An old fashioned Hour A Week Good Ole ‘Planet Drum Circle’ every Sunday Morning at 11AM EST & Tonight, FIVE (5) Hours of Live Jerry Garcia Music from His Solo Projects Every Sunday Night!
Music is medicine. Not metaphorically. Not as a feel-good way of saying that your favorite album lifts your mood on a rough Tuesday. Literally, clinically, neurologically medicine, and the research now exists to prove it. Mickey Hart has spent decades saying exactly this, and the scientific community has spent decades slowly, reluctantly catching up. As of July 1, 2026, the catching up has taken a significant institutional leap forward.
That’s the day the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health launched the Music as Medicine Neuroscience Research Initiative, and Hart’s name is right there in the founding partnership alongside soprano and arts advocate Renée Fleming and Real Chemistry founder Jim Weiss. The NIH doesn’t do things casually. When the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health puts its name on something and writes grant checks, the science is real.
Here’s what the initiative actually does. Read on The Grateful Dead Substack!
One Hundred Thousand Dollars at a Time
The program funds individual research grants of one hundred thousand dollars each, directed toward scientists with innovative proposals in three distinct areas. Basic research into the underlying biological and neurological mechanisms through which music influences health. Clinical research developing, testing, and personalizing music-based interventions for cognitive function, mental health, and quality of life. And research into how to actually integrate these therapies into healthcare settings and communities at scale.
That last category matters enormously. Promising medical research dies in the gap between the lab and the patient all the time. The fact that Music as Medicine is explicitly funding work on scaling and accessibility tells you this initiative is not interested in publishing papers that get cited twelve times and go nowhere. It wants music-based therapy inside hospitals, inside care facilities, inside the communities where people with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and depression actually live.
Nominations were open through July 31, 2026. The scientific selection committee, chaired by Dr. Assal Habibi, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Southern California, will review applications and select grant recipients in the fall.
Dr. Habibi put it plainly: emerging research keeps demonstrating that music can meaningfully improve the lives of people with Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and other conditions affecting memory, movement, and emotional well-being. This initiative is the next generation of that work, bringing together interdisciplinary researchers who are serious about finding out exactly how and why. Read on The Grateful Dead Substack!
Why Mickey Hart in Particular
This isn’t a celebrity endorsement situation. Hart didn’t write a check and put his name on a press release. The man has been doing this work for years, in ways the music press mostly ignored because it didn’t fit neatly into the rock biography frame they preferred.
His collaboration with neurologists at the University of California San Francisco to track his own brain waves using EEG equipment during drumming. His research into rhythmic entrainment, the process by which the brain’s neural oscillations synchronize with external acoustic stimuli, and the clinical implications of that synchronization for patients with damaged neural pathways. His work with astrophysicists to translate cosmic radiation data into audible musical patterns, a project rooted in the same conviction that rhythm operates at every scale from the subatomic to the galactic. Read on The Grateful Dead Substack!
Planet Drum Circle!
Planet Drum Circle is an invigorating radio show that takes listeners on a rhythmic journey through the vibrant world of percussion, led by none other than Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, two legendary drummers best known for their roles in the Grateful Dead. Broadcasting for an hour every Sunday, this show is a testament to the power of rhythm and the universal language of music. An old fashioned Hour A Week Good Ole ‘Planet Drum Circle’ every Sunday Morning at 11AM EST!
Every Sunday Morning at 11AM EST
The JGB Radio Show!
Celebrating Jerry Garcia’s Solo Projects with Live Music. When it comes to iconic figures in the world of music, Jerry Garcia is a name that stands out. Known primarily as the lead guitarist and vocalist of the Grateful Dead, Garcia’s influence on the music industry cannot be overstated. However, what many people may not be aware of is Garcia’s extensive solo career, which produced some incredible music that deserves recognition. FIVE (5) Hours of Live Jerry Garcia Music from His Solo Projects Every Sunday Night!
