I'm gonna make him a proxy he can't refuse - with Dr. Simon Brassell
Hi, folks. Welcome back to Earth on the Rocks, the show where we get to know more about the person behind the science over drinks. I'm your host, Shelby Rader, and joining me today is Dr. Simon Brassell. Simon, thanks for joining.
Simon:Well, it's great to be here and thank you very much for the invitation.
Shelby:So, Simon, since we're getting to know you over drinks, what would be your drink of choice for today?
Simon:Well, I am a great fan of single malt scotch and have an extensive collection of them. On a summer evening, gin and tonics are wonderful, and breakfast isn't breakfast without grapefruit juice and coffee. But my go to drink has to be wine because all of the different varietals and the wonderful combinations with food and especially with cheese.
Shelby:Do you have a specific type of wine that you're more drawn to?
Simon:Well, the fine wines for Napa Valley, especially the Cabernet Sauvignon are probably my main favorite. But there are so many opportunities to sample different wines from different countries, different varietals, different flavors, and tastes, and and noses, aromas associated with them, that it's just it's always a wonderful experience.
Shelby:I will say I have very little knowledge of wines, but I've gotten to hear about your knowledge of wines on a few occasions, and it is it's very enjoyable for me to learn about those things from you because you do have a lot of knowledge about them, and and I'm sure as listeners can tell, are very passionate about them.
Simon:Well, it's thanks to my father. I mean, as a a small boy well, not a small boy, maybe a teenager. I was occasionally given money back in Britain to go around to the wine store and purchase the wine that he wanted. Maybe I was age 13 or 14, and the the wine merchant knew who I was, knew who my father was, knew that if the wine did not get back to my father, there would be problems. So through my parents and especially my father, that's where that love of of the grape began.
Shelby:How would you sort of classify yourself outside of a wine connoisseur if someone were to ask what sort of scientist are you?
Simon:Well, the phrase that I've often used is I'm a molecular and isotopic biogeochemist, which is an automatic conversation stopper. Yeah. But what it means is that I look at organic matter and I look at the composition of organic matter in a whole variety of different geological and sometimes biological materials. And part of the goal is to understand the fate of organic matter from when it's made by organisms, when it's carried and buried into segments, and its ultimate fate within the rock record. And one of the ways to do that is by looking at the compositional characteristics of the organic matter.
Simon:So that's that's what I study and use a variety of analytical and instrumental techniques to do so. And part of it is to build the stories that those molecules tell us about their history, about the history of when they were formed, what the earth was like at that time. And it's been a a long journey because I started this as an undergraduate, but very rewarding in in the path.
Shelby:And can you tell us a little bit about what you mean when you say organic matter? Because that might be a slightly unfamiliar term to some folks.
Simon:Well, primarily, is that all living material, for example, photosynthetic organisms take in carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and through the energy that they derive from photosynthesis, make a variety of different molecules. We think of what what our body is composed of, and we derive that from our food, but that food, especially if we're eating vegetables and plants, is being derived from this this process. And so it's the material that includes carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, sometimes sulfur, the material that is essential to all living organisms. And different living organisms have very different compositions of their organic matter, and that's what we observe when we look at those molecules within the sediment record, also within within living material, and, through to to petroleum. The field is sometimes would be referred to as organic geochemistry, and that grew out from the nineteen fifties in wanting to understand the composition of petroleum and how that was linked to once living organic material, once living organisms.
Simon:And so from that, the field has then expanded into many other areas so that that aspect of understanding the origins of petroleum and gas is a far, far smaller component of the field than it was at its origins.
Shelby:And so you you mentioned, you know, that even the things that we eat and presumably drink, such as wines, can have some impact on our makeup. So is there a way that we can use organic geochemistry to better understand human and sort of their interactions with their environments?
