This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedanta. The turn of the year is a time when we set

the old aside and welcome the new into our lives. And so today we bring you a tale of

loss and renewal from December 2015. It appeals to me for two reasons. The first is, it's

a universal story. I was really devastated to lose something that I was completely in

love with and so passionate about and that had really constituted such a large part of

my life and my identity. You know, I was first and foremost a violinist. The second reason

is that this is also about social science research and its applications in the real world.

What we found was a 9% increase in college enrollment rates. As a result of eight text

messages. I mean, that is really profound. Eight text messages is what I send my best friend

on any given day. This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedanta. Today we're telling you

a story that begins in the attic of a home in Connecticut and ends at the White House.

And on our theme of loss and reinvention, we'll bring you a poem I came across from Elizabeth

Bishop, read by musician Amy Mann. Then practice losing farther, losing faster, places

and names and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

My grandmother was an Indian classical violinist and so my mom had her old violin in our attic

for many years. This is Maya Shankar, no relation. Each of my three older siblings had rejected

the violin saying that it wasn't cool enough. And my mom finally gave me the instrument.

And I was immediately taken kind of by the tactile sensation of the instrument. I mean,

the wood and the bow. I just loved the feeling of playing the violin. Even as a child,

Maya immediately loved everything about the violin. The way it looked, the way it felt,

the way it sounded. Maya's mother didn't know much about Western classical music, but

she signed up her daughter for lessons using the Suzuki method. The focus was on playing

...