The Healing Effects of Music & Understanding Adolescence

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Today, on something you should know, some things about friendship I bet you never knew.

Then the important role music plays in all of our lives.

What people often underestimate is that music is not just decoration for our lives.

It shapes our emotions, our memories, and even our social relationships.

One of the most surprising findings is just how deeply music affects the brain.

Also, the surprising things that impact how much you like the food you eat and what goes on in the adolescent brain and why being a teen can be so tough.

The age of puberty has fallen.

Now it's about 12 years old.

Why is that important?

When puberty hits, the brain courses with hormones that sensitize us to the world around us.

You've now got a sensitive adolescent at a younger age.

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Something you should know, fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life today.

Something you should know with Mike Carruthers.

We all know friendship is important, and we're going to start this episode with some interesting facts that really drive that point home.

Hi and welcome to something you should know.

Friends are important for kids and adults and here are some facts you may not know about friendship.

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A weak social circle can take a toll on your longevity, comparable to smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.

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When researchers asked 139 college students to rank the general attractiveness of people in a group photo and then rank them by their individual photo, the individual photos were ranked 5.5% less attractive.

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A study suggests that close friends share about 1% of their DNA, making them as close genetically as fourth cousins.

Researchers from Yale University and the University of California at San Diego analyzed data from nearly 2,000 people and found that the chemistry that draws friends together may stem from that shared DNA.

And that is something you should know.

Everyone enjoys music, I think.

Although we don't all like the same music, everyone likes some kind of music, and we know it has an effect on us.

And how music affects different people is something science is learning more and more about.

Music can help with depression, dementia, and Parkinson's disease.

Stefan Kolsch is someone at the forefront of the research on the effects of music.

Stefan is a leading neuroscientist and music psychologist.

He's held positions at Harvard University and is currently a professor at the University of Bergen in Norway.

He's author of a book called Good Vibrations, Unlocking the Healing Power of Music.

Hi, Stefan.

Welcome to Something You Should Know.

Hey, Mike, it's great to be with you.

So as someone who likes music, I listen to music, I enjoy music,

but I think of it as that, as enjoyment.

But you study music as it relates to health.

What is it that music does for people beyond being something

to enjoy?

Yeah, I think music has a remarkable power to change how we feel, think and also heal.

These things are linked with each other and drawing on decades of neuroscience and psychology, we can now show how music engages the brain in unique ways, regulating emotions, relieving pain, strengthening social bonds and even supporting mental health and memory.

And the best part is you do not have to be a musician to benefit.

Music is already built into our brains.

It's one of the most accessible tools we have for emotional well-being.

And music is universal, right?

In this world, there are few places or no places you can go where there isn't some sort of music.

Every culture that we know about has music and dance.

Not just language, but also music and dance.

And that's why we assume that music is universal.

Every culture has it throughout human history.

And also, it means that we all are musical.

Our brains are musical.

It's tied into our evolutionary heritage as humans that we

understand music, that we participate in music, that we like music, and that we heal from music.

I would imagine if you asked people how important music is,

I don't think they would rank it really high because, you know, life has a whole lot of other things to think about and worry about.

Music is nice to have but the fact that what you just said is it's so universal that it perhaps is more important than we realize.

Yes, absolutely.

What people often underestimate is that music is not just decoration for our lives.

It shapes our emotions, our memories and even our social relationships.

One of the most surprising findings that I've made over the last decades is just how deeply music affects the brain, right down to the brainstem the oldest center of our brains throughout the entire brain and how does it do that

well there are several emotion systems in the brain the the one in the brainstem i also call the vitalization system that the the direct connection from the ear into the brain goes into that system and this system can vitalize us for example music can encourage us many use music to motivate them in the morning to get up or when they do sports.

And on the other hand, we can also use music via the same system to relax.

For example, when we want to calm down, meditate, sleep in the evening, when we want to calm down our baby with the lullaby.

And what's important about this system is that this system also has direct connections into all organs of our body.

For example, our heart, our breathing, our digestion.

And that's maybe one of the reasons why music can have these visceral effects on us.

It can directly produce a sweat response, dilate our pupils, change our heartbeat, our breathing, and so forth.

What about the different types of music?

Can you say that different types of music elicit different responses?

