Senior producer of the Science Vs. podcast, Rose Rimler, talks with professor Damian Radcliffe about her journey to becoming a science communicator and the challenges of multi-media journalism.
About Our Guest:
Rose Rimler is a senior producer for the Spotify/Gimlet Media podcast Science Vs. An alumni from the University of Oregon, Rose graduated with a masters in marine biology and conducted studies on oysters in the Pacific Northwest. She was a AAA Mass Media fellow with the American Association for the Advancement of Science and has written for the Raleigh News and Observer, Healthline, and Sleep Review Magazine.
Science Vs. researches claims made on social media and examines whether the ideas are based in fact or not. Science Vs. takes material from political discourse and controversial opinion, with topics ranging from universal healthcare to fad diets. Rose's work for Science Vs. has been praised in the New York Times, the LA Times, the Atlantic, and more.
Find Rose Rimler Online
-Linkedin
-Twitter
-Gimlet
Show Notes
00:03: Guest Introduction
01:20: Rose's marine biology background
04:25: Moving from science to news writing
07:51: Internship culture and changes with COVID-19
09:46: The multi-media journalism learning curve
12:01: Background on Science Vs.
14:40: Rose's favorite episodes of Science Vs. (Mass Shootings: How do we stop them?, Who Killed Affordable Housing?, Coronavirus: Pregnant in a Pandemic)
19:39: Benefits of audio as a medium for storytelling
21:43: Transitioning show styles to follow trends
32:54: Rose's recommendations for science news (Ed Yong, Gina Kolata, Decoding the Gurus, Debunk the Funk, Abbey Sharp)
34:45: Advice for aspiring science communicators
37:10: Wrap-up
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Damian Radcliffe 00:03
Hello, and welcome to the Demystifying Media Podcast. I'm Damian Radcliffe, the Carolyn S. Chambers Professor of journalism at the University of Oregon. And in this series, we talked to leading scholars and media practitioners about their work at the leading edge of Communication Studies in practice. Today, we're joined by Rose Rimler, a senior producer at the podcast science versus Previously, she was a mass media fellow with the American Association for the Advancement of Science placed at the Raleigh news and observer. And she's contributed to articles in sleep review, health line and Popular Science.
Damian Radcliffe 00:33
She graduated from the University of Oregon with a master's in marine biology, science versus is an award winning podcast that looks at the science behind issues facing all of us. From pollution and pandemics to sharks, ASMR and intermittent fasting. They're reporting on COVID-19 won gold in audio reporting from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and science versus has been praised in the New York Times the LA Times The Atlantic Popular Science, Columbia Journalism Review, wired, the BBC, and many, many other places. The show is produced by Spotify in New York. And we're really delighted that Rose is joining us today. Thanks for joining us in the studio.
Rose Rimler01:06
Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.
Damian Radcliffe 01:08
So I would like to start at the beginning, it would be great to understand a little bit about your journey into science communication, the shift from doing this master's in marine biology and what inspired you to join science versus.
Rose Rimler01:20
Yeah, so I graduated with my degree in marine biology, not a famously job rich field. I thought I wanted to work in maybe environmental restoration. Maybe policy, and I did get a fellowship in environmental policy for a year. And I just wasn't for me. Maybe another version of that would have been for me, but I didn't really like it. I also tried to get a job working for nonprofits doing oyster restoration. And there wasn't really much there, very little juice in that orange at that time for me, for whatever reason.
Damian Radcliffe 01:57
Your Master's was in oysters. So that was the reason for that.
Rose Rimler01:59
Yes, yeah. So I had done some work on oysters. So I thought I could kind of continue in that vein. But at the same time, I always did like writing. I've always enjoyed writing, I've taken creative writing and journalism classes in high school and college. I had done some volunteer work writing for kind of a nonprofit near the grad school so I could get some experience doing that. And I had been applying to this fellowship, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, mass media fellowship is a long, long term. But I've been applying for that for years. I mean, I applied twice in graduate school, and then I there was one more year I was eligible, because they want a recent graduate. And so while I was in this sort of environmental policy, fellowship, and not really enjoying it, I thought I'll apply one more time to this writing fellowship. And then I got it. So that was really great. And I just sort of followed that path, because that was what became available to me at that time.
Damian Radcliffe 02:59
And this was the internship that then took you to North Carolina and to the newspaper rally. Did you get any say about where you would end up?
