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Acast

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helps creators launch, grow, and

1:58

monetize their podcasts. I'm

2:00

a singer and

2:09

I've released seven albums in

2:11

between having my five sons aged 16 months

2:21

and 16 years, so I've spent a few

2:23

places myself. Being

2:27

a mother can be the most amazing thing, but

2:29

it can also be hard to find time for yourself and

2:31

your own ambitions. I want to be a bit nosy

2:34

and see how other people find their head in things.

2:36

Welcome to Spinning Plates.

2:41

Hello to you, how you

2:43

doing? I'm speaking to

2:45

you on, oh what is

2:47

it, Friday afternoon. Golly,

2:50

the week's gone quick. Blimey.

2:53

And I've still got the last

2:55

little bits of a beautiful, oh it's a really

2:57

beautiful sunny day actually. That

3:00

lovely golden light. And

3:02

the weather has been teasing us. It goes

3:04

from heatwave to proper

3:07

autumn chill in

3:09

a day,

3:09

it feels like.

3:11

So this morning it was all kind of cold

3:13

and we left for school and the kids wanted their

3:15

coats and I put them in shorts

3:17

and it wasn't really shorts weather. But now it's actually

3:19

really quite warm, so hopefully they've

3:21

forgiven me by now. And

3:23

I think we're kind of getting into our September

3:26

stride a little bit, although

3:28

I have to say I feel pretty exhausted.

3:30

I don't know, hmm, my

3:34

secondary school kids, well in particular

3:36

my 11 year old, when he comes home

3:38

he's always got quite a lot of homework now, and

3:41

I have to sit and do it with him. And

3:44

I just don't think I'm a very good teacher. In

3:46

fact I think I'm a bad teacher. And

3:49

he's very sweet because he always wants to understand

3:51

the answers, which obviously is the right

3:54

thing to do, but I'm a bit like, let's just get this

3:56

done, the answer's this. And obviously

3:58

that's the wrong attitude. that the rubber

4:00

did. So I'm trying to actively like slow myself

4:02

down, explain stuff,

4:04

get him to do the solutions and work it out.

4:08

But then yeah I just find it a bit

4:10

overwhelming sometimes because I never really know if

4:12

the emphasis of homework is on him finishing it

4:15

or him understanding it. Understanding

4:17

it would mean we'd probably spend about double the time

4:19

sometimes. Also I've

4:22

kind of done school I don't necessarily

4:24

want to do it again. What

4:28

is the obsession in biology with an animal

4:30

cell and the plant cell and the differences between them. I swear

4:32

to God I've done that now with like I'm

4:35

on my third kid doing it and I remember it's all

4:37

I can remember from GCSE, due to Institute

4:39

of Youth, plant cell, animal cell, those

4:41

of actuals, job done. Anyway

4:44

what else is going on? Well up to there I did another podcast,

4:48

episode four yeah.

4:50

I'm still scooping up ideas of new people.

4:53

I don't know the couple of bookings. It's

4:56

shaping up well. I think I'm probably I've

4:59

probably got about half my guests for the next series.

5:01

I thought it's quite

5:04

a nice feeling and there's a

5:06

few trees I'm still shaking but all

5:08

good stuff, all lovely people, all people

5:10

I think you'll be interested to hear their stories.

5:13

I've

5:15

done my first meeting

5:17

about what I'm wearing for my Christmas tour. That's

5:19

my front door. Because

5:22

it's Christmasy and it's weird because normally

5:24

the idea of thinking like Christmas in September

5:26

or October would be horrifying. I

5:28

don't feel horrified by it at all. I'm actually completely

5:30

there because suddenly I can sort of see that

5:33

December will be here before I know it. So

5:36

I'm planning my outfits and

5:38

how I'm going to do one change into another change

5:40

and what someone's going to sing. I'm quite

5:43

excited about all that too. I'm already

5:45

feeling a little bit festive. Maybe

5:49

it's the fact things are happening that always make you think of this time

5:51

of year like I don't know strictly coming

5:53

back on daily and you're like well that's another

5:55

fast train to Christmas isn't it. to

6:00

tell you about. You know

6:02

what I haven't really done very much this week, I've been staying

6:04

at home quite a lot.

6:05

I've had festivals

6:09

and all that meant that was away so much as away quite

6:11

a lot last weekend so I'm just trying to really

6:13

hunker

6:13

down a little bit, just be home a bit

6:16

more, keep on top of

6:18

things here. Continuing with the declustering,

6:20

I think I spoke to you about that last week. The

6:22

piles of stuff are ready to go by the door. Yeah,

6:24

all

6:26

kind of, all pretty change of season

6:29

stuff. And this

6:31

week's episode is, oh,

6:33

so sometimes when Claire,

6:36

my producer and I record an episode,

6:38

we feel

6:39

like we get a bit of a sort of crush on our guest.

6:41

And that is what happened with my guest

6:43

for this week. So

6:46

I spoke to Professor Alice Roberts. She's

6:49

a TV presenter and

6:51

she's a biological anthropologist.

6:54

So she basically studies old

6:56

bones,

6:56

sometimes very ancient bones, and then

6:58

tries to work out as much as she can about that person

7:01

from their skeleton.

7:02

So already fascinating

7:05

stuff, right? And I first met

7:07

her when we were both involved

7:10

in a brilliant evening. Again, I've probably spoken

7:12

to you about before, which is Brian

7:14

Cox and Robin Ince. They do the Infinite Monkey Cage,

7:17

a big Christmas show. So it's basically, it's called

7:20

Compendium of Reason. And it's all

7:22

people from the world of science and

7:24

comedy and then some musicians too,

7:27

who hop up and do a turn as

7:29

part of this big evening all held together by Brian

7:32

and Robin and

7:33

introducing people and talking

7:35

about space and the world

7:38

and fascinating stuff. So a lot of scientists. So that's

7:40

how I met Hannah Fry as well, who I had recently.

7:45

It's how I also met, oh, golly,

7:48

Helen Glover, the rower, and

7:51

that led me to Alice Roberts. So Alice

7:54

spoke and I met her briefly and I thought

7:56

she seemed really cool and really interesting. So

7:58

I invited her to do the podcast. and,

8:01

ah, what

8:01

a woman. We had such a good chat. It was the

8:03

perfect conversation really, because

8:06

whenever I'm inviting people onto this podcast,

8:08

I always say, my guests are all

8:10

working women who happen to be mothers, and we talk about

8:12

how motherhood has influenced work, and

8:15

vice versa, but that's kind of the icebreaker,

8:17

and we can talk about all other things, and that's basically what happened

8:19

with Alice and I. So we did speak about

8:21

how it felt to

8:22

be raising her two children and her experiences,

8:25

all of that stuff, and how it's about then playing

8:28

with her work, and how, you know, the bits

8:30

is made of something about. But

8:32

we also from this, spoke a lot about humanism,

8:35

because for a long time, Alice was the president of

8:37

the Humanist

8:37

Society, she's now vice president, and

8:41

this is something I'm really interested in. So it was

8:43

a really, really lovely, proper

8:45

conversation where you feel your brain cells

8:47

all going brrrr in happiness. So,

8:49

sorry, that was my cat's call at the same time. I can't, I

8:52

can't from his sleeping one, I made that noise. Sorry,

8:54

Titus, I was trying to mimic the sound

8:57

of my brain cells

8:57

doing something. So he's not used to it noise

8:59

either. And yeah,

9:01

I just really enjoyed

9:04

it.

9:04

So Alice, thank you to you,

9:06

and thank you to you, dear

9:08

listener, for giving me your time again.

9:11

I think you're gonna enjoy this, but I will see you again.

9:18

Oh, gee, I'm just gonna have

9:20

a quick answer, you know,

9:21

but you just mentioned that this is quite a man of time for you. So

9:23

what are you up to at the moment?

9:25

I am getting ready to film the next

9:27

series of Digging for Britain,

9:28

which always takes up photos of my summer,

9:30

because we travel around the country looking

9:33

at different archaeological digs all over the place.

9:36

So I'll be heading off to do that,

9:38

I think probably end of May, early June,

9:41

but I'm squeezing in another series, which

9:44

is for channel four, and it's,

9:45

I think I can talk about it.

9:47

Yeah,

9:49

it's called Ottoman Empire by Train. So

9:52

it's a mixture of kind of travel and

9:54

history. Wow. And so I've

9:57

just got back from Turkey, Bulgaria,

9:59

and said. Yes, I could see you were at places

10:01

like that, amazing. Yeah, and next week I'm off

10:04

to Romania. Wow. Because

10:07

I was thinking about what you do, so

10:10

broadly speaking, biological anthropology,

10:12

but I was thinking that covers so

10:15

much, because actually, in terms

10:17

of your sciences, you've got anatomy,

10:21

you've got forensics, you've

10:22

got history, you've

10:23

got humanity, you've got culture.

10:26

It kind of covers tons of things, doesn't it?

10:28

Like, you have to reach into so many

10:30

pockets to work out humans

10:33

and how the species have evolved and what you've been up to

10:35

all this time. Yeah, I think

10:38

as it's gone on, I've become

10:39

much more interested in, I suppose, all

10:42

the

10:42

kind of cultural aspects.

10:45

My background is medicine and anatomy.

10:48

I still teach anatomy to medical students at

10:51

Birmingham University. But I

10:54

think that the biological

10:55

anthropology means that

10:57

you end up very often focusing on

10:59

bones. So I suppose if you

11:01

boil it right down to the nitty-gritty

11:04

of it or what it is on a daily

11:06

basis, it's going to look at

11:08

old skeletons. So I look at those

11:10

old bones and I try

11:12

and reconstruct a biography from the

11:14

bones, which is something that, when

11:16

I started getting into that area of science, having been a

11:19

medic,

11:19

having been a doctor,

11:21

I found it quite amazing how much you could tell

11:24

just from a skeleton. So

11:26

yeah, I'm very focused on that kind

11:28

of, the

11:29

kind of intimate details

11:31

of those bones and that individual

11:34

from that kind of biological perspective. But then

11:36

as soon as you start to build that up, it

11:38

is a little bit like you've got

11:39

a patient and you're trying to find out about that patient

11:41

and you're trying to

11:42

understand them and understand their life. So

11:44

you start to add on

11:46

all of these aspects, which are more than just

11:48

the biology. They're the kind of human experience

11:51

and then the culture as well. Well,

11:53

that's extraordinary. And do you feel like you get

11:55

a sort of link with the person as you're

11:57

building the picture? Yeah, definitely.

11:59

Yeah, because you're

12:02

interacting with an individual. Yeah,

12:05

it feels very personal. But there's a

12:07

sort of poetry to it as well, because as you

12:10

say, you're delving, you're getting a sense of what was

12:12

going on historically, but looking at one

12:14

life lived. And I suppose when we think

12:16

of

12:17

the past,

12:19

things that tend to get very clumped together and you forget

12:21

about what an individual's experience

12:23

of that time would be like, how their day would

12:26

be, what they felt about things. You know,

12:28

it's not like you can say across the board

12:30

that

12:31

one

12:32

time in the chapter

12:34

of the world, they all felt the same way about things. But we sort

12:36

of tend to do that a little bit. Yeah,

12:38

we say things like the Romans believed

12:40

this. Exactly. Of course, there isn't

12:42

one thing that the Romans believed. No. One thing

12:45

that I and eight people believed is it would have been

12:47

hugely diverse. No experience of life would have been

12:49

hugely diverse.

