Alison Stewart: This is All of It from WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart, and right now we're going to do a special edition of All of It, a book club for kids. This is Get Little. We just heard from the musician Questlove about how he taps into his creativity. Now we're going to hear from some friends of ours who use their creativity to make songs about weird nature facts. Alice Gafinsky and Ana Gonzalez are producers on Radiolabs podcast for kids: Terrestrials, where they explore surprising stories about science and the critters that live right in your backyard, bees, squirrels, birds, and so much more. Here's a clip from today's new episode.

Speaker 1: Three, two, one.

Speaker 2: Imagine your eyeballs grow lots of hair and you suddenly get really good at math, trigonometry, in particular.

Speaker 3: It's the study of angles, triangles, and stuff.

Speaker 2: But instead of showing off that math with a pen and paper--

Speaker 3: You show it off--

Speaker 2: By dancing. You shake it to the left. You shake it to the right. Then you waggle, waggle, waggle, waggle and point your body in the perfect angle to show your siblings how to find flowers.

Speaker 3: You have become--

Speaker 2: A honeybee.

Speaker 3: But not just any honeybee. One of the overlooked honeybees. Dum, dum, dum.

Alison Stewart: Every episode of Terrestrials has a special song, too, inspired by nature and science. Today we're going to get to hear some of them but first, welcome Alan. Nice to talk to you.

Alan: Hey, good to be here.

Alison Stewart: And also Ana. Great to talk to you, too.

Ana: Hi, Alison. Good to be here.

Alison Stewart: Okay, Ana, what-- Just for people who aren't familiar, what is Terrestrials?

Ana: Okay. Terrestrials is a family-friendly podcast from Radiolab, technically Radiolab for kids. And it's hosted by Lulu Miller, who's also the co-host of Radiolab for adults, which is what we call regular Radiolab here. Alan and I are the producers, and Lulu enlisted us to enact this dream that she had because she's a mother, she has kids, and she didn't hear too many podcasts that were story-driven and sound rich and had music. And so she decided to create a world of her own and make it Terrestrials.

That's where we're at now. It's a nature podcast all about the strangeness right here on Earth and the whole goal is that it's a family-friendly show that you could put on while you're making dinner and everyone's milling about or you're on a road trip and you got a five-year-old, an eight-year-old, an eleven-year-old and parents up front, and everybody can enjoy it. Last season, we had episodes that were all about rule breakers, creatures, or phenomena that broke the rules that we've made up about nature. Like a mule, which isn't supposed to have babies, but one of them did.

This fall, we have new episodes coming out that are all about things that are overlooked, like stumps or squirrels, or honeybees. We do this all through storytelling, talking to experts, which could be scientists who have studied this their whole life or a middle schooler who is obsessed with squirrels and we write music for it and that is where Alan comes in.

Alison Stewart: Yes, Alan, you're the show's songbird. What does that mean exactly?

Alan: Well, it means that I get to have fun with music to help tell stories and to use music in a journalistic way to help explain scientific concepts or advance the plot and move the story forward but we also use music to drive home the emotion behind something or help us open up our minds to some of these bigger concepts. And sometimes we just honestly are using these songs to help us remember flashy, big, crazy, weird new words that we just learned and stuff like that.

Alison Stewart: Hey, listeners, by the way, Radiolab and Terrestrials want your help to come up with ideas for the show. They might even turn them into songs. What's your favorite weird or fun fact about animals, plants, rocks, water, anything that you can find in nature, even facts about your pet. Give us a call. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. You can call in and talk to Alan and Ana from Radiolabs Terrestrials and get on the radio. Or you can text us, too, as well.

Alan: Call in. We're always looking for inspiration.

Alison Stewart: Tell us about learning a new word. I'm scared to say this word. You have this one song called-- Okay, let me try it. Interferometer.

Alan: Close.

Ana: So close.

Alan: So close. It's more of an interferometer.

Ana: Interferometer because it has to do with the idea of interference, which is important when you have to learn how gravity works, which we had to do for an episode and still don't know if I know how it works, but we wrote a really fun song to explain it.

Alan: We'd love to play the song for you. It's a song about gravitational waves, a phenomenon that Einstein predicted, but at least Ana and I still barely understand. The song is also about this shiny new three mile long machine called the interferometer, which we can barely pronounce but the song. The song is about this episode where Wanda Díaz-Merced, an astrophysicist who lost her eyesight at age 20 but uses radio waves to listen to the universe.

