Latest / PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast / Geoscience Across the Pond: Interview with Professor Chris Jackson

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Geoscience Across the Pond: Interview with Professor Chris Jackson · PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome to Planet Geo, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works, and why it matters to you.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_03: Chris, what's going on, man?
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: Uh actually a lot.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we've had a busy few days.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_03: And it's good to be doing this.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_03: It's good to be back.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_03: We're still rocking it.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_03: It's we're kind of getting back into a flow, a Planet Geoflow.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_03: I love it.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_03: It's so good.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: I know.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: Me too.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we're in the flow for sure.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_03: So today, we have an amazing interview.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, this was such a fun conversation.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_03: I learned a ton.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_03: I thought about a lot of stuff.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_03: I had trouble keeping up.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it it ticked all the boxes for me.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_03: Uh covering energy and education and policy and the future.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, amazing, amazing stuff.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_02: One of the things, too, that I thought about because of the interview and because of what Chris said is how fortunate we are to work in the field that we love.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_03: I agree completely.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_02: That was a takeaway for me with this interview.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_03: For sure.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_02: He's very, I don't know, thought-provoking, introspective, um, however way you want to put it.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_03: Um just talking to Chris, so this is Professor Chris Jackson from uh the University of Manchester.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_03: He just he got me all fired up about earth science, about geoscience, about teaching geoscience.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, he just got me fired up on all fronts.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_03: It was so fun and really an invigorating conversation.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_02: It was.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: You know, right down to the very end when he talked about what his favorite day as a geoscientist has been.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, amazing.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_03: A great answer.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_03: Amazing insights.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_03: So before we get to the interview, real quick, you're Chris Bullheis.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_03: You're otherwise known as Boring Chris.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm not sure.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_03: I'm a I'm a little bit.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_03: I had to differentiate between the Chris's.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, you do what you can.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_03: So you're Chris Bullheis.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_03: You are a nationally recognized Earth Science teacher in the state of Michigan.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_03: You're my former high school teacher.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_03: You taught me the basics and some of the advanced parts of geoscience back in the day.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_03: So you're boring Chris for the next hour or so here.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: I am.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: I am boring Chris.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: And you are Dr.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: Jesse Rymank, as you said, one of my former students.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: You went on to Hope College and got your undergrad in geology, and then you went to the University of Alberta in Canada to get your PhD in geoscience, and now you're a professor at Penn State University.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_02: And this is Planet Geo.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_03: And this is our interview with Professor Chris Jackson.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_03: Stay tuned till the end.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_03: We hope you love it.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I am very excited here.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_03: We have Professor Chris Jackson.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_03: Professor Jackson, welcome to Planet Geo.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, thank you very much, Chris and Jesse, for having me on.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_03: We are so excited.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_03: And so uh before we kind of get into it, allow me to sort of fanboy a little bit here.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_03: I'm super excited.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Chris, I've been this is like when somebody introduces you for a talk and they rattle off like this long list of things, and then you just end up disappointing people for the next 45 minutes, and they're all like, this was totally awful.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why did any of that other stuff happen?
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_03: I very much doubt that that is gonna be the case, but I have been like fired up to talk to you for uh probably like a month, at least a month.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_03: I think I uh I you gave a talk at Penn State, and within five minutes of your talk, I would had texted Chris Bullheise.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna call Chris Bullheise Boring Chris, and maybe Professor Jackson give me like school Chris or something like that.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, but I texted Boring Chris and was like, oh, we gotta interview this guy.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_03: It's such cool science, it's amazing.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_03: He's so good at communicating it.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_03: So I got really excited, and then I went and looked at your CV, and uh wow, that's an intimidating thing to look at your resume.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, you have done it all.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_03: You've won several awards for science communication, for education, for doing science, for reviewing science.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_03: You are now the chair of sustainable geoscience at Manchester University, formerly at Imperial College, London, and you worked in industry, you've worked in academia.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, what haven't you done?
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's amazing.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_03: I'm super excited.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Anything of use and value, perhaps, is the answer to that question.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, well, so if I sit here with my like the like slack jaw just staring into the screen, forgive me, because I'm just like listening and trying to take it all in, trying to keep up.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_03: The hamster might fall off the wheel here during the conversation.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_02: Chris, you get used to it.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: He looks at me that way all the time.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's I mean, it's all obviously structured and very planned, of course, all of all of my career.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, in in in reality, it's uh it's um I guess it's just a desire to be involved in lots of different things and interest in lots of different ideas, and also having no self-discipline to withdraw myself from some of the activities you mentioned.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it's it's it is it is uh yeah, I'm not I'm not a structured and a strategic person at all.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I'm sure there's a lot of people that are very appreciative that you do are not structured, but let's start where it matters.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you're very active in Twitter, and your Twitter handle is size underscore matters, size being S-E-I-S like seismology.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_03: So this is an absolute stroke of genius.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_03: Where did you come up with this?
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_03: When did this happen?
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_03: It's a it's amazing.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because when I I guess when I first started off using Twitter, it was never to kind of go and rant about like you know, the discrimination and like social inequality, right?
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was it was to be about science, right?
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I was gonna go there and and talk about rocks, and um and I thought like size matters, you know, size matters.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: It was gonna be a Twitter handle which was gonna have this deep dive into seismic reflection data, which is one of the main um analytical tools I use uh for my research.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then it was a play on words, obviously, about size matters, right?
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: And and yeah, and and and it wasn't meant to be suggestive or anything, although I did caught some.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, right.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_03: I don't I don't buy it.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah, I don't buy it, right?
