Adam Mastroianni is a social psychologist and the author of Experimental History, available on Substack. But what is Substack? And is it a good vehicle for science communication? Adam shares his experiences writing for a non-academic audience and also reflects on the role of "science communication" in the world. Should there be a division between the scientists and the science communicators? What is a scientist's responsibility in keeping in touch with the public?
We also discuss his new article in The Atlantic: "I Ruined Two Birthday Parties and Learned the Limits of Psychology."
You can find the rest of this summer's science communication podcast series here.
For a transcript of this episode, visit this episode's page at: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episodes/
Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.
Adam Mastroianni is a social psychologist and the author of Experimental History, available on Substack. But what is Substack? And is it a good vehicle for science communication? Adam shares his experiences writing for a non-academic audience and also reflects on the role of "science communication" in the world. Should there be a division between the scientists and the science communicators? What is a scientist's responsibility in keeping in touch with the public?
We also discuss his new article in The Atlantic: "I Ruined Two Birthday Parties and Learned the Limits of Psychology."
You can find the rest of this summer's science communication podcast series here.
For a transcript of this episode, visit this episode's page at: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episodes/
Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.
Hey everybody, welcome to another edition of Hot SiCom Summer, a special podcast series about science communication. One of my goals for this series is to highlight different media for science communication and shine a light on social science communication where I can. Today's guest does both of these. Adam Mastriani is a postdoctoral scholar in social psychology and he runs a popular sub-stack called Experimental History. Sub-stack is like blogging 2.0 and a medium with lots of promise for science writing.
Andy Luttrell:Adams found a nice niche here, reaching a wide audience with accessible and fun analyses of all sorts of curious ideas about what it means to be a person. In April of this year he also had a great article in The Atlantic titled I Ruined Two Birthday Parties and Learned the Limits of Psychology. It really is worth a read. So I was excited to talk to him about his work. but Adam has an interesting perspective on the whole idea of science communication as its own thing. to begin with, whose responsibility is it to fill the public in on scientists' findings? Does the existence of science communication reveal a failing of traditional models of academic science? So today's episode is one part nuts and bolts of writing about psychology on the internet and one part philosophy of science communication itself. I always have a good time talking with Adam, and this time was no different, so let's get into it.
Andy Luttrell:One of the things that I thought made you a good candidate for this series was one of the things I want to do is showcase a variety of media through which scientists can talk about the work that they do, and Substack is a fairly new medium on the scene, and as I was thinking about this earlier today, i was remembering that a couple of weeks ago I don't know how it came up, but Substack was mentioned somewhere and my wife was like what is that? Do you know what that is? And I was like, yeah, i know what that is. And she said what? How could you know what that is? So clearly, this is a medium still gaining some traction. So, just to set the stage, what is it? So, someone who doesn't know what this is, how would you describe Substack and other kinds of things like it?
Adam Mastroianni:Yeah, i struggle to know what to call what I, in particular, do on it. What Substack is is just an easy way of sending emails to a lot of people. Really, it combines a blog with a newsletter and, i think the killer part of it This could have been done 25 years ago probably, but for whatever reason, they just figured out. If you make it a lot easier to get people's emails when they read something that you wrote that they like, then you go from being a content creator on the internet to someone who's actually engaged in a conversation with people, and so, rather than having to fight every time to get this person to come back, and rather than being subject to whatever algorithm is running like the content platform that you're on, the idea is that if you create something that people like, they will give you the opportunity or the ability to keep talking to them in the future, so, which I know that's a very helpful description, but part of it is that you can kind of do a bunch of stuff on it.
Adam Mastroianni:So there are people who like post recipes on it. If you like the recipes, you subscribe to them and then you get more recipes from them. There are people who do like art and animation, and what I do is talk about research and psychology, and probably one of the more important parts is that they also, if you know what Patreon is, that's bolted onto it. So basically, an easy way of accepting money from people. So if people like what you have created and want to see some more of it, they can pay you some small amount of money per month or per year to get that premium content. So, yeah, so that's what it is. It's like a blog and a newsletter and a way of getting money from people.
Andy Luttrell:Yeah, it strikes me as kind of like blogs are back. That's sort of my impression of Substack, And I can't quite put a finger on what it's doing to have resurfaced this old idea of anyone can write some stuff and anyone can read it. It seems like the email thing. It's almost weird that email is the primary mechanism, given how much everyone complains about how much email they get now, And Substack is like we're going to add to it and be successful.
Adam Mastroianni:Not only that, like our business model is going to be here at pay to receive more emails, which, i mean, does work. I mean the most successful people on the platform. So, like this history professor, heather Cox Richardson, i think, like it's not entirely clear what individuals make on it, but I think he's making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. Based on like, you can kind of get a sense of how many paid subscribers she has and how many and over a million people have given her their email address to like receive a daily update about, like how history influences today's politics. And like they do that because, like they read something that she likes and they just really like her. And yeah, there's something about that. That like rather than the like. Oh, i like this author and so I'll just wait to see where they post their next article, which could be like in the New Yorker or in some random magazine that I don't read. Like I actually get to know them through this platform, where I see them right in their voice all the time.
Andy Luttrell:Yeah, and it's a fairly low cost. As I understand, that's probably part of the success. Like it's a volume game, like with Patreon. Sometimes you look and you go oh yeah, they've got like thousands of people. Each of them are giving like a dollar or two a month, which is like very little in the grand scheme for an individual person, but you can pound that across a whole bunch of people doing it And that's a pretty nice chunk of change to just like write whatever you want to people who have asked for you to email them your ideas.
