Latest / Ryan's Journal / From McVicker to Madonna: The Brain’s Pop-Culture Shuffle

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From McVicker to Madonna: The Brain’s Pop-Culture Shuffle · Ryan's Journal

• 0:07
  So, so I was listening to this, this wild audio snippet, right?
• 0:12
  And she goes, she goes from talking about Mrs.
• 0:14
  McVicker in high school Spanish class, like, right straight to,
• 0:17
  to Vicks VapoRub, because McVicker sound, sounds like Vicks,
• 0:21
  and then Vicks means sore throat.
• 0:22
  It is, it is literally like watching someone's brain hit the shuffle button in real
• 0:27
  time.
• 0:28
  Wait, Mrs.
• 0:29
  McVicker to Vicks VapoRub?
• 0:32
  That is, that is actually such a classic example of what cognitive scientists call
• 0:38
  the spreading activation model.
• 0:40
  Collins and Loftus came out with that back in 1975.
• 0:44
  Your memory isn't like a file cabinet, you know?
• 0:47
  It's like this massive web where one acoustic sound, like McVicker,
• 0:52
  just fires off a neuron to Vicks, and suddenly you're thinking about a sore throat.
• 0:57
  Man, 1975!
• 0:59
  That is, that is nuts.
• 1:01
  But it's so true though!
• 1:02
  Like, she's sitting there complaining about standardized testing with Roseanne
• 1:07
  Anderson, and then, boom, two seconds later she's literally shouting,
• 1:11
  Alexa, volume ten, play Madonna!
• 1:13
  I mean, I do that in the studio all the time.
• 1:15
  We'll be, we'll be tracking a vocal, talking about some serious heartbreak or
• 1:19
  whatever, and my brain will just jump on a word, and suddenly I'm ad-libbing about
• 1:24
  taco meat or salsa music.
• 1:26
  You just, you just gotta follow the spark, you know?
• 1:28
  Wait, taco meat?
• 1:29
  Did she, did she actually say taco meat in the middle of talking about standardized
• 1:34
  tests?
• 1:35
  Yeah!
• 1:35
  Taco meat!
• 1:36
  Rose Coots, taco meat, Roseanne Anderson, standardized testing.
• 1:40
  It was, it was all right there in the first ten seconds!
• 1:43
  That is, um, that is so funny because when you do a stream of consciousness vocal
• 1:48
  dump like that, it's almost like a total neurological drain.
• 1:53
  Like, I use red light therapy and I try to do these structured journaling prompts
• 1:57
  every night for sleep recovery, right?
• 2:00
  To clear my mind.
• 2:01
  But a prompt forces you into this neat, logical box.
• 2:04
  When someone just talks into an ambient voice memo, all the sensory chaos comes
• 2:10
  spilling out.
• 2:11
  It's totally unfiltered.
• 2:13
  Right, right.
• 2:13
  Because institutional stuff like tests and school, man, it's so boring,
• 2:17
  your mind just craves an escape hatch.
• 2:19
  She goes straight from test stress to dreaming about Scott Foley,
• 2:23
  warm weather in Mexico, salsa beats, and hot Latino guys.
• 2:27
  It's like, why think about a test when you can think about Mexico,
• 2:30
  you know?
• 2:30
  Scott Foley in Mexico!
• 2:32
  It's an instant escape route.
• 2:34
  Your nervous system is feeling stressed by the memory of school,
• 2:38
  so it instantly pivots to warmth, music, and romance to regulate itself.
• 2:43
  It's totally fascinating.
• 2:44
  And then, okay, then she starts singing Madonna in Spanish!
• 2:48
  She's singing Verás, which, man, that track takes me back.
• 2:51
  That was off Madonna's 1995 album, Something to Remember, right?
• 2:55
  Yeah, 1995!
• 2:57
  The song was translated into Spanish by Paz Martínez, the Argentine songwriter.
• 3:02
  The chorus lyrics are so intense.
• 3:04
  Ya lo verás, no necesito a nadie más, which means, You'll see,
• 3:08
  I don't need anyone else.
• 3:10
  And then she sings, Será mi gloria personal.
• 3:13
  It's this total declaration of absolute independence.
• 3:16
  Será mi gloria personal!
