May 6, 2025 • 17 mins
Hello, Puzzlers! Puzzling with us today: neuroscientist, musician, and best-selling author of This is Your Brain on Music, Dan Levitin!
Join host A.J. Jacobs and his guests as they puzzle–and laugh–their way through new spins on old favorites, like anagrams and palindromes, as well as quirky originals such as “Ask AI” and audio rebuses.
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"The Puzzler with A.J. Jacobs" is distributed by iHeartPodcasts and is a co-production with Neuhaus Ideas.
Our executive producers are Neely Lohmann and Adam Neuhaus of Neuhaus Ideas, and Lindsay Hoffman of iHeart Podcasts.
The show is produced by Jody Avirgan and Brittani Brown of Roulette Productions.
Our Chief Puzzle Officer is Greg Pliska. Our associate producer is Andrea Schoenberg.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello Buzzlers. Let's start with a quick puzzle. Last week,
the Tony nominations were announced. As you may know, the
Tonys are the final letter in the famous acronym egott,
which stands for Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony. If you are
an actor or a musician who wins all four words,
you are said to have gotten and egot very hard
(00:22):
to do. An elite group with Whoopi Goldberg, John legend
Yola Davis Well. In honor of Egot and the Tonys,
here is your little amuse boosh puzzle. What words in
the English language contain the letters egot in that order,
the consecutive letters egot somewhere in the word beginning Miller end,
(00:43):
I'll give you one miss begotten, so as in even
the best entertainers sometimes appear in miss begotten plays mis begotten.
There are a couple of more egot containing words, which
we will discuss after the break. Hello puzzlers, Welcome back
(01:08):
to the Buzzler podcast the Long Lost Rembrandt Hiding in
your Puzzle Yard Sale. Before the break, we asked what
words contain the letters egot as in Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony,
Greg This adjective. One adjective might describe actors. I don't
want to be ungenerous, but sometimes actors are this.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Oh, oh, it could be the start of the word.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Yes, it could be the start.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Got it.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
I was trying to make sure there were letters in
front of the egotistical exactly egotistical.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
And then the other one is also actors sometimes have
to do this for their salaries.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
With the ego trip.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Now they have to with the producer. They might engage
in a little bit of this activity get their salaries higher.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Negotiation.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Negotiation that's trickier because the tea doesn't have a hard
tea sound finding it there.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
And thanks to Andrea Schoenberg for coming up with this
intro puzzle. There are a couple of less common words
egotropic and saxagathia. Sorry if I'm pronouncing that wrong, A
type of evergreen tree. I bring all this up because
today I will be doing some acting, possibly worthy of
(02:32):
a tony we'll see, and I'll be doing it for
our guest, who is an esteemed scientist an author of
several best selling books, including This Is Your Brain on
music and the Organized Mind. Welcome Dan Leviton.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Aj Greg, Welcome back to light. Welcome back. Have we
aj we haven't talked about the Leviton effect. Oh, I
would like to hear, because I was. I actually didn't
realize that you had an effect named for you.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Yeah, few of us do tell us what is the
leviton effect?
Speaker 4 (03:05):
Well, I don't call it that that that's fair. I
did not blame it that. It was just it was
an interesting finding that stood on its head what we
thought we knew about the nature of memory. So the
puzzle of memory is how can you navigate through a
(03:26):
world in which you remember every detail of everything?
Speaker 1 (03:29):
You know?
Speaker 4 (03:30):
If you see your friend, the likelihood is, on multiple
occasions they're going to look a little different. Their hair
is going to look a little different. You're viewing them
from a different distance or a different angle. Yet somehow
memory has to make coherent all those different views of
a person. There was a famous patient studied by the
(03:52):
Russian neuroscientists Luria, who had a weird kind of hyper
memory where he could not consolidate different views of a
single person into a representation of that person, so he
could never recognize anybody. And he said, everybody has so
many faces. Huh, how do I know they're the same
(04:13):
person who's a neurological disorder. But for the rest of us,
we kind of smear across these details because it's adaptive
and useful, and with music, it would really be adaptive
to be able to recognize a song in any key,
which we do. You sing happy birthday, happy birthday, or
happy birthday or happy birthday, doesn't matter what key, same song,
(04:37):
even without the words did.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Same song.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
So what we found in my laboratory years ago was
that if you ask people to sing their favorite song,
we expected they would just sing it in all different
kinds of keys and at all different tempos, because it
doesn't really matter.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
But if it was a song that had been a.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
Top forty song, meaning it had been played in the
same version over and over and over again, when they
sang the song, they tended to sing it at exactly
the right pitch, in the right key, and at exactly
the right tempo spontaneously. These were non singers, non musicians,
so their brain somehow encoded that level of detail, and
(05:20):
that became known as the Leviton effect.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Interesting, and what is the greater meaning of the Leviton effect?
