Anna Ploszajski on when stories are the missing element

[00:00:00] Sarah: Hi, Anna. It's brilliant to have you joining me on the podcast today. Welcome.

[00:00:03] Anna: Thank you so much. I'm really happy to be with you. Looking forward to our conversation.

[00:00:07] Sarah: Yeah, me too. Um, I've been really looking forward to this and we've had some good chats in the lead up to it, so thank you for joining us. I mean, you'd be could to jump straight in.

[00:00:16] You ran, you've set up your own venture called Storyology. So can you start by telling us a bit about what that is and how you'd describe your work?

[00:00:25] Anna: Yeah, so as the name suggests,  Storyology. brings together stories and storytelling with the world of science, which is my own background. I was a scientist for many years.

[00:00:37] I worked in material science for a long time, and maybe I'll tell you the longer origin story shortly. But the, the quicker version of the origin story is that I lived a kind of double life of scientists by day and person doing science communication by night. That involves standup comedy and writing and.

[00:00:55] All sorts of things. And through that I discovered storytelling. And [00:01:00] Do you want me to tell you the long story now? Yeah, go for

[00:01:01] Sarah: it. Yes. Okay, perfect.

[00:01:03] Anna: All right. Scrap all of that. So for me, it all started back when I began my PhD in material science. I actually had quite a negative experience. I wasn't really gelling with the people in my lab.

[00:01:16] I felt quite lonely. It was, yeah, sort of not a very happy time. And at the university that I was at, they ran lots of courses, which were lots of different things. You could do languages, you could do kind of skills sessions, learn how to code, all these sorts of things. And I took a course which was an introduction to public engagement and I don't really know why.

[00:01:36] I just wanted to get out of the lab, really meet some new people, try and find my, my people. And, um, I took this course and I guess one of my. Key character flaws is that I am like a pathological teacher's pet. To give you a good example, I'm still friends with my school physics teacher and we go for dog walks like quite frequently.

[00:01:56] I love that. So, yeah. And by the way, me

[00:01:59] Anna: too. So like, [00:02:00] yeah.

[00:02:01] Sharing here.

[00:02:03] Anna: I love that. So I've always been a teacher's pet anyway, in this, in this public engagement session, I was that one, always putting my hand up, always talking to the teacher, offering an answer. And at the end of the session he came up to me and said, you seem like a bit of a show off.

[00:02:16] And I was like, that wasn't what I was going for. I just wanted you to like me. And he said, well, you should come and try my standup comedy night. Which is a sentence that nobody ever wants to hear. The, the sing, the single most terrifying sentence that anyone's ever heard. Oh my gosh. Absolutely. And I was very scared of public speaking.

[00:02:35] Very, very scared. But because it was a teacher asking me to do it, obviously I had to say yes. And so I was like, okay. And so I went along and I did nine minutes of standup comedy about hydrogen storage materials, which was my topic of research and comedy was kind of intriguing, terrifying, obviously, but kind of intriguing because unlike the world of science, which is very rigorous and sort of black and white, you can put a [00:03:00] formula to something and, and that's what it is.

[00:03:02] Comedy is the opposite. It's very subjective, it's very unpredictable. And so I, although it was scary, I, I sort of felt interested by it. And so I kept doing it and very soon ran out of jokes about hydrogen. And so started to want to tell stories. And you know, one day I googled, how do you tell a story?

[00:03:22] And I went down this massive internet rabbit hole and I started reading books by novelists and screenwriters and people who tell stories for a living. And what I found was stories. Funnily enough, they're quite similar to science in many ways, which is that there can be a formula to a story. You know, it has a shape and a texture, and a pattern and a structure.

[00:03:44] And material science is all about structures as well. And, and so, although it was a new concept, it also had a lot of overlap with my world of science. And there were lots of rules, obviously, as a teacher's pet. I love rules. Yeah. How do you build a world? How do you build a character stakes, [00:04:00] conflict, tension story arcs, all these sorts of tools.

[00:04:03] I kind of learned those and applied them on the comedy stage. And it, and it worked. You know, it, it, it meant that I could sort of remember my sets better. It meant that my sets had more of a structure and a, and a natural arc to them. And so for a long time I lived this double life, you know, downstairs in my basement lab by day, doing my experiments, and then downstairs in basement pubs doing comedy by night.

[00:04:29] And for a long time, those worlds were completely separate. And then. When the time came to write up my PhD thesis, I was like, well, this is just a story, right? This is the story of my last four years. And actually the story of science is quite linear. It's quite a kind of individual story. A lot of the same tools and rules will apply to a PhD thesis as applied to like a Pixar movie that weirdly quite similar in shape.

[00:04:56] And so I did that. I wrote my PhD thesis as a story and [00:05:00] passed my PhD VI with no corrections. My examiner said it was the best thesis he'd ever read. Wow. And asked to have a copy of it to show his students, wow, the science was good, but this, that, the communication I think was what set it apart. And so that proved to me, you know, the, the, the tools from storytelling were applicable in lots of other different places apart from communicating with non-expert audiences.

[00:05:23] Actually, they could be used in the academic world as well. So I spent another couple of years researching. Alongside all of that, I got a book deal by making a friend on a swimming holiday who happened to be a literary agent. And she helped me to write my proposal and, and get that off the ground. And again, I used lots of storytelling techniques in writing that book, which became handmade.

[00:05:44] And that takes us up to the pandemic. My postdoc contract ended. I just finished writing the first draft of the book and I needed a job. And I found this job that was essentially like a, an [00:06:00] in-house writer for a research group. Um, it was a materials research group and they needed someone to help them communicate in lots of different ways, writing grants, proofreading their papers, making them a new websites, that kind of thing.

[00:06:13] So I did that remote for a year, and in that role I was working with lots of different scientific researchers. More closely. And, and also I was now not a researcher myself. I was sort of on the admin team and having that little step back and talking to the researchers about what they did, I noticed a few things.

[00:06:30] I noticed that they were incredibly brilliant, smart, clever, detailed people who were the world experts in their tiny, tiny, little detailed thing. But when I would talk to them about, you know, what are the implications of this? Or what are the, I suppose like the human factors of the research what are your hopes and dreams for this technology?

[00:06:53] They really struggled to go beyond the kind of stock line that they would always say, you know, [00:07:00] this has great potential implications for the future of medicine. They, they could kind of say a general thing, but they weren't able to express what it meant to them or what it would mean to other people. And so I developed a little training course for them, which was of course storytelling for researchers.

[00:07:16] Where I sort of tried to answer, tried to solve their communication problems as I saw them, as I'd been sort of seeing them work. And so they were my little Guinea pigs. And a year into that, I decided to take that full-time as a freelancer. So that became what is now Story origin. Story Origin, as the name suggests, combines science and storytelling.

