Creature Beats

under the ocean. And we have a special guest from NASA who uses music to educate and inspire discover this more as we answer the angel question, do all birds like Taylor Swift or just the Swift's Joel Monique, our lovely producer, is back with us again on a hot mic, and joining me today is NASA engineer, creator, educator, and musician Deja Williams. Welcome, Deja, Hi are you? I am really good? I'm so excit I had to talk about

music with you. I It's always fascinated me how it's its own language where you just like listen to a piece of music and you feel this raw emotion and it feels like we're sort of connected to the natural world in a way. And so I'm I'm just so excited about this topic and I'm so excited to have you. I've never I don't think i've ever spoken to anyone from NASA before. Yeah, I'm excited to do this too. I I never. I've always had an appreciation for just

natural songs. I love when I see people making instrumentals or beats to like just things that they have at their house, whether it's a pen or like or the wind or the river sounds. So I'm super excited to look at music in a different perspective today. Yes, Yes, And we will have an interview with you in the middle of the episode where we will talk about your own musical talent. You create songs to help get people interested in STEM in math and engineering, which is really exciting.

It's a wonderful way to learn through music. I remember. I mean, this is kind of funny, but I remember I could only learn the U. S States through that Animaniac song that Oklahoma said it. I don't remember it now, but as a kid, it helped me. Helped me immensely pass that test. Yes, I know, I'm trying to think of it so bad, I can't think of how it goes, But yes, that that was the song of our first grade year. That was our thing, but it helps unlock

a part of your brain. I think it's like, in fact, like there's this whole thing where people who have suffered some kind of brain trauma, either through a stroke or brain injury, even if they can't talk, sometimes they can still see because it's a different part of the brain. So if the part of the brain that allows them to sing or play music is still functioning, then they can sing and play music but they can't like, and they can maybe communicate through using their singing voice instead

of their talking voice, which is I think really fascinating. Yeah, yeah, so it's it's it's such a mysterious thing. And then we'll talk about later in the episode. Some of these mysteries of music, especially when it comes to music and nature, I have yet to be discovered, but they are really interesting and really exciting. We can I ask before we move on, how'd you get into like music? Oh? My god, great, great question. So I got into music, but my my

family played a huge influence. Every year, we have this thing. It's not necessarily a family reunion. We call it a pig party, but everybody goes down to Atlanta and we have a talent show where everybody in the family has to participate, especially the kids. So I would have my bigger cousins right the wraps and and things of that. So or I'm from St. Louis, Missouri, so Nellie was huge at the time, so we would always like wrap

Nellie song. So that that's what got me like in tune with music, trying to be prepared for the family talent show. How'd you do? I did a pretty good. My cousins always beat me out, But look, I'm the one doing the music now, you know. I gotta make sure that they don't hear this. Oh my god, you're calling them out. You speaking of learning music from a young age. I do want to talk first about birds,

which I think are the most iconic animal musicians. It's the iconic animal who makes music in a way where we feel that by just hearing them seeing we can sort of understand them in a way that is otherwise hard to understand. Joel, I know that your relationships with birds is a little bit iffy. It even bird calls,

which we all know are actually dinosaur screams. Are they very some are very nice and you're like, Wow, what a wonderful way to like wake up in the morning, and sometimes a giant raven is sitting in the palm tree outside of your house staring at you singing, and you're like, I know you hold grudges. I feel like I haven't done anything specifically to you. But maybe the birds know that I'm afraid of them, and they're stalking my space. I don't know. I want to love the

bird music because I know what's important to them. I know it's like what keeps them alive, how communicate and find a partner and stuff. It's very romantic. I'd still horrified with dinosaur screeches that accompany every sunrise. That's very metal, hilarious. The cousin who actually puts on the pig party, he actually is scared of birds himself, and he calls it. He says that him and birds just have a misunderstanding. He doesn't doesn't like to say that he's scared of that.

He just said, yeah, we don't have a little misunderstanding. Nothing too nothing too crazy, but they can hear things. I'm not the kind of person who advocates like during rocks at birds or like running out they're scared. None of that, None of that, None of that, you know. I would just like them to stay over there and as we over here and we're good, Like, can you have a you have a healthy respect for the dinosaurs of today that we know I do, I am aware

of their power. Well, hopefully I will be able to convince you to enjoy bird music because actually, so there are kind of different types of bird vocalizations. It's not all birds songs. So a lot of the stuff you hear from, like say a crow, or those like bird calls that you hear, it's technically not bird's song, although there's with everything in evolutionary biology, like the borders are

kind of fuzzy. So bird calls are simple vocalizations that are often less pleasing to our human ears, and bird songs, which are longer, they're more elaborate, they're more complex, and we typically find them a lot more pleasing to our ears. So generally speaking, bird calls like uh, that raven staring at you, Joel going that is sort of a short and sweet kind of communication. It's often like an alarm, like hey, watch out for that hawk, or like hey

