This episode was recorded early in 2020, and then the whole podcast enterprise was tanked as I was trying to cope with COVID19 and the lockdowns. I am realising this now as Vince is retiring at the end of 2024, and we're going to miss him a lot, and it was a really interesting interview.

Transcript 

Speaker 1 

Because I. One of the. The waggon I had a double espresso and I'm ashamed of myself. 

Speaker 2 

Do you know what I'm in a good place with my coffee dictionary. Do you know I'm? I'm fine. I gave up. Nicotine largely gave up alcohol. I'll. I'm good. I'm good. I accept. I'm completely addicted. 

Speaker 

I. 

Speaker 2 

I gave up. 

Speaker 1 

For eight years. Bloody hell. And then somebody gave me a double espresso. So. And it's like cocaine. It's fantastic. 

Speaker 2 

I got when I came back from sanity leave because I I stopped drinking not through choice, but just to kind of. I kind of lost the taste for it and for a couple of years I haven't had any and I came back. Eternity leave. And I was like, oh, this is fantastic. This is like I completely get it. Yeah, right. I think that's a good level. My fricatives keep sounding awful, but that's on me, not on you. 

Speaker 1 

I've moved away from it. Do you want me to? Do you want to test again? 

Speaker 2 

Just tell me. I mean, I'm not very loud. Just tell me again your chia seeds or coughing water? 

Speaker 1 

Yeah, disgusting. My healthy breakfast. I. 

Speaker 2 

Think that'll be fine. Thank you very much. Let's. On it. Brilliant. I'll move it slightly closer. 'cause you have more important people, right? I'm just going to start, weirdly by introducing the whole. We are recording. Yes, it's recording. Excellent. Welcome to what works. This is a UCL PALS podcast where I, Sophie Scott, get to talk to my colleagues about what works for them and how they got into really doing what they're doing and how they manage their work and their life and all the other things we don't normally talk about with colleagues, and it's an absolute pleasure today to introduce my colleague Vincent Walsh, who has been at the ICN since the inception of the ICN. 

Speaker 1 

Almost. 

Speaker 2 

OK, but let's go back a bit further. So what I'd like to start with, if that's OK, Vince, if you could tell us a little bit about how you ended up getting into science at all. Can you remember like you know anything, perhaps even when you were a kid that now when you look back on it, you think that was a bit of a sign, this is where I was going. 

Speaker 1 

No, I I. It's funny that you ask what works. I have no idea what works, and I honest to God, it's not an affectation of no idea. I would how I got to do this. I wasn't a nerdy kid. I didn't play with electronics. Umm, I left school at 16 with 4G CSESI never knew I was any good at anything. Definitely never read a book until I was at least 16, possibly 18. If it didn't have pictures of a sports person or a music person in it. So I always get irritated and slightly suspicious about these people who are reading Tolstoy when they're 4. And I think just wasn't. It wasn't wasn't my my track at all. So no. About science. Until people, what my students don't believe me. But until my mid 30s. No idea about science career, so yeah, just left school at 16. To work in a record shop. 

Speaker 2 

Which one? 

Speaker 1 

Jazzling records in Oldham loved it. And then. 

Speaker 2 

Excellent. 

Speaker 1 

Some of my friends. 2 girls were applying to be nurses. And it wasn't a degree then, so you could do it with  O levels. Which were Cs, by the way. Didn't get any As. And as I remember it we we put an application in for me as a kind of a joke, why don't why don't why don't we do it? And and then I ended up being a full time nurse for five years and part time for three years. And specialised after I qualified in Psychiatrics. So I discovered my career progression from wiping ***** to kissing them and I and I know which is most useful. And I loved it. And it was when I was at nursing school that I I met a guy called John Hart. And it was funny because he was the first person any of us had ever met who got a degree, who wasn't a doctor or a teacher. We thought it was a freaking genius. But he was also the first person I met who I kind of wanted to be like, if you like. So it was. It was him who got me into, fell in love with him. Totally. It was him who got me into reading. And I think it was when I was 20. We chatted and he suggested I might try and go back to night school. And do some exams. Umm, so I did that. Still no idea. About about science. I'm 23 by this time. 

Speaker 2 

So what did you do? 

Speaker 1 

So I did. I did psychology at Sheffield but. Even at that time, like most psychology undergraduates, now you imagine you're going to be a clinical psychologist. And I mean, I don't like listening to people. I learned that pretty quickly. And I guess in the first year then we had. We had Dawkins selfish gene on our and that was the kind of, if you like, Damascene conversion and had some great tutors, Ian Mitchell and Peter Eggrave and John Frisby. 

Speaker 2 

Remember Frisby? Yeah. 

Speaker 1 

Yeah. And then I started getting obsessed. It was then that I started getting obsessed still. Because people, you know, people got all these A levels that I didn't have, I just thought they were cleverer for a a long time. I mean a long time. And I had no idea what to do for a for a PhD. Really wanted to do 1. 

Speaker 2 

I realised I've made you miss a bit out, so you went back to night school and you took exams. When you say that, did you mean like more 0? 

Speaker 1 

Uh. 

Speaker 2 

Levels or A levels was it like? 

Speaker 1 

I did. I did. I did O levels and A levels. Yeah, I still. Yeah. Yeah. The only thing I was ever good at school was maths. 

Speaker 2 

At night. 

Speaker 

Yeah. 

Speaker 1 

So I went back and did maths and some other things. I always remember finding maths really easy. That's the only thing I remember. 

