Sing for Science

Recorded Live at the Totality 2024 Festival in Hannibal, NY following the Total Solar Eclipse and Laraaji’s performance of his Sun Piano/Moon Piano albums. Ambient/New Age music legend Laraaji talks about how he represents the moon’s energy in 12 musical notes, his time at Howard University in the 1960s, his experience observing the Total Solar Eclipse. Cornell University Astronomer Dr. Nikole Lew...

Swedish Argentine folk singer José Gonzalez returns to the show along with our only other repeat guest, physicist Dr. Brian Cox of BBC and CERN fame. The two talk about secular humanism, atheism, finding meaning, black holes, Carl Sagan and more!

Recorded live at 2024 On Air Fest in Brooklyn, NY: Indian Carnatic superstar Sid Sriram talks about his song “Blue Spaces” with visual neuroscientist/color expert, Dr. Bevil Conway. We talk about Sid’s personal and cultural associations with color, cultural appropriation, the brain’s visual system, “the dress” from 2015 which some saw as blue and black and others as white and gold, the subjectivit...

Best Coast lead singer and Jungian analysand, Bethany Cosentino and “This Jungian Life Podcast" host Lisa Marchiano do a deep dive on you guessed it…Jungian Analysis! We cover dream analysis, the unconscious, creativity, archetypes, personae and then some!

Spyro Gyra co-founder Jeremy Wall talks about the height of the jazz fusion era, composing and about about the ins and outs of lake formation, spirogyra algae, harmful algal blooms or HABS and more with lake ecologist, Holly Waterfield. This episode was co-produced with the AJ Reid Science Discovery Center at SUNY Oneonta where it was taped in front of a live audience on December 6, 2023.

Queen of Percussion and Prince collaborator Sheila E talks about her 1984 hit, working with Prince, salsa music and learning from her legendary father with University of Mexico Neuroscientist, Dr. Hugo Merchant. Hugo shares fascinating findings about how the mechanisms in the brain process rhythm and help us keep a beat.

A FAMILY OF TREES: UNCOVERING NETWORKS IN OUR FORESTS' UNDERSTORY with Andrew VanWyngarden and Ben Goldwasser of MGMT and Dr. Suzanne Simard, forest ecology professor. In this episode we discuss: - how trees communicate with one another - the folly of industrialized logging - how trees help other trees - Native American ancestral DNA in cedar - where to buy mushrooms in Connecticut

Chanteuse Chan Marshall, best known as the artist Cat Power talks about her recreation of the historic 1966 Bob Dylan concert album at the Royal Albert Hall with Cornell University neuroscientist and nostalgia expert, Hetvi Doshi. We cover the origins of nostalgia study, the growing body of scientific evidence that suggests nostalgia has health benefits and improves social cohesion with one anothe...

MAC DEMARCO: CHAMBER OF REFLECTION: UNDERSTANDING THE SCIENCE OF SOUND with Mac DeMarco and Russ Berger, acoustician. In this episode we discuss: - what sound is - how speakers work - how sound affects the human body - how the brain interprets sound in a space - Astronautical elimination

Recorded live at the MIT Museum in Cambridge, MA on 9/18/23: Heavy Metal frontman and horror movie expert Spencer Charnas chats with psychologist Dr. Sarah Rose Cavanagh about his favorite horror movies, why we like to be scared, the difference between fictional and real violence, monster theory, recreational fear lab research and more.

Spencer and Sarah field questions aplenty from the sold out crowd at the MIT Museum on 9/18/23. Lots of territory covered including favorite on-screen monsters, what we fear most, scary music, and how to take a class with Sarah in Boston.

Multidisciplinary artist Eartheater talks with NYU computational biologist and artist, Dr. Elizabeth Hénaff about cell division, snails, horseshit, gut biome health, artist residencies and more at this very special live event! This episode was recorded at DEMO2023, presented by NEW INC and the New Museum, June 2023

311 lead singer and eternal optimist Nick Hexum talks about their breakout hit “All Mixed Up” with best-selling author and Dutch Historian, Rutger Bregman. Rutger’s books “Utopia For Realists” and Humankind” draw on scientific evidence that demonstrate our inherent capacity for good and the viability of ideas like Universal Basic Income, a 15 Hour Work Week, Open Borders and more.

