Hello, and welcome to the Physics World Stories
podcast. I'm Andre Glesser, and in this episode,
we're gonna be exploring
the intersection
between physics and music, or at least we're
gonna be listening to some physics based songs
in the company of Linda Williams.
Having performed for the likes of Kip Thorne
and Stephen Hawking, Linda finds herself about to
embark on a tour which begins
performing
a song about
and in front of
Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell.
We'll hear about that later in the podcast,
but let's begin with one of her songs.
The curl of the Faraday's law.
Now the trick is to use the vector
ID for the curl, I'll curl.
And then you'll see that everything simplifies,
because Gauss's law tells us that del dot
E is zero,
and Ampere's law
simplifies the other side.
Aloha. My name is Linda Williams,
and I'm the physics chanthus.
I produce,
original
science cabaret for
scientists
and the general public.
My background is I'm a physicist, and I
have over twenty years teaching
as a tenured college professor.
But now I'm retired from that, and I'm
just
getting my act together and taking it on
the road.
And cooled the particle
zoo was born in the goo.
Photons,
bosons,
gravitons,
leptons,
energy, radiation.
Science cabaret or physics cabaret or cosmic cabaret
or atomic cabaret or algebra cabaret
is just a form of,
musical theater performance
where the topics are whatever
issue you want. Right now, I'm doing a
new show called Atomic Cabaret, which is all
about the nuclear world we live in, and
it commemorates
the eightieth anniversary
of the US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
this year.
And,
I've also done
algebra cabaret, which is a cabaret all about
math. So it's essentially songs and repartee, and,
usually, I'm a solo act, but sometimes I'll
bring in other performers.
And, yeah, so it's science themed,
theater, musical theater
in a cabaret genre. Because you're about to
go on tour.
Yes. So I'm about to embark on a
journey to The UK. I'm going on tour.
It's been a bucket list of mine to
perform at the Edinburgh
Fringe Festival, which I'll be doing this year.
But my first stop is in Belfast
at the International
Symposium
on Astronomy and Culture.
It's called INSAAP,
and,
it's a fantastic
conference
of, artists and astronomers
and archaeologists
and folks who are into
ancient astronomy, archaeoastronomy,
and just all coming together and seeing how,
astronomy influences art and culture. So I'm going
to be doing the banquet,
show at the Belfast
Castle,
on June 12. Amazing. So Edinburgh Fringe,
I can kinda see that. I can see
you performing there. That that's gonna go very
well, I think.
I hope so. Yeah. Yeah.
I what what did you teach? Physics?
I taught at a,
college in California
at
at Santa Rosa Community College,
junior college
for twenty years. So I essentially taught all
of the lower division
courses,
calculus based, algebra based. I also taught some
astronomy.
And, yeah, I did that for twenty years.
And during COVID, I moved to Hawaii and
was teaching remotely.
And when they said, we're gonna go back
face to face, I said, aloha. I'm I'm
staying.
And, I ended up working at the Gemini
Observatory on Mauna Kea as a tour guide
for a couple years.
And then now I just decided to go
on tour while I still can sing and
dance.
Did your students know about your alter ego?
No. I mean, I I was performing long
before I got into physics.
So I was performing first,
And then, you know, I was auditioning and
trying to get into the business in Los
Angeles, and I was just bored. And I'm
I said, I'm gonna write my own shows.
So I went to college. I never thought
I'd go to college. And I went to
college,
And,
I just realized, like, I needed to find
something I was interested in,
and I ended up
falling in love with astronomy and physics. And,
I mean, people thought I'd be a, you
know, like a stripper in Vegas. No one
thought I'd end up going into physics, and
it turned out I was good at it.
So then, naturally, I just started, you know,
creating work about it and performing. Because, you
know, as soon as I've learned about the
Particle Zoo, I was like, oh my god.
You could totally sing about corks. You could
sing about the Big Bang. Everything is so
singable,
and it's fascinating, and I love it all.
And so I just naturally put it to
music and theater, and I've been doing it
for a long time.
I grew up in the eighties,
during the, you know, super high threat of
nuclear Armageddon, and I became an antinuclear activist.
And so it was through that, actually, and
I I just I remember picking up a
Scientific American, and I couldn't
understand it. And I thought, what? I am
missing something.
