Speaker 1: Let's talk about it.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about the May Hero. Let's talk about it.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about the May Hero. Welcome to the Man,
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the mail room of Everybody, Doctor Jesse
Speaker 2: Mills here, joined as always by Jordan Run to my
Speaker 2: on air producer personality, Man of the Street, Brooklyn Night
Speaker 2: to the Core by way of Boston and today. Yeah,
Speaker 2: is that a fair intro, Jordan, I mean the superlatives
Speaker 2: I keep I can't. I can't come up with any
Speaker 2: more superlatives for you well and longtime music journalists.
Speaker 3: So this is a really special episode from me. I
Speaker 3: am so pumped.
Speaker 2: That is a perfect segue into our guest, who are
Speaker 2: beyond honored to have that. Doctor Daniel Levinton is able
Speaker 2: to spend a little bit of time with us today
Speaker 2: and honestly, I mean this this could be a ten
Speaker 2: part series just because of this, you know, because truly
Speaker 2: there are a few people that get to actually wear
Speaker 2: the genius label. But he is, I mean, he has
Speaker 2: his brilliance has applied to his work as a cognitive neuroscience,
Speaker 2: a musician, a record producer. I mean to have that
Speaker 2: ear as a whole other level of genius and a
Speaker 2: best selling author. I mean, and actually, you know, there
Speaker 2: are authors. I wrote a book, there are writers, and
Speaker 2: I think Daniel is actually a writer. I mean, his
Speaker 2: words and how he's able to convey complex information really
Speaker 2: make him who he is. And he can take some
Speaker 2: of the most esoteric work that he does in the
Speaker 2: lab and translate it into things that everybody can understand
Speaker 2: without downplaying, and that is very, very difficult. Einstein was
Speaker 2: able to do that. Of all people, not that I'm
Speaker 2: comparing you, but I think you belong in that pantheon,
Speaker 2: Doctor Levitton. Just people that have made such a contribution
Speaker 2: not only to the professional literature and somebody that has
Speaker 2: a PubMed search behind him, but also that works in
Speaker 2: the popular space as well. He's the founding Dean of
Speaker 2: Arts of Humanities at Minerva University and James McGill Professor
Speaker 2: Emeritus at McGill University. Doctor Leviton is published six consecutive
Speaker 2: best sellers, not just one, including This is Your Brain
Speaker 2: on music and as a problem speaker on nerve science,
Speaker 2: productivity and aging. It really is a classic. And anyway,
Speaker 2: so I mean, I could go on forever about your intro,
Speaker 2: but then we're not gonna have time to really, I
Speaker 2: use the word pick your brain. Maybe obviously not literally
Speaker 2: because you can't, but at least figuratively in such a way.
Speaker 4: Well, you're you're a urologist. If you have to choose
Speaker 4: something to pick at, I would choose the brain.
Speaker 2: That's right, fair enough? Yes, yeah, we're all keeping our
Speaker 2: clothes on for this one today. But yeah, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of other people know.
Speaker 4: I may not have pants on at a boy, that's right.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know we're post COVID, but doesn't mean
Speaker 2: you ever have to go back to that. Yeah, whatever
Speaker 2: happens below the belt, but I didn't even stay below
Speaker 2: the belt. It ends up in my office, So you're right, Dad,
Speaker 2: you're right. Oh my gosh, I don't even have to
Speaker 2: do the jokes today. I don't have to do the jokes.
Speaker 2: But Jordan, I got Dad Levitton here. How are you, God,
Speaker 2: it's great to see you.
Speaker 4: I'm well, thank you. Trinity wants to get oh my
Speaker 4: gosh on air?
Speaker 2: Is this a Is this a certified service animal dog
Speaker 2: or is this a.
Speaker 4: No, she's a rescue. She was found wandering the mean
Speaker 4: streets of Pixley, California. Yes, outside of Bakersfield. Yeah, and
Speaker 4: she was rescued, fostered, and then I got her in September.
Speaker 2: Does she have that Bakersfield sound? Does she perk up
Speaker 2: when she hears.
Speaker 3: Merle Hag Grand Parsons, Grand Parsons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, I could tell. I could tell she has
Speaker 2: that look about her. She's got a little bit of
Speaker 2: the Bakersfield but put some refined West La vibe as well.
Speaker 2: Dwight Yoakam exactly, Dwight yoakambe later day Bakersfield sound. Yeah, golly,
Speaker 2: we did some good stuff out here in California for
Speaker 2: country music and above.
Speaker 4: So yeah, let's talk about buff implicit. There's a hierarchy,
Speaker 4: that's right, implicit, there's a hack.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, we've got the Sunset sound, we've got
Speaker 2: Laurel Canyon. Ill never forget Bakersfield, for God's sakes, and
Speaker 2: in a lot of ways, we wouldn't have the Eagles
Speaker 2: without Bakersfield. So definitely absolutely right, Jackson Brown, I mean, Jordan,
Speaker 2: what am I missing? If a Joni Mitchell we're going
Speaker 2: to talk about today.
Speaker 4: Flying Burrito Brothers.
Speaker 2: Yes, there you go. Well, you got the grand Parsons
Speaker 2: exactly right, exactly right? Well, Dad, Yeah, I mean, just
Speaker 2: let's get into this, you know. So as a cognitive neuroscientist, right,
Speaker 2: you spend your life studying the brain and some of
Speaker 2: the aspects of the brain that are hard to characterize.
Speaker 2: But one of the things that I think you have
Speaker 2: been able to characterize is making an impact on conditions
Speaker 2: like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's movement disorders. And of course to
Speaker 2: this show, which is really a show four men and
Speaker 2: the people that love those men. We're all getting older
Speaker 2: one way or the other. And you quote brilliantly Dylan
Speaker 2: Thomas in your book Successful Aging, really in the first
Speaker 2: couple of pages, you know, we're all trying to rage
Speaker 2: against the dying of the light and also the who
Speaker 2: for that matter, great cold hope I die before I
Speaker 2: get old. But how do we do this? I mean,
Speaker 2: tell me what happens to the brain as we age?
Speaker 2: Why do we get things like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. And
Speaker 2: I know I'm giving you, you know, not a lot
Speaker 2: of time for this, but just you know, start riffing
Speaker 2: on this, because that's what you are. You're a musician.
Speaker 4: Thank you well for the listening audience at home. Of course,
Speaker 4: doctor Mills knows the answers to all these questions, and
Speaker 4: he's feigning that he doesn't, so that I have an
Speaker 4: opportunity to talk, and I invite you to jump in
Speaker 4: if I got anything that contradicts your understanding, but you're
Speaker 4: too kind. Let's talk about diseases of aging. I mean,
Speaker 4: the big three are Alzheimer's, dementia, and which isn't necessarily
Speaker 4: Alzheimer's related, and well, let's say Alzheimer's dementia, Parkinson's and
Speaker 4: cancer and so across evolutionary time skills. What Darwin taught
Speaker 4: us is that the primary mission of your genes is
Speaker 4: to pass themselves on to a new generation, and anything
Speaker 4: that will help you do that becomes selected through the
Speaker 4: process of natural selection over tens of thousands of years.