Simon:Well, one of the clues there is is from the not just the molecules themselves, but the isotopic composition they contain. And so isotopes are the fact that carbon, for example, occurs as both the more common isotope, which is carbon 12, and another isotope, carbon 13, that's about 1.1 of natural abundance of carbon. But the way in which carbon gets processed by plants means that different types of plants incorporate a different level of carbon 12 and carbon 13. So dependent upon the diet that someone has, that may be recorded in their tissues and in an archaeological sense, there are bone or teeth that remain, whether for humans or for animals, one can analyze that from the isotopic composition and get an idea of what the diet of that organism was when they were alive. That same approach can also, in a human context, it's possible using that to be able to identify the example that immediately comes to mind is a woman who lived in medieval times, who was buried in Britain, but had spent part of her life in Italy and then in France because of being able to look at the different composition of parts of her remains that had been formed at different times of her life.
Simon:So it's sort of like a forensic exercise in being able to piece together from the geochemical information that evidence of an individual's history.
Shelby:That's one of the more interesting aspects of isotope geochemistry, which you and I both are involved in in different capacities, is being able to use it for just what you say, for forensic geology, which I think is sort of an unusual term that people maybe don't think about commonly. But, yeah, we can sort of see a reflection of our diets at different periods of our lives based on where we've been and what we've consumed that are represented in different parts of our bodies. And so one of the sort of fun facts I enjoy is that over the last, I don't know, several decades, Americans have this very strong isotopic signature of half fructose corn syrup. Yes. And so coming from the Midwest, I feel like maybe people take a lot of pride in that.
Shelby:You know, we're very much corn based people. But so you had mentioned, you know, thinking of carbon as an example and these two isotopes of carbon. And so for folks who maybe are less familiar with that idea, these are still carbon atoms but slightly different masses. And when I say slightly, mean incredibly small differences in their weights or their masses. And the fact to me that we can even measure those differences is is just really impressive because that is a very difficult task to do because they are so similar, but we can actually differentiate between them and then apply that knowledge to some of the things that you mentioned, some of the things that you you also work on.
Simon:I think I think the great thing also is that over time, the ability to measure them, we've been able to measure smaller and smaller amounts so that the nature of the material that it's possible to analyze now enables a much finer time resolution than was possible when that capability first developed. And that is able to to give us a the kind of resolution that we know where someone was living when they were 13, and we know that it was different from when they were living at 17. And that kind of information is only in the comparatively recent past amenable to us because we now have the sensitivity of the instruments to measure these differences in the isotopic composition of carbon at minuscule amounts.
Shelby:So you you mentioned earlier that you have sort of have been interested in this field of organic geochemistry since you were an undergrad. Yes. And so was that something growing up that you you sort of knew that was an area that you wanted to explore or did that come later in life? Because that's sort of a slightly more niche field within the geosciences.
Simon:Well, I think as a child, my interest was very much in science partly because my older brother was much more interested in literature and sometimes siblings choose to go different paths. And associated with that, I then did a lot of natural sciences, physics and chemistry at at high school. Although I still remember that the first two exams I took in chemistry, I got 8% and then 21% and was bottom of the class.
Shelby:Out of 100%?
Simon:Out of a hundred. And the following year with a different teacher, I was then at the top of the class. So there was something about the pedagogy of the the teachers there that made a difference for me. But I also was living at a time where the revolution in earth sciences was taking place with the recognition of plate tectonics. And that ability to understand how the earth works and how the internal engine of the earth, the heat, it was moving plates around.
Simon:I watched a lot of TV programs, science TV programs, and read books. And so that's what as well as instances on family holidays that drove me towards thinking that I'm also interested in geology. So in choosing a university, there were a number of universities in Britain which did joint honors degrees in chemistry and geology. And so that's what I chose to do and went to the University of Bristol. And at Bristol, there are two of the leaders of the field of organic geochemistry, Jeff Eglinton and James Maxwell, and they were teaching classes to undergraduates within this joint program.
Simon:And so that's where I was captivated by this field, did an undergraduate honors thesis project, and then did exactly what I would advise none of my students to do. I stayed at the same university to do a PhD. I then continued as a postdoc there and then as a Royal Society research fellow at Bristol before moving to The US. So, yes, that it was it's primarily the influence of individuals and their just the enthusiasm that they conveyed for the field, and it just was a great fit for me.
