You and Betty and the nancy's and bills and Joes and Janes will find in the study of science a richer, more rewarding life.

Hey, welcome to Inquiring Minds. I'm Indravis Gontas.

This is a podcast that explores the space where science and society collide.

We want to find out what's true, what's left to discover, and why it matters.

Right in the intersection of all of that are physics experiments, especially theoretical physics experiments, where the application

of those massive projects is not immediately clear when the scientists themselves go out to

begin finding those solutions. So this week we're talking to Susie Sheehe. She's a physicist,

an academic, and a science communicator who divides her time

between the University of Oxford and the University of Melbourne. And she's currently focused

in her research work on the development of new particle accelerators for applications in medicine.

But she's also written a really fabulous book called The Matter of Everything,

how curiosity, physics, and improbable experiments changed the world.

Susie Sheehe, welcome to inquiring minds. Thank you. It's great to be here.

So one of the things I really like about your

approach to understanding physics is that it is grounded in how these discoveries were made. And that to me

is always fascinating, especially when you have a serendipitous discovery. You know, often it's so hard

to get funding for basic science and theoretical physics, I think is particularly esoteric

for a lot of people. They don't understand, like, why should we be spending so much money

building a particle accelerator when, you know, and then there are, of course, people who understand

and who realize that a lot of the answers about the universe are going to be, you know,

within this kind of sphere.

But for those that are still skeptical, I wondered if we could start with the story of the first

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