The Science Pawdcast

Episode 19 Season 7: Cooling Paints, Anger Management, and Dr. Lori Palen with Data Soap Box

• Jason and Kris Zackowski • Season 7 • Episode 19

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Innovations in science are making daily life better through passive cooling paint and insights into pet interactions. 

In the Science News section we explore technologies that could transform how we maintain comfortable living spaces and manage our emotions at work.

• Cement-based cooling paint from Nyang Technological University uses three cooling strategies: radiative cooling, evaporative cooling, and solar reflection
• The specialized paint maintains effectiveness after two years of testing, reflecting 88-92% of sunlight while conventional paints yellow and lose performance
• Buildings using this paint required 30-40% less electricity for air conditioning, potentially reducing urban heat islands
• Research shows looking at photos of your own dog (not random dogs or cats) significantly reduces anger and aggressive intent

The Guest in Ask an Expert...


• Dr. Lori Palen discusses how data communication bridges the gap between scientific discovery and real-world impact
• Data Soapbox helps scientists translate complex findings into accessible, engaging content that drives positive change
• Science communication needs to be planned from the outset rather than treated as an afterthought

Dr. Palen's links

Data Soap Box: https://datasoapbox.com/

Dr. Palen on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/loripalen.bsky.social


Our links:

Our Website!  www.bunsenbernerbmd.com

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Speaker 2:

Hello science enthusiasts. I'm Jason Zukoski. And I'm Chris Zukoski, we're the pet parents of Bunsen, beaker, bernoulli and Ginger.

Speaker 3:

The science animals on social media.

Speaker 2:

If you love science.

Speaker 3:

And you love pets.

Speaker 2:

You've come to the right spot, so put on your safety glasses and hold on to your tail. This is the Science Podcast. Hello everybody, welcome back to the Science Podcast. We hope you're happy and healthy out there. This is episode 19 of season seven. Chris, the summer is so close, I can taste it. If you could taste such a thing.

Speaker 3:

If you could taste such a thing, it would be so tasty, delicious even. I'm picturing ice cream and hanging out just at our house and playing with the dogs and with Ginger and relaxing. I'm looking forward to it. So a taste of summer is on the menu.

Speaker 2:

As we're both high school teachers, the kids are prepping and writing their tests and we are not teaching, so it is quite a different workload right now because you're not prepping and marking the same way you would normally. And this time next week I think we're done Wednesday or Thursday next week, you're done Friday next week, right?

Speaker 3:

Our last thing that we do is grad.

Speaker 2:

Ooh is that on the Friday?

Speaker 3:

That is on our last day, our teacher organization organizational day. Yeah, gotcha.

Speaker 2:

Let's talk about what the podcast this week will be about. Our science news item is about this paint that could cool down a house. I wish we had that when we lived in the trailer, because that house was way too hot.

Speaker 3:

Magma. It was as hot as the surface of the sun.

Speaker 2:

I think it would be cooler if we moved there, and our second study may ruffle some fur, because it is talking about how looking at pets may or may not reduce how angry you are, and that's an interesting take on the stress level that usually comes with a reduction when you're interacting with pets.

Speaker 3:

I was reading that article and I was after we share. I think I have some strategies to use at my place of work and Chris.

Speaker 2:

The guest and ask an expert is Dr Lori Palin, who's going to be talking to us about data and how. Data is the core of science. Communication, which is kind of cool. Yeah, all right, let's get on with the show. There's no time like science time this week in science news. Could you cool? A house without air conditioning and a paint is the key ingredient, as mentioned. I wish we had this in the trailer. This was pre Bunsen by a long ways. We were. When we were a young couple and we were just starting out, chris, we lived in a trailer like a modular house a modular home, jason, that that's what it was and we moved it onto the property that we live on now.

Speaker 3:

That's been in my family since the late 1800s, and we just parked it out in the middle of the, in the middle of a field, and there was no shade, no trees, no, nothing for a very long time, and so there was no respite from the sun it was warm in the winter as long as the furnace didn't quit, but in the summer and our summers get hot, not Texas or Arizona hot, but our summers get hot it was unbearable.

Speaker 2:

Like it was. You could not sleep at night. We had fans in every room to cool us down. To cool us down Our oldest son, duncan he was a little guy then. He taped water bottles to his body at night.

