Opinion Science
Opinion Science
SciComm Summer #21: Joel Bervell on Short Form Video
Joel Bervell recently graduated from medical school, which is when he gained fame as an influencer helping the public navigate good medical science. He’s out there breaking down myths about medicine, particularly shining a light on racial disparities in health and treatment. He recently won a Peabody award, consults with the White House, has given interviews on various media platforms, and has given talks all over. He hosts the podcast, The Dose. And he developed an animated children’s show for YouTube ("The Doctor is In").
So, I think it’s safe to say Joel knows a thing or two about reaching people with solid science content. I was happy I could catch him in between the 30 things he’s working on to learn more about his story and how he pulls all of this off. So let’s jump right into my chat with Joel Bervell.
You can find the rest of this summer's science communication podcast series here.
For a transcript of this episode, visit this episode's page at: http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/episodes/
Learn more about Opinion Science at http://opinionsciencepodcast.com/ and follow @OpinionSciPod on Twitter.
Hello, welcome to July, and welcome back to Hot SciComm Summer. Today I'm excited to share a conversation with Joelle Bervell. Where to start? Joelle does everything. I guess first I'll mention that a few of this season's guests share something in common. Last year, I was very honored to receive an award for science communication from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and the Schmidt Foundation. And yes, it was very nice to be recognized. But the best part, honestly, was that I got to fly out to a week of workshops with the other award winners that year. And just getting to hang out with so many sharp, talented people was so inspiring. It was like why I started this podcast series in the first place. I just wanted to meet people who do this kind of work and learn from their approach. Anyhow, one of the awardees was past SciComm Summer guest Sam Jones, but two others are guests this season. Joelle, who you'll hear from today, and Alex Danis, who you'll hear from next. Next time. Next time. In any case, Joel has had really incredible success on social media, sharing social and medical science. Better to hear it from him, but essentially he's out there breaking down myths about medicine, particularly shining a light on racial disparities in health and treatment. And just to give you a taste of where this work is taking him, when I met him last December, he was getting ready to fly to Norway to attend the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony as a guest, and in the few months since then, he won a Peabody award. Not to mention his work consulting with the White House, being on TV, giving media interviews and talks all over. This all, by the way, is mostly while he's been in med school. So I think it's safe to say that Joel knows a thing or two about reaching people with solid science content. I was happy I could catch him in between the 30 things he's working on to learn more about his story and how he pulls all this off. So let's jump right into my chat with Joel Burvell. Joel Burvell Walk me through the first moment where you're like, I'm going to make a video, right? And I'm going to let the world see it. I have to imagine, I mean, the way these stories always go is like, person on a whim makes a video because it seems like a fun idea. All of a sudden... A lot of eyeballs are on it. And now there's a question of like, well, do I do this again or just kind of like bask in the moment that just happened? So where was your head at when you first started doing this? You've basically just told my
Joel Bervell:story. Now I'm joking. No, I think there's definitely an element of truth to that for everyone that gets into this space where you have a moment where you say, whoa, that blew up in a way I didn't expect. For me, that came during my first year of medical school. I had graduated from Yale for undergrad, went to grad school, and then came to Washington State University for medical school. And during my first year of medical school, halfway through, COVID hit. And I think like many other parts of the world, the world shut down for me. And most of my classes were actually online instead of in person. Unlike most of the rest of the world, we were in medical school. And so learning a lot about science and what does COVID mean in Washington state had actually been one of the first places that had the first COVID outbreak in the entire United States. And so we actually had researchers coming to our school, talking to us about it, all that kind of stuff. But I started just playing around with TikTok because I had extra time. And so that was my first platform, TikTok specifically. specifically. where my first videos were actually not about science or about communication really at all. It was just having fun with different trends that I could be a part of. And one of the first videos I made was this trend where you literally transform into something that you look like with kind of just like cut screen. And I remember I transformed into Dr. Burke from Grey's Anatomy because I'd always had people growing up kind of joke, oh, you kind of look like Dr. Burke, even though I don't at all, but people always say that. But I guess people on TikTok thought I did because the video did pretty well, got like a 100,000 views. And I'd been posting my journey to get to medical school on Instagram, and I'd never gotten that many views on anything. And so for me, it was this moment where I said, whoa, there's a whole new audience here on TikTok, where one, people are really friendly. Two, they like engaging with science content to some degree. And at least in this case, it was medical content, right? And like a medical show. And I started thinking, what else can I post that would actually be informative? I think I'd always had this kind of idea of social media. And I hated the fact that people use it just to bring And I was always like, how can you actually teach something really interesting on social media? And so I started off with actually talking about my journey into medicine. scholarships. So for the first part of it, actually, I was a scholarship guy. But really what ended up changing it was at the start of my second year of medical school. So this is about the end of the first semester of my second year. So in December 2020, I was home during COVID. And I remember I came across this article that someone had posted on Instagram on their story. And it was from the New England Journal of Medicine. And it was essentially talking about how these devices that we put on our fingers called a pulse oximeter don't work well in darker skin tones. In fact, people with darker skin tones are three times as likely to have inaccurate, overestimated oxygen saturation levels when compared to people that don't have melanated skin. I remember seeing this thinking, this can't be true. I've just finished my pulmonology unit. I finished my cardiology unit. We would have learned about it somewhere there. But I went, read the full study, did a deep dive, found that there were so many other studies that existed, literally stretching back until the 90s, that showed that this was true, but for some reason we weren't being taught it. And so I did what any Gen Z slash millennial would do. I jumped on TikTok and made what I could only do at that time, which was a 30-second video about pulse oximeters. And I started off by saying, What does racial bias in medicine look like? And literally within 24 hours, that video had over half a million views. And I think I was shocked by the response of so many people being interested in a piece of content that I found interesting, which was about science, and really communicating that piece of science to the general masses. I think part of the reason why it did so well was one, There's a lot of doctors and nurses on TikTok at that time. Two, people were thinking about COVID and how they could protect their families. And three, the FDA was telling people to bring these devices home. and buy them to be able to check if they were hypoxic or had low oxygen levels. Yet, they were not also at the same time talking about the fact that skin tone could be an actual confounder within that. And so that became my first racial bias in medicine series, and I ended up starting to post a ton of videos about things that I wasn't learning in medical school that were related to science, that were kind of on this cutting edge of what does health equity look like in the United States. Thinking about how race, gender, socioeconomic status, all are indicators of the care that we receive in the United States and how we should actually maybe be rethinking that and actually doing it in different ways. So that kind of became my platform over the next few years and now it's been five years of doing it.
