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- [00:00]
Capella University
This message comes from Capella University. At Capella, you can earn your degree with support from people who care about your success. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella. Edu.
- [00:15]
David Bianculli
This is FRESH air. I'm David Biancooli. Do you ever walk into a room and forget why you're there or read a book or watch a movie and years later can't remember a thing about them? Charan Ranganath is a neurologist who studies memory, and what he's about to say might make you feel better about your memory. When Ranganath meets someone, the question he's most often asked is why am I so forgetful? He says we have the wrong expectations for what memory is for. The mechanisms of memory, he says, were not cobbled together to help us remember the name of that guy we met at that thing. Instead of asking why do we forget, we should really be asking why do we remember? And that's the question he's been researching for about 25 years with the help of brain imaging techniques. Charan Ranganath directs the Dynamic Memory Lab at the University of California, Davis, where he's a professor at the center for Neuroscience and the Department of Psychology. His book is called why We Remember, and it's out in paperback. Terry Gross spoke with him last year.
- [01:21]
Terry Gross
Charan Ranganath, welcome to FRESH air. It's a pleasure to have you here. I learned so much about memory, I want to tell you I've had proper noun issues for years or decades. And sometimes, if anything that starts with a capital letter, a person's name, a movie, a television show, a recording, the songwriter's name. I remember the lyrics but not who wrote it, even though I know who wrote it and I know the name of the movie and I know the name of the show and I can't find it in my brain. And then a few seconds or a few minutes or a few hours or a few days later, without even thinking about it, it just kind of pops into my mind, what is going on?
- [02:04]
Charan Ranganath
I really find this a fascinating phenomenon. They call it the tip of the tongue phenomenon. Sometimes I don't know if this is what you're talking about, but where you have, you know, the information is there. And I mean, you're aware of something, but it just doesn't you don't have proof of its existence. You're just working on this complete faith that it exists. There's many reasons why this happened. One of the big ones is, you know, you pull out the wrong information when you pull out the wrong information, what happens is it makes it much harder to find the right information. So in other words, if you're looking for someone named Fred and you accidentally pull out Frank, and you know that's not the name. Now, Frank is very big in your consciousness, and it's fighting against the other memory that you have. And so as a result, you're going to have some. Some trouble. Now, later on, what happens is your mindset changes, and you're no longer stuck in that previous mistake, and that's why it can pop up. So what can sometimes happen is that we're looking for something, but then we get the wrong thing, and that leads us so far in the wrong direction that the competition in memory works against us.
- [03:15]
Terry Gross
But sometimes I know that the name starts with a K or it starts with an L. Why do I know that, but I don't know the name?
- [03:23]
Charan Ranganath
Well, that's another thing that can happen is that you get what's called partial retrieval, where you get a piece of the information but not the whole thing. And again, one of the things that I talk about in the book is this idea that I realized as I was writing it that it's not very intuitive. But memories compete with each other. And this is true for a name. This could be true for memory, for an event. And so if you have learned multiple names that start with the letter K, now what happens is you have this competition where essentially they're fighting with each other.
- [03:57]
Terry Gross
Oh, I go through the whole Alphabet. Is it Ka, Ko?
- [04:04]
Charan Ranganath
Yeah. And the more similar they are, the harder that competition is. Right. And I want to be clear that proper nouns are exceptionally hard because the problem is never the name or usually not the name with me. Sometimes with my name, it is the name for people. But let's say if the person you're looking for is Katherine. Right. Starts with a K. The problem is that there's nothing that helps you link Katherine's name with her face. It's just a completely arbitrary link. They could look like anyone, and that would be their name. So you're really trying to form a memory for something that's utterly meaningless. And that's the hard part. It's a little bit easier if you have some knowledge about them, but often it's just very hard. And even once you learn it, as you said, you can still suffer from this competition because there's many other people that you have probably met whose name also starts with a K. Well, you.
- [05:00]
Terry Gross
Make an interesting distinction, which is that there's a difference between Forgetting and a retrieval failure. And like for instance, my proper noun problem is a retrieval failure because it's in there, it's in my brain someplace. I just can't find it. It's rummaging through the junk drawer to find something really small.
- [05:19]
Charan Ranganath
That's exactly, that's one of the best analogies that I would think of as rummaging through the junk drawer. Another example I could give, which is it's easy for me to think of because it's my life, is that if I walk into my desk and my office is completely filled with junk, my desk is my junk drawer, basically, and I'm looking for something, let's say, let's just imagine I have 100 post it notes on my desk and they're all yellow. And on one of them I wrote my password for some bank account. Let's say I'm looking, I'm looking. It's going to take me a while to find it. And I might not find it amidst all the other clutter, but if I had used a hot pink post it note, it would stick out relative to everything else. And that is the issue with memory is you want something that's distinctive, that makes this particular memory unique relative to other memories that you're looking for. And so that's a big part of what helps you overcome the competition in memory.
