People & Nature: Introduction and Behind the Scenes

Meet the team behind the Streaming Science: People and Nature podcast series as they share their journeys into science communication, conservation, and storytelling. In this introductory episode, faculty and graduate students from the University of Florida's Department of Agricultural Education and Communication reflect on their experiences at the inaugural People and Nature Symposium and explore how connecting people, science, and the environment can inspire meaningful change. 

People & Nature Symposium: https://tbep.org/people-nature-symposium/ 

Transcript

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00:00:03 Jamie Loizzo

Hello, everyone.

00:00:04 Jamie Loizzo

Welcome to our Streaming Science, People and Nature podcast series.

00:00:09 Jamie Loizzo

This is our introduction podcast to let you meet those of us behind the scenes who had the wonderful opportunity to work on this podcast series in a class here in our University of Florida Department of Agricultural Education and Communication.

00:00:26 Jamie Loizzo

I'm Jamie Loizzo.

00:00:27 Jamie Loizzo

I'm an associate professor in this department.

00:00:30 Jamie Loizzo

and I have the great joy of teaching our class called Scientist Online every spring.

00:00:36 Jamie Loizzo

I'd like you to meet the two lovely graduate students who took the class with me this spring and who explored people in nature with me.

00:00:48 Jamie Loizzo

Would you like to go ahead and introduce yourself, Emma?

00:00:51 Emma Poole

Hi, everyone.

00:00:53 Emma Poole

My name is Emma Lauren Poole.

00:00:54 Emma Poole

I am a second-year master's student here in the Department of Agricultural Education and Communication, specializing in communication.

00:01:02 Jamie Loizzo

And why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself as well?

00:01:04 Adeyinka Ayodele

Hi, everyone.

00:01:05 Adeyinka Ayodele

I'm Ade Nkaya Adele.

00:01:07 Adeyinka Ayodele

I'm also a grad student here, my second-year master's program in AEC.

00:01:12 Adeyinka Ayodele

I am so excited to be in this class because I have the privilege of learning how to introduce

00:01:19 Adeyinka Ayodele

communication specialization is what we're doing extension.

00:01:24 Jamie Loizzo

And so communication and extension seem to go pretty well together, right?

00:01:28 Adeyinka Ayodele

Of course, of course.

00:01:29 Jamie Loizzo

Yes.

00:01:30 Jamie Loizzo

So tell us, Adeyinka, where are you from?

00:01:32 Jamie Loizzo

Tell us a little bit about your background, how you got interested in extension, in communication, and how you found your way to the University of Florida.

00:01:41 Adeyinka Ayodele

Yeah, I'm from Nigeria.

00:01:43 Adeyinka Ayodele

So I have a bachelor's degree in agriculture education, but I was a professional landscaper in Nigeria before I moved down here to Florida.

00:01:51 Adeyinka Ayodele

So I do more of environmental beautification, horticulture, and related landscaping occupation.

00:02:00 Adeyinka Ayodele

I got to University of Florida when one of my clients was facing a water challenge, and I went online to read more about these water scarcity issues, which we are also facing in my country.

00:02:12 Adeyinka Ayodele

And then I came across my current advisor's research on water conservation, which resonates with my passion.

00:02:20 Adeyinka Ayodele

And I reached out to her

00:02:22 Adeyinka Ayodele

From there, we build up relationship and I told that I am interested to further my studies in world conservation related issues and most especially human behavior related to world conservation.

00:02:36 Adeyinka Ayodele

And then luckily I applied and I got admitted.

00:02:39 Jamie Loizzo

Emma, same question for you.

00:02:41 Jamie Loizzo

Tell us a little bit about your background and path to UF and to this class.

00:02:47 Emma Poole

Well, I hate to follow that because not to say that my journey has not been as interesting.

00:02:52 Emma Poole

interesting or crazy, it has just probably been a little bit less well-traveled.

