Latest / PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast / Gymnast to Geoscientist - GeoGirl Dr. Rachel Phillips

Transcript

Gymnast to Geoscientist - GeoGirl Dr. Rachel Phillips · PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Planet Geo, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works, and why it matters to you.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: I can't see you.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I mean you and your technical difficulties, Dr.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: Rymanck, you need to take back every bad thing you ever said about me, and how I'm old and non-technical because I'm not having any problems.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I just spent the last hour looking at a frozen Jesse Rymanck on the screen.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, poor, poor Rachel, with like seriously, you had your mouth open and you're you're leaning forward.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: You might have had some spittle coming out of your mouth.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: It was like not a good look.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: Caught me in a particularly unprofessional looking uh view there.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_02: My my my uh video froze during our interview, and then I was hidden and I couldn't actually determine that my video was frozen.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_02: So so we just you know just went through it.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_02: It was great.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: So Rachel Phillips, Dr.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_02: Rachel Phillips, I mean, also known as Geogirl.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_02: Rachel has an amazing YouTube channel called GeoGirl at Geogirl.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_02: But Rachel has her PhD in geology from uh University of Texas, El Paso.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_02: She worked on some really cool biogeochemistry, paleoceanography stuff, did an amazing job.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it looks like an amazing PhD from the outset, but also considering that she did this during COVID, I mean, yeah, unbelievable, right?
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_02: And then also started this amazing YouTube channel.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: She's now working as a postdoc at University of South Carolina, working on really geoeducation research and sort of the misconceptions around geology and geoscience.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't know, Chris.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_02: I she's impressive, very, very, very impressive.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: And what she had to say about what those misconceptions were about the field of geology, she had the best insights I've ever actually.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: Some of the stuff she talked about, I haven't even thought about, to be honest with you.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think?
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: I agree completely.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: Brought up things that I had not even considered, and I'm in this world.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_02: Hold on, hold on, hold on.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: Just let me backtrack here a second.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: When we talk about misconceptions of geology, we're not talking about you know diamond forms from coal.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: Those are not the misconceptions we're really referring to.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: That's a really good point.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's more like what do people think a geologist is or does, or what their background is, or what their job is.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's misconceptions about that, which are way different and actually way more important because these are the ones that prevent people from being interested in geology, from even caring where a diamond came from, right?
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's almost more fundamental.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_02: Totally.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's just so important, and I'm so excited to see where her research goes.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, he she kind of downplayed it a little bit, but these NSF postdocs are no joke.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_02: They're very serious to get.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: It's a big deal to get one and then to kind of take it somewhere and do this type of work is really an amazing, amazing fee.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_02: So uh Rachel's just very, very impressive.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm ex I'm really excited to see where this research goes.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's super interesting.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm excited to have the opportunity to talk to her again later on down the road to find out where we're going next.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: What are what are the conclusions and how do we fix it?
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm excited to see where the channel goes too.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_02: Where does she take this channel, this YouTube following she has, which is very large, it's massive following.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: And she makes amazing videos that are both lecture format and she started this during graduate school during COVID while she was TAing.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_02: Like that's just amazing.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: I I couldn't put two thoughts together during regular graduate school, and there was not a pandemic going on, and I was not trying to put together a YouTube channel.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that it's just an impressive feat.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's right.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: But she also does a really good job.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I can't point at you.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's the thing.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: I can't let it be like doing that.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: I can't see you, you know.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: I know it's really nice.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm hidden back here, and I just can avoid all the abuse.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, all right.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: So, but she does a really good job on Geogirl.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: We're with the graphics.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they're they're amazing, and and that's something that you and I are wholeheartedly aligned with.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: That geology needs to be as visual as it can possibly be.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: And her channel does a really good job of incorporating that aspect into geoscience as well.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, if you're listening to this and you're interested in learning more about Rachel, you can head over to geogirlscience.com.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: That's her website.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_02: We'll put a link in the show notes.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: And her YouTube channel is Geogirl.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: And she's got a lot of stuff.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_02: You have basically she has YouTube courses that are kind of partitioned out, kind of like our Cam Geo content, except in video form.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_02: There's earth history, sedimentology, mineralogy, geochemistry, all sorts of YouTube courses or YouTube playlists.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: There's merch she has available, her website's really great.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_02: Check it out.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: She also has resources, textbooks, like her recommended textbook for all sorts of different stuff.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: She's got a ton of content, and she has some really interesting developments ongoing with the Geological Society of America, for instance, and collaborating on making videos and has a fellowship there.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: So check out her stuff.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: Rachel's great, very impressive.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_02: And here's our interview with Rachel Phillips.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um, okay, Dr.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: Rachel Phillips, welcome to Planet Geo.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's a real pleasure to have you here.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for joining us.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you so much for having me.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_05: I was so excited to be here.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, this is great.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: So I think probably people listening might know you as GeoGirl.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and we're gonna kind of center, I don't know if we'll center the conversation around that, but that'll be part of our conversation, I guess.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: So we always have a traditional opening and actually closing question, and Chris is best at asking the opening questions.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: So we always, Chris, do you wanna you wanna lead out with the opening question?
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'll take it, sure.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: So, Rachel, we always ask our guests, what got you into geoscience?
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like what was your moment?
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: Because Jesse and I, we each have our own, and it's I don't know, it's a very personal story to us, and it's it was very impactful when we realized that it happened.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: So what got you into this?
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I too have kind of a story that goes along with this.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_05: And mine is I think kind of unique because interestingly, I have two geology parents.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_05: Wow, and so I grew up kind of in this house, you know, filled with rock shelves and parents always wanting to go camping and show me the rocks and all these things.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_05: And I tell you, my brother was interested, and I was so, so uninterested.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_06: I thought rocks were so boring, and I was like, ew, that's gross.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_06: That's what my parents did.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_06: And so I just wanted nothing to do with it, but I didn't know what I wanted to do.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_06: And so I when I went to college, I was essentially I was going on a golf scholarship.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_06: So I was going for athletics, and then I was just like, well, I have to pick a major.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_06: So my dad was like, engineers make money, do engineering.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_06: So I did engineering and I didn't really love it.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_05: It wasn't what I wanted.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_05: And then I took a chemistry class and I really fell in love with that.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_05: I think because the professor was so great.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_05: And so I wanted to change my major to chemistry.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, but my coach said there were too many labs that overlapped with practice.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_05: So then I was looking into other majors, and my geology parents conveniently pointed out that if I majored in geology, I could minor in chemistry and then I just have to do the lectures, not the lab portions.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_06: So I was like, I will give it a shot one semester, and that's it, and we'll see.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_06: And I quickly realized that geology was way more than what I thought, which was just rocks or oil or whatever.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_05: I had these misperceptions, which we'll get into later, but I really didn't understand what all it encompassed.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_05: And then I realized that it was Earth, like geo means earth, and you could study everything, the chemistry of what's going on in Earth and on Earth.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_05: And I thought that was so cool.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_05: And so I quickly fell in love with it.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_06: But yeah, I had this just a weird story of like having these misperceptions of what geology is, even with geologist parents, and then figuring it out on my own because I didn't want to listen to them.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's so I I have several follow-up questions, but so do I.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: We might not get past question one.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: So many questions.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: Are you jumping in, Jesse?
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: Because I got follow-ups on this.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: No, I'm I'm jump, I'm definitely jumping in here.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: So I want to okay, I'm gonna try and filter it down.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: What did your parents do for work as geologists?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_02: And then what turned you off about it, I guess.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe we'll talk about misconceptions later, but like what was what was the negative about was it just that they were parents or or what what was it?
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_06: That was a big part, I think.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, like everybody, right?
