Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Theremins

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why theremins are secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5

There are men's known for being instruments famous for being sci-fi monster music nobody thinks much about them so let's have some fun let's find out why there are men's are secretly incredibly fascinating Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode of Podcasts All About Why Being Alive is More Interesting Than People Think It Is. My name is Alex Schmidt and I'm not alone because I'm joined by my co-host, Katie Golden. Katie! Yes. What is your relationship to or opinion of the theremin?

Wait, hang on. I got a sick theremin impression to hit you with. Hold on. Ooh, okay. Wait, hang on. Hold on. Wait, hang on. Hold on.

Let me take a sip of water. That'll do it. Okay. Let me take a sip of water. That'll do it. Okay. Hang on. Let me take another sip of water. Hold on. I can't do it. Hang on.

You see the problem is that I'm having too much fun. I'm smiling too much. So I can't. Usually I can do that, but right now I like Theravans, Alex, to answer your question. I enjoy their dulcet tones. It always makes me think of sort of like corny sci-fi creature feature podcast name drop soundtracks. And so I quite enjoy it, yes. Yeah.

This is a great CIFF topic because it's all around us. My initial relationship was that I mixed up the name. I thought it was the name for that thing where there's a bunch of glasses of water and you rub the rim. Oh, right, right, right. But no, it's different. It's the thing that you began to do an impression of and it's different. It's the spooky instrument. We'll also have a few clips to play so people can hear it because it's the kind of sliding strange sound. It's not that wacky tin whistle sliding sound, but it's like an unearthly sliding pitch sound that I too associated with like 1950s science

fiction. Or with, like you said, monster movies. And what I understand about it is it's not played on a keyboard or with your mouth. It's like your proximity to a rod is what changes the tone. So like theremin players look like they're doing magic where they're like, and they're putting their hands all around it, pulling their hand.

Like it's very silly though It does it's very goofy looking that that can't really be avoided That's all dead on and yeah, and then the little social media card for this episode I'll have at least one picture of someone with a theremin because it's basically two antennas There's a tall antenna going up and then a to the side antenna. And yeah, just your proximity to it changes pitch and volume. And it is the first instrument where you don't directly touch it or manipulate it or blow air through it that was ever created. So people also said, this is like a magic trick. This is really neat just to see it

played. Even singing, right? You're squeezing air through your meat tube, which is your throat. Right. There's no other instruments like this that I can think of where it's like, where just your proximity is turning it on. Unless like you consider the little ding dong,

like when you go into a 7-Eleven, an instrument. Right, right. I mean, I am a musician, an artist in how I shop at 7-Eleven. I really blow people's minds. That's right. Automatic doors are my instrument and I am a maestro. Yeah. And so this is a really wonderful topic because it's all around us and also nobody thinks

about it. By the way, thank you to Tkounio on the Discord for the suggestion. Lots of people excited about it in the polls, including like the Buffalo, Cleo Mancer, Burrito, Jankars, You Agent, Sandcaster, DC Prox. Many listeners really want to hear about this. And on every episode, we lead with a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. This week, that's in a segment called Numbers are leaving tonight on a plane. I can see the red stats lights, a hen for spine, oh and I can see numbers waving goodbye. Well it looks like numbers must be the stats in my eyes.

And then the theremin comes in. Wait, hang on. comes in. Wait, hang on. Is it mean if I suggest that the impression has gotten a little bit less good each time? Which I love. Maybe that's mean. I'm sorry. No, it's not mean. Leave it in damn you. Just didn't say anything. Leave it in damn you. Be honest with me. Does this sound like a theremin? Vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv That last name was from Horgan Conclusion on the Discord. Thank you Horgan Conclusion. We have a new name for this segment every week.

Please make a Missillian Wacking Bass possible. You can submit through Discord or to sifpod at gmail.com. Yeah, the numbers this week are designed to demonstrate how this instrument sounds and demonstrate that we've all heard it, even though a lot of us don't think about it day to day. I do. I think some people do to day. I do. I think some people do, yeah.

I'm always thinking about that theremin. I'm thinking, I'm always thinking this could use a sick theremin drop. There's like one iconic song of that. The number there is 1966. Cause 1966 is when the Beach Boys released Good Vibrations. Oh yeah, now that's a good song. I like the Beach Boys.

Me too. Let's hear a quick clip of it, because in super technical terms, they played it on something called an electro-theramin, which was a different version of the instrument that you do touch that was designed later on to be easier to play. But the gist of how it sounds is probably the world's most heard example of what a theremin sounds like. So here we go. And that's all we'll listen to because it's probably very copyrighted. But

And that's all we'll listen to because it's probably very copyrighted. But the like, do, do, do, do, do, like that tone in the background is a very direct imitation of a true theremin from another version of a theremin. And it was one of the biggest pop songs in the entire world in like all of music history. It's a cool, very distinctive sound. I think that it's, it is interesting because it has such a association with the era of like, you know, the 50s sci-fi period, where is this idea of the future or like, ah, this is what the future is going to be like, that now when you hear it, it sounds very retro. Exactly. Yeah, they really dated themselves. And interestingly, the mid-50s, 60s of the

1900s is not the origin of the theremin. It's not even really the peak of the theremin. It just got used in a lot of pop culture in that time. I think also it was recorded a lot at that time. So that's why it's associated with it, right? Because we have the recordings and we have the movies and the mystery science theater renditions of it. That is true. Yeah, it's just like pop culture got a lot bigger and a lot more plentiful too. Yeah, so that's a big part of it.

