Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stop
Speaker 1: Work dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, and my name is Christian Seger.
Speaker 1: Hey Robert, he ever met a person who doesn't like music?
Speaker 1: I do not think I've ever met anyone who just
Speaker 1: across the board doesn't like music. I've certainly met plenty
Speaker 1: of people who seem to dislike music in certain scenarios
Speaker 1: because I'm the kind of type of types of music, well,
Speaker 1: types of music, but also music in certain situations, like
Speaker 1: I've certainly known people who don't like music while driving.
Speaker 1: I'm of the mindset I want music on all the time,
Speaker 1: just about music of my own choosing, but music. I
Speaker 1: know a lot of our colleagues have difficulty writing while
Speaker 1: there's music on. I don't have that problem, although I
Speaker 1: do like sort of cultivate playlists of stuff that helps
Speaker 1: me to write, you know, mostly instrumental stuff. But there's
Speaker 1: certain music that I can listen to that has vocals
Speaker 1: that I can listen to all writing. But yeah, so
Speaker 1: you know, I know, like you like, I've known like
Speaker 1: various sort of iterations of people who can't listen to
Speaker 1: music during certain times. I've only meant like one or
Speaker 1: two people in my life who just don't. They literally
Speaker 1: say I don't like music, And that's so alien, so
Speaker 1: difficult for us to comprehend, because it's like hearing someone say, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't like food, like I don't like
Speaker 1: drinking liquids. It almost seems inhuman in a way. And
Speaker 1: I think like when you hear that, at least in
Speaker 1: my experience, people will kind of think like, oh, that's
Speaker 1: the trade of a psychopath, right, But it's not. It's
Speaker 1: actually not. We've talked about psychopaths on the show and
Speaker 1: that hasn't come up as one of the symptoms. But also,
Speaker 1: as we're going to talk about today, this is a
Speaker 1: real brain condition. Yeah, at least a couple of different
Speaker 1: conditions we're going to discuss, and I think they both
Speaker 1: serve to remind us just how tenuous our sensory experience
Speaker 1: of the world really is. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean, like,
Speaker 1: think about you and me, right, Like the audience probably knows,
Speaker 1: if they don't already, that you are really into electronic
Speaker 1: music and you cover it for stuff to blow your mind,
Speaker 1: I'd say weekly, right, Yeah, and um, and I as
Speaker 1: many people have heard on other episodes, grew up in
Speaker 1: the punkin metal scene and still listen to a lot
Speaker 1: of that stuff, which a lot of people find unlistenable
Speaker 1: and dissonant, including you know, my wife and um, I'm
Speaker 1: okay with that. But it's interesting because dissonance plays into
Speaker 1: these diseases as well. Well, here's a quick question for you,
Speaker 1: and I think this helps to sort of this helps
Speaker 1: a lot of us, uh, try and comprehend what some
Speaker 1: of these conditions are. Like, Yeah, like what what's the
Speaker 1: type of music that you just really don't get that
Speaker 1: you just you can't really listen to, you don't understand,
Speaker 1: and and you're just willing to say, yeah, I that
Speaker 1: is not for me usually like np R style jazz.
Speaker 1: I don't want to say jazz in general, because there's
Speaker 1: plenty of stuff that's being done in that area that's
Speaker 1: interesting and I like, but like that kind of like
Speaker 1: background elevator music jazz, you know what I mean? Like
Speaker 1: that that drives me crazy. It's like fingers on a
Speaker 1: chalkboard for me. It's I have to say jazz as well.
Speaker 1: And part of this could be I mean the view
Speaker 1: I guess is the jazz takes some getting used to.
Speaker 1: You have to be you have to immerse yourself in it.
Speaker 1: And I like some jazz, and I like jazzy elements
Speaker 1: and some of the music I listened to from time
Speaker 1: to time. But it's that jazzy jazz that's spacey jazz,
Speaker 1: that that completely unhinged jazz that just kind of gives
Speaker 1: me to shape, making me think of this joke on
Speaker 1: Parks and Rack. I don't know if you remember this,
Speaker 1: but the their local MPR station, they had a show
Speaker 1: and they would say jazz plus jazz equals jazz. Whenever
Speaker 1: I hear something like that, I'm like, nope. There. In
Speaker 1: the general, I often think about it that it's maybe
Speaker 1: like a like a strong alcoholic property, you know, some
Speaker 1: strong liqueur that you would never drink on your on
Speaker 1: its own, but you would use in a recipe or
Speaker 1: would you would certainly use in them using a mixed drink.
Speaker 1: So I often think, well, that is that is the strong,
Speaker 1: undeluded stuff that is not for me. Yeah, but you
Speaker 1: can put a like a shot of it, or like
Speaker 1: I will. I don't drink clearly, so shots a lot,
Speaker 1: but you know a little bit, it's like adding grenadine
Speaker 1: to your to your soda or something like, yeah, you
Speaker 1: could drink and given a little flavor. Well, like punk
Speaker 1: is is one of those things. I think about this
Speaker 1: sometimes it's like pure punk. I just it's not my scene,
Speaker 1: it's not what I dig. But I've certainly loved groups
Speaker 1: that have elements of punk in their sound. They either
Speaker 1: come out of punk or find some of their musical
Speaker 1: genre to combine it with, Like um oh the Pokes
Speaker 1: come to mind. Yeah, share a little bit of Irish music,
Speaker 1: a little bit of punk music. It's really I would
Speaker 1: be hard pressed to want to listen to Irish or
Speaker 1: punk mu look on their own, but when these two
Speaker 1: come together, then I you know, I've always enjoyed it. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I can definitely see that, even like having spent many
Speaker 1: a year in basements watching just like crusty punk bands
Speaker 1: just hammering out four chord songs. Uh, I can understand
Speaker 1: where you're coming from and that that sort of has
Speaker 1: led to like what a lot of our I guess,
Speaker 1: like popular alternative music is nowadays. Right, it's like a
Speaker 1: fusion of punk and jazz or punkin metal, or where
Speaker 1: Joe and I were just talking the other night about
Speaker 1: Scott like nineties and how that was sort of something
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, well, okay, enough about our musical interests.
Speaker 1: But so clearly we're human beings who love music. We've
Speaker 1: got opinions about music. We like to talk about it,
Speaker 1: we like to listen to it, we got to shows. Um.
