Off Air... with Jane and Fi - It's NOT a pie

Episode Date: February 16, 2023

Jane and Fi have swanned off on holiday, so Chloe Tilley and Calum Macdonald are here to hold down the fort for the last time before their return on Monday.They're joined by Dr. Maggie Aderin-Pocock, space scientist and science communicator.If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] Producer: Kate LeeTimes Radio Producer: Rosie CutlerPodcast Executive Producer: Ben Mitchell Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, hello, you're listening to Off Air with Jane and Fi, but this week, of course, it's with Chloe and Callum. And as we like to do at the start of the podcast, we can take you behind the scenes and tell you that producer Rosie is recording this for the first time. So if it sounds weird, if it's gone wrong... It will be perfect. Don't be mean. It'll be immaculate. It's a Rosie Cutler production today. It has been lovely this week

sitting in for Jane and Fi. We've been very lucky, haven't we, just to sit and kind of gossip on the radio and do some news. It's been really nice. It has been a newsier week, perhaps, than we'd expected, given the sort of half-term vibe that's in politics and life in general, I suppose. We had that big SNP news, Nicola Sturgeon news this week, so we were dealing with that, which was quite an action-packed day. But it's a nice leisurely sort of afternoon conversation on Times Radio, isn't it?

I hope we've channeled some of Jane and Fee. We haven't fought over the big seats. I think that's a thing that we've managed to avoid. There haven't been any big seats because we've been sitting in the cupboard. That is true, actually. Let's be honest. But no, it's been lovely.

And thank you for all of your messages. We've really enjoyed it this week. So I hope you've enjoyed having us here. We're returning to breakfast. In fact, early tomorrow morning. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, we're on Breakfast on Times Radio. So I hope you can join us then. Tell you someone who did join us today for our

big interview was Dr Maggie Adarin-Pocock. She is a wonderfully inspirational person. You know those people you just speak to and the enthusiasm in their voice just lifts you and engages you. She is a space scientist, she's a space communicator, a science communicator

and I love the fact that she describes herself that way. She told us she spoke to over 400,000 children about science, about space, about making it engaging. And what I loved about her was she was talking about how we've got to move away from old white men talking about science in a certain way. There's got to be different ways of talking about science because different people get drawn into science and space through different approaches. Yeah, and science is exciting. That's the thing. And if anybody makes it boring, they're doing it wrong. I'm no scientist. I'm not particularly enthused about science. It's not my passion, whatever. But I can think back to those memorable science lessons in

school where a teacher brought it to life usually by making something sort of explode or pop or you know a different colored flame you know first time you see a flame that isn't orange and it's because of whatever chemical they're burning those sorts of things make science exciting and also i think we're probably we're probably at this stage aren't we where space exploration space travel is becoming exciting once again in a way that it would have done or would have been decades ago and actually we're probably quite fortunate that we're kind of living into that chapter now and so that should be exciting too and to engage children and bring them in well let's hear from dr maggie adarin pocox she began by telling us where her passion for science and space came from i got the space bug from a very early age

and it turned out to be the clangers. So I started watching the clangers when I was a child and I just fell in love with them. And it turns out that the clangers are a gateway that led on to sort of hardcore science fiction, like Star Trek and things like that. So yes, I'm also a Trekkies. But because I had some challenges when I was growing up,

science fiction sort of enabled me to sort of think crazy thoughts and sort of have crazy dreams, really. When you say challenges growing up, tell us about them. Yes. So one of the things that I found out is I went to 13 different schools when I was growing up. And it's quite interesting because when I go out and speak to kids about this they say oh my goodness how naughty were you it wasn't like that it wasn't like that so my parents put up when I was four and sometimes I was with my mum and sometimes I was with my dad um but also one of the challenges I faced was dyslexia and it's funny because um as a dyslexic um when you're first at school it's all about reading and writing and these are some of the things that dyslexics find really hard.

