Mama Mia, Mama Mia! A Canadian Bohemian Rhapsodizes About String Theory

Let me confess right off that I didn't understand anything Tim Blais sings in this video, except that it's hard — very hard — erase-the-blackboard-constantly-in-frustration hard — to find a mathematical theory that explains everything in the universe. That's OK. I'm not a physicist, so this isn't my problem. But when Tim produces an Albert Einstein sock puppet having a high-tenor tantrum, I found myself doing a little happy dance.

With no apologies to Queen, this is Tim's "A Capella Science" take on String Theory set to Bohemian Rhapsody. He calls it "Bohemian Gravity." He's 23. He wrote this. He sang this. He designed this. He's amazing.

A year ago Tim's college paper, The McGill Daily, sat him down and asked "who are you?" He says he grew up not too far from Montreal, that he's been a science nerd all his life, or for as much of it as he can remember. When he was about 3 or 4, he says ...

a kid in my preschool introduced me to "Bill Nye The Science Guy," which became the only TV I watched for about six years. After kindergarten I didn't go to school until Grade 10, but was homeschooled by my parents. We had a very multifaceted way of learning [...] that I think allowed me to see the big picture of things without getting bogged down in the horrible little details that are often the stumbling block when you start learning something. That gave me a fascination with science that's essentially carried me through a science DEC and one-and-a-half university degrees. But my parents have always been super cool about not pressuring us kids to be anything in particular, and now to show for it they've got an emerging rock star — my brother, Tom; a dedicated speech pathologist — my sister, Mary-Jane; and me, researcher in incomprehensible physics and recently popular internet fool. I think they did alright.

Me too. And if you liked this video, you should know he's got a few others. Last year, his A Capella Science version of the Higgs boson, sung to Adele's "Rolling in the Deep" was a monster success. The McGill paper asked him if he considered himself a singer or a scientist and he answered, "I don't really know what I am. I'm a person with varied interests." I think that's kind of obvious.

Thanks to Jacquie Lowell for sending this video my way.

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A Conversation With Eric Kaplan: On ‘The Big Bang Theory,’ Helping Physics and Fiction Collide

Part of its success might lie in the fact that one of its executive producers and script writers, Eric Kaplan, knows comedy and academia. His résumé includes not only “The Simpsons” and “The Late Show With David Letterman,” but also Harvard and a Ph.D. program — never completed — at the University of California, Berkeley.

We spoke with Mr. Kaplan, 46, for two hours in Boston and again by telephone. A condensed, edited version of the two conversations follows.

You grew up in Brooklyn, right?

I grew up in Flatbush. My mother was a biology teacher at Erasmus Hall. My father was a storefront lawyer. I got into Hunter High School when I was 12, and I took the subway to Manhattan.

Hunter was an awakening. I had friends from all over the city. During lunch hours, we’d go look at the arms and armor collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Like the characters in “The Big Bang Theory,” we played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons. I went to comic book conventions. I started reading philosophy pretty young.

Then I got into Harvard. My uncle said, “You should go to Harvard because they have a greater tolerance for weirdos than other schools.” And I said, “I’m not aware that I’m a weirdo.” And he said, “Uh-huh.”

Was Harvard anything like your version of Caltech on “The Big Bang Theory”?

It was. Because you had people there who were sincerely and passionately interested in what they were doing. That world was about people so entrenched in whatever they were studying that they forget to put their pants on. Now, I don’t think I ever did that. But I’m sure I knew people who did.

The idea that you’re more interested in the amazing problems that life offers than in some kind of status game was genuine there, and that’s what we try to convey about the characters on the show.

The Nobel Prize physicist Leon Lederman spent years trying to interest Hollywood in a television series featuring scientists. He got nowhere. How did Chuck Lorre, who first developed your series, get it done?

Well, Chuck Lorre is an incredibly accomplished and successful television producer. Leon Lederman shouldn’t feel bad. I bet if Chuck Lorre wanted to run an experiment on a particle collider, they wouldn’t let him.

Lederman was told that nobody would want to watch a show about a bunch of nerds. Why was this assessment wrong?

I think that Chuck and Bill Prady, the show’s creators, figured out that the experience of being an outsider had universal appeal. The emotional pain at the heart of “The Big Bang Theory” is the feeling of being an outsider. Our characters, they don’t have to be scientists. They could be anybody who’s felt like an outsider.

Aren’t you stereotyping scientists by labeling them as misfits?

Listen, it’s a story, not a thesis about how everyone is. It’s a collection of specific characters. All scientists are not Sheldon Cooper, who finds it difficult to hug someone or go out to lunch and divide a check. But many people whose cognitive ability outstrips their emotional sense can see some aspect of Sheldon in themselves.

How do you find the science content for your stories?

Well, let’s say we decide that Amy and Sheldon should have a fight. Since they’re scientists, their fight will be about science — about the relative priorities of neuroscience and physics. What’s going on emotionally is they’re arguing about the terms of their relationship, but they will cover it by expressing themselves about science. In that case, I wrote that scene because I have my own theories on that subject.

But in another situation, we could say we want Sheldon to be really angry about some branch of science he thinks is important, and he thinks others don’t understand. We’ll ask our science adviser, “What could that be?”

Do you read the professional journals?

No, we read Science Times. We’ll come across stuff that seems worthwhile. The particle accelerator in Switzerland, there was some worry that it would destroy the universe. We probably made some joke about that or maybe even had a little plotline about it.

How did you come to do the show?

I applied for a job.

And ... ?

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 9, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated part of Mr. Kaplan’s title on “The Big Bang Theory.” He is one of the show’s script writers, he is not the chief script writer.

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