She and her colleague Stavros believed they could use this machine to prove the existence of gravitational waves. This song helps us remember what the interferometer is, what it does, how to say the weird word and I hear you're a little bit of a Shaft fan. Is that what I heard?

Alison Stewart: Oh, yes.

Ana: Well, then you might like this song a little bit.

Alison Stewart: Oh, yes. Let's hit it.

Ana: And since this machine detects the presence of gravitational waves by picking up interference in spacetime, the machine is obviously called the interferometer.

[music - Interferometer]

Alison Stewart: Oh, you had me. You had me at the first note.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Oh, it's all Alan. Ana, but I understand you play bass on that.

Ana: Yes, I did. I went to school for jazz bass, and I played bass and a bunch of instruments. That's why I loved listening to all the kids in the last segment. They reminded me a little me playing music and Alan was-- well, really, it gets into the process of how we made this song and a bunch of other songs is like we're writing a script like you would a normal kind of boring radio script, where it's just like, people talking, people talking, people talking.

Then we've run into something like, how are we going to explain what an interferometer is without putting people to sleep who don't care about physics? It's a big challenge but that stumble that Lulu had in the script of her not being able to pronounce interferometer, that was a genuine thing that happened with her and Wanda, who's this incredible astrophysicist. Wanda genuinely had to correct her, like, "No, it's an interferometer. What I'm talking about."

From there, I was like, well, maybe there's something there and the rhythm of the word interferometer, we have to sing it. It's so much fun. We decided to describe the entire process of how an interferometer worked based on the theme from Shaft and that is just more like voice memos that we send each other on the team. We have little ideas and record them into our phones and send them to each other.

I don't know, interferometer and Shaft, it just made sense. I was like, what if you guys, hear me out? We just. It was like, interferometer. Then universe, whatever. All those words came into play and Alan really did the rest but then he's like, "Hey, you play bass. Why don't you play a little 1970s funky thing under this?" And then the background vocals are also me and Alan's wife Alita singing. That's another fun fact.

Alan: Yes, it's a whole family affair. We get everyone involved. Everyone in Terrestrials is getting on the track.

Alison Stewart: We are talking about Radiolab for Kids Presents: Terrestrials. A whole bunch of new music as well. We're having a listening party with producers Alan Gafinsky and Ana Gonzalez. Kids, if you're listening, if you have a favorite weird fact or fun fact about anything in nature, call us and tell us. Two one. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. You might make it on to Terrestrials. We'll have more after a quick break. This is All of It.

You're listening to All of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guests are Alan Gafinsky and Ana Gonzalez. They are producers from terrestrials. It's Radiolab for Kids, and they got a whole bunch of new music in the episodes. In fact, an episode drops today. Hey, we got a call. Let's talk to-- is it Maya and Arielle from Baltimore?

Maya: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Hi.

Maya: Hi.

Alison Stewart: Tell us what your favorite fact is. Your favorite nature fact.

Maya: Well, for one, when an animal is cloned, it starts out as an embryo, not as the form it was clone at and rattlesnakes will shed their tails.

Ana: Whoa, wait. How do you know those facts? Where did you get these amazing facts from?

Maya: We got one of them from our science class, and I just got one from National Geographic magazine.

Alan: Okay. Wait, tell me about this rattlesnake thing because I know they shed their skin, but are you saying they shed their whole tail like they can crack off their tail?

Maya: Yes, sometimes they do. It's rare though.

Ana: Whoa. And are they still poisonous? If you found a shedded tail, could it sting you?

Maya: I think it could.

Alan: Wait, do they [crosstalk].

Ana: I don't know. We'll have to look into that. That's a great prompt for us because we don't know anything really about snakes, so that would be great for us to learn.

Alan: I would honestly love to do a snake episode, but we'll see if we can get away with it because Lulu, our host, really doesn't like snakes.

Alison Stewart: Oh, she doesn't?

Ana: She's petrified of them.

Alan: She's a little wimp.

Alison Stewart: All right, let's talk about the new season of Terrestrials. Feature some special guests on songs. Who can we hear?

Alan: Yeah. Well, so here's the thing. We-- because music is such an important part of the episodes to us, we wanted to make sure that the music was extra special to us and to all the listeners so we brought in some real great musicians, some real rock stars to join us on some of these tracks. We've got Tambour, who is a concert harpist and vocalist from Nashville who's performed with the likes of Jack White and Cigaros.