Speaker 4: So if you're charming and you're not psychotic, you're probably
Speaker 4: more likely to be able to reproduce, and so charming
Speaker 4: as a trait gets passed on. Psychoticism tends not to.
Speaker 4: If you stick around to help raise your children, if
Speaker 4: you're the kind of man that is a good father,
Speaker 4: your children to be better positioned to pass on their DNA.
Speaker 4: I mention all of this as a long wind up,
Speaker 4: because evolution doesn't care about what happens after you've pro created.
Speaker 4: There's no evolutionary biological force to manipulate your genome once
Speaker 4: you've already procreated. So we see these diseases of aging
Speaker 4: because there's no evolutionary pressure to get rid of them.
Speaker 4: That's sort of the thirty thousand foot view. Evolution and
Speaker 4: the genome are driving it. Now, you know, they are
Speaker 4: environmental components to this. But we're seeing epidemic proportions of
Speaker 4: Parkinson's and cancers and Alzheimer's for a number of reasons,
Speaker 4: but the largest reason by far is that we're an
Speaker 4: aging population. We are old enough to get diseases that
Speaker 4: people didn't live long enough to get in generations before,
Speaker 4: in our grandfather's generation, and the diseases then have an
Speaker 4: opportunity to manifest themselves in a way they didn't before.
Speaker 2: I love that. I mean, so we're basically genetically whistling
Speaker 2: past the graveyard when he hit about thirty five or so.
Speaker 2: It sounds like and that you know we.
Speaker 4: Were, Or if you're Tony Randall eighty.
Speaker 2: There you go. That's right, yeah, Mike Jagger. I mean
Speaker 2: that guy still does more pilates than I do at
Speaker 2: his age. But you're right. I mean, I think that's
Speaker 2: a really critical point that people should understand, is that
Speaker 2: and I've made this argument years ago, and by the way,
Speaker 2: I don't know all the answers, but I do impute
Speaker 2: with a bit of Midwestern common sense in that that
Speaker 2: there was a study years ago, or a conjecture years
Speaker 2: ago that statins, which are what we treat men and
Speaker 2: women for cholesterol issues, may contribute to Alzheimer's. And you know,
Speaker 2: the common sense doctor part of me says, well, that's
Speaker 2: because we're not dying of heart attacks when we're fifty
Speaker 2: or sixty. So are we living to the point where
Speaker 2: we're developing dementia because we would have otherwise that gene
Speaker 2: would have already kicked in caused a widow maker heart attack.
Speaker 4: And that's exactly right.
Speaker 2: And we wouldn't have gotten there. And so it's not
Speaker 2: really the status is that we're so good at getting
Speaker 2: older that at some point something is going to get us.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I think that's exactly right. And the trick of course,
Speaker 4: we can talk about the amount of time you're on
Speaker 4: the earth as your life span, but the amount of
Speaker 4: the proportion of that that you're healthy as your health span.
Speaker 4: And this is a concept that hasn't really worked its
Speaker 4: way down to the average person. But you know, the
Speaker 4: idea of health span as well. Most of us were born,
Speaker 4: you know, we grow up Somewhere along the way. You
Speaker 4: might get mononucleosis or a broken leg or something, but
Speaker 4: you're generally healthy, and then at some point you hit
Speaker 4: a wall. It could be eighty, it could be ninety,
Speaker 4: but you hit a wall and you get sick and
Speaker 4: you die of that illness. And sometimes the illness in
Speaker 4: the case of MS or Parkinson's, can last ten or
Speaker 4: twenty years before you die. So the effort, I think
Speaker 4: is to make your life span is probably genetically determined
Speaker 4: unless you walk in front of a bus. Your health span, though,
Speaker 4: is largely under your control. And so what we talk
Speaker 4: about is trying to increase the duration of your health span.
Speaker 2: It brings up the point that we are seeing diseases
Speaker 2: of excess and you do an amazing job in your book,
Speaker 2: Successful Agent on talking about diet, and I think what
Speaker 2: you're saying there is that we're not really looking at longevity,
Speaker 2: in other words, how to live longer, but living better
Speaker 2: in that a lot of things that affect our lifespan
Speaker 2: actually hit our health span when we're in our twenties
Speaker 2: and thirties. You know, the rates of obesity, heart disease,
Speaker 2: metabolic syndrome which often leads to diabetes. Those are things
Speaker 2: that are certainly going to affect our lifespan. But maybe
Speaker 2: when we're sixty. But if you hit that when you're twenty.
Speaker 2: You know, if you're fifty eighty one hundred and twenty
Speaker 2: pounds two hundred pounds overweight when you're in your twenties,
Speaker 2: then that's going to affect your health span because you're
Speaker 2: not going to able to get up and move, and
Speaker 2: you're not going to be able to potentially not even
Speaker 2: be able to procreate. Interestingly enough, because one of the
Speaker 2: biggest problems I see in my fertility practice is ozobesity
Speaker 2: and trying to help men, you know, improve their sperm counts,
Speaker 2: which therefore is adding to not only their health span
Speaker 2: and their lifespan, but also their evolutionary span. And you're
Speaker 2: promoting that DNA a little bit longer. So I like
Speaker 2: how you frame that. Talk to me then about what
Speaker 2: you think the pillars of healthy aging and healthy living
Speaker 2: are then, I mean, what are Because as you said,
Speaker 2: this hasn't trickled down necessarily to everybody in the in
Speaker 2: our listening audience about the difference between lifespan and health span.
Speaker 2: So that's revelation. But then what our takeaway messages, even
Speaker 2: this early in our discussion on the pillars of aging,
Speaker 2: that we can do well, how do we prevent these
Speaker 2: nerded generative disorders just in case we get to make
Speaker 2: it to sixty or seventy.
Speaker 4: Well, so I'll back up and say that we now
Speaker 4: think that your health span is controlled by about twenty percent.
Speaker 4: Twenty percent impacted by your genome, your genetic endowment. Eighty
Speaker 4: percent is behavioral, lifestyle, cultural. That's a lot of wiggle room.
Speaker 2: Right, So you can outrun your genes.
Speaker 4: You can outrun your genes, right. So I would say
Speaker 4: the biggest factor statistically, when we look at epidemiological studies
Speaker 4: of millions of people and we assess them for variety
Speaker 4: of lifestyle variables and personality variables, the biggest predictor of
Speaker 4: health span and longevity and overall life satisfaction is the
Speaker 4: trait of conscientiousness. And this is a stir of personality
Speaker 4: traits that include things like doing what you say you'll do,
Speaker 4: stick toitivenesss grit, following rules when appropriate to follow rules.
Speaker 4: So conscientious people tend not to jaywalk, and so they're
Speaker 4: less likely to get hit by a bus. They tend
Speaker 4: not to commit heinous crimes that would ended up end
Speaker 4: them up in prison, which is bad for your health.
