Transcription
Part of the book is to try to create this, uh, uh, intergalactic music theory of everything. How would you think, what kind of theory would you need to talk about all music and not just Beethoven and Bach and Chopin or something like that? So, um, that's really the big challenge here. And so we have to actually get rid of those very important cultural questions. What makes music great? And just ask them simpler question. What is music?
The Golden Record? You guys, how did you get interested in that? So, you know, it's a funny question because, um, I mean, you know, Daniel and I have known each other for years, but we don't get to see each other very often. So we have this annual conference that takes place somewhere else, um, in North America every year, in November. And so that particular year, whenever it was five years ago I think it was in Vancouver. Yeah. And so we had it, we, we met, met up for breakfast. I was, at the time, I was sort of, you know, grappling with lots of different ideas and they didn't really seem to come together. And we were talking about it for a long time. And then, you know, Daniel was saying, I think there is a connection and the connection is The Golden Record. And, um, and he was right. So, you know, this was also something that Daniel had been thinking about. And so that's when we decided we're going to write a book.
So tell us, tell them what the Golden Record is and how far away from us it is right now. I think there's two of them and they're very far away from us right now. And at least so we can have some context. The Golden Record was sent out. This is a, a sort of a record LP of recorded music from around the world that NASA, on the Carl Sagan, sent up into space in 1977 in two Voyager spacecrafts, uh, in order to share with the universe, something of human culture and hopefully make contact with aliens. That was the idea behind it. It was pretty crazy at the time. But I think today with the discovery of so many exoplanets, it's becoming a little bit less crazy of an idea. Although it's very far away from us now. They're at the, the intersection of our, of our, uh, you know, sort of a group of planets and the next one. It's out voyaging further than any, anything has ever voyaged from the, uh, from, uh, the earth, that we know of. Furthest, um, human object, I think. From our planet. The furthest our culture has ever, sort of, gone out to the world. Or to the universe.
Now there's a lot of songs on The Golden Record. Now, so, so you decide the thing that, that brings together a lot of these ideas is The Golden Record. Now, do you sit down and listen to it together? We both listened to it many, many times. Yeah. Okay.
Now, now, you know, this is, Carl Sagan's idea was that you'd send this record player off into space, but if I'm an alien, you know, like, what am I going to make of this? You know, it's, it's, it has no earthly context. Grow. You know, when I, when I listened to jazz, you know, I hear, um, the room Miles Davis was in, and I have some understanding of what that room was, even though it's very far away or Chicago Blues or, or, uh, even, you know, early recordings of Bach. I, I, I can understand the context of some of those things. Now, if I get all this music and I have no context, what does it, what is it? Well, that's our question really in our, in our book of alien listening. If you put music in this contextless context, it changes the entire meaning of music and how you think about it and how you theorize music. So this is what our research is about. And the strange thing is, you know, once you take away all those cultural contexts, what is it? It's just earth music.
