A Royal Opportunity: Dr. Christopher Jackson

Season 2 is LIVE! On this week’s episode, I had a life-changing conversation with Prof. Christopher Jackson who is now a Professor at the University of Manchester in England! He is quite the celebrity in the geology world and is the FIRST Black scientist to give a Royal Institution Christmas Lecture which is a tradition started by Michael Faraday in 1825! Enjoy!

Transcription

Transcribed by Sarah L. Miller, Curriculum in Toxicology and Environmental Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

CJ: Oh wow okay yeah so my name is Christopher Jackson. I am British, so I am from the East Midlands in England from a city called Darby. And growing up, that was an interesting experience as the one of two children to immigrants from Jamaica and St. Vincent. So it was it was a good upbringing, it was a very white sort of setting I grew up in quite a, you know, safe and secure environment. I enjoyed going to school. I was very easily distracted by everything outside of school, including sports. So I was very, very passionate about football and athletics, especially growing up. But I guess all the way through my education, I was interested in science. But I wasn’t particularly good at it, it wasn’t my strongest subject at school, but I did find it interesting. And, eventually, you have to make a decision when you’re doing academic work and studying when you’re younger as to whether you’re going to follow that and actually take it very seriously, or whether you’re going to try and, you know, become a professional football or an athlete or do something else. And then it’s you know when you kind of look at the numbers, it becomes pretty clear that that’s going to be a hard thing to do. So I then kind of got my head down and started to study harder, and I was fortunate enough to get into the University of Manchester to study geology. So I did my undergraduate in geology. I did a PhD in geological sciences, as well. So doing a lot of fieldwork in Egypt and living in Cairo as well there a time. Then having finished my PhD I went to work in Norway in a city called Bergen, which is in western Norway, which actually is where I’m sitting right now. I’m actually west of Norway on sabbatical. But I recently came here to work for about 3 years for an energy company and then went back to the UK to take an academic position at the Imperial College. And I worked at Imperial College for 16 and a half years. Today is my last day, my last working day.

JP: Let’s go!

CJ: Literally I think I’m looking at my watch, and I’m like “In 50 minutes’ time I can clock off officially from Imperial forever.” So today’s my last working day because on Monday I start at the University of Manchester. So I’m going back to my alma mater, to the university where I did my undergraduate and PhD to take up a new position as a chair in sustainable geosciences it’s called. So that’s sort of like my potted journey, so far. And one fun fact about me is that I’m quite good at knitting.

JP: Knitting! Very cool. That explains your Twitter profile picture. Got you, got you, got you. I was like “That’s really cool, that’s really cool.” Congratulations, that is awesome to hear. Now this has been a burning question in my mind; being a geologist, someone who really cares about our planet–the answer to this might not be as holistic as I think– but what are your thoughts on whatever the heck it is going on in the US right now and how they’re handling the climate crisis?

CJ: Oh, my goodness, that is a big question. I mean, I mean, in some ways, in some ways, you know there’s reasons to be very fearful because the US is a huge country. It has huge influence. People follow its lead. It also has a significant output of carbon dioxide, you know so there’s concerns there that they can dictate a lot of the mood and actually the material impact to the emissions on the climate. But then in a positive sense if they react in a positive, grown up, and you know progressive way, then that can signal to the rest of the world that you know they are taking the climate crisis seriously and they are taking steps to address it. And they recognize their negative role in that, as we all should do around the world anyway. So it is a very sensitive subject, and it’s been on a knife edge recently with all the political change that’s occurred in the US. So you know, Trump’s sort of attitude was completely different to what it looks like the Biden administration’s attitude is going to be. So you know, going into the Paris Climate Accord, coming out of the Paris Climate Accord, and then getting back in again, and what that signals globally and what the actual impact would be, you know, in terms of, you know, whether the US doubles down on coal and ignores the move towards more renewable and well kind of green energy sources, let’s say. It’s all–we just hope there’s some stability for some time now.

JP: Yeah definitely. Yeah so Dr. Jackson, you’re a man of great renown, I must say. I don’t know if you’re a Hamilton fan, but that was the Hamilton reference.

CJ: The only reason I know about that is I’ve not seen Hamilton because, basically, by the time you could get tickets in London, because it was always sold out right. By the time you could almost get tickets in London, COVID hit so it was closed. So the only reason I know of Chris Jackson is because like occasionally on Twitter people like turn up and like put these Hamilton memes in. Or I’ve been mistaken for another Chris Jackson before.

