It started with a casual remark over coffee. It was the late 1990s, and I was a postdoc in Karin Rabe's ferroelectrics research group, then at Yale University. Ferroelectrics are materials that exhibit a spontaneous electric polarization that can be reversed by applying an electric field. Although they were named after an analogous magnetic phenomenon-ferromagnetism-ferroelectrics were generally thought to not have magnetic properties, which made me, a budding magnetism researcher, an apparently odd fit for the laboratory. That odd juxtaposition, though, turned out to be crucial to my career. "It's a pity there are no magnetic ferroelectrics," my labmate said to me as we guzzled espresso, "because then we could collaborate."