00:00

Katrina: Welcome to the Discover Science podcast from the College of Science at the University of Nevada, Reno. My name is Katrina Perce, and I am a graduate student in the Reynolds School of Journalism, where I'm studying science communication with the Hitchcock Project for Visualizing Science. I'm joined today by my co-host Ai Ana Richmond.

Ai Ana: Hi, Katrina.

Katrina: Hi, Ai Ana.

Ai Ana: I'm Ai Ana. I'm a PhD student studying ecology and evolution, specifically the link between the gut microbiome and cognition in a teeny tiny little songbird.

00:33

Ai Ana: I spend a lot of time running around the woods. Your local cryptid field biologist, if you will. Katrina and I are beyond thrilled to be hosting today's podcast, diving into the world of science communication, asking many, many questions, and hoping to figure out what it really takes to bridge the scicomm gap with none other than Alie Ward.

Ai Ana: Alie Ward is the woman. A Daytime Emmy Award winning science correspondent for CBS's “The Henry Ford's Innovation Nation with Mo Rocca,”

01:02

Ai Ana: host of “Did I Mention Invention?” on the CW. You'll find Alie on Netflix's science series “Brainchild” and Science Channel's “How to Build Everything,” along with GE’s series “In the Wild,” where she co-hosts with Adam Savage of MythBusters fame. She's a contributor on Cooking Channel's ongoing show “Unique Sweets,” an actress, and at one point was a staff writer and editor for the LA times and on-air contributor to KTLA.

01:30

Ai Ana: A personal favorite of mine as well, with many others, proven by its over 50 million downloads in 2021. Alie is the creator and host of one of Time's “Top 100 Podcasts of All Time,” and the number one science podcast on Apple right now: Ologies.

01:40

Katrina: Now, if you haven't already given it a listen, Ologies is your podcast to answer all of life's curiosities. Described as the podcast for baddies that want to be educated and many people's current hyper fixation, Alie started Ologies in 2017, producing weekly episodes, interviewing experts in distinct fields like fromology, the study of cheese, or some that you might have never heard before, like ergopathology, studying burnout. Alie is truly a leader and inspiration in science communication and bridging the gap to understanding and loving science's role in our everyday lives. Thank you so much for joining us today, Alie.

02:18

Alie: Oh, I'm so happy to be here. You guys are amazing already. And fellow podcasters. It's not often I'm in a room with fellow podcasters, so this is exciting. We can talk shop.

Katrina: Yeah, it's very nerve-wracking interviewing someone that also does interviews.

Alie: You’ve got to watch out because I’ll start asking you questions. So I might like Reverse Uno card you without even realizing I'm doing it. So keep me on track.

Katrina: We’ll watch out for it.

02:49

Katrina: So we'll start off talking about your journey. When you first started off in college, you were pursuing biology and a career in biological illustration, and you ended up changing your course of study and obtaining a degree in cinema with a minor in biology. Can you talk a little bit about that transition?

02:58

Alie: Yeah, I mean, I always loved science from when I was a kid. My parents got me a microscope for some holiday and, you know, it was like a toy one. But it functioned. It didn’t have a light, but it had a mirror you could use, and I don't think they thought much of it. I think there I think they were procrastinators when they were shops probably like, I don't know.

03:17

Alie: And I loved it. I just fell in love with it. I would swab windowsills and see what was on there, or I'd try to look for bacteria from ponds and stuff. And so I was really like glued to that thing. And it started to make me realize that there's so much more in the world that we just can't see, because we don't have the eyes for it.

03:35

Alie: Once you have tools and once you're open to looking, you know, you really discover a lot about stuff around you. So I started loving science and ecology and nature and all that stuff. But I was really torn. I was also like a ham, and I loved drawing and I loved putting on plays and stuff. And so when it came to college, I started in environmental studies, and I really wanted to do biological illustration.

03:57

Alie:  There was a guy named F. Netter, Frank Netter, who's like, absolutely the G.O.A.T. when it comes to biological illustration. And I realized, like, he kind of already did everything that I want to do. And I'm also not as good as him. And so I started, you know, I'd study studio art and then have an O chem class right after.

04:18

Alie: And so I went back and forth between labs and studios, and I ended up graduating in cinema with a minor in biology. So I've always kind of had one foot in each and a lot of new media, you know, we call it new and it's like 30 years old now. A lot of digital media have opened up a lot of opportunities to make more stuff that incorporates both.

04:42

Alie: And here I am with a podcast, which, you know, yeah, podcasts didn't exist when I was in college. When I was in college, we were editing film on actual film that we had to cut with a razor blade, and then you had to tape them together with special, expensive tape. That's how you cut film. You literally cut it. So I’m like, whole new world over here. You’ve just got to change with the times.

05:04

Ai Ana: So speaking of changing with the times, I've spent a lot of time thinking about evolution and studying evolutionary biology and to step back in time a little bit. Probably our most famous great great, great, great — it goes for a while — great grandparents is Tiktaalik, which is this really weird, amphibian looking thing with four legs.

05:24

Ai Ana: It kind of looks like a kindergartner went wild designing a dinosaur. And this is our beloved grandfather: Tiktaalik. And it's so important for evolutionary biologists because it's often considered this really pivotal moment in vertebrates’ evolution and transition from ocean into land. So, I've often used Tiktaalik as this metaphor in my own life for many of my own pivotal decisions in life and career, all these other big life things. So do you have any Tiktaalik moments in your crazy career that's gotten you to where you are now?