12:50

Exactly. So how did you make the leap between

12:52

being a medic to what you

12:55

do now?

12:56

Well, kind of by mistake.

12:58

So I should be a surgeon,

13:01

really. And I left

13:03

medical school, did my house jobs

13:05

in South Wales.

13:06

So I was a junior doctorate

13:09

in Cardiff and in Bridgend. And then

13:11

I was looking for the next step. I knew

13:13

I wanted to do surgery at that point. I

13:17

loved surgery. I liked the craft of it.

13:20

I really loved anatomy.

13:21

I still love anatomy. And

13:23

it was kind of putting that anatomy into practice.

13:25

So I was looking for next jobs

13:27

and looking around at what

13:29

that might be. And I supported this really

13:32

intriguing job in Bristol, which

13:34

was just a six month training

13:36

post, six month

13:38

job where I would be doing a bit

13:40

of surgical work as an

13:42

FHA,

13:42

as a senior house officer,

13:45

and

13:45

also teaching anatomy at Bristol

13:47

University.

13:49

And there was somebody in

13:51

the department called Dr. Jonathan Musgrave,

13:53

who was

13:54

a forensic anthropologist. I'm

13:56

always been quite intrigued in old

13:58

bones and forensic anthropologists. had an amazing

14:01

retired surgeon called Richard Newell who

14:03

would teach

14:04

anatomy at Cardiff

14:06

when I was at Cardiff Medical School and

14:08

he would

14:08

you know he'd tell us about arthritis and then he'd bring

14:11

in examples of arthritis

14:13

in archaeological bones so I always think quite

14:15

I always had that in the kind of back of my mind I was

14:17

interested in that so I thought oh I might

14:20

this six months job sounds really really

14:22

good because I'm carrying on with my surgical

14:24

training I'm teaching

14:26

anatomy which I love and also you need to polish up

14:29

your anatomy if you're going to be a surgeon you have to

14:31

do surgical exams and that obviously

14:33

involves quite a bit of anatomy it's sort of the basics

14:35

isn't it knowing how the body's put together and

14:38

then the opportunity to do a bit of research

14:40

as well really intrigued me so that

14:43

was just going to be a six month job

14:45

yeah loved it and

14:47

while I was there my boss

14:50

who run anatomy on the medical course

14:52

left and the department

14:54

just wanted somebody to to kind

14:56

of look after anatomy for

14:59

a bit and it was it was a kind of fill-in job and I thought

15:02

okay I'll do this for another six months then and

15:04

then they said do you want to stay on for another six

15:07

months so I was quite enjoying

15:09

it all the time I thought I'd go back to

15:11

surgery and then eventually

15:14

there was the offer of doing a part-time PhD

15:16

and I thought actually you know I am really enjoying

15:18

this I love anatomy love

15:21

the teaching really interested

15:23

in the in the research that I'm getting into

15:25

so I made this kind of yeah very kind

15:28

of gentle transition it wasn't it

15:30

wasn't like wake up one morning I thought I don't want to be

15:32

a surgeon no I got kind of

15:34

drawn into this other world which I just

15:36

hadn't expected at all but that's so

15:38

lovely and I guess that means if you've got that passion

15:41

and curiosity then it gives you all that

15:43

first to keep learning more and that's kind of you just be

15:45

able to follow your nose with it really like yeah why

15:47

does this part lead me and I suppose the

15:49

big difference between the medical side

15:51

of the studying anatomy and the surgical

15:53

side and then where you ended

15:56

up is

15:57

you're looking at these bones to tell

15:59

story

15:59

stories from people who have died and the past.

16:03

And I think this makes me excited too. I've got

16:05

a bit of a

16:06

curiosity, I think, and I suppose

16:09

the link between the living and the dead really,

16:11

and

16:11

this experience

16:14

we have

16:14

and everything that we perceive is out

16:17

the world as we know it, but the fact that everything's

16:19

evolving. And so the things we have

16:21

access to the way our world works is not the same

16:23

as it would have been 100 years ago, 500, 1000 years

16:26

ago. But that is your experience.

16:29

And

16:30

we tend to forget that people

16:32

who lived 1000 years ago were full of just

16:35

as much vitality. They got excited

16:37

about things, they had up days, down

16:39

days, things happening, adventures, whatever. You

16:42

sort of get it, this sort of like a faded idea

16:44

of, I don't know, I suppose all emotions

16:46

being muted, because it's

16:49

muted in our presence. But that wouldn't

16:51

have been the case for them then at all. No,

16:53

it's interesting, isn't it? Because I think that

16:55

by the time, I mean, obviously, when you've got

16:57

the written word, we've got

16:59

that amazing, I mean, I just think that technology

17:03

is

17:04

incredible. And that must have been so, you know,

17:07

completely kind of life changing and culture

17:10

changing. I mean, people are being able

17:12

to write things or? Yeah, if you think about

17:14

writing, see,

17:16

if you think about kind of culture before that,

17:18

you've got the only information

17:20

that you're getting as a human

17:23

is from other living humans. Yeah.

17:27

From the world around you, but the information about

17:29

humans is coming from other living humans.

17:32

Once you get the written word, you can

17:34

obviously

17:35

read the thoughts of somebody who you've

17:38

never met. Yes. And that person

17:40

may not even be alive anymore. And

17:42

that is that when you think about it, that is actually quite

17:45

mindblowing. That is also my ability to think that

17:47

wasn't the case. Yeah, yeah. Don't

17:50

you? Yeah, you do communicate outside your tribe

17:52

and outside your own experience. Yeah. So

17:55

it's only 4000 years that we've been able

17:57

to do that to kind of have a.

17:59

that kind of information that gets passed

18:02

on, that can be centuries

18:04

old or thousands of years old. And

18:07

I think,

18:08

and I suppose if you look at what's happened

18:10

with the written word, then you know some of it is,

18:14

I think a lot of history tends

18:16

to be about prominent people

18:18

and you know big

18:21

political changes always written about from the point

18:23

of view of the victors and you've

18:25

got a lot of people's stories that never get written

18:27

down. I think a big

18:30

change came with

18:32

probably novel writing and

18:34

you know that the

18:37

idea of a novel that you can get inside somebody else's

18:39

head and experience a

18:41

different world from the perspective

18:44

of another individual. It's

18:47

fascinating isn't it? I mean it really is. It kind

18:49

of enlarges our own human experience

18:51

I think. Yeah I mean when I was you know,

18:54

I knew I was going to speak to you, I was looking at all your

18:56

areas of your work

18:59

and I thought, I think it's actually

19:02

quite overwhelming. Once you start feeling

19:04

in, it's sort

19:05

of endless, it's like looking at space or like the scene

19:07

or something. It's like woah, okay I'm just

19:09

going to turn cram for a brief history

19:12

of everything that humans have been up to. But

19:14

talking about getting your information from

19:16

other humans before we started

19:18

recording, we were talking about it's like do you have two kids and I

19:20

find that really fascinating just watching them

19:23

grow up. So now are they, is it 10 and 12 is that right? 10

19:25

and 13. Okay,

19:28

I'm afraid since they're teenagers. I know it's

19:31

quite a milestone that isn't it? Definitely.

19:34

I think it's because everybody's got such a

19:36

strong association with their own teenage

19:38

years. You know, here we go,

19:40

you start 13, it's like a gentle little

19:44

start but you know,

19:46

here

19:46

we go. And you kind of get that's when you

19:48

first start to find out who you really are

19:50

as a person as well I think. Absolutely

19:53

and everything's firing and you know all the

19:55

neurological remapping and everything that's going on

19:58

is quite, it's a good area of research. If

20:03

we go back to what was happening in your

20:05

life when you had your first baby.

20:07

Oh my goodness, that was a crazy

20:09

year. It was a crazy, crazy year.

20:11

I had left Bristol University,

20:14

so I'd resigned from my academic job. I'd

20:17

been there for 11 years and

20:20

I'd started to, I suppose, do

20:22

other things. So I started by that

20:25

point, I was already

20:27

doing quite a bit of television. I had my first

20:29

big landmark series on the BBC.

20:32

We filmed that in 2008.

20:32

That was an incredible human journey

20:35

where we went around the world mapping paleolithic

20:38

migrations that the colonisation of the world

20:40

and the ice age. Wow. Hold

20:42

on for a second. How did you find that going into TV?

20:45

Because you didn't have to write

20:47

into telly if you'd want to just to stay in the

20:49

research I guess. No, that was another mistake

20:52

really.

20:54

Having become a lecturer

20:56

at Bristol University

20:59

and teaching anatomy,

21:01

doing my research in

21:02

old bones, it was the research

21:04

in old bones that ended up opening the world of

21:06

television to me because I was doing

21:09

some work, doing my own research, but

21:11

also writing reports

21:14

on bones for the

21:16

police

21:16

occasionally, getting involved with forensic cases

21:19

and then also for archaeologists. So

21:21

people would dig up bones in Bristol and

21:24

they'd send them up to our labs at the university

21:26

and there was a team of us there, there

21:28

was a team of us there writing up the reports on these

21:30

bones. So you really were doing like modern day and

21:32

back in, it's all across the ages when you were looking

21:35

at the bones. Yeah. That

21:37

was interesting. And then Time Team were

21:39

half based in Bristol and they needed

21:41

somebody to do

21:43

reports for them. So they had to produce reports

21:46

on all of their

21:46

excavations. So they got in touch

21:48

with the team at Bristol University and said, will you really

21:50

do reports for us? So that's how I started.

21:52

So I was literally getting the bones that they'd dug

21:55

up on whatever site and writing

21:57

those reports. And then they said, well, can

21:59

you come back? along on one

22:01

of these sheets

22:04

and I said well I have to reorganise

22:06

my teaching a bit and say are you sure that there's going to be bones?

22:09

And they said I'm not coming. Exactly

22:12

I'm not going to say I'm coming. And they

22:14

said well it's a cemetery excavation. So I

22:19

went along and that's kind

22:22

of a standard way in which

22:24

academics engage

22:26

with the media and the media engages academics

22:28

that you have expert contributors. So that

22:30

was kind of my role. And

22:33

it just

22:35

kind of grew and it grew quite organically

22:37

so I ended up

22:39

doing a

22:40

little bit of presenting,

22:43

interviewing, interviewing people and

22:45

then the BBC

22:47

invited me to present Coast and

22:49

I yeah

22:52

I think they thought I was an archaeologist. So

22:54

I had to say I'm, and I said we'd

22:56

quite like you to present this program.