Andy Luttrell:You didn't have to do it though, right? That video could have blown up and you could have been like, whoa, what a wild ride. And I'm going to go back to studying. But instead, you took the bait and ran with it. And the gamble worked out in the long term, it seems like. But why do another one, right? You were faced with a choice. Keep doing this or just like... be bewildered by the virality of that one video.
Joel Bervell:Yeah. I remember I ran to my sister's room after I posted that video and it got pretty viral. And I asked her, Rachel, did you know about this? Had you ever learned about it when you were in medical school? She's a physician as well. And she said, no, but do you know about this? And we ended up starting creating a whole list of these biases that exist. I think for me, the reason why I felt like I had to do it was no one else was doing it. These were all things that my sister or I had experienced that had real world impacts on patients' lives, whether it was literally life or death, impacting if someone gets a kidney transplant, impacting whether someone has a vaginal birth or a C-section. And so these were all things that we had experienced and asked ourselves, why do we do it like this? But for some reason, no one was using social media specifically to discuss it. And so I always have this actually saying that I say all the time that even before I started social media, if not now, when? If not me, who? And I realized no one else was doing this. I felt like I was positioned in this perfect place being a black medical student that's going through the COVID pandemic to talk a lot about these racial issues. There's a racial reckoning going on. And I knew that I have the interest and also the background to be able to do it where I studied microbiology in college, but I also took a ton of classes that were at the intersection of bioethics and law or even media and medicine. And so it didn't even feel hard to me. I know this sounds weird to say, but it didn't feel hard. It felt like I was able to share things that I'd been talking about all the time with my friends just on a platform that actually reached a lot more people and bringing a lot more individuals into this conversation. So into the question of why did I do it? It was really because no one else was doing it. And I felt like this was something that I wanted to create for my mom, my sister, my brother, my dad, that no one else was putting out there.
Andy Luttrell:So you mentioned a perspective that you bring to it. I'm also curious, like in terms of the things you're good at, just like you, the unique person who's I think I saw maybe you did debate in high school and you did these other things. Like there's a version where I go like, oh, you sort of found yourself like, oh, not only do I like have the know-how side of it, but I also like, I know how to actually do this. Like I know how to like be engaging. I know how to like churn through raw material and create communication out of it. Yeah. Is that right? Did you feel like, like in what ways were you kind of ready to go? Like, you know, luck favors those who are prepared. Yeah. What are the skills that you brought to the table at that early stage?
Joel Bervell:Yeah, it's funny because I actually had this conversation with my mom. When everything was taking off and I had been invited to the White House, it was on the Kelly Clarkson show and all these crazy things that were happening. And my mom was like, You know, everything you've done has kind of led you to this moment. And so she started bringing up the things. And so you mentioned speech and debate. That was one thing that I did speech and debate all four years. I was a state champion in Congress, which is like a specific type of debate where you literally get up and debate affirmative or negative bills. And what's so funny is like a lot of the work I do online is talking about policy and how does policy relate to health care. And so a lot of like I didn't know what Medicaid was like when I first started debate. But by the end of my four years, I knew what it was because we were debating about where we should be expanding Medicaid policy like a lot of the conversations that I'd had in high school early on even before college were things I was bringing up again on my social media but now connecting it to this larger conversation of medicine policy and like where we were in those like in the COVID pandemic and so yeah I think speech and debate so like public speaking was one skill I knew I brought I think music is actually another one that I thought about because the fact that like TikTok ran a lot on like sounds and And I've played piano literally since I was three years old. I play saxophone. I also play clarinet. And I think it's funny because sometimes I'll see people post things. I'll be like, that sound doesn't make sense for that video. And I think it's this ability to be able to say, where does the sound match with this? What's the tone that I want to go for? Do I want this to be more somber? Do I even want to not use any music? And then there's the idea of music itself. The whole TikTok platform runs on trends. And so if you can understand a trend from a piece of music... Or if you start a trend from a piece of music, that's how you grow, right? You build something from this unique perspective of community. So speech and debate, music, I think even videography. I grew up taking photos. My dad actually came from Ghana, West Africa. And the way he even came to the United States in the first place was through photography. He took photos at weddings and would actually use that to pay to get to the United States. When my brother and I were growing up, our first business was we would actually go to weddings, take photos, and this was like in the Ghanaian community, take photos, bring our own like photography set thing and print out the photos right there and sell it back to them. But we also-
