The New Yorker Radio Hour - Atul Gawande and Andrew Bird Discuss the Art and Science of Cancer

Episode Date: December 29, 2020

Atul Gawande is a New Yorker staff writer, a practicing surgeon, and an indie-music fan, and he loves the work of the songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and whistling virtuoso Andrew Bird; Gawande has included Bird’s songs in playlists he uses in the operating room. In 2016, at the New Yorker Festival, Gawande spoke with Bird about songwriting, confronting illness, the nature of cancer, and whistling. Andrew Bird performed “Capsized,” in which he played all of the parts with the help of looping devices. Bird’s latest record is “Hark!” a Christmas-themed album. Atul Gawande was recently appointed to the incoming Biden Administration’s COVID-19 task force. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. That's from the record called Hark, a Christmas-themed record by Andrew Bird. Bird is a singer, a songwriter, a violinist, a guitarist, and he whistles quite a lot, certainly more than anybody in indie music. One of his most avid fans is the New Yorkers, Atul Gawande. Atoll's a terrific writer and a surgeon, and recently appointed to the Biden administration. COVID-19 task force. Attul is also a big music guy, and sometimes he has Andrew Bird on his playlist while he's in

the operating room. Atul Gawande sat down with Andrew Bird at the New Yorker Festival in 2016. I've been a fan of yours from the first album, 2003 Weather Systems. When I heard the next album, or two albums after that, Dark Matter, you said that, you know, When I was a little boy, I threw away my action toys and devoted myself to playing Operation. Yeah. And I was just a little boy. I became obsessed with.

Did you really actually want to be a surgeon? Because I've been hoping. No, I was more interested in psychiatry, actually. I wanted to be a psychiatrist, seriously, yeah. You did? Yeah. Where'd you go up, and how, and did you know your interest in music? Were you actually, or were you thinking you might like to be a doctor?

Well, I grew up around Chicago, north of Chicago, in Lake Bluff, Illinois. And I started playing violin when I was four, and it was just, it was something, it was my mom's idea and I played Suzuki violin completely by ear for the first 10 years. And it's just something I did every week, almost every day of my life from before I was really conscious human. So I didn't really think of it in terms of, and I still don't as like a profession. So when I thought of like, what do you want to be when you grow up? I thought I like the interior design of the, the psychiatry. office. I like the wood paneling and all the accessories. And I was curious about human behavior,

but yeah. You were growing up with lots of different interests as a kid. Yeah. What was the path that led you down this particular path and what were the others that might have happened? Well, I mean, I didn't get really serious about music until I was maybe 15 when not much. in your life is going very well, you know. And I was already pretty good at this, and I was looking for something, some sort of thing to feel good about. And I was like, wow, I already kind of have this in the bag, almost half in the bag. And I threw myself into it in a sort of high school sort of, I'm going to be an artist sort of thing. And then my head was filled with all these lofty ideas. I'm going to be the greatest violinist.

And it was my goth music, you know, in high school. I mean, all my friends were kind of the goth kids, but I didn't actually care for that music very much. I preferred, you know, Dvorzac and Mozart's Requiem and all that stuff. It's the same thing. You're truly got. I was old school goth, yeah. Yeah.

But then I started practicing, you know, six to eight hours a day, I got pretty fanatical about it. You did classical music. By the time he went to college, it was with a focus on classical music. Yeah, violin performance, yeah. And where were you in school? At Northwestern. And so what were you thinking would happen after that? Well, at first I was thinking, I guess I'm going to do this classical thing,

although I was starting to get hints that maybe that was going to be tough and I wasn't really cut out for it. I didn't love being in orchestras. And I didn't get along with my teachers so well. Not that they didn't get along, but they were trying to show me how to do one thing, and I was excited about, you know, Hungarian gypsy music. I was like, look, I want to improvise my own cadenza in this concerto. And they said, no, you have to play the transcription of the guy in 1880 who did this. And I was like, I want to bring improvisation back to classical music.

and they're like, no, just do the program, and then when you get out, you can do what you want, which by the time I got out, I was so eager to do what I wanted that I haven't read a lick of music since I left school. When did you start to think, you know, maybe this violin and whistling would be the basis for fantastic rock and roll?

Well, I kind of backed into it. I didn't whistle at first because I thought, oh, that'd be too cute, you know. But I whistle, if you hung out with me for a day, it would drive you crazy because I whistle nonstop. I often say if I'm not eating or talking or sleeping, I'm whistling, no matter what mood I'm in. And so I didn't think to put that on a record until swimming hour. And then it's when I'm a moment. I started playing solo and I noticed and I started doing the looping that the timbre of the whistle really cuts through all the mid-rangee violin stuff. It was more like a mix thing. I'm just trying to

use everything in my disposal to keep people's attention in a solo context and the whistling. I would fill my lungs with air and just hold a note until people stop their conversations. And it was really effective. Because they wondered what the hell you were doing. There's like, what is that, what's that piercing sound? There's something maybe where I resonate so much with what you do. And at some extent, the New Yorker does, because it's occupying the space between being challenging and wanting to be generally connecting with lots of people.

Right. And yet, being relatively demanding 10,000 word stories on, you know, why we itch. And a woman who, you know, scratched her way all the way through her skull. Is that your article? It was me. Okay.

It was one of mine. But the kind of thing that I'm not toying with you, but wanting to draw people in, but without the same tricks, right? That's what I think the New Yorker is generally trying to do. Yeah. I mean, I guess it's a, My approach to communication has generally been, yeah, a little bit perceived as maybe opaque or like obtuse or whatever.

