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Episode 334: Katrina Miller
283 Plays2 years ago
Katrina Miller (@__katrinarenee) is a physicist and writer who recently had a wonderful essay about trailblazing Black women in the physical sciences for Wired Magazine.
Social: @CNFPod
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
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Transcript
Introduction and Promo
00:00:00
Speaker
ACNFers, many of you know I love to crack open a beer on this pod. Sometimes it contains booze, other times it doesn't. I've been selected as brand ambassador for Athletic Brewing, a brewery that makes my favorite non-alcoholic beer. Shout out to Free Wave. I'm drinking that right now, Sir Hazy IPA. And if you use the promo code BRENDANO20 at checkout, you get 20% off your first order.
00:00:27
Speaker
Head to athleticbrewing.com and order yourself the best non-alcoholic beer I think you'll ever drink. I mean it. Also, I don't get any money. I get points towards like flair and beer purchases, but no money. So go check it out. I have always loved writing because it helps me understand myself and it helps me understand the way that I feel about things that have happened to me. But beyond that,
00:00:54
Speaker
I think that there is also something very, there is something very impactful about writing about your own experiences and other people finding themselves in those stories.
00:01:16
Speaker
Oh, well, hey.
Meet the Guest: Katrina Miller
00:01:18
Speaker
Hey there. CNF, it's CNF Pod, the creative non-fiction podcast. The show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. But then again, you knew that. I'm Brendan O'Mara. But then again, you knew that.
00:01:33
Speaker
Today's guest is Katrina Miller. She's a physicist, what? And a damn fine
Challenges in Physics as a Black Woman
00:01:39
Speaker
writer whose reported essay, The Unwritten Laws of Physics, appeared in Wired magazine. I read that sucker and I was like,
00:01:54
Speaker
That's me writing an email to her. And after 21 email exchanges, we got her on the show to talk about this essay and her work. Here's the deck of the essay. Quote, I never meant to be a trailblazer. I just wanted to be a scientist. But in my field, nearly every black woman is an anomaly who faces constant scrutiny for her race and gender. End quote.
00:02:23
Speaker
Ripe conversation and we get into a little physics talk right at the top of the show and dive into the writer she always was but didn't manifest until recently. You're gonna have some fun. I guarantee it. She's at underscore underscore Katrina Renee on Twitter. If you want to check her out there, give her the old follow. Why not? Show notes to this episode and a billion others are at BrendanOmero.com.
00:02:52
Speaker
There you can sign up for my up to 11 rage against the algorithm newsletter. This is where it's at seeing efforts I'm not one to hang out on social media and scroll a whole bunch. I think it's a waste of time I think you know it is too but I am one to put a lot of effort into a kick-ass newsletter that entertains gives you value and Sticks it to the algorithm Shoves it right up the algorithms ass and if that's your thing sign up for it been doing it for many years
00:03:21
Speaker
And it's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. I have a lot of fun putting it together. I think it's a good read. First of the month, no spam. So far as I can tell, you can't beat it. All right. That's it. That's it. See you next week. No. What do you say we just get this show on the road?
Deep Dive into Physics: Neutrinos
00:03:40
Speaker
Get ready for some neutrinos and liquid argon. What?
00:03:55
Speaker
What was your dissertation on? So I am currently finishing up. My dissertation focuses on electron neutrino cross-sections. So cross-sections are just the rate of interaction that a particle has with a specific type of matter. And we have this huge vat of liquid argon at Fermilab that we call a particle detector, a neutrino detector.
00:04:25
Speaker
And my particular project focused on how a specific type of neutrino called an electron neutrino, how often they actually will collide with their interact or produce some type of detector activity inside of this large amount of liquid argon.
00:04:43
Speaker
What are the larger implications of that degree of research? I think particle physicists, me included, are especially interested in studying neutrinos because there is a lot of
00:05:02
Speaker
anticipation that they might be able to tell us about why the universe is structured the way it is. So one of the big questions in particle physics is, like, why is there more matter than antimatter in the universe? So, you know, going back to, like,
00:05:17
Speaker
The theory of the Big Bang, scientists think that matter and antimatter were created in equal parts, but somewhere along the cosmic timeline, that balance got shifted into favor of matter, which is why when we look around us today, the entire world is just made up of matter and antimatter is very unstable in nature. And so scientists think that by probing the properties and behaviors of different types of neutrinos,
00:05:43
Speaker
they might lend some insight into what caused this shift to create a matter-dominated universe. What are some theories as to where the antimatter went to or disappeared to?
00:05:59
Speaker
Right. So I think that when we study neutrinos, what we're specifically looking for is, so the Big Bang Theory kind of postulates that matter and antimatter behave like mirror images of each other. So, you know, the way that they interact with surrounding particles or antiparticles should be the same, but mirrored because they have exactly opposite characteristics.
00:06:25
Speaker
But there has to have been some sort of deviation from this complete mirror image. So anti-matter must act or behave differently in some way such that it created this imbalance that led to a depletion of anti-matter in the universe. And so by studying neutrinos and comparing them to their behavior of anti-neutrinos, scientists are hoping to find a distinction between the two.
00:06:50
Speaker
Is there any parallel between, let's say, matter and antimatter and the chirality of certain molecules, whereas you do have that mirror image, but one performs entirely different than the other? Yes. So you're starting to ask really theoretical questions, and I am an experimentalist, so I would need to go back to the books, too.
00:07:13
Speaker
completely answer you. But at base level, you can think of like, you know, an example of a matter particle is like the electron, it's negatively charged, it has a mass of a certain whatever unit you want to measure the mass in. But you also have, you know, its antimatter partner, which we call a positron, or an anti electron that has the exact same mass, behaves the exact same, except it has a positive charge.
00:07:41
Speaker
And so it behaves with matter very differently in the sense of the way it interacts via charge forces, but it would behave with anti-matter in a way that looks like a mirror image of the way electrons behave with matter. Crazy.
