Audio Transcript

Published: August 14, 2018
APA 7 Citation: Newsome, B. (Host). (2018, August 14). STEMpunk [Audio podcast transcript]. Fizzics Education.
https://www.fizzicseducation.com.au/podcast/fizzicsed/stempunk/

Ben Newsome CF is the recipient of the 2023 UTS Chancellor’s Award for Excellence and a Churchill Fellow. He is a global leader in science communication and the founder of Fizzics Education.

[00:00:00]
Announcer: You’re listening to the Fizzics Ed Podcast. For hundreds of ideas, free experiments and more, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. And now, here’s your host, Ben Newsome.

[00:00:17]
Ben Newsome: Yes, welcome again to another Fizzics Ed Podcast. This week is a little bit different because this time we’re connecting with STEMpunk, another podcast that is all about, well, funnily enough, STEM. And the person who we’re actually going to be chatting with is Tom Gordon, who’s a science communicator at the School of Physics at the University of Sydney.

[00:00:33]
Ben Newsome: Now he has a lot of background and knowledge and experience when it comes to delivering science to high school students and beyond. He did a bit of his work in astronomy and astrophysics at the ANU. He’s done a lot of work in science communication again at the ANU and has a master’s degree in space studies in France.

[00:00:52]
Ben Newsome: However, in amongst all this other stuff working with Kickstart, which is an outreach programme and an in-reach programme for University of Sydney, he also hosts the STEMpunk Podcast with Christie McMonigal and Shane Hengst. So this time we’re going to actually be interviewing each other, which is a little bit weird for both of us, but we had a lot of fun doing it. So all the best, I hope you have a bit of fun with it too, and let’s get on with it.

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Announcer: This is the Fizzics Ed Podcast.

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Tom Gordon: Well, I’ll ask you my question that we ask all of our guests. That question is, what is STEM to you?

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Ben Newsome: S T E M, or A and an R and whatever else people want to say. STEM to me is the acronym science, technology, engineering, mathematics, but frankly, I think it just boils down to problem-solving. For me, it’s just simply what tools have you got hanging around that can allow you, the learner, the person who needs to solve the problem, to, well, solve the problem. I’m less concerned about labels and more concerned about what you do, if that helps.

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Tom Gordon: Yeah, fair enough. We find that a lot of people will answer with something like problem-solving or something like that, which is a nice way of approaching it. I always find it interesting the people who spell it out like you just did, and also there’s a few responses that we get which are very much, “I don’t like labels, so it’s about this.” So I would be in that pot.

[00:02:22]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, you basically got all of them. Everyone’s got a bit of a feeling about what STEM is. Our work at Fizzics is to go out to all these different schools and things, and we hear lots of different feedback about what people think STEM is. Sometimes people do a lot of time in the technology side, sometimes people do a lot of time in the engineering, like the maker stuff side.

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Ben Newsome: But you talk with a lot of people who have been doing this for quite a long time, it’s meant to be an integration of all four things, right? But then again, the fact that the question is “What is STEM?” almost alludes to the idea that no one really truly, definitely, 100 percent actually defined the thing before it broke out onto the world, and now everyone’s trying to work out what to do with it.

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Tom Gordon: Yeah, correct. I find that interesting as well, which is the reason we ask what is STEM. Because here we are, my podcast is called STEMpunk, but we don’t really know what it is. We’re crowd-sourcing a definition of STEM almost by asking everyone what it is. It’s a funny thing that we don’t know what it is, yet here we are, it’s the buzzword of the moment.

[00:03:30]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, and it’s actually starting to get a bit off the ball now. It’s not so much what happens in the media occasionally, it’s what I’m hearing just on a subjective point of view. Just simply what the feedback is from the teachers that we hear is they really just want a simplistic way of looking at those four disciplines that can be communicated well to people who need to communicate that literacy onto their learners.

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Ben Newsome: So if it means that they understand that there are these things called variables and you can apply these variables to the thing you just made and that you can measure the thing and maybe hook up a bit of tech in the meantime, it sort of seems to be leaning that way. But I think everyone’s got a good take on it, or a different take on it rather. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not doing a great thing, they’re just doing a creative idea of what STEM is.

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Tom Gordon: Yeah, and perhaps that’s a really good thing about a definition that we don’t really know what it is, is there’s many interpretations, therefore many directions you can go to kind of do whatever it is you do.

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Ben Newsome: True. But that makes it fun.

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Tom Gordon: Speaking of whatever it is you do, I’ll have a go at telling you what I do, and do you want to start off, Ben? Do you want to tell us or introduce to my listeners what you do?

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Ben Newsome: That’s the thing. So the idea is that definitely we both run podcasts, so we’re very much used to interviewing other people. So now we’ve got two interviewers trying to interview each other, which is kind of amusing and it’ll be interesting how we go. But okay, for me, I can just answer really quickly for your question, what do I do? I run a company called Fizzics Education, which can’t spell very well, but it’s F I Z Z I C S. And it’s an outreach company.

[00:05:04]
Ben Newsome: So we run programmes at schools, libraries, museums, zoos, aquariums, all those sorts of places to be able to teach kids how the world works. That’s our job. And so we have staff in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Canberra, and lately in San Diego as well. And the idea is that we’ll go to any audience who wants to do stuff. That’s a simple way of saying it. So we think we worked out last year we reached about 300,000 kids a year, something like that, and it just keeps on growing and growing. So Tom, what do you get up to?

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Tom Gordon: What I do is I run an outreach programme at Sydney University, and that outreach programme is called Kickstart Physics. So Kickstart Physics is an outreach programme for high school students, mostly year 11 and 12, where they’ll come into our second-year teaching lab and have a go at doing some of the experiments that are in their syllabus. So it’s directly syllabus-related.

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Tom Gordon: Using our equipment and hearing from our tutors. So these demonstrators that we have to help the high school students are all second, third year, honours, PhD students, explaining these concepts from the syllabus using our kit, our experiments, and using the same words as their teachers do, and the textbooks and the videos they see. So it’s all syllabus-related, it’s all connected to what they’re learning, but it’s hearing it again in a different way from someone who is probably only a few years older than the student.

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Tom Gordon: The good thing about it is that a student will come in here either because they can’t do this at school, or because they can but they want to do it again at school, or because they’ve got the equipment but it’s broken, or they’ve got the equipment but the teacher doesn’t know how to use it, or they’ve got the equipment and it works but they didn’t get it, so they want some revision.

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Tom Gordon: So I see one quarter of all of the high school students that sit the physics exam in New South Wales come through this lab. That’s about two and a half thousand students a year.

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Ben Newsome: That’s fantastic considering that they’re not just in metro, right?

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Tom Gordon: Mostly metro, but we do go out to regional areas. So in a couple of months we’ll be going out to Coffs Harbour and Dubbo. But yeah, mostly metro areas, you know, Western Sydney, Southern Sydney, Northern Beaches, that sort of stuff. Some schools from up in Gosford and stuff. This is location-specific, so not the best, but yes, we see one quarter of all the students.

[00:07:39]
Tom Gordon: Now considering that New South Wales is like the fourth biggest education provider on the planet, okay? It’s bigger than some of the provinces or most of the provinces in America, China, India. So we see more students than some countries have physics students to do this, you know, half day or full day programme where they get like full, unhinged access to experiments that they can do related to their syllabus. It’s pretty sweet.

[00:08:10]
Tom Gordon: Now because I’ve got two and a half thousand of them, that’s also a lot of data points. So I’m starting to survey them as well and ask about what it is about experiments that makes you do better at science. You know, what is it about seeing this thing in the flesh or manipulating a piece of equipment? What is it about that that makes you understand physics better? So that’s my research as well.

