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It may never have seemed that way at school, but then again, you probably didn't have ABC science buffs Adam Spencer and Dr Karl Kruszlnicki teaching it to you. In Perth last week as part of the travelling National Science Week roadshow, the pair were pointing out, with the ease of consummate performers, that not only is science good for you, you're actually gonna be needing it too.
The 29 year-old Spencer was also, at one time, the consummate uni student, starting arts-law at the University of Sydney in 1987, before moving into a maths degree that currently has him teetering on the brink of a PhD in Pure Mathematics, focusing on the er, sufficiency of jets of polynomial functions.
Always a keen debater, Spencer was well versed in the way of comedy via Theatre Sports, so much so that when a friend entered him in Triple J's Row Comedy competition in 1996 he won the NSW state final. Soon after, while in the audience during an outside broadcast by the Js from Sydney University, he was asked to read the weather, with a Pure Mathematics bent. 'Hobart fine and 22' the square root of 184 'he ad-libbed in a manner that would one day become trademark. 'Melbourne sunny and 22, which of course, is the cube root of 10,648'.
The Triple J ball was now rolling, already a Good News Week regular, Spencer was soon picking up request work before joining Helen Razer on the afternoon shift, The Departure Lounge, eventually making the show his own for the better part of last year. Earlier this year he took over the Triple J Breakfast Show with due aplomb. Spencer also hosts the ABC-TV science program, Quantum, and is impersonated rather badly each week by some guy on Channel 10's Totally Full Frontal.
You're presently on a whirlwind roadshow with Dr Karl. What's the caper?
We're taking this rock'n'roll science show on the road for National Science Week. It's Perth, Darwin, Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne... and bloody Swaziland may have slipped on the agenda at the last minute. Karl and I talk about Great Moments in Science, we throw around ideas with some slides and videos and we go at it for about an hour, trying to get across everything from 'will there be an Armageddon next year when all the planets line up?' through to 'what on earth is the theory of the kamikaze sperm' and 'what's the calorie analysis of the diet of Elvis Presley and did it lead to his death?'
To which the questions are 'what was it?' and 'did it?'...
Yeah, whereas most human beings take in 3,000 calories a day and 5,000 is about the most people can get through. Eivis was chewing through 90,000 for a while there. One that's very interesting about Elvis too is that while he was famous for his cheeseburgers, people just assumed that these Elvis cheeseburgers were like 20 kilometres wide or whatever, they were just your normal McDonald's style cheeseburger. The thing was Elvis ate about 65 of them at a sitting. That's where the problem is, once you get up to the 40s there you really gotta start trimming back.
As for as you can tell are the kids these days digging science?
Yeah they are. I think for a lot of young people at the moment science has impacted so much in their lives through explosions in information technology in particular and most people have come across some of the stuff that's going on in genetics - they're the two main areas as far as I'm concerned. I hope some people are starting to realise that being scientifically and technically literate is just going to be so crucial in the next 50 years. The example I give is that I have a giggle with my dad 'cause he can't program the video recorder. That's fine, but 20 years from now, to be alienated from the basic technologies of society means you won't be able to do your banking, you won't be able to study at school or you won't be able to communicate with people the way most people are communicating. I think some people are starting to pick up now how important that stuff is. There's been a general renaissance and interest in science as a result of it.
Is science being taught right in schools?
No, absolutely not. It's taught, in some cases, very appallingly in schools. People often ask us 'how can you make science sexy? How long has science been sexy?' Science has always been sexy by that definition, it's just that people have failed to make that clear. Science hasn't suddenly become more interesting, science was fascinating in the 1700s, science will be fascinating 500 years from now. But a lot of people don't explain that properly and that's very unfortunate. I'm taking a national tour around and I host Quantum on the ABC and I failed a Year 10 chemistry exam. I just didn't do it 'cause it sucked.
Still, you're near to a PhD in Pure Mathematics...
Maths was the one area of science I had any vague idea about.
Your specialty is the sufficiency of jets of polynomial functions. Please explain, sexily.
(Laughs) What I was essentially looking at was when you have very complicated equations, sometimes not all of the terms in that equation are necessary to really understand the answer. I'm not talking about getting the exact answer but if you had y4 +x3y2+x7+x10+x15=0 or something like that, not all of those terms are really important to understand what the answer's fundamentally going to look like.
So sufficiency conditions are working out, in complicated equations, which parts of the equation do you really need to understand what's going on and which bits you can piss off because they're just getting in your way.
Right.
(Laughs) It'd be like if you wanted to make a director's cut of a video, what are the shitty bits you could take out of the original? For example, for a film, Meet Joe Black, that I saw on the way over you could have had a director's cut of that which would be three minutes long. It was fucking awful.
