Science, Surprise & Inclusivity: From Asimov to a Giant Bottom!

Join Julie Bishop as she speaks with Katherine Matheson, Director at the Royal Institution and former CEO of the British Science Association, on the transformative powers of science, technology, and communication. Discover how Katherine’s early love for Asimov shaped her optimism, the evolution from CD‑ROMs to TikTok in science outreach, and why interdisciplinary thinking is essential today. 

They discuss crucial topics including AI, engineering biology, semiconductors, and the race to better batteries. Katherine also shares insights on inclusive access, future career paths beyond academia, and a hilariously surprising moment involving a giant model bottom at the RI. Whether you’re an educator, parent, or curious learner, this episode is a joyful and thought-provoking journey into the future of science communication. 

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Transcript

Hi, I'm Julie Bishop and thank you for tuning in to the third episode of the IT Naturally podcast, where we talk to leaders and experts about how technology can be a force for good. And today I'm joined by Katherine Matheson, who's currently director at the Royal Institution. And she's led some of the UK's most respected science organisation, including as chief executive of the British Science Association. And her career has focused on making science more inclusive, more accessible and culturally relevant to all parts of society. So Catherine, welcome to the podcast. And today we're going to be talking about a whole range of topics, including how science, communication and technology have shaped Catherine's career and her personal development.

Julie Bishop 

what role emergency technologies might play in expanding equitable access to science and the advice that Catherine would give somebody who's starting a career in science. So we'll start right at the beginning. So how was working in science engagement shaped your personal development and your outlook on the world?

Katherine 

I think my personal route into science was through science fiction writing and the amazing short stories of a writer called Isaac Asimov who was publishing short science fiction stories in magazines in the 1950s in the US and they've been collected together in volumes of short stories. He is famous for writing the iRobot stories and he was playing with ideas about what the future could look like.

I came across these stories when I was about 12 or 13 and I just found them completely fascinating, you what will the future be and what are the different ideas or the different avenues we could explore to try and understand that and it led me to see science as a cultural activity, know, so not just a job or a thing that you study in school but a kind of participation that can be enjoyable and fun and something you do in your downtime, not just for kind of homework.

What I didn't know at that point was that there were other people who were treating science as a cultural activity in the same way that I was. I think for most of us, when we're perhaps 12 or 13, our main experience of science is through schooling. I think in terms of shaping me personally, that early experience contributed to a sense of optimism that I have about the future and an interest in future technologies.

I mean not all technology is good of course there have been some missteps There's a great quote in the Onion, you ever look at the Onion online magazine? It's a satirical, again American satirical magazine, it has lots of material to work with at the moment. It has this great quote about you know modern science has a long proven track record of correcting the mistakes it inadvertently unleashes on the world and if the worst ever came to pass

Science would find some way to fix it, you know, that's what science does. And I think for many scientists and researchers throughout my career, I've talked with scientists and researchers in various settings, many, many, different people, and they are often motivated by solving real world problems. So for me, science and technology is about what are the problems, what are the challenges we face, and what can we do about them?

Julie Bishop 

Brilliant. And yeah, I can't agree more. And it is quite a relief that we do sometimes fix some of the mistakes that we make. I think we are in need of lot of fixing at the moment for some mistakes that we've been making. And in what ways have you seen science communication and the technology enrich the careers and development of your colleagues over the years?

Katherine 

Exactly.

Katherine

Throughout my career what I've witnessed in science communication is a flourishing of different approaches and different formats and that's been almost entirely driven by the expansion of technology. So we have many more technologies and platforms with which we can communicate with different audiences. When I was starting out in the late 1990s, so this ages me a little bit, I was doing a master's dissertation.

and I did my master's dissertation on CD-ROMs which, Julie, you will be far too youthful to remember and those CD-ROMs, do remember? I was doing my dissertation on CD-ROMs that would be posted out to schools and teachers would open the envelope, take out this disc, feed it into their computer and then images and words would pop up on the screen and they were supposed to, these CD-ROMs

The idea was that teachers would use them in a computer lab in school, so you'd have to take the children into a special room which had the computers in which would eat these CD-ROMs and then they would do their learning in that very special setting and then they would leave all that behind and they wouldn't be allowed in the room again for another week. And the CD-ROM material, I mean it was thought of as cutting edge at the time, that's why I was doing dissertation on it because it had the ability to display short videos with audio over the top and...

some of these CD-ROMs you could even rotate images so you could see how molecules behave in space or you could see how food chains change when you have a different predator and this very limited form of interactivity was thought to be absolutely the cutting edge in 1998 and of course all that's completely irrelevant now.

not that it was the best dissertation to start with maybe, but it is completely, completely, that whole landscape is absolutely transformed and the thing that I think the science communication sector is really grappling with at the moment is how to be accurate and how to build trust in ultra short-form content like TikToks. It's a completely different landscape now.Think about the flourishing of YouTube, for example, as a platform to communicate with each other and then the amount of content that is produced specifically for that medium and that must outweigh, in one day, must outweigh all of educational publishing's output for like a year back in the 90s. So there's this absolute flourishing of science communication and the challenge is how to be trustworthy and how to be accurate while still attracting an audience. People have a lot of choices about what they can do at their time.