Speaker 2 

Yeah, yeah. So you've gone back and when you did the O levels and A levels that still wasn't particularly science oriented. That was thinking about were you already thinking about psychology? 

Speaker 1 

Yeah, it was just psychology. It was. Psychology was thinking about Cos it was. Yeah, it was psychiatric nursing that I was. I was doing. So that was the kind of. 

Speaker 2 

That's where you wanted to go. 

Speaker 

Yeah. 

Speaker 1 

Not logical next step, but it was because I've never had a plan. Yeah, they just this seems all right. Does the next seem they seem alright without the next thing. Yeah, but never ever had. 

Speaker 2 

What's interesting? 

Speaker 1 

Plan, yeah. 

Speaker 2 

When you go to Sheffield, so Sheffield, when you're at Sheffield, you're doing your. 

Speaker 1 

Did my undergraduate at Sheffield yeah. 

Speaker 2 

Degree now, yeah, what? Was it like being a mature student? 

Speaker 1 

I wasn't mature really, I. I just told her. Yeah. No, I don't think I've cracked that. And it's funny. You see, students now are kind of 23, and they're described as mature students, but hand on heart, can you tell the difference between them and a 19? Old it's. 

Speaker 2 

I thought I was incredibly old when I went to Polytechnic. I was 21. I was all “Look at me”, you know. 

Speaker 1 

So. I didn't feel any difference. I just joined in with this stuff that I usually join in the sports stuff. And no, I didn't feel like I was a mature student at all, didn't feel any different. What? 

Speaker 2 

Was it like compared to working? 

Speaker 1 

If yeah, easy. That was the. That was the real thing. You know, having to turn up at shift work. Do you know 7.30 shifts or do night shifts and finish work at 6:00 in the morning and then find out that you've got 10 hours a week and people think that that's a lot of classroom time. So I did actually find from not reading at all until it was kind of, you know. The amounts of reading that were asked to at university. Thought was laughable. And. And read everything basically. I mean I can still remember where I was, but you know which chair I was sat in which room I was sat in when I read things like the selfish gene and the blind watch maker and the extended phenotype, they were my kind of and, and that was the first time, I think as well that I thought. This is a way I want to think. And if it doesn't sound? That the thing that mattered to me until that point was just music. And I think that that those three books were the first time that I realised ideas could have the same effect on you as music that could excite you in the same way. So that was a kind of a conversion for me. 

Speaker 

Yeah. 

Speaker 1 

And I only got to do a PhD because nobody else wanted it. My PhD supervisor with all love and due respect to him was as mad as a box of frogs Janisch Kulakowski. 

Speaker 2 

Who is this? Who is this still? 

Speaker 1 

In Manchester. Yeah. And he he was doing work on V4 in colour vision. It was around the time that that Zeki had identified colour neurons in V4. I just couldn't believe I was going to get my hand. Sounds awful. I was going to get my hands on some monkey brains. Handwritten application. 

Speaker 2 

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK. 

Speaker 1 

I think I was the only candidate. He had a reputation for being very difficult and he was, but he let me be obsessed. So for the next three years. Literally six days a week, I just trained monkeys in colour constancy experiments. And just became more and more and. Obsessed. Still without a plan, I had no idea. Yeah. 

Speaker 

Yeah. 

Speaker 2 

And what happened next? So you get your PhD and you managed to get a PhD, it sounds like it wasn't always the easiest context to do that. 

Speaker 1 

I did, yeah. It was. I don't. I don't know if it was hard or easy. I remember the first week there. I went to the lab head and said who's the? Who's the monkey? Behaviour expert here. He said you are. I said, who's the colour constancy expert? He said you are. So I was just. Given this empty room and something to do with and when I interview people now, I always ask. Imagine I'd disappear for six months. What are you going to do with an empty room? What are you going to and? And I think it's it's not a bad thing, especially in these big, beautiful places like Queen Square where everything is there that you need. And every piece of expertise that you there is need. It can be really difficult for people when I think they they leave, you know, with a PhD with a neuron. And a nature Neuroscience. Paper, but never, never having had the kind of loneliness of solving a problem all by yourself. So yeah, I think we should throw them in dungeons more for their own good. 

Speaker 2 

It's certainly the thing I remember most about doing your PhD is. I loved having. Like a like this unfolding series of you kind of got on top of one thing and then there was the next thing would open up and you kind of got the sense for this. This is the point is the journey. It's not the destination. 

Speaker 1 

Yeah. Yeah. And it's it's kind of I didn't even think it was a journey. I was just stuck in this not stuck in a bad way. I I was just surrounded. By all these interesting things that I could do, and whenever I said to Yanish can I try this? He'd just say yes. Try try that. So I just got to play about really. I didn't know. I didn't didn't know. It was going. And got to. Meet some really inspiring people like Zeki. Dave perrett. And and just become obsessed about visual cortex. Yeah, by this time, I'm 30. Yeah. 

Speaker 2 

Yeah. What did you do with your PhD? Where did you go next? 

Speaker 1 

So the next was that then then it was a disaster again, I had no plan. I just applied for a post doc in Oxford. 

Speaker 

And. 

Speaker 1 

Almost two years there had a dreadful time. Nothing went right. And I applied for a teaching job 17 hours a week at UCL University of Central Lancashire. 

Speaker 2 

Yeah. Imy old stomping ground. 

Speaker 1 

So I'd I'd I'd given up by that time. So yeah, and it was pure chance that Alan Cowie came by my office one day and. And said are you interested in in working with me and I Thought. Yeah, I'll, I'll do that. 

