00:02
Søren Meibom
I chose a painting by Jens Søndergaard called Stormy Sea.

00:06
Søren Meibom
The light is so dramatic. That incredible beauty of the coastline, the force of the ocean. You can almost smell the ocean, you can feel the wind. And the people standing, looking over the ocean, you are learning about their lives, these stoic, hardworking, honest people. Their hardships, their interaction with the ocean, how they probably lost many friends and family members out there on that dangerous but very, very beautiful nature.

00:38
Søren Meibom
My grandmother is from there. We used to go as a family, we would always go there on vacation. It's such an emotional and loaded visualization of the coast of northwestern Denmark. His motives check so many boxes for me in terms of my childhood memories.

01:04
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
My name is Tina Jøhnk Christensen, and I'm the host of Danish Originals, a podcast series created in partnership with the American Friends of the National Gallery of Denmark. Our goal is to celebrate Danish creatives who have made a significant mark in the US.

01:19
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Today, our guest is Søren Meibom, a Danish scientist, former soccer player, and artist. Welcome Søren.

01:28
Søren Meibom
Thank you very much, Tina.

01:30
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It is so good having you. Where are you at the moment and would you mind describing the location to our listeners?

01:36
Søren Meibom
Of course. I'm sitting in our home in the town of Winchester, about eight to ten miles north of Boston. We have lived here for 14 years. We've been in the Boston area for 20 now. So yeah, this is a lovely little town, actually have quite a European feel, waterways, roundabouts, little streets with shops, and it's a wonderful place to be.

02:04
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I see you have artwork in the background, and I assume portraits of your kids.

02:09
Søren Meibom
Yes, the artwork is mine. The series of photographs is my wife's failed attempt at taking a Christmas photo of our children. And I decided to make it into a series of 12 pictures of different failed attempts. It's a very fun sequence.

02:25
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
They look uncontrollable!

02:27
Søren Meibom
Completely!

02:29
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Let's start in Madison, Wisconsin. How did this transfer to the US happen back in 1999? And why Madison, a city of less than 300,000 inhabitants, like the city you are from, Odense, actually.

02:44
Søren Meibom
That was exactly my question, Tina. I had studied for my masters at the University of Copenhagen, and at that point I had specialized in physics and astrophysics. And I had done my masters thesis while serving in the Danish military, the Air Force. It was quite a hectic period of time.

03:02
Søren Meibom
I had thought about what I wanted to do after my masters, and I wanted to pursue research in astronomy and astrophysics. But I just couldn't see myself staying in Denmark. I wanted to spread my wings and get out in the world. I went into my advisor's office. And I said, Johannes, I would like to study for a PhD.

03:23
Søren Meibom
And I thought I was going to disappoint him, I thought he was going to wish that I would stay and work with him. I said, but I really want to go abroad. And he looked at me and he said, I have known that for a long time, Søren. I know exactly where you're going to go.

03:37
Søren Meibom
And Tina, I had been dreaming about places like San Francisco, Los Angeles, or maybe Florida, or Spain or Italy, something exotic. And he said to me, you're gonna go to Madison, Wisconsin.

03:52
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Did you even know where it was?

03:54
Søren Meibom
Not at all. I did not know there was anything called Wisconsin. Why would I? But then he started explaining to me, and of course he had connections there, which is often how it works in the world of academics. He started explaining to me about the school, the university, the town, and I became reluctantly interested.

04:10
Søren Meibom
And I ended up going and I could talk for hours about how absolutely wonderful Madison, Wisconsin is — being the capital, being a huge university town, very good school, in a part of the world that I would never have thought that I would ever go to.

04:27
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What made it so wonderful?

04:30
Søren Meibom
As a Dane, as a progressive, and with a Danish attitude to how society should work, it's actually a pretty liberal oasis in an otherwise fairly conservative state. It also is the capital of the state and has that large university of 50,000–60,000 students or so, or at least in terms of staff and everything.

04:50
Søren Meibom
It was a very vibrant place. I could start listing all the musicians I have seen, world-class names, come through Madison the time I was there, arts and culture and things happening. And of course the academics of it — the university being very strong on multiple fronts, and within my own field as well, of astronomy. It was a very strong department, and still is.

