SciComm Summer #22: Alex Dainis on Producing Online Videos

Alex Dainis is a freelance science communicator and video producer. She's been making science videos on YouTube for years, including recent work for the American Chemical Society. In 2024, she was received an Award for Excellence in Science Communications from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine and the Schmidt Foundation.

We talk about how she started down this road and decided to make it her full-time work after graduate school, including the challenges of freelancing while staying committed to high-quality content.

"Science is About How You Know" prints available here.

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.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:09

Hey everyone, welcome back to Hot SciComm Summer. This week we get to hear from Alex Danis. Alex came on my radar years ago when I started dabbling in making social psychology YouTube videos. She was pretty early on the scene using YouTube to get science to the people. She got her PhD in chemistry from Stanford in 2018 and now is a freelance science communicator and video producer. She makes her own work, helps produce videos for others, and makes videos for the American Chemical Society. Alex Thanks for having me. challenges of doing good work in a crowded media ecosystem. So let's get into it with Alex Danis. Like, what is your story? Like, how did you get here? And it's probably a longer road than we need to, like, truly unpack everything. But like, what got you into science? And then what made this version of working in science appealing to you?

SPEAKER_02: 1:38

Absolutely. So I'm trying to think of where to start that isn't the very beginning. But I've always really loved science. I've been someone who asks a lot of questions. And so, you know, high school, college, science was something that I thought was really interesting as a way to ask questions of the world. But I... could not be confined by science. And I double majored as an undergrad in both biology and film and worked in film for a couple of years after getting my degree and loved it, really enjoyed what I was doing. I was working at a small media production company but missed talking about science so I started a science YouTube channel truly as a hobby and I almost didn't start it because SciShow had started the year before and I was like oh two science YouTube channels that's one science YouTube channel too many like it doesn't need that and now we know that that's absolutely incorrect there's a whole ecosystem of them but I started a science YouTube channel truly as a hobby in 2012-2013 before I went to grad school and then went to grad school and was working in science and missed doing film and so kept the Science YouTube channel is sort of a side hobby. And long story short, thought for a very long time that I was going to have to decide between science and film. And it wasn't until really late in my graduate school career that Somebody reached out to me, a small company called MiniPCR, and asked if I made freelance videos. They had seen a video that I had made just for my own YouTube channel. They really liked it. They asked if I would make a video for them. And I had never done freelance work like this before, but I said, sure, of course I can make you a science video. And so started freelancing sort of late in grad school as a science video producer and loved it and really enjoyed it. And it was the first time that I heard of science communication as a field. I had certainly known before that that people People worked for places like Nat Geo or Discovery, but I didn't know it was something you could do sort of freelancing on your own. And so when I graduated in 2018 from grad school, I had a couple of freelance clients and I said, OK, I'm going to give myself one year. And if I can still eat and pay my rent in one year, then I'll keep doing it for another year. And about six months in, I wasn't sure that I was going to make that. But it's been six years now that I've been incredibly grateful that I haven't had to choose between science or film and I'm able to So you made your first video, you said, before grad school? Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 4:11

Is that right? Yeah. So

SPEAKER_02: 4:17

it was, it was... I believe the summer of 2012 was when I first released a science YouTube video. I had made a couple, hadn't released them. But the very true answer to this story is that I had a slightly viral lip syncing video that wound up on the front page of the Huffington Post and that was not supposed to go anywhere beyond just my friends. But somehow suddenly I had thousands of subscribers and I thought, OK, well, you're here. You want lip syncing, but I'm going to tell you about science. And so it was just just this sort of luck and happenstance that I had these videos I'd been thinking about making and suddenly I had subscribers. And so I started just talking to people on the internet about science. And again, really, it was just a hobby. I think now people look at social media and they look at YouTube and they understand that that can be a career. They understand that that can be something that can make a difference. But At the time, it was just a fun way for me to talk about the thing that I loved. And it wasn't until many years later that I realized how powerful it could be as an education tool and as something that could get the cool stuff that I loved and knew about science out to more people in the world. So I'm glad I've still been able to do it, but it was not an intention or design that I had at the beginning.

SPEAKER_01: 5:39

And you were interested in film. Had you already, like, you were sort of familiar with the tools that it took to do that, right? So you've sort of, you'd done your training. So you were prepared, like a kind of the luck, opportunity favors those who are prepared kind of a situation. Is that the case?

SPEAKER_02: 5:55

Yeah, absolutely. So I had gotten a film degree. And it was small at the time. So I did my undergrad at Brandeis. And it was the first year that they had actually opened it up to be a major again. So it was a new program. And I thought they did a great job but I was really excited that after my undergraduate degree, I was able to actually go and work at a small production company and get a lot more of that hands-on opportunity. I was an associate producer, which meant that I was doing everything from getting coffee to helping conduct interviews to doing the editing. So I really got the full range of what you can do in film and in media production. So that was, I think, very helpful that, as you said, I was able to cultivate those skills and able to sort of grow those and then was ready with them when the opportunity struck to actually merge the two into science film production.