JP: That’s so funny. Yeah it’s my favorite Broadway musical right now. I’m Disney Plus-ing that thing. But all jokes aside, I do want to get into the nitty gritty of these questions. So being a Black geologist, have you ever felt isolated as a black geologist or as a first-generation college student? And bouncing off that, how can we better shape the education system to provide full inclusion, even in Europe? Is it a matter of local grassroots, top down, both? What are your thoughts on that?

CJ: Yeah so, you know, studying pre-university and then going to university I’ve said this before, but I had a generally positive experience, you know. There were racist incidents, but they never hampered my progress as a black person. That’s partly because of who my parents were in their character and also what they instilled in me. And so, you know, those incidents didn’t ever stop me trying to achieve what I wanted to. And also, I felt like I was accepted for who I was and what I was achieving both pre-university and at university. The reason I’m always hesitant to talk about those is because the same instance I was subjected to would obviously impact another black person that could record impact them in a very different way and completely destroy their confidence and derail their progress. And so therefore there’s no way we should ever allow racism to occur, and we should always counter it where we find it right because it’s just, we need to allow everybody to live without fear and to develop as positively as quickly as they can in respect to their race. So even though I was the only black geologist sort of like in Manchester, and I was like the only black person pretty much I knew in Manchester apart from like one or two, again I was very unaware of my race, which sounds a bit odd. I was just a geologist and I just had like predominantly white friends and have this working class first-generation background but so did a few other people, and I just got on with it. And to work after university in a company again it was I felt treated well, I was in Norway, which is an incredibly and was then, an even more incredibly white country. And, but again I never felt any sort of exclusionary behaviors. And even then I’d say even coming back to Imperial you know that my, the most recent 16 and a half years in my life, it’s generally been a positive journey. What I would say is what’s happened in the last year, I think a lot of things have come to light and a lot of like my blackness, if you will, I kind of like partly reconnected with it. And then I’ve noticed more in the last year, personally, about the way some people react to me and the way some people have a very poor understanding of they have basically no racial awareness right of how what they say and do and how that sounds and impacts the mental wellbeing of black people and my wellbeing as well. I would say, you know over slightly longer term than the last year, since you know Black Lives Matter sort of protests and then later George Floyd. Years before that, by being very active on social media I’ve heard stories from other black people who’ve been subject to terrible racism. And I’ve become much more aware that probably getting back into my own history and thinking about incidents and thinking, a lot more deeply about them and realizing now how significant those incidents were, how you know damaging they were for somebody who’s like confident and noisy and outgoing like me. You know they do kind of chip your edges off a bit and the accumulation of these microaggressions, you know like the slow accumulation of those are what I think can then suddenly hit you and you suddenly realize that, actually, yes, you have been discriminated against, it has negatively impacted your progress. Yeah I think that I have experienced that. Now to the second part of your question, what do we do about this yeah and you know there’s 3 things is it now 2 things at least. One is attracting black students to any particular discipline. And let’s stick with higher education, you know, making them aware that higher education is for them, it will empower them, they will have a fun time, they will educate them, they will become more socially aware. You know, making it clear that higher education is not just for these people over here who are white and middle class, but it could be for black working class people because you know talent is equally distributed, opportunity is not. Giving people the opportunity to come, so we need to attract people. But I think attracting people isn’t enough, I think, on top of attracting people, we need to retain them. We need those systems they’re entering into those institutions they’re entering into to not be hostile towards them. We need those institutions to recognize the journeys those people have been on to get there and what they’ve seen. And how even if they’re at university how they’re treated differently. Those institutions need to recognize that, and they need to completely eradicate those things. And they need to not only that and not only tackle people who would bring that aggression towards black people. You also need to support those black staff and students who are working in your institutions and are part of your community. And that takes a lot of emotional labor on the part of the non-black community and sometimes that takes financial commitments as well to put in place, training, or to allow specific spaces for black people to support each other in. Because part of it is not just allyship from non-blacks it’s also black people building a safe community for themselves to support each other. Institutions have a role to play in all those things, yeah.

JP: Definitely. Yeah that was an amazing answer. I did want to ask, do you have any advice for those people that are already subject to that? As a mentor, as someone that a lot of people look up to, as a professor: what is your advice to those people that are going through it, they are having a tough time and they don’t have the personalities that we both have, you know outgoing?