00:02:56 Emma Poole

I am a 7th generation Florida resident and very proud of it.

00:03:00 Emma Poole

I come from the little weird triangle where Pasco County, Hillsborough County, and Polk County intersect.

00:03:08 Emma Poole

And we have called that home since the mid-1800s.

00:03:12 Emma Poole

I attended Florida Southern College in good old Lakeland, Florida for my bachelor's degree in journalism, specializing in multimedia and media production.

00:03:23 Emma Poole

I, of course, grew up in agriculture.

00:03:24 Emma Poole

I was a state of A officer, did all the things right.

00:03:27 Emma Poole

But in college, undergrad-wise, it was more for me about

00:03:33 Emma Poole

newspaper, journalism, writing, sports.

00:03:36 Emma Poole

I was the photographer for baseball and basketball at Florida Southern for three years.

00:03:41 Emma Poole

I had the opportunity to do photos at the Philadelphia Phillies MLB spring training.

00:03:45 Emma Poole

It was a very, very great experience.

00:03:48 Emma Poole

I was a sports editor for three years, a center spread designer, and I was an editor-in-chief as well.

00:03:53 Emma Poole

So it has been a blessing to be here, but I felt that it was a detour.

00:03:59 Emma Poole

I felt that it was a point that got added into my plan that was not there previously.

00:04:03 Emma Poole

but it has been where I need it to be.

00:04:05 Jamie Loizzo

Yeah.

00:04:06 Jamie Loizzo

We're so glad to have you.

00:04:07 Jamie Loizzo

And, we're a small but mighty class.

00:04:10 Jamie Loizzo

And I think having all of our different backgrounds and the topic we have been working on for this podcast series has been a really great thing that has united us in a lot of ways from our different backgrounds and perspectives.

00:04:21 Jamie Loizzo

And super cool to see how much we all care about science communication, about making the world a better place, about connecting people with agriculture and natural resources.

00:04:30 Jamie Loizzo

I'm curious, Adiyinka, from that first day, when you

00:04:33 Jamie Loizzo

came to the class and we met with Dr.

00:04:35 Jamie Loizzo

Blake, what did you think?

00:04:36 Jamie Loizzo

What did you learn from him?

00:04:38 Jamie Loizzo

What did you think about what we were gonna be working on?

00:04:41 Adeyinka Ayodele

Yeah, I think you already did a lot of the background job, like the, should I call it a dirty job before we started the class?

00:04:50 Adeyinka Ayodele

So our first day of meeting with him, you know, we already know what we wanted to do.

00:04:55 Adeyinka Ayodele

And then he, we met with him and he shared with us the plans

00:05:01 Adeyinka Ayodele

that he also had.

00:05:02 Adeyinka Ayodele

And I was so glad.

00:05:04 Adeyinka Ayodele

I think it will be my first time of meeting someone that would tell you that I have no expectation.

00:05:08 Adeyinka Ayodele

Just give us the best that you have to offer.

00:05:11 Adeyinka Ayodele

I have no expectation.

00:05:12 Adeyinka Ayodele

So that really motivated me and also encouraged me, a kind of energy to not to give us my best sense.

00:05:21 Adeyinka Ayodele

This person doesn't give us an expectation, but asks us to

00:05:25 Adeyinka Ayodele

Deliver what we have in stock, so I think that's what motivated me to do more in this project.

00:05:31 Jamie Loizzo

Yeah, I think that the idea that this was the first ever People in Nature Symposium, they were building it from the ground up, and so they didn't necessarily have any expectations for...

00:05:43 Jamie Loizzo

how the symposium would go.

00:05:45 Jamie Loizzo

They had a plan, a roadmap, and then anything that was willing to partner with them or jump on board, they were just excited to see what we would do and what we could come up with.

00:05:54 Jamie Loizzo

So I really appreciated that creative freedom as well and just the opportunity to explore what a podcast series could be like alongside this first ever event.

00:06:05 Jamie Loizzo

So that's a great point.