05:15
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Then you moved to Boston in 2005. You mentioned 20 years in Boston. You worked there as an astronomer, you were part of NASA's Kepler mission. What did you do? Please tell our listeners so they understand in layman terms.

05:31
Søren Meibom
My PhD thesis, which I completed in Madison, Wisconsin, was with a particular focus on stars, a particular class of astronomical objects called star clusters. So I would study stars and how they evolve over their lifespans in great detail.

05:48
Søren Meibom
That expertise of studying stars very carefully, especially stars like our sun, we call them solar type stars, sun-like stars, became attractive at that time around the early 2000s because there was this boom, gold rush, almost, to look for planets outside of our solar system, the so-called extra solar planets.

06:13
Søren Meibom
And NASA was in the process of planning missions, including the Kepler mission, to look for planets outside our solar system in the galaxy. The way that you find planets, to be very brief about it, is that outside of our solar system, all of the stars are so far away that there's no way you can see planets around them directly.

06:33
Søren Meibom
So all methods of finding extra solar planets are indirect, meaning, you're looking at how the planet affects the star. You're basically looking at whether this planet eclipses the star, dims the star for a short period of time, or how it gravitationally pulls the star back and forth.

06:53
Søren Meibom
I was hired at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics into a group who was part of the science team behind the Kepler mission. They needed someone who could help them really understand the stars well to select the right kind of stars to look for planets around. That was a long answer, I realize. But that was the scientific path that led me from Madison to Boston.

07:20
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And you have a successful career as an astronomer. You also taught at Harvard. Why then in 2019 decide to focus on art? What made you make that huge shift?

07:34
Søren Meibom
Yeah, it's a very complicated and long answer in principle, but I'll try to just take it bite-sized. I've always made art. Art has really been a lifelong passion of mine. My father is an artist, and I've made art since I can remember. And it's been this persistent, ever-present force, something that I felt really wonderful doing and I loved doing.

07:59
Søren Meibom
Soccer was a huge part of my youth. I played on the elite club teams and regional teams and national teams. That was dominating for many years. Then about high school age, science started taking over and eventually putting an end to soccer. I had the science career you've been describing. But art was always simmering in the background. I really loved doing it and I always found time for it. And I always envisioned myself doing it at a higher level.

08:27
Søren Meibom
I reached the point in my scientific career where I felt that I had really accomplished a lot of the milestones that I was hoping to accomplish. And like in many other careers, you go from being a student to doing really exciting new work, publishing papers and discovering things. And then at some point you transition to becoming almost like a manager or a mentor. That happens in academia as well.

08:55
Søren Meibom
You can still do research, but you end up spending a lot of time getting money, advising, managing groups, et cetera. And so the choice was really, do I want to enter that phase of my scientific career and spend most of my time on things that are not directly related to research, discoveries, or at least indirectly related? Or do I want to pursue this other passion of mine, this other dream of mine?

09:23
Søren Meibom
It wasn't an overnight decision for sure. It was something I thought about and spoke to my wife about, and spoke to our financial advisor about, for probably four or five, six years. I was raised in a belt-and-suspenders kind of way, so it wasn't a completely crazy decision.

09:23
Søren Meibom
The hardest part was actually letting go of a career that had taken 20+ years to build. Choosing astrophysics is not exactly a secure choice either. It's a fiercely competitive and long road to get to where I was. And so that was the hardest part. We made sure that we were not going to end up on the street.

10:11
Søren Meibom
But there was letting go of all that I had built up. What you do, what you have been trained to do, what you have accomplished, it becomes part of your identity. I was an astronomer, I was an astrophysicist. And now I had to start saying, I'm an artist. I say that proudly now, but that can mean so many things.

10:30
Søren Meibom
Saying you're an astronomer and astrophysicist, it means something's very specific. Saying that you're an artist, it could range from making cutting boards and bird feeders, to being at MoMA. It is such a large spectrum. It's much less well defined, so you have to be comfortable with that.

10:48
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Your new career involves three themes. You've managed to combine science, art, and soccer. What do these things have in common from your point of view?

