Musical Language

Summary

Radiolab: "Musical Language"

Date: September 24, 2007
Hosts: Jad Abumrad & Robert Krulwich
Guests/Contributors: Diana Deutsch, Mark Jude Tramo, Ann Fernald, Jonah Lehrer, David Cope

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the blurry, fascinating line between music and language. The hosts, using sound experiments, research, history, and personal stories, journey through how our brains process sound, why some music is pleasurable or painful, how culture and biology interact in musical understanding, and even what happens when computers learn to compose. Key guests include researchers in sound perception and musical psychology, with perspectives ranging from neuroscience to artificial intelligence.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. When Speech Becomes Song: Diana Deutsch’s Sticky Phrase

• [02:27–05:13]

  • Diana Deutsch, a professor of psychology at UC San Diego, recounts stumbling onto the “Speech-to-Song Illusion” while editing a research CD. Looping a spoken phrase, she realized it began to sound sung rather than spoken.
  • Memorable Moment: “Sometimes behave so strangely…” practically becomes a Radiolab office earworm.
  • Insight: Repetition can push spoken language into the realm of music, demonstrating how our brains can ‘flip’ the categorization of sound.

  “It continues to sound like singing for a very, very long time.” – Diana Deutsch [04:32]

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2. The Building Blocks of Music: Language, Pitch, and Brain

• [07:14–19:06]
  • The show explores how language and music are more intertwined than we imagine. Mark Jude Tramo, neuroscientist, notes that everyday speech uses pitch to convey emotion and meaning—akin to melody.
  • Diana Deutsch’s research on “tone languages” (like Mandarin) shows that speakers, especially when trained in music early, display a dramatically higher rate of perfect pitch.
    • Experiment: Mandarin-speaking music students vs. American (non-tonal) counterparts: 74% of Chinese students (started music at age 4–5) had perfect pitch vs. only 14% of Americans.
    • Quote: “The Beijing group was nine times…more likely to show perfect pitch than the American.” – Diana Deutsch [15:13]
    • Insight: Early exposure to tone language may unlock, rather than predetermine, heightened musical ability—a testament to the plasticity of human perception.

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3. Universal Melodies in Parenting

• [22:10–26:23]
  • Ann Fernald’s global research on how mothers speak to infants reveals universal melodic patterns for approval, prohibition, attention, and comfort—distinct from the semantics of speech.
  • Audio Samples: Multilingual parents praising, scolding, or comforting use similar melodic intonations.
  • Quote: “It feels to me more like touch…sound is kind of touch at a distance.” – Ann Fernald [26:02]
  • Insight: Some aspects of ‘musical language’ are deeper and more universal than the cultural layers of language itself.

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4. How Sound Physically Becomes Feeling

• [27:00–34:00]
  • Jonah Lehrer describes sound as “touch at a distance,” breaking down the journey from vocal cords, through air, to vibrating the hair cells of our inner ear—which ultimately translate into electrical signals traveling to the brain.
  • Mark Jude Tramo plays the actual sound of neural signals.
  • Insight: Regular, orderly neural “meters” (like those produced by consonant musical intervals such as a “perfect fifth”) are processed as pleasing, while irregular, arrhythmic signals (from dissonances like a “minor second”) register as unpleasant or even agitating.
  • Quote: “When the meter of the electricity is regular and rhythmic…it will arrive in our mind and be heard…as a sound that we generally like.” – Host on Mark Jude Tramo’s findings [32:17]
  • Quote: “If a sound entering my brain is disorderly and unexpected…that would make me feel uncomfortable.” – Robert Krulwich [33:32]

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5. The Rite of Spring Riot: How The Brain Handles the New

• [34:23–49:43]
  • Jonah Lehrer recounts the infamous 1913 premiere of Stravinsky’s "The Rite of Spring," during which the Parisian audience rioted at the piece’s dissonance and unfamiliar structure.
    • Scientific Explanation: Dissonant, unpredictable sounds agitate neurons in the auditory cortex that are tasked with deciphering new patterns—producing a storm of dopamine. Too much can cause feelings akin to madness.
    • Quote: “Dopamine makes you feel happy…a little too much…turns into literally schizophrenia.” – Jonah Lehrer [41:27]
  • One year later, the same piece is met with adulation as listeners have “learned” to find the hidden order, illustrating the adaptability (plasticity) of the brain.
    • Quote: “Our neurons literally adjust…if you’re letting your corticofugal network do its job, it can actually resculpt your brain and let you hear the patterns better.” – Jonah Lehrer [45:06]
    • Debate: Does the brain “rob” art of its newness, or is its ability to learn to love newness a triumph of culture over biology?

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6. Machines That Compose: David Cope and Experiments in Musical Intelligence

• [51:33–61:05]
  • David Cope, UC Santa Cruz, introduces "Emmy,” a computer program (Experiments in Musical Intelligence) that analyzes scores of composers for patterns, then recombines the “DNA” to create new pieces “in the style of” various masters.
  • Emmy's output—sometimes indistinguishable from actual Bach, Mahler, or Joplin—draws both praise and outrage from musicians and scholars.
    • Memorable Anecdote: Cope’s computer-composed Bach is loved by an elderly fan who doesn’t know it’s not “authentic.”
    • Quote: “There is nothing intelligent about my program in the slightest… I could do everything it did if you gave me ten years. I just don’t have that amount of time.” – David Cope [59:16]
    • Insight: The machine exposes how much of what we define as musical genius is pattern and recombination—inviting us to reconsider the boundary between “art” and “craft.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Diana Deutsch’s Looping Phrase (“Sometimes behave so strangely…”) becomes the key motif and office earworm, exemplifying the speech-to-song shift. [02:56–05:13]
• On perfect pitch:
  “Perfect pitch…like having a tuning fork in your brain.” [11:31]
• On sound as touch:
  “Sound is kind of touch at a distance.” – Ann Fernald [26:02–26:23]
• On the brain’s plasticity:
  “The Rite of Spring is perfect evidence of the brain’s astonishing plasticity.” – Jonah Lehrer [44:19]
• On Emmy's artificial compositions:
  “If by some weird fluke, this stuff hangs around… 100 years from now, I hope we can put aside all this machine-trapping stuff, and really just deal with the music itself.” – David Cope [60:33]

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Key Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |-----------|----------------------------------------------------------| | 02:27 | Diana Deutsch: Speech-to-Song Illusion | | 07:14 | Language and Music – Mark Jude Tramo | | 08:22 | Tone Languages: Pitch meanings in Mandarin | | 15:13 | Perfect pitch prevalence: Chinese vs. American students | | 22:10 | Ann Fernald: Universal melodies in parenting | | 27:00 | Sound as physical touch, journey to the brain | | 32:00 | Regular vs. irregular sound processing (consonance/dissonance) | | 34:23 | The Rite of Spring riot and neuroscience of dissonance | | 44:19 | Brain plasticity: Learning to hear new music | | 51:33 | David Cope & Emmy: Computers composing music | | 59:16 | Cope on Emmy's lack of intelligence | | 61:39 | Emmy takes us out: machine Mahler performance |

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Tone & Style

• Playful, deeply curious, sometimes irreverent.
• Hosts blend science with storytelling and hands-on audio demonstrations.
• Willing to embrace ambiguity and wonder, skeptical of simplistic answers.
• Brings in the voices and lived experiences of scientists, musicians, and even “machines.”