So I went to the library, and I
I just started reading. I mean, I picked
out books like,
you know,
Kant's Progolema to any future metaphysics. Like, I'm
just pulling stuff, and I'm like, I can't
comprehend this. And so then I said, well,
I'm gonna go study physics and math. And
I literally
taught myself trigonometry over the summer and started
taking calculus, and I was good at it.
It's like I'm a savant of some form.
You know?
Like, an idiot savant, a bim smart bimbo.
But,
yeah. So before that, like, in high school,
I was doing shows. I was performing. I
would you know, I've always been singing and
dancing.
So then I just naturally started doing shows
about physics. And my first show
was when I was in grad school. It
was called Cosmic Cabaret, and it was all
about the big bang and the evolution of
the universe.
And I always have, you know, environmental and
social justice issues woven in
to it all, you know, to kind of
complement my activism with my,
love for science and
and,
astronomy. And so,
how the Physics Chantouse was born. So I
was doing shows for years
that always had sort of a combination
of science fiction, science fantasy, science kinda melded
together with musical theater and comedy.
And then when I I went to my
first conference, the American Physics
Society, APS conference, and I was sitting in
the banquet,
and what they had on stage was so
boring. I wrote down on my
cocktail napkin the physics chanteuse, and I said
to myself,
I'm gonna do shows for scientists. Because one
of the one of the problems about doing
science theater is exposition.
So if you're gonna make a joke
about the big bang or you're gonna make
a joke about physics, you have to explain
it to your audience. And when you have
an scientifically
illiterate or not very literate audience, you have
to do a lot of explaining before you
can get to the punch line. So I
remember just thinking, like, I can
do shows for scientists with no exposition
whatsoever.
And that's how the Physics Chanties was born.
I just started you know, the first show
I did was for a solid state conference,
and I, you know, I just researched the
material and, you know, talked to the organizers
and see who's in the audience and write
a song for somebody and and, you know,
working on and I'm a had people come
up and say, I can't believe you put
my research in your song. Like, only five
people in the world know about that. You
know? It's just it's just so much fun.
You know? So my although I do write
songs for the general public and kids and
up with science stuff, I I really love
writing
songs that are scientifically
accurate for a scientific audience. And I think
that's what's unique about my show because there's
plenty of people doing science theater for a
general audience.
But doing it just for scientists is just
a whole another level, and I just love
it, which brings me to what I'm doing
at INSAAP, which is writing the song
for Dame Jocelyn Bell Brunel,
on Pulsars.
You've written for a few people. You've written
songs for a few people. We'll come to
some of those, but Dame Jocelyn Bell Brunel
is,
well, I think legend is thrown around too
much because she really is one. She's such
an inspiration.
Her story is she's so humble.
She's a Quaker. You know, she's just so
humble, and her contribution is so magnificent, and
she's such a fighter. And as a woman
and a feminist,
and, you know, I'm mature older woman. So
when I went to school, I was often
the only woman in class.
But, you know, she
she stuck to her guns. Right? Her her,
thesis adviser who won the Nobel Prize, you
know, he used to call her stupid.
So I didn't put any of that in
the song I wrote. I just honored her
discovery
and, you know, not
complain about,
her not getting the Nobel Prize. Although I
mentioned it, but even she says, well, I'm
just thrilled that they thought
my little pulsating star was worthy of, you
know, a Nobel Prize.
She's so humble. It's incredible.
So, yeah, I'm thrilled to hear. Where does
the the creative process start? Is it with
the words? Is it with the melody? Usually,
when it's for a scientist like this, it's
the words. It's the research. So I have
to,
I watched her give talks for this, honestly,
and I would say that 90% of this
song is her words.
Jocelyn Bell
was a PhD
grad student
studying
astronomy
at Cambridge
in '67.
She was looking for quasars,
ressinging the planetary
scintillation.
She built a radio
telescope with over 4,000
dipole antennas.
Now face, face switch
receiver
So I mean okay. Here's what happened. She
gave a talk, and the title of the
talk was
tick tick tick
pulsating star, how we wonder what you are,
and that's the chorus of the song. So
I just pulled that from her talk. And
then as I'm watching her talk, and she
was giving the the speech that she gave
I've watched several, but one she was giving
at Stanford. So it was to a scientific
audience.
And so, you know, I'm taking notes, and
the way I usually do is I'll take
tons and tons of note. I love doing
research, so I spend way too much time
doing research
instead of practicing the song. But, so I'll
I'll do a lot of writing, and then
I pair it down, and then I turn
them into
lines.
