation and uh what they do on the interwebs and talking about what they do with music we also have michael herman on the show with us as well uh michael herman is the uh reverberation co-founder and ceo uh launched Wicked Cow, Reverberation's managing partner in 1995 as a TV production company, producing its inaugural project, Reverse Angle,

and a sports entertainment show. He hosted airing on Fox Sports. Along with that, we have Anna Gabriel on the show. She's, along with being the daughter of Peter Gabriel, I wonder how she worked that out. She was born in London, England, and she moved to the U.S. in 1992 to launch her career as a

photographer and video director. Her fine art photography has been exhibiting galleries in Sundance, Boston, New York, and London. Welcome to the show, both Anna and Michael. How are you? Good, thank you for having. How are you? Good. Thank you for having us. Peachy. Terrific. Peachy, peachy. So there you go.

So this is kind of an interesting combo. I've got you two here who have helped co-found this reverberation, if I understand it correctly. Peter Gabriel is involved in it, and I believe so is Keith Blanchard. Do I have that all correct? You do. There you go. There you go. And we're missing the other two, but you know, you guys are going to make a great stand in for them as well.

We hope you'll carry the load. We'll do our best, no promises. There you go. So let's do this. Let's get the dot coms. Let's get some places that we can plug where you want people to go check you guys out on the interwebs. Website is reverberation.co.co. And we are at reverberation.co on Instagram.

And we're at reverberation on Facebook. There you go. Anna, any plugs you want to do on your websites? My personal, well, I actually have another book, a photography book out called ID, and that website is idphotographs.com. There you go. So let's talk a little bit about this. What launched this project? Because it seems like, okay, so there's a book, there's the website. Give us a grand overview of what's going on here and why you're doing it. Anna, do you want me to go? Sure. Okay. So Anna and I have been friendly. We're friendly from like the late part of the 2000s

until 2020 when we sort of had a little bit of a friend-a-sense. And we've been Facebook friends for all that time. And I think following each other a little bit in our work. But in 2020, my company had recently launched sort of an accessible brain brand that was for sort of like, you know, the idiots like me, that we can understand the science and pull usefulness and understanding out of like this influx of brain

science that was sort of infiltrating our zeitgeist. You know, in the middle of last decade, you heard a lot of like how to sleep better, how to eat better, what is brain health all of a sudden, we had never heard that term. So we wanted to create a very fun and funny and visual and interactive brand around your brain. And we did some really fun projects around that. The last project we did was this really fun, interactive live event here in New York with Seth Rogen and Martha Stewart and Jane Gretkowski was all about, it was an interactive sort of musical and panel discussion around the impact of comedy and food on your brain, which was a lot of fun. And I'd been an admirer, not only of sort of the Queen's of Anna's, but an admirer of her work. Anna's a super talented photographer and director and I am a lifelong

super fan of Peter not just as a musician but as an activist and an artist and you know someone who really has put his world his money his time his his art into trying to make the world a better place and he's done some really powerful things and I've been just a super admirer for a long time. And knowing that we wanted to really move into like the power of our brains. In 2020, right before the pandemic, Anna and I kind of got together. And we figured that, you know, taking sort of this vast brain, this was a lot to chew on but you know i think we both knew that it was um even anecdotally that we all have songs that we were listening to whether it was to go to sleep or to calm us down or to you know when we're playing basketball in the driveway to pump us up as i am now um there was this sort of invisible, magical thing out in the universe that was

affecting, you know, everything we did. And a little bit about Peter is Peter's been sort of an anomaly in the music world. And there are others, but not many who really have devoted his personal interest in time to science and neuroscience and really getting a really robust understanding of how it all works. So Anna and Peter and my company decided to create this music, tech, and media studio around the impact of using our everyday music to do everything better. So whether that was on the anecdotal side where we're helping to increase creativity and productivity, or it was on the other side of understanding how sound can help, you know, retard the growth of Alzheimer's plaque growth or helping our,

our basic mental health in the world in which we live now. And we decided to go out and create a voice that was fun and funny and colorful and accessible and to bring a whole bunch of people together. And that's exactly what we're doing. And we started with our book. And we brought Keith on to help write this book, which he did a brilliant job of. And if you don't know keith keith among other things used to be the um he used to be the uh editor-in-chief of the digital version of rolling stone and also the world science festival so he's this great funny dude who just gets it and was able to translate for us um a lot of the science that we were calling together and um our whole ecosystem for the studio starts with the

