Keeping Records - To Rustle is Human (with Daniel Chua and Alex Rehding)

Episode Date: November 5, 2021

Caleb has moved out. Shelby is also moving out. Distance has come between them, but their love for one another bridges that great divide. Here to observe our hosts' attempt at coping with separation anxiety are Chair Professor Daniel Chua (University of Hong Kong) and Fanny Peabody Professor Alex Rehding (Harvard University), co-authors of the book Alien Listening: Voyager's Golden Record and Music From Earth (Princeton University Press). A discussion between four academic equals unfolds, focusing on how the Golden Records can teach us to differently hear and analyze music. Throughout the lecture, the esteemed professors make a Golden Record together with just as much food on it as there is music. For all of our listeners with terminal degrees in their respective fields, this one is for you.  Daniel's Artifacts  John Cage, 4'33" (audio-visual) Video of whale almost swallowing human (audio-visual) Durian (food) Alex’s Artifacts Trio, "Da Da Da" (audio) Blowfish (animal and food) Rice pudding (food) Original Voyager Artifact Greetings from the U.N./Whale Greetings (audio) Purchase Daniel and Alex's book Alien Listening: Voyager's Golden Record and Music From Earth! -- Follow the show @keepingrecordspod Advertise on Keeping Records via Gumball.fm See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is a HeadGum Original. In 1977, NASA sent two solid gold records into space, so that aliens might find them and understand life on Earth. I send greetings on behalf of the people of our planet. And friendly wishes to all who may encounter this voyager. Now, we're making new records with our friends. Bonjour tout le monde. Konnichiwa.

Hola y saludos a todos. Assalamu alaikum. We step out of our solar system into the universe seeking only peace and friendship. We know full well that our planet and all its inhabitants are but a small part of this immense universe that surrounds us. Hello from the children of planet Earth. well well well well well well well well well well elvis castello sorry soul you might do you mind if i give it a little soul shelb two white people talking about giving soul to music and also calling that soul shelb do you

mind if i give it a little soul not soulful at all what's up you freak bitch do you sorry it's hard to ask even do you miss me it can't be that hard to ask you've asked me 17 times well and every time it feels good to hear it yeah i missed you i was gone for a long time you had grace in instead of me how did she do please don't say good i don't feel comfortable talking about it at this time just give me an up and down head shake or side to side head shake wow yikes okay yeah let's just move on um it's so good to see you girl how is everything with you you know it's um i got the keys to my new apartment i'm not there yet i'm in my new apartment you got the keys to your new apartment the breakup is official are you seeing other people yet uh no i'm living alone you're seeing about a hundred other roommates a dead move in

with a bunch of people did we ever talk about why that part of the move on here a little bit well i don't know i mean in what detail did we talk about why we talked about you living with a bunch of people yeah i moved in with a bunch of people because i'm going to be traveling a lot and i wanted cheap rent that's basically the idea wait um jeffrey james friend of the pod. Acquaintance of the pod. Pulled me aside and said, hey, is it actually about the cat? Will you back me up on this though, Shelby? Please back me up on this.

The cat really, if you're not a cat fan, does sometimes act a little crazy. You have to back me up on this. Yeah, big time. And when I'm not home, she really does be acting. she misses you so much that she like meows constantly it's really crazy yeah no one's taking that away from you i it was really funny for no i think jeff thought we were like covering up for bigger drama that we were like actually really fighting and that um the cat was like our public story which is is very funny. But funny to have a public story for a podcast where we literally talk about like who we fuck. Yeah, we're like, this is the public facing story.

The private story. Well, that's where. Well, that's that's something a little too dastardly to tap into. I missed you. Toronto is really beautiful during the fall, though. So, you know, I was in, you know, I was in hog heaven wearing layers up there. Yeah. Honestly though,

I miss layers. It's cute. I'm like trying to layer. I'm wearing like a sweatshirt with like a long coat and being like, well, I'm now I'm sweating. It's only hot enough to be doing one of these two things, but it looks better with both.

Um, I 100% agree. Well, did you miss me? Yeah, actually a lot. And kind of was like excited that you so you got home and i was not home when you got home and then i thought maybe you'd be home when i got home and you um just like really uh weren't weren't uh here yeah so it's just one of

those things where it's like salt in the wound um we're both leaving la for thanksgiving though that's kind of cute powerful even powerful la there'll be a there'll be a huge power vacuum in la without us yeah i imagine there'll be an earthquake so be on the lookout for that yeah we cause an earthquake when we leave town your mama i imagine there'll be an earthquake when we leave so your mama's so powerful in the industry how powerful in the industry is she when she leaves down the whole earth shakes it's actually a really nice thing to say about someone's mama that's the spin on your mama jokes that we never got that we deserved i said months ago i don't know if i said it on the pot or not

but i've been saying your mama jokes are making a comeback after covid covid created some kind of profound time and space continuum wherein your mama jokes are going to come back i can feel it do you think it's going to be like the your mom or like actually like a clever take on your mama jokes i think it's going to be just like that show where they used to like rap like roast that your mama's so fat that was a full ass show yes it was iconic i loved listening to it they got people's moms so good no mom went ungotten on the show moms were got moms were had moms were had you got to get her be god that's not a single orphan to be seen because these people have the moms you guys we are so excited we're so excited that was funny um that was really funny

okay i guess though for real shelby i'm so excited about our guests today i'm so excited about our guests today it's really exciting about our guests today i would say i would say that about our guests today it's really exciting about our guests today i would say i would say that about our guests today it's exciting actually i want to cut you off i'm i'm feeling in regards to sort of with regards to our guests today there's excitement in the air yeah no i'm sorry and i don't mean to interrupt or anything but i would just say like when it comes to the guests today can i stop you haven't really talked enough about what's up go ahead no go ahead you were saying no you were saying something it was about the guests i was going to give an emotion were you about to say that sorry i didn't mean to interrupt are you okay no but you if you go ahead because i shouldn't be talking over women

were you about to say that they were exciting climate exciting yeah i am i'm really excited about our guests today who are they well they're the writers of the book alien listening voyagers golden record and music from earth which was released um september 14th in the u.s and november 9th in the uk from if i can be honest princeton university press uh our guests today are the chair professor at the university of hong kong and the fanny p body professor of music at harvard university respectively make some noise put your hands together for our dear friends actually two of our oldest friends in the whole world who we're extremely close with, Dan Wachua and Alex Redding. Hi, guys.