And as a science communication person, I'm really interested in how we entice people to spend time with accurate science content rather than the many, many other entertainment-based opportunities that they have. And I think we're having this conversation in 2025, and I'm thinking about the Christmas lectures that are coming up later this year, which will be all about space.

Katherine 

one of things I did was I went back and I watched the Christmas lectures that Carl Sagan did in the 1970s about space and he had a lot less stuff but they're completely captivating, they're still captivating now. Some of the demonstrations or the equipment that he's using we wouldn't do it the same way now but the way that he tells the story still remains completely captivating. So I think there's a lot we can learn that sort of

works on multiple platforms and then there are different techniques that we need to learn to cope with different platforms. So it's been a real flourishing I would say since those early days.

Julie Bishop 

And one thing that I've noticed by coming to the Royal Institution and going to the lectures and things is learning how all of the different sciences are so interconnected. You can't talk about medical science without talking about chemistry, talking about biology, talking about maths. it's all so interconnected. We all build on each other, don't we? I find that very exciting.

Katherine 

Yes, so do I. find the interdisciplinarity of the research challenges that scientists are working on now really, really exciting. it's, again, thinking back to our school days when we used to say things like, well, I like biology, but I don't like physics, know, without any real comprehension, how could we? That these things are so kind of interconnected that it's quite hard to draw the line sometimes. There was a talk at the Royal Institution a couple of weeks ago by the chief scientific advisor.

Angela McLean and she was talking about engineering biology which is this sort of emerging discipline around using engineering-like techniques to manipulate biological structures, typically genes, genomes, in order to do things like soak up dangerous heavy metals from the ground and reduce landfill problems and environmental challenges.

array of different applications from this particular discipline. And yet that's quite a new discipline. I think there are degree courses in engineering biology, but there's not very many of them, and most young people wouldn't have heard of that as an opportunity. And yet it's just one of these kind of exciting frontiers in research at the moment.

Brilliant, brilliant. And how can we foster better inclusion in science technology? How can we make sure it's there for everybody to be able to take part?

Katherine 

I think this is a really exciting question actually Julie because the risks of not fostering better inclusion in science and technology are significant and very real. one of the most exciting areas I think in science and technology at the moment is artificial intelligence, AI, and we're seeing that being applied in a whole range of different settings very excitingly.

including in science, technology and research itself. So AI is being used to accelerate the discovery rate, for example, or to summarise the current literature in a particular field in order to identify gaps. One of the hazards around using AI more is that it has this tendency to generalise, to summarise what is known and to take the average, the mean average.

Julie Bishop 

lowest common denominator sometimes isn't it? feels like.

Katherine 

Exactly right, yeah, yeah, it sort of picks that, I heard this said a lot on the internet, so this must be true and we all know the pitfalls of that kind of summarising. And so I think it is even more important than it ever has been to elevate original voices, people from diverse backgrounds, people with different ways of seeing the world such as neurodiversity. You know the value here is in difference and in range and I think I'll move to more hybrid working as a result of the pandemic.

helps you know if you're somebody that doesn't like a lot of sensory information because it disrupts your focus you know or if you're having to mask neurodiversity traits you know things like that being able to work at home or work in a hybrid way can be really really helpful.

Julie Bishop

Yeah, even mobility issues can be overcome, you know, you don't have to get out and travel somewhere.

Katherine

Absolutely.

And for lot of people with chronic health problems, know, they might have good days and bad days, or they might have a good hour and a bad hour. Being able to flex their timetable can be really helpful in managing conditions like that. And that enables people to come into the workforce and, you know, shape the way that we do things, you know, shape the way that research is done, or what we research, or how we research it, and what technologies we develop for the future. And that's all extremely, extremely helpful.