11:00
Søren Meibom
To take the science and the art first, when you and I went to school, Tina, I don't know how this has changed in Denmark, but in the US it's pretty much the same. You're put into these boxes of being a creative, artistic person or you're a logical thinking scientific person. When I went to high school in Denmark, there were even two tracks, right? There was the humanities and the languages, and then there was the mathematical track, they called it.

11:27
Søren Meibom
Society has a tendency to divide people into these different camps. And even sports, you can also be the sporty type, you can be put into that box. For something like science and art, there's actually a tremendous amount of overlap. In order to be a good scientist, you obviously have to be very curious about the world and ask good questions.

11:48
Søren Meibom
Once you have asked the questions, there's a tremendous amount of creativity also involved in designing an experiment. How are you going to answer this question? Can you divide it into smaller questions? What kind of data do you need? How do you analyze the data? How do you extract information? How do you communicate your results to the world around you?

12:10
Søren Meibom
There's a whole bunch of steps that actually require a lot of creativity in science. Science is restricted more by certain rules and norms of how you do things and how you present things. Whereas art is more of a free kind of creativity and communication, but I do think there's a lot of overlap between them.

12:31
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
One of your paintings is Messi and Ronaldo who are competing, and is full of numbers that reflect something scientific. What inspired you to do this painting? And as a former soccer player, are you a fan of these two rather amazing soccer players?

12:49
Søren Meibom
Well, the last one is very easy to answer, right? I mean, they were unbelievable. There's a debate that has been going on — who is best — but that's really irrelevant. They're just incredible. It's really a mixed media piece. It was part of a whole series I did about the game of soccer. I was interested in seeing if I could communicate through art what is so special about the game.

13:11
Søren Meibom
It is by far the most popular sport in the world. It's something that is being played and watched and loved on every continent and every culture. And so I made a whole series trying to ask and answer what makes soccer so uniquely popular across the globe. Now, one of those things is these incredible personalities that come around every once in a while.

13:34
Søren Meibom
And we have been so lucky the last 15, 20 years to sit in the front row and experience two of them, Messi and Ronaldo. They were heads and shoulders better than everybody else. And they were engaged in this incredible rivalry. And so the piece you were referring to is called "The Rivalry." I wanted to portray that aspect of the sport and of this human performance.

14:00
Søren Meibom
They were the best for 15 years straight, which is incredible to think about. So I wanted to portray them in a way that reflected my personality as an artist and my background. This is part of what I call SciArt, to see if you can fuse traditional visual art techniques with the language of science. Instead of drawing lines with a pencil or with charcoal or painting with a paintbrush, I collected all of the performance data on the two players.

14:32
Søren Meibom
In modern soccer, everything is recorded about them — how many shots on goal, how many goals, how many assists, how many dribbles, how many passes with the left foot, the right foot, how many headers, how many tackles, everything is collected throughout their seasons and throughout their careers.

14:47
Søren Meibom
You can create graphs, curves, that represent this performance metric. I said to myself, instead of drawing with a pencil, I'm going to use these curves as lines. And then the line is not only a line, it also represents the actual performance of these two amazing athletes.

15:09
Søren Meibom
The piece that you're referring to, it's a collage of hundreds if not thousands of individual pieces of transparent plastic with these graphs printed on them that I used as lines to draw the players. And they're drawn in an opposing fashion, holding onto a ball to symbolize the rivalry. And then, for artistic effect, to create light and shadow and some coloring, I added images of all the trophies that they had won.

15:41
Søren Meibom
The picture is essentially painted with their accomplishments in comparison. It has that dual meaning and all these layers of information. When you see the piece from a distance, you think it would be a charcoal drawing or a watercolor, but it's really an extreme example of painting with data, painting with information.

16:08
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
The scientist and the artist combined there.

16:11
Søren Meibom
Exactly. I refer to it as SciArt because it is this challenge of seeing if you can combine the two languages and thus make the work even more powerful and captivating and deep.

16:25
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I love soccer too. I played in Dalum IF, but I was not very good at it. You were good and you started out in KFUM in Odense and went on to play in local clubs B1913 and OB. And you were moving towards a professional career as a soccer player. What is it about this sport that makes you love it so much?

