Quote of the Day (Daniel Levitin, on Diverse Users of Music's Power)

“The power of music to evoke emotions is harnessed by advertising executives, filmmakers, military commanders, and mothers. Advertisers use music to make a soft drink, beer, running shoe or car seem more hip than their competitors. Film directors use music to tell us how to feel about scenes that otherwise might be ambiguous, or to augment our feelings at particularly dramatic moments. Think of a typical chase scene in an action film, or the music that might accompany a lone woman climbing a staircase in a dark old mansion: music is being used to manipulate our emotions, and we tend to accept, if not outright enjoy, the power of music to make us experience these different feelings. Mothers throughout the world, and as far back in time as we can imagine, have used soft singing to soothe their babies to sleep, or to distract them from something that has made them cry.” —American-Canadian psychologist, neuroscientist, musician, and record producer Daniel J. Levitin, This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession (2006)

Photo of Daniel Levitin taken at McGill Alumni London Talk Series, Dec. 17, 2015, by Quebec 2015.

Quote of the Day (Daniel Levitin, on the Proliferation of Misinformation)

“Misinformation has been a fixture of human life for thousands of years, and was documented in biblical times and classical Greece. The unique problem we face today is that misinformation has proliferated; it is devilishly entwined on the Internet with real information, making the two difficult to separate. And misinformation is promiscuous — it consorts with people of all social and educational classes and turns up in places you don’t expect it to. Misinformation can take hold and become well known, and suddenly a whole lot of people are believing things that aren't so. “—Daniel J. Levitin, A Field Guide To Lies: Critical Thinking in the Information Age (2016)