Fresh Air - Sleater-Kinney

Episode Date: March 25, 2024

Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker co-founded the band Sleater-Kinney together 30 years ago, and became an important part of the 1990s feminist punk scene in Olympia, Washington. Rolling Stone once called Sleater-Kinney the best American punk rock band ever. Brownstein and Tucker just released their 11th album, called Little Rope. While they were working on the record, Brownstein's mother died in a car accident. They spoke with Ann Marie Baldonado about how the grief affected the album, and what it's like to make music together for decades.Also, David Bianculli reviews the Netflix series 3 Body Problem.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Our guests, Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker, formed the band Slater-Kenney 30 years ago during the height of the Riot Grrrl feminist punk scene in Olympia, Washington. In January, they released their 11th album called Little Rope. They spoke to Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Baldonado. It's been almost 20 years since Rolling Stone deemed Slater-Kenney the best American punk rock band ever.

So we're lucky that the band, Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker, are still making music and performing live. Since they started playing together in the 90s, up until their latest album, Little Rope, their music continues to evolve, but still holds on to some signature tenets. The interplay of explosive guitars, Corin Tucker's distinctive wail, catharsis, vulnerability, guts, and feminism sour mixed with energetic joy. During an eight-year hiatus, they both worked on solo music projects, while Carrie Brownstein also co-created the sketch comedy show Portlandia with comedian and SNL alum Fred Armisen. Sleater-Kinney reunited 10 years ago in 2014 and became a duo in 2019 after the departure of longtime drummer Janet Weiss. Little Rope is their 11th album. While they were working on it,

Brownstein's mother tragically died in a car accident. We'll talk about how that altered the trajectory of the songs and what it's like to work together for decades. Sleater-Kinney is currently on tour in the U.S. and will play abroad later this year. Let's start with a track from their new album, Little Rope. Here's Say It Like You Mean It, with Corin Tucker on vocals and guitar, and Carrie Brownstein on guitar. Thank you. No bitter endings And no false starts Just tell me what they Just say the words

Say it like you mean it And even here and before you go And if you hear it, I'll be upon you. Say it like you mean it. Say it like it's for you. That's Say It Like You Mean It off the album Little Rope. Keri Brownstein, Corin Tucker, welcome back to Fresh Air. Let's start off by talking about this song. Corin, this is you on vocals. How did this song come about?

This song was something that I had an idea for. I had like a really rough demo of it. And it was really just, I just had the chorus to begin with. And then I shared it with Carrie and she was like, it's great. I really like it. You need to finish it. And so Carrie worked on the music and I eventually came up with a vocal melody and and lyrics for the the verses and we went into the studio with it but when we were recording it

the vocals weren't quite hitting where they needed to and I went home and I just ended up going to bed and waking up in the middle of the night being like, I have an idea. And I sang a different melody into my phone and just started the song in a different place that was kind of like a quieter, sweeter place to start the singing in. So that it gave it kind of a bigger arc to go to in the chorus. Well, so starting at a different place than where you originally started it, how did that sort of help what you wanted the song to be about? Yeah, I think that, you know, the song is about a relationship with, you know, your longtime person. And it's, it's different when you write a song like that when you're older, because you have this whole journey that you've taken with the person and it goes through a lot of ups and downs. But I think one of the things about,

you know, writing a love song when you're older is that you realize there is a goodbye coming at some point for all of us. And we don't know when exactly that's going to be. But we do know that that's kind of the about that concept and saying, let's really say what we need to say today because we don't know what's going to happen in the future. But there's a lot of emotions, I think. There's like layers and layers and layers of emotions. And I think I needed to start the song in a different place in order to go through some of the different emotions that happen with that concept. You started writing the songs for this album a few years ago in 2022. And this album was written during a period of sudden tragedy. Would it be okay if I asked you

to talk about what happened while you were working on the album? Sure. So we had written probably three quarters of the album and we had gone into the first session of recording in the summer of 2022. We were slated to go back into the studio that winter, the end of the year. And in late September, I got the news that my mother and stepfather had been killed in a car accident in Italy while they were on vacation. So that really changed a lot of things personally, obviously, for my family. And it really changed the direction of this album because it changed the direction of my life. Did any part of you want to stop or take a break? Because that would have been totally understandable.