Hi. Hi. We're so excited to have you guys. How are you guys? How's it going? We're excited. We are very excited. Excited is the word we decided. It's great to be with you.

And it's also great to see, well, we are seeing each other, but to hear Daniel again. And we haven't seen each other in a long time. Yeah, I mean, I'm in Hong Kong. You're in Boston. Why are you in Washington? I am in Boston. How often do you guys get together in person?

Is it regular? Was it regular before COVID? What's what's that like oh we just kind of met up during conferences or between you know travels when we were speaking so we just managed to meet each other in Hong Kong Macau Washington Vancouver it's not bad yeah you guys have really a really global friendship this is a very inspiring to me I need to make a friend across the world who we have to try it's like if we're gonna go that far i guess we should meet in the middle because i'll see you in bangladesh yeah if we have to get if we have to get together yeah we have to write a book together yeah we got to get invited to at least one conference and that hasn't happened for us yet people yeah people do not really try to have us at conferences wait i'm really interested though um alex and daniel what so so y'all were speaking at like the same conferences how did the book come

up was it like a was it like a shy thing like i kind of think we should write a book together was it that's caleb and me deciding to do a show together in chicago being like i have this idea i have this idea but i don't know. I'm very bashful. the things that we'd been working on. And I felt that the kinds of things that I was interested in were kind of all over the place and, you know, something here and something there. And then we kind of started talking about the golden record as something that we were both interested in. Then it turned out that was really the thing that held everything together. And that was the connection between all the things that I hadn't been able to put together. And from there to writing the book was really easy.

And it sort of happened in three simple steps. Well, a bit more complicated than that. A bit more, no. Jane was like, no, don't undersell it. Jane was like, my family suffered't undersell it. Daniel's like, my family suffered from the pressure of this book.

No, I think Alex, at first we wanted to have an intergalactic, we wanted to form an intergalactic council of musicologists, didn't we?

At first. Oh, yeah, yeah, Before the book. No, it's that, yeah.

Daniel says, I haven't seen my niece in years because of writing this book. Yeah, Daniel said, I wouldn't say it was simple. Definitely, I haven't seen my niece in years because of writing this book. Daniel said, I wouldn't say it was simple.

Definitely I was challenged by it. And that's actually really vulnerable to admit that it was harder for you. Okay, so you're both professors. Massive, huge, huge thing to be. Shelby and I could never. What do you guys both teach and and if you if you're talking to a dumb person and none of our listeners are but you never know they're all actually really really really smart highly educated but what do you teach what

is what is your your field of study about well i'm a musicologist that just means i think about music rather than just play it so most of the time I think about how does music work and where does it come from and why do we do it? That's basically what I do. Do you also play it? Yes. Occasionally I also play music, but I wouldn't want to, you know, do that for many people. It's not that pleasant. Okay. And Alex, what about you? Yeah, it's similar. I mean, my actual field is music theory. And what, what makes a piece hang together, what makes music tick. And it can get, you know, fairly conceptual depending on which level you want to pitch it at. I mean, I started my life as a trombonist.

I'm a recovering trombonist. Heck yeah. And I still play the piano a little bit. I mean, you know, I bash things out in class occasionally and I play play music for my kids, who are my most appreciative audience. You guys should hear some of Caleb and my songs. We're really... We're really? Yeah, we're really...

Shelby, well, I shouldn't attribute this to Shelby necessarily, but Shelby, I do think you agree with me when I say this. I feel that everybody in the world wants to be a comedian, except for comedians who want to be musicians. Yes, exactly. I think that's the... And we definitely want to be musicians we we wish that we more than anything we keep singing on this podcast and no one signed us to a record deal should shall we come on should shall we go ahead what song are you singing this is so fucking embarrassing in front of our guests. And I'm sorry to curse. What song? We're laughing with you.

We're not laughing at you. Exactly. What song do we sing? Whitney Houston. What song? What is that song called? She has like a whole lot of them. No, no, no.

Because I can't remember the name of it. I got so mad. Should stay high. It's Dolly Parton. i will always love you dolly parton originally then whitney come on now wait i have a question alex alex and daniel do you do you guys pay attention to your um your rate my professor scores no not at all i have one in hong kong i'm not sure whether it even exists for me. Oh, yeah, yeah. That might not even be a global thing. Yeah.

I don't think I've ever looked at it. I know they exist. Come on. You've never even taken a peek? You know what I'm going to do right after this, right? Yeah, me too. I'm going to have a look at yours, Alex. Oh, that's all I would be doing all day long,

which is, of course, why i'm a comedian and not a professor i'd be like what are they saying about me on the forums mental illness yeah you guys are well we're not well i'm like yeah we're not well if someone were to have a rating on me baby i'd be looking honey honey you know i'd be looking it up okay um i do i have any other professor questions well i guess we can always come back to it what we actually shelby and i brought you guys here today because we have a really salient prescient um sort of timely question for you important brave courageous yeah shelby i'm trying to impress the professors i have a vocabulary are you kidding i have to google now well these guys

are really important and we have to like be on our a game salient salient prescient salient solution say oh god shelby let's talk offline we have a really big question for you guys we want to ask you if we were making shelby you want to ask. Okay, yeah. If we were making new records today to send in some other Voyager, what would you want to include? And we'll kick it off with Daniel. Well, I think one interesting piece, at least for me, would be John Cage's four minutes and 33 seconds. In fact, I think you had, did you have John Lomberg on your show at all?

