All right,

Oh,

Hey ya,

let's see ya

back to

come

a Hi there's it so hot down here, hotter than a crucible.

It ain't right and it ain't natural.

Lover, you were gone so long.

Lover I was long.

Hi there. I'm Jason Gatz, and you're listening to Think Again, a Big Think

podcast.

Among other things, music can be medicine.

Like a vaccine, it sometimes works by giving your body a little taste of the disease.

Other times, of course, you just want to dance and James Brown might be just what you need,

but the medicine songs I'm talking about are the ones that break your heart open, no matter

how many times you hear them.

And you want them to because that's what it feels like to be alive.

Nobody knows this better than my guest today, singer-songwriter

Aeneas Mitchell. Like the centuries of blues and folk songs that echo through it, transubstantiated

by her voice and guitar into something almost too beautiful to bear, her music is powerful medicine.

Anais wrote all the songs, lyrics, and the book of the new Broadway musical Hades Town, directed by Rachel Chavkin.

...