An Evening with Professor Brian Cox (Thursday 29th September 2016, Manchester O2 Apollo)

It breaks my heart to have to write something of a mixed review for An Evening with Professor Brian Cox. Indeed, it’s take me almost a month to finishing writing this post, because I wasn’t sure I wanted to be so negative, but I hope the following criticism will be seen as constructive rather than vindictive.

Once of the first things Brian said when he came on stage was how comforting it was to see a couple of thousand people make the effort to come out on a “night like this” (i.e. cold and wet) for what was “essentially a lecture”. He was right – it is comforting, and it was a lecture. Now, I’m fine with lectures – in fact I’d love to go to more of them – but something that’s billed as “An Evening With…” and takes place at a gig venue like the O2 Apollo should surely have been more, for want of a better word, entertaining? Yes, there were a couple of videos, lots of amazing photographs and some nice graphs, plus some interludes involving Cox’s regular work partners Robin Ince and Jeff Forshaw, but in the main this was a two-hour lecture about cosmology that was actually not very accessible. If you consider Cox’s TV series (which I love) as introductions to science, then An Evening with Professor Brian Cox was more like an intermediate course. No, it wasn’t at the level of a university lecture, but there was a lot of technical information and graphs. This isn’t necessarily problematic, and after all you can’t have science without maths and graphs, but I think there needed to more focus and a slightly softer approach, because it was all rather bewildering. My wife and our friend felt the same.

It’s obvious from watching Cox’s TV shows or by listening to him on podcasts that he’s a very good public speaker: he’s knowledgeable and engaging, plus he’s in the enviable position of being able to throw in jokes about not having been on that same stage for a while (nice reference to his pop-star days there). But I think there was simply too much being thrown at the audience for the show to fulfil its purpose (at least this is my view, which is, after all, only one opinion and others are available). I enjoy reading popular science books on physics, but much of the content went over my head, and even when I did follow what was being said it was quickly replaced by another graph. As one person behind me remarked, “He kept going off on tangents.” There needed to be more structure, and I felt the same way after hearing Cox’s 2012 Cockroft-Rutherford lecture. I’m not saying that the science should be dumbed down or that there needed to be more puppet videos, just that there is a way of effectively communicating complex ideas and information, and I’m not convinced that this show gets it right. It does in part, but not wholly. Perhaps others had a different experience, but I’m sure that the scientists in the audience – of which there were many – got more out of it than the people like me who love popular science and The Infinite Monkey Cage podcasts but simply aren’t sufficiently scientifically-minded to be actual scientists. And if the evening wasn’t for people like me, who was it for?

Then there is the choice of venue itself. Most people would have been attending after a full day of work and the 02 Manchester Apollo was, like any gig hall, unbearably hot; I can’t have been the only one who was actually falling asleep by the end. Well, I know I wasn’t – the guy next to me jumped twice as he finally dropped off. Then you have the usual gig venue problems: cramped seating, people arriving late and disrupting the beginning of the performance, boozers who can’t last an hour without needing to stand up and disrupt a whole row of seated attendees so that they can go to the toilet. For this, we had to pay over £30 (plus booking fee). I can’t help thinking that the evening would have been far better suited to somewhere like the Bridgewater Hall, or even a university lecture theatre, where at least the seating would have been roomier and there would have been less drinking. I suspect the choice of venue was an attempt to draw in a different type of crowd, which is to be applauded, but if that’s the case then I would question the content of the evening even more…

So that’s the moaning out of the way. Please don’t think that I had an awful time, because I didn’t.  There were many positives to highlight. Firstly, science is AWESOME, and this was definitely conveyed by Cox, Ince and Forshaw, all of whom have a clear passion for physics and cosmology. The excitement regarding science was obvious as Cox talked, as it was Ince’s interludes (he likes to play up the “idiot” role but anyone who has listened to any of the podcasts in which he’s involved will know that he’s absolutely not an idiot). And there is a definite geeky excitement to seeing such a large venue occupied by PEOPLE WHO JUST LOVE SCIENCE. What the show did do very well was convey the incredible complexity of the universe and its incomprehensible vastness. Even if you’re bamboozled by the equations, it’s still easy to get an overall sense of just how amazing the universe is.

If you love science, you will enjoy this lecture, however I suspect that the level of enjoyment will probably fluctuate quite a bit depending on your grasp of the concepts. I may have some gripes about the evening, but I’m very glad that I went. I just hope that the next Cox event lives up to my expectations.

On Treating Victims With Respect

This is less of a blog and more of an article, but what the hell…

In recent days, we’ve seen US Presidential candidate Donald Trump hit by multiple allegations of sexual assault against women. It started with the release of video recording of crude comments made a decade ago in conversation with TV presenter Billy Bush, and now we’re seeing more and more women come forward to accuse Trump of assault or inappropriate behaviour.

