July 14, 2025 • 49 mins
Today's guest is Laurie Winkless. She's a physicist, a science writer and she's the only person I know who's actually made writing about friction interesting. You could say she's a science friction writer...
She’s appeared everywhere from Forbes to Wired to BBC, and she has written two books. Oh and she won a scholarship to do some training at NASA. As you do.
I am very excited to talk about her transition from scientist to science communication and why she thinks that's so important.
In this episode she shares:
- Her background and how she got into physics
- What actually is a PhD and if she'll ever get one
- What science communication is, how she got into it and why we need more people in it
- Why she brings creativity into her job and why sexism prevented her from doing it earlier
- Her (brilliant) books and what you should know about them
- How she wrote her first book
- Her very interesting favourite friction fact.
- One science myth that she wishes would die
- What shark inspired swim suits are and why they help swimming
Key Quotes
“Most of the noise that we hear on the roads is not actually from the engines it’s from the interaction between the tyre and the tarmac.”
“So much of the universe is defined by the interaction between surfaces.”
“I think sometimes people are afraid to be a bit weird.”
More about Laurie
Find her via her website or on social media.
And don’t forget to head to our Instagram for a chance to win one of her signed books.
You can get involved with the podcast online too of course.
Find our full podcast via the website here: https://www.nowthatwhatsicall.com
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
Kyoto Kaitaki and welcome to NowThat's what I Call Green.
I'm your host, Brianne W, an environmentalist and
entrepreneur trying to get you as excited about our planet as I
am. I'm all about creating a
scientific approach to making the world a better place without
the judgement and making it fun.And of course, we'll be chatting
about some of the most amazing creatures we share our planet
with. So if you are looking to
(00:26):
navigate through everything green or not so green, you have
come to the right place. I'm very excited.
Today I'm talking to my first ever physicist and first ever
person to work at NASA. How cool is that?
Today's guest is Lori Winkler. She is a physicist, a science
writer. You could say she's a science
friction writer, which I think is quite an accolade.
(00:49):
And no, I didn't come up with that.
I did get it off her website, but she's the only person I know
who's like writing about friction.
Interesting. Which we will go into very
shortly as she's appeared everywhere from Forbes to Wired
to BBC. And she has written two books
which we will be giving away today.
One on the science of surfaces meets the friction and one on
science and the city, which is away that physics effects
(01:12):
everything you do and how a cityruns that you may not even
realise. I'm not gonna talk too much
about her career because it's gonna be 1 of the things that we
go into, but I'm very excited totalk about her transition from
scientist to science communication and why she thinks
that's so important. Thank you so much for joining
me, Lori. Is it more Kiera Bren?
(01:33):
No. Lori Lori's bang on.
Yeah, people pronounce it different ways, but Lori is how
I pronounce it. So perfect and I'm going to say
it wrong halfway through and slightly panic.
No, don't worry about it. You wouldn't be alone in that.
I get all sorts of things, Brianne.
It's so funny. I don't know if you get this,
but so many people are, oh, how do you say your name?
Or they'll say hi, Brianne and I'll say and they'll
specifically ask me and then they'll repeat it incorrectly.
(01:55):
Anyway, I get Laura a lot. Even when my e-mail address is
my full name, I will very often get Laura.
I'm like, no, no, it is. It is actually my name.
Laurie is actually my name. It's not that uncommon anyway.
I don't think so. Dear me, dear me, thank you for
joining me. You really are my first
physicist because to be honest, the idea of of speaking to a
physicist is a little intimate. Adding, I asked on our Instagram
(02:18):
stories on what people wanted meto ask a physicist and I
specifically said please don't ask me to ask about string
theory because not only am I notsmart enough to understand it, I
don't think I'm smart enough to ask questions about it.
I don't think I'm smart enough to explain it.
I've read a little bit and I think I'm actually worse off
than had I not read anything before.
But I do want to start with yourearly stage.
(02:39):
When did you know you wanted to go and be a a scientist and be
why the focus on physics? It's unusual, or it feels
unusual, I suppose. Yeah, no, I think that's fair.
I don't have a single moment that I remember.
I was, I think, like most scientists, an extremely
annoying kid. Like really annoying, like
always asking annoying questions, breaking stuff so I
(03:01):
could figure out how it worked, you know, and my parents and my
family were very supportive of that, which I really appreciate.
And I, so I think that curiositywas in me somehow kind of
without any nurturing, but then it was nurtured into being.
My dad is actually an engineer. He's a toolmaker by training and
very handy, you know, very good with his hands and very
(03:23):
practical and also very, very smart.
And he always encouraged the fact that I was also interested
in how things worked. And I wanted to learn how to use
all the tools and I wanted to help him do all the DIY projects
in the house, despite being likethe baby and the youngest of my
family. And my mum is, she's got a
theatre background. So I feel like now, I didn't
(03:43):
feel like this when I was younger, but I feel like now I'm
a real mash together of my parents.
You know, I've got the kind of performance creative side from
my mum and the kind of technicalengineering, physics side from
my dad. But yeah, I think the curiosity
was then, at least initially, was very focused on space,
right? Which is such a classic kid
thing to be interested in. And my brother and I had a
(04:05):
telescope, and that's when I started to think about, you
know, the universe around us. I was quite young, you know, I'm
kind of 6 or 7. And I'm really starting to
understand and become interestedin the solar system and planets.
And I think at some point someone told me that if I wanted
to do space stuff, I probably needed to be good at physics.
Unfortunately. Yeah, and I was always good at
(04:27):
maths. I was always like, I love maths.
And I was always pretty good at physics in school.
I was terrible at biology. Like I have such admiration for
biologists, like squishy stuff is just like, I just can't.
Yeah, I find physics and chemistry are a lot like cleaner
and straighter, have straighter edges or something, which is not
true, of course, but I think that was something that I really
(04:48):
admired about those sciences as a kid.
And and then I had, was lucky and had good teachers who also
encouraged my interests. And and I read a lot of Popular
Science. Then as I got older too, you
know, as a teenager, I started to read a lot of Popular Science
and and again, they were quite often kind of physics E
engineering, E Spacey stuff. So yeah, there wasn't really a
(05:09):
moment. I just really just followed my
own stream of curiosity and was encouraged along the way.
And and physics is kind of whereI popped out at the end of this.
She didn't say, you know what? I'm going to be a physicist when
I'm Stephen. When you were Stephen, rather.
Well, I did tell my mum what university I was going to go to,
apparently at the age of four. I have no memory of this, but I
(05:30):
asked my mum. We were walking past Trinity
College in Dublin, which is likea beautiful university, and
asked what it was. And she said, oh, that's a
school for big people, but you have to work really hard to get
into that school. And I was like, I'm going to go
to that school someday, and I did.
Oh, that's good. Yeah.
So definitely like ambitious andvery curious.
(05:51):
And I kind of probably by the early stages of secondary school
kind of age 1314, that kind of age, I was like, yeah, I want to
do physics, I want to study a STEM subject at university.
So yeah, by then I was I was pretty set.
I guess the biggest thing that sticks out to me is that you
really enjoy men. I didn't know people that you
existed. I thought, you know, people
tolerated it. But but in saying that, I always
(06:11):
believed that I was going to be terrible at maths.
So it was a self reinforcing prophecy, right?
Totally. And I think maths teachers, a
bad one, can reinforce that ideatoo.
To be honest. I definitely had a couple of
years with a very bad maths teacher in high school that
almost put me off the subject, but managed to be recovered back
on the path by having a different teacher.
So I do think that maths particularly is one of those
(06:33):
subjects that needs a good teacher to help you with and to
make you realize that it's, it'sjust another tool.
It's just another way of understanding the universe
really and another way of exploring what's around us.
And I had a fantastic maths teacher in the second-half of
secondary school and thank goodness for it.
My goodness. It's a really lovely way of
(06:53):
explaining it because maths doeshave a tear.
Well, I think that maths has a bad reputation.
Here's my response. But you're right, it is just
another way of looking at the world around us.
Yeah, it's just a language. It is, it is, and I guess the
ultimate language in many respects.
I've had a few debates with a few engineers who keep saying
that physics and maths are the ultimate sciences.
Right. You're just doing a wishy washy
(07:13):
soft science, which is, of course, Nancy.
It's cool. Everything is depending on what
it is you want to study. So you knew what you wanted to
do. You went to Trinity.
Trinity College was it? Yeah.
And once you got through your bachelor's, what was the next
step? What was the plan?
I was pretty sure I didn't want to do a PhD, at least not
immediately, but I felt like I wanted to learn more.
(07:36):
I still needed some more to learn, really.
So I applied for a master's programme in London at
University College London and itwas in, in space science.
And this was very heavily influenced by the fact that
during my undergraduate degree, I was very lucky and I got a
scholarship to the Kennedy SpaceCentre for a summer.
So the summer between my, my third year at university, uh, a
(07:57):
group of 14 of us from all different universities around
Ireland went on this government sponsored scholarship program
basically. And we were there for the summer
and it was an amazing experience.
You know, that's when we were atthe Kennedy Space Center.
We were studying at Florida Tech, we were doing flying
lessons. We were hanging out with
astronauts. Like we got to visit all these
(08:17):
NASA facilities. I got to go to the space shuttle
Endeavour, which had always beenmy favorite space shuttle as a
child. So that felt like a couldn't
believe that was happening to me.
And yeah, so I really thought, you know, maybe I wanted to go
down the the space route as a career.
So I felt like having a physics degree was a great start, but I
needed some more formal education within the space
(08:38):
sector. So I applied for this master's
at UCL, which was in space science.
And that would mean leaving Ireland and moving to London for
this kind of very intense one year kind of condensed master's
program. So yeah, I did that.
And during that time I really fell in love with the city.
Like London really stole my heart very quickly.
And I started applying then for jobs for after my postgrads,
(09:02):
anything I could get, really anything in the STEM sector at
all, and was lucky enough to geta job at a huge lab called the
National Physical Laboratory. This is the UK's, it's called
the Metrology Institute. So it's a measurement science
institute, but we also did a lotof research that was very
applied. So we, you know, worked with
industry partners, we worked with companies and engineering
(09:24):
consultancies and, you know, manufacturing companies trying
to solve their real problems using our research as well as
doing fundamental research. So that felt like a really cool
place to be. Like I will say this often, but
like, I feel like that's where Ilearned to be a scientist.
Whereas at university, in my postgrad even, I was still
(09:44):
learning about science, but actually working in the lab was
where I became a scientist. And yeah, I ended up staying in
London for almost 12 years in the end.
Oh. London does have that something
about it. It's life, isn't it?
Yeah, I can understand that. Going back briefly on the PhD
thing, because I am sort of canvassing people.
I've always wanted to do it my whole life.
And I don't know how much of that is attached to the whole
(10:05):
being a doctor, as in not a medical doctor.
Don't get shouted at me in the comments, but you know, there's
also an element of that. But also, I love learning.
So why did you decide you didn'twant one?
Well, you were thinking about that.
You didn't think you wanted one.What was the deciding factor and
what? Tell me about PHD's.
I don't think people really understand what they are.
Yeah, I feel like I have a better sense of what a PhD is
(10:27):
since writing my books, because I've been told by lots of people
who do have PhDs that the process of writing the books
sound very similar. They can be a bit torturous,
right? They are at least three years.
I don't know anyone who's done aPhD in three years, but in
theory they're doable in three years.
So three to five years is the norm.
