Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature feature production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology
Speaker 1: and evolutionary biology, and today on the show, we're talking
Speaker 1: animals that are unusually musical. Music isn't just something that
Speaker 1: nearly every human on the planet loves, but something that
Speaker 1: can be found from up in the skies to deep
Speaker 1: under the ocean. And we have a special guest from
Speaker 1: NASA who uses music to educate and inspire discover this
Speaker 1: more as we answer the angel question, do all birds
Speaker 1: like Taylor Swift or just the Swift's Joel Monique, our
Speaker 1: lovely producer, is back with us again on a hot mic,
Speaker 1: and joining me today is NASA engineer, creator, educator, and
Speaker 1: musician Deja Williams. Welcome, Deja, Hi are you? I am
Speaker 1: really good? I'm so excit I had to talk about
Speaker 1: music with you. I It's always fascinated me how it's
Speaker 1: its own language where you just like listen to a
Speaker 1: piece of music and you feel this raw emotion and
Speaker 1: it feels like we're sort of connected to the natural
Speaker 1: world in a way. And so I'm I'm just so
Speaker 1: excited about this topic and I'm so excited to have you.
Speaker 1: I've never I don't think i've ever spoken to anyone
Speaker 1: from NASA before. Yeah, I'm excited to do this too.
Speaker 1: I I never. I've always had an appreciation for just
Speaker 1: natural songs. I love when I see people making instrumentals
Speaker 1: or beats to like just things that they have at
Speaker 1: their house, whether it's a pen or like or the
Speaker 1: wind or the river sounds. So I'm super excited to
Speaker 1: look at music in a different perspective today. Yes, Yes,
Speaker 1: And we will have an interview with you in the
Speaker 1: middle of the episode where we will talk about your
Speaker 1: own musical talent. You create songs to help get people
Speaker 1: interested in STEM in math and engineering, which is really exciting.
Speaker 1: It's a wonderful way to learn through music. I remember.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is kind of funny, but I remember
Speaker 1: I could only learn the U. S States through that
Speaker 1: Animaniac song that Oklahoma said it. I don't remember it now,
Speaker 1: but as a kid, it helped me. Helped me immensely
Speaker 1: pass that test. Yes, I know, I'm trying to think
Speaker 1: of it so bad, I can't think of how it goes,
Speaker 1: But yes, that that was the song of our first
Speaker 1: grade year. That was our thing, but it helps unlock
Speaker 1: a part of your brain. I think it's like, in fact,
Speaker 1: like there's this whole thing where people who have suffered
Speaker 1: some kind of brain trauma, either through a stroke or
Speaker 1: brain injury, even if they can't talk, sometimes they can
Speaker 1: still see because it's a different part of the brain.
Speaker 1: So if the part of the brain that allows them
Speaker 1: to sing or play music is still functioning, then they
Speaker 1: can sing and play music but they can't like, and
Speaker 1: they can maybe communicate through using their singing voice instead
Speaker 1: of their talking voice, which is I think really fascinating. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's it's it's such a mysterious thing. And then
Speaker 1: we'll talk about later in the episode. Some of these
Speaker 1: mysteries of music, especially when it comes to music and nature,
Speaker 1: I have yet to be discovered, but they are really
Speaker 1: interesting and really exciting. We can I ask before we
Speaker 1: move on, how'd you get into like music? Oh? My god, great,
Speaker 1: great question. So I got into music, but my my
Speaker 1: family played a huge influence. Every year, we have this thing.
Speaker 1: It's not necessarily a family reunion. We call it a
Speaker 1: pig party, but everybody goes down to Atlanta and we
Speaker 1: have a talent show where everybody in the family has
Speaker 1: to participate, especially the kids. So I would have my
Speaker 1: bigger cousins right the wraps and and things of that.
Speaker 1: So or I'm from St. Louis, Missouri, so Nellie was
Speaker 1: huge at the time, so we would always like wrap
Speaker 1: Nellie song. So that that's what got me like in
Speaker 1: tune with music, trying to be prepared for the family
Speaker 1: talent show. How'd you do? I did a pretty good.
Speaker 1: My cousins always beat me out, But look, I'm the
Speaker 1: one doing the music now, you know. I gotta make
Speaker 1: sure that they don't hear this. Oh my god, you're
Speaker 1: calling them out. You speaking of learning music from a
Speaker 1: young age. I do want to talk first about birds,
Speaker 1: which I think are the most iconic animal musicians. It's
Speaker 1: the iconic animal who makes music in a way where
Speaker 1: we feel that by just hearing them seeing we can
Speaker 1: sort of understand them in a way that is otherwise
Speaker 1: hard to understand. Joel, I know that your relationships with
Speaker 1: birds is a little bit iffy. It even bird calls,
Speaker 1: which we all know are actually dinosaur screams. Are they
Speaker 1: very some are very nice and you're like, Wow, what
Speaker 1: a wonderful way to like wake up in the morning,
Speaker 1: and sometimes a giant raven is sitting in the palm
Speaker 1: tree outside of your house staring at you singing, and
Speaker 1: you're like, I know you hold grudges. I feel like
Speaker 1: I haven't done anything specifically to you. But maybe the
Speaker 1: birds know that I'm afraid of them, and they're stalking
Speaker 1: my space. I don't know. I want to love the
Speaker 1: bird music because I know what's important to them. I
Speaker 1: know it's like what keeps them alive, how communicate and
Speaker 1: find a partner and stuff. It's very romantic. I'd still
Speaker 1: horrified with dinosaur screeches that accompany every sunrise. That's very metal, hilarious.
Speaker 1: The cousin who actually puts on the pig party, he
Speaker 1: actually is scared of birds himself, and he calls it.
Speaker 1: He says that him and birds just have a misunderstanding.
Speaker 1: He doesn't doesn't like to say that he's scared of that.
Speaker 1: He just said, yeah, we don't have a little misunderstanding.
Speaker 1: Nothing too nothing too crazy, but they can hear things.
Speaker 1: I'm not the kind of person who advocates like during
Speaker 1: rocks at birds or like running out they're scared. None
Speaker 1: of that, None of that, None of that, you know.
Speaker 1: I would just like them to stay over there and
Speaker 1: as we over here and we're good, Like, can you
Speaker 1: have a you have a healthy respect for the dinosaurs
Speaker 1: of today that we know I do, I am aware
Speaker 1: of their power. Well, hopefully I will be able to
Speaker 1: convince you to enjoy bird music because actually, so there
Speaker 1: are kind of different types of bird vocalizations. It's not
Speaker 1: all birds songs. So a lot of the stuff you
Speaker 1: hear from, like say a crow, or those like bird
Speaker 1: calls that you hear, it's technically not bird's song, although
Speaker 1: there's with everything in evolutionary biology, like the borders are
Speaker 1: kind of fuzzy. So bird calls are simple vocalizations that
Speaker 1: are often less pleasing to our human ears, and bird songs,
Speaker 1: which are longer, they're more elaborate, they're more complex, and
Speaker 1: we typically find them a lot more pleasing to our ears.
Speaker 1: So generally speaking, bird calls like uh, that raven staring
Speaker 1: at you, Joel going that is sort of a short
Speaker 1: and sweet kind of communication. It's often like an alarm,
Speaker 1: like hey, watch out for that hawk, or like hey
Speaker 1: I'm over here, where are you? Or hey stop that
Speaker 1: or just you know, generally, these like little snippets of communication,
Speaker 1: whereas bird songs are longer and more complex. So, for example,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the musician wrin, which is
Speaker 1: a little rust colored bird with white spots on its
Speaker 1: neck and dark bands on its wings. It's found in
Speaker 1: the Amazon rainforest, and there is a musician wrin call,
Speaker 1: and I want you to listen to the difference between
Speaker 1: its call and its song because it's quite quite remarkable.
