Alie Ward is a lot of things--an actor, illustrator, TV host. But I was especially interested in talking to her about her undeniably popular science podcast, Ologies. Her show shares interviews with all sorts of scientists. It's so delightful and engaging, and Alie puts in the work to fill the listener in behind the scenes on things you wouldn't know if you just listened to the interview. Think you're not interested in indigenous bees? Well, just listen to her interview with a Native Melittologist and think again.
We talk about Alie's backstory, how she approaches Ologies, and what we're trying to do when we share science with a big, public audience.
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.
Alie Ward is a lot of things--an actor, illustrator, TV host. But I was especially interested in talking to her about her undeniably popular science podcast, Ologies. Her show shares interviews with all sorts of scientists. It's so delightful and engaging, and Alie puts in the work to fill the listener in behind the scenes on things you wouldn't know if you just listened to the interview. Think you're not interested in indigenous bees? Well, just listen to her interview with a Native Melittologist and think again.
We talk about Alie's backstory, how she approaches Ologies, and what we're trying to do when we share science with a big, public audience.
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.
Hi, welcome back. This is HotSci-Com Summer, a special podcast series about science, communication. And listen, we're deep in the throes of summer now. My garden is about to burst. I picked like 12 cucumbers yesterday and it feels like I could turn this into a metaphor about how this podcast just keeps delivering a hearty bounty. But I can't seem to do it without it sounding very dumb. So you can use your own brain to connect the dots and make it make sense. But it's time for a riddle. What does subnology, nephrology and biomineralogy all have in common? That's the study of sleep, kidneys and shells. Don't think too hard. The connection is just that they're all ologies. Not only that, but they're ologies featured on the podcast ologies.
Speaker 1:If you like science and podcasts, you've heard of ologies. A few weeks ago it took the very top spot in the science category on Apple Podcasts and it's always at least in the top couple, and it was also recently in the top 10 of all podcasts on the platform, up there with like the Daily and that True Crime one. Anyhow, listen to ologies for 30 seconds and you'll go oh yeah, I see why people love this. These features interviews with scientists, Ologists, but that description doesn't do it justice. It's like the most accessible, least pretentious and dog-gone-it-most-fun glimpse into the giddy minds of experts, and it works because it's made and hosted by my guest today, allie Ward.
Speaker 1:She not only hosts ologies, but she's also a daytime Emmy Award-winning science correspondent for CBS's the Henry Ford's Innovation Nation with Mo Raca, and host of Did I Mention Invention on the CW. She's acted in TV shows, hosted food programs, was an illustrator for LA Weekly. I'm not gonna list all her credits, but what a wild ride. So I wanted to learn more about Allie's story, how she approaches ologies and also just what are we ultimately getting at by bringing science to a big public audience. It was a really fun conversation and I think you'll get a lot out of it too. So let's jump in. One thing just in terms of thinking about how you have gotten into this mess of talking about science to people, in kind of looking at your backgrounds, I have to say it looked very familiar to me because I feel like I felt similarly and so, as far as I can tell, early on in life we're looking at microscopes, is that?
Speaker 1:right yeah, microscopes pond water or something.
Speaker 1:Studying biology, being an actor hosting food programs, painting wood that you find around the world, an illustrator for a professional outlet, winning a daytime Emmy and having a number one science podcast, like that's so many different things, and I feel similarly in that, like I was making. Remember. So my first year of college I went to art school and there was this assignment that was draw a self-portrait, and I can tell in hindsight that I was really struggling with this because it was like me split down the middle, like a right brain, left brain sort of a thing, Because I was in art school and really struggling to be like is this all I want to do?
Speaker 1:Like I kind of miss this. You know technical, science-y stuff.
Speaker 3:And even now.
Speaker 1:I'm still kind of bounding back and forth between that yeah. And so I'm curious for you, like what is that duality? Does it feel like a duality? Does it feel like all of these things are actually the same thing, like, how do you navigate these to what people think of as different kinds of people?
Speaker 2:Yeah, what a great question, and I sympathize so much when you have artistic inclinations but also you like crave, knowing what's real and what knowledge is in this, like exploration of facts and understanding more about the world as you age. All that stuff is like so real and I really swung back and forth between being like I just want to create stuff, I want to be a little goblin who, you know, makes sketches and movies and makes paintings out of, you know, wood that I get out of a dumpster or whatever, to then feeling like it wasn't going deep enough into like the human experience of why am I feeling this way? Why do brains work this way? You know, why is that moss growing that way? And sometimes art felt so like human centric and I think that science was almost an escape from just this human experience, because when you start to care about science, you start to realize that we're just one species, obviously, of like millions and billions and billions, and you know billions that have existed and 99.9% of them are now extinct, like we will one day be. And so science started to.
Speaker 2:I always felt like by neglecting science, I was really not understanding my place in the world and what humanity's place in the world was so, yeah, going back and forth between, like this bigger picture and, and so I really thought I had to choose down the line. And so I remember wanting to be like a performer and a writer as a kid and then sitting at a lake and seeing like bats swoop around the surface and turtles like sliding off of logs and stuff and being like no ecology, conservation, science, that is worth that and I'm renouncing performance. That is vapid and silly. And then you know, going three years into my undergrad and studying Ochem and biology and botany and animal bio and all this stuff and being like, yeah, but I, this is so factual and where's like the magic and the sparkle that I wanted.
Speaker 2:So I kept going back and forth and it took me a while before I was like, oh, psychom, like I didn't realize that was a place to like apply creativity and writing to the bigger picture of the world. And it wasn't until I was volunteering in a museum in 2013 that I really realized like this could be like a thing. And I was volunteering purely because I was just really depressed. My dad had been diagnosed with cancer and I broke up with a boyfriend I was seeing and it really broke my heart and I was doing this travel food show but it didn't really feel like me. It felt like I don't really care about donuts as much as I have to pretend to. I have terrible blood sugar, and like hypoglycemia and like reactive pro post-prandial hyper insulinemia. Like doctors are like why are you eating?