And yeah, the Beach Boys were kind of a leader in it, especially because they were trying to be more innovative than every other band on earth. In the sessions for an album called Pat Sounds, they first tried this. It's so good. And sort of a deep cut on it. There's a song called I Just Wasn't Made for These Times, has toward the end of it a little bit of Electro-Tharumon. And then they left Good Vibrations off of Pet Sounds because they wanted to do something even more amazing than Pet Sounds with Good Vibrations. And in the end they did, but also they couldn't make the rest of an album called Smile kind of around it. And they released a version called Smiley Smile, which was basically good vibrations

and then demos. But yeah, good vibrations blew the world's mind because they could record so many different tracks and kinds of things. And one of them was this weird version of Atheramen. I really like the Beach Boys. I think that they kind of, maybe this is controversial, but I kind of feel like they hold up better than the Beatles in my humble opinion.

That's cool. Yeah. I don't know. Like I really liked the Beatles too, but it's just some of the little weird tricks they do with their harmonies and stuff that the Beach Boys do, especially in Pet Sounds. It's like, yeah, they were really doing stuff that seemed really ahead of their time. Paul Jay It was. And yeah, and those two bands really

pushed each other in a way that influenced all of music. So yeah, the Thera Men is foundational to a lot of stuff, all of us, through this landmark Beach Boys song that made the Beatles say, we really got to make a Sgt. Pepper and a White Album. We got to get it together. I know we've been slacking with Rubber Soul. It could be viewed as sort of a gimmick, right? Because like, oh, okay, here's this different instrument. Maybe it's kind of gimmicky, but whenever you try to introduce new types of technology into music, and I think people do that to this day, but yeah, it's very interesting. It is. And then the other big touchstone of this instrument is movies, like you said.

Attack of the 50-foot woman! She wants civil rights! Whoa! The 50-foot suffragette, like her huge dress sweeping cars off the road. She wants equal compensation for her labor! Right, she's like, I don't even need the money to be my size. It can be regular size. Right. She's like, I don't even need the money to be my size. It can be regular size. Just it should be the same amount of money. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't have to be a giant check or whatever. It's fine. No, no, not giant money. Just regular money, please.

But yeah, I was surprised to find that this instrument is not just a mid-century sci-fi thing. The number there is 1930. Because in 1930, the Russian classical composer Dmitry Shostakovich used the theremin for a movie score. Ah, yes. As early as 1930 in the Soviet Union. Dmitry shows to go, yeah. The movie is titled Odna, which means alone. 1930 in the Soviet Union. Dimitri shows to Goya. The movie is titled Odna, which means alone.

It sounds like the grimest movie possible. It is a Soviet realist drama about a young school teacher trying to educate the children in Siberia. I know it sounds like I'm doing a bit, but that's the movie. This sounds like the Simpsons bit where it's like the itchy and scratchy show done by the Soviet animators. It's like very strange, brutalist, grim. And like brilliant. Their animation's so good. But let's hear it. This is one part of the score. It's soundtracking a snowstorm blowing into Siberia.

Let's hear that. Very wonderful. I love it. It's a little example. Man, I love it. It's like a full orchestra, but that like sliding tone that dominates is a theremin. Like a real theremin. Again, not to name drop my podcast, but I sort of branded my evolutionary biology podcast all around this sort of these vibes, creature feature, and you try to use music from that period. It's great. Yeah, I really love it. I think that it does give feels like icy and cold.

So that vibe is very, very cool. The Theramen has achieved that vibe no matter what the genre kind of across movie history. It doesn't have to be fantastical. It can be a struggle in Siberia. One source about that, it's a wonderful blog. It's by writer and composer Claire Nina Norelli. Yes, the theremin's famous for science fiction movies and horror movies. The most popular example is probably a 1951 movie called The Day the Earth Stood Still.

The score uses two theremins working together along with a full orchestra. Let's hear a little bit of that in the classic The Day the Earth Stood Still soundtrack. ["The Day the Earth Stood Still"] It's just good stuff. I love it so much. This is my jam. I have a very strange eclectic taste in music and I would sometimes just be like, you know

what? I want to do a playlist of just this stuff and listen to it while I'm folding laundry. Yeah. Norelli points out that as early as the 1930s, it's all over Russian cinema and then by the early 40s, lots of American composers are using it for just straight up unsettling dramas. Especially in 1945, there's the movie The Lost Weekend by Billy Wilder and another movie

called Spellbound by Alfred Hitchcock that both use theremin heavily. This is our last theremin example. It's from the soundtrack of Spellbound, 1945. The composer is a Hungarian-American composer named Miklós Rósa, but here's his soundtrack using the theremin. Nice. Yeah, so there's other instruments there too, but you know, that's not a really a science fiction movie. It's just Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman not trusting each other and maybe he's out

of his mind. Ooh, scary. I know. Oh no, the guy from Roman Holiday. Oh no. It's scary how beautiful they both are. Yes. Yeah, I mean, part of it is I think it's kind of almost sounds like a human voice, but not

quite. So I think that gives it a uncanny valley kind of thing. Cause it's like almost a human, like almost some, some soprano kind of going like, but it's not, it's not human. It doesn't come from a, you know, human vocal cord. So I think that can give us this sense of like, Ooh, that's not quite right. Like some sort of like strange predator trying to mimic a human voice. And, you know, cause like there are, I wonder if there's something in like our sort of monkey brain that makes us fear that,

or at least feel a little unsettled by it. Cause there are like, there are predator, predatory cats that will kind of mimic monkey sounds or like baby monkey sounds to try to lure monkeys out of their hiding spots and then like eat them. So we have all of these like musical advancements and stuff and the ones that kind of give us these chills or these sort of like unsettled feelings. I wonder if part of that is somehow rooted in our history of like not wanting to be eaten by a predator that's like mimicking our voices.

Yeah. Yeah. Like no matter what, it does feel like a theremin is like puppeting me or something when I hear it. Like I shouldn't have this big of a reaction to it. It's just an instrument, but it's getting something out of me every time. Yeah. I personally actually love the uncanny Valley. I find it really thrilling for some reason in the same way that like a roller coaster is thrilling for some people. It's like, yeah, just that like feeling of like, ooh, this is wrong. I love it. That goes with the last number. It's a quick number section because the last number is February 2025. Oh, uncanny.

