Archives for May 2016

Photonics & Friends – Interview with SPIE CEO

SPIE is the international society for optics and photonics and Spark Science got the CEO to come to the Spark Radio studios for an interview.

We talk about what the heck photonics is, spying with film and student chapters worldwide. Spark Science even calls into Hsinchu, Taiwan to talk to some wonderful SPIE chapter members.

Enjoy our show on how the world is affected by LIGHT.

Click Here for Transcript

[? Blackalicious rapping Chemical Calisthenics ?]

? Neutron, proton, mass defect, lyrical oxidation, yo irrelevant
? Mass spectrograph, pure electron volt, atomic energy erupting
? As I get all open on betatron, gamma rays thermo cracking
? Cyclotron and any and every mic
? You’re on trans iridium, if you’re always uranium
? Molecules, spontaneous combustion, pow

? Law of de-fi-nite pro-por-tion, gain-ing weight
? I’m every element around

(Dr. Regina) Welcome to Spark Science. I’m Regina Barber DeGraaff, I’m an educator, pop culture enthusiast, lover of photonics, even though I don’t know what it totally is but I know I use it. I’m here with my co-host Jordan Baker who just came back from vacation. How are you doing?

(Jordan) I’m excellent. I was just in Cabo San Lucas. Which is a little ways away from San Jose del Cabo.

(Regina) Really?

(Jordan) So you get them mixed up. I got lost on the road a couple of times.

(Regina) Right. So you are an improv entertainer, butcher, lover of music, and all that is true.

(Jordan) Yep.

(Regina) Do you know what photonics is?

(Jordan) Isn’t that like hieroglyphics?

(Regina) It’s not.

(Jordan) Oh.

(Regina) The purpose of today’s show is to find out what it is, how it benefits our life and also about Bellingham’s involvement in photonics and SPIE and what that is. We’re here, joined today by our guest Dr. Eugene Arthurs. Welcome.

(Dr. Arthurs) Thank you.

(Regina) You are the CEO of SPIE. First of all, what does SPIE stand for?

(Dr. Arthurs) We can’t tell anybody that.

(Regina) [Laughing.] I know! I noticed that. Also, about photonics, before we go into your life, we’ll go into that too.

(Dr. Arthurs) Well, photonics is the science and technology of anything to do with photons.

(Regina) So almost everything now.

(Dr. Arthurs) Radio waves, light waves, X-Rays, and so on. It’s a very, very broad science. Our society, which is about 19 thousand members is almost as big as the American Physical Society.

(Regina) Really?

(Dr. Arthurs) Yes.

(Regina) Wow. And what about the age of the society? Which one is older?

(Dr. Arthurs) We’re probably a bit younger I think. I think, it’s an interesting question that you ask about societies, what’s their future, because, I think most of the scientific societies are populated at the top level by people even older than me if you can imagine that Regina.

(Regina) I can.

(Dr. Arthurs) Earlier on you said . . .

(Jordan) I can’t.

(Regina) You’re very young.

(Dr. Arthurs) Earlier you said how at the turn of the century you started teaching and I felt like a dinosaur.

(Regina) No! [Laughing.]

(Dr. Arthurs) But then somebody said that dinosaurs ruled the earth for a very long time.

(Regina) It’s true. So you have power in that.

(Dr. Arthurs) Yes.

(Regina) I say that I went to Western Washington University at the turn of the century because I find that funny but the 18 year olds don’t and they have no idea what I’m talking about. They’re like, “Yes you did.” But you’re right, when I was growing up, turn of the century meant 1900, not 2000. Yes. [Laughing.] So, tell me your best description of where did the term SPIE, or the letters, where did those come from at the very start of the society?

(Dr. Arthurs) More than 60 years ago, it was the time when rockets were being tested. We had imported a lot of the German rocket experts and kept them in the desert down in New Mexico. The air space industry was in southern California. As in all sort of science and technology, things were progressing by failures and so on. Somebody figured out that maybe if they could photograph the rockets in flight, they could actually learn more about what was going on. It would provide more information than going out and finding the debris field.

(Regina) [Laughing.] Yes.

(Dr. Arthurs) I mean, people had this vision that all of the sudden we made rockets fly and knew all about them, but it took a long, long time and a lot of rockets hitting the earth where they weren’t supposed to.

(Regina) Just like Space-X now.

(Dr. Arthurs) Or North Korea.

(Regina) Yeah, OK. [Laughing.] They don’t get our podcast. They probably do.

(Dr. Arthurs) So, there were some engineers in the area that were into optics and things like that, that were given this task. All we know today and with all electronic imagining and things like that, it sounds like a fairly simple task. But, you have to go back 60+ years and think about what cameras were like then and what high speed cameras were like.

(Regina) Right.

(Dr. Arthurs) Actually, they had to design these cameras that pulled rolls of film through very quickly and very precisely.

(Regina) Wouldn’t they catch on fire then?

(Dr. Arthurs) No, they managed to do it without catching them on fire as far as we know. They really looked around for some body or some organization where they could be part of and learn which is what scientific communities are all about, learning from others. Apparently, no one would have them.

(Regina) You mean like APS wouldn’t have them?

(Dr. Arthurs) They were too engineering for APS.

(Jordan) ABS?

(Regina) APS association, so American . . .

(Dr. Arthurs) The American physical society.

(Regina) Totally wrong. [Laughing.]

(Jordan) Alright.

(Regina) I was part of it at one point. American physical society. Yep.

(Dr. Arthurs) So, they start their own organization. The Society of Photographic Instrumentation and Engineers.

(Regina) Ah!

(Dr. Arthurs) They actually had some ties with Hollywood back then. Because someone said their cameras were all that interesting. So they started their own society, they used to meet in somebody’s house and that was half a dozen of them. Then a dozen, eventually about a year or two later they started to have a conference as we would call it. Where people would come in and talk about the problems they were experiencing.

(Regina) OK.

(Dr. Arthurs) It actually, the very precise cameras and films were rather important also for aerial reconnaissance.

(Regina) Oh. [Laughing.]

(Dr. Arthurs) A lot of the people who got into this society early on, joined companies like iTech in Massachusetts now long gone, and provided the camera systems that went up on the U-2 and the first ones that went up in satellites.

(Regina) Wow. So you had like a very, well, I was going to say military association with SPIE, but they were private companies too right?

(Dr. Arthurs) Oh yeah. There were to some extent military companies but I think people in the US don’t realize how much actually science is funded by the department of defense.

(Regina) If you’re in science you know.

(Dr. Arthurs) In science you know. But a lot of the devices we take for granted including the wonderful internet, came from department of defense funding. A lot of medicine, modern medicine comes from defense funding. I know some people have difficulties with this but this is how it worked in the United States.

The initial pictures that were taken say of Cuba for example, they were taken by satellites or high flying aircraft. The ones from satellite they were all taken on film. These satellites, all very precise mechanics, they had to eject the canister of film from the satellite so it came down through the atmosphere and was caught by special planes with big gay basket type wings.

(Regina) What?

(Dr. Arthurs) Yes.

(Jordan) Wait, and this is all in the New Mexico desert?

(Dr. Arthurs) Oh no, this has moved from the New Mexico desert to the satellites going around the earth, flying over the earth. Places like Cuba where there were odd things going on perhaps back in the early 60s.

(Regina) And in the air there are just basket planes?

(Dr. Arthurs) Yeah.

(Regina) This sounds so, like, cartoonish. This sounds so crazy but it really happened.

(Dr. Arthurs) It really happened. I mean, I think a lot of the technology of a moving filament and things like that helped the Hollywood things like that as well. The original logo for SPIE actually was made up of a filium sprocket.

(Regina) Oh.

(Dr. Arthurs) But, you can imagine that there was some pressure to get away from this model. Between the people who wanted to get pictures from space and the people who wanted to get pictures of space, there was a big push towards electronic imaging that we all take for granted now as we all carry sophisticated ones around on our phones.

(Regina) We all have a connection to space.

(Dr. Arthurs) Yeah.

[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]

? Early late at night
? I wander off into a land
? You can go, but you mustn’t tell a soul

(Regina) Welcome back to Spark Science where we’re talking to Dr. Eugene Arthurs about photonics. We were just talking about how you first discovered lasers, right?

(Dr. Arthurs) Yes.

(Jordan) He didn’t discover it.

(Dr. Arthurs) I did not discover lasers. [Laughing.] That’s a whole other question and difficult.

(Jordan) [Laughing.]

(Dr. Arthurs) The first laser was operated by Ted Maiman in 1960.

(Regina) This is a good segue, my error gets us into the segue. So yes, 1960.

(Dr. Arthurs) There’s a lot of dispute over where the ideas came from but that seems to be science in general.

(Regina) Right.

(Dr. Arthurs) Then, somebody gets the Nobel Prize. It’s not necessarily the truth but it settles it.

(Regina) Right. For Wikipedia’s sake.

(Dr. Arthurs) Going back to the days of the dinosaurs. I have a picture here actually that you would be interested in.

(Regina) Ah.

(Dr. Arthurs) Which is in black and white because that was the pictures in those days. 1969.

(Jordan) Oh, you had horns then.

(Dr. Arthurs) Our laser group in Belfast, which was one of the biggest laser groups in Europe at the time, but what you will notice about this picture is, everybody’s wearing a shirt and tie just like the labs today.

(Regina) Sarcasm listeners.

(Dr. Arthurs) [Laughing.] There are no females, none whatsoever in this group of 70 or so physicists and support people.

(Regina) I think there are a couple of non-Irish people.

(Dr. Arthurs) There are a few non-Irish people yes.

(Regina) But no women.

(Dr. Arthurs) It’s remarkably homogenous. No women.

(Regina) For our listeners, we’ll take a picture of this and post it on our Instagram.

(Dr. Arthurs) Today woman in particular find this insulting but I can’t go back and change history.

(Regina) No. I don’t think you controlled it either.

(Dr. Arthurs) No, actually the following year, to the shock and horror of a lot of administrates, a women did join the group.

(Regina) And she bought a tie and shirt probably. [Laughing.]

(Dr. Arthurs) And now, I would think we have, uh, maybe up to 20% women who are members of SPIE.

(Regina) That’s pretty good. I think 20% is the average for physics.

(Dr. Arthurs) Yeah. A lot of them are coming into what is, for us an increasingly dominant area, the biomedical side of photonics. Medical imagining meaning really advanced X-Ray technology as I said from my, first of all, what’s desirable there is they don’t want you getting a big dose of X-Rays. So, people today get an X-Ray image taken with much less exposure to X-Rays.

The images now are on a digital imager. So, instead of having a big sheet of film, but a digital imager on a screen and some of the interesting challenges are around automatically, without using people at all, picking out lesions or whatever that are on that image. Which of course radiologists don’t particularly like.

