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Planthropology
Planthropology
118. The Poetry of Science, Nature Check, and Groups of Belonging w/ Dr. Sheryl Hosler
Dr. Cheryl Hosler, creator of Nature Check and The Roving Naturalist, shares her journey from feeling inadequate in science to becoming a postdoctoral researcher and innovative science communicator who uses storytelling and gaming to connect people with ecological concepts.
• Cheryl's educational path from English major to scientist, overcoming early discouragement in high school science classes
• The limitations of the "deficit model" in science communication and why simply providing information rarely changes behavior
• How cover crops function in agricultural systems and their ecological benefits
• The importance of applied science that directly addresses stakeholders' needs
• Why scientists should study humanities to develop critical thinking and empathy
• Using Dungeons & Dragons and other tabletop role-playing games to humanize scientists and make science accessible
• The Roving Naturalist YouTube channel and its approach to science communication
• How community and "groups of belonging" influence our attitudes and behaviors
Find your community and surround yourself with people who help you see the best version of yourself that could be. The right community will motivate you to become that person.
As always, thanks so much for listening! Subscribe, rate, and review Planthropology on your favorite podcast app. It helps the show keep growing and reaching more people! As a bonus, if you review Planthropology on Apple Podcasts or Podchaser and send me a screenshot of it, I'll send you an awesome sticker pack!
Planthropology is written, hosted, and produced by Vikram Baliga. Our theme song is "If You Want to Love Me, Babe, by the talented and award-winning composer, Nick Scout.
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What is up? Plant people it's time once more for the Plantthropology Podcast, the shore. We dive into the lives and careers of some very cool plant people to figure out why they do what they do and what keeps them coming back for more. I'm Vikram Baliga, your host and humble guide in this journey through the sciences and, as always, my friends, I am so excited to be with you today. Hey, I have some questions for you just here, right off the bat bat. Do you like Dungeons and Dragons? How about storytelling and role playing and figuring out yourself and how to gain empathy for other people? Do you love the story and poetry of science? Well, if any of those things are true and if you just like really cool people, you're going to love today's episode.
Speaker 1:My guest for today is Dr Cheryl Hosler, the creator of Nature Check and the Roving Naturalist. She is a brilliant science communicator and really I say that a lot and I talk about a lot of people, but I find Cheryl to be incredibly inspirational in this whole thing where we try to tell the story of the world around us. She is a postdoc at Penn State University, a recent PhD, so everyone say congrats to Dr Hostler. And just such a good person, just such a good person. She's one of a few people that actually got me into playing tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons. There's another one that we'll talk about in the show called the Wild Sea, and I still feel like I'm not very good at it, but she's so kind about the way that she puts information out there and the way that she tells the story of communicating with people and the way that she relates to people and talks about science. I think you're going to love today's episode.
Speaker 1:We cover a lot of ground today. We talk about everything from the experiences that shape us into the educators we want to be and the scientists we want to be and just maybe, the people we want to be. We talk about community. We talk about finding a really good group of belonging. We talk about community. We talk about finding a really good group of belonging. We talk about the importance of nuance and context in science, communication and nature and finding our roots and getting back to asking good questions and remembering what it's like to not know anything and to build our experiences and the way we communicate on that. So great episode, and I think that you're going to love Cheryl just as much as I do so, grab your favorite set of dice and get ready for episode 118 of the Planthropology podcast, the poetry of science nature check and groups of belonging, with Dr Cheryl Hosler. What's your cat's name? This is Puzzle. Puzzle's a good name.
Speaker 2:Thank you, we get that a lot. The kittens are Cipher and Whisper, so we have like a teen cartoon team going on.
Speaker 1:It's fantastic, cheryl. I am so excited to get to talk to you today. I think we talked about this a long time ago and I'm glad that it is finally getting so. Thanks for agreeing to be on.
Speaker 2:Thanks for being a part of this and tell us about you. Oh gosh, yes, thanks for having me About me. Well, I was born in, yeah, I guess like I grew up in a family that was always really into like spending quality time outside, and so I just sort of developed this love for nature and have pursued a few different career paths, but all related to the natural world. So I guess that's me, yeah.
Speaker 1:Very cool. So you're currently a I believe at, so can you take us through sort of the process to get there from school to figuring out what you want to do? Because I think that's something that I like to get into is, like, why do you love plants? Like, why are you into the thing that you do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, which school do you want me to start at for the timeline?
Speaker 1:Oh, wherever you'd like Okay.
Speaker 2:So, like I said, I was really into nature and stuff growing up and so as I was moving into high school I thought maybe I wanted to become a biologist. And I had a few rough experiences in high school which unfortunately is apparently a pretty common experience and by the end of those years in high school, pretty much I just felt like I was not good enough or smart enough to be a scientist.
Speaker 2:So, when I started my undergraduate at Penn State, I came in as an English major, which I love reading and writing and doing critique of literature, so that was really fun. And then realized that there was a major that I could get that would allow me to walk in the footsteps of some of the mentors that I'd really valued at a summer camp that Penn State runs that I went to as a kid, and so I decided to double major and do this recreation parks and tourism management major. So I learned informal education, pedagogy and team building stuff and how to teach people how to rock climb and canoe and whatever, and so I spent a few years after undergrad doing all of that kind of stuff and it was really fun. I've worked with every age group, people with special needs. I've worked 200 plus person live animal presentations. I've done summer camps. So it was all really fun.
Speaker 2:But there were a few reasons why it didn't feel like a sustainable career for me and I, with a few more years of frontal lobe development, thought maybe I should try giving science another try. So, yeah, I found a university that I thought would be a good fit for this attempt. So I was in the Chicago region at the time and there's a bunch of universities there in the city, but they're all like really big universities. So there's a smaller university called Northern Illinois University that's in Northern Illinois and it's an R2, so a little bit smaller, but still a research school, and they have master's degrees and they also were still teaching a lot of the ologies classes, so like entomology, ornithology, mammology, whatever.
