Osama bin Laden and the B-52s

A clue to why you listen to the music you do.

"This is WDOG, Big Dog Radio, blastin' out golden oldies 24 hours a day. We've got Osama on the request line callin' in from his digs in Afghanistan.

What can I spin for ya', Osama?"

"I would very much like to hear 'Rock Lobster' by the B-52's."

"You got it Osama-lama-ding-dong! Wooff! What's your favorite radio station?"

"It is, of course, the Big Dog, W-D-O-G. Woof, and death to America."

Man, you think you know a guy! I woulda' guessed Osama Bin Laden's favorite song would have been, I don't know, something a little more Jihad-esque -- not Rock Lobster by the B-52's, but apparently his musical tastes leaned towards Western artists.

Of course, that appeared to be his musical preference back in 1996 when he was living with Kola Boof, his Sudanese mistress. Still, I guess I would have thought he'd be requesting something by R. Kelly or even Coolio -- artists that were hot and hip back then -- rather than the B-52's.

Call me cynical, but Osama just doesn't seem like a guy who was a sucker for whimsy.

But according to an interview with Kola Boof, Rock Lobster really was his favorite song. (His other passions allegedly included reruns of the TV show, The Wonder Years, and watching Boof "dance like a Caucasoid girl.")

As strange as his music choice (and television viewing choice) might sound, it makes perfect sense to neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky. If you asked him, he'd probably think Osama's choice of music wasn’t entirely unpredictable.

Sapolsky, as explained on a story several years ago on National Public Radio, started wondering about music and the brain when he hired a young assistant. Sapolsky found his assistant to be extremely annoying. Oh, the assistant did his work just fine, but it was the music he played.

One day he'd be tapping his pencil to Sonic Youth, and the next day he'd be listening to glorious Ludwig Van. If only the pendulum of his musical tastes swayed from just those two extremes! No, this kid listened to klezmer music, to freakin' Minnie Pearl, even pygmy love songs!

Sapolsky, then in his forties, no doubt wanted to shove the kid's forehead through his Bose speaker.

He couldn't get over that the kid wasn't stuck in any kind of musical rut, whereas Sapolsky pretty much listened to the same old Bob Marley CD over and over again. Sapolsky could probably karaoke I Shot the Sheriff without even looking at the screen. After some soul searching, he realized he'd turned into one of those guys who paid attention to the late-night commercials they used to run that advertised anthologies by music dinosaurs.

The greatest hits of Todd Rundgren? Where’s my goddam credit card?

Sapolsky kept asking himself, why? Is there an age from which a person passes from an open-minded, adventure stage to a close-minded, comfortable stage?

Sapolsky decided to investigate this apparent phenomenon. He called up 50 radio stations and spoke to the station manager of each. He asked them two questions:

1. What is the average age of the music you play?

2. What is the average age of the people who listen?

Sapolsky found that radio stations use something called the "Breakthrough minus 20" formula. Let's say dinosaur Billy Joel had his first breakthrough hit in 1976. That means his first fans were born about 20 years earlier.

Breakthrough = 1976, minus 20, or 1956.

In a nutshell, the music you got to high school and college with is the music of your life, and that's the premise commercial radio stations are built on.

From the ages of 14 to 21, you're open to new music. Once you hit about 35, most people won't tap their pencil to anything new, no matter how dynamic. At age 35, your ears, and unfortunately, your mind, close up shop and go live in Florida in one of those geriatrics-only compounds.

“Those pickle-ball playin’ bastards aren’t going to know what hit them once I hit town!”

Let's investigate my opening example. Party animal Osama Bin Laden allegedly liked Rock Lobster, which was a hit in the summer of 1978. Using our "Breakthrough minus 20" formula, we subtract 20 from that and get 1958.

And it turns out Osama was born in 1957.

It looks like those radio stations might know what they're talking about. Suddenly, the notion that Osama rocked to the B-52's isn't that outlandish, or at least not quite as outlandish as it might have seemed a minute ago.

So, if you're a 25-year-old, 20 years from now you may well be listening to the same crap you're listening to today! Your kids will snicker and roll their eyes because the music implant in dad's head, bless his fogey-heart, is playing the "old standards," classics by Machine Gun Kelly, Thunderpussy, and that delightful old crooner, Bad Bunny, along with some current hip-hop.

“Sweetheart, do you remember where we were the first time we heard 'Slut Me Out’'?”

But Sapolsky didn't limit his research to music. He wondered if people are more adventurous regarding food when they're younger, so he called up 50 sushi restaurants in the Midwest.

While sushi has been part of the food landscape of the east and west coasts for years, it was still relatively new in the Midwest. According to one restaurant manager in Omaha that Sapolsky called, "uncooked fish wrapped in seaweed still makes a lot of Nebraskans nervous."

