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

Mike talks with science communicators Alex Dainis, Trade Dominguez and Joe Hanson about what it’s like trying to do their job in today’s information environment.

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Alex Dainis

• https://www.instagram.com/AlexDainis/
• https://bsky.app/profile/alexdainis.bsky.social
• https://www.helicasemedia.com/

Trace Dominguez

• https://www.instagram.com/tracedominguez/
• https://www.threads.com/@tracedominguez
• https://www.youtube.com/tracedominguez
• https://thatsabsurdshow.com/

Joe Hanson

• https://www.instagram.com/drjoehanson/
• https://www.youtube.com/@besmart
• https://www.youtube.com/@pbsterra

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Never Post’s producers are Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton and The Mysterious Dr. Firstname Lastname. Our senior producer is Hans Buetow. Our executive producer is Jason Oberholtzer. The show’s host is Mike Rugnetta.

teach us about life

gently

implored the little beings

and stretched their arms

for love of the other shore

 Canto XVII (for Diana) by Alejandra Pizarnik


Never Post is a production of Charts & Leisure and is distributed by Radiotopia

Friends, hello and welcome to Never Post, a podcast for and about the Internet. I'm your host Mike Rugnetta, and we have a methodical show for you this week. In this episode, I chat with geneticist and science communicator Alex Danis, Emmy nominee and science communicator Trace Dominguez, and molecular biologist and science communicator Joe Hanson about what it's like right now in this environment trying to communicate with people about science. What helps, what hinders, and what keeps them from losing their minds. But first, we're gonna take a quick break and you're gonna listen to some ads unless you're on the member feed.

On Wednesday, February 25, the United States Senate Health Committee held a confirmation hearing for Casey Means who has been nominated by Donald Trump to be the next surgeon general. For the unfamiliar, The US surgeon general is often referred to as the nation's doctor. They are a commissioned officer and the operational head of the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. They report to the assistant secretary for health who themselves reports to the secretary of health and human services who right now is Robert f Kennedy junior. The surgeon general is one of the country's foremost communicators about health and related topics, guiding the country in its understanding of important public health issues.

The health warnings on both cigarettes and alcoholic beverages called surgeon general's warnings are perhaps two of the more notable impacts made by office holders past. The office was established in 1871 and since then every US surgeon general has been a licensed physician who finished their residency. This may change with Casey Means who attended the Stanford University School of Medicine, but dropped out of her residency to pursue a career in functional medicine, which Wikipedia describes as quote, a form of alternative medicine that encompasses many unproven and disproven methods and treatments. Citation. Citation.

Citation. At its essence, it is a rebranding of complementary and alternative medicine, citation, and as such is pseudoscientific, citation, and has been described as a form of quackery. Citation, citation, citation, citation, citation. Casey founded a practice in Portland, Oregon which has closed. She does not hold a medical license and works now mostly as an influencer.

Her Instagram profile includes photos and clips of her with Andrew Huberman, Joe Rogan, Bill Maher, Tucker Carlson, as well as longevity specialists. And I think the founder, but I'm not sure, of at least one skin care brand whose primary spokesperson appears at the moment to be trad wife Vundefrau, Nara Aziza Smith. Memes posts take aim at what she calls ultra processed foods. She cites sourceless statistics about increases in the prevalence of various diseases, upticks in childhood onset, this and that, and speaks in an alarming and in this administration very familiar tone about all the ways various establishment forces conspire to diminish the health of Americans or keep them from knowledge about what true health really looks like. Like RFK junior and so many others associated with the current American administration, there are kernels of truth in her criticisms.

The American health care industry is mismanaged, profit driven, exploitative. Many Americans do have trouble getting access to nutritional foods, but her responses to these issues often lead to more questions than answers. Here's one clip of Casey chatting with Joe Rogan. It's a minute and a half long, and I'm not gonna edit it down so that you get the full, well, experience, I guess.

We know a lot. We have the technology, the money, and the resources to fix all of this, the planet and health, and we're not. And that's why I think there's something darker happening on, like, the consciousness level. I think it's gonna be hard to get our way out of this if we stick to partisan politics and quibbling about individual policy ideas. I think it has to start with, are we committed to life and to awe and to connecting with source and then listening and moving our way out of here, or are we not?

And if we choose not, which is what I think we're doing I mean, I think there's huge light happening. That's why a lot of people are interested in this issue right now. But, like, if we don't, I do think we're on the road to existential disaster because we're that powerful now. Step one is us deciding, like, what choice do we wanna make in this lifetime. Do we wanna believe that life is a miracle?

This universe is a miracle. Our bodies are miracles, and we want to connect with God in this lifetime. We wanna build and respect these temples that are interconnected with the earth to do that, or do we not? And, like, that's the choice we have right now. And I think we have to take that very seriously.

And I think a lot of the political stuff that's happening, MAHA, it's all just a reflection of people wanting to find a way to fight for life and not knowing how. That's what I think is kinda happening here.

And wanting life to make more sense.

Casey does not, at the moment, appear to have the votes to be confirmed as surgeon general of The United States. Former surgeon general Jerome Adams called her nomination incomprehensible. Senate health committee chair Bernie Sanders said

I have very serious questions about the ability of doctor Means to be the kind of surgeon general, this country needs. Thank you very much.

She faced round after round of tough questioning in her hearing about the abortion pill, mifepristone, about the safety and availability of birth control generally, about the importance of vaccinations, specifically regarding measles, the flu, and so on. Here is an early exchange between her and senator Bill Cassidy, a physician and senior United States senator from Louisiana.

And some have been scared to vaccinate their children because they've been told incorrectly that vaccines cause autism. Do you believe that vaccines, whether individually or collectively, contribute to autism?

Senator Cassidy, you're a physician. I'm a physician. The reality is that we have an autism crisis that's increasing, and this is devastating to many families. And we do not know as a medical community what causes autism. The administration has just committed a huge amount of funding to look at the exposome of all environmental factors that could be contributing to autism.

And until we have a clear understanding of why kids are are developing this at higher rates, I I think we should not leave any stones unturned.

There's been a lot of evidence showing that they're not implicated. Do you not accept that evidence?