And in that time, the idea is that you're asking a set of
(10:50):
specific questions or you're, you know, exploring a specific
scientific idea. And then you are, at least in
the sciences, at least in the physical sciences, you're then,
you know, designing a set of experiments and trying to find
answers to those questions. And the real idea of a PHC is
that you're adding a novel pieceof understanding.
So it can't be about repeating what other people have done.
(11:12):
Of course, you do do that in science too, because you have
to, you know, check out what previous people have done.
But it's about developing new knowledge.
So you have to kind of discover something in inverted commas
within the process of a PhD. And I think for me, I felt just
like such a baby going out of mydegree.
(11:34):
You know, I was 21. I knew kind of what I wanted to
do in the next stage, but I knewthat there wasn't a specific
topic that I was obsessed enoughwith to then bury myself in for
the next kind of four years. I also felt like I wanted a
change. I wanted not necessarily just to
just leave Ireland, but you know, I wanted to try and live
(11:55):
somewhere else. And I had this opportunity to do
the master's program and I thought, that's good.
And then I can see what I want to do after that.
So honestly, it was kind of justnot feeling mature enough to do
a PhD, not feeling ready enough kind of in both in my scientific
knowledge, but also just in my, in myself really wanting to
explore a bit more before committing because it's a huge
(12:16):
commitment. It really is a huge commitment.
And it's very self driven. If you're doing a PhD, you will
have supervisors, you will have colleagues, you'll have friends
in your lab, you know, you'll have lab mates, even people
within your same research group who work alongside.
But ultimately it's yours, it's your baby and you have to drive
it forward. So it's just a massive
(12:36):
undertaking and I didn't feel ready but but I did actually
start and not finish a PhD. Not finish yet.
Not finished yet. Yeah.
I might start another one in my 50s maybe.
Who knows? Yeah.
When I was working at NPL, my really good boss, I really loved
working with him and had an ideafor a research project we had
funding that would fund me for kind of three to four years on a
(12:59):
specific topic. And we thought like, if I could
also get a PhD out of this big research project that we have to
deliver anyway, maybe it will beworth it.
But it all kind of for various reasons, I just didn't work out
in the end. So I got a couple of years not
quite into it and decided that it wasn't the right fit for me
or the project in the end. So we just carried on delivering
(13:21):
the science itself. But I no longer kind of was
registered as a PhD student. Yeah.
So it's I have a kind of mixed feelings about a PhD, but but
kind of like you, I do harbor the idea of doing one at some
point. It feels like the pinnacle of,
you could say it's some insane external validation.
I think there's an element of that in it for me.
(13:42):
But. And I don't care if that's
unhealthy. Yeah.
No, me neither. Yeah, I'm doing the, I'm a
couple of masters papers every semester to, to sort of chip
away at it and like, the obsession with my results is
probably probably not pretty good.
I screenshotted. I'm just just going to say a
(14:02):
guy's got an A plus for my what was it, molecular microbiology.
It was fascinating, actually. It was all about AMR,
antimicrobial resistance. And it's not, it's not good.
But as an aside, yeah. So I, I get the, I get the
hangover. Maybe we'll both go back to it
one day. We can cheer each other on.
Unfortunately, I will leave everything to the last minute.
So can you write APHD sort of at9:00 PM at night the day before
(14:24):
you're supposed to submit it? I don't know.
I mean, I do have a friend who wrote it in a couple of weeks,
but I will not name him to save his blushes.
Oh, OK, no, well, that actually makes you feel a little better.
Cool. OK, one day, one day.
So I have to MPL. You're now in science calms and
I want to focus a little bit of the conversation about this
because a fair few science communicators, now they're
coming out and they're all doinga wonderful job.
(14:46):
But we need more because the anti science narrative seems
perhaps it's just the echo chamber I'm in, but it seems to
be booming. And I'm personally getting all
sorts of quite odd questions. You know, I was this this drug
is now apparently made with bitsof fetus is one question.
And and you know, these people aren't stupid, they're not
(15:07):
gullible, but they are hearing these things from people they
should theoretically be able to trust.
They shan't name names, but I should imagine you can think of
at least one or two people I'm talking about.
And it's really scary actually, because already it's doing harm.
The US is currently in the the largest outbreak of measles it's
had and 50-60 years I think it was.
There's all sorts of things going on far beyond just
(15:28):
disease. We need more science
communicators. Why did you get into it and how
I suppose, how do you call yourself a science communicator?
I. Kind of fell into it a little
bit. NPL, one of the most amazing
things as a kind of a junior scientist working in a lab like
that, there were loads of amazing reasons, but one of the
programs they had was they actually supported each staff
(15:50):
member to go out into the community and talk about science
kind of in whatever form you wanted.
So we had a science ambassador'sprogram, there's Auk wide
science ambassador's program called Stemnet.
It's fantastic. And MPL was one of the
signatories to that program. And what that meant is that they
kind of had to support their staff to go and talk to the
public. So we actually had it in our
(16:11):
contract that we had a certain number of days per year that you
were allowed to use, that I was allowed to use to go and do
science communication because the lab felt like that's part of
the remit of doing science, is also talking to non scientists
about the science we're doing. That was a real priority for the
labs and still is. And so that was a very
privileged position to be in because it actually was part of
(16:32):
my job. OK, it was a teeny, teeny tiny
part of my job, but it was stillthere.
You know, it was still supportedand enabled by the lab.
So we started doing, I started doing science outreach kind of
fairly often and fairly early onin my time at MPL.
A lot of the time going to a school and giving a talk.
Some of my favorite things were like working with teachers and
telling them about nanotechnology and thermal
(16:55):
energy harvesting, which was what my research was on.
So kind of upskilling teachers and telling them about what cool
stuff is happening in the lab now because, you know, they're
busy people, they can't be reading loads of research
papers. And I really enjoyed that
because it felt like I was indirectly kind of helping to
get to the next generation by helping their teachers.
So I really enjoyed that processand I started writing.
(17:17):
I've always been, you know, a journal keeper.
As a kid I had diary, many of them, but I've always loved
writing and, and English was kind of my next favorite subject
in in school after physics. Physics and maths are the same
in my head. So after those two, English and
yeah, I'd always loved writing. And you write a lot in science
anyway. You spend a lot of time writing
papers and applying for researchgrants and writing presentations
(17:41):
and all that stuff. But I started to write about
science for non scientists. So I started to just faff around
at the edges of writing about science for a more general
audience and was kind of doing that secretly had like a secret
blog, didn't tell anyone. I was doing it just as a as A to
practice really like to kind of get myself out of my science
(18:02):
focused head and to just like lift my head up and look more
broadly at society and see who Icould talk to.
So it was just a bit of fun initially and I started getting
really into it and, and I think I started getting into science
outreach in general more becauseI had some level of talent in
it. Like I'd always been a stage
(18:23):
school kid. Like I said, my mum's from a
theatre background. I've been involved in shows my
whole life. So even though I'm actually not
a very extroverted person, naturally I'm really good at
faking it so. What we call the amber version
now. Yeah, maybe really good at
faking confidence. And also like I, I genuinely
(18:43):
love people. Like I love talking to people
about stuff. So I think I had some level of
talent in it and my lab supported it and they allowed me
to do more and more of it until the point I started kind of
attracting attention from outside the lab.
So I started working with a group called The Naked
Scientists, who is a fantastic podcast in the UK, and for a
little while there I was like their physics correspondent.
(19:06):
So every few episodes I'd go on to the show and talk about a
specific piece of, you know, research some new physics news
that had come out. And that was awesome because I
found that really hard. And I like to do hard things
because I think it makes you, you know, you have to be weak at
stuff before you can become strong at it.
So I really enjoyed that, flexing those muscles a bit.
(19:28):
I have always had a very community focus to everything I
do. Partly I think a huge part of
this is because of my upbringing.
I'm from a big family. We're very well, our family are
like well established in our local community.
My parents know everybody, everybody knows them.
So the community, the wider community has always been very
important to me. I never wanted to be in science,
(19:53):
to be in a kind of an ivory tower, for want of a better
word. I always wanted to tell people
about what we were doing. It wasn't about, you know, pure
academic pursuit of knowledge. That was a part of it.
But the other part of it was like, and now I need to give
back and now I need to tell people what we're doing.
And that's just that. Yeah, it's definitely because of
(20:14):
the way I was brought up. So science communication kind of
fitted into that really without kind of I didn't think about it
strategically at all, like not at all.
Umm, it just kind of happened and.
The best careers do. Yeah, and I think like you.
Never end up where you think you're gonna.
No and I think like at the olderI've gotten like since I've kind
of passed 40 now, I find myself getting very philosophical about
(20:36):
my career and much more open to bringing my creativity actually
into my job. Because I, I think for a long
time in physics, especially as awoman, like, and I hate to say
this and I think it is differentnow, but I, I was, you know,
very often the only woman in theroom.
I was very often the only woman at the steering group meeting.
I was very often being spoken over by an electrician to my
(20:59):
male colleague, even though it was my piece of equipment that
we were, you know, setting up inmy lab.
That gets kind of exhausting. And I think you protect yourself
in the ways that you need to. And I think for a long time I
minimized a lot of my personality or my creative
interests. I kind of just packed them away
a little bit and had to present myself as a serious physicist.
(21:23):
And I think the older I've gotten now, I don't really care
anymore because I am very confident in myself and who I am
and what I've achieved and the things I care about and the
things I still want to achieve. So I think that that has come
later that like level of like being really comfortable in my
own skin and in that combinationof creativity and science, They
(21:47):
now feel like natural bedfellowsin a way they didn't when I was
in the lab for, you know, even when I was doing science
outreach, it still felt a bit like I was, I was hiding a
little bit to myself. So yeah, this science
communication thing, it just kind of felt right.
And it felt like if I worked really hard at it, that I could
get good at it. Yes, that's kind of why I ended
(22:08):
up trying to get better at. It is interesting listen to you
talk because I talked to a lot of scientists and they're all
fascinating, but communication is a particular skill and that
is very much something you have and you are a delight to talk
to. You can tell you're a
storyteller, a science friction,rather sorry, in a way that a
(22:30):
lot of scientists struggle with.So it's definitely a skill and
you have got good at it, which is why you happen to have two
books now. This is not a reflection on your
book at all. I started reading this and I got
distracted and it's absolutely nothing to do with the book and
everything to do with the fact that I can't stick to anything.
I pick it up and put it down. I think I got distracted by the
(22:50):
book about rabies Which. Happens.
Oh God, it was horrific. Anyway, I love your writing
style, which is why, of course we're giving away a couple of
copies. Laurie has kindly signed this.
They are very hard to get hold of, so you are very lucky to
have it. I have a Kindle version and I'm
very excited. It is next on my TBR.
But I'm a big fan of Mark Meowtanick.
(23:11):
I don't know if that's how you say his name.
Miyodovnik. Yeah, he's wonderful.
The moment I saw it on the back,I thought, aha, his endorsement
on the back. Rather.
I can't believe I said it like that.
Oh, and I've said his name before.
Oh, this is awful. Don't worry, he's also used to
his name being mispronounced. He's he's very cool dude and
won't be worried at all and won't be upset.
Oh, you'd meet him because I love the way, just like what
(23:32):
you've done in Sticky is talk about how science is part of
everyday life in a way that you don't even realize that when he
talks about liquids on the plane, right?
It's fascinating and it's a really beautiful way of getting
across something that people think, oh, too hard.
I'm never going to understand itand making it the real world,
which is actually a really good way to teach math as well.
So we are giving those away. So if you are not following us
(23:55):
on Instagram, what are you even doing?
