
This Is Your Brain on Music
The Science of a Human Obsession
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Narrated by:
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Edward Herrmann
About this listen
And, taking on prominent thinkers who argue that music is nothing more than an evolutionary accident, Levitin argues that music is fundamental to our species, perhaps even more so than language. This Is Your Brain on Music is an unprecedented, eye-opening investigation into an obsession at the heart of human nature.
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Critic reviews
"Levitin is a deft and patient explainer of the basics for the non-scientist as well as the non-musician....By tracing music's deep ties to memory, Levitin helps quantify some of music's magic without breaking its spell." ( Los Angeles Times Book Review)
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Have you ever wondered how off-key you are while singing in the shower? Or if your Bob Dylan albums really sound better on vinyl? Or why certain songs make you cry? Now, scientist and musician John Powell invites you on an entertaining journey through the world of music. Discover what distinguishes music from plain old noise, how scales help you memorize songs, what the humble recorder teaches you about timbre (assuming your suffering listeners don’t break it first), and more.
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Nearly everyone will get something out of this!
- By Tim on 02-18-11
By: John Powell
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1774
- The Long Year of Revolution
- By: Mary Beth Norton
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 16 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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From one of our most acclaimed and original colonial historians, a groundbreaking book - the first to look at the critical "long year" of 1774 and the revolutionary change that took place from December 1773 to mid-April 1775, from the Boston Tea Party and the First Continental Congress to the Battles of Lexington and Concord.
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The US revolutionary war was baked in by 1775
- By Randall Parker on 04-18-20
By: Mary Beth Norton
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Musicophilia
- Tales of Music and the Brain
- By: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Music can move us to the heights or depths of emotion. It can persuade us to buy something, or remind us of our first date. It can lift us out of depression when nothing else can. It can get us dancing to its beat. But the power of music goes much, much further. Indeed, music occupies more areas of our brain than language does - humans are a musical species.
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The Best Of Sacks...
- By Douglas on 11-23-12
By: Oliver Sacks
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Papyrus
- The Invention of Books in the Ancient World
- By: Irene Vallejo, Charlotte Whittle - translator
- Narrated by: Sophie Roberts
- Length: 17 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Long before books were mass-produced, hand-copied scrolls made from Nile River reeds were the treasures of the ancient world. Emperors and pharaohs, determined to possess them, dispatched emissaries to the edges of the known world to bring them back. Exploring the deep and fascinating history of the written word, from the oral tradition to scrolls to codices, internationally bestselling author Irene Vallejo shows that books have always been a precious and precarious vehicle for civilization.
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Great read
- By Hunter Pechin on 12-15-22
By: Irene Vallejo, and others
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Understanding the Mysteries of Human Behavior
- By: Mark Leary, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: Mark Leary
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Original Recording
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Every day of your life is spent surrounded by mysteries that involve what appear to be rather ordinary human behaviors. What makes you happy? Where did your personality come from? Why do you have trouble controlling certain behaviors? Why do you behave differently as an adult than you did as an adolescent?Since the start of recorded history, and probably even before, people have been interested in answering questions about why we behave the way we do.
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I wanted to like this course
- By Diane Tincher on 08-06-18
By: Mark Leary, and others
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The Missing Thread
- A Women's History of the Ancient World
- By: Daisy Dunn
- Narrated by: Daisy Dunn, Jenny Funnell
- Length: 17 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Around four thousand years ago, the mysterious Minoans sculpted statues of topless women with snakes slithering on their arms. Over one thousand years later, Sappho wrote great poems of longing and desire. For classicist Daisy Dunn, these women—whether they were simply sitting at their looms at home or participating in the highest echelons of power—were up to something much more interesting than other histories would lead us to believe. Together, these women helped to make antiquity as we know it.
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Not quite what I expected
- By havanese lover on 01-13-25
By: Daisy Dunn
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The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
- A Journey Through History's Greatest Treasures
- By: Bettany Hughes
- Narrated by: Bettany Hughes
- Length: 13 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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For millennia, the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World have been known for their aesthetic sublimity, ingenious engineering, and sheer, audacious magnitude: The Great Pyramids of Giza, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Temple of Artemis, the Statue of Zeus, the Mausoleum of Halikarnassos, the Colossus of Rhodes, and the Lighthouse at Alexandria. Echoing down time, each of these persists in our imagination as an emblem of the glory of antiquity, but beneath the familiar images is a surprising, revelatory history.