[00:07:39] And what I try to do is to help technological people. It doesn't have to be scientists, it can be engineers, it can be people that work in the world of tech and other forms of researchers as well. And I try to help them see what I saw in that sort of early eureka moment, which is that storytelling is just a form of communication.

[00:07:57] It's a very powerful form of communication. And there are some [00:08:00] quite simple rules that we can learn and apply to help communicate who we are and what we do better. So that's how theology came about. Um, mm-hmm. And yeah, that's, that's what I do now. It's brilliant.

[00:08:14] Sarah: And I, I find it inspiring and exciting and, uh, that, that you're working in this area.

[00:08:19] It's an area that, that I've had personal connection with as well, um, because I used to be a communications manager at, at Cambridge University in the engineering department. So I feel pain. Yes. Um, but, uh, it's so positive and I suppose reassuring to hear you talking about your PhD and how using some of these unexpected, I think techniques and approaches had such a impact and such a result, and that you had such incredible positive feedback.

[00:08:48] I think it's fascinating though, about why there seems to be a kind of detachment and why there's barriers, why there's, it feels like there's a separation, particularly in, in science and STEM [00:09:00] subjects from why communication matters and hearing you starting to talk about that with. The discomfort. I think that some academics experience maybe around expectations of how you should communicate as a, yeah.

[00:09:15] You know, as a respected and eminent scientist so that you sound really clever and you like you, you know, you've got this real specialist knowledge that's locked away from other people because you are the expert. I'm interested in hearing you talk about what you think those barriers are and, and where they come from and, uh, you know, what's behind that.

[00:09:36] I suppose, I think

[00:09:38] Anna: you hit the nail on the head when you were talking about sort of the culture of STEM research, which is that it can be a little bit exclusionary, it can be a little bit. Experts often have to kind of assert their expertise and often that is through using long and complicated words or, you know, there can be that culture of sort of unhelpful culture [00:10:00] of through being a scientist.

[00:10:04] Excluding others, which I strongly disagree with. And there is this culture, in particularly the academic world of being smart, being clever, being the best. All those things kind of come together. Where I think that stems from is almost like the, the very essence of how science is set up. And, and you know, how kind of modern science happens.

[00:10:26] Because if you go back and you look at the, the scientific method as it has arisen over the last a hundred years, but actually you can go back to the ancient Greeks and they're saying very similar things. It's all about reason and rigor and logic, kind of as it should be. 'cause what we do is we look, we look for often physical evidence in the observable world.

[00:10:44] And we say, okay, well, you know, if this apple is dropping on this man's head, then what does that mean about how the forces are acting on the apple? So that's how it should be. But where I think the scientific method fails is to acknowledge the human factors [00:11:00] in science. For some sciences, those human factors might not be so obvious.

[00:11:07] So let's take for example, you know, trying to discover or trying to put a formula to gravity and an apple falling on a man's head. Um, you can take measurements, you can make observations, and you can make a mathematical formula that would describe the speed at which any apple would fall toward the center of the earth, earth, you know, as you do your maths.

[00:11:25] And that's okay. And for a lot of early science, that sort of thing worked because it was relatively simple formula. There weren't that many, um, moving parts to it. There weren't that many variables. We were just trying to work out, you know, what's gravity? Don't tell a quantum physicist this. I was working with quantum physicists yesterday and they were talking about quantum gravity, and I was like, ah, I thought we understood gravity.

[00:11:48] Apparently we don't. Um, but let's take that aside. The problem with modern science though, is that because it's so complex and because we are now getting down to such fine details and such complicated. [00:12:00] Relationships and interactions that we are trying to, and problems that we're trying to solve. Often human factors do come into it.

[00:12:07] Often in modern science, there's a huge amount of uncertainty, particularly in medical sciences. But actually in a lot of science, our observations are statistical. We are talking about like very high likelihoods of something being correct or it's a very close approximation to what's really going on.

[00:12:24] Even in engineering sciences often, it's like a good approximation, a good model. So there's always this element of uncertainty. And uncertainty is a very, um, sort of human thing. And because it's a human thing, I think scientists, it's really hard to communicate uncertainty while also communicating one's expertise and, and sort of one's brilliant scientific things.

[00:12:48] So that's one side of it is, is the fact that a lot of science is so subtle now is so, because there are uncertainties that can be really hard to reconcile with. Communicating in [00:13:00] an honest way. Yes. And, and that stems from the scientific method. The final thing, I guess, the final failure of the scientific method is that it doesn't take into account human factors.

[00:13:09] Mm-hmm. So it doesn't take into account who was making that observation, what were they expecting to find, and did they in fact find what they expected to find or didn't they? How likely is it that someone would communicate an unexpected finding if they are trying to, you know, assert themselves as an expert?

[00:13:29] What with their personal views? In some scientific fields, it doesn't really matter what way you vote in other scientific fields, it really does. And, um, there are all sorts of biases that we know must exist because science is a human endeavor and humans are messy and complex. And yet we, we write those, that mess and that complexity out of the science that we report.

[00:13:55] And that's why I think storytelling is so powerful is because it can help bring a little bit more humanity [00:14:00] back into science. Absolutely.

[00:14:02] Sarah: Yeah. There's loads to pick up on with that that I'd like to come back to, and particularly with your book and everything, but just to stay with that culture and some of the reasons I think, why it's difficult to find good communication often in academic science.

[00:14:17] It'd be good to hear your thoughts on how academic culture affects that. And I think particularly funding and the need to be competing for money and budgets and sort of need to protect your own areas, I think sometimes that affects communication. Um, how much you wanna share, how confident you want to be and what you're saying and how much you need to kind of put yourself on a, a pedestal or to communicate in a very particular way that will get published or be more recognized for funding.

[00:14:52] I mean, my. Reasonably short two year insight into working at top level of academia as communications manager. So I was a [00:15:00] little bit, you know, outside of it 'cause I wasn't one of the academics. But still, I mean, I suppose I went into it thinking, oh this is a nice world where everyone's kind of doing all this nice research.

[00:15:09] It's great, and actually get into it. And it's brutal. It's brutal. People have to fight for the funding to prolong the contract or to work with the team. Even really senior academics, they're dependent on being able to make the case very regularly so they can continue their research and to, it means that there's a pretty brutal culture in there.

[00:15:29] But how does that affect communication in

[00:15:32] Anna: science? Hugely. I mean you, yeah. The competition for jobs in academia is so fraught and people speak of something called a publish or perish culture, which is, you are measurable, your kind of currency as an academic is often in publications. So you write up your research and you send it off to a journal and they publish it.