Adam Mastroianni:Yeah, there was this now famous article I guess that's pretty old at this point called A Thousand True Fans. That was pointing out that if you have a thousand people who are willing to give you $100 a year, which isn't a huge amount of money and not a huge amount of people, now you're making $100,000. And that's like twice the median income. That's way more than most people make doing creative stuff. It's still really hard to do, right, because, like, who am I willing to give $100 a year to? who make stuff that I like enough? But there are some, and so, like I subscribe to substacks and I'm like I actually really do want to read everything that this person writes because I think they're really interesting And whenever I get an email from them I'll read it immediately. It's like a pretty short list, but they exist And, like that's part of my goal is like to be on that short list for enough people that I can pay rent and not start.
Andy Luttrell:Yeah, And it's like the diversification of where what we read comes from to right. Like this is a model that works, because we all kind of find these little tiny bubbles on the internet of people who we go. You are exactly what I want right now. As opposed to like oh, i get this magazine every month and yeah, there's usually like something cool in there where it's like no, i've like we're just so not even specialized, but it's just so one to one and you can be successful even with a small audience.
Adam Mastroianni:Yeah, and I think that happens in a couple of ways. One is like when you read someone in like the New York Times, you're reading some of their voice, but you're reading overwhelmingly the voice in the New York Times because the editor has gone through and reshaped what they've written. I went to a workshop like hosted for academics who wanted to write for the public, where, like, a New York Times editor was there and you like brought in an op-ed and you saw what he like you saw all the markup that he would do on your op-ed and I saw like okay, some of this is just making the sentences better, which you can do because you're an editor who's really good at this But some of this is making the sentences sound like they're being written in the New York Times And and like I actually am not that interested in that Like I want to write this, like I want to write good sentences And so I'll take those notes, but I want to write sentences that sound like me, and I think that's also part of why these things take off is like it's very refreshing to hear people speak in their own voice, even if like, yeah, like if an editor worked over their piece, it would flow better or whatever. But that's not really what I'm here for. I don't want to hear everything written in kind of this. You know, view from nowhere, voice that a lot of these magazines and newspapers try to like, go for.
Adam Mastroianni:And the other way that it's very one to one is like when you pay for a subscription to New York Times, like some amount of that dollar goes I mean, it's more than a dollar but some amount of what you pay ends up in the pockets of the people who are actually producing the things that you like, but it's a very small percentage, whereas when you subscribe to someone on substack it's 87%.
Adam Mastroianni:The like sub-tact takes a 3% cut, the payment processor takes a 10% cut, the payment processor takes a 3% cut And the rest goes directly to that person, which I much rather do. By the way, for a piece I'm writing right now, i tried to figure out like what percentage of what my students pay for their program ends up in my pocket as their instructor, and it was like somewhere between 5% and 7%, which is wild considering, like I'm, the main way that they interface I mean me and the other people who are teaching them that's the main way that they interface with their program And yet, overwhelmingly, what they're paying for is like, well, the lights to stay on, which we need, and like the bathrooms to be clean, which we need, but the rest is like going to the administrators who, mainly what they seem to do in my case is like double book my classroom So I have to find some other place to teach. That's a digression.
Andy Luttrell:It's reminding me, too that it's like whose voice are you hearing? Conversation something we might get to later which is like when I edit students writing like academic writing, there's a part of it where it's like you're not, it's not wrong to say this, but it's not how we say this, like when we talk academically in these journals. We say it like this, and so here's how you'd say this thing, which is a similar sort of strange thing where I think, where you know the logical conclusion is take away all of these institutions and you could just communicate your ideas and your findings in whatever way is authentic to you And like that's the heart of science communication from the perspective of the person doing the science.
Adam Mastroianni:Yeah, and some of those norms that we enforce, like just like the New York Times editor, like some of them we do because it makes the words better, like it makes the ideas clear, and some of them we do because it's just the way that it sounds and you just sound wrong or you don't sound like our voice if you don't do it. And it's really hard for, i think, the people who enforce those norms to distinguish between those two things, like the things that we do because it's better and the things that we do just because it's the thing that we do. Like, for instance, i once had a fight with a journal where they wanted to abbreviate. Every time I used the word years. They wanted to abbreviate it to the letter Y. Not even like I'm not even talking. Like you know, i ran 400 participants parentheses like they were, on average, 40 Y old, like even in the introduction. Like for 40 years, like, no, for 40 Y.
Adam Mastroianni:And I, like I understand that very few people who are not scientists will end up reading this because, like they don't have institutional access to it. But on the off chance that one of them happens upon it and hasn't come across, this, like, why don't we just make it slightly easier for them to understand. And I had to like fight with. They were like, but why? This is like this is the house style. And I'm like because it's for one thing, i didn't write that word, i didn't write the word why I wrote the word years And like my name is on this and not yours, so like why should I want it to be changed? But also it is just like slightly easier. It's like why go out of our way And like finally they gave up because I made a big deal out of it. But yeah, it's a thing like that where, like this is the house style. Well, like the house style doesn't actually make it easier to understand, it's just the house style.
Andy Luttrell:And presumably that is what made blogs in their heyday Nice also right, Like you were just getting a direct stream from people in the style that they wanted to talk to you And I would guess that you were involved in that as well Like, is there a pre-substack Adam Estriani blogger edition Or did you really start writing only when this medium presented itself?
Adam Mastroianni:No, i did a lot of stuff like that. I mean I created a lot of content, i guess is what we call it now, but nothing ever like this. I mean like and college I was doing improv and like hosting a late night show and writing sketches and like musical comedy and stuff, and I kept doing that in the years afterward. But I had never like written essays really, i mean, except like in class when I had to. So this form of writing like began when I started my sub-stack in January of last year.
Andy Luttrell:That surprises me. I took you as like a writerly person, but the story so I talked to Latif Nasser for this recently and his origin story was like playwriting and just theater in general. I have a background in stand up and improv and sketch and those sorts of things, so I definitely see this through line. Like the people who go, i have a brain that's wired to do science, but there's also this part of me I can just only speak for my own experience. I just go. There's also this part of me that's like, yeah, but like couldn't you do something else with this too? Like isn't there a way that you could lean on those other things that you think are so fun and marry them with this style of thinking that you like?
