Throughout the program, our hosts and guest struggle to analyze the importance of something that persistently evades definition. John speculates that perhaps any sound can be music, if it is presented in the proper context. And surprisingly enough, our expert, David Harrington, to some extent, agrees with him. He believes that music is completely personal, thus making any classification or evaluation of music completely subjective. For him, music, good music, is whatever sound or note he finds magnetizing. Whatever compells him. Ken, John, and members of the audience voice challenges to this view.

Ken以个人的音乐作品能够传达明确的情感为例，阐述了音乐与认知之间的神秘联系。他告诉我们，没有人能从《梦之安魂曲》中萦绕的不和谐的配乐中走出来，以为这是一首快乐的曲子。如果我们不能对音乐的魅力有一个客观的标准，我们如何解释具有基本的、明显普遍的解释的音乐作品?一位听众对大卫关于对音乐的任何评价都必须是主观的说法提出了质疑，他说，似乎有些情况下我们可以把个人品味放在一边。当然，客观上，勃拉姆斯写的室内乐作品要比沃尔格林(Walgreens)的缪扎克音乐好。And John says that if music is entirely subjective, we need some explanation for how we use the word "music" to make what appear to be objective judgements about the world.

Parallel to this debate is a discussion of the fundamental importance of music, with or without a solid definition. The power of music over our emotions and behavior shows that music cannot be ignored. Similar to the link between music and cognition is the link between music and identity: how we define ourselves, personally and culturally by what we listen to. This observation of Ken's incites a discussion of music as language, and whether its entirely relative to musical communities, or whether it is universally comprehensible on some basic level. The show resolves with the conclusion that music is a subject, "so deep that none of us can see the bottom, or the top."

• Roving Philosophical Report(seek to 6:16): Zoe Corneli interviews John Calloway, a San Francisco Unified School District music teacher. He views his primary role not as to teach the mechanics nor technique of music, but to teach its importance to his burgeoning musicians. It gives them the power to express and grasp what words cannot.

• 60-Second PhilosopherIan Shoales很快地涵盖了三种不同的理论来解释为什么音乐对我们很重要:一种是生物学的，一种是社会的，还有一种是统计学的。