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_05: But I um both my mom and my dad went to they met in grad school at University of Texas at El Paso, which eventually is where I went.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_05: Again, resisting the whole time, but I eventually fell found myself there.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_05: I don't know.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_05: But um, both my mom and dad were more hard rock in terms of their research.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_05: But then of course it was the 1980s and oil was booming and everything.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_05: So Soft Rock.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, so they got really great offers from Arco, which was eventually bought out by BP.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_05: And they worked for Arco.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_05: Well, my mom did, and then my dad was with her, begged for a job, and they gave him one too.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_06: He's gonna be mad that I mentioned that.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_06: Oh, it's okay.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_05: Um, but but well, he even he initially got a job at Exxon and then moved to Argo.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_05: But yeah, they worked in amazing places.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_05: They moved to Alaska right after grad school and worked there for like seven years.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_05: It was insane, and then worked a long time before they had us.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_05: But my mom was field exploration geologist.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_05: She eventually became the head of all geological research at Arco.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and my dad was more, you know, in the computer kind of guy, Excel sheets and stuff, but they were exploration geoscientists essentially.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_02: And but came out of the nerdy hard rock geology field where their passion was.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, my mom, Ike pet, medpet, and my dad economic geology.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, he really loved for really expensive minerals.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_05: Um yeah.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_05: And and I I think it was a mixture of, oh gross, that's what my parents did.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_05: And it's just so funny.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_05: I because we grew up in this house full of rocks, and my parents, of course, were always telling me, oh, look how cool this is.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_05: And I just saw rock.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_05: I think I just got it in my head that that's boring.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_05: And then I also specifically remember having a conversation with my mom just because of, I don't know, how I guess how old the field I thought it was.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_05: And I remember having a conversation with her when I was deciding to switch my major.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_05: And I was like, but isn't it all done?
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_05: Like, isn't everything mapped?
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_05: Isn't everything figured out?
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_05: Like I just assumed everything was answered.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_05: I had no idea that there were still so many things to do in geology.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_05: And I don't know where I got that mindset, but it's just what I thought.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_05: And now, you know, and we'll get to a, but now it's like my mission to figure out why students have this mindset and how to transform it.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_05: Cause there is so many opportunities in geoscience, but people don't know that.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_05: And I didn't even know that.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_05: So I just had this moment where she, of course, answered and was like, no, there's so much more.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_05: And that was a really important conversation I remember us having.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_05: And so that really, you know, changed our mind about what geoscience could be for me.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, everything your parents is just uncool by definition.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, Chris had the same experience.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_02: I had there were parts of my life that I swore I would never do because my parents did it, and then I ended up doing it.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_02: And Chris is the same.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that's so everybody's.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: I was dragged kicking and screaming into this.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I knew a couple things when I went to college, and one of them was that I wasn't gonna do anything science related, and I certainly wasn't gonna become a teacher, which I didn't do originally anyway, but I I was just dragged like in this direction uh very unwillingly.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's so weird.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: And my own kids, I have two kids that are gone and they're living their lives, and they don't want anything to do with geology or rocks, or they don't even listen to my podcast.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's really disappointing.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: I gotta I gotta work on this.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we'll see.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_06: We'll see where they end up.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, that's right.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: I think there's still hope for Bella.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_02: Bella's still there's still hope she'll come around.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_06: The funny part is I was the one that hated listening to my parents ramble on about the rocks, and I was like, just get those away from me.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_06: My brother loved them, and I became the geologist, and he became a writer.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_06: So oh wow.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: So you're the favorite one now.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you're the chosen one.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_02: So have your parents made an appearance on the Geogirl channel ever?
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_06: Not in video form.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_06: My mom comments on every video.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_06: She is replying, she's commenting.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_06: No, my dad could care less.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_06: He doesn't watch.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_06: Oh, okay.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_06: I think he watches like a bit, but I go really deep and he's like, I don't need all this.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_06: I don't need all this.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_06: I got this yet.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_06: My mom loves it.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_06: She will dive deep in any top.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_06: She will call me afterwards and be like, Oh, what about this?
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_06: And we'll keep talking about it for like an hour.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_06: Like, we'll just go on.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_06: But yeah, my dad, he he's done with the learning.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_02: That's uh that's very similar.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Chris's mom, Joyce, is we get a lot of emails from Joyce with various things.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_02: Usually they're a little bit persnickety because you know, her son isn't getting enough credit for something, or he's not getting enough air time, or something like that, usually.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: So, so yes, she my mom pretends to listen.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yours actually listens.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: Mine, whenever I go over there on Friday afternoon, she's sleeping and I'm in the background, and it's just oh oh no.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_06: I find I find my mom falling asleep to meet all the time, and then she'll call me after I post videos and she'll be like, What about this?
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_06: And I'm like, Mom, I answered that at seven minutes in the video.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_06: Listen to Yeah, yeah.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's so good.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_02: Oh man, this is funny.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_02: I I I like the the way this has worked out.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: This is very funny.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_02: So, um, Chris, did you have other questions about this that that's I have one really quick one that I'm just curious about?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: It really I want to get into the geogirl thing, but so you went to college on a golf scholarship, but you were a really well-established gymnast.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: How how did you make that transition?
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, how do you even know that?
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_06: Um, I was uh we do our research, Rachel.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: Come on now.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: We used to just shake it.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: This is Chris showing off the deep dive.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, geez.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_05: So I grew up in Plano, Texas because well, Arco was headquartered there.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_05: And then when my parents moved from Alaska to Plano, they then had me and my brother.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_05: And um, I grew up there my whole life.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_05: And in Plano is where the World Olympic Gymnastics Academy is, which now has multiple branches.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_05: And that is where I I was coached by Cecile and Laurent Landy, who are now, well, for the past few years, the like Olympic coaches that coach Simone and the rest of the team.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_05: So they're very good coaches, and that Jim has produced a lot of Olympic gymnasts.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_05: And so it was very high level.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_05: And I was there's essentially two types of gymnasts that go there.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_05: There's the ones that compete to the point of getting a college scholarship, and the ones that are Olympic material.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_05: And I, until I was about 14, they, you know, they try and make everybody Olympians until they can't anymore.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_05: And I was on the trajectory and then got some injuries, and then I was on the college trajectory, which is still high level, but not as much.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_05: And so I was set to work on getting a scholarship to college, and I was like a sophomore in high school, but that's when they start looking to sign gymnasts.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_05: And so I was just about to do that, and then I tore basically everything in my knees.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_05: And um, and so then I essentially the college was off the table.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_05: So I quit.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_05: And this gym was very intense.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_05: We trained eight hours a day, and I went to school for two hours of okay.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_05: And so we went to this special school in Plano that is essentially just for very high-level athletes, and it was mainly gymnasts from this gym.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_05: And so I just had like senior year left essentially, and I was like, Well, I can't just like go to a normal school now.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_05: I gotta do some sort of sport.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_05: And so my dad had me in my big knee brace that I was still in.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_05: He was like, Let's try golf, because you don't have to do any crazy movements for that.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_05: Um, so I went to the swing coach and he was like, You're really like naturally good at this because you're so flexible and your core is very strong.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_05: And so I was like, All right, well, cool, let's go with this.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_05: And so I could only do like putting and chipping at the at the time because I wasn't allowed to twist.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_05: But um, I eventually worked up with him to the point that I got a scholarship to a junior college, and I went to Wego for two years and then transferred to Arlington, where I where I finished out my bachelor's.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_05: And so I did golf uh on scholarship for oh wow, that's amazing.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's such a cool story.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's such a in in short order.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's amazing.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it was very quick.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_05: I was surprised that I actually got a scholarship.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, that's really impressive.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_02: I I haven't well, this will probably feed back a little bit into later conversations, but are sports still a major part of your life?
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_05: Not really just because of time.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_05: Well, one, you can't really ever do any gymnastics things past past a certain point in life.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, no, fair enough.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_06: Golf, you can do a lot, but it takes a lot of time.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, and so that's something I don't I don't have to.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_02: That's not a uh a sport you can do on a graduate student salary or even a postdoc salary.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_02: Either too easily.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_05: In college, of course, we're in Dallas, where I ended up in Arlington, which is essentially Dallas, and you have all these really expensive, beautiful golf courses around, and we had essentially free passes to whatever golf course we wanted to go to.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_05: And so, do you know, as long as we were on the team, we brought our bag and they knew who we were, we could just go.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_05: I remember graduating, going to a golf course and be like, oh my god, I have to pay.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_03: That's funny.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_02: What the heck?
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's expensive.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah, my parents were both golf coaches at various points in in time and they're teaching careers.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: And uh that was one of the things that I did not ever want to do.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I still don't particularly love golf.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_02: Uh anyway.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um okay, Rachel.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_02: Let's let's move in.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_02: Tell us, can you tell us the origin story of your YouTube channel?