But now I see dyslexia as my superpower and it really enables me to do the things that I love. But yes, when I started off, I was sort of put in the remedial class at the back and sort of considered to be a bit dumb. And so my crazy dreams of getting into space seem literally just a crazy dream. And it's interesting that that happened because I mean that happened a lot didn't even when I was growing up I saw that kids that were clearly very intelligent but were dyslexic and not diagnosed were not given the opportunity did it put you off learning for a long time at school I thought I don't like school and school doesn't like me but my parents were sort of very into education they saw the education as a sort of a way of sort of transcending barriers. So it was sort of quite a challenge for me because especially early on at

school, I just decided that I used to fall asleep in class and sort of sit in the back and with the safety scissors and the glue, just keeping out of harm's way. But there was a moment actually when a teacher asked a question and everybody else in the class got it wrong and I got it right. And I thought, oh my goodness, maybe I I can do this so that was quite a transformation and then lots of help and support from family friends and many wonderful teachers I mentioned to somebody that I know that we were going to speak to you today and immediately they said inspirational and I

wonder Maggie at what point you realized you were inspirational? Thank you. That's lovely. I'm sorry, I'm losing my voice a bit. But it's quite interesting because sometimes people say, oh, Maggie, you're a role model. And at first I thought, oh, my goodness, I can't be a role model because I know what I'm really like. If you see my study here, I'm quite messy. And I'm really optimistic, so I'm usually late for everything

because I try and cram too much into the day. And so I can't be a role model. I can't be sort of inspirational. But I realized a role model, someone who's inspirational, has got something to share. And so for me, it's talking about space and astronomy and science.

And that's what I love to do. And so I don't think you have to be perfect to be sort of inspirational or a role model. You just have to have something to share. And yeah, i like to sort of share my love of space and everything out there crucially you harness it so well and you're so willing to share that i suppose there are some people who could be inspirational but but haven't quite put their finger on on how to do it yes and i think that is a challenge um but i've been

doing sort of science communication for over 18 years and in that time I've seen about 400,000 people so if you take my first talk I'm not sure it was quite up to snuff but it's a learning experience and I think that's what people don't realize also it's just trying to find the right hooks I remember when I first went out to speak to younger kids I was like you know what can what do we have in common what can I use use? And it turned out to be twinkle, twinkle, little star. Because twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are. And I said, well, hey, let's go on a journey and find out what stars are and what happens in stars. And so it's finding, I think, the right hooks that sort of make the science accessible. I can imagine when you were growing up, science was still very white, male, middle-aged.

Did you see that in yourself? Did you see any barriers put up? Did you see it as a challenge? I mean, what were your experiences like? Yes. So I think growing up, one of the things I thought was that all astronomy was done originally by white guys in togas because it seemed all about the Romans and the Greeks.

They were the people who did astronomy. But I've since learned that astronomy is the heritage of every culture of the world and so I'd like to sort of share that with people and also yes sort of growing up when I said I want to be a scientist so people sort of looked at me so you you don't you don't look like the type you you don't fit the stereotype but I was lucky that I got the passion for it at an early age and so it was almost as if nothing was going to stop me and through my life and there's been a sort of a number of sort of challenges and pitfalls where I've fallen flat in the mud and so oh my goodness it's all gone horribly wrong but when you have a big dream it means you pick yourself up you brush

yourself up and keep going just find a different route to take so the fact that the most people I was interacting with or I was often the only sort of a female So the fact that the most people I was interacting with, or I was often the only sort of a female in the room and the only black person in the room. Sometimes you can use that to your advantage. It means that they remember what I'm going to say. So I don't think it's always negative. And I know that you're really passionate about getting girls particularly engaged in science. I do think it's getting better. I've got daughters and I do think at school it is getting better. Girls are not quite so scared of science because I think sometimes they can be a bit scared. I think it's becoming a bit more accessible. What do you think the key is

to unlocking girls' enthusiasm and belief that they can do science, they can achieve in it? I think there's a number of different things. One of the things is that if you take a subject like physics, girls often do better than physics than boys. But some girls think, oh, you have to be a genius to do physics. And I'm not a genius, so I can't do it. And it's showing them that, yes, you can do it and you can excel in it. So I think role models do come into that. So just showing a number of fantastic women who've had brilliant careers in science and in STEM, science, technology, engineering and maths, because then they know that they're not taking a lonely path. Other people have trodden the path before them. And I think another factor is relevance.

