Robert Krulwich

Can you introduce yourself?

My name is... My name's Juana Molina.

Okay, so you know how sometimes on this podcast, instead of the science and the big ideas and the whatever, we present musicians?

Yep.

Well, that's what I want to do for the next ten or so minutes.

Mostly because I think she's amazing, but also because when we used her music in the sperm show, I used it for some of the breaks.

This song right here, in fact.

We got a flood of email, people asking about it.

I wonder what she thought about being the brakes in the sperm shell.

She doesn't know.

So this podcast is for the bunch and bunch and bunch of people who wrote in asking about Juana Molina, and also for the rest of you who maybe don't know her yet, but will hear her now, and maybe, I hope, fall in love with her music as I have.

So let me make space here.

Okay, so I spoke with her recently as she was in town to play a gig at this club called Le Poisson Rouge.

Le Poisson Rouge, the red fish.

Yep.

And she told me her backstory.

It's kind of interesting.

She started out as a musician, taking piano lessons and guitar lessons, trying to be a performer.

It wasn't really working out at that point.

So she needed a job, and she wasn't really sure what to do, but she knew she was always good at impressions.