CJ: You know, none of this is their fault, right? That’s the first thing people need to realize. It’s not your fault for being black in the exclusive university, right. It’s not your fault for being black and having moved into the middle classes, right, by your education. That’s not your fault. You shouldn’t feel guilty for that, and you shouldn’t have any self hate for yourself. This is the problem of the perpetrator, of the people, or the system which is making you feel like that. That’s the first thing I would say is to try and realize it’s not you. Okay, you can’t not be black, it’s really hard. You can kind of become more white by becoming educated or going to university. You can become more white by buying a big house in the suburbs. You know, you can do all these white things but, ultimately, people will still treat you on first views as being black and maybe discriminate against you. I think then trying to find support in your community is the real important thing. And in some of those spaces, there are many people who are in the same let’s say just to start with the same ratio group is you, they might not be many black people to go and say, “Who do you trust?” and say, “Look, this is happening to me. I feel really upset about it. It’s impacting me in these ways. What guidance could you provide me or even just listening?” It’s not even guidance at times right, all you want to do is talk to somebody about something that’s happened, and that in itself is kind of therapeutic and can be beneficial for moving on from a specific incident or from you know more systematic and longer term impacts of racism. So you might then have to seek out allyship or mentorship or support let’s just say more generally from people who aren’t in your racial group because you may be in a white dominated space. But there may be very, you know, progressive and supportive people in those spaces and they will be able to… And that’s second thing I would say is trying to find support. And that could be you know one way you can do that is physically around you (it’s difficult in COVID times) in the corridor, in the hallway, in the dining hall, in the sports pitch, you know that sort of thing. You know, but it could also be virtually, could be on social media. And it could be through online networks as well. Social media rightly is criticized for being terrible in many ways, but in a lot of other ways historically excluded groups can come together on those platforms.

JP: Yeah.

CJ: And then what you realize is that this is one thing that I learned is that when you do that—and whether it’s black people or whether it’s like queer people, it’s trans people, it’s people from socially or economically disadvantaged background–you suddenly realize that they had similar experiences to you. See, what you experienced wasn’t imagined. You suddenly feel less isolated, even though these people are on a screen.

JP: Right.

CJ: And I think that’s one of the things sometimes critics of social media don’t understand is like, why do certain groups feel safer in virtual spaces and talking to each other in virtual spaces than they do in real spaces surrounded by people who are either not like them or are just outright hostile towards them.

JP: Right. Wow, yeah, you are a very influential person. Whenever I see your tweets, someone sends me your tweets, and they’re like “Wow this is such a great [undiscernible] like I can’t believe this happened,” and I hope you know that you are a person, someone I really look up to you, and someone that like I think carries a wealth of knowledge, so.

CJ: Nice well, thank you for that. The thing is, though, what I would say is a lot of my experiences. I’m going through all these things, I don’t have all the answers, I’m not an expert–

JP: Right, I don’t think anyone does.

CJ: No exactly, and so what you’re doing in you know what you’re trying to do is share your experiences, hear about other people’s experiences and their struggles, and by talking about them and even doing like podcasts like this, you know when you ask me, these questions I’m forced to think for real about–

JP: Yeah.

CJ: Like what do I feel about this, what do I think is a really good way to tackle this, how would I advise somebody about this. And I think having those internal dialogues but doing them very publicly on podcasts, on social media–

JP: Right.

CJ: I think it’s quite useful–I mean you feel incredibly vulnerable because there’s going to be haters right there’s going to be people that say you’re [indiscernible] you know junk all the time he says this and criticizes these people. But you get it all the time, you talk about racism and somebody turns up and says oh you’re racist because you’re talking about racism. And the reason you know there’s racism is because you’re talking about it. And you know, like people will always spirit up some sort of way of criticizing you. And sometimes they should right, sometimes you make a mess of it. Nobody’s perfect. And I think, then the way you go forward from that is to admit that and then move on. But some things we are right about, some things you know we are right to feel as minorities or as–I mean, we’re both first-generation university attendees, we are right to feel or have felt intimidated in these spaces because they just seem very alien to us.

JP: Right.

CJ: And I think that’s absolutely fine.

JP: Yeah and as we both know, I think representation really does matter right. So pivot the mood a little bit, how does it feel to be at this point in your career? You just did the Christmas Lectures, if you want to explain what those are to the audience that would be awesome. But how does it feel? I feel like you must feel really proud of yourself, right?

CJ: Yeah, that’s good. I’m just laughing there because I never feel proud of myself for anything–

JP: And that’s why you’re here.