Speaker 4: And they tend to have a doctor. You know, they
Speaker 4: have a regular doctor, and they see the doctor regularly,
Speaker 4: and they do what the doctor says. This is key
Speaker 4: because I don't know about your practice, but a number
Speaker 4: of doctors tell me eighty percent of their patients have
Speaker 4: a note in the file non compliant.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, that's terrible. Yeah, zero in my practice. But
Speaker 2: I'll think about it now.
Speaker 4: Well, maybe you kick them out if they don't comply.
Speaker 2: You go, that's right. Oh, my stuff is so easy
Speaker 2: to comply to because it makes you, you know, have
Speaker 2: better sex and live longer. So you know, I've got
Speaker 2: great compliance. But that's just the luck of the draw.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, I mean typically I think psychiatrists do
Speaker 4: all just gps and the chronologists they complain about this.
Speaker 4: So you know, you have a doctor. When you get sick,
Speaker 4: you have somebody to see. They've got your chart, they've
Speaker 4: got your history. Conscientiousness is a huge factor, and I
Speaker 4: would apply that to things like good sleep hygiene, going
Speaker 4: to bed at the same time and waking up at
Speaker 4: the same time every day to the extent that you can.
Speaker 4: It's much easier on your body. The human body is
Speaker 4: a Republican. It doesn't like change.
Speaker 2: Okay, man, they just do it out there. That's the
Speaker 2: Canadian and you talking.
Speaker 4: There nothing wrong with Republicans. You why change something that's working.
Speaker 2: That's right exactly, whether it's working for you or someone else.
Speaker 4: Not taking a partisan instance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I get you right there. Yeah, we'll let that
Speaker 2: one fly. Yea.
Speaker 4: And so you know, good sleep hygiene, sleep in a
Speaker 4: dark room, no screens, two hours before bed, all that stuff.
Speaker 4: Alcohol interferes with sleepsyd you don't get. I mean, it
Speaker 4: might knock you out, but that's not the same as
Speaker 4: getting a good night to sleep. And then diet. I
Speaker 4: went down a black hole for about six months when
Speaker 4: I was writing the book, trying to figure out what
Speaker 4: the dietary guidelines were. And it's in our line of work.
Speaker 4: You have to consider people in the Mediterranean and who
Speaker 4: follow the Mediterranean diet seem to live longer. They are
Speaker 4: these so called blue zones, right, there's seven of them
Speaker 4: around the world or something. But it's not just that
Speaker 4: they're eating the Mediterranean diet, which is high in fish
Speaker 4: and fresh vegetables. It's that they're walking a lot, they
Speaker 4: engage in manual labor, they have family support.
Speaker 2: Networks, friends, and family clothes. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so we don't know that it's the diet. And
Speaker 4: my view, which might be somewhat controversial, is if there
Speaker 4: was clearly a superior diet vegetarian, vegan, omnivore, keto, Mediterranean,
Speaker 4: whatever it was, if it was clearly superior, we'd know.
Speaker 2: And we don't, right well, clear superior. Also that you
Speaker 2: also mentioned in the pillars sticktuitiveness, and I think any
Speaker 2: diet that you can stick with is probably a good diet.
Speaker 2: But also you know, it's very difficult to stick to
Speaker 2: anything other than the Mediterranean diet, which is a whole,
Speaker 2: very thousand plus year old way to live. As you said,
Speaker 2: it's a whole packet, just not just the diet.
Speaker 4: As Woody Allen said, you can live to be one
Speaker 4: hundred if you just give up all the things that
Speaker 4: make you want to live to be one hundred.
Speaker 2: That's right, exactly right, Yeah, And that goes back to
Speaker 2: the idea of health span and lifespan is exactly right,
Speaker 2: although you know you've mentioned that in your book too.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's plenty of examples of people that are
Speaker 2: smoking somepart cigars and drinking and brandy every night. They
Speaker 2: lived one hundred and twelve. It's amazing what we can
Speaker 2: do that those might be the twenty percent that have
Speaker 2: a little bit of a genetic predisposition.
Speaker 4: Oh, for sure. I think it's wrong to look at
Speaker 4: these outliers. I mean, it's smart to look at this statistically.
Speaker 4: There's a bell curve, and you know, eighty five percent
Speaker 4: of people are in the middle of this curve, and
Speaker 4: then there are a few strays on either side. And yeah,
Speaker 4: there's one hundred and twenty one year old frenchwoman I
Speaker 4: think her name was Gene Callum.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 4: She was smoking, she was drinking, you know. I mean,
Speaker 4: but you can't look at those sort of like looking
Speaker 4: at Charlie Parker and saying, oh, if I become a
Speaker 4: heroin addict, I'll be a great saxophone player.
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, But I mean, you know the pre shows, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's right. I mean, Keith Richards, your name the creativity
Speaker 2: is there. But but yeah, but they're not.
Speaker 4: You can't. You've got to base yourself on the statistics.
Speaker 2: And they're not on the same gene locus. I don't
Speaker 2: think you know, heroin addiction and amazing sax playing, Otherwise
Speaker 2: there'd be no kidney gen So you know.
Speaker 4: I'm glad you said that, not me.
Speaker 2: You have a you know, you have a clear living
Speaker 2: example the guy that's doing it right. But I like
Speaker 2: it you said that because right in the blue zone again,
Speaker 2: you know, you look at Okinawa and you say, if
Speaker 2: you just eat enough fish, you're gonna be fine. Right,
Speaker 2: just there's mercury, but there's yeah, but then if there's
Speaker 2: so much mercury fish, but then the average American doesn't
Speaker 2: eat enough fish to even get close to a mercury
Speaker 2: level to worry about. And so if you're worried about
Speaker 2: all of the micro nutrients are the things that the
Speaker 2: environmental hazards, we're probably not even to a level. We
Speaker 2: get into that because of that sticktuitiveness and that inability
Speaker 2: to say I'm going to adopt a lifestyle instead of
Speaker 2: a diet. But you're right, and also you know you're not.
Speaker 2: I mean, I can I'm I'm looking at my office
Speaker 2: at Arawon here in Santa Monica, and and I can
Speaker 2: need as much arow and smoothies and take as much
Speaker 2: seaweed as I want. But but I'm still not that
Speaker 2: more than a quarter mile from the on ramp to
Speaker 2: the four h five. So I'm probably breathing in too
Speaker 2: much lead and break dust and Lord knows what else
Speaker 2: that that I'm not gonna have to worry about if
Speaker 2: i moved to Sardinia or Okinawa.
Speaker 4: So so the environmental toxins are the early evidences. They're
Speaker 4: implicated in Parkinson's and MS. We're not sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's what I wanted to do I asked about. Yeah,
Speaker 2: a lot of a lot of MS data show there's
Speaker 2: northern climates, industrial climates, especially that there is a there's
Speaker 2: a little bit of a predisposition there that that isn't
Speaker 2: necessarily genetic as you were.