- [06:17]
Terry Gross
But you can't do that with every memory. I mean, it's like having a new password every time you sign onto a site. There's a limit to how many mnemonic devices or little memory tricks you can use for every password and add to that everything you want to remember. How many memory devices can you come up with?
- [06:38]
Charan Ranganath
Well, I think this is one of the reasons why I wanted to write this book so badly. I'd been told by a lot of people and hey, you should write a book teaching people how to remember more. And I always say, you don't want to remember more, you want to remember better. Because nobody that's ever been studied has a photographic memory for everything. And in fact, I don't care because my phone has a photographic memory. Literally. I don't need to do that.
- [07:04]
Terry Gross
I want to ask you about social media because so many people are constantly jumping from one post to another, from one screen to another, and, you know, attention spans on screens are getting shorter and shorter. How does it affect your memory of what you've seen on social media if you just keep scrolling? And does that have an impact on your general ability to remember? Like if your attention is constantly getting Diverted from one thing to another, one thing to another. Does that have a sustained effect?
- [07:43]
Charan Ranganath
Yes. I think that the technology in and of itself doesn't necessarily cause these changes. It's more how we interact with the technology. And what I mean by that is that if we are switching between one thing and another, and we're so in the habit of being responsive to everything, what happens is that you have two problems with this. So one is that your attention actually gets grabbed every time you switch. You actually have a little bit of a cost in your prefrontal cortex. Just to simplify, it has to work a little bit harder just to get you caught up and back on the program. Right now I'm doing a social media post, but then Instagramming my time at this cafe, and then I'm going back and talking to my wife. Every time I switch back and forth, my brain uses some resources just to get on task. So I'm already behind schedule once I switch over. And as a result, I'm a little bit more. I'm even stressed I'm behind, and I'm having trouble focusing in a way that allows me to get these sharp memories. Because the memories that stick around are going to be the ones where we have a lot of rich information about the sights and the sounds and just they're more the immersive sensory details that can really make this moment unique relative to all these other moments. And so other things that we do with social media and the way we interact with it, like taking pictures, for instance, sort of the rise of Instagram walls everywhere. You can see now how much that has changed people's experience of places. And as a result, what I think sometimes happens is that people get into a mode of mindlessly taking pictures in a way that doesn't focus them on the details of their surroundings. And what do you do? You post it. You get a lot of these pictures, you over document, and then you post them and either never go back to them or in the worst case, they disappear. Right. So there's a platform called Snapchat where the information literally disappears within, I don't know, 24 or 48 hours. And I think that's a metaphor for how technology can impact our memories in general.
- [09:57]
Terry Gross
There are memories that we'd like to forget, but we can't. And that's mostly like traumatic memories, especially PTSD or memories of sexual abuse, rape, crime. And when we have an experience like that, a traumatic experience, the fight or flight response kicks in, whether or not we can actually fight or flight. So what's going on chemically in the brain with that fight or flight experience. That makes a bigger, like a deeper, unforgettable kind of memory.
- [10:40]
Charan Ranganath
Well, there's two parts of it, right? So there's this fight or flight response, which is we tend to associate with the feeling of fear. And so that's our heart racing, our body is mobilizing us to move. And so we're getting adrenaline's pumping through our veins, and we have a burst of neuromodulator called noradrenaline in our brains. And that's going to promote plasticity for this moment when I was scared for whatever it happens to be. And so that's the brain saying, hey, this is biologically important. But we also have the anxiety of how things could happen. So in other words, if you're a mouse and you're running around and all of a sudden you see a cat and the cat starts chasing you, you get this big fight or flight response. But now you could be a mouse and you don't know where the cat is, but it's somewhere out there. At any moment it could jump out. Now you're under stress and anxiety, and that's associated with all these release of these stress hormones. And the way these stress hormones tend to work is they don't just enhance memory for that moment where the bad thing happened, but a lot of the things leading up to it. And we think the reason for that, I think it makes sense, is if you're a cave person and you go into a cave and you get attacked by a saber toothed tiger, you don't want to just know that you got attacked by the saber toothed tiger. You want to know where that cave was and how to avoid it in the future. So you want to learn all the things that led up to that point. And so that's one of the ways in which these traumatic experiences can hijack those survival circuits that we have.
