Episode 125 - Interview with artist, author and scientist Dr James O’Hanlon

Transcript

Michael (00:00:01)

Hello and welcome back to another season of Let's Talk SciComm, season 17. We have a fantastic lineup of interviews for you, with some great Listen to This If… style episodes as well that we can't wait to share with you. This season we'll be releasing all of our episodes on a Friday.

And also a reminder to sign up to our newsletter The ChitChat, if you haven't done so already. The ChitChat will bring the best of Let's Talk SciComm directly into your inbox, with some great tips and advice on science communication and the latest on what Jen and I have been thinking about or what we've been reading or watching, and also some great science communication events.

So without further delay, for the first episode of this season, we have our interview with Dr. James O'Hanlon.

Jen (00:00:55)

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of Let's Talk SciComm, my favourite place to be.

I'm Jen Martin and as ever, I am joined by my very dear friend, colleague, partner in crime, compatriot, I need to think of some more words, Michael Wheeler. Hello Michael.

Michael (00:01:13)

Hiya, Jen. We got three hellos from you there, so we know that's going to be a good omen for the episode.

Jen (00:01:20)

Yeah, can you tell I'm a bit excited, like really excited? So today we are welcoming a really excellent, excellent science communicator to the podcast. His name is Dr. James O'Hanlon. He's really accomplished a whole lot of things, Michael. We're just going to feel really inadequate in this episode, okay?

So James is an amazing storyteller, artist, illustrator, podcast host. Of course he's a scientist as well. And I recently had the lovely experience of actually getting to spend some time with him in person. I was up in Armidale in the New England area of New South Wales and I didn't even realise James lived there.

So we often get James to come and talk with our students about how they can visually communicate their science. And we were chatting at the end of the lecture and James [was like], "Oh, are you going to be here soon?" I'm like, "Where's here?" Because I didn't even know he lived in Armidale. But it meant that we got to hang out a bit, but also that I got to see some of James' incredible artwork in real life.

So everyone, go to James' website and have a look at some of these amazing cool murals in the street. Like I'm just walking down the street, amazing artwork beside me. I'm like, "Hey, I know the bloke who did that". So... So yes, James is very cool.

But if we go back, he's got a PhD in animal behaviour. And his research focused on an area that a lot of people wouldn't think of and that is invertebrates. You know, people are, tend to be much more excited about vertebrates than invertebrates. But James loves invertebrates. So praying mantises, ants, spiders, stick insects, all the things.

And he's done all the academic stuff. So he's published widely in the academic literature. He's researched as a postdoc. He's been a lecturer. But the reason we really wanted to talk to James today is because he also is very experienced at translating that science for different audiences as... So as I've said, in art, but also in writing and in speaking.

So I want to tell you a little bit about some of his books, which we're going to ask him about. So James has produced both children and adults’ books. An amazing book called "Silk & Venom: The incredible lives of spiders", I think played a really important role in helping people to like spiders more or at least be less stressed about spiders, which is important.

He illustrated a gorgeous children's book which was published earlier this year called "Sid and the Very Hard to Find Squid", which I am officially saying is a tongue twister. Most recently, James has just published a new popular science book called "Liars, cheats and copycats: Trickery and deception in nature". So this is about camouflage and mimicry and other amazing natural history deceptions. Can't wait to hear about that. There's another kids' book on the way with some very dear friends of mine called the "Mystery of the Missing Turtles". You get the idea Michael, this bloke has done amazing things.

So James these days works part-time as a science communicator and project manager with our very good mate Tullio Rossi at Animate Your Science. He also works freelance as an artist and a storyteller. And because he's ridiculously crazy as well as amazing, I think he's also recently started a second PhD because everybody needs two PhDs. So James, we're going to ask you about that later, but we're really chuffed that you could make time to speak with us today. So welcome to Let's Talk SciComm.

James (00:04:43)

Thank you Jen and thanks Michael for having me here. That was a very delightful intro to listen to.

Michael (00:04:50)

Oh, thanks James. We're so pleased to chat with you.