Yeah. I mean, to be fair, there wasn't any pressure to continue, not from Corin or our management or, you know, there are no outside influencers that were saying that it was an imperative to finish the album. And I don't even know whether I was thinking as clearly or cogently as let's finish the album. And I don't even know whether I was thinking as clearly or cogently as let's finish the album. But what I did know was that I needed structure and walls and stability at a time where everything faded and seemed to dissipate and blur. And playing music and playing guitar, which is something that I started doing in my teens, that was a ritual and a choreography that I really understood. I knew what to do with my hands and fingers upon a fretboard or the neck of the guitar,

but I didn't know what to do with the rest of my body. I didn't really even know how to walk through a room or get out of bed as someone who was grieving. So I turned to something that I did know. And it was just the act of doing and making, I think, that gave the days shape and started to give my life a little bit of shape. Yeah, when I read that you sort of found comfort in going back to guitar and playing guitar like you did when you were younger, that made a lot of sense to me because it seems so physical. And I can understand that because I feel like grief affects your body, whether it saps you of energy or I mean, even for me, I felt like I changed the way I was in my body. It's hard to describe, but it sort of sounds like what you're talking about. I don't even know what words to use, but you just sort of feel different.

Yeah. I think especially with parents or family members, it's an architecture. It's like the scaffolding of your life and how you see yourself in relation to it is gone. It's sort of crumbling and you have to sort of write yourself in a new way and see yourself in relation to others in a different way. And I think, you know, it's like you're sort of walking around without a skeleton for a while. Now, you said that you didn't feel like you could handle the vocals the way you usually do. These days, you kind of trade off on songs. Can you explain why you wanted to play guitar but not sing as much? Yeah, it's interesting because in the early days of Slater-Kinney, as our listeners will know, or if people are just going back now and listening to our earlier records, you know,

Corinne is the voice of Slater-Kinney. She has this amazing capacity to express so many emotions with her voice. She's really a very singular vocalist. And, you know, I was sort of always a sort of milder companion to that, more of a punk or personality singer. But over the years, I gained confidence and partly because I had to kind of keep up with Corin and we liked the intertwining vocals you know I started to sing more as we continued on and with this album well first of all I'm such a fan of Corin's voice like it's bigger than me and I needed to hear it I needed something bigger than me to step inside, to be a cloak, to be a shield, to be able to listen to sort of as a fan. So I turned to Corinne as, you know, just to help. And I needed her to rise to the occasion, which she definitely did. But I think I just felt,

part of it was that usually I have the words, I have the language, I'm fairly eloquent, but I just felt slightly misshapen and felt like I could express myself more clearly through guitar, which I think is an instrument that really emulates the human voice quite well. And that's where I did my wailing and let the notes bend and let the sorrow come through or the sourness or the agitation or even the terseness and the frustration. That's all there in the guitar on this album. Going back to some of the difficult part of this story, Can I ask you, Carrie, was it even more difficult that the accident that happened with your stepdad and your mom happened far away? You know, your mother and stepdad were on vacation in Italy when the accident happened. Did that make it feel strange

or not real? I mean, it's always kind of strange and not real, I think, when you hear that someone that close to you has passed away. But yeah just wonder if there was a difference. I have not been asked that question, but I will say that Italy is a wonderful place to visit and a terrible place to die. It just takes a long time. I'm not singling out Italy, but it's just, as anyone knows who has lost someone in a far-flung place, the logistics are agonizing. The death certificates, just all, I mean, honestly, it's just through everyone in my family and Eric's family. Eric was my stepfather. We were just mired in all of these details. And that I think, so it felt both far away, but what we were forced to focus on was just this minutiae that was sometimes so absurd as to just be funny, sort of that laugh cry kind of combination. And yeah, it was aggravating and very protracted. It actually

