Culture and Science – Robin Ince

You're listening to scientists, not the science. My name is Dr Stuart Higgins. This episode contains strong language. Hello, welcome to scientists, not the science. The show that looks at what it means to be a scientist. I'm Stuart, I'm a physicist, working in biomedical engineering. And what that actually means is that I spend all day in a university lab trying to make new materials that can help us understand how cells interact with their environment. Now, normally I don't do an introduction like that because this show isn't about science. You're not going to hear my guests talk about quantum mechanics because instead I explore what it's like to be a scientist. And to do that, I interviewed not only scientists, but also people who can show me an alternative perspective too. This week, my guest is multi-award-winning comedian, writer and performer, Robin Inns. Yes, hello, I am Robin Inns. I present a podcast, wrote radio full-show, called The Infinite Monkey Cage with Professor Brian Cox. The Infinite Monkey Cage is an award-winning radio show and podcast, which explores different scientific ideas by discussing them with a panel of scientists and comedians. Robin also has a rich back catalog of shows that have featured science. But I am basically someone with no great knowledge but a large amount of curiosity. So where did that curiosity come from? I did really enjoy science up to the age of 13. I got a very bad result in my first physics exam when I changed schools, 18%. But that meant that science was in tatters for me then. So I moved far more closely towards the arts. I always wanted to be a performer or a writer from a very early age. I was a stand-up really from the age of 21-22. I did my first stand-up gig when I was 18 years old and then I was a full-time stand-up from the age of 22. During this time, Robin began reading more science and science fiction. And that made me think, I wonder how I can turn this in stand-up? Or can I turn it into stand-up? And so that's really what led to me now for the last 10 years. I suppose most of my work is in some ways involving some communication and scientific ideas in frivolous and facetious ways. A part of Robin's inspiration for incorporating science into his work was a reaction to psychics on TV and the prevalence of high street stores selling ineffective remedies. So that made me annoyed because I thought there's so many people being fleeced all of the time. So how can I at least talk about this because when you were not necessarily for any educational purposes, but when you are enraged by something sometimes jumping up and down on stage for 20 minutes and talking about it, create some sense of relief. It is the balm of show business fury. Then that expanded from there and I thought, well, I need to know a lot more about the world and I need to have a far deeper understanding of many of the things that I'm using on a day-to-day basis. For Robin, it's important that the achievements of science aren't forgotten and that people don't begin to take them for granted. We have had three generations of people who have not faced many of the difficulties and brutalities of existence which most other generations have had. So therefore, we have such easy access to the internet, such easy access to clean water, to vaccination and to health and to hopefully long life that we become rather blasé. And we've almost written out science from being part of that story. We just kind of take it as read that, hey, you lived this age and you can take some pills and everyone's gonna be better. So we are using science all the time and we're using technology all the time and we just presume it will always be there. - One thing that I've, you know, having researched you for this interview that you'll clearly have this great understanding of science, you're clearly very much involved with scientists, are you a scientist? - No, I don't have a great understanding of science either. I'm very shallow. I think one of the great differences between someone who is predominantly doing some form of entertainment and a real scientific researcher is tenacity. I can be flippant and I can be easily distracted and in fact, one of the complaints that I've had sometimes from scientists is you've made it look like it's too much fun. 'Cause of course when you're on stage, you're talking about the most exciting moments of science and you're talking about some of the most ridiculous and some of the most exuberant moments of discovery. But as I realize, a lot of it is being in a lab and just repeating something over and over and over again, praying for an anomaly or the lack of an anomaly or whatever it might be. And at the end of 10 years going, oh well, it turned out that everything was fine, nothing's changed. What I see my job as being, if we can call it a job, is saying to people, don't be scared of approaching science and also don't be worried about the fact you probably won't get a deep understanding because as we know the number of branches of science are so many now and in that tiny little section, you have to have an enormous amount of knowledge and then the rest of science, you may well know almost nothing about. Just have fun with it. Don't pick up a book about quantum intertermacy and at the end of the book you go, oh, I still don't really