Musical Hallucinations Gone Wild

Robert and Joe return with a third installment of Grimoire of Horror, in which they’ll each present a horror short story of note and discuss its connections to science and culture at large. In this volume, they discuss Jorge Luis Borges’ "There Are More Things" and Ursula K. Le G ... Show More

In this episode of STBYM’s The Artifact, Robert discusses “The Devil’s Country,” the fabulous haunted tiled-wall mosaic room in Clive Barker’s 2001 novel “Coldheart Canyon.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. 

In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss the Six Labors of Theseus through the modern lens of slasher movies.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. 

In the same way that optical illusions can trick our eyes, auditory illusions can trick our ears. This raises a serious question: what is hearing, and how much of it is actually made up by our brains? In this story from the Unexplainable podcast, we explore how our brains create ... Show More

Claudia Hammond finds out how neuroscientists are understanding musical hallucinations by looking at the brains of those who experience them. Tim Griffiths and Vicky Williamson talk about their research into musical imagery and what it reveals about the workings of the brain and ... Show More

Have you ever been convinced you heard a voice -- shout, a whisper, someone speaking directly to you -- only to turn around and realize no one was there? This experience is more common than we might comfortably imagine. For millennia, people who heard voices in their heads were c ... Show More

Have you ever had a song continue to loop in your brain no matter how hard you tried to shake it? These “earworms” are more than just an annoyance—they’re a phenomenon scientists have studied for years. This episode dives into what makes certain melodies stick, why some tunes are ... Show More

<p>A listener relates the strange story of a name that came to him during an intense hallucination. Listeners ask whether anyone else has felt they've predicted the future via their dreams. A caller relates several funny (and occasionally dangerous) stories of real-life spycraft. ... Show More

We love listening to music at a ridiculous level of detail. But the other day we heard a podcast that made us fundamentally question the accuracy and reliability of our own listening skills. In it they played a familiar melody, “Yankee Doodle,” in such a way that we couldn’t reco ... Show More

Sights and sounds can blind our judgement if they’re under the control of sinister powers. Does a mask hide fangs? Can forces embed dangerous visions in our mind? Bright spotlights can hide many things behind them. Leaving you delirious and wondering if it’s all a real threat or ... Show More

In the same way optical illusions trick our eyes, audio illusions can trick our ears. This raises a fundamental question: What is hearing, and how much of it is made up by our brains? This is the first episode of our new six-part series, Making Sense. You can find more of Diana D ... Show More

<p>A whirlwind of questions brings us to an odd conclusion: could reality be an illusion created by a quantum fluctuation of a brain?<br/><br/>For ad-free episodes and other exclusives, join us for $3 a month on Patreon: https://patreon.com/whythisuniverse</p><p><a rel="payment" ... Show More