I think workplace culture has a big role to play in terms of inclusion in science and technology. So there's a great piece of research called the ASPIRES study, which looked at the uptake of science and technology among young people and kind of followed them into the workforce. the research started when they were 10 and it's been following them doing interviews and focus groups as they progress through school and higher education, further education into the workforce. And what they found was that

there's quite high amount of peer sexism among young people, particularly in science and technology workforces. And that's a real shame, there's a lot of great work being done to encourage, particularly if you think about, know, encourage girls and young women to take computer science options. And then some of that work is just undone by kind of casual sexism in the workplace. And so being able to address that in a...

in a significant way, I think will have a big impact on many people who risk feeling marginalised currently.

Julie Bishop 

No, definitely, definitely, definitely. And what benefits have you seen to society from expanding access to science education?

Katherine 

Yeah, I think there's a number of benefits and one of them relates to our previous conversation about inclusion. know that more involvement by underrepresented communities, by minoritised communities is absolutely a win-win. It's more opportunities for the individuals and their families and their communities, but it's better outcomes for research and development. So that's absolutely a win-win. I think as well that access to science engagements and science education

It also offers benefits in terms of the decisions we all make as individuals. So we all have to decide, you know, which vaccines to accept or what to feed our children or, you know, what kind of vehicle, what kind of car to buy or, you know, all this kind of thing. And often those decisions contain an element of science and technology, which if you feel that science and technology is not your thing, some of that information can feel overwhelming.

know and how do I make sense of this decision making. So I think access to science education, science engagement is really helpful in supporting individual decision making as well as kind of career opportunities for those people. I also think as well Julie that sometimes awe and wonder and joy is all we need from the outcome. You know if you think about watching David Attenborough on the TV like

Yes, he's educating us, but we're not there for the facts, we? We're there for the way that he makes us feel when he talks about these amazing ecosystems and creatures. We're there for the storytelling. We're there for the awe and the wonder and the joy. And I personally feel that everyone should have access to that.

Julie Bishop 

I've recently got two grandchildren and I've been intrigued by how science-based and facts-based the way that children are brought up now and how all the old wives tales that went from generation to generation about how you lay your baby down, how long they should see, all those sort of things are now replaced by research and it's so

wonderful to see and I looked at the stats of the horror of what's known as caught death and how the difference because it's science based now rather than from mother to mother to it's just incredible and that impacts every young parent it's not the ones who went to school and studied science in particular it's every parent needs to understand the

the facts. And it's so it's just so exciting to see the the outcomes, the positive outcomes that using science is bringing to something as mundane as childcare.

Katherine 

Yeah. Yeah.

Katherine 

I think that's absolutely right. And we can apply these techniques of scientific research and development to every area of human endeavour. So putting the baby to bed or growing your houseplants effectively or whether to give kids a mobile phone. All of these questions that people think about every day can be a target for scientific research.

Making sure that we have a diverse group of people involved in the decision making around what to do research on is really crucial. Otherwise, I think some of those topics go under-recognized.

Julie Bishop

Yeah, yeah, and it's clearly true from the last few hundred years, isn't it? Looking at medical potentially, what are the things that excite you most that are being researched at the moment for their future impact on our society? What's in the early stages that's going to be really exciting?

Katherine 

Yes

Well, we've talked about AI, but I think that has to be top of my list. For the sheer scale of impact across all sectors, it's a technological development in itself, but it's an enabling technology for all other sectors. It's a catalyst. So I think that is absolutely one of the most exciting emerging developments. mean, not everything in computing is AI, as you know, so I think there's a lot of

lots of potential. I'm thinking about big data sets and data sharing, so the NHS holds one of the best data sets in the world in terms of understanding these very diseases which come about from a very complex set of factors all acting together. You need a big data set to really see the effect size that they're looking for and the NHS data because in theory at least it is pooled.

so it's population level, is one of the best in the world, along with Iceland, apparently. So I think that the application of big data and better data sharing and better stats and big computing power will drive some of our future medical discoveries, which I think will be very exciting. We talked earlier about engineering biology, and I think that will be under the hood technology in a lot of different settings.

the technology will come out looking like it's about heavy metals or it's about crop yields and then you look under the HUD and there's some engineering biology so I think that's a very enabling technology as well. And then finally there's a very unglamorous and really critical research area which is around semiconductors and batteries, everything we need, everything we want for the future is going to rely on

access to really high-performing semiconductors and really high-performing and not too heavy batteries. And those technologies don't feel very kind of glamorous, you know, like a cure for cancer would, but the cure for cancer, you know, is dependent on these other enabling technologies. So a shout out for the unloved semiconductor and battery research areas.

Julie Bishop 

Peace.

And it feels like the battery one is due a big evolution, doesn't it? It feels like something's going to happen soon that's going to really change batteries because we've been caught at a certain level for long time, haven't we?

