Felicity Lewis is the national explainer editor for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. She has worked in diverse roles on titles from The Herald Sun to The Independent to The Age (Melbourne) magazine and has won several awards, including a Walkley. She is the editor of a new anthology called What’s it Like to be Chased by a Cassowary? Fascinating answers to perplexing questions, a curation of explainers from the nation’s most trusted news outlets.
Today, Felicity is on the blog to tell us everything she learned while editing this book (including why you should be very wary if you find yourself near a cassowary). Read on!
Felicity Lewis (Photo by Harvard Wang)
Being not at all an expert on topics like quantitative easing, football biomechanics or space exploration actually turned out to be an asset for me when I was editing What’s It Like To Be Chased by a Cassowary?
I learned heaps – and not in ways I expected.
I didn’t know, for example, that the cassowary makes a bone-shaking boom when it’s agitated and there’s a good reason humans should stay away. Mostly, it’s for the sake of the cassowary – they’re endangered – but it is also for humans. Cassowaries can’t fly but they can run and if you’ve threatened them in any way, you don’t want them to catch up with you …
I knew cicadas made a lot of noise, too, but I didn’t know what came before and after. I won’t drop any spoilers here but I suspect you will have a new compassion for these ancient creatures when you read “Why do cicadas sing at dusk?”
And speaking of making a racquet, even though I’m a tennis fan I had no idea what goes into fine-tuning a professional player’s “key weapon” before I edited “How can a racquet make or break a tennis player?” I mean, exactly what bit is it in Rafael Nadal’s racquet that amps up his monster topspin (and how can I soup up my racquet to be like his)?
And, OK, I didn’t know much about cricket at all but Greg Baum’s explainer on “What is reverse swing? was totally intriguing and funny – I learned what makes a cricket ball swing in a confusing (reverse) way and how this manoeuvre became an almost mystical part of the game. For once, I’ve got something that’s not widely understood to add to barbecue chats about “the gentleman’s game”.
AFL writer Jake Niall’s piece on “How does Scott Pendlebury stop time?” has given me a fresh perspective on sport too: it looks at how some exceptional athletes move, and think, to outsmart opponents. It’s not just AFL stars like Pendlebury, it’s some basketballers, tennis players and other sportspeople. Think, The Matrix in sport shorts.
There were some unsavoury things I learned while editing this book, such as that rhino horn is worth more, per gram, than cocaine, which is explained in “Why do people post lizards in the mail?” (I didn’t know people posted lizards in the mail either, and I was shocked to find out why.)
Other explainers left me more hopeful. After editing “What will power our homes in the future? I grasped how the “distributed energy grid” works, with households and businesses with rooftop solar panels feeding power back into the grid, storing power in home batteries and electric cars, and using software to draw power when they need it from the cheapest source. The future has just about arrived.
And “What happens as we die?” might sound depressing but it left me a little more hopeful too. I was with a close relative when they died a couple of years ago and I wanted to read something to make sense of the experience but there wasn’t a lot around. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one who had been through this; “What happens as we die?” has turned out to be one of our most popular explainers ever.
I picked up some top tips, too. I’d always felt like I’d been “absent from school” on the day they taught cryptic crosswords – all those boxes and enigmatic clues would swim before my eyes. I had an “ah-hah!” moment with word whiz David Astle’s “How do you conquer cryptic crosswords?” I might just have a new favourite pastime.
And I got even more than I bargained for, in the best way possible, when wine critic Max Allen explained what wine tasting notes really mean. How can a wine possibly taste like “well-hung venison” (and would that be good or bad)? Wine labels and wine reviews make more sense to me now, and I’ve got a “trendy” term or two up my sleeve for when quaffing wine, such as “Ooh, very funky!” or “Try this, it’s really smashable!”
—What’s it Like to be Chased by a Cassowary? Fascinating answers to perplexing questions, edited by Felicity Lewis (Penguin Books Australia), is out now.
What's it Like to be Chased by a Cassowary?
Fascinating answers to perplexing questions
Catnip for the curious, this anthology is an engaging and lively curation of authoritative and original voices from the nation’s most trusted news outlets.
Ever wondered what happens to us as we die? Or how the Esky became an Aussie cultural icon? Or why we have leap years? Then look no further – and even if you haven’t wondered, you’ll want to find out. This anthology is a diverse collection of explainers by some of the finest writers from The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald...
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