Building a Career in Science Communication, Listening as a Skill, and Working with Communities with Faith Kearns

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! 

On today’s episode, we talk with Faith Kearns, scientist and science communication practitioner about Building a Career in Science Communication, Listening as a Skill, and Working with Communities.  Read her full bio below.

Help us continue to create great content! If you’d like to sponsor a future episode hit the support podcast button or visit www.environmentalprofessionalsradio.com/sponsor-form 

Showtimes: 
2:03 - Skills of an Event Planning 
9:29 - Interview with Faith Kearns Starts
19:08 - Faith's day to day
29:39 - Faiths Book - Scientific Communication 
37:45 - Field Notes with Faith!

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This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professions (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.

Connect with Faith Kearns at https://www.faithkearns.com/bio

Guest Bio: 
Faith Kearns is a scientist-communicator who focuses on water, wildfire, climate, and disasters in the western US. She is the author of the book Getting to the Heart of Science Communication and co-host of the podcast Water Talk. She is currently the Director of Research Communication for the Arizona Water Innovation Initiative in the Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University.

Music Credits
Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa
Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to EPR with your favorite environmental nerds, Nick and Laura. On today's episode, Nick and I talk about event planning. We interview Faith Kearns about building a career in science communication, listening as a skill, and working with communities. And finally, horseshoe crabs are living fossils that have been on Earth for around 450 million years, just a little short period of time there, and they have uniquely blue blood used their tails to flip themselves over, which they're not very good at, and are more closely related to spiders than crabs. 

So what about that. I thought that was my line. No, I did. I stepped right on it. I was like, isn't that cool, Laura? You're like, that's what I'm supposed to say. Sorry. By the way, Nick saw a horseshoe crab the other day, and now this is like his new favorite thing, so that's why this is our and finally, there you go. I mean. 

NAEP just completed a pop-up webinar titled Quick Reactions to the Supreme Court's rulings and the seven County infrastructure case in front of the Supreme Court. Uh, if you missed it live, you can listen to it for free. If you are an NAEP member. There are also many trainings that we are doing, many additional webinars we're doing this year, so please do check out the webinar page. It's gonna be updated throughout the year as we do. We have another NEPA and more Essentials and advanced networking workshop. So please do check those out at www.NAEP.org.

Let's get to our segment. 

Hey Laura. Hello, Nick. It's good to see you again. Uh. Yeah, it really feels like it. Um, but you've been quite busy, I guess we both have in one way or another, but we were just talking about our segment for today, and I know you've been doing a, you did a film festival in Atlanta, you just did, and I want to hear more about it a little bit, and I want to put it in context of what we do because a lot of what your logistics of planning something like that. Like I wanna know how you got the skills to do that and how easily transferable some of what we do as project managers in the environmental space actually translates to lots of other things. So have the floor and let me know. Yeah, well, thank you for asking. The film festival is a large event. It's called the Art of Moviemaking Film Festival, and it's different than other film festivals as we are shining the spotlight behind the scenes on the creatives, so we have like best prop, best sound engineering, best set design, which just Oddly, don't exist anywhere else. Um, the Oscars just picked up stunt performance, which we have been doing now for 2 years, um, but I don't think they're actually enacting that for several years still. It's just something that they're like, oh, we're going to do this. So it's been really awesome to see all the people who also support this mission. But so much work. So we have our annual award in in New York City. We did last June this year we're pushing it to October, but we just did an event in October. I mean, we, my brain is frazzled from all of this. We just an event last weekend in Atlanta and it was. It was a 3 day event with networking. Saturday was all day screenings and Sunday was a summit with vendors and panels and presentations and speakers. The venue was amazing. It was in this brewery called Monday Night Garage. And it was huge and had all the AV that we needed and the amazing thing was, you know, it was our first year there. And we've been planning for it really hard, and marketing is always the hardest part, but people keep asking me like, what's your favorite part about it? or what was your favorite thing? And I'm just like, the entire total orchestration of it. Right. 

And we do some of this with NAEP every year, of course, our annual conference too. So it's always like, I thought it'd be fun to talk about like planning something like this because it's really hard and like, you know, we are planners, like by nature, we have to help. So like, so you find a venue, right? That seems to be the hardest thing. But then you're, like you said, marketing is really the hardest thing. So how do you reach out to people? How do you plan this? How do you make sure that it goes well when it's going? Yeah, well, this is where all the things that I've learned, having been a project manager and working, you know, actually a certified PMP. Knowing the Pemblock and knowing how to set deadlines, how to communicate, how to prioritize and know your lead and lag times, that stuff is invaluable, whether you're working on a wetlands project or if you are planning a major event. I get asked that a lot during coaching is like, you know, what other skills should I learn? You know, I'm policy, whatever, but project management because it doesn't matter what you're doing, everything has deadline, everything has a budget, everything has communication needs. And The ability to like orchestrate these things and see what needs to happen before the next thing because I'll be doing something and someone will say, oh, you need to do this.