What is that? What does that say about us as humans?
Speaker 4 (05:29):
Well, it tells us that the brain is handling memory
in two disparate ways. It retains vivid sensory details of experience,
but it also generalizes across them.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
It's doing both.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
Nobody thought that was the case.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Fascinating. All right, well we've got a puzzle. I think
it will involve some memory, it will involve some generalization,
so and it will involve your brain, so all those
will be necessary. It's a type of puzzle that we
call the earbus trademark pending. And the earbus is like
(06:08):
an audio rebus. And what happens is I'm going to
say a word in a certain way, a certain tone
of voice or a certain accent, and that is a
clue to a two word phrase. So what is a ribus.
A rivus is a visual riebus is when you print
a word in a certain way as a clue. So
(06:30):
if you see the word grass but in green typeface,
that's a clue to green grass. So got it. That's
the kind of puzzle. This is the audio version. So
to give you an example, if I said the word tied,
that's a clue to rising time, exactly, you got it?
Or something like chamber chamber, chamber, chamber echo chambers always fast.
(06:55):
I'm a little nervous. Okay, all right, Well here are
some others in in native split infinitive. Look at that exactly, which,
as we know, is not really a grammatical problem. It's
a made up problem. Everyone to go ahead and use it.
How about school musical?
Speaker 3 (07:20):
I just want to hear you do that again, even
if Dan knows the answer right away, I just want
to hear you do it again.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
School musical?
Speaker 4 (07:28):
Is this a.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Movie?
Speaker 1 (07:32):
It is a movie, but it's yeah, it's also just
a phrase. It is what my son starred in in
his sophomore, junior, and senior.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Oh, but it's a general general term for this thing
that our kids, right, and it's not it's not school musical.
It's school musical.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
I'm saying it at a certain high school music that's yes,
very good musical. And let me just take this opportunity.
One of my favorite parts of your book was about
how the phrase low pitch and high pitch is totally arbitrary.
Why is it? Why is it high? And in other
cultures like ancient Greece, that would have been low. What
(08:17):
I said school musical is actually low, So.
Speaker 5 (08:22):
You would have had to go school musical, and then
the Greek would go high school musical.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Exactly, which is so interesting.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Right, so all the ancient Greeks listening to the podcast,
we will release a slightly different version.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Of That's right. It's very confusing. I find that fascinating.
All right, how about this one break. I'm saying, imagine
I've had about eight vodkatonics and I'm like, slurred speech.
(08:56):
That's it. That's it, you got it, slurred speech. I
did it mostly because I wanted to do another one
of that same word, and that is.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
E.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
So each of those are a h They're not the
whole thing they are. They're not an entire thing. They
are fragmented speech, broken speech close. It's more of a
grammatical phrase. When you have a verb or a noun,
(09:41):
is it called a.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
A phoneme speech? No, that's not where verbal noun.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Well, it's parts of spears of speech. That's it. That's clever.
That is clever. Well, thank you, Wow, that is very clever.
I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
The parts of speech.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
Oh yeah, and and Greg, he did divide them into
the phone emes, not the alphabetical morphological units, but the
actual phonemes the auditory.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
That was very clever, very clever. AJ do you have
a PhD?
Speaker 1 (10:14):
I do love my linguistics. All right, here we go.
We got gratification, graph delayed gratification. That's nicely done, nicely done.
(10:34):
All right, just a couple more. Well, now, this one
will require some of my u some of my acting skills.
So but I'm gonna do it.
Speaker 4 (10:43):
Are you a method actor?
Speaker 1 (10:45):
I'm gonna try. I'm gonna try. Here we go.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
What is your character's motivation?
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Well, you'll say you'll see in a moment. Whoa, whoa.
What's that word you're saying?
Speaker 4 (11:01):
Trying to say?
Speaker 1 (11:03):
That's part of the puzzle. W O l S is
the word I'm saying, and I'm saying it at a
in a very emotional way. Wolf. Oh, you are the boy.
Speaker 4 (11:16):
You are the boy who cried wolf.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
That's right, I am crying wolf exactly. All right, one
last one, one last one. You're doing good.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Well.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
This one, actually I'm gonna do as a bunch of
different This is the same same sort of phrase, but
I'll just throw out a bunch eve n bread ed
back ad the law got it? Got it?