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Summary Takeaways

Music and language aren’t just close siblings—they may, in fact, be twins.

• The brain’s boundaries between speech and song are easily crossed; culture influences biology, and vice versa.
• What’s considered “music” is shaped both by ancient universal melodies and by what our brains learn to recognize as pattern or order—even when that order is originally perceived as chaos (as in the Rite of Spring).
• Technology like Emmy shows us that, under the hood, musical genius is not magic, but recursiveness and creativity—dispelling and complicating the myth of the singular human artist.

Radiolab’s episode leaves listeners with a sense of awe for the brain’s adaptability, the messiness of artistic value, and the endlessly surprising ways that music (and language) connect us.

Transcript

[Robert Krulwich]

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[Jad Abumrad]

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[Jad Abumrad]

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[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Now, Now. Okay, you're listening to radio.

[Diana Deutsch]

I'll continue. We here report the first large scale study comparing the prevalence of absolute pitch in two normal populations by Means.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

This is Professor Diana Deutsch.

[Diana Deutsch]

Diana Deutch well, yeah, I'm going to turn down my headphone level and I'm a professor of psychology at the University of California, San Diego.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Can you still hear me? Diana?

[Diana Deutsch]

Okay. Hello.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Diana studies sound. How humans perceive sound. She's a scientist. She has a lab. But every so often she will also release CDs, right? These CDs of audio demonstrations that she uses in her research. And that's why we called, because it was in the production of her second CD that she stumbled onto the weirdest phenomenon.

[Diana Deutsch]

Well, when you do post production, as you know of speech, you loop things. Loop things. Loop things so that you can zero in on P's that sound too loud. You need to unpop or S's that sound too sharp and so on. So you put things on loops in order to fine tune the way the speech sounds. So I had this particular phrase on a loop and forgot about it.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

What phrase was this?

[Diana Deutsch]

It's a phrase that occurs at the beginning of the cd in which I say, the sounds as they appear to you are not only different from those that are really present, but they sometimes behave so strangely as to seem quite impossible. Quite impossible. Now, I had sometimes behaved so strangely. Looped. The sounds as they appear to you are not only different from those that are really present, but they sometimes behave so strangely. Sometimes behave so strangely. Just those few words. Sometimes behave so strangely and forgot about it. Sometimes behave so strangely. Sometimes behave so strangely.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

So here's what happened. Diana leaves her studio. She closes the door, goes into the kitchen to make some tea. All the while, this loop is whirring away in the background. As she's sipping her tea, she thinks, is someone singing? Who's singing?

[Diana Deutsch]

I heard what sounded like song in the background.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

She realized, wait a second, that's not singing, that's me talking.

[Diana Deutsch]

That very phrase. Strangely. But at this point, sometimes behave so strangely, appear to be sung rather than spoken so strangely. Sometimes behave so strangely. This is sometimes behave so strangely, right? Yeah, you still hear the words, but they're sung words rather than spoken words.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

It's weird. Like it just switches at a certain point, three or four repetitions in. It's going, it's going. And then pow. It becomes music. And then now none of us can get it out of our head. Like the whole office is like, sometimes behave so strangely. Sometimes behave so strangely.

[Diana Deutsch]

And you know what? If you do this demo and then you go back to the original sentence, it sounds like speech to begin with. And when you come to that very phrase, I seem to be bursting into song. The sounds as they appear to you are not only different from those that are really present, but they sometimes behave so strangely as to seem quite impossible. I have to say, this can continue for months and months. It's sort of, sort of like your brain gets altered for that particular phrase, and it continues to sound like singing for a very, very long time.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Alright, so here we have just one small indication that music is. Well, it behaves very strangely. I mean, think about this. We started with some basic speech, repeated it a few times. Somewhere along the way, it leapt into song. How did it change like that? And if that's all it takes to turn something into music, then what exactly is music really?

[Diana Deutsch]

Sometimes we hate so strangely.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

This is Radiolab. Today's program is about answering that question, or trying to, in any case. I'm Jad Abumrad. Here with me, this is Robert Krulwich, my partner in crime.

[Robert Krulwich]

It's a little hard to get out of your head.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

I know.

[Robert Krulwich]

It is really weak.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Okay, so this hour, what are we doing? We are going to try, and we will probably fail.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yes, we will fail, but we will make an earnest effort to try to find the ingredients of music, both its basis in language, its basis in physics, its basis in your brain. We'll look everywhere we can, software, trying to find out what music is made of and why it touches us so intimately.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

And touches us sometimes not in a good way. If you've ever had this experience of going to a concert, hearing some music, and it just made you upset for some reason, like irrationally upset, almost like you wanted to hurt someone. If that rings a bell, there's a segment later in the show you will not want to miss. This is Radiolab. Stick around.

[Robert Krulwich]

Sometimes they behave so strange. I completely messed up.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

All right, shall we start?

[Robert Krulwich]

Sure.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Well, first, thanks to the LaGuardia High School chorus and Robert Apostle. They were the voices you just heard. We'll hear more of them later.

[Robert Krulwich]

So let's explore a little bit more closely this connection between language and music. Yes, you think of them as separate. The thing is, they're really closely related, says neuroscientist Mark Jude Trammell.

[Jad Abumrad]

When we speak, we sing. You know, how to use the pitch of your voice to convey emotion and meaning? Like, I went to the store just because I raised the pitch, the note, if you will. You interpret that as an interrogative monotonic speech, you know, talking at the same rate and rhythm in the same pitch and loudness. I mean, that is not how humans talk.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

But humans talk in all kinds of different ways in different languages. Each language has its own musical personality. German is different than French, is different than Swahili. And if you look at those differences closely, there are all kinds of things we can learn about music. Take Diana Deutch. She's recently been looking at tone languages. Just published her results, and the results are startling. Diana, before we start, what exactly is a tone language?

[Diana Deutsch]

Okay. In tone languages, words take on different meanings depending upon the tones in which they are enunciated. For example, Mandarin has four tones, and the word ma in Mandarin means mother in the first tone, hemp in the second tone, horse in the third tone, and a reproach in the fourth tone.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Could you say Them?

[Diana Deutsch]

Would you like me to.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Yeah, could you. Could you demonstrate?

[Diana Deutsch]

I thought you were.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Well, you know, I have them on cd, but I'd rather hear you say them.