I'm over here, where are you? Or hey stop that or just you know, generally, these like little snippets of communication, whereas bird songs are longer and more complex. So, for example, I want to talk about the musician wrin, which is a little rust colored bird with white spots on its

neck and dark bands on its wings. It's found in the Amazon rainforest, and there is a musician wrin call, and I want you to listen to the difference between its call and its song because it's quite quite remarkable. So here's the call and here's the song. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. It's like the difference between like a whistle as you're walking down the street and like uh honk slash whistle of trying to call someone's attention from across

the field. It's very different. That's crazy. So they and all the is it okay? Are birds like um snowflakes through each of their songs are deferent? Are they composing? Are they building off of one another? Is there a bock level bird who's like that bird was a master songwriter? Those are extremely good questions, and those are questions that are often the focus of zoom musicology studies and ornithology studies. So I would say that the answer is going to

depend on the species of birds. Usually what happens with bird's song is that you have your little baby birds and they have this instinctive understanding of which bird songs they're supposed to listen to to pick up on somehow, which is interesting because bird songs do evolve over time, so that mechanism of them being like, ah, that's that's one of the that's one of my family, I know, I gotta listen to that, uh, is kind of mysterious. But they do learn specific songs that like all of

their species of birds are going to be doing. However, they also can in some species and it differs like some species have these big repertoires of songs, some species just have a couple's songs and generally can have this big repertoire of like variations on these bird songs. And you could definitely have a bird talk who kind of like innovates a little bit and then passes that song on to other birds if it catches on. So there is bird innovation in songs, and it is really interesting

to see that happen. It's partially innate, there's a partially instinctive ability to sing, and then it's partially learned, which is actually you know, there's a lot of debate on how humans pick up on language, but it's there's sort of this idea that you know, we have these structures in our brain that are really good at creating language, but then we have to learn it, so we learn it from each other. So it's a potentially similar things with birds, and we can learn a lot about human

communication through bird communication. Who we study like us. I want to Jackson Family five birds. I want to see like the little Michael, you know, do you know, finally learning to like hit those dance steps at the right time. I feel like this is the most interested I've ever been in birds because it's the reality TV show waiting to have in. I want to see how the birds are evolving, what they're learning from their parents week to week.

Are they getting stronger? Are they frustrated that the judge don't like what they're doing? This could be very interesting. They actually practice their song and it is called subsong. When they practice their song, it's kind of these little like very quiet, kind of uncertain little practicing, like almost like they're singing the songs under their breath, like okay,

boo boo boop. And then so they're kind of learning this song and then as they get older and start to get more confident in their song, it starts to get stronger and stronger, and they will finally reach this age where they can actually sing and sing well. And the reason that they sing is that they are actually advertising that they're great birds. So what that's it? This

is unbelievable. Wow, I did I didn't know that they they This is literally how humans are failing learn anything the drums or you know whatever, Like, does that remind you of getting ready to do the wraps in front of your families where you like everything that she's saying. She's like, oh, they have this innate ability to that. We I mean, we have an innate ability to either some people can stay on beat or they can't type

of do. So, yeah, I see a lot of similarities in how I learned music or watching maybe a child in my family learned music. So this is pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. And there's also similar to humans, there's this crystallization period for learning bird song. So if you don't expose a baby bird to birdsong when it's still immature, it actually can't learn it an adulthood, which is similar to how humans.

They we seem to have this period of time that where we can learn language, and if like say someone who is basically these children who have been not exposed to human society, it's very very rare that this happens. It's usually a lost child and then they get lost somewhere where they don't have contact with with other people,

and then they get found. They struggle very much. They can kind of learn language a little bit, but they really struggle because it seems to be something that we basically have this crystallization period where like kids are great at learning language. It's astounding how how smart and could they are picking up on language just by absorbing it. And it's the same similar thing with baby birds. They

pick up this bird song and they learn it. And the whole reason they sing to each other is they're essentially advertising either to mates or two rivals that they are very talented, which means there which is sort of an advertisement of their overall health. So research has shown that high quality songs help indicate health. So there's a connection between the tempo of the songs and whether they

have disease or parasites or their overall physical welfare. So like if they kind of it's basically if you have rhythm as a bird, it means you're healthy. And if you're kind of like maybe off key, a little bit off tempo, it means you might be dealing with some some itchy skin mites or something. There a song that we can sing as humans if find out if if you're sick or not, that would be really cool. Little we could just like, you know, whether you need to

go to the doctor or not. Yeah, Unfortunately, it's going to be show tunes. Speak for yourself, missy, I will show tunes my way through an illness. Let's do this. I'm ready for the talent competition as well. I would like to wear an idle version of the songs. I think that they would be beautiful. And I do think that if humans could sing their despair, it would be more like a Glee episode with like it would be a lot of mashup songs. It would be people trying

to express their feelings through multiple songs and sing terribly. Yeah, well, you know, speaking of Glee actually, So, like I said, there's two main reasons that birds song happens, and one is mating, advertising yourself to mate, like hey, like I have the mental acuity and the physical fitness to sing this amazing song, you should mate with me. But the other reason is to advertise to rivals that you're awesome and amazing and you you can go at any time, bro.