book there you go anna do you want to throw your thoughts in on that yeah well just to add that we you know we wanted to make the book as usable um as possible so something that you know you can carry around that doesn't sit on a bookshelf and you can kind of flip through so we also made it very visual and colorful so each chapter is color-coded but it's um you know broken up into subjects like focus sleep um become connect uh create and then you can kind of flip to that chapter and find out you know how music can can help you within those um within those daily activities that you might have um so and it's also you know made in flexi bind so you could put it in your pocket and carry around a certain size we sort of you know put all these factors in to kind of make it

as friendly as possible for the non-scientists and um easily pick up and read there you go you know music has such an integral part of our lives i don't think i have to tell anybody that but if i do i just did uh you know i i grew up in, I was just looking up Shock the Monkey here on the Wikipedia because I was a teenager when Shock the Monkey came out. I know that's hard to believe because I look so young and Brad Pittish,

but I actually was. 1982. Very handsome. Yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, sir. The flattery will get you everywhere. 1982, I remember when that song came on the charts.

It exploded. I graduated high school in 86, so I would have been what? Junior high? 14. Sophomore? About 14. But I remember how explosive it was. It was all over the radio.

It was everywhere. It was such a huge hit. I believe MTV was coming up at that point Man, it's all fading But I remember the video on MTV Was just like, you know, just off the charts Every five minutes I remember the video scared me quite a bit Did it really?

That's right, it had the monkey in it It was kind of a little bit weird But I mean, you'd watch it Because you're just like, you know, and that was kind of the whole age of, you know, kind of interesting sort of videos and everyone was experimenting and trying to make art. I think, you know, Miami, what was it, that shaped us in fact we were talking before the show about how i just went and bought metallica's new album 72 seasons i went to this really interesting premiere they did of it uh and maybe this plays into your book but they did something that i don't think any artist has ever done yet i could be wrong but they released a a movie and it's it's a movie of all the songs in the album where they introduced

the album to us not only in an audio format but they released it in a movie format or video format or visual format as well and so they literally sat down with us they sold tickets to a one night only exclusive thing in movie theaters where you could go and they introduce the album to you and i have been in love with the last two albums of metallica uh and they haven't been that good and i think i i think a lot of uh people who are metallica fans kind of agree i mean they're okay but being able to sit down with the band kind of almost on a one-on-one level and have them introduce the music to me and what their thoughts of each song were.

And then some of them were ones of them playing, and some of them were like weird sort of almost Peter Gabriel's, you know, sort of visual art things that you kind of, it gives you a different experience. And I'm in love with the whole album. And I don't know if I just got hoodwinked to love the album because of this whole experience they put me through, or if I just really liked the music. And I'm pretty sure I really liked the music, but it's interesting to me how,

you know, so many songs, you know, we go back and love those songs that were kind of at that moment that got imprinted at such a young age. And I think what you guys are trying to do is tie together the brain waves and the connectivity and frequency ranges as well and why we fall in love with this music. Is that right? Yeah, absolutely.

And I think that the point that you made about how you hear music is an interesting thing because that changes your experience, whether it's in a car on headphones at a live show um i think that that can definitely affect your emotional experience of different sounds and music um but i think you know um in general you know it, it's, you know, music, we're all made of sort of cells that vibrate, you know, and music is a vibration and it can connect to all of us in a, you know, very physical sense. And more even on the spiritual sense too, is my belief. But it's a very powerful tool that, you know, if we can harness and we learn to use, it could

help us dramatically with different elements of our life. There you go. Do you want to chime in or add anything on to that, Michael? No, I mean, I think Anna nailed it, frankly. I think that one of the things that I've been so excited about learning through this process is exactly what Anna just said, which is, you know, we are made up of water and water vibrates. And as someone who was not a trained musician, to have to think about the impact of sound and music on our bodies has spawned a lot of ideas. Again, not only, well, we're developing ideas that have true medicinal, medical, science-driven application.

So, you know, understanding the biology and the physiology of music's impact when we hear sound and music has allowed us to try to approach systemic problems in a different way and creating those musical interventions. And that's probably, for me, like the most fascinating is drilling the music down to such a scientific way in ways that it never would have considered as a layperson, you know, leading up to the beginnings of creating the studio. There you go. And it's interesting to me how music can imprint memories into your brain.

You know, I've had, and you guys talk about this in the book, and you guys talk about it on the website. You know, I've had, you know, I'll give you an example. When I was a teenager, one of my girlfriends, she said to me, you're my candle in the wind. And I was like, okay, well, great. That's awesome. I didn't get the reference because I wasn't listening to the radio,

I guess, at the time. And she said, no, no, the song, REO't listening to radio I guess at the time And she said no no The song REO Speedwagon Candle in the Wind She goes that's a song that bonds me to you And reminds me of you And I was like well I better go find out what this song is about And so that kind of became our song

Our romantic song And you know a lot of the references of the couple years Where your girlfriend and boyfriend resonate around it And anytime I hear the song, I'm going to remember that relationship. Um, you guys talk about, uh,

different frequencies. So there's, you know, Delta, Theta, Alpha, Beta, Gamma.

