‘I discovered things I had no idea about!’: The factory visit that surprised Dr Karl
In season two of his ABC series, the popular scientist uncovers the history of even more Australian products.
In between developing a chatbot to counter climate change disinformation, pumping out his award-winning TikToks, and hosting his Triple J talkback show, Dr Karl Kruszelnicki has found time to film a second season of his ABC series about the making of popular Australian products.
This time, for Dr Karl’s How Things Work, he visits the factories and farms behind staple consumer goods such as potato chips, AFL footballs, meat pies, guitars, bread, boots, ice cream and books. True to form, he finds fascinating facts lurking on each conveyer belt.
Dr Karl Kruszelnicki visits a bread factory for season two of his ABC series Dr Karl’s How Things Work.
“I discovered things I had no idea about!” says Kruszelnicki, enthusing over a vibrating stainless-steel plate that, using the laws of physics, sends chips uphill for salting. “I formulated an idea that these products show that we are a society of people that need each other because you can make chips one at a time, but you can’t make huge numbers, or as consistently. It’s the same with footballs or books. All of these things require teams of people that exist – not independent of our society – but as a subset of society. That makes me feel good about society.”
His chatbot, Digital Dr Karl, due to launch this month, which uses his voice to answer questions and start conversations about climate change, is funded by Bellagio Center Residency in Italy from the Rockefeller Foundation. The work is the continuation of Kruszelnicki’s decades-long dedication to the issue, which saw him unsuccessfully run for a Senate candidacy in the 2007 federal election. He isn’t ruling out another shot at politics.
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“With regard to the Australian Senate, which is only 70-odd people, I’ve heard some of them say that there’s no such thing as climate change,” says Kruszelnicki, who is 2025 NSW Senior Australian of the Year. “It’s like saying that the seven-multiplication table is a lie. They’re totally wrong. And if I was in there, I would be at least one person trying to tell the truth about climate change and so that’s my motivation to try and make the world a better place for the next generation. I can see [that politics] is a very dirty game. But on the other hand, it’s a game where you’ve got a chance to make the world a better place.”