We did. Because I think he mentioned to me that, you know, actually, you know, we did think about that very, very briefly, because as you know, it's often known as, you know, just 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence. At least the score looks like, you know, it has nothing there.

But actually, it's 4 minutes and 33 seconds of audience listening to themselves. It's audience noise, right? So I thought it'd be quite nice to have that or at least a sort of short excerpt of it on any new version of the Golden Record since we're interested in how aliens listen to us. It's only fair that they get to hear us listening to ourselves.

So that would be one of my choices it's a very comedic i was watching a video of it's a very comedic like it reminds me honestly of a lot of kind of stuff that we shelby and i saw when we first started out in comedy in chicago it's the kind of thing you would see at like an alt comedy theater at like two in the morning on a tuesday night it's like yeah just going up dressed as this like grand pianist and like this big fancy tuxedo and sitting down at the piano and then just being silent it was like I was laughing out loud this is hilarious we have we have a friend Miranda um who does a bit where she comes out with a guitar to play a song and she gets the pick stuck in the middle and she can't she keeps just shaking the guitar

to try and get the pick and she never plays the song. And it's like you're waiting the whole time and the video I saw was actually not John Cage himself. It was someone doing a performance of it and he kept opening the piano to start again and then would close it. And then we'd close it. And it's like, there's like beats to it.

Like there's really, it really does. You've had mistakes. Like comedic structure. Up, yeah, up, down. It's like, it's just a bunch of expectancy. It's like you're every, every moment something new happens, you're going, oh, and now he's going to start. And then he doesn't.

And it really does make you laugh. So the idea of it being humans listening is it reminded me of like when you're filming something and you have to get room tone so that you can have the actual silence won't work. You have to have the tone of the room to take the place of silence. And it, which you guys know, this is for our listeners.

But it reminded me of that because I was like, it's so hard to stay quiet when you're doing that when they're like all right room tone and i'm like giggling you know it's it's really difficult but to have four minutes of people mostly being quiet and then every like 45 seconds to hear a cough or something yeah you can feel how many people are in the room it's really it's really pretty interesting or like a wrestling of like a like a body moving and because everyone else is quiet you like hear that person moving which also is like interesting to think of in the context of someone who's never been on earth because then they just hear the sounds and they're like what exactly

is making that like you know what i'm like what is they might not rustle they might be slimy so there wouldn't be as much they might never rustle everything they have might be slimy, so there wouldn't be as much wrestling. They might never wrestle. Everything they have might be wet. Wrestling can be human. To wrestle is human. To wrestle is human. To wrestle is to be alive. Our book. I think for John Cage, it's just a matter of, there is no such thing as silence on this planet.

Everything, in one sense, is music. So in a way, just playing that just tells you what a planet is like. It reminds me of, what's that song I'm trying to think of? Four Minutes and 33 Seconds. No, of, um, what's that song I'm trying to think of? Um, four minutes and 33 seconds. No, no, no. That's a,

that's a score. Four minutes to save the world. No, a great song. I'm thinking of you guys, the one from, um, Tarzan.

Where they're like, boom. It's like the, it's like, boom, boom, boom. Yes,

yes, yes. Rosie O'Donnell sings it. Yeah, they're like, they're like, they're like a typewriter and it's like... And it becomes... Trashing the camp! Trashing the camp. Trashing the camp from Tarzan.

That song? Bangs. I love that song. When you say everything is music, that's what it makes me think of. Because it's like there's a drip in a pot and anyone have you guys i i went to summer camp alex and daniel caleb knows that um almost too well but i went to summer camp and it was like it's one of the biggest things about shelby where everyone would just like make one sound repeatedly and you would try and make a song out of it that was was like a big time waster. You would

just be like, we got time to kill. And you would just be like, one person would just be like, boom, boom, boom, for like 30 minutes while everyone else added a sound. Oh, that's great. I mean, that's basically our theory of music in our book. Oh, I'm a professor. Yeah, you could have written this book. Wait, honorary degree. I have an an honorary degree and we can arrange that what does the speaking of the book what does the book like if you if you were if you were telling a person who knew nothing about your field like some like random person on the street like oh i wrote a book what would you tell

them it's about like what would they be experiencing when they read the book? Both waiting for the other one to do it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, well, Daniel, you're so good at summarizing this. So let me try. So we actually start with the Golden Record, right? And you guys know everything about the Golden Record, so I don't have to explain that. But it's a compilation of music and sounds from all over the world.

And we have a pretty good idea about representation, that they come from different parts of the world, and that some traditions have something to do with other songs, and then others are completely separate. But as soon, once you stick it to the side of the spacecraft and send it into outer space, none of these categories mean anything. And it just becomes earth music. So that's sort of our starting point. You know, how do we understand music? How do we understand listening? Because that's the kind of question that we ask ourselves, if there are no humans around to listen to it. And then everything becomes different. And so you kind of have to reinvent the wheel from the ground up. So the record as an actual material object, you know, has the sound wave engraved in it. And that's all you're getting.

You're not getting any of the history. You're not getting any of the culture and the background. And so all you have is in the grooves of the record. And you have to basically reconstruct all of Earth's history from those two grooves. That's all you're getting. So where do you start? Basically, when we hear tones, like musical tones, they're not actually one thing. There's sort of lots of repetitions of, you know, vibrating air or whatever other medium you're listening to. If you enjoy listening to music in your bathtub, you can also do that underwater. So even at that level, you have repetition. And it turns out that repetition is super important. So when you, you know, when you hear a song, just to give you a

very banal example of repetition, a song usually has, you know, a refrain and, you know, music comes back. And the kind of altogether now part of songs is, you know, usually repetition. So the idea of repetition and of shaping time at various levels, you know, whether it's at the micro level where lots of repeated vibration create the sensation of one tone or at the macro level when you have a song where different parts are repeated. That seems to be the combining factor. And what you're doing is really you're playing with time. And you basically I mean, well, we talk a lot about folding time. And that's what music does.