Shelby:During your time there at Bristol, both as a a student and a postdoc and then later on, were there any sort of experiences that really stood out to you, whether that be in the lab or being able to go into the field or things like that that also sort of reemphasized your interest in what you were doing?
Simon:Well, think between an undergraduate and graduate, and then again as a first year undergraduate, I had two summers at the University of Berkeley working on microbial mats collected from Baja California in Mexico. And so I did some fieldwork associated with that project and and spent a couple of summers in California, which was a wonderful experience. And then in 1978, I had my first opportunity to go on board what was the Glomar Challenger, which was the drilling ship and was in the Philippine Sea collecting cores from the Philippine Sea for for analysis. A couple of years later, I went again to the Angola Basin to drill where we drilled and recovered cores from there. And those experiences on board the ship were so insightful because you're cloistered for two months with a whole variety of scientists in different disciplines.
Simon:But especially, I think, at that age, learning about what are the paleontologists doing, what are the sedimentologists doing, how do we learn from the geophysics in seeing the sediment sequence that we're recovering? And the other chemists, the physical property specialists, all the different scientists on board, and learning from them about what they studied and why they studied it, that was what was truly enlightening and helped give me a really broad perspective of of the scope of geosciences and also recognizing the way in which a particular area of my interest might fit into help solve some of the problems and the questions that other scientists were wanting to to answer.
Shelby:So this idea of of a research cruise is one that we have not heard about yet on this show, and so I'm I'm roughly familiar with them. I myself have never been on one. But could you tell us a little bit more about the goal of those? And like you said, it it's a ship. It's a cruise that a group of scientists go on.
Shelby:So it's sort of like I would envision a classroom on steroids where you just have a lot of folks that are very excited about what they're doing but in one space. And so because there is this diversity of of sort of interests and disciplines, what are the goals of some of these cruises? What's it like to be on there? What's your schedule? How do you interact with other groups?
Shelby:Those sorts of things.
Simon:So I think the first thing is that there are groups of scientists who get together and decide we need to go and get cause from this particular part of the ocean. So the idea is to recognize sites which ideally answer multiple questions and serve multiple disciplines. And so groups of scientists get together, make these proposals, and often it's an iterative process before finally that particular location gets selected for an expedition. And that is also there's a lot of logistics there because you're not going to take the ship from the middle of the Pacific and move it to the Atlantic. You'll find a progression of different sites associated with these proposals to make sure there's a smooth track.
Simon:And then once the cruise is it's agreed and is going to fly, then the scientists the lead scientists on those proposals, it's then a case of gathering a shipboard scientific party, covering all of the expertise that's needed to address the questions associated with what is expected to be recovered. And then those individuals meet often for the first time on board the ship, and then you're there for two months. I think there are lots of stories associated with the beginning, you open where the fruit is and there's a wonderful supply, and toward the end of the cruise, you open it and there's lemons, nothing else left. So there are those aspects, but the real fun comes when the cores arrive on deck. They are split, so you have an opportunity then to actually see the sediments, to sample them.
Simon:And one of my fond memories was from one of the technicians on board on, the second time I was on board. And when I came up and we we had reached an interval of the Cretaceous, which is of particular interest because it's associated with times which are called oceanic anoxic events, where the ocean was thought to be anoxic or certainly have less oxygen than it does. And so we get these black shales associated with those horizons. And the first time we recovered one of those, and I went up to the core lab to see these, one of the technicians with a toothpick and a post it note had put, oh ah. And so the question was, why is it oh ah?
Simon:Well, when all the scientists come and see that layer, they go either, oh, or they go, ah. And so those are those are the fun things that take place, but ultimately, it's then the ability to see those sediments for the first time and have a sense then of how they can contribute to our better understanding of the processes that formed them and the history of the oceans.
Shelby:And so you are are now talking about these cores, and so folks have listened to earlier episodes with Andrea Stevens Goddard. She described a core as essentially taking a straw Yes. Sticking it in the ground, and then pulling up what you can recover. And so you're saying that we're doing this in the bottom of the ocean Yes. Which seems very difficult.
