Welcome to hows to Works Now. I'm your host Lauren Vogelbaum, a researcher and writer. Here at hows to Works. Every week, I'm bringing you three stories from our team about the weird and wondrous advances we've seen in science, technology, and culture. This week, Spotify rolled out an update to fix a bug in its desktop app code that could seriously damage computers and unrelated, some Californians are getting serious about seceding
from the United States, but first, Unfortunately. Senior writer and Stuff to Blow your Mind co host Robert Lamb brings us a soothing story. Listening to music has been shown to have real benefits to our mental health. Here's how it works. In times of strife and uncertainty, music feels both rage and optimism. It stirs us to action and provides catharsis. It also soothes the fissures of an anxious psyche. The therapeutic use of music is way back in India.
The roots of therapeutic music traditions extend through ancient Vedic and sanscrit texts, as well as the ethics Baga, Bagita, and Ramayana. Music therapy in Africa may date back to at least ancient Egypt, and continues on in every modern African state. Eastern traditions to incorporate the power of music.
The Chinese Han dynasties, the Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor, often considered the fundamental text of traditional Chinese medicine, went so far as to connect specific musical notes to corresponding elemental aspects of the human body. Yet musical healing isn't
mere magic and myth. Modern medical science also weighs in on the subject, As Professor Urika Nielsen points out in The Anxiety and Pain Reducing Effects of Music Interventions, a systematic review, numerous studies reveal the power of musical interventions
to reduce pain and anxiety in hospitalized patients. Nielsen reviewed forty two randomized controlled trials of music intervention, and while the musical genre and durations varied on lyrical, slow and flowing music had the greatest effect on relaxation and pain release.
Today we roughly categorize such music as ambient. It's a broad musical genre that emerged out of nineteen seventies electronic sound experimentation, but has come to encompass everything from the minimalist acoustic compositions of Steve Reich to the electronic soundscapes of Affects Twin. These sounds comfort us, But why the most commonly accepted theories define music as a distractor. It draws us away from the experience of negative physical or
mental stimuli with familiar soothing acoustics. Neurological musical therapist Michael h Thought goes further, however, stressing the effects of music on multiple brain regions related to memory, learning, motivation, and emotional states. There is, after all, no music center in the human brain, be at the works of Vivaldi or van Halen. Music saturates multiple cognitive systems with its influence.
For instance, since music shares neural pathways with motor control, it may improve movement in stroke or Parkinson's disease patients. Music runs deep within us, and so too may our
appreciation of ambient soundscapes. In a two thousand twelve interview I conducted with Hearts of Space founder Stephen Hill, the host of the long running Slow Music for Fast Times program, shared his own personal take on the power of ambient music, relating it to the evolutionary importance of auditory environmental awareness.
Quote what happens with ambient music is that the continuous stream of sound, the lack of sudden sound events, the consonant harmonies, and the slow pace all conspire to send us the message that everything's cool here. You don't have to keep scanning the environment for danger. This is the relaxation response that is shared by ambient chill, New Age and some styles of folk, jazz and classical music. Unquote. So you can look to evidence both medical and mythological,
pilosophic and personal. Ambient music demonstrates an ability to soothe our minds in the wake of negative stimuli, both immediate and distant, abstract and tangible. Naturally, this doesn't mean we should hide away in our ambient caves or ignore life's challenges, no more than we should denounce the physician in favor of Philip Glass. But for many modern humans, the ancient prescription holds true. Ambient music can calm the inner storm and perhaps provide the clarity we need to make the
next step in survival. And who couldn't benefit from a little of that right now? The text component for this segment on now do how staff works dot com includes ambient listening recommendations from a handful of guests such as
Mary Anne Hobbs and DJ Food. But if you'd like to hear an example of ambient music, continue listening at the end of this podcast to hear American ambient recording artist Helios his track All You Are Off the two thousand sixteen EP Remembrance, available at unseen music dot com. Next up, senior writer and tech stuff post jump in Strickland explains how an error and Spotify could be taking years off the hard drive life of its desktop app. Users.