- [12:08]
Terry Gross
So once you have what seems like an indelible horrible memory and things that are happening now, make those memories come to the surface again and you're deep into post traumatic stress disorder, how does our knowledge of that perhaps help in changing the trauma of re experiencing the traumatic event?
- [12:33]
Charan Ranganath
Well, part of the vividness that we have when we recall a traumatic event, and this is true in PTSD and in people who don't have ptsd, but we're remembering something traumatic, is that you get this visceral response and that's that kind of you get a reactivation of the stress response or the fight or Flight response where your heart starts racing, you may be sweating or something like that. And that actually gives us that feeling of vivid remembering. Even though we're not getting the details of what happened, often it just makes us feel like we're remembering more. And I think one of the important things that we used to do when I was doing my clinical training was actually do cognitive behavioral therapy. And the behavioral therapy was addressing this kind of more visceral response associated with the fear. But then there's the how you think about it part. And the thinking about it part is actually separate. And it involves getting people to not. Not change the memory per se, but change how you interpret it and how you think about it.
- [13:31]
Terry Gross
Can you explain that a little bit more? Because I know early in your career or in your studies, you were working with veterans, and it was kind of like a group therapy session that you were running. And they were dealing with these kind of traumatic memories from their time, I think mostly in Iraq. So how did the technique that you're talking about is changing the narrative that you tell yourself about that story. How did that go? How did that work?
- [13:59]
Charan Ranganath
In our group, we had both veterans of the Vietnam War, but also the Iraq wars. And so I came into this group cold, thinking to myself, you know, I'm a young psychology intern. I don't have any of these experiences. What am I going to do? And what I realized was I had this hugely important role to be a team member with them. It wasn't like they were my patients. Like, we were working as a team where one person would release this memory that they just hadn't shared before, and another person would release a memory. And next thing you know, I could see this shared narrative buildup that was common across all these people. But because I wasn't in the thick of it, I could view it from a bird's eye view and give them a different perspective on it. And as we would come to an agreement about the way to reinterpret this memory, those memories are being transformed little by little, because the act of recalling them and sharing them changes it. So you tell me a memory, and it's no longer your memory, it's our memory because of the work that we put into in terms of transforming it.
- [15:05]
Terry Gross
So how does that make things any better?
- [15:08]
Charan Ranganath
Well, I think that there's events that we experience that are objectively bad, but what do we take away from those experiences? Right. Sometimes they're learning experiences where we would say, okay, I don't want to make that mistake again. And there's Something we can look at and learn from and take with us into the future. Sometimes there's things that are just bad things happen to people. But even then, you learn from your resilience and you learn that you survive those experiences. And so, you know, I've had experiences like that myself, and I think that act of changing the way you look at the past makes you realize that it's not an objective thing. The way we look at the memory is going to affect how we feel about it.
- [15:52]
Terry Gross
And as you've pointed out, memories change over time. Memories aren't like, indelibly the same. You compare it to a copy machine and making a copy of a copy of a copy, the image gets lighter, it can change slightly, and it's no longer like the original. So what you're talking about is having that work in your favor.
- [16:22]
Charan Ranganath
That's right. That's right. But what I would say is that we can even. It's not like you're fundamentally changing necessarily your recall of what happened, but when we look at memories from a different perspective, we can often see different things. You can actually pull up parts of the memory that you didn't even know were there before. Right. So it's not necessarily distorting your memory, but changing your perspective. But that in and of itself now changes that narrative that you've started to put together. So the story is part of how we approach that past, and building that new story changes our default way, so to speak, of imagining how that thing could have been.
- [17:03]
Terry Gross
You write that sleep is very important both to memory and to synthesizing memory. Can you tell us in, you know, briefly what goes on in the brain while we're sleeping that is so helpful?
- [17:16]
Charan Ranganath
Well, one of the fascinating things about sleep is we tend to think, oh, nothing's happening. I'm not getting anything done. But your brain is hugely at work. There are all these different stages of sleep where you can see these symphony of waves where different parts of the brain are talking to each other, essentially. And so we know for a fact that that one of the. At some of these stages of sleep, what happens is the brain will flush out toxins like the amyloid protein that can build up over the course of a day. So just by virtue of that function, sleep is very important. But then on top of it, what we can see is that the neurons that were active during a particular experience, we have come back alive during sleep. And so there seems to be some processing of memories that happen during sleep. And the processing of memories can sometimes lead to some parts of the memory being strengthened, or sometimes you're better able to integrate what happened recently with things that happened in the past. And so sleep scientist Matt Walker likes to say that sleep converts memory into wisdom, for instance, so we should really.
