Hi, I'm Ashlee Vance,
and welcome to my living room here in California.
We've got about seven rolls of toilet paper left
and two wonderful boys helping out,
filming me right over here.
We obviously can't do Hello World like we normally would,
so this is the from home version.
We thought we'd try to take this challenge as an opportunity
to take all our viewers on kind of a trip around the world
to see what different inventors and scientists
and technologists are up to.
The first place we're gonna head to is New Zealand.
I've got a friend there named Michelle Dickinson,
she's a scientist who has been out front
talking about the virus.
So, off we go to New Zealand first to meet Michelle.
My name is Dr. Michelle Dickinson
and I am a nanotechnologist having worked in the tech sector
for 20 years around the world.
And a couple of years ago I decided to quit my hardware job
and move to helping educate kids and parents
about science and technology, and get more kids involved
who might not see themselves as scientists or engineers.
We were a company who traveled around the world
with our live theater shows
and our school teacher training programs.
And then that died.
So, yay.
Thanks, COVID.
So, this hits, and your business has to change.
And so, what have you done?
How have you adapted on the fly?
We said to our team,
"What do people need in this lockdown?"
And as we saw schools were closing,
we spoke to teachers and they said,
"We've never done online teaching before.
"We don't know what that is."
And they said, "The thing we're gonna drop first is STEM,"
so science and technology.
They said, "That's too hard for us to do online."
I just said, "Well, this is what we do.
"How can we help provide something to kids
"to help them build their confidence in STEM?"
Hi, I'm NanoGirl and I want to be a...
Superhero!
And so, we developed an online platform
that basically helps kids build their science superpowers.
This week, the superpower I'm trying to get
is the power to fight baddies like viruses, yuck.
I saw some of the first lessons were about COVID,
what is it, and making your own special soap
to deal with it.
It's so simple, but parents were like,
"My kids won't wash their hands.
"I need to motivate them."
We said, "Well, if you make the Superpower Soap
"where it's got that superhero sticker in it,
"they'll get super powers every time they touch this soap."
And parents have said literally the kids love their soap,
they're washing their hands all the time
to get super powers.
And it just helped to motivate them.
Look at that, we destroyed our baddie,
the virus is destroyed.
You are the superhero.
Our kids, actually they've sort of accepted all this
really well, I feel like, but it is, it's nuts.
And you're lucky Ashlee, right, 'cause you're tech savvy.
But there are millions of parents around the world
who science and tech wasn't their thing,
and they go back to their 13-year-old fearful self
of a Bunsen burner and a Petri dish when we talk about it.
And so, we're all about how do we empower those people,
those people who haven't touched science for 40 years,
maybe, to be able to have these conversations about viruses.
And how you transfer it, and what they actually are,
and what they could do without it being too fearful.
Because we understand when we're talking to kids
we've got to help them understand that it's serious,
but also not induce so much anxiety
that they become petrified of everything.
So how do people find this?
So nanogirllabs.com is how you basically find it.
We're on all of the channels, social, you name it.
Destroy the virus baddies, yay!
You can look at our free stuff,
and if you want to subscribe you can.
If you can't afford to,
just press the I can't afford to do this button
and we'll try and give you free access.
As some of the lockdowns started,
I caught you on the Internet
with the prime minister in New Zealand.
It seemed like you were educating people about COVID.
Yeah, so luckily,
I guess New Zealand has been slightly behind the COVID curve
in that we've got to watch other countries do their thing
and use a lot of data.
We have a prime minister
who has worked really hard on communication.
She's brought me into that team to communicate to the nation
about what is COVID, what should we do,
how can we help each other.
Lots of people getting questions around,
how to explain what this is to children?
So, the easiest way to explain it,
is if your child has had the common cold, for example,
they would have had a virus that had a dangly bit
that attaches to our nose.
And it would have stuck to our nose and made them sick.
The Covid-19 we're talking about,
it has a different dangly bit, and it attaches to our lungs.
One of the things we've done really well in New Zealand,
I think, is set up an alert system pretty early that said,
here's the alert system, it's four levels,
and here's where we are now,
and this is what moving to the next levels will look like.
That allowed everybody to prepare early.