We've got mid-west indie legend Mike Kinsella of American football and Captain Jazz. We've got Laura Jane Grace, infamous anarcho punk band Against Me!, performing on a track with us. We really pulled out the stops and just reached out to a bunch of really great musicians that we were excited about partnering with. And we hope that parents and kids will like it, too.

Alison Stewart: Ana, we have another song here. It's called on the other side. What is this episode that this song comes from?

Ana: Okay, great question. Unlike the fun interferometer science where we went silly, dancy, funky, this episode is called-- it's about the arctic squirrel. It's about an overlooked squirrel that lives up in the Arctic--

Alan: And it actually comes out today.

Ana: No, that was last. It's already [inaudible 00:13:36]. The honeybee. Yes, so it's out. You can listen to this. It's about these arctic squirrels. Every winter it gets so cold up where they live, like 60 below zero and the only way that these squirrels can survive is if they go into this deepest hibernation where they literally disconnect parts of their brain and freeze and curl up in a little fur ball and then as the spring comes around, their bodies begin to thaw out and their brain regrows these connections.

They don't remember a lot of things, but they remember their friends and their social connections and it's this beautiful, touching thing that happens every single year. And so this song that Alan wrote on the other side is this beautiful duet about how squirrels can find each other on the other side. He sings it with this beautiful vocalist, her name is Tasha. I believe she's an indie artist, but she's also been on Broadway, and the result makes me well up every time I listen to it.

Alan: Tasha is a fantastic musician. She's the performer in the Tony-nominated musical Illinois, based on the Sufian Stevens Illinois album. She, of course, writes her own stuff. She's just released a new album titled All This and So Much More on Bayonet Records. Her soaring vocal performance on this track just takes the cake. She's definitely a star, and we're so lucky to get to work with her.

Alison Stewart: Here is on the other side.

[music - On the other side]

Alison Stewart: That is a gorgeous song, by the way.

Ana: Oh, thank you.

Alison Stewart: All right, we got a text. I recently found out that hummingbirds can't get concussions because their tongue wraps around their brain and acts as a cushion.

Alan: They use their tongues as an airbag?

Alison Stewart: That's one way to look at it.

Ana: Wow. That's a great fact. Thank you for that.

Alan: Inside their skulls. Is that what they're saying or around the outside of their head?

Alison Stewart: I'm thinking around the outside, but who knows?

Alan: I'm going to have to do some research. This is incredible.

Ana: Yeah, we're going to have to watch some videos, ask some bird people what's going on.

Alan: That sounds like good fodder right there.

Ana: Oh, yeah. A lot of humming.

Alison Stewart: All right, there's a new episode out today called The Crystal ball. Tell us what it's about.

Ana: It's about a honeybee. We all know about honeybees. In the United States and Europe, we have one kind of honeybee, and it constantly gets plagued by diseases, viruses, bacteria, parasites. We enlisted the help of this wonderful entomologist friend of the show, our bug correspondent, Dr. Sammy Ramsey to--

Alan: Sammy.

Ana: Dr. Sammy. He took us all the way to the jungles of Bangladesh to look for a honeybee that is often overlooked and it's overlooked because it's hard to find and it's a different species of honeybee, and it can potentially unlock ways to protect our honeybees, which are the key to pollinating all of these plants that we rely on for food and to make our ecosystems function. That's what it's about.

Alison Stewart: All right, let's hear the song from that episode. It is called waggle, waggle. Let's listen.

[music - Waggle Waggle]

Alison Stewart: I love saying that. Where can people hear all of this great music?

Ana: You can go on to anywhere you get music and search Terrestrials, just the songs, and we have all the songs from last season, and then every new episode we release a single, so you'll hear that song, which is out today, and the songs that we played earlier.

Alan: If you want to be the first to hear the song, you got to hear it when the episode drops. So you want to go to terrestrialspodcast.org or go to--

Ana: Wherever you get your podcast.

Alan: Wherever you get your podcast. You search Radiolab for Kids and you'll find new episodes as they drop weekly.

Alison Stewart: It sounds so good. Thank you so much to Alan Gafinsky and to Ana Gonzalez. Radiolab for Kids Presents: Terrestrials. We really appreciate you taking your time today.

Ana: Thank you, Alison.