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- [00:06]
A
From the historic campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, where the good, the true and the beautiful are taught, nurtured, and honored, this is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners across the country. There's several things I find interesting about the dark matter search, and that is there's a lot of these really sensitive detectors set up or being developed to detect other things like neutrinos and things like that. And what people are discovering is, oh, we didn't detect the thing that we wanted, but surprise, we just created a really sensitive dark matter detector.
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This is your host, Scott Bertram. Welcome to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, part of the Hillsdale College Podcast network. That was Dr. Paul Hosmer, chairman and associate professor of physics here at Hillsdale College. We'll talk in depth in a moment with him about 2025, the year in physics. And later on in today's program, we talk Dr. Ivan Pongrasic from Hillsdale's economics department about his double life as a surf guitar player. First, we're joined by Dr. Paul Hosmer. He is chairman and associate professor of physics here at Hillsdale College. Dr. Hosmer, thanks for joining us.
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A
Thanks for having me.
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B
We talked at the beginning of 2025 and made an effort to do it again at the beginning of 2026. So we've made good on this. That the year, in fact, physics this time. Looking back the previous year, 2025, when we do look back at 2025 in physics, what kind of a year was it? How would you sort of describe what happened these past 12 months?
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A
Well, it was another really great year in physics. Physics is a really exciting science. There's always really neat things going on. And I feel like it's been successful every year since about 1687, when Isaac Newton published the Principia. And so we had another really great one. So we had some really powerful theories confirmed. Tantalizing discrepancies persist, which are always exciting. Neat applications are coming into view, and also global defense systems tested, which I think is really important.
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B
All right, so we've got this interstellar Object. Is it 3i Atlas? Is that what it is?
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A
Yes, that's right. So three I Atlas, and we're really excited about this. So the I stands for interstellar. So this is an interstellar object that has visited and is visiting the solar system. So this is an object that has come from another star system and passed through the vastness of space and somehow, against all odds, has made it to Our solar system and is zooming through. So The I in 3I stands for Interstellar. 3 stands for the fact that this is only the third such object we've ever observed passing through the solar system from interstellar space. The first one that we confirmed was in 2017. The second one was in 2019. So this is only the third third. So these things are very rare and it's super exciting because, you know, instead of having to go off thousands of years to another star to study these kind of things, this thing happened to pass by our neighborhood and we get to look at it as it zooms through. So that's just really exciting. And these things have been happening, or we've been noticing them more often. We hadn't seen any until 2017. And then since then we've seen three, which is, I think, a testament to the fact that we're getting more sensitive to observe these. And part of that is our global defense system that we are setting up to look for near Earth asteroids and things like that. So that's a good sign that we're being sensitive to this and we're seeing these things. But also we get to study things about other star systems to compare to ours. Composition, formation, development, dynamics. And so these are little messengers that we get to study. Now it's moving very fast, it's not going to be here very long. And so we don't have a lot of time to study it. But while it's here, it's really exciting.
- [04:03]
B
We also have these occasional headlines and a few in 2025 about City Killer asteroids or suddenly getting close. And there's a 3% chance this happens, but then it's just 1%. And how worried should people actually have been or perhaps should they be in the future when they hear headlines like that?
- [04:19]
A
Yes. So, well, the three eye Atlas wasn't, I guess, in danger of hitting the Earth, but in right about the beginning of 2025, we did observe an astero. First observations looked like it had a potential to actually strike the Earth in the future, sometime in the near future, 2032 or something like that. And so when it was first observed and we're getting the dynamics of it, they put the probability of a collision with Earth at something like 1%, which maybe doesn't sound that high, but considering the fact that at that time they didn't know exactly how big it was and it could be a global killer, 1% sounds really high. And in fact there is a scale called the Torino Scale, which gives us some sense of how worried we should be. It goes from 0 to 10 and this one got up to 3. So we should have been worried at a level of 3 out of 10. Now they made more observations and it actually got up to 4% chance that it might hit in the future. And then fortunately after that, after more observations, that probably went down to almost zero. And so we're now pretty certain that it will not in fact hit the Earth. But kind of a funny twist, as we made more observations and the James Webb Telescope observed it actually, the probability that might hit the Moon started to go up, and that's now at 4%. So we're safe on Earth, but it may hit the Moon. In fact, we know if it does hit the Moon, it would happen at about 10:19am on Wednesday, December 22, 2032. So put that on your calendars. And you know, it's not that big when it hits the Moon. If it hits the Moon, it wouldn't really budge the Moon very much, but it could kick up dust and that dust could come to Earth and it could dis satellites around Earth. So it is still something that one might be concerned about. And it's concerning enough that, you know, there's been discussion of whether we should try to interdict this in the meantime. But how worried should we be? It's not going to hit the Earth. And so that's good news.