- [18:22]
Terry Gross
Give ourselves time to sleep even when we feel like we don't have the time.
- [18:27]
Charan Ranganath
Absolutely, because it's an investment. Because you're depriving your brain of all this information processing that can happen in your sleep. And I do believe it's controversial, but I do believe in the idea that sometimes you can wake up and through that memory processing actually have the ability to solve a problem that you couldn't do before you went to sleep. I mean, the other part of sleep, I think that's very important is when we're sleep deprived. It's just terrible for memory. All the circuitry that's important for memory does not function as well. And memory performance really declines.
- [19:00]
Terry Gross
Do you get enough sleep?
- [19:02]
Charan Ranganath
No, not at all. Not at all. I wake up in the middle of the night and I'm still trying to figure out exactly why.
- [19:11]
Terry Gross
Right. So we all have problems, I think it's fair to say. Remembering names and faces, it's very common and it's really embarrassing when it happens, especially if it's someone whose name you really ought to have remembered. I'm confident that this has happened to you and it must be especially embarrassing because you are a memory scientist. So how do you deal with it when you, especially if you're supposed to be introducing this person to somebody else and you can't even remember their name, how do you deal both with the embarrassment of it and just with the, you know, not wanting to hurt somebody's feelings by making them feel not important enough to have remembered their name. Like, what's your cover?
- [19:55]
Charan Ranganath
Oh my God. I still am working on this. I've had so many gaffes with people who have known for so long. I'm just terrible at this. The only thing that I have going for me is that people can just tell within an instant that I'm absent minded. And especially once I tell people I study memory, that gets me off the hook because you tend to study what you're not good at. Right. So they call it me search. So I think there's kind of a general idea that you study the things you're not good at, which is why I'm always a little suspicious of the social psychologists.
- [20:28]
Terry Gross
Charan Ranganath, thank you so much for talking with us.
- [20:32]
Charan Ranganath
Thank you. This has been fantastic.
- [20:35]
David Bianculli
Charan Ranganath, AUTHOR of the book why we remember he spoke to Terry Gross last year. Later, we listened Back to our 1997 interview with Alf Clausen, the Emmy winning former composer, arranger and orchestrator for the Simpsons. Justin Chang reviews the new film the Life of Chuck, based on a Stephen King novella, and I provide some context for the upcoming live TV performance of George Clooney's Broadway production Good night and Good Luck. I'm David Biancooli and this is FRESH air.
- [21:07]
Charles Schwab
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- [21:22]
Capella University
This message comes from Capella University. The right support can make a difference. That's why at Capella University, learning online doesn't mean learning alone. You'll get support from people who care about your success and are there for you every step of the way. Whether you're working on a bachelor's, master's or doctoral degree, you can learn confidently, knowing you'll get the dedicated help you need. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more@capella.edu.
- [21:54]
Charles Schwab
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- [22:25]
David Bianculli
The new movie the Life of Chuck, which won the top audience award at last year's Toronto International Film Festival, opens in theaters this week. It's an adaptation of a Stephen King novella and it's set during what appears to be the end of the world. Its stars include Tom Hiddleston, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan and Mark Hamill. Our film critic Justin Chang has this review.
- [22:50]
Justin Chang
The writer and director Mike Flanagan has become a well regarded name in modern horror, known for his TV versions of the Haunting of Hill House and the Fall of the House of Usher. He's also made a couple of Stephen King adaptations, including the films Gerald's Game and Doctor Sleep, and he's currently working on a new series version of Carrie. His latest movie, the Life of Chuck, is both a continuation of this trend and a bit of a departure from it. It's based on a 2020 King Novella that draws on horror conventions without quite becoming a full blown horror story. King's work can be unabashedly sentimental as well as genuinely scary, and this movie is a mystery with a maudlin streak. It hopes you'll be scratching your head at the beginning and brushing away tears by the end. The life of Chuck is divided into three acts, told in reverse chronological order. In the first act, a narrator voiced by Nick Offerman explains that the apocalypse is underway. The world is being devastated by fires, floods and earthquakes. Coastal parts of the US including California, are collapsing into the ocean. The Internet is shut down, seemingly for good, and humanity seems about ready to shut down as well. A few folks are trying to hang on for as long as they can. Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Marty, a small town schoolteacher, and Karen Gillan plays Felicia, a hospital nurse who has seen many of her patients die by suicide. Marty and Felicia were once married and remain good friends. In this scene, Marty talks to Felicia on the phone the phones still work and tries to offer some reassuring perspective. He explains the concept of the Cosmic Calendar, which imagines the history of the entire universe compressed into a single year.