SPEAKER_01: 6:47

Did you have to rent a camera? What were you actually using? Because this 2012, it's a different technology world. It

SPEAKER_02: 6:57

was. It was. I was very grateful and lucky that when I graduated from college, my parents had bought me a Nikon DSLR. So it's actually still sitting on the shelf behind me. I have not turned it on in forever, but there's a little camera sitting behind me that was my very first camera. And it was, I mean, now, my gosh, it was incredible at the time that it filmed in 1080. Like, that was huge, that it was 1080p. It could do, like, 24 frames per second. And it was, like, But it was that, and I had a little microphone, and then I started making them. Truly, I was just filming them in my bedroom, and I was... again, sort of very lucky that maybe six to nine months in YouTube selected me as one of their next EDU gurus, which was very kind and very exciting. And I got to go to YouTube headquarters in California and they gave us, I think it was$800 to spend at B&H. And so I bought my first lights and that was really exciting that like, okay, now I had a camera and a microphone and lights. And so just slowly slowly over the years I built those out and I've changed the bulbs multiple times but those are still the soft boxes that I used to film today or from that initial little grant from YouTube which I'm so appreciative for so yeah it was it was not like today where I didn't even have a camera I mean I had a camera phone technically but it was an old little flip phone that took the grainiest 8 pixel photo you've ever seen it was not like today where everyone has a beautiful 4k camera on their phone um And I remember, too, I was, you know, I love making videos, but I know that I am not a Hollywood level creator. DP. I'm not an amazing director of photography, but gosh, was I stretching that little Nikon to its limits. I was playing with every setting it had and trying to do all kinds of crazy lighting things and just really having fun with it in a way that I think was super valuable at a time, again, where it was just a hobby. It was just a thing I did for fun as a way to have another outlet for babbling about science to people beyond just, you know, the four people I saw every day who were like, OK, we've heard all your penguin facts, Alex. Like, you gotta you gotta get some new material.

SPEAKER_01: 9:22

Is that what it was in the beginning? It was like Penguin Facts kinds of videos? Yes.

SPEAKER_02: 9:26

Yeah, absolutely. They were two to four minute long videos. My very first one was on a brain freeze. So why do you get brain freezes? And it's your trigeminal nerve getting confused. They were very little quirky questions about the world around you. Think, why is the sky blue type of things? There was not... a lot of thought because I didn't really know at the time anything about science communication or have a real agenda behind them. It was just, here's a fun thing I learned, let me tell you about it. And I loved that and I still do some of that today, but it was a style that I think was quite popular then of just here's a cute fun fact whereas now I think as a field we think a lot more about like we want to teach you the process of science we want to humanize science and all these kinds of things I was just out here doing dishes in my apartment being like let me tell you how soap works which was fun which was very fun but very they started off as very simple videos

SPEAKER_01: 10:25

So, yeah. So how have they evolved? Like, what is different about how you approach something now? I think one of the things is that, like, you have other voices that are involved, as I understand it. And so, like, maybe you could sketch out that part of the story, too, of, like, how what you're doing now is sustained or, like, who you're producing stuff for now that's different than before. And then whether that's changed the kind of stuff that you make.

SPEAKER_02: 10:48

Absolutely. So when I started, it was really just... me alone in my apartment making videos just for myself. And they were very sort of simple. And as I progressed through graduate school and kept making videos and kept doing more communication work and more education work, I started to realize that the vocabulary that I had to move through the world, thinking about genetics and thinking about biology, had not always been translated to everybody else. You know, there were some people in my life who were very well educated and very smart, but didn't have the truly the same vocabulary to be able to tackle questions about GMOs or genetic tests in medicine or CRISPR editing or any of that kind of thing. So I started to see communication as more of a tool to be able to educate and share the stuff that I really loved with other people. And I was very lucky that around the time that I was starting to understand the power of this and starting to understand more of the ways that we could use online video to educate and make science more accessible, I started to work with other people and other organizations. And so some of the work that I do now, I'm still in. So for example, with the American Chemical Society, with the Boston Museum of Science, I write, host, and produce videos for them. And work with teams of varying sizes. So for example, at the American Chemical Society, there's a team of maybe five or six people. And so I'm very lucky that it's an incredibly collaborative team where I come with a pitch for an idea. And then as a team, we sort of shape that pitch into a story. People are helping with the editing of the story. And then I deliver final footage. And thank goodness somebody else edits and animates them together into the final video now. Versus some place like the Museum of Science, which also I have to pitch ideas to and they have feedback on, but I end up doing the majority of the editing and the producing and all of that. So there's some chunk of my clients where I'm very much still on camera, writing the stories, doing the production work. But there's another portion of my clients now. For example, I work with a series called Chemistry Shorts for the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, where I am completely behind the camera. I am helping connect the filmmakers with scientists. I'm helping drive the narratives. I'm much more an executive producer role there and get to do more of the idea generation, the thinking, the logistics of running a program. And then there's sort of an in-between where last year I produced a series for PBS Digital Studios where it was an idea that I had been pitching for five years and nobody wanted until PBS and they were excited to help me produce it. And I was directing and writing and doing research for that story, but there was another host and we were able to bring in It was a show talking about food science and how we're going to keep feeding people for the next hundred generations. So it was really fun that we got to bring in both scientists and members of different communities who have long ties to food and let them speak and let them put their ideas out there about what their communities need and how they're trying to keep their communities fed and healthy and happy for a long time to come. So I do a variety of things in the film production world, from being on camera to behind the camera. And I think I'm really lucky that I've been able to work with great teams. You know, that PBS show that I made last year, I was so, so lucky I got to work with another production company called Stemmedia, and we co-produced it. And I think they helped bring in an awesome animator and an editor and, you know, film production teams. And that, I think, is what's really fun now is that I've moved from just being myself making videos alone in my bedroom to getting to work with other people who are really passionate about the audio and the science and the film and sort of building out this community, a little bit of science communicators. So again, a long answer to a short question, but all to say that I'm very grateful that now I get to do bigger things and work with more passionate people. That's the most fun part.

