This episode is a part of Caring for Caregivers, a series supported by the Van Leer Foundation.
The Healing Power of Lullabies: Comfort for Caregivers
Article by: Emily Brower
Alexis Cariello’s three-year-old son, Nico, loves to sing. Sometimes, he drifts off to sleep to the sound of his own voice; other times he belts out holiday tunes from his bed so loudly that Cariello and her husband can hear him from the living room of their Brooklyn apartment.
But when Cariello and Nico sing their special lullaby together, it holds a deep and heartfelt meaning.
“[Nico is] always like, ‘Mommy, are you gonna lay with me?’” Cariello says. “And when we're sharing this song in particular, we're on the same team, and it's really beautiful and valuable.”
Cariello wrote the lullaby when Nico was still in her womb. It has carried them through sleepless nights, tantrums, and the ever-shifting landscape of early childhood and parenting. It’s become more than just a melody— it’s a tether between mother and child, a grounding force in the whirlwind of toddlerhood. The lyrics go, in part:
Always remember, that you can be tender.
Give and receive and lead with love.
You can be open.
You can be broken.
You can be free.
Hold and be held.
“When we sing together, there's just a release of tension,” Carillo says. “And the toddler years in particular, there's so much tension. I literally can hear the change in his breathing with this song. If I were to put my hand on his chest, I would feel a slowed heart rate.”
The Science of Lullabies
Research shows that calming music helps ease anxiety by activating the brain’s relaxation centers and slowing the heart rate. Studies also show it can also lessen pain perception by engaging the neural pathways linked to relaxation.
Daniel Levitin, a neuroscientist, musician, and bestselling author of the books, Music as Medicine: How We Can Harness Its Therapeutic Power, and most recently, I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music As Medicine, has spent decades studying the science behind music and the healing qualities it can produce.
His research found that music itself is a natural regulator of emotions, and depending on the type of music, it can help people self-soothe in moments of exhaustion or stress.
“When mothers sing to their infants, it releases prolactin in both the mother and the infant, which is the same substance released in breast milk,” Levitin says. “It's a soothing, tranquilizing neurohormone.”
For children, lullabies allow for them to connect to and recognize their mother’s voice, even in the womb, creating a sense of safety and security. Additionally, their familiar melodies and rhythms support language development in infants.
Infants depend on constant care and attention to survive. Some needs are clear, like food and shelter, while others are more subtle, such as a parent's soothing voice or reassurance that they will always be there for their child.
“Especially when a kid is preverbal,” says Mia Bertolo, a lab manager at The Harvard Music Lab. “The way an adult can signal that to an infant is with this kind of credible signal that says, ‘Look, I'm investing all this energy and producing this beautiful signal, purposefully for you.’”
Lullabies are more than just a way to soothe a child, they are a caregiving ritual that nurtures both the parent and baby. Studies show that lullabies engage multiple brain regions, including those responsible for emotion regulation, memory, and social bonding. Singing or listening to lullabies can lower cortisol levels, reducing stress for both caregivers and children.
They also strengthen emotional bonds, fostering attachment and security in early development. By activating the parasympathetic nervous system, lullabies can help calm the body, promote relaxation, and improve sleep quality for whoever is listening
Though melodies and lyrics vary widely, research shows that lullabies share similar musical characteristics across cultures.
“Lullabies are universal,” Levitin says. “All mothers instinctively sing to their infants, and they instinctively sing across cultures, songs that have very similar features. The mother uses a soft voice, not a loud one. She uses a slow tempo, and if there's a leap, it always comes down again.”
Humans, regardless of background, instinctively use repetitive, slow, rhythmic, and soothing tones, to comfort and connect with their children. This shared sound helps regulate the infant’s emotions, reinforcing that feeling of connection.
“Infants are learning about the structure of melody, but more importantly, they're learning what their mother's voice sounds like,” Levitin says. “So that in the dark, when they can't see one another, the mother can still soothe the infant.”