- [24:52]
Charan Ranganath
The Big Bang happens at midnight January 1st. Then each month of this calendar is.
- [24:57]
Justin Chang
One and a quarter billion billion years long.
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Charan Ranganath
Ain't nobody told me there was math on this exam.
- [25:02]
Justin Chang
Universe starts January 1st, but the the Milky Way didn't form until May. Our sun and our Earth.
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Charan Ranganath
They don't show up until mid September.
- [25:15]
Justin Chang
Life appears soon after, but not us. No, no, we don't appear for guess how long again.
- [25:21]
Charan Ranganath
I was told there'd be no math. December 31st. Last day on the calendar and the.
- [25:27]
Justin Chang
Very first human beings on Earth made their debut around 10.30pm Even as everything around them crumbles, Marty and Felicia notice something strange. Wherever they look, they see an image of a man named Charles Krantz on billboards, TV screens and even windows, accompanied by the words 39 Great Years. Thanks Chuck. It's a surreal and unnerving sight. No one seems to have any idea who this Chuck guy is, but as the first act winds to a close, we meet Chuck. He's played by Tom Hiddleston and he's dying of cancer. What's going on here? An answer begins to emerge in the second act, which takes place several months before the first one. The world isn't ending yet. Everything seems fine. Chuck, an accountant who looks reasonably healthy, is out walking in a busy town square where he encounters a busker played by the drummer, the Pocket Queen. An impromptu dance number follows in which Chuck shows off some serious moves while a crowd looks on in amazement. It's great to watch Hiddleston cut loose and Flanagan directs the scene with real verve. From there, the third and final act rewinds further back to Chuck's childhood and teenage years, during which he's raised in a quiet suburb by his grandparents. Mia Sara plays Chuck's loving grandmother who taught him how to dance, and Mark Hamill plays his soulful but practical minded grandfather. There's a lot going on in this chapter. It's a coming of age drama with elements of a haunted house thriller, too. It's also a solution to a mystery as the connections between Chuck's life and the end of the world become clear. Without revealing too much, let's just say that King wants us to reflect on the idea that every human life is a universe unto itself. It's no coincidence that at the beginning of the movie, Marty is teaching his class the poem Song of Myself in which Walt Whitman declared, I contain multitudes. Throughout the movie, Flanagan makes clever use of recurring images, like a door at the top of a dim staircase, that help us piece the puzzle together in a uniquely cinematic way. In most other respects, though, the Life of Chuck feels hobbled by its extreme faithfulness to King's novella and its ultimately life affirming message comes together in a surprisingly lifeless way. At times, the film does feel like an audiobook, as Offerman's narrator keeps dumping exposition in scene after scene for a story that seems to urge us to dance like no one's watching. The Life of Chuck itself doesn't have much in the way of spontaneity. The movie doesn't ultimately contain multitudes, it just has a multitude of ways to keep hitting the same beat.
- [28:36]
David Bianculli
Justin Chang is a film critic for the New Yorker. He reviewed the Life of Chuck after a break. We remember. Alf Clausen, the composer and arranger behind so many of the song parodies on the Simpsons, died last week at age 84. This is FRESH AIR.
- [28:53]
Charles Schwab
This message comes from Thuma. Create your oasis with Thuma, a modern design company that specializes in furniture and home goods, by stripping away everything but the essential. Thuma makes elevated beds with premium materials and intentional details with clean lines, subtle curves and minimalist style. The Thuma Bed Collection is available in four signature finishes to match any design aesthetic. To get $100 towards your first bed purchase, go to Thuma co NPR support for NPR's Climate Solutions Week. Rethinking Home comes from the Nature Conservancy. People from all walks of life depend on nature for the food they eat, the water they drink and the air they breathe for strengthening their communities, powering their livelihoods, and safeguarding their health. Nature is common ground for everyone, and uniting to protect nature can help solve today's challenges and create a thriving tomorrow for future generations. Discover why@nature.org NPR.
- [29:54]
David Bianculli
The familiar theme song to the long running animated TV series the Simpsons was written by Danny Elfman. But for the next 27 seasons, from the show's launch in 1990 until 2017, all the music was written, arranged and orchestrated by Alf Clausen, who died last week at age 84. He worked with a 35 piece orchestra and often the show's cast members to create a dizzying range of musical highlights. Winning two Emmys for his efforts, Clausen had demonstrated his gifts for musical satire and cleverness. Before joining the Simpsons, he provided the music for the famous episode of the TV series Moonlighting that was a parody of Shakespeare's the Taming of the Shrew. On the Simpsons. One of his many inspired contributions was the music for a local musical production of another theatrical classic, A Streetcar Named Desire. Its songs featured solo turns by Julie Kavener's Marge as Blanche and Harry Shearer's Ned Flanders as Stanley and a big closing production number, the Kindness of Strangers, featuring quite a few of Springfield's familiar residents.