But it's there for you. It's there for you if you want to dig into it. It's like usually I start with a really strong melody and I'm compelled to sing that melody and I have a need for words. And I think, well, let's talk about something interesting. That's generally how I come at it. This album is really different because it's so direct and personal. You're singing about meeting your wife, and you're singing about having a child.

I love to play a few minutes from Puma. The first time I heard this song, I felt like I knew exactly what it was about. And I hadn't read anything about it, heard anything about it if people, if we could play Puma. It's just a tumor and she was radioactive for seven days. And as soon as I heard that line, I'm a endocrine surgeon. I do thyroid cancer care. And I'm like, this is a song about thyroid cancer. And the treatment you undergo for it involves being radioactive for seven days. And we,

the doctor tells you to stay away, only you made it this beautiful thing of because of the flying neutrinos and the gamma rays. And but you wanted to hold her anyway. And you made this thing that's like a regular part of my life and what I do for people and turned it into art in a way that I didn't really even understand could be possible. It was this amazing thing. I mean, I play this song for patients now in, and I played in my operating. room doing these operations. Yeah. And being that direct is not something that you have wanted to do before. And I was really struck by you're letting it hang out there and be that personal. I don't think you're entirely comfortable being there, are you?

No, I had some major, I paused for sure when I was working on this song. But, I mean, how could I go ahead and make another record and have gone through what we went through without, and completely omit these things that were so real and pervasive and just visceral? So basically that song opens with, do you see particles in the air? And this is when we were living in New York in an apartment where you couldn't see much more than just

a patch of sky out the window. And there's maybe an electrical wire. And you've ever had that experience where you look out at the air and you feel like you can see the subatomic particles? And it's probably just some dust. But either way, and in New York, yes. Yes. And I was thinking, I mean, basically the song

is about how my wife, Kathy, handled this really scary thing right after we had a kid. this really crazy, reckless thing, it seemed like. I mean, a guy in a space suit comes in and puts a pill on your tongue, and they say, okay, just take a cab home, but sit as far away from the driver as possible. And then she had to lock herself in her apartment for at least seven days. And I took our son upstate just to assure that we wouldn't,

you know, be tempted. And I thought, this is crazy, reckless, you know. And I was thinking about those particles and how are we always, are we constantly being lacerated by these subatomic particles? What is cancer? I mean, that's my question for you. I guess what I'm wondering is like, and maybe there's been discussions of this or not, But does cancer have a purpose?

There seems to be some genetic, it seems to be in our genetic code to some degree, and then there's environmental. But does it, is there some reason cancer exists? If I told you, then the song wouldn't happen, right? It occurs because we're constantly bombarded by radiation from the sun and from outer space. our DNA undergo mutations all the time.

We generate a cancer cell almost every day, and your body clears it out. And we have a defense mechanism that is really good at clearing it out. And yet, every once in a while, one can get through, and the longer you live, the more likely it gets through. And the shocking thing is it can nonetheless get through when you're a child. It can get through in young age, like you guys, and go onward. The fantastic news is she's doing great.

But nonetheless, it is one of the few ways in which we're aware of our fragility, unlike a century ago, when you could get a flu, you could get a broken leg, you could get a strep throat. George Washington died from a strep throat, you know, three days later he was dead because we didn't have treatment for it. And so I think it's still our being in touch with the fact that we're still, animal, mortal beings. I like to write about things that I don't understand, you know? And it's, so let's not get to the bottom of it tonight.

Let's not. Exactly. I don't have anything to write about it. The other part of that song is the reason why it's so upbeat is because it's more, there's other lines there that are about how my wife dealt with the scary thing, with a sense of humor and grace, you know, that impressed the crudotomy. But it was just, you know, the line of the,

we were on our way to get some test results and we knew something wasn't right. And she said, I'm afraid they're going to tell me I'm a girl and not a Puma, which is an inside joke to some degree, but I just thought it was amazing that she was able to think that way and it's such a scary moment.

Anyway, she has kind of a very feline fixation and embodies that as well. So, anyway. I think this album, though, has done so well because it is accessible at times. And then other times when, you know, I didn't understand what Puma was about. I knew there was something personal in it, but it brought out something that was just at another level of connection. And that's what makes it art and what makes it beautiful with the music interplay, interplaying with the lyrics. And I think there are those many moments,

you know, valleys of the young. Which struck me as on one level being straightforwardly about having a child and suddenly not being connected to those people who have brunches and sleep in late every day. And yet there seems to be a whole other layer to it that I never could guess or understand. Am I reading that right? Yeah.

I mean, and I say that for the last verse, which gets kind of brutal, talking about, it's based on an actual, something that a friend of mine went through, but it imagines to parents that are going to the aid of their adult child who's just tried to commit suicide, but they're at the end of their life or quite a bit, you know,

they're still in that parent mode of like going to the aid of their child who's in middle age, you know. So it's, that was kind of a sucker punch in the song, because I'm talking otherwise about these more superficial things that happen in urban environments between people who have kids don't and that chasm between, which is something to talk about. But this last verse was like, I'm going to grab you by the collar. Make sure you're really listening, you know. Well, I want to thank Andrew Bird for the time we've had to mine a little bit of your life and music. You're an amazing person and musician. And we're in for a treat with you playing solo on stage and constructing your music in front of us. So I'd like to have a warm round of applause for Andrew Burr. To know someone's watching you, watching me watching you

And all they will look upon You may not know me but you feel my stare And as she sees you It changes you Rearranges your mind the cute Andrew Bird performing at the New Yorker Festival in 2016 That's the New Yorker Radio Hour today Thank you as ever for listening

Have a wonderful Christmas Wherever you are, I hope you're safe Warm and well See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.