Why does radio hold a special place in our hearts?
Amanda Krause is fascinated by the link between music and wellbeing, and now she’s researching why radio is so important to many older people
Chris Hatzis
Eavesdrop on Experts, a podcast about stories of inspiration and insights. It’s where expert types obsess, confess and profess. I’m Chris Hatzis, let’s eavesdrop on experts now changing the world - one lecture, one experiment, one interview at a time.
Have you noticed something happening to you when you listen to Eavesdrop on Experts? Do you get a bounce in your step every time a new episode appears in your podcasting app?
Well, we hope so - but if our show doesn’t quite do it for you, maybe your favourite band is guaranteed to lift your mood - whether you’re driving in traffic, walking the dog, washing the dishes. If you never gave a moment’s thought to why that is, Amanda Krause is about to surprise you.
Dr Krause is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions and the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, University of Melbourne.
Dr Krause is interested in the social and applied psychology of music with a focus on everyday music interactions. Her current research explores how the daily lives of older individuals can be enhanced through music played on radio, and how radio listening habits relate to their sense of well-being. In fact, there’s a survey that you, or someone you know that’s over 65, can participate in and the links to that survey are in our episode page credits.
Our grizzled radio and podcast veteran Steve Grimwade caught up with Dr Amanda Krause to talk about her work.
Steve Grimwade
Now, important question, imagine you're in the popcorn queue at the circus. You get chatting to the person next to you and they ask, what do you do. What do you say?
Amanda Krause
I study how and why we listen to music in everyday life. So I'm really interested in just our everyday experiences of using our mobile phones to listen to music, turning on the radio, whatever it is, and to think about those behaviours and how it influences our well-being.
Steve Grimwade
Why on earth do we listen to music?
Amanda Krause
That's such a big question. So there's so many different reasons why we listen to music and there's so many benefits to our well-being. A big one is what we call mood regulation. So the idea that we want to either enhance the mood we're in or shift out of the mood we're in, and this could be we're feeling sad, we want to feel happy. It could be we're trying to ready to go out for the evening and motivate ourselves or maybe even if we're exercising, to keep going longer… all these different things.
Steve Grimwade
Important to notice for context, do you play an instrument?
Amanda Krause
I do. I play a few instruments. So I grew up playing the oboe, but because the oboe is sort of the odd instrument out when you start wanting to do more than just the orchestral group, I wanted to play in jazz so I learned alto saxophone to do that and then in high school we all had to be in the marching band, we didn't have a choice. So oboe, not a good reed-going-through-the-mouth instrument, so I started learning percussion and that's something - world percussion is where I'm really keen to just try to get my brain to understand complex rhythms in different ways. So I've done a little bit of that, but not enough to say I'm an expert.
Steve Grimwade
So what was the bridge from making music to wanting to know more about the impact on the mind and body?
Amanda Krause
So for me, there's a lot of great research that talks about music making and especially in terms of well-being but my interest has always been in listening because there's less barriers to listening to music than there are to playing. So you don't need an instrument, you can do that alone with other people all the time and I think there's just so much recorded music that we have so much access to now than ever before in so many different ways. So that's really why I'm focused on the listening.
Steve Grimwade
Now before we talk about how the transistor radio is the world's greatest invention, let's talk about another love of yours or potential love, fine art. You previously conducted research into gallery visitors' responses to an exhibition on love and emotion. What did you find?
Amanda Krause
That's part of a bigger program of research that we're really interested, for our work in the Centre for the History of Emotions, this idea that we have these performances and also works of art that are historical and portray different emotions or different versions of emotions, but re right now, in modern day are the audience trying to understand these.
So this program of research that we're working on is trying to think about what's being communicated? Do we have access to those emotions? Are we understanding them in the same or different ways? So the Love exhibition, which was at the National Gallery of Victoria, was a really great exhibition. It was a partnership between the University of Melbourne and NGV and we put this on. There was over 200 pieces, so it was a massive exhibition and we did a couple different things.
So we had a survey as well as interviewed people who had gone and seen the exhibition and we were really interested in this idea of love as the emotion being portrayed but in that exhibition, it wasn't just romantic love. It was familial love, it was friendship, it was desire, it was loss, it was longing and grief and all of these different things. So we found a couple different really interesting things. One, that our modern-day response, we sort of understand what we're looking at in these artworks not only from the content but also sort of the historical information that was provided to people and the labels and the information on the walls, but also then understanding a personal connection. So trying to relate the content to an experience that you've had personally and then if you've gone to the gallery with somebody else, that conversation with that person you're with or group of people can also help you use more context to understand that.