Or it's really if you like this music,

that's between you and your music and that's great, but

this other guy may not like that music.

That's just not his cup of tea and it doesn't do anything for him.

Absolutely.

It's actually both.

So on the one hand, our Western music often expresses emotions like a voice.

So for example, when you hear my voice, you can hear whether I'm happy or sad, surprised, scared, and so forth.

And music, especially Western music, often imitates these universal features of emotional expression of speech.

For example, music can also sound sad or happy by the same acoustical characteristics that we use to code the same emotional expression in language.

These features are universal, meaning that they are understood all around the globe.

So for example, when I go into, let's say, the Brazilian rainforest and meet a Yanumami man, he will hear in my voice whether I'm happy to see him or scared.

just as he will see it in the expression of my face, for example.

And we've done a similar study in Africa where we played Western music that sounded happy or scary or sad to people who have never heard Western music before.

And even they could recognize this music as, you know, happy or sad or scared.

Not as well as the Western

participants, but of course that was the first time that they heard this kind of music ever.

So there are some universal features of emotional expression, but

It's also important

that music can elicit very different, the same music can elicit very different emotional responses in different listeners, just as you said.

And for the healing effects of music, it's important how the music affects you emotionally.

So, for example, if you like to listen to, let's say, heavy metal music because you find it motivating and encouraging, then that's the right music for you to get, for example, out of bed or use it during sports.

If another person

likes opera, then that kind of music is the right kind of music for that person.

And

maybe even the latter person says, well, this heavy metal music sounds scary and aggressive to me.

And the heavy metal person says, well, this is

not at all what I hear.

To me, it sounds very different.

So what you said about playing Western music to people who've never heard it before,

how does Western music

compare with other kinds of music?

Don't other forms of music from other cultures,

don't they have happy songs and sad songs and like we do?

Not all cultures, many cultures, but not all cultures.

So for example the African culture that I just spoke about,

they only have happy music.

For them music is always something that is, let's say, played at festivities, that children do when they have a great time.

So the concept that music can express sadness was something completely new to them.

We had to explain it to them and

so that means that there are cultures who do not have this kind of emotional expression of different emotions with music like we have it in Western music.

If you think for example of the music that children do when they have their play songs and they are singing games also usually you know positive

joyful and the phenomenon that music can express all these different kinds of emotions

also surprise curiosity interest suspense tension etc is something that developed only during the last recent you know few hundred years well since we're talking about sad songs under the umbrella of the healing power of music you wonder why have sad songs because

Sad songs make you feel sad, don't they?

Or do they have another purpose?

There are many different purposes for sad music.

So for example, let's say music would only produce one emotional expression.

It would get kind of boring after a while.

We like

to

be taken through these aesthetic trajectories, through different emotions, emotional conflicts, resolutions of these conflicts, etc.

So that can be one reason.

Another reason is that

Many people

use music, sad-sounding music, for example, to vent.

After a breakup or something that frustrated them, they can use the music to just

cry it all out.

And after that, they feel better and then they turn to more happy sounding music again.

Especially people with

higher scores on empathy, for example,

like to do this.

Also, sad music can resonate with us and

we can remember certain episodes of our own lives where we maybe felt sad

sad music often sounds very beautiful it can be very moving it can be very touching also kinds of emotions that we like

music that sounds sad to us might actually sound let's say peaceful to others we did a study where we found that music that was rated as sad sounding by Western listeners was actually rated as peaceful sounding by many Asian listeners.

And peaceful sounding music is something that we like to use to calm down, to relax.

And

individuals with tendency to depression, let alone individuals with depression, they also like to listen to sad music because they feel understood, it fits to their mood, they don't feel alone with their problems.

And what these individuals often don't realize is that they

actually pull themselves down with the sad sounding music.

It's important that we, when we listen to music to influence our moods, that sooner or later we listen to music that sounds like the mood that we want to get into and not just listen to the music that sounds like the mood that we are currently in.

So for example, when we're in a depressive or sad mood, it's important to at least after a while add songs to the playlist that sound like the mood that we want to get into.

For example, more encouraged or happier or, you know, more positive.

We're talking about the effects of music.

Stefan Kulsch is my guest.