Music as a Tool for Healing
In clinical trials, researchers found that music is more effective than Valium at reducing anxiety in an operating room.
Stemming from shamanistic traditions, for thousands of years, music has been used to treat injuries, illnesses, and mental disorders. However, due to the rise of behaviorism in the 1950s, this practice was dismissed as unscientific. Neuroimaging has since validated music’s benefits, with thousands of papers now supporting its therapeutic effects.
Levitin has been working with the NIH and Francis Collins since 2017 to introduce legislation that would allow Medicare to pay for music therapy. Additionally, in Minnesota, Blue Cross Blue Shield covers 12 music therapy sessions per year for aging adults.
When Alexis Cariello wrote her lullaby for her son Nico, it was a part of the Lullaby Project, a Carnegie Hall initiative that pairs caregivers with musicians to create personal lullabies, fostering connection and providing a creative outlet, especially for families facing challenges like perinatal anxiety, homelessness, or incarceration.
Cariello, who lives with obsessive compulsive disorder, had put a lot of thought into her decision to become a parent; she had a lot of reservations.
“I know that the likelihood of having postpartum depression when you struggle with something like obsessive compulsive disorder or anxiety or depression is much more likely,” Cariello says. “What I didn't know was that perinatal mood disorders are also very common. So It surprised me how difficult my mental health became and how quickly it happened.”
At about 12 weeks of pregnancy, it became clear to Cariello that she was in a very dark place. Seeking support, her therapist helped her connect with a women’s center that specializes in treatment for perinatal mood disorders. There, she was introduced to the Lullaby Project.
Grounded in research on music’s benefits for maternal health and child development, the program nurtures emotional bonds and eases stress for expecting parents. For Cariello, writing a lullaby became a healing part of her pregnancy journey.
“It was so powerful and it was so beautiful,” Cariello says. “This lullaby allowed me to think, ‘I don't know how to be a mom. I don't know how to be a parent and it's going to be new forever. But I do know how to care. And I do know how to take care of people. It connected us in just a way that was about so much more than sharing my body with him or sustaining a life."
As part of the Lullaby Project, Cariello journaled about her hopes for the baby and parenthood. Then she met with professional songwriters to bring her lullaby to life. The process became an emotional release, allowing her to channel her anxieties into something healing.
When Cariello was asked to have her song recorded in a studio by professional musicians, the experience became a touchstone. Hearing her words transformed into a fully produced song was a moment that reinforced her strength as a mother.
“I felt so held,” she shared, describing the moment she listened to the artists bring her song to life. In the midst of the often-overwhelming journey of parenthood, the music offered her a space where she could reflect, create, and reconnect with herself and her loved ones.
The Power of Ritual
Incorporating rituals, like singing or journaling at night, can also create a sense of consistency and stability in daily life.
Cariello knew she was in a dark place early on during her pregnancy because she had stopped doing her usual rituals, like creating full moon altars, but the lullaby journal gave her a chance to reconnect with the ritual process she had lost.
“The writing of it felt like ritual because I do a lot of writing in general to kind of understand the world,” Cariello says. “And then when they recorded it and sent it back to me, I played it every single day, without fail.”
Today, singing the lullaby has become a nightly ritual for her and her son, a source of comfort for both of them, but more than that, it has strengthened their shared nervous system, offering them a sense of safety and belonging.
“When people listen to the same music, their brain waves synchronize,” says Levitin. “They're literally on the same wavelength.”
As parents, caretakers, and communities, we often focus on what we must do for our children— how to guide, protect, and nurture them. But caretaking is also about being present, about letting ourselves be held in return.
“Everything is so fast and everything is so hard and challenging,” Cariello says. “Sometimes you just really need to slow down.”