Adam Mastroianni:Yeah, and to come from traditions where, like we really care about how this is expressed, like the expression is everything about it. I mean sure, there's content too, right, but like we care what the play is about, but we really care that the words of the play are the right words, that like it sounds like the way people would talk, that like people are really like speaking as their character would, and like it's not a fun play to watch if every character sounds the same. I guess, unless that's the point of the play, unless it's on purpose, like it's not fun to watch if the people don't sound like humans sound, unless that's the point of the play, unless it's a purposeful choice, whereas in science it's like, ah, we kind of we don't want you to sound like anything. The more you sound like yourself, the more suspicious I guess we get, because it's like, well, what are you trying to do here?
Adam Mastroianni:Which has always confused me, and I think part of it is just like people just really don't like the deviation from the norm, like the reason you don't like it is because it's not done. And so I've had people tell me like your paper has too many jokes in it, and this wasn't even like there's a paragraph digression. That's like trying to set up a pun. It's really just like ah, the example that we use is a little bit jaunty. You know, like we really are trying to write a scientific paper. I mean, you know I'm not writing, you know, like a humorous essay, it's just like slightly funny. And people are like, don't do that. I'm like I feel such. I don't know what the emotion would be. Is it pity? confusion, a mixture of those for being such a person who, like wouldn't want that, like why do you want something to be more boring? Which like to watch a play or a stand up bit and be like there's too many jokes in here? It's like, well, but we came to like engage people.
Andy Luttrell:Yeah, the difference, it seems like I just yeah, in comedy or in creative writing, so much of like the thing you're chasing is finding your voice right, like that's like the whole enterprise is. You start out by copying other people, trying on different hats, sometimes literally, And eventually you go like, oh, like, this is the way I say these things, or like these are the thoughts I have, and I think you're right that a lot of academic writing is saying like check those at the door, please. Like, don't bring any of that stuff in. Like we want you to read a paper and not have any clue as to who wrote this, which is just like a complete 180 from the way a lot of other creative writing works.
Adam Mastroianni:Yeah, and I think it's like in part done because they think that it ruins the objectivity of what we're doing to allow into it any amount of your personality, which I think has this model of science that I think makes sense.
Adam Mastroianni:But it's totally wrong that like science is like trying to play, it's like trying to like rob God of his secrets And like it doesn't matter who you are doing it, but like God just says this list of secrets in order of importance, and like your job is just to get the next one that's most important, and like this is a very serious enterprise, and like it doesn't matter who you are doing it, like that has nothing to do with the kind of questions you would ask or be able to answer.
Adam Mastroianni:We're like I don't believe that's true for maybe anything, but especially not for psychology, where it's like so much of where our ideas come from come from our subjective experiences, like that's our way into this in the first place. And so if we pretend that like this had nothing to do with me, like this could have come from anybody, anyone could have written this paper, like that's a lie, they couldn't have. Like I had a particular experience that led me to be interested in this question And like I do think it is value beyond, just like this is why I'm writing in a paper and not my diary, but like you had to get here somehow And the way you did it wasn't just by like reasoning from first principles, which is why I think this like push toward objectivity, or like this view from nowhere version of writing is like misguided. It buries a thing that's actually important.
Andy Luttrell:And probably breaks public interest in it. Right To go like, oh, there's this sort of like pile of facts over there, and why should I be bothered? Whereas one of the themes that came through in talking to people for this last year was like, yeah, the moment we started centering this on our own like personalities, that's when we got engagement and like people wanted to hear more And like, sure, i'm curious about what you're finding. But when you think about like great science communication for the public, it's from like a character, like it's a person, but it's a person that people are like reading in, as a character, like, oh, you love this, like you have a very unique like connection to this, and so, in that case, finding your voice is an important part of the puzzle. And I'm curious, like, how have you found that journey of science writing Like, what is that like honing in on? Oh, this is the me that talks about this stuff to people.
Adam Mastroianni:Yeah, i tried to write a piece about this recently because a reader asked that they were like I'm trying to get better at writing. Like how do you do that? And I think so much of the advice about writing is focuses on the writing. That, like your words should sound like this and like you should write for 20 minutes and take a break, which I think, like I don't know, maybe that all helps, but I actually think the better way of finding your voice is taking seriously the experiences that you've had. That, like I like there's each person is unique and that no one has the same string of experiences in their lives, and so no one is the same amount of capable of writing the same kinds of things that, like for whatever, i don't know what I am more capable of writing, having like grown up in the middle of nowhere in the Midwest and then, like gone to college far away and like done a lot of improv and had weird experiences and then, like, gotten a PhD in psychology. But, like no one else is that particular constellation of experiences, especially, the further you know, the more granular you get, and so for me, it's been thinking about, like, what kind of person had that, did that make me and how can I sound like that person, how can I just be that person? And often it's a matter of trying to be more honest and like not trying to sound like someone else and be like, okay, i want to sound like the scientist whose papers I read, but trying to sound more like myself. And I can just feel it.
Adam Mastroianni:When I'm writing that like when I get stuck a lot it's because I'm like I'm trying to be dishonest in some way, that like I'm trying to cover up for the fact that I don't know what I'm talking about, or like really, what I want the reader to do is feel a certain way about me or I don't really believe what I'm saying, for whatever reason.
Adam Mastroianni:And when I get unstuck is when I figure out, like, how do I just say the thing that's inside, that's what it's been like, and like I think that's both true for creating creative things but also for doing science that, like, my ideas are way worse. When I'm like, okay, how can I put together a series of studies such that a journal will allow me into it, rather than like, what do I want to know And what are the steps that I have to take in order to answer the question to my satisfaction. Yeah, i could just tell the difference between like the studies that I come up with when I'm trying to like go through a checklist are. They're like, they're fine, they're lawful, they follow the rules, but they're boring. It's like there's no point in doing them.