And then I take the lines, and I
put them into shorter statements, and then I
try to rhyme them. Pass shows rough in
the data.
She sped up the paper
to get a final resolution,
and out popped out little green men every
one point three three seven seconds. Tick, tick,
tick, pulse, saving star. I'm
thinking I gotta do a workshop and because
it's the same thing I do
for every scientific song. It's the same process.
Research,
writing,
and then breaking it down into lines and
I where I don't worry about rhyming, and
then I'll do the rhyming scheme.
And then I have to check for accuracy,
which I get in trouble with.
You know, I just have to be really
careful because some things work better structurally,
and then I'll find out like, I'll realize,
like, that's wrong. That's backwards. And then I
have to redo the whole song. I just
had to do that with the Pulsar song.
Actually, I Got a mistake.
Oh, that I can't have any mistakes.
You know? If I'm singing a song in
front of Jocelyn Bell, the my nightmare is
that she's gonna come up to me afterwards
and go, oh, dear. I lovely song. It's
just one bit.
It's actually
the ray is not feeding into the receiver.
The you know, I it's it's like a
nightmare to me is this that come up
and and and have to do a correction.
You know? Listen there. So has anybody ever
done that to you? Have you ever had
that nightmare happen? Well, I just wrote a
song for,
Alan Robock, the climate scientist who works in,
nuclear winter research, and I wrote a song
for him because he has a line that
he said that I go, that's a that's
a hook. And it was,
nuclear winter is a self assured suicide. And
and I that's the chorus of the song,
but I say,
nuclear winter is a self assured suicide. You
bomb your enemy and end up killing everyone
alive. So that's the the the chorus, which
works great.
But I so I finished the song, and
I was so proud, and I sent it
to him. And he said wrote back, and
he goes, I love it.
But, dear, there's a couple mistakes. You know?
And, because I was saying it's ash instead
of smoke, and it's really the smoke that
goes to the stratosphere
and produces
the blocking of the sunlight that creates the
nuclear winter. It's not the ash.
So,
but ash was easier to sing sing than
smoke, so I have to fix it. But,
you know, I'm grateful because I don't want
any mistakes. It's it's a it's science. They're
they're very factual, and I pride myself on
making sure that they're correct.
Do you write all the music yourself as
well? So I do.
I'm not really like, I don't perform live,
but because of the,
in the olden days, I can you know?
And when I first started doing this, I
would use sequencers
and synthesizers,
and I can strum on a guitar, but
I'm a I'm a, I'm a loop maker.
And now I realize I should probably be
a DJ because that's what I love doing
is I can, you know, just take loops
and make songs out of loops now. Like,
with Logic Pro, it's what I'm using right
now.
And I've also been experimenting
with AI songwriting programs because
I'm primarily a lyricist, and I've been experimenting
with dropping lyrics into Suno is one program.
And what they do is they make songs,
and they'll have a singer on it. And
I'll just listen to a thousand,
and, and I'll I can get, like, a
melody out of it. So that's been an
interesting process,
that I've done. I think I have, like
I wrote a song called, There is No
Planet b, Earth is all we need,
and I'd grab the music out of Suno
for that. And then I can pull off
the vocals and sing on it. So that's
an interesting process
that gets people upset. There's a lot of
musicians who you know, it's, like,
unacceptable to be using AI as a tool
like that, but,
I'm just gonna confess and say that I
find it a very interesting process, and it
expediates
the process. Now
having said that, probably 50% of my shows
for scientists
are parodies. I'm the parody queen.
So I can take you know, I do
these medleys of parodies. So I've done medleys
of parodies of pop songs and classic songs
because
that's an easy it's fun. People love it.
They recognize the song. It's, it's clever,
and I don't have to write the,
music.
So, you know, I've done medleys.
I'm doing a medley for the,
Insap Show of, like, songs related to,
you know, astronomy. I've done several
songs for
astronomy, astrophysics, physics. Every show, I do some
parodies. There's entertainment in here. Right? But there's
also science communication.
And you've talked about the, you know, you
don't need the exposition for it. But now
tell me all about the audience reactions from
the sort of
delight to the possible intrigue.
Well,
it's been a I've had a a full
range.