Speaker 2:And so for all of those reasons, I thought that would be a good fit and I basically just emailed the graduate coordinator and was like, what would I need to do to like be allowed to apply to grad school? And he was like, oh well, you need two semesters of undergraduate biology and chemistry at the very least, because I didn't have any of those. Right, you didn't actually have to take any science classes beyond your gen eds in order to get a degree in teaching people about nature, which is weird, okay, but yeah, so I went to the community college and took intro bio and chemistry and then I did the cold email thing where I found somebody within that department who would take me on as a student and while I was doing all of that, I also took entomology as a student at large. So it was like you're not like an undergraduate, but you aren't formally in the graduate program.
Speaker 2:And so eventually I did make it in and I did my master's for three years there in restored tall grass prairie, which was incredible. I'd grown up in the hardwood or mixed forests of the Northeast, which are beautiful, and I hadn't really understood what was so great about the Midwest, because so much of it is corn and soybeans, but the prairie is just incredible. It really is. And so, yeah, I think like that was a wonderful experience. And then I did another round of cold emailing to find an advisor for my PhD at a different university that I was in one of the universities in downtown Chicago, the University of Illinois Chicago, and I did a five year Ph-year PhD where I was studying pollination, so really very much focused on plants. For that project I raised two different species of plants that are non-self-pollinating and used their seed count as a way of quantifying the pollination services they receive, because they can only make seeds if insects move their pollen for them. So that was amazing.
Speaker 2:And then, when I was getting close to the end of my PhD, I started applying for jobs faculty jobs and postdocs and I wound up finding this really cool opportunity back at the university where I started, at Penn State, being supervised by two PIs on synthesizing the data for a long term project. So they've been running this project basically since I graduated from Penn State a little over 12 years ago. So I've joked with them that they started this project so that I could come back and work on the data for them. But this project is looking at the responses of a whole bunch of different species of cover crops to the environmental variation across years, and then we'll also be getting into how those different species provide a bunch of ecosystem services to the farm fields where they're being planted.
Speaker 1:So yeah, oh, wow, no, that's fascinating, yeah, yeah. And again, it's no surprise I'm a nerd, like I nerd out about this stuff, but like people don't realize how big of a deal crops are, like it's so important from an ecological standpoint and a soil conservation standpoint.
Speaker 2:I'd never heard of them. But now it's just like this is the coolest thing. Nobody in the Midwest, really or not nobody, but very few people in the Midwest do cover cropping because they have so much land and they just pump it full of nutrients and whatever. But yeah, we're working with organic growers here in the Northeast and yeah, cover cropping, I guess, is really popular and I've gone to a few extension runs. These like farmer learning circles where the farmers can come and like learn from one another, and it is just incredible to me how much these guys like experiment on their own farms to try to figure out what will work best for them. It's really cool. So our project was sort of designed based on what those farmers have been trying.
Speaker 1:See, that's so cool, and when we talk about research, I think it's actually especially right now, and for those listening right now could mean a lot of things. But I think, as we record this, the I don't know applicability of science is something that's really important to talk about, and how you and I, as researchers, as scientists, understand that like science for the sake of science is never that like we're doing it to this. Okay, sometimes it is, but like, but like it can build fundamental baselines for a lot of things. Right, like we're, we're, we're finding a starting point. Right, we're finding new questions, those things. But you're thinking about applied science. It's like oh no, these farmers, these growers, these stakeholders, whoever are doing and they're trying things, why don't we help them figure out why it works or how to make it work better, and all of that.
Speaker 2:It's really, I think, especially in agriculture and in the plant world, like a really important thing that we need to lean into a bit. It's kind of the same principle as traditional ecological knowledge TEK right that, like the people on the ground doing the thing know how to do the thing.
Speaker 2:And what we, the research scientists, are good at and therefore is to quantify and like really zoom in on those patterns and come up with the exact causal relationship, sometimes because, like, anecdotal evidence for why something works may not be the actual reason. So, yeah, I really like being an applied scientist and like working hand in hand with the practitioners at all of these different locations.
Speaker 1:For sure, that's super cool. And to take a step back, I actually wanted to say congratulations because you were fairly recently a doctor hustler and that's just so cool. That's so cool. Congratulations.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a weird feeling, but it's so exciting.
Speaker 1:I think weird is such a good way to, just because, like I remember, for me when I graduated, I was like everyone was like Do you feel so good? I was like I think so. I don't like my brain hasn't reset yet. I'm not sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, on the day I defended, after I came out of the closed door portion, oh, you've passed, or whatever everybody was like, oh, are you so relieved? And I was like, well, no, because like good advisors, don't send you to your defense unless they know you're going to pass. So like I knew I was going to pass two weeks ago when I sent my dissertation to my committee. But like now I actually get to call myself doctor and like that's a big deal for a whole bunch of reasons.
Speaker 1:For sure.
Speaker 2:Stemming all the way back to. Nobody in my family has gotten a PhD in anything in like 100 years, and the last one was in banking and the fact that I started out thinking I wasn't good enough for this, like I obviously am good enough and smart enough, but it took me a really long time and a lot of work to demonstrate that to myself.
Speaker 1:Listen, you're kind of speaking my language. I get it, but from the outside, looking in, I can tell you that I've always thought the world of what you do and I, like, I've always thought of you as just a really great scientist and communicator and it's just so exciting that you're in a place, maybe, where you're feeling that now too, and that's pretty cool. I haven't, as a total aside has nothing to do with plants. Obviously there have to be PhDs in, but I've literally never thought of that being. It has never popped into my head before.
Speaker 1:When my grandmother told me up, I was like oh huh, okay, I mean cause clearly they would have to be like there's phds and everything. It's just I don't know. Sorry, but that it's like when your brain's like humming along and then something just kind of sticks it like a gear, like like a stick in the spokes.
Speaker 2:I'm just like until you've handled it yeah, I have to deal with that.