Rose Rimler03:08
Oh no, okay. I was like Raleigh, North Carolina, like I never, you know, I'm from California, and then I'd been living in Oregon, so I had never even considered North Carolina in my consciousness at all. But it was, it was great. It was a great experience. I love being in the newsroom. Despite the fact that newspapers that are now are not doing so great. There was still a lot of passionate people there, you know, working on it, and doing the best they could. And I really enjoyed learning from them. And I got to write tons of stories are, you know, I was the only person covering signs on the environment, which is very sad for the community of Raleigh, but good for me, you know, so I got to do all the stories that I wanted. And I ended up with 30 clips at the end of that summer. So I had a ton of work to show up to show off to, you know, anywhere I wanted to get more work from.
Damian Radcliffe 03:57
And then how did you transition from that? And also, we should say, this was your first time you said you had a little bit of writing sprints, but you'd never been in a newsroom. You hadn't done student media.
Rose Rimler04:05
Yeah, I was like, I can't believe you're letting me do this. You know, when I, when I first had a piece published in the newspaper, I was like, really? Just in there now. It's like, it's on the record. And yeah, they just let you do that. That's really cool. Yeah, it was great.
Damian Radcliffe 04:20
So how did you transition from that to then finding yourself in New York working for Gimlet media and Spotify?
Rose Rimler04:25
I went back to Oregon when that ended, I went to Portland and lived there for a little while and I I got some freelance work. I was writing with those clips. I got work writing for healthline.com. But I was reading news news stories about stuff in health and medicine, which I kind of sort of went that direction. I could see why you might think I'd be writing about the environment, given my background, but I just thought I would get a little burned out from environmental reporting. I didn't think I was really ready to do that. And it seemed like also, there was a little bit more work potentially in mind. Interested in health. So I went that direction. And I also really, I've always been curious about it. If I wasn't like squeamish, I may have gotten to med school, you know, so. So I enjoyed that. So I went with it. And, and so I was trying also trying to sell stories to outlets like as a general freelancer, which was really hard, I didn't really have any connections. And I wasn't in the community that much yet. And then I did get a staff job, it was still remote. I was working kind of from my house in Portland. But I was working for a medical trade magazine called Sleep review, which I think is like, I don't think people talk about that enough. Like this option of trade magazines, it's like kind of quasi journalistic, I guess, probably depends on the outlet. There's a little bit of a cozy relationship, potentially, between the advertisers and the content and like a traditional news outlet, but it's still, it's you can still do journalism. And it's still like a really good experience. And you can get a you can get a stable job.
Damian Radcliffe 05:54
So it's a huge industry that b2b publications, people don't realize how big it is, how many journalists they employ. And some of those publications are incredibly profitable as well. So there's actually a job stability there that you might not necessarily get in more mainstream outlets.
Rose Rimler06:08
Yeah, I think we I think as a community, I'd like to hear more about those jobs and what it's like to work there. And they're very talented people working there. But I left it after not that long. And it wasn't because of the work. I actually enjoyed the work. It was just too lonely. I was really new at this. And I, it was a very small outlet. So I didn't really have any co workers even remotely that I was working with, I was just filing stories. And I just thought this is so lonely. I was kind of depressed. I thought, how can I be a science writer if this is what science writing looks like, just holed up at home working quietly on your own stories. So I thought I don't want to leave science writing. But I want to find some things more collaborative. And so I thought, well, maybe multimedia is more collaborative. Seems like it would be right. And I like podcasts. I started listening to podcasts a lot when I was in grad school doing really boring like microscope work. Like very tedious kind of counting oyster spat is what I was doing.
Damian Radcliffe 07:00
And so I left like background medium for that kind of thing.
Rose Rimler07:02
Yes, and it saved me like it turns something that would have been unbearable. It was something that was kind of fun. Because like, Oh, great. I get to listen to four hours of radio lab now. So I was a fan of stuff at at gimlet. And so when I saw signs versus was hiring an intern, I thought that seems like I could actually maybe get that internship. And I did and for I was fortunate enough that they accepted me as an intern. It was a paid internship, but not a lot. So yeah. So I moved to New York, which was kind of a gamble. And I didn't really expect to stay longer than six months for this internship. But eventually I got hired and to get a job to say no. So. So that's how I ended up there. And I was right that it was a much more collaborative environment and science versus has a great team, and a great spirit of teamwork. So that gamble paid off.
