Good Job, Brain! - 291: The Electric Slide

Episode Date: June 12, 2025

Zip, zap, zop! Prepare your brain for some shocking trivia about electricity. Are electric eels actually electric? What did people call them before we had a word for electricity? Get charged up with Chris' "Complete The Circuit" word game. Colin gets juiced up by college rock, and learn about landmark moments in electronica with Karen's synthy quiz. For advertising inquiries, please contact [e-mail]! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an airwave media podcast. Bienveneo, benevolent, beavering, brainwaves, believing in Benvolio and Befitron. Welcome to Good Job, Brain, your weekly quiz show, an Offbeat Trivia podcast. This is episode 294, and I'm your humble host, Karen. and we are your, this is submitted by my husband, a juicy jiblets gibbering judiciously about gibbets, juju beans, and Julia Child. I am Colin.

And I'm Chris. Okay, Karen, do you have like a soundboard there with like a, like a DJ style air horn? Oh, you want like a morning, something like that. Yeah, exactly. You know, tend to the morning DJ. You can just place that in. Yeah, yeah, in post. It's going to be totally different than what you think.

Fantastic. I love it. I love the unknown. Okay, here we go. Got some color news. I got an article here. I'm reading the headline. This is from just three days ago as we sit here. It's from Smithsonian magazine. Scientists say they've discovered a new color, an unprecedented hue only ever seen by five people. Wow. They're lying, first of all. All the five of them got together. You mean like it's only visible to five people or it's like enclosed somewhere and only five people have seen it. Five people that we know of so far.

I love the amount of enthusiasm and questions and maybe even controversy. We've already generated and we haven't even reached the subhead line yet. All right. So that's just that's just the headline. All right. On to this on to the subhead. The color dubbed Olo, that's spelled O-L-O-O-O-L-O-O, like YOLO, the color dubbed OLO, is described as an intensely saturated teal, okay? Okay. Researchers. I've seen teal before.

No, no, no, no. Not at this level of saturation. We're still on the subhead. Researchers say it might have applications in understanding colorblindness. Okay. Okay, okay, okay. This article was talking about some scientific break. breakthroughs that were taking place right here, very near to me at my alma mater and yours,

Karen, the University of California, Berkeley. So I immediately switched my news source. I went over to the UC Berkeley news site, found the article, scientists trick the eye into seeing new color, OLO. UC Berkeley scientists created a new platform called Oz. Okay, this is the technology platform, which involves lasers. that directly controls up to 1,000 photoreceptors in the eye at once, providing new insight into the nature of human sight and vision laws.

All right. So here is essentially what this platform, the Oz platform, does. It fires tiny doses of laser light to individual photoreceptors in one eye at a time. Okay, so you're kind of mounted into this machine, you know, like, you're getting your eyes checked. Those of you have had your eyes checked, right, the automatrist. But this one's now shooting lasers into your eye for the purposes of science. And it's so precise.

So they calibrate it to each individual's eye, okay? So the laser, it sends some images to your eye, sort of records how your vision system responds to it, and then it sort of calibrates itself, maps itself to your eye. So now it can send to individual photoreceptors within your eye. All right. And I'm quoting here from the article. from Berkeley News. Humans are able to see in color

thanks to three different types of photoreceptor cone cells embedded in the retina. I know you guys know this, at least more or less. Each type of cone is sensitive to different wavelengths of light. Okay, S cones detect shorter, bluer wavelengths. M cones detect medium greenish wavelengths

and L cones detect longer reddish wavelengths. All right. So, however, due to an evolutionary quirk, The light wavelengths that activate the M and L cones are almost entirely overlapping. This means that 85% of the light that activates M cones also activates L cones, all right? So then isolated. Yes. Out in nature, us with our human vision systems, we never encounter any wavelength of light in the natural world that can make it past our processing system and only target the M cone.

There's always some bleed over or spillover overlap into the bandwidth adjacent L. Cone. So basically, the premise of this platform, or this experiment anyway, is according to senior author Ron Eng, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Berkeley, I began wondering what it would look like if you could just stimulate all the M-Cone cells. Would it be like the greenest green you've ever seen? And more or less, that's pretty much what it is. So the five people who have been hooked up to this apparatus are all professors or grad students involved in the research project here. So, you know, in the articles about it, they'll have like a little square of, you know, a nice, pretty vivid teal.

And they're saying, like, imagine this, but a thousand times more intense, just experiencing this, this sensation of a color in a pure way. Right. They all agree that it is practically an indescribable experience. Wow. You have to see it. You have to see it to understand it. And one of the researchers described it as, imagine you've gone your whole life just seeing different shades of pink. Okay.