Also, the ability to digitize images and send them over the internet has already hurt the radiologists of the US because some of the images you are taken of you in the hospital, are read in India, for example. The results are sent back so you can have them the next day.

(Regina) Right.

(Dr. Arthurs) That’s one more traditional, we’re all familiar with the various imaging modalities but also the use of light in medicine is rather important. When you go in and give blood or something like that or a sample or whatever, it’s usually light that is used to analyze that in a device called a spectrophotometer, which you’re probably very familiar with.

(Regina) I know this skill, excellent! [Laughing.]

(Dr. Arthurs) But, they increasingly now, people are using light without having to take a sample and send it off to a lab. They can actually increasingly use light in the clinic itself to do diagnosis. Increasingly sensitive diagnosis. The entire genome, genomics which is revolutionizing medicine, is based on light.

If you took one of the machines that actually read your genome, which allows the physician to customize the treatment for you, inside that box is full of lasers, light detectors, and so on. So light is everywhere you might say, in medicine particularly. One of the pioneers of our society that actually led us into biomedical to some extent, was a Britton chance that died about a year or two ago at the age of 100. He was still out doing research.

(Regina) Wow.

(Dr. Arthurs) One of the interesting research studies that he did was using inferred light to enter the brain without having to take the top off or anything like that.

(Jordan) [Laughing.] That was graphic. You did a head slicing motion on the top of your head.

(Regina) If only we had video.

(Dr. Arthurs) It goes, passes through the skull, and he could tell by the signals received back, the brain activity. This was being and will be applied more and more to a whole lot of things such as, our children are learning, he did some experiments with that. You can improve learning actually, since it’s not damaging radiation, inferred, its fine to use it a lot.

But also, some people are interested in using it in airports and things like that so that they can tell the tension level of someone without them even knowing or being probed.

(Regina) I can just imagine where this is going.

(Jordan) Yeah, right?

(Regina) This is scary. What if there’s just nervous people out there?

(Jordan) You mentioned airports. The X-Ray machine that they have now that you were talking about earlier, does that go somewhere else like India and then it’s read? Or is there someone on site that knows?

(Dr. Arthurs) No. They have to read that in real time. That’s something that they can’t be, “Oh, we let a guy through yesterday and he was carrying a hand gun.” That’s real time results. There’s X-Rays. X-Rays have their draw back in that you’re exposure should be limited to X-Rays, your cumulative exposure. But, there’s long wave systems as well that are used. You stand and hold your hands up and all that stuff that is not damaging radiation.

(Regina) That’s a good question.

(Dr. Arthurs) For these gentlemen, you said they were in Hsinchu right? That is actually where something that our society has been very active in, lithography, which is the way to print computer chips. In their city is the most advanced plants in the world for printing computer chips. They all use light to do that. Laser light, actually.

(Regina) My master’s thesis was about polymers and lithigracy, uh, lithography.

(Jordan) I don’t think it actually was.

(Regina) It was!

(Jordan) You can’t even say it.

(Regina) I know right? [Laughing.] It was computationally modeling thin film polymers and etching things in there, and talking about the glass transition. So, you bring it to a certain temperature and it no longer is hard and you can’t write in it anymore. So . . .

(Dr. Arthurs) The dentist would be very interested in that. You see them using light for hardening polymers right? Cross linking polymers for light is used everywhere. It’s used on your magazine covers, it’s used on a lot of flooring, floor tiles, and I mean, a dentist is a small example where they put polymer on your teeth and they harden it with a little UV thing.

(Regina) That’s awesome. Can you tell us a little bit about how student chapters came about, before we talk to our lovely guest that we called in Taiwan? But before we talk about that, I want to talk about how they got started, these student chapters.

(Dr. Arthurs) That’s before my time.

(Jordan) [Laughing.]

(Dr. Arthurs) Actually, interestingly, probably for these gentlemen too, the idea of chapters for anything is a US cultural idea.

(Regina) Is it?

(Dr. Arthurs) Yes.

(Regina) [Laughing.] I had no idea.

(Dr. Arthurs) So when we try to explain that to our academic members in Asia, they said, “What are you talking about?”

(Regina) [Laughing.]

[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]

? There’s a world inside
? Where dreamers meet each other
? Once you go, it’s hard t come back
? Let me paint your canvas as you dance

? Dance in the trees
? Paint mysteries
? The magnificent droid plays there
? Your magic mind
? Makes love to mine
? I think I’m in love, angel

(Regina) So, um, first of all how many chapters does SPIE have?

(Dr. Arthurs) We now have about 300 student chapters.

(Regina) Are they on every continent?

(Dr. Arthurs) Not Antarctica, I don’t think we’ve got one there yet.

(Regina) Well, penguins are slow. So.

(Jordan) We’re still waiting.

(Regina) [Laughing.]

(Dr. Arthurs) Before student chapters, we actually had local chapters. We don’t have them anymore. Pre internet they were very useful gatherings of people in various cities. I was actually a president of a local chapter in Connecticut where people would gather once a month or something like that, interested in various aspects of optical technology. We’d have a speaker in. That might be the only place where you would pick up specialist knowledge or at a society meeting.

Then, along came the internet and their value went down. Out of that, I think, came student chapters to really help the students interact. The society brings in maybe, 200+ student chapter leaders each year to our meeting in San Diego. For many of them, this is their first time ever in the United States. Their first time at a meeting, a scientific meeting.

It’s really quite heartening to see people from Ukraine interact with the people from Taiwan and learn about each other. I think scientific meetings, the value of them, is somewhat underrated in the days of the internet.

In my own case, my supervisor, one of the questions was about how you really decided on your career. You choose your supervisor. You choose a supervisor that has your interests at heart, not just using you to publish papers. Sorry if any of the academics would be offended by this.

My supervisor, I was talking actually to a former colleague of 40 something years or so, insisted that we go to conferences. That’s a wonderful experience I think for young scientists and a wonderful opportunity.

(Regina) Right.

(Dr. Arthurs) If I was starting over again, I would ensure I got a supervisor like that who was really at a record of sending his students or her students to conferences and have them present the work and have given them that opportunity.

(Regina) So, with that, because I agree with everything you just said, it builds their confidence and helps them network, I think that kind of stuff should be focused on also with how good your science is.

(Dr. Arthurs) We’re all obviously not in politics today right?

(Regina) Some of us are and we don’t even know it.

(Jordan) Science people can always use help with their social skills right?

(Regina) That’s right.

(Jordan) [Laughing.]

(Dr. Arthurs) Yes.

(Regina) It’s true. We should focus on it. So, we have called in to students at the SPIE chapter in, I’m going to try to say it like my mom says it, Hsinchu. Yes! My mom corrected me like, 20 times.

(Dr. Arthurs) I’m sorry, I said Henshu and that’s, because of the way it’s spelled right? In the west?

(Regina) She’s like, “What H? There’s no H there!” [Laughing.] So, yeah, H-S-I… I’m not going to try again. I went to visit the student chapter in Taiwan and they invited me to do a talk. They’re wonderful students. I’m going to let them introduce themselves. Their name and their major and then I will let whatever order you would all like to ask your questions, you can decide. You can ask your questions and Dr. Arthurs will hopefully be able to answer them.

(Porchu) OK let’s start from, I am Porchu Chin [sp?] I’m am the research assistant in liquid crystal lab. I also am the secretary of our student chapter.

(Dr. Arthurs) Thank you for doing that.

(Porchu) [Laughing.] I think what you are talking about, to choose the right supervisor that are willing to send the students to conference is a pretty great idea. Our supervisor does just that to us and, um, I’m wondering about, can you tell us about the challenges in photonics and optics in the next 10-20 years?

(Dr. Arthurs) I think actually I would use opportunities for optics and photonics because you’re at a very good time to be entering the field. I was with the president of the Max Planck Society about a week ago. He said that if he was starting his career, he also is of my generation, he said if he was starting his career in science, he would go into photonics because there is so much obvious opportunity. I call it the rise of the photon. Permians [sp?] that underpin the last century, the electrons, the electronics are running into rather serious limits. I think photons will help to get around a good number of those limits in communication and computing and so on. I don’t think we know exactly how yet, but you’ll be part of answering that question.

(Porchu) Yeah yeah yeah. I’m especially interested in the optical computer. Can you tell me more about the optical computer? Since the Moors law is . . .

(Dr. Arthurs) The whole concept of optic competing is somewhat controversial. There are some that take the very strong position that optic competing will never happen. I do not believe that.

I would remind them that Lord Kelvin, the famous physicist, who actually spent some time in my university in Belfast when he was active in research and physics, is known to have said, “Heavier than air machines will never fly.” You can spend a lot of time actually, mocking predictions of people who said things would not happen.

Optical competing I believe will happen. Will it be some of the techniques, will it emerge from silicon photonics? I don’t know. Will it emerge from some of the liquid crystal STMs or something like that? Perhaps.

There’s a company in the UK working in that direction to do it. I don’t think we’ll see it in the next decade but I also don’t think it will be like a joke about fusion. Fusion, we will have fusion in 50 years. They were saying that when I joined the university almost 50 years ago and they’re saying it today.

I don’t think that’s true of optical competing. I think you’re talking about, maybe 20, 25 years. I think it’s going to be necessary because the electron, Moore’s law is really grinding to a halt. It shouldn’t be called Moore’s Law. It was somebody’s back of the envelope, Gordon Moore’s back of the envelope.

(Regina) Can we elaborate on what Moore’s Law is for our listeners?

(Dr. Arthurs) Gordon Moore way back in the 60s who was with Intel, one of the co-founders of Intel, on the back of an envelope at some meeting predicted that the number of transistors on a chip, on a computer chip, would double every year. Which it did for a while, and then every 18 months. And that the cost would come down by a factor of 2 per year. Having that as sort of a guideline really drove the semi-conductor industry to do absolutely unthinkable things. I mean, I don’t know the number of people. When I actually came over to a company in the United States called Quantronics, which none of you have ever heard of, we were in the semi-conductor business doing a little bit of lithography. The CEO said, “Optical lithography is dead.” This is 1980. He was not alone in that.

A lot of people thought optical lithography was finished but that community in the 35-36 years since has really done what people then could not even imagine. But, fundamentally now, we’re running into a limitation because of the electrons being used. So, Moore’s law, Intel has slowed on Moore’s law. They were really one of the big drivers as is TSMC in Shinshu, and Samsung. Yeah.

(Porchu) [Laughing.] Yeah. The three [inaudible.]

(Dr. Arthurs) And Samsung. They’re actually, it’s so expensive now that those three names are really the only players driving it. The semi-conductor industry 20, 30 years ago, had many, many players. Many companies.

(Porchu) [Inaudible.]

(Dr. Arthurs) Since that and with the progress in technology, it has become so expensive that there’s only about three players of any significance left. Intel, Samsung, Shunshu [sp?], and TSMC.