But we don't have to resort to violence, because we can just settle this by seeing which one of us is going to be better at defending our territory through our songs. And they have these like they have these song fights, so like there will be a bird singing in it's territory and usually so typically it's the male birds that sing. So the birds have rat battles. They did, haven't That's crazy? Oh my god, I gotta tell everybody that birds have rap battles. When they do, they do

and don't like compete with each other. So that so one of the birds will sing a song in its repertoire, and then another bird will sing either that same song or maybe a slightly different version of that song to say like, hey, anything you can do like I can do better, essentially, and and they'll go back and forth to both advertise themselves in front of me. It's like, hey,

you you think this guy is good? Like look at me, um, but also like to work out territory disputes without having to resort to actual fighting because they're like, hey, you know, like listen, you don't want to mess with me. I have this extremely sick beat that you do not want to mess with. Oh my guy, I am mind blown right now. I just I gotta take that to the classroom, teach about about birds and and have them. Yeah, that's a that's really cool. The battles ever, give bloody? Does

it ever go beyond just singing? And how is a winner determined? A winner is determined by sort of the bird's taste in music. So again, like if it has the right tempo, if they have a big sometimes in some species, if you have a bigger repertoire to draw from.

That means that you are chosen more by mates or respected more by other birds, Like birds will like if if a bird is advertising its territory and it's a better singer by the metrics that these birds have chosen, then rivals will not challenge that bird as much because they're like, hey, you're probably kind of a badass and I don't want to deal with you. But yeah, it's it is. I think it. It's not that they never

resort to sort of squabbles and violence. I think it is a way to avoid that though, because if you can advertise your physical fitness without having to resort to violence, then it kind of works out for everyone because then it's like, hey, we don't really a lot of animal to do this too, by the way, like some animals do it by like comparing their jaw size, Like they'll open up their mouths and be like, oh, I have a bigger job than you, so we don't have to

actually do this, And then it benefits them both because like the the winner doesn't have to get any like expend energy or get any injuries from it. In the loser, you know, avoids probably what's going to be losing, Yeah, exactly, losing confrontation. Nobody wants that. So, you know, music, it's a way to resolve bird disputes. I think that's great soul. Yeah yeah, yeah, And like I said, so it's bird's song is generally something that male birds do, but female

birds sometimes sing. So like because males are often the ones that are advertising themselves to mates or defending territory, they'll often be uh in a lot of species, they're the ones that produce bird song, but in areas where birds actually have a lower risk of mortality, so like in the Amazon where they have few were predators and more resources, and also being having a lower rate of mortality means that they can form these stronger pair bonds

with each other because it's like, you know, it's more beneficial to be monogamous if your monogamous partner isn't going

to get eaten by a cat or something. So in those areas, females actually also sing, which seems to indicate that first of all, because that may strengthen their pair bond, and also in other areas where they have these shorter, unpredictable breeding opportunity windows, like in the deserts of Australia and Africa, where weather conditions are really erratic, both males and females sing because it just increases their chances that they're going to find each other as quickly as possible

while the conditions are right to breed. So it's really interesting how like these environmental factors really influence whether you're going to have a boy band or you know, boy and girl bands. So are the birds coursing together? Is it multiple voices? It once? It can be so sometimes it's a single bird singing a song of advertisement like hey, come mate with me, or stay out of my stay

off my porch um or it is. They can be duets, so a pair bond can sing a duet to strengthen their relationship essentially, I mean, just like any sort of good musical. It's like when your parents do the two steps in the kitchen and their bonds, Like, I love

that romance. And then you can have like birds duetting as a form of rivalry where it's like they're singing a duet to kind of like see who's the better singers, So yeah, they they It is really interesting and there's I mean, it really depends on the species of birds because there's a whole variety of behavior some kind of like generalizing, but yeah, it's um, yeah, it's it's really interesting and I love I love the whole thing of

like birds singing duets together. It's so sweet, so ro mantic, and the way birds actually can produce music is really interesting, just on the sort of physics side of it. So birds don't have a larynx like humans do. They have a synx, which is, you know, the bird version of a larynx, so it's similar to how a larynx works, where air's force past membranes that vibrate in a resonance chamber that produces sound, kind of like the strings of

a violin. When those strings vibrate, they produce a sound, and then you have the resonance chamber in the body of the violin. But what's interesting about the syrinx is that it allows them to create two notes at once because they can control muscles on either side of the serix independently, So like how a pianist can control both hands and play different notes at once, like a bird can play two notes at once. They're humans who can sing two notes at the same time. Yeah, isn't that

the a throat singing? Yeah? Yeah, a throat singing is incredible hollyphonic overtone singing, Yeah yeah, and it's with throat singing. I think what's happening is basically what happens when you are switching from one register to another with singing, where it's like, now, I'm not like a vocal expert with with human singing, but you can It's like switching from a certain register of singing to like a falsetto ish register.

It might might not technically be falsetto. And I apologize to all the all the vocal coaches out there that are just like, no, but you're it's basically of these two distinct registers of singing that that happen in different parts of the larynx and different parts of the the

sort of like like glottal area. And then if you basically like get sort of like between them or like right at that bridge between them, if you can kind of lean into that, you can get those two registers kind of like going uh simultaneously, and that's how you get that really interesting, incredible throat singing. There's a ton ton of videos on YouTube if you guys want to look it up and check it out. Sometimes you see people like manually manipulating their throat trying to achieve that

like dual tone. Some people can just do it with their like nose and like despite overing our mouth at a certain angle and like getting the air to hit the cordy. Today it is the craziest thing you've ever heard. Though, You're like, I'm sure there are aliens in that person. This is a Men in Black episode and they're just lying to us. We've been mind I remember I tried to do that when I first found out about it, and I just saw singing is not necessarily my strong suit.