understand it and then you put it down thinking, therefore you don't have a scientific brain therefore it's not for you. And you have to explain and go, no, the thing is though, why do you are reading that? Where there are little moments where you went, bloody hell, that's amazing isn't it? And that's weird and I hadn't thought of it like that. That's making me rethink the table that I'm looking at. All of those things are part of the fun of it. Sometimes I find it really challenging to excite non-scientists about the same scientific ideas that excite me and I find this not only for straighting but it also feels like failure, a failure to communicate properly. So I wondered what does Robin think of this? - I think one, you have to accept, if you actually went back and realized the starting point of the depth of understanding you have now, we're talking about years. And I think sometimes jargon is necessary. Sometimes there are ideas where if I wish to approach them, I have to first of all get a glossary and I have to be prepared to, I mean I think people who embarrassed about stopping you. 'Cause really, I find quite often with Brian Cox or Jim Crowley or whoever it might be that I'm a little poor nurse, I'll be sitting there and there'll be a point where I think I have to stop then I have to say can you say that again? Now as human beings, we're always worried about showing our ignorance and we may well be thrown out of the tribe for that, there's something there going on in the backs of our mind. And that's the important thing is to say, stop me at any point. - And I think the same thing happens with scientists and talks, feeling unable to interrupt to clarify what the speaker is saying. - I told this to Brian once when I was doing a lecture thing with him. And at one point he turned to me and said, what's that equal Robin? I said, I don't know, I'm not even listening to you at the moment. I stopped about four minutes ago 'cause I'm just collating something you said earlier. And very often when you have science being presented by one person for an hour, you actually need pauses every 10 minutes where they go, and now we're going to stop. I just have a little think. - If I sit in a talk by a chemist who's synthesizing a new molecule, I have no idea. I have absolutely no idea. That's the same for me, that's the same experience as somebody who doesn't have a physics background listening to me go on in a jargon lane way about my work. Those are the same feelings and yet somehow a scientist feeling that is somehow different than somebody else feeling that in a way that presents a more of a barrier. Scientists have somehow got over in their head that actually they can, it's okay. I'm used to this feeling of not understanding most of the time. - Well, I think that's an important, but it's almost what we mentioned before, which is of course, everyone is so specialized now. And this is another danger that we get in terms of public understanding of science when it's used by the mass media, which is scientists are sometimes presented as having parity when in fact one scientist is from a totally different area of knowledge. And so you get to certain things where something is being stirred up, some form of either a paranoia or some form of journalism. And they'll dig out someone from biochemistry to talk about something which is actually about particle physics, whatever it might be. Or the carbon content of ice samples. And you go, but that person's not even from that branch, but they're saying, oh, with this scientist says, so you are right, there is a problem, which is people view, we still see you as a separate tribe and a creature with perhaps a different, well, I don't anymore. But as having a separate kind of brain. And also as one tribe, as though the scientists have spoken speaking all from the scientists and actually that it's such a diverse range and we're all continually arguing in a nice way. And there are scientists who are absolute idiots on an enormous number of subjects. They're quite brilliant on what they do. But in other stuff, you go, why the, why has he said that? Robin, along with producer Trent Burton, run Cosmic Shambles, a network that brings together podcasts and video interviews on science and the arts. This includes lots of interviews with working scientists about why they do what they do, and more deeply what they believe, what they believe. So what's Robin hoping to achieve through Cosmic Shambles? A lot of what I'm working is to give people enough of a taster for them to decide, I want to know more about that. And then they will go off to the books and then they will go off to the longer documentaries and all of those things. So that's really what Cosmic Shambles is. And it's also normalizing scientists. - With such a huge archive of interviews with so many scientists, I was interested in the patterns that Robin had observed. He told me he noticed the different sources of inspiration for scientists. For some, it was a great science teacher, although not always the case, but for many of a certain age, the big inspiration was space. - The space race played an enormous part on their education. There was NASA, and so you have the astronauts, then Russia got the cosmos, then you got this race going, and then some of them were old enough to just have some vague memory of