Now, now, um, what do you, so Pythagoras has had the first idea of what music was, you know. What did, uh, what did people think of Beethoven when we got to Beethoven in relation to monotone music? Like, I mean, that might've been like listening to alien music in some sort of sense. No? Absolutely. Yeah. It's, um, I mean, you know, one thing that is pretty interesting about the way that The Golden Record is put together is that the, when they, you know, when they decided to make it, they went through various, uh, versions. And the first, you know, the first draft was, let's just put all of Bach's music on it. Um, and, uh. Which is not a bad place to be right? Yeah, then the second person was, let's just have a mixed tape with Beethoven 9 on it, but nothing else. That was the latest technology at the time. And so they thought they were going to do that. But then, you know, the, uh, the team, um, around Carl Sagan spoke to Alan Lomax, uh, you know, the, the ethnomusicologist and he said, you know, you really should try to go out of your comfort zone. And so they ended up putting a lot of, um, music from all parts of the world on it. And so the notion of what music was, was really broadened out. And so, you know, they, they tried really hard to get a sense of, uh, you know, music is not just one thing. It's not just Bach and Beethoven, but it is also, you know, um, music by, uh, um, Australian aboriginals. It's, uh, it's a, you know, Peruvian wedding music, it's Sub-Saharan, uh, drumming. Um, and so for the time that was -. Louis Armstrong right? Louis Armstrong. Louis Armstrong is on there as well. Yeah. And I mean, you know, they, so they, they also wanted to have, uh, some American popular music. And one thing that I find really interesting is that, you know, what ended up being put on the record is just, uh, you know, it's all, African-American popular music, so they have a blind Willie Johnson, Louis Armstrong, and Chuck Berry. Um, so they, they, this talk about how they wanted to include The Beatles as well, but they couldn't get the copyright for Here Comes the Sun. Um, but you know, what ended up being put on the record is really by the standards of the time, about as broad-minded, as it gets. And so, you know, to get back to your question about what is music? It's really a kind of, you know, um, uh, diverse and open-minded, uh, concept of music that was sent out in, in to outer space. And that's really different from the very first conception of what they were going to do with this. And one detail that I find absolutely mind blowing is that they did all this in record time. They only had six weeks from beginning to end. And so they just, you know, did all this. You know they didn't have Spotify. Exactly.
And to confuse aliens even more they actually included the sound of nature as well. So you have waves and babies crying and also whale songs. I think, um even, and actually, hat would be indistinguishable for the aliens from human music. So in that sense, it also sends, uh, the musical of the earth that is in one sense non-human. What is it that, that makes us human? You know, what is the, the things that we can look at and say, you know, we're different from animals? I mean, you know, lots of animals, um, sing songs, you know, birds sing songs, whales, you know, hum, or, or communicate through songs. But is there something different about, you know, Beethoven is there, is, is that the, the height of our, our humanness embodied in, in this arranging of these sounds? This, this great, you know, beautiful thing. That's a great question.
So the makers of The Golden Record thought so. In the final version, there are two pieces by Beethoven, three pieces by Bach. So they kind of get special treatment in the end. And the idea behind it was that if there are aliens out there who are interested in our music, then they might want to have something that they can meaningfully compare against each other. And so they thought having multiple pieces by the same composer would help them. But to get back to your earlier question, you know, there's absolutely no reason why aliens would pick up on style right on, on compositional style. Because like, um, the one piece by Beethoven is the 5th symphony. It's like a fast and furious big, big orchestra. And the other is the Cavatina from, uh, the slate string quartet. So it's this very intimate, very slow piece of, of music. Um, I, you know, there's a lot of different stuff going on. The only thing that links them is that they're by the same composer, the same is true for them, for the, for the pieces by Bach. So I'm not at all convinced that style and the same composer are really relevant criteria once you get into outer space. Obviously for us here on earth, that is a really important criteria, but, you know, we are, what we're talking about with The Golden Record. If it actually ends up being found by someone who can hear it, it would be that, you know, we have to completely, you renegotiate all our criteria. Like, what is music? What are the dimensions in which, in which music exists? What kinds of things do we listen to, listen for? Human music is very specific to humans. So, um, you know, even when we listen to whale songs, are we really listening to what whales hear? Right. So the question about aliens, is we have no idea how they will actually filter the music, listening to Bach harem, um, may be this thing to either a fart or something that you wouldn't know, right. And so I think NASA, were hoping that the mathematics of music or the science there, would do the trick, the complexity of that, but we cannot even guarantee that with alien ears. I mean, it may be a universal language in some sense, right? Besides mathematics, maybe music.
