Hello, and welcome to the Physics World Stories podcast. I'm Andre Glesser, and in this episode, we're gonna be exploring the intersection between physics and music, or at least we're gonna be listening to some physics based songs in the company of Linda Williams. Having performed for the likes of Kip Thorne and Stephen Hawking, Linda finds herself about to embark on a tour which begins performing a song about and in front of Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell.
We'll hear about that later in the podcast, but let's begin with one of her songs. The curl of the Faraday's law. Now the trick is to use the vector ID for the curl, I'll curl. And then you'll see that everything simplifies, because Gauss's law tells us that del dot E is zero, and Ampere's law simplifies the other side. Aloha. My name is Linda Williams, and I'm the physics chanthus. I produce, original science cabaret for scientists and the general public.
My background is I'm a physicist, and I have over twenty years teaching as a tenured college professor. But now I'm retired from that, and I'm just getting my act together and taking it on the road. And cooled the particle zoo was born in the goo. Photons, bosons, gravitons, leptons, energy, radiation. Science cabaret or physics cabaret or cosmic cabaret or atomic cabaret or algebra cabaret is just a form of, musical theater performance where the topics are whatever
issue you want. Right now, I'm doing a new show called Atomic Cabaret, which is all about the nuclear world we live in, and it commemorates the eightieth anniversary of the US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki this year. And, I've also done algebra cabaret, which is a cabaret all about math. So it's essentially songs and repartee, and, usually, I'm a solo act, but sometimes I'll bring in other performers. And, yeah, so it's science themed, theater, musical theater
in a cabaret genre. Because you're about to go on tour. Yes. So I'm about to embark on a journey to The UK. I'm going on tour. It's been a bucket list of mine to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which I'll be doing this year. But my first stop is in Belfast at the International Symposium on Astronomy and Culture.
It's called INSAAP, and, it's a fantastic conference of, artists and astronomers and archaeologists and folks who are into ancient astronomy, archaeoastronomy, and just all coming together and seeing how, astronomy influences art and culture. So I'm going to be doing the banquet, show at the Belfast Castle, on June 12. Amazing. So Edinburgh Fringe, I can kinda see that. I can see you performing there. That that's gonna go very well, I think. I hope so. Yeah. Yeah.
I what what did you teach? Physics? I taught at a, college in California at at Santa Rosa Community College, junior college for twenty years. So I essentially taught all of the lower division courses, calculus based, algebra based. I also taught some astronomy. And, yeah, I did that for twenty years. And during COVID, I moved to Hawaii and was teaching remotely. And when they said, we're gonna go back face to face, I said, aloha. I'm I'm staying.
And, I ended up working at the Gemini Observatory on Mauna Kea as a tour guide for a couple years. And then now I just decided to go on tour while I still can sing and dance. Did your students know about your alter ego? No. I mean, I I was performing long before I got into physics. So I was performing first, And then, you know, I was auditioning and trying to get into the business in Los Angeles, and I was just bored. And I'm I said, I'm gonna write my own shows.
So I went to college. I never thought I'd go to college. And I went to college, And, I just realized, like, I needed to find something I was interested in, and I ended up falling in love with astronomy and physics. And, I mean, people thought I'd be a, you know, like a stripper in Vegas. No one thought I'd end up going into physics, and it turned out I was good at it. So then, naturally, I just started, you know,
creating work about it and performing. Because, you know, as soon as I've learned about the Particle Zoo, I was like, oh my god. You could totally sing about corks. You could sing about the Big Bang. Everything is so singable, and it's fascinating, and I love it all. And so I just naturally put it to music and theater, and I've been doing it for a long time. I grew up in the eighties, during the, you know, super high threat of nuclear Armageddon, and I became an antinuclear activist.