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Subsequent to that, I got like a load of stick for it.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: But by then the ship had sailed already.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: And by then the Twitter handle was not simply about talking about rocks and seismic data, it was about a bunch of other things.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um wait a minute.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_02: So you you caught some uh you caught some flat food?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, not much.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean it, you know, it's um is it a suggestive Twitter handle?
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_03: Not it's funny, regardless of whether it's suggestive, it's good quality humor there, I think.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I thought I thought it was the right side of good taste.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: I is probably the best way to describe it.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, people on the on the who's listening to the podcast can make their own minds up about that.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: But um that was where the name came from, was it you know, was initially what the folks in my Twitter feed was going to be about, and then it just deteriorated.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_03: Or or or became more important, depending on how you view the podcast.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: So, Chris, I have a I have a question for you.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um first of all, I want to say you're a very difficult person to prep for getting rid of ready for this podcast because you're absolutely all over the place.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: I couldn't I couldn't nail you down.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: Your area of interest is tectonostratigraphic evolution of rift basins, salt tectonics, and deep water sedimentology and stratigraphy.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_02: So where did that come from?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, what what is going on with that?
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: So it all started off at university.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: I was pretty rubbish at certain subjects like mineralogy, metamorphic petrology, but there was a bunch of other subjects which I did find very interesting.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so when I went to do my PhD, I was looking for something which allowed me to um integrate a number of different things I was interested in: sedimentology, structural geology.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: I was really into field geology as well.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I found a PhD which was based in the Suez Rift in Egypt, and that was ideal for me.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: But during that PhD, I was forced to log sections for sedimentological analysis and stratigraphic analysis.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: I was forced to make field maps for structural geology.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: I then also did some seismic reflection data interpretation in the central part of the Gulf of Suez, so offshore subsurface geology.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: So my hands got dirty with that.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: So when I left my PhD, I was kind of all over the place that I had acquired a number of different skills and interests, and I was just curious in those three areas: structural geology, sedimentology, and the application of geophysical data.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: And like I said earlier, I just didn't have the self-discipline in many ways over the last 20 years to shape myself free of that curiosity or to shape myself clear of valuing one of those types of data sets, right?
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I find them equally as interesting.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: And my problem is I like people.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: So when good people who are interesting come to me and say, Chris, we've got this problem we're trying to solve.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: Could you come with a bit of your sedimentological analysis or you know, your knowledge?
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: Or I find it hard to say no.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I blame everybody else, is what I'm saying.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's like I want to that was that was that in the late 90s when you were beginning to interpret seismic reflection data?
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, in 1998, I remember my first class, which was in base analysis with Rob Golthorpe, who then became my uh PhD supervisor, and he showed me this piece of paper, right?
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: He rolled this piece of paper out in lab, and it was this seismic reflection profile across this rift basin in the East Midlands of England, which is where I'm from, and it went like literally under my house.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_03: Can I interrupt and say let's describe like what seismic reflection is?
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah, sorry.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_03: Like what does it look like?
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_03: This is and what kind of data, what are the input data to this?
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so a seismic reflection data or a seismic reflection line is essentially like when you do a CT scan of the earth.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: So imagine you do a CT scan of inside the human body, you're you're you're in, you know, or uh x-rays, you're looking at differences between the flesh and the muscles, so you're imaging the internal structure of our bodies.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: And and seismic reflection data is similar.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's where we use acoustic waves, so sound waves are fired down into the earth, they bounce back off the rock layers, and then we use certain tools to listen to those sound waves.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: But by doing that, we build up this picture of what's beneath our feet um down to several kilometers depth and also across lines, so we can take cross sections through the earth which are 20, 30 kilometers long.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: So imagine it like that.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of a it's like a picture of all the rock layers and the structures and the faults and the folds and the deformation of the earth's crust beneath our feet brought to life with this technique.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, okay.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_02: So I have a question that to go along with that a minute.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_02: Then do people ask you to interpret their data?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_02: Then because I I read I read something that you like you're one of the leading seismic reflection data interpreters of your time.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: So that's pretty impressive.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: I kind of wish people didn't write stuff like that down.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's no, so it's yeah, so people do.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: So we get these data sets, and I work with students and postdocs and research fellows and other colleagues to look at these data and use them to understand the structure and evolution of the earth.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because in those images, in the same way that a geologist would go into the field and collect rocks, or they would make maps of the rocks in the field, or they'd collect samples and do geochemical analysis to work out what the rocks are made of.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: We look at those profiles to try and build up a picture of the physical structure of the earth and the physical evolution of the earth.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, how and when and where mountains were built, how and when and where the crust was stretched and pulled apart.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: And all of that is recorded in those profiles that we get either asked to interpret or we go and beg companies to give us the data to go and do that.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_03: So I was watching one of your Royal Society lectures, and you got this great question from uh a kid who was in the audience who's like, What is it like to be a geologist?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_03: And your answer was, oh, it's pretty rock and roll, really.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_03: Um, which was a great answer.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_03: But how did you get into geoscience?
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_03: Like, was there this sort of aha moment?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_03: Like, what can you kind of talk us through the progression there?