And from there, I'll let Daniel take over, because that's where it gets a little harder. Oh, really? I thought that was brilliant, Alex. That was great. Yeah, I'm compelled. Daniel, go ahead. So basically, music takes place on this spectrum of repetition right from the minutest repetition to the sort of larger so it's infinite and our ears human ears happen to fold that spectrum in different ways so we hear pitch

form or rhythm right but that's just uh determined by the physiology if you like and the psychology of the way we listen to music. But if you were an elephant, it would be completely different. You could hear much lower repetitions as maybe continuous kind of tone, for example, if you were an elephant below 20 hertz. But then if you can imagine that you were an alien with a brain the size of a planet, maybe you can hear repetitions at the rate of, you know, 100 years, you know, in a repeat sort of cycles. So we sort of imagine music in this crazy way. But in this way, you can actually scale music for the entire universe.

And the universe itself in a sort of ancient concept can somehow be like music or is music in some sense because everything repeats in the universe this is so smart that like i'm sitting here and i'm going i'm going right there's folding i really did not grasp like i'm like i understood the part i understood the most was the elephants here different than us yeah which i didn't know or think about before. Yeah, you probably did though, Shelby, because on the opposite end of it, dogs, like dog whistles, they can hear tongues that we can't hear. Yeah, but I guess I hadn't thought about elephants. Well, people rarely do, unless they're doing something bad.

And they remember that. They're coming for us. Planet of the Apes is nothing. It's Planet of the Elephants. They're coming. I don't like their ears. I mean, we really don't have to go in on elephants' ears, but I'm sorry.

I don't like to be controversial on the podcast. I know someone will do a write-up of this on the internet, and we'll all get in trouble, and that's fine. Alex and Daniel are fine with that. Elephants' ears, they don't make any sense. They're too big. They hang down too low. I don't like them.

They're really, really off-put too low. I don't like them. They're really, really off-putting. What about the snack elephant ears? What? At a carnival, you can't get an elephant ear? What are you talking about? You don't know elephant ears at a carnival? State fair?

Alex, Daniel, do you guys know what this is? I don't. I'm just amusing you guys. They have elephant ears very much mike do you know what this is oh fuck mike knows what it is that sucks i really thought we were gonna have a full win okay what are the elephant ears are a thing what are they made of the same stuff as funnel cakes really i think but they're a little different about funnel cakes no mike just sent you a link and i'd really really like you to click on it i'll click on it okay elephant ears oh my god what is going on sweetie this is a fried dough yeah it is fried dough with some

cinnamon on it and it's called an elephant ear because of i think mostly the shape everyone thinks i'm i'm not smart but i actually am i um what was i gonna say about music i can't talk about i can't talk about the elephant ears anymore because i really do think it's just funnel cake there was a link i saw it babe it was given funnel cake i looked at the link and i said that's a clear-cut example funnel cake there was a link i saw it babe it was given funnel cake i looked at the link and i said that's a clear-cut example funnel cake has powdered sugar it does not have cinnamon sugar you you being you being so mad at me i don't know what it is honey i'm from missouri if do you feel comfortable taking the rest of this episode yourself because i need to take a step away just just me daniel, and Alex talking about elephant ears.

They're like falling asleep. They're like, get off the ears thing, dude. No, okay, okay, okay. We got to get back on track. We do this. I'm sorry, guys. Well, we should ask Alex, what's the first thing that you would put on your records? That was a really tough question because, you know, I admire Daniel for just coming up with something like that. I just, you know, I've thought about the Golden Record so much. And that's always the question that completely paralyzes me.

Oh, we're terrified. We're terrified every day that we have to make our records. Yeah, we have to make one ourselves. And we are not excited. Horrifying. So you're not alone. It's like, yeah, good, good. So it's like, you know, there are these gaps. There's like no Middle Eastern music and there's no hip hop. And that feels like a real omission. And so, or, you know, why not add Tooth and Throat singing? That's pretty cool. But in the end, I decided I'll just go for something that's totally about me

because it's my choice. It's my party. Exactly. So I wanted to go for something that, you know, I think is just the greatest song that was ever written. No one here knows it. But it was kind of my youth, because of course, that's what you're going to go with. Growing up in the 1980s in Germany, that was, you know, a new German wave. Everybody was very cool. Everybody was kind of punk. And the Casio VL synthesizer was the thing. And so this group Trio made a song that's completely minimalist, and it's called Da Da Da. And that's also the translation I mean

so what you have to imagine is like Dieter from Sprockets I don't know if you if you all remember your SNL Welcome to Sprockets I'm your host

Dieter Watch it it's good it's good Just watch it just watch it and it's

what I like about that song is that it's so minimalist and it's so simple that either the aliens totally get it or something else will happen. But if you want to communicate with aliens, if you want to send music to the aliens, it felt like this was a good starting point. Caleb, this is the repetition they were talking about before. Exactly. This feels like it would be in a Pretty Woman montage. For people who don't speak German, he's talking about the Industrial Revolution and what it meant for society.