Damian Radcliffe 07:51
Yeah. And we hear a lot during conversations with guests in this series, and in guest lectures about the importance of internships. I think a lot of people probably assume that that's something people do whilst they're a student, or once they've just graduated. You were in your early 30s. At that. Yeah. I was 30. Yeah. So yeah, it's an important reminder that you can transition careers and move in different directions. And through internships and fellowships and so forth. At any point in life.
Rose Rimler08:17
Really, you can I mean, I think it's harder depending on your circumstances. There's, I think, internships should always be paid. I don't think there should be unpaid internships anymore. They probably still are. But I think more and more of them have become paid internships, although maybe right now that's it's a rough point in journalism. But in general, I think the field has accepted that it's like exploitative, to have unpaid interns, but they're, even if that's true, they're not typically paid very well. So I think, you know, you have to be relatively unencumbered, if I had had a mortgage, if I had child support, or children, or if I had been a caretaker and other ways these opportunities would have been a lot harder to take advantage of right now.
Damian Radcliffe 08:56
That's a really good point. And as also, that also points to a lot of the structural weaknesses of internships that we talked about the need to diversify newsrooms in journalism, but actually, the system, in many places is not set up to support that.
Rose Rimler09:09
Yeah. But I think COVID may have actually helped with that, because now there's a lot more opportunity to be a remote worker. So when I was an intern at science versus I had to move to New York. Now, when we've had interns since the pandemic, we've had a number of interns who have just zoomed in, and they've done have done a great job, maybe the internship, maybe they would have gotten more out of it. I don't know, but it's better than nothing. So I think now that we have different work culture where we can accept people who can stay where they are, and not have to incur the expense and the disruption of moving maybe then we can get a more diverse pool of candidates for those jobs.
Damian Radcliffe 09:46
Right. Well, and this was your first foray into radio and and audio. So what was the the learning curve like for this internship?
Rose Rimler09:56
It was a big learning curve. You know, I was fortunate in that I I had a science background, and it's a science show that's very, its first priority is the rigor of its research. And so that was a good fit. I had already had a lot of experience reading scientific papers and doing that kind of research for my own degree. And then also for the science writing and reporting I was doing since then, audio itself and making kind of a story. Like the podcast, Enos is like, turning it from information to like a story that people want to listen to, because the podcast is optional. It's not, you know, a newspaper story is sort of, I mean, not everyone reads the paper, but like, a little bit, like less optional, it's like, you have to find out what's going on in the world that day, a podcast is like, Do you want a little extra, so people can turn it off. And so you have to kind of make it more engaging, have a beginning, middle and end. And so and then you have to get like tape from the people that you interview that's really compelling. So which means you have to push people on the mic, or scientists who are a little bit stilted, or who are using a lot of jargon, you kind of have to push them a lot. And that has been difficult for me to learn, I still I still haven't gotten it, the making a structure that's like an engaging story is really difficult and has was a big learning curve. I wouldn't say I have that down either.
Rose Rimler11:18
And then then just the technical aspects, the recording itself is not that big a deal. I think it looks scarier than it is. But it does take a while to feel comfortable with the equipment, and then kind of get used to working in the editing software. So we do a lot of we do a first pass putting together an assembly of the show the producers do. So I had to be comfortable in Pro Tools. And that's just a lot of that is sort of getting used to seeing, like just the visual layout of the program and, and not getting intimidated by having a lot of tracks, which is kind of what it looks like.
Damian Radcliffe 11:49
Gotcha. And for people who are unfamiliar with the podcast, obviously we'll we'll link out to it in the in the show notes. But how would you describe science versus and what's it about? What's the what's the core mission for the podcast?
Rose Rimler12:01
Yeah. Well, it was started by our host when he Zuckerman and executive producer. She started it at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. And then the original company that produced to gimlet media, which was a sort of a podcast startup in New York. They wooed her away from the ABC, Australian, British Broadcasting Company, other ABC, other ABC, they wooed her away and brought her to New York. And so she started making the show for New York, I joined about a year and a half or two years into that, I want to say and so the vision for the show is it's looking at ideas that are popular in in our culture, more and more on social media. Or just ideas that are circulating that have some potential link to a scientific background. Or let me rephrase it. It's ideas that you you could use science to explore.