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B
We'll set our calendars for 2032, and there's an impact imminent.
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A
That's right. Buy your Christmas presents before December 22, 2032.
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B
Dr. Paul Hosman with us. We talk about the year in physics 2025. The Large Hadron Collider tested the Standard Model again. It survived. You got to tell people first what the collider is, what the standard model is, and then why this might be a big deal.
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A
Yes. So before that, I would say this is one of the really cool things about physics is that we get to talk about cosmic and astronomical things and they're really big and the cool things out in space. But then physics also gets to go down to this topic, which is tiny fundamental particles, the fundamental particles and fundamental forces. So the Large Hadron Collider, or the lhc, is kind of the world's premier high energy particle accelerator at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. And so this is a huge machine pumping a lot of energy into accelerating particles to test fundamental physics in particular, one of the things it does is test the standard model of particle physics. The standard model of particle physics is one of our two premier theories of fundamental theories of nature, the other one being Einstein's general theory of relativity. So general theory of relativity tells us about cosmic cosmological things and gravity. And the standard model of particle physics tells us about almost everything else. All the fundamental particles, all the fundamental forces, except gravity. And so these are two really powerful theories. And the lhc, CERN is one of the best places to test the standard model of particle physics because it can produce these particles and study the predictions that the standard model says for their production and for their decay and things like that. So the LHC has been busily producing these kind of particles. In particular, it, like no other place, can produce these really heavy quarks, like top quarks and bottom quarks, and the Higgs boson, which you may have heard of, and the W and Z boson, and look how they interact. And so far, you know, in 2025, generally speaking, the standard model predictions in these very obscure almost decays in events has been confirmed. And so the standard model continues to survive these really stringent tests that the LHC is doing on it.
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B
Let's talk about the neutron lifetime problem, which is long running. What's the mystery here and what is new in 2025?
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A
This is going to nuclear physics. So we zoom out in terms of the particle scale. So the LHC is probing into even nuclear, sub nuclear, what makes up the neutrons and the protons inside the atom. So the atom is made up of electrons orbiting a nucleus with protons and neutrons in it. And so the neutron is one of your standard components of the atomic nucleus. And you know, in terms of it's fairly massive. The protons and neutrons in the atom can sit, are most of the mass of the atom. So if you think of your, your body and the mass of your body, probably about 50% comes from the mass of the neutrons in the nucleus. So these are really common, ubiquitous particles. And you would think we'd have these things nailed down pretty well, but it turns out we don't. So the neutron, while it's in the atom, in the nuclei in the atoms in your body, fortunately it's stable. That means it's not going to spontaneously decay. That means you don't spontaneously explode or something like that.
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B
Good things.
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A
But neutrons, when they are outside of or free of the nuclei in atoms, they do decay. They decay in about 15 minutes. And we've known that for a very long time. And you would think that'd be fairly straightforward to zero in on exactly how long that lifetime is. And it turns out we have different, almost independent ways to measure that lifetime. And the interesting Thinging is the two primary ways that we measure the half, half life or the lifetime of the neutron, they currently disagree. They don't disagree by a whole lot, but they disagree by about 10 seconds out of 15 minutes, which is really quite dramatic, and it's really actually quite exciting. So we were talking about the LHC and how it was confirming the standard model, and you might think those kind of confirmations are really exciting, but actually it's rather frustrating when things turn out the way that we expect. Physicists really like to find discrepancies or problems with our models. So, like the standard model of particle physics, we'd be really excited if we found that it failed. Unfortunately, we keep finding that it succeeds. We think that it should fail because we can't connect it with Einstein's general relativity. So we think we have to find something better than the Standard model. And we can only find that if we find where the standard model model fails. So we come to the neutron in this kind of mundane, let's say, particle nuclear physics, and surprise, there's this discrepancy that's always. So that's really exciting. What is causing this discrepancy? We don't know. It could be the two different ways that we test it. There's some kind of systematic errors that we don't understand in one or both of them. Or it could be there's something interesting about the neutron that we didn't know before, and that would be very exciting. Some kind of excited state that we didn't know before, or something more exotic like dark matter interactions that one of the tests are sensitive to and the other is not. So we're always really excited about discrepancies, and this is one of them. So I think that's one to follow.
- [11:36]
B
Talking with Dr. Paul Hosmer, who's chairman and associate professor of physics here at Hillsdale College, about the year in physics 2025. This has been an annual. Could have been an annual discussion about the search for dark matter, which still hasn't shown up directly. Did the picture change at all these past 12 months?
