So, What happens in our mind when music plays? Not just what we hear—but what we see, what we remember, and what we feel unfolding inside.

Today, we’re diving into a question that seems simple on the surface but opens into something deeper: how does music shape the inner world of the human mind?

Our guide on this journey is Princeton professor Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis, a scholar whose work sits at a fascinating crossroads—where music meets psychology, neuroscience, and imagination. She’s not just asking why we like certain songs or how rhythm works. She’s asking something far more intriguing: when you listen to music, why does your mind start telling stories?

Elizabeth is a leading scholar in the interdisciplinary field of music cognition, serving as professor of music at Princeton University. At the core of her research is a deceptively simple question: what happens in the mind when we listen to music?

Her studies show that when people listen to instrumental music, they often generate vivid mental narratives. While these narratives feel personal, her work demonstrates that listeners frequently produce strikingly similar interpretations—especially when they share cultural backgrounds. This insight challenges the common idea that music is a “universal language,” suggesting instead that musical meaning is shaped by shared cultural experience.

Across cultures and across listeners, music can produce patterns of shared imagination—what she calls a kind of “collective inner storytelling.” But here’s the twist: those shared experiences aren’t universal. They’re shaped by culture, memory, and the environments we grow up in. In other words, music doesn’t just express emotion—it helps construct meaning, and that meaning lives somewhere between the individual and the group.

Even more, there are implications beyond the lab. From understanding Alzheimer’s and dementia to exploring how music creates social bonds—even among strangers—this research points to music as more than art. It’s a kind of cognitive technology, shaping how we remember, imagine, and connect.

Because the next time a song gets stuck in your head, or a melody seems to carry you somewhere else, the real question might not be “why do I like this?” but “what is my mind doing with this sound?”

Let’s find out.

To support this podcast go to Arts Council of Princeton's donation page to make a gift or become a recurring donor!

Ghada Amer was born in Cairo (Egypt) in 1963. In 1974, her parents relocated to France where she began her artistic training ten years later at Villa Arson, Nice, France. She currently lives and works between New York and Paris and has exhibited among others at the Venice Biennale, the Sydney Biennale, the Whitney Biennial, and the Brooklyn Museum.

“I believe that all women should like their bodies and use them as tools of seduction,” Amer stated; and in her well-known erotic embroideries, she at once rejects oppressive laws set in place to govern women’s attitudes toward their bodies and repudiates first-wave feminist theory that the body must be denied to prevent victimization. By depicting explicit sexual acts with the delicacy of needle and thread, their significance assumes a tenderness that simple objectification ignores.

Ghada Amer continuously allows herself to explore the dichotomies of an uneasy world and confronts the language of hostility and finality with unsettled narratives of longing and love.

Ghada Amer’s work addresses first and foremost the ambiguous, transitory nature of the paradox that arises when searching for concrete definitions of east and west, feminine and masculine, art and craft. Through her paintings, sculptures and public garden projects, Amer takes traditional notions of cultural identity, abstraction, and religious fundamentalism and turns them on their heads.

Over the course of her career, Amer has expanded her practice into ceramics, bronze, garden installations, and public art, continuing to explore the tension between beauty and provocation. Her engagement with ceramics has deepened in recent years, including time working at Greenwich House Pottery, a historic center for ceramic arts in New York City. There, she immersed herself in the technical and communal aspects of clay, further exploring the medium’s physical demands and conceptual possibilities. Her ceramic works mark a significant evolution: shifting from the flatness of canvas to the tactile, unstable qualities of clay. In these pieces, she engages with the hierarchy between fine art and craft, using materials historically associated with domestic labor to question systems of value within the art world. The physicality of ceramics—its susceptibility to pressure, collapse, and transformation through fire—mirrors the thematic concerns that have long driven her work, including control, vulnerability, and resistance.

More recently, Amer has also spent time working and engaging with the community at the Arts Council of Princeton in Princeton. This phase reflects an ongoing collaboration with executive Director Adam Welch.

To support this podcast go to Arts Council of Princeton's donation page to make a gift or become a recurring donor.

The first episode of Open Studio features an interview taped at ⁠Soul Selects⁠ studios in Hopewell, NJ., with ⁠Chris Harford⁠.

Chris's roots in the Princeton arts community run deep, going back to the early 1980s when a vibrant mix of local culture, independent music, and community support helped shape a generation of artists. As a student at Princeton High School, he was already performing locally, and by the time he was in college, he was touring with his band Three Colors, playing across the Northeast and opening for acts like The English Beat and Bow Wow Wow. Those early years set the tone for a career defined not just by performance, but by a deep belief in music as a shared, community-driven experience.

Over the decades, Chris has become a central figure in the Princeton - New Hope music scene, performing in countless venues, from Small World Coffee and John & Peter’s to festivals and stages across the region. He’s collaborated with an extraordinary range of musicians, including members of the Henry Rollins Band and Ween, and has built a reputation as a “songwriter’s songwriter,” admired for his originality, independence, and ever-evolving sound. His work has been recognized in publications like Rolling Stone, Billboard, The New York Times, and People Magazine, reflecting a reach that extends far beyond the local scene.

In addition to his music, Harford is also a visual artist, with his paintings and mixed media work exhibited throughout the region. Whether through sound or image, his creative practice is rooted in experimentation, collaboration, and a constant drive to explore.

More than forty years into his career, Chris Harford remains a vital and evolving presence, an artist who has helped shape the cultural fabric of this community while continuing to push his work in new directions.

To support this podcast go to ⁠Arts Council of Princeton⁠ donation page to make a gift or become a recurring donor.