Episode Summary: Music has a unique ability to calm, heal, and bring people together, and lullabies are one of the earliest ways we experience this connection. In this episode, we explore how music affects the brain, reduces stress, and strengthens bonds between caregivers and children. Through science and personal stories, we reflect on the deep emotional power of lullabies and their role in both everyday life and moments of challenge. From ancient traditions to modern research, we uncover why lullabies remain a universal source of comfort.
Today’s Guests:
ALEXIS CARIELLO is a social worker who was prescribed music to help manage her perinatal anxiety.
DR. DANIEL LEVITIN is a neuroscientist, musician, and bestselling author of the books, Music as Medicine: How We Can Harness Its Therapeutic Power and I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music As Medicine.
Follow Dr. Levitin on IG: https://www.instagram.com/daniellevitinofficial
Bringing Lullabies into Everyday Life
You don’t need to be a professional musician to bring the healing power of music into your caregiving routine. Here are some simple ways to incorporate lullabies into your daily life:
- Sing, Even If It’s Just for You: Whether you hum a tune while rocking a child to sleep or sing in the shower, music can help regulate emotions and ease stress.
- Create a Caregiving Playlist: Curate a selection of calming songs that bring comfort and connection.
- Write Your Own Lullaby: Personalizing a song can be a deeply meaningful way to express love and support.
- Share the Experience: Singing together can strengthen bonds, whether with a child, a partner, or a classroom of students.
Related The Science of Happiness episodes:
How Awe Helps You Navigate Life’s Challenges: https://tinyurl.com/2466rnm4
The Science of Singing Along: https://tinyurl.com/4nbb3v76
The Science of Humming: https://tinyurl.com/4esyy6nd
Related Happiness Breaks:
A Breathing Technique To Help You Relax: https://tinyurl.com/3dtwyk44
Making Music With Your Body: https://tinyurl.com/275tna6h
A Mindful Breath Meditation: https://tinyurl.com/mr9d22kr
Related Practices:
Kindness Art for Kids: https://tinyurl.com/bk9tn3hh
Music to Inspire Kindness in Kids: https://tinyurl.com/yjk344rd
Our Caring for Caregivers series is supported by the Van Leer Foundation, an independent Dutch organization working globally to foster inclusive societies where all children and communities can flourish.
To discover more insights from Van Leer Foundation and others on this topic, visit Early Childhood Matters, the leading platform for advancing topics on early childhood development and connecting diverse voices and ideas across disciplines that support the wellbeing of babies, toddlers and caregivers around the globe.
Music has the power to uplift, soothe, and connect. What lullabies, songs, or musical rituals bring you comfort? We’d love to hear from you! Email us at happinesspod@berkeley.edu or message us on Instagram @ScienceOfHappinessPod.
Help us share The Science of Happiness! Leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts and share this link with someone who might like the show: https://tinyurl.com/2p9h5aap
Transcription:
ALEXIS CARIELLO: I never had the certainty that I wanted to be a parent, and it took me a while to get to the point of saying, Okay, I want to do this. I think I want to try this. One of the things that my parents gave me that was so strong was a love of music, and when I tried to visualize what it would look like if I did take the leap into parenthood, visualized myself singing to whoever this kid would be. There were a variety of things that led me to ultimately take the leap, and one of the things was the power of visualizing our relationship through music, and I didn't yet know how crucial that would become, but I do remember thinking about music quite a bit beforehand.
DACHER KELTENER: Welcome to the science of happiness. I'm Dacher Keltner. Today we're exploring how soothing music, especially lullabies, can do more than just calm children. They're part of our history and cultural repertoire, dating back at least 35,000 years and evoking deep emotions like joy, sorrow, hope and awe, reminding us we're part of something bigger. Our guest today, Alexis Cariello, was prescribed music a few years ago to help manage perinatal anxiety. Through a lullaby she co-wrote, she discovered an entirely new way to connect with her son, her community and ultimately herself. Later, neuroscientist, musician and best selling author, Dr Daniel Levitin will help us better understand why music can have such a calming effect on us.