Woo. I mean, it was. You folks remember? A lot of our listeners were around in February 2025. But that's when the TV show Severance almost featured a theremin. Oh, what? Oh, almost. I don't want to spoil the show.

So in very general terms, just one episode of the second season of Severance on Apple TV, a character wants to play a theremin at a funeral and then is prevented by their boss. It's like there and they don't get to. I'll link a recap from theRer.com that has spoilers and also a bunch of wild theories about the symbolism of a theremin in this puzzle show. That seems to be part of why listeners suggested it. It's amazing on its own and also Severance referenced it, I think partly because it's uncanny and that whole show is uncanny and mysterious.

I got to watch Severance. I've only heard good things about it. Very good so far, yeah. It sounds like an interesting premise, going to work, working in a dead-end job that you hate. Sounds great. I just heard a, my brother, my brother and me, where Griffin describes something that annoys him, and he says, if you do that in front of me,

I will wedgie you so hard, you will severance right there. You'll become two people. I made you really happy. Anyway, so yeah, it's a big pop culture instrument, a big like modern strange music instrument, but where did it come from? Let's get into that in Mega Takeaway Number One. The theremin is named after the strange celebrity Soviet scientist who invented it.

Ah, fantastic. Man, I love this. It's a guy's last name. Soviet science, man. It can do things from creating incredible discoveries to some crazy man trying to breed chimpanzees with human beings. It's like, it runs the full gamut of bringing us interesting, cool technology

and complete psychopaths. This guy is a lot of the episode and he's even weirder than that because he's all that and then other stuff. And his name is Leon Theramyn. And depending on how you anglicize or Russify his name, he also got called Lev Sergeevich Teramyn. And his father was a French Huguenot ancestry, like French Protestant Christians. So that's why his name sounds a little bit French too.

I'm always forgetting about the Huguenots. Let me tell you though, wars of religion era, French or not, Huguenots had to get out. Catholic country. I barely understand that reference. But let's continue. I barely understand that reference. Let's continue. I was raised by a Catholic dad and a Protestant mom who both liked history. So I was told a lot of weird stuff like that that nobody cares about. You really grew up on Huguenot history for kids. Leon Thurman is all the weird Soviet scientist things and was also a celebrity

performer of music, but also kind of magic on an instrument he invented and named the ether phone. That's a nice name for it. But he was just so prominent as the player it became named after him after a while, the Theremin. Am I looking at him? Is it this guy sort of with the mustache in a very fancy hall, looking very stern and serious as he plays what looks like a old-timey cash register? This was truly an exciting live performance for people because he just wouldn't touch it.

And he was also a showman. He's also like vaguely handsome to me. Yeah. And so he really put on an event and then people were like let's just name it after the guy who does that thing. Like come on. Yeah like how like how the piano was named after Herbert Piano Man. Herbert Piano Man. Herbert Piano Man. Sing me a song, Herbert Piano Man. They dropped the min from it because they were anti-Semitic. Right, Ellis Island reduced the name and shrank the keyboard. It used to be like 200 keys and they were like, I can't, 88, 88, I'm done.

Can we have a keytar actually? More portable. Also, if folks have heard past episodes about last names, we talk about the Ellis Island last name thing being a myth. So I know, I know, don't let me know. But anyway, the key sources here are an amazing book. There's a book called Theramin, Ether Music and Espionage. Ooh, that's a great title.

It is. It's a very well researched book about this guy and his instrument, and it's by Albert Glinski who's a music professor at Mercyhurst College, also citing an amazing piece for Discover Magazine by Nathaniel Sharpling and amazing piece for Discover magazine by Nathaniel Sharpling and a piece for Smithsonian magazine by Nora McGreevy. Because the dominant figure here is Leon Theremin, born in Tsarist Russia in 1896. And like he lives 97 years, he dies in 1993. So his lifespan and what happens to him completely dovetails with the rise, fall, and end of a Soviet Union. Like he lives to see it end.

Maybe not a coincidence. Maybe not a coincidence. I don't know. His whole deal is bound up in the Soviet Union. Yeah. That's wild. He had an early interest in lots of kinds of science, and then he goes to study physics and astronomy at St. Petersburg University, still Czarist. But then right as he's a young man, he gets drafted into the Russian army in World War I and is a radio operator. So he's starting to get ideas about signals and radios. It's true.

Yeah, like he is kind of ahead of electronics. He's like, I like physics and astronomy. Oh, and that's transferable to radios. And then that leads to all this. And after World War I, he returns to St. Petersburg. There's also a Bolshevik revolution overthrows the Tsar, makes a Soviet Union. And according to Albert Glinsky's book... You say that, there's a Bolshevik revolution. Anyways, moving on. I'm going to repeatedly yada yada the entire history of the Soviet Union,

because it's all about the fair. Yada yada yada, Yugoslavia, blah blah blah. Yada, yada, yada. Yugoslavia, blah, blah, blah. Then this builds kind of the central tension of his whole life. Apparently, Theremin loved science and electronics and physics and studying that stuff. And his biographers debate it, but in general, he was pretty willing to accept almost any flaws in the Soviet Union if that let him have a job in a laboratory in time to build electronics. That's kind of the overarching thing of his deal. So he was like, yeah, all right, if you tell me to try to mate human beings and chimpanzees, I'll do it as long as you let me pull around with radios and stuff." Basically, they especially wanted him to do military technology and security service technology.

And he said, great, as long as I'm doing science. Hey. Yeah. The oddest thing to me is one of his friends, like a personal friend, was a Russian writer named Boris Galiev. And Galiev goes on to write a biography of Theremin. He titles it Soviet Faust. Because even Theremin's personal friend is like, this guy really kind of sold out some of our human values in order to just do science in a Soviet context.