SPEAKER_01: 15:00

One of the things you didn't mention it in the team, but like, I'm curious, are there people who help with the, like just getting the stuff out there and finding people? Cause I find that that's one of the things, like if you're totally independent, that's the part that sucks up a lot of time that for me is like just the most annoying part of like, I want to make the stuff and I want to like get excited about the stuff. And like, but I also don't want to do it if nobody's going to be there for it. And so like, I hate that it has to be me, but it comes down to me. So I'm curious, like, I was wondering how you'd built something of a following or a viewership and also how that's changed over time as people seek out this kind of stuff for different reasons.

SPEAKER_02: 15:43

When I first started, I was super resistant to marketing. I was very much of the, if you build it, they will come and I'm just make it good. And that's not how the internet works, right? Like you can be making the most incredible product, but if nobody knows it's there, nobody's going to be able to find it. So I, for a long time, really resisted spending any time, for example, on YouTube, on thumbnails and titles. I was like, I'm just going to put it out and it's going to be good and people will find it. And I've had to admit that that is just not how those platforms are built. you have to think about, you have to spend a lot of time on a really good thumbnail and a really good title. And I'm terrible at those things. So again, I'm very lucky, especially for the work I do with the American Chemical Society, that we have whole threads on Slack about thumbnails, about titles, about how are we going to tell people really quickly what this is and why they should care about it in the half a second it takes them to scroll. So there's definitely teamwork that goes into there. But It's hard. It's really, really hard to do that marketing. And, you know, I have been on, for example, Instagram for 10 years now, maybe. And I'm at like 30,000 Instagram followers. That is a slow, slow slope for social media. But it grows and it builds and you get a few new people and you have a video that goes viral and a couple more people come in kind of thing. And I... think for me, I have found that partnering with other organizations is the best way to do that. So, you know, if I am partnering with the American Chemical Society, we both have our own audiences, we cross promote, and then we each get some more people, you know, I cross promote almost everything I do with the Boston Museum of Science. And that way, you know, some of their followers see me and my followers see them. And it doesn't necessarily have to be transactional in that a lot of those people are clients who I'm making the videos for. But even just I try so hard now to repost whenever my friends do something great because I'm like, hey, I have a little audience like I think they would like this. Let me repost it for you. And I I actually have and this is a little behind the scenes. There's a group of us who all try and like help promote each other. And so like if I know that, you know, one of my friends has done something really cool, I'll like even if they're not there's not like a formalized group, but like there's a group of people who know that if I sending them a video yes it's because I like that video but it's also because I want the algorithm to know that I really like this video so like my friend Molly like I'll send my friend Molly videos that like sure she might be interested in this video about science but she also knows that like I'm sending it to her to tell the platform that like I like this and so like I can't I can only like it once and I can only comment on it once but then I can also send it to five people and that tells the platform that I like it so I it's it's hard to do it as the person and I know that because I've been doing it for so long so this is like the flip side of that that whenever I see somebody doing something cool I will like share it to five friends I know and comment on it and like it and all of those kinds of things because it's so hard right it's so hard to promote your own stuff online because there are I forget what the number is but it is something like you know 20,000 hours of content being uploaded to YouTube every hour or something like it's an overwhelming number and so whenever I see something good I try as the viewer to be like I like it I I share it. I comment on it. Like, I'll subscribe to your channel. I'll watch it through. Sometimes, too, if a friend puts up a video I really like, I'll just let it run in the background. Like, even if I've already watched it, I'm like, ooh, it came up on my feed again. I'm going to click on it to show the algorithm that it's worth clicking on and then, well, I've already watched it, so I'm just going to let it play and mute in the background. So, I think this is also my strategy is karma. It's just like, I try and share things I really like and I hope that happens back to me because it is It is a tough, tough problem.

SPEAKER_01: 19:45

It seems especially tricky in science. I feel like people who are drawn to science, almost by their nature, are not... the folks who want to be doing this kind of promotional stuff. And when you see someone who is doing a lot of it, you go, well, what's going on there? The concern, though, is the people who are really good and all they want is views are not the people I'm the most stoked about being the voice of science for the public. And so it's this push and pull that I have not cracked the code of, what do we do about it? How can we get... on good science being promoted by good actors while also not like undermining the kind of just like do good work ethos that good science really thrives on?