Speaker 1: But there's people out there who don't. And it's not
Speaker 1: just because you know they don't, they don't go to
Speaker 1: things like that, or they're just not. It's because there's
Speaker 1: literally something going on in their brain that makes it
Speaker 1: so that they're capable of enjoying music. Something's wired differently.
Speaker 1: Some systems are online in a slightly different array, and
Speaker 1: we will get into into these in a moment, but
Speaker 1: before we do, without it be helpful to just go
Speaker 1: ahead and give a nice overview of the cognitive experience
Speaker 1: of music, just basically what's going on when we process it.
Speaker 1: So music is of course a deep part of our
Speaker 1: cognitive architecture. It changes our mood, it heightens our emotions,
Speaker 1: it summons and banishes memories, It affects the manner in
Speaker 1: which we preceive perceived time. Even we can actually use
Speaker 1: it to treat illnesses of the mind and body. So
Speaker 1: it's powerful stuff. It's potent stuff that's not even just
Speaker 1: with human beings. There's been research done on plants that
Speaker 1: music affects plants, so we're talking about some serious magic here.
Speaker 1: There are parts of the brain that respond to music
Speaker 1: that that don't respond to language. There are separate parts
Speaker 1: of the brain that respond to melody, to the melody
Speaker 1: of language, different than these different for the parts of
Speaker 1: the brain the respond to the melody of music. They
Speaker 1: are parts of the brain that deal with movement, attention, planning,
Speaker 1: and memory, and these all respond to music even though
Speaker 1: they don't have anything to do with the actual auditory process.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot going on behind the scenes, and
Speaker 1: and we don't fully understand it yet. I mean, I
Speaker 1: would say this research well, you know, we'll talk about
Speaker 1: it later, but really, only in the last century have
Speaker 1: we even been aware of this as a medical condition.
Speaker 1: But only in maybe the last twenty or thirty years
Speaker 1: has there have been like real deep research into what
Speaker 1: this means. Yeah, and certainly there's a lot of wonderful
Speaker 1: research out there about our relationship with music, and we
Speaker 1: can't cover it all here, but just a couple of
Speaker 1: i think illuminating studies to to touch on here um in.
Speaker 1: In recent years, we found that you can look to
Speaker 1: the brain via f m R I, and specifically you
Speaker 1: can look at brain activity in the nucleus incumbence. This
Speaker 1: is involved in the formation of expectations, and we can
Speaker 1: actually tell if a person is enjoying the music they're
Speaker 1: listening to by looking at at brain activity in this region.
Speaker 1: If it's meeting their musical expectations and matching up with
Speaker 1: the stored templates of what you've heard before, then you
Speaker 1: see stuff light up. Um, yeah, I could absolutely believe
Speaker 1: that given my experience with music. Yeah, Like if you're
Speaker 1: just like I don't know, Like here's an example, Like
Speaker 1: I walk around sometimes and I'll just have like my
Speaker 1: entire music library on shuffle on my phone or something
Speaker 1: like that, Like one like really great song from my
Speaker 1: high school days will pop up, and it's like I
Speaker 1: can feel like, whatever those lights are that are going
Speaker 1: on in my brain just activate, you know. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The expectation plays such an interesting role in our experiencing music,
Speaker 1: because on one hand, there's there's something that happens when
Speaker 1: a when a melody or a tune or the lyrics
Speaker 1: take you to that place you're expecting it to go
Speaker 1: but then also when it goes to a slightly different
Speaker 1: place where it kind of you think it's going to
Speaker 1: turn left and it turns right. But that animates you
Speaker 1: as well. It's it's it's almost like narrative without words. Really.
Speaker 1: Ah yeah, that's a really interesting way to put it.
Speaker 1: I um, I'll just do a little bit of subjective
Speaker 1: experience here to throw in here. I'm not like, personally
Speaker 1: a big fan of The Cure, but a friend of
Speaker 1: mine is, uh and if he's listening her, this is
Speaker 1: your story. So The Cure just played in Atlanta recently,
Speaker 1: like I think like two weeks ago. Did you know
Speaker 1: about this? Oh? Yeah, I have. I have some friends
Speaker 1: who are really they went to this show. So the
Speaker 1: way that he told me was that, like, apparently this
Speaker 1: tour was like you know, they're going to be playing
Speaker 1: all their greatest hits or whatever, but that was sort
Speaker 1: of like a different arrangement of the musical instruments. So
Speaker 1: he was really excited because he's like, well, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: hear the songs that I love and it's gonna be
Speaker 1: played by the guys who wrote them, but they're going
Speaker 1: to be playing them in very different ways than I'm
Speaker 1: used to and that's a wholly new experience. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I've had an experience with I guess uh, tool has
Speaker 1: been been worth seems like the kind of band that
Speaker 1: would do something like that. They'll play with the intro
Speaker 1: on something and so the live version at first you're
Speaker 1: not sure what it's going to be, but then then
Speaker 1: you realize, oh, it's it's this track, it's that track, whatever,
Speaker 1: the particular track maybe, and there's this, you know, a
Speaker 1: physical experience of excitement totally. When I was, you know,
Speaker 1: still involved in the music scene and just go into
Speaker 1: a lot of shows, the thing that was always the
Speaker 1: most impressive to me, and that just showed like a
Speaker 1: real classic professional touring band, was when they could play
Speaker 1: an entire set without stopping, Like they would just start
Speaker 1: and their songs. They had figured out ways to weave
Speaker 1: their songs in and out of one another, so they
Speaker 1: would just play like a really tight thirty forty minutes
Speaker 1: set and then boom, they were done, got off on stage.
Speaker 1: And that is the kind of thing that just floors you.
Speaker 1: It's just like you don't have time to stop and
Speaker 1: breathe and kind of judge them. Uh, for other factors
Speaker 1: like whatever they're wearing, or what they say in between
Speaker 1: songs or something. You're just like bombarded. Well, that's one
Speaker 1: of the reasons that I've been so into DJ mixes
Speaker 1: over the years. Uh, it's not quite the same as
Speaker 1: a as a band performing their entire set without stop,
Speaker 1: but the the idea that you can take various musical
Speaker 1: elements and and a talented DJ it can create a
Speaker 1: seamless tapestry of sound. I love that, and certainly you
Speaker 1: get those six surprises, those expectations met or skewed throughout
Speaker 1: that sonic narrative as well. So all right, we're clearly
Speaker 1: establishing that we're music nerds. We love music, and whatever
Speaker 1: parts of the brain that don't work for for some
Speaker 1: of these people, they're they're lighting up like fireworks for us. Now.