really prolonged a lot of things, including the memorial service and just our ability to find closure. There was just a lot of paperwork and legalities to sort through when an accident happens on foreign soil. So, yeah, it was just an added, I think, surrealism to the entire thing. Yeah, it even took them a couple of days to find you and they called you, Corinne, because that was a number that they had on file for Carrie's passport. Yes. Yeah, I've had the same phone number since the 90s. Good for you. You may be like the only person. I know. I know.

It was the one working phone number. And, you know, it was the strangest phone call I've ever had. And I didn't, I couldn't process it at the time I was driving my daughter to school and it came over you know the car and and I was like uh I'm not gonna give you Carrie's number like you you can text me your details like it just it seemed unreal seemed you know they weren't saying they didn't say what was going on they just said we have we need to talk to Carrie Brownstein. I was like, I'm sure you do.

It just seemed unreal. And I had a bad feeling once the text came through, and it seemed like a legitimate member of the U.S. Embassy in Italy. Then it was like, well, this seems, I didn't even really know, but I had a bad feeling when I saw that text. Yeah. I want to ask you about another song off the new album, Little Rope. It's the song Dress Yourself, which has that great line, get up girl and dress yourself in clothes you love for a world you hate, which I feel like many people can relate to. Can you talk about writing this song? Yeah, there was a line that I read.

It started out like, get up, girl, and something about meeting the day. I think it was that author, Jean Rees. And so I was thinking of, okay, yeah, you're getting up, you're meeting the day. And I sort of, I wrote it down and I was thinking about it and just the sort of modern conundrum of, I guess, just the kind of cognitive dissonance that we all have to live with in order to both be cognizant of the woes of the world and our own, you know, pain. And yet, yeah, I started out, you know, thinking about, yeah, putting on your sort of your favorite clothes to put yourself into a world that you either momentarily or maybe loathe, I guess, weekly,

loathe on a weekly or yearly basis. We somehow do it. I mean, I feel like that's just, you can't think about it for too long. It's so mind-boggling what we're able to juggle and what we're sort of forced to tune out. You can't engage with it all 24-7. But then you're sort of, there's a kind of a self-loathing and knowing that you can't and a desperation and a feeling of inadequacy that you can't.

So, you know, it's a conundrum that we all live with, I think. Now, you worked on this song before your mother passed away, but then you say it sort of took on a different meaning afterwards when you recorded it. Yeah, I mean, mostly the chorus. I mean, it really is a song about depression and sort of deep perennial sadness, I think, very entrenched. And the part in the chorus, you know, give me a reason, give me a remedy, give me a new word

for the old pain inside of me was really about my family and, you know, just sort of the longstanding, I guess, yeah, sadness around some of those relationships. And it was strange to me that after my mom died, it was like I had gifted myself the song to help me deal with it. Well, let's listen to the song. Here's Dress Yourself from the new Slater-Kenney album, Little Rope. Get up, girl, and dress yourself In clothes you love for a world you hate Stand up straight and comb your hair A style you told us Have to range Give me a reason Give me a remedy

Give me a new word For the old pain inside of me Give me the madness Give me the memory Give me the memory Give me a new word For the old pain inside of me We're listening to the interview Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Baldonado recorded with Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker,

co-founders of the band Slater Kinney. Their new album, their 11th, is called Little Rope. More after a break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air. The wreck of you is on display Get out now while you still can I hope you're saved, this is that rainy day Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, Give me the madness Give me the memory Give me a new world Hi, this is Molly. And I'm Seth.

We're two of the producers at Fresh Air. If you like listening to Fresh Air, we think you'll also like reading our newsletter. You'll find the interviews and reviews from the show all in one place. Plus, staff recommendations you won't hear on the show, behind-the-scenes Q&As, bonus audio. It's also the only place to find out what interviews are coming up. We keep it fun, and it comes straight to your inbox once a week.