You're like baby pink and light pink and maybe a little medium saturated pink. And then one day you see red for the first time ever. And you're like, oh, my God, that's the most saturated pink I could imagine. Right. And it's a rough analogy. So they've named this color Olo. After what? Yolo?

It's like color without the sea or a. the R. Oh, maybe that's why. Oh, it's the middle, like OLO. Oh, turns out I was close. It's a play on 010, which corresponds to the cone cell. So, so one is the M's, right? So you have, right? No S and no L and they're only firing on the M zone. I see. Props to all the researchers and to all the people willing to stick themselves on the Oz platform. And yeah. We've heard about some people who can see an extra color. Yeah. So, Karen, you're right.

So among the applications, potential treatments for color blindness of different varieties of finding out, is it possible, as you were maybe getting right up to the edge of saying, Karen, could we allow normal vision people to see in tetrachromatic color, right? As if we had four sets of cone cells and create sort of a fourth input into our vision. How much are you willing to pay to experience this? Five bucks. What? I would I would pay more than five bucks to experience Olo.

$15. I wonder if I'd cry. I wonder anybody cried. Right. Right. Woohoo. New color. Olo.

Ollo. Ollo. And let's jump in to our first general trivia segment. Pop quiz, hot shot. Here I have a random trivial pursuit card from the box. And also, we're going to keep the party. going with the TV buff super hard TV trivia cards. Those are fun.

Hard is fun. I would say they're up and down. Like sometimes surprisingly hard, sometimes like... Well, they're fun. We're going to have a good time. Here we go. You guys have your barnyard buzzers. Let's answer some questions.

Listeners play along. Here we go. Blue Wedge for geography. Almeria, Spain is known for its 64,000 acres of what? Multiple choice. Oh, okay. okay beaches greenhouses or soccer fields almeria spain colin beaches incorrect 50 50 chris how many acres 64, I guess that's a lot greenhouses you are correct it is greenhouses sound like a lot of soccer fields uh says here

the reflection off the greenhouses means the entire area can be seen from space. Cool. But the whole, I can be seen in space is debatable. Right. From the moon space. That's right. That's right. That's right. You can see airports and soccer stadiums and things like that. Relative. Relative. All right. Next question. Pink Wedge for

entertainment in which professional sport did Jason Lee make a name for himself before starring the TV show, My name is Earl. That's funny because he started a lot more things. Yeah, other things. Yeah, it shows you when this set was created. Colin, go ahead. Skateboarding.

Yes, he was one of the early pro skaters. Next question, Yellow Edge. Which? Oh, I need help. Pohaten, Poetton. Powhatan. I think so, yeah. Pohattan.

It's either Pohattan or Powhatan. Which Powhatan Native American woman changed her name to Rebecca Rolfe and married a Jamestown colonist. Wow. Chris. Pocahontas. Yes. All right.

It's the right time window. It's not Sacchia. Rebecca Rolf. That was not in the Disney movie. It changes her name to Becky. Becky with the good hair. Purple Wedge. Next question.

Which toxic chemical element was commonly used in classical paintings and frescoes? Chris? Lead. It's lead. It's lead. It has many desirable qualities for coating a surface, including durability and water resistance. Okay. That's the thing.

It was so good. It was just a good at it. It's so good. Delicious, too. Yikes. Next question, green wet for science. What is the everyday term for NACL? Colin.

table salt salt oh really okay all right last question on this card orange wedge which fashion designer was not only a design director at ralph loren but also an accomplished figure skater hmm say it again uh which fashion designer was not only a design director at ralph loren but also an accomplished figure skater later had their career with their own name as designer oh i I see, I see. This person's a very famous name. Okay, okay. Designer.

They also used to be a figure skitter. Oh, Colin. Bob Mackie. Oh, that's a good guess. Incorrect. It is a she. It is Vera Wang. Oh, I just for Vera Wang on the red carpet.

I really should have recalled that. No, you know. All right. That's a good one. I'm excited. I love this TV buff box. Here we go. Here we go.

The listeners, some of these are hard. Some of these are easy. We'll see. The first one's always hard. It's a quote. So I'm going to read the quote. It's not lupus. That's it.

Oh, okay. Oh, Chris. Seinfeld. Incorrect. Oh, oh, sorry. Seinfeld is lupus? Is it lupus? Oh, this is, this is, is it house or house MD?

It is house. It's a doctor house. Oh, that's right. House, yes. It's up the gun. House is the one with the recurring joke about they always think it's loop. Okay. All right. Next question. Oh, I asked this in like a couple of episodes ago. Hopefully you guys will get it. What is the name of Bluey's dad in the cartoon Bluey? Colin. That's Bandit, of course. Bandit. Bandit. Third question here.