Right. So like a Faustian bargain where it's like, look, I will create monsters as long as I can make fun noises with this machine. Yeah. And he also, the vast majority of it is like military technology. He's not doing spookier stuff than that really. But when I keep talking about the chimpanzee human hybrids, there's like, I think literally only one guy who like did some of that. And I'm not even sure if that was officially sanctioned by the government. In Glinski's book, he reviews some of Thurman's notes and apparently occasionally Thurman got really interested in specifically the Frankenstein stuff of like creating life forms from dead tissue.

Yeah, why not? It's just, come on, man. I mean, okay, but hear me out. Some of our medical advancements aren't so different from Frankenstein concepts, right? Organ transplants or restarting the heart with, well not restarting the heart, but resetting the heart's rhythm with electricity. So it's not so far out there. It is pretty funny though,

the person who invented the theremin that would go on to be used in sci-fi movies about raising the dead was just like, yeah, that'd be cool if we could raise the dead. I'd be into that. He truly fits this thing. Yeah. And the other thing about Fahraman is he had an initial earnest excitement about Vladimir Lenin, because he felt that Lenin was very pro-science and pro-technology, pro-industry. Apparently, Lenin once said, quote, communism is Soviet power plus electrification

of the whole country, end quote. Yeah. Theremin was one person who perceived Lenin as being a like utopian pro-science kind of person. Yeah, he said a lot of things that seemed reasonable at the time. Truly. And yeah, then Glinsky describes Theremin immediately realizing, oh, Lenin's building like camps for his enemies, but I'm still all in, I guess, because I want to do this thing.

Yeah. Whoops. What happens is Theremin comes back from World War I. He comes back to what was St. Petersburg is now called Petrograd because the communists renamed a lot of cities. And he takes a job at the Physical Technical Institute, which is basically a military research facility funded by the government. And he's trying to develop a proximity sensor system. So that you can know when someone enters your sort of Soviet equivalent to the 7-Eleven to not buy a Slurpee because

that is a symbol of American indulgence. Right, you just go in to get a ticket to stand on a different line. And so Thurman, he's working on a proximity sensor system for the army and security services. Both this experiment and the resulting instrument, it's a lot of electrical engineering stuff. It's sort of hard to describe. I'm going to link off to better sources of it. The gist is that he's using one device called a capacitor, which stores electrical charge. He experiments with linking that to another device called an oscillator.

And he accidentally discovers that the oscillator makes a sound when it's rigged up that way. Ooh. The technical name is that the frequencies are heterodyning. Mm-hmm, yeah, of course. Heterodyning is when you do a mixer type thing with two frequencies that turns them into one sound audible to the ear.

Again, I'm going to link off for the nitty gritty of it because it's fully electrical engineering stuff. It's amazing Thurman could figure this out in 1918. But this meant that in his attempt to build like a sensor for the military, he accidentally builds an oscillator that makes an audible tone. And also he can shift the tone by moving his hands back and forth away and close to the oscillator. And that basic principle becomes the instrument.

So when he's moving his hands back and forth, what is this antenna sensing? What's going on between his hand and the antenna that is causing it to kind of like receive some sort of information? The super basic version is that it's just giving the device different readings of how close or far a human hand is because we are also sort of a capacitor, our bodies, like we store electrical charge as energy. And so it's basically a also sort of a capacitor, our bodies. We store electrical charge as energy. And so it's basically a machine that is a capacitor, and we're a capacitor, and the oscillator makes a noise as it reads how close and far they

are from each other. I see. So it's kind of like a electro receptor. It's detecting sort of the nice, nice. Because yeah, that's like something that occurs in animals as well. There's electro reception in, I mean, sharks famously, also elephant fish, electric eels,

which are not necessarily eels. But yeah, so that is a, technically mother nature invented this technology first, is all I'm saying. Yeah, get out of here, Theramen. It should be called the Mother Nature. The electric eel. And yeah, and Theramen, he names this the ether phone. You could also pronounce that aether phone.

Some people write it with that H symbol and A and E put together on the front, but it's referring to Aether in the sense of being the air and just like amazing gases around us. Right. But because Theramen immediately realizes, I've built the first instrument that is not a product of contact or a keyboard or blowing air. Right. And he's also a musician. He is a trained cellist.

And so he becomes basically the first person to play music on his own accidental invention because he finds that like the skills to bow a cello strings are pretty transferable. And he starts playing music on it. Yeah, you use your kind of like wave your hand around quasi randomly. That's how I understand it. Cellist plays their instrument. It's kind of like... Yeah, apparently all the first skilled players of this were either stringed instrument players or a few trombonists. Ah, that makes so much sense. It's all that kind of move. And so people figured it out that way.

My brother played the trombone in high school and I was just like, anyone could do that and like pick it up and then like. When I used to play the trumpet, I was like, wow, the trombone's not for me. That looks really hard. Yeah. Buttons. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, like apparently even in the lab when Theramen is first accidentally getting sound out of this, one of the first things he does is to try to play the swan section of Carnival of the Animals by Camille Cesson.

Oh yeah. Because he just like knows that on the cello and he's like, can I get that noise out of this fooling around, you know? And then do a remix of it. Do, do, do, um, tch, um, tch, um, tch. We will talk later about him basically inventing drum machines too. He was very skilled. That's real. And yeah, and so Thurman also bothers to spend time on this because he believes he can achieve something as a patriotic Soviet person.

He feels that like the Soviet system is this modern and forward-looking idea. It should have an instrument that's modern and forward-looking to represent it. He also says, quote, my apparatus frees the composer of the despotism of the twelve-tone scale and offers infinite new tonal possibilities, end quote. Yeah, I'm always talking about how my apparatus is anti-despotic. Just a much less likable Woody Guthrie instead of this machine kills fascists. Like, hear ye, hear ye, mine apparatus is anti-despotic. Crazy, mine apparatus is anti-despotic.