DR. DANIEL LEVITIN: In clinical trials, music is more effective than valium in an operating room at reducing anxiety, and it's non addictive. It's cheaper.
DACHER KELTNER: Welcome back to The Science of Happiness. Joining me from New York City is Alexis Carrillo. Three years ago, Alexis was pregnant with her son, Nico, and when she sought out help for her perinatal depression, her psychologist prescribed her music. Alexis was connected with a team at Carnegie Hall, a famous concert hall in New York City. They have a lullaby program where expecting mothers write lullabies for their unborn babies, with the help of professional musicians. From seeking support for depression to having her lullaby performed in front of 1000s at Carnegie Hall, she joins us to share her journey. Alexis, thanks so much for being on the show.
ALEXIS CARIELLO: Thank you so much for having me.
DACHER KELTNER: You know, I remember, you know, with my two daughters, Natalie and Serafina. And, you know, once they entered into the world and we were doing our bedtime rituals, that just almost instinctively, these lullabies started to come out of me, and I grappled with, you know, what kind of lullaby should I sing? And how would I discover that. I'd love Alexis, for you to take us back to, you know, when you were pregnant with your son, how did you discover the Lullaby Project at Carnegie Hall?
ALEXIS CARIELLO: I'm someone who lives with obsessive compulsive disorder, and I was in therapy. I went to therapy, and that's kind of how I figured out that I could and would, you know, want to consider being a parent? It's something I talked about a lot, and I said to my husband a ton, I'm so nervous about having postpartum depression. I know that the likelihood of having postpartum depression when you struggle with something like obsessive compulsive disorder or anxiety or depression is much more likely. What I didn't know was that perinatal mood disorders are also very common. When I got to about 12 weeks pregnant, and it became clear that I was in a very dark place. I got connected with a center that does specifically treatment for perinatal mood disorders, and the provider I was seeing said, you know, there's this program. We have an opportunity. I thought that because you're creative and you always do your homework that you might be interested. And up to that point, my creativity was dormant and my happiness was dormant, honestly, for most of my pregnancy, and when they asked me, the thing that pushed me to say yes was thinking about, like, my dad and my mom specifically, and how much they love music, and, you know, they live in New York, and they go places, and I just heard Carnegie Hall, and I was like, yeah, I'm gonna do this. I'm definitely gonna do this. I mean, it was probably the most memorable experience of my life, I have to say, at least creatively.
DACHER KELTNER: Yeah, you know, we have all these cultural myths about having children and the build up to it, and the oceanic love and delight of having children, and that's true, but there's also a lot of struggle and a lot of anxiety that surfaces in those times. What was the process like of writing this lullaby?
ALEXIS CARIELLO: The Lullaby Project sends sort of a journal to get you started. And the most powerful thing for me was writing a letter. So they ask you to just write a letter to your child, or your, in my case, unborn child. Ultimately, what I wrote to him was something that, it felt generational, what I want to still be telling him or anyone else I care for in many, many years. And it's that the world, I think, in its current iteration, will take tenderness from you first. I think it will harden you. And if we can stay tender, and if we can stay open, and if we can allow ourselves to lead with love first, there's a lot more likelihood that we are both individually happy and that like we reach collective liberation. I remember picturing him in like, you know, his college dorm. If he decides to do that and having the words, you know, I trust you and stay tender, and it's okay to be broken sometimes. So I was thinking very long term about it when I wrote to him.
DACHER KELTNER: Wow. And then with the project, you get to collaborate with professional artists as well. And what was that like for you? I would find that really intimidating to like, take my sort of half garbled phrases of a lullaby, and suddenly I'm working with a pro. You know? What was it like for you?