So I'm going to read you the summary of the plot, the premise of the show and you tell me what show. A dark comedic series about a woman living in London as she navigates love, family, and complex. emotions. Dark comedic series. A dark comedic series. That's a lot of shows. Okay. Colin? Are they looking for flea bag here?

We are looking for a flea bag. Okay. All right. Good job. Heavy. But funny, but heavy. Next question. Which series first season was filmed in a Hawaiian resort requiring a single location

due to COVID-19 guidelines? Oh. Chris. The White Lotus. Yes, it is the White Lotus. Very current. Yeah. Next question.

Who wrote the theme song for the Ellen DeGeneres show? Oh. Boy. She must have gotten one of her celebrity friends to do it, right? Sure, yeah. So when did the Ellen DeGeneres show start? Okay, mid-90s? This is not the talk show, Ellen.

This is the talk show. This is the talk show. Show is not the sitcom. It is a female pop star. Okay. Well, that rules that what I was going to guess. Popstar rock star. Pop star rock star.

It's not blues traveler. It's not. They might be giant. Miley Cyrus. Oh, I don't know. Too young. Yeah, you're right. She would have been like 10 years old.

Good for her if she was able to do that. When did her show start? I guess was on for a long time. Ellen Chow in the mid-90s, right? Was that early? Oh, my God. Yeah. So, anyway.

Okay, so Ellen's talk show. No, not mid-90s. It wasn't mid-90s. Late 90s? Early 2000s? Anyway, I mean. If only there was a way to. To find out. You can find out while I think about this. Okay, I guess we'll never know. Female pop star. Ellen slash rock star. Plash rock star, pop rock star. Gosh. 2003. Still, I mean, still, though, over 20 years ago. Okay. Now that I'm on this page, I have a little point. ripe because different seasons had different songs and different remixes.

So there was this the first season? This is seasons 13 to 19. I mean, if it makes you feel better, Karen, I don't know any of the season's songs. I mean, I didn't know they had seasons like. 13, that's 2016, that this song would have been the theme song. A mononym. Oh, pink? Pink, pink.

See, I wouldn't See, I wouldn't guess that. So it's not the theme song, it's a theme song. It is a theme song, yeah. Maybe the theme song when the question was written, perhaps the incumbent theme song. Yeah. Today's the day is the title.

All right. Last question on this TV buff card. Ooh. Too easy. Okay. The Hogan family, Arrested Development and Ozark have which actor in common.

Oh, okay. Chris. Jason Batman. Jason Batman in the new commercials. Yes, Jason Bateman. Who is related to Justine Bateman from... Wow. Yes, extremely related.

Extremely related. Almost as close as you can get. Was the 75% share DNA between siblings? That's right. Closer than any other humans. All right. Good job, Frames. I love this.

It's great. I didn't realize it was more current than that. I thought it was all going to be like the Andy Griffith's show or whatever. Yeah, yeah, the silver screen. All right. This week's topic, Colin, you got science on the mind, don't you? I do. I got science on the mind.

We're talking about lasers in the eyes, which is one of the many incredible things we would not be able to do without harnessing the power of electricity. So this week, we're doing the electric slide. All right, well, get us started off here. I've got a word play game, a classic good job brain, word play game in which you're going to not learn anything about electricity whatsoever. You will simply be playing a word game that I like to call complete the circuit. Oh, yay! That sounds fun. Well, I think we've done this before. We've absolutely done this before. I'm going to give you a weird two-word phrase, and you give me the word that goes in the middle

to join those up to make two common two word phrases, like before and after on Wheel of Fortune. now this might be difficult except it's not going to be difficult because I'm going to give you a hint the words that you're going to be inserted are all related somehow to electricity somehow right

get your head into that zone so let me give you an example if I were to say the phrase general slide electric which makes general electric and the electric slide two things that too common two word phrases from our uncommon two word phrase the general slide okay you all seem ready we will buzz in for this one and remember every every word is going to have something to do with electricity or you know something in that area basically to help you out

So here we go. Atomic drink. Atomic. Energy. Yes, Colin. Energy. Atomic energy, energy drink. Well done.

Off to a good start. Karen, having some of her energy drink. Oh, hopefully help her with. At 9.56 p.m. Oh, boy. Here we go. culture wave culture wave

Colin shock shock culture shock shock wave yep yep yep it's all gonna make it's all gonna make sense

when you when you get the word yep all right here we go here's another one Nintendo Ranger oh oh Colin again Uh, power? Power.

Oh, the magazine. Power and costume superhero. Power Ranger. Next one. Bright plug. Karen. Spark. Spark.

Yes. Well done. Bright spark. Spark plug. Very good. Aggravated acid. Oh. Aggravated.

Aggravated acid. Karen. No. Battery? Yes. Oh, what's an aggregate? Like the crime. Yeah.

