Listener supported WNYC Studios. Sometimes it's hard to understand difficult science concepts unless we sing about them. I mean, the song we're going to play, if this existed in... My freshman year of high school, it would have been an incredible godsend for my grades. It's Wednesday, December 4th, and it's also Science Friday. I'm Sci-Fi producer Kathleen Davis.
In 2009, the band They Might Be Giants released an album called Here Comes Science. In it, they sing about the science of plasma, talk about what blood does in the body, and they sing an ode to the elements. In this archival segment from 2009, Ira Flato is joined in studio by members of the band to discuss the album and play some songs.
Joining me now in the studio here in New York is John Linnell and John Flansberg, also on the drums, Marty Beller in the background. We'll be playing a lot of music. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you. It's very exciting to be here. Why would you do songs about science? I mean, not only geeks like me.
like science? Because we're like you. Are you? This is really a big thrill for us because we've been listening to the show for a long time. It's like suddenly we're inside the TV set or the radio. kind of trippy. Were you sciencey geeks when you were in school? Not exactly, no. I mean, it's actually a little bit of a stretch in a way for us to declare ourselves
to be authorities on science. This is the Peter Principle in full blue. Yeah, yeah. And you're stepping into a little quagmire by naming a song Science is Real. There are a lot of people who don't believe science is real. Well, you see, that's not controversial for us. Not for you. No.
But have you heard any reaction from people who say, well, why – Well, I don't think judging by YouTube flame comments, you can really get an accurate gauge of what the – in general, it seems like people are actually quite – quite positive about the whole prospect. People we meet face-to-face are like you, pretty much. Well, that's good. Name the songs on the album. Well...
Meet the Elements, Photosynthesis, My Brother the Ape, I Am a Paleontologist, Roy G. Biv, which is about the color spectrum, light spectrum. And I don't know, John, what other titles? Cells. Cells. Why does the sun shine? Speed and velocity. And now these all sound like kids' songs. Are these aimed at kids? Well, it's sort of a mixed bag. There are some songs that are very simple that are good for little kids.
And then there are songs that are more fact-packed that probably would be a little bit too complicated for a toddler. I mean, the song we're going to play, the song Meet the Elements, if this existed in my freshman year of high school, it would have been an incredible godsend for my grades. Well, when I hear a song Meet the Elements, who am I thinking of? Not if you guys before, way before you guys were born. Tom Lerner.
Do you remember the Elements song? Do you remember Tom Lehrer? No, actually. I know the song Pollution by Tom Lehrer. He did a whole song of the Elements that's much different than yours. Probably more satirical than ours. I can't believe that guy invented a time machine and went backwards and stole our ideas. Thank you.
Yeah. No, I don't know. I'm not familiar with that song. But he just go rattles through the table of elm, periodic table of elm. Well, that's kind of what we're doing. That's what we're doing. Imagine our disappointment. But you know what? He was a folk singer. No, no, no. What made you write this song? Tell us a little bit about the genesis of this song. Well, we were working on our science album. And I guess the thing is we wanted to...
cover all of the different areas of science. So we're thinking chemistry, biology, physics, earth science, applied science. You know, we're just trying, stepping into each one. find the periodic table of the elements to be kind of a great organizational you know An amazing inspiration, actually. Do you? Yeah, that it's a grid. You can just look at it and say, oh, it's all laid out simply. It's a lot simpler than a lot of other science.
charts that you have to study. So this one seemed like it was something you could stare at and write a song based on. I'm Ira Flato. You're listening to Science Friday from WNYC Studios. This is an interview from our archives, recorded in September of 2009. And we're going to hear a cut from the album. Here they are. They might be Giants playing. Meet the elements. Meet the elements. Let's meet them now.
Oxygen eventually will make it rust away. Carbon in its ordinary form is coal. Crush it together and diamonds are born. Come on, come on and meet the elements. May I introduce you to a friend? The elements like goodbye. to make a chemical compound or stand alone as they are. Neon's a gas that lights up a sign at a pizza place. The coins that you pay with are copper, nickel and zinc. Silicon and oxygen make concrete bricks and glass. Now add some gold and silver for some pizza place class.
You should check out the one full of helium and so is every star stars are mostly hydrogen which may someday drive your car hey who let in all these elephants don't you know are made of elements. Elephants are mostly made of four elements and every living thing is mostly made of four elements. Bacteria.
That was nothing like that. That was much better. It's a great song. We haven't heard the Tom Lehrer song. I can't possibly comment. This was just terrific. How long did it take you to write that song? Months, years, decades, lifetime. That's a secret. If we do some kind of theme for somebody, they're going to want to pay us less.
Wow. Reveal how quickly you can write a song. Well, just to remind our audience, we're talking with the band They Might Be Giants, and their new album is Here Comes Science. Is it out now? It is out. As of yesterday, it's out everywhere. You can buy it at Target. No kidding. Yeah. And you can download it. Right next to Miley Cyrus. After the break, more from our 2009 conversation with They Might Be Giants. Stay with us. So any donation you make will be doubled.
