Jamie Morton interviewed Nigel Latta, the presenter of the eponymous ‘Nigel Latta Blows Stuff Up’ TV Show, for the Weekend Herald.
An excerpt (read in full here):
Why Nigel blows stuff up
We think of him as a celebrity shrink, the parenting guru, the self-styled TV guinea pig who once voluntarily spent a grim night in Rimutaka Prison.
What, though, could Nigel Latta possibly know about science, the weighty subject that seems to be his cosy new home on telly.
Quite a bit, actually.
Yes, the fabulously articulate host of On Thin Ice: Nigel Latta in Antarctica and his latest adventure, Nigel Latta Blows Stuff Up does have some clue as to what he’s banging on about.
In an alternate reality, Latta could have wound up in a lab coat, his name appearing atop papers in obscure journals, rather than in this newspaper’s entertainment section.
So, when we watch him explaining the dynamics of gravity we might be interested to learn that Latta, holds a Master of Science degree – in marine science – as well as his Masters degree in psychology. Or that he prefers books about maths and physics for recreational reading.
“The idea that four fundamental forces – gravity, electromagnetism, the weak force, and the strong force – and 12 elemental particles are all that you need to make everything from Mars to monkeys is incredibly intriguing,” he tells the Weekend Herald.