Speaker 3:

Do you remember that? Just to stay cool, I do. We had them refrigerated or frozen and he just taped them and put them in his bed.

Speaker 2:

So this comes from Nyang Technological University in Singapore, and they've developed this cement-based cooling paint that passively cools surfaces like how we sweat.

Speaker 3:

It's so cool, Jason. This cement-based cooling paint comes from three different strategies actually Radiative cooling, which is cooling that reflects sunlight and emits absorbed heat back into the sky, and then also, like you said, we sweat. Evaporative cooling cools as the water slowly evaporates. And the third type of technology or strategy is solar reflection, and it actually reflects 88% to 92% of sunlight even when it's wet, important in the in the climate of singapore yeah, and that's why they developed it here, because singapore, unlike alberta, canada, is hot and humid.

Speaker 2:

We are dry, like I would say. Our climate's pretty dry here in alberta. Dry and cool. Would you agree with that? Dry and cool? That's the opposite of our climate and traditional go ahead.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I just noticed that sometimes my skin is dry and sometimes it's not, and sometimes it cracks in the winter and I just need more moisturizer.

Speaker 2:

Oh, our winters are really dry, yeah, so the reason why this was developed in Singapore was their traditional cooling methods. They lose effectiveness because water vapor gets trapped that the cement-based paint attacks because it's porous, so the structure retains a lot of water and that allows very slow evaporation. And that's why sweat works. When you get, when you sweat, the water that your body perspires as your body heats up, that energy that you're irradiating goes into the sweat and then the sweat evaporates off your body, taking all of that extra heat with it. So it's like a heat transference, in the simplest terms to explain. And the cement-based paint does that, which is cool, but it's got more than that going on inside it.

Speaker 3:

Another cool thing about the paint structure is that it has nanoparticles in it, and what the nanoparticles do is that they boost the reflectivity and the strength of the paint, which helps the paint maintain its white color over time.

Speaker 2:

Now this is all on paper sounds amazing, but they tested it. So this is why this is a real thing that we're talking about right now, because real science was put into work to test this cement paint. They had three small test houses and they were painted and exposed to two years of sun and rain in Singapore. They used just regular white paint, commercial radiative cooling paint so that's some fancy paint. And then this new cement, ntu developed cooling paint and they looked at results after two years.

Speaker 2:

As you mentioned, chris, that regular paint and the commercial paint yellowed and lost its effectiveness after those two years. As you mentioned, chris, that regular paint and the commercial paint yellowed and lost its effectiveness after those two years. However, the NTU's paint remained super white, maintaining its reflectivity and cooling performance. So as a material science, as a material matter, it held up really well over two years and I don't know what kind of sunlight and weather you get in Singapore, so I have no concept of that. But if you just painted something outside in Alberta, it would look beat up after two years if you didn't put any finish on it probably.

Speaker 3:

There's more Energy savings. The new paint actually required 30 to 40% less air conditioning electricity compared to the other two. And what you notice about air conditioning is it takes and puts heat out into the environment, so it's twofold in terms of a broader impact on the environment. So you get to stay cooler without using all that electricity, but then also without putting extra heat out into the environment.

Speaker 2:

A huge percentage of a building's energy globally is used for cooling. I just think, of course, we shouldn't throw stones within a glass house. I just think, of course, we shouldn't throw stones within a glass house because where we live in the world we have to use considerable energy to not die in the winter, and that's natural gas. The cold provinces of Canada predominantly use natural gas as a heating method to not freeze to death. But we've been to really warm places Like, I'm thinking, las Vegas right. Every place we walked into the casinos and the hotels and people's homes. I'm sure the vast majority of them have air conditioning to cool their home.

Speaker 2:

Because I don't know if that would be tolerable for the average person to live in a non-air conditioned house in the desert Probably not. So I'd imagine those buildings. More than 60% of their energy would be used for cooling, and this paint produces that. It's an invisible hand helping your house and it's truly passive cooling. Now, where perhaps the study needs to work on is or they need to work on the paint is that it's really effective in humid climates and that's where all those other paints fail. And, of course, because it's humid, there's more water that could be absorbed for that passive cooling.

Speaker 3:

For sure, and it also allows that reduction of the urban heat island idea, where the air conditioning systems release the warm air into the environment. This actually releases heat as that invisible infrared radiation which then just escapes into the atmosphere, and so it just reduces that local heat accumulation in cities, which is awesome and amazing heat accumulation in cities, which is awesome and amazing, yeah.

