American Scientist

In episode five of DEAI ComSci (for Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion), American Scientist's science-for-all podcast, we're discussing how podcasts can help navigate complex, relevant issues in science and society.
We'll hear from science communication leaders and podcasters on why podcasting is an important platform for science. Interviews include Sameer Honwad (professor at the University of Buffalo), Wendy Zukerman (host of the Science Vs podcast and 2022 Sigma Xi honorary membership award winner), and Aaron Scott and Emily Kwong from NPR's Short Wave podcast, as well as one of their guests, Dr. Tiana Williams-Claussen from the Yurok Tribe.

Image by Jordan Anderson

Transcript

[music]
00:04
Jordan Anderson
Science Communication. Inclusive science communication. You're listening to American Scientist's DEAIComSci, the science-for-all podcast, where we aim to explore how science communicators are making science more reflexive, equitable, and engaging for audiences. In this episode, Why we Podcast: Sharing your Voice in Science. We'll hear from science communication leaders and podcasters Sameer Honwad (professor at the University of Buffalo), Wendy Zukerman (host of Science Vs and 2022 Sigma Xi iFoRE award winner), and Aaron Scott and Emily Kwong from NPR's Short Wave. As well as one of their guests, Dr. Tiana Williams-Claussen from the Yurok tribe. I'm your host, Jordan Anderson.
[music ends]

In our last episode of DEAIComSci, we discussed how we can build science curiosity in non-STEM audiences through science fiction, film, and videography. This can lead people to look up the facts themselves and become better media consumers. And that got me thinking of other media platforms that we use to communicate, including one near and dear to my heart: podcasting. In this episode, we'll dive into how sharing your voice in science through podcasting can help us all navigate complex, relevant issues in science and society.

[Break—Chanting “Stop Bad Cops”]

Earlier this year in Atlanta, I went to a community-building event.

01:47
“Wolf”
The nexus of the fight for me is protecting ancestral lands, protecting the climate, protecting the Earth, making sure it has a voice.

Jordan Anderson 01:56
That was “Wolf”, who chose their name to conceal their identity. They were speaking at Welaunee people's forum. There was dancing, music, painting, native foods, tonics, and most importantly, people with a voice to share amongst their community. Here's another community member, Guillermo Zapata.

02:16
Guillermo Zapata
I feel really happy that people are listening. You know, it's like people have like a moral obligation to do something about it.

02:22
Jordan Anderson
The “it” is a United States police training facility in the city's South River Forest. People in Atlanta and all across the U.S. call it "Cop City."
Zapata says when people hear about something from the people directly experiencing it, it's special.

02:40
Guillermo Zapata
You know, and they feel inspired to, like, have their own feeling of like relationship and like familiarity with their ecosystems and living things you know, and like that this isn't just something that is about Atlanta.

02:53
Jordan Anderson
A lot of people are opposed to Cop City because of the potential for over-policing, threats to Indigenous land and neighboring minority communities, as well as damage to the environment. Again, here's Zapata:

03:04
Guillermo Zapata
I hope that it turns into something that's about, like, you know, a cultural shift, you know. A change in, like, how people are treating each other and how people are treating the world, you know.

03:17
Jordan Anderson
Cop City caused significant media attention. Interviewers from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fox News, and more came to listen to those like Zapata and Wolf. Through these platforms, Zapata and Wolf could share their voice and promote their desires to audiences across the nation. Collectively, these voices have had an enormous impact. Efforts to stop Cop City have grown to international levels, and this has resulted in significant social, political, and environmental delays to developing the facility.

So what does this have to do with podcasting?

Podcasts are a relatively new way for anyone to communicate their voice and share their opinions publicly. With the right following, a podcast can be a tool for substantial change in our environment that people can do entirely by themselves with very little equipment. In other words, the right podcast can replace mass media and bring significant attention to an issue. I wanted to learn more about how people are using podcasts to share their voice and create change. So, I did a bit of exploration. After some digging, I came across Dr. Sameer Honwad, an assistant professor of Learning Sciences at SUNY Buffalo. Dr. Honwad has been exploring how podcasts get people to think about environmental challenges in their communities: how people are treating each other and how people are treating the world.

04:41
Sameer Honwad
How do we educate people who live unsustainable lifestyles to live sustainable lifestyles?

04:52
Jordan Anderson
Dr. Honwad’s conclusion? Making sure people have a voice.

