An exploration of Engineering and Astronomy with Breyton Hill

Breyton Hill interviews Dr. Laura Bottomley, an engineering professor at NC State, about her career journey, motivation, and common misconceptions about engineering. 

Dr. Bottomley talks about her original dream to be an astronaut right up until the moment she got in the classroom. “I loved it. Teaching was the ultimate puzzle… to figure out how to explain things to people so that they would understand and would get excited about stuff. I was sunk.”

Breyton asks Dr. Bottomley about her career mentors over the years and how one of those mentors prompted Dr. Bottomley to found Women in Engineering at NC State. Dr. Bottomley didn’t see a lot of change happening with regard to getting women into and excited about engineering so she became that change with her K-12 outreach program, the Engineering Place. 

The pair discusses how engineering is making a difference in the world and that “engineers are not just people who do math and science alone in their room with the door shut and never talk to people. That image is completely incorrect. [Engineers] have to be very wholistic.”

After clearing up common misconceptions about engineering, Dr. Bottomley offers the question of “what kind of difference do you want to make in the world? Where do you want the impact of your life to be?” and offers some advice on how to discern that. 

“Begin with the end in mind,” she says, “but as you learn more, be willing to change.”

The interview continues with Dr. Bottomley’s current soapbox “we need to teach more critical thinking in this country. Anti-intellectualism is dangerous. I don’t think that we should aspire to be ignorant.” 

Breyton ends the interview with the Breyton Interrogation: a series of questions to get to know you rather than what you do. 

 

Breyton Hill then transitions to interviewing at North Carolina Museum of Natural Science’s Astronomy Day. 

Secretary of the Raleigh Astronomy Club, Ann Murphy, discusses her interactive booth about how time passes differently and your weight and jumping height changes on different planets. 

Ann introduces Pluto’s five different moons. Breyton dives deeper into these moons and the dwarf planets in our solar system including Pluto, Eris, Ceres, Haumea, and Makemake. 

Breyton additionally spoke with volunteer, Toby, on different kinds of telescopes. Volunteer Syndey, also at the telescope booth, explains that using a telescope or binoculars, you can see Mars currently in retrograde.

Lastly, Breyton discusses the potential of alien life with Toby. 

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Creators and Guests

Host

Sophs Magnanini

Public Affairs Director (2025-2026)

Producer

Breyton Hill

Content Creator

What is Oak City Move?

A radio program and podcast from WKNC 88.1 FM HD-1/HD-2 celebrating those who enact positive changes in the Raleigh community.

00:00
Sophia Magnanini
Oak City Move is a podcast on WKNC's 88.1 FM HD1 Raleigh, where we highlight people and organizations creating positive change in the Triangle and beyond. Oak City Move can be heard on air every Other Monday on 88.1 FM HD1 Raleigh or online at wknc.org Listen for episodes and more information, go to our blog at blog.wknc.org or follow us on SoundCloud at wknc8081. Hello, WKNC Raleigh. The song you just heard was Sweaty linen by Surf Ninja 3. I am your host, Sofia Magnanini and you are listening to Oak City Move. Today we've got something different. Today our one of our content. Today we're going to switch it up a little bit and one of our amazing content creators, Breyton Hill, is going.

01:04
Sophia Magnanini
Today we are switching it up a little bit and one of our amazing content creators, Breyton Hill, will be interviewing Dr. Laura Bottomley, an engineering professor at NC State, about her career journey, motivation and common misconceptions about engineering. After that, we have another great interview by Breyton Hill with Ann Murphy, the secretary of the Raleigh Astronomy Club, where they discuss Anne's interactive booth and about how time passes differently, as well as how your weight and jumping height changes on different planets. She also speaks with many other different people that you'll hear later on. But yeah, we're going to pass it on to Breyton.

01:56
Breyton Hill
Good morning, everyone. My name is Breyton Hill and I'm here today with Dr. Laura Bottomley. Dr. Bottomley is originally trained as an electrical engineer, but now is a professor at NC State University in the Colleges of Engineering and Education. She's also the director of the Engineering Place and Women in Engineering at NC State. So welcome to WKNC.

02:16
Dr. Laura Bottomley
Thank you.

02:17
Breyton Hill
I guess my first question so again, I introduced you with a bunch of labels, but is there anything else you'd like to add to that introduction?

02:24
Dr. Laura Bottomley
Well, no. So I introduce myself that way. But then I also add I'm also a mom, have two kids who aren't kids anymore because they each have kids of their own. So I'm a grandmother as well.