Katrina's Physics Journey
00:07:56
Speaker
It is kind of nuts.
00:07:59
Speaker
Yeah. Well, yeah, the more the more and more you like the the science starts going into like, you know, that degree of granular physics, which are certainly granular in your field, but they are just they contain multitudes.
00:08:16
Speaker
It's wild and all kinds of mind-bendy. It's very non-intuitive in a sense, because when you start going far enough in physics, you stop being able to understand the universe in terms of
00:08:33
Speaker
you know your own perception because you know these particles are invisible we can never see them with the naked eye. We can learn about them in our textbooks and draw pictures of how we you know how we we think that they interact with each other or create formulas but we never actually get to see or touch them or experience them with our five senses.
00:08:53
Speaker
At some point along the line, this stuff really clicked with you and it kind of, you probably saw things other people like me can't see and then you also, it just made sense on some level. What was that moment like for you when you just kind of really locked in to physics and this degree of research and study?
00:09:12
Speaker
Yeah, so I think for me, I got interested in physics the way that many people get interested in physics. I always like to call astronomy a gateway drug into physics because, you know, there is some every
00:09:29
Speaker
every person, whether they are scientifically oriented, whatever that may mean, or not, you know, or interested in science or math, like every person has a sort of fascination with the universe at large and ask themselves like a question of like, where did we come from, you know, at some level.
00:09:47
Speaker
And so I just ended up taking this astronomy class for non-majors as an elective when I was a freshman in high school. And for me, I just wanted to know. I just felt this burning desire to understand the universe or the language of the universe, and even more so to understand what we don't yet understand about it.
00:10:09
Speaker
And so, you know, growing up, I was always very good at math. I still love math. And when I realized probably a lot later than most that physics was kind of an application of math towards understanding the world around me, I just became very passionate about it. I really fell in love with it.
00:10:28
Speaker
When I think about physics and math and really where I started to lose my traction with math was right around Calc 2. I can really pinpoint the moment and really why I started to slip. I sort of lost the aptitude, but especially so when
00:10:52
Speaker
I started thinking of like Isaac Newton like looked up into the sky and was and invented calculus to explain what he was seeing and I was like I can't even understand this on the most basic level and here is this guy who's tapped into whatever cosmic power is out there and he just invented it and to make it all and it all made sense and it worked and like to me that that blew up my brain in a way that a few things have and
00:11:21
Speaker
Yeah, that's, it's funny that you say that because I actually, you know, my first couple of years in undergrad, I was planning on becoming a double math and physics major. And I got all the way up to, you know, I finished all three levels of calculus, and then I had to take this class called linear algebra. And that's when I was like, Oh, I don't actually like math. I like calculus.
00:11:44
Speaker
And calculus is physics, like you said, like calculus was invented, or discovered, if you will, depending on who you talk to, to kind of just, you know, create a framework to describe nature mathematically. And so, for me, like when I kind of going back to your earlier question, you, you know, even as a physicist, I still, there still comes a point where it's no longer intuitive for me. And I think that
00:12:13
Speaker
I think you just kind of get comfortable with that and know that, you know, if I follow the math, if I understand the math, I look at my
Lack of Role Models and Finding Inspiration
00:12:22
Speaker
observations and I understand my theory, then, you know, like that math will take you home. That math will always lead you to the right answer. And if it doesn't, you know, if it, if it, if the math is saying something that your experimental observations are not, then you have a discovery.
00:12:39
Speaker
I love that the math will take you home. That's just a great phrasing. That's what got me through quantum mechanics. As you're developing an aptitude and an affinity for this kind of study, who are some of the people you looked up to? That's a good question.
00:13:06
Speaker
I didn't have very many role models when I was a budding physics major and it wasn't because I didn't
00:13:18
Speaker
look up to people, I think it just was because I couldn't see myself in people who I admired, right? So, you know, my undergraduate advisor played a huge role. Phil Barbot at Duke University played a huge role in, you know, giving me the confidence to see myself as a physicist. My astronomy teacher at Duke also, you know, instilled some of the same confidence on the academic side, on the classroom side. But there was never really
00:13:47
Speaker
a moment for me until my senior year where I ever met a physicist who, you know, I felt like, oh, I can see myself in this person. I can see myself, you know, trying to repeat the trajectory or going along following a similar path to
00:14:05
Speaker
as they were. And so it really wasn't until graduate school when I started experiencing, you know, a lot of isolation and a sort of loss of self in the field that I started looking for these role models, which, you know, outlined in my wired piece, you know, that's when I started looking and found them.
00:14:22
Speaker
You're peace and wired. I like how it's almost like this detective story in a way where you're trying to seek out people, the women of color, specifically black women in
00:14:39
Speaker
in these in physics and it just so grossly underrepresented and I loved how you were like we're connecting the dots and connecting the chain as as small as that chain is or as short as that chain is it was very satisfying to read how you're piecing it together and how that lineage you know goes goes back a few decades and is like connecting to yourself.
00:15:02
Speaker
you know, as a scientist, I am an investigator. And so I sort of apply, you know, a scientific process to also different areas of my life. And so writing this piece, reporting this piece was just another area where I was, you know, taking on the role of researcher, the role of investigator, and, you know, doing the analysis and drawing conclusions from it.
00:15:31
Speaker
Yeah, in a way, to piggyback on a term you used earlier, the math will take you home. In a sense, what was the math of this piece and how did that take you home to your final sort of deduction, if you will, in this piece? Yeah, that's a really good question. I think for me,
00:15:51
Speaker
The math was, you know, I just kept seeing patterns. I, you know, every, everybody who I interviewed, I kept hearing the same stories. You know, the walks of life were different. The time periods were different. The people, the characters in their stories were different, but I kept coming across the same patterns of, you know, interactions of behaviors, of feelings of emotions.
00:16:16
Speaker
feeling like they weren't good enough, feeling like they didn't belong. And then that also resonated with me because those were also my patterns. And so I remember having a conversation with a writing mentor of mine, and I was just explaining how emotional this experience was for me, because I kept noticing the same things over and over again. And I will never forget when he told me, he was like, that's what you call systemic.