Or TikTok? We're on TikTok now, which is a
decision I don't regret. Already had one community
guidelines violation for talkingthe truth about lab meat and how
it's made and bioreactors. I don't even understand anyway.
So how did you write your first book?
How did that happen? So back in the olden days when
(24:16):
Twitter was not a cesspit, it was actually a lovely place to
do science communication. Like there were loads of
scientists on there, loads of science journalists and science
communicators on there just hanging out.
I don't know, it just was, I don't know how it happened, but
it just became a place for for science.
And now it feels so weird to saythat because it's fallen so far.
(24:38):
But anyway, so back in the day that science and science
communication was a big thing onTwitter and I spent and a lot of
time talking about science online and, you know, would do
all these long threads about metrologies or like measurement
science or about materials and all of this stuff.
I just found it really fun. You know, it's just like, oh,
this is really fun. Or like I'd feature lots of
(24:58):
scientists. I'd write a little tweet about
lots of people who I admire, including Mark Madovnik.
And that was just like, I think at some point I started sharing
my writing there. So I started, you know, I was
writing articles. I was writing news articles for
scientific journals about papersthat were being published.
So they're still not very publicfriendly, but they're a lot more
public friendly than the papers.And I'd also started writing,
(25:21):
you know, proper science journalism.
So I'd started pitching story ideas to editors and I was
getting the occasional thing published.
So I was sharing a lot and it was kind of quite obvious that
I'm a physicist and I'm talking about physics and materials.
I get Adm one day from this man called Jim.
It's. A bit mighty, Jim.
Yeah, Jim is a publisher at Bloomsbury.
(25:44):
And he said, oh, do you want to get lunch someday?
I'd love to talk to you about books.
And I was like, sure. At no point did I consider that
he was asking me if I would be interested in writing a book.
I thought, like, he wanted me toreview stuff.
I don't know. I was very naive.
I love that most people like He wants me to write a book.
He's going to give me a series. This is going to be the next
Harry Potter, except nonfiction.I was just like, sure, let's
(26:07):
have lunch. So we had lunch in a place in
Camden, in, in north London. And in that conversation, he
said, So have you ever thought about writing a book?
And I was like no. And immediately lying like
immediate light because. Never considered it.
Of course there's. 44 manuscripts at my house, but no
neither. Like as a kid, even though I was
(26:27):
like, I wonder if I'll ever write a book someday not knowing
what it would be about, you know?
But he said, you know, how to think about it and have a think
of some ideas of topics you might want to write about.
And if any of them sound like goers, then maybe you want to
put a proposal together. So this wasn't like a free ride
in. This was like a nice to meet
you. You're an interesting person and
on the Internet talking about physics, which is a topic that's
(26:50):
deathly boring, uh, apparently. So maybe you'd want to write a
book. So I went away and came up with
a couple of different ideas for books, and one was the science
of London. And I'd been living in the city
for ages at this point. And as a city dweller, I'm from
a small town, but you know, as the city dweller in this
magnificent city, I, I just found myself being really
(27:12):
fascinated by the infrastructurethat kept it moving.
So the tube particularly, uh, big public transport, big train
fan, like huge, huge train fan. So the tube was just like magic
for me. And I would just notice stuff,
You know, I started noticing thepositions of sensors on the tube
or like the breeze on the tube when you walk down the escalator
(27:32):
or, you know, replacing traffic lights or replacing water pipes.
And for me, the city suddenly became this Organism in my mind,
like it became this Organism that all of these things are
operating together in this way that we do not notice until they
stop working, so until there's something wrong.
Is that very true? Yeah.
And I thought, like, I want to write a book about like the kind
(27:54):
of hidden science of of London. So this was the idea.
I went to Jim, the publisher with, and he said, I like it,
but I think it's too narrow. Can you broaden it out a bit?
So in a conversation, I was like, oh, maybe we could just
do, like, all cities again. Naivety is a wonderful thing.
So. And he was like, yeah, I love
it. So OK, cool.
(28:16):
I was like, great, no problem, Ican do that.
So put together a proposal. And that was a process in
itself. I had to think about who would
read this magical, mysterious book that I hadn't written yet,
how long it might be, how many chapters it would have, what
would be in each chapter. You have to do all of that.
Oh, so you have to do a lot of upfront planning.
Yeah, a lot. And I thought it was weird at
(28:37):
the time, but for sticky it became really important.
Actually, I I found it really, really helpful.
But so I put this proposal together, it went through the
first decision conference and then it got through the second
one and I was like. Decision Conference.
Yeah, And I was like, Oh my God,this is like getting a bit weird
now. And then I get an e-mail from
Jim to say they want to Commission it.
(28:57):
And I cried. I bet you did, What a cool
feeling. Yes.
So that was the kind of beginning of it.
I will say that like I didn't get a single penny for the first
book until some books got sold. I didn't even get in advance for
science in the city. It's not something you do for
the money a lot of the time, right?
Oh God, no. I'll tell you that if that's if
that's where you're getting intowriting books for, you're going
(29:18):
on the wrong path. But yeah, so that became my
first book and it took me about two and a bit years to write.
And it came out, I think it's eight years ago, could be 9
years ago now. And yeah, it's it was the
coolest thing I think I'd ever done at the time.
You know, it felt so cool and weird.
And to be honest, now I look back at the book and I'm like,
(29:39):
oh God, it's not, it's not cringy, but my naivety and my
youth are are peppered through it.
And and that's OK. I'm still really proud of it
because it opened so many doors to me after that.
Like the reason I write for Forbes now is because of science
and the city. So I've been writing for Forbes
for years and years and years because I had this book that was
published. So yeah, I'm very proud of it as
(30:00):
my first book baby. Good.
Yeah, you, you certainly shouldn't be cringed, but I can
understand because your opinionsdevelop and you think actually
not black and white as I thoughtit was.
I get it. Why friction?
Why was the next one about something that is incredibly
niche but really quite important, shall we say?
I am a glutton for punishment, Ithink is the first thing.
(30:23):
No, it was it was a weird thing.There was a few different things
happened on related things that made me zoom in on this idea of
a book about friction. And the first was actually when
I was writing Science in the City and I was thinking about
how train wheels move because they're made from steel and they
move on steel tracks. And I was like, that's so cool.
And then I was thinking about tires that we use on roads and
(30:45):
how they grip onto the road and how most of the noise that we
hear on roads is not actually from the engines of vehicles,
it's from the interaction between the tire and the tarmac
and. This is the sort of thing that
other people don't think about, right?
And it's actually fascinating and it sounds, and I imagine
people are like, this is a weirdthing to fixate on.
But actually, when you look at the way and why things do what
they do, even the smallest of things, it's fascinating and I
(31:08):
wish more people understood that.
I think sometimes it's a little bit, people are a bit afraid to
be a bit weird or there's, you know, and like, I love being
weird. The best people are the ones
that are, if you like what people would call them weird,
right? They have fascinations about
unusual things. They are passionate about stuff
that other people aren't, and they are particular about things
(31:29):
they I used to be embarrassed about the fact I was weirdly
obsessed with animals saving worms and snails and, and coming
in and showing people things I found outside and people are
like, great, it's a worm. And I did.
I always felt really weird aboutit.
Then I realized, actually that'spart of what makes people really
cool is these different fascinations.
So I can understand that. Yeah, totally.
And yeah. And I think for me it was just,
(31:50):
it's that like curiosity, like I've never lost that.
And I hope never to lose that inmy whole life.
If I remain curious till the dayI die then that's great because
I don't know everything and I don't want I want to get closer
to knowing more things but I'm very comfortable with not
knowing everything. And the more you know, the more
you realise you don't know a. 100%, yeah.
And the thing with friction, like why I kept coming back to
(32:11):
it was I just, I started thinking about where things
meet, like thinking about the the train wheels and the car
tires and then thinking about water repellent surfaces and
thinking about the Lotus Leaf. And I had done that for a
totally unrelated tiny research project at MPL.
And I was just, I just kept thinking about surfaces, you
know, I kept thinking about the top of things and the, the
(32:35):
interfaces between things. And for me it just was like,
there's so much that happens at interfaces.
There's so much of the universe is defined by the interactions
between surfaces and friction for me was just one part of
those interactions, but it was the one I was most interested
in. And I was like, surely someone
(32:56):
has written a book about friction, like surely.
And I, like, dug around for ages, and obviously no one had
because they're not insane. And it was another one of these
things. It's like, oh, it's a cool idea.
And then I just realized later how enormous a topic it was
going to be. But yeah, so no one had written
a book about friction. And I was like, I think there's
something here. Like I think this is an idea for
(33:17):
another book. So you're the world's only
science friction writer? I'm determined to wedge that in
as many times as possible. There's textbooks about
friction, but they're not that interesting.
So yeah. So yeah, I kind of pitched that.
So went through the same processagain, you know, sent in this
application or this proposal forthis book.
And, and again, it kind of morphed a bit in the process of
(33:37):
writing it. But yeah, ultimately it is a
book about friction. But that includes things like
aerodynamics and how things movethrough water, hydrodynamics.
And I talk a lot about the natural world actually in the
book, which is unusual for a physicist.
I think I had to learn a lot, let's put it that way.
The squishy things. The squishy things, yeah, but
also about things like, you know, tires and earthquakes.
(34:00):
Like there's a whole chapter on earthquakes because most of
plate tectonics is is defined byfrictional interactions between
plates. So it ended up just becoming
this like vast book. And there's loads of things I
didn't even include in this, youknow, in the end there's a few
things I wish I'd included but didn't, but time ran out.
Sticky took me 5 years to write,so time was very much out by the
(34:22):
time I submitted it. Yeah.
The amount of work that would gointo a non fiction, it's because
it's a funny line, right? It's it's non fiction
storytelling. Yeah.
Does it have an official term? No, I don't.
I think. Yeah, I think that's a good
description as it is. Because non fiction brings to
mind a little bit of a sort of aLexury textbooky thing, and no
one's you don't tend to read textbooks for joy, especially,
(34:43):
I'm sorry, especially a physics one.
I'm sure they're fascinating. No, I think that's fair.
But yeah, because you do manage to make a very dry topic really,
really palatable. So I do really recommend people
go and give it a read. I mean, you've got plenty of of
articles around about too, so they're an excellent way to to
get an insight into your writingstyle.
Yeah, I try and take the scienceguide approach rather than
(35:04):
science lecturer approach. You know, I want people to come
with me as we find out stuff together because yeah, there's a
lot about science that I know. There's a lot about physics that
I know, and I do have that knowledge and that expertise,
but I don't know that much aboutevery single thing that I write
about. So that means I need to
interview actual experts in those topics.
(35:25):
And I'd rather bring my readers with me, you know, met me like
physically in some cases if I could.
But in the course of my writing,I want them to feel like they're
with me interviewing this expert.
They're with me when we're visiting this lab and they're
kind of alongside me as I ask difficult questions and as I dig
through the literature. When with Sticky I wrote, I
(35:45):
think I had something like 7 or 800 references for sticky like
it was. That's more than a PhD thesis
would normally have. Oh my God, I was going to say
the words new PhD but OK, good to know.
I can totally understand why andI it just says that you've done
it properly because you're right, you're not the expert in
everything. There is no such thing.
(36:06):
And it speaks to your critical thinking and your understanding
of actual science that you do goand talk to experts rather than
trying to be the the fountain ofknowledge.
Nah, no time for that. I'm going to ask you some quick
fire fun questions. What is your favorite friction
fact? Okay, my favorite friction fact.