Hold on, we don't have a venue yet. So it's like, first pick a date and secure the venue, then find people to fill it. Then you mark. But some people will start marketing and start promoting and doing stuff before they actually have anything. And then, and then how am I going to get people to sign up for something they don't know what it is? So there are clear stages and milestones that you have to meet, and I have learned all of that from working on wetlands projects and cleanups and restorations that require a deadline and a permit deadline, and you have to know what you're going to do first before you do the next thing and using, I'm not, I didn't use a Gantt chart to plan this, but in the past you have it kind of floating around in your brain. Oh gosh, can't charts, that is, that is taking me back. That's oh it's great. I know, I know they're wonderful, wonderful things. It's actually like when it works, a Gantt chart is the greatest thing that's ever been invented, and when it doesn't work, it's maddening. Where's the error? How do I fix this? But I think it does speak to a lot of what we do as project managers, like you said, like people sometimes, even when you're trying to become a project manager, what are the skills I need to do this? And I've had people be like, oh, I can be a project manager in like a year, and I I only need one year of experience to be a project manager, and you're like, well, not really. I mean, there's a lot of nuance that comes into these things and if you Do an event. If you plan events, you understand that, but if you're winging it for the first time, there's just gonna be stuff you don't know because you haven't done it before. 

You're going to have panelists that show up and don't know what they're supposed to do. You're going to have vendors who show up and don't know where to go. You have guests who come and they don't know, didn't have a ticket or didn't know what. they're supposed to be at. You're gonna have so many people coming to you with, what do I do? Where do I go? And oops, I went to the wrong place. And when you see this beautifully enacted and everyone is where they're supposed to be, everyone shows up, they're on time, the event starts and ends on time, people are having a great time. You have all the burden of all the stuff going on in the background, but your goal is for the people to show up, enjoy themselves. So like if there's a wetland project or restoration. You know, people do their work, the volunteers show up, the work gets done, and then everybody, nobody sees the pain and suffering that went on behind the scenes to make sure that construction was there at the right day and that they had the right plans and the permits were there. Oh gosh, yeah, and yeah, it's like, um, you know, I could say even within AP it's exactly the same, like the conference itself, there's always so much going on in the background, so much. And you know, some of it's perfectly reasonable. Sometimes, you know, people get stuck and they can't make it, and you have to like scramble for updating your presentation in the last minute. There's all kinds of stuff that goes into it. So it's really, I think the joy of this show is that we get to highlight a lot of different skills and jobs and Industries, but they all kind of have transferable skills to other things too. Well, a shout out too because a lot of it too is finding good people to help and team members to take feedback and are OK with you shoving the vision down their throat. Yes, that's a great idea, thanks, but that's not where we're going. And but one of the persons that I met Leon planning this event is Kenyatta. He is Shri. We had Shri Ratna on recently, and that's her husband. That's. So, so again, you think of like, oh, you're doing art and film festival, that doesn't have anything to do with environmental, but it does, you know, crosses over and, you know, our worlds are now connected through him because he's going to continue to help being a partner on these locations, but she's in film and she's doing sustainability and storytelling is a big part of it.

 So you also don't know where you're. Little bubbles and weird worlds collide when you're doing things like this. That's so true. And like there's a lot of, it's funny cause like film in general, there's a lot of people that do a lot of different things. It's a very big industry. Every plant you see has someone taking care of the plants. Every animal you see has someone taking care of the animals. There's a lot of work that goes into those kinds of things. So it's really cool that we kind of get to bring all that together. So, I mean, that's, that's probably enough for today's segment, but I thought that was a really fun thing and, um, I'm glad we get to talk about it. Yeah, awesome. Thanks for asking again. Yeah, yeah, let's get to our interview. 