Andy Luttrell:Like you're on a ride at Disneyland where
Joel Bervell:they're taking- set up the whole background we would put on green screens we would make like all these designs we ended up going into videography too where we like be filming the whole thing as well so we would edit afterwards we'd have to cut we'd have to figure out ways to make it unique put the music in the background and i was doing this as a fifth grader right and so even looking back all the way at that point it was like okay i even did videography and like in my school like when all my clubs i was the guy that was always like how could we make this like cool uh in shot i don't I was cool like video with this or how do I use iMovie to make something really cool? And so I was in student government and made a lot of videos and a lot of different like PowerPoints, all things that I think go very much hand in hand with production skills that are now used on social media. And the cool thing about social media is now you can do it all from just a phone, right? Whereas before I had my DSLR or I had like my iMovie and my dad taught me a lot how to use all of these things because even growing up, he would actually, I haven't thought about this in a long time, but we would do like these annual Christmas, like mini videos, you know, where, or mini like TV series type things where he would like throughout the entire day, go around filming us on Christmas and then like produce a video. And my brother and I would help him with it. So all those things were things that I still use today in terms of the basic skills of videography and photography and understanding how do you make something visually appealing, but also making it interesting when it comes to music and sound. But then, of course, the most important part is that voice that comes through and being able to make a strong argument no matter what that is.
Andy Luttrell:That's great. And I feel like that is a lot of the story. People who kind of go down this road... It's not a grand surprise, right? Like in talking to people for this series, there's always something where it's like, yeah, but like before I even cared about science, I was doing, I was making this or I was doing that or I was interested in this. The other part though about like social media success or really like the next stage of any of this is getting eyeballs on it, right? Like there's a whole other part of the process, which is like, where are the people coming from? And in some ways these platforms are nice because they're sort of built for discovery, at least that's what they say. but you probably had to navigate that part of it as like an alternate side. So I'm curious, like how deliberate were you about kind of taking this and building it into a thing as opposed to just being like, I'm going to make my stuff and I'm not even going to pay attention. I imagine you're somewhere in between, but like how did you juggle that side of the equation? I
Joel Bervell:was pretty deliberate actually. Like I knew that I wanted to create content for a purpose. And so I wanted that purpose to reach a specific community. One of my friends, as I mentioned, I'd kind of been using Instagram all throughout college to like document my journey as a pre-med student and I think it actually had a lot of negative perceptions towards it because you know like when you're first getting started out everyone's like what are you trying to do you're trying to be an influencer all this kind of stuff one of my best friends his name is Joe English we he hates social media he's off of everything right and so we had this long conversation about like and he asked me this question of like who are you trying to reach what's your purpose with social media and this was probably when I was a sophomore in sophomore, maybe junior in college. And I remember it really, I thought about that for a long time. And so when things started taking off on TikTok, that was part of the reason why I switched from just doing like kind of fun content to doing more serious content. Because I wanted to say, even if it doesn't bring me the most success the fastest, can it be something that I look back and say, I know why I'm doing this. I always say for anyone creating content, you can burn out really easily if you don't know what your why is. If you don't know why you're creating that content, why you're putting it forward, you're going to kind of feel nebulous and not really know what kind of content to post. And so when I posted about racial biases, I was like, I want this to be my niche. I want to talk about race and gender. I want to talk about medicine. I want to talk about the things that other people aren't discussing. I want to bring in current day events and actually have those conversations Thank you so much. Like my Instagram, I could literally see in real time how it changed from kind of in a way a younger demographic to an older demographic because I think people that are older think more about healthcare or utilizing the system more. I also realized that it was turning more female. So actually I think probably 70% of my followers on both platforms are female. I think part of the reason why is there's so many reproductive health conversations that happen that unfortunately, one, we don't get in medical school or two, there's a lot of misinformation about that. Yeah. And so I think those were the things that I was thinking about as I created this content, but it also helped me figure out what kind of content I wanted to make more of as well.