Neil Armstrong standing on the moon. And they were driven by a mixture of the genuine science that was going on and a huge amount of 1970s TV. A lot of television was, even though it's kind of quite scary and paranoid, in another way it was quite positive. Most of it in the end said kind of science will win. Curiosity will win. We will be able to build the machines. Whereas a lot of the TV you see now, at the end of it all it turns out. that we will continue to live in a dystopia and everything crumbles and everyone dies. My favourite quote is, "Nobody was happy and then everyone died." And that kind of almost feels like where we are now, where the 1970s was like, "We're gonna build stuff and we are gonna live on the moon, "but then the moon's gonna be blasted into bits "and we're gonna end up flying through space "on a bit of the moon." Which, you know, all this one. And it was this wonderful mix as well of all of the crappy pseudo science that was out there. That's another thing, a lot of my generation, they got into science because they were interested in bigfoot. We would see this footage of bigfoot and we would hear about, you know, Eric Vondannakin explaining how my intemples were built by aliens. - There's something really beautiful in my mind, at least, of the idea that there's a generation of scientists who were influenced by the culture around them, influenced by the arts. And that is the reason they came into science. And they all generate science. And then people will incorporate their science into current culture. And that will facilitate the next generation of science. That feels really wonderful loop, the whole civilization is built around the interplay between these different things. A little bit of a pretentious grand idea. But it's not a pretentious thing. - It's not amazing. - It's interesting, isn't it? That's one of the things that I think's possibly happened now is the idea of being intellectually aspirational is considered to somehow be pretentious. So, and I think it's, I don't know, it's infuriating that because of some of the arts-based people who don't have any desire to understand science because science means that it makes them ignorant. Because there is no way, if you want to get interested in science from the first things that you are confronted by, is the broadness of your ignorance. - I mean, I love what when we want to do the tours with Brian and we do a Q and A. And whenever we've done Q and A's on any of the stuff that we've done, people will so often start their question with, I know it's probably a stupid question. But what lies behind that simple question is of course an enormous number of human beings who spend a very long amount of time trying to get to the first smidgings of understanding. That's one of the things we really have to battle with science communication and for people generalities, do not be scared of your question. If you want to know something and it really comes from your heart, it's not a stupid question then. It just means you don't know it because you haven't spent your life as a scientist or you may have only recently decided you're interested in science again. Well, you may have only become interested in science as you sat in that auditorium there and then mainly watching some comedians, whatever it might be. And I think that's, again, I mentioned it already, but that's one of the biggest battles is to say, your question is not stupid if your question comes from the heart. - I get as a sadness that, oh, you do realize scientists are the same. I wonder how you show non-scientists that actually know that. That's a perfectly normal feeling and everyone feels that. - You literally just have to tell them whenever you're in certain, you know, you can use those examples and say this is not, don't think that every scientist, once they get to a certain point, has an understanding of all of these different subjects and don't think there aren't some scientists that have got a tremendously long way. And if you actually get to some of the very basic questions, they might go, oh, hang on a minute, I'm stumbling a bit here. I mean, it's much easier for me to ask questions because I have no speciality. I'm someone who doesn't know very much, who wishes to know more. Therefore, I may well ask a very stupid question. - I noticed when I was reading through things, you mentioned yourself as kind of an idiot bridge or part of my job is to say, look, I'm an idiot. The word I wrote down was storytellers. Is that a prerequisite for science to exist? That's actually in the scientific establishment, you need storytellers, you need people who are gonna leave that narrative. - Yeah, I think so. I mean, so many of them do involve stories. Nearly all, yes, the end result might be something which is predominantly numerical on a blackboard. But what lies behind that is normally a story, is normally moments where someone has suddenly noticed an aberration in the behavior of something, for instance. So I think the stories are very, very important and most people, most scientists have stories as well. - So my point is though that actually maybe scientists aren't the best people to tell those stories. - Some of them aren't, but they're not always the best ones. But I think it's also very important for those if someone else takes the job of storyteller, it's very