You know, just the first thing that comes
to mind was I did
a show at CERN,
and it was for a,
summer school of science teachers from all over
Eastern Block country. So this was, like, in
February or something. And so there was, you
know, all these teachers,
and they were all drunk,
and the power went out. So here I
am in the most, you know, sophisticated,
physics facility in the world in in the
electricity. So I'm singing acapella because the show
must go on. And the they all start
singing their country songs,
and then they storm the stage and steal
all my stuff.
That was, like, the worst experience.
I have a lot of sing along songs
as well, and I get the audience singing.
So for example,
I did a parody
of,
Blackbird to Black Hole,
you know, instead of, you know,
blackbird singing in the dead of night, that
song I'd you know, I'd instead of rewrote
it as black hole spinning in the dead
of night
and spiraling around out of sight until you
collide. And when black holes collide, they produce
a gravitational
chirp.
So then I
I was able to get a gravitational
chirp from Scott Hughes who was working on
gravitational,
waves. And I put that in the song,
and it sounds like whoop. So then I
have the whole audience
says, everybody chirp, so everyone's going whoop whoop
whoop whoop whoop whoop whoop. And, you know,
so that's kinda fun.
The more they drink, the better. So unless
they get too drunk and they storm the
stage, but, typically,
yeah, the response is really fun,
for the most part. But, you know, I've
had, like, I've had some really negative response
as well.
Yeah. In the earlier days, I would get
invited to a conference,
and
there would be people that would say no.
No. We cannot have a woman on stage
in a slinky outfit singing.
And so I got banned from performing several
times.
Oh, dear.
Yeah. It's a bit of a backlash. But,
you know, it's I understand it. It's like,
look. There's three women at the physics conference,
and one of them shouldn't be on stage
in the slinky outfit.
So, you know, until there's more parity
oh, I got a little play on parity.
Parity, parity. Until until there's more quality in
the you know, in physics,
I understand that. So it's it's, you know,
I understand that. Okay. Fair enough. People are
being entertained. Some people are being, you know,
upset by it. But most people are being
entertained. Because at Edinburgh Fringe, not everybody is
going to be a scientist the way they
would be at CERN or or at conference.
The world premiere of Atomic Haberay will be
in Belfast right after NSAP on,
June 18. And then I go on tour.
So then after that, I'll be taking
it to,
York and then Leeds and then London and
then you know? So several different fringes. And
if you go to my website, atomiccabaret.com,
you can see all the
venues in, The UK that I'm doing. So
that show is geared towards a general audience,
so I will have to do exposition,
which just means that you you know, I'm
talking, I sing, I talk, I sing, and
I have to explain,
the physics. So for this show, it's primarily,
it's more political. It's physics and politics because
it's nuclear weapons.
And,
and in The UK, I'm talking about the
dreadnought. I'm talking about the Trident. I'm talking
about the b 61 that The US is
bringing to Lake And Heath. There's been a
lot of protests about that. You might have
heard the show is a benefit for CND,
and their attempt to, abolish nuclear weapons.
So I will talk you know, I'm talking
about
how what radiation is, what nuclear physics is.
You know? But then I'm singing a song
about depleted uranium. So it's not as much
of it as a
science show and,
so it's a bit of a,
different, you know,
show for me, which I'm excited about. So
because I'm getting on in age, and so
I kinda feel like I I need to
be more,
political,
because the world's also kind of in bad
shape right now. So I just feel like
it's a use my platform as best I
can to try to do good in the
world,
with physics. That's that seems like a good
idea.
Although I think possibly there are some people
in charge in some countries in the world
who wouldn't want people being political
when they were on tour. I'm thinking of
Bruce Springsteen, for example. He's currently on tour
in The UK, and he's
speaking out against the current
administration in America.
And
the current
president of America used some social media to
put out a message about Bruce Springsteen being
A loser.
That's pretty much what he says about anyone.
He he doesn't like him. Like, Taylor Swift's
not hot anymore.
She's just a loser. It's like anyways.
If I was gonna go to a performance
concert of any sort, I'd probably choose
Taylor Swift,
you, or Bruce Springsteen
over one of his rallies. But did does
that concern you at all for me?
Well, for example,
honestly,
you know, like, so for the INSAAP
show I'm doing, it's a audience of astronomers.
And, you know,
I'll have a little flavor of politics because
I can't help it. You know? I mean,
that's who I am, but
it's not
I'm not beating them over the head with
it. Whereas
Atomic Cabaret is just kind of a different
show
because,
I'm deconstructing,
you know, deterrence, and I'm deconstructing
the,
you know, the politics of
of nuclear weapons. So, you know, that that,
you know, we're making ourselves safer,
you know, by having nuclear weapons is just
absolute madness. So it's a that's a different
show.