Welcome back to EPR. Today we have Faith Kearns with us. Faith is the director of research communications at Arizona Water Innovation Initiative at Arizona State, where she focuses on water, wildfire, and climates with an emphasis on the emotional side of public facing science. Sounds fascinating. So we're glad to have you here, Faith. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to have a conversation with y'all. Yeah, so let's start off with, you do have a book and we'll get to that, but start off by telling us how you got into science communication. Yeah, so I started doing science communication before it was called science communication. There wasn't really a career path at all. Um, I am in my 50s at this point. And so I started doing this work in the 90s. Basically, I got a really great position as a work study student in the athletics department of my university and undergrad and I ended up just kind of Working in marketing and communications. And I thought it was super fun. And I still think it's super fun. And at the same time, I was an environmental science major. And, you know, people are always just like, What are you doing? You know, like, why, why, why aren't you working as a lab assistant, you know, or why aren't you a marketing major? Kind of depending who I was with at any given point in time. And then I got really lucky because a professor just sort of handed me this, you know, print out of an email for an internship with the Ecological Society of America, which I didn't know what that was. I, you know, it was just all a mystery to me. And, you know, it was sort of like this intro to a world that I didn't know existed. So I ended up being a public affairs intern with the Ecological Society in DC starting in 1996, actually. And we didn't use the word science communication at that time. And so that brought together all of my interests. I was basically able to take all the skills I just sort of learned by doing in communications and marketing and use them in a science context. And then it sort of became more clear, like, oh, there's, you know, there is sort of a path here. And then a couple of years later, I would say around 2000 was maybe when we started using the term science communication. 

So, you know, I think when people think about Science communication. It's both something that's been around forever, right? As long as we've been communicating science. I've been doing science, people have been communicating science. But I think as a formalized field, it's something that really has only been in existence. And it's still a pretty contested field in a lot of ways. Like, not everybody knows what we're talking about when we're talking to each other. People with so many different backgrounds come into the field, and there's just all sorts of Of confusion and certainly the moment we're in right now in terms of the value of science communication and all of those things is back in pretty deep contestation again. So that's the brief overview of the last sort of. Well, let's talk about that for a minute. So, communication, what does that involve? Is it social media? Is it blog articles? Is it defining whether climate change or change in climate are the same or different things? Like what is it all of these things? Yeah, I think that's the issue, right? It's both the beauty and the challenge of the field is that it is pretty inclusive. And so you can be talking in a conversation about science communication and one person's context will be about doing live shows, for example, you know, and then somebody else's will be about informal science and like in a museum setting. And then somebody else is talking about sort of social media influencing, which certainly has become a big part of, particularly individuals, science communication efforts, but also institutional ones. And so, you know, it really is this vast variety of people coming together, and it can mean any one of a number of things. For me personally, a lot of what I do is writing social media. Yeah, I mean, those are my two primary sort of tools that I use, although I also do a ton of community engagement work. And so that's kind of the book I wrote was really trying to tie together kind of this science communication that a lot of times was very top down, sort of one-way communication. 

You know, when, when I was sort of up, so to speak, in this field, there was a Huge emphasis on just learning how to message and how to frame and sort of how to perform scientific authority. And, you know, what became very clear to me over my career was my ability to perform scientific authority is different than a lot of the folks who are sort of promoting that, right? So you can imagine there are many. People who look the part of a scientist, I don't particularly, you know, and so I think, you know, I started to really question a lot of the main sort of tenants of the field because it just felt like, this isn't how I work. It doesn't make sense to me. It's not even available to me in many ways as a pathway, but I'm doing this work. So how do you bridge that? Like, I'm a full time science communicator, that's what I do. But nobody's talking about the way that I work and so I kind of needed to do that myself. And of course, in the process found many other people working in very interesting ways. Right, right. So speaking of the work, you just, you were at the University of California and then moved to Arizona State, and now you're 100% focused on science communication. So how has that changed for you? Yeah, that's an interesting question. Again, because of the, the way the field works, it's really hard. Like if you go search LinkedIn or whatever for a science communication job, it's really hard to find that term at all. And if you do the jobs. Might not be anything like what you're thinking they are. And so I think again, because of the newness of the field, there's really been a need to basically create your own job. And so that's basically what I've done my whole career, either by getting a job that allowed me sort of time and space to carve out. Time to do science communication to prove that it was worth doing.