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_02: Which is great, by the way.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh your videos are amazing and very, very, very well done.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_02: So, what's the origin story of this whole whole adventure?
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, so I was a teaching assistant, graduate teaching assistant in grad school, and I was teaching some labs in spring of 2020.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_05: So TA plus 2020 equals remote lectures.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_05: I recorded some lectures for my students and uh I put I tried putting them on Blackboard, but it was uploading too slowly and the storage was weird.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_05: So I ended up putting them on YouTube and I sent my students the links, and then I started putting more up there because I quickly realized that I was getting a lot of feedback from people and comments saying, Oh, these are so helpful.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_05: Essentially anybody but my students.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_05: And um and so I, you know, wanted to keep helping people, you know, whatever studying for exams, or even people saying, you know, oh, it's just helping them learn more about a topic they just have general interest in.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_05: And so I started making more, and then I had people suggesting topics, and I was like, oh, actually, I need to study that because I had my PhD qualifying exams coming up.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_05: And so I needed to study anyway.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_05: And I know for me, I've always learned best when I learned something enough to teach it.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_05: So I tried really hard to study all these broad geoscience topics to study for my comprehensive exams, and um, that was kind of the beginning of it.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_05: And then the continuation was essentially just because I saw the impact of it.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_05: And essentially the moment that I got my first comments saying, I am majoring in this because of you, that was it.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_05: Then I was like, I gotta do this forever.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, that's really cool.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: Have you been doing it since 2020 then?
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, since September, well, late August 2020.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_05: So for four years now.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that is first of all, amazingly impressive to do this during graduate school when your time is.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, uh that's unbelievable to be able to be doing all of the stuff that you've done since it was a nice break.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_05: People are always like, Oh, how do you do all that with the grad work?
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_05: But it was my break.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_05: It was like not work for me.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_05: I I found it extremely fun to like push aside the research for a second and do something like a video.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_02: So that's really interesting.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: So I have a question.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_02: I because I my sense is that your idea about or your comment about studying for candidacy with this, this seems like an unbelievable way to study for candidacy, actually.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_02: You know, forcing yourself to teach yourself all the basics that you have to learn for candidacy.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: Uh was it incredibly productive?
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, did you just crush your candidacy because of all this work you've done?
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_04: No.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, no, no.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if I believe that.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_05: But uh I uh well, the first part, which is uh just general knowledge questionnaire type type exam from your committee, that part I hadn't been doing it that long by then.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_05: I had only been doing it about a year and only broad topics for about one semester by the time I I did that.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_05: So I didn't know as much as I well know now through doing the channel.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_05: But yeah, I did not pass with flying color.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, they were, I think, nicer to me than than I give myself credit for because I wish I had answered things differently.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_05: But yeah, I mean, obviously, once it came to my actual like candidate PhD proposal type thing, that was better because that was my own research.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_05: But the broad exam, that was not as pretty.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think none of they're never pretty, even when they are really, really well done.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, the point is to like get you to a point where you don't know.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you're always gonna end the questions with I don't know.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, and so I'm sure you did very well.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, okay.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: So, Rachel, so what is your I mean, uh we know why you got into it, but why do you keep doing it?
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: What's Your goal?
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: What do you want to accomplish with this really, really good, well done Geogirl channel?
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: What are you trying to do?
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_05: Well, at first, again, it was mainly just for students.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_05: And obviously, I started it as just lectures.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_05: It's still mainly just lecture format, but less so in a way, which I'll get to.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_05: But yeah, I started it very much for undergraduate, even sometimes graduate students that are studying for exams and very specific courses.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_05: I went through like certain ABs of petrology, how to identify certain rocks and thin section.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_05: Like nobody random on the street is gonna need to know that.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_05: But I was posting these videos because I, you know, wanted to help students.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_05: And then the more that I got comments saying, Oh, I'm not a student, I'm just interested in geoscience and learning more, I started making more broadly appealing videos.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_05: And so it's kind of morphed into just making study guides essentially for students.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_05: And now the goal is more to still help students understand certain concepts, but also promote kind of the diversity of geoscience out there.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_05: And I think for me, there's a lot out there that's like PBS Eons and stuff that covers certain bits of the things that I cover, but to a very surface level degree.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_05: And I like to really dive deep so people can have the the answers to the questions they're left with after those videos, like, but why this?
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_05: And I try and answer all the but whys and really go deep so that they can get to like the end question, which is like, you know, something that I always say like at the end of a lot of my videos, I'm like, but we still don't know this.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_05: So if you're interested in going to the research, go do it.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_05: So yeah, I love kind of just doing very deep dives so that people, one, can have access to that kind of information, and two can, whether they're a student or just interested in geoscience, can really like be able to learn this stuff and dive deeper and know where to go for more resources or if they want to get into it.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_05: So that's kind of now the goal is just to get more people interested.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I like the way you phrased that.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_02: I think it was you cover the but how question at the end.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_02: Is that what you said?
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_02: The but how but why, yeah, yeah.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_02: But why, yeah, the but why.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I like that.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_02: That's really that's really great.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_02: And this is one thing that Chris, I don't know, Chris, how you feel about this, but that's always impresses me about, frankly, our listeners on this podcast, is how deep people want to go.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_02: In many cases.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you know, there's really no limit to how deep people who are interested in particularly in geology, maybe want to go on a topic.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's a really, it's a really interesting phenomenon.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_02: I I'm always impressed by that.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_06: The the my commenters still find a butt why at the end of my video.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: So what is your okay, you you kind of alluded to to sort of how it's changed or how you've I don't know, tweaked or something like that since then.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_02: What are your like favorite things?
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_02: What's your favorite video?
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_02: Or what's your what's one you kind of you loved making, or you loved the process behind, or you love the final product?
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_05: That's a very hard question, but I prepared before this and tried to think of my babies.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_02: All these uh yeah, easy.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Jesse, I mean, how can she answer this question?
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: If if somebody asked us that, what would you like to resolve?
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that doesn't mean that I have to have an answer to my own questions.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think that's right.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, no way.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_04: You're just the ass.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_02: They don't get turned around.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think that's the way it works.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: Well, they could get turned around.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, okay.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I didn't know that.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_02: Dang it.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, so I think I'd have to say, based on not only the preparation and making of the video, but also how the outcome turned out.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_05: I think my favorite is my video about purple earth or when earth was purple.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_05: And I yeah, I talked with Jesse about this, but essentially early on on my channel, I was very like, I wanted to title my videos very technical titles so that people would know that they're getting into kind of a very deep college-level lecture in some cases.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_05: And I didn't want to be very poppy and broad with my title and have people click in and be like, oh, gross, it's a lecture and comment mean things and then leave.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_05: Um, I didn't want to mislead people.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_05: And so I wanted to kind of make the titles and thumbnails as technical as the talk just to make sure they knew what they were getting into.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_05: But then, you know, I received a lot of comments from people saying they liked the lecture format and the deep dives once I got better with using less jargon and better at speaking and keeping it interesting, storytelling type things.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_05: And so as I got better at presenting, I was like, well, I should try and appeal to broader audiences because even the ones that aren't students seem to enjoy this lecture content as long as it's engaging lectures.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_05: And so I decided to take some of my old content that I had made when I was doing very technical titles and stuff and kind of revamp it and remarket it as something different and make the video a little bit more poppy and the title and the thumbnail.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_05: And so the purple earth video is about how on early Earth, before modern photosynthesizers like plants, green plants had evolved, there were photosynthesizing microbes that actually had purple pigments instead of green chlorophyll pigments.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_05: And that Earth might have had more of a purple hue if these were very widespread.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_05: I had made a video about that same topic, essentially, just less focused, called like early photosynthesizers or like evolution of photosynthesis years ago.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_05: And that got maybe like 4,000 views, I think.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_05: And then this purple earth video with the when earth was purple title got 100,000.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_05: So I was like, okay, so this makes a difference.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_05: And none of the commenters were mad that it was a lecture.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_05: So I kind of that was one of my like realization moments of people are interested in these topics as long as you keep the lecture or video or whatever interesting, you know, as long as you keep it engaging.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_05: And so that was one of my aha moments of just how I can make my videos reach broader audiences and more people and get more people interested as long as I, you know, keep them interested.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_05: So yeah, I really like that one because it helped me shift my channel to where it is now, which is I think reaching more people.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_05: And it really wasn't until I tested that out that that I knew I could do that.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_02: That's really interesting.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: So, Rachel, if you could stick around after the podcast and have a chat with Jesse about how to name episodes, that would be really helpful because he's we argue about this all the time and he's just not very good at it.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_02: So that would be amazing.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: That's true.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_02: I I need a lot of help on episode.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_05: I have to say, I well, I just want to say I have uh I told Jesse this, but I will go back to my old videos.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_05: I used to think when I was making them that I was a relatively good speaker, and now I go back and cringe.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_05: And you know, I thought it was okay at teaching, you know, my students and I they enjoyed it, but I I go back now and I look back at the very old ones and I just cringe so hard.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_05: And I've gotten way better and I've gotten way better at like using less jargon and using better analogies.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_05: But I have to say, after listening to y'all's podcast, I'm like, I need some of your analogies, Chris, because they're so good.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_06: You come up with the best, most self-explanatory things to very, very hard concepts.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_06: And I'm like, I should have known that before I did the video on this, you know.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thank you, but I don't know about all that.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_02: Chris, hold on, hold on.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_02: Get ready for a compliment.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_02: It is all Chris.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_02: Chris is the analogy master.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, even if I have a good analogy, usually he fed that to me before the before the episode.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: Just steal him.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm gonna steal.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: Go ahead.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: I steal all the time.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I do.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's what every really good educator does is we just rip off stuff.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: We have an ability to see what's good, and then we just take it and make it our own.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: And there's nothing wrong with that.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: But I'll I'll say, Rachel, to your point, too.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like when you do something like what you've done for four years, and then you look back on this, this is the best professional development you could ever do, right?