You know, I've always worked with equalizers and different sound recordings where, you know, there's different hurts and, and how some of those things appeal to us and certain sounds appeal to us. Uh, in the book, uh,

you guys spoke or you guys along with i guess keith uh work with different neuroscientists uh david burn uh am i pronouncing that right david burn you're talking heads right um yeah bradford misalis hans zimmer mcfleetwood sheila e and then you work with neuroscience with neuroscientists as well. I might need some neuroscientific work. Oh, little brain. You work with them to train. We know a person. I mean, listen, we're shock the monkey.

I think I need the shock part. So some electronic shock therapy. And you guys found some different things. You mentioned the Alzheimer earlier where there be some some things that we can use to repair people's brains there yeah we we just a little context what we've really been you know our our mission as a studio is you know we see um we see the next sector of wellness being driven by music. And at this moment in time, there hasn't to this point been sort of an arbiter the way,

the way there are in other frontiers of science. Like you think about how we learned about science growing up, right? So like you think about this great frontier, like deep space, and you have people like Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson guiding you as, you know, as some, as with through through information that's very fun and accessible, you want to learn about it. The same with the deep sea, and Jacques Cousteau is an awesome personality. But with all this brain science coming at us,

there is not, to our understanding, certainly our fandom, there hasn't been like this arbiter that has sat in the middle and being able to not only deliver the science to us, but in a way that we can absorb it, use it, understand it. So we've been, our book just launched, which is the first project in the studio, but we've been at it for three years, bringing some of the more important

voices to develop our initiatives together. And those include partnerships with some of the most important major research universities and neuroscientists in the world. And then with artists and music companies. And then obviously with media companies and creators. And we've triangulated all of that. And Keith's voice, as mentioned earlier,

like in the book, is really fun and funny and easy. And he distills the voice and the science in a way that makes it very easy to understand. So with regard to, you know, some of the stuff we're exploring on the Alzheimer's sense, it's, you know, it's such a horrible affliction. And at MIT, for instance, there is a lab run by Dr. Liwei Tsai, and she and her team have used a very specific frequency of 40 hertz and have found the ability to stop the growth of Alzheimer's plaque in mice, which is phenomenal. Phenomenal. But on the other side, so we're leaning into creating musical interventions like that, that are serious, that are effective and scientific.

On the other side of those projects that we want, like, what's the impact of music when you go to work, right? How do leaders emerge in the workplace through music? How do you focus and build creative teams in the workplace through music? How do you focus and build creative teams in the workplace through music? One of the things that I think I found out that I love is supposedly one of the most effective ways to concentrate in the workplace, especially with like computer work, is to have video game soundtracks on in the background, which is kind of awesome. Right? You think about it, it's they're all very stylized, and they are born to elicit a very specific outcome. And science has found that that is one of the very specific ways to help increase focus in the workplace.

There you go. And Anna, I'm going to throw you an additional that and feel free to add on what you want. But I noticed that on the website, you've got relax, focus, love, thrive, connect, escape, feel, become, kind of some different examples and some stats on how people can use music to connect to what they do. Any thoughts you want to throw into that? Yeah, well, one thing, you know, we've mentioned a few times with the interest of those, Michael, when we first heard it, was this thing called the ISO principle, which when you're listening, excuse me, when you're listening to, when you're feeling let's say a rageful

and angry instead of um listening to calming music right away you would listen to music that was at your level so what you think is metallic whatever that may be for you and then slowly bring it down to something at a lower level and that's something that for example is a small piece of information that i never knew that because i would have automatically gone to classical music or something that calm you know you think calms you down but if you know how to slowly bring your brain down to the right state it's you know it's a better way to use it so things like that that are you know sort of small techniques of of that you might not know of how to actually listen to it. And one of the interesting things they talk about in the book is love and relationships,

how we can be drawn to people who, uh, there's a thing here on, uh, chapter three on love. A couple only has a 2% chance of success if their musical tastes are in opposition. Boy,

I've had those girlfriends and dates. yeah, it's unless they like the corner music you like and you like've had those girlfriends and dates. Yeah, unless they like the corny music you like and you like theirs. Quick ones, yeah. Yeah, there's going to be a fight over the radio. There's going to be a fight in the car over you know, I had one girlfriend, you know,

and I'm not knocking her in any way, she performed, but you know, she liked her music and I like Metallica and you know, I'm driving down the road, angry. But you know, it's interesting how this is connected and some of the data and research you guys have done we talked a little bit in the green room before the show about how maybe there are certain frequencies that we're attuned to that make us choose the type of genre maybe that we're attuned to like I you know I look at people who

listen to country music and I just don't get it, but maybe they do because of the rain waves. Well, I think a lot of it has to do with, you know, where you've grown up and what you've been introduced to as a child. I mean, I think if you're, there are very different sounds and environments in Asia, for example, or even Africa to America, Europe. There's this very, you know, you grow up with different sounds in the environment around you so I think what makes you feel comfortable

and what you hear can affect your music tastes and how you will be drawn to certain sounds and music. You know, did you want to throw something in here, Michael? No, I think Anna said it perfectly.