Speaker 4 (11:47):
What do you got breaking the law?
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Breaking?
Speaker 4 (11:49):
Bad breaking?
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Even I forgot what the other one was, but breaking
got it, nailed it, well, well done, So.
Speaker 5 (12:02):
Ladies and gentlemen at home, the guest today was not
prepped on any of the puzzles today. This is all
spontaneous and off the top of the collective heads and
imaginations of the team to which you are listening right now.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Now, is that a quiz show reference? Is that like
an old quiz show controversy?
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Am I riff on it?
Speaker 3 (12:22):
But yeah, in fact, we might just use that and
put in front of each episode.
Speaker 5 (12:27):
Today's guests were not prepared in any way.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Here to certify that our guests have not been prepared
and so.
Speaker 5 (12:34):
You don't forget order before midnight tonight.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
My uncle was on a quiz show and was fed
the answers because he was like, he was on as
a kid, and they wanted to make the kid look smart.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
So, oh, are you smarter than a third grader?
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Is that the show? Well? This was like a long
This wasn't like the fifties. Oh wow, this was when
things were really corrupt.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
Well well wait wait, wait WAITI things are not corrupt now.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Well, good point, they're corrupted in different ways. Yeah, we
certainly have a lot of corruption going on as we speak.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Oh, I've got a puzzle for you.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Okay, go ahead, I want to hear it.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Corruption corruption, corruption.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Oh and by the way, folks, the doctor is waving
his hands moving around like like a maniac. So wait,
that would be greg Do you have it?
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Is it rampant corruption? Corruption? He was rampant in his office.
It was shocking.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
But we well done, well done. That was a very
visual audio rebus. H Oh. My question is, since we
were talking about musicals, do we process uh singing differently
than instrumental music.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
When you listen to music, you don't realize this is
what's going on.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
But your brain has special.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
Purpose assessing circuits that effectively deal with different aspects of
the music. So part of your brain is figuring out
the pitch sequence and it binds those into a representation
of melody. Another part is looking at the duration of
notes and it binds them into rhythm and meter and tempo.
(14:19):
And another part, if there's lyrics, is analyzing those. So
you get more activity because you're adding an area when
they are lyrics. But it's even not just that you're
adding an area, but the interaction between lyrics and harmony
lyrics and tambore melody rhythm. That creates a whole lot
(14:42):
more complexity. So when you listen to a great singer,
just say Frank Sinata, for instance, even if you don't
speak the language, he's conveying the emotion with what he
does with his voice to separate the lyric. And you know,
all these processes are going on with lyric music.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
But we think even instrumental music.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
If you've got a great violinist playing, they may sound
like a mother weeping or you know, a child crying,
and they replicate and mimic natural sounds of humans. And
so it activates all those circuits in the brain.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Too interesting.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Oh, that's interesting. So you can see that the same
parts of the brain, they're being activated. That's cool.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
That is cool. And I will say just to you
brought up Frank Sinatra. I liked what you said in
your book that he got too cocky. He got too
cocky at the end. You don't like his music after
what nineteen eighty I wrote that he.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
Sang with all the satisfaction of a man who just
had somebody killed.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
All right, listen, we're not implying he did well, but
be true may or may not be true, may be true,
maybe true, we don't know. Well, excellent, we love it.
And oh I do I have an extra credit Wheat chaff.
Wheat got it, chaff, They got it all right, don't
(16:15):
say it, don't say it, Okay, we won't say extra
credit for the folks at home. Thank you, Daniel, Thank
you Greg and listeners. And and if you like the show,
you can check out our Instagram theme which is at
Hello Puzzlers, where we post original puzzles, visual puzzles, all
sorts of fun stuff. And we'll meet here tomorrow, of
(16:36):
course for more puzzling puzzles that will puzzle you puzzlingly.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Hey Puzzlers, it's Greg Pliska, your chief puzzle officer, here
with the extra credit answer. From our previous episode, we
had doctor Dan Leviton with us to talk about Your
Brain on Music, his great book, and our puzzle was
Your Brain on Music, where we took brain and put
it in place of other body parts in song titles.
(17:06):
I gave you two extra credits. They were these the
weekend sings. And I know she'll be the death of me.