Shelby:And so these would be, I would imagine, very valuable, highly sought after samples because it's very difficult for us to to get to the the bottom of the ocean and to retrieve material. And so the fact that that this is all sort of organized in that way is pretty impressive, and I felt like being a part of that would be a lot of fun.
Simon:I think there's a a wonderful community of scientists who work together with these materials. And part of the challenge now is that some of the most interesting layers and the ones that tell us most about critical intervals of of Earth history have now been really extensively sampled from the cores that were recovered. And in actual fact, the last time I went on board the ship, which was in 02/2001, and I was actually on board the ship during 09/11, which was such a well, I think for everyone, was an emotional experience, but just very strange when you're in the middle of the ocean. But associated with that, there was one of these oceanic anoxic events that we recovered. And a colleague recently was looking at that same core where the cores are stored in Texas, and that entire core is now just foam that is put in to fill the gaps where people have sampled.
Simon:So there is none of that core left. And that's, I think, the the key challenge that because this operation of collecting the sediments began, well, in the late sixties, early seventies, it really got started. So many of the sites have now we now have much better tools and techniques to go back and look at some of the questions. But sadly, the funding for ocean drilling is now gone. Part of that is because the ship that has been used for the last, gosh, nearly thirty years is old.
Simon:It needs a further refit, and is less seaworthy than it needs to be to go into certain territorial waters. So it's for many of us within the community, this is a time period of concern associated with how are we going to get back out to the ocean and recover these cores. There's some prospect because there is a drilling ship, operated by Japan, but that rarely leaves Japanese waters. But the Chinese also have two new drilling ship that they are building and will become operational in 2027 or thereabouts, but we do not know the extent to which those are going to be accessible to the international scientific community. So it's a time of transition for thinking about ocean drilling, but the key consideration is that there is so much that we have learned over the years and the need to continue to learn about the oceans from this process is is more important than ever.
Simon:And I always think that, you know, we know far more about the surface of the moon than we do about the deep ocean and the history of the ocean.
Shelby:Well, and and like you said, I mean, once once the samples from these previous cores are gone, they're gone.
Simon:They're gone.
Shelby:You know? A lot of these analyses that that we as geochemists and other folks will do are destructive. So we have to destroy the material to measure it. And when you just have a core, you have very limited material. So, yeah, it's it's a shame that there's so much uncertainty with with how this program moves forward because it feels like such an integral part of how so many disciplines have evolved in their understanding of the way that the Earth works because so much of the ocean is otherwise inaccessible.
Simon:Yes. I think the other side of this is also that based on our comments and our conversation previously, it was such a magnificent experience for me as a graduate student and then as a postdoc and then as a professor to go onboard that ship. And I'm just saddened that that opportunity is not gonna be available for a generation of scientists because it's so formative in having a sense of accomplishment from what the cruises and expeditions achieve, but also the opportunity to to interact with such a broad group of scientists cloistered Yeah. And unable to escape.
Shelby:Yeah. So what was that like being somewhere in the middle of the ocean for 09:11? I mean, how how efficiently are you all even receiving news when you're there?
Simon:Well, we were off the coast of Japan, maybe a thousand miles or so East of Japan in a location called Chatsky Rise. And there was a satellite broadcast, and so the news spread. I was told by one of the other scientists as I was just going down the stairs, said, oh, a plane has just hit one of the World Trade Towers. And so it meant the scientists then gathered, and and many of us were there in the common room where we where we saw actually the the Second Tower being hit, which was very, well, just think everyone, it's such an emotional experience. One of the scientists on board the ship, her father worked at the Pentagon on some days of the week, and so one of the concerns that she had was then to try and get contact with her family.
Simon:Unfortunately, her father was not there that day. We were initially listening to it on the the broadcast we had was Bloomberg. And I will never forget the commentator on Bloomberg as the second plane hit, and it just seemed so weird. He said, I don't know what this means for the stock market. And I thought, how can anyone in that moment of time have that as your primary concern?
Simon:Fortunately, we we were able to tune in using the satellite to I think we then got PBS, and so it was a much much much better sense of of us all coming to terms. And then the ship at the end of the cruise was in Hawaii, and there was no one in Hawaii. And it's one of those occasions of then flying back to The US on an almost empty aircraft, and this was in early October, and coming back to a very changed world.