He is a neuroscientist and author of the book, Good Vibrations: Unlocking the Healing Power of Music.

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So Stefan, you said earlier, and I've heard it before, that every culture throughout history that anyone has ever found has had music.

But I'm wondering, has there ever been a culture where they may have had music, but it wasn't as important as it is, say, in our culture?

To my knowledge, this culture doesn't exist.

Not every culture has, let's say, big orchestras, like, for example, you know, we have in our Western cultures, or you know, Indonesian cultures also have bigger orchestras and many other cultures, too.

But that doesn't necessarily say that

other cultures who have, let's say, smaller ensembles, who have more singing and drumming rather than know dozens of different instruments have less interest or less enjoyment in music.

On the contrary, usually those are the cultures where everybody participates in making music, in singing, in dancing, in stomping, and where the concept of being unmusical

is not known.

Again, when we went to Africa, to the Mafa tribe in northern Cameroon, the concept of musicians and non-musicians was completely new to them.

For them, music is something that, you know, you do, that everybody does.

The social scheme that we have, that a few perform for the many, was something that was very new to them.

Is the experience of music different

if you play an instrument versus you don't?

You're just a listener?

For a classical musician,

The experience certainly differs because often, depending on the school where they come from, they are not meant to feel too much emotion themselves during playing because they are

supposed to deliver a good performance and one that stimulates emotions in the audience, but they are not supposed to get carried away.

But of course there are also other cultural contexts in which this can be very different.

For example, in a club scene where everybody is dancing, cheering, singing along, it's about participating in the music, just like in a football stadium or at a happy birthday celebration when we sing happy birthday, it's not about singing the exact same note, it's about participation, it's about celebrating community and enjoying.

So with regard to the healing effects, it can be tricky to explain that because we can use music,

both music listening, for healing purposes and there are also some studies that say that making music can be important in certain circumstances.

So for example, example, of course we can use music listening to regulate our emotions, our moods, to let's say switch off negative thoughts and negative thought loops.

When you make music however there's a cascade of other additional processes in the brain that probably have additional effects.

So for example studies with Parkinson patients who have difficulties walking

show this curious phenomenon that they can dance to music.

And this has been used for therapeutic purposes.

For example, playing music while walking, while taking a walk every day for, let's say half an hour.

And then even without music, they can actually walk better.

They make faster strides and longer strides.

So that is something where you already engage actively in the musical experience because you move to the music, you walk to the music, it's almost like a dance.

Or we have an Alzheimer project where we have a memory choir.

For one year everybody participates, gets singing lessons every week,

practices singing at home, the songs at home.

We sing together several times every month.

We do brain scans before and after to see whether

This has an effect on the brain aging, on the brain degeneration.

And we see that in certain parts of the brain there is no significant decline anymore in the music singing group, whereas in a passive control group there's significant decline of brain volume.

So

those are processes where I presume that active participation, active music making, active singing in this case, is crucial.

And is there any explanation as to why that happens?

Yeah,

so making social bonds while making music is something that engages what I call the happiness system in the brain.

This is by the way also the system where Alzheimer's dementia actually starts, where the neurodegeneration starts.

And this system, the so-called hippocampal formation, has a stripe of neurons that can generate new stem cells which can then

counteract neurodegeneration or which can counteract volume loss in this region due to the death of neurons, for example as a consequence of severe trauma, as a consequence of depression, as a consequence of chronic severe emotional stress.

Now we know from meta-analyses, that is analyses about dozens of studies, that music is particularly powerful in activating this region of the brain when we feel emotions with music and probably even stronger when we experience these emotions together with others as we do when we, for example, sing together.

So, our hypothesis is that singing together in, let's say, a social setting where you feel liked, you like the others, you have fun joining the choir, you have fun singing, bonds

people together.

And this results in activation of this happiness center in the brain that counteracts neurodegeneration.

So, performing music, as in singing together, has perhaps more effect than passively listening to music?

Yeah, I think especially when it comes to activating this particular region of the brain.

But let's not forget that even when we only listen to music, we often feel a connection to the musicians.

We sometimes imagine as if we were part

of let's say the band playing or as as if we were part of the audience that we might hear in the video or see in the video and hear in the recording.

