Mike Rugnetta: Friends, hello and welcome to Never Post, a
podcast for and about the Internet. I'm your host Mike
Rugnetta, and we have a methodical show for you this
week. In this episode, I chat with geneticist and science
communicator Alex Danis, Emmy nominee and science communicator
Trace Dominguez, and molecular biologist and science
communicator Joe Hanson about what it's like right now in this
environment trying to communicate with people about
science. What helps, what hinders, and what keeps them
from losing their minds. But first, we're gonna take a quick
break and you're gonna listen to some ads unless you're on the
member feed.
On Wednesday, February 25, the United States Senate Health
Committee held a confirmation hearing for Casey Means who has
been nominated by Donald Trump to be the next surgeon general.
For the unfamiliar, The US surgeon general is often
referred to as the nation's doctor. They are a commissioned
officer and the operational head of the United States Public
Health Service Commissioned Corps. They report to the
assistant secretary for health who themselves reports to the
secretary of health and human services who right now is Robert
f Kennedy junior. The surgeon general is one of the country's
foremost communicators about health and related topics,
guiding the country in its understanding of important
public health issues.
The health warnings on both cigarettes and alcoholic
beverages called surgeon general's warnings are perhaps
two of the more notable impacts made by office holders past. The
office was established in 1871 and since then every US surgeon
general has been a licensed physician who finished their
residency. This may change with Casey Means who attended the
Stanford University School of Medicine, but dropped out of her
residency to pursue a career in functional medicine, which
Wikipedia describes as quote, a form of alternative medicine
that encompasses many unproven and disproven methods and
treatments. Citation. Citation.
Citation. At its essence, it is a rebranding of complementary
and alternative medicine, citation, and as such is
pseudoscientific, citation, and has been described as a form of
quackery. Citation, citation, citation, citation, citation.
Casey founded a practice in Portland, Oregon which has
closed. She does not hold a medical license and works now
mostly as an influencer.
Her Instagram profile includes photos and clips of her with
Andrew Huberman, Joe Rogan, Bill Maher, Tucker Carlson, as well
as longevity specialists. And I think the founder, but I'm not
sure, of at least one skin care brand whose primary spokesperson
appears at the moment to be trad wife Vundefrau, Nara Aziza
Smith. Memes posts take aim at what she calls ultra processed
foods. She cites sourceless statistics about increases in
the prevalence of various diseases, upticks in childhood
onset, this and that, and speaks in an alarming and in this
administration very familiar tone about all the ways various
establishment forces conspire to diminish the health of Americans
or keep them from knowledge about what true health really
looks like. Like RFK junior and so many others associated with
the current American administration, there are
kernels of truth in her criticisms.
The American health care industry is mismanaged, profit
driven, exploitative. Many Americans do have trouble
getting access to nutritional foods, but her responses to
these issues often lead to more questions than answers. Here's
one clip of Casey chatting with Joe Rogan. It's a minute and a
half long, and I'm not gonna edit it down so that you get the
full, well, experience, I guess.
Casey Means: We know a lot. We have the technology, the money,
and the resources to fix all of this, the planet and health, and
we're not. And that's why I think there's something darker
happening on, like, the consciousness level. I think
it's gonna be hard to get our way out of this if we stick to
partisan politics and quibbling about individual policy ideas. I
think it has to start with, are we committed to life and to awe
and to connecting with source and then listening and moving
our way out of here, or are we not?
And if we choose not, which is what I think we're doing I mean,
I think there's huge light happening. That's why a lot of
people are interested in this issue right now. But, like, if
we don't, I do think we're on the road to existential disaster
because we're that powerful now. Step one is us deciding, like,
what choice do we wanna make in this lifetime. Do we wanna
believe that life is a miracle?
This universe is a miracle. Our bodies are miracles, and we want
to connect with God in this lifetime. We wanna build and
respect these temples that are interconnected with the earth to
do that, or do we not? And, like, that's the choice we have
right now. And I think we have to take that very seriously.
And I think a lot of the political stuff that's
happening, MAHA, it's all just a reflection of people wanting to
find a way to fight for life and not knowing how. That's what I
think is kinda happening here.
Speaker 2: And wanting life to make more sense.
Mike Rugnetta: Casey does not, at the moment, appear to have
the votes to be confirmed as surgeon general of The United
States. Former surgeon general Jerome Adams called her
nomination incomprehensible. Senate health committee chair
Bernie Sanders said
Bernie Sanders: I have very serious questions about the
ability of doctor Means to be the kind of surgeon general,
this country needs. Thank you very much.
Mike Rugnetta: She faced round after round of tough questioning
in her hearing about the abortion pill, mifepristone,
about the safety and availability of birth control
generally, about the importance of vaccinations, specifically
regarding measles, the flu, and so on. Here is an early exchange
between her and senator Bill Cassidy, a physician and senior
United States senator from Louisiana.
Speaker 2: And some have been scared to vaccinate their
children because they've been told incorrectly that vaccines
cause autism. Do you believe that vaccines, whether
individually or collectively, contribute to autism?
Casey Means: Senator Cassidy, you're a physician. I'm a
physician. The reality is that we have an autism crisis that's
increasing, and this is devastating to many families.
And we do not know as a medical community what causes autism.
The administration has just committed a huge amount of
funding to look at the exposome of all environmental factors
that could be contributing to autism.
And until we have a clear understanding of why kids are
are developing this at higher rates, I I think we should not
leave any stones unturned.
Speaker 2: There's been a lot of evidence showing that they're
not implicated. Do you not accept that evidence?
Casey Means: I do accept that evidence. I also think that
science has never settled and I think there is I think that the
effort to look at comprehensive cumulative exposures, of our
exposome into what is causing autism is important. And I look
forward to seeing those results and sharing the best public
health information with the American people.
Speaker 2: Well, I got through five out of my seven. So thank
you for cooperating. Senator Sanders.
Mike Rugnetta: The phrase science is never settled, the
way it's deployed feels like a weaponization. This phrase
normally means almost the opposite of what it's doing
here. Science is never settled when spoken by scientists means
we commit to our knowledge until evidence leads us to different
conclusions. When spoken here by means, it smacks of doubt and of
conspiracy. It may be that Casey Means does not become the
Surgeon General, but she's gotten this far.
Her three hour hearing aired on cable news, on C Span, and so
on. Her ideas find purchase on the biggest podcasts, on some of
the largest news networks. She's got nearly 850,000 followers on
Instagram and as such our president feels that she may be
suited as the nation's number one health communicator. Alex,
Trace, Joe, and I don't discuss Casey Means at all in the
following conversation, but we do discuss at length and in
detail the environment that empowered her and sustains her
relevance. I wanted to get them on as communicators, science
communicators specifically, to find out what it's like for them
operating in that same environment trying every day to
engage in truth seeking and publicly committing to science
that, no, may not be settled, but that doesn't mean that we
lack confidence in it.