04:55
Sameer Honwad
It's not rocket science to realize that traditional ways of teaching science is not working. When you're in the classroom, throwing science at people, it definitely does not work. And these environmental problems are so complicated, right? They are personal. They are scientific, they have sociopolitical issues in them. If I listen to a story, I feel much more engaged. And podcasting is awesome, because that's what it sort of does.

05:28
Jordan Anderson
One of the projects that Dr. Honwad is involved in is Voices to Hear, which uses oral storytelling to empower Native American students to engage them in environmental decision-making and scientific communication, while building a stronger sense of their ethnic identity. The students themselves make the podcast.

05:45
Kyra Baldwin
Hello, my name is Kyra Baldwin. Today, I'm going to be introducing our podcast topic, which is going to be revolved around salmon and the climate change. Not only is salmon restoration involving climate change important now, but in 10 years, this will be a huge issue with restoring salmon. Global warming could take salmon away from us completely.

06:15
Sameer Honwad
As you know, they're not easy to make. They are labor intensive. They require a lot of scaffolding, they require a lot of editing. So it's a work of patience and perseverance.

06:29
Jordan Anderson
Here's a little more on the episode titled, Future Changes To Salmon Sustainability.

06:35
If climate change keeps happening the way it is now, then farmers will lose their land with their crops. There'll be an increase in electricity bills and landowners will suffer. Farmers will have to sell their land to make salmon habitats safe in the area.

06:55
Sameer Honwad
What the students do is very interesting to us.

Jordan Anderson
Again, Sameer Honwad:

Sameer Honwad
One of the groups in our tribal youth made a podcast on mining. They had to look at history; as soon as the history happened, they also realized, 'Oh, there are politics involved,” because tribal land was taken. And then there's justice involved because sovereignty was at stake. What did the US government do? What did the tribal people do? How were some people oppressed? How was their land taken away? Then the other parts of the politics is what is the U.S. government doing now to clean up the pollution caused by the mines? And that part is fascinating, right? Because who takes the responsibility for cleaning up? Does the State of Idaho take responsibility for cleaning up? Does the federal government take responsibility for cleaning up? And then the science of actual cleanup. So all of that, together, can be discussed in a really small amount of time. And then when you put that story together, when you put all of this together, you can see that mining is not just a science issue. It's a political issue. It's a social issue. It's a cultural issue. It's a historical issue. You can read all of that together or listen to all of that together. All complexity needs to be talked about together, not piece by piece. That's what the podcast or storytelling pedagogy helps us do.

08:18
Jordan Anderson
And that helps students too in what they go on to do.

08:22
Sameer Honwad
We've seen some really positive changes to what the students are thinking about in terms of their own future.

08:28
Jordan Anderson
Podcasts are easy-to-access platforms that are fun to create and allow us to use storytelling to understand challenging science topics. However, there are some additional challenges we may need to consider when we think about podcasting and the podcasts we listen to. One of those is avoiding bias in our messages.

[music break]

One of the ways to do so is by elevating a diverse group of voices in a podcast, which is something that NPR's Short Wave does.

08:56
Emily Kwong [Short Wave Podcast]
You're listening to Short Wave from NPR.

09:00
Jordan Anderson
NPR's Short Wave is a famous podcast that I connected with, because not only do they elevate a diverse group of voices, they also call into question who science has historically helped and hurt.

09:11
Emily Kwong
People have a singular image of what a scientist is. And it can sometimes look an awful lot like Bill Nye.

09:16
Jordan Anderson
Emily Kwong is the co-host of NPR's Short Wave.

09:16
Emily Kwong
I love Bill Nye, don't get me wrong, but there's so many more individuals out there who do science and we want to hear from them on our show.

09:28
Jordan Anderson
So I asked Emily and her co-host, Aaron Scott, how they advance diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion on their show.

09:36
Emily Kwong
So, I would say it's a combination of how we book, which is like a audio lingo term for who you actually put on the show, who listeners get to hear from, and how we pitch. Which is not a baseball term. It just means what stories we're deciding to tell. And one of the ways that we really want to elevate DEI on our show, is by telling stories from a certain perspective that maybe isn't represented in mainstream media, and we do that all kinds of ways.