ALEXIS CARIELLO: When I'm in a place where my mental health is, you know, not the best, some of those pretenses of how I'm seen or how I'm performing are actually less pronounced. So I was sort of like whatever, you know, this will be fun and it'll be an experience. And, you know, I don't really care too much about anything right now, and it turned out to be so healing, you know, it was on a zoom call, and I had both, you know, a songwriter and a musician, and they had read my journal, and we started by me actually reading my letter, and it happened before my eyes like literal magic. I don't know how else to describe it.
I trust you, you know what to do.
and even if it's dark…
When Nico was probably seven months the lullaby project, sent me an email and said, Hey, how would you feel about us recording your lullaby in studio with professional artists? And I was like, Yes, of course. I want that. So I actually got to attend the rehearsal and the recording, and it was so powerful.
I trust you, you know what to do.
I got to sit in the control room and listen to the artists, and it was so powerful, and it was so beautiful, but the real magic for me was just hearing it sung back to me so many times, like I was the baby, and I had this aha moment that I realized I wrote it to myself that actually I need to hear it every single day of parenting, like I trust you. I trust myself to keep him safe. I trust that I can stay tender throughout all of this. So now, when I sing it, I think I'm telling myself too. I felt so held, which is one of the lyrics in my song.
DACHER KELTNER: That's incredible.
ALEXIS CARIELLO: Yeah.
DACHER KELTNER: Your experience, in some sense, gets right to the heart of the purpose of music, or why we're such a musical species. You know, that it allows us to convey the things that we care about most to people that we love. It allows us to convey it in a way that will stay with them. You know, there's research that finds that listening to lullabies help people with their anxiety and reduce the attachment issues that are associated with high risk pregnancy. So you know, what you're describing is something that science is just starting to figure out. What was it like for you? Alexis, to write these words. Write this journal, write these letters to Nico. See it translate to a song. How did that affect your own anxieties and worries and OCD tendencies?
ALEXIS CARIELLO: Well, for one, it brought ritual back. I'm very into ritual in general. It's really like my probably main anchor for my mental health and. And my connection to the collective. And my husband had said, you know, one of the ways he knew that I was in such a dark place during my pregnancy was that I stopped my rituals. The writing of it felt like ritual, because I do a lot of writing in general to kind of understand the world, you know, personal writing, and then when they recorded it and sent it back to me, I played it every single day, like without fail. It was the first time, you know, I think that I felt like I had a connection. I think that birthing people are put under immense pressure to feel grateful, and I felt a lot of shame that I didn't. And this sort of like, brought me back into this place of I just have to feel what I have to feel in the moment, and I have to connect how I connect in the moment. And I think some of it is also that I didn't feel very connected to Nico as like a baby that I carried. And ultimately, I think that's because I connect a lot more with my identity as a caretaker than as a mother or as a parent. And this lullaby allowed me to think, oh, I want this for everybody I love. I want this for everybody I care about, and Nico is just going to be another person that I care about. And I actually do know how to do that. I don't know how to be a mom. I don't know how to be a parent, and it's going to be new forever, but I do know how to care.
DACHER KELTNER: That's profound. I mean, that's in some sense, the purpose of art and music is to teach us, like caring is just this human tendency. We do it in so many ways. One of the things I remember just deeply and viscerally about singing lullabies to my daughter, Serafina and Natalie, was just how calming they were and how soothing. You know, as an infant listens to lullabies, their heart rate slows down, their pupil dilation decreases. The sweat in their skin is attenuated. They have elevated vagal tone, which is this really nice cardiovascular marker of just being open and calm and connected. And I'm just curious, you know, you come, as you've very boldly described, from a kind of a background of anxiety and even OCD, familiar to me. And here's this possibility that being part of this ritual of creating a lullaby and singing in it and becoming part of your family, may have calmed your family nervous system down a bit, or at least your sons. And I'm just curious about your reflections related to that?
