Explore the Superpowers of Music Festivals With Scott Crabtree

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0:59Thank you for joining us for episode 527 of Live Happy Now. As we continue our summer of fun, it's a great time to explore the hidden superpower of music festivals. I'm your host, Paula Phelps, and this week I'm talking with Scott Crabtree, founder and chief happiness officer at Happy Brain Science, a company designed to help others discover well-being through the lens of positive psychology. Scott's also a musician and has studied the profound effect that music has on us. So today, he's here to talk about how the power of music is amplified through music festivals, how festivals can help offset the loneliness epidemic, and why it's so good for us to just get up and dance.

1:40Let's have a listen. Scott, welcome back to Live Happy Now. So happy to be here. Thank you. What a fun conversation. One of my favorite topics, and one of yours, of course, is music. And I'd been reading some research about live music versus recorded music. And of course, this is summertime. We're really trying to talk about like having a great summer of fun. And it's the time for festivals. So before we talk about the importance of being able to enjoy a music festival, I wanted to talk, get some input from you on how live music overall influences our brain chemistry and helps our emotional well-being.

2:15Yeah, such a rich and fascinating topic. So first of all, where I start with this is one of the most amazing things I read in This Is Your Brain on music is that music literally plays your brain. If I could sing you a perfect concert A at 440 hertz, you would have a neuron firing at 440 hertz. And if I sing you a note at 300 hertz, you have a neuron firing at 300 hertz. So music literally plays your brain, which is kind of cool and mind boggling to me. But more important and more on track with the question you asked, music can dramatically affect mood in a number of ways. One of those is neurotransmitters.

2:58So you understand, some of your listeners will already understand that things like dopamine affect our mood. Dopamine is a chemical about wanting and enjoying things to oversimplify a complex neurotransmitter. But part of why music is so rewarding for us is that it can fuel our brains with dopamine. So we get a surge in dopamine when we expect something and then when we get it. If we expect something until we get it, there's a drop in dopamine that results in the wanting, so to speak. So part of why we love music so much may be expectations getting fulfilled, right? So if we're listening to music that is going, we know where the beat is, and every single time it comes, we get a little release of dopamine in our brains.

3:53So that experience of having expectations met and then expectations challenged and surprised is cool for our brain and gets things like dopamine going in our brain. Part of our well-being is feeling connected, especially to other people. We're wired for it. From the vast majority of human history, our survival has depended on being connected to other people. Your survival odds go way up in a group. You can alert each other to dangers. You can build a shelter together. You can share extra food you have. So we survive much better in groups. And so we are wired to belong to a group. It is part of our survival, so much so that social exclusion literally hurts.

4:46This is one of the craziest things I've learned in about 15 years of studying related science, is that if someone is socially rejected, it's literally painful to the point where taking a Tylenol makes you feel better. Oh my gosh. Yeah, it's crazy. Tylenol actually reduces the pain because it is pain. Because just as your body getting injured is a survival threat, you getting excluded from a group is a survival threat. So especially with live festivals, but even with recorded music, you can feel less alone and more connected. So when we put that music experience, we take that and we put it into a festival environment.

5:32now we've amplified everything we've amplified the number of people that there are we've amplified the number of experiences at a typical live music experience you're going to see one band and you're going to have a specific experience and here you've just exponentially expanded it so what does that do when we expand our sense of community when we expand our sense of belonging because there is a sense of belonging almost immediately when you walk through that gate so how does that affect our mental health? It's so powerful. I mean, not only mental health, but even physical health, Paula. So St.

6:08Charles Health System here in Oregon has hired me to put together a session called Building Belonging, the Science of Connecting in a Lonely World. And I start with this. I promise this gets back to your question, but I start with this. I tell audiences, I want you to imagine three fictitious people who are otherwise the same except for the factors I mentioned. And I want you to tell me who has the biggest health risks in the year ahead. Person one is lonely. Person two is obese. Or person three drinks five alcoholic drinks a day. Who do you think has the biggest health risks in the year ahead?

6:42It's the lonely person. That's how serious an issue being alone is. Or I should say feeling lonely because being alone and feeling lonely are two different things. and we can be in a crowd and feel lonely because we're not feeling connected to anyone. But as you said, the connection at a music festival happens the moment you walk into the gate or even before you walk into the gate, right? So I used to go to a lot of Grateful Dead concerts. I named my daughter Althea, a group of Grateful Dead fans. But in that kind of concert in particular, but a lot of concerts, you start feeling the vibe in the community in the parking lot, right?

7:23Everyone's dressed similarly. They're playing the music of the band you love. You're connecting. You're picking up good vibrations to honor the late great beach boy who just died. So that community feeling is so strong and it's so essential to our well-being. When we feel lonely, our body goes into risk management mode. Things like inflammation go up, blood pressure go up, because your body's on alert. Your skin temperature drops when you feel lonely because your body is in survival mode and it's sucking resources into your core to preserve the core because it preserves you're at threat. So all these crazy things go on when we feel lonely and so many wonderful things go on when we feel connected.