Subscribe for yourself at whyy.org slash fresh air. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to the interview Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Baldonado recorded with Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein of the band Slater-Kinney. They formed the band 30 years ago in Olympia, Washington, and it became an important part of the feminist punk movement of the 90s. They both sing and play guitar, with Corin Tucker doing most of the singing on their new album, Little Rope. It's their 11th. While they were working on the album, Brownstein's mother died in a car accident. Although a lot of the tracks on Little Rope had already been written, they both say that dealing with grief transformed the album. I want to play another song from Little Rope, Hunt You Down. Can you talk about writing it? Hunt You Down was a song that we really worked on for a long time. We had so many iterations

of the chorus, and it was probably the trickiest song to finish because we had a lot of faith in it. It was catchy. It was slightly dancey. We needed a song like that on the album. But the lyrics, the theme of the song just was not really coalescing. It wasn't until I was listening to an interview with an undertaker and poet named Thomas Lynch out of Michigan. And he was talking about meeting with a bereaved father who had lost a young child. And the father said to him, the thing you fear the most will hunt you down. And Thomas Lynch was struck by it, and I was struck by it too, and I wrote it down. And as I was still wrestling with that chorus, I tried singing that over a melody, and everything kind of clicked together. And then I wrote the verses around that idea.

That idea, like what you fear most happening will find you. I think that's something that those of us with anxiety think about so much, like on loop. It's such a true, difficult line. Yeah. Whether it's, you know, existential or much more real threat, I think there are a lot of us deep in that all the time. Well, let's hear the song. This is Hunt You Down from the new album, Little Rope. stay Been crawling round here for days in hopes the walls open up and give way Call me

home I forgive you I wish I told you so No other words to

go With words left to me I send your ashes my love The thing

you fear the most will hunt you I should smell it. Down, down, down Down, down, down I'm not in the room I'm not ready That's Sleater-Kinney with a song, Hunt You Down, off the new album Little Rope. My guests are singers, songwriters, and guitarists, Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein. I'm hoping you can talk about meeting each other and forming the band.

You met in Olympia, Washington. You guys were in college there. What was it like starting out the music scene there? Well, just for clarity's sake, we actually met in Bellingham, Washington. What was it like starting out the music scene there? Well, just for clarity's sake, we actually met in Bellingham, Washington. We met at a punk rock show that my first band, Heavens to Betsy, was playing. And Carrie was in the audience. And she came up to me after the show and she said, I'd like to get more information about this Riot Grrrl business.

I took her address and wrote it down and we talked about Olympia because I was going to school there and she expressed interest in going to school there. You know, the music scene in Olympia was extraordinary. It was wild. I mean, I went there as a college student and as a freshman in college, I went to every punk rock show downtown that I could get into and just thought, you know, I saw a show that year. I saw Bikini Kill and Bratmobile play a show, and I said, I want to do this. And I formed a band, or I told people I was in a band. And then that summer, I got asked to play a show, and, you know, I suddenly was in a band. And then that summer I got asked to play a show and, you know, I suddenly was like making records. So I did transfer then to the Evergreen State College and formed my first band called Excuse 17. And then eventually Corin and I started playing together sort of as a

side project. And that's sort of how Slater-Kinney got its name because we thought, well, this is not going to be very serious or probably long lasting. So we'll just name it after a road that our rehearsal space was near called Slater-Kinney, which is a town outside of Olympia called Lacey, Washington. And Corinne just left it on my answering machine one day. I came home from classes and Corinne said, let's call the band Slater Kinney. And we thought, sure, this will last about a year. And that's how that all began. You guys had a short-lived romance when you were first starting out. I'm not sure if it's okay to ask about it, but it was 30 years ago. And you continue to be a band and write music together and be in each