Speaker 2 

Can I just ask and you don't have to tell me this if you don't want to, I can edit this out, but could you just outline generally what you felt wasn't working for you in Oxford when you were first there? You don't have to if you don't want to. 

Speaker 1 

Yeah. No, I don't. Don't mind it. I wasn't necessary to to the lab. The person I was working with didn't just didn't need me to do things, so I'll I'll give you one example of of how because people look at you and they think, oh, it's all right for you. But remember, I'm 30 years old at this incident. I'm going to tell you. And somebody said. Can you can you order some more electrode wire California electrode wires for the electrodes. We do a single unitary order. I said. Sure, he said you can use my phone because this was before student offices had international lines or before mobile phones and. I rang me. And he said ‘when you get through, can you hand me the phone?’ I just thought ******** to this. 

Speaker 

But. 

Speaker 2 

Well, so. So you're just dailing this you're. 

Speaker 1 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I I really was. 

Speaker 2 

Not necessary to the conversation. 

Speaker 1 

Unnecessary to the lab. And treated. Very, I wouldn't say badly intentionally that just this person had no idea how to to to use me and I I was on fire with energy. I'd have done anything, you know. But massively low on confidence at that time. So I I thought that was it. I'm I'm not going to have a scientific career. I don't know what to do next. And and it really was just a chance passing comment of Alan Cowie is that. That kept me on board for. While yeah. So that I was with Alan for 10 years. Yeah. 

Speaker 2 

I have had a few interactions with him. He seemed to be a genuinely generous, decent human. 

Speaker 1 

he was wonderful, he. He he never criticised me ever, but he had a way of hutching his eyebrow that said. I know that's ********. And I can still see it, but he he he just trusted people and gave them enough rope, but saved them if they if they needed to. Saving. And he? Yeah, but I did an awful lot of freedom with with Alan, which is how I got into brain stimulation because I've had enough of monkey work by, by that time, I didn't think it was worth it. But again, no, no plan. We're just going from experiment to experiment and thinking this is lucky. You know, this is all right. And again, it was Alan who who suggested I apply for a Royal Society Research Fellowship. I mean, the single best thing in the whole world for young scientists. Nothing. Nothing comes a close second to it. It's five years of money, write a page every year on what you're doing, and we'll trust you to do the rest. And it turned out to be 10 years of money that that I that I had from the Royal Society and it was that kind of trust that I needed, not somebody looking over my shoulder, just somebody saying. Go off and do what you can and do you do your level best. And I did that. 

Speaker 

Yeah. 

Speaker 1 

Umm, it was unusual to get where at that time Zeki and Cowie were at each other's intellectual throats of what V4 did and didn't do. 

Speaker 2 

Yeah. 

Speaker 1 

And both Zeki and Cowie supported my application for the for the Royal Society Research Fellowship. So then I felt some kind of again, not a plan, just was at liberty to try things out. 

Speaker 2 

And you've got that independence there. When your own money, haven't they? 

Speaker 1 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was. It was real independence. It wasn't. It wasn't visible. Independence. People kept saying to me. Like. Don't you leave? Allen Cowie. You're in his shadow. And I thought it's quite nice. And you know it's it's it's not a competition. I don't feel like I have to prove anything. And. Just stayed within until Utah Frith. Asked me if I wanted to come to the ICN. And I haven't managed to leave. 

Speaker 2 

It's a strong gravitational pull. So Uta’s suggestion of you coming to the ICN? That was possible because you could move your fellowship and it was tactical on her part because you were bringing something to the ICN that wouldn't really exist here. 

Speaker 1 

Yeah. 

Speaker 2 

Wasn't wasn't that? 

Speaker 1 

Yeah, that time I was, I was doing a lot of brain stimulation, but I should explain why I got into brain stimulation. Cause again, people always think when they see you in a certain position, it's always been all right. And you've always been full of confidence. 

Speaker 2 

Yeah. 

Speaker 1 

So. I got into brain stimulation. 

Speaker 2 

Could you say what brain stimulation is? Because people may not know? 

Speaker 1 

Yeah, transcranial magnetic stimulation, which is basically what I built most of my career on, it's a way of non-invasively stimulating the human brain. And we would be able to do things like reproduce neuropsychological effects. 

Speaker 2 

It's possible. 

Speaker 1 

Of neglect or speech arrest or things like that. One of. 

Speaker 2 

And can I? The thing, and it was a kind of technical development at that time. That meant because it'd been around as an idea, but suddenly it became possible. 

Speaker 1 

Yeah, it been around in the in multi Physiology for quite a while. But nobody really picked up and run with it in a psychological sense. And that was what I I think I I I I did in in in that time. But I didn't do it because I thought this is a great idea and it's going to. Build me great career. I was thinking at the. Time. I've no idea where I'm. I'm going to end up. These. Look fairly cheap to me if. I end up in the University of Mid NowhereShire. I can get a personal loan out and and and get away. I was actually thinking like that. I was thinking what's the minimum case I could do it and still by this time 34 years old, I hadn't given any public. Talks or or or presentations. 

Speaker 2 

Have you done scientific talks? 

Speaker 1 

Umm, no, I was terrified. Yeah, it's so now I do public talks all the time. People think it's easy, but still. 

Speaker 2 

Really. 

Speaker 1 

If I was explain to some of my undergraduates yesterday because I'm getting them to give talks that I was nervous talking to them yesterday, you know, before every undergraduate lecture, I'm still the last hour of the bathroom and it never goes away. 

Speaker 2 

You should do that, yeah. 