ALEXIS CARIELLO: Oh my gosh, 100% I feel emotional, even being asked that question, because I lay with him at night and he's always like, Mommy, are you gonna lay with me? And I literally can hear the change in his breathing, particularly with this song. So you know, he loves to sing. He actually will sing himself to sleep by himself. But this song, every time if I were to put my hand on his chest, exactly like you said, a slowed heart rate. You know that, like sleep breath, that is the best. And what you said about the family nervous system, I think is so true. You know, we're an organism, and everything is so fast and everything is so hard and challenging, and sometimes you just really need to slow down. And with this song, I have to slow down to sing it.
DACHER KELTNER: Do you guys ever sing the song together?
ALEXIS CARIELLO: Yes, and you know, the first time he sung it with me, I was so shocked. When we sing together, there's just a release of tension, and the toddler years in particular, there's so much tension. But when we're singing together, or when we're sharing this song in particular, we're just like on the same team, and it's really beautiful and valuable, those moments. It's just sweet, you know, brings us back together.
DACHER KELTNER: Alexis Cariello, thank you so much for being on the show and for your wonderful lullaby. Thank you.
ALEXIS CARIELLO: Thanks for having me.
DACHER KELTNER: Up next, Dr Daniel Leviton joins us to break down how listening to and making music influences the way we think and feel.
DR. DANIEL LEVITIN: When people listen to the same music, their brain waves synchronize. They're literally on the same wavelength.
DACHER KELTNER: Stick around.
Welcome back to The Science of Happiness. I'm Dacher Keltner, and today we're talking about something that's been with us for tens of thousands of years. Music, it soothes babies to sleep, brings us together and even changes our brain patterns. But what is it about music that makes it such a profound part of the human experience to help us understand we're joined by neuroscientist, musician and best selling author, Daniel Levitin. His books, This Is Your Brain On Music and The World In Six Songs changed how I feel about music and how I see the world. His new book, I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine explores the curative effects of music. Daniel, welcome to the show.
DR. DANIEL LEVITIN: Thank you.
DACHER KELTNER: You're a performer, and you just performed at Kennedy Center with Renee Fleming. You're a producer of many well known musicians, and then you're a cognitive scientist and a neuroscientist. You've done it all. You've looked at music and felt it from different perspectives. I'd love your thoughts. Daniel, we had a guest on our show who's part of the Carnegie Hall Lullabies Project, where parents write lullabies, and there's a nice science of lullabies now just showing their universal musical structure, and it's so meaningful and calming. And I'm just curious how you would think about lullabies and singing to your child and the calming effects of music as just a universal piece to this puzzle of music?
DR. DANIEL LEVITIN: Looking at contemporary, pre industrial, even pre literate societies, it's universal. All mothers instinctively sing to their infants, and they instinctively sing across cultures, songs that have very similar features. The mother uses a soft voice, not a loud one. She uses small stepwise motion or occasional leaps, but slow tempo, and if there's a leap, it always comes down again. Rock a bye, baby. I went up now. I'm going down on the treetop when the wind blows, right. We call that gap fill. We created a gap by leaping, then we come down, or the Brahms Lullaby and and infants are learning about the structure of melody, but more importantly, they're learning what their mother's voice sounds like, so that in the dark, when they can't see one another, the mother can still soothe the infant.
DACHER KELTNER: I know you've thought about the biological rhythms of music. You've studied rhythm earlier in your career. How early we detect rhythm and tempo. And how do you think about the transmission of feelings between a mother singing and a child? How would we think about that sort of neurophysiologically? What's going on?
DR. DANIEL LEVITIN: When mothers sing to their infants it releases prolactin in both the mother and the infant, which is the same substance released in breast milk. It's a soothing, tranquilizing neurohormone. Now, why that is, we don't know, but it seems as though it evolved as an adaptation to help the mother in the infant bond. When people listen to the same music, their brain waves synchronize. They're literally on the same wavelength.
DACHER KELTNER: Pretty remarkable.
DR. DANIEL LEVITIN: Yeah.
DACHER KELTNER: What's the lesson there? What do you take from that?
