Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor - Episode 108: Alice Roberts

Episode Date: September 25, 2023

Professor Alice Roberts is a TV presenter and biological anthropologist - in her own words, she looks at old bones and tries to construct the person's history from their skeleton, and she loves the link betwwen the living and the dead.Her pink hair hints at her less traditional and more playful side, also illustrated by the amazing story that as a junior doctor she did some of her paediatric ward rounds on rollerblades, much to the children's joy! Alice was offered her first solo TV series just before she had her first baby. She presumed it was bad timing but to her surprise the executive producer suggested she take her her newborn baby with her on the filming, which she did successfully with the help of her husband who came along too.Alice has two children, now aged 10 and 13. She is vice president of Humanists UK. And she speaks out against faith schools, saying how children have a right not to have religion forced on them.Spinning Plates is presented by Sophie Ellis-Bextor, produced by Claire Jones and post-production by Richard Jones Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, I'm Sophia Lispector and welcome to Spinning Plates, the podcast where I speak to busy working women who also happen to be mothers about how they make it work. I'm a singer and I've released seven albums in between having my five sons aged 16 months to 16 years, so I spin a few plates myself. Being a mother can be the most amazing thing, but can also be hard to find time for yourself and your own ambitions. I want to be a bit nosy and see how other people balance everything. Welcome to Spinning Plates. Hello to you. How you doing? I'm speaking to you on, oh, what is it? Friday afternoon. to you on, oh what is it, Friday afternoon. Golly the week's gone quick, blimey. And I've still got the last little bits of a beautiful, oh it's a really beautiful sunny day actually, that lovely golden light. And the weather has been teasing us, it goes from heatwave

to proper autumn chill in a day it feels like so this morning it was all kind of cold when we left for school and the kids wanted their coats and I put them in shorts and it wasn't really shorts weather but now it's actually really quite warm so hopefully they've forgiven me by now and I think we're kind of getting into our September stride a little bit although I have to say I feel pretty exhausted I don't know my secondary school kids well particularly my 11 year old when he comes home he's always got quite a lot of homework now and I have to sit and do it with him and I just don't think I'm a very good teacher I'm in fact I think I'm a bad teacher. And he's very sweet because he always wants to understand the answers,

which obviously is like the right thing to do. But I'm a bit like, let's just get this done. The answer's this. And obviously that's the wrong attitude. I do know that's the wrong attitude. So I'm trying to actively like slow myself down, explain stuff, get him to do the solutions and work it out. But then, yeah, I just find it a bit overwhelming

sometimes because I never really know if the emphasis with homework is on him finishing it or him understanding it understanding it would mean we probably spend about double the time sometimes and also I've kind of done school I don't necessarily want to do it again um what is the obsession in biology with an animal cell and a plant cell and the differences between them i swear to god i've done that now with like i'm on my third kid doing it and i remember it's all i kind of remember from gcse camp i won't do too honest with you plant cell animal cell there's the vacuole job done anyway what else is going on well today i did another podcast um episode for you I am still scooping up ideas

of new people I've done another couple of bookings it's shaping up well I think I'm probably I've probably got about half my guests for the next series sorted that's quite a nice feeling and there's a few trees I'm still shaking but all good stuff, all lovely people all people I think you'll be interested to hear their stories and I've done my first meeting about what I'm wearing for my Christmas tour

oh, that's my front door because it's Christmassy and it's weird because normally the idea of thinking about Christmas in September, October would be horrifying but I don't feel horrified by it at all I'm actually completely there because suddenly I can sort of see that December would be horrifying but I don't feel horrified by it at all I'm actually completely there because suddenly I can sort of see that December will be here before I know it so I've been planning my outfits and how I'm going to do one change into another change and what songs I'm going to sing I'm quite excited about all that too I'm sort of already feeling a

little bit festive um maybe it's the fact things are happening that always make you think of this time of year like i don't know strictly coming back on telly and you're like well that's another fast train to christmas isn't it um what else have i got to tell you about i'm trying to think you know i haven't really done very much this week i've been staying at home quite a lot uh i've had festivals and all that meant that was away so much i was away quite a lot of last weekend so i'm just trying to really hunker down a little bit just be home a bit more keep on top of things here continue with the decluttering i think i spoke to you about that last week the piles of stuff are ready to go by the door yeah all kind of all pretty change of season stuff and this week's episode is oh so sometimes

when claire my producer and i record an episode we feel like we get a bit of a sort of crush on our guest and that is what happened with my guest for this week um so i spoke to Professor Alice Roberts she's a TV presenter and she's a biological anthropologist so she basically studies old bones sometimes very ancient bones and then tries to work out as much as she can about that person from their skeleton so already fascinating stuff right and I first met her when we were both involved in a brilliant evening again I've probably spoken to you about before which is uh Brian Cox and Robin Ince they do the Infinite Monkey Cage a big Christmas show so it's basically it's called Compendium of Reason and it's all people from the world of science and comedy and then some musicians too who hop up

and do a turn as part of this big evening, all held together by Brian and Robin. And they're introducing people and talking about space and the world and fascinating stuff. So a lot of scientists. So that's how I met Hannah Fry as well, who I had on recently. It's how I also met Helen Glover, the rower, and now it led me to Alice Roberts. So Alice spoke and I met her briefly and I thought she seemed really cool and really interesting. So I invited her to do the podcast and what a woman.

We had such a good chat. It was the perfect conversation, really, because whenever I'm inviting people onto this podcast, I always say my guests are all working women who happen to be mothers and we talk about how motherhood has influenced work and vice versa but that's kind of the icebreaker we can talk about all other things and that's basically what happened with Alice and I so we did speak about how it felt to be raising her two children and her experience of all of that stuff and how it's that's intertwined with her work and how she's you know the bits has made her feel differently about but we also from there spoke a lot about humanism

because for a long time alice was the president of the humanist society she's now vice president and this is something i'm really interested in so it was a really really lovely proper conversation where you feel your brain cells are going in happiness so sorry that was my cat's call at the same time i just woke up from sleeping when i made that noise sorry titus i was trying to mimic the sound of my brain cells doing something see he's not used to that noise either and um yeah i just really enjoyed it so alice thank you to you and thank you to you dear listener for giving me your time again. I think you're going to enjoy this. I will see you on the next one.

Well, where should we start? Why don't we start with what you're up to at the moment? You just mentioned that this is quite a manic time for you. So what are you up to at the moment? I am getting ready to film the next series of Digging for Britain, which always takes up quite a lot of my summer because we travel around the country looking at different archaeological digs all over the place.

So I'll be heading off to do that, I think, probably end of May, early June. But I'm squeezing in another series, which is for Channel 4, and it's, I think I can talk about it. Yeah. It's called Ottoman Empire by train. So it's a mixture of kind of travel and history. Wow. So I've just got back from Turkey, Bulgaria and Serbia.