SPEAKER_02: 20:34

Yeah, I think it's super hard because all of these platforms that I work on are very algorithm driven and they are not driven to support well-researched and long-term production time pieces, right? They are built to support someone who can put up a snappy 60-second video once a day. And that's not how I think is the best strategy for making science content. Sometimes you need a lot of research. Sometimes it takes a long, long time to put together a good science video. And I absolutely agree with you. I think that 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 there is a platform that I saw recently where I've just been so curious Mm-hmm. One of my fears when I see these platforms growing is what, you know, I can't prove that all these scripts are now AI-written, but I think I have pretty good evidence that this was not a well-researched video and that if a human had seen this, they would have realized that this was a poor translation moment happening. But I... I do think that sometimes people fall into that trap of, I have to get bigger. I have to use tips and tricks and all these kinds of things to feed the algorithm, to grow the platform, to get bigger. And I personally would rather have 100 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. Mm-hmm. I don't think I want 5 million followers. I don't think I want to be that giant platform. I would much rather have a bunch of us who are all smaller and doing good work and adding to this collectively and helping each other and building this community of trusted scientists that the audience can look at versus just the one or two giant platform people who love that promotion and love those numbers and... I just don't know how you sustain quality without a huge team at those sizes. And maybe, you know, some people do then build out a huge team and that's great. But I think it's hard.

SPEAKER_01: 24:04

That's what I was thinking. SciShow is actually a good example of this, or Veritasium, who are huge, but also I feel pretty good that they're doing the work, but they've assembled a team of people. I wonder if there's room for something like a network kind of a thing, where it's like you assemble people, so there's no pressure to produce every day, but a channel is producing very frequently, and And so like that brings in the revenue that can get disseminated to the creators and give everyone space to actually like hunker down and like do good work. Because yeah, I don't see any way that you could do that as an individual. No,

SPEAKER_02: 24:45

no, it's hard. And that's why, I mean, I think there are some platforms like that. So Nebula is one that comes to mind that I am not a part of, but I know a number of people who are, which is sort of a creator driven educational platform that's, I believe I believe they help with sponsorships. I think there might be or have been at some point in time, like a revenue sharing kind of model. But it is sort of that thing where they've assembled a bunch of education broadly, I don't think it's specifically science, people together who are all sort of under this one network and trying to produce. But even that, I mean, I think they all do great work, but it's not... nobody's flipping on like you know we're flipping from Fox and ABC and NBC you know channels four five and six or whatever up to seven which is then like the science content creators channel like I think it's I think it's tough

SPEAKER_01: 25:39

and it's also a reason why maybe network is not quite the way to put it like there's yeah what's I show in and others have done is like it is its own brand like I know what I'm getting even though it's like a big team doing it right and the only way you kind of sustain quality is to have that team so something like that. We need to do more of that. Yes, yes. I just am willing it to the world to happen. I was curious, too, about the American Chemical Society. Is that what it is that you do stuff for? They seem to be particularly clued in to the importance of public outreach, and I'm curious to know a little bit more about them and sort of how they support folks like you, because it seems like something that more professional societies should consider doing. They seem like a very good example of how to do this in a good way.

SPEAKER_02: 26:23

Yeah, so I can only speak to the YouTube channel. So they have a number of different sort of communication platforms. They have the C&EN magazine. They have their own sort of branded American Chemical Society sort of headline news channel. But I work on the Reactions channel, which started 10, 12, 15 years ago now at this point. And I've been working with them for the past four years. And it really is... a cool group of people who are just thinking about what are interesting science stories we can bring to the public. And often, how can we talk a little bit about the process of science in there too? And I am just an independent contractor for them. So I don't get a lot of the behind the scenes intricacies of how it works within ACS proper. But I'm a contractor, the other host is a contractor, and we get to come in and work with the employees of the ACS to make these videos. And again, it's a very collaborative sort of pitching process of we bring in ideas, there's a back and forth of not just what is the actual science behind the idea but what can we show and how can we show the process of science in doing this and we do think really deeply and I think especially over the past couple years have thought really deeply about that secondary level of not just communicating the science but specifically communicating the how the why all of those other parts of science that I think we intrinsically know as people working in this space but that is not always translated because so much of science media just talks about the end end point, right? This study came out and found X. We do have a focus more on how did we get here? And what is the history of this literature? And these two scientists absolutely disagree on the back and forth of this topic. So it is interesting. And I again, the channel has been around for much longer than I've been a part of it. So I don't have a lot of specifics on the background of it. But I've been really pleased to be a part of a team that Thank you. They have allowed this team to grow something that's over half a million subscribers now that are dedicated fans that want to watch this content they're putting out. So I do think it has been a really valuable thing that they have developed. But yeah, I do wish I knew a little bit more about its founding because I just got to come along when it was really rolling and get to contribute to it. But it is an interesting thing for them to have been like, hey, we're going to make 10 years ago A YouTube channel. Like, why would you do that? I'm so glad they did. And I think they've been very successful with it. But yeah, why? Why would you do that? And now I just come in at the point. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I've just luckily been able to come in at the point where they're like, yes, this is a good idea. And we have data to show it and like, cool, awesome. But I do wonder if that was a hard sell at the beginning.