Speaker 3:donuts for money and I'm like I because everyone says this is a dream job and I got lucky.
Speaker 2:So I started volunteering at this museum at like the absolute low of some depression and ended up. That really made me realize that that it was part of who I was was curiosity and science and stuff, and then from there I had made a friend back when I was working in film after college, because I graduated with a degree in film, with like a minor in biology or whatever, and someone that I had met on a film set when I was a caterer, like 20 years before, was an editor for a production company that was making a kid science show, and so they he saw my Instagram from the museum and they brought me in, and then I ended up getting a job doing science TV, and that really inspired me to make oligies a thing. I had wanted to make something with this list of oligies for years, but I didn't realize, though, that you could combine them and and I started to get and I started to get kind of annoyed, living in LA, that like we know so much about who's dating who and who's wearing what and we treat people in the arts like celebrities, but we don't care as much about people in the sciences, and I'm like they're doing such cool shit too. Who are these people? Who are they dating? What's their life like? Why are they doing what they're doing?
Speaker 2:And so my aim with oligies was just to kind of like make oligists like rock stars, like how we care about musicians, you know, because it's a lot of times it's much harder to run your own lab than it can be to learn to play the bass. So why don't we find the intrigue in everyone you know, but I don't know was it? Has that been a similar path for you? Have you felt like do you go like one way and then the other and then go? Can I combine these? Is there a Venn diagram?
Speaker 1:Yeah, if I go too long thinking only about one side of the equation it feels wrong. Right, like you know I need it does feel like there needs to be something going on on both sides for it to all feel like it's coming along. So to do science and art at the same time, or communication, like in grad school I did stand up comedy pretty much through grad school.
Speaker 1:And that was like this perfect way of being like, okay, I'll give a talk about my study in the morning and then I'll do something completely different but not actually that different in the middle of the night, and that was sort of sustaining.
Speaker 1:But then, when it was like, oh well, you could do both at the same time, like you could use that that's whatever it is that you want to do to connect with people and perform and do things creatively, but also do it just in the context of the things that people are paying you to do. Anyway, like I'm already, I'm already reading this stuff. I might as well reflect on it and invite these people on and share what they're doing with others, and so, yeah, so I think that makes sense to me that there's sort of like, yeah, there's this fusion that helps keep those things in balance. So I'm curious, though like in the museum, you said you were the stuff on Instagram for the museum. Was that you were producing stuff for the museum, or you just took it upon yourself to be like, hey, look at what's going on here. Like it strikes me that this was a point where you went oh, like I can be me and talk about this stuff and do it in like a medium that is unique.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like was that was that kind of how that came about.
Speaker 2:It was definitely the latter, where I was just posting stuff. Like my job as a volunteer was mostly just showing people where the bathrooms are. Like you go through rigorous docent training and you're trained by highly professional museum scholars and experts. Most of the time people just have to pee and and that's. But it's really cute and funny because during orientation they're like here's Maslow's hierarchy of needs and what most people need are physical needs first, so people don't care about the coyote pelt if they have to take a shit.
Speaker 2:So understand that if someone comes to you asking for the bathroom, you just got to make sure that their needs are taken care of. And I was like, okay, that's an interesting way to look at it and good to know. But as docents, really you're just there in case someone has questions and hopefully to inspire some wandering curiosity. And so we learned as docents that instead of yammering in front of a mural of a dinosaur, it's better to ask people what do you see here? Why do you think they have this? What do you think that tail's for? And then it's got to sit back and let them wonder. And so that's a good idea. Do you think it could have helped them? Do this or this and try to ask kind of open-ended questions. That wasn't an open-ended question, horrible example. But why do you think they had such tiny teeth, whatever? And so I think in psychom that taught me in psychom to help people come to conclusions instead of to blast them in the face with it.
Speaker 2:When it comes to topics like systemic injustice or climate change or things that are tough for people to face because it might seem dismal or it might seem too big for them to grapple with, having them understand things and coming to some of their own conclusions based on some of the questions that you ask or the facts that you present, I think can be helpful to get people more invested in the information. But all of this is to say, but also it's got to be fun. I feel like psychom when you can approach it like gossip. You've got to leg up, and then you're just like you'll never guess what this thing's doing. Or if you're excited about it, that's half the battle. If you're excited about something, people are going to listen. If you went to a restaurant and you're like that's pretty good, but I feel like, oh, I had this Baba Ganoush and you're like I'm all in, tell me about the Baba Ganoush, and so I think if you're excited it helps, like your own curiosity definitely is like a massive, massive tool in the psychom tool belt.
Speaker 1:It's funny. But my first thought was I was going to say, for as wonderful as Carl Sagan is, I would not sort of peg him as this like the most fun guy at the party. But in hindsight it's kind of like, but he had his own unique way. It was still infectious, it was still like oh, but you love this, don't you Love it.
Speaker 2:You think this is the best.
Speaker 1:And that's the part that's like that's your way of showing that you love this, and everyone's got their own way of showing that they love this.
Speaker 2:Right To come at the universe through the door of an apple pie or to be like here's how tiny we are. Everything you've ever loved is on that, and I think that even Carl knew you got to hit him in the feels Like you got to go for something that's like your grandma's cooling apple pie. It took stars exploding to make it. You're like whoa, you just took something that is emotional and relevant to me and tied it to this big thing that I thought I was not capable of really caring about or comprehending because it was too big.