Shelby:Was there any discussion of of sort of ending the cruise early after this event happened, or was that sort of out of the question at that point?
Simon:I think because of so many of the logistics for these cruises are set so far ahead of time, the primarily, the only reason why there is a change in that is is because of some medical emergency or some major equipment failure. And I don't know whether the the co chiefs discussed this. They certainly that was not shared with the rest of the scientists.
Shelby:Yeah. I could imagine coming back after that would be sort of a very strange experience that that would sit with you.
Simon:Well, and the the other consideration, because this was in 02/2001, the communication between the ship and I mean, we had a limited number of emails that we could send, and and those were only in sort of in in pulses. So and no phone service. And so it was yes. We we were pretty much isolated and sharing our experiences and and our thoughts associated with how this has all changed. Yeah.
Simon:Yeah. Yeah.
Shelby:So some of these experiences we've been talking about were were while you were based in The UK. And, obviously, now you're here in Bloomington, Indiana. And so so what sort of drew you to The US and what drew you to IU specifically?
Simon:So I I've had two summers experience in The US, but when people ask me why did you move to The US, I usually give a two word answer, which is Margaret Thatcher. And that's primarily because the opportunities for individual of my of my age group, the university expansion that has taken place during the sixties and into the early seventies was then very much on hold in the late seventies. And so the opportunities that one saw and the amount of funding for science was well, whether it was being cut or whether it was simply just not keeping pace with inflation was what having had experiences in The US, One thought this may be a better career opportunity. And so I when I first came to The US, I had a position at at at Stanford and was tenured there and then was lured to IU for for a couple of reasons. One of them because we'd had the Loma Prieta earthquake in California, but the other was more of a personal aspect because when we first moved to The US, my wife could not work because she did not have a visa.
Simon:We thought we'll have green cards within about six months, and president Reagan gave an amnesty to illegal immigrants. And so the wait for a green card was then about two and a half years. Wow. And during that time, we were trying to live in one of the most expensive parts of the country on on a single salary. So that the the opportunity to move to somewhere that was a little less expensive, let's say, and have our young children grow up here has been has been great.
Shelby:Yeah. I don't know that it's every day that you hear somebody say, I was tenured at Stanford and decided to move to to Bloomington, but we are certainly very lucky to have you here. You've had a very impressive career even to the point of earning your own nickname within the field. You're oftentimes quite fondly referred to as the godfather of alkenones. Mhmm.
Shelby:So my first question is, you know, how do you respond to that? How does that that's a pretty big title to carry. And then a follow-up will be to talk about a little bit how that came to be and what what alkanones are and those sorts of things. But how does it feel to be the godfather of alkenones?
Simon:I think part of it is when you have been in a field for as long as I have. It is great when some of the accomplishments that you achieved fairly early in that phase that you have seen those discoveries continue to provide new information of value to the community. And partly because of of being at the outset of this discovery is what has tended to lead to that particular phrase of godfather, I suppose.
Shelby:That's a very modest response, but you certainly have earned the the godfather reputation.
Simon:Well, they are by far and away my my favorite molecule of all. And within the community, a few years ago, there was a sort of I think it was in relation to one of the World Cups. There was a competition here. What is your favorite molecule? And alkenones, unfortunately, got eliminated early in the process, and I and I still think that was not the right decision.
Simon:But
Shelby:Can you tell us what what is an alkenone?
Simon:So an alkenone, it's a a long chain molecule. It has between thirty six and forty or even 42 carbon atoms. It's called an alkenone because it also they have double bonds, carbon carbon, doubly linked within the structure, and their owns because they also have an oxygen group. And they're made by just a few species of algae within the ocean and within lakes called haptophytes, and it is that specificity of the organisms that synthesize them that's part of the benefit of following them because we know exactly where they come from, we know that they are products of organisms that are photosynthetic algae, so we know they live in the surface waters of the ocean. And back in the early eighties, 1 of the discoveries that one made, and this stems directly from materials that have come from the drilling programs.