Steve Grimwade
It's interesting when you think about context and the way the mind is getting in the way of a visceral experience or the way the mind might need to be integrated into your experience of it, a lot of times music I think leapfrogs the mind and goes straight to some other part of the body. Well obviously it is in the mind, but still, it's less conscious in our response.
Amanda Krause
Yeah so this is what I'm super excited about and when I think about this type of research is, of course you can think about the music itself. It's got the rhythm, the melody, the mode, the tempo, all of that, but in addition to that you have what's the extra musical associations.
So it's not just the inherent music, but it's the fact that you have a personal connection. So maybe it's the first song you danced to at your wedding or it's the song that you listened to when you broke up with the first boyfriend or girlfriend that you had. All of these things are outside of the music but so inherently tied to the music that it prompts your memory and can take you instantly back to the time when you heard that.
What's really cool is I love the research that shows basically it's - we have a reminiscence bump. So even in older life, the music that we gravitate towards is whatever the music was that we were listening to when we were late adolescents, early adult. So it's not necessarily the music from that time. It will be, but now that we have these ways of accessing Elvis at the same time as Justin Bieber at the same time of whatever, it's not necessary tied to just what was charting on the radio, but it's what you were exposed to.
So for me, I'm looking forward to when I'm 80 and loving the ska music, because that's in high school what I - and I listen to a lot of jazz and a lot of other things, but I'm just going to think about the fact that like Justin Bieber is going to stay with us. You know Britney Spears is going to come back because we're all going to have this reminiscence bump of when that was popular.
Steve Grimwade
No, no.
Amanda Krause
Other things too.
Steve Grimwade
Recently in one of your lectures in the pub, I should add, you spoke about how music has been associated with therapeutic, medical and curative powers. You also said that there's a growing acceptance that participation in music can benefit people's well-being and health. Is this acceptance borne out in the stats and the science? Is there a direct link?
Amanda Krause
Yes. So what's really cool is we're starting to see this increase in research that's looking at art, music, forms of arts broadly and links to health and well-being. So whereas before, anecdotally we were sort of always on the same page going yes, there's clearly a link here but now we're starting to really build that evidence base and more people are on board with this idea and so we can really actually start now, not just being able to say that very broadly yes, music is linked to health and well-being and it has throughout history just like you said, but now we're really trying to understand those specific relationships.
Is it your participation in the arts that is causing positive well-being or is it that people who have positive well-being are connected in the arts? We're trying to get at these relationships, trying to understand cause and effect, trying to understand is there a certain number of times that you need to do this in order to have a dosage effect or is it better for one type for a certain type of person or at a certain age. We're just trying to get more evidence around this idea to support what we all know but to have that scientific proof.
Steve Grimwade
So it's likely that I'm personally happiest when I'm experiencing live music. What would the science say about that? What's happening to my brain and my body physically and what's happening to me through relationships and society and culture?
Amanda Krause
Yeah, so - well that's a really big question.
Steve Grimwade
Yeah sorry.
Amanda Krause
But what's really cool is there's - the research is really supportive about live music being quite a unique experience. So we have so much recorded music and my colleagues and I have sort of considered why you might have a preference for still listening to CDs or cassettes, physical media, versus why somebody would be now choosing to stream and use Spotify or YouTube or whatever, if you're still holding onto your CD collection.
We asked people about their favourite format and one of them we included was live music. What we see there is this idea that it's a unique experience in the sense that you may have said, okay well this is my favourite band. I know the music and you go along, but you still don't know what's going to happen and you also - whether or not you've attended with a group of people or a friend, you are in this social situation where you have this collective experience.
So it's affecting your mood, it's affecting your body, there's movement, there's dance, there's this whole crowd feeling around that which can be really powerful.
Steve Grimwade
Your current project is exploring older listeners' radio habits and how these may relate to their sense of well-being. Perhaps you could explain that further?
Amanda Krause
Yes, so what I'm really interested here is extending this idea of the link between listening in our everyday lives and well-being. We know that the Australian population is ageing and the amount of people in that older band is rapidly increasing and this is a big concern, how do we deal with this? You know, the associated issues that come along with ageing. So what I'm really interested in is considering the radio, because it's a longstanding familiar medium that we have immediate access to. Oftentimes in remote and regional places it's a still functioning medium where maybe you don't necessarily have cellular reception but the radio will still work. So how can we look at this tool and think about it in terms of how it can benefit our well-being?