I do accept that evidence. I also think that science has never settled and I think there is I think that the effort to look at comprehensive cumulative exposures, of our exposome into what is causing autism is important. And I look forward to seeing those results and sharing the best public health information with the American people.

Well, I got through five out of my seven. So thank you for cooperating. Senator Sanders.

The phrase science is never settled, the way it's deployed feels like a weaponization. This phrase normally means almost the opposite of what it's doing here. Science is never settled when spoken by scientists means we commit to our knowledge until evidence leads us to different conclusions. When spoken here by means, it smacks of doubt and of conspiracy. It may be that Casey Means does not become the Surgeon General, but she's gotten this far.

Her three hour hearing aired on cable news, on C Span, and so on. Her ideas find purchase on the biggest podcasts, on some of the largest news networks. She's got nearly 850,000 followers on Instagram and as such our president feels that she may be suited as the nation's number one health communicator. Alex, Trace, Joe, and I don't discuss Casey Means at all in the following conversation, but we do discuss at length and in detail the environment that empowered her and sustains her relevance. I wanted to get them on as communicators, science communicators specifically, to find out what it's like for them operating in that same environment trying every day to engage in truth seeking and publicly committing to science that, no, may not be settled, but that doesn't mean that we lack confidence in it.

That doesn't mean that it's wrong. So after a short break, me, Alex, Trace, Joe. I've been wanting to make this episode for a really long time, so I really hope you enjoy it. Joining me are Alex Danis, Trace Dominguez, and Johansson. Alex is a science communicator specializing in genetics, biology, and chemistry.

She's the cohost of the American Chemical Society's series reactions and has partnered with the Museum of Science in Boston, the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, and many others. She has a PhD in genetics from Stanford. Alex, thanks for joining us.

Thanks for having me.

Trace Dominguez is an Emmy nominated host, writer, and producer of science programming. He's the coproducer, writer, and presenter of PBS South Florida's show Stargazers, and EP and cohost of the podcast, That's Absurd. Please elaborate. He was a longtime producer at Discovery Communications and later Seeker Media. Trace has a master's in public communication from American University.

Trace, nice to have you here.

Thanks.

And Joe Hanson is a producer, host, and science communicator. He is the creator of Be Smart, an award winning YouTube science program produced by PBS Digital Studios, as well as the host of Overview, a PBS Terra series about nature and earth science, and high school quiz show produced by WGBH. Joe has a PhD in cell and molecular biology from the University of Texas.

Joe, nice to see you.

Always a pleasure, Mike.

When was the last time all of us hung out together? Was it at a YouTube EDU conference or a VidCon perhaps?

I feel like it was one of those.

Safe bets. Yeah.

It wasn't a metal show or something like that, unfortunately, but it would I wouldn't be surprised to see any of us there.

We could make it happen. If you guys come to Brooklyn, I'll take you out. We can go see some Horrible Noise.

Delightful.

And it would be a great time.

Sounds cathartic.

Great band name.

I would go see Horrible Noise. Yes. Excellent band name.

So I would love to start maybe frustratingly broad here with a question that you all maybe thought you had gotten past having to answer, which is what is a science communicator? What do you do? What what does your job entail?

Well, Mike, obviously, we communicate science.

But duh. Thanks, Trace.

Well, that's what snides communicators don't do. They say duh real loud to people.

They really shouldn't, but sometimes they do.

Look, it's certainly a field that's a lot of different things and and that's that's what makes it exciting and challenging. It's it's a bit of a a job title that crosses into journalism at points where we need to be critical and and and weigh evidence and have ethical responsibility to our communities. It's it's educational at times. It's where we want people to take information and use it for their own purposes and and for the future. It can inform policy.

It can try to debunk and and keep people safe, from from, information and then help them make good decisions. It's it's a million different things with with potential, depending on the use cases.

Yeah. My fun answer is often that I get to talk to scientists all day and then be loud about it on the internet. But that comes from a place where I want to try and give people the vocabulary and the knowledge and the ability to sort of look at their world in a new way. And the best way that I can do that is through science.

Did you know the term science communicator before you became one? Because that I did not know that that's what I was doing for maybe three years that I was doing it.

Oh, yeah. I would say I didn't I did not hear that term until I had been doing it for about five years. I truly did not know it was a thing until I had just been I I started just by making YouTube videos about science as a hobby and it really was not until about four or five years in that I was like, a, other people do this. And they've thought about better ways to do it than I have. And b, like, this is a field that has research about it, that has best practices, that has, like, all this other stuff behind it.

Yeah. That was when I learned the term science communication. I did not know it was a thing.

You look back, if you take a historical perspective on this too, you know, every science communication conversation must invoke the name of Carl Sagan within the first five minutes. So we'll go ahead check out.

We did it. That's a

good If you look back at the time that he was on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and publishing the the first great Cosmos series, He was a popularizer of science. That's what people called him. And there's this sort of, like, inherent framing there that that science is this sort of underdog, like like, hated, you know, like, bullied nerdy thing that needs to be helped out of its and and and get that makeover. Just take off those glasses, and everybody would would would fall in love with it. And then there were people who were science writers and science journalists in this sort of very serious gray suit kind of newspaper attitude of the thing.

And then you had your sort of like essayists and people that are focusing on the beautification of nature and the Rachel Carsons of the world. And I think that that has sort of converged into this term that is kind of hard to put a finger on because it encompasses all of those things and more.

And I think it's changed quite a bit over the past ten, fifteen years that we've all been doing this as well. Because I remember hearing Ed Young, who's an incredible, you know, science journalist and writer, talk about this at one point in time where he made the distinction about a decade ago that science journalists should be and can be critical about science whereas he felt that science communicators were sort of in that science popularizers sphere. But I think that's changed. I think all of us as science communicators do feel like we are critical of science at times and do try and take that more skeptical lens. But I I think that that was not considered part of it a decade ago.

I totally agree. I think Joe listed so many things right off the bat. Right? And I think one of the things though that science communicators also do is they're part of the organization of science itself. There are science communicators who work for industry, whether it's in commercial or maybe they work in academia or maybe they work for a science organization like Alex is working for American Chemical Society.