Speaker 1: So here's the call and here's the song. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. It's like the difference between like a whistle
Speaker 1: as you're walking down the street and like uh honk
Speaker 1: slash whistle of trying to call someone's attention from across
Speaker 1: the field. It's very different. That's crazy. So they and
Speaker 1: all the is it okay? Are birds like um snowflakes
Speaker 1: through each of their songs are deferent? Are they composing?
Speaker 1: Are they building off of one another? Is there a
Speaker 1: bock level bird who's like that bird was a master songwriter?
Speaker 1: Those are extremely good questions, and those are questions that
Speaker 1: are often the focus of zoom musicology studies and ornithology studies.
Speaker 1: So I would say that the answer is going to
Speaker 1: depend on the species of birds. Usually what happens with
Speaker 1: bird's song is that you have your little baby birds
Speaker 1: and they have this instinctive understanding of which bird songs
Speaker 1: they're supposed to listen to to pick up on somehow,
Speaker 1: which is interesting because bird songs do evolve over time,
Speaker 1: so that mechanism of them being like, ah, that's that's
Speaker 1: one of the that's one of my family, I know,
Speaker 1: I gotta listen to that, uh, is kind of mysterious.
Speaker 1: But they do learn specific songs that like all of
Speaker 1: their species of birds are going to be doing. However,
Speaker 1: they also can in some species and it differs like
Speaker 1: some species have these big repertoires of songs, some species
Speaker 1: just have a couple's songs and generally can have this
Speaker 1: big repertoire of like variations on these bird songs. And
Speaker 1: you could definitely have a bird talk who kind of
Speaker 1: like innovates a little bit and then passes that song
Speaker 1: on to other birds if it catches on. So there
Speaker 1: is bird innovation in songs, and it is really interesting
Speaker 1: to see that happen. It's partially innate, there's a partially
Speaker 1: instinctive ability to sing, and then it's partially learned, which
Speaker 1: is actually you know, there's a lot of debate on
Speaker 1: how humans pick up on language, but it's there's sort
Speaker 1: of this idea that you know, we have these structures
Speaker 1: in our brain that are really good at creating language,
Speaker 1: but then we have to learn it, so we learn
Speaker 1: it from each other. So it's a potentially similar things
Speaker 1: with birds, and we can learn a lot about human
Speaker 1: communication through bird communication. Who we study like us. I
Speaker 1: want to Jackson Family five birds. I want to see
Speaker 1: like the little Michael, you know, do you know, finally
Speaker 1: learning to like hit those dance steps at the right time.
Speaker 1: I feel like this is the most interested I've ever
Speaker 1: been in birds because it's the reality TV show waiting
Speaker 1: to have in. I want to see how the birds
Speaker 1: are evolving, what they're learning from their parents week to week.
Speaker 1: Are they getting stronger? Are they frustrated that the judge
Speaker 1: don't like what they're doing? This could be very interesting.
Speaker 1: They actually practice their song and it is called subsong.
Speaker 1: When they practice their song, it's kind of these little
Speaker 1: like very quiet, kind of uncertain little practicing, like almost
Speaker 1: like they're singing the songs under their breath, like okay,
Speaker 1: boo boo boop. And then so they're kind of learning
Speaker 1: this song and then as they get older and start
Speaker 1: to get more confident in their song, it starts to
Speaker 1: get stronger and stronger, and they will finally reach this
Speaker 1: age where they can actually sing and sing well. And
Speaker 1: the reason that they sing is that they are actually
Speaker 1: advertising that they're great birds. So what that's it? This
Speaker 1: is unbelievable. Wow, I did I didn't know that they
Speaker 1: they This is literally how humans are failing learn anything
Speaker 1: the drums or you know whatever, Like, does that remind
Speaker 1: you of getting ready to do the wraps in front
Speaker 1: of your families where you like everything that she's saying.
Speaker 1: She's like, oh, they have this innate ability to that.
Speaker 1: We I mean, we have an innate ability to either
Speaker 1: some people can stay on beat or they can't type
Speaker 1: of do. So, yeah, I see a lot of similarities
Speaker 1: in how I learned music or watching maybe a child
Speaker 1: in my family learned music. So this is pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And there's also similar to humans, there's this crystallization period
Speaker 1: for learning bird song. So if you don't expose a
Speaker 1: baby bird to birdsong when it's still immature, it actually
Speaker 1: can't learn it an adulthood, which is similar to how humans.
Speaker 1: They we seem to have this period of time that
Speaker 1: where we can learn language, and if like say someone
Speaker 1: who is basically these children who have been not exposed
Speaker 1: to human society, it's very very rare that this happens.
Speaker 1: It's usually a lost child and then they get lost
Speaker 1: somewhere where they don't have contact with with other people,
Speaker 1: and then they get found. They struggle very much. They
Speaker 1: can kind of learn language a little bit, but they
Speaker 1: really struggle because it seems to be something that we
Speaker 1: basically have this crystallization period where like kids are great
Speaker 1: at learning language. It's astounding how how smart and could
Speaker 1: they are picking up on language just by absorbing it.
Speaker 1: And it's the same similar thing with baby birds. They
Speaker 1: pick up this bird song and they learn it. And
Speaker 1: the whole reason they sing to each other is they're
Speaker 1: essentially advertising either to mates or two rivals that they
Speaker 1: are very talented, which means there which is sort of
Speaker 1: an advertisement of their overall health. So research has shown
Speaker 1: that high quality songs help indicate health. So there's a
Speaker 1: connection between the tempo of the songs and whether they
Speaker 1: have disease or parasites or their overall physical welfare. So
Speaker 1: like if they kind of it's basically if you have
Speaker 1: rhythm as a bird, it means you're healthy. And if
Speaker 1: you're kind of like maybe off key, a little bit
Speaker 1: off tempo, it means you might be dealing with some
Speaker 1: some itchy skin mites or something. There a song that
Speaker 1: we can sing as humans if find out if if
Speaker 1: you're sick or not, that would be really cool. Little
Speaker 1: we could just like, you know, whether you need to
Speaker 1: go to the doctor or not. Yeah, Unfortunately, it's going
Speaker 1: to be show tunes. Speak for yourself, missy, I will
Speaker 1: show tunes my way through an illness. Let's do this.
Speaker 1: I'm ready for the talent competition as well. I would
Speaker 1: like to wear an idle version of the songs. I
Speaker 1: think that they would be beautiful. And I do think
Speaker 1: that if humans could sing their despair, it would be
Speaker 1: more like a Glee episode with like it would be
Speaker 1: a lot of mashup songs. It would be people trying
Speaker 1: to express their feelings through multiple songs and sing terribly. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know, speaking of Glee actually, So, like I said,
Speaker 1: there's two main reasons that birds song happens, and one
Speaker 1: is mating, advertising yourself to mate, like hey, like I
Speaker 1: have the mental acuity and the physical fitness to sing
Speaker 1: this amazing song, you should mate with me. But the
Speaker 1: other reason is to advertise to rivals that you're awesome
Speaker 1: and amazing and you you can go at any time, bro.