important for them to not also take on the mantle of being the person who holds the knowledge. If you see that, because I think that's the, sometimes I watch TV shows and I think this person is pretending that they know what has been scripted for them and they understand it. And I think it's very important to show the fact that you are a spectator conveying this story, not the person with a deep understanding. - So you are exposed to lots of scientists and you're clearly exposed to lots of science ideas. Are you ever exposed to the machinations of the industry of science, all the stuff that's going on behind all the papers? - Do you know what? I try and ignore, in every world I try and ignore that, because it won't really affect me and it may well depress me. So in the same way with actually with the way the media works, you know, sometimes someone will say, "Don't you realize you've just met the head of radio for?" And I'll go, "Oh, I just didn't realize." I try not to know about the organizations, the conspiracies and all of those things that lie behind. I'm just very interested in the ideas. - I'm smiling because that's essentially the antithesis of this podcast, which I really like. I like the idea that I've gone the other way and gone. I'm gonna break it all open and see what's behind. - Oh, I think that, I think it's great to make sure that information is out there. As well, I think it should always be accessible. But I find that, well, no, I'm not sure it is the same thing, 'cause what I'm thinking about is actually very much the politics, finding out about the enormous problems of getting funded and all of those kind of things. I try and, 'cause it just oppresses me. It oppresses me when I meet scientists who have wonderful ideas and are unable to get funded. And of course, that's something that has been equally depressive when meeting filmmakers who can't get, you know, there are so many brilliantly creative people who do not have the, sometimes the political wherewithal to make what they want to make. But in terms of some of the other mash-knit, yeah. I mean, I've always been, the ego thing is a fascinating thing to watch as well. Because I think sometimes when you're in show business, you presume there is a different form of ego. And in fact, in every single, you know, the first time a scientist was worried about the positioning of their name on a poster, I thought, oh, here we go. It's the Butch and Sundance quandary. That's really fascinating, 'cause you do come across scientists and interestingly, their ego, they're driven by their ego and their ego influences their science, influences how they interact with other people, influences how they persist with their ideas quite often. And you can meet people who are quite arrogant, but actually are, to some extent, driving their particular field. And because it can be quite a singular activity science in your view, if you're just just you coming up with the ideas and dragging everyone else along with you, then ego sometimes does something in that situation. Oh, I've certainly, there are certain heroes of science of mine who I've met people who work with them and have found out that, you know, and people who just said, well, I would never have worked with them again. Yeah, I can't. And that's what I quite like. Sometimes I'll pick Brian up when he'll sometimes talk about sciences. He's just this beautiful thing where scientists are gathering the field and look at the daisies and question the daisies. And we're all, you know, all of us are just constantly in awe of the scientific. And I think bull shit. There is quite a lot as well of, you know, the arrogance, it is not just about, I am merely a servant of nature. I am merely here to wonder, you know, and I think maybe he does, you know, it may be entirely genuine with him. But I like that. He sometimes has that very, in the same way, if I might just go, I'm only a comedian 'cause I just wanna tell the truth to people. I see myself as a kind of outlaw, fuck off, also you get their laughs back and you get money and you have a great, bloody life. And don't pretend that, you know, and I really enjoy watching that. I enjoy watching those two versions, which are when we see the profession we're in as something pure and above all other forms of career. 'Cause most scientists, you know, a lot of scientists are like, we're doing it, you know, obviously there's usually some underlying reason you're there. But, you know, you're looking where your next paper's coming from. You're looking at, you know, how can I make a name for myself? How can I get this person to know me? How can I be creative profile within my field? All these things, that's what's driving you day to day because that's the reality of life of just keeping you going. But is there not, you know, is there not a danger by separating those things and by not presenting both those things together that you end up with science on this pedestal? You end up with this fairy tale version of science and that itself introduces the barrier back in again. I'm not sure whether people need to primarily know about the machinations. What is important is to know the method by which the information they're receiving was gathered. And I mean, that's very broadly. I don't mean that they have to know every single process involved, but it is sometimes