 Or in the case of the ASU job, it was really me just going, I've actually never had the opportunity to just do science communication full time. I've always had to do project management or, you know, things, and then sort of slowly be like, oh, and I can write all this stuff and it gets all this attention and everybody likes that, you know, but it, it's not something I was hired full time to do until I went to ASU. And so that was a really interesting change for me because I did spend all of My career, except for a couple stints in DC in the UC system, and getting used to a new state system is challenging. I'm originally, I was born and raised in Arizona, so it's, it's a homecoming. Um, but it's also a really different institution. But I was really excited because I think they basically saw ASU has been bringing in tremendous amounts of research dollars, and they've just really seen the limitations of their current sort of marketing and communications. I shouldn't say the limitations of the. But just, you know, the setup of most universities, coms offices as former journalists, science writers, etc. And I'm sort of trying to come in with this different model that, you know, Daniel Swain, for example, calls being a scientist communicator, where you're both subject matter expert and sort of doing this communication work. And ASU really went like, Oh, this is really interesting. They actually created a new career path in hopes of hiring other people to do similar roles in different topic areas because when it comes to communicating some of this research, you really actually do need specialists who can kind of read these papers and explain them without needing so much to rely on faculty interpretation and things like that, right? So I work really closely with the rest of the marketing and communication staff, and it's, it's still really hard to try to figure out like, how is science communication different, but for me in particular, being able to bring my own subject matter expertise to bear is what I think really helps. 

Not to say that's the only a path for a science communicator at all, but it, it's mine. Yeah, that's great. And, and you're right, I think, you know, prior to 2000s, and even still some places, the research is done, the research is put in peer reviews and it's sent to other people who already know the language, who know what they're reading or expecting it, want to read it, but who's explaining this to people who want to know what's happening in the world and. Yeah, and the other thing I would say too is, you know, even with sometimes within the sciences, we can get really like, we all understand each other. Like, I'm a scientist or a scientist, we all get science in it and, you know, we all, I think, also recognize the specialization these days is. Such that we're, we're all basically the audience for science communication because, like, just think COVID, right? I'm trained as an ecologist. I'm certainly not an epidemiologist. And so that was made repeatedly clear to me, right? So I think, I think that's a helpful point in just thinking through like. What makes good science communication and good science communicator, because you're being constantly an audience for this material too, right? So, absolutely. We're always like, OK, we need to, and I like to play our dumb on the show if Nick is hot into a conversation with somebody about Nipah things that are happening in DC, I'm like, excuse me, what are you guys talking about? Yeah, yeah, super useful. But it's like, it's like funny cause it's like thinking about it like in, you know, if, if you say like, oh look at that prosyano tour over there, everyone's gonna be like, what are you talking about? It's a raccoon, right? And it's the same thing, but that's a perfect example. I love that example of like, no one would call it its scientific name because everyone knows it's a raccoon, so please don't do this you're talking about it. Yeah, yeah, close your trash can so the raccoons don't get in, right? 

Totally, totally. So your day to day, are you talking to the people doing the work and who are you then speaking to relay the information? Good question. So, you know, in my current job, I work for the Arizona Water Innovation Initiative, which is a very large $40 million state funded project, and I work closely with the project leads who are mostly faculty members, and there's about 5 of them, but there's overall about 100 people involved with the project. And sort of my day to day is, I would say within a week, I always do an interview for a piece that I'm writing, so I, I try to put out a piece a week and so it, you know, it involves interviewing people and then writing about what they're doing. And we also have a podcast, so a couple of colleagues and I host a podcast called Water Talk, and we, we do ours only, you know, 34 months out of the year, we, we put out 12 episodes in sort of a season, so sometimes I'm also interviewing people for the blog. That's a pretty intense time. At the same time, I also actually do participate in some of our work. So for example, we're doing a series of rural groundwater resilience workshops in Arizona, and I both write about those, but I'm also on the organizing committee and spend a lot of time just with the folks that we're working with that live locally on whatever issue, you know, what in whatever place we're working. And so this for me is the big The difference of how I work is I'm just really integrated into the actual projects themselves too. Not all of them. Um, I work with a couple of engineering faculty who do really interesting sort of like, much more technology, you know, desal filters. 

And I love learning about it, but I'm not an engineer. what's not work that I participate in. So it's a real mix of things. I'm also kind of on the steering committee or executive committee for our projects, so involved in leadership decisions and Things like that, I, you know, I'm responsible for our newsletter, I all sorts of stuff, all the usual calm stuff you could picture. Yeah, so you're kind of like a specialized generalist. Yeah, in a lot of ways. I mean, I also feel in this particular job, like I'm a band photographer. Yeah, I don't know how else to describe it, but I feel like I'm following everybody around and just kind of like walking, taking photos and writing about everything that they're doing. But it's really satisfying to be back in my home state, working, you know, Arizona is what inspired me to work on water in the first place. And so just being here and kind of feeling like, you know, this is my, my backyard and I care about these issues and I really want to see our state survive and thrive and be sustainable. And so it really, there's a deep care kind of and place based orientation toward the work too. Yeah, I think it's one of the more amazing things about the country being as large as it is, right? Like I think. East Coast, we talk about water, it's almost like an afterthought completely, right? I don't worry about, you know, we don't worry about showers and how long they are or watering lawns and you know, we, I remember talking to somebody who moved to San Diego and they're like, I came there from North Carolina and I was like, oh, I guess we have to kind of watch our, our regulations on water. And then within a month, got a $500 fine for watering the yard too much. He's like, oh, no, no, no, it's serious about it. It's not a joke. Oh yeah, I know, yeah, for sure. I mean, California is where I cut my teeth working on water issues and they are like, it's just extremely political and obviously it is in Arizona too. 