Yes, I could see you were in places like that. Amazing. Yeah, and next week I'm off to Romania. Wow. Because I was thinking about what you do. So broadly speaking speaking biological anthropology but i was thinking that covers so much because actually in terms of your sciences you've got um you've got anatomy you've got forensics you've got history you've got humanity you've got culture

it kind of covers tons of things doesn't it like you have to reach into so many pockets to work out humans and how the species has evolved and what we've been up to all this time yeah I think I think um as it's gone on I've become much more interested in I suppose all the all the kind of cultural aspects my background is medicine and anatomy. So I still teach anatomy to medical students at Birmingham University. But I think that the biological anthropology means that you end up very often focusing on bones. So I suppose if you boil it right down to the nitty gritty of it or what it is on a daily basis. I look at old skeletons. it is on a daily basis. I look at old skeletons. So I look at those old bones and I try and reconstruct a biography from the bones, which is something that, you know, when I started

getting into that area of science, having been a medic, having been a doctor, I found it quite amazing how much you could tell just from a skeleton. So yeah, so I'm very focused on that kind of, the kind of intimate details of those bones and that individual from from that kind of biological perspective but then as soon as you start to build that up it is a little bit like you've got a patient and you're trying to find out about that patient and you're trying to understand them and understand their life so you start to add on all of these aspects which are more than just the biology they're the they're the kind of human experience and then and then the culture as well well that's extraordinary do you

feel like you get a sort of link with the person as you're building the picture yeah definitely yeah you yeah because you you're interacting with an individual so yeah yeah it's very it feels very personal yeah I suppose there's a sort of poetry to it as well because, as you say, you're delving, you're getting a sense of what was going on historically but looking at one life lived. And I suppose when we think of the past, things tend to get very clumped together and you forget about what an individual's experience

of that time would be like, how their day would be, what they felt about things. It's not like you can say across the board that one time in like, you know, a chapter of the world they all felt the same way about things, but we sort of tend to do that a little bit. Yeah, we do. We say things like, the Romans believed this. Exactly. No, of course, there isn't one thing that the Romans believed. No.

There isn't one thing that Iron Age people believed. It would have been, you know, hugely diverse and their experience of life would have been hugely diverse. Exactly. So how did you make the leap between being a medic to what you do now? Well, kind of by mistake. So I should be a surgeon, really. And I left medical school, did my house jobs in South Wales. So I was a junior doctor in Cardiff and in Bridgend. And then I was looking for the next step. And I knew I wanted to do surgery at that point. I loved surgery. I liked the craft of it. I really loved anatomy. I still love anatomy. And it was kind of putting that anatomy into practice. So I was looking for next jobs and looking

around at what that might be and I spotted this really intriguing job in Bristol which was just a six-month training post six months job where I'd be doing a bit of surgical work as a as an SHO as a senior house officer and also teaching anatomy at Bristol University. And there was somebody in the department called Dr Jonathan Musgrave, who was their forensic anthropologist. And I've always been quite intrigued in old bones and forensic anthropology. I had an amazing retired surgeon called Richard Newell, who would teach anatomy at Cardiff when I was at Cardiff Medical School.

And he would tell us about arthritis and then he'd bring in examples of arthritis in archaeological bones. So I'd always had that in the back of my mind, that I was interested in that. So I thought, oh, this six-month job sounds really good because I'm carrying on with my surgical training. I'm teaching anatomy, which I love, and also you need to polish up your anatomy

if you're going to be a surgeon. You have to do surgical exams and that obviously involves quite a bit of anatomy it's sort of the basics isn't it knowing how the body's put together um and then the opportunity to do a bit of research as well really intrigued me so so that was just going to be a six month job yeah loved it and while I was there my my boss who ran anatomy on the medical course left and the department just wanted somebody to to kind of look after anatomy uh for a bit and it was it was a kind of fill-in job and I thought well okay I'll do this for another six months then and then they said do you want to stay on for another six months? And I was quite enjoying it. All the time I thought I'd go back to surgery.

And then eventually there was the offer of doing a part-time PhD. And I thought, actually, you know, I am really enjoying this. I love anatomy, love the teaching, really interested in the research that I'm getting into. So I made this kind of, yeah, very kind of gentle transition. So it wasn't like I wake up one morning and thought I don't want to be a surgeon no I got kind of drawn into this other world which I just hadn't expected at all but that's so lovely and I guess that means if you've got that passion that curiosity then it gives you all that thirst to keep learning more and more that's kind of you just be able to follow your nose with it really like yeah where does this

path lead me and I suppose the big difference between the medical side of the studying anatomy and the surgical side and then where you ended up is you're looking at these bones to tell stories from people who've died and the past and I think this makes me excited too I've got a bit of a curiosity, I think, and I suppose the link between the living and the dead, really, and this experience we have and everything that we perceive is the world as we know it, but the fact that everything's evolving. And so the things we have access to, the way our world works, is not the same as it would have been 100 years ago, 500 years,

you know, 1,000 years ago. But that is your experience. And we tend to forget that people who lived 1,000 years ago 500 you know a thousand years ago yeah but that is your experience and we tend to forget that people who lived a thousand years ago were full of just as much vitality they got excited about things they had up days down days things happening adventures whatever yeah you sort of get it this sort of like it's like a faded idea of i don't know i suppose a mute all emotions being muted because it's muted in our present. But that wouldn't have been the case for them then at all.

No, it's interesting, isn't it? Because I think that by the time, I mean, obviously, when you've got the written word, we've got that amazing, I mean, I just think that technology is incredible. And that must have been so, you know, completely kind of life-changing and culture-changing when it first came along. I mean, literally just people being able to write things or...

Yeah, people being able to write things. So if you think about kind of culture before that, you've got the only information that you're getting as a human is from other living humans. Yeah. Or from the world around you. But the information about humans is coming from other living humans. Once you get the written word,

you can obviously read the thoughts of somebody who you've never met. Yes. And that person may not even be alive anymore. And that is, when you think about it, that is actually quite mind-blowing. It's also mind-blowing to think that wasn't the case for so long. Yeah, yeah. You forget about that, don't you? Yeah,'t you yeah you do communicate outside your tribe and outside your own experience yeah so it's only 4 000 years that we've been able to to do that to kind of have

that kind of information that gets passed on yeah um that can be centuries old or thousands of years old yeah um and i think and i suppose if you look at what's happened with the written word, then, you know, some of it is that I think a lot of history tends to be about prominent people and, you know, big political changes always written about from the point of view of the victors. And you've got a lot of people's stories that never get written down. Yeah.

I think a big change came with probably novel writing. And, you know, that, the idea of a novel that you can get inside somebody else's head and experience a different world from the perspective of another individual. Yeah. It's fascinating, isn't it? It really is. It kind of enlarges our own human experience I think yeah I mean when I was um you know and I knew I was going to speak to you

I was looking at all your areas of your work and I felt like this I think of like oh this is actually quite overwhelming it's like once you start peering in it just it's sort of endless it's like looking at space or like the sea or something it whoa. Okay, I'm just going to try and cram for a brief history of everything that humans have been up to. But talking about getting your information from other humans, before we started recording, we were talking about the fact you have two kids and how you find that really fascinating,

just watching them grow up. So now are they, is it 10 and 12? Is that right? 10 and 13. 13, okay, cool. I've got a teenager. I know, it's quite a milestone, that, isn that right? 10 and 13. 13, okay, cool. I've got a teenager. I know, it's quite a milestone, that, isn't it? Yeah, definitely.

I think it's because everybody's got such a strong association with their own teenage years. Yeah. You're like, ooh, here we go. You know, you start 13, it's like such a gentle little start, but you know, ooh, here we go. And you kind of go, that's when you first start to find out who you really

are as a person as well I think absolutely and everything's firing and you know all the neurological remapping and everything that's going on is quite it's a good area of research if we go back to what was happening in your life when you had your first baby oh my goodness that was a crazy year it was a crazy crazy year I had I'd left Bristol University so I'd resigned from my academic job and I'd been there for 11 years and I'd started to I suppose do other things so I'd started by that point I was already doing quite a bit of television I'd had my first big landmark series on the BBC. We filmed that in 2008. That was an incredible human journey where we went around the world

mapping Paleolithic migrations, so the kind of colonisation of the world in the Ice Age. Wow. Just hold on that for a second. How did you find going into TV? Because, you know, you didn't have to branch into telly if you'd wanted just to stay yeah research i guess i know that was so that was another mistake really so so having having become a lecturer um at bristol university and you know teaching anatomy doing my research on old bones it was the research and old bones that ended up opening the world of television to me because i was doing some work I was doing my own research but also doing writing reports on bones for the police occasionally getting involved with forensic cases and then also for archaeologists so people would dig up bones in Bristol and

they'd send them up to our labs at the university and there were a team of us there there was a team of us there writing up the reports on these bones so you really were doing like modern day and back and it's all across the ages when you're looking at the yeah yeah that must have been interesting and then time team were half based in bristol and they they needed um somebody to do reports for them so that you know they had to produce reports on all of their excavations so they got in touch with the team at brisky university and said will you you know will you do reports for us so that's how i started so i was literally getting the bones that they'd dug up on whatever site and uh writing those reports and then and then they said uh well can you come along on one of these uh one of these

shoots and i said well i have to reorganize my teaching a bit say are you sure that there's going to be bones? And they said... I'm not coming if there's no bones. No, exactly. There's no point in me coming. And they said, well, it's a cemetery excavation. So I was like, all right. It's very likely.

