Did science as entertainment continue?

Yesterday’s mention of symphonies that wear out the bass drum and the eardrum with endlessly hammered final movements reminded me of Peter Schickele’s classical parodies. Schickele mainly focused on the finicky excesses of Baroque Purists. I was a finicky Baroque Purist, so I appreciated his work.

This led to a broader thought about science as entertainment, one of my themes in the last few years. The tradition mostly died, with two recent exceptions but no living specimens.

Tom Lehrer and Schickele turned their academic specialties into song. Schickele had a real vaudeville touring act. He employed his students to help write the music and build the props, which was a perfect job-type education for them. Lehrer didn’t use his students.

For the audience, Schickele’s shows were enjoyable but not a real learning experience. If you weren’t familiar with the academic side of music, you wouldn’t catch the inside jokes. Lehrer was more intentionally educational in the spirit of Faraday. He gave you a personalized taste of real math topics. After hearing Lobachevsky, you might decide to learn more about non-euclidean geometry. And you might decide NOT to pursue a tenure-track job**. The song is educational in both directions.

Lehrer is still alive at age 96! Schickele died last year.

Are there any modern examples? Some profs are podcasters and substackers, which doesn’t count as entertainment. It’s just the modern version of Outreach. Before NPR turned professional and political, Educational Radio and Educational TV were mainly broadcasts of regular lectures and classes. Profs are expected to do a certain amount of Outreach.

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** Looking up Lehrer’s biography to see when he stopped performing, I was surprised. He didn’t enjoy touring, gave up public appearances in 1972 and returned to teaching. He only wrote 37 songs, but many of them are timeless. The biography also mentions that he spent 15 years halfheartedly trying to finish a PhD but finally gave up. I wonder if the Lobachevsky song reflects his frustration with the academic status game?