And it's not to say wetter places have their own whole sets of issues, right? It tends to be much more on the sort of contamination or sewer overflow or all, you know, basically we're in this world where you mostly have too much water or too little, and the problems are slightly different, but they still exist. But I do think that background of like water quantity and just general scarcity around using it is very, very different, particularly in the southwestern US for sure. 100%, and uh you know, you kind of alluded to your book already, was getting to the heart of science communication. So what inspired you to write it and what is it about? Yeah. So the book is, is basically about this idea that we are working, you know, I, I specialize in environment issues. I, I sort of degrees are in environmental science, work on water, wildfire, climate change, and these are all to me, incredibly emotional issues, particularly when you work at a local community level where you're on a bodily level. like, accountable and responsible to people, right? And that was very different. I worked largely in the cooperative extension system in California and did a lot of very local work and just started to see again, the tools that I think people were predominantly talking about in the science communication space, made no sense for my context. Just none. I mean, the idea that you would You know, write up series of messages and just kind of repeatedly deliver those, um, is impossible in a sort of more relational conversation context, right? People see through that immediately. So it's not to say that like messaging isn't valuable, you know, you need to go on CNN and get your point across and, you know, I have used those tools for sure for that kind of thing. But on a day to day basis, what I was finding was like, what I really needed to be able to do was sit with people's emotions. I needed to be able to sit with conflict and actually kind of be comfortable in conflict oriented spaces because there's a lot of information and conflict. 

And if you're super duper conflict avoidant, you just, you miss a lot of things. And that is really a skill. Particularly, I think for science types to have to learn. For the most part, I think scientists are pretty conflict avoidant as an overall sort of just set of professionals, you know, very different than, say, lawyers or whatever. Most of us just don't want to be in arguments all day. And so just learning to flex kind of that muscle. And then because I work on wildfire and drought and things like that, I was also seeing The repeated effects of trauma in terms of the way that the science community could and was interacting around some of those issues. So I start the book and I tell this story a lot of basically being pretty close out of graduate school. I had gone and been a Triple AS fellow for a short period of time and came back to California, was working in this wildfire center. And, you know, we went up to this small community in northern. California to do what's called the fire safety demonstration day, trying to show people how houses burn in fires and what you might be able to do to stop it. And we were in this, you know, big warehouse at a fairgrounds, and there are probably 200. And I was sitting in the audience, actually watching one of my colleagues give a talk about this, and you could just feel the room. But there was just something very strange going on. And I don't know what in that particular day made me available to actually, you know, go like, what is this that is happening right now? And I had a couple people who were, you know, community members come up to me, one woman, and then this man who really was very visibly upset. And he basically Well, you know, I didn't understand at the time, but he was essentially saying that like the way that we were sort of so intellectually describing how you could keep your house from burning down during a fire was sort of triggering a set of traumas that he had because that community had just had a wildfire 34 months before we were there. This was 2006, probably 2007.

You didn't pay any attention to that. Which now makes you just go, what? Like, what, what were we thinking that we went into this place where they had just had this exact thing happen and we didn't even register it. We didn't take it into account. And that one particular event, I just basically then spent many years after that going, how could we have handled that better? And then that kind of thing kept emerging. It just kept emerging that I would watch scientists go into these small communities, give a talk, and then somebody would ask a pretty emotional question about The place they live and why are we cutting down these trees or why are we not cutting down these trees? And the scientists would get really overwhelmed by the emotion, you know, and just kind of, you see this mask like, I have too many emotions coming at me, you know, and it just started to be like, we, we have to be able to handle this better, you know, if you, if you're gonna work in this very sort of place-based local community kind of way, that, that kind of stand. Offish, intellectually distanced, science communication is not going to work in this setting. And so then I tried to figure out what would. And so a lot of the book is actually me having to learn from other fields, fields where the emotions are more present, where you, if they're really these practice-based fields like medicine, you know, where doctors really do. Ideally deal with emotions that people are having around say a cancer diagnosis or whatever. So I was learning a lot about how doctors do or don't learn that set of material cause many still don't, right? 