22:57

I'm

22:59

not really a presenter, I've never done a piece of camera

23:01

before and also I think you

23:03

think I'm an archaeologist and I'm not. And they said

23:05

why are you? I said I'm a

23:07

biological anthropologist and they were like oh

23:10

alright. I was reassuring that they had

23:12

to start from the same place I was a few

23:14

days ago. That's right. So

23:18

yeah and then I ended

23:20

up doing more and more television and really enjoying that.

23:23

So I got to the point with

23:28

my job at Bristol where

23:30

I don't know whether it was

23:31

necessarily difficult to balance

23:34

all of those things but

23:36

certainly I had the view that

23:38

the university wasn't particularly supportive

23:40

of people doing public engagement and

23:43

I must say I did feel as

23:45

though my head was pressed up against a bit of a glass

23:48

ceiling. So

23:49

I'd been there 11 years and

23:51

I

23:52

did see quite a lot of men being cremated

23:54

around me and wondered why it

23:56

wasn't the same for me. And so there were lots of things

23:58

and I just got to the point where I was like oh

23:59

to the point where I thought

24:01

I'm not enjoying this job as much as I was.

24:03

So I resigned

24:05

in 2009

24:09

and literally two weeks after I handed

24:11

in my letter of resignation I

24:13

discovered I was pregnant.

24:15

So that was a big thing. I was

24:17

like oh I'm leaving, I'm

24:19

leaving a really secure job here

24:20

and stepping out and it

24:23

felt like stepping off a precipice into the

24:25

unknown. You know I'd worked for the NHS full

24:27

time,

24:27

I'd worked for the University of Bristol

24:29

full time and I was suddenly stepping

24:31

off into what I hoped might be

24:34

the world of freelancing and

24:37

you just don't know when you step off if there's

24:39

going to be anything to step onto. So

24:41

it was a bit tricky and when I left

24:45

the university I had a book to write so

24:47

I was writing a big anatomy book

24:50

at the time

24:52

and then the prospect

24:54

of a television series came up and it

24:56

was a series looking at British

24:58

archaeology, travelling around and

25:01

it sounded really exciting. It was a new idea,

25:03

new television theories but

25:05

you know I had to say to the producers like I'd love to do it

25:08

but I'm going to have a baby next February

25:11

and amazingly John Farron

25:13

who is the executive producer said okay

25:16

well how about if we start filming in

25:19

April and you bring a baby

25:21

with you. Wow

25:22

that's actually pretty, that's what

25:24

I did. That's pretty amazing response

25:26

though because if

25:28

they hadn't said that, do

25:31

you think you would have fought your corner

25:33

to try and make it happen or do you think you would have

25:35

just gone okay yeah no I

25:38

can see why that's not going to work. How significant

25:40

is it that they try to work around you? Yeah

25:42

really significant because I didn't

25:45

know, I had

25:47

my lovely friend Miranda Christovnikov who

25:49

was one of the presenters on Coast and does

25:52

a lot of wildlife presenting. I knew

25:54

that, so her kids are a little bit

25:56

older than mine and I knew that she had taken

25:59

her baby filming. with her. So before

26:01

I talked to the producers about it, I

26:03

went around and had a proper chat with with

26:06

Miss about how it was and

26:09

how difficult it was,

26:11

whether she would recommend

26:13

it, whether she thought I'd

26:15

be able to do it. And she said, yeah,

26:18

just, you know, it's fine. They're very

26:20

portable. I love it. Great. That's

26:22

a magic tip I use a lot when I'm small. Yeah, as long

26:24

as you've got somebody with you. So my husband

26:26

was also a just kind of

26:28

embarrassed

26:31

on a freelance career at that point as well. And he said, look, I'm

26:33

right. I'm going to support you this year. I'm

26:35

going to come with you filming. So

26:37

that's how that's how we did it. But yeah, I mean,

26:39

having I think the producers of

26:42

Digging and John, John Farron in particular,

26:44

he was absolutely

26:46

wonderful because he said, let's all try

26:48

this. And if it doesn't work,

26:51

it's fine. You can walk away from it. And

26:53

if it doesn't work, to

26:55

just have you as a single presenter, we

26:57

could maybe bring in another presenter. Let's just see what

26:59

happens. That's pretty amazing. I mean, that was that

27:02

was amazing, because it meant that it wasn't I was going

27:04

into it without that kind of stress of going, Oh, my

27:06

goodness, what if this doesn't work? Oh, absolutely.

27:08

Because it could have just as easily been someone saying,

27:11

we can make it April. And hopefully

27:14

that will just be fine. And it's kind of on you to

27:17

make it fine. Yeah. And then you'd feel

27:19

all that pressure of,

27:21

okay, I think I can probably do this. But

27:23

what if I can't? And you get that slightly jangly adrenaline

27:26

of just like, have a bit more than I can do with

27:28

this. So to have him say, let's

27:30

just be in our way with it. This is a new thing. Yeah,

27:32

new thing for us. Yeah. And then you've

27:34

got that slight blissful

27:36

ignorance, I think as well when it's your first baby, because

27:39

people your friend saying, fine, you

27:41

go, okay, yeah, nodding with them. Yeah,

27:44

fine. But you don't really, it's so

27:46

hard to imagine it's an abstract, the idea

27:48

of not being when they're actually here, how are

27:50

you going to feel and you're going to feel the same person you were

27:53

before you had this? I know when I was having my first I was

27:55

really worried that my whole all of my

27:57

priorities have flipped to the extent where I didn't

27:59

even even know am I still going to be ambitious? Am

28:01

I still going to want to do things with my

28:04

work like that? I don't know how I feel. Also,

28:06

your brain isn't necessarily super

28:08

sharp when you've got all the hormones

28:10

and sleep deprivation. There's an element

28:12

of wading through triclos in your

28:14

mind. Yeah, it's fine. I mean, the

28:17

cruelty of not sleeping properly is tough on

28:19

your brain. It's just that you do. I

28:21

do know more than forwards. I just can't think of

28:23

any of them, right? Just everything is gone.

28:26

I felt like I've had amazing training for babies,

28:29

having been a

28:29

junior doctor in the long seas. Well,

28:32

touching on that for a minute, is it true

28:35

you did some of your ward rounds in rollerblades?

28:37

Yes, it is. That's bloody

28:39

cool. Oh, my god. Yeah. You

28:42

must have been a memorable junior doctor. Can

28:46

I see you running the rollerblades, please? Yeah, yeah. Towards

28:49

the end of the university that got into rollerblades,

28:51

you used

28:51

to go rollerblading around Katais

28:53

Park in the middle of the garden. Hey, I had rollerblades.

28:56

Brilliant fun. They're just fantastic. I've rediscovered

28:58

them recently. Have you? My

28:59

kids are into rollerblading. Oh, good to you. I got

29:01

myself some really nice ones. In fact,

29:03

I could only find one

29:04

of my ones from university. I went up and I lost,

29:06

and I've managed to find one of them. Same

29:09

bastard. I thought, oh, I'll get myself some more.

29:11

So I was doing

29:12

pediatrics, and

29:15

pediatric surgery, actually, when I was

29:17

a house officer. And when

29:19

you were on call overnight, you'd

29:22

be sleeping in the accommodation

29:24

on site at the hospital. But

29:26

it was still some distance away from the main

29:28

hospital. And there were these tunnels underground

29:30

that you went through

29:32

to get from the accommodation to the hospital. And I was

29:34

like, well, this is perfect. I can get quickly through

29:36

those tunnels if I put my rollerblades. They're made for rollerblades.

29:39

Take my rollerblades. So I did that.

29:41

And then I thought, actually, I probably could do

29:43

it. I don't know if I was thinking you'd do it now, would you? Probably

29:46

could do my rollerblades. Well, I'm not sure. On

29:48

rollerblades.

29:48

But yeah, it was pediatrics,

29:50

and the kids obviously loved it. I bet they did. Oh.

29:52

That's very cute. Anyway, sorry. I went off on a bit of

29:54

a tangent. I just think

29:57

that was a really amazing event that year.

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31:35

So you, so let's cut back, so you've had your baby

31:37

and then you find yourself with an eight-week-old?

31:40

Yeah, yeah. What

31:43

are your memories of that time now? Oh, really

31:45

lovely memories. It was, it

31:47

was actually, um, yeah,

31:50

it was really lovely, it was really joyful.

31:52

I was working with a, with a really fantastic

31:55

team, lovely,

31:57

lovely crew. Um,

31:58

we'd, we'd

31:59

stay in places and

32:02

we'd all kind of have dinner together and

32:05

quite often some guitars would come out in the evening

32:07

and people would play music. It's just lovely. And

32:10

yeah, it was actually really, it was a really

32:13

precious time being together as a little family

32:15

as well. Yeah. So my husband would

32:18

take my daughter

32:20

when I was actually on camera and filming

32:23

and then we'd have to try and hook up at lunchtime

32:25

so that I could feed her because I

32:27

was like, she's going to be breastfed. That's

32:29

going to happen. What I'd also

32:32

done having talked to Miranda

32:34

was made sure that she would

32:36

have bottles as well. So I was

32:39

expressing milk so that if

32:41

we didn't quite get the timing right, we

32:44

could manage all of that. So she was only getting breast milk,

32:46

but she was doing bottle feeding as well as breast

32:49

feeding. And that was funny because I had these conversations

32:51

with the, I think that the health visitor who

32:55

I think was quite

32:57

disapproving of me introducing

32:59

a bottle early on, given that my daughter was,

33:02

I mean, she was brilliant at breastfeeding. I

33:04

didn't have any issues with breastfeeding because it

33:06

was absolutely joy. She just knew what to do and got on with it.

33:09

I was like, well, thank goodness she knows what to do.

33:11

And

33:12

I remember the health visitor being like,

33:15

ooh, you know, she could get nipple confusion.

33:17

And I was like, what? I'm sorry, what is this thing?

33:20

I'm not sure it has any other terms. Nipple

33:22

confusion. This

33:25

idea that if you introduce them to a

33:27

bottle, they're going to go, what's that? They are not

33:29

going to go back to drinking it as a breast. But

33:31

it turned out that she

33:32

was quite happy with whatever

33:35

it was as long as it hadn't been coming out of it. She was just

33:37

open to either method. I

33:42

know, I love all those terms they come up with. And

33:44

they're sort of there to make you feel terrible.

33:46

The idea of a confused week

33:49

old, I'm like, I'm confused. You're already

33:51

so new and you're already

33:53

confused. Yeah, what am I doing?

33:56

Oh my goodness. It was funny though. It was like...

33:59

television is say, un-glamorous

34:02

at times, I remember.

34:03

I remember being in a taxi

34:05

with one of the crew

34:07

going across London and I just

34:10

had got to the point where I had to express some

34:12

milk and you get to the

34:14

point where like, now it hurts,

34:17

I actually just came to have to express the milk.