I don't know why he's got an English accent and he's Russian, but you know. Yeah, I did make him medieval for some reason. That doesn't make sense. So then, so there, I mean, as a patriot and a scientist and a musician all at once, he starts just doing what's a combination tech demo and musical concert anywhere he can. Starts doing it at like technical conferences, research facilities, but then people running traditional music venues in Russia bring him in. And within a year of building a prototype of this, he gives a private performance for Vladimir Lenin. Here's a show for

you. And apparently Lenin loved it. In 1922, Lenin writes a letter to Trotsky asking if they could replace some of the armed guards at the Kremlin with electronic sensor technology, kind of like this theremin stuff. Like, what if we reduce our guard payroll? But also at this point, what's the theremin going to do? It's like you replace the armed guards, but then it's like someone tries to sneak in and theremin's just like, it's really a spectacle. He's a showman. He's good at music. It's amazing that he's not touching it at all.

It also has kind of a dance vibe to it visually. And then he rapidly in the 1920s goes from prototyping this to being a world famous musician. The Soviets give him a train pass to go anywhere within the USSR. And the obligation was he had to play this for people to entertain them and as propaganda for how amazing Soviet science is. Then they send him to Germany, France, and Britain in 1926, and New York City in 1927. As further cultural propaganda combining science and music and the show.

Right. This was pre-Cold War, so we still had some diplomatic relations that were not frozen over. Exactly. That's the key thing because his timing means that he can just go to the United States and stay there without the Soviets getting mad yet. So that trip to New York City in 1927 is key. Thurman just starts living in New York. He stays there for 11 years. And works for American capitalist companies just doing other projects. And the Soviets have not yet said we're locking everything down, but they will later.

Spoiler. Or did he, like you said he was like working for American companies, like what was, like with the theremin or just general electronic sort of stuff? All the above. Yeah. He as soon as 1929 makes a deal with RCA, the radio corporation of America, it's like kind of still a famous company, uh, to sell like a household theremin. Like you at home can play the theremin.

His other big project is to make an electronic crib alarm because in the 1930s, Charles Lindbergh's baby gets kidnapped. The Lindbergh baby is a huge story and they say, oh, we can sell the public crib alarms to protect their baby on the heels of the story. Now I understand you're saying electronic crib alarm. I kept hearing cribble arm and I was like, what's a cribble arm? Like a cribble, like some sort of thing that's a Cribble and the arm of the Cribble.

Yeah, I'm writing a Dungeons and Dragons campaign, Mitchell. It's going great. We need to arm our Cribbles in this country. Okay, so the electronic Cribb alarm because Lindbergh baby kidnapping, got it. All normal and very normal stuff happening in the country at the time. It was a really weird time and he becomes this weird cultural celebrity who's a famous inventor and famous guy

from this sort of new Soviet Union country, but also putting on musical performances all the time. Like, he's just constantly doing shows. He and some other players do Carnegie Hall at one point. He's a major musician and socialite in New York City. Right. The other thing he does is train a few other people to be theremin soloists, just as a fellow musician and entertainer. He also falls in love with one of them. The key figure there goes on

to be named Clara Rockmore. She was born in modern Lithuania to a Jewish family. That was Russian territory at the time and they suffer anti-Semitism before leaving, going to America. They were also very poor in both countries and we think that due to malnutrition she had joint problems that ended her career as a classical violinist. Her elbow couldn't keep up because she had malnutrition in Czarist Lithuania. But luckily she also meets Leon Theram and he says, it's easier on your joints to play my ether phone." And she takes that up and becomes the other most famous thereminist in the world. Wow.

And then also Leon proposes marriage and she says no and marries a different guy named Rockmore. So that's sad for him. It's like leading up to like some incredible love story and like them learning the theremin together and then he's like, you want to get married? She's like, no. She raised some other guy. Not really. Even though we are very alike.

No, thank you. So yeah, so his personal fame and other people spreading it, the instrument name ends up named after him and is a huge trend in the 1920s and 30s. People doing classical theremin performances for amazed audiences, where it's kind of a magic show, kind of a music show. Yeah, I'd imagine that'd be quite spectacular. It'd be like someone, I guess like today it'd be like someone playing an instrument with

their mind or something. Just you know, very, very unusual. Yeah. And it also kind of fits what we enjoy with electronic music, right? Because it's sort of a person just standing there, but also it's amazing and the beat drops and stuff. Right. Like watching a DJ doing all the things with their arms, or they're doing disc scratches

and dropping beats and hitting pops and snarking glarks and that kind of thing. Leon was always storking glarks on the theremin. Yeah. And that's one element of a quick takeaway number two. The theremin led to most electronic music. Oh, nice. It turns out the RCA theremin and its failure directly led to the career of another musical innovator named Robert Moog. Oh, the Moog synthesizer!

Yes. Yeah, if people know these kind of instruments, Robert Moog was a guy that led to a Moog company he ran and they were the first makers of synthesizers. Wow. I used to, well, I still do, but I definitely also used to love Wendy Carlos, her music. So good. I don't know her. She is a synthesizer musician. She did a lot of soundtracks. She did the soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange. She used to be William Carlos.

She's a transgender woman. Even at the time she was transgender, but she came out later in her career, huge sort of innovator in the synthesizer space where she used the Moogs synthesizer and did all like, she would take classical pieces of music and then rearrange them for the synthesizer and create these really beautiful pieces for movies like A Clockwork Orange and other movies at the time.