8:12So as you said, you can get that strong feeling of connection by sharing a love for a genre of music or a band. Festivals, as you said, are even amplifiers for it. But that's really what it's all about in my mind is shared experience, sense of community. It dramatically impacts our well-being. And keeping in mind that I am not a mental health professional, I would say even our mental health. One thing I'd love to dig into with you is that usually with Live Happy Now, we're talking about eudaimonic happiness. And so let's talk, let's talk about the two types of happiness, because we're talking about hedonic happiness here.

8:54So talk, talk to me about the two types of happiness. And then let's get into why it's okay to let loose a little bit and pursue this hedonic happiness through the summer. Absolutely. So the research is clear. As you said, there are two types of happiness, hedonic and eudaimonic, which is a fancy Greek word that gets it more meaningful sense of happiness. So the best short way I've heard this described was at a happiness conference where someone said hedonic happiness is eating an ice cream cone. Eudaimonic happiness is buying an ice cream cone for somebody else. I love that description of it.

9:32Isn't that great? I wish I could remember their name and give them credit, but it's a great description, right? So I would actually argue that you get both at a music festival and certainly the hedonic leads. It's let's party, let's go hang out and dance in the sun, let's listen to music we love. It is hedonism at its best. And I want to make crystal clear there is nothing wrong with hedonism. Now, hedonism, that hedonic pleasure, it tends to be short-lived. And without some of the more meaningful eudaimonic happiness, you can get on what experts call a hedonic treadmill, where it's like, I have to keep buying things or keep eating ice cream cones or keep drinking or doing drugs to stay happy because the effects of the hedonic happiness are fairly short term.

10:27But happiness, real lasting happiness comes from both hedonic and eudaimonic happiness. So there's nothing wrong with some hedonic happiness. It's good for positive emotion. And you can get a lot of it at a music festival, right? Song after song, band after band, dance after dance, crowd after crowd, under the sun. That's a lot of hedonic happiness to be had there. But there's also, I would argue, some eudaimonic happiness. At a number of concerts, and this certainly varies from concert to concert and festival to festival, but a lot of festivals and concerts that I go to, they're talking about bigger causes.

11:08They have booths set up in the entryway from nonprofits they support. The musicians might be talking from the stage about supporting good causes or saying things like, let's all be good to each other. Let's all be good to each other is eudaimonic happiness. And part of what you get at a festival is, again, a good vibration back to Brian Wilson. Good vibes, right? Everyone here is going to be good to each other. We're all here together. We're all here to have a good time. A huge mood boost comes from positive interactions with other people, not just close friends, but strangers. And I've had some of the kindest, best interactions with strangers at music festivals.

11:55We'll be right back with more of Live Happy Now. We're already helping you wrap up your weekend with a smile, so why not let us start your Monday with an encouraging boost too. Wake Up Happy is the newest addition to our mission to make every day happier, and it's a Monday morning lift you don't want to miss. When you sign up, we'll send you one quick, uplifting text every Monday morning to kick those beginning of the week blues to the curb and help you rise and shine a little easier. Think of it as the best wake-up call you'll get all week, delivered right when you need it the most. Sign up, sleep well, and let us help you start your week with a smile.

12:34To get your weekly wake-up happy text, visit livehappy.com and sign up for our Sunday Sillies newsletter. You'll get the option to receive a free wake-up happy text every Monday. And if you're already getting Sunday Sillies, you'll see a prompt asking if you'd like to opt in. So sign up and let us give your Monday mornings a makeover. The other days we'll be so jealous.

13:00And now let's hear more from Scott Crabtree. You know, I know people who have made lasting friendships. We have Bonnaroo right outside of Nashville. And I have friends who made friends at Bonnaroo like five, six years ago, I want to say. And now every year they meet back up at Bonnaroo. And, you know, this lasting friendship that came about just because of this shared love of music. And that's another really cool thing where you can just, you really can build bonds, especially at a time when we do feel lonely. We do feel isolated from people and there's so much discontent going on. It is so wonderful to be able to find someone that that's our common ground.

13:41And really nothing else matters at that point. It's just like we're sharing this experience and the joy of it and kind of the rest of the world melts away. Yes, Paula. And those lasting friendships are awesome. Some of those are wonderful, absolutely huge for happiness and well-being, as you know. But also, I want to point out that acquaintances can be important too. So the belonging research indicates we need both. And actually, there are some advantages that acquaintances have that friends don't. For example, you're more likely to find your next job candidate or your next job through an acquaintance than a friend, because your friends tend to know the people that you know.