Speaker 1 

No, no. If it matters to you, it shouldn't it. Go away. So yeah. I think the brain stimulation, Alan Cowie's. Continual support. And that gave me the kind of confidence, and then Utah Frith, bringing me here was was another step. 

Speaker 2 

And that. Have been quite a big deal because there wasn't. It's obvious now because we live in a world that's got multiple cognitive neuroscience institutes in it, but there wasn't anything like that in the UK there was the APU in Cambridge, which was I was, which was quite a different looking institution. So it is how it is now and basically the ICN was set was it was a completely novel kind of beast, so it was quite a big deal to go away from Oxford. 

Speaker 1 

Yeah. Yeah. 

Speaker 2 

Sense of this kind of thing. So a new sort of institute. 

Speaker 1 

Yeah. And there was a very different kind of energy. And when I found quite scary as well. I mean, everybody was really good. Nobody. Nobody taking their foot off the gas and was just was focusing on teaching, which will come to later I'm sure. Umm, so yeah, it was it. Really on fire. Felt a bit competitive actually at first, but which doesn't suit me. I'm not. I'm not I'm I'm just not competitive. You know, I like trying really hard at stuff, but I really don't mind being, you know, second best or third best. I think that's that'll do for me. 

Speaker 

Yeah. 

Speaker 2 

And I I and I suppose my main competitiveness is with myself, I. He can't. He can't do anything about other people. You can sort yourself out. And that's kind of. 

Speaker 1 

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Speaker 2 

I want to feel like. Exceeding my expectations and I don't really care what that means. I'm. Not absorbing someone else. 

Speaker 1 

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a misjudgment people make about others all the time. If you're trying really hard at stuff, they imagine that you're competitive and actually you just might be trying really hard at stuff because you're, like, trying really hard at stuff you want to do stuff properly. 

Speaker 2 

Yeah. 

Speaker 1 

Yeah, but I think the one thing that the ICN that that I got from the ICN that I didn't get at Oxford is not a criticism of Oxford, it's. Had kind of grown up intellectually in Oxford, but I got a kind of a fresh start here and was given signals of what my value was here and I set up the TMS lab. And loads of collaborations. I think we did like 30 papers in the first two years of TMS and with people in the ICN I otherwise wouldn't have worked. You know. 

Speaker 2 

It's interesting to look back at that time now because it was, I wasn't there. But you say that the papers and the people, the stuff happening it's like it's been a phenomenal flourishing. 

Speaker 1 

Yeah. Yeah. And I, I don't think it stopped. It's really easy when you're part of something for a long time to think. You hear people say things like there's some are playing a band and we're going through a period like this at the moment where it's. Oh, well, it's not. It. You know, but, but well, marriages are like that. And businesses are like that. And research institutions like that. And bands are like that they evolve. Uh, but when we when I look at some of the people who we've hired over the past few years, if they'd have been here when I arrived, if I kind of went back in. Time machine. I'd have been just as terrified of them as I was of everybody. When I got here, yeah. 

Speaker 2 

And then you're still on the university. Royal Society , university fellowships. How did you look? How did things kind of evolve once you were here in terms of like, your, you know, how you're managing your academic? Funding and that kind of side of things. 

Speaker 1 

Yeah, I've never managed anything. Sophie. I'm not. Honest to God, it's always. It's always lunged from one thing to another. 

Speaker 2 

What you applied for? 

Speaker 1 

In a. 

Speaker 

Desperate sense, yeah. 

Speaker 1 

So after the Royal Society. I got a few grants and got. Some more Royal Society money, the best of which was the Royal Society Industry Fellowship. So as a 50%. University 50% Royal Society. Secondly, to industry and that's when I work with a company called the Magistim company. Paired by the Royal Society to help develop machines for TMS and depression. And that was that was a real eye opener to me. That's when I started getting involved in things much more outside of university because we have this ridiculous belief in universities. I realise that this is where all the smart people are and it isn't. 

Speaker 2 

Smart choice. 

Speaker 1 

So because of that roles that's industry fellowship, which I held for four years. I started to get involved in it, just just interested in what other people did in the domains and that included sports. It included the military, it included other industries and I started doing lots of different work with, with, with those kinds of people. And I think it's only in the last three or four years that I've been off some kind of external money and I'm now 100% UCL money, yeah. 

Speaker 2 

Can I ask a really boring technical question? When and how did you get UCL to under write your position? 

Speaker 1 

Yeah. 

Speaker 2 

You remember. 

Speaker 1 

I can and it's amazing to think about it. Uta kind of championed bringing me here. And. A letter came to me one day. I'd had no interviews. A letter came to me From Bob Lieberman. I'm embarrassed of us, yeah. 

Speaker 2 

Yes, yes. 

Speaker 1 

And it said it basically said. I'm sure I could dig the letter out. They said if you bring the next five years of your Royal society thing to UCL will underwrite you with a professorship at the end of it. And I thought, well, that's good. You know. And it terrifies me to think, you know. And at that time, anybody with a PhD. 50% of us could have a good shot at getting a faculty position. Now it's 5%. And it's difficult to explain to post docs now that that that kind of thing happened even. 

Speaker 2 

I remember going to somebody senior and saying, well, you know, I'd like to get my next some going to the welcome trust. I'd like to, you know, on a fellowship now. And I'd like to go for. And the next one up and I'd like to have my position underwritten and this person says, no, you can't, you’re junior, you need to, you know, someone like Rick Henson needs to be more like him. And I was like, I'm on the same fellowship as Rick Henson and this person said, no, you're not. They're on quite a prestigious fellowship from the welcome trust. And I said. 