Andy Luttrell:How often does this subject come out? Is it biweekly?
Adam Mastroianni:My main posts are every other week and for paid subscribers I usually have something in in in between.
Andy Luttrell:Do you find that that regularity is helpful? it for like what we're talking about finding how you want to do this.
Adam Mastroianni:Yeah, it's helpful in that like it prevents you from endlessly iterating, just like stewing too long, that like these things have to bake but they can then burn, and like is two weeks the appropriate amount? like often I feel like I could use some more time, which is probably the right point then, because, like I need to be, i think I need to be kept A little bit more going fast than going more slowly, although I think a lot of people have the opposite problem, that they think that like really what I need to do is produce a lot of content all The time. And like the number one thing that I feel when I read a lot of Substance is like I would rather you wrote half as much, because I'd want to read the thing that you would write if you had the luxury of time. Like I really am only interested in your best ideas. I don't care if you send me an email once a month with what you have. I'd rather that than for emails in a month that are all like kind of mediocre. Like there's a million people who can send me like the mediocre things that I'm like half interested to read. There's so few people who can send me the really exciting stuff, that that I'll read immediately, and I think met some of those people, some of the people who are not sending me things I really want to read could be the person who sends me the things I really want to if they just wrote less and thought more.
Adam Mastroianni:And I think that is also supposed to be part of the promise of this platform is, like you don't have to be buzzfeed Because, like you're never I mean now I guess buzzfeed is done, but you never, you know, and so don't be them because it didn't work, like it worked really well until it didn't work. This model of just like just produce content at all costs, no matter what it is, like just make clickbait. I think it's part of why is that that is succeeding? because there's more people doing stuff on it, that That it's like oh, this feels refreshing, because it doesn't feel like this is algorithmically optimized to make me click on it, which I never wanted in the first place, like sometimes it got me like, okay, fine, but I never liked it. It wasn't. I didn't feel joyful reading it.
Andy Luttrell:Yes, and that it drops in your inbox is probably helpful. That you just go like, oh Nugget from the sky came today and I'll read it, as opposed to like you just have to pump stuff out In order to just throw it in people's faces so that maybe someone somewhere's gonna click on this. Because I've always found that the Advice for you know, be consistent. When you're doing like YouTube stuff, it's just like be consistent, consistently, put out stuff, stick to a schedule.
Andy Luttrell:It's really hard to do that when you're trying to be honest and you're trying to tell the truth about how You know, we know things about the world, and it's just like. That's fine if you're kind of making up. You know silly voices Sort of making stuff up, like yeah, you can just like, yeah, pump that out, but it is hard to like be thoughtful. On a schedule, however, where I was sort of wondering Whether there's the benefit of that consistency Isn't so much the like you prevent yourself from thinking too hard, but you just get more practice at saying things in your voice. Right, like if you write an op-ed every three years, yeah, good luck figuring out what your special style is. But if you go, well, every time, i find the podcast helpful for this reason, like the first five minutes of my show, or like the Andy show, where I write something, i think about something, i edit stuff together.
Andy Luttrell:You were part of of that Yep production and that's sort of like, okay, pretty low stakes, five minutes of something every couple weeks And I, it has to happen. That's just like the schedule that I put and I can sort of suss out like, oh, this is, this, is the sort of the way that I tell this story, or I don't know. Maybe I'll try this this week. I'm gonna do something, bonkers, i'm gonna try it out in a different way. I wonder if you find that that kind of schedule affords you the opportunity To play with your voice and sort of settle on like, oh, this is, this is the way I do this.
Adam Mastroianni:Yeah, some for sure, and I can see the difference now between The way I write and like the way I wrote it a year ago, that I think it's not totally different. But I can see that like oh, there's things that I was interested in that that I wouldn't be interested in now, and I feel like a little more Confident. Like oh, there's these wells that I go to, which is also good, in like draining those wells, but also like this means I want to drill new wells. I don't want to be going back to the same thing every time. I don't really know how to characterize this problem, but but I think like repetition seems to be really good for some people and it doesn't make any difference for others And I don't know what is the difference. Like when I was in the UK and doing a lot of stand-up, i would like gig with the same people a lot and, and some people I would see like They get better every time I saw them and some people be exactly the same every time I saw them and like they're both Doing just as much. Like what was it? and for some of them I was like well, it was a lack of paying attention to what was working and what wasn't, so like it didn't matter that they didn't again. They never learned anything.
Adam Mastroianni:Each time for writing It's kind of weird because like, yeah, you can get like likes and comments on your post, but really a lot of that has to be internal. They're just like you have to recognize when you see it, but that was the better thing and then try to do more of that next time, because, like I don't know when you're not getting a laugh immediately, just like that feedback gets, and and when, even when someone drops a like on your post, it's like well, what did they like? did they only like the last paragraph? They don't look at first paragraph, and so I think if you don't have some taste in the first place Which who knows where that comes from then just doing it over and over again Isn't gonna get you anywhere, because you don't know what to do more of.
Andy Luttrell:Well, yeah. So now I don't know what you do. You can focus, you give people those dials as they read an article, and they can just tell you like that was a funny part for me, and you go. I'll say that again next week then. Thank you.
Adam Mastroianni:I'll just reorder the word so it feels novel. Just pump up the same thing every week.
Andy Luttrell:Do you see your sub-stack as like? what is it? Is it science reporting? Is it essay? Is it story? What is it? How do you think about what it is that you're asking people to read?
