Your Brain on Music, with Renee Fleming and Francis Collins

Published May 30, 2024, 7:00 AM

You know Renée Fleming as one of the most famous and beloved sopranos in history. You may not know that Renée struggled mightily with stage fright for most of her career. Her experiences sparked a passionate interest in brain science, and she found a kindred spirit in Dr Francis Collins, former NIH director and fellow musician. This unlikely duo is working together to bring attention and much needed funding to the healing power of sound for ailments ranging from Alzheimer’s to chronic pain. A world with less pharmaceutical intervention and more singing, dancing, and community? We’re in.

Life can be a lot, and it helps to have a therapist by your side. Register at talkspace dot com to connect with a licensed therapist within days for virtual support. Talkspace is a network with major insurers no insurance. Now get eighty five dollars off of your first month with promo code Katie when you go to talkspace dot com slash Katiecuric. Hi everyone, I'm Katiekuric and this is next question. That was the incomparable Renee Fleming. You know, once when I was walking near Lincoln Center a few years ago, some tourists stopped and said, I just love you, Renee, and I was like what. Then I realized she thought I was Renee Fleming, which was such a compliment, even though I can't really sing and certainly not like Renee Flemy. It may surprise you all to learn that Renee has long suffered from anxiety and even physical pain as a result of crippling stage fright. That got her wondering why is this happening? She became obsessed by the mind body connection and has spent years exploring the topic. Along the way, she met doctor Francis Collins, who shared her curiosity and love of music. The former director of the National Institutes of Health, is an avid guitarist and bluegrass junkie. Their relationship was a match made in research heaven. In fact, Francis wrote the forward of Renee's new book called Music and Mind, Harnessing the Arts for Health and Wellness. I recently had an opportunity to speak with both of them. So here's our conversation about your brain on music.

Hi, Renee, how are you?

I am great. You know, I'm such a fan and I feel like we've become friends in recent years, which has been a real highlight for me. And before I talk about your incredible book and your extraordinary work, by the way, I want listeners to know a little more about your background. We recently had a cup of coffee and I was embarrassed to say I didn't know as much about your childhood as I should have. And your parents, Renee, were both music teachers. Is that where you got your gift?

Well, I would say that's where I had no choice, because you know, we just lived and breathed music starting from a very early age. In fact, you know, I was told that I sang before I spoke. I was a very late speaker, and that's probably true, you know, and we you know, we were kind of taking road trips and singing the road signs in harmony, and I thought everyone did that. I thought that was just normal, and then I just kept up with it. And I think that, you know, some of the early learning is really helpful because music is a language, and so it becomes one of the languages that you speak as a child.

Did your parents have extraordinary voices like you? And what about your siblings? And if not, were they pissed that you did and they didn't?

Now everybody, you know, there's so many There were so many great voices out there. It's just but finding your way to a high level career and singing is another whole thing. You know. They say the voice is ten percent. And my parents were wonderful teachers and musicians and fat my father's still alive. Actually, what did.

Your dad play and what did your mom play?

Well?

They were both singers, Oh, both singers. Yeah, they were both singers, and they both played keyboard to some extent. My sister teaches very high level goji for non classical singers at Temple University, so she's producing the next generation at Broadway stars, and my brother sings at a rock band, but he teaches technology in middle school in Newer Shelles, so we're all. Everybody's an educator. My other little brother, actually my little brother sings in the Houston Grand Opera Chorus, so he is a professional singer.

Wow. So you all obviously were bitten by the bug. And if you aren't directly involved with music your music adjacent.

Yes, definitely.

Well, I think it might surprise a lot of people Renee that you don't consider yourself a natural performer. And you experienced some intense stage fright when you were a teenager and a little bit later in your life when I think you were just dealing with a lot of pressure and stress, So that I understand led you to be interested in the mind body connection. Can you talk about how that happened and why?

Absolutely?

So.

Yeah, the pressure for performance in our field is really high. We are we are literally reviewed in the newspaper the day after we perform almost every time, and certainly for most of my career that was, and the and the standards and the by which we are judged were very high. So it's not easy to be us. And and add to that that it's a tightrope that the fact that we're singing virtuosic music alone on stage without a microphone, so there's no nobody's adding to the sound or making it more beautiful or adding auto tune, very naked on stage, and so that that produced not only stage right, but I had sematic pain, which is a kind of a psychosomatic pain, which nearly derailed my career a couple of times.

