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Not What You Know, but How You Know: Science Communicators Roundtable · Never Post

• 0:06
  Mike Rugnetta: Friends, hello and welcome to Never Post, a
• 0:10
  podcast for and about the Internet. I'm your host Mike
• 0:12
  Rugnetta, and we have a methodical show for you this
• 0:16
  week. In this episode, I chat with geneticist and science
• 0:20
  communicator Alex Danis, Emmy nominee and science communicator
• 0:24
  Trace Dominguez, and molecular biologist and science
• 0:28
  communicator Joe Hanson about what it's like right now in this
• 0:32
  environment trying to communicate with people about
• 0:38
  science. What helps, what hinders, and what keeps them
• 0:42
  from losing their minds. But first, we're gonna take a quick
• 0:46
  break and you're gonna listen to some ads unless you're on the
• 0:49
  member feed.
• 0:56
  On Wednesday, February 25, the United States Senate Health
• 0:59
  Committee held a confirmation hearing for Casey Means who has
• 1:04
  been nominated by Donald Trump to be the next surgeon general.
• 1:09
  For the unfamiliar, The US surgeon general is often
• 1:11
  referred to as the nation's doctor. They are a commissioned
• 1:16
  officer and the operational head of the United States Public
• 1:19
  Health Service Commissioned Corps. They report to the
• 1:23
  assistant secretary for health who themselves reports to the
• 1:27
  secretary of health and human services who right now is Robert
• 1:32
  f Kennedy junior. The surgeon general is one of the country's
• 1:36
  foremost communicators about health and related topics,
• 1:41
  guiding the country in its understanding of important
• 1:44
  public health issues.
• 1:45
  The health warnings on both cigarettes and alcoholic
• 1:49
  beverages called surgeon general's warnings are perhaps
• 1:53
  two of the more notable impacts made by office holders past. The
• 1:58
  office was established in 1871 and since then every US surgeon
• 2:04
  general has been a licensed physician who finished their
• 2:07
  residency. This may change with Casey Means who attended the
• 2:13
  Stanford University School of Medicine, but dropped out of her
• 2:16
  residency to pursue a career in functional medicine, which
• 2:20
  Wikipedia describes as quote, a form of alternative medicine
• 2:24
  that encompasses many unproven and disproven methods and
• 2:28
  treatments. Citation. Citation.
• 2:31
  Citation. At its essence, it is a rebranding of complementary
• 2:35
  and alternative medicine, citation, and as such is
• 2:40
  pseudoscientific, citation, and has been described as a form of
• 2:45
  quackery. Citation, citation, citation, citation, citation.
• 2:58
  Casey founded a practice in Portland, Oregon which has
• 3:02
  closed. She does not hold a medical license and works now
• 3:05
  mostly as an influencer.
• 3:07
  Her Instagram profile includes photos and clips of her with
• 3:11
  Andrew Huberman, Joe Rogan, Bill Maher, Tucker Carlson, as well
• 3:16
  as longevity specialists. And I think the founder, but I'm not
• 3:20
  sure, of at least one skin care brand whose primary spokesperson
• 3:25
  appears at the moment to be trad wife Vundefrau, Nara Aziza
• 3:29
  Smith. Memes posts take aim at what she calls ultra processed
• 3:34
  foods. She cites sourceless statistics about increases in
• 3:39
  the prevalence of various diseases, upticks in childhood
• 3:42
  onset, this and that, and speaks in an alarming and in this
• 3:47
  administration very familiar tone about all the ways various
• 3:51
  establishment forces conspire to diminish the health of Americans
• 3:55
  or keep them from knowledge about what true health really
• 3:59
  looks like. Like RFK junior and so many others associated with
• 4:04
  the current American administration, there are
• 4:07
  kernels of truth in her criticisms.
• 4:10
  The American health care industry is mismanaged, profit
• 4:13
  driven, exploitative. Many Americans do have trouble
• 4:18
  getting access to nutritional foods, but her responses to
• 4:22
  these issues often lead to more questions than answers. Here's
• 4:27
  one clip of Casey chatting with Joe Rogan. It's a minute and a
• 4:31
  half long, and I'm not gonna edit it down so that you get the
• 4:33
  full, well, experience, I guess.
• 4:40
  Casey Means: We know a lot. We have the technology, the money,
• 4:43
  and the resources to fix all of this, the planet and health, and
• 4:46
  we're not. And that's why I think there's something darker
• 4:50
  happening on, like, the consciousness level. I think
• 4:52
  it's gonna be hard to get our way out of this if we stick to
• 4:55
  partisan politics and quibbling about individual policy ideas. I
• 5:00
  think it has to start with, are we committed to life and to awe
• 5:05
  and to connecting with source and then listening and moving
• 5:09
  our way out of here, or are we not?
• 5:12
  And if we choose not, which is what I think we're doing I mean,
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  I think there's huge light happening. That's why a lot of
• 5:18
  people are interested in this issue right now. But, like, if
• 5:20
  we don't, I do think we're on the road to existential disaster
• 5:23
  because we're that powerful now. Step one is us deciding, like,
• 5:27
  what choice do we wanna make in this lifetime. Do we wanna
• 5:29
  believe that life is a miracle?
• 5:32
  This universe is a miracle. Our bodies are miracles, and we want
• 5:35
  to connect with God in this lifetime. We wanna build and
• 5:38
  respect these temples that are interconnected with the earth to
• 5:41
  do that, or do we not? And, like, that's the choice we have
• 5:45
  right now. And I think we have to take that very seriously.
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  And I think a lot of the political stuff that's
• 5:49
  happening, MAHA, it's all just a reflection of people wanting to
• 5:53
  find a way to fight for life and not knowing how. That's what I
• 5:57
  think is kinda happening here.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: And wanting life to make more sense.
• 6:00
  Mike Rugnetta: Casey does not, at the moment, appear to have
• 6:03
  the votes to be confirmed as surgeon general of The United
• 6:07
  States. Former surgeon general Jerome Adams called her
• 6:11
  nomination incomprehensible. Senate health committee chair
• 6:15
  Bernie Sanders said
• 6:16
  Bernie Sanders: I have very serious questions about the
• 6:19
  ability of doctor Means to be the kind of surgeon general,
• 6:23
  this country needs. Thank you very much.
• 6:25
  Mike Rugnetta: She faced round after round of tough questioning
• 6:28
  in her hearing about the abortion pill, mifepristone,
• 6:32
  about the safety and availability of birth control
• 6:35
  generally, about the importance of vaccinations, specifically
• 6:38
  regarding measles, the flu, and so on. Here is an early exchange
• 6:43
  between her and senator Bill Cassidy, a physician and senior
• 6:48
  United States senator from Louisiana.
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  Speaker 2: And some have been scared to vaccinate their
• 6:53
  children because they've been told incorrectly that vaccines
• 6:57
  cause autism. Do you believe that vaccines, whether
• 7:01
  individually or collectively, contribute to autism?
• 7:06
  Casey Means: Senator Cassidy, you're a physician. I'm a
• 7:09
  physician. The reality is that we have an autism crisis that's
• 7:13
  increasing, and this is devastating to many families.
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  And we do not know as a medical community what causes autism.
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  The administration has just committed a huge amount of
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  funding to look at the exposome of all environmental factors
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  that could be contributing to autism.
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  And until we have a clear understanding of why kids are
• 7:33
  are developing this at higher rates, I I think we should not
• 7:37
  leave any stones unturned.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: There's been a lot of evidence showing that they're
• 7:41
  not implicated. Do you not accept that evidence?
• 7:43
  Casey Means: I do accept that evidence. I also think that
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  science has never settled and I think there is I think that the
• 7:49
  effort to look at comprehensive cumulative exposures, of our
• 7:55
  exposome into what is causing autism is important. And I look
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  forward to seeing those results and sharing the best public
• 8:01
  health information with the American people.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: Well, I got through five out of my seven. So thank
• 8:05
  you for cooperating. Senator Sanders.
• 8:18
  Mike Rugnetta: The phrase science is never settled, the
• 8:21
  way it's deployed feels like a weaponization. This phrase
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  normally means almost the opposite of what it's doing
• 8:30
  here. Science is never settled when spoken by scientists means
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  we commit to our knowledge until evidence leads us to different
• 8:40
  conclusions. When spoken here by means, it smacks of doubt and of
• 8:46
  conspiracy. It may be that Casey Means does not become the
• 8:52
  Surgeon General, but she's gotten this far.
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  Her three hour hearing aired on cable news, on C Span, and so
• 8:59
  on. Her ideas find purchase on the biggest podcasts, on some of
• 9:04
  the largest news networks. She's got nearly 850,000 followers on
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  Instagram and as such our president feels that she may be
• 9:11
  suited as the nation's number one health communicator. Alex,
• 9:17
  Trace, Joe, and I don't discuss Casey Means at all in the
• 9:22
  following conversation, but we do discuss at length and in
• 9:26
  detail the environment that empowered her and sustains her
• 9:31
  relevance. I wanted to get them on as communicators, science
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  communicators specifically, to find out what it's like for them
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  operating in that same environment trying every day to
• 9:46
  engage in truth seeking and publicly committing to science
• 9:51
  that, no, may not be settled, but that doesn't mean that we
• 9:55
  lack confidence in it.