• 3:18
  Man, that hits!
• 3:19
  But then, okay, this is where it got super weird for me personally.
• 3:23
  The tape keeps playing, she's asking Alexa to play next, play next,
• 3:27
  and suddenly it switches to the Sickick remix of Frozen from 2022,
• 3:32
  featuring Fireboy DML.
• 3:33
  And suddenly, bro, I hear my own voice!
• 3:36
  My vocals from my track with Fireboy were layered right on top of Madonna's 1998 Ray
• 3:41
  of Light song!
• 3:42
  I was like, wait, how did I get in this room?
• 3:44
  Wait, your voice came on?
• 3:46
  On her smart speaker in the middle of her voice note?
• 3:48
  Yes!
• 3:49
  I'm sitting there listening to this lady's private audio, and suddenly I hear myself
• 3:54
  singing, I've been waiting, waiting for a sign, right over Sickick's trap beat and
• 3:59
  Madonna's original 1998 vocal loop.
• 4:02
  It was like this crazy TikTok viral phenomenon colliding with a 1990s pop ballad,
• 4:07
  all happening inside this one person's living room.
• 4:10
  That is such a surreal multiverse moment.
• 4:13
  Think about that timeline.
• 4:14
  1998 original track, 2022 viral remix with your vocals and Fireboy DML,
• 4:20
  and this person is controlling the whole emotional vibe in real time just by saying,
• 4:25
  Alexa, play next.
• 4:27
  Smart speakers have completely changed how we regulate our mood,
• 4:31
  haven't they?
• 4:32
  You don't even have to walk across the room to change the track.
• 4:35
  You just command the AI, and within two seconds your brain gets a brand new sensory
• 4:41
  hit.
• 4:41
  Totally, man.
• 4:42
  It's instant gratification.
• 4:43
  But, but wait, before that, did you hear the part where she was quoting that spoken
• 4:48
  word section from Madonna's track What It Feels Like for a Girl?
• 4:51
  From the year 2000 Music album?
• 4:53
  Oh, the sample of Charlotte Gainsbourg from that film, The Cement Garden!
• 4:57
  Where she says, Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short,
• 5:02
  but if little boys look like girls, it's degrading, because you think being a girl
• 5:06
  is degrading.
• 5:07
  Yeah!
• 5:08
  That quote!
• 5:09
  She's reciting that verbatim in the middle of her kitchen, or wherever she is.
• 5:13
  It's like, pop culture gives people this vocabulary to talk about heavy stuff like
• 5:17
  gender performance or vulnerability without having to frame it like a serious
• 5:21
  thesis.
• 5:21
  She just drops the quote and then moves on to cha, cha, cha,
• 5:24
  one, two, one, two!
• 5:25
  It's a complete emotional feedback loop.
• 5:27
  She's moving from deep societal commentary to dance steps in three seconds flat.
• 5:32
  Okay, but we gotta talk about the absolute most bizarre part of this whole
• 5:35
  recording.
• 5:36
  She takes Madonna's 1986 track Live to Tell, right?
• 5:39
  The line where Madonna goes, A man can tell a thousand lies,
• 5:43
  I've learned my lesson well, hope I live to tell the secret I have learned.
• 5:46
  Beautiful, tragic ballad, right?
• 5:48
  Right, a classic ballad about holding onto deep, painful secrets.
• 5:52
  Right!
• 5:52
  But every time she sings that line, she interrupts herself,
• 5:56
  clears her throat, and starts repeating, Put the lotion on or gets the rose!
• 6:00
  Like, laughing hysterically!
• 6:02
  She takes Buffalo Bill's terrifying line from Jonathan Demme's 1991 movie,
• 6:07
  The Silence of the Lambs, It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose
• 6:11
  again, and she turns hose into rose!
• 6:14
  Wait, she mashed up Silence of the Lambs from 1991 with Madonna's 1986 ballad?
• 6:20
  And she replaced hose with rose?
• 6:22
  Yes!
• 6:23
  Over and over!
• 6:24
  Put the lotion on or gets the rose!
• 6:26
  Then she giggles, then she goes back to, A man can tell a thousand lies!
• 6:30
  It was terrifying and hilarious at the exact same time!