Okay. So I went along. And that's kind of, I suppose, a standard way in which academics engage with the media and the media engages academics, that you have expert contributors so that was kind of my role and um it just it just kind of grew and it grew quite organically so I ended up doing a little bit of presenting interviewing interviewing people and then the BBC

um invited me to present Coast and I yeah I think they thought I was an archaeologist so I had to say when they said we'd quite like you to present this programme I was like

I'm not really a presenter I've never done a piece to camera before and also I think I think you think I'm an archaeologist and I'm not and they said

what are you? and I said I'm a biological anthropologist and they were like oh alright that's reassuring that they had to start from the same place I was a few days ago that's right so yeah so and then and then I ended up doing more and more television and really enjoying that um so I got to the point uh with my uh with my job at Bristol where I don't know whether it was it I don't know if it's necessarily difficult to balance all of those things but certainly um I had the

view that the university wasn't particularly supportive of people doing public engagement and I must say I did feel as though my head was pressed up against a bit of a glass ceiling. So I'd been there 11 years and I did see quite a lot of men being promoted around me and wondered why it wasn't the same for me. And so there were lots of things and I just got to the point where I thought I'm not enjoying this job as much as I was. So I resigned in 2009 and literally two weeks after I handed in my letter of resignation I discovered I was pregnant oh so that was yeah that was a big thing yeah it's like oh I'm leaving I'm leaving a really secure job here yeah and stepping out and it felt like stepping off a precipice into the unknown you know I'd worked for the NHS full-time I'd worked for the University of Bristol full-time and I was suddenly stepping off into what I hoped might be um the world of freelancing

and you just don't know when you step off if there's going to be anything to step onto yeah so it was a bit tricky and when I um when I left the university I had a book to write. So I was writing a big anatomy book at the time. And then the prospect of a television series came up. And it was a series looking at British archaeology, travelling around. And it sounded really exciting. It was a new idea, new television series. But, you know, I had to say to the producers, like, I'd love to do it, but I'm going to have a baby next February.

And amazingly, John Farron, who is the executive producer, said, okay, well, how about if we start filming in April and you bring your baby with you? Wow, that's actually pretty... That's what I did. That's a pretty amazing response though, because if they hadn't said that,

do you think you would have fought your corner to try and make it happen or do you think you would have just gone, okay, I can see why that's not going to work? How significant is it that they tried to work around you? Yeah, really significant because I didn't know. I had my lovely friend Miranda Kristofnikov who was one of the presenters on coast and and does a lot of wildlife presenting I knew that so her kids are a little bit older

than mine and I knew that she had taken her babies filming with her so before I talked to the producers about it I had I went around had a proper chat with with Miz about how it was and you know how difficult it was uh whether whether she would recommend it whether she thought um you know i'd be able to do it and she said yeah just you know it's fine they're very portable that's an adjective i use a lot when they're small yeah as long as you've got somebody with you so my husband um was also uh just kind of embarked on a on a freelance career at that point as well he said look I'm right I'm going to support you this year I'm going to come with you filming so that's how that's how we did it but yeah I mean having I think the the producers

of Digging and John John Farron in particular uh he was absolutely wonderful because he said look we'll we'll try this and if it doesn't work it's fine you we'll try this. And if it doesn't work, it's fine. You can walk away from it. And if it doesn't work to just have you as the single presenter, we could maybe bring in another presenter. Let's just see what happens. That's pretty amazing. I mean, that was amazing because it meant that it wasn't,

I was going into it without that kind of stress of going, oh, my goodness, what if this doesn't work? Oh, absolutely. Because it could have just as easily been someone saying um we can make it april and hopefully that'll just be fine and it's kind of on you to yeah make it fine yeah and then you'd feel all that pressure of okay i think i can probably do this but what if i can't and you get that slightly jangly adrenaline of just like have i bitten off more than i can chew with this so to have him say let's just feel our way with it.

This is a new thing for you, a new thing for us. And then you've got that slight blissful ignorance, I think, as well when it's your first baby because people, your friend saying, it's fine. You go, okay, yeah, nodding with them. Yeah, fine. But you don't really, it's so hard to imagine. It's so abstract, the idea of having.

It's nuts, isn't it? When they're actually here and how you're going to feel and you're going to feel the same person you were before you had them so I know when I was having my first I was really worried that my whole all of my priorities would flip to the extent where I didn't even know am I still going to be ambitious am I still going to want to do things yeah with my work like that I don't know how I'll feel also your brain isn't necessarily super sharp when you've got all the hormones and sleep deprivation. There's an element of wading through treacle in your mind.

Yeah, trying to. I mean, the cruelty of not sleeping properly is tough on your brain. It's just that feeling of, I do know more than four words. I just can't think of any of them right now. It's just everything is gone. I felt as though I had amazing training for babies, having been a junior doctor in the 90s. Well, touching on that for a minute,

is it true you did some of your award rounds in rollerblades? Yes, it is. That's bloody cool. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. You must have been a memorable junior doctor. Can I see the one in the rollerblades, please? Yeah, yeah.

Towards the end of university that in the rollerblades, please? Yeah, yeah, towards the end of university that got into rollerblading. We used to go rollerblading around Catayes Park in the middle of Cardiff. Brilliant fun. They're just fantastic. I've rediscovered them recently. Have you? My kids are into rollerblading. Oh, good for you. I got myself some really nice ones because my, in fact, I could only find one of my ones from university. I went up in the loft and I've managed to find one of them. It was soed I'll get myself some more but yeah so I was doing paediatrics and paediatric surgery actually when I was when I was a house officer and when you were on call overnight you'd be sleeping in the accommodation on site at the hospital but it was still some distance away from the main hospital

and there were these tunnels underground that you went through to get from the accommodation to the hospital. And I was like, well, this is perfect. I can get quickly through those tunnels if I take my rollerblades. So I did that. And then I thought, actually, I probably could do, I mean, I don't think you'd do it now, would you? But I probably could do my war drowns on rollerblades.

But yeah, it was was pediatrics and the kids obviously loved it i bet they did oh that's very cute anyway sorry i went off on a on a bit of a tangent there but i did i did think that was a really amazing thing about you on each step with peloton from their pop runs to walk and talks you define what it means to be a runner. Whatever your level, embrace it. Journey starts when you say so. If you've got five minutes or 50, Peloton Tread has workouts you can work in or bring your classes with you for outdoor runs, walks, and hikes led by expert instructors on the Peloton app. Call yourself a runner. Peloton all-access membership separate. Learn more at onepeloton.ca

slash running so you're so let's cut back so you've had your baby and then you find yourself with an eight week old going after yeah yeah what are your memories of that time now oh really lovely memories um it was it was actually um yeah it was really lovely it was really joyful I was working with a with a really fantastic team you know lovely lovely crew um we'd we'd stay in places um and we'd all kind of have dinner together and quite often some guitars would come out in the evening and people would be playing music it's just lovely um and yeah it was it was actually really it was a really precious time being together as a little family as well yeah so my husband would take um would take my daughter when I was actually you know on camera and filming and then we'd have to try and hook up at lunchtime

so that I could feed her because I was like I'm she's going to be breastfed that's going to happen um what I'd also done having talked to Miranda uh was made sure that she would have bottles as well so I was expressing milk so that um if we didn't quite get the timing right we could we could manage all of that so she was only getting breast milk but she was doing bottle feeding as well as breastfeeding and that was funny because these conversations with the I think that the health visitor who I think was quite um disapproving of me introducing a bottle early on given that my daughter was I mean she was brilliant at breastfeeding I know I didn't have any issues at all with breastfeeding it was absolute joy she just knew what to do and got on with it. I was like, well, thank goodness she knows what to do. And I remember the health visitor being like,

ooh, you know, she could get nipple confusion. And I was like, what? I'm sorry, what is this thing? I know, it's brilliant, isn't it? All the terms. Nipple confusion. This idea that if you introduce them to a bottle, they're then going to go, what's that thing?