00:16:42
Speaker
And I was like, yes, that's exactly, that is exactly what it is. This is systemic. And, you know, one of the more pioneering figures and the one that's highest up in your piece deals with, you know, Willetta Greene Johnson. And when you speak with her and dive into her career and see what, and just
00:17:06
Speaker
Sort of envelop yourself in in her journey like what did you see in her that you found? You know just deeply inspiring and you know sort of a catalyst for for your own career Right the first time I met Willetta great Johnson. I think I was a little Maybe intimidated is not the right word because I wasn't scared, but I was just so in awe Right. Yeah, I
Writing and Reclaiming Her Voice
00:17:30
Speaker
I was just like this is
00:17:33
Speaker
This is the woman who paved the way for me to be here today. This is my history. And so there was something really, I think, powerful about that. And the first time I met Willetta Green-Johnson was actually a couple of years before I started writing the piece. And I was still in a pretty toxic working environment, and so to hear
00:18:00
Speaker
her story and just sit in her presence was both heartening because it was like finally someone I can relate to, someone I can see myself in, someone who just gets it without me having to over explain myself or convince them that this is, you know, micro aggressive or something that's, you know, beyond me and has to do with my identity. But it was also very disheartening in the sense that like, wow, we have
00:18:28
Speaker
a time period of maybe what she graduated in the late eighties. So 20 or 30 years of a gap and we're still experiencing very similar things. The stories that you are telling me, I could switch the names around and I could put myself in your shoes and be having the exact same experiences I'm having today.
00:18:51
Speaker
Yeah, and you talk about the systemic nature of it all, and where along the line through your research and your experience do you find that, you know, that people, sometimes women, sometimes women of color are either sort of like scared out of pursuing science?
00:19:10
Speaker
Not scared the wrong word but you know kind of like almost let's just say maybe discouraged from it and then maybe there is just like the you know people go with a different route because there was nobody there to put their arm around their shoulder and say hey you know like I think you should really keep going with this.
00:19:27
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Discouraged, I think, is a really good word. Or even maybe not discouraged, but never encouraged, right? Yeah, yeah. And so something, the scientist in me, when I'm looking at this, when I'm analyzing this data from all of my interviews and the reporting that I did,
00:19:45
Speaker
and I'm looking for patterns, the thing that I noticed that I didn't really get to flesh out in the piece was that all of us had very, very supportive undergraduate experiences. And that led us to a point where we even were able to think about pursuing and try to pursue the PhD, right? And so that made me wonder, well, you know, like, what happens
00:20:12
Speaker
What happens if black women don't have supportive undergrad experiences? Well, they probably never even make it to grad school to, you know, be able to have the experiences of what I'm going through right now. Um, or what happens if, you know, when I was an undergraduate major, if my astronomy teacher never sat me down and said, Hey, you are really interested in this. I think you should take, keep taking more physics classes. I know, like, I know for a fact that I never would have thought to pursue a physics major because it was scary.
00:20:42
Speaker
And so without having a support network and people believing in you, I think that there are probably a lot of Black women in physics and astronomy who don't even get to the point where they can call themselves physicists or astronomers before they feel that sense of discouragement that leads them out of the field.
00:21:05
Speaker
And you talk about earlier that part of the genesis of the piece was something of a loss of self. And I wonder through your reporting and your researching and certainly the writing of it, if you found a greater foundation and to kind of use the flip of loss of self maybe as something of a gain of self. Yeah. So the writing process itself was very transformative as writing has always been for me.
00:21:31
Speaker
Not many people know that before I was a scientist, I was a lifelong writer. Good. We'll unpack that. Sure. I've been sitting on the idea of writing this story pretty much since I restarted my PhD in a new research group.
00:21:56
Speaker
it, you know, as I'm coming up on my final year, or very close to dissertation and defending my PhD, I thought it was just a good time to start to reflect on my experience, but not only my experience, you know, also the echoes of the experiences of the black woman who came before me. And so, you know, like, I think
00:22:19
Speaker
I kind of had a general idea for what I wanted the story to say, but I didn't have the words for it. And through the process of writing, I actually went beyond it because I realized that me writing this piece on such a public, widely read platform was a reclamation of self and a reclamation of my voice in the times that I felt like I had to be silent.
00:22:49
Speaker
Um, or let me amend that in the times where I was silenced. Right. Um, and so there, you know, my editor really pointed out to me that, you know, there are so many times in the personal parts of my story when I didn't say anything or I chose to be silent instead of standing up for myself because I didn't feel like I had the agency to speak up. And so, you know, like.
00:23:13
Speaker
having these experiences and now writing them and sharing them with people that I went through this and I got through this and look, I'm still here, was a gain of self in the sense that it just really allowed me to reclaim those experiences as part of what got me here.
00:23:32
Speaker
Now you said you were a lifelong writer before you took a dive into physics and such. So take us to that moment of where you first developed your obviously a love of reading and of course a love of writing.
00:23:47
Speaker
Oh, right. I was an avid reader as a child. My mom was taking me to the library every week, and I was checking out the maximum number of books I could check out, which I think was six in the children's library.
00:24:06
Speaker
And I was just reading anything that I could get my hands on. I went through, I think one of my favorite series was like the Magic Treehouse series, as I think it was called. And I just, I was devouring books. And so naturally, you know, like as an avid reader, when you're a child, you want to emulate. And so I started writing. And so writing for me has just always been a way to kind of
00:24:32
Speaker
the world around me and understand my thoughts and feelings and observations that I was experiencing. One of the earliest things I remember writing, and I remember showing my mom, and she still laughs about it when she tells this story today, is I wrote a story about me and my older brother, who's two years older than me, entering a cave and coming across the cave monster, and he got eaten by it. But of course, I survived.
