Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to Talk Nerdy. Today is Monday,
Speaker 1: August tenth, twenty twenty six, and I'm the host of
Speaker 1: the show Doctor Kara Santa Maria, and I am back
Speaker 1: from a trip to Australia and New Zealand where I
Speaker 1: had so so much fun traveling with my sgu cohort Steve,
Speaker 1: Bob and Jay, as well as Angela Jones, Roy and
Speaker 1: Brian Weckt, as well as my partner and the partners
Speaker 1: and family of some of my colleagues. It was a
Speaker 1: huge group and we managed to be drama free, although
Speaker 1: a bunch of us got sick, which I guess is
Speaker 1: to be expected when you're traveling to the Southern Hemisphere
Speaker 1: so the winter in some time, it's a drastic shift,
Speaker 1: and of course there are all of those fun viruses
Speaker 1: that are floating around during the season. But I'm back
Speaker 1: now and somewhat over the jet lag, and gosh, I
Speaker 1: just had so much fun, both at the Australian Skeptics
Speaker 1: meeting where we did not a con, as well as
Speaker 1: the meeting of the New Zealand Skeptics and all of
Speaker 1: the cool stuff that we did in between. I visited
Speaker 1: fabulous Maudi spa in rohod Arua on the North Island
Speaker 1: of New Zealand. We went to Hobbiton which was interesting,
Speaker 1: very very cool. We spent some time in Sydney in
Speaker 1: Australia and also in christ Church in New Zealand for
Speaker 1: the conferences, and went to the Zoo and Wellington on
Speaker 1: the North Island. Just so much fun and I got
Speaker 1: to meet some of you, which is awesome, awesome, awesome.
Speaker 1: So before we get into this week's episode, as always,
Speaker 1: I want to thank those of you who make Talk
Speaker 1: Nerdy possible. If you're interested in pledging your support still
Speaker 1: for the time being on an episodic basis, all you've
Speaker 1: got to do is visit patreon dot com slash talk
Speaker 1: Nerdy to learn more. This week's top patrons include Chuck Blell,
Speaker 1: David J. E. Smith, Daniel Lang, Will DeFraine, David Compton,
Speaker 1: Brian Holden, Gabo Jay l Rika Hagman and wouldn't you
Speaker 1: know it, Pascale Galotti. Pascali Galotti, I got to meet
Speaker 1: you in person. You're freaking awesome. That was so much fun.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad that we got to spend a little
Speaker 1: bit of quality time. Wish it had been more. I
Speaker 1: got to learn how to say your name correctly. Gosh,
Speaker 1: I hope I'm still not butchering it. I've said Galotti
Speaker 1: for years. Pascali Galotti, you are awesome.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Thank you as well as Mary Neiva, Rica Maharaj, Joe Wilkinson,
Speaker 1: and so many more of you. Thank you all so
Speaker 1: much from the bottom of my heart. All right, let's
Speaker 1: get into thank you it. This week I had the
Speaker 1: opportunity to chat with ROBERTA Quak. She is a science writer.
Speaker 1: She's written for a ton of different outlets, from The
Speaker 1: New York Times to The New Yorker to New Scientist
Speaker 1: audubonn She has a fellowship from the Night Science Journalism
Speaker 1: Program at MIT, a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Speaker 1: She's won awards from Triple As, the American Geophysical Union,
Speaker 1: and she worked in a science lab before she became
Speaker 1: a science journalist and is very, very interested in the
Speaker 1: scientific process. So she has a new book out called
Speaker 1: Lost in Curiosity Field Notes from Scientists' Adventures into the Unknown. So,
Speaker 1: without any further ado, here she is Roberta Quack. Well, Roberta,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining me today.
Speaker 2: I'm excited to be here. Thanks so much for having
Speaker 2: me on me too.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna be talking about your new book, Lost
Speaker 1: in Curiosity, field notes from Scientists' Adventures into the Unknown.
Speaker 1: But before we get into the actual kind of content
Speaker 1: of the book, I'd love to take some time just
Speaker 1: to get to know you a little bit more. And
Speaker 1: you're positioning to or within the book. So you're a
Speaker 1: science writer, but before you became a science journalist, you
Speaker 1: worked in the sciences. It's it's always interesting to me
Speaker 1: when I talk to folks who are sort of on
Speaker 1: that line between doing science and writing about science, or
Speaker 1: maybe they've spent a whole career as a science communicator
Speaker 1: or a science journalist. Some people it seems like kind
Speaker 1: of go through the j school route and then they
Speaker 1: learn the beat while they're doing the work. And then
Speaker 1: other folks I do notice there's like a subset of
Speaker 1: science writers who were scientists, like they were trained in
Speaker 1: the sciences and then decided, you know what I want
Speaker 1: to I want to write about this. I think that's
Speaker 1: that's more my bag. Would you consider yourself in that camp?
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm in the second camp, though I would say
Speaker 2: I'm maybe only partly trained in the sciences because I
Speaker 2: did my undergrad in biology, and I did sort of,
Speaker 2: you know, bounce around between a few labs for you know,
Speaker 2: summer internships. And I did work after graduation in a
Speaker 2: genetics lab as you mentioned. But I didn't do I
Speaker 2: didn't go through like the ordeal of a PhD as
Speaker 2: a lot of my fellow science writers have, where they
Speaker 2: get part way through their pg D and then they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: my gosh, I can't do this. I don't want to
Speaker 2: be a scientists for the rest of my life. So
Speaker 2: luckily I figured that out before I went into a
Speaker 2: PhD program. I had kind of a weird what happened
Speaker 2: I'm thinking back. So I did my undergrad in biology.
Speaker 2: I actually worked in software engineering for a while. I
Speaker 2: was living in Silicon Valley, so everyone was doing that.
Speaker 2: And then so the genetics lab work. I was actually
Speaker 2: a software engineer. I wasn't like doing things with test
Speaker 2: tubes or pipets or anything.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: And then from there I switched into creative writing, fiction writing,
Speaker 2: and then took a left turn again into science journalism.
Speaker 2: So that's how I ended up where I am now.
Speaker 1: Oh interesting, So you you know, you obviously chose to
Speaker 1: major in biology because there because it was interesting to you,
Speaker 1: and it, you know, kept your attention long enough to
Speaker 1: get to get through your undergrad But then you didn't
Speaker 1: initially have the intention of becoming a science writer.
Speaker 2: You mean when I was an undergrad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I don't sort as you were figuring
Speaker 1: out what you wanted to do with your life.
Speaker 2: Yes, I don't think I really knew it was even
Speaker 2: an option back then, And I hear that from a
Speaker 2: lot of science writers that we we didn't even realize
Speaker 2: that was something people did as their or it's just
Speaker 2: not it's not like a it's just not a common
Speaker 2: option that comes to mind. So, you know, the options
Speaker 2: seemed like I could try to go to med school,
Speaker 2: I could try to go to grad school, and I
Speaker 2: kind of didn't want to do either of those things.
Speaker 2: But since so many people were doing computer scientists was
Speaker 2: like early what two thousands in the Bay areas, so
Speaker 2: that's all that anyone was thinking about. This must have
Speaker 2: been like right before the dot com bust or something
Speaker 2: and so or boom boom and then bust. But yeah,
Speaker 2: so I I instead kind of went to a bionformatics
Speaker 2: company where I was doing, you know, programming, and that's
Speaker 2: how I ended up on that path.