05:58

Alie: Number one, great segue, podcaster, I clocked that. That’s a great segue way up top. That's a really cool way to put it. And I think all of us do. You know, we were chatting up in the student lounge earlier over pizza about how you have all these paths that take you down different capillaries, almost, you know, like veins and arteries to vessels to capillaries.

06:16

Alie: But I think for me, I had those “Aha!” moments, you know, as Oprah would call them. And one of them was sitting on the dock in high school at a lake. My dad was raised on a farm in rural Montana.

06:28

Alie: So, I was on a lake at a family reunion, and I saw all these bats that were going across the water and my uncle was teaching me about ecology and I was like, this is the most exciting thing. And that was really what would also put me on my scholastic path, like academic path toward biology. But then I had another moment, like I was saying, with biological illustration, where it was in the library at, JC looking at illustrations, and I was like, “Netter did it better.”

06:53

Alie: What am I going to do? And so then I was thinking maybe I would do more cinema and do more TV and stuff. And so yeah, those were those were my floppy dinosaur moments back in the day.

Katrina: It warms my heart that you said your “Aha!” moment. The last podcast we did with Discover Science, I interviewed an ice cream scientist and she talked about the “Aha!” moment!

07:15

Alie: Oh that's great.

Ai Ana: The “Aha!” Podcast it might be, right?

Alie: That's great. And you really do have those moments where something strikes you. You have like a clarity and it's usually checking in with yourself with like what do you want or what are you capable of? Or what do you want your future to look like? You know, sometimes you have to be still for a second to have those bop you on the head.

07:35

Katrina: So kind of leading straight into Ologies with that, I love your slogan for Ologies. The whole “ask smart people stupid questions” or sometimes you play with it in your episodes with like “ask smart people shameless questions”, or “ask passionate people impassioned questions.” I feel like this really opens the door for something that a lay audience might never say, but definitely feel.

07:58

Katrina: I know as a non-scientist myself, talking to a scientist like I want to focus on getting it right and like I want them to respect me and the way I talk and everything. But I feel like that's a big solution with scicomm, like asking the questions even if you do feel quote unquote stupid.

08:15

Alie: We really censor ourselves a lot and what we're willing to ask and having it be so extreme. And there's of course, that adage of like, there's no stupid questions and there isn't, you know, and obviously that's like hyperbolic and ironic, but it really is like, let yourself ask the questions that you're curious about instead of the ones that you think are impressive. Like let yourself let your curiosity kind of drive the conversation.

08:35

Alie: And yeah, a lot of times, like I've asked questions that seem really basic and the scientists will be like, “that's a great question and we're trying to figure that out right now,” or “that's a really interesting way of looking at it.” And also in journalism and scicomm, you're a proxy for your audience. So if you don't ask those questions, you're doing a disservice.

08:55

Alie: And once you break that, once you ask a few what you don't think are impressive questions, you start to realize, like, “oh, this is actually good.” And also when you're talking to experts, like a lot of times they really want to talk about this stuff. No one at the Thanksgiving table cares about what they do. They're like, “Jeanette works in a lab. I don’t know.”

09:16

Alie: I don't know, but if you're like, “tell me all about it.” Jeanette's going to be like, “sit down. I would love to.”

Ai Ana: That's something I've really seen with my own students, too. You know, as a grad student, I've TA’d everything from introductory biology, it's the first time these kids have been in a biology space, all the way up to mammalogy and these are like 400-level class, students who are supposed to know what they're doing, though I don't know if any of us ever figure it out, but that's always something I tell them.

Ai Ana: I'm like, you guys, don't be scared to ask questions. If you have a question, I promise you, everyone else in the room has the same question and it’s probably because I didn't explain it right. Like, it's okay, just ask.

09:50

Ai Ana: And I really try and make our classroom a space where people feel comfortable asking these questions and interacting with science in the way that we're supposed to.

Alie: That's exactly right. Someone else wants to know is a big motivator, too. If you'd hold the door open for a stranger, why won't you ask a question that will also maybe help the stranger, you know, helps you too! It’s the only thing that separates people from people who know stuff from people who don't know stuff, is curiosity and inquisitiveness. You can't learn stuff without it. Trust me, it's what I do for a living.

10:19

Ai Ana: So in an interview you said that Ologies really, “helps people that love science and have the curiosity of science, but have been left behind by academia or feel like they don't have a place in there because their brains hop around too much.” Is this something you've experienced yourself, or is part of your motivation for creating and continuing with Ologies?

10:41

Alie: It's definitely part of my motivation, and I did experience it myself. When I was first coming up with Ologies, I had worked in science TV for kids for a while. You know, Saturday morning. And so, you always think science programing for kids, for kids, for kids, for kids, for education, for kids, for kids. And I was like, there are so, well, this is in 2017.

11:02

Alie: And I was like, kids don't vote, man. You know, like we need people voting who like, care about consequences and who just care about the world around them, and also maybe who understand that any given person has like stories. And I don't have kids and I'm not having kids. And so I felt like, well, why do people who have adult brains and interests, why do they have to consume things that are meant for someone who's 35 years younger than them?

11:30

Alie: You know, that doesn't make any sense. Like they're not watching HBO Max at midnight. You know, kids aren't. So why does everything have to be at a level of grade school and stuff? And so for me, I was like, well, I want to know about, you know, weasels and, the ocean and dolphin sex. And, you know, I wanted, but, it's weird.

