Elizabeth Margulis

Elizabeth Margulis -- the Director of the Music Cognition Lab at the University of Arkansas and the author of On Repeat: How Music Plays The Mind -- explains why repetition and music ...

On the show yesterday, author Jennifer Egan talked about a character in her novel A Visit From the Goon Squad who is obsessed with pauses in rock and pop songs. Today, we’ll revisit the topic with Sophie Harris, music writer at Time Out New York, and Elizabeth Margulis, associate professor and director of the Music Cognition Lab at the University of Arkansas.

The pause can be the most devastating effect in music. Today, we hear about why well-placed silence can infuse music with humor, eroticism, or Zen-like anticipation. We hear why silence is golden. Joining us is Jan Swafford, a writer and composer who teaches at Tufts University; Loren Kajikawa, an ethnomusicologist ...