Got it. All right. Alternating events. Karen. Current. Current. Current. Yes.

Alternating current events. Excellent. Now you're getting it. Cover nurse. Cover. Nurse. Whoa. Ooh.

I've stumped the cast of good job, brain. Cover. Yeah. Words somehow related related to electricity. Cover blank, blank nurse. Colin. Oh, charge. Charge.

Charge. Yes. Cover charge. Charge. charge nurse. Creative mall. Creative mall.

Mall. M-A-L. M-A-L. M-A-U-L. Yeah, I know. M-A-L. Tough one again. Creative. M-A-M-L. Uh-huh. Oh, Karen. Strip?

No. Oh. Keep naming types. of malls. Oh, okay. You were, like, fashion mall, shopping mall. No, I mean, like, oh, oh, boy, Colin. Outlet.

Outlet. I was close. That's what I was thinking of. You were very close. You led me up the path. That's team trivia, you know? In my brain, I saw, like, an extension cord, and it was like, oh, yeah. Right, right, right.

Creative outlet. Yeah, yeah. Outlet mall. Just two more left. Okay. Um, greased McQueen. Eric. Lightning.

Lightning. Both about a car. It sounds like a good drink, though. You know what I mean? Like a theme restaurant. Please. Um, and good job, good job. And finally, ear, ugly.

Ear. Ear. Ear. Ere ugly. Oh. Colin? Plug? Plug.

Ear plug and plug. What's plug ugly? Really ugly. Very ugly. It's an old-timey expression. It's old-timey. Yeah. Well, good job, brains.

That was good. Pulled out some tough ones there. Yep. Always in for a treat with a Chris word quiz. All right. I'll go next. It's well known here at Good Job Brain. We love trivia about

super villains from comics, comic books, comic movies, because they can easily cross the line from scary, creepy, that you love to hate, to like laugh out loud, ridiculous. Some of the memorable ones we talked about, Pace Pot Pete, who is a villain inspired by a pot of glue. Penny Plunder, Penny Plunder, who loves pennies. It was a different time. It was a different economy back then, I guess. And, you know, more often than not, their theme or their identity or their gimmick is like somehow tied to how they became bad, right? Their origin story. On the subject of electricity, we have to pay a visit to the Spider-Man villain Electro. Nice. Specifically, the version of Electro in the Amazing Spider-Man

movie. Do we know? Do we remember who played Electro? Was that, was that Jamie Fox? It is Jamie Fox. Nice. Electro origin story, Max Dillon. Electric engineer. In the original comics, he was like a lineman, like he was repairing a power line, gets into a freak accident, gets electrocuted, causes a mutation reaction in his body and turns him into essentially a capacitor.

He can, like, absorb electricity, also emit electricity. And he has to charge himself. You know, in the comic book world, that's a pretty good, origin story. You know, it's pretty straightforward. Nothing too weird or silly. You're like, okay, yeah, I can see that. But in the amazing Spider-Man movie, played by Jamie Fox, he works for Oscorp labs, and he had to repair a power line in the lab. He gets shocked. And I'm like miming this, by the way. So he's repairing the line. He gets shocked because he completes the current. He then falls into a tank filled with.

electric eels that they were doing experiments on. I have not seen this. It's ridiculous. It sounds ridiculous. It's kind of graphic. He gets electrocuted again once he's in the tank of water. The eels all are giving off like electric charge, electrocuting him. And they all attack him.

They all bite him. But believe it or not, though this scene is not accurate in any sense, it does reference the fact that a lot of what we humans know about electricity and charge and battery and all that stuff that, you know, showed up in Chris's quiz did actually come from the electric eel. Hmm. So let's back up a bit. Electric eels. Native to South America, not actually eels.

What? We're going to call them eels, but they're not actually eels. They're knife fish, which is more like a catfish. We probably all first learned about electric eels in cartoons. Absolutely. Absolutely. You know like Looney Tunes where Wiley Coyote puts his hand in the water and then the screen goes black and white and see their skeleton like flashing. It's in The Little Mermaid, Flotsam and Jetsam. Now, the first question you might have is, does it actually give off electricity? Yeah. And the answer is absolutely yes. 600 volts. That's like what an AC or a heater use. They can emit 600 volts, but only for like milliseconds. Will you feel pain? Yes, depending on conditions. It can be like from touching an electric fence to like put a taser jammed into you. How does it work? How does it work? I am on the edge of

my seat here, Karen. I'm so angry at myself that I've reached this point in my life and I've never bothered to look it up. How do they work? Where does it come from? So this is, well, they're long. That's part of their secret. Two thirds, three quarters of that length from the tail to almost their head, is made up of special electric organs. And these organs have these cells. They're called electrosites. These electrocytes act like a tiny battery. Normally, they don't do anything.