And that can already provide us with a kind of surrogate of a social experience.

It's like our brain imagines that we were part of the community.

And this can be powerful too.

We know this from going to the cinema where we know it's not real, but still we feel intense emotions.

When it comes to the healing power of music, to try to activate all the forces, all the benefits that music can give, is there any prescription of

the best way to engage with it?

Well,

I don't think there is a one-fits all recipe for that.

If you want to regulate your emotions with music,

then don't just let the music run in the background, but somehow actively engage with the music.

So for example, you can tap along with the music, or you can breathe along with the music.

You can count the beats of the music while you breathe in and out.

I've done studies with depressive patients for example and when they use this method then the negative thoughts and thought loops are gone and that gives their brains at least a few minutes of you know chance to recovery like an emotional timeout where the you know where certain brain structures can start breathing again especially those involved in emotions.

Chronic stress and chronic chronic negative emotions are particularly unhealthy for us.

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And

while short-term stress can temporarily boost certain immune responses, chronic high stress reduces the activity of immune cells.

Chronic stress even can decrease the number and effectiveness of cells of the immune system, leaving us more vulnerable to viruses, other pathogens, etc.

I'm just saying this to underscore that constant negative emotions and moods, depression, hostility, anxiety, worries, etc.

are actually bad for our health.

So that's why it's important to regulate our emotions and moods.

And we can do that with music.

Well, this is great.

Stefan Kolsch has been my guest.

He is a neuroscientist and music psychologist.

And the name of his book is Good vibrations unlocking the healing power of music and there's a link to his book at amazon in the show notes summer really lends itself to a minimal effort maximum impact makeup look when it comes to looking and feeling your best especially in the august heat sometimes less is more and when you're working with fewer products you want the quality to be high which is why thrive cosmetics is your go-to for a simple clean and radiant summer look every product is 100 vegan cruelty free and made with clean, skin-loving ingredients that work with your skin, not against it.

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When you think about your adolescent years, what do you think?

Was it a particularly difficult time?

It seems to be for many people.

Adolescence is often thought of a time for risky behavior and some bad decisions.

But what goes on in the brain of an adolescent?

And how do those teen years influence your life as an adult?

And what should every parent be on the lookout for in their own adolescent child?

Every one of us who is now an adult has gone through their adolescent years and survived them.

So what about them?

Well here with the latest understanding and research on adolescence is Matt Richtel.

He's a health and science reporter at the New York Times, and he spent nearly two years reporting on the teenage mental health crisis for that paper's series, Inner Pandemic.

Matt is also author of a book called How We Grow Up, Understanding Adolescence.

Hey, Matt, welcome to Something You Should Know.

Hi, Mike.

How are you?

Good.

Thanks.

So when I look back on my adolescence and those years, those teen years,

I remember them pretty well.

I think they're memorable years for many of us, perhaps in part because a lot of firsts happen in your teen years, important firsts.

But as somebody who studies and reports on adolescence, what is it?

What is adolescence and why does it seem to be fraught with trouble?

Adolescence is a process of integration between the known and the unknown.

And what I mean is that what is known is what our parents teach us.

Use a fork, do your homework.

This is how the world works.

It's what we tell them.

What is unknown, Mike, is what actually works in a real world that is changing.

So I'm going to get into what this conflict is internally and between generations.

But in short, adolescents are reconciling what they've been told and what they are actually experiencing.

And this is what they're biologically programmed to do.

Well, that's an interesting definition.

And it sounds right, but it certainly isn't experienced that way.

I don't think if you asked an adolescent, you know, how is life going, they would say, well, I'm struggling with the known and the unknown.

That's not how it's experienced.

Yeah, and that's why I frame it this way, because actually, after a lot of testing this with the scholars and the researchers, at 30,000 feet, the adolescent brain is a hypersensitized information processing machine under very difficult circumstances.

There are two sources of conflict.

One is the internal conflict.

Think about this.

There's a sense of conflict in the young person who is attempting, as I said, to reconcile everything their parents tell them.

with everything they're experiencing in the world.

That world is changing.

And let's be honest, parents don't always get everything right so here's a young person who is saying my parents have indoctrinated me into these ideas much of which are very valuable and some of which are not conforming to what I'm experiencing now why aren't they conforming to what the young person's experiencing there are two reasons for this one is that the world is changing The other is young people are changing the world or contributing to that because they're carving out their own ground.