And I feel like spiders, you know, a lot of people are scared of them. Confession, I do get nervous around spiders, I have to say.

James (00:05:01)

Yeah, even just from a purely quantitative point of view, spiders are the most scary animals on the planet. They are the biggest phobia beyond flying, beyond dogs, beyond heights. Spiders are number one, which is a real conundrum. And the psychologists are studying because it doesn't make any sense. They're on the whole harmless. We're talking about 50,000 species of spiders. A small handful of them can cause us harm, but on, the most of them don't. So it's a classic phobia. It's an irrational fear that we have of these critters.

So yeah, it makes sense to try to figure out what's actually going on. How did they get this number one spot in our minds? So yeah, for a while was forming this idea in my head of that there needs to be a book out there that I have to, that I can point people towards that tells them the truth about spiders. And I went looking for the book and couldn't really find... You know, there's lots of cool books out there about spiders but I had this idea of a book in my head. And I couldn't find it because it didn't exist. And that's when it kind of clicked and went, maybe I could write it. And so I did.

Michael (00:06:10)

Yeah, wow.

Jen (00:06:15)

I think that is awesome that you decided to write the book. And I have to explain why I laughed heartily before, not because I was laughing at you wanting to be a marine biologist, but just because not only is that also my story, but it's my husband's story. Half the people I know were like, "Yeah, I'm going to be a marine biologist". And we did it for a few years and went, "Nah, I want to find something else that's more interesting". And for you and I, we both ended up in this kind of animal behaviour world. And for you, you ended up with these really, really fascinating invertebrates. And I'm sure if anyone can convince Michael to love spiders, it's you because of your incredible storytelling skills.

James (00:06:49)

There's a book I can recommend you, Michael. You should check...

Michael (00:06:54)

So have you converted anyone? Have you made people who were previously nervous about spiders less nervous?

James (00:07:01)

I have. I've had the odd person reach out with a random email, just letting me know that they finished the book, and they've always hated spiders and now they're starting to see them in a new light. And that's... So I can't explain how wonderful that is to hear because that was kind of the whole point of writing this book, is to kind of just grab people by the ears and tell them that spiders are cool and scream it in their faces and hopefully change some people's minds, yeah.

Michael (00:07:30)

Fantastic. So to all of the listeners out there who are like me, a bit nervous about spiders, a strong recommendation there then.

But, you know, your work spans so many different things James. You know, working across science, illustration, writing and communication. And I'm always fascinated to meet people that combine science with art. Have you always been an artist?

James (00:07:56)

Yeah, the arts came first really. It's always been there. I was the kid locked in his room night after night, just drawing things with pencil and paper. And I guess maybe I assumed that being an artist wasn't a real job so I'd go and get a real job like being a scientist. And you realise it's not really a real job either so... inevitably it all sort of comes back.

But I started to realise when I was doing science that I'd almost kind of filled the same I don't know, need or desire in my brain or niche? And I think it's this whole idea of creation of, creating things yeah? As an artist, you can have an idea and you can bring it to life with just paint and... or clay or an instrument or whatever that might be.

You go through that same sort of process as a scientist. You identify a knowledge gap and then just through your own elbow grease and counting in some clever spreadsheet use, you can bring about knowledge that never existed before. And it's almost like this little kind of mini playing god a bit. As an artist you can bring something into the world, a story or a character that never existed before you. As a scientist, you can bring knowledge and information to the world that would have never existed before you. It's a really fulfilling way of, of existing I think.

Michael (00:09:19)

Yeah, I think that's a really good description of art and science, that they both are really fundamentally about generating something that's new, that hasn't existed in the world. Yeah, I guess people often think about them as kind of being like very different, you know, different parts of our brain. You know, you can, you either do one or the other. But yeah, they're very similar.

Jen (00:09:46)

So James, I'd love to talk more with you about this kind of merging of different things because as Michael's just said, you do a whole lot of different things. You know, you could be called an illustrator, you could be called a writer, you could be called a specialist in outreach, all of the things.