I'm not going to go back to drinking it over breast. But it turned out that she was quite happy with, you know, whatever it was, as long as it had milk coming out of it. Even if she was confused, she was just open to either method. Oh, dear. I know, I love all those terms they come up with. And they're sort of there to make you feel terrible. The idea of a confused, weak old lady.

I've confused you already. You're so new and you're already confused. Yeah, what am I doing to you? Oh, my goodness. It was so, I mean, it's funny though. It was, and there's, you know, it's like television is so unglamorous at times. I remember being in a taxi with one of the crew going across London and I just had got to the point where I had to express some milk.

And you get to the point where now it hurts. And I actually just came to have to express some milk. So I was basically under a shawl in the back of a taxi going across London with my electric breast pumps going. So that was the kind of glamour of filming with a baby. I had a rucksack um because I had um my second baby around the same time as your first baby so 2009 and by that time for the first baby I'd had to use this sort of hospital grade single breast pump thing because both my babies were born early those two so the breast pump is the only way you

can do any milk if you if that's what you want to do because they can't suck when they're really little but by the time I got to kit in 2009 they'd come up with all sorts of amazing breast but the breast pump is the only way you can do any milk if that's what you want to do because they can't suck when they're really little. But by the time I got to kit in 2009, they'd come out with all sorts of amazing breast pumps, including this one that fit in a rucksack with a double pump attachment. Oh my goodness, you can walk around with it. Yeah, I think they called it pump and go.

I mean, it was pretty snazzy, let me tell you. Hilarious. So yeah, I got very used to that. I've definitely, back of a taxi, 100%. I've been under the sheet. It's just the noise sometimes. Did you carry on working all the way through then when you had little kids? I sort of did different things with different ones, really.

I think my first, I'd been releasing a second album when I found out I was pregnant with my first baby, which was sort of comedically weird timing. So I did two singles and then basically just stopped the album I didn't do any more promotion with it and as it turned out that was quite good timing because he ended up being born early I wasn't very well so I kind of focused on that for a little bit and then I gradually worked my way back into songwriting but it was gentle and I didn't have anything in the diary so I I sort of took my longest with him. But by the time I got to some of the later babies,

the sequels, I was a lot faster at getting back into work because I felt like I had a bit more of my own mind about how I wanted it to take shape and what it felt like. And certainly by the time I got to baby four and five, I was working, but it was all, it felt very supportive. It felt very wholesome. I liked being in a music environment with a

tiny baby. It felt actually very harmonious and I enjoyed it a lot. And it also meant that I had proper time with that new baby where I still had my little ones, but I could kind of go to work, but actually have time with my baby, just the two of us. Otherwise, I don't think I would have had as much time. The only one I sort of think I got a bit wrong with, really my second, in that I was in hospital, having again had him two months early, and my manager came to see me and he said,

so we're going to film a video for this new single in 10 weeks. And I was like, okay. And really, I think filming a music video 10 weeks after my second c-section was just a bit yeah heels mini skirt makeup I just wasn't in that mood actually not at all so that was the only one where I think I probably should have said no to that but I think I think you just have to I think you'd have to go with the support of the people who tell you the nice advice that makes you feel that you're doing the right thing. Because those voices and that support is like, became like everything to me.

And stay away from Mumsnet forums and places like that. Because I remember going to work one time. I had one gig with my, when I was my third, he was six weeks. And it meant a night away from him which made me feel oh it was like that thing of like velcro oh it's awful isn't it you can literally feel

this kind of this kind of weird umbilical cord still there exactly no I felt terrible and so I was googling you know

is it okay to leave my baby for one night and it was all these people on forums going well I mean you can personally I wouldn't it wouldn't be for me but I mean, you can. Personally, I wouldn't.

It wouldn't be for me. But, I mean, you could if you want. You might scald them for life. If you don't mind that your baby won't have you for a night when it's so, and it was just, you know, not the place, not the place to head. No. But I think with you and what you're doing, when you say it was a really lovely time and really joyful

and lovely to look back on, I think it's really special actually that you get that experience and also with what you were up to it kind of meant forever after that point you had this sort of blueprint of I know I've done this this version of my working with my baby and my husband yeah yeah so therefore I know I'm capable so then the decisions I make I don't need to test myself in any environment I know I know what works for me I've done it in a safe way and then from there on you can kind of just keep going and I suppose early on it meant that you still had your the passion you have for your work was all still still there so still entwined with that new bit new chapter especially after

finding out that you were having a baby at just two weeks after handing in your resignation because at that point you probably thought okay deep deep breath you know what happened and did you do it a similar way when you had your second no because I had because then my daughter was three and a half and um it would have been I think too difficult to do a similar thing with a tiny baby and a three and a half year old. Yeah, it's definitely different. You're being dragged in two different directions, aren't you? Yeah, they're not so portable, the three and a half year old. They're not so portable, no.

And they, you know, you end up running after them. Yeah. So I decided to, by that time, I was working at Birmingham University. So having thought, actually, when I left Bristol, I was working at Birmingham University. So having thought, actually, when I left Bristol, I was very disillusioned with lots of things, but I thought I'd probably left academia for good as a, you know, in a kind of formal role. I had honorary positions at a couple of universities,

including at the archaeology department in Bristol, where I had just amazing friends and incredibly supportive people, including my very good friend and PhD supervisor, Kate, who is still just such an amazing woman and really, really helped me at that difficult time. And I think that I thought I'd left academia and then the University of Birmingham was interested in my work in public engagement, which is broader than the television stuff, which is obviously the most visible bit.

But I'd also done quite a lot in schools engagement and that kind of thing. And so they were talking to me about a job and I was quite reluctant to begin with but I joined the university in 2012 and it's I'm still at Birmingham University and that and that's been amazing I mean I've absolutely loved that job um so I was I was in a university role as well as doing writing and broadcasting. And then I'm pregnant with my second baby and I decided to take time out. So I took nine months off. Well, I kind of took time out.

I took nine months off from the university and I took nine months off from television, which is quite a difficult thing to do, actually, because there were quite a few projects that year where people were saying, oh, you could do this, and there were some really interesting projects. I was like, I'm not doing it. I've made this decision, and I'm going to stick with it. And how easy was it just to say no to things then?

Did you feel, was it a bit of a wobble, or were you like, no, I know what I need now? I think it was quite difficult, but I did stick to my guns. And my husband and I always talk about balance and work and life and family. And, you know, we were kind of discussing these opportunities. And I thought, you know, it's that thing with television where you realise if you turn down something, it probably is not going to come back. And you kind of worry about where your career is going to go in the future.