Adam Mastroianni:I don't know, because my PhD advisor I got my PhD a couple of years ago and he asked me the same question He was like so you're a writer And I'm like, well, i'm just as much a writer now as I was when we were working together. Like writing, i was writing then too, and I still do studies and I still write about them. So yeah, i don't know what bucket to put this in, but, like, some of my work is purely scientific. That, like, i still collect original data and I write about it. Some of it feels scientific but a step removed. That, like, what I'm doing is not even a step removed but a different way. That, like, i'm not collecting original data but I'm developing an idea just as I would anywhere else. It just happens to be on this platform.
Adam Mastroianni:So, yeah, it doesn't feel like reporting and it doesn't feel totally like writing. It feels like trying to apply the correct kind of effort to an idea to make it useful and legible, and sometimes that requires original data and sometimes that requires, like, finding the right metaphor And sometimes it requires synthesizing data that already exists. But I don't see those things as like distinct. I see it as just like you wouldn't be like a contractor, when they hammer a nail is doing something different than when they like glue things together. It's like, well, it's, they're all, they're building a house. And it turns out that, like you don't only need hammers and nails to build a house, like you need other things. I have no idea what else I assume.
Andy Luttrell:I've never built a house. I think it's just hammers and nails, all right.
Adam Mastroianni:Well wrong metaphor that I got to work on it.
Andy Luttrell:So I also wanted to talk to you about the Atlantic article, which is on, kind of inspires the same question of like what is what was that? I really enjoyed it, as I told you, but as I think about it, it was a bunch of things right. Like you talked about research and psychology, about conversation, you told a story that I could imagine reading in like a humorous memoir, you commented on the nature of psychological science All of those at the same time. So I'm curious on a concrete level, like how did that begin? Like where did that opportunity come from? Where did the idea strike you? And then, how did you settle on? like what is this going to be? Like what do I want to say and how do I want to say it?
Adam Mastroianni:Yeah, so practically like. The genesis for that idea was that I had had those bad experiences, like signing up to do an escape room with strangers in Atlanta in 2018. After reading this research about like oh, it's so good to talk to strangers, i had a terrible time. I ruined their days And that had been a story that I would tell people afterward.
Adam Mastroianni:It never had the same meaning that I gave it in the piece, which is like, well, what do you do with that? And that I guess came from like writing out that story and trying to make sense of like feel like there's something here Like this mean, this was an opportunity to think about something. And I guess it was an opportunity to think about like how should we try to apply the things that we study and the things that we read about? And it turns out you can't just take like some study and be like I'll just do that Because, like, what is it to do that? Like you have to make all these leaks as to like what was it that they did? And like what's the version that I can do? That's like where the genesis came from.
Adam Mastroianni:The the practically like why I ended up there was from writing on the internet. I sometimes have people just like email me or like message me on Twitter or whatever, and be like, hey, would you want to write a piece for whatever? And so an editor from the Atlantic reached out and was like, would you like to write something for us? And I just kind of pitched him some ideas and he was like, oh, that idea sounds kind of interesting. I just wrote up a draft and send it to him And like, yeah, so like what is that?
Adam Mastroianni:Is it science? Is it journalism? Like I don't know, maybe those, those things are not useful ways of thinking about. Like maybe those divisions much like the divisions between departments at a university, like it's not like God created the world with biology and with physics, like those are just turned out to be useful ways of dividing the world, and we know that they're also sometimes kind of productive ways of like. Sometimes the the division between one department and another actually obscures something in nature that isn't divided, and that's what it feels like to me, that like those things weren't divided. The way I'm trying to understand this involves both personal experience, but also reading some research and also doing some of my own, and so to try to bucket it would be like to break it apart, i guess Yeah.
Andy Luttrell:So it sort of, i think, pushes us into not that we haven't been philosophical up until this point, but you sort of, when we were exchanging emails about this, you sort of, in this very impressive way, just like, oh, by the way, like here's a three point structure of how I think about this issue, and I was like, well, beautiful, let's, let's just do that. Cause you sort of said, like science, communication can be several things, and that raises questions about, like, whose responsibility is it to do these things? What are the implications of carving communication up in those ways? So I think I'm just going to throw it to you Oh, yeah, oh man.
Andy Luttrell:What were those?
Adam Mastroianni:three things. Now I got to find that email because I kind of remember that a moment of clarity, i think. Actually I do remember So. So I felt like there there's what we right now call science communication. I think there are three kinds of things that people are doing when they are doing that.
Adam Mastroianni:And one is like they're doing like journalism on science, which is the scientist wrote a paper and now I'm going to write a story about the paper, and that, i think, is really weird because, like, the paper was already supposed to be the explanation of the ideas, and so, and I understand, like, why this happens, because, like, the papers are so obtuse that obviously, you know, the everyday readers of the New York times are not going to load up science or nature and start reading. But shouldn't they be able to like what was so important, like why did this idea have to be expressed in this way? That's so hard for most people to understand? I think a lot of people would answer that question like well, it's so complicated, you like can't use regular words to do it, and so that's why we need, like the gods are off doing their own thing, and then we need this priestly class of scientific reporters who, like, can interpret the actions of the gods for us. I just don't buy it. Like, i think if you can't explain to a reasonably informed and curious person what you did as a scientist, you probably don't understand what you're doing. And again, a lot of it is like based on you might have to like elide over some things, right, but like, when I'm explaining what I'm doing, at some point inevitably I run like a linear mixed effects model And like, in order to really understand it, you have to understand what that is, but you don't actually have to understand it to get the gist of what I'm doing. Like it's not really critical. If you're a practitioner and you wanna take what I did, like you need to know that. But I can just say, like these things were different. They like we can be pretty sure from the statistics that like these things did not differ by chance. Like I think that's really enough for 99.9% of people. And I mean, look, i can only speak for psychology, which deals with, like humans, so is maybe more accessible. But even so, i just think that, like we should be able to express these things in a way that doesn't require a completely different profession of people to try to translate what we did so that humans could understand it. So I think that's one thing, that that like science communication is doing.