If someone asks you what do you do, how do you describe that career? And I guess I'd love to hear some advice from you about: You know, what do you wish other early career scientists listening might know about how you build kind of a hybrid career? Or this, you know, follow this kind of unconventional pathway? How can that look? And you know, has it been easy? Has it been difficult? What do you know now that you didn't know then?

James (00:10:27)

Yeah, as far as unconventional career pathways go, I think I've kind of got one of the weirdest ones. And for me, there was this little moment in time where it was... I don't know, not a make or break it kind of moment. To put it shortly, the beginning of 2020, my first child arrived, my postdoc ended, and the world went into lockdown all within the space of two weeks.

So it was this kind of line in the sand where I could go, Right, what am I kind of doing here? And that's the point at which I went around, I'm going to stop chasing the carrots, and jumped ship from academia altogether. I just started trying new things. And that meant doing a lot more science communication, picking up work in that area. And weirdly, diving into art and getting paid to do art. And this thing that was always a hobby suddenly became an income stream.

So yeah, now six years later, I have this weird career that is art and science and storytelling all combined together. Which, you know, is hard to talk about when you know, you're making small talk at the pub when someone goes, what do you do? Usually I just say I work freelance and then move on from there.

Michael (00:11:46)

Yeah, but I mean a lot of those things that you're doing now, like they seem like bigger, juicier carrots to me. It sounds like you're very fulfilled by the variety of work that you're involved with. And I guess part of that variety are the different audiences that you communicate to as well. You know, from kids to adults, scientists, non-scientists.

And you're often communicating about natural history, behavioural, ecology. You know, we often talk about this idea of simplifying the language but not the idea, because you still want to communicate that nuanced idea where you've got to change the language for the different audiences. How do you approach that challenge?

James (00:12:33)

I think I've come to understand it is, it's all about story. Whatever you're getting across, it needs to come down to some form of story. So it can have a hook or an arc or whatever type of story structure you want works for you. Find what that is. And there's a very simple reason for that, is that story is built into us as humans. It's kind of part of our DNA almost.

The way I like to think of it is story is the file format that this machine needs to process data. You know, you think about... There can be all sorts of data, mathematical data, climate data, socioeconomic data, whatever it is. And whatever you need to process that data in some way and you need to get that data in a particular file format to be read by whatever software or hardware the data is going to be used by. This machine here, this pink squishy machine in a brain, the file format it needs is story.

Jen (00:13:38)

That's a great analogy. I haven't heard... You know, obviously storytelling is something we think about and talk about, you know, endlessly. But I haven't heard that analogy before. It's a really good one James.

James (00:13:49)

And we can see it play in all sorts of different ways. The way that, you know, I would really really struggle to recite, you know, the three years of marine geoscience that I did. But I can do a pretty great job of telling you about the Spider-Man movie I watched for the first time last night because it was in the story format. Our brains are just wired to process things when it's in the story file format.

Jen (00:14:13)

So does that story approach allow you to then communicate quite complex science, do you think? You know in the... What Michael's getting at is this balance between accuracy and accessibility. Does the story give you the potential to then communicate a lot more detail, do you think?

James (00:14:31)

Yeah, it does, because even then you could squeeze in a little bit of jargon. You could squeeze in a whole lot of nuance if it is sort of wrapped up in things like character or narrative and those sorts of things. We can understand complex ideas if they're wrapped up in character motivation or a cause and effect type of stuff, yeah.

Michael (00:14:56)

I have a toddler now so I'm a big fan of kids' books and yeah, I mean I'd love to hear some examples from your book. You know, about how you're weaving in nuanced ideas into the narrative there. Because, you know, you've got that story. But then at the same time you know, there's science behind it.

I believe that with modern technology, you know, we've been getting a little bit better at finding colossal squid. So colossal squid are a thing right? They, they exist?

James (00:15:28)

Yep, they're a real creature, the world's largest invertebrate. But you know, I could have just written a fun fact kids' book about colossal squid because I think they're really cool. But I guess the complex idea that was wrapped up in that story is that I wanted to write a kids' book that showed that science wasn't about having answers.

