It's Monday, April 15th, 2019, and you're listening to Inquiring Minds. I'm Indravis Gontas.

And I'm Kishar Hari. Each week, we bring you a new, in-depth exploration of the space where science, politics, and society collide.

We endeavor. We endeavor to find out what's true, what's left to discover, and why it all matters.

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You can't touch music. It exists only at the moment it is being apprehended, and yet it can profoundly

alter how we view the world in our place in it. I wish I had the brilliance to have written that

statement, but it's a quote from David Byrne in his book, How Music Works. And

it sets forth this incredible vision for what music is. And music, that is a passion of this

week's guest who happens to be our own Andrey Viscontas.

Wow, it definitely feels weird to be on the other side of the microphone, so to speak. Yeah. Why did you start your book, and we're going to get into the details in the interview,

with that quote. Like, what did that quote encapsulate for you? Yeah. So Burns' book,

How Music Works, was really influential for me.

You know, for a long time, I really kept my scientific and musical lives very separate. I mean,

for like, you know, almost two decades. And, you know, people who knew me as a scientist really

didn't know me as a musician and vice versa. And part of that was because I worried that if I

took too much of a scientific lens to my life as a

performer, that it would kind of steal away the magic. And, you know, I've read the Richard

Feynman quote about how science just enhances the beauty of the flower, you know, by looking at it,

by adding all these extra layers. But there was just a part of me that kind of felt like,

...