11:52

Alie: And so I had a really big struggle trying to figure out if podcasts should be for adult audiences, but also like swearing. Should I swear in this? Should I show up with my full self because I have such a sailor mouth, horrible, I grew up around a lot of comedians. There's not a lot of holding back. And so I really was like torn.

12:13

Alie: And there were I looked at all the top podcasts for science, and none of them had this little red “E” next to it, which means, you know, explicit. And so I was like, well, am I going to be shooting myself by doing that, like shooting myself in the foot? But I was like, I would rather do something authentic and give it my all than do something inauthentic and get an audience that is not really who I want to attract.

12:35

Alie: So I went with it and it turned out, oh, that was missing. The thing that's not there was actually missing. And so I've ended up getting, cultivating an audience of really curious adults who, yeah, maybe loved science or maybe they're in the sciences, or maybe they study geophysics, but they want to learn about birds, too. So you know that authenticity and thinking of what I wanted and what I wish was around was a really big factor in how I kind of structured it.

13:02

Katrina: I really love how, intentional or not from the beginning, explicitly plus science really created a bridge between some sort of like appropriateness when it comes to science. Maybe I do just want to be chilling and hearing this quote unquote normal talk, normal conversation, while also learning. I mean, sometimes I feel like if I'm listening to a science podcast, I feel like I'm sitting in a classroom and I'm like, maybe I don't want to be in that environment.

13:26

Alie: Right, exactly. And I think that a lot of laypeople who maybe aren't scientists by trade, they don't want to feel like they're in a lecture. And I wanted to also highlight people's humanity, not have it be at a lectern or talking down, or have it be like, I'm educating you, but it's more like I'm just having a really bonkers interesting conversation, like, come on in.

13:47

Alie: And so I'm really glad I did it that way. And it's funny, I have Smologies now which are these shorter, like kid friendly G-rated edits that we do. We release them in their own feed. So people can just, like, listen when they carpool or whatever, because I would get like, reviews. I got this one review that was like one star and it was like, “I love this podcast and everything about it, but she used the F-word, so I'm giving you one star.”

14:12

Alie: This one in particular was like, “And it was labeled educational. It had a red ‘E’ next to it,” and I was like, oh dear, that means it's not for kid like that means I'm gonna say the F word and so I was like, don't get mad at me. It's labeled! You just didn't know what the label meant. So yeah.

14:29

Alie: So I peeled off to Smologies so everyone's happy and then I can still be myself when when I show up to interview, which is good.

Katrina: They took it as E is for everyone

Alie: You know what I mean? I was like, no, this is not Nintendo. No, this is the very opposite that. Yeah. 

14:44

Alie: Finding your audience though, you have to just trust that if you're authentic, then the people who are into it will come to you and hang out. And the people who aren't, you know, buzz off. But I think it's the same as friend groups too. You know, when you're authentic, the people who are down with you are going to stick around. And if you're inauthentic, then you're going to attract the wrong people who eventually won’t stick around. So learning the importance of authenticity as like a preservation of your own sanity is something that I learned later in life through a lot of different ways, Ologies being one of them for sure.

15:19

Ai Ana: I really admired throughout your work in Ologies as a creative writer myself was how you integrate metaphor. It's really cool. You use it really well for communicating some of these really complex scientific ideas. In lutrinology, which is the science of otters, you use dachshunds as this really elegant metaphor, pun fully intended, to hypothesize how otters bodies have elongated through this artificial selection.

Ai Ana: I'm just curious, as someone who loves to learn myself, is this use of metaphor something that you've always done to kind of help conceptualize science for yourself, or is this been a skill that you really had to hone over time?

15:56

Alie: That's a great question. And I think because my family, they're great writers, my dad was a great writer, my sister was a journalist, and my other sister, I've been begging her to write a novel for years and years, and she's a county administrator, and she's like, “I know one day,” she's like the most brilliant writer I know.

16:09

Alie: And so luckily, my family's very awkward and awkward emotionally. So I think that they just try to use, like, humor as a way to cope with things. And so I think we're always trying to kind of entertain each other. But I remember my mom uses a lot of metaphor, and I remember her once we got like a computer, and this is when they were the size of like a refrigerator.

16:27

Alie: And you've probably have seen this in sci fi movies, but just like a black and orange screen, old school. And I was like, why can't you just plug it in and use it? And my mom was like, “Well, it's kind of like if you got a Mercedes, but there was no engine and you had to put the engines in like a program so it could run.” And I was like, okay, that's tight, I get that.

16:50

Alie:  And so I think my mom was always looking for ways to conceptualize things. But I remember my dad was on the internet on an email list with like, my whole huge family. He's one of 11. And so he was an early adopter, and he was always a better writer than he was an oral communicator.

17:01

Alie: Even though he's in broadcasting, he could always really let his heart come out in writing. And so I think it's probably just a combination of my family trying to entertain each other, and my mom trying to explain things to me asking too many questions.

17:18

Katrina: Before you kind of get into an episode and you're discovering, like, these new Ologies and everything, are you kind of searching before it, like more about it so you can get sort of an understanding of it before, or are you kind of going into it blind?

17:26

Alie: Sometimes I go completely. I mean, I know like cursory information, but sometimes I find, and this is so counterintuitive, sometimes I find going into it not knowing a lot helps me ask the questions that the audience needs to know. I sometimes struggle like, I just did an M.S. episode because my mom has M.S. and she's had it for 20, 25 years, and I've read, I can't tell you how many papers I've been down.