Okay. You it's for me it we mentioned metallica and uh love and stuff like in high school i was in you know i was i was in that love phase and i had my girlfriend in high school and we loved a lot of journey and journey's like a lot of love songs you know it's all about love and and you know there's not a lot of anger depression misery headbanging going on a journey over there. At least not that I've checked lately. But, you know, when I was young, my first real band I fell in love with was Rush. And their song Subdivision.

I was, I think, 12 or 11 years old. I started going to school. And, you know, the fights at school and the strangeness of peer pressure and all that. And the song spoke to me in a way, not only musically, but with the lyrics, where it told me about what the hell is this whole subdivisions and the dreams and all these sort of issues. And then later in life, I discovered Metallica, and I have depression in my past.

My family, I think we might have some genetic. I don't know if it's genetic, but there's some definitely in my family. And, you know, James Hetfield, the lead singer of Metallica, talks about how, you know, his trauma as a child. He lost his, I believe, his mother early on. So there was some other abandonment there, not by choice. And issues, I think, with his father and different things like that. But for me you

know i'll listen metallica and people be like holy shit man you're really getting into that that's some real headbanging stuff but you'll tell people hey man that's cathartic you know i used to have girlfriends that would watch lifetime uh tv um and i you know i i come home and they'd be with their mom sitting in front of two feet in front of lifetime TV crying. And I'm like, Oh God. And I just turn around and leave. Um, and I, I couldn't figure understand what the thing was, but what I finally got to understand was there's a cathartic process of emotions and feelings, maybe what they're thinking

that they're going through. And it helps, it helps kind of cleanse you. Like I can listen to Metallica and when I get done you know anger misery when i get done i'm like cool man the world's great again it's almost a healing tree that's funny total no pun intended yeah totally um you know it's funny someone a buddy of mine who's a music file said something to me a few years ago that actually reminds me a lot of you too as we're just sort of listening to to your nostalgia where he said to me like a lot of a lot of reason why he listens to music is that he he's very analytical when it comes to music and he listens to the music strictly for the musical sake i listen to a lot of music certainly for the music but like

it's so visceral with me with certain, especially teenage emotions and our musical, our musical lives are really shaped it. I think 13, 14 and 15, when we're, our brains are really processing music at its highest count. And we're associating music with those, with those sort of adolescent memories. And I have those too, where, you know, listening to music, it's powerful, like when you don't hear a smell, so you don't capture a smell for a long time, and then all of a sudden you smell something, and it just takes you back instantly.

Well, the musical ties to your brain and the associations of those memories are such a strong draw for me personally and obviously not alone here. And, you know, it really it really almost hijacks your brain. And, you know, music can both help and frankly can manipulate at the same time. Think about all the times that were manipulated, whether it's through a soundtrack or it's through a shopping experience, right? All things that can make you linger, make you excited to shop more, spend more, be more interactive. And those are the tricks of the trade. And, you know, we, we, we avail some

of those secrets in the book and, and, you know, it's, it's amazing. Like it almost feels like, certainly to me along this path, it just feels like it's this invisible magic trick that has all kinds of superpowers. And our job here is to decipher and put them to good use. There you go. I love the concept of this in the science about this. I'm an atheist that said we crawled up from the primordial soup and learned to walk on land. And sometimes I wonder if that's why we have this connection to the ocean. Like, I have a weird connection to the ocean. And we go and we stand there kind of in awe of it.

But it might be, you know, everyone's got a different opinion. They're entitled to it. But sometimes it might be our mother calling us home but one thing you've kind of talked about is the verberation you know and there's something about listening to waves and that it's very calming to me i used to go down to the ocean in california whenever the world was you know you're just like oh my god everything's just burning down in my life and i would go down there and i would it would it would not only calm me and still me and center me, but it would also kind of remind me with the largeness of it that all my stupid little problems didn't amount to a hill of beans across the eons of time that those waves have been crashing on that shore. Everything was a little speck of sand. And I would be healed. I would come back from it and go, whatever.