You know, there's all these wonderful kids' books out there that are fun facts about animals or geology or whatever it is. And as a scientist, I was reading them going that's great, but it doesn't really get to what I think of as what science is. Science isn't about knowing stuff. Science is about not knowing stuff and being driven to find these things out. Can I turn that into a kids' book?

And so I came up with this idea of having a little character who's a young scientist who is just obsessed with a particular thing that he has to find. And that just so happens to be this mysterious animal that had never ever been seen in the wild before, even though it's this giant five meter long half a ton squid [that] hadn't been seen in the wild.

Until I go ahead and write a book about how no one had ever seen one in the wild. And what happens at the end of the space of about a month is that headlines... it hit the news. "Colossal squid spotted in the wild for the first time".

Michael (00:16:54)

Yeah, wow, what timing. So that was the first time that a colossal squid has been spotted in the wild.

James (00:17:03)

Yeah, a group called Ocean Census, a group that's all about discovering deep-sea marine life put a remote-controlled sub down in the ocean and just so happened to fly past a colossal squid, which was about this big. It was about 30 centimeters across. Is a baby colossal squid.

Michael (00:17:23)

Ah, a baby colossal squid. It's still called a colossal?

James (00:17:24)

Yeah, I guess so.

Jen (00:17:27)

A mini, mini colossal.

James (00:17:28)

Still counts.

Jen (00:17:30)

But James, I think you can take all the credit for that. Surely you visualised it. You made that happen. Surely this is how it works in the world, right?

James (00:17:38)

Yeah. So one of them universal synchronicities that would not have happened if I hadn't written this book. Oh yeah, I'll take partial credit.

Jen (00:17:44)

I'm giving you... No, I'm giving you all the credit. I think you manifested it. You manifested it and it happened.

James (00:17:50)

Thank you.

Michael (00:17:51)

I have to ask James, just out of interest, how big do they think colossal squid can grow to?

James (00:17:57)

So the biggest ones that they've pulled up or washed up on beaches are five meters long including their big long tentacles.

Michael (00:18:05)

Yeah, wow.

Jen (00:18:07)

That's a decent size.

James (00:18:08)

That's like the length of a room. Yeah.

Michael (00:18:09)

That's massive.

James (00:18:11)

There's a, there's the giant squid is longer but they're skinnier, so they don't weigh as much. So the colossal squid takes out the biggest invertebrate even though giant squid are longer.

Jen (00:18:25)

So James, we've got to stick with cool animal stories because they're one of my favourite things. So your new book, which rather than the colossal squid story for kids is for adults. So as I said, it's called... Yes. There it is. Look, I have ordered my copy. I've ordered my copy and I really hope to have it with me so I can hold it up and say "Look, look, look", but it hasn't arrived yet.

So please hold it up again. Beautiful looking book, "Liars, Cheats and Copycats". Here's one James prepared earlier. So this is all about kind of trickery and deception in nature. So I've got two questions for you. One, can you tell us what makes deception such a great, you know, such great fodder for storytelling? And two, have you got a favourite story that you can share with us from the book?

James (00:19:12)

Deception is all around us in nature. It's... and it's something that we're all kind of familiar with. We've all had that experience of you know, spotting what looks like a stick and realising there's something a little bit off about it. And all of a sudden it moves, and you realise it's a sticky insect.

We've seen those visual illusions happen in front of us. We've experienced an advertisement that's, was so utterly convincing that we hit the Buy Now button before even kind of thinking about it. There are all these little tricks that nature uses that are also work on us.

And so I think having that experience of being swindled ourselves makes understanding deception nature just that little bit more interesting and weirdly relatable I think. In terms of a favorite example. Umm... Don't make me choose. I don't know.

Jen (00:20:10)

Well, they're all your beautiful babies.