And that's kind of what Theramonist did too. They were not playing Diplo or Justice or Daft Punk or something. They were just playing classical music on these electronic instruments. And yeah, that's cool. Yeah, it was very, very cool. But I listened to that stuff all the time in high school because I was very cool. Very cool. The theremin directly led to most other electronic instruments because I mentioned before that in 1929, Leon Theremin tries to sell a consumer theremin with RCA. The instrument in today's dollars cost nearly $3,000, which is definitely money, but not totally impossible for a nice musical instrument.

Unfortunately, they tried to start doing this in 1929. That's the year when the stock market crashes and there's a global depression, so no one can afford it. Whomp, whomp. Apparently, a few rich people bought one, including the son of Henry Ford. A few movie studios get one because you can't afford that when you're buying all kinds of expensive production equipment. The theremin ends up being a curiosity for just a few interesting hobbyists. One of them is a musician named Paul Tanner, who was a big band trombonist with the Glenn

Miller band. He built that electro theremin and played it on Beach Boys records. The other person to take the original true theremin really seriously is a teenager named Robert Moog. In the 1950s, he uses the diagrams in a hobbyist magazine to build his own theremin at home. Wow. He's 14 years old when he does this. Nerd alert. Yeah.

Then he makes a small home business designing and selling theremins through the mail. Amazing. For a few other hobbyists, because truly nobody else cares about selling theremin's like through the mail. Amazing. For a few other hobbyists because truly nobody else cares about the theremin. Like that's how you can get one in the 1950s. Just the dedication to hobbies truly makes the world function when you have one obsessive building synthesizers in their basement. Right. And he had the step toward that was building theremin in his basement. Like he was just a theremin business for years. That also funded him going to school for engineering training. It also put him in touch with other musicians and nerds

who gave him tips on electronic music. Amazing. And all that leads to his mid 1960s invention of the first synthesizer. Incredible. Yeah, yeah. That's just, yeah, like 14 years old. Like when I was 14 years old, I was like reading Archie comics and picking my nose. I wish I was doing things that productive at work. You wish you were picking your nose. And yeah, I didn't know this.

It turns out the Moog Company never stopped making theremins. They became famous and popular for synthesizers. But CBS News interviewed one of their executives. They say that they've sold hundreds of thousands of theremins over the years. And in 2020, they did a 100th anniversary celebration of Leon Theremin inventing the theremin in 1920. And they released a luxury Theremin called the Claravox, which is also named after Clara Rockmore. The Theremin was the foundation of the main company that built all electronic instruments going forward.

I want to see what a luxury Theremin looks like. The Claravox. It's very stylish little art deco. It's good. Yeah, man, that's totally the Cadillac of theremins. It's really cool. And folks, that's a ton of numbers and takeaways. We also have two more takeaways about the rest of Mr. Theremin's bizarre life and about space aliens.

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Again, that's accounting.unc.edu. We're back and we're back with takeaway number three. Leon Theremin invented all kinds of other amazing devices for American companies and as a Soviet prisoner. Ah, oops. The Soviet Union did not treat him well once they started getting Cold War about all this. Oops, yeah. It was a problem. That's kind of the problem with these like, when you compromise your morals, like you don't really get to decide where the ethics train makes its final stop. Yeah. Because he definitely under coercion, but also possibly willingly, did spying and research for

the Soviets in a lot of his life. He was definitely coerced into it and also might have volunteered afterward. Yeah, he's a complicated figure. The theremin and instrument is harmless. Yeah. And then he did a bunch of other stuff. Yeah. And some additional sources here, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History has some early machines by Leon Theremin and also citing a piece for JSTOR Daily by writer Angelica Frey. Because not only did Leon Theremin inspire Robert Moog and the synthesizer and a whole

bunch of those electronic instruments, he co-invented the rhythm machine, aka the drum machine, just along the way. I mean, what's a few horrific weapons compared to the untiss machine where you get some really good untisses out of it? Yeah. And he did this one in his time in the US because basically from 1927 to 1938, he's in the United States and the Soviets aren't so mad at the Americans yet. And so he's just allowed to hang.

And Thurman and a collaborator named Henry Cowell create something called the Rhythmicon. The Rhythmicon basically looked like an amplifier with a few keys on the top of it, like keyboard keys. And it allowed you to set that machine to repeat a note at a specific timing. And this was the first version of future rhythm machines. It could make a beat in a musical way automatically, electronically. Awesome. In 1931.

That's... I just don't think about pre-70s DJs being a thing. Same. Yeah, he's just so far ahead of his time in so many ways. The other very ahead of his time invention is that he parallel invented the television. Oh. Pretty good. Ah. He's only named for this funky sci-fi instrument.

But in 1927, Theremin is between finishing a mission to Europe for the Soviets and going to New York City. He does one last trip back to Russia to complete some last prototypes. And one of them is a large screen that can display a video camera's input from a wired broadcast. It is parallel inventing the television. Yeah, why not? He's got some time in his

afternoon. You know, he's got a few minutes at lunch. Television, great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Albert Glinsky in his book, he really focuses on this because when he's describing Thurman's life, he says that a lot of Thurman's ideas were treated as this is secret military technology in the Soviet Union and maybe commercial tech for everybody in the United States. Because apparently, theremin invents TV in the Soviet Union, he shows it to them, they immediately classify it, keep it to themselves and try to use it basically for security camera displays. That's it. They won't give it to people. Not for airing, what is it, Worker and Parasite, the itchy and scratchy Soviet TV show.