Speaker 2:And I think that's the thing that I think with psychom is people don't realize that they're interested in science because science is such a school topic. But it's like if you care about pie and boning and why you get nervous texting someone, and you care about why you're so tired after a jet lag or whatever, you care about science. There's science in everything. There's science in everything you do, and so if you can make something relevant to someone, then it's such a door, it's such a door opening. I'm curious how I'm curious what you learned in standup has helped you in psychom and in giving your presentations. And do you ever coach friends who have to go do a keynote of conference to be like listen, you need a better opener.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I really should put keynote consultants on my website. Yeah, I guess I've never written out the manifesto of things that I learned doing one thing, applying it to the other. But one thing that does kind of strike me is getting people's attention so much of standup, especially when you're just fighting it out, is like you don't have to listen to me, and the same thing with science. You don't maybe even know, want to listen to me, but I have something that I think you'll really like, and so how do we convey enthusiasm, even just vocally? Right, like I can't push you. I'm not like an advertiser. Right, like I'm not sort of guiding you toward this. I'm like, once you're here, once you got to me, I want to make sure that you're like in it and ready to listen to it.
Speaker 1:And so I think, probably in some kind of fuzzy way. Standup was a road to figuring that out.
Speaker 2:I think that's great. I mean, I think more scientists should be forced, forced to take a standup course, because it is the scariest thing ever. What was it like the first time you did standup?
Speaker 1:Well, there are two first time. There's like a real first time and a fake first time. I was in college and there was some I did like sketch it in Providence stuff, and so I was like, yeah, I could just stand up and I somehow won some little contest based on a set. That was like, let's face it, it was not good, but the grand prize.
Speaker 1:It was better than a couple other people and the grand prize was opening for some big time comedian who came in. And that's when I realized, oh, that wasn't that good though those five minutes. Now that there are like hundreds of people, I'm like this is the wrong prize for a student who's done this once before. Oh gosh, and I was the school yearbook interviewed me afterward Like this is our student comedian and I was so kind of depressed that I think I told them like I don't know if I'll ever do this again.
Speaker 2:Oh, no, that's the best origin story ever. Who wins a contest their first time doing it?
Speaker 1:Well, I mean it was set up to be that. It was everyone's first time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but that's great, but that's a real mind fuck. Is there? What social science would you apply to that learning lesson? Like of expectation of confidence, of like a beginner's thing like?
Speaker 1:It maybe reminds me a little bit of like Dunning-Kruger-y stuff. One of the one of the little trivia points about that original paper is one of the studies I think was about Assessing whether jokes were funny, and if you look in the footnotes it's like some of the participants were stand-up comics that, like you would recognize. It was something like. I don't really remember that it's been a long time, but it was something like people are overly confident that they can tell when something is funny or not when they don't have sufficient expertise. Right, that sort of sweet spot where you go I know enough to be dangerous, but like I'm too confident and it's miscalibrated. My sense is something like that was happening where I was like, okay, like some, these people told me I won this contest and so I'll do my thing, and I think, yeah, I had miscalibrated confidence in that moment poor Dunning and Kruger, yeah, kruger right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Kruger, to to have an effect named after you is such an honor, but to also have it be like the scientific explanation for dumb assery, such a bittersweet Moment. But good on, good on them. Actually, how's Maslow doing? Are we still down with his hierarchy of needs, or is that kind of like the food pyramid where we're like? This is bullshit.
Speaker 1:I don't, I don't know, like I haven't really heard people talk about it in a while, like it's not, I don't really do much motivation work, so the people who study motivation could tell you better. Like, yeah, my guess is it's probably a little too course for the kinds of models that we have now, where it was like yeah, like the bread of needs is.
Speaker 1:Going to the bathroom, but the fats and salts of needs are self-actualization, maybe hitting on something true, but maybe not doing it in the most rigorous way. But I don't know. I mean, I just don't know enough about it to comment.
Speaker 2:This is, I feel like, in terms of allergies, episodes. People love social sciences. They gobble them up. I love doing them as episodes, and so I'm trying to Hold off on doing just a plain psychology episode for as long as I can, or a plain Sociology episode for as long as I can, because I like to milk them as a double word or where I have a something psychology or something Sociology.
Speaker 1:That way I can just do as many niche topics, but yeah, I even really know what a just general psychology like it that you know as an insider you go. That's 30 million things like I know exactly. So I get to.
Speaker 2:I get to take the Allogy from the psychology of it or the sociology of it, whatever, but then just it's, there's so many volitional psychology was an episode I did on procrastination and the TLDR from that was just like don't do it and I was like but we addressed it again later in the, in the ADHD episodes, which was good.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I mean part of like what drives me and I think what drives a lot of psych commerce is they just care, you know. And I think that when it comes to trying to figure out what your niches in psychom, you just can't go wrong with authenticity, and I think that that's kind of the same with humor and with relationships. You know, deferring to Authenticity is your best bet, you know, as long as it's done with kindness and you're not being an asshole, but like if you have a question that's authentic, like ask it. If you have an observation, say it. Or if you, if you messed up a little bit and it's kind of clear that you did, then call it out because it's a relief. It's like I feel like authenticity always breaks the tension, and so I Don't know, I think Authenticity also kind of is such a good compass for what you want to cover.
Speaker 2:I might be Really good at asking smart people, not smart questions. Other people might want to communicate to people that are their peers I like to communicate to a lay audience that and try to get as many people interested in something as possible. So I think, like really trying to figure out what gets you fired up because, as with any creative project Like it's super exciting, when it starts it starts to feel really shitty as you're learning. You go why did I pick this, why am I doing this? Sucks, and then maybe you get a couple of highs and you go, figured it out and then Sucks again. And so I think if you have an undercurrent of really liking what you do or having an intrinsic reason, as opposed to like number of followers or Prizes or whatever you know if you have an intrinsic reason or a real thirst for doing it, like it'll get you through those parts that are hard, because there's always gonna be hard parts and if I didn't care I would have given up the four and a half years ago.
Speaker 1:So that's a good point about, like what you cover. I'm also interested in how you cover it. So you know, in creativity, when you talk about authenticity, you talk about finding your voice. Having listened to allergies predominantly in the last couple of years, like you have like a very distinctive, like voice. Like I hear it, I go like, oh, there's, I don't hear anyone else doing it like this, and and it's singular and it's but. But like you know, you weren't doing that on day one. I imagine, like what was the road to being like this is the alley ward, who does this? Is it just oh, yeah, I just sat down and I can start talking? Or was there something of like a trial and error and I could, you like, even Paint a portrait of your voice on all the?