CJ: No, but I’m trying to do something that is as best as I can, and then it’s up to other people to decide whether or not they think it was good, bad, or ugly. I have a very poor radar for working out whether anything I’m doing is useful. For the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, Institution is this scientific society in the UK. It’s been going for a few hundred years. And every Christmas, they have this prestigious lecture series called the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, and they’ve been running for 185 years. So Michael Faraday did the first lectures, that’s how old these are. And they are held on, around Christmas so normally on Boxing Day (the day after Christmas), and they’re 3 nights running. The recent incarnation of it is 3 nights running. And they’re normally given by one scientist on a specific topic. And so there’s been chemistry, there’s been astrophysics, there’s been maths, there’s lots and lots of [indiscernable] evolution. This year the subject was climate change. And the Royal Institution chose 3 lecturers to give these 3 lectures. So there was myself talking about the geological record of climate change, so looking at climate change over millions of years. There was Helen Czerski who looked at the role the oceans play in modulating and controlling the climate. And then Tara Shine talked about the kind of modern or the kind of recent climatic changes and our role in influencing those and what our role could be in the future in terms of addressing some of the climate change negative impacts of climate change we are experiencing. So it was significant this year because it’s the first time they ever had 3 lecturers. Normally it’s just 1 person gives all 3. But I was the first ever black lecturer in 185 years.

JP: I wish it wasn’t 8am here so I could just pull a drink out, you know.

CJ: Oh yeah yeah well I’m gonna drink now because it is the afternoon here in Norway. So it was a huge honor to be asked to give these lectures or give one of these lectures. And a lot of the story–you know climate change would have been a big deal anyway because it’s a very controversial very topical topic.

JP: Right.

CJ: Then with this theme, this story of me being this black person, first person in 185 years to give a lecture. And that then triggered a whole bunch of other discourse around the lectures as to why you know, I was the first person historically why people have been excluded, and what this meant for black people. And to your question about, your statement about “you must have felt very proud about that,” I mean I was–what I can say is I was very nervous about the opportunity because I like public speaking, I love talking about my subjects. I get nervous all the time, but I’m happy to push through those nerves if I believe the purpose is worth it.

JP: Right.

CJ: But I was very, very nervous about kind of like how I was going to come across as representing geosciences. I was representing black people. I was representing first-generation people. I was representing working class people. So for me it was broader than simply being black. There were a lot of other things which I didn’t want to screw up, and I wanted to represent positively for. So that was kind of stressful but then also just the preparation for lectures took 6 months to like write the script and to work with the demo team to design the demonstrations. And it’s all filmed as lives, and there’s a big camera crew there. So then it’s all very [indiscernable] as well. And so whenever people say you must’ve been proud or were you happy or like, how do you think it went. It’s really hard for me…

JP: Yeah.

CJ: …to think only about the lectures. Like what, so just the 58 minutes on screen. It’s really hard for me to just isolate up to 58 minutes because I saw everything that went on, including all the racist abuse I got when I was announced, right, last June or July, whenever it was. So I’m still kind of processing bits of that and trying to look at what those 58 minutes sort of did, and what they meant, and how people…

JP: Yeah.

CJ: …interacted with it, and what they thought about it. And yeah. People talked about this, social media, people said that they liked it. My kids liked it, they said. And that’s really important feedback I think. Because then at least them I don’t have to rely on my own assessments of what I thought it was like I can just hear like what other people thought.

JP: Yeah I thought it was awesome. I tried to access it, and it was like oh only people in the UK can access it, and I was like no! So thank you for sending that over, that was amazing–

CJ: No problem.

JP: I was like, man how am I gonna watch this? Yeah so what did you have to sacrifice in order to get to where you are now? Are there any regrets there? Are you glad that it ended up the way it did? I’m sure you are.

CJ: Yeah, what have I had to sacrifice? I think it, you know, maybe everybody’s to some degree, but academics, maybe, especially you know it’s quite a high pressure job. There’s lots of moving parts. There’s the tension between work and other people you work with. And then you know if you have family, your family and your friends. And so trying to make sure that you are fulfilling the needs of all of those people as well as not sacrificing your own mental and physical wellbeing to make everybody else happy. You know, trying to make all of that work at the same time can be quite demanding. Do I think I’ve done that well? I think I’ve done it better at times than others. I think you know, sometimes I’ve neglected myself, other times I’ve neglected my family. Other times, I’ve probably neglected people at work who’re relying on me because you are trying to juggle all of these things.

JP: Right.

CJ: At the moment, I’m kind of moving jobs, and you know there’ll be lots of changes with that. But I look at aspects of academia and I think academia is incredibly demanding. And it’s that big balance between the demands placed on you by academia and the fulfillment you get, right? And that fulfillment can come in many ways. It can come in doing podcasts like this and talking to early career researchers and scholars like yourself. It can come from setting up things like preprint servers to make open science reality and democratize science. It can come from writing a paper with a PhD. You’ve got to find fulfillment in all of those things, I think, because otherwise it is just like you’re just rushing and rushing and rushing.