But if an eel needs to zap something, the brain sent a signal and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Best analogy I can think of is, you know, like a big flashlight. You know, you have those long flashlights that's like a big stick. Yeah, like a maglight. Yeah, yeah. And you have to put like four. D batteries stacked up. At rest, these cells, electrocytes, sodium ions on the outside, potassium ions on the inside. Inside the cell, it's negative. It's like waiting. Once the eels like,

yo, yo, yo, time to turn it on, high voltage time. The sodium channels open and the sodium ions rush into the cell. And now this difference, when you have so many cells all doing the same thing, this is where the electricity comes from. But again, milliseconds. Like, this happened so quick. Do I actually have to make contact with the eel to feel the shock, though? Or can I be very near the eel? You can. And that hurts a lot if you're in direct contact, if you have wet skin. But it also, electricity can travel through water. So the shock, it dissipates, but it's a larger area. But they can have a more concentrated shock without water. Like, they can jump up. and shock you in the face if they want to.

Follow-up question is, if they can deliver a big shock, why don't they shock themselves? How is it possible that they don't electrocue themselves? They're in water. Right. They're giving off electricity. They're built for this. Maybe they do all the time. But it's not fatal to them, right?

It's not fatal to them. The more important organs like heart, their heart is tucked away front 20% of the body. This is the ideal scenario. The predators get shocked in water, and then they drown. And so usually the death is from the drowning, is from the water, and less from the shock, even though the shock caused it. Right. It's really fine-tuned to whatever eats the so-called eel. But wait a minute.

Humans didn't really even have a word for electricity until the 1600. Humans didn't even really understand electricity until the 17th, 18th century. So what were the electric eels called before we had the term for it? A spicy eel. The local tribes of naturalists knew that there was some sort of power. So there's another really similar fish called the torpedo ray. Sure. And the torpedo acts the same.

Emits electricity in the same way. And the term torpedo comes from torpor or torpure, right? Which is to paralyze and cause paralysis. And that's where we get the word torpedo from. The word torpedo we know as like the underwater bomb or weapon. It's named after the fish. named after the fish. It's the fish first.

Then we name the weapon torpedo. And nowadays, we associate torpedo with more of the shape, like the torpedo shape. So back to Amazing Spider-Man and the insane tank of electric eels. I said that scene is ridiculous. But there is a factual reference behind it a little bit. So Italian chemist, Signore Alessandro Volta, is credited with. with inventing the first battery. Mm.

Completely inspired by the learning of the electric eel. He didn't have a tank of eels, but he learned from naturalists that electric eels had these electrocytes. And essentially, they're like stacked battery cells or stacked plates along the body. He was inspired completely by the electric eel. They're literally a slippery, wet battery in the water. And then, full circle. In 2019, scientists discovered an electric eel species that produces the most bioelectricity, period.

And they named it after Volta. Nice. There you go. From Jamie Fox to a battery. All right. Well, let's take a quick break. And we'll be right back. Zazazza, zazza, zah, zah, zah.

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You're listening to Good Job Brain. Smooth puzzles. Smart trivia. Good job brain. And we're back. This week, we're talking about things that are electric. I'm going to take it into the realm of music. You know, recently, Chris, you had a quiz for us about songs that started their life as demos. So I want to share this fun, fun to me anyway, story with you guys about one of the biggest hits in American songwriting and performing history. Specifically, I'm going to talk about one of the biggest folk rock hits ever. Chris, I know we're right in your wheelhouse here with the folk rock, perhaps more on people's minds recently due to a certain hit biopic

starring a certain Timothy Shalamee in the theaters. I'm talking about a... I am referring to a complete unknown, of course, based on the life of Bob Dylan. That's right, Bobby, Bobby D. Let me start. I'm going to play for you guys just about 10 seconds of the intro to this song that we're going to talk about. We can do sort of a little mini quiz here.

Here is the track. Hello, darkness, my old friend. I've come to talk with you again. Yes. Please tell us. What is that track and song there? Sound of Silence. As performed by...

Simon and Garfunkel. You got it. That's right. The song originally titled The Sounds Plural of Silence, but it is, in fact, now known as the Sound of Silence, right. And Simon and Garfunkel, of course, were one of the key artists, big names in the American folk rock movement. This was their first hit. I only recently discovered that it was not their first hit single or song in quite the way that it is for a lot of other bands. They knew each other for a very long time.