14:25But if you meet an acquaintance at Bonnaroo or another music festival, and you don't become deep friends, but you're an acquaintance, you recognize them on the streets of Nashville, you meet up at Bonnaroo, etc., you're more likely to find someone like a job candidate through an acquaintance than a friend. So both levels of connection can be valuable in their own way. And music festivals can be great for catalyzing both of those. That's really, yeah, that's an interesting way to look at it because I hadn't really thought about that. And, you know, another thing, of course, about festivals is that we're not standing still.

14:59We are. Not if you're doing it right. We're going to dance. And let's talk about that. How does that movement with the music impact our mood, impact our stress levels, let us kind of get rid of some of the burdens that we're carrying right now? Oh, so much, right? You know this, but the stress response in our bodies is preparing us for physical action, right? The sweaty palms are so we can get a better grip on a stick or a rock. The quick breathing is to oxygenate our muscles so we're ready to run or fight. As you mentioned, it's a very stressful time for a lot of people. I'm sorry, and I don't want to sugarcoat any of this.

15:40It's a really hard time for a lot of people. There's a lot of prolonged stress. which is not what the stress response was designed for. The stress response was designed to keep you alive when a moose charges you in Alaska, as happened to me a couple of years ago. Something like that, right? So it's a short-term, get stressed, get energized, do something with all that stress energy, and then go back to normal. Well, for far too many of us, the stress is too long-lasting. And the other part of it, going back to your question, we don't do anything with that stress energy. So if stress is preparing us for physical action, let's take some physical action to feel better.

16:21Exercise, and it doesn't have to be a marathon, it can be a quick dance to a three-minute song or whatever, physical activity not only is a great way to reduce stress and cope with stress effectively according to the science, but it also boosts cognition. People who get exercise get higher grades. People who walk before a test score higher on the test. Again, keeping in mind that I'm not your mental health provider, I repeat that because I call myself chief happiness officer of happy brain science. So let me be clear, I'm not licensed nor qualified to diagnose or treat any sort of mental illness.

16:55But the evidence is that exercise is as effective as antidepressants in treating moderate depression in the long run. As if that weren't enough reasons to get up and dance at your next festival or at least to walk around, there's one more reason at least that I can think of this moment, and that is memory. So the research suggests that bodies in motion have brains that produce more BDNF, brain-derived neurotropic factor, which long nerdy scientific story short, you can think of as learning aid. So we remember music festivals vividly years later. Why? In part because we were on our feet and dancing or walking around.

17:36And that movement helps us make memories. The movement helps us make memories. The uniqueness helps us make memories. So the research on memory is if two memories are very similar, they get combined in the brain. So if we're not careful, if we get up, do the same drive to the same office, sit at the same desk and do similar work there every day, and then drive home the same road, Every single day of work becomes, I went to work and did some work. There's no differentiation in those memories. But Bonnaroo is different than Sisters Folk Festival that I'll be going to later this year here in Sisters Oregon.

18:12Or you name it. There's thousands of these music festivals now because we love them and we keep wanting to go to them. And they're so awesome. Everyone you go to is different. It has a different vibe, a different lineup. It's in a different place. So you make a unique memory. and that memory can continue to provide happiness and well-being years after it happened. That's true because when I was preparing for this and I think of, I've been to, let's say a few festivals in my day and it did, it just brought back so many memories of the different ones and the time and just, you can't help but smile when you think about that.

18:48It made me think of friends that I haven't seen in years and the fun that we had going to these shows and and the different things that we did. And so it really does, that memory component, also when you hear a song that you saw performed live, then it has a whole different meaning and it strikes you. It just lands differently for you. And again, it brings a smile because that is connected with such a great memory. Yes, and it connects to so much in our brains. So I don't know if you've seen the wonderful documentary Alive Inside. It starts with a guy who has to be at least 90 years old. I think his name is Henry.

19:27And he is sitting in a wheelchair slumped over in a nursing home. And a clearly caring nurse is saying, Henry, hey, Henry. And all she's getting back is, eh, eh. She's got a nonverbal response, his head slouched over, shoulders slouched over. Basically unresponsive. All but unresponsive. she takes a pair of headphones and puts music in his ears from when he was 20 years old that he loved and he immediately picks up his head and his eyes open wider and he starts bobbing his head to the music and in under five minutes the conversation goes henry yeah who am i henry you're rebecca you're my nurse okay great where are we henry and they have an ongoing conversation he almost literally comes back alive because of the music.

20:22And this documentary Alive Inside talks about how music is such a strong connection to memories, to rhythm, to emotions, to well-being. It can trigger all kinds of brain activity for us. And it is so good for us. But a lot of people, when they hit a certain age, they think, well, I'm too old to go do that. I've heard people who are my age tell me that they are too old to go out and do such things. But then on the other hand, we had a neighbor at our first apartment in Nashville, who he was early 70s. And he and his wife, like, I couldn't believe it. They're like, yeah, we got the whole weekend pass for Bonnaroo.