(Regina) Cool.

(Dr. Arthurs) There will be, I’m sure as optical competing develops, there will be whole new different companies of all sizes for a while until perhaps 50 years from now, that too will be consolidating into a few major players. You say optical competing by the way. All the people are talking about quantum competing of different kinds. Some people are thinking that beyond silicon you will actually have biocomputers.

(Porchu) Biocomputers?

(Dr. Arthurs) Yes.

(Porchu) Wow that’s crazy.

(Dr. Arthurs) DNA is competing.

(Regina) I know nothing about any biology computers. I’ve never heard of that.

(Dr. Arthurs) I think, I really do believe that a photonics, who the spread, offers many, many career opportunities.

(Porchu) You’re waiting for us to create.

(Dr. Arthurs) Yes, exactly.

[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]

? Take me back to Wondaland
? I gotta get back to Wondaland
? Take me back to Wondaland
? Me thinks she left her underpants

? The grass grows inside
? The music floats you gently on your toes
? Touch the nose, he’ll change your clothes to tuxedos
? Don’t freak and hide
? I’ll be your secret santa, do you mind?
? Don’t resist
? The fairygods will have a fit
? We should dance

? Dance in the trees
? Paint mysteries
? The magnificent droid plays there
? Your magic mind
? Makes love to mine
? I think I’m in love, angel

(Mike) So, I’m Mike Chung and I’m now a PhD student here in [inaudible] university. I’m also working in a crystal lab. I’m the former president of our chapter here.

(Dr. Arthurs) Thank you for doing that.

(Mike) The outreach chair of our chapter so I do some outreach program. Last year, I think last year 2015, is the year of light right?

(Dr. Arthurs) Yes.

(Mike) We have a lot of activity all around the world. I would like to ask Dr. Eugene, what did you learn from international?

(Dr. Arthurs) It was a remarkable year of being able to sort of see how important light photonics is in life in general. I think it was quite eye opening for some people in that. The realization of the role it played. Of course, we wouldn’t be here but for light from the sun.

(Mike) Yes.

(Dr. Arthurs) To start with. Now we’re trying to really, instead of using the light from the sun that came over in over the millennia and created all the fossil fuels, we’re trying to get more direct use of the light with less environmental consequences. I think one of the, there are a couple of other things about the year that were quite striking. The realization of who had contributed to our knowledge of light throughout the ages has, I think, been changed somewhat.

There was a, for the first time in parts of the West, a realization of some of the work done in China. I’m not going to pronounce it right but Mohi or Mozi’s Cannon actually contains some early work on reflection and imaging and light. There was a big emphasis on the year of light on the contribution by the Islamic scientists. Particularly Alhazem, as he is known in the west, who was in Basra or somewhere like that, and wrote actually what is considered by many, the first book of light. Some of his students actually did things that Newton got credited with.

(Mike) So it’s not Newton.

(Dr. Arthurs) Yes. Things like the breaking of white light into colors and so on, that was done way back by the Arab scientists before Newton. We’re quite Western centric so everything is seen through a specific cultural constraint, OK? I think also, one of the striking lessons was light poverty.

(Mike) Light poverty? What’s that?

(Dr. Arthurs) Light poverty. We are here in the West and our astronomy community are very, very upset that there is too much light at night. They wanted the international year of light to be about dark skies.

(Regina) Because of light pollution?

(Dr. Arthurs) Because of light pollution. If you look actually at the campus map of the United States at night put together by some NASA scientists, you actually see not just a map of light but you see an economic map of the world.

It is really, in a way, a shim on us humans that today when those of us in some countries are so profited in the use of light and other resources and there’s more than a billion people in the world who have no light. Many of them using kerosene lamps today, which are dangerous not just because they topple over and start fires, there’s a lot of deaths in that, but having a kerosene lamp inside a dwelling is really quite unhealthy but it’s the only form of lighting that almost a billion people have.

In this day, when we have solar energy and LEDs, they all should have at minimal cost today, but still, you see the children in these homes who are grouped around a little kerosene lamp to try and study. That’s really their way to the future, to study and be educated, they can only use that lamp for a short time and their health is suffering. They don’t know it but that’s the reality.

There’s a lot of focus on that for the first time during the international year of light. It had sort of gone unnoticed and the fact that the international year of light was global, it brought up things like that throughout the world. Plus, there was a lot of celebration of light as well and it’s various applications throughout the world. That was a very positive thing.

I think many of the people working in light for the first time began to have a sense that they were part of a huge enterprise that is making the world better for people.

[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]

? Take me back to Wondaland
? I gotta get back to Wondaland
? Take me back to Wondaland
? Me thinks she left her underpants

? This is your land
? This is my land
? We belong here
? Stay the night

(Howard) My name is Howard John. I was studying the nanophotonics plasmonics [inaudible.] I would like to ask and I hope, what can SPIE do more, these foundations can not only in the researching applications or maybe some collaborations maybe with the [inaudible] or can it maybe have some any other else? Yeah. I think I’m very wondering what can we do more? [Laughing.] Thank you.

(Regina) Thank you.

(Dr. Arthurs) One of the questions that came across in advance was about science and politics and sort of trying to understand why SPIE had any role in politics. Well, the funding of science in many countries, including the United States, is determined by people in government. That’s especially true for basic science. It comes out of something called the discretionary part of our national budget. Our national budget is about 5 trillion dollars. Part of that is discretionary and science funding comes out of that. The other bigger part of the budget is called mandatory which involves mediocre, social security, and so on. Now, this is not just the United States, its many countries. Perhaps Japan is more advanced in this than we are, but, the economics and the budget of the countries historically have been built on having a lot of young people and not so many old people. Well . . .

(Regina) Uh oh.

(Dr. Arthurs) Uh oh is right. [Laughing.] With the increasing number of old people, which of course one must realize is in part due to science, the discretionary budget in the US is really being squeezed and will going to be smaller and smaller because more of the national budget is going to go to older people.

(Howard) Oh, I see. [Laughing.] So that’s a problem for SPIE right?

(Dr. Arthurs) I don’t think it’s a problem for SPIE, I think it’s a problem for the developing world. So, if science funding is coming out of that, then it’s going to get squeezed. The societies SPIE and others are trying to get much better at presenting a case for science. Science has changed the world and will continue to be very important to the world but, politicians get much more attention from the beer distributors.

That’s an example that is constantly used for me when I go to DC. They tell me, “The beer distributors are here every day wanting legislation in their favor,” and so on, “the scientists, we never see them.” If you dig a little deeper, they say, whenever the scientists come, we don’t know what the heck they are talking about so we don’t really want to see them.

But, the society and SPIE is really trying to improve its communication by scientists, and of the value of science. To try and actually remove the disrespect that the scientific community has for politicians. I think politicians also have some sort of disrespect for scientists in a different way.

(Regina) I think its fear. [Laughing.]

(Dr. Arthurs) Fear, whatever it is. They don’t understand us and we sometimes I think make them feel a little undereducated. They have skills. They are in the political world. Political skills require different attributes but we need to learn to communicate the value of science, the value of photonics to the world and to the future of humanity so that funding will continue.

(Howard) This is a vision of the Spark Radio. Very important.

(Regina) Yes thank you! I’m actually, I did a talk over in Shenzou and I did a talk about science communication which they were at. So, they’ve heard this before.

(Porchu) Yes.

(Regina) They’re like, yes. [Laughing.]

(Porchu) We are improving our skills on communicating.

(Regina) I want to thank you for asking Dr. Arthurs questions and giving us your questions a head of time and letting us call you early in the morning.

(Porchu) No problem.

(Howard) It’s not so early. It’s OK.

(Jordan) It’s not so hard.

(Porchu) It’s also a pleasure to talk to you.

(Regina) We’re going to take a quick break and we’re just going to end this show like we end every show, talking about how the topic we are talking about today is how it’s portrayed in pop culture. We’re going to let our wonderful friends in Taiwan listen and add on to that discussion with their pop culture as well.

[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]

? This is your land
? This is my land
? We belong here
? Stay the night
? I am so inspired
? You touched my wires
? My supernova shining bright

? Take me back to Wondaland
? I gotta get back to Wondaland
? Take me back to Wondaland
? Me thinks she left her underpants

(Jordan) Welcome back to Spark Science, this is Jordan and I have Regina next to me. On the other side of me I have Eugene Arthurs, Dr. Eugene Arthurs. Uh, president or CEO?

(Dr. Arthurs) CEO.

(Jordan) He said that very sternly towards me. [Laughing.]

(Dr. Arthurs) That’s because of the structure of societies. Societies have got a staff, a CEO, and they have elected volunteers who have real jobs. The chief elected volunteer is called the president.

(Regina) Ah.

(Dr. Arthurs) If I were president, I would be gone a year from now, right? I don’t want to be gone a year from now.

(Regina) So, we always end every show of Spark Science relating what we talked about to what people can understand and what I love, pop culture. So, Dr. Arthurs, when you think of photonics and you think of pop culture, where do those mesh in your mind?

(Dr. Arthurs) Well, I’m a big science fiction person. That may be quite influential in my . . .

(Regina) Your love of lasers?

(Dr. Arthurs) Asmof [sp?], Dr. Who…

(Regina) Oh so good!

(Dr. Arthurs) Star Trek which is 50 years old this week right?

(Regina) Oh I love it! So, Jordan, my wonderful childhood friend doesn’t hate Star Trek, he just keeps hearing it over and over again.

(Jordan) Ugh, Star Wars, never seen it, Star Trek, don’t care.

(Dr. Arthurs) Well you know, Star Wars with the light sabers, I don’t know how they work it, people want us want us to make them.

(Jordan) And you should.

(Dr. Arthurs) I think, I don’t quite know what phasers are. Phasers to stun, right, and fusors to . . .

(Regina) To kill, it’s the whole gambit.

(Dr. Arthurs) The whole cloaking thing is now part of our conferences. Meta materials, you were in Meta materials in Taiwan right?

(Porchu) Yes.

(Regina) Are you working on cloaking?

(Howard) I know it and I want to try to do something special but actually, I cannot really get a new idea of how to embolden the working reference. It’s still a challenge.

(Dr. Arthurs) That terminology obviously came from science fiction.

(Regina) It did, making things disappear with light.

(Dr. Arthurs) Yes. I think Meta materials is going to change light enormously. We think of a lens today as a little half sphere or something like that, the lens of the future is going to be an electronic disc which will be a lot lighter and will change optics too.

(Jordan) Electronic disco?

(Dr. Arthurs) We’ve been through the whole disc thing. You’re talking about pop culture the all of CDs, DVDs…

(Regina) Laser disc? Who wins the, yeah…

(Dr. Arthurs) But now we have to move to holographic storage and think like that. So you’ve got also the holograms, don’t forget, in the original Star Wars. What was it? Princess Leah or something?

(Regina) Leia, sure.