So she's involved in the sciences directly almost as like an outreach component. I do think there is a line between, like, science journalists in in at least the science journalists' minds and science communicators. But I think the science communicator umbrella is is, like, above them whether they acknowledge it or not. Right? They are communicating about science.

They're educating the public, but they're doing it from kind of like like, they're trying to do it from an island looking at it as opposed to being amongst it. And I think science communicators weighed in there. And some of them are hyper involved. Some of them are more kind of out on the on the fringe looking in. It's such a broad term that it kinda took everybody's kinda come to the same place, but it doesn't have a very solid meaning.

And maybe that's why we hadn't even heard it when we when when I started making science videos, I was like science enthusiast. Like, I've used the term curiosity explorer. Like, because there was just I didn't know. Yeah. I didn't know what word Mike, you're making a face.

It's the right face.

It's good audio content for me to just be making faces back here again. I'm curious if if the three of you individually, not like thinking about science communication as a whole or as a monolithic pursuit, but if the three of you as people have, like, specific objectives that you feel like you are aiming for within your own individual practice of communicating with audiences about the sciences.

I've always thought of myself as that first line, you know, the science teacher that you had when you were in seventh grade or eighth grade or ninth grade, you know. I wanna, like, hook you in so that you wanna, like, relay to somebody who's gonna tell you even more, go even deeper. And I've also made shows that do that. But like, mostly what I'm trying to do is get people who may be not science critical because it's hard to very hard to reach those people, but science interested. Maybe they were like, I liked science but I didn't really engage with it in school as much.

Those are the people that are my people. Like, I wanna try and be like, how about this cool thing? How about that way of looking at your world? Maybe you really like this thing in your world. Let me tell you some science about it and see if maybe that hooks you in to go learn more.

Yeah. I got a comment recently on a video where someone said, I'm so glad I have a scientist I kinda know that I can ask about this. And I was like, that encapsulates exactly who I wanna be. I wanna be the scientist you kinda know that you can ask about something. And I feel like that's sort of how I set the tone of the work that I do and some of the goals.

But I think also, I am personally seeing that we are at what I feel like is kind of like the atomic age part two where like there's all this science bubbling into like disc ourse and into all these direct to consumer products that are coming out. And some of it is good and some of it is bad. And I just want people to be able to look at things and have a gut check on, like,

should we be gene editing embryos or should I be sending my DNA to this company or should I be like, I

want people to be able to have that gut check for themselves. And if they don't have it, I want them to be able to trust me that I can be like, hey, I can't answer this for you, but like, here's my gut check on that.

Walking Geiger counter.

Yay. Yeah. I'll take it.

The needle is is clicking.

Yeah. Yeah.

So I think related to all of these answers, all of these ideas, what I'm interested in specifically in this conversation is your perspectives on the information environment as it exists right now, which I mean, talk about radioactive in some ways. We know it's not great. We all live in it every day, especially in The United States. But I suspect that the three of you are, like I don't know if you're exposed to the, like, weirder or more intense portions of it, or if, like, there are difficulties that you encounter on a day to day day to day basis based upon the work that you're doing. But I imagine that the three of you, the very least, are thinking about it more than a lot of other people as folks who are sort of engaged in the pursuit of getting getting people to understand the world at scale and, you know, the difficulties of that pursuit and how to ameliorate those difficulties.

So I wanna focus our chat if we can for, like, a little bit on the forces that you see working with and against the work that you're currently doing as science communicators.

Let me offer an idea here. Because I'm realizing we all kind of have been doing this for about the same amount of time. Like, we've all been professionally on the Internet for about the same amount of time. We're peers. Right?

I think do you guys remember there was this great sort of utopian idea that the democratization of information was supposed to make everything better.

Yeah. We're all stifling laughter. Yeah. Yeah. That's a bad side.

Let me just lead with it. The number of times I say the Internet was a mistake is more than zero. Yes.

And I think we can all I I we can point to ways that that's certainly true. Right? I mean, it it has led to incredible things. But and that's it's like

the

most bolded large font underlined but in the universe there. We I don't think what we accounted for was this this rise of individualized kind of bespoke realities coming along with it. And it's sort of science sort of assumed for its entire history of the past few centuries that it's been, you know, kind of a real thing that there was a shared universal reality. And it's kind of a truth that all scientists still kind of underlies the philosophy of their work, right? That we're all living in the same place made of the same atoms, etcetera, etcetera.

But the information environment has moved very far away from that shared reality.

Yeah.

I I agree with everything that Joe just said and I think one of the ways that that manifests in my day to day that is maybe the lower level frustration, but the more obvious and in my face frustration is that I hate debunking. I hate making debunking content. It is my least favorite content to make. I find it, like, soul draining. But the number of times where I get requests or people send me things or they're like, is this real?

Is that real? What's going on? Can you make a video about this? What do I do? Has just skyrocketed.

And I cannot and do not take on most of the things that come in about that. But the need I'm seeing from the audience has changed where it used to be just like, cool content. Thanks guys. Like, this is fun. Mhmm.

And now there are so many people who are just like really actively searching for like, I don't know what's right or somebody sent me this or actually, you know, this other person on the internet who also is wearing a white coat said this. Sure. And that has just yeah. Sometimes you got to do it, right? Sometimes I'm like, you know what?

I have a PhD in RNA biology. Let me talk about the RNA. You know, sometimes I feel like I have to, but I've just seen that increase in people trying to figure out what those realities are that Joe was just talking about has surged.

Do you think those requests come from a place of, like, there's just more stuff out there that's wrong? The audience is just more unsure of what they're being shown, or is it both or some third thing? Like

It's probably both, but I do feel I have no data to back this up, but my gut check is that there's also just so much more wrong stuff out there. Yeah. Right? When we all started on the internet, yes, it was democratized but it was also smaller, you know? And so it was easier for good stuff to drown out bad stuff and now everyone has the ability to broadcast their every thought and second into the ether.

And I just feel like the by by the nature of there being more content, there's going to be more wrong stuff too that's harder to drift through.

Because within these bespoke realities, if you choose to interact with certain individuals, certain subjects, certain tones of content, I mean, a million different little handles that are being pulled by the automated machines that are feeding it to you, you're going to be able to just continue to interact with that content. They're never going to see the debunking. They're never going to see the correction. They're never going to see the good information that could pre bunk that, which is a nice technical jargony science communication term.