DR. DANIEL LEVITIN: I think now music is a playground for the brain to work out stuff. So what's happening when we listen to music is most music has a pulse. We call that the tempo, the beat, whatever you want to call it, and it's moving forward. And if nothing else, your brain is a giant change detector, a pattern detector, whether you know it or not, whether you're a musician or not, your brain's trying to figure out what's going to come next in the music, even not at a conscious level. This happens in the part of the brain called Brodmann area 47 here, along the side, on each hemisphere, it's trying to figure out what's going to happen next. If the composer and the musicians can surprise you, that sets off a neuro chemical chain of reward, the dopaminergic system, the well known reward center, the same thing that is evoked when we eat food while we're hungry or drink while we're thirsty or have sex while we're in the mood for sex. And so we'd known about this reward circuit for years, and it responds to learning. We are a learning species. We all descended from ancestors who got a little dopamine hit when they learned about their environment and when music surprises us. What we learn, in a grand, metaphorical way, is, I thought the world was this way. I thought this path was leading me here, but I ended up over here. I think if we can lower our defenses and allow ourselves to be vulnerable and not try to control our thoughts, but enter the default mode, the daydreaming mode, while we're listening to music. Music can transport us and give us a sense of awe and wonder and show us worlds that we didn't know existed.
DACHER KELTNER: One of the most inspiring developments in this literature, and I know it's at the heart of your new book is people are finally starting to get interested in what seems obvious to a lot of us, which is the stress reduction benefits of music, the calming effects of music. So what's your thinking about the health benefits of music?
DR. DANIEL LEVITIN: Well, you know, it's a funny thing, because going back 20 or 30,000 years, we've used music to treat injuries and illnesses and mental disorders. It was the shamanistic tradition, and of course, with behaviorism in the 50s, it seemed unscientific to look at something as squishy as emotion or as unwieldy as music. And it was neuroimaging that brought it back into the realm of science, and we now have 1000s of papers showing the efficacy of music for treating injury, illness, mental disorders. In clinical trials, music is more effective than valium in an operating room at reducing anxiety, and It's non addictive. It's cheaper, spiraling healthcare costs of valium at the CVS on the corner there near you in Berkeley, $3, in the hospital, same valium, not $3, $750. It is a profit setter for the hospitals. But the music, you know, is more effective. Our lab was the first to show my lab at McGill that the brain produces its own endogenous opioids. When you listen to music that you like, opioids, you know, natural painkillers. We take opiates that led to the opioid crisis, but your brain will produce them if you listen to music you like. I've been working with the NIH and in particular, with Francis Collins Since 2017 we're working with a senator to introduce legislation, a bill that would get Medicare to pay for music therapy and music interventions, starting in September, Massachusetts will provide 12 vouchers for free music therapy, even preventative music therapy, to everyone in Massachusetts and in New Jersey, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Jersey are now reimbursing for music therapy.
DACHER KELTNER: Makes me hopeful in rather complicated times.
DR. DANIEL LEVITIN: I think art has the ability to help us imagine the world different than it is, and through that active imagination, we can actually build a better world.
DACHER KELTNER: On our next episode, we're joined by the most successful woman to ever compete on Jeopardy, Amy Schneider.
Jeopardy: This is Jeopardy. What would you like to wager?
Amy Shneider: 2,000. 5,000...
AMY SCHNEIDER: Of the things that I came out of the Jeopardy experience with was I really was successful at being completely focused just practicing ways to interrupt outside thoughts. And there was such a kind of good feeling about having that intense focus for periods of time, but I haven't been able to do it outside of that context.
DACHER KELTNER: We explore a practice to help you sharpen your mind by connecting with your body. Thanks for joining us on The Science of Happiness. Our associate producers are Emily Brower and Dasha Zerboni. Our sound designer is Jennie Cataldo of Accompany Studios. Shuka Kalantari is our executive producer. I'm your host, Dacher Keltner, have a great day.
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