[00:08:30]
Ben Newsome: That’s the beauty of it too because you’re in the research. I mean, you’re in Sydney University, you’re working at the School of Physics, and that affords you that ability to literally say, “Here’s the cool stuff.” I can imagine the students, their eyes could potentially go wide going, “Oh wow, you got that stuff!” But then you get the ability to be able to create a body of work which is then able to help others then look at physics education as a whole. And that’s got to be quite empowering to be in that position.

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Tom Gordon: Yeah, it really is. Like we do have students that walk into the building here, and they don’t build buildings like this anymore. And they walk in and their eyes light up and they say, “Whoa, it looks like physics in here!” And that’s for a reason. We do that on purpose because we want that reaction. We want you to feel like you’re in a place where physics happens.

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Ben Newsome: I wonder what a survey would be like again, what they think a physics lab looks like before they turn up.

[00:09:25]
Tom Gordon: Yeah, that’d be interesting. I’m sure we have your typical stereotypical image, we’d have that too. But we also have this huge lab. My office is right next to it and it’s filled with second-year students right now. I’m looking at it, and it just looks like a physics lab. There’s wires everywhere, bits of equipment that look some new, some old. It’s fantastic.

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Tom Gordon: But like you said before, and I agree with you, when I first started doing this job, there were surveys, but it was like, “Do you like this?” and “How cool is this?” and “Would you come back?” And I started to get the same answers. So I knew the answer to the question, and in physics, if you ask the same question and get the same answer, you’re not doing a good job anymore. You’ve got to change your question in order to get more information.

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Tom Gordon: And I thought it was weird that we weren’t using this huge data set, which is two and a half thousand students every year, to ask some questions to make what we’re doing better. So that’s and you know, I’m at the School of Physics, I kind of felt like I needed to contribute somehow. That’s definitely important.

[00:10:31]
Ben Newsome: And this actually informs your own practice. I mean, this informs every single high school physics teacher who gets involved because they could access that research, and that could inform how they prepare their students in their schools to not only access Kickstart, but also what students’ expectations are as they enter year 11 and then leave year 12, and what their pathways could be into that career.

[00:10:52]
Tom Gordon: Yeah, for sure. It also makes students feel good if you start telling them, “Hey, look, you’re here doing physics, but I’m also doing physics on you at the same time.” And they feel like they’re being part of an experiment, which they absolutely are. Some cool things that we’ve seen come out of it is if you give a student a piece of equipment that is known to them, let’s say it’s a mobile phone, and do some physics with a mobile phone, which was one of our experiments that we’ve got in here, the students will start taking responsibility for what they’re learning.

[00:11:27]
Tom Gordon: Now we kind of could have guessed that before, but it really comes out when you have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of students saying this. It’s a real, it makes what we do justified because the students take responsibility. And if you have a student that takes responsibility for what they’re doing, then they’re going to start enjoying what they do and get engaged in it and then looking further.

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Tom Gordon: If you can get a student, here’s the thing, if you can get a student to use their phone to get a piece of data and use that to create some sort of graph or table or something and then look at that graph and go and change their experiment, they’ve just done physics. Like that’s science, they’ve done science. And that’s what we’re seeing that they’re doing. They’ll create their data, put it into Excel, make a graph, and then change what they’ve done based on their previous data. Brilliant. That’s perfect. That’s what we’re doing.

[00:12:28]
Ben Newsome: Fantastic. And I’m just wondering about all these students coming through and eventually they would then choose an undergraduate degree and hopefully perhaps a STEM-related one, or even better for you, a physics-related one. With some of the people that you work with, are some of them ex-alumni? Like people who have gone through your project as a high schooler?

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Tom Gordon: So yeah, they are. It’s very hard to pinpoint what it is that got them to come here. So it’s very hard to say you have enrolled in this because of this programme. There are so many factors, like Dr. Karl, that’s a factor, because people come to the University of Sydney because of Karl. Or it’s close to the train line. That’s another factor, believe it or not. Or “my parents went here.” These factors are huge.

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Ben Newsome: I respect logistics. This is pragmatic, right? They are physicists after all.

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Tom Gordon: Yeah. So there are a number of them that come and work with me because they saw Kickstart. They went to Kickstart at high school and now they’re back. And they get a real kick out of being the demonstrator for their school when their school comes in. Which is of course, and so do the teachers. The teachers of course love it to say, “Look, it’s one of you, you know, they came back.” So yeah, it’s there’s a lot of students. A few of them actually, a few of them came through, did Kickstart and are now at Sydney Uni. Anecdotally, yes, but that’s anecdotally.

[00:13:55]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, but I mean still very powerful. I know the National Youth Science Forum has a very large alumni, and you can see them pop up around the place. Questacon has the same. I know yourself has been involved with Questacon at one point too. I mean, you do see that happen, and the more touch points the better. In fact, while you were talking about that I was reflecting on my own world whereby back when I was I think I was six or seven years old, and that’s the thing, it’s like a haze of memory when it kind of kicks in as to whether you’re not actually sure if you’re remembering a memory or a dream.

[00:14:27]
Ben Newsome: But I’m fairly sure that when I was living in Townsville up there, that I went to a kid’s science party. I know this because we now run science parties, right? But now looking back on this I only got a couple of snapshots of my memory, but I know that the boffin who turned up was playing with this cold stuff that was liquid and at the time I’d got no idea than that. That’s all I learned as a six-year-old, right? It’s cold stuff and it’s a liquid. Turns out it was liquid nitrogen, right?

[00:14:51]
Ben Newsome: And I distinctly remember them cooling down a squash ball and throwing it at the wall and it shattering. Now by the way, heads up guys, don’t do that because you get these shards of really cold rubber that act like basically really hard stuff which all the people don’t do that. But I know this is back in the early 80s, right? You could do whatever you want then. But they throw this squash ball at the wall, the shards go everywhere, everyone freaks out and they all rush forward because hey, what else is a six-year-old going to do?

[00:15:16]
Ben Newsome: And I distinctly remember holding this cold shard of broken squash ball in my hand, freaking out. And I know that this actually happened, I don’t think it was a dream. Like who’s going to dream that when they’re six, right? So that tiny little thing, who knows if that was the beginning of a trajectory which brought me to where I am now? I always wonder about all that, you know, it’s like the sliding doors, those pathways where you’re never quite sure what you’re actually doing, but you do get led down the path and you get inspired by people all over the place. And I think every touchpoint in STEM matters.

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Tom Gordon: So that… that’s a nice segue into my question for you. What’s your origin story for Fizzics Education? How did that start up?

[00:15:58]
Ben Newsome: I actually still wonder. All right, so we started in 2004. All right, so let’s I actually it actually winds back slightly further than that, as all good stories do, but I will promise this will not be long. I trained as a biologist actually and when you enter the big bad world of trying to find a job in biology, turns out there was not much work in that in the mid-90s.

[00:16:23]
Ben Newsome: So I, like a lot of biology graduates do, I joined a bushland regeneration team. And what that meant was chopping out lantana and privet and all those fun weeds they’re right across the Sydney Basin. So I did a lot of my biology with a chainsaw. So we’re doing all this work and clearing out all these weeds and things, and the public constantly harassed us… or that inquisitive, but the harass is actually quite a useful word because some of them thought we were genuinely day-release prisoners, or we were environmental vandals.

[00:16:50]
Ben Newsome: So this public works was happening in an area where people had no idea about what the benefit would be. There was no communication about what was happening in their own world, right? And you do this for long enough, you start to realise perhaps maybe there’s an issue here that rather than trying to clean up the mess that’s being created by all the runoff and pollution and all this stuff, all the stuff that creates weed infestations in the area, why not actually help people understand about their environment?