17:53

Alie: And when there's a new paper out, I'm reading it. And so I'm more familiar with it. And it was almost hard for me to think, okay, like, what would you need to know if you had no idea what this was? You know, I wanted to jump in and ask, what about this treatment? What if I did …. and I was like, oh no, I have to first ask like, what is it?

18:09

Alie: And so sometimes if I research too much about an Ologist or too much about their work, their most interesting stuff is not a surprise to me. And so I sometimes have to hold back on reading too many biographies, like I'll listen to some things of how they present their stuff if they're enthusiastic, but I don't like reading a lot of articles about them, because then some of their best stories are reruns, and I want to bring that, like, you know, to the audience because the audience is usually like, “What?” too.

18:40

Alie: So yeah, it's it happens to behoove me there. I do feel like there have been other articles, and journalism articles and some that I do where I do show up really prepared because, you know, it might be a really complex topic. I did an episode on OCD recently, and Doctor Wayne Goodman, who's like the person who founded the scale by which OCD is measured.

19:00

Alie: You know, I was asking him a lot of questions and having a good conversation, and he was like, “You really know your stuff.” And I was like, I've been diagnosed. So I was like, I've read him. I read a lot about it. And so that one. No, again, I had to go from the perspective of misconceptions. What's a lot of the flimflam?

19:17

Alie: You know what I mean, to get the basic stuff. But yeah, it's funny. Sometimes I'm like, what's a tree? And then, you know, well, how is it different than a bush? And other times I'm like, so when we're talking about the latest trials with Ocrevus in New Zealand or, you know, whatever all over the map.

19:38

Katrina: So with that, you're having these conversations with the scientists, but you also include, like your little narration, your aside during it, and even in the neuropathoimmunology episode, the study of Mutiple Sclerosis

Alie: Katrina!

Katrina: Thank you, I practiced that

Alie: Good job

19:50

Katrina: So in that episode, you included a voice note from the guests and you add more context. Sometimes you'll clarify information or even correct information after the episode. So what's that process kind of like after having the guest and everything, like how do you manage which sections are given more context or given additional notes?

20:06

Alie: Oh, that's a great question. This is like how do we make the donuts? And this is something that took me a lot of trial and error to figure out too. And there were moments where I was like, I am never going to figure out this podcast. I just had the raw interview. I remember asking my first guest, who was an entomologist, about elytra, which are these, things on the back of beetles?

20:26

Alie: And I remember being like, the audience doesn't know what elytra was. And that was me also trying to be like, I know this word before and I realized, like, that's not how I want to approach it. And so I was like, okay, well, I do want to add more context. Or I remember the first episode that went up was a volcanology person, and she mentioned something about some springs.

 20:43

Alie: And I was like, oh, I don't, I was like, I'm not going to stop her to be like, explain to me what these hot springs are. But when I was listening to it, I was like, you know, well, what's that? Why is that a place that she feels like I should know about? Because she's not used to talking to people who maybe aren't volcanologists.

20:58

Alie:

And so I started when I went from these raw interviews to making them easier to follow for the public and sometimes less dry like, sometimes the information can get kind of dry or serious. And so then you can pop in with added context or a rabbit hole you went down, or the etymology of something that is surprising, just to kind of lighten it up and give little brain breaks.

21:19

Alie: And so I started doing that more because I realized it was better than interrupting my guest to have them explain something that is just tangential. And so going on those tangents, I think has been really fun and it's also a way for me to answer questions that the audience might have that they're going, “What are these hot springs?”

21:37

Alie: And then I bounce in with like, okay, here's the deal. I think a lot of times those are the questions that the listeners want to Google. And so what I do is and I brought my kit, I'll show you after. But my whole audio kit, what I use on the road and what I use for the first couple of years before a lot of it started to be remote after quarantine.

21:55

Alie: It's a purse. It's a JCPenney purse I got for $10 at a flea market, and it’s like indestructible. And it fits my recorder, which is a Zoom H4N, old school one.

Katrina: Love that recorder

Alie: Right? Yes, again, a tank. It is a tank. And you drop it off into a canyon, you just find it, keep using it.

22:17

Alie: So I've got that a couple, sure, SM58s and some good cords. I bought really cheap cords when I first started and they buzzed a lot, and I replaced my mics before I realized that it was just cheap cords. So I use those. Get it off the card. I take the file, I put it into a transcription thing called Temi.

22:34

Alie: Which used to be $0.10 a minute, which is why it was Temi and now it's $0.25 a minute. I'm really pissed about it and I have written them being like, this is wrong. And it also doesn't transcribe swear words. It cuts them out. So I'm like, if I need to know where I swore for Smologies... So I was like, anyway, I have a bone to pick, but then I have a transcript.

22:53

Alie: What I do is I listen back to my interview and wherever there's a spot where I'm like, this could use some clarification or it's getting a little dry, I might add, like a sound bite or a drop, we call them, or I'll add an aside and I color code it. So anything that gets cut, which could be paragraphs, it could be ums, it could be coughs, it could be stammers.

23:11

Alie: All of that I highlight in red, everything that gets added that I write is an aside, I highlight that in green and I number them. And then anything that's a drop, a sound effect, a sound bite gets highlighted in yellow so that when my editors, now I have editors, I used to do it myself, but now I have two editors, Jake and Mercedes.