Steve Grimwade
How do you define a sense of well-being? Do you also measure people's physical and mental health?
Amanda Krause
Yes so well-being is really broad and has a lot of different areas - mental well-being, physical well-being and on and on and on. For this study we're thinking very much about psychological well-being and what we're really interested in terms of older listeners is in things like loneliness and social isolation and depression.
Because these are very common experiences, not just for older listeners, for all of us across the ages, but these particular issues we know are social issues but also then can lead to other physical health issues. So the idea is, can we understand the relationship between listening? Can we work with radio personnel to sort of better design radio programming? Then can we teach people to have a tool that they can use themselves to regulate their well-being, which hopefully will then have positive knock-on well-being effects.
Steve Grimwade
Do you have any results in yet? Do you have a sense of where it's going and…
Amanda Krause
Yes. So this project has multiple phases. Phase 1, we did interviews. So I talked to people around the Greater Melbourne area just to get a sense of how they use the radio, what their preferences are, what their motivations for listening are and a couple really interesting things came out of that. One, very clearly, people know what they like and what they don't like and that's personal preference for all of us. So it might be, I love talkback or I can't stand it and switch to music. Or it could be - what's also really interesting and I wasn't necessarily anticipating this, but I think this speaks to radio, not just music listening, which is what my background is in research, but people had really strong preferences for certain presenters.
A few people told me, you know so-and-so was on this program, listened to it all the time and then they left. So they either sort of chased the dial to find that person or really then weren't really liking what was being put in place. So people have very strong preferences for what they want to hear.
The other really interesting idea which I want to pull on this thread further is this idea between a radio listening habit that is, I put it on to help me when I wake up or it's on throughout the day or I can't sleep so it's on, where it's just in the background, providing that noise, providing that stimulation, versus some people talk about their relationship with it more as a companion, and that's what I'm really interested in. So some people are saying they're alone at home but they can put on the radio, they can participate in a conversation, there's somebody else present through that listening. That's a really interesting idea, especially when we think about what we're interested in, loneliness and social isolation.
Steve Grimwade
What do you think it is about the human voice and the aural experience? I mean why does listening to someone's voice give you more of an insight into who they are and give you that human connection?
Amanda Krause
I think it is the human connection, that it is the voice. I think that is very much a part of it, especially when you think about okay, they're listening to certain presenters, to have conversations as well as then you're hearing voice in music as well. What's cool about that I think is also you may be listening and hear something really interesting that you can then follow up and so you're getting information or you say oh, you come across somebody else and you tell them what cool story you just heard or the news and things like that. So I think it's not a finite thing, that it just keeps continuing and can keep going for as long as you're listening or you can come - you can put it down, come back to it.
The other really nice thing about the radio in terms of what people have been telling me - and I think this is true for myself as well - is you can have it on when you're doing other things, which is a little bit different. You can have the TV on too, but because it's the radio, you can work on things, you can do your washing up and whatever, but a lot of people have been talking about how they're still able to do their hobby or they're still able to take it with them while they commute or even long haul truckers, where there's this ability to stay in touch with what's going on.
Steve Grimwade
Just like you're with your partner and you're just only half listening.
Amanda Krause
Yeah.
Steve Grimwade
That was a joke, listeners, it's a joke, it's a joke.
Amanda Krause
[Laughs]
Steve Grimwade
So does the type of show have a discreet impact on the well-being that's different from another type of show? Are you finding that?
Amanda Krause
So this is a question I have. So the first phase was the interviews. Right now we have a survey where the survey is online and I'm hoping that people will participate so that I get a wide variety of responses and people can also fill it out by post if they're not wanting to do it online, but that's one of the questions. So in the survey it asks you what type of program you like as well as it asks questions about well-being, so that we can start to look at that and hopefully come up with an answer to that question.
Steve Grimwade
What have you been surprised at most in stage 1?
Amanda Krause
That's an interesting question. This link to the presenters, doesn't surprise me but I guess I wasn't necessarily anticipating how strongly people were speaking about their preferences for content, for stations and for actual people. I think what was really neat is I've actually spoken to some people who have heard me talk about this on the radio and there's that nice connection. I think about how the radio - you don't even necessarily know what this presenter looks like, but you have this relationship with the person that you know their voice, they tell you information, if you call in and you're participating in that, you really do develop a very strong relationship with people that you don't necessarily know in your everyday life except for this really special way of having that relationship.
