Hope Jahren, author of the best selling memoir, Lab Girl, joins us for an hour of discussion about mental illness, trees, and the life of a woman scientist.
Shelley Berman, Josh Elwood, Sheela Gunn-Cushman, Adrienne Lauby and Mark Romoser talk to Ms Jahren, read from her book and entreat listeners to become members of KPFA.
Lab Girl is a book about work, love, and the mountains that can be moved when those two things come together. It is told through Jahren’s stories: about her childhood in rural Minnesota with an uncompromising mother and a father who encouraged hours of play in his classroom’s labs; about how she found a sanctuary in science, and learned to perform lab work done “with both the heart and the hands”; about her bouts with mental illness, and about the inevitable disappointments, but also the triumphs and exhilarating discoveries, of scientific work.
At the core of this book is the story of a relationship Jahren forged with a brilliant, wounded man named Bill, who becomes her lab partner and best friend.