The Science Revolution Will Be Televised--and Here is Your Host... 
by Andrew Kerr
September 2007

Bahareh Azizi hosted a PBS science TV show pilot called "Science Investigators" that you can watch online right here. She also lived in occupied Kuwait before the first Gulf War. Today she teaches at Georgia Tech's School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, but in her scant spare time she is plotting another potential television project. We discussed all of the above and much more in August 2007.

Q - Last night I read a fun piece in the Atlantic Monthly about how science is being portrayed more positively on TV. They cited "CSI" as one example. These positive portrayals, they said, were in stark contrast to portrayals of scientists in decades past, scientists who were usually "mad" and whose recklessness led to "experiments gone horribly wrong".

A - I watch "CSI" quite a bit. I think it’s one of the best shows. It's got that murder mystery angle, but at the same time it shows you how they do diagnostics, how science comes into play, how important it is to do a DNA test or a protein test...I think it's a fascinating show.

When I was first doing the "Science Investigators" show I was hoping that we would cover stories like "CSI" did, in the sense, OK, how do you do paternal tests? How you do a DNA test to verify identity? That was something that I was interested in conveying to the general audience. I thought people would understand science better if they could relate it back to themselves.

I really believe science is one of the most fascinating subjects out there. If people would realize how it incorporates into their everyday lives, it would make a lot more sense. "CSI" does a very good job of bringing the real world and incorporating science, showing you how things come together. I love that show by the way!

Q - Do you watch "Mythbusters"?

A - Yes! I love "Mythbusters". When I first started doing "Science Investigators" they told me to watch "Mythbusters" because "Mythbusters" is a little more learning "slash" science. "Mythbusters" is also very chaotic. Our show is very scripted, and so it was a little different.

And PBS has a lot of science shows which I think are fabulous as well.

Q - Thinking back to how scientists were portrayed back in the 1980s, they were almost always variations of the mad scientist.

A - And the scientists themselves too...One of the premises for doing this new show was to bring in young scientists, not an old, 70 year-old man with white hair all over the place as if he were electrocuted. Real people do science.

One of the biggest advantages of "Mythbusters" is that it takes in the the dimension of reality TV and brings in science. So it's a reality TV show about doing science.

Even if you look at the Food Network, for example, Alton Brown [of "Good Eats"] does a very good job of showing the science part of food. Everything he talks about, for example, roasting a turkey, he brings in the science part of why the turkey temperature can't go beyond this and what ends up happening if it does.

You and I enjoy "NOVA", but maybe somebody else finds it extremely boring and slow. You want to be able to capture every sort of audience as much as you can. And some people may find "Mythbusters" really annoying. I think it's a very good show, but again you want to try to captivate the general audience as much as you can.

Q - I read that you lived in Kuwait. Was that before Gulf War 1?

A - My dad was a diplomat in the 70s, and he moved to the United States because he was going to represent the Iranian embassy in the United States, in [Washington,] DC. Then he moved to the consulate in Houston in '77. I was born in Houston. My parents then moved back to Iran (his term was over at the embassy). So we went to Iran for a couple of years, and then got transferred to the Iranian embassy in Kuwait. Then, in '79, the revolution happened--Khomeini came into power and Iran became an Islamic republic.

My father had already taken this job in Kuwait, so he decided to move to Kuwait and pursue his career. But in 1980 and '81, when the revolution firmly got planted into the Iranian system of government, there was a lot of conflict and my father just couldn't deal with the politics of it. So he quit. He decided to stay in Kuwait because things in Iran were chaotic as well. My mother started teaching at Kuwait University. My dad was unemployed for a while and then started his own business.

The Gulf War was in 1990. We were there when the invasion happened. We escaped out of Kuwait after about a month and a half of living under occupation and moved to the United States for about nine months. Kuwait was liberated in February of '91 and we moved back to Kuwait in August of '91. So the oil wells were still on fire when we got back.