Adam Mastroianni:The other is like covering events in science as a journalist. So rather than like a paper coming out, it's like here's some things that like like actual happenings. So the example I gave was the New York Times had this great article on Amy Cuddy, who is a target of the replication crisis, and it wasn't primarily about like one paper said this and another paper said that It was about the humans involved in it, just like if they had all been producing music or art or doing politics or whatever that like. I gained a lot from reading that because I got to hear the characters involved say things that I didn't know that they had already or like believed or said. Because like it wasn't just the stuff that they had written in papers. So like a journalist went to them and interviewed them and then is now reporting back about the things that they learned. That seems really useful.
Adam Mastroianni:Like I think that kind of science communication is great. And like it's not exactly about like scientists discovered this, but it helps us understand, like, what these scientists are doing. And then what was the third thing. I don't even know. Did he even list a third thing?
Andy Luttrell:You listed three. Those are the two I remember. Oh yeah.
Adam Mastroianni:The third one is just like. It's just science, Like science, communication is just like. We learned some things and here they are.
Andy Luttrell:It's what we're supposed to be doing. You're saying, right, yes, exactly, it's not a paper, it's supposed to be, technically, counts of science, communication. But who are we communicating to?
Adam Mastroianni:Right, yeah, which is weird, that like we call that science. But if you were to, you know, when you write a paper in a journal, that's science. When you summarize that paper in an op-ed, that science. Communication, which I think is just one of these like moat widening techniques that we use in academia to be like we do something different and special And like that's why we deserve many, many millions of dollars in taxpayer money every year, because, like you can't do what we do And it's only when we cross the moat and speak to you mortals in your own language that we're doing science communication.
Adam Mastroianni:We're not doing what we really do inside the tower.
Andy Luttrell:This is the version for the simpletons, but we have trust us, We have locked in our vaults the recipes.
Adam Mastroianni:Yes, yeah, yeah, which I think it's unfortunate, because part of what that does is imply that you only get to do science when you're inside the tower. Whatever you do outside is like that citizen science or that science communication, like these are qualified versions of it, when, like, you can do exactly the same thing. I mean it might be practically more difficult because, like you don't have the Petri dishes, or it might be legally more difficult because you don't have the authorization to do it, but like you can. If you can do the pea plants in your backyard and do genetics, like I don't know, maybe you'd be able to answer a useful question or not, but like that's doing science And so, and then if you wrote about it in regular language, like that would also be science, like we don't have to append communication to it and downgrade what you did.
Andy Luttrell:So what's the utopia that you have in mind? I feel like you have this Eden. You're envisioning this perfect world where we get to do all the things, and what does that look like?
Adam Mastroianni:Yeah, i don't know, like I don't know if such a thing exists. I'm more I see myself as like trying to work toward an ecosystem, basically that I feel such little conviction about what the right thing is for everyone to do that I just think you, there's just no way that we can know that like it's definitely the best to do science in this one way and communicate it in this one way and to be kind of like this one person. That seems like a no hypothesis is very easy to falsify, and instead I think like there should be many people doing many things in many different ways, communicating them in different ways, asking questions in different ways, and I wanna be one of those people. And it's really hard to be a different kind of person in academia because, like you kind of have to optimize for putting articles and journals and those like don't value the diversity of asking questions. Like you know, they want you to abbreviate years to why, and if they want that, like imagine what they want on the more substantive issues And so, yeah, so if there is a utopia, i think it is one in which, like people are doing really weird and different things in such a way that some of the people are like I think those people over there are totally wasting their time and they're doing something stupid.
Adam Mastroianni:And those people think the exact same thing about the first people and not in like the stupid academic way that's like, oh, we're both competing for status and I wanna outcompete them. But just like I think what they're doing is so weird that it makes no sense to me, because otherwise, how do we make progress? Cause most of the things that we discover like don't make a lot of sense at the beginning. Like if they do make sense, they can't be that revolutionary, like they're not gonna move us that far forward, because, like it all fits into the paradigm that we have right now. If what we want is a better paradigm, like you kind of need a weird person, you need someone to do something different. And if you're optimizing for sameness, like you're not gonna produce that person, like you're gonna push that person out into industry or whatever, and they're never gonna do science again, in part because once they, you know, leave their academic job, it's gonna be like, well, they can't do science because it's not what's done.
Andy Luttrell:Mm-hmm, i was thinking of maybe another to add a fourth version of science communication to the list which is more of like an analysis kind of communication where you go I'm gonna waddle out from my tower and say, you see all this stuff going on out here. This is what people like me see when we see this stuff Like this is happening in the news And it turns out that a bunch of us have been asking this question for a long time And here's what we've been saying And here's how this way of thinking about the question might help you think about the question I talked for this series last year. I talked to John Sides who was one of the editors or publishers of The Monkey Cage and which was at the Washington Post forever, and that was his kind of description of what they were doing. It's like we are political scientists, social scientists who are trying to help people make sense of the world that's happening right And say like if you were putting on the glasses of a social scientist and looking at the news, this is what it would look like And maybe this is gonna help you sort of see where this is headed, which seems sort of distinct from the other things of like it's just here's a study and here's what it found, here's what's going on with these kooky scientists, and like here's original research being communicated kindly, but a more integrated version.
Andy Luttrell:And I feel like people who write books do a version of this, where it's like I'm sort of, yeah, summarizing a point, a bigger points, and so just I don't know what that changes about it, but I'm curious what you take in on that style.