(Dr. Arthurs) So holography appears increasingly now in movies.

(Jordan) I think I saw a video now where they do video conferencing but you use a camera.

(Dr. Arthurs) Virtual reality is going to be a thing that’s coming that I am too old for. These guys are all getting excited now about the virtual reality.

(Jordan) They’re all nodding.

(Porchu) Virtual reality.

(Regina) As long as you have eyes and brain activity, I’m sure you’re not too old for virtual reality. It just hooks right up.

(Dr. Arthurs) We’re learning actually about the eyes and the brain. The simplest thing used to be, in video displays, some percentage of the population would get fits from some of that. The whole thing now about virtual reality is quite complicated. How to keep people enjoying it without feeling nauseous or something like that.

(Regina) Yes.

(Dr. Arthurs) There’s a lot of interesting stuff coming.

(Regina) Someone just talked to me about that and how they need a reference point. How, if you have the goggles on that there’s going to be some virtual reality but you also need to see the room you’re in otherwise you’ll get nauseous.

(Dr. Arthurs) Yes. It’s really interesting technology. We’re also learning more about light and how it effects the human cycles. It wasn’t that long ago that we discovered that there were actually three sensors in the eye. The rods, the cones and another one.

(Regina) Magic.

(Jordan) Another one?

(Dr. Arthurs) In the most recent Apple launch of the product they actually have software in it that deals with something that becomes more and more interesting. The light effect on your life and your sleep and your health and changing the spectrum actually, the latest iPod pro, has got the latest software in there to change the color of the screen before you go to sleep.

(Jordan) I’ve heard about this. The blue lights or whatever?

(Dr. Arthurs) Blue lights at night are very bad. We’re not just talking about your sleep and your dreams. It affects your health. The cancer people have found a link.

(Regina) What?

(Dr. Arthurs) Yes. There’s a lot more to learn about light and our lives actually and the impact of light on us.

(Regina) Wow. It’s amazing.

(Dr. Arthurs) You’ve got things in this part of the world here, we have a good number of people who suffer from seasonal effective disorder.

(Regina) Yes. In Bellingham.

(Dr. Arthurs) In Bellingham. So they’ve got special light that try to help them get through the winters here.

(Regina) I have a happy light in my house.

(Dr. Arthurs) The latest, the lightning we’ve been living with which goes back to Edison and people before him, not just Edison, sort of like a fixed spectrum, fixed color. With LED lightning now, you can actually have smart lightning, which changes during the day to stimulate you in different ways.

(Regina) We’re living in the future.

(Dr. Arthurs) It’s really a . . . Phillips has a got a lab that I visited some years ago. You walk in and see the lighting developed for an office that is supposed to keep people alert and working hard. The light that’s developed for the grocery store, that shows things and actually they figured out what will make you buy stuff by the way it’s lit.

(Regina) Casinos have figured what makes you, how to keep on gambling.

(Dr. Arthurs) The impact of light on people is really little understood. There’s a huge scope for work there for young people like yourselves. So, get on with it.

(Jordan) Get to it.

(Regina) Is there anything you would like to add to our pop culture discussion?

(Dr. Arthurs) One of you brought up the Big Bang Theory. One of you is a Big Bang Theory person, right?

(Hoju) That’s me.

(Regina) Hoju.

(Dr. Arthurs) If you watch very carefully you would have seen on one episode several SPIE posters.

(Regina) [Gasps.]

(Porchu) Really?

(Hoju) Really?

(Dr. Arthurs) [Laughing.] I’m disappointed that you didn’t bring that to my attention.

(Porchu) Oh really, did you sponsor?

(Dr. Arthurs) They came and asked their scientific advisor, from Cal Tech I think, who advised them to get some SPIE posters, they looked geeky enough for the show.

(Jordan) That’s a slap in the face.

(Dr. Arthurs) No! Geek pride is what we’re about here.

(Regina) That is very true. That is what this show is about, geek pride. Jordan I’m going to bring you over.

(Jordan) Alright.

(Regina) We’re going to end on that because that’s amazing. I want to thank Poju and Mike, is that what you said, I’m going to…

(Howard) Howard.

(Regina) And Howard. I want to thank you for letting us call you and asking wonderful questions. Thank you so much for joining us.

(Taiwanese students) Thank you.

(Regina) Thank you Dr. Arthurs. This has been really enlightening. Pun intended.

(Jordan) Enlightening!

(Dr. Arthurs) Yes. Thank you.

(Regina) Thank you.

[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]

? Take me back to Wondaland
? I gotta get back to Wondaland

(Regina) Thank you for joining us, we just talked to Dr. Arthur, CEO of SPIE, about photonics. This show is entirely volunteer run and if you want to help us out, click on the donate button. If there’s a science idea that you are curious about, send us an email or post a message on our Facebook page, Spark Science. Today’s episode was produced in the KMRE Spark Radio Studios located in the Spark Museum on Bay Street in Bellingham. Our producers and engineers are Erik Faburrietta and Nathan Miller. Our theme music is Chemical Calisthenics by Blackalicious and Wandaland by Janelle Monea.

[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]

? My supernova shining bright
? Hallelujah hallelujah, hallelujah

[? Blackalicious rapping Chemical Calisthenics ?]

? Lead, gold, tin, iron, platinum, zinc, when I rap you think
? Iodine nitrate activate
? Red geranium, the only difference is I transmit sound
? Balance was unbalanced then you add a little talent in

? Careful, careful with those ingredients
? They could explode and blow up if you drop them
? And they hit the ground

[End of podcast.]

Gene Luen Yang: Award Winning Author & Computer Scientist

We are back with an amazing interview with National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, Superman writer, Avatar the Last Airbender comic author and Computer Scientist, Gene Luen Yang.

Please enjoy our joyous conversation about superheroes, growing up Chinese-American, computer science and comics for STEM.

Video of interview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pyXnzJKnKE

Check out Gene Luen Yang’s websites and his new comic that teaches kids computer science.

http://www.secret-coders.com/

http://geneyang.com/

Click Here for Transcript

>> Here we go!

[? Blackalicious rapping Chemical Calisthenics ?]

? Law of de-fi-nite pro-por-tion, gain-ing weight
? I’m every element around

Dr. Degraaff: Hello and welcome to Spark Science, where we explore stories of human curiosity. My name is Regina Barber DeGraaff and my co-host, Jordan Baker couldn’t be with us today. I’m very pleased to welcome Gene Yang, who is an author, a computer scientist, an educator, and a cartoonist.

Gene Yang: Well, thank you for having me, Regina.

Dr. DeGraaff: Well, thank you for coming. This past January, the Library of Congress nominated you for the 5th… I’m gonna get this right: the 5th National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. And it’s a 2-year appointment, right?

Gene Yang: Yes.

Dr. DeGraaff: And we’re gonna come back to like, what that means.

Gene Yang: Okay.

Dr. DeGraaff: But it’s a big deal, though.

Gene Yang: It was a crazy thing. I got to fly out to Washington DC with my wife. Super fancy. All these fancy people in a room, they gave me a fancy medal. It was amazing.

Dr. DeGraaff: And did, like Obama pick you, President Obama, or was it…?

Gene Yang: No. I was disappointed.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right? You’re like, “Where is he?”

Gene Yang: But it was almost as good. It was the librarian of Congress. So, at the time, it was a guy named David Mao. And then there was a crew of folks from the Chungsbook Council. The previous national ambassador was also on that.

Dr. DeGraaff: Okay. So they know President Obama, so by one degree . . .

Gene Yang: Yeah. Somebody there has had a meal with president Obama.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right. So, you’re also the current writer for Superman on DC Comics, which is amazing. Like, I’m geeking out right now. And your first ever, well you were the writer on Issue #41, which I have here!

Gene Yang: Wow. Well thank you for having it.

Dr. DeGraaff: Well, Comics Place here in Bellingham; they just gave it to me because they’re super-nice. Because they didn’t have any of your other books and I was kind of sad, so they gave me this. So we’re gonna come back to being a writer for Superman. But like I said before, you kind of know a lot . . . well maybe I shouldn’t say “a lot about science.” Maybe that’s insulting.

Gene Yang: I don’t know that much about science. I was a B/B- student from college.

Dr. DeGraaff: So was I. Now PhD. That’s what happens.

Gene Yang: That’s awesome.

Dr. DeGraaff: Yeah. But you know something about STEM and you want to promote STEM in your new position.

Gene Yang: Yes, yes; that’s part of the platform.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right. And we’re gonna come back… I really like that you’re saying that every ambassador has had this platform, and that’s part of yours for this next two years. So we’re gonna come back to that, but before we do that, we always talk about on our podcast and now on our show here, we talk about background. The first thing we want to talk about is like, “how did you get into STEM?” because I know that you did major in computer science, right, or was it computer engineering?

Gene Yang: It was computer . . . I think it was . . . you know, I don’t remember the exact title.

Dr. DeGraaff: That’s alright.

Gene Yang: I think it was computer engineering.

Dr. DeGraaff: It changes. So, you did major in some sort of STEM. I keep on saying “STEM,” so for our listeners and for our watchers, STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math.

Gene Yang: That’s right.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right. So, it’s words us in the business use. But I do want to talk about your first two . . . or let’s talk about your first one, your first graphic novel. And it really does talk about the Asian-American experience. So, I wanted to talk about these 2 things.

Gene Yang: Sure.

Dr. DeGraaff: So, whatever you’d like to start with. If you wanna talk about computer science and spark how you got into that, or maybe talk about this . . .

Gene Yang: Well, I actually got into computer science and comics when I was in 5th grade. 5th grade was a big year for me, looking back.

Dr. DeGraaff: Oh, wow! It was an eventful year.

Gene Yang: It absolutely was. So, in 5th grade, my mom bought me my first comic book. When I was a kid, at local comic . . . actually at local bookstores, they had these things called spinner racks; do you remember that?

Dr. DeGraaff: Yes.

Gene Yang: Okay. I don’t think anyone under the age of 30 remembers that.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right. I am over 30. You got me.

Gene Yang: They’re these wireframe racks that would carry a month’s worth of comics. And then you could spin ’em so that you could see them all.

Dr. DeGraaff: Yeah.

Gene Yang: And then one night my mom took me to this local bookstore. I saw this issue of “Marvel 2 in 1.”

Dr. DeGraaff: Okay.

Gene Yang: It was starring The Thing and Rom the Spaceknight. So, as soon as I saw it, I just knew I needed to own it.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right.

Gene Yang: And I brought it over to my mom and I said, “Mom, will you please buy this for me?” She refused to buy it for me because she thought The Thing looked way too scary. Instead she bought me the latest…

Dr. DeGraaff: Yeah. You were in 5th grade, though.

Gene Yang: Yeah. I know. I have to be honest though. Like, if I look back, I was kind of a wimp, especially when it came to monsters. So, she had a point. She definitely had a point.