Rose Rimler12:57
So it's stuff like, I mean, the classic example that was going around when when he started the podcast was Gwyneth Paltrow talking about vaginal steaming. So it's stuff like that. It's like, my friend says, You should steam your vagina, should you and then we can look into that, you know, and we've done a lot of episodes on diets. That's a rich vein to mine. I like to cover stuff like that weight and weight loss is something I've been really interested in covering, we do social issues as well, because there's plenty of research into things like gun control, immigration, universal health care, so things that don't seem as obviously like sciency. Like, what's the science behind the keto diet? Like that's an obvious one for us. But what's the science behind immigration? There is actually like, there's research that you can you can look into, like, what's the effect of an influx of immigrants on the economy of a city? Actually, there's, you can measure that and people have. And so that's kind of that's kind of our ethos. And a lot of our material comes from political discourse, controversial stuff, stupid things people say on social media, smart things people say on social media, just just what's the word trying to figure out what's in the zeitgeist. And then we're trying to examine that slowly with good research.
Damian Radcliffe 14:11
And through that, that research and the storytelling that you described earlier, the goal here is to make this super accessible, right, so I don't have to have a scientific background or an interest in, in science per se, to enjoy the show.
Rose Rimler14:25
That's right. Yeah. So we are we want it to be accessible to pretty much anyone. It's not a show for children, but a lot of people tell us that they have their kids listen to it. Yeah, and I think the idea is just to make it less scary, right?
Damian Radcliffe 14:39
Other... in your time there, is there a particular episode or story that you've worked on that has been most memorable or that you're most proud of you like to share with our listeners?
Rose Rimler14:50
Yeah, I'm I'm I'm definitely proud of a few episodes that llama proud I'm proud of many episodes that we as a team have produced or that colleagues took the lead on I'm really proud of our our are reporting on issues around transgender health care. I was not the main producer on those episodes, but I think we did a great job. My colleagues did a great job. One he did a great interview with a guy who is a promoter of ivermectin for COVID, I think was really excellently done an episode that I made a couple that come to mind. These are both like non traditional sciency topics. And maybe that's why I'm sort of proud of them. I did an episode about mass shootings a couple years ago, which is sort of an episode about gun control, but specifically, like the policies that politicians and advocates say we need to enact to stop mass shooters, do they like potentially work and like what could work? And I had to kind of come from a realistic point of view, because a lot of people just want to say, well, we shouldn't have any guns, and then we wouldn't have any shootings. Okay, that guess that would work. But it's not really a realistic place to start. So I was really proud of sort of deconstructing ideas on both the right and the left. And I found a lot of surprising information and that and I think very helpful information. And I feel good about that work.
Rose Rimler16:06
I also did an episode about affordable housing. Last year, I guess, and that when I'm, I enjoyed the research, but also we did a different kind of format, we we did it as a murder mystery. So it was like who killed affordable housing, who's the culprit behind why we nobody can afford a place to live, it seems. And I really enjoyed how our audio engineer, Bobby Lord, score the episode he put in all this noir music, and at least learn to like and this day walked into my office and said, I can't get an apartment, you know, this kind of like feeling. And I really thought that was fun. I made of what could have been a very dry topic, very fun. And I just think it turned out really well.
Damian Radcliffe 16:45
I love that we'll we'll we'll share a link to all the episodes that you referenced during the show today. So people can go away and and listen to those. And I think that kind of touches on what I was one of the next questions I wanted to ask, which was around some of the challenges of presenting these, these these topics. So you talked a little bit about making sure that the people you're interviewing are engaging and can communicate in a way that reaches a mass audience, but also taking topics that might otherwise be quite dry and finding creative ways to present him. So other, other challenges that you're also facing as you're putting together individual stories and episodes.
Rose Rimler17:20
For sure, every episode is kind of hard. Usually, we Yeah, finding good talent is a big part of it, we do a lot of pre interviews, so we reach out to scientists, and talk to them without formally recording the conversation. And that's useful for a variety of a variety of reasons. One, you know, I, you get a lot of information from talking to 1015 scientists, you're not going to have 1015 voices on the show, even if they're all amazing talent. So I get a lot of background information that way. But I'm also like listening to, like, is this person emotive? Are they happy to be on that really helps if someone really wants to be interviewed, that helps a lot. Are they? You know, are they game? Like if we kind of, like, push them? Or say like, could you say that again? What if you were saying it to a fifth grader? How would you put it like, oh, sure, well, but if they're reluctant to do that, it's, I mean, it's not like we couldn't have them on, but it's more work for us. So it's kind of nice to have someone who can kind of play. So that is one thing.
