Because words are the molten iron of my trade, whenever I come across a new one it's like finding a strange jewel in the pile of rubble I am using in my latest attempt at a soaring cathedral.
This new word was prosody.
I have since discovered that prosody is used in the esoteric world of linguistics to describe the subtleties of speech that convey meaning beyond individual words.
So if you say "That was a really great party" - it could mean you enjoyed yourself, or it could mean the exact opposite, depending on your intonation and emphasis.
I never knew there was a word for the ability to twist the meaning of words with just a rise or fall in tone.
Donald Trump is obviously a master of prosody. But for goodness sake don't tell him.
However, Dr Eastaugh wasn't using prosody to define a narrow term of linguistics.
He used it to describe the rise and fall of a mother's voice when she speaks to her baby.
He went on to say that the prosodic nature of a mother's voice helps develop the Broca region of the brain which plays a critical role in forming speech and language.
Then he said something astounding. He said neuroscientific researchers in the United States working with traumatised children are now starting literacy lessons with 10 minutes of Mozart because Mozart wrote the perfect prosodic music.
His music has just the right amount of highs and lows to help develop language in traumatised children.
The brain is indeed a peculiar and powerful thing because for an instant at Dr Eastaugh's kitchen table, I was five years old and falling asleep to the sound of my father playing Eine Kleine Nachtmusik or Sonata No 16 on his pre-war piano downstairs in our tiny little Welsh terraced home.
I listened to that every night for the first 12 years of my life, or at least until Jimi Hendrix arrived and I put a pillow over my head and turned on Radio Luxembourg.
Now, when I listen to classical music, and particularly Mozart, I feel a potent mix of comfort, nostalgia, energy and continuing wonder at the fusion of mathematics and emotion that comes from eight notes on a piano.
Today there is ample scientific evidence to show that children who study music and learn to play a musical instrument also do better in other subjects such as language, reading and maths.
And because they do better in these fundamental things they lead happier, more fulfilling lives.
And yet, music is always the first thing to disappear in a squeezed educational budget.
The Federal Government policy of defunding the arts at university level will result in less music in schools, with less music teachers and less children learning music.
Computers and coding will remain, while the other sort of keyboard, the musical one - goes out the window.
This does not make for a harmonious future or one where the rise and fall of a mother's voice is placed at the centre of things.
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