Now, now, um, a turtle, theoretically senses time in a totally different way than a human being would sense it. So theoretically, you know, can we learn from the way different life form, you know, uh, a songbird can, you know, sing almost at the speed that we listened to it. So is it, can we learn cues from things on earth about the way, um, life might interact with, with this music? Yeah. We have a whole chapter on all these different animals. What would the, what would they experience be like listening to The Golden Record? And, you know, we were thinking of that fruit fly, for example, because there is a metabolic rate which actually experience time completely differently. So it would take, it would seem much, much longer, um, for the fruit fly even to hear a very short piece, because it'll last, most of the fruit flies life, for example. But yeah, I see all these things, right, biological makeup, all the filters that we have built in, as well as the atmosphere impression and so on will change the actual experience of music. I think Alex did a great job trying to theorize what it would be like for an octopus to hear music and it has a much more limited range and it's listening through-. And four hearts and- Yeah, exactly. Right. What would that be like? They would, that's pretty alien already, but actually we don't know. I mean, that's the, that's the issue. Even on earth we don't really know how to get inside another species, um, uh, experience of listening to our music.
Now, Alan Lomax, you know, he would spend time going through the South, you know, Leadbelly, slept on his bed. You know, he, he had an idea. It was more of a, I mean, I, I, what would you call him a muse? The first, one of the first musicologists going up into people's attics, finding this old music up in the, uh, in the attic. You know, what was his sort of framework of thinking about this in the seventies? You know? Yeah. So he was incredibly influential, right? I mean, he, he, he collected music that, you know, was not, I mean, you know, it existed, it would, if people hadn't really looked at it from a scholarly perspective and he was really important in preserving a lot of these traditions and also kind of changing the perspective of what counted as music and that it wasn't just Bach and Beethoven, but, um, but you know, that folk music, um, was a really valuable, uh, object of study as well. And so, you know, I think, um, his, you know, on the one hand, obviously he was really important in collecting certain repertoires and, uh, you know, putting together various collections. Um, uh, but also, you know, on a broader level, I think his, uh, his influence was really important in telling people what music is and what it could do. I mean, obviously he wasn't the only one, but, um, he was certainly one was very important in, uh, in American culture. And, uh, you know, he also helped the team, um, that put together The Golden Record and putting them in touch with various collections. And, you know, I mean, it was really hard to get collections of non-Western music at the time. They, you, you know, there were some archives, I mean, the biggest one, the most important one at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. And they certainly make use of that. But, you know, a lot of it was just about personal connections that. You know, they went to New York a lot and talked to people, you know, who had certain recordings of, uh, you know, specific ragas that they wanted to include, uh, but it was very much word of mouth and, uh, you know, they took what they could get. Um, but also what they really liked. I mean, they, they, you know, they, they had very stringent aesthetic criteria about what they liked.
That's my question. Cause it's really, again, it's, somebody's personal curation of taste that. Right. So, you know, and so how it, you know, first of all, can we just explain a little bit about what you two do cause it's so interesting and you're, you know, a little bit just about your background, because I think it would be important for the folks watching, listening, Daniel. Well we're both musicologists, uh, with, uh, uh, interest, uh, in music theory in particular. So I I'm based in Hong Kong, but my work actually is primarily on the sort of the, the, the Western repertory, uh, particularly on Beethoven. Uh, and so I do a lot of philosophical as well as theoretical work, uh, on, on music. That's what I do. Alex. Um, I teach at Harvard, I also, I'm a musicologist slash music theorist. Um, and the slash is really, uh, you know, is a function off my education, both Daniel and I were trained in England in Cambridge. And there is no distinction between musicology and music theory there. It's a small field and so it's taught us, um, one thing, whereas, uh, in, in the American system, there is quite a strong division between historical musicology and music theory that sort of looks at music more systematically and tries to understand how it works. Um, and so both our interests are really on the, "how does music work "side? Um, my work has also started in the 19th century with, uh, European concert music, which is, you know, sort of one of the very central repertoires in, uh, in musicology. Um, but I have a short attention span and I've been jumping around quite a lot. I like to say that. Um, uh, but I, I look at miscellaneous, I've worked on Ancient Greek music. Uh I've um, worked on the Eurovision song contest. Um, and so moving into outer space was really a natural step. Okay, thank you. Sorry. You know, um, uh, is that like studying Jenny Lind, like that kind of music early concert music? Is Jenny Lind early concerts? And she, yeah. I mean, she's definitely a big figure. There isn't a whole lot of research on historical performance just because we lost, you know, their voices, but you know what I mean. It's uh, so that kind of repertoire is very composer based. And so, you know, you kind of, um.