Speaker 4: It's interesting you mentioned this because I spent twenty years
Speaker 4: in Montreal at McGill and the For one thing, there
Speaker 4: was a lead smelting plant on the island in Montrealsen Island,
Speaker 4: and the level of toxins in the air were so
Speaker 4: high that at one point, my physician said, you know,
Speaker 4: you could smoke a cigarette a day and it wouldn't
Speaker 4: even make a dent in what you're getting in through
Speaker 4: the air here.
Speaker 2: Wow, and that's why you picked up smoking. Yeah, amazing,
Speaker 2: that's the world. That's the lesson. The moral of the
Speaker 2: story doesn't matter.
Speaker 4: Actually from it. This is a bit of a diversion.
Speaker 4: But from a neuroscientific standpoint, nicotine is possibly the ideal
Speaker 4: drug because it can cause you you it can increase
Speaker 4: memory capacity, it can increase focus and attention without giving
Speaker 4: you the jitters the way too much coffee does. It's
Speaker 4: not necessarily responsible for adverse heart events. It's the delivery
Speaker 4: method that's the problem. It's the smoking that's the problem.
Speaker 4: So some friends of mine have been taking nicotine gum
Speaker 4: just now and then the way you would reach for
Speaker 4: a cup of coffee. And I asked my neurologist about
Speaker 4: this yesterday and he was all for it.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah. I think I read, you know, way
Speaker 2: back in medical school learning about schizophrenia, that that nicotine
Speaker 2: has a unique position in the mind of a schizophrenic
Speaker 2: that it actually helps sort of uh auto regulate some
Speaker 2: of their you know, their their missed synapses, and that's
Speaker 2: why so many, so many people with schizophrenia they tend
Speaker 2: to smoke, almost in a chain smoking way.
Speaker 4: I'm so glad you explain this to me. I know
Speaker 4: somebody who was it's a frantic and who had smoked
Speaker 4: two or three packs a day from the age of eleven. Wow,
Speaker 4: And by age sixty, the cardiologist said you got to
Speaker 4: give up smoking. And so the cardiology bought my friend
Speaker 4: this special box. I don't know if you've seen these,
Speaker 4: but it's got a timer on it and a motor
Speaker 4: and you put the pack of cigarettes in the box
Speaker 4: and the lid closes and you can't pry it open.
Speaker 4: And then every thirty minutes or whatever it was it
Speaker 4: was subscribed. Every forty the box opens and you can
Speaker 4: take a cigarette out. And so my friend, who had schizophrenia,
Speaker 4: every time the box opened would just grab a whole
Speaker 4: fistful of cigarettes.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I was gonna say it sounds like one
Speaker 2: of your Stanford experiments you did as an undergrad, maybe
Speaker 2: in the rat lab, having a little buzzer box. I
Speaker 2: did some incentive coz that that's great. He figured out
Speaker 2: how to out the out fox the fox.
Speaker 4: But in fact my friend had a stroke and it
Speaker 4: damaged a great about a third of my friend's brain
Speaker 4: and my friend was you know, can still talk, but
Speaker 4: they totally Cigarettes are completely out of the question now
Speaker 4: and the schizophrenia has returned.
Speaker 2: Well there you go. So talk to us about stroke
Speaker 2: in aging and rewiring. And Jordan, I know you were
Speaker 2: when we were talking about this. You you came across
Speaker 2: some things that h Doctor Levitton had had brought up
Speaker 2: in uh, because you know you've had I mean, first
Speaker 2: of all, I didn't put your intro the fact that
Speaker 2: that when Joni Mitchell is quoting what a great songwriter
Speaker 2: and singer you are, and I mean that's pretty hard
Speaker 2: to beat praise like that coming from Joni Mitchell. I
Speaker 2: mean again, another Laurel Canyon resident and Canadian made it
Speaker 2: down to Laurel Kenyon just Likedil Young at all. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, how does the brain tell me about stroke?
Speaker 2: And let's just jump into music in that, because I
Speaker 2: mean I cannot let you not talk about your work
Speaker 2: in music in cognitive science.
Speaker 4: Thank you. So as you know your listeners may not
Speaker 4: know there are two kinds of stroke. There's a hemorrhagic
Speaker 4: stroke where a blood vessel bursts and it bleeds through
Speaker 4: your brain, or there's a chemic stroke where there's a
Speaker 4: clot and either one can damage the brain. It damages
Speaker 4: it in different ways. My understanding is that as chemic
Speaker 4: strokes tend to be more localized, but it depends on
Speaker 4: how far back then the blood vessel they are and
Speaker 4: what they're feeding. I mean, it's hard to draw generalizations.
Speaker 4: The problem with the brain bleed, though, if it's not caught,
Speaker 4: is that then the blood just fills the cavity and
Speaker 4: presses on the cerebral spinal fluid and all hell breaks loose.
Speaker 4: So the way we treat stroke is, if you've got
Speaker 4: risk factors, we either give you a blood thinner or
Speaker 4: a blood clotter, and basically you get to choose which
Speaker 4: way you want to die. Do you want to die
Speaker 4: from a clot or because they can't treat both. Right,
Speaker 4: But Joni had an aneurysm burst, as you know, in
Speaker 4: twenty fifteen March, and she was in a coma for
Speaker 4: three months, and when she got out of the hospital,
Speaker 4: her neuro surgeon thought that there was no chance that
Speaker 4: she would ever recover speech or movement, and so he
Speaker 4: sent her home without any follow up care. I mean,
Speaker 4: he wrote a prescription for twenty four hour nursing, but
Speaker 4: nothing in terms of care. I figured it was a
Speaker 4: lot cause, but I visited her, and I write about
Speaker 4: this in my new book I Heard there was a
Speaker 4: Secret chord.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh man, it just gives me chills to hear.
Speaker 2: The title of that book one of the best songs
Speaker 2: in the history of rock and roll.
Speaker 4: I visited her two days after she got back home,
Speaker 4: and you met with the nurses, and it was Yeah,
Speaker 4: she couldn't talk, she couldn't walk, she couldn't express anything.
Speaker 4: Do you want to drink of water? She couldn't nod
Speaker 4: or shake, you know. But when music was coming from
Speaker 4: the other room while the nurses were on break, something
Speaker 4: in her kind of perked up, and I thought, well,
Speaker 4: maybe the way to reach her is to play her
Speaker 4: music that we know she likes. And she had invited
Speaker 4: me to help her curate an album of her favorite
Speaker 4: songs called Starbucks Artist's Choice, and I think there were
Speaker 4: sixteen songs on it. We spent many hours listening through
Speaker 4: her collection figuring out what should go on it, and
Speaker 4: by definition, these were her favorite songs, and so I
Speaker 4: played her the first cut on the album, and she
Speaker 4: seemed to respond in a positive way, so the nurses
Speaker 4: played her that album, you know, throughout the day for
Speaker 4: the next two weeks. And we now know that listening
Speaker 4: to music you like can increase dopamine. My lab was
Speaker 4: the first to show that that dopamine is released by
Speaker 4: pleasurable music, and we found the mechanism we found where
Speaker 4: it's the limbic system, the nucleus succumbents the ventral tagmental area,
Speaker 4: the same region that is active when you have an orgasm,
Speaker 4: when you are hungry and you eat, when you're a
Speaker 4: gambler and you win a bet, listen to music you like,
Speaker 4: that same pleasure mechanism comes in. So it's affiliated, I
Speaker 4: guess you say, with sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
Speaker 2: And very white. I was going to say, but you know,
Speaker 2: he transcends all of them except the dug part. Yeah
Speaker 2: good lower d yes.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, it does.