But like you said, we're water beings because we're made up a lot of water. speck of sand and i would i would be healed i would come back from it and go whatever but like you said we're water beings because we're made up a lot of water at least most of us are i think mostly on vodka um but uh you know that resonance in our in our soul in our in our bodies you know there's certain notes that can hit you that just can change your mood or emotions one way or another any thought well i think that i i feel exactly same with water but i also believe that that because we were in our mother's wombs in fluid and you know we had that motion of water but also the sound like the muffled sound of of being underwater in in the womb and the other thing you're in the in you know in the womb we also

the first one of the first sounds we hear is the heartbeat, our mother's heartbeat. So it's like this very strong rhythmic sense, which I think also connects us to the rhythm of life, as it were. And we all sort of have an innate sense of rhythm and different aspects of life that's all based around a certain beat, a certain rhythm. My mom must have had a Lars Metallica kick drum heart. Yeah. But what if instead you found out that it was more like Barry Manilow or Enya? Would it change the way that you look at Metallica? No, I love both those bands too.

I'm like a connoisseur of everything from the 80s and 70s, 80s, a little bit in the 90s I've come to embrace. But, you know, there's a lot of melodic. My mom sang to me. I think a lot of mothers sing to their children. There's kind of a, I think there's science behind it, but I think moms do it because they intuitively know. Yeah, there is.

I mean, there's a lot of controversy to play music and that, but there was a recent study yes we just got sent that um they found out that that babies who'd um who in the last few weeks of um before they were born so not early on but the last few weeks that they had music either their mother singing or music played to the belly actually um developed better with speech when when they were learning to read and write and talk. So there's a connection to music and the development in the brain with speech development, too. Did you guys? Go ahead, Michael. No, Chris, I was just going to say, you know, we talked about a little bit in the green room just about how, you know, how rhythm is important and how we, you know, how we how we start in a certain way.

And Peter himself started out as a drummer. And, you know, a lot of what we're looking to explore is that is the power of rhythm and constancy and how it affects and how we, how we can measure math and time. And you think about things that are measured by rhythm, so many important things in our life. And those are things that we're trying to get down to the bottom to and allow ourselves to have a better understanding of how rhythm can really help us breathe. It can help us communicate and it can help us um coalesce together it can build community like because once like you're at a concert one of the great things

that we learned is that your your brains your brainwaves sync up with your neighbors at the at a concert and like that's incredible to me and that's often just based on the rhythm of the beat maybe that's what we feel we're at concerts then there's kind of unifying mind meld absolutely yes body meld emotion meld you know we all feel the sun we all feel you know if it's a painful song about sadness or misery or loss you know we all kind of feel that everyone Everyone will cry. What's also interesting to me is, well, there's one thing I want to get out of the way first. So I don't know if you guys researched in the book or researched it yet, but someone should solve this riddle for me. There are times in my life where I won't have heard the song. Maybe I heard it, I don't know, in music or a movie.

Maybe that triggered it. But sometimes I'll get a track in my head i think usually i pick it up like i'll hear it in a movie or you know some player somewhere i'll hear the cut like and it can just be like a lick the riff you know uh of of the whatever it is maybe the chorus or the beginning and it sticks in your head and i don't know maybe i'm insane because i have a lot of adhd or had um but that thing will bug me and haunt me like i'll wake up doing the tune in my head and you're like love of god are you serious and then eventually i'll figure out that it's going on and i'll be

like can can you leave me alone please play another song or something you know and it becomes maybe it's my age adhd but i'll eventually just go have to listen to the song and then play it like five times sing to it just to kind of get it to release um and i gotta tell you um and uh uh i looked up peter's top songs here because i want to make sure i you know there was anything i could pull from it. And I graduated high school in 1986. I was a big watcher of MTV. And I just noticed that one of his top songs is, of course, the song Sledgehammer. Guess what the hell has been playing in my head for the last 10 minutes

just by seeing the word Sledgehammer and having that song play. It is now in that place in my head right now and probably will be for the next 24 hours. And also I'm relieving the video as well because that was like every other video on MTV in 1986 was Sledgehammer. I have a little camera on that video.

I was just about to share, Anna. That's right. Three minutes, 42 seconds in and it's a freeze frame. It's fortunately a very quick and it's hypnotic. Sledgehammer. add-ons. It's fortunately very quick. And it's hypnotic. Sledgehammer.

