BONUS EPISODE Creating Music with Jarrett Sleeper and David Bashwiner

In a bonus episode of Ologies, host Alie Ward hands the microphone to her partner, musician and composer Jarrett Sleeper, to interview biomusicologist Dr. David Bashwiner. What follows is a raw, wide-ranging conversation that dives into the neural mechanics of creativity, the physics of sound that connects all vertebrates, and why the feeling of music "coming from somewhere else" is not just mystical poetry but a describable brain state.

The Neural Feedback Loop of Creation and the Default Mode Network

Jarrett opens with a question many creators recognize: the experience of inspiration as a kind of channeling, where good ideas feel like they arrive from outside the self rather than being willed into existence. Dr. Bashwiner confirms this is a real phenomenon, rooted in the brain's default mode network (DMN). First identified in the early 2000s by researchers like Marcus Raichle, the DMN is more active when a person is at rest—staring at a crosshair on a screen—than when performing a focused task. In popular culture, the DMN has been somewhat warped into a catch-all for "mind-wandering," but its relationship to creativity is more specific. Studies by researchers like Rex Young show that when people engage in divergent thinking (e.g., "list all the things you could do with a cactus"), those who perform better show more DMN activity. The DMN is deeply connected to memory,