And so it was through that, actually, and I I just I remember picking up a Scientific American, and I couldn't understand it. And I thought, what? I am missing something. So I went to the library, and I I just started reading. I mean, I picked out books like, you know, Kant's Progolema to any future metaphysics. Like, I'm just pulling stuff, and I'm like, I can't comprehend this. And so then I said, well,
I'm gonna go study physics and math. And I literally taught myself trigonometry over the summer and started taking calculus, and I was good at it. It's like I'm a savant of some form. You know? Like, an idiot savant, a bim smart bimbo. But, yeah. So before that, like, in high school, I was doing shows. I was performing. I would you know, I've always been singing and dancing. So then I just naturally started doing shows about physics. And my first show
was when I was in grad school. It was called Cosmic Cabaret, and it was all about the big bang and the evolution of the universe. And I always have, you know, environmental and social justice issues woven in to it all, you know, to kind of complement my activism with my, love for science and and, astronomy. And so,
how the Physics Chantouse was born. So I was doing shows for years that always had sort of a combination of science fiction, science fantasy, science kinda melded together with musical theater and comedy. And then when I I went to my first conference, the American Physics Society, APS conference, and I was sitting in the banquet, and what they had on stage was so boring. I wrote down on my cocktail napkin the physics chanteuse, and I said to myself,
I'm gonna do shows for scientists. Because one of the one of the problems about doing science theater is exposition. So if you're gonna make a joke about the big bang or you're gonna make a joke about physics, you have to explain it to your audience. And when you have an scientifically illiterate or not very literate audience, you have to do a lot of explaining before you can get to the punch line. So I remember just thinking, like, I can do shows for scientists with no exposition whatsoever.
And that's how the Physics Chanties was born. I just started you know, the first show I did was for a solid state conference, and I, you know, I just researched the material and, you know, talked to the organizers and see who's in the audience and write a song for somebody and and, you know, working on and I'm a had people come up and say, I can't believe you put my research in your song. Like, only five people in the world know about that. You know? It's just it's just so much fun.
You know? So my although I do write songs for the general public and kids and up with science stuff, I I really love writing songs that are scientifically accurate for a scientific audience. And I think that's what's unique about my show because there's plenty of people doing science theater for a general audience.
But doing it just for scientists is just a whole another level, and I just love it, which brings me to what I'm doing at INSAAP, which is writing the song for Dame Jocelyn Bell Brunel, on Pulsars. You've written for a few people. You've written songs for a few people. We'll come to some of those, but Dame Jocelyn Bell Brunel is, well, I think legend is thrown around too much because she really is one. She's such an inspiration. Her story is she's so humble.
She's a Quaker. You know, she's just so humble, and her contribution is so magnificent, and she's such a fighter. And as a woman and a feminist, and, you know, I'm mature older woman. So when I went to school, I was often the only woman in class. But, you know, she she stuck to her guns. Right? Her her, thesis adviser who won the Nobel Prize, you know, he used to call her stupid. So I didn't put any of that in the song I wrote. I just honored her discovery and, you know, not complain about,
her not getting the Nobel Prize. Although I mentioned it, but even she says, well, I'm just thrilled that they thought my little pulsating star was worthy of, you know, a Nobel Prize. She's so humble. It's incredible. So, yeah, I'm thrilled to hear. Where does the the creative process start? Is it with the words? Is it with the melody? Usually, when it's for a scientist like this, it's
the words. It's the research. So I have to, I watched her give talks for this, honestly, and I would say that 90% of this song is her words. Jocelyn Bell was a PhD grad student studying astronomy at Cambridge in '67. She was looking for quasars, ressinging the planetary scintillation. She built a radio telescope with over 4,000 dipole antennas. Now face, face switch receiver
So I mean okay. Here's what happened. She gave a talk, and the title of the talk was tick tick tick pulsating star, how we wonder what you are, and that's the chorus of the song. So I just pulled that from her talk. And then as I'm watching her talk, and she was giving the the speech that she gave I've watched several, but one she was giving at Stanford. So it was to a scientific audience. And so, you know, I'm taking notes, and the way I usually do is I'll take
tons and tons of note. I love doing research, so I spend way too much time doing research instead of practicing the song. But, so I'll I'll do a lot of writing, and then I pair it down, and then I turn them into lines. And then I take the lines, and I put them into shorter statements, and then I try to rhyme them. Pass shows rough in the data. She sped up the paper to get a final resolution, and out popped out little green men every one point three three seven seconds. Tick, tick,
tick, pulse, saving star. I'm thinking I gotta do a workshop and because it's the same thing I do for every scientific song. It's the same process. Research, writing, and then breaking it down into lines and I where I don't worry about rhyming, and then I'll do the rhyming scheme. And then I have to check for accuracy, which I get in trouble with. You know, I just have to be really careful because some things work better structurally, and then I'll find out like, I'll realize,
like, that's wrong. That's backwards. And then I have to redo the whole song. I just had to do that with the Pulsar song. Actually, I Got a mistake. Oh, that I can't have any mistakes. You know? If I'm singing a song in front of Jocelyn Bell, the my nightmare is that she's gonna come up to me afterwards and go, oh, dear. I lovely song. It's just one bit. It's actually the ray is not feeding into the receiver.
