Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor - Episode 85: Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock

Episode Date: February 6, 2023

Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock is a space scientist and science communicator and presenter of The Sky at Night and the BBC's GCSE Science Live! lectures. She also presented the series Out of this World, on CBBC during lockdown with her daughter, Lauren, now 11.Maggie had her daughter when she was 42 and carried on doing science talks around the world, often with her little girl on stage with her, for the first 4 years of Lauren's life. I particularly marvelled at the Royal Institute lecture I found on YouTube of Maggie tackling the subject of Careers in Science while Lauren sat happily in a sling on her hip, occasionally chewing a microphone cover or snuggling into her mum, while Maggie did the ultimate 'spinning plates' of continuing to deliver her science lecture.She has had a lifelong desire to get into space, something that has spurred her on through A levels, University and her career in space science, including working on the detection of landmines and on the James Webb telescope.  It was fascinating talking to Maggie about her childhood including coping with dyslexia and going to 13 different schools in 14 years during her parents turbulent divorce.  Spinning Plates is presented by Sophie Ellis-Bextor, produced by Claire Jones and post-production by Richard JonesWe had a lot of giggles, as well as touching on some incredibly mighty subjects...you know, life, the universe and everything! I loved hearing about the scale of the universe; what might be out there still to be discovered; and how Maggie is hoping the current 'Battle of the Billionaires' to get into space might help her and her daughter fulfill their dream of space travel at last.  Maggie's enthusiasm and glass-half-full attitude is catching! I came away thinking about aliens, white guys in togas, and wanting to eat a lot more toast! And, at last, I think I've met someone who talks as fast as me! 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. Hey, hey, how have you been? Greetings from the land of the weekend. As I speak to you, it's a Saturday afternoon and it's been quite nice today. I've actually felt quite productive.

Richard is away. He's been away all week, away with his band, doing some recording. And sometimes when you get to the weekend and you've got lots of kids, it can feel a bit daunting because you think, oh, what am I going to do with them all? But we've had a pretty good day, actually. Managed to get a couple of haircuts done. Not by me. Took them somewhere. And my youngest had a little football thing this morning and then there was a soft play moment

and I managed to get my favourite coffee, my favourite local coffee favorite local coffee and yeah a few other bits and bobs so you know it's been a nice day of pottering and then tomorrow we're going to go to the cinema with my mum so quite a nice little weekend really and then Richard's home tomorrow night which will be lovely um and this week's been super quiet I managed, I've only been out one night, actually. I went to Dublin for a gig. Oh, and the last time I was speaking to you last weekend, I just got to the airport, hadn't I? And I was going away with my mum.

That was really nice. I have to say, oh my gosh, that part of Scotland, so flipping beautiful. And we've got like the best weather ever. So we went on a very, very long sort of three and a half hour walk, my mum and I. And it was absolutely stunning. So if you get a chance to go up that way, it's like an hour and a half from Aberdeen. And a very, very lovely hotel called the Five Farms.

But that whole part of Scotland is gorgeous. So that was all really good it's nice to spend time with my meter and this week has been about well i've recorded a couple of podcast episodes i've um also been doing getting things ready for the album more of that getting stuff ready i've got a tour as well i'm going on tour to europe in a couple of weeks which is the first time i played some of those countries and that's the ages so i'm super excited about that that's a real treat anyway you didn't come here to hear about all that shenanigans you came here to hear uh about my guest and uh i loved meeting maggie so maggie adarinocock is a space scientist and space communicator.

Mother of one, a daughter who is 12. Oh no, 13. She'll be turning 13 this year, I guess. 12 at the moment. And she's just completely lovely. Credit to my mum. It was actually my mum who suggested Maggie. I was aware of Maggie, but she's one of those people where the more I found out about her the more I liked her so as I was going to meet her uh to chat to her I was just kind of really feeling excited there are some guests you know where you feel a bit more you can feel a bit nervous but she's so warm and lovely

that I just knew all I needed to do was be you know with her to ask her some questions and it was all gonna gonna flow because she's got that thing that all the best communicators and teachers have where they are excited about the information that they have but they want you to walk away with some new information and they there's no silly questions so I felt like I could have asked anything about science and space and she would have been would have taken it in the best way possible so that was really lovely and um yeah it's a really really great chat and it was lovely to spend time with her we'd never met before but i hope our paths cross again anyway i will leave you with maggie and i it's not 10 to 4 in the afternoon you never guess what i'm gonna do

i'm gonna go make a cup of tea, of course. Can't believe I haven't had any tea. Oh my gosh, actually, I haven't had a cup of tea since this morning. What is going wrong? I'm going to rectify that immediately. See you on the other side. It's so lovely to meet you, Maggie. I've been really looking forward to talking to you today

I've had your lovely voice in my ears a lot over the last week listening to Brits and Bob so why don't we start with the here and now what are you up to at the moment? Juggling plates actually Not just spinning them, you're juggling them throwing them up in the air I know, it's seen how many actually crash lands

and so at the moment i'm uh doing a book tour so i was doing that sort of uh end of last year and it's just sort of ramping up again uh this year um i do something called gcse science live which is really exciting because it's 2015 year olds in a feature in london for instance and you know you've got to grab their attention because if their attention starts to wane the phones come out and the noise level before you know you're sort of swamped that's quite intimidating actually oh do you know but then it's lovely because if you can grab their imagination and talk to them about something that sort of you know that they're interested in uh then then it just feels like

magic I bet and I suppose what have you got like a thing that normally is quite a good way to hook because i've heard you say that you quite like it when people say they're not interested in space and australia what's your normal kind of hook for getting people into it so it's it varies um depending on the group um one of the things is talking about sort of life on other planets uh so uh i grew up watching Star Trek. Yeah, live long and prosper. It's just deep in me. And so all the things that Star Trek did, they sort of travelled out beyond our solar system

through the galaxy to other solar systems. And now with science, we're finding these other solar systems. We call them exoplanets. And the more we look, the more we find. So every star you see in the night star is a sun like our sun some are bigger some are smaller but they're sort of stars and in our galaxy the milky way there are 300 billion stars and now we're finding that

most of the planets we actually analyze have these exoplanets going around them but we can do even more we can actually sort of see because planets don't give out light uh stars do but planets don't they just um planets just reflect the light from their star but if something i'll look our nearest star is 40 trillion kilometers away so i'm throwing a lot of big numbers no no i'm there i'm right here for it so our nearest star is 40 trillion kilometers away and so the light reflected off a planet is just too dim to see. But we can use different techniques to find these planets. And now we're even looking at the atmospheres of these planets,

seeing what chemicals are in there and looking for signs of life. So from sort of going from universities thinking, well, I don't know if there are any other planets out there, to now we're finding sort of thousands of them and looking at their atmospheres and looking for life. We're progressing quickly. It's so mind-blowing, isn't it? I mean, it's crazy.