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Charan Ranganath
My name is Blanche dubois. I thought my life would be a Mardi Gras, a never ending party ha.
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Charles Schwab
Stella.
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Charan Ranganath
Stella.
- [31:26]
David Bianculli
Can'T you hear me? Ella, you're putting me through hela.
- [31:32]
Charan Ranganath
Stella, Stella.
- [31:36]
Capella University
You can always depend on the kindness of strangers who walk up.
- [31:41]
Terry Gross
Your spirit and shoot you from dangers.
- [31:44]
David Bianculli
Now here's a tip from Bat you won't regret.
- [31:47]
Capella University
All strangers just don't break you have it you have been.
- [31:59]
David Bianculli
That was music from the Simpsons by composer and orchestrator Alf Clausen. He spoke with Terry Gross in 1997 and she asked him how he worked with the writers of the Simpsons who provided the delightful lyrics.
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Alf Clausen
I'm usually given a set of script pages that contain the lyric, and I'm usually given enough pages in front of the lyric and behind the lyric so that I know what the setup of the scene is supposed to be. And once I'm given the lyric, I'll be in conference with the producers and I'll get a scan from them as to the pacing of the lyric, what the intent of the scene is, what the ambiance of the song should be. There are times at which the Lyric doesn't always match up pacing wise, line to line to line. And at that point I'll pick up the phone, talk to the producer who wrote the lyric, or if it's a combination of producers, we'll have a conference call and I'll say, you know, line number 15 has seven words and line number three has four words. So what can we do to make those match? So that from a song standpoint, it's easier for me to create something in a song form. So it's a collaborative effort. They're very cooperative that way.
- [33:10]
Terry Gross
Let me move to another track on the Simpsons songs in the key of Springfield cd. And you wrote a theme for the Springfield news show Ion Springfield with Kent Brockman.
- [33:21]
Alf Clausen
Right.
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Terry Gross
Tell me about writing this theme and what you think of TV themes and news themes that you hear.
- [33:29]
Alf Clausen
I think that my take on TV news themes in general now is that somewhere along the way there has been a God of rock and roll that has reached down and grabbed every news director by the neck and said our news theme must contain rock and roll and our news theme must be synthesized. Because that's what the public relates to now. It gives us all this excitement. And that's what I tried to reach for in the ion Springfield theme. The rock groove plus the electronic synthesized music that everybody has come to know and love.
- [34:11]
Terry Gross
Well, let's hear your version of this, the ion Springfield theme with Kent Brockman.
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Charan Ranganath
Hello, I'm Kent Brockman and this is I on Springfield. Wow. Infotainment.
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Terry Gross
What are some of the for real TV themes that you've written over the years?
- [35:05]
Alf Clausen
Well, TV themes has not been my bailiwick, as they say. I co wrote the theme to the elf series and other than that I have been basically known as an underscore music person, not a theme writer.
- [35:19]
Terry Gross
And what is underscoring?
- [35:21]
Alf Clausen
Underscoring is all of the music that you hear within the body of the show other than the theme. Underscore music that accompanies dialogue. Underscore music that takes us from one scene to another. Underscore music is often feature music that that really is designed to complement the mood of a particular scene.
- [35:46]
Terry Gross
And how much underscoring do you have to do for the Simpsons?
- [35:49]
Alf Clausen
It's quite extensive. In my normal schedule I have about 30 music cues to write for an episode and I have about a four day turnaround for that. And the music is all written for a 35 piece orchestra, so it's pretty intense.
- [36:04]
Terry Gross
I want to get to another song on the Simpsons cd. And this is actually a parody of A song from Schoolhouse Rock, the song I'm just a bill on Capitol hill. And this was a song written by Dave Frishberg that's supposed to describe. I mean, that does describe how a bill becomes a law. And this is a really clever parody of that by a demagogue sung in the Persona of a demagogue. And Jack Sheldon, the trumpeter who sang the original version, sings this one as well. Tell us how this one came about.
- [36:42]
Alf Clausen
Well, again, the lyric originated as part of the script. And when I was given the sample that this was supposed to follow, when I heard the original, my first comment was, well, that's Jack Sheldon singing. And the producer said, do you know him? And I said, oh yes, he's a friend of mine. He's worked for me many times in the past. He worked for me on moonlighting playing some of his beautiful, beautiful trumpet solos. He's one of the best jazz trumpet players in the world. And I said, wouldn't it be funny if we could get Jack to sing on our parody as well as the original? And the comment was made of do you think we'd be able to get him? And I said, sure, let me make the call. I called Jack and Jack said, I'd be glad to do this. So it really, I think, makes it come that much closer to home and gives the bite that much more significance.