Speaker 1 

Have. 

Speaker 2 

I'm on the same fellowship and it just would not have it. It was extraordinary. Well, obviously not. You can't be. So I just went to Lieberman. I just bypassed the stage altogether and got, but and now I'm kind of astounded at that chutspa. You know, I I I could have just, I mean, obviously. 

Speaker 1 

And then I have. GI. Well, I never met him. I never met him. 

Speaker 2 

It was very nice. 

Speaker 1 

It was Uta who broke the whole thing. 

Speaker 2 

Yeah. 

Speaker 1 

And and and. Said because genuinely. I've never had. There are certain kinds of ambition or expectation I've never had. If it'd have sent me a letter saying if you bring your five years, we'll give you another 5, I'd have thought, well, that sounds good too. I'll have that. But it didn't. It just said here we'll give you the whole capizzle. 

Speaker 

Yeah. Exactly. This. 

Speaker 1 

So yeah, I was really happy with that. 

Speaker 2 

Scooter, isn't it? I think serendipity gets a bad rap, but really can be a, you know, it's it's useful. When it appears in life and it's highly useful, I'm not saying serendipity. Obviously, Uta was working very hard for you, but you know it wasn't that you were setting. It wasn't. 

Speaker 

Yeah. 

Speaker 1 

I now realise, yeah, no idea at the time. 

Speaker 2 

Plan, you know? Yeah. I think that's something that I have no idea how. You know, we're not even really kind of touching on this in the podcast, but that that sense you get sometimes from senior people of like instead of because sometimes it feels like a very narrow, very shaky ladder that you're trying to climb and frequently Fingers seem to get stamped on from those up higher and every so often somebody reaches back and you get a hand appears and I can think like a couple of times that's happened to me. Dorothy Bishop's done that for me and Sue Iverson. 

Speaker 

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Speaker 2 

To that for. And it was really, yeah, phenomenal. And really. 

Speaker 1 

Sue did for me as well. Sue was fantastic, yeah. 

Speaker 2 

No, neither of them had any. You know, they had no dog in that fight. I was not working for them. I wasn't one of their people, and they were both phenomenally helpful and really, really important point, you know, and it really made a difference. Yeah. 

Speaker 1 

Yeah. I think Sue Sue was one of those people for me. John Hart, the the guy I met with when I was a nurse, he was definitely the first. And I often think if I hadn't have met John, I'd have no idea what would have would have happened. And then I think, gosh, if Alan Cowie hadn't have breezed by my office that day, I have no idea what would have, what would have happened. 

Speaker 

Yeah. 

Speaker 1 

And at the time that Uta was supporting me as well. It was it wasn't self-interest. She was disinterested. One of my main papers at the time was with John Stein on. Magna cellular theory of dyslexia. You know which Uta was stomping all over at the time, so it was real intellectual disinterest. Amazing. 

Speaker 2 

Yeah. Right. So it can be incredibly powerful and I think that's it's something I try and remember. Now I am one of those more senior People, it's, you know, you can play that role in people's lives, that it's worth being taking it seriously as part of your responsibility. 

Speaker 

Yeah. 

Speaker 1 

Yeah. And and it's hard enough and and actually the responsibility is great. 'cause I think even for someone like me, there were probably going to be other things might have opened up. Because 50% of us would end up with a faculty position, the question I think we have now is, is how do we all power PhDs to to move on and a few years ago, I I stopped taking PhD students who wanted to be scientists. Because I had experience of somebody coming through my lab and hitting a brick wall, and I hated it, and I realised that that we haven't thought this through and I think the spoke universities generally, what are we for now? At the undergraduate and postgraduate level. You know. At the postgraduate level. Some of my PhD students, so you know, professors all over the world. I jokingly say I was Heidi Johansson Bergs, a PhD supervisor and officially I was just smart enough, you know, never to meet with her and stay out of her way. But. 

Speaker 

Yeah. 

Speaker 1 

Other you know, David Pitcher and Silka Goebel in in in your Amanda Ellison in Durham. I used to know how to help people get the next the next position. Now I don't. I really don't. I really don't. I'm the oldest person. Vn, I've got 7 years to go, so the demographic is is tough for people as well. So I think we've got to ask what we're what we're offering people with a PhD and what kind of training we're we're offering them for. I'm not being negative about the intellectual life or an academic life, just that we have to be realistic. 

Speaker 2 

And I think when I was doing my phd a friend of mine who. I had a lovely chat, went off to work for Unilever, and then I could never understand how he held down the job. It was always like losing important papers 'cause he just was drunk on the way home and stopped to talk to a cat and fell asleep on the pavement. Kind of level somehow doing very well in Unilever. And he was like, oh, no, we love people with pH D's because you can do research. You can find things out you can. Problems and he said. And you can show that you can get a PhD yourself. And I think that kind of. Mark Wolport said we should we should think of scientists and particularly pHDS like pluripotent stem cell, there's so much else you can do with this and I'm really proud that some people I've worked with have gone off work, gone off into industry. They've gone off into translation, they've gone into sort of science. Public engagement or sort of science publishing. Or, you know, the public, the funding side. So it's and that's at the start of it. There's so much else you can do with this. And part of it was, you know, not these are all still ways of being scientists. You're not not a scientist. 

Speaker 1 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And. We're on the beginning to see these as acceptably successful destinations for pH D's, and I think. 

Speaker 2 

We should, we should be a lot more. 