- [11:56]
A
Well, not really. So dark matter is one of the really exciting areas in physics. So if you ask, what are the most interesting and exciting vistas for physics? What is dark energy? What is dark matter matter? Dark matter, we think it. It exists from various independent observations in astronomy that affect the dynamics of galaxies that we see through gravitational lensing, but we just don't know really fundamentally what it is. Is it Primordial black holes are. Is it small particles that are like the ones that we know, electrons and things like that, but just don't interact by the same. By the same forces like the electromagnetic force? We're pretty sure it does not interact with the electromagnetic force. That's why it's called dark matter. The electromagnetic force has to with light or photons. And so these things are going to be very hard to detect. Anything that doesn't interact through the electromagnetic force are going to be very hard to detect. So it's pretty wide open as to what these things are. And so there's a whole lot of ideas how to try to figure out what they are and test those things. And all those things are going on all over. Physicists all over the world are doing these things. And unfortunately this year, we did not detect dark matter or discovery. What is the answer? Is it primordial black holes or other particles? But that's not necessarily a failure, because what happens is any one of these kind of dark matter searches that fails tells us something about what dark matter is not. And so it kind of limits the scope of what the possibilities that are still out there for dark matter to be. And so we continue to kind of eliminate possibilities. And so that's exciting. I also, there's several things I find interesting about the dark matter search, and that is there's, you know, there's a lot of these really sensitive detectors set up or being developed to detect other things like neutrinos and things like that. And what people are discovering is, oh, we didn't detect the thing that we wanted, but surprise, we just created a really sensitive dark matter detector, and we can eliminate certain possibilities for dark matter. And so you get a kind of an added benefit to a lot of the detectors that are out there. And then there's just a lot of really creative ideas of if dark matter is like this, maybe this would be a way to detect it. And one of my favorites that came out in 2025 is that dark matter, which does definitely interact through gravity, could kind of g or coagulate inside massive objects like planets. And that could actually affect the rotational velocity of planets. And so maybe if we get really sensitive to rotational velocities of planets, we might detect effects of dark matter in that way. And so that's one of the cool ways. Another one is looking at the twinkle of star, distant starlight. And we know that it twinkles. And if dark matter exists in the space out there, maybe it'll make it stars twinkle a little bit differently. So that's another fun one to think about. So none of those have panned out yet, but there's some neat ideas out there, and I always enjoy hearing kind of the creative ways to try to find dark matter.
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B
That's Dr. Paul Hosmer from Hillsdale's Physics department. More on what happened in 2025 in physics in a moment, but first we ask you to take a moment right now and subscribe to this program. Do it via Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or even on YouTube where you can find these episodes. Doing so means you'll never miss a new episode of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. And that's a fantastic thing. All the great guests, all the convers will come directly to you in your chosen app. However you get this show, go ahead and subscribe via Apple Podcasts, via Spotify, via YouTube. Subscribe today to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, continuing now with Dr. Paul Hosmer from Hillsdale's Physics department as we talk about what happened this past year in the world of physics. Now, in a previous answer, you mentioned black holes, and 2025 had the possible discovery of a supermassive black hole in a nearby galaxy. Why was that such a surprise?
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A
Yes, so the nearby galaxy is the dwarf galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud. So our really nearest neighbor kind of large galaxy is the Andromeda Galaxy. That's several million light years away. But our near neighbor dwarf galaxies, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, which are not visible in the Northern Hemisphere, they're fairly close and they kind of keep Milky Way galaxy company. Well, it's known that large galaxies are going to have supermassive black holes in their centers. In fact, we've basically directly observed two such in our galaxy and in another. But these smaller galaxies shouldn't necessarily have these black holes. Well, the story with the Large Magellanic Cloud starts with these stars called hypervelocity stars. So it turns out that, you know, when you look up in the sky and you see the stars, they're fairly stationary other than due to the rotation of the Earth. They go around. They look like they're going around, but they seem to be kind of sitting still relative to each other. They're actually moving around somewhat. But we've noticed about 1,000 stars in the galaxy that are moving extremely fast, hypervelocity stars. And so that's kind of neat. Where do they come from? The thought was they come from interactions with a supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy, kind of tearing apart binary star systems, and one gets sucked in and one star flies out with a really high velocity. So we've been looking at these, and it turns out some of these stars, hypervelocity stars, seem to be coming not from the center of the galaxy, but from the Large Magellanic Cloud. And so the idea then would be that there is a supermassive black hole doing a similar thing, but in the Large Magellanic Cloud. And I think it's kind of a neat picture. I like this story because you have this picture of this beautiful, peaceful, nearby dwarf galaxy, but it actually, it's hurling these extremely fast stars in our direction, which, you know, know, we're not really in danger of getting hit by these things. The space is very vast, but it's. I think it's a neat picture to think about.