16:51
Søren Meibom
It has all the things that team sports in general have. It has an incredible social aspect and collaborative aspect. The game of soccer, played with the 11 players on the team and 22 people on the field, represents such a rich and complex challenge in terms of how you can work together with your teammates and work around your opponents. There are so many different roles and positions in the game of soccer.

17:21
Søren Meibom
It also has the most wonderful toy in the world involved: the ball. The round ball is such an amazing thing to play with and to try to control and manipulate. What I was trying to answer through my art is why has that particular sport become so universally loved and played?

17:43
Søren Meibom
I think in many ways, the game represents the complexity of life. It represents the struggles that we have, the roles that we play in normal life, of supportive roles, individual accomplishments, collaboration. And like other sports too, of course, struggles and failures and successes.

18:01
Søren Meibom
There will continue to be a very rapid evolution and improvement and variation in how it is played. I fell in love with it before I could even remember. I can't play anymore, but the reason I still watch it for hours at a time on television is because I think it has all these incredible aspects that relate to our existence otherwise.

18:23
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And I have to say, in Europe, of course, we call it football, not soccer — fodbold, in Danish. Then you also played in B —.93 —

18:35
Søren Meibom
B.93 in Copenhagen.

18:37
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And here you were on the same team as Kasper Hjulmand, who is our former coach for our national team. I learned that it was his visit to Boston that inspired you to make an exhibition in Denmark, right?

18:53
Søren Meibom
I had emptied my office at the Harvard-Smithsonian April of that year. We both had been busy. Getting together was something that happened mostly when I came to Denmark. But he called me up and said, hey, so can I come and visit? He was here for a week and we walked around Boston.

19:10
Søren Meibom
And talking to a person like Kasper about soccer brought to my attention this richness and this importance of the game and how it affects people all over the world and how it can be used for all kinds of good purposes in terms of helping children in different parts of the world, engaging them and gathering them, creating a safe environment that can include education, et cetera, et cetera.

19:33
Søren Meibom
So that was a visit that was the trigger to create this series of art pieces that were then eventually exhibited at the Museum of National History at Frederiksborg Slot in Denmark, during and after the European championships. That was a very festive time in Denmark.

19:53
Søren Meibom
A fun little anecdote about my team that I played on in Copenhagen in B.93 is that there were three national coaches coming out of that. There was Kasper and then there was Kenneth Heiner-Møller, who became the Danish women's national team coach and the Canadian women's national team coach. And another player on that team, a good friend, they're all friends of mine — Morten Rutkjær, is the men's national team coach for Greenland.

20:22
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Wow. Okay.

20:23
Søren Meibom
And there was actually just a movie premiering in Denmark about the Greenlandic national team. So it was a wonderful team and a wonderful time in Copenhagen there.

20:33
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
How do you react when the Danish national team is playing? Are you watching all the games? Do you behave like a fan or do you sit quietly and analyze the game like I assume Kasper would do?

20:49
Søren Meibom
He's at a whole different level of analyzing. I watch it mostly as a fan now. I certainly watch the Danish national team and very much cheer for them, and hope that I will next summer here in the US, too, in the World Cup. I also cheer for the American team.

21:03
Søren Meibom
I've lived exactly half of my life now in Denmark, 26 years, and half of my life in the US. The first half in Denmark and the second half in the US. I still feel Danish. I still say I'm Danish when people ask me. But obviously I'm very rooted and connected to the US and love being here. And so I'm also very much rooting for the US team.

21:25
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Whose side would you be on if Denmark was playing the US?

21:28
Søren Meibom
Denmark.

21:31
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
That was a fast answer.

21:33
Søren Meibom
That's a fast answer. If they were playing each other, I would root for Denmark. But as long as they're not playing each other, I'm rooting for both of them.

21:39
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
In which way do you feel Danish and in which way do you feel American?

21:43
Søren Meibom
I still feel Danish because the US is such a different place, not in terms of the clothes we are wearing or our lifestyle so much. But politically, culturally, on a daily basis, we can get very frustrated and negative about what is happening, especially these days as Danes, right? Because our foundation, our principles, our grounding, is so different than what is happening right now in the US.