Q - What was it like living under an occupation?

A - I laugh about it now. I feel like everything in my life seems so much funnier than it did at that moment!

But it was very, very hard. Being Iranian, you grew up during the Iran-Iraq war [1980--1988]. You could hear bombs going off because Kuwait is right on the Persian Gulf, and Iraq is to the north of it and Iran is right across from the bay. Where the majority of the fighting was occuring between Iran and Iraq was kind of close to where Kuwait was at, so you could hear SCUD missiles hitting and so forth.

But living a war is completely different. Kuwait to me was very safe. I'd grown up there for twelve years at that point, and we'd never had anything go wrong. All of a sudden, I wake up one morning and I look out the window and there are soldiers everywhere. They were killing people. You'd see dead bodies in the streets. Tanks were on fire (the Kuwaitis had built in a resistance of their own), and they were fighting every night.

Resources were limited because we weren't sure how long this invasion was going to last. So, in a country which always had had ample amounts of food, all of a sudden people were going crazy for just a loaf of bread. The supermarkets would open at 6 AM and everybody would be rushing in just grabbing. I'd grown up in a very luxurious life-style (Kuwait's a very rich country) and all of a sudden you have nothing.

I feel bad more for my parents than for us because we were kids. We always had food on the table, we didn't care about the real big picture. But I think my parents both aged about ten years! [Laughs] And we'd lost all our money because the banks were frozen, so whatever you had was whatever you had at home. Luckily, in those days my parents always had a hidden stash of cash. We lived off of that for about a month and a half.

Q - I am reminded of another Iranian expatriate who fled the revolution of '79, went to Texas, and made a name for herself: Anousheh Ansari. [Ansari was the first woman space tourist; she went into space last year.]

A - There's a big number of us [Iranians] that have been away from home and that have never grown up in Iran. We have a lot of pride when it comes to one of us doing a good thing.

It's amazing how many Iranians at Georgia Tech come up to me, especially girls, and say, "We're so proud that you're a professor and you got your PhD and you're teaching and doing research at Georgia Tech! It makes us feel like we have a role model!"

So [Ansari] is a big role model for young Iranian women.

I'm lucky enough to be outside of Iran and live outside of Iran. There's a number of women that aren't able to leave Iran, so their resources are limited. That's why I think it's so important that the United States open its borders, especially for education, because for a lot of these students their only hope is coming to the states and getting educated. That has made a big difference in the future for Iran itself.

A few years ago an Iranian woman [Shirin Ebadi, a lawyer who made a name fighting for the rights of women and children in Iran] won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Q - We obviously have a pretty limited perspective on Iran here in the United States. What is the situation in Iran right now, democratically, and with regards to human rights?

A - Iranian women have always worked, and we've always had the right to vote. There are so many Iranian scientists in Iran. We are a society of intellectuals. I think that's one of the biggest problems with the government: You can't control a bunch of brains.

And the internet is the best thing I think that's ever happened to Iran. This is where we get new information, new knowledge. Everyone's getting access to it--there's only so much they can control. Yes, you can put regulations on certain sites, but believe me, you can get through to those sites and find the information that you want and watch these shows you want to watch. I think it's the best thing that's happened for Iran, or for any closed society for that matter.

Q - A friend of mine returned to Iran after living most of his life in this country. He was dismayed by the political apathy he encountered amongst people his age.

A - That's one of the drawbacks of voting in Iran: Everyone feels that there is some sort of a conspiracy going on. I understand that feeling of hopelessness, because everytime you try to move forward you feel that someone else comes into power that takes you two steps back. It's really frustrating when you have so much passion and pride for your country, and you see that we're progressing in this field and we're progressing in that, and all of a sudden somebody comes into power and puts another set of regulations on and you're back to square one.

The majority of Iranians are very young. I think that 70% of the population is under the age of 25. That was the case I think a couple of years ago. So you can imagine, as a young person, you have all these years ahead of you and so much hope, and all of a sudden every time you want to do something you're restricted.