And I actually have an example of that. It's a wood thrush. This is what every morning in Illinois sounds like. I just want to live in the back country of Illinois where there are many a tree and cornfield. This is what you woke up to you every morning. It is gonna be very strange nostalgia, but it's also it is very beautiful. This is one of those you just can't deny that. It's it's just lovely. I love the I love the bird trills that it almost sounds digital,

like it's been auto tunes. You know what I mean, because I think it is. It's one of those examples of it. It's playing two notes at once, so it sounds kind of synthetic and digital because you shouldn't be able to do that. It's like going back and forth crazy. So what part of Illinois are you from. Let's see, so I was born in the Hazel Crest, which is like half an hour outside of Chicago, but I was raised in Ottawa, Illinois, which is like right next to

Starved Rock, the Big State Park. Okay, Okay, I've heard I've heard of these places, but i'm because I've heard this too, so I'm assuming is that, like, are these birds some of these birds in the Midwest, like you know, heavy in the Midwest. I don't know. Yeah, I think it's it's found in all over eastern uh eastern United States, and then probably into the Midwest a little bit, and then I think it tapers off a little bit as

you get closer to the west coast. Okay, that makes sense, Okay, Yeah, it definitely could have been the wood thrush or another species of thrush who also do similar calls. I'm giving this the Beyonce efforts. If you wanted or you would have put a wing on her. That was good. Oh my god. So one car and that I had as I was doing this research is why does bird's song sound so good to us? Like? Is it like human song?

Like what do we find so appealing? Because there's nothing better than like, you know, you're out in nature and you're hearing bird's song and it's so relaxing and it sounds nice. Like there's all sorts of interesting animal vocalizations, but sometimes they don't really sound nice. They just it's like, Okay,

that's interesting, not into it, but it's cool. There was a zoom musicology study published in the Max Planck Institute of Ornithology that found that musician rins are are a little pow that we listened to at the beginning of the episode. Uh, share a similar taste in music as humans. So the intervals in their music, which is like the difference in pitch between two notes, are the same as

intervals found in music in most human cultures. So I'm not a musician, so this quote from the article doesn't make much sense to me. So I'm hoping, but I'm hoping for for musicians, this will this will mean something. So the authors of the studies say, quote, it is because musician rins preferentially produced successive perfect octaves fifths and fourth that their songs sound musical to human listeners. So great, cool, I love it. Some factory this morning. Take them. Oh

my gosh, that's interesting. Now, I wonder if we took these birds to different concerts, like who they would ring because, like we know, plants are classical creatures. They want to listen to their box and their beech ovens like a string and a trumpet, you know, but I wonder, like, you know, if we played I don't know, some te Swift for the birds suddenly, you know, sort of like they pick up on birds and Amazon where foresting is heavy, will sometimes make the sounds of the saws, the trucks

and mimic that. Yeah, that's the that's the liar bird. Which there are birds that actually copy sounds, so they have such a flexible ability to fill their repertoire with different kind of sounds. They don't just do like sort of a species specific song. They copy all sorts of sounds they found. They can, like, like you said, Joel, just mimic exactly like a chainsang. I would like to see, you know, some bird renditions of the Taylor Swift album. I want to know what, how do they feel about it?

What they're you know, intonation of haters gonna hate, hate hate. It's like, I think that would be brilliant. Um, you know, if we got a boy band number of you know, if we get twelve for like a K pop band, done, what does that sound like? I feel like birds have are holding back on us. As you know, I'm a very conspiracist. I'm not one of the conspiracy people who please birds don't exist. But I do believe birds aren't

plotting for their takeover. And I wonder, like, you know, if they're just like these humans are so silly they think their music okay, they don't know, they don't know what's around the corner. I would like to hear it. Yeah, yeah, I mean we have seen those birds in the videos, like like cockatoo who like sort of seems to dance to yeh, it seems to Bob's to the of them.

I was actually talking to a listener, Brian Greco, who is an assistant professor at University of Wisconsin River Falls in the Department of Animal and Food Science, and I was asking him his opinion on like how animals respond to music. He was saying that sort of differences in tempo and the frequency of tones can have an effect on the um activation of the parasympathetic nervous system. So like sort of that's that's the same system that kind of engages you in in excitement, fight or flight, or

to calm down, and so he said. Quote this as well and illustrated by the five jillion dancing parrot videos on YouTube. The vast majority of the selected songs are high tempo, and many of the featured birds are displaying fight, flight or reproductive communication cues. So uh, And then he says,

so music is exciting, be it scary or sexy. So birds are either finding the music to be a turn on and they're getting a little bit you know, these are some some thirsty, horny birds, or they are finding the music alarming and kind of feeling in an excitement. It's possibly a fear excitement. It's hard to tell, like the difference between fear arousal and excitement arousal. So it has something to do with the tempo and frequency. And I don't know how birds would react to h T. Swift.