Speaker 1: But we don't have to resort to violence, because we
Speaker 1: can just settle this by seeing which one of us
Speaker 1: is going to be better at defending our territory through
Speaker 1: our songs. And they have these like they have these
Speaker 1: song fights, so like there will be a bird singing
Speaker 1: in it's territory and usually so typically it's the male
Speaker 1: birds that sing. So the birds have rat battles. They did,
Speaker 1: haven't That's crazy? Oh my god, I gotta tell everybody
Speaker 1: that birds have rap battles. When they do, they do
Speaker 1: and don't like compete with each other. So that so
Speaker 1: one of the birds will sing a song in its repertoire,
Speaker 1: and then another bird will sing either that same song
Speaker 1: or maybe a slightly different version of that song to
Speaker 1: say like, hey, anything you can do like I can
Speaker 1: do better, essentially, and and they'll go back and forth
Speaker 1: to both advertise themselves in front of me. It's like, hey,
Speaker 1: you you think this guy is good? Like look at me, um,
Speaker 1: but also like to work out territory disputes without having
Speaker 1: to resort to actual fighting because they're like, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: like listen, you don't want to mess with me. I
Speaker 1: have this extremely sick beat that you do not want
Speaker 1: to mess with. Oh my guy, I am mind blown
Speaker 1: right now. I just I gotta take that to the classroom,
Speaker 1: teach about about birds and and have them. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a that's really cool. The battles ever, give bloody? Does
Speaker 1: it ever go beyond just singing? And how is a
Speaker 1: winner determined? A winner is determined by sort of the
Speaker 1: bird's taste in music. So again, like if it has
Speaker 1: the right tempo, if they have a big sometimes in
Speaker 1: some species, if you have a bigger repertoire to draw from.
Speaker 1: That means that you are chosen more by mates or
Speaker 1: respected more by other birds, Like birds will like if
Speaker 1: if a bird is advertising its territory and it's a
Speaker 1: better singer by the metrics that these birds have chosen,
Speaker 1: then rivals will not challenge that bird as much because
Speaker 1: they're like, hey, you're probably kind of a badass and
Speaker 1: I don't want to deal with you. But yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it is. I think it. It's not that they never
Speaker 1: resort to sort of squabbles and violence. I think it
Speaker 1: is a way to avoid that though, because if you
Speaker 1: can advertise your physical fitness without having to resort to violence,
Speaker 1: then it kind of works out for everyone because then
Speaker 1: it's like, hey, we don't really a lot of animal
Speaker 1: to do this too, by the way, like some animals
Speaker 1: do it by like comparing their jaw size, Like they'll
Speaker 1: open up their mouths and be like, oh, I have
Speaker 1: a bigger job than you, so we don't have to
Speaker 1: actually do this, And then it benefits them both because
Speaker 1: like the the winner doesn't have to get any like
Speaker 1: expend energy or get any injuries from it. In the loser,
Speaker 1: you know, avoids probably what's going to be losing, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: losing confrontation. Nobody wants that. So, you know, music, it's
Speaker 1: a way to resolve bird disputes. I think that's great soul.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, And like I said, so it's bird's
Speaker 1: song is generally something that male birds do, but female
Speaker 1: birds sometimes sing. So like because males are often the
Speaker 1: ones that are advertising themselves to mates or defending territory,
Speaker 1: they'll often be uh in a lot of species, they're
Speaker 1: the ones that produce bird song, but in areas where
Speaker 1: birds actually have a lower risk of mortality, so like
Speaker 1: in the Amazon where they have few were predators and
Speaker 1: more resources, and also being having a lower rate of
Speaker 1: mortality means that they can form these stronger pair bonds
Speaker 1: with each other because it's like, you know, it's more
Speaker 1: beneficial to be monogamous if your monogamous partner isn't going
Speaker 1: to get eaten by a cat or something. So in
Speaker 1: those areas, females actually also sing, which seems to indicate
Speaker 1: that first of all, because that may strengthen their pair bond,
Speaker 1: and also in other areas where they have these shorter,
Speaker 1: unpredictable breeding opportunity windows, like in the deserts of Australia
Speaker 1: and Africa, where weather conditions are really erratic, both males
Speaker 1: and females sing because it just increases their chances that
Speaker 1: they're going to find each other as quickly as possible
Speaker 1: while the conditions are right to breed. So it's really
Speaker 1: interesting how like these environmental factors really influence whether you're
Speaker 1: going to have a boy band or you know, boy
Speaker 1: and girl bands. So are the birds coursing together? Is
Speaker 1: it multiple voices? It once? It can be so sometimes
Speaker 1: it's a single bird singing a song of advertisement like hey,
Speaker 1: come mate with me, or stay out of my stay
Speaker 1: off my porch um or it is. They can be duets,
Speaker 1: so a pair bond can sing a duet to strengthen
Speaker 1: their relationship essentially, I mean, just like any sort of
Speaker 1: good musical. It's like when your parents do the two
Speaker 1: steps in the kitchen and their bonds, Like, I love
Speaker 1: that romance. And then you can have like birds duetting
Speaker 1: as a form of rivalry where it's like they're singing
Speaker 1: a duet to kind of like see who's the better singers,
Speaker 1: So yeah, they they It is really interesting and there's
Speaker 1: I mean, it really depends on the species of birds
Speaker 1: because there's a whole variety of behavior some kind of
Speaker 1: like generalizing, but yeah, it's um, yeah, it's it's really
Speaker 1: interesting and I love I love the whole thing of
Speaker 1: like birds singing duets together. It's so sweet, so ro mantic,
Speaker 1: and the way birds actually can produce music is really interesting,
Speaker 1: just on the sort of physics side of it. So
Speaker 1: birds don't have a larynx like humans do. They have
Speaker 1: a synx, which is, you know, the bird version of
Speaker 1: a larynx, so it's similar to how a larynx works,
Speaker 1: where air's force past membranes that vibrate in a resonance
Speaker 1: chamber that produces sound, kind of like the strings of
Speaker 1: a violin. When those strings vibrate, they produce a sound,
Speaker 1: and then you have the resonance chamber in the body
Speaker 1: of the violin. But what's interesting about the syrinx is
Speaker 1: that it allows them to create two notes at once
Speaker 1: because they can control muscles on either side of the
Speaker 1: serix independently, So like how a pianist can control both
Speaker 1: hands and play different notes at once, like a bird
Speaker 1: can play two notes at once. They're humans who can
Speaker 1: sing two notes at the same time. Yeah, isn't that
Speaker 1: the a throat singing? Yeah? Yeah, a throat singing is
Speaker 1: incredible hollyphonic overtone singing, Yeah yeah, and it's with throat singing.
Speaker 1: I think what's happening is basically what happens when you
Speaker 1: are switching from one register to another with singing, where
Speaker 1: it's like, now, I'm not like a vocal expert with
Speaker 1: with human singing, but you can It's like switching from
Speaker 1: a certain register of singing to like a falsetto ish register.
Speaker 1: It might might not technically be falsetto. And I apologize
Speaker 1: to all the all the vocal coaches out there that
Speaker 1: are just like, no, but you're it's basically of these
Speaker 1: two distinct registers of singing that that happen in different
Speaker 1: parts of the larynx and different parts of the the
Speaker 1: sort of like like glottal area. And then if you
Speaker 1: basically like get sort of like between them or like
Speaker 1: right at that bridge between them, if you can kind
Speaker 1: of lean into that, you can get those two registers
Speaker 1: kind of like going uh simultaneously, and that's how you
Speaker 1: get that really interesting, incredible throat singing. There's a ton
Speaker 1: ton of videos on YouTube if you guys want to
Speaker 1: look it up and check it out. Sometimes you see
Speaker 1: people like manually manipulating their throat trying to achieve that
Speaker 1: like dual tone. Some people can just do it with
Speaker 1: their like nose and like despite overing our mouth at
Speaker 1: a certain angle and like getting the air to hit
Speaker 1: the cordy. Today it is the craziest thing you've ever heard. Though,
Speaker 1: You're like, I'm sure there are aliens in that person.