JP: Right.

CJ: And you find it very hard to kind of take a moment and look around and see what you’re achieving. And I could see how, when you retire almost, you could feel incredibly unfulfilled. Because…

JP: Right.

CJ: …lots of good things have happened but you’d have been in such a headspace that you weren’t actually recognizing them. And I think that’s something which is like–how old am I, I’ll be 44 in time. And I think, as I get to kind of middle aged or mid career let’s say, I’m kind of struggling and thinking more about that because I feel I’m giving as much as I can to academia. Academia seems to be okay with how much I’m giving. My family seems to not hate me. My friends still invite me out for bike rides and to go to parties, right. So maybe everything’s just about in balance. But I do remain–I am hyper vigilant about my wellbeing because I just don’t think any job–even academia is an amazing job for lots of obvious and possibly non obvious reasons, I think, academia could be quite damaging. And if you’re not aware of how you feel about it, you can just find yourself just doing it because you’re doing it right. I’m an academic and I just do academia. And actually I say you know what? This actually isn’t very good for me. It’s not very good for my family or it’s not very good for the people I work with and therefore I need to go do something else.

JP: Yeah.

CJ: The problem there, I think, is a lot of academic self worth and people’s identities as academics is tied to their science, and they can’t imagine themselves in a different career or different space. And I get that right, because it is kind of all-consuming. But I am just doing that for myself, being aware of how I feel about it.

JP: Yeah, and I mean you’re very vibrant human being right, but I think we both know that you’re not going to have a best day every day. What are your tricks? What are your magic tricks for staying motivated and just keep going?

CJ: Oh God. Just [indiscernable]. Living outside this house in the cold is a strong motivation for doing my job. No I think for me, I’m very physically active. I really need to get outside. My life alright. I love running. I love cycling. I went running today with my wife, that took an hour of work. We went for a run in the snow and it was really beautiful. But I need to feel kind of fulfilled in all areas of my life that you know need to fill and physically kind of active. I need to feel that I’m sort of actively partaking in home life with my 3 daughters and I’m sort of aware, I’m not an absent father or an absent [indiscernable] in that respect. One thing I find really useful for me is celebrating everything. It’s just like enjoying everything that happens, anything that’s small and positive. So you know like–

JP: In what way though? Like throwing a little mini party or like–

CJ: Oh, my goodness, like yeah booze, lights, music. No seriously though I mean like you get a paper you know I published like I don’t know over 200 scientific papers, right? Now and you’d think at this point, publishing another paper it wouldn’t really matter. But it’s just a huge—like, whether it’s just me as first author, and it’s somebody assessing my work before it’s published, it’s just like… I really liked doing that work, I really liked writing it up, and somebody sort of assessed it to varying degrees and they thought it was worthy of being published. Or whether it’s a PhD- or an MSc-led piece of work that’s being published. I just think it’s so exciting. Because when those things happen, you should celebrate them, so I do have a drink.

JP: Yeah.

CJ: Send excited emails to students when they have abstracts accepted at conferences, because for them it’s a huge huge deal and for me as a supervisor. You know, as an advisor to see their happiness and to see that recognition of their progress, that is really enriching for me it’s like okay it’s my job, but actually at a human level it’s just very, very exciting to see another person who you care about feeling positive about themselves. I do think like that for me is another kind of trick or tip, if you will, that you know just make sure you do put the brakes on occasionally and look around and kind of look at what you’ve done, you know. Somebody gave me a tip the other day, at the end of the week on a Friday, you should write down all the things you’ve done…

JP: Yeah.

CJ: …because often on Fridays you’re left with this feeling that I have this to do list and I didn’t do anything on it. But actually if you kind of like look at what you did do, and some of the other things that weren’t in the to do list, but actually which influenced other people’s lives in a positive way–it’s a much better way to end the week, to realize that you are a productive human being.

JP: Yeah well, I mean that’s all I stand for, right? Like really bringing out humanity again in hard fields like science. Because I feel like it just gets lost, as I said before I hit record.

CJ: Yeah yeah, exactly, you can look at scientists as being like really is it, I think the word is dispassionate, right? So they’re like, “Yeah and you know, like I do this like hard sums, right, or I do this hard bit of analysis and I’m not political and I’m not human and I don’t need people around me because I’m dedicated to my work.” And it’s just complete garbage, as you’d say…

JP: Yeah.