Dr. DeGraaff: She knew you.

Gene Yang: She made me put that back, and bought me the latest Superman comic, which was like a “DC Comics Presents.” I don’t know; I think it was in the 50s. It had Superman and it had Atomic Knights in it. So, that was the very first comic I bought.

Dr. DeGraaff: I like how she’s like, “Marvel? No. Here’s DC.”

Gene Yang: Yeah; t’s because of Superman, right? Like, she wouldn’t have bought me Batman either. It’s just because Superman is such a boy scout.

Dr. DeGraaff: He is. He is. But he does have depth. And we’re gonna get back to that, because you’re the writer now, so you know.

Gene Yang: I agree. I agree. Actually when I was in 5th grade, I was not a big Superman fan.

Dr. DeGraaff: Yeah.

Gene Yang: And I know this is gonna make you mad, but I was definitely more of a Marvel fan than a DC fan.

Dr. DeGraaff: Oh no! I totally agree. I grew up here. You grew up in California, right?

Gene Yang: I did.

Dr. DeGraaff: I grew up here in Washington State, but I would spend my summers in California. And my California relatives would have, like, better TV.

Gene Yang: Ah! Better TV. How does that even work? There were like 3 stations and they were all over, weren’t they?

Dr. DeGraaff: In Lynden, MTV was banned. So I grew up in Lynden north of here, which is a very small town.

Gene Yang: Oh.

Dr. DeGraaff: But I loved X-men: the 90s animated…

Gene Yang: Yeah!

Dr. DeGraaff: That’s… I mean, I wasn’t a big reader in general.

Gene Yang: So, when you were a kid, you were a Marvel kid.

Dr. DeGraaff: I was a Marvel… well both. Both. But I liked X-men for – this is gonna sound really crazy, but – they had Jubilee! It was the one, like, Asian-American I could see was Jubilee.

Gene Yang: Yeah.

Dr. DeGraaff: And so I loved X-men, the animated series.

Gene Yang: Yeah, X-men has always been like this . . .

Dr. DeGraaff: Really diverse!

Gene Yang: Exactly. It’s been a center of diversity. It really has been.

Dr. DeGraaff: It has been. Because they have like a million characters, so it’s easy to just easy to, like, insert them.

Gene Yang: That’s true.

Dr. DeGraaff: But they had big roles, though. I mean, Jubilee had a big role. Storm had a huge role.

Gene Yang: Yeah. Storm was the leader for a while.

Dr. DeGraaff: Exactly, right?

[? Laurie Anderson singing O Superman (For Massenet) ?]

? O Superman. O judge. O Mom and Dad. Mom and Dad.
? O Superman. O judge.
? Dr. DeGraaff: Back to your thing.

Gene Yang: [Laughing.] So, 5th grade . . .

Dr. DeGraaff: 5th grade.

Gene Yang: I started buying comics. I also started making comics. I had this friend named Jeremy Kinioshi [sp?] when I was in 5th grade and we started making comics together.

Dr. DeGraaff: Do you still know him?

Gene Yang: We would brainstorm stories. I do. We like, we lost touch and then we reconnected through the magic of Facebook.

Dr. DeGraaff: Okay. The magic of Facebook!

Gene Yang: So, we just hung out. He lives in Hawaii. A couple years ago, we hung out with him.

Dr. DeGraaff: Oh no. You have to go to Hawaii. Super sad.

Gene Yang: Yeah. Yeah. So sad to go to Hawaii. [Laughing.]

Dr. DeGraaff: So you’re friends with . . . say his name one more time.

Gene Yang: Jeremy.

Dr. DeGraaff: Okay. Jeremy. And you both, like, love comics?

Gene Yang: We both love comics. I was a new comic book reader. He had been reading them for a really long time.

Dr. DeGraaff: In 5th grade?

Gene Yang: In 5th grade.

Dr. DeGraaff: Like when I was 2 . . .

Gene Yang: Exactly. Like when he learned how to read, that was the first thing he did was started buying comics.

Dr. DeGraaff: Wow.

Gene Yang: His mom was super.

Dr. DeGraaff: Cool?

Gene Yang: [Laughing.] Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. My parents were not so cool with me reading comics.

Dr. DeGraaff: Me neither.

Gene Yang: It took me a long time to get them to turn around.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right. Right.

Gene Yang: So that’s how I got into comics: 5th grade.

Dr. DeGraaff: But I do wanna admit a lot of physics professors really love drawing because in every physics class you have to set up the problem and you draw like things sliding down ramps. You draw, you know, today I was drawing a ballistic pendulum you know and . . .

Gene Yang: Awesome.

Dr. DeGraaff: My students do know that I like drawing because I bring in colored pencil . . . pens and like everything’s color-coded and like, so I draw everyday, honestly in lecture, but it’s not this quality.

Gene Yang: [Laughing.] I feel like you’re seeling yourself short. I feel like you should take some pictures of what you’re drawing on the board and make it into a book.

Dr. DeGraaff: In grad school, there was actually a grad school newsletter and I actually drew 2 comics for the newsletter and it was like science jokes.

Gene Yang: Oh my gosh. Like why did you quit then? So this is turning into a like redemptive art therapy.

Dr. DeGraaff: An intervention? Oh god, no.

Gene Yang: Like you actually ran like a strip. You did a weekly strip?

Dr. DeGraaff: Only 2 times. Only 2 times.

Gene Yang: Okay.

Dr. DeGraaff: 2 strips and they were 2 science-y jokes. And it has like science kids talking and one’s about some horrible joke about inside the cockpit and I actually had to look up a picture of a cockpit online and I was like drawing a cartoonish cockpit ? I can’t talk ? of a plane and I wondered if the FBI is gonna like look me up because I’m looking at these pictures.

Gene Yang: Oh.

Dr. DeGraaff: It’s like yeah, no, it was actually fun.

Gene Yang: That could go multiple ways, trying to make a joke about a cockpit, right?

Dr. DeGraaff: Yeah. It was . . . it was an old joke about . . . it was an integral joke.

Gene Yang: I see.

Dr. DeGraaff: Like, it was poles on an infinite plane.

Gene Yang: Alright. I feel like I need to know more.

Dr. DeGraaff: I will tell that joke. I will tweet that joke or post it on Facebook. I’ll find the comic if you want and send it to you.

Gene Yang: I would love to see it.

Dr. DeGraaff: Would you really?

Gene Yang: I absolutely would, yes.

Dr. DeGraaff: I do like your thing about Logo, this idea of this little thing that was like a turtle. Was that the origin of your love for turtles?

Gene Yang: No. No. Turtles just keep showing up but they’re totally unrelated.

Dr. DeGraaff: That’s weird though.

Gene Yang: Yeah, it’s a little weird. It’s a little weird that it keeps coming back. The whole turtle thing actually, um . . .

Dr. DeGraaff: So just to reference for our viewers and our listeners, what I’m referencing is this shadow hero which is this wonderful book ? this is the first thing I read a couple days ago and I was just like “this is amazing.” And it’s the first Asian-American superhero called The Green Turtle and it was just a great story.

Gene Yang: Thank you. Thank you.

Dr. DeGraaff: Yeah, no, I loved it.

Gene Yang: Well, the Green Turtle is not my invention, right. He’s this old character.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right. But this is your reinterpretation.

Gene Yang: Yeah. It’s Sonny and I bringing back this old character that nobody remembers, for sure.

Dr. DeGraaff: Yeah. So do you want to tell us ? maybe we can go back to this idea of how you kind of may be growing up, and we can come back to the Green Turtle and this book because I really like this story and I can identify with definitely both of these stories.

Gene Yang: Well, thanks.

Dr. DeGraaff: So maybe let’s just start with The Green Turtle. So you said that this is a comic, or derived from a comic from the 1940s, right?

Gene Yang: Yes.

Dr. DeGraaff: You could tell us a little bit about that.

Gene Yang: Sure. Sure. In the 1940s, there was this cartoonist. His name was Chu Hing, one of the first Asian-Americans to work in the American comic book industry. And the 1940s, like, we call that the “golden age of comics” because that was when comic books, especially superhero comics first became like this mass medium, right? And people were getting crazy rich off of it.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right.

Gene Yang: Superman debuted around that time. Batman debuted around that time. There were these international sensations. There was also like Captain Marvel, Shazam, was also around that time. And it’s hard to believe now but back then, he was actually on the same level as Superman, you know, he was just as popular.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right. Well if you watch Batman: Brave and the Bold now, which is a new animated series, he’s in that.

Gene Yang: Yeah! He’s amazing in that.

Dr. DeGraaff: And he’s also in “Young Justice.” Is he? I don’t remember. I think he’s cool!

Gene Yang: I love him. He’s like a total fantasy character. In any case, the golden age of American superhero comics, and all these publishers were just popping up and throwing characters out at the public. Because people wanted to find the next Batman or Superman. So, this was the environment that it was in, right? And Chu Hing, this Chinese-American cartoonist was working for this really small company called Rural Home, which only lasted a couple years.

Rural Home asked him to create a character, like a superhero character. So he does; he creates the Green Turtle. The rumor about the Green Turtle is that Chu wanted him to be a Chinese-American, like he himself was.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right. I love that story in the back of your . . .

Gene Yang: But his publishers wouldn’t let him do it.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right. It’s 1944.

Gene Yang: Yeah. They just didn’t think it would sell, you know?

Dr. DeGraaff: Well, they’re having problems now, right, with making superheroes Latino. Anyway, continue.

Gene Yang: Exactly. Exactly. So, it’s kina weird right, we’re almost a dec . . .

Dr. DeGraaff: 70 years later, and it’s still a problem.

Gene Yang: That’s kind of crazy. In any case, anyways, his publishers wouldn’t let him do it. Chu reacts in this really passive-aggressive way because he is a cartoonist and that’s what we do.

Dr. DeGraaff: Yeah. I love it. So I wanna show this picture to everyone. Yeah. So here’s a picture. And you saw that he never draws ? here’s the Green Turtle right here ? he never draws the Green Turtle face-on. Like you can never see his face, really.

Gene Yang: Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. DeGraaff: Which is crazy. So people can still believe, maybe, that he’s Asian-American.

Gene Yang: Exactly.

Dr. DeGraaff: I love it!

Gene Yang: That’s the theory. When you look at the pages, you just don’t see superhero comics drawn like that, right, where you only see the character’s back, or if he’s turned towards you, like, something’s covering his face.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right. And not just the mask, but like a shadow.

Gene Yang: Yeah. Like a shadow or like his arm. Like he’ll be punching and his arm will be in the way. And the rumor is that he did it because he wanted to be able to imagine his character as he intended, as an Asian-American. We don’t know if that’s true. Like the Green Turtle only lasts 5 issues. He’s the lead feature in Blazing Comics, which you can get for super-cheap at comic-book conventions. I got all 5 issues and they were all under like $50. For comics that old, that’s kind of crazy, right?