And now he's talking about fashion. He really likes shoulder pads. This is hot. This feels like, I don't know why, I don't really know what I'm talking about when I say that this should be in a shopping montage but this should be in a shopping montage it also feels like something it's kind of and maybe it has been just not in anything i've listened to but it should have been sampled by now oh do you know what it reminds me of um it reminds me of um mike are you saying this was in a volkswagen commercial or you feel like it should be in a volkswagen commercial it was a volkswagen commercial as it should be vroom vroom german car german song what is the song i'm thinking of i want i want money i what is do you guys want to talk i'm

getting so stressed out because i can't it's in my head but i can't make it come out of my mouth i want It's in my head, but I can't make it come out of my mouth. I want money. That's what I want. Yeah, Mike, you're so good. Guys, hear what I just said on the podcast. Listeners, hear what I just said and know that Mike answered the question. This is the kind of shit he has to put up with. Mike, replay it a couple of times in the editing so that people understand exactly what Caleb said that got you you to find the actual song this is mike's job mike has a fucked up job like that's his job

oh yeah no okay alex i love that song i do think it belongs in a shopping montage and i also i want to be in germany in the 80s but i simply was not caleb in the 80s you were living where? That was Iceland? Yes in the 80s I was no honey that was the 70s. In the 80s I was in Singapore and I was in a bad way with some worse people. So Alex you're from you're from Germany? That's right yeah I grew up in what was then West Germany that was like when the wall was still up in Hamburg in the north. What if we were like, what wall? We're like, the wall. What are you talking about?

The wall. Before the guy from Baywatch took it down. And then he took it down. Actually, Daniel did not. I think Daniel did not like that joke. Daniel was like, no, no, no no just kidding um i love this edition and i think also uh your your uh decision alex to do like something that's just you that you're like this is just what i because you to identify the gaps and try to be everything to everybody we have found making records with

people a lot of times our friends or our guests will you know text us and be like i just there's all these there's all these gaps and i don't want to present this super like uh you know homogenous like it doesn't matter it has to be we're gonna we're gonna make a bunch of different ones it's like it has to be you you know showing something that's authentically you is the is the way we can get it to be the most authentically human being yourself it sounds like a really bad psa that we're doing being yourself is the church the only way to win is to be yourself if you're if you're being someone else no one else can be you oh my god i really hate that quote that quote that's like um be yourself everyone else is already taken oh shut up what if i want to be one of the people

that's taken goofball they have to die sometime and then i get to be them and then i get to take that over wait caleb steals identities for a living oh i wish that'd be fun if you could get away with it that's a good gig but a lot of times you can't uh which reminds me we should before we get into the rest of these records we should go to a break for advertisements. Money makes the world go round. That's what I'm always saying. Yikes. Welcome.

Welcome, Bark. Alex and Daniel. Did you have to ask something? We have a tradition on the podcast so and so are this podcast alex daniel what you have to know is that typically the people we have on this podcast clowns we have clowns on this podcast not like you guys we have comedians we have a tradition and it is sort of embarrassing to come to you humbly, humbly, humbly and ask.

I cannot. I'm sick to my stomach. I think I'm going to throw up. I feel like I have to give away my degree. We have to ask you guys, would you guys give us a bark? Like, um,

you're allowed to say no. You're allowed to say no.'re allowed to say no like a dog a bar well alex has just got a dog i have two dogs we should we should definitely do barks i i wasn't expecting that you can give a johan sebastian bark johan sebastian bark Sebastian Bark. Yeah! That's my bark. Yeah! Let's go. We got what we needed. I was going to say over

our break during the advertisements, which the listeners loved, that Shelby has given me two really profound compliments during our friendship. And we've been friends for a long time, so I know a lot of you are wanting to hear that the number is higher. The number is two. No, it's not two you give me a lot of compliments two is the profound there's two that stick out one of them is that i have the kind of nose that people would get plastic surgery to have that really changed me and the other is that i have

a really special skill that i can hear a song and within a millisecond know what it is. These are the two compliments Shelby's given me that have changed my life. I've called you diplomatic. I've said, you know, you're always fair. I've said a lot of other good stuff. You do call me fair, which is actually really counter to my persona. I don't think that people want to hear that. I think people, I think, I think people want to hear that.

But you think that about yourself too. I am very fair. I'm extremely fair. It's not counter to your persona it's actually your no you're thinking counter to my personality i'm thinking my persona oh you know about your brand yeah i think people want i think people want me to be a zingy a zingy homosexual urban comedy's bad boy okay we can't talk about that we have to talk about daniel what would be the next thing on your record? I thought about sending a clip of a recent one of this,

I think it's a humpback whale, sort of almost swallowing this diver. Oh, shit. Oh, shit. It ends up just diving in the mouth of this whale and then it's sort of kind of pushed out. Because on the Golden Record, there is actually a mash-up of various UN delegates. And they were so long-winded

that they couldn't really compress all this onto the record. So what Carl Sagan's team did was they sort of made a collage of this stuff and then they put in the background whale song to sort of hold it all together so it's a very strange sounding sort of montage of sounds. A kingdom of suns is there. Every sun pulsates there with all its power. In greater suns, unheard sounds. And I thought that would be very confusing for the average alien trying to decipher, you know, how do humans speak?

And then there's this really weird sort of language, I suppose, in the background. So I thought that this video might actually help the poor aliens figure out what on earth was going on. Literally, what on earth is going on. Yes. One of the sounds on the original records is a recording from a UN meeting where each country is greeting each other. What you might notice in the background of this recording is the sound of whales. Now, many of you are probably thinking that whales sound something like this. You would be mistaken. One interesting fact about whales is that male humpback whales found in U.S. waters

can sing complex songs in winter breeding areas near Hawaii and the Caribbean and elsewhere, and these songs can last up to 20 minutes and be heard from miles away. Another interesting thing about whales is that blue whales specifically are the largest animals to have ever lived on planet earth. Ever. Meaning the dinosaurs you imagine roaming our planet actually pale in comparison in size at least to the blue whales we see today. Those blue whales can grow to be 90 or more feet and weigh as much as 24 elephants combined. That's more than 330,000 pounds. Now, what we aren't talking enough about is how the aliens might hear this specific recording, this mashup of sorts, this DJ earworm presents. To me, I think, as a human hearing it, I experience confusion. As an alien, I might be so confused as to take it as a threat.