We're on a lockdown, but everybody seems to be playing ball
and our supermarkets are full of food
'cause nobody panic-bought
'cause they knew what the message was early on.
You locked down super early
before there was kind of hardly any cases.
And so this was just about wanting to be what,
just incredibly proactive on this
and sort of get ahead of things?
Yeah, and communication has been great.
We haven't just communicated it to those who watch politics.
We did a press conference just for children in parliament.
That was really important because obviously children
are a big part of this as well as everybody else.
So, our job as superheros
is to stop the virus from spreading.
And we wanted to include them in the conversation,
so that they were also gonna take part in this
and understand their role.
As a scientist, how close attention are you paying
to how this is spreading and the treatments,
and is this something that you're really following deeply?
Look, I'm a nanotechnologist,
and a virus is literally as nanotech as you get.
So, I'm interested for many reasons.
One, I'm interested as a communicator as to how to explain
the world of the tiny and the invisible,
which is what I've done my whole life to everybody else,
'cause I can understand how it might seem really scary
that there's this invisible pathogen
that might be fatal to us.
I think our scientific literacy as a population
has decreased over the past 10 years
as we haven't focused on science.
And so I'm just focused on making sure
that some of these complex medical journal publications
are actually explained in a way that people can,
help them to understand their life at home.
What can I do to control my environment
and my bubble to keep my family safe?
The US, we have this explosion in cases right now,
but I am deeply curious about how the US
is being perceived overseas.
Well, I think different countries are dealing with it
in different ways, and I think that's pretty sad actually
because this is a worldwide virus.
The virus is apolitical,
and it doesn't care about countries' borders.
And I think this is really a time
when we should be pulling together
and not trying something out and seeing what happens.
If there's inspiration in any of this,
it seems to be the way science has come through
all over the world, how quickly this got sequenced,
how quickly we're working on detection, on vaccines.
Is there gonna be some good that comes out of this
a year from now?
Look, I hope so.
I'm also seeing some bad coming out of it.
I think the lack of scientific literacy
means everybody believes everything that's coming in
and not able to have that scientific literacy to go,
is this a good or a bad idea?
How do I look this up?
I've talked to a couple of companies.
They've got vaccines and animal trials
and they're telling me, "Look, we know this is safe,
"if we don't have to go through the arduous process,
"we could get this to people much more quickly."
So, the thing with a vaccine,
and anytime you modify something in the body,
you are literally changing a person's immune system.
And that has two outcomes.
The great outcome is it makes you hopefully protected
against what is this virus right now.
But there's also an adverse reaction in that we don't know
how it's gonna affect your immune system in a different way.
So, what if we vaccinate everybody against COVID,
but suddenly you're more susceptible to something else.
And that's why long-term clinical trials
become really important.
It's those side effects that we need to look at.
Okay, this is Bowie.
This is Tucker.
Hey, Bowie and Tucker.
Did you guys have any questions about how New Zealand
is dealing with the virus?
Or about the virus, you know Michelle is a scientist.
How much on quarantine are you?
So, it's super serious here.
So, we have to stay at home
unless we are going to the supermarket,
and only one person from our home
is allowed to go to the supermarket,
you can't take everybody else,
or you're going to the pharmacy to pick up drugs.
You're allowed to go for a small walk every day,
but that is it.
So, all of our online shopping is off.
You cannot order anything online
unless it's medical or food.
All the takeout's shut.
So, everybody can only buy food from the grocery store
and then has to cook it at home.
Yeah, it's pretty strict.
Well, I think we are going to try to make one of your,
we're gonna go through one of the experiments.
I think we're gonna try to make the--
The catapult plane, it's my favorite,
make the catapult plane.
We're gonna do that,
and thanks so much for spending time with us.
Thank you, stay safe.
Why don't we make a paper plane that gets its thrust
and its power, not from an engine, but from an elastic band.
For this experiment, you will need scissors,
tape, and a pencil.
Start by measuring and drawing a rectangle.
Then, cut it out.
Fold your paper back.
Place your elastic band into that hook.
This is gonna be our launch mechanism.
Next, you want to draw a triangle on your piece of card.
You're gonna tape this bit to the underside of your plane.
Now you're ready to launch.
Three, two, one.
Ow!