The you know, I it's it's like a nightmare to me is this that come up and and and have to do a correction. You know? Listen there. So has anybody ever done that to you? Have you ever had that nightmare happen? Well, I just wrote a song for, Alan Robock, the climate scientist who works in, nuclear winter research, and I wrote a song for him because he has a line that he said that I go, that's a that's a hook. And it was,
nuclear winter is a self assured suicide. And and I that's the chorus of the song, but I say, nuclear winter is a self assured suicide. You bomb your enemy and end up killing everyone alive. So that's the the the chorus, which works great. But I so I finished the song, and I was so proud, and I sent it to him. And he said wrote back, and he goes, I love it. But, dear, there's a couple mistakes. You know?
And, because I was saying it's ash instead of smoke, and it's really the smoke that goes to the stratosphere and produces the blocking of the sunlight that creates the nuclear winter. It's not the ash. So, but ash was easier to sing sing than smoke, so I have to fix it. But, you know, I'm grateful because I don't want any mistakes. It's it's a it's science. They're they're very factual, and I pride myself on making sure that they're correct. Do you write all the music yourself as well? So I do.
I'm not really like, I don't perform live, but because of the, in the olden days, I can you know? And when I first started doing this, I would use sequencers and synthesizers, and I can strum on a guitar, but I'm a I'm a, I'm a loop maker. And now I realize I should probably be a DJ because that's what I love doing is I can, you know, just take loops and make songs out of loops now. Like, with Logic Pro, it's what I'm using right now.
And I've also been experimenting with AI songwriting programs because I'm primarily a lyricist, and I've been experimenting with dropping lyrics into Suno is one program. And what they do is they make songs, and they'll have a singer on it. And I'll just listen to a thousand, and, and I'll I can get, like, a melody out of it. So that's been an interesting process,
that I've done. I think I have, like I wrote a song called, There is No Planet b, Earth is all we need, and I'd grab the music out of Suno for that. And then I can pull off the vocals and sing on it. So that's an interesting process that gets people upset. There's a lot of musicians who you know, it's, like, unacceptable to be using AI as a tool like that, but, I'm just gonna confess and say that I find it a very interesting process, and it expediates
the process. Now having said that, probably 50% of my shows for scientists are parodies. I'm the parody queen. So I can take you know, I do these medleys of parodies. So I've done medleys of parodies of pop songs and classic songs because that's an easy it's fun. People love it. They recognize the song. It's, it's clever, and I don't have to write the, music. So, you know, I've done medleys. I'm doing a medley for the, Insap Show of, like, songs related to,
you know, astronomy. I've done several songs for astronomy, astrophysics, physics. Every show, I do some parodies. There's entertainment in here. Right? But there's also science communication. And you've talked about the, you know, you don't need the exposition for it. But now tell me all about the audience reactions from the sort of delight to the possible intrigue. Well, it's been a I've had a a full range.