Don't worry, there's update available. Here's what's going on. Did you hear that Spotify Streaming music desktop app might have been killing your hard drive for months? What's up with that? There's a bug in some versions of Spotify's desktop app for Windows, Mac and Lennox that overwrites the same database file every few minutes, even if Spotify is just running idle in the background with no music playing. The culprit appears to be a vacuum process for a file containing
the string mercury dot dB. Here's a bit of irony for you. The purpose of the vacuum process is to pack database files so that they take up less space. Get it It's like vacuum ceiling a digital file. It involves rebuilding a file to be as efficient as possible, which is generally a good thing. But savvy Spotify users
notice that this process was happening far too frequently. That's a big problem, particularly for people who have a solid state hard drive or ss d s. S d s are fast and efficient, but they also have some limitations. For example, as you write and overwrite data to a solid state drive, it slowly loses data storage capacity. It's similar to how a battery's charge capacity decreases after many
charged cycles. Spotify's buggy vacuum process overwrites the Mercury dot dB file frequently enough to amount to gigabytes of data over the course of a day. If you leave Spotify active whenever your computer is on, you could be taking years off the life of your solid state drive. Perhaps the worst bit of news is that this seems to have been an issue since June two thousand sixteen, so it may have been affecting thousands of hard drives for months. One semi bright spot in this mess is the bug
is a purely local phenomenon. Spotify isn't downloading massive amounts of data and chewing through any data restrictions you might have with your internet service provider. Yea, here's some actual good news. Spotify has fixed the bug in an update. If you use the Spotify desktop app, check to see if your version is one point zero point four two or later in the about Spotify menu option. If it is, you're in the clear. Oh and if you only use Spotify on mobile devices or on the web, you never
had anything to worry about in the first place. The bug only affected the desktop versions of the program. Finally, this week, I'm exploring exactly how difficult it would be amidst all our current political strife for state in the US to secede from the Union. Special thanks for our freelance writer John on Donovan for this one. People have different ways of venting their post election emotions. Some take
to the streets or let loose on social media. In California, where almost six of the voters picked Hillary Clinton over President elect Trump, they're talking leaving, as in getting out, splitting up, seceeding, and yes they're serious tech industry insiders like Shervan Peshavar and Iranian American Silicon Valley executive and entrepreneur from Sherpa Capital and Hyperloop One took to Twitter after the election, vowing to fund a campaign to launch
California as a new nation. Peshavar told Snen Money in an email quote, it's the most patriotic thing I can do. The country is at a serious crossroads end quote. Even before the election, California citizens have pitched the need to break up with Uncle Sam. The Yes California Independence Committee filed for nonprofit status in it's demanding quote the liberation of the people of California. From its end quote, it's
not quite as violent as it sounds. They say that they explicitly reject conduct or speech inciting open rebellion against the American government. Yes, California got more than fifteen thousand new likes to its Facebook page last week, up more than four thousand two. But talking about breakup, as in all matters of the heart and mind, is a lot easier than actually breaking up. You'll recall perhaps the Civil War, although some states have discussed walk out since then, Texas,
We're looking at you. Any state that seriously considers secession runs up against a wall bigger than the one Trump said he wants to build on the US southern border. The Constitution of the United States. The Constitution has provisions for joining the Union in the New States Clause. That's happened plenty, But the other way around, there's nothing in the Constitution about a state leaving the Union. But Yes California points to an eighteen sixty nine Supreme Court decision
that may provide them with a literal out. The case is Texas v. White, in which the Court ruled that states could not unilaterally secede from the Union. Yes California agrees, but they point out this passage from the decision. When therefore Texas became one of the United States, she entered into an indissoluble relation. The union between Texas and the other states was as complete, as perpetual, and as indissoluble
as the union between the original states. There is no place for reconsideration or revocation except through revolution or through consent of the states. Yes California is ruling out revolution, but insists the way out is if they get the other states to go along. What they're looking for is an amicable divorce. The people at Yes California see two
routes to get that done. In the first scenario, after a majority of Californians vote on a statewide ballot to pursue secession, and it passes, a state delegation heads to Washington, d C. And proposes an amendment to the U. S Constitution to allow secession. According to s California, two thirds of the House of Representatives and two thirds of the Senate would have to approve the proposed amendment would then have to be okayed by thirty eight of the fifty states.
The second scenario skips the Washington step, and after the statewide ballot passes, calls for a convention of the States, a secession proposal would have to be approved by two thirds of those delegates. If passed Yes, California says it would go to individual states, where legislatures would vote on it. Again, thirty eight of the fifty states would have to pass it. Even if the Calaxeters got that far, they might come to regret it, and the rest of us along with them.
On the Skoka Blog, the executive director of the California Constitution Center at the University of California Berkeley School of Law, laid out the prospects of secession. They're referred to such a constitutional amendment as unleashing the Kraken. Once one such change started looking like it might pass, they say other groups could and would flood Washington or a state convention with their own ideas for large scale change. Anyway you look at it a calax. It wouldn't be easy, but
we're not going to say it would be impossible. That's almost all for this week. Stay tuned after my closing speel for a bit of ambient music to help get your brain through the day. If you're not subscribed to the show, do that thing and send us a link to anything you'd like to hear us cover, plus your
favorite holiday recipe cocktails included. You can send us an email at now podcast at how stuff works dot com, and of course, for lots more stories like these, head on over to our home planet now that how stuff works dot com. Thanks to Helio's for use of their track All You Are Off the EP Remembrance, available at Unseen hyphen Music dot com.