34:19

So I was basically under a shawl in the back of a

34:21

taxi going across London with

34:23

my electric breastbone. So that was

34:25

the kind of glamour. Well, I had a- Filming

34:28

with a baby in the home. I had a rucksack,

34:30

but because I had my

34:33

second baby around the same time as your first baby,

34:35

so 2009. And by that time,

34:37

for the first baby, I'd had to use this sort of hospital

34:39

grade single breast pump thing. Because

34:42

both my babies were born early, those two. So

34:44

the breast pump is the only way you can do any milk

34:46

if that's what you want to do, because they can't suck when they're

34:48

really little. But by the time I got to

34:50

KIT in 2009, they'd come up with all sorts

34:53

of amazing breast pumps, including this one that fit in

34:55

a rucksack with a double pump. Oh

34:57

my goodness,

34:57

you can walk around with that. I think they call it

34:59

pump and go. I mean, it was pretty

35:01

snazzy, let me tell you. So there

35:04

we are. So yeah, I got very used

35:06

to that. I definitely back of a taxi, 100%. I've

35:09

been there under the sheet. And did you- It's

35:11

just the noise sometimes. Did you carry on working all the way through then when

35:14

you had little kids? I thought I did different things with

35:16

different ones, really. I think my

35:18

first, I'd

35:20

been releasing a second album when I found out

35:22

I was pregnant with my first baby,

35:24

which was sort of

35:26

comedically weird timing. So

35:28

I did two singles and then basically just stopped the

35:31

album. I didn't do any more promotion with it. And

35:33

as it turned out, that was quite good timing because he ended

35:35

up being born early. I wasn't very

35:37

well. So I kind of focused on that for a little bit. And

35:40

then I gradually worked my way back into

35:42

songwriting, but it was gentle and I didn't have anything

35:45

in the diary. So I took my longest with him. But

35:47

by the time I got to some of

35:49

the

35:50

later babies, the sequels, I was

35:52

a lot

35:52

faster at getting back into work because

35:58

I felt like I had a bit more. my own mind

36:00

about what how I wanted it to take shape and what

36:02

it felt like and certainly by the time

36:05

I got to babies four

36:07

and five I was working but

36:09

it was all it felt very supportive it felt

36:11

very wholesome I liked being

36:13

in a music environment with a tiny

36:16

baby it felt actually very harmonious

36:18

and I enjoyed it a lot and it also meant that I had proper

36:21

time with that new baby where

36:24

I still had my little ones but I could kind of go

36:26

to work but actually have time with my little

36:28

my you know my baby the two of us

36:30

otherwise I don't think I would have had as much time

36:33

the only one I sort of think I got a bit wrong was really

36:36

my second and that I I

36:38

was in hospital

36:40

having again had him two months early and my

36:42

manager came to see me and he said so we're going to film

36:44

the video for this new single in 10

36:46

weeks and I was like okay and really I

36:48

think filming a music video 10 weeks

36:51

after my second c-section was just a bit

36:53

yeah heels mini skirt makeup

36:56

oh no this wasn't in that mood no not

36:58

at all that

37:00

was only one I think I probably should have said no to that

37:02

but I think

37:04

I think you just have to

37:06

I think you'd have to go with the support of the people

37:08

who tell you the nice advice that makes you feel that you're

37:10

doing the right thing because those voices and that support

37:13

is they it's became like everything to me

37:15

and stay away from mum's net

37:17

forums and places like that because I remember

37:20

going to work one time I

37:22

had one gig with my when I was my

37:24

third he was six weeks and it meant

37:26

a night away from him which made me feel oh it

37:29

was like that thing of like felt oh he's awful

37:31

isn't it you can literally feel this kind of yeah

37:33

it's like this

37:34

kind of weird umbilical cord still there

37:37

exactly you know I felt terrible as I was googling

37:39

you

37:40

know is it okay to leave

37:42

my baby for one night and it's all these um people

37:45

on forums going well I mean you can

37:48

personally I wouldn't it wouldn't be for me

37:50

but I mean even if you want you might go for

37:52

a night but your baby won't have you for a night when it's

37:54

and it was just you know not the place

37:56

not the place

37:59

But I think with you and what you're

38:02

doing, when you start with a really lovely time and

38:04

really joyful and lovely to look back on,

38:06

I think it's really special

38:08

actually that you get that experience. And also with

38:10

what you were up to, it

38:12

kind of meant forever after

38:15

that point you had this sort of blueprint of I know

38:17

I've done this version of my

38:19

working with my baby and my husband. Yeah.

38:23

So therefore I know I'm capable. So then

38:25

the decisions I make, I don't need to test myself

38:27

in any environment. I know what works

38:29

for me. I've done it in a safe way. And

38:31

then from there on, you can kind of

38:33

just keep going. And I suppose early on, it meant that

38:35

you

38:36

still had your, the passion that you have for your

38:38

work was all still there. I was all still

38:41

entwined with that new chapter,

38:43

especially after finding out that you were

38:46

having a baby just two weeks after handing in your resignation.

38:48

Because that's what you probably thought, okay,

38:51

deep deep breath, you know what happened to

38:53

that. And did you do it a similar way when you

38:55

had your second? No, because

38:58

I had, because then my daughter

39:00

is three and a half and

39:04

it would have been, I think, too difficult

39:06

to do a similar thing with

39:09

a tiny baby and a three and a half

39:11

year old. Yeah, it's definitely different.

39:13

You're being dragged in two different directions,

39:15

aren't

39:16

you? Yeah, they're not so portable. They're not so portable.

39:18

No. And they, you

39:20

know, you end up running after them. So

39:24

I decided to, by that

39:26

time I was working at Birmingham

39:28

University. So having thought actually, when

39:30

I left Bristol, I was very disillusioned

39:33

with lots of things that I thought I'd probably left academia

39:36

for good as a,

39:38

you know, in a kind of formal role. I

39:40

had honorary positions

39:41

at a couple of universities,

39:44

including at the Archaeology Department in Bristol

39:46

where I had just amazing friends and

39:49

incredibly supportive people,

39:52

including my very good friend and PhD

39:54

supervisor Kate, who is still

39:57

just such an amazing woman. and

40:00

really really helped me at that difficult time.

40:03

And

40:06

I think that I'd

40:09

thought I'd left academia and then

40:11

the University of Birmingham was interested

40:15

in my work in public

40:17

engagement, which

40:19

is broader than the television

40:21

stuff, which is obviously the most visible bit, but I'd obviously

40:24

done quite a lot in schools engagement and that

40:26

kind of thing. And so they

40:29

were talking to me about a job and I was

40:31

quite reluctant to begin with, but I

40:33

joined the University

40:34

in 2012. I'm

40:37

still at Birmingham University

40:38

and that's been amazing.

40:41

I mean I've absolutely loved that job. So

40:44

I was in a university role as

40:47

well as doing writing and broadcasting.

40:51

And then I'm

40:53

pregnant with my second baby

40:56

and I decided to take time out.

40:58

So I took nine

41:00

months off, well I kind of took time out, I

41:02

took nine months off from the University

41:05

and I took nine months off from television. Quite

41:08

a difficult thing to do actually because there were quite a few

41:10

projects that year where people were saying, oh you

41:12

could do this. And there was some really interesting projects.

41:14

I was like, I'm not doing it. I've made this decision.

41:16

I'm going to stick with it. And how easy was it

41:18

to say no to things then? Was it

41:21

a bit of a wobble or were you like, no, I know what

41:23

I need now? I think it

41:27

was quite difficult, but

41:29

I did stick to my guns. And

41:32

my husband and I always talk about

41:36

balance and work and lives and

41:38

family. And we

41:41

were kind of discussing these opportunities. And I thought,

41:44

it's that thing with television where you realize if you turn down

41:46

something, it probably

41:48

is not going to come back. And you

41:51

kind of worry about where your career

41:53

is going to go in the future. So I think it's a freelancer. You've always

41:56

got that thing of going, oh is that,

41:58

have I stepped off something here?

41:59

Yeah, is it gonna be really difficult to get back on again?

42:02

But I've made I've made that decision and I was

42:04

writing

42:04

a book as well So so that's what I did

42:06

keep doing I kept on writing And

42:09

I find that really important actually when I had when

42:11

I had little babies that I was still Doing

42:15

something with my mind

42:16

because I talked to some

42:18

people who said

42:21

I don't you I'm not even sure if they meant it but they say

42:23

oh, you know for a while all you want to think about is nappies

42:26

and Bottles and things like

42:28

this and I'm thinking this sounds like hell to me. No,

42:30

that's not what I want to do I'm you know, I'm

42:32

still me You

42:35

know, I'm not just no, I mean, I

42:37

think you know that that new baby bit when

42:39

you if you have that time

42:41

Without I mean, I don't maybe they didn't mean literally now,

42:44

please. I've got my little mind Yeah,

42:46

I suppose the nicest thing

42:48

about having a baby But

42:51

I do think you know sometimes those bits where they've

42:53

got a little baby It is really extraordinary,

42:55

you know, and it feels quite special but

42:59

I

42:59

Mean that it's each their own isn't it? I think

43:02

I think if you've got quite a Busy

43:05

brain it can be quite nice to

43:07

feel like you've got another place to go and other things

43:09

to talk about sometimes Yeah, yeah,

43:11

even have to be working. I think even now

43:13

that you can do things like Go

43:16

to cinema, you know, they do all those mornings where you can go to

43:18

the pictures and you can bring your baby Yeah, you can actually

43:20

just watch a film that other so when you see your friends

43:23

Something else It's

43:25

just well, I always quite like that feeling

43:29

But yeah, it's interesting It's obviously the biggest

43:31

thing that's

43:31

happening in your life at that at that point in time

43:33

when you've put it when you've got a child Hmm

43:36

and then you you know a new baby. It is

43:39

amazing. It's extraordinary. It's lovely.

43:41

Hmm

43:42

but I

43:44

Didn't want to lose the rest of myself.

43:47

So yeah writing about this quite

43:49

quite important to be doing Well, they having

43:51

said that

43:52

so my daughter

43:54

Who is the baby that came on the

43:56

first series of digging for Britain and the second series being

43:58

written? was

43:59

just very, very amenable

44:02

to going around

44:04

the country, sleeping anywhere, just

44:08

an extraordinarily calm

44:11

little baby. And

44:13

she slept a lot. She slept a lot.

44:16

And my husband and I were congratulating ourselves

44:18

on being

44:19

very relaxed parents.

44:20

And obviously this was why she was

44:22

the way she was. And then the next one

44:24

came along and he was completely different.

44:27

And he did not sleep.

44:28

He did not sleep in the night.

44:30

He woke up every hour and a half through the night.

44:34

And he did not sleep during the day at

44:36

all. So that was, I was trying to

44:38

write this book. Yeah. Well, you

44:40

know, kind of almost, you know, propping my

44:42

eyes open. Wow.

44:44

I mean, I have to say that's still extraordinary.

44:46

You say you're not really working, but you did write a book. I mean, that

44:49

is a massive achievement in itself.

44:51

Definitely. It was a difficult book as well. It

44:53

was a book I'd wanted to write for ages.

44:56

And it was kind

45:00

of very apt because it was about embryology.

45:02

So it was about development in

45:05

utero and kind of starting off from the single cell,

45:08

which I just think is, I do still think it's the

45:10

best story in the world. How

45:12

you get from being a single

45:14

tiny cell to being a whole person.