Damian Radcliffe 18:22
Is it easy to find those people?
Rose Rimler18:23
You know, it's not easy to find them. Sometimes you just have a lucky break. And like, the first person you reach out to is great. But a lot of times you're looking and looking and looking or someone you know would be great won't answer your emails, or it's busy, you know.
Damian Radcliffe 18:40
And presumably, you also want to diversify your talent pool as well. So you don't just you find someone and they're great. Everything they says is radio, gold, audio gold, but you can't have them on every show or every show in that in that let's say so you'd say dieting, for example, you find a great person that you can have them back every time you explore that as a as a topic.
Rose Rimler18:56
Yeah. And we also want to just make sure that we're not only having on like straight white men to talk about science, even though the fields especially some certain disciplines have a lot of straight white men, like we're trying to show the audience that actually a lot of different voices, a lot of kinds of people work in science. So that's another thing we're looking out for.
Damian Radcliffe 19:18
And how do you think audio and podcasting lends itself to this type of storytelling and communication there are some unique characteristics of the of the medium but I'm really curious on your your take having written both in worked in both print and in audio about the differences you you see and some of the unique things that you can do in audio that perhaps you can't do in print?
Rose Rimler19:39
Yeah, I think I you can be very intimate. You have someone's voicing right in your ear. If someone's sad, recounting a sad story, you can kind of hear the tremble in their voice. Well, and then the way that we tell the stories now, the producer will come on the show and tell Wendy the science that's we've kind of changed our model, a little bit spiel, but more conversational So in that model, you are hearing someone hearing the science and reacting. And maybe that reaction mirrors your reaction, or hearing the story and reacting. And so then you've got kind of like a friend there, who's experiencing it with you, I think that model can be successful. For that reason. Yeah. And then also, you can do things like you can put in music, which can really manipulate people. If you want someone that feels to pay attention, at a certain point, you can put in a start, you can start the cue, right there, or you can stop the cue, the music has already been going on, and you stop it, and you bring it back. So you can kind of play with people's focus and attention, you can change the feeling of the music to have a different emotion to evoke a different emotion. You can say things sarcastically, and trust that your audience understands sarcastic or you can say something and just have just, it's dripping with disstain in your voice.
Rose Rimler20:52
I remember hearing an example from This American Life. Year, like during like probably 2017 or so where they there's during that period where they're interviewing racists a lot. I think they moved on from fortunately, but the reporter was paraphrasing what he had said about a race of people and just the way she had, she said what he had said it she just had, it was just dripping with the stain about how he had said it and you knew exactly how she felt about it. And I don't know stuff like that really stands out to me when you can get personality of the reporter or that person captured in a way that you might not capture and print although print has its own benefits.
Damian Radcliffe 21:29
Sure. No. And you've alluded to the fact that the show has also changed a little bit during your time they said it's going and becoming more conversational. Is that kind of one of the biggest shifts you've seen and what's what's driven that?
Rose Rimler21:43
Yeah, that was an intentional choice by Wendy she she is always open to kind of rolling and rolling with the media punches. And like what you know, what's more popular now? What should we be doing? What are what do people like what sounds like it's dated now. And she has took a lay of the land and saw that like there's just a lot more chatty, like chat shows now. And she thought that could work well for our show. And she said, let's try it. So we just starting one season, we said from this season, we're going to we're going to start like the producer is going to do a bunch of the research come on the show and tell me the science and there's still the scripting element just because with our show, you can't really be off the cuff entirely. I think the listener can probably tell what's off the cuff and what's not, because we'll have like a statistic or a certain way of saying something, and then we'll have like when he will make a joke, and then we'll kind of joke about it that's off the cuff, but like parts of it are scripted.
Damian Radcliffe 22:35
How did the audience react to this to this shift?
Rose Rimler22:39
It's, you know, it's hard to say because how do you really know, you know, like, people will tweet at you but mostly angrily.
Damian Radcliffe 22:47
It's not a representative sample.
Rose Rimler22:48
It's not a representative sample, less people are on Twitter now. So we actually don't get as much engagement that way. But our numbers have not gotten our numbers are doing good. I think we've even gone up. So maybe maybe people like it. Yeah.
