What do Chinese literature, medieval string instruments, and earthquake drills have in common? In Los Angeles, the answer is Lucy Jones.

Often called “L.A.’s earthquake queen” — a nickname she’s not exactly fond of — Lucy Jones has been the city’s most trusted voice on seismic safety for decades. In this episode, we talk about how she went from refusing to attend her local public high school to graduating in Taiwan, why she nearly studied earthquakes in Iceland, and what musical instruments can teach us about how the earth moves.

We recorded this conversation inside her seismology center at Caltech — at the very table where, years ago, she used pencils and rulers to calculate earthquake magnitudes by hand. And while she’s best known for explaining “The Big One,” we also get into how she helped create the Great California ShakeOut — a drill that began as a public outreach idea and turned into the largest earthquake preparedness event in history.