So, you know, we hit this, we hit this time where we have, you know, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, right. And, and there's a, you know, there's a real complexity to the music. There's these motifs that go on in the music and we have some really great people that come after that, but they, I'm not sure they ever reached that, that same pinnacle in terms of the construction of the, the music. What do, you know, how do you guys see that as an idea? Like, like, why are we, why is, why is it the art form is so different now than it was then? Big question. Yeah. Well, the things changed, right. And actually that, uh, what we might call the pinnacle and so on, uh, may not be a pinnacle in a way I think these are cultural markers. Jeez, your'e going to say Beethoven's not a pinnacle. I dont want to tell anybody that. If you, if you throw the whole thing into space, right. It just makes things completely different, and you need to ask a completely different set of questions. Uh, what really is music? How does it work? You know, is, can you, based on your understanding of music on these sort of the pinnacles, right? On sort of Beethoven and Bach. Because if you do that, it'll be very particular and very, very specific, but it actually wouldn't speak in space. So we have to find a more universal grounding if you like for that. And so part of the book is to try to create this, uh, uh, intergalactic music theory of everything. How would you think, what kind of theory would you need to talk about all music and not just Beethoven and Bach and, you know, Chopin or something like that. So, um, that's really the big challenge here. And so we have to actually get rid of those very important cultural questions. What makes music great? And just ask them simpler question. What is music?
So you have to Subtract Cambridge entirely and then just focus on Beyonce and how it makes you feel. And Jesse, this is the second time this has happened to you recently. I think your Greeks got in trouble last week as well. Oh, yeah. Last week we did a podcast and the guy said, I said, "What about, you know, Aristotle and Socrates?" He said, Oh, they don't matter anymore. They don't matter anymore. They were also the pinnacle. Yeah, they were! Anyway. But it's, but you know, Daniel, you just said something incredible around, you know, what is music? By the way, if we're doing it in space, and, and I know nothing about anything, but doesn't it just go out and the way that you hear things and how sound waves travel, like it's all different. We don't even know what it could be. Right? I see Alex is nodding. If you reduce it down, if you try to think of a way, of a baseline, because what is NASA doing? Why are they even doing this? What on earth are they thinking about when they send music into space, right? So I think it's really about sending an experience of time into space. What music gives you is a coherent experience of time. So you are actually able to share something of your time with someone else, to keep in time with another species. That's what you're trying to do here, I think. And so you have to begin thinking about music and time and the way it makes time, uh, coherent.
In the, the length of a piece or the relationship between the notes? I think the relationship between timings. If you think of it in terms of repetition, then you can begin to talk about music, both human and non-human, right? Then you can talk about it in other species, as well as just, you know, I mean, you know, most cultures actually think of music in non-human ways. So Chinese culture or Indian culture, when you go back very early, even Greek, even Pythagoras, right? The ticking of the universe and the, the universe is making music. So even the, the sounds, the waves, for example, on the NASA, uh, Golden Record would in some sense, be rhythm, and can be perceived as music. Uh, and so I think if we be begin from there we begin to share the experience of time on earth when somebody hears, say the sound of the waves or the winds, or whatever. But, you know, when you think of some of the classics that went up there and then you think about, they are emblematic of the time, but it's also, we get, or we listen and we have these emotional responses. It's a, it's an emotional, right, thing about how music makes you feel. If we, if we get away from traditional, are we still ultimately looking for a feeling about what it is to be human? And that's what we want to communicate? This is some way in which we experience our lives through this auditory experience?