[00:17:18]
Ben Newsome: And so, quick left turn and trajectory, become a high school science teacher. Because I thought, hey, I can influence a lot of kids, might be able to help out with understanding our local community and all the rest. That didn’t last long. I was lucky enough to be picked up with CSIRO Science Education, which was this fantastic outreach group. It’s been changed a little bit lately in the last couple of years, but for a number of years, it was highly influential in getting a lot of kids doing a lot of cool stuff right around Australia. So I was involved with them…

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Tom Gordon: Agreed.

[00:17:49]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, they were fantastic. They did a bloody well good job, frankly. And so I was there for a couple of years, but it came to a point where I thought, you know what… and you’re probably starting to pick up the flavour here… I’m a fairly restless type of person. And for me, I thought I just need to start doing stuff myself, I just couldn’t help myself. So I entered small business wilderness.

[00:18:11]
Ben Newsome: And funnily enough, winding back to what we just described, started doing science parties. Because I knew full well that no one else would actually start off with this initially. All right, so several years of doing hundreds and hundreds, literally, I know by numbers that I personally ran about 750 science parties myself. As well as getting building up a team to be able to produce science outreach that I felt worked for me.

[00:18:37]
Ben Newsome: And so wind that forward, we’ve now got it’s kind of got out of control a little bit, but it still stays true to the idea that it was always started with the idea that I want to teach people about how the world works, but do not… but I don’t want to have boxes around how that might look like. And that includes funding, opportunities or lack thereof, or perceptions and realities around how a particular potential direction of a bureaucracy might be leading.

[00:19:04]
Tom Gordon: Yeah, sure. That no, I do pick that up, that you you don’t want to sit still and let something let a question go unanswered.

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Ben Newsome: Yeah, that’s why I said I promised to do a really short story, not talk for too long. I do get accused at work going, “Okay, it’s time to finish now, we need to do some work.”

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Tom Gordon: What’s the most popular thing that you do? Like what’s the session that you do that most people go for?

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Ben Newsome: Yeah. All right, so there’s about 39 programmes. There is… there is not “about”, 39 is quite precise, that’s exactly what it is. But the… and that’s been driven by the Australian Curriculum itself, so we only ever develop programmes that actually fit the curriculum. So to answer the question in a simplistic way is actually one of the large stage shows.

[00:19:50]
Ben Newsome: I mean, two-thirds of our programmes are hands-on workshops where the kids will come through, 30 kids a pop, and get to do stuff with equipment that they won’t get in their school. But I must say the stage shows work really well because they’re also about inspiration. So you’ll have several hundred people come through the door and it’s a little bit, you know, wiz-bang-pow type stuff. But it has a narrative of science literacy all through it, and the idea being that you can engage with your school.

[00:20:16]
Ben Newsome: And our feedback from the schools are, “this works”. And what happens is the kids start engaging with the school… like to be honest, yeah, I’m a science guy, I’m going to be wanting people to do science. However, I actually don’t care if they now engage further with history, art, doesn’t matter, music, literature, doesn’t matter to me. If the kids are now engaging with their school further, we’ve still done our job properly. So that’s sort of part of that, and what then happens is that then flows into other programmes as well.

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Tom Gordon: So you do a stage show at a school where you bring the whole school in and you do your show, just like the Bell Shakespeare Company does their show, or…

[00:20:53]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, literally. So I mean we’ve got 16 vehicles driving around the place just all the time doing programmes. Majority are workshop-based, but the the school hall type setup works really well and in fact, frankly, it actually works incredibly well from a school’s budget point of view. Remember I used to be a teacher, that now it’s you’ve got more kids in the hall, it just becomes a mathematical construct that it’s going to cost less per child. I mean just just that’s what it’s going to be.

[00:21:22]
Ben Newsome: So that means that you can reach disadvantaged communities quite well with this really cool show that actually helps them now engage with their processes that happen in the school as well and so on. And it works really well, a real treat.

[00:21:36]
Tom Gordon: That’s really cool. I really like that. I also used to be a teacher, so I know I know the situation where it’s handy to get all of the school in for this one science thing and it kind of works, you know, for the bean counters. That’s really awesome.

[00:21:58]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, and just what really matters then is then going, “Well, that was fun and wow.” In fact, we make a point of saying, and it’s about two experiments in, we usually settle everyone down and this is a narrative that always goes through and go, “Here’s the problem with science shows.” And you get this little look from the kids because they’re not used to someone talking to you like that because, you know, you’re meant to be all like the “here’s the show, right, everything’s awesome.”

[00:22:20]
Ben Newsome: And we basically just say, “Here’s the problem with science shows. I’m going to tell you straight up this is the problem. We’re going to come here and we’re going to do experiment one and everyone goes wow, and then we do experiment two, then everyone goes wow, then three, then four and so on. And then you then go home at some point and then the person who looks after you says ‘What did you see?’ and you said ‘I saw some science stuff’ and then they’ll ask you ‘What did you learn?’ and then you go ‘I don’t know’.”

[00:22:45]
Ben Newsome: And that’s 100% the biggest problem with science shows is there’s too much theatrics and us from our visceral knowledge that kids learn properly when you wind back the drama a little bit and go, “You know what, what is the point of this experiment? What is actually trying to show? What is it modelling?” Start using the real words that happen in the real context of science, then it starts to work and suddenly it’s no longer a show as such, you’re now working with the audience to actually understand that these concepts being presented are real things, not tricks, not magic.

[00:23:22]
Tom Gordon: Yeah, sure.

[00:23:24]
Tom Gordon: When we talk about models in Kickstart as well, we do something very similar. So I’ve got a trampoline that’s got a simulated weight on it, and then you throw some marbles around the trampoline and it orbits, you know, it’s a model of an orbit basically.

[00:23:42]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, cool. I love that experiment.

[00:23:44]
Tom Gordon: And before we do it I’ll stop everyone and say, “Hey look, just you know, this is a model. With all models there are inaccuracies and possible misconceptions. So if you walk away thinking that you understand everything about orbital mechanics, then I’ve not done my job properly. You know, when I’m doing this have a think about how this is not a good model or have a think about how you could model this better,” you know.

[00:24:06]
Ben Newsome: I completely agree with that point. It’s almost like breaking the fourth wall to say we’re all having a good time, we’re all having fun, but let’s just think about what’s actually happening here. Exactly right. Without critical analysis you really just might as well just have some popcorn.

[00:24:20]
Tom Gordon: Do you do any presentations for non-school audiences like perhaps that science show for general public?

[00:24:26]
Ben Newsome: Absolutely. We’ve run programmes in prisons, hospitals…

[00:24:31]
Tom Gordon: Oh wow. Cool.

[00:24:32]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, the whole thing. We do, globally, we teach via video conference. Just prior to this recording I was talking about I’m really tired right now because this is not making stuff up, I did four programmes to a school in New York from midnight to 5:00 a.m. this morning. And the reason why is again, if people connect with us, we want to connect back with them. We’re not going to say no if we can do it, right? So we’ve run programmes to retirement homes. I mean we run about 400 science parties a year, keeps us very busy on the weekends.

[00:24:59]
Ben Newsome: We’ve run programmes on cruise ships, at all sorts of places. We do a lot of representation for large companies. So for example with the NRMA, the National Roads and Motoring Association, we run about 200 schools a year something like that for them. We’re currently, literally today, we ran some programmes for the GWS Giants on footy maths and sports nutrition.

[00:25:20]
Tom Gordon: Wow.