Speaker 2:cheese, yeah, oh, that's another great question, because that's really nice of you to say. I do not want to ignore the fact that you just paid me a huge compliment and thank you, and those are things that I I still struggle with is like is this, is this a voice that resonates with people? Does this have value? Am I just another person doing this? And and also, there's a lot of pain in authenticity, there's a lot of vulnerability and it's a lot easier to be a shell of yourself, because if people don't like the shell, you go yeah well, that's an even really me, so thank you. But if you are really yourself and people don't like it, it potentially could hurt more. But the upswing to having a really authentic voice is when people get it. It feels better Than anything else, like when you put your real, true self out and people go I like that. You go. Even Five people saying I like that feels better than 5,000 people being like I love this shell of yourself. You know, and that's really kind of like how I felt doing food TV is people being like I love this shell and I'd be like thank you. But then people starting to like ology is I was like oh, this really Feels like I'm at my. I'm doing the right thing, you know, and the road to that was hard and I always credit Matt Myra, who was on Nerdist, who did Nerdist for a long time and has his own shows I think he came up with this or he stole it from someone else, but he calls them West Coast and East Coast podcast, where he's like East Coast have like Sound beds, they got music cues, they've got transitions, they've got many producers working on one thing and it's polished and like every waveform is where it's supposed to be right. And then there's East Coast podcast where it's like a couple people, some mics and they're talking about farting and sandwiches or whatever, and then maybe they edit out like the most incriminating parts where they should talk someone, but other than that it's pretty much raw right. And so I was like, well, okay, most science podcasts are East Coast and I had been doing like a comedy podcast before that and I was like I want to do like a West Coast science podcast. So I had seen this list of ologies online 20 years before and I thought maybe I would make an illustrated book about it.
Speaker 2:I always was fascinated by all these ologies. Who does them? How did they get their names? What's the discipline like if someone is a nephologist who studies clouds, why? Why do they pick clouds instead of being a melatologist who studies bees? Right, like, why do they pick that?
Speaker 2:And I always had that idea and I thought I'm I should do it as a TV show is what I first thought, because I was working in TV and I got my degree in film, and so One night we had just won our first Emmy for Innovation Nation and I pitched it to the producer at the Emmys. Well, everyone was a little wine buzzed. I was like, if I'm ever gonna sell a show, it's gonna be now, on the, on the heels of this. And I was like, hey, dan, what about a show? That's a different ology. And he was like it's never gonna work as a show. And I was like so then I kind of got sad and I sat on it for a while and then came time.
Speaker 2:I was like, why don't I do it as a podcast? Why don't I do? Is the West Coast podcast Great? And so I Got the name. I got the handles on social media. I Told people hey, I'm gonna start recording a podcast. I started where I asked some friends who were scientists. I did Lila Higgins, who was the person who encouraged me to volunteer at the museum, who changed my whole life, interviewed her first, interviewed some other people and I was like it's not, something's not right yet with it, because there are things that a lay audience might not know and I don't want to leave them out of the conversation and I want to give context for why this fact is relevant and kind of spice it up a little bit. And so for nine months I had like six or seven interviews in the bank and I everyone's like, when you put out the podcast, I was like I don't know, I was killing me and.
Speaker 2:I was trying to edit it and I just couldn't wrap my brain around it. And then one day I get a DM from someone that's like, hey, just heads up. Brady Herron, who's another podcaster, was talking on his podcast about wanting to make a podcast about allergies. And I was like what? No, I've been. I announced this nine months ago. I have the handles, I have the art, I have banked and what am I gonna do? And so I Wrote Brady an email and I was like, hey, I heard about this. Just so you know, I've been working on the same idea, I just haven't put it out yet. And I put out a Trailer that night. I was like I got an RSS feed. I put out a trailer, just being like here's some clips from interviews. It's come soon, and I was like I got to make this work in the next two weeks, which?
Speaker 1:means you made the trailer at that point.
Speaker 2:I made the trailer like I kind of had had an idea for it but I like stayed up all night and just made a trailer so that it existed. So the allergies podcast existed and Brady was very gracious and he was like don't worry if, if anyone comes at you, don't worry about it. Like I know you've been working on it. So I was like cool, but I had two weeks to come up with it, and so I that's when I decided to make kind of this like hybrid East Coast, west Coast like a sides in it and some sound effects, but mostly an edited conversation. And my biggest question was like do I make no other Podcasts that were for science had like an E next to them, which means swearing and explicit content? I was like, do I make this for kids or do I make this in my voice? And that was the hardest decision is like how much of myself do I put into this?
Speaker 2:And I decided you know I'd worked in kids TV for science. I just was like I'm just gonna make this as me as possible and if it fails, it fails. And so I decided to keep the swears in and keep it conversational and be as authentic as I could in it and and it ended up Filling a niche. You know where I think a lot of science content is geared toward like you can listen with your kids and that's it's something academic. But I think it ended up working to my advantage that I decided to keep it more me and yeah. So I had like two weeks that put up the first episode and then I've been like chasing the dragon like ever Cuz, like I didn't launch with any banked episode. I had all these like raw interviews and so but that. But putting the asides in was kind of my compromise, hmm, and so yeah, for what it's worth.
Speaker 1:I was a couple years ago when I was listening maybe the first couple times that I listened to it I actually in. I wasn't expecting it and so, if you're, I think it takes a little getting used to as a listener because there's no like cue, like oh wait, it's the same person's voice, but now there's some other point in time and they're filling in the gaps. But the fact that that worked actually gave in the early days. So my show is mostly long-form interviews and I think there was a time I was editing and I was like this doesn't make any sense, like, and I thought, oh, but you know what, like it would be fine, like I can just come in after the fact and be like hey, by the way, this is the background that you need for this to make sense.