Yeah. That's right.
You know, I had, like, this success in
the nineties where I got a full spread
in the New York Times. I was on
To Tell the Truth. I was in People
Magazine. I was, like, in every you know,
I had this
little,
my little fifteen minutes of fame, and what
I got from that was a book deal.
And it was supposed to be, like, my
life on the stage, and I would you
know, it'd be
what it's like to be a woman in
physics and my take on the universe. And
so I got a book deal, and I
got invited
to do a PhD at City University of
New York from with Brian Schwartz, who's a
physicist, and he's very supportive of,
physics and theater and science and the arts.
And so
I started my PhD. I moved to New
York City in February.
So,
a few weeks later, nine eleven happened,
and
I saw the towers fall from my apartment
in Brooklyn, and I fled. I just fled.
I went back to California.
I was very traumatized by that experience. And,
like, what happens often in warfare is that
I found myself pregnant within a year, and
you don't have to put this in the
show, but you know? So I was like,
I have to get a job. I'm a
single mom, so I went I gave up
my career,
and I,
and I taught physics at a community college
for twenty years until my son, you know,
went off to college, and I retired.
And so now that I have this big
twenty year gap
of doing being on the road and doing
shows.
I did, however, have the opportunity
to do some shows, especially at my college,
because we had a planetarium.
So I was producing
shows,
in the planetarium.
I was doing all,
you know, astronomy and physics, like, themes about
Starship Earth and, cosmic evolution
and going in I it's my favorite theater
is the planetarium because the acoustics are really
great. So I would do musical shows in
the planetarium,
and I was able to do that for
years. So I continued to produce work,
but not
out at conferences as much as,
I was doing before just because, you know,
I was a single mom, and I had
to at one point, I was doing shows
a lot, and I was like, I something's
gotta, you know, give because I can't do
it all. I'm gonna either suffer as a
mom or suffer as a teacher or, you
know, suffer as a performer. So I just
said, well, I'll do that later. So now
I'm getting my act back together and taking
it on the road. I'm really excited. Amazing.
Do you feel like the the physics community
has become more
accepting of this sort of
mixture of science and the arts in this
way? Yeah. I I mean, definitely. Like, if
you recall, there was big plays like Copenhagen,
you know, which was a, you know, wild
Tony award winning show.
And I think
with climate science, there's a lot of climate
theater.
I think, like, even at Edinburgh Fringe, there's
a there's a lot of climate shows. I
think so, I mean, it's climate physics.
There's not a lot of physics theater.
No. There's some there's some comedians
who are doing science.
I know there's a mathematician
who and who's doing some stand up,
and he's pretty funny. But it's not that
common, I'd have to say.
So whether or not they
accept it is I mean, it's like with
any field. They're serious. They got business to
take care of. Geologists
are the most chill.
So I love doing the,
you know, the American Geological Union
shows. Done several of those because they're they're
kinda chill. Astronomers tend to be chill. Particle
physicists,
very uptight.
You know, fusion,
I've I've done a I did a fusion
conference. They were pretty uptight. So it just
depends.
You know, people are very serious.
And but I've been really lucky because I've
done a lot of shows with Kip Thorne.
So you know? And he's a big fan.
He's, he even gave me a quote
for this show.
I got to quote him, and he said,
Linda will blow your mind. And I said,
that's perfect. Thank you very much, Kip. You
know? And so Cool.
Yeah.
So not a really great audience when someone
like Kip Thorne comes on stage and introduces
you and says you know,
gives you accolades and says how great you
are. It's like it's hard. Everyone it,
you know, yeah, it just gets everybody jazzed
up. This isn't deliberate, but I'm wearing an
Interstellar T shirt, which is obviously Kip Thorne
Kip Thorne related. So how did you meet
Kip Thorne then? How did that come about?
So
I was hired by Richard Price, who is
a gravitational
theorist for the KipFest. So Kip was turning
60 years old, and
they were planning this giant party at Caltech.
And so
Richard saw me and, you know, somehow found
out about me and hired me. And so
I helped in the coordination. This is my
favorite part is to actually participate in organizing
the party.
