S6 EP2: Chris Lintott

What Did You Do Yesterday? with Max Rushden & David O'Doherty

In this episode, hosts Max Rushden and David O'Doherty interview astrophysicist Chris Lintott about his recent experiences in The Hague. Chr

Key takeaways

• Chris Lintott is the host of the long-running BBC show The Sky at Night.
• During his stay in The Hague, Chris had to purchase 20 euros worth of chocolate just to access a cup of coffee.

Main topics

• Personal anecdotes from The Hague
• Interstellar objects and comets

Notable quotes

The most exciting word in science isn't eureka, it's that's funny.

Conclusion

The episode provides an entertaining blend of lighthearted travel mish

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:06) Podcasts, there are millions of them. Some might say too many. I have one already. I don't have any because there are enough. Politics, business, sport, you name it, there's a podcast about it and they all ask the big questions and cover the hot topics of the day. But nobody is covering the most important topic of all. Why is that? Are they scared? Too Speaker 3 (0:26) afraid Speaker 2 (0:26) of being Speaker 3 (0:27) censored by the man? Speaker 2 (0:29) Possibly, but not us. We're here to ask the only question that matters. We try and say it at the same time, Max. What did you do yesterday? What did you do yesterday? That's it. All we're interested in is what the guests got up to yesterday. Nothing more. Day Speaker 3 (0:45) before yesterday, Max? Nope. The greatest and most interesting day of your life? Unless Speaker 2 (0:49) it was yesterday, we don't want to know about it. I'm Max Rushton. And I'm David O'Doherty. Welcome to What Did You Do Yesterday? Speaker 2 (1:00) Hello and welcome to What Did You Do Yesterday? My name is Max Rushton. Alongside me today is Irish comedian David O'Doherty. Welcome, David. I Speaker 3 (1:08) think I say the least I've ever said in this episode because it's genuinely interesting. And that's why we have had the great and the good on this podcast, Max. You don't necessarily learn. You learn about human nature, maybe, from it. Speaker 2 (1:27) So it was good because you let the two great scientific minds of our generation just get on with it. It was like, for you to take a step back, it was very generous broadcasting. Today's guest is Chris Lintott, who is the host of The Sky at Night. You know, he is Patrick Moore for the 2020s. So Speaker 3 (1:49) The Sky at Night, to people who may not know what it is around the world, is this... very long running BBC astronomy space generally TV show that I think is one of the earliest shows that was ever on BBC. And it still continues the second Monday of every month. You can watch it on the iPlayer if you have access to the iPlayer. So Chris is in this great lineage of these great broadcasters and great minds about space. And you Speaker 2 (2:20) booked him, Max. I booked him because he was on TalkSport. And as you just said, what the hell was he doing on TalkSport? It was the day of the eclipse. And Chris is a Talk United fan, as Charlie Baker is. And so Charlie knows him because there's about four Talkie fans. He came on and it was one of those bits where... this was suddenly really exciting stuff compared to just talking about who Liverpool were going to buy on the weekend. It's another one of those where the boss goes, I know you were really passionate about Lord of the Rings and the Eclipse. Could you possibly get energised about, you know, if Everton should buy a striker? But he was such, he was such good value. And like, you know, occasionally, you know, people say it'd be good to hear of just some other people's yesterdays. And so we've booked him on a great yesterday because, you know, like we could have got him just lying at home, but he is at. a space he's a space thing yeah so this thing is about space and obviously know more about space because of ian i know so much more than two months ago it is arguable to say my knowledge is still limited hey Speaker 3 (3:18) there's a genuinely good bit on this where i mentioned the kuiper belt and in the next sentence you name one of the icy moons of outer space I think Speaker 2 (3:30) we impressed him with our space knowledge Speaker 3 (3:32) and our Speaker 2 (3:32) forensic questions about the cosmos. But it's really, it's like interesting. And he's also doing some lectures. Did you write that down? He's doing some free lectures for people in London at Gresham College. Speaker 3 (3:43) Which has for hundreds of years, yeah, offered free lectures to the people of London. And he is doing some at the end of September. So look up Gresham College. I mean, what an educator. I've come out of this having learned so much. I Speaker 2 (4:00) like it when you think this podcast is prestige. But like you will learn stuff. And that's new for us. That's new frontier. We found a new frontier. Say no more. Speaker 3 (4:12) Ladies and gentlemen, this is what Chris Lintott did yesterday. Speaker 2 (4:26) Chris Lintott, welcome to What Did