22:09
Søren Meibom
But in a way, I think that's also why it is a fascinating place to live. That's also why I love living in the US — because it is an unruly place. It is an unpredictable place, still.

22:25
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Is it still the Wild West?

22:27
Søren Meibom
We don't ride horses and unfortunately, too many people still shoot guns. But it still has an aspect of the Wild West. It's a very young country compared to Europe. There are many reasons why. But there is part of that unruly, unconventional, unpredictable nature to this country that is very appealing to me, despite the fact that I grew up in a very orderly, well-behaved, homogeneous society.

22:57
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
What are the best things about having a Danish passport, and what are the best things about having an American one?

23:04
Søren Meibom
I actually haven't made use of it. For small, practical issues of traveling around the world, you sometimes pick your Danish passport. I remember as an astronomer, I would go observing in South America and around the world. And sometimes it would be much easier to pick my Danish passport because I wouldn't need a visa. I wouldn't have to go through the process of paying the money.

23:24
Søren Meibom
I don't actually know off the top of my head if there's a real advantage to having an American passport in terms of traveling around the world. Obviously, it's nice to be a citizen when you're living here. Despite the many flaws of the electoral system, you can still cast a vote. I had a green card before that. There's not that big of a difference. My wife is American, so I got a green card early on. In that sense, it's been pretty frictionless.

23:49
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You were born in Odense, and you were one of three kids. Your mother was a nurse, and your dad was an engineer who later became an artist, you mentioned that before. What was the street where you grew up called? And what was your childhood home like?

24:05
Søren Meibom
The street was called Højmarksvej. And we lived in number 14, and it was at the top of what was called Bolbro Bakke, which means the —

24:17
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Oh, is that where the Odin Tower used to be?

24:19
Søren Meibom
Yes, it is. It means that the hill of Bolbro, and Bolbro was the name of that particular neighborhood. And under the Second World War, there was a very big tower and there was a restaurant up top. And the story there is that my dad actually remembers, it was his childhood home too. It wasn't the Nazis that blew it up. It was the Danish Resistance movement because the Nazis were using it for a communication tower, and so that was blown up. That was my old neighborhood.

24:44
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And Odin is one of our gods, and our city Odense is named after this god.

24:50
Søren Meibom
Exactly. Yes. The part of town, it wasn't affluent. In fact, some people have told me that it was one of the poor zip codes. But our home was a wonderful place, and safe and sound and we grew up with all the privileges that it means to grow up in Denmark, in terms of what we could do, and schooling and opportunities. So it was a good life.

25:12
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And you went to Provstegårdsskolen, also in Bolbro. Did you have a teacher who inspired you to go in the scientific direction? How did the astronomer appear in you?

25:26
Søren Meibom
I had very good teachers, I felt, but I don't think that any of them inspired me to go in the way of science. Even in high school, it was mostly just driven by my own desire to understand the world around me. I've become much more self-aware about this more recently.

25:45
Søren Meibom
As a side note, I am now involved with something called the Global Curiosity Institute, where we talk a lot about curiosity and different kinds of curiosity and what it means. I was never really self-aware in regards to something like how I was as a person and what drove me, but looking back, I think I had a natural curiosity drive.

26:09
Søren Meibom
I've always been very interested in understanding things at a deeper level instead of the superficial answers that you often get to questions. I was very fascinated by understanding even mundane things around us in our daily lives. How do they actually work? And that is pretty much at the core of the sciences — understanding how things work, trying to explain them.

26:30
Søren Meibom
As a boy growing up, if you had told me, Tina, that I was one day going to be involved with discovering planets around stars and star clusters, or studying the evolution of stars and determining their ages at Harvard Smithsonian in Boston — it was a complete fantasy, that wasn't even a dream at that point.

26:53
Søren Meibom
I was interested in space and the planets and the moon and things like that, like many kids. But it wasn't a boyhood dream that just slowly came into being. I had that level of curiosity, that interest in understanding the world and nature that was a precursor probably for a career in science.

27:13
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You and I went to the same high school in Odense. You started in 1989, is that correct?

27:20
Søren Meibom
Yes.