Speaker 2: Oh, well done, well done.
Speaker 4: So dopamine. It also our allowed was the first to
Speaker 4: show that we listen to music you like, your brain
Speaker 4: produces its own opioids, its own internal analgesics. Dopamine does
Speaker 4: different things in different parts of the brain and in
Speaker 4: the limbic system it signals pleasure, but in the frontal
Speaker 4: lobes it helps spur motivation, and in the basil ganglia
Speaker 4: it helps to create smooth and continuous movements. The reason
Speaker 4: Parkinson's patients have trouble walking is because the basil ganglia
Speaker 4: dopamine circuits are degraded. But that dopamine was enough to
Speaker 4: motivate her to want to get better, and so I
Speaker 4: hired a team of speech therapists, physical therapists, occupational therapists,
Speaker 4: and a neurologist to come to the house and within
Speaker 4: two years we were able to go out to dinner together.
Speaker 4: And then I think four years later, whatever it was,
Speaker 4: she played a Newport folk festival. Maybe six years later.
Speaker 4: I'm fuzzy on the dates.
Speaker 2: That's about right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, wow.
Speaker 2: So do you think it's because of who she was
Speaker 2: and what she did? Is her brain respond differently to
Speaker 2: be a musical genius as she is to that or
Speaker 2: in other words, as somebody was just reading me surgical
Speaker 2: books while I was in a coma, would it, you know,
Speaker 2: would it wake me up? Or would I respond to
Speaker 2: music just because I'm a lover of it, not that
Speaker 2: I'm a player? Of it.
Speaker 4: So for the audience, Doctor Mills and are both research
Speaker 4: scientists as well as writers. And the difficulty with research
Speaker 4: is that no two brains are alike and knows who
Speaker 4: brain injuries are alike. And so what we try to
Speaker 4: do when I do my MRI studies fMRI studies brain scans,
Speaker 4: I try to get twenty or thirty people and find
Speaker 4: what's common to all of them, because one brain doesn't
Speaker 4: really help you predict what another brain will do, but
Speaker 4: the average is somewhat stable. So I don't know. I
Speaker 4: can't know. It's it's unknowable whether Joni's brain was I mean,
Speaker 4: obviously it was special, She's a genius. Was it special
Speaker 4: in a neuroprotective way or in a neuroplastic way, We
Speaker 4: don't know. David Crosby, who knew her wells, told me
Speaker 4: that he thought that it was her recovery was unique
Speaker 4: to her because she has such an indomitable spirit. Yeah,
Speaker 4: And I mean, that's that's the Jonie. I know. She
Speaker 4: is just fiercely in charge of her life and will
Speaker 4: not take no for an answer. And that's you know,
Speaker 4: you're getting back to aging and the Dylan Thomas quote
Speaker 4: you started with, you know, I talked about conscientiousness for
Speaker 4: sleep and diet, But the other see that's really important
Speaker 4: is curiosity and curious people. That's the second most important
Speaker 4: statistical factor in overall life satisfaction and longevity and health span.
Speaker 4: Curious people are motivated to learn every day, and that
Speaker 4: is neuroprotective because you're building up new brain circuits all
Speaker 4: the time and reinforcing old ones, making connections between something
Speaker 4: you just learned and something you knew before. And curious
Speaker 4: people also have more friends because instead of trying to
Speaker 4: be interesting, they're interested, and so it's much more fun
Speaker 4: to be with a curious person at a dinner party
Speaker 4: or a concert or wherever you are, because they're going
Speaker 4: to keep asking you questions and it's you know, they
Speaker 4: never get tired of it. Joni's like that, she's very,
Speaker 4: very curious.
Speaker 2: You brought up something I was thinking about in my
Speaker 2: personal history recently, is that I was an okay baseball
Speaker 2: player in high school. And I went to it a
Speaker 2: fantastic high school. So there are a lot of much
Speaker 2: better players than me, and I would get recruited every
Speaker 2: once in a while. So love baseball, grip playing it.
Speaker 2: Then you know, went to college, tried out for the
Speaker 2: team at UCLA, and here I am as a physician
Speaker 2: and not a major league baseball player. So we all
Speaker 2: know how that story ended. And I really didn't pick
Speaker 2: up a baseball for years. And then about six or
Speaker 2: eight months ago, the Dodgers reached out to me and said, hey,
Speaker 2: doctor Mills, we'd love to have you start for show.
Speaker 2: Heey tani. It didn't actually quite go like that. Actually was, Oh,
Speaker 2: we wanted to honor you to throw out the first pitch.
Speaker 4: You got to throw out the first pitch.
Speaker 2: My god did I got to the a first pitch
Speaker 2: and it was the first day that sho he actually
Speaker 2: started June twenty second, twenty twenty five.
Speaker 4: Now let me back up. Were you a pitcher, No.
Speaker 2: I was a first basement. I'm left handed and I
Speaker 2: had an okay arm, but a much better bat, and
Speaker 2: so I always played first base. And I hadn't played
Speaker 2: baseball for you know, really since high school. Maybe a
Speaker 2: little pickup softball here and there. But when they called
Speaker 2: me and said, doctor Mills, we want you to be
Speaker 2: out there to celebrate Men's Health Month as the Men's
Speaker 2: Health Champion in Los Angeles, I said, of course, and
Speaker 2: then my competitive brain said, I actin you'd probably pick
Speaker 2: up a baseball and throw it again. And so I
Speaker 2: went to this local pitching hitting academy down on in
Speaker 2: Sawtel in that sort of that West LA neighborhood, really
Speaker 2: cool place, and I was, by far by, you know,
Speaker 2: an order of forty years older than anybody else that
Speaker 2: was training there. But I would get on the mountain
Speaker 2: and I would throw a bucket of balls and it
Speaker 2: was the most meditative state I've been in, whether I'm writing,
Speaker 2: whether I'm reading, whether I'm operating. It just it triggered
Speaker 2: something in me that I hadn't really thought about, just
Speaker 2: a repetition of throwing one hundred balls until my arm
Speaker 2: was ragged, just to be able to get in shape
Speaker 2: to throw one pitch, you know, in front of an
Speaker 2: audience at Dodger Stadium. But it I have to get
Speaker 2: back there because it just it. So what was that?
Speaker 2: What do you do when you haven't done something for
Speaker 2: years that you used to love and then just put
Speaker 2: your childhood dreams on hold? What triggered in my brain
Speaker 2: that made me feel so good standing on that mound
Speaker 2: and just throwing the ball into a backstop.