Speaker 1: Another key point though, is certainly you've been to a
Speaker 1: concert or performance and you've been experiencing the music, and
Speaker 1: maybe you've seen somebody like clearly their significant other drug
Speaker 1: them here and they're not enjoying it, or they got
Speaker 1: a free ticket and you said drug them. I thought
Speaker 1: drug early gave them drugs so that they would just
Speaker 1: sit put. But yeah, that's that's that's possible, depending on
Speaker 1: these both. Yeah, so you've seen people that are not
Speaker 1: into it, or they're they don't they're clearly they're the
Speaker 1: first time or maybe they you don't feel like they
Speaker 1: could possibly be enjoying the music on the same level
Speaker 1: as you are. Yeah, possibly and and certainly like and
Speaker 1: I have to applaud my wife again, like she's indulged
Speaker 1: me by you know, sometimes I can't get a friend
Speaker 1: to go with me to a particular kind of thing,
Speaker 1: and she's like, all right, you know, let's I'll go
Speaker 1: with you. You know, we'll go see Converge and High
Speaker 1: on Fire. And she's just sitting there like shaking her
Speaker 1: head while I'm like really into it, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I get that. Well. It's interesting because despite
Speaker 1: all of our very musical taste, in our varying levels
Speaker 1: of engagement with particular types of music, particular performances, the
Speaker 1: brain experiences that we have are actually pretty consistent among
Speaker 1: most people. There was a two thousand thirteen study publishing
Speaker 1: the European Journal of Euroscience, and they found that if
Speaker 1: two people listened to the same track, one inexperienced fan
Speaker 1: of the music and another not the other one. Just
Speaker 1: like a newcomer you know, there's been dragged in there
Speaker 1: by their spouse. You're still going to see the same
Speaker 1: synchronization in several key brain areas and similar brain activity.
Speaker 1: So as much as you you know, might like to
Speaker 1: think you're experiencing your favorite band and an entirely different
Speaker 1: cognitive level than the you know, the dumb guy next
Speaker 1: to you with the glories on his fingers, Um, that
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to be quite the case. We're still engaging
Speaker 1: like the same networks. I wonder if this is similar
Speaker 1: to like research that's been done on depression and anxiety
Speaker 1: in that like, Um, the more you listen to the
Speaker 1: songs over and over again, right like, it's maybe it's
Speaker 1: like a like writing over the same pathway of the
Speaker 1: brain over and over and over again, so it makes
Speaker 1: it easier for that experience to happen. It's happening in
Speaker 1: the same way for everybody, but it's just kind of
Speaker 1: going through the brain. I don't know how to describe
Speaker 1: this other than with like road metaphors, right Like, it's
Speaker 1: like going down the same road, but it's just like
Speaker 1: going down faster for for us, or something that plays
Speaker 1: in expectation right where the road is gonna turn, where
Speaker 1: it's gonna split. Yeah. Interesting, huh. I wonder if anybody's
Speaker 1: done research on that, like the the the experience of
Speaker 1: having music encoded to the brain as being similar to
Speaker 1: the sort of expectations that encode anxiety into people. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I will have to follow up on that, because I
Speaker 1: know there have been a number of studies that have
Speaker 1: looked into, you know, the potential therapeutic aspects of music,
Speaker 1: as well as the role of music and in various
Speaker 1: emotional states. Yeah. Right, and you think about it, like
Speaker 1: some of the emotional states that are created by listening
Speaker 1: to music have very similar symptoms to anxiety. Huh. All right,
Speaker 1: maybe that's a future episode. We'll have to dig deep
Speaker 1: for that one. But let's take a quick break and
Speaker 1: then when we come back, we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: the condition of a musia or tone deafness. All right,
Speaker 1: we're back. So this first one, tone deaf deafness, a musia.
Speaker 1: I feel like this is gonna be the one where
Speaker 1: we're gonna see far more listeners who can share experiences
Speaker 1: with this. Certainly we've probably all encounter people with varying
Speaker 1: levels of tone deafness over the years. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: seems like tone deafness has variations on it, like extremes
Speaker 1: or you know, some people have it to to less
Speaker 1: an extent than others. The term congenital amusia is what
Speaker 1: we use to denote tone deafness that you're born with.
Speaker 1: It's been described in medical literature for more than a century,
Speaker 1: and it manifests basically as a severe deficiency in processing
Speaker 1: pitch variations. Now this extends to impairments in musical memory
Speaker 1: and recognition, as well as what we traditionally think of
Speaker 1: his tone deafness as like bad singing or the inability
Speaker 1: to tap in time with music. Right um, everybody's right
Speaker 1: now is probably thinking of like the person who I
Speaker 1: don't know was inquired or something that they just couldn't
Speaker 1: hit the notes. Yeah um. Some literature also refers to
Speaker 1: a musia as dismelodia or dismusia, but the term amusia
Speaker 1: is generally agreed to be preferable because it acknowledges the
Speaker 1: possibility that there exists as many forms of congenital amusias
Speaker 1: as there are forms of acquired amusias. And what I
Speaker 1: mean by that is accidental brain damage. So you can
Speaker 1: hurt yourself a variety of ways that will also produce
Speaker 1: this effect. Now, to clarify, congenital means present from birth,
Speaker 1: but it is possible to acquire a musia through brain
Speaker 1: damage in life. The very first study that looked at
Speaker 1: this was done in eighteen seventy eight by a guy
Speaker 1: named Grant Allen, and he was investigating a thirty year
Speaker 1: old man with a neurological lesion that gave him this,
Speaker 1: as he referred to it, then severe musical handicap um.
Speaker 1: And maybe some of you out there wondering right now,
Speaker 1: like I can relate to this, is this me well,
Speaker 1: it could be a recent study found that out of
Speaker 1: a hundred people who self declared them selves as having
Speaker 1: a handicap for music, only twenty two so actually exhibited
Speaker 1: the traits of a musea after they were tested with
Speaker 1: a formal questionnaire. And the way that this questionnaire worked.