But sometimes what people are learning in school doesn't seem to bear any resemblance to what's happening in real life. Yes, that's true. Making that connection, I think, and I think the curriculum's trying to change to do that more, but at the same time, I think more can be done. I've met organisations where kids are actually doing proper scientific research with researchers from universities and other organisations,

and they're making a real difference. So it empowers them, it gives them confidence to know that they can do this. You're listening to Off Air with Jane and Fi. This week with Chloe and Callum. Thanks for having us. We're talking to Dr Maggie Derren-Pocock,

space scientist, science communicator, and all-round inspiration. Here she is telling us about how she dealt with repeated failures involved in space science because you have to. You have to fail to succeed at space, don't you? She says they're necessary to succeed. There is actually, but in science in general, when we're progressing and sort of moving our mindset forward,

there are so many dead ends we take along the way, but we learn from those dead ends. And this is one of the things that we don't bring out often. We talk about all the success and yet this is one of the things that we don't bring out often we talk about ah the success and yeah this is a this we've done it we've achieved it but we don't talk about sort of the route that we take and it's very important I think for people to understand that because it isn't just instantaneous success it is sort of the journey along the way and all the things you learn on that journey so um I think um I think the way we talk about science and the way we sort of talk about research and how we do it. And I was at Spaceport Cornwall in January for the Virgin launch. And it was so exciting where this jumbo jet took off with the rocket slung underneath.

And then we were all there rooting for it. And in the end, something went wrong and it didn't quite make it into space. But we learn from that. And so next time, hopefully we get there. But it is it is quite a process. Yeah. Is that a mindset that you feel helps you in other aspects of your life, too? You're so involved in so many different things that that kind of get knocked down, but we get up again sort of mentality. Yes. And I think it's that sort of resilience. And i think i got that from an early age because as a dyslexic it's all about so you type something into the computer and the computer says okay okay let's try and spell it another way okay let's just use a different word so so you sort of learn that yeah there's usually another route but i think that's why um when i go out to see uh speak to kids i

like to say have a big and crazy dream you know reach for reach for the stars no matter what your stars are because by doing that it means that when you do fall over you pick yourself up you lament the things that have gone wrong but you pick yourself up and you have your eye on that end goal and you keep going and I think that's the resiliency just keeping going. You go to so many schools and speak to so many young people and i know there's been a real push in recent years to get more young people particularly girls but young people into stem subjects as you say um are you seeing that change are you seeing more enthusiasm amongst young people do you think it's working i think it is but it's working too slowly

so if you look sorry if we look back at the numbers things are moving sort of gradually forward and back in 2019 there was a magical moment when um sort of more girls took physics chemistry and uh biology than boys and so people think yes this is wonderful but girls are still sort of going more for the sort of the biological sciences or sort of going into medicine than the computing the engineering and the physics so it's just trying to show that you know these subjects are good for everyone and also showing that these subjects need diversity i think it's quite terrifying if subjects like physics are just done by white guys we need different ideas coming to the table because then it's better for profit profitability but it's better for the subject as

well because we're having more sort of, when you have a brainstorming session, you have more ideas coming in. And so it's sort of, yes, more diversity in that way. And do you think choice is important? I'm thinking particularly Rishi Sunak thinking about making kids study maths to 18. I'm just wondering, should it be about choice

or should we actually make kids study sciences, study maths longer so they learn more about it and potentially fall in love with it yes well i think the problem is when you make someone do something i think they're less likely to fall in love with it so i think what we need to do is actually make the subjects sort of sort of accessible and exciting and sort of sell the subjects to them rather than making them do it. I'm slightly worried about sort of enforcing these things. I've met many people who said, oh, yeah, I didn't like physics at school. My physics teacher didn't make it very exciting. So let's make it exciting.