Speaker 

Yeah, yeah. 

Speaker 2 

Well, you know, I don't think there's a continuing conversation about how we actually do this, but it is not something, you know, I can think of successful people who've moved back and forth between them. It's not impossible for this to happen and we. Talk about that. 

Speaker 1 

Yeah. And I think the model will change in the future. The deep mind is showing that you can have a different kind of model. But the way government funding is structured and welcome funding is structured, I think is showing that you're going to have to have a better facility for explaining your research to people other than the six other people in the world who care. To get it funded and to see the point of it. So although intrinsic interest and intellectual motivation should still be the prime movers, I think they used to be sufficient and I don't think they're that they're sufficient. Still necessary, but I I think we should be giving our our students a wider training and their undergraduate level. I'm really concerned with what what a university degree is for in the 21st century. 

Speaker 2 

And if we think about where you're at now? How how do you do you feel comfortable with how you kind of manage your work life balance? How's that kind of side of things change for you? 

Speaker 1 

I it. Work life balance. Well, like, yeah, let's call it a life work balance. I'm in the midst of changing every scenic person knows you have to reinvent yourself from from from time to time. Uh, so I did fantastic conversation a few years ago with Geraint Rees when he was the director here and I was frankly a little bit little bit lost. You know, you research there's some research programmes come to a bit of an end, you're not quite sure what to do next. 

Speaker 

He. 

Speaker 1 

Very smartly outlined, put in a nice little pile, all the things that I was good at and was told me what value they had, which was fantastic to hear. It was amazing that he thought through it. And so we put those in a little pile and then in a big. He pull the things. I was capable of doing to destroy myself. But in a really open, useful, helpful way. And it was because of that conversation with with Geraint that I started to restructure my. My research I was 48 at this time and and that was the first time I thought what should I do over the next five years. And I think without him thinking, thinking for me in that sense, I don't. I don't think I've been able to. 

Speaker 

Yeah. 

Speaker 1 

Umm. And that's when I started to do more applied research, which has worked out really well for me, but also it's when I started to take on the Bachelor of Arts and Science degree. Which? Michael Wortman and and Carl Gumbridge started up here and and that really excited me because I'd given up teaching for 15 years 'cause I kept having external money. I could buy myself out, and I'd given up because. 

Speaker 

Yeah. 

Speaker 1 

Psychology had become an A level and I hope you don't edit this out. It should not anywhere on this earth be an A level. 

Speaker 2 

I tell people not to do it. Yeah, do sciences, do maths? Do other things do other things? 

Speaker 1 

It's useless and it's intellectually fraudulent. But what I was teaching in Oxford, we used to get these fantastic students who'd come to university. Something that they'd clearly thought about because it wasn't an A level at school and almost overnight. 1A level psychology became a subject. We got students who were coming to university to do something they were good at. School. And they were immediately less interesting and more intellectually conservative. What? The Basque degree at UCL did was recreate that space where people who didn't want to give a parts didn't. Sciences could come and do stuff that they weren't necessarily good at at school. 

Speaker 2 

'Cause to be clear, this is a degree that I mean, it's more like something you could. In the US. 

Speaker 1 

It's, I call it liberal arts with teeth. 

Speaker 2 

You know, that's cool it liberal arts. So yeah. 

Speaker 1 

No sweet teeth. You know you're not allowed to to avoid quantitative subjects, you're not allowed to avoid the science that you measure in something. If you measure something to humanities, you have to do the sciences. If you measure the sciences, you have to do things from the humanities. And we have, I mean, I really do worry that a lot of degrees are not tooling up our. Students for the 21st century were, which is going to be the data century and you know you can it. It appalls me that you can still graduate from any university without any appreciation of statistical or mathematical thinking. I don't care what you do. Whether it's, you know, at history, looking at the data, looking at historical patterns, you're going to have to understand power laws, for example. We have great courses on the Basque called quantitative methods. I think they should be compulsory. It's not that you have to be able to do the maths, but at least be able to think through. And understand how other people think, statistically and mathematically, and the first person to deliver that course on the bus was Hannah Fry. 

Speaker 

Yeah. 

Speaker 1 

And so I've become really committed to the BASc. It's 40% of my my time at the moment. And I'd I'd like it to be more, but I think it really delivers what a degree should be in the 21st century. It tools you up for thinking. In an interdisciplinary way about, you know, whatever subjects it is that. You're doing. 

Speaker 2 

And personally it's working for you because you keep it's keeping your interests going, you're enjoying your teaching because they're doing something that's. 

Speaker 

Yeah. 

Speaker 1 

And and these kids, some of them, they're just amazing. I'll just give you an example of one challenge I gave to one. Someone came to me after a lecture and she said I'm really interested in your sleep work. That was something that I I started a few years ago. Got and something just told me that she was more than merely enthusiastic, so I threw her at 25 grammes worth of sleep kit that I didn't know how to work anymore because my PhD student had left. I said, can you get that working? And she got that working. And within 10 weeks of her first ten weeks at university. She was doing home sleep recordings from Colossal Genesis patients 10th week at university. That's the kind of quality of person where. 

Speaker 

Yeah. 

Speaker 1 

Were attracted. Umm. And yeah, they just filled me with enthusiasm and umm and give me a feeling that the world's in in good hands and they're super challenging as well. I, you know, in any lecture I might never get through my slides. Because the hands are in the air all the time. 

Speaker 

Yeah. 

Speaker 2 

That's what a degree should be. It's what worries you coming to university. 