[00:15:51] And that's sort of one point. Um, and you get more points for the greater number of papers that you publish or in the more prestigious journals. [00:16:00] So that's your sort of currency as you are going through your career. And it's a bit of a false or a bit of an unhelpful metric because what that measures is how good you are at writing publications, not necessarily how impactful those publications will be.

[00:16:20] You know, there there's all sorts of stories about people like splitting up their experiments. It could be one paper, but you can split it up into five. And so people go for the five because it's about quantity over quality in some areas. So, so that's really damaging because it doesn't measure Yeah, the quality of the scientist or the research is just about volume.

[00:16:41] And also what that does is it doesn't. Provide much space for failure, um, or much space for play or collaboration or just taking time to do things. Because often academics are on, as you mentioned, short term contracts and the pace of it [00:17:00] is unrelenting sometimes. And so because there's no space for failure, it means that the picture that we get of science is often that it's all about discovery.

[00:17:10] Mm-hmm. It's all about, you know, positive findings and making a difference and, and finding things out. All of what's gets published or the vast, vast majority of what gets published is discoveries of some kind or some kind of incremental finding, whereas the vast majority of what science actually is, is a lot of failure, a lot of checking your results, a lot of checking other people's results.

[00:17:34] A lot of sort of discussion and collaboration that doesn't necessarily move things forward, but makes connections sort of across, if that makes sense. So what we are measuring is not a very good measure of actually what science is. And yeah, I think a lot of that can be attributed to, I guess the working culture and, and how it has been set up.

[00:17:55] Sarah: Yeah, it's really good to hear that around or, or your thoughts around failure. And [00:18:00] I think fear and sort of bearing in mind that most listeners to this are from more of a business world, that there's certainly parallels with working in any kind of organization or anything where there's a fear of how you communicate, affecting your position, your ability to bring stakeholders with you, whatever those stakeholders are.

[00:18:23] The ability to win support, financial or otherwise for the projects that you're trying to lead on and to justify what you're doing. And I think a pressure as well to be very focused on. I'm not saying this is wrong, but very focused on outcome or impact. Yes. And obviously in academia that's massive.

[00:18:43] There's a thing called the research excellence framework, which, um, for people that aren't aware of that is a way of sort of a long-term measurement of universities. That's that's very much about the impact of the work, which is fine, except that it makes it difficult when you're doing something that's quite blue skies or [00:19:00] where Yeah.

[00:19:00] It makes it difficult if you're working in a space where you are not sure what the value of this work might be. And there's a sort of, I think there's a danger of that, meaning that those types of projects get overlooked. So a massive role for communication, I think. Mm-hmm. In trying to explain what you're doing.

[00:19:19] And, and that parallel absolutely exists in the business world where trying to tell a story about the work that you're doing really, really matters.

[00:19:28] Anna: Yeah.

[00:19:28] Sarah: So I guess an interesting question is how do you help people to think about that and, and do it better and approach it in a way that. Allows for a bit of freedom or a more interesting way to engage people while there's the fear of not coming across and ticking all the boxes in the way that you feel that you know, or, you know, yeah.

[00:19:52] Needs to be

[00:19:53] Anna: done. Yeah. It's, it's interesting. It's about my, my job is, you know, trying to sell storytelling as like a serious and [00:20:00] rigorous method, while also being sort of fun and creative. Yeah. And sometimes a bit silly At the same time, what I have found has, has worked effectively, has been to first, you know, prove the point and kind of introduce what storytelling is, and then show how actually a lot of research is already formatted as a story, and then show if you, if, if that is the case, and I, I try and make that obvious that that's the case, then here are the tools from storytelling that we can kind of super impose over that.

[00:20:32] Traditional formats. Mm-hmm. In order to bring it alive even better. So I'll give you the example. My sort of archetypal story that I often teach is the story of Finding Nemo, which is sort of silly little kids movie. But kids movies are often very archetypal. They often follow a kind of fairytale type structure, quite a familiar story, arc, beginning, middle, and end.

[00:20:52] Often a physical or a metaphorical journey takes place. They're quite rooted in that kind of storytelling culture. [00:21:00] So just really briefly, like a few spoilers coming up, the story of Finding Nemo is that there's a dad Clownfish called Marlin, and at the beginning of the story we find out that it's just him and his son, Nemo, and their little family of two.

[00:21:13] And they live in this beautiful tropical reef near Australia and they live this wonderful life. Marlin takes Nemo to school every day, and they have all their friends and neighbors and it's all good. And then one day Nemo gets taken away by a scuba diver. To go and live in a dentist office in Sydney.

[00:21:33] And the story is Marlon has to go and find Nemo. And so off he swims into the ocean and he meets lots of different challenges and, um, scary things along the way. Sharks jellyfish. Um, but he also meets a little blue friend called Dory who says that she'll help him to find Nemo. They do find Nemo, but on the way home, Doy gets caught up by this fishing net and she's being like, winched up out of the sea with all [00:22:00] these other fish.

[00:22:00] And Nemo says, I know how to go and help, but I have to swim into the net to go and tell everyone what to do. So Marlon, you know, having just got his precious son back has a choice to make, you know, does he continue to worry about NEMO and, and sort of wrap him up in cotton wool or does he allow Nemo to go off and take a risk?

[00:22:20] Of course he does that. And Nemo goes into the swimming, swims into the fishing net, tells everyone to swim downwards. Everybody swims downwards. And then the strength of that is enough to break open the nets to save the day. And everybody returns home back to the reef to live happily ever after, until finding Dory, which is the second film, uh, which I haven't seen.

[00:22:39] But the, the, the format of that very sort of archetypal hero's journey, beginning in a home environment, beginning at home, everything's good, wonderful idyllic thing, something happens that's your inciting incident. NEMA gets taken away and there's a, a physical journey that the protagonist has to go on.

[00:22:59] So off they go. [00:23:00] Marlin swims the ocean. Um, and there's also challenges that they have to meet along the way as well and overcome. And in overcoming those challenges, the, the protagonist changes in some way. They learn about themselves. There are goodies and baddies antagonists. Along the way. Um, there's often a final test in which the protagonist has to put into practice everything that they learned in the middle part of the story to show, to demonstrate that they've changed, and then at the end they return home having changed and everyone lives happily ever after.

[00:23:30] This is a very similar story to how we communicate scientific research, believe it or not, beginning, middle, and end, beginning. We show what's come before we write about sort of prior knowledge. The, we often do a literature review, so we look at everything that everybody knew before. Then you come along and you ask your research question.

[00:23:51] You say, what if we could do X, Y, or Z? So that's your inciting incident. It's when you kinda ask the question of the [00:24:00] story, then you go off and you do your experiments. It's not a physical journey, it's kind of metaphorical or intellectual journey. You do your experiments. You often have to overcome some challenges and difficulties along the way and.

