A Periodic Tale

How did a shy Polish immigrant kid - Karl Sven Woytek Sas Konkovitch Matthew Kruszelnicki - evolve into the fabulously eccentric Dr Karl?

Shortlist ABIA Biography of the Year 2025

The only child of Holocaust survivors who fled to Australia in 1950, Karl has always forged his own destiny in an idiosyncratic way. Before he became one of the world's favourite scientific storytellers, he ambled through a convoluted cacophony of a career.

In the 1960s, he got his start as a physicist at the Port Kembla Steelworks and promptly joined the Steel Industries Auto Club, racing modified rally cars on Wollongong's deserted back roads. In the 1970s, he entered his self-described 'drug-crazed hippie years', making a living as a long-haired, dope-smoking taxi driver. After he applied to be a NASA astronaut in the 1980s and 'failed', he ended up live broadcasting the first space shuttle launch on Triple J instead. Unexpectedly, that blasted off his media career, and from there it was a stratospheric rise from radio to TV, books, newspapers, speaking, podcasts and the internet.

Karl's story teaches us that you don't have to know all the answers, as long as you ask the right questions. He has wandered down more than a dozen career paths, from being a TV weatherman (really) to a professional four-wheel drive tester in the outback (really) to being a roadie for Bo Diddley (really). All of these seemingly random experiences have helped create the Karl we know today.

In this long-awaited memoir, you will learn that it's okay to not take a linear path through life, and that by following our curiosities and our passions, we can bend the universe to our liking.