Alex, I see you nodding. Yeah! It's, it's so great because you're raising all the points that we're trying to discuss in the book. And yeah, um, you know, I think, I think Daniel put it really beautifully, that it is about a feeling of being in time with another being. And, uh, and we don't know what the emotional reach is of the Golden Record or, you know, even what, uh, you know, what other extra terrestrial civilizations, if they exist, um, would be like, so we can only speculate about that. But we can be pretty sure about time in, you know, in that it's such a general category that really brings all of human music together. That's the one thing that applies to all human kinds of music, irrespective of style and age and genre. In a way, it's almost like if, if you know, the first time I heard King Sunny Ade, right? Like I don't really know, you know, I don't know what that, what, what he grew up in or where the place is. So I really have no context for it. I can only analyze it from my perspective of a person who's just feeling like, "Oh, this is cool," but, but, uh, I wonder how an alien, what an alien, I guess an alien really wouldn't make that much difference between that music. They would, they would subtract all of the context, completely.
Now, now, has it made it so that when you guys listen to things you haven't heard before, you're listening with fresh ears? You're listening in new ways because of this analysis you've been doing? I certainly have. I now listen much more in terms of repetition and rhythm and the shaping of time. Right? Uh, and it's helped me to also appreciate, uh, even certain things like John Cage. They actually had a joke that they would send 4'33", uh, into space as well, you know. The NASA team at the time. But actually what he's trying to say here is that, you know, listen to what's happening in time, right. It is actually coherent in some sense. And so when you take away the context, uh, there is still a kind of internal mechanism that is happening with, in music, that could be emotive, that could be rational. It expresses itself in various ways, right? But it's that internal element there, um, that is being sent into space. And the question is, how do you get that internal element to express itself? What medium is it going to go through in order for it to connect with another species? Um, now, when this was made and sent into space, it ignited the imagination of people. It had so much, you know, it was sent in the seventies, it ignited your two imaginations. So in some sense, Carl Sagan was a brilliant, brilliant guy. He's challenging us on Earth to listen to this music. And what do you think he's, he was trying to tell us about the way this was organized and what we should, you know, pale blue dot and all of that. Like, what was he trying to say to us about the, the family, the human family of music?
Yeah. So, the backstory to this is that, um, the, so, you know, the Golden Record was part of the Voyager mission in the seventies and the previous, uh, big NASA mission was the Pioneer mission. And they had the, you know, the iconic plaque with the naked man raising his hand and the naked woman standing next to him and, you know, the kind of symbols and that got a lot of flack from the religious right. Um, because of the nudity. And so they were really skittish about using visual representations of humans. And so they thought, well, maybe we should try something, you know, auditory, um, which seemed less controversial. Um, so, so, you know, that was, that was the immediate cause why they, why they did that. But I think it was a really brilliant idea because with the Golden Record, with all the music, um, people can really connect to it. And, you know, I, I would say the Voyager mission is the one NASA mission, maybe, you know, other than the moon landing, that's stuck in people's minds. And when, when you mention the Voyager mission, the very first thing people always say is the Golden Record. Even though from a scientific perspective, that was an afterthought, right? It's not even particularly scientific. It was mostly about, you know, um, getting high quality photos of the outer planets. That was the scientific mission. But, but you know, that, that little record that they stuck to the outside of the spacecraft is the thing that people really connected with. And, uh, so, you know, that's one of the things that Carl Sagan was so brilliant at. You know, Cassini, they sent up and it sent back amazing, incredible pictures of Saturn. Um, but it circled Cassini endlessly, and then eventually, well, not endlessly cause then it eventually crashed into the planet. And it seems like there's a, NASA at the moment and just our, we, we have a, as a culture now, world culture, we're sort of really fixated on Mars, going to live on Mars. But Voyager was, and these early seventies space missions were, were much more, you know, they went further, you know, Voyager's out at the ends of, of, it's further from us than anything that we've ever done in human time. Do you think there's something about the imagination of the time that, that pushed things out there like that?