My head is going numb. She'll always get the best
of me. The worst is yet to come. And that,
of course is I can't feel my brain. Actually it's
I can't feel my face when I'm with you, but
we changed it. And the other one was a Tony
(17:27):
Braxton song and R and B ballad about someone whose
head was metaphorically shattered by some tough math problems and
she wants it put back together, and that, of course
is unbreak my brain instead of unbreak my heart, the
great Tony Braxton tune. That's a great song. Thanks for
playing puzzles with us, and we'll see you here next time.
Hello Buzzlers. Let's start with a quick puzzle. Last week,
the Tony nominations were announced. As you may know, the
Tonys are the final letter in the famous acronym egott,
which stands for Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony. If you are
an actor or a musician who wins all four words,
you are said to have gotten and egot very hard
(00:22):
to do. An elite group with Whoopi Goldberg, John legend
Yola Davis Well. In honor of Egot and the Tonys,
here is your little amuse boosh puzzle. What words in
the English language contain the letters egot in that order,
the consecutive letters egot somewhere in the word beginning Miller end,
(00:43):
I'll give you one miss begotten, so as in even
the best entertainers sometimes appear in miss begotten plays mis begotten.
There are a couple of more egot containing words, which
we will discuss after the break. Hello puzzlers, Welcome back
(01:08):
to the Buzzler podcast the Long Lost Rembrandt Hiding in
your Puzzle Yard Sale. Before the break, we asked what
words contain the letters egot as in Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony,
Greg This adjective. One adjective might describe actors. I don't
want to be ungenerous, but sometimes actors are this.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Oh, oh, it could be the start of the word.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Yes, it could be the start.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Got it.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
I was trying to make sure there were letters in
front of the egotistical exactly egotistical.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
And then the other one is also actors sometimes have
to do this for their salaries.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
With the ego trip.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Now they have to with the producer. They might engage
in a little bit of this activity get their salaries higher.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Negotiation.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Negotiation that's trickier because the tea doesn't have a hard
tea sound finding it there.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
And thanks to Andrea Schoenberg for coming up with this
intro puzzle. There are a couple of less common words
egotropic and saxagathia. Sorry if I'm pronouncing that wrong, A
type of evergreen tree. I bring all this up because
today I will be doing some acting, possibly worthy of
(02:32):
a tony we'll see, and I'll be doing it for
our guest, who is an esteemed scientist an author of
several best selling books, including This Is Your Brain on
music and the Organized Mind. Welcome Dan Leviton.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Aj Greg, Welcome back to light. Welcome back. Have we
aj we haven't talked about the Leviton effect. Oh, I
would like to hear, because I was. I actually didn't
realize that you had an effect named for you.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Yeah, few of us do tell us what is the
leviton effect?
Speaker 4 (03:05):
Well, I don't call it that that that's fair. I
did not blame it that. It was just it was
an interesting finding that stood on its head what we
thought we knew about the nature of memory. So the
puzzle of memory is how can you navigate through a
(03:26):
world in which you remember every detail of everything?
Speaker 1 (03:29):
You know?
Speaker 4 (03:30):
If you see your friend, the likelihood is, on multiple
occasions they're going to look a little different. Their hair
is going to look a little different. You're viewing them
from a different distance or a different angle. Yet somehow
memory has to make coherent all those different views of
a person. There was a famous patient studied by the
(03:52):
Russian neuroscientists Luria, who had a weird kind of hyper
memory where he could not consolidate different views of a
single person into a representation of that person, so he
could never recognize anybody. And he said, everybody has so
many faces. Huh, how do I know they're the same
(04:13):
person who's a neurological disorder. But for the rest of us,
we kind of smear across these details because it's adaptive
and useful, and with music, it would really be adaptive
to be able to recognize a song in any key,
which we do. You sing happy birthday, happy birthday, or
happy birthday or happy birthday, doesn't matter what key, same song,
(04:37):
even without the words did.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Same song.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
So what we found in my laboratory years ago was
that if you ask people to sing their favorite song,
we expected they would just sing it in all different
kinds of keys and at all different tempos, because it
doesn't really matter.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
But if it was a song that had been a.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
Top forty song, meaning it had been played in the
same version over and over and over again, when they
sang the song, they tended to sing it at exactly
the right pitch, in the right key, and at exactly
the right tempo spontaneously. These were non singers, non musicians,
so their brain somehow encoded that level of detail, and
(05:20):
that became known as the Leviton effect.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Interesting, and what is the greater meaning of the Leviton effect?
What is that? What does that say about us as humans?
