How Music Plays in Our Brains, with Professor Elizabeth Margulis

The Sydcast

Episode Summary

The Music Cognition Lab at Princeton University is where researchers study why we love music, how we process while listening, why we like what we like, and countless other creative questions that combine music, cognitive science, and neuroscience. Our guest on this episode of The Sydcast is the scholar and creative force behind the Lab, Professor (and pianist) Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis.

Sydney Finkelstein

Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the Global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life.

Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis

Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis, author of On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind and The Psychology of Music: A Very Short Introduction, directs the Music Cognition Lab at Princeton University. Her research uses theoretical, behavioral, and neuroimaging methodologies to investigate the dynamic, moment-to-moment experience of listeners without special musical training. She was also trained as a pianist.

Insights from this episode:

• How Elizabeth got into music cognition
• How music is connected to our cognitive state
• How long it took Elizabeth to write a book
• Insights into repetition in musical listening
• How repetition affects our musical tastes
• How people use music for pleasure
• Similarities between ritual and the repetitive aspect of music
• Effect of adolescence on people’s musical preferences

Quotes from the show:

• “I genuinely feel very comfortable in situations where I have less expertise or people have more experience in a certain area than me. I find that very energizing and exciting” –Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis [8:00]
• “There are all kinds of music, and there are types of music that expressly try to avoid this kind of repetition, as they are trying to explore another aspect” –Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis [18:50]
• “The expectations you have while you listen are important because you need to be familiar enough to generate these expectations” –Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis [23:16]
• “People use music for all these kinds of purposes including mood regulation, sports preparation. You can find untold, enumerable playlists on Spotify whose title is about some function” –Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis [25:46]
• “I think there is something about the way ritual often has this repetitive aspect is connected to music’s repetitive qualities as well” –Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis [27:22]
• “Actually, one of the best ways to teach language is through music” –Syd Finkelstein [28:29]
• “We know that adolescence is the period in life that’s most relevant to setting a person’s musical preferences: so people are seeking out new stuff and discovering it and choosing it actively as adolescents” –Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis [36:50]
• “That’s part of why you get people’s music preferences in their profiles on dating apps and what not: it’s because people really do feel like there’s something about their identity that resides in these kinds of aesthetics and preferences ” –Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis [40:25]

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Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis

Website: Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis

Twitter: Elizabeth Margulis

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This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.