It is endlessly fascinating, though. I think so. But I think there are two sorts of people. Because, you know, I was bandying those numbers around. Some people, I sort of tell them those numbers and you can see their face looking more and more worried. How many billions of stars? How many billions of stars? How many billions of galaxies?

And I think they feel sort of really quite overwhelmed. Yeah. But I think other people, you tell them that and they think, oh my goodness, I'm part of something amazing. And I think that's my take on it. I'm very small, very insignificant. It's obviously an insignificant planet. I've got billions out there. But boy, are we part of something amazing i know this is quite bizarre

it almost makes me feel a bit weepy as well there's something about the magnitude of it yes and that that's all it's not just an idea it's real that is all out there i was seeing it and analyzing it and yeah i'm trying to understand it which is incredible and i think i was thinking about my relationship with the sky above me and how I think so much of it is fused from when you're really little because everybody, no matter where you are, we can all look up and gaze and think. And there's a sort of sense of wonder that you can sort of propel yourself up there and then it's as broad as all that, know your thought but also your association um it must i was thinking there's a similarity actually i think in your instinct when

you're small to be the wonder of space that links up with your wonder of music as well i think some of these things are quite instinctive yes yes i mean there can't be a child on earth that doesn't really look up you know no actually but i think there are because i think the problem is we live in cities with streetlights, and so people sort of get caught down below. And I think, yes, I think children still look up, but it's trying to sort of keep that wonder going. But what I love is that every culture across the world, and one of my challenges is when I was growing up as sort of being black and female,

I thought that all astronomy was done by white guys in togas. Yes, togas. With Greeks and the moment and people like that yes but if you look across the world and the history of every culture everybody's looked up built monuments and celebrated but i do know what you're talking about with that sort of that feeling of music i remember borrowing a record this is very much dating me from the library when I was young and it was a Brandenburg concerto and I put it on and it made me weep and I was thinking how can someone just sort of manipulate music to make me feel so emotional yeah that's incredible and it does it's what it transcends it just makes the the soul sing I think there's something as well

about the timelessness of the the emotions you're feeling you know that sometimes if you're staring at the night sky there's probably something that links you to ancestors far back and people yet to come yes yes it's like that wonder is going to sustain isn't it yes it's almost as if it's timeless and we're looking up and but that sort of plays with the time and the universe because um uh we see everything with sort of plays with time and the universe because we see everything with sort of, well, visible light. That's how we perceive the universe ourselves. And light is finite. It takes a certain amount of time to travel.

So it travels at sort of 300 million metres per second, which is going somewhere, fastest thing in the universe. But it means that sometimes as we look at things, like our next door neighbour star, Proxima Centauri, it's taken four and a quarter years for that light to reach us. In that time, Proxima Centauri could have blown up or disappeared or whatever. And we wouldn't know for four and a quarter years

because it takes that amount of time to... And we can see things from the early universe because some of the things, it's taken billions of years for the light to get to us. So we're time travellers in that way. That's an amazing thought in itself, just actually letting that perk a little bit. And yes, because I suppose when you look up,

a large proportion of what you're seeing is no longer there. Yes, no longer exists, yes. Which is incredible. Because we never look at the sun, but light from the sun takes about eight minutes to get to Earth, so again, it's sort of that time travel. Yeah, that's astonishing. One of the things I was listening to in the last week

was your Desert Island Discs, which you recorded when you were actually pregnant, I think, with your little girl. Yes. Can you remember how you were feeling back then about sort of impending motherhood? Ah, incredibly excited. It's something that I'd always wanted to do. And I had my

daughter when I was 42. So I was sort of relatively old. And it's just sort of that it's happening. And I just felt so much excitement, but also terror. Because I think parenting is one of those things that's best done in theory. You can look at someone else and say, well, I think you should do this with your kids. But course when the kids standing in front of you i don't know the kitchen knife and ice cream it's all ah it's very different it's all the reality yeah and so i think i was aware of that and uh but yes but i was it just seemed like the ultimate adventure we were talking about something music and space but i think kids are the ultimate adventure because it's a human sort of learning and sort of perceiving and sort of developing yeah i think that's magical it is magical and also there's an unknown element

in who you're mothering as well yes who they are who they are yeah exactly what do they need from you and i saw in the dedication to your book you said something like my daughter who's she's now 12 is that right she she like hold you hold a mirror up to you and i think there's something that does happen like that where you learn about yourself yes through the things where you find your challenges your limits with the things you need to work on what's the fun things you really enjoy yes about yourself through seeing yourself reflected in this small person. Yes, because they sort of mimic what you say. They take on some of your mannerisms and things like that.

Because I do lots of public speaking. And sometimes I've done a couple of talks where my daughter's been standing in front of me copying what I'm doing. Like a little mini-me. That's so sweet. Well, actually, you were doing talks when she's in a sling and you were this impressed me mightily so i watched um at the royal institute giving a talk

and if you your daughter at the time is at the stage where most people are struggling just to actually have a conversation like meeting a friend for coffee and trying to keep an eye on a thread but you're delivering this lecture about your career and your daughter is literally pulling the sponge off the microphone, eating it. She used to love that. You seem really relaxed and natural. How instinctive was it to you just to take her with you wherever you went? Am I right? She travelled with you for like the first four years of her life? Yes, yes.

We've got a little poster at home of a map of the world and all the places we travelled together because two days after she was born I got invited to make a documentary the BBC called do we really need the moon which was wonderful opportunity I had literally just had Laurie and so I said back yeah I'd love to do it but you know I'll just have my baby and they said oh yes we'll work around that and so uh um because of that I got used to having her with me all the time and um and it's funny because I look at the documentary now and because I was breastfeeding her and sort of filming and it

was just sort of a roller coaster uh and sometimes I see myself on the video and I'm sort of like you're tired there I can tell you just slumped across the moon yeah great but I think because that got me into the mindset of being able to take her with me. And I used to do these lectures and it just seemed naturally to have her with me. And so she'd come on the stage. And I remember once I was doing something

called GCSE Science Live and sort of speaking to thousands of school kids. And a girl who was about 18 years old came up to the stage and said, I saw you with your daughter. And it made me cry because I've just had a baby and I really thought that my life was over. But seeing you on the stage, just working, enjoying yourself and with your baby,

it makes me think, okay, this isn't over. I can do stuff. That's amazing. How powerful is that? We were both like blubbing. But that is interesting. That is amazing. And I think it is inspiring. And actually, I was thinking, you know, even where I'm at,