23:30

Alie: When they go through, they can see what needs to be cut. Jake might do all the red lines and Mercedes might do all the drops and back and forth. They switch depending because they're in two different time zones. So that's kind of how I build it. And then once I have that cut, I do a QC pass. I listen to it again and maybe I'll be like, that's too many drops or cut this aside, it's, there's too many.

23:49

Alie: And yeah, so that's kind of how I do it. And when I record asides, they're all numbered so that we know where it goes where. And then a very helpful tip if you're doing audio and you need to do different takes or you need to do different voice overs is I do a snap in front of the mic and you can usually see a spike, a really vertical spike.

24:06

Alie: So on your audio timeline you can see, okay, that's a new take. That way you're not looking around for like, where is that take? You can go 1234 okay. Take seven. There you go. So yeah that's kind of the system we have. And it involves a lot of highlighting of Google Docs, a lot of highlighting of Google Docs.

24:22

Ai Ana: What are your preferred highlight colors?

Alie:  Oh it's oh it's so funny. My life is literally like in this color scheme. It's a dark pink for the red lines that get cut. It's a nice sea sage green for the asides. And then it's a nice golden yellow, for the sound effects. And I dream in those colors because it's just like what's in my eyes all day long.

24:49

Ai Ana: I'm glad I asked.

Alie: Yeah, I'm glad you asked, too. It's something that, you know, when you're building an audio format or, you know, even video, having a transcript can really help. And having that roadmap can make it a lot more accessible. Because we've been writing papers since we were in grade school. We write letters, write notes. And so sometimes when you're working in audio/video, it can be hard to know where to put things.

25:09

Alie: So definitely help me organize. And then I can realize, okay, I should switch this instead of just going at it like, you know. So if you're making videos for scicomm, that's my tips.

Ai Ana: I just worked, actually. Katrina and I were in this scicomm class together in the spring.

Alie: That’s great! That's amazing.

Ai Ana: Yeah, it was awesome. I was like, well, one of my really big goals as, as an ecologist, as we're facing climate change, I really want to make sure that each chapter of my dissertation, you normally have to do four chapters for a PhD, in each one is an individual study, and my first one is in peer review process right now. But it is incredibly complex. I'm talking this is someone else's dissertation deep into cognition, and I'm coming in like I just graduated my undergrad.

 25:54

Ai Ana: I applied to this Ph.D. position kind of as a joke for my friend. So I'm in over my head, and it took me a full year to understand this project. And then I'm like, I'm taking a scicomm class and I think, oh, for my final project I think it would be awesome, because again, I want to make each one of these chapters accessible.

26:13

Ai Ana: How do I do that? I guess a scicomm piece that goes with each like proper scientific publication, right? One of my buddies is a science journalist and I was like, come visit me for a week, let's work on this project together. And it takes me the entire week to explain this to him. We go over and over and over and he's like, okay, I think I got it.

26:30

Ai Ana: I was like, cool. Then we film it, we and I'm feeling pretty good about it. But I'm like, hey, this, this part right here. We explain it too quickly. It's too tricky. I know, because it took me months to understand this. This we need to do more than a 15 second recap. Yeah. And he's like, no, no, no, I think it's fine.

26:44

Ai Ana: I'm like, no, it's fine because I spent a week teaching you this.

Alie: So he had done the work

Ai Ana: Yeah, yeah. And so then we he was like no, no I showed it to a couple other people. You were right. I was like, I know.

Alie: Yep, yep, yep.

Ai Ana: Thanks buddy. But like yeah it was, it was, it was a little tricky.

27:00

Alie: Because when you already know something, you can skim by it. But if you're trying to do something for a lay audience or someone who's not in chickadee cognition, for example, and microbiome, then yeah, you have to back up a little bit. And I think that's why it's helpful to learn things by other people. Before Ologies went out, I made like 4 or 5 different friends.

27:18

Alie: Two of my friends, not scientists, on their way to Burning Man, were like, cool. We’ll listen, man, and then, you know, other people who are physicists and neuroscientists. So I had a bunch of different people listen. And, and I think that's really, really helpful. So you can understand if you're going into it cold, like what makes sense and what doesn’t? And also what do they not need to know in order to still be invested.

27:42

Alie: You know what I mean? Like, sometimes you think more info is better, but sometimes it's the like the little facts that will stick with them, or it's the context and how it changes their life, you know what I mean? If they hear different bird songs in their yard, or if they see different birds at their feeder or whatever, then they'll remember that, you know, more maybe than, than some really, really deep detail.

28:05

Alie: So it's, and that's a problem with Ologies too is knowing what to cut and what to explain more. What's TMI? And luckily I have a long, you know, hour, hour and a half every week so we can go we can get pretty in-depth, but yeah, sometimes you’ve got to summarize.

Ai Ana: I guess that segues pretty well into our next question too, where we kind of look at sitcom and the general public eye as well.

28:26

Ai Ana: Right now we're seeing a huge growing skepticism of science by the general public.

Alie: Really?

Ai Ana: But also, like academia is so inaccessible. It's so unjust. Many scientists have such poor communication skills, which is not something you're often taught in grad school, is how to communicate your science point blank, even like to other scientists. So obviously Ologies really helps bridge this gap.