Katherine 

Yep, we have and that's my understanding absolutely that there's a number of other technology, a number of other fields where the technology is several steps ahead and being held back effectively by the current state of the battery. So if you think about electric vehicles, know, think about airplanes, we need electric airplanes probably, but that's, I don't know how far off that is, but they're so heavy. How can you get a battery into an airplane and fly? So there's a,

Julie Bishop 

Yeah.

Julie Bishop 

Absolutely.

Katherine 

The Faraday Institution, who is a regular partner of ours at the Royal Institution, they do a lot of really important work on this. They're doing an event with us in a few weeks time about electric airplanes and I just thought yes, you know, we need airplanes to be more environmentally friendly, desperately need that, and batteries are going to be the key to that. So how quickly can we bring that on? How quickly can we bring on solar power facilities?

that can store energy effectively and release it when it's needed rather than when the sun is shining. These kinds of technologies are really, really crucial.

Julie Bishop 

Absolutely, absolutely. And how can we help our young people see science as just so much more than a subject at school? And how can we get the youngsters engaged in a way that they can see that they can change society?

Katherine 

Well, I think you've hit the nail on the head there, Julia. I think it is about seeing science as a way to generate positive change on subjects that you care about as an individual. I think somehow science at school comes across like this sort of body of facts, you know, that we worked out the mass number of carbon and we calculated how big the Earth is and the distance to the sun. You know, it's just we accumulated some facts and that when scientists go to work, they just sort of polish those facts up.

to make them shine even more brightly. Something about the discovery aspect I think gets a little bit lost for many of us as we go through our school science, which is absolutely not criticism of the teachers working their hardest to make the curriculum exciting and relevant to young people, but there's something about the excitement of working on the unknown, working right at the edge of knowledge, asking questions that nobody knows the answer to.

and that you will be potentially the first person to ever know something. I remember reading an interview with the amazing woman who worked as part of a team on visualizing a black hole for the first time using data. And she said there's this moment where she was looking at this image and she thought everyone in the world is going to see this image. Everyone's going to be really excited by this image, but just for a moment, I am the only person to have seen that. And it feels like you're on an expedition, know, you're kind of...

so super exciting. I think the other thing that would really help us enable more young people to see a future for themselves in science is to showcase the range of roles. So actually it's not just the academic, you know, I've got 42 degrees and I'm very clever and I spent my whole life thinking about this, you but the machines that those people are all relying on, the computers, the technology.

Julie Bishop 

Yeah.

Katherine 

the laboratory equipment, the fields, apparatus, whatever it is that they need. All of that stuff comes from a team of people who are working hard to support that. And the role of technician in particular is both crucial for scientific research and development. Nobody ever gets their experiment to work without the technician doing it for them basically. So the technician has this really powerful role in science and research and technology of being the person who translates the physical world into the kind of

theoretical ambitions of the projects and those teams of technicians they can be super specialists or they can be quite generalist but they're absolutely crucial and we don't do enough I think to highlight that role. think that there's also, I for young people if you're at school at the moment, there's lots of opportunities to kind of get stuck in outside the curriculum.

Julie Bishop 

Yeah.

Katherine 

So, you know, at the Royal Institution we do these master classes in computer science, which we just have a lot of fun with. We bring in people who work in computer science in some way with a room full of children and we get them kind of working on real life, know, really relatable things like making a robot that can do a really cool dance. That's a very important skill set and actually is a very important skill set, but it's also a lot of fun. But there's some great, there's other resources out there I have a lot of respect for.

The Crest Awards, where children and young people get recognition for a piece of research that they've done themselves beyond the curriculum. There's a huge number of resources now which use Raspberry Pi computers, so you can do almost anything that you want to do with your Raspberry Pi. It's your research, you do what you want with it and that's the freedom and the creativity.

those kind of schemes bring I just think is a really helpful adjunct to the curriculum.

Julie Bishop 

Because when I was at primary school, we had the first man land on the moon. And that was just so exciting as to the possibilities for the future. And I worry sometimes at the moment that our science is all about how we're damaging the planet and how we've got to stop doing things to cause harm. And some of that excitement of

the world's your oyster, know, men go to the moon. I still find it almost impossible to believe that people have been to the moon, people tell me they have. But it's, but that excitement, somehow we need to get some of that back, don't we? So that it's not the negativity of the environment.

Katherine 

Yeah.