02:35
Breyton Hill
That's awesome. At heart, you're an engineer.

02:38
Dr. Laura Bottomley
Yes.

02:38
Breyton Hill
So what inspired you to get into that field? And is that always something that you knew you wanted to do?

02:44
Dr. Laura Bottomley
I have known for a very long time. So when I was must have been say, fifth grade, I watched Star Trek on tv and at that time there was one woman who showed up in the command crew, right. There were other women running around with clipboards but there was one woman in the command crew and she was Lieutenant Uhura. And I liked what she did, but I thought, I want to be the captain. Right. So I watched it and I, in my mind, I was the captain of the Enterprise. Right. Well, that translated to actually being very interested in science. And I really do think that Star Trek inspired me to really pay attention and be interested in science. But my parents also played a really strong role in that as well. Right.

03:30
Dr. Laura Bottomley
My mother enrolled me in microscope classes when I was in third grade and that kind of stuff. So, yeah, it came from a lot of different places. But throughout that, I decided that I was in fact going to become an astronaut. That was what I was going to do. And for the rest of my career, I would say all the way up through undergraduate, that was my trajectory, I was going to become an astronaut. And when I was in high school and I started looking at what do you major in if you're going to become an astronaut? Engineering was a strong choice. And I actually ended up choosing engineering at the time because I said, well, what if I don't become an astronaut because it's hard and they only pick one out of, I don't know, however many thousands of people that apply.

04:17
Dr. Laura Bottomley
So I might not become an astronaut. So I need a career or I need a degree where I can still work and do interesting work. And so I thought, I will become an engineer, I'll get a degree in engineering. And all the way up through, I mean, actually when I was getting ready to graduate with my undergraduate degree in electrical engineering, I, I turned down an interview with NASA, not for the astronaut position because you don't start right out that there are actually a lot more requirements to become an astronaut. And if anybody wants to know, I'm happy to tell you. But I, at that time sort of pivoted and said, you know what? I'm not going to go that route. I'm going to stay terrestrial. Because I wanted to do more. And that at the time it began to seem restrictive.

04:59
Dr. Laura Bottomley
I wanted to have a family, I wanted to be a mom. And I couldn't see how I was going to do that trajectory, have the family that I wanted to have. And so I became interested in still doing research and things in engineering. And I got an opportunity to go work at&T Bell Labs. And Bell Labs was still this legendary place. And it's hard for people nowadays, I think, to appreciate how cool it was to work at Bell Labs. And it was really cool. And so I worked there for a while and did some really fabulous things. I got to work on projects associated with getting the Internet to people's homes on the existing telephone lines, which of course we have now. Right. So that came to fruition. So that's kind of pretty cool.

05:43
Dr. Laura Bottomley
But then we left Bell Labs when my husband said he wanted a Ph.D. and I thought, okay, fine, we better go now before we're too used to having money.

05:52
Breyton Hill
Yeah.

05:53
Dr. Laura Bottomley
So I let him pick where to go and he picked NC State to come to for his PhD. And when I contacted the department, I asked them, could I teach? Because at that time I just had a master's degree. Just had a master's degree. She says, Right. And so they said I could teach because with the master's degree and the experience that I had. And this was a problem because the moment I got in the classroom, I loved it. Teaching was the ultimate public puzzle to figure out how to explain things to people so that they would understand and so that they would get equally excited about stuff.

06:28
Breyton Hill
Yeah.

06:28
Dr. Laura Bottomley
And then I was sunk because then I had to get my PhD and the rest is history.

06:34
Breyton Hill
Could you go into a little bit more about what it looks like on a day to day with your teaching? Like what was the switch from Bell Labs to teaching?

06:42
Dr. Laura Bottomley
It's interesting because the days became much more variable. When you work in an industry anywhere, you may have multiple projects that you're working on. So you do a little bit on this one, a little bit on that one and whatnot. But the days are pretty much the same each day, working on the projects and that's nice. I mean it's fun. But then you get an academic position and now you're teaching, but you're also meeting with students. And I do a lot of mentoring, a lot of advising of students even though I'm not an official advisor. And then at the same time you're also. Well, I'm also doing a little bit of my own research, so I do a little bit of that.

07:19
Dr. Laura Bottomley
And then I might do a little bit of writing of papers or reading of papers because you have to keep up with what's going on. And then I have a meeting, so I have to go across campus for the meeting. And then maybe I have to go pitch to somebody to give me some money. So every day is very different. And it's jam packed all day long.