Steve Grimwade
What do you believe right now you're looking forward to most in stage 2? What are you expecting?
Amanda Krause
I'm looking forward to seeing what the results tell us about well-being in terms of not just the type of programming - that's a really interesting question - but also sort of how people - if people have an awareness of making motivated choices of putting certain things on to shift their mood. I think that's quite an unconscious thing that maybe people are doing, but I'm also really curious to see if that's a conscious choice. Now from some of the people I've interviewed, it is for some people, it is not for other people, but I'm really keen to see on a larger scale if we can really start to understand that.
Steve Grimwade
There seems to be a new study every few years proclaiming the great benefits of radio and a quick Google search this morning turned up two of these for me. However both were sponsored by the radio industry and they were really sort of marketing concerns in my view. How do you ensure that what you're doing is independent?
Amanda Krause
Well I do have to say that this research is funded by the Community Broadcasting Foundation. They do have an interest and social isolation is one of their things that they were interested in and they looked at that in partnership with another researcher in terms of community volunteers, the people who are helping run the radio programs. So there is an interest here from the industry and I hope that's sincere across not just the Community Broadcasting Foundation but across the stations nationally.
They're not dictating what I do, so in that sense this is a rigorous piece of empirical research that I hope will have those implications.
Steve Grimwade
Do you find there's any difference between radio and pod?
Amanda Krause
This is something that people keep asking me about and so right now, this study is really focused on the radio but in linking back to some of the other research I've done where I've been really interested in the technologies that we use, I think podcasting needs to be considered. So maybe I can do that in the future.
Steve Grimwade
It's an interesting idea though because I mean in many ways, if I stuff up as I so often do, my producer Chris, hey, will just rewind me and let me start again. I guess live you're flying by the seat of your pants at all moments and maybe yourself is revealed to a greater extent.
Amanda Krause
That could be and it could be maybe why it's able to create those bonds between people because it's not then as manufactured as maybe something else would be. What I'm really interested in, in terms of thinking about the podcasts, is that ability for it to be on demand. So, so much of what my previous research in terms of the technology for listening to music has shown is that you have a more positive response, and maybe that's in terms of mood, or you like the music more or you pay more attention to it, these positive responses in terms of you the listener being in control. So easiest example is I'm going to respond better to pulling out my phone, putting on whatever I want to hear because we now have that technology at the push of a button, as opposed to walking in the shop and something is being broadcasted through speakers to me.
The other really tied piece to that is because we have these mobile devices, we now can create auditory listening bubbles for ourselves or for other people, but in public places at any time. So this idea of you don't necessarily know what the person next to you on the tram is listening to. It could be a podcast. It could be an audio book. It could be music, it could be nothing, if they just want to look like don't bother me with the etiquette of…
Steve Grimwade
[Laughs] You've seen through me on public transport, damn.
Amanda Krause
I've done it, I've done it. So the podcast is a really interesting idea of making - I mean radio is mobile in the sense that we can use the internet to access it but it's another version of possibly being in control of what you're listening to and being able to pull on your preferences in that way, but it's something that deserves more attention.
Steve Grimwade
Do you think the proliferation of voices and devices and shows and pods and et cetera, that it's just leading towards a confirmation bias in what we choose to listen to? So therefore we'll be in our own hands to mood enhance or to change our own moods rather than actually forming a relationship with someone that's just going to be there from 12:00 until 2:00 every Wednesday.
Amanda Krause
Well and I think that's why I'm really keen to think about radio and not just music at this point. Because I think part of that might be you know that so-and-so is going to be presenting that program at 12:00 and is going to talk about sports or the weather or whatever it is. So it's a continual relationship that you might not get if you just put on your playlist of favourite music. So we're doing another study separate to this one where we're looking - still again about older listeners but in aged care settings, where we know that we really want to have a positive effect and help people's well-being and that's one of the questions we have, is to consider sort of - previous research has started to show that personal playlists can help with symptoms of dementia and things that are very prevalent, but we want to compare what can we learn about playlists in terms of that individual nature of it, but also that human connection through programming that's on the radio and is possible through other mediums.