You know, just the first thing that comes to mind was I did a show at CERN, and it was for a, summer school of science teachers from all over Eastern Block country. So this was, like, in February or something. And so there was, you know, all these teachers, and they were all drunk, and the power went out. So here I am in the most, you know, sophisticated, physics facility in the world in in the electricity. So I'm singing acapella because the show
must go on. And the they all start singing their country songs, and then they storm the stage and steal all my stuff. That was, like, the worst experience. I have a lot of sing along songs as well, and I get the audience singing. So for example, I did a parody of, Blackbird to Black Hole, you know, instead of, you know, blackbird singing in the dead of night, that song I'd you know, I'd instead of rewrote it as black hole spinning in the dead of night and spiraling around out of sight until you
collide. And when black holes collide, they produce a gravitational chirp. So then I I was able to get a gravitational chirp from Scott Hughes who was working on gravitational, waves. And I put that in the song, and it sounds like whoop. So then I have the whole audience says, everybody chirp, so everyone's going whoop whoop whoop whoop whoop whoop whoop. And, you know, so that's kinda fun.
The more they drink, the better. So unless they get too drunk and they storm the stage, but, typically, yeah, the response is really fun, for the most part. But, you know, I've had, like, I've had some really negative response as well. Yeah. In the earlier days, I would get invited to a conference, and there would be people that would say no. No. We cannot have a woman on stage in a slinky outfit singing. And so I got banned from performing several times. Oh, dear.
Yeah. It's a bit of a backlash. But, you know, it's I understand it. It's like, look. There's three women at the physics conference, and one of them shouldn't be on stage in the slinky outfit. So, you know, until there's more parity oh, I got a little play on parity. Parity, parity. Until until there's more quality in the you know, in physics, I understand that. So it's it's, you know, I understand that. Okay. Fair enough. People are being entertained. Some people are being, you know,
upset by it. But most people are being entertained. Because at Edinburgh Fringe, not everybody is going to be a scientist the way they would be at CERN or or at conference. The world premiere of Atomic Haberay will be in Belfast right after NSAP on, June 18. And then I go on tour. So then after that, I'll be taking it to, York and then Leeds and then London and then you know? So several different fringes. And if you go to my website, atomiccabaret.com, you can see all the
venues in, The UK that I'm doing. So that show is geared towards a general audience, so I will have to do exposition, which just means that you you know, I'm talking, I sing, I talk, I sing, and I have to explain, the physics. So for this show, it's primarily, it's more political. It's physics and politics because it's nuclear weapons. And, and in The UK, I'm talking about the dreadnought. I'm talking about the Trident. I'm talking about the b 61 that The US is
bringing to Lake And Heath. There's been a lot of protests about that. You might have heard the show is a benefit for CND, and their attempt to, abolish nuclear weapons. So I will talk you know, I'm talking about how what radiation is, what nuclear physics is. You know? But then I'm singing a song about depleted uranium. So it's not as much of it as a science show and, so it's a bit of a, different, you know,
show for me, which I'm excited about. So because I'm getting on in age, and so I kinda feel like I I need to be more, political, because the world's also kind of in bad shape right now. So I just feel like it's a use my platform as best I can to try to do good in the world, with physics. That's that seems like a good idea. Although I think possibly there are some people in charge in some countries in the world who wouldn't want people being political when they were on tour. I'm thinking of
Bruce Springsteen, for example. He's currently on tour in The UK, and he's speaking out against the current administration in America. And the current president of America used some social media to put out a message about Bruce Springsteen being A loser. That's pretty much what he says about anyone. He he doesn't like him. Like, Taylor Swift's not hot anymore. She's just a loser. It's like anyways.