Katherine 

I think that's right and it reflects that JFK quote about the Apollo missions. We choose to go not because it's easy but because it is hard and this idea that by working in groups, by working in teams together, we could do things that would have been thought impossible 10 minutes ago. And it brings me back to...

where I started my journey with science actually in these fictional stories that Asimov wrote where they were set in spaceships or were set on different planets and he was sort of playing around with ideas of what could the future look like. If we had robots what would the problems be from that? How would we resolve those? Or if we had spaceships what would the problems be there? And I think that

We need to see a version of the future in our minds in order to be able to get there. That's the first step. That's what JFK did when he announced the moon missions, moon landing missions. I think that's what Asimov was doing playfully. I think that's what a lot of our cultural films, books, TV series, podcasts, we're trying to work out what's the future that we want to get to and then we can figure out how to get there. But without that vision in our minds, what are we doing? We're just polishing the facts that we already know.

Julie Bishop 

Exactly. And moves on a bit. Unfortunately, we're coming to the end fairly soon, which is a shame. could talk to you all day about this. What advice would you give? I'm sure you do this. What advice do you give to people starting their careers in science, technology today, particularly about making a positive impact?

Katherine 

Oh absolutely, I do get asked about for careers advice and I try and help as much as I can. I think my observation would be that careers advice that young people get, often focuses on a discipline, like why don't you do history? Or it focuses on a job title, like why don't you become a doctor? But jobs change all the time and there's many, many more options than we think of when we think about particular job titles. So my advice would

Julie Bishop 

Yeah.

Katherine 

for young people I suppose, or for any of us maybe, would be don't focus only on the job titles or the disciplines. There are lots of other questions to think about too. Deciding whether to do history or geography or deciding whether to do biology or chemistry, you know, these are important decisions but they're not the only important decision. I think for all of us we need to figure out as well what kind of organisation do we want to work in? Do we want to work by ourselves as a sole trader, you know, with freedom?

for all of the ups and all of the downs? Do we want to work in the public sector, the private sector, the charity sector, they have quite different cultures? Do we want to work in a big organisation? Do we want to work in a field that's really fast-paced and everything changes or somewhere more steady-state? Do we want to work in an environment that's very competitive or is more collaborative? There's nothing right or wrong about any of these opportunities but some of them will suit us better than others.

So for young people the challenge is not only what subject or what job title, but what's the setting that will enable you to thrive? How do you find that out? You find that out by trying lots of different things. That's not a mistake to have tried lots of different things, particularly early in one's career. Get as many opportunities as you can to see what different places are like and figure out like, would I like this? Is this bringing out the best in me or is this better for somebody else and I would be better in a different kind of setting.

Julie Bishop 

Yeah, and yeah, and we don't, we don't just have one career now, do we? all move around and do, I never imagined I'd be running a company as I was a computer programmer, you know, and yeah, so it's

Katherine 

None of us.

Katherine 

Yeah, yeah, very few of us end up where we expect to and that's part of the fun, right? The surprises along the way.

Julie Bishop 

Yeah, exactly, exactly, exactly. And then your little bonus question, what's the strangest or funniest thing that's happened to you in your career up to date? I'd imagine there's a few different things you could talk about here.

Katherine 

Well, let me tell you about something that happened just after I joined the Royal Institution. So I feel very lucky to be working with the Royal Institution team. We have a lot of thinking about science, science communication and technology. And I'd been there for maybe a few weeks and I was still kind of getting used to it.

something dropped off my shelf then. So I'll start that again. That was slightly weird. Hopefully the whole shelf's not coming down. I'd been at the Royal Institution for a few weeks now, still getting used to it, finding my way around, and I walked past the front door and there was a gigantic bottom, like a human bottom, a fake one, by the front door, like right next to the front door. It huge. And it was just like a model bottom from the sort of belly button to just above the knees. And I thought...

What is this? Who's left this here? What is going on? Anyway, it was there for a few days and then it disappeared and it turned out to be for a show that we were doing at the weekend for a family audience all about food and digestion so I think the bottom was a prop for that show which makes complete sense, But you know the funniest thing wasn't that a bottom appeared by the front door for a few days it was that it was so normal nobody mentioned it. was like completely normal thing to happen at the Royal Institution and I thought I am in the strangest funniest

most delightful place.

Julie Bishop 

It is fabulous. is fabulous. So thank you so much for coming on our podcast. As I say, I could talk to you all day. It's really interesting. Really enjoyed it. Really enjoyed it. But it's been really brilliant to hear your thoughts. And if people want to engage with you, what's the best way of people contacting you, Katherine?

Well, I would head to the Royal Institution website, rigb.org, or I'm very findable on LinkedIn.

Julie Bishop 

Brilliant. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Katherine 

Thank you Julie.