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_03: How did you get into it?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: I've told this story like a few times before in different ways, but I was just not very good at lots of other things.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's always a strong motivation to become interested in something.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Is you know, I was not particularly good at history or the other, you know, social sciences, um, but I was kind of interested in physical geography, so you know, the the the the geomorphology, the shape of the earth's surface and the way the earth planet had evolved.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I was interested in that.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then geology kind of came to me in that way, and I found it something which was one of the easiest subjects for me to understand.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, maths, physics, chemistry, I did okay at those, but I didn't find them easy.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas geology, not only did I find them easy, but they really captured my imagination that we could go into the field and look at rocks, or we could look at these profiles from underneath the earth's surface, and from that look at processes that happened 350 million years ago.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it was absolutely incredible to have that realization.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: But that realization for me came actually quite late.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: So it actually came as I was coming towards the end of what we call in the UK A-levels.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: So when I was starting to get to about the age of 18, so just before you go and select what you might want to do at university, and and it was probably that combination of being really interested in it, finding it easier.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody said you get to live away from your parents at university, and I was thought that sounds pretty awesome, and there's a way of making that happen, and it might be easy.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that was where I got into it, and um, but it I don't have a really romantic story where I used to go collecting fossils on a beach on holidays, or I was the kid who was in the sandpit with the piece of granite.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like there was there was none of that.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: My parents were both uh nurses, so they were both nurses in a local hospital, so they you know weren't scientific at all and they never went to university.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I had no kind of broader input into being interested in a uh a STEM discipline or geoscience in particular.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I just kind of fell into it.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's interesting.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_02: But like, is that typical for students in the UK at A level to take a geoscience course?
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: No, not at all.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: So this is a big discussion, which presumably is going on in the US as well as the UK.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: So there's been a there's very few places which teach pre-university geoscience as an individual subject.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: If there's any geoscience being taught, it's often uh integrated into the physical bit of geography, so physical geography, so volcanoes, earthquakes, geomorphology.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: But in terms of geology-focused GCSEs, we call them, so that's the exam you take at 16 or A levels, that's the exam you take at 18.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: There's not many places that teach that.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: So uh there's not many kids getting uh drawn into geoscience or geology directly as a function of the subject in itself.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: Quite often people uh are drawn to it because they have some exposure to physical geography, or they may have gone the maths, physics, chemistry route and then see an application for those disciplines in geoscience, of which there are many, of course, and we we need those people in geology, geoscience, however you wish to call it.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, we have struggled a bit with with that, Chris.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, the the exposure bit.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a big debate/slash discussion going on at the moment with dwindling.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: I won't say dwindling, but um declining student numbers at university geology degrees.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's a discussion going on about how best to tackle that.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_02: Do you have a voice in that discussion?
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: I do.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: I have an opinion.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not sure.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe that's the better question.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna say having an opinion is like, you know, I have a view on it.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Having a voice is that somebody might listen to it.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: But um, I have an opinion about that.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think um I think it would be beneficial for geology, geosciences, because even that in itself, what we call it is a debate and a discussion, is like there's some people who are very obsessed with keeping geology as something separate to geoscience.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: I don't see that distinction myself, but um you know, there's a value in having geology or geoscience uh uh promoted as a subject in itself.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: So it's rather than oh, there's this like mongrel subject called geology, which kind of pinches things from maths, physics, chemistry, physical geography, you know, and and that's the way you're gonna get into it rather than saying, look, there's this amazing thing which is called the Earth, and it's had this 4.5 billion year evolutionary history, which has then been recorded in all of these different things, and we can explain it with all of these incredible tools we've got in all of these other disciplines.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like we should be doing that, right?
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: In the same way we wander about the stars in in astronomy.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: We should be thinking about our planet in the same way, we should have the same wonder because we have that deep time 4.5 billion year perspective to explore with all of these tools.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: And if we want to understand climate change, we've got that same tract of time to look at.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: If we want to understand resource potential in different parts of the world, we need to have a foundational knowledge of earth science.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: If we want to understand geohazards and how to mitigate them, that's how we need to be positioning geosciences, I think, more squarely.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um I told you it was an opinion.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, well, I I mean, I I totally I totally agree with you.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_03: And it and like astronomy, it's it's a field that integrates chemistry and biology and physics, and it's actually a great way to teach those perhaps more fundamental sciences because they're integrated into the earth system in this really interesting and intricate way with all these feedback loops.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, yeah, I totally agree.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_03: I could not agree more with you.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I don't care if it's geology or geoscience or earth science, whatever you call it.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I really agree strongly with you on that one.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think it I think it goes to like when we think about the breadth of things that are considered in geoscience or what geoscience can be applied to and what we use in geosciences, because some people would say, well, geology is like field geology, you know, like why dudes in like waterproof boots going out into the top of the mountain collecting rock samples.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that is a slightly fixist view of what geology is, which is why I'll declare here on this podcast that I in some ways like geosciences more because I think it's I think it brings more of a a reality to what it is.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's a science of the earth, you know, and and it it's a it's a sandpit for all of those other people, like mathematicians, all the other people working in all these other areas.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: In that though, we still have to be careful that we don't just see geoscience as being I don't know how to explain this.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: We don't want it torn into bits and taught as little isolated segments in all of these different courses.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think it has its own identity, and I think we need to get people passionate about the structure and evolution of the earth and life on it as a kind of gateway then to to you know getting them to go into specifics within their geophysics, geochemistry, uh paleo paleontology, paleoecology.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_02: That line of thought, Chris, is exactly what led to Jesse and I beginning the discussion to start this podcast.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know, we want to our stated goal is we want to bring geology or geoscience to the people that really don't have this deep background in the field of geology, because we have this amazing planet.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_02: We've only got the one.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I it's just a disconnect for me in terms of why it's not embraced on a wide level, and let's learn as much about this planet as we can because it's the only one we have.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, it only good can come from that.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: No, and I mean as much as the conversation's been around some of the negative impacts of geology recently, right, related to climate change, global warming, and the role of fossil fuels in that.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously, geosciences has been central to that.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the reason you've the reason I've got this the components in this laptop I'm talking to you on is because of mining.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's because somebody understands geochemistry, it's because some somebody understands where to go and build a mine, you know, the plastics, all the the things we're using here are petrochemically based.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: So it is it touches our lives every day in literally everything we do.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: Geoscientists are somewhere within that that that that story, right?
