Welcome to Crumbs of Science!

Join us in our very first episode, where we learn all about building with gingerbread, making fat birds, and the best way to make sure a child is cooked all the way through. Special guests: structural engineer Will Horton and pediatrician Dr Jake Barlow.

Recorded by Sarah-Jayne Robinson and Tim Newport at CPAS Podcast Studio.

Edited by Tim Newport, transcribed by Sarah-Jayne Robinson.

Intro music sampled from "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

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Transcript:

SJ: Next to a great forest, there lived a poor woodcutter who had come upon such hard times that he could scarcely provide daily bread for his wife and his two children, Hansel and Gretel.

[intro music]

SJ: Hi everyone, my name is Sarah-Jayne

T: And my name is Tee

SJ: And we're Crumbs of Science, a podcast about the science in and around fairytales. Now because this is our very first episode, we thought we'd give you a little bit of a background about ourselves. SO my name is Sarah-Jayne or SJ and I think that I decided at about five years old that I was going to be a fairy princess in my future to the extremes where my 21st birthday I had, it was themed 'What do you want to be when you grow up?' and I went as a fairy princess. But I also have a science background, I have an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering and arts from the University of Western Australia and after I graduated I spent five years travelling around the world working on oil rigs and I've worked on six continents so far, so almost made it to all the continents, so almost made it to all the continents of the world, one more to go.

T: Is that one more Antartica?

SJ: It is Antartica - it's very hard to get to. But I have experienced at least a little of all the others so far. So I've also done a fair bit of science and now I've left that job and I'm currently studying a Masters of Science Communication (Outreach) at the Australian National University, which is why we're doing this podcast.

T: Ah, and so my name's Tee and I'm also studying this, the Masters of Science Communication (Outreach) at, uh, the Australian National University. Um, and I'd just like to thank the Australian National University for their facilities in recording this podcast today. I studied journalism and geology at university and I actually worked for several years putting on science kids parties, where I'd go to children's birthday parties and instead of a clown, I would be a scientist and everyone would get to do science experiments, um I've also done ...

SJ: What was your favourite? Your favourite science experiment that you did at a kids birthday party?

T: Um, so one of my favourites was definitely, uh, making little rockets, where you mix alka-seltzer and water in little pointy test tubes and then put them on a little base and you just put it on the ground and count down 5...4... and then it just goes off. Uh, great experiment, definitely need safety glasses for everyone though, those thing uh, move very fast. Um, but I also did a bunch of science as well, during my geology degree, I did a three week field trip out to the, out to Broken Hill, um, out to the desert where they filmed Mad Max and got to camp for three weeks uh, and stare at the ground, it was great.

SJ: I think that's most of geology isn't it?

T: Yeh, it's really, [sigh], it's really tough to make sound exciting.

SJ: Is geology a real science, oh, who knows? So, our podcast is about fairytales and this week, if you couldn't tell from that opener, we're discussing Hansel and Gretel, which is the, one of the most...