You can't. Like, I'm going to ruin it for you. I'm putting everybody's head now. We all have to share my pain. But Chris, so what you're experiencing is called an earworm, right? So we go into the book a little bit. One way to alleviate that earworm is to chew gum because gum can help disrupt the neuropathways, which will help you get the song out of your head although you don't want to get sledgehammer out of your head you want to get a different song out of your head right i usually it's well i i have several

voices in my head from all the personalities so we're always trying to just keep the kill kill kill one on its own we don't want to listen to that voice at least that's what my judge and parole agents anymore we can't is there a song though to listen to that voice. At least that's what my judge and parole agents say anymore. Is there a song, though, that you know that if you hear it, it's going to be sticky for days? Because I have a couple in my head that I know that if I hear it, that's the end. There's no amount of bigly chew

in my mouth that would stop that song from repeating and repeating. Yeah, I've scheduled a few lobotomies with some songs, but sledgehammer is one of those songs. Uh, shock the monkeys. Zombie by the,

uh, by the cranberries is a song and ants marching by Dave Matthews. I challenge anyone to go out and listen to those and not have it, you know, stick in your mind this time tomorrow. Yeah. And, and I think it's interesting how we have a kind of an assembly of those maybe that's the way we process our emotions we're using music to process our emotions because sometimes i find like

why is this song stuck in my head and there's something eating me there's sometimes where i've had something that's eating me there's some sort of subconscious idea process about something i wanted to write down or some something that i'm trying to square in my head or get a resolution to. And somehow that music is, is guiding me or sometimes it's the lyrics that are hitting me. Any thoughts on that? I think, well, I think the incumbent, you know, a combination of some people are more affected by lyrics than they are by the

sounds and tones. But, but I think there's specific, you know, elements to the music as well as the lyrics the lyrics are the obvious one where people connect to what somebody's saying um but sound wise i think there are certain tones chords progressions that you can use that will elicit different emotions in people so i think the combination is is what gets to people um but i think on the other side, you know, there's like music can be used in terms of sticking something in the positive side of actually remembering things too. Like if you're learning, if you're a school in, you know,

if you're learning your ABCs, you learn it with a song and you remember it because of the way it's sung. So it's attached to music. For me personally, you you know my dad used to help us learn our multiplication tables using some song or another he made up um but it but it always helped um and i actually i'm a believer that it should be used in education for kids all over the place in in whatever subject matter and uh one of the things you talk about your book is all these different emotions and features and

how music works we mentioned enya and like new age music and different things piano music is like a uh i don't know if dopamine is the right word uh it will it's almost like a turkey eating turkey with the uh what's it called try try tohan. If I hear really slow, beautiful piano music, it's almost hypnotic, and it will just make my brain. It's like hitting my brain with a nice brick or something, and I just go, ooh. You guys talk about relaxing there. One thing you talk about, too, is sex in music and playlists for the people like and how that can have an effect on our love and lovemaking.

Anna, you want to fill that one? Well, I think, you know, I mean, it's the obvious acting with people through music, you know, having the same taste as we mentioned earlier is a big part of it. And also, obviously, rhythmic factors of the tracks. the same taste as we mentioned earlier is a big part of it um and and also obviously rhythmic factors of this of the tracks and um but i think you know if i think it's it's more connection um than anything uh between people and and how it can build connection music can build connections

yeah but you know i think sort of like songs to to make love to to also have this sort of circular, repetitive melody. So it's intoxicating and it's getting into your brain and that it is that like during that moment, it is on repeat. So going back to that rhythm again, like how intrinsic rhythm is to all of us. It goes over and over again. But Chris, I think, you know, there's a study that we've been privy to that I think just blows us away. Just going back to relaxation, which is chapter one in our book, University of Pennsylvania did a study within the past few years about,

I think that they were, they had called together about 57, 157 people who were pre surgery. And they gave, I think, about half of them, some medicinal sedative, an IV sedative as a nerve block. And the other half, they, through noise canceling headphones, they played what is supposed to be the world's most relaxing song, which is a song called Weightless by a band called Marconi Union. And the results were phenomenal. The levels of anxiety in these pre-surgical patients

was almost indistinguishable between the music intervention and listening to waitlist for eight minutes as it was to have an IV sedative and like that to me it is so demonstrative of like power of music because if music can be a non-invasive medical wellness tool especially when you're talking about having to take some heavy drugs, um, as opposed to a song having theoretically the same kind of impact, then to me, it's a no brainer on, you know, the direction as,

as what we should be learning and what we should be chasing. There you go. Yeah. The, what the sex thing I was referring to was one of the areas of the book that talked about how to build a sexy time playlist. And if you, if you want to build closer bonds with someone,

you should choose music, the closer bonds with someone you should choose music that reverberates with you which makes sense because i i'm not a big fan of certain types of music i think some people you know they like their genres and it would be very hard for me to fall in love with somebody if i was constantly have to listen to a genre of music i don't like and if you notice like even our dating profiles i think tinder and different things when you people for dating, you know, they'll talk about what sort of music you're into. What do you like? And, you know, we'll advertise. Like, even on Facebook, we'll advertise what our favorite bands are and different things.