They knew each other from when they were kids. They were performing as teenagers. They were very tight and both had this songwriting and performing drive. So by the time they got to college age, they were sort of at that crossroads that many young acts are, which is, do I keep putting time and energy and maybe money and commitment into this musical career? Or do I decide it's time to go to college and get a degree or whatever, choose a different. profession. They were at this point. They were performing. They were doing shows. I mean, they weren't nobody's, but it was, it's a crowded market, right? Like anybody else trying to break in. They finagled an audition with Columbia Records, with a producer by the name of Tom

Wilson. Among many other names, he worked with Bob Dylan, a big influence in particular in Dylan going electric. This was a major plot point in the movie and a major plot point in Bob Dylan's actual human life as a musician. Yes, Dylan goes electric. And Wilson agreed, like, yeah, you guys got something here. There's a folk movement happening in 1964 is where we are here in time. So Tom Wilson, he worked with Simon and Garfunkel to craft their debut album named Wednesday morning 3 a.m.

They released the album, released it in October 1964. And this album flopped. It was, it was not a hit. The critics didn't like it. It didn't sell well. that the shows had terrible energy around it. So they split up. Simon and Garfunkel were like, well, we gave it our shot.

We tried her best. It's time to do our thing. And Garfunkel did indeed go back to school, went back to school at Columbia. And Paul Simon moved to England. And then a funny thing happened. In early 1965, the sound of silence started to become a sleeper hit in the Boston area. Radio station, Radio Station WBZ, in fact, was the first station, the late-night DJ, played this track.

He liked it a lot. It picked up, in particular, with the college crowd at Harvard University. They're moody, man. And another Boston Area University, Tufts University, the alma mater of our very own, Chris Kohler. I see. And P.T. Barnum. Among many others. And Tracy Chapman and Hank Azaire.

period. Oh, really? Sound of Silence was getting increasingly heavy airplay driven by requests. You know, the kids were phoning in because that's how it worked. There was no, you know, online and there's I mean, it was if you wanted the song, you would call them up. So the Harvard kids, the Tufts kids were calling it up.

It spread from the late night shift into some of the daytime shifts. Other, of course, radio stations took note. The people whose job it is in the record company to monitor radio play and promotions and things like that, caught on pretty quickly like, wow, we're getting a lot of airplay of this track off this album that didn't really do anything out of the gate. They noticed it was having a wave of popularity in Boston.

Then they noticed it was having a wave of popularity down in Florida. And the working theory is that it was the college kids going down for spring break. Followed them down the coast. So now you've got this budding. Hold on. Who's partying at spring break and be like, you know what song will really live in this party? It's not silence. That's my jam. Let's request this.

Whoever is working in the Promotions Office at Columbia Records, noticed this, passed the information on it, filtered down eventually to Tom Wilson, none other than producer. Tom Wilson had an idea. So now I mentioned that Tom Wilson, he was a major force. Many people say in guiding Dylan toward the electric, more rock-oriented sound. Right around this time, hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, the Bird's rendition of it, a Bob Dylan song. The Birds had a big hit with this kind of jangly folk rock version. He had an idea is, hey, what if we took this kind of mopey acoustic track, all right?

What if we redubbed it and we hipped it up a little bit with electric music and electric guitar and electric sound? All right. Not a lot of people even necessarily realize that there are two versions of this song. There's the version of the Sound of Silence, which is an all acoustic jam. And Tom Wilson, as much as he was impressed by the radio bubble up of this track, he knew that that alone was not enough. That was not enough for him to go to Columbia and say, we're on to something. We've got to, you know, promote the heck out of these guys. I want to play for you guys, a comparison. First, let me play you the original, the acoustic original. In the sound of silence, in restless dreams I walked alone, narrow streets of cobblestone.

And now let me play for you. Full-blown jangle, folk rock vision of producer Tom Wilson. Give me the jangle. I'm ready. This is the version I've heard. I thought that was only one song. I can't tell. I can't tell which version I've heard.

Maybe it's both. So they released that on the radio. It became a huge radio hit. And then, of course, it made its way onto the soundtrack for the movie The Graduate. Yes. That version shot up the charts. By January 1966, it was the number one track. Obviously transformed the course of Simon and Garfunkel's career, musically, professionally, personally, I'm sure.

Financially. Yeah, certainly financially. Simon and Garfunkel had no idea Tom Wilson was doing it. any of this to the song. Because as far as Columbia Records was concerned, they're like, you guys broke up. I mean, we see, like, you're in school in Columbia, your buddy went back to England.

Like, this album flopped. That was sort of their version of the story. It's like, well, we honestly didn't see anything wrong with just kind of taking the song. It was like our producer decided that he could turn it into gold. He did. I mean, he did. There's no question that if he hadn't touched the song,

we would have probably never heard the name Simon and Garfunkel, right? Paul Simon, he hated it. He was horrified by it, like, hearing it for the first time of, like, what did they do to my baby? All these elects, like, I didn't even know these musicians that the producer found and hooked him up with. So huge hit on their hands, and the record label is like, all right, well, you boys got to come back and make a record, right? I mean, like, you'd be foolish not to. I mean, they rightly agree. I think they would be foolish not to.