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B
A few more minutes with Dr. Paul Hosmer as we talk about the year in physics 2025. The magnetic pole still moving this past year. What's going on? What explains that? And hear a little bit about a potential magnetic pole flip. Is that real? Is that overhyped?
- [17:59]
A
Yes. So this is real. So we've talked about death from above, and let's talk about death from below. So the Earth's magnet, this has to do with the Earth's magnetic poles. So a few interesting facts regarding the Earth's magnetic poles. One is the fact that. So that you have the north and south geographic pole. That's kind of the axis on which the Earth rotates. But the Earth is also like a large bar magnet with north and south magnetic poles. And those things are not exactly located at the geo. You know, the geographic poles. They are. We've known since about 1830s that they are located a little bit off of those. So the north, the magnetic pole in the north was actually when it was discovered in 1830, somewhere in northern Canada. And since we've known the location of that pole, we've noticed that it's actually moving. It's actually drifting, and it's actually drifting off into the Arctic Ocean and heading on over to Siberia, which is interesting. And in fact, it moves maybe something like six miles a year when we first discovered it. But recently it's been Moving more like 30 miles a year towards heading on over to Siberia, which is really kind of a dramatic thing. So. So what's causing that? Well, in the end, the Earth's magnetic field is caused by motion of kind of a molten iron core of the Earth. You have, like a conductive material. You have electric currents in there. Electric currents create magnetic fields and that's generating the Earth's magnetic field. But there's complicated dynamics with the motion of the iron core, some turbulence and complex motion. And so that can make these poles kind of drift or move. You know, that's interesting from the point of view of navigation. So that's where this story comes in 2025. So the United States government and the British government get together and produce every five years what's called the World Magnetic Model, which is going to be. This is how for GPS purposes and things like that, we will identify what the magnetic field looks like and where the North Pole is. And so that's significant. And that came out in 2025. And sure enough, the pole has continued to move. And people, some people have gotten nervous about this because they think that, that it possibly indicates that the Earth's magnetic field is going to weaken, collapse, and then reverse polarity. And we know that this has happened before in the past. So this is something that does happen. We've never seen it happen live. So we're not sure that this kind of motion of the, of the pole is a forerunner of a collapse or reversal. But if a collapse reversal would happen, that could be a negative thing. The Earth's magnetic field protects us from the high energy cosmic rays from the sun. We know that a lot of animals use the magnetic field to navigate or migrate. So one would think that a collapse of magnetic field would be, could be kind of cataclysmic. But the good news is not everyone agrees that this, that the movement is a forerunner of the collapse. And if the collapse reversal is going to happen, that's on the timeframe of thousands of years. So we won't be here long term.
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B
Yeah. As we wrap up, there's some areas in physics in 2025 that saw some incremental developments, but those developments could have some very practical applications. What should we talk about here?
- [21:10]
A
Yeah, so a lot of what we've talked about, been talking about is kind of fundamental physics and just what's going on out there. But obviously physics has lots of practical applications or developments. And so some of the things that have been on the radar and have been developing this year is obviously more work quantum computing. In fact, the Nobel Prize in physics in 2025 had to do with quantum mechanical effects in electrical circuits on a macroscopic scale, which is really neat. So obviously quantum computing is becoming extremely important. In fact, Hillsdale College physics department offered our first class. Dr. Jim Peters offered quantum computing. This year we have development of a nuclear clock. So you may have heard of the atomic clock, which is a very precise timekeeping device used in things like GPS and also science, precise scientific research. Now nuclear clock is here, which is much more precise than the atomic clock. There's been incremental, you know, movement in terms of solving engineering problems with nuclear fusion. So that's still coming on the horizon. And then something that I always find exciting are kind of possible medical applications for nuclear physics. So in particular, there's some. Been some developments with proton therapy, so that's using proton beams to attack things like tumors. Cancer. Tumors. And so developments on how to deliver the proton beams in a. In a better way. There's been development on muon beams, which would be something like, you know, doing things similar to X rays, let's say, but have some great advantages if we could manipulate and use muon beams. And so things like that are, you know, coming, coming down the pike and just look really exciting and could be very beneficial for humanity in various ways.
- [22:58]
B
And they might make next year's year in physics 2026. We just have to wait and see.
- [23:04]
A
Yes.
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Dr. Paul Hosmer is chairman and associate professor of physics here at Hillsdale College as we talk about the year in Physics 2025. Dr. Hosmer, thanks for joining us here on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.
- [23:16]
A
Thanks for having me.
- [23:17]
B
Up next, Dr. Ivan Pongrasic, professor of economics here at Hillsdale College. We'll talk about surf guitar. I'm Scott Bertram. This is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.