Um, I was learning about how lawyers do it too, how, you know, so that's really the book was me kind of just trying to figure out how we can be in the current moment we're in, which is very emotional, very volatile, very political, and still do our work with integrity and in a way that, that feels OK. And so, yeah, so the book was born from that and I finished it actually, and right as COVID was starting, I was actually on my last writing retreat to finish the last part of the book, right when we were getting news about COVID and sort of finished it during that time. And so I was able to integrate to just some of what we were seeing. around COVID, which I think really made more clear actually what I was trying to say, because a lot of times I think people were like, What is this woman talking about? If you hadn't had that kind of direct experience, people were just didn't get it. And then I think COVID actually made a lot of people go like, Oh, yeah, this is kind of pervasive and everywhere. And now, I mean, now what? You know, now we're really living in it so. For real, yeah, and well, it's, it's interesting because as I hear you talk about it, I think, you know, we talk a lot about science communication. How does the scientific community talk to the public or something like that, but it really sounds like your book is also really in a way for scientists to understand how they come across and way they can mitigate that. So do you feel that people that read the book come away with a better understanding of how to as scientists communicate with the public, or is it really also for People who are in the public wanting to understand scientific communication in general. Yeah, I mean, my audience for the book was definitely other sort of science communication practitioners, because I just, that's the group that I think needs this information. I ended up interviewing about 100 people for the book. So this isn't even just me kind of telling these stories. I tried to be really comprehensive about location and folks' identities and the issues that they're working on. It's just so people could really see themselves in the book. That being said, I also have Been invited to give many public talks and to talk with even just small groups like master gardeners or right after that, I also work on sort of water wildfire overlap issues. And so when the LA wildfire stuff happened around water, that was a, a big and interesting deal. And I ended up, for example, giving a talk to a set of watershed coordinators who are going to be out in the community talking to people about the water quality issues after the fires and really wanting to understand, like a, what a trauma and formed approach to kind of transmitting technical information might be. So I think there's a wide, a wide variety, you know, citizens who are interested in climate change, for example, will ask me to talk again, just about how, you know, because they find themselves in this sort of translational role too, right? 

They're, they're an interested citizen, but they are having to interact with sort of scientific information in order to talk to, to their peers or their whatever. So it's actually found a pretty, pretty broad audience. And I do think I think the book is a little, it's a deep book. It's kind of a hard, I'm sure a hard read for some people. And I've certainly seen, you know, I have seen people think that maybe it's a little too like, quote unquote woke or whatever we mean by any of that these days. But, you know, for me, again, like when you're working directly with people, you really have to try to understand the variety of actual people's experiences. And that just, it does. It takes a lot of emotional and attentional. Work. And so that's just a certain skill set. And, you know, the other thing I try to stress is not everybody needs to work this way, right? I think it can, you know, people will be like, Oh, I just, you know, I don't, that's what science communication is. And it's like, no, all I was trying to do is say, there's this other, other piece. And if, if that's a turn off to you, that doesn't mean you can't do science communication. But for those of us who are really struggling to do this very deeply engaged science communication work on very contentious issues. There wasn't, there just wasn't any advice on that, you know, and so that's what I was really trying to provide. Yeah, it's very cool. It really is. It's really neat to see, and I think we're in a place to where, like you say, there's a lot of emotion everywhere. I feel like there's emotion so, so many different places we're not even sure how to handle just that on a day to day basis, and then you add something complicated on top of it, and now we're in a place where it's like I I can't even hear you because so much going on, really, really neat. Yeah, it's a tough time because the background, that's what I was trying to say about trauma too. There's just so much background trauma. You know, people have been through so many, you know, just even COVID itself as a trauma that we all experienced, you know, so just trying to understand each other better in terms of, well, information overload, emotional overload that people are already dealing with. And then on top of it, you're trying to transmit some kind of technical information that I think you really have to understand if people are available to that right in any given moment. Yeah, it sounds like an important book. And have you gotten feedback on people are using it or putting it into practice? 

Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's almost, you know, one of the funny things again about becoming sort of an elder at this point, which is very weird. It's weird. You go from like early career to elder almost immediately, it feels like. Um, and so it just, it's very interesting to me because when I first started writing about all this stuff, I gave my first real thought. On this stuff in 2010, I think, it was very scary. Like, it's, it's hard to explain how scary it was to stand up in front of a bunch of people and just say, like, look, I'm dealing with all these very emotional issues and I'm trying to figure out how to do it. And here are some of the tools I've been using. But how much things have evolved then in the last 15 years to the point that sometimes when I talk to young people and sort of I'm like trying to make this point that we're discussing right now, they're like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. And so then I kind of have to like recognize that, that I and the, the work, my work and other people's work in this arena have actually already changed the field, you know? And so, so sometimes when I feel like I'm still, because I still do have to make the case to some people, right? Um, but then there's other people who are just like, this is old news for me because you realize that there are young people who grow up already with this book, you know, or grew. already in the context that I was talking about, it's an interesting inflection point, basically where I'm like, is, is what I'm saying still helpful and new? Or did people already read it and absorb it? And I think it's a little bit of both, but I definitely get the feedback. I mean, the book is, I didn't necessarily intend it, but it's being used in a lot of classroom settings. There just aren't a ton of science communication books in general, and the ones that are out there are a little older and sort of not updated to The current political moment that we're in, which is clearly shaping and reshaping everything that we're doing right now. So, yeah, I, I get a lot of, a lot of positive feedback on it. I'm sure there are detractors as well. I certainly think there are many people who want to stick to just the science. And that's why I try to say, Great, if that's your comfort zone, great. All I was trying to do was say, there's a whole bunch of us working in a different way. 

And that's all, just trying to make room for a different experience. Yeah, and you're gonna see that too. Like I remember doing a public meeting and the, the meeting was about a habitat restoration, so it's a win for everyone, but the people there didn't want it just because it was unknown and they're, you know, so their emotions are coming from fear and then Half of the staff that were there to have the conversation or doing what you said, like, uh, I don't know how to answer these charged up people, but it's good, but it's good for you. That's all I can say. It's gonna be good for you. You're gonna like it, you know. Yeah. And I think the thing that something like that book offers is just companionship. You can see that lots of other people are. In those experiences too, and that there actually are tools, which is the other thing I really tried to provide. Like, here are some actual things. Here's how to think about listening. That was one of the big things in the book too. There's a whole chapter on listening because, again, as I was coming up, we're talking about communication constantly, but nobody ever talked about. Flip side of listening. It was just all transmission, you know, and so I really tried to, like, again, in my own work, I had to take a listening very seriously. You know, I, I took a lot of contemplative practice, workshops and different things like that, just trying to make myself into a better listener. And then, I mean, it was even controversial. The first time I talked about listening at an ecological society conference. The level of distaste in the room was strong. And this was only probably 2012 that people were just like, What is this psychotic woman talking about? Like, what, why would we listen to anybody? I remember a grad student literally raising her hand and Saying like, so you're saying when I meet with so and so, I should just listen. It's like, OK, the tone of your question suggests that you think that's stupid, but I actually am. So, um. Yeah, times have changed a little, but, you know, and so I'm trying to also adapt to that and kind of go like, OK, I think the people who needed the message got it. 

You got the tools out there, and now you don't need to push so hard on certain things. But again, you find yourself in certain audiences like giving a talk at a very, I remember giving a talk to a bunch of sort of pretty hardcore oscientists. And there was definitely still, I mean, that was probably 2 years ago and there was still a lot of just like, huh? Like, what? Why would we do any of this? You know, so. It's a little all over the place. 

I think you just covered our next topic, which is our segment that we have called Field Notes. Um, it's a part of our show that we with all of our guests where we talk about a memorable moment doing the whatever work it is that you do in the field, and we ask our listeners to send us your funny, scary, awkward. Weird happenings that happened in the in the work that you're doing so that we can read them on a future episode, which can be sent to info@environmentalprofessionalsradio.com. But do you have any other stories like that that come to mind?

 I mean, I have, I have so many because I really have been doing, you know, sort of deeply embedded work for the last 20 years. And I think, you know, there are just so many, I mean, the other thing I will bring up that I think I was able to touch on in the Book, but probably needs its own whole treatment, which is just around ethics, you know, what are the, the ethics of science communication. And that was one glaring thing that I really saw in sort of researching the book was, you know, for example, in medicine or law, there are these touchstones of sort of ethical obligations, agreements that people have signed up for. And I find it really interesting in our field that we don't have. And the more that The field becomes practice based. I think you, you do need to discuss ethics. And so I think that that's one of the trickiest issues in terms of field work is like, when you're out in a community, particularly if you're coming from a prestige university, there's a whole bunch of stuff you have to realize about, you know, what a rural community, for example, already assigned to you because of the institution that you're coming from, their history with that institution, which may be Pretty dark in a lot of cases where people may have felt burned by, you know, and then you're navigating constantly these issues of, if I elevate the work of this person over that person, what am I doing in this community? And, you know, just really having to struggle a lot with how all of that plays out and then the political levels too. You know, I personally have gotten an unfundful of political push.

