This is Radio Lab. I'm Robert Krelwich. I'm Chad Aboomrod. And this hour I'm going to curse you,

Jad. I'm going to ask you to just simply do this following thing. You know that song that we both

hate. Which one? Um, bum bum bum bum. God, it's like the moment you start that.

Keep going. Can you sing it? There are some songs that I can stick into your head and they just won't leave.

There's somebody, poor Suzanne, who got this song somehow stuck in her head.

And then there's songs that just won't go away because you didn't even invite them and they

stay.

This is an hour on the music in our heads. Where does the songs come from? Why do they stay? A whole hour without Suzanne Vega. Thankfully. On Radio Lab. Let me ask you a question there to get us started here. When a song gets stuck in your head, do you have one in there right now by any chance? Oliver, the Broadway Show tune. Of course. What does it sound like when it's in there? What does it sound like? Yeah. Oh. No, but just think, before you answer, just think, what does it really sound like? Describe it musically. Um, well, it does, it, well, it's funny that you mentioned this. It doesn't actually, I don't hear any musicians. Like, is it loud? No, it's nothing. It's not loud. Does it have like a location? No. Tambor? No, it just has a melody. A vague, foggy. Like a shadowy melody, right? Yes, exactly. Okay, well, so that's our starting point. You know, most of us get a song in our head, it's kind of like what you described. Vague. But there are people who, when they get song stuck in their head, it's a whole different experience. It is not vague. In fact, they wish it were vague. They wish it were a shadow. And you'll know what I mean in a second. Let me introduce you to someone. Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb. Always has songs running through his head. Everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go. He's plagued by them, actually. And he spoke with our producer Lulu Miller. And so that was going through your head just now? That's right. Mary had a little over and over again.

You know, let me have you just introduce yourself really quickly.

Oh, my name is Leo Rangel, and I'm not young.

I just had my 94th birthday.

I've been in L.A. since I was in the war, World War II.

Leo's a psychoanalyst.

Oh, yeah. I'm still in practice. So he finds everything that's been going on in his own head, sort of intriguing, like from a professional standpoint. I'm trying to think, what the hell am I doing? Anyway, this whole thing started for him about 12 years ago. He just had major heart surgery, and he wakes up in his hospital bed.

Oh, I wake up in the ICU, and almost as soon as I'm conscious, outside my hospital window,

I hear music, and it was distant, it sounded funereal, like hymns.

I hear these songs, I look out the window, I think, Jesus, a rabbi is out there.

I say to my kids, I casually say, hey, there's a rabbi out there singing. They said, what do you

mean? So I said, there must be a rabbi school, and he must be teaching young

people how to be rabbis, and the kids looked at each other. Because they weren't hearing anything.

But at that moment, that didn't matter to Leo, because the music was so loud and vivid to him,

so totally coming through that window window that I dismissed them as,

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