00:25:02
Speaker
And at the time, I didn't really understand why my mom was laughing so much or why she thought it was so funny. But as an adult, I'm like, oh yeah, that is the epitome of me and my brother's relationship growing up.
00:25:15
Speaker
Did he pick on you a lot? He did pick on me a lot. And I was the quintessential little sister. But I actually, I stopped writing when I hit high school. And it was just because I, one, I was just getting more busy with other interests. You know, I was running track, I was playing basketball, I was playing instruments, and I was also taking my academics more seriously because I wanted to get into college. But also, I think,
00:25:45
Speaker
You know, I was dealing with a lot of things as a teenager that I didn't really want to process. I didn't want to understand. And so I didn't want to write them on a page where it would make them real. And so I stopped for a long time and I missed it a lot. But, you know, during that time I developed a passion for physics, just got really busy with college. And, you know, it really wasn't until the pandemic that I picked up the pen again.
00:26:14
Speaker
What were some of those things that you didn't want to process when you were in high school?
00:26:18
Speaker
I think my mom getting divorced with her husband, my stepfather, led to a lot of different changes about the house, the environment of the home that were really difficult for me. I had a very turbulent relationship with my mother at the time. My brother had gone away for school, so it was just me and her. I started dating.
00:26:48
Speaker
really having the best relationships. A lot of them were very toxic. And, you know, so I just, I wasn't really having a good time. And the things that I was experiencing were not things that I wanted to remember. So I didn't want to write them down.
00:27:02
Speaker
Right, right. It seems like just from speaking with you earlier just in this conversation about how analytical and the approach that you had of being very scientific.
00:27:18
Speaker
to me that that's that says something that you like a certain amount of like structure and it sounds like maybe during that period it seemed like things were a bit in upheaval and that might have been just that I don't know disorienting especially being you know a teenager right absolutely and so you know like
00:27:36
Speaker
I probably, you know, when I think about it in retrospect, that is probably the time where I needed to write the most, you know, to just kind of get things out. But I just, you know, I didn't. I just avoided and I moved on to other things. So, you know, what at what point at what point do you do you kind of discover writing again? Was it like you said at the beginning of the pandemic or was it maybe a little before then?
00:28:05
Speaker
So I think I started thinking about writing again when I went to like a women in science symposium and I listened to this woman speak about how she had gotten a PhD in math and now she was a science journalist, a science and health journalist. And I
Balancing Personal and Reported Narratives
00:28:25
Speaker
remember watching her talk and being like,
00:28:30
Speaker
Oh my gosh, like I had no idea that there was an intersection between writing, which is a skill that I love and I know that I'm good at, um, and science, which is my expertise. And so, you know, like I kind of bookmarked in the back of my mind, you know, like, Oh, this was the internship program, the fellowship program that she did, um, to kind of help her pivot from.
00:28:54
Speaker
academic science career to journalism and maybe I'll apply for that someday. And it was, you know, every summer would go by and I was like, Oh, you know, like, I don't have time or I would try to start an application and I'd get extreme writers block because I hadn't practiced personal writing in a long time. And then I just kept putting it off. And I think when the pandemic hit,
00:29:20
Speaker
you know, there was a period of kind of dead time the first few months of the pandemic where everyone was like, oh, I don't know what exactly is going on. Standards of productivity kind of lowered and that just gave me a lot of time to think, right, about my future career path, what I wanted to do, things I wanted to try, things that I felt like I had missed out on because, you know, pursuing a physics PhD is
00:29:43
Speaker
very time intensive as you can imagine. And so I just said, I'm going to do it. I'm going to really try this year to start writing again. And that started with an anonymous blog, just writing things like movie reviews or things I did today, or here's a craft I put together, just random things just to get warmed up, I guess.
00:30:11
Speaker
And then I asked, actually I applied for this smaller internship with the physical sciences communications office at my university and asked them if I could just be a part-time science writer for a quarter.
00:30:29
Speaker
And that's really, that really, I think gave me the structure that I needed because there's something about external deadlines that motivate me. But that gave me the structure I needed to really kind of take myself more seriously as like, okay, I want to, I want to think about journalism and science journalism in particular as a, as a potential career path. That also gave me, you know, public facing bylines that I could use
00:30:58
Speaker
on my resume to help me apply for this fellowship, which I got at Wired. Very nice. I didn't realize you had a fellowship through Wired. That's cool. Yeah. I did a fellowship with Wired. I was a full-time science journalist in summer 2021. At the end of the summer is when I pitched that Wired feature. I'd been working on it pretty much for a year by the time it came out in June.
00:31:28
Speaker
Yeah, so maybe get into the sort of the nuts and bolts of how you went about, you know, researching the story, like where they maybe where the idea really came from and then how you sunk yourself into it. I think maybe this is mentioned in my story, but essentially,
00:31:47
Speaker
There came a point in time in my grad program where I was feeling very lonely, very isolated. I felt like no one could really understand or relate to what I was going through. And so I started wondering like, who else has walked this path?
00:32:02
Speaker
Is there anyone like me? Am I the first? What does it mean for me to be the first? And so I had known of Willetta Green-Johnson by the time I pitched the piece because I had had those feelings and reached out to her, found her online and reached out to her and had breakfast with her before I ever pitched the piece to Wired. And I also was aware of all of the other women at the time, but I think
00:32:33
Speaker
I think coming into my last year as a PhD student, I was like it's time to really be serious about stringing our stories together and see what I can find.
00:32:43
Speaker
Some of that we have an idea in our head when we have a vision in our head of what the story or the essay or whatever it's gonna be is gonna look like. But then when we sit down, sometimes it's like, wow, this isn't really aligning with the vision I had. And I wonder what that might have looked like for you as you were generating this piece.