[00:25:21]
Ben Newsome: We’re running programmes which are just about to be announced. So actually Tom, you’re getting this first. Wow. We’re running some programmes with Toyota and West Melbourne regarding STEM as well out that way. We’re running a lot of corporate stuff.

[00:25:34]
Ben Newsome: We’re a social enterprise meaning that whatever those corporates do the actual pure net benefit gets thrown completely into kids’ faces usually with liquid nitrogen.

[00:25:40]
Ben Newsome: So you know you can do that fun stuff but that allows us basically what happens. What happens is the corporates end up subsidising the remote tours, they end up subsidising the free stuff. So I see STEM as an ecosystem and frankly if you try and put that stuff in a box that says it must be in school, well you’re just not doing service the fact that well these kids don’t live in school, they hang around school, eventually they graduate.

[00:26:00]
Tom Gordon: Right. Yeah, outside the box theory, but the thing is is that I’ve been lucky enough to work with some highly creative individuals who don’t really believe there is a box. It’s a construct in your mind.

[00:26:15]
Tom Gordon: One of the things that I really enjoy thinking about and it’s clear that you do as well is the non-traditional ways of doing science communication or science for that matter. So I like the idea of doing presentations to NRMA or in a prison or a hospital or the Giants. You know I once wanted to start a consulting company that goes to businesses and runs science-themed workshops at Luna Park, you know whatever. Try something different just go to Luna Park and bring some business people there and start talking about risk. You know that would be fun.

[00:26:54]
Ben Newsome: Yeah it is. And I love the fact you just said fun just then. Because there’s no point doing it unless you’re not enjoying it as well because if you’re not enjoying it I can guarantee your class isn’t.

[00:27:06]
Tom Gordon: Yeah. There’s other examples too like recently last year I went to Splendour in the Grass and we did a science presentation at Splendour in the Grass. Now that was a lot of fun. There’s non-traditional ways of going to places where science isn’t. And doing presentations about that there. I respect that. I think that’s brilliant.

[00:27:28]
Ben Newsome: And without telling the future or anything, looks like you and I think similarly on some things so I’m gonna write it down and say work with Ben on something.

[00:27:40]
Ben Newsome: Actually we might actually catch at Splendour in the Grass. We got contacted to say, “Hey, would you want to come play?” And anyone uses those words with us we go, “Yeah, we’ll play.” It’ll be fun, right? And so basically what I’m describing is a bunch of ADHD types, right? But if it’s not vibrant and if it just becomes routine, you’ve missed the point.

[00:28:02]
Tom Gordon: Yeah. Yeah, cool. Well if you go to Splendour it’s a lot of fun.

[00:28:08]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, I think I’m getting voted out though. We’ve only got two places and I think I get to go to a lot of cool things. I’ve got to make sure I share it around. I’m not sure if I get to go but I’ll see if I can sneak a lift.

[00:28:20]
Tom Gordon: But people like Dr. Karl, he goes to Woodford Folk Festival every year. So there’s music festivals and festivals and like you said prisons and hospitals these places are you know it’d be it’s educational I think to go to those places. It’s worthwhile to go to those places.

[00:28:43]
Ben Newsome: Oh yeah, I would say beyond worthwhile. Because when you think about it, the biggest issue we’ve got in this community is that we talk to ourselves. In fact we’re doing it right now, right?

[00:28:53]
Tom Gordon: Yep. Completely. 100 percent.

[00:28:54]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, we should be going out to where the people are as such and not bashing them down with big words or coming across high and mighty because frankly that’s half the issue. Is working at their level. One of the things I totally respect with some of our presenters, and I did this work myself, some of the things I look for are not science presenting skills, like that’s part of it, but I also am very impressed if they’ve worked in a bar or if they’ve worked with kids at a scout club. If they can interact with people at a human level. That’s critical for inspiring people’s minds.

[00:29:30]
Tom Gordon: Yeah. And working with people is different for different… I like the idea that communicating with people, if the people are year three students that’s very different to people who are year 12 students. So yeah, no I don’t know what else to say there.

[00:29:49]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, I know from my end just to fill in the gaps, it’s not talking down or up to people, how about talking with them?

[00:29:56]
Tom Gordon: Yeah.

[00:29:57]
Ben Newsome: So it’s simply just, if you are, I mean I was lucky enough that I’m an army kid. My family comes from the country. I’ve spent time living in a city. I went to a boarding school. I went to a Catholic school. I went to a public school. Done all this stuff, done a lot of travelling all over the world which means I can hopefully relate to people. And so I’m just always interested about their story, what they know, and I love having those chats.

[00:30:21]
Ben Newsome: Like for example when we talk to people in the retirement homes, I love their stories because frankly I’m not even quite sure whether I even run the programme because all I’m doing is asking questions and then people just spill out all this rich history and knowledge from their careers, and then everyone starts talking to each other and they all learn off each other and I’m just sort of there as a facilitator. And that’s fantastic.

[00:30:40]
Tom Gordon: I really like that. I like that. I read a, you reminded me of something, I read a book, if you haven’t read it go and read it. It’s called Physics on the Fringe. It’s by Margaret Wertheim.

[00:30:53]
Ben Newsome: Okay.

[00:30:54]
Tom Gordon: Who is, she was an ex-Sydney Morning Herald journalist, a science journalist, and then she went overseas and now freelance writes. But she wrote a book called Physics on the Fringe where she, because she was a journalist and a science journalist, she’d get all these calls and faxes and emails and whatever from mostly retired men about their new version of physics, or you know, Einstein is wrong and I’m right. And normally we’d say oh these people are crazy and crackpots and all that sort of stuff. But she started to listen to them. Actually went and hung out with a few of them.

[00:31:31]
Tom Gordon: And figured out that they’re fascinating people, insanely intelligent, but just a bit wrong on a couple of things. But if you go to their conferences and they have conferences, it’s indistinguishable whether they’re right or we’re right. So she went to one of these fringe conferences and they all know this, they all know that they get looked down on. On the other hand they all think they’re right. So there’s a rule now in these conferences where it says you’re not allowed to say that I’m right and everyone else is wrong because that makes us look like we’re crackpots.

[00:32:07]
Tom Gordon: On the other hand, you go to a physics string theory conference and what do they say? I’m right and you’re all wrong. It’s fascinating.

[00:32:15]
Ben Newsome: Well actually I agree, in fact I’m pretty sure Niels Bohr has a quote, I’m going to get this wrong right, but pretty much it’s like the problem is that your theory is crazy, but the question is is it crazy enough to be true?

[00:32:28]
Tom Gordon: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s really cool.

[00:32:31]
Ben Newsome: It’s very, very important to know this. And I actually totally agree with what you’re just saying. I think people get worried about the minutia. Okay, here you got 99% right, but you got this 1% wrong. And because you got this 1% wrong all I’m going to do is focus on this because somehow it builds my ego and my reputation and whatever else is going on. Now let’s be honest, 1% wrong is still 1% wrong. But it’s 99% right. Now think about it from a learner’s point of view. If all you get told is that you’re wrong all the time, how many times are you going to keep putting out your ideas? You’re not.

[00:33:02]
Ben Newsome: In fact Sir Ken Robinson talked about creativity being killed in schools. Now I’m not going to go down that path because I think there are some highly creative educators who make sure that creativity is out there and I know that people listening to this podcast will know exactly what I’m talking about with Sir Ken Robinson, go check out his TED Talk. But whether you agree with it or not with whether this creativity can be killed, I would suggest that potentially part of it is that we need to be focusing on just as much of what they’re doing well as opposed to what they’re not doing well.

[00:33:30]
Tom Gordon: For sure. Wow. That’s all very good.