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Jesse and I feel that way about doing our podcast.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: I shudder to think about what I didn't know five years ago compared to where I'm at now.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: And it's changed me as an educator as well.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it it's I have to curate so much more about like what do I want to say?
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: Because I have I I can't talk forever, you know, even though I want to.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, just try it.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, you can try.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I I think Rich, I want to hear your thoughts on that too.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_02: But I want to hear your thoughts on another thing as well that you just touched on is we've gone back, Chris and I, to some of our old episodes, and they are unlistenable, unlisten toable.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_02: Like they're so cringy.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we actually re-recorded a couple old ones because we're just like, this is terrible.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_02: Like, we were not doing a good job at that.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_02: So I want to know what Chris mentioned, like, where is this professional development kind of taken or taking you?
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_02: But also what is the hardest thing that, or what's the the most difficult thing that you've learned, or what's the hardest in you know, in the four years?
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_02: Because for me and Chris, I don't know what yours is, but mine is probably just being comfortable with the record button on.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_02: Like, there's something about that that is I've always felt like I'm okay in front of a classroom when there's like an exchange between people, but you know, this like comfort level with being on and having a really clear line of of speaking, like ideas get cluttered in my head and then they kind of get jumbled as on their way out.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_02: And this still happens all the time when I'm going back and editing, I'm like, oh Jesse, you idiot.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_02: You you just really rambled through that.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_02: But that like clear line of logic in your head to your mouth, that's something that I really still to this day sort of struggle with a little bit.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm curious, actually, for both of you, what what's been the hardest?
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, Jesse, we both forgot the question because you really, really got rambled.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: I fell asleep for a second.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_02: Holy cow Thank you, Rachel.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for sticking over me.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_02: Chris is so beautiful.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_02: What did I do to him?
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_05: Um Yeah, so I'll start.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_05: And my so I'll start with just the professional development side of things.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_05: Yes, completely.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_05: I again was under the impression that I was like pretty okay at this before starting and have realized through doing it that I definitely wasn't.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_05: And well, I mean, I guess okay, depending on what my goals were.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_05: But as a communicator, I am now a million percent better and still have a long way to go.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_05: And I it's just been completely transformative in terms of how I speak and how I think about speaking now.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_05: Even I thought it would just kind of be YouTube would be separate from the talks that I give at like conferences and things.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_05: But now from what I've done on YouTube, I now even prepare differently for talks that I give to like live audiences and students and and colleagues at conferences and and stuff like that.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_05: And I never thought that I would overlap.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_05: But the way that I think about storytelling and keeping people engaged and how I represent my data and the jargon that I use has has just completely changed because, largely because of my audience telling me I don't understand blank.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_05: Can you explain it again?
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_05: And every video that that happens, I'm like, God, I should have explained it this way or with this verbiage, because that is the way that I did it is too technical or whatever it might be.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_05: And so it's really taught me little by little all these ways that, you know, I could just become better at communicating in general.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_05: And I've even gotten better, like not even just speaking, but like communicating with students one-on-one or with anybody one-on-one.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_05: So it's really just transformed me completely.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_05: And I that's something I did not expect getting into this.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_05: I just thought, oh, like outreach and learning.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_05: But yeah, it's been really great for me, not only learning these things, but learning how to communicate.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_05: And so that has been amazing.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_05: And I think has given me a lot of opportunities that I don't think I would have otherwise gotten.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_05: You know, like my current postdoc position, I don't think I would have gotten it had I not had this huge portfolio of my work online.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_05: So that's been amazing.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_05: But the hardest thing, oh gosh, there's so many.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_05: I think people, everybody wants to communicate their science.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_05: It's the logistics that kind of present this barrier.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_05: And I think people think, yeah, you know, you could go post videos and stuff or podcasts, but they they underestimate everything that goes into that.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_05: And I think for me, it's that everything.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_05: It's the audio adjusting, it's the editing, it's the preparation, and it's everything that you are not trained as that you have to become an expert in.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_05: That to me has been the hardest.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_05: But yeah, sorry, I'm going.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: No, that I think that's a very valid point.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah, absolutely.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_02: And and I you bring up an interesting point.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_02: I'll have to consider your point about getting better at talks and especially interacting with students one-on-one.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_02: That's something I'll have to think about.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_02: That I I'm sure I've gotten better at that because of doing the podcast.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I'm teaching Chris stuff every week, so I must be getting better.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you're such a sage, Jesse.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: Just listen to me.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: Just to ask you.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: Rachel, one one thing, and then I I want to get into and talk geology.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I want to move into talking about your PhD research and and what you did and why you chose that direction.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: But before I do that, your channel, you use like really good graphics and diagrams and things like that.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: How how's that done?
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_05: So it depends on which graphics.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_05: I do a variety of methods.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_05: So what I normally do is most of the time I will try and take actual figures from from papers that I'm trying to summarize or simplify in a video.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_05: And I will, you know, try and cite everybody, but I will normally use figures or modify figures in some way so that I can kind of walk through the actual data if I'm representing data.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_05: Sometimes if it's just me talking about the intro or the conclusions, I'll just put imagery up there of kind of like what I'm talking about, whether it be a dinosaur or something.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_05: But I often run into the case where, and I'm sure you guys have run into this with your app and everything, where there's imagery that I want to say a very specific thing and get a very specific thing across.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_05: And I need something that's just not out there.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_05: And I will go and try and make my own.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_05: And I'm very, very low tech.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_05: So the only things that I use, I use Canva a lot, which is the kind of graphic design, well, not really self, but just website.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_05: And so it has a lot of, you know, little design templates you can use and things you can put together to make a diagram of some sorts.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_05: And so I use that a lot to make my own diagrams to explain concepts.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_05: And then I just use good old fashioned PowerPoint a lot.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_05: I've gotten really proficient with it.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so I'll say interesting.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_02: That's amazing that you've made a lot of that stuff with even Canva.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_02: Canva's sophisticated, more sophisticated, but still difficult to make the imagery that you're making.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_05: Well, the key to good graphics, at least diagrams to show concepts, and my experience is simplicity.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I just make very simple things.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's true, but Jesse and I have thought a lot about this, and we've had a lot of conversations about think about the possibilities of having somebody with an understanding of geoscience and then just can kill it in graphic design.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: It would be what uh amazing.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_05: It's always been my number one like wish list of things.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_05: If I could like fund a person to come help me with any aspect, it would be graphics.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_05: Because I hate also having to use and rely on like fair use when I use imagery and stuff that isn't mine, but it's I can't, I don't have the capacity or skill to make anything that is designed by me.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_05: And so, you know, I just rely on the transformative aspect a lot of the times.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_05: And I would love to just have a graphic designer.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, totally.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we we went through an exercise of of I mean, we've we work with graphic designers and and you know, went through an exercise of finding somebody who's a geologist who brings that as well.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_02: That's amazing.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so but it's a work in progress, you know, like working through this stuff, and you know, that kind of talent, we gotta have some revenue to support that, right?