Yeah, I mean, it was, you know, it's so counter to the spirit of the age, right? I mean, this is the Cold War. This is, um, you know, this is not a happy time. Vietnam had just happened. Um, you know, the oil crisis was, uh, was on people's minds. Um, I, and so, you know, in that climate, um, they really set a sign of hope. And, uh, you know, someone else is out there things, and, you know, they assumed that if there is anything out there, it will be a friendly extra terrestrial civilization, right? Not a hostile one. Um, you know, you can also see that, that spirit of collaboration in the way they put together the Golden Record, I mean, Sagan was really concerned that this would not come across as an American project, but he really wanted it to be, you know, worldwide. So, you know, and he was specifically thinking about the Soviet Union, how they could be represented. And, you know, he called up his, uh, friends in Moscow and said, you know, can you talk to the officials to, to ask what they want included in the Golden Record? Of course, you know, when they, when they got an answer from, from, uh, Moscow, they didn't really like what they suggested. And so they chose something else, but still. It was on their minds.
What, what was the Russian music they put on there? There was a lot of good choices. Yeah. So, you know, what's interesting is that there is no actual Russian music. The very first thing that they wanted was Korobeiniki, this Russian folk song that had an afterlife as the Tetris theme song. Um, and they, they were looking at one specific performance by a tenor called Nicolai Gedda, but he was born in Sweden. And so they, you know, they thought he was insufficiently Russian. And so they didn't take him, and then, uh, the, the thing that, uh, that the Kremlin really wanted included was this, uh, it was sort of an artificial folk song that came from a movie from the 1940s. And they thought, "Eh, you know, this is too political, we don't want to include that." And so in the end they, they looked to the other Soviet republics and they included Georgian choral music and Azerbaijani Mugham. Parts of the Soviet Union were represented, just not Russian.
It's, it's funny that you see nationalism, you see fundamentalism, you know, you see all these things reflected in the song selections, um, that you would, you know, you would think that if we're going to make a world choice, we would just make the best choices, most creative choices that we could. Although the Tetris theme song may not be any different than, than Mozart to an alien. You know what I mean? But I think, I'd like to just go a little deeper what you said. Cause I think there's something about, it's very, you know, frail to think that humans want to, in that time, so thinking of the context. And I'm thinking, of course, what will be the golden record post-pandemic. What would we send up now? And what, you know, if you think about it, you were just giving us the historical context, and this need to kind of, you know, we're going to tell you a little bit about ourselves, also, it's a very vulnerable thing to do that, you know, in a way. It's, it's beautiful. And it's, it's just the, "We're here!" you know, "If anyone's out there." And, and also, um, it's interesting because we really have no way of ever, we don't know, but we so want to connect with something else. So what is that? What do you think that is? Like, we so want something else. Is it to take care of us? Like, what do you think is the deeper meaning of that?
Well, I always think that, uh, you know, this whole project is still part of the summer of love, you know? Coming out there, these people, and, uh, and actually one of the, uh, team members called this Voyager project, you know, a love letter to the universe. And so there is an element in which NASA really is coming in peace, right? They're sending music because they believe that music is a sign of peace. So it is a kind of, um, uh, sort of cultural, diplomatic mission writ large here. Uh, and I think it begs this question, you know, what does it mean to send music into space? Do you presume then that space, our universe, is peaceful? Because the alternative is that it is a very violent universe. And in fact, part of the reason why people complained about the Pioneer, uh, mission, and also, uh, this, this mission is that you're giving away the coordinates of Earth. That means that aliens will come and invade us and we've done the most stupid thing you could imagine. Right? But actually what Sagan is doing is the complete opposite. That fundamentally, even though he doesn't know, uh, he believes, I think, that the universe is peaceful. It's possible to send a love letter out there and hope, um, that, um, that would send a message. And I don't think humans will get an answer back, of course. Um, but if I was an alien and I somehow intercepted Voyager and somehow managed to decode this record by making a gramophone, um, I would know that there is peace somewhere else in the universe. I think that's the idea. So in a way, uh, we are the answer to that question about whether we think, uh, the universe, in some sense, uh, is meaningful. So we're the ones we've been looking for. It's kind of odd, right? That we would do this, then why would we even do this, right?