There's so many of these two, bythe way, but my favorite 1 is
(36:29):
that we have only recently discovered why a curling stone
moves the way that it does untilliterally a few years ago.
The physics of curling stones. So this is the sport where you
slide a big rock on a sheet of ice.
Which always looks hilarious, but apparently it's a lot of
fun. So much physics as well.
My goodness. So much, uh, like truly, really,
truly. It's absolutely delightful.
(36:51):
Yeah. We've only just really
discovered how they work becauseif you take like a bottle and
you slide a bottle along a countertop, and if you do that
while you twist the bottle, as you slide it, it will rotate in
a particular way. So it will rotate, I'm going to
get this wrong now, but it will rotate in the opposite way to
which you spin it. So that I mean like you spin it
(37:11):
and it will move forward and it will veer off and it will veer
off in the opposite direction. And this is called asymmetric
friction. Is this the whole curling the
the David Beckham kick thing? Kind of it's like it's even more
complicated because we're on a surface, on a physical surface.
So moving through the air is actually a bit easier in some
ways to get things to bend. But, but when you're sliding on
a surface, it's the way that if you're sliding a bottle, the
(37:31):
bottle's kind of leaning forward.
There's more friction on the front than the back.
So it's the motion of the back that actually defines the way
that it moves. A curling stone veers, it curls
in the same direction in which it spins.
So that's the exact opposite to what friction physics would
expect. And yeah, we really only have
(37:52):
discovered why, and it's becauseof this really specific
interaction between the ice, which on a curling rink is
pebbled. So it's bumpy, it's not smooth,
and the bottom of a curling stone is also rough.
There's two theories. We still don't know which one it
is, but we know it's probably some combination of those two
theories. And I love that we have the
sport that's been around for like 500 years and now we watch
(38:14):
at the Winter Olympics and we'rereally only still understanding
the physics behind it now. And I love stuff like that.
And that's pretty true about so much of almost all science
disciplines, right? You know that it works, but we
don't quite sure why. Like, we don't really know why
painkillers work. Although they just released a
study about acetaminophen the other day, didn't they?
So interesting. OK, that's I'm not one I would
(38:36):
have picked as a yeah, I know people who curl, who curl, who
are curlers and yeah, that's a lot of fun.
Yeah, it is a lot of fun. It turns out though, even if you
know loads of theory, if you've never done it before, you will
be crap at it. Because I was humbled very
quickly when I went to visit a curling rink knowing all the
physics and then was absolutely dreadful and I.
(38:58):
Don't want to insult curlers, which is like you sort of throw
gently but slide a stone. Now that the speed of rotation,
the weight behind it, the way you release it, those sweepers,
they help to straighten out the curl like it's, there's so much
physics goes into curling. It's really astonishing.
And it was, I love talking to curlers about it because a lot
(39:18):
of them had a real instinctive understanding of what must be
happening. Having no background in physics.
They still had a sense of, of why the stone was moving this
way. And and that is another example
of like how science is just partof the world.
It's not separate from. That's not a thing that you get
to opt out of, I don't think. It's just embedded in the way we
exist. And yeah, people get a sense of
(39:38):
it, even if they have never looked at an equation.
Frickin love it, so good, so interesting.
Never would have the words are there about curling.
Sorry. Nasby was famous for curling,
and that's very curling. Yeah, I thought it might be.
Is there even? Anyway, it's a whole of the
topic. What is 1 science myth,
presumably physics related, thatyou wish would die.
We are going to do a whole separate microgreens episode on
(40:00):
physics myths, so you're gonna kill a whole lot of them.
So this could be a little tasterof what we're going to talk
about. I mean, it's too big, but it has
to be climate change being a hoax.
Oh, OK, we're going to go there just.
Yeah, I'm so over it. And I think I've gotten, I used
to be really patient about it. You know, I used to try and meet
people where they are and say, like, tell me why you think
this. Tell me what it is that you've
(40:20):
read or what you've heard or what you've seen that's making
you think this. And I've just lost a lot of the
patience for that now, to be honest, because I think there
are some people who I just don'tthink I can get through to them
and I can't get through to everyone.
So I kind of dip out of that. I'm not saying they're hopeless,
but I also related to that it's I don't want us to lose hope.
(40:43):
I think there's a lot of doomismin climate change.
Like, yes, it's real, Yes, it's happening.
Yes, we need to take action. But to me, I, I get sad really
when people are just like, well,why are we even bothering?
Like, what's the point? It's like, because every day
will make a difference. Every day that we do this, every
moment we earlier we decide to stop burning fossil fuels will
(41:04):
be better than than waiting. And so, yeah, the climate stuff,
I'm so over it. I've lost all patience and time
for explaining it to people who just do not want to hear the
truth. No, I 100% agree.
I've stopped calling them climate change deniers.
They are climate change confusedbecause that is specifically
aggressively patronizing. And that's how I feel we should
be to these people now, because it's funny, isn't it?
(41:26):
How many of these people who have big platforms, right, who
are campaigning against doing anything about climate change
and their evidence is compellingif you don't know what you're
looking at, right? They look like they know what
they're talking about. And that is frustrating.
But they're all LinkedIn some way to the fossil fuel industry.
(41:47):
Recent chats to someone on LinkedIn and his defense, very
respectful, which is a nice change.
And he was a lawyer for one of the largest oil and gas or gas
companies in Altera So. It's frustrating.
It's frustrating. And I think I just, I want to
help like I want to help people understand, but facts aren't
enough. They're not even no.
Facts alone are not enough, and if they were, misinformation
(42:09):
would have died to death. But facts need legs to walk on,
and legs are the legs are stories, you know, like we need
to be telling stories about it. But even with our best efforts,
I think that there are some people who I personally can't
reach. I don't think they can't be
reached, but I personally cannotdo it totally.
Yeah, I we did a couple of episodes and and videos on how
to talk about climate. Because you're not going to
(42:31):
change the mind of a bunch of these climate confused, but you
are potentially going to get through to people who are just
lingering in the comments and reading.
Right? And I think that's the key if
you want to. Oh, yeah, I hear that is without
question the most frustrating myth.
Do you have like, a fun one to like use the episode on a
cheerful note? Oh, I'll tell you another
friction one if you want. In the early 2000s there were
these swimsuits that everyone was wearing in the Olympics.
(42:53):
These were like shark inspired swimsuits.
They actually ended up getting banned because they were seen as
kind of performance enhancing. Yes.
Do you remember this? Yeah.
Were they actually? They were performance enhancing
but they had absolutely nothing to do with sharks.
Whatsoever. So they didn't have denticles or
anything on them? No, They had things that looked
like denticles, but they were just printed onto the fabric.
(43:14):
And actually there's a shark researcher who took some of this
fabric and found that it was better.
It had lower drag when you turn the fabric inside out when you
get it the right way out. So so that was a really fun one
because I think, you know, Speedo really leaned really
heavily into the shark aestheticand umm, marketing around those
suits. But actually probably what kept
(43:37):
them, what made them performanceenhancing was one they supported
the swimmers core so they could move more efficiently through
the water. They probably also sat slightly
higher in the water, so it was slightly kind of buoyant and
that would also reduce the waterresistance that they would
experience. And also like they were
incredibly smooth than form fitting.
(43:57):
So you didn't have any. All your bumps and wrinkles and
hair were all hidden in the suit.
Do swimmers have bumps, Wrinkles.
Yeah, maybe I don't know kind. Of perfect.
But I love that one because it'sanother one of those things
where there's a marketing angle and then there's the actual
science. The actual science says Nah.
It's just so true almost all thetime.
(44:18):
It's great. Really enjoy that.
OK, my final question is the oneI always end on.
Of course. I wonder if this is going to be
related to the previous climate change relation.
If you were Supreme Global Overlord and you had the power
to do anything you wanted to make the world a better place,
what would be the first thing you would do?
Massively increase investment inrenewable energy and public
(44:38):
transport above all. Because I think like more than
half of the world lives in cities now, right?
We are urbanites. We are an urban species and the
way that we move around and build in our cities is having a
very rapid impact on our environment.
So our cars are a major problem.It's not a problem having any
(45:01):
cars. The problem is having so many
cars and so many large heavy vehicles.
SUVs and stuff. Yeah, SUVs are a problem on so
many levels. I've written about them for
Forbes many times on this. They actually make traffic
worse. Also, just as an FYI.
So like, people who talk about utes like their magic, they
you're actually making the traffic worse.
And other Ute owners are also making the traffic worse just by
(45:23):
their physical presence. Interesting.
Yeah, the environmental impact of of these types of vehicles is
just enormous. It's enormous.
And it's just getting worse and worse and worse.
And even if we have, if we switch to 100% EVs, we still
have other issues. We still produce lots of tyre
pollution because they're heavy too, just like fossil fuel
vehicles. And also we just can't move that
(45:44):
many people around efficiently if we're all moving in our own
cars. So public transport, huge
investment in that for sure. Like that's a major one for me
in all cities. That'll be the first thing I'd
do. And then alongside that, I would
massively increase investment inrenewables and throw out any
ideas of starting to mine for new oil and gas like we are
(46:06):
starting to do. Here I don't want one.
So, yeah, they're the two big ones for me.
I think if we could get those both on, you know, handled, I
think that would make a huge impact.
It's probably an argument for eating less meat as well, but
it's just not something I know enough about.
I, I know there's an argument for that.
Umm, but yeah, those two would be my, my top 2.
So yeah, investment in renewables, investment in, in
mass public transport in in all cities in the world.
(46:28):
You're saying that because you like trains?
I do love trains. I grew up on the Isle of Man
till I was 7. I moved here and just at the
back of our house was a train track and in the Isle of Man
they painted all of the train the same colour as as various
Thomas the tank engines. So, you know, I'd wave at Thomas
and the yellow, the green 1 Percy.
Percy. Yeah, I don't really remember,
(46:49):
but I apparently I'd sit on top of the slide every afternoon and
I got home and I'd wave at the train.
So I I get the train thing. They're very cool.
Yeah, and I also grew up by a train station in my whole life.
My grandfather was a railway engineer.
My mom was convinced that I havesomehow have part of his spirit
in my body because of my love ofof railways.
So yeah, I am biased, but the bias is scientifically
(47:12):
supported. Just look at the tube, You can't
argue with the efficiency. You couldn't get people around
that number of people around that quickly any other way apart
from teleportation, and I don't believe we're right there yet.
I think we're still a way off. In three years, isn't that what
they keep saying about fusion? Although we should have talked
about fusion. Next time, next time, next time.
Thank you. You have been so interesting.
(47:34):
And I know that you, well, you've come to terms with your
weirdness as you're putting it now, but that's what makes these
sorts of conversations fascinating.
And I really appreciate it. And thank you very, very much
for signed copies of these. Appreciate it.
I am very excited to give them away.
You have the delight now. I've put you on the spot of what
do you want people to answer in the comments to get in the
(47:54):
drawer. So it could be something like
the favorite physics fact or a myth.
I mean, it doesn't have to be related to physics or friction
or anything really. Yeah, OK, Yeah, no, I think, I
think let's do let's, what is your favorite surprising physics
fact? So it doesn't have to be
impressive or huge or anything. Just tell me something
surprising in the world of physics.
(48:16):
OK, amazing. And then you'll be able to pick
the winner. So you have to come up with a
good one. OK.
And we will pop this up on Instagram today.
You will see the giveaway up there also on again on TikTok.