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: There's somewhere within the story of all the stuff we're using every day, and the the fact we have like transport, private or public, you know, those things are all based on geoscientists' input at some point of that process.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: And we we you know, we're here talking about people in Silicon Valley with the tech and the fight making faster chips, my uh my fancy phone here and all this and that, and we're celebrating those people as being the ones who pushed us so fast and so far.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, geoscientists still have this we are and we will remain, you know, great importance, I think.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, absolutely, but nobody's talking about us, I don't think.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: Bangs the table.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, that's right.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, we I agree completely.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_03: And this is actually a great segue into the the next thing you wanted to kind of talk about, which was when you you're you gave a talk at Penn State on these massive underwater landslides, and you're studying these ancient ones using your seismic data.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_03: And this was something that I had never really considered, this sort of human hazards aspect to this.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_03: And so can you like can you paint us a picture of what these things look like and why it's important to kind of understand them from a societal impact perspective?
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I think most people, or you know, not most people, I shouldn't say that, but some people will be aware of of um the fact we have landslides on the earth's surface or above the sea, so in mountains and other steep regions, there's areas where rocks slide and fall down.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: And you can imagine that the size of those rock falls and the velocity, the speed that those rocks are moving at pose a hazard to uh roads, they pose a hazard to houses, they pose a hazard to infrastructure.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: So these are what we would call um sub aerial landslides.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: So these are because the the ground gets weak and those slopes fail and the rocks slide down.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: That process also happens in the submarine realm or the subaqueous realm.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, they they can also happen in lakes.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: So in Those locations, again around the edges of a sedimentary basin, we call it a depression in the Earth's uh crust, and these cases filled with water.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the slopes are sufficiently steep that they can fail.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: And the volume of that failure area can be significant.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking thousands of cubic kilometres of material failing probably in a few minutes or hours.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: Oh wow.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: The impact of that, and to go to your second point, is is is many and varied.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: So one thing is those those submarine landslides can trigger tsunami.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: So what are kind of colloquially termed uh tidal waves.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: But the displacement of a large body of water, and as that water um elevates, we get a wave, and that wave can build and it can inundate land.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: So we saw that um in Palu in Indonesia a couple of years ago.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: There was an earthquake and it triggered a landslide, a submarine landslide, and that submarine landslide um results in the deaths of hundreds of people.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing that can be impacted by these submarine landslides is uh submarine infrastructure.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: So increasingly, you know, we've got these huge cables going across the Atlantic Ocean.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: So we have telecommunications between you know both sides of the Atlantic.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: And if we have these submarine landslides, because we're talking of kilometres cubed of material moving at probably several tens of miles per hour, you can imagine the damage that would do to a pipe that's on the seabed containing um optic fiber cables.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: So there's this threats to life, and there's threats to, dare I say, the internet and like our communication technologies.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: So it's really important to try and use a variety of tools to understand the size of these submarine landslides and how often they happen.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because if they happen every million years, we might not be so concerned.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: But if they have return periods or, you know, kind of um recurrence periods of every hundred years and they're of a certain size and they happen in this place, we might not want to put our cable there.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: We might want to go over there as well.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why I'm excited to work on on those.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_03: So is that like a field you're kind of getting into?
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: You're you're starting to I can't I kind of like hold my head in my hand here thinking, is this another field I'm going into?
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: But we we've done some, I've always been interested in them.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: I never, you know, I was just, you know, I'd go to talks at conferences and be wowed by people working in them.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: I then thought there was a few things that I could bring to the table in terms of some of my structural geology knowledge.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I was interested in the structure of these landslides and how they're deformed internally because they can deform because they're quite cohesive, they're quite sticky.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I was like, okay, we're going to do some work on that.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so over the last three, four, five years, we've done some work on these.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I then I've started talking to people in the community who do a lot more work in that area and trying to build bridges into those communities.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think by bringing together lots of different approaches, we can have a much more holistic and much more rounded view of submarine landslides.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: So um, there's probably a bunch of people out there who think what I do sucks in this space.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because, you know, there's there's people who've made their whole careers out of these, and I just wander up thinking, oh, this is kind of interesting.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that does that whenever I get involved in any of these things, it's not really because I think I can I guess it's not because I think I can contribute, quote unquote, anything.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's just because I'm interested in it.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: And if people see some value in bits of it, that's cool.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: But if I spend three or four years learning something, I'm a better geologist at the end of that.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's incredibly selfish to say it, but I'm pretty happy with that outcome.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I yeah, and I've trained a few people, you know.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: I've worked with some nice people, I've worked with some students, they've gone on to go and do whatever they want to do in their careers.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: That for me is uh is the deepest value in going into new areas and doing research.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_02: So, Chris, have you modeled these in the lab, like with a physical model?
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: No, but it's possible some people have physically modeled these.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: You can build yourself a mini uh mini basin underwater and you can shake it, like literally like an earthquake.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: You can shake this uh this um this uh effectively a small swimming pool.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um you can shake it and you can trigger a material to fall down from the sides of that and look at how that material uh travels and how it deforms internally.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: So we don't do that because it's very expensive, it's technically quite challenging.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: If you're gonna design a bunch of those experiments, often those experiments need to be based on natural observations or observations from natural systems, so you can actually design the experiments because you can design any experiment you want, you can build any numerical model you want, unless it's actually conditioned and constrained by some real-world parameters, it's a little bit of a more thought experiment.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I think I think we're still in the stage of collecting data on these things before we would go and build more sophisticated physical models.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_02: It's got to be hard to get data though, because they don't happen with that like a high level of frequently.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: Not only are they fairly infrequent, imagine where they happen all around the world, under the water in the deep ocean.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: How would you even have an instrument there to record them?