[00:24:12] By the end, you pull together all of that information to do something or say something new. It's the equivalent moment to your final test is your conclusion. And at the end you have a resolution where you say to what extent you've managed to answer that question, and you sort of return home to a place of knowing.

[00:24:36] So those two stories are very super imposable onto each other. But often when I, when I teach this, you know, people will say, okay, well we've just spent like two hours talking about finding emo and all the different ways we can use storytelling. And what you are showing us is introduction, methods, results, conclusion.

[00:24:52] That's what we already do. So what, what have you got to add? And the point is, is that you can write in that same structure, in that [00:25:00] same format, but through being a storyteller, you can tell that story in a slightly different way. You know, you can make sure that you're bringing elements of character into it.

[00:25:08] You can emphasize your research question as the most important story beat as the inciting incident is the most important story beat. You can make sure that you are providing a logical narrative and explaining why. One thing led on to the next thing, to the next thing, and not just providing a kind of series of bullet point facts.

[00:25:26] And when it comes to the conclusion, you are drawing together all those different pieces of information to say something new, not just restating what's come before. So there's lots of ways that you can become a better storyteller through the usual formats of scientific storytelling by understanding tools from the world of fiction.

[00:25:45] Sarah: That's brilliant. And you've talked mostly there, I think about structure, which is great. Mm-hmm. Do you encourage people to think differently about their words and language and even try to nudge them towards something that might feel [00:26:00] dangerously creative? I love that.

[00:26:03] Anna: Dangerously creative. I want that on a t-shirt.

[00:26:06] Um. Yes. Yeah, just thinking about language for a second language is really crucial and, and it can be such a barrier when we are talking to audiences, particularly non-expert audiences about technical ideas because there's often quite technical language involved. What I say to people is language comes into it when we think about world building.

[00:26:26] You know, your job as a storyteller at the beginning of a story is to invite your audience into the world of that story, be it showing your audience who Marlon and Nemo's friends are, and where they go to school, and how does the physics of the world work. When you're underwater, things can float in.

[00:26:42] There are bubbles, all that kind of thing. We kind of have to do the same thing when we're talking about science. We have to show, you know, what are the important parameters? Who are the important people working in the field? Is everybody in that field trying to, I. Discover the same thing. Is everyone trying to find the cure to cancer or make batteries more [00:27:00] efficient?

[00:27:00] Or are people moving in different directions? What are the power structures like? Is, is industry an important player here or is it more of a blue skies thing? So you're gonna invite people into that world and it's important because by the time you get to telling people about your research question, the significance of that is only really relevant if you've told them.

[00:27:21] Kinda the backstory, if you've invited them into that world. And language comes into it here because in any story audiences are perfectly capable of learning new words and we only have to look to fantasy stories or um, science fiction stories where there's often a lot of made up language. If you look at Harry Potter is a really good example of this.

[00:27:39] Even a children's story. I dunno how many made up words there are in that, but like, well over a hundred, possibly 200 different words that are completely specific to that world. I. And, and children as young as seven are able to read these stories and understand the, the world and, and learn those new meanings.

[00:27:56] And the same is true with science as well. As long as you are [00:28:00] inviting people into your world, defining your terms, showing them through the plot, if you like what those terms mean, absolutely fine to use technical language as long as you're bringing them into your world and not using it as an alienating tool.

[00:28:15] Sarah: I'm interested to what extent rules kind of exist or are perceived anyway about what you should avoid and what is okay to do. Yeah. For example, writing in the first person and where you've seen people take risks or bend those rules and where you've seen that work or, or perhaps backfire.

[00:28:35] Anna: Yeah. Yeah. Good one.

[00:28:37] I think rules, rules are very important and that comes back to the kind of the conventions of, uh, of the form, if you like. So, so the rules are important. What I tell people is that. In my storytelling workshops, we often focus on that Finding Nemo thing. It's quite a kind of formal structure. But then the point is, is that once you understand how that works, you [00:29:00] can then break a lot of those rules and pull them around quite a lot depending on the application, you know, depending on the communication that you're doing.

[00:29:08] So, for example, sometimes you won't need to do any world building at all because you're talking to other experts and they already know all the backgrounds. But other times you might need to do 90% of your presentation might be introduction or world building because people are completely unfamiliar with what you are working on.

[00:29:28] And if that's the case, then you know, the, the, the beginning part of your story is the first 90% and then the middle and the end is just really fast at the end. But there's no point in giving them your results if they don't understand the context in the world. So a lot of these tools can be yet massively.

[00:29:45] Tweaked and pulled around, expanded, contracted, depending on the situation in terms of language and, and being a bit more creative about it. I, it depends on the situation. [00:30:00] Often journals are increasingly happy for, uh, writers to write in the first person Interesting. And in the active voice as well. So we performed this experiment mm-hmm.

[00:30:12] Rather than the more traditional passive voice of the experiment was performed.

[00:30:16] Mm-hmm.

[00:30:17] Anna: Basically, because it makes it, it's a bit easier to read, I think particularly for people who don't read English as a first language, it's a bit more clear if you just say who's done it rather than sort of writing in a sort of backwards way.

[00:30:29] So, and so that's becoming more and more popular now in presentations. It's far more accepted to say I, and we, and, and to speak in the first person than in any other form in a PhD thesis. There's a lot of creative freedom because. It's not, it's a formal document, of course, but there's less convention, I think, than in like writing papers or grants, for example.

[00:30:55] Whether people are willing to take those risks is another matter.

[00:30:57] Sarah: Yeah. Well, I was gonna ask you that. Where have you had success with [00:31:00] sort of building confidence in people or, or seeing them take a step that they might not have considered before and do something that felt a bit uncomfortable to them, but that, you know, how, how, how do you build that confidence in people?

[00:31:12] Anna: My favorite way when I see that the strongest is when I'm teaching presentation skills, because in the same way that we are often taught to kind of write ourselves out of our work, I think people often feel a little bit intimidated by standing up and owning their work. Sometimes, especially if it's a collaborative piece of work or something, there's often a kind of, yeah, a bit, people are a bit embarrassed or a bit humble about kind of saying.

[00:31:44] Hello, I'm Anna and this is what I've done. But when we stand up and give a presentation, we are physically there. You know, our character in that story is there in the room. And as the narrator of that story as well, there's a lot of options, a lot of opportunity [00:32:00] for creative storytelling in a presentation environment.

[00:32:04] And so where I see people go on a go on their own personal arc of change is often in presentations and a little goes a very long way. You know, I often will encourage people to just speak about how exciting or intriguing or frustrating it was when they did these experiments, or you know, when they tried to find those solutions.