I like that.

You know, getting ahead of of of the of the wrongness. And that's the eternal challenge. If someone sends you something like this, I think because they're appealing to our authority, they're appealing to our reach as science communicators, like help me. I'm just, you know, this little person over here. But if you could talk about it, people could could understand and and everyone would see the truth.

And the fact is that everyone won't see the truth because we cannot, in some cases, break through these digital walls or or in some cases, psychological walls too, which is this totally other level of challenge that we have in reaching some of the people that most need to hear this stuff through all the cognitive biases and and things that we're that we've realized we haven't cured yet either. Yeah. There's we learned a

lot about this in in like calm theory. Right? There's like peripheral processing, which hits our emotions and our feelings a lot more than than central processing, which is like an ad from the ad council where it's like, here's this very complicated topic and I'm going to try and get you interested in it. You know? You know?

Do you have a plan? Let's go find a plan to make a plan so that you save your self in a buyer. And it's like or we could just be like, fire, you're gonna die. You know, like, the the the latter one is gonna get the eyeballs, but it doesn't tell you anything. Yeah.

And that's that's the Internet is filled with the latter and we are trying to do some of we're trying to, like, get people from from that to come over to be like, okay. So there was a fire. You're right. How could we either prevent the fire or what you should do when you get involved in a fire. But

but meanwhile, you are you're competing with fire watch twenty twenty six.

Where's the

fire now? It's 30 feet away.

They have, like It's 25 feet away. Theme.

Give to our Patreon to stop the fire. And

then there's also an AI generated fire on something important, and everybody's like, no. This is on fire too. And you're like, no. Then then Alex has to debunk that that's an AI video, and she can't be talking about how to save yourself from a fire. And so it's just this constant battle of of of all of the content.

Right? It used to be that people making content really wanted to make content. Not that they not that it was hard. Right? There was that point where there was a crossover between you had to go buy a camera.

There just wasn't a great camera in your pocket. So if you wanted to look a certain way, you had to go at least try a little bit. The the the word of the year for for for me is '20 in 2026 is friction. There was more friction. Now there is almost no friction to creating a bit of content.

And that means that everybody's thoughts per what Alex has said, like, can be broadcasted at any time. And we are terrible as a as an animal, as a species of distinguishing between two human beings opinions as to which is better. Like, we're really bad at that. We see them as, oh, they're both people. They're equal.

And then we use heuristics like, oh, that one is this type of person, so I won't believe it. As opposed to the information they're saying. We're just like trying to find all these heuristics. And it's so much easier on the Internet for the robots to do some of that for us, which is never helpful.

Is that what accounts for, like I never had to deal with this in, like, my earlier Internet days, but I think I saw each of you do it in one way or another. Just like talk against, say, flat earth theory or try to convince people about climate crisis stuff. Right? Like or extinction events or, like, the importance of biodiversity, things like this, which is like, these are topics that would be considered controversial for a narrow stripe of an audience and which you would have to speak carefully around, but which generally were understood to be ideas and theories and situations worth discussing and that held water and that, again, like, reflected some aspect of reality. And it feels like over the last half a decade or so, like, more and more topics of increasing granularity have taken on the political valence that these large topics at one point held.

And just hearing you talk, Trace, about, like, being in this, you know, the infinite amphitheater, basically, subjected to everybody's thoughts and opinions at all times, trying to use our dumb animal brain to sort through into, like, what's, you know, what's important. I wonder if these two things are, like, can explain one another a little bit.

Sometimes I ask myself why people want to know true things. And for it for certain, who knows, psychological profiles, upbringings, you know, it could be the way we're born, the way we're educated. For some people, for whatever reason, we want to know true things because it just gives us a better true picture of the universe. We can make better decisions that that lead us to better success. Maybe it's adaptive.

Maybe it's evolutionary.

It's so satisfying. It's just satisfying to like, no. It feels good to be like, I'm on solid footing.

But I think for other people, they don't share that basic that basic perspective. And what they want to believe become these sort of little external signifiers. They become sort of like human bumper stickers. And the Flat Earth example is just a perfect example of this. I promised long ago I will never make a Flat Earth debunking video.

The world just does not need this because the people who who find themselves at Flat Earth conventions and who find themselves as part of these online communities did not find their way there because they had some genuine scientific process that led them to observations that this is the only remaining truth. They turn out to be people who are seeking community because they were excluded from other parts of society. People who have had very difficult traumatic experiences. People with very challenging psychological profiles. People with really difficult histories with information and being and belonging and feeling like they were seen to be valuable.

And the community took them in and they adopted an idea that is frankly beyond belief for many of us in order to stay belonging in that community. And it's the perfect example of those sort of signifiers that that people will choose to wear despite how irrational they may seem to the rest of us.

And like, I think sure, like, changing of the mind as a exhibit of weakness too. Right? Is a huge part of it. Right? Change is weak.

Yes. And I think that's something I think about this a lot that when I was, I don't know, in middle school and I'm gonna get the politician wrong. But like the biggest thing that everyone was like, he's

a flip flopper. Right?

And that was the worst possible thing you could be was a flip flopper, was to change your mind. Once you had an opinion, you had to stick by it. And that really at like nine, 10, or whatever stuck with me so hard that like, well, once you believe something, you have to stay with it. And it wasn't until I became a scientist really where I was like, oh, no no no. Like changing your mind when you get new information is the best thing you can do.

But there was so much social pressure against that for so long. And I think people still feel that pressure to remain within communities. And I agree with you, Joe, that the world does not need Joe Hanson to make a Flat Earth video.

Right? Like, we don't need that. Us,

it would be great. But what we do need and what I think is compelling and is helpful is people who were in those communities and have left talking about what changed their mind and why they left and how they found new community and that kind of thing. So I think about that a lot that like, you know, none of us have been to my knowledge flatters. None of us have been anti vaxxers. Right?

But like where are those spaces where we can amplify voices or try and lend our own voice to like, hey, I changed my mind and it was okay and it was a good thing and like talk about that process more. Because I also think that from outside of science, people don't see that. Right? They look at science and all they see is, you know, the headline that says scientists said x. And when they see scientists change their mind in light of updated data, like at the beginning of the pandemic where stuff was updating all the time because we were learning more, I think people saw that and thought, oh, you lied last week.