Speaker 1: It's very cool. And so you know, throughout your career, then,
Speaker 1: how have you twisted and turned? Like have you kind
Speaker 1: of stayed the course? Have you had specific beats within science?
Speaker 1: Do you tend to you know, write more long form,
Speaker 1: do you tend to write more kind of fast coverage,
Speaker 1: like how what has been your approach?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think most science writers when they're
Speaker 2: starting out, we do news articles because you know, they're shorter,
Speaker 2: they're easier to manage. You know, it's a few interviews,
Speaker 2: you get it done within a day or a few days.
Speaker 2: So most of us will cut our teeth doing that.
Speaker 2: And then you know, as time went on, I started
Speaker 2: to get more ambitious, like I wanted to do more
Speaker 2: narrative features. And I think that was partly two from
Speaker 2: that training that I had in fiction writing for the
Speaker 2: MFA program. You know, you learn all these tools of
Speaker 2: the trade, these you know, craft techniques for you know,
Speaker 2: creating scenes and dialogue and character and setting and all that,
Speaker 2: and so I wanted to put some of that to
Speaker 2: use in my science writing too. So I did start
Speaker 2: to try to pitch and write more features at that
Speaker 2: point and then yeah, and then I guess after maybe
Speaker 2: decade or so, is when I started thinking about like
Speaker 2: going to the book route and taking on an even
Speaker 2: bigger project.
Speaker 1: Narratively speaking, it's a I think it's like super super scary.
Speaker 1: I have not taken the plunge. I have you know,
Speaker 1: received let's say, encouragement to do so, and it just
Speaker 1: it's such a daunting task to me to sit down, conceptualize, pitch, edit,
Speaker 1: right and edit and right and edit and right and
Speaker 1: edit a full length book. So I'm curious, how did
Speaker 1: you even begin that process? How did you even choose
Speaker 1: what you wanted to write about?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I guess if we're talking about the
Speaker 2: idea for this book and how that started, I mean
Speaker 2: that actually started when I was in that MFA program
Speaker 2: in fiction writing. So I was taking an essay writing
Speaker 2: class and I needed a topic for an essay assignment,
Speaker 2: and I happened to be friends with this evolutionary biologist Ben,
Speaker 2: who was doing his PhD program at the same university,
Speaker 2: and he was studying sunflower genetics, and so I thought, well,
Speaker 2: it would be fun to you know, follow Ben around
Speaker 2: on his experiments and write a narrative essay about his research.
Speaker 2: So I followed him on a twenty hour experiment where
Speaker 2: we were taking leaf samples every few hours, and we
Speaker 2: started at seven am, we ended at three am the
Speaker 2: following morning, and there were basically like kind of a
Speaker 2: series of unfortunate events, which you know, the upshot was
Speaker 2: that Ben decided at the end at three am that
Speaker 2: he would probably just have to redo the entire experiment no,
Speaker 2: which I'm guessing some scientists in your audience will identify.
Speaker 2: And so that I mean that that just stayed with
Speaker 2: me because you know, it just brought home his his dedication,
Speaker 2: his perseverance, like to him, but wasn't even a big deal, like,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, of course, I'll just do it all again.
Speaker 2: And so I was keeping that in the back of
Speaker 2: my mind that you know, I was interested in this
Speaker 2: idea of the scientific process and all the labor that
Speaker 2: happens behind the scenes, all the you know, obstacles and
Speaker 2: challenges and the human struggle that happens behind the scenes
Speaker 2: before you get to that result. So that was percolating
Speaker 2: for a long time, and then it was maybe after
Speaker 2: like ten or twelve years later that I thought I
Speaker 2: could write a book where I'd follow a different research
Speaker 2: project from a different field of science in each chapter.
Speaker 2: So we'd have like astronomy, geology, evolutionary biology, whatever, and
Speaker 2: then each chapter would follow that person or that teen's
Speaker 2: journey through their research question.
Speaker 1: I love that, so, you know, I've it's interesting because
Speaker 1: I feel like I've had a few folks on the
Speaker 1: show before who were more sort of like process oriented, right,
Speaker 1: really asking the questions that I find the most interesting,
Speaker 1: which is not so much what do we know? But
Speaker 1: like how how do we know what we know? And
Speaker 1: how do we know what we don't know? And what
Speaker 1: are all the twists and turns that come along in
Speaker 1: the path. But I feel like most of the time
Speaker 1: when we discuss that sort of process of science, it's
Speaker 1: from like a historian perspective. So maybe somebody will have
Speaker 1: written a book about a particular scientist or a particular discovery,
Speaker 1: and they'll have, you know, dug deep into the archives
Speaker 1: to tell the real story of it, and not like
Speaker 1: the simplified loan genius story that we often hear. But
Speaker 1: I love that your approach is more contemporary. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like what is what are how are these people
Speaker 1: doing this?
Speaker 2: Now, yeah, I think that's true that a lot of it.
Speaker 2: You'll find a lot of those stories in you know,
Speaker 2: history books, and those stories are fascinating too, right, like
Speaker 2: going back and hearing the twist and turns that you know,
Speaker 2: the scientist went through to get to this big discovery.
Speaker 2: And I think the advantage of advantage of doing a
Speaker 2: contemporary approach is that, I mean I get to see
Speaker 2: it happening in real time, like in front of my eyes, right,
Speaker 2: Like I get to be in the field with the scientists,
Speaker 2: you know, in Greenland when they're trying to study this glacier,
Speaker 2: or I get to I mean sometimes it's remote, like
Speaker 2: one scientist was trying to study these frogs in Borneo,
Speaker 2: and even though I wasn't there with her, I was
Speaker 2: like getting her updates and we were, you know, communicating
Speaker 2: a lot about all the obstacles that she was coming
Speaker 2: up against. So I think just getting to see it
Speaker 2: unfold in real time, and we can't really do that
Speaker 2: with historical stories, right You're trying to reconstruct things from
Speaker 2: documents or letters or something. But if you can just
Speaker 2: be there and the thick of it with them, that's
Speaker 2: great because you can construct scenes from that, and I
Speaker 2: think that's part of what can help draw readers in
Speaker 2: is to feel like they're really there with the scientists.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, It's it's different now too, because science
Speaker 1: is I mean, I feel like the I guess the
Speaker 1: philosophy of science has maybe been clarified, and there have
Speaker 1: been some adjustments, some updates, you know, since kind of
Speaker 1: early scientific thought. But ultimately the biggest leap, especially even
Speaker 1: like within the last five, ten twenty years, has been
Speaker 1: the technology, the advancements that scientists use, right, Like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I want to answer this question or I'm really interested
Speaker 1: in interrogating this unknown and I don't know how to
Speaker 1: do it. So I'm going to try and develop a tool,
Speaker 1: and then now that I have this tool, I can
Speaker 1: I can dig a little bit deeper. Do you find
Speaker 1: that sometimes when you are kind of embedded with scientists
Speaker 1: and you're working with them, that it's easy to get
Speaker 1: caught up in the technology, the how all of this
Speaker 1: stuff happens because it's so sophisticated.
Speaker 2: Now, Yeah, I mean, I guess it was sometimes it
Speaker 2: was tricky to figure out, Okay, how deep into the
Speaker 2: weeds are we going to go on the methodology? Right?