You Do Yesterday? Speaker 1 (4:29) Thank you. It's a pleasure and a slightly confusing experience to be here. I spent all of yesterday very conscious of everything I was doing. Speaker 2 (4:37) It's exciting, Donald, because this is, I believe, our first scientist, depending on how Dara describes himself. For the first time, we have someone of substance. Whoa. Mary Beard would be disappointed. Okay. Speaker 1 (4:49) Dara knows his stuff as well, it has to be said. He's got deep physics cred hidden underneath his comedy exterior. Speaker 3 (4:55) Dara once tried to explain black holes to Hector about... at an artful end of season do. I'm just worried, Max, about, because up until now, our sort of astronomy space correspondent has been your four-year-old son. Ian, yeah. You're going to have to tell him that he's been bumped. He has developed an obsession, Chris, with all things galactic. Speaker 1 (5:21) Four to eight-year-olds have the best questions because they ask, what is a black hole? And they expect an answer. And they're not satisfied with any wishy-washy. Things like, are there aliens? What was the Big Bang exactly? I was asked by a five-year-old the other day. And it's the exactly that I really enjoyed there. I also once talked to somebody in NASA's Mars program. And he said that they had no problem appealing to kids because he was building a robot to look for dinosaurs in space. It was basically, that's the dream Speaker 2 (5:53) job Speaker 1 (5:53) when you're six. Speaker 2 (5:54) All it needed to be was on a train and then with a digger on the back and you're absolutely smashing it. What I'm excited about is so many times on this podcast, it ends with someone wanging on about the art of comedy. And so unless you did a work in progress night. last night, you know, just trying out some observational work. I'm excited to know that that won't be part, but don't, no spoilers, please. No, Speaker 1 (6:15) no. But observational work means something very different if you're Speaker 2 (6:17) at the business end of a telescope. So Speaker 1 (6:19) that Speaker 2 (6:20) might come up. Whatever happened about peanuts? You're talking to the Kuiper belt. But anyway, here we go. What time did you wake up yesterday, Chris? I Speaker 1 (6:27) woke up rudely. My alarm went off at six. I'm away at the minute. I'm at a conference in The Hague in Holland. And it was incredibly disconcerting because I don't like waking up. up with an alarm. And it's just the normal iPhone alarm, but it's very loud and very upsetting. But also not to get too meta, I'd been dreaming about this interview. Right. And so I woke up on the day that I was supposed to be recording, convinced that I just recorded the interview about the day that I was about to have. And the interview went really badly as well. We sort of cut it off at about this stage. Speaker 3 (7:01) And so the difficulty here, Chris, is Again, not to get too interstellar slash map of Haiti about this, but we can't ask you about the dream because technically the dream took place the day before yesterday because yesterday only begins with that awful Speaker 1 (7:17) iPhone sound. So you need to know, I think that I was in this discombobulated state and I was in a very strange hotel room. I'd done that thing where you, I'd sort of booked and then moved and then found somewhere cheaper and it's sort of. without ever really considering what I was doing. So I booked somewhere near the conference venue in downtown The Hague. It's actually in what my local friends described as a dodgy street, but there's no sign of any dodgy activity, except that the hotel's called the Velvet Lounge, which is worrying. That Speaker 2 (7:46) sounds sinister, Chris. Speaker 1 (7:48) It does. It's got two awful spirally fake plants outside, but one of them is leaning on the site. And then when you go in, there's no staff. What should be a reception area is a construction site. And you have to phone a number. And then they gave me an app on my phone, which unlocked a door, which led into a room. Chris, are these rooms available? I'm going to have to ask Speaker 3 (8:09) Max. By the hour, yeah. 24-hour periods are a shorter time period. I'd Speaker 1 (8:15) like to claim I've had a variety of interesting guests. But no, it appears to actually be a hotel. I think what's happened is I think it's mid-renovation. And they've decided to keep operating while reconsidering. But the room, it had these enormous... high ceilings. So you could fit two or three London flats on top of each other in this space. And it's just one big room with a desk, a small fridge in the middle of the room, which for some reason has a tiny stool next to it, and then the bed and that's it. And so it's six in the morning, which is early, which is really five o'clock UK time. My alarm's gone off. I've had this disturbing dream. I'm in this space that sort of is a hotel room, but doesn't really make sense. And it's basically not a good start to the day. Speaker 2 (8:58) Do you immediately go and sit on the