I'm going to have that in my head, that there's so many options that we have, and sometimes you can feel that you don't have them when you just had a baby. I mean, a lot of people, they think, OK, I've got to do this lecture, right? Maybe I'll try and leave enough milk, or I'll only be out for this many hours yes of course that's fine if that's how you do it and i did some of that as well i remember yes um sort of um forgetting the breast pump or

something and sort of getting very engorged with milk so yes but it is that juggling act but um and also um i think laurie just got used to it at an early age or being on stage with mom yeah taking the foam off the microphone i always wondered just oh my god the germs no no but you're so nice and relaxed while she's doing all that and never lost your thread you'd always go straight back into the sentence wherever you were and keep going with all of it but sometimes again i look at those videos and i think of what i should have been at home playing with laurie but it was nice that we could do both yeah and then you continue to do both and you've done tv together haven't you which is lovely yes cbbc yes that was very weird because it was in the middle of lockdown and um so again we were approached and said it would be nice to make this of a short documentary about space

sort of little facts and figures um but um we need to do it sort of remotely and i said what happens i've got a really big green screen in my home which we can set up and so this that's brilliant and my annoy was there saying i want to be involved well yeah can my daughter you know sort of join in and this yeah yeah that sounds brilliant and so we did it in our kitchen we sort of moved all the furniture and set up this green screen but um the director and the producer all had to sit outside because of covid they couldn't come indoors and so they had a little um sort of a um sort of canopy outside and sometimes it was pouring with rain and we wouldn't even we weren't even allowed to offer them coffee because of you know the bubbles so bad but it was amazing fun for me and Laurie. Really fun.

But your work did change a little bit when you had her, didn't it? Because before that you were working, I think you said you were doing, you were more sort of space science day job, like lab sort of work. Yes. And then the space communication. Yes. But that kind of took over priority after that. Yes, because it was quite interesting. Because before Laurie came along, I was building,

sort of working on things like James Webb Space Telescope, building equipment for that, working on other instrumentation, looking at climate change. As a space scientist, it's quite an intense job, so long hours and things like that. Then on top of that, I was trying to do the science communication, because I wanted the next generation of space scientists, or scientists anyway, or kids just reaching for the stars,

no matter what their stars are. So I was going out and doing some of that but it was quite hard juggling at and um it's quite often because at the top of the company the boss says yeah we really like what you're doing mag but um when you're sort of when your manager's saying where you're going I've got to go and give a talk to the school what now we've got you know so there was quite a bit of conflict there and so when lori came along it was but it's funny before she was uh before she was born i thought okay you know i'll just continue being a space scientist you know i'll sort of look after lori and and sort of continue the science communication and i realized that stuff in terms of spinning plates that was just too many yeah and i wanted to be with her and that blew me away because i thought you know it's sort of but no I just wanted to be

with her constantly whenever I got the opportunity and so by doing the science communication it enabled me to sort of take her with me and sort of do things with her yeah so um it just changed my mindset completely that's like so did you have anyone that was in mind of you'd seen doing this thing of doing taking their babies to lectures no I hadn't it's funny funnily enough yes i hadn't but it's funny i've met lots of people since who say oh yes yes i did that with my daughter and one of the things i think is important is we get that out there definitely because i think people think that yes um because we're few and far between and it depends on so many factors um a sort of support at home and a child who is happy to sit on your arms while you're sort of yabber away but many kids i think would do that if they're

used to it and so we should let people know that this is possible and it means that there's just more flexibility than we realize yeah and it also for me when i was listening to you talk it introduces um a playfulness to hearing someone speak that breaks the sometimes you know the kind of tension that can happen when you're part of it i'm a lecturer i'm speaking to you yes there's a little person there you know that's unpredictable and i think covid did a lot of that because people were yes i'm sort of recording from home or filming from home yeah little people running in. And it is, it's just, I love it.

I think it really does break the ice and it just makes people human. Rather than, yes, I am a scientist up here on a pedestal. No, I'm a human and I've got a daughter and I love her. Yeah, let's all be happy together. Yeah, and still be productive too. Yes, yes. And bring new things to it. And so just so I get my head around it.

But I mean, obviously there's the wonder of space and the sort of poetry of that, but when it's the sort of nuts and bolts of being a space scientist, what sort of thing does that normally involve? Yes. Are you happy to see this? Because I'm thinking of applying.

Join us, you know it, makes sense. I'm going to be such a great asset. Of course you will. I already know it's 3.7 miles from the sun. I've memorised everything you've told me so far. The thing is, it's funny, because people think, working in the space industry,

we need scientists, we need engineers. We don't. We need everybody. Because different people bring different facets. It's like music. The music of the Swiss. It's like you do a playlist. Yeah. That music the the music of the swiss it's sort of a playlist that was done for when one of the um yeah there's many more missions we need more music basically we bring different aspects and that's one of the things i've found in my career that

i've had quite a varied career but you you bring different things. And companies that thrive have a diverse sort of a gene pool of people coming. And so I think the worst case scenario is that the space industry is just called a space scientist because we all think in a similar way, and then you don't get the innovation. Yeah, well, actually, what you've said there reminds me of when they're talking about the fact that now there's much more awareness of how people are neurodiverse, and you've spoken a lot about dyslexia. And I think that's maybe part of that, that you need people who think in different ways

and process things differently. Yes. And as a space scientist, what we do is we sort of come up with a concept. So you might get contacted by the European Space Agency, who says, we want to see how plants are photosynthesising, how they're taking up oxygen and releasing... Taking up carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen, very important for climate change and what's happening on Earth.

But you want to do it from space. So this is a sort of low-Earth orbit, so probably about 300 kilometres up above the Earth's surface, above sea level. And so then we'll start brainstorming and thinking, how can we do that, what can we do, how are we actually going to measure this from so far away and so then we come up with a concept then come up with a design for an instrument and then we have to miniaturize everything because getting things into space is expensive and then you've got to work out well this is going to be powered by sun energy by solar panels so how much power can we use and so we go

through this whole process but the joy of it is when we sort of build it and then it gets launched into space and then yes it's operational and then getting data but as a space scientist we go through that whole process so from concept to sort of how do we tackle this problem to it's up there and it's working because yeah i didn't even think about the fact that you've got the you've got how you solve the initial problem but then you've got to make it so that, as you say, it's actually miniature and lightweight and easy to set up and all those things. And if something goes wrong, how easy is it for the people that are there to be able to fix things? Well, see, there's no one there. That's the problem. Oh, OK.

Yeah, because these satellites just orbit the Earth. I was thinking about International Space Station. Oh, yes. Well, see, on the International Space Station, you have experiments. But this is just on satellites. Most of them are just, yeah, just orbiting the Earth in a lonely space. Wow. And so what we have to do, and we're quite right, we have to build in redundancy.