Speaker 1:So but that was there from the, from the jump the Like. I can just Like how much of that was forethought where you went. This is the way I'll do this, versus you're listening to those first interviews going that I got a. People are gonna be lost.
Speaker 2:So, yes, it was mostly that I want to trust me. Any, I wanted to do a West Coast podcast. You're fucking kidding me. You put up two mics, you talk about sandwiches, you post it and you're like later, great, wonderful East Coast podcast with tracks and editing. You're buying trouble, right? Unless you have, like you're supported by like a foundation you know, that's like foot, the Ennenberg foundation. Like you know.
Speaker 2:If you're just like no, it's just me and trying to learn how to use GarageBand off of YouTube, which it was for the longest time, I was like, well, how do I put it? But a lot of it was I my, a lot of it was my wanting to take the viewer With me and feeling like the viewer wasn't left out of the conversation. I wanted to feel like if you invited someone to a party where they didn't know anyone, and then you're just like I'm gonna go talk to my friends and they were like this sucks, I'm by the dip and like I don't, who do I talk to? I wanted to Let the viewer know like I gotcha, like I'm never forgetting that you're the third person here. You know what I mean. And so I think that the Asides were like I remember. I remember Doing the first edits on Lila's episodes and we talked about Elytra, we talked about the covers of Beetlewings and I really like bugs and Lila's an etymologist, so we were talking about like he's really colorful Elytra.
Speaker 2:And I remember being like unless you have bug books, you probably don't know what that is. And then you're listening, you're just like okay, but I was like I wish I could stop and be like by the way, that's what these are, because also in the interview, to stop Lila and be like, you know she's like, and so I was like, well, and so it really kind of started with wanting that aside, to be like, I want it, I want people to know it's okay, if you don't know this, you're here to learn this. Or if you know, in the very first episode about vulcanology, jess Phoenix says a joke that's really common among geologists and I was so new to interviewing I didn't get the joke but I laughed anyway. And so later I was like I want to look up what that even means. And then I was like well, I want to explain that to the audience.
Speaker 2:But then I also have to admit that I laughed at that without knowing what it meant and so that the Asides kind of developed from that being like Not only do I want to explain better so that people don't feel left behind, but also, if someone else is listening and they're like I don't know what that means they're not alone and that they're not, they're not dummies for not getting that you know, and also pointing out. Well, this made me wonder this, and so I had to go jump down this rabbit hole, which it's nice to hear from listeners that they're like. I had the same question.
Speaker 2:You know I feel like I get good, because sometimes you don't want to bother an expert with some. You know Tangent, you got to get the good stuff, and so I think it kind of breaks it up a little bit too. And it's so funny I've been diagnosed with ADHD since starting this podcast Reviews or people online being like it's so great I've ADHD, it's so great to listen to a podcast with someone whose brain works the same, and I was like that's weird, my husband has ADHD but I don't so glad it's ADHD friendly. And then I was like no stupid, like you definitely have ADHD and that is yeah. And so I think it helps for people who Maybe Love science and have the curiosity of science but have been left behind by academia or it felt like they don't have a place in there because their their brains hop around too much. So I think it it has a dual purpose. Where it's, it lightens things and gives things more context and also you feel like as a listener, you're never gonna get left behind, you know.
Speaker 1:What. What is nice about it, too, is it's not. It's not like authoritative narrator voice. It's not like and, by the way, like- this is what this means it, at least in what I hear of late it's like. So I looked into this for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is what I found, and it is sort of that like we're all doing this at the same time, like, yeah, I'm like a few steps ahead of you, but not many more than that exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that that's okay. To learn like that's the whole thing is like curiosity and a willingness to learn is so much More important in life than just knowledge, than banked knowledge, because one thing I learned from doing so many interviews with inventors for CBS, for Innovation Nation and doing the show it's like Failure is a huge part of success. It's a huge part of science. We See the papers that get published but we don't. We might not hear about all the experiments that fail before the experiment that Renders some results, or we don't hear about the samples that got lost because of a refrigeration error In the final results, you know.
Speaker 2:So I think that what I got the behind the scenes, look, I got as an interviewer was hearing a lot about failure and Workarounds and resilience, and that gets lost a lot when thinking about science. We think about science it's just knowledge here to tell you something you don't know. But really there's a lot of scrappiness and the same kind of scrappiness that's in creativity. That's an art you know of. Like Well, we got a ton of feedback from the guitar in this, but it ended up sounding really cool, or these were, these were just Placeholder lyrics that ended up actually being really good, you know, and so we don't hear that kind of side of science and I wanted to Bring that humanity to science, you know, and let people know that science comes from people and these people are weird and interesting and great and, you know, have learned a lot of lessons along the way. So I think that in doing the aside, it's like that was that was one way to kind of bring more humanity to it.
Speaker 2:And also, since this is a podcast about science, I'll give you some secrets that I don't tell a lot of people in interviews.
Speaker 2:Sometimes interview sucks or, you know, sometimes parts of the interview sucks and Sometimes people might misstate a fact and not realize it until later and email me later or I'll go and I'll fact check and I'm like, oh, they got that wrong, that's okay, I got their back, like I'm gonna cut that and you're never gonna know, and in an aside I'm gonna have the correct information. Or and the interviewee looks good and we don't have a, you know, a part where they're saying I don't really know, or I think it was this, but it might. You know, I just kind of clean it up, I make it kind of seamless and you know if there's something that they don't know, or if they have outdated information, then that's okay. Like we get rid of the, we get cut that part out of the Apple and, and you know, serve it at the best we can. And so I really want to make the Scientists come off as their best and I don't want to hang them out to dry if Maybe they misstate something on accident. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm, I wonder too. So when I talked to one of the producers at science versus you know they're a very produced science show and it I got the impression that, like one of the advantages is in an interview you could ask the same question three times and then finally the scientist locks in, is like oh, I have to say it like this for it to make sense to anyone who's not like in my direct field.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm curious to do. You find that as well. Like, is some of this an opportunity to be like? You know we can sort of it's you. We're not just listening to one uncut or at least seemingly uncut interview. There's enough bouncing around that you could sort of mask those takes where they didn't make any sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, and but that, yes, I can do that. But what I prefer to do is, in the moment, say that didn't make any sense to me. That's natural me Didn't make sense to my audience, not gonna make sense to you. So it's almost more of a relief and a burst of of the tension if I go wait, that didn't make it. Okay, that didn't make any sense. So then what is that? You know what he mean. Like I.