When did those moments surface, Because it's interesting if you think about what was going on in your life right Renee, first as a teenager and later I know, when you had your two children and your marriage was falling.

Apart absolutely, And you know, first of all, the stage right started in middle school, started at a very young age because I was incredibly shy. I was a bookworm, so I did not have an ounce of natural performer in me and I had to learn it had I learned it literally by by observing my friends who for whom it was easy. And you know, Juilliard at Eastman and when I studied abroad, so I picked those skills up kind of. But yeah, when you have life stressors, then everything falls apart, and in my case, I think it was the stage right, served as a kind of a hedge against the pressure but also against not making life changes that I needed to make. And you know, I feel lucky that I got the right support and I was able to get through it without stopping, because we know very famous people who have stopped performing and sometimes they don't go back for twenty years.

You say there were a lot of factors RENEE involved in your I guess maybe panic attack or discomfort on stage, and you say one was a deep seated discomfort with success. Now I've never heard of that, but when I thought about it, you're right, you right. We can all point to celebrities or politicians who have sabotaged their careers with drug and alcohol abuse or other poor choices. Part of the problem is that you're being taken far from your roots and comfort zone, maybe to a level of success that's far beyond your friends and family, and that's uncomfortable.

Right, Exactly. It's really kind of intuitive when one thinks about it, that, yeah, what causes people to burn up their lives when they're really achieving greatness, And in many cases it is definitely that you've come too far from your comfort zone as a human being. From your comfort zone. Is you know how you grew up et cetera, or you weren't prepared to succeed and to excel somehow you know you were made to believe on some it's always a subconscious level. It's never conscious, right that you know something bad would happen if you did really well?

How did you fix it? How did you deal with it those times where you have this crippling anxiety and fear.

Well, there are two ways. One is to understand the root so that that take that's therapy, and the other are behavioral therapy, so you know, rekind of tuning or thinking about performing. I had to stop seeing the audience as judgmental, you know, I imagine everyone had a scorecard and they were not well intentioned, right, And so once I turned it around and it was a book by barely sales on public speaking, I was able to see myself as a conduit for something beautiful that I was sharing giving to the audience. So I reversed the direction of the experience of performing, and it it helped immensely.

I think all of us, at one time or another have felt dramatically moved by a piece of music or art. It's so interesting when something hits you, it's almost all of your senses are swept away. I've had that experience. I'm sure probably hearing you sing Renee, but you know, many many times. So talk about this feeling for people listening and are trying to understand the real neurological connection that's going on between music and your entire being.

Well, it's very much embedded in our DNA, and it's been with us since before we spoke, I mean really the beginning of humans, and it's incredibly powerful. From my perspective on stage, it's a flow state. I'm in the zone when I'm performing. It induces feelings of awe and awe has now by sciences been proven to be something incredibly beneficial. But what's wonderful about it in terms of the fact that it's so much a part of our lives. Any aesthetic experience, whether it's being in nature or seeing visual art, or just looking at design and architecture, has a huge effect on our biology. Really down to the cellular level. It's the elephant in the room. As my friends who's a maximmon says, it is something that we take for granted and we don't really understand how powerful it is. And now the fact that science is looking at it, is researching it, is looking at the brain when we're having these experiences is teaching us a lot.

Let's talk about your book because it really stems from a conversation with Francis Collins, who is head of the NIH in twenty fifteen. He's also an amateur musician. So tell us about that meeting and how it led to your commitment to this work, because Renee, I mean, you've really gone there. You have dug deep into this topic. Tell us about that initial meeting.

So we were at this really interesting dinner party because it was the day after the marriage equality decision by the Supreme Court.

Francis also remembers this dinner.

It was very remarkable and the kind of thing that you can't imagine could have really happened, but it did. So, yeah, it was nine years ago. It was like this summer of twenty fifteen. There was a dinner party for thirty or forty people at an exclusive and outside of Washington, d C. And my wife and I were invited, and amongst the nvites were three Supreme Court.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg Antonin Scalia and Kennedy were all there. Wow, it was tense. It was tense, and I was seated between RBG and Scalia because they're both.