Speaker 4 (05:29):
Well, it tells us that the brain is handling memory
in two disparate ways. It retains vivid sensory details of experience,
but it also generalizes across them.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
It's doing both.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
Nobody thought that was the case.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Fascinating. All right, well we've got a puzzle. I think
it will involve some memory, it will involve some generalization,
so and it will involve your brain, so all those
will be necessary. It's a type of puzzle that we
call the earbus trademark pending. And the earbus is like
(06:08):
an audio rebus. And what happens is I'm going to
say a word in a certain way, a certain tone
of voice or a certain accent, and that is a
clue to a two word phrase. So what is a ribus.
A rivus is a visual riebus is when you print
a word in a certain way as a clue. So
(06:30):
if you see the word grass but in green typeface,
that's a clue to green grass. So got it. That's
the kind of puzzle. This is the audio version. So
to give you an example, if I said the word tied,
that's a clue to rising time, exactly, you got it?
Or something like chamber chamber, chamber, chamber echo chambers always fast.
(06:55):
I'm a little nervous. Okay, all right, Well here are
some others in in native split infinitive. Look at that exactly, which,
as we know, is not really a grammatical problem. It's
a made up problem. Everyone to go ahead and use it.
How about school musical?
Speaker 3 (07:20):
I just want to hear you do that again, even
if Dan knows the answer right away, I just want
to hear you do it again.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
School musical?
Speaker 4 (07:28):
Is this a.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Movie?
Speaker 1 (07:32):
It is a movie, but it's yeah, it's also just
a phrase. It is what my son starred in in
his sophomore, junior, and senior.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Oh, but it's a general general term for this thing
that our kids, right, and it's not it's not school musical.
It's school musical.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
I'm saying it at a certain high school music that's yes,
very good musical. And let me just take this opportunity.
One of my favorite parts of your book was about
how the phrase low pitch and high pitch is totally arbitrary.
Why is it? Why is it high? And in other
cultures like ancient Greece, that would have been low. What
(08:17):
I said school musical is actually low, So.
Speaker 5 (08:22):
You would have had to go school musical, and then
the Greek would go high school musical.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Exactly, which is so interesting.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Right, so all the ancient Greeks listening to the podcast,
we will release a slightly different version.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Of That's right. It's very confusing. I find that fascinating.
All right, how about this one break. I'm saying, imagine
I've had about eight vodkatonics and I'm like, slurred speech.
(08:56):
That's it. That's it, you got it, slurred speech. I
did it mostly because I wanted to do another one
of that same word, and that is.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
E.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
So each of those are a h They're not the
whole thing they are. They're not an entire thing. They
are fragmented speech, broken speech close. It's more of a
grammatical phrase. When you have a verb or a noun,
(09:41):
is it called a.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
A phoneme speech? No, that's not where verbal noun.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Well, it's parts of spears of speech. That's it. That's clever.
That is clever. Well, thank you, Wow, that is very clever.
I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
The parts of speech.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
Oh yeah, and and Greg, he did divide them into
the phone emes, not the alphabetical morphological units, but the
actual phonemes the auditory.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
That was very clever, very clever. AJ do you have
a PhD?
Speaker 1 (10:14):
I do love my linguistics. All right, here we go.
We got gratification, graph delayed gratification. That's nicely done, nicely done.
(10:34):
All right, just a couple more. Well, now, this one
will require some of my u some of my acting skills.
So but I'm gonna do it.
Speaker 4 (10:43):
Are you a method actor?
Speaker 1 (10:45):
I'm gonna try. I'm gonna try. Here we go.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
What is your character's motivation?
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Well, you'll say you'll see in a moment. Whoa, whoa.
What's that word you're saying?
Speaker 4 (11:01):
Trying to say?
Speaker 1 (11:03):
That's part of the puzzle. W O l S is
the word I'm saying, and I'm saying it at a
in a very emotional way. Wolf. Oh, you are the boy.
Speaker 4 (11:16):
You are the boy who cried wolf.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
That's right, I am crying wolf exactly. All right, one
last one, one last one. You're doing good.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Well.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
This one, actually I'm gonna do as a bunch of
different This is the same same sort of phrase, but
I'll just throw out a bunch eve n bread ed
back ad the law got it? Got it?
Speaker 4 (11:47):
What do you got breaking the law?
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Breaking?
Speaker 4 (11:49):
Bad breaking?
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Even I forgot what the other one was, but breaking
got it, nailed it, well, well done, So.