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_02: And so uh that it'd be great to be at a point where we could we could, you know, do that a lot.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_02: But um I think we're all kind of as geologists, we're also fairly visual.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_02: Like we we need to have the the visuals, so we are kind of visual by default, but then there's some people who are like incredibly talented visualists, uh as well as geologists.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um so sorry, Chris, I think I interrupted you again there.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: No, that's fine.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's fine.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, Rachel.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_01: So can you tell us about your PhD research?
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_01: Just let's talk geology for a little bit.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_05: So yeah, for my PhD work, I did uh I studied paleoceanography, so essentially ancient ocean chemistry, at least in my case.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_05: And essentially, the way that I normally explain this is the way we study Earth's past, like before humans were around to take climatic and environmental measurements, is by using the things that were around taking those measurements for us, aka rocks.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_05: And so I did lab-based research where I essentially mixed chemicals together to see how certain specific rocks formed, so that when we found those rocks in the rock record, we knew what conditions they represented in terms of ocean chemistry and whatnot.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_05: And so my specific project was focused on studying molybdenum signatures and how molybdenum signatures formed.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_05: So, in other words, I studied how molybdenum containing rocks form and how the molybdenum speciation or type of molybdenum that got preserved, how it got preserved under different chemical conditions, so different pH, different oxygen concentrations.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_05: And then essentially we use that to then take that and say, okay, if we find this molybdenum species or compound in a rock from this kind of rock, then it was probably relatively low in oxygen concentration or relatively acidic.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_05: And so that was what my work was was based on.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_01: So what kind of Were you able to do anything with temperature or not?
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_05: I didn't do anything with temperature that focused on temperature.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_05: I focused mainly on oxygen content, pH, iron content, and sulfur content.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_02: Can you give us a kind of a workflow?
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_02: Like what is what did your PhD workflow look like?
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_02: Were you collecting samples, bringing them back to the lab?
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_02: What was the the sort of balance there?
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, so I did for my specific dissertation work, it was fully lab based.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_05: There was a point in time where I wanted to do field samples and take them back to the lab and analyze them, um, which I did do for one project, but not it wasn't in my dissertation.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_05: But um, for my dissertation work, it was fully just me synthesizing molybdenum compounds in lab.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_05: So I would get up go to lab.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_05: Well, a lot of it was just preparation, so designing the experiments.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_05: And that was for the first bit, a lot of what it was.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_05: My whole first chapter of my dissertation is a review paper, not even data containing because, well, I got to grad school and a pandemic happened.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_05: So we got kicked out of the lab, and my advisor was like, read a bunch of papers and write a review.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_05: And I was like, sure.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_04: So I did that.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_05: And um, then I got back to lab.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_05: And, you know, by then I had a lot of time to prepare, you know, my plan for experiments, and I proposed my idea, and my committee said yes.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_05: And so I went ahead and did a series of experiments every month to two months, some of them ran longer, but it was just analyzing them every day.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_02: So you were generating, sorry, you were you were doing an experimental calibration.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_02: So you you had compiled a bunch of stuff in your first chapter of like molybdenum speciation, molybdenum measurements from real rocks, and then you were kind of experimentally calibrating those measurements in the lab for the latter chapters.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, essentially from the late review that I had done for the first chapter, I knew what the major questions were in the field and what the major debates were in terms of which molybdenum signatures were a little bit more ambiguous.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_05: And so I then designed experiments to look into those specific questions that we still didn't know.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, that was the rest of you know the two, three years that I was there.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_05: It was just in the lab, well, for like two years and then writing.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_05: That's the last year.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that it's amazing.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_02: I go back to this.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's amazing that you, you know, maintain this YouTube channel while doing this and you know, doing graduate school L during COVID.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that that's a a very that's a very efficient graduate school and very resilient.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_02: Uh do you feel this is an odd question?
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_02: We can cut this if you want, but do you feel that your sports background has helped you a lot with that's not an odd question.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_05: Absolutely.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_05: It has 100%.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_05: That is what gave me my work ethic.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_05: I I know it.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_05: It's my gymnastics coach.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_06: The Russian and French people yelling at me in the background, yes, that is it.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_02: I I'd imagine, I mean, for me, I played small college basketball during college, and I was always a much better student during the season than out of the season.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_02: Like the structure, and I always had to be just you had to be more structured in your life when you were sort of doing this.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I found that again in graduate school, I did I played some basketball, um, I would say semi, semi, semi, semi professionally in graduate school for a couple years.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_02: And it was the same thing.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_02: I was just a much more productive person because I had to be, you know, like you had more structure to your day.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_02: In graduate school, you Can be you have an unlimited amount of unstructured time that you just have to decide what to do with.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_02: So adding that little bit of structure really helped me a lot.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_05: I had to be really mindful and determined and organized to make my that I mean, all grad students have to.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_05: And that was one thing for me.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_05: I had an advisor that I had an undergraduate research advisor that was very strict on timelines.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_05: And then I had a graduate advisor that was very lenient because she's she always told me, Well, you're so driven.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_05: And I'm like, no, I need you to give me a deadline.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_06: And if you don't, I will not send anything to you.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_05: And so I had to tell her something or ask her to give me a deadline because I just and so sometimes she was she was too nice and she just wouldn't.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_05: And so I was like, okay, I gotta make myself do this.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_05: So I really had to be hard on myself.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_05: But yeah, I think I think absolutely my athletics background was one of the major reasons that I could.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_01: Do you plan to like, are you gonna continue this line of research or are you going in different directions, or do you just have more questions than when you first started?
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_05: So I am now doing a postdoc that's different research.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_05: I'm still finishing up some of those last papers and stuff from the molybdenum work and then other internship work that I did essentially the same thing with the molybdenum, but with allium instead.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_05: We're finishing up publishing those in the next year or two.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_05: Um, I just got revisions back today on my last dissertation molybdenum paper.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_03: So how were they?
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_05: Um extensive but good.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's good.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_00: Positive, just lots of.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is a sore topic with Jesse.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_05: So my worst favorite thing about academia is getting is revising.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_05: It's off.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_02: One of my favorite things to do is to rant to Chris when I get a paper rejected.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_02: That's true.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_02: And then like six months later, he'd be like, So what about that paper?
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, oh, it's still not accepted anywhere.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_02: It's in the second rounder, some cranky thing about it.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's so frustrating.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_05: I love being like 10th author, non-corresponding author.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_05: Like then you're just like, hey, another paper.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_05: But corresponding author, oh my god, it's it's a it's the worst.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_05: But it's a lot and reviewers are just so blunt because they're anonymous, and you're like, you could have said it nice.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_01: Does that seem does that seem right to you?
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: We've just seen I have talked about this.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_01: Does it seem right that they can be that like I don't know, something about that doesn't hit me right?
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Ridge, have you have you uh started reviewing papers yet?
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and I strugg I struggle with that too.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_05: I'm like, do I reveal my identity or not?
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_05: I'm always very not like I don't know, I'm scared to be mean, so I'm typically very nice anyway, but I I never know what to do.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_05: I I don't know whether I like it or not when people do reveal their identity because I do have one particular reviewer that seems to always get my papers, and he's always told me who he was, but he's never less blunt.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, right.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_02: This is the classic thing.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_02: And my my PhD supervisor gave me very good advice that I try and mostly follow, which was he he says he always signs his name because he feels like you have to be internally consistent.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_02: If you uh if you do it once, you should always do it.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_02: And if you're either anonymous once, you should always be anonymous, or if you're sign your name once, you should always sign your name.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_02: But he feels like it's a good internal check on him so that he's so that he's more thorough and more careful in his review and doesn't either give unwarranted compliments or give unwarranted critiques because he signed his name to it.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_02: So he spends a lot more time on his reviews, which makes a lot of sense.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_02: But I I have not always followed that advice, um, especially earlier on when I'm reviewing somebody senior, very senior to me's work, and I I know I'm gonna be a little critical about it.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um I still like am really hesitant to anyway.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_06: So yeah, I also sometimes do the same thing where I'm like, well, I don't want to reveal my identity because I don't know if I'm if I'm saying all the right things.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_06: Like I don't know that much about this topic.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_06: So I don't know.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_06: I I still have very much imposter syndrome when I review, but it doesn't go away.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_02: Uh to say that uh it definitely doesn't go away.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, I want to hear about the the postdoc research now.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_02: So what um, you know, what led you to this and and what are you finding?