[00:33:36]
Tom Gordon: What’s, here we go I’ve got another question for you. Another thing we do in STEMpunk is I’ll get our previous guest to ask a question for our future guest. These people don’t know each other right. So I’ve got a question from our past guest her name is Chloe Warren and she is a freelance science writer. We interviewed her late last year. So her question for you even though she doesn’t know you or that we were talking is what is the best mistake you’ve ever made?

[00:34:10]
Ben Newsome: Love it. Hi Chloe, love the question, that’s awesome. What is the best mistake I’ve ever made? Wow I love it. I really like that actually, we concentrate a lot of that with some of our podcasts about failure, I really dig failure because it’s in there that you tend to learn a lot more. All right wow and there’s a this is a stumbling rambling chat while the person gathers their thoughts that’s what’s occurring right now.

[00:34:36]
Tom Gordon: I can put some hold music on if you like.

[00:34:40]
Ben Newsome: I prefer elevator music please that would be fantastic. All right so there’s no way I’m going to be able to say the most spectacular failure off the top of my head but I must say we do fail a lot. So I’m just trying to think of a stupid failure, got nothing to do with science whatsoever, it just just popped into my memory and I don’t want you to have to be waiting around while I come up with something.

[00:35:04]
Ben Newsome: I do remember I used to have to work in the Novotel to serve drinks and bits and pieces to wedding reception stuff. And I was carrying like about 20 champagne flutes, and this is going nowhere with STEM, but it still was a spectacular failure. And what I learnt that evening was when you’re serving the drink around especially around the bride’s table, be sure to be aware of where your tray is, where your champagne flutes are, keep them away from people who may want to stand up, because when they do stand up, they’re very good from a pivot point, there we go we can go with a bit of leverage, as a pivot point it kind of tipped over and I did get the groom a little wet. Not a little. Now that’s a simple spectacular failure but you know what, from an educational context I can think of some other things later, but tell you what that does, it does make you realise there is a thing called humility, and also a way to be able to deal with a bad situation well.

[00:36:03]
Tom Gordon: Yeah cool.

[00:36:04]
Ben Newsome: So I don’t know if I helped you out there Chloe, I’m going to have a little bit think a bit further like what have I done in classes because I have had some complete mess-ups.

[00:36:13]
Tom Gordon: I’ll probe you a little bit more. Has there been an experiment at a birthday party that’s gone horribly wrong or not horribly but just didn’t work?

[00:36:20]
Ben Newsome: You know what I’m actually thinking of an issue where it did actually occur. And this is just being just not being observant or realizing the implications of what we were doing. So just a simple cornflour slime experiment, there’s no issue in that beyond the slipping hazard and you gotta do a bit of cleaning up right. The issue was not the cornflour, the issue was that we’re doing it with food colouring which happens to be where about 10 meters away, the lady who had booked us and thank you very much for having us along by the way, she had this really nice porous sandstone blocks as part of her garden. And just not realizing I just said hey kids just put your slime over there we’re gonna move on with the party wash your hands etc etc. I didn’t notice that one of the kids’ cups had a ring of undiluted food colouring. Now the geologists out there know full well exactly what’s going to happen next, that it’s going to go into the porous sandstone. Yes I had to sort that out. But that was just a by definition a negligent thing to do right?

[00:37:21]
Ben Newsome: But it’s one of those things that in the moment you can miss it. So you know when you do all your safe work method statements and risk assessments and blah blah blah you got to do it right, but sometimes you it’s almost like trying to hold the tail of the dragon. Like what is going to go potentially wrong. And thankfully very few things have gone wrong because the people that we have on board might not have you know well experienced science communicators and science teachers and they can think this through and there’s training and all the rest. However every year we’ll have something silly happen, and that was a good example of a silly thing.

[00:37:53]
Tom Gordon: Can I tell you one of my best mistakes that I’ve ever made?

[00:37:57]
Ben Newsome: Sure.

[00:37:58]
Tom Gordon: This is a story that I bring out often because it’s one of the best. So we went, this was when I was working at Questacon, we went out to an Indigenous community near Oenpelli which is you know Northern Territory, start at Northern Territory find the middle, and you’re in the right place. Not quite the middle but you know what I mean. Anyway so we brought our science experiments in the back of a four-wheel drive and we turn up at this community with probably about 80 people in it. And we started to do a presentation that we’d normally give to year three or year four students, perhaps year six students whatever. But it involved balloons and Newton’s laws of motion.

[00:38:46]
Tom Gordon: So we had this one long balloon I’m sure you can imagine it’s the rocket balloon, and you point it one way and you say the air’s going to come out one way, which way is the balloon going to go? And everyone knows the answer, you point it to the left, the air is going to go out to the right, the balloon goes out to the left. Simple. Anyway so with very little language and a translator we were like okay where’s the balloon going to go? And all the kids pointed up and to the right. We were pointing this thing to the left. And we’re like okay, you didn’t get that let’s explain it again. So we explained it again a bit more slowly and then said right where’s the balloon going to go? The air’s going to go out to the right, the balloon’s going to go to the left. Which way is the balloon going to go? And they all pointed up and to the right again and we’re like oh man, they just didn’t get it. We’re going to have to show them. So what do we do, we let the balloon go, and the balloon went straight up and to the right. The wind took it.

[00:39:44]
Tom Gordon: And I thought okay I’m in their classroom now.

[00:39:48]
Ben Newsome: Yeah. Good call.

[00:39:50]
Tom Gordon: We just did not realize. We were outside, we didn’t know there was a slight breeze that we just didn’t even notice. And as soon as we let the balloons go they just went up into the right and these kids laughed themselves silly because they’re like yeah we taught you a lesson. We left with our tail between our legs and just thought yep we absolutely failed that but man that was a good lesson.

[00:40:13]
Ben Newsome: It was perfect because that’s the thing like, you can have people in front of you where you’re not you might assume they know something and often they know a lot more than they think. It’s a bit like when we run a dinosaur program I always say to the four-year-old kid at a preschool, I guarantee you you know more than I think, and more more than the teachers and the parents think in this room as well. And they all start beaming and I’m dead set serious. These kids, like you go here’s a dinosaur what’s it look like, and the kid will say it’s Pachycephalosaurus, like yes it is. I’m still waiting for a kid to say Australovenator, like you know the Australian Australovenator wintonensis but I’m still. The thing is that you cannot discount your group.

[00:40:55]
Ben Newsome: Mind you language is a barrier, we ran programs we like we’ve done programs we’ve traveled overseas with our stuff, we did some programs into China and that means obviously a translator at in a lot of these points and some of the times you may be trying to translate something that is untranslatable. So I found out at the time that the person that was helping me out, this was around the Guangdong province near Shenzhen which is near Hong Kong. There’s not really a fantastically useful word for slime turns out.

[00:41:28]
Tom Gordon: There actually isn’t.

[00:41:30]
Ben Newsome: He was trying to say this and I feel sorry for the guy like he’s trying to get wrap his head around his the stuff that isn’t quite a liquid or a solid but drips. Effectively what he was saying. I’d love to if there’s anyone listening in who knows a far better translation for slime please let us know in Mandarin that’d be fantastic I mean I…

[00:41:50]
Tom Gordon: You might have to refer to non-Newtonian fluid but then it kind of kills it.

[00:41:53]
Ben Newsome: Yeah but the biggest problem was I was running this to five-year-olds.

[00:41:56]
Tom Gordon: Oh.

[00:41:57]
Ben Newsome: So I mean you’ve got like it’s one of these things like we an earlier episode we got to speak with Joanna Howes who won the Flame Challenge with the Alan Alda Center. Now I’m gonna probably mess this story up slightly but part of the whole Flame Challenge was Mr Alan Alda the you know the bloke from MASH and all these other shows beyond that, brought up went up to his teacher when he was 11 years old and said what is a flame? And the teacher said just really offhandedly, a flame is a is a product of combustion. And Alan Alda effectively said well now I know another word but I still don’t know what a flame is.