And it was my idea, I have to
take credit for, to,
have a,
a, like, a family tree
for Kip, like, where he came from because
so his you have Einstein, then you have
Wheeler, then Wheeler was his mentor, and then
he then you have his tree of all
his students, grad students, and so on. And
so we got to work on that. And,
and so I was able to perform at
the KIPP Fest, and I sang a bunch
of songs, and
that was it. I was at a party
at KIPP's house, and it was like a
who's who in general relativity. And, of course,
his best friend, Stephen Hawking, was there, and
and he yeah. So he invited me back
for several other events to perform at.
Yeah. He's a,
he is a great supporter of you know,
has been for my work.
You met Stephen Hawking as well then?
Yeah. I got to perform at his birthday
party, his sixtieth birthday party.
He had a big birthday party in The
UK, but then he had a smaller little
bash birthday bash,
in a jazz club in,
Pasadena,
and Kip flew me in to perform at
that.
And that was,
that was exciting.
Amazing.
Okay.
Is it do you have a I it's
it's hard to say. Right? Because you've made
songs about and for some pretty amazing people.
Is it do you have a particular favorite,
person to write for or about?
Well, it has to be Kip Thorne. You
know? I mean,
because his work is so phenomenal, and he
is such an amazing person. He's so kind
and generous and
brilliant. And,
yeah, that's probably
been my best greatest muse for sure.
Yeah. And then but as far as, like,
a topic that's fun to write about,
particle physics is really fun to write about
because you have you know, I've written quark
songs and different songs and my love on
song. I was commissioned to write a song
for a science radio show for,
Valentine's,
and I came up with my best song
I've ever written, which is I discovered the
Love On, which is the boson of love.
And so then, you know, it's the particle
of love, and that's been, and I end
every show with that song.
We need to add it to the standard
model chart. It's the force that's missing,
from the chart is the Lovon.
And,
you know, so yeah. So those are that's
a really fun topic to sing about
and write songs about. It's very lyrical.
The standard model of physics
has four forces
in it.
The strong, the weak,
gravity
and the electromagnetic.
But I have found a new force
that rules from high above.
Let me
propose to you
a unified theory of love.
About
when you were doing this in the in
the nineties,
you were talking about nuclear weapons.
We're
back doing it again. You're back doing it
again.
Why do we still need to talk about
this?
Sadly,
because we still have
overkill capacity
to murder the biosphere. I mean, ultimately,
you know, I started writing a song called
the deep
because I'm obsessed with the deep field, and
it starts off by saying I've been staring
at the deep field
and thinking about how many, you know,
thousands of galaxies and millions of billions of
stars, and yet we still have this deep
silence. We have the great silence
of the Fermi paradox. Right? Where why are
we alone? Are we alone? Do does it
do we require
a universe of entropy
in order to have the emergence of this
complexity of life on Earth? Like, what you
know, that I reject Copernicanism
that, you know, we're not special. We're super
special and that we would have the we
would dare
to,
jeopardize something as rare as life,
is out outrageous
to me. It's,
I think about it all the time and
I always have. It's always been I think
the day I discovered,
wow, we can kill all life on earth.
Like, not just kill all life on earth
and, oh, that's okay. Humans will go away,
and then the Earth will be better because
another life form will emerge afterwards.
I'm talking about biotic death, the end of
evolution.
Like, it'll be so dead. There'll only be
extremophiles.
So, you know, that's the sad thing. And
putting that in a show and at the
Edinburgh Fringe is a challenge. So I'm trying
you know? But it's something people don't wanna
talk about.
It is the business of physics. The number
one business of physics is nuclear weapons.
So, you know and that's heartbreaking to me
because
the universe is so interesting and exciting and
fascinating
and everything in it from pulsars to quasars
to the big bang and galaxies and, you
know, we're on this planetary starship
spaceship, spaceship Earth orbiting a star that's dragging
us through a galaxy. And, you know, if
we could think galactically
and preserve life on Earth, who knows where
our future generations will end up and what
will happen? The idea that we have to
extend the human,
species to Mars to preserve the light of
consciousness,
like, from Elon Musk,
is just ridiculous.
Because it's like a Mars is like a
shitty little planet. You know? Like, why we're
already interstellar. We're inter we're planetary.