And so more people want to do it because I think I think it is very important, though, that people have an awareness of science, science and STEM, science, science technology engineering and maths is gathering our lives in so many different ways but as a society we need to have an awareness of where stem is going so we can make the right decisions and but as but as a society so even for the kids that don't want to become scientists i still want to speak to them so they have an awareness of what we're doing in science and we can sort of go forward in the right direction what is what is the cell for physics what is the most exciting thing how do you make it exciting oh um well when i go out and give a talk i like to talk about some of the amazing things that are happening so um just

talking about our you um our universe um our sun is our local star and when we look up in the night sky and we see all those other stars, they're suns like our sun. Over the years, it's quite interesting to see how our knowledge of the universe has changed. We used to think the sun was the centre of the universe, so we used to think the Earth was the centre of the universe, then the sun. Now we know we live in a galaxy called the Milky Way that contains 300 billion stars.

And one of the things we're discovering is we're discovering some of the planets going around those stars and we're able to analyse some of their atmospheres so we're looking for life out there and in the future that there's a project called breakthrough star shot we're hoping to actually be able to send space probes to these sort of distant stars and see some of these what we call exoplanets so there's so much exciting stuff going on out there it's just but it's also highlighting that some of the things we just don't know we only know what's about 90 um about sort of a six percent of the universe is made of the other um the other 94 we don't know what it's made of and so i like to tell kids this you know we're stumped come and help us because there's still so many questions to answer that is why you're a science

communicator that's clear exactly it made us both smile smile on a slightly different um topic i want to ask you about maggie you've mentioned quite a few times about diversity and about race and often you know it's white men in a room who are doing this educating you want to change that i know that you're a commissioner for the commission on race and ethnic disparities and you were involved in that report back in april 2021 which was looking at whether there was institutionalized racism in this country and it found that there wasn't. There was still racism, but it wasn't institutionalised. And I know you got quite a lot of kickback, as many of the people involved in that report did. Do you regret being involved in that or do you think it was helpful and it did help move things forward?

I think if you look, we came up with 24 recommendations out of that report. People got very hung up on the institutional racism. But some of the outputs were an office for health disparities. So looking at how different racial groups respond to different medicines. So investigate how

medicines can be tailored for different ethnicities. Another one was the police need to use stop and search. But one of the ways we can sort of protect people from stop and search is make sure that people have a sort of a body cams when they're doing the stop and search.

So if something goes wrong, we can actually sort of look back and say, okay, that doesn't look right. So there were all these sort of different recommendations. I think they got lost in the semantics, which was an unfortunate thing. But also I think racism is alive and unfortunately kicking in the UK today. And it's something that we need to tackle. So although I regret the response to the report, I think it was a necessary thing to do.

And what we need to do is come together to stamp out racism and to stamp out sort of racism is one aspect. But it's just sort of allowing different people from different groups to thrive in a community. So that's sort of one of the challenges that I want to take on. And I think the report helps to do that. Do you think racism is getting worse in this country or that it is improving in the sense of people are breaking it down and it is less frequent than we would see in the past?

I think it depends on how far back you go. When my dad first came to the UK from Nigeria, he was going to places and there was, I think it was obvious, no blacks, no dogs, no Irish. And there were signs like that in windows. And so we have moved on. There's there were signs like that in windows and so we have moved on I don't know there's legislation and things like that to sort of um to to improve that situation but sometimes um although the legislation is there things can go underground and I think um there are there is

still racism happening um you look at some parts of the NHS where people of ethnic minorities are much more likely to be disciplined and things like that. And to me, it's about sort of communication. And so it is trying to tackle. So I think it has improved from the times that my father lived in. But we still got a long way to go. So, yes, we're in the right direction, but we need to get there faster. And I think that's what we were trying to do with the report. That was Dr Maggie Adarin-Pocock, space scientist and science communicator and all-round infuser of children and people about science.