28:49

Ai Ana: But I wanted to ask you, like a two part question as someone with a foot kind of in both worlds, what are ways you'd encourage the general public to engage with science? And the flip side of that is when you speak with these scientific experts, what are some of the patterns you noticed with a really stellar science communicator so I can take my notes?

29:09

Alie: Okay. Oh great question. So I would say if you are just a layperson and you see something you're curious about, look for papers on it. Look for YouTubes on it, seek out the information instead of just going “huh.” Take a note in your day of what you're curious about, put it in your notes app and then go look it up later.

29:27

Alie: Treat yourself to that instead of just scrolling aimlessly. So I think getting people used to finding out the answers, and also not through ChatGPT, not through AI. I did an AI ethics episode recently, and it like 79% of the time, it hallucinates like it has told me wrong information about myself. It said that I had a thyroid operation.

29:51

Alie: No I didn't, mine's fine, you know. So I think people have to get used to respecting experts. And I think that's one thing I try to do with Ologies is like, respect this person as a human being who's dedicated their life to it. But I think it's also that scientists are sometimes more accessible than you realize. If you see a really cool spider and you email a spider expert, they might get right back to you and say like, “Oh, that's, that's what that is,”

30:14

Alie: and, you know, “here's where you find out more about it.” So I think getting used to scientists as people and respecting them in their work as people. Science doesn't come from the ether. People looked into something, had a question, looked into something, experimented, investigated, wrote it down. And so I think that respecting those people who are in there already who are doing the work, and also I think the bigger part though, is context, is everything affects your life.

30:41

Alie: If you go back enough. And I think any science can change the way you look at the world. Learning how something evolved can change the way you look at your own life. And so I think I'd anthropomorphize a little here and there because I want things to be emotional. I know that you're not supposed to do this, but when you can make science emotional for someone learning it, that really tends to stick with them.

31:04

Alie: And they tend to respect those facts and respect that process. So I try to make it as relatable as possible. And talking about otters, debunking flimflam, that they have a favorite rock. Like the next time someone sees that, they'll be like, no, actually there's an expert on otters who says that is not true. And that is cool because look at that.

31:27

Alie: I know something that is a myth that has fooled other people. So yeah, I think really trying to give it context and give people, relate it back to their life in some way.

Ai Ana: I really appreciate what you said about the emotion, because it's true. You can sit there and be like, oh, that's a lioness, Panthera Leo. Look at the sagittal crest.

31:45

Ai Ana: Like, can you tell I just did my skull section? I am in my mammalogy earlier this week. It's like go sagittal crest and the masseter fossa. I'm like okay, these are all just words. Lions. Yeah they're cool. And then you go out on a safari and you see one at the sunrise, and it's just like the most emotional... I, I'm stumbling for words because there aren't words for these experiences.

32:05

Ai Ana: Right. When you detach, sometimes I think we see this struggle with science a little bit, where it's taken out of that context and it's so sanitized and clean and completely objective. It is like, well, no, this this is also something that you can experience and it's so beautiful when you do.

32:19

Alie: And biology is messy, science is messy. And there's feuds! I love talking about science. I love talking about going to blows over a dinosaur skull. It's like there is passion. There are weirdos out there and they do good science. Tycho Brahe, a famous Dutch astronomer. The guy got his nose cut off in a duel with his cousin. He had a fake golden nose. He had a moose that would drink beer and get drunk at his castle.

32:46

Alie: There is a crater named after him that looks like the moon's butthole. There is, there are stories, and it's kind of fun to gossip about science. I like gossiping about the stories behind it. And yeah, it's funny that you were, you know, how do you relate that emotionally? I just learned about that, sagittal crests and how they chew and how important that is for muscle attachment from the jaw to the skull.

33:08

Alie: And I was hanging up my friend, Simone, she's got a dog named Bubba, and she was like, “Why's Bubba have such a pointy head? I don't know.” And I was like, oh, you know, it's just sagittal crest. Like he's a pit mix. So he's got like big jaws and you know, it’s really true. And she was like we pulled up a picture and it's like a sagittal crest means nothing to some people.

33:26

Alie: But if that's why Bubba has a cone head, you're like, cool. That's because he's got bonkers jaw muscles. That's awesome. And sure enough, he destroyed so many toys in the time we were sitting there, which I love because my dog does not care about toys. So he goes through Gremmy's toy box. But yeah, so those kinds of things, when you can apply it to people's lives and suddenly they, they care about it.

33:47

Ai Ana: Well then what's the flip side of when you get these good science communicators is applying that is having that like link to someone's direct life?

Alie: I think having that link to their life, meeting people where they're at, which is if they are resistant to science, if they for some reason don't trust vaccines, or if they don't trust global warming, you have to remember people's humanity.

34:10

Alie: And even though some people make choices that really hurt people and they say and do things that really hurt people, you want to write them off and you want them to fall into a chasm in the earth. And I have been there. But you also have to think, okay, they don't trust some things or they're scared of some things, and maybe this person had a bad experience with a doctor, or maybe they were misdiagnosed, or maybe they're really worried about someone else's health.

34:35

Alie: So usually comes from a place of fear, that kind of ignorance or that willing ignorance, which we did an episode called Agnotology with Dr. Robert Proctor, who studies willing ignorance. And you know that willing ignorance is usually to protect something that they hold dear, and they think that's a way to protect it. So you don't want to think about climate change because you've got five grandkids, you know, what's it going to look like for them?