If I was gonna go to a performance concert of any sort, I'd probably choose Taylor Swift, you, or Bruce Springsteen over one of his rallies. But did does that concern you at all for me? Well, for example, honestly, you know, like, so for the INSAAP show I'm doing, it's a audience of astronomers. And, you know, I'll have a little flavor of politics because I can't help it. You know? I mean, that's who I am, but it's not I'm not beating them over the head with
it. Whereas Atomic Cabaret is just kind of a different show because, I'm deconstructing, you know, deterrence, and I'm deconstructing the, you know, the politics of of nuclear weapons. So, you know, that that, you know, we're making ourselves safer, you know, by having nuclear weapons is just absolute madness. So it's a that's a different show. Yeah. That's right. You know, I had, like, this success in the nineties where I got a full spread in the New York Times. I was on
To Tell the Truth. I was in People Magazine. I was, like, in every you know, I had this little, my little fifteen minutes of fame, and what I got from that was a book deal. And it was supposed to be, like, my life on the stage, and I would you know, it'd be what it's like to be a woman in
physics and my take on the universe. And so I got a book deal, and I got invited to do a PhD at City University of New York from with Brian Schwartz, who's a physicist, and he's very supportive of, physics and theater and science and the arts. And so I started my PhD. I moved to New York City in February. So, a few weeks later, nine eleven happened, and I saw the towers fall from my apartment in Brooklyn, and I fled. I just fled. I went back to California.
I was very traumatized by that experience. And, like, what happens often in warfare is that I found myself pregnant within a year, and you don't have to put this in the show, but you know? So I was like, I have to get a job. I'm a single mom, so I went I gave up my career, and I, and I taught physics at a community college for twenty years until my son, you know, went off to college, and I retired. And so now that I have this big twenty year gap of doing being on the road and doing shows.
I did, however, have the opportunity to do some shows, especially at my college, because we had a planetarium. So I was producing shows, in the planetarium. I was doing all, you know, astronomy and physics, like, themes about Starship Earth and, cosmic evolution and going in I it's my favorite theater is the planetarium because the acoustics are really great. So I would do musical shows in the planetarium, and I was able to do that for
years. So I continued to produce work, but not out at conferences as much as, I was doing before just because, you know, I was a single mom, and I had to at one point, I was doing shows a lot, and I was like, I something's gotta, you know, give because I can't do it all. I'm gonna either suffer as a mom or suffer as a teacher or, you know, suffer as a performer. So I just said, well, I'll do that later. So now I'm getting my act back together and taking
it on the road. I'm really excited. Amazing. Do you feel like the the physics community has become more accepting of this sort of mixture of science and the arts in this way? Yeah. I I mean, definitely. Like, if you recall, there was big plays like Copenhagen, you know, which was a, you know, wild Tony award winning show. And I think with climate science, there's a lot of climate theater. I think, like, even at Edinburgh Fringe, there's
a there's a lot of climate shows. I think so, I mean, it's climate physics. There's not a lot of physics theater. No. There's some there's some comedians who are doing science. I know there's a mathematician who and who's doing some stand up, and he's pretty funny. But it's not that common, I'd have to say. So whether or not they accept it is I mean, it's like with any field. They're serious. They got business to take care of. Geologists are the most chill.
So I love doing the, you know, the American Geological Union shows. Done several of those because they're they're kinda chill. Astronomers tend to be chill. Particle physicists, very uptight. You know, fusion, I've I've done a I did a fusion conference. They were pretty uptight. So it just depends. You know, people are very serious. And but I've been really lucky because I've done a lot of shows with Kip Thorne. So you know? And he's a big fan. He's, he even gave me a quote for this show.
I got to quote him, and he said, Linda will blow your mind. And I said, that's perfect. Thank you very much, Kip. You know? And so Cool. Yeah. So not a really great audience when someone like Kip Thorne comes on stage and introduces you and says you know, gives you accolades and says how great you are. It's like it's hard. Everyone it, you know, yeah, it just gets everybody jazzed up. This isn't deliberate, but I'm wearing an Interstellar T shirt, which is obviously Kip Thorne
Kip Thorne related. So how did you meet Kip Thorne then? How did that come about? So I was hired by Richard Price, who is a gravitational theorist for the KipFest. So Kip was turning 60 years old, and they were planning this giant party at Caltech. And so Richard saw me and, you know, somehow found out about me and hired me. And so I helped in the coordination. This is my favorite part is to actually participate in organizing the party.