stool? and just look at the fridge. I mean, it's you've got to use, what else is it there for? Speaker 1 (9:03) I'm glad you said that. I strongly believe you've got to use everything in a hotel room, which has led to me in the past doing things like pressing my jeans, because if you've got a trouser press, you've got to do so. So I sat on the stool the night before. I had looked in the fridge. There was no need to do that this morning. And so I did what everyone else does when you first get up and picked up the phone to sort of see what was going on in the world. Interruption, as a, you know, you're a Speaker 2 (9:24) spaceman. So when you pick up your phone, is your first, do you have like an app which? Because we're kind of hoping you discover the meteorite that's coming to destroy Earth. Or are you like the rest of us civilians just on Instagram going, I wonder if I got any likes for this story I did yesterday? I Speaker 1 (9:41) probably would get a text if there was the meteor coming to destroy Earth. Who would text you, Chris? Well, I've got lots of friends, we'll get onto this later, who study comets and meteorites. And so when something happens, there is this. But for listeners, there's a website. called C-N-E-O-S that you can go to. And it'll give you a list of all the most likely things to hear Earth. So you could, if you wanted to, check that every morning and make sure that nothing new has appeared. Brian Speaker 2 (10:06) blessed at three. You're like, okay, this is good. Oh, Speaker 1 (10:09) wow. That's fun. But no, I don't do that. The first thing always I check on my phone is baseball scores. I'm sort of vaguely a baseball fan. I've had a passing interest in the Arizona Diamondbacks since I went to a game. 25 years ago, I discovered that they had a swimming pool in the stadium, which I decided was cool. And so, yeah, the Diamondbacks won, yes, or like the night before. So I woke up to a 6-5 overtime win. So that's exciting. And then I don't think about them for the rest of the day. But I do have my baseball moment, first thing. Speaker 3 (10:37) So, Max, what I've got here is, so I've imagined it's quite an impressionistic moment. So he's on the, I'm calling it a milking stool. It's just three little legs. He's using the only light in the room is when he opens the fridge. There's Speaker 1 (10:51) a Speaker 3 (10:51) little light out of it. And he's using that to check baseball results. Speaker 1 (10:55) That's pretty close. And at that point, I noticed, which somehow I'd missed when I checked in the previous day, that on the wall, there are portraits of the Dutch king and queen in sort of semi-formal attire. And they're quite high up because it's a tall room. They're about... I know, 12 feet above the floor. So they're quite imposing. How Speaker 2 (11:14) big are, and forgive me, I have just misplaced the names of the Dutch king and Speaker 1 (11:19) queen. Yes, I don't know either, I'm afraid. No, Beatrice maybe? Let's call it Hans Speaker 2 (11:23) van Broekelen. Speaker 3 (11:25) Oh no, he's gone with footballers again. And Beatrice Clog. Sure, that'll work. Ignore that, please. Chris, I was recently in Cambridge, birthplace of Max, and every single person, I see running along the street, I believe has just thought of one of the secrets of the universe. Okay. Even though they're probably just trying to pick up a takeaway coffee or go to a graduation or whatever, I believe there's been a breakthrough. Does this happen while you're in this room? Does someone burst through the door and say, we've got it pointing at an equation? Speaker 1 (12:02) No, that almost never happens. In fact, it doesn't. There's a great Arthur C. Clarke thing, I think it's Arthur C. Clarke, where he said that the most exciting word in science isn't eureka, it's that's funny. Which is odd because that's two words. But that sense of something not making sense, that's usually where we're puzzled by things. That's good. The closest we get is, like I said, a discovery of an asteroid or a comet or something that excites people. And that will blow things up. No such excitement yesterday morning. Okay. So 6.10? Where are we? I've sort of got myself together and realized that the reason I'm up so early is that I work with a bunch of people in New Zealand. And I have a 7 a.m. telecom on Zoom with them. which we'll get to. And I'm like, okay, this hotel has no coffee in it. There is no coffee machine in the room. There are no kettle. There's no, certainly no bar or breakfast area. And so I'd set my alarm six knowing that I had to go out onto the streets of the Hague looking for coffee. On the dodgy street. On the dodgy street, exactly. But I thought I'd spotted a McDonald's the night before. And I thought, you know what? Get in the shower, get dressed, get out. It's functional traveler time. Get to McDonald's, coffee, fine. Come back for my 7 a.m. call. McDonald's in Holland don't open until 9 a.m., it turns out. Speaker 2 (13:17) It's not a 24-hour. So you're showered and you're on the street and you're outside a closed McDonald's at, what, 6.30? 