Adam Mastroianni:That's interesting. I mean I think, like the traditional, like science communication take on, that would be like this is all one way, Like I emerge from the tower and I apply what I know to things out in the world, which I agree, like that sounds to me like science communication. But I think if you're gonna do that, well, the things in the world should also constrain what you found in the tower. And if the things that you're observing like seem like they work differently or like the theories that we have don't seem to be up to snuff, to like explain these things Well, like now it seems like you're back to doing science, that we did all these studies in the lab, We had all these people fill out these surveys and like what we found there doesn't make a ton of sense or like partially explains this, but there's something unexplained. And I think if you're doing something more reciprocal, you're doing science again And I think the better version of that is reciprocal.
Adam Mastroianni:But like I think there are so few things that we understand well enough that it can go just one way. I mean, like if you're talking about like people hitting billiard balls around it, you know, like a pool table, it's like well, we do know how this works And I don't think anyone's gonna go back and be like the eight ball that bounced in a certain way that, like the mechanics didn't predict. But certainly for social science, when you go out and you're like man, like why is like, how does Trump work? I mean to say that, like we get that from all the studies that we've done, there's plenty of things that we can say, But I also think they constrain a lot of it and point out like where we don't understand these things.
Andy Luttrell:Yeah, i had an idea for a book once that I don't think I'm gonna do so I'll just talk about it now which is like I was reading Megan Phelps Roper's memoir about leaving the Westboro Baptist Church and sort of rethinking like all of these lessons about the world that she had been taught growing up And I was like, yeah, like persuasion, psychology doesn't understand this. Like this is attitude change, this is belief change, but in an area that, like, we can't really touch. And I thought it would be interesting to write a book of like here's, like as far as we can go with our science and hear our stories of people who, their stories, we just can't. They don't fit these models probably, and I thought that there's reason why I sort of walked that back a little bit and might not pursue it. But it sort of sounds like an example of what you're talking about.
Andy Luttrell:If we're gonna do this, we should have the courage of being like, hey, we didn't see this coming And like, as far as we were concerned, this shouldn't have happened. You maybe see that, with the way they reported on, like you know, economic crises, being like, oh, all of our models, they just but is it economists who are writing those stories? Or is it reporters who were, like we kept talking to economists and none of them saw this coming? Like, how much responsibility do we bear as scientists ourselves to say, hey, part of our job is to tell the public like we biffed this one?
Adam Mastroianni:Yeah, and I don't see that as only benefiting the public. This seems like the like collection and curation of mysteries, which is exactly what we should be trying to do to figure, like what are the naturally occurring phenomena that we can't explain, and then can we explain them Like I don't even know how you would do it any other way. I mean, i do know. I think it's a worse way that, like you look at the literature and like what haven't we done yet? And like I guess we do that, but I'd much rather go out in the world and be like nothing that we have could have predicted this or really helps me explain it. I'd like to create the thing that does that. And then you give me the person like I studied people who leave cults and churches or whatever And I figure, like how does that work? Like what is it that makes one person do it and not another? It seems like our question to answer, but I'd love to know that answer.
Andy Luttrell:So I just had two nuts and bolts questions for writing, as we kind of are on our descent. One is just where do the premises come from? And on that train, like, how many don't survive? Like what is the proportion of like ideas that occur to you You maybe get a little bit of the way there And the number that actually become something.
Adam Mastroianni:It feels to me like a series of demonic possessions that, like each post, possesses me in some way. It is the thing to which my thoughts return and cannot turn away from until I summon the incantation to dispel it. Which is like a post that expresses the idea appropriately And like where they come from the first place, like the image that came into my mind was like walking like on a narrow, rocky path through, like with like a hellish chasm on either side. These demons are like clamoring on either side to like climb into my soul And like one of them makes it in and that one becomes the thing that, like I need to deal with next. A lot of this is driven by like well, the clock is ticking down, there's two weeks until I need to do something And like so I'll like kind of flirt with a bunch of them until one of them is like that's really the thing that I can't get out of my head. So we like how many don't don't make it a lot. So right now I think there's something like 200 notes in my evernote app that that are things like ideas I've started. You know, sometimes just a title or an idea, but sometimes like paragraphs that haven't yet seen the light of day and like probably won't. And I think that's an important part.
Adam Mastroianni:Like this is what I feel like I got out of doing a PhD is I sat in a room with my advisor for years and pitched him ideas And we talked about them and virtually none of those ideas ever turned into papers. And it was learning, like what's the difference between an idea that's worth spending time on and what's an idea that goes in the document on my computer called the idea graveyard? And like the difference between them, like I can express it a little bit, but it really feels like intuitive. Like it is like when you're cooking and you just know like it's cooked long enough and like part of it is taste, but like can you even describe what it should taste like? You just kind of know from, from doing it enough times.
Adam Mastroianni:But like, like we were saying before, like but you also know what it's supposed to taste like like you don't you only learn it from, from repetition. And that was why, like doing that PhD was so important, because I was like cooking in the kitchen with like a master chef who I could like you know he would take a spoonful of my broth and go like No, i had like, or needs more salt, or like you know, you sauteed the onions too long, or just no, and then I go. Yeah, i also kind of agree, this one wasn't as good. And now move on to the next one.
Andy Luttrell:Like some weird machine learning thing where someone just goes this wasn't a good one, you come. All right, i guess I'll try to figure out next time.
Sam Jones:which one is a good one, and you're also saying people should subscribe to the sub stacks.
Andy Luttrell:you can have more possession, you can be more fully.
Adam Mastroianni:Yeah, very good, if you love Satan, subscribe to Experimental History.
Andy Luttrell:That's the tagline. The other nuts and bolts question I had was whether you deliberately punch up your writing. So one of the things that I think defines your style is that it is fun and funny, and it's a style that I think people get the impression just occurs and just flows out of a funny person. And certainly like when I was in like high school or college, i'm like I'm going to write like a funny essay, i'd write it all out and I'd go, yes, that was funny. I'm done now And you know, as I sort of got a little more mature in that area and realize like, oh no, like that's an idea, but you actually have to be quite deliberate about those choices. So, just like writing is rewriting, i'm curious about the style that you have Like how much of that is coming out in the just outpouring of a demon possession versus the more controlled Adam later. That goes Okay, but like what? what actually are the words that need to be here?