We had so many of your messages today on varied subjects, which I absolutely loved. We were speaking at one point about the piece in The Times magazine, which comes out on Saturday, where Anna Murphy, the fashion editor for the times and sunday times had um had two photographs taken it's on the front page of the magazine one where she looked beautifully au naturel and one where she had actually been tweaked if you like what she would have looked like if she'd had botox or whatever which she absolutely does not do. We had a message from Sue in Chester.

She says, I'm 61. I'm an ex-dancer and model. I've had no fillers or Botox and never would. Notice this year on Love Island, more of the people taking part, looking a bit more, well, natural. Some have had work, but there are a few participants, including men, who look like they've actually had nothing done, and it is absolutely refreshing.

I mean, the people who go on Love Island certainly don't need any work done because they're in their 20s. But that's what's worrying, isn't it? It's filtering that message down that you have to look kind of perfect, whatever perfect is. And as our conversation kind of explored on the programme, actually, kind of you start with a bit of work, but you have to keep having the work done to maintain it. And ultimately, there's a real danger you end up looking like Courtney Cox on Madonna. Exactly.

And why is that becoming the definition of perfect? It's bizarre. They look completely abnormal, in my opinion. I will forever be wrinkly. Yeah, and bring it on. I've got loads of grey hairs already. At 29? 29, honestly, I see them. And that is generally what spurs me to get a haircut, because. At 29? 29, honestly, I see them.

And that is generally what spurs me to get a haircut because when my hair is shorter, you don't see them. Particularly in the sides. So when you come in blonde, we'll know why. Yeah, exactly. Too many greys. Something else we were talking about on the programme today. This lobster pie.

It's not a pie. Well, you and this person who texted Will agree A pie is not a pie If it only has a pastry lid That is merely a stew With a pastry lid A pie is a stew contained wholly Within pastry

This is in capital letters Stop conning pie lovers It is true So this is a fancy restaurant in London That's charging, is it £96 or £94? £96. £96 for a pie, in inverted commas, that has two lobsters in it. Share it between two people.

And the king and queen consort were apparently there in the last couple of weeks. I do wonder where the queen consort picked up COVID, just as an aside. Anyway, they were there having their lobster pie and apparently it's become the the dish of the moment some people don't even look at the menu they just say bring me the lobster pie the lobster is sticking out it's worth saying the head is coming out with the eye and the shell and everything and looks at you as it as it appears in front of you apparently it's very rich yeah so you really would be full on your 50 quid each yes yeah i i feel like it's not for me the only restaurant i can ever walk into and know what i'm ordering without looking at the

menu is nando's i get the same thing every time never been to a nando's have you not no i'll take you to nando's i don't want to go to all right okay but thank you for the offer take me somewhere posh right okay i'll go to the lobster restaurant, but not the lobster pie. Oh, gosh. We did have this text as well, on which we will leave you, because it will blow your mind like it blew ours. This is David from Suffolk. Does Maggie, Dr Maggie, think that there might be intelligent life on other planets?

And if so, why have we not been contacted yet? Well, David, when you find intelligent life on this planet let us know thanks for having us this week you can find us in our usual home which is times radio breakfast friday saturday and sunday mornings from 6 a.m and tomorrow on breakfast or the 17th of february depending on when you're listening to this podcast we are going to give you the chance to win six month free digital subscription to The Times and The Sunday Times. You have to have collected all five, by that point, all five winning words.

We've done four of them on this podcast all of this week, and the fifth one will be live on Times Radio Breakfast on Friday morning from six o'clock. So do get involved if you'd like a chance. The word today is... Rocket. I nearly forgot. See, I didn't write it down.

You need to write it down. So Jane and Fee are back next week in their normal slot, three till five on Times Radio, Monday to Thursday.

We're back in our normal slot on Times Radio Breakfast Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I hope you can join us then. you have been listening to off air with jane garvey and fee glover our times radio producer is rosie cutler and the podcast executive producer is ben mitchell now you can listen to us on the

free times radio app or you can download every episode from wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget that if you like what you heard and thought, hey, I want to listen to this, but live, then you can Monday to Thursday, 3 till 5 on Times Radio. Embrace the live radio jeopardy. Thank you for listening, and hope you can join us off air very soon. Goodbye.