Oh, you didn't know what you were talking about because now you're saying a different thing. And I think we just need to do a better job of modeling that as scientists that, like, no, no. Like, Pluto was a planet. Now Pluto's not a planet, and here's why, and it's okay.

Yeah. My dad growing up, he's a very nerdy man, but he has, you know, he had planted flags in certain ways like everybody on, like, opinions. And one of those, you know, I think the pandemic is an easy one to find those moments of, like, you say flip flopping. But he was like, I don't know if I should eat eggs. I don't think I trust whether or not any of the, science is right on eggs.

Because throughout his life, he had heard eggs were bad and were bad for your cholesterol, and then eggs were good for you, and then eggs were bad for you again. And it was a nuanced discussion that scientists were having. But to your initial question about forces against, I have a thing that I talk to people about when we talk about science communication, and that is using science words, which make somebody feel like they have more authority. But because you are using terms that scientists might use, whether they are real or fake, They sound science y enough. And so, like, pop science, the coverage of science outside of science communication in local news or in blogs or in people who just, again, have a camera and pointed at themselves because they saw a study somewhere, and now they wanna talk about the headline that they saw.

And they're like, scientists say this. And it's like, but you didn't but it's been a nuanced discussion that scientists have been having for a while, and you're just seeing one teeny tiny bit of it. And so my dad has been victim of that and still doesn't know whether eggs are healthy for him. He will eat them, but, like, doesn't know and doesn't know who to trust on it. And he is a smart man.

So it's like, you can fall for this pretty easily if you only read a little bit. And it's hard to ask people to read more. More.

Yeah. There's a comfort with certain feelings that that and and and mental states that a person has to develop. And these are like a muscle, they're like an exercise you have to do because they are inherently uncomfortable. Like, why do we watch to the end of a movie? Because we don't like unresolved tensions and questions about the universe, okay?

Like we want to wrap things up. It's sort it's it's a it's a natural human instinct. Right? And we don't like our our identities challenge. We we we we love our families.

We love our communities. We love where where we're from. I have a completely irrational love for several sports teams that I could never logically defend during their worst seasons. Okay? But I continue to hate the other guy because it feels right and human.

And these are all things that we do. There's a necessary kind of humility that that must enter the game in in in order to develop that comfort with changing your mind. Everybody finds themselves in these situations right now, right? Whether you're arguing online or at Thanksgiving or whatever. Right?

You're everyone's having these conversations about science and what's right and what's wrong. And no. No. This is the truth. And your uncle's like,

oh, no. That's gonna be I I saw it somewhere.

Well, try this. And it's so illustrative for, I think what it takes to start to chip away at these hardening challenges is to ask, what would it take for you to change your mind? And it's often very effective because it involves it asks somebody to do this self reflection of if there is reasoning involved, what is that reasoning? And maybe inside of their head, they're realizing there isn't as much reasoning as they thought to begin with. It makes it a personal kind of effort and a proactive effort on their part, rather than feeling like they're reacting to attack and these things that can bring up defenses.

Yeah. And to your point from earlier, those attacks, as we all know as science communicators, and maybe it doesn't need to be said in our circles, but if you're not in the world of science communication, stating facts at people, telling them that they're wrong, debunking things will not change anyone's mind. It it does not work. There are reams of pages of studies. There are more PDFs than you can fit in your computer on this specific topic.

Right? I don't know. I don't have a barrels of ink. There's no barrels of ink anymore. So I don't really like in the same so I don't really know how to say we've had spilled barrels of ink on this.

But like, there's so much study of of this will not work. But what does work is exactly what Joe's talking about. Right? Is getting kind of going around the logical argument that most science communicators are like, well, I can make this. You know, I can tell you about you know, Alex can talk about mRNA and how it works all day, but that's not what the person listening might need in order to actually learn about m m mRNA.

And that good science communicators, the best ones, you know, the Sagans, if you will, and, like, they appeal to your emotion and they give you some logical information. I made a medium good video about this where it was just like, just ask questions. Don't even try and talk to people about what you're thinking about and your logic. Just ask them where they get their foundations of their thoughts.

One of the things that has changed a lot about how I think about science communication over the past few years is reading about deep canvassing techniques, which were a whole bunch of techniques developed by the LGBTQ center in Los Angeles when gay marriage was on the ballot and instead of just sending people around to be like, do you support this? Yes or no? They would send people out and have them have the goal of having conversations that required both parties to ask questions and both parties to share personal anecdotes. And it massively changed people's minds about these topics. And so I have not found a way to make this sound less, like, VC tech deck, like, and I'm so sorry.

But I have tried to start thinking about it less as science communication and more as science conversation. Wow. Wow. Which I know and I hate it. I hate it so much.

Wow. But, like, when can I converse with someone? When can I have a conversation instead of me just talking at them? And so I spend a lot of time now in the comment sections.

I was gonna say, which is a challenge from a a broadcast medium like Yeah. Like Instagram. Right? Or Yeah.

Yeah. It's it's super hard. And so I've I've I haven't figured out exactly the right way to do it yet, but I spend more time in the comment sections. I try and have a lot more conversations in person. Like, I really would love to shift more of the work that I do away from the Internet and into in person so I can just be talking with people.

I had the most charming experience a couple of weeks ago. I got kind of, you know, the PTA at school finds out that you're a scientist with with a YouTube channel. You get asked to do stuff. And I went to the STEM night at school, we're promoting science, the science fair exhibits are out, the book fair is going on. It's just a celebration of learning.

Like, can

you do something? Well, yeah. And what I decided to do mostly because I had no time to prepare was set up this like Charlie Brown

Yes.

Psychiatrist. He it. Knew it.

Did you do ask a scientist? Yes. Said,

right there.

Zero sense. And I just sat there and had kids walk up and ask anything that they wanted. There was nothing was off limits from like the kindergartners all the way through their older siblings. Even parents were jumping in and just became this incredible little congregation of people hearing other people's questions. And I could see these moments of people realizing that, oh, I actually kinda wondered that, like, you know, those eyebrows go up at this feel and realizing that their curiosity wasn't just theirs and and kids getting over that anxiety of thinking that it's bad to ask a question.