But everyone gets around the restrictions. It's a game now, "Bring it on, do your worst; we're going to get past it." They have plenty of parties. Women are supposed to be covered but they have a nice way of making it a fashionable way of covering yourself now. Every rule is broken. You can't stop human beings from wanting to do what they want to do. If you don't give people freedom they're going to seek it.

But the problem with that is that, for example, you get a lot of people who drink and drive. You get young students having sex. If you don't teach them about protection then you're going to get an ample number of disease in this country, and then AIDS is going to be a big problem. It is a big problem in Iran right now. There's always been a very high use of opium in Iran and so sharing of needles also brings about the risk of getting AIDS.

That's the problem: When people start to do things underground they don't know the right way of doing things. And that's something the goverment's facing right now. You have to be aware of things that are going on in your society so that you're able to teach the people what the right way of doing things is, and not always be saying, "Oh no! It's wrong. Don't do it!" Because people are going to do it. That's one of the drawbacks of doing everything hidden.

Q - Were you interested in science as a kid?

I wasn't interested in science at all! When I was in high school I wanted to be a journalist.

I went to the American School in Kuwait, which was very similar to school in the United States, and we used to have these universities that would come and recruit. One of the schools that came was Michigan State. Now all my friends, mind you, went to Boston or California or DC, and they were all like, "Come on! Let's go there!" And I was like, "No, I want the real college experience."

I was like, "Where is this?" Oh, East Lansing, Michigan. "Where's Michigan?" It's a near a lake. "Oh, OK, that might be good!"

No one told me what the weather was like in Michigan. I'm a girl from the desert! You can imagine!

So I applied to Michigan State. When I applied, my parents were like, "One of the only ways we're going to let you go to the United States is if you study science, law, or medicine." I told my parents, "I don't like any of those choices. I want to study journalism." And my mom was like, "If you want to take journalism, you can stay right here in Kuwait and go to the school here." And I was like, "Kuwait? Nah-ah, I gotta go!"

So I thought: "What if I put 'undecided'?" Then I could switch to communications once I got to the states. My mom was like, "OK you can put 'undecided'."

I gave my application from my mother. She sent it off. And then I get this letter from the College of Natural Sciences at MSU saying, "Congratulations, you've been accepted! We look forward to seeing you in the fall--as a chemistry major!"

I'm like, "Wow, I did not even apply for anything!"

My mother was like, "Oh my God! You must have been so smart that they thought you were definitely made to be a chemist." And then it hit me. My mother had gone and changed my "undecided" to "chemistry" and then sent it off!

I hated general chemistry. My first week of school I was so miserable.

But then you start to really learn and understand your major, and I was really fascinated. I did research my junior and senior year, too, and I was really, really fascinated by just how you can apply science to just the body. That's why I became a biochemist. How the body works, how intricate cells are, and how little proteins can make such a big difference--it blew my mind.

I really enjoyed doing biochemical research. My last year of college undergrad I took a biochemistry lab course. I loved that class, loved working with my hands, loved applying what I learned in the books to in the lab.

When I graduated, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to go to medical school or to graduate school, but I enjoyed research so much that I felt I was much better at working with my hands than memorizing facts, and I'm much better at taking the facts that I've learned and applying them rather than just memorizing them. I guess as a doctor I felt you just saw the clinical patients and it was more of a routine than discovering new things. I wanted to discover new things.

I also enjoyed teaching a lot, I really enjoy working with students. So I decided to go to graduate school. And I had a great time here at Georgia Tech.

Q - What problems have you seen with the way chemistry is taught, and what advice would you give to teachers who might be reading this?