Speaker 1: This is a Men in Black episode and they're just
Speaker 1: lying to us. We've been mind I remember I tried
Speaker 1: to do that when I first found out about it,
Speaker 1: and I just saw singing is not necessarily my strong suit.
Speaker 1: And I actually have an example of that. It's a
Speaker 1: wood thrush. This is what every morning in Illinois sounds like.
Speaker 1: I just want to live in the back country of
Speaker 1: Illinois where there are many a tree and cornfield. This
Speaker 1: is what you woke up to you every morning. It
Speaker 1: is gonna be very strange nostalgia, but it's also it
Speaker 1: is very beautiful. This is one of those you just
Speaker 1: can't deny that. It's it's just lovely. I love the
Speaker 1: I love the bird trills that it almost sounds digital,
Speaker 1: like it's been auto tunes. You know what I mean,
Speaker 1: because I think it is. It's one of those examples
Speaker 1: of it. It's playing two notes at once, so it
Speaker 1: sounds kind of synthetic and digital because you shouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to do that. It's like going back and forth crazy.
Speaker 1: So what part of Illinois are you from. Let's see,
Speaker 1: so I was born in the Hazel Crest, which is
Speaker 1: like half an hour outside of Chicago, but I was
Speaker 1: raised in Ottawa, Illinois, which is like right next to
Speaker 1: Starved Rock, the Big State Park. Okay, Okay, I've heard
Speaker 1: I've heard of these places, but i'm because I've heard
Speaker 1: this too, so I'm assuming is that, like, are these
Speaker 1: birds some of these birds in the Midwest, like you know,
Speaker 1: heavy in the Midwest. I don't know. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's it's found in all over eastern uh eastern United States,
Speaker 1: and then probably into the Midwest a little bit, and
Speaker 1: then I think it tapers off a little bit as
Speaker 1: you get closer to the west coast. Okay, that makes sense, Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it definitely could have been the wood thrush or another
Speaker 1: species of thrush who also do similar calls. I'm giving
Speaker 1: this the Beyonce efforts. If you wanted or you would
Speaker 1: have put a wing on her. That was good. Oh
Speaker 1: my god. So one car and that I had as
Speaker 1: I was doing this research is why does bird's song
Speaker 1: sound so good to us? Like? Is it like human song?
Speaker 1: Like what do we find so appealing? Because there's nothing
Speaker 1: better than like, you know, you're out in nature and
Speaker 1: you're hearing bird's song and it's so relaxing and it
Speaker 1: sounds nice. Like there's all sorts of interesting animal vocalizations,
Speaker 1: but sometimes they don't really sound nice. They just it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's interesting, not into it, but it's cool. There was
Speaker 1: a zoom musicology study published in the Max Planck Institute
Speaker 1: of Ornithology that found that musician rins are are a
Speaker 1: little pow that we listened to at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the episode. Uh, share a similar taste in music as humans.
Speaker 1: So the intervals in their music, which is like the
Speaker 1: difference in pitch between two notes, are the same as
Speaker 1: intervals found in music in most human cultures. So I'm
Speaker 1: not a musician, so this quote from the article doesn't
Speaker 1: make much sense to me. So I'm hoping, but I'm
Speaker 1: hoping for for musicians, this will this will mean something.
Speaker 1: So the authors of the studies say, quote, it is
Speaker 1: because musician rins preferentially produced successive perfect octaves fifths and
Speaker 1: fourth that their songs sound musical to human listeners. So great, cool,
Speaker 1: I love it. Some factory this morning. Take them. Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, that's interesting. Now, I wonder if we took
Speaker 1: these birds to different concerts, like who they would ring because,
Speaker 1: like we know, plants are classical creatures. They want to
Speaker 1: listen to their box and their beech ovens like a
Speaker 1: string and a trumpet, you know, but I wonder, like,
Speaker 1: you know, if we played I don't know, some te
Speaker 1: Swift for the birds suddenly, you know, sort of like
Speaker 1: they pick up on birds and Amazon where foresting is heavy,
Speaker 1: will sometimes make the sounds of the saws, the trucks
Speaker 1: and mimic that. Yeah, that's the that's the liar bird.
Speaker 1: Which there are birds that actually copy sounds, so they
Speaker 1: have such a flexible ability to fill their repertoire with
Speaker 1: different kind of sounds. They don't just do like sort
Speaker 1: of a species specific song. They copy all sorts of
Speaker 1: sounds they found. They can, like, like you said, Joel,
Speaker 1: just mimic exactly like a chainsang. I would like to see,
Speaker 1: you know, some bird renditions of the Taylor Swift album.
Speaker 1: I want to know what, how do they feel about it?
Speaker 1: What they're you know, intonation of haters gonna hate, hate hate.
Speaker 1: It's like, I think that would be brilliant. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: if we got a boy band number of you know,
Speaker 1: if we get twelve for like a K pop band, done,
Speaker 1: what does that sound like? I feel like birds have
Speaker 1: are holding back on us. As you know, I'm a
Speaker 1: very conspiracist. I'm not one of the conspiracy people who
Speaker 1: please birds don't exist. But I do believe birds aren't
Speaker 1: plotting for their takeover. And I wonder, like, you know,
Speaker 1: if they're just like these humans are so silly they
Speaker 1: think their music okay, they don't know, they don't know
Speaker 1: what's around the corner. I would like to hear it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we have seen those birds in the videos,
Speaker 1: like like cockatoo who like sort of seems to dance
Speaker 1: to yeh, it seems to Bob's to the of them.
Speaker 1: I was actually talking to a listener, Brian Greco, who
Speaker 1: is an assistant professor at University of Wisconsin River Falls
Speaker 1: in the Department of Animal and Food Science, and I
Speaker 1: was asking him his opinion on like how animals respond
Speaker 1: to music. He was saying that sort of differences in
Speaker 1: tempo and the frequency of tones can have an effect
Speaker 1: on the um activation of the parasympathetic nervous system. So
Speaker 1: like sort of that's that's the same system that kind
Speaker 1: of engages you in in excitement, fight or flight, or
Speaker 1: to calm down, and so he said. Quote this as
Speaker 1: well and illustrated by the five jillion dancing parrot videos
Speaker 1: on YouTube. The vast majority of the selected songs are
Speaker 1: high tempo, and many of the featured birds are displaying fight,
Speaker 1: flight or reproductive communication cues. So uh, And then he says,
Speaker 1: so music is exciting, be it scary or sexy. So
Speaker 1: birds are either finding the music to be a turn
Speaker 1: on and they're getting a little bit you know, these
Speaker 1: are some some thirsty, horny birds, or they are finding
Speaker 1: the music alarming and kind of feeling in an excitement.
Speaker 1: It's possibly a fear excitement. It's hard to tell, like
Speaker 1: the difference between fear arousal and excitement arousal. So it
Speaker 1: has something to do with the tempo and frequency. And
Speaker 1: I don't know how birds would react to h T. Swift.