[Diana Deutsch]

Well, okay. So excuse my bad pronunciation, but I'll try. Ma, mia's mother. Ma means hemp, Ma means horse, and ma is a reproach.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

So conceivably, if you screwed up the tones, you could call your mom a horse.

[Diana Deutsch]

Yes, indeed. In fact, there are quite a lot of jokes where Westerners who don't speak the tones right say terrible things. You have to be very careful.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

See, this is a basic difference. In English, we don't really worry about pitch. We can say our words up here or down here or glisten up or bend it down. It's all the same. Not so with tone languages. In any case, this is where it gets interesting. One day, Diana is working with some Mandarin speakers, and she notices something. There were these words, these words that they would say where they would all hit precisely the same note with their voices, not just close to one another either. Exactly. Precisely and consistently the same pitch, even on different days.

[Diana Deutsch]

In fact, would you like me to play for you one person reciting a list of 12 Mandarin tones on two different days?

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Yeah, definitely.

[Diana Deutsch]

First, you have the first words spoken on day one, followed by the same word spoken on day two. Then you have the second word spoken on day one, followed by the same word spoken day two, and so on. And that way you can see the consistency. It's going to appear as though the words are being repeated immediately, but in fact, the repetitions occur in entirely different days.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

So each of those word pairs came out of the mouth of one person, separated by, like, 24 hours?

[Diana Deutsch]

Oh, much more than that. Something like a week, really. And it was a remarkable consistency.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Well, that would be like us saying the word mom, always at this note right here. Mom. Mom.

[Diana Deutsch]

Mom. Well, I concluded that basically this was a form of perfect pitch.

[Robert Krulwich]

I've never quite understood what perfect pitch is, to be honest.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

You don't know what that is?

[Jad Abumrad]

No.

[Robert Krulwich]

Should I? I mean, I know I should.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Well, it's.

[Robert Krulwich]

Whisper it to me.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

As a musician growing up, Perfect pitch is like the. It's like the thing. It's like the thing you wish you had. None of us have. Basically, it's like having a tuning fork in your brain. Here, I'll give you an analogy.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Okay. You see this coffee cup I'm holding?

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

What color is it?

[Robert Krulwich]

Brown.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

And you knew that how?

[Robert Krulwich]

Through my eyes.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Right. You didn't need me to put this Brown coffee cup next to my blue jeans.

[Robert Krulwich]

No, I didn't.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

In order to see the brown, I mean, it's absolute brown.

[Robert Krulwich]

Absolute brown.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Perfect pitch. People have that with pitch. They hear a pitch, they know exactly what note it is. The rest of us have to run to the piano.

[Robert Krulwich]

So if they hear a ding from an elevator, can they name the note?

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Yeah, that's exactly it. Anything with a pitch, like a horn hog, they could tell you that horn is an F. Or those church bells, they're alternating between B flat and B. And if the faucet were dripping, they could say that faucet is dripping in a D sharp. They don't even have to think about it.

[Diana Deutsch]

They just know it used to be that the note names would jump out at me.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Diana Deutsch is actually one of these lucky people.

[Diana Deutsch]

To the extent that it would even be a nuisance.

[Robert Krulwich]

And why is that good?

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Well, it's really rare. It only happens like once every 10,000 people here in America or Europe.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah, but so does turning your tongue.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Into a union hold up. And of the people who have it.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Well, let's see. How should I say this? If you look in your music history textbooks, you will see that every famous composer, like the really big ones, like.

[Diana Deutsch]

You know, Mozart.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Bachelor.

[Diana Deutsch]

And beat over.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

They all had it.

[Robert Krulwich]

Oh, really?

[Diana Deutsch]

Mendelssohn, the list goes on and on.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

So if you have perfect pitch, on some level, you are closer to them. You've got the gift. Anyhow, let's get back to Diana Deutsch.

[Diana Deutsch]

Okay.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Okay. Let's talk about your latest experiment. That's the one I'm really interested in. Okay, so you compare Chinese kids to American kids to see who has perfect pitch more. So explain how this works. You had a group of Chinese music students, a group of American music students at the Eastman School of Music here in New York. You play them a bunch of notes, I imagine, in a room and ask them to guess what those notes were. Right? Now, how did that work exactly?

[Diana Deutsch]

Well, the test consisted of piano tones which began on the C below middle C, that's this note, and extended up three octaves all the way up to the that note.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

That's a big range.

[Diana Deutsch]

Yeah, 36 notes.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Can you demonstrate?

[Diana Deutsch]

Sure. Yes. Here are six tones. Such as were given in the test.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

So you would have played those notes to both sets of kids and asked them to name the notes without going to the piano. What were the notes really?

[Diana Deutsch]

What? These notes were D, E, G sharp, C sharp, D sharp and G. What were the results? Well, it turns out. The Chinese group far outperformed the Eastman group. Of those students who started musical training at ages 4 and 5, 74% of the Chinese group show perfect pitch. But 14% of the US non tonal language speak 74%. The Beijing group was nine times roughly more likely to show perfect pitch than the American.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Jesus, that's a staggering difference.

[Diana Deutsch]

It's a staggering difference.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

And it's your hunch that the difference is because they speak a tone language?

[Diana Deutsch]

That's my hunch. I mean, it's known that in the first year of life, say from age 6 months up to, you know, a little past a year, infants learn features of their native language. This is a very, very important stage. Let's suppose that tone and the absolute pitch of tones is a feature which is potentially available to anyone. Babies who are exposed only to an intonation language such as English are not given the opportunity to acquire tones. Then they're going to be at a real disadvantage when they come later on to learn to take music lessons.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

So you think that as they're. Let me ask you this. As they're learning their language, which includes inherently music to some degree, they are essentially learning two languages as they learn one, is that right?

[Diana Deutsch]

It's a matter of fact, if you take the first tone, ma, it's a flat tone, it's really sung compared with English speech, it's really more like song.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

That's always been sort of the stereotype of the Chinese language is it's very sort of sing songy.

[Diana Deutsch]

Yes. For example, the third tone in Mandarin ma is sort of like, like a J type pattern. The second tone, which is a gentle upward gliss ma, the fourth tone, which is a rapid downward gliss ma. I mean, these are all kind of musical relationships. Given the evidence on absolute pitch, one could speculate further and say, well, maybe other features of music are also enhanced for individuals who start off learning tone language.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

So then here's my big question. Could this explain the experience that I had? And I think a lot of people have this experience when they're taking music lessons and playing little piddly pieces like. And here are these Chinese girls, right, who are playing Rachmaninoff, you know, they're brilliant. Is this why?

[Diana Deutsch]

Well, I think it's a viable hypothesis. I mean, evidently, it could be something else. There could be something else going on.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Like what?