07:41
Breyton Hill
Or you're interviewing at the radio.

07:43
Dr. Laura Bottomley
We're happy to.

07:43
Dr. Laura Bottomley
I know. Or that. Right. Which is super cool.

07:46
Dr. Laura Bottomley
Yeah.

07:47
Breyton Hill
So you talk a lot about student mentorship and how like you enjoy the process of that do you have anyone who is a mentor to you?

07:55
Dr. Laura Bottomley
So I would say I have had a lot of mentors over the years. And it's. Some have been more formal, some have been less formal. I had, when I was at Bell Labs, I had mentors about, you know, how do you. Actually, I had an official assigned mentor at Bell Labs. They did that to people when you first joined and they would tell you about how you accumulate work. It's not that you just sit there and your boss gives you things to do. You go out and find your own work. And if you choose well, then you advance if you don't choose well. So to have a mentor to help you with that was really important. And I had a really good one. I've had career mentors. So, like when I came back to NC State after I had.

08:32
Dr. Laura Bottomley
I had graduated with my PhD, I had gone to work at another university for a while and I came back to NC State to start the Women in Engineering program. The person that hired me, Dr. Sarah Ryla, who was the first female faculty in the electrical and computer engineering department here at NC State, she was a career mentor for me, Dr. Joanne Cohen in the math and statistics department. She has been a career mentor for me, giving me advice about, you should do this, you shouldn't do that kind of thing. And they are invaluable. There has rarely been a single person that I go to for everything. Right.

09:08
Breyton Hill
Yeah.

09:09
Dr. Laura Bottomley
You find somebody that can help you with this over there. Somebody that can help you with this over there.

09:13
Breyton Hill
Your network.

09:14
Dr. Laura Bottomley
Yes, your network, exactly.

09:16
Breyton Hill
Can I circle back for a moment? So you talked earlier about how you turned down an interview from NASA.

09:21
Dr. Laura Bottomley
Yes.

09:22
Breyton Hill
Can you talk about what was going through your head in that moment?

09:25
Dr. Laura Bottomley
So I was getting ready to graduate with my master's degree, and at the time, the job market was really good for engineers. I'm just going to say that before I say the next sentence. I had 11 offers for plant trips.

09:39
Breyton Hill
Holy cow.

09:41
Dr. Laura Bottomley
And NASA. This particular job with NASA, I would have had to pay my own way to go out there because at the time, the government didn't have money to bring people in for interviews. And it had these 11 other things that I could go to, and I ended up with nine job offers from that. So at the time, especially because I knew that even if I still wanted to be an astronaut later, having a job at NASA is not one of the prerequisites for getting accepted into the astronaut program. So, you know, I thought, well, I'm sorry, you just didn't compete with what some of these other folks are offering.

10:12
Breyton Hill
Me at the time, that's pretty awesome to hear.

10:16
Dr. Laura Bottomley
It's pretty fun when it turns out that way.

10:18
Breyton Hill
Exactly. Can you tell me a little bit more about the Engineering Place and Women in Engineering at NC State? So they're both programs that you're directors of. What inspired you to be a director and a little bit more about the programs.

10:30
Dr. Laura Bottomley
Yeah, so I started both of them, and I've actually turned them over to other directors at this point, which was really hard.

10:37
Breyton Hill
Yeah, your babies.

10:38
Dr. Laura Bottomley
Yes, it's really hard. But so, yeah, when I came to NC State, I was asked to start a Women in engineering program. And the reason for that was that at the time, we had a significantly lower percentage of women in engineering than there are women in the population. And it was at the time, something around 18% women. Shortly thereafter, it dropped to a low of 14% women in 2004, which is really low. And there are all kinds of people will argue about what the reasons are for that. Right. Women aren't interested in engineering, which was not true, or that there are processes in place that prevent women from being able to study engineering, which is partially true. So there was a need for somebody to look at it. Right.

11:25
Dr. Laura Bottomley
So that's why I started the Women in engineering program under Dr. Sarah Ryla's tutelage, I'd say. And so we began to look at things, and I started all the sort of typical things that you would do. Right. I looked up, so what is this university doing? So I said, we'll do that too. But I didn't see a lot of change happening. And in fact, the percentage of women in engineering at that time had been very low for 50 years. And people had been working to try to change it, but not a lot of change had happened. So I said, all right, clearly, you know the definition of insanity, doing something.