And it was my idea, I have to take credit for, to, have a, a, like, a family tree for Kip, like, where he came from because so his you have Einstein, then you have Wheeler, then Wheeler was his mentor, and then he then you have his tree of all his students, grad students, and so on. And so we got to work on that. And, and so I was able to perform at the KIPP Fest, and I sang a bunch of songs, and that was it. I was at a party at KIPP's house, and it was like a
who's who in general relativity. And, of course, his best friend, Stephen Hawking, was there, and and he yeah. So he invited me back for several other events to perform at. Yeah. He's a, he is a great supporter of you know, has been for my work. You met Stephen Hawking as well then? Yeah. I got to perform at his birthday party, his sixtieth birthday party.
He had a big birthday party in The UK, but then he had a smaller little bash birthday bash, in a jazz club in, Pasadena, and Kip flew me in to perform at that. And that was, that was exciting. Amazing. Okay. Is it do you have a I it's it's hard to say. Right? Because you've made songs about and for some pretty amazing people. Is it do you have a particular favorite, person to write for or about? Well, it has to be Kip Thorne. You know? I mean, because his work is so phenomenal, and he
is such an amazing person. He's so kind and generous and brilliant. And, yeah, that's probably been my best greatest muse for sure. Yeah. And then but as far as, like, a topic that's fun to write about, particle physics is really fun to write about because you have you know, I've written quark songs and different songs and my love on
song. I was commissioned to write a song for a science radio show for, Valentine's, and I came up with my best song I've ever written, which is I discovered the Love On, which is the boson of love. And so then, you know, it's the particle of love, and that's been, and I end every show with that song. We need to add it to the standard model chart. It's the force that's missing, from the chart is the Lovon. And, you know, so yeah. So those are that's a really fun topic to sing about
and write songs about. It's very lyrical. The standard model of physics has four forces in it. The strong, the weak, gravity and the electromagnetic. But I have found a new force that rules from high above. Let me propose to you a unified theory of love. About when you were doing this in the in the nineties, you were talking about nuclear weapons. We're back doing it again. You're back doing it again. Why do we still need to talk about this? Sadly, because we still have overkill capacity
to murder the biosphere. I mean, ultimately, you know, I started writing a song called the deep because I'm obsessed with the deep field, and it starts off by saying I've been staring at the deep field and thinking about how many, you know, thousands of galaxies and millions of billions of stars, and yet we still have this deep silence. We have the great silence of the Fermi paradox. Right? Where why are
we alone? Are we alone? Do does it do we require a universe of entropy in order to have the emergence of this complexity of life on Earth? Like, what you know, that I reject Copernicanism that, you know, we're not special. We're super special and that we would have the we would dare to, jeopardize something as rare as life, is out outrageous to me. It's, I think about it all the time and I always have. It's always been I think the day I discovered, wow, we can kill all life on earth.
Like, not just kill all life on earth and, oh, that's okay. Humans will go away, and then the Earth will be better because another life form will emerge afterwards. I'm talking about biotic death, the end of evolution. Like, it'll be so dead. There'll only be extremophiles. So, you know, that's the sad thing. And putting that in a show and at the Edinburgh Fringe is a challenge. So I'm trying you know? But it's something people don't wanna talk about.
It is the business of physics. The number one business of physics is nuclear weapons. So, you know and that's heartbreaking to me because the universe is so interesting and exciting and fascinating and everything in it from pulsars to quasars to the big bang and galaxies and, you know, we're on this planetary starship spaceship, spaceship Earth orbiting a star that's dragging
us through a galaxy. And, you know, if we could think galactically and preserve life on Earth, who knows where our future generations will end up and what will happen? The idea that we have to extend the human, species to Mars to preserve the light of consciousness, like, from Elon Musk, is just ridiculous. Because it's like a Mars is like a shitty little planet. You know? Like, why we're already interstellar. We're inter we're planetary.