A - I think pictures are very important. Pictures, video, and definitely experiments. When [students] can see what is happening--when you mix carbon dioxide with something else and you get this reaction to occur and you see this gas forming and so forth--then they can take that chemical reaction that you're writing on the board and relate to it. If you're talking about titrations for example, and you're saying, "Once the acid and the base are at the same molar concentration you're going to get a color change," well do it! Do it with them, or have them do it! Once they see that color change they'll be like, "Ah, this makes sense."

Some students just do not like memorizing facts. But with chemistry you can start doing experiements at the very start.

I feel that I never learned in high school how to solve a problem. It was more "Let me memorize this equation and plug numbers in." What I try to do is teach [my students] how to think about a problem. Most of the time the problems that I give them will have too much information. You'll see right away the minute I give them the problem they'll start writing down the equations that we had just learned in lecture. I always tell them, "Think: what's given of you? What's asked of you? Sometimes it's just simple multiplication, sometimes it's using an equation."

They should be able to solve a problem regarding anything you've taught them so far.

You have to grab their attention to want to learn science, because believe me there are number of them that come as freshman here that hate science, and they already have in their minds that they are just not good scientists. I keep telling them that's not true. Everyone's a good scientist. Just try to see what you're learning. Try to apply it to your life, appreciate it.

I think it's very important to have visuals and to be able to critically think. Especially when it comes to things like atoms, electrons, learning about the orbitals, because we can't really see it, we can't really touch it. So you've got to try to bring as many pictures so that they can at least have a visual description in their heads.

Visuals: as many as you can.

Q - So you saw an advertisement for a science TV show host, put out by--was it WGBH that did that? What made you decide to go for it?

It was PBS and Lion TV that were looking. Lion TV and WGBH did this as a collaboration.

I wanted to be a journalist, and so here I am--"Oh this is a journalistic opportunity." I'm much happier as a scientist, I would say, so my mother did good, by the way, I would never admit it to her! [Laughs] But I thought, OK, this is a chance for me to do what I've always wanted to do with something that I'm passionate about.

I did not think for a minute that I was going to even be called back. Immediately after I sent in my picture they asked me for a video of me doing an experiment. I had never done a video in my life. So I had friend sit there, hold this camera, and me like try to do an experiment in the lab. I sent the video. It was very rough, it wasn't edited at all.

They called me in two or three weeks and said, "You're going to Oregon to interview this professor." I was in shock. I was like, "Interview? How do I do this?" So when I got there the producers and directors had flown in from New York and I was flying in from Atlanta and I met them there, and they were like, "This is just like every other TV show you've done." And I'm like, "I haven't done any other TV shows!" And they just looked at each other like, "Oh my goodness. This is going to be interesting." And it was. It was a very tough day of shooting, but it worked out.

What was hard was logistics of not looking at a camera and looking at a camera. And obviously you're a little more nervous because you have all these people that are looking at you under a lens, but it was really worth it, and I had a really good time. It was great.

Q - One thing that I thought was a little bit funny was how I'd be sucked into the story, and then all of a sudden one presenter or another would turn to the camera and say, "Now although this is an aracheology story, I'm not actually an archeologist. I'm a physicist!" Or, "I'm not actually a biologist..." And I wondered, "Why are you confessing this?"

A - And it lost credibility a bit, right? So you hear someone presenting stuff to you, and they're like, "I'm not a physicist..."

I was a biochemist, Kevin was a physicist, Tory was a science journalist, and Basil was a quantum physicist as well, and we were doing things that were very basic biologicals. I mean really the only person I could relate to the frog story was myself, because I do DNA tests all the time, and we were doing tests in the lab. But when I went to do the story on the fastest electric car, that was very hard for me because I didn't understand the physics behind it. I understand basic physics of acceleration and force and the lightness of the batteries and so forth, but I'm sure Basil or Kevin would have had much better questions to ask them because they're both physicists by nature.

But again you're selling this for television. It looks much cooler when a girl is sitting there in the car with her hair all done and looking all pretty, riding in the fastest electric car--which by the way I really thought I was going to die in that car--than it does a guy who's like "Oh, cool!"