I'm not really only person

who doesn't know this stuff. And it really, really charming and felt positive. And there's just, there's no there's no website for that.

These all sound like answers to the question that I was gonna ask next, which is like, what do you do, especially, like, right now where there is an administration that is doing a lot to erode as much trust as they possibly can in the institutions that practice and forward and fund and communicate science so that you then get people being like, oh, this is sort of related to what you were just saying, Trace. Like, people being like, oh, scientists? You mean the people who study gay frogs or whatever? You know, the old Alex Jones line or, like, what was the most recent paper that they that they paraded around, like, studying transgender mice, like gender in mice? People like, what are we why are we spending money on that sort of thing?

I guess if you're asking, like, what do you do when someone starts to focus on those things, you know, that their trust in these institutions has been so eroded. You just ask them why, and you allow them space to be curious and to ask questions and hope that they'll take the opportunity.

Yeah. Well, you can't make them take the opportunity. Right? Like, we we Joe mentioned a couple of times. Right?

Some people either don't have the interest. They don't have the wherewithal to have the conversation. They may not have the information, like, bench and a deep enough informational bench to understand the information that they are presented with, but everybody understands their own opinion. Whether they understand it well is what I think asking people questions helps do. Are we gonna put data centers in space?

Do you want there to be? Like because I they have an opinion whether they know it or not.

And Well, like, what

about starts the conversation.

What about the stuff that's like what about vaccines? Like, stuff that's not, like, fun and neat, but stuff that's like, listen. This is actually, like, kind of important.

I have a friend who is science communicator, and I'll let her tell her own story at some point. But we were having drinks, and we were talking about this exact thing. And she had a family member who was an anti vaxxer and had was having her first kid. And she did exactly what I think she did the exact right thing. She spent years talking to her family member about all of their anxieties about vaccines and their kids are vaccinated now.

And so it's just like, you can change minds. It takes a lot of effort and a lot of time. And it's not always fun conversation because it was like, the person doesn't always believe you or is like, well, you're just saying that because you're being paid. And it's like, paid by whom? What am I supposed to do?

Show you a screenshot of my bank account? Like, I can't like, what? Why do you think that? Who told you that? Where did that

come from?

You know? God, I wish.

I yeah. That'd be great. Except for it wouldn't

be because then I wouldn't be talking about it because

I have ethics. But like,

you know, just it's tough. Because you have to get people interested in order for them to even want to listen.

And that example you gave was was so perfect because it wasn't the American Academy of Pediatrics that delivered that message. It was someone with a different emotional personal resonance into that individual that was able to break through. This issue of institutional distrust and decay of trust in institutions is not a passive process. Right? This is an this is actively being encouraged in many ways by many powerful people and many powerful organizations.

But within that, I think those people even work are capitalizing on something that is is much broader than science and the challenges we face as science communicators. We are coming out of a generation long challenge to trust in institutions from forever wars to economic inequality being screwed by the system with healthcare and education in so many ways and people seeing promised opportunity not delivered. And there is this undercurrent of cynicism and distrust in society that people are capitalizing on and science is one of the victims. So it's not unique to this field, this challenge that we face. People are just figuring out how to use that attitude against science in many ways.

I have a pet theory that is like completely unproven at this point, but I think this totally explains the Internet trope of people holding little tiny mics when they don't have to in videos. Okay. Come on. Videos in their car.

Okay. I love that. Okay?

Yeah. You could very

well compensated influencers are choosing to record their videos in their car and holding tiny microphones in front of their face. And I'm just like, why? You don't have to do it that way. But what these are, I think, are these external signals that I'm just like you. I'm just on your level.

I'm not one of those other people up there that's got a big professional microphone and studio that's recording something, you know, real fancy and top down authority. I'm one of you and I've got access to that secret information that's just between you and me. And there are a million little things that we could pick out. Some of these people might be doing these things and sending these signals on purpose. Some of them might be doing it without even realizing they are, just to try to make a thing that looks right in their community.

But I think that it's moved authority from being a place of, you know, having sole access to information or very specialized training or spurt and titles to where authority is now, are you a part of my community? Is that why and that is the greatest signal to some people about why I should or can trust you.

Yeah. I think there's something interesting in there too. And I agree with what both of you were just saying of we also, as strategic science communicators, can and do use those things. Right? We also have versions of the work that we do that are a little more chill and we're just chatting and we're just using an informal tone.

And I think that it's so hard to describe to people that like, no no, I'm doing it for good. Right? I'm doing it because my motive is good and they're doing it and it's wrong. But it's effective. And so, you know, I think it goes back to like how do you how do you get around that?

How do you change people's minds? I do think that there's part of it that the word authenticity, right, like being a whole human. But I was talking with a scientist who, you know, he runs a research lab. He's not a science communicator. But his whole goal is to tell people that his job is just a job.

Right? And like he goes to work, he does science, he comes home, he plays with his kids, he eats dinner, he does a little more science, he goes to bed. And he tries to really frame it as like, you can anyone can relate to that. Right? That they go to work, they do their job, and they come home.

And that framing science as just another job has been very effective for people being like, oh yeah, like, I could also do that. I just chose to do this other job. So I do think that there are ways to use that and do that that are effective and that are modeling that we are all just people who have good in well, most of us have good intentions. But it does feel I will say that sometimes it feels weird to use those things that I do use all the time and be like, but I'm doing it for the right reasons.

It does feel sometimes like I'll grab a a dry erase marker and and use it as a microphone or whatever. And it feels a little bit like, how do you do fellow kids like Steve Buscemi? You know? But but that's you're meeting people where they are. Right?

You're meeting people where they are and doing exactly what you're both talking about where you're like, how can I get past people's defenses just enough to hook them in, to get them interested in this strange thing about the world that they already live in and that they probably experience every day? And so I'm if I have to put on a banana suit and go into the into there and do it, I'm gonna do it. If you are being objective, it's a little disingenuous, but so is all media in some on the most objective. Right? Like, people saying, like, oh, well, I was watching Andor, and it just looked like sets.