Speaker 4: That's a great question, a great story. I'll start with,
Speaker 4: how is it you were able to throw after all
Speaker 4: those years?
Speaker 2: Well, it was funny. The owner of the place, who
Speaker 2: I love, he was great because, you know, again I
Speaker 2: was the oldest guy there. I told him my story,
Speaker 2: told him. He was like, ah, that's cool. So he
Speaker 2: actually started. He started. He brought out a speed gun.
Speaker 2: I was doing fine. I was throwing. You know, I
Speaker 2: was from probably about eighty percent strikes and the first
Speaker 2: time I threw I was in the in the low fifties.
Speaker 2: But by the time it was game day, he brought
Speaker 2: out a speed gun and I was up into into
Speaker 2: the low sixty mile an hour range, which was you know,
Speaker 2: for a ten year old little leaguer, that's pretty good material.
Speaker 2: You know, that's pretty good stuff. I could I could
Speaker 2: go into Little League and throw at that. But but
Speaker 2: I was doing pretty well. I mean, I still keep
Speaker 2: myself in shape, just not not in the in that sense.
Speaker 2: But it was very gratifying to even in those probably
Speaker 2: eight weeks or so that I trained for this, to
Speaker 2: see some improvement. Does that make a difference if I
Speaker 2: was actually okay at it versus just being terrible.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because the way we move, is that we have
Speaker 4: to engage a circuit in the brain that's called the
Speaker 4: motor planning area pre motor area, and it works in
Speaker 4: tandem with the cerebellum and other structures. But the idea
Speaker 4: is that any movement, whether it's throwing a ball or
Speaker 4: catching a ball, or playing a guitar or a piano, dancing, typing,
Speaker 4: these are require motor action plans, is what we call them.
Speaker 4: Your brain has to come up with a plan about
Speaker 4: what to do and what order. And if you look
Speaker 4: at touch typists who are and you shoot them in
Speaker 4: high resolution video and then slow it down, their fingers
Speaker 4: and wrists are actually a few letters ahead of where
Speaker 4: they need to be because they're anticipating it. That's the
Speaker 4: depth of the motor action plan. Or guitarists, pianist violinists too.
Speaker 4: So the thing to know about memory is that anything
Speaker 4: that gets in there that had an emotional packed an
Speaker 4: emotional wallop for you first kiss, your first time you
Speaker 4: drove a car, your wedding, or you know, more ordinary
Speaker 4: things like practicing over and over again, that's in there.
Speaker 4: That's in your brain. It's just a matter of finding
Speaker 4: the circuit and pulling it out again. And we've seen
Speaker 4: this in every domain that if you reached some level
Speaker 4: of expertise through your motor system, say it took you
Speaker 4: ten years to be able to throw like you did,
Speaker 4: or ten years to play an instrument like you did.
Speaker 4: If you drop it for thirty years and you come back,
Speaker 4: it's not going to take you ten years again. Might
Speaker 4: not even take you ten weeks. You get back a
Speaker 4: lot faster because you just have to reactivate those circuits
Speaker 4: that are already in there. Now. The euphoria that you felt,
Speaker 4: that's probably a combination of rediscovering something from your childhood
Speaker 4: that was an ambition of yours, Yes it was, and
Speaker 4: realizing that you're still pretty good at it, and then
Speaker 4: it puts you in touch with that motion was like
Speaker 4: Proost's Madeline or a particular smell activating a memory. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and suddenly you're ten years old again and your care
Speaker 4: free and you don't have blood on your hands and.
Speaker 2: Wow, oh Dan, that's so that's exactly right. Yeah. Ah,
Speaker 2: So what is that with you and music? Because you,
Speaker 2: I mean, you just keep you just keep doing it.
Speaker 2: So how do people is it is music? Something? Because
Speaker 2: other than you know people that you know that that
Speaker 2: can't play anymore for arthritis. You know Les Paul towards
Speaker 2: the end of his career, Peter Frampton recently. You know
Speaker 2: people Alan, Yeah, yeah, you know what is it about
Speaker 2: music that allows you to keep coming back to that? Well?
Speaker 2: Is there is there a dopamine russia euphoria that keeps
Speaker 2: some people going, especially people like you? That is you
Speaker 2: know that both and you know, one of the leading
Speaker 2: cognitive neuroscientists but also a recorded producer and player. You know,
Speaker 2: how does your brain work? I guess is the the's.
Speaker 4: The I wish I knew that, Yeah, I wish I knew.
Speaker 4: I think well, I mean, getting back to the statistical trends,
Speaker 4: people who learn to play an instrument at any age
Speaker 4: report overall life satisfaction, and playing an instrument is neuroprotective.
Speaker 4: Becoming a world class musician takes more training than becoming
Speaker 4: an astronaut or a neurosurgeon. It's tens of thousands of hours,
Speaker 4: and the neural capacity you build up, the neural reserve,
Speaker 4: cognitive reserve, is enormous and it doesn't matter when you start.
Speaker 4: I know people who started playing an instrument when they
Speaker 4: were sixty or seventy and they seem to reap the
Speaker 4: benefits of the neuroprotective effects. So anything that you can
Speaker 4: do that will build up new circuits is good. And
Speaker 4: the thing about music is not all the songs that
Speaker 4: they are to write have already been written, and it
Speaker 4: has all these parameters of tambre and rhythm and melody.
Speaker 4: And for people who like music and who like playing
Speaker 4: or writing music, most of the players I know will
Speaker 4: never play a song the same way twice. I'm up
Speaker 4: in Northern California now because I came up to see
Speaker 4: my friend Rodney Crowell play a concert in Napa at
Speaker 4: the Uptown Theater and he's got an all new band.
Speaker 4: He's seventy five years old. He's playing songs that he
Speaker 4: has been playing for fifty years. And I see him
Speaker 4: several times a year. Every performance is different, and that's neuroprotective,
Speaker 4: and that's what keeps him coming back. Can I do
Speaker 4: this better? And just to make a kind of nonlinear
Speaker 4: analogy to that, you know, can I do this better?
Speaker 4: You remember the old Who's on first routine by Abbot
Speaker 4: and Costello.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, of course I do.
Speaker 4: You can do a deep dive on YouTube and there
Speaker 4: are about forty or fifty versions of it. They were
Speaker 4: constantly tinkering, trying to make it a little better. Sometimes
Speaker 4: they failed. Well, it wasn't better, but the fact is
Speaker 4: they kept working at it so that they could riff
Speaker 4: on it. And what I get out of music. I'm
Speaker 4: just now at the point where Joni's been a mentor
Speaker 4: to me in my songwriting, in my singing, as has Rodney.
Speaker 4: And I've been writing songs since I was twenty. I'm
Speaker 4: sixty eight now, but I feel like I've finally, in
Speaker 4: the last year or two, gotten to the point where
Speaker 4: I can do something that stands up, that holds up.