• 9:58
  That doesn't mean that it's wrong. So after a short break,
• 10:04
  me, Alex, Trace, Joe. I've been wanting to make this episode for
• 10:09
  a really long time, so I really hope you enjoy it. Joining me
• 10:28
  are Alex Danis, Trace Dominguez, and Johansson. Alex is a science
• 10:35
  communicator specializing in genetics, biology, and
• 10:37
  chemistry.
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  She's the cohost of the American Chemical Society's series
• 10:41
  reactions and has partnered with the Museum of Science in Boston,
• 10:45
  the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, and many others. She
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  has a PhD in genetics from Stanford. Alex, thanks for
• 10:52
  joining us.
• 10:53
  Alex Dainis: Thanks for having me.
• 10:54
  Mike Rugnetta: Trace Dominguez is an Emmy nominated host,
• 10:57
  writer, and producer of science programming. He's the
• 10:59
  coproducer, writer, and presenter of PBS South Florida's
• 11:02
  show Stargazers, and EP and cohost of the podcast, That's
• 11:06
  Absurd. Please elaborate. He was a longtime producer at Discovery
• 11:10
  Communications and later Seeker Media. Trace has a master's in
• 11:14
  public communication from American University.
• 11:17
  Trace, nice to have you here.
• 11:18
  Trace Dominguez: Thanks.
• 11:19
  Mike Rugnetta: And Joe Hanson is a producer, host, and science
• 11:22
  communicator. He is the creator of Be Smart, an award winning
• 11:25
  YouTube science program produced by PBS Digital Studios, as well
• 11:29
  as the host of Overview, a PBS Terra series about nature and
• 11:33
  earth science, and high school quiz show produced by WGBH. Joe
• 11:37
  has a PhD in cell and molecular biology from the University of
• 11:41
  Texas.
• 11:42
  Joe, nice to see you.
• 11:44
  Joe Hanson: Always a pleasure, Mike.
• 11:45
  Mike Rugnetta: When was the last time all of us hung out
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  together? Was it at a YouTube EDU conference or a VidCon
• 11:53
  perhaps?
• 11:54
  Trace Dominguez: I feel like it was one of those.
• 11:56
  Joe Hanson: Safe bets. Yeah.
• 11:57
  Trace Dominguez: It wasn't a metal show or something like
• 12:00
  that, unfortunately, but it would I wouldn't be surprised to
• 12:02
  see any of us there.
• 12:04
  Mike Rugnetta: We could make it happen. If you guys come to
• 12:05
  Brooklyn, I'll take you out. We can go see some Horrible Noise.
• 12:09
  Alex Dainis: Delightful.
• 12:10
  Mike Rugnetta: And it would be a great time.
• 12:10
  Trace Dominguez: Sounds cathartic.
• 12:11
  Joe Hanson: Great band name.
• 12:12
  Trace Dominguez: I would go see Horrible Noise. Yes. Excellent
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  band name.
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  Mike Rugnetta: So I would love to start maybe frustratingly
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  broad here with a question that you all maybe thought you had
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  gotten past having to answer, which is what is a science
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  communicator? What do you do? What what does your job entail?
• 12:33
  Trace Dominguez: Well, Mike, obviously, we communicate
• 12:35
  science.
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  Mike Rugnetta: But duh. Thanks, Trace.
• 12:40
  Joe Hanson: Well, that's what snides communicators don't do.
• 12:41
  They say duh real loud to people.
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  Alex Dainis: They really shouldn't, but sometimes they
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  do.
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  Joe Hanson: Look, it's certainly a field that's a lot of
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  different things and and that's that's what makes it exciting
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  and challenging. It's it's a bit of a a job title that crosses
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  into journalism at points where we need to be critical and and
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  and weigh evidence and have ethical responsibility to our
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  communities. It's it's educational at times. It's where
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  we want people to take information and use it for their
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  own purposes and and for the future. It can inform policy.
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  It can try to debunk and and keep people safe, from from,
• 13:19
  information and then help them make good decisions. It's it's a
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  million different things with with potential, depending on the
• 13:24
  use cases.
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  Alex Dainis: Yeah. My fun answer is often that I get to talk to
• 13:29
  scientists all day and then be loud about it on the internet.
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  But that comes from a place where I want to try and give
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  people the vocabulary and the knowledge and the ability to
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  sort of look at their world in a new way. And the best way that I
• 13:47
  can do that is through science.
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  Trace Dominguez: Did you know the term science communicator
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  before you became one? Because that I did not know that that's
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  what I was doing for maybe three years that I was doing it.
• 13:59
  Alex Dainis: Oh, yeah. I would say I didn't I did not hear that
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  term until I had been doing it for about five years. I truly
• 14:05
  did not know it was a thing until I had just been I I
• 14:08
  started just by making YouTube videos about science as a hobby
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  and it really was not until about four or five years in that
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  I was like, a, other people do this. And they've thought about
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  better ways to do it than I have. And b, like, this is a
• 14:21
  field that has research about it, that has best practices,
• 14:24
  that has, like, all this other stuff behind it.
• 14:26
  Yeah. That was when I learned the term science communication.
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  I did not know it was a thing.
• 14:31
  Joe Hanson: You look back, if you take a historical
• 14:33
  perspective on this too, you know, every science
• 14:36
  communication conversation must invoke the name of Carl Sagan
• 14:38
  within the first five minutes. So we'll go ahead check out.
• 14:41
  Mike Rugnetta: We did it. That's a
• 14:41
  Joe Hanson: good If you look back at the time that he was on
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  The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and publishing the the
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  first great Cosmos series, He was a popularizer of science.
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  That's what people called him. And there's this sort of, like,
• 14:55
  inherent framing there that that science is this sort of
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  underdog, like like, hated, you know, like, bullied nerdy thing
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  that needs to be helped out of its and and and get that
• 15:05
  makeover. Just take off those glasses, and everybody would
• 15:08
  would would fall in love with it. And then there were people
• 15:11
  who were science writers and science journalists in this sort
• 15:14
  of very serious gray suit kind of newspaper attitude of the
• 15:18
  thing.
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  And then you had your sort of like essayists and people that
• 15:22
  are focusing on the beautification of nature and the
• 15:26
  Rachel Carsons of the world. And I think that that has sort of
• 15:30
  converged into this term that is kind of hard to put a finger on
• 15:35
  because it encompasses all of those things and more.
• 15:37
  Alex Dainis: And I think it's changed quite a bit over the
• 15:41
  past ten, fifteen years that we've all been doing this as
• 15:43
  well. Because I remember hearing Ed Young, who's an incredible,
• 15:47
  you know, science journalist and writer, talk about this at one
• 15:49
  point in time where he made the distinction about a decade ago
• 15:53
  that science journalists should be and can be critical about
• 15:57
  science whereas he felt that science communicators were sort
• 16:00
  of in that science popularizers sphere. But I think that's
• 16:03
  changed. I think all of us as science communicators do feel
• 16:07
  like we are critical of science at times and do try and take
• 16:10
  that more skeptical lens. But I I think that that was not
• 16:14
  considered part of it a decade ago.
• 16:17
  Trace Dominguez: I totally agree. I think Joe listed so
• 16:19
  many things right off the bat. Right? And I think one of the
• 16:22
  things though that science communicators also do is they're
• 16:25
  part of the organization of science itself. There are
• 16:27
  science communicators who work for industry, whether it's in
• 16:31
  commercial or maybe they work in academia or maybe they work for
• 16:34
  a science organization like Alex is working for American Chemical
• 16:37
  Society.
• 16:38
  So she's involved in the sciences directly almost as like
• 16:42
  an outreach component. I do think there is a line between,
• 16:45
  like, science journalists in in at least the science
• 16:49
  journalists' minds and science communicators. But I think the
• 16:51
  science communicator umbrella is is, like, above them whether
• 16:54
  they acknowledge it or not. Right? They are communicating
• 16:57
  about science.
• 16:58
  They're educating the public, but they're doing it from kind
• 17:00
  of like like, they're trying to do it from an island looking at
• 17:03
  it as opposed to being amongst it. And I think science
• 17:06
  communicators weighed in there. And some of them are hyper
• 17:09
  involved. Some of them are more kind of out on the on the fringe
• 17:13
  looking in. It's such a broad term that it kinda took
• 17:17
  everybody's kinda come to the same place, but it doesn't have
• 17:21
  a very solid meaning.
• 17:22
  And maybe that's why we hadn't even heard it when we when when
• 17:25
  I started making science videos, I was like science enthusiast.
• 17:28
  Like, I've used the term curiosity explorer. Like,
• 17:32
  because there was just I didn't know. Yeah. I didn't know what
• 17:34
  word Mike, you're making a face.
• 17:36
  It's the right face.
• 17:37
  Mike Rugnetta: It's good audio content for me to just be making
• 17:39
  faces back here again. I'm curious if if the three of you
• 17:43
  individually, not like thinking about science communication as a
• 17:48
  whole or as a monolithic pursuit, but if the three of you
• 17:52
  as people have, like, specific objectives that you feel like
• 17:57
  you are aiming for within your own individual practice of
• 18:01
  communicating with audiences about the sciences.
• 18:04
  Trace Dominguez: I've always thought of myself as that first
• 18:06
  line, you know, the science teacher that you had when you
• 18:09
  were in seventh grade or eighth grade or ninth grade, you know.