Speaker 1:Well, I want to talk, as we go through this, a little bit more about specifically some of the work you're doing and to the extent that you can tell. But for those that aren't like familiar, can you give us like the elevator pitch for what a cover crop is, because I think that's poorly understood.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the way I've been explaining it to people and again, like just under a year ago I was learning this but yeah, the way I've been explaining it to people is that cover crops are domesticated crop species that are planted on fields when the cash crop isn't growing. So, like, the cash crop in the rotation that we're looking at is organic corn, organic soybeans and organic winter wheat, and then the cover crops are grown between the winter wheat and the corn. And what absolutely blew my mind is that you plant these seeds in like late August, early September, and then they grow in the autumn and then they grow again in the spring and then we terminate them. So sometimes people harvest cover crops Ours are just getting plowed into the soil in May and then you plant the corn in that same soil. And yeah, it was kind of weird for me to think about planting annual seeds in the fall and asking them to grow, like in the coal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like good luck, have fun.
Speaker 2:Exactly, but like it's so interesting because, like I said, my first job is synthesizing all these data and understanding how the different species respond to the environment and it's so interesting to see the trends for like which ones of them like to have their feet wet Right, so they respond positively to precipitation, and which ones like the cold or don't like the cold. It's really interesting.
Speaker 1:We mostly grow well, at least where I am. We mostly grow cotton grow well, at least where I am. We mostly grow cotton. There's a little bit of sorghum, milo, depending on you know, whatever which part of the country you're in A few other things, but it's mostly cotton. And so there's some people starting to do winter wheat and a few other things in rotation. Some are doing like alfalfa, but you know I'm out here in. This is also a prairie, it's a short grass prairie, so it's a little different. But we're also right next to the desert, like if you go next door to the West, it is the Chihuahuan Desert, like it's the real kind of like capital D desert, and so we get these big dust storms that come through here and it's like every second Tuesday is like the dust bowl again, and I think people are getting to a point where like, oh, you mean bare plow fields are not great for that, like maybe that's going to blow away.
Speaker 2:How did we not learn that lesson 100 years ago, Right?
Speaker 1:right, exactly, and it's just in the past oh, maybe 15 years, 10, 15 years that people are really working in the cover crops or doing reduced tillage or leaving stubble in the fields and things like that over the winter, just to like, hey, let's keep the soil where it's supposed to be, because they don't need it in Oklahoma, like it's our soil, let's leave it here. But it's becoming more popular and we think about, like different agricultural systems and I don't know if it's, I guess it does fit in the regenerative ag in some ways, in a little bit, as we try to like, think about how we go into the future and be more ecologically minded.
Speaker 2:I think it's such a big deal yeah, I mean especially a lot of the work here was motivated by the fact that we're in the chesapeake bay watershed, so like that is a fragile watershed anyway. And then you take into account the fact that we're in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, so like that is a fragile watershed anyway. And then you take into account the fact that in this part of the East Coast a ton of farmers are doing dairy or poultry, and so they have a lot of manure that they want to get rid of. And so how do we like allow them to spread that manure on their fields to provide nitrogen and other nutrients to their cash crops, but not watch all of those nutrients just like run off every time it rains, or like when the snow melts and just wind up in the Chesapeake Bay causing problems?
Speaker 1:So, yeah, one of the like main ecosystem services that this project has been focused on is nitrogen leaching and like studying how the nitrogen is moving or staying in the fields yeah, oh, I mean, and I again I could, I'm trying to rein myself in a little bit because like there's so much that my brain's like oh yeah, I just talked to my students about fertilizer runoff and showed them pictures of dead fish. They did not love. I, I don't. But like, those are the conversations I think we have to like have like it's bad for the fish.
Speaker 2:A lot of humans like we we have like a strong bias towards like mammals and the more distantly and animals related to us like the less empathetic people feel.
Speaker 1:So I'm glad that they were sad about the dead fish oh, there were certainly a few oh what and like, and I don't know if it was more of just like the gross algae sludge that they were reacting to or the fit, but either way, I got an awe out of them, so that's something like so. So I'm curious. I was looking over you for one thing you've published a lot more than I am. You're a better that. But do you see yourself in the future like staying in research? Would you like to teach what's kind of your idea?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, so first too, you were going to say you looked over my like Google Scholar or something Like there are a lot of papers on there, but a lot of like I only have two first author papers published so far. I have a few more in peer review right now. I have a few more in peer review right now, but most of those papers are because I've been fortunate enough to work in like really big collaborative research groups. No-transcript. I think like doing collaborative science is something that really makes me very happy, because none of us are, none of us can do this alone the days of publishing single author papers are, and probably should be over oh yeah, I gotta remember the last.
Speaker 1:You see them every now and then, and it's usually by someone that's been researching in the field for 112 years and like.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but yeah. So I'm just, I'm so grateful to everyone that I've been able to work with because they've been really rewarding experiences. But yeah, where do I see myself? I mean, I would very much like to be a PI at a research university because research is so much fun.
Speaker 2:A prominent public figure recently said that scientists are afraid to ask questions, and I was flabbergasted because the one thing we really like to do is ask questions. So, yeah, I would love a career where I get to like pursue the questions and mentor students individually with research, because I've had so many really good and valuable mentors. I want to sort of pass that forward to the next generation of students. But I also really love teaching. My first career in environmental ed, I loved engaging with students and even though classroom teaching with grades and stuff is a little different than like teaching during summer camp, I still really do love teaching, especially those sort of like introductory classes, because that's where you get people excited and engaged who might not otherwise have thought that they would be. So, yeah, I would love to be a professor at a research university so that I can do the teaching and the mentoring and the research. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Very cool, yeah. And again, like I love that you talk about it that way, because I hear sometimes I don't want to say like colleagues I teach with we actually have a very like strong teaching faculty at my institution and like they really love the students. But I hear it thrown around sometimes that like, oh, I hate teaching freshmen and undergrads and those intro classes, blah, blah, blah. And again the 112 tenure, like whatever. But it is so important, like what's our job? Right, we are trying to build scientific consensus, but to do that as part of that, we have to build and train the next generation of scientists and enthusiasts. And what better way to do that than to be really fun in an intro class?