And this week, we're celebrating Giving Tuesday, which means now is a great time to double your impact and show your support for Science Friday, a nonprofit dedicated to making science accessible to the public. So please go to sciencefriday.com slash support to make your donation and invest in the future of science journalism. Again, that's sciencefriday.com slash support and thanks.
Hi, I'm Alexis Ohanian. You may know me as one of the co-founders of Reddit, but more recently, a large part of my identity is being a father to my wonderful daughters. In my podcast, Business Dad, I hope to open the conversation about working parents a bit. You'll get to hear from a wide range of business dads, from Rainn Wilson and Guy Raz to Todd Carmichael and Shane Battier to find out how they balance being a dad with a successful career.
Business Dad is available now, so be sure to listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. I wish I used to play the accordion. Man, start jamming. Feel free. With the band, they might be giants, and the new album is out just out yesterday. Here Comes Science with John Flansburg and John Linnell.
So they're playing the music for us, and not to be outdone is Marty Beller's here with the drums. The king of the drums. The king of the percussion. Marty is actually playing an electronic drum kit, which is brand new. It's this brand new thing.
That explains why I tried to go over and use my fingers. Oh, yeah. And nothing happened. It's electronic. You need the magic of electricity. What an age we live. And I'm surrounded by, I guess I'd call them music geeks, music science geeks because they're writing albums. science. What's the next song?
We'd love to hear from you. Well, this has a little story behind it. We used to cover a science song. In fact, we still do, called Why Does the Sun Shine, which is from a bunch of science, a collection of science songs that came out. when we were kids with Tom Glazer. And I don't know if you're familiar with this record, but the song was called Why Does the Sun Shine? And in parentheses, the sun is a mass of incandescent gas.
And what we found out was that subsequently they figured out that the sun is not actually made of gas after this song. become popular among kids. Sure it is. Well, apparently it's not. I better relearn something else. We're here to tell you that there are four states of matter and the sun is actually... super excited gas, which is called plasma, where the electrons have stripped off, been stripped off, precisely.
And so we were forced to write this answer song to our own very popular Why Does the Sunshine. Which is something we only do reluctantly. This whole fact-checking thing is very difficult for a rock band. Yeah, musicians don't normally care about whether there's plasma or gas there. We care about beauty and poetry. Those are our main concerns. All our lies are in our path.
We're forgetting about the lines. But it speaks very highly of you that you want to change the song to get it right. Yeah, it was just sort of fun too. I mean basically – an engineer we were working with, we were actually talking about the conundrum of the whole thing because we had already re-recorded this famous song from our repertoire for this album. And we were just like, well, what are we going to do? It's outdated. Science has...
has evolved, the consensus has moved on from the idea of the song. And this engineer, John Altshuler, actually said, why don't you just write a song called The Sun is a Miasma of Incandescent Plasma? And that's what we did. Is that the name of the song? Yeah, that is the song. All right, here it is. Here they is. Here they is. Here they is. They might be giants from their album Here Comes Science. The sun's not simply made out of gas. No, no, no. The sun is a quagmire. It's not.
Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Nevermore. Ira, I have to say we've been on a million radio shows and the reverence with which you show the length and ending of a song is truly a recessive trait.
In DJs, hosts, radio people. You want to know why that is? It's beautiful. Like when you actually at the top of the thing where you played the entire song, Science is Real, like, you know, typically, you know, people just hit the fader 30 seconds. But right before it ends, it's like, oh, we don't have that kind of time.
I'll tell you why that is. I love public radio. Yes, I come from a public radio FM classical music background. When I was in my learning days at WBFO in Buffalo, if I ever faded down one... Yeah. One note of a classical music. I once had an argument that I was the news director. I wanted to fade down the...
The music so I could get a bulletin in there. Right, exactly. I heard a, you can't run a bulletin, you can't interrupt an FM radio. Right, right. Classical music. So you were like the king of dead air. So you just let the song go all the way. You wrote the whole song. Why don't we hear it?
the whole song. You actually let a little silence in after that. Absolutely. Our guy in Boston, I guess, was Robert J. Lertzema. It would seem like he'd fallen asleep. It was this quiet moment. I remember him. Yeah. It was like, that was. But it suggests a whole different kind of lifestyle. It's fantastic. I have a suggestion for a song for you. Oh, sure. You know, you talked about the mistake with the makeup of the sun. How about something about Pluto not being a planet?
We do have a song. We haven't learned how to perform it in this group, but with this arrangement. But we do have a song called How Many Planets where we dodge the question of how many planets there are by simply enumerating everything. planet or not in the course of the song. Let the people decide. Let the people decide, yeah, yeah. What's your opinion on that, Ira?
I don't think it really matters. I don't think that it matters that Pluto is a planet. Well, then we're in agreement then. That's more or less what we're expressing in this song. Who cares? If I were pressed, I'd have to say, yes, there are eight planets, but it doesn't really matter that Pluto has been different. because it's just a name for something. Yeah. I think everybody kind of feels for Pluto a little bit, though. Yeah. I think Woody Harrelson should be a planet, too. So that makes nine.