45:17

It's completely crazy. And

45:19

it's mind blowing. It is absolutely mind blowing.

45:21

Each of us did this thing that we were just

45:24

a cell, just one cell. It's

45:26

mad. And I teach, I've taught

45:29

embryology at medical

45:31

school since I, you know, since

45:34

I started in an academic I've always loved embryology.

45:37

And it kind of explains the anatomy. It's

45:39

kind of where the anatomy comes from as well. So

45:41

I really want to write a book about this because the stories

45:43

are brilliant. You only really get

45:46

to understand that stuff and to hear those stories

45:49

if you study medicinal biology at

45:51

university. So I wanted to write

45:53

something that was more accessible. And

45:56

also embryology is kind of where

45:58

evolution happens. So

46:01

it's where the body gets built.

46:05

And so if you're going to end up with species

46:07

evolving and changes happening

46:10

over time, it's happening through that building

46:12

process.

46:12

So evolution and embryology

46:14

intertwined.

46:15

So that was the book I wanted

46:17

to write. I remember talking to my

46:19

lovely literary agent, Luigi, about

46:22

it. And he was a bit

46:24

skeptical at first, but I was very passionate

46:26

about the subject. And

46:28

I think I did go away from some conversations with him

46:30

thinking, well, I'm hoping to write a popular science

46:32

book, but this could be the most unpopular science

46:35

book that anybody has ever written. But

46:39

it was tricky, I think, because

46:41

I'd set myself that kind of challenge of writing

46:44

about the two things together, both

46:46

embryology and evolution. But

46:48

I think in the way that some of those most challenging

46:50

things that you set

46:52

yourself can be a nightmare at times.

46:55

And you're just going, oh, I'm thinking, why have I done

46:57

this to myself? Why have I set myself this challenge? But

46:59

then what you end up with at the end is just

47:02

really satisfying.

47:03

And then you can't even put yourself

47:05

back in the mindset of how you got there in the first place. Like,

47:08

how did I do it? Or where did the time come from? Yeah.

47:10

You did it. But I'm wondering, what's

47:13

the link between your day

47:16

job if you're looking at

47:18

anatomy and anthropology and behavior?

47:21

And then what's

47:23

your relationship with it when you're just with

47:26

your family and seeing a

47:28

small human turning into a big human? I mean,

47:31

does it have a lot of crossover? Or do you not really

47:33

think of it? I mean, when

47:35

you look at people, do you see like their bones? Does

47:38

it cross over? Yeah, I think

47:40

so. And certainly

47:43

with children,

47:43

I mean, being

47:45

someone that's really interested in development,

47:49

looking at children as they grow. And

47:53

it's interesting, obviously, how their bodies

47:55

change and how they change shape and change

47:57

size. And

47:58

that's all.

47:59

extraordinary. Yeah. Going

48:02

back to when they were babies, I always used to,

48:04

you know, you've got this

48:06

baby that

48:09

you've made in quite a meaningful

48:11

way and that

48:13

baby started off as a single cell

48:16

and then essentially, say

48:20

my husband contributed a tiny

48:23

bit of DNA

48:24

to that first single cell

48:27

and then

48:28

everything else

48:30

that creates the baby that you give

48:32

birth to has come from you. So

48:35

you've actually created,

48:37

it's done it itself, but it's done it using materials

48:39

that you're giving it. So all of the material

48:42

that goes into making that baby has

48:44

come from your own body. I found that

48:45

really intriguing. Yeah, that is actually

48:48

amazing. And then you go,

48:49

and then it carries on, of course, when you're feeding

48:52

the baby. Yeah, because again, all the

48:54

all the growth of that baby is being

48:57

is being fueled by

48:59

what you're giving that baby from your own

49:01

body. And yeah, I mean, I

49:03

think of it that way. Think of it as a process.

49:05

And then that thing is just doing what it does. Yeah, yeah.

49:08

But you're providing all the material,

49:10

all those materials have come from you getting stuff

49:12

out of your environment, eating your environment and

49:15

giving it back to your baby in a in a form

49:17

that they can use. And I did I quite

49:19

like that. I quite like going, I'm now I'm going

49:21

to do this magic trick of eating this cake

49:23

and making it into milk. Well,

49:27

I'm gonna fit my children down going,

49:29

you owe everything to me. I mean,

49:31

obviously, I can still

49:33

the point they start to eat stuff. If you're

49:36

breastfeeding them, then everything that's in their body

49:38

has come from you. Which

49:40

is quite nuts. Yeah,

49:43

so I've had those kind of thoughts. Yeah.

49:45

And I think, obviously, in terms of embryology

49:48

and

49:50

evolution, when I have my daughter,

49:52

I don't know if it

49:55

was, you know, I think I think childbirth is

49:57

such an incredible time.

50:01

You know, this, I think when I

50:03

had my first baby, I couldn't, I had

50:05

this complete mental wall

50:07

in my head of

50:10

me as a woman with a baby

50:12

inside me. And then on the other side of

50:14

that wall, as me with a baby

50:16

that's external, and I couldn't really,

50:19

even though I'm an

50:20

anatomist, and I've been, you know,

50:22

a medic as well, I know, I know

50:24

the physical reality

50:27

of it, but just trying to get your

50:29

head around the fact that there's going to be this new person.

50:32

And that somehow the

50:34

bump,

50:34

which is, you know, not just a bump, it's a,

50:37

you can feel that person inside you. But

50:39

the idea that that person's suddenly going to be on the outside

50:41

of you is such a, I

50:43

mean, until you've done it, I think with a second

50:45

baby, you go, yeah, I understand

50:47

how this happens now. But you know what I mean?

50:49

It's kind of understanding it not on a,

50:51

not on a physical, not on a, not in a

50:53

physical way, but in a kind of

50:56

intuitive way. Yeah,

50:58

no, I think I think really weird until

51:01

it's

51:02

almost impossible

51:04

to really sort of make that an

51:06

actual. Yeah, because also there's so

51:08

many

51:09

bits of it. I

51:11

don't know, this might just be my experience. But when,

51:14

when they're born, it's almost like that's when you meet

51:16

them. So you've had the relationship with

51:18

the

51:19

bit when it's the two of you in the symbiosis.

51:22

But then there's this sort of extra bit that when you

51:24

see them, you go, Oh, of course it's you. Yeah, it's

51:26

a bit you didn't know about them. But you sort of felt

51:28

on another level, you can't draw

51:30

that out until they're there. No,

51:32

no, no, no, even having, I mean,

51:35

even that amazing thing of being

51:37

able to see your babies in the room, which is, I mean, that's

51:39

another extraordinary bit of technology, isn't it? When

51:41

we

51:41

think about human experiences, the

51:44

fact that it's only in the last

51:47

sort of 50, 60 years that we've

51:49

had that, yeah, that anybody's actually been

51:51

able to see their baby before they're born. Yes.

51:54

And that now we've got ultrasounds. And not just, you

51:56

know, you can see them in three dimensions, and you can see them

51:58

moving in three dimensions.

51:59

incredible but it's still something completely

52:02

different when you see them face-to-face for the first

52:04

time. Yeah I mean I don't know those 3d

52:07

ones where they can see more of the features might have come

52:09

on them but I never did those because I saw the

52:11

pictures that they sort of used to advertise and always looked like

52:13

a baby made of clay or something and I thought it is

52:16

odd. I don't know I think I'd wait. I

52:19

had yeah I had 40 scans

52:21

for both my babies and

52:23

they were pretty good. Really? Yeah I mean

52:25

when you look at them and you can compare the baby

52:27

with the scan okay

52:30

that's pretty good. Yeah but they do look

52:32

weird. Yeah they look kind of slightly metallic.

52:35

Yeah well I don't I think this was I only

52:37

remember it really with my first I mean that's like nearly 20 years

52:39

ago and everything moves on it's such a pace. Yeah.

52:42

But I'm hoping that this is the something

52:45

I saw about the way you were raising your daughter

52:48

like really resonated with me because you were talking about

52:50

the fact that you didn't want her to feel

52:52

that she had to conform to sort of stereotypical

52:55

girl things and I felt this very strongly with my

52:57

first as well and I continue to because

53:00

I've happened to have boys but I was really shocked

53:03

at the sort of things

53:05

that were expected of him just because he happened

53:07

to be a boy that I didn't even know if he was into

53:09

yet. I want to talk

53:11

to you about that because I don't really feel like I

53:13

see

53:15

that many people talking about it the way I feel

53:17

about it as well actually. I don't know if that's because

53:19

a lot of people are just quite happy with

53:21

the way things go in a predictable way or

53:23

maybe people don't feel the need to get annoyed about it. I get

53:25

annoyed about it still like if I go into there's

53:28

a clothes shop not far from here and they've

53:30

got a boy's side and the girls have their clothes and the boys

53:32

have certain slogans and the girls and I have to

53:34

say it's one of the poor girls and

53:36

there's a staff in there the other day like do you not think they're

53:39

kind of expecting different things and

53:41

she was a bit like you know

53:44

she's a bit blank I don't think she knew

53:46

what to do with

53:46

me really but

53:48

I just wondered where that came from that feeling

53:51

was it just because you met your

53:53

daughter and thought I need let's see who

53:55

you are or was it just was it because it's like external

53:58

you know and you're shopping for them or you're taking to

54:00

nursery and the expectation or? I think

54:03

it came from a number of different reasons.

54:05

I think it's, you know, it suddenly becomes

54:07

very personal when

54:08

you've, when you have a child and

54:10

you're thinking about

54:12

how you want them to experience the world.

54:15

And I felt quite strongly that I

54:18

didn't want to be narrowing

54:20

horizons, that I wanted

54:23

her and my son to

54:25

be able to engage with the world

54:27

and not to have those kind of cultural expectations.

54:31

Yeah. But even before

54:33

I had children, I was interested

54:36

in, for

54:37

instance, the lack of

54:40

girls and women in the

54:43

more physical sciences.

54:47

And, you know, still in engineering,

54:50

so few professional engineers are

54:53

women. It's just extraordinary. And, you

54:58

know, sometimes you hear opinions and

55:01

still to that, you know, still quite recently

55:03

you hear people saying, oh, well, that's

55:05

because boys are better at such and such,

55:07

or that's because girls are, you know, more attuned

55:10

to such and such. And you think, I don't actually

55:12

believe that. I think it is largely cultural

55:15

because if you went back to the 1940s,

55:17

1950s and looked at medicine, you'd

55:20

say, oh, well, the reason that most doctors

55:23

are men is because men are better suited

55:25

to being doctors.

55:27

And clearly something's happened

55:29

in medicine,

55:30

which means that girls

55:32

can aspire to be doctors.

55:35

And, you know,

55:37

when you open it up in that

55:39

way, and it's about,

55:41

it's about a culture change, isn't it? You

55:43

find that actually lots of girls do want to become doctors.

55:46

So we've seen that big change happening in

55:48

medicine. We've seen it happening

55:51

in biology as well. It's

55:52

happening in chemistry, but I still think there's big

55:55

issues with physics and engineering.