SPEAKER_01: 29:37

Probably. Well, and it probably grew naturally. And thank goodness for the people who just sort of like didn't give up on it. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So you mentioned there are two directions I want to go. One, I think I'll run with, which is to stick with the audience part of it. And I wonder, you know, like it's kind of remarkable that an institution like that has garnered a following like that on YouTube. And it just kind of raises this question of like, who is this content for? Like, who are we trying to reach? Who are we actually reaching that maybe is not everyone that we're trying to reach? And I'm just curious, how do you think about when you're creating stuff, who is it for? And when you're trying to find viewers, who are you trying to find?

SPEAKER_02: 30:21

Yeah, that is very different project to project. So there are some projects I work on that are very... easy to figure out who the audience is. So, for example, I do a lot of work with still my very first freelance client, a company called Mini PCR Bio. They make educational curriculum and supplies for classrooms. And so that is great. It's like, who is our audience? Our audience is teachers. They are probably high school biology or AP bio teachers. We know exactly what they need in their content. And so it makes it so easy to be like, you want these three things? We can give you these three things. Like, here's how much it going to, you know, cost you in your time of prep setup. We're going to tell you a little bit about what your students will learn. Like, it makes crafting the videos so easy. But then there are other projects I work on, for example, the Museum of Science in Boston, that is much more broad, right? They are trying to spark awe and wonder in an audience that could include anybody, right? Could include anybody scrolling through your feed. And that is a much harder audience to create content for. Because when I think about audience, I think a lot about what I can assume that they are bringing to that conversation and what I cannot assume that they're bringing to that conversation. So in the example of high school biology teachers, I can assume they're bringing a background in biology. I can assume they're bringing needs that are, how are we going to translate these topics to our students? I can talk directly to that. But for a more public general audience, I can't assume that they know what DNA is. I can't assume that they know what a cell is. So I'm going to have to take time to explain all those things so that they can come along So thinking about that audience for– and those are really sort of two extremes of a very narrow specific audience and a very broad audience. But as much as I can at the beginning of a project, talk to the client, talk to the team about who that audience is, I think the better the product can be. Yeah. And sometimes that changes over the course of a project. So for example, for these Chemistry Shorts videos, we really started off thinking a lot about teachers and students as our audience. And we do have an audience that includes teachers and students. But as these videos started to get bigger and they started to go more broad, we started to see that actually we were getting a little bit more of the public than we thought we might have at the beginning. So, okay, now we have to make different assumptions of the information they're bringing. We have to give different background. We have to really think a little bit more Yeah. And then, for example, for the American Chemical Society, we know that we have an audience that thinks really deeply about chemistry. And they are going to have 25 different papers that were their favorite papers that we didn't cover in the study. And we play with that a little bit, right? We dive really, really deep and we try and find those things. But then even at the end of a recent video, I was like, look, I didn't get to your favorite paper. Leave it down below, right? Because I know that you are that super excited chemistry person. who has thought about this so deeply and you are on this journey with me. So I probably don't need to describe to you what an amino acid is, but I do need to respond to the fact that you're right. I did not talk about your favorite paper on the quantum theory of this. But I think that that sort of play with our audience specifically on that channel has done really well that they feel challenged talked to. They feel in conversation with us. Our producers do a great job of responding to a lot of the comments, so it does feel like a conversation. And there was a video that It wasn't one of my videos. It was one of the videos that the other host, George, took that was a direct response to a viewer email that the viewer wrote in and was like, hey, my coworker says this thing that trees are actually worse for the environment in cities than it would be if we had no trees. And so George did this entire deep dive on this and started off the video with like, hi, viewer, Andrew, like you brought this to us. So we dove deep into it kind of thing. So I think it is just a worthwhile conversation at the beginning of any piece of media to really, really think about for this specific piece of media, who is your audience? What do they already bring to this conversation? What are you gonna have to provide to them? And why are you talking to them? I think a lot too about the goal of every piece of media. And I think that ties in directly to the audience that your goal could be to teach, or it could be to challenge an assumption, or it could be to ask a question, or it could be to make an advertisement. Like your goal for every piece of media you're creating is very different. But I think it's so important to think of that goal in the context of your audience upfront before you ever put pen to paper. Because it just makes the process easier and so much more streamlined.

SPEAKER_01: 35:31

Yeah. So I think all of that, as well as sort of the kind of focus that you started to take is relevant to sort of the other direction I was going to go a second ago, which is the fluoride video, which, you know, I asked you to nominate something that we could talk about more concretely. But I truly, you know, speaking of your SciComm Illuminati trying to lift everybody up on these platforms, I saw that video and like I was two distractions away from doing exactly what you talked about because I was like so excited about this fluoride video. I thought there were so many things that you did Yeah, so...