That doesn't mean that it's wrong. So after a short break,
me, Alex, Trace, Joe. I've been wanting to make this episode for
a really long time, so I really hope you enjoy it. Joining me
are Alex Danis, Trace Dominguez, and Johansson. Alex is a science
communicator specializing in genetics, biology, and
chemistry.
She's the cohost of the American Chemical Society's series
reactions and has partnered with the Museum of Science in Boston,
the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, and many others. She
has a PhD in genetics from Stanford. Alex, thanks for
joining us.
Alex Dainis: Thanks for having me.
Mike Rugnetta: Trace Dominguez is an Emmy nominated host,
writer, and producer of science programming. He's the
coproducer, writer, and presenter of PBS South Florida's
show Stargazers, and EP and cohost of the podcast, That's
Absurd. Please elaborate. He was a longtime producer at Discovery
Communications and later Seeker Media. Trace has a master's in
public communication from American University.
Trace, nice to have you here.
Trace Dominguez: Thanks.
Mike Rugnetta: And Joe Hanson is a producer, host, and science
communicator. He is the creator of Be Smart, an award winning
YouTube science program produced by PBS Digital Studios, as well
as the host of Overview, a PBS Terra series about nature and
earth science, and high school quiz show produced by WGBH. Joe
has a PhD in cell and molecular biology from the University of
Texas.
Joe, nice to see you.
Joe Hanson: Always a pleasure, Mike.
Mike Rugnetta: When was the last time all of us hung out
together? Was it at a YouTube EDU conference or a VidCon
perhaps?
Trace Dominguez: I feel like it was one of those.
Joe Hanson: Safe bets. Yeah.
Trace Dominguez: It wasn't a metal show or something like
that, unfortunately, but it would I wouldn't be surprised to
see any of us there.
Mike Rugnetta: We could make it happen. If you guys come to
Brooklyn, I'll take you out. We can go see some Horrible Noise.
Alex Dainis: Delightful.
Mike Rugnetta: And it would be a great time.
Trace Dominguez: Sounds cathartic.
Joe Hanson: Great band name.
Trace Dominguez: I would go see Horrible Noise. Yes. Excellent
band name.
Mike Rugnetta: So I would love to start maybe frustratingly
broad here with a question that you all maybe thought you had
gotten past having to answer, which is what is a science
communicator? What do you do? What what does your job entail?
Trace Dominguez: Well, Mike, obviously, we communicate
science.
Mike Rugnetta: But duh. Thanks, Trace.
Joe Hanson: Well, that's what snides communicators don't do.
They say duh real loud to people.
Alex Dainis: They really shouldn't, but sometimes they
do.
Joe Hanson: Look, it's certainly a field that's a lot of
different things and and that's that's what makes it exciting
and challenging. It's it's a bit of a a job title that crosses
into journalism at points where we need to be critical and and
and weigh evidence and have ethical responsibility to our
communities. It's it's educational at times. It's where
we want people to take information and use it for their
own purposes and and for the future. It can inform policy.
It can try to debunk and and keep people safe, from from,
information and then help them make good decisions. It's it's a
million different things with with potential, depending on the
use cases.
Alex Dainis: Yeah. My fun answer is often that I get to talk to
scientists all day and then be loud about it on the internet.
But that comes from a place where I want to try and give
people the vocabulary and the knowledge and the ability to
sort of look at their world in a new way. And the best way that I
can do that is through science.
Trace Dominguez: Did you know the term science communicator
before you became one? Because that I did not know that that's
what I was doing for maybe three years that I was doing it.
Alex Dainis: Oh, yeah. I would say I didn't I did not hear that
term until I had been doing it for about five years. I truly
did not know it was a thing until I had just been I I
started just by making YouTube videos about science as a hobby
and it really was not until about four or five years in that
I was like, a, other people do this. And they've thought about
better ways to do it than I have. And b, like, this is a
field that has research about it, that has best practices,
that has, like, all this other stuff behind it.
Yeah. That was when I learned the term science communication.
I did not know it was a thing.
Joe Hanson: You look back, if you take a historical
perspective on this too, you know, every science
communication conversation must invoke the name of Carl Sagan
within the first five minutes. So we'll go ahead check out.
Mike Rugnetta: We did it. That's a
Joe Hanson: good If you look back at the time that he was on
The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and publishing the the
first great Cosmos series, He was a popularizer of science.
That's what people called him. And there's this sort of, like,
inherent framing there that that science is this sort of
underdog, like like, hated, you know, like, bullied nerdy thing
that needs to be helped out of its and and and get that
makeover. Just take off those glasses, and everybody would
would would fall in love with it. And then there were people
who were science writers and science journalists in this sort
of very serious gray suit kind of newspaper attitude of the
thing.
And then you had your sort of like essayists and people that
are focusing on the beautification of nature and the
Rachel Carsons of the world. And I think that that has sort of
converged into this term that is kind of hard to put a finger on
because it encompasses all of those things and more.
Alex Dainis: And I think it's changed quite a bit over the
past ten, fifteen years that we've all been doing this as
well. Because I remember hearing Ed Young, who's an incredible,
you know, science journalist and writer, talk about this at one
point in time where he made the distinction about a decade ago
that science journalists should be and can be critical about
science whereas he felt that science communicators were sort
of in that science popularizers sphere. But I think that's
changed. I think all of us as science communicators do feel
like we are critical of science at times and do try and take
that more skeptical lens. But I I think that that was not
considered part of it a decade ago.
Trace Dominguez: I totally agree. I think Joe listed so
many things right off the bat. Right? And I think one of the
things though that science communicators also do is they're
part of the organization of science itself. There are
science communicators who work for industry, whether it's in
commercial or maybe they work in academia or maybe they work for
a science organization like Alex is working for American Chemical
Society.
So she's involved in the sciences directly almost as like
an outreach component. I do think there is a line between,
like, science journalists in in at least the science
journalists' minds and science communicators. But I think the
science communicator umbrella is is, like, above them whether
they acknowledge it or not. Right? They are communicating
about science.
They're educating the public, but they're doing it from kind
of like like, they're trying to do it from an island looking at
it as opposed to being amongst it. And I think science
communicators weighed in there. And some of them are hyper
involved. Some of them are more kind of out on the on the fringe
looking in. It's such a broad term that it kinda took
everybody's kinda come to the same place, but it doesn't have
a very solid meaning.
And maybe that's why we hadn't even heard it when we when when
I started making science videos, I was like science enthusiast.
Like, I've used the term curiosity explorer. Like,
because there was just I didn't know. Yeah. I didn't know what
word Mike, you're making a face.
It's the right face.