We're on this the spaceship. That's kind of
my ethos I'm working on right now that's
also in my show, which is, like, you
know, let's let's try to get rid of
our capacity to murder the biosphere
so that we can continue on this journey
in space because,
you know, this is the I actually have
a song. This is how it's it's it's
called Spaceship Earth, and it starts out with,
you know, often you hear Elon Musk saying
that humans have to colonize Mars, that we
have to go to the stars, that we
have to go to space. And I just
wonder, where does he think we are? We
are in space. We're on a planet. We're
in you know, so it goes into this
whole thing, and it's just like, you know,
it's it's like,
Copernicus never happened. We're all living like we're
flatlanders,
that all there is is Earth. It's the
center of the universe, and we don't have
this galactic
perspective that we're on a planet orbiting a
star, orbiting a galaxy in a local group
of galaxies expanding with the Hubble flow. I
mean, we gotta think galactic to save ourselves.
We gotta be more Star Trek and less
Star Wars. I mean, I like Star Wars
too. But, yes, I see what you're saying.
I know. I like them both too.
So it seems a really odd decision that
when but my daughter used to ask me
that all the time. Star Wars or Star
Trek? I'll be like, both? Why why do
I have to choose between them?
The world premiere is a very exciting time
because you've never performed it before.
I suspect that
the world premiere will look quite different as
a show to the last one you do
in the Edinburgh Fringe because you've you've evolved
with the audience's reaction. You know, there's a
I forget what it's called. Just telling you
this because I did perform several times at
the Swedish
Science Festival.
Because, you know, in other countries, science is
huge. Edinburgh has Edinburgh has a science festival,
fringe festival. I mean, there's it's much more
popular in Europe than it is in in
The States.
They have something. It's a it's I forget
what the word is, and it's I forgot
about this, and I need to find what
it is. There's a Swedish
word for an artist who kind of goes
to a place and and creates on the
spot. Now that's not exactly what I'm doing,
but
I am
when I go to another location if I
were to go globally, I would, like, talk
about what's you know, just like a stand
up comedian does that. Right? They go and
they talk about the issues of that community.
So
when I'm in Scotland, I'm doing a show
in Glasgow.
I'm going to talk about
Fastlane. That's where the Trident submarines are based.
You know? And so there's if I was
doing a show,
you know, down south in in in England,
I would, you know, talk about Lakenheath and
the B 60 1 or or whatnot. So
there's different issues. But, yeah, the show is
gonna evolve.
I do extemporaneous
performance. So what I'm doing is I have
all the songs. I have a script.
I have you know, I'm using PowerPoint. So,
you know, there's a structure to it, but
it's changing.
So the beauty of everything except Edinburgh I
mean, Edinburgh, I got forty five minutes. I
got ten minutes in, ten minutes out. Like,
there is you know, I've never been to
the Fringe before, so I'm sure it's gonna
blow my mind. But, you know, that's the
whole thing. It's like you got ten minutes
to get in, set up, do your show,
ten minutes out. So it I'll be much
whatever what I end up doing
at the end of my tour at Edinburgh
will be very different than what I'm doing
in Belfast, you know, for the world premiere.
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. David,
how many shows are you gonna be doing
in Edinburgh?
Nine.
So I'm just I'm not doing the full
run because I have no idea what to
expect. And quite honestly,
I've never done more than
two shows. Like, I've done several weekends
consecutively, but only weekends. Like, I've never done
I don't know how people do three weeks.
You know, night after night after night, I'm,
like, tired. I like, anyway so,
but then I plan to take this to
Australia because they have fringes. But, you know,
next year
is the some anniversary for Chernobyl. And I'm
like, I'm gonna do the Chernobyl show.
And I have a song for that.
I haven't written it yet, but it's a
it's a parody of, I don't know if
you know this song from American in Paris,
but it's like it's like, I'm building a
staircase to paradise
with a new step every day.
Maurice shall I forget who's singing it, but
Maurice
some old singer guy.
And so they wanna do, like, this I'll
have an animation of the sarcophagus that's slipping
over. Chernobyl will be like, I'm building a
staircase to paradise.
One sarcophagus
every
decade or whatever it end up being.
They just but, right, Russians just drone bomb
the sarcophagus.
You know? It's like, what, a hundred million
dollars, you know, to do that? They're gonna
have to do it forever.
Mhmm. I mean
right? I mean, think of, like, at least
with Chernobyl,
they can cover it. With Fukushima,
it's just oozing into the ocean.
You know? So,
it's kind of like a it would be
more like a show about these wounds on
mother earth that we're gonna have to, like,
take care of, like, vessel virgins serving
the altar, you know, like, forever. We're gonna
have to be caring for these wounds we
created
with, you know, our technology.