• 18:12
  I wanna, like, hook you in so that you wanna, like, relay to
• 18:17
  somebody who's gonna tell you even more, go even deeper. And
• 18:20
  I've also made shows that do that. But like, mostly what I'm
• 18:25
  trying to do is get people who may be not science critical
• 18:29
  because it's hard to very hard to reach those people, but
• 18:32
  science interested. Maybe they were like, I liked science but I
• 18:35
  didn't really engage with it in school as much.
• 18:37
  Those are the people that are my people. Like, I wanna try and be
• 18:40
  like, how about this cool thing? How about that way of looking at
• 18:44
  your world? Maybe you really like this thing in your world.
• 18:48
  Let me tell you some science about it and see if maybe that
• 18:50
  hooks you in to go learn more.
• 18:52
  Alex Dainis: Yeah. I got a comment recently on a video
• 18:56
  where someone said, I'm so glad I have a scientist I kinda know
• 19:00
  that I can ask about this. And I was like, that encapsulates
• 19:03
  exactly who I wanna be. I wanna be the scientist you kinda know
• 19:07
  that you can ask about something. And I feel like
• 19:10
  that's sort of how I set the tone of the work that I do and
• 19:14
  some of the goals.
• 19:16
  But I think also, I am personally seeing that we are at
• 19:22
  what I feel like is kind of like the atomic age part two where
• 19:25
  like there's all this science bubbling into like disc ourse
• 19:30
  and into all these direct to consumer products that are
• 19:33
  coming out. And some of it is good and some of it is bad. And
• 19:38
  I just want people to be able to look at things and have a gut
• 19:41
  check on, like,
• 19:43
  Bernie Sanders: should we be gene editing embryos or should I
• 19:45
  be sending my DNA to this company or should I be like, I
• 19:48
  Alex Dainis: want people to be able to have that gut check for
• 19:50
  themselves. And if they don't have it, I want them to be able
• 19:53
  to trust me that I can be like, hey, I can't answer this for
• 19:55
  you, but like, here's my gut check on that.
• 19:57
  Mike Rugnetta: Walking Geiger counter.
• 19:58
  Alex Dainis: Yay. Yeah. I'll take it.
• 20:00
  Joe Hanson: The needle is is clicking.
• 20:02
  Bernie Sanders: Yeah. Yeah.
• 20:04
  Mike Rugnetta: So I think related to all of these answers,
• 20:08
  all of these ideas, what I'm interested in specifically in
• 20:12
  this conversation is your perspectives on the information
• 20:16
  environment as it exists right now, which I mean, talk about
• 20:20
  radioactive in some ways. We know it's not great. We all live
• 20:25
  in it every day, especially in The United States. But I suspect
• 20:29
  that the three of you are, like I don't know if you're exposed
• 20:33
  to the, like, weirder or more intense portions of it, or if,
• 20:38
  like, there are difficulties that you encounter on a day to
• 20:42
  day day to day basis based upon the work that you're doing. But
• 20:46
  I imagine that the three of you, the very least, are thinking
• 20:49
  about it more than a lot of other people as folks who are
• 20:54
  sort of engaged in the pursuit of getting getting people to
• 20:59
  understand the world at scale and, you know, the difficulties
• 21:05
  of that pursuit and how to ameliorate those difficulties.
• 21:08
  So I wanna focus our chat if we can for, like, a little bit on
• 21:11
  the forces that you see working with and against the work that
• 21:17
  you're currently doing as science communicators.
• 21:19
  Joe Hanson: Let me offer an idea here. Because I'm realizing we
• 21:23
  all kind of have been doing this for about the same amount of
• 21:26
  time. Like, we've all been professionally on the Internet
• 21:28
  for about the same amount of time. We're peers. Right?
• 21:31
  I think do you guys remember there was this great sort of
• 21:35
  utopian idea that the democratization of information
• 21:39
  was supposed to make everything better.
• 21:41
  Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. We're all stifling laughter. Yeah. Yeah.
• 21:45
  That's a bad side.
• 21:47
  Trace Dominguez: Let me just lead with it. The number of
• 21:49
  times I say the Internet was a mistake is more than zero. Yes.
• 21:54
  Joe Hanson: And I think we can all I I we can point to ways
• 21:56
  that that's certainly true. Right? I mean, it it has led to
• 21:59
  incredible things. But and that's it's like
• 22:03
  Bernie Sanders: the
• 22:03
  Joe Hanson: most bolded large font underlined but in the
• 22:07
  universe there. We I don't think what we accounted for was this
• 22:11
  this rise of individualized kind of bespoke realities coming
• 22:16
  along with it. And it's sort of science sort of assumed for its
• 22:21
  entire history of the past few centuries that it's been, you
• 22:24
  know, kind of a real thing that there was a shared universal
• 22:30
  reality. And it's kind of a truth that all scientists still
• 22:33
  kind of underlies the philosophy of their work, right? That we're
• 22:37
  all living in the same place made of the same atoms,
• 22:40
  etcetera, etcetera.
• 22:42
  But the information environment has moved very far away from
• 22:45
  that shared reality.
• 22:46
  Mike Rugnetta: Yeah.
• 22:47
  Alex Dainis: I I agree with everything that Joe just said
• 22:49
  and I think one of the ways that that manifests in my day to day
• 22:53
  that is maybe the lower level frustration, but the more
• 22:57
  obvious and in my face frustration is that I hate
• 23:00
  debunking. I hate making debunking content. It is my
• 23:03
  least favorite content to make. I find it, like, soul draining.
• 23:07
  But the number of times where I get requests or people send me
• 23:11
  things or they're like, is this real?
• 23:13
  Is that real? What's going on? Can you make a video about this?
• 23:16
  What do I do? Has just skyrocketed.
• 23:18
  And I cannot and do not take on most of the things that come in
• 23:23
  about that. But the need I'm seeing from the audience has
• 23:28
  changed where it used to be just like, cool content. Thanks guys.
• 23:32
  Like, this is fun. Mhmm.
• 23:33
  And now there are so many people who are just like really
• 23:35
  actively searching for like, I don't know what's right or
• 23:38
  somebody sent me this or actually, you know, this other
• 23:41
  person on the internet who also is wearing a white coat said
• 23:44
  this. Sure. And that has just yeah. Sometimes you got to do
• 23:48
  it, right? Sometimes I'm like, you know what?
• 23:50
  I have a PhD in RNA biology. Let me talk about the RNA. You know,
• 23:54
  sometimes I feel like I have to, but I've just seen that increase
• 23:58
  in people trying to figure out what those realities are that
• 24:01
  Joe was just talking about has surged.
• 24:03
  Mike Rugnetta: Do you think those requests come from a place
• 24:05
  of, like, there's just more stuff out there that's wrong?
• 24:10
  The audience is just more unsure of what they're being shown, or
• 24:16
  is it both or some third thing? Like
• 24:19
  Alex Dainis: It's probably both, but I do feel I have no data to
• 24:24
  back this up, but my gut check is that there's also just so
• 24:27
  much more wrong stuff out there. Yeah. Right? When we all started
• 24:30
  on the internet, yes, it was democratized but it was also
• 24:33
  smaller, you know? And so it was easier for good stuff to drown
• 24:38
  out bad stuff and now everyone has the ability to broadcast
• 24:41
  their every thought and second into the ether.
• 24:44
  And I just feel like the by by the nature of there being more
• 24:48
  content, there's going to be more wrong stuff too that's
• 24:50
  harder to drift through.
• 24:52
  Joe Hanson: Because within these bespoke realities, if you choose
• 24:55
  to interact with certain individuals, certain subjects,
• 24:59
  certain tones of content, I mean, a million different little
• 25:02
  handles that are being pulled by the automated machines that are
• 25:05
  feeding it to you, you're going to be able to just continue to
• 25:09
  interact with that content. They're never going to see the
• 25:11
  debunking. They're never going to see the correction. They're
• 25:13
  never going to see the good information that could pre bunk
• 25:16
  that, which is a nice technical jargony science communication
• 25:19
  term.
• 25:20
  Trace Dominguez: I like that.
• 25:20
  Joe Hanson: You know, getting ahead of of of the of the
• 25:22
  wrongness. And that's the eternal challenge. If someone
• 25:25
  sends you something like this, I think because they're appealing
• 25:27
  to our authority, they're appealing to our reach as
• 25:29
  science communicators, like help me. I'm just, you know, this
• 25:32
  little person over here. But if you could talk about it, people
• 25:35
  could could understand and and everyone would see the truth.
• 25:40
  And the fact is that everyone won't see the truth because we
• 25:45
  cannot, in some cases, break through these digital walls or
• 25:50
  or in some cases, psychological walls too, which is this totally
• 25:53
  other level of challenge that we have in reaching some of the
• 25:58
  people that most need to hear this stuff through all the
• 26:00
  cognitive biases and and things that we're that we've realized
• 26:03
  we haven't cured yet either. Yeah. There's we learned a
• 26:06
  Trace Dominguez: lot about this in in like calm theory. Right?
• 26:09
  There's like peripheral processing, which hits our
• 26:12
  emotions and our feelings a lot more than than central
• 26:16
  processing, which is like an ad from the ad council where it's
• 26:20
  like, here's this very complicated topic and I'm going
• 26:22
  to try and get you interested in it. You know? You know?