So I think as a freelancer, you've always got that thing of going, oh, is that, have I stepped off something here? And is it going to be really difficult to get back on again? But I've made that decision. And I was writing a book as well, so that's what I did keep doing. I kept on writing. And I found that really important, actually, when I had little babies,

that I was still doing something with my mind. Because I talked to some people who said, I don't know, I'm not even sure if they meant it, but they say, oh, you know, for a while, all you want to think about is nappies and bottles and things like this. And I was thinking, this sounds like hell to me. No, that's not what I want to think about is nappies and um bottles and things like this and I was thinking this sounds like hell to me no that's not what I want to do I'm you know I'm still me I'm still you know I'm not just uh no I mean I think you know that that new baby bit when you if you have

that time without I mean I don't maybe they didn't mean literally nappies I've got very literal mind but yeah I suppose if you are just the nicest thing about having a baby, is it? I wouldn't say so. No. But I do think, you know, sometimes those bits where they've got a little baby, it is really extraordinary, you know, and it feels quite special.

But, I mean, look, it's each to their own, isn't it? But I think if you've got quite a busy brain, it can be quite nice to feel like you've got another place to go and other things to talk about sometimes yeah it doesn't even have to be work things I think even now that you can do things like um go to the cinema you know they do all those mornings where you can go to the pictures and you can bring your baby yeah you can actually just watch a film that other so when you see your friends you've got other things something else to talk about yes it's just well I always quite

like that feeling. It's interesting, isn't it? Because it's obviously the biggest thing that's happening in your life at that point in time when you've got a child and a new baby. It is amazing. It's extraordinary. It's lovely. But I didn't want to lose the rest of myself. So, yeah, writing a book was quite important to be doing.

Although, having said that, so my daughter, who was the baby that came on the first series of Digging for Britain and the second series of Digging for Britain, was just very, very amenable to going around the country, sleeping anywhere, just an extraordinarily calm little baby. And she slept a lot. She slept a lot. And my husband and I were congratulating ourselves on being, you know, very relaxed parents. And obviously, this was why she was the way she was. And then the next one came along, and he was completely different. And he did not sleep.

He did not sleep in the night. He'd wake up every hour and a half through the night. And he did not sleep during the day at all. So that was, I was trying to write this book. Yeah. Whilst, you know, kind of almost, you know, propping my eyes open. Wow. I mean, I have to say, that is still extraordinary.

You say you're not really working, but you did write a book. I mean mean that is a massive achievement in itself definitely it was a difficult book as well it was a lot of long words it was it was a book i'd wanted to write for ages um and it was and it was kind of very apt because it was about embryology so it was about development um in utero and kind of starting off from the single cell which i just think is,

I do still think it's the best story in the world, how you get from being a single tiny cell to being a whole person. It's completely crazy. It's mind-blowing, actually. It is absolutely mind-blowing that each of us did this thing. We were just a cell, just one cell. It's mad.

That is. And I teach, I've taught embryology um at medical school um since I you know since I started in academia I've always loved embryology and it kind of explains the anatomy it's kind of where the anatomy comes from as well so I really want to write a book about this because the stories are brilliant you only really get to to understand that stuff and to hear those stories if you study medicine or biology at university. So I wanted to write something that was more accessible. And also embryology is kind of where evolution happens.

So it's where the body gets built. And so if you're going to end up with species evolving and changes happening over time, it's happening through that building process. So evolution and embryology are intertwined. So that was the book I wanted to write. I remember talking to my lovely literary agent, Luigi, about it. And he was a bit sceptical at first, but I was very passionate about the subject. skeptical at first but I was very passionate about the subject um but I think I did go away from some conversations with him thinking well I'm hoping to write a popular science book but

this could be the most unpopular science book that anybody's ever written um but it was yeah it was it was tricky I think because I'd set myself that kind of challenge of writing about the two things together both embryology and evolution um but I think in the way that some of those most challenging things that you set yourself can be a nightmare at times and you're just going, oh, I'm thinking, why have I done this to myself? Why have I set myself this challenge? But then what you end up with at the end is just really satisfying. And then you can't even put yourself back in the mindset

of how you got there in the first place. Like, how did I do it? Or where did the where did the time come from yeah you know you did it but I'm wondering what's the link between your day job if you're looking at anatomy and anthropology and behavior and then your how what's your relationship with it when you're just with your family and seeing a small human turning into a big human I mean does it have a lot of crossover or do you not really think of I mean like when you look at people do you see like their bones you look at it is it does it cross over yeah I think so um and certainly certainly with children I mean being you know being someone that's really interested in development,

looking at children as they grow, and it's interesting, obviously, how their bodies change and how they change shape and change size, and that's all extraordinary. Yeah. Going back to when they were babies, I always used to, you know, you've got this baby that you've made in quite a meaningful way in that that baby started off as a single cell and then essentially you're,

say my husband contributed a tiny bit of DNA to that first single cell and then everything else that creates the baby that you give birth to has come from you so you've you've actually created it's done it itself but it's done it using materials that you're giving it yeah so all of the material that goes into making that baby has come from your own body i found that really intriguing yeah that is actually amazing and then you go and then and then it carries on of course when you're feeding the baby yeah because again all the all the growth of that baby is being is being fueled by what you're

giving that baby from your own body and yeah i mean you don't really think of it that way because you think of it as a process and then that thing is just doing what it does yeah yeah but you're providing all the materials. All those materials have come from you getting stuff out of your environment, eating your environment and giving it back to your baby in a form that they can use. And I quite like that. I quite like going, I'm going to do this magic trick of eating this cake and making it into milk.

Well, I'm going to sit my children down going, you owe everything to me yes yeah I mean obviously up until the point they start to eat stuff um if you're breastfeeding them then everything that's in their body has come from you which is which is quite nuts yeah so I've had those kind of thoughts yeah and and I think also in terms of embryology and um uh evolution when I had my daughter I don't know if um it was you know I think I think childbirth is such an incredible um uh time you know this this I think when I had my first baby I couldn't I had this complete mental wall in my head of me as a woman with a baby inside me. And then on the other side of that wall, as me with a baby that's external.

And I couldn't really, even though I'm an anatomist, and I've been, you know, a medic as well. I know, I know the physical reality of it. But just trying to get your head around the fact that there's going to be this new person and that somehow the bump, which is, you know, not just a bump, you can feel that person inside you, but the idea that that person's suddenly going to be on the outside of you is such a... I mean, until you've done it,

I think with a second baby you go, yeah, I understand how this happens now. But do you know what I mean it's kind of understanding it not on a not on the physical not on a not in a physical way but in a kind of um uh intuitive way yeah no I think I think really weird until they're there it's it's almost impossible to yeah really sort of make that an actual yeah because also there's so many bits of it I don't know this might just be my experience but when when they're born it's almost like that's when you meet them so you've had the relationship of the a bit when it's the two of you in the symbiosis but then there's this sort of extra bit that when you see them you go oh of course it's

you yeah it's the bit you didn't know about them but you sort of felt on another level you can't draw that out until they're there no no no no even having I mean even that amazing thing of being able to see your babies in the room which is I mean that's another extraordinary bit of technology isn't it when we think about human experiences the fact that it's only in the last sort of 50, 60 years that we've had that, that anybody's actually been able to see their baby before they're born. Yes. And that now we've got ultrasounds and not just, you know, you can see them in three dimensions and you can see them moving in three dimensions.