00:06:06 Jamie Loizzo

And so we learned early on in the semester when we first started that people in nature sort of came out of this idea that

00:06:13 Jamie Loizzo

But not everyone knows maybe what social science is.

00:06:18 Jamie Loizzo

Not everyone knows necessarily what conservation social science is or environmental social science.

00:06:25 Jamie Loizzo

And so this symposium was really this way of getting all of these people together who care about social science, who care about the environment, who care about conservation, who care about Florida, who care about the southern United States, and just getting them together to have this place to say, okay,

00:06:43 Jamie Loizzo

we aren't the ones doing the hard science.

00:06:47 Jamie Loizzo

We're not working in labs, we're not collecting field data, but we are the broader impacts people who are communicating with those scientists to then help people potentially make change in the world to take care of our natural resources, take care of our environment.

00:07:02 Jamie Loizzo

And yeah, usually there's not an event or a place necessarily where social scientists come together in that field.

00:07:09 Jamie Loizzo

We're usually at the STEM conferences or in the STEM grants.

00:07:13 Jamie Loizzo

So it was pretty cool to know this was going to be an effort to get that group of people together in a way that maybe they hadn't done before across Florida.

00:07:20 Jamie Loizzo

When we first had that conversation with Dr.

00:07:22 Jamie Loizzo

Blake and we first talked about some of these themes, what did you think about that?

00:07:26 Jamie Loizzo

What were some of your first impressions or your first thoughts going into the symposium?

00:07:34 Emma Poole

I think for me, one of my first impressions personally, and Adiinka, I'm not sure if you have this too, but I have, long kind of individually dwelt in the space of what can we do to connect people to a world around them that they depend on, but that also in turn, that symbiotic relationship, the world around them depends on them to make the right choices for the longevity and the preservation of the future of the world around them.

00:08:01 Emma Poole

Something that I think is super unique about conservation, especially in Florida, with the way that a lot of people who are in agriculture and people who are in cattle ranching and other animal livestock industries have taken conservation and stewardship as their own responsibility is that has caused this to become

00:08:19 Emma Poole

more than like a partisan issue.

00:08:22 Emma Poole

This is everybody.

00:08:24 Emma Poole

This was so needed.

00:08:27 Jamie Loizzo

And it was very neat.

00:08:28 Jamie Loizzo

I mean, the first day we got to hear presentations from these environmental and conservation social scientists, and they're from nonprofits, they're from industry, they were from academia, and we got to see them all together, extension, hear them share what they're working on when it comes to behavior change, attitude change, mobilizing communities to preserve

00:08:49 Jamie Loizzo

natural resources.

00:08:50 Jamie Loizzo

But I also appreciated, you know, Emma, you mentioned you're from this ranching background.

00:08:56 Jamie Loizzo

I think there was an appreciation for ag and natural resources together in that it was focused on people, right?

00:09:02 Jamie Loizzo

People across all these areas and people working together to protect and preserve land.

00:09:08 Jamie Loizzo

And you're doing your master's project here in our department

00:09:12 Jamie Loizzo

on a program called Florida Preserved, which is exactly kind of really well connected to people in nature and what was happening there.

00:09:20 Emma Poole

Anytime I get to exist in a space with people who are of the same mindset as me, that it's not us versus them, it's us and them,

00:09:30 Emma Poole

or Florida, it's always refreshing to me to get to exist in a space with people who feel that way as well.

00:09:36 Jamie Loizzo

Yeah, that was very cool.

00:09:37 Jamie Loizzo

And so, Ada Yinka, you presented some research at the program.

00:09:42 Jamie Loizzo

You were helping produce this podcast series, of course, and conducting some interviews, but then you were also a graduate student who presented your research at the poster symposium the first evening.

00:09:53 Jamie Loizzo

So what was your experience?

00:09:55 Jamie Loizzo

experience like to present some of your own research at people in nature.