Damian Radcliffe 23:00
That's interesting. And it's quite a complex show, you've intimated that like, there's a lot of stuff that goes on under the hood, a lot of background research, a lot of thinking about ways to frame the narrative to be creative with this. How long does a typical episode or it take to put together because I think people might be surprised?
Rose Rimler23:19
Probably a few months for like a classic science versus
Damian Radcliffe 23:22
This is for 30-35 minutes. Yeah?
Rose Rimler23:25
Yeah. You know, there are also episodes we've made a lot faster during COVID. We were turning them around really quickly a few days. That was a little easier with COVID. Although that might seem counterintuitive, but it was easier because there was an almost no research. There's like usually one paper about whatever. Like I remember, we did an episode about how does COVID affect people during pregnancy? I read every paper that was about pregnant people with COVID. Because there's like 12 of them. So it wasn't that hard to do. Now it would be different. There's thankfully there's a lot more research. But surprisingly, of COVID ones were a little bit in a way easier to make, which sounds weird, but...
Damian Radcliffe 24:01
And you're working on multiple episodes can concurrently how does the workflow manifest itself?
Rose Rimler24:06
Yeah, we have about let's see, we have right now we have three producers plus Wendy who produces her own episodes, as well as hosts. So among the four of us, each producer will take two or three episodes a season that they are the lead producer on. And so I have three this season two, we're done with the third one still in production. And so you'd work on them sequentially. We all sit down and we make a schedule before the show starts. And then we try to space everyone's episodes out. So people get a few weeks in between when each episode comes out. So you're kind of starting your first episode when that's in a little bit better shape. You're still working on it, but then you're starting the second episode. And then when the first one's out, the second one's in a little bit better shape. You're starting your third episode, so there's overlap, but if all goes well, there's not too much overlap. There's like a few weeks of overlap. Yeah, it's a lot of work. It's definitely like kind of a Go Go Go
Damian Radcliffe 25:00
Oh, yeah. And of course, the field you're in is also changing all the all the time as well. So you've, you've talked a little bit about sort of changing audience preferences, the shift to kind of more conversational podcasts, but also the technology we're using to access this has changed dramatically with the, with more smart devices, and so on and so forth. So how do you see podcasting and audio storytelling developing? What are the trends that people should be looking out for?
Rose Rimler25:23
Yeah, I mean, when I first started at science versus I would call people for interviews. And I'd have to say, a lot of the times, I'd say, I work for a podcast, and this is what a podcast is. It's kind of like radio, but it comes over the internet. I never have to do that anymore. So podcasting has become more of a household term. But yeah, I think a lot of what's changing now, like the expectation that there will be video associated with associated with the podcast, and I think a lot of people in the podcasting space are trying to figure out what that means for them. And it makes a lot more sense for a show like, I don't know, Smartlist, I think they have a video. Conan O'Brien needs a friend, those kinds of chat shows where they're two or a few people sort of talking to each other, or somebody, Mr. Chamberlain, you know, someone interviewing another person? And I don't know, I don't know why people really desperately want to I mean, I don't know why. Why did people want to watch Charlie Rose? I don't know. But they did. And so. So whoever wants to watch someone being interviewed, is getting that opportunity more and more.
Rose Rimler26:22
It's harder for people, it's harder to understand how video will play into a show like ours, which is sometimes referred to as a highly produced podcast, meaning it has like taped from multiple sources as musical scoring and has. It's very, very like scripted, or partly scripted at least, and how to make a video out of that. It's not clear. And how much do we need to I don't know, maybe there's a market for both kinds of shows to exist simultaneously. But I think right now, nobody can deny that a lot of people expect to watch podcasts.
Damian Radcliffe 26:58
Yeah, yeah. And we've seen some, it's much easier, as you said, to just put three cameras in a studio when people are sitting around the desk talking like like we are now and be able to just kind of cut between that versus something that is so much more highly produced and sophisticated. And we've seen some attempts, like a few years ago, The New Yorker partnered with This American Life and told some stories via animation, but that stuff is incredibly labor intensive.
Rose Rimler27:20
Do you remember that This American Life TV show?