Anything can be taken as a threat if you have the right attitude. And we don't know the attitude of the aliens, but they might have the right attitude. I would venture to say I'm sure that they do have the right attitude. Aliens probably have the right attitude. When it comes to their attitudes, the aliens likely have the right ones. It's probable that the aliens have, in regards to their attitude, the right kind of attitude that they could have for the aliens being right in their attitude. Nine out of ten NASA scientists actually believe that the attitudes of the aliens

has a higher than normal likelihood to be correct. That's whales? They put whales behind the UN speaker. Well, yeah, I know the person. I know it's in the background. I'm saying even what's going on back there, that's Wales?

That is not the Finding Nemo version of Wales that I learned about. That's supposed to be Wales. What are you talking about? This is Wales? That's crazy. The decision to put that in like a weird mashup of like UN delegates speaking is one of the most chaotic decisions they could have made. Well, Daniel's right.

We have a lot of explaining to do if we sent that up there. They're going to think that's part of the guy talking. It makes no sense. It sounds alien to us, right? When you listen to this thing, it's like, what is that, right? So imagine what an alien would make of this. Maybe it actually makes perfect sense it sounds alien to us right when you listen to this thing it's like what is that right so imagine what an alien would make of this maybe it actually makes perfect sense to an alien i don't know but it's the most bizarre thing to send and it needs explanation i mean you really want that whale sound to swallow up that speaker actually uh in in that recording yeah maybe i think there's a well there is certainly a reality there's a potential reality where the

same way that people think that kids have like a special portal to the other side of human life that maybe whales have that with aliens and maybe the aliens hear it and go damn that's so true what you just said after they heard the aliens the aliens are kind of like whoa whoa. Whoa, damn. That was deep. That was profound. Yeah, holy shit. What the hell? Okay, Alex, what is the next thing you put on your record? So I really like that it doesn't have to be music. I was thinking about more music, but I think I'll stay with the underwater theme that Daniel just brought up. And I want to put Blowfish on my golden record. And the idea behind it is that it's a fugu puffer fish, you know, the Japanese specialty that's highly toxic, but that you can eat if you get all the,

I don't know how many steps, like 28 steps of cutting it. If you get it right, then it apparently it becomes a delicacy. I've never eaten it, but I think it says something profound about the human psyche that, you know, someone would eat this, die, and then try again. Eat it again, die. And I just imagine that, you know,

the person who failed, you know, their last words were, this is the most delicious thing I've ever eaten. Try again. Please keep trying. Please, you have to try this. And so, you know, that's what I want to share with aliens.

Well, also pufferfish generally are such a fascinating. A lot of what's in the ocean to me is alien. Like there are things that exist in the ocean that i'm like that doesn't make sense i'll think about it shouldn't i'll think about it and the deep sea specific when they like start making their own light i'm like what are we doing yeah when i found out this fish can make their own light with their head i was like um that's a wrap on me and learning about fish but puffer fish are so, similarly to how we eat them, actually, because they puff up to defense in defense. But a lot of the time that causes so much stress that they die trying to decompress.

And yet they're still just like whoop. And we're trying to eat them and dying, trying to eat them and still giving it a go. Like there's something sort of poetic about their existence being a lot like their uh demise oh oh okay miss okay miss coffee sorry oh okay he's in session oh oh snaps oh tell them that was really powerful that was that was like a lauren that was like a lauren hill interlude on the Unplugged album. That was beautiful. Daniel and Alex, you don't have to answer this. Caleb, did it make sense what I was saying?

No, but I thought it was so powerful. No, it totally did. I'm just being... The only thing I was thinking that whole time was I'm the opposite of a person who wants to eat a delicacy. Bring me something normal. I want to eat a cheeseburger. I want to eat... I just want to eat a cheeseburger i want to eat i just want to eat something normal when people are like oh you can this is a 500 p i'm like i'm okay i'll

save my money i would like to go to golden corral well the richer you get the weirder the food hasn't been my experience i i keep eating normal stuff and i'm not rich i'm just saying when i was broke i ate normal stuff when was broke, I ate normal stuff. When I had money, I ate normal stuff. You're talking millionaires? People start eating weirder. Like fine dining has weirder stuff than what you're used to. Oh, for sure. What do they do in fine dining restaurants? There's a type of, I might've said this on the podcast once

because I found this out and thought it was crazy. There's a type of coffee that in order to make it, an animal has to eat and shit the beans yeah everybody who's a fan of the morgan freeman and jack nichols movie um the bucket list knows that jack nicholson jack nichols what's his name old guy watches nicholson um mike had to say it in the chat i just forget nichols nicholas nicholson you know crazy glasses watches the nicks um yeah that's in the that's in the bucket list the movie you ever seen the show alex daniel anybody seen it no no i haven't but i have had that coffee makes me an intellectual me not having to the movie makes me an intellectual wait daniel is the coffee good? No, it's terrible. Stop talking about it.

That looks like coffee. It tastes like coffee. There's nothing special about it. It tastes like coffee, but with the knowledge that it's also poop. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's like coffee, but you have to know about something bad. I hate that. Exactly.

He's like, man. Okay. Who are we at at who's up next um this is daniel's time to shine daniel oh well the last thing i thought i'd like to introduce aliens to would be a smell or taste and that's a fruit from my part of the world called the durian. I don't know whether you've ever come across a durian. It's this very spiky, armour-plated kind of fruit that grows in very high trees. If it falls on you, you'll probably die. And then if you open it up, it's these very creamy pods and usually people hate the smell of this thing.