27:21
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Which means that you were in 1.g when I was in 3.g. I graduated in 1990.

27:27
Søren Meibom
That is so funny, Tina.

27:29
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
So our paths have probably crossed and we played soccer on the same field, just next door to the school, I guess. What were your high school years like and what were your favorite subjects? I hope I wasn't one of them who threw sweets at you, which was this weird tradition we had.

27:47
Søren Meibom
Well, you must have been Tina, that was part of your duty. And frozen sweets, too, so they hurt more. That is so funny. That was a great school, by the way. I really liked that. It was a culture shift, as I said, from my part of town —

28:02
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
It's called Sct. Knuds, I don't think I mentioned that. Sct. Knuds Gymnasium.

28:05
Søren Meibom
Sct. Knuds Gymnasium. And to me it was a little bit of a culture shock, because even in Denmark, which is a very homogeneous country, and there's not huge class differences and wealth disparities, it was still a bit of a different clientele, I would say, than I was used to.

28:23
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
A lot of kids from private schools.

28:26
Søren Meibom
Exactly. So let's just put it that way. There were a lot of kids that had gone to private schools before they came. Again, the part of town I grew up in was a lot of working folks, a lot of low income families with a lot of problems, frankly. It was a different experience to go to high school.

28:42
Søren Meibom
But I thought it was a fantastic high school. My teachers were really good. A handful of my very best friends are from gymnasium. I had a wonderful time there. I think it's really funny to think about the fact that we were roaming the hallways at the same time. I was so incredibly immature at that time, especially as a boy. It was all about soccer and just having fun. But we did get a really good education there, I would say.

29:07
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
I agree.

29:08
Søren Meibom
Funny.

29:09
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And then you also went to Odense University for a few years, and we probably also met there because I went there too in Fredagsbaren, Friday Bar —

29:17
Søren Meibom
Yes.

29:18
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
— which was the place that everybody gathered on Friday from all the different kinds of studies, because otherwise we didn't really meet. What made you move to Copenhagen from there? You didn't continue your studies in Odense, you went to Copenhagen.

29:35
Søren Meibom
I started studying physics and mathematics in Odense and I think maybe I have this desire to move and not stay in the same place. I was having a little bit of a hard time with my motivation. I was struggling a little bit.

29:50
Søren Meibom
But then there was an opportunity to take one class. They didn't have an astronomy department or even astronomy faculty in our hometown of Odense. But they did offer one class on stellar evolution. And because I was struggling with finding the excitement of everything, I spent a lot of time playing soccer at the time too.

30:10
Søren Meibom
I grabbed the opportunity to take this one class and I absolutely loved it. That was my first experience with astronomy at a real scientific level of research. The fact that we understand how stars evolve, how they're born, and how they go through their lives, so to speak, and how they die and how it depends on the size and mass, and all of this physics and chemistry involved — this was fascinating to me.

30:35
Søren Meibom
It's a very special field because there's not a laboratory, it's not like you can go and dig something out of the ground and look at it and turn it around and probe it and drill it. All astronomers have is light. And so the amount of knowledge we had gained — I remember thinking, from the telescope as an instrument, how we analyze light and how much we have learned about these points in the sky.

30:57
Søren Meibom
So I was really, really fascinated by that. And as quickly as I could, I arranged — this is a long story too — but I got the opportunity to do my bachelor project, which is the project you do to finish your third year, at an observatory on Sjælland, an hour or so west of Copenhagen.

31:19
Søren Meibom
And I went there and I used a real telescope to take my own data, and I worked with who would eventually become my master's advisor in Copenhagen. And I did my first observations of an open star cluster. So then I was sold. The only way I could continue that line of study was by moving to Copenhagen. The only real problem in my mind was I had to find a place to play soccer in Copenhagen.

31:46
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Which is why you played in B.93 or what?

31:50
Søren Meibom
So, without bragging, I was good enough that there were several clubs that were interested in me. And I took that as an opportunity to negotiate my way into an apartment in Copenhagen close to the university. And the small amount of money that was involved was helpful to live in Copenhagen. I solved that problem, the soccer and the science, and moved to Copenhagen and absolutely loved living in Copenhagen.