And that's incredible. But it's still something completely different when you see them face to face for the first time. Yeah. I mean, I don't know those 3D ones where they can see more of the features might have come on there, but I never did those because i saw the pictures that they sort of used to advertise me always look like a baby made of clay or something and i thought it is odd i don't know i think i'll just wait i had i had um yeah i had 4d scans for both my babies and uh and they were

pretty good really yeah i mean when you look at them and you can compare the baby with the scan okay oh yeah okay that's, that is pretty good. But they do look weird. Yeah, they look kind of slightly metallic. Yeah, well, I think this was, I only remember it really with my first, I mean, that's like nearly 20 years ago and everything moves on at such a pace. Yeah. But I'm hoping that this is, there's something I saw about the way you were raising your daughter

and it really resonated with me because you were talking about the fact that you didn't want her to feel that she had to conform to sort of stereotypical girl things and I felt this very strongly with my first as well and I've continued to because I've happened to have had boys but I was really shocked at the sort of the things that were expected of him just because he happened to be a boy that I didn't even know if he was into yet and I want to talk to you about that because I I don't really feel like I see that many people talking about it the way I feel about it as well actually I don't know if that's because a lot of people are just quite happy with the way things go in a predictable way or maybe people don't feel the need to get annoyed but I get annoyed about it still like if I go into

there's a clothes shop not far from here and they've got like a boy's side and a girl's side with their clothes and the boys will say certain slogans and the girls. I remember saying it to one of the poor girls, members of staff in there the other day, like, do you not think they're kind of expecting different things? And she was a bit like, you know, she did it blank. I don't think she knew what to do with me really. But I just wondered where that came from, that feeling. Was it just because you met your daughter and thought, let's see who you are? Or was it because of external, you know,

and you're shopping for them or you take them to nursery and the expectation? I think it came from a number of different routes. I mean, I think it suddenly becomes very personal when you have a child and you're thinking about how you want them to experience the world. And I felt quite strongly that I didn't want to be narrowing horizons, that I wanted her and my son to be able to engage with the world

and not to have those kind of cultural expectations yeah um but even before I had children I was I was interested in for instance the the lack of uh of girls and and women in the more physical sciences um and you know still in engineering so few professional engineers uh are women it's just extraordinary um and you know sometimes you hear opinions and still today you know still quite recently you hear people saying oh well uh that's because boys are better at such and such or that's because's because girls are more attuned to such and such. And you think, I don't actually believe that. I think it is largely cultural.

Because if you went back to the 1940s, 1950s and looked at medicine, you'd say, oh, well, the reason that most doctors are men is because men are better suited to being doctors. And clearly, something's happened in medicine which means that girls can aspire to to be doctors and you know when you when you open it up in that way and it's about it's about a culture change isn't it you find that actually lots of girls do want to become doctors so we've seen that big change happening in medicine um we've seen it happening in biology as well it's happening in chemistry but i still think there's big issues

with with physics and engineering um and it i think it is entirely cultural i don't think there's anything about male brains that means that men are better at physics or more attuned to physics um and and girls and women are not no i think you're absolutely right so so so there's that kind of perspective and i think that you know that all there have been lots of efforts obviously to to to try to uh open up those those areas of science and and we've seen a small increase um but it's still you know we've still got a long way to go I think to I think it is there's there's something ethical about it which is that you you don't you don't want to be limiting people's horizons you don't

want to be limiting people's opportunities no and it's such a strange when you have your your child and then you see as you say these sort of limitations put on them it's it's such a instinct isn't it to push back on that and go well no that can they not just have the option of whatever makes that works for them please like why are you sort of diminishing their choices it felt felt like a very very old school actually i was really surprised at that as you know that they would just be like well I presume you're going to want things from this side of the chart but I guess with probably with me having a son my instinct was probably more to do with um I don't know how he chooses to be in his character and his emotional language and all those kinds of things because I guess you don't tend to worry about um as you say

boys having the option of the jobs they want because there's such a broad selection of very you know high profile men and all of those areas so you're not so it's more probably the emotional support I wanted to offer yeah and let them be well then we think it you know it works the same so there were there were there were subjects where like psychology where um yeah that's true actually female dominated yeah you expected to be empathetic and men to be lesser whatever it might be yeah yeah that's very true actually and it's um i mean it's nice that there are some increases but really i think we can ramp things up a little bit and go a bit quicker and i suppose i mean do you think about the fact that the work you've been doing and being a communicator on such a broad platform has maybe helped more women and young girls see a life for themselves and in the sciences you care about it's it's absolutely

lovely to you know I get um emails and and letters from um from children and um and young people saying you know they've they've watched something that I've made or they've read something that I've written. And that's helped them kind of think about what they might want to be doing in the future. And I like doing live shows as well and sort of chatting to the audience afterwards. And it's lovely to have that kind of feedback from people.

And I think it's kind of an overused word, but I think it's really humbling. And I think that I'm lucky to be doing that. I'm lucky to be in that position where I can kind of be there as a woman doing the science that I love doing, talking about it, writing about it. And I hope that, I hope it helps a bit about it um and I hope that I hope it

helps a bit yeah yeah no I think it definitely does I guess it's something that when you're just doing what you do you sort of don't think about that as like the concentric circles and then when you realize it it's like oh that's a really lovely yeah thing I'm doing the thing I care about I've got you know all these great opportunities and also it's reaching people yeah it's a really nice thing it is it's and It is. And also I think it makes you very aware that it's really important to have all sorts of different role models. Yeah. And I think by and large the BBC does a really good job of that,

of making sure that there is a diversity in terms of just the people that you can see on television and particularly in documentaries when you're looking at people who are talking about history or science or whatever it is. Yeah. To see a diversity of people doing their subjects, I think, is incredibly important. Absolutely.

And as it should be. And I'm glad that if that's been a conscious decision, then I'm really... Yeah, it is a conscious decision and it's really important. It is, definitely. And it also brings it to life and makes everybody it sort of makes the conversations flow more easy because you realize that actually doesn't have to you don't have to look a certain type of person to be open about the passions you have you know it's absolutely fine yeah the other thing I want to speak to you about is I don't know recently you were on a radio four program

that was touching on your work as in the humanists and my mum was on the same program because she's um a member of humanists you can you're is it vice president still yes so you get to be um so I was president for four years and then after your president you get to be vice president for life oh cool yeah okay get a nice badge there's quite a few I don't know I've got a badge actually I should ask about that yeah some sort of rosette yeah but actually I think the humanist thing is really interesting and I'm I'm sure that is exactly the same as my beliefs as well because I like what I like about it is it's not about the absence thing so it's not about saying I'm an atheist I don't believe in God or I'm agnostic I don't

believe in any religion you're actually saying well I that of course you have to believe and feel like that in order to be a humanist but you're actually saying about I suppose humans being able to find their own purpose in life and so believing in essential a value of the fact that we do exist and we're here and this is our one life and let's see we can make it is that something that was very influenced by what you do and the connection you have with the stories of the that the bones tell you or is that something that was just always there i think um is it really interesting because i i didn't hear or it sounds like i didn't haven't heard of humanism i just kind of heard about it but I didn't realize that it described what I thought um until probably 25

years ago maybe so it was quite you know I was an adult and I I knew I didn't believe in God but I didn't feel that that kind of defined me you know it is odd isn't it to define yourself by something that you're not yeah and also that sounds so it's like I'm a negative and it doesn't mean you're not actually still there's so much beauty and wonder in the world it doesn't mean you know you want to have something that shows you're still taking all of that in and yeah and however that might feel for someone that has that kind of faith it's still it's still got a spirituality to it it's still part yeah definitely i mean i said so i've said that before and i said you know i've considered myself to be quite a spiritual person and then some religious people say you're not spiritual because you're not religious and it's like i don't think i don't think you get

to tell somebody whether they feel spiritual or not no no and if things move you like nature and yeah people music and poetry and art and all these things they contribute they they inform they are extra they are part of you know the you know all the tapestry that being alive is about and it's nice to be able to have a way to contextualize that yeah and that it's um yeah so it's kind of a i suppose, there's a scientific basis for me in that I was brought up in quite a religious household and I got to the point where I was a teenager and thinking, I was doing sciences at school and just thinking,

I can't really match this up in my mind, this doesn't work. And so I decided when I was a teenager that I didn't believe in God. And then I kind of just left that, I suppose, and didn't feel that there was a need to attach myself to any particular philosophy or to describe it in any particular way until I started to read a bit more about humanism. I think it was talking to Jim Al-Khalili, actually, because he's a good friend.