Speaker 2:I've learned that in the moment it's okay to be conversational and be like. You know I don't know what that means in the interview. You know, sometimes I'm like it's not worth their time to explain this. I'll explain this in an aside later and sometimes that my human reaction Mirrors what the audience is having. So I might as well have it if I'm like that sucks, you know. And they're like, yeah, it does. You know, sometimes it can be a relief to the person I'm interviewing to have my reaction be human, because then it allows them to be human too.
Speaker 2:And you know, I think that one thing I've learned from so many TV interviews is To try to figure out what will bring out emotion in someone I'm interviewing because so many people are used to being a representative for their lab or for their, their university or for whatever, and they're. They're used to academic conferences where you have to come off as of as kind of sterile and and in psychome and in art and in communication, like that's not necessarily the goal, and so asking them something that lights them up or is a frustration, or Letting my surprise come through, kind of opens the door to oh, and this is a safe place to be. A person Like you can be a person here, and I had this interview About phenology, which is the changing of seasons, and I studied doctor or I interviewed Dr Libby L Wood and you know I always ask people what it talks about their job and and she's she got Really quiet and choked up and she started crying and she was Saying that it's really hard to do the work she does about Climate change and trends and to have no one believe or or to be maligned for it, and she was so apologetic about crying and I was like no, dude, like this is what people need to hear, because people think that if scientists Aren't emotional, that they shouldn't be emotional, but people need to hear how much of a struggle this is and that science is done by humans, and it's not just this graph that gets popped out of this AI, like it's people With a invested passion in something Having to deliver bad news, you know. So I think that giving people license to be human is Part of what my job is, and so if I have a reaction to something that's like what, like that's okay. You know Long answer Sorry.
Speaker 2:Oh great, sorry.
Speaker 1:No, no, that is great and and yeah, I mean you set the tone right, like and in some ways it kind of goes back to your point about Giving yourself the freedom to just ask the clarifying question that's on everyone's mind Is it's kind of empowering to be like people see scientists as these kind of Ivory tower figures who are not to be questioned but like sometimes what they say doesn't make sense. I know a lot of scientists. They say a lot of things don't make any sense and they know it right and all it takes. You know, when you, when I teach too, it's like can someone call me out on this because, like I couldn't have gotten this all right, right, like I didn't make, I made perfect sense to all of you for the last 20 minutes.
Speaker 2:That doesn't, that doesn't seem right, but like and it's evolving science is evolving a paper comes out that does looks at something a little more depth than the last paper. You got a little more information about it. You know what I mean. That's great about it and I think it's great that you're willing to be called out, that you're, that you're Having a coming from a place of like we're all learning and the exploration is part of it is great, you know totally.
Speaker 1:I want to. I'm mindful of the time. One thing I did want to talk to you about was a lot of this is uh, Kind of like in the moments of doing the interview and then reflecting afterward. But I'm also curious about the before part of the equation and like what you know. You could construe oligies as a science show, but To me it's like conversations with delightful scientists. That is the defining feature and everyone.
Speaker 3:I listen to.
Speaker 1:I'm like how are all of these so delightful? Like and like I said, I know plenty of scientists. I can tell you they're not all delightful.
Speaker 3:So I'm curious, like what the process of finding people or vetting people or like.
Speaker 1:What does that planning stage look like?
Speaker 2:Oh, thanks for noticing that. I love finding anologist. Oh, it's my favorite part of the job, really, is my favorite part of the job is finding who I'm gonna interview about something. Sometimes someone says you gotta talk to this person about gall wasps. Wow, have they got a lot to say about it? And they love it. And I hear from enough people this is a guy to talk to about gall wasps. I go all right, I'm on board.
Speaker 2:Other times I say raccoons, I kind of know everything about them. Who's studying raccoons so much? And I'll look up raccoons and I'll look up the genus for them and I'll see. Okay, suzanne McDonald is a lead author on a lot of these papers. What's her deal?
Speaker 2:And so I'll go kind of different routes and I think the reason why they're so delightful is because they're talking about the thing that they probably love the most or that they know the most about. And they're probably so delightful because no one ever cares as much as we do about what they're talking about. Like I have a friend who is a plant expert and sometimes his wife will good naturedly be like don't talk about plants too much at this party. She's like a filmmaker, a different crowd or whatever. But, honestly, I'll tell you, at a filmmaker party, these filmmakers want to hear about a botanist talking, but for the most part, someone who studies barnacles is probably jokingly told like don't talk too much about barnacles. But then they come on my podcast and I'm like you tell me everything you know about barnacles. I was gonna say here you fire hose me about barnacles, and they're like yes, and so I think you're catching them in like a moment of someone walking through the gates of Disneyland, where they're like here I go, I'm good to do my thing, and so I think that feeling celebrated is a great way to bring out the best in people. And when people come on oligies, it's not like okay, so you know a lot about barnacles. Huh, I bet you don't know everything, and I bet what you know is probably divisive. It's like no, it's a celebratory thing. And so I try to find people who seem like they are gonna be excited to talk about it or will know so much niche content that they will appreciate the questions locked at them.