Speaker 2:Yeah, what better way to do that than to be really fun in an intro class.
Speaker 2:Yeah well, and also I learned that this was something feinman did that like he really liked and would try, I guess, every semester to teach, like physics 101 or whatever, because it allowed him to remember what it was like to be at the beginning and not know anything, which I think think is so important, like again, as a science communicator, especially like so many people sort of forget what it's like to be the student at the beginning, not knowing anything, whether they're talking about undergraduates or graduate students.
Speaker 2:Even I've mentored several graduate students here since I've been a postdoc that are like, oh, like, how did you learn this? And like it's OK, like, like you don't have to know all of it right now, like that's why you're here, right? So, yeah, I think like being reminded what it's like to not know any of it is important. But also students who don't know all of it already have different perspectives and might come up with cool ideas that we hadn't considered because we've bounded ourselves so much by like the conventional knowledge and literature. Like if you don't know anything, you can just ask any question and you might hit upon something cool that nobody else thought of.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's so good. Yeah, that is such a good, I think, perspective, because I like the way you frame that in the reminding ourselves about where we started. Right, returning somebody, because I think about coming in to do my master's. So I actually have a bachelor of arts in horticulture and, like I studied landscape design and I at the time didn't know you weren't supposed to go from a bachelor of arts to a master of science and so I was just like I'll apply for it. I don't know, I didn't know any better, and they were like well, we don't really do that, but okay, and so I ended up making the program and it was that it's the whole process.
Speaker 1:I tell people that we teach our undergrads about science, we're trying to give them a body of knowledge, and then we teach our master students. We're walking them through really, or undergraduate researchers, but really the nuts and bolts of gaining knowledge. Then at the PhD level, we're kind of teaching them how to do it for themselves, how to run their own programs, and I think that sort of stepwise process, the farther you get away from it, it is hard to sometimes look back and be like, oh no, I've been that kid, like I know the student that's 18 years old and it's the first time out of the house and they're excited about something that's really cool. So, okay, you mentioned a minute ago that part of what you do is science, and outside of the research and outside of the university life, you do science communication. What made you want to get into that?
Speaker 2:I guess I was a science communicator before I knew that was the name of the job, because being an environmental educator is just a subgenre of science communicator, right, like I was. Just I was doing it in person through programming and so, yeah, when I was taking that entomology class, when I was a student at large.
Speaker 2:That prof was great. She was super helpful in supporting me and making me feel like I belonged. And she not that far into that semester was like, have you ever thought about science communication? Like she knew a tiny bit about what I had done in my previous career and I think a lot of it was just like the way I spoke during like class presentations and things like I don't know. I just sort of developed this skill set as a theater kid, as an environmental educator, I mean all of us are just know-it-alls and I've just really practiced being a know-it-all in a way that people appreciate listening to. I mean, there's no such thing as, like, a perfect communicator. But yeah, I've had a lot of practice with those skills of thinking about how to present information in ways that will be accessible to different audiences and I think that's like the really important part.
Speaker 2:I was I was hired to be the broader impacts for someone's grant. I've been making videos about their research project, which is great. But when I asked them before I started filming like so what's your intended audience? They were like everyone, and I think that is so often. Like what? Like scientists or other people who are like trying to communicate information are like I want everyone to know and like that's just not going to work because not everyone receives information the same way. And so the fact that I have practiced working with kids with sight impairments, kids on the autism spectrum, kids of all ages, adults of all ages, families, like all of these different groups I've played the accordion, I guess, with the information and figured out how to transpose it for the needs of each group.
Speaker 1:And that is a real skill. Like that's that is not something everyone can do and I think that people watch science communicators online and we do all this stuff and you make it look easy, but like that's really something that one, there's like a natural aptitude that a lot of people have for it, but two, like that's a craft you have to. It's really something you have to figure out. There's so much I don't know back end work and almost science that goes into how we science communicate.
Speaker 2:Oh for sure. Yeah, I definitely was not as confident or as good at it now back then as I am now. But yeah, I think the science that goes into science communication is also a really important point. There is a lot of cool research on science communication, theagogy, the effect. I even know of a researcher who, like, specifically looks at science communication with audiences of like faith backgrounds.
Speaker 2:But a lot of science communicators don't know that exists, or they and, or they don't read it, and it's a really weird like circle for me. I guess that, like the science communicators are constantly like I want to teach the important stuff to the people, but like the science communicators are constantly like I want to teach the important stuff to the people, but like the science communication researchers are like I want the science communicators to know the important stuff about how to do what they do, and like nobody's talking to us yeah, huh and yeah, it seems like we are missing a piece in the middle there somewhere the like who communicates to the like, who's the extension service between the scientists and the science communicators, instead of, like, the scientists and the general public, like there's like that.
Speaker 1:I hadn't really thought of that.
Speaker 2:That's really an interesting point so are you aware of the deficit model or like what that means?
Speaker 1:in a very loose sort of way. The deficit.
Speaker 2:model is this like way of teaching us, and science communicators often sort of fall into this. Because model is this like way of teaching us, and science communicators often sort of fall into this because it feels intuitive to us. Right, the if they only knew Right.
Speaker 2:If my audience only knew that buying this product from this company was causing water pollution in some other part of the world, then they wouldn't do the thing Right Like. If only they knew they would change their behavior. But research in the social sciences has demonstrated over and over again that changing knowledge does not change attitudes and even changing knowledge and attitudes does not necessarily change behaviors and like that's all really interesting.
Speaker 2:And I went down kind of a rabbit hole on this and realized that about every 10 years in the social science literature there is a paper that's like, hey, the deficit model doesn't work. So approximately every 10 years the science communication researchers are also going. If only the science communicators knew, because it's just a paper in their literature, right Like it's published in the science communication, research or social science journal.