James (00:20:13)

Well okay. Well, let's stick with the cephalopod theme then. We've just been talking about colossal squid. There are these really sneaky cuttlefish that we get on the east coast of Australia where the males will masquerade as females. I shouldn't use the word masquerade. I've got my pedantic scientist head going, Well, no, that connotates something else. Anyway, they pretend to be females.

Jen (00:20:40)

Will present themselves.

James (00:20:41)

Present themselves as females to avoid the aggression of other competitive males. And they do it in this really fancy way. So we know cuttlefish, they can change colour, really fast and in intricate ways.

What they do is a male will sidle up to a female and on one side of his body, the side that's facing the female, he'll put on the mating display, these big bold almost zebra stripes. They signal to a female his intentions.

On the other side of his body, where any other observing males might be, he dresses like a female. He says to that male, "Nothing to see here. It's just a couple of girls hanging out. No need to get aggressive".

Which raises all these questions of what's going on in that cuttlefish's mind. Does he actually know what the signals on his back are and what they mean? [It's] intentionally communicating one thing to one individual and another thing to another individual. It's... Yeah.

Jen (00:21:39)

It's amazing.

Michael (00:21:39)

I think that's fascinating. I actually wanted to ask about that. You know, because in humans, I guess, deception is associated with intelligence.

We know, you know, that we're being deceptive. You know, I'm being deceptive right now. I've got a shirt on, but you don't know that I'm wearing my comfy shorts. So, you know, just saying, they must be highly intelligent.

James (00:22:00)

You don't know what I'm wearing below this shirt, yeah.

Jen (00:22:02)

I thought you were about to say Michael, "But you don't know that I don't have any pants on at all". And I was like just don't stand up then, okay?

Michael (00:22:10)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, I mean, is it the same in nature? Is deception associated with intelligence? Do these animals know they're being deceptive?

James (00:22:21)

So for the longest time, it was assumed that animals couldn't lie because we thought, well, us humans must be the only ones smart enough to be able to lie. But of course, now we know that they do, and there are lots of examples of animals that do.

Interestingly, I don't know if there's a link to intelligence, but there seems to be a link to sociality. So animals that seem to use what they call tactical deception in nature. There's more examples coming from apes, from monkeys, from dogs, from rodents. So perhaps lying is an adaptation to survive and to get along peacefully and cooperatively in societies.

And it's something that we can see in ourselves. You know, we use nice little mistruths just to get along with each other. As that person that cannot hold their tongue and that has to be honest about everything, they don't hold on to friends for very long.

Jen (00:23:22)

Yeah, I mean it...

James (00:23:24)

So maybe it is an adaptation just to get along in a social group.

Jen (00:23:28)

I think that totally makes sense. You know, when people ask you which superpower would you rather have and one of the options is mind reading. And you're like, The last thing I want is to know what everyone around me is thinking. Just not a chance.

But that makes sense from an evolutionary point of view that one of the things we've developed if we want to live in communities and societies is yeah, ways of easing out difficulties. And if that means a bit of deception here and there, then that makes total sense to me.

James (00:23:55)

And even just for individuals within their societies, you know, as we know, evolution, natural selection still works on individual reproduction. If individuals can put themselves ahead of it and exploit those within their societies, then it makes sense that lying would evolve in those contexts.

And they're the sort of things that we see when we're talking about lying in animals, ways that animals will use like a false alarm calls to make all of their their family members flee. And then they can run around and steal all the food that their family members have left so...

Michael (00:24:28)

Yeah, wow. Yeah and I suppose, you know, evolution is something that's always occurring. And, you know, even evolution in terms of the fields that we work in, I do want to talk about that.

I'm curious to ask you about the evolution of your field or, you know, science in general, because the world is rapidly changing. What kind of skills do you think scientists will need most? And especially scientists out there who are keen on blending science and art and you know, creative pursuits?

James (00:25:08)

Well, unsurprisingly, I'm going to say that science communication is a wonderful skill that scientists are going to have to have. We've talked about this kind of stuff before. That to succeed as a scientist, you don't just need to get good results and do good science. Your science has to have high impact. It needs to be cited by others. It needs to be read by others. You need to be that high profile researcher. It's all about playing that metrics game.