And so we're trying to keep the weight as minimum as possible. But if a board goes down or electronics goes down, it's nice to have a backup. Yeah. Because some of these satellites cost us, I don't know, half a billion pounds just to sort of design and get up there. Yeah. So you want to know that it's, James Webb's was a lot more.

Wow. Wow. Yes, and James Webb sits 1.6 million kilometres away from Earth. Wow. So it's just out there. And so that's why... What does that cost more? How much is something like that? James Webb, gosh, well, definitely a few billion.

Wow. Gosh, what did you say? A few hundred billion. That's a lot of money. It is. But I think 10,000 scientists across the world, scientists, engineers across the world working on it, saying, I love that as well.

Yeah. So the community, we're all doing this together. And are there things that you would physically be touching that then end up on the way out there? Yeah, and that's why I love that as well. Isn't that an amazing idea? Yeah. Your fingerprints up there.

That's incredible. Fingerprints are never going to... Oh, sorry. No, you kept it very clean. Whatever you're supposed to have done. Yeah, I've got them off afterwards. amazing idea yeah your fingerprints that's incredible fingerprints and never oh sorry no you kept it very clean whatever you're supposed to have done yeah i've got them off after your metaphorical fingerprints yeah well yeah but potentially my dna yes exactly things like that just something you've interacted with yes this goes up yes incredible because my lifelong desire has been to get out into space yes and the only time i um i um we considered that was when my daughter was born because i wanted to be here and yet so we want to go into space together now but

um uh so that that was my crazy idea but now um by building this instrumentation that goes up into space and helps earth it's the next best thing and how likely is the space mission for you and your daughter? Ah, well, it's getting, the odds are getting better. Because if you see things like sort of Roger Galactic with Richard Branson and Elon Musk, and let's call it Battle of the Billionaires, guys who've made a lot of money and thinking, space, the next frontier. Absolutely. And I'm coming along, so wait for me, please. Because in the past, space was mainly done by countries.

And with that, the limited resources, so limited in what you can do. But now it's sort of, yes, and with sort of these other companies coming up and more and more people want to get out there. Would you? Yeah, I would actually. I've done, I've been to Houston and done the parabola. Oh, the Vomit Comet. The Vomit Comet, yes.

Yes, yes. I've never done that. It's really fun. And I would love to. You could definitely do that. Yeah. Actually, there's been a few times where we got close when I'm filming.

And I was like, yeah, yeah, okay. And then something falls through at the last minute. I actually did it for a job. It was a really crazy job. I was working with walkers. They developed a lighter crisp. So I'm great with a straight face, I promise. So obviously the correct way to illustrate that the

crisp is lighter is to take me into zero gravity. With the crisp. With the crisp. They were floating all around. That's not the Simpsons one, he's just in space eating the crisps. The job came in quite last minute because I think they were

struggling to find someone to say yes, but I love all that sort of stuff. I love rollercoastering anyway. Yes. But also I thought this is a really unique thing. So for anyone listening who doesn't know what we're talking about, it's like you basically, the plane does what they call parabolas, where the plane is, it's essentially like

if you're throwing a bucket of water around in a circle and the water stays inside the bucket when you spin it around because the water is falling with the bucket. Yes with the plane the plane does these drops and then you're falling with the plane so you experience zero gravity yes you touch the floor and you float off and i think the thing that really unnerved me and of course it makes complete sense i haven't really thought about it is the fact that there's no friction so you you just keep going yes so you bob against something else you can't like swim back so when you think of it being like underwater there's elements of that and that you know you leave the floor but you can't shift yourself no no it's great i like you're passive in it yeah speaking to astronauts and on the international

space station you've got that you know constantly yes and um i'm saying it just feels weird i'm quite messy. And I was saying, does it matter if you're messy? I'm messy as well. Yeah. Maybe that's why we haven't been asked about that. But they were saying that sometimes,

because everything is in that microgravity environment to effectively float, you leave something somewhere and then go and do something else. But then when the astronauts come back to Earth, they sort of leave something and fall to the ground. Oh, damn. That's so true.

Because they spend six months on the International Space Station. That is so crazy. And they sleep whichever way up they fancy. Well, yeah, rope train to the wall. Because, yeah, which way's up? Yeah. Yeah, we need to go. We need to do this podcast from space.

Okay. I will put that on my diary. I would be well up for it. I think, of course, the risk element of the space mission is off-putting. But I think that the actual wonder of seeing our planet from far away. I mean, that must just be one of the most incredible sights. That's one of the things I so desire to see. The curvature of the Earth from space, the atmosphere.

And then just because you orbit every 90 minutes. So the curvature of the Earth and space, the atmosphere. And then just because you orbit every 90 minutes. So you go around the Earth and so you see day and night in different countries and deserts and brazing sunlight and just see the whole planet. Own 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.

And it's funny, I think that's one of the things that really attracted me to space when I was a child, because I was growing up in the UK in sort of late 60s, early 70s. And I felt I didn't belong. My relatives would say, Oh, you don't even speak Nigerian you're a lost Nigerian and I'll go to school and people say yeah why don't you go back home but I live around the corner but it's just kids and so space gives you that sort of a we are united there's no barriers you don't see the countries from space you just see planet earth yeah I was thinking about that when you're talking about different countries having their space missions and how it would be great if everybody just teamed up, really.

The whole space race thing, teaming up makes the most sense to pool resources, surely. And I suppose we have done that to a certain extent. So things like the European Space Agency, I can't remember, sort of a different country, Canada, many European countries all collaborating. But it's also interesting to see how things progress. Because I have a a theory there's been three eras of space and the first era was of space was confrontation because the space era came out of the second world war and it was mainly about lobbing intercontinental ballistic missiles you

know from one part of the earth to the other and it just happened that they sort of they clipped space while they were doing that and then people realized that you could actually observe um people from space so space was actually quite useful right and so it sort of came out of quite a dark time and then people started sort of getting sort of you know oh yeah yeah let's use space and there was the spaceways with the russians and the americans uh but then after that people thought you know space is pretty expensive let's start collaborating so you get formation of the european space agency in 1975 and people coming together but now i think we're going into the new era and it's an era of commercialization where you're getting people like musk and branson and many others thinking okay how do we sort of utilize space but in the

era of collaboration one of the things is space seems to be slower then because it's all done by committee and should we go to mars should we go to the moon i don't know let's think about it for it's an awful lot of money but then you're getting these pioneers saying yeah Should we go to the moon? I don't know, let's think about it for a while. It's an awful lot of money. But then you're getting these pioneers saying, Yee-haw, let's go to the moon, let's go to Mars and beyond! You talked a little bit then about your childhood, and when I was driving here today, I was thinking, you know those books, Little People, Big Dreams?