Thank you. You have been wonderful to talk
to. Thanks, Brianne.
I'm like a huge admirer of yours, like the way that you run
(48:38):
your business, the fact that youprioritize the environment above
all else. Like honestly, like I'm a huge
admirer of yours. So when you started following me
on Instagram, I was like, what is happening?
There you go, I hope you learnedsomething and realise that being
green isn't about everything in your pantry matching with those
silly glass jars or living in a commune.
(49:00):
If that's your jam, fabulous. But sustainability at its part
is just using what you need. If you enjoyed this episode,
please don't keep it to yourselfand feel free to drop me a
rating and hit the subscribe button Kyoda and I'll see you
next week.
Kyoto Kaitaki and welcome to NowThat's what I Call Green.
I'm your host, Brianne W, an environmentalist and
entrepreneur trying to get you as excited about our planet as I
am. I'm all about creating a
scientific approach to making the world a better place without
the judgement and making it fun.And of course, we'll be chatting
about some of the most amazing creatures we share our planet
with. So if you are looking to
(00:26):
navigate through everything green or not so green, you have
come to the right place. I'm very excited.
Today I'm talking to my first ever physicist and first ever
person to work at NASA. How cool is that?
Today's guest is Lori Winkler. She is a physicist, a science
writer. You could say she's a science
friction writer, which I think is quite an accolade.
(00:49):
And no, I didn't come up with that.
I did get it off her website, but she's the only person I know
who's like writing about friction.
Interesting. Which we will go into very
shortly as she's appeared everywhere from Forbes to Wired
to BBC. And she has written two books
which we will be giving away today.
One on the science of surfaces meets the friction and one on
science and the city, which is away that physics effects
(01:12):
everything you do and how a cityruns that you may not even
realise. I'm not gonna talk too much
about her career because it's gonna be 1 of the things that we
go into, but I'm very excited totalk about her transition from
scientist to science communication and why she thinks
that's so important. Thank you so much for joining
me, Lori. Is it more Kiera Bren?
(01:33):
No. Lori Lori's bang on.
Yeah, people pronounce it different ways, but Lori is how
I pronounce it. So perfect and I'm going to say
it wrong halfway through and slightly panic.
No, don't worry about it. You wouldn't be alone in that.
I get all sorts of things, Brianne.
It's so funny. I don't know if you get this,
but so many people are, oh, how do you say your name?
Or they'll say hi, Brianne and I'll say and they'll
specifically ask me and then they'll repeat it incorrectly.
(01:55):
Anyway, I get Laura a lot. Even when my e-mail address is
my full name, I will very often get Laura.
I'm like, no, no, it is. It is actually my name.
Laurie is actually my name. It's not that uncommon anyway.
I don't think so. Dear me, dear me, thank you for
joining me. You really are my first
physicist because to be honest, the idea of of speaking to a
physicist is a little intimate. Adding, I asked on our Instagram
(02:18):
stories on what people wanted meto ask a physicist and I
specifically said please don't ask me to ask about string
theory because not only am I notsmart enough to understand it, I
don't think I'm smart enough to ask questions about it.
I don't think I'm smart enough to explain it.
I've read a little bit and I think I'm actually worse off
than had I not read anything before.
But I do want to start with yourearly stage.
(02:39):
When did you know you wanted to go and be a a scientist and be
why the focus on physics? It's unusual, or it feels
unusual, I suppose. Yeah, no, I think that's fair.
I don't have a single moment that I remember.
I was, I think, like most scientists, an extremely
annoying kid. Like really annoying, like
always asking annoying questions, breaking stuff so I
(03:01):
could figure out how it worked, you know, and my parents and my
family were very supportive of that, which I really appreciate.
And I, so I think that curiositywas in me somehow kind of
without any nurturing, but then it was nurtured into being.
My dad is actually an engineer. He's a toolmaker by training and
very handy, you know, very good with his hands and very
(03:23):
practical and also very, very smart.
And he always encouraged the fact that I was also interested
in how things worked. And I wanted to learn how to use
all the tools and I wanted to help him do all the DIY projects
in the house, despite being likethe baby and the youngest of my
family. And my mum is, she's got a
theatre background. So I feel like now, I didn't
(03:43):
feel like this when I was younger, but I feel like now I'm
a real mash together of my parents.
You know, I've got the kind of performance creative side from
my mum and the kind of technicalengineering, physics side from
my dad. But yeah, I think the curiosity
was then, at least initially, was very focused on space,
right? Which is such a classic kid
thing to be interested in. And my brother and I had a
(04:05):
telescope, and that's when I started to think about, you
know, the universe around us. I was quite young, you know, I'm
kind of 6 or 7. And I'm really starting to
understand and become interestedin the solar system and planets.
And I think at some point someone told me that if I wanted
to do space stuff, I probably needed to be good at physics.
Unfortunately. Yeah, and I was always good at
(04:27):
maths. I was always like, I love maths.
And I was always pretty good at physics in school.
I was terrible at biology. Like I have such admiration for
biologists, like squishy stuff is just like, I just can't.
Yeah, I find physics and chemistry are a lot like cleaner
and straighter, have straighter edges or something, which is not
true, of course, but I think that was something that I really
(04:48):
admired about those sciences as a kid.
And and then I had, was lucky and had good teachers who also
encouraged my interests. And and I read a lot of Popular
Science. Then as I got older too, you
know, as a teenager, I started to read a lot of Popular Science
and and again, they were quite often kind of physics E
engineering, E Spacey stuff. So yeah, there wasn't really a
(05:09):
moment. I just really just followed my
own stream of curiosity and was encouraged along the way.
And and physics is kind of whereI popped out at the end of this.
She didn't say, you know what? I'm going to be a physicist when
I'm Stephen. When you were Stephen, rather.
Well, I did tell my mum what university I was going to go to,
apparently at the age of four. I have no memory of this, but I
(05:30):
asked my mum. We were walking past Trinity
College in Dublin, which is likea beautiful university, and
asked what it was. And she said, oh, that's a
school for big people, but you have to work really hard to get
into that school. And I was like, I'm going to go
to that school someday, and I did.
Oh, that's good. Yeah.
So definitely like ambitious andvery curious.
(05:51):
And I kind of probably by the early stages of secondary school
kind of age 1314, that kind of age, I was like, yeah, I want to
do physics, I want to study a STEM subject at university.
So yeah, by then I was I was pretty set.
I guess the biggest thing that sticks out to me is that you
really enjoy men. I didn't know people that you
existed. I thought, you know, people
tolerated it. But but in saying that, I always
(06:11):
believed that I was going to be terrible at maths.
So it was a self reinforcing prophecy, right?
Totally. And I think maths teachers, a
bad one, can reinforce that ideatoo.
To be honest. I definitely had a couple of
years with a very bad maths teacher in high school that
almost put me off the subject, but managed to be recovered back
on the path by having a different teacher.
So I do think that maths particularly is one of those
(06:33):
subjects that needs a good teacher to help you with and to
make you realize that it's, it'sjust another tool.
It's just another way of understanding the universe
really and another way of exploring what's around us.
And I had a fantastic maths teacher in the second-half of
secondary school and thank goodness for it.
My goodness. It's a really lovely way of
(06:53):
explaining it because maths doeshave a tear.
Well, I think that maths has a bad reputation.
Here's my response. But you're right, it is just
another way of looking at the world around us.
Yeah, it's just a language. It is, it is, and I guess the
ultimate language in many respects.
I've had a few debates with a few engineers who keep saying
that physics and maths are the ultimate sciences.
Right. You're just doing a wishy washy
(07:13):
soft science, which is, of course, Nancy.
It's cool. Everything is depending on what
it is you want to study. So you knew what you wanted to
do. You went to Trinity.
Trinity College was it? Yeah.
And once you got through your bachelor's, what was the next
step? What was the plan?
I was pretty sure I didn't want to do a PhD, at least not
immediately, but I felt like I wanted to learn more.
(07:36):
I still needed some more to learn, really.
So I applied for a master's programme in London at
University College London and itwas in, in space science.
And this was very heavily influenced by the fact that
during my undergraduate degree, I was very lucky and I got a
scholarship to the Kennedy SpaceCentre for a summer.
So the summer between my, my third year at university, uh, a
(07:57):
group of 14 of us from all different universities around
Ireland went on this government sponsored scholarship program
basically. And we were there for the summer
and it was an amazing experience.
You know, that's when we were atthe Kennedy Space Center.
We were studying at Florida Tech, we were doing flying
lessons. We were hanging out with
astronauts. Like we got to visit all these
(08:17):
NASA facilities. I got to go to the space shuttle
Endeavour, which had always beenmy favorite space shuttle as a
child. So that felt like a couldn't
believe that was happening to me.
And yeah, so I really thought, you know, maybe I wanted to go
down the the space route as a career.
So I felt like having a physics degree was a great start, but I
needed some more formal education within the space
(08:38):
sector. So I applied for this master's
at UCL, which was in space science.
And that would mean leaving Ireland and moving to London for
this kind of very intense one year kind of condensed master's
program. So yeah, I did that.
And during that time I really fell in love with the city.
Like London really stole my heart very quickly.
And I started applying then for jobs for after my postgrads,
(09:02):
anything I could get, really anything in the STEM sector at
all, and was lucky enough to geta job at a huge lab called the
National Physical Laboratory. This is the UK's, it's called
the Metrology Institute. So it's a measurement science
institute, but we also did a lotof research that was very
applied. So we, you know, worked with
industry partners, we worked with companies and engineering
(09:24):
consultancies and, you know, manufacturing companies trying
to solve their real problems using our research as well as
doing fundamental research. So that felt like a really cool
place to be. Like I will say this often, but
like, I feel like that's where Ilearned to be a scientist.
Whereas at university, in my postgrad even, I was still
(09:44):
learning about science, but actually working in the lab was
where I became a scientist. And yeah, I ended up staying in
London for almost 12 years in the end.
Oh. London does have that something
about it. It's life, isn't it?
Yeah, I can understand that. Going back briefly on the PhD
thing, because I am sort of canvassing people.
I've always wanted to do it my whole life.
And I don't know how much of that is attached to the whole
(10:05):
being a doctor, as in not a medical doctor.
Don't get shouted at me in the comments, but you know, there's
also an element of that. But also, I love learning.
So why did you decide you didn'twant one?
Well, you were thinking about that.
You didn't think you wanted one.What was the deciding factor and
what? Tell me about PHD's.
I don't think people really understand what they are.
Yeah, I feel like I have a better sense of what a PhD is
(10:27):
since writing my books, because I've been told by lots of people
who do have PhDs that the process of writing the books
sound very similar. They can be a bit torturous,
right? They are at least three years.
I don't know anyone who's done aPhD in three years, but in
theory they're doable in three years.
So three to five years is the norm.
And in that time, the idea is that you're asking a set of
(10:50):
specific questions or you're, you know, exploring a specific
scientific idea. And then you are, at least in
the sciences, at least in the physical sciences, you're then,
you know, designing a set of experiments and trying to find
answers to those questions. And the real idea of a PHC is
that you're adding a novel pieceof understanding.
So it can't be about repeating what other people have done.
(11:12):
Of course, you do do that in science too, because you have
to, you know, check out what previous people have done.
But it's about developing new knowledge.
So you have to kind of discover something in inverted commas
within the process of a PhD. And I think for me, I felt just
like such a baby going out of mydegree.