10:08
Aaron Scott
As Emily was saying, when we look for guests, you know, we recognize that in a lot of scientific fields, the people who tend to get interviewed, the people who get funding and grants and tend to run labs, tend to for the most part be older cisgender white men.
[audio break]

10:34
Aaron Scott
And so as we're looking for people to talk to, we're always oftentimes looking to go beyond that space. Looking at grad students, looking at postdocs, looking at science educators, looking at people who maybe don't necessarily have a PhD, but are working in science in different ways. Oftentimes looking a lot at traditional ecological knowledge and people who hold the Indigenous knowledge, and so we cast a really wide net in the people that we want to talk to.

11:04
Jordan Anderson
One of those people is Tiana Williams-Claussen, a wildlife biologist of the Yurok tribe in Northern California, which has been working for years to reintroduce California condors into the sky. In this clip, she's talking on NPR's Short Wave’s episode titled: The Quest to Save The California Condor, about the time her group released two condors.

11:23
Tiana Williams-Clausson [Short Wave Podcast]
Obviously, there's this huge surge of excitement and happiness and fulfillment, but I also felt like I did when my daughter was taking her first steps. Because these are birds that they've been raised in captivity before they came to us. And you know, they're fully flight capable. They're two to three years old, but they've literally never had the opportunity to fly before. And so just seeing them so effortlessly take off into the wide blue sky, it was very heartwarming.

11:58
Aaron Scott [Short Wave Podcast]
Today on the show, the years-long quest to return California condors to their ancestral sky.

Aaron Scott [DEAIComSci]
The tribal wildlife department is run by this woman, Tianna Williams-Claussen, and along with several of her colleagues, has kind of spearheaded this push to reintroduce condors to their skies, and did so earlier this year, and livestream the whole thing. So, we have this great audio of her, you know, kind of giving a play-by-play of the birds in their facility as they open the gate. So we've talked to a number of native scientists, Indigenous scientists, about the way they do science and what they can use from Western science, but also how to decolonize Western science.

12:50
Tiana Williams-Claussen [Short Wave Podcast]
Ultimately, of course, the goal is that we bring the world back into balance.

12:54
Jordan Anderson
Again, Tiana Williams-Claussen speaking on Short Wave’s podcast.

12:57
Tiana Williams-Claussen [Short Wave Podcast]
And we no longer have to maintain this in terms of management, and they are just free-flying tagless birds, reintegrated into their traditional role in our ecosystem, and in our ceremonies.
[music]

13:10
Jordan Anderson
Historically, Western science was practiced in a way that didn't consider a diversity of cultures. In turn, many communities did not adapt Western science practices, including Western medicine and technologies. But through podcasts such as Short Wave, scientists such as Tiana Williams-Claussen can tell their story of how they integrate Western science with their culture. For Williams-Claussen, that is treating environments as sacred, and with an understanding that harming the environment not only harms communities, but all people. So, after hearing the Short Wave podcast, I wanted to hear more from Tiana Williams-Claussen directly about her work. So, I reached out and she offered some additional details.

13:54
Tiana Williams-Claussen [DEAIComSci]
At this point, our role as world renewal people is not to maintain this balance, but to restore this balance, or at least restore what balance can be found in this new day and age, so that we have healthy and functioning systems again. So part of that is bringing species like condor who has been extirpated back because they play an important role.

14:17
Aaron Scott
And so it's kind of by sharing the Short Wave spotlight.

14:20
Jordan Anderson
Again Aaron Scott from NPR's Short Wave.

14:23
Aaron Scott
It means that, you know, we can talk about the science they're doing, share some of their personal stories. And it then becomes a tool that they can use as they're looking for a lab or applying for grants. Like, you know that it's helping to build the reputations and the portfolios of young scientists.

14:41
Jordan Anderson
Which further helps us all navigate complex, relevant issues in science and society. Again, Tiana Williams-Claussen.

14:49
Tiana Williams-Claussen
There's an entire generation, basically, that understood that it was dangerous to be Yurok and so many of whom made the decision to not pass on the language, to not pass on culture, to help children acclimatize in the hopes that they would survive and not have to suffer like that generation had had to do. I always think about our cultural values, our grounding as having been kind of banked, in a time of, in a really scary time where it wasn't permitted or safe to let it shine. But now we've come into a time, again, where we can openly and freely without fear of repercussion, be who we were meant to be. And so the Yurok tribe puts a lot of effort into resolving these social injustice issues, bringing us to better health by investing in reintegrating youth, and adults as well who are struggling, into traditional culture.