Speaker 2: Because in some sense. I mean, that's where the story
Speaker 2: is happening, right'. It's in the weeds where they're encountering
Speaker 2: these obstacles. But you also don't want readers to just
Speaker 2: get so lost in the details that we're losing the
Speaker 2: bigger narrative. Like so, for example, one chapter is about
Speaker 2: astronomers who are trying to detect the first convincing evidence
Speaker 2: of an exo moon, so a moon circling a planet
Speaker 2: outside our Solar system, And this is incredibly difficult to
Speaker 2: two because these planets are very far away, these moons
Speaker 2: are often very tiny, they're going to be tiny compared
Speaker 2: to their planets, and there's so many other things that
Speaker 2: can trick you into thinking that you have found a
Speaker 2: signal of a moon when it's actually something else. And
Speaker 2: so there is a lot of sort of technological and
Speaker 2: methodological detail that goes into, you know, trying to separate
Speaker 2: the signal from the noise and trying to make sure
Speaker 2: like is this real, is this just kind of a mirage?
Speaker 2: Are we just seeing something that we want to see?
Speaker 2: And so I had to sort of make some decisions
Speaker 2: about when to go into that in great detail and
Speaker 2: whether to keep it higher level.
Speaker 1: Right, right, And I feel like that's probably always a
Speaker 1: science journalist or science writer's struggle among many, But it's
Speaker 1: sort of at what level of depth? Because you can
Speaker 1: always go deeper, you can always get more technical, you
Speaker 1: can always get stuck more in the weeds, and you
Speaker 1: can always back off and speak about things in a
Speaker 1: much broader, much more general, much more kind of almost
Speaker 1: like social or humanistic way. And there's so much latitude there.
Speaker 1: And I find that different different science writers really do
Speaker 1: approach those questions differently, and it makes for you know,
Speaker 1: that's why there are so many different stories about even
Speaker 1: the same thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I feel like, I mean, if there is
Speaker 2: going to be some level of technical detail, it does
Speaker 2: have to be sort of balanced out or that there
Speaker 2: has to be moments in the book where I zoom
Speaker 2: out to those bigger questions so it doesn't just feel
Speaker 2: like we're talking about like software programs or something, right, Like,
Speaker 2: there has to be like a bigger picture why are
Speaker 2: we doing this? Like why are they so fascinated by this?
Speaker 2: Like and you know, with the Exo Moon story, it's
Speaker 2: really about this. It's this, it's this spirit of discovery
Speaker 2: of exploration, you know, finding things that we haven't found before,
Speaker 2: being the first to find like the first human to
Speaker 2: ever see something for the first time, and it raises
Speaker 2: these questions of objectivity and how you can whether you
Speaker 2: can trust what you're seeing, or whether you're seeing something
Speaker 2: that you that you are hoping so hard is there
Speaker 2: that you're almost kind of like willing it into existence?
Speaker 2: So I think there has to be that zooming in
Speaker 2: on the detail, but then also zooming out to those
Speaker 2: big questions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's there's this whole other leg isn't there
Speaker 1: of sort of you know, it's one thing if we
Speaker 1: are turning our instruments and our eyes and our ears
Speaker 1: and our senses to the cosmos and we are trying
Speaker 1: to describe or understand something that either has has not
Speaker 1: been described or understood or requires clarification. And it's another
Speaker 1: thing if we're doing that, you know, towards our own
Speaker 1: home planet, towards our backyard, towards our oceans, towards you know,
Speaker 1: different ecosystems. There's there's this other layer, I think of
Speaker 1: humility that's required with the sciences that we haven't always
Speaker 1: historically had. I was just saying this to my partner
Speaker 1: yesterday I got like a news alert because I get
Speaker 1: those often about a new monkey species, and it was
Speaker 1: literally I saw that too.
Speaker 2: I didn't yeah, yeah, find it, but I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: what what's that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, and it looked bizarre and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: but but I just hated how the headline. All the
Speaker 1: headlines I saw were like new new species, new species discovered,
Speaker 1: and it's over and over, this thing is new, And
Speaker 1: then in the lead, like the very next line, it
Speaker 1: would say something like known to locals as and it
Speaker 1: had a name, and I'm like, it's not new, like
Speaker 1: it's just new to science, like to Western science. It's
Speaker 1: newly described by West right right. There's this really interesting,
Speaker 1: I think layer to conversations about exploration, conversations about you know,
Speaker 1: the beauty I think, and the humanity of being curious
Speaker 1: and of setting out to answer questions where I think
Speaker 1: we do have to always take a step back and say, like,
Speaker 1: and what is my positioning within the milieu, and how
Speaker 1: can I explore in such a way that is respectful
Speaker 1: and that is open minded, and that doesn't require I
Speaker 1: guess the historical hubris that that many scientists or explorers
Speaker 1: have had that said like I am the only person
Speaker 1: who is equipped to answer this question, and I am
Speaker 1: you know, my opinion on this is is so much
Speaker 1: more important. Did you find that this kind of younger
Speaker 1: generation of researchers that you've worked with is more sensitive
Speaker 1: to this approach?
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know if I have a good
Speaker 2: way to contrast younger and older researchers broadly, but I mean,
Speaker 2: for one chapter, the evolutionary biology chapter, the scientist she's
Speaker 2: from Columbia originally but and now in the States, but
Speaker 2: she studies a frog species in Borneo, and I think
Speaker 2: she did, I mean, she did always collaborate with local
Speaker 2: scientists and you know, relied on their expertise, and so
Speaker 2: that was always, you know, part of her research plan.
Speaker 2: And that I mean that chapter was intro too, because
Speaker 2: you know, what you're saying about the monkey reminds me
Speaker 2: of this story the frog species that she was studying.
Speaker 2: It's like it has this sort of particular parental behavior
Speaker 2: that scientists have found interesting that you know, the males
Speaker 2: will carry their tadpoles on their backs to pools and
Speaker 2: you know, drop them off there to grow up, and
Speaker 2: they'll look after the eggs until they become tadpoles and
Speaker 2: so on. And I think the initial reports of this were,
Speaker 2: you know, from Western scientists. It was maybe a few
Speaker 2: decades ago that those appeared. But when I interviewed the
Speaker 2: scientists and when I looked sort of closer at the papers,
Speaker 2: it was an indigenous local who found that first evidence.
Speaker 2: Like they were helping the you know, the team, this
Speaker 2: team that had showed up from the US, and they
Speaker 2: had a team of locals that were that were helping
Speaker 2: with the scientific data collection. And it was the local
Speaker 2: you know, staff worker who found the mail frog carrying
Speaker 2: as tadpoles. So and it was one of those things
Speaker 2: where I wanted to find out this person's name, but
Speaker 2: there was no way I could do that because it
Speaker 2: had happened, you know, decades ago, and there wasn't any
Speaker 2: way to track that down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think that that's one of those It
Speaker 1: makes me wonder how often is that the case? Right,
Speaker 1: Like in the annals of history and the stories that
Speaker 1: we tell, how often are these incredible discoveries, especially when
Speaker 1: we're talking about like ecology or investigation from or by
Speaker 1: a group of scientists in a land that they're not from.
Speaker 1: How often are the descriptions and the stories that they
Speaker 1: tell really built I think on the on the really
Speaker 1: hard work of local individuals who because they don't have
Speaker 1: the degrees or the associations or the whatever, they really
Speaker 1: don't always get there.
Speaker 2: Due well they very rarely get there, do Yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean that person was not an author on the paper.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Well, yeah, it's rough, right, And so I'm curious,
Speaker 1: you know, as you as you went about kind of
Speaker 1: telling these really interesting stories and ultimately how many how
Speaker 1: many different scientists well I shouldn't say how many individual scientists,
Speaker 1: but how many different stories did you include in the book?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So there's nine chapters and it's kind of a
Speaker 2: mix of life sciences and physical sciences, so sort of
Speaker 2: all over the board.