55:58

And

55:58

it's,

56:00

I think it is entirely cultural. I don't

56:02

think there's anything about

56:04

male brains

56:06

that means that

56:07

men are better at physics or more

56:09

attuned to physics and girls

56:12

and women are not. No, you're absolutely

56:14

right. So there's that kind of perspective

56:17

and I think that, you know, there

56:19

have been lots of efforts obviously to try

56:22

to open

56:25

up those areas of science and we've

56:27

seen a small increase, but

56:29

it still could, you know, we've still got a long way to go, I think.

56:34

I think it is, there's something ethical

56:36

about it, which is that you don't want

56:38

to be limiting people's

56:41

horizons. You don't want to be limiting

56:43

people's opportunities. No, and it's such

56:45

a strange, when you have your

56:47

child and then you see, as you say, this sort of limitations

56:49

put on them, it's such a

56:52

instinct, isn't it, to push back on that and go, well,

56:54

no, because they not just have the option of whatever

56:56

makes it work for them. Yeah, quite

56:59

diminishing their choices. It felt

57:02

like a very

57:03

very old school actually. I was really surprised

57:05

at that as you know. It

57:08

would just be like, well, I presume you're going to want things from

57:10

this side of the chart. But I guess probably

57:12

with me having a son,

57:15

my instinct was probably more to do with,

57:19

I don't know, how

57:21

he chooses to be in his character and his

57:23

emotional language and all those kinds of things,

57:26

because I guess you

57:28

don't tend to worry about, as you

57:30

say, boys having the option of the jobs they

57:33

want because there's such a broad selection of very,

57:36

you know, high-profile

57:37

men in all of those areas.

57:39

So you're not, so it's more probably the emotional

57:41

support I wanted to offer. Yeah, well, it's the same.

57:45

So there were subjects where, like

57:47

psychology, where that's

57:50

very female dominated. Yeah, it's expected to be empathetic

57:53

and men to be less than whatever it might be. Yeah,

57:55

that's very true actually. And it's,

57:57

I mean

58:00

It's nice that there are some increases, but

58:02

really I think we can ramp things up a little bit and

58:04

go a bit quicker. And I suppose, I mean,

58:06

do you think about the fact that the work you've been

58:08

doing and being a communicator on

58:11

such a broad platform has maybe hit

58:13

more women and young girls see

58:16

a life for themselves in the senses

58:18

you care about? It's absolutely

58:20

lovely. So, you know, I get emails

58:22

and letters from

58:25

children and young people

58:28

saying, you know, they've watched something that

58:30

I've made or they've read something that

58:32

I've written and

58:37

helped them kind of think about what they might

58:39

want to be doing in the future. And I like

58:42

doing live shows as well and chatting to

58:44

the audience afterwards. It's lovely to

58:47

have that kind of feedback from

58:50

people. And I think

58:52

it's kind

58:53

of an overused word, but I think it's really humbling.

58:55

And I think that I'm lucky

58:57

to be doing that. I'm lucky to be in that position

58:59

where I can kind of be there

59:02

as a woman doing

59:04

the science that I love doing, talking

59:06

about it, writing about it. And

59:09

I hope that helps a bit.

59:11

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's definitely done. I guess it's

59:13

something that when you're just doing what you do, you don't think about

59:15

that

59:16

as like the concentric circles. And then when you realize

59:18

it, it's like, oh, that's a really lovely thing.

59:20

I'm doing something I care about. I've got,

59:22

you know, all these great opportunities and also

59:24

it's reaching people. Yeah. Nice

59:27

thing. It is. And

59:29

also I think it

59:31

makes you very aware that it's really important

59:34

to have all sorts of different role models.

59:36

Yeah. And that I

59:38

think by and large, the BBC does a really good job

59:40

of that, of making sure that there

59:43

is a diversity in terms

59:45

of just the people that you can

59:48

see on television, and particularly

59:50

in documentaries, when you're looking at people who are

59:52

talking about history

59:55

or science or whatever it is, to see

59:57

a diversity of people doing their subjects, I think is

59:59

incredible.

59:59

incredibly important. Absolutely. And

1:00:02

that it should be and I'm glad that if that's been a conscious decision,

1:00:04

then I'm ready. Yeah, it is a conscious decision.

1:00:07

It's really important. Yeah, definitely. And

1:00:09

it also brings it to life and makes everybody sort of

1:00:13

makes the conversations flow more easy because you

1:00:15

realize that actually doesn't have to you don't have to look

1:00:18

a certain type of person to be open

1:00:20

about the passions you have. You know,

1:00:22

absolutely fine. Yeah. The only

1:00:24

thing I want to speak to you about is I don't know, recently you

1:00:26

were on a radio for program

1:00:29

that was touching on your work as in the

1:00:31

humanist and my mom was on the same program

1:00:33

because she's a member of humanist

1:00:36

UK and your is it vice president still?

1:00:38

Yeah, but you get to be so

1:00:40

as president for four years and then after your

1:00:42

president, you get to be vice president for life. Oh,

1:00:45

cool. Okay. And I've had

1:00:47

just quite a few. I don't know if that's bad. But actually,

1:00:49

I think the humanist thing is really interesting. And

1:00:56

I'm I'm sure that is exactly the same as my beliefs

1:00:58

as well, because I

1:01:00

like what I like about it is it's not

1:01:03

about the absence things. It's not about

1:01:05

saying I'm an atheist. I don't believe

1:01:07

in God or I'm agnostic. I don't believe in any

1:01:10

religion. You're actually

1:01:12

saying, well, I of course you have to believe

1:01:14

in those feel like that in order to be a humanist. But

1:01:16

you're actually saying about,

1:01:18

I suppose humans being able to find

1:01:20

their own purpose in life. Yeah.

1:01:23

And I think that's essential

1:01:25

a value of the fact that we do exist and

1:01:27

we're here and this is our one life and

1:01:30

that's something that was very influenced

1:01:33

by

1:01:33

what you do and the connection you have with the stories

1:01:36

of the that the bones tell you. Or

1:01:38

is that something that was just always there?

1:01:41

I think

1:01:43

it's really interesting because I

1:01:45

didn't hear or since

1:01:46

I hadn't

1:01:47

hadn't heard a few minutes, I kind of heard about it, but

1:01:49

I didn't realize that it described what

1:01:52

I thought

1:01:54

until probably 25

1:01:55

years ago, maybe.

1:01:59

I

1:02:00

was an adult and

1:02:02

I knew I didn't believe in good, but

1:02:05

I didn't feel that that kind of defined me. It

1:02:07

is odd, isn't it, to define yourself by something that

1:02:10

you're not. Yeah, and also that sounds

1:02:13

very negative and it doesn't mean you're

1:02:15

actually still... There's so much beauty and wonder

1:02:17

in the world. It doesn't mean you want to have

1:02:20

something that shows you're still taking all

1:02:22

of that in and however that

1:02:24

might feel to someone that has that kind of

1:02:26

faith. It's still got a spirituality

1:02:28

to it. Yeah, definitely. I mean,

1:02:31

someone said that before and I said,

1:02:32

you know, I consider myself to be quite a spiritual

1:02:34

person and then some religious people say, you're not spiritual because

1:02:36

you're not religious. And it's like,

1:02:39

I don't think you get to tell somebody whether

1:02:41

they feel spiritual or not. No, no, and it's like, move

1:02:43

you, like nature and

1:02:47

music and poetry and art and all these things,

1:02:49

they contribute, they inform,

1:02:52

they are part

1:02:54

of, you

1:02:56

know, all the tapestry that being

1:02:59

alive is about. And it's nice to be able to

1:03:01

have

1:03:01

a way to contextualize that.

1:03:04

Yeah, and it's, yeah, so

1:03:06

it's kind of a, I suppose there's

1:03:08

a scientific

1:03:09

basis for me

1:03:11

in that I was brought up in quite a

1:03:13

religious household and I got to the point

1:03:15

where I was a teenager and thinking I was

1:03:18

doing sciences at school and just thinking

1:03:20

I can't really match

1:03:22

this up in my mind, this doesn't work. And

1:03:25

so

1:03:25

as I decided when I was a teenager that I

1:03:28

didn't believe in God.

1:03:31

And then I kind of just,

1:03:32

I kind of just left that I suppose

1:03:35

and didn't feel that there

1:03:38

was a need to

1:03:39

attach myself to any

1:03:41

particular philosophy or to describe it any

1:03:43

particular way until I started

1:03:46

to read a bit more about humanism.

1:03:49

I think it was talking to Jim Alkalili actually,

1:03:51

because

1:03:52

he's a good friend

1:03:54

and we'd worked on,

1:03:58

we'd

1:03:58

worked at Chelton Science Festival to get there.