Speaker 5 (12:02):
Ladies and gentlemen at home, the guest today was not
prepped on any of the puzzles today. This is all
spontaneous and off the top of the collective heads and
imaginations of the team to which you are listening right now.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Now, is that a quiz show reference? Is that like
an old quiz show controversy?
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Am I riff on it?
Speaker 3 (12:22):
But yeah, in fact, we might just use that and
put in front of each episode.
Speaker 5 (12:27):
Today's guests were not prepared in any way.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Here to certify that our guests have not been prepared
and so.
Speaker 5 (12:34):
You don't forget order before midnight tonight.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
My uncle was on a quiz show and was fed
the answers because he was like, he was on as
a kid, and they wanted to make the kid look smart.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
So, oh, are you smarter than a third grader?
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Is that the show? Well? This was like a long
This wasn't like the fifties. Oh wow, this was when
things were really corrupt.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
Well well wait wait, wait WAITI things are not corrupt now.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Well, good point, they're corrupted in different ways. Yeah, we
certainly have a lot of corruption going on as we speak.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Oh, I've got a puzzle for you.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Okay, go ahead, I want to hear it.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Corruption corruption, corruption.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Oh and by the way, folks, the doctor is waving
his hands moving around like like a maniac. So wait,
that would be greg Do you have it?
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Is it rampant corruption? Corruption? He was rampant in his office.
It was shocking.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
But we well done, well done. That was a very
visual audio rebus. H Oh. My question is, since we
were talking about musicals, do we process uh singing differently
than instrumental music.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
When you listen to music, you don't realize this is
what's going on.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
But your brain has special.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
Purpose assessing circuits that effectively deal with different aspects of
the music. So part of your brain is figuring out
the pitch sequence and it binds those into a representation
of melody. Another part is looking at the duration of
notes and it binds them into rhythm and meter and tempo.
(14:19):
And another part, if there's lyrics, is analyzing those. So
you get more activity because you're adding an area when
they are lyrics. But it's even not just that you're
adding an area, but the interaction between lyrics and harmony
lyrics and tambore melody rhythm. That creates a whole lot
(14:42):
more complexity. So when you listen to a great singer,
just say Frank Sinata, for instance, even if you don't
speak the language, he's conveying the emotion with what he
does with his voice to separate the lyric. And you know,
all these processes are going on with lyric music.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
But we think even instrumental music.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
If you've got a great violinist playing, they may sound
like a mother weeping or you know, a child crying,
and they replicate and mimic natural sounds of humans. And
so it activates all those circuits in the brain.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Too interesting.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Oh, that's interesting. So you can see that the same
parts of the brain, they're being activated. That's cool.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
That is cool. And I will say just to you
brought up Frank Sinatra. I liked what you said in
your book that he got too cocky. He got too
cocky at the end. You don't like his music after
what nineteen eighty I wrote that he.
Speaker 4 (15:46):
Sang with all the satisfaction of a man who just
had somebody killed.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
All right, listen, we're not implying he did well, but
be true may or may not be true, may be true,
maybe true, we don't know. Well, excellent, we love it.
And oh I do I have an extra credit Wheat chaff.
Wheat got it, chaff, They got it all right, don't
(16:15):
say it, don't say it, Okay, we won't say extra
credit for the folks at home. Thank you, Daniel, Thank
you Greg and listeners. And and if you like the show,
you can check out our Instagram theme which is at
Hello Puzzlers, where we post original puzzles, visual puzzles, all
sorts of fun stuff. And we'll meet here tomorrow, of
(16:36):
course for more puzzling puzzles that will puzzle you puzzlingly.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Hey Puzzlers, it's Greg Pliska, your chief puzzle officer, here
with the extra credit answer. From our previous episode, we
had doctor Dan Leviton with us to talk about Your
Brain on Music, his great book, and our puzzle was
Your Brain on Music, where we took brain and put
it in place of other body parts in song titles.
(17:06):
I gave you two extra credits. They were these the
weekend sings. And I know she'll be the death of me.
My head is going numb. She'll always get the best
of me. The worst is yet to come. And that,
of course is I can't feel my brain. Actually it's
I can't feel my face when I'm with you, but
we changed it. And the other one was a Tony
(17:27):
Braxton song and R and B ballad about someone whose
head was metaphorically shattered by some tough math problems and
she wants it put back together, and that, of course
is unbreak my brain instead of unbreak my heart, the
great Tony Braxton tune. That's a great song. Thanks for
playing puzzles with us, and we'll see you here next time.
Hosts And Creators
Greg Pliska
A.J. Jacobs
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