[Diana Deutsch]

I mean, one could argue that instead it might be genetic and so on.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

But that's such a boring theory, frankly.

[Diana Deutsch]

It's a boring theory. And furthermore, we don't have to assume that knowing what we do about exposure to tone language in very early childhood, as a.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

It's just not fair.

[Diana Deutsch]

And I think we can look at it another way. Around here we have a faculty that had been thought to. To be confined to a few rare individuals who are just extraordinarily gifted.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Right.

[Diana Deutsch]

That might, in fact, be available to any individual, provided they're given the right exposure at a critical period. And that raises the question of what other sorts of abilities could be brought out. If we only knew just what to do, there may be much more human potential than we had realized.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Diana Deutsch is a professor of music psychology at the University of San Diego.

[Robert Krulwich]

Music psychology.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Music psychology. And as I mentioned earlier, she's also the releaser of two CDs. Yes, two CDs. One's called musical Illusions and Paradoxes, and the other one is called Phantom Words and Other Curiosities.

[Robert Krulwich]

What would she put on a cd? Exactly.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

She puts these little audio pieces that she uses in her research. The stuff, I guess, that she will play to subjects as she tests them. And she puts these on CDs because they're kind of fun to listen to.

[Robert Krulwich]

This is like an ear test or.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Yeah, sort of. We've actually put a couple on our website.

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, what do they sound like? Just a little sample.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

All right, I'll give you some samples. There is the chromatic illusion. Kind of has a carnival feel to it. There's also the Cambiata illusion.

[Robert Krulwich]

Oh, the Cambiata illusion.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

And of course, the phantom word experiments.

[Robert Krulwich]

Ah.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

None of those pieces are gonna make any kind of sense unless you Visit our website, Radiolab.org where all will be explained.

[Robert Krulwich]

Coming up, fashionable French ladies in elegant dresses throw things at innocent musicians.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

I'm Jad Abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

Maybe not so innocent.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Ravar Grubich and I will continue in a moment.

[Jad Abumrad]

You're listening to radio.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

From New York.

[Robert Krulwich]

Public Radio, W N Y C and npr.

[Diana Deutsch]

Sometimes they behave.

[Robert Krulwich]

So strangely. Sometimes they behave so strangely. Sometimes they behave so strangely. Sometimes they behave so strangely.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Sometimes they behave so strange.

[Robert Krulwich]

Sometimes they behave so strange.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

This is Radiolab. I'm Jad Abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

And I'm Robert Krilwich.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Our program today is about music, what it is, how it works.

[Robert Krulwich]

And what we want to do next is we want to. We want to stay on the subject, but we're going to explore this a little more deeply, take a closer look at the connection between language and music. We're going to add touch, touch. And that will take us to the ear. The ear and then into the brain.

[Jad Abumrad]

The brain.

[Robert Krulwich]

And then to the big question, the really big question. Why does music, or how does music become a feeling?

[Jonah Lehrer]

The feeling.

[Robert Krulwich]

Why do we get such a deep pleasure or deep pain? We will have pain coming up too. All simply because of air pressing against your ear.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

All right, we're first.

[Robert Krulwich]

All right. Well, there is a psychology professor I want you to meet at Stanford who directs the center for Infant Studies there. Ann Fernold is her name. And she got it into her head that there is a kind of deep universal music inside language. And she discovered it actually at a hospital. The Max Planck Institute in Munich has an obstetrics unit which is very popular among expectant mothers.

[Ann Fernald]

These mothers came from the wards of this German hospital. And so they were Turkish, they were Greek, they were Sicilian, they were the so called guest workers in the German society. Of course, I didn't understand a word of what they spoke. As soon as they put the baby down and no longer had the physical contact, bodily contact with the. They started to sing almost in one language after another.

[Robert Krulwich]

Dutch.

[Ann Fernald]

I heard these. I heard them use these melodies.

[Robert Krulwich]

Russian.

[Ann Fernald]

To reach the child, to remain in touch with the baby. So the next day I brought my tape recorder.

[Robert Krulwich]

Anne Fernold took her tape recorder from that hospital and traveled all over the world recording parents as they talked to their very little babies. And it didn't matter whether the parents spoke a romance language or a tone language. Everywhere she went below the words, she heard consistently the same melodies.

[Ann Fernald]

For example, I'll start with approval.

[Robert Krulwich]

When a parent wanted to praise a.

[Ann Fernald]

Child, we would ask the parents to show the baby they were happy.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Good boy.

[Robert Krulwich]

Now you got it.

[Ann Fernald]

Just using their voice. Show them you're happy with that.

[Robert Krulwich]

Da. Portuguese.

[Ann Fernald]

And what these things had in common was that the melody was a kind of a rise, fall.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Good girl. Good girl.

[Jad Abumrad]

You got it?

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Yeah. Good girl, sweetie.

[Robert Krulwich]

So it doesn't matter what words the parents are saying. It's always really about this melody.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

And why that particular melody.

[Robert Krulwich]

All she knows is it works.

[Ann Fernald]

There's something about this melody that keeps the child doing something.

[Robert Krulwich]

There are, she says, other categories that.

[Ann Fernald]

She discovered now with a prohibition. In contrast, your goal is to stop the child from doing something.

[Robert Krulwich]

The category that says stop, quite a different malady.

[Ann Fernald]

It's short, it's sharp. In musical terms, it's staccato.

[Robert Krulwich]

There is the category of look. Pay attention to that.

[Ann Fernald]

Mothers frequently use rising pitch.

[Diana Deutsch]

Nora, look.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Look, sweetie.

[Ann Fernald]

They frequently use higher pitch. A unicorn.

[Robert Krulwich]

A unicorn. So far, Anne Fernald has found four universal melodies that Praise that, stop that, call attention, and of course, the melody that comforts. And while this may seem obvious to you, if you think about it, this is music that is understood by infants who are just new in the world. But we all know what it means. We all know these songs.

[Ann Fernald]

We're used to thinking of sounds as being about something. Speech is always about something. But it feels to me more like touch.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Touch?

[Ann Fernald]

Touch isn't about something. If you whack me on the arm in a sudden sharp way, I'm going to be startled. Or a gentle touch has a different effect. And I think, you know, actually, sound is kind of touch at a distance.

[Robert Krulwich]

I was Ann Fenauld, director of the center for Infant Studies at Stanford, and when Ann says sound is more like touch, that turns out to be literally the case. This is something I learned from a friend of mine, Joan Allairer.

[Jonah Lehrer]

My name's Joan Allairer, who at this.

[Robert Krulwich]

Very moment is working on a book.

[Jonah Lehrer]

An upcoming book on art and science, on the connection between art and science.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Do we have a name for that book?

[Jonah Lehrer]

It's called Proust Was a Neuroscientist.

[Robert Krulwich]

Okay, Anne, says Jonah, thinking about sound as a touch.