And Glinski says the amazing thing is, Thurman then goes to New York City. He starts making musical instrument projects with RCA. And as he's talking to them, he learns that an RCA executive named David Sarnoff has a vision of their very experimental television being in every home. And they're like, oh, it's cool. You also thought of that. We're already working on it. Don't need your help. But he's as good at this as everybody in terms of electronic innovation. Yeah. he's he's as good at this as everybody in terms of electronic innovation. Yeah, it's got to be somewhat discouraging though. Like if you're like, yeah, like here's my I pitched this to my government and they like put it in a closet. And then over

here, it's like, yeah, we're about to have people like watching Westerns everywhere. Yeah, like it took decades for TVs to be common in homes. There have been had that idea at the same time or slightly before a bunch of scientists all over the Western capitalist world. Yeah. Then he's in New York City for most of the 1930s. And he also is thriving, right? He's like this celebrity inventor and popular musician. He also falls

in love again. He tried to create a new kind of ballet where dancers would affect a big theremin with their whole body, which is a great idea. It's really cool. That's fun. Yeah. Also, that's like, that's prime fallen in love territory where it's like, you know, here, I need you to use your entire body on this instrument, please, ballerina. Like, what was he thinking? Right. So he meets a bunch of beautiful dancers and one of them is a ballet dancer named Lavinia

Williams. She says yes to his proposal. They get married. Albert Glinski says this also might have sidetracked some of Fairman's potential business success because Lavinia Williams was a black American and racist American business executives were not good with that. Yeah. You love your wife, you say.

Hmm, that doesn't sound very business. Yes. So like Leon Thurman's living this amazing New York City life. And then in 1938, he basically vanishes. He makes a long trip back to the Soviet Union under an assumed identity on a ship registered in the Soviet Union. And most experts believe he was forced to make this trip, especially because he and Lavinia Williams never saw each other again. Oh, that's sad. You don't just suddenly leave the continent your wife is on without the KGB forcing you, you know?

Unless it's my wife, am I right? I love my husband. Right, not your wife though. Not my wife. Yeah. And so then Theremin arrives in the USSR and is put in a Gulag and assigned to hard labor. Oh dear. The Soviets are mad that he was not cold warring as hard as they wanted to for this like decade or so.

And then Glinsky says Theremin basically handles this by agreeing to do the maximum amount of science for the Soviet military. It turns out this Gulag system had a set of prison labor science labs called shurashkas. So it's like you're imprisoned, but you're allowed to do science. You don't have to like break rocks. And if you're talented enough, they'll put you in it. I mean, technically science is just breaking really tiny rocks, like at the molecular level.

Oh no, everything's breaking rocks. Oh no. Well, that sounds pretty rough. I feel bad for him. I was like a little bit like a scant of him cause he seems like he compromised on his principles, but then, you know, pretty sad. Yeah, it seems like this initial Soviet Union he was so excited about ruins his life.

Yeah. It's fuzzy the whole rest of his life. In 1947, after nearly a decade, he's officially released from the Sharashka prison lab, but he either willingly or unwillingly works for the KGB for a few decades, then he teaches at a Soviet university. He just marries a new wife in Russia. There's no paperwork with his old marriage. And he doesn't get to leave the Soviet Union

from this 1938 abduction until 1989. Well, hey, that's when I was born. Did that have something to do with it? Yeah, they said Katie's around Cold War's over Like he basically gets to leave because the Soviet Union falls apart Yeah, that was me. I did that and it seems like we'll never know the exact details of what happened because by the time he gets Out he's in his mid 90s He also had kind of a lifelong reputation for exaggeration and telling tall tales. So between tall tales and maybe some senility, his stories kind of don't add up when he's interviewed and we'll just never know exactly how the Soviets abducted him or what they

did to him. That's the extraordinarily strange productivity and life of the Thurman guy, who's only known by the name of his instrument now. Yeah. Because it does sound like kind of initially like he really bought into sort of the propaganda of the Soviet Union, right? Yeah. He loved it.

Yeah. Like if he's buying into the propaganda of like, well, they're forward thinkers. They shouldn't have a problem with me, you know, doing cool science in the US and stuff and not, you know, but then the authoritarianism caught up to him, I guess. It did. Like they they just decided if you're a Soviet person and you're alive, you exist to serve the state. That's our philosophy. So they abducted him and brought him back to serve the state. That's our philosophy. So they abducted him and brought him back to serve the state. It also definitely impacted how much he could invent for the world. He was stuck in a weird military prison lab instead of coming up with ideas freely. It's incredibly strange.

That doesn't have any relevance to today's world, does it, Alex? Oh, the government messing with funding for science? No, haven't heard of that. Cool. Sweet. We have one last quick takeaway for the main show and also the bonus shows about the weird stuff he built for the Soviets. Human chimpanzee hybrids?

No. He really did no biological stuff, but his notes say he was interested. It would be cool. Right. But yeah, takeaway number four. Russian teenagers tried to broadcast theremin music to extraterrestrials. And we are waiting to see if extraterrestrials will reply. This is a story from the year 2001.

ASL, please respond. Like ASL, like it's a weird theremin pattern. Yeah, there was a event basically called the Teenage Message where Russian scientists solicited tips from teenagers on what would be worth broadcasting from a very large radar dish for a SATI search for extraterrestrial intelligence projects. And they voted for theremin music. Oh, okay. I mean, I'm really proud of these teenagers for coming up with a mature response.

Yeah, I mean, ASL is probably what most of them pick, but yeah. And Source Here is another book, it's called Extraterrestrial Languages. It's by a Wired magazine staff writer named Daniel Oberhaus. And it's about just our attempts to predict or speak things that aliens would understand. One of our biggest broadcasts, the Evpatoria radar system in Crimea, it sent seven pieces of theremin music to a set of distant stars in 2001. Apparently, there were a bunch of technical reasons that that made sense. That was why scientists offered it as a poll option to the teenagers. I see.