So imagine that sense of conflict when you are saying, this is what I've been told to do every day, and

this is my, I am trying to test the terrain myself to make sure those rules work.

That's a very intense feeling.

So adolescence has a reputation.

They're often thought of as difficult years, they're troubled years,

risky behavior, bad decisions.

And we can all remember people in high school that went through that.

But what is that?

We understand much better than we ever have what that is.

And the reason we understand is because scientific methodology has changed.

In the past, we looked at their behaviors and said, Neanderthal.

But now that we can look under the hood of their brain with neuroscientific techniques, imaging, we understand something that you just alluded to that's very important.

Adolescents are tuned into reward and they're tuned away from their families into their peer groups.

What's happening during this period is that they are programmed to look for things that are rewarding, which causes them to ignore risk a little bit because they really need to understand what their footing is in the world around them.

It's one thing to have been told by your parents, this is how things work.

It's another thing to test that ground for yourself.

And I can make a very good case that biology has programmed us to test by ourselves because you can't trust everything you hear.

and hearing something is not the same as experiencing it.

So

when someone goes and tries alcohol, when someone goes and goes over the speed limit, when someone tests their relationship with their teachers, that is not expressly an act of rebellion.

It is an act of probing essential for the survival of the individual and the species.

So some adolescents exhibit those behaviors, but not all of them.

There are some kids who go through adolescence seemingly without a whole lot of trouble and others who go through it with nothing but trouble.

Yes, and I've looked expressly into that question.

And the research suggests, Mike, that more often than not, people are not experiencing that much trouble.

Mike, if you think about adults and the spectrum of skills that we have, there are some people who are managers who are good at playing by the rules.

There are some people who are creators who are good at looking at things in a different way.

We exist as a species through a spectrum of human condition.

And in our adolescents, there is a spectrum of tolerance to risk and a spectrum of desire for reward.

And when you see that in your individual kids, it's tempting to say, what did I do wrong?

What's happening here?

Oh my gosh, I'm a terrible parent or I'm a great parent.

I think a better way to look at it is there's a spectrum.

And depending on how you view that, the spectrum, you may think you're lucky to have the kid who explores like crazy or the kid who's much easier to deal with, as it were?

Well, I've always thought that one of the reasons that we notice and shine a spotlight on what we consider troubled adolescent behavior is

as children grow up into adolescence, they start to do things just naturally that they've never done before.

Well, Bobby's never done that before,

and no, Bobby has not.

And

look at that, and because that's now different,

it's potentially troublesome.

Yes.

And I'm glad you asked that question because a lot of this behavior, while frustrating, even scary, is not necessarily inherently troubling.

They are programmed to do the new thing for the reasons I just explained.

And Mike, if I might add some context to this, that period of risk tolerance and reward seeking fades as we get older into our 20s and 30s.

So that means that parents are not exactly on the same frequency as the young people who are say, let's pick an example.

Bobby never stayed out till two in the morning and didn't tell us where he was.

Bobby never didn't show up for class before.

Understand that Bobby is trying to make sense of the boundaries and the rules of society.

And Mike, it's tempting to ask, well, if Bobby does this, is Bobby hosed for life?

And the answer is no, with a couple caveats I'd like to stress.

The answer is this period is one of discovery that will likely fade into an adult life like most of us understand,

unless something really rotten happens.

There are a couple really red lines, and I would put as one of the most profound addiction,

because that's something that can last with you the rest of your life.

There's a big difference between experimenting with a beer or weed and discovering that you have a propensity to addiction.

And that's one of those places where I'd plead with parents to intervene as strongly as they might.

That is something that can last forever.

There are other things that can last forever.

For instance,

drinking and driving that leads to an accident, Severe criminal activity.

These are things that can mar a person.

Now, criminal activity of various degrees can be seen under the heading of experimentation.

Someone shoplifts, it doesn't mean they're going to spend their lives unsuccessful.

I just draw a fine line between those things that put a sorry not a fine line.

I draw a very thick line between those things that endanger your health or someone else's health that parents must draw a fine line around.