34:58

Alie: You don't want to think about climate change because your house is on, or you don't want to think about it because that changes the way your crops grow. And so it's easier to say the data is falsified because you can't grapple with the reality of it. And so you say this information I can't grapple with. So the people who gave it to me, I don't trust them.

35:16

Alie: So you kind of have to go backwards as a science communicator, and you have to try to find the humanity in everyone, from the person that you're interviewing who is maybe not used to talking to a lay audience, you have to find that they're a person. You have to think about them of like, what was the worst birthday they've ever had?

35:32

Alie: What are they mourning right now? What is the song that they turn on when they're in the car by themselves and just wail to in a good way? So once you try to speak to people's humanity, I think it helps a lot. And I try to do that no matter who I'm interviewing or who I'm like trying to communicate to.

35:50

Alie: And sometimes it's tough as a science communicator because your audience wants you to scream at people. And trust me, there are things that I want to make my position known. But I'm also like by laying out all of these facts on something, you got to know where I'm standing. I'm fact based. So if I'm giving you these facts, you got to know where I'm landing on it.

36:09

Alie: But then I use my personal Instagram, my personal things to say, hey, let's donate to this, cause let's speak up about this genocide. Let's look at these facts about climate data. But when I'm presenting to an audience for Ologies, I try to really just give objective facts that you can absorb, and maybe it can change the way you look at things, but it's a struggle.

36:28

Alie: I mean, it's not easy for science communicators. It's not easy for scientists. It sucks right now. It sucks real bad and you're up against a machine of disinformation, whether it's from AI or whether it's from entertainment news sources that pose as fact-based journalism. And it's just, it's nuts. You just got to keep fighting the good fight. 

36:59

Ai Ana: I had such an interesting example of this recently. I was at a friend's house and there's this really crotchety 80-something-year-old woman, like with the walker, with the like, perfectly like coiffed hair and like, lipstick and everything. So I'm just I'm just chatting with her and she's like, oh, you know what? What are you doing here in Reno? And I'm like, “Oh, you know, I was offered to be in this PhD program, I'm studying chickadees and cognition and hopefully relating some of that to climate change.”

Ai Ana: And she just goes, “what good does that do for the world?” And I was just like, okay. And, you know, I, I really was gently, kindly tried to be like, “oh, you know, for me, I feel like this is how I can contribute to society and really help make science more accessible to people with climate change coming up.”

37:33

Ai Ana: And she just kind of, like, scoffed it off. And then I asked her what she did, and she's like, oh, I was a ballroom dancer. And I was like, oh, okay. A couple months later, I bumped into a mutual friend of ours and she was like, you know, “That conversation you had with Sally was amazing. She's still been thinking about climate change weeks later, we're still talking about it.”

37:51

Ai Ana: And I was like, oh, thank God. I took the breath to look at someone's humanity, really connect with that instead of just being like, “Yeah. Idiot. You don't know anything. Whatever. I'm going to sit here in my ivory tower in academia and look down on all you peons.”

38:05

Alie: It's like if you're doing work to help the world, you want not just peers to know about it. Well, you want people to understand the context of it and why sometimes dollars are funding it and why it does matter. Sally probably has grandkids or has younger people that are going to be around longer than her, and chickadees can be a canary in the coal mine.

38:24

Alie: Kind of. So it's like relating it back to someone and also trying to erase just the first bit of resentment is important. And so you got to keep the why in your brain because, yeah, it can be something little that maybe makes someone curious about it, or it can be a little fact that does it. Or we had a philologist on they study the change at the seasons and I you know, I always ask what the hardest part about a person's job a lot of times are like email or writing grants or the commute, or you could do all kinds of stuff.

38:55

Alie: And she started crying. She was like, people don't believe me. People don't believe us. Everyone that I work with is working so hard to capture so much data, to put information together to like, try to pump the brakes. And people just don't believe me. So I think having something like that in an interview where you see it's not just someone wagging a finger at you saying you don't take your boat on the lake or don't ride your ATV because of the carbon, when you really see people trying to help each other, I think that's when people are more open and also like ballroom dancing contributes to the world.

39:30

Alie: I love to watch it. Fun. Thanks, Sally. You know what I mean? Like, is she saving the planet? I don't know, maybe someone who would have been a really big jerk, turn out ballroom dancing, and then they wound up being great. You don't know. You don't know how it can change people, so you just got to keep doing it.

39:46

Katrina: Speaking of, keep doing it. With over 400 episodes of Ologies now, do you feel like you'll ever run out of Ologies?

Alie: Katrina, I have nightmares. Woken up in a sweat. I've had nightmares where I got to the end of a list and that’s it, there's no more Ologies. And then, and I woke up and I was like, oh, thank God, thank God, because I got books of them.

40:09

Alie: There's so many new ones are being invented every day, sometimes by me, but I usually always try to find it in the literature every once in a while. Let's go to scotohylology is the study of dark matter, and there just wasn't something to capture that. You know, there was cosmology, dark matter cosmology. “Scoto” means dark “hylology” means matter.

40:26

Alie: So I ran it by Dr. Flip Tanedo, and he was like, I love it. And I was like, great, well, you're an expert on this. So that's a word now. And now it is. Now people use it five people, but that's five people more. And so yeah, I, I usually look up the Greek, sometimes the Latin, it's usually Greek that it's based on.