(11:34):
You know, I was 21. I knew kind of what I wanted to
do in the next stage, but I knewthat there wasn't a specific
topic that I was obsessed enoughwith to then bury myself in for
the next kind of four years. I also felt like I wanted a
change. I wanted not necessarily just to
just leave Ireland, but you know, I wanted to try and live
(11:55):
somewhere else. And I had this opportunity to do
the master's program and I thought, that's good.
And then I can see what I want to do after that.
So honestly, it was kind of justnot feeling mature enough to do
a PhD, not feeling ready enough kind of in both in my scientific
knowledge, but also just in my, in myself really wanting to
explore a bit more before committing because it's a huge
(12:16):
commitment. It really is a huge commitment.
And it's very self driven. If you're doing a PhD, you will
have supervisors, you will have colleagues, you'll have friends
in your lab, you know, you'll have lab mates, even people
within your same research group who work alongside.
But ultimately it's yours, it's your baby and you have to drive
it forward. So it's just a massive
(12:36):
undertaking and I didn't feel ready but but I did actually
start and not finish a PhD. Not finish yet.
Not finished yet. Yeah.
I might start another one in my 50s maybe.
Who knows? Yeah.
When I was working at NPL, my really good boss, I really loved
working with him and had an ideafor a research project we had
funding that would fund me for kind of three to four years on a
(12:59):
specific topic. And we thought like, if I could
also get a PhD out of this big research project that we have to
deliver anyway, maybe it will beworth it.
But it all kind of for various reasons, I just didn't work out
in the end. So I got a couple of years not
quite into it and decided that it wasn't the right fit for me
or the project in the end. So we just carried on delivering
(13:21):
the science itself. But I no longer kind of was
registered as a PhD student. Yeah.
So it's I have a kind of mixed feelings about a PhD, but but
kind of like you, I do harbor the idea of doing one at some
point. It feels like the pinnacle of,
you could say it's some insane external validation.
I think there's an element of that in it for me.
(13:42):
But. And I don't care if that's
unhealthy. Yeah.
No, me neither. Yeah, I'm doing the, I'm a
couple of masters papers every semester to, to sort of chip
away at it and like, the obsession with my results is
probably probably not pretty good.
I screenshotted. I'm just just going to say a
(14:02):
guy's got an A plus for my what was it, molecular microbiology.
It was fascinating, actually. It was all about AMR,
antimicrobial resistance. And it's not, it's not good.
But as an aside, yeah. So I, I get the, I get the
hangover. Maybe we'll both go back to it
one day. We can cheer each other on.
Unfortunately, I will leave everything to the last minute.
So can you write APHD sort of at9:00 PM at night the day before
(14:24):
you're supposed to submit it? I don't know.
I mean, I do have a friend who wrote it in a couple of weeks,
but I will not name him to save his blushes.
Oh, OK, no, well, that actually makes you feel a little better.
Cool. OK, one day, one day.
So I have to MPL. You're now in science calms and
I want to focus a little bit of the conversation about this
because a fair few science communicators, now they're
coming out and they're all doinga wonderful job.
(14:46):
But we need more because the anti science narrative seems
perhaps it's just the echo chamber I'm in, but it seems to
be booming. And I'm personally getting all
sorts of quite odd questions. You know, I was this this drug
is now apparently made with bitsof fetus is one question.
And and you know, these people aren't stupid, they're not
(15:07):
gullible, but they are hearing these things from people they
should theoretically be able to trust.
They shan't name names, but I should imagine you can think of
at least one or two people I'm talking about.
And it's really scary actually, because already it's doing harm.
The US is currently in the the largest outbreak of measles it's
had and 50-60 years I think it was.
There's all sorts of things going on far beyond just
(15:28):
disease. We need more science
communicators. Why did you get into it and how
I suppose, how do you call yourself a science communicator?
I. Kind of fell into it a little
bit. NPL, one of the most amazing
things as a kind of a junior scientist working in a lab like
that, there were loads of amazing reasons, but one of the
programs they had was they actually supported each staff
(15:50):
member to go out into the community and talk about science
kind of in whatever form you wanted.
So we had a science ambassador'sprogram, there's Auk wide
science ambassador's program called Stemnet.
It's fantastic. And MPL was one of the
signatories to that program. And what that meant is that they
kind of had to support their staff to go and talk to the
public. So we actually had it in our
(16:11):
contract that we had a certain number of days per year that you
were allowed to use, that I was allowed to use to go and do
science communication because the lab felt like that's part of
the remit of doing science, is also talking to non scientists
about the science we're doing. That was a real priority for the
labs and still is. And so that was a very
privileged position to be in because it actually was part of
(16:32):
my job. OK, it was a teeny, teeny tiny
part of my job, but it was stillthere.
You know, it was still supportedand enabled by the lab.
So we started doing, I started doing science outreach kind of
fairly often and fairly early onin my time at MPL.
A lot of the time going to a school and giving a talk.
Some of my favorite things were like working with teachers and
telling them about nanotechnology and thermal
(16:55):
energy harvesting, which was what my research was on.
So kind of upskilling teachers and telling them about what cool
stuff is happening in the lab now because, you know, they're
busy people, they can't be reading loads of research
papers. And I really enjoyed that
because it felt like I was indirectly kind of helping to
get to the next generation by helping their teachers.
So I really enjoyed that processand I started writing.
(17:17):
I've always been, you know, a journal keeper.
As a kid I had diary, many of them, but I've always loved
writing and, and English was kind of my next favorite subject
in in school after physics. Physics and maths are the same
in my head. So after those two, English and
yeah, I'd always loved writing. And you write a lot in science
anyway. You spend a lot of time writing
papers and applying for researchgrants and writing presentations
(17:41):
and all that stuff. But I started to write about
science for non scientists. So I started to just faff around
at the edges of writing about science for a more general
audience and was kind of doing that secretly had like a secret
blog, didn't tell anyone. I was doing it just as a as A to
practice really like to kind of get myself out of my science
(18:02):
focused head and to just like lift my head up and look more
broadly at society and see who Icould talk to.
So it was just a bit of fun initially and I started getting
really into it and, and I think I started getting into science
outreach in general more becauseI had some level of talent in
it. Like I'd always been a stage
(18:23):
school kid. Like I said, my mum's from a
theatre background. I've been involved in shows my
whole life. So even though I'm actually not
a very extroverted person, naturally I'm really good at
faking it so. What we call the amber version
now. Yeah, maybe really good at
faking confidence. And also like I, I genuinely
(18:43):
love people. Like I love talking to people
about stuff. So I think I had some level of
talent in it and my lab supported it and they allowed me
to do more and more of it until the point I started kind of
attracting attention from outside the lab.
So I started working with a group called The Naked
Scientists, who is a fantastic podcast in the UK, and for a
little while there I was like their physics correspondent.
(19:06):
So every few episodes I'd go on to the show and talk about a
specific piece of, you know, research some new physics news
that had come out. And that was awesome because I
found that really hard. And I like to do hard things
because I think it makes you, you know, you have to be weak at
stuff before you can become strong at it.
So I really enjoyed that, flexing those muscles a bit.
(19:28):
I have always had a very community focus to everything I
do. Partly I think a huge part of
this is because of my upbringing.
I'm from a big family. We're very well, our family are
like well established in our local community.
My parents know everybody, everybody knows them.
So the community, the wider community has always been very
important to me. I never wanted to be in science,
(19:53):
to be in a kind of an ivory tower, for want of a better
word. I always wanted to tell people
about what we were doing. It wasn't about, you know, pure
academic pursuit of knowledge. That was a part of it.
But the other part of it was like, and now I need to give
back and now I need to tell people what we're doing.
And that's just that. Yeah, it's definitely because of
(20:14):
the way I was brought up. So science communication kind of
fitted into that really without kind of I didn't think about it
strategically at all, like not at all.
Umm, it just kind of happened and.
The best careers do. Yeah, and I think like you.
Never end up where you think you're gonna.
No and I think like at the olderI've gotten like since I've kind
of passed 40 now, I find myself getting very philosophical about
(20:36):
my career and much more open to bringing my creativity actually
into my job. Because I, I think for a long
time in physics, especially as awoman, like, and I hate to say
this and I think it is differentnow, but I, I was, you know,
very often the only woman in theroom.
I was very often the only woman at the steering group meeting.
I was very often being spoken over by an electrician to my
(20:59):
male colleague, even though it was my piece of equipment that
we were, you know, setting up inmy lab.
That gets kind of exhausting. And I think you protect yourself
in the ways that you need to. And I think for a long time I
minimized a lot of my personality or my creative
interests. I kind of just packed them away
a little bit and had to present myself as a serious physicist.
(21:23):
And I think the older I've gotten now, I don't really care
anymore because I am very confident in myself and who I am
and what I've achieved and the things I care about and the
things I still want to achieve. So I think that that has come
later that like level of like being really comfortable in my
own skin and in that combinationof creativity and science, They
(21:47):
now feel like natural bedfellowsin a way they didn't when I was
in the lab for, you know, even when I was doing science
outreach, it still felt a bit like I was, I was hiding a
little bit to myself. So yeah, this science
communication thing, it just kind of felt right.
And it felt like if I worked really hard at it, that I could
get good at it. Yes, that's kind of why I ended
(22:08):
up trying to get better at. It is interesting listen to you
talk because I talked to a lot of scientists and they're all
fascinating, but communication is a particular skill and that
is very much something you have and you are a delight to talk
to. You can tell you're a
storyteller, a science friction,rather sorry, in a way that a
(22:30):
lot of scientists struggle with.So it's definitely a skill and
you have got good at it, which is why you happen to have two
books now. This is not a reflection on your
book at all. I started reading this and I got
distracted and it's absolutely nothing to do with the book and
everything to do with the fact that I can't stick to anything.
I pick it up and put it down. I think I got distracted by the
(22:50):
book about rabies Which. Happens.
Oh God, it was horrific. Anyway, I love your writing
style, which is why, of course we're giving away a couple of
copies. Laurie has kindly signed this.
They are very hard to get hold of, so you are very lucky to
have it. I have a Kindle version and I'm
very excited. It is next on my TBR.
But I'm a big fan of Mark Meowtanick.
(23:11):
I don't know if that's how you say his name.
Miyodovnik. Yeah, he's wonderful.
The moment I saw it on the back,I thought, aha, his endorsement
on the back. Rather.
I can't believe I said it like that.
Oh, and I've said his name before.
Oh, this is awful. Don't worry, he's also used to
his name being mispronounced. He's he's very cool dude and
won't be worried at all and won't be upset.
Oh, you'd meet him because I love the way, just like what
(23:32):
you've done in Sticky is talk about how science is part of
everyday life in a way that you don't even realize that when he
talks about liquids on the plane, right?
It's fascinating and it's a really beautiful way of getting
across something that people think, oh, too hard.
I'm never going to understand itand making it the real world,
which is actually a really good way to teach math as well.
So we are giving those away. So if you are not following us
(23:55):
on Instagram, what are you even doing?
Or TikTok? We're on TikTok now, which is a
decision I don't regret. Already had one community
guidelines violation for talkingthe truth about lab meat and how
it's made and bioreactors. I don't even understand anyway.
So how did you write your first book?
How did that happen? So back in the olden days when
(24:16):
Twitter was not a cesspit, it was actually a lovely place to
do science communication. Like there were loads of
scientists on there, loads of science journalists and science
communicators on there just hanging out.
I don't know, it just was, I don't know how it happened, but
it just became a place for for science.
And now it feels so weird to saythat because it's fallen so far.
