A researcher explores ‘musical daydreams’ and a song’s power to move us episode artwork

EPISODE · May 5, 2026 · 50 MIN

A researcher explores ‘musical daydreams’ and a song’s power to move us

from St. Louis on the Air

Music has the power to conjure memory and emotion. In her new book, “Transported: The Everyday Magic of Musical Daydreams,” St. Louis native and professor Elizabeth Margulis investigates the source and implications of music’s impact on human cognition. The director of Princeton University’s Music Cognition Lab shares insights from her research, including the way that emotion and memory can trigger a person to “find yourself transported to some memory from your past, often quite vividly, or some fictional scene that you've never really experienced.”

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A researcher explores ‘musical daydreams’ and a song’s power to move us

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This episode was published on May 5, 2026.

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Music has the power to conjure memory and emotion. In her new book, “Transported: The Everyday Magic of Musical Daydreams,” St. Louis native and professor Elizabeth Margulis investigates the source and implications of music’s impact on human...

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