Science Friday - 'They Might Be Giants' Sings About Science

Episode Date: December 4, 2024

As part of Science Friday’s 33rd anniversary show, we’re revisiting our listeners’ favorite stories, including this one from 2009.In the album “Here Comes Science,” the band They Might Be Giants tackled the scientific process, plasma physics, the role of blood in the body, and the importance of DNA, all in song. Band members John Linnell and John Flansburgh discuss the album and play some science tunes. The transcript for this segment is available at sciencefriday.com.  Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Sometimes it's hard to understand difficult science concepts, unless we sing about them. I mean, the song we're going to play, if this existed in my freshman year of high school, it would have been an incredible godsand for my grades. It's Wednesday, December 4th, and it's also Science Friday. I'm SciFry producer Kathleen Davis. In 2009, the band They Might Be Giants released an album called Here Comes Science. In it, they sing about the science of plasma, talk about what blood does in the body, and they sing an ode to the elements. In this archival segment from 2009, Ira Flato is joined in studio by members of the band to discuss the album and play some songs.

Joining me now in the studio here in New York is John Linnell and John Flansberg, also on the drums, Marty Bell are in the background. We'll be playing a lot of music. Welcome to Science Friday. It's very exciting to be here. would you do songs about science? I mean, I thought only geeks like me like science. Because we're like you. Are you? Do you do a little? Well, we love that, you know, this is really a big thrill for us because, you know, we've been listening to the show for a long time. It's like suddenly like we're inside the TV set or the radio. It's very, it's kind of trippy.

Were you, were you sciencey geeks when you're in school? Not exactly, no. I mean, it's actually a little bit of a stretch in a way for us to declare ourselves to be authorities on science. This is the Peter principle in full blue. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. And you're stepping into a little quagmire by naming a song, science is real. There are a lot of people who don't believe science.

Well, I see that's not controversial for us. Not for you. No. But have you heard any reaction from people who say, well, why is... Well, you know, I don't think judging by YouTube flame comments, you can really get an accurate gauge of what the... In general, it seems like people are actually quite positive about the whole prospect. whole prospect. But people we meet face to face are like you pretty much. Well, that's good. Name the songs on the albums. Well, Meet the Elements, Photosynthesis, my brother the ape.

I am a paleontologist. Roy G. Biv, which is both the color spectrum, light spectrum. And I don't know, John, what are the cells? Cells. Why does the sunshine? Yeah. Why is the sunshine? Speed and velocity. And now these all sound like kids songs. Are these aimed at kids? Well, it's kind of, it's kind of it's sort of a mixed bag. There are some songs that are very simple that are kind of, that are good for little kids. Right.

And then there are songs that are more fact-packed that probably would, you know, be a little bit too complicated for for a toddler. But, you know, if you're, I mean, the song we're going to play

the song, let's play a game. The song Meet the Elements, like if this existed in my freshman year of high school, it would have been an incredible godstand for my grades. Well, you know, when I hear a song Meet the Elements, who am I thinking of? Not a few guys before, way before you guys were born, Tom Lerr, right?

Remember the elements song? Do you remember Tom Ler? No, actually. I know the song, I know the song Pollutioned by Tom Ler. He did a whole song of the elements that's much different than you. Probably more satirical than ours.

I can't believe that guy, like, invented a time machine and went backwards and stole our ideas. Yeah, no, I don't know, I'm not familiar with that song. But right, he just go rattles through the, table of elm, periodic table of... Well, that's kind of what we're doing.

That's what we're doing. What made you... Imagine our disappointment that we find out. But you know what, there's... He was a folk singer. No, no, no. What made you to write this song? What else a little bit about the genesis of this song?

Well, we were working on our science album. And I guess the thing is we wanted to cover all of the different areas of science. So we're thinking chemistry, biology, physics, Earth science, applied science. You know, we're just trying, trying... stepping into each one. And I find the periodic table of the elements to be kind of a great organizational, you know, an amazing inspiration, actually. Do you?

Yeah, that it's a grid that you can just look at it and say, oh, it's all laid out simply. It's like a lot simpler than a lot of other science charts that you have to study. So this one seemed like it was, you know, it was something you could stare at and write a song, based on I'm Ira Flato. You're listening to Science Friday from WNYC Studios.

This is an interview from our archives recorded in September of 2009. And we're going to hear a cut from the album. Here they are.