Speaker 1: If these birds are gonna be very mad, Max vibes sexy,
Speaker 1: but it's kind of scary. They like a loud, fast
Speaker 1: music telling you overlords they're coming for So I didn't
Speaker 1: invite a nass An engineer on the show to talk
Speaker 1: about music just because she's super smart and space is cool,
Speaker 1: but because Desia is a musician herself. When we return,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about how she uses music to
Speaker 1: inspire and educate students about stems. Write your hands because
Speaker 1: we're too busy schooling. It's simple, let me prove it.
Speaker 1: We gotta keep improve it. Bro, we gotta get these
Speaker 1: braids and agree were week for someone I much saw
Speaker 1: you how to do this, how to cover units hands
Speaker 1: because we're too busy schooling. It's equals in its own negatively,
Speaker 1: that's a modest we of the web. Fine, as well
Speaker 1: as sh'll not find a rude over to say rude
Speaker 1: over to a food over to say rude over. What
Speaker 1: you were just listening to is another one of Desia's songs.
Speaker 1: So now let's go behind the music and get a
Speaker 1: NASA engineers scoop on how songs can spread knowledge. So Deja,
Speaker 1: I want to to talk to you a bit about
Speaker 1: your experience both as an engineer at NASA and as
Speaker 1: a musician. So first of all, for those of us
Speaker 1: who maybe aren't engineers, I'm pointing to myself, can you
Speaker 1: kind of describe like what you do at at NASA
Speaker 1: as an engineer? As an engineer a NASA, I'm a
Speaker 1: quality engineer. So myr. Mary starts off with me kind
Speaker 1: of going through a bunch of paperwork on some discrepancies
Speaker 1: that I may have found the day before. Discrepancies mayna
Speaker 1: that there's something wrong with a part literally anything on
Speaker 1: the space. We don't want that right exactly. So I
Speaker 1: go through those discrepancies, send them to the actual engineers
Speaker 1: that are you know, work in that particular system, and
Speaker 1: it's their job to take what I say and UM,
Speaker 1: fix it basically um. And the quickest way to say
Speaker 1: that it's just to fix it right. So after I
Speaker 1: do all that paperwork, I go to different labs. I
Speaker 1: suit up, I put my mask on and put my
Speaker 1: buddy suit on, got my booties on. I go in
Speaker 1: the lab and I start to I inspect. I do
Speaker 1: a lot of inspecting on whether we're putting together something
Speaker 1: or we could we need to make sure that this
Speaker 1: part weighs this much, or we need to make sure
Speaker 1: that this mechanism can hold as much weight as it's
Speaker 1: supposed to, it could take this much force, it could
Speaker 1: exist in this temperature, or any type of anything like that.
Speaker 1: We need to make sure that it's going to actually
Speaker 1: do what it's supposed to do in space. So I'm
Speaker 1: there to make sure that the proper steps are being
Speaker 1: taken to make sure that we can rely on what
Speaker 1: we're sending up there. That sounds incredibly important. I am
Speaker 1: really glad that you are making sure that the things
Speaker 1: that we send into space are you know, space worthy
Speaker 1: and not gonna fall apart. And when we think about
Speaker 1: things like hey, let's just build a spaceship, it kind
Speaker 1: of hurts my brain to try to think about all
Speaker 1: of the many, many, many steps and many many people
Speaker 1: who have to be involved to do that. I can't
Speaker 1: I don't even know where you start, Like just like
Speaker 1: look staring at a blank sheet of paper and then like,
Speaker 1: I don't know drawing a spaceship, Like, how do you
Speaker 1: even start with that? But that's that's the thing. A
Speaker 1: lot of us don't even know where it starts. Like
Speaker 1: there's not there's not one single person that could give
Speaker 1: you the rundown. But when it comes to actually doing it,
Speaker 1: it takes a massive amount of skill sets and uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's a we have to be a huge team.
Speaker 1: And some people don't like to admit that, they think
Speaker 1: that their part is probably more important than someone else's.
Speaker 1: But man, these you can't think that sending a rover
Speaker 1: to Mars can, right. Uh, that is so interesting, that's
Speaker 1: incredible that you do that. When did you first realize
Speaker 1: that you wanted to become an engineer. I started getting
Speaker 1: interested in engineering while I was in high school. We
Speaker 1: had these classes called Project Lead the Way, and they
Speaker 1: allowed you to design different like buildings like uh and
Speaker 1: things like that through a software called like auto cat.
Speaker 1: It was. It was a it was a lower version
Speaker 1: than what they used in the industry, but it was
Speaker 1: still giving us an opportunity to design things on our
Speaker 1: own and and see how things work. But I also
Speaker 1: had this little internship at the St. Louis Science Center
Speaker 1: called Youth Exploring Science, and they gave me a lot
Speaker 1: of opportunities to study things like explore right, things like chemistry, robotics,
Speaker 1: like um, just anything that you could think of. They
Speaker 1: were allowing us to do projects on them, and then
Speaker 1: they would take it a step further and put us
Speaker 1: into summer programs where we were to actually teach it
Speaker 1: to elementary school. So, teacher, can you talk about the
Speaker 1: importance of exploring, about just being allowed to open space,
Speaker 1: explore technology. It's I just think that's where genuine learning
Speaker 1: comes from, is just having that curiosity to see how
Speaker 1: something is working, how can I replicate that? How can
Speaker 1: I build that right? And then or and then another
Speaker 1: part of engineering is how can I make it better?
Speaker 1: How can I innovate this thing? So just having that
Speaker 1: genuine curiosity of Okay, how does my cell phone work?
Speaker 1: Do I have one that I can take apart? Okay, well,
Speaker 1: what's this thing? What's this thing? And then you just
Speaker 1: start googling stuff and okay, I got my answers. Obviously,
Speaker 1: it will take a little bit more formal training to
Speaker 1: put bigger things together, but I do think that true
Speaker 1: learning and just being inquisitive. You gotta teach kids to
Speaker 1: just explore the world around you, like it looks for answers.
Speaker 1: Are you can you can build whatever is in your hand.
Speaker 1: You can build that Nintendo like. I think one of
Speaker 1: the really cool things that you do is you use
Speaker 1: music to help inspire kids to have that interest in exploring.
Speaker 1: How do you use music to inspire and to educate,
Speaker 1: especially when it comes to engineering and too, math and
Speaker 1: science these things that I think can be really intimidating
Speaker 1: to kids. So the music for me is about breaking
Speaker 1: down a barrier, more in particular a language barrier. I
Speaker 1: feel like right now, education as a whole, not even
Speaker 1: just math, is science are given in a very uh,
Speaker 1: it's just just one track, and we use the same
Speaker 1: words through every curriculum and it's not very diverse at all.
