What Shapes Our Musical Taste?

We’re delving into the CrowdScience archive to give you another chance to hear an award-winning show from 2025. CrowdScience listener Dorit has a problem. She wants the tiles in her new bathroom to be arranged randomly but, no matter what she does, it still looks like they form s ...  Show more

Space missions are searching for evidence of extra-terrestrial life. CrowdScience listener George in Kenya wants to know what could be up there, and if there’s a risk it could harm humanity. With rovers currently analysing samples on Mars, missions searching for the building bloc ...  Show more

It can be hard enough to answer the question, "what kind of music do you like?" But how about "why do you like it?" That's one of the many questions about the human brain and sound that neuroscientist Nina Kraus set out to answer in her book Of Sound Mind. In this interview with ...  Show more

What albums and songs are getting a lot of play on your Spotify or iTunes app currently? My guest would say that the music you put in heavy rotation comes down to your unique "listener profile."Her name is Susan Rogers, and she's a music producer-turned-neuroscientist as well as ...  Show more

A well-crafted piece of music can bring us to incredible highs and crushing lows, sometimes within the same song. Why does music affect humans this way? Join Chuck, Josh and special guest cellist Ben Sollee as they get to the bottom of music and emotion.

We all know music can influence our moods, but can it actually boost our memory? How do musical memories emerge at the borders of identity, experience and culture? In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe explore these questions and discuss the curious ways we r ...  Show more