40:43

Alie: And I look to see if that Ology exists. And a lot of times you find it and you go, oh, it's in a paper. Sometimes it's in a letter that two scientists wrote to each other jokingly, I think sea cucumbers. That particular Ology was coined in a joking letter. But yeah, so I'm never going to run out, never going to end. You know how many objects there are in the world?

41:03

Alie: I remember I was being interviewed for this one article and I was like, anything's interesting if you give it context, if you're related to people's lives and stuff. And I was sitting across from a brick fence and I was like, bricks. Masonology is probably a word. And like, who makes bricks? Why are they red? How old are they?

41:20

Alie: Why do people steal bricks out of ashes in Saint Louis? What's so specific about their bricks? You know, all these things. And it's funny because we're talking about that now. And there's like a brick wall behind me. And I was like, oh my God, I do that one on bricks because it's going to be weird and interesting. There's going to be someone who's stoked to talk about bricks. I can't wait to meet them.

41:39

Katrina: I personally love watching a brick TikTok.

Alie: Oh! Masonology TikTok. You kidding with that grout and stuff?

Ai Ana: When they like flip it over, they line them all up and flick it and like a hundred of oh fall into place.

Alie: Oh, the in the mortar texture. Sometimes it looks like buttercream. It's like forbidden, like rock flavored buttercream, I know.

41:58

Alie: So yeah. So there's something interesting about everything. What are the most famous bricks thrown through windows? I don't know, but you can go in a lot of directions. So once you have context for something, everything's interesting. And I'm never going to run out of Ologies.

Katrina: We kind of invested in our own kind of Ology. If you were to create, you know, the study of Alie Ward, what would the Ology be called?

42:23

Alie: I think the only thing I'm really qualified for is an Ology-ologist, the study, because ology is study. So I think I study the study of and I, I do feel quite qualified. And Jeopardy has a round called “Ologies” used to be called study groups. Now it's called “Ologies”. And I wrote to the Jeopardy Team and I was like, every time you guys have this category on, I get so many tweets.

42:47

Alie: I live in LA, put me on. It was started in quarantine. And then there was a writers strike. So I have to swing back around. But I was like, let me know if I can announce some clues because I'm there. But I am almost certain that I would win any round of trivia that had to do with an ology.

43:02

Alie: People will say things like, is there one for this? And I'll be like, yes, and we've covered it. It happens so much. So yeah, I'm an Ology-ologist.

Ai Ana: Well, now I want you to like, give me an Ology. Like, what would you name the study of cognition and microbiome? I mean, be careful. This is what I'm titling my dissertation.

43:20

Alie: So, cognitive neuro microbiology. But it would have to be ornithological cognitive microbiology.

Ai Ana: I’ll take it.

Alie: I do three words sometimes; attention deficit neurobiology, we do that. Sometimes you need more than one word. Crow funerals, corvid thanontology. Sometimes you got to get specific.

43:40

Katrina: Well I want to thank you so much, Alie, for joining us on the Discover Science podcast. It was such a pleasure getting to talk to you and talk science. Dream come true.

Alie: Love it, love it. Loved being here. Amazing segues, great preparation, wonderful questions, great stories. Loved it. Ten out of ten, would Discover Science again.

Katrina: Nice.

Ai Ana: Yeah, yeah, we had a lot of fun. But we like prepared for this and sat there and read your Wikipedia article.

44:10

Alie: I think that a guy went to high school, wrote most of it, and then my niece contributed a little bit. So to me, I was like, oh, you don't have to do that.

Ai Ana: And the thyroid problems, that came from somewhere.

Alie: My thyroid is fine. Everyone okay? Don't trust the AI, it is fine. Do not trust everything that AI tells you.

Katrina: You heard it here first.

Alie: Yeah. Listen to the AI ethics episode. You'll never use it again.

44:39

Ai Ana: A little off script, but this is one of my favorite stories about bird behavior. The Raven master in London. Because in London they have this Tower of London has this myth about like, oh, if there's no ravens around the tower, it'll fall just like, so ominous. And no one has any idea where this nursery rhyme came from.

44:57

Ai Ana: Like, oh, of course we have to have a raven master who goes and takes care of the ravens, and they have a colony of captive ravens, and they're so intelligent. They live to be 40 years old in captivity. And so they recognize that they're the Raven master. Of course, and interact with them and they die eventually. And one day, one of them died.

45:15

Ai Ana: And of course, the Raven Master is just distraught because he’s taken care of these animals, his whole life and they go through and again, it's the British. So this is some giant ornate funeral and yada yada yada. And the other ravens are watching this and get jealous. And so the next morning he comes in and finds a second one dead.

45:33

Ai Ana: No. And is like, oh my God. And goes in and like, like goes to pick it up and it caws off laughing it like flies away. Wow. Oh, I was like, you just got pranked by a raven.

Alie: Like, oh, that is, that is such an evil genius maneuver.

Katrina: So funny.

Alie: And also like, what do you expect from like, corvid royalty, but to toy with a commoner that is amazing and doesn't surprise me at all.

46:04

Alie: Gelotology is the study of laughter. So it could be Corvid Gelotology. They're just playing pranks. They're like “sike!” So, so they're like that guy. He's a real cut up. He's like the real class clown.

Katrina: He goes “watch this!”

Alie: He goes, so yeah, you know, he's like, look, you guys, you guys, you guys, you guys, you guys, you guys. I got a really good one. Yeah. Okay, when he comes in. Don't say anything. Don't say anything.

Ai Ana: Someone's filming this for TikTok, right?