There's a difference between being a good scientist and being a successful scientist. The successful scientist is the one that gets out there. It's kind of no different to every other field. You can be a good singer and a successful singer. Skill sets need to be the successful singer are being seen and being liked by lots of people.

So if you can do good science and also be an effective communicator and get that science out in front of the people that matter, be that within your field, be it in front of politicians, whoever it is. That's the skill that you're going to need to survive in the, you know, the hyper competitive industry that science is.

Michael (00:26:10)

That's a great analogy because I'm a good singer but nobody, you know, recognises that.

James (00:26:17)

Your Spotify downloads are starting to getting up there.

Michael (00:26:18)

No, I'm a terrible...

Jen (00:26:24)

Just before Michael starts singing James, I think we need to cut that off at the pass. I just really quickly have to ask you, we can't end without asking you a very important question. Are you really doing a second PhD and why? Is it just so we're all going to have to call you Doctor Doctor?

James (00:26:43)

I mean, like I said, doing good science didn't work for my academic career, so I'm going for quantity over quality... See if that works this time. No, it came about because now that I'm working in the arts a lot and writing these books. You know, books are a strange... thing. You can't really make a living from writing books.

But I wanted to, I really enjoy it and want to do more of it, so I was looking for ways that I could support writing another book and doing another big creative piece. And you're looking around for grants that might support it. And another local writer pointed out to me that I might be eligible for a scholarship to do what's called a creative practice PhD.

So instead of doing research like you would in a, your run-of-the-mill PhD, your work is a major creative work. So for some people that might be I don't know, composing a symphony or writing a novel or a collection of paintings that make an installation. And I thought I've always wanted to try my hand at a graphic novel because I write and I illustrate and it makes sense to put all those things together and do a graphic novel. And so I pitched to do a creative practice PhD where I write a graphic novel and weirdly they said yes and so now I'm doing a second PhD.

Jen (00:28:11)

I think that is absolutely awesome. And I'm just going to start calling you Doctor Doctor James right now.

James (00:28:19)

I'm going to insist on it from here on in. And I was never one to be a stickler for the Doctor title.

But now that I'm at two, I'm going to insist on Doctor Doctor. Yeah.

Michael (00:28:26)

That's fascinating.

Jen (00:28:28)

Totally fair enough.

Michael (00:28:30)

With those creative practice PhDs, is there a whole...? Do you like discuss the creative work as well as produce the creative work?

James (00:28:39)

Yeah, so along with the major creative work, you produce an exegesis. It's not quite a thesis. It's a little mini thesis. They're called an exegesis. That is essentially a big long essay, a couple of chapters describing the research that went into your piece, how it fits into other theory within, the arts or humanities.

So the piece I'm working on is all about animal ethics and conservation. I haven't completely jumped ship from the fun animal stories. And I'm using a graphic novel to ask questions about why we care. Why do we care about conserving species?

The easy answer would be because you know, biodiversity and happy functioning ecosystems and things, but is that really why we care about koalas and pandas and all these cute cuddly things? What else is actually going on in our motivations there?

Michael (00:29:32)

Yeah, wow. Well, that's fantastic. I mean, best of luck to you, soon to be Doctor Doctor.

James (00:29:36)

A couple of years yet, we'll see.

Michael (00:29:40)

Well, we are getting to the time in the podcast now where we must switch gears a little bit. And we're going to ask you the really tough questions. So we've done the warm up.

James (00:29:50)

Alright.

Michael (00:29:56)

Quick questions, quick answers. The first one that I would like to ask you, soon to be Dr. Dr. James, what topic in science do you always feel excited about?

James (00:30:13)

It's whenever... It's a bit like the colossal squid story. It's whenever a something suddenly appears out of nowhere. It's whenever an animal that hasn't been seen for 50 years all of a sudden is caught by a photographer.

Jen (00:30:26)

I can get very excited about those things too, James. I totally totally agree.