Speaking of science and sexy, have you heard about how Blur have a bit of a science project?
No, what are they doing?
There's a guy who's keen to launch a rocket to Mars in 2003. They're using their nous, celebrity and charm to raise money for him. I s'pose if Blur are into it, anyone can be ...
Anything like that's fantastic if it makes just a few kids think it's good. That's why I try and throw a bit of maths into the Breakfast Show on Triple J, when we're doing the weather occasionally I'll go 'Perth, sunny and 27, that's three cubed', just a little mathematical explanation of a couple of numbers on the weather or whatever. Occasionally you'll get emails from people saying 'you explained a perfect number the other day mate, I did it with a pen and paper and I think I've worked it out'. I just love that, sort of stuff.
That's a development of the thing that pretty much funded you on the radio in the first place...
Exactly. I'm just running that little pony into the ground (laughs). I'm gonna keep running it 'till the maggots have eaten it up and just walk away.
So were you a science geek at school? You couldn't have been if you failed chemistry ...
But I didn't even do chemistry. It was an elective and I said 'I don't wanna do that'. I did it for three months like I had to and then just dropped it. I'd like to think I was a mixture of incredibly cool and hip at school and a bit of a geek. To be honest, I probably didn't really manage either of those. I drifted anonymously through it all. I was a debater at school and I think we all know how cool that was (laughs).
It has come in very handy though.
Oh absolutely. I can yak under wet concrete mate, don't worry about that.
Speaking of 'cool', what of the guy on Totally Full Frontal who impersonates you by constantly saying 'science is cool? Aren't these people meant to be professionals?
Well it's as close to amusing as that show gets. I met them at the Logies. I walked up to the guy and said 'it's a pleasure to meet myself'. I actually got on really well with them and they agreed that if they won the Logie - which would have been no more surprising than Hey Hey It's Saturday winning it - I was going to go up with them and stand there in the background going 'oh what a cool award. How cool. What a cool vibe, Gee that's cool'. I've only seen it a couple of times and I was tipped off in advance that it was happening - but the coverage, of me on Full Frontal, as with most of their stuff, the makeup and mannerisms were reasonable, it just wasn't particularly funny. But that's the way it goes.
It's like he'd never seen or heard of you but one of his friends had told him about you and they'd got it wrong.
They wanted me on it and they couldn't find any take on it.
There's about four webpages about you on the internet ...
Yeah, I set up three of them. No ... are there?
Yes, like Claire And Susan's Adam Page and stuff like that.
Wow. I've seen a couple of them, vaguely.
Did you think you could inspire that kind of fandom?
I don't know if it's fandom as much as a couple of people with a bit of spare time getting their heads around new technology (laughs).
While giving you a plug?
Oh well, if they insist. As long as I keep those payments coming I hear they're keeping them up.
So how are you coping, getting up in the mornings for the Breakfast Show?
I love it. The only tragedy about getting up at that time in the morning is that I have to cut my morning jog a bit short. I've got to be in the studio at about 5am, so I only jog for about 20kms these days instead of the 35km I was doing last year. With Sydney 2000 around the corner it could be a tragedy that impacts on this nation.
You wouldn't want to be a lazy bastard now, would you?
I don't have any choice mate (laughs). It's a bizarre shock to your system. I get up at 4.54am every day because I like a bit of precision. I actually think I find that a bit easier than I would find getting u at about 7.30am to be in an office by 9am. If I had to do that I'd be late every day. You just don't have any choice with this thing. If I'm two minutes late for work, people find out very quickly. I just have to do it.
You got into radio slightly by design, almost by accident...
Oh, completely by accident. It comes down to a combination of right place at the right time and my ability to secrete little parcels of food poisoning into other presenter's lunches at crucial times.
What do you like best about radio if it was something you didn't know you were going to get into?
I had no idea. I'm literally still getting my head around it. I've been doing it for a year, basically, it's a bizarre and very flattering thing where I'm doing breakfast at Triple J and occasionally I realise I've got this job that in some people's minds is the top of the tree and is something I've meant to have coveted for years and gone 'round plotting and scheming and stabbing other people in the back and spreading rumours about them just to get my hands on this chalice.
I was hanging around the corridor one day and the boss said 'oh yeah, what are you like to getting up in the morning?' (laughs). It was just an amazing coincidence of Mikey (Robins) leaving at the same time and me being there and all that sort of stuff. The thing I'm enjoying most about it is I still know maybe only 10% of what radio's about.
Helen Razer has said that you're 'devoid of any kind of performance anxiety'. True?
In that sense, yeah. I don't get nervous about doing it. I feel comfortable in that sense. At the some time I think I'm much better at it than I was a year ago. So I was feeling comfortable last year even though some of the shows were completely shit. I just didn't even realise, you know?