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: So there's some places like the Monterey Canyon, offshore Western US, off Long Beach, where there is like a fairly regular return rate of some of these sediment gravity currents.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: So that that that canyon has been instrumented because they know there's going to be flows going down there and they can measure the speed and the density of those flows.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: But there's lots of parts of the seafloor that we don't know much about.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: So um the other the other allied problem is often these flows, as I referred to earlier on, are incredibly powerful.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: So you can stick like tens of thousands of dollars worth of monitor equipment down on the seabed and it just gets swept away.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_03: That would be disappointing.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of disappointing.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's kind of like I don't know, maybe maybe for one glorious moment you get a piece of data recorded back on land, sent by the machine as it's like broken into a thousand pieces.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, that's right.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_03: Like sending an instrument crashing into one of the you know planetary bodies.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so so Chris, you are you're black in a field that is, well, let's call it like it is, that is dominated and has historically been dominated by people who look like Boring Chris and myself.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_03: Like how what is your bed, what has been your experience, both when you're kind of coming up as a younger academic, and also sort of now that you're quite prolific and perhaps a lightning rod for things?
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not sure.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_03: Like uh can you kind of just speak to that a little bit?
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, absolutely.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: So uh it's interesting because I was talking to a colleague today who's Ghanaian about this, and uh, he's in the Earth Science Department here in Manchester, so it's quite unusual to have another black colleague, really.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: But we were talking about this, you know, when we were when you're growing up um in a very white space, shall we say, the the experience for black people is is very different because partly it depends on the environment in which you find yourself.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: So obviously, this friend of mine, he um is Ghanaian, you know, studied in Ghana, so that the you know the kind of anti-black racism is not as you know, isn't really a thing.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: There's other forms of discrimination, of course, but if you're in the UK or in the US and you're black growing up, um both pre-university and at university, there's more chance of there being anti-black racism directed towards you.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: Me personally, I didn't really have much how shall I put this?
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: I was I was called names and I was you know occasionally bullied for being black.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: At university, though, when I arrived, I was aware that it was a very white thing, higher education.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: I was aware that was that at Manchester?
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: At Manchester as an undergraduate, yeah.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I was aware that I was a very unusual in geosciences, but I was treated quite well, you know, so I was quite outgoing, I was quite noisy, I was quite confident, I played sports, I drank, I, you know, went to all the clubs.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I was kind of like fully in there in university experiences.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to experience it.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, I that's my personality dealing with a situation which to other people who have got different personality types to me might actually kind of um not have such a positive experience, shall I say?
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: So, so so so in many ways, I kind of had a very positive experience.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: Then I went to work in industry and it and it was fine too.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: What I was talking to my friend about today is actually now, with all of the decorations and all the things you talked about earlier on.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: What's odd is you can walk into a room now with all of that, and nobody knows that.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: What they see is a black person entering a room in a white space.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so, just to give you an example of this, so I went to a very prestigious university in the US, which will remain nameless, to give an invited talk.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: And they flew me over there at great expense for three days to go and give this seminar as one of their two international speakers for the year chosen by the student body at this university.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I um met a bunch of people in the morning, then I got a FaceTime with the dean.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I had got to go into the dean's office, and the dean sat down in there and he said, Oh, so you'll hear about the PhD interview.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, This was two years ago, by the way.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: Oh so I was like, No, no, no, I'm not, I'm Chris Jackson.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm here to give the um, I can't remember the name of it, it was like a name seminar, and you know, because we'd see the colour drain from this person's face, and they were like, Oh my god, I'm really sorry, I'm really sorry.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, nice to meet you.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I had a busy morning, you know.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: And when I then told that story, I had a bunch of people turn up in social media then saying, Well, it's not because you're black, it's because you looked young or because you were wearing jeans and the t-shirts and you weren't dressed in the suit.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, You can bet your ass if I turn up in a suit to that office, he'd have definitely thought I was there for the interview, but that wouldn't have helped me out because it would have it would have been like a black person kind of like trying to code themselves, you know, to it's for sure, for sure, for sure, for sure.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, racism goes all the way from things like that.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I've had other experiences where I've been the keynote speaker at conferences and I've been to the front to load my talk up for the keynote session, and I've been asked to stand at the back of the queue because the keynotes are loading their talks up.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: And again, you can look at those situations.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: And at the time, to be honest, Jesse and Chris, at times there have been situations where I have I have probably been ignorant to the to that's that form of microaggression, that form of racism, because the racism is the big ticket things.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's being beaten up outside of a club for being black, which has happened to me.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's being shouted out with the N-word, which has happened to me.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: And they're the things that I think most people would say, that's racist, right?
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's terrible.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: But then there's all these other manifestations, and what I'm really concerned about, and you know, I hope I've probably answered your question about my experiences in that regard, but what I'm concerned about now is you know, if we still become fixated on things like the big physical manifestations of racism or the big verbal expressions of racism, so the murder of George Floyd being one of those things, we can fail to see the smallest or the kind of systematic or the systemic issues which are kind of softer expressions of racism, if you will.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: So you know, like if you walk in a room, there's nothing you can do about being black.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a name like, you know, Mohammed or Kofi or something on a CV, you can't hide that, but it still could be sending a signal consciously or subconsciously to somebody who's assessing you for a job or a promotion or or whatever it might be.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: So we need to kind of have that discussion as well.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is all to say, yeah, more latterly in my career, I become more aware of my blackness, and it's because I'm hearing more about the the black experience, perhaps.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I'm just more sensitive to to some of these situations.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you use the term lightning rod as well.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, Carrie, sorry.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_03: I guess I meant to say, um, that kind of leads me to the sort of next question, I suppose, is is it a is your what you're kind of describing as I think a raised awareness internally, uh I mean externally, the this it's the same, but you're sort of more aware of it.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_03: Is that partly due to the public conversation that's going on right now, or is it to your stature?
