In situ with Neil Garg

The number of hobbies I have has steadily declined as I’ve had more children. I have four, including two three-year-olds, identical twins. I try to spend most of my free time with my kids.

I love to watch movies. I used to work at a Blockbuster video store many years ago, and my wife studied film. We always enjoy watching movies. Most recently, more than anything, I watched Game of Thrones.

I like to go hiking. I have two favourite trails in the Los Angeles area. One is Switzer Falls, and very close to that is a place called Mount Disappointment, which is not disappointing at all. Whoever discovered it thought they were climbing to the highest area and they brought all this camera gear to take photos. When they reached the top of this mountain they realised there was another point very close by that’s just slightly higher. Nowadays there’s a trail that connects the two peaks.

My family and I do all kinds of vacations, but I personally enjoy cities the most. For example, we did a trip to New York City and saw some Broadway shows, Hamilton and Wicked. I went to college in New York, so it’s always nice to go back there. Our other favourite place is Lake Tahoe.

I have too many favourite foods. I love barbecue, especially things like burgers or steak. On sabbatical in Texas, I developed a fondness for Texas barbecue and something called the Gut Pak, but it’s really not good for you, very meat- and fat-heavy. I also love tacos.

Growing up, I don’t know if I really knew what I wanted to be. I had a little bit of pressure from the family to become a medical doctor. Trying to accept that notion, I was interested in psychiatry. When I started college I took a psychology course. It was interesting, but I didn’t do so well academically. On the flipside, when I was taking chemistry classes I enjoyed them and I did well in them.

The hardest thing I’ve ever done is a tie between being a parent to four children and giving a TEDx talk at UCLA a few years ago. Very different extremes, very different challenges. When you’re a parent, you really learn to be patient. And you also learn to be patient in other situations, like with your students.

We typically rely on slides to present chemistry. We use a laser pointer, we’re constantly pointing to chemical structures and explaining the thought process behind what we’re doing. Giving a TEDx talk was a very different style: 20 minutes, 100% facing the audience. Your slides are just to accent the main talking points. It’s almost like a show compared to a lecture.

I’m not one of those people that has a specific routine for coming up with ideas. One of my biggest problems is my brain is always turning. I do a lot of thinking on planes, just staring out the window. And I hate to say it, but at conferences, especially during lectures. Some of the talks are really great and inspiring, and might prompt an idea. Then there are other times when the lectures are not so intriguing, and I’m not paying attention at all. Instead, I start doodling some of the things that we’re working on and try to come up with solutions to some of the problems that we have.

I think there’s an overall issue with scientific literacy or lack thereof. Organic chemistry has the reputation for being a scary subject, but I think most people don’t have any idea what it is. It’s a problem that has been around for a long time, and it’s up to us chemists to try to address that.

One of the major problems in society is the reputation of chemicals in general. It’s more often that you’ll see something negative about chemicals in the media than something positive. My kids and I wrote a colouring book that was prompted by one of them asking me if there were bad chemicals in our food. I was thinking ‘Where does a four-year-old get this impression that it would be a bad thing if there are chemicals in her food?’ To me these outreach projects are almost hobbies, but they also do something good for my field, and, hopefully, something good for society and the community at large.

The craziest demo I’ve done would be the liquid nitrogen ping pong ball explosion. You take a huge garbage can, you put some liquid nitrogen in an empty soda bottle, seal it and put it at the bottom of the barrel. Then you dump about 2000 ping pong balls on top. The liquid nitrogen warms, the bottle explodes and all the ping pong balls go shooting out. It really is an amazing sight, but maybe not the safest demo. I put this on at an elementary school, and the conclusion is that I won’t do it again.