• 26:24
  Do you have a plan? Let's go find a plan to make a plan so
• 26:27
  that you save your self in a buyer. And it's like or we could
• 26:31
  just be like, fire, you're gonna die. You know, like, the the the
• 26:35
  latter one is gonna get the eyeballs, but it doesn't tell
• 26:37
  you anything. Yeah.
• 26:38
  And that's that's the Internet is filled with the latter and we
• 26:42
  are trying to do some of we're trying to, like, get people from
• 26:46
  from that to come over to be like, okay. So there was a fire.
• 26:50
  You're right. How could we either prevent the fire or what
• 26:54
  you should do when you get involved in a fire. But
• 26:56
  Mike Rugnetta: but meanwhile, you are you're competing with
• 26:58
  fire watch twenty twenty six.
• 27:00
  Trace Dominguez: Where's the
• 27:01
  Mike Rugnetta: fire now? It's 30 feet away.
• 27:02
  Trace Dominguez: They have, like It's 25 feet away. Theme.
• 27:05
  Mike Rugnetta: Give to our Patreon to stop the fire. And
• 27:08
  Trace Dominguez: then there's also an AI generated fire on
• 27:11
  something important, and everybody's like, no. This is on
• 27:14
  fire too. And you're like, no. Then then Alex has to debunk
• 27:17
  that that's an AI video, and she can't be talking about how to
• 27:20
  save yourself from a fire. And so it's just this constant
• 27:24
  battle of of of all of the content.
• 27:27
  Right? It used to be that people making content really wanted to
• 27:32
  make content. Not that they not that it was hard. Right? There
• 27:35
  was that point where there was a crossover between you had to go
• 27:39
  buy a camera.
• 27:40
  There just wasn't a great camera in your pocket. So if you wanted
• 27:43
  to look a certain way, you had to go at least try a little bit.
• 27:45
  The the the word of the year for for for me is '20 in 2026 is
• 27:49
  friction. There was more friction. Now there is almost no
• 27:53
  friction to creating a bit of content.
• 27:55
  And that means that everybody's thoughts per what Alex has said,
• 27:59
  like, can be broadcasted at any time. And we are terrible as a
• 28:05
  as an animal, as a species of distinguishing between two human
• 28:09
  beings opinions as to which is better. Like, we're really bad
• 28:14
  at that. We see them as, oh, they're both people. They're
• 28:16
  equal.
• 28:17
  And then we use heuristics like, oh, that one is this type of
• 28:21
  person, so I won't believe it. As opposed to the information
• 28:23
  they're saying. We're just like trying to find all these
• 28:26
  heuristics. And it's so much easier on the Internet for the
• 28:29
  robots to do some of that for us, which is never helpful.
• 28:34
  Mike Rugnetta: Is that what accounts for, like I never had
• 28:37
  to deal with this in, like, my earlier Internet days, but I
• 28:41
  think I saw each of you do it in one way or another. Just like
• 28:45
  talk against, say, flat earth theory or try to convince people
• 28:51
  about climate crisis stuff. Right? Like or extinction events
• 28:56
  or, like, the importance of biodiversity, things like this,
• 28:59
  which is like, these are topics that would be considered
• 29:04
  controversial for a narrow stripe of an audience and which
• 29:09
  you would have to speak carefully around, but which
• 29:12
  generally were understood to be ideas and theories and
• 29:15
  situations worth discussing and that held water and that, again,
• 29:19
  like, reflected some aspect of reality. And it feels like over
• 29:22
  the last half a decade or so, like, more and more topics of
• 29:28
  increasing granularity have taken on the political valence
• 29:33
  that these large topics at one point held.
• 29:37
  And just hearing you talk, Trace, about, like, being in
• 29:41
  this, you know, the infinite amphitheater, basically,
• 29:44
  subjected to everybody's thoughts and opinions at all
• 29:46
  times, trying to use our dumb animal brain to sort through
• 29:50
  into, like, what's, you know, what's important. I wonder if
• 29:53
  these two things are, like, can explain one another a little
• 29:56
  bit.
• 29:56
  Joe Hanson: Sometimes I ask myself why people want to know
• 30:00
  true things. And for it for certain, who knows,
• 30:05
  psychological profiles, upbringings, you know, it could
• 30:09
  be the way we're born, the way we're educated. For some people,
• 30:12
  for whatever reason, we want to know true things because it just
• 30:17
  gives us a better true picture of the universe. We can make
• 30:21
  better decisions that that lead us to better success. Maybe it's
• 30:24
  adaptive.
• 30:24
  Maybe it's evolutionary.
• 30:25
  Trace Dominguez: It's so satisfying. It's just satisfying
• 30:27
  to like, no. It feels good to be like, I'm on solid footing.
• 30:32
  Joe Hanson: But I think for other people, they don't share
• 30:36
  that basic that basic perspective. And what they want
• 30:41
  to believe become these sort of little external signifiers. They
• 30:46
  become sort of like human bumper stickers. And the Flat Earth
• 30:49
  example is just a perfect example of this. I promised long
• 30:53
  ago I will never make a Flat Earth debunking video.
• 30:57
  The world just does not need this because the people who who
• 31:03
  find themselves at Flat Earth conventions and who find
• 31:06
  themselves as part of these online communities did not find
• 31:09
  their way there because they had some genuine scientific process
• 31:13
  that led them to observations that this is the only remaining
• 31:18
  truth. They turn out to be people who are seeking community
• 31:23
  because they were excluded from other parts of society. People
• 31:25
  who have had very difficult traumatic experiences. People
• 31:28
  with very challenging psychological profiles. People
• 31:31
  with really difficult histories with information and being and
• 31:36
  belonging and feeling like they were seen to be valuable.
• 31:40
  And the community took them in and they adopted an idea that is
• 31:44
  frankly beyond belief for many of us in order to stay belonging
• 31:50
  in that community. And it's the perfect example of those sort of
• 31:53
  signifiers that that people will choose to wear despite how
• 31:57
  irrational they may seem to the rest of us.
• 31:59
  Mike Rugnetta: And like, I think sure, like, changing of the mind
• 32:02
  as a exhibit of weakness too. Right? Is a huge part of it.
• 32:06
  Right? Change is weak.
• 32:07
  Alex Dainis: Yes. And I think that's something I think about
• 32:09
  this a lot that when I was, I don't know, in middle school and
• 32:13
  I'm gonna get the politician wrong. But like the biggest
• 32:16
  thing that everyone was like, he's
• 32:17
  Bernie Sanders: a flip flopper. Right?
• 32:18
  Alex Dainis: And that was the worst possible thing you could
• 32:20
  be was a flip flopper, was to change your mind. Once you had
• 32:24
  an opinion, you had to stick by it. And that really at like
• 32:27
  nine, 10, or whatever stuck with me so hard that like, well, once
• 32:30
  you believe something, you have to stay with it. And it wasn't
• 32:33
  until I became a scientist really where I was like, oh, no
• 32:36
  no no. Like changing your mind when you get new information is
• 32:39
  the best thing you can do.
• 32:41
  But there was so much social pressure against that for so
• 32:45
  long. And I think people still feel that pressure to remain
• 32:48
  within communities. And I agree with you, Joe, that the world
• 32:52
  does not need Joe Hanson to make a Flat Earth video.
• 32:55
  Mike Rugnetta: Right? Like, we don't need that. Us,
• 32:59
  Alex Dainis: it would be great. But what we do need and what I
• 33:01
  think is compelling and is helpful is people who were in
• 33:05
  those communities and have left talking about what changed their
• 33:09
  mind and why they left and how they found new community and
• 33:12
  that kind of thing. So I think about that a lot that like, you
• 33:16
  know, none of us have been to my knowledge flatters. None of us
• 33:19
  have been anti vaxxers. Right?
• 33:21
  But like where are those spaces where we can amplify voices or
• 33:26
  try and lend our own voice to like, hey, I changed my mind and
• 33:29
  it was okay and it was a good thing and like talk about that
• 33:32
  process more. Because I also think that from outside of
• 33:35
  science, people don't see that. Right? They look at science and
• 33:38
  all they see is, you know, the headline that says scientists
• 33:40
  said x. And when they see scientists change their mind in
• 33:44
  light of updated data, like at the beginning of the pandemic
• 33:47
  where stuff was updating all the time because we were learning
• 33:50
  more, I think people saw that and thought, oh, you lied last
• 33:54
  week.
• 33:54
  Oh, you didn't know what you were talking about because now
• 33:56
  you're saying a different thing. And I think we just need to do a
• 33:59
  better job of modeling that as scientists that, like, no, no.
• 34:02
  Like, Pluto was a planet. Now Pluto's not a planet, and here's
• 34:06
  why, and it's okay.
• 34:08
  Trace Dominguez: Yeah. My dad growing up, he's a very nerdy
• 34:12
  man, but he has, you know, he had planted flags in certain
• 34:16
  ways like everybody on, like, opinions. And one of those, you
• 34:20
  know, I think the pandemic is an easy one to find those moments
• 34:24
  of, like, you say flip flopping. But he was like, I don't know if
• 34:27
  I should eat eggs. I don't think I trust whether or not any of
• 34:30
  the, science is right on eggs.