Speaker 2:It's not being disseminated to the science communicators and so a lot of people still fall into using the deficit model in the way they create science communication content, because it feels intuitive to us, because in large part, we are people who change our attitudes and behaviors when we are presented with new information. But that is not the way normal people work, quite frankly.
Speaker 1:You're right, though, and that's so. I did a lot of work, and I have done, throughout my career, a lot of work in water conservation. That's been a major area of research focus just throughout time, and a lot of my PhD work was also actually in, like what are the practices of different, how do homeowners manage their water use in the urban landscape, et cetera, and we asked all these questions. We did a big survey, and it's interesting because a lot of people say, oh yeah, no, I know I'm supposed to, or I know I'm supposed to, but that's all. Yeah, no, you're right, that doesn't bridge the gap all the time, because the even the intent to change practice sometimes is not there, despite the knowledge and it's. I think we do fall into that trap of thinking oh well, they know better, they should do better, and but that's just not how the humans work.
Speaker 2:Like, don't, we don't do that well and I like first realized this back when I was like still getting my degree in environmental education, there was this program. So the Penn State sort of environmental education center offers this like week-long camp type thing to all of the surrounding school district fifth graders and they just like go to this camp for a week and they get their entire environmental education curriculum for the entire year in that like one week, which is really cool because a lot of the I mean this is really cool because a lot of I mean this is central pennsylvania, so a lot of these school districts aren't like super affluent and so being able to like get that cool, like outdoors, hands-on experience is really important for those kids.
Speaker 2:But the way all of these programs that I've ever worked in sort of defend their existence because by having to do some sort of survey at the end and like prove with numbers that they've done something right, so like, oh, okay, well, I'll survey the participants before and after they do this program and my survey will show that more of them know the right answers to these questions and that I think I phrased that way intentionally, because it's not just true or false doing this leads to water pollution.
Speaker 2:The right answers also include the attitude questions right, like if you're taking a survey for the program that you just did that was talking about water conservation, then of course you're going to answer the water conservation attitude and like, oh, yeah, I promise that my behaviors will change in the future. Questions the way you think the instructors want you to answer, but the answers on the survey don't reflect what people actually go home and do, and like, yeah, I became aware of this really early on. That like, oh, there's this huge disconnect between, like, the numbers that we have to use to justify our programs continuing to be funded and their ultimate efficacy.
Speaker 1:Goodness, there's a lot more here that we probably like don't have the time to get into. Maybe on part two, like maybe we'll do this again, but there is a lot to be said about that and the way that we approach no-transcript. But I think that, as scientists, as people interested in the green in nature, right in the green sciences, that's really something. Right in the green sciences, that's really something. And I think that, from the researchers to just the people that like going on the park, like I think the, like you said, broader impacts the now, what big picture question is a question that we have to ask ourselves a lot and sometimes be okay with being uncomfortable with the answers.
Speaker 2:I don't know if that's the right way to say that, but there's, yeah, there's a lot there, yeah I also think, like those of us in the green sciences I like the way you put that like most of the science communicators I know are ecologists of one stripe or another, and I think there are a lot of reasons for that, but one of them is that, like, what we do could actually impact someone's attitudes, behaviors or quality of life could actually impact someone's attitudes, behaviors or quality of life. Like if a physicist says, hey, I discovered a new star or a new subatomic particle or whatever people are like cool and they keep going on with their day. But like if we discover something about, like how to do better farming, like that's immediately impactful to like a lot of people along, like a huge supply chain. So, yeah, I think like we have a very strong responsibility to be good at presenting what we've learned to other people.
Speaker 1:Awesome, and that's a good segue and a good time for a quick break, and when we come back, I want to talk about the Roving Naturalists and I want to talk about Nature Check, because these are both such cool projects that I think people need to know about. So let's take a quick break and then we'll come back. Well, hey there, welcome to the mid roll. I hope your house plants are doing well. I have to confess I have some plants in my office and they're just so badly neglected. I have a little tomato in here that a friend gave me and I need to put it outside because that's where the tomatoes do better instead of under the throw lights, and I have brought it back from the brink like two or three times and it builds character right In your houseplants. Anyway, I hope yours are doing better than mine. Thanks so much for listening to Plantthropology and thanks for being a part of what we do here. A huge thanks to Cheryl for being on this episode, thanks to the Texas Tech Department of Plant and Soil Science for supporting the show and the Davis College of Agricultural Science and Natural Resources for doing the same.
Speaker 1:If you want to support plant anthropology, there are a lot of great ways you can do that. You can go follow us on social media. You can find plant anthropology or plant anthropology pod or some similar concoction like that, depending on which usernames are available, all over the internet. On social media. You can email me at planthropologypod at gmailcom. You can find me personally as the plant prof all over the place as well Places you've never thought of, actually all the places you think of. That's basically it. I'm nowhere interesting or new or cool, but you can find me on YouTube, instagram, the other place, as we call it, in the episode threads and a lot of other places as well. So look us up, connect with Planthropology, send us your feedback. I'd love to know what you think along those lines. Tell your friends about planthropology If you love the show. Word of mouth is still the best way to get more ears on it. Also, if you don't mind leaving me a rating and review, I wear a size five star and you can rate planthropology on Spotify, apple podcast, pod chaser and so many other places as well.
Speaker 1:If you'd like to financially support the show, go to planthropologypodcastcom. Check out some merch, score yourself some cool swag there's new stuff coming soon. Or you can head to buymeacoffeecom slash planthropology, and for the price of a cup of coffee you can pay for hosting fees and mostly coffee, mostly coffee. I drink a lot of coffee. Anyway, let's get back to it More with Cheryl in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. We're back. So you have a couple of specific projects talking about science, communication, the dissemination of knowledge to people, the Roving Naturalist and Nature Check, and you've been doing both of these for quite a while, like it's been a long time thing for you, so so tell us a little bit about those. Let's start with the roving naturalist. Where did that come?