It didn't look like and it's like, all TV is like that. That's just what TV is. I I

I don't know how I feel about that Andor show. It feels like they're trying to tell a story. Yeah. They're trying

to tell they're trying

to tell me something,

and I

don't know how I feel about it.

And it's just Can can I tell you my best banana suit story of the past year? Please. Was that I did a brand deal that makes, on the face, no sense for me with Doctor. Squatch soap when they released a soap that reportedly had Sydney Sweeney's bathwater in it. And I made a video about they sent me the soap.

I made a video about the soap because I got to talk about the fact that there's DNA in almost every single one of your cells. And so I reached an audience that did not care about DNA. They cared about Sydney Sweeney and they cared about soap. But I got to I got sixty seconds to tell them a little bit about DNA. And those videos hit, you know, a million views kind of things because people cared about Sydney Sweeney.

But that was a million people who otherwise were not gonna think about DNA that day and I just got a little fact in there.

And so sometimes I do think

that like meeting people where they're at can be weird can be weird spots. That's weird. But like, you can put DNA in there.

Why can't we think about both? Yeah. Exactly. Right?

Why not both? Porcainulostos, as they say.

When we all first met, there was this sort of like separation, I think, between two content types. There were science communicators over here, and then there were and this I don't know if this phrase has ever been said, but like humanities communicators over here.

Oh.

One of the things that I heard as someone who made a show about popular culture and philosophy was like, would hear from a lot of people who would consider themselves, say, Vsauce fans or Veritasium fans, etcetera, etcetera, saying like, well, I'm not gonna watch that. That's political. You know, you're the show that you make is political. It's it's got politics. It's like, oh, all it is is opinions, and, like, I'm not interested in that.

I'm interested in the truth. So that's why I watch science communicators, something that's not political at all. And so I'm just curious how it feels over the last ten or twelve years to just have been handed a political position effectively.

I never wanted that. I never wanted to talk about politics. I hate talking about politics. Right? Like, in in my personal life, I, you know, hated talking about it, didn't wanna ever talk about it online.

But then it became impossible not to. I was like, oh, it is I mean, yes, it affects our daily lives all the time but like, it is now so overwhelmingly affecting science, how can I continue to do science communication legitimately and not talk about it? But I I still hate it, like I do it because it's important. But that's another part of the job that has absolutely changed that I I never wanted, I wanted to avoid until truly it became just unavoidable.

I mean, you know, politics will find you if you don't find it first. Right? I mean, it's it'll it'll whether it's stomping on your neck or or what. But I do think science for a long time, the community of science told itself a story that it was somehow above or separated from all these things. Maybe that was the comfort with just having more funny than you knew what to do with.

Maybe it was the place of scientists and society being like this weird nerd priesthood in terms of how people looked at them. But science is inherently political. I mean, it's a measure of where we put priorities and resources and what we think is important for society to be interested in and the uses of those things and what they could do to people and places and and and culture. There there are numerous stories throughout history where people where you've had the the traffic accident version of science colliding with with politics, whether it's the atomic bomb or or, you know, thimerosal or or these many, many famous failures of science. So to for us to have thought at one point that we know, no, we will never find me.

It feels a little naive in retrospect. Like, it it was always there. You know, we're not separate from society. It is not this magical work that we do.

And you don't have to shoulder that position for your audience either, it sounds like.

I mean, that is one of the challenges too, to remain To have a scientific perspective is also sort of asking somebody to have a, you know, to not take the personal perspective. So that is, I think that's the real challenge that we find ourselves in is to separate the personal and our own investments and the ways that could affect us personally from the sterility of the facts and the reason. But, you know, reason is a magical idea that no one's quite figured out and gotten, you know, something we all kind of orbit and never fall into. And so a bit of us as people will always be involved there. It affects our perspectives on things and how we interpret information.

We can look back at the history of science for hours and hours if you want to and look at cases where people believe that science is this sort of ethereal thing floating above the rest of society, but it is influenced by our priorities and our unconscious biases in ways that we have to be honest with. And so I think putting that word I back into science and science communication has been a really important development that we like, we are part of this. We're all we are figuring it out along with you. And we're honest about our mistakes like real humans are. That that makes us unique and I think makes what we're doing maybe a little more relatable and honest than anything else out there.

I think about a panel that Joe was on so often in an early VidCon, how to be wrong on the Internet. Joe knows the panel. We were all there. It was great. There was a YouTuber there who used to make listicles about stuff that was sometimes science, and he said, I just leave it up.

I don't care.

I almost brought up that panel in this conversation a few minutes ago. Also think about good panel.

I cannot drag his name through the mud. I mean, if

you want to, I'm I we can. But like, I don't even know if he makes videos anymore. I, you know, he's not in my algorithm. But the point is being wrong on the Internet is so important for us and it's not always important for, you know, you think that Alex Jones talking about gay frogs is worries whether he's gonna be wrong or not in his next episode? He was like, well, last episode I have a I just have a correction I wanna make that it they weren't making the frogs gay.

It was actually salamanders. They were the it wasn't frogs. Sorry. My mistake. Different you know, my mistake.

Let's move on and talk about something. You know, it's just like so it's like, some comedian that came across my algorithm was like, do you think that everyone has impostor syndrome or just the people who care about their job? Like, if you have impostor syndrome, it means that you are having a little bit of metacognition about your work. You're like, am I good enough to do this? That thought doesn't enter everyone's head.

Yeah. And I think that's where you can you can pepper in as well the like, well, and I was wrong about this. Or also the I don't know. Right? I think that that's also incredibly important to model because I think there are so many people shilling misinformation online who are like, I know this thing with a 100% certainty.

And I think it's really important to be like, hey, I don't know the answer to this, but here's how I might find it out or here's how I'd go about it or in hopefully not even saying it so directly, but just showing the process of doing that. I think being able to say I was wrong, I don't know, like, here's how I feel. I agree with you. I think those are things that were really not allowed in broadcast communication for a long time and they are required, I think, to do our job well now.

Yeah. A bit of authenticity like you're mentioning, but also just a bit of being human. Right? The story then becomes a little more about the person who's learning your learning journey, as we said on our podcast once and had a real fun time trying to say that over and over again. Your learning journey.

