The Last Show with David Cooper
Jesse Rogerson: Betelgeuse Ain't Alone - January 7, 2026
08 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
For those who know that questioning everything includes questioning this show's existence. The Last Show with David Cooper. As we age, I think a lot of us worry about our memory, but there is a trick to make your memory improve as you age. All you got to do is listen to music after something happens.
I'm sure it's more complicated than that, but hey, we're going to discuss this new scientific discovery research paper with Jesse Rogerson on science news. Jesse is a astrophysicist at York University. Jesse, what a pleasure it is having you. So great to have you back. I'm so happy to be back, David. Thanks for having me. What a mensch, he said.
Okay, this one, I mean, it does involve Alzheimer's patients. So maybe it's like, I can't just listen to, I don't know, Taylor Swift's newest album and all of a sudden remember everything that happened in my life. Maybe it's not as simple as that, but it's pretty cool research.
Chapter 2: How can listening to music improve memory retention?
You know what though, actually, in this study, so the headline of the study is that you can use music to reinforce knowledge that you just got. And they did it for both like healthy older adults and adults that are diagnosed with mild Alzheimer's. So it's not just Alzheimer's, patients. It also works with healthy older adults. And the way they did this, so they had 186 participants
93 were like the healthy older adults and 93 were diagnosed with Alzheimer's. And then they broke those two groups into three categories to listen to different types of music. So what they would do first is they would show them a series of images. These images had a variety of emotional tones, some happy images, some sad images, some neutral images. And they were
basically committing them to memory. They were working with them. They were learning these images. And then immediately after that, they listened to some music. And that music also came in different flavors. Some of the people listened to really happy, like jaunty music. And some people listened to very chill, relaxing music. Down tempo. Down tempo, yes. I love that.
And then the third group listened to white noise, which I think is a weird choice. So they were meant to be like a control. So you have this... Once you've done this music intervention, they then ran them through memory tests. They said, OK, how many of these do you remember? And how many happy ones do you remember? How many sad ones do you remember?
Chapter 3: What role does music play in memory reinforcement?
And then they also ran them through a test where they put in images that were not there before and got them to find the one that stands out. Which one's the one that wasn't there before or which one is the few that weren't there before? And they found some really, really interesting stuff.
They found that if you listen to music that is emotionally arousing, so happy, jaunty music, this actually makes your memory better. It makes you more able, this is for healthy adults, more able to recall the images and more able to find the outliers. So that was really good.
And what they found also is that if you listen to relaxing music, relaxing music actually makes you repress the negative memories. All the ones with the negative emotions, if you were listening to relaxing music right after, you were less able to recall negative emotions. You're a professor at a university. What would you recommend to students while they're trying to cram before an exam?
Like just cram, read all the materials, go through all the bullet points, and then listen to what? Oh my gosh, well, okay. Yes, listen to music seems like the right recommendation. Listen to music that makes you happy is the right recommendation, but really cramming is the worst thing to do. So my premise was off. The premise is off.
Listen, this is something that professors don't teach you in university. D is for degree, my friend. D is for degree. I think depending on where you're going, David, depending on what you're trying to do, yes, that could be true. But I think the role here is, the role of the music here, is it attaches this emotional tag to the memory. And emotions are coded much harder in the memory.
So this is good for healthy adults. It's good for intervention for Alzheimer's people as well. But it's also good for PTSD people. So someone who has some severe PTSD, if they spend a lot of time listening to relaxing music, hopefully that might repress some of those negative memories. Now, there's a lot of work that still needs to be done, but there's some really interesting stuff found.
I have a pretty bad memory and I don't remember much of my childhood, but I remember one year after summer camp, I was driving with my dad and the Neil Young song, Old Man, was on the radio. And this is like a very moving song about reflecting on life's journey, you know, with the wisdom of age. It's from the perspective of like a son and an old father, whatever.
And I said to my dad, the summer went by really quick. And my father just said to me, you know, life really goes by really quick. So, you know, pay attention or something. And it was just an offhand thing he said to me. And it's so burned into my memory, probably because that song was playing. And now when I reflect on life's journey, that song and that conversation with my dad comes up.
I know I'm kind of derailing, but anecdotally, when I associate music with memories, they become more powerful. Yeah, I think. And what's what you're really doing is you're associating emotions with memories. Right. And that's where because that's when you're activating the amygdala in your brain, which is like is it like drives that memory down deep into the core.
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