Mike Rugnetta: It's good audio content for me to just be making
faces back here again. I'm curious if if the three of you
individually, not like thinking about science communication as a
whole or as a monolithic pursuit, but if the three of you
as people have, like, specific objectives that you feel like
you are aiming for within your own individual practice of
communicating with audiences about the sciences.
Trace Dominguez: I've always thought of myself as that first
line, you know, the science teacher that you had when you
were in seventh grade or eighth grade or ninth grade, you know.
I wanna, like, hook you in so that you wanna, like, relay to
somebody who's gonna tell you even more, go even deeper. And
I've also made shows that do that. But like, mostly what I'm
trying to do is get people who may be not science critical
because it's hard to very hard to reach those people, but
science interested. Maybe they were like, I liked science but I
didn't really engage with it in school as much.
Those are the people that are my people. Like, I wanna try and be
like, how about this cool thing? How about that way of looking at
your world? Maybe you really like this thing in your world.
Let me tell you some science about it and see if maybe that
hooks you in to go learn more.
Alex Dainis: Yeah. I got a comment recently on a video
where someone said, I'm so glad I have a scientist I kinda know
that I can ask about this. And I was like, that encapsulates
exactly who I wanna be. I wanna be the scientist you kinda know
that you can ask about something. And I feel like
that's sort of how I set the tone of the work that I do and
some of the goals.
But I think also, I am personally seeing that we are at
what I feel like is kind of like the atomic age part two where
like there's all this science bubbling into like disc ourse
and into all these direct to consumer products that are
coming out. And some of it is good and some of it is bad. And
I just want people to be able to look at things and have a gut
check on, like,
Bernie Sanders: should we be gene editing embryos or should I
be sending my DNA to this company or should I be like, I
Alex Dainis: want people to be able to have that gut check for
themselves. And if they don't have it, I want them to be able
to trust me that I can be like, hey, I can't answer this for
you, but like, here's my gut check on that.
Mike Rugnetta: Walking Geiger counter.
Alex Dainis: Yay. Yeah. I'll take it.
Joe Hanson: The needle is is clicking.
Bernie Sanders: Yeah. Yeah.
Mike Rugnetta: So I think related to all of these answers,
all of these ideas, what I'm interested in specifically in
this conversation is your perspectives on the information
environment as it exists right now, which I mean, talk about
radioactive in some ways. We know it's not great. We all live
in it every day, especially in The United States. But I suspect
that the three of you are, like I don't know if you're exposed
to the, like, weirder or more intense portions of it, or if,
like, there are difficulties that you encounter on a day to
day day to day basis based upon the work that you're doing. But
I imagine that the three of you, the very least, are thinking
about it more than a lot of other people as folks who are
sort of engaged in the pursuit of getting getting people to
understand the world at scale and, you know, the difficulties
of that pursuit and how to ameliorate those difficulties.
So I wanna focus our chat if we can for, like, a little bit on
the forces that you see working with and against the work that
you're currently doing as science communicators.
Joe Hanson: Let me offer an idea here. Because I'm realizing we
all kind of have been doing this for about the same amount of
time. Like, we've all been professionally on the Internet
for about the same amount of time. We're peers. Right?
I think do you guys remember there was this great sort of
utopian idea that the democratization of information
was supposed to make everything better.
Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. We're all stifling laughter. Yeah. Yeah.
That's a bad side.
Trace Dominguez: Let me just lead with it. The number of
times I say the Internet was a mistake is more than zero. Yes.
Joe Hanson: And I think we can all I I we can point to ways
that that's certainly true. Right? I mean, it it has led to
incredible things. But and that's it's like
Bernie Sanders: the
Joe Hanson: most bolded large font underlined but in the
universe there. We I don't think what we accounted for was this
this rise of individualized kind of bespoke realities coming
along with it. And it's sort of science sort of assumed for its
entire history of the past few centuries that it's been, you
know, kind of a real thing that there was a shared universal
reality. And it's kind of a truth that all scientists still
kind of underlies the philosophy of their work, right? That we're
all living in the same place made of the same atoms,
etcetera, etcetera.
But the information environment has moved very far away from
that shared reality.
Mike Rugnetta: Yeah.
Alex Dainis: I I agree with everything that Joe just said
and I think one of the ways that that manifests in my day to day
that is maybe the lower level frustration, but the more
obvious and in my face frustration is that I hate
debunking. I hate making debunking content. It is my
least favorite content to make. I find it, like, soul draining.
But the number of times where I get requests or people send me
things or they're like, is this real?
Is that real? What's going on? Can you make a video about this?
What do I do? Has just skyrocketed.
And I cannot and do not take on most of the things that come in
about that. But the need I'm seeing from the audience has
changed where it used to be just like, cool content. Thanks guys.
Like, this is fun. Mhmm.
And now there are so many people who are just like really
actively searching for like, I don't know what's right or
somebody sent me this or actually, you know, this other
person on the internet who also is wearing a white coat said
this. Sure. And that has just yeah. Sometimes you got to do
it, right? Sometimes I'm like, you know what?
I have a PhD in RNA biology. Let me talk about the RNA. You know,
sometimes I feel like I have to, but I've just seen that increase
in people trying to figure out what those realities are that
Joe was just talking about has surged.
Mike Rugnetta: Do you think those requests come from a place
of, like, there's just more stuff out there that's wrong?
The audience is just more unsure of what they're being shown, or
is it both or some third thing? Like
Alex Dainis: It's probably both, but I do feel I have no data to
back this up, but my gut check is that there's also just so
much more wrong stuff out there. Yeah. Right? When we all started
on the internet, yes, it was democratized but it was also
smaller, you know? And so it was easier for good stuff to drown
out bad stuff and now everyone has the ability to broadcast
their every thought and second into the ether.
And I just feel like the by by the nature of there being more
content, there's going to be more wrong stuff too that's
harder to drift through.
Joe Hanson: Because within these bespoke realities, if you choose
to interact with certain individuals, certain subjects,
certain tones of content, I mean, a million different little
handles that are being pulled by the automated machines that are
feeding it to you, you're going to be able to just continue to
interact with that content. They're never going to see the
debunking. They're never going to see the correction. They're
never going to see the good information that could pre bunk
that, which is a nice technical jargony science communication
term.
Trace Dominguez: I like that.
Joe Hanson: You know, getting ahead of of of the of the
wrongness. And that's the eternal challenge. If someone
sends you something like this, I think because they're appealing
to our authority, they're appealing to our reach as
science communicators, like help me. I'm just, you know, this
little person over here. But if you could talk about it, people
could could understand and and everyone would see the truth.
And the fact is that everyone won't see the truth because we
cannot, in some cases, break through these digital walls or
or in some cases, psychological walls too, which is this totally
other level of challenge that we have in reaching some of the
people that most need to hear this stuff through all the
cognitive biases and and things that we're that we've realized
we haven't cured yet either. Yeah. There's we learned a
Trace Dominguez: lot about this in in like calm theory. Right?