Speaker 1 

Is what a degree should be. It really is and I think there are so many degrees. Uh, the challenge now is when I went to university, Google didn't exist, so you had to go because that's where the books were. You had to spend, you know, your evenings force copying everything. You were never going to read. The library. But now the challenge is what can we teach them that? Can't look up on Google. And I really don't mind saying, but I don't think a lot of teachers and a lot of university teachers and universities are up to that. What can we give them that they can't look up on Google? How do we teach them how to think? How do we teach them to think across disciplines? How do we get them to? To not be afraid of stepping across disciplinary boundaries. How do we get them to to to get ready to retool in the 21st century? You know, any of my school friends could look at a job and imagine it's going to be there for the next 30 years. But you can't do that now. You're going to have to. You're going to have to be really intellectually and psychologically fleet of. As the world moves much more quickly. So that's the kind of thing that I think challenge that I think we have at the BASc, yeah. 

Speaker 

Yeah. 

Speaker 2 

So that's a lot of work. It's not the only thing that's keeping you busy during your working life at UCL, but maybe we can come back to that, but I know it's not incredibly like a purely monastic life where one is offering an entire. 

Speaker 1 

Yeah. 

Speaker 2 

24/7 time to the university. What else do you do to make it work for you? 

Speaker 1 

Yeah. So I, yeah, I'm definitely not a workaholic. I think. I think all that sounded as if so I have this way. You know, it's funny. I said I I I was 34 before I. Lectures. What I always try and do now is is when I'm discussing anything, just make the very best case I can and I've got. I realise I've been told I've got this habit of sounding certain and and there was somebody who asked me a few months ago. She said, do you ever do self doubt? I thought are you. Are you kidding me? It's like all I'm trying to do is. Something through. And and even if it sounds convincing, I might not believe it myself. But no, I'm not a workaholic. I'm sure it sounded like I was. Yeah, no, I I've always been very sporty and I'm I I train for rock climbing. I do it a lot of rock climbing. 

Speaker 2 

Though it's important not to be. There's yeah. 

Speaker 1 

I've been dragged up El Capitan by a few younger friends. 

Speaker 

And. 

Speaker 1 

I had some great experiences. Out there and. I play in the London Gay Big band. 

Speaker 2 

What's your play? 

Speaker 1 

I play trumpet. I I played for about a year at school. The coordinate ahead, the coordinate I'd come out in a hive if I even hear a. Band. Can I can smell the stale beer and farts of the brass band I? 

Speaker 2 

My parents found brass music really rousing, I slightly, erotically terrifying for me. But but. 

Speaker 1 

Music I and and I love the the the, the old musicals that black and white, Saturday morning musicals Freddie. Starring Ginger Rogers. So. But the reason I I I took up a trumpet. Two reasons. One is I remember. A student in Oxford who at Grade 8 at the French or which seemed like stratospheric to me and I said, what do you know? What do you play? Said I I don't play anymore. I didn't think there was any point in going any further and I realised that he'd done music like people do. I don't know geography. If that's not an insult to geography at school. 

Speaker 2 

Yeah. 

Speaker 1 

And I just wanted to punch him. How can you do that with music? And the other time was when I had lunch with Alan Cowie on the day of his retirement. And I asked him what he was going to do next. And and I realised in talking to him just how much of his life he'd put into science, I mean, you know, he he he discovered and mapped V2 and. And and V5 and and it all sort of incredible things. I just realised that I didn't want to do do that much. So at the age of Forty 2, I thought, what can I do that I can get better at for the rest of my life? And then I took up the Trumpet. And I think it's the only thing I've what I love about it is it's the only thing I've ever done that I think I've done properly from start to finish. Everything else has been kind of haphazard. Going to night school, finding a career ending. In Alan Cowie's lab. But the trumpet's, the one thing that I've kind of, and I practise an hour a day. Every day we've played pride for the past eight years. We played Ronnie Scott's two gigs last year. We've done Berlin Pride, we've done. 

Speaker 2 

Come on. Come on. The big one. The big one. The television one. 

Speaker 1 

All sorts of things. 

Speaker 

Oh yeah, we did. 

Speaker 1 

Britain's Got Talent and we got the semi finals of Britain, Got Talent. 

Speaker 2 

That's not nothing that is fairly. 

Speaker 1 

Actually that was interesting because that's live and one of the things that I developed working with sports and other groups. Umm, the performance under pressure and it was. I was thinking then there are 8 million viewers watching this right now. You know, if you've got into your trumpet, it's going to get an artist. So yeah, I enjoyed that for all sorts of reasons. 

Speaker 2 

And actually, I'm playing on your. Yeah, it's it's a completely different thing, isn't it? I mean, being in a band is is. 

Speaker 1 

Yeah, yeah, I. Do not I do not want to play my? I do not want to be a just saw those kind of thing. My fantasy is is just to be at the back of a soul band occasion going. Doo Doo. Doo. Yeah, I did. Apply for one of those a few few years ago. In fact, I know it's exactly 5 years ago and I can tell you why I'm 58 now. It's 53 and it said you've got to be able to play this kind of music. You've got to transport. You've got to be able to rehearse on Thursday evenings in Brixton. You've got to, you know all your Otis Reading and stuff like that. I've got great work for it and it's that nobody over 35. I thought, oh, I've got the numbers the wrong way around. I'm 53. So yeah, between sport and and I'm addicted to probably go to a minimum of of a couple of gigs a week. That includes musicals. I've seen almost all the musicals on on the West End there. My kind of big addiction. And my fret. Trumpet teacher. Was in the LP always wipes in the LPO, so I got to gigs all the time. Yeah. 