Oh god, although they're very good friends, are they were very good friends?

Yes, but this was tough. You know, his rebuttal was really scathing, et cetera.

And they had just the day before their decision about a gay marriage. And let's just say, some of the opinions there were pretty strongly worked it. Stealia and Gettensburg were on different sides of this, and Kennedy was sort of the tiebreaker. So everything was a little tense, ah during the dinner, and then we went outside after It's a lovely summer evening and there was a bluegrass band that had been hired to come and play a few tunes to hopefully lighten the occasion. And the organizers knew that I'm a bit of a bluegrass fan and told we will bring your guitar and maybe you could join in, So of course I did. How fun, Yeah, it might surprise people that I would actually know the tunes like Soldiers Joy and Red Wing, but it was easy to jump in. But still it was not quite clicking. You could sort of feel the group had not really come together at that point. And then this incredibly stunning woman I'd never met before I came up to the band and said, you know, maybe we ought to get everybody to sing. Maybe that would help sort of bring us all together. And I gradually realized, oh my god, this is Renee.

Let me and you all became fast friends that night, didn't she did.

I was initially terrified that she would want to sing opera, which was not in my repertory, but that much Renee knows music from every possible genre and was immediately comfortable with jumping in with folk songs like the Water Is Wide and Shenandoah and within you know, a song or two. Pretty much everybody stopped looking glom and tense and joined in and began to sing with us, including Scalia, singing lustily, raising his brandy glass and his cigar. And something really happened there. It was a perfect example of how music, down through probably hundreds of thousands of years, has brought people together at a time where or maybe they weren't feeling so friendly to each other. Music behinds us, music inspires us. It happened that evening It's happened lots of other jobs before and since, and that was pretty impressive. And so after all of this, al Renee said, you know, I'm about to start a special year at the Kennedy Center where I'm supposed to be an advisor, and I'm kind of looking for a project to throw myself into.

Got the ideas, and so he said, we have a new Brain and institute. We want to understand it's an initiative. We want to understand this incredibly complex organ the most complex thing in the universe, really, and so music is one of the ways that we can do that. So now they've funded since we started our project, which is Sound Health with the NEA the Kennedy Center. I'm an advisor there.

I know, and you did a nineteen part series. I was watching some of them last night. I mean, that was a huge commitment. I think you did it during the pandemic. But you did a whole series of webinars really on every aspect of music and the brain, which I guess in some ways laid the framework for the book. Right.

Well, it certainly did, I mean, and Vivic Morti is now our Surgeon General, has really become a champion for this work. As well, and the NIH has spent thirty million dollars funding music research. I mean, nobody would have predicted that when I met him.

This summer. Just in about a month is the major symposium of the Brain Initiative, which NIH has been supporting now for seven years, started by President Obama in the way back then, and which has now hundreds and hundreds of scientists working on it, people with expertise and neuroscience but also in robotics and engineering and everything you could think of. And there's going to be all symposium at that meeting about music and how it's going to teach us things about how the basic science of the brain works, but also teach us how to be even more effective in this non pharmacological of providing healing to people who are suffering. And everybody kind of wants to see that happen too, So we're getting the momentum. The will woo reaction seems to be fading as people are more and more like, oh, maybe there's something useful to here.

When we come back. Renee illuminates the powerful connection between music and memory, and I remember listening to Frank Sinatra in my family's basement.

Thank everyone needs.

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Here's to those who love not to wisely, No, not wisely, but too well. To the girl who's song eyes with envy when she hears that wedding bow. To the guy who throw party if he knew someone to call. Here's to the loser, bless.

Renee. I used to listen to that song in my basement. My dad had an album Frank Sinatra. It was the Capitol Records Years, and I absolutely love that song. So when Peter sent that to me, I just had a rush of memories. First of all, I loved the words, I love the tune. I love everything about this song, and it's kind of an obscure. I was going to look up who wrote it, but Frank Sinatra recorded it with the Nelson Riddle Orchestra, and I want It made me wonder how much of our attraction and being swept away and for us to be in a certain flow has to do with memory and experiences.