As well. And so learning how to really kind of deal with something coming straight from the top of your state level government to say this thing you did was is going against us or whatever, when really you're trying to keep your, your integrity intact. This is all very Challenging, challenging work. And I just think we do ourselves a disservice by not really talking about the nitty gritty of how challenging it, it really can be. Yeah. I mean, that doesn't kind of give a good anecdote, but there are so many that fall into that category of like, if I just having to navigate so carefully, politics of a local place as an outsider. We've had many stories on this show about You know, into the field and you're in the field, you're in someone's, you know, yard basically, and they can see you and, you know, we've, you know, countless times I, I've had people threaten me with guns. I've had, you know, we've heard other people have guns pulled on them and you're almost like the first line of communication for a project many times and the people who are in there are the ones who don't want to talk to other people. They want to be out in the field. They want to be. You know, just doing the job, just trying to do my job, just trying to do the job. And yeah, even like what you're talking about, like one of my favorite examples of getting out of a situation like that was literally just listening. I just listened to this person vent his frustrations at me for, you know, 1015 minutes, and he said, All right, well this is what, this is where you're looking for. And it was just that was polite. 

So it's really cool to see, but I know we're, we're running close to time here, and one of the things we like to do on the show is also ask our guests what they like to do for fun. And we know that you're into taking pictures in nature through fun house mirror sets, which sounds absolutely delightful. So how did you get that idea and what kind of effects are you looking for in those? Yeah, I mean, yet another one. I have no, I don't really know what. So I, I have always been into photography since high school and have gone in and out of being really, really into it. And, and not. But one time I was at a sculptural museum that's outside of Concord in Massachusetts. I was staying with Family. They had these really beautiful kind of warped metal landscape sculptures that were reflecting, it's an outdoor museum, reflecting all the trees and stuff. And they were making these just really cool shapes. And I was like, Well, I want to be able to do that so bad, right? Like just myself. And I was like, how on earth am I ever gonna These were giant metal sculptures. And then somehow I just found my way to the fact that you can actually buy essentially these little pieces of various sizes that are fun house mirrors and started taking them out and doing a lot of more on the probably macroscopic like picture level, taking, you know, little pictures of. Macrophytes in a stream being reflected into this mirror setting where they're getting all kind of warped with have also having the, the thing itself in the photo, you know? And so I've been doing that for a really long time and I still find it really interesting. Yeah. But, you know, I think like a lot of people, I was just talking to my brother like. Yesterday about how much of our free time now is just phone scrolling and like how to, how to get yourself out of that. You know, I, I walk my dog twice a day. 

I live right across from Forest Service land, and that's my other big way, but it's just the still the pull to the, to the screens is pretty tense, so always trying to find ways to end that. That sounds like a good way to do it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think we are just about out of time. Is there anything else that you would like to chat about that we didn't mention already? No, I mean, I appreciate you all understanding kind of what, where I'm coming from and already going like, yeah, I see this in my own work. We hear it from other people. And so that's just, you know, that's part of it is just having this community of people who are like, yeah, that's, I'm experiencing that too. That's, there's a lot of power in that. So I appreciate your, your podcast and talking with you guys today. Yeah, we are happy to have you. I think it's a super important topic. I remember trying to convince my managers in my government job that the staff needed to have some sort of training in how to communicate and talk to the public and they wouldn't fund it. And then somebody got in trouble for talking to saying something inappropriate or wrong they got quoted in a in a newspaper. It's like, and then they got in trouble, but I'm like, how? You haven't given any training on this, and they didn't, you know what I mean? It's not a priority, but it's um it can be a risk, not knowing how to say what you're you should say or what to say or not to say, you know. Yeah, totally agree. It's great work that you're doing and congrats on the book. I hope you've had good success with it. And continue to. And finally, where can people get in touch with you? Feel free to send me an email. I, my website is just faithkearns.com, and I've got my Gmail address and LinkedIn account and Blue Sky and all of that Instagram linked from there. So, whatever floats your boat in terms of your best ways of communicating, I'm probably there. 

Awesome. Well, thanks so much. Thank you. That's our show. Thank you, Faith, for joining us today. Please be sure to check us out each and every Friday. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review. Bye. See you, everybody.