Your learning journey is the

whole process of science. Right? Like, science is how we know, not

what we know. Like, I I think modeling that is, the biggest thing you can do.

I I often I I'm often afraid that we're sitting here sort of gardening through the apocalypse on our little flower path,

know, sort of

anxiety falls apart around us. And and we're sitting here saying this, how beautiful it is to change your mind and how wonderful it is to celebrate these things. And we and we do. We, like, we exhibit these things. They're really that that that that really fundamental mindset is important to all of us.

But we're also sitting here at a time when there's, you know, accounts on x called this you that just exist to make fun of people for things they said in the past that they are now saying different things in the present. There's this social pressure in these places to crystallize and make more rigid the beliefs that how dare you ever think about updating your your, you know, your beliefs based on new information. It's bullying in the form of that that flip flopping kind of risk.

Mhmm.

So we're sitting here, you know, as like in this David and Goliath sort of setup fighting against those really intense pressures because, you know, feels good for those bullies to point and laugh and and and click that like button and keep promoting that content, especially when you, I don't know, hypothetically have platforms that may amplify inorganically content that promotes those kind of emotional mindsets. But, you know, that's just a hypothetical.

I just think that's why you gotta do it yourself. Right? They can't this you you if you've already this you'd yourself. And that's why I think we gotta do it because then it's like, oh, I was wrong, and you just take the wind out of the sails.

And what I was gonna say is that I think it's it's especially important to do that in light of the fact that the same thing, the sort of entrenching, establishing a position, and never moving away from it has increasingly become a characteristic of journalism as all of the institutions that practice it have been captured by billionaires. So there are there are a decreasingly many examples of how to do this very important thing.

I also think we mentioned politics earlier. Right? And Joe said, you know, if it's gonna come for you eventually. And I I like to think of it as they came because they didn't have any other thing to fight with. So, like, if you're worried about some issue, then politicize it.

And now I can argue with you that it's political and tell you to stop talking about it because now it's political. Right? Like, the shape of the planet we're on is not a political position unless another group of people get together and be like, let's make this political. Now that it's political, we can tell you to not talk about it because there's a lot of people who, you know, don't want you to talk about politics. And it's like science is funded by governments and people.

National parks are run by governments and funded by taxpayers. The road is political. The park is political. The science is political. All of space is political.

The ocean is political. Like, there is nothing. The health care, you name it. It is already either funded by or partially research done by science, which is funded by people, which is political. So it's like everything is.

But if they want you to not talk about it, what they'll do is they'll kinda slide underneath it with this is a political hot button issue now, and we've spent a lot of time trying to make it so. So then we can tell you you can't talk about it anymore.

Here's the risk of these bespoke realities when when apathy comes into it. The more you swipe through and don't interact with something in any algorithm, right, the less you're gonna see of that thing. So the more that people are, I don't know, frustrated or maybe even trained or convinced to avoid this stuff, they're like, ugh, not another thing about vaccines. Ugh, not another thing about climate change and they're swiping through to the next, you know, toddler falling down. That that makes it less likely that they're gonna see that thing when it really matters.

Because they're building they're they're reinforcing this eat this reality that's even further and further away from science and from inner from maybe encountering that content. And that's a really that's a really sad and and kind of frightening outlook on the future as as there becomes, you know, four websites that are ever increasingly customizing your your your view of reality. But maybe maybe if we're looking for optimism there, something that we all know is that you're always encountering some group of people for the first time. The treadmill of humanity is always bringing new people into an idea for the first time. And that is one of the things that sort of keeps me going through all these frustrations and questions and uncertainties and and face palming moments throughout being a science communicator over the past decade plus is that, you know what?

There's always somebody out there who could find this and have have have my answer be the first answer they ever hear on this that could frame the way they look at this question for the rest of their life. And that's a really incredible opportunity for us that I think just continues to to underscore how important it is that we continue to do this and don't kind of give in to these cynical frustrations that that hit us sometimes.

Friends, thank you so much for joining me and having this conversation. We have got through, like, less than a tenth of what I have written down in my preparation doc for this. Like, you know, Alex, you mentioned studies about science communication and books that have been written about it. I wanna know about that. Trace, I have more questions about what it's like working for a large entertainment company doing science communication.

Joe, I would like to spend an hour talking about ask a scientist by itself. Yes. I I just wanna talk about that. So maybe we can reconvene at some point in the future and get to, again, a tenth of this.

You name the time and the place. I'll bring the ask a scientist family to do it.

Where can everybody who is listening find you on the Internet? We'll go in introduction order. So Alex, Trace, and Joe.

I'm at Alex Danis on pretty much all platforms, but also at the American Chemical Society Reactions channel on YouTube.

I'm at Trace Dominguez on pretty much all the things. My ones that I use the most are probably Instagram and threads, but I have a YouTube channel. And then I have my podcast, That's Absurd, Please Elaborate, which you can get at That's Absurd show pretty much everywhere. And we release every Thursday. It's so fun.

And Stargazers, can find by I do too many things. I'm sorry. You can just go to PBS.

Please turn on your TV. Maybe Trace will be there.

Sometimes that happens. Although one time I was in The Bahamas and I turned it on and Mike was there. So that was cool.

That was really awesome. Dumpster.

What? That's fun.

I'm at doctor Johansson on pretty much all of the platforms, but don't LinkedIn me. I I just simply won't. And on YouTube, can find me at Be Smart or on PBS Terra channel. You can check out my show overview.

Thanks, friends. Talk to you soon.

Bye. Bye.

Bye bye. That is the show we have for you this week. We're gonna be back here on the main feed on or around Thursday, March 12, but hark, we streaming. We'll see you at twitch.tv forward slash the never post on Monday, March 9 for a team chat, which will be edited and released for members soon after. Speaking of, did you know that you can become a member of NeverPo's for $4 a month at neverpo.st?

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Neverpost's producers are Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton, and the mysterious doctor first name last name. Our senior producer is Hans Buto. Our executive producer is Jason Oberholzer, and the show's host, that's me, is Mike Grigneta. Teach us about life gently, implored the little beings and stretched their arms for love of the other shore. Canto 17 for Diana by Alejandra Pizarnik.

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