The other stuff, I urge parents to put it under the heading of what experimentation is being done here?

What's the big picture in my adolescence life?

To what extent are they trying to figure out what works and what doesn't work?

And then a parent can begin to set the boundaries around that particular individual.

I'm wondering how formative those adolescent years are.

In other words, I've heard things like, for example,

the music that you like in adolescence tends to be your favorite music for the rest of your life.

And that there are things that happen in adolescence, and I wonder how impactful they are later on.

Romance, you know, those early romances and heartbreaks and things.

Those can really stick with you.

And I wonder if they help to form who you are and how you handle those things later.

It's been studied in a manner of speaking through a very discreet, important piece of science, which is what happens inside the brain during adolescence.

When you enter into this period of adolescence,

you become very hypersensitive to the world around you and your brain is particularly, the word they use is plastic.

Over the course of adolescence, there is this phrase scientists use where they say it's a period of use it or lose it.

And as that plasticity begins to harden, Mike, the brain of the adolescent goes from being very open to new ideas like music or romance to by the end, seeing some hardening in the brain around certain ideas that an adolescent has emphasized.

Now, this doesn't mean an adolescent can't learn something new later, but it means some tracks are laid down during this period.

I've seen it happen where adolescence takes a toll on the relationship between the teen and the parents because there is behavior that is different and there's rebellion and there's testing the waters that the relationship takes a hit.

Do you generally think that resolves itself over time or does the relationship really take a hit?

Mike, I've seen that go a lot of different directions.

I'll start with what the conflict is.

There are, to my mind, two sources of conflict based on the research.

One is that this kid is going through a testing period and the parents are like, wait, I explained to you how this works.

You're not listening to me.

I'd urge parents in this period to internalize the idea that there is some testing going on.

This doesn't mean parents let young people get away with everything.

In fact, I'd argue that what it calls for is very, very clear boundaries around the very most important stuff and some understanding that the less important stuff is not personal.

It's not a reflection of the parents.

It's not actually,

it's not so much a rejection of the parents as it is an effort to understand if what the parents are saying really works in the real world.

What about the experiences in adolescence that seem very important at that time in terms of how they affect you later.

Things like if you're popular, if you have a girlfriend, if you play sports, if you those kinds of things that seem critical then, I'm not sure how much they affect you later.

Yeah, it's a really, really good question.

These things that a young person can fixate on or ruminate on are not necessary, are not as, not necessarily, they're just not as important as they seem at the time.

And in fact, Mike, I'd argue that the fixation put on them in the period of adolescence can even be a kind of,

it may be a manifestation of the anxiety that the young person is dealing with more generally as they try to make sense of the world.

But when they say, oh my gosh, I didn't, you know, I didn't make the varsity.

My life is ruined.

This is one of those places where I'd urge parents to step in and lend the perspective that says, one, one,

it's not the end of the world.

And two, there may be something you're going through, young person, that leads you to fixate or ruminate on this particular thing when, in point of fact, there's a much broader emotional struggle you're in, which leads me back to one of the very first questions you asked, which is how has adolescence changing?

And there's a really fundamental biological phenomenon at play here.

The age of puberty has fallen.

It was,

its onset for girls was about 14 years old in 1900.

Now it's about 12 years old.

Boys follow a similar path.

Why is that important?

When puberty hits, the brain courses with hormones that sensitize us to the world around us.

The reason puberty is changing has to do with diet and other Western things I won't go into right now because the most important thing is that you've now got a sensitive adolescent at a younger age.

That is happening just at a time a ton of information is flooding us.

If you go back to 1800s, we were not sitting in a world of news cycles, information, changing economies, changing jobs, things moving this quickly.

What that does is put a lot of pressure on the adolescent brain to make sense of what's new when a lot is new.

What else from the research you've done, what else about adolescents do maybe people don't understand or

that people don't understand?

One thing I'd really stress is that in this exploration of the world around, there is an incentive, Mike, to look for new, not just to understand the world around you.

And if you, I know, I know there's a temptation to people, for people to say, I was trying to find my identity.

Who am I?