Simon:For my PhD thesis, I'd looked at these alkenones in samples from the Japan Trench off the coast of Japan. And then a couple of years later, we were looking at samples from the Middle America Trench off the coast of Of Mexico and a little bit further south. And I recognized that the distributions were different in these two settings. The ones in off the coast of Japan had a higher proportion of molecules with more double bonds than the ones off the Middle America Trench. And partly because the production of double bonds in by organisms can be related to temperature, I thought maybe this is a temperature response.
Simon:And so we then conducted a series of experiments. We grew up the algae in collaboration with the Marine Biological Laboratory in Plymouth at different temperatures.
Shelby:So you're growing your own algae?
Simon:They're growing your own algae at different temperatures. And you're seeing in the alkenones that they produce this same response. The ones grown at higher temperatures have less unsaturation. The ones at lower temperatures have more.
Shelby:Sorry. Can you explain what unsaturation is?
Simon:So unsaturation is the number of double bonds that are present. So the more double bonds primarily, the proportion of the molecules that have two double bonds versus those with three. That's really what we were what we were focusing on. And so we also then had a whole series of of samples from different latitudes and pieced together then that this was a coherent story. We had a a sediment core from off the West Coast Of Africa where the record of glacial interglacial cycles and the temperature changes in the ocean associated with those were really well documented using another means of determining that, which is use of isotopes again, use of oxygen isotopes, and our record from the alkenones compared directly with that.
Simon:And so we introduced what was effectively the first molecular paleotemperature proxy. So when individuals ask me about this, I say, well, if you gave me a sediment that's 10,000,000 years ago, I can analyze it and I can say 10,000,000 years ago, the surface temperature of the oceans at that location was 23.8 degrees. That's that's what it provides. And that's sorry. That's Celsius, not Fahrenheit.
Shelby:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That I mean, I think this is an incredible story and and incredible work. Like I said before, I felt like your answer was a little modest because this is a really pivotal sort of change in the field.
Shelby:But it also, to me, highlights the way that science sort of unfolds in a very interesting way. You observe these differences. You're not entirely sure why there are differences between these cores, so actual physical samples. You have some ideas, some speculations. You go to the lab setting.
Shelby:You grow your own algae at different temperatures, you can sort of constrain how those algae are producing these different alkanones based on temperature. Then you have a more firm idea of how this might be used as a temperature proxy. But then you go the next step further and use a different sort of temperature proxy that we're very confident in to compare with this new potential proxy to establish it as what now is is a widely used tool. And the fact that you are able to do that in such this cohesive way, I think, just a really beautiful example of of how science works.
Simon:And I think it's great that you say that because it also is the way that a scientist thinks. It's the way in which one has an idea or hypothesis. How do we best test this? And how do we best test this in multiple ways to make sure that we're not just doing a narrow assessment but something broader than that. I think the other the other aspect of the alkenones that I have to bring into this story is what we call this temperature proxy.
Simon:And there are 37 carbon atoms, and we introduced it as UK Thirty Seven. That's because it's unsaturation for The UK because with the oxygen atom in them, these molecules are ketones, and then 37 because of the number of carbon atoms. But I still well remember with Jeff Eglinton, who was my mentor. We sat together in his office, and I remember saying, yeah, we could call this UK. And Jeff smiled broadly because being in the in Britain at the time, we thought, okay, we could have some sort of national pride in the creation of this as well.
Simon:Yeah.
Shelby:The year that the alkenones were knocked out of the molecule bracket, do you remember what molecule won?
Simon:I think it was GDGTs. So GDGTs are glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers, which is why they're shortened to GDGTs. And in actual fact, those molecules are another paleotemperature proxy that was developed several years after the the the the alkenones, and the story associated with them is that the index that's used for as a temperature proxy, it's called TEX 86. And that the TEX is not associated with Texas, but instead, this was developed at the Royal Dutch Institute for Sea Research or NEOS. And the lab is on the Island Of Tessel, which is T E X E L, so they called it TEX 86 with a similar sort of pride in the island where the research had been done.