Speaker 1: It tested your aptitude for scale, interval and contour information,
Speaker 1: as well as melodic organization dimension, rhythm and meter, and
Speaker 1: temporal organization dimension. They also tested memory recognition ability connected
Speaker 1: to music. Now, those who are tone deaf are generally
Speaker 1: unable to hear the differences in pitch and tone that
Speaker 1: the rest of us here, we joke about this, right,
Speaker 1: you know that there's always like uh and I imagine
Speaker 1: with like movies like Pitch Perfect or TV shows like Glee, like,
Speaker 1: there must be tons of joke about jokes about tone Deafnessily,
Speaker 1: it seems like every long running show ever has had
Speaker 1: at least an episode where oh, it's the person who
Speaker 1: can't sing, but they don't realize they can't sing us.
Speaker 1: So it's a common enough of a thing that it
Speaker 1: shows up in some pop culture narrative and we all
Speaker 1: recognize it. Uh. We use the phrase really to describe
Speaker 1: people who don't understand simple communication strategies to write, like
Speaker 1: like even outside of it, we've turned into this metaphor
Speaker 1: for like, ah, well, he's tone deaf, so that's why
Speaker 1: he doesn't understand what we're talking about here. It's not
Speaker 1: even we're using it on a on a level beyond
Speaker 1: like its actual medical application. Right. And it's most extreme though,
Speaker 1: People who are tone deaf are unable to even perceive
Speaker 1: music the same way that the rest of us do,
Speaker 1: and it comes down to an actual difference in their
Speaker 1: brain structure. Uh. And it's different from those like you know,
Speaker 1: Robert and myself for whom music comes naturally. Okay, it's
Speaker 1: actually defined as a learning disability. There's a team from
Speaker 1: the University of Montreal who have first published an empirical
Speaker 1: study on it, and that's their delineation. So, for instance,
Speaker 1: most children, and I didn't realize this, but this is
Speaker 1: probably a common experience for you. Most children learned to
Speaker 1: sing at the same time that they're learning to speak, right,
Speaker 1: so they're like kind of like singing words. Like I
Speaker 1: was a babysitting a friend of ours four year old
Speaker 1: the other night, and he was singing constantly, but then
Speaker 1: he would just kind of talk to himself too. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's my experience with my son Bastion is um, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of talking at this point
Speaker 1: he's four, but there's also a lot of singing. He
Speaker 1: will just burst into song about the silliest things, to
Speaker 1: the point we're just like, all right, you just you
Speaker 1: can't sing about butter anymore. Just just eat, don't play
Speaker 1: with the butter, and don't sing about the butter for
Speaker 1: just consumed butter. Well, that sounds like he is not
Speaker 1: tone deaf, because tone deaf children don't do this singing
Speaker 1: when they're younger. Uh. And this is where this this
Speaker 1: woman seems to be like the expert on this, Like
Speaker 1: every study I was looking at, she was somehow involved
Speaker 1: in Her name's Isabelle Perette's and that's when she gave
Speaker 1: it the official disorder, congenital amusia. Uh. It's innate in
Speaker 1: these people's brain, the lack of musical perception. And it's
Speaker 1: also hereditary. Uh. They found that congenital amusia is genetically transmitted.
Speaker 1: Thirty of the people who have first degree relatives with
Speaker 1: this cognitive disorder also have it. However, if you look
Speaker 1: at control groups, only three percent habit and control and
Speaker 1: control group families. However, congenital amusia doesn't seem to result
Speaker 1: from any particular family environment. It's not like I don't know, Uh,
Speaker 1: you can somehow connect it to like alcoholics or something
Speaker 1: like that. Right, Like, there doesn't seem to be an
Speaker 1: environmental source that's causing this. It seems to be genetic. Remember,
Speaker 1: though genes don't specify cognitive function, they actually influence brain development.
Speaker 1: So the next step that these researchers are looking at is,
Speaker 1: let's identify the genes that relate to these neuroanatomical anomalies
Speaker 1: that are found in the brains of people who have amusia. Now, interestingly,
Speaker 1: that three percent control group almost lines up exactly with
Speaker 1: what they've found to be the percentage of people in
Speaker 1: the population who have it. Four percent seems to be
Speaker 1: the number of people in general population who are a
Speaker 1: music They grow up with normal exposure to music and
Speaker 1: are otherwise capable of doing everything else everybody else does.
Speaker 1: They're intelligent, they're educated. This only affects their ability to
Speaker 1: recognize pitch and music, and it doesn't apply to language.
Speaker 1: This is the really fascinating part. Right. The musics can
Speaker 1: process speech as well as environmental sounds like I don't know,
Speaker 1: like an animal's cry or something right, or voices. They
Speaker 1: can understand all of that. They can even understand the
Speaker 1: pitch changes in different languages like you know a little Chinese.
Speaker 1: I spent some time in China. You know how important
Speaker 1: pitch is the difference in words. They're fine with that,
Speaker 1: but it's only with the music that they have this
Speaker 1: pitch problem. Well, it reminds me of some of the
Speaker 1: bits we we discussed earlier about how our brains process
Speaker 1: music and the idea that your brain is processing it
Speaker 1: separately from the music itself. They based on all of
Speaker 1: these other factors, So I guess it stands a reason
Speaker 1: someone would even you know, fairly significant musa here could
Speaker 1: still listen to, say a track with some really engaging lyrics,
Speaker 1: of course, and they're gonna get some sort of lyrical
Speaker 1: experience out of it. Yeah, and maybe maybe even something
Speaker 1: that is thinking of some of the more some of
Speaker 1: the least musical music that I like, some of the
Speaker 1: more noise branded stuff like, maybe they could listen to
Speaker 1: that and appreciate that on some level that is not
Speaker 1: as tied to the music, but still somehow tied to
Speaker 1: a sonic experience of the thing. We are going to
Speaker 1: get back to that. Yeah, there's a there's uh a
Speaker 1: way that dissonance in particular plays into both regular music
Speaker 1: listening experience and a music listening experience. But there's actually
Speaker 1: some music acts that are recorded that are fluent in
Speaker 1: several languages, so this is it doesn't at all affect
Speaker 1: their other communicative abilities. Uh. And the way that they
Speaker 1: figured this out was they use these tests that were
Speaker 1: originally designed to a sess the presence and specificity of
Speaker 1: musical disorders and patients with brand damage. The big one
Speaker 1: seems to be the difficulty in detecting pit related changes, right,
Speaker 1: especially when that extends into dissonance, which a musical subjects
Speaker 1: have little sensitivity too. So that's interesting, right. So, uh,
Speaker 1: people who love music, when you create music that has
Speaker 1: dissonance in it, when tones are playing over one another
Speaker 1: that don't match up the right way, and it just
Speaker 1: sounds like kind of white noise, some people hate that, right.