Speaker 1: And did you kind of was the sort of choice
Speaker 1: to include what you included because those were the scientists
Speaker 1: that you were able to embed with, and those were
Speaker 1: the you know, the trips that you were able to
Speaker 1: go on and the reporting that you were able to do.
Speaker 1: Or did you have sort of like a wealth of
Speaker 1: stuff and you really had to pare it down?
Speaker 2: Yeah? That was an interesting process. So I I mean,
Speaker 2: for some of the chapters I had written, maybe like
Speaker 2: a short news story, or I interviewed this person once
Speaker 2: before for a future story, but hadn't gone into tremendous
Speaker 2: depths on their research. And if I found myself sort
Speaker 2: of thinking, like, you know, if that was still sort
Speaker 2: of nagging at me, like, h, I wonder what happened
Speaker 2: with that? Because I knew they were going to do more,
Speaker 2: Like I knew they were going to take further steps,
Speaker 2: then I would call that person back and say, you know,
Speaker 2: what's going on now, Like, for example, one the chemistry chapter,
Speaker 2: I had interviewed Jenny Ingram, who's an indigenous chemist who
Speaker 2: studied the effects of uranium mining contamination on the Nabjo nation,
Speaker 2: And so I had just a few paragraphs about her
Speaker 2: in a feature, but I knew that she'd had, you know,
Speaker 2: many many students who had come through her lab over
Speaker 2: the years, many of them also Indigenous, and they were
Speaker 2: trying to understand the effects on their community. And so
Speaker 2: there seemed to be a bigger sort of generational story
Speaker 2: about this, you know, this research unfolding over many years.
Speaker 2: So that was one that I went back to, and
Speaker 2: then other chapters it was, you know, the topics were
Speaker 2: totally new to me. It was. Really it was a
Speaker 2: very unscientific process. I'll say I was like choosing what
Speaker 2: the other topics would be. I mean it was you know,
Speaker 2: me scanning tons of journal articles and news stories and
Speaker 2: calling people and talking to tons of people and then
Speaker 2: just just like waiting in that conversation for that spark
Speaker 2: that like that there had to be some kind of
Speaker 2: emotional connection that I felt with the researcher with the
Speaker 2: research question, like something that made me feel there's like
Speaker 2: an emotional heart to this story that makes me want
Speaker 2: to follow it more so. Yeah, I really so much
Speaker 2: about the I mean, the logistical questions played into it too,
Speaker 2: but you know, for some of them, I didn't even
Speaker 2: know until later whether I'd be able to follow them
Speaker 2: in the field.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I think one of the themes that
Speaker 1: I hear again and again from science writers that I
Speaker 1: have on the show, regardless of their of their sort
Speaker 1: of academic or just meandering life path, is that really
Speaker 1: the way to write science is to tell stories, and
Speaker 1: especially to tell stories of people like as readers. This
Speaker 1: is how we connect, This is how we remember, this
Speaker 1: is how we become emotionally invested. We need characters and
Speaker 1: we need plot points. You know, we need to be
Speaker 1: able to like we are just a storytelling species. And
Speaker 1: so is that a decision that you made very very
Speaker 1: early on, Like that is going to be my approach
Speaker 1: because that is how I write.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I knew it would definitely be narrative.
Speaker 2: It had to be. I mean it was. I mean
Speaker 2: that's if we're talking about you know, this book is
Speaker 2: about the process of science, the messy middle of science.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's what narrative is, right. It's like conflict, odbstacles.
Speaker 2: You know, a character has a dream, a goal. If
Speaker 2: you think about in my MFA program, the fiction writing program,
Speaker 2: there's some like diagree that they teach everyone in undergrad
Speaker 2: classes where it's like, you know, like rising action, obstacles, climax,
Speaker 2: dneumont right, and that's a key part of what makes
Speaker 2: a story. And that's exactly what science is, right. You know,
Speaker 2: they've got this question they want to answer. Obstacles are
Speaker 2: thrown in the way, will they or will they not
Speaker 2: overcome them? And you know, are they going to come
Speaker 2: out on the other side? So I think like the
Speaker 2: whole narrative approach is totally inherent to science. Like it's
Speaker 2: not even something that I had to force.
Speaker 1: You know, and I love because having worked as a
Speaker 1: scientist for many, many years before I then moved more
Speaker 1: into science communication and then kind of went back and
Speaker 1: got more involved in the clinical side of psychology. But
Speaker 1: I worked as a neuroscientist in a lab, and I
Speaker 1: can attest to the fact that if you were to
Speaker 1: ask me about all of the thrilling experiences I had
Speaker 1: asking questions, I would say, Oh, my gosh, nobody would
Speaker 1: want to follow me around the lab. It's so boring,
Speaker 1: It is so frustrating. It's mostly just beating my head
Speaker 1: against the wall and being like, well that didn't work. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's try something else. Well that didn't work either, And
Speaker 1: so it's so funny that from the perspective of the
Speaker 1: person doing science, I wonder how often you would hear
Speaker 1: things like oh, it's such a joy, Like like I'm
Speaker 1: so you know, my curiosity takes me to all these
Speaker 1: interesting places and it's like fascinating.
Speaker 2: No, they're probably all.
Speaker 1: Like, ah, I'd never want to try this again.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, but I mean that's what makes I mean,
Speaker 2: I think that's what makes readers care about the characters
Speaker 2: in the book, Like you you know, if you see
Speaker 2: someone struggle, you're kind of rooting for them to keep going.
Speaker 2: But I mean it's true that. I mean, one challenge
Speaker 2: of the book was that, I mean, there is a
Speaker 2: lot of science that's super boring where you're just doing
Speaker 2: stuff over and over again. And there was of course,
Speaker 2: I could not write a chapter where it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: they did this experiment, don't work, so we're going to
Speaker 2: do it again, and it didn't work, We're gonna do
Speaker 2: it again, and like on and on. There had to
Speaker 2: be some kind of progression, right Like, it couldn't. It
Speaker 2: didn't want it to feel repetitive, even though you know,
Speaker 2: parts of science obviously are repetitive. So there was a
Speaker 2: lot of I mean, I don't know, like with the
Speaker 2: physics chapter, right like, this was about physicists studying the
Speaker 2: paper crumpling and whether we can detect you know, predictable
Speaker 2: patterns when you crumple a sheet of papercores at all
Speaker 2: just random, right, or the parts of it that are
Speaker 2: that can be predictable. And I think I sat in
Speaker 2: probably on like more than a dozen Zoom meetings, so
Speaker 2: I have hours and hours of audio, like probably ten
Speaker 2: or fifteen interviews in addition with the main researcher and
Speaker 2: all the other researchers, So all of that had to
Speaker 2: be kind of shaped into a narrative. And so there's
Speaker 2: definitely parts that I had to skip over because it
Speaker 2: would take you don't want, like the no reader wants
Speaker 2: to sit through like fifteen hours of zoom meetings, right,
Speaker 2: So I really had to figure out, Okay, what are
Speaker 2: sort of the key plot points, Like what were the
Speaker 2: key turning points, because those did happen like amidst all
Speaker 2: the sort of tedium and you know, just meeting over
Speaker 2: and over like endlessly discussing these same points or whatever. Like,
Speaker 2: there were turning points for sure, and so it was
Speaker 2: a matter of noticing those and like noticing also the
Speaker 2: moments of emotion and making sure that those were sort
Speaker 2: of the guide posts for the story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that that really is sort of the
Speaker 1: it's funny. I was about to say privilege. That is
Speaker 1: definitely not the right word. The skill, I guess, the
Speaker 1: the insight that a science writer such as yourself would
Speaker 1: bring to the you know, sometimes mind numbing, oftentimes frustrating
Speaker 1: kind of day in day out labor of actually doing
Speaker 1: lab science is that you can take a step back.