other's lives. I think that's like life goals, keeping people important to you in your life like that. We were really just ahead of the curve with the conscious uncoupling. You know, we, I feel like now there's so much more discourse around, you know, maintaining relationships and having things be copacetic and, you know, that, you know, communication is key and, you know, trying to prevent things getting acrimonious or too toxic. And not that there wasn't a lot of drama and acrimony and heartache and bad behavior. There definitely was. But we had the band to keep us together while we behaved poorly. And eventually we talked it out and worked through it. We were just kids when we started out. You know, we were so young that sometimes we didn't, you know, we didn't really know how to handle all of those big emotions.

But I think because we were able to write the music and do the songs, it's like that was always there for us. It did sort of help us grow as people. And I think that, like, those kind of more mature behaviors caught up with us eventually, hopefully. Like this week. Yeah, they just did. They just did during this interview. Now, you write about breakup at various times over the course of those 30 years. And one example is the song One More Hour. I think Pitchfork called it one of the most devastating breakup songs in all of rock music. Can you talk about

writing that song? Yeah, I mean, I think that kind of the language that we had to handle what was happening at the time, I was really sad. And I, you know, I think that just being in that moment and writing about how something that you think is so special will end. I think that's kind of the nature of love songs and that whole idea of impermanence and just trying to capture some of those images as that relationship is fading away is something that just sort of tumbled into that song. Well, let's hear the song One More Hour by Sleater-Kinney. In one more hour, I will be gone In one more hour, I leave this room. The dress you wore, the prettiest shoes. All the things I left behind for you. Oh, you've got the darkest night. Oh, you've got the darkest night.

I've been singing it. Oh, I've been singing it. I've been singing it. Oh, I've been singing it. You never want to let it, let it go. That's Slater Kinney with One More Hour, Corin Tucker on vocals and guitar, Carrie Brownstein on guitar.

Let's take a short break here and then we'll talk some more. My guests are Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein, co-founders of the band Slater Kinney. They just released their new album, their 11th. It's called Little Rope. We'll talk more after a break. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. I'm Anne-Marie Baldonado, back with the band Slater Kinney, which is Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker. They've just released their 11th album. It's called Little Rope.

Carrie Brownstein is also an actor and comedian. She co-created the TV series Portlandia with SNL alum Fred Armisen. I want to talk to you about your guitar playing. The band doesn't have a bass player. You both play guitar. Can you describe how you approach your sound and if it's changed over time? Sure. So Corinne and I are both self-taught guitar players. And Corinne's previous band was just guitar and drums. So she was just tuning her guitar to her voice, just tuning by ear. It was never codified, you know, via a tuner.

So she was not in standard E, which is, you know, what most people start out with. So when we formed Slater Kinney, obviously we needed to tune to each other so that the songs didn't sound awful. And she happened to plug into a tuner one day and it was, her guitar was in C sharp. So, I mean, honestly, that was by accident. And stories of bands often involve these kind of happy accidents. It could have just as easily been, you know, drop D that day or standard E tuning, but it was C sharp, which is a step and a half lower. So I also tuned to C sharp, and that became the tuning of Slater-Kinney. Now, two guitars in C sharp, you know, they, as you go farther up on the neck, the intonation, it's not, you're not always in tune.

And so there is, you know, we veer into this sourness. And I think what that sourness evokes is something that's melancholy. It's the sound of heartache. It's the sound of bittersweetness. And I think that became part of the lexicon of, you know, the sonic lexicon of our band. We also play very interlocking guitar parts. So we never really followed the convention of, okay, you're going to be rhythm guitar and I'll be lead. We do sometimes, you know, occupy those places as guitarists,

but often we're both playing a semblance of a lead. We play a lot of inverted chords, half chords. It's kind of a strange vernacular. And I think that's why Slater-Kinney is part of the reason why we sound quite different from other bands. I love that you detune to C-sharp, which is something I'm not a guitar player, so I don't completely understand. But I always wondered what that kind of tension was. So I'm glad that they're, you know, to sort of find out what that kind of unspoken thing is that I can't put my finger on is. Well, it's that inaccessibility that our band has had for many years. People are like, why can't I get into this band? That's one of the reasons.