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_02: I'm so interested in this topic.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_02: This is just so cool.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_05: Oh yeah, yeah.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_05: I didn't even finish the previous question about if I was gonna continue.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_05: But yeah, I have some papers, but um, other than that, I like now the direction I'm going in now with the postdoc research.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_05: So I think I'll probably do that rather than go back to the paleoceanography, geochemistry work that I was doing for my PhD, just because I think it's more impactful.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_05: And so, well, now I'll just go ahead and answer the next question, which is what is that?
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_05: I for my postdoc am doing, well, it's an NSF fellowship that is the solicitation for the fellowship is NSF STEM education something fellowship, postdoctoral fellowship, I think.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_05: And when I submitted a proposal, I was like, well, I'm interested in geoscience education, have no background or experience other than my channel that I've done throughout grad school, but it's not been part of my research.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_05: So I really wasn't all that confident about getting it.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_05: But I think again, like I said earlier, I think having that portfolio out there of my kind of commitment to geoscience communication really helped me get that.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_05: And so I did get it and I was like, okay, so this is an NSF postdoctoral fellowship.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_02: That's great.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_02: Congratulations.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's a big deal.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_02: That's awesome.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I ended up getting that and taking it to University of South Carolina, which is where I'm at now, and working with Dr.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_05: Catherine Riker.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_02: Just for the for the listener who doesn't know, these are you wrote you can do two kinds of postdocs.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_02: You can go work for somebody who has money to support a postdoc, or you can write your own thing, which you've done, which is the much harder route.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_02: You raised your own money, and then you can take it wherever you want, basically.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_02: Like you get it funded, and then you like pick a host university to go to.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_05: For mine, they required me to submit the proposal on top of an explanation of where I was going to carry out the research and with whom, and why I chose that university and that person, and have a very good reason to back that up.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_05: So I did a lot of research beforehand, reaching out to different people.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_05: The first two professors I reached out to were actually retiring, but they both recommended this person to me, which is Catherine Riker at University of South Carolina.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_05: So I was like, well, that seems like people think she's the person to go with.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_05: So I reached out to her and she helped me finish up letters and other components.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_05: There's so many components to an NSF proposal.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_05: Oh my god.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_05: But we finished that up.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_05: So she had agreed before we even submitted it.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_05: And then, you know, six months later, whenever they get back to you and they're like, hey, you got it, you're like, oh, okay, cool.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_03: So I forgot I submitted that actually.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, and I had just accepted something else that was like a$25,000 grant for like a dissertation fellowship that I had to give back because I accepted this other thing, which required me to graduate sooner.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_05: So they were like, nah, yeah, no, you have to give that back.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_02: Oh bummer.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_02: That always hurts.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that almost hurt.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_05: But I'm glad that I went the route that I did.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_05: So I am here in South Carolina now with Catherine Riker, and I am now working on geoeducation research is her field, technically.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_05: My specific project is a little bit more a combination of geoeducation and geocommunication research.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_05: So, what I'm specifically trying to figure out is what are the major misconceptions of geoscience among students and the general public, and how can we transform those to increase geoscience enrollment and engagement in the field.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_05: So, to do this, it's essentially project is a survey-based project.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_05: I'll send out surveys asking questions, you know, trying to identify misperceptions of geoscience or just perceptions of geoscience in general and get an idea of all the differences in age groups thinking one thing versus the other, or you know, maybe gender stereotypes, and so all of these things to kind of just identify what's out there and then use that to kind of see what has deterred students from entering the field and which ones of those have encouraged students to enter the field, and then try and design better outreach techniques and methods for us in the future to use to more effectively encourage students to enter the field.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's really interesting.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_01: Are you able to talk about any of what you've found?
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_05: So far, um, I have found part of the the the questions you sent me that I ran out of time to prepare for.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_05: So this is just this might get a little rambly, but so far I've seen a lot of misperceptions around geology, is well, the most common ones I see through like comments too on YouTube.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_05: And one of the reasons I wanted to actually do this project is because I see, oh, geology is just rocks or oil and gas or whatever.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_05: And people come to my channel and they're like, I didn't know it also was like geobiology or geochemic.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_05: They don't realize that there are other avenues to geology and and aspects of it.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_05: So that's a big one, is just not understanding the full scope of geology.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_05: And then another major misperception I see is people, especially younger student-aged people, thinking that geology is bad for the environment or has somehow caused climate change, which, you know, obviously in part has, but it's also part of the solution, which I think they are not, they're missing that part.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_05: And so they don't put together that geo means earth.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_05: They kind of just have, again, it goes back to that perception of geology meaning either just rocks or just oil, gas or fossil fuels, whatever.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_05: And so they they have this idea that it's either bad or boring or whatever.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_05: And that seems to have really influenced especially younger generations.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_05: Then I also saw, I'm just picking, I think, the results that I've seen that I think are the most interesting.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_05: Another very interesting finding that I think came from some of the early surveys is I asked people, I kind of threw this in there last minute, too.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_05: I asked people to define this, was one of the only questions on there that was like fill in the blank, like they could choose the wording.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_05: And I said, define geology in three words.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_05: And then I said, define in the next question, define geoscience in three words.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_05: No context.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_05: And over, I think it was like 80% of the people or more put something related to rocks when it came to defining geology.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_05: And 50% of the people, or like 60%, put something related to earth and had no mention of rocks when it came to geoscience.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_05: So people think geoscience is the is the science of earth and geology is the study of rocks when they're the same thing.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_05: Because geometry, and so that to me, I was like, I mean, it validates a lot of the department name changes that we're seeing.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_05: People go from geological sciences to earth sciences or earth and environmental sciences.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_05: But it really is crazy to me that people have this old traditional view of geology that is, I think, you know, exacerbating this enrollment decline that we're seeing.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_05: And then the very last thing that I'll mention is I saw a lot of people in in my third set of surveys where I asked more about what kinds of outreach would actually get you interested in stuff like that and how you were.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_05: People were initially exposed to geoscience and whether that increased their interest or decreased or didn't change anything.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_05: I saw a lot of hints at a need for more geoscience in the media and not just geoscience and media, whether it be books, magazines, TV, like traditional things or social media and whatever else there is in terms of media.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_05: But all of these things, it seems people want not just more geoscience representation or not want, but that would help get more young people interested, but also more diverse representation of like diverse role models and not just you know your typical older, you know, white male and people who look like Chris.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, let's be honest about it.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_02: People who look like Chris and me.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_02: I do it.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I do.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_05: With a raw camera, you know, well, and also people in different settings in the lab.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, yeah, it's it's yeah, you know, it's so it's true though.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 56:15
  SPEAKER_05: So that was the biggest things is like more media exposure and and more accurate, wide, diverse types of media exposure of geoscientists, and then the just perceptions part.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, sorry.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_02: I think that I mean a couple of those that stand out to me.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, first of all, these are so interesting.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I'll be really curious, Rachel, to hear how I mean, maybe near the end.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_02: How long is your postdoc for?
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_02: Is it how long is this this project?