12:00
Breyton Hill
Over and over again, expecting a change.

12:02
Dr. Laura Bottomley
Yes, exactly. And I said this. We have to stop this.

12:05
Dr. Laura Bottomley
Yeah.

12:06
Dr. Laura Bottomley
So for a year, I stopped doing some of the programs, and I said, I want to look at our students and our prospective students and look at what's going on in their lives. And so I realized a couple of things. There were some things that I realized that women who are already on campus could benefit from, because to increase the percentage, you can either keep the women that come or get more, or preferably both. Right. So I put in place some things to be a retention effort. And then I said, we need more women to apply. Right. So I went out to high schools and I said, hey, you should come be engineers.

12:46
Dr. Laura Bottomley
And I realized that by the time students get to high school, they've already kind of made decisions that are going to lead them down a science path or a non science path. And frequently people have decided, I am good at this. Right. I'm good at science, I am good at math, or I am not. Those decisions that they've made are based on misconceptions, but they have made those decisions. So then I said, well, clearly we got to go to middle schools. Right. So then I started going to middle schools. Well, you know, girls in middle school have already made some decisions about what they like and what they don't like. And so then I had to go to elementary schools. And before you knew it, we had a K12 outreach program.

13:30
Dr. Laura Bottomley
Because when you start going out to elementary schools and talking to the kids you see in kindergarten, everybody's excited about science.

13:37
Breyton Hill
Yeah.

13:38
Dr. Laura Bottomley
But by the time they get to third grade, they've started realizing that there's this external pressure that tells me whether I can or can't pursue this route. There are the toys that people are encouraged to play with. There are the oh, girls, don't do that messages that are being sent. There are things you see on television shows that say, if you look out there at the existing scientists, I don't see a lot of black men there. So there's this subliminal message that, well, maybe science isn't for black men or for women. Right. You get what I'm saying?

14:13
Breyton Hill
Yeah.

14:14
Dr. Laura Bottomley
So that's what the engineering place was created to address. We don't want anyone to think that science and engineering are not for them, or math for that matter. And whether that is someone because of their ethnicity or someone because of their gender, or someone who's of a majority gender, majority ethnicity, but still is being discouraged from pursuing engineering for one reason or another, they're told, well, you're really creative. You shouldn't be an engineer. That's complete malarkey. Right. So that's what the engineering place does. So we adopted the mission to get the word about what engineering really is and what skills are really needed to be engineers, not just what the ether was putting out there.

15:06
Breyton Hill
Could you elaborate on that? So I have a science background and you're an engineer. But for those of us listening who maybe are not in a science background, what is engineering?

15:16
Dr. Laura Bottomley
So I can tell you what engineers do.

15:19
Breyton Hill
Okay.

15:20
Dr. Laura Bottomley
And I want to start there, and then we're going to back up to what engineering is.

15:25
Breyton Hill
Sounds fantastic.

15:26
Dr. Laura Bottomley
So all engineering jobs solve problems of one type or another. The problems that they solve are of all kinds, and they have to do with usually something about making our lives better. Some people say, you're making humanity's lives better, but it's not just humanity, it's animals, too.

15:49
Breyton Hill
Yeah.

15:50
Dr. Laura Bottomley
So I don't like to narrow it down quite that much. Now, the tools that we use to solve those problems do in fact include math tools. They include science tools. They include math tools because we model the world with mathematics, and so we have to be able to manipulate those models. And so that's why we have to learn the math. The science tools are. Science helps us understand how the world works. And so in order to be able to manipulate that or get around it or change it or whatnot, we have to first understand it. So that's what science does for us. But it's not just math and science, because the world includes humans. So I also need to understand a little bit of sociology, a little bit of political science, a little bit of psychology to really be able to.

16:39
Dr. Laura Bottomley
For example, if you're going to design a human computer interface, there's so much psychology that goes into that design. Right. So engineers are not just people that do math and science alone in their rooms with the door shut up and never talk to people. Right. Some people have gotten that image, but it's completely incorrect. We have to be very holistic. We have to understand a lot about a lot of things, and we can't possibly understand everything. So we also need to be really good teamers. And I say teamers as opposed to team members, because what I mean is, you have to be able to go out and find the people that know the things you don't know and bring them in, help get from them what you need to solve the problems that you're going to solve.