• 34:33
  Because throughout his life, he had heard eggs were bad and were
• 34:35
  bad for your cholesterol, and then eggs were good for you, and
• 34:38
  then eggs were bad for you again. And it was a nuanced
• 34:40
  discussion that scientists were having. But to your initial
• 34:44
  question about forces against, I have a thing that I talk to
• 34:49
  people about when we talk about science communication, and that
• 34:51
  is using science words, which make somebody feel like they
• 34:56
  have more authority. But because you are using terms that
• 34:59
  scientists might use, whether they are real or fake, They
• 35:03
  sound science y enough. And so, like, pop science, the coverage
• 35:08
  of science outside of science communication in local news or
• 35:13
  in blogs or in people who just, again, have a camera and pointed
• 35:17
  at themselves because they saw a study somewhere, and now they
• 35:20
  wanna talk about the headline that they saw.
• 35:22
  And they're like, scientists say this. And it's like, but you
• 35:24
  didn't but it's been a nuanced discussion that scientists have
• 35:27
  been having for a while, and you're just seeing one teeny
• 35:31
  tiny bit of it. And so my dad has been victim of that and
• 35:35
  still doesn't know whether eggs are healthy for him. He will eat
• 35:37
  them, but, like, doesn't know and doesn't know who to trust on
• 35:42
  it. And he is a smart man.
• 35:43
  So it's like, you can fall for this pretty easily if you only
• 35:47
  read a little bit. And it's hard to ask people to read more.
• 35:52
  More.
• 35:52
  Joe Hanson: Yeah. There's a comfort with certain feelings
• 35:54
  that that and and and mental states that a person has to
• 35:57
  develop. And these are like a muscle, they're like an exercise
• 35:59
  you have to do because they are inherently uncomfortable. Like,
• 36:02
  why do we watch to the end of a movie? Because we don't like
• 36:06
  unresolved tensions and questions about the universe,
• 36:09
  okay?
• 36:09
  Like we want to wrap things up. It's sort it's it's a it's a
• 36:12
  natural human instinct. Right? And we don't like our our
• 36:16
  identities challenge. We we we we love our families.
• 36:19
  We love our communities. We love where where we're from. I have a
• 36:21
  completely irrational love for several sports teams that I
• 36:25
  could never logically defend during their worst seasons.
• 36:28
  Okay? But I continue to hate the other guy because it feels right
• 36:33
  and human.
• 36:35
  And these are all things that we do. There's a necessary kind of
• 36:39
  humility that that must enter the game in in in order to
• 36:44
  develop that comfort with changing your mind. Everybody
• 36:47
  finds themselves in these situations right now, right?
• 36:49
  Whether you're arguing online or at Thanksgiving or whatever.
• 36:52
  Right?
• 36:53
  You're everyone's having these conversations about science and
• 36:55
  what's right and what's wrong. And no. No. This is the truth.
• 36:58
  And your uncle's like,
• 36:59
  Bernie Sanders: oh, no. That's gonna be I I saw it somewhere.
• 37:02
  Joe Hanson: Well, try this. And it's so illustrative for, I
• 37:06
  think what it takes to start to chip away at these hardening
• 37:10
  challenges is to ask, what would it take for you to change your
• 37:15
  mind? And it's often very effective because it involves it
• 37:20
  asks somebody to do this self reflection of if there is
• 37:24
  reasoning involved, what is that reasoning? And maybe inside of
• 37:28
  their head, they're realizing there isn't as much reasoning as
• 37:31
  they thought to begin with. It makes it a personal kind of
• 37:35
  effort and a proactive effort on their part, rather than feeling
• 37:38
  like they're reacting to attack and these things that can bring
• 37:42
  up defenses.
• 37:43
  Trace Dominguez: Yeah. And to your point from earlier, those
• 37:45
  attacks, as we all know as science communicators, and maybe
• 37:48
  it doesn't need to be said in our circles, but if you're not
• 37:51
  in the world of science communication, stating facts at
• 37:54
  people, telling them that they're wrong, debunking things
• 37:57
  will not change anyone's mind. It it does not work. There are
• 38:01
  reams of pages of studies. There are more PDFs than you can fit
• 38:05
  in your computer on this specific topic.
• 38:07
  Right? I don't know. I don't have a barrels of ink. There's
• 38:09
  no barrels of ink anymore. So I don't really like in the same so
• 38:11
  I don't really know how to say we've had spilled barrels of ink
• 38:14
  on this.
• 38:15
  But like, there's so much study of of this will not work. But
• 38:19
  what does work is exactly what Joe's talking about. Right? Is
• 38:22
  getting kind of going around the logical argument that most
• 38:26
  science communicators are like, well, I can make this. You know,
• 38:29
  I can tell you about you know, Alex can talk about mRNA and how
• 38:32
  it works all day, but that's not what the person listening might
• 38:35
  need in order to actually learn about m m mRNA.
• 38:39
  And that good science communicators, the best ones,
• 38:41
  you know, the Sagans, if you will, and, like, they appeal to
• 38:45
  your emotion and they give you some logical information. I made
• 38:50
  a medium good video about this where it was just like, just ask
• 38:53
  questions. Don't even try and talk to people about what you're
• 38:57
  thinking about and your logic. Just ask them where they get
• 39:00
  their foundations of their thoughts.
• 39:13
  Alex Dainis: One of the things that has changed a lot about how
• 39:17
  I think about science communication over the past few
• 39:19
  years is reading about deep canvassing techniques, which
• 39:23
  were a whole bunch of techniques developed by the LGBTQ center in
• 39:28
  Los Angeles when gay marriage was on the ballot and instead of
• 39:31
  just sending people around to be like, do you support this? Yes
• 39:34
  or no? They would send people out and have them have the goal
• 39:37
  of having conversations that required both parties to ask
• 39:41
  questions and both parties to share personal anecdotes. And it
• 39:45
  massively changed people's minds about these topics. And so I
• 39:50
  have not found a way to make this sound less, like, VC tech
• 39:56
  deck, like, and I'm so sorry.
• 39:58
  But I have tried to start thinking about it less as
• 40:01
  science communication and more as science conversation. Wow.
• 40:06
  Wow. Which I know and I hate it. I hate it so much.
• 40:08
  Wow. But, like, when can I converse with someone? When can
• 40:13
  I have a conversation instead of me just talking at them? And so
• 40:16
  I spend a lot of time now in the comment sections.
• 40:19
  Mike Rugnetta: I was gonna say, which is a challenge from a a
• 40:22
  broadcast medium like Yeah. Like Instagram. Right? Or Yeah.
• 40:26
  Alex Dainis: Yeah. It's it's super hard. And so I've I've I
• 40:29
  haven't figured out exactly the right way to do it yet, but I
• 40:32
  spend more time in the comment sections. I try and have a lot
• 40:34
  more conversations in person. Like, I really would love to
• 40:38
  shift more of the work that I do away from the Internet and into
• 40:42
  in person so I can just be talking with people.
• 40:45
  Joe Hanson: I had the most charming experience a couple of
• 40:48
  weeks ago. I got kind of, you know, the PTA at school finds
• 40:51
  out that you're a scientist with with a YouTube channel. You get
• 40:55
  asked to do stuff. And I went to the STEM night at school, we're
• 41:00
  promoting science, the science fair exhibits are out, the book
• 41:03
  fair is going on. It's just a celebration of learning.
• 41:06
  Mike Rugnetta: Like, can
• 41:06
  Joe Hanson: you do something? Well, yeah. And what I decided
• 41:10
  to do mostly because I had no time to prepare was set up this
• 41:13
  like Charlie Brown
• 41:15
  Trace Dominguez: Yes.
• 41:15
  Joe Hanson: Psychiatrist. He it. Knew it.
• 41:18
  Mike Rugnetta: Did you do ask a scientist? Yes. Said,
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: right there.
• 41:20
  Joe Hanson: Zero sense. And I just sat there and had kids walk
• 41:25
  up and ask anything that they wanted. There was nothing was
• 41:28
  off limits from like the kindergartners all the way
• 41:30
  through their older siblings. Even parents were jumping in and
• 41:33
  just became this incredible little congregation of people
• 41:36
  hearing other people's questions. And I could see these
• 41:39
  moments of people realizing that, oh, I actually kinda
• 41:43
  wondered that, like, you know, those eyebrows go up at this
• 41:46
  feel and realizing that their curiosity wasn't just theirs and
• 41:50
  and kids getting over that anxiety of thinking that it's
• 41:55
  bad to ask a question.
• 41:56
  Bernie Sanders: I'm not really only person
• 41:57
  Joe Hanson: who doesn't know this stuff. And it really,
• 42:00
  really charming and felt positive. And there's just,
• 42:03
  there's no there's no website for that.
• 42:07
  Mike Rugnetta: These all sound like answers to the question
• 42:09
  that I was gonna ask next, which is like, what do you do,
• 42:13
  especially, like, right now where there is an administration
• 42:18
  that is doing a lot to erode as much trust as they possibly can
• 42:24
  in the institutions that practice and forward and fund
• 42:28
  and communicate science so that you then get people being like,
• 42:32
  oh, this is sort of related to what you were just saying,
• 42:33
  Trace. Like, people being like, oh, scientists? You mean the
• 42:36
  people who study gay frogs or whatever? You know, the old Alex
• 42:40
  Jones line or, like, what was the most recent paper that they
• 42:43
  that they paraded around, like, studying transgender mice, like
• 42:48
  gender in mice? People like, what are we why are we spending
• 42:51
  money on that sort of thing?