So Paul Simon came back to the U.S. Arch Ruff uncle, you know, paused again, his studies, and they were scooted into the studio to start work on a follow-up album. So the name of their follow-up album as a now folk rock duo as opposed to a pure acoustic folk act was sounds of silence. Just to make sure there was no, no, like you're at the record store, you're looking for it, like they want your money. Got it.

The first track on this album was the electric version of The Sound of Silence. That's my story of how Simon and Garfunkel, maybe against their own judgment, went electric and it saved their careers and made them lots and lots of money. When planning for life's most important moments, sometimes the hardest part is simply knowing where to start. That's why we're here to help. When you pre-plan and prepay a celebration of life with us, every detail. will be handled with simplicity and professionalism, giving you the peace of mind that you've done all you can today to remove any burden from your loved ones tomorrow. We are your local Dignity Memorial provider. Find us at DignityMemorial.ca.

The Dignity Memorial brand name is used to identify a network of licensed funeral cremation and cemetery providers owned and operated by affiliates of Service Corporation International. Okay, I have our last segment. Also, I got music on the mind. I just want to come clean. I desperately wanted to make an EDM Electronica music quiz I love that stuff I know I'm hanging out with you guys I'm correct to assume you guys are not EDM fans

you're correct yeah I would say I mean I'm aware of it certainly I would not describe myself as a fan so I've revised my concept and I here have a quiz about electronic and synth landmark songs or artists remember Again, like Colin said, there was a time when there wasn't electricity or electric stuff in the music. And now it's everywhere. And this is unlike our usual music quiz. I'm going to play a clip and then I'm going to ask a trivia question about the clip.

Let's do a write down. Again, I'm going to play a very short clip. And then I'm going to ask a trivia question about that clip or inspired by that clip. And you write down your answer. Ready? Pends and paper. lipstick on your forehead, whatever works. Okay, here we go.

Let's play. Clip number one. My name is Giovanni Giorgio, but everybody calls me Giorgio. Yes. All right, man here. Her talking in this track is, Giorgio Maroder, the father of disco, pioneer of electronic dance music.

This track you just heard is featured in what award-winning album? Title of the album, please. Again, the question, the man you heard talking is none other than Giorgio Moroder, the father of disco, pioneer of electronic dance music. This track you just heard is featured in what award-winning album? Title of the album, please. answers up both of you have put random access

memories one of perhaps greatest album of all time by maybe the best yeah conversation by French duo daft punk

Jojo Baroder father of disco produced a lot of disco hits including a song we frequently sing when we're recording which is hot stuff also I learned one

the oscar for Best Original Song, Take My Breath Away by Berlin, featured in Top Gun. Top Gun. And he won an Oscar for Best Original Song for What a Feeling! Wow.

From Flash Dance. Nice. He's just some of his accomplishments. Just a few. Top Gun cracks me up, man. Because I actually didn't see Top Gun for a long time. And I knew the song was in there. But I did not realize.

I didn't realize how much the song was in there. and how, like, the entire romantic subplot is just an extended music video for that song. And, like, whenever the two of them show up on camera in that movie, it's... Down, down, down, down. And then, like, an hour into it, right as they're about to make Whooppy, that is when it's like, the lyrics kick and it's so, like, it's so corny, it's so dumb. And you can see, just like, you can see how people. we're just like this is the greatest song that is ever and the greatest love story ever told

it's so so funny all right incredible let's play a second question play the clip All right. Swedish DJ Tim Bergling had many hits throughout the 2010s, sadly passed away very young at age 28 in 2018. He performed under what DJ stage name? This song also Wake Me Up. It was everywhere. Again, the question Swedish.

DJ Tim Bergley had many hits throughout the 2010s, but Sally passed away at age 28 in 2018. He performed under what stage name? All right, write something down. Don't leave a blank. Oh, okay, all right. That song is called Levels. If you go to a lot of conventions,

video game conventions, they would play that before a keynote. Chris says Dichay Connor Colin put Darud Derruda Sandstorm I almost put that in the quiz but I thought it was a little bit too memeish too viral

It is Avichi I just want to get a little more appreciation to DJ Connor there just if we may just for a moment there This is a Rosanne joke right It is it is Sorry, I didn't, I didn't catch it. A lot of Chris's quiet jokes I don't catch.

Until like I'm editing and I listen to right. All right, next question. Question number three, let's play the clip. Yes. I'm going to be singing this for the next four days. Thanks, Karen. Yeah. There's no words. Oh, yeah. I'm in it, I should say. One of the most famous movie themes of the 80s, or of all time, can you tell me what is the title of the track you just heard? Yeah, I can.