Speaker 1: You can kind of hold this perspective of the larger story,
Speaker 1: how it fits into the life arger millieu, how it
Speaker 1: you can see those inflection points, probably very easily because
Speaker 1: you're not in the muck all day every day, like
Speaker 1: you're you're dipping into the muck and dipping back, So
Speaker 1: you at least you at least get that, you know,
Speaker 1: you can empathize with how how frustrating and boring it
Speaker 1: sometimes is. But it's it's funny how when you're in it,
Speaker 1: it just feels interminable, like it does not feel dynamic,
Speaker 1: It does not feel like there are these inflection points.
Speaker 1: It feels like a slog until you publish, and even
Speaker 1: that's the same.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And I will say, I mean there were
Speaker 2: there was only so much that I could participate in
Speaker 2: that I was like party two, right, So for example,
Speaker 2: what the physics team, there was a graduate student who
Speaker 2: was doing tons of lab experiments like crumpling I don't know,
Speaker 2: probably hundreds of sheets of paper and like all this
Speaker 2: little apparatus in the lab and like scanning them with
Speaker 2: lasers and taking all these measurements. I mean, it was
Speaker 2: incredibly laborious, and I did do a field reporting trip,
Speaker 2: but I only visited the lab for a day, so
Speaker 2: I didn't see, you know, all of the I think,
Speaker 2: you know, ideally, as a reporter, it would have been great
Speaker 2: to spend yeah, like many months visiting and seeing him
Speaker 2: at his work, but I didn't have that opportunity because
Speaker 2: it was on the other side of the country. So
Speaker 2: so yeah, I'm sure there were huge, huge swaths of
Speaker 2: the story that I missed that were very boring and or.
Speaker 1: Not in the book, like how many times did you
Speaker 1: observe an acute mental breakdown?
Speaker 2: I don't think I saw any mental breakdown. No, I
Speaker 2: don't know. That's good.
Speaker 1: Anybody quit it's not worth it.
Speaker 2: No, that didn't happen. I mean there were certainly moments
Speaker 2: of frustration, that's for sure. I mean, I guess the
Speaker 2: closest that this, I mean the closest that I would
Speaker 2: say and this at all was not at all like
Speaker 2: a breakdown, but just you know, genuine frustration. Because the
Speaker 2: the glaciology team I followed, you know, they they do
Speaker 2: a field expedition to Greenland once a year, and so
Speaker 2: I had tagged along in twenty twenty three, and there's
Speaker 2: so much preparation that goes into these field expeditions. Right,
Speaker 2: there's so much time, with so much money. There's so
Speaker 2: much like thought and care that goes into just getting
Speaker 2: there and making sure you get on the ice and
Speaker 2: like you know, get the instruments on the ice. There's
Speaker 2: weather problems, there's helicopter problems, there's so many things that
Speaker 2: can go wrong. And in one conversation, so I'm sitting
Speaker 2: you know, at the hotel in town with these researchers
Speaker 2: who are still in town. The rest of our team
Speaker 2: is on the glacier, and there's some question about whether
Speaker 2: they're going to be able to get out these radar
Speaker 2: instruments that are buried under the ice, Like they put
Speaker 2: them out last year, but now they're buried under you know,
Speaker 2: several meters of snow and ice, and there's a real
Speaker 2: question about whether they're going to be able to get
Speaker 2: them out, which is a huge bummer if they can't,
Speaker 2: because I mean, first of all, they're super expensive, but
Speaker 2: also like you know, we are really hoping to get
Speaker 2: the data off these instruments. That's the whole point.
Speaker 1: That's the whole right, that's the work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the work, right, And so I think there was.
Speaker 2: I mean, there were definitely moments of frustration where it's like,
Speaker 2: oh my gosh, well we can't just give up, like
Speaker 2: we've got to figure out a way to get these out. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think that's often the stuff that we
Speaker 1: don't get to. Maybe I shouldn't say we don't get
Speaker 1: to see it, you know, some people are privy to that.
Speaker 1: I think if you survey most most just people in
Speaker 1: the country, and I apologize for anybody listening if there
Speaker 1: has been a siren in the background of my recording
Speaker 1: the whole time. My hope is that my microphone is
Speaker 1: very very sensitive and only picking up my voice.
Speaker 2: But I don't know why I have not heard any sirens.
Speaker 2: Oh good.
Speaker 1: It's like I have no idea what's happening out there
Speaker 1: in LA today. But it has been NonStop since we
Speaker 1: got okay, So I'm just like, whatever, this is just
Speaker 1: it's just color, you know, it's just a little am
Speaker 1: Beyonce there for you podcast listener. But yeah, I you know,
Speaker 1: I think I think I've even read before in some surveys,
Speaker 1: like people will be asking if they could name a
Speaker 1: living scientist and it's very very hard to do or
Speaker 1: they all name the same person, and very few people
Speaker 1: can say, yeah, my neighbor, you know Laura, or my
Speaker 1: neighbor Joe, like works in a lab and you know
Speaker 1: there is a professor, and so it's probably true most
Speaker 1: people don't actually know what happens sort of like behind
Speaker 1: the curtain, not that there's a curtain, like nobody's trying
Speaker 1: to hide this from anything. They're actually going like it's
Speaker 1: so cool, right, and everybody's like, no, it's not that cool.
Speaker 2: I'm not that.
Speaker 1: But so I think that there is this lack of
Speaker 1: it's just a gap in knowledge really, because how can
Speaker 1: we hold everything we're being tasked with holding in our
Speaker 1: brains all the time, But there's a gap in our
Speaker 1: knowledge of what the actual process really looks like, you know,
Speaker 1: what does it really mean to do science? Like when
Speaker 1: people say I'm a scientist, I think that there is
Speaker 1: a lot of misconception around that. Like I remember early on,
Speaker 1: like it was like when I first started my master's
Speaker 1: degree and I was working in a neuroscience lab and
Speaker 1: we were doing these experiments, lots of different types of experiments,
Speaker 1: but we would use neuronal tissue from embryonic mice and
Speaker 1: then we would like do things with these little nerve
Speaker 1: networks that we would build from these embryonic mouse brains.
Speaker 1: And I remember having a friend who is like an
Speaker 1: animal rights activist, and that's good and fine, but they
Speaker 1: were like, well, can't you just like use a computer?
Speaker 1: And I was like, do you think I'm teaching dissection?
Speaker 1: Like do you think that that's what the science I'm
Speaker 1: doing is is the same thing as like what you
Speaker 1: see in a bioclass, where like students are learning where
Speaker 1: the organs are. And I think that there is this
Speaker 1: like huge disconnect sometimes between the doing of the science
Speaker 1: versus either the demonstrations that people are exposed to or
Speaker 1: the outcomes of the science, and so people will often
Speaker 1: talk about science as if it is the thing we
Speaker 1: know and not the way we got to that thought.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think that's really why I wrote
Speaker 2: the book. I mean, I think there's there's this tendency
Speaker 2: to think of science as like there's still, you know,
Speaker 2: prevalent in the popular imagination, this idea of the Eureka moment.