It really is a cross between smelly feet, camembert and mango. But I just can't believe that nature can produce such an amazing, sophisticated fruit. And you do have to be slightly sophisticated to love this fruit. And people in Malaysia, in Singapore, in Thailand, and in Hong Kong have this very sophisticated taste, right? And it's just extraordinary kind of texture. As I said, it's like uh kind of texture as i said it's like really eating uh a natural cheese if you like so that's what i would like to introduce the alien to because it's probably the most pungent extreme smell and taste and texture that you could send into space for someone else to try from earth do you want to send them

like okay so they get the fruit and do you want them to have any kind of primer like do you want to send them, like, okay, so they get the fruit, and do you want them to have any kind of primer? Like, do you want them to know about the controversy on Earth or how popular it is, or do you want them to just go in raw? Oh, definitely go in raw, because you have to be surprised by this thing. I mean, the idea that this could even exist on our planet is really alien, right? So you have to just have the experience of the first time sort of smell and taste of it. I mean, actually, most people don't even get to tasting it because they can't stand the smell. That's a really iconic thing to be your favorite fruit. You're like, I love it because people would rather die than eat this fruit.

Oh, it's an amazing fruit. More for me. More for me. That's why it's my favorite. It's my favorite because nobody else likes it it's all for me alex have you ever had one yeah i did when i went to hong kong i actually brought back lots of durian candy and they fed it to my kids to see what would happen it's the only thing daniel would feed you in hong kong so my daughter clearly has very sophisticated taste she liked it my my son not so much oh dang yeah

he's not as smart divide he's not as sophisticated sorry same thing he's less sophisticated same thing um i watch a lot of cooking shows and they always use durian as kind of like the like litmus test how are you gonna make this right like if you can do it with this yeah where they're because a lot of people who haven't seen it before they smell it and they're like i can't cook with it it's like a whole it's always sort of having watched it enough i'm annoyed by it i I'm like, you can. Everyone seems to make it work. I've seen it done. I want to try one. Do you think I could get one anywhere in LA, in the States, Daniel?

You can get them here. Really? Really? You can? Whoa. But you must try it. Probably not as good as you could there. Like H-Mart or something? Where do you get that?

No, it's like in Asia, it's like wine. You have different sort of categories of durian because they have different flavors, as it were, like really bitter, really sweet, very chocolatey and so on. So people have this sort of very fine palate for durians. I'm so jealous. I want to try this immediately. We could get next day delivery on a durian if we wanted to. Press send. Yeah, always go for a Malaysian one.

They're the best. There's a lot for buying fresh in California. So we'll do some research and we'll try it. We are. We're going to try it and get back to you. We're going to let you know what we think. Oh, that's cool. Okay.

Jenna's like, all right. Whatever you want. Go ahead. See what happens. See what happens. And if you hate it, don't call me. Do not reach out. We'll videotape it just in case it's the last thing we ever do.

It's like that blowfish. Yeah. Daniel put a hit out on us. It's actually extremely poisonous. Yeah. Alex, what is the last thing on your record? So Daniel is so sophisticated. I'm not.

When you guys asked me, I was just going through a really, really bad cold. My first like my first sickness since the since, you know, COVID started and and everybody went back to their homes and didn't talk to each other. And so I'd forgotten what it was like to have a cold and I was feeling extremely sorry for myself. And for some reason, when I get sick like that, I get this craving for rice pudding. And that's sort of, you know, I know it doesn't do anything, but it makes me feel better. And so I thought that's what the aliens need. If it's good enough for me, it's got to be good enough for the aliens. So I'll put rice pudding on my golden record. Is there any particular brand, flavor, place you get it from?

Chef. Whatever I can get. Yeah. A true fan. Whatever I can get my hands on. That's what I like. Caleb, do you like rice pudding? Now, you've asked an interesting question.

Do I like rice pudding? Am I confident that I've had it? I think I've had it. I think I've had it i i think i i think i've had it but i hmm i don't know well what is do you like it i do like it actually a lot it kind of sometimes reminds me of and before anyone comes for me i know they're completely different foods, um, different textures, blah, blah, blah, blah, but of noodle kugel, which is a Jewish food. Um, which is like a sweet noodle dish that has like raisins and stuff in it and cinnamon and some other stuff. And something about like the noodles and the rice sort of are both in the same, they're the grain family and they're in the family

together. And then there's like the raisins a lot of time in rice pudding it's sweet there's some sort of like marriage there to me and i love that in that way it's very sort of homey to me shelby are you jewish no cool love the culture though right well same so i i was wondering when you were saying all that is rice pudding and anyone can tell me yes or no. Is rice pudding the same thing as tapioca? No, no. Alex, you guys can't tell, but Alex was really mad. He rolled his eyes really big at me. Listeners, you need to know he's furious with me right now.

Absolutely pissed. Logging off, logging off. I don't know. I think I have had rice pudding. I went to Silver Lake. Shelby, have you been? Yes. I went with a friend recently. But bleep that out. No freak out for the girlies.

Yeah, bleep the name of that restaurant. If you're a Thai restaurant in greater LA, reach out. We might have a promo opportunity for you. My friend ordered a pudding that I believe was rice pudding and she was so stoked on it she was like i can't wait for you to try this it's my favorite every time i come here they bring it out for free because they know i'm gonna get it and i'm like bad business but go ahead and so

they bring out the thing and i try it and it's one of the worst things i've ever eaten and i was very clear about that and i was like i don't like this i will not take another bite i regret the bite that i took and she was like oh they didn't do it right like my half don't like this. I will not take another bite. I regret the bite that I took. And she was like, oh, they didn't do it right. Like my half wasn't cooked or something like there was some kind of whatever happened. I didn't get a good bite of the pudding and I think it was rice pudding. And that's when I think I had it for the first time. And that was recent. So my point is it wouldn't make me feel better if I was sick, but here's the tea. I love that we're sending this and I want the aliens to have it and Alex I don't want you to feel like um I don't want you to feel like you can't eat it all the time just because I said that um complete silence in in reaction to you Alex is pure Alex is furious

with me still furious yeah literally fuming it's insane um I'm looking up the same same time menu to see if that's what you had that is not rice pudding you don't think the rice pudding is like porridge with rice Daniel said absolutely not Daniel said absolutely not Caleb well our guests today have made me the fool

and I think that's so beautiful I love that they seemingly don't even have dessert on their menu, Caleb. You were in a fever dream. I, well, that's very possible. Hey, I think these are all great additions to the record. And before we get out of here,