Dr. DeGraaff: Yeah. That is crazy. So, we have to take a break. But when we come back, I want to talk about the re-imagining of this story and kind of how the parents are portrayed. And also, kind of, the linking between not being a perfect Asian-American, which is definitely a theme here, and I just absolutely love it because I’m not a perfect Asian-American!

Gene Yang: [Laughing.]

Dr. DeGraaff: Alright. We’ll take a break.

[? Laurie Anderson singing O Superman (For Massenet) ?]

? O Mom and Dad. Mom and Dad.
? Hi. I’m not home right now. But if you want to leave a
? Message, just start talking at the sound of the tone.
? Hello? This is your Mother. Are you there? Are you
? Coming home?

Dr. DeGraaff: Welcome back. I’m here with Gene Luen Yang and we’re talking about comics and science and technology and I am super-excited to have you here. We broke and we started talking about this Asian-American identity and how that’s really explored in these two graphic novels that you put together. I want to talk about the first one: American-Born Chinese. It’s award winning! I know because of this sticker; this sticker right here. And I consumed this in like an hour the other day.

Gene Yang: It took me 5 years to make, but that’s cool! You want to read it in an hour, that’s cool!

Dr. DeGraaff: [Laughing.] Oh, God! And I love this story. I mean, just to give you some background, my mom is from Taiwan. She came in her late 20s. And my dad is Mexican-American. And I grew up in a town, like I mentioned, Lynden, which is not culturally diverse, even compared to like this Bellingham.

Gene Yang: So were you the most diverse thing in the town?

Dr. DeGraaff: We were the only Chinese-American family and I’m not even full Chinese. And I could totally identify with this book. Like, it was crazy and how this character, you know, has this, you know, kid who comes and who has an accent. He’s from Taiwan. He wants to be friends. Here’s this one right here. He comes in and his initial instinct is to just not be friends with this kid from Taiwan. And I could identify with that, right, because I don’t even speak Chinese, right, and everyone would assume I did, and I would just be like “I need to distance myself from anything like that.” So where did this all come from? Is this personal or is this just like friends of yours?

Gene Yang: That’s definitely a personal book. It’s fiction. But I pulled heavily from my own life to make that book. I think when I was in 4th grade, this kid came from Taiwan to our school. He was a 3rd-grader. And our teachers were so insistent on us being friends. And I just remember I didn’t even have like a logical thought behind it. I just remember being like . . .

Dr. DeGraaff: Repulsed.

Gene Yang: Right. From the depths of my heart, I really just wanted to get away from this kid. You know what I mean, following me around. He didn’t speak English very well, so he was following me around speaking in Mandarin.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right. And do you know Mandarin?

Gene Yang: I do. I do. But I wouldn’t speak it. I definitely wouldn’t speak it at school.

Dr. DeGraaff: Yeah. Yeah.

Gene Yang: And then finally, you know, my best friend and I, we ended up throw like tanbark at him to get him away from . . . it’s part of growing up, right, especially if you grew up in a situation where you were a part of a minority.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right.

Gene Yang: Or you were the minority. You just go through and I don’t think you would be able to articulate the self-hate when you’re actually feeling it. It’s just you know that you’re not part of the group. You know that you’re different.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right. Yeah.

Gene Yang: And then you have to, at some point, become comfortable with that. You have to accept that.

Dr. DeGraaff: Which is the end of this book.

Gene Yang: Yeah. I guess so.

Dr. DeGraaff: I mean, so spoilers, but that’s basically the end.

Gene Yang: [Laughing.] I feel like making this book was part of my catharsis, was part of my process of accepting.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right. And how old are you when . . . I mean if I’m gonna ask . . .

Gene Yang: I finished that book when I was in my early 30s.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right!? I think I came to that conclusion in my late 20s or late 30s, too. But I want to go back to science . . . so when you’re in college and you’re like . . . were you still a computer scientist when you were writing this?

Gene Yang: Yeah. So, right after I graduated from college, I took a job as a computer programmer for a couple years. And then I left that job and became a high-school teacher. I taught computer science. I taught AP computer science. I taught introductory computer science. I did that for a long time. So when I was working on that book, I was actually teaching computer science.

Dr. DeGraaff: So why did you leave like the industry to become a teacher? Because I was a teacher at a private school for a year.

Gene Yang: What’d you think?

Dr. DeGraaff: And I did not like it.

Gene Yang: Really? Why not?

Dr. DeGraaff: Umm… I loved the students and they still watch my show and like listen to my show. So they were . . . it was just . . . I had never been to a private school in my life. I’m a poor kid. I have been to state schools all throughout everything.

Gene Yang: So it felt weird.

Dr. DeGraaff: And there was no detention. Like, kids could act up and there’s no ramifications.

Gene Yang: Ahh. It’s not like that at our school. I gave detentions.

Dr. DeGraaff: I couldn’t do anything.

Gene Yang: Yeah. I used to make my students copy out of this computer science textbook from the 1950s about a language, like this dead computer language. I don’t remember what it was.

Dr. DeGraaff: FOURTRAN? I’m just joking.

Gene Yang: [Laughing.]

Dr. DeGraaff: Yeah. So when you’re teaching computer science and you’re thinking about like where we grew up and stuff, I think a theme with computer science and also with your graphic novels is this idea of the model minority, you know. And this idea that, you know, Chinese or Asians, you know, really North Asians, are really really good at science. And we’re really smart and we’re perfect and we’re like, you know, we never get into trouble, and like, did that, did you see that at all when you were teaching or when you were going through school or when you were writing these books?

Gene Yang: I mean, as a student I definitely felt that pressure.

Dr. DeGraaff: Yeah.

Gene Yang: And I think that the whole “model minority,” that whole myth of the model minority really comes out of immigration patterns, right? Like my parents came over in the 70s. Around that time, if you were living in Asia and you were really good at Math or science, you were encouraged to come to the United States. So of course if you get all the kids that are good students in that one particular area.

Dr. DeGraaff: It’s a selection bias!

Gene Yang: It totally is a selection bias. It totally is, right? And out of that came this . . . this model minority thing. I don’t think that existed if you go back to like the 40s or the 30s.

Dr. DeGraaff: Like the gold rush, too?

Gene Yang: Yeah. You look at the Chinese communities that were in San Francisco at the time, I don’t think those same stereotypes existed.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right.

Gene Yang: Do you know who Ronald Takaki is?

Dr. DeGraaff: No.

Gene Yang: He was a professor, an Asian American studies professor at UC Berkeley.

Dr. DeGraaff: Okay.

Gene Yang: So I was privileged enough to sit in on one of his lectures. He’s the one that really examines this model minority, you know, thing.

Dr. DeGraaff: Yeah. And when did it start?

Gene Yang: And he talks about when did it start and who’s it for, like a model for who. And what he argues is that really Asian Americans in a lot of ways are being used by American society, almost against other minority groups.

Dr. DeGraaff: It is! It’s a “divide and conquer” thing.

Gene Yang: It kind of is, yeah.

Dr. DeGraaff: And, like I said, being part of two minorities, you know, Hispanic and Asian, you kind of see this dynamic happen.

Gene Yang: Yeah.

Dr. DeGraaff: And you see a lot of stuff… in STEM, we’re trying to get more underrepresented minorities. But Asians aren’t included in that. But what we were talking about on the break is how I really love that your character isn’t perfect. Like we said, we said “okay, we did this terrible things,” right? And the same with the shadow hero. His mother is not perfect. But she’s still lovable, you know? And I want to live in a world where we can be people of color and not be perfect, right?

Gene Yang: Yeah.

Dr. DeGraaff: And it’s really hard in the media.

Gene Yang: Or I think it’s more just to be…

Dr. DeGraaff: Complex?

Gene Yang: 3-dimensional.

Dr. DeGraaff: Yeah.

Gene Yang: You know? I think, when I was growing up at least, it was very difficult to find 3-dimensional characters ? 3-dimensional Asian American characters in any of the stories that I read or any of the stories that I watched on television.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right. Right.

Gene Yang: GI Joe might’ve been the one exception. There were a couple of GI Joe characters, both on the good guy side and the bad guy side who were 3-dimensional. And the reason why was because most of those episodes were written by this Japanese-Ameren writer. So he was very cognizant of this, a guy named Larry Hama.

Dr. DeGraaff: Wow! Cool.

Gene Yang: Yeah. You should check him out. He’s awesome.

Dr. DeGraaff: I should. I should know more.

[? Laurie Anderson singing O Superman (For Massenet) ?]

? Hello? Is anybody home? Well, you don’t know me,
? But I know you.
? And I’ve got a message to give to you.
? Here come the planes.
? So you better get ready. Ready to go.

Dr. DeGraaff: I think there are more 3-dimensional characters. We were talking about Marvel and X-Men.

Gene Yang: Mhmm.

Dr. DeGraaff: The early 90s animated X-men series was just very, I mean soap-opera-ish, you know? And everyone was very 3-dimensional. And I think that that was very beneficial. I don’t know.

Gene Yang: Yeah. I think, you know, I think it was a need that I wasn’t even aware of when I was growing up.

Dr. DeGraaff: Yeah.

Gene Yang: So when I started actually encountering these characters who look like me and actually also act like me like Jubilee on X-Men.

Dr. DeGraaff: Like Jubilee, yeah!

Gene Yang: Amazing character.

Dr. DeGraaff: Or like Harley Quinn from DC Comics. And I wanted to get into . . .

Gene Yang: Isn’t Harley Quinn blonde, though?

Dr. DeGraaff: She is. But when you put the costume on, nobody knows what ethnicity you are.

Gene Yang: That’s true. I actually think that, you know . . .

Dr. DeGraaff: I used to cosplay as Harley, so . . .

Gene Yang: Yeah. That’s such an important part of the appeal of superheroes, right? When you look at Spiderman, anybody can be under that mask.

Dr. DeGraaff: Exactly. And I love that. But we were talking about complex characters. In the DC universe, so we can get to your Superman writing, I think Superman is more complex than people give him credit for. And Harley, we were talking about like, Batman villains; there’s a lot of villains in the Batman universe that are very . . . they’re startling, right? I mean Catwoman is very much not good but not all bad.

Gene Yang: Yeah.

Dr. DeGraaff: And it’s great to actually have these complex characters. So, tell me more about Superman and how you write him. And how is he different from like the movies and like the old trope?

Gene Yang: Superman is . . . I was not a fan of Superman when I was growing up. For sure. I just thought he was a boring character.

Dr. DeGraaff: Me too! I have had weak arguments about this with my husband.

Gene Yang: He’s a Superman fan?

Dr. DeGraaff: He’s a Superman guy. He’s like “Superman is Like . . .”

Gene Yang: I mean I am now! [Laughing.]