[00:32:28] There's a brilliant quote by Maya Angelou who said that people will forget what you said. People will forget what you did, but people will never forget how the, how you made them feel. And it's that point about. Connecting with empathy that storytelling allows you to do by putting yourself into that story, regardless of what the content is about.

[00:32:49] People are interested in you, what you thought, and what you did and how you felt. Yeah. And so allowing audiences insight into [00:33:00] your particular experience. That's the most fundamental sort of human way that we have of connecting. And people don't stop being human when they walk into a scientific environment.

[00:33:11] So encouraging people just to put a little bit more humanity into it, a little bit more, this is what I think, this is how I felt. This is how strange or funny or weird this was. That's the eureka moment often for people.

[00:33:29] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:33:29] Anna: And when we are audience members, it's, those are the bits that we remember.

[00:33:34] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:33:35] It's a good time to. Talk to you about your book Handmade, because I think you, you're putting this into practice so brilliantly yourself and thank you. I've been listening to the audio book, which is a pleasure because you're reading it out. It's me getting progressively horse, but it's absolutely brilliant.

[00:33:54] I'm really, really enjoying it in a way that, thank you has surprised me because I wouldn't have [00:34:00] necessarily thought that a book about, essentially about material science would engage me as much as it is, and I think that's because you're bringing yourself into it and you are using storytelling in a whole different range of ways that it's really clever and just brings the whole thing to, to life.

[00:34:19] I think the whole framework, it's so, it's called handmade and it really is about you getting your hands on and kind of. This tactile relationship that we have with materials in our lives that we don't think about. I mean, I don't think about, I'm sure you do, but I don't kind of exist with all these things that I just sort of take for granted.

[00:34:37] Don't even notice, get irritated with because they're not working. Don't really think about what components or materials are used in the, the stuff that I've got on me or with me, or getting me from one place to another. And you're getting hands on. It's about making things. It's about, you know, through the book you are blowing glass or cutting metals or turning clay and it's really, [00:35:00] it's a very visceral and human interaction.

[00:35:03] But you are also using stories beautifully. So it's broken down by materials. You've got chapters on each material, but you're using stories in those materials. So for example, there's a, there's a fantastic chapter on plastic where you're, you're sharing the story of your grandfather George, who had to leave Poland in, in the war and was lost as a small boy from his family.

[00:35:25] And it's. Incredibly personal, moving this journey, this historical journey of someone that's a close relative, but then you've turned that story into a way to tell us about plastic and how plastic was, you know, a really important part of his life. And he founded a plastics company when he eventually ended up in Britain.

[00:35:46] And, you know, in, in other ways through the book, you've got smaller stories as well. There's a lovely one about you, I think that you, you're bringing in the personal experiences like with brass. So you're a trumpet player. Yeah. And you are like the most incredible like, talented person. That's quite annoying.[00:36:00]

[00:36:00] Thank you. So you're clearly a good trumpeter as well. And um, you talk about standing up at age 12 to play the last post and how utterly terrifying that was in the school assembly. I'm like with you shaking. It's awful. But you kind of have this almost like spiritual relationship with brass and then again with clay and.

[00:36:20] It's great how you bring this stuff to life and uh, thank you. I think sort of making that connection. It's really interesting to see how you've done it. I think you've also used quite small analogies as well that I think are stories. So I was trying to remember with you at the beginning of this, 'cause I said the downside of listening to an audio book is that it's really hard to put a bookmark in.

[00:36:39] So I couldn't, was trying to refer back in my mind to where this was. But I think it's about steel structure where you just described the structure of the material as being like three people sitting on two chairs, which is just so lovely and visual. And for somebody like me that's not, not really, you know, got a background in science, it's, it's, it's great.

[00:36:57] Yeah. So I'm interested in how deliberate [00:37:00] you are in thinking about using those stories. How much reworking it takes and Yeah, just how you just sort of think about this. I, I feel like you must have enjoyed this process because I feel like that comes across in the book that it's like, oh, that's lovely.

[00:37:14] Quite fun to have done it. But, but tell me about it.

[00:37:17] Anna: Yeah. Gosh. Yeah. I loved, I loved writing that book. In terms of the stories of it. What was really important to me was that. All of the chapters are a non-science story. So you mentioned the grandad George Chapter about plastics. There's also chapters about channel swimming and trumpets and a camper van trip around Scotland.

[00:37:38] Oh, cool. I haven't gone to that. That's, well, yeah, you'll come to that. It was really important to me. Each chapter was, was a non-science story because I wanted story to be the driving, the kind of backbone to it. And then the other thing that was important to me was that none of the science that is in there is in a superfluous way.

[00:37:55] So all of the science is in there as part of the plot. Mm-hmm. So you know, [00:38:00] there's only explanations of atoms because it's important because we are doing blacksmithing and we can see it glowing. And why is it glowing? Well, that is a scientific thing, but more importantly it helps Agnes to like flack the thing and make it change shape.

[00:38:11] So it was really important to me that there was never a kind of, here's a fun fact, kids about science because it, yeah, I always wanted it to be part of the plot. So you mentioned that stories. All over in lots of different length scales. The overall book has its own arc of I'm a idiot scientist who doesn't know anything at all about how to like shape anything at all with my hands.

[00:38:36] I just know things on paper come with me as we go and discover this world together. And then of course, by the end, I've had those experiences and so that that change has taken place. There's that story, but then also each chapter has its own little arc as well. And I wrote the book completely, not in the order that those stories appear.

[00:38:55] I wrote each chapter almost as like a standalone thing. [00:39:00] And then at the end of the process stood back and looked and looked at that full picture. And I thought, what's the story here? Like what is gonna be this overall story? And it was that idea of change. It was learning, it was a trajectory from the world of sort of more quote unquote scientific materials.

[00:39:18] Like I. That I was familiar with from the world of material science, which is like steel and brass and glass and, um, ceramics and plastics. And then, so those are the first half. And then the second half is this kind of like wild adventure into quote unquote crafty materials like wool and paper and stone and things that are just never even mentioned in material science degrees, or at least in, in my sort of formal materials education.

[00:39:45] So there was that trajectory. And yeah, it was a joy to kind of work out retrospectively, like what have I learned? Like what, what is different now and what, what's the tension in each chapter and, and how will it best, [00:40:00] you know, have the shape that I want it to.

[00:40:02] Sarah: Yeah, it's, and it's really nice how much of yourself you've brought in.

[00:40:05] And, you know, I think, I mean, I appreciate how honest you've been about some things in there already, but you know, from the beginning you'd sort of opening it up with feeling nervous about your first standup comedy gig and things like that. I suppose, you know, going back to that Finding Nemo structure and the story arc and that, that sort of classic quest of the hero or the protagonist that you are that protagonist in this story.