Well, before I let you go, I want to ask you about another song. This is called Untidy Creature. And I believe it's the first song you started writing for the album, but it's the last track on the album. Can you talk about writing it? Yeah, this song is one that we, I think we started writing maybe in 2021. And it came together so quickly, just the melody and the guitar that we were a little suspicious of the song. Like, ah, is this, you know, maybe this sounds too much like other things we've done or it's, you know, it's not covering enough new ground for us. We just, we didn't know. So we kind of put it on the back burner and wrote the other music. But while we were writing the rest of the record, a lot of things happened. And one of them was Roe v. Wade being overturned and a sense of just anger and frustration and bitterness and betrayal and feeling trapped. And as we worked on that song, those feelings came up and they came up in a way that looked at the idea of relationship and personal relationship, but also the relationship of being

viewed or seen or evaluated in your own country as, you know, not being worthy of being in charge of your own bodily autonomy. All of those feelings went into that song, and they came out very raw during the recording. Well, here's a song, Untidy Creature, from the Slater-Kinney album, Little Rope. Corin Tucker, Carrie Brownstein, thank you so much for coming back to Fresh Air. Thanks so much for having us. Thank you. I heard the click of a tiny catch I closed my eyes and you found the latch

I looked up and saw the bars intact Locked up tight, the perfect trap A rattle and shake inside The perfect track. There was a time when I saw it outside Followed the air, turned left, turned right Now with the move, you close the lock The world outside isn't what I want A rattle rattling shake inside Push against your arms tonight And it feels like we were broken

And I'm holding the pieces so tight You can try to tell me I'm nothing And I don't have the wings to fly But there's still a tear that's been spoken And there's no tomorrow in sight Could you love me if I was broken And there's no going back tonight Carrie Brownstein and

Corin Tucker. Their band Slater Kinney has a new album called Little Rope. They're currently touring the U.S. and will play abroad later this year. They spoke with Fresh Air's Anne-Marie Baldonado. After we take a short break, David Bianculli will review a new science

fiction series from some of the creative forces behind Game of Thrones and True Blood. This is Fresh Air. This is Fresh Air. The 2007 Chinese science fiction novel, The Three-Body Problem, was the first part of a multi-volume story that sold millions of copies in China and also was adopted there into a TV series. Now Netflix is presenting a new TV adaptation of its own, dropping all eight episodes of the latest series from some of the creative forces behind Game of Thrones and True Blood. Our TV critic, David Bianculli, has this review.

The three creators of Netflix's three-body problem have lots of experience adapting sprawling, unusual book series for television. David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were behind HBO's Game of Thrones, and Alexander Wu was one of the producers of another HBO series based on popular fantasy novels, True Blood. Their partnership here has resulted in an eight-part drama that gets increasingly intense and compelling as it proceeds. It tells a story that's as unusual and original as the way it's mounted for TV, with shifts between the past and present, reality and high-tech virtual reality, and a lot more. It's one of the most complicated narratives I've ever seen on a TV show,

but also one of the most cerebral narratives I've ever seen on a TV show, but also one of the most cerebral and ultimately the most captivating. No bare-bones plot description can do justice to three-body problem, but here goes. Start with the title. Three-body problem turns out to be a conundrum of physics, that when you have three bodies orbiting around each other, whether they're planets or subatomic particles, their paths are so affected by each other, they can't be accurately predicted. In a futuristic virtual reality headset game played by some of the scientists, one of the tasks they're directed to solve is the three-body problem itself. And in a larger sense, it could be said that three of this show's primary characters,