My feeling about this is, like, look. How
many songs are written about love?
Millions. Right?
How many why don't why aren't we singing
about everything? Why aren't we singing about,
you know, quarks and leptons and,
quasars and pulsars and nuclear weapons? And, you
know, there's a full
universe
of topics that are worthy
of singing about
and celebrating
and hopefully is entertaining to people, not just
scientists. So that's
that's kinda my jam. I do write songs
about love, but it usually involves
a boson. When you hear songs that aren't
scientifically accurate, does it bother you anyhow? I'm
thinking of things like
the final countdown
where they're heading for Venus,
and and maybe they've seen us. I'm not
I know there's possibly life in the clouds
of Venus, but I don't think it's got
eyes. Does that worry you? No. But let's
face it. The best science song ever written
in the history of the world
is the galaxy song.
You know, and I don't know how accurate
that is,
but it's pretty accurate. But that's a fantastic
song. I if I ever wrote a song
that well, I would,
be so proud. But that's a really good
song.
I don't there are like, I'm in a
group of science singers. I've been to conferences
of
science
songwriters.
And if you go on YouTube and you
look up science songs, often what you find
are assignments
teachers have given kids in,
you
know, elementary and middle school or high school
for extra credit. Like, write a song about
carbon or something, and then you'll there's thousands
of songs, parodies mostly,
that you can find. And there's there's other
groups. There's there's the Cernettes.
Right? So the Cernettes was a group at
CERN.
They're not that scientifically accurate. There's Astro Capella
is another group that sings science songs,
and they're accurate. So, I mean, there's actually
people gigging and doing work,
about,
science, but typically for a general audience, you
know, for children. There's two you know that
song, the sun is the mass of incandescent
gas. It was covered by they might be
giants. You know that song?
It's a great song, but it was written
by it was the same guys who wrote
Unchained Melody,
and they also wrote albums,
albums of
songs
on science, and they're spectacular. Like, they wrote
them in the sixties.
Lou Zinger and Hizeret
is their name. You gotta look it up.
Like, they're spec I've covered several
of their songs,
in my show, like,
what does the glass of a greenhouse
do? It doesn't let the long heat waves
pass through. I mean, they're just they're for
kids, but they're fantastic songs. Like, they're really
and they have songs about the stratosphere and
I've sung I've used them all. Tom Lear.
He's probably the first
person to sing about science, and he he
was also an activist.
Right? So he also wrote about bombs.
He was, I think he was a Quaker.
God bless the Quakers.
So,
you know, I think he was the first,
and then
the,
you know,
Hi Zaret and Lou Zinger, their names are
so great,
did albums full.
And then They Might Be Giants covered one
of their songs. And so, I mean, I
really haven't you know, I guess I could
do a PhD on this, like,
someday. But there is, like, a history of
it. I haven't really seen anyone
doing
cabaret. Like, I mean, my goal when I
went to get my PhD in New York
and have a book deal in 02/2001
was that I was gonna go to Broadway
and do, you know, Cosmic Cabaret on Broadway.
That was that was my goal.
And I'd wanted to have a doctorate because,
you know, I think because it legitimizes
you. And I was doing pedagogy, actually. So
I was doing science pedagogy.
So you you're an activist.
You're a scientist.
You're a science communicator.
If you if you could use one song
to fix one problem in the world, what
would you sing about to fix? It's the
Love On song
that, you know,
I just you have to believe in love.
Like, compassion,
empathy
is something that
physics can't
describe.
Right? So I you know, ultimately,
even though I do sing about science,
if I want to try to save the
world, the best thing I can do is
try to provoke empathy and compassion in people,
whether you're a scientist or not a scientist.
That mediates
the force of love
But you can't measure it You can only
feel it Pulling on the super strings of
your heart We should add it to the
standard model chart The force that rules from
high above
in a unified
field theory
of love.
I'd like to thank Linda very much for
talking to me and wish you the very
best of luck for that tour. If you'd
like to find out more about the tour,
maybe get some tickets and go along to
it, Linda's website is scintainment.com.
So if you think about science and entertainment,
combine those two words, scintainment.com.
But if you struggle with that, we'll, of
course, post a link to it on the
Physics World website,
physicsworld.com,
and we'll be back next month with something
else from this wonderful world of physics. Thank
you very much for listening.
Fundamentally,
you know, love on, baby.