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_02: Uh two years.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_05: And I have till the end, I just finished.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_05: I started in January.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_05: So I have till the end of 2026.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_05: Great.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, 2025.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_02: I'll be in very interested to hear you know how this progresses over the next several years.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_02: But I think one thing that stood out, we had Steph Morzak on, who is a mining geologist and has worked in a variety of mining things.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_02: But her opinion on the second one you mentioned, the young, and I see this all the time, the young students who have this perception that geology equals bad, geology equals mining, geology equals oil and gas.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_02: And it's again, it's it's like not wrong, but it's not right either.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like, and it's not the way you said it is perfect.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_02: It's part of the solution.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_02: The solution resides in geoscience fundamentally here.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_02: And and I think that that's missed.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_02: And so I'll be interested to hear sort of what solutions there are to that.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_02: And the the other one that I've I think the the representation uh aspect is a really such an important one.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_02: And there's so many people from both diversity of science and diversity of backgrounds that are out there doing really, really cool stuff.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_02: And there's so many people who go off and do cool stuff, but actually have like sort of are home in geoscience or geology, they're like geologists by training, and then they go off and I mean the head of DARPA, she's amazing, and she's a geologist by training.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's an incredible career path that geology sets you up for, even if you don't go into geoscience.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, just the the skill set you develop in a geoscience undergrad program or graduate program is just applicable to so many different fields.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_02: So I yeah, that's really cool to hear your your results so far, and I'll be excited to see where it goes.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, they definitely align with a lot of things I've seen through YouTube comments as well.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_05: I remember I always whenever people like I do like update videos and stuff that aren't necessarily lectures, I'll sometimes like post pictures of like conference I went to or a thing I went to um to analyze sample samples or uh me working in the lab because I finished a set of experiments or whatever.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_05: And I remember throughout grad school, obviously everything I was doing was in the lab.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_05: And whenever I like put up pictures of me doing my samples in the lab or put up a video or whatever, people were like, Aren't you a geologist?
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_05: Are you in the lab?
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_06: And I'm like, that's geology too.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_02: Totally.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but yeah, people don't realize it.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_02: It's so interesting.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, so how how where are you taking this your YouTube channel?
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_02: I guess.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_02: And is this research that you're doing like feeding back directly into what your plans are for the future with the channel?
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I immediately after I started getting survey results, I was like, oh, I should do this.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_05: Like, you know, I I started seeing certain things that I was, oh, that means I should do this.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_05: So yeah, absolutely.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_05: I want to start implementing things.
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_05: Actually, one of the biggest things that I noticed was to, well, let me, I know we're like going way over time, but I have a short story.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_05: Short story.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_05: When I was in grad school, our department hired on an outreach coordinator or something like that.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_05: And she used to be faculty and she moved to doing this position.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_05: And she occasionally invited us graduate students to come to high schools with her to talk about geology and get students.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_05: So I was really excited about this idea.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_05: And I was like, oh my gosh, we're going to high schools.
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_05: This isn't in high school or taught in high school, at least in El Paso, Texas.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_05: And so I was like, yes, we need to expose high schoolers to this.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_05: This is great.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_05: So I would go with her and and she would start the presentation, the 45-minute presentation with so here's the major and track options in our department and some of the fact.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_05: And I was like, wait, no, we need to tell them white rocks are cool first.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_04: And so they kind of glaze over.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_05: And so I remember thinking, no, we gotta go that about this totally differently.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_05: And at the end of the let the her lecture, she would go into some of the cool research going on in the department.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_05: I'm like, we need to start with that, or like start with what geology is, why it's cool.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_05: And I remember well, that was kind of like a just aha moment in in my mind of like, okay, so it's not just that we need to hire these people and pay them to go do this, but we also need to do it right.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_05: And I didn't do anything at that point.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_05: But now that I'm in this field and I'm seeing the results from the surveys and what high school-aged people might have benefited from knowing and being exposed to at that time, I'm realizing that the main thing that we need to focus on is getting them just interested in the topic to begin with.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_05: We don't need to start off with career options or whatever.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_05: But so that's recruitment side.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_05: In terms of retaining students, retention side of things, career options is a really, really important thing.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_05: And so one of the things that I've learned in in my survey is departments don't do a great job of telling students what they can do with their degree.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_05: And so I have I have now designed an idea for the future of my channel to do kind of a series.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_05: I'm working on interviews for the for the near future, which I'll talk about in a second, but I want to do, and they're more so with academics going over research projects, but I want to do a series of videos interviewing people that aren't just academics, that are, you know, working in every sector of geoscience and industry and consulting and whatever, and talk about these different, well, what they're doing, just first again, starting off with interest and and concepts and things that get people in the door, and then finishing off with, okay, well, how did you get into your current position?
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_05: What is your day-to-day?
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_05: And how can somebody that might be interested in this get in and do that?
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_05: And so that is something that I know on my channel would be really impactful because I do have students that watch me.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_05: They're already in the major and they need to know what to do with it.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_05: And I've made like a geoscience career video in the past because people wanted it, but I am not the person to talk about it because I am in academics.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_05: You know, I'm not the person doing the thing.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_05: So I really hope to do that eventually.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_05: Um, that's definitely in my future plans, and that's definitely inspired by the survey results and and things I've noticed.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_05: And then in the more near future, I'm doing uh GSA's science communication fellowship this year.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_05: And I, for that, am going to be kind of taking over their channel as well as kind of posting videos in tandem of on both channels that overlap a bit to promote both.
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_05: But also to begin with in the next month or so, it's going to be mainly interviews with scientists presenting at GSA and talking about their projects and promoting the conference and all of that.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_05: But I'm really excited for that because again, it kind of brings me into this interview world and and gives me some experience with that so that I can do things like future interviews about careers and future interviews with people like you about oldest rocks.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_05: So that's what I'm really excited about, is just transitioning into more interviews.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_05: Of course, I don't want to replace my classic lectures, but yeah, right.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_02: Of course.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_02: No, you can't you can't stray too far from home base.
• 1:03:47
  SPEAKER_02: But that's really cool about the GSA Fellowship.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_02: So it'll be an ongoing thing over the next year.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_02: Is it you said a year?
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah, it's a year for now, and then we'll see after that.
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_02: Here it goes.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_02: That's really cool.
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I and I think that is something.
• 1:03:59
  SPEAKER_02: First of all, there's no money in oldest rocks research, so don't go into that for choice people.
• 1:04:04
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but I it's something, even our department at Penn State, you know, we have a massive alumni network of very successful geoscientists that went out into industry, and we don't use them, frankly.
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_02: Like we we just don't expose our students to really the non-academic alumni.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_02: We're pretty good about exposing people to the academic path because we're all academics, but we're not that great at integrating the alumni.
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_02: And my experience is Dick, the alumni who are out in industry and have gone on to like amazing careers, they're really passionate about giving back and interacting with students.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_02: We're just not really using it very well.
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_02: So I think you know, your sort of goals there are massively aligned with a lot of people out there who are on the the fading edge of a career, maybe, and and they want to give back and they've had an amazing path because of geoscience and they'd love to come on your channel.
• 1:04:52
  SPEAKER_02: I bet you'd get a massive amount of people who want to do that.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, very cool way.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's awesome.
• 1:04:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's such a this is so true.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_01: I come across this all the time because parents of my high school students want to meet with me and because their kid wants to go into geoscience and and they they're sometimes I get the feeling like they're almost pissed off.
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like what like what have you done to my kid?
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what is that's so funny.
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_01: What are they gonna do with that?
• 1:05:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, but seriously, I don't do a good job of it myself.
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_01: I don't do a all right, so you're turned on to the field of geoscience, but what are you gonna do?
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, we I I just think that we pretty much do a horrible job of what's the next step.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, actually on that, on that point, Chris, I it's so funny.
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_05: I used to think I want to reach the younger people.
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_05: I want to reach the students, the potential students, to inspire them to go into geoscience, and that's it.
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_05: And I remember I always saw like in my analytics, oh, I'm I'm reaching pretty good spread of age groups up all the way to 65 plus.
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_05: And I was initially like, like, I wish it was younger or younger dominant.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_05: But then I realized through comments the importance of having the older audience in there because I got comments from parents and grandparents that were like, oh man, if I had known about this, I might have become a geoscientist.
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_05: And now I want to tell my granddaughter or my daughter about your channel and about what you can do with this.
• 1:06:21
  SPEAKER_05: And I realized how important it is that we talk to the parents and talk to the grandparents.
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_05: And that's not just like something, there's data that shows that, you know, especially minority groups, especially Hispanic groups are very familial, like influenced by in terms of like what they do for a job.
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_05: And so talking to the parents and talking to the grandparents is really, really important for kids' decisions in terms of majoring.
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_05: And so I think it's definitely changed my perspective on reaching older audiences.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_05: And now I'm really grateful for my parent and grandparent audience because I we need to reach everyone, you know?
• 1:06:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's a really great point.
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_02: I hadn't ever thought about that of the sort of feedback down from grandparents and parents, but it's it's totally true.