Adam Mastroianni:It's funny.
Adam Mastroianni:I think it goes in the opposite direction that, like the, the controlled version writes, like, writes things that are less funny, and the less controlled version writes things that are funnier And that I normally like. When I get stuck, it's like I'm being too serious, like what I have to expend effort on doing is unsquizing rather than squeezing, and I often find that like, ah, this paragraph is a little bit boring because I'm like, yeah, i haven't let myself have any fun. Like I was too concerned with, like Is this point correct? or like will people criticize it? And what if I just cared less? How would I say it? And then I say it that way And I don't know if, like, i actually could skip to that second part that like maybe it's actually important to do the more serious thinking, otherwise it would all just just be like jokes and like dumb ideas that don't add up. But it doesn't so much feel like coming back and making the jokes funnier later. It feels like coming back and allowing the jokes to come out if they didn't the first time.
Andy Luttrell:Nice And just by way of wrapping up, I realized we're a little over the time that I said we were going to go till.
Adam Mastroianni:We're good.
Andy Luttrell:But if anyone were to come to you and plead for advice someone who goes I you know I like what you do. I'm interested in kind of breaking out of the molds that I'm getting from my science training right. Part of the point of the series is to serve as a resource for people who go like No one teaches me how to do this, but like I have a drive to do it. What might you say to someone who comes to you?
Adam Mastroianni:with that. So I wrote up some of these ideas in a piece called Brain Training Begins in the Hips, which is specifically about writing. But for more specifically, for science, i guess I would say, like we know that certain things are beautiful because humans will do them, even when they're not incentivized to that. Like people will sit alone in their homes and write a song, they'll like play guitar and they'll do it for hours, and I just think that like that isn't. That is evidence of like that thing is beautiful and good. Nobody writes a scientific paper just because they want like, they're just like Oh, it's so beautiful I can't help but do it. Like the way that we write has to be heavily incentivized. So the fact that people aren't doing this of their own accord, like they only do it with the hopes of like gaining tenure or fame or status or whatever, means that this is not the most beautiful way of doing it. There is some, but we know that people are actually very curious. Like people will do things like read every fact they can find about dinosaurs. They like will run little experiments in their house, where I remember my friend telling me like I used to run experiments where I've just put different things in a bottle of sunny D and put it under my bed Like, yeah, we're not going to learn anything doing that, but like that was an urge to discover something about the world, and I think there's something beautiful in that.
Adam Mastroianni:So if you feel stuck, i think, in the way that you're doing science, ask yourself what is the thing that you would do just because you wanted to. Like if someone told you today, like after this you'll never be able to be a scientist ever again, like we're going to send you to science jail where you may never discover a truth about the universe, like what would you do in the time you had left? I would bet it's almost certainly not the thing that you're doing right now. If it is like, congratulations. But if not, i don't know.
Adam Mastroianni:we're spending some time thinking about what that thing is And then I think you should just do it, because I don't know science jail isn't real And like, yeah, i don't know It might cost you a career in the traditional sense, but like the price you're going to pay for that was doing the things that you didn't think were most important. So I don't know why not do the things that you think are right and accept the consequences, both good and bad, and I think the consequences are mainly good And that's why people spend all that time like playing the instrument in their basement. It just feels good And I think that is actually the reward. You also have to figure out how to pay yourself, but uh, I don't know, But uh, figure it out.
Andy Luttrell:Well, that's super great. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk about all this stuff. This has been super fun.
Adam Mastroianni:Of course, thanks for having me.
Andy Luttrell:Thank you to Adam Mastriani for chatting about sub-stack and the philosophy of science communication. You can find his research work at adammastranicom and you should really sign up for his sub-stack experimental history. You can find links to all of this and the Atlantic article in the show notes for this episode.
Andy Luttrell:This series on science communication is a special presentation of my podcast, opinion Science, a show about the science of our opinions, where they come from and how they change. You can subscribe any old place where they have podcasts, your apples, your Spotify, your Stitchers and be sure to check out OpinionSciencePodcastcom for all the episodes and other stuff. And if you're up for helping the show in some way, there's a link on the website to contribute financially to this project. You can throw a couple bucks into the hat as a simple donation, because between recording, hosting, licensing, transcribing, it's not free to keep the lights on around here. But if you find this series valuable or the podcast in general, you can be part of its production, even in a small way, and I'll be super grateful.
Andy Luttrell:And again, whoever you are, i hope you're enjoying the show and I'm hoping this summer series will reach folks with a keen interest in science communication. So please tell people about it. Post online email a friend, i don't know. Tell your neighbor anyone who would be interested in boosting their own communication skills, especially scientists who would like to reach beyond academia. Okay, thank you so much for listening. Happy Independence Day for those of you in the United States with me, go watch a parade, fire up a grill, look at some fireworks and I'll see you back here next week for another look at the work of science communication.
Sam Jones:It makes so much sense now that I'm in science journalism and that I cover so many different topics, because I have always loved so many different topics in science. And it is really hard if you ask me, like, what is your favorite stuff? I mean I guess I could say things that are related to human health, but like, also, i love a lot of things that have nothing to do with humans, right, like I think I love that I am able to cover such a range and part of why, like Tiny Matters, the podcast I exec produce it's called Tiny Matters because it's about tiny things in our world that matter, that have a big impact, and so that can be like pretty much anything, and that is because I like talking about everything related to science. Hi, i'm Sam Jones. I am a science journalist and audio producer based in Washington DC.