[Ann Fernald]

More like touch.

[Robert Krulwich]

I asked him, how does sound get into or touch your brain? Take us on that journey.

[Jonah Lehrer]

It's just waves of vibrating air. It's just your voice touch. At a dist beginning, your voice box compresses air. And that air travels through space and time into my ear to a little tunnel. Waves of diffuse vibrating air focused and channeled into my eardrum, which vibrates a few very small bones. And the little bones transmit the vibration into this salty sea where the hairs are. And the hair cells are fascinating. The hair cells become active when they are literally bent by a wave. They bend like trees in a breeze. And when these hair cells bend, charged molecules flood inwards and activate the cell.

[Robert Krulwich]

So the sound triggers the bones. The bones disturbs the fluid. The fluid rocks the hairs.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Yes.

[Robert Krulwich]

And then the hairs set off, essentially, electricity.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Yes.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Huh?

[Jonah Lehrer]

That's the language of neurons.

[Robert Krulwich]

All those changes from waves to bones to electricity, all those things were a trip on their way to being heard. It's only when the electricity finally forms a pattern in your brain, only when it's deep inside. That's when you hear something.

[Ann Fernald]

Feels to me more like touch. Sound is kind of touch at a distance.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Radiolab is supported by Planet Visionaries, the podcast created in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. The show is hosted by Alex Honnold, who you may recognize from free Solo, where he climbed El Capitan without ropes. Now he's turning his focus to the biggest challenge of all. Protecting the only planet we've got. Every episode brings you stories that prove climate optimism isn't naive, it's a strategy. The episodes span the globe, from Arctic scientists and Amazon Forest Guardians to entrepreneurs reimagining fashion and food systems. You'll hear from explorers, scientists, activists, and storytellers who are working to reshape the future in practical, human ways. In one episode, Alex sits down with wildlife photographer Bertie Gregory to discuss how animals can teach humans resiliency, empathy, and hope in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. Check out Planet Visionaries Listen or watch on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Robert Krulwich]

You should tell the people who we are and what our new show is. I'm Robert Smith, and this is Jacob Goldstein, and we used to host a show called Planet Money, and now we're back making this new podcast about the best ideas and people and businesses in history and some of the worst people, horrible ideas, and destructive companies in the history of business. We struggled to come up with a name, decided to call it business History.

[Jad Abumrad]

You know why?

[Robert Krulwich]

Why? Because it's a show about the history of business, available everywhere. You get your podcasts. All right, now that we have gotten a sound and any sound into our heads, let me ask you the next really big question.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Okay.

[Robert Krulwich]

Why do some sounds? Let's make it music. Okay. Why does music make so many of us so often feel so strongly?

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Yeah. Like, in terms of what we were just listening to, like, how does all that electricity from the ear going up to the brain in the next millisecond become a feeling? Yeah. Well, let me introduce you to someone.

[Jad Abumrad]

Mark Duteremo.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Actually, we heard from him earlier. He's a neuroscientist.

[Jad Abumrad]

I'm in the Department of Neurology at Harvard Medical School.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

And Mark can at least begin to answer this question, this feeling question. He's done something really interesting. He's able to listen to the electricity as it pulls in the ear and shoots up this big fat nerve to the brain.

[Jad Abumrad]

It's kind of a popping sound.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

He can actually listen to that nerve to the electricity.

[Jad Abumrad]

It's a little faster than I'm able to do here with my fingers.

[Robert Krulwich]

Is that. Is that the sound?

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

That's what it sounds like. So you.

[Robert Krulwich]

How do they get. How do they get this sounds?

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

I actually have no idea. I guess they sort of tap into the nerve.

[Robert Krulwich]

This is the sound of sound entering a brain.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Yes. This is the sound of sound entering the brain as electricity, little pulses. And as you can hear, the electricity has a meter. What Mark has discovered is that when the electricity entering your brain is even and regular.

[Robert Krulwich]

Is this regular?

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

This is regular.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah, that's regular.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Right. When the meter of the electricity is regular and rhythmic, it will arrive in our mind and be heard by us as a sound that we generally like. Like this nice sound that in music is known as a perfect fifth.

[Jad Abumrad]

The inputs coming from a perfect fifth.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Is very, very regular, like a metronome. However, and here's where it gets interesting. When the meter going from the ear to the brain is irregular, it jagged, arrhythmic, unpredictable.

[Robert Krulwich]

Wait, let me. Let me hear.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

This is jagged right here. This is jagged.

[Robert Krulwich]

Wait, shh. Oh, yeah, it is jagged.

[Diana Deutsch]

Yeah.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

And what Mark has discovered is that when electrical impulses like that travel from the ear to the brain, they will become heard by us, by our mind, as a sound that we generally don't like. Like that.

[Robert Krulwich]

Don't care for that one.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

That's a minor second.

[Jad Abumrad]

The input's coming from. A minor second is very, very chaotic.

[Robert Krulwich]

Okay, so let me just sum up here what I think you're saying. If a sound entering my brain is disorderly and unexpected.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Electrically speaking.

[Robert Krulwich]

Electrically speaking, then that would make me feel uncomfortable.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Yeah.

[Robert Krulwich]

And if it comes in in a familiar and orderly way, that will make me feel comfortable.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

There does seem to be a relationship between the kind of electricity a sound produces and how we feel about that sound.

[Robert Krulwich]

Do they have, like, fancy names for this?

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Well, that's a minor second. That thing you just heard.

[Robert Krulwich]

But do the scientists have names for pleasant and unpleasant?

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Consonant is pleasant, dissonant is unpleasant. That's not a science name. That's a music name.

[Robert Krulwich]

Oh, okay.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

And these are fixed positions in your ear.

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, maybe fixed for scientists, but, you know, maybe. Let me just propose this to you. That what people find pleasing and what people find painful is malleable. I'll tell you why. I'm gonna tell you a story now, a true story.

[Jonah Lehrer]

And it involves a musician, Igor Stravinsky, who is now considered to be one of the great composers of the 20th century, if not the most important composer of the 20th century.

[Robert Krulwich]

That's Jonah Lehrer again. And Jonah tells the story of two concerts one year apart in the same city, the exact same piece of music. The audience who heard it first and then the audience who heard it later on heard totally different things. So let's begin. First, Jonah, how does this just set the scene?

[Jonah Lehrer]

This is May 1913.

[Robert Krulwich]

It's a spring night.

[Jonah Lehrer]

It's a balmy summer night. Blue black tie costumes. The women have their fedoras.

[Robert Krulwich]

This was evening clothes.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Yeah, well, this was the Russian Ballet. This was high art.

[Robert Krulwich]

And the program said, this is a concert about springtime. But as they settled into their seats, it turns out that what Stravinsky had in mind was not spring like honey bees. No, the spring Stravinsky had in mind was about change, about radical change. Ritual, murder, literally.