Okay, Doctor Doctor, next question is, is there a communication skill that you are currently trying to improve upon?

James (00:30:40)

I've been working on my... public speaking skills. I'm learning all of the little, the little ticks that you have. Little things they try and train out of you whenever you're having to do public speaking.

The first one I noted was I always used to end sentences with "and stuff". Now I talk about spiders and insects, praying mantises and stuff. And it just completely undermined any credibility that I had. And you kind of go, All right, if I'm going to be a communicator and a voice out there, I need to work on not saying "and stuff" all the time.

And the next thing is to stop moving my hands about like an orangutan, like you guys are seeing me do now, yeah.

Michael (00:31:27)

Yeah, wow. Yeah. It's funny, those little habits that we have.

Yeah. And, you know, a couple of words just erasing all credibility. You know, all of that hard work, you know, doing a PhD.

James (00:31:39)

Yeah. Yeah.

Michael (00:31:40)

Yeah. OK, next question, Dr. Dr. James. You mentioned in the opening that spiders are the number one phobia. Public speaking has to be up there, close to spiders. How do you deal with public speaking nerves?

James (00:31:59)

A bit of nerves are good because they give you the bit of energy that you might need to be a bit of an animated, interesting person. I don't know if I get public speaking nerves anymore now that I've been doing it long enough. So hopefully that's helpful to people that might be facing nerves is to know that it's not an insurmountable obstacle. And yeah, you get to be able to just channel that energy into your speaking and your performance as opposed to it being [a] worry.

Jen (00:32:34)

Yeah, great. Just keep on going and it gets easier.

James (00:32:37)

Umm-hmm.

Jen (00:32:38)

Next question James. Does coffee, tea or something else get you going and fuel you?

James (00:32:45)

It's coffee. And I can say that quite confidently. So I never ever ever drank coffee for most of my life. And something weird happened after having kids. Suddenly... You know, it always tasted like, I always used to describe it as hot cigarette water because it's what coffee tasted like.

And suddenly, after having kids, my brain has kind of just sent that information to another part of my brain going, Yeah, this is... this is actually quite good. And I think the nice thing about having that revelation as an adult is that I actually get to experience sort of the self-awareness and knowing that feeling of when a coffee kicks in, and feeling it as being a bit abnormal. And so yeah. Yep, my go-to.

Michael (00:33:29)

That's great. I'm a big fan of coffee. I love when people are converted to become coffee drinkers, so join us.

James (00:33:36)

It's helped my social life immensely, being a coffee drinker, because I was always that person going for English breakfast tea when everyone's getting a nice, easy coffee. So yeah, I recommend it.

Michael (00:33:48)

Yep. Alrighty. Well, final question then. What is your very top tip for communicating effectively about science?

James (00:33:59)

[The] one I've already said. Find the story, find the arc, find the hook, find the character at the center of it and follow them through.

It's not just about explaining without jargon what, I don't know, radioisotope carbon dating is. You know, find the story that goes with it.

Jen (00:34:20)

Excellent, excellent advice James. And just absolutely excellent to spend some time with you, Dr. Dr. James.

James (00:34:29)

Thank you so much.

Jen (00:34:30)

It is so fabulous to get to unpick a little bit more about the incredible work you do. And I really did mean what I said in the intro. I found it very inspiring being in Armidale, walking down the street with our mutual excellent friend, Deb Bower. Her going, "James painted that". "Yeah, James painted that." I even took some pictures because they just, you know, that's a really powerful way to communicate with people, in a way that most of us I think just don't have the skills to do.

So congratulations on your books, your incredible murals, just all the great things that you're doing. And of course, thanks always for coming and speaking and sharing your skills with our students. That means a lot to us too.

James (00:35:07)

Thank you both for having me. It's been wonderful.

Michael (00:35:09)

Thanks James. It's been a pleasure.

Michael (00:35:31)

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, we'd love you to tell a friend about the podcast or leave us a review. And you can reach out to us on social media.

And also a big thank you to our production team, Steven Tang and Madeleine Kelly.