Sing for Science

What turns neighbors into enemies? What makes cruelty feel permissible? And how does music push back? In this episode, Dropkick Murphys founder Ken Casey and Yale psychologist Phillip Atiba Solomon use the band’s new song “Citizen I.C.E.” to explore identity, policing, propaganda, and the psychology of dehumanization. It’s a sharp, urgent conversation about punk, power, and the systems that teach people who belong—and who don’t.

Read the full transcript of this episode: http://singforscience.org/transcripts/dropkick-murphys-citizen-ice-phillip-atiba-solomon-public-safety-scienceFor further reading and listening:Dropkick Murphys - Citizen I.C.E. (feat. Haywire) (Official Music Video)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSrDkRm7_78Why Minnesota Was a Wake-Up Call by Phillip Atiba Solomon for Time Magazine https://time.com/7380603/minnesota-ice-wake-up-call/To Protect the Next George Floyd, We Must Remove the Threat of Police Violence from Everyday Life by Phillip Atiba Solomon for Time Magazinehttps://time.com/5956701/george-floyd-justice-police-reform/The Root Cause of Violent Crime Is Not What We Think It Is by Phillip Atiba Solomon for New York Timeshttps://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/12/opinion/crime-policies-cities.htmlKen Casey: ‘I’m Not Going to Shut Up’ by Jeffrey Goldberg for The Atlantichttps://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2025/07/ken-casey-dropkick-murphys-donald-trump/682984/Dropkick Murphys: 30 Years of Fighting Nazis, Now Taking on Trump | On Offense with Kris Goldsmithhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVcWLObekRUAbout the Guests:Ken CaseyFounder and vocalist of Dropkick Murphys, known for blending punk rock with themes of working-class identity and social justice.https://dropkickmurphys.com/Phillip Atiba SolomonProfessor at Yale University and co-founder of the Center for Policing Equity, focusing on data-driven approaches to public safety and equity.https://policingequity.org/

Humanist Heavyweight Steven Pinker joins José González to unpack “Against the Dying of the Light,” a song inspired in part by Pinker’s book, Enlightenment Now. Together they explore Enlightenment values, human nature, progress, algorithms, anger, AI, and whether reason, science, and empathy can still help us push back against darkness.

Chanteuse Chan Marshall, best known as the artist Cat Power talks about her recreation of the historic 1966 Bob Dylan concert album at the Royal Albert Hall with Cornell University neuroscientist and nostalgia expert, Hetvi Doshi. We cover the origins of nostalgia study, the growing body of scientific evidence that suggests nostalgia has health benefits and improves social cohesion with one another. We also talk about the dynamics of food nostalgia and Hetvi’s community nostalgia initiative. For more information on Cat Power’s tour and Hetvi’s work please visit catpowermusic.com, hetvidoshi.com and thecommunitynostalgiaproject.com.

Grammy-winning artist Miguel joins science historian Jimena Canales for a live taping centered on his song “Nearsight [SID]” from CAOS. What begins as a conversation about a lyric — “slow it down for me” — opens into a wide-ranging exploration of time itself: how it feels to speed up as we age, how music can stretch or compress our experience of the present, and why certain moments seem impossible to hold onto. Drawing on her work on Einstein and Bergson's philosophy of time, Canales helps unpack the tension between measurable, physical time and lived, emotional time — while Miguel reflects on fatherhood, memory, and the urgency behind wanting to slow a fleeting moment. Taped live at the MIT Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts on February 14, 2026.

Alt-R&B artist rum.gold joins host Matt Whyte with Dr. Nim Tottenham, Chair of Psychology at Columbia University, for a live taping centered on his song and video “Is It Something I Said.” What begins as a conversation about a music video portraying a mother and son living with anxiety, grief, and hoarding becomes a striking window into Dr. Tottenham’s research on how early caregiving and stress shape the developing brain — and how those early emotional environments can echo into adulthood as anxiety, attachment struggles, and dysregulation. Taped live at Ludlow House in NYC on January 27, 2026 as part of the On Air presents series.