CJ: …because before we became scientists, we were children, we were human beings.

JP: Right!

CJ: We still are members of the public. Right?

JP: Yeah!

CJ: We’re still political animals, we’re still emotional creatures, we’re still human. And you know, what we do for our jobs as scientists may kind of change our lens slightly, but I think that’s one thing I felt over the last 10 years or so, as it’s kind of feeling like what was originally motivating me and what I originally to achieve and all the things I originally valued before I went to university– trying to bring some of that back into like my practice quote unquote as an academic.

JP: Right, right.

CJ: So it’s not just about the science it’s about how about how we vote, how we treat people different from us, you know how we try and get the best out of people, those things are really important to me as well as raising money and writing papers.

JP: Alright, so I’m gonna shoot some fun questions at you now if that’s okay. If you could do anything else with your life, what would you do?

CJ: Oh my goodness.

JP: And you kind of touched on this earlier.

CJ: I’m actually thinking about this quite a bit recently. What would I do if I wasn’t doing this? I like people and like work with people and I like seeing people, I like telling people about things and people learning and seeing sparks in them and them getting excited, and seeing people progress. And so whenever I tell my wife about this, which is why I’m laughing because regularly talk about this at the moment you know, like if I worked in like social work or is it my wife is a teacher and I’m a teacher as well, I guess, an educator, but that bit of it I really, really liked. Like looking like trying to influence people not just like thematically around the scientific discipline but also as a person trying to make them understand and why it’s important to be compassionate towards other human beings, you know so maybe something in teaching or social work or something which got me out and about in the community meeting different people and testing myself almost in terms of how I relate to them right because that’s one of the challenges of life is not everybody’s the same and so, how do we get the best out of people and how do we relate to them and how we modify our behaviors so that we can in totality get the best out of each other and then progress something we’re working on jointly, so that would be a good job or a good test. But then on the flip side you know I like being outdoors I like riding my bike and I could be a bike mechanic like do like kind of like talk to my wife about traveling as well and you know you do these like holidays for like marathon runners or holidays for cyclists you do, to give them tours and stuff like this. And I think how that would be quite nice because to be outdoors you’d be meeting people and be trying to get people to improve it’s not that I’m any good at cycling or running, by the way.

JP: I don’t know, I feel like you’re in the right place. I feel like you have a perfect mirror of who you are, like think about it.

CJ: You just have to be faster than the person you’re telling what to do, I think.

JP: Yeah!

CJ: It’s like teaching students, you really need to be one page ahead of them in the textbook right you don’t need to know what you’re teaching them. So I think there are things out there, I think that I would like to do and that’s the difference whether I’m any good at them, at first.

JP: Okay, so let’s say this pandemic is over, and you get to go to whoever’s concert you want, any dead or alive artists. Who would it be?

CJ: Oh my goodness, that’s a very good question. I’m going to pick three just because I’m the podcast guest so I can do whatever I want.

JP: Exactly.

CJ: I would choose number one I choose Queens of the Stone Age. Oh yeah number two I would pick Frank Ocean.

JP: Ooo, that’s a good one.

CJ: Number two I would pick Frank Ocean.

JP: Oh! Okay, that’s a big big jump there, I like that.

CJ: I have very different music and then I would also pick Led Zeppelin.

JP: Okay, so you like rock more.

CJ: Not really, no I mean I like all sorts of music

JP: Yeah.

CJ: But I just listened to a lot of Queens of the Stone Age and [indiscernable] and stuff, and I would just love to see them live with that energy.

JP: Yeah.

CJ: I’ve never had the chance to do that. Frank Ocean just musically, and the message, and the way it’s done, you know the auditory experience–

JP: Oh yeah.

CJ: …and his personal story which is you know in it altogether it would just be I would just like to be there for like two hours and experience that.

JP: Yeah.

CJ: And Led Zeppelin because I used to play in a band and–

JP: Oh very cool.

CJ: I used to play bass guitar years and years ago and we would play a lot of Led Zeppelin and a lot of Queen and that sort of era of rock music, and I would just like to go and see Led Zeppelin play when they were sort of in their heyday you know I think it was the famous Madison Square Gardens they did, which was recorded and it was just being there and that sort of era so it’s just as much about being there at that time as it is hearing them now. I don’t want to see Robert Plant and John Paul Jones play now. I want to see them when they were in Led Zeppelin years ago.

JP: Right, yeah, I’m a huge Queen fan so I’m glad that you chose Led Zeppelin over Queen. Two more. So who is your favorite mentor slash teacher growing up, and why? And that can be open to interpretation, doesn’t necessarily have to be an educator, just someone who has had a positive influence.