[00:42:30]
Tom Gordon: Yeah right.

[00:42:31]
Ben Newsome: And that is in the real heart of science communication. Don’t create a problem.

[00:42:39]
Tom Gordon: Yeah that’s right.

[00:42:42]
Ben Newsome: You want them leaving asking questions but asking questions that aren’t created by your lack of ability to explain a concept.

[00:42:49]
Tom Gordon: Yeah. Yeah sure. Well I like his mind. He said well okay you gave me an answer but yeah I’ve got another one now.

[00:42:59]
Ben Newsome: Yeah well that’s right and actually the answer was worse because it didn’t actually answer what a flame was in the first place. So if anything he was far better off not asking that person.

[00:43:07]
Tom Gordon: Yeah. Because he could have gone to another person who would have described you know what truly was combustion was in simple language. Now simple language doesn’t mean you’re dumbing it down, it means you’re making the idea accessible. You know don’t confuse the two. Just saying combustion, I mean I can say big fancy words to a whole bunch of primary kids but that doesn’t help them one little bit.

[00:43:28]
Tom Gordon: Unless they get it which yeah and if you were to say it’s a product of combustion you’re going to have to do pretty well to explain that.

[00:43:34]
Ben Newsome: Totally so. I mean I remember running we used to run programs for the New South Wales Gifted and Talented Association and I remember running a program where there was a bunch of 10-year-olds in the room and long story short we’re talking about cells so red cells, white cells, platelets etc. So I just had a kid just put his hand up go sir can you just say erythrocytes and be done with it?

[00:43:58]
Tom Gordon: And I went touche. Let’s do that. So suddenly my lesson became a year 11 biology workshop. So I guess the moral of the story is listen to your audience let them give you the feedback and then happy days from there.

[00:44:13]
Tom Gordon: So I asked you a question from our previous guest, I’ll invite you to ask one for our next guest.

[00:44:20]
Ben Newsome: Yeah I’ve got a great question in fact it’s actually one of the interview questions that we ask when people want to work here. And it’s a good question because it tells me about where their heart is and how they think. It’s a nice simple question. Ignoring funding, imagine that someone dumped $10 million in your pocket now. But you’ve got to do it around STEM somehow. What would you do with it?

[00:44:43]
Tom Gordon: Okay let me I’m just going to write it down 10 million.

[00:44:47]
Ben Newsome: If you had 10 million bucks in your pocket right now, and the only caveat was it must be spent on some form of STEM outreach in some way. What would you do with it? Imagine you had six months to play around and design it and stuff around that way, what would you do with that $10 million? How would you make that spread and make an impact?

[00:45:07]
Tom Gordon: That’s a great question.

[00:45:10]
Ben Newsome: That’s why we use it.

[00:45:12]
Tom Gordon: Yeah. What would I do with it?

[00:45:15]
Ben Newsome: Yeah I was literally I’m going to throw that to you now mate what do you reckon? 10 million bucks I mean that’s well outside the scope of most funding right so now the doors are open what would you do with it?

[00:45:25]
Tom Gordon: I would, look my numbers are going to be a bit out but I reckon I would invest a lot of it, let’s say seven and a half million.

[00:45:35]
Ben Newsome: Yep.

[00:45:36]
Tom Gordon: So that keeps going. So it’s not just 10 million, it’s more than that it comes back every year. But I would invest it so it has to be STEM so I’d invest it into something that STEM related like renewable energy or something like that that so it’s gonna keep giving me back money every year so I don’t have to worry about it running out as soon as it will. So I’d invest some of it into renewables or some tech company, I reckon I’d try and fund some sort of startup so some sort of tech startup based on STEM education one comes to mind. Not two.

[00:46:26]
Ben Newsome: I don’t know two or three?

[00:46:27]
Tom Gordon: Yeah fair enough keep going.

[00:46:28]
Tom Gordon: And the rest the rest you could do some really cool inspirational projects with. I like the idea of what CubeRider have done. Which is sending like basically satellites out to schools so that the schools can muck around with a satellite and then the punchline is well that’s exactly what we’ve just put in space. Or Planet Labs which is trying to throw lots and lots of satellites up into space which do remote sensing, or there’s a couple of really cool science startups, so I’d try and do something with that. I’d try and, yeah I don’t know.

[00:47:16]
Ben Newsome: No, I love that. I mean I really love that answer, in fact I love the idea of investing in a perpetual fund. I mean we’ve had lots of different answers over the years and all of them have been valid in lots of different ways. Excuse me. Now one of the things about a perpetual thing that invests in people to be able to… it’s the old analogy, do you teach them to fish or do you give them a fish? So I love that idea, in fact I was lucky to get involved with and become one of the recipients of a Churchill Fellowship which works on exactly that principle, that in the 1960s a whole bunch of money got thrown in to a big pot in respect and continual trust which was going to honour the memory of Sir Winston Churchill.

[00:48:07]
Ben Newsome: And the idea was that that money would then go as travelling fellowships for people who are doing the best they can in what they do and that knowledge would then be brought back to Australia and then shared. And that means that it’s perpetual, it then effectively is an investment into infinity as long as they keep on investing correctly. And that means that your seven and a half million that you suggested is no longer seven and a half million, it’s a lot bigger than that. And that’s the idea.

[00:48:30]
Tom Gordon: Yeah.

[00:48:31]
Ben Newsome: That’s why I actually asked this question, because I’m very interested in 10x thinking. I like the idea of, you know how the idea that a meeting if it’s set for an hour you’ll run it to an hour then you’ll stop even though the conversation should have stopped at 37 minutes? Or if you’ve got the funding of $100,000 people will make sure they spend all their money to $100,000 because turns out they’re assessed about how that money was spent, right?

[00:48:52]
Tom Gordon: Yep.

[00:48:53]
Ben Newsome: The word spent is the key here. It was spent, it was not invested. Because at the end of it all, there’s no more money left. There’s no more things, and sadly, and it’s a real issue that happens in this particular industry, science communication, that these funded things are awesome until they’re no longer funded. The issue is they’re not sustainable.

[00:49:15]
Ben Newsome: And that’s actually one of the things that we’ve always measured what Fizzics does, Fizzics Education does, is that we’ve never really applied for funding. Not really. I mean occasionally people ask us “Hey dudes, it’s time you do this one.” But the reality is that if you build everything around a funding model, that’s all well and good until you have a political climate change, or there’s actually no more money to begin with. If you make it sustainable from the start and run a model whereby it’s fair and equitable and can people who can’t quite access it, you use money from other places to be able to allow them to access it, suddenly you make real change happen and it can’t be knocked over by a whim.

[00:49:48]
Tom Gordon: Yeah, sure. I think I think, you know, both you and I find ourselves in that situation slightly different right? So the job that I do is basically it funds itself, and the job that you do gives you the chances or the resources for you to do what you want and more, which is really awesome.

[00:50:13]
Ben Newsome: It’s a bit of fun, I mean as long as we make payroll each week we’re okay.

[00:50:20]
Tom Gordon: Oh look, to be honest for people like you and I’ll put myself in that category as well, sometimes it isn’t just about the payroll. Otherwise, you know, you wouldn’t get told by your colleagues, “Hey Ben, it’s time to go home now mate, come on, let’s go home.” That’s right. You’re still at work enjoying what you do. And I think that’s beautiful. It’s really cool to see.