Shelby:So if you identify some of these things, you have the the ability to name them, it sounds like.
Simon:You have the you have the capability of choosing what you want to call the index with some, I mean, some relevance clearly. But, yeah, Jeff Eglinton wrote with coauthors a book called Echoes of Life, which tells a lot of his story and research within the field of organic geochemistry. And in the copy that he gave to me, the little note that he wrote was saying, but the best fun time we had was was with the alkenones. And for me, that time was pivotal for my career, but also just, as you're describing, a great experience in developing a new tool using sound scientific principles.
Shelby:And now what sort of science questions are you attempting to answer with some of these molecules? And are the alkenones still your go to, or or are there other molecules that you're also using in your research?
Simon:Well, the alkenones, we we make measurements of the GDGTs as well as a further temperature proxy. I mean, we often describe the alkenones as a gift that keeps giving. And and the molecular record in sediments is also that way. There were always new molecules that one encounters, some that you recognize well and think, oh, is this a story that we can tell? So we have other for example, some some years later, we've found a variety of molecules that actually help us interpret the salinity of lacustrine systems because different distributions of these molecules occur in lakes with different salinity.
Simon:So there's always this sort of frontier of thinking what other story can these molecules tell us apart from the organisms that produce them, something about the environment in which they are being recorded, and then also how they get transformed as they get buried. But one of the I mentioned earlier that in part organic geochemistry grew up out of the desire to better understand the origin of petroleum. And so within the field of organic geochemistry, many of the meetings that I first attended in the sort of seventies and early eighties, petroleum geochemistry, petroleum research was a large part of those meetings. And now those meetings, a huge part of them, is dealing with the way in which the tools that we have can help us understand paleoclimate, And that's how the field has evolved. And I suppose I played a small part in helping that evolution.
Shelby:Yeah. I would I would say that you definitely, definitely did. If there are folks that are listening to this that think, I don't know, this sounds really interesting, something that I would want to explore, say, students in high school or or undergrads, what sort of advice would you have for them? Or or if you could go back and tell your younger self something to sort of keep in mind as you move through your career, what would that look like?
Simon:I always think that the the main driving force has to be curiosity. Wanting to there's something that you might see or discover and you want to know why is it the way it is and what can we learn from that. And the molecules are one way in which we're reconstructing their history. We're finding where they come from, where they are now, and where they're going. And that I think it's that idea of of wanting to answer questions about, well, about the world around us generally.
Simon:And that I think is it's the richness of of of the field of geosciences that there are so many different ways in which we can interrogate the history of the earth, and molecular and isotopic geochemistry is is is one approach.
Shelby:From what I know of you outside of your science work too, I think that and that this seems consistent for other folks that have been on the show. That sort of inherent curiosity expands to other aspects of your life too. I mean, just like you were describing your deep knowledge of wands. I know you have an interest in things like racing, and and that curiosity is very obvious, and it's it's infectious, and it's fun to be around people who who just have questions about things and and wanna figure out why something is the way it is or how this works or what that means even in sort of day to day aspects. And so it's it's a lot of fun to to get to have you on and to also get to to interact with you outside of this.
Simon:I think that also, in my mind, it also transcends into the teaching because the teaching that we do, it's a case of the question one wonders, why is it that the students don't get this concept as well as I hope? Why did my approach to teaching it not work as well? And why is this group of students understanding and this other group of students not? And that I think is, again, it's part of that curiosity and wanting to know in the context of teaching how one can how one can be more effective as an educator. But it's it's always driven by the the the desire to know more and to understand.
Shelby:Yeah. Well, speaking of curiosity, I'm curious to hear what your yes, please segment is gonna be.
Simon:Mhmm.
Shelby:So we'll we'll move to that portion of the show. I'm happy to go first or you can go first if you like. That's
Simon:I I can happily go first.
Shelby:Yes. So I'll I'll time you. I'll give you a notification when you have thirty seconds left, fifteen and five, and you can take it from there. This will be Salmon Brassel's yes, please. Whenever you're ready, Salmon.