Speaker 2:And I've had a couple real thinkers, though and sometimes that's fun, like the proscianologist in question who studies raccoons, dr Suzanne McDonald. I was like what would the ology be for this. I'm pretty sure it'd be raccoonology, because people have used the term in the literature and what do you think about it? She was like that's ridiculous. And I was like ouch, cool, I love your honesty. You know what I mean. And she was like raccoonologist, raccoonology is not a thing. And I was like what about proscianology? And she's like mm, that's a genus of raccoon. She's like I'll sign off on it. And I was like okay, we have an opinion here. Anytime you have an opinion, you gotta be excited about that. You know what I mean? Cause, like if someone who's an expert has an opinion, you're like that's dope.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I did an episode about aging biogerontology and I was like this is the worst interview I've ever done. This guy hates me. He hates my questions. He scoffed at some of them and he's a 79 year old professor who studied aging since his youth, so that's gotta be weird. I also had a list of questions for myself that I think one of them included like is it weird to approach death? And I was like you know, but in my head I was like say that better. But anyway, we got through this entire interview.
Speaker 2:I'm like this guy hates me as soon as I turned off the recorder he was like great questions, great interview. And I was like what, are you kidding me? And so a lot of that interview was like aside. They're like I think this guy fucking hates me. And so the reader, the listener, is along for that journey of like is this guy mad? And then at the end the outro is like you'd never believe what he said. After I turned off the recorder and so there's like a payoff. So sometimes the charm is in the harassability.
Speaker 2:It's rare, but I learned this trick too at parties. If you don't know what to talk about with someone in your own party and you have social anxiety or you're neurodivergent say, for example, me both and you want to get someone talking like, ask them about something that they love and it's you know. If they're a couple, ask how they met. Before you know it they go oh boy, here you go. This is gonna be a good story. You know where I was at a party recently? This girl had great skin. It's like your skin's great. What do you use? Before I knew it, I had a whole recipe of serums. You know I'm not a big serum squirrel, but I appreciated that she had really done her research, so asking people about what they love is a great way to get to know someone.
Speaker 1:I was in I think I was like a sophomore in college or something and I read how to Win Friends and Influence People. Because everyone says this is the greatest book, hundreds of thousands, of millions of copies. I thought, okay, I'll read it.
Speaker 2:I've never read it.
Speaker 1:I've got a tattered version of it somewhere. I read it the one time. Most of it was like okay, but one thing was something like ask questions or something like that, and I was like at lunch with a friend in the cafeteria and I was like. I'm going to ask a lot of questions and at the end, like as we got up to leave, he was like what a great conversation. I was like, wow, okay, so that's why so many books have been sold.
Speaker 2:You know it's so funny because it's like, for me, a bit of it was born out of like I am genuinely curious about people's backstories and I think maybe that comes a little bit from acting, like you know, taking acting classes. It's like you know, I had to play this role where I was attacked on campus and you know, my acting teacher was like write a backstory of everything that happened up to the attack. So when I, you know, and I was like okay, I was like dang. It turns out I think I like writing more than acting, cause like the backstory part of it was like the fiction part was really interesting for me.
Speaker 2:But when you're an actor or whatever, you've got five lines but you're like where's this character come? And so for me I think the back, people's backstories, took on a lot of importance to me, and even scientists or people I meet, and I am genuinely interested and it's funny, cause I would go on a lot of dates and I would know everything about the person and then they'd leave and they'd be like oh, where are you from, and I'd be like seriously just go anyway bye, I mean.
Speaker 2:So sometimes it backfires. And I should say also that that a sad story about me volunteering and stuff. You've you've done your research on me so you probably know but luckily the good I should have put the button on this that my dad ended up living another 10 years and I ended up marrying the guy who I was so heartbroken over. We broke up cause of our age difference and then we aged and then it was fine, so it was great. So all's well that ends well, and in the middle of it came all of these which has changed my life in so many great ways. So it all kind of wrapped itself up.
Speaker 2:But I have gone out to lunch and I have had a friend of mine say you asked me too many questions and I was like I'm sorry, I'm genuinely interested. But she was like Just let the conversation flow more, you don't have to ask someone, you don't have to interview me. And I was like, well, I'm sorry, that's part of why I'm an interviewer, as I ask a lot of questions. But I do feel like giving people a place where they can shine is is a good service, because a lot of people don't get that in their life. They don't get a chance to explain why they like something or why they hate something.
Speaker 1:It was reminding me. I don't know when this came up Just the other day. I was remembering in college I didn't volunteer to pay me. I wouldn't have done this if they didn't pay me, but I worked at a summer camp with like five year olds and I found that I really loved talking to them about their favorite TV shows and their favorite video games, Because I could tell like your parents are so annoyed by this, Like they're not letting you do this, but like this grown up basically a grown up- is like interested in this thing, like that's your whole world, like your world is eating breakfast and playing this game and no one wants to talk to you about it?
Speaker 3:Like, yeah, I want to hear about it. Like why is it so cool?
Speaker 1:And it seems like the same thing. It's just like this basic human thing of like. I have this thing that I can't stop thinking about. I'm like I'm not going to volunteer it to too many people because they don't seem to be interested, but that first time someone goes like, yeah, so what is this about? And like it's a genuine interest. It's not just small talkie like oh, what'd you put up to?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's like yeah, there's, there's nothing like it. You go this is it?
Speaker 2:And I feel like, in terms of the influencer market, right, if someone goes on TikTok and they're like these leggings are the best, or whatever People will see that goes, maybe I should try those leggings. And I feel like we know that influence matters, we know that marketing matters, we know that people we respect who care about something will start to care about that. We know that, sure, there's a social, several social sciences all based on this. And so if I care about something that someone else cares about, my audience is going to care about it. And so there really is this sort of like, this kind of electric, contagious curiosity of influence that I do think that you can care about anything if given enough context and if given some kind of emotional connection to why it matters or why it's thrilling. And so I think that part of you know what all the Jesus selling to people isn't just facts, but it's the permission to be stoked about something, or it's the permission to respect that people are stoked about different things, or the look at something through anologist's eyes. You know, if your grandpa tells you everything about a model ship he's been working on, you're going to care about it more because it matters to him. And so I think people develop a soft spot for millipedes because someone who studied them, because he got fascinated by them as a kid, or someone who, you know, has always loved the ocean and always felt out of place on land, and so their marine biology takes on a different kind of flavor. And so I think that's part of like part of that human connection, and I think finding those human stories is such a good vehicle for making the facts matter to people and making the fact stick and making them look around and say, well, I just listened to an hour and 15 minutes on millipedes, like I wonder what's going on with that slug. You know what I mean? I wonder what's. I wonder how matches work. You know things start to take on an importance to them, and if you can live your life with a lot of stuff mattering, I think you've lived it more richly, you know.