• 42:52
  I guess if you're asking, like, what do you do when someone
• 42:55
  starts to focus on those things, you know, that their trust in
• 42:58
  these institutions has been so eroded. You just ask them why,
• 43:01
  and you allow them space to be curious and to ask questions and
• 43:05
  hope that they'll take the opportunity.
• 43:07
  Trace Dominguez: Yeah. Well, you can't make them take the
• 43:09
  opportunity. Right? Like, we we Joe mentioned a couple of times.
• 43:13
  Right?
• 43:13
  Some people either don't have the interest. They don't have
• 43:17
  the wherewithal to have the conversation. They may not have
• 43:19
  the information, like, bench and a deep enough informational
• 43:23
  bench to understand the information that they are
• 43:25
  presented with, but everybody understands their own opinion.
• 43:29
  Whether they understand it well is what I think asking people
• 43:34
  questions helps do. Are we gonna put data centers in space?
• 43:38
  Do you want there to be? Like because I they have an opinion
• 43:42
  whether they know it or not.
• 43:43
  Bernie Sanders: And Well, like, what
• 43:44
  Trace Dominguez: about starts the conversation.
• 43:45
  Mike Rugnetta: What about the stuff that's like what about
• 43:47
  vaccines? Like, stuff that's not, like, fun and neat, but
• 43:50
  stuff that's like, listen. This is actually, like, kind of
• 43:53
  important.
• 43:54
  Trace Dominguez: I have a friend who is science communicator, and
• 43:56
  I'll let her tell her own story at some point. But we were
• 43:59
  having drinks, and we were talking about this exact thing.
• 44:01
  And she had a family member who was an anti vaxxer and had was
• 44:06
  having her first kid. And she did exactly what I think she did
• 44:10
  the exact right thing. She spent years talking to her family
• 44:15
  member about all of their anxieties about vaccines and
• 44:19
  their kids are vaccinated now.
• 44:22
  And so it's just like, you can change minds. It takes a lot of
• 44:25
  effort and a lot of time. And it's not always fun conversation
• 44:29
  because it was like, the person doesn't always believe you or is
• 44:33
  like, well, you're just saying that because you're being paid.
• 44:35
  And it's like, paid by whom? What am I supposed to do?
• 44:37
  Show you a screenshot of my bank account? Like, I can't like,
• 44:40
  what? Why do you think that? Who told you that? Where did that
• 44:42
  Bernie Sanders: come from?
• 44:42
  Mike Rugnetta: You know? God, I wish.
• 44:44
  Bernie Sanders: I yeah. That'd be great. Except for it wouldn't
• 44:46
  Trace Dominguez: be because then I wouldn't be talking about it
• 44:48
  because
• 44:48
  Bernie Sanders: I have ethics. But like,
• 44:49
  Trace Dominguez: you know, just it's tough. Because you have to
• 44:52
  get people interested in order for them to even want to listen.
• 44:55
  Joe Hanson: And that example you gave was was so perfect because
• 44:59
  it wasn't the American Academy of Pediatrics that delivered
• 45:01
  that message. It was someone with a different emotional
• 45:06
  personal resonance into that individual that was able to
• 45:10
  break through. This issue of institutional distrust and decay
• 45:15
  of trust in institutions is not a passive process. Right? This
• 45:21
  is an this is actively being encouraged in many ways by many
• 45:25
  powerful people and many powerful organizations.
• 45:28
  But within that, I think those people even work are
• 45:31
  capitalizing on something that is is much broader than science
• 45:36
  and the challenges we face as science communicators. We are
• 45:40
  coming out of a generation long challenge to trust in
• 45:46
  institutions from forever wars to economic inequality being
• 45:53
  screwed by the system with healthcare and education in so
• 45:57
  many ways and people seeing promised opportunity not
• 46:00
  delivered. And there is this undercurrent of cynicism and
• 46:05
  distrust in society that people are capitalizing on and science
• 46:09
  is one of the victims. So it's not unique to this field, this
• 46:14
  challenge that we face. People are just figuring out how to use
• 46:17
  that attitude against science in many ways.
• 46:22
  I have a pet theory that is like completely unproven at this
• 46:25
  point, but I think this totally explains the Internet trope of
• 46:30
  people holding little tiny mics when they don't have to in
• 46:34
  videos. Okay. Come on. Videos in their car.
• 46:37
  Trace Dominguez: Okay. I love that. Okay?
• 46:38
  Bernie Sanders: Yeah. You could very
• 46:40
  Joe Hanson: well compensated influencers are choosing to
• 46:43
  record their videos in their car and holding tiny microphones in
• 46:47
  front of their face. And I'm just like, why? You don't have
• 46:49
  to do it that way. But what these are, I think, are these
• 46:53
  external signals that I'm just like you. I'm just on your
• 46:59
  level.
• 46:59
  I'm not one of those other people up there that's got a big
• 47:02
  professional microphone and studio that's recording
• 47:05
  something, you know, real fancy and top down authority. I'm one
• 47:09
  of you and I've got access to that secret information that's
• 47:12
  just between you and me. And there are a million little
• 47:14
  things that we could pick out. Some of these people might be
• 47:17
  doing these things and sending these signals on purpose. Some
• 47:21
  of them might be doing it without even realizing they are,
• 47:24
  just to try to make a thing that looks right in their community.
• 47:27
  But I think that it's moved authority from being a place of,
• 47:34
  you know, having sole access to information or very specialized
• 47:37
  training or spurt and titles to where authority is now, are you
• 47:42
  a part of my community? Is that why and that is the greatest
• 47:46
  signal to some people about why I should or can trust you.
• 47:50
  Alex Dainis: Yeah. I think there's something interesting in
• 47:53
  there too. And I agree with what both of you were just saying of
• 47:57
  we also, as strategic science communicators, can and do use
• 48:04
  those things. Right? We also have versions of the work that
• 48:09
  we do that are a little more chill and we're just chatting
• 48:13
  and we're just using an informal tone.
• 48:16
  And I think that it's so hard to describe to people that like, no
• 48:21
  no, I'm doing it for good. Right? I'm doing it because my
• 48:24
  motive is good and they're doing it and it's wrong. But it's
• 48:28
  effective. And so, you know, I think it goes back to like how
• 48:31
  do you how do you get around that?
• 48:33
  How do you change people's minds? I do think that there's
• 48:35
  part of it that the word authenticity, right, like being
• 48:39
  a whole human. But I was talking with a scientist who, you know,
• 48:43
  he runs a research lab. He's not a science communicator. But his
• 48:45
  whole goal is to tell people that his job is just a job.
• 48:50
  Right? And like he goes to work, he does science, he comes home,
• 48:54
  he plays with his kids, he eats dinner, he does a little more
• 48:56
  science, he goes to bed. And he tries to really frame it as
• 48:59
  like, you can anyone can relate to that. Right? That they go to
• 49:02
  work, they do their job, and they come home.
• 49:05
  And that framing science as just another job has been very
• 49:07
  effective for people being like, oh yeah, like, I could also do
• 49:11
  that. I just chose to do this other job. So I do think that
• 49:14
  there are ways to use that and do that that are effective and
• 49:18
  that are modeling that we are all just people who have good in
• 49:21
  well, most of us have good intentions. But it does feel I
• 49:26
  will say that sometimes it feels weird to use those things that I
• 49:30
  do use all the time and be like, but I'm doing it for the right
• 49:33
  reasons.
• 49:35
  Trace Dominguez: It does feel sometimes like I'll grab a a dry
• 49:38
  erase marker and and use it as a microphone or whatever. And it
• 49:41
  feels a little bit like, how do you do fellow kids like Steve
• 49:44
  Buscemi? You know? But but that's you're meeting people
• 49:47
  where they are. Right?
• 49:48
  You're meeting people where they are and doing exactly what
• 49:51
  you're both talking about where you're like, how can I get past
• 49:55
  people's defenses just enough to hook them in, to get them
• 49:59
  interested in this strange thing about the world that they
• 50:02
  already live in and that they probably experience every day?
• 50:05
  And so I'm if I have to put on a banana suit and go into the into
• 50:09
  there and do it, I'm gonna do it. If you are being objective,
• 50:12
  it's a little disingenuous, but so is all media in some on the
• 50:17
  most objective. Right? Like, people saying, like, oh, well, I
• 50:20
  was watching Andor, and it just looked like sets.
• 50:22
  It didn't look like and it's like, all TV is like that.
• 50:24
  That's just what TV is. I I
• 50:26
  Mike Rugnetta: I don't know how I feel about that Andor show. It
• 50:28
  feels like they're trying to tell a story. Yeah. They're
• 50:29
  trying
• 50:30
  Bernie Sanders: to tell they're trying
• 50:31
  Trace Dominguez: to tell me something,
• 50:31
  Bernie Sanders: and I
• 50:32
  Trace Dominguez: don't know how I feel about it.
• 50:33
  Alex Dainis: And it's just Can can I tell you my best banana
• 50:35
  suit story of the past year? Please. Was that I did a brand
• 50:39
  deal that makes, on the face, no sense for me with Doctor.
• 50:45
  Squatch soap when they released a soap that reportedly had
• 50:49
  Sydney Sweeney's bathwater in it. And I made a video about
• 50:54
  they sent me the soap.
• 50:55
  I made a video about the soap because I got to talk about the
• 50:59
  fact that there's DNA in almost every single one of your cells.
• 51:03
  And so I reached an audience that did not care about DNA.