You know those books? And I was thinking, I was double-checking if there'd been been one of you because surely it's on the horizon because your story is extraordinary because of when you know your childhood being as you said the dyslexic girl and this is before you knew you were dyslexic as well and i think now the association we have with dyslexia is really positive when my kids are kids is dyslexic, and for him it's quite a visible thing in terms of people talking about it and being aware. But certainly in the 70s, that was a different thing. And then also, am I right, 13 different schools in 14 years? Yes.

That must be something of a record in itself. Because also you don't start till, you know, that's a quick turnaround. I think some schools it was, hi, bye. Show my face. I know, was that something? And, you know, you're a third of four girls, is that right? Yes, yes. And spent most of your time with your dad after a turbulent divorce from your parents,

which I very much identify with. My parents grew up when I was four as well. So I heard you speaking about that thing of having to choose your loyalties and one parent, which is just a... It's a very tricky muscle to develop as a little person. Yes, yes. Yes, because it's a lot of responsibility and guilt. It just...

Yes, because you've always got an answer when you're that little, because normally life is quite binary about what you feel like about things. Yes. So I think it is really a tough conversation to be part of. But then also you've got the fact that you've got this, you know, you must clearly be incredibly bright. Oh, come on. You don't have to correct me on this.

This is just factual. It's the way we measure brightness. See, because people think, oh, space science, it's, oh, that's tough. But it's like me and languages. To me, wow, that's tough. Or sort of people, sort of lawyers, reading all those documents.

So people have strengths and weaknesses. I agree with that. But if you've got this academic potential with space science, and then... I was thinking you must have a massive amount of resilience and grit, because surely if the odds are stacked against you, then you have to just keep on hitting the targets. And is that something that you've been very conscious of?

Yes. Well, it's funny, because one of the things about dyslexia is I think it teaches you resilience. And just as an example um you're sort of typing an email on the computer and you type in a word and the computer says oh rats okay so you retype it okay let's come up with a different word so you're just used to sort of that that sort of buffering um but but also I think one of the things that really worked for me is having that crazy dream of wanting to get into space. Because it means that although you sort of aim for targets, quite often you miss and you fall in the mud and it's all gone horribly wrong.

But when you've got the crazy dream, you sort of pick yourself up and think, oh, that was terrible. Ouch, that really hurt. But if I want to get to that dream, I've got to find a different way. So, OK, this isn't working. Let's go around this way or go over that way or just find another way around the obstacle and i think that sometimes it's quite lucky if you have that desire when you're young because you can just it keeps you focused yeah and sort of on track and sort of yeah and i always think that i may never make it into space i really hope i do i may never make it into space but by having that crazy dream it's encouraged me to sort of push harder and overcome hurdles and so not so much keeping um hitting targets hitting targets but finding a

way to hit targets when everything else just seems to be against you yeah and sometimes i think when you look back because there's a sort of hardiness you have when you're younger that you maybe don't have in the same way when you're older, when you're like teenage, or if you've got that little fire in your tummy, sometimes you can look back and think, how did I have the energy to keep pushing and pushing? Yes, yes. Yeah, the energy.

But I mean, how do you go about trying to pass on this sort of resilience in your daughter? Because I would have thought that would be quite a good quality to pass on this sort of resilience in your daughter because I would have thought that'd be quite a good quality to pass on yes well actually because I think I'm quite lucky that I got it from my mother and my father because my father was well well into education I think that's another driver um I think it's often the case with immigrants especially Nigerian immigrants that your education is the way to sort of transcend it's a social lubricant if you want to sort of yeah if you want to improve your lot in life it's got to be education which was a bit of a dichotomy for me because i was doing so badly at school when i started but this idea that i have to get a good

education uh so it meant that there was that driving me as well and and it's quite interesting because i have conversations with my daughter and because she is quite heavily dyslexic probably more so than me and so it is sort of saying you know so what is your dream and she doesn't really know what she wants to do she's got some ideas but if you want to fulfill that dream yeah having an education really helps and it's a primary school it was interesting because I think she saw it but you know wasn't really into it but now I think she is she's seeing that yes and but also um it's quite interesting because people whenever they meet here they say are you going to be a scientist like your mother i always feel bad for her because she doesn't want to be a scientist like a mother

but she is actually enjoying science at school at the moment she's um well now she's got to secondary school and also she's indoctrinated at home i mean she's just had a chance really it's the conversations you have, isn't it? Yeah, that's it, about everyday things, that sort of just immersed with science and engineering. Yeah, and whenever people ask me if my kids are musical, I always say I just hope they have as lovely a relationship with it as I do, because for me, music, never mind it being my day job,

I just love the fact that music's always been there. So maybe for her, it doesn't really matter what her day job is, but if she just keeps that enthusiasm for wanting to know how things work, the fact that music's always been there. So maybe for her, it doesn't really matter what her day job is, but if she just keeps that enthusiasm for wanting to know how things work the way they work, that's a lovely thing. Yes, and it's funny, because when I go out to schools, people often say, well, do you want to speak to the gifted and talented kids

who are going to become the future space scientists? No, I want to speak to everyone. Because, as you say, it's just keeping that awareness of science. Science plays such a vital role in our lives yeah and in so many different ways you know inoculations um so for a while i was working in landmine detection so many different decisions we have to make as a society yes that are influenced by science and engineering and so if kids are turned off about it how can they make societal decisions so i want to speak to everybody about science and

show the power of it but show the power for good and the power for detrimental so um yeah so people are aware of and when we make the right decisions hopefully well like you've mentioned landmines and i think that's what you did isn't it after your degree is that right you went to do um work for ministry of defense yes so part of your job was working out how to detect where landmines are. Yes. So I was thinking about the fact that means you've almost had this silent dialogue because you're developing science to help find out where the landmines are but on the other side of that conversation is a team of scientists who try to make sure that landmines can't be detected. Yes. And that's a crazy silent dialogue to be in with people who, you know, have maybe shared your passion for some of the same things

to get them, you know, in engineering and science, and then they find out using it in that way. Yes, yes, and it must be a decision. So I got my sort of degree and my PhD, left university, couldn't find a job, ended up working for the MOD, so the Ministry of Defence. And I was thinking, you know, it's the Ministry of ministry of defense but some of that defense it can be aggressive and so i i made sure that i was only working as a missile warning system so warning pilots and missiles coming

uh landmine detection uh but yes sort of uh there are people making different decisions and going sort of a for sort of the more aggressive side and um and it's quite interesting because uh war is a technology stimulator when war comes along people throw scientists at it to develop new technology to develop new ways of sometimes killing people yeah and so i think it's sort of that's why we need to have that awareness that science is just so, it's a double-edged sword. Yeah, and the morality within what you're doing. Yes. And thinking about ethics and all these things,

not just using your skill set to make the best of the best if the outcome is something you fundamentally don't agree with. And I think that was wonderfully shown by the Manhattan Project. So when they were making the first nuclear bomb, scientists were sort of throwing themselves in to sort of go, tackling this problem. And then after a while, they sort of stepped back, especially after Hiroshima and Nikosaki.