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Hi there, It's Bill Gray from Hillsdale College. Before you skip ahead, can I ask you a question or two? If you could teach 50 million Americans one thing, what would it be? Would you teach our great American story that this nation is unique, founded on self government and individual liberty? Maybe you would teach the truth about free enterprise, how hard work and opportunity allow anyone to rise. Or would you teach the gospel and the Christian faith that helps us live good and meaningful lives at Hillsdale College? We're doing exactly that. Teaching the best that's been thought and said through our free online courses, K12 programs, Imprimis, podcasts, and more. We reach and teach millions every year with the principles of liberty that make America free. And with your help, we can reach even more. Your tax deductible gift today will help us teach millions more people to pursue truth and defend liberty. Just text the word give to 7 1844. You'll get a secure link to make your donation in seconds. That's give to 718 44. Thank you for standing with us. Now Back to the show.
- [24:52]
D
Classical music is one of the greatest achievements of Western civilization. It took 2,000 years and the work of the greatest philosophical, scientific, political and religious minds to properly tune the piano and make great music possible. But classical music can be intimidating. In Hillsdale College's new free online course, the History of Classical Chopin through Gershwin, you'll learn how to appreciate humanity's greatest musical accomplishments in the history of classical music. Concert pianist and Hillsdale College Distinguished fellow Hyperion Knight explains how music has developed and what distinguishes the greatest musical achievements of Western civilization. To enroll today and secure your spot in this completely free online course, visit Hillsdale. Edu Network. That's Hillsdale Edu Network.
- [26:06]
B
Welcome. Welcome back to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. I'm Scott Bertram. Be sure to follow us on X. We're hillsdaleradio. You can find the podcast network at HCPodcasts. We're joined by Dr. Ivan Pongrasic. He is William E. Hibbs, Ludwig von Mises Chair of Economics and professor of Economics at Hillsdale College. And for our conversation today, important to know he's also a talented and successful guitarist. Dr. Pongrasic, thanks for joining us.
- [26:37]
E
Thank you very much, Scott. And thanks for being so kind, too. I appreciate it, not just to any.
- [26:41]
B
Kind of guitarist, but a surf guitarist. And we'll talk more about that in a moment. But I guess we start by asking, how does an economics professor become a surf guitar player? Although in your case, it's almost the reverse. Right. A surf guitarist becomes an economics professor.
- [26:56]
E
Right. I started playing in bands when I was about 19 and, and different kinds of bands, metal, alternative, shoegaze even. And in fact, I was in a shoegaze band when I started grad school. And in the middle of my grad school career, I fell in love with surf music and formed my first surf band, the Space Caustic. So I was very much still in grad school, which is probably not the best thing to do when you're in grad school. Yes. But I went ahead and did it anyway, and it worked out so.
- [27:28]
B
Surf rock has a very distinct. How would you describe it for our listeners? What attracted you to that particular style and not say metal or something else? And what keeps you interested in that style of guitar playing?
- [27:42]
E
It is very distinctive. It's a style that goes back to the early 60s, and it was somewhat of a global phenomenon. Most people associate surf music with Southern California, and rightly so. That's where, strictly speaking, the actual surf music was born. But, but at the time, as kind of the early rock and roll pioneers were coming across some hard times. And you had the deaths of Buddy Holly and Richie Valance and Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran, all of those early rock and roll guys. You started seeing a rise of instrumental rock music with people like Link Ray and Dwayne Eddy and Johnny and the Hurricanes. And they were actually pretty successful acts and they had pretty major hits. And not just in the United globally. And that kind of inspired this new wave of rock and roll music, which was instrumental. And maybe instrumental music was much more acceptable back in the early 60s. And I don't think it is very much anymore at all. People just cannot figure it out, like, what is going on? When is the. When is the singer going to come in? You know, you got to tell me what the song is about, right? Actually, give me some lyrics. But what happened is that there was a rise of several acts in the early 60s, California, about 61, 62, that became very closely tied to the rise of defender guitar amplifier instruments. And the Fender company was just coming into its own at that point. And they were situated in Orange County, California, not on the coast, a little bit further inland, but in particular the guys that is referred to today as the king of surf guitar, Dick Dale, he's formed a very successful partnership with the Fender company and they started feeding him all these new instruments. And that really ended up creating the sound of surf music. So it is. It's a guitar LED sound. It's. It tends to be kind of a clean. It's not very distorted guitar sound. And there is the use of the reverb effect, which is such a major part of surf music music, which gives it this sound, like as though it's at the bottom of a well. You can kind of even hear like a little, you know, like, echo inside of that reverb. And the interesting thing about it is that Dick Dale was able to use that reverb effect to capture the. The feeling and the sound of surfing the big waves. And there's this kind of white noise element. I've never surfed, so I have no idea. But I'm told that if you are, you know, riding a big wave, that is just white noise and a surfer, and apparently quite a good surfer. And so he started. He latched onto that newly created reverb effect by Fender Co. In order to capture the feeling of surfing and the sound of surfing. And. And it was really because he, you know, it was not intentional. He was hanging out on the beach all day. And Newport Beach, Balboa island there. And all these guys, he knew they would come to his shows, they say, man, your music sounds the feels to surf a wave. And so it was a kind of an organic thing that just kind of evolved and. And people started referring to it as surf music. But it's that sound that Dick Dale created which is a very actually powerful sound. He started using incredibly loud amplifiers that were made especially for him by Fender, the first hundred watt amplifiers that were ever made like five, six years before. The Marshall amplifiers, which everybody kind of associates with heavy metal that don't powerful amplifiers. Well, Dick Dale was playing at those volumes about five or six years before any of the Brit guys, British guys did. And so, yeah, so it's. It tends to be highly melodic. It tends to be led by this, you know, kind of clean guitar, but that also has quite a bit of aggression to it. And it can do both. It can, you know, be more kind of softer or extremely high energy. So in anything in between, between.
