Summary
Chi Onwurah tells Jim Al-Khalili why she wanted to become a telecoms engineer and why engineering is a caring profession.
As a black, working class woman from a council estate in Newcastle, she was in a minority of one studying engineering at university in London and encountered terrible racism and sexism. She went on to build digital networks all over the world, the networks that make today's instant muli-media communications possible. And Chi built the first mobile phone network in Nigeria, when the country was without a reliable electricity supply. Today she is Shadow Minister for Science, Research and Innovation.
When Chi decided to go into politics, her engineering colleagues were not impressed. Why would anyone leave their noble profession to enter a chaotic, disreputable and dubiously useful non-profession, they asked. But, Chi believes, parliament desperately needs more scientists and engineers, not only to help us solve science-based problems but also to create technical jobs and build a strong economy.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Ever wondered what the world's wealthiest people did to get so ridiculously rich? |
| 0:05.4 | Our podcast Good Bad Billionaire takes one billionaire at a time and explains exactly how they made their money. |
| 0:11.9 | And then we decide if they are actually good, bad or just plain wealthy. |
| 0:15.5 | So if you want to know if Rihanna is as much of a bad guy as she claims, |
| 0:19.2 | or what Jeff Bezos really did to become the first person in history to pocket a hundred billion dollars, |
| 0:24.6 | listen to Good Bad Billionaire with me, Simon Jack, and me, Zingsing. |
| 0:28.5 | Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:31.0 | This is the sound of crowd science. |
| 0:33.5 | We shoot a laser beam at this atom. |
| 0:36.2 | Is that a big canister of oxygen in the background? |
| 0:39.0 | Oh, there's a wasp in there. |
| 0:40.3 | Yeah, perhaps possibly the most disgusting thing I heard this morning. |
| 0:44.6 | But it's one of the nicest fun facts you're going to hear today. |
| 0:47.4 | So here I'm actually holding a donut. |
| 0:49.4 | What are you going to do with that? |
| 0:50.3 | Find out more at the end of this podcast. |
| 0:53.4 | This is Discovery from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:56.5 | I'm Jumal Khalili, and in my series The Life Scientific, |
| 1:00.0 | I get to talk to some of the extraordinary men and women who are trying to understand our world |
| 1:05.0 | and make it a better place. |
| 1:06.6 | Today's show is all about digital networks. |
| 1:09.5 | Please don't switch off. |
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