They were looking back and said, what have we done? We were sort of caught up in the project, but this is devastating. It's changed the world on a scale we cannot understand. And so, yes, and so as scientists, but we need that little society saying, so what are you doing exactly? And where's that going? And should we be doing this? And that's a societal push.

We need everybody to be in on that conversation. And so did any of that shift or become even more part of your motivation know your motivation once you had your your baby yes so trying to create a world that is safer uh has a sort of a climate that isn't that isn't toxic it yet is it's sort of a driving force and i think we want to do it anyway but when you think of sort of the next generation and the generation after that and then how far is this going and so what can we do now because decisions we make now have such long fold as of consequences so yes it does sort of really focus the attention on the future yeah i'm passing through but yes and what about everybody else yes exactly i guess i think that also goes back to education and i mean with my i've got one child with dyslexia and two that have dyscalculia, which I'm sure you know about, the maths version of dyslexia.

I have both actually. Well, yeah, quite often they're like. Yeah, interlinked. Okay. So when, with that, how did you not sort of fall out of going, wanting to go to school at all how did you stay so committed to going into a place because most teaching is taught in such a way that's quite rigid and i'm sure even now with your daughter even though it's generations on from when you were little it's still it's still quite tricky it is getting the support and yes and i do see it as better now and my daughter goes

through a sort of local state school. And yeah, but also it's the way they use dyslexia because it isn't just, oh, she can't read, she can't spell, put her in the remedial class, which is what happened to me. But it's sort of, oh yes, but look at her creativity. Look how logical she is. And so it's tapping into the benefits of dyslexia. But for me, actually, for quite a bit of schooling,

I just hated it. I decided decided you know school doesn't like me i don't like school i used to pretend to fall asleep in class pretend i could do that for real actually in some pre-med classes it was real and so it was good why did you pretend for just to zone yourself out yeah just i didn't really want to be there that's got to be the ultimate insult to the teacher as well looking around the back like she's pretending to sleep in my lesson again

and then look at the time and be like she'll probably be at a new school by this afternoon just passing through anyway who's that person sleeping at the back she was here yesterday so there was a time where school didn't agree with me but then there were teachers who went above and beyond.

And what happens if you have a teacher you love and then you have to move? Oh, yes. Because moving school a lot, that is a big deal. It is. But I think you get used to it. It's funny, I didn't realise I'd gone to 13 different schools until I did Desert Island Discs, which was lovely. And so I was really honoured to be doing it like doing this but it was um they said okay let's do some research and we started doing research oh yeah

schools and the list just kept on going whoa whoa whoa wow you'd lost count yes yes i did i wasn't really aware and and the thing is it's um i think i'm a sort of glass half full sort of person and it does teach you skills so in a new situation other people might thinking oh yeah i don't know anyone i'm more likely so yeah okay let's just you know strike up a conversation because i'm used to being sort of you know thrown in the deep end so there are some benefits of it but you do lose out and my husband for instance has um friends he knew from primary school and they're sort of they've known each other and grown up together. But yeah, I don't really have that. In some ways, I'm almost frightened of it.

It's strange that I'm used to... I see myself as a chameleon. I'm putting another situation and it's hard to go back and be the person I was there because that was three schools ago and I don't know who that person is anymore. So there's, yeah, again, the yin and the yang. Yeah, but then I guess you've given your daughter this thing that you didn't have which is an incredibly consistent childhood which

is a very different thing isn't it if you've been moving around a lot and parents changing their situations and all that it's quite a big it's quite a big difference to not have that when you're growing up I think I think so yes and I well although it's quite interesting because in other ways because she travels a lot with me and so it's interesting because um she moves around that way but it seems more stable that way and that's one of the reasons I love her her coming with me when I go on trips and stuff like that because I suppose um my husband and I are her constants and to a certain, it doesn't matter where we are as long as we're together.

Yeah. And, yeah, just incredibly close to my daughter. Yeah, yeah, that's so lovely. But I think it's also because she's an only child. I had her when I was 42, and I had quite a few complications afterwards. So there wasn't much chance of me having another child. And so, yes, it's quite interesting

because I'm sort of a mother stroke sister which i love but it can be complicated because you're a sister you can have fun together but hey have you done your homework it's changing hats midway no but i think that's the benefit i mean i'm close to my mum in that way too and i think it's nice like she she never wanted to be my friend like that but she's she's my mum and we're incredibly close and yeah i think i think um that's the dynamic of of close motherhood actually i think you can have that can't you and don't have to she needs she'll still look to you to be the person that gives her those boundaries that's that's all part of it isn't it i hope so yes definitely i always think

that um when she's older if we get on she'll be oh my mother took me around the world and we sort of traveled together it was lovely but if we don't get on it she dragged me around the world from place to place yes well if your dream is to go to space with your daughter i think that's a very good litmus test for how well you get on because you're not going to agree to going to space with someone if your relationship's a bit yeah okay but wait till we get there it's exactly the side of the international space station i'm not talking to her just exactly she ate my chocolate biscuits and i'm not happy no exactly no that's gonna really put those things to the test but it could be

an amazing thing to do together yes i do like traveling with my mom i think i'd go to space with her i think i would yeah i'm gonna say yes um I sort of you were about to talk about teachers how did you find teachers that were significant if you're also moving around like can you remember teachers that had a big steer on you yes I remember sort of I remember moments and teachers so I remember a moment uh when I was in a science class and this was when I was pretty disengaged in school and I think one of the reasons I was disengaged is because I thought I'm dumb I'm at the back of the class you know safety scissors and glue I'm just disconnected and so education isn't my thing but I remember sitting in a class and a teacher asked a question and the question was if a litre of water weighs

one kilogram what does one cubic centimetre of water weigh and being dyslexic means I'm quite logical so I worked out that one cubic centimetre of water is? And being dyslexic means I'm quite logical, so I worked out that one cubic centimetre of water is a thousandth of a litre. A thousandth of a kilogram is one gram, so one cubic centimetre of water is one gram. Well, I got this. Put my hand up. And then I looked around the classroom. No-one else had their hand up. Being the dumb one at the back, I thought, you know,

how can I get this? And no-one else does. So I just, you know, put my hand down. So the teacher sort of noticed that, you know, and she'd be like, go on, you know, encourage me to answer. And I got it right, So I just, you know, put my hand down. So the teacher sort of noticed that, you know, and she'd be like, go on, you know, encourage me to answer. And I got it right. And it was, you know, that magical moment of, oh, my goodness, I knew this and other people in the class didn't. So I'm not as dumb as they think and I'm not as dumb as I think.