- [32:05]
B
How were you introduced to that style of music? I love surf music. There's a DJ in Chicago who is partial to it as well. And so he would sprinkle in these cuts, adventures and lively ones and others into the music. How were you introduced?
- [32:22]
E
It's a very strange story actually because as probably some people around here know, I was not born in the United States. I was born in. Raised in former Yugoslavia, which no longer exists, now it's Croatia. And in Yugoslavia, when I was growing up, there was a British instrumental band that was very popular and. And they were an early 60s band called the Shadows. And the Shadows had a massive hit in 191960 with a track called Apache. And they actually ended up being such a major influence on a whole generation of British guitar heroes. People like David Gilmore of Pink Floyd, Mark Knoffler of Dire Straits, Brian May of Queen, Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath, and even people like Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page and even Clapton, all of them are, you know, they will just start talking to them about the Shadows and they can. They will not shut up. They, you know, that was like an early love. And the Shadows ended up being very popular in Yugoslavia in the 60s as well. And my dad was also a guitar player and was into rock and roll music. And he end playing in a couple of bands himself back in the 60s. And one of them was a Shadows kind of a tribute band. They played a lot of Shadows material. And so I grew up hearing both my dad playing the Shadows material at home, but also every time that he would get together with his buddies, the guitars would come out usually. Well, not usual, always just acoustic guitars, but they would always play a bunch of Shadows tracks. And so the shadow sound is not strictly speaking, surf music, but it's got a lot of similarities, everything. And so when I came to the United States, I was absolutely in love with the Shadows. And. But there was. The Shadows are completely unknown in the United States. No one's heard of them. And so I started reading these guitar magazines and I would see that that was mid. The mid 1984, 85. And that was right at the tail end of what's come to be called the second wave of surf music. So there were a whole bunch of surf bands that were written about in this guitar. These guitar magaz. And they would sometimes reference the Shadows and it was like, oh, there is a connection here. Because I never heard of surf music prior to that. And you know, this is the mid-80s. It's not like you can just go to the Internet and check it out, right? And I was living in the middle of nowhere. We were with Russell Kirk up in Central Michigan. So I couldn't even go to a store and like, just buy some surf records. That was not possible. But I started reading about it and figured out that there is a connection there. And then when I finally got to college, I was at Central Michigan University my first year and there was a very cool little independent record store and I. I got a record by the Challengers, who was a pretty well known surf band. There was a record label called Rhino Records, which, you know, legendary, released a ton of old Re. Re releasing a lot of this stuff. And they released the Challengers collection. And I. I looked at this album and the guys look just like the Shadows, you know, the suits with the Fender guitars. And it's like, oh. And then I flipped it over and there were two Shadow songs that. That were covered by them. They were the only surf pain that actually covered the Shadows. And that happened to be the record that I came across. So that was around 1986. And at that point surf music was absolutely on my radar. And I started seeking out more and more of it. And I discovered Dick Dale and then some compilations. And it just opened up this whole new world to me.
- [36:01]
B
Dr. Yvonne Pongrasic with us. He's a economics professor here at Hillsdale College, but also a surf guitarist. You've played in bands like the Space Cossacks and the Madeira and most recently Lords of Atlantis. So you mentioned a lot of these songs have no words at all. And I imagine you helped write some of the Songs that you played in those bands. What's the challenge, or perhaps is it a freedom in composing music without lyrics, without putting words to the melody?