If these birds are gonna be very mad, Max vibes sexy, but it's kind of scary. They like a loud, fast music telling you overlords they're coming for So I didn't invite a nass An engineer on the show to talk about music just because she's super smart and space is cool, but because Desia is a musician herself. When we return, we're going to talk about how she uses music to inspire and educate students about stems. Write your hands because we're too busy schooling. It's simple, let me prove it.

We gotta keep improve it. Bro, we gotta get these braids and agree were week for someone I much saw you how to do this, how to cover units hands because we're too busy schooling. It's equals in its own negatively, that's a modest we of the web. Fine, as well as sh'll not find a rude over to say rude over to a food over to say rude over. What you were just listening to is another one of Desia's songs. So now let's go behind the music and get a

NASA engineers scoop on how songs can spread knowledge. So Deja, I want to to talk to you a bit about your experience both as an engineer at NASA and as a musician. So first of all, for those of us who maybe aren't engineers, I'm pointing to myself, can you kind of describe like what you do at at NASA as an engineer? As an engineer a NASA, I'm a quality engineer. So myr. Mary starts off with me kind of going through a bunch of paperwork on some discrepancies

that I may have found the day before. Discrepancies mayna that there's something wrong with a part literally anything on the space. We don't want that right exactly. So I go through those discrepancies, send them to the actual engineers that are you know, work in that particular system, and it's their job to take what I say and UM, fix it basically um. And the quickest way to say that it's just to fix it right. So after I

do all that paperwork, I go to different labs. I suit up, I put my mask on and put my buddy suit on, got my booties on. I go in the lab and I start to I inspect. I do a lot of inspecting on whether we're putting together something or we could we need to make sure that this part weighs this much, or we need to make sure that this mechanism can hold as much weight as it's supposed to, it could take this much force, it could exist in this temperature, or any type of anything like that.

We need to make sure that it's going to actually do what it's supposed to do in space. So I'm there to make sure that the proper steps are being taken to make sure that we can rely on what we're sending up there. That sounds incredibly important. I am really glad that you are making sure that the things that we send into space are you know, space worthy

and not gonna fall apart. And when we think about things like hey, let's just build a spaceship, it kind of hurts my brain to try to think about all of the many, many, many steps and many many people who have to be involved to do that. I can't I don't even know where you start, Like just like look staring at a blank sheet of paper and then like, I don't know drawing a spaceship, Like, how do you even start with that? But that's that's the thing. A

lot of us don't even know where it starts. Like there's not there's not one single person that could give you the rundown. But when it comes to actually doing it, it takes a massive amount of skill sets and uh, it's it's a we have to be a huge team. And some people don't like to admit that, they think that their part is probably more important than someone else's. But man, these you can't think that sending a rover to Mars can, right. Uh, that is so interesting, that's

incredible that you do that. When did you first realize that you wanted to become an engineer. I started getting interested in engineering while I was in high school. We had these classes called Project Lead the Way, and they allowed you to design different like buildings like uh and things like that through a software called like auto cat. It was. It was a it was a lower version than what they used in the industry, but it was still giving us an opportunity to design things on our

own and and see how things work. But I also had this little internship at the St. Louis Science Center called Youth Exploring Science, and they gave me a lot of opportunities to study things like explore right, things like chemistry, robotics, like um, just anything that you could think of. They were allowing us to do projects on them, and then they would take it a step further and put us into summer programs where we were to actually teach it

to elementary school. So, teacher, can you talk about the importance of exploring, about just being allowed to open space, explore technology. It's I just think that's where genuine learning comes from, is just having that curiosity to see how something is working, how can I replicate that? How can I build that right? And then or and then another part of engineering is how can I make it better?

How can I innovate this thing? So just having that genuine curiosity of Okay, how does my cell phone work? Do I have one that I can take apart? Okay, well, what's this thing? What's this thing? And then you just start googling stuff and okay, I got my answers. Obviously, it will take a little bit more formal training to put bigger things together, but I do think that true learning and just being inquisitive. You gotta teach kids to just explore the world around you, like it looks for answers.

Are you can you can build whatever is in your hand. You can build that Nintendo like. I think one of the really cool things that you do is you use music to help inspire kids to have that interest in exploring. How do you use music to inspire and to educate, especially when it comes to engineering and too, math and science these things that I think can be really intimidating to kids. So the music for me is about breaking

down a barrier, more in particular a language barrier. I feel like right now, education as a whole, not even just math, is science are given in a very uh, it's just just one track, and we use the same words through every curriculum and it's not very diverse at all. So if I always use this example, I remember I had I don't know if it was a physics question or something, but it has something to do with like skiing or uh, snowboarding or how fast this kid was

going and I had. You know, the people in my classroom, they have been to Denver or to any you know, they have been skiing before, so they could imagine that, oh I was going pretty fast as I was skiing, So I could imagine you had that lived experience. So when we break break down the language and we start talking in a way that different particular groups of kids that they can understand, it's going to be a more