16:00
Jordan Anderson
Podcasting and media creates a means to pass down some of the knowledge and traditions, as both Dr. Honwad and Dr. Williams-Claussen have shared.

16:08
Tiana Williams-Claussen
So I really enjoyed my opportunity to talk to Short Wave. I really appreciate it. For me, when I'm listening to something that is purely audio, it allows me to engage very cerebrally with it. I'm not distracted by the visuals and things like that. It can be very evocative because of the tones and the words that are used. It is a direct translation, a direct transmission of what the speaker is thinking and feeling.

16:42
Jordan Anderson
Today, there are nearly half a billion podcast listeners worldwide. This episode that you, our listeners, are listening to, is only one of five million podcasts with some 70 million episodes. Because of the sheer volume of podcasts out there, important stories like the ones shared today with Dr. Honwad and Dr. Williams-Claussen can be easily buried. As a podcast host myself, I wanted to know what can make a novel or amateur podcast big. So, I reached out to Wendy Zukerman, host of the popular podcast Science Vs, a fellow attendee whom I had met at Sigma Xi's annual IFoRE conference in 2022. Her podcast reached enormous heights in the science community. So, I shared with Dr. Zukerman my interest in learning both about what inspired her to create a science podcast and how she made it so popular.

17:33
Wendy Zukerman
So I started just before the podcast bubble, which was very fortuitous for me, just dumb luck. But before working in podcasting, I was working at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which is like the BBC. Most Americans are familiar with the BBC. We have the ABC. Canada has the CBC, you know, welcome to the Commonwealth. So before then, so I was working in television doing some research for Australia's Science Show.

18:03
Jordan Anderson
Wendy's Zukerman is a trained scientist and lawyer. It wasn't until after she finished her law degree that she dove into a science communication career.

18:11
Wendy Zukerman
And I never expected to have an entire career doing science journalism, it was always like my dream job. But I was like, but this won't last. And then I got the job at New Scientist. And I was like, yeah, but like, this isn't gonna last. And they got the job at the ABC, and then podcasting, which led me to New York. Science podcasts do really good in Australia. And it just like happened to be the week that when Gwyneth Paltrow had suggested women steam-clean their vaginas as she was making her like sliding-doors transition from actress to health guru, it was kind of in the early days of that. And I was like, this is crazy! This is so funny. Like, let's make a podcast with like science versus Gwyneth Paltrow. And just like, look at the things people care about, with joy and humor and not make it boring. And then it like expanded out, and I never did that Gwyneth Paltrow episode, but I pitched it to the ABC and they were like, Yeah, make a pilot. And I was like, okay, and didn't know what that really meant. I was like, I made something. And then I sent it out because this was like, there was no editorial or anything. So I sent it to my family who are all very clever and at very opinionated in wonderful ways. So they were like, they'll listen and like made notes. They were like my editors, and I fixed up the pilot, sent it off and they [the ABC]  were like, great, make 10 more of these.

19:37
Jordan Anderson
Zukerman started Science Vs in 2015. Since then, the industry has changed drastically. There weren't podcasting production and distribution companies like there are now.

19:48
Wendy Zukerman
You can do it all on your own organically, but it has, it has become harder. I think probably now, if you can work with a bigger podcast than you, if you can either get onto that show, or get them to talk about your show, that helps you to get a little more listeners and then you can kind of jump to the next rung.

20:06
Jordan Anderson
For those of you podcasting already, or thinking of sharing your voice in science through podcasting, Short Wave's Emily Kwong and Aaron Scott have some additional suggestions.

20:15
Aaron Scott
One other suggestion I would have is find partners, like, some of the independent podcasts I've known that have succeeded are podcast creators who are like: I want to do stories about the outdoors, maybe I'll approach like Outdoor Magazine in the case of Peter Frick-Wright and Robbie Carver, and like, pitch my podcast to them, and then they'll, you know, fund it and help me grow it. So it's like, who are the museums, who are the science magazines that don't have podcasts, who are the people that you could partner with, and kind of go to them and hope that they have some, basically, institutional structure, have reporters, have experts, have people that you can collaborate with as you go about making something. So as opposed to, you know, doing something in the vacuum of your bedroom and doing it all yourself, there's a lot of really smart, talented people out there. And it's like, if you have a good idea, maybe you do a couple episodes to prove that you know what the idea is, and then you take it out and try to find somebody who's interested in in working with you on it.