00:33:08
Speaker
When I started freelancing part time and doing science journalism part time, I was very nervous about putting my writing out there because I've been a lifelong writer, but I was a very closeted writer. And so I didn't really like people reading my work. And then I got comfortable. After so many pieces, you kind of get comfortable with people reading your work. But tackling a personal piece is very different because
00:33:36
Speaker
It was, you know, it was a lot easier to have people read your work when you're sort of detached from the subject, you know, like I'm not writing about myself or anything. And so when I actually, the first, the first pitch that I sent, um, the Wired editor, the features editor there, it really didn't have any of my own story in it at all. I was like, I, you know, these women are people who I look up to and who have, you know, just been,
00:34:07
Speaker
almost like a, you know, just a list of names that I could refer back to, you know, in times of doubt during my PhD. And I want the world to know them because they are essentially modern day hidden figures. You know, I don't even know if people in my department know who they are, but they should be celebrated. And so, you know, my thought was like, I'm not even really going to talk about myself. I'm just going to report this piece and talk about their experiences and their resilience and how they made it through.
00:34:37
Speaker
And my editor sent back the pitch and was like, this is a great idea, but I want you to insert yourself more into the story. And that's when things got really hard. And that was something that I think I was internally fighting with going back and forth with my editor on throughout the
00:34:58
Speaker
you know, all of the months that I was working and writing and reporting this piece is how much, you know, how do I strike that balance between like my personal story and using that as a sort of like a drive for investigation of these other women's stories. And so it didn't turn out the way that I imagined it, but I think that the piece turned out the way it needed to be.
00:35:24
Speaker
Yeah. What were the what was the conversation like of having you be some some more of the connective tissue in in the story that you're having with your editor? Yeah. So I think.
00:35:40
Speaker
You know, some examples were like, there was a question of whether if I should write the story chronologically. So starting with Willetta Green-Johnson and then moving on to Tanya Venters and Casey Stevens-Bester and just going in order and then leading up to me at the end. Or if I should try to structure the piece as like, we are starting with me and then we're jumping back in time and revisiting each of these women's stories. And so we tried a lot of different things.
00:36:09
Speaker
was probably always the one saying like less of me, more of other people, more of other people. And so I honestly like I think that I needed that viewpoint from my editor because the balance that was struck in the end felt right. I think another thing was the ending. So
00:36:33
Speaker
The end of the piece, the final scene of the piece is the four Black women who are here at the University of Chicago today sitting together at a table, having our own space, creating our own space in a space that is otherwise not always very welcoming. And there was some question about, should we end with this scene of community or should we end
00:37:00
Speaker
on the individual, on me, on wrapping up my story. And so there was a lot of shifts and back and forths and rewritings about what's the right approach for the ending. And I think it kind of ended up as a combination of both.
00:37:17
Speaker
Yeah, you do. And you end the piece. It's weird. It's something of a turn because you go through the whole piece about studying physics, being PhD, defending your thesis. And even at the very end, it's almost like as you're standing on the shoulders of all these incredible people before you,
00:37:39
Speaker
it's it's like you're almost you're almost but not quite almost stepping aside to like alright well I'm not gonna quite do what that what what they're doing I'm gonna actually you know be a writer so that was a that that surprised me when I came to it I wonder if that surprised you as you were writing it
00:37:56
Speaker
I think by the time that I wrote the piece, I knew that I wanted to pursue writing and science journalism and creative nonfiction, but I wanted to, and my editor wanted to make sure that the readers
Identity: Physicist and Writer
00:38:14
Speaker
who we took along on my journey with me through the piece didn't, you know, hit this realization and be left
00:38:24
Speaker
with feelings of like sadness or disappointment of like, oh, you know, she didn't succeed or, you know, she was robbed of her dream. And so I really wanted to write the ending so that people knew that, you know, like I'm not leaving
00:38:43
Speaker
academic physics for lack of opportunity. I'm here. I'm going to get this PhD. I've been through too much not to get this PhD. Me choosing my own path in the face of that is a type of empowerment in itself. And if there's one thing I learned from where all of the other women who came before me ended up is that you really
00:39:09
Speaker
have to, you have to retain the agency to, to choose what's best for you. And so for Willetta, that was, you know, teaching, that was teaching physics, not engaging in academic research. For Tanya Benters, that was, you know, becoming a research scientist at NASA. So not even staying in academia, but staying academic adjacent. And for Casey Stevens Bester, that was pursuing a tenure track position at a university.
00:39:37
Speaker
Yeah, and when I read the piece, and I read it a couple times because I had the time to do so, and it struck me, it was definitely a piece, a science piece written by a writer, not a scientist. Not to discredit your skill as a scientist, but I could definitely, I felt the skill of a writer behind this.
00:40:00
Speaker
I don't know that's just that's the pulse I felt felt throughout this whole thing I'm like oh here we go like this is gonna be maybe gonna be one of the more like on the forefront of great popular science writing. Thank you for that I think even though I.
00:40:18
Speaker
you know, stopped writing per se by the time I got to high school and college, I still was using a lot of the skills of understanding the world around me through writing just in a different way. Right. And so, you know, a lot of, I get a compliment all the time in my field is like, Oh, you're such a great science communicator. You're such a great teacher. Like you really just explain physics in a way that people can understand that feels accessible to people.
00:40:48
Speaker
Um, you know, even, you know, as I've started doing science communication through journalism, it's the same thing as like, you really break things down for people in a way that, you know, feels like, you know, even if you don't have access to scientific spaces or, you know, expertise, you can still understand it. And I, I always say that, you know, like the skills that I learned as a writer and learning how to understand the world around me.
00:41:17
Speaker
are the same types of skills that I transferred when I tried to understand physics. And so now kind of like merging those two things doesn't really feel, it doesn't really feel like it's coming out of nowhere. Who can you point to as some of the models or mentors sort of in this field of science writing that you want to see yourself pursuing or kind of going down that path? Oh, wow.
00:41:47
Speaker
So for this piece specifically, I think I drew inspiration from many different types of writers. I don't even know if I would call them all science journalists. So the one piece that I really studied a lot is called The Standard Model, and it's by Joshua Robka. I think that's how you pronounce his last name. I'm going to apologize if it's not. It's R-O.
