Earworms: Jean Harris's 33-Year Song Loop and Why Lady Gaga Sticks

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In 1946 Jean Harris heard Put the Blame on Mame at the movies, and the song played in her head for the next 33 years. This episode explores the earworm, a term from the German Ohrwurm, known clinically as involuntary musical imagery. It is a memory loop, not a hallucination, and the hosts separate it from palinacousis, a rare condition tied to temporal lobe damage. About 98 percent of people get earworms. Men and women get them equally often, but women's last longer and bother them more, and people who score higher in neuroticism or have intrusive thoughts get more of them.

Research shows that cheerful and somber instrumental music get stuck equally often, but negative tunes cause more distress. Nearly 75 percent of earworms have lyrics, usually a 15 to 30 second chorus, and the formula combines a fast tempo, a simple melody and one unexpected interval that trips the brain's predictive coding. The hosts also cover when a nonstop loop can be a warning sign and the science behind getting rid of one.

The most reported culprits, from Don't Stop Believin' and Bohemian Rhapsody to Bad Romance and other Lady Gaga hits
Climber Joe Simpson, injured and alone in the Peruvian Andes, unable to escape Boney M's Brown Girl in the Ring
Why a loop with no break for more than 24 hours has, in rare cases, signaled a stroke, epilepsy or a tumor
Mark Twain's 1876 jingle story, Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man and Emperor X's 10,000-year earworm for nuclear waste warnings
Puzzles, chewing gum, playing the song to the end, and cure songs like Happy Birthday

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