[Jonah Lehrer]

That's what the story of the play is.

[Jad Abumrad]

It's.

[Jonah Lehrer]

It's a pagan ritual where at the end, the virgin gets massacred.

[Robert Krulwich]

Oh, dear.

[Jonah Lehrer]

But the music itself is fascinating. The beginning is this very charming bassoon. It's a classic Lithuanian folk tune. And it does sound like the earth is warming. And that lasts for about a minute. And then we get some tutti of flutes and it's lovely. It's getting a little more disturbing. And then about three minutes into it, Everything changes. There's just an earthquake. Stravinsky plays this chord. There's a great story that when Diaghilev, who is the head of the Ballets Russe, first heard this chord and Stravinsky was playing on the piano for him, he asked Stravinsky, how long will it go on like that? And Stravinsky looked at him and said, to the end, my dear. And it literally does that. Chord structures the music. It's one of the most difficult sounds you've ever heard. It is. It is just the stereotype of dissonance.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

It is.

[Jonah Lehrer]

It hurts you, huh?

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, what happened?

[Jonah Lehrer]

Well, after about three minutes, they rioted. They what? They rioted.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Meaning what?

[Robert Krulwich]

Like they screamed or threw.

[Jonah Lehrer]

They screamed. There was bullet blood. Old ladies were hitting each other with canes.

[Robert Krulwich]

Why were old ladies. Old ladies should have gone and hit Stravinsky with a cane.

[Jonah Lehrer]

But once they started screaming, Stravinsky ran backstage and by some accounts, was crying. Nijinsky was off on the side of the stage screaming to his dancers to keep the beat.

[Robert Krulwich]

Wow.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Quite the fiasco. And the question is why?

[Robert Krulwich]

This is the feeling question. Why so much feeling about a piece of music? That's.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Why did they riot?

[Robert Krulwich]

You would think that they rioted because they were hot, because they didn't like those sounds, because they thought those dancers were making strange and odd gestures.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Well, Jonah offers a different theory. Let me put it this way. This riot has been talked about and written about for forever, but to the best of our knowledge, no one has ever tried to explain what happened that night through the lens of brain chemistry.

[Robert Krulwich]

Brain chemistry.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Yeah, what music can do to a brain.

[Jonah Lehrer]

You know, if you try to imagine yourself where all you've heard is Wagner and the great romanticism of 19th century.

[Robert Krulwich]

Music.

[Jonah Lehrer]

And then all of a sudden you get this. I mean, these are noises you've never heard before.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

It's all very new. But scientists are beginning to figure out what happens in our brain when we hear noises we've never heard before, especially dissonant noises. We find that chords, musical chords that are typically judged to be dissonant, elicit these wild fluctuations in brain activity. This is Jan Fishman. He is a neuroscientist, and he studies those wild fluctuations in the brain on an area of the brain called the auditory cortex. Let's zoom into the auditory cortex for a moment, because this is basically hearing central. And when you're listening to music, there are all kinds of neurons doing all kinds of things. One gang in particular that Jan is interested in. That's right, a gang that he suspects gets very agitated when it hears hear sounds like these. These neurons might be the new noise department, because he thinks their job is to take every new, strange, unordered, unpredictable noise that comes into the brain and figure it out, find the pattern.

[Jonah Lehrer]

There are groups of neurons whose sole job it is.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

This is how Jonah puts it.

[Jonah Lehrer]

To turn that distance a note, dissect it, take it apart, and try to understand it.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

We are pattern searching animals. And this is how Jan Fishman puts it. And so, at the level of the auditory cortex, the brain has this daunting task of having to be able to disentangle this complex mixture of sounds. Most of the time, those neurons in the auditory cortex succeeded in finding the pattern. But every so often, maybe this was the case that night. They fail. Okay, so, Robert, imagine inside the brains, inside the heads of the people in the audience listening to the Rite of Spring that night, were all of these neurons. Yeah, I can hear them trying to make sense of the new sounds and failing. Not just feeling once or twice, but over and over and over.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah, because the Rite of Spring keeps being dissonant all the way through, so they can never get any rest.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

And when those neurons fail repeatedly, there are consequences, chemical consequences.

[Jonah Lehrer]

What happens is our neurons squirt out a bit of dopamine.

[Robert Krulwich]

What does the dopamine do?

[Jonah Lehrer]

Well, dopamine makes us feel a little.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Dopamine makes you feel happy. That's why sex and drugs make you feel euphoric.

[Jonah Lehrer]

But a little too much. That euphoria turns into literally schizophrenia.

[Robert Krulwich]

Really?

[Jonah Lehrer]

Yes. I don't want to oversimplify schizophrenia in any way, shape or form. But some of our most effective treatments for schizophrenia work by suppressing dopamine release in the brain.

[Robert Krulwich]

So there's some kind of relationship. Too much dopamine has been shown clinically to. To make people feel crazy.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Yes.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Maybe that's what happened that night. On May 29, 1913, music erupted, neurons revolted.

[Robert Krulwich]

Right. Dopamine flooded through their brains and people.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Went mad, literally mad.

[Robert Krulwich]

Let's go to the second night in our story. The piece does come back to Paris, right?

[Jonah Lehrer]

Yes.

[Robert Krulwich]

How much later after the riot?

[Jonah Lehrer]

From May to March.

[Robert Krulwich]

Actually, it was April, so it's almost a year later.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Yes.

[Jonah Lehrer]

And this time it doesn't come with a ballet. This time it's just being performed as a work of music.

[Robert Krulwich]

So does anyone buy tickets?

[Jonah Lehrer]

Oh, yeah, it's gonna sell out. It caused a few nights of violent riots.

[Robert Krulwich]

Can you set up the situation now? The audience, is it a different audience?

[Jonah Lehrer]

I actually don't know if the audience.

[Robert Krulwich]

Is different, but we can at least say that the audience is coming to it with a different set of information.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Exactly. They've been warned. So for the first time, they can actually sit back and really try to pay attention to the notes. By being willing to listen, they could hear the orders and patterns that Stravinsky had hidden in this work. They were able to hear the music and find the orders hidden underneath this noise.

[Robert Krulwich]

Was there a riot this time? The second round?

[Jonah Lehrer]

Oh, no, quite the opposite. Stravinsky was a hero. They carried him out on their shoulders.

[Robert Krulwich]

Really, literally. He was.

[Jonah Lehrer]

He was literally. He was carried on their shoulders and the press was glowing. In one year, in one year, in.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Just one year, Stravinsky had gone from villainous monster to hipster icon, to the extent that police had to escort him from the concert hall to keep him safe from adoring fans. And that was just the beginning.

[Jonah Lehrer]

The. The third story, if you wanted to tell a third story, would be. It became children's music, it became Disney music.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

In 1940, 27 years after Stravinsky had caused a violent, bloody riot, he was negotiating with Mickey Mouse over the rights to use his music in Fantasia.