Speaker 1: Like I dated a girl once who I remember putting
Speaker 1: on a record in a car and she just said,
Speaker 1: turn this off. It just sounds like insects. Uh, And
Speaker 1: she was wrong, but she probably wasn't in music because
Speaker 1: they have very little sensitivity to dissonance. Okay, So I
Speaker 1: so one with this condition could very well be an
Speaker 1: exclusive fan of say like Nurse with Wound or early
Speaker 1: into New Boton, very like throw a xylophone down a
Speaker 1: hallway sort of music. That's what I'm kind of wondering
Speaker 1: is if like these experimental noise fans that are just
Speaker 1: super into it and that's all they listened to. I
Speaker 1: wonder if you could have a musia and not even
Speaker 1: know it, because that's sort of your genre of choice. Um,
Speaker 1: it doesn't appear, unfortunately, to be something that can be
Speaker 1: quote unquote fixed either. Peretza's team has tried teaching kids
Speaker 1: with the musica to like music. Actually, they basically they
Speaker 1: gave them MP three players and they said listen to
Speaker 1: this for thirty minutes a day. Not only did the
Speaker 1: kids fail to improve on their tests, but they how
Speaker 1: poorly they scored on the test correlated to how much
Speaker 1: they reported listening to the music. UM. So the next
Speaker 1: steps to to see if there's any kind of way
Speaker 1: to reverse this. Seemed to be some kind of remediation
Speaker 1: training programs that might improve hitch perception and memory. At
Speaker 1: the very least, this will us understand the neurological basis
Speaker 1: for this so that we can use it to diagnose
Speaker 1: other learning disorders too. So, what what's going on in
Speaker 1: the brain here? Right? Like, let's zoom in take a
Speaker 1: look at the brain and figure out what exactly the
Speaker 1: deal is. Well, there's a study by a team in
Speaker 1: France and they used MTG scanners to figure this out.
Speaker 1: A music people's brains stem from delayed or impaired functioning
Speaker 1: in their frontal and auditory cortex. They also had physical
Speaker 1: abnormalities in those areas of the brain with more gray
Speaker 1: matter and less white matter than usual. Now, this is
Speaker 1: something that's come up on the show a couple of
Speaker 1: times when we're talking about everything from brain disorders to
Speaker 1: drug usage. Right, like that white gray matter balance seems
Speaker 1: to be pretty important. Again, people with music, they don't
Speaker 1: enjoy music, but they're capable of enjoying all the other
Speaker 1: pleasures the rest of us are. Right, It's not like
Speaker 1: they're dead inside, right, it's just this one area, and
Speaker 1: arguably an area that that certainly has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with their survival or ability to to move and enjoy
Speaker 1: life and and and partake of our culture. They're just
Speaker 1: not into the musical aspect of it. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: they like food, they like money, they like sex. This
Speaker 1: has all been tracked in Uh. There was a March
Speaker 1: six article in the Journal of Current Biology. They looked
Speaker 1: at this UM. So, Okay, we know it's innate or
Speaker 1: it's acquired. We know it prevents people from processing music
Speaker 1: the way they do. There's also another way to look
Speaker 1: at this, another terminology called specific musical and hedonia. UH.
Speaker 1: And this is what another studies authors called the inability
Speaker 1: to explain experience pleasure from music in general. So if
Speaker 1: a musia is the like disease, the extreme version where
Speaker 1: you can't appreciate music at all, is this specific musical
Speaker 1: and hedonia. And in their study, they divided thirty people
Speaker 1: into three even groups and they were asked to do
Speaker 1: what they called a music task where they listened to
Speaker 1: class sical pieces of music and then they rated them.
Speaker 1: Then they were asked to do a monetary incentive delay task.
Speaker 1: Basically this is gambling um and usually both would induce
Speaker 1: an emotional reaction in the brain. The researchers analyze the
Speaker 1: heart rate of their subjects and how much they perspired. Now,
Speaker 1: some were quote emotionally oblivious to music that they could
Speaker 1: tell what they were supposed to be feeling. So they
Speaker 1: heard the stuff they knew they were supposed to be
Speaker 1: having some kind of feeling, but their brain wasn't registering it.
Speaker 1: Their brain registered okay, there's some reward system in place.
Speaker 1: When I'm when they were playing around with the money
Speaker 1: and gambling, that was lighting up, but not when they're
Speaker 1: listening to music. So I'm wondering, this is just me
Speaker 1: here and maybe I'm way off, But do you think
Speaker 1: a music can also affect a person's timing and tapping
Speaker 1: in terms of like fine motor control, because I'm thinking, like,
Speaker 1: if you can't tap out a beat along to a song,
Speaker 1: would that affect your fine motor control in terms of
Speaker 1: like trying to find I don't know. I'm thinking about
Speaker 1: like platform video games where you're trying to like jump
Speaker 1: from one thing to another at just the exact right time,
Speaker 1: sort of like it was like the old school platformers
Speaker 1: where they were just insanely difficult and you essentially had
Speaker 1: to know like the exact beats to hit the exact key.
Speaker 1: There's a name to that, right, And I'm wondering if
Speaker 1: that affects them as well, or like for Simon game
Speaker 1: comes to mind. Oh yeah, that would be a perfect example.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, like they'd just be unable to do Simon.
Speaker 1: I'm curious about that. Again, it comes down to like
Speaker 1: a small loss like Simon wouldn't be a big deal.
Speaker 1: But I would imagine if the fine motor control extended
Speaker 1: into other aspects of your life that might be difficult.
Speaker 1: I mean, certainly there was a time when like the
Speaker 1: predominant game video game was those insane platformers, and if
Speaker 1: you were not able to partake of those. I mean
Speaker 1: you felt like you were missing out a little bit,
Speaker 1: like I was just always kind of horrible at them.