Dr. DeGraaff: Yeah. He’s like, “He’s loyal. Batman sleeps around.”

Gene Yang: Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. DeGraaff: And he’s like “Batman’s rich. Superman actually has to work and went to college.” And he’s like going through all these things.

Gene Yang: I mean, you know, I think the biggest part of Superman’s appeal is that he is the first superhero. He was a character who was popular enough and powerful enough to establish an entire genre of stories. So every other character out there including batman, every other superhero character out there, is in some sense, a riff off of Superman.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right.

Gene Yang: You know, the whole secret identity and the fact that you dress up and fight crime. All of that was established by Superman.

Dr. DeGraaff: Well, or Zorro, if you really actually . . .

Gene Yang: Yeah! I guess so. I guess so. I guess Zorro, yeah.

Dr. DeGraaff: Because Batman, the creator was a big Zorro fan.

Gene Yang: Yeah. He was.

Dr. DeGraaff: The first Mexican-American superhero. But go ahead. Just have to represent the other side. [Laughing.]

Gene Yang: Now, Superman . . . I think the superhero genre has a lot of overlap with the immigrant experience.

Dr. DeGraaff: Yeah. Definitely.

Gene Yang: You know, the creators of Superman and Batman, too, and pretty much every other superhero out there.

Dr. DeGraaff: He’s an international immigrant.

Gene Yang: Yeah. I mean, they were children of immigrants. There were these children of these poor Jewish immigrants from Europe.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right. Right.

Gene Yang: And I think they really embedded a lot of their experience into this character.

Dr. DeGraaff: They did.

Gene Yang: So this whole idea of having to negotiate two different identities and two different names, two different sets of expectations, that’s just something that the kids of immigrants have to deal with on a daily basis.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right.

Gene Yang: So when I grew up, I had one name at home and another one at school. I spoke one language at home and another one at school. I had two different sets of expectations. And, unconsciously or not, I think that’s part of the reason why I was drawn to superheroes as a kid.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right.

Gene Yang: … is that I saw that same dual identity play out in these comics.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right. Well and they were saying that these dual identities are okay and even necessary.

Gene Yang: Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. DeGraaff: Like I was like, “Oh. It’s okay?”

Gene Yang: That they’re good for the world, right?

Dr. DeGraaff: Yeah.

Gene Yang: Yeah.

Dr. DeGraaff: Yeah. No; I loved that. But I also loved . . . I was reading more about Superman’s history and he was a big social justice guy. Like, he was really big on like, helping the downtrodden and just, you know, helping the poor. And he hated rich people. That’s why he hates Batman! I mean people don’t understand this. Like, Batman vs. Superman. He doesn’t like Batman because he’s rich. Like, people don’t understand that.

Gene Yang: Right. Yeah. Unearned wealth, right? Batman has unearned wealth.

Dr. DeGraaff: That’s what he hates. Yeah.

Gene Yang: Yeah. Superman, he’s old enough that he’s actually gone through multiple eras.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right.

Gene Yang: With multiple moral codes and multiple motivations.

Dr. DeGraaff: Mhmm.

Gene Yang: And I think I grew up with Superman as everybody’s favorite uncle. But he wasn’t always like that.

Dr. DeGraaff: No.

Gene Yang: To prepare for the Superman gig, I actually read Superman comics from the 30s and 40s. And back then he was…

Dr. DeGraaff: Yeah. He’s intense!

Gene Yang: Yeah. He was kind of a jerk, too. You know?

Dr. DeGraaff: He collapsed a mine on people. I mean, how awesome is that?

Gene Yang: Yeah! He like, he found out a city commissioner was running an illegal gambling hall and he said “you need to close it down or I’m gonna kill you.” He actually said that: “I will end your life unless you close this down.”

Dr. DeGraaff: Wow! I was doing research and like you said, he kinda sounds like Batman a little bit in the beginning.

Gene Yang: Yeah. And I think the same thing that happened to Mickey Mouse happened to Superman. So, Mickey Mouse in the beginning…

Dr. DeGraaff: He was just hard.

Gene Yang: was kind of a jerk as well, you know?

Dr. DeGraaff: He kinda was, yeah. Itchy and Scratchy.

Gene Yang: And then he becomes the corporate symbol. Exactly. He was Itchy and Scratchy.

Dr. DeGraaff: From The Simpsons reference.

Gene Yang: And then he becomes the symbol of this huge corporation. And he can’t do that kind of stuff anymore. I think the same thing happened with Superman. Superman becomes the face of DC Comics.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right. Right.

Gene Yang: And he can’t do that anymore. Whereas Batman is more like Donald Duck. Donald Duck can still be a jerk.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right. He’s just misunderstood!

Gene Yang: Yeah. Donald Duck is my favorite!

Dr. DeGraaff: He was my favorite too when I was a kid.

Gene Yang: He’s the best.

Dr. DeGraaff: And I was like, you know, we all get angry. [Inaudible.] Those people annoy me, too. I would be as frustrated as him.

[? Laurie Anderson singing O Superman (For Massenet) ?]

? You can come
? As you are, but pay as you go. Pay as you go.
? And I said: OK. Who is this really?

Dr. DeGraaff: So how . . . how are you writing Superman, then? How is the way that you write him similar to the old ones or maybe more like the uncle? How are you writing it?

Gene Yang: Well, first, I’m working as part of a team. So, Superman is popular enough now that he’s in 4 different books. So, there’s Superman which I write. There’s Action Comics.

Dr. DeGraaff: This Superman right here?

Gene Yang: Yeah. That’s the one I write.

Dr. DeGraaff: First one!

Gene Yang: And then there’s Action Comics. There’s Superman/Wonderwoman and Batman/Superman. So we all have to kind of coordinate. I’ll tell you what draws me into the character, though, is those immigrant roots.

Dr. DeGraaff: Yeah.

Gene Yang: And this idea of the dual identity. What we wanted to do . . . so something that kids of immigrants have to do as they get older is they have to take these two different identities that they lived in for all their childhoods and they have to kind of collapse them into one, right?

Dr. DeGraaff: Yeah.

Gene Yang: And that’s what we forced Superman to do as well. And the first storyline is this villain, this new villain who’s kinda like an evil version of Facebook.

Dr. DeGraaff: Yes. Yeah.

Gene Yang: And we can debate whether you need an evil version of Facebook or not.

Dr. DeGraaff: I was wondering who was on his phone.

Gene Yang: [Laughing.]

Dr. DeGraaff: Somebody’s talking to Superman. I’m like, “I don’t know who this person is.”

Gene Yang: Right. So he’s like an evil version of Facebook. He leads to Superman’s secret identity being exposed. So he’s forced to integrate these two identities.

Dr. DeGraaff: Wow. So this Superman that you’re writing, everyone knows he’s Clark Kent.

Gene Yang: Everyone knows he’s Clark Kent by issue number 44.

Dr. DeGraaff: Oh and you’re 41, so this is like 3 issues in, boom!

Gene Yang: 3 issues in and he gets revealed.

Dr. DeGraaff: Wow. I gotta actually read the rest. I got this one for free so . . .

Gene Yang: And then after he gets revealed . . . this took a little arguing on my part, but, we bring him to Oakland, California.

Dr. DeGraaff: Oh, yes! That’s awesome.

Gene Yang: Because that’s what you do, right? When things go bad, you go to Oakland.

Dr. DeGraaff: You go to . . . I hear Oakland’s getting really nice, though.

Gene Yang: Oakland is getting really nice, yeah.

Dr. DeGraaff: It’s gentrifying.

Gene Yang: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Dr. DeGraaff: We’re gonna take a break and when we come back, I wanna talk about your new appointment, how we’re gonna integrate all of this stuff, this cool stuff we’ve been talking about, and actually get people interested in STEM.

[? Laurie Anderson singing O Superman (For Massenet) ?]

? And the voice said:
? This is the hand, the hand that takes.
? This is the hand, the hand that takes.

Dr. DeGraaff: So, let’s go back to the comics. We were talking about Superman. Real quick, before we talk about science, I wanna talk about Dean Cain. The Superman series when I was a kid, he was like, I knew he was part Asian and I was like, “Oh my gosh!”

Student: Wait. How’d you know? Did you know from reading or from looking at him?

Dr. DeGraaff: Both. I was like “this guy; he could be part Asian.” I mean, being a part Asian, you can kind of.

Gene Yang: You can kind of tell, right?

Dr. DeGraaff: And then I was like, “He looks kinda Asian. He looks kinda Keanu. I’m gonna look him up.” And I was super-excited. I don’t know. How did you feel about the Superman, like, live-action Dean Cain version in the 90s?

Gene Yang: The “Lois and Clark?”

Dr. DeGraaff: Lois and Clark!

Gene Yang: Yeah. I thought it was awesome. I mean, I think that show was really hard to pull off. And they totally did it. To make like almost like a romantic comedy and to actually have the spotlight shared between Lois Lane and Clark Kent was pretty ? that was a feat. And they did it.

Dr. DeGraaff: Well, and I think it was awesome that they kinda stuck with the part-Asian theme with Smallville with Lana, right?

Gene Yang: That’s right.

Dr. DeGraaff: But I wanted to bring that up because Dean Cain, it was huge for me. I still love Dean Cain. To be a kid and have somebody else who’s like mixed who was being treated like just a person was really big for me at the time.

Gene Yang: Yeah.

Dr. DeGraaff: But I want to bring it to scientists in comics. So we had this big event here at Western where we talked about science and pop culture and who is being portrayed as the scientists in pop culture. And I dressed up as Dr. Light and we had this big event.

Gene Yang: Which is awesome, which is perfect.

Dr. DeGraaff: Yeah, thank you. Right, because I used to dress up like Harley but it just became too popular so I googled like “Asian astrophysics” and then she came up!

Gene Yang: Yep. I think she would be the only one to come up, right?

Dr. DeGraaff: Yes.

Gene Yang: Did anyone else come up?

Dr. DeGraaff: No.

Gene Yang: Okay. [Laughing.]

Dr. DeGraaff: In comics, no.

Gene Yang: Okay.

Dr. DeGraaff: And I was like, that’s just me. I can just slightly be me and be a comic superhero. But I wanted to say there are a lot of scientists in comics. That’s how people get superpowers.

Gene Yang: Yeah. I mean, there are sometimes called science heroes. Superheroes are called science heroes, right?

Dr. DeGraaff: Really?

Gene Yang: Because there is this science fiction element to a lot of origin stories.

Dr. DeGraaff: Mhmm.

Gene Yang: I mean, not Batman, but pretty much everybody else.

Dr. DeGraaff: But, I mean I would say he’s kind of . . . technology!

Gene Yang: I guess, so he’s an engineer. He’s an engineer. You’re right.

Dr. DeGraaff: So batman is an engineer.