There's like peripheral processing, which hits our
emotions and our feelings a lot more than than central
processing, which is like an ad from the ad council where it's
like, here's this very complicated topic and I'm going
to try and get you interested in it. You know? You know?
Do you have a plan? Let's go find a plan to make a plan so
that you save your self in a buyer. And it's like or we could
just be like, fire, you're gonna die. You know, like, the the the
latter one is gonna get the eyeballs, but it doesn't tell
you anything. Yeah.
And that's that's the Internet is filled with the latter and we
are trying to do some of we're trying to, like, get people from
from that to come over to be like, okay. So there was a fire.
You're right. How could we either prevent the fire or what
you should do when you get involved in a fire. But
Mike Rugnetta: but meanwhile, you are you're competing with
fire watch twenty twenty six.
Trace Dominguez: Where's the
Mike Rugnetta: fire now? It's 30 feet away.
Trace Dominguez: They have, like It's 25 feet away. Theme.
Mike Rugnetta: Give to our Patreon to stop the fire. And
Trace Dominguez: then there's also an AI generated fire on
something important, and everybody's like, no. This is on
fire too. And you're like, no. Then then Alex has to debunk
that that's an AI video, and she can't be talking about how to
save yourself from a fire. And so it's just this constant
battle of of of all of the content.
Right? It used to be that people making content really wanted to
make content. Not that they not that it was hard. Right? There
was that point where there was a crossover between you had to go
buy a camera.
There just wasn't a great camera in your pocket. So if you wanted
to look a certain way, you had to go at least try a little bit.
The the the word of the year for for for me is '20 in 2026 is
friction. There was more friction. Now there is almost no
friction to creating a bit of content.
And that means that everybody's thoughts per what Alex has said,
like, can be broadcasted at any time. And we are terrible as a
as an animal, as a species of distinguishing between two human
beings opinions as to which is better. Like, we're really bad
at that. We see them as, oh, they're both people. They're
equal.
And then we use heuristics like, oh, that one is this type of
person, so I won't believe it. As opposed to the information
they're saying. We're just like trying to find all these
heuristics. And it's so much easier on the Internet for the
robots to do some of that for us, which is never helpful.
Mike Rugnetta: Is that what accounts for, like I never had
to deal with this in, like, my earlier Internet days, but I
think I saw each of you do it in one way or another. Just like
talk against, say, flat earth theory or try to convince people
about climate crisis stuff. Right? Like or extinction events
or, like, the importance of biodiversity, things like this,
which is like, these are topics that would be considered
controversial for a narrow stripe of an audience and which
you would have to speak carefully around, but which
generally were understood to be ideas and theories and
situations worth discussing and that held water and that, again,
like, reflected some aspect of reality. And it feels like over
the last half a decade or so, like, more and more topics of
increasing granularity have taken on the political valence
that these large topics at one point held.
And just hearing you talk, Trace, about, like, being in
this, you know, the infinite amphitheater, basically,
subjected to everybody's thoughts and opinions at all
times, trying to use our dumb animal brain to sort through
into, like, what's, you know, what's important. I wonder if
these two things are, like, can explain one another a little
bit.
Joe Hanson: Sometimes I ask myself why people want to know
true things. And for it for certain, who knows,
psychological profiles, upbringings, you know, it could
be the way we're born, the way we're educated. For some people,
for whatever reason, we want to know true things because it just
gives us a better true picture of the universe. We can make
better decisions that that lead us to better success. Maybe it's
adaptive.
Maybe it's evolutionary.
Trace Dominguez: It's so satisfying. It's just satisfying
to like, no. It feels good to be like, I'm on solid footing.
Joe Hanson: But I think for other people, they don't share
that basic that basic perspective. And what they want
to believe become these sort of little external signifiers. They
become sort of like human bumper stickers. And the Flat Earth
example is just a perfect example of this. I promised long
ago I will never make a Flat Earth debunking video.
The world just does not need this because the people who who
find themselves at Flat Earth conventions and who find
themselves as part of these online communities did not find
their way there because they had some genuine scientific process
that led them to observations that this is the only remaining
truth. They turn out to be people who are seeking community
because they were excluded from other parts of society. People
who have had very difficult traumatic experiences. People
with very challenging psychological profiles. People
with really difficult histories with information and being and
belonging and feeling like they were seen to be valuable.
And the community took them in and they adopted an idea that is
frankly beyond belief for many of us in order to stay belonging
in that community. And it's the perfect example of those sort of
signifiers that that people will choose to wear despite how
irrational they may seem to the rest of us.
Mike Rugnetta: And like, I think sure, like, changing of the mind
as a exhibit of weakness too. Right? Is a huge part of it.
Right? Change is weak.
Alex Dainis: Yes. And I think that's something I think about
this a lot that when I was, I don't know, in middle school and
I'm gonna get the politician wrong. But like the biggest
thing that everyone was like, he's
Bernie Sanders: a flip flopper. Right?
Alex Dainis: And that was the worst possible thing you could
be was a flip flopper, was to change your mind. Once you had
an opinion, you had to stick by it. And that really at like
nine, 10, or whatever stuck with me so hard that like, well, once
you believe something, you have to stay with it. And it wasn't
until I became a scientist really where I was like, oh, no
no no. Like changing your mind when you get new information is
the best thing you can do.
But there was so much social pressure against that for so
long. And I think people still feel that pressure to remain
within communities. And I agree with you, Joe, that the world
does not need Joe Hanson to make a Flat Earth video.
Mike Rugnetta: Right? Like, we don't need that. Us,
Alex Dainis: it would be great. But what we do need and what I
think is compelling and is helpful is people who were in
those communities and have left talking about what changed their
mind and why they left and how they found new community and
that kind of thing. So I think about that a lot that like, you
know, none of us have been to my knowledge flatters. None of us
have been anti vaxxers. Right?
But like where are those spaces where we can amplify voices or
try and lend our own voice to like, hey, I changed my mind and
it was okay and it was a good thing and like talk about that
process more. Because I also think that from outside of
science, people don't see that. Right? They look at science and
all they see is, you know, the headline that says scientists
said x. And when they see scientists change their mind in
light of updated data, like at the beginning of the pandemic
where stuff was updating all the time because we were learning
more, I think people saw that and thought, oh, you lied last
week.
Oh, you didn't know what you were talking about because now
you're saying a different thing. And I think we just need to do a
better job of modeling that as scientists that, like, no, no.
Like, Pluto was a planet. Now Pluto's not a planet, and here's
why, and it's okay.
Trace Dominguez: Yeah. My dad growing up, he's a very nerdy
man, but he has, you know, he had planted flags in certain
ways like everybody on, like, opinions. And one of those, you
know, I think the pandemic is an easy one to find those moments
of, like, you say flip flopping. But he was like, I don't know if
I should eat eggs. I don't think I trust whether or not any of
the, science is right on eggs.