Speaker 1: So if I always use this example, I remember I
Speaker 1: had I don't know if it was a physics question
Speaker 1: or something, but it has something to do with like
Speaker 1: skiing or uh, snowboarding or how fast this kid was
Speaker 1: going and I had. You know, the people in my classroom,
Speaker 1: they have been to Denver or to any you know,
Speaker 1: they have been skiing before, so they could imagine that,
Speaker 1: oh I was going pretty fast as I was skiing,
Speaker 1: So I could imagine you had that lived experience. So
Speaker 1: when we break break down the language and we start
Speaker 1: talking in a way that different particular groups of kids
Speaker 1: that they can understand, it's going to be a more
Speaker 1: enjoyable learning experience. So music for me, especially with black
Speaker 1: and brown kids, well, well all kids love hip hop,
Speaker 1: but you know that that I know that's the music
Speaker 1: that touches my community the most. So let me try
Speaker 1: to break it down into that language. Like in my
Speaker 1: song like one inch and two points five for cine
Speaker 1: meter is your future briter than the ring on my
Speaker 1: pinky finger, Like like jewelry is such so huge in
Speaker 1: the rap community, So let me put that, let me
Speaker 1: make some of that into the science. So so they
Speaker 1: thinking we're saying about diamond rains and whatnot when you
Speaker 1: don't even know that you're memorizing that these conversions the
Speaker 1: song right, because you're I mean, I think that's something
Speaker 1: that is often overlooked in education. We assume you get
Speaker 1: a textbook, you have a curriculum, and oh that works
Speaker 1: for every every kid. And of course no, you know,
Speaker 1: children are extremely influenced by their environment in which they
Speaker 1: grow up. You can't like teach a kid in New
Speaker 1: York like all right, so let's talk to you about
Speaker 1: surfing and use that as a metaphor for like it's like, well,
Speaker 1: pay surfs here, what are you talking about? So it's
Speaker 1: just I think that's incredible. I'm going to play a
Speaker 1: sample of one of your songs right now for our
Speaker 1: listeners to here, first of all, because it's a really
Speaker 1: wonderful song. I love it. It's so catchy, just to
Speaker 1: of you a taste of like how you can make
Speaker 1: something that you know, if you talk to tell a
Speaker 1: kid like we're going to learn about how to convert
Speaker 1: units and you can feel their solely their body. But
Speaker 1: but when you do it like this, It's so fun.
Speaker 1: I was listening to this and I'm someone who, like
Speaker 1: I don't remember unit conversion home. Now I'm like, all right, yeah,
Speaker 1: this makes sense. I want to relearn. Oh wow, that
Speaker 1: is awesome. Yeah, so let me play that right now.
Speaker 1: I met put your burning in the rain on my
Speaker 1: piggy fingers. Well, people, full full. You gotta keep your
Speaker 1: head in three yard just sad, he shouted. Teach you
Speaker 1: you will start seventy sixty yards in the mouth six really, Brown,
Speaker 1: would you talk a little bit about the creative process
Speaker 1: for you, like when you are creating an educational song,
Speaker 1: like how do you pick out a topic that you
Speaker 1: think would be really useful for kids to have unit conversions.
Speaker 1: I came up with an idea to do that one
Speaker 1: because I was actually at work and we were trying
Speaker 1: to do a test on some type of part and
Speaker 1: we had to put X amount of pounds in it
Speaker 1: on or onto a piece of hardware, but our our
Speaker 1: instructions were in kilograms, so we needed to convert that.
Speaker 1: And I literally was like, oh my god, I remember
Speaker 1: having to do this when I was younger, and let
Speaker 1: me just make a song about it. Yeah, that. That's
Speaker 1: why I'm choosing topics that touch a wide range of
Speaker 1: edges demographics right now, until I get the resources to
Speaker 1: do Like, Okay, this is first grade, this is second grade,
Speaker 1: this is third grade math. What does music mean to you?
Speaker 1: And what does it mean to get to express your
Speaker 1: interests in STEM and engineering through music out is a
Speaker 1: really good question. Music is I don't know, it's everything
Speaker 1: to me. I don't want to sound cliche, but when
Speaker 1: I first when I first got out here to m
Speaker 1: l A for my job, I was focused on the
Speaker 1: job and I didn't get to express myself ado any music,
Speaker 1: and it really took me like I just was sad
Speaker 1: and I didn't and I didn't know why, Like I
Speaker 1: just I couldn't figure out. It's just like, you just
Speaker 1: got this really good job, You're moving to the West
Speaker 1: coast from Missouri, like this is a great time. But
Speaker 1: what I realized, the missing key ingredient to what makes
Speaker 1: me happy is a music. So it's it's a safe
Speaker 1: haven for me. It's a way to um, it just
Speaker 1: feels something, you know, Um, Yeah, I can't I can't
Speaker 1: do it without it. But because of that, that's how
Speaker 1: I came with the idea it to use the two.
Speaker 1: It's like, Okay, these these worlds don't too have to
Speaker 1: be totally separate from me. I can mix them and
Speaker 1: also give back and teach at the same time, you know,
Speaker 1: and make and affect some change. So music, it's it's
Speaker 1: really huge. That's amazing. Yeah, that's I love that so much.
Speaker 1: It's I think music really taps into something so deep
Speaker 1: inside of us. And to use that to reach out
Speaker 1: to kids, to make something that, you know, to sort
Speaker 1: of spark this scientific curiosity. And then I love that
Speaker 1: music can educate, inspire, and it taps so directly into
Speaker 1: our emotions. Maybe it can make us care about endangered
Speaker 1: species that may not be as cuddly as a panda
Speaker 1: or a koala. A listener tell usker Diaries on Instagram
Speaker 1: sent me a story about folk music that is about
Speaker 1: saving the bees. Climate change, these colony collapse, disorder, pesticides
Speaker 1: have all caused a lot of problems for bee populations
Speaker 1: for both honey bees and wild bees. Song Hive is
Speaker 1: an archive project started by traditional Irish fiddler Rowan Pigott,
Speaker 1: who is putting together folk songs about bees to stir
Speaker 1: up buzz about bees for bee related environmentalist causes, such
Speaker 1: as the bee cause. So here's a little musical sting
Speaker 1: in the key of bee. This one is sung by
Speaker 1: Rosie Hodgson. Bees bees hogeo bees hi from your neighbors
Speaker 1: as much as you please. But what happens us you
Speaker 1: must tell or else we will give you honey tis.
Speaker 1: I'm mad to day stop the baby story lead. But
Speaker 1: if you have a baby, I'm a work by nature.
Speaker 1: I freely it's a nice and all my days in
Speaker 1: the fiend. That's a tirable trade, which may well be
Speaker 1: which brings all the palmer's day. That was another song
Speaker 1: by Irish fiddler Rowan Pigott about honey bees. But to
Speaker 1: explore one of the most mysterious songs in the world,
Speaker 1: we need to get to know an animal that's over
Speaker 1: five hundred million times bigger than a honeybee. So now
Speaker 1: I want to talk about one of the most incredible
Speaker 1: mysteries in animal behavior, and that is whale song, which
Speaker 1: even listening to it, I get chills because it's so
Speaker 1: there's something so ethereal about it. Do you have you
Speaker 1: guys listened? Do you guys listen to whale song? Because
Speaker 1: have you heard of it. It's a band called whale Song.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I can't wait. My spiritualist when we're
Speaker 1: meditating likes to play it as we're talking about living
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles. Just reveal my whole list Los Angelino's self.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I've been I've been meditating with the whale sounds. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well look I just play whale sounds sometimes too, So
Speaker 1: you're you're good here. So what exactly is whale song?
Speaker 1: So whale song is produced by two species of baling whales,
Speaker 1: and that is what we basically know as whale song,
Speaker 1: So the humpback whale and the blue whale, the blue
Speaker 1: whale being the biggest animal ever, it's just huge. And
Speaker 1: then cetaceans, So that's the the animals that the marine
Speaker 1: mammals that includes whales, dolphins in general. They all communicate
Speaker 1: with these very complex vocalizations like clicks. They can even
Speaker 1: have dialects, like how the sperm whales seems to have
Speaker 1: these dialects of clicks. But whale song as we know
Speaker 1: it as the sort of like melodic variety of frequencies
Speaker 1: and tones, is specific to the humpback and blue whales.