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I think you were the first black person to give one of the Royal Society Christmas lectures, like one of the the really publicized lectures.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so is it you know, can it kind of disentangle those, or is it hard to tell?
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's it's hard, isn't it?
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because you know, Chris can be a bit of a douchebag, Chris can be a bit of a dick, right?
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: And this and this and this reasons people might like to.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: What about which which are we talking about here?
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: Chris, we just met.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: I should Chris Jackson.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: He um so yeah, they were all introducing Christmas lectures, 185 years, never been a black lecturer before.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: I was the first ever black lecturer um to give one of the very prestigious lectures.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you know, to couple this to your comment about Lightning Rod, yes, when that was announced, oh, that's gonna be one of the lecturers and I was black, I attracted a lot of criticism about not being worthy of this position, and it was all virtue signalling in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: And this guy, what does he know, and why should he be given this opportunity?
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then what you're forced to kind of do is spend time not only just being racially abused and having people send threatening emails to your inbox, but you're also spending time trying to um convince them of your qualifications.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: You're trying to you're trying to justify your validity as a as a scientist.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: And lots of scientists, and I'm no diff in that regard, have self-doubts about you know the worthiness and the value of our work and whether we're any good or not.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then you get this thing which kind of does partly validate you or validates you in some way at some time, at least, because that's not to say if you don't get this opportunity, you're you're you're not valid.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: But this happened to me, and then a load of people just turn up saying, Well, you know, this isn't good enough for us, or we don't think you're worth this opportunity.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_02: Uh that did that happen on what platform would you get that on?
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_02: I'm curious about that.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness, everywhere.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: So it started off.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: I was interviewed on a thing called Sky News, which is this big news channel in the UK, big sort of um news channel.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: I was interviewed on a well-watched uh morning slot, and um it started on that.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I was interviewed, and then I think on Twitter there was something about, well, Chris Jackson's been on this thing, and then in there in the replies, there was a bunch of commentary in the replies, but also in DMs, like threatening messages saying, you know, what do you know about this?
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: What do you know about that?
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this is woke virtue signalling by the Royal Institution.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: The only reason they're doing this is to kind of you know play to the left and and all this.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: All you've you've heard it all before, of course.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: So there was that, there was a few print news articles written.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I was featured in uh a couple of like Sunday magazine full spread things and and online things as well, some interviews, and then the digital versions of that.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you can have the comments at the bottom of the news stories.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_03: The comments section, oh yes, the comment section.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a complete shit show.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um, oh man.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: So there's lots of commentary in there.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I had emails sent to me as well.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: I had a couple of videos with black people being beaten up, sent to my Twitter DMs, like YouTube links to videos of anti-black violent expressions of racism.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: So across many platforms, Chris, you know, there's and and you know, and you kind of say, is it worth it?
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: And that, you know, people, I mean, I'm not sure what your next question is, but the logical question is how do you feel about that?
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think the opportunity I was given to talk about not just the you know climate change and the geological record, which is what the lecture is about, but to have this opportunity to stand up as a black working class man and say, This is why this is an important bit of this story.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: It was too, it was too important to pass up, and it was too important to be cowed by cowards.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, all these people writing trash, you know, come and talk to me, you know, we can have a sensible conversation about what issues you have, but you're some keyboard warrior trying to get me as the first black person for 185 years.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, it's not gonna, it's not gonna stop me from trying to plan and deliver the best lecture I can and to represent as well as I can for all of the groups that I represent.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: And and and it feels, you know, it's not scary, it's not, you know, it's it's not scary, but it's a bit crap to open up anything and find something a bit nasty being directed towards you.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_03: But you know that's I mean, that's hell of impressive, and it'd be damn hard.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_03: I don't kudos to you for taking that approach and and sort of going through that.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_03: Uh quick, I can't imagine.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: But that's the but that's the problem, is just imagine how many people either don't go forward for an opportunity or have an opportunity and withdraw from that opportunity because of that.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it and in this case, we're talking about being black, right?
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: But women, if you're LGBTQ plus you know, a member of that community, or you're disabled, there's lots of things which which are exerted on these different groups, and and I think having these conversations is really, really important.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: I just so happen to have the personality where I can come on and say, screw you people, yeah.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: Let's let's have this discussion and I'm gonna share all of this violent stuff I've had directed me.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it and I and it adds feel to my fire.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: It makes me want to go out there and and and and and make opportunities for other people.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's all these people are serving to do.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so because you just recently, I believe, recorded, but it's not quite out yet, a podcast series called, I believe it's a grown-up guide to the earth.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_03: And this is part of uh a series of podcasts that have the grown-up sort of guide moniker, is that right?
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's correct.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: So they've had the grown-up guide to oceans and grown-up guide to dinosaurs, yeah.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so what's the deal with this?
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_03: What's going on?
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_03: When do we get to hear it?
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_03: I'm really excited to hear it and listen to it.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm excited to hear it too.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's one of those, it's one of those things.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know this, right?