32:14
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
And you did military training in Denmark too. How did that help shape you? It seems when you talk to men who've been in the military, they remember those years fondly, if they haven't been to war, that is. They speak about it as something special, the camaraderie. But also, it's pretty strict, the military training. You get treated in a certain way, but you also learn stuff from it. What did you take away from those years?

32:39
Søren Meibom
I had postponed it with the hope that it was never gonna happen. I was very unlucky. In Denmark, we have a draft. You go see a doctor, and if you're physically fit, you pull a number out of a hat, essentially. And if that number is very high, you're very lucky and you never have to do anything. I pulled out, and I'm not kidding you, Tina, I pulled out 163. That was my number. I will never forget that number.

33:05
Søren Meibom
I was guaranteed that I had to serve for a year. So I postponed it all the way until I was done with my masters. But, coming back to the conversation with my advisor suggesting that I go to Madison, if I was going to leave the country, I would have to put in my one year in the military before leaving the country.

33:24
Søren Meibom
And so that ended up being an experience where I essentially was finishing my master's thesis while serving in the military. Jumping on the train early in the morning, going to the military base, jumping in the train, going back to my office, and sleeping three or four hours a night for at least six months. You know, when you're young…

33:42
Søren Meibom
But because I was five, six years older than the average soldier, it was quite a frustrating experience for me. The lieutenants and the sergeants who were screaming and spitting in your face, were three, four, five years younger than me. So it was not a great time. I think it is a very healthy thing to do, and it was a healthy thing for me too, but it was just different because I was older.

34:11
Søren Meibom
The one thing that was wonderful is that I was in the Air Force, and for reasons I don't fully understand —

34:19
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Of course you were. You had to be close to the stars.

34:22
Søren Meibom
Of course, yes, but I was not flying planes, I was in the force to protect air bases. And for some reason, that branch of the military got to go to the shooting range every single day. And so we shot rifles and machine guns and pistols and everything every day. And that became a sport, a competition.

34:42
Søren Meibom
And so that is a thing that I really enjoyed, despite the fact that I don't own a gun today. I have no interest in guns, but the sport of shooting became part of my experience that saved the day a little bit.

34:53
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
A little detour, but did you ever get to visit NASA here in LA? I went there once. There were these two Danish scientists who were part of making a little magnet on those —

35:05
Søren Meibom
Oh, the rovers.

35:06
— yeah, the rovers on Mars and they would attract dust from the planet so they could see whether there had been life on the planet before. Did you ever visit that? I was there once talking to them about this very specific thing that they were doing.

35:22
Søren Meibom
I went to the LA location at Pasadena —

35:26
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
That's the one. That's where I went.

35:28
Søren Meibom
Okay, I have been there as well as up in San Jose near San Francisco. And in Florida, of course. I went to the launch of Kepler. And in DC. So I've been to many of the locations. Yeah, I've been to Pasadena as well, multiple times.

35:43
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Pretty interesting.

35:45
Søren Meibom
Oh yeah.

35:46
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
So now you're a freelancer. I want to ask, what's it like? What is life like as an artist?

35:53
Søren Meibom
I wasn't blind to the idea that this was going to be starting from scratch. As I said, I built my scientific career over 20 years of formal training and diplomas and jobs. And so starting out as an artist, I was fully aware that it was going to be first of all, a wonderful thing. It was something I really wanted to do, and making art was going to be absolutely wonderful.

36:16
Søren Meibom
And it is. I wasn't of course blind to the fact that it was going to be a difficult road depending on what your goal is. I'm taking my art career just as seriously as I took my soccer career and my science career. It's not an early retirement. And I work probably more hours now than I have ever done, also because my kids are grown and they moved away, and so I can pretty much work all day.

36:39
Søren Meibom
But it is of course a very challenging job to take on because in this day and age, you're wearing all these different hats. I'm the creator, but I also have to be the marketer, and website developer and social media, networking, trying to make things happen for you. And that takes a lot of time away from the creative process.

37:02
Søren Meibom
In some ways, it's fascinating because you get to interact and talk to a lot of different people. I really love that part of it. In science and astrophysics, you quickly become laser focused on a small subfield where you're doing your research and the community is relatively small and you interact with a smaller group of people.