very important, for instance, to know why certain pieces of research exist, for instance. So that does come into it. I would say that part of the background can be important, especially when it is politically motivated. But sometimes that process is just going to get in the way when you could really be enjoying this journey through the universe. It's a point of pragmatism, I suppose, which is, is this particular piece of information? Is this particular story, a beautiful story, or is it also a beautiful story which I now have to make some kind of voting decision on, some kind of decision about how I live my life? Then you might want to change some of the questions and some of the things that you see behind those ideas and why those conclusions have been reached. So is it easier to present and talk about science that there's more abstract, like cosmology, you know, something that won't have a direct impact on how we live our lives? No, not necessarily at all. In fact, quite often it's easier to talk about things which are directly involved in our life because they are the ones that are most frustrating when they're misrepresented. So that will give you the eyeer and give you the motivation to talk about it. But then when you just want to have that moment of going, let me show you a few animations of this particular idea of what may well happen when this particular star explodes or claps in or itself, whatever it might be, then you can, you know, sometimes the politics of that isn't required. With this more experience of communicating science, what are the key areas of science education that Robin would like to see tackled? Well, I think there's a couple, one of the things that we always bang about and the bang on about in the show and stuff is to educate people about the necessity of doubt. The necessity of using your doubt correctly, because of course at the moment when we see the fake news thing, that is very often poorly used doubt. And the idea that science is a method, not a subject, and that it is about constantly learning about less and less wrong versions of the universe. I think part of the rise of dogmatism that we're seeing across the political field is people are desperate for certainty. And if you say, look, there isn't certainty, but there are definitely better ways of moving forward. It's something that's been my bug bear for many years, and it's not necessarily comfortable moment when you first come across that. That's why people react so bad when a bit of science appears to be wrong, then you'll get people going, oh, well, all science is wrong, how arrogant. And you go, no, no, but the scientists who positive this initially didn't say this was right, they said this is what they believed at the time, and this is certainly what the evidence and the experimentation suggested. When a right answer arrives, there are a thousand scientists desperately trying to work out why that answer is actually not as good as it should be, in fact, may well be wrong. And there's such joy in that for many people involved in science and such joy for the spectators, sometimes of these things as well. And I think if we can start to make people comfortable with that idea, it will help change the understanding of what science is. Thank you very much. I've got to go to the fair now. Do you need a cup of tea now? No, I'm good. Thank you. A huge thank you to Robin for the opportunity to talk with him. There were some moments during that interview that really made me stop and think, in particular, I just love this idea that the arts and culture of the day can inspire people to become a scientist who then do the science that influences the arts and culture of the day. Okay, so I have some exciting news. In the previous episode, you may have heard me mention that scientists thought the science was nominated for the best interview podcast at the British Podcast Awards. Well, we won. I had a lot of fun last week, receiving a giant plastic trophy from DJ Edith Bowman at the awards ceremony. And quite frankly, I'm still shell shocked to be in the company of some really established big name podcasts. I'm saying this because I know that this might be your first listen to scientists and the science. Thanks for being here. This is very much a one-man show. These are really just great interviews that I want to share with you. You may not know a lot of the people I interview, but I always strive hard to find the most interesting and insightful people to put in your ears. I also want to say a huge thank you to Debbie, who became the first person to be a review on the UK iTunes store. She writes, "Only found this podcast recently. Great interviews with fascinating people. Congratulations on the British Podcast Award win. Keep up with the good work." Debbie, thank you. It's those kinds of comments that really let me know that there are people out there listening to the show. If you want to help out too, then now's the time to subscribe and leave a review on iTunes. Thanks. Scientists, not the sciences, produce for myself, Stuart Higgins, with thanks this week to my guest Robyn Inc. You can find the entire back catalogue of interviews along with additional show notes and photos on our website, signoutsci.com. That's SCI-NOT-SCI.com. I'll be back in two weeks' time with another great interview. Speak to you soon.