[00:50:41]
Ben Newsome: That’s what I love and that’s actually quite rife in this industry which is fantastic, in education as a whole. And it goes beyond that into professional areas where people are passionate for what they do. I’ve argued that I haven’t worked for years. I just take a long time doing it.

[00:50:54]
Tom Gordon: Yeah.

[00:50:56]
Tom Gordon: What is, like you’ve probably covered some of this, but what’s next for you?

[00:51:02]
Ben Newsome: Gosh. We gotta sort out this San Diego thing. So that’s only just started the last couple of weeks. Seriously, we’re just still sorting out a bank account. But I mean I love a challenge. So I, and as you can hear, I don’t limit opportunities. I just see where the dice lay and we then throw the dice again and again and again and again. So for me it’s making sure that a) that what we do is still doing what we purport it to do, that it communicates science effectively in a way that’s accessible for the people who are in front of us, etc. etc.

[00:51:40]
Ben Newsome: Secondly, I’m also interested about reaching audiences and places that haven’t been traditionally dealt with. In fact, like both of us run a podcast right? And the reason why I run this… like you’ve got STEMpunk, we run Fizzics Ed Podcast because we couldn’t think of any other name. Now the reason why was simply I was challenged by a teacher during a TPL, a Teacher Professional Learning event, basically saying, “I want to hear from people doing cool stuff.” And I said, “Oh no, cool, I’ve got some blogs here, you can read the book that I’ve written, you can go check out that.” She goes, “No, no, no, I don’t want to read anything, I want to hear from them.”

[00:52:16]
Ben Newsome: And suddenly out of nowhere a podcast was born. Because firstly, if I get challenged, I usually do something about it. And secondly, she had a valid point. Because she was stuck in traffic every afternoon. Seriously, she’s a Sydney teacher, you’re in Sydney traffic you’re gonna cop traffic. She wanted to listen to people who do cool stuff in her world. And so for me, I can’t actually quite answer your question because I am a little reactive, to my own detriment occasionally. But that means that every year is a new and brighter things.

[00:52:46]
Tom Gordon: That’s yeah, that’s pretty cool. I mean, similarly, the reason that I started a podcast was because I want to try and do science communication in as many different ways as possible, not as a box-ticking exercise, but I want to be good. Like that’s why I, you know, I have done science communication to primary school, I have done it to high school, informal and formal, there you go.

[00:53:16]
Ben Newsome: Exam checking or non-exam checking.

[00:53:19]
Tom Gordon: Something like that. And I’ve also, you know, I’ve written a paper, I’ve written for a pop science magazine, I’ve done a podcast, I’ve done radio interviews, I’ve done television interviews. I just want to be able to, you know, tweeting, Facebook, I want to be able to do all of that. I want to say, because I take my job seriously as you do right? Science communicator, I want to be able to say I can communicate science to as many different people as I can. And that’s the reason I started a podcast. Because that’s one of them.

[00:53:47]
Ben Newsome: That’s perfect and that’s exactly where I’d hope that anyone who is educating an audience should hopefully be leaning towards. Now let’s be honest, all of us have different amounts of resources and time and all the rest. Let me be really clear about that. But there really is that whole “journey of a thousand miles, just take one step.” You’d be amazed how far things go if you take the step. The issue that happens, I believe, doesn’t mean I’m right, it’s just a belief, right? My belief system is often it’s around a perception of resource limitations or a perception of fear.

[00:54:24]
Tom Gordon: Yeah, sure.

[00:54:25]
Ben Newsome: What will happen? What will happen? What will happen? And over the years, I mean I can’t say I’m fearless, but I’ve certainly grown to learn that you can fail and fail and fail again. All you do is you fail fast and move forward.

[00:54:40]
Tom Gordon: Yeah. Yeah. I’m reading a book at the moment, it’s pop this book, but it’s called The Gentle Art of Not Giving a…

[00:54:50]
Ben Newsome: Yes, I love it. I want to read that book. I know exactly what you’re talking about.

[00:54:56]
Tom Gordon: The art of not giving a hoot let’s call it that.

[00:54:59]
Ben Newsome: Yes.

[00:55:00]
Tom Gordon: And that’s what they say there, like his opening line is you’re going to get tired of hearing this, you mess up and then move on. That’s how you learn.

[00:55:09]
Ben Newsome: That’s exactly right. The thing is, I mean, if you speak with any person, and especially because I’ve had the advantage to be able to go to retirement homes and what not and I always ask for their advice because I want to learn from them too, and they go, “You know what, I wish I just did what I knew.”

[00:55:23]
Tom Gordon: Yeah.

[00:55:25]
Ben Newsome: And it’s eventually, you know that whole idea of that, I mean I wish I could remember it, I mean I always like these sort of stories, but you know when you’re a 15-year-old you’re always worried what everyone thinks. And the 20-year-old you start to feel a little bit like you know you can do your own thing but you’re still a little bit not quite sure whether what you’re doing is actually quite right. By the time you’re 30 you think you’re actually doing okay, but you’re not too quite sure you’ve got financial things and all the rest.

[00:55:55]
Ben Newsome: By the time you start hitting towards 40 and 50 you realize, you know what, no one was really watching in the first place. And you were doing the best you could anyway. So it’s just you know what, as long as you don’t destroy the farm that you work in, the building that you work in, the organisation’s credibility and everything else, as long as you’re moving forwards, that’s a good way to go.

[00:56:07]
Tom Gordon: Yeah, for sure. So what’s next for you? Like what…

[00:56:16]
Ben Newsome: Yeah.

[00:56:17]
Tom Gordon: So a number of things. I’ve got a couple of papers that I’m writing, which is exciting. Which are throwing up some interesting results and questions. The new syllabus is next for me. So the Kickstart program that I run here, it needs to be updated fairly quickly because the new syllabus for New South Wales is coming in, which is really exciting because it just means we get to go into the lab and start tinkering, designing new experiments, new resources, and helping the teachers with these new depth studies. I’m sure you’ve heard lots of it…

[00:57:01]
Ben Newsome: Yeah. Big thing for year 11 and 12.

[00:57:03]
Tom Gordon: Big thing for year 11 and 12, for sure. And a lot of teachers and students don’t know how to approach that, so people like you and I are in a position to start helping them, which I’m pretty excited about. And like I said before, the other things like non-traditional science communication. I absolutely want to keep going to places like music festivals or agricultural days or you know following your footsteps, going to places like prisons, like that’s amazing.

[00:57:32]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, just make sure you don’t take the sharp things.

[00:57:35]
Tom Gordon: Liquid nitrogen not a good idea.

[00:57:38]
Ben Newsome: No, real story actually, this is not made up, we’ve gone to Juvenile Justice Centers, we’ve been to maximum security where you’ve got young adult offenders between 18 and 25. And we had the high school teacher, because some of these places have high school in there. And of course there’s a massive disparity and difference between the learners, because some of these kids might be 16 but they’re still not able to read for whatever reasons happened in their family and their background. And other ones are highly intelligent but they use their intelligence in another way, and mind you don’t get me wrong, the kids who couldn’t read they would be just as intelligent, the issue is that they’ve got all this other stuff going on that’s prevented them.

[00:58:18]
Ben Newsome: Now, we went into this particular school, but we couldn’t get into the school till you actually literally get buzzed in like check everything out and security and all the rest. And the security guard at the time hadn’t been quite informed that we were coming in to do this thing which turned out was actually liquid nitrogen shows. So here we are bringing a hazardous chemical into a high security site. And I’ve been ticked off by the powers that be, but the powers that be hadn’t quite informed what was happening down below. So he was really intent on having us tip the dewar on its side and run it through this multi-however many thousand dollar x-ray machine.