enjoyable learning experience. So music for me, especially with black and brown kids, well, well all kids love hip hop, but you know that that I know that's the music that touches my community the most. So let me try to break it down into that language. Like in my song like one inch and two points five for cine meter is your future briter than the ring on my pinky finger, Like like jewelry is such so huge in the rap community, So let me put that, let me

make some of that into the science. So so they thinking we're saying about diamond rains and whatnot when you don't even know that you're memorizing that these conversions the song right, because you're I mean, I think that's something that is often overlooked in education. We assume you get a textbook, you have a curriculum, and oh that works for every every kid. And of course no, you know, children are extremely influenced by their environment in which they

grow up. You can't like teach a kid in New York like all right, so let's talk to you about surfing and use that as a metaphor for like it's like, well, pay surfs here, what are you talking about? So it's just I think that's incredible. I'm going to play a sample of one of your songs right now for our listeners to here, first of all, because it's a really

wonderful song. I love it. It's so catchy, just to of you a taste of like how you can make something that you know, if you talk to tell a kid like we're going to learn about how to convert units and you can feel their solely their body. But but when you do it like this, It's so fun. I was listening to this and I'm someone who, like I don't remember unit conversion home. Now I'm like, all right, yeah, this makes sense. I want to relearn. Oh wow, that

is awesome. Yeah, so let me play that right now. I met put your burning in the rain on my piggy fingers. Well, people, full full. You gotta keep your head in three yard just sad, he shouted. Teach you you will start seventy sixty yards in the mouth six really, Brown, would you talk a little bit about the creative process for you, like when you are creating an educational song, like how do you pick out a topic that you think would be really useful for kids to have unit conversions.

I came up with an idea to do that one because I was actually at work and we were trying to do a test on some type of part and we had to put X amount of pounds in it on or onto a piece of hardware, but our our instructions were in kilograms, so we needed to convert that. And I literally was like, oh my god, I remember having to do this when I was younger, and let

me just make a song about it. Yeah, that. That's why I'm choosing topics that touch a wide range of edges demographics right now, until I get the resources to do Like, Okay, this is first grade, this is second grade, this is third grade math. What does music mean to you? And what does it mean to get to express your interests in STEM and engineering through music out is a really good question. Music is I don't know, it's everything

to me. I don't want to sound cliche, but when I first when I first got out here to m l A for my job, I was focused on the job and I didn't get to express myself ado any music, and it really took me like I just was sad and I didn't and I didn't know why, Like I just I couldn't figure out. It's just like, you just got this really good job, You're moving to the West coast from Missouri, like this is a great time. But what I realized, the missing key ingredient to what makes

me happy is a music. So it's it's a safe haven for me. It's a way to um, it just feels something, you know, Um, Yeah, I can't I can't do it without it. But because of that, that's how I came with the idea it to use the two. It's like, Okay, these these worlds don't too have to be totally separate from me. I can mix them and also give back and teach at the same time, you know, and make and affect some change. So music, it's it's really huge. That's amazing. Yeah, that's I love that so much.

It's I think music really taps into something so deep inside of us. And to use that to reach out to kids, to make something that, you know, to sort of spark this scientific curiosity. And then I love that music can educate, inspire, and it taps so directly into our emotions. Maybe it can make us care about endangered species that may not be as cuddly as a panda or a koala. A listener tell usker Diaries on Instagram sent me a story about folk music that is about

saving the bees. Climate change, these colony collapse, disorder, pesticides have all caused a lot of problems for bee populations for both honey bees and wild bees. Song Hive is an archive project started by traditional Irish fiddler Rowan Pigott, who is putting together folk songs about bees to stir up buzz about bees for bee related environmentalist causes, such as the bee cause. So here's a little musical sting in the key of bee. This one is sung by

Rosie Hodgson. Bees bees hogeo bees hi from your neighbors as much as you please. But what happens us you must tell or else we will give you honey tis. I'm mad to day stop the baby story lead. But if you have a baby, I'm a work by nature. I freely it's a nice and all my days in the fiend. That's a tirable trade, which may well be which brings all the palmer's day. That was another song

by Irish fiddler Rowan Pigott about honey bees. But to explore one of the most mysterious songs in the world, we need to get to know an animal that's over five hundred million times bigger than a honeybee. So now I want to talk about one of the most incredible mysteries in animal behavior, and that is whale song, which even listening to it, I get chills because it's so there's something so ethereal about it. Do you have you guys listened? Do you guys listen to whale song? Because

have you heard of it. It's a band called whale Song. Oh my gosh, I can't wait. My spiritualist when we're meditating likes to play it as we're talking about living in Los Angeles. Just reveal my whole list Los Angelino's self. So yeah, I've been I've been meditating with the whale sounds. Yeah. Well look I just play whale sounds sometimes too, So you're you're good here. So what exactly is whale song?

