An exploration of Engineering and Astronomy with Breyton Hill

Breyton Hill interviews Dr. Laura Bottomley, an engineering professor at NC State, about her career journey, motivation, and common misconceptions about engineering. Dr. Bottomley talks about her original dream to be an astronaut right up until the moment she got in the classroom. “I loved it. Teaching was the ultimate puzzle… to figure out how to explain things to people so that they would understand and would get excited about stuff. I was sunk.” Breyton asks Dr. Bottomley about her career mentors over the years and how one of those mentors prompted Dr. Bottomley to found Women in Engineering at NC State. Dr. Bottomley didn’t see a lot of change happening with regard to getting women into and excited about engineering so she became that change with her K-12 outreach program, the Engineering Place . The pair discusses how engineering is making a difference in the world and that “engineers are not just people who do math and science alone in their room with the door shut and never talk to people. That image is completely incorrect. [Engineers] have to be very wholistic.” After clearing up common misconceptions about engineering, Dr. Bottomley offers the question of “what kind of difference do you want to make in the world? Where do you want the impact of your life to be?” and offers some advice on how to discern that. “Begin with the end in mind,” she says, “but as you learn more, be willing to change.” The interview continues with Dr. Bottomley’s current soapbox “we need to teach more critical thinking in this country. Anti-intellectualism is dangerous. I don’t think that we should aspire to be ignorant.” Breyton ends the interview with the Breyton Interrogation: a series of questions to get to know you rather than what you do. Breyton Hill then transitions to interviewing at North Carolina Museum of Natural Science ’s Astronomy Day. Secretary of the Raleigh Astronomy Club, Ann Murphy, discusses her interactive booth about how time passes differently and your weight and jumping height changes on different planets. Ann introduces Pluto’s five different moons. Breyton dives deeper into these moons and the dwarf planets in our solar system including Pluto, Eris, Ceres, Haumea, and Makemake. Breyton additionally spoke with volunteer, Toby, on different kinds of telescopes. Volunteer Syndey, also at the telescope booth, explains that using a telescope or binoculars, you can see Mars currently in retrograde. Lastly, Breyton discusses the potential of alien life with Toby. ★ Support this podcast ★

You can listen to An exploration of Engineering and Astronomy with Breyton Hill online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

An exploration of Engineering and Astronomy with Breyton Hill is an episode from Oak City Move by WKNC 88.1 FM HD-1/HD-2.

This episode is 38:13 long.

This episode was published on Feb 23, 2026.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from Oak City Move when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.