Well, memory is incredibly powerful and very much connected to music. So that's why, for instance, a couple of things. One is that if you hear a song, you're taken back to your wedding or your high school graduation or whatever. Formative experiences you've had, and it's immediate, you know, and the nervous system and also the brain. It's so much about the brain. But basically, and you can switch, you can go back, you can hear the next song and it will take you to a different memory. So it's really it's incredibly powerful. But what we're discovering for Alzheimer's patients, which is something everyone is afraid of now talking all over the country, and that's the leading I would say subject around which people have anxiety. But memories are very much connected to our experience. So that's one of them. That's one of I would say the most powerful courses of research right now.

Pain is another, So Francis, music can actually ease physical pain.

I'll give you our own little personal example. Just ten days ago, I was in the hospital after a major surgery. I was having a pretty bad time in the postop phase, and I really didn't want to indulge in a lot of narcotics to try to handle the pain. So instead I decided, Okay, I'm going to take my own medicine here. Let's see if we can use music therapy to get me through a tough couple of days. And after doing a lot of listening to James Taylor and a lot of Alison Krause.

I love Alison Krause.

Oh my god. Yes, And this one may seem odd to you, but I'm also a fan of a really wonderful pipe organ performance. So I pulled up a lot on YouTube all the amazing pipe organ performances of bach preludes and fugues being played on organ c in Europe that are just amazing, and I got lost in all of that and sort of the pain it was still there. I knew it was there, but it wasn't near is intrusive. I was kind of getting the benefit of this. Well, that was a short term couple of days, but certainly for people with chronic pain that doesn't go away. The benefits also are becoming more and more clear. And NIH has a big program right now investing in rigorous studies of this to try to see what are the nuances that lead to a better outcome, because again, right now it's a little empirical, and maybe there's a way we could be even more effective if we understood it.

It's interesting because you know Dan Levitton, who does a neuromapping really in the chapter that he writes for my book talks exactly about where this all lives in the brain and how it works and how it's tied together. But the reason the NIH is studying music is because music is in every known part of the mapped brain today, and that's incredibly powerful. There are almost no other activities that are that widespread in the brain. And part of it is the complexity of engaging with music. You know, it's hearing, it's rhythm, so it's you know, movement. Also, it's memory, it's language because we're we're often thinking about words to go with these things. You know, it's just a very complex activity. And if you're making music, it's triply so.

And I know that when they mapped your brain singing renee, it showed areas of your brain lighting up that don't light up when you're speaking.

Right, correct. And what was surprise the scientists in my fMRI study. I was in that machine for two hours, my goodness, and you were singing away, yeah, singing away like you know many you know, many repetitions. But what surprised them was that imagining singing was more powerful than the other two. Really, and speaking or singing, Wow, that's crazy.

So just thinking of songs, and does the thing go for people who can't sing or who prefer listening over singing.

Maybe not. Maybe singing for them would be more more kind of almost traumatic to have to sing in an MRI machine, So that might have been more active, you know, they said to They actually did sort of surmise that because I'm a singer, it's a bit second nature, right right, But while imagining, I had to tune out the noise of the fMRI, of the MRI, I had to focus, et cetera. So it was a little different.

That's interesting. So, but the same benefits of singing again for people who are not blessed with your amazing voice. I mean, it doesn't keep me from singing just because I can't sing like you, Renee. But what about people who are just listening to music? Can you talk about what that does to the brain.

Well, first of all, you're a pianist, so you are a musician, which is so fabulous that you had that training.

Well it's more, you know what's really weird, Renee, is I play by ear now and I play mostly like Irving Berlin in the key of C because it's hard for me to play implicated like Billy Joel songs with a lot of flats or sharps. But while I took piano for ten years, when I sit down, I just sound out music that I like and just play it. And that's I don't know. I'm the only one in my family who can do that, and I was hoping my daughters would be able to play by ear, but they can't either. Where does that come from?