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: So with podcasts, you kind of record bits of it.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you record it in one go and then you edit it down.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: But this thing, um, so yeah, so it's called a Grown Up Guide to Earth.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's been recorded over the last um three or four months or so in segments.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's live segments where we're in the field talking to scientists live and mountains and on glaciers and things like that, interviews with people.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: There are uh narration and voiceover by me.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: There's um lots of different bits which have been done in different any order, and then they're all being mixed now to try and form this coherent story.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I I can't really give too much away, but there's a very logical thread through all six episodes.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: So each episode's half an hour long.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_03: Six episodes, okay.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, six-part podcast series, 30 minutes each.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_00: We start in one place, I'll tell you, and we finish somewhere else.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_03: Wow, how informative.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_00: That sounds amazing.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: And now we start in a little place.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_02: So we start with When do you think it'll be released?
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's gonna be released, I think, in the middle of September.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I am I'm very excited to hear it because I just want to hear what it's like.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: I I think I I I want because it's targeted at non-specialists, so we work very hard on the language, we work very hard on the on the way we told the story of the earth and its interaction with the atmosphere to try and make sure it's very approachable for people.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um so what was your role in this?
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_02: Did you come up with script?
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_02: Was that your job?
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I was involved in bits of the script writing.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: I was I actually did a lot of self-recording in the field, so I would go out with um field equipment to do recordings, headphones and remote mics and all of this sort of thing, recording.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: I then did the narration as well.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm the presenter of the of the of the whole series, but on each episode I have three or four guests who are experts in mantle dynamics, or they're experts in soil development, or you know, whatever it is.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: And and they come in and I have a discussion with them about a certain aspect of the earth, and and then we weave it through the story.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um super cool.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_03: So, where can we find this when it comes out in mid-September?
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_03: Where's it going to be?
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it'll be on Audible in September.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, very cool.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_03: All right, so so people who are listening to Planet Geo, go listen to A Grown Up Guide to the Earth by Professor Chris Jackson in September.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard as well, but I mean there's the thing that kind of makes me incredibly nervous about anything I do is the permanence of it.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, you you end up, you know.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think when we were talking about this podcast, right?
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: I am one of these people who works better without being given questions.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I quite like the spontaneity of like you ask me a question, and I'm thinking, oh my goodness, I wish I'd actually been given that question before because I'd have scripted a like a perfect answer.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_03: And I have no, we don't like scripting around here.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: I have a deep regret about not doing that because I I quite like, you know, because I'm not here to, you know, oftentimes I'm not here to give answers.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not here to tell you about like here's a solution to anti-black racism, here's the solution to sustainable geoscience's future.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like when I'm having these conversations with people, I am thinking on my feet.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if that comes across, but I am sort of thinking my way on my feet, and I find that really, really useful for me as a human being to put myself in situations where I do have to think quite deeply but quite quickly in a coherent way to try and and I'll and and in that there'll be some missteps.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'll forget some things, I'll say some things which afterwards I'll be like, I shouldn't have said that.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they're still on the record, and you know, you'll say, Chris, do you want us to edit any of this out?
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll say, No, I'd rather live with that.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then if people want to pick me up on those things and say, You said this or you didn't say this, I would I would rather hold my hand up and say, Yeah, you know, that's something I'm gonna try and fix in myself for the future.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um but it is terrifying, but it's it's just how it is, I think, for me.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_03: It's also a little bit freeing to be like, oh, I'm willing to say, yeah, I was wrong on that back then, or I should have said that.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_03: Whatever freeing in some way.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: It is freeing, but remembering that, Jesse, there is a privilege to that, right?
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because there's some people who, you know, can screw up and they guess they get a pass and they can continue.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_00: And there's some other people who be like terrorized for making even much more modest and minor mistakes.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_00: And and um, that's a good point.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then, yeah, it's kind of it's closely knitted to our personality types as well.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: If you've got thick skin, you can be like, I didn't care if all these haters are saying all this thing about this word I got wrong in this podcast.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um But yeah, it is it but it but still it's but it still does affect us right.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: Even for people like me, I will go away from some of these things I've done, whether it's a podcast where I'm being interviewed or it's something where I've presented and feel bad about it, you know?
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: Feel that I kind of made a bit of a a bit of a mess.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_02: No, Chris, so can I ask you one more question that I just really you're I think one of the people that can really truly answer this question.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's fine.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_02: So Chris, um I've had a a lot of my students like Jesse um go into the geosciences or geology.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, you think about why do people go into geology?
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and they they go into geology because they have this connection with the earth, it's an excuse to travel, to go see exotic things, you know, geology in the field.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, shit, it's it's the best.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_02: So my question is Is there a collision that goes on between the love of geology and the earth and working in the industry that happens to people that go into this field?
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_00: Into the industry?
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there must be some people who are conflicted, of course, who have very um a deep passion for the amazing thing that finding hydrocarbons is, because you if you've never done it, it is absolutely amazing that you would drill a hole the size of a coffee cup down to five kilometers beneath the seabed, somewhere offshore Australia, and find hydrocarbons due to this sequence of events in the Earth's history, which means that something has been charged with petroleum.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_00: That is amazing.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_03: It is incredible when you frame it like that.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_03: That's unbelievable.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_02: I've never heard it framed quite that way.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: So that's just incredible, right?
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_00: And having that as a job and getting that, you know, isn't it's just an incredible scientific endeavor.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's this more curious bit about whether it's societally beneficial, right?
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_00: You in some ways it is because it's providing energy, in the other ways it's it's contributing to climate change.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_00: But the science at the core of that is amazing.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's just super awesome.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: So you have that love for that subject, and then you have that issue with, well, I'm contributing to the biggest challenge that humankind has ever faced, right?