Well, there are people who are space cadets. What's that email address again, Ira? Don't send it to me. Don't send it to me. Send it to John Linnell. That's right. I'll take questions. Go ahead. I'm willing to debate. Do you have a – you never ask anybody this question, but you never ask anybody who's your favorite kid, right? And you ask musicians what's your favorite song that you have. It's funny. We do get that. And we are – yeah, it's like insulting. How could you ask that?
I'm appalled. I remember there was a radio station that used to advertise itself as one of two of America's great radio stations, so you never had to ask what the second one is. Well, if we said it's a Tom Lehrer song, would we suddenly reveal something? Let's see if we can get another song in. It's a laughter epidemic. What should we do? Come on. Oh, let's do My Brother the Ape. My Brother the Ape. Here I are. They might be giants. About evolution, that controversial fact. Well, I got
They might be giants. The new album, Here Comes Science, John Flansburg and John Linnell here in the studio with us. Rocking away and also on the drums, Marty Balor back there. Not saying very much. Any other folks you play with? Any people in your band? Yes. We're just about to go out on tour. We're doing some family shows as well as a Flood show where we're playing our 1990 breakthrough album Flood in sequence.
That's kind of a once-in-a-lifetime deal for us. And then we're doing this whole new show for adults. But joining us on stage is this fellow named Ralph Carney who's famous among musicians for being the guy who plays on all the –
Tom Waits, sort of the classic Tom Waits middle period circus music albums. He's a multi-instrumentalist. He plays a lot of different kinds of horns. And he's going to be joining us, and it'll be very interesting working with somebody who's got such a... clear voice as a...
It's very different. Unlike the rest of us. Yeah. We're just hacking along. We also have Dan Miller plays guitar and Danny Weinkoff plays bass. So it'll be a six-piece. And where are you going to be? Where can people see you? Everywhere. You've got to schedule it all. You can tell us your next time. Go to our website. Or go to Facebook. Facebook has got all that information.
And also there are all these videos. If people want to see videos of these songs, the entire album, Here Come Science, has been made into a DVD. So there are all these animated videos accompanying... music and they're really some of them are really quite remarkable so we might see you on an MTV video I don't think MTV is playing videos anymore but if they were they certainly know I mean it's
It's shocking to everyone, especially musicians. I have two daughters. I know it's on that. It's more of a lifestyle. Music is more of a lifestyle expression these days. But I don't know if they'd really warm up to science that much. I wish I could play a musical instrument. I was just hoping that we'd be on Science Friday. Well, one of us got our wish. Exactly. And is there a topic you'd like to take on that you haven't done yet, a subject matter?
we were tossing around ideas for the next Disney produced Giants record, instructional music for young people. We're thinking maybe There Goes Your Civil Rights could be the next one. That was one idea I think Flansburg had. Here we have the syndicalists. We could do like a history, like sort of a...
People's History of America. People's History of America, yeah. Well, we've got about two and a half minutes left. Have you got a quick song you can sing? Oh, sure. What should we do? Do you want to hear a non-science song? Sure, whatever. We've only got a couple of minutes. I say that, but I don't have anything in mind. Well, play us out to the end of the show. Why don't we do a song that's factually incorrect? Go ahead.
Even old New York was once New Amsterdam. Why they changed it, I can't say. People just liked it better that way. So take me back to Constance. That's nobody. They changed it, I can't say People just liked it better music stops. Wow, I love that song. I know that song. It's an oldie moldie. Yeah, it's super moldie. And that's not on this album, though. No, it is not. But it's still a great song. So if people go to watch you in concert, do you play other stuff besides...
Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, I mean, these albums are only 40. Even when we're doing the Flood, like sort of, you know, tribute to ourselves show, it's only 40 minutes of the show and the show is like an hour. The family shows was like an hour 15. The adult shows were like an hour 45, sometimes two hours when we're feeling heroic and when we're in our Bruce Springsteen mode.
Things start expanding into the Mannerist period. I think we play more songs per show than Bruce, but probably only about half as long. I'm going to have to drop in. Please do. I'm going to have to drop in. Bring your accordion. We try not to talk about that. Plenty of room. Actually, use one of ours. I just have to bring my chopsticks. I'm a frustrated drummer, too.
Thank you, Marty. I won't even try to do that. We've run out of time, but you guys were terrific. Thank you. You took up our whole studio with a musical instrument. You're welcome anytime you want to come back. Thank you so much. It was really a pleasure. You're welcome. John Flansburg, John Linnell.
Also on the drums, Marty Beller. They might be giants. The new album is Here Comes Science. That's all the time that we have for today. A lot of folks help make the show happen, including Beth Ramsey, Santiago Flores. Diana Plasker. John Dankoski. and many more. Tomorrow, we'll bring you to the silliest award show in all of science, the Ig Nobel's, which celebrate unusual achievements in science, medicine, and other fields. But for now, I'm Sci-Fi producer Cassie. Thanks for listening.