Pulitzer Nominated composer, Ted Hearne talks about his epic work “Farming”, a hybridized piece written for a 24 piece choir with text taken from William Penn correspondence, a Jeff Bezos speech, the Uber Eats Twitter feed and more. Dr. Sarah Taber joins us for a conversation about the impacts of settler colonialism on modern day agriculture, the romantic myth of the American family farm and more!

Fab Four drummer and peace activist, Ringo Starr talks about going to see the Maharishi with John and George, his upbringing in violent Liverpool of the 1950s and being saved by music and then the gift of meditation. Bob Roth, renowned meditation teacher of 60 years and CEO of the David Lynch Foundation, talks to Matt and Ringo about the scientifically documented capacity of meditation to cultivat...

NYC Legend Joan As Police Woman (Joan Wasser) talks about her 2011 song “The Magic” with influential writer and science historian, Maria Popova (The Marginalian / Brain Pickings). We talk about measuring how music can transport us, the “magic” of making connections, pattern recognition, wonderment as a discipline, double dutch and so much more in this incredibly awe inspiring episode.

Irish balladeer and arena headliner, Dermot Kennedy talks about his experience coming up as a busker in Dublin with Hong Kong psychologist, Dr. Robbie Ho whose research seeks to quantify the effect “busking” has on the audience’s perception of a public space.

Special Chernobyl anniversary episode with Nata Zhyzhchenko of the Ukrainian band, Onuka and Chernobyl radiobiologist, Olena Pareniuk. Both of today's guests joined us from Kyiv and have been in Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion. We talk about what life is like during wartime for a professional musician and a scientist, the horsehair construction of a Ukrainian folk instrument that s...

Join SFS host, Matt Whyte and SFS social media manager, Bailey Constas for a curated peak at some of Season Two's Best Moments! Featuring SIA with psychotherapist, Dr. Alexandra Katehakis, Lamb of God’s Randy Blythe with social psychologist, Dr. Tony Lemieux, Jose González with epidemiologist, Dr. Mike Osterholm, Blondie’s Debbie Harry and Chris Stein with climatologist, Dr. Michael Mann, and Maji...

Join SFS host, Matt Whyte and SFS social media manager, Bailey Constas for another trip down memory lane with some of Season One’s Best Moments! Featuring Living Colour and fascism expert, Dr. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Aly & AJ and neuroscientist, Dr. Joseph LeDoux, Aluna and conflict resolution expert, Priya Parker and DMC with folklore expert, Dr. Jennifer Schacker.

Join SFS host, Matt Whyte and SFS social media manager, Bailey Constas for a trip down memory lane with some of Season One’s Best Moments! Featuring MGMT & forest ecologist, Dr Suzanne Simard, Norah Jones and science journalist, Shawn Otto, Connie Britton and rivers expert, Paul Gallay, Renée Fleming and Parkinson’s expert Dr. Bin Hu, Mac Demarco and acoustician Russ Berger.

Today’s episode was hosted by the MIT Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts and recorded in front of a live audience as part of an ongoing collaboration with Sing For Science. We discuss the Manhattan Project, the ethical implications of nuclear energy, climate change, quantum entanglement, quantum computing and more!

 This episode was recorded live at Public Records in Brooklyn, NY as part of the Offair event series. Arcade Fire multi-instrumentalist Richard Reed Parry and percussionist/composer Susie Ibarra talk about their album “Heart and Breath” with cardiologist and bestselling author, Dr. Sandeep Jauhar. Their album is set entirely to the rhythm of their own heartbeats and breath cycles so we dive deep o...

Grammy Award and Macarthur Fellowship winning artist Rhiannon Giddens talks about her collection of slave narratives, “Freedom Highways,” the origins of the banjo in Africa and the connection between African and African American music with trailblazing ethnomusicologist, Dr. Portia Maultsby.

WARNING: This episode contains content related to mortuary science that some listeners may find disturbing. Korn frontman Jonathan Davis delves into his past as a mortician with popular science bestselling author, Mary Roach. Mary wrote the hit book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers and the two have no shortage of gory details to discuss. We talk about the biology of human corpse decompos...