And we'd worked at Cheltenham Science Festival together over years. And I knew that he was involved with Humanist UK. And we talked about humanism. And I thought, actually, that probably does describe what I think, which is that you've got a rational approach to the world and you kind of prioritise that. But also you've got a strong sense of values and morals and ethics and that you have, I suppose, your own kind of moral senses

guided by, certainly by reason and logic. I mean, I think there's a fantastic logic about equality, that there's no logical reason for any one human to be worth any more than any other human. So therefore equality. It's very, very logical and rational. it's very very logical and rational um but then empathy and um yeah kindness i think as a as a principle in life is is really important to me yeah so it brings all of that together and and i think you know that's what that's what humanism is and you don't have to i think there's a lot of people that feel that way um but would still feel nervous about labeling themselves as anything because it's not you know it's not like organized religion where you have to kind of sign up to

something and say you know this is what I believe I think also having gone to um I didn't grow up in a religious house at all but I did go to church school my local state school was church school so between the ages of like four and eleven and I think there's still a part of me that said thinks if I voice these things that I might still be hit by lightning even though I don't actually believe that's possible do you know what I mean yeah it's sort of like it's just like a childlike emotion between you know my adult brain and the things I believe in and then the fact of a vocalizer but I'm always a bit like oh see I think that's quite damaging and I think that's one of the reasons that I've I um started supporting Humanist UK was because it's a you know it's a it's a nice bunch of people um with

similar kind of ideas to mine but actually there's I think there's work to be done in our society there's work to be done to stop the religious privilege that still exists, which is a kind of historical artefact. The fact that we've got religious clerics with automatic seats in government in the House of Lords is crazy. You've got 26 Anglican bishops who get automatic seats in the House of Lords. Things like that we just think doesn't fit our society, actually. There's probably so much about the way that things are set up.

This is throwback and handed down. Yeah, yeah. Probably nobody's looking at the books and going, hang on a minute. So can I just point this out? Do you think you're aware of it? Yeah. It sounds a bit old-fashioned nowadays. Only two countries in the world where you've got religious clerics

with automatic seats in government, Iran and the UK. When you put it like that, it's mad. Wow. It's mad. and then I think I feel the same way about faith schools so um so I've worked with Humanist UK on on that whole kind of issue because I mean for me when I was first looking for schools for my children it became very obvious that basically I had no choice and I was going to end up sending my children to a to a faith school because a third of our primary schools are faith schools. A third?

A third. I know, it's crazy. So Humanists UK have this kind of ongoing campaign about that. And it's not about being anti-religious and it's not about attacking anybody's individual faith or religion. It's about saying state schools shouldn't be pushing a particular religion onto children. And they definitely do. So having had children that have gone to faith schools,

even if I, as a humanist parent, went along and talked to them and said, look, please could you not tell them to pray? Please could you invite them to pray if they want to or to meditate on something rather than telling them about God as a fact and getting them to imagine God as a fact? It would still just happen. It just kind of permeated it.

And I think, you know, I went to a C of E school as well and these ideas get kind of lodged. It came to, I mean, yeah, there was a point with me where I found it all quite difficult because I'd recently lost my mother-in-law and we just had to have our dog put down as well. And my daughter, who was quite little at the time, was just, you know, completely,

she wasn't completely confused about it we talked about everything but you know she was being told that somebody had come back to life so she she knew this story about Jesus coming back to life that he'd been crucified she knew that she'd had nails through his hands as well which I think is quite traumatic thing to tell children um but then she was saying you know she was asking if other people could come back to life so you've kind of introduced these very weird and i think deeply unhelpful ideas to children well also if you believe in that then you can have that as how your house operates but if you don't then you've got quite a tricky bit of i mean you don't want to undermine school and then

telling them things but at the same time you don't want to undermine school and them telling them things, but at the same time, you don't think what they're telling them is true. And you say, it's not about, it's not about, I would never want to take away anyone's faith. In fact, I'm actually sometimes quite jealous of people who've got it and it means so much to them and has helped them through difficult things or gives them that perspective. I think that's magic, actually, it's wonderful. But you're just looking for the option that works for you when you're raising your child. And I didn't realise there's as many as a third of schools

because you also get the people where they go to church just to get the place in the school. So it's not like we're only talking about catering for those families, really. Yeah. I think they're really divisive. There's an interesting group called the Accord Coalition, which is a group of religious people and humanists, there's at least one ex-bishop in it, who are arguing against state faith schools in our society. in our society, for all sorts of reasons. First of all, because it is actually against the human rights of the child.

Children have human rights, and you have a right to freedom of religion, and that means also freedom from religion. You have a right not to have religion forced on you. But then another dimension of it is the divisiveness in society. And if you've got some schools that are selecting, that will create further social division. We can see that. There's good research to show that.

So if you create the possibility of a school selecting and doing that beyond just geographic, I mean, even geographic selection creates differences, of course, it does. But if you've got faith schools, because some of these schools are able to discriminate against people who are not of that religion. So, you know, you've literally got to get a letter from the vicar to get into that school. I mean, this is, you know, taxpayer-funded state schools.

It's crazy. It's just discrimination. Well, yeah, and it also goes on to my other pet topic, which is just that there should be good local schools for all the kids full stop, actually. I think it's... It's what any parent wants, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Because you also want those schools to be local. Because when I first expressed this, I had people saying to me, oh, well, you know, you should send your children privately. And I was like, well, why should I send my children privately? You know, state schools are meant to be there for everybody. Oh, well, you should be prepared to drive your child, you know, however far to get them into a school which isn't a faith school.

And I thought, no, that's not it either, isn't it? Is it? And I'm not asking for, I'm absolutely not asking for there to be humanist schools. I just don't think we should be pushing anything. Yeah, I mean, you can have lessons that teach about the different faiths yeah yeah conversation and and if a child you know thinks oh my god that sounds like that's something i want to learn more about then yeah pursue it that's absolutely fine obviously if your family are religious and go to church or wherever you go that that's that's how you're raised that'll be there anyway

but school maybe not being part of that would make sense probably for i wouldn't be surprised it's not the majority of families actually but maybe i'm wrong just in terms i think it probably is actually because i mean the every time there's a census we're seeing a growing number of people saying they're non-religious the census questions are a little bit skewed because they say are you really you know what religion are you? So they kind of assume that you've got a religion. Yes.

The British Social Attitude Survey, which says, are you religious? More than half of the population said they're not for the last 10 years. And also it skews into old age brackets as well. Yeah. So I'd imagine that it would be even, you know, be more than half yeah it'd be interesting younger families yeah yeah I suppose people uh with it when it comes to the way that things are set up with so many things in in this country I think people just

get a bit nervous when you start talking about reforms and things because they think it sounds like a lot of work and underpin everybody's sort of been through the same system and look it worked for most of us let's just keep the status quo it just sounds that's probably where people mostly just kind of go keep it as it is it's fine yeah and i imagine the church of england is quite keen to keep its control over schools as well because you know in those in those faith schools it has it has quite a lot of control over the curriculum it has control over the way that religion is taught and um and and that it's not just learning about religion but but that it is um you know putting religion out there is in in a kind of factual way yeah yeah it's so yeah so i imagine the cov would be very keen not to lose it yeah not to lose its primary schools in particular absolutely well there's again another whole whole conversation

we have with that but um if we could go back briefly to bones because I did want to ask you what can you learn from a piece of bone and how small can it go for you to learn those things? That's a great question. That's a really good question. So as an osteologist, I like to be able to look at whole bones. I can get a lot of information about the age of somebody when they died, whether they're male or female, pathology, which I'm particularly interested in. So I'm always looking at joints to see if I can see evidence of arthritis

and that kind of thing. I have worked on cremations, which are really interesting because... It must be time-consuming trying to... It's very time-consuming. I think about another bit. Yeah, I think it requires a kind of patience though. I think when I've got a big collection of creations that I'm looking at, like I looked at the ones from some Roman cremations from Caelian in South Wales.