Speaker 1: And so here is a humpback whale song which sounds
Speaker 1: a little bit like a hunted violin mm hmmm, mm hmm.
Speaker 1: And here is a blue whale song which sounds like
Speaker 1: we're in a sci fi Oh my god, this is crazy.
Speaker 1: It makes me want to like take some tidbits out
Speaker 1: of it or sound bites and make a beat from it. Like,
Speaker 1: I could definitely make some music from this. If you
Speaker 1: do that, let me know, because I would love to
Speaker 1: hear that. Uh. You know, like when you hear a
Speaker 1: piece of music that just kind of brings you to
Speaker 1: tears a little bit, it makes you so emotional. I
Speaker 1: feel that way when I listen to whale song, where
Speaker 1: I kind of want to cry because it's like, so
Speaker 1: there's something really hauntingly beautiful about it. Also, when you
Speaker 1: investigate the story behind whale song, it is still haunting
Speaker 1: because it's so mysterious and interesting, and it gives you
Speaker 1: the sense of the unknown that we know so little
Speaker 1: about the world's largest mammal, the world's largest animal. Even so,
Speaker 1: the way we hear whales is probably different from how
Speaker 1: whales hear it because we're listening with underwater microphones. Then
Speaker 1: we're listening to a recording through our human ears. But
Speaker 1: the way that it hits whales is going to be
Speaker 1: different because whales listen directly through the water and they
Speaker 1: don't have external ears like we do. They have these
Speaker 1: internal ears, and it resonates through their jaw and bones
Speaker 1: and and fatty tissues and into their ears. I don't
Speaker 1: know what it's like to hear a whale song as
Speaker 1: a whale. We only know what it's like to hear
Speaker 1: a whale song as a human with our with our
Speaker 1: weird human ears, So that that itself is pretty hard
Speaker 1: to try to try to conceptualize. There's something there's something
Speaker 1: a little haunting about that when I think about, like
Speaker 1: I can, I can never really understand what it's like
Speaker 1: to hear a sound as a whale, because there experience
Speaker 1: of that is going to be so completely different. I
Speaker 1: imagine if you put your handerwater and then cover your
Speaker 1: ear like real good with your hands and then like
Speaker 1: scream melodically all right the water, We're probably getting close
Speaker 1: to what a whale is earring. Hang, I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: right back, Okay, now I'm wet, and uh, I don't
Speaker 1: understand anything. Don't try that at home. I feel like
Speaker 1: they don't do children mad, We're gonna all kinds of
Speaker 1: phone calls no good. And our heads aren't really designed
Speaker 1: to hear sound underwater, whereas whales, again, it's like they
Speaker 1: have these resonant chambers inside their heads that lead to
Speaker 1: their ears, so the way they experience the sound is
Speaker 1: probably more full than we can as humans. And it's
Speaker 1: interesting because these baling whales, at least these two species
Speaker 1: of baling whales, have this like different method of community
Speaker 1: patian than the toothed whales, the whales with teeth, and
Speaker 1: it may have something to do with the difference in
Speaker 1: basically their feeding behavior. So the humpback and blue whale
Speaker 1: may focus on hearing low frequency sounds for long distance communication,
Speaker 1: whereas toothed whales like dolphins, orcas, and sperm whales focus
Speaker 1: on higher frequencies to communicate and echolocate in their more
Speaker 1: immediate surrounding because they actually hunt for fish, Whereas baleen
Speaker 1: whales like the humpback and the blue whales, they feed
Speaker 1: by taking in huge gulps of sea water and then
Speaker 1: smooching it out through that baleine, which is that keratin
Speaker 1: structure at the front of their mouth that looks like
Speaker 1: a push broom all over their mouth, and then as
Speaker 1: they shove that seawater out of their mouth inside of
Speaker 1: the bristles, all these little krill and other tasty, little
Speaker 1: edible sea creatures get stuck in there, and then they
Speaker 1: just eat that up. So they're more a much more
Speaker 1: passive feeder. They don't have to chase after any prey
Speaker 1: to eat it. So for them, having that immediate echolocation
Speaker 1: around them and immediate communication close by is not as
Speaker 1: important as perhaps more long distance communication to be able
Speaker 1: to locate other members of their group over long distances
Speaker 1: um or to find mates. It's also an interesting question
Speaker 1: about whether baling whales actually echolocate. We don't really know,
Speaker 1: which seems like we should at this point noe that
Speaker 1: about them, but we don't. We there's some research that
Speaker 1: seems to suggest no, they're not really they don't really
Speaker 1: rely on echolocation. But there's other research that's that's showing that, like, hey,
Speaker 1: maybe their songs and their vocalizations actually could be used
Speaker 1: for echolocation. We just we don't know. That's always fun
Speaker 1: in science, and we just don't know. Something I like
Speaker 1: the idea of a humpback whale or even a blue
Speaker 1: whale being their own GPS system. But it's like a
Speaker 1: very dope music, you know what I mean, sort of
Speaker 1: like we get boring to like turn left here. They're
Speaker 1: like really general like turn left here, and it's like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, disco whales, disco whales. I love that. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: that would be great. I feel like whatever research study
Speaker 1: comes out to see if these singing whales use that
Speaker 1: to echo locate, it should be called disco whales, and
Speaker 1: I won't accept anything else. The question is what do
Speaker 1: they use their their whale song? What do humpback whales
Speaker 1: and blue whales use their songs for? We kind of
Speaker 1: are going to get a little bit back into like
Speaker 1: what we learned about birds. So both males and females
Speaker 1: will do vocalizations like these, like sort of smaller vocalizations
Speaker 1: that seem to be more for communicating with other individuals
Speaker 1: a spy to them. But those long melodic haunting songs
Speaker 1: is really just coming from the males. So that's a
Speaker 1: similar thing that that we see in many bird species,
Speaker 1: where it tends to be the male birds singing rather
Speaker 1: than the females. So that may give us some hints
Speaker 1: about like this could potentially have something to do with mating,
Speaker 1: but we've never really observed blue whales or humpback whales mating,
Speaker 1: so we don't know. These are private creatures. We study
Speaker 1: the hell out of these guys, we've never like once
Speaker 1: been like oh, I thought, idea. There's just not that
Speaker 1: much documentation on how their mating works. They are very
Speaker 1: I think it's just the difficulty of you can't like
Speaker 1: position researchers down under deep underwater for months on end
Speaker 1: just hoping something happens. Now, you'd think that there would
Speaker 1: be an eccentric billionaire that creates a submarine that people
Speaker 1: can live in, like stocks whales, and it's like, come on,
Speaker 1: do it, do it, do it and try to study.
Speaker 1: I like to think they're like puritanical and they like
Speaker 1: go like way way down to deep where there's no
Speaker 1: light and they're like this is perfect, like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And they have like a they have like a cottage
Speaker 1: down at the bottom of the ocean and like the
Speaker 1: whale groom is carrying the whale bride behind to the
Speaker 1: doors of the giant whale cottage and you know, or
Speaker 1: just like a yeah, So what one thing that's interesting
Speaker 1: is that you can actually kind of identify groups of
Speaker 1: whales based on the songs that they're singing. So, Joel,
Speaker 1: you asked a really interesting question at the top of
Speaker 1: the episode about birds about like, you know, do they
Speaker 1: have these individual songs do they change over time? And
Speaker 1: that's we talked about what that is like for the birds.