• 51:07
  They cared about Sydney Sweeney and they cared about soap. But I
• 51:11
  got to I got sixty seconds to tell them a little bit about
• 51:14
  DNA. And those videos hit, you know, a million views kind of
• 51:18
  things because people cared about Sydney Sweeney.
• 51:20
  But that was a million people who otherwise were not gonna
• 51:22
  think about DNA that day and I just got a little fact in there.
• 51:26
  Bernie Sanders: And so sometimes I do think
• 51:27
  Alex Dainis: that like meeting people where they're at can be
• 51:30
  weird can be weird spots. That's weird. But like, you can put DNA
• 51:33
  in there.
• 51:34
  Bernie Sanders: Why can't we think about both? Yeah. Exactly.
• 51:37
  Right?
• 51:37
  Trace Dominguez: Why not both? Porcainulostos, as they say.
• 51:51
  Mike Rugnetta: When we all first met, there was this sort of like
• 51:54
  separation, I think, between two content types. There were
• 51:58
  science communicators over here, and then there were and this I
• 52:01
  don't know if this phrase has ever been said, but like
• 52:03
  humanities communicators over here.
• 52:05
  Trace Dominguez: Oh.
• 52:06
  Mike Rugnetta: One of the things that I heard as someone who made
• 52:08
  a show about popular culture and philosophy was like, would hear
• 52:11
  from a lot of people who would consider themselves, say, Vsauce
• 52:15
  fans or Veritasium fans, etcetera, etcetera, saying like,
• 52:19
  well, I'm not gonna watch that. That's political. You know,
• 52:22
  you're the show that you make is political. It's it's got
• 52:24
  politics. It's like, oh, all it is is opinions, and, like, I'm
• 52:27
  not interested in that.
• 52:28
  I'm interested in the truth. So that's why I watch science
• 52:30
  communicators, something that's not political at all. And so I'm
• 52:33
  just curious how it feels over the last ten or twelve years to
• 52:37
  just have been handed a political position effectively.
• 52:41
  Alex Dainis: I never wanted that. I never wanted to talk
• 52:43
  about politics. I hate talking about politics. Right? Like, in
• 52:46
  in my personal life, I, you know, hated talking about it,
• 52:49
  didn't wanna ever talk about it online.
• 52:51
  But then it became impossible not to. I was like, oh, it is I
• 52:55
  mean, yes, it affects our daily lives all the time but like, it
• 52:58
  is now so overwhelmingly affecting science, how can I
• 53:01
  continue to do science communication legitimately and
• 53:05
  not talk about it? But I I still hate it, like I do it because
• 53:10
  it's important. But that's another part of the job that has
• 53:12
  absolutely changed that I I never wanted, I wanted to avoid
• 53:16
  until truly it became just unavoidable.
• 53:19
  Joe Hanson: I mean, you know, politics will find you if you
• 53:21
  don't find it first. Right? I mean, it's it'll it'll whether
• 53:24
  it's stomping on your neck or or what. But I do think science for
• 53:29
  a long time, the community of science told itself a story that
• 53:35
  it was somehow above or separated from all these things.
• 53:38
  Maybe that was the comfort with just having more funny than you
• 53:41
  knew what to do with.
• 53:42
  Maybe it was the place of scientists and society being
• 53:45
  like this weird nerd priesthood in terms of how people looked at
• 53:49
  them. But science is inherently political. I mean, it's a
• 53:57
  measure of where we put priorities and resources and
• 54:00
  what we think is important for society to be interested in and
• 54:04
  the uses of those things and what they could do to people and
• 54:08
  places and and and culture. There there are numerous stories
• 54:12
  throughout history where people where you've had the the traffic
• 54:15
  accident version of science colliding with with politics,
• 54:19
  whether it's the atomic bomb or or, you know, thimerosal or or
• 54:24
  these many, many famous failures of science. So to for us to have
• 54:30
  thought at one point that we know, no, we will never find me.
• 54:34
  It feels a little naive in retrospect. Like, it it was
• 54:37
  always there. You know, we're not separate from society. It is
• 54:41
  not this magical work that we do.
• 54:43
  Mike Rugnetta: And you don't have to shoulder that position
• 54:47
  for your audience either, it sounds like.
• 54:49
  Joe Hanson: I mean, that is one of the challenges too, to remain
• 54:53
  To have a scientific perspective is also sort of asking somebody
• 54:56
  to have a, you know, to not take the personal perspective. So
• 55:00
  that is, I think that's the real challenge that we find ourselves
• 55:03
  in is to separate the personal and our own investments and the
• 55:09
  ways that could affect us personally from the sterility of
• 55:13
  the facts and the reason. But, you know, reason is a magical
• 55:18
  idea that no one's quite figured out and gotten, you know,
• 55:21
  something we all kind of orbit and never fall into. And so a
• 55:28
  bit of us as people will always be involved there. It affects
• 55:32
  our perspectives on things and how we interpret information.
• 55:36
  We can look back at the history of science for hours and hours
• 55:39
  if you want to and look at cases where people believe that
• 55:43
  science is this sort of ethereal thing floating above the rest of
• 55:46
  society, but it is influenced by our priorities and our
• 55:52
  unconscious biases in ways that we have to be honest with. And
• 55:55
  so I think putting that word I back into science and science
• 55:59
  communication has been a really important development that we
• 56:02
  like, we are part of this. We're all we are figuring it out along
• 56:05
  with you. And we're honest about our mistakes like real humans
• 56:09
  are. That that makes us unique and I think makes what we're
• 56:13
  doing maybe a little more relatable and honest than
• 56:15
  anything else out there.
• 56:16
  Trace Dominguez: I think about a panel that Joe was on so often
• 56:20
  in an early VidCon, how to be wrong on the Internet. Joe knows
• 56:23
  the panel. We were all there. It was great. There was a YouTuber
• 56:27
  there who used to make listicles about stuff that was sometimes
• 56:29
  science, and he said, I just leave it up.
• 56:32
  I don't care.
• 56:33
  Mike Rugnetta: I almost brought up that panel in this
• 56:36
  conversation a few minutes ago. Also think about good panel.
• 56:40
  Joe Hanson: I cannot drag his name through the mud. I mean, if
• 56:42
  Trace Dominguez: you want to, I'm I we can. But like, I don't
• 56:47
  even know if he makes videos anymore. I, you know, he's not
• 56:49
  in my algorithm. But the point is being wrong on the Internet
• 56:54
  is so important for us and it's not always important for, you
• 56:58
  know, you think that Alex Jones talking about gay frogs is
• 57:02
  worries whether he's gonna be wrong or not in his next
• 57:04
  episode? He was like, well, last episode I have a I just have a
• 57:08
  correction I wanna make that it they weren't making the frogs
• 57:11
  gay.
• 57:11
  It was actually salamanders. They were the it wasn't frogs.
• 57:14
  Sorry. My mistake. Different you know, my mistake.
• 57:17
  Let's move on and talk about something. You know, it's just
• 57:19
  like so it's like, some comedian that came across my algorithm
• 57:24
  was like, do you think that everyone has impostor syndrome
• 57:28
  or just the people who care about their job? Like, if you
• 57:31
  have impostor syndrome, it means that you are having a little bit
• 57:34
  of metacognition about your work. You're like, am I good
• 57:38
  enough to do this? That thought doesn't enter everyone's head.
• 57:42
  Alex Dainis: Yeah. And I think that's where you can you can
• 57:44
  pepper in as well the like, well, and I was wrong about
• 57:47
  this. Or also the I don't know. Right? I think that that's also
• 57:51
  incredibly important to model because I think there are so
• 57:53
  many people shilling misinformation online who are
• 57:56
  like, I know this thing with a 100% certainty.
• 57:59
  And I think it's really important to be like, hey, I
• 58:01
  don't know the answer to this, but here's how I might find it
• 58:04
  out or here's how I'd go about it or in hopefully not even
• 58:07
  saying it so directly, but just showing the process of doing
• 58:09
  that. I think being able to say I was wrong, I don't know, like,
• 58:14
  here's how I feel. I agree with you. I think those are things
• 58:16
  that were really not allowed in broadcast communication for a
• 58:21
  long time and they are required, I think, to do our job well now.
• 58:27
  Trace Dominguez: Yeah. A bit of authenticity like you're
• 58:29
  mentioning, but also just a bit of being human. Right? The story
• 58:34
  then becomes a little more about the person who's learning your
• 58:37
  learning journey, as we said on our podcast once and had a real
• 58:41
  fun time trying to say that over and over again. Your learning
• 58:43
  journey.
• 58:44
  Alex Dainis: Your learning journey is the
• 58:45
  Bernie Sanders: whole process of science. Right? Like, science is
• 58:48
  how we know, not
• 58:49
  Alex Dainis: what we know. Like, I I think modeling that is, the
• 58:52
  biggest thing you can do.
• 58:53
  Joe Hanson: I I often I I'm often afraid that we're sitting
• 58:56
  here sort of gardening through the apocalypse on our little
• 58:59
  flower path,
• 59:00
  Alex Dainis: know, sort of
• 59:00
  Joe Hanson: anxiety falls apart around us. And and we're sitting
• 59:04
  here saying this, how beautiful it is to change your mind and
• 59:06
  how wonderful it is to celebrate these things. And we and we do.