17:21
Dr. Laura Bottomley
Because none of us is an expert in everything. So that's what engineers do. So what is engineering? Engineering is the whole realm of preparation, which means getting the degrees or studying the things. Right. And it's also the implementation of all of those things. So engineering could be convincing someone that you really need to model the climate like this so that you can learn what you need to know about making decisions for government funding.

17:58
Breyton Hill
You've won so many awards over the years. Do you have an award you're most proud of?

18:05
Dr. Laura Bottomley
The awards that I'm most proud of are awards from students or that I have achieved by being recommended by students, because that's really where I'm trying to make a difference in the world. And so to have students say that I've made a difference is the thing that I'm the most proud of. Now I won't deny it was really fun to go to the White House, but.

18:26
Breyton Hill
Yeah. Would you say that the reviews from students and making a difference in students lives is what gets you out of the bed in the morning?

18:36
Dr. Laura Bottomley
Oh, absolutely.

18:37
Breyton Hill
Absolutely.

18:37
Dr. Laura Bottomley
Absolutely. That's why. And this job is hard, Magnum, you're busy. A lot of times the cognitive load is very high. I feel like I've whiplashed at the end of the day because I've done so many different things sometimes. And when students are struggling and I'm trying to help them, that's an emotional load. There have been semesters that were really very difficult because the emotional load that students were carrying was so heavy. And I've tried to help in whatever way I can. I'm absolutely not a counselor, but I can help you find one, you know, that kind of thing. So if I didn't think that I have an opportunity to make a difference in someone's life today, some days it would be hard to get out of bed. But that's one of the things this job does for you.

19:25
Dr. Laura Bottomley
In fact, if you don't mind the plug, that's what engineering does for you. You know that when you get out of bed, you have an opportunity to make a difference that'll make a difference in someone's life.

19:34
Breyton Hill
As someone who is looking at kind of a next step in their life, what inspiration or advice do you have to engineers or to other college students or just people? I guess. What would you give advice to your 20 year old self?

19:49
Dr. Laura Bottomley
Yeah, so the advice that I give is a lot to do with. I don't know if you've ever read the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. It was something that was big some time ago, but one of those seven habits has really stuck with me. And it's begin with the end in mind. And I don't know why we don't do this more. So when you come to college, you're launching yourself on a four, possibly five year endeavor. My son took six because he co oped and he played varsity sports and he did a lot of really wonderful things in college. So that's great. Why wouldn't you have an end in mind? So what do I mean by that? Well, what kind of job do you want?

20:31
Dr. Laura Bottomley
Sometimes that's too difficult of a question to answer because you don't know what all is out there. So then I ask you, well, what kind of difference do you want? To make in the world. Where do you want the impact of your life to be? Right? And that can have many answers. It can be that you love sports and so you want to make a difference in the world by enabling safer sports. So you want to go work at a Nike, you want to go work at an Under Armour or something like that, right? Well, if that's what you want to do, then there are things you should do during your undergraduate time that will help you get to that trajectory. So have an end in mind. But then realize that life is not linear.

21:17
Dr. Laura Bottomley
And as you learn more things about what's out there and what you can do and what you like, you may change that end that you're aiming for. And that's actually a good thing because you're making decisions more and more based on real information, not just what you imagine. So those two things start with an end in mind. But as you learn more, be willing to change your trajectory, change your plan and realize that's not a failure. It's a. I know more now, so I'm going to make a wiser decision.

21:51
Breyton Hill
Now that flexibility is important.

21:54
Dr. Laura Bottomley
Oh, yes.

21:55
Breyton Hill
So we've talked a lot about your career and your teaching life, but what's important to you outside of that?

22:02
Dr. Laura Bottomley
I'm very active in my church and I'm active in my church because that actually aligns with wanting to make a difference in people's lives. I feel. Well, I'm a United Methodist, so for those of you that know nothing about the United Methodist Church is, one of the sort of founding principles was that education is important. And so Methodists went around founding universities a lot. Right. So that jives with what I believe. I believe education is really important. So I do things even outside my job to promote access to education and to help educate people. I do have some hobbies. I love birds. And I've managed and I love to travel and I've managed to take some students with me to go places. Right. And that has been really fun.

22:52
Dr. Laura Bottomley
I've been able to have experiences and learn things about other cultures that actually have helped me in the classroom in a strange way. But I've also been able to see birds that I never look up. Lilac breasted Roller, one of the most beautiful birds in the world, in Rwanda. So that's a fun thing. I also love rocks and minerals, and travel also enables that kind of addiction as well. So I have a really cool rock collection, if you can believe it, and that's fun. So I do those things.