Speaker 4: And you know, when Jonie said she liked the songs,
Speaker 4: doesn't get better than that.
Speaker 2: I mean, Stevie Wonder gave you some props that ain't
Speaker 2: bad he did.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we worked on a record together. He's amazing.
Speaker 2: Oh again, another genius that just yeah. I think there
Speaker 2: must be a something about geniuses that you guys are
Speaker 2: on this wavelength where you know, you get each other
Speaker 2: without you know, some X factor.
Speaker 4: I would not put myself in the category of Joony
Speaker 4: or CD or in the category of genius, but I
Speaker 4: think in the way that No. Two brains are alike.
Speaker 4: No two musicians are alike, No two geniuses are alike.
Speaker 4: And so it's not what's in common, but what's different
Speaker 4: that's so fascinating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, wow, you know. So one of the things we
Speaker 2: love to do in the show is talk a little
Speaker 2: bit about you know, what's fact and what's fiction and
Speaker 2: what's hype. And you did a great job and successful
Speaker 2: aging about and I think we covered the diet, nutrition,
Speaker 2: to eat, move, sleep, right, those are the fundamentals that
Speaker 2: we all talk about. But there are you know, you
Speaker 2: did talk about there might be some hope for supplements,
Speaker 2: you know, neurodegenerative aging and slowing down the process. And
Speaker 2: so at the time of that book, which is a
Speaker 2: couple of years old, now you know you were maybe
Speaker 2: mentioning something. But what what is out there that and
Speaker 2: and you know, again I'm a huge skeptic of supplements.
Speaker 2: I'll just put that out there and uh and again
Speaker 2: in a very common sense way, because I think usually
Speaker 2: you know, there's something else that triggers, whether it's you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's the seed in the grape, or it's the
Speaker 2: skin and it's not necessarily as verit well, or it's
Speaker 2: there's not. And then, for example, and I'm asking, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna I'm gonna rant before I ask you a question, Dan,
Speaker 2: but I will say, you know, the thing I get
Speaker 2: a lot is this, you know, the idea of n
Speaker 2: A D plus right or the uh sh right, thank you?
Speaker 2: And and the problem with it is is that is
Speaker 2: that it It's all right, we have an E rating, Jordan.
Speaker 2: It's okay. We can say, we can say the S word.
Speaker 2: I promise. Yeah, my mom's listening. It's that fucking bullshit
Speaker 2: mad oh boy, come on, let her rip now, letter rip.
Speaker 2: But uh but yeah, I mean, and yet everybody is
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, I just I did a surgery
Speaker 2: in Beverly Hills earlier. And uh you know there's three
Speaker 2: clinics on on four corners that that are selling drops
Speaker 2: and oral and IV even I mean, shouldn't I I
Speaker 2: should have stopped and gotten an IV of n AD plus.
Speaker 4: And it took us forty four minutes for you to
Speaker 4: talk about getting oral.
Speaker 2: Oh look at this guy. Gosh with the jokes, Jordan.
Speaker 2: I don't need to write material anymore.
Speaker 4: Tony cars and golf swing.
Speaker 2: Oh God, thank you, look at you. That's right now.
Speaker 2: We now we're going to really walk into the e rating.
Speaker 2: God damn, this guy is good.
Speaker 4: We earn it now, we gotta earn it. Come on, well,
Speaker 4: so here here, I'm going to be dogmatic here. There
Speaker 4: is no such thing as alternative medicine. Okay, there's medicine
Speaker 4: and then there's everything else. Medicine are things that have
Speaker 4: been shown to work. Now I would call vitamin D meta.
Speaker 4: Even though you can get it over the counter, it
Speaker 4: doesn't mean it's not medicine, aspirins medicine. If it's been
Speaker 4: proven to work, it's medicine. If we aren't sure whether
Speaker 4: it works or not, it's alternative medicine. The whole category
Speaker 4: is deceiving. It should not be called alternative medicine. It
Speaker 4: should be called we don't know if it's medicine or
Speaker 4: not yet.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, that is great.
Speaker 4: And so people get seduced by these stories of you know,
Speaker 4: n A D plus. Another dogmatic rule is if the
Speaker 4: person who's recommending it is selling it, particularly in the
Speaker 4: case of a physician, don't buy it. So Stephen Gunderson
Speaker 4: keeps clogging up my YouTube feed with crazy claims about
Speaker 4: how you should never eat tomatoes and they're poisoning you,
Speaker 4: and you got to get your supplements. And then there's
Speaker 4: that guy at Harvard who's the NAD plus guy, Sinclear
Speaker 4: Davidson Claire. Yeah, he for one thing, you know, an
Speaker 4: end of one that is experimenting on yourself is not
Speaker 4: the plural of anecdote, is not data well done. And
Speaker 4: you know, I remember talking to the head of the
Speaker 4: FDA at the time that I wrote the book about
Speaker 4: and a couple of other you know, like Harvard Nutrition
Speaker 4: Department people, not David Sinclair, and I say, what's the
Speaker 4: deal with this? And they said, well, it seems to
Speaker 4: show some benefits in mice. And I said, well, would
Speaker 4: you take it? And the head of the FDA said no.
Speaker 4: I said why not? He says, because I am not
Speaker 4: a mouse, right, And not to drive the point home
Speaker 4: too hard, but about ninety seven percent of the stuff
Speaker 4: that works in mice does not work in humans, and
Speaker 4: a high percentage of that is actually harmful to humans. Yeah,
Speaker 4: mice are not just little humans in fuzzy suits.
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah. Imuring data is so hard to extrapolate
Speaker 2: just because the I span is you know, it's accelerated.
Speaker 2: But but you know, then just go back to secaramices
Speaker 2: and looking at yeast and yeah, we have gene homologies,
Speaker 2: but the organism is so different it's it's hard to extrapolate.
Speaker 2: And I think that's that's fair. I mean, and by
Speaker 2: the same token, then you know, should I be throwing
Speaker 2: out all my seed oils because you know in the
Speaker 2: seed oil data is such as such a when you
Speaker 2: look at the amount of seed oil that you have
Speaker 2: to ingest, whether you're a mouse or a human, to
Speaker 2: show any kind of worry for aunca genesis, it's you know,
Speaker 2: you'd be having gallons of it a day and time.
Speaker 4: Was Michael Pollen on this just you know, eat a
Speaker 4: variety of foods and eat the food itself. There was
Speaker 4: this whole big thing with fish oil. You may remember,
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, of course we were all supposed to take
Speaker 4: fish oil tablets. And then he realized because omega threes
Speaker 4: were present in the fatty fish like mackerel and salmon,
Speaker 4: and the more omega threes the better. But when you
Speaker 4: extract the omega three from the rest of the micro
Speaker 4: nutrients contained in the fish and the other chemicals, they
Speaker 4: cause cancer.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 4: You have to get them as part of a whole diet. So,
Speaker 4: you know, I think Michael's right, eat a variety of foods,
Speaker 4: more plants than than you probably think is normal. Right,
Speaker 4: And but you know, enjoy y know, Michael has Michael
Speaker 4: and I went out got an ice cream cone recently.