I believe Shelby has a question for you guys. Don't leave it. If there's one thing that you could delete from the record and make sure the aliens never find out about and it you know doesn't have to be war or famine any of the big stuff yeah what would you delete daniel you first yeah i would delete social media. And there's a theory that we don't see aliens because advanced civilizations destroy themselves before they can communicate with other advanced civilizations. But that was during the Cold War. They thought there would be a sort of nuclear blast. But I think we might destroy ourselves with just social media.

So I would not like to share that with an alien civilization. Wow. So you're you're completely you're completely on the side next yeah literally my career you're but you're i'm hey some days i'm sorry about that no no no i'm literally on your side i'm wondering though are do you ever feel daniel that like do you ever feel a nuance to it like oh there it's it's brought so many people together there's's this beauty in some ways. Or are you just straight across the board, like, evil outweighs the good. Bye.

I think so. I mean, I can see that actually it's a great way to make people believe in anything you want. So it's actually extremely dangerous. Yeah. The funny thing is humans have this propensity to believe anything anybody says. So it's a very bizarre uh phenomena i think and uh it's definitely not going to be good for the rest of the world if this continues as it is put it that way i completely agree yeah yeah well there's also there's like something i don't

know the details on this because i don't remember them but there's something about like humans were never like meant to see as many people in a day as we see because of social media and like that has like complicated the human brain in a way that like is the cause of like a lot of like mental health stuff that we see rising now it's like that social media has brought way too many people around we see we see and hear too many people around. We see and hear too many people a day. Yeah, it's massively distorting and it makes people act. I got to say, I was just thinking the other day, I think about needing to delete social media, not me personally. I have a career because of it. I'm so grateful. That's actually one positive I think for it is that I get to have a career. But that it needs

to go across the board because I was reading this article about, do you guys, maybe you don't, Daniel, you especially since you hate the internet, Salt Bae, do you guys remember Salt Bae? The guy who sprinkled the salt on the steak and went viral? I don't know exactly. Well, there's this guy a couple of years ago who he's a chef and he sprink sprinkled uh salt on a steak very

flamboyantly and he went viral and people were calling him salt bae and he was like this big internet sensation for like a week and there was an interview with him a couple weeks ago and this article where he was saying i've changed so many lives every kid wants to be salt bae now i walked down the street and kids yelled that's salt bae i want to be him and i was reading this and i just thought wow what a unique way that internet makes us truly delusional like that is an insane point of view no one wants to be the salt guy no kids and it really does i'm sure he believes it and it's crazy and i was just like we got to get out of here this can't keep going you know what's worse i think there is one or two kids that probably do want to be salt bae saw the video and say i want to do that well you know do you want to do you want to uh get super famous and start your own chain of

restaurants from like posting an internet video being stupid sure do you want to be the guy who's salt bae uh yes yes sincerely shelby wants to be shelby wants to be salt i bought a cell i bought a salt cellar so that i could sprinkle salt on my food the same way a salt cellar yeah salt cellars like the it's like a thing that you hold salt in next to the stove so you could oh cute like a little thumb like a little pinch bowl well because they say you're supposed to touch the salt because then you know how much you're putting in your food and you'll never be able to tell for sure when you use like a thing beautiful so i agree i think social media could go um alex alex what would you delete that was another really hard question i mean you know all the obvious things um but you know like the early tiktok videos that my family posted during the early weeks of COVID.

That can definitely go. But I sort of got sidetracked thinking about that one. And I just thought, what if we Rickroll the aliens and, you know, put Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up on the golden record? Would we start an interstellar war so you know that's probably what i would put on there so yeah in absence of any bad stuff we're just going to rickroll them and see what happens yeah i adore that it's funny to title that something really intense yeah for the aliens like visit us or something like you know at the end of

the bottom of a website where it's like contact us now yeah like, you know, at the end of up the bottom of a website where it's like contact us now. Yeah. It's that it's that trying to touch base with us. And it just has, it just has never going to give you up on it. I think that song is really delightful and I think they would view it as a treat. I don't think they would feel, I don't think they would feel attacked by that at all personally, but we all get that.

If we said contact us, they clicked it to get in contact and said it was just a song I don't think they would be moved by that in a negative way I think they would enjoy it no problem thank you for sharing Caleb okay not a problem thank you Daniel, Alex you guys have been truly an amazing guest

this has been so much fun thank you guys so much for coming on thank you truly an amazing guest. This, this is, has been so much fun. Thank you guys so much for coming on. Thank you. Thank you. What a lovely experience. It's been amazing. And exciting. We,

and exciting. And it did prove to be exciting. I think Shelby. Yes. Sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt. It was exciting. I think.

Yeah. Is there anything, Daniel and Alex that, that y'all want to think yeah is there anything Daniel and Alex that y'all want to promote or is there a place where you want people to follow you

or a newsletter is there anything at all that you want to tell our listeners to do enroll in your college maybe yeah that's a really good idea go to Harvard

yeah go to Harvard you guys yeah just go there or you can come to Hong Kong. Go to Hong Kong. See Daniel. Oh, buy a book. I mean, that's for sure.

Yeah, buy the book. Buy the book. Okay. Well, bye now. Bye. Bye. Bye, guys. Our closest friends in the world.

That was a Hiddem Original.