00:09:58 Adeyinka Ayodele

So my poster was here about and other synthetic elements that is common in Florida landscape these days.

00:10:08 Adeyinka Ayodele

So we realize that people are not adopting artificial turf, grass, rock, rubber, mulch, and the likes.

00:10:16 Adeyinka Ayodele

And then we are not really thinking of the consequences.

00:10:19 Adeyinka Ayodele

What could be

00:10:20 Adeyinka Ayodele

the effect of all these new synthetic elements that we are using in our landscape.

00:10:25 Adeyinka Ayodele

The reason that I presented was how can we connect people back to nature?

00:10:31 Adeyinka Ayodele

But before we can connect people back to nature, we need to make people know that this thing is abstracted in Florida and it is currently growing.

00:10:39 Adeyinka Ayodele

So there is a need for us to connect them back to the

00:10:43 Adeyinka Ayodele

ecological benefits that they can derive from nature.

00:10:47 Adeyinka Ayodele

Because if these elements were generally accepted, I mean, adopted in the state, the people, there might be a disconnect between people and nature.

00:10:57 Adeyinka Ayodele

So that was exactly what I presented.

00:10:59 Adeyinka Ayodele

And we discovered that all these elements are already common in Florida.

00:11:04 Adeyinka Ayodele

And another thing that we also discovered is that

00:11:07 Adeyinka Ayodele

The people really care about nature, but then they also want these landscape elements because of the benefits that they can derive from, especially the economic aspect of it.

00:11:17 Adeyinka Ayodele

So that is what I presented.

00:11:19 Adeyinka Ayodele

And majority of the people that I presented to were very excited about my research.

00:11:24 Adeyinka Ayodele

They realized that this thing is happening and nobody is doing something about it.

00:11:28 Jamie Loizzo

You did a great job presenting and it was a beautiful evening.

00:11:31 Jamie Loizzo

They actually moved the posters outside to the back deck at Austin Cary Forest at the

00:11:38 Jamie Loizzo

So it was so lovely to see you get to actually truly present out in nature at the Nature Symposium and then have some great conversations with people about your research.

00:11:47 Jamie Loizzo

That was really cool.

00:11:48 Adeyinka Ayodele

Everything about the symposium is about nature.

00:11:52 Jamie Loizzo

Yes.

00:11:52 Adeyinka Ayodele

The poster presentation, the events, the food.

00:11:55 Adeyinka Ayodele

When we were eating and I saw a lot of people sitting on the floor, I was like, this is kind of interesting.

00:12:01 Adeyinka Ayodele

People are really interested in connecting back to nature.

00:12:04 Jamie Loizzo

Definitely.

00:12:05 Jamie Loizzo

It was great to have those days out there in the forest.

00:12:07 Jamie Loizzo

I just absolutely love it.

00:12:08 Jamie Loizzo

We even sat outside to conduct some of our interviews with our podcast guests.

00:12:13 Jamie Loizzo

And so our job was to sort of document the first ever happening of this by speaking to some of the people who were there presenting or attending.

00:12:24 Jamie Loizzo

I conducted both of my interviews outside.

00:12:26 Jamie Loizzo

One, I sat down on my sweater with Dr.

00:12:29 Jamie Loizzo

Amanda Brinton, and she and I just sat down on our jackets and talked under the trees.

00:12:34 Jamie Loizzo

So you're going to hear some different nature around us even in these interviews.

00:12:37 Jamie Loizzo

And then I sat on the back deck with Jim Bays and we talked while some of the sessions were going on inside and people were coming outside.

00:12:45 Jamie Loizzo

But it was just a beautiful setting to even have these conversations.

00:12:49 Jamie Loizzo

And I really, I learned a lot from Amanda, as you will hear in the interview that I conducted with her.

00:12:54 Jamie Loizzo

She is a graduate of the University of Florida, the School of Natural Resources and Interdisciplinary Ecology.