SPEAKER_02: 36:36

This is a video I made for the American Chemical Society that came out in January. And it came about because a couple months before that, sort of October, November, December of last year, community water fluoridation was coming up more and more in the media, partially because of RFK Jr.''s potential nomination and also partially because there were a couple of communities who were gaining some notoriety about having community town halls around whether or not they wanted to keep water. water fluoridation in their cities. And I, at first, just looked at these and was like, oh, yeah, well, fluoride is great. We should just keep fluoride, whatever. And I realized that I had that response and thought, well, okay, but I haven't actually thought about fluoride deeply ever. You know, I've seen a couple news articles here and there. I know my dentist says it's good for me. General scientific consensus is it's good. But I have absolutely just taken that at the sort of, well, science thinks it's fine, and so I'm just going to believe that, which certainly I think is good for a number of things. But I thought, OK, well, I'm a science communicator. It is my job to dig into these kinds of things. What if I take one of these assumptions, truly an assumption that I have, that this is good and it seems like the science holds that up? But a lot of people disagree about this. A lot of people really... think that for one reason or another, we shouldn't be doing community water fluoridation. And why? And why don't I give them the same respect that i ask people who disagree with me to give me when i try and argue my case and so i wanted to and i pitched this to the american chemical society that i was like okay i'm gonna tell you my bias up front that i think water fluoridation is good but i want to deep dive into both sides of the research and try and put my biases aside as any good scientist should and really really consider if i still hold this position And incredibly, the American Chemical Society was like, yeah, go for it. And they let me for almost two months just read everything I could and interview scientists and dive into these news stories and just try and get as much information as I could about fluoride and chronicle that process. And use it as a way to show people of, hey, this is a topic that I want to be informed about. And I want to know when I sit at a dinner party and say, I think that this is a good thing, why I hold that and be able to really understand both sides of the conversation and come out of it. And I really was open to changing my mind. I really tried to put myself into a mindset where I was like, you know, if I read all this research and I come out on the other side and think community water fluoridation isn't good, I want to be able to say that. I And be open to changing that opinion. feels like the right thing to continue doing. But there are places where I think we should consider that have really high levels of fluoride from the groundwater. Maybe we should consider pulling it back to the recommended levels. We should do deeper studies about this in the US because most of the data is not coming from here, is not coming from our communities and relevant water conditions. And so it was... Truly a process of me exploring this literature, trying to, for myself... understand where i really sat on this research but also use that as a demonstration to other people of what we mean in science when we say we're doing our own research and we are diving deep into this it is not just doing a google search it is spending weeks and weeks you know thinking about this and reading so much and doing all this and i did also try and make a point at the end that like I don't expect everybody to do this. Not everybody has a job where you get paid to do this. And this is one topic. I can't possibly do this for every topic out there. And so trying again to instill a little bit of trust in experts as well of like, I'm not going to be the expert on everything. You shouldn't look at me on everything. But like, if somebody is saying, hey, I have spent two decades of my life studying fluoride, and this is where I stand. giving them a little bit of credence that they might know a bit more than the 30-second Google search. But I'd also love to hear if you think I did that.

SPEAKER_01: 41:31

No, that was what was so exciting, right? It was like, uh-huh. it was just like an illustration of what it means to chase a question through science, right? And kind of modeling that. And like you have particular skills that allow you to parse all of those papers, right? And so it's not like a how-to, but it is just sort of like a demonstration. I think sort of in thinking about it, even again right now, it was sort of an opportunity to show like, what do we mean when we say we don't know, right? Like it doesn't mean we haven't tried. It doesn't mean that like, it's two sides that are awash. It just means that like, it's really complicated and maybe it's not even complicated, but we just don't have the right kind of data to answer your specific question, right? You shouldn't think of science as like, oh, we have this book about how the whole universe works perfectly. It's on page 53. We don't. We don't have that. So the best you can do is sort of go with what you have and open up new questions. That's also what you're modeling. It's like doing science is not answering questions. It's finding out what your question actually is.

SPEAKER_02: 42:39

It's funny, I think there's a print that might go up on my wall soon that talks about just that concept that science is how we know, not what we know.

SPEAKER_01: 42:48

Yeah, you're speaking right to my heart. So I will say one thing that when I rewatched the video the other day, there was a choice that I saw that you could have made but didn't. And I don't know if it was deliberate or just it didn't come up. There was a lot. You did a lot for this video. But what I didn't see were... I didn't hear voices other than your own, like literally voices other than your own. And I thought like one of the ways you could have done a story like this would actually be like talking to people and sort of getting their sense of like this or that, right? Like you were very much showing like your journey through a pile of papers. And so I'm curious, like, Is that just sort of like the train you ended up boarding and that's why you ended up there? Or was there like a real moment where you thought, no, this is a video about me trying to learn based on what's already out there?