Speaker 2: We've got this genius in the lab who has this
Speaker 2: brilliant idea. They figured it out, And I think just
Speaker 2: at a broader level. You know, for most people, the
Speaker 2: way they encounter science, you know, a lot of it
Speaker 2: might be through reading the news, where they read a
Speaker 2: news story about the results of a study. And I
Speaker 2: wrote those news stories too, right, like, that's of course
Speaker 2: you want to report on the results. But I think
Speaker 2: they're just less likely to encounter those stories of all
Speaker 2: the work that went into those results and how those
Speaker 2: you know, how we figured these things out. And I
Speaker 2: think that plays a little bit into you know, trust
Speaker 2: in science, because I think if they saw how much
Speaker 2: agony went into getting result, they would maybe be like, oh, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe they do kind of know what they're talking about
Speaker 2: if they spend the punch.
Speaker 1: Time, right, and just like the sheer like the sheer
Speaker 1: quantity of people and brain power and you know, like
Speaker 1: hands and eyes and tools, and because very often when
Speaker 1: we hear about okay, there's like, oh, a new drug
Speaker 1: just made it to market that is like the best,
Speaker 1: you know option for somebody with pancreatic cancer, and and
Speaker 1: you know, it's like leaps and bounds above the last,
Speaker 1: you know, best thing that we had. And then it's
Speaker 1: like lead author on the study so and so has
Speaker 1: this to say, and and this drug company, you know,
Speaker 1: after however much R and D was able to put
Speaker 1: it to market. But I think there's this sort of
Speaker 1: takeaway of like, and it's it's not intentional, it's just
Speaker 1: you know, we can't hold so many things in our heads.
Speaker 1: But this takeaway of like, oh, they kind of threw
Speaker 1: money at a problem, and like I don't know, five
Speaker 1: or six people like worked really hard at it, and
Speaker 1: now look at this thing we have, and it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like dozens of labs contributing in their way,
Speaker 1: and like all these grad students saying I'm gonna take
Speaker 1: this tiny piece of this tiny problem, or this tiny
Speaker 1: piece of this huge problem, and I'm gonna answer this
Speaker 1: one question that is necessary for the massive downstream chain.
Speaker 1: I don't think we often give credit to how connected
Speaker 1: all science is to all other science.
Speaker 2: Mm hmmm, yeah, I mean I think that is. I
Speaker 2: think that is another thing I wanted to get across,
Speaker 2: is this idea of science as this huge collective enterprise, right,
Speaker 2: And that's partly why I wanted each chapter to follow
Speaker 2: you know, such different fields of science, this idea that
Speaker 2: you know, each researcher is contributing this tiny piece this
Speaker 2: tiny like you imagine that all of humans scientificnowledge is
Speaker 2: like this huge mosaic. They each got their own little tile, right,
Speaker 2: and then they're like polishing it and refining it, and
Speaker 2: they like added the mosaic. But you can, like from
Speaker 2: a distance, you'll you'll not even see it. It just kind
Speaker 2: of blurs into the whole picture. But that, you know,
Speaker 2: I wanted to have the reader to have both the
Speaker 2: sense of you know, that that vast scale, that bigger enterprise,
Speaker 2: and then the work on the ground that's happening at
Speaker 2: the human level of individual people that makes that possible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know, I think you mentioned before like
Speaker 1: trust in science. Obviously, this is something that is incredibly
Speaker 1: concerning and relevant right now because of the people who
Speaker 1: are in inordinate positions of power and influence, who who
Speaker 1: are actively you know, working to eroad trust in science.
Speaker 1: And I often think that even as maybe science reporters
Speaker 1: or scientists ourselves, like we don't often do the nuance
Speaker 1: of the conversation service when somebody says, well, I don't
Speaker 1: I don't trust that scientist, and it's like you shouldn't
Speaker 1: trust a single scientists. But that's different, that's different than
Speaker 1: trusting science. I mean, you should trust a single scientist,
Speaker 1: like to the extent that you feel comfortable doing so,
Speaker 1: but like good you're skeptical of that one person or
Speaker 1: that one person's findings or this one study. But when
Speaker 1: we talk about science, capital s science and how like,
Speaker 1: you know, the literature tells us when we say words
Speaker 1: like that, the senectic keys for sort of like the
Speaker 1: entire body of findings based on you know, sometimes dozens, hundreds,
Speaker 1: or even thousands of individuals across multiple labs. You don't
Speaker 1: have to trust one person anymore because there's so much
Speaker 1: consensus amongst many people. And I think we sometimes speak
Speaker 1: about science in senectic key so that it's hard for
Speaker 1: the individual citizen to know the difference between what one
Speaker 1: scientist said and what the scientific body is saying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that makes me think of a head
Speaker 2: of conversation with a researcher Joanna Huckster, who studies public
Speaker 2: understanding of science and especially like ideologically divisive science, And
Speaker 2: I think they had done a study just kind of
Speaker 2: trying to assess how much people really knew about, you know,
Speaker 2: sort of how science works at like a system level,
Speaker 2: Like do they know that there's peer review, right, like
Speaker 2: that that exists. Do they know how peer review works?
Speaker 2: Like do they understand the sort of checks and balances
Speaker 2: that are in place in science? And their conclusion was
Speaker 2: that a lot of people don't like they don't that's
Speaker 2: not something like if you think about the way we're
Speaker 2: taught science in school, we learn the scientific method, you know, question, hypothsis,
Speaker 2: you know, experiment, results, analysis, but we don't really learn
Speaker 2: about the whole sort of apparatus and structure around science,
Speaker 2: like the social structure around it. The fact that all
Speaker 2: these scientists are working as checks and balance is against
Speaker 2: each other. And that's so apparent in like the astronomy chapter,
Speaker 2: because part of the reason that it's so hard is
Speaker 2: that every time someone puts out a paper saying, hey,
Speaker 2: I think I have some pretty good evidence for an exomoon,
Speaker 2: someone else will come along and say like, nah, I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't think so yeah, And so as a realt
Speaker 2: the result there really isn't like one. There still is
Speaker 2: no consensus that yes, we have definitely found one.
Speaker 1: Which is so fascinating because it's kind of like, I
Speaker 1: think I'm taking it for granted at this point that
Speaker 1: we found a ton of them. But yeah, okay, but
Speaker 1: it's true. Sometimes there are these fundamental questions that we
Speaker 1: sort of like as a whole kind of assume are
Speaker 1: answered or are mostly answered, but really they rely. Like
Speaker 1: I think you see it a lot with like anthropology
Speaker 1: for an example, where it's like, ah, yeah, we think
Speaker 1: we have these insights about like an ancient people's but
Speaker 1: really we had like three teeth and.
Speaker 2: We're making a lot.
Speaker 1: You know, they're doing a lot of heavy lifting with
Speaker 1: these assumptions, but it's the best we have so far,
Speaker 1: and most of the experts agree that, you know, based
Speaker 1: on what we know, this is the most likely conclusion.
Speaker 1: Because that's another big thing that I think is hard
Speaker 1: for even scientists to grapple with all the time, is that,
Speaker 1: you know, most of the claims that we make in
Speaker 1: science are probabilistic claims. They're not absolute, they can't be
Speaker 1: absolute by definition. They're like, based on the evidence we
Speaker 1: have available, this is the most likely you know, outcome,
Speaker 1: and that will iterate the more we learn.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think you know your example, what anthropology.