The most disappointing thing is that whatever happens to Trump, this sort of inappropriate behaviour towards women will continue to happen and others will seek to defend it. The same thing happened when the Johnny Depp / Amber Heard split also recently hit the headlines.

I find it hard to believe that the same old arguments are continuing to crop up in relation to domestic violence. We just don’t seem to be getting any closer to eradicating the problem or treating victims with respect. Every day in my current employment I see the incredibly destructive and corrosive effect of domestic violence on individuals and families as a whole. So why are we still failing victims?

First of all, let’s be clear that neither Trump nor Depp have been found guilty in a court of law, and we shouldn’t judge them until they are. Furthermore, no-one knows the truth of the matter except the alleged victims and the accused (although there is compelling third-party witness evidence to support Heard’s claims that Depp physically assaulted her on least one occasion, and of course there is the recording of Trump). It’s true that a very small percentage of such accusations are false, and it may be the case that Depp is innocent. The cornerstone of any decent legal system is the principle that the accused is innocent until proven guilty, and every accused person has the right to a fair and robust trial. However – and this is the key point – that does not mean that there is a right to treat victims as liars.

And yet we have people like Nigel Farrage  attempting to explain away Trump’s behaviour as mere “locker room” banter. Oh, please. Whether Trump knew he was being recorded or not, there is no excuse for such comments: no right-minded person – male or female – would talk about grabbing a woman “by the pussy”. And consider fellow actor Paul Bettany tweeting the following about Depp: “He’s the sweetest, kindest, gentlest man that I’ve ever known. Just saying.” Sorry Paul, but the fact that a person was sweet, kind and gentle to you on a film set – maybe even socially – does not mean that he or she is incapable of domestic violence. It doesn’t work like that. You see, men and women are capable of being both nice and violent: the two are not mutually exclusive. I have nothing against Paul Bettany, but he is a public personality and as such his views are both far-reaching and potentially influential. He has 148,000 followers on Twitter, and so he has a responsibility to think before he tweets.

Publicly undermining an accuser has the effect of minimising the alleged violence. Time and time again we see accusers treated with absolutely no regard for their feelings. Just put yourself in the shoes of a domestic violence or sexual assault victim. Imagine how difficult it is to be subjected to such scrutiny – from the police, from legal professionals, from family and friends – and then, to top it all off, you also see people rushing to support your alleged abuser. This is why victims often don’t come forward: it’s just too much.

In this day and age we should not still be having the same outdated arguments regarding domestic violence and sexual assault. We need to stop making excuses and start treating victims with more respect.

Jonathan Safran Foer in conversation with Jeanette Winterson (Tuesday 11th October 2016, Manchester Literature Festival)

The Manchester Literature Festival always has great authors and this year was no exception, because on Tuesday my wife and I were fortunate to see Jonathan Safran Foer in conversation with Jeannette Winterson.

Foer is sometimes unfairly maligned as being a pretentious writer (just search the internet for the explosion of outrage regarding the publishing of his emails with Natalie Portman), but however you feel about his writing, there is no doubt that in person he is a great conversationalist: pin-sharp and very eloquent. Yes, he obviously takes his writing very seriously and he has a clear love of language, both written and spoken, but he’s also very self-aware and has a keen sense of humour. For example, he started off by joking that his friends and family always disappear whenever he has a new book out, as if fearful of somehow upsetting him, and yet more than one friend had excitedly brought up his impending date with Jeannette Winterson.

Special credit must be given to Jeanette Winterson, who was enthusiastic and inquisitive in her questions. Thankfully there were no toe-curling questions, such as when my wife and I went to the Festival’s Michael Chabon event a couple of years and the interviewer brought up the fact that Chabon’s wife had given Chabon a sexually transmitted disease, which was slightly awkward for everyone… The focus of the talk was, of course, Foer’s most recent book, Here I Am, but we got to hear about all manner of topics, from Foer sudden adoption of a dog to his decision, upon reaching the age of thirty, to start throwing birthday parties again, magicians and all. I always think with these sort of events that there is risk of there being too much emphasis on deciphering the author’s books, which is rather unnecessary given that the books often speak for themselves. An event like this proves that authors should just be allowed to talk, because inevitably they will say something interesting and you will learn something new.

One of the most interesting things Foer said, in respect of his teaching at NYU, was that he saw little point in trying to teach writing, because there was really no secret to constructing sentences. Instead, he preferred to focus on working out how to get his students to continue to write. This resonated with me, because I’ve certainly found that the most important thing is to write frequently, no matter how little.

The audience Q&A section was, as always with these sort of things, a bit hit and miss, given that the audience members asking the questions are inevitably star-struck and nervous, but Winterson stuck to her promise to be thoroughly Northern and cut short anyone who started to ramble – even Foer himself!

It was a very enjoyable event, and to top things off, my wife and I walked away with no less than four signed books. Long live the Manchester Literature Festival!