whose stories and fates interweave in wildly unexpected ways, are themselves a sort of dramatic three-body problem. One of these three characters is Clarence, a detective played by Benedict Wong from Doctor Strange. He's hired by the head of a top-level British intelligence agency to investigate a series of deaths of prominent scientists worldwide, many of which seem like suicides. Clues eventually lead to a radio signal

sent from Earth to a planet several light-years away, which may have triggered a return response. The second character is Ye Wen-Zha, the daughter of a physics professor in China. As a young woman, she witnesses her father's death during the Cultural Revolution of 1966, then becomes a scientist working on a top-secret project for the state. Much later, played by Rosalind Chow, she finds herself in an interrogation room in present-day England, questioned by the detective Clarence.

There is one thing we can't figure out. Just one thing. It takes four years for a radio signal to get from our planet to their planet, correct? And another four to get a response. But from what we can tell, Evans spends most of his life on a ship. Judgment day. So what's he doing? Waiting eight years for a callback?

Now, I'm an idiot, never went to uni, but I can't make sense of that unless... Unless? There is a faster way to communicate. But faster-than-light communication is impossible. Impossible for us. The third character in My Three-Body Problem is Mike Evans, a mysterious billionaire who also is being investigated by the detective in the present.

Evans is played as an older man by Jonathan Pryce, who portrayed the religious fanatic High Sparrow on Game of Thrones. Evans has indeed found a way to communicate, apparently, with someone from another world or perhaps another realm. Using what looks like an old-style ham radio setup, he talks to a female voice he calls My Lord. It's like a conversation with a very advanced form of artificial intelligence, but with much higher stakes.

Even a simple fairy tale reading can turn ominous. And she looked at the big bad wolf and said, Grandma, what big eyes you've got. We do not understand. What don't you understand? He intends to eat her yes she does not want to be eaten so why does she remain in the house when she knows the wolf intends to eat her she doesn't know a wolf is pretending to be the grandmother we do not understand well he's to be the grandmother. We do not understand.

Well, he's dressed like the grandmother. He's wearing her clothes. He looks like her. He sounds like her. But he is not the grandmother. He is the wolf. Yes, but Little Red Riding Hood doesn't know that. The wolf has communicated with her.

He has. If he wanted to achieve his aim of eating her, why did he communicate with her? After he communicated with her and she learned his intentions, why didn't she run? Because she didn't learn his intentions. He was hiding them from her. Don't you ever hide your intentions? She didn't learn his intentions. He was hiding them from her. Don't you ever hide your intentions? We do not understand. Based on my description, I don't expect a lot of understanding either. And I haven't even mentioned how this TV adaptation adds a group of new characters, a next-generation set of brilliant scientists who were students together at Oxford

and all of whom play key roles in exploring and expanding the story of Netflix's three-body problem. Revealing as little as possible, I can say that the plot goes from solving small problems a murder here, a scientific abnormality there, to a conflict that quite literally is out of this world and that, again, quite literally, may take centuries to resolve. The opening episode of Three-Body Problem is almost all mysteries, but don't be thrown. Things do become clear as the drama progresses. The characters and actors pull you in. Among the group of young scientists, the standouts include Asa Gonzalez as Augie and John Bradley, another Game of Thrones veteran, as Jack. And once you're in, you'll be in for all eight exciting, unnerving episodes.

Three-Body Problem is planned as a three-season series to tell the full story from the original books. And I suspect Netflix will have no problem greenlighting the rest. Three-Body Problem is a mission that must be completed. It's so smart, it puts the science back in science fiction. David Bianculli is a professor of television studies at Rowan University. He reviewed the new Netflix series, Three-Body Problem. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, we'll talk about how climate-driven migration could change the face of America. Our guest will be ProPublica reporter Abram Luskarten. He says millions of us may flee to other parts of the country in coming decades to escape wildfires, rising seas, oppressive heat,

and drought. He's written a new book called On the Move, The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America. I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham.

Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salat, Phyllis Myers, Anne Rebould-Donato, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Simon, Teresa Madden, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.

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