00:13:01 Jamie Loizzo

She has her PhD from there and she's

00:13:04 Jamie Loizzo

done some work about conservation in Puerto Rico, and now she's back in Florida with her own company in the Tampa Bay area, where she is helping stakeholders work together on different conservation issues.

00:13:15 Jamie Loizzo

And I just, and then Jim Bays, he just has this illustrious career.

00:13:21 Jamie Loizzo

He's retired, but he was working in soil and water and

00:13:26 Jamie Loizzo

preserving our habitats all through Florida and collecting all kinds of water samples and just this long career as a scientist.

00:13:32 Jamie Loizzo

And now he works for a conservation group called SOLE.

00:13:37 Jamie Loizzo

And you'll get to hear him talk about that and the importance of working as communities together to conserve natural resources in Florida.

00:13:45 Jamie Loizzo

So I really appreciated that.

00:13:46 Jamie Loizzo

I know you each conducted a couple interviews as well.

00:13:49 Emma Poole

So I got to speak with the one and only Blake Simmons.

00:13:53 Emma Poole

He was incredible.

00:13:54 Emma Poole

We literally found a clearing

00:13:56 Emma Poole

I went and sat down on the kind straw and talked for a while just about some of the takeaways moving forward and what can happen as a result of this and what the symposium has the potential to do.

00:14:08 Emma Poole

And I also got to talk with Sarah Lockhart, who is also based here in Gainesville.

00:14:13 Emma Poole

And our conversation was about a lot of the networking that's able to happen through things like that and how people in the conservation space rely on each other, but all of those experiences are a lot

00:14:26 Emma Poole

a lot different.

00:14:27 Emma Poole

Her research deals in land trusts, and hearing more about that was insightful for me, and I was really happy to be able to make that connection.

00:14:34 Jamie Loizzo

What I love about getting to teach this class is we are doing science communication in real life.

00:14:39 Jamie Loizzo

We're just speaking to our guests.

00:14:41 Jamie Loizzo

We're investigating what they're talking to us about.

00:14:44 Jamie Loizzo

We developed sort of our interview and conversation routes ahead of time.

00:14:48 Jamie Loizzo

We investigated them online.

00:14:51 Jamie Loizzo

We made these arrangements with them to speak with them there.

00:14:54 Jamie Loizzo

And then we're also learning the skills

00:14:56 Jamie Loizzo

of recording audio, editing audio, putting it together, streaming it for people to hear.

00:15:00 Jamie Loizzo

Adeyinka, you were all over the event for your interviews, and you lined up three different interviews, I believe.

00:15:08 Adeyinka Ayodele

Yes.

00:15:08 Jamie Loizzo

What were some of the highlights of some of the interviews you conducted?

00:15:11 Adeyinka Ayodele

One of those people that I met, which was actually my first person, was Shannon Gohans, and then

00:15:20 Adeyinka Ayodele

she talked about the plastic pollution and how the Remora app helps individuals to track the reduce, I mean, track and reduce their use of single-use plastics.

00:15:31 Adeyinka Ayodele

So I think she developed an app called Remora and she discussed in that interview how this app can actually help individuals to track their plastic use.

00:15:44 Adeyinka Ayodele

And another person that I met is also

00:15:48 Adeyinka Ayodele

Dr.

00:15:48 Adeyinka Ayodele

Rebecca Zagar, and then I think she talked about storytelling, then majorly how communities in Tampa be can strengthen climate resilience through urban forestry.

00:16:02 Adeyinka Ayodele

So, and also she related all this to Blue Gap Project.

00:16:07 Adeyinka Ayodele

And then last person was Kalita Skrotz.

00:16:11 Adeyinka Ayodele

A little I was talking about Lagun Yoga, which I was hearing for the first time to what does it, what is Lagun Yoga and how can Lagun Yoga helps to strengthen the mind-body connections with nature.

00:16:23 Adeyinka Ayodele

So these are the sets of people that are missing.