(24:38):
But anyway, so back in the day that science and science
communication was a big thing onTwitter and I spent and a lot of
time talking about science online and, you know, would do
all these long threads about metrologies or like measurement
science or about materials and all of this stuff.
I just found it really fun. You know, it's just like, oh,
this is really fun. Or like I'd feature lots of
(24:58):
scientists. I'd write a little tweet about
lots of people who I admire, including Mark Madovnik.
And that was just like, I think at some point I started sharing
my writing there. So I started, you know, I was
writing articles. I was writing news articles for
scientific journals about papersthat were being published.
So they're still not very publicfriendly, but they're a lot more
public friendly than the papers.And I'd also started writing,
(25:21):
you know, proper science journalism.
So I'd started pitching story ideas to editors and I was
getting the occasional thing published.
So I was sharing a lot and it was kind of quite obvious that
I'm a physicist and I'm talking about physics and materials.
I get Adm one day from this man called Jim.
It's. A bit mighty, Jim.
Yeah, Jim is a publisher at Bloomsbury.
(25:44):
And he said, oh, do you want to get lunch someday?
I'd love to talk to you about books.
And I was like, sure. At no point did I consider that
he was asking me if I would be interested in writing a book.
I thought, like, he wanted me toreview stuff.
I don't know. I was very naive.
I love that most people like He wants me to write a book.
He's going to give me a series. This is going to be the next
Harry Potter, except nonfiction.I was just like, sure, let's
(26:07):
have lunch. So we had lunch in a place in
Camden, in, in north London. And in that conversation, he
said, So have you ever thought about writing a book?
And I was like no. And immediately lying like
immediate light because. Never considered it.
Of course there's. 44 manuscripts at my house, but no
neither. Like as a kid, even though I was
(26:27):
like, I wonder if I'll ever write a book someday not knowing
what it would be about, you know?
But he said, you know, how to think about it and have a think
of some ideas of topics you might want to write about.
And if any of them sound like goers, then maybe you want to
put a proposal together. So this wasn't like a free ride
in. This was like a nice to meet
you. You're an interesting person and
on the Internet talking about physics, which is a topic that's
(26:50):
deathly boring, uh, apparently. So maybe you'd want to write a
book. So I went away and came up with
a couple of different ideas for books, and one was the science
of London. And I'd been living in the city
for ages at this point. And as a city dweller, I'm from
a small town, but you know, as the city dweller in this
magnificent city, I, I just found myself being really
(27:12):
fascinated by the infrastructurethat kept it moving.
So the tube particularly, uh, big public transport, big train
fan, like huge, huge train fan. So the tube was just like magic
for me. And I would just notice stuff,
You know, I started noticing thepositions of sensors on the tube
or like the breeze on the tube when you walk down the escalator
(27:32):
or, you know, replacing traffic lights or replacing water pipes.
And for me, the city suddenly became this Organism in my mind,
like it became this Organism that all of these things are
operating together in this way that we do not notice until they
stop working, so until there's something wrong.
Is that very true? Yeah.
And I thought, like, I want to write a book about like the kind
(27:54):
of hidden science of of London. So this was the idea.
I went to Jim, the publisher with, and he said, I like it,
but I think it's too narrow. Can you broaden it out a bit?
So in a conversation, I was like, oh, maybe we could just
do, like, all cities again. Naivety is a wonderful thing.
So. And he was like, yeah, I love
it. So OK, cool.
(28:16):
I was like, great, no problem, Ican do that.
So put together a proposal. And that was a process in
itself. I had to think about who would
read this magical, mysterious book that I hadn't written yet,
how long it might be, how many chapters it would have, what
would be in each chapter. You have to do all of that.
Oh, so you have to do a lot of upfront planning.
Yeah, a lot. And I thought it was weird at
(28:37):
the time, but for sticky it became really important.
Actually, I I found it really, really helpful.
But so I put this proposal together, it went through the
first decision conference and then it got through the second
one and I was like. Decision Conference.
Yeah, And I was like, Oh my God,this is like getting a bit weird
now. And then I get an e-mail from
Jim to say they want to Commission it.
(28:57):
And I cried. I bet you did, What a cool
feeling. Yes.
So that was the kind of beginning of it.
I will say that like I didn't get a single penny for the first
book until some books got sold. I didn't even get in advance for
science in the city. It's not something you do for
the money a lot of the time, right?
Oh God, no. I'll tell you that if that's if
that's where you're getting intowriting books for, you're going
(29:18):
on the wrong path. But yeah, so that became my
first book and it took me about two and a bit years to write.
And it came out, I think it's eight years ago, could be 9
years ago now. And yeah, it's it was the
coolest thing I think I'd ever done at the time.
You know, it felt so cool and weird.
And to be honest, now I look back at the book and I'm like,
(29:39):
oh God, it's not, it's not cringy, but my naivety and my
youth are are peppered through it.
And and that's OK. I'm still really proud of it
because it opened so many doors to me after that.
Like the reason I write for Forbes now is because of science
and the city. So I've been writing for Forbes
for years and years and years because I had this book that was
published. So yeah, I'm very proud of it as
(30:00):
my first book baby. Good.
Yeah, you, you certainly shouldn't be cringed, but I can
understand because your opinionsdevelop and you think actually
not black and white as I thoughtit was.
I get it. Why friction?
Why was the next one about something that is incredibly
niche but really quite important, shall we say?
I am a glutton for punishment, Ithink is the first thing.
(30:23):
No, it was it was a weird thing.There was a few different things
happened on related things that made me zoom in on this idea of
a book about friction. And the first was actually when
I was writing Science in the City and I was thinking about
how train wheels move because they're made from steel and they
move on steel tracks. And I was like, that's so cool.
And then I was thinking about tires that we use on roads and
(30:45):
how they grip onto the road and how most of the noise that we
hear on roads is not actually from the engines of vehicles,
it's from the interaction between the tire and the tarmac
and. This is the sort of thing that
other people don't think about, right?
And it's actually fascinating and it sounds, and I imagine
people are like, this is a weirdthing to fixate on.
But actually, when you look at the way and why things do what
they do, even the smallest of things, it's fascinating and I
(31:08):
wish more people understood that.
I think sometimes it's a little bit, people are a bit afraid to
be a bit weird or there's, you know, and like, I love being
weird. The best people are the ones
that are, if you like what people would call them weird,
right? They have fascinations about
unusual things. They are passionate about stuff
that other people aren't, and they are particular about things
(31:29):
they I used to be embarrassed about the fact I was weirdly
obsessed with animals saving worms and snails and, and coming
in and showing people things I found outside and people are
like, great, it's a worm. And I did.
I always felt really weird aboutit.
Then I realized, actually that'spart of what makes people really
cool is these different fascinations.
So I can understand that. Yeah, totally.
And yeah. And I think for me it was just,
(31:50):
it's that like curiosity, like I've never lost that.
And I hope never to lose that inmy whole life.
If I remain curious till the dayI die then that's great because
I don't know everything and I don't want I want to get closer
to knowing more things but I'm very comfortable with not
knowing everything. And the more you know, the more
you realise you don't know a. 100%, yeah.
And the thing with friction, like why I kept coming back to
(32:11):
it was I just, I started thinking about where things
meet, like thinking about the the train wheels and the car
tires and then thinking about water repellent surfaces and
thinking about the Lotus Leaf. And I had done that for a
totally unrelated tiny research project at MPL.
And I was just, I just kept thinking about surfaces, you
know, I kept thinking about the top of things and the, the
(32:35):
interfaces between things. And for me it just was like,
there's so much that happens at interfaces.
There's so much of the universe is defined by the interactions
between surfaces and friction for me was just one part of
those interactions, but it was the one I was most interested
in. And I was like, surely someone
(32:56):
has written a book about friction, like surely.
And I, like, dug around for ages, and obviously no one had
because they're not insane. And it was another one of these
things. It's like, oh, it's a cool idea.
And then I just realized later how enormous a topic it was
going to be. But yeah, so no one had written
a book about friction. And I was like, I think there's
something here. Like I think this is an idea for
(33:17):
another book. So you're the world's only
science friction writer? I'm determined to wedge that in
as many times as possible. There's textbooks about
friction, but they're not that interesting.
So yeah. So yeah, I kind of pitched that.
So went through the same processagain, you know, sent in this
application or this proposal forthis book.
And, and again, it kind of morphed a bit in the process of
(33:37):
writing it. But yeah, ultimately it is a
book about friction. But that includes things like
aerodynamics and how things movethrough water, hydrodynamics.
And I talk a lot about the natural world actually in the
book, which is unusual for a physicist.
I think I had to learn a lot, let's put it that way.
The squishy things. The squishy things, yeah, but
also about things like, you know, tires and earthquakes.
(34:00):
Like there's a whole chapter on earthquakes because most of
plate tectonics is is defined byfrictional interactions between
plates. So it ended up just becoming
this like vast book. And there's loads of things I
didn't even include in this, youknow, in the end there's a few
things I wish I'd included but didn't, but time ran out.
Sticky took me 5 years to write,so time was very much out by the
(34:22):
time I submitted it. Yeah.
The amount of work that would gointo a non fiction, it's because
it's a funny line, right? It's it's non fiction
storytelling. Yeah.
Does it have an official term? No, I don't.
I think. Yeah, I think that's a good
description as it is. Because non fiction brings to
mind a little bit of a sort of aLexury textbooky thing, and no
one's you don't tend to read textbooks for joy, especially,
(34:43):
I'm sorry, especially a physics one.
I'm sure they're fascinating. No, I think that's fair.
But yeah, because you do manage to make a very dry topic really,
really palatable. So I do really recommend people
go and give it a read. I mean, you've got plenty of of
articles around about too, so they're an excellent way to to
get an insight into your writingstyle.
Yeah, I try and take the scienceguide approach rather than
(35:04):
science lecturer approach. You know, I want people to come
with me as we find out stuff together because yeah, there's a
lot about science that I know. There's a lot about physics that
I know, and I do have that knowledge and that expertise,
but I don't know that much aboutevery single thing that I write
about. So that means I need to
interview actual experts in those topics.
(35:25):
And I'd rather bring my readers with me, you know, met me like
physically in some cases if I could.
But in the course of my writing,I want them to feel like they're
with me interviewing this expert.
They're with me when we're visiting this lab and they're
kind of alongside me as I ask difficult questions and as I dig
through the literature. When with Sticky I wrote, I
(35:45):
think I had something like 7 or 800 references for sticky like
it was. That's more than a PhD thesis
would normally have. Oh my God, I was going to say
the words new PhD but OK, good to know.
I can totally understand why andI it just says that you've done
it properly because you're right, you're not the expert in
everything. There is no such thing.
(36:06):
And it speaks to your critical thinking and your understanding
of actual science that you do goand talk to experts rather than
trying to be the the fountain ofknowledge.
Nah, no time for that. I'm going to ask you some quick
fire fun questions. What is your favorite friction
fact? Okay, my favorite friction fact.
There's so many of these two, bythe way, but my favorite 1 is
(36:29):
that we have only recently discovered why a curling stone
moves the way that it does untilliterally a few years ago.
The physics of curling stones. So this is the sport where you
slide a big rock on a sheet of ice.
Which always looks hilarious, but apparently it's a lot of
fun. So much physics as well.
My goodness. So much, uh, like truly, really,
truly. It's absolutely delightful.