Damian Radcliffe 27:22
Yes, I do. I do. Yeah, that was a short lived, lived experiment. But on HBO, maybe Yeah, but you also wonder like, particularly for shows like like yours? Is that going to reach a new audience? Or are you just investing a lot of time and effort and money into creating the ability to tell this on on another medium that really just serves? Perhaps your your core audience or, or no audience at all?
Rose Rimler27:47
It's a really good point. And what is the strategy? The what's the best strategy to really meet the needs of the audience you already have and keep them super loyal, or to reach out and change things risk, maybe losing some of the audience you have that like things a certain way, but potentially get new audience members? And we don't? It's hard to know. Yeah.
Damian Radcliffe 28:06
I'm also curious about science communication in general, as well, and how you're seeing that evolving, we occasionally see headlines talking about how knowledge and understanding of science is diminishing in the US and indeed many other places around the world that with topics like like COVID, huge interest at the beginning of a pandemic then very rapidly turning off as people became exhausted by it, or they couldn't straight answers to to emerging issues. So in the same vein as my podcasting question, how are you seeing science communication, evolving as well?
Rose Rimler28:38
That's a really good question. I don't know. I wonder about stuff like this. Here's me with my science versus hat on, are we really getting, like worse? Like, are we getting really getting less science literate as a community as a country or as a global population? I don't know. I think it's easy to say like, there's always a nostalgia bias, like things used to be remember when things were better, right. So I don't know. I wonder if that's really true. I maybe I'm being optimistic. But moving on from that, like, one thing I've noticed is there's just a lot more content in general now. I think it feels that way. And that's good and bad. It's good stuff and bad stuff. It's like there's a lot more charlatans out there pushing silly wellness hacks. There's a lot more like wannabe Gwyneth Paltrow shows. There's also a lot more debunkers. So I think and I think it's maybe it's proportional, I don't know, but, and that's good. From a world perspective. I don't know that it's great that we have all these people with this bad wellness advice out there, or bad science takes it's good for me as someone who needs material to debunk on science versus but is it good for the world? I don't know.
Rose Rimler29:46
And then also similarly, we've got a lot of very smart very creative and charismatic people sort of on Tik Tok doing doing the work themselves or making their own independent podcast or however they want to do it. Debunking that and having their own hot takes and, and having a lot of thoughtful conversations about it. I think as good for the world, yes. For my job, oh, there's more competition. So. So I think that's one way it's changed. Like, it's like more and more and more. I don't know if you feel this way, and maybe this is my honest nostalgia bias, like I remember when there was less than it was easier. I don't know. But it feels to me like there's just more more everything. And it's kind of exhausting.
Damian Radcliffe 30:24
Yeah. And I think part of the challenge there is, on the one hand, we have this incredibly rich tapestry, and you have access, arguably, to more great scientific reporting than ever before, across more mediums, more platforms, in producing and really engaging in creative ways. But as you say, the counterpart of that is also misinformation and a lot of snake oil salesmen, particularly in the kind of the wellness space. So is there also a factor there in terms of this, how to filter the good stuff? And how to be sufficiently media and scientifically literate to know well, what is the stuff I should trust? And what are the things I should should take with a pinch of salt?
Rose Rimler31:04
I know, and I think about like, how to explain that distinction. How am I How am I confident that I'm getting that distinction? I mean, and why should anyone trust our show over some other show? I mean, I think one thing we do that should reassure people, and obviously, we're not the arbiters of truth, but at least that we're trying, and that we have a particular standard we're holding ourselves to is that we published our transcript of all the citations, we're very careful to cite the transcript very thoroughly. And just to say, like, here's where we got, you know, here's the study we're referring to, if you are curious, or you're skeptical of our interpretation, you can read it yourself. And what's your interpretation? And that is actually one thing I'm seeing more and more content creators do on YouTube on tick tock is, they'll talk about something and they'll throw up a study, they'll have an image of the study they're talking about, which I think is cool. I mean, and this is a criticism, I could love it that that they could probably love right back at us is like, Well, how do I know you're not cherry picking? And that one's hard. I mean, we try not to we reference a lot of reviews and meta analyses. But there aren't always appropriate reviews and meta analyses to reference so I don't think I've really nailed know how to nail that one, like, how do you trust that we're not cherry picking? I think if you get familiar with a content creator, and you watch or listen to their stuff routinely, then you'll kind of get a sense of what their outlook on life is, what their biases might be. How likely you think they are to cherry pick, rather than are they really just genuinely curious about a topic and they try to bring you everything they say like I was surprised i I've changed my mind, you know? So I think like following certain people is a good way to decide whether or not they're trustworthy.