• 59:08
  We, like, we exhibit these things. They're really that that
• 59:10
  that that really fundamental mindset is important to all of
• 59:14
  us.
• 59:15
  But we're also sitting here at a time when there's, you know,
• 59:18
  accounts on x called this you that just exist to make fun of
• 59:24
  people for things they said in the past that they are now
• 59:27
  saying different things in the present. There's this social
• 59:32
  pressure in these places to crystallize and make more rigid
• 59:37
  the beliefs that how dare you ever think about updating your
• 59:41
  your, you know, your beliefs based on new information. It's
• 59:46
  bullying in the form of that that flip flopping kind of risk.
• 59:50
  Alex Dainis: Mhmm.
• 59:51
  Joe Hanson: So we're sitting here, you know, as like in this
• 59:54
  David and Goliath sort of setup fighting against those really
• 59:59
  intense pressures because, you know, feels good for those
• 1:00:03
  bullies to point and laugh and and and click that like button
• 1:00:06
  and keep promoting that content, especially when you, I don't
• 1:00:09
  know, hypothetically have platforms that may amplify
• 1:00:14
  inorganically content that promotes those kind of emotional
• 1:00:19
  mindsets. But, you know, that's just a hypothetical.
• 1:00:22
  Alex Dainis: I just think that's why you gotta do it yourself.
• 1:00:24
  Right? They can't this you you if you've already this you'd
• 1:00:27
  yourself. And that's why I think we gotta do it because then it's
• 1:00:30
  like, oh, I was wrong, and you just take the wind out of the
• 1:00:33
  sails.
• 1:00:33
  Mike Rugnetta: And what I was gonna say is that I think it's
• 1:00:35
  it's especially important to do that in light of the fact that
• 1:00:39
  the same thing, the sort of entrenching, establishing a
• 1:00:42
  position, and never moving away from it has increasingly become
• 1:00:47
  a characteristic of journalism as all of the institutions that
• 1:00:51
  practice it have been captured by billionaires. So there are
• 1:00:54
  there are a decreasingly many examples of how to do this very
• 1:00:59
  important thing.
• 1:01:00
  Trace Dominguez: I also think we mentioned politics earlier.
• 1:01:03
  Right? And Joe said, you know, if it's gonna come for you
• 1:01:06
  eventually. And I I like to think of it as they came because
• 1:01:12
  they didn't have any other thing to fight with. So, like, if
• 1:01:16
  you're worried about some issue, then politicize it.
• 1:01:20
  And now I can argue with you that it's political and tell you
• 1:01:23
  to stop talking about it because now it's political. Right? Like,
• 1:01:26
  the shape of the planet we're on is not a political position
• 1:01:32
  unless another group of people get together and be like, let's
• 1:01:35
  make this political. Now that it's political, we can tell you
• 1:01:38
  to not talk about it because there's a lot of people who, you
• 1:01:41
  know, don't want you to talk about politics. And it's like
• 1:01:44
  science is funded by governments and people.
• 1:01:47
  National parks are run by governments and funded by
• 1:01:50
  taxpayers. The road is political. The park is
• 1:01:52
  political. The science is political. All of space is
• 1:01:56
  political.
• 1:01:56
  The ocean is political. Like, there is nothing. The health
• 1:02:00
  care, you name it. It is already either funded by or partially
• 1:02:04
  research done by science, which is funded by people, which is
• 1:02:08
  political. So it's like everything is.
• 1:02:10
  But if they want you to not talk about it, what they'll do is
• 1:02:13
  they'll kinda slide underneath it with this is a political hot
• 1:02:17
  button issue now, and we've spent a lot of time trying to
• 1:02:21
  make it so. So then we can tell you you can't talk about it
• 1:02:24
  anymore.
• 1:02:24
  Joe Hanson: Here's the risk of these bespoke realities when
• 1:02:27
  when apathy comes into it. The more you swipe through and don't
• 1:02:31
  interact with something in any algorithm, right, the less
• 1:02:33
  you're gonna see of that thing. So the more that people are, I
• 1:02:37
  don't know, frustrated or maybe even trained or convinced to
• 1:02:41
  avoid this stuff, they're like, ugh, not another thing about
• 1:02:45
  vaccines. Ugh, not another thing about climate change and they're
• 1:02:49
  swiping through to the next, you know, toddler falling down. That
• 1:02:54
  that makes it less likely that they're gonna see that thing
• 1:02:56
  when it really matters.
• 1:02:58
  Because they're building they're they're reinforcing this eat
• 1:03:01
  this reality that's even further and further away from science
• 1:03:05
  and from inner from maybe encountering that content. And
• 1:03:09
  that's a really that's a really sad and and kind of frightening
• 1:03:13
  outlook on the future as as there becomes, you know, four
• 1:03:16
  websites that are ever increasingly customizing your
• 1:03:21
  your your view of reality. But maybe maybe if we're looking for
• 1:03:26
  optimism there, something that we all know is that you're
• 1:03:29
  always encountering some group of people for the first time.
• 1:03:33
  The treadmill of humanity is always bringing new people into
• 1:03:37
  an idea for the first time. And that is one of the things that
• 1:03:41
  sort of keeps me going through all these frustrations and
• 1:03:43
  questions and uncertainties and and face palming moments
• 1:03:47
  throughout being a science communicator over the past
• 1:03:49
  decade plus is that, you know what?
• 1:03:52
  There's always somebody out there who could find this and
• 1:03:56
  have have have my answer be the first answer they ever hear on
• 1:04:00
  this that could frame the way they look at this question for
• 1:04:04
  the rest of their life. And that's a really incredible
• 1:04:09
  opportunity for us that I think just continues to to underscore
• 1:04:13
  how important it is that we continue to do this and don't
• 1:04:15
  kind of give in to these cynical frustrations that that hit us
• 1:04:18
  sometimes.
• 1:04:29
  Mike Rugnetta: Friends, thank you so much for joining me and
• 1:04:32
  having this conversation. We have got through, like, less
• 1:04:36
  than a tenth of what I have written down in my preparation
• 1:04:40
  doc for this. Like, you know, Alex, you mentioned studies
• 1:04:45
  about science communication and books that have been written
• 1:04:47
  about it. I wanna know about that. Trace, I have more
• 1:04:51
  questions about what it's like working for a large
• 1:04:54
  entertainment company doing science communication.
• 1:04:58
  Joe, I would like to spend an hour talking about ask a
• 1:05:01
  scientist by itself. Yes. I I just wanna talk about that. So
• 1:05:06
  maybe we can reconvene at some point in the future and get to,
• 1:05:10
  again, a tenth of this.
• 1:05:11
  Joe Hanson: You name the time and the place. I'll bring the
• 1:05:14
  ask a scientist family to do it.
• 1:05:17
  Mike Rugnetta: Where can everybody who is listening find
• 1:05:20
  you on the Internet? We'll go in introduction order. So Alex,
• 1:05:24
  Trace, and Joe.
• 1:05:25
  Alex Dainis: I'm at Alex Danis on pretty much all platforms,
• 1:05:29
  but also at the American Chemical Society Reactions
• 1:05:33
  channel on YouTube.
• 1:05:34
  Trace Dominguez: I'm at Trace Dominguez on pretty much all the
• 1:05:37
  things. My ones that I use the most are probably Instagram and
• 1:05:40
  threads, but I have a YouTube channel. And then I have my
• 1:05:43
  podcast, That's Absurd, Please Elaborate, which you can get at
• 1:05:46
  That's Absurd show pretty much everywhere. And we release every
• 1:05:50
  Thursday. It's so fun.
• 1:05:51
  And Stargazers, can find by I do too many things. I'm sorry. You
• 1:05:55
  can just go to PBS.
• 1:05:56
  Mike Rugnetta: Please turn on your TV. Maybe Trace will be
• 1:05:57
  there.
• 1:05:58
  Trace Dominguez: Sometimes that happens. Although one time I was
• 1:06:00
  in The Bahamas and I turned it on and Mike was there. So that
• 1:06:02
  was cool.
• 1:06:03
  Bernie Sanders: That was really awesome. Dumpster.
• 1:06:04
  Mike Rugnetta: What? That's fun.
• 1:06:05
  Joe Hanson: I'm at doctor Johansson on pretty much all of
• 1:06:10
  the platforms, but don't LinkedIn me. I I just simply
• 1:06:14
  won't. And on YouTube, can find me at Be Smart or on PBS Terra
• 1:06:19
  channel. You can check out my show overview.
• 1:06:22
  Mike Rugnetta: Thanks, friends. Talk to you soon.
• 1:06:24
  Trace Dominguez: Bye. Bye.
• 1:06:25
  Mike Rugnetta: Bye bye. That is the show we have for you this
• 1:06:42
  week. We're gonna be back here on the main feed on or around
• 1:06:45
  Thursday, March 12, but hark, we streaming. We'll see you at
• 1:06:50
  twitch.tv forward slash the never post on Monday, March 9
• 1:06:56
  for a team chat, which will be edited and released for members
• 1:07:00
  soon after. Speaking of, did you know that you can become a
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  Neverpost's producers are Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton, and the
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• 1:07:34
  is Hans Buto. Our executive producer is Jason Oberholzer,
• 1:07:38
  and the show's host, that's me, is Mike Grigneta. Teach us about
• 1:07:48
  life gently, implored the little beings and stretched their arms
• 1:07:53
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• 1:08:00
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• 1:08:02
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