Andy Luttrell:Yeah. So that's what I'm wondering, like, what is the tangible thing you can do? So one is you can sort of look at what, what's landing and you can also like, you know, focus on making better videos, but in terms of like strategy, someone who's, let's say someone who's like, I've started to do this kind of thing. I have an idea in mind of like what it is that I'm trying to do, but like I can't seem to like find my people on the internet. Are there things that you've learned that like, oh, this actually really helped. Like once I started doing this, I could see that I was finally getting through to the audience that I was trying to reach. Yep. I think
Joel Bervell:definitely following other people that you enjoy. Like if you want to have a community, be a part of that community, right? Find those people, follow the others that are already doing it. Two, you can collaborate with those individuals. And so I think what really helped me was starting when I grew big enough, like to do collaborations with other creators who were within my niche. And so that's medicine, right? Anyone that's interested in medicine will like my niche, but also anyone that's interested in kind of health equity will also like it. And so I had a lot of fun actually finding people offline on like a different platform where they weren't big and bring them over to TikTok or bring their ideas over to TikTok. over to TikTok and maybe screenshotting their posts or stitching a post and actually saying, here's like what this person's doing. And that helped a lot with one, getting kind of having that cross collaboration of pollination and two, knowing that I'm reaching the right audience. And I think about this a lot because when I started doing more brand deals and doing ads and stuff, you can definitely tell when people are coming to your page that don't know your content, right? Or if you have a video that really blows up, like I think I had one on Instagram that got 28 million views, I could tell when it wasn't people that followed me, right? Because there's a lot of unfortunate conversations. Or you could tell the people that know your content and that don't know your content. And so I think it's really about being consistent. That's really big. And the type of content you create, you can experiment every so often, and that's important. But know that by experimenting, you're going to be attracting a different audience. The other thing I think is really important that I'm realizing I started doing about two years ago is I started telling people in my videos who I was. And so... I start off my videos by saying like, my name is Joel, the medical myth buster, and let's talk about X and Y, right? And I think as soon as I say that, so medical myth buster, it's going to be anyone that's interested in reframing the healthcare field, anyone that's interested in science by saying medical myth buster, but also people that are just curious about the world around them. And I also made sure that my bio, these are all the little things, but like my bio made sure to say who I was, medical student, doctor. I would say things like follow if you want more content like X, you know, like having all those call to actions or really important to bring people into the conversation and understand what they're getting themselves in for.
Andy Luttrell:Are you, in terms of sustaining, you mentioned consistency. Before we started recording, I talked to you about how relentless this podcast schedule is. I'm realizing you're in the same boat for this stuff, right? You've got to, as I understand it, to kind of maintain a following, kind of constantly be out there. And I'm often... alarmed at that within science media because it's all too easy to sort of veer off course and be like I just they need me to say something and so I'm going to say something and it would be alluring to sort of stray from like the integrity of giving good information and so like what are you doing like to sustain this at the quality level that is important to you like what does that process look like in terms of your process
Joel Bervell:yeah I have a couple things I'll start I'll start with what I do now and then what I learned later. Yeah, I guess one of the things that I do a lot is I have a schedule or a general schedule that I don't always follow to a T, but I'll know the type of content that I want to create. I started different types of series. That makes it so much easier. So for Black History Month, I had a history called Woke Black History, where every single day for the month of February, I posted a video about some person from history that people don't know about. And that becomes really easy because you get the formula down. You're basically telling facts. about someone else's life but you have a video about them and those videos always did really well too and so that was nice because it kind of took the pressure off of having to come up with brand new ideas at least I had like some idea of what I want to do and I have a lot of different series like that so I have the woke black history, racial bias in medicine. I have hidden medical history, you know? And so every time I have these like long kind of form that I can talk about, but then I have my one-offs, which are more like my bread and butter, which are where I really dive deep into a concept where maybe I talk about GFR and kidney functioning, how there is a racial equation in medicine or pulse oximeters, as I talked about, and what's happening today. I do updates as well. I think updates are really nice ways to be like, I can read back into old content. My old followers, I've already seen it, could be like, oh, here's an update on it. But the new followers who never even saw it are like, oh, cool, this is something I've never heard about. But he's giving me an update, which means he's been talking about it consistently. I think the other thing I realized... is i can repost content and i repost content a lot like i said i've been doing this for five years now because short form content you unfortunately it's helpful for the algorithm to post a lot um i like i'm i've literally reposted when i'm traveling i just repost and no one notices because not all your followers see those things all the time so i always try i try my best to make what's called evergreen content that's content you can post at any time doesn't matter if it's in december or march and it'll do well i can post it and so what of my other series I have is called Derm on Darker Skin and that's kind of my go-to if I really need to post something is it's like literally a seven second video where all I do is I point out what skin conditions look like on darker skin versus on lighter skin those ones always do really well I only have like 12 episodes right now but I repost those episodes all the time because people forget and it's funny because I was looking back through some of my old videos and I'd even forgotten I'd made them you know like I'd watch one I'd be like this is a good video when did I make this and so I'll be like let me take it let me repost it again and if i if i can't remember it there is zero chance someone else is gonna remember it you know and i sat there for like however many hours making it So those are all things that have been really helpful to take the stress off of having to post every single day. I think the one other thing I'll say is like some of my favorite types of videos to make are just me sitting there watching something, you know? And so that can actually work pretty well depending on what kind of niche you're in. But if there's like a science video that you just want to watch, respond to, those are super easy. Reactionary things can like take the pressure off, but it's things that you're seeing in your day-to-day all the time where you say, maybe this is something my followers would be interested in as well. I think the base of what I'm trying to say is If there's something you're interested in, your followers will most likely be interested in too. And so using that everyday content that you're seeing as things just like springboard off to have a conversation can be really helpful.
Andy Luttrell:Is it still just you or
Joel Bervell:are there any other hands in this now? policy making sure it's like the most up to date I'm getting the dates right all that kind of stuff and then I have my my kind of notes app open next to me as I'm doing the script speaking into the camera but it's still just me doing all of it but I also now have a podcast and so I have a team that helps me with that yeah so it's I kind of have a little type A so I think that's why partly I like doing it alone is because I know exactly how I want it to look like and I move fast and kind of do things very untraditionally
Andy Luttrell:so
Joel Bervell:yeah
Andy Luttrell:So yeah, so what you outlined a handful of different kinds of videos that you do, but for like, if you think of kind of like your core, how much time are you spending on one of those, right? It ends up being two minutes ballpark. I don't know what you would estimate, but like how, what is going into that final product?