Damian Radcliffe 32:51
Other examples of people you would recommend that we should should follow?
Rose Rimler32:54
Yeah, who should you follow? I mean, every science writer, this is not audio. Every science writer loves Ed Yong writes for The Atlantic, mostly. There's a lot of good science writers for stat. These are this is a health thing. I like Gina Kolata’s work she writes for The New York Times a lot this these are all writers. I think that there's a podcast actually like my brother showed me it's called not showing me Yeah, sent me it's this is an audio and it's called demystifying the gurus and their whole their their social scientists, but their whole thing is they they look into sort of public intellectuals and really evaluate their, their what they have to offer and what evidence it's based on and I, from what I've listened to, it seems like they genuinely are quite fair. They're long. They're like three hours long, but I think they do a great job. There's a guy on an Instagram called debunk the funk. He does a lot of vaccine denial. He's still on the vaccine, COVID vaccine denialism beat and he's doing the Lord's work. debunk the funk. He's really good. There's another wellness person I like to watch on YouTube called Abby sharp. I find her kind of charming and, and I sometimes I slightly disagree with her tastes, but mostly I do I think she doesn't. She's a nutritionist. And I think she has really good at information. And she's the one other person that shows the papers she refers to. And that's I'm always pausing it and writing it down. That's great.
Damian Radcliffe 34:21
There's lots of lots of fantastic physicians there. And we'll ask our producer to put links to all of those in the show notes so people can go and explore, explore those. And then lastly, just wanted to wrap up by really asking about advice for people who want to follow in your footsteps. So of people who are interested in science communication, and people interested in podcasting, perhaps the intersection of the two, what are some of the kind of core pieces of advice that you would want to pass on to them?
Rose Rimler34:45
Yeah, I think number one piece of advice is to do it. Any way that you can. Don't wait for someone to give you a job to do it. Sadly, that'd be nice. But like, you know, do it on your own time. Anyway, you can you can volunteer If you're a student, I think you can volunteer or join like the, the newspaper, I didn't do this as a student I wish I had, you can join the newspaper, join a podcasting club, any, if you're a student, you're listening, listening to this, take advantage of all the stuff that's available to students, it goes away, it goes away when you graduate, and it's much harder to kind of get your foot in the door with stuff. So any kind of club or student group that that does any kind of writing science stuff, science, communication, podcasting, and yeah, that's what you want to do. Take advantage of it.
Rose Rimler35:31
If you're not a student, or you know, you've moved on you, there's still ways to do it, you can you could start your own YouTube channel, for example, you don't even have to publish them, you can make them and see how that feels. You could write out start a blog, you could write articles, just write or make the content you want to make. Because you're gonna get better every time you do it. And don't be too afraid to do it and to fail. Um, because you don't have to publish it, you can decide if you want to publish it. So that's a good way to get some experience to see if you like it. And I really recommend this is an also for students, I recommend the AAA s mass media fellowship, if you're eligible for that. That's really excellent. And somehow they have funding every year. I'm always waiting to hear they get cut, but they're not cut. So it's a great fellowship to get some writing work. Science Communication work. Yeah. And then for just sort of how to follow my footsteps, you could not because my career is weird, and everybody's is weird. Everybody arrives at things sort of in a different way. But I think that and and also the landscape has changed. We're in a, I'll be totally honest. Like we're in a place right now. Where podcast jobs like stable podcasts and audio producer jobs, are drying up or have dried up a lot. I don't think we'll always be here. I think it'll, the pendulum will swift will shift again, I don't think the field is going to die. But I think it's changing. And so the more you can do this independently, and you can kind of have your own business model, if that's of interest to you, or make something with your friends like the more that's going to serve you because I think we're entering that sort of a period of less staff positions more freelance work. Gotcha.
Damian Radcliffe 37:11
Well, lots of great advice there for people to go away and and think about, we've run out of time for today. So just reminds me to thank you so much for joining us in the studio today, alongside this podcast, where he's also gave a guest lecture at a class yesterday and you'll be able to find that along with this podcast on our website demystifying dot you oregon.edu or wherever you find your podcasts. In the meantime, just reminds me to thank once more our guest today and thank you for listening