And I wrote about them in my last book, Buried. And that was a lot of painstaking work. Just picking up tiny pieces of bone with forceps and kind of looking at each one. I've got my cat's ashes on the mantelpiece over there if you're bored and want to have a go. But yeah, the thing with ashes is really weird actually because if you look at archaeological cremations,

you've actually got quite big bits of bone. So some of them might be even two or three centimetres long. Oh, wow. And there might be bits of bone that you can recognize so um if you you know sift through the sample you might actually end up well hopefully being able to first of all determine if it was more than one person in a cremation um and if you're really lucky you might be able to say something about their age and whether they're male or female so you've got fairly chunky bits of bone, which I think surprises people,

because if they do go and pick up ashes of anybody, a pet or a person, it doesn't seem to be that there'll be any recognisable pieces of bone there. And that's because in modern cremations, we obviously cremate the body. The bones are then, what remains of the bones, these calcined bones are then taken out of the crematorium and are ground up in a machine called a cremulator. So it's very... And I think a lot of people don't know this. A cremulator.

A cremulator. So it's... And I'm fascinated by that because I think that archaeologists of the future will kind of look back on Britain now and go, it was obviously very important for people to have these bones ground up. There must have been an important belief

associated with this grinding up of bones. And yet I think it is something that most people don't know happens. Wow. I think, I'm not sure why it happens. Maybe people don't want to collect recognisable pieces of bone. I don't know.

From a conventorium. That somehow they want to have disappeared the body. The body needs to be disappeared. I find kind of funerary practices. Yes. that somehow they want to have disappeared the body the body needs to be disappeared it's it's really i don't find kind of funerary practices yes in the past and today yes i have your book i haven't got to yeah i haven't got to that bit if i have that i'm fascinated by too does it make you think about what you want to happen to your bones yeah i think there's there's um some big ethical questions about that because um well you've got a

bit of a difficult thing to decide because you might be like well i want to go there study me side of things i think i'm gonna have to do that um so yes i've i in my career have have depended so heavily on so many anonymous generous people who left their bodies to medical science and you know and still do i think it's the best way to learn anatomy the section is you know it is um it is the best way to understand how the human body is put together uh and it's you know it's this it's it's really essential to to surgeons in particular to to be able to understand that, but I think for all doctors. So, yes, all these amazingly generous people who say, I'm giving my body to medical science.

And they can do that knowing that they've left this incredible gift to the future. That's extraordinary. Well, if we finish up just about your children again what do you hope outside i know we've talked about how we've contributed their physical matter up to the age of whenever you've been there what do you hope they've inherited from you more in your character oh god that's a big question isn't it it is actually and i don't know if i'd be able to answer it very well. I'd probably keep changing my answer.

Yeah. Go with your first instinct, I'd say. I hope that I'm encouraging them to be kind to people, not to jump to conclusions about people that they meet, but to get to know people and not to be prejudiced. So I think that that, yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? When you think about the biggest thing, and there's so much, there's so much. No, but you can't go wrong with a bit of kindness.

I don't think you can. I mean, it's like, I'd love someone to be interested in... They're 10 and 13, so I think there're still, for the 10-year-old, the world is still wide open. He's quite interested in various sciences. He's always asking me very difficult questions about physics, which I then have to tweet at Brian Cox to go, Brian, can it wilt to ask you a question like this again?

Can you help me, please? Like he asked me the other day, went if there's if there's sunshine if the sun is shining and there are clouds um why aren't there rainbows everywhere and i was like okay this is a great question yeah and i kind of think i could get i could probably struggle my way to an answer here you could make something up and then i'm yeah but i know i can't do that i'm saying i can't He asked me, what's on the other side of a black hole? Was one of his questions. Oh, that's good. Which was extraordinary.

I mean, I love the fact that he's curious and interested in the world. And, you know, my daughter is too. And I love the fact that she's interested in art because I love art. Oh, that's, yeah, I know that about you. Yeah, it's another passion. And there's that kind of nervousness as a parent because you kind of get, you know, like when she does a beautiful drawing and there's a bit of me that's like,

oh, brilliant, she loves art, she loves art. And then, again, you don't want to channel them. I want her to explore freely. I want her to explore freely and find her thing. They're both really musical, which is amazing because I'm not. So I'm surrounded by people in my house that play music, which is a complete joy. But yeah, I think kindness is the main thing.

I think it is, isn't it? It's got to be. I think kindness is, it definitely is the main thing. And also what you're talking about there with the lack of prejudice and taking people is also about, it comes back to that human connection and the time we're all sharing together, the here and the now.

So I think that's a perfect answer. Oh, thank you so much, Alice. That was a complete pleasure. I think we could probably talk about way more. Actually, my youngest, before I let go, he said something to me last night. I thought it was such funny timing, knowing I was in speech yesterday. So he's four. He was going to sleep, and he said,

Mummy, imagine in Sesame Street if Big Bird just stood up and got his bones outside of his body and he was standing there with his bones in his brain and then he collapsed to the floor and his bones will break and he can't get back into being Big Bird again. I was like, wow, that's outlandish, but I know a lady who can talk to me about bones. It's very metaphysical.

I'd love to know what Big Bird's skeleton looks like. I know, in the brain. Fluffy, I expect. See? What a great woman. Thank you, Alice. And it did feel good to think about how I felt about humanism, really.

I don't really have a lot of chats about religion these days. It hasn't played a big part in my life, really, ever. But I definitely, you know, I went to a religious school and it was a big part of the learnings. As it happens, the kids don't go to religious schools. And I don't know how I would have felt about it if they were studying the Bible when it's not part of our lives. And obviously some of the teachings in it, you know, they are presented as fact. It's good to be able to question these things and think about if it works for you. That's not really, they do go to school to try and get a rounded education.

I want them to learn about all religions, but I don't know if I want it to be something where they feel they have to take it on as a truth for themselves unless it actually resonates. So that's how I feel about it. But also I've thought a lot about that humanist way and about the idea of us all sharing this one experience of life. We happen to all be on the planet at the same time together, about the legacy of kindness and empathy

and leaving your mark on the world based on the good deeds you do and, you know, all the stuff that you can leave behind that's positive to do with your work, to do with art, to do with connections with other people. It doesn't have to be a big thing. You don't have to have, you know, designed an amazing building or changed the world. You can just be someone that's thinking about fellow humans

and wanting to pitch in and make sure that the world is a little bit better than you found it. I think these are all good things. You know, there's always that adage, isn't there, about people won't remember what you said, but they'll remember how you made them feel. And it's so true. So it's funny.

I never really thought a lot about legacy or what I leave behind until I started doing these conversations and then so many people I speak to it is something to think about I think I probably should have a word with myself about that really I suppose a couple of good disco songs isn't a bad contribution but I could probably muster up a bit more than that if I dig a bit deeper I'll do my best anyway in the in the meantime, I know I spoke about Christmas a little bit before the chat with Alice with you, but I actually even ordered a Christmas present today. Oh, yes. What has happened to me? This is a bit of a shock, isn't it? I don't know.

I don't know who I am these days. I barely recognize myself so uh let's see how long that lasts it's a bit like this decluttering phase I've had I just know it's about to finish I just know any minute now I'm going to be like ah sod it leave it to be a mercy in fact I'm already sort of slightly losing the bug the thing is I did loads of sorting and then like a week later it all looks like it's back to normal and I just can't be bothered it has to everybody else has to care a little bit about it too anyway I've I've got happier things in my midst. Tonight, I'm out for dinner with my mum and the rest of my family because it was her birthday last weekend and we couldn't all get together. And we're going to a place where they do really good Italian food and also Negronis.

So I don't think I'll be caring about anything in a few hours' time except for good times with the fam. And on that note, I will love you and leave you. I'll see you next week. Thank you for stopping by. Lots of love. Be kind to yourself. Bye-bye. Thank you.