6 Speaker 1 (13:24) .20 maybe because I'd really gone for it because I really need coffee. And so I thought, okay, so the Hague, it's… damp. It's not quite raining, but it's trying to. It's dark still. The sun's just coming up. There are a few people cycling, but that's it. That's the only activity is the occasional bike going past and a street sweeper. And I start to wander through the streets of the city and almost every other building is a coffee shop. Not like a Dutch coffee shop that sells pop, an actual coffee shop, but they're all shut. They all open at eight. Oh no. I had this dystopian wonder through the hague. It was a deeply strange start to the day. Speaker 3 (14:01) I know where this is going. And it's in this, because he hasn't had the coffee, it caused him for the first time to look up. And he sees the moon just as about to go down. And he realized, is Venus not just another moon of Earth? You know, it's something that's been staring us in the face for thousands of years. He goes, that's Speaker 2 (14:20) funny. Speaker 3 (14:20) Yeah. Speaker 1 (14:21) That's right. No, sadly, I'm incapable of any rational thought. So I've got headphones in. I'm listening to cricket podcasts because I'm trying to catch up on cricket with the test starting. So I'm wandering through the Hague listening to cricket, which feels undutched. And nothing is open. And I'm getting increasingly frantic, really, because there's that thing of how far do I go from the hotel and still make it back for my 7 a.m. call? Could you be late? I presume scientists are all very punctual. We're often scatty, but the trouble is because the New Zealanders, when we work with them, one or the other of us is at the start or end of their day. So we're doing 7am so that they can take a call before they go home. Right. And so there's a lot of time zone chat. And so I'm very conscious. Plus, you know, I've got a day to get on with. So I'm also... Chris, does the Speaker 3 (15:07) Velvet Lounge not offer guests small tubes of dried coffee granules? No, nothing. Again, Speaker 1 (15:16) in the room, there is a fridge, which is empty, a stool, a desk, and a portrait of the Dutch Royal Family. That's it. That's the sum total. I interacted with no people. I had to call somebody who gave me this electronic key. But as far as I can tell, there are no staff. I'm not even sure there are any other guests. I didn't see anyone else. I Speaker 2 (15:34) was about to say, Speaker 1 (15:34) are you Speaker 2 (15:34) the only person in this dystopian hotel? Speaker 1 (15:37) I did have room number one. So it's possible there is only one room. Speaker 3 (15:42) It feels a flawed business model, doesn't it? The Dutch royals run it. Maybe you have to ring Hans van Brooklyn and ask him how to open the window. So you Speaker 1 (15:54) think, I like this, because I'd assume there was no service at all, but perhaps it was a fully appointed royal palace. If I merely vocalized my desire while looking at the portrait, three footmen would appear with breakfast. And they're currently confused why the British man doesn't need the luxury breakfast that has been prepared. Speaker 2 (16:11) Or the Dutch king and queen. If you look at the eyes, they're moving, and they've been stood there the whole time. This is what they actually Speaker 1 (16:17) do. It's a very individualized monarchy. Exactly. I like that. That's good. Speaker 2 (16:21) Do we get a coffee? Speaker 1 (16:22) I'm worried for you. Well, I head back towards the hotel coffee-less. In my desperation, I realised that what I should have done was head towards the train station. Yeah. And I realised I've just about got time to get there. So I walk towards the train station, cutting through... I have no idea. This might be the nicest residence block in the UK, but to... somebody who's lived in London, it suddenly felt like an extremely dodgy area. There were a couple of people sitting on steps in apartment blocks. Anyway, so I'm trying to walk quickly and get through and I get to the station and there's a national train strike. So everything in the station is shut. Wow. Speaker 2 (16:55) And of course, those people on the steps, there is a risk that they are Patrick Moore ultras. That's right. Speaker 1 (17:00) Yeah, well, they could be astrologers as well, or have theories of their own about the cosmos, which is always a risk. Yeah, oh, Speaker 2 (17:07) that's true. It could be Speaker 1 (17:08) Russell Grant. Yeah, the enemy, as we refer to him. Speaker 3 (17:11) Could be creationists. 