Speaker 4: I love So you know it's not you can't never
Speaker 4: eat ice cream, but moderation.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But and I think you said that because that
Speaker 2: goes back to one of the pillars of longevity is
Speaker 2: friendship and enjoying doing what you do. And so if
Speaker 2: you enjoy going and getting in a d plus ivs,
Speaker 2: then you should do that. But but if you enjoy
Speaker 2: you know, a little salt and straw or or your
Speaker 2: local your local ice cream vendor, then then you should,
Speaker 2: you know, you should have a little ice cream every
Speaker 2: now and again. Wow, I love this. I mean, you're
Speaker 2: a wealth of information, Jordan, you had some you had
Speaker 2: some thoughts or what did you What do you want
Speaker 2: to talk about with Daniel before we give him the
Speaker 2: kicker about what the secrets to his longevity are.
Speaker 3: Oh, this is such an unfair thing.
Speaker 2: A lob in at the very end.
Speaker 3: Now, I'm so sorry for what I'm about to do.
Speaker 3: But I mean music is the greatest passion of my life,
Speaker 3: and one of the things I love the most about
Speaker 3: it is sort of the mystery behind it. And I've
Speaker 3: heard you speak about how we see the remains of
Speaker 3: Neanderthal communities and some of the oldest items there are
Speaker 3: musical instruments, and from they've spoken about how the parts
Speaker 3: of the brain that process music are evolutionarily older and
Speaker 3: more resistant to brain damage. I just wanted to ask
Speaker 3: you more about if you could shed a little light
Speaker 3: on the mystery of music. Why it's been this thing
Speaker 3: that's been a part of our about being a human
Speaker 3: since the earliest days.
Speaker 4: What it does, what it gives to us, we don't know.
Speaker 4: We can speculate. It seems as though music preceded language,
Speaker 4: and it was good for emotional communication when you didn't
Speaker 4: need to refer to concrete objects in the world, but
Speaker 4: you wanted to communicate in emotional state. And we still
Speaker 4: do that. We do it with prosity. If I'm asking
Speaker 4: a question, my sentence goes up at the end, and
Speaker 4: if I'm making a statement, the sentence goes down at
Speaker 4: the end, and I can change my tambo. If I'm angry,
Speaker 4: I get like that all raspy, you know. I mean
Speaker 4: these are all musical components. Think of Louis Armstrong's raspy
Speaker 4: trumpet or something where his raspy voice, although he does
Speaker 4: it in a way that it doesn't sound angry, but
Speaker 4: it's still exciting because.
Speaker 2: It's called Ella. Fitzgerald, he just had Ella right by the.
Speaker 4: I know Ella was a patient at UCLA.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I think ultimately it's because music isn't constrained
Speaker 4: and meeting the way language is. When when I when
Speaker 4: I sang language, I've got a pair of reading glasses.
Speaker 4: You may have an image of them, and I can
Speaker 4: hold them up and now you're seeing him, But there's
Speaker 4: still reading glasses. They're not a fern, you know, They're
Speaker 4: not a bottle of snapple. They're glasses. But there is
Speaker 4: no mew musical phrase that I can play that will
Speaker 4: convey a physical object in the world, or even a
Speaker 4: concept like justice or jealousy or love. I mean, we
Speaker 4: may take from certain musical gestures those feelings, but they're
Speaker 4: not intrinsic to the music. They're not in the notes.
Speaker 4: It's our interpretation of them. And so music's ambiguity is
Speaker 4: its power. It can project onto the screen of your
Speaker 4: mind and your emotions anything you wanted to, and you
Speaker 4: can find your own story in it. Getting back to Jony,
Speaker 4: I remember the first time I heard Jony's song Amelia
Speaker 4: off of Hezira about looking for love at all the
Speaker 4: wrong places. Basically, I just thought, oh my god. You know,
Speaker 4: the music, even without the lyrics, made things clearer to me,
Speaker 4: and so I think that's it.
Speaker 2: In a nutshell, the blues are blue for a reason. Yeah,
Speaker 2: all right, So I gotta ask you one thing before
Speaker 2: I let you go, because I know you're crazy busy
Speaker 2: as always, but but I always want to leave our
Speaker 2: audience with what one thing do you have to do
Speaker 2: every day to make you you because of what you're
Speaker 2: able to accomplish in a day? Is it coffee? Set, meditation?
Speaker 1: Ah?
Speaker 2: All right? How much? How much? And how often?
Speaker 4: I sleep seven and a half or eight hours every
Speaker 4: night and I take a five minute power nap.
Speaker 2: Love it?
Speaker 3: You still you sleep more than most people I feel like,
Speaker 3: and you still do all that you do.
Speaker 2: That's incredible.
Speaker 4: Well, I pretty much have to play music every day.
Speaker 4: If I don't play music, I get grumpy.
Speaker 2: I love that. Yeah, I have to listen to music
Speaker 2: every day for sure. Otherwise if I played it too much,
Speaker 2: everybody else would be grumpy around me. But if I
Speaker 2: listen to it, that's a whole other thing. Well, doctor Levitton,
Speaker 2: this has been beyond and honor to have you on
Speaker 2: the show and sharing what you know about music, about
Speaker 2: cognitive science, and and then you know, in terms of
Speaker 2: our our listeners out here, you've got to check out
Speaker 2: not only his books, but his music as well on
Speaker 2: Daniel leviton dot com albums and just just it's just
Speaker 2: a beautiful I can't even you know. Again, I don't
Speaker 2: want to say, because I know you're friends with Steely Dan,
Speaker 2: but I get a serious Steely Dan vibe from some
Speaker 2: of your music. It's just that melifluous. It's just it's
Speaker 2: so it's just captivating between your voice and just and
Speaker 2: your and whoever plays bass for you. My god, it's
Speaker 2: just wow. I know you've got an amazing ensemble.
Speaker 4: Well, I play bass on most of my recording.
Speaker 2: Are you kidding me? That's you too? Kid?
Speaker 4: God?
Speaker 2: Okay, well that was not even trying to be flattering.
Speaker 4: But Victor Wooten plays on one song on Turnaround, and
Speaker 4: Steve Bailey plays on the heather song and then on
Speaker 4: the most steely Danish song, which is headed for the Fall.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's a guy named.
Speaker 4: Andy hess Rose and Cash's bass play.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I'm telling you though, it's uh. It's everybody. Please,
Speaker 2: even if you don't read his books, you got to
Speaker 2: listen to his music.
Speaker 4: That's very uh.
Speaker 2: You delivered on the mail Room. I'm so grateful to
Speaker 2: you for your time. And then the listeners are also grateful. Jordan.
Speaker 2: Let's let her rip and get him onto his next gig.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much, Dan, appreciate you coming on the Mailroom.
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me the checks in the mail a.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about it. Let's talk about the man hero.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about it. Let's talk about the man Hero.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about it. Let's talk about.
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