00:16:25 Adeyinka Ayodele

And if people listen to our podcast, they are going to hear more about their work.

00:16:29 Jamie Loizzo

Yes, so you did a great job conducting these interviews and I know you've been in the lab working to edit them and prepare them.

00:16:35 Jamie Loizzo

And I think people are going to enjoy hearing the different conversations you had.

00:16:40 Jamie Loizzo

So we were conducting the podcast, but we were also participating in the event.

00:16:45 Jamie Loizzo

We had some presentations, as you heard.

00:16:47 Jamie Loizzo

We had conversations with people.

00:16:49 Jamie Loizzo

On the last wrap-up day, Emma, you went to the wrap-up session where they were really looking forward to what are the next steps for people in nature?

00:16:58 Jamie Loizzo

How do we move forward as this collective group?

00:17:00 Jamie Loizzo

What were some things that you learned or talked about in that wrap-up session, the final day?

00:17:05 Emma Poole

I learned so much from my small group, and they had the topic of early engagement.

00:17:10 Emma Poole

engagement within communities.

00:17:12 Emma Poole

And I think one of the biggest things that I learned is that building rapport and building trust with people and where they are currently, lots of times involves acknowledging where they've come from.

00:17:23 Emma Poole

And that was something that we were talking about with early engagement, community work, and building trust is, some historical legacies that are in place, programs that have worked, programs that have not worked, and maybe why, or distrusts that people in the communities you're working with have toward people like you that are coming in, you know, and acknowledging that the reasons for that and everything.

00:17:46 Emma Poole

So it was a really good conversation.

00:17:47 Emma Poole

But as we were having that conversation, I was thinking about how unique of an opportunity we

00:17:53 Emma Poole

had as the first group of students to be involved with the symposium.

00:17:58 Emma Poole

So I'm like, we're sitting here talking about how in the future, whoever comes on board with things has to acknowledge the historical legacy.

00:18:06 Jamie Loizzo

I think it was great to see students.

00:18:09 Jamie Loizzo

And I know that day and that session wrapped up with the community once more.

00:18:13 Jamie Loizzo

The community wants more engagement with one another.

00:18:16 Jamie Loizzo

So this was a great time to be there to experience the beginning.

00:18:20 Jamie Loizzo

And then hopefully, like you said, they'll build this history and this legacy together to continue this movement of social scientists working in the environment and conservation together.

00:18:30 Jamie Loizzo

So I just want to thank you all.

00:18:32 Jamie Loizzo

Thank you for participating in the project.

00:18:34 Jamie Loizzo

Thank you for attending People in Nature.

00:18:37 Jamie Loizzo

And thank you to the People in Nature Symposium

00:18:39 Jamie Loizzo

organizers for allowing our class to collaborate, to have this opportunity to have the interviews, have the conversations, and then share them as part of the legacy and follow up of the event.

00:18:50 Jamie Loizzo

And to have these online for people to hear is just a preserved way to know where people in nature started.

00:18:57 Jamie Loizzo

And hopefully it just only grows from here and continues to become this really mobilized community of social scientists.

00:19:05 Jamie Loizzo

So thank you so much, you guys.

00:19:07 Jamie Loizzo

It was really great to see you do your interviews and

00:19:09 Jamie Loizzo

I hope the listeners really enjoy them.

00:19:11 Emma Poole

Thank you for letting us.

00:19:13 Adeyinka Ayodele

Thank you for having us.

00:19:15 Adeyinka Ayodele

Thank you for the privilege.

00:19:16 Jamie Loizzo

Yes, of course.

00:19:17 Jamie Loizzo

So make sure you follow along with Streaming Science, the People in Nature Symposium.

00:19:22 Jamie Loizzo

We will have all kinds of show notes and social media posts for you to be able to listen to these episodes.

00:19:27 Jamie Loizzo

And we hope that you really learn a lot about social science and about conservation and community.