00:42:16
Speaker
E-B-K-E. It's essentially a first-person essay about him going to this conference to report on the 50th anniversary of the standard model of particle physics, which is basically the particle physicist's version of the periodic table. He's supposed to write this story painting the conference in a good light and
00:42:46
Speaker
you know, he can't help but mention that there are still a lot of disparities with race and gender that exist in the field of physics. And so he decides to, you know, kill the piece and write his own first-person account of it, of the entire experience. And so that for me was like a piece that I read several times when I was having writer's block or lacking inspiration. Another piece or a book actually that I found to be
00:43:16
Speaker
very helpful in crafting this wired feature is by Chanda Prescott Weinstein. It's called Disordered Cosmos, if you're familiar. I heavily encourage you to look it up because it's a, again, it's a first-person account. It's a pop science book. So it's about all of the wonderful things, all of the wonderful
00:43:46
Speaker
concepts of astronomy and physics in the universe and the mysteries of the cosmos through the lens of a Black agender woman who is pursuing an academic career and how that has shaped her experiences and her perspective on the physics.
00:44:05
Speaker
And so just weaving, you know, like the science, blending the science and the narrative, like the first-person account together, I think was a big source of inspiration for me. The other piece that comes to mind is there is a New York Times feature called The Hidden Toll. And it's about the high rates of mortality for Black women who are in undergoing labor, in labor.
00:44:34
Speaker
I think it's written by Linda Villarosa. I think that's her name. Again, it's just like, you know, the way that the writer inserts herself into the story, a reported story, is something that I don't see very often. And when I do see it, and it's done well, like, it's just, you know, like, it's that feeling of, wow, I wish I could, I wish I could have written this, or why didn't I think to write this, you know, so.
00:45:03
Speaker
Yeah, that's the really funky balance of doing a reported piece but inserting just enough of yourself as the author into the piece to imbue it with that extra dimensionality without calling too much attention to yourself. Like, that's the rub. Right, right, exactly. And it was a very difficult balance to strike.
00:45:26
Speaker
And I think, you know, there were, like I said, there were definitely arguments with my editor about how much because she was like, I want more of you. I want more of you. Readers are going to want more of you. And I was like, no, I don't want to put the spotlight on me. If we have a specific word count, I want to keep these words for so and so, you know, so.
00:45:45
Speaker
How did your editor sway you to get more of you in the story? How did you acquiesce to that? I think because she helped me to realize that, you know, like this piece was very, you know, Wired is a national, if not international publication, right? So it's read by people from all walks of life who
00:46:15
Speaker
may or may not have any connection to the University of Chicago, but this story and all of the people in this story and the scenes that happen of this story all happen at my university. And so I think for me, it finally clicked when my editor told me that, you know, like to make this story impactful, like readers need a reason to care about this story. And they are going to find that through rooting for you.
00:46:43
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that's just it. Sometimes while
Crafting Stories and Overcoming Writer's Block
00:46:46
Speaker
Lawrence Wright, when he's writing long features or even books, he calls his main character a mule, like someone that is going to carry you through the story.
00:46:59
Speaker
And like, in this instance is like, you know, not to dehumanize you, but it's like, but it's like, it's, it's like you needed to be the like, the one who shoulders a lot of the, the narrow, like a root, the rooting interest, as you were saying, because, you know, you'll pull us through and by when we latch onto you, we're going to trust you and go along with you for the journey. So then, then you're going to convey the message of these of these women that you're trying to celebrate.
00:47:26
Speaker
But you do you do it by getting us to care about you. Right. Absolutely. So I am the vessel. And I think the other thing about that is that no matter how good of a reporter I am and how pointed or interesting the questions that I ask my sources, I can never get as much vulnerable color in a story than when it's coming from myself. Right. And so, you know, like centering myself in certain parts of the story allowed me to be
00:47:55
Speaker
so intimately vulnerable with the readers in a way that you can't really get when you're reporting about someone else. Now you've brought up writer's block a couple times and some people have their own ways of getting through it. Some people believe in it, others don't. For you, how does it manifest and how do you work your way through it?
00:48:19
Speaker
Good question. Writer's block manifests as procrastination for me. I think I got my official assignment maybe in August sometime, August 2021. I don't think I actually sat down to start writing until January 1st.
00:48:41
Speaker
These dishes aren't going to clean themselves. Got a vacuum. Exactly. And it was just like a panic driven sort of thing, right? And so let's see, I have several strategies. I try a lot of different things when it comes to writer's block. And I think for me,
00:49:02
Speaker
Um, the things that help are turning off spell check and grammar check because I want to edit while I write. And I find that I am not a great multitasker. That's something that I've realized about myself through this whole PhD process. And so I really need to focus on one task at a time. And so I'm like, let me just get the words on paper. And if it's, if it's going to be a shit draft, it's going to be a shit draft. But I know that once the words are on paper.
00:49:30
Speaker
I can sculpt out something great. People will tell me I'm a great writer, but on the inside, I'm like, I'm a good editor, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Plus the old adage of writing is rewriting. Exactly. Like you were saying, you need to build up the rubble or the block of marble. And at that point, you can start chiseling around it, but you need to conjure that block of marble first.
00:49:57
Speaker
Right, exactly. And so, you know, like sometimes turning off spell check is enough. Sometimes I actually need to leave a word processor. So I will go write in like Apple notes or something that feels less formal. Sometimes I instead of writing paragraphs, I'll just do like very, very detailed outlines until they basically turn into paragraphs when I remove the bullet points. And sometimes I write by hand.
00:50:22
Speaker
Um, like I journal, um, because I feel that just stepping away from the computer and writing by hand, there's something a lot less formal about it. And so I'm less worried about making it perfect because, um, I know that I'm going to have to reread and re rewrite and transfer the words onto the computer at some point. And so I can just allow myself to kind of like.