Q - During shooting, were you encouraged to provide input with regards to the content, or were you largely working from a script?

A - We definitely had more input than I thought we would. Because the producers were not scientists, they would ask us, "Is this a correct statement to make about frogs? Is this a correct statement to make about the DNA?" And oftentimes we'd say yeah, that's correct, but maybe we should say it this way, because sometimes in science if you say something just the wrong way you can contradict yourself.

They asked us how we felt things should be presented. If we didn't like something we would tell them we really weren't comfortable doing this.

Q - In watching yourself now, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, do you wish you had done anything differently?

A - I wish I was a little more comfortable. We did the car story last, and you can tell that [by then] I became comfortable with the camera. In the beginning I was so timid and afraid. I wish when I did the frog story I was a little more comfortable, a little more relaxed, and not so afraid of the camera. That comes with experience.

Q - So now it sounds like you have an opportunity to do another show.

A - We're looking into maybe starting a show on Discovery Channel. It's in the very early stages. A little more biologically-oriented, more medical, not so much general science. But we're open to doing anything that is fascinating. I'm working with a producer right now. We'll see what happens and where it goes from there.

[Laughs] I may be the next, who was that famous scientist that was on TV when we were growing up?

Q - Bill Nye the Science Guy?

A - Yes, that's right.

Q - So here's my Popularizer of Science challenge: Can you describe your research in a manner that I can actually understand?

A - I work in the lab with Donald Doyle as a postdoc. We modify proteins to create switches. So, when you want light in a room, you turn on a switch. When you want the light off you turn off the switch. In the same respect we want to make a protein that acts like a switch. When we want it to turn on, we turn it on. When we want to turn it off we turn it off.

Cystic fibrosis is caused by a defect in the gene. So if we want to take a person that's got cystic fibrosis and introduce to them a normal gene, we would just take the gene and put it in the body. The problem with that is controlling the amount of gene that's being made. Your body has a certain mechanism where it produces each gene. It's a time thing. So not every gene is turned on all the time and not every gene is turned off all the time. Some genes are turned off every six hours, some are turned on every two hours. It just depends on how the body needs it and the mechanism with which it uses it for.

If we were to introduce this gene, if there was no mechanism to control it, it would just be on all the time. Having the gene on all the time will then cause other problems. You need to be able to control when this gene is turned on and off. So what you do is you take the gene and put it under the control of a protein switch. And how we make our protein switches is we make it such that when the protein binds to a small molecule the switch is on, when the small molecule is not present the switch is off. So what you would do then is you would take your gene, put it under the control of this protein switch, and you would introduce the protein switch and the gene into someone's body. You would give them that small molecule as a drug. So every time they take that drug it will turn the switch on, the gene will be made. And when the drug is not present the gene will be turned off. So that's one of the applications of our protein switches.

Did I do good?

Q - Yes! I was wondering how one would control the activating of the "switch"; just taking a pill with the molecule in it as needed is a very common sense solution. Getting me to understand something like that takes true talent!

A - When you start talking to a scientist who doesn't know how to make his work sound interesting, you are so lost that you think that science is just beyond me. But science is so simple if you're able to explain it well. And I've really tried my best to master that, to try to be able to teach people science at a very fundamental level. I also try to encourage young students to become interested in science. You have to be able to take some of the most complicated topics and try to break them down such that they would at least understand the basics.

"Ah, I get it!"; I love that statement. That's the most rewarding thing to me as an educator, when someone says, "Ah, I finally understand!"

When we were doing our show, I got so many comments from the staff at the chemistry department. Now they understand why they disected frogs in school. They never realized that frogs and us, we have a similar anatomy. It was that "Ah, I understand now! Thank you!" That was really important to me.

So, if I can make a difference in anyone's life in that sense, that's very rewarding. To teach someone who doesn't know anything about science and to make them have a little lightbulb go off in their head, I think that's really rewarding!