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_00: The a warming planet and whether it's too late to anything.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_00: So clearly there's going to be a clash there for some people.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_00: Because earlier on, I talked about some people on LinkedIn screaming about the fact that climate change doesn't exist.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_00: When if they're not doing that, they're just very anxious about losing their jobs.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: They probably have less of they're probably less concerned about climate change because what they want to do is make book for the next 20 years of their life, which is fine, right?
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because people got to eat.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I can completely see that that there is a conflict there.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I have that myself as an academic, of course, right?
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_00: There's some super interesting applied problems I would like to solve with regards to the oil and gas industry.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm conflicted.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_00: I've got three small kids, I am kind of environmentally aware as an individual.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like big government and big industry to do more because I think there's this big screw problem at the moment where we're trying to get people to recycle, and then if you don't recycle, it's your problem yet.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, major industries are the major polluters and the lack of governmental control.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I think I think I I have that angst as well myself.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I do it's reflected in me.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_03: So, Chris, we always end with this.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_03: What was your best day as a geoscientist?
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my words.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very good question.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_02: So here's the deal, Chris.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_02: Not to interject, I'm sorry, but I think I know the answer to this, so I really want to know.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, all of his deep research on you, he really got to know you, Chris.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_00: Have you been speaking to my mum?
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um one of my happiest days in as a geoscientist is fairly recently where I had a student who I work with who was one of my two tees with colleagues in the UK.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I didn't really teach her, but I was there for pastoral support and some other things.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_00: And this particular student who I won't name, she had um some quite severe health issues.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of the time we spent together were discussing those, and then her health issues got worse and worse and worse.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_00: And eventually she had to leave the university for a year, and and eventually she um she started using a wheelchair and she couldn't physically access the building.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, through all of those years, I I built up a very good rapport with her.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then coming to the day, um, she recently graduated, and two weeks ago, she she finished uh after five years, and she sent me uh an email, and it was just so nice.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was just um, you know, you taught me about this thing, you introduced me about these technical things, but what you also did, which was what I needed, was you were there for me as a as a person and to allow me to access the science, you know, without that bit of support in the pastoral area and the emotional support and the encouragement, the science which I loved and wanted to love even more wouldn't have even been accessible to me because I'd had to have moved away from it because the university experience just wouldn't have been possible for me, or I'd have thought I'd had to quit on it.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: So as a geoscientist, you know, that's my best day as a geoscientist when I receive that email because it spoke to two things.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_00: One is the fact, as an educator, I want to educate people and infuse them about the wonder of the planet.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then equally, I don't want myself to be one dimensional in that that's all I do.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_00: I want to make it that people have just a better life experience, and with that foundation of a better life experience, they then can go on to engage and thrive in the technical things.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_00: So it sounds a bit sappy, but it it did it did mean a huge amount of stuff.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great story.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_02: Uh well, Chris, you just made me feel like um a bad human um because that's not the answer I thought is this a time when I like had the bath of champagne and like you know, no, it was it was when you went down into near Gongo.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_01: And uh um I thought like that was that was awesome.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's awesome.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is it's awesome, but I think you know, in many ways, you know, there's lots of days where I do some like really cool geology stuff.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_00: But I was gonna say something about the field when I was thinking that then I was like, you know, one of the best days is when I go into the field and went to the Andes and you look out and you see all the Chilean volcanoes on the other side of the Chilean Argentina back, you know, and there's these incredible days where you just sit there having lunch, and you're just like, I am just a ridiculously privileged human being to be in this physical aspect, this geographical position, doing a job, somebody's paying me to do this, right?
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's many days like that, but but that's a very it's self-fulfilling.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, don't change your answer.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_00: That was no, that's gonna say, but but but then in some ways, you know, I got this good feeling from this student.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_00: And is that bad?
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that I felt good about that.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, I mean we're thinking too deeply about about the question here.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_03: I think I think your answer was great, and it speaks volumes about you, and it speaks volumes about your approach to this whole industry and in your job.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_03: And and okay, let's just end it there before we do too deep of a uh dive into this.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, amazing.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_03: So, Chris, thank you so much.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_03: This was like such a pleasure to talk to you.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, we covered a ton of stuff, and I learned a shitload.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_03: So talking about it.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I did too, Chris.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_03: It's been an honor.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_03: So we really appreciate the time.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's been an absolute pleasure.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm I'm always amazed that anybody wants to talk to me about anything.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_00: So um, but it is, you know, I I think as well, it's it's like I said earlier on, like doing these sorts of things, it is good mental exercise for me to think about what I think are some of the really big thorny issues.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like, oh, Chris, what's your favorite rock?
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_00: And Chris, you know, tell me a bit about like seismic reflection data.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's like there are all these really hugely problematic things that pervade across society, let alone just inside geosciences, and and having to think about those is really, really hard and it's quite emotionally draining, you know, yeah, to talk about these things.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_00: But I just think they're really important to talk about.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you for having me on, and thank you for for asking those questions in that way and allowing me to think and talk.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_02: We really appreciate it.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, I only ever regret not dropping more people in the shirt join broadcast normally.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because people are like, oh, you slight off this person, you sure you want it in?
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, yeah, I do want it in.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, get it onto the news.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's great.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's an absolute pleasure.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Jesse, for getting contact.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_00: Nice to meet you as well, Chris.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, great to meet me too.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_03: See you around uh, you know, the geosciences, hopefully, in person in three dimensions sometimes.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, it'll be nice, won't it, when the world changes again.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_03: Well, thank you very much, Chris.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_03: Appreciate it.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_00: See you later.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_00: Bye.