Yeah. Well, you know, it could travel so far it went to an alternate universe, you know? But, but, um, if you were selecting today, um, would you make different choices? And would you make, you know, how would you, what criteria would you use to sort of, you know, is it fast music, slow music? Is it, you know, how would you think about it now? It's super hard. And I'm so glad that someone else did it because, you know, I mean, just excluding music is so hard, right? I mean, it's, uh, you know, there's always more music that you want to include. And I think, you know, I keep on thinking, yeah, it's not, it's not perfect. There's always more that we could include and there are some, you know, geographic gaps, but it's pretty good. And I'm not sure I could do a better job, you know? I mean, I think, um, you know, there's no music from the Middle East, there is no Caribbean music. Um, those are probably, uh, areas that I'd like to see represented. Um, there's, there's no hip hop. I think that's sort of, you know, the major genre that, you know, it was too early. This is 1977, but, uh, but that's probably something that, you know, in the Golden, Golden Record version 2.0 you'd want to add. We should've had Grandmaster Flash on there. Right!
Why are we thinking, can't we do another one? Or. We don't have any probes going anywhere anytime soon. Well, we might. I mean, the thing is, do you, and I know very, nothing about it, but like, are there sort of, can you go on Spotify and say, this is, I'm going to make my own Golden Record? Are people doing that? Yeah, it's called a playlist. Oh, that's just what I mean. But is there a, if you, are you ever working with any AI technology to put it all together? So all of your theories and all of these great ideas, and then have you done that and put it into not Watson, but put it into something and see what would come out if you put your criteria in? We haven't done that yet. That's a really good idea. But, um, so you know, that that's something for the future. I, you know, I taught a class last semester where we put together Golden Record 2020. I mean, it was much shorter. We actually found a company in North Carolina that produces single pressings of vinyl records. And so, you know, we, we had, um, one record made. It's, it's very eclectic. I mean, you know, it's, you know, curating by committee is really hard. Um, what was interesting was that the, the, you know, the collection ended up being really international. Um, I don't think there was any song that is from the U.S. Uh, the, I mean, our top ranked song was Hi'ilawe, but that was written before Hawaii became a part of the U.S. So, you know, it's probably not the collection that I would have chosen, personally, but it's, it's interesting. Yeah.
You have to think of it really as a time capsule. So you're trying to capture, you know, they're trying to capture 1977. And I'm sure, I don't know whether you remember mixed tapes. Right? But actually, you would compile your favorite pieces of music on this tape. It was a, it was a work of love, and, you know, and then you would share it with someone else. Right? And I think that's the concept here. So I think if we were to do this again, we would have to think of it in those terms. This is a time capsule of the things we love and we would want to share it, um, because there's no other way of doing this because there's too much music. And actually the other bizarre thing is that our technology is so advanced now that we could, of course, and then we have, if we're sending things digitally into space, but it actually makes less sense than sending a physical, a very limited and a very, very simple object actually. And that's the magical thing about the Golden Record, it's actually just a very simple, mechanical thing that we sent into space. But that is the thing that would probably last longer than any sort of digital signals that we send out.
Well, thank you guys very much. This was fantastic, you know? Um, really appreciate you spending time with us to talk about this. It was a pleasure. For anybody watching, and so if they want to know more, where should they go to learn about what you're doing? Or anything you want to tell us, or tell the audience? Questions for them? Should we ask them to think of... Do you guys have a website? Or the book is coming out, or anything like that? The book is coming out some time this summer. It's called Alien Listening. So look out for the book, uh, it tells you everything. Okay. We'll put it in the, we'll put it in the listing, too. I think we also want to ask everyone who's watching, you know, what, what would you put on? Yeah. What music would you put on there? It's kind of interesting. Um, well thank you gentlemen. Very much. Really appreciate your time. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Thank you. See you later. Be well!