[00:40:30] Yeah. And we follow you and you share different experiences, but what's also interesting is that you're using characters. So, you know, so there is your grandfather George, but there's, or at least as far as I've got so far, there's different characters who help you understand the materials. So there's, yeah, the glassblower, there's the mm-hmm.

[00:40:48] Trumpet maker. How do you think other people could use characters in whatever communication they're doing? Mm-hmm. Where it might feel a bit odd, like, we haven't really thought about using [00:41:00] characters. What, what do characters mean very broadly, and how could we start thinking about using characters,

[00:41:08] Anna: I guess in an archetypal sense?

[00:41:11] And when I say archetypes, I mean these kind of like traditional structures that we often see. There are some archetypal characters that you'll often see cropping up in very much a sort of fairytale story. So you'll have like an antagonist who can be the kind of badie often or the friendly goodie, but who is a challenge to the protagonist.

[00:41:32] A bit like Dory. She's a, she's an antagonist, but a friendly, friendly one. You can have trickster archetypes who are the kind of, I'm mixing up my Disney films now, but Zu in The Lion King, the little bird who sort of floats around and comments on things. He's like a trickster archetype, um, who's sort of there as comic relief and a bit of a guide.

[00:41:53] You've got, um, sort of mentors and all these sort of figures that crop [00:42:00] up in lots of stories. So that can be one way is to sort of identify in the story that you're telling, are there any archetypes and can I learn from how other people have treated the trickster or whatever? Would that work in my story?

[00:42:14] That's one way of doing it. But to be honest, often real life stories are not that archetypal and it can sometimes feel a little bit too shoehorned to try and make, you know, somebody into a stereotype or an archetype. And so then the question becomes what's their function in the story? How do they, how or hinder the protagonist?

[00:42:33] Do they facilitate the change? Does the protagonist learn anything from them? Sometimes characters are just mirrors that are held up to the protagonist and the protagonist sees a different way of being or a different way of thinking. So it's about, yeah, understanding what's the function of that person to this project.

[00:42:52] For example, are they, are they a mentor figure? Are they a friendly antagonist like a PhD supervisor might [00:43:00] be? Are they sort of helping but in a challenging way?

[00:43:03] Sarah: And do characters have to be people? Could they be, you know, could your antagonist be, I don't know, something in the research that's throwing you off or.

[00:43:13] You've got your trickster. Yeah, good point. But it could be like a, a sort of something that's come sideways that's thrown you off halfway through what you thought was totally turning into your theory or,

[00:43:22] Anna: yeah, really good point. No, you absolutely, you can have kind of non-human characters and often it is, it's termed sometimes like an antagonistic force, so it can be a character or it could be bad luck or natural forces.

[00:43:35] It could be things that happen inside or outside of your control. There can be lots of challenges that crop up along the way that are non-human in nature. Yeah.

[00:43:44] Sarah: Mm-hmm. How did you kind of think about developing these storytelling abilities in yourself? How consciously have you, I know you've talked about standup and testing yourself, you seem very willing to kind of push yourself and test yourself, but as it just sort of happened over time [00:44:00] with experimentation, or have you taken conscious steps to try and develop certain aspects of communication broadly?

[00:44:07] I suppose, not just, yeah, obviously storytelling is a part of that, but the communication. Broadly. Mm.

[00:44:15] Anna: I'd say I'm definitely self-taught as a, as a storyteller, as a communicator, I've learned everything that I know through trial and error, and you know, in the early days I learned everything that I knew, like on stage in front of people.

[00:44:28] That's the horrible thing about comedy, is you can't practice it unless it's in front of other people. Yes. It's not real, is it? You can't be. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So very much empirically gained as opposed to any sort of formal training, which isn't to say that I haven't studied it. You know, I've read all those books that I mentioned and, and tried to glean knowledge from other people as well, but often you can only really learn by doing the, the sorts of archetypes that we've been talking about.

[00:44:55] The kind of heroes journey type patterns were the first ones that I came across, [00:45:00] but I quite soon realized that although they sort of were working, there were lots of times where they didn't seem to fit or. It felt a little bit too formulaic or a bit too perfect. And so then I started looking at other forms of story because the hero's journey is just one of thousands and thousands of different methods and patterns in storytelling, and often they're quite cultural.

[00:45:25] So every different culture around the world will have their archetypal stories. The hero's journey is quite a western type of archetype. It was, well, I suppose it was originated in the ancient Greek world, but then sort of popularized as the hero's journey by, um, Hollywood screenwriters, um, and story theorists in the 20th century.

[00:45:46] But if you look at stories from the Far East, for example, the patterns are very, very different. And the, the narratives and how the characters are, are in interact are very different. To take those two examples to illustrate it for you, the hero's journey is very [00:46:00] individualistic. There's a singular hero and they go off on their physical or metaphorical journey.

[00:46:05] Um, and there's a very strong resolution at the end. Whereas in a story that is typical of one that might come from Japan or China or Korea, it's less individualistic and more of a, it's more of a collectivist story. So there isn't one single protagonist, but there might be three or four. And the story isn't about a quest to find a treasure.

[00:46:27] It's about bringing something that is outta balance back into balance through collective action.

[00:46:32] Hmm.

[00:46:33] Anna: In those forms, quite often there isn't a happily ever after, or at least there isn't a concrete resolution. Sometimes stories from the Far East will leave things unresolved or will prefer to let the reader work out what they think about it or what they, the message that they're taking.

[00:46:54] There is no, and the moral of the story is. Blah. It, it's very like [00:47:00] up to you. That's so

[00:47:01] Sarah: interesting.

[00:47:01] Anna: So I find inspiration. Yeah. Yeah. I find inspiration from lots of different places and, and so sometimes those sorts of forms, you know, different forms are, are actually a bit more applicable in certain scenarios.

[00:47:12] So yeah, that's, that's what I'm sort of experimenting with and interested in now as finding out what, what the different rules might be and, and sort of how I can apply those and

[00:47:22] Sarah: brings in different ideas, doesn't it, different ways of thinking about it, because we probably are, without even thinking about it, we probably think of a story as being a certain pattern, I suppose, however subconscious that is.

[00:47:33] That's, um, it's quite cultural. Exactly.

[00:47:36] Anna: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And, and there's obviously nothing wrong with that, but it's, it's really interesting to get a glimpse into how other cultures treat stories and, and how those stories. Interact with culture as well.

[00:47:49] Sarah: Absolutely. I feel like I need to go and read more.