Speaker 2:from. So when I decided I was going to grad school, I wasn't sure what what my job would look like like. I knew it was going to be primarily me taking classes and me doing research, and I wasn't sure how much teaching I would still be able to do. Lots of grad students do do teaching through, like TA ships or whatever, and I certainly did have opportunities like that during grad school. But before I started my master's I wasn't sure.
Speaker 2:So I promised myself I was not going to give up informal education, because I really do love it and I really do think that like learning while you're having fun, or I call it like guerrilla teaching, right, they're like, oh, we're playing a tag game, but like you all are ostensibly like aquatic macro invertebrates at the same time, so you're going to learn something about stream ecology while we play tag, right, like that's a much better, more fun, more effective way to learn than like sitting in a classroom being lectured at and again, the social science like bears that out. People almost everybody learns better through active learning, whether it's like hands-on stuff or just like being engaged through discussions or activities. So I really wanted to sort of keep doing informal ed, even as I like sort of pivoted into this research career. So, as makes perfect sense, at the same time that I started my master's degree, I also started a YouTube gym, and the Roving Naturalist was my attempt to answer all the questions you never knew you had about how humans and the environment interact, and it was really a great outlet for me to like explore literature and concepts that weren't what I was doing during my like job Right, so like I was looking at dung beetles in this tall grass prairie for three years during my master's, which was amazing, but like that was just one topic.
Speaker 2:But on the Roving Naturalist, I talked about all kinds of ecological concepts. I talked about making your backyard a habitat. I read the social science literature about things like the deficit model and groups of belonging and the pedagogy behind science communication. So, yeah, it was really an opportunity for me to like do these deep dives and then continue practicing in a new medium, sharing those things with other people. And the roving naturalist is like primarily talking head videos and does sort of fall into the deficit model a bit because it is me talking at the audience, but I was really excited by the idea of using YouTube because people think I'm crazy when I say this, because there's a comment section which
Speaker 2:is wild, because everybody has said since the inception of the internet don't read the comment section, right, right, teaching is an interaction for me.
Speaker 2:Right, teaching is a two way process, and so I was really excited that. Oh yeah, like, youtube videos is a way that I could be doing science communication and my audience can give me feedback, they can ask me questions, they can contribute their own thoughts on the topic. Right, because that's always the way I've taught. When I was doing live animal presentations to like groups of elementary school kids, I didn't start by telling them about the animal, I brought it out and I asked them what they noticed about it or what they knew about it, because everyone is smarter than we give them credit for. So, like, I really believe that teaching and learning is a two way interaction because we can always learn something from one another. So, yeah, I was really excited about the comments section because that would give me a way to organically interact with the audience beyond the content of the video that I was presenting, which the video itself is a one-way teaching interaction right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so I like deep dove into like social media and created a Twitter account and an Instagram and made all these videos and went to VidCon several years in a row and like all of this crazy stuff and like I don't know. Chasing numbers in online content creation is rough, but I was having so much fun that didn't. I mean, of course it mattered, but it didn't like hurt. Right, I am never going to like break even on that project, but it's just been so much fun. And I did an interview series on the channel called Explain Yourself where I would interview early career scientists, usually at like academic conferences, and for many of them I was their first time ever being interviewed.
Speaker 2:But it was just so much fun to learn about these people and their journeys through science and the research they're doing and to give them an opportunity to practice talking about it to a non-professional scientist audience. So, yeah, I just the Riving Naturalist has been a blast. I speak about it kind of in the past tense because while it is still live online, I haven't made content for it in a few years. Because running two science communication projects and finishing a PhD during COVID and like trying to become like a full-fledged researcher is like a lot.
Speaker 1:Kind of a lot, yeah, yeah, it's kind of a lot. Yeah, wow, yeah. And you make a really interesting point with some of these things that there are so many fascinating people out there with just incredible work that nobody is from and like maybe they've published a thousand papers but like that's still something that is it's paywalled, it's whatever, something that is it's paywalled, it's whatever. And so I don't know, I guess, platforming people who have such a cool story to tell, and usually, I think oftentimes, something I've found is that they're so much better at it than they think they're going to be. Oh, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm like, well, okay, but you did great, like it's.
Speaker 2:That's such just a cool feeling on this side of it, on the creation side of it well, and I love to use the word platforming because, like running a podcast or running a youtube channel, like there was a financial investment and there's this like infrastructure or logistics. Right, like I run the channel, I bought the equipment, I learned how to use the equipment, all that stuff, and like that is such a huge barrier to entry to be able to communicate your science broadly that I was like well, I already did all that work.
Speaker 2:Now I will make this platform available to other people so they can come on and use my platform to disseminate what they know, but without that huge barrier to entry of having to buy all the stuff and learn how to run a youtube channel yeah, which is a lot of work.
Speaker 1:Like that's not easy. I like, I'll be honest, I'm still a little scared of YouTube. Like if I had my stuff together a little bit more, I would do more YouTube. I've just gotten so into the short form. Well, the podcast is not short, but like on the video side, the short form stuff that I'm like what do you mean?
Speaker 2:I have to write a script like what do you mean? That's like I can't just my phone up and talk. That's funny because, like you do a great job with that short form stuff, but like short form, when it like first blew up and became a thing, I was like do I want to pivot to that?
Speaker 2:because making long form and short form content are so different so different so when I was an English major, I had a prof say that, like, when you're writing a novel, you have to like, focus on every paragraph, right, and when you're writing a short story, you focus on every sentence, and when you're writing a poem you focus on every word, and so, like if a short form video is to me very much like a poem or maybe a short story, where, like, you have to have everything like really dialed in order to like get the right message across in the right way, whereas, like in a four to eight minute video, you have more time to explain what you're trying to say. So, yeah, the short form stuff kind of scares me.
Speaker 1:So yeah, the short form stuff kind of scares me. Can I just tell you, that whole description explanation you just gave for me is such a powerful encapsulation of why scientists need to study the humanities, because and I say that in all seriousness a dead serious like because we have to think about the way we approach things right, and the parallel between a short form video and a poem is so good, so good, yeah, anyway.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all scientists should have to take more humanities classes than they do, and they should have to take them more seriously than they do.