1:03:59

over years

1:04:03

and I

1:04:03

knew that he was involved with

1:04:05

Humanist UK and we talked about humanism

1:04:08

and I thought actually that probably does

1:04:10

describe what I think which is

1:04:12

that you've got a rational approach to the world

1:04:14

and you kind of prioritise that but

1:04:16

also you've got a strong sense

1:04:19

of values and morals

1:04:21

and ethics and that

1:04:24

you have your I suppose your own

1:04:26

kind of moral sense is guided by

1:04:30

certainly by reason and

1:04:33

logic

1:04:34

I mean I think there's a fantastic logic about

1:04:36

equality that

1:04:38

there's no logical reason for any one

1:04:40

human to be worth any more than any other

1:04:42

human

1:04:43

so therefore equality it's very

1:04:45

very

1:04:46

logical and rational but

1:04:49

then empathy and yeah

1:04:52

kindness I think as a principle

1:04:54

in life is really important to me yeah

1:04:57

I love brings all of that together and I

1:05:00

think you know that's what that's what humanism is and you

1:05:02

don't have to I think

1:05:03

there's a lot of people that feel that way

1:05:05

but we still feel nervous about

1:05:08

labelling themselves anything it's not

1:05:11

like organised religion where you

1:05:13

have to kind of sign up for something and

1:05:16

say this is what I believe I think also

1:05:18

having gone to I

1:05:20

didn't grow up in a religious

1:05:22

house at all but I did go to church school

1:05:25

a local state school this church school so

1:05:27

between the ages of like four and eleven and

1:05:29

I think I still a part of me that said think

1:05:31

should I've always these things that might

1:05:33

still be hit by lightning even though I don't

1:05:35

actually believe that's possible yeah like

1:05:37

this is like a childlike

1:05:40

emotion between you know my

1:05:44

adult brain and the things I believe

1:05:46

in and then the fact of a vocalizer I'm

1:05:48

always a bit like oh

1:05:50

yeah I think that quite damaging and I think that's one of

1:05:52

the reasons that I've I started

1:05:55

supporting humanist

1:05:56

UK was because it's

1:05:58

a you know it's a it's a

1:05:59

nice bunch of people with similar

1:06:02

kind of ideas to mine but actually there's I think

1:06:04

there's work to be done in our society there's

1:06:06

work to be done to stop the

1:06:09

religious privilege that still exists which is a kind of

1:06:11

historical artifact you know that we've

1:06:13

got religious clerics

1:06:15

with automatic seats in government and the House of Lords

1:06:18

is crazy you know you've

1:06:20

got 26 Anglican bishops you get

1:06:22

automatic seats in the House of Lords there's things

1:06:24

like that we just think not doesn't set our society

1:06:26

actually no there's probably so much about

1:06:29

the way that things are set up this is this is throwback

1:06:31

and handed yeah yeah yeah maybe

1:06:33

look at the books and going hang on a minute sounds

1:06:38

a bit old-fashioned nowadays only a few countries in the world

1:06:41

where you've got religious clerics with all the classic

1:06:43

seats in government Iran and

1:06:45

the UK

1:06:46

when you put it like that it's mad wow

1:06:50

and then I think I feel the same way about faith

1:06:52

schools so

1:06:54

so I've worked with humanist UK on

1:06:57

on that whole kind of issue because I

1:06:59

mean for me when I was first looking for schools for my

1:07:01

children it became very obvious that basically

1:07:03

I had no choice and I was gonna end up sending

1:07:05

my children to a space school because

1:07:08

a third of

1:07:09

our primary schools are

1:07:11

our faith schools a third

1:07:13

I know it's crazy so

1:07:16

humanist UK have this kind of

1:07:18

ongoing campaign about that and

1:07:20

and it's not it's not about being anti-religious

1:07:23

and it's not about attacking anybody's individual

1:07:26

absolutely not a religion yeah it's about

1:07:29

saying

1:07:30

state schools shouldn't be pushing a particular

1:07:32

religion onto children

1:07:34

and they definitely do so having

1:07:36

had children that have gone to high schools

1:07:39

even if I you know as a humanist

1:07:42

parent went along and you know talked to them and said

1:07:44

look please could you not tell them

1:07:45

to pray please could you invite them

1:07:48

to pray if they want to or should you know to

1:07:50

meditate on something rather than telling

1:07:52

them about God as a fact

1:07:55

yeah and getting them to imagine God as a fact

1:07:57

they

1:07:59

still just happened, it just kind of permeated

1:08:02

it and I think I went to C.A.B.

1:08:05

school as well

1:08:05

and these ideas

1:08:07

get kind of lodged. There

1:08:11

was a point with me where I found it all

1:08:13

quite difficult because

1:08:16

I'd recently lost my mother-in-law

1:08:19

and

1:08:19

we just had to have our dog put down as well

1:08:22

and my daughter who

1:08:23

was quite little at the time was

1:08:27

completely, she wasn't completely

1:08:29

confused about it, we talked about everything but she

1:08:32

was being told that somebody

1:08:34

had come back to life so

1:08:37

she knew this story about Jesus coming back to life

1:08:39

and that he'd been crucified. She knew that she'd have nails

1:08:42

through his hands as well which I think is quite a traumatic thing

1:08:44

to tell children but

1:08:46

then she was saying, she was asking if other people

1:08:50

could come back to life. So you've kind of

1:08:52

introduced these very weird

1:08:55

and I think deeply unhelpful ideas

1:08:57

to children. Well also if you believe in

1:08:59

that then you can have

1:09:00

that as how your house operates but if you

1:09:02

don't then you've got quite a tricky bit of,

1:09:04

you

1:09:06

don't want to undermine

1:09:08

school and then telling them things but at the same

1:09:10

time you don't think what they're telling them is true. Yeah. And

1:09:13

you say it's not

1:09:15

about, I would never want to take away anyone's face,

1:09:17

in fact I'm actually somewhat jealous of people

1:09:19

who've got it and it means so much to them and has

1:09:21

helped them through difficult things or give them their perspective.

1:09:24

I think that's

1:09:25

magic actually, it's wonderful but

1:09:28

you're just looking for the option that works

1:09:30

for you when you're raising your child and I didn't

1:09:33

realise it's as many as a third of schools. Did

1:09:35

you also get the people where they go

1:09:37

to church just to get the place in the

1:09:39

school? So it's not like, we're only talking

1:09:42

about catering for those families

1:09:44

really. Yeah I think they're really

1:09:46

divisive. There's an interesting group

1:09:49

called the Accord Coalition which is a group

1:09:52

of religious people

1:09:54

and humanists,

1:09:55

there's at least one ex-bishop

1:09:57

in it, who are doing

1:10:00

against

1:10:02

state-face schools

1:10:03

in our society, for

1:10:06

all sorts of reasons. First of all, because it

1:10:09

is actually against the human rights of the child. Children

1:10:12

have human rights, and you have

1:10:14

a right to freedom of

1:10:16

religion, and that means also freedom from

1:10:18

religion. You have a right not to have religion

1:10:20

forced on you. But

1:10:23

then another dimension

1:10:25

of it is the

1:10:26

divisiveness in society.

1:10:28

And if you have got some schools

1:10:31

that are selecting, that

1:10:33

will create further social

1:10:36

division. We can see that. There is good research

1:10:38

to show that. So if you create the possibility

1:10:40

of a school selecting and doing

1:10:43

that beyond just

1:10:43

geographic, I mean even geographic selection

1:10:46

creates differences, of course,

1:10:47

it does. But

1:10:50

if you have got faith schools, because some of these schools

1:10:52

are able to discriminate against

1:10:55

people who are not of that religion. So you

1:10:59

have literally got to get a letter from the vicar

1:11:01

to get into that school. This is

1:11:03

taxpayer-funded state schools.

1:11:05

It is crazy. It is just discrimination. And

1:11:08

it also goes onto

1:11:09

my other pet topic, which

1:11:11

is that

1:11:12

there should be good local schools for all the kids,

1:11:14

for stop actually. I think it is... Any parent wants them.

1:11:16

Yeah, absolutely. Because

1:11:19

you also want those schools

1:11:21

to be local. When I first expressed this, I

1:11:23

had people saying to me, oh well, you should

1:11:25

send your children privately. And I was

1:11:27

like, well, why should I send my children privately?

1:11:29

State schools are meant to be there for everybody. Oh

1:11:32

well, you should be prepared to drive your child

1:11:35

however far to get them into a school

1:11:37

which isn't a faith school. That

1:11:39

is not either, isn't it? And

1:11:41

I am not asking for... I am absolutely

1:11:44

not asking for there to be humanist schools.

1:11:46

I just don't think we should be pushing anything. Yeah,

1:11:49

I mean you could have lessons to teach about the different faiths and all

1:11:51

that kind of thing with conversation. And

1:11:53

if a child got... thinks, oh my God, that

1:11:55

sounds like something I want to learn more about, then

1:11:58

you pursue it. That is absolutely fine.

1:11:59

And obviously if your family are religious

1:12:02

and go to church or wherever you go, that's how

1:12:05

you're raised. That'll be there anyway. But

1:12:08

school maybe not being part

1:12:10

of that would make sense probably for, I wouldn't be surprised

1:12:13

it's not the majority of families actually, but maybe

1:12:15

I'm wrong. I think it probably is actually because I

1:12:17

mean, every time there's a census

1:12:20

or thing, a growing

1:12:22

number of people saying they're non-religious, the census

1:12:25

questions are a little bit skewed because they

1:12:27

say, are you, you know, what religion are you?

1:12:29

So they kind of assume that you've got a religion. The

1:12:31

British State Law Institute survey, which says, are

1:12:34

you religious? More than half

1:12:36

of the population said they're not for like

1:12:38

the last 10 years. And

1:12:42

also it's skewed into old

1:12:44

age brackets as well. So I'd imagine

1:12:46

that it would be even,

1:12:48

even, you know, be

1:12:49

more than half. Yeah, it'd be interesting to go. Younger families.

1:12:52

Yeah. Yeah. I

1:12:54

think people

1:12:56

work with it when it comes to the way that things

1:12:58

are set up with so many things in

1:13:00

this country. I think people just

1:13:02

get a bit nervous when you start talking about reforms and

1:13:05

things because they think it sounds like

1:13:07

a lot of work and underpin everybody sort of been through

1:13:09

the same system and look at what most

1:13:11

of us actually see. The State of the Square, it just sounds

1:13:14

like people mostly just kind of go, keep

1:13:16

it as it is, it's fine. Yeah. And

1:13:18

I imagine the Church of England is quite keen to keep

1:13:20

its control over

1:13:21

schools as well.

1:13:23

Because, you know, in those

1:13:25

faith schools, it has quite

1:13:27

a lot of control over the curriculum. It

1:13:29

has control over the way that religion is taught

1:13:32

and that it's not just

1:13:34

learning about religion, that it

1:13:36

is

1:13:39

putting religion out there in

1:13:41

a kind of factual way. Yeah.

1:13:44

Yeah. So yeah, I imagine the theory would

1:13:46

be very keen not to

1:13:48

lose its primary school in particular.

1:13:50

Yeah, absolutely.

1:13:52

Well, there's again another whole

1:13:54

conversation you have with that. But if we could go

1:13:57

back briefly to bones, because I did

1:13:59

want to ask you. So what

1:14:01

can you learn from a piece

1:14:03

of bone

1:14:03

and how small

1:14:07

can it go for you to learn those things? That's

1:14:09

a great question. That's a really good question. So

1:14:13

as an osteologist,

1:14:17

I like to be able to look at whole

1:14:19

bones. I

1:14:21

can get a lot of information about the

1:14:24

age of somebody when they denied, whether they're

1:14:27

male or female pathology,

1:14:30

which I'm particularly interested in. So I'm

1:14:32

always looking at joints

1:14:33

to see if I can see evidence of arthritis

1:14:35

and that kind

1:14:38

of thing. I have worked on cremations, which are really

1:14:40

interesting because... It must be time consuming.

1:14:42

It must be very time consuming. I think about another

1:14:44

bit. Yeah,

1:14:46

I think it requires a kind of patience. I

1:14:50

think when I've got a big collection

1:14:52

of creations that I'm looking at, like I looked

1:14:54

at the ones from some Roman cremations

1:14:57

from Kellean

1:14:57

in South Wales, although

1:15:00

I wrote about them in my last book, Buried,

1:15:02

and that

1:15:04

was a lot of painstaking work, picking

1:15:07

up tiny pieces of bone with four sets and kind

1:15:09

of looking at each one. I've got my cat's ashes on the mantelpiece

1:15:11

over there. I couldn't board anyone having

1:15:14

that. But yeah, the thing with ashes

1:15:16

is really weird actually, because if you look

1:15:18

at archaeological cremations, you've actually

1:15:20

got quite big bits of bone.

1:15:23

Some of them might be even

1:15:25

two or three centimeters long. Oh, wow.