So whale song is produced by two species of baling whales, and that is what we basically know as whale song, So the humpback whale and the blue whale, the blue whale being the biggest animal ever, it's just huge. And then cetaceans, So that's the the animals that the marine mammals that includes whales, dolphins in general. They all communicate with these very complex vocalizations like clicks. They can even have dialects, like how the sperm whales seems to have

these dialects of clicks. But whale song as we know it as the sort of like melodic variety of frequencies and tones, is specific to the humpback and blue whales. And so here is a humpback whale song which sounds a little bit like a hunted violin mm hmmm, mm hmm. And here is a blue whale song which sounds like we're in a sci fi Oh my god, this is crazy. It makes me want to like take some tidbits out of it or sound bites and make a beat from it. Like,

I could definitely make some music from this. If you do that, let me know, because I would love to hear that. Uh. You know, like when you hear a piece of music that just kind of brings you to tears a little bit, it makes you so emotional. I feel that way when I listen to whale song, where I kind of want to cry because it's like, so

there's something really hauntingly beautiful about it. Also, when you investigate the story behind whale song, it is still haunting because it's so mysterious and interesting, and it gives you the sense of the unknown that we know so little about the world's largest mammal, the world's largest animal. Even so, the way we hear whales is probably different from how whales hear it because we're listening with underwater microphones. Then

we're listening to a recording through our human ears. But the way that it hits whales is going to be different because whales listen directly through the water and they don't have external ears like we do. They have these internal ears, and it resonates through their jaw and bones and and fatty tissues and into their ears. I don't know what it's like to hear a whale song as

a whale. We only know what it's like to hear a whale song as a human with our with our weird human ears, So that that itself is pretty hard to try to try to conceptualize. There's something there's something a little haunting about that when I think about, like I can, I can never really understand what it's like to hear a sound as a whale, because there experience

of that is going to be so completely different. I imagine if you put your handerwater and then cover your ear like real good with your hands and then like scream melodically all right the water, We're probably getting close to what a whale is earring. Hang, I'm gonna be right back, Okay, now I'm wet, and uh, I don't understand anything. Don't try that at home. I feel like they don't do children mad, We're gonna all kinds of

phone calls no good. And our heads aren't really designed to hear sound underwater, whereas whales, again, it's like they have these resonant chambers inside their heads that lead to their ears, so the way they experience the sound is

probably more full than we can as humans. And it's interesting because these baling whales, at least these two species of baling whales, have this like different method of community patian than the toothed whales, the whales with teeth, and it may have something to do with the difference in

basically their feeding behavior. So the humpback and blue whale may focus on hearing low frequency sounds for long distance communication, whereas toothed whales like dolphins, orcas, and sperm whales focus on higher frequencies to communicate and echolocate in their more immediate surrounding because they actually hunt for fish, Whereas baleen whales like the humpback and the blue whales, they feed by taking in huge gulps of sea water and then

smooching it out through that baleine, which is that keratin structure at the front of their mouth that looks like a push broom all over their mouth, and then as they shove that seawater out of their mouth inside of the bristles, all these little krill and other tasty, little edible sea creatures get stuck in there, and then they just eat that up. So they're more a much more passive feeder. They don't have to chase after any prey

to eat it. So for them, having that immediate echolocation around them and immediate communication close by is not as important as perhaps more long distance communication to be able to locate other members of their group over long distances um or to find mates. It's also an interesting question about whether baling whales actually echolocate. We don't really know, which seems like we should at this point noe that

about them, but we don't. We there's some research that seems to suggest no, they're not really they don't really rely on echolocation. But there's other research that's that's showing that, like, hey, maybe their songs and their vocalizations actually could be used for echolocation. We just we don't know. That's always fun in science, and we just don't know. Something I like the idea of a humpback whale or even a blue

whale being their own GPS system. But it's like a very dope music, you know what I mean, sort of like we get boring to like turn left here. They're like really general like turn left here, and it's like, oh yeah, disco whales, disco whales. I love that. Yes, yes, that would be great. I feel like whatever research study comes out to see if these singing whales use that to echo locate, it should be called disco whales, and I won't accept anything else. The question is what do

they use their their whale song? What do humpback whales and blue whales use their songs for? We kind of are going to get a little bit back into like what we learned about birds. So both males and females will do vocalizations like these, like sort of smaller vocalizations that seem to be more for communicating with other individuals a spy to them. But those long melodic haunting songs

is really just coming from the males. So that's a similar thing that that we see in many bird species, where it tends to be the male birds singing rather than the females. So that may give us some hints about like this could potentially have something to do with mating, but we've never really observed blue whales or humpback whales mating, so we don't know. These are private creatures. We study the hell out of these guys, we've never like once been like oh, I thought, idea. There's just not that

much documentation on how their mating works. They are very I think it's just the difficulty of you can't like position researchers down under deep underwater for months on end just hoping something happens. Now, you'd think that there would be an eccentric billionaire that creates a submarine that people can live in, like stocks whales, and it's like, come on, do it, do it, do it and try to study.