SPEAKER_02: 43:41

We did talk about that. So I did conduct a couple of interviews with people sort of on both sides of this debate. So researchers who have spent a lot of time thinking about fluoride and water. And those were recorded interviews. We did not include them honestly, mostly for time. So the original cut of this video without those interviews included was 22 minutes long. And so we knew it would be really hard to sustain an audience on this topic for 22 minutes. And that was before we added those people in. So we ended up then cutting that video down to 14 minutes. So of the original script, which was Thousands of words. We cut that. Then I filmed it. It was 22 minutes. And then we cut a third, a whole third of the video to get it down to something that felt like it would be in the watchable range. So it was truly a... a decision of how do we keep this story streamlined in a way that is going to keep people watching. Because one of the things that we, I'm going to peel back again, the door a little bit here, peel back the curtain. We think a lot about the analytics on the videos for that channel. We have specific meetings where one of our producers does an analysis based on some of the data from YouTube of exactly where people are leaving. And so we're able to see the kinds of things that cause people to leave a video. and it's a little disheartening sometimes that just like transition words if you tell someone like i just told you a so now i'm gonna tell you b people are like oh i'm watching a video i could be folding laundry and they leave right like little things like that and so we do i think it's important you know if we want to get a message across people have to watch it and so sometimes there's stuff like that that there were so many other things i wanted to put in this video and so many other so many other avenues that not only i wanted to go down i recorded um And just in the end, they got cut in service of, we want people to get to the end message. We want people to sort of follow this journey. And sometimes you got to shrink that journey to make it palatable is the wrong word, but I think accessible and watchable.

SPEAKER_01: 46:02

Was this one that you yourself didn't edit? Someone else? Yes, I did not

SPEAKER_02: 46:07

edit this.

SPEAKER_01: 46:08

This is a... Like, there's a lot of raw material here. And so I'm curious, like, how did you work with someone so that the final product was true to, like, your experience of discovery, but that, like, you were not actually... Getting out your razor and cutting the tape together.

SPEAKER_02: 46:25

Yeah. So this was a really interesting one for that. So I worked with, again, a producer, Elaine, at the American Chemical Society, who I've worked with for a number of years now. So I think there's a lot of trust there in the whole team. But I think especially because we work together a lot where I sent her hours, maybe, of footage. Yeah. between multiple takes and different angles. And I shot a bunch of stuff on my phone as I was going through this. There's a piece where I'm in the car and I just heard a news story. And that was really, I just parked the car and got out my phone and talked for five minutes about this news story I had just heard. So there was a lot of stuff like that in this video that I sent to her. And I had written a script slash outline beforehand for this. So That, I think, helped keep me in line a little bit as I was recording and helped sort of guide her in editing. And we have an iterative editing process. So she sent me that 22 minute long cut and it was sent out to the rest of the team, too. We all sort of made suggestions of places we want to edit and then she sent it back. And I think that was one where I think the edit she sent back was like 10 minutes. And I was like, wow. I actually think there's stuff we need to put back in for the story. So then it went through another round. And there were a number of things that I was like, no, this is really important to me that we leave XYZ point in. So then she went back and she put those things in. So it's, it's a lot of trust in the team, especially I think, for something like this, where I will say, I have gotten some emails about this video that are long and passionate. And so, you know, I knew that I was putting out sort of a personal take on this. And I I'm, again, incredibly grateful that I'm able to work with people I trust that if I say like, You know, absolutely. I understand as a verbose person, as I'm sure you can tell, I got a lot to say. And sometimes people have to cut me off and cut me down. And that's fine. And I get that. But I'm lucky that I work with a team I can trust where if I say no, no, like this is a point that's really important to me. They hear that and we can collaboratively work to put those back in. So trust, trust in the team is the answer to that question. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 48:40

I'm also getting the sense, one of my questions on my planning document was like, what does a typical week look like? And I'm getting the sense that there isn't one, right? There are too many things and they all work too differently. But in a more general way, I'm curious about the life of someone who is doing this as their primary job. And you're sort of, my sense is like kind of cobbling together and living and dying one person. What is it like? How have you approached living as an independent science communicator?

SPEAKER_02: 49:25

One of the things about being freelance is that there are waves of times where there's a lot of work and times when there isn't a lot of work. And I, six years in, feel very lucky that now I have a couple steady clients that I know I'm going to work with every month that are going to sort of be there and then I can add things on to that. But I am a person who... A little bit of it was sort of that scarcity mentality at the beginning. I came straight out of grad school into freelancing. I thankfully had about a year of freelancing under my belt that I had just squirreled away all that money to have a little bit of cushion when I came out of grad school. But I... Mm-hmm. Yeah.$25. And I was like making Instagram posts for$25. And I said that to somebody else. And they were like, you got to add some zeros to that. Like, what are you doing?

SPEAKER_01: 50:51

They cashed out on you.

