Are fleas as interesting as whales? What is the likelihood of passing down a kidney disease? And how likely are you to be swept away by a tornado? Those are some of the questions NPR science reporter Nell Greenfieldboyce grapples with in her new book “Transient and Strange: Notes On the Science of Life.” The book includes a number of essays considering the intersection of the wonders of the universe with the personal. Greenfieldboyce has been heard here since joining NPR in 2005, and it’s my pleasure to welcome her to WAMC.
It's clear from the book that you and your children are/were precocious. What got you interested in science as a career?
Oh, I always loved science as a kid and you know, just mucking around outside and encountering toads and little insects and plants. I was always curious. And I thought I was going to be a scientist. And when I went to college, I took biology courses and chemistry, but I also took history of science courses. And I got fascinated with science as a sort of social activity and learning about how we came to know everything we know. And at some point, I realized all this stuff that I enjoyed as a kid, like watching documentaries and reading ‘Popular Science,’ that there was actually a job which involved making those things. And so I've been doing that ever since. And I feel like I really lucked out. It's an awesome career. And it gets me to study interesting things all the time.
Did seeing things through your kids’ eyes reawaken something in how you approach science and what you were just talking about?
I think so. Because kids, you know, it's kind of a cliche, but kids are kind of scientists themselves. They're fearless in probing whatever new thing they encounter, and they have no preconceptions, and they're incredibly serious and dedicated to just trying to figure everything out. And that includes some real big philosophical questions about death and the universe and what it all means; the kind of questions that as an adult, you can stop thinking about and maybe focus on the day to day, but when your kids are right there, looking to you for guidance, suddenly you are reminded that, oh, yeah, all this stuff is out there to be grappled with.
I'm dying to know, how come your kids call you Nell?
It's a funny thing. I grew up calling my mother Susie. And people would ask me, is she your real mother? And obviously, she is. My brother, when he was growing up, one day just asked her like, what's your name? And she told him and so he started calling her that. And I started calling him that too, because he was my older brother. And when my kids were very young, they called me Mama, and I kind of liked it. It was cool. But then at some point, they just started calling me Nell too. So I'm not sure what it means. What can I say? It's my name.
Let me ask you a personal question. Because the last part of your book is about how hard you and your husband really had to work to have children. And a lot of times, you're questioning the path, you're questioning your choices. How did you get convinced, you know, how did you know that that was something you really wanted?
I don't know if I ever questioned that I wanted children. They seem like awesome fun. And indeed, they have been. But for me, my husband's family has a kidney disease, a genetic kidney disease. And so we were faced with whether or not we wanted to try to do anything to try to avoid passing that down. And so it sort of thrust us into a whole world of medical decision-making that for me, as somebody who's very aware of the history of science and the history of genetics, and in particular, the really dark history of Eugenics that existed in this country, it really made me think about the whole process, I think, in a pretty complicated way. And it certainly set me off on a series of events and decisions that, yeah, were difficult at the time. And you know, I tried to write about it all pretty frankly, because I feel like, yeah, it's personal, but at the same time, people are having to deal with this stuff. And not everybody talks about it. And I thought, well, here I could talk about it, and also put it in some historical context.
How's everybody doing now?
As far as I know, we're great.
That's good. My colleague here at the station has a saying that ‘a version of me is on the radio.’ And so it occurs to me that your book is a lot more revealing than you normally are in your stories. How did you decide to open the door a little bit?
You know, I've always been kind of a private person, especially you know, as a journalist, you want to maintain a sort of reserve, you want what you're reporting on to be the story, not you. But I've always done more personal writing, whether it's letters to friends or other things. And when I started writing these essays, I found myself writing about things that were rather personal. And, you know, I kind of surprised myself and that I don't mind, I don't really care. I thought I would care more than I did that other people would hear about this stuff. But to me, everything in the book is it's kind of an everyday ordinary experience that people have. And the only difference is that I have spent my whole career and really much of my life thinking about science. And so, you know, all the poetry and the metaphors and the ways I have of trying to understand, it involves science, so when I write about, you know, my first kiss, it was a weird situation, but it was also mixed up with black holes. And, that's an example of how like, for me, in a way, it's revealing, because it's personal, but in another way, these are pretty universal experiences, I think.
So a lot of science reporting in recent years is pretty grim. It's new diseases, climate change, that kind of thing. How do you go about retaining your sense of awe and openness, given the fact that so much of it is negative?
There is a lot of grimness in the world. And you know, you don't want to hide from that. And in fact, you know, that's one of the things I explore in this book is like, you know, when you're a parent, you have to tell your children about so much that's so difficult, like nuclear war, like nuclear weapons, it's like, yeah, as an adult, you can sort of pretend they don't exist. But when your kids start asking you questions, you have to give them answers. But at the same time, there is so much beauty in the world, and there are so many people working hard to make discoveries and do things. And you know, as I report on them, people are excited, and people are thrilled to know that somebody's out there trying to figure out exactly what color Neptune is, for example, you know, or exactly how something evolved or how it came to be or what's going on with Venus. And, you know, what about those black holes. I think that it makes people feel hopeful, you know, hopeful that we're figuring things out, and that we're all doing it together as humanity.
I'm glad you brought up space, because it's such an interesting time. A lot of your coverage has been on space exploration and NASA and I just wonder what you make of this moment we're in where so much of the effort to get back out there is being done by private enterprise and billionaires as much as the government.
Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? I mean, NASA is trying to do something different. And it's trying to make a more sustainable situation where it's not just one government agency doing things, but integrate it more into an industrial base and economic activity. And we'll see how that goes. I mean, obviously there are differences between NASA and the private sector. And, you know, people have different feelings about this. And I think that, you know, it's kind of an experiment. It's kind of a new way of trying to do things and as it's happening we're seeing all the pros and cons playing out.
I know it's probably cost prohibitive for now, but would you go up?
Would I go to space? Oh, absolutely not. Never.
Me neither. Honesty question. Are you doodling as we do this interview?
I have a pen in my hand right now. I'm not actually doodling because I'm in the studio. And I wouldn't want the scratching to get picked up by the microphone. But there are papers in front of me with geometric doodles, yes, yes, that I have done in between interviews.
So writing about it didn't end the fixation.
No, no, no. So I have a whole essay in the book about my compulsive geometric doodling. And that is so much a part of me, I don't think it could ever go away. It's almost essential to the working of my brain, which is what I was trying to write about in the essay, is trying to understand, like, what's going on there? And like, how does it connect with the history of science? And why do so many people doodle in the same ways? And why do we doodle? I mean, there's an appalling lack of scientific research on this. So if some potential PhD candidate is listening, there's a whole world that could be studied there.
As you noted, your doodling puts you in good company. So I guess don't stop.
As the title of the essay is, everybody does it.