00:50:50
Speaker
I don't know, lower the expectation I have for myself to write something good. Yeah, I like the notion of writing longhand too. I'm reading Robert Caro's memoir of his work called Working about how he goes about writing biography and he's written these thousand page biographies on Lyndon Johnson and he's got another one coming out I think in a year or two, but this basically crafty memoir came out.
00:51:19
Speaker
I think within the last year or two but he's a big thing like he's I mean he's in his 80s but through it all even his book drafts he's written them in longhand and it's painstakingly slow but I can see the value in it you know yeah I don't know if I'd ever write a whole book on paper but I definitely see the value and like you know just getting things out as a first draft
00:51:45
Speaker
Now there's the power of you brought up focus and by virtue of that attention and you said like you're not a good multitasker and few people are actually I don't think we're supposed to be multitaskers but we were really conditioned to try to do more than we can in the time that's allotted to us.
00:52:05
Speaker
So you already brought up a couple of things that help you focus, be it turning off spell check or grammar. But what are some ways that you go into the cave and remove distractions so you can really focus on doing the work? Oh, that's a good question. So I recently invested, not recently, maybe a year and a half ago, invested in soundproof headphones over the ear headphones, like the 90s. And that has helped immensely. I will literally just
00:52:35
Speaker
go to a desk in the corner, put on my soundproof headphones and just lock in.
00:52:42
Speaker
very recently, as recently as like last month, a friend told me that they work better when they have a hat on, because it's like a thinking cap, literally putting on a thinking cap. And so I do this thing where I put on a cap and my headphones over it. And it just feels like I highly recommend everyone try it. You just really get locked in.
00:53:07
Speaker
Another thing I do when I'm writing longer pieces is I tend to, I've noticed that I tend to have specific soundtracks for them kind of, like not officially, but I will listen to certain things depending on the, I will listen to certain music depending on
00:53:26
Speaker
the thing that I am writing. And so there was a, I wish I could remember the name of the YouTube video. It was like a three hour low fire YouTube video that I would just stream every single time I sat down to write my Wired feature. And it's the same thing with my dissertation. I have a different album that I'm listening to nonstop. And I put that music on every single time. And that just signals something, I guess, in my brain to tell me that, okay, it's time to focus on this task at hand.
00:53:58
Speaker
You mentioned that sometimes when you're writing, you'll do essentially kind of an outline-ish kind of way to go through the draft just to get the momentum going and then you kind of remove the bullets. Are you something of an outliner when you work on a long piece? Definitely. I think that there's a good balance to be struck between, you know, just
00:54:29
Speaker
free writing and outlining and I tend to do a combination of both. I will outline until I hit a point where I feel stuck on my outline and then I'll just free write until I hit a point where I feel stuck and I'm like, okay, I need to go structure again. So I tend to go back and forth between the two.
00:54:50
Speaker
Now you've got your science background and you always had the writing bug, if you will. So what does it mean to you to be a writer? Why is it important for you to...
00:55:09
Speaker
Let me try to rephrase this differently. It's something of a calling, I guess. There's a little fanfare, it's a lot of work on your own, so you really have to have your own internal engine about it. I wonder for you, why does it matter to be a writer? Why is it important to you? Yeah. I think there are a couple of answers to that question. For one, I've
00:55:38
Speaker
I have always loved writing because it helps me understand myself and it helps me understand the way that I feel about things that have happened to me. But beyond that, I think that there is also something very, there is something very impactful about writing.
00:56:02
Speaker
about your own experiences and other people finding themselves in those stories. For me, going back to my wired feature, I
00:56:16
Speaker
And by the time I submitted it and it published, I was so over it. I was so ready to be done. I didn't want to look at it anymore. I was like, I don't even know if anyone is going to like this. The shock factor was gone for me. I was too close to the story, but since then.
00:56:37
Speaker
Continuing you know to today's I think as most recent as yesterday actually I've I've received so many emails and notes and linkedin messages and Twitter messages and Facebook messages and just you know of people Telling me how much they resonate with my experience and for me that
00:57:02
Speaker
really made as emotionally turbulent the process of reporting and writing and editing was, it really made it all worth it because I could put something out that I was proud of and have people find some sort of solace in it in the same way that I found solace in other people's stories. And that was really impactful
Societal Expectations and Career Evolution
00:57:24
Speaker
for me.
00:57:25
Speaker
like even going back to earlier in our conversation when you talked about a loss of self and putting this piece out there i imagine that a lot of these messages that you've gotten are get are resonating with people because they probably similarly felt the loss of self in they probably felt very as as lonely as you say in the in the wired piece and now they're realizing like oh i'm not as alone as i thought it was right uh... the one email that
00:57:54
Speaker
really was memorable for me was this, it was an older woman and I don't even know her last name or where she was from. She told me that she had tried to pursue a chemistry degree back in like the 80s or 90s. She wasn't brave enough to finish, this was her words. She really committed me on my strength and courage and bravery.
00:58:24
Speaker
Um, and I think what I ended up writing back was, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot, it takes a lot of strength to finish, but it also takes a lot of bravery to walk away from something that, you know, is not for you. And that was the only exchange we had. And I think her original email was maybe like two or three sentences, but it just really, I don't know. It just really stuck with me for some reason.
00:58:54
Speaker
Oh yeah, well it kind of gets to your, you know, you're echoing your experience too of investing all this time into academia and you're, you know, you're sidestepping that to be more of a science journalist and to pursue these more just creative nonfictiony pursuits. And yeah, it's hard because there's the whole sunk cost thing. You're like, I spent all this time doing this. That means I have to see it through. It's very hard to make that pivot.
00:59:22
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that for me as a black woman, there's also a lot of guilt that I've had to sort of process and that, you know, like there's, there is a unspoken burden. I don't know if I would call it a burden actually. There's an unspoken weight that is placed on black women in physics to succeed.
00:59:50
Speaker
for the next generation, right? Like be the change that you want to see. And so for me, a lot of times what kept me going was like, even though I couldn't feel the passion that I once had for physics, I have to do this for the next woman so that she can see me as a role model in a way that I didn't have one until I came to grad school.