Speaker 1: And I remember feeling a little left out like I
Speaker 1: I had never beat like I don't think I backed
Speaker 1: any of those old Nintendo games, and and I did
Speaker 1: feel like this or something something wrong with me that
Speaker 1: I haven't beat Super Mario Brothers too. I can sort
Speaker 1: of remember that yet, because especially like our generation, the
Speaker 1: way we played like we all would just huddle around
Speaker 1: the TV and the console right for hours at a time.
Speaker 1: I remember playing like Mega Man for like ten hours
Speaker 1: straight into the middle of the night with my buddies,
Speaker 1: and we would like switch off right. But yeah, you
Speaker 1: would sort of get laughed at if you weren't as like,
Speaker 1: oh you can't make that one little jump? Come on,
Speaker 1: you know. Thank god they got easier. Okay, So Robert
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit more about agnosia and how
Speaker 1: it's related to a musea. Well, Agnosia in Greek means
Speaker 1: not knowing and um and if from a broad standpoint,
Speaker 1: agnoja refers to a number of different neural disorders that
Speaker 1: and basically in which the subject experience is an inability
Speaker 1: to inability to process different sensory information. Now what sort
Speaker 1: of information? This varies a lot. Some experience and inability
Speaker 1: to recognize and identify objects or persons or aspects of
Speaker 1: objects or persons. Uh. The sense itself is not defective, however,
Speaker 1: it's just how you're processing it. So it's not that
Speaker 1: you can't hear, it's not that you can't see, it's
Speaker 1: just there's no memory loss. And it might be limited
Speaker 1: to a single sense, it might be more than one.
Speaker 1: So what I immediately thought of here was all of
Speaker 1: our sacks famous study of the men who mistook his
Speaker 1: wife for a hat, which was about a guy who
Speaker 1: had a brain disorder and literally like couldn't perceive the
Speaker 1: difference between his wife when he saw her in his hat. Uh.
Speaker 1: And all of your Sacks was famous for doing all
Speaker 1: kinds of studies like this. But this, that seems like
Speaker 1: maybe a more extreme version of agnosiat Well, there are
Speaker 1: a number of different versions of it that have been
Speaker 1: either officially or unofficially identified, So just a few. Here.
Speaker 1: There's finger agnosia. This is an inability to recognize the
Speaker 1: fingers of the hand. There's a more famous one, and
Speaker 1: certainly Oliver Sacks don't study this one a good bet.
Speaker 1: And this is a prosopagnosa. This is face blindness. So
Speaker 1: you look at a face. It's not that you can't
Speaker 1: see it's not even that you can't see a face.
Speaker 1: It's not like on that that wonderful episode of Hannibal
Speaker 1: where it's like a blank thing. Right, It's it's not
Speaker 1: that as wonderful as that was visually in that show.
Speaker 1: It's not really what facial face blindness is like. But
Speaker 1: still you you can't you look in at the face,
Speaker 1: you're seeing the face, but you can't really identify what's
Speaker 1: going on. You can't like put the markers together to
Speaker 1: identify it as being different from one face or another. Right,
Speaker 1: There's also a phone agnosia, which is voice blindness. There's
Speaker 1: time agnosia, which is an inability to interpret the passaging
Speaker 1: of time, and there's also semantic agnosia. And this is
Speaker 1: object blindness. And without being fresh on the details of
Speaker 1: the hat situation, that seems like that that would be
Speaker 1: the related clas probably yeah, And I have to say um,
Speaker 1: and I have to bring this up in a big
Speaker 1: geeki about it since I'm currently reading the latest book
Speaker 1: in our Scott Baker's Prince of Nothing. You have told
Speaker 1: me about this numerous times, and so has a friend
Speaker 1: of the show, Ec Steiner. Yeah. Yeah, I look forward
Speaker 1: to chatting about this latest book with Steiner because it's uh,
Speaker 1: the title is a Great Ordeal. But throughout the entire
Speaker 1: series there's this tragic, undying elder race known as the
Speaker 1: non Men. Okay, so they're like humans, but they're very
Speaker 1: alien in many respects. They've been around forever, they've they've
Speaker 1: had all these traumatic experiences, and there are a few
Speaker 1: different differences that, like, very notable differences between them and humans, Like,
Speaker 1: for instance, they're you know, they're ghastly and pale, kind
Speaker 1: of google ish. They their teeth are all fused together.
Speaker 1: But the one that I've always found really fascinating was
Speaker 1: the revelation that they can't see paintings. Interesting, they deal
Speaker 1: almost exclusively with three dimensional representations. That would that would
Speaker 1: definitely work for Steiner since he's working. For those of
Speaker 1: you who don't know who we're talking about. This is
Speaker 1: a friend of ours who has actually done work for
Speaker 1: the show before, especially for our video series. Um. He's
Speaker 1: worked with me on comic books before in two dimensional formats.
Speaker 1: But he actually sculpted like these huge set pieces that
Speaker 1: we used for the Monster Science series. Here. He did
Speaker 1: this wonderful Cathulu piece that we have here in the office,
Speaker 1: and uh, just a giant cyclops skull that you can
Speaker 1: see in the background and a couple of those. So
Speaker 1: he's worked with us on the show before. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so maybe he's he himself is one of the non
Speaker 1: men um He might be. But I've seen people interpret
Speaker 1: this like painting blindness, if you will, and maybe it
Speaker 1: maybe it's something to do with oh well they can't
Speaker 1: see colors and color blindness. But I can't help but
Speaker 1: wonder if this is, uh, if this would be some
Speaker 1: sort of like painting agnosia. And certainly our baker worked
Speaker 1: so many neuroscientific and philosophical ideas and it was work.
Speaker 1: I would not be surprised at all of that was
Speaker 1: a partial inspiration for it. Okay, Yeah, I like that.
Speaker 1: I like that, but all displating it outward. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: all of these conditions, the real ones that we've discussed here,
Speaker 1: there are examples where again, you're the stimuli is entering
Speaker 1: through your senses, but then something is messed up, the
Speaker 1: wiring is crossed. There's there's something in many cases physically
Speaker 1: damaged in the brain that is permitting the proper processing
Speaker 1: of that stimula. Yeah, and where this enters the musical
Speaker 1: realm is auditory agnosia. And they're essentially two different versions here.
Speaker 1: There's classical auditory agnosia, which entails environmental sounds, so this
Speaker 1: would be like you hear a bird or a car,
Speaker 1: but you're unable to process exactly what that sound is.