Joel Bervell:Yeah. Depends on the type of video. Like I said, like if it's a shorter one, I could literally knock it out in less than 30 minutes. If it's a, if it's a Derm on darker skin, if I've already collected, what takes the most time for me is that pre. process of getting all the information and making sure that it looks good. Let's say a two-minute video that I'm making that is about some specific concept that I have to dive into research. I would say it all maybe... three and a half to four hours, but I usually try and split that up. So I'll have a day where I do all the research and I write the script. So maybe the research and script writing portion takes an hour, hour and a half, and then I go to the next phase, which is the recording. That can usually take, usually a little bit quicker, 30 minutes to an hour. And then the editing process, that usually takes about another 30 minutes to an hour, depending on how long or how much I want to add into it. So yeah, and all about four hours for a video.
Andy Luttrell:Are you sensitive to these like shifts over the day of like, are you dropping these videos at 3.43 p.m. or whatever? Like, is that part of it? Or is it just like once it's done, it's in the world? I usually like to
Joel Bervell:post in the afternoon. And I think about people that are kind of like from my background because that's why. And so this is a whole other thing to think about that. Like, I don't know if this is accurate or not. This is how I think. But like, I'm like, OK, I am someone who gets up at around like. 6 a.m. and so there's that crowd if I want to reach that crowd I could post at 6 a.m. but I usually am trying to go for the after work crowd coming home from work or maybe they're working late about to go in for the night shift so my sweet spot for posting is like 5 p.m. Pacific time because that's 5 p.m. on the West Coast where people are just getting off work it's 8 p.m. on the East Coast where people are maybe sitting at home eating dinner watching TV but they're scrolling through their phones and I've realized that that has the biggest engagement for me personally but I think that's because my audience which is mostly medical those are the times where I'm free which I know they'll be free too. And so I usually try and hold onto videos until like those times. I've heard things about like posting at noon. I just personally don't really like posting during the day. I like the beginning or the end, but that also works for my schedule where I'm usually editing beginning or end and then just posting right away.
Andy Luttrell:So you're not, you're filling out a queue of like algorithmically optimized posting times, but it's sort of ballparking
Joel Bervell:when it's done and put it out. Yeah. But I've, I've seen it work for me. And so like, I know generally I'll be like, okay, I've posted that video on like a Friday and Fridays never do well for me. Cause I think most of the people that probably follow me are like, I don't know, like out and about, you know, like either at the bars or friends. And so, or maybe if I posted earlier Sundays though, or like a great day, you know, where I can post Sunday morning, I know people are in bed scrolling like I am, you know? And so that works really well. So
Andy Luttrell:this is all like also only part of your time, right? Like you do all these other things too. So I guess on the one hand, we can just talk about like time management more generally and then get into like the bigger opportunities that have come from this stuff. But like you're making videos, you're managing an account, you're also doing podcasts or other sorts of things. But then like- you're a med student, or I don't know where you are on that road, but that's, for most people, their entire job. And so you're having to do this very difficult, demanding thing on top of another difficult and demanding thing. So one, why do you do that to yourself? And two, how do you pull it off? Someone who is interested in doing this probably is faced with kind of the overwhelm of, I don't actually have the time to do this. So what are you doing that you're able to do both of those things
Joel Bervell:yeah I always say if it had not been for COVID I definitely wouldn't have started to post videos and coming out of COVID the transition from like the virtual to like the in-person was so difficult not even because of time but because of the demands on your time right like people are expecting more of you when you don't when you're not just behind a computer screen but I think for me like there always is time if you try and find it. I think I also have to say I'm lucky, right? Where I'm single, I'm young. Yes, I'm in medical school, but I don't have to think about a family right now. And so a lot of my time where other people are going to the grocery store and cooking, it's my time to create videos, right? But I also do get up pretty early. And so I know if I have a video I'm trying to get out, I actually get up around 4 a.m. sometimes. So I graduated this past December from medical school. But up until then, I would get up at 4 a.m., work on my videos until about like six and so that would either be research or recording or usually what I would do is like I would do the research the night before and then I'd record in the morning when I woke up and so then just have it and then like edit throughout the day and like during my lunch break and then in the afternoon post that video that I want like at 5 p.m. right when I get off of work and so it was like a lot of holding on to it and like knowing that I like gonna come back to it but that really worked for me because I was like this is before any of my roommates get up okay cool I'm at work I have lunch break let me just eat while I edit super easy and then like later in the afternoon I can post if there's any editing I have to do and that's kind of the four hours there you know like the four to six is two hours maybe an hour at lunch then an hour in the afternoon and boom, like I get a video done. And then like I, go back and forth on doing like simpler videos where maybe i have like a literal um like cut out of me where i just like point to something if i really want to i can just take that put it on the background of a video that i saw during the day that i think was like really relevant write out a caption that explains it more with my thoughts post it boom done and those ones always do really well because it's like starts conversation but time management is something that i i think it's all about finding the time and like spacing it out it isn't easy and it looks different for everyone um I think it's all about finding those gaps in between and not necessarily just putting it all in one chunk, but spreading it out. And then I, of course, like I think many other creators do this too, batch create content. And so if I know I have like a day off, I'll create 12, 20 videos so that when I am too tired to post anything, I can just like use one of those and post it later.