Speaker 

I. 

Speaker 2 

Think something that I hadn't occurred to me because. 'M not to the same level of expertise as you, but for me it was doing stand up comedy which I'd never ever done until I was 44 and the first time I did it I thought I want to do that again. I want. I want to get good at this and it was a revelation to me that you could get a new skill. At what felt like an extremely like, this is a very solidified part of life and. Not and it's. 

Speaker 1 

Yeah, yeah. 

Speaker 2 

It was really, really, really rewarding to me. In addition to actually doing the things I enjoy just to actually kind of have a new thing in my life and a new thing to get on top of and see where, you know, distinct goals, I could go for things I could manage. 

Speaker 

Yeah. 

Speaker 1 

I sometimes say that the crisis in education isn't in in schools. It's in middle age because people think that they can't do any more. They can't develop any more. But the skill that we have got and I think for myself because of my own route into things, the skill that the skill that I've developed is, is learning how to learn. So we we can keep up with with we can not keep up with the rest of which young people can learn, but we can learn things in a really useful way. It's funny when I took up rock climbing, nobody ever said. Why bother? You're never going to SIM Everest. But when I set up the trumpet, people said, why bother? You're never going to be any good. And. 

Speaker 2 

Like it's not in and of itself an enjoyable thing. 

Speaker 

Yeah. 

Speaker 2 

To do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Speaker 1 

Exactly, exactly. It was a really, really strange thing. It doesn't always work. One of the things I've failed to do my whole life is learn a foreign language. My mum's Italian. But she stopped speaking Italian when she came to England. She said. If you're living at a country, you speak at Ian Glaze and she brought us up speaking very poor English. Umm, so when we did the bask started Carl Comrich and I decided we would show our students that we were committed to lifelong interdisciplinary learning. So I sat in on beginners French with my students for two years and came bottom. 

Speaker 

I just. 

Speaker 1 

Can't do it. I and I do now officially give up on trying to learn a. Language oh there. 

Speaker 2 

We go. There's something that's that's promising. Now. It's not that you're not going to all faces, you know. 

Speaker 

Oh. 

Speaker 2 

I'm gonna let you go. 'cause. That's done an amazing job. But is there anything else that you'd like to add? Is there? Is there anything that you you know, if you had your time again? 

Speaker 

OK. 

Speaker 2 

You do anything differently? No, I. 

Speaker 1 

I'm things just. Things just happened as as as they have, there's never been any plans. Some people say don't you wish that you'd gone to a better school and you know, because you could have got a levels and things. But I don't know, I found. Because you have to do things your your own way you find out. You find out what what your own style is, and sometimes I worry about our students. Who? Are very. So let examined rather than educated, and they've learned how to pass exams rather than how to think and how. Explore and. And and and how to go about finding things out? So no, I think I was forced to learn how to find things out. I just feel like if. Have handed this to me when I was an 18 year old in in Auburn. I'd have snapped your hands off, so no. 

Speaker 2 

And I think one of the things that's it's like amazing and terrifying about coming through academia, even though it's not where you stay, is that actually there is. Everybody is kind of taking the next best step. What seems right now because actually you can't have a plan, you can't guarantee the jobs, you can't guarantee the funding. So in fact even and there's so many different pathways, people take and different kinds of help or different sorts of structures. But even like you and me being on research money for a long time before you move on to HEFCE funding, it gives you a completely different trajectory. 

Speaker 1 

Yeah. 

Speaker 

Yeah. 

Speaker 2 

He's been like, I can't, you know, some my contemporaries went straight into lectureships after their pH DS, and that was their career. And they have successful careers. But there's almost no superficial, you know, similarity to mine at. 

Speaker 1 

Yeah, yeah. All. Yeah, I think it's easier. One of the things, although I've never had a plan myself. I. I kind of almost insist that my own students think further ahead than I did just because I I genuinely think it's tougher. I genuinely think it. I was lucky to land on my feet in ways that might not be possible again. And I just might because I don't understand the the way the world is and there might be other ways of. On. Feet. But if they haven't got a plan, then at least I'm I'm trying to halfway think of 1/4 of them I. 

Speaker 

No. 

Speaker 2 

Suppose the main thing I try and do and this is I'm not none of it's right. I mean this is just. Thing I worry about with mine is making sure they've got. They'll all come out with very different skills. 'cause no one does the same PhD, but they they've got something. Something that will give them an edge, something that will be something no one else has got, or some combination of things. And that's, you know, they've they've got something that will. They'll stand out in some way. 

Speaker 1 

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. What's their identity? Yeah. 

Speaker 2 

Yeah. And that they enjoy that, they'll find it fulfilling because you know you're never going to get a PhD if you don't like it, you know, it's bossing no one else. 

Speaker 1 

Yeah. Yeah. Makes you do it, you know? Yeah, no, that's exactly 1 of my strategies as well that, that, that the PhD student at the end of it has an intellectual identity and an ownership of what they've. What they've done. 

Speaker 2 

Yeah. Yeah, that's. So thank you very, very much. I can't, I mean the one I was really hoping we could get you for this because I. 

Speaker 1 

You out from. 

Speaker 2 

It's it's really important to hear, you know, someone who's kind of entered very different route and then had an outstanding academic career and also managed to kind of keep things fresh. And also has to have a life outside. Designer is extremely rewarding. So thank you very much. Thank you, Vince Wilks, thank you. 

Speaker 1 

Thanks a lot. Thank you.