SPEAKER_02: 50:53

They did because I just had no idea. I don't know what an Instagram post is worth. Right. And there's no, where do you find that out? What do you do? And so for a long time, I was, I mean, I was really burning the candle at both ends. Um, And then I, again, was sort of thankful that I got these sort of steady clients that I was like, OK, like, I know I'm going to have these number of projects this month. I can add this kind of thing on. But my other problem is that I am very excitable and I want to work on all the things all the time. And so I also just love saying yes to stuff because I love doing this work. And whenever somebody comes to me with a cool idea, I'm like, yeah, of course I want it. Like, of course. And so then I got myself into a position where I think it was twenty twenty I was on the road 136 days out of the year between filming and going on location for shoots and interviewing people, and that was not good. That really, really burnt me out. But it's a Constant struggle. And it is something that I have worked on with my therapist. I have a planner that I try and keep myself in and really strongly think about work-life balance because I think it is so easy in this profession to... want to do everything and want to say yes to all the cool projects because I love it. But then also at the end of the day, be like, what happened to this entire year of my life that I just worked myself into the ground? So I am still figuring out how to do this because you're right. There is no one week that makes sense. And there is no... I'm my own boss. And so I think as someone who... I don't know, I want to make good stuff and I feel really passionate that this stuff is good for the world. There's no standard work day. There's no beginning and end. And I'm a morning person, so I'm up early working. And so it is a constant struggle to try and think about how do I how do I value my time, both Monetarily, when I'm saying to a client, you know, this is going to take me 20 hours, how do I put a price on that? And then also, how do I value my time of I am a human who needs other experiences in my life other than just working? And how do I make time for that? So Yeah, there's no singular week. You know, this week I spent Monday and Tuesday at a conference in Boston on trust in science communication. And then I came back Wednesday and was filming ice freezing all day for the American Chemical Society. And yesterday I was taking a bunch of meetings and today I'm on a podcast. So it's all over the place. But I love that. I am the kind of person that I love. I love bouncing back and forth between different projects. So it works for me, but it's... I have thought a lot recently about how do I scale up and how do I bring on help? How do I grow? How do I hire an employee? And the number one thing that I have been thinking about is how do I manage my own time and work in a way that I can bring someone on in a responsible way as a manager? Because you can't ask someone to join this chaos. Like, I got to reign in the chaos a little bit before I have somebody join it.

SPEAKER_01: 54:38

It's why I think about this like deans of colleges. No one goes to school to become a dean, right? No, no. So you're selecting from people who are trained in a wildly different set of skills. Yes. And it's the same thing here, right? Like you have developed as a creator and like it's a whole different ballgame to then think of yourself as a manager. Yes. It seems like that's where like the big– chasm here is that like you're either going to make that jump or you're not.

SPEAKER_02: 55:09

Yeah. And it's one of those things where I've been thinking a lot about Truly, do I take management classes? Like, how do I figure out, you know, do I go to the Small Business Development Center and take, you know, small business owner classes? Because I, I want to make sure that when I do that, it's really important to me that anybody I work with feels both well paid, because that's not something that happens all the time in the film industry. Or in science, you know, I want to make sure that everyone is appropriately compensated for their time. But also, I've worked with some scattered And it's not fun. And so absolutely, I think I think it's a problem that plagues science, too, that the people who become even just PIs of labs sometimes become PIs of labs because they're great at science, not because they're great at managing a group of 20 people. And so as strongly as I think we need science communication training for all scientists. For my own selfish benefit as well, I'm like, we also needed management training. We also are expecting people, whether they're coming into a sort of right turn career like me or staying in academia, to become good managers. And so we got to get that training somewhere. But I think it's only when we are confronted with the wall of having to use it that I think we are then forced to go out and get it.

UNKNOWN: 56:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 56:29

For sure. So I think you've addressed all the things that I had in mind that I was hoping that we would talk about. So that only leaves us at, what is your favorite thing about blimps?

SPEAKER_02: 56:42

Oh, that's such a hard question, because my favorite thing about blimps is just how weird they are. So I... I have this weird side hobby of tracking blimps and trying to create the most complete list of all the blimps in the world. And it is something that should be measurable but is... inexplicably very hard to measure, but I just think they are so weird. If you see a blimp, it is like a bobbing fish in the sky that is somehow advertising me tires and is just magical and weird and slow-moving and were once used as warships and were terrible at that. Just no matter what they're doing, they're weird and strange animals Yeah. And so I just think they are such a strange and weird tool. And also, with some small exceptions, owned by strange and weird people. And so I also just love the story of like, how do you become a kind of person who owns a blimp? And can I be that person one day?

SPEAKER_01: 58:05

That's exactly the answer I was looking for. So thank you for that and for everything else. And yeah, kudos on all the work that you've done in this area.

SPEAKER_02: 58:14

Thank you. Thank you so much. I hope that was good. I love these kinds of chats, but sometimes I worry I get a little too excited and a little too verbose and babbly. So I hope that was helpful.

SPEAKER_01: 58:37

Alrighty, thank you to Alex Danis for taking the time to talk about her work. As always, check out the episode webpage for a link to her website where you can find videos that she's made and how to follow her for more. By the way, at one point, Alex mentioned a print that she had just gotten. That was from me. That was the reference she was making. I made a run of wood type prints that say, science is about how we know, not what we know. If you're looking for some nerd art made with old timey printing methods, I'll leave a link to that print in the show notes. if you want. 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.

SPEAKER_00: 59:58

To me, having an opening hook or story or something that is interesting is really, really important. Getting into it, it's like writing the first page of your book is the hardest. What's the entry point? So for me, that'll either be a really entertaining study, an anecdote of mine or someone else's that supports the point. So opening hook, science, practical strategies. To me, the things that make the talk work are the stories. and the practical advice and once you have some of those that's why i'm very very reluctant to ever change them up i don't change them up all that often because once you know they work those are the ones that are that make the talk feel feel fun i'm allison forgale i'm an organizational psychologist and i'm the author of the book likable badass how women get the success they deserve