First of all, I'm really jealous. You know. I had the chance to take jazz harmony from a jazz musician in graduate school, and I in exchange for voice lessons, and I wish I had done it, because to be able to play by ear. First of all, that's the most relaxing thing you can do, I know, because it's improvisation and you have to shut off the part of your frontal lobe which judges you have to that has to turn off for you to be able to do that, which has got to be great for your health. And so listening to music, what's fascinating about it is it's been shown to be incredible beneficial for anxiety, for depression, for pain. So it's really beneficial to listen to music, and especially we do it anyway. We use playlists for exercise or cooking or you know, walking.

So, but what is it renee that is there a particular place in your brain it impacts, like for pain, does it light up a part of your brain? And then it sort of overcomes the part of your brain that is having to deal with pain, Like how does it work?

So it can be a distraction. It's releasing chemicals into your brain and doorphins and these are feel good chemicals. So it's it's it's incredibly helpful for our health to do this, especially especially today today's stressors. This year is going to be rough. We know that. So I've I've actually become a poster child for neural arts and I'm doing artistic things every day that I enjoy and getting away from the news, very upsetting opinion news. I'm really just not doing it this year. Yeah, so it's helping me, but I can't tell you how much happier I am. So and listening to music is one of those things. So it's really about the release of chemicals in your brain that makes this work. And then they also talk about the fact that one of the things I don't know if you ever you know, if you hurt yourself, if you cut yourself and then you bump your knee, yeah, the initial pain goes away because you're now distracted by the new pain.

So right, Well, whenever I'm getting a shot or like botox, yeah, once in a while, I will pinch my hand really really hard, so I'm focused on the pain in my hand instead of the pain in my forehead. Confessions here on next question with Katie Couric.

Exactly, and also, you know, frankly, listening to music can also work the same way. It is a distraction, but more than that, it does something really positive.

You mentioned patients with Alzheimer's, and you and I have talked about this as well. There was a documentary a few years back. I wonder if it's available. I interviewed the people behind it, and then there was like some breaking news story so it never aired and they were crestfallen, so I know. And it's called Alive Inside, and it was about people giving elderly folks and nursing homes. I guess at the time maybe iPods and earphones or whatever, and how their personas completely changed when they heard music that they knew and recognized and loved.

It. Can't get away from me if I'm in this place. It takes food to my school. They Oh god, beautiful. Does it make you happy to sing for us? That's the memory piece Stan Cohen's film, It's Beautiful. It's on YouTube.

Is it okay? I highly recommend Alive Inside Everybody because it's pretty extraordinary. And I learned so much from your book, and I thought we could just talk about a few of the points quickly. You write that hearing is I knew this, by the way, when my dad was in hospice and he was dying, and I was very, very close to my dad. He was just an amazing person. I brought a little speaker to the hospital room and my phone and I played all his favorite songs. When I used to play the piano, he'd yell down to the basement, Katie, play as Time goes by, or I'll be seeing you. And so I played all of these wonderful songs that I knew he loved because I had always heard that hearing was the last to go. But tell me about why we haven't done more research on that.

Well, it's been hard to do the research on anything artistic. So it's the brain imaging and it's the fact that technology has really expanded that's allowing us now to see all of this. So it's new. It's basically relatively new because but technology makes it possible. So what's interesting about that is my husband's aunt at the end of her life didn't know anyone around her, didn't speak. I was there, I saw this, But if you said I'm looking, she would finish the whole song over for leave Clover exactly. She would finish the song with words absolutely perfect. And there are five or six songs that she would do and I just sort of thought, this is actually joyful, and you know, these were pieces from her childhood. But she didn't open her eyes and she didn't know anyone. So it is the last memory to go. Music memory, and that's why researchers are using it to try and extend that that moment of a liveness that you see in the film. I mean, look at the Henry segments. They're really powerful.

Francis. What music can do for these patients is really remarkable.

You know, on some of the more dramatic examples that I have seen in terms of how music can help in that situation where people who have had strokes that affect the speech area of the brains, all called Broca's area. Most people are locked in in a terribly frustrating way. They know what they want to say, but they cannot make the words come out. They can understand what people are saying to them, but they can't interact backwards. But guess what if you ask them to sing of the Happy Birthday song, they can do it, And once they realize they can do it, then you can start to retrain their communication ability by singing it instead of singing it.