[Robert Krulwich]

Which Fantasia is it starring a hippopotamus and a little tutu?

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

No, it's.

[Robert Krulwich]

That the one.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Is it the mushrooms, John?

[Jonah Lehrer]

Yeah, I think it's the mushrooms, isn't it?

[Robert Krulwich]

It's the mushrooms.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Actually, we looked it up later. It was the part with.

[Robert Krulwich]

So how does this happen? How do you go so quickly from being the most outrageous thing that literally maddens people To a triumph. To kids music.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Yes. I mean, the Rite of Spring is perfect evidence of the brain's astonishing plasticity.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

See, this is the really cool part of it for me. If you remember just one bit of science from this whole thing, remember this? Those neurons we met earlier, the one.

[Robert Krulwich]

With the little voices? I like them. Yes.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

It turns out those neurons learn and they learn fast. I'm so smart. Because they're actually part of a larger network of brain cells with a very.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Technical name called the corticofugal network.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

And what this network does is it's always sort of monitoring, listening to the sounds that are coming into the brain and tuning those neurons to better hear those sounds.

[Robert Krulwich]

Like trying to get the station on the radio, just getting it just right.

[Jonah Lehrer]

So our neurons literally adjust. Literally. We're talking in the biochemical engineering sense. So if on that first night, you just hear the rite as pure noise all the way through from beginning to end, if you're listening, if you're letting your corticofugal network do its job, it can actually resculpt your brain and let you hear the patterns better. As the symphony evolves, is it fair.

[Robert Krulwich]

To say that this is a sort of tug of war?

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

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[Robert Krulwich]

You should tell the people who we are and what our new show is. I'm Robert Smith and this is Jacob Goldstein. And we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast about the best ideas and people and businesses in history and some of the worst people, horrible ideas and destructive companies in the history of business. We struggled to come up with a name. Decided to call it business history.

[Jad Abumrad]

You know why?

[Robert Krulwich]

Why? Because it's a show about the history of business. Available everywhere you get your podcasts Artist comes, creates something that is new and unpredictable and strange and maybe noise, ish, at first hearing. And the artist is thrilled to be new in that way. And then the brain ruins it all, slowly but surely, by making it familiar.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Well, the brain abhors the new. The brain constantly wants to assimilate every experience we've ever had into every other experience. And I think Stravinsky realized it was the purpose of the artist to challenge the brain, to break the brain out of its conservative cycle.

[Robert Krulwich]

The astonishing thing to me is here you have an artist like Igor Stravinsky who comes to town intentionally trying to get people to sit in their seats and really listen to music. And the strategy he chooses is instead of pleasing them, he wants to put them in a little bit of discomfort or real pain even. And indeed, they not only listen, they riot. But within a year, and this is the sad part, to me, within a year, it's easier to hear. Suddenly it's pleasant. Suddenly they like it. And suddenly Igor Stravinsky is robbed of his newness.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Why is that sad for you?

[Robert Krulwich]

Well, because it kind of.

[Diana Deutsch]

I don't know.

[Robert Krulwich]

I never thought of the brain as the enemy of the artist before.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Yeah, but I can give you a different interpretation on this. I mean, here comes a guy who offers up the most dissonant, stabbing, percussive, painful music that anyone had heard to that point, and we learned to love it. Doesn't that make you sort of feel like pride?

[Robert Krulwich]

No, no.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

I mean, like, our brains can decode anything.

[Robert Krulwich]

We learn to love it only because it's well made. Yeah, but it was just random CAR honks. I don't think you could really appreciate that.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

I disagree.

[Robert Krulwich]

Oh, you think it would be like, just.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Have you heard the music that was written after Stravinsky? It's even worse than what you just did.

[Robert Krulwich]

Yeah, but my brain has never accommodated that.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

But some people love that stuff. And my only point is that if there. If there are these, like, fixed poles in our ear between consonance and dissonance, which is how we started this whole thing, and now we end up learning that our brains can override that to such an astonishing degree, well, then culture wins. Culture beats biology. That's true.

[Robert Krulwich]

But to me, it's sad.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

It's sad for the artist, it's not sad for us.

[Robert Krulwich]

Hmm. It's sort of like the artists and the brains are in a kind of eternal struggle. Special thanks for that story to Joan Oleira, who is a regular Radiolab contributor, and he's the author of the upcoming book Proust was a neuroscientist. Proust et teh unior scientist.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

I'm Jad Abumrad. Robert Krulvich and I will continue in a moment. You're listening to Radiolabs from New York.

[Robert Krulwich]

Public Radio, W N Y C and npr. Sam.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

This is Radiolab. I'm Jad Abumrad.

[Robert Krulwich]

And I'm Robert Krulwich.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Today, our program is about music. We ended our last segment with a look back at a very famous riot in 1913 and a composer, Igor Stravinsky, whose primary objective was to create something new and dissonant and disturbing. Right now, we'll present the opposite.

[Jad Abumrad]

The opposite.

[Robert Krulwich]

The un. Stravinsky.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

The anti. Stravinsky. In a way, what we mean is we're going to introduce you to a guy who has invented a new, radically innovative and ingenious way of creating something. Old.

[Robert Krulwich]

Chance so much.

[Jad Abumrad]

Are you Ellen?

[Ann Fernald]

I am.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Are you David? His name is David Cope. He works and teaches composition at UC Santa Cruz in California. And recently our producer, Ellen Horn, was in the area. And it is a beautiful area.

[Jad Abumrad]

It's 22.5 miles.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Wow. And she paid him a visit.

[Jad Abumrad]

Extraordinary. And they like birds. We've got a. We've got. You know, I have nests in each window each year and. Sure. And this one's over here. You can take a look if you like. Come back in. It's okay. It's just me. Come on, get back in your nest.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Mom.

[Jad Abumrad]

She usually. She'll just hop right back in when she hears me talk. Aren't you gonna listen to me?

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

All this was beside the point because we actually come to talk to David Cope not about nature, but actually about something unnatural that he'd done, which started about 20 years ago.

[Jad Abumrad]

In 1980, I had a commission for an opera which involved actual money, which had been given up front, and which, by the way, since I had four small children, I had already spent. And for the first time in my life, I suffered a composer's block. It was like somebody just shot me. Here I should be at the height of my creative power and I can't find a reason to compose a first note, the C sharp. It sounded no more interesting than C natural or D. And notes just didn't make any sense to me. I was really lost. I can't think of anything worse because it's not my profession. It's what I am.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

A short time later, David Cope is at a party and he finds himself talking to a guy who programs computers.