So we're at the very beginning stages of that, but it's something to look forward to and build towards and think about all of this research collectively and how do we then help people self-regulate but still discover things? That's part of the radio - it's part of streaming where the idea is that you're not just so focused but you can discover and that is, if I go back to the study I was talking about in terms of people's favourite formats, that was something that was listed for the radio, was that you are making a choice of putting a station on or maybe you channel surf and start looking for other things, but you don't necessarily know what you're going to hear and so that serendipitous moment of coming across something you love and haven't heard for a while or learning something new is still possible and I think that's going to be important.
Steve Grimwade
It's interesting that dichotomy between the anchor, which is that same voice coming in your ear and the trust you build in that curator to be able to not playlist and to deliver their expertise and their choice of music or subject matter, but then also be open to I don't know what they're going to play next.
Amanda Krause
Yeah.
Steve Grimwade
I mean that's the beauty of community radio in many ways.
Amanda Krause
I think - yeah, so I think in that case and other research, not just my own, has shown that is that you will be more open, so you start - you'll like the music that your friend will suggest. You'll trust them more than just maybe a random stranger, but if you're building this relationship of listening to a certain presenter, you're going to keep listening because you like what's going on but you'll still be able to learn about new things through that relationship.
Steve Grimwade
So down to the nitty gritty. Who is your radio station or show or broadcaster? Who do you like to spend time with?
Amanda Krause
I figured you might ask me that and I was worried about it because [laughs]…
Steve Grimwade
Don't worry, you love Eavesdrop on Experts, it's fine.
Amanda Krause
There we go, yes.
Steve Grimwade
Reveal it here.
Amanda Krause
Eavesdrops on Experts, yes, definitely. No, what I really like is I've lived a few different places, I've travelled around the world and what's cool is to tap into some of those community radio stations, especially sort of university stations because you get such an eclectic mix of things, but it really helps you start learning about what's going on in your community. So I think that's something that I've really valued, moving to new places, is that it can key you in to what's going on.
Steve Grimwade
Finally look, I've been in radio and pod for I don't know, 15 years or thereabouts. However I've never had a paid gig, so like this is your chance to help me out. What are the pro-tips you can give me so I can build a substantial audience that is going to just want me and no one else?
Amanda Krause
[Laughs] I think you do need to somehow build a relationship with your audience, but that leads me to where this research is going. So right now we have the survey open and I'm hoping lots of people respond, but what I'm going to do then is take the data that we got from the interviews, the data from the survey and then speak with radio personnel and sort of close that loop and think about okay, to ask radio personnel how do they make their decisions, do they consider their listeners' well-being in any way, show them the data of what we're finding in terms of what their preferences are and what the data shows, to think about how do we make more effective programming that will help everybody.
Steve Grimwade
It's possible that in a previous iteration when I played nothing but The Muppets for about three years, I may not have been taking my listeners' considerations into…
Amanda Krause
Yeah, I - there's your pro-tip.
Steve Grimwade
Yeah, thank you. Dr Amanda Krause, thank you so much for joining us today. May your listening habits continue to increase your well-being.
Amanda Krause
Thank you.
Chris Hatzis
Thanks to Dr Amanda Krause, from the Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions at the University of Melbourne. And thanks to our reporter Steve Grimwade.
The survey for Dr Krause’s Radio for Wellbeing research project can be completed online. The link is in the Whooshkaa episode page credits and on the Pursuit website. You can also visit the Community Broadcasting Foundation website for more information on the project. Again, the link is in the credits.
Eavesdrop on Experts - stories of inspiration and insights - was made possible by the University of Melbourne. This episode was recorded on August 3, 2018. You’ll find a full transcript on the Pursuit website. Audio engineering by me, Chris Hatzis. Co-production - Dr Andi Horvath and Silvi Vann-Wall.
Eavesdrop on Experts is licensed under Creative Commons, Copyright 2018, the University of Melbourne.
If you enjoyed this podcast, drop us a review on iTunes, and check out the rest of the Eavesdrop episodes in our archive. I’m Chris Hatzis, producer and editor. Join us again next time for another Eavesdrop on Experts.
Loneliness and isolation can be a very real issue for many older Australians. Dr Amanda Krause’s research is looking at how listening to the radio can help.
Episode recorded: August 3 2018
Interviewer: Steve Grimwade
Producers: Dr Andi Horvath, Chris Hatzis and Silvi Vann-Wall
Audio engineer and editor: Chris Hatzis
The survey for Dr Krause’s Radio for Wellbeing research project can be completed online. You can also visit the Community Broadcasting Foundation website for more information.
Banner image: Getty Images
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