1:15:27

And there might be bits of bone that you can recognize. So

1:15:31

if you sift through the sample, you

1:15:33

might actually end up, well, hopefully

1:15:35

being able to first of all determine if it was more than one

1:15:37

person in a cremation. And

1:15:40

if you're really lucky, you might be able to say something

1:15:43

about their age and whether they're male or female. So you've

1:15:45

got fairly chunky bits of bone, which

1:15:49

I think surprises people because if they do

1:15:51

go and pick up ashes of anybody, a

1:15:53

pet or a person, it doesn't

1:15:56

seem to be that there will be any recognizable pieces

1:15:58

of bone there. And that's because in modern We obviously

1:16:01

cremate the body. The

1:16:03

bones are then, what remains are the bones,

1:16:05

these calcined bones are then taken out of

1:16:08

the crematorium and are ground up

1:16:11

in a machine called a cre emulator. So

1:16:13

it's very, and I think a lot of people don't know this.

1:16:16

A cre emulator. A cre emulator. So

1:16:19

it's, and I'm fascinated by that because

1:16:21

I think that archaeologists of the future will kind of look back

1:16:23

on Britain now and go, it was

1:16:25

obviously very important for people to have these bones

1:16:28

ground up. There must have been an important

1:16:30

belief associated with this grinding

1:16:32

up of bones. And yet I think it is something

1:16:34

that makes people don't know happens. Wow. I

1:16:38

think, I'm not sure why it happens.

1:16:40

Maybe people don't want to collect recognizable pieces

1:16:42

of bone. I don't know. In the crematorium,

1:16:45

that somehow they want to disappear the body. The

1:16:47

body needs to be disappeared. It's really,

1:16:50

I find kind of funerary

1:16:52

practices. Yes. In the past

1:16:55

and today. Yes. Quite fascinating.

1:16:57

I have your book. I have that.

1:17:00

I'm fascinated by it. Does it make you think

1:17:02

about what you want to happen to your bones?

1:17:05

Yeah, I think there's some

1:17:07

big ethical questions about that because

1:17:10

well, you've got a bit of a difficult thing to decide because

1:17:12

you might be like, well, I won't go there. Study

1:17:14

me side of things. I think I'm going to have to do that.

1:17:18

So yes, I've, I in

1:17:20

my career have,

1:17:21

have depended say heavily on so

1:17:25

many anonymous, generous people who

1:17:27

left their bodies to medical science and

1:17:29

still do. I think it's the best way

1:17:32

to learn anatomy. Quite a lot.

1:17:37

It is the best way to understand how the human

1:17:39

body is put together.

1:17:43

And it's really essential

1:17:45

to

1:17:47

surgeons in particular to

1:17:49

be able to understand that. But I think for all

1:17:51

doctors, so yes, there are all these

1:17:53

amazingly generous people who is

1:17:56

giving my body to medical science

1:17:59

and they can. you know, they can do that

1:18:01

knowing

1:18:02

that they've left this incredible gift.

1:18:04

Yeah, that's extraordinary. Yeah, that's

1:18:07

extraordinary.

1:18:08

Well, if we finish

1:18:10

up just

1:18:11

about your children again, what do you hope

1:18:14

outside? I know we've talked about how we've contributed

1:18:16

their physical matter up to the age of whatever you've

1:18:18

been in. What do you hope they've inherited from

1:18:20

you more

1:18:21

in your character?

1:18:23

Oh, God, that's a big question, isn't it? It

1:18:25

is actually. I don't know if I'd be able to answer it very

1:18:28

well. I'd probably keep changing my answer. Yeah.

1:18:30

Go with your first instinct, I'd say.

1:18:34

I

1:18:36

hope that I'm

1:18:38

encouraging them to be

1:18:40

kind to people, not

1:18:43

to

1:18:45

conclusions about people that

1:18:47

they meet, but to

1:18:49

get to know people and

1:18:51

not to be prejudiced.

1:18:54

So I think that that, yeah, it's interesting,

1:18:56

isn't it? I think it's like the biggest thing. And there's

1:18:58

so much

1:19:01

But you can't go wrong with a bit of kindness. I think

1:19:04

people can. I mean, it's like I'd love them to be

1:19:06

interested in. They're 10 and 13, so

1:19:08

I think they're still,

1:19:10

the 10-year-old world is still way deep

1:19:12

and he's quite interested in various sciences.

1:19:14

He's always asking me very difficult

1:19:16

questions about physics, which I

1:19:18

then have to tweet at Brian Cox. Okay,

1:19:21

Brian, can it, we'll ask you a

1:19:23

question like this again. Can you help me please? Like

1:19:26

he asked me the other day, he went, if there's

1:19:29

sunshine, if the sun is

1:19:30

shining and there are clouds,

1:19:33

why aren't there rainbows everywhere?

1:19:35

And

1:19:36

I was like, okay, this

1:19:36

is a great question. And I kind

1:19:38

of think I could get, I could probably struggle

1:19:41

my way to an answer here. You could make something up. And

1:19:44

then I'm,

1:19:45

yeah, but I know I can't do that. I mean, I think

1:19:47

what's on the other side of a black hole? Was

1:19:51

one of his questions. Oh, that's good. Which

1:19:54

is, you know, which is extraordinary. I mean,

1:19:56

I love the fact that he's curious and interested

1:19:58

in the world and, you know, my daughter is curious. I love

1:20:00

the fact that she's interested in arts because I love

1:20:02

art. Yeah, I know that, but yes, another

1:20:04

person. There's that kind of nervousness as a parent

1:20:07

because you kind of get, you know, when she

1:20:09

does a beautiful drawing and there's a bit of music, it's like, oh,

1:20:12

brilliant, she loves art, she loves art. And then

1:20:14

again, you don't want to channel

1:20:16

them. I want her to explore freely.

1:20:19

I want her to explore freely and find her

1:20:21

thing. They're both really musical,

1:20:23

which is amazing because I'm not. So

1:20:26

I'm surrounded by people in my house that

1:20:28

play music. Oh, lovely. I'm a complete

1:20:30

joy. But yeah, I

1:20:32

think kindness is a main thing. I

1:20:35

think it is, isn't it? It's got to be. I think

1:20:37

kindness is, it definitely is the main

1:20:39

thing. And also what you're talking about there with the lack of

1:20:41

prejudice and taking people is also about,

1:20:44

it

1:20:44

comes back to that human connection

1:20:46

and we're all

1:20:48

sharing together. But here and now, I think

1:20:51

that's a perfect answer. Oh,

1:20:54

thank you so much, Alice. It's a complete

1:20:56

pleasure. I think we could probably talk about it way more. Actually,

1:20:58

my youngest, my four week before I let go, he

1:21:00

said something to me last night. I thought, it was such funny timing. Yeah,

1:21:03

no one else has speech these days. So he's four. He

1:21:05

was going to sleep and he said, Mommy,

1:21:07

imagine in Sesame Street if Big Bird

1:21:10

just stood up and got his bones

1:21:12

outside of his body. And he was standing

1:21:14

there with his bones in his brain. And then he collapsed

1:21:16

the floor and his bones will break and he can't get back into

1:21:18

being Big Bird again. I was like, wow,

1:21:21

that's outlandish. But I

1:21:23

know a lady who's been talking to me about bones.

1:21:25

Very metaphysical. I'd

1:21:27

love to know what Big Bird skeleton looks like.

1:21:37

What a great woman. Thank you, Alice.

1:21:41

And it did feel good to think

1:21:43

about how I felt about humanism,

1:21:45

really. I don't really have a lot of chats

1:21:48

about religion these days. It

1:21:50

hasn't played a big part in my life. Wow,

1:21:53

really ever. But I definitely, you

1:21:55

know, I went to a religious school and it was a big part

1:21:57

of the learning. As it happens,

1:21:59

the kids.

1:21:59

don't go to religious schools and

1:22:02

I don't know how I would have felt about it if

1:22:04

they were studying the Bible when it's

1:22:06

not part of our lives and obviously some of the teachings

1:22:08

in it, you know,

1:22:11

they are presented as fact.

1:22:14

It's good to be able to question these things and

1:22:16

think about if it works for you. That's

1:22:19

not really, they do go to school to try and get a rounded

1:22:21

education. I want them to learn about all religions but I

1:22:23

don't know if I want it to be something where

1:22:26

they feel they have to take it on

1:22:28

as a truth for themselves unless it actually resonates.

1:22:31

So that's how I feel about it. But

1:22:33

also I've thought a lot about that humanist way and

1:22:36

about the idea

1:22:38

of us all sharing this one experience

1:22:40

of life. We happen to all be on the planet

1:22:42

at the same time together about

1:22:44

the legacy of kindness and empathy

1:22:47

and leaving your mark on the world based

1:22:49

on the good deeds you do and, you

1:22:52

know, all the stuff that you can leave behind that's

1:22:54

positive to do with your work, to do with arts,

1:22:57

to do with connections with other

1:22:59

people. It doesn't have to be a big thing. You don't

1:23:01

have to, you know, design an amazing

1:23:03

building or change the world. You

1:23:06

can just be someone that's thinking

1:23:09

about fellow humans and wanting

1:23:11

to pitch in and make

1:23:13

sure that the world is a little bit better than you found

1:23:16

it. I think these are all good things. You

1:23:18

know, there's always the adages in there about people who don't

1:23:20

remember what you said but they'll remember how you made them feel

1:23:23

and it's so true. So

1:23:26

it's funny, I never really thought a lot about legacy

1:23:28

or what I'd be behind until I started

1:23:30

doing these conversations and then so many people I

1:23:32

speak to, it is something to think about.

1:23:35

I think, hmm, I probably should have a word with myself

1:23:37

about that really. I suppose a couple

1:23:39

of good Bisco songs isn't a bad contribution

1:23:42

but I could probably muster a bit more than

1:23:44

that if I take a bit deeper.

1:23:47

I'll do my best. Anyway,

1:23:50

in the meantime, I know I spoke

1:23:52

about Christmas a little bit

1:23:54

before the chat with Alice for the year but I

1:23:56

actually even ordered a Christmas present

1:23:58

today. Oh yeah!

1:23:59

Yes, what has happened to me, this

1:24:02

is a bit of a shock, isn't it? I don't know.

1:24:05

I don't know who I am these days. I barely recognize myself.

1:24:08

So let's see how long that lasts.

1:24:10

It's a bit like this decluttering phase I've had. I

1:24:13

just know it's about to finish. I just know any minute

1:24:15

now I'm gonna be like, I thought it, leave

1:24:17

it to be a mercy. In fact, I'm already

1:24:19

sort of slightly losing the bug. The thing is

1:24:21

I did loads of sorting and then like a week later,

1:24:23

it all looks like it's back to normal and I just can't be bothered.

1:24:26

Everybody else has to care a little bit about it too. Anyway,

1:24:29

I've got happier

1:24:29

things in my meds tonight and out for

1:24:32

dinner with my mum and the

1:24:34

rest of my family because it was her birthday

1:24:36

last weekend and we couldn't all get together. And we're

1:24:38

going to a place where they do really good Italian

1:24:40

food and also

1:24:43

Negroni's. So I don't think

1:24:45

I'll be caring about anything.

1:24:47

And if we have time, make sense? A good time with

1:24:49

the fam. And on that note, I

1:24:51

will love you and leave you. I'll see you next

1:24:53

week. Thank you for stopping by.

1:24:55

Lots of love, be kind to yourself, bye bye. F

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