Everything I learned at Electromagnetic Field 2026

People like authenticity. When I introduced my talk, I apologised for the basic theme: “I don’t understand how LibreOffice Impress templates work, so this is just the basic Pandoc theme, but at least it’s not AI.” That received a huge cheer. Things that also got a cheer: when I said that I’d cycled all the way from London; and when I faintly praised the Tories for opting out of article 20(6)(b) of the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic to preserve the right of pedestrians to cross the road wherever they wish. The most typically EMF question after my talk: where did you take that photo of your bike by the weir? (Near Eton.) Lots of people (who go to EMF) really like number plates. My talk was very well attended, especially considering it was 10:30 on a Sunday morning. Admittedly, it wasn’t quite as busy as the full house for Breaking into buildings with boobs (a hugely informative and entertaining talk!) but I didn’t put “boobs” in the title and, as someone pointed out, to be on Stage A…