4,200 years seems like a very convenient amount of time that the universe has existed. Speaker 1 (17:18) The natural enemy of the astronomer is actually the retired engineer who has their own theory about how things should work. I mean, they mean well, but I do not need another 200-page dissertation written in crayon about what... the Big Bang is simple if you only look at it in their way. And do the people on the steps look like retired engineers? It's certainly impossible. Anyway, I get through them and weirdly, the only thing open, I find something open. There is an open shop. It's a chocolate shop at the station, but it sells coffee. Speaker 3 (17:45) Yes. Speaker 1 (17:46) But I can only have a coffee if I buy chocolate. I don't see the problem. Oh, I bought very expensive chocolate. What do you mean? You can't, what do you mean if you just say, I said, can I have a coffee? And they said, no, you have to order chocolate. I was like, then can I have a coffee? And they said, yeah. How much chocolate did you have to, how much? I bought Speaker 2 (18:05) 20 euros worth of chocolate, which was one bar. which I haven't eaten yet. Okay, and they refuse to serve you coffee unless you spend 20 euros on chocolate. What a great idea. I assume Speaker 1 (18:14) it's their entire business. If they're the only place in The Hague that's open before 8am that serves coffee, presumably this is a thriving business. But I was the only person in there. Speaker 3 (18:22) Again, another of Max's leave arguments was, in continental Europe, you've got to buy chocolate if you want coffee. You want that in Britain? Nah, don't think so. We need Speaker 2 (18:34) to make our own laws. And that is... It was creeping in. It was creeping. I could see it was creeping in at Costa. They made me buy a twirl before I was allowed an iced latte. And I thought, this is the thin end of the wedge. It starts off with them just making you look at it. You have to like consider the chopper. That's where it starts. Yeah. And then maybe stroke it a little. Soon it'll be, unless you get this whole Toblerone. And you eat it in one go. You're not allowed any caffeine. Right, so we've got, what coffee are we having, Chris? Speaker 1 (19:02) Just a black Americano. I've got very simple coffee taste, so that's fine. So I take that back to the Velvet Lodge and Speaker 3 (19:07) make Speaker 1 (19:08) it onto my 7am call. And what we're doing is, one of my colleagues there has a job interview today. So yesterday we were doing a dry run of the job interview. So we're making this poor man present himself to a group of people he knows quite well. Oh, this is fun. So how many Speaker 2 (19:25) people are on the call? Speaker 1 (19:26) There are four of us on the call, him and then three of his colleagues who are pretending to be interviewing him for this job. And Speaker 2 (19:32) they're all New Zealanders. So there's... Yeah, Speaker 1 (19:34) two Kiwis plus me. Speaker 2 (19:35) Two Kiwis. So there's you, I presume, Brett or Jermaine from Flight of the Conchords. Speaker 1 (19:40) Yeah, and my mate Michelle. And Richard Hadley. And then Michelle. Speaker 2 (19:43) Right. So you're opposing his interviews. Do you have a bit of small talk before or do you go straight in as if you are, or like Daniel Day-Lewis, you're now method, you're in character about it. Speaker 1 (19:52) Yeah, we're physicists, so small talk doesn't always happen. So he gives a 20-minute presentation about his work, which was great. He spent a lot of time making it look good. Oh, are you saying it's superficial? It looked, aesthetically Speaker 2 (20:05) looked good, but there was no substance to it. That's what I'm hearing from the... You've got to Speaker 1 (20:08) show you've got the heavy stuff as well, I think. So we advised him to put some more physics in it. He has to pretend that we were undergraduates and teach us some stuff. So he taught us about tides, which was nice. Speaker 3 (20:18) And Speaker 1 (20:19) then we asked him questions about... How he would deal with students and what his plans. I asked my least favorite interview question, which is that's all very interesting. But what do you think you'll be doing in 20 years time? Which is a completely unfair question that none of us can answer. But it's the kind of thing that you get asked in an interview. This is an interview for an academic job. So hopefully Speaker 3 (20:40) I will never have to do an interview in my life. What's the best thing to say? Because I would imagine you should what you should say is. If I were so lucky as to get this job in 20 years, I would have re-established this institution as a globally recognized center of learning, Speaker 1 (20:57) something like that. I mean, I think if you were being interviewed by managers, that would work. If you're being interviewed by other academics, then that immediately puts you on the side of the administrators. And Speaker 2 (21:07) his expertise is tides. Speaker 1 (21:09) Yeah, he's a theorist. So he works with us on, we study interstellar objects, which are asteroids that come from beyond the solar system. Right. And he works on... how they move through the galaxy. So could he say, Speaker 2 (21:22) in 20 years, guys, I'll be riding bareback on Fortuna HS7 as we fly through the cosmos and I will have a parade of small aliens who have taught our language and our ways, but not in a colonial way. And we're all getting along and there's world peace. Speaker 3 (21:40) Do I have