I like to think they're like puritanical and they like go like way way down to deep where there's no light and they're like this is perfect, like yeah, yeah, And they have like a they have like a cottage down at the bottom of the ocean and like the whale groom is carrying the whale bride behind to the doors of the giant whale cottage and you know, or just like a yeah, So what one thing that's interesting is that you can actually kind of identify groups of

whales based on the songs that they're singing. So, Joel, you asked a really interesting question at the top of the episode about birds about like, you know, do they have these individual songs do they change over time? And that's we talked about what that is like for the birds. But for these whales, their songs slowly evolve over time

and is specific to each group of whales. So you may have a group of whales from one region and a group of whales from another region, and their songs are going to be different um from each other, and then they're also going to slowly evolve over time into sort of different types of songs. So like when you take sort of a slice in time of what's happening with these whales, it'll sound like they have just one

song that this group sings, and that that's true. Then like a few decades from now, that song is going to be a little different, but they are all singing that same song. So that's again really interesting. It just seems like these songs are actually part of the whales culture that they learn and then it evolves, much like human music, it evolves over time, which is I think

really interesting. So you have to name these clans of whales, merchandise them, give them like color coding systems or something so that people can attach and like you think your favorite Harry Potterhouse, your favorite whale plan, and then you just really rock with that song. And then I don't know how we can do it safely because I know Sonar is messing with the whales and the way that

your patterns are swimming and stuff. But like if we could project the music back at that and be like, this is our remix of your deadly song and just see what the reaction is, please exactly when you start partnering with our Animal Earth friends and and beautiful collab. But then we're just going to get into these like, oh's this post industrial whale rock or is this like is this sort of like avant garde whale rock and it's going to be insufferable, sufferable, your scientist, this is

the best. But so yeah, the purpose of these songs is highly mysterious. The leading theories are that it is used by males to find mates over long distances, used by males to induce estros and females, that is, to make them ready to mate, which I'm not exactly sure

about that one, but maybe here and then. Um. It could also be as a way to communicate or to warn other males of their presence, so similar to birds, where it's like, hey, this is my territory, Like we don't have to like I don't think whales really fight each other that much, but it's just a way of like saying, hey, let's you know, we don't need to we don't need to bonk into each other, we don't need to like, uh, compete over resources in this territory.

Let's kind of maintain this distance so that we each have our little slice of ocean life. Could also be to communicate with distant groups. Uh, so like you know, you have a whale or two over here, and it's like, hey, how are you guys over there? But it's like way eight miles away. That's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, whales on their cell phones, but they're just like, where are guys? Do you wanna get McDonald? But it's c McDonald that makes me think about evolution in period because say something

should say this, just say something catastrophic happens. You got the whales. They can communicate really far. You got the birds who can sing to each other and just communicate, but then our power goes out. What are we going to do? That's why we must form on the alliance with the birds in the whales, so we have have

agents both in the air and in the seas. Okay, okay, there's actually some research on blue whales and a Cyrvic and her team of oceanographers at Script's Institute of Oceanography in La Joya, California, which is actually in the same department that my dad works. So this is definitely nepotism and bias that I am, you know, full disclosure. But they did a study on blue whales and they found that blue whales dived down deeper in the ocean to

do their songs. And because the nature of the water changes as you get deeper, and like the water pressure increases and allows for further transmission of these sounds, it seems to indicate that they are diving down deeper in

order to transmit their songs across further distances. So that does seem to indicate that these whales songs are for long distance relationships, whereas the there are other vocalizations they are closer to the surface of the water, so that seems to indicate that is more for like sort of

a short, shorter distance communication. So yeah, it's it's one of those things where when you're feeling like, oh, we already know everything about the natural world, what's left for me to do as a young aspiring scientists, it's like, no, we don't we we don't know anything, right, right, there's so little we know. And I actually feel like asia that the deep ocean is kind of similar to space

and how mysterious it is. Like absolutely when you spoke about a submarine, having a submarine that people some tech whiz or something that having a submarine that someone could live down there or in deepest possibly could go, that's the same thing in space we're trying to get like hotels or just regular human flight travel. So things are happening on both ends of the spectrum. There exactly a bit cool so that we can discover space whales, cosmic

disco whales. God, I wish so anyone listening who is an aspiring scientists and aspiring evolutionary biologist or any anything in the field of stem listen to listen to some music, get inspired, and please discover the mystery of whales because maybe they know the meaning of life and we're they're just singing about the meaning of life and all of life's answers and we just don't know what they're saying. You the first to craft the code. You can do

it well. Dejah, thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate you talking about the work you do and the wonderful music that you make. That is it's I really I will include a link to it because I feel like people really should check it out. It's such I love, I love, I don't I get I get chills thinking about just like combining music with education. It's amazing. Um can where can people find you? Um So?

You can find me on my website at Dejah Williams dot com, or you can follow me on Instagram where I'm most present at uh deja d A j A E dot mone or the same thing on Twitter, but instead of a period, it's a underschool and Joe. Where can people find you? Oh? You guys know me. You can find me all over the internet at Jowa Monique that's j O E L L E m O n I q u E. And you can find us at Creature Feature Pod on Instagram at Creature feet Pot on Twitter.

That's f A T, not f E T. That is something very different and you can find me at Katie Golden on Twitter or you know, just post my Katie thoughts. And as always, I'm also at Pro Bird Rights where look, this wasn't bird propaganda and I'll see you if you claim it was. Thank you so much to the space Coassics for their super awesome song Exo Lumina. Creature Feature

is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or Hey guess what where have you listen to your favorite shows? See you next Wednesday.