• 6:34
  That is, um, that is actually such a fascinating psychological armor mechanism.
• 6:41
  Think about what she's doing.
• 6:42
  Live to Tell is all about carrying a secret that burns inside of you.
• 6:48
  That's heavy.
• 6:49
  That brings up genuine emotional tension.
• 6:52
  So how does her brain cope with that heavy disclosure?
• 6:56
  It instantly injects dark humor!
• 6:58
  It grabs a horror movie quote from 1991, twists the word hose to rose,
• 7:04
  and turns a scary line into an absurd joke.
• 7:08
  It's emotional self soothing.
• 7:10
  Bro, total self soothing!
• 7:12
  Because whenever things get too real, you gotta laugh, man.
• 7:15
  If you don't laugh, you're gonna cry or break down.
• 7:18
  And did you notice the physical reaction in her voice?
• 7:21
  She cleared her throat, she burst into this unscripted nervous laughter,
• 7:26
  and she repeated that lotion phrase like four or five times in a row.
• 7:30
  When you repeat a phrase like that and laugh uncontrollably,
• 7:34
  that is your nervous system actively discharging built up stress and lowering
• 7:39
  cortisol levels.
• 7:40
  Her brain was literally letting off steam so she wouldn't get overwhelmed by
• 7:44
  whatever real secret she was thinking about.
• 7:47
  Man, I feel that so much.
• 7:49
  When we're on tour, after, like, night forty in some random hotel room,
• 7:54
  late at night, everyone is so exhausted and fried that someone will say the dumbest,
• 7:59
  most absurd inside joke, or mangle a movie quote, and we will just laugh for twenty
• 8:04
  minutes straight until our stomachs hurt.
• 8:06
  It's the only way to release that high pressure valve when you're under intense
• 8:10
  stress.
• 8:11
  It's a survival mechanism!
• 8:12
  The absurdity breaks the emotional freeze response.
• 8:15
  It really makes you think, though, like, why is a raw, messy voice memo so much more
• 8:20
  real than anything people post on Instagram or TikTok?
• 8:23
  Oh, absolutely.
• 8:24
  Back in 1986, this famous researcher, James Pennebaker, did these ground breaking
• 8:30
  studies on Expressive Writing.
• 8:31
  He showed that writing down your deepest thoughts for fifteen minutes a day improves
• 8:35
  your immune system and lowers stress.
• 8:38
  But Pennebaker's protocol was very structured, right?
• 8:41
  Sitting down with a pen and paper.
• 8:43
  What we're seeing now with smart speakers like Amazon Echo and phone voice memos is
• 8:48
  this chaotic, ambient audio journaling.
• 8:50
  There's no prompt, no audience, no editing.
• 8:53
  It's just raw human consciousness recorded in the room.
• 8:56
  Yeah, because on social media, everybody curates everything!
• 9:01
  You pick the best lighting, you edit out the awkward pauses,
• 9:04
  you pretend you got it all together.
• 9:06
  But in a voice note, you can be singing Madonna one second,
• 9:09
  shouting at Alexa the next, and making weird jokes about taco meat and Silence of
• 9:14
  the Lambs.
• 9:15
  It's like, that's where the actual human being lives, you know?
• 9:18
  It raises such an interesting debate, though.
• 9:21
  Like, she keeps singing that line, Till then, it will burn inside of me,
• 9:26
  kept it hidden well.
• 9:27
  Is it healthier to hold onto your secrets and process them through these weird,
• 9:33
  private, playful rants, or should people be spilling every unfiltered thought into a
• 9:38
  microphone or uploading it to cloud servers?
• 9:40
  Man, I think if you hold everything in without some kind of release valve,
• 9:44
  it just eats you up inside.
• 9:46
  Whether you write a song, or sing along to Madonna, or just ramble to your smart
• 9:50
  speaker, you gotta let the wild stuff out somewhere.
• 9:53
  It really leaves you with a lingering question.
• 9:55
  Is our true identity found in our polished, organized thoughts,
• 9:59
  or is it hidden inside the weird, mid song, lotion and salsa chatter we record when
• 10:05
  we think nobody else is listening?
• 10:07
  I'm betting on the lotion and salsa chatter every single time.
• 10:10
  Alright, good chatting, talk soon.