Speaker 2:I've seen them in the gen ed courses, yeah, like I mean I was an English major and it's like kind of a meme in society and even in my personal story. But like that trained me so well to be good at so many other things Right, like learning how to critically read literature made me really good at reading papers, and like critically listening to presentations and having to write so many papers made me really good at writing. My master's advisor said part of the reason he was so quick to accept me into his lab is because he realized he wouldn't have to teach me how to write yeah, I was very flattered to hear.
Speaker 2:But like, yeah, the humanities teach those kind of skills critical reading, critical writing and also teach empathy. And science is not objective, no matter what anybody says, everything about what we do is subjectively tied to our identities and our perspectives on the world. How I pursue answering them are entirely dependent on my identity and so, like if more scientists took humanities courses and had that more developed like front of the brain empathy, then I think a lot of what we're doing would look very different.
Speaker 1:Yeah, goodness, yes, yeah, I'm just. I was just thinking about all the great clips I'm going to get out of this episode, like you're so good.
Speaker 2:So that actually that leads well into your other project, the deficit model and groups of belonging and all of the social science literature that says just presenting information to people does not change their attitudes or behaviors. But what does? Is these groups of belonging friends Right? Like you are more likely to think similarly to the people in your neighborhood or the people you hang out with and like. If some of them start changing their behaviors, then you will too, right, and which is why we see lots of sort of like factions in our society. And all of that sort of led me to thinking about other ways of doing science communication. And then I saw a great talk by a woman at the Ecology Society conference years ago where she talked about doing science communication at her church. She was very involved with her church and she gave a guest sermon on the importance of plants in the Bible.
Speaker 2:And it was so popular with the people at her church that she was invited to give this guest sermon at lots of other local churches in the area and apparently it changed a lot of the people who listened to it because they were like, oh yeah, we are supposed to be stewards of this world and take care of all these plants and like plants are really important.
Speaker 2:And like that story really like stuck with me because I was like, oh so if you sort of stick to your group of belonging, that's a better way of doing this communication right, because people are more likely to trust you. You don't have to like work on building trust because they already know you and they know that you have things in common and stuff like that. And so I was like, well, what kind of like group of belonging do I have that I could sort of try working on? And yeah, I'm a nerd and gaming and doing it live on twitch seemed like a great way to go about it.
Speaker 2:And yeah, the storytelling aspect of tabletop role-playing games is just sort of the icing on top, because storytelling is quintessential to the human experience. Right, like for as long as we have been humans, we have been telling stories to one another. That is how we teach each other things, whether it is don't go over there, that's where the lions are, or this is how the stars work. All of those are stories, and so framing teaching as storytelling just really seemed like a good fit too. And so, yeah, wound up sort of sitting on that idea for a while and then connecting with some people on Twitter back when it was nice to be on science Twitter and developed this project. So yeah, nature Check, as makes perfect sense, was we started streaming two months before I started my PhD, because I'm really good at timing these like you do at school experience.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've been playing D&D and now branching out into other tabletop role-playing games as well and just like a bunch of scientists sitting and telling stories and talking about science when it's relevant to the plot, however tangentially that might be. But ultimately, my real goal with this wasn't even the like teaching content part, so much as the like showcasing that human, that scientists are real human beings. Because, like I hear so often, like oh, scientists are this, that or the other thing and even in science communication workshops I would hear this phrase constantly repeated scientists aren't good at telling stories. We need to teach you how, and I was like that is malarkey. I know tons of professional scientists who are great storytellers, who are super funny, who are very creative, and so nature check is my way of showcasing the humans who happen to do science for their jobs and like we're real, we're three dimensional, we're funny, we're bawdy and like ideally, that will help people trust what we have to say about our jobs because they will feel more connected to us yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:Hey, just to like encapsulate it just as a so nature check. Basically, you play dnd or another game game to again tell good stories and I have to thank you for inviting me to be part of this, because I still have like the most tenuous grip on what I'm doing and, like I before, I think before you messaged me and was like, hey, would you like to be involved. I think I had played, maybe twice, and I think I picked a cleric that had no healing spells. Yeah, yeah, I don't know what I'm doing. I have to be the healer. That's fine.
Speaker 1:Well, I certainly was not, but I've had, and it's been over a couple of years and we've because of skin I know you can't see me people, but just gesturing around it everything. We haven't gotten to do it like every month, but I have had so much fun being a part of Nature Check and the Wild Sea campaign that we're doing and I apologize and, to those of you that have listened to any of this or are familiar, I feel like I've unleashed a lot of cursed things on our campaign, like a teeth-based currency and I don't know man, yeah, poor felix.
Speaker 2:So felix is the person who's running the game for us and he's the creator of the game system. We're using the wild sea, which you should all go out and look at, because it is incredible the art in the book is gorgeous and the setting is really what caught my eye.
Speaker 2:So I I met Felix at Gen Con a few years ago. They had a Wild Sea booth where they were selling the books and they were running like one hour long one shot games with like pre-made character sheets so people could sit down and like get a feel for how the gameplay goes. And I played a session with Felix where he was one of the other players and I was just like this game is awesome and this setting is awesome and it would fit so well with nature check, but also I just want to play it anyway. And then I coerced Felix into being our game mest for the ship.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And he's so patient with us.
Speaker 1:He is so patient. I was going to say you're all very patient with me Because it's funny. He's like we'll log on and everyone's got notes and stuff and I'm like I think I'm a cactus. I don't like.
Speaker 2:I haven't taken any notes for that game.
Speaker 1:Well, maybe it's Joanna that really is very detailed with her notes. One of the people there is like, but it's been so much fun and so I'll link to some of the like. Is it so it streams, and is that mostly where nature check goes?
Speaker 2:yeah, so we? Yeah, twitch is the best place to find us. We do have a youtube channel, and you can find us on podcast platforms too. I've been calling it the deep time recordings because I think we are approximately two years behind. Oops, because editing videos and podcasts takes a while, and uploading really big, three hour long videos takes a while too. So yeah, we're. We have a bit of a backlog. Sorry, I'm working on it.