[Jad Abumrad]

Asked me how things were going, and I just Simply said, you know, it's a nightmare. And we talked through it, you know, and I think I must have initiated it by saying, are there any intelligent programs out there that could I could possibly use to help me through this? And he said, well, there aren't any intelligent programs, period. But he said, you don't really need one. Don't you really just need some kind of a foil? He called it that. And I really had an epiphany. What I would do is build not so much a composing engine, but an analytical engine, a computer.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

It took him years to build.

[Diana Deutsch]

And that's it. This is.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is. This is Emmy right here.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Emmy is the computer's name, spelled E.

[Jad Abumrad]

M, I. Emmy is an acronym for Experiments in Musical Intelligence.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

And what he built Emmy to do is analyze things, specifically notes, treat notes like data. In other words, he'll feed Emmy a bunch of sheet music, for example.

[Jad Abumrad]

BUCK CROWS.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Emmy will then convert every single note on the page into numbers. Wow.

[Ann Fernald]

Can you describe what you see on the screen?

[Jad Abumrad]

Well, there's thousands and thousands of numbers. There are five numbers for each note.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Numbers which represent all kinds of things.

[Jad Abumrad]

The on time, the pitch, the duration.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

A chorale becomes a huge mass of information, which Emmy then sorts through looking for patterns. Note 450 always seems to be followed by note 456, loud and then soft. She will find the patterns. Every composer has them, the little things.

[Jad Abumrad]

They do, the DNA of the individual.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Now, finding all the patterns, mapping the creative DNA of a composer is in and of itself, not all that interesting. It's what happens next, which is the spooky part. Cope hits a few buttons and all the DNA starts to recombine. Ghosts stir in the machine. Emmy Mahler, Emmy beethoven, Even Scott Joplin, and of course, his favorite Bach, of course.

[Jad Abumrad]

Then I became very excited about this prospect and immediately put in some Cope. And sure enough, my opera, which had taken, I don't know, by the time I was. I put in the cope, it was maybe five years had passed. The opera was written in about 10 days. So as a demonstration, I'm going to play for you the. The opening of a corral that was composed in 1987 in the style of Bach, one of the first ones that came out of the program. Now, this chorale was so bad, it sounded to me when I first heard it that I threw it away and put it in the trash can. And then I said, well, there's something about that that I kind of like. And I pulled that out again, and thank God I did, because it's one of my favorite pieces the program ever produced. So here's what it sounds like as a machine would play. You can hear the rigidity of the performance, the machine like rigor of the meter being processed and all the notes being processed at precisely the right time with these timbres, these sonorities, which are egregious. I mean, they're just terrible. Now I'm going to play for you the same chorale as performed by a group of singers, a wild leader, Same piece of music, incredibly human, personal music, physical. Going someplace intriguing. I want to hear more of the second one. I'm glad I turned off the first one when I did. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Well, the number of negative reactions far, far outnumber the positive reactions.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Can you remember, recall when in particular.

[Jad Abumrad]

One that, oh, yeah, I was at a conference in Germany in which colleague hit me in the nose with his finger. I'm. I'm pretty much of a coward physically. You know, he was bigger than I. So it was. It was quite a moment. But there have been many, many occasions, you know, shouting matches. If you've spent a good portion of your life being in love with, you know, these dead composers. I mean, that sounds horrible, but you know what I mean. And along comes some twerp who claims to have this little piece of software which he says isn't even much at all, that can, can. Can move you in the same way. Suddenly you're saying to yourself, well, what's happened here? Certainly my, my, My relationship to the original pieces of music has cheapened in some way. I mean, what is Chopin ru.

[Ann Fernald]

Really?

[Jad Abumrad]

Just nothing more than a bunch of cliches strung together. I hurt with them in a way, and when they hurt, I feel successful. And I also feel very bad. I mean, I'm messing with some pretty powerful relationships here and doing so in a mechanical way. If I had done it myself as a human being, these individuals could probably live with it because after all, they could say, well, you know, he's just.

[Robert Krulwich]

Really good at that sort of thing.

[Jad Abumrad]

But somehow using hal, you know, or some version of HAL is the ultimate insult. There is nothing intelligent about my program in the slightest. Nothing intelligent about it. I could do everything it did if he gave me 10 years. I just don't have that amount of time. I'd rather spend five minutes. Thank you very much. We did a concert here of Bach, of Emmy Bach. And the middle movement is just adorable. I mean, it's just lovely. And. And a friend of mine was sitting in the back of the hall next to an ancient lady. She must have been in her 80s. Lady 80s. And she couldn't read very well, so she hadn't read the program notes. And she really just was at this concert because friends told her she didn't know what was all about or anything like that, but she knew all about music and she loved Bach and she listened to that. And she turned to my friend and said, oh, that was just beautiful. And my friend started to say, but do you know that it was. And then he said, well, the hell with that. It was the reaction that I hope people will have 100 years from now if by some weird fluke, this stuff hangs around long enough to still be around them, that I hope we can put aside all this machine trapping stuff and, and really just deal with the music itself.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Piece was produced by Jonathan Mitchell and recorded by our producer, Ellen Horn. David Cope composes and teaches at UC Santa Cruz in California. If you'd like to hear any more compositions by his computer, Emmy, and there are hundreds, you can Visit our website, Radiolab.org There you will find Emmy Bach, Emmy Chopin, Emmy Scott Joplin, even Emmy Navajo music. And the scary part is that much of it is quite good.

[Robert Krulwich]

Emmy Navajo music.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Yep. Well, I guess we should sign off, right?

[Robert Krulwich]

Yes. I'm just still thinking about Emmy Navajo music.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Actually, you know what? Let's let Emmy take us out. Oh, this is actually your favorite composer as reanimated by Emmy the computer Mahler. Emmy Mahler.

[Jonah Lehrer]

Oh, damn.

[Robert Krulwich]

You know, this is very troubling. This is very troubling.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

And for more information on anything you heard this hour, check our website, Radiolab.org and while you're there, communicate with us. RadiolabNYC.org is the address. This is Radiolab. I'm Jad Abumrad. Robert Krulwich and I are signing off.

[Diana Deutsch]

Okay, here we go. Radiolab is produced by Jad Abamrad and Ellen Horn, with help from Sarah Pellegrini, Sally Hershit, Melissa Keeble, David Martin, Michael Shelley, Amber Seeley, Laura Bitali, and special thanks to Eileen Delahunty, John Elliott, Celeste Rubin Cordelli, and also special thanks to me, Diana Deutsch. Radiolab is produced by New York Public Radio and distributed by npr. Okay, bye.

[Narrator / Radiolab Host (likely Jad Abumrad or Robert Krulwich alternating)]

Support for NPR is provided by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, a foundation created by Andrew Carnegie to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding, and the Horace W. Goldsmith foundation, supporting the new Museum of Modern Art in Midtown Manhattan. [e-mail] and the Kauffman foundation of Kansas City. The foundation of Entrepreneurship on the [e-mail] this is NPR, National Public Radio.