Andy Luttrell:It seems like this kind of time management thing is another skill you bring to the table, right? Like you were running a business in fifth grade or whatever, and doing a bunch of stuff outside of your normal schoolwork. It seems like that in college, that was the case too. So in some ways, this sort of feels like just a heightened version of... just the kind of person you've always been juggling both the core responsibilities and this other stuff that you want to do.
Joel Bervell:Exactly. Yeah. And I think what's kind of funny is like, I used to do a ton of extracurriculars growing up and now I don't really do any extracurriculars, but this is my extracurricular, you know? And so I had mentioned that I was like in high, literally in middle school, my siblings actually started a nonprofit. And so that was most of my time where after school, I was spending six, seven hours after school working on this nonprofit every single day. And so don't do that anymore. Don't do student government. I'm not doing mentoring or anything like that. And so this really becomes... my new project. And so I think I've really paced a lot of that other time that I spent on extracurriculars with this. But in some ways, they're very similar in terms of even podcasting. It's talking with people that I admire or just hosting in general. From creating videos, it's the research aspect of it. It's doing an extracurricular, maybe putting together a brief or something like that. And so all very similar when it comes down to the kind of work I'm doing, but just looking at it in a different way and using a different medium to reach people. Do you ever just... Watch a movie. does that fit in all the time hey I was watching White Lotus last night I got actually so these past three weeks have been on the move I was in Montgomery Alabama for a talk then I went to Rio for Carnival that was at South by Southwest and I was giving three talks and I just got back yesterday and I was like exhausted and so what I was like I'm supposed to get like two videos done yesterday I was like not gonna happen emailed people saying hey not gonna get done sat on my couch watched White Lotus was very happy you know so happens all the time yeah I am very much self-care first. So if I need to say someone is going to wait, they will wait until I'm able to feel to my best self.
Andy Luttrell:So you teased the other stuff, right? Like all this travel and all this... that seems to have been sparked by the social media stuff. And so I think the last time when I saw you in person, you were like getting ready to fly to Norway for the Nobel Peace Prize stuff. Oh, wow. That was a long time ago. You never went to that coffee place I told you about, I assume. Oh, no. Yeah, sorry. It was so busy. I was running around, yeah. But so you did that. You're running around there. You're going to other things. You've done work for the White House and the UN. You mentioned a bunch of travel you just did in the last few weeks. And there's part of me that's like, maybe I'm just showing my age and I'm like, is this just what influencers do? Like, is this the job or it can't be right. Like, so I'm curious kind of when did that stuff start? And that's another thing that you could sort of choose. You could choose to dive in and burnouts. You could choose to sort of say, I'm not going to bother with all that stuff. That's not why I do this.
Joel Bervell:Yeah.
Andy Luttrell:But like, how, how have you sort of handled like taking those opportunities when they come and And what are they? What are these new opportunities that have flowered from this social media stuff?
Joel Bervell:Yeah. I should warn that the reason why I'm doing so much right now is I don't start residency until July. And so I joke that 2025 is my year of yes, and 2026 is going to be my year of no. So right now I'm doing absolutely everything. Next year, you will not see me out and about. I'll be in the hospital. But to answer that question, I think... really it was right when the COVID pandemic not ended but like we kind of came out of it that's when I started getting a lot of like people that had been following me online I think I had been I had maybe a following of like 200,000 on TikTok probably and then like maybe 50,000 on Instagram. For reference, now I'm at like 800,000 on TikTok and at half a million on Instagram. And then like other platforms have grown too. But I think when I came out, a lot of people that had seen me online were like, oh, this guy seems kind of cool. Can we bring him to my institution to speak? And so started doing a lot of like hospitals and speaking at hospitals about the work I was doing. That kind of grew and people started recommending me to other hospitals or their peer organizations. I had also, even just in college, done a lot of different... like conferences and nonprofits. And so I'd been a part of this thing called the Clinton Global Initiative University, CGIU, which is where college students can like propose some type of idea that would change the world. And then like you get support from the Clinton Foundation. So they had seen the things I was doing online and they said, do you want to come to CGIU as a speaker? So I got invited to that. The FDA actually invited me to come speak as well about pulse oximeters because I'd seen my video and we're like, this is interesting. How are you getting science communication across? And then it kind of started blowing up where you think about the different verticals where you can go because I'm talking about tech policy misinformation and disinformation. That reaches basically every industry. And so Google invited me for a talk, for example, and then I did South by Southwest and actually moderated like a featured panel. This was four years ago now. I think all those opportunities, people started seeing me and saying, hey, this guy's someone who can moderate a panel or can speak about science or can talk about misinformation or disinformation or talk about policy and what that looks like today. So it just started kind of snowballing. It's kind of hard for me to quantify when I think back to it because I've done so much. And sometimes I write it down and I look through and I'm like, wow, I've worked with the White House, the UN, the CDC, the Surgeon General's Office, FDA, name an institution that's related to healthcare. I've worked with them. Name an institution that's even related to tech, Google, TikTok, Meta. I've talked to all these places and now I know people within them as well. And so I think it's, one, I'd say actually it's not quite normal within the influencer world. I think there are some influencers who do who do this. But I knew