01:00:18
Speaker
Um, and so I, it was a very difficult decision to stand up and say, no, like I, I can't sacrifice my own goals and the things that I want for myself for the sake of a cause. And through that realizing that there is more than one way to contribute, you know, to, to the cause.
01:00:41
Speaker
And so just because I'm leaving academic research doesn't mean that I'm not a physicist, right? Like it doesn't mean that I didn't, you know, and I think calling myself a physicist and pursuing a degree in writing is a form of challenging the notions of what it means to be a physicist. Because I will always call myself a physicist. I think I've earned it at this point.
01:01:07
Speaker
Oh, hell yeah. Just based on the exchanges we've had over the last few months, it's like I'm just not, I'm like a tertiary satellite to the rigors that you've gone through. Yes, I appreciate your patience.
01:01:29
Speaker
Oh no, they think nothing of it. I say that only to underscore just the weight of doing that kind of work and the fact that you're able to construct a piece of this nature and to start to make these other pivots with trying to wrap up your PhD and in a very, very complicated esoteric wing of physics is just an incredible accomplishment.
01:01:59
Speaker
And yeah, absolutely. Like you got to wear that physicist title proud. Thank you. Yeah. So I, you know, I like to think of it as, you know, I am a physicist and, you know, to add onto that identity, I'm also claiming the, the career of writer as well.
01:02:16
Speaker
And just as we go forward, too, it's maybe a generation or two ago, you were sort of, you were in one box, be it physicist or high school teacher or whatever, but these days it's more multi-hyphenate. Like right now, it's like your physics PhD, creative writer, journalist, and so forth, and so it's like by the time your career is over, there's probably gonna be like
01:02:45
Speaker
six, seven, eight things that you're like, yes, I am this, I am this, I am this.
01:02:50
Speaker
Yeah, I hope so. I think the pandemic really showed everyone the value of having science trained journalists. I've been pleasantly surprised at how transferrable the skills are from being a researcher, a scientific researcher to undergoing the investigation and or research that comes with reporting a piece.
01:03:20
Speaker
Very nice. Well, I want to be mindful of your time, Katrina. And, you know,
Musical Recommendations
01:03:24
Speaker
because it was a while ago, I can't remember if I primed the pump on this, but I always like to end these conversations by asking the guests and the guests in this case being you for a recommendation for the listeners. And this can be anything. It can be like a pencil or a brand of coffee adopting a dog. I don't know. It can be anything. So if you've given it any thought, I'd love for you to offer a recommendation to the listeners out there. No problem. How about an album?
01:03:50
Speaker
Please. Yeah, that's awesome. Very few people have recommended music. Oh, perfect. Okay. I highly recommend Steve Lacy's new album. It's called Gemini Rites. The whole thing is a bop. Great album.
01:04:04
Speaker
Very nice. Cool. Oh, I love it. And where can people find you online, Katrina, and get more familiar with you and your work if they don't know who you are? Oh, yeah. I have a sometimes active Twitter page. It's at two underscores, Katrina Renee, K-A-T-R-I-N-A-R-E-N-E-E. That will probably change to Katrina PhD or something after I graduate. But that's what it is right now.
01:04:32
Speaker
Fantastic. Well, what a pleasure to speak to you, Katrina, with what I hope might be the first of many conversations we have down the road. It was so great to hear you talk about science and writing and your experience and bringing your experience to the page. A delightful experience for me as the reader, and I just got to commend you on the work you're doing. So thank you so much. Oh, thank you. Like I said, I'm a huge fan of your podcast, and so it's very surreal to hear your voice coming through my computer.
01:05:04
Speaker
And so we've come to the end. Thanks for listening, CNFers. Thanks to Katrina for her patience and for coming on the show, talking shop. I think it might be the first interview she's ever done about her writing. She's a budding writer and my gosh, if that essay for Wired is what a budding writer looks like, well, shit, I might make a go of it by the time I turn 70.
01:05:26
Speaker
Alright, who? She's gonna be like the next Neil deGrasse Tyson. If you care to share, link up to the show on social and tag it at cnfpod so I can give you the James Hetfield gif you deserve. Jeff, gif, don't matter. Don't matter.
01:05:42
Speaker
check out the patreon page patreon.com slash cnfpod shop around and see if there's anything there that'll make you want to put a few bucks in the cnfpod coffers every penny counts helps subsidize the audio magazine that i've been dragging my ass on but it's in the works every penny counts cnfers lastly brendanamara.com is where the rage against the algorithm newsletter is i gotta warn you it does go up to 11
01:06:10
Speaker
So that's it this week, CNFers. I don't have much by way of a parting shot. I got my teeth clean today and my teeth look great. My teeth implants look great. I almost said my implants look great, but that sounds bad. I didn't have my usual hygienist, but I had someone who was, I appreciated, heavy-handed with the suction straw. Kept things from getting all gaggy. She did the thing where she asked me what I do and I never quite know how to answer that question anymore. But I was like, I'm an editor, writer, podcaster.
01:06:40
Speaker
And you know, it's weird you say something, you say you're a podcaster, you kind of remember, like, if you told anyone, you're like, I'm a blogger. And it just felt like, oh, oh, honey. So that's how I feel like when I say I'm a podcaster, even though I've been doing this forever. And anyway, and she was like, oh, we got to talking about books and a little bit of writing. She's like, oh, my neighbor wrote a book. She's like, it's not nonfiction, but it's based on her life. I'm like, oh, that's pretty cool.
01:07:05
Speaker
And she's like, so now I know an author. And she's like, have you written a book? And I was like, yeah, about this horse, like a billion years ago. She's like, oh, that's cool. And I'm like, now you know two authors. And she was like, that's cool. And then she blasted my face with radiation. Stay wild, seeing efforts. And if you can do interview, see ya.
01:07:36
Speaker
you