Because throughout his life, he had heard eggs were bad and were
bad for your cholesterol, and then eggs were good for you, and
then eggs were bad for you again. And it was a nuanced
discussion that scientists were having. But to your initial
question about forces against, I have a thing that I talk to
people about when we talk about science communication, and that
is using science words, which make somebody feel like they
have more authority. But because you are using terms that
scientists might use, whether they are real or fake, They
sound science y enough. And so, like, pop science, the coverage
of science outside of science communication in local news or
in blogs or in people who just, again, have a camera and pointed
at themselves because they saw a study somewhere, and now they
wanna talk about the headline that they saw.
And they're like, scientists say this. And it's like, but you
didn't but it's been a nuanced discussion that scientists have
been having for a while, and you're just seeing one teeny
tiny bit of it. And so my dad has been victim of that and
still doesn't know whether eggs are healthy for him. He will eat
them, but, like, doesn't know and doesn't know who to trust on
it. And he is a smart man.
So it's like, you can fall for this pretty easily if you only
read a little bit. And it's hard to ask people to read more.
More.
Joe Hanson: Yeah. There's a comfort with certain feelings
that that and and and mental states that a person has to
develop. And these are like a muscle, they're like an exercise
you have to do because they are inherently uncomfortable. Like,
why do we watch to the end of a movie? Because we don't like
unresolved tensions and questions about the universe,
okay?
Like we want to wrap things up. It's sort it's it's a it's a
natural human instinct. Right? And we don't like our our
identities challenge. We we we we love our families.
We love our communities. We love where where we're from. I have a
completely irrational love for several sports teams that I
could never logically defend during their worst seasons.
Okay? But I continue to hate the other guy because it feels right
and human.
And these are all things that we do. There's a necessary kind of
humility that that must enter the game in in in order to
develop that comfort with changing your mind. Everybody
finds themselves in these situations right now, right?
Whether you're arguing online or at Thanksgiving or whatever.
Right?
You're everyone's having these conversations about science and
what's right and what's wrong. And no. No. This is the truth.
And your uncle's like,
Bernie Sanders: oh, no. That's gonna be I I saw it somewhere.
Joe Hanson: Well, try this. And it's so illustrative for, I
think what it takes to start to chip away at these hardening
challenges is to ask, what would it take for you to change your
mind? And it's often very effective because it involves it
asks somebody to do this self reflection of if there is
reasoning involved, what is that reasoning? And maybe inside of
their head, they're realizing there isn't as much reasoning as
they thought to begin with. It makes it a personal kind of
effort and a proactive effort on their part, rather than feeling
like they're reacting to attack and these things that can bring
up defenses.
Trace Dominguez: Yeah. And to your point from earlier, those
attacks, as we all know as science communicators, and maybe
it doesn't need to be said in our circles, but if you're not
in the world of science communication, stating facts at
people, telling them that they're wrong, debunking things
will not change anyone's mind. It it does not work. There are
reams of pages of studies. There are more PDFs than you can fit
in your computer on this specific topic.
Right? I don't know. I don't have a barrels of ink. There's
no barrels of ink anymore. So I don't really like in the same so
I don't really know how to say we've had spilled barrels of ink
on this.
But like, there's so much study of of this will not work. But
what does work is exactly what Joe's talking about. Right? Is
getting kind of going around the logical argument that most
science communicators are like, well, I can make this. You know,
I can tell you about you know, Alex can talk about mRNA and how
it works all day, but that's not what the person listening might
need in order to actually learn about m m mRNA.
And that good science communicators, the best ones,
you know, the Sagans, if you will, and, like, they appeal to
your emotion and they give you some logical information. I made
a medium good video about this where it was just like, just ask
questions. Don't even try and talk to people about what you're
thinking about and your logic. Just ask them where they get
their foundations of their thoughts.
Alex Dainis: One of the things that has changed a lot about how
I think about science communication over the past few
years is reading about deep canvassing techniques, which
were a whole bunch of techniques developed by the LGBTQ center in
Los Angeles when gay marriage was on the ballot and instead of
just sending people around to be like, do you support this? Yes
or no? They would send people out and have them have the goal
of having conversations that required both parties to ask
questions and both parties to share personal anecdotes. And it
massively changed people's minds about these topics. And so I
have not found a way to make this sound less, like, VC tech
deck, like, and I'm so sorry.
But I have tried to start thinking about it less as
science communication and more as science conversation. Wow.
Wow. Which I know and I hate it. I hate it so much.
Wow. But, like, when can I converse with someone? When can
I have a conversation instead of me just talking at them? And so
I spend a lot of time now in the comment sections.
Mike Rugnetta: I was gonna say, which is a challenge from a a
broadcast medium like Yeah. Like Instagram. Right? Or Yeah.
Alex Dainis: Yeah. It's it's super hard. And so I've I've I
haven't figured out exactly the right way to do it yet, but I
spend more time in the comment sections. I try and have a lot
more conversations in person. Like, I really would love to
shift more of the work that I do away from the Internet and into
in person so I can just be talking with people.
Joe Hanson: I had the most charming experience a couple of
weeks ago. I got kind of, you know, the PTA at school finds
out that you're a scientist with with a YouTube channel. You get
asked to do stuff. And I went to the STEM night at school, we're
promoting science, the science fair exhibits are out, the book
fair is going on. It's just a celebration of learning.
Mike Rugnetta: Like, can
Joe Hanson: you do something? Well, yeah. And what I decided
to do mostly because I had no time to prepare was set up this
like Charlie Brown
Trace Dominguez: Yes.
Joe Hanson: Psychiatrist. He it. Knew it.
Mike Rugnetta: Did you do ask a scientist? Yes. Said,
Speaker 2: right there.
Joe Hanson: Zero sense. And I just sat there and had kids walk
up and ask anything that they wanted. There was nothing was
off limits from like the kindergartners all the way
through their older siblings. Even parents were jumping in and
just became this incredible little congregation of people
hearing other people's questions. And I could see these
moments of people realizing that, oh, I actually kinda
wondered that, like, you know, those eyebrows go up at this
feel and realizing that their curiosity wasn't just theirs and
and kids getting over that anxiety of thinking that it's
bad to ask a question.
Bernie Sanders: I'm not really only person
Joe Hanson: who doesn't know this stuff. And it really,
really charming and felt positive. And there's just,
there's no there's no website for that.
