Tom Lehrer

Douglas Cooper conducts an off-the-cuff telephone interview with Harvard math professor/nightclub satirist Tom Lehrer.

The Interview

Cooper and Lehrer begin with Lehrer’s professorial schedule, primarily Harvard and M.I.T. Asked to size up his songwriting/performing career, he says that any success derives from working the "already converted," people who "get it".

Although Lehrer made his first recording in 1953, Cooper is interested in Lehrer’s post-touring career in entertainment—the early 1960's, when he created songs for That Was The Week That Was. He became political and topical (i.e. "New Math”).

Lehrer took a swipe at the rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, later one of my radio guests ("'Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department,' says Wernher von Braun"). The album went gold.

Cooper asks about TV that Lehrer admires, and he indicates "nothing," except old movies. He likes David Frost, abhors Rickles' hostility. He states that he will vote for McGovern, and jokes about the vice-presidency to demean Hubert Humphrey’s second try in 1972. He then went back to teaching.