23:23
Breyton Hill
Can I ask your Best travel spot.

23:26
Dr. Laura Bottomley
Oh my gosh. My best travel spot. That's really hard to say.

23:29
Breyton Hill
Or you can have more than one.

23:30
Dr. Laura Bottomley
Oh, yeah. Because I've probably the best travel spot's the one I haven't been to yet, but I have had. So I've been to Rwanda many times and taken students there and I really love that country. It's a very safe country in Central Africa and so you can go on safaris and you can see animals. But I really have enjoyed meeting people there. I found that people in Rwanda share my sense of humor, which is really rare across cultures. So that jives with me. Right. I like that a lot. So I definitely love traveling to Rwanda. But I've also had a lucky opportunity. I went to Costa Rica and got to go back in the forest in Costa Rica in a national park and see some really cool animals with my daughter. And that was really fun.

24:20
Dr. Laura Bottomley
I've also, well, I've been to NC State, Prague a couple of times and that's really cool. It's a really cool European experience. It's very different. So, yeah, I've been lots of places and I've been to all but two continents. So I need Australia and I need Antarctica. Antarctica is probably not going to happen because I get seasick on boats and that's how you get there most of the time.

24:44
Breyton Hill
Yeah.

24:44
Dr. Laura Bottomley
So that's probably not going to happen. But Australia, I'm thinking that could happen.

24:48
Breyton Hill
It's a pretty impressive goal.

24:49
Dr. Laura Bottomley
Yeah.

24:51
Breyton Hill
And then kind of to wrap up. Is there anything that you want to talk about that I didn't ask about or are there any misconceptions about you or the work that you do you want to clear up?

25:01
Dr. Laura Bottomley
Well, just the standard misconceptions about what engineers do, but we've already addressed that.

25:05
Dr. Laura Bottomley
It's true.

25:06
Breyton Hill
Yeah.

25:07
Dr. Laura Bottomley
The thing that, to me is my current soapbox.

25:10
Breyton Hill
Yes.

25:11
Dr. Laura Bottomley
Is that we need to pay more attention to teaching critical thinking in this country. Critical thinking, the ability to look at information and determine, okay, is this likely to be true or likely to not be true? And then how do you find out if it's true or not true? Instead of seeing something on the Internet and getting excited about it and going off and posting a million things and that kind of thing. I think social media encourages that sort of behavior and that is not helpful behavior. It doesn't lead us down a good place. I also really feel that we've got a sort of sense of anti intellectualism in this country and that's dangerous. I don't think that we should aspire to be ignorant.

25:58
Dr. Laura Bottomley
And I don't think that we should say that my expertise from reading a couple of webpages is equivalent to the expertise of someone who's studied a topic for eight years. I think we should acknowledge that there are people who are more experts on subjects than we are, and so we should maybe listen to them.

26:28
Breyton Hill
I don't know if you've watched the Late show with Stephen Colbert, but he has a Colbert questionnaire. So my version of that is the Breyton interrogation.

26:38
Dr. Laura Bottomley
Excellent. I have watched that, by the way.

26:41
Breyton Hill
So this is a list of silly questions that I asked to get to know you rather than what you do.

26:46
Dr. Laura Bottomley
Okay?

26:47
Breyton Hill
So number one, what's the best sandwich?

26:51
Dr. Laura Bottomley
The best sandwich is a submarine sandwich on a really freshly baked sandwich roll with a lot of pickles and pickled sweet peppers.

27:04
Breyton Hill
That sounds fantastic.

27:06
Dr. Laura Bottomley
And now I'm really hungry.

27:07
Breyton Hill
Having said that, sorry about that.

27:09
Dr. Laura Bottomley
That was an easy question. Actually, that was.

27:11
Breyton Hill
What is one little thing that could ruin your day? Could be a pet peeve. Could be something that irks you.

27:19
Dr. Laura Bottomley
People being mean. And it doesn't even have to be to me, just being mean to somebody or to me, that irritates me much more than it should. Right. One should let those sorts of things roll off. But, like, no, that was mean. Don't do mean, you know?

27:34
Breyton Hill
Yeah, totally.

27:35
Dr. Laura Bottomley
Totally.

27:36
Breyton Hill
What is the best compliment you have ever received?

27:40
Dr. Laura Bottomley
Well, it's hard for me to take compliments, and that's probably why it's difficult for me. Me to remember. I get embarrassed. I've had people tell me that something I have done has really changed the trajectory of their life, and that's probably the best compliment that I could possibly receive. I have a hard time believing it, but, yeah, I'll go with that.