CJ: Yeah and there’s a couple of people. So one was my–I mean like growing up, I guess, my mom and dad were very influential they were not academically you know both nurses, you know came over from Jamaica and St. Vincent’s live in the UK in the late 60s. So how they dealt with what they had to deal with before I was born when I was born in terms of racism in the UK. And their outlook on life was–and is–in my mom’s case very like positive and you try and work as hard as you can, and as long as you feel that you’ve done as much as you can and you worked as hard as you can, that’s enough. You know, like you never want to leave a situation feeling that you’ve never done as well as you can. And if you fail that’s fine and if this thing is beyond you that’s fine. But you always will have a warm glow inside you if you feel that you’ve really applied yourself to a problem. And you know they applied that to me when I was growing up across the sports I did, they did it academically you know, and that was what I needed growing up as a child, I needed supportive parents whose message to me was try your hardest, but not then to you know criticize and punish me for not being the best or winning or anything like that and that was useful for me. And I guess at university, a hugely influential person in my life was my PhD supervisor Rob Gawthorpe, so he taught me as an undergraduate, inspired me with his teaching style and what he was teaching us about, and that drew me then to sedimentary basins analysis, which is what I work on now so looking at the evolution structure of the Earth. And it’s not just like all the technical stuff he taught me. He taught me how to press buttons on machines and make machines beep, and you know collect data.

JP: The scientist stuff.

CJ: All the science stuff.

JP: Yeah.

CJ: But it was all the other stuff as well like the attention to detail and why it matters and how you talk to people, and he’s a big climber right, so he got me into rock climbing as a PhD student–

JP: I love climbing.

CJ: …Yeah and so what I really liked about him was he had this very balanced view like he was like I’m gonna work really hard on these eight hours of work and then I’m going to go and climb for two hours in the evening and I really need to do that he said, to come back the next day and work hard on the science again. And so that kind of work life balance thing which at times a lot of academics struggle with. I took a lot of pointers from him in terms of the value of what was going on outside of your work and what that could bring to you in your work and make you calmer and enjoy your work more and be more productive when you’re there if you take that time away. So that was very influential in. And you know even after I finished my PhD, he and I were very close friends and you know, personal issues I suffered from depression during my PhD and in the last kind of saves of my PhD and it was nothing to do with him and what I was doing in fact but he was very supportive then in trying to like make the environment as positive as possible for me to kind of finish the PhD and do as well as I could, and I hugely respect him for that. And so we have a very close personal relationship that allows us to talk about difficult things and personal things.

JP: Yeah.

CJ: And then I guess you know, more recently, people I find inspiring. I’ve got a friend Ben Britton who’s a material scientist. Well he’s at Imperial College, he’s leaving today as well he’s going to University of British Columbia.

JP: Yeah!

CJ: And it’s no surprise, in some ways Ben’s leaving on the same day as me. He’s going to UBC, is actually in Vancouver now. But he’s been–there’s a lot of people who I kind of met at the same time as I met Ben that’ve been very influential in my thinking about–because diversity, inclusion, and justice from like the last 3, 4, 5 years. But Ben in particular is one of these people who I can have very like honest nascent conversations, where I am uncertain about things I do feel a bit exposed or a bit like nervous about a view and I’m trying to work through it and he’s always very understanding and he’s not afraid to tell me where I might be going wrong or you know not where I’m going wrong, but he is not afraid to tell me where one of my assessments of a situation or a personal something might need some reframing. [Indiscernable] So I think that group of people at various stages in my life have and are still driving me to be the best person I can, not simply in terms of the science I’m doing but also just that you know what I’m trying to more broadly contribute to society sounds really stupid to say it. But like what you said you know if there’s one person in LA who’s like this person said something that inspired me or it cheered me up or it–and then somebody contacts me for–like that is hugely valuable to me it really it encourages me to do more, and it makes me want to be more in that space as well yeah.

JP: I mean, I think you’re doing everything right now so. You’re doing a lot just being yourself.

CJ: Yeah and you know and my cells will change, right, you’ll get feedback you do this right and this wrong. You’re gonna change how you do things. And at times you don’t have all the energy that you need and other times you’re buzzing with energy and you can take on the world and tackle every person and every problem. And it does fluctuate and making sure you’re aware of that and react in the right way and it happens to me as well you know.

JP: Yeah.

CJ: I’m enjoying it so far.

JP: So last question before I let you go. What is your proudest accomplishment or happiest memory?