Speaker 2: I think it's it's true that that it becomes just
Speaker 2: even hazier and even more difficult when you're trying to
Speaker 2: look into the past, right, So, in the like in
Speaker 2: the paleontology chapter, the researchers, the main researcher is trying
Speaker 2: to figure out when warm bloodedness arose, like during our
Speaker 2: evolutionary history, which is a really key trait for for
Speaker 2: mammals and for humans. And you know, she comes up
Speaker 2: with her own tentative contribution to that debate, and then
Speaker 2: you know, shortly after she publishes, someone else, you know,
Speaker 2: publishes something else that says, well, no, it actually probably
Speaker 2: happened like X billion years, no singer, or later or
Speaker 2: whatever than she had proposed, And so I think, yeah,
Speaker 2: when you're looking into the past, it just becomes even
Speaker 2: more I don't know, provisional, I guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I and each individual sort of field has
Speaker 1: its own I guess, error bars, and its own parameters
Speaker 1: of like what's acceptable evidence, what's not acceptable evidence? And
Speaker 1: you know, I see this all the time as a
Speaker 1: psychologist who also worked in like laboratory neuroscience, where often
Speaker 1: you're trying to answer the same questions. But it's just
Speaker 1: really a lot easier to clone a mouse and do
Speaker 1: one thing to one clone and something different to the
Speaker 1: other clone. And say, Okay, how did it affect this
Speaker 1: animal that is genetically the exact same as this other one,
Speaker 1: And you just can't do that with people, and you're
Speaker 1: just you know, the statistics have to get a lot
Speaker 1: more creative because the ethics are different, and you know,
Speaker 1: we're observing things that are sort of more naturalistic and
Speaker 1: trying to make critiques or assumptions just based on behavior.
Speaker 1: And every single field of science has has its own parameters.
Speaker 1: And now we're living in a world and I'm wondering
Speaker 1: how much this got messy in your work for this book.
Speaker 1: But we're living in a world where we're trying not
Speaker 1: to be as siloed as we used to be, and
Speaker 1: many sciences are intentionally moving toward multidisciplinary thought. You know.
Speaker 1: I mean you said it yourself. You were doing like
Speaker 1: computer science in a genetics lab. Mm hmm, right right,
Speaker 1: I mean that must be pretty messy. Like as you're
Speaker 1: going through and you're saying, Okay, here's a physics story.
Speaker 2: We're going to talk about physics.
Speaker 1: And now here's a you know, ecology store, and we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about ecology. Oh, but there's like an
Speaker 1: engineer on the team, and there's Oh okay, so this
Speaker 1: is you know, and it's situated in this one department
Speaker 1: at this one university that seems kind of out of
Speaker 1: left field. But science is too complicated nowadays to stay
Speaker 1: in one's lane, Like we just can't do science without collaborating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean one I feel like one of the
Speaker 2: most interesting collaborations was like in the climate change chapter,
Speaker 2: there were engineers, coastal engineers who were working with architects
Speaker 2: and they were trying to devise these weird they call
Speaker 2: them Emerald Tutu's. They're like these floating mats with you know,
Speaker 2: plant matter growing from the top and the bottom, and
Speaker 2: the ideas you could you know, set them floating in
Speaker 2: a harbor and they could help dampen the wave energy
Speaker 2: when when a storm comes in or when waves come in.
Speaker 2: And so, I mean that was interesting because the idea
Speaker 2: actually came from the architect right like he wanted to.
Speaker 2: He was thinking about it from sort of an urban
Speaker 2: urban systems you write, like how do we protect cities
Speaker 2: and how can we create something that's esthetically pleasing and
Speaker 2: also you know, easy to build and you know, feasible,
Speaker 2: and you could put it in the Boston harbor and
Speaker 2: so he ended up working with these engineers to you know,
Speaker 2: work out the details of this, but that yeah, they
Speaker 2: really needed to work across disciplines to make that happen.
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 1: That's fascinating. So I've got to ask one question that
Speaker 1: has been kind of on my mind since the beginning.
Speaker 1: You know, you're somebody who has worked in labs, You're
Speaker 1: somebody who has had quite a lot of exposure to science.
Speaker 1: But then, of course you took on a much larger endeavor,
Speaker 1: a much larger project, in preparing to write this book,
Speaker 1: and in of course writing this book, I'm curious, you know,
Speaker 1: as somebody who's pretty well versed in the sciences, I mean,
Speaker 1: working as a science reporter, a science writer, as you
Speaker 1: made lost in curiosity, did you discover anything along the
Speaker 1: way that like really was new to you, Like, oh
Speaker 1: now I get it, or like this insight into the
Speaker 1: scientific process I didn't really like it wasn't, as I
Speaker 1: guess deep until you set out to write this book.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know if there was one big
Speaker 2: insight in particular, but I'm remembering there's like there were
Speaker 2: a couple of moments where yeah, I kind of shifted
Speaker 2: my perspective, so like one that I'm thinking of is
Speaker 2: in the molecular biology chapter I had followed. This is
Speaker 2: during the COVID nineteen pandemic. So I'm stuck at home
Speaker 2: and I'm just like zooming and calling all these scientists
Speaker 2: around the world who are sequencing SARS kobe two samples
Speaker 2: to try to better understand how the virus is spreading,
Speaker 2: either through their community or through their country or between countries.
Speaker 2: And I remember telling, you know, friends about this writer
Speaker 2: friends about what I was finding, and you know, people
Speaker 2: would ask things like, oh, so when they found that,
Speaker 2: then that lead to some change in policy, right, Like
Speaker 2: did that because that's you're thinking, that's the reason they're
Speaker 2: doing this, right, that they're trying to stem the tide
Speaker 2: of this of this pandemic somehow. And so I remember
Speaker 2: reaching out again to one of the scientists. This is
Speaker 2: a biologist in Wisconsin who was sequencing samples, and he
Speaker 2: had found links between I guess cases that started on
Speaker 2: the college campuses, and then it seemed like the same
Speaker 2: strains of the virus ended up in nursing homes nearby,
Speaker 2: and several of those nursing home residents died from COVID
Speaker 2: and so he was able to, you know, provide evidence
Speaker 2: for that just based on the you know, the ged
Speaker 2: genetic composition of the virus. And so I asked him
Speaker 2: if any policy had changed as a result, because prior
Speaker 2: to this, like students were having parties, right like, there
Speaker 2: was you know, there was a lot of stuff happening
Speaker 2: on campus that was sort of contributing to the spread
Speaker 2: to the community. And he said, no, I don't think
Speaker 2: any thing changed after the study. I mean, it wasn't
Speaker 2: it wasn't that the universe. He wasn't doing anything. Like.
Speaker 2: Part of what happened was that by the time his
Speaker 2: study was complete, the damage was already done, right, so
Speaker 2: and the university had already started responding, you know, trying
Speaker 2: to you know, put practice in place to stop infections.
Speaker 2: And so, I, I guess from my perspective, I found
Speaker 2: that kind of frustrating her because I was thinking, well,
Speaker 2: isn't this like don't we want don't we want this
Speaker 2: clear line from science to policy, right, Like, don't we
Speaker 2: isn't that what we're aiming for? But he really had
Speaker 2: a longer game in mind. He was you know, he said,
Speaker 2: this is going to be useful for the next pandemic, Like,
Speaker 2: if there's another pandemic, we can use this knowledge to
Speaker 2: help us respond to that, and like these technical procedures
Speaker 2: that we now have in place to sequence quickly and
Speaker 2: so on, like that's going to be helpful as well.