[00:47:52] Well be exposed to more far Eastern, I think. I'm trying to remember, but I, I feel like the film, everything Everywhere, all at once was Yep. [00:48:00] Sort of more drawing on that kind of influence of how a story is told. I loved that film. Absolutely. I think it was probably pitched at my kind of demographic, but I, this is brilliant.

[00:48:12] Anna: I watched it while I had COVID and I was like, am am I feverish or is this just a fever with, with the sausage

[00:48:17] Sarah: fingers in my head or

[00:48:19] Anna: Exactly. I need to be watched it while not quite ill.

[00:48:22] Sarah: I, I just wanna sort of pick up with that about, um, different influences though. Mm. And also making connections. 'cause I think one of the things that you've, you, you've done in the book that's really powerful is that you make connections between.

[00:48:35] Different ideas you're drawing, you are taking what on the surface might sound like quite a specific topic as in a material for a chapter, but then you're making so many interesting connections. So you're drawing on personal stories and you, but you're drawing on examples that maybe not immediately obvious, but there's absolutely, there's a connection because of how that gives us the [00:49:00] experience of that material in a way that is very human.

[00:49:03] And I think you are making connections, not just with examples and analogies, but also with how we think in different ways sometimes. And I'm really keen on the kind of value of communication for linking ideas. And I think it's one of the things that was interesting to me working in academia is that I went into it thinking this is all about sharing ideas.

[00:49:25] It's all about cross fertilization of staff across different departments. And, and then of course the reality of it is that because you're fighting for funding, as I mentioned earlier, often actually it's quite the opposite because you kind of want to exclude other people from knowing what you're doing.

[00:49:39] And some people think beyond that, but it's difficult too. So sometimes it's these walls kind of put up that are quite difficult, but the value of making connections, it's so super important. And, um, yeah, I'm just interested in whether you've seen how storytelling or [00:50:00] improved communication has opened up that sharing and, and building of ideas or bringing people together in whatever way that means, you know, if somebody's gone to a conference and they've heard from somebody.

[00:50:12] Talking in a more open way that's triggered a different way of thinking. Or if they'd be more likely to read a paper that isn't directly related to their area of interest. Because it's more accessible and more

[00:50:23] yeah,

[00:50:23] Sarah: readable. You know, are we benefiting from improved communication by making stuff just more human, more readable, more understandable?

[00:50:34] Anna: Definitely. And I think one thing that's really important to me is to break down hierarchies of knowledge. I was really conscious as an Oxford educated scientist with a PhD, like how that is viewed. And I didn't, I was a bit uncomfortable writing the book to be seen as that kind of academic expert. And so I wanted to elevate the expertise of [00:51:00] craft people.

[00:51:01] Maybe not elevate, no, that's the wrong word I wanted to understand. And um. To break down those hierarchies of knowledge or perceived hierarchies of knowledge in the world that I was in and show, you know, there I found that there was so much to learn from blacksmiths and potters and stonemasons and gas blowers.

[00:51:21] You know, so much to learn from people who hold different forms of knowledge and that can be extended of course to indigenous knowledge and all sorts of, you know, non-formal or non-academic ways of gaining knowledge. So that was what was really important to me and that's why I positioned myself in the way that I did at the start of the book, which was somebody who knows nothing at all about making and craft and yeah, went, went off to kind of, um, celebrate those other forms of knowledge.

[00:51:50] And so I think that is something very important to me and I think that is something that I have seen in friends of mine who have read [00:52:00] the book as well. I've seen them start to. Explore other forms of knowledge too. One un unintended but brilliant consequence of writing the book and the podcast that it came out of was that, you know, I'd talked to a hundred craft people for the podcast about different materials and, and wanted to see their materials through their eyes.

[00:52:23] And so now I have an amazing network of people that if I have a question about silver or steel or cake, you know, I have my people to call on who are not from the world of science and who won't explain things in those ways, but will provide such rich insights. And so that, one of the brilliant impacts, I think is, is sort of how stories help to, just to illustrate, I suppose, and, and to, yeah, to celebrate those, those different forms of knowledge in different places that it can come from.

[00:52:59] Sarah: [00:53:00] Yeah, we've talked about this previously, but the. Education system doesn't necessarily set us up very well for doing it because we have these kind of labeled subjects as if they exist as an entity. You know, you've got English and history, and then you've got chemistry and they're all completely separate and they've got a different teacher in a different classroom and a a thing on their own with, with a curriculum.

[00:53:21] And then that's that subject. And I think it's fascinating. I just, I love generally making connections between different things where it might not be obvious and, uh, yeah, I feel like there's something interesting for us to draw on and, and learn that's applicable obviously in all the stuff that you're working in and academia.

[00:53:40] But I think, you know, for us all to think about and how we explore the work that we do and

[00:53:48] Anna: our lives in general. Totally. And just going back to the language thing, I think one nice example from the podcast that always sticks with me is that I interviewed a s silversmith called John Kussell. And he brought some of his [00:54:00] pieces in to show me, and we were talking about his processes of how he, it's called cold working of metal, which is where kind of as its hounds, you kind of hit metal when it's cold and you, and you can shape it into different shapes with a soft metal like silver.

[00:54:13] Um, and so we were talking about cold working and I was asking him, you know, how does it feel? What's telling you when the material like is changing or what are you looking for? What are the signs? Kind of just asking about the process. And he said, yeah. So what happens when you're cold working is that when you hit the metal, um, the atoms get angry.

[00:54:33] If you keep hitting it, they get really angry and then after a certain point you need to stop because otherwise it'll break. And I just love this, the language that he was using, what he was describing is that, you know, when you cold work a metal, you're moving the atoms around inside and that makes it more brittle.

[00:54:49] Um, and I knew that from a scientific point of view, but I'd never thought of it, it with. That sort of beautiful description of, of angry [00:55:00] atoms. Um, and it totally illustrated it. It made total sense to me. Yeah, absolutely. Um, yeah, and, and it was so sort of visceral and um, just beautiful and, and, and that was a really lovely example I think of how different, different minds, different ways of thinking can paint the fullest picture, I guess.

[00:55:23] Yeah. And

[00:55:23] Sarah: what you've done there is to go out and meet these characters for like real people who have got really different experiences, work in different worlds, um, you know, are in different places and different backgrounds. And I think that's given you not only an interesting framework and a way of telling stories to bring them to life, but also it's kind of, I'm sure has like exposed you to different ways of thinking that again, gonna help you with how you tell the stories.

[00:55:51] I just wanna sort of link to that for a penultimate question really, I think, which is about the connections that we all [00:56:00] make in our own lives and how exposing ourselves to different experiences can help us to look at things differently. So I, I want, I really wanna ask you about swimming the channel, because what an amazing thing to do.