That's one thing that comes from doing a lot of debating and performance earlier, I've got no qualms about that. One thing I do try and challenge myself to do as a performer is that every six months you should get yourself into a gig, some sort that you've never done before and that you are actually quite scared to do. I supported Steven Wright when he was in Australia a few years ago it was my first major gig in stand up comedy, really. I'm in front of 2,000 people at the State Theatre in Sydney for three nights. I was just absolutely, ridiculously out of my depth and I did it for a exactly that reason - I'll give it a shot, hey? Every six months I'll try and do something I'm really not sure if it's going to work. That way you stop being complacent and that way you keep redefining what you can do. That's the best way to get over performance anxiety, you just walk out and give it a shot.
Is there preference between radio work and TV with Quantum? Which has impacted on your life more?
Well it's all part of my grand plan to one day host Australia's Funniest Home Videos. Unfortunately I've seen Channel 9's list of exceptionally good looking and fairly vacuous young women. I'm a long way down that list. I'm not even in the top 50.
Don't limit yourself, what about When Things GO Wrong, Wildest Cop Videos and The Very Best Of The World's Worst Drivers?
I want to see The Best Of The Worst Of Australia's Video Players Going Wrong. It's just a group of guys sitting around going 'you piece of shit, work, work!'. You can get a few hours out of that.
Or perhaps the return, if ever, of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
(Laughs) I think the ABC's doing a version of it called Anybody Want A Free Beer?
What did you think of that show? A chance of a lifetime or TV evil?
Oh, pathetic. What I would love to do if I was on it is throw questions back of the host. I was watchinq it the other niqht and this guy was asked "where's the headquarters of the UN?' he said Paris and it's actually New York. I would have loved it, Eddie McGuire says 'Adam, where's the headquarters of the UN?' I would have gone 'for $250,000 Eddie? Okay, it's in New York, how about double or nothing if you can tell me the first Secretary-General? It's actually Trygve Lie Eddie, former Norwegian Finance Minister. A compromise candidate, replaced by Dag Hammarskjold a few years later. Eddie? Oh okay, let's just move on'.
Do you think the performer in you is now too strong to settle back into mathematics as an older Spencer?
One thing, when this bizarre 'other' stuff finishes, I would love to read more mathematics. I haven't done that much of the physics stuff, I wouldn't give a particularly good explanation of how the universe started, for example. But I'd be happy to move into being not just a science communicator, but a mathematics communicator. I used to teach and tutor a lot at university, which I loved. It really was fun.
What's the solution to the millennium bug?
Reset everything to 1972.
Gough Whilam would be pleased.
Yeah, by that I mean politics, fashion and Australian cricket (laughs).
What's the solution to Fermat's Lost Theorem?
I would personally do it using the highly abstracted version of Elliptical Curve Theory. Unfortunately, someone else has already done it. I was just about to do it the next day. What are the odds, hey? We'll have that as a special sealed section in your next edition (laughs). It's a bit hot for people.
Look after the paperwork and maybe you could join Adam Spencer on Triple J.
Triple J morning announcer, host of the television science program Quantum and mathematician, Adam Spencer looks back at the strict discipline of his schooling and its part in his rise as a multimedia personality.
"I went to a Jesuit military school in Japan, which was pretty bizarre but had a big influence on where I have ended up. I got that mixture of Jesuit discipline and respect for the important things in life, which are the military and Latin and the right for younger children to be strapped for misdemeanors, I remember getting the strap once from a father whose name I won't mention because he never told us- he always wore a hood- for not having my Latin signed by mum. I had actually done the homework, but I had actually forged mum's signature because mum had been too busy in the morning.
This father had different grades of strapping. The first grade was a 'tickle', then a 'smack' then a 'slosh', and the one where he would launch himself off the ground and swing back with his full body weight was called a 'stinker'. He was such an old coot he missed my hand and hit me across the wrist. I was in genuine pain and was looking down at my arm which was just this giant red welt. I couldn't feel my hand because I think he broke my wrist and this guy said: "Sorry, there's a good boy, put your hand out and I'll hit it."
At the time it struck me as harsh and painful, but in hindsight I realise it was fair and it's one of the reasons why my work is marked by such preparation and discipline. It's not good enough just to produce the goods, you actually have to go through the paperwork. I ended up in mathematics as a result of a partially refined mind and, motivated by fear stumbled through at quite a high level. I then went to university at Oxford. It was a pretty sex time to be doing maths so I did law instead and after a few years dropped out. I returned to my native mathematics and ended up doing a PhD at Sydney university in the late '80's and early '90's. I am famous for spending a while at university."