Speaker 2: So he was much more philosophical about it, And yeah,
Speaker 2: I think they. I think he just saw it in
Speaker 2: a much more big picture way than I did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I have a feeling that the grind does
Speaker 1: that to you that many young scientists probably do start out.
Speaker 1: And I think it also depends on the field. It
Speaker 1: depends on how translational the work that you're doing actually
Speaker 1: is or versus how basic it is. But like that
Speaker 1: early on in your career, there probably is this, you know, idealism,
Speaker 1: this sort of commitment to I'm gonna answer these questions
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna affect a lot of change. And ultimately
Speaker 1: I think it's all you know, all roads lead to
Speaker 1: improvement and progress and however you want to define it.
Speaker 1: But probably the longer you work as a scientist, the
Speaker 1: more you recognize that like structures are structures and systems
Speaker 1: are systems, and we are slowly but surely changing the
Speaker 1: shape of our society, but no one kind of published
Speaker 1: study is going to finally make the politicians understand that,
Speaker 1: you know, they should put more funding in this one area,
Speaker 1: or those inflection point stories. I think that most of
Speaker 1: us grow up reading. I mean, it kind of takes
Speaker 1: us back to the beginning of our conversation, the lone genius,
Speaker 1: the Eureka moment, like it's it's largely a myth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think it's funny how often, like the
Speaker 2: term Nobel Prize comes up when like regular people talk
Speaker 2: about scientists. I don't I don't know. I feel like
Speaker 2: there's just this impression that, oh, or they're all trying
Speaker 2: to get a Nobel Prize or something. And I'm like, no, like,
Speaker 2: hardly anyone's gonna exactly, and they're gonna.
Speaker 1: Get it when they're like ninety. Anyway, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: like decades after. It's gonna be about a thing that's
Speaker 1: like hardly even relevant anymore. I mean, it is still
Speaker 1: really relevant, but like it's the foundational thing and the
Speaker 1: reason we could later do all these other cool things.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think there's there's some it
Speaker 2: does seem like scientists, for most of them, there isn't
Speaker 2: going to be some huge burst of glory at the end.
Speaker 2: I mean, of course, within their field they might be appreciated,
Speaker 2: but you know, outside that they no one might even
Speaker 2: know what they've ever done in their lifetime. But that
Speaker 2: seems to be enough for them. There's a lot of
Speaker 2: I mean, I think the other lesson that I took
Speaker 2: away is that I just thought of sciences, it's this
Speaker 2: act of humility because you're accepting that you're playing such
Speaker 2: a tiny role in this bigger enterprise. And it's also
Speaker 2: an act of hope that all of those people's work,
Speaker 2: all of the scientists work put together collectively will make
Speaker 2: a difference in the end.
Speaker 1: And I mean it really does speak to like even
Speaker 1: just the title of your book, Lost in Curiosity, I
Speaker 1: don't think that most people, if they didn't have just
Speaker 1: a fundamental hunger, a fundamental interest and like awe when
Speaker 1: it comes to understanding the natural world, most people would
Speaker 1: not The risk benefit analysis is not always in the
Speaker 1: fev of a scientist, right Like it can be a
Speaker 1: very thankless job. It can be incredibly difficult to constantly
Speaker 1: be trying to get enough funding to keep your lab afloat,
Speaker 1: to constantly fight for your job. It's very competitive sometimes
Speaker 1: to get into let's say a postdoc. Like sometimes you
Speaker 1: are literally moving across the country. You're leaving everything that
Speaker 1: you know and love, or asking them to come with
Speaker 1: you to get a position where you're underpaid, where you're overworked.
Speaker 1: And you know, if these individual scientists did not absolutely
Speaker 1: love the pursuit of knowledge and we're not fundamentally curious
Speaker 1: about answering these questions, I just can't imagine most people
Speaker 1: would be doing science. It just like it doesn't pay enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that is that's one part of the
Speaker 2: of science that I maybe didn't get into as much
Speaker 2: in the book. But I think the public also doesn't
Speaker 2: really realize. It's just the personal sacrifices that are made,
Speaker 2: like you said, like moving away from the community that
Speaker 2: you maybe are familiar with, where all your friends are
Speaker 2: starting all over again every few years. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: there's there's a lot going on behind the scenes, and
Speaker 2: a lot of sacrifices behind the scenes that allow us
Speaker 2: to get those scientific results that we then see reported
Speaker 2: in the news.
Speaker 1: Absolutely and pretty much everything we know to be true.
Speaker 1: It's really because so many people stayed up late at night,
Speaker 1: so many people, you know, really dedicated themselves and pushed past,
Speaker 1: you know, some boundary, some threshold, some comfort level in
Speaker 1: order to be able to answer the tiniest little piece
Speaker 1: of that, you know, puzzle that equation, that tapestry, Like
Speaker 1: you mentioned that mosaic, right, each individual story in and
Speaker 1: of itself is I think it's not just unique and
Speaker 1: valuable and necessary, but it's it's interesting in and of itself.
Speaker 1: But then once you kind of position each story within
Speaker 1: the larger milieu, you start to see the forest for
Speaker 1: the trees and understand that it literally takes all of
Speaker 1: these people, all of these individual people at whatever level
Speaker 1: they're working right undergrads in a genetics lab, you know,
Speaker 1: tenured professors who are at that sort of nobel you
Speaker 1: know level, and literally every single person in between just
Speaker 1: staying curious and staying the course and beating their head
Speaker 1: against the wall.
Speaker 2: And their experiments.
Speaker 3: Don't work out to be able for all of us
Speaker 3: today to have the comforts that we have to have
Speaker 3: the medicines and the technologies and just the understanding of
Speaker 3: where we came from and where we're going.
Speaker 1: And I'm just like endlessly grateful for anybody who chooses
Speaker 1: to dedicate their life to science. I think it's such
Speaker 1: a as you mentioned, it's a humble pursuit. It's also
Speaker 1: very very noble pursuit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think gratitude is another emotion that
Speaker 2: I came away with after reporting the book. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, I read the news headlines about sea level rise,
Speaker 2: like glaciers melting, whatever, and like, oh, this study found this.
Speaker 2: And then you know, when you actually go to when
Speaker 2: you actually see what it takes to gather that data
Speaker 2: from a place like Greenland, and how much sacrifice and
Speaker 2: struggle goes into that, you realize, Wow, there's I mean,
Speaker 2: just to get this information, for us to bring this
Speaker 2: information and home does as a species, you know, it's
Speaker 2: it is a cause for tremendous gratitude.
Speaker 1: Absolutely well, gosh, I feel like I could talk to
Speaker 1: you about this all day, but I also don't don't
Speaker 1: want to keep you or the listeners any longer. Everybody
Speaker 1: the book is Lost in Curiosity. Field Notes from Scientists'
Speaker 1: Adventures into the Unknown by ROBERTA.
Speaker 2: Quack.
Speaker 1: Roberta, thank you so much for being here with us today.
Speaker 2: This was wonderful, so much fun. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Absolutely and everybody listening. Thank you for coming back week
Speaker 1: after week. I'm really looking forward to the next time
Speaker 1: we all get together to talk. Meredy