- [37:33]
Terry Gross
Well, let's hear the parody of I'm just a bill. The parody is called the amendment song. And this is from an episode of the Simpsons called the day the violence died. Hey, who left all this garbage on the steps of congress?
- [37:46]
Charan Ranganath
I'm not garbage, I'm an amendment to.
- [37:50]
David Bianculli
Be as an amendment to be and.
- [37:53]
Terry Gross
I'm hoping that they'll ratify me.
- [37:56]
David Bianculli
There's a lot of flag burners who.
- [37:59]
Charan Ranganath
Have got too much freedom I wanna make it legal for policemen to beat.
- [38:05]
David Bianculli
Em cause there's lamberts to our neighbor.
- [38:07]
Charan Ranganath
Tease least I hope and pray that.
- [38:10]
David Bianculli
There are Cause those liberal freaks go too far.
- [38:16]
Terry Gross
Why can't we just make a law against flaggarting?
- [38:19]
David Bianculli
Because that law would be unconstitutional. But if we change the constitution then.
- [38:24]
Terry Gross
We can make all sorts of crazy laws. Now you're catching on. What the hell is this? It's one of those campy 70s throwbacks.
- [38:32]
Charan Ranganath
That appeals to generation xers.
- [38:34]
Terry Gross
We need another Vietnam Then up their ranks a little.
- [38:37]
David Bianculli
What if people say you're not good.
- [38:38]
Terry Gross
Enough to be in the constitution? Then I'll crush all opposition to me and I'll make Ted Kennedy pay if he fights back I'll say that he's gay.
- [38:51]
David Bianculli
Good news amendment. They ratified ya. You're in the U.S. constitution.
- [38:57]
Charan Ranganath
Oh yeah.
- [38:58]
David Bianculli
Doors open, boys.
- [39:04]
Terry Gross
When you're writing a song parody, you're trying to write it as if it were serious, as if it were really a Broadway show or really a movie theme.
- [39:11]
Alf Clausen
Absolutely, Absolutely. I'm very, very serious about this. And I hearken back to another phrase that an old trumpet player friend of mine told me a long, long time ago. You can't vaudeville. Vaudeville, meaning that if something is funny already, if you try to put something funny on top of it, it will dull the issue rather than enhance it. Therefore, not only in creating the songs, but in creating the underscore music for the Simpsons and trying to give credence to the emotional content of what the characters are saying. I'm always extremely serious and I think what happens is that the the listener and observer gets pulled into the situation more effectively once the music is serious, so that when the gag finally comes, the gag then becomes twice as funny.
- [40:17]
David Bianculli
Alf Claassen, longtime composer, arranger and orchestrator for the Simpsons, speaking with Terry Gross in 1997. He died last week at age 84. Coming up, I discuss George Clooney's Broadway hit Good Night and Good Luck, which CNN is televising live Saturday night.
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Charles Schwab
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Capella University
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- [41:43]
David Bianculli
This Saturday, CNN is presenting a live telecast directly from Broadway featuring George Clooney as pioneering CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow in the stage drama Good Night and Good Luck, CNN is promoting the telecast as unprecedented. That's somewhat debatable. But what isn't debatable is that it's the TV event of the season and not to be missed.
- [42:06]
Justin Chang
A CNN special event on June 7, a landmark television event. For the first time ever, Broadway goes live on television. George Clooney and the five time Tony nominated Good Night and Good Luck, One Night Only, live on CNN and streaming live on max.