- [36:31]
E
Yeah, actually, I would definitely think of it as freedom rather than a challenge. And maybe because I was so into it to instrumental music from the very beginning, you know, I was inspired to pick up the guitar mostly because of the Shadows at the age of 13, and I just loved their sound. And I loved Hank Marvin, the lead guitar player, and his particular style and tone. And so to me, it came very naturally. And I loved being able to imagine these melodies that were highly evocative of various places. And that actually is what I ended up really loving about surf music. So Dick Dale, who I mentioned, his father was Lebanese. And so when he was growing up, he had this whole half. Half of his family was from Lebanon, and they would play the instrument called the oud, which is a North African instrument. And that became a big part of his influence. And it was his grandfather that would play the oud, and he would hear all these melodies, and he actually started incorpor that into as he was developing surf music. So it ended up becoming a major influence to have a lot of Middle Eastern melodies and these kind of Mediterranean, North African melodies. And then that spilled over into. Of course, they were just north of Mexico, so a lot of. They were listening to a lot of Mexican radio, and they would hear the folk music, Mexican folk music, and then that spilled over into like, Spanish melodies and flamenco kind of stuff. And all of that ended up becoming amazing, major kind of the DNA of surf music. And I just thought it was so, if I use that word already, but evocative, it would transport you to another place. It was exotic enough to be transported to Southern California, of which I had a very romantic notion for much of my life. And as I started reading, reading about the history of surf music, the kind of a very brief moment in time of the early 60s Southern California, you know, all these teenagers, they were just on the beach all the time and living a very carefree life and just being able to play music and be young. And it was a very romantic notion. I found that exotic enough on its own, but then to be able to be transported to all these different places around the world in some way. Surf music is actually world music. And the first time that there was a crossover between rock and roll music and world music, you know, that you started seeing these influences coming up in rock and roll music from other cultures and other locales, and. And all of that, that all brought it Together for me, like, this is really cool stuff. This is something that is, you know, that I can just close my eyes and I can assign stories in my own mind. It. It unleashes the imagination. There's nobody telling you what the song is about, you know, what you should be feeling, what you should be thinking. Right. If you are willing to open up your imagination, you can actually assign any kind of a story to that, to that song.
- [39:44]
B
Dr. Vaughan Pongrasic, you're an economics professor here at Hillsdale, but during that time, which is now, you know, decades, you've been touring, recording, rehearsing with these bands, in addition to the full academic career. How do you. How did you manage? How do you manage that?
- [40:00]
E
Not. Not so easy. It required some sacrifices. It did help, of course, that we had. Have summers off mostly, you know, not entirely, but so I was able to do most of my touring in the summer, which is, of course, the best time to be touring anyway.
- [40:18]
B
Right.
- [40:18]
E
And fortunately, I was always in bands with people that had fairly flexible schedules themselves and wanted to make this happen. And so, you know, we were able to tour all around the country and Europe and, you know, we got to play in Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Germany, Switzerland, Holland through the years. And so it definitely did help to have the summers off. And that's when I would do most of it. And then during the school year, I would mostly play in. Well, my band here since I've been at Hillsdale College has been the Madeira. And the Madeira is based in Indianapolis. So we would play mostly around Indiana, but a little bit in Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, places like. Like that. So that, you know, if I could drive within three or four hours one direction, I would. I would be able to do that on the weekend.
- [41:11]
B
Is there any particular performance or any particular venue you've played over the years that stands out as particularly meaningful?
- [41:19]
E
Yeah, absolutely. Almost certainly a lot of those European shows are very special. And in particular, there is probably the largest surf music festival, which is still. It's not huge, huge. Surf music is a very underground genre, so we can't compare it to other major festivals. That's not fair comparison. But there is probably the best known surf music festival. It's called the Surfer Joe Festival, and it's in Livorno, Italy, which is just outside of Pisa, and it's right on the Ligurian cedar on the Mediterranean. And I've been fortunate enough to play it, I think, four times altogether through the years. And probably, probably the 2015 performance and the 2018 performance, those two stand out and the 2015 performance was with a kind of a strange band. It was called the Blair Pongrasic Band. And it was. Blair is John Blair, who is the guy that's widely referred to as the surf music historian. And his band, John and the Knight Riders were credit. Are credited with starting the surf music revival around 1979. 1980. So surf music was kind of killed off by the Beatles in particular around 64. It just disappeared in record time. And then we started seeing this huge number of surf bands starting up in the early 80s and that was really led by John and the Knight Riders. And it was John Blair who was the lead guitar player in that band. It was his band and we became friendly, in fact, we became friends. And he got an offer to. To do a European tour. And he didn't actually have a band at that time, so he approached me and said, hey, would you like to go tour Europe? And I said, well, I'll twist my arm, sure. And so we ended up playing at this Surfer Joe Festival and that was actually our debut show. We had never played as a band before and it was the Madeira drummer Dane Carter and a Southern California bass player who we all knew and is phenomenal, John Paul Balak. And the three of us, sorry, the four of us, rather, we practice for the first time time ever as a band two days before our performance, I think actually, no, the day before come to think of it. And we just came. We were both. We were all completely jet lagged so, you know, we flew over and within a few hours we did our first practice and then we practiced again the next afternoon and then we performed that evening and we played a mixture of his stuff and my stuff and I do write a lot of it and. And it was an incredible experience. And there were, I think there were probably about 1500 people there for which for me is a massive crowd. And they knew who we were. These are pretty hardcore surf music fans and so they just loved us. And that was probably the greatest surf music experience I had. Probably closely matched by then, three years later, the Space Cossacks, my original surf music band, which broke up in 2000, but we reunited a couple of times and that was the most recent or no, actually we did reunite one more time anyway. No, that's right, that was the last one, 2018. And so we played again the Surfer Joe Festival and apparently we're quite big in Europe and people were just going gaga and it was incredible, actually. Really a fun experience.
