In the late 1990s expectant mothers pressed headphones playing Mozart to their bellies, convinced it would raise a genius. This episode traces the idea back to a 1993 study in Nature by Frances Rauscher, Gordon Shaw, and Katherine Ky, which tested 36 college students on a paper folding and cutting task after hearing Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D major, K. 448, relaxation instructions, or silence. The boost in spatial temporal reasoning faded within about 10 to 15 minutes, and the authors said they were not claiming Mozart raised general intelligence.

A 1994 New York Times column said Mozart makes you smarter, and Don Campbell’s 1997 book The Mozart Effect, which borrowed a term from Alfred Tomatis, pushed claims about IQ and healing. In 1998 Georgia governor Zell Miller sought $105,000 a year for classical recordings for every newborn and played Beethoven to lawmakers. Replications failed, a 2010 meta-analysis of 39 studies found little evidence, and researchers tied the short boost to enjoyment arousal. A 2023 review found the epilepsy research flawed.

• The neural resonance theory and why it appealed to marketers
• A state representative who asked whether Charlie Daniels would do instead
• The same short boost from upbeat pop music and a Stephen King story
• Claims about a Yanni track and seizures, and rats that heard Mozart before birth
• A German sewage plant that played Mozart to its microbes, and Rauscher’s advice to fund active music lessons