Speaker 1: And then there is interpretive or acceptive agnosia, and this
Speaker 1: entails music and gets more into this this idea of
Speaker 1: musical agnosia. I guess like here's a good point for
Speaker 1: me to probably clarify too, because I have this. I
Speaker 1: don't know about you, but um, I have a good
Speaker 1: bit of tenitis um from all my years going to shows,
Speaker 1: and even though I want ear plugs, Uh yeah, I
Speaker 1: still hear that whistling at night and if everything's quiet,
Speaker 1: I just hear a high pitched wine all the time. Um.
Speaker 1: And this isn't that though, right, Like that's that's an
Speaker 1: actual like we actually have an episode of brain stuff
Speaker 1: about that. Um, But that's part of your ear drum.
Speaker 1: Being affected and then connecting to your brain. This is
Speaker 1: totally different. This is just brain right now. In some
Speaker 1: of the case and we'll look at a couple of
Speaker 1: case studies here, uh in a minute. In some of
Speaker 1: those you do see like actual deafness occurring as well.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, for the most part, we're talking about
Speaker 1: the about not a physical hearing loss. So examples of
Speaker 1: this go back at least as far as nineteen o five.
Speaker 1: I was looking at some articles about this, and the
Speaker 1: reference a physician only referred to is uh Bond Vincini
Speaker 1: and another one by the name of lamby L. A. M. Y.
Speaker 1: And both of those uh encountered individuals who who had
Speaker 1: UH difficulty with music so they could In the first one,
Speaker 1: the nineteen o five case, the patient could still process
Speaker 1: musical information, but could no longer recognize well known tunes.
Speaker 1: Um he could pick out a wrong note in a
Speaker 1: famous tune, but he couldn't name that tune. And in
Speaker 1: the nineteen o seven case from lamby L. A. M.
Speaker 1: Y described a patient who could transcribe his national anthem
Speaker 1: but didn't know what it was. That's interesting, huh, And
Speaker 1: I'm assuming that had given their names, they probably weren't
Speaker 1: transcribing the American national anthem, right. I think these were both,
Speaker 1: uh at least said the first one was Italian. I'm
Speaker 1: not certain about Lamby. Again, I look to try and
Speaker 1: find some more information about these individuals from motor Head
Speaker 1: did some certainly may be lots of time alright. So
Speaker 1: the thing to keep in mind is there's a lot
Speaker 1: of variety. UM. Here's an example to that. In eleven
Speaker 1: case that was reported by zang Kaga and Hai. She
Speaker 1: of a twenty seven year old woman with long term
Speaker 1: severe hydrocephalius. This is abnormal accumulation of cerebro spinal fluid
Speaker 1: in the brain, and this was due to congenital spina bifida.
Speaker 1: She gradually lost her hearing, but she experienced quote severe
Speaker 1: difficulty in distinguishing verbal, environmental and musical instruments sounds. As
Speaker 1: her hearing left her. She continued to enjoy music, however,
Speaker 1: and could she could because she could sense the rhythms
Speaker 1: by simply turning up the music allowed enough to feel
Speaker 1: the vibrations, and this allowed her to actually summon the
Speaker 1: memories of emotional associations that she had made with the
Speaker 1: music prior to her hearing loss. Okay, that's nice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's kind of beautiful. I mean it gets
Speaker 1: into this idea that we discussed earlier that the brain
Speaker 1: is processing music in a few different ways, and if
Speaker 1: one of those bridges happens to break down, it doesn't mean,
Speaker 1: you know, the information can't get across, and the vibration
Speaker 1: alone are enough to sort of trigger those emotional associations.
Speaker 1: Is interesting. Yeah, And you can also of course get
Speaker 1: into I don't think they got into it as much
Speaker 1: in the paper, but you know, you have you have
Speaker 1: instances where you can you can use hearing a devices
Speaker 1: that that that depend upon like vibrations in the skull
Speaker 1: as opposed to uh, you know straight up you know,
Speaker 1: your drumalizations. Yeah. Now, compare all of this to an
Speaker 1: earlier case. This was present in nine six in the
Speaker 1: Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, that of a and this was
Speaker 1: I think the case itself was first studied in the seventies,
Speaker 1: but it was a forty year old nurse referred to
Speaker 1: as c N who, following a series of surgeries at
Speaker 1: age thirty five to repair cerebral aneurysms in each of
Speaker 1: her temporal lobes, complained that she was no longer able
Speaker 1: to pick out the simplest overlearned tune, you know, things,
Speaker 1: the tunes you should have known just by heart. So
Speaker 1: she no longer recognized tunes from her own record collection
Speaker 1: unless they had audible lyrics, which is which is interesting.
Speaker 1: You can only identify them of the lyrics kicked in.
Speaker 1: So this is making me think of people. I listened
Speaker 1: to a lot of music that has unrecognizable lyrics, and
Speaker 1: I'm okay with that, but I know a lot of
Speaker 1: people who are like, how could you listen to that?
Speaker 1: You don't know what they're saying. I wonder if that's connected.
Speaker 1: I don't know, because maybe it's just an aesthetic preference.
Speaker 1: But I often think of in cases like that where
Speaker 1: you can't quite understand what the the the vocalist is saying.