28:01
Dr. Laura Bottomley
Solid.

28:02
Breyton Hill
Solid. What's on your to read list right now?

28:06
Dr. Laura Bottomley
So this is a complicated question. I read a lot. I counted one time over the summer, and I read 7,000 pages over the summer. Holy crap. I read a lot. So I don't like to read nonfiction because that's what my job is, Right? So I read nonfiction for my job. And it's not that I don't like it, but in my spare time, I don't really like to read nonfiction, but recently I've had a lot of conversations with people, and I think I'm gonna have to go and read Michelle Obama's latest book.

28:37
Breyton Hill
Ooh, okay.

28:39
Dr. Laura Bottomley
I also read a book recently that turned out to be much more difficult to read than I thought it was gonna be. That's right. Yes. It was the origins of the patriarchy. That's right. So that book was very interesting. Yes. And it was. What I didn't realize was that it was going to be so densely academic, which is actually great because that meant that what I read I had a high confidence in, but it also meant it was much more complex. But I do recommend that book to somebody who looks around and wonders, how did we get here? I think it's good for us to interrogate ourselves like that from time to time. And so to go and read that I think is really good.

29:25
Dr. Laura Bottomley
But to then have a book study on it, I would need somebody who's actually qualified in I guess sociology, anthropology to lead a book study like that because it's very. It's not out of the question, but it's a dense book.

29:42
Breyton Hill
An expert, like you were saying earlier.

29:44
Dr. Laura Bottomley
Yeah, I need an expert. I'm not. I can't read that book and become an expert to teach it.

29:48
Breyton Hill
Absolutely, absolutely. If the world was split into dancers or not dancers, where do you fall?

29:55
Dr. Laura Bottomley
Oh, dancers. For sure. I'm a terrible dancer.

29:57
Breyton Hill
Doesn't have to be good, but.

29:58
Dr. Laura Bottomley
But that's where I would be. Absolutely. Because for the pure joy of it.

30:02
Breyton Hill
Exactly. It's fun to move. Do you have a no Skip album and if so, what is it?

30:08
Dr. Laura Bottomley
I've had a lot of no Skip albums over the years.

30:10
Breyton Hill
You can have more than one also.

30:11
Dr. Laura Bottomley
Yes, yes. There's one sort of self serving answer to this. It's true, but. And that is any of the albums that my daughter has produced. She has five albums out there. Kathleen Bottomley, Katie Bottomley. I'm just gonna put that out there.

30:24
Breyton Hill
Put it out there.

30:24
Dr. Laura Bottomley
Yeah. She's on Spotify, she's on Apple Music and so any of those. I listen to those songs, but I like Sara Bareilles and I listen to a number now. I got that from my daughter too. Right. So if I'm in the car, I listen to her albums without skipping.

30:40
Dr. Laura Bottomley
It's a good pick.

30:41
Breyton Hill
Going off of vibes alone. Do you think that you're more rock, paper or scissors?

30:47
Dr. Laura Bottomley
Rock.

30:48
Dr. Laura Bottomley
Rock.

30:48
Breyton Hill
I think I'd agree.

30:50
Dr. Laura Bottomley
I maybe shouldn't be, but I am. Yeah, more rock.

30:53
Breyton Hill
And our last question of the Breyton interrogation. Describe the rest of your life in five words.

31:01
Dr. Laura Bottomley
Can I just do it in four?

31:02
Dr. Laura Bottomley
Sure.

31:03
Dr. Laura Bottomley
She made a difference.

31:05
Breyton Hill
I think that's beautiful. Well, thank you so much for listening. This has been Dr. Laura Bottomley and Breyton Hill.

31:22
Sophia Magnanini
Next up we've got Brayton's Science Feature. Let's get right into it.

31:30
Breyton Hill
Good morning, everyone. This is Breyton Hill, back with another science feature. This week, we're focusing on North Carolina's Museum of natural Sciences Astronomy day. Having been pushed back two weeks now due to the crazy snow we've been experiencing in the triangle, Astronomy day was officially February 6th and 7th of 2026. I got the privilege to interview some folks there, some who'd been there since almost the beginning and some who'd never been to Astronomy Day before. First up was Anne Murphy, the secretary of the Raleigh astronomy club. Can you tell me a little bit more about the booth that you're running today?