They might be giants playing. Meet the elements. Let's meet them now. Is a metal you see it every day. Oxygen eventually will make it

rust away. Carbon in its ordinary form is coal Crush it together and diamonds are born Come on, come on and meet the elements May I introduce you to a friend's the elements Like a box of paints that are mixed to make every shade They either combine to make a chemical compound or stand alone as they are Neons of gas that lights up a sign at a pizza place

The coins that you pay with are copper, nickel and zinc Silicon and oxygen make concrete bricks and glass Now add some gold and silver for some pizza place glass Come on, come on and meet the elements I think you should check out the ones that call the elements Like a box of paints that are mixed to make every shade They either combine to make a chemical compound or stand alone as they are Keep up with other elements forming compounds when they combine

Or make up a simple element formed out of atoms of the one kind Balloons are full of helium and so is every star Stars are mostly hydrogen Which may someday drive your car Hey, who led in all these elephants Don't you know that elephants are made of alimans Elephants are mostly made of four elements And every living thing

Is mostly made of four elements Plants, bugs, trees, worms, bacteria and men are mostly carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen. Come on, come on, and meet the elements. You and I are complicated, but we're made of elements. Like a box of paints that are mixed to make every shade. They either combine to make a chemical compound or stand alone as they are. Team up with other elements, forming compounds when they combine.

Or make up a simple element Formed out of atoms of the one kind Come on, come on, meet the elements As they call the Elements Like a box of take every shade They either combine to make a chemical Come out or stand alone as they are Wow, that was great

Thank you. That was nothing like, you know, that was much better That's a great suck. We haven't heard the Tomlera or something. No, I can't possibly come in. This is just terrific. How long does it take you to write that song? Months, years, decades, lifetime?

That's a secret. Again. Then people are going to, if we do a work, if we do like some kind of theme for somebody, they're going to want to pay us less if we reveal how quickly you can write a song. Well, just to remind our writing, it's where we're talking with the band. They might be giants and their new album is, here comes science. Is it out now? It is out of iTunes.

As of yesterday, it is out everywhere. You can buy it at Target. No kidding. Yeah. And you can download it. Right next to Myelie, Cy. After the break, more from our 2009 conversation with They Might Be Giants. Stay with us.

Hi there, Ira here, letting you know that we have a dollar-for-dollar match right now. So any donation you make will be doubled. And this week, we're celebrating Giving Tuesday, which means now is a great time to double your impact and show your support for Science Friday. a nonprofit dedicated to making science accessible to the public. So please go to ScienceFriday.com slash support to make your donation and invest in the future of science journalism. Again, that's ScienceFriday.com slash support and thanks.

I wish I used to play the accordion. Man, start jamming. Feel free. With the bad they might be giants and the new album is out just out yesterday. Here comes science with John Flansberg and John Linnell. Also, they're playing the music for us and not to be outdone is Marty Bellar is here with the drums. The king of the drums. The king of the percussion.

Marty is actually playing an electronic drum kit, which is brand new. It's his brand new thing. That explains why I tried to go over and use my fingers. Oh, yeah. And nothing happens. It's electronic. You need the magic of electricity. What an age we live.

And I'm surrounded by, I guess I'd call them music geeks, music science geeks, because they're writing albums about. science and what's what's the next song we'd love to hear from you well this this has a little story behind it we we used to cover a science song in fact we still do called why does the sunshine which is from a bunch of science the collection of science songs that came out when we were kids with Tom Glazer and I don't know if you're familiar with this record but the the the song was called why does the sun shine and in parentheses the sun is a mass of incandescent gas. And what we found out was,

subsequently they figured out that the sun is not actually made of gas after this song and become popular among kids. Sure it is. Well, apparently it's not. I better relearn something else. We're here to tell you that there

are four states of matter and the sun is actually super excited gas, which is called plasma, where the electrons have stripped off, been stripped Strip precisely. And so we were forced to write this answer song to our own very popular, Why is the Sunshine?

Which is something we only do reluctantly. This whole fact-checking thing is very difficult for a rock band. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, yeah, musicians don't normally care about, whether there's plasma or gas there. We care about beauty and poetry. Yeah. Those are our main concerns. All our lies are in our past.

we're forgetting about the lines. But it speaks very highly of you that you want to change the song to get it right. It was just sort of fun too. I mean, basically, an engineer we were working with, we were actually talking about the conundrum of the whole thing because we had already re-recorded this famous song from our repertoire for this album.