Speaker 1: It's like Tom York comes to mind. Certainly, some of
Speaker 1: the music of a tool even or or Um Sugares
Speaker 1: another act that comes to mind, where if I'm not
Speaker 1: even understanding exactly what's saying, or I'm only picking up
Speaker 1: on certain words, like the voice itself as a musical instrument. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was just mentioning this the other day to a
Speaker 1: friend of mine about Radiohead, that that's how I think
Speaker 1: of Tom York is less as a lyricist and more
Speaker 1: as like a vocal musical contributor, sort of like how
Speaker 1: Mike Patton does stuff with his voice and some of
Speaker 1: his side projects like um like Phantom Moss, where he's
Speaker 1: not even really saying things, but he's just like using
Speaker 1: his voice as an instrument. Yeah, or like certainly we
Speaker 1: can all listen to music in different languages. We can
Speaker 1: listen to say, Mongolian throat singing and still experience enjoy it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the the the individual in question here, she had
Speaker 1: no problem understanding or communicating verbally, but music simply didn't
Speaker 1: register like it used to. Musical patterns found no purchase
Speaker 1: in her mind. And this made her a near perfect
Speaker 1: case of music agnosia. While and it sounds like there's
Speaker 1: an overlap there with a musa. So I wonder if,
Speaker 1: like um, the neurobiologists that are really looking into this deeply,
Speaker 1: if there's just a terminology overlap here, or if there's
Speaker 1: some symptoms of agnosia and some symptoms of as a
Speaker 1: musea that separate them out as being totally different. I
Speaker 1: think that there is definite overlap here, because I have
Speaker 1: seen and some of the papers we were looking at
Speaker 1: they even you said you even you used them interchangeably
Speaker 1: or said, this is also known as a musea. Though,
Speaker 1: and though there are plenty of cases, especially in the
Speaker 1: stuff we covered earlier, where a musa is not describing
Speaker 1: agnosia and vice versa. So it sounds like that we
Speaker 1: need to do a lot more research on this and
Speaker 1: sort of better identify these categories. Yeah, I believe, I
Speaker 1: believe the experts in these areas are still trying to
Speaker 1: get firm ideas of what's going on, because certainly agnosia
Speaker 1: is a is a rarity compared to the more simpler
Speaker 1: versions of the music, right, Yeah, you can have a
Speaker 1: musea and okay, so maybe this is the difference. Amusia
Speaker 1: is the four percent of the population who are just
Speaker 1: toned deaf, whereas agnosia or the term that I was
Speaker 1: using earlier, me scroll back into the notes to find
Speaker 1: it specific musical and hedonia those sound like the the
Speaker 1: extreme version of it where you just don't process music
Speaker 1: at all, right, And I think that's I think that's
Speaker 1: where we see the overlap. Yeah, and those conditions where
Speaker 1: we're talking, especially when we're talking about brain injuries um,
Speaker 1: physical trauma to the brain, physical changes to the brain,
Speaker 1: the result in these symptoms. Now, in the treatment of
Speaker 1: agnosia um, the analogy I made earlier about the two bridges,
Speaker 1: that's ultimately where we see the main treatment or coping mechanisms,
Speaker 1: and that is that if one bridge is out, there
Speaker 1: are other bridges. There are other ways that we consume
Speaker 1: music that we that we take music in, and so
Speaker 1: we we see in various cases where it basically information
Speaker 1: is just presented in other modalities with that connect to
Speaker 1: the patients. So it's just a different way of connecting
Speaker 1: with the music. It's interesting that you use the term
Speaker 1: bridges because from what I can tell, the causes that
Speaker 1: lead to and these are the physical causes that lead
Speaker 1: to agnosia um usually are around the occipito temporal border
Speaker 1: in the brain of the ventral stream right connecting parts
Speaker 1: of the brain together, the bridges between that that gets damaged,
Speaker 1: and this could be lesions on the parietal or temporal lobes.
Speaker 1: It can be produced from head injury or a stroke,
Speaker 1: or infection or carbon monoxide poisonings, all kinds of things, right,
Speaker 1: UM but these lead to all the kinds of agnolgia,
Speaker 1: and not just the auditory ones we're talking about, also
Speaker 1: visual and tactile that you know, we're focusing on auditory today,
Speaker 1: but that bridge, if that's severed, that's where that sense
Speaker 1: kind of goes Hey whire Alright, So this is what
Speaker 1: I'm wondering, and this is what I'd like to see
Speaker 1: more research of, you know, leading us out for the future.
Speaker 1: What effects do a musia or agnosia have on other
Speaker 1: behaviors like we've we've seen Okay, yes, these people understand
Speaker 1: uh language still right, and they're they're capable of being
Speaker 1: functional in society and working and being intelligent and educated.
Speaker 1: But what kind of personalities develop from a person who
Speaker 1: just doesn't have music in their life. It's a good
Speaker 1: question I'd love to hear from from any listeners on this. Certainly,
Speaker 1: the the data we were looking at in the papers
Speaker 1: we were reading, they seem if anything, it seems like
Speaker 1: most of the time the researchers are surprised at how
Speaker 1: how well the individual does you know? So it's it
Speaker 1: I don't see a lot. It's maybe in the more
Speaker 1: severe cases where it's affecting you know, greater sound agnosia
Speaker 1: in general, or or other types of of a stimulus
Speaker 1: coming into the brain. But for the most part, it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to handicap them significantly. I mean, they're still
Speaker 1: able in many cases to enjoy music. The thing the
Speaker 1: one area that is that is specifically affected. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: also wondering too, and please listeners chime in on this
Speaker 1: one as well. With the rise and popularity of podcasts,
Speaker 1: I wonder that is an outlet for a music acts
Speaker 1: like there, Well, I don't like music, but these podcasts
Speaker 1: are great, So I'll just load up a bunch of
Speaker 1: these and listen to these all the time. I've certainly
Speaker 1: met people like that, the people who don't want to
Speaker 1: drive with music on, and then inevitably that they want
Speaker 1: to listen to something, right, and they'll they'll go for
Speaker 1: a podcast, We'll go for a radio show, or like
Speaker 1: a book. Yeah, yeah, interesting, okay, huh. Well, I like
Speaker 1: to balance back and forth between the two. Sometimes I'm
Speaker 1: in the mood for music, sometimes in the mood for
Speaker 1: a podcast or a book. But that's an interesting, interesting
Speaker 1: difference in experiences. Well, it seems like there's a lot
Speaker 1: of information that we can learn from you the listeners
Speaker 1: out here about this. I mean, we're scratching the surface
Speaker 1: of this pretty much brand new discipline of research. So
Speaker 1: let us know what you think about it. I want
Speaker 1: to hear your your experiences. Maybe you've met people who
Speaker 1: don't like music at all. Maybe you're one of those people,
Speaker 1: and maybe that's why you listen to the show. Um,
Speaker 1: so let us know. Uh. You can contact us in
Speaker 1: all the usual ways. We are on social media all
Speaker 1: over the place, Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, and Instagram. And then
Speaker 1: there's also our landing page, Stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: dot com. That's where you're gonna find all the podcasts,
Speaker 1: all the videos we've made, and all of the articles,
Speaker 1: none of which are musical based. If you have a musea,
Speaker 1: you can consume them and be just fine. That's right.
Speaker 1: And hey, if you want to get in touch with
Speaker 1: us directly, as always, email us at blow the Mind
Speaker 1: at how stuff Works dot com. Well more on this
Speaker 1: and basands of other topics. Is that how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. I pol have a fa back by a
Speaker 1: part