In this episode, I sit down with David Sulzer, known in the music world as Dave Soldier, a neuroscientist and composer whose work lives at the intersection of art and science. As a Columbia University professor with over 200 research papers and a prolific musical career, Sulzer has spent decades exploring how the brain learns, remembers, and creates. Our conversation flows through his current reading list, from Thomas Paine and Aldous Huxley to Johannes Kepler, revealing how the questions of the past continue to shape our search for truth and meaning today.
We talk about the way Kepler and Galileo once believed the stars were embedded in a celestial sphere and how understanding their errors opens a window into the evolution of human thought. Sulzer explains how curiosity, rather than certainty, drives real discovery and how science and art are bound by the same impulse: the desire to understand the world through pattern, rhythm, and form. We explore his book Music, Math, and Mind, which demystifies how sound becomes emotion, how learning happens in the brain, and why curiosity might be the most beautiful human instinct of all.
As the conversation unfolds, we move from neuroscience to philosophy, from Indian classical music to Renaissance art, from learning behaviors to the politics of scientific funding. What emerges is a reflection on what it means to be truly educated: to follow your curiosity wherever it leads, to see connections others miss, and to find harmony between intellect and imagination. This episode is for anyone who has ever wondered how a melody can change your mind or how the mind itself might just be music in motion.
⏱️ Chapters
00:00 – Introduction: Meeting David Sulzer, neuroscientist and composer
01:30 – How he chooses what to read and what books teach him about our time
05:00 – Kepler, Galileo, and how early scientists imagined the universe
09:30 – The harmony between music, mathematics, and planetary motion
14:00 – What we forget about how people once understood the cosmos
18:00 – Curiosity, play, and the beauty of not knowing
22:00 – How Music, Math, and Mind explores sound, emotion, and learning
27:00 – Why education should connect art and science
32:00 – Tradition versus innovation in music and human creativity
37:00 – Balancing two callings: being both a scientist and a musician
42:00 – The neuroscience of learning and what changes in the brain
47:00 – Depression, schizophrenia, and the complexity of mental illness
52:00 – Why funding for science and research truly matters
56:00 – Closing reflections on curiosity, meaning, and the purpose of knowledge