Gene Yang: Or at least he hires engineers. He’s like a Steve Jobs. He hires Lucius Fox and yells at him to make awesome technology.

Dr. DeGraaff: If you look at the animated series, he’s doing a lot of that engineering himself.

Gene Yang: Yeah. That’s true.

Dr. DeGraaff: But he does hire Lucius Fox, another person of color in science.

Gene Yang: That’s right.

Dr. DeGraaff: But Superman is a journalist. Batman is the greatest detective. These are people that ask questions, which is basically what scientists do.

Gene Yang: Right.

Dr. DeGraaff: And everybody on “The Flash” is a scientist.

Gene Yang: I know! That show is amazing. That’s the one TV show that our whole family follows: me, my wife, and my kids, yeah.

Dr. DeGraaff: Really?

Gene Yang: Yeah. It’s great.

Dr. DeGraaff: How old are your kids?

Gene Yang: So, we have 4.

Dr. DeGraaff: Oh my gosh!

Gene Yang: I know. We have a 12-year-old, an 8-year-old, a 6-year-old, and a 3-year-old.

Dr. DeGraaff: Wow.

Gene Yang: Yeah. The oldest is a boy and the rest are girls.

Dr. DeGraaff: Okay. But they all love Flash?

Gene Yang: Yeah. Flash is great. Flash is great.

Dr. DeGraaff: Well, they have such wonderful, like, female, like role models. I mean, felicity on Arrow is a computer scientist. What’s her name? Cait?

Gene Yang: Yeah. Caitlin Snow. Have you looked her up in the DC Wikipedia?

Dr. DeGraaff: I’m scared. I have friends that tell me, “Don’t look them up. They’re gonna be evil.”

Gene Yang: Yeah.

Dr. DeGraaff: Maybe that’s only other planets. Planet Earth II.

Gene Yang: Maybe. They are different realities for sure. But I think that’s something that’s been changing. I don’t think it was like that. Like if you look at the early days of comics, there just weren’t that many scientists who weren’t heterosexual white guys, right, at all?

Dr. DeGraaff: Right. Right.

Gene Yang: That was just the way things were. So, seeing characters like Caitlin Snow, who I don’t think is a scientist in the comic; I could be wrong about that.

Dr. DeGraaff: Which is awesome that they made one for the visual medium.

Gene Yang: Yeah. It’s great. I think it’s wonderful.

Dr. DeGraaff: So, yeah, and then there’s Cisco, who was a Hispanic engineer.

Gene Yang: Uh huh.

Dr. DeGraaff: And who I love. I think he’s great. And then Barry; Barry Allen who is the Flash, but he is a forensic scientist on the show.

Gene Yang: But that’s also something that was actually true in the comic.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right. Exactly. So I mean I just love that in Dr. Light, who’s an astrophysicist, a really grumpy Asian woman, which is totally apt. That’s why I picked her.

[? Laurie Anderson singing O Superman (For Massenet) ?]

? This is the hand, the hand that takes.
? Here come the planes.
? They’re American planes. Made in America.
? Smoking or non-smoking?

Dr. DeGraaff: So you have this science. Is that the way you want to kind of project and kind of promote with your new position? So let’s talk about your goals. I have them written down here. I’ll check if you’re right.

Gene Yang: Right, so as national ambassador, every national ambassador comes up with a platform, which is just something that they want to talk about during their term. For me, it’s reading without walls. And that’s just a fancy way of saying I wanna get kids to explore the world through reading. I think exploration is such an important part of growing up. And books are such a great way of exploring the world. So I’m encouraging kids to do 3 things, to explore the world.

Dr. DeGraaff: Yep. I have them here.

Gene Yang: Number 1 is to read books about people who are different from them, so people who look different from them or live differently from them. Second is to read books about topics that they might find intimidating. And my pet project here is STEM books, books about science, technology, engineering, and math.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right.

Gene Yang: And then finally it’s to read books in different formats. When I was a kid, I had this friend who was a huge science fiction geek and he totally looked down his nose at comics, right, he just would never touch a graphic novel in his life.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right.

Gene Yang: So to a kid like that, I would want him to try a graphic novel.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right.

Gene Yang: But now I meet kids that are the exact opposite.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right!

Gene Yang: That only read graphic novels and to those kids, I really want them to explore some prose or some books in verse or something.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right. Well I think, I mean there’s even ways that you can even trick them, this sounds weird but you can even trick them. I think like for instance, I am a giant “Avatar: The Last Airbender” fan. I mean, like, when it came out, I was in grad school. I love this comic and it’s very mystical and there’s a lot of magic in it.

Gene Yang: Yeah.

Dr. DeGraaff: But there’s like hidden inside this story, and you’re actually the writer for the comic, right?

Gene Yang: Mhmm.

Dr. DeGraaff: Which, I think you’re like the coolest now.

Umm, hidden in there is Sokka, this character right here. I don’t know if you can see that. He doesn’t have any powers. He doesn’t have any bending. He doesn’t have any magic. And he’s an engineer!

Gene Yang: He is. He totally is. He draws designs of machines and he gets them made.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right. Right.

Gene Yang: Yeah. He’s awesome.

Dr. DeGraaff: And he talks about science a lot in this series!

Gene Yang: He does. He talks about science a lot. Yeah.

Dr. DeGraaff: And I feel like there are ways you can just, kind of, I don’t know . . . I don’t wanna say, “trick,” but insert these things.

Gene Yang: Yeah. I think there’s something about . . . like the stories we tell color certain professions, right?

Dr. DeGraaff: Right.

Gene Yang: And I think that one of the things that we’re seeing now is that scientists and nerds and people, and like geeks, are kind of emerging as a cool class.

Dr. DeGraaff: We are cool.

Gene Yang: And the reason why that’s happening in part is because they’re showing up as heros in the stories that we read.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right. But you also do this comic called “Secret Coders.” Can you tell us about that?

Gene Yang: Secret Coders is a graphic novel series. There will be 6 books in all. And I’m super excited about this book.

Dr. DeGraaff: Yeah. I went to your website. It’s secret-coders.com.

Gene Yang: Right. It’s a book that I’ve thought about for a little time. It’s a book that teaches kids the fundamentals of computer science through LOGO, through that language that we talked about earlier.

Dr. DeGraaff: Awesome. You just dug it up from the grave and like, resurrected it?

Gene Yang: Yeah. Well there’s a reason that I wanted to do LOGO. And it’s because I wanted to draw the parallel between coding and magic. So, magic, like in Harry Potter, you know, you speak these words that sound like they’re out of some dead language, and then something magic happens, something amazing happens.

Dr. DeGraaff: It’s called Latin! [Laughing.]

Gene Yang: Yeah, yeah, it’s called Latin! And I think coding is the same way. You know, you speak these words that seem kinda weird, and then something amazing happens, you know?

Dr. DeGraaff: Right. Yeah.

Gene Yang: So I wanted that parallel. I thought one way to draw that parallel was to use a language that’s kind of dead, that’s on the dead side, like LOGO.

Dr. DeGraaff: Right. And kind of mystical.

Gene Yang: And a little bit mystical, yeah.

Dr. DeGraaff: I love it. And these kids in this new series go to a school and then they’re solving mysteries.

Gene Yang: Yeah.

Dr. DeGraaff: So it is kind of mystical and magic.

Gene Yang: Well, I only handle the writing. The drawing is handled by this guy named Mike Holmes, who is amazingly talented. He used to work on the “Adventure Time” comic before he started working with me.

Dr. DeGraaff: Okay yes, which is very popular here on campus.

Gene Yang: And what we’re doing in the book is I wanna structure every chapter to kind of be like one of my lessons.

Dr. DeGraaff: Okay.

Gene Yang: I started thinking about this book when I was teaching computer science. I used to teach in this really visual way of drawing a lot on the board. And I always thought “man, a lot of these lessons would really work well as comics.”

So each of these chapters, it starts off with a little bit of review of an old concept. Then I introduce something new. And then I give them an exercise to solve on their own. So that’s how I ran my lectures. I would do a little bit of review. I would introduce a new concept. I’d end the lecture with something they would work on on their own to see if they understood the concept.

Dr. DeGraaff: So do you still teach a little bit or are you kind of teaching through this comic right now?

Gene Yang: Well, right now, for STEM at least, I’m only teaching through the comic.

Dr. DeGraaff: I love this. I love this. So, I really hope this takes off. I’m actually gonna read this with my daughter because I would love for her to understand this.

Gene Yang: That would be great.

Dr. DeGraaff: And I would actually love to learn how to code. So what’s next for this ambassadorship? It just started, so what’s your plan after the ambassadorship? What do you want to do? Do you want to still do STEM stuff? Or are you gonna kinda go off into . . .

Gene Yang: I have . . . so we just finished writing and drawing the 3rd volume of Secret Coders. We have 3 more of those to do.

Dr. DeGraaff: Okay.

Gene Yang: I’m also working on the next book and I’m both writing and drawing. And then I’m doing my first non-fiction book. It’s about basketball. I followed a high school basketball team for a season. I’m doing a book about them.

Dr. DeGraaff: Really? That’s awesome.

Gene Yang: There’s actually a lot of overlap between . . .

Dr. DeGraaff: There’s some basketball in this one.

Gene Yang: Yeah.

Dr. DeGraaff: Was the only one here that you did do the art for, which I think is awesome. But so, the American-born Chinese.

Gene Yang: Yeah. I was not a basketball fan growing up.

Dr. DeGraaff: [Laughing.]

Gene Yang: I actually just started getting into basketball a couple years ago.

Dr. DeGraaff: This has been like, an awesome conversation. Hopefully we can maybe can continue it offline and nobody gets to see it. But I do want to thank you for coming. And I think you’re doing wonderful work.

Gene Yang: Thank you. Thank you, Regina. This was fun!

[? Laurie Anderson singing O Superman (For Massenet) ?]

? And the voice said: Neither snow nor rain nor gloom
? Of night shall stay these couriers from the swift
? Completion of their appointed rounds.

Thanks for listening to Spark Science. I’m Regina Barber DeGraaff. We’ve been talking with Gene Yang, the current writer for DC’s Superman. Today’s episode was recorded at the Digital Media Center at Western Washington University. Our show was edited by Nathan Miller and Eric Fabureta. Our theme song is “Chemical Calistenics” by Blackalicious and our feature song today is “Oh, Superman” by Lori Anderson.

[? Laurie Anderson singing O Superman (For Massenet) ?]

? So hold me, Mom, in your long arms.

[?Blackalicious rapping Chemical Calisthenics ?]
? Lead, gold, tin, iron, platinum, zinc, when I rap you think
? Iodine nitrate activate
? Red geranium, the only difference is I transmit sound
? Balance was unbalanced then you add a little talent in
? Careful, careful with those ingredients
? They could explode and blow up if you drop them
? And they hit the ground
[End of podcast.]