While it was difficult to get specific numbers, Sapolsky calculated that first-time sushi eaters were likely to be 26 years old or younger. People from the ages of 26-29 were less likely to eat raw fish, whereas taking anyone over 39 to a sushi restaurant for the first time was a task that only a tag team consisting of Sisyphus and Epicurus might tackle. In fact, only 5% of those over 39 would dare to munch on maguro.

After 39, you're stuck with the same old foods you've always eaten. Your window for new foods not only closes, but you pull the drapes down and turn off the lights.

Sapolsky decided to look at one last area that seemed to be the exclusive domain of youth: piercing.

After talking to 50 tattoo parlors and body piercing studios, he determined that the window of tongue piercings is pretty much restricted to ages 16 to 23. Only 5% of tongue-piercing customers are older.

While Sapolsky found the door on belly button piercings isn't as tightly regimented as tongue piercings, it's a pretty safe bet that there aren't too many women over the age of 40 getting them.

What is it about the ageing brain that makes us pass from the novelty stage to the predictable stage? Obviously, there are those who continue to be open to new music, new food, and new circumstances of any kind, but are there any specific characteristics that the stodgy hold in common?

The psychologist DK Simonton, an expert on ageing, believed those who don't retain their sense of adventure have two characteristics:

1. They stay at the same job for a long time.

2. They become eminent or especially successful at that job.

For whatever reasons, this combination ramrods you into a debilitating state. As soon as something new arrives, you're screwed. Your brain short circuits. You spend your future free time watching Friends reruns and yelling at kids to get off your lawn.

It appears it happens in the animal kingdom, too, but it certainly can’t be explained by “staying at the same job for a long time.” For example, it appears that when a baby rat reaches puberty, novelty is good — new foods are cool, new haunts are cool — but not quite so cool when they get older.

Similarly, when baboons are moved to a new territory with new plants, the older baboons won't try them. The young ones do, though, while the older baboons sit around and talk about the good ol' days and how you "shoulda' tasted the leaves in the Congo, by gum, because they really knew how to grow them up there."

The older baboons are just like the reluctant sushi-eaters in Nebraska!

So, maybe it’s biological. Robert Sapolsky thinks so. While it apparently can't be explained by an equation or anything chemical, Sapolsky thinks aging creatures all over nature are often drawn towards repetition because, "...you get to a time in life where, by definition, stuff's turning to quicksand and wherever you can get some solid footing, the familiar becomes real comforting."

Similarly, Chris Miller, one of the station programmers that was interviewed for the National Public Radio piece, says that his listeners can hear an old song and see what they saw, hear what they heard, feel what they felt those many years ago when they first listened to the song.

In effect, it becomes a form of time travel, something permanent in an ever-changing world.

That sounds more psychological to me than biological. Rather than aging skin, droopy testicles, or rigid arteries, it seems to be a result of fear rather than the environment and degenerating DNA. In my experience, most people, as they age, contract. They make their world smaller and smaller by crawling into their cocoon of habit and routine.

Routine, after all, is comfortable, but change? That’s scary.

But here’s the thing (apologies to Aaron Sorkin and Rob Lowe): Man came out of the cave. And we looked over the hill. And we saw fire. And we crossed the ocean. And we pioneered the west. And we took to the sky. The history of man is hung on a timeline of exploration.

And yes, that applies to mankind as a species, but it might just as well apply to the individual too. I ask you to think back on your life. I’m guessing that the times you were happiest, when life was the most exciting, when your mind and your soul grew, was when you were trying new things, learning new skills – getting out of your comfort zone.

And the alternative? Your mind constricts, your body constricts, and then death! Ack! In Dickensian speech, your spirit never roved beyond the limits of your money-changing hole. And now that spirit is doomed to listen to Todd Rundgren on eternal shuffle! A life…and an eternity… of contraction and stultification when you could have at least tried the Arby’s Classic Beef n’ Cheddar sandwich instead of the same, safe, boring, Classic Roast Beef sandwich for 40 years!

So maybe, just maybe, you might consider force-feeding yourself new music, new foods, and new experiences in general. You might not want to try listening to Thunderpussy, diving right into eating some uni (sea urchin) or shirako (Google it, if you dare), or getting a Prince Albert, but maybe try playing some different Apple playlists other than Todd Rundgren Essentials and maybe trying some African food or Persian food or any damn food you’ve never tried before. (You have my permission to skip the piercing, though.)

You might become less of a boring person, find yourself discovering new delights, and you might find yourself experiencing more joy – the joy that only discovery elicits -- and a level of excitement that you haven’t felt in years.

Obviously, not everybody gets stuck in the comfort afforded by the past. They readily experience anything new and they’re fearless; they never contract. To you I say carry on, good sir or madam.

But to the others, the people who wallow in staid music, food, and everything-else preferences? I urge you to experience the many flavors of life, and not just the Classic Roast Beef sandwich.

That was good advice 20 years ago and it's a good advice today, too.

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