Because maybe it is easy to sort of send in a smaller information package. Yeah. Yeah, very good. That's one of the reasons. Yeah, it's like a small amount of data that will travel well. And Oberhaus says, quote, there amends were also chosen because they produce sustained self oscillating signals that don't fade over time. Unlike the damped oscillations of drums, pianos or guitars, end quote. Like it can be a relatively continuous

tone. Apparently, the really amazing advantage of the theremin is that aliens might be able to see the music instead of hearing it. Unlike some of our other instruments. Is it because the aliens are doing a little of the old LSD? Yeah, they're in the jazz cigarette galaxy. Here's Oberhaus's description of it. Quote, it's high frequency oscillations can be converted into any band of the electromagnetic spectrum. Thus, if an extraterrestrial cannot hear sound in the same frequency as humans,

it is possible to convert the signal into an optical wavelength to produce color music that is purely visual." It's like that instrument in Futurama where you play it and it makes weird holograms. Pretty much accidentally by Leon Thurman, he came up with something that might be the easiest music for extraterrestrials to understand and send back to us. And this is all guesswork, but we just can put together basic wavelength and light and sound theories into this guess. And then like the aliens decrypt it and it's just like a cool ass and a crude drawing of a wiener, because it was submitted by teenagers. And the aliens like, I just heard the SIF pod about the cool ass actually. Have you guys heard this, I guess? because it was submitted by teenagers.

And the aliens like, I just heard the SIF pod about the cool S actually. Have you guys heard this podcast? Just me? Okay, great. Anything with aliens is of course theoretical, but there's two cool things we definitely know. One is that the Interstellar Theorem and Concert is our second idea for sending music to aliens that we've ever had as a planet. Because the first idea was physical media, like the Golden Record

and the Voyager Space Probe. And then the second idea is the continuous analog wave of Theremin music. Did we just send like a recorder like that you we all got in school like the little plastic recorder and with like a capsule it's like this is a this is a human maturation ritual their planet worships something called a hot cross bun I don't know what that is make them think twice about invading this planet when we have an army of school children and their terrible instruments. Well, and the other thing we're very confident about is that if this project worked, like if we can reach and contact aliens with the sound of a theremin, if it works, we won't

know for a few more decades because of just how long it takes the signal to reach the stars it was sent to. Right. Yeah, that makes sense. The chief scientist of the project, Alexander Zaitsev, he says we sent the signal to 16 different stars. It'll reach its first star in 2036. It'll reach its last star in 2070. It'll reach its last star in 2070.

So even if aliens have an instantaneous way of replying somehow, either way it'll be many decades before we know if this worked or not. Potentially we've successfully begun the process. We have no idea. Most likely the alien's going to be some kind of like slug thing that looks up at the sky and then there's like some kind of weird sound that comes out and then the slug alien is like weird and then goes back to its sort of slug business. Right. Oh, it must be a slug alien weather balloon. Anyway. Oh, weird.

Oh, right. But anyway, we'll see. I hope they like the theremin. I hope they like it too and they don't. They're like, we must destroy this planet and their terrible taste in music. Right. Anyway, we'll see. I hope they like the theremin. I hope they like it too and they don't. They're like, we must destroy this planet and their terrible taste in music. Right. Folks, that is the main episode for this week.

Welcome to the outro with fun features for you such as help remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, the theremin is named after a strange celebrity Soviet scientist who invented it. Theremin is his last name. Takeaway number two, the theremin led to most electronic music. Takeaway number three, Leon Theremin went on to invent all kinds of amazing devices for organizations as varied as American companies and a Soviet gulag.

Takeaway number four, Russian teenagers tried to broadcast theremin music to extraterrestrials, and we're waiting to see if extraterrestrials reply. And then a quick numbers section about theremins as a vibe and touchstone in pop music, in movies, and in severance. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode because there's more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now if you support this show at MaximumFun.org. Members are the reason this podcast exists, so members get a bonus show every week where

we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is two astounding pieces of Cold War spy technology invented by Leon Theramon. This instrument might only be the fourth or fifth most impressive thing he ever built. He was an astounding Cold War spycraft engineer. Visit sifpod.fun for that bonus show. For a library of almost 20 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows and a catalog of all sorts of max fun bonus shows, it's special audio, it's just for members. Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation. And by the way, yet another thank you to people who supported us in the maximum fun drive just a few weeks ago. One of the things you unlocked is digital art

for episode 250 that is coming out this summer. And when I say it's coming out, both the episode is coming out and the art. When you're a Max Fun member, you get our previous pieces of digital art for anniversary milestone episodes. And you will also get that new one as soon as it's out. Additional fun things, check out our research sources

on this episode's page at MaximumFun.org. Key sources this week include a lot of amazing science writing. A piece for Discover magazine by Nathaniel Sharpling. A piece for Smithsonian magazine by Nora McGreevey. Also expertise from the digital collections of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, which has examples of stuff like the Rhythmicon, the prototype of a drum machine. And the key book about the music and spy craft of this episode, it's called Theremin, Ether

Music, and Espionage, that is written by Albert Glinski, who's a music professor at Mercyhurst College. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca, I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenapehoking, the traditional land of the Munsee Lenape people and the Wapandru people, as well as the Mohican people, Skatigok people, and others. Also KD taped this in the country of Italy, and I want to acknowledge that in my location, in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, native people are very much still

here. That feels worth doing on each episode and join the free CIF Discord where we're sharing stories and resources about native people and life. There is a link in this episode's description to join the Discord. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord

and hey, would you like a tip on another episode? Cause each week I'm finding you something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is about episode 118. That's about the topic of the Great Lakes of North America. Fun fact there, some people believe

there are really four Great Lakes. Other people believe there are six. Some other people believe there are one. There's a lot of fun hydrological and geographical debate about whether there's five Great Lakes or not. There might be four or six or one or nine if you count some lakes that are entirely in Canada. It's wild. So I recommend that episode. I also recommend my co-host Katie Goldin's weekly podcast Creature Feature, Theremin Vibes, about animals and science and more.

Our theme music is Unbroken, Unshaven by the BUDDHOS band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra extra special thanks go to our members. And thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that?

Talk to you then. Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.