- [44:42]
B
Yeah, A couple of quick questions here as we wrap things up. Who do you love listening to? Who are your favorite guitarists to listen to?
- [44:49]
E
So I mentioned Hank Marvin of the Shadows. And he remains, you know, to this day, 40 some years later, later, he's by far my favorite. And so, you know, if, if he's good enough for David Gilmore, Brian May and. And Mark Knopfler, definitely good enough for me. I love Dick Dale. He had a much more limited output as a guitar player, but he was. He's simply inimitable. Inimitable. The guy was a force of nature. We, a couple of my different bands got to open for him and I got to meet him quite a few times and, and his sound was just massive. And. And the fact that he was doing that back in 61, playing with so much force, power, volume, was highly inspiring. And so from the surf music and instrumental rock music world, those are two main, main, two influences. And outside of that, I love Richard Blackmore of Deep Purple and Rainbow and he's a huge influence. I, I can't. I mean, I think that guy is just absolutely from another planet, so. But yeah, those are my three main ones.
- [45:53]
B
And then finally, for people who are listening who might not be familiar with surf music at all, we've mentioned a lot of bands throughout the course of the Shadows ventures, Dick Dale, certainly. Are there any modern bands still active who are. Who are carrying that torch forward?
- [46:10]
E
Oh, actually, yeah. The scene is very much fully active and it's a kind of a global scene. There's a lot of stuff happening in Japan, There's a lot of stuff happening in Europe. Tons of stuff happening in, in Europe. And so you have, well, Mr. Surfer Joe, Lorenzo Valdemprini, he's an Italian guy who puts on those festivals and he actually tours around the world. He's about my age, so I'm 56. He's probably maybe a couple of years younger than me and he's still touring and recording music. He's great, amazing guy and a very fun guy too. Probably my favorite current performing band is from the Netherlands and they're called the Phantom Four. And they are just a phenomenal band. They have a lot of these world influences. And the guitar player from the Phantom Four had a band called the Treble Spankers before them and they were a huge influence, a huge inspiration for me to actually get into surf music initially. And, you know, there are a lot of American bands that are playing the Aqualads from Charlotte. And Jeremy DeHart, who is, who is my compatriot in Lords of Atlantis, he's carrying on with the with the Aqualas. The Aqualas have been around for like 25 years or something. And so those are just the surf coasters from Japan. They are still active. They're one of my favorites. Absolutely remarkable band. So, yeah, there's a lot of stuff happening. I mean, if you start getting into this as I, as I did and it became like a scholarly endeavor to discover all of these bands that are active and it really, you know, I became kind of obsessed with it in the 90s because there were just bands everywhere. And that was right as the Internet was starting up. So it was not very well developed. And so just discovering all these bands and finding out what their releases became like a full time hobby. And it's very much still like that. And maybe I don't have quite the same passion and quite the same amount of time that I did back then, but there is a lot of amazing stuff going on.
- [48:13]
B
Dr. Yvonne Pongrasic. He is William E. Hibbs and Ludwig von Mises Chair of Economics at Hillsdale College, also professor of economics, comics and great guitar player. I live down the block and so I occasionally hear him playing in his backyard. It's very nice. You can see his band Space Madera, lords of Atlantis. Dr. Pongrasic, thanks so much for joining us here on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.
- [48:35]
E
Thank you very much, Scott. It's my pleasure.
- [48:38]
B
That will wrap up this edition of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Our thanks to Dr. Paul Hosmer from Hillsdale's Physics Department and Dr. Ivan Pongrasic. Remember, you can hear new episodes every week on this station. You also can find extended versions of some of our interviews or listen anytime to the podcast. Find it at Podcast Hillsdale Edu or wherever you get your audio. Until next week, I'm Scott Bertram and this has been the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.
- [49:12]
A
Sam.