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Great overview with lots of additional history
- By McFitz on 03-26-25
By: Bettany Hughes
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Every Living Thing
- The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life
- By: Jason Roberts
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 14 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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In the eighteenth century, two men—exact contemporaries and polar opposites—dedicated their lives to the same daunting task: identifying and describing all life on Earth. Carl Linnaeus, a pious Swedish doctor with a huckster’s flair, believed that life belonged in tidy, static categories. Georges-Louis de Buffon, an aristocratic polymath and keeper of France’s royal garden, viewed life as a dynamic swirl of complexities. Each began his task believing it to be difficult but not impossible: How could the planet possibly hold more than a few thousand species—or as many could fit on Noah’s Ark?
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Fascinating history of scientific thought
- By Candy Dan on 06-10-24
By: Jason Roberts
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The Wizard and the Prophet
- Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World
- By: Charles C. Mann
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 18 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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In 40 years, Earth's population will reach 10 billion. Can our world support that? What kind of world will it be? Those answering these questions generally fall into two deeply divided groups - Wizards and Prophets, as Charles Mann calls them in this balanced, authoritative, nonpolemical new book. The Prophets, he explains, follow William Vogt, a founding environmentalist who believed that in using more than our planet has to give, our prosperity will lead us to ruin.
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Fantastic
- By BKATX on 01-26-18
By: Charles C. Mann
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The Big Picture
- On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself
- By: Sean Carroll
- Narrated by: Sean Carroll
- Length: 17 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Already internationally acclaimed for his elegant, lucid writing on the most challenging notions in modern physics, Sean Carroll is emerging as one of the greatest humanist thinkers of his generation as he brings his extraordinary intellect to bear not only on the Higgs boson and extra dimensions but now also on our deepest personal questions. Where are we? Who are we? Are our emotions, our beliefs, and our hopes and dreams ultimately meaningless out there in the void?
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ABSOLUTE MUST READ!
- By serine on 05-12-16
By: Sean Carroll
Well done could be even more science-based
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Superb! Highly recommend this audio book!
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very in depth and covers every aspect of the title
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and I need a heading too
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It is a most interesting unusual book about music at the intersection of emotions, the brain and cognitive behavioral science. It is a musical journey sort of like learning about your girlfriend by starting with her DNA.
There seem to be about 200 people in the Western world focus on this area of music and cognition. It is an eye-opener regarding the area that it focuses on. I.e. Animal and human music and its associated biology and sociology.
What it does not do is touch on spiritual development or physical health maintenance and or improvement. So it would seem from the section on music history the that the 200 focused in this area are unaware of classical African civilization, Kemet (Ancient Egypt) and the earliest music notation in Recorded history and its cosmological utilization.
Levitin, takes a most interesting look at the role of music in mans animal nature and the transition to his human nature. It would be interesting to see levitin in his next work or some other musicologist pick up this discussion at the intersection cognitive behaviorism advances like ACT and musical human transcendence technology focused on man's spiritual nature as in the Ausarian musical orientation.
A good read for folks focused in the areas mentioned above. A shocking read for those who just like to make, listen or dance to music. Lol 🎼👁👍🏿
How the brain listens to music
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I don't know where the author got his information, but it doesn't ring true for what I have seen over the past 20 years. Music therapy is an amazing tool for children with autism precisely because so many of them love it! Maybe it starts with an attraction to the structure, but I don't believe that is where it ends.
I found it a little challenging to follow all the science parts, but overall I really enjoyed this deep dive into music and its role in our lives. I am excited to find out what happens next in this field.
A bit heady, very interesting, point of debate
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super scientific and well written
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I would recommend this book for someone is very highly educated in music, is familiar with music terminology, and has a curiosity about the brain and our anatomy of the ear. It is very "heady" and detailed.
I imagine someone who fits the description above will very much enjoy this book and learn a lot from it.
I, on the other hand, found myself taking far too long to process some information. By the time I was able to process it, I had missed about two minutes of the audio book and had to go back.
Not for the novice musician...
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Love the depth!
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Decent book
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