We're on this the spaceship. That's kind of my ethos I'm working on right now that's also in my show, which is, like, you know, let's let's try to get rid of our capacity to murder the biosphere so that we can continue on this journey in space because, you know, this is the I actually have a song. This is how it's it's it's called Spaceship Earth, and it starts out with, you know, often you hear Elon Musk saying that humans have to colonize Mars, that we have to go to the stars, that we
have to go to space. And I just wonder, where does he think we are? We are in space. We're on a planet. We're in you know, so it goes into this whole thing, and it's just like, you know, it's it's like, Copernicus never happened. We're all living like we're flatlanders, that all there is is Earth. It's the center of the universe, and we don't have this galactic perspective that we're on a planet orbiting a star, orbiting a galaxy in a local group
of galaxies expanding with the Hubble flow. I mean, we gotta think galactic to save ourselves. We gotta be more Star Trek and less Star Wars. I mean, I like Star Wars too. But, yes, I see what you're saying. I know. I like them both too. So it seems a really odd decision that when but my daughter used to ask me that all the time. Star Wars or Star Trek? I'll be like, both? Why why do I have to choose between them?
The world premiere is a very exciting time because you've never performed it before. I suspect that the world premiere will look quite different as a show to the last one you do in the Edinburgh Fringe because you've you've evolved with the audience's reaction. You know, there's a I forget what it's called. Just telling you this because I did perform several times at the Swedish Science Festival. Because, you know, in other countries, science is
huge. Edinburgh has Edinburgh has a science festival, fringe festival. I mean, there's it's much more popular in Europe than it is in in The States. They have something. It's a it's I forget what the word is, and it's I forgot about this, and I need to find what it is. There's a Swedish word for an artist who kind of goes to a place and and creates on the
spot. Now that's not exactly what I'm doing, but I am when I go to another location if I were to go globally, I would, like, talk about what's you know, just like a stand up comedian does that. Right? They go and they talk about the issues of that community. So when I'm in Scotland, I'm doing a show in Glasgow. I'm going to talk about Fastlane. That's where the Trident submarines are based.
You know? And so there's if I was doing a show, you know, down south in in in England, I would, you know, talk about Lakenheath and the B 60 1 or or whatnot. So there's different issues. But, yeah, the show is gonna evolve. I do extemporaneous performance. So what I'm doing is I have all the songs. I have a script. I have you know, I'm using PowerPoint. So, you know, there's a structure to it, but it's changing. So the beauty of everything except Edinburgh I
mean, Edinburgh, I got forty five minutes. I got ten minutes in, ten minutes out. Like, there is you know, I've never been to the Fringe before, so I'm sure it's gonna blow my mind. But, you know, that's the whole thing. It's like you got ten minutes to get in, set up, do your show, ten minutes out. So it I'll be much whatever what I end up doing at the end of my tour at Edinburgh will be very different than what I'm doing in Belfast, you know, for the world premiere.
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. David, how many shows are you gonna be doing in Edinburgh? Nine. So I'm just I'm not doing the full run because I have no idea what to expect. And quite honestly, I've never done more than two shows. Like, I've done several weekends consecutively, but only weekends. Like, I've never done I don't know how people do three weeks. You know, night after night after night, I'm, like, tired. I like, anyway so, but then I plan to take this to
Australia because they have fringes. But, you know, next year is the some anniversary for Chernobyl. And I'm like, I'm gonna do the Chernobyl show. And I have a song for that. I haven't written it yet, but it's a it's a parody of, I don't know if you know this song from American in Paris, but it's like it's like, I'm building a staircase to paradise with a new step every day. Maurice shall I forget who's singing it, but Maurice some old singer guy.
And so they wanna do, like, this I'll have an animation of the sarcophagus that's slipping over. Chernobyl will be like, I'm building a staircase to paradise. One sarcophagus every decade or whatever it end up being. They just but, right, Russians just drone bomb the sarcophagus. You know? It's like, what, a hundred million dollars, you know, to do that? They're gonna have to do it forever. Mhmm. I mean right? I mean, think of, like, at least with Chernobyl,
they can cover it. With Fukushima, it's just oozing into the ocean. You know? So, it's kind of like a it would be more like a show about these wounds on mother earth that we're gonna have to, like, take care of, like, vessel virgins serving the altar, you know, like, forever. We're gonna have to be caring for these wounds we created with, you know, our technology. My feeling about this is, like, look. How many songs are written about love?