Yeah, and that's also something important for people to know that even talking to someone you may not think is there is really important at the end of someone's life. Did you know early humans sang before they spoke? Renee explains right after this. If you want to get smarter every morning with a breakdown of the news and fascinating takes on health and wellness and pop culture, sign up for our daily newsletter, Wake Up Call by going to Katiecuric dot com. Now more from Renee and Francis. You mentioned that you sang before you spoke, but that's really true of our species, that a lot of humans sang before they spoke. Can you explain that to.

Me, well, we don't, you know, we can't know what happened. Then, you know, researchers are looking at animals now and birds and dogs and horses and to kind of try and piece together what our evolution was artistically. But it makes kind of a lot of sense that in order to survive, humans, you know, could make vocal sounds that would be like the animals they were hunting, so birds or whatever creatures they were, and then eventually speech didn't develop until much much later.

Oh how interesting.

Yeah, So you know, it's just it's really fascinating when you think about that. In fact, there's a language I just learned. I just came back from India and there's a language there that they couldn't really decipher. It's done enchanting by these by monks. And finally realized they said, we believe that these songs predate speech. Wow, so people are still singing them. It's so interesting.

That is interesting. You also point out that women suffering from postpartum depression can benefit from singing an acchoir. Help me understand that, Renee.

So, you know, it surprised me. This is relatively new research. But the World Health Organization is beginning to have tremendous success by taking some of these findings to countries where they are in a better position than we are to kind of embed them in healthcare right away. So, but it works. Singing an acquir somehow really improves the level of depression, the level of difficulty that women with postpartum depression are having, and singing an acquire has a lot of benefits in They just did a study that compared singing an acchoir was singing alone and singing an acquire had better health outcomes.

Well, you can understand why, right, I mean, you have a sense of community, you have kind of working literally in harmony with others and feeling something greater than yourself. I mean it makes total sense.

Right, totally, And and it strengthens immunity too. They found but our brain waves align when we're in a shared artistic experience, and that's meaningful, that's powerful, and that's definitely evolution.

And that's also a huge argument to keep performing arts programs in schools across the country right especially at a time when young people are experiencing unprecedented anxiety and depression and stress. I think maybe educators will understand how important the arts are to your overall educational experience, right.

Absolutely, the art should stay in schools for a couple of reasons. One is that it's good for you. It helps kids with identity, with figuring out who they are. They can be more creative as a result. But one of the main purposes is truancy is becoming a tremendous problem, especially in urban centers around the country, and an artistic pursuit can keep kids in school, so that's major. One of the things I would really like to see happen is for creative arts therapists to be embedded in schools to help with pro social behaviors and the kinds of things we're talking about, but also to kind of give morale to everybody, and they can work alongside arts educators too.

You talk about your hope for reimagining performing arts venues in order to serve the public in a very different way too outside of schools. What is your vision for that renee.

Well, there was a study done by Opera America that interested me because it said that what people want is to be together with their friends and families. That's why they go to performances. They want to be seated and the round. They want to be able to order drinks, and so let's make it social, but let's make it also a place where we exchange ideas together. So in a way, I could envision performing arts centers becoming community centers.

That would be wonderful, and I think we need it more than ever. I think everyone's looking for experiences, right, and sort of these experiential opera tunities, I think, certainly after the pandemic, when you're all together with people sharing something. And honestly, I think part of the problem with polarization in this country, Renee, is that we all are in our little silos, and this whole feeling of even the nation or a big section of the population seeing something at once at the same time and enjoying it has become few and far between. I think that's why sports are so popular, absolutely.

I mean sports definitely does that, and performing arts can do it as well. But this loneliness and isolation are at an all time high, and it's a worldwide problem. Doctor Ted Drosid the World Health Organization told me he's incredibly concerned because depression is up thirty percent in the world and part of it is this isolation. So I you know, the people in the US are not going to performances as much as they did be for the pandemic for a number of reasons.

And they're not going to church in places like that where you have that sense of community either and music, by the way.

Well, and I would tell them this is not good for your health. You folks have to get out, get out and be with other people. So science and tells us now that it's really important we are social creatures.