Simon:Thank you. Well, at spring break, I am heading back to Britain for a few days, and I actually realized that this is the fiftieth time in the years that I've been in The US that I'll be making that trip. And I know that in past podcast, there's been some discussion about the connections to where you grew up and the connections especially to food maybe. And so that's always that there there's always a certain enthusiasm associated with that and the adrenaline rush that comes
Shelby:30 seconds.
Simon:When you when you land back in your home country. So I'm I'm looking forward to seeing family and friends and experiencing some British cuisine, some British beers as well, maybe. 15? And I look forward every time to when I have that that opportunity.
Shelby:Perfect. Thank you. Do you have have a British cuisine that you're most looking forward to? Are there sort of go tos whenever you go back to visit?
Simon:Well, I think the benefit now is that much of the British cuisine I can acquire here. So I can have my Seville orange marmalade for breakfast. I can there's a I I know that we sometimes do plugs for things, so there's actually a company called Jolly Posh just outside Chicago that that sells British meats. So I can get British sausages and and and British biscuits. But it isn't just the food itself.
Simon:It's the ambiance in which I mean, going into a pub and having a pub lunch with a a pint of English bitter is I grew up with it. And so it those kind of connections just stay with you through, I think, throughout your life.
Shelby:Yeah. There's a fondness and a nostalgia Yes. There.
Simon:Nostalgia ain't what it used to be, though. No.
Shelby:I I did my graduate work in Tucson, Arizona and still go back and visit, and it's the same thing. You know? There are certain places I love to go even if the food's not great or the beer isn't very good. It's just because there's all these memories and a history there, and and it's just a lot of fun to
Simon:And and the familiarity.
Shelby:Yes. Yes. Exactly. Yeah.
Simon:And and, you know, going back to Britain, it's also a case. I I often refer to the fact that I have two sets of software driving on the left or the right Yeah. And switch between those.
Shelby:Yeah. Alright. Now now I am up for my yes, please, and I'll I'll give a little bit of a disclaimer. This is this is slightly a bit of a request. I would have done it anyway, but I think that the request helped.
Shelby:So I'm ready whenever you are somewhere.
Simon:I am hitting start on my timer.
Shelby:So, yes, please. Let's talk a little bit more about personal training. So over the last year or so, I've been working with a personal trainer here at IU. Shout out to Griffin. That was the part that was a slot request.
Shelby:And so, like, growing up, I always played sports and I was pretty active. But I feel like the older I've gotten, the more difficult it has become to find time to do those sorts of things. And there was a moment a couple of years ago where I was hacking with a
Simon:Thirty seconds.
Shelby:A friend who was Austrian, so I was in Europe and was hacking with him. And it was very clear there was a huge disconnect between our our physical fitness levels. So after that, I came back and started working with a personal trainer, and that has been so much fun. It's a great way to to push myself and to have accountability to push myself and to keep something on a schedule that someone else is holding me to. It's not just me.
Shelby:So it has been a great experience and and a lot of fun. And if folks can manage that, I certainly recommend it. The personal training has been a lot of fun. I've gotten a lot of other folks involved. Some other folks from our department have started to go as well.
Shelby:So I've been trying to convince them if they're listening to give me some commission every time I bring somebody over. But so far, that hasn't turned in anything. Maybe I'll get a free t shirt out of it or or a session at some point. But but, yeah, otherwise, it's been pretty enjoyable.
Simon:Well, I I hope it works well for you and one's always conscious that fitness is something that oh, well, I always find there's never quite enough time to do justice to it.
Shelby:Yes. Which is exactly why I needed to schedule it with someone else because otherwise, I don't hold time for it. So that has been the big driver.
Simon:Great.
Shelby:Thank you, Simon, for coming on. This has been a great opportunity to get to chat with you and get to know you a little better. And for folks that are listening, join us next time where we'll have a new guest.
Simon:Thank you, Shelby. That was great.
Shelby:Earth on the Rocks is produced by Cari Metz with artwork provided by Connor Leimgruber , with technical recording managed by Kate Crum and Betsy Leija. Funding for this podcast was provided by the National Science Foundation grant EAR dash 2422824.