One of the most famous movie things of the 80s and maybe of all time. Can you tell me what is the title of the track you just heard? All right, here we go. Chris has put Axel F. Colin has put Axel F's theme. I have to give it to Chris. It is just Axel F. Wasn't sure I went back and forth.

The movie, Beverly Hills Cop, yes. Eddie Murphy plays the character Axel Foley, and it's titled after Axel Foley, but it's just Axel F. So the title of track is not Beverly Hills Cop theme. or I'm old enough that I will tell you guys I was at a school talent show in probably you know whatever year like well let's see what year that movie come out was that like 84 85 like fourth grade fifth grade something like that anyway and in that in that talent show not one not not two but three three separate kids performed Axel F as their as their little talent like on the same little

school provided synth yeah it was a school provided synth so like everyone like whether you're doing you know fur release or Axel F they were they were all they were all bad but like by the third time like you can see just people are like ah come on again yeah but like what are you gonna do as a kid it's not like they communicate with each other yeah it's like young people going to like a public karaoke and then they request tequila that's like what they do now that actually happened on our Disney on our Disney cruise karaoke event on the cruise and it was only like an hour of karaoke only like 10 or 11 songs could even be performed during that karaoke window and a kid got up and did tequila three songs later a group of kids got up and then they did the song

tequila everybody politely chuckled through the first one yeah yeah second one was like Cut it off, cut it off. We had on our computer a, remember mod files? No. Like before MP3s. It was sort of like. It's not MIDI. It was after MIDI.

It was because MIDI was like electronic instruments. So we had MIDI files. But then there was also the mod format, which used samples and sequencing. So the mod file incorporated a bunch of samples. and then it played back those samples with a certain sequence. You could get really good effects, but it didn't last very long until like MP2s and MP3s kind of. Wow, I don't ever remember it.

I don't remember this. We had a bunch of those and one of them was Axel F. And the file name was Axel F. Wow, so you knew that's a slumdog question. We went through some stuff with music on the computer. You know what I mean? Prior to, prior to something that was compressed and could deliver CD quality audio, we went to a lot of different places. Yeah. Let's move on to question number four to write down. We're going to listen to a clip. Play clip for it. you just heard is the rock one preset on the Suzuki Omnicord it's an electronic musical instrument

not like a keyboard it's just like a big board with a lot of buttons and sliders uh the Suzuki omicord introduced in 1981 and this preset is one of the things you know sometimes they have like beats already built in so this rock one preset was used pretty much as is yeah uh in the intro to the hit song Clint Eastwood by what band let's play it again I never knew the provenance of this that's fantastic yeah again what you just heard is the rock one preset uh this was used pretty much as is as the intro to the hit song Clint Eastwood by what band? Chris put Hanson.

Colin put gorillas. Colin is correct with gorillas. They literally took the preset. Yeah, that's so good. Amazing. Speechless, amazing. This is our last question in this, you know, electronic synth kind of inspired music quiz.

Let's play clip number five. All right, here's the question. The 1999 album play was groundbreaking for being the first album to have every one of its tracks licensed for use in movies. TV shows and commercials. Who is the artist? Please write down, give me the artist. The 1999 album play was groundbreaking for being the first album to have every one of its tracks license to be used in TV shows and movies, commercials. Who is the artist?

Who is this electronic music artist? I'm taking me back with some of these tracks, Taryn. I know. Chris has put Dead Mouse, good guess, Colin, Mobe, you are correct, it is Mobe. Oh, sure, yeah. Takes me back, takes all of us back. Here are just some of the brands that use tracks. Oh, good, I'm glad you're going to, yeah, okay.

Nordstrom, American Express, Galaxy, Volkswagen, Bailey's Irish Cream, Rolling Rocks. It was a lot of alcohol brands, Nissan, a lot of car brands. It wasn't Moby's decision to do that. It was the record company like, let's do this and see if this can boost album sales. And it completely did. This has become almost the blueprint for getting ready for commercial use. Interesting. Mission accomplished.

Yeah. Mission accomplished. I mean, Moby did not have, his later albums did not have as big of his impact as play did. It was huge. And there you go. There's my electronica. I like that. That was really good.

I'm not torturous. Return to that quiz at some point. That was good. And that's our show. Thank you all for joining me and thank you listeners for listening in. Hope you learn stuff about electric words, about electric eels, about electric songs, and more. You can find us on all major podcast apps and on our website, good job brain.com. This podcast is part of Airwave Media Podcast Network.

Visit Airwavemedia.com to listen and subscribe to other shows like Pulse of the Planet, Nature Nerds, who arted. And we'll see you next week. Bye. Bye.