- [42:21]
David Bianculli
CNN's claim that for the first time ever, Broadway goes live on television technically is accurate, but it's somewhat arguable. Live TV broadcasts of stage dramas, comedies and musicals are as old as television itself. That's not an exaggeration. A musical written expressly for TV called the Boys from Boise was broadcast by New York's Dumont Station in 1944, back when television still was considered experimental. In 1955, NBC presented a live staged version of Peter Pan, a musical starring Mary Martin. But that was a Broadway musical that had closed one week earlier. To prepare for the live telecast in 1983, the PBS series American Playhouse presented a live version of Thornton Wilder's the Skin of Our Teeth starring Blair Brown that was broadcast directly from the old Globe Theater. But the Globe was in San Diego, not on Broadway. Many TV presentations of Broadway shows over the years were filmed or pre recorded, not performed live. Modern TV musicals that weren't pre recorded, such as Allison Williams and Christopher Walken in NBC's Peter Pan Live in 2014, were staged expressly for TV. One nationally distributed live performance that did emanate directly from Broadway was a 2016 production of the musical she Loves Me. But that was live streamed, not televised. So when CNN says of Good Night and Good Luck that for the first time ever Broadway goes live on television, it's being very careful with its wording. No matter. I'm really excited about this special TV event. Good Night and Good Luck, written by George Clooney and his production partner Grant Heslov, is based on the story of broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow, who set the standards for excellence in news reporting for the entire industry, first as a CBS radio reporter during World War II, then as the host of the TV news magazine See It Now. In the 1950s, he used that TV pulpit to challenge Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy, whose communist witch hunting tactics of lies, bullying and unfounded accusations had divided and paralyzed the country. When Murrow and his team, which included producer Fred Friendly and director Don Hewitt, migrated to tv, they were like kids with a new set of toys playing with the possibilities of live television and a new visual medium. On that first show in 1951, they opened by showing live, side by side images of the Brooklyn Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge simply because they could. We, for our part, are considerably impressed. For the first time, man has been able to sit at home and look at two oceans at the same time. We are impressed with the importance of this medium. We shall hope to learn to use it and not to abuse it. And they used it well, very well. Three years later, in 1954, they devoted an entire program to the tactics of Joe McCarthy using his own recorded words and images to expose him. The counsel Murl gave that night, speaking on live TV to his national audience absolutely is worth hearing today, more than 70 years later. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. Twenty years ago, Clooney directed a movie about that Merle McCarthy confrontation. He and Heslov wrote it and named the 2005 film after the phrase with which Murrow ended each radio and TV broadcast. Clooney had a supporting role as Murrow's producer, Fred Friendly. Murrow was played by David Strathearn, whose portrayal was as faithful and respectful as the movie's script. The actions of the junior senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear, he merely exploited it, and rather successfully. Cassius was right. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves. Good night and Good Luck. Clooney wanted to make the movie Good Night and Good Luck in part to salute his father, Nick Clooney, who was a TV news anchor in Cincinnati, and also to salute television news at a time when it, and specifically CBS, had stood up to political power. In 2012, CBS presented a pilot that aimed to revive one of Ed Murrow's TV shows with new hosts, but not see it now. Instead, it was the much more celebrity centered, person to person. Clooney was one of the celebrity guests and was asked then why he didn't play Edward R. Murrow in his Good Night and Good Luck movie.
- [47:27]
Charan Ranganath
I thought about playing Murrow and I'd written it to play Murrow quite honestly.
- [47:33]
David Bianculli
And I realized that Edward R. Murrow was this character that always felt like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. And that isn't something that is necessarily.
- [47:46]
Charan Ranganath
The way people think of me.
- [47:48]
David Bianculli
And I didn't think I could act.
- [47:49]
Charan Ranganath
My way out of that.
- [47:51]
David Bianculli
Well, it's 2025 now and things are a bit different. Clooney has the gravitas now and some experience with live tv, having presented the CBS live drama version of failsafe in 2000. And CBS, instead of standing up to power these days, shows signs of caving. Executives at the CBS flagship news series 60 Minutes, a series created by Don Hewitt, the director of See it now, have quit over what they say is an atmosphere of editorial interference. I've seen the Broadway show and Good Night and Good Luck brings home the distinctions, the stakes and the messages brilliantly and powerfully. The stage production, directed by David Cromer, uses TV cameras and monitors to stunning effect. And a closing news montage bringing the story and the issues up to the present day is as much a knockout punch as the final speech Clooney delivers as Murrow, he's excellent. So is the play, and so is the idea that a TV news outlet is presenting it live this weekend on television. Saturday night's live presentation of Good Night and Good Luck will be available on CNN at 7:00pm Eastern Time. It also will stream live on CNN.com and on Max on Monday's show. Comedian Atsuko Okatsuka is known for finding humor in the dysfunction of her immigrant family and and the daily responsibilities of being an adult. Her new stand up special is about her father, who reappeared in her life after decades away. Join us to keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews. Follow us on Instagram @NPRFreshAir. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Sam Brigger is our managing producer. Our senior producer today is Roberta Shurok. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Hertzfeld and Diana Martinez. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly CV Nesper. Hope Wilson is our consulting visual producer for Terry Gross and Tonya Moseley. I'm David Biancooli.
- [50:31]
Capella University
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Charles Schwab
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Charan Ranganath
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Charles Schwab
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