32:02
Anne Murphy
Okay, so this is age and weight on other planets. So what we do is we get the person's birthday. These are little kids, right? And their height, we have the weight, and we have how high they can jump. Once you pull that out, then you choose what your destination is going to be. So, you know, you can choose whichever planet you want, including the moon, we have a couple of dwarf planets. We have that. Then it gives you output. So it tells you how old you would be on that particular planet. So if the planet is something like Uranus, you would be a lot younger because it's relative to Uranus, it's not relative to Earth. And then Uranus has a larger orbit than Earth does. You're going to be younger. Uranus, you're going to weigh more, and you'll see that.

32:52
Anne Murphy
And then you will also see how high you can jump. So if it's a large planet like Uranus, your jumping is going to be less. If it's a small planet like Pluto, how high you can jump is going to be larger. Of course, we have other things. You can kind of see how heavy things are on the different planets. So if you're a tactical person, you can pick those up and say, oh, well, this is how hot how much it is on a certain planet.

33:21
Breyton Hill
I actually got the chance to try out Anne's booth, and as it turns out, I'm not even a year old on Pluto, but I can jump 22ft. So that was pretty cool. And speaking of Pluto, I didn't know this, but it actually has not one, but five total moons.

33:37
Anne Murphy
Pluto, even though Pluto is now a dwarf planet, it has five moons. Five moons, so it has the big one.

33:45
Breyton Hill
Chevron.

33:45
Anne Murphy
And chevron and Pluto are binary systems. So they go around each other and they're tidy along. But Pluto also has four other small moons, like about 5 miles to 10 miles across. And so that actually is a Very good little system.

34:06
Breyton Hill
Since we're talking about Pluto so much, I feel like I have to bring up the debate of if Pluto should be a dwarf planet or if it should be the ninth planet in our solar system. The international Astronomical Union, or iau, Defines a planet by three different things. One, it has to orbit around a host star, so in our solar system, that would be the sun. Two, it has to be mostly round. And three, it has to be big enough for gravity to clear away objects of similar size in its orbit. Unfortunately, this means that Pluto does not make the cut because it's not big enough for gravity to clear away objects of similar size in its orbit around the sun. Sun. There's a lot of controversy around this, But Pluto is not actually the only dwarf planet in our solar system.

34:49
Breyton Hill
There are four other dwarf planets that exist. Eris is actually the dwarf planet that made scientists reclassify what a planet is and has ultimately led to the downfall of Pluto as the ninth planet. Ceres is actually an asteroid and not a planet orbiting the sun. In the asteroid belt. Ceres was not only the first to be discovered, but remains the biggest asteroid in the belt. Haumea is considered one of the fastest rotating objects in the solar system and is also covered In a thin layer of ice. Lastly, Makemake is one of the last dwarf planets to be discovered. And actually, unlike all of the rest of the dwarf planets, has no moons. All of these dwarf planets are super cool, but how can we see them? I spoke with Toby also at Astronomy Day about different types of telescopes.

35:36
Toby
We have on display three different parts of, like, telescopes. So it's just like we have, like, the refractor type and we have the reflector, and basically they all, like, kind of reflect light differently. For the different telescopes we've learned about, we have our manual telescope. If you want to get into astronomy, you should start. You could start with binoculars. And the manual telescope is way cheaper.

36:11
Breyton Hill
Also, at the telescope booth, I spoke with Sydney. So for most of its orbit, Mars moves from west to east.

36:17
Sydney
But as seen from Earth, the nightly.

36:19
Breyton Hill
Motion of Mars appears to reverse course for two months When Earth overtakes it. This east to west motion is called retrograde. Then it switches back to its original west to east direction. Mars is currently in retrograde. So pretty cool to be able to use a telescope or binoculars if you have some to look at. Mars seemingly moving backwards. And lastly, another controversial topic in astrobiology right now is whether or not the species on Earth is the only life out there. I spoke with Toby on the concept of aliens.

36:51
Toby
Obviously, the universe is expanding all the time, like, by the second. So I think that the probability of there not being aliens is absurdly small. And, you know, we got like, you know, look in the ocean, and there's all these interesting creatures that have adapted to different ways of life. And so I think that it's almost probable that other planets have found ways to adapt and find life, even if they're small, even if they're not intelligent life.

37:23
Breyton Hill
Well, whether or not you're Team Alien or Team Earth, that wraps up Astronomy Day with the Science Museum and this Science News feature. My name is Breyton Hill, and you're listening to WKNC 88.1. Thank you.