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Who Becomes a Volcanologist? Dr. Robin Andrews · PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Planet Geo where we learn about the Earth.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Jesse Rymick.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Join me and Crisple Heis every week.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, this week we're really excited to have an excerpt from our interview with Dr.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Robin Andrews.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Dr.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Andrews is a PhD volcanologist and a science communicator extraordinaire.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: He's written for the New York Times, the Atlantic, National Geographic, Scientific American, and many others.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: And he also has a new book out called Super Volcanoes, What They Reveal About the Earth and the Worlds Beyond.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: We encourage you to check it out.
• 0:38
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• 0:40
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• 0:42
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• 0:46
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• 0:49
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• 0:50
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• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Our email is planetgeocast at gmail.com.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy this excerpt and tune in next week for the full interview with Dr.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Robin Andrews.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: You interviewed a lot of people for this book.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, a lot of scientists, a lot of like people who study weird volcano types that you talked about in the book.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Some of these people we've talked to on this podcast, like Tina Neal or Maiway Haas, and some really prestigious volcanologists.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Did you come away with a summary?
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, a common denominator to people who are interested in volcanoes.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Or were there some common features to the people who are interested in this who really dive deep into these things?
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_02: Oh man, you know what?
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: I think it just I think it varies so much.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's quite a niche.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I wanted to get into volcanoes because A, I was stubborn, and B, I was like, it's so removed from what normal jobs are that you're told about what do people do?
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_02: Is it when you know when you're a kid?
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_02: That was like, that's it.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: It sounds crazy.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: I want to do that.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that was very unplanned, but I was just like, that's it, that's my plan.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: There's other people that I was talking to uh, there's a volcanologist, uh Jackie Kaplan Auerbach.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_02: I've never actually said the surname out loud, but I think I hope that I've pronounced it all right.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_02: But she's in um uh Washington State, and she she's she's in the book, and she she studies like underwater volcanoes.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: She's like a volcanologist and a seismologist, and she kind of I I I sort of did a QA with her recently for something else, and uh she got into volcanoes because she has an undying love of physics.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: It's like a lot of people think people get into volcanology because they're like, oh, you get to travel and see these volcanoes.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's great.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_02: Why would why would that be a downside?
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_02: But she loves physics so much that she said that when she was in in her first year, they had like such a good maths teacher, because there's a lot of maths involved in this, and the teacher showed them how to derive like a few famous equations that can only like equals Mc squared, and they at one point they stood up and like applauded because it was like a magic trick being unfolded.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like it's so nice to hear people think like physics is so good, you know.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_02: So I if there is a common denominator, I think there probably isn't one all kinds, but a frequent theme is that people just like love an aspect of it so much that they would, if you said, Oh, tell me about that, and they wanted to tell you about it, they would just keep going on, and you know, it it's that like passion for something, not necessarily like she loves volcanoes, and loads of people will study volcanoes often, but that love is for often for something really specific about them.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's interesting.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_02: And people that have lived through like devastating eruptions, they keep doing it because they they almost feel like, well, what else am I supposed to do?
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: Like I lived and my colleague didn't.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a good point.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, a lot of people, including Chris Bullis, I think, was you know, in some ways inspired by Mount St.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Helens as well.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I guess I was curious if there's a lot of if you you encounter a lot of things like that, you know, people inspired by a particular volcano that erupted, or yeah, Mount St.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: Helens is a big one.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I think it was it's not only because it was big and because it happened in America as well, but it was one of the first volcanoes that had like a really big international like news coverage.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't just like on news, like National Geographic did a really big like so the La Palma eruption in the Canary Islands recently.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: I was asking a volcanologist called Stavros, like, how did you get into volcanoes?
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_02: Do you do it for the science, or do you do it because like for days like this where thousands of homes are being destroyed?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: And he was like, Well, yeah, I grew up in Greece, but um when I was 14, I think it was 40, something like that, he saw in a national geographic issue the photographs of the Mount St.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_02: Helens eruption and heard that people had died in trying to study it, essentially.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: And he said that's what he inspired him to do it because he hoped that he could be a similar vanguard to help reduce the likelihood that people would die, kind of thing.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I so sometimes it's it's like a very noble thing.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_02: And then sometimes you get people like me who are just like, explosions are amazing, yay, you know.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: So there's a whole range, but yeah, passion for something about it, like just an absolute zealous drive to do something about them.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_02: I've never met a volcanologist who's like, nah, it's just a job.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, you know.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, by the way, Jesse, I just want to point out that I get a standing ovation almost every day.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, when when the bell rings and everybody stands up, that's not a standing ovation, Chris.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's people leaving class.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, all right.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's not where I thought that was gonna go.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Robin.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I really got excited about this.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: We alluded to it earlier.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: You painted a very vivid description of melting rocks in a lab.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: What does this look like?
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: Can you paint a vivid picture for for that?
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, it's so it's not like ice sort of thing, which sort of melts relatively uniformly if you just leave it, you know, heat it at melt.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: Rocks are like made of loads of different kinds of minerals, they melt at different temperatures, which is great because if everything melt at the same temperature, then that'd be a really weird planet to live on.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: Like everything's solid.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_02: Ah, everything's liquid, you know, that'd be crazy.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: So it's good that things melt at different if they're solid or liquid at different temperatures.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: And basically, you melt these things in labs partly to see, like, oh, what comes out first?
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what was the magma, how did the magma put itself together, or how does this rock become magma sort of thing?
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_02: And you there it can be a little window, and basically you just watch this rock like bleed to death.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_02: That's what it looks like.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's it sort of just exsanguinates its innards, it's satisfying if you're kind of kind of a macabre.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_02: I would say do not put chocolate in these ovens.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_02: That was I did that once just to see what would happen.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_02: And man, that lab smelled bad.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's so bad.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what kind of temperatures are we talking about?
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_02: 1800 degrees Fahrenheit.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so wait a minute.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: You thought it would be a good idea to put chocolate in focus?
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, whoa, whoa.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_02: I never say it's a good idea.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_02: I just got a bit.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: What that sounds like something Jesse would do.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: I expect better out of you.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: No, no.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: Sometimes you just gotta push that big red button, you know.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it just looks like this kind of puddle of like rock and and and magma all or lava all at the same time.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, if you heat it up high enough, you just get a big if you get a rock from um like uh a Mount St.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: Helens like volcano, these tend to melt at lower temperatures overall, the minerals tend to melt.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_02: So you can just melt them pretty easily.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, in these ovens sort of things.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_02: So it is weird watching a rock melt, though.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_02: You do feel a bit like, what if I could harness this power for evil or good, depending on what mood you're in.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: I need an oven.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: I wouldn't put rocks in a normal oven, it would just be very disappointing.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: I won't put chocolate in it.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh right now, yeah.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_02: And I definitely do not put chocolate in it.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_02: God, that smell was cool.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's it for this week.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Olivia Leone is our social media intern.
• 7:59
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• 8:02
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• 8:04
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• 8:08
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• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: See you next week.