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_02: Like everybody knows what a lawyer does and that you can make a bunch of money.
• 1:07:08
  SPEAKER_02: Nobody knows what a geolog that you can go have a six-figure salary as a geologist, right?
• 1:07:12
  SPEAKER_02: Like that's not unless you know somebody um who did it.
• 1:07:16
  SPEAKER_02: You don't know.
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I think, you know, one thing that on the younger thing, that's something that Chris has has had a massive influence on an entire generation of geologists because we got exposed to a very passionate person about geology in high school, in early high school, uh, which is incredibly rare in most places, especially in the state of Michigan, where there's actually very little geoscience industry whatsoever.
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_02: So that early exposure is is really important.
• 1:07:39
  SPEAKER_02: But like it's a good, it's a really interesting point you just made that it doesn't hurt to influence the parents and the grandparents as well.
• 1:07:46
  SPEAKER_02: That's really I hadn't thought about that before.
• 1:07:48
  SPEAKER_02: That's a great way to put it.
• 1:07:49
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, that's totally cool.
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we are, I mean, we're running long in the tooth.
• 1:07:53
  SPEAKER_02: Rachel, I will ask maybe one more question, but I want to I'll also a commitment to come back on.
• 1:07:58
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe once this research is a little further along, we can talk about it again.
• 1:08:02
  SPEAKER_02: Because I think there's there's so uh you have such an interesting take on stuff and collecting really interesting data on geoscience misconceptions or something.
• 1:08:09
  SPEAKER_02: So as long as as you're willing to do that and come back on again, that'd be cool.
• 1:08:13
  SPEAKER_02: We could we could end now as we're then we can end.
• 1:08:16
  SPEAKER_02: That's all right, right?
• 1:08:17
  SPEAKER_01: Is that we'll agree to we'll agree to end it then.
• 1:08:19
  SPEAKER_02: Is that sound right, Chris?
• 1:08:20
  SPEAKER_02: Is that okay?
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's right.
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, okay.
• 1:08:23
  SPEAKER_02: All right, well, Rachel, our our traditional closing question here is what is your best day as a geoscientist?
• 1:08:29
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, you know, I looked at this question and then I was like, I don't know.
• 1:08:34
  SPEAKER_05: And then I thought about it for maybe 0.2 seconds, and I was like, no, I do know.
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_05: And it was definitely the first day that I got a comment that was like from a student that was like, I am majoring in this because of you.
• 1:08:45
  SPEAKER_05: I was like, okay, this is it.
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_05: This is that right there has doubled my impact as a geoscientist.
• 1:08:52
  SPEAKER_05: And then, you know, every time that happens, now I'm just so grateful for this, you know, platform that I have and ability to impact students that I have.
• 1:09:01
  SPEAKER_05: And now it obviously gets me nervous because I'm like, oh gosh, now I so much responsibility.
• 1:09:07
  SPEAKER_05: But like I feel really lucky to be in the position that I can inspire students to do this.
• 1:09:12
  SPEAKER_05: But that was definitely that first time was definitely, I think, my best day.
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:09:17
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, okay, I have so many questions.
• 1:09:19
  SPEAKER_02: That's a very cool experience.
• 1:09:21
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you're following.
• 1:09:21
  SPEAKER_02: Do you you you have 10 to 100 X more followers than people who have ever read my any of my my papers or all of my papers I've ever written in aggregate, right?
• 1:09:30
  SPEAKER_02: Like the the following, it's just an amazing thing.
• 1:09:33
  SPEAKER_02: So how do you handle the you said pressure, which I think is really an interesting one.
• 1:09:37
  SPEAKER_02: How do you not stress yourself out about that, I guess?
• 1:09:41
  SPEAKER_05: You know, it's really not that bad when I in just, you know, in my little world posting my normal videos that do average, because I have this community, those people that always comment on every single video and always come back and have done so since the beginning of the channel, those people are always the people that I see in the comments and I feel such comfort.
• 1:10:06
  SPEAKER_05: And like they're my little geo family.
• 1:10:08
  SPEAKER_05: I'm like, oh yeah, okay.
• 1:10:10
  SPEAKER_05: If you like the video, then we're good.
• 1:10:11
  SPEAKER_05: Like, you know, like we're good to go.
• 1:10:13
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, that's right.
• 1:10:14
  SPEAKER_05: And so I feel a lot of comfort from that.
• 1:10:16
  SPEAKER_05: When when videos go crazy, like I had the dark oxygen one go crazy, like 250,000 views.
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_05: That was a lot of comments from people that don't normally watch me.
• 1:10:26
  SPEAKER_05: And those make me remember that those numbers aren't people, and that, you know, there's people that might not like what I'm saying.
• 1:10:36
  SPEAKER_05: And so those videos are great because you're like, oh, it's doing really well, but also it's like bittersweet because you also see a lot more negativity and and skepticism, which I love skepticism as a scientist, but like when it's negative or rude, it's not great.
• 1:10:52
  SPEAKER_05: So I I'm just the people that come back every time and when I see their comments, that's when I feel like really comforted and like, yeah, this is this is like my little family.
• 1:11:01
  SPEAKER_05: I must keep going.
• 1:11:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:11:03
  SPEAKER_02: That's really cool.
• 1:11:04
  SPEAKER_02: That all right, that's great.
• 1:11:05
  SPEAKER_02: I never thought about the comment section as kind of a source of that for for somebody in your position.
• 1:11:10
  SPEAKER_02: That's cool.
• 1:11:11
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's that's a great day as a geoscientist, I must say.
• 1:11:14
  SPEAKER_02: That's a very good answer.
• 1:11:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you.
• 1:11:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good answer.
• 1:11:17
  SPEAKER_01: I guess we're gonna have to let you go then.
• 1:11:19
  SPEAKER_01: I know, I guess we'll let you go.
• 1:11:20
  SPEAKER_02: We can talk about the comment section, you know, the next time.
• 1:11:22
  SPEAKER_02: Round two.
• 1:11:24
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, part two.
• 1:11:25
  SPEAKER_02: Part two.
• 1:11:26
  SPEAKER_02: We could we could dive into all that.
• 1:11:27
  SPEAKER_02: That'll be great.
• 1:11:28
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thank you, Rachel.
• 1:11:29
  SPEAKER_02: This has been super informative and interesting, and your channel's just amazing.
• 1:11:33
  SPEAKER_02: And and you're listening to this, go check it out.
• 1:11:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's at Geogirl at YouTube, and you have a website as well, loads of information, um, and just videos on everything.
• 1:11:42
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you have produced so much amazing content, it's incredible.
• 1:11:45
  SPEAKER_02: So go check it out, and you got a series coming up with uh with GSA as well, which will be very exciting to see.
• 1:11:50
  SPEAKER_02: So thanks for joining us.
• 1:11:51
  SPEAKER_02: This has been awesome, Rachel.
• 1:11:52
  SPEAKER_02: Really appreciate the time.
• 1:11:53
  SPEAKER_02: This has been great.
• 1:11:54
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you so much.
• 1:11:55
  SPEAKER_05: Thanks, Rachel.
• 1:11:56
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you for having me.
• 1:11:59
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, that's a wrap.
• 1:12:00
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for listening.
• 1:12:01
  SPEAKER_02: Again, if you want to support us, there are two ways to do that.
• 1:12:04
  SPEAKER_02: First of all, you can head over to our website, planetgeocast.com.
• 1:12:07
  SPEAKER_02: There's a support us link there.
• 1:12:09
  SPEAKER_02: You can also download our Camp Geo mobile app.
• 1:12:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's the first link in your show notes, and we have a ton of audiobook content for sale there, and also a bunch for free.
• 1:12:17
  SPEAKER_02: The intro level geoscience course that Chris and I teach with a bunch of images in audio textbook form.
• 1:12:23
  SPEAKER_02: You can also find old podcast episodes that are organized in a more linear fashion.
• 1:12:27
  SPEAKER_02: Chris and I kind of randomly walk around through geoscience content in this channel, but if you want to find it more organized fashion, it's on the app.
• 1:12:35
  SPEAKER_02: You can also send us an email, planetgeocast at gmail.com, or follow us on all the social medias at Planet Geocast.
• 1:12:41
  SPEAKER_02: Cheers.