So it makes a difference. So this would be really great, too, because I can see what you guys are talking about now with, like, Alzheimer's and dementia. And I know dementia is clearly in the early stages. Dementia and how music and the frequencies can be used to stimulate the brain to keep it from dying. Is that your hope that maybe you can translate some of that and the science of it into um into uh you know therapies like you mentioned earlier we we've done our best to surround ourselves with the world's most pioneering scientists who could speak to the science a lot better than we can frankly our job was to um to vet the musical interventions that we're building through these media projects with these scientists.

I think it would be irresponsible certainly for me to begin to explain to you how the frequency hits the cochlea and then translates into the brain through electricity, but that's what I can tell you on its most basic level is what is happening. But, you know, we do go into some of the more specific science throughout each chapter in the book. And that will help guide the reader to better understand with each sort of intersection that we address in the book, whether it's focus or relaxation or becoming and thriving, that you can put the science to work for very usable tools.

There you go. So what do you guys hope to do in the future? Is there a roadmap yet, are you playing it out to see how it goes? What's the future of what you guys are going to do with the company? Well, we have a lot of projects coming up where we sort of have our eggs in many baskets, as it were. But we'll be releasing sort of media projects such as podcast, TV show, all sorts of things, as well as hopefully a traveling museum, like live events, different, there are many different places we can go. I mean, music is obviously, it's so, it could be involved in anything, really. So we can go anywhere with it.

And we have many different partners we're working with on different projects. So they will start to sort of, the book mainly is our DNA for most of these. So, you know, we started with, we wanted to start with the book because of that, and then things will gradually progress from there into these different podcasts. And I think it maybe explains why I hate to toot my own horn being a Gen Xer, but that's what we do. But it's interesting how the music from my era of time,

and I'm not going to throw you guys under the bus for age-wise and assume that you're a singer. Grow up. But it seems like the 80s, the 70s had some of the most greatest music ever. And I know some people will argue with me about it. But what's interesting is that music, you know, like Peter Gabriel's music, a lot of his list, In Your Eyes eyes i mean this this stuff still resonates today and every now and then i'll be like oh man that was such a great song i remember that song on the radio i mean the radio those of you who are millennials gen g's you'll have to google what a radio is um but uh

uh i remember those experiences and you know back in, you'd sit by the radio and wait for that song. You'd call the DJ, hey, can you play this song? And then you'd hope that he would. And then plus pray and record to see if you could record it. I remember, like I say, I grew up watching MTV, and Peter Gabriel was a real big impact on their broadcasting. But it's interesting how so much of that music is like still alive today. It resonates.

And maybe it's because of those frequencies like you guys are talking about. And that's the real power of them. You know, even today's musicians and artists sample a lot of that music. You know, the rap, people put different sampling in their music. And a lot of people will talk about the influence of what they're currently doing as an artist to that music. And a lot of them are going back and using it. So it's interesting to me how that keeps coming back. Yeah, you know, Anna and I, we together did the interviews of the musical artists in the books that range from David Byrne to Questlove to Mick Fleetwood and Hans Zimmer and Sheila E.

And we talked a lot about this. One of the people we interviewed in the book was Kool from Kool and the Gang. And I remember his telling us that, you know, he asked his mom, you know, like, what makes a hit song? And she said, it's always a simple melody. Right? So to your point about all the sampling and the repetitiveness and the resonance of all that 80s music that was very easy to absorb, it was easy to capture, it was easy to memorize, and it was easy to associate, I think, with sort of everyday memories. Because of just the nature of how you absorb music whether it was through the radio and you're always in the car and you were just waiting waiting and hoping that the DJ would play something that like resonated and I think those associations were

deeply ingrained through very simple melodies and I think that's probably a reason if you look back at some of the songs that that you feel are sort of coming back At you there's probably a very simple melody associated Any thoughts? Well, David Burns is something interesting that I thought was was that that kid people of the younger generation of today Actually don't have as much bias on styles and types of musics there. They're much more willing to listen to music of a different generation. It's not like their parents' music, and it's not got such a cliché as it did when probably all of us were younger.

And so it's interesting. And we were kind of thinking, is this because of the way music is available now? Are we listening to just singles and not albums is it you know is it much more playlists mixed playlists um and and the streaming services um but it's it's just i thought it was an interesting point that he made yeah it's it you know and i think movies and tv play a big part like i was a big sticks grand illusion fan when it came out. I'm that old. Wait, I didn't think it came out. Love Grand Illusion. But Grand Illusion won an album.

And then it had that huge comeback when South Park did a redo of Come Sail Away on the show. Parody. They did it with Rush and I think Tom Sawyer. They've done a lot of artists. But there's different movies, too, that have done that as well. They do that replay and suddenly it becomes there was the thing recently where

a couple years ago on TikTok where the one gentleman I think it was Dreams it was one of the Fleetwood Mac songs and he played it while drinking ocean spray and suddenly ocean spray started selling a million things and it became like this huge thing.