Speaker 2:I think that we're going to be alive, for maybe I think the average lifespan for an American male is 77.4 years or something, and that's a weird fact to know and you might be like, okay, those are numbers. But the reason I know that is because my I'm sorry, my dad lived just over that and my dad. My dad lived with cancer for nine and a half years and he died one year ago. And while he was in hospice I remember wondering how long the average American man lives, and the time would be up for my dad like June 30th that would be the average American lifespan according to his birthday, and he lived until July 8th. And so when I think about my dad's death it was so terrible to watch him go through that, but it was a comfort to know he lived a little bit longer than average and with cancer, and it's like that's one of those numbers where the average lifespan of someone like a 77.4, it doesn't mean anything, but if you can think about what it means in one person's life, it will matter more to you.
Speaker 2:You know, and I think that for every fact and for every figure there's a relevance and there's a context and there's something that makes it matter. And I think what I try to do with science is to make those things matter, to make a fact or a figure have relevance, you know, and if you can live on this earth with things mattering to you and you can soak up as much about the stuff around you and the people around you and instead of being like how's it going lately? And they're like, oh, the roofing business is pretty busy in the rainy season, you're like that's cool. But if you're like, did you ever almost fall off a roof? And they're like, oh, this one time do you know what I mean? And you have more of a connection with them. Or you say, how did you meet your wife and you know more about them? Or their insecurities. You've had a richer life, like that lifespan that you've gotten to live on earth is packed with more stuff, and I think that's a better way to live.
Speaker 2:And I think that's kind of what drives me, you know, is trying to get other people to squeeze the most out of their life by caring about more and about taking curiosity and applying it to a souffle they're making and a pencil they're sharpening and how long their dad lived or whatever.
Speaker 2:And all of that makes our lives richer. And the tragedy of the end of a life, the blow, the impact, is softened if you really feel like you lived originally. And what we're fed is a lot of fear mongering and it's a lot of political stuff and it's a lot of this person against this person, this person trying to take away something you want. All of this fear mongering sells advertisement, like, clinically, that's what's going on. And if we can turn instead to living our lives paying attention to better stuff, if we can live our lives more richly, then we get a better life out of it. And so I think that on the hard days when I'm really tired and I'm like, ah, this interview sound quality is really messing me up, like intrinsically, the things that I'm trying to leave behind matter so much to me that it makes my job a joy, you know, and it makes SCICOM so so much more rewarding than I could ever have on a travel show about donuts, you know, sorry, donuts.
Speaker 1:Well, that is as beautiful a way to wrap up as I ever could have imagined. So I'll just say Kudos on a great show and thanks for taking the time to talk about what you do.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's an honor. Thanks for asking me about stuff I like to do. I mean, as you can tell, I'm very enthusiastic. So thank you for turning the mic in the other direction.
Speaker 2:And yeah, if anyone ever wants to make something, just make your own. Make your own stuff, make your own stuff, make your own stuff. Even if someone is holding an Emmy and they are wine drunk, they might not see the potential of what you're making. So make, make your own stuff, whether it's a TikTok or an Instagram or a YouTube series or a podcast, or you make a zine that you distribute locally. You know, out of photocopies Like make your own stuff and make what you want to make, and it'll be so rewarding.
Speaker 1:Alrighty. Thank you so much to Ellie Ward for taking the time to talk. That was super fun and there's a lot of great insights in there about the point of science communication and a whole bunch of other stuff. You can learn more about Ellie at alleywardcom. That's A-L-I-E, ellie. Go subscribe to oligies already and, by the way, I also love that they occasionally release family-friendly re -edits of episodes that are safe for small ears. Those are called small achieves. We listened to one about cats on a recent road trip and my two-year-old didn't really know what was going on, but my wife and I got to enjoy a solid podcast at full volume with a toddler in the backseat, so still a win. Also, about 10 minutes after we ended the call, I get an email from Ellie. Subject line immediate fact check Turns out that as of 2021, the average life expectancy in the US is 77.8 years. Ellie writes life expectancies have been all over the place since COVID and then vaccines, but my dad made it 19 days past 77.8, which I'd say was a win, totally agree.
Speaker 1: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's, your YouTube's and be sure to check out OpinionSciencePodcastcom for all the episodes and whatnot. 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 partner's coworkers at that party. You have to go to Anyone who would be interested in boosting their own communication skills, especially scientists who would like to reach beyond academia, and I appreciated the shout out on Twitter the other day from someone listening to this series on the plane ride to a conference. Let's do more of that, all right. Thank you so much for listening. We've got just one more episode to go this summer, and it's one I've been super excited to share.
Speaker 3:The questions are way bigger than the answers that we're ultimately going to have such partial and piecemeal answers to anything Any scientific question, any big philosophical question, any more like moral question, any question that we have about how to live or about the world that we live in.
Speaker 3:The thing I want to do at the beginning of all the stories that I do is to sort of like infect someone with a question, maybe a question that they already had, maybe a question they had when they were young and then were kind of like sort of forgot about. Or maybe it's a question they deep down and still have inside. Or maybe it's a question they never even thought of and now, all of a sudden, they won't stop being able to think about making that question matter. And then at the end we're going to get something, hopefully some offering that feels like it's some kind of closure on the you know, but at the same time to kind of say, like this is a provisional answer, like this is the best we can do, which is which is nowhere near as as important or powerful as as as the question itself. My name is Latif Nasser, I am a journalist and, more specifically, at the moment I am I'm the cohost of the New York Public Radio Show, radio Lab.