[00:59:02]
Ben Newsome: I said mate, you can only do this once. You know like it’s eventually like, I’m doing the best smuggling trick you can possibly think of at this point. Like I open the dewar lid up, you can look inside it, it’s going to be dark, it’s going to feel really cold stuff. I can pour a little bit out so you can see it, but you’re going to freak out once you start seeing what it does.

[00:59:12]
Ben Newsome: It was an interesting discussion, but I mean this is the thing, it just comes down to knowing your environment and what are the logistics. I mean we love the pragmatism of what is the thing, in fact when we do a lot of events, because we have you can hear like we do a bucket load of events, they could be festivals and whatever. And often when you speak with the event producer, the focus seems to be more about the wiz-bang pretty lights and all the fandangled stuff, whereas we care about where do we park? Where do we put the stuff? Where’s the powerpoint? Where is the washing up spot? Because the science and all the credibility stuff on stage, we already know. We just want to know that other stuff. And often it’s not considered. Mind you I must say there will be some event producers out there doing a massively decent job, don’t get me wrong, but there are others where you go wow, did you not consider this prior?

[01:00:04]
Tom Gordon: Yeah, yeah. We’ve got a lot of equipment, we need to… yeah.

[01:00:08]
Tom Gordon: Yeah. One of the other things I wanted to mention about what’s next and I think I’m trying to start doing this message more and more and more. Because not only should it be next for me or should it be something that I consider as the next thing, but I think it really should be something that everybody thinks is the next thing. And I’m going to sound like I know what I’m going to sound like, right? But I think I would like to start getting the politics message across a little bit. I don’t know what you think about that, but Dr Karl has a great way of saying it, it’s better that you’re standing outside the tent… no, it’s better that you’re standing inside the tent weeing out than standing outside the tent weeing in.

[01:00:55]
Tom Gordon: So one of the ways that you can change science or culture or policies is to be a part of it. So that’s that’s one of the things that I’m going to try and do a lot more, be a part of politics and that discussion.

[01:01:09]
Ben Newsome: And it takes a brave person to do this because the reality is, you stick your head above the parapet, things will fly at it.

[01:01:17]
Tom Gordon: Oh yes, part of it.

[01:01:19]
Ben Newsome: And really almost toxic, venomous stuff can come at you. Vitriol which is in some ways completely unfounded and based on their own fears. And so it is a difficult thing, I know that people like Neil deGrasse Tyson will comment subtly but very effectively on particular things. And there are others around Bill Nye does it and all the rest. There will, there is also some research around when you’re dealing with the science message as to how to deal with the issues that happen around, you know, the pseudoscience stuff and there’s plenty of pseudoscience around, that um, the very act of engaging in that discussion is far more important than a flat refusing their ideas because they actually back away and entrench their ideas.

[01:02:00]
Ben Newsome: So it’s a very difficult line. And I’m not actually just saying subjectively, I know there’s research on this, so it’s it’s very difficult isn’t it? And well done for looking at the politics side of it because that’s a genuinely interesting area which I think as society becomes even every year, every generation it becomes more and more informed about how the world works, like it’s just dark ages right? But it’s still got to be championed by these people that put their head above the parapet. And good on you. That’s awesome.

[01:02:39]
Tom Gordon: So that’s the that’s that’s what I’m going to try and do. It’s really hard to argue with people like that too because, like you said vitriol, I don’t know the definition of that word, but it’s probably quite based on ideology, which is which is almost, you know, the anti or it’s the opposite of science, like ideology.

[01:03:00]
Ben Newsome: Well it is the opposite of the scientific process. Like I will argue a point based on evidence, but an ideology is based on a belief.

[01:03:08]
Tom Gordon: Yeah. And the thing is, so when vitriol happens at you, it’s very difficult to reply back with a scientific argument. So it’s challenging, but worthwhile I think.

[01:03:15]
Ben Newsome: It is, and as long as this, and that’s why I said discussion, discussion based on mutual respect on people’s head space around a particular concept is the beginning of a long-term engagement in a narrative that can be developed over time. The flat refusal, this actually goes back to what we were discussing about 20 minutes ago around the 1% being focused on not the 99% you got right.

[01:03:37]
Tom Gordon: Yeah.

[01:03:38]
Ben Newsome: I mean there is actually, you look at all these different things, and I don’t want to go down some of the areas that ends up these these discussions often end up going. The there is a lot of merit to a lot of the things that you hear about stories about how things work from time and up to now in all these different ways right? And a lot of it comes down to that particular group of people’s experience and interpretation of those experiences. I mean obviously in some cases there was more scientific method than others.

[01:04:10]
Ben Newsome: But their interpretation of those experiences are nonetheless they’re still valid, they just may not be rooted in logical scientific reason that’s testable, measurable and all the rest right? So if you’ve grown up in that particular belief system and that’s all you’ve ever heard, and now you’ve got someone saying “nah ain’t the case”, natural human response is to go “uh nah, totally wrong.”

[01:04:33]
Tom Gordon: Yeah, well you’re wrong.

[01:04:34]
Ben Newsome: Exactly. And I totally get that, and that’s why I actually deliberately keep my nose out of it, because I actually respect both sides. Because it’s not like a protection to the company or to myself, it’s actually like you know what, I would rather not spend time in a flaming war on Twitter. I would rather actually have a beer with someone, or not a beer if they can’t have beer, but quietly have a chat with them and find out where they’re coming from and over time get that out. Now of course we can’t do that with the masses, but things like the podcast and the blogs and all these other stuff builds up a body of work which hopefully over time can be accessible and used.

[01:05:13]
Announcer: We hope you’ve been enjoying the Fizzics Ed Podcast. We love making science make sense. Why don’t you book us for a science show or workshop in your school? If you’re outside of Australia, you can connect with us via a virtual excursion. See our website for more.

[01:05:28]
Ben Newsome: Well there you go that was Tom Gordon, who’s very much a very big fan of well STEM. I mean he works out of the University of Sydney at the School of Physics so he’s gonna like his science, technology, engineering, maths without a doubt. But having clearly set up with Christie and Shane the STEMpunk Podcast, he is a big fan and is trying to spread that message far and wide. So why not go onto stempunkpodcast.blogspot.com.au and go and check out their past episodes because there’s quite a bit of a, well a variety of informal chats with STEM professionals in lots of different ways. Anyway, we’ve got more episodes coming up so I hope you keep hanging around to the Fizzics Ed Podcast. You’ve been listening to me, Ben Newsome of Fizzics Education. I’m hoping that you’re making your STEM stuff awesome and engaging and all the rest it can be, but until then, I’ll catch you next week.

[01:06:16]
Announcer: You’ve been listening to another Fizzics Ed Podcast. We’re excited about science. Subscribe to us on iTunes to download the next episode as soon as it’s released. And don’t forget, for hundreds of ideas, free experiments, our new Be Amazing book and more, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. That’s physics spelled F I Z Z I C S.

[01:06:41]
Announcer: This podcast is part of the Australian Educators Online Network. AEON.net.au.

Frequently Asked Questions

Extra thought ideas to consider

• The Human Element in Science Communication: Tom Gordon mentioned looking for presenters who have worked in diverse environments, like bars or scout clubs. How does a communicator’s ability to relate to people on a “human level” outweigh their formal scientific credentials when it comes to inspiring students?
• STEM as a Political Act: Tom discussed the idea of “standing inside the tent” to influence policy and culture. Should science communicators be more active in the political sphere to ensure scientific literacy is prioritised in national curricula?
• Breaking the “Box” of Bureaucracy: Both guests expressed a desire to work without traditional boxes or boundaries. How can schools and universities create more “unhinged” access to resources and experiments that don’t fit into a standard 40-minute period?