And we were just like, well, what are we going to do? It's outdated. Science has evolved. The consensus has moved on from the idea of the song. and this engineer, John Altschiller, actually said, why do you just write a song called The Sun is a miasma of incandescent plasma? And that's what we did. Is that the name of the song?

Yeah, that is the song. All right, here it is. Here they is. Here they is. They might be giants from their album here. It comes science. Out of gas, in a fire. Forget what you've been told in the trons are free. Red Dwar.

I hope it never morphs into some super. No, but collapse. Oh, on, on. Gasma of incandescent plasma. I forget what I was told by myself. L, L, L. Electrons are free plasma. Full state of matter, not gas, not liquid, not silent.

I forget that. That's great. That's great. Ira, I had to say we've been on a million radio shows, and the reverence with which you show the length and ending of a song is truly a recess. trait in DJs, hosts, radio people. You want to know why that is? It's beautiful.

Like when you actually at the top of the thing where you played the entire song, science is real, like, you know, typically, you know, people just hit the fader, 30 seconds, but right before it ends, it's like, oh, we don't have that kind of time. I will tell you why that is. That's why I love, I love public radio.

I come from, yes, I come from a public radio FM classical music background. Oh, right. And my, when I was in my learning days at WBFO and Buffalo, if I ever faded down, One note of a classical music. I once had an argument that I was the news director,

and I wanted to fade down the music so I could get a bulletin in there. I heard a, you can't run a bulletin, you can't interrupt an FM radio. So you were like the king of dead air. So you just let the song go all the way. You wrote the whole song. Why don't we hear the whole song? You actually let a little silence in after that. Absolutely.

Our guy in Boston, I guess, was Robert J. Lertzima, It would just, it would seem like he'd fall in his sleep. You know, it was his quiet moment. I remember him. Yeah. It was like, that was. No, that was. But it suggests a whole different kind of lifestyle.

It's fantastic. I have a suggestion for a song for you. Oh, sure. You know, you talked about the mistake with the makeup of the sun. How about something about Pluto, not being a planet? Oh, well, we do have, we do have a song. We haven't learned how to perform it in this group, but with this arrangement. Oh, is there.

But we do have a song called How Many Planets where we dodge. the question of how many planets there are by simply enumerating everything planet or not in the course of the song. Let the people decide. Let the people decide, yeah, yeah. What's your opinion on that, Ira? I don't think it really matters. I don't think that it matters that Pluto is...

Well, then we're in agreement then, yeah. That's more or less what we're expressing in the song. Who cares? If I were pressed, I'd have to say, yes, there are eight planets, but it doesn't really matter that Pluto has been demoted because it's just a name for something. Yeah, yeah. I think everybody kind of feels for Pluto a little bit, though.

Yeah. Yeah. I think Woody Harrelson should be a planet, too. So that makes nine. Well, there are people who are, you know, or space cadets, but, you know. What's that email address again, Ira? Don't send it to me. Don't send it to me.

Send it to John Linnell. That's right. I'll take questions. Go ahead. I'm willing to debate. Do you have a, do you have a, you never ask anybody this, any, this question, But you never ask anybody who's your favorite kid, right? And you ask musicians, what's your favorite song that you have?

It's funny, yeah, we do get that. And we are, yeah, it's like insulting, you know. How could you ask that? Oh, I'm appalled. I remember there was a radio station that used to advertise itself as one of two of America's great radio stations. So you never had to ask what the second one is. Well, if we said it's a Tom Laira song, would we suddenly reveal something? Let's see if we get another song.

It's a laughter epidemic. What should we do? Come on. Oh, let's do My Brother of the Ape. My brother, here I are. They might be giants. About evolution, that controversial fact. Well, I got the information that she sent to everyone.