What do I do in this world?

simultaneously i'd ask adolescents to consider this idea that some of the things going through your mind are about finding something new for yourself and that sensation that you're moving away from your parents and exploring is very very natural and important it doesn't mean that you can't play by the rules but it means you are programmed to look for new things and that is okay

so this question of whether it's tougher today to be an adolescent than it was in the past is one i

i'd like you to weigh in on because

my sense is that's not true i mean it it was just as tough then given the circumstances then 30 40 50 years ago dealing with what you had to deal with It wasn't easier.

It was just, that was your reality.

That was then, and today is today.

But

I just never got the sense it's harder.

It's just maybe different.

I wholly agree.

I'd stopped that analysis about 150 years ago when it was, I guess, easier in that there was no period of adolescence and much harder in that you went from being a child to being in a trade to being pregnant or a father and to dying.

So

this adolescence is a product of modern society.

And since it's begun, I agree with you, Mike, that not that it's begun, but since this time period and this transition has existed in a modern society, I don't think it's much different than it used to be because I think that that difficulty in wreck in taking in the old rules, testing, probing, risking upsetting the people who came before you is very difficult.

The only exception to that question is the falling age of puberty.

It means that there are people who are more vulnerable or sensitive and aware at an earlier age in life when the rest of their brains are no more

developed than they used to be.

What do I mean?

There's a kind of a neurological mismatch for people who hit puberty earlier.

The mismatch is between how sensitive they are to the world and how equipped their brains are to make sense of what's around them.

We need to recognize this phenomenon as a society and really help our young people by talking them through what's going on.

It's not that they're going crazy, it's that they're highly sensitive to a fast-changing environment.

You had mentioned earlier about, you know, the eighth grader who says, you know, everyone in school hates me, you know, life's not worth living.

And or those times when there's a romance, adolescent romance that breaks up and it's just devastating.

But eventually that stops when you get at the other side of adolescence.

But what is it in adolescence that causes those very sensitive and extreme reactions to those, I guess, their social situations?

But at some point, you stop doing that.

Those things go away.

Yeah, those hormones that create immense sensitivity to the world around you, heightened, heightened sensitivity.

It's almost like having a microscope that shines the sun extra hard into your brain about social events.

That begins, those hormones begin to fade.

And then simultaneously, you've begun to learn some of what actually works and you're putting it into practice.

So so you're not as sensitive, you've learned more, you may not be, you may never be as vulnerable to that sensation as you are during your adolescence, which is why I hope this becomes an opportunity for us to help young people through it so that they can have the experimentation, probing, experience the emotion, but don't cross the red line into things that will destroy their lives and ours as people who love them.

Well, having lived through my own adolescence and watching my boys go through theirs, I haven't really thought about it in the way you're talking about it.

So it's great to get that perspective.

I've been talking with Matt Richtel.

He is a health and science reporter at the New York Times and author of the book, How We Grow Grow Up, Understanding Adolescence.

And there's a link to that book in the show notes.

Matt, thanks for being here.

Thanks, Mike.

It's hard to realize it in the moment, but environmental factors have a big impact on how you judge the food you eat.

So much so that a professor at Oxford coined the term gastrophysics as the name of this new science.

His name was Dr.

Charles Spence, and what he found is, for example, music and lighting have a big effect.

In one of the largest ever wine tastings involving 3,000 people, participants were given a glass of wine and then asked what it tasted like and how much they enjoyed it.

Afterwards, the lighting and the music were changed and they were given another glass, which unbeknownst to them was filled with the same wine, and their responses to the questions changed by 20%.

At a restaurant, the menu matters.

The perfect number of starters is 7, main courses is 10, and any fewer than that, and the diners felt short-changed.

Any more and they started to feel overwhelmed.

You'll enjoy your food more if you are the first at the table to give your order.

By doing so, you are ordering what you really want instinctively.

Red plates cause you to eat less.

Red is a primitive danger signal, but it also gives the food less contrast, which makes it less desirable, so you will eat less of it.

And the weight of your fork matters.

People who eat food with heavy silverware perceive the food as more expensive than people who eat the same food with lighter forks.

And that is something you should know.

Something you should know is produced by Jennifer Brennan and Jeffrey Havison.

Executive producer is Ken Williams.

I'm Mike Carruthers.

Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

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You might think you know fairy tales, and you might think that they are cute and sweet and boring.

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