that I didn't just want to be an influencer in the sense I wanted to create content. I wanted to be more like a thought leader. And so I wanted to be the lead of my field and be able to talk about these things from an authoritative position. And so I made sure that when I was taking on deals or even talking to people, I kept relationships. I am really good friends with all the people that bring me on to speak at an event. I stay in contact with them. I text them. They become friends. I think that's really important to grow your brand because There's a lot of gatekeepers. And the reason why some people go to PR agencies or go to management agencies is because those are gatekeepers that can connect you to that next stage. But if you have all the contacts, then you are able to get into these spaces. So to answer your question directly, probably not the most normal. I definitely am a weird influencer. But the sense where I feel like I love doing this stuff and being able to create things out of nothing and see where I can go from it. So you're managing this also yourself? You haven't? So I have, I am signed to an agency, but they just manage brand deals. Everything else is kind of myself, you know, and so. All the
Andy Luttrell:talks, all that stuff, it just go
Joel Bervell:into your email account. It goes to my email account. It's inbound that comes to me. And I now like, they basically, I have teams that work on negotiation, but I'm very much like, I want to be in charge. And they, once again, my type A personality, I'm like, I want to be on every email chain. I want to see every person we're talking to. If we're working with a brand, like I need a vet, like I do a lot of that. And it's because it's my personal brand and I think like some people don't start doing that till later on I'm really happy I started off early because it's made me see like what I can and can't do on my own and where I need help and where I don't need help and I think that people always ask like what's the stage where you think you need to get management or you need to get like a team and I always say when you can't do the work all yourself you So I've gotten teams to offload the things that I think I'm okay with offloading, but I still do most of the work myself, whether that's creating scripts. A lot of my friends now have other people create scripts. I don't think I'll ever do that because I know the type of content I create can't be replicated. I'm trying to bring different genres and industries together. And unless someone's really as plugged in as I am to policy, health, and tech all at the same time, they're not going to be able to create these videos and be able to talk about it in the way that I do. And so I want my authentic voice to still get out there.
Andy Luttrell:What was the first thing that you did offload to a team? Like what of those things where you're like, oh, someone else can do this part, please take it. Brand
Joel Bervell:deals. I hate negotiating. I hate being, I hate having to say that's enough money. Give me more. That was the first thing I said, you go take that on. Next thing was like scheduling stuff. And so like, car like if I'm in a city and I need a car to pick me up or even flights and things like that hate having to book flights and it takes so long and so now I just say I want a flight within this time send it to my team they deal it all I think those are the two big things script writing I like I said I like doing that it's fun for me to figure out how do I make this engaging wouldn't give that up videography is something like editing is something that a lot of my friends offload I haven't done that yet because I think my it's pretty like I'm okay with half an hour to an hour of extra work to edit if It means it's my style. I think every influencer will say they get a lot of emails saying, we can help you with making your videos more engaging. For me, my videos do well enough, and I like the kind of not... I don't want to be the most polished. I like the fact that it's not the most polished because I think it brings in a different audience of people that are just saying, oh, this is raw. This feels like new still. And I like that. But I think once you get a little bit too polished, sometimes it's like, whoa, where's this production quality coming from? And I feel like it's not unique to me. It
Andy Luttrell:does seem like there's a certain alchemy of your hand on all of those parts that once you start Farming it out. And like, you know, I get those emails too, where it's just like, yeah, but I feel for you. I know you're looking, I'm sure you're talented, but like that, there's no way that it's going to be the same thing, right? Like I do think there's a real premium on, oh, this is the person and it's their vision for what they're doing. Yeah. But unfortunately that part takes a lot of
Joel Bervell:time. Exactly. I will say like one, so one example of something that I was like, I cannot do this on my own. And so it's basically totally outsourced right now is I'm starting a digital TV show. And so it's called The Doctor Is In. And I was like, there's zero chance I'm gonna be able, I don't know how to do animation. And so I was like, definitely a team for that. I don't know how to like book out like a place to do like a green screen or to hire a camera team or even the right people are. And so about like three years ago, one of my friends would connect me with this doctor His name is Dr. Jose Mori. He runs a company called Ad Astra Media. And he asked me on our first call, what's your dream project? And I said, to build an animated TV show for the next generation. And so he's like, we can make that happen. And I'm so glad I did because going through the process with him, there's zero chance I could have done it on my own. It would have taken me an extra... five six years you know and so i think there are like things like that where i like i know i don't have the talent to find out who the best animators are or figure out how do you like do a pitch deck um or even reach out to advertisers in a way that can like actually support a project i couldn't have done any of that so that was like one of the biggest things i've outsourced and Basically, other than jumping in to help with fundraising or to help with actually posting online every so often or to actually show up for the shoot, they have a whole team that's doing all of that, which has been absolutely incredible. So that's been one thing that I'm like, oh, I can see how nice it is when you have a whole other team doing stuff, but it's nice because it's an extension of my brand, but not close enough where I have to worry about managing on the day-to-day.