Mike Rugnetta: These all sound like answers to the question
that I was gonna ask next, which is like, what do you do,
especially, like, right now where there is an administration
that is doing a lot to erode as much trust as they possibly can
in the institutions that practice and forward and fund
and communicate science so that you then get people being like,
oh, this is sort of related to what you were just saying,
Trace. Like, people being like, oh, scientists? You mean the
people who study gay frogs or whatever? You know, the old Alex
Jones line or, like, what was the most recent paper that they
that they paraded around, like, studying transgender mice, like
gender in mice? People like, what are we why are we spending
money on that sort of thing?
I guess if you're asking, like, what do you do when someone
starts to focus on those things, you know, that their trust in
these institutions has been so eroded. You just ask them why,
and you allow them space to be curious and to ask questions and
hope that they'll take the opportunity.
Trace Dominguez: Yeah. Well, you can't make them take the
opportunity. Right? Like, we we Joe mentioned a couple of times.
Right?
Some people either don't have the interest. They don't have
the wherewithal to have the conversation. They may not have
the information, like, bench and a deep enough informational
bench to understand the information that they are
presented with, but everybody understands their own opinion.
Whether they understand it well is what I think asking people
questions helps do. Are we gonna put data centers in space?
Do you want there to be? Like because I they have an opinion
whether they know it or not.
Bernie Sanders: And Well, like, what
Trace Dominguez: about starts the conversation.
Mike Rugnetta: What about the stuff that's like what about
vaccines? Like, stuff that's not, like, fun and neat, but
stuff that's like, listen. This is actually, like, kind of
important.
Trace Dominguez: I have a friend who is science communicator, and
I'll let her tell her own story at some point. But we were
having drinks, and we were talking about this exact thing.
And she had a family member who was an anti vaxxer and had was
having her first kid. And she did exactly what I think she did
the exact right thing. She spent years talking to her family
member about all of their anxieties about vaccines and
their kids are vaccinated now.
And so it's just like, you can change minds. It takes a lot of
effort and a lot of time. And it's not always fun conversation
because it was like, the person doesn't always believe you or is
like, well, you're just saying that because you're being paid.
And it's like, paid by whom? What am I supposed to do?
Show you a screenshot of my bank account? Like, I can't like,
what? Why do you think that? Who told you that? Where did that
Bernie Sanders: come from?
Mike Rugnetta: You know? God, I wish.
Bernie Sanders: I yeah. That'd be great. Except for it wouldn't
Trace Dominguez: be because then I wouldn't be talking about it
because
Bernie Sanders: I have ethics. But like,
Trace Dominguez: you know, just it's tough. Because you have to
get people interested in order for them to even want to listen.
Joe Hanson: And that example you gave was was so perfect because
it wasn't the American Academy of Pediatrics that delivered
that message. It was someone with a different emotional
personal resonance into that individual that was able to
break through. This issue of institutional distrust and decay
of trust in institutions is not a passive process. Right? This
is an this is actively being encouraged in many ways by many
powerful people and many powerful organizations.
But within that, I think those people even work are
capitalizing on something that is is much broader than science
and the challenges we face as science communicators. We are
coming out of a generation long challenge to trust in
institutions from forever wars to economic inequality being
screwed by the system with healthcare and education in so
many ways and people seeing promised opportunity not
delivered. And there is this undercurrent of cynicism and
distrust in society that people are capitalizing on and science
is one of the victims. So it's not unique to this field, this
challenge that we face. People are just figuring out how to use
that attitude against science in many ways.
I have a pet theory that is like completely unproven at this
point, but I think this totally explains the Internet trope of
people holding little tiny mics when they don't have to in
videos. Okay. Come on. Videos in their car.
Trace Dominguez: Okay. I love that. Okay?
Bernie Sanders: Yeah. You could very
Joe Hanson: well compensated influencers are choosing to
record their videos in their car and holding tiny microphones in
front of their face. And I'm just like, why? You don't have
to do it that way. But what these are, I think, are these
external signals that I'm just like you. I'm just on your
level.
I'm not one of those other people up there that's got a big
professional microphone and studio that's recording
something, you know, real fancy and top down authority. I'm one
of you and I've got access to that secret information that's
just between you and me. And there are a million little
things that we could pick out. Some of these people might be
doing these things and sending these signals on purpose. Some
of them might be doing it without even realizing they are,
just to try to make a thing that looks right in their community.
But I think that it's moved authority from being a place of,
you know, having sole access to information or very specialized
training or spurt and titles to where authority is now, are you
a part of my community? Is that why and that is the greatest
signal to some people about why I should or can trust you.
Alex Dainis: Yeah. I think there's something interesting in
there too. And I agree with what both of you were just saying of
we also, as strategic science communicators, can and do use
those things. Right? We also have versions of the work that
we do that are a little more chill and we're just chatting
and we're just using an informal tone.
And I think that it's so hard to describe to people that like, no
no, I'm doing it for good. Right? I'm doing it because my
motive is good and they're doing it and it's wrong. But it's
effective. And so, you know, I think it goes back to like how
do you how do you get around that?
How do you change people's minds? I do think that there's
part of it that the word authenticity, right, like being
a whole human. But I was talking with a scientist who, you know,
he runs a research lab. He's not a science communicator. But his
whole goal is to tell people that his job is just a job.
Right? And like he goes to work, he does science, he comes home,
he plays with his kids, he eats dinner, he does a little more
science, he goes to bed. And he tries to really frame it as
like, you can anyone can relate to that. Right? That they go to
work, they do their job, and they come home.
And that framing science as just another job has been very
effective for people being like, oh yeah, like, I could also do
that. I just chose to do this other job. So I do think that
there are ways to use that and do that that are effective and
that are modeling that we are all just people who have good in
well, most of us have good intentions. But it does feel I
will say that sometimes it feels weird to use those things that I
do use all the time and be like, but I'm doing it for the right
reasons.
Trace Dominguez: It does feel sometimes like I'll grab a a dry
erase marker and and use it as a microphone or whatever. And it
feels a little bit like, how do you do fellow kids like Steve
Buscemi? You know? But but that's you're meeting people
where they are. Right?
You're meeting people where they are and doing exactly what
you're both talking about where you're like, how can I get past
people's defenses just enough to hook them in, to get them
interested in this strange thing about the world that they
already live in and that they probably experience every day?
And so I'm if I have to put on a banana suit and go into the into
there and do it, I'm gonna do it. If you are being objective,
it's a little disingenuous, but so is all media in some on the
most objective. Right? Like, people saying, like, oh, well, I
was watching Andor, and it just looked like sets.
It didn't look like and it's like, all TV is like that.
That's just what TV is. I I
Mike Rugnetta: I don't know how I feel about that Andor show. It
feels like they're trying to tell a story. Yeah. They're
trying
Bernie Sanders: to tell they're trying
Trace Dominguez: to tell me something,
Bernie Sanders: and I
Trace Dominguez: don't know how I feel about it.
Alex Dainis: And it's just Can can I tell you my best banana
suit story of the past year? Please. Was that I did a brand
deal that makes, on the face, no sense for me with Doctor.