Speaker 1:But yeah, it's totally fine, I totally get it.
Speaker 2:Go to our YouTube channel or our podcast stream and find, I think, like the first 50 or so episodes of our D&D campaign, our long running D&D campaign, as well as some of our one shots, and then in the interim we've done a lot more one shots, as well as this mini campaign of the Wild Sea, and, yeah, we stream approximately two Sundays a month right now because I'm still postdocing is a weird temporary job and so I don't want to like make a whole bunch of commitments until I know where I'm landing permanently.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, sure, but it's really cool and I think because I think I was this person for a while but for those of you out there listening that are like I don't know about D&D, I don't just give it a shot, because if you like, truly like, if you like good storytelling, if you like just the I don't know psychological, mental exercise of being able to kind of get outside of what you do and think through a fun situation, um, it's so much fun, it's so much fun and I like, I thoroughly enjoy it and, again, I good at it and I come up with horrible things, like a bar called the dangling uvula and it was awful, like all the mouth, stuff, real bad.
Speaker 2:So my apologies, no, but you're not bad at it, you, I mean, you're creative if wacky, and that's like all you really need, right, like tabletop role-playing games are great because they allow us to tell stories, but because, like we were talking aboutplaying games are great because they allow us to tell stories, but because, like we were talking about before with the humanities thing, they allow us to exercise our empathy, and like emotional communication muscles. Right like you get to step into being somebody else and explore how that person might respond to situations, instead of how you would respond to them or how that person might respond to situations. So like I don't know, I know lots of it. Practice social interactions without consequences in the same way, which is like really cool. And yeah, I don't know. I mean, my favorite D&D book is the Monster Manual because it's got ties to ecology.
Speaker 2:Right, all of these monsters have a biology and an environment where they live. No-transcript. You can explore a world, and you can build and explore people too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and I think I have learned things about myself through it too, just through the self-reflection of like, how would I like, how do I want to react to a situation? How do I want to react to a situation? How do I want to react to whatever weird thing is crazy thing is happening in the storyline and I'm like okay, but should that be how I want to react? Should that be? I don't know. I think it's very like in a like, it's a fun way to introspect in some ways, and I think that's a thing more people should do, really like, and I think it allows you to like I don't know, evaluate your motivations and things like that too.
Speaker 2:It's really, it's fun and it's just fun well, and I think your character in the wild sea game, karn, is like a really good example of that, because since you're amber clad, like you have that sort of like amnesia adjacent kind of life experience, right. So like, oh, like what do you like, what do you remember or what would you think about this, or like every once in a while you get a flashback memory and like I think those are really cool opportunities to think about. Like, oh, if Karn is sort of getting to reinvent himself because he doesn't remember who he was before, like yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Well, I was looking at the time and we're over an hour and I could keep talking for quite a while longer. I'm still thinking about cover crops, shoot, but you know, I think, as we start to wind down, for one, I have thoroughly enjoyed this and I appreciate the way you approach so much of this and like, to that end, I ask all my guests if you had something to leave listeners, what would that be? What do you think is like the thing that, for you, is like foundational and pivotal and transformational, or like do you have a good cookie recipe? I don't care, whatever it is.
Speaker 2:I do like baking. No, I actually I had to do some soul searching about this recently because I was invited to give a talk at a symposium and they just wanted me to talk about myself and my journey and I was like, how do I like end this in a way that doesn't sound weird, because I'm definitely taking the scenic route and I think what I realized and what I want other people and my younger self and whoever to know is that, like, our experiences in life and the paths that we take are very much affected by the people around us. So the best thing you could possibly do for yourself is to cultivate a community around you that is going to be good for you, right, like finding supportive friends, family found family. Finding supportive friends, family found family, whatever who help you see the best you that could be and help you feel motivated to like walk that path. I think that's what I want my younger self and everyone else to know is like go look for good people to surround yourself with.
Speaker 1:That's excellent advice, very excellent advice, cheryl, where all can we find you?
Speaker 2:I know we've talked about a few of the places, but gosh yeah, so you can find me on blue sky and instagram and the other place, but I don't really check it yeah me either the roving naturalist or roving naturalist, depending on character limits, and on youtube.
Speaker 2:at the channel the roving naturalist, the logo is a yellow backpack and some hiking boots. And then you can also find me where I live on Twitch on Nature Check. The Twitch channel is Nature Check D&D, because somebody else was sitting on the Nature Check handle already, and we stream two Sundays a month at least. And you can also find Nature Check on Blue Sky and Instagram and the Other Place.
Speaker 1:So yeah, the Other Place. I like that. That's yeah, whatever, whatever we're calling it these days this week, but awesome. We'll link to all that in the description and just thank you for your time and your I don't know wisdom and perspective. I appreciate it Personally. If nothing else, I very much appreciate it. So thanks for being on. It was fun Y'all.
Speaker 1:We've been talking so much about community this season. What's really interesting is talking to Cheryl after the episode a little bit later. She didn't realize that that was sort of the theme of the season and so her advice is so timely and so great Find a community to belong to, and if someone like Dr Cheryl Hossler is in your community, you can count yourself lucky, as I do. Thanks again for listening to Plant Anthropology. You know I do this for you and I'm proud to do it. Thanks again to Texas Tech and the Department of Plant and Soil Science and the Davis College for supporting the show. Thanks to Cheryl for being a part of it and for just being my friend.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that Plant Anthropology is written, directed, hosted, produced whatever else you can think of by yours truly, vikram Baliga. Our intro music is by the award-winning composer, nick Scout. Our mid-roll music is by my buddy, rui, and if you like dad, jazz and lo-fi, you should definitely check him out. I hope you're still being kind to one another. If you have not to date been doing that, now is probably a pretty good time to start. I hope you stay safe. I hope you stay well. No-transcript.