Andy Luttrell:You mentioned brand deals, too, and there's a part of this there's like a money part of this of like negotiating speaker fees and negotiating brand deals. And so like, you know, there is a world where like there's a sustainable career here or, you know, there's, and so, you know, you're also at a unique position. You mentioned you're about to start residency next year or so or soon-ish. July, so a few months, yeah. So like it does to me looking in look like you're at a, crossroads as to like whether you go one way or the other or you keep on doing sort of this split venture that you're doing now how are you thinking of that in terms of like the importance of communication in sort of your future plans for yourself versus oh this is like a fun thing i'm doing for now but like ultimately i'm gonna be a doctor
Joel Bervell:yeah for me it's the latter like this sounds weird but it's like been a fun side quest in a way where it's been like whoa this is like opened up so many doors i didn't expect but my goal is always to be a has always been to be a doctor and i think that comes through in all my content that i create too it's like through It's the things I'm learning in the moment and not learning in the moment that I wish I was. And it allows me to speak to an audience in a more authentic way. And so for me, like in July, if my residency program, for example, were to say, you can't post on social media, I'd kind of be like, okay. Like I, it's been a great run. It's been fun. I'll come back to it in three to five years whenever I need to. And it'll always be there, you know, and I'll always be learning. And that's the beauty of my channel is it's, it's about the things that I'm learning that I think more people should know about. Um, and I mean, it's grown so much just over in such a quick time, but for me, the ultimate goal is to be the best doctor I can be. That's what I came into this for. That's even why I post on social media, because I think part of being a doctor is being a good communicator, um, And that's all I'm trying to do is to be a good doctor at the end of the day. And there's so many different ways to do that. Social media has been my vehicle right now. Maybe one day that'll be on TV. Maybe one day that's just in my doctor's office. That's really how I think about it.
Andy Luttrell:You've mentioned too that you've had people talk to you who want to do what you're doing. If you think about a new generation of people who are using social media, social media in the five years you've been doing this kind of work on it has already changed from A to Z. Looking forward... someone who wants to do something like what you're doing, but hasn't started yet. What's sort of the kind of advice that you give in that situation? Well, the first advice is one that
Joel Bervell:everyone hates, which is just start, right? Just post that first video. Like it can be so nerve wracking, but you have to start somewhere. And sometimes it'll blow up, sometimes it doesn't, but you don't know what's going to work until you actually start posting. The second thing I always say is find your why. And so figure out what is it that's going to drive you into creating that content. Is it because you like seeing people when they see your content? Is it that you like informing? Is it that you like entertaining? What is it about your content that's going to make people say, I like this guy, you know? And you have to like building community because if you don't like building community, it's not the place for you. This is where you're going to have tons of eyes on you at all times. And so you need to be okay with curating and managing a community. I think the other thing I'll say is like, you need to understand or like at least be a little bit interested in the ecosystem of social media. Meaning you need to understand the things that TikTok is doing and Meta is doing and like Snapchat. Snapchat's like one that people don't talk about, but they want people to make a lot of money on there, are huge creators on there, are getting a lot of good information or just sharing their daily lives, you know? And so understanding the ecosystem is really important. I think I was always super interested in social media. If I wasn't in medicine, I would have been in tech and probably been working at a social media company. My brother worked at both Twitter and at Microsoft. And I think I was like, oh, I could have actually seen myself doing that as well. But I think really understanding the ecosystem is something that helps you get an edge over other creators and understand how the algorithm works. At the end of the day, the algorithm is looking to push out specific things. If you know what it's looking for, you can actually game the system. And so I talked about in the beginning, music on TikTok, but even like specific words or hashtags or joining programs. And so I did a ton of programs. Through TikTok, it was the TikTok for Black Creatives program. For Meta, it was the We the Culture program. Threads has a program right now. Snapchat has programs. YouTube has programs. So all these are things that if you get plugged into, that's how you go from just being a... a creator that doesn't really stand out, to actually being one that's highlighted by the platform, which will then push out your content more. So that's kind of like a long-term game. But the whole idea is really understanding the system, understanding yourself and your why, and then being able to really understand what is it that you want to bring to the table that doesn't exist already or that you're going to do in a different way.
Andy Luttrell:That's great. Well... Good luck with your year of yes. All the things that come with it. It's been exciting to see the stuff that you've gotten to do and to hear about sort of like, it is remarkable that like over this whole span, the stuff that you're making is still kind of right in the pocket of the spirit of the stuff you started with, which I think is rare for like a social media story like this. So kudos on that. And thanks for taking the time to break it down. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you to Joel Breville for taking the time to talk about his work. I have to take him at his word that he takes breaks because I still don't quite know how he does it all. Check out the episode webpage for a link to Joel's website where you can learn more about all the amazing stuff that he's doing. This series on science communication is a special presentation of my podcast, Opinion Science, a show about the science of our opinions, where they come from, and how we talk about them. You can subscribe any old place where they have podcasts and be sure to check out opinionsciencepodcast.com for links to things that come up in this episode and ways to support the show. And whoever you are, I hope you're enjoying the show. And I'm hoping this summer series will reach folks with a keen interest in science communication. So please tell people about it. Post online, email a friend, make a poster and stick it to a wall. These are wild times, and I think it's more important than ever to help the world understand good science and champion its value, so let's all make an effort to get better at doing that. Okie doke, thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you next week for more SciComm Summer.
Alex Dainis:I have seen a number of platforms that have clearly started focusing on just get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And you can see the quality go down over time. And I personally would rather have a hundred science communicators who all have 50,000 followers, but we're all sort of putting out slower, better researched content than having one science influencer who has 5 million followers. My name is Alex and I make science videos.