Squatch soap when they released a soap that reportedly had
Sydney Sweeney's bathwater in it. And I made a video about
they sent me the soap.
I made a video about the soap because I got to talk about the
fact that there's DNA in almost every single one of your cells.
And so I reached an audience that did not care about DNA.
They cared about Sydney Sweeney and they cared about soap. But I
got to I got sixty seconds to tell them a little bit about
DNA. And those videos hit, you know, a million views kind of
things because people cared about Sydney Sweeney.
But that was a million people who otherwise were not gonna
think about DNA that day and I just got a little fact in there.
Bernie Sanders: And so sometimes I do think
Alex Dainis: that like meeting people where they're at can be
weird can be weird spots. That's weird. But like, you can put DNA
in there.
Bernie Sanders: Why can't we think about both? Yeah. Exactly.
Right?
Trace Dominguez: Why not both? Porcainulostos, as they say.
Mike Rugnetta: When we all first met, there was this sort of like
separation, I think, between two content types. There were
science communicators over here, and then there were and this I
don't know if this phrase has ever been said, but like
humanities communicators over here.
Trace Dominguez: Oh.
Mike Rugnetta: One of the things that I heard as someone who made
a show about popular culture and philosophy was like, would hear
from a lot of people who would consider themselves, say, Vsauce
fans or Veritasium fans, etcetera, etcetera, saying like,
well, I'm not gonna watch that. That's political. You know,
you're the show that you make is political. It's it's got
politics. It's like, oh, all it is is opinions, and, like, I'm
not interested in that.
I'm interested in the truth. So that's why I watch science
communicators, something that's not political at all. And so I'm
just curious how it feels over the last ten or twelve years to
just have been handed a political position effectively.
Alex Dainis: I never wanted that. I never wanted to talk
about politics. I hate talking about politics. Right? Like, in
in my personal life, I, you know, hated talking about it,
didn't wanna ever talk about it online.
But then it became impossible not to. I was like, oh, it is I
mean, yes, it affects our daily lives all the time but like, it
is now so overwhelmingly affecting science, how can I
continue to do science communication legitimately and
not talk about it? But I I still hate it, like I do it because
it's important. But that's another part of the job that has
absolutely changed that I I never wanted, I wanted to avoid
until truly it became just unavoidable.
Joe Hanson: I mean, you know, politics will find you if you
don't find it first. Right? I mean, it's it'll it'll whether
it's stomping on your neck or or what. But I do think science for
a long time, the community of science told itself a story that
it was somehow above or separated from all these things.
Maybe that was the comfort with just having more funny than you
knew what to do with.
Maybe it was the place of scientists and society being
like this weird nerd priesthood in terms of how people looked at
them. But science is inherently political. I mean, it's a
measure of where we put priorities and resources and
what we think is important for society to be interested in and
the uses of those things and what they could do to people and
places and and and culture. There there are numerous stories
throughout history where people where you've had the the traffic
accident version of science colliding with with politics,
whether it's the atomic bomb or or, you know, thimerosal or or
these many, many famous failures of science. So to for us to have
thought at one point that we know, no, we will never find me.
It feels a little naive in retrospect. Like, it it was
always there. You know, we're not separate from society. It is
not this magical work that we do.
Mike Rugnetta: And you don't have to shoulder that position
for your audience either, it sounds like.
Joe Hanson: I mean, that is one of the challenges too, to remain
To have a scientific perspective is also sort of asking somebody
to have a, you know, to not take the personal perspective. So
that is, I think that's the real challenge that we find ourselves
in is to separate the personal and our own investments and the
ways that could affect us personally from the sterility of
the facts and the reason. But, you know, reason is a magical
idea that no one's quite figured out and gotten, you know,
something we all kind of orbit and never fall into. And so a
bit of us as people will always be involved there. It affects
our perspectives on things and how we interpret information.
We can look back at the history of science for hours and hours
if you want to and look at cases where people believe that
science is this sort of ethereal thing floating above the rest of
society, but it is influenced by our priorities and our
unconscious biases in ways that we have to be honest with. And
so I think putting that word I back into science and science
communication has been a really important development that we
like, we are part of this. We're all we are figuring it out along
with you. And we're honest about our mistakes like real humans
are. That that makes us unique and I think makes what we're
doing maybe a little more relatable and honest than
anything else out there.
Trace Dominguez: I think about a panel that Joe was on so often
in an early VidCon, how to be wrong on the Internet. Joe knows
the panel. We were all there. It was great. There was a YouTuber
there who used to make listicles about stuff that was sometimes
science, and he said, I just leave it up.
I don't care.
Mike Rugnetta: I almost brought up that panel in this
conversation a few minutes ago. Also think about good panel.
Joe Hanson: I cannot drag his name through the mud. I mean, if
Trace Dominguez: you want to, I'm I we can. But like, I don't
even know if he makes videos anymore. I, you know, he's not
in my algorithm. But the point is being wrong on the Internet
is so important for us and it's not always important for, you
know, you think that Alex Jones talking about gay frogs is
worries whether he's gonna be wrong or not in his next
episode? He was like, well, last episode I have a I just have a
correction I wanna make that it they weren't making the frogs
gay.
It was actually salamanders. They were the it wasn't frogs.
Sorry. My mistake. Different you know, my mistake.
Let's move on and talk about something. You know, it's just
like so it's like, some comedian that came across my algorithm
was like, do you think that everyone has impostor syndrome
or just the people who care about their job? Like, if you
have impostor syndrome, it means that you are having a little bit
of metacognition about your work. You're like, am I good
enough to do this? That thought doesn't enter everyone's head.
Alex Dainis: Yeah. And I think that's where you can you can
pepper in as well the like, well, and I was wrong about
this. Or also the I don't know. Right? I think that that's also
incredibly important to model because I think there are so
many people shilling misinformation online who are
like, I know this thing with a 100% certainty.
And I think it's really important to be like, hey, I
don't know the answer to this, but here's how I might find it
out or here's how I'd go about it or in hopefully not even
saying it so directly, but just showing the process of doing
that. I think being able to say I was wrong, I don't know, like,
here's how I feel. I agree with you. I think those are things
that were really not allowed in broadcast communication for a
long time and they are required, I think, to do our job well now.
Trace Dominguez: Yeah. A bit of authenticity like you're
mentioning, but also just a bit of being human. Right? The story
then becomes a little more about the person who's learning your
learning journey, as we said on our podcast once and had a real
fun time trying to say that over and over again. Your learning
journey.
Alex Dainis: Your learning journey is the
Bernie Sanders: whole process of science. Right? Like, science is
how we know, not
Alex Dainis: what we know. Like, I I think modeling that is, the
biggest thing you can do.