It's interesting. I tried to pitch a documentary in twenty eighteen prior to the pandemic, and I've interviewed Vivek Murphy many times and nobody was interested. But now maybe with these huge numbers, people might reconsider they thought it was too much of a downer. I'm like, okay, whatever. Anyway, let's go back to your book, Renee, because I just want to finish up by asking you how you were able to assemble such an incredible group of artists and scientists. It includes essays written by everyone from Yo Yo Ma to architect Liz Diller to scientists from MIT and Johns Hopkins. How did you in the world, Renee, by the way, with your day job? How did you assemble all these experts and say, can you contribute to this book.

Well, I was trying to show the breadth of the field as it currently exists and talk about the future the pillars. Also, childhood development is a major pillar, and I just asked, you know, I just asked repeatedly. It took a long time to pull this together. And it's a good reference also for people who kind of just want to maybe they want to just go to one specific section, but there are chapters that make people cry. They're very surprised. There were two young men who saw a need in their communities and they created initiatives that are booming now, one in Philadelphia and one in New York City. There's Roseanne Cash's chapter kills Me. I mean what she went through with a wrongly diagnosed brain disorder called kiari one and she and her recovery from that as a musician. It's heroing. And you have you know, Esperanza Spaulding and Rhianna Giittons and really interesting artists, writers Richard Powers and and patch it so's I wanted it to really be expansive.

Well, it's incredible what you've put together, Renee, And I'm just so I mean, I'm not in a position to be proud of you, but I'm so impressed by your commitment to something because you know, obviously you want to contribute more to the world than just your beautiful singing voice and your artistic prowess, and you know it's time consuming. How were you able to do it and to really really spend so much time? You're clearly intellectually curious.

So yes, yes, well, you know, I have wonderful Chasin and Paul in my office, and I couldn't have done it without Jason because he was the nuts and bolts, gathering everything. What I didn't know about writing this book because I had already written a book called The Inner Voice. Was that an anthology? All the way falls to us to me, So I really had to have help, no question. But we did get it done, and I think it's beautiful. I would also point to my friend's book Your Brain on Art that was a bestseller last year for people who like a broader kind of artistic experience. The neuroscience book is fascinating and I'm working closely with them. Anyway, I just announced we're about to announce scholars so I'm funding now put your money where your mouth is right. Grants for young scientists who partner with an artist.

That is awesome.

They're amazing.

Well, wow, that's exciting. Well, you've given so much to the world. It was so wonderful to see you as a Kennedy Center honoree. So well deserved, and I know that that was such a thrill. I wasn't there, but I got to watch it, and what an incredible experience. And I can't think of anyone more deserving. The book that you've got out now is called Music Harnessing the Arts for Health and Wellness. Renee, so great to see you. Thank you so much for talking to me about all your important work, because I think it's going to solve a lot of problems if people actually implement some of the ideas that are put forth in this book.

Thank you, Katie. I really appreciate your time and attention to this. Thank you. I believe you and I agree.

Thanks for listening. Everyone. If you have a question for me, a subject you want us to cover, or you want to share your thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world, reach out. You can leave a short message at six oh nine five point two five to five oh five, or you can send me a DM on Instagram. I would love to hear from you. Next Question is a production of iHeartMedia and Katie Kuric Media. The executive producers are Me, Katie Kuric, and Courtney Ltz. Our supervisor producer is Ryan Martz, and our producers are Adriana Fazzio and Meredith Barnes. Julian Weller composed our theme music. For more information about today's episode, or to sign up for my newsletter wake Up Call, go to the description in the podcast app, or visit us at Katiecuric dot com. You can also find me on Instagram and all my social media channels. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Everyone needs someone to talk to and text with about life's challenges, and while girlfriends are great listeners, there are limits to your group chat. A talkspased therapist will give you an objective perspective and professional guidance. Register at talkspace dot com to connect with a licensed therapist within days and you can start messaging back and forth and also schedule live video or audio sessions talkspace is in network with major insurers, and codepays are usually twenty five dollars or less no insurance. Now get eighty five dollars off of your first month with promo code KTI when you go to talkspace dot com slash ktiecuric. Match with a licensed therapist at talkspace dot com slash ktiecuric

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