[00:56:12] You've kind of pushed yourself into a zone of real well, pushing your limits. Real discomfort. Mm-hmm. I enjoy endurance sports. How I get that Yes. Kind of buzz. I, I love it. Yeah. But, um, I think it helps you to think in a different way and, and particularly when you've gotta sort of dig that deep and think about yourself in a kind of getting yourself through challenge.

[00:56:37] And I think that kind of willingness to put yourself into different spaces also opens up thinking and, and ideas and imagination. And I. Do you feel like drawing on different experiences from your life, like swimming the channel, I you good to hear about swimming the channel and what it was like, but has that helped you to tell stories do you think?

[00:56:56] Totally.

[00:56:57] Anna: Yeah, definitely. Um, [00:57:00] because it, at their core stories are just about communicating a change. The vast majority, unless it's something weird like Kafka where nothing happens, but, but most stories about a change taking place, you know, the characters or something is different at the end compared to how it was at the beginning.

[00:57:14] You know, some story, some life events like swimming the channel actually are quite archetypal journeys, physical journey and that example overcoming challenges. Sometimes life events are a bit more subtle or they're a little bit about a different form of change or you're at a different sort of point in what's changing.

[00:57:40] But I suppose what storytelling helps you to do is to kind of process. Those life events. Mm-hmm. Um, and, and that's true. You know, whether you have read books about storytelling or not, but you, I think we all narrativize and process our lives through story. Um, the way that we remember things that have happened, the way that we remember to, you know, communicate the story of [00:58:00] our day or the story of a project.

[00:58:02] We are constantly, narrative eyes can kind of rewriting stories according to our own memories. That's how our, I think that's how our memories often work is through narrative and story and, and making those connections. So in a way it's a bit of a funny iterative process because the, the channel swim itself was, you know, an event and, and a thing, an aversion.

[00:58:26] My experience of it was a version of those events. When I, the next day I wrote it up as a blog post and I retold that story, and then I rewrote that blog for the book and added in all the stuff about sugar and science. Mm-hmm. Now that's my memory of it, that story. Mm-hmm. But of course, there are a million other ways that that story could have been told.

[00:58:49] And there are even more ways that that story could have gone and different perspectives that it could have been told through. So I think, yeah, storytelling helps us to process our [00:59:00] lives. And in writing those stories, it helps us to put 'em into context, I guess. And, and remember.

[00:59:06] Sarah: Yeah, I, I think you're so right.

[00:59:08] Like memories are things that we've created ourselves. Mm. With a choice about what we've excluded. I think, you know, so many memories are sort of based on a photo and that's how you remember it. Yes. And then in, you know, 10 years later, you look at the photo and it triggers the memory. But actually the reality of the situation wasn't just the photo.

[00:59:25] It was, that was the moment where you all stood together and smiled or. Yeah, exactly. You chose to like stand in front of a beautiful mountain. But yeah, a lot of other things happened that morning too, but definitely

[00:59:35] Anna: it's why. Yeah, it's kind of why in, in the story of the channel Swim in the book, you haven't got there yet, but it's the next chapter after Clay.

[00:59:44] At the end of the story, there's a, a kind of scene that I really wanted to put in there, which was standing in Medway services, in the toilets with like all the hand dryers going and like people bustling around like busy [01:00:00] summer weekend. Like it was like chaos and just kind of standing there in my dry rub and my wooly hat, like having washed my hands, just being like staring at myself in the mirror being like, what just happened?

[01:00:14] It was like such a surreal moment and I have such a memory, such a strong memory of that. Just pause in time of like, what just happened? Wow. This is so strange. Wow. And I'm really fascinated by Aftermaths and kind of how we process these things. An hour, a day, a week, a month, a year later. Yeah. And that was probably about six hours later just being like, what the hell?

[01:00:40] Sarah: Amazing. I mean, what, what a, what an incredible thing to do. This has been so fascinating, you know, really opening up all of these different angles and lenses on, on, sort of mix my metaphors on, um, on storytelling and how you've used them and, um, I'm sure being really thought provoking for how we could all [01:01:00] use storytelling and techniques and communication, but, but think very broadly about connecting ideas and bringing in personal experiences and that kind of thing.

[01:01:08] I have a final question for you, which I ask all podcast guests, which is that I'm speaking to you as a human, Anna. Mm-hmm. What's, um, exciting you at the moment and what are you kind of looking forward to? What's motivating you, either relating to your work or,

[01:01:23] Anna: or other stuff? That's a lovely question. What am excited to look forward to?

[01:01:28] I had a failure earlier this year, which was that I wrote a book proposal about a lot of the stuff that we've talked about today, science and storytelling, and how in order to understand science we have to understand story and vice versa, and nobody wanted to publish it. It got universally rejected by everybody and I was quite crushed for like a good few weeks thinking, like, just, I'm rubbish.

[01:01:53] Nobody likes what I do. Everything's terrible. And one of the things that I was really passionate about with that [01:02:00] project was rewriting stories and changing narratives. We've talked about hero's journeys, also kind of, um, stereotypes of stories like good and good versus evil. I was writing, you know, about how a lot of science gets reduced to good versus evil and a lot of theory basically.

[01:02:15] Um, and the publisher's point was, this isn't relevant enough to the general audience. This is a book for people that already in these worlds, which is fair enough. And now what I'm thinking about is whether I can actually apply that thinking to writing new stories. Mm-hmm. And that's what I'm doing now and I'm really excited about it.

[01:02:34] I'm writing a new book proposal, which is about materials again, but trying to write new stories that are not just sort of the archetypal hero's journey, but thinking about dismantling simplistic stories in science. One good example is actually the story of plastic, particularly today. It's been kind of vilified and sort of a cast in a kind [01:03:00] of.

[01:03:00] Evil villain's role in the material world. But of course it's not, in reality, it's not that simple. So I'm looking forward to, to using that thinking and storytelling and, and how we can harness the power of narrative to rewrite that story, to rewrite the story of plastic, um, and think, you know, is there a bit more of a nuanced version of the story that has a few more gray areas and doesn't just pit good against evil.

[01:03:26] Mm-hmm. And putting into practice what I had previously just been writing about in theory,

[01:03:31] Sarah: I love how you've responded to what you first described as being the failure and sort of figure it up and like, I mean actually literally kind of rewriting your own experience there into something that you kind of reframe as a slightly different project or an amendment or, or whatever.

[01:03:47] But um, yeah, that's really cool and I really wish you very best of luck with it. It's been just thank you, fantastic to have your input on this. Thank you so much for. I hope everyone listening [01:04:00] has really enjoyed it as much as I've enjoyed chatting with you, Anna. Um, so thank you and uh,

[01:04:06] Anna: thank you.

[01:04:06] Sarah: Yeah, bye for now.

[01:04:07] Bye.