Joe Hanson: I I often I I'm often afraid that we're sitting
here sort of gardening through the apocalypse on our little
flower path,
Alex Dainis: know, sort of
Joe Hanson: anxiety falls apart around us. And and we're sitting
here saying this, how beautiful it is to change your mind and
how wonderful it is to celebrate these things. And we and we do.
We, like, we exhibit these things. They're really that that
that that really fundamental mindset is important to all of
us.
But we're also sitting here at a time when there's, you know,
accounts on x called this you that just exist to make fun of
people for things they said in the past that they are now
saying different things in the present. There's this social
pressure in these places to crystallize and make more rigid
the beliefs that how dare you ever think about updating your
your, you know, your beliefs based on new information. It's
bullying in the form of that that flip flopping kind of risk.
Alex Dainis: Mhmm.
Joe Hanson: So we're sitting here, you know, as like in this
David and Goliath sort of setup fighting against those really
intense pressures because, you know, feels good for those
bullies to point and laugh and and and click that like button
and keep promoting that content, especially when you, I don't
know, hypothetically have platforms that may amplify
inorganically content that promotes those kind of emotional
mindsets. But, you know, that's just a hypothetical.
Alex Dainis: I just think that's why you gotta do it yourself.
Right? They can't this you you if you've already this you'd
yourself. And that's why I think we gotta do it because then it's
like, oh, I was wrong, and you just take the wind out of the
sails.
Mike Rugnetta: And what I was gonna say is that I think it's
it's especially important to do that in light of the fact that
the same thing, the sort of entrenching, establishing a
position, and never moving away from it has increasingly become
a characteristic of journalism as all of the institutions that
practice it have been captured by billionaires. So there are
there are a decreasingly many examples of how to do this very
important thing.
Trace Dominguez: I also think we mentioned politics earlier.
Right? And Joe said, you know, if it's gonna come for you
eventually. And I I like to think of it as they came because
they didn't have any other thing to fight with. So, like, if
you're worried about some issue, then politicize it.
And now I can argue with you that it's political and tell you
to stop talking about it because now it's political. Right? Like,
the shape of the planet we're on is not a political position
unless another group of people get together and be like, let's
make this political. Now that it's political, we can tell you
to not talk about it because there's a lot of people who, you
know, don't want you to talk about politics. And it's like
science is funded by governments and people.
National parks are run by governments and funded by
taxpayers. The road is political. The park is
political. The science is political. All of space is
political.
The ocean is political. Like, there is nothing. The health
care, you name it. It is already either funded by or partially
research done by science, which is funded by people, which is
political. So it's like everything is.
But if they want you to not talk about it, what they'll do is
they'll kinda slide underneath it with this is a political hot
button issue now, and we've spent a lot of time trying to
make it so. So then we can tell you you can't talk about it
anymore.
Joe Hanson: Here's the risk of these bespoke realities when
when apathy comes into it. The more you swipe through and don't
interact with something in any algorithm, right, the less
you're gonna see of that thing. So the more that people are, I
don't know, frustrated or maybe even trained or convinced to
avoid this stuff, they're like, ugh, not another thing about
vaccines. Ugh, not another thing about climate change and they're
swiping through to the next, you know, toddler falling down. That
that makes it less likely that they're gonna see that thing
when it really matters.
Because they're building they're they're reinforcing this eat
this reality that's even further and further away from science
and from inner from maybe encountering that content. And
that's a really that's a really sad and and kind of frightening
outlook on the future as as there becomes, you know, four
websites that are ever increasingly customizing your
your your view of reality. But maybe maybe if we're looking for
optimism there, something that we all know is that you're
always encountering some group of people for the first time.
The treadmill of humanity is always bringing new people into
an idea for the first time. And that is one of the things that
sort of keeps me going through all these frustrations and
questions and uncertainties and and face palming moments
throughout being a science communicator over the past
decade plus is that, you know what?
There's always somebody out there who could find this and
have have have my answer be the first answer they ever hear on
this that could frame the way they look at this question for
the rest of their life. And that's a really incredible
opportunity for us that I think just continues to to underscore
how important it is that we continue to do this and don't
kind of give in to these cynical frustrations that that hit us
sometimes.
Mike Rugnetta: Friends, thank you so much for joining me and
having this conversation. We have got through, like, less
than a tenth of what I have written down in my preparation
doc for this. Like, you know, Alex, you mentioned studies
about science communication and books that have been written
about it. I wanna know about that. Trace, I have more
questions about what it's like working for a large
entertainment company doing science communication.
Joe, I would like to spend an hour talking about ask a
scientist by itself. Yes. I I just wanna talk about that. So
maybe we can reconvene at some point in the future and get to,
again, a tenth of this.
Joe Hanson: You name the time and the place. I'll bring the
ask a scientist family to do it.
Mike Rugnetta: Where can everybody who is listening find
you on the Internet? We'll go in introduction order. So Alex,
Trace, and Joe.
Alex Dainis: I'm at Alex Danis on pretty much all platforms,
but also at the American Chemical Society Reactions
channel on YouTube.
Trace Dominguez: I'm at Trace Dominguez on pretty much all the
things. My ones that I use the most are probably Instagram and
threads, but I have a YouTube channel. And then I have my
podcast, That's Absurd, Please Elaborate, which you can get at
That's Absurd show pretty much everywhere. And we release every
Thursday. It's so fun.
And Stargazers, can find by I do too many things. I'm sorry. You
can just go to PBS.
Mike Rugnetta: Please turn on your TV. Maybe Trace will be
there.
Trace Dominguez: Sometimes that happens. Although one time I was
in The Bahamas and I turned it on and Mike was there. So that
was cool.
Bernie Sanders: That was really awesome. Dumpster.
Mike Rugnetta: What? That's fun.
Joe Hanson: I'm at doctor Johansson on pretty much all of
the platforms, but don't LinkedIn me. I I just simply
won't. And on YouTube, can find me at Be Smart or on PBS Terra
channel. You can check out my show overview.
Mike Rugnetta: Thanks, friends. Talk to you soon.
Trace Dominguez: Bye. Bye.
Mike Rugnetta: Bye bye. That is the show we have for you this
week. We're gonna be back here on the main feed on or around
Thursday, March 12, but hark, we streaming. We'll see you at
twitch.tv forward slash the never post on Monday, March 9
for a team chat, which will be edited and released for members
soon after. Speaking of, did you know that you can become a
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You get an ad free feed of the show, you get edits of live
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Neverpost's producers are Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton, and the
mysterious doctor first name last name. Our senior producer
is Hans Buto. Our executive producer is Jason Oberholzer,
and the show's host, that's me, is Mike Grigneta. Teach us about
life gently, implored the little beings and stretched their arms
for love of the other shore. Canto 17 for Diana by Alejandra
Pizarnik.
Neverpost is a production of Charts and Leisure and it's
distributed by Radiotopia.