21:06And they're going out there. It's like, you know, there's like one tree out there. And it's really hot, right? I was concerned for him. But, you know, he and that's what lit them up. It's like, that's why they moved to Nashville when they retired. And they did not see themselves as that being out of their reach. They're just like, we finally have the time to go do these things. Yeah, wonderful. Yeah, I love the bumper sticker. It's been a while since I've seen it. But there's a bumper sticker that if I recall says, you didn't stop going to live music because you got old. You got old because you stopped going to live music.

21:41I like it. I like it. I like that too. There's actually some interesting research around this. So the research indicates that positive emotional experiences are especially intense when they are new, but that is more true for younger people than older people. So younger people will get an especially big boost from something new and different. I've never been to this festival before. I've never seen this band before. That's going to be an especially awesome experience for them. Seniors tend to get less of a boost from new experiences and more of a boost from familiar experiences. So it might be meeting an old friend for a delicious coffee at their favorite coffee shop, and they've done this dozens of times.

22:32but for an older person, they can get a really significant boost in happiness and well-being from that. Now, anytime I'm talking about sciences, I'm talking about averages, right? And whoever's listening, you're not an average. You're a unique person. You're 86 billion neurons are wired differently than anyone else's in the universe. So don't listen to what science produces in the sense that they produce averages. Do what's right for you. And for some, it's going to be going to festivals until their 70s, 80s, or even 90s. I hope to be one of those people. And I think festivals can be awesome for any age.

23:11And without going into all the nerdy detail, there's more research that suggests intergenerational experiences are extra meaningful and good for us. So I'm all about seniors going to music festivals. Yes, please. I hope to do it myself. And it may be that part of why we see more younger than older people at most festivals is that difference of, I want new experiences. I found those really awesome. And I, older person, want to do this thing that I've done many times before. Again, festival to festival, but certainly it can be a lifelong experience of joy and happiness and even meaning. So what if someone's been sitting on the sidelines?

23:52They're like, I used to listen to music. I really enjoyed doing that. I haven't done it for a while. What's a good way to get back out there and reignite that and fire their brains up and experience some of the many benefits of getting out there and experiencing this live music environment? Yeah. Well, just do it. I hate to be quoting it. Okay, Nike. Now we're going to get sued by Nike. Great. Yeah. No, no, no. We'll give them credit here. But, you know, I think about lowering activation energy. And what I mean by that is often the hardest part for someone is to get started on something, right?

24:31I don't know how to, I don't know, how am I going to get there? Pick something nearby, pick something easy to get to, get a ride with a friend, go with other people, et cetera. Make it easier for yourself and then you'll do it. The other thing that really comes to mind for me is a wonderful Harvard Business Review article that you might not think relates by title, but I promise I'm going to make a connection here. The title of the article is How to Stay Stuck in the Wrong Career. And this Spanish academic, last name Ibarra, says, when we want to make a big change in our careers, what we typically try to do is come up with the perfect plan and then execute that plan.

25:13And that rarely works because we usually don't have enough information about the new career to come up with the perfect plan. So the author's advice is instead of trying to make a perfect plan, test and learn. Iterate. If you think you want to become a police officer, for example, what's one step you can do that will take you in that direction and give you more information? That might be in the case of somebody who wants to switch careers and become a police officer, it might be watching a documentary or something like that. So why am I bringing all this up? Because I think we can get stuck because we're trying to come up with the perfect plan or waiting for the perfect opportunity.

25:58I'm a fan of the phrase progress, not perfection. And I love this test and learn thinking. So instead of, okay, it's been 25 years since I've been to a festival. I'm somewhat introverted. I'm sort of scared. I better come up with the perfect plan here. What's the perfect festival for me to go to? What's the perfect weather? I got to wait for it to be 72 with a light breeze and within 10 miles of my house. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. Just do something. Go to an open mic in your town. Go to a concert. Go to an outdoor festival. Call a friend and make a plan. Just experiment. The worst case scenario is the experiment doesn't go well and you decide, yeah, you know what?

26:39there's a reason I stopped going to music festivals. But much more likely, you'll discover that testing and learning is really fun and gives you new information that helps you take another iteration. I want to quickly extend one thing I mentioned there. I mentioned introverts. And introverts listening to this might be like, ooh, festivals, so many people. I get it. I get it. I'm actually a bit more ambiverted than I might appear on the Live Happy podcast. But I deeply understand and respect introverts. I'm partially introverted. I'm married to an introvert. For anyone who doesn't understand, Susan Cain's book, Quiet is a wonderful testament to the power of introverts.