And I told you family pictures aren't exactly my idea. I did everyone. And that's how you said ever. My brother the year. Terrific. They might be giants. The new album here comes science. John Flansberg and John Linnell here in the studio with us. Rocking away and also on the drums, Marty Beller. Back there, not saying very much to sound. Are any other folks you play with? And people in your band? Yes. Yeah. We actually are, we're just about to go out on tour. We're doing some family shows as well as a flood show where we're playing our 1990 breakthrough album Flood in sequence. That's kind of a once-in-a-lifetime deal. for us. And then we're doing this whole new show for adults. But joining us on stage is this fellow named Ralph Carney, who's famous among musicians for being the guy who plays on all the Tom Waits,

sort of the classic Tom Waits, middle period circus music albums. He's a multi-instrumentalist. He plays a lot of different kinds of horns. And he's going to be joining us. And it'll be very interesting working with somebody who's got such a clear voice as a musician. It's very different. It's Unlike the rest of us. Yeah. We're just hacking along. We also have Dan Miller plays guitar and Danny Weincoff plays bass. So it'll be a six piece.

And where are you going to be? Where can people see you? Everywhere. You got to schedule a little? You got to your next stuff? I would say go to our website. Or go to Facebook. Facebook has got all that information.

We've got all these. And also there are all these videos. If people want to see videos of these songs, the entire album, HereCom Science has been made into a DVD. And so there are all these. animated videos accompanying the music. And they're really, some of them are really quite remarkable. So we might see you on an MTV video.

I don't think MTV is playing videos anymore. But if they were, they certainly, no, I mean, it's shocking to everyone. Right. I know it's on. Especially musicians. I have two daughters. I know it's more of a lifestyle. Music is more of a lifestyle expression these days. But no, I don't know if they'd really warm up to science that much.

I wish I could play a musical instrument. I was just hoping that we'd be on Science Friday. Well, one of us got our wish. Exactly. And is there a topic you'd like to take on that you haven't done yet, a subject matter? We're thinking, we were tossing around ideas for the next Disney-produced Giants record instructional music for young people. We're thinking maybe there goes your civil rights could be the next one. It was one idea, I think Flansberg had.

Yeah. Here we have come to syndicalists. We could do like a history, like sort of a people's history of America. People's history of America, yeah. Well, we've got about two and a half minutes left. But you've got a quick song you can sing. We can take a bit. Sure.

Sure. What should we do? Do you want to hear a non-science song? Sure, whatever. We only got a couple of minutes left. I say that, but I don't have anything in my mind. Well, play us out to the end of the show. Why don't we do a song that's factually incorrect?

Go ahead. Constantinople been a long time con. Constantinoba now. I'm a moonlight night. Every gal of Constantinople lives in Tenoble. Should be waiting in to Istanbul. Even old New York was once in New Amsterdam. Why they changed it, I can't say.

People disliked it better that way. So take me back to Constantinople. You can't go back to Constantinople. Been a long time gone. Constantinople. Why to Constantinople get the works? That's nobody's miserable. Istanbul is heard.

New York was once to Amsterdam. Why they changed it, I can't say. People just liked it. Better than way. No, you can't go back. That's no, but stand. We really aren't going to talk until the music stops. Wow, that's amazing.

I love that song. I know that song. It's an oldie moldy. Yeah, it's super moldy. And that's not on this album, though. No, no. It is not. But it's still a great song.

So if people go to watch you in concert, do you play other stuff besides? Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, I mean, these albums are only four. Even when we're doing the flood, like, sort of, you know, tribute to ourselves show. It's only 40 minutes of the show, and the show's like an hour. The family shows is like an hour of 15. The adult shows are like an hour of 45, sometimes two hours when we're feeling heroic. And when we're at our Bruce Springsteen mode, and things start expanding in the mannerist period.

Yeah. I think we play more songs per show than Bruce, but probably only about half as long. I'm going to have to drop in. Please do. Please do. We're going to drop in. Yeah, bring your accordion. Bring my accord.

We try not to talk about that. Plenty of room. Actually, he's one of ours. I just have to bring my chopsticks as the only thing I get here. I'm a frustrated drummer, too. Thank you, Morning. I won't even try to do that. We've run out of time, but you guys were terrific. Thank you. You took up our whole studio with the musical instruments.

You're welcome any time you want to come back. Well, thank you so much. It was really a pleasure. You're welcome. John Flansberg, John Linnell, also on the drums. Marty Beller. They might be giants. The new album is Here Come Science. That's all the time that we have for today.

A lot of folks help make the show happen, including... Beth Rami. Santiago Flores. Diana Plasker. John Dancosky. And many more. Tomorrow, we'll bring you to the silliest award show in all of science. The Ig Nobel's, which celebrate unusual achievements in science, medicine, and other fields.

But for now, I'm SciFRI producer Kathleen Davis. Thanks for listening.