Millions. Right? How many why don't why aren't we singing about everything? Why aren't we singing about, you know, quarks and leptons and, quasars and pulsars and nuclear weapons? And, you know, there's a full universe of topics that are worthy of singing about and celebrating and hopefully is entertaining to people, not just scientists. So that's that's kinda my jam. I do write songs about love, but it usually involves a boson. When you hear songs that aren't
scientifically accurate, does it bother you anyhow? I'm thinking of things like the final countdown where they're heading for Venus, and and maybe they've seen us. I'm not I know there's possibly life in the clouds of Venus, but I don't think it's got eyes. Does that worry you? No. But let's face it. The best science song ever written in the history of the world is the galaxy song. You know, and I don't know how accurate that is, but it's pretty accurate. But that's a fantastic
song. I if I ever wrote a song that well, I would, be so proud. But that's a really good song. I don't there are like, I'm in a group of science singers. I've been to conferences of science songwriters. And if you go on YouTube and you look up science songs, often what you find are assignments teachers have given kids in, you know, elementary and middle school or high school
for extra credit. Like, write a song about carbon or something, and then you'll there's thousands of songs, parodies mostly, that you can find. And there's there's other groups. There's there's the Cernettes. Right? So the Cernettes was a group at CERN. They're not that scientifically accurate. There's Astro Capella is another group that sings science songs, and they're accurate. So, I mean, there's actually people gigging and doing work, about, science, but typically for a general audience, you
know, for children. There's two you know that song, the sun is the mass of incandescent gas. It was covered by they might be giants. You know that song? It's a great song, but it was written by it was the same guys who wrote Unchained Melody, and they also wrote albums, albums of songs on science, and they're spectacular. Like, they wrote them in the sixties. Lou Zinger and Hizeret is their name. You gotta look it up.
Like, they're spec I've covered several of their songs, in my show, like, what does the glass of a greenhouse do? It doesn't let the long heat waves pass through. I mean, they're just they're for kids, but they're fantastic songs. Like, they're really and they have songs about the stratosphere and I've sung I've used them all. Tom Lear. He's probably the first person to sing about science, and he he was also an activist. Right? So he also wrote about bombs. He was, I think he was a Quaker.
God bless the Quakers. So, you know, I think he was the first, and then the, you know, Hi Zaret and Lou Zinger, their names are so great, did albums full. And then They Might Be Giants covered one of their songs. And so, I mean, I really haven't you know, I guess I could do a PhD on this, like, someday. But there is, like, a history of it. I haven't really seen anyone doing
cabaret. Like, I mean, my goal when I went to get my PhD in New York and have a book deal in 02/2001 was that I was gonna go to Broadway and do, you know, Cosmic Cabaret on Broadway. That was that was my goal. And I'd wanted to have a doctorate because, you know, I think because it legitimizes you. And I was doing pedagogy, actually. So I was doing science pedagogy. So you you're an activist. You're a scientist. You're a science communicator.
If you if you could use one song to fix one problem in the world, what would you sing about to fix? It's the Love On song that, you know, I just you have to believe in love. Like, compassion, empathy is something that physics can't describe. Right? So I you know, ultimately, even though I do sing about science, if I want to try to save the world, the best thing I can do is try to provoke empathy and compassion in people, whether you're a scientist or not a scientist.
That mediates the force of love But you can't measure it You can only feel it Pulling on the super strings of your heart We should add it to the standard model chart The force that rules from high above in a unified field theory of love. I'd like to thank Linda very much for talking to me and wish you the very best of luck for that tour. If you'd like to find out more about the tour, maybe get some tickets and go along to it, Linda's website is scintainment.com.
So if you think about science and entertainment, combine those two words, scintainment.com. But if you struggle with that, we'll, of course, post a link to it on the Physics World website, physicsworld.com, and we'll be back next month with something else from this wonderful world of physics. Thank you very much for listening. Fundamentally, you know, love on, baby.