And Mick Fleet was like, hey man, I need to get on this TikTok thing. We just sold 40 million records. And you look at stuff like Pink Floyd's the boy, I'm getting too old.

I need some more Shock the Monkey help. Pink Floyd's The Wall and then Dark Side of the Moon. I mean, that thing was on the thing forever. What's interesting, too, to me, and I know I'm kind of rambling a little bit here, but there's a point to it. There's certain songs or certain music that you listen to

that the words don't matter. Like Steely Dan, like all their stuff. I was a fan of Steely Dan for like 30 years, there's certain songs of certain music that you listen to that the words don't matter like steely dan like all their stuff i was a fan of steely dan for like 30 years and one day i sat down i was like you know i should figure out what the lyrics are to all these songs that i'm always going to court like what the hell is and i started reading you know the origins of songs and you know being the drug fiends they were and half insane we've had some of the producers of their song um you know and they're great guys but you know i started reading some of the music and i'm like this is completely not what i imagined the music was i was singing to but you know and everyone has their

own interpretation so it's kind of interesting that way maybe we can maybe we can solve alzheimer's by i don't know metallica don't know. You just need more head binging. Maybe less. Anything we haven't touched on that you guys want to tease out about what you guys are doing and how you're doing it now that we've established the 80s are the greatest musical era ever. One of the things, I mean, look, I, I, I love what we're doing because like music is so accessible. It's democratized. It's a tool that I think we're just learning how to hone. You know, Chris, you talked about early on.

There are there are sciences in the world that are that are buttoned up tight. Right. And science is science. And I think the science around music and the neuroscience of music is evolving. And, you know, our job as we see it is to make sure that we're ahead of that science and we have the right scientific data, the right scientists around us to help us make sure that whatever we can imagine to create where music is so bespoke and we all absorb it different ways that we're trying to create opportunities to figure to help people including ourselves learn how to make use of the music in a different way than they had before and realizing the tools that they have at their fingertips yeah maybe there's some science to it Anna any parting thoughts well just that I think you think music is, we shade the universal language, but it's true.

And I believe that it predates language as well, itself and speech. But it's just such a powerful thing. Just the fact that, we talked about this earlier, but the fact that music and smell can skip our frontal cortex and go right to the limbic system and where we feel and we skip all reasoning,

it's just, it goes straight to the core, as it were. So it is an extremely powerful tool for all of us. There you go. You know what was funny? That was the other thing I was trying to remember. I game with my nephew, and he's, you know, he was like 12 or 14 at the time and i would game with him across our game destiny and call of duty and he started singing like he would just be you know he'd be playing and he started singing uh uh the queen song uh another one bites the dust

there's a couple others these songs i think bohemian rhapsody and and a few other ones and i said to him i about fell off my chair. I go, do you know what the song is? He goes, I don't know. I'm singing the little tune. And he does that with a lot of classic songs from the 80s. And I said, and I kind of fell off a chair. I go, do you know where that song, how old that song is?

And he goes, I don't know. It's a song I just kind of like. And I go, I was your age in junior high when hit the queen song another one bites the dust i had the single i think i might still have the 45 single uncle chris you're old yeah that reminds me of that a lot but but then i'm like you know it was so amazing that here he is and probably what 40 years later the same song is resonating with him that it did to me at my age and it kind of gives you goosebumps you're kind of like wow but once again that reiterates why the 70s and 80s the greatest musical generation ever

and uh everything after that has been downhill so there you go crunch sucks anyway i'm just kidding i love nirvana i love nirvana that's about it um anyway guys thank you very much for coming on the you go. Grunge sucks. Anyway, I'm just kidding. I love Nirvana. I love Nirvana. That's about it. Anyway, guys, thank you very much for coming on the show. Give us your.com so people can find you on their website. Reverberation.co There you go. And your guys' personal works, please.

Mine is Anna Marie Gable Photography, I think. On Instagram and Facebook. And mine is Ut Marie Gable Photography I think on Instagram and mine is Utter Nonsense U-D-D-E-R Utter Nonsense there you go and send a message to your father thank you for breaking my brain

in my 80s and stuff with Sledgehammer being on repeat he's only getting started and Shock the Monkey that's still a great song the punch getting started. And Shock the Monkey. That's still a great song. The punch of it is just Shock the Monkey. Great. Now that's going to be in my dreams tonight.

Thank you very much for everyone for coming on the show. Thanks for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschristmas, youtube.com, 4chesschristmas, all those places on the internet, LinkedIn, YouTube. I think we covered all. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time.