21:23
Jordan Anderson
A little personal story about how we started the DEAIComSci is that this podcast came from a project during my master's at Duke University, I was researching where the gaps are in reaching non-science audiences with science. I wanted to know what the initiatives were that the scientists were creating to fill those gaps. Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society had a common interest. And so this research evolved into a partnership with Sigma Xi, and it is now supported under American Scientist and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund.

21:55
Emily Kwong
If you're partnering with a local organization, nonprofit, school, after-school club, whatever, you know exactly who you're making that work for, and, and who you're serving through that work. And you get feedback from them. And I think that that's where your creative juices can really flow. And also where you'll do your best work because you're making it in collaboration with other people. And it's a two-way relationship, right, between the listeners and you, I feel like there's 50 million reasons to start one, but really know your reason. And that will help give your show focus, that will help give your show a sense of a moral foundation. Ours is "Everything is science, science is for everyone" and you hear that in every episode. That's the thesis of Short Wave, that's the that's the, the ball we're tossing out there every single episode. So I think just being a little intellectual about it in the beginning will really help you clarify your ideas as you go along. Which is a very serious answer but it's kind of how I strongly feel in our media-saturated world, we've got to be more intentional about what we're saying to each other.

23:08
Aaron Scott
Yeah, and it also means that having a reason to do something, I mean, both, it's a lot of work, but there's so many podcasts out there that we've kind of hit the point where it's really hard to break out, or to make money or to have a hit podcast. So it's kind of you have to be doing it for a very clear reason, that is not necessarily fame, or I'm gonna, you know, make this a living, which is discouraging in some cases. And you know, there's certainly people who do it. But it's a very hard time to be starting something. So having a clear mission for why you are getting something out of that podcast is, it's really important.

23:56
Wendy Zukerman
I think it's that picking topics

Jordan Anderson

Again, Wendy Zukerman.

24:00

Wendy Zukerman

...that people care about and trying to open that up. Because like if you have a show that is mainly made by white people who are only going to be interested in, like, not only but like there might be just certain cultural things that they miss, that when I should say like that I miss. And so I'm not picking a topic for a show that might actually be as like interest to someone else, to a different group of people, whether that's someone who's like, you know, from China, or who's African-American, like I just might miss like an entire topic that would be super cool to Science Vs, and like through doing that topic, would get more listeners through the door as well. Something that we've cared about on the show, like from day one is like changing what the voice of authority sounds like. When I was starting and it's like on radio, the idea that like, back then, a young woman would be a voice of authority was like not  something that people were interested in, that some people were interested in. You know, I was told my voice was too high, I was told my voice was too low. You can't be funny. You can't be a voice of authority and be funny. Like, you have to be boring. That's what a voice of authority is. And so just changing that, what that means is, I think, a part of just getting more people listening. Like, my favorite thing about making the show is when people say, I don't like science, but I listen to your show and I loved it. And I was like, oh, because there was something we did, we picked a topic that for some reason made you click on a show called Science Vs, that you cared about that topic enough and we kept you in through whatever, trying to try to be funny, trying to make the science as interesting as possible, and you listened to the end, and you liked it. And like that's so wonderful.

Wendy Zukerman
I think some of the work that we have to do to get people listening is to just be like you care about science too, I swear, it's relevant to your life, and remind them that science is everywhere, and it's cool.

[closing music]

26:09
Jordan Anderson
Science is everywhere. And today, we've learned how we can approach science podcasts through science learning and science advocacy. We've also explored best practices for creating our own podcast and building a diverse audience in today's information-saturated world. Sharing your voice through podcasting helps all of us navigate complex, relevant issues in science and society.

This episode of DEAIComSci has been brought to you by American Scientist and Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society, and was edited by Robert Frederick. For transcript of this episode, please visit americanscientist.org and look for the blog post that accompanies this podcast. Special thanks to Sameer Honwad, Aaron Scott, Emily Kwong, Tiana Williams-Claussen, and Wendy Zukerman for joining us today. Today's music choices come from Epidemic Sound and the Free Music Archive. Please be sure to check out Voices to Hear, Science Vs, and NPR's Short Wave, especially the podcast episode The Quest to Save The California Condor. If you liked what you heard today, follow American Scientist and follow me at Twitter at @Jordan_artsci. I'm your host Jordan, thanks for listening.