And that gave sort of the momentum that, OK, if I can do this. And to me, it's all about that confidence. Yeah. Confidence is what I think makes and breaks people in, actually, definitely in school, but in most walks of life. that okay if i can do this and to me it's all about that confidence yeah confidence is um what i think makes and breaks people in actually definitely in school but in most walks of life when you've got the confidence you think okay well if i if that works what else can i do and then you push a little harder and you sort of you know gain some more knowledge but if you're if you feel oh no i can't you know then i think then that's what stops you yeah and fear of saying

the wrong answer yes and everybody else is looking yeah that's quite crippling isn't it for a lot of kids i think and i think with the dyslexia just like reading out loud yeah the fear of the one word yeah well that's a very real fear i mean how many of us even now as adults have anxiety dreams about school you know there's a reason why and it's also that you're never again in the melting pot of so many different characters and having to just rub alongside people in that way true because then after that you can choose you know who you socialize with and in your work you're likely to be with people we've got you know you're bringing things to the pot but school is it's pretty cutthroat

yes definitely and i think it's amazing to have a moment like that, a school moment that actually was so defining. Yes. Not many people have that real, like, that literally was like a light bulb going on. Yes, and I say that, and that was a change. It caused lots of other things. And as I say, fantastic teachers who went sort of above and beyond and sort of gave me extra lessons.

And lots of teachers would sort would make me keep a diary. I hate keeping a diary. But I'd write and correct my spellings and things like that. Just so I could develop a bit better. And so how is it when you get to here and now and you're helping GCSE and also younger kids get engaged, is that teaching something that really means a lot to you? Yes.

Because I know what it's like to be disengaged with school. And that's why I like to speak to all pupils when I go to a school. And so I know what it's like sitting at the back of class thinking, this isn't for me. Especially with science, you know, you get some kids coming in when I'm going to give a lecture and they say, oh, I don't want to be here. This is a science talk. Why would I want a science talk?

And so then I want to entertain here this is a science talk what would i want a science talk and so then i want to entertain them and regale them and wow them with just 101 different things so they come out and think wow that was science yeah that's here and just think again so yeah and then to join that i think over the past about 18 years i've seen 450 000 people and and there's a spark as well when you interact with someone or I gave a talk once at a school and someone was doing sign language which you might notice I talk quite fast simultaneous translation sign language I always feel sorry for them because their fingers are like friction may catch fire I gave gave this talk at a school, and later on I got an email saying that there was a little boy in the group

who was a voluntary mute and had never sort of spoken to their teachers. But after my talk, he wanted to know what happens if galaxies collide. And so he started speaking about that. And so it was just sort of this magical moment because it was something that caught his attention so much and that he was so interested in that he started speaking. And so you think, whoa, it's powerful stuff. I'm lucky I'm doing space because space really gives it that power.

But if you can go out there and share that with someone and share that passion, it's just an absolute joy. That is incredible. That's amazing. that's amazing um it's funny you mentioned about talking fast because um just before christmas i um i went to a friend's christmas drinks and there was uh lauren laverne and lauren laverne of course now does desert island disc and she was saying when she's doing her research on people she listens to the audio of people like their books or podcasts whether at double speed so i thought i'd give it a go and i've tried one of your podcasts you're the wrong person to cut double speed i'm trying back so much like whoa i can't and then i thought no it's right she just speaks i'm fast talker as well by the way so i totally get that but i was just like

whoa it's if you ever want it I just want to try that yeah I haven't listened to it it's amazing but I couldn't keep up one and a half might be okay but I'm listening to you you've got so much enthusiasm and exuberance and I'm trying to picture if little Maggie had that is that something that's grown and blossomed with your confidence and with the more you've you've sort of grown into feel find your own space and excuse the pun of what you're doing you know your workplace or was that if I'd bumped into you at school would we've would you've had that same thing then? It's very hard for me to tell because um as a child I was

convinced that I was an introvert. You see, because I have three other sisters, so two older, one younger, and my two older sisters are larger than life characters. I mean, they are, they're just amazing. And so, compared with them, I was sort of the quiet one. And so, I always used to say,

no, no, I'm the quiet one. I'm the introvert. But I think I'm quite extrovert. Actually, there's an omnivert. Because I like the quiet one. I'm the introvert. But I think I'm quite extrovert. Actually, there's an omnivore. Because I like the quiet times where I can talk to myself and contemplate life, the universe and everything. But at the same time, there's the performer in me that likes to get out there and challenge people with ideas. But I think as a child, I wasn't very confident at all and and I think I was almost crippled with decision making every decision I had to sort of agonize over sort of for a long

time like is this the right one and then after I've made the decision I still think I heard you talking about um regret uh and it's sort of a challenging things to have and sometimes I'd sort of the things sometimes it was silly things like sort of bread or toast I had toast what was I thinking so the big questions there I can relate the correct answer is toast actually nowadays I think I'll just go for toast bread but crunchy yeah so I don't think I was that confident and also because of the dyslexia and all the other things I think I was um in the sort of family pecking order I was sort of a nice but dim oh no I find that hard to believe but I think if you've got big extrovert siblings that's quite another thing that's you just that's part

of the family dynamic you know a big family everybody kind of finds their pitch a little bit that's it yes it's a way of survival I think yeah and it's as we grow and develop and sort of sometimes you sort of um and that's one of the things about changing and changing school a lot it means it can sort of uh I didn't like I didn't like the role I was playing in that one I'm gonna try this one now do you think having a being a mum and motherhood made your relationship your love affair with what you do expand a little bit as well i think um it's quite interesting because um i loved it before but actually and especially when laurie was in my arms and i was giving a talk it just made me i don't know if that made me feel

very complete and the things i love i've loved communicating but and i have my daughter with me as a space scientist i knew she'd always be at home. I couldn't take her to the office. But this enabled me to do both. And there's an image my husband gave to me probably a couple of years ago. And I'm going to pronounce it incorrectly, but I think it's called Ikigai.

And it's a diagram with four circles all interconnected. And one is what you can get paid for, what you love doing, what the world needs, And it's a diagram with four circles all interconnected. And one is what you can get paid for, what you love doing, what the world needs. And the other one, which I can't remember. Anyway, I'll come back to that. But the bit in the center is where you get life fulfillment. So Ikegai is sort of a Japanese life fulfillment. And if you can get all these circles together, get them all working then you can sort of happily sit in the center and my husband sort of gave me this picture and said I think you might be in the center that's lovely I like that very much um so what's your big things

about space that are kind of unanswered that you'd like to know the answer to yes one of the things I love to tell kids is that there are some big questions out there. One of the things is that when we look at the universe, the universe, we know what about 6% of the universe is made out of. 6%? No, it's embarrassing. What have you been doing with your time? Me, you, the table, we don't know about that stuff.