CJ: Uhhhh…

JP: That nervous laugh.

CJ: Proudest accomplishments…

JP: Your wife will be really angry if you don’t say the marriage.

CJ: Convincing her to marry me! Happiest memory… I don’t know, there’s been lots of them. I mean it’s really odd I can’t–Somebody asked me this the other day, and I found it very hard to put my finger on one moment. I think what I can say is that the things I do value at the moment are when people give me feedback where something I’ve done or said or some supports I’ve given them has acted positively upon their life and them saying “Thank you for teaching me” or “Thank you for defending me at this moment” or “Thank you for…” You know, that makes me happy and makes me want to do more of those things. With my children you know recall something I told them or they voice an opinion about racial injustice. The eldest one’s nine. The second one, the middle daughter, is seven. When I hear those things, it makes me very proud that obviously we’ve been having conversations around it. Which I think is a positive influence on their outlook on life and how they will go on to treat other people.

JP: Right.

CJ: And so those sorts of things rather than specific moments, those sort of things do make me happy. Now do they make me proud? I find “proud” though is a very odd term because you know, I pride in my daughter and my PhD students—

JP: Yeah.

CJ: –who are doing amazing things. But do I take pride in them? I’m supremely happy for them, but proud makes it sound like I have this like, I’ve had some sort of–

JP: Ego.

CJ: Yeah yeah yeah, there’s a lot of ego. It’s hard to explain isn’t it. It’s like almost there’s something in what I’ve done that’s sort of done this—I’m just really happy for them.

JP: Yeah.

CJ: So yeah I think every day it happens you know every day something terrible happens of course, I read on Twitter about something awful.

JP: Doom scrolling.

CJ: Just doom scrolling. But then you’re just like “Oh my God the world’s not awful because this person posted a picture of [incinerable] sliding down some [indiscernible].”

JP: Exactly. Yeah well that was my last question. And bouncing off that last one I do want to say I’ve learned a lot. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this with me and it’s just so like reinvigorating doing this stuff and just hearing so many people with different perspectives from all over the world, because there’s a theme you know it’s all about empathy, compassion, mentoring, being human, and getting away from science, and working on that work life balance.

CJ: Yeah and I don’t think you need to leave those things behind you know. There’s a great article today in Research Fortnight which I recommend for you and your listeners. Which was written–I’m not recalling who the authors were–but they were talking about all of the contributions that academics make to academia and we look at it through the lens, if you will, of research income and papers right. But there’s like a huge range, as you said at the start, about science and society. There’s this huge range of other contributions that can be made and leaving those bits of your personality at the door that could help with those things is a massive loss to yourself and a massive loss to you know, whoever you’re working with or whichever academic institution you’re in because you end up with a monoculture which is defined by a bunch of people who raise lots of money and write lots of papers. But that will never survive. It won’t potentially teach well. It probably won’t translate research outcomes very well to the broader society. It won’t be able to engage with policymakers. There’s all these other things which we really need to go out and search for different people with that humanity and those characteristics because that’s the way that academia will thrive at the end of the day I think.

JP: Yeah I said that in one of my interviews yesterday. That just made my heart kind of skip a beat. I feel like the way you look at science is the same way that I do and I just really, really, really appreciate that and it’s so reaffirming hearing that from someone like you so.

CJ: No problem at all, I mean yeah to say in an interview for me if I heard that from a potential grad student I’d be like “This is the person, these are the people that I want to be in the lab and the group,” right. I want people to be bringing tenacity for science and we’ll teach them the technical things and we’ll help them with the science, but I also want them to bring a lot more than that. Because if you think about it, a lot of the kind of cleverness and the technical stuff. It’s our jobs as advisors to teach you…

JP: Yeah!

CJ: …In your 3, 4, 5, 6 years however long your PhD would be you know it’s a hard job to give you the skills to succeed at the science. And you need to be committed and work hard and listen and that’s all fine. But all the other stuff we can’t give you that. You know what are the other things that we need in our research groups that can signal my values right to people and say, and we do that, in our group that I want students to be coming with a passion for other things and to bring other like ideas to the group around how we should conduct ourselves and how we should relate to other people, and I find like hugely exciting when I’m interviewing people.

JP: Yeah definitely. Well thank you so much for taking the time to do this.

CJ: No problem.

JP: I really, really appreciate it. And if you ever need anything from an undergrad in LA, let me know.

CJ: I’ve never–I’ve not yet been to LA I need to–

JP: Oh, really.

CJ: –go to LA.

JP: Nice! Well if you ever want to visit…