(36:51):
Yeah. We've only just really
discovered how they work becauseif you take like a bottle and
you slide a bottle along a countertop, and if you do that
while you twist the bottle, as you slide it, it will rotate in
a particular way. So it will rotate, I'm going to
get this wrong now, but it will rotate in the opposite way to
which you spin it. So that I mean like you spin it
(37:11):
and it will move forward and it will veer off and it will veer
off in the opposite direction. And this is called asymmetric
friction. Is this the whole curling the
the David Beckham kick thing? Kind of it's like it's even more
complicated because we're on a surface, on a physical surface.
So moving through the air is actually a bit easier in some
ways to get things to bend. But, but when you're sliding on
a surface, it's the way that if you're sliding a bottle, the
(37:31):
bottle's kind of leaning forward.
There's more friction on the front than the back.
So it's the motion of the back that actually defines the way
that it moves. A curling stone veers, it curls
in the same direction in which it spins.
So that's the exact opposite to what friction physics would
expect. And yeah, we really only have
(37:52):
discovered why, and it's becauseof this really specific
interaction between the ice, which on a curling rink is
pebbled. So it's bumpy, it's not smooth,
and the bottom of a curling stone is also rough.
There's two theories. We still don't know which one it
is, but we know it's probably some combination of those two
theories. And I love that we have the
sport that's been around for like 500 years and now we watch
(38:14):
at the Winter Olympics and we'rereally only still understanding
the physics behind it now. And I love stuff like that.
And that's pretty true about so much of almost all science
disciplines, right? You know that it works, but we
don't quite sure why. Like, we don't really know why
painkillers work. Although they just released a
study about acetaminophen the other day, didn't they?
So interesting. OK, that's I'm not one I would
(38:36):
have picked as a yeah, I know people who curl, who curl, who
are curlers and yeah, that's a lot of fun.
Yeah, it is a lot of fun. It turns out though, even if you
know loads of theory, if you've never done it before, you will
be crap at it. Because I was humbled very
quickly when I went to visit a curling rink knowing all the
physics and then was absolutely dreadful and I.
(38:58):
Don't want to insult curlers, which is like you sort of throw
gently but slide a stone. Now that the speed of rotation,
the weight behind it, the way you release it, those sweepers,
they help to straighten out the curl like it's, there's so much
physics goes into curling. It's really astonishing.
And it was, I love talking to curlers about it because a lot
(39:18):
of them had a real instinctive understanding of what must be
happening. Having no background in physics.
They still had a sense of, of why the stone was moving this
way. And and that is another example
of like how science is just partof the world.
It's not separate from. That's not a thing that you get
to opt out of, I don't think. It's just embedded in the way we
exist. And yeah, people get a sense of
(39:38):
it, even if they have never looked at an equation.
Frickin love it, so good, so interesting.
Never would have the words are there about curling.
Sorry. Nasby was famous for curling,
and that's very curling. Yeah, I thought it might be.
Is there even? Anyway, it's a whole of the
topic. What is 1 science myth,
presumably physics related, thatyou wish would die.
We are going to do a whole separate microgreens episode on
(40:00):
physics myths, so you're gonna kill a whole lot of them.
So this could be a little tasterof what we're going to talk
about. I mean, it's too big, but it has
to be climate change being a hoax.
Oh, OK, we're going to go there just.
Yeah, I'm so over it. And I think I've gotten, I used
to be really patient about it. You know, I used to try and meet
people where they are and say, like, tell me why you think
this. Tell me what it is that you've
(40:20):
read or what you've heard or what you've seen that's making
you think this. And I've just lost a lot of the
patience for that now, to be honest, because I think there
are some people who I just don'tthink I can get through to them
and I can't get through to everyone.
So I kind of dip out of that. I'm not saying they're hopeless,
but I also related to that it's I don't want us to lose hope.
(40:43):
I think there's a lot of doomismin climate change.
Like, yes, it's real, Yes, it's happening.
Yes, we need to take action. But to me, I, I get sad really
when people are just like, well,why are we even bothering?
Like, what's the point? It's like, because every day
will make a difference. Every day that we do this, every
moment we earlier we decide to stop burning fossil fuels will
(41:04):
be better than than waiting. And so, yeah, the climate stuff,
I'm so over it. I've lost all patience and time
for explaining it to people who just do not want to hear the
truth. No, I 100% agree.
I've stopped calling them climate change deniers.
They are climate change confusedbecause that is specifically
aggressively patronizing. And that's how I feel we should
be to these people now, because it's funny, isn't it?
(41:26):
How many of these people who have big platforms, right, who
are campaigning against doing anything about climate change
and their evidence is compellingif you don't know what you're
looking at, right? They look like they know what
they're talking about. And that is frustrating.
But they're all LinkedIn some way to the fossil fuel industry.
(41:47):
Recent chats to someone on LinkedIn and his defense, very
respectful, which is a nice change.
And he was a lawyer for one of the largest oil and gas or gas
companies in Altera So. It's frustrating.
It's frustrating. And I think I just, I want to
help like I want to help people understand, but facts aren't
enough. They're not even no.
Facts alone are not enough, and if they were, misinformation
(42:09):
would have died to death. But facts need legs to walk on,
and legs are the legs are stories, you know, like we need
to be telling stories about it. But even with our best efforts,
I think that there are some people who I personally can't
reach. I don't think they can't be
reached, but I personally cannotdo it totally.
Yeah, I we did a couple of episodes and and videos on how
to talk about climate. Because you're not going to
(42:31):
change the mind of a bunch of these climate confused, but you
are potentially going to get through to people who are just
lingering in the comments and reading.
Right? And I think that's the key if
you want to. Oh, yeah, I hear that is without
question the most frustrating myth.
Do you have like, a fun one to like use the episode on a
cheerful note? Oh, I'll tell you another
friction one if you want. In the early 2000s there were
these swimsuits that everyone was wearing in the Olympics.
(42:53):
These were like shark inspired swimsuits.
They actually ended up getting banned because they were seen as
kind of performance enhancing. Yes.
Do you remember this? Yeah.
Were they actually? They were performance enhancing
but they had absolutely nothing to do with sharks.
Whatsoever. So they didn't have denticles or
anything on them? No, They had things that looked
like denticles, but they were just printed onto the fabric.
(43:14):
And actually there's a shark researcher who took some of this
fabric and found that it was better.
It had lower drag when you turn the fabric inside out when you
get it the right way out. So so that was a really fun one
because I think, you know, Speedo really leaned really
heavily into the shark aestheticand umm, marketing around those
suits. But actually probably what kept
(43:37):
them, what made them performanceenhancing was one they supported
the swimmers core so they could move more efficiently through
the water. They probably also sat slightly
higher in the water, so it was slightly kind of buoyant and
that would also reduce the waterresistance that they would
experience. And also like they were
incredibly smooth than form fitting.
(43:57):
So you didn't have any. All your bumps and wrinkles and
hair were all hidden in the suit.
Do swimmers have bumps, Wrinkles.
Yeah, maybe I don't know kind. Of perfect.
But I love that one because it'sanother one of those things
where there's a marketing angle and then there's the actual
science. The actual science says Nah.
It's just so true almost all thetime.
(44:18):
It's great. Really enjoy that.
OK, my final question is the oneI always end on.
Of course. I wonder if this is going to be
related to the previous climate change relation.
If you were Supreme Global Overlord and you had the power
to do anything you wanted to make the world a better place,
what would be the first thing you would do?
Massively increase investment inrenewable energy and public
(44:38):
transport above all. Because I think like more than
half of the world lives in cities now, right?
We are urbanites. We are an urban species and the
way that we move around and build in our cities is having a
very rapid impact on our environment.
So our cars are a major problem.It's not a problem having any
(45:01):
cars. The problem is having so many
cars and so many large heavy vehicles.
SUVs and stuff. Yeah, SUVs are a problem on so
many levels. I've written about them for
Forbes many times on this. They actually make traffic
worse. Also, just as an FYI.
So like, people who talk about utes like their magic, they
you're actually making the traffic worse.
And other Ute owners are also making the traffic worse just by
(45:23):
their physical presence. Interesting.
Yeah, the environmental impact of of these types of vehicles is
just enormous. It's enormous.
And it's just getting worse and worse and worse.
And even if we have, if we switch to 100% EVs, we still
have other issues. We still produce lots of tyre
pollution because they're heavy too, just like fossil fuel
vehicles. And also we just can't move that
(45:44):
many people around efficiently if we're all moving in our own
cars. So public transport, huge
investment in that for sure. Like that's a major one for me
in all cities. That'll be the first thing I'd
do. And then alongside that, I would
massively increase investment inrenewables and throw out any
ideas of starting to mine for new oil and gas like we are
(46:06):
starting to do. Here I don't want one.
So, yeah, they're the two big ones for me.
I think if we could get those both on, you know, handled, I
think that would make a huge impact.
It's probably an argument for eating less meat as well, but
it's just not something I know enough about.
I, I know there's an argument for that.
Umm, but yeah, those two would be my, my top 2.
So yeah, investment in renewables, investment in, in
mass public transport in in all cities in the world.
(46:28):
You're saying that because you like trains?
I do love trains. I grew up on the Isle of Man
till I was 7. I moved here and just at the
back of our house was a train track and in the Isle of Man
they painted all of the train the same colour as as various
Thomas the tank engines. So, you know, I'd wave at Thomas
and the yellow, the green 1 Percy.
Percy. Yeah, I don't really remember,
(46:49):
but I apparently I'd sit on top of the slide every afternoon and
I got home and I'd wave at the train.
So I I get the train thing. They're very cool.
Yeah, and I also grew up by a train station in my whole life.
My grandfather was a railway engineer.
My mom was convinced that I havesomehow have part of his spirit
in my body because of my love ofof railways.
So yeah, I am biased, but the bias is scientifically
(47:12):
supported. Just look at the tube, You can't
argue with the efficiency. You couldn't get people around
that number of people around that quickly any other way apart
from teleportation, and I don't believe we're right there yet.
I think we're still a way off. In three years, isn't that what
they keep saying about fusion? Although we should have talked
about fusion. Next time, next time, next time.
Thank you. You have been so interesting.
(47:34):
And I know that you, well, you've come to terms with your
weirdness as you're putting it now, but that's what makes these
sorts of conversations fascinating.
And I really appreciate it. And thank you very, very much
for signed copies of these. Appreciate it.
I am very excited to give them away.
You have the delight now. I've put you on the spot of what
do you want people to answer in the comments to get in the
(47:54):
drawer. So it could be something like
the favorite physics fact or a myth.
I mean, it doesn't have to be related to physics or friction
or anything really. Yeah, OK, Yeah, no, I think, I
think let's do let's, what is your favorite surprising physics
fact? So it doesn't have to be
impressive or huge or anything. Just tell me something
surprising in the world of physics.
(48:16):
OK, amazing. And then you'll be able to pick
the winner. So you have to come up with a
good one. OK.
And we will pop this up on Instagram today.
You will see the giveaway up there also on again on TikTok.
Thank you. You have been wonderful to talk
to. Thanks, Brianne.
I'm like a huge admirer of yours, like the way that you run
(48:38):
your business, the fact that youprioritize the environment above
all else. Like honestly, like I'm a huge
admirer of yours. So when you started following me
on Instagram, I was like, what is happening?
There you go, I hope you learnedsomething and realise that being
green isn't about everything in your pantry matching with those
silly glass jars or living in a commune.
(49:00):
If that's your jam, fabulous. But sustainability at its part
is just using what you need. If you enjoyed this episode,
please don't keep it to yourselfand feel free to drop me a
rating and hit the subscribe button Kyoda and I'll see you
next week.
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