Stuff that reflects light but there's also stuff we call dark matter and dark energy and we call it that because we don't know what it is we know it's out there because we can see its gravitational effect but we can't actually sort of tangibly interact with it and so so that's what i like to tell the kids you know 94 of the universe we don't actually know what it's made of. So come and help us because we really need it. Yeah, that's amazing, isn't it? Yes. The sort of the Holy Grail is their life out there.

Yeah. And I'm excited that, you know, we are getting closer to answering that because with things like James Webb, with telescopes looking at these exoplanets. But one of the nice things is we used to talk about, you know, we used to talk about planets in the goldilocks zone where they're the right distance from their local star so they're not too hot not too cold just like to have liquid water and so we thought we had to have goldilocks

but now we realize that because we found life and in thermal trenches deep in the oceans where we didn't think life could exist it opens up the possibility of where we might find life, even in our own solar system, like some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, where because they're going round such a massive planet, the gravitational forces sort of heat up waters under an icy shell. So there could be life, a moon like Enceladus, but we don't see it because it's underneath this icy shell,

but it's just exciting what could be out there I guess it means as well what you're thinking of when you say life on other planets you're thinking about you know

the equivalent of humans or you're thinking about something totally different it could be just some sludge which don't get me wrong it's life I'll be happy for you

but I'm kind of looking for like the alien type, you know, the classic. Yes, yes. With the extra eye and slightly green. Something like that. Yeah, something fun like that. As depicted on Star Trek. An unexpected limb, an unexpected head. Yes.

Eyes. But you see, the thing is those aliens generally look like us, but, you know, with an extra appendage. But it's easier for the costume department. It is, yes. But I like like coming up with a few years ago i was invited to make a portrait of an alien and i came up with this um sort of a we have um planets like jupiter where we don't even know if it's got a rocky core so it's just atmosphere and so i came up with this lovely um sort of back the size of a football pitch. And it was like a blob.

And it wasn't all our DNA and our bodies are carbon based, but this was silicon based. And it sort of sucked in nutrients from the atmosphere. And but it communicated through lights, scintillation. So it's sending communication through lights and just totally way away from anything that we know. And there's a whole area of science called astrobiology and as we detect these exoplanets and look at their atmospheres it's working out what sort of life could live on a planet like that and to me that's mind-boggling it's like science fiction and science so you take the science we know and take it in and extrapolate it out. And it's just wonderful. I'm sure that's the most addictive thing about working in an area such as space,

is that if you've got a kernel of something, you can just push it. If you can think it, it might be a thing. Yes. And also, because what I love about science fiction is it sort of inspires scientists. So like the communicators on Star Trek became mobile phones. You can see an idea and think, well, hold it, why can't we do that? Okay, that is science fiction, but it's usually based on some reality. So yeah, let's investigate, let's do it. Yeah, and a lot of people that worked on science fiction projects

are probably people that had a real passion for space and knowledge and try and, you know, get as much as they can. Yes. Right. Imagination go wild. Yes, and I love that. Yes, right. And get as much as they can. Yes. Right. Imagination go wild. Yes. I love that. And it just leads to different opportunities

and also sometimes drives the science as well. So do you sometimes watch things with your daughter like science fiction films and things and then she'll say, how realistic is this one? Yes. If it's good science fiction, then I can suspend disbelief. Because I must say, I love science fiction. Science fiction saved me.

Because as a dyslexic, I hated reading. But my sister would tell me about some of the science fiction books she read. My sister, Hal. And I'd say, oh my, that sounds amazing. And I'd actually read the book. I'd get half the words wrong, but I'd read the book because it was such a compelling story. So I love that.

And yes, my daughter and I do sort of watch science fiction together. And I try and suspend the disbelief as much as possible because I want to enjoy it but sometimes it's hmm okay you've pushed it too far this ain't happening it's probably quite often isn't it if you're honest uh well I think it's all incredibly exciting and I feel like yeah we should put a date in our diary for like 20 years and do our next installment in space well it could give space or mars i mean we've got options my diary is clear um and until then i want you to live long and prosper please i'd say to you thank you so much lovely to speak to you really nice to talk to you too i'm all excited i am i feel like this place is cool. It's all out there. See, isn't Maggie just so warm and infectious?

And I hope that she and her daughter get to have that exploration of space together. It's pretty magical. I'd quite like to go to space. My 10-year-old Ray is in the room. Ray, would you go to space with me? If we could, if there was like a rocket that would take us to space, would you want to go with me? Mama! He's walking away from me.

Fine. Did you say fine? Maybe. Maybe. All right. Mickey, I'll be there in a second i might get a speed stick i won't be there for ages well yeah it's unlikely to be a quick trip let's face it but you know imagine seeing the earth from space that would be pretty amazing anyway i work on that i'm not sure i found my space companion just yet. Maybe. It's probably the most sensible answer, to be fair, by the time we get to it.

Anyway, yes, thank you so much to Maggie. Thank you so much to you, of course, and to producer Claire, editor Richard, and lovely Ella May, who does the artwork. I've got so many more amazing women coming up for you in the next few weeks. And I realised yesterday, actually, when I did my recording yesterday, it was my 90th recording. I've spoken to 90 amazing women.

How cool is that? Anyway, I'm being heckled from the other room by my four-year-old. His patience doesn't last too long. I'm coming, Mickey. And I've got things to tidy. Oh, I decorated the boys' room. I've got three of my kids in one room, and I've redecorated it this week. And, you know, there's that fun bit where you decorate and everything looks really lovely.

You start putting things back in, and you're like, oh, it looks great. And then you realize it's because you've only put a third of the things back that should go in there. So upstairs, there's a bath that's filled with boxes of all the other stuff. And quite frankly, I could probably just put that whole lot in the bin now and just have what we've got. You all right, Ray? But anyway, it does look lovely, though. I put a bit of wallpaper up in one corner of the room. It looks bloody lovely.

I get excessively overexcited about it. But then my seven-year-old Jesse is the same as me he's decided when he's older he wants to be someone who helps people organize their homes so he's put up some little acrylic shelves for all his little display items and he just said to me he's on the top bunk he said mummy the ladder up to my bed is the stairs to heaven now I'm in heaven in my bedroom he's so happy he and I get very excited about interiors it's a nice way to be and I think Ray's happy with it too kids get very excited about interiors. It's a nice way to be. And I think Ray's happy with it too. Kit's not so sure. Anyway, I better go. Mickey's calling me.

See you next week. Take care of yourselves. Have a lovely time. Lots of love. Bye. Thank you.