Cole got to know Frank Oppenheimer through his Exploratorium museum.
(photo courtesy K.C. Cole)

K.C. Cole is a professor at USC's Annenberg School of Journalism. Her recently published book, "Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens: Frank Oppenheimer and the World He Made Up," is about the younger brother of J. Robert Oppenheimer, otherwise known as the "father of the atomic bomb." Though both brothers worked on the Manhattan Project, Frank Oppenheimer came into his own in his later years and founded the Exploratorium museum, his atonement to the atrocities brought on by the bomb.
 
As someone who started off as a political writer and then became an award-winning science journalist with Frank Oppenheimer as your mentor, how did you initially make that switch from politics to science?
Previously I was someone who thought that an accelerator was a gas pedal on a car as opposed to a particle accelerator. I was sent to the Exploratorium on assignment and was just impressed by this great big, dark, cavernous building. I dropped a quarter into a donation barrel and 300,000 volts of purple lightning shot up. I noticed this whole space was a playground of people just having fun. There were no rules, no guards, and you could touch anything. There were magnetic fields and pendulums, and I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. I looked for the proprietor and finally found Frank in a back room, engulfed in cigarette smoke and sawdust. He took me on a sightseeing tour and taught me to "get out of the bus," so to speak. He taught me to break things and climb on them, to just play.
 
What were his views on the concept of play?
He thought play was difficult. He said playing to be playful meant to take risks. You can never make discoveries, or make anything innovative if you're not willing to make a fool of yourself and fall flat on your face. That's a hard thing to learn.
 
How did you find your niche in science journalism?
After my visit I wrote a feature on the Exploratorium and he liked the article. He offered me a job writing explanatories. I thought he was crazy. I took very low pay, but the more I did it, the more I wanted to do it. To get myself taken seriously as a science writer took quite a while because I was already an established political writer.
 
What kind of political writing did you do?
I graduated from Barnard with a degree in Eastern European Politics. At that time the Vietnam War was going on. I thought the relationship between the communist world and the United States was scary and important. I was offered a job to work for Radio Free Europe which I didn't know then but turned out to be part of the CIA. What's funny is that I worked for the CIA twice, the first time unknowingly. So I worked in Prague for a while. I was in the right place at the right time and ended up writing the cover story for the Sunday New York Times Magazine. I was looking at what the U.S. newspapers were writing and they were just quoting State Department statements because they had no correspondents in Prague during that time. It was a fun experience for me.
 
What was the other CIA job you took?
It happened quite recently. The CIA invited me to come and be a consultant. I didn't want to go so I charged them an amazing amount of money and they actually paid me. Someone from their agency had read my books, which were mostly about how we know what we know.
 
What kind of consulting did they want you to do?
One of the questions the CIA asked was, "How would you find a terrorist cell in a neighborhood where otherwise everyone looked alike?" And I knew how to answer it based on the connection to science. For example, Rutherford discovered the nucleus of the atom by throwing something at it and shaking up the system so that it acts differently. Basically, although we can't see the stars in the sky, they're still there. It's just that the sunlight is blocking them out. So theoretically if we throw up a lot of darts and see what bounced back, you could find where the stars were that way even though you couldn't see them. It's the same general idea as finding a terrorist cell. I was amazed that I had anything to say, but it turned out to be very interesting.
 
Your most recent book is "Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens: Frank Oppenheimer and the world he made up." Are there any new projects or books in the works?
No, this book was many years in the making. I wrote four or five books in between. It's a huge book. I've said this before but I'm never ever, ever, ever, ever going to write another book. What I really want to do is get back to doing commentaries for Marketplace.  I want to write for magazines I've never written for before. I was invited to join a blog with some extremely prestigious people, including a Nobel laureate and a very well-known scientist. That will be new and interesting. And then I'll see. I would like to have a few days off.
 
Would you miss the book writing?
It's crazy- being on this book tour gets me so tired of listening to myself talk. I thought what I missed was the writing.  But that's not what I miss. What I miss is learning new things, being out there and finding new stuff, interviewing people as opposed to people interviewing me. I already know what I think; I want to know what you think. I miss that. I hope that when all this is over I can get out there and discover new things and write about them because that's what's really fun about being a journalist.
 
In your book you mention two Frankism quotes: "Perhaps some wonderful new social invention would appear if only we had an inkling of why it is that people enjoy listening to music," and "There are two things that people [are surrounded by and] avoid trying to understand. One is music, and the other is electricity." What was Frank Oppenheimer's connection to music?
Frank would say, "You don't expect someone to read the latest paper in physics and just understand it but you do expect people to go and listen to music and expect them to get it right away." That's crazy. In some ways we should teach science more like music. We have to change our ideas about what making sense means. We should understand that things are foreign and unfamiliar and that you have to be introduced to them in ways that are more similar to understanding music rather than reading a physics paper. Music is so beautiful that you want to practice. Science should be approached the same way.
 
How did Frank make people understand physics?
He was just so clear. He met you at the level you were. If you didn't know the language or have the technical skills he just thought you didn't have the language. He never treated anyone as stupid or incompetent; he just started with them wherever they were. But he always treated everyone at a high intellectual level and always with respect. Because he knew that there are people who aren't articulate in their vocabulary, but they're still smart. And there are people who may not be technically proficient, but they're also smart as well. So there's no reason to throw out one just because you don't have the other. I thought that was pretty cool.
 
Another one of Frank's quotes was that "Artists and scientists are the official noticers of society." Can you explain the connection between that quote and journalism?
The quote is very relevant to journalism. It makes you open your eyes and look at things in different ways. Journalism is an art because it transforms your perceptions. It shows you the same old thing in a different way that you never saw before. It makes your life deeper and richer.