Speaker 1: But for these whales, their songs slowly evolve over time
Speaker 1: and is specific to each group of whales. So you
Speaker 1: may have a group of whales from one region and
Speaker 1: a group of whales from another region, and their songs
Speaker 1: are going to be different um from each other, and
Speaker 1: then they're also going to slowly evolve over time into
Speaker 1: sort of different types of songs. So like when you
Speaker 1: take sort of a slice in time of what's happening
Speaker 1: with these whales, it'll sound like they have just one
Speaker 1: song that this group sings, and that that's true. Then
Speaker 1: like a few decades from now, that song is going
Speaker 1: to be a little different, but they are all singing
Speaker 1: that same song. So that's again really interesting. It just
Speaker 1: seems like these songs are actually part of the whales
Speaker 1: culture that they learn and then it evolves, much like
Speaker 1: human music, it evolves over time, which is I think
Speaker 1: really interesting. So you have to name these clans of whales,
Speaker 1: merchandise them, give them like color coding systems or something
Speaker 1: so that people can attach and like you think your
Speaker 1: favorite Harry Potterhouse, your favorite whale plan, and then you
Speaker 1: just really rock with that song. And then I don't
Speaker 1: know how we can do it safely because I know
Speaker 1: Sonar is messing with the whales and the way that
Speaker 1: your patterns are swimming and stuff. But like if we
Speaker 1: could project the music back at that and be like,
Speaker 1: this is our remix of your deadly song and just
Speaker 1: see what the reaction is, please exactly when you start
Speaker 1: partnering with our Animal Earth friends and and beautiful collab.
Speaker 1: But then we're just going to get into these like,
Speaker 1: oh's this post industrial whale rock or is this like
Speaker 1: is this sort of like avant garde whale rock and
Speaker 1: it's going to be insufferable, sufferable, your scientist, this is
Speaker 1: the best. But so yeah, the purpose of these songs
Speaker 1: is highly mysterious. The leading theories are that it is
Speaker 1: used by males to find mates over long distances, used
Speaker 1: by males to induce estros and females, that is, to
Speaker 1: make them ready to mate, which I'm not exactly sure
Speaker 1: about that one, but maybe here and then. Um. It
Speaker 1: could also be as a way to communicate or to
Speaker 1: warn other males of their presence, so similar to birds,
Speaker 1: where it's like, hey, this is my territory, Like we
Speaker 1: don't have to like I don't think whales really fight
Speaker 1: each other that much, but it's just a way of
Speaker 1: like saying, hey, let's you know, we don't need to
Speaker 1: we don't need to bonk into each other, we don't
Speaker 1: need to like, uh, compete over resources in this territory.
Speaker 1: Let's kind of maintain this distance so that we each
Speaker 1: have our little slice of ocean life. Could also be
Speaker 1: to communicate with distant groups. Uh, so like you know,
Speaker 1: you have a whale or two over here, and it's like, hey,
Speaker 1: how are you guys over there? But it's like way
Speaker 1: eight miles away. That's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, whales on
Speaker 1: their cell phones, but they're just like, where are guys?
Speaker 1: Do you wanna get McDonald? But it's c McDonald that
Speaker 1: makes me think about evolution in period because say something
Speaker 1: should say this, just say something catastrophic happens. You got
Speaker 1: the whales. They can communicate really far. You got the
Speaker 1: birds who can sing to each other and just communicate,
Speaker 1: but then our power goes out. What are we going
Speaker 1: to do? That's why we must form on the alliance
Speaker 1: with the birds in the whales, so we have have
Speaker 1: agents both in the air and in the seas. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: there's actually some research on blue whales and a Cyrvic
Speaker 1: and her team of oceanographers at Script's Institute of Oceanography
Speaker 1: in La Joya, California, which is actually in the same
Speaker 1: department that my dad works. So this is definitely nepotism
Speaker 1: and bias that I am, you know, full disclosure. But
Speaker 1: they did a study on blue whales and they found
Speaker 1: that blue whales dived down deeper in the ocean to
Speaker 1: do their songs. And because the nature of the water
Speaker 1: changes as you get deeper, and like the water pressure
Speaker 1: increases and allows for further transmission of these sounds, it
Speaker 1: seems to indicate that they are diving down deeper in
Speaker 1: order to transmit their songs across further distances. So that
Speaker 1: does seem to indicate that these whales songs are for
Speaker 1: long distance relationships, whereas the there are other vocalizations they
Speaker 1: are closer to the surface of the water, so that
Speaker 1: seems to indicate that is more for like sort of
Speaker 1: a short, shorter distance communication. So yeah, it's it's one
Speaker 1: of those things where when you're feeling like, oh, we
Speaker 1: already know everything about the natural world, what's left for
Speaker 1: me to do as a young aspiring scientists, it's like, no,
Speaker 1: we don't we we don't know anything, right, right, there's
Speaker 1: so little we know. And I actually feel like asia
Speaker 1: that the deep ocean is kind of similar to space
Speaker 1: and how mysterious it is. Like absolutely when you spoke
Speaker 1: about a submarine, having a submarine that people some tech
Speaker 1: whiz or something that having a submarine that someone could
Speaker 1: live down there or in deepest possibly could go, that's
Speaker 1: the same thing in space we're trying to get like
Speaker 1: hotels or just regular human flight travel. So things are
Speaker 1: happening on both ends of the spectrum. There exactly a
Speaker 1: bit cool so that we can discover space whales, cosmic
Speaker 1: disco whales. God, I wish so anyone listening who is
Speaker 1: an aspiring scientists and aspiring evolutionary biologist or any anything
Speaker 1: in the field of stem listen to listen to some music,
Speaker 1: get inspired, and please discover the mystery of whales because
Speaker 1: maybe they know the meaning of life and we're they're
Speaker 1: just singing about the meaning of life and all of
Speaker 1: life's answers and we just don't know what they're saying.
Speaker 1: You the first to craft the code. You can do
Speaker 1: it well. Dejah, thank you so much for joining me today.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate you talking about the work you do
Speaker 1: and the wonderful music that you make. That is it's
Speaker 1: I really I will include a link to it because
Speaker 1: I feel like people really should check it out. It's
Speaker 1: such I love, I love, I don't I get I
Speaker 1: get chills thinking about just like combining music with education.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. Um can where can people find you? Um So?
Speaker 1: You can find me on my website at Dejah Williams
Speaker 1: dot com, or you can follow me on Instagram where
Speaker 1: I'm most present at uh deja d A j A
Speaker 1: E dot mone or the same thing on Twitter, but
Speaker 1: instead of a period, it's a underschool and Joe. Where
Speaker 1: can people find you? Oh? You guys know me. You
Speaker 1: can find me all over the internet at Jowa Monique
Speaker 1: that's j O E L L E m O n
Speaker 1: I q u E. And you can find us at
Speaker 1: Creature Feature Pod on Instagram at Creature feet Pot on Twitter.
Speaker 1: That's f A T, not f E T. That is
Speaker 1: something very different and you can find me at Katie
Speaker 1: Golden on Twitter or you know, just post my Katie thoughts.
Speaker 1: And as always, I'm also at Pro Bird Rights where look,
Speaker 1: this wasn't bird propaganda and I'll see you if you
Speaker 1: claim it was. Thank you so much to the space
Speaker 1: Coassics for their super awesome song Exo Lumina. Creature Feature
Speaker 1: is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: like the one you just heard, visit the I heart
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Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows? See you next Wednesday.