37:21
Søren Meibom
But now, as an artist, my world is completely open. As we talked about earlier, I use a lot of science in my art. I can study anything. I have made art about radiology, about human evolution, about soccer, about rowing, all these different topics. I can open up my world completely. And I have spoken and met so many different people from so many different parts of the world and so many different backgrounds.

37:45
Søren Meibom
So that part I really love. I made my mark as a scientist, maybe as a soccer player as well. And I'm very confident that I will someday make my mark as an artist. Obviously, it's a long haul and it's a very competitive area and you have to somehow penetrate all the noise and make it happen.

38:04
Søren Meibom
I've had glimpses of it, and I have exciting things on the horizon. But it is just a grind and you can't escape that. Luckily I have no problem motivating myself. One of the fears of course could be, do you get the work done when you could do all kinds of other things? You have to have, of course, that drive, to make sure you don't end up watching Netflix for five hours every day.

38:26
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Ooh. Well, that's work for me actually —

38:30
Søren Meibom
Oh yeah. You can check that off as your research!

38:36
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
Yeah! When you think back, what would you say were the highlights in your life and career? What moments stand out for you?

38:44
Søren Meibom
Well, life, of course, and career are intertwined but also a little bit separate. In terms of my life, obviously my wife and my family are a big part. My wife is American and a big part of why I love living in the US so much. She represents all the things that I love about the US — the optimism, the positivity, the unpretentious hardworking open-minded person, representative of the best versions of Americans.

39:15
Søren Meibom
And very supportive of what I do, both before and now, and very interested in Danish culture and establishing that also with our children. So meeting her and living with her was a highlight and continues to be a highlight. And of course my children. So that's the family aspects of it.

39:31
Søren Meibom
The years that I played soccer in Copenhagen with that team was a peak in my soccer career and where I really enjoyed it. It was too bad that my science had to make me stop at the point where I was playing at the highest level.

39:44
Søren Meibom
Moving to the US, feeling that level of freedom and independence, even though it was a little scary, I was never homesick. Taking that leap and moving to a part of the world where I literally knew no one. Those first days, they were tough, but it was just so exciting. Walking out of the door, that first day feeling that Midwest summer heat and humidity.

40:10
Søren Meibom
You didn't know whether to go left or right at the first intersection trying to find the university. I vividly remember that. It was never traumatic. It was never homesick. It was just the excitement of it. That's a highlight, for sure, being involved with mass emissions, as I said, is almost surreal when you think back and could you ever have imagined being involved with NASA space missions, scientifically making discoveries and doing research at that level of significance?

40:42
Søren Meibom
I've had a few very nice exhibitions as an artist as well. I hope there are going to be many significant highlights as an artist. It's something that I strive for in the next several decades.

40:58
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
My final question to you is, what would you still like to achieve? Do you have unfulfilled dreams that you would like to fulfill or a bucket list you need to check off?

41:12
Søren Meibom
I've traveled a lot in my years as a scientist and a soccer player, so I don't really have this urge to travel, it's not like I'm gonna say no or stay home, but in terms of traveling, I feel that's fine. Intellectual challenges, I can also check off, and education. I'm very focused on — I don't even know how to define success as an artist. It's not a matter of making money.

41:37
Søren Meibom
I'm hoping that I am going to get to a point as an artist where my art is being seen and enjoyed and appreciated and having an impact. The way I'm working right now as an artist is trying to do this SciArt that lends itself, in my mind, to larger scale projects, commissioned work in public spaces, in businesses or organizations. I'm hoping that I can succeed with that vision, where my art will find audiences, where they really are affecting people in a positive way.

42:15
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
That sounds great. Good luck with that, Søren. And thank you so much for being part of Danish Originals. We really appreciate you being with us.

42:24
Søren Meibom
It was so much fun, Tina. Thank you so much.

42:27
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
You're very welcome. Thank you.

42:30
Tina Jøhnk Christensen
For today's episode, Søren Meibom chose Jens Søndergaard's Hav. Storm or Stormy Sea from 1954 from the collection of the National Gallery of Denmark.