Speaker 2:

And any way you can lower building cooling costs or how much demand there is on the grid, that's great. Even in Alberta in the last two years, we've had warnings from the government that we are we were reaching like max capacity for electricity. Do you remember that last summer?

Speaker 3:

yeah, the possibility of a brownout, because like please don't use water or electricity during these peak hours because there isn't enough going around for for that usage.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I don't remember another time in my life where there was a warning from the government about that. I can't remember the last time. As our climate changes and our summers are getting warmer and they are getting a little bit warmer, this paint is super cool and maybe in the future could be part of your normal building costs to decrease how much you have to cool the house, which is cool.

Speaker 3:

Jason, you said it was super cool, so that's a pun, good job.

Speaker 2:

Okay, thanks. That's science news for this week. This week in pet science, we're going to be talking about how pets and pictures of pets can maybe reduce your anger, or maybe not.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I was actually a little bit surprised about this, because you and I have covered studies before that have looked at people who either have a pet or are looking at images of pets, and it said that the looking at an image of a pet, like, reduced your stress or your anger, as well as actually being in the presence of a pet.

Speaker 2:

No, not anger like stress and anxiety. I don't think we've ever done one where it's talked about aggression.

Speaker 3:

No, and so that's what made it interesting, because I was looking at it from the lens of stress and anxiety. So I was looking for some confirmation bias in this study going oh yes, it's going to work, because I was equating those emotions. But anger is a different emotion and it makes sense that the results of the study are different than looking at anxiety and the release of the hormones that we have when we look at pets or have a pet with us.

Speaker 2:

And I think we all get angry. I hold in a lot of my frustration, but I do get angry and I do have angry outbursts occasionally. So I was like, looking at this, and everybody who has stress in their life may get to a point where they're like you're just so angry. So it'd be interesting to see, as we go through the study, what it says, because it does have a, I guess, a counterintuitive conclusion so the participants.

Speaker 3:

There were two lab-based experiments which involved a random dog photo, a random cat photo, a photo of their own dog, of the participants own dog and a photo of their own cat. So these participants were brought together and then, simultaneously, the participants completed an anger inducing writing task.

Speaker 2:

I was glad it wasn't math, I know I'm glad it wasn't math. Because they've used math before to stress people out, to give them anxiety and that's where the anxiety came from.

Speaker 3:

The idea of the anxiety was from that other study that we broke down about the people having to do math and then all those anxious smells were coming off of them. But this one was an anger inducing writing task, which is super funny. So in the first study it was self-reported anger and a hypothetical retaliation on a situation that you were angry about. So, immediately post-task, the participants rated their anger on a scale and then they also indicated their willingness to retaliate in scenarios. So if they were, for example, being insulted by a coworker, what kind of snappy response would they have? Or what kind of retaliation would they have?

Speaker 2:

But we're high school teachers, like the kids snark at us all the time. We're immune to this. A little bit I'm immune. If I was in a job and then some my coworker was like you're dumb, I'd be like your words mean nothing to me. My soul is dead and black from working as a high school teacher without the kids can be so snarky and cruel. Sometimes you have nothing. Being insulted by a coworker who cares. Anyway, chris, I just thought that was so funny and so what?

Speaker 3:

the key finding of that study was that the participants who viewed their own dog significantly reduced both their felt anger and their aggressive intent. So the other images that they were told to look at or asked to look at so the cats or other random animals actually had no effect which was interesting yeah. I was a little shocked by that. I thought they would all just have a Zen moment looking at animals. But no, it's your own personal pet that brought down the heat.

Speaker 2:

Now the second study is wild.

Speaker 3:

So study number two was a behavioral measure of aggression.

Speaker 2:

So participants, what they did is they played competitive reaction time game where they could choose the intensity and duration of an aversive white noise blast to punish an opponent so you lose it and he gets blasted in your ears with this annoying white noise, and then you could choose how loud and how long to do it for to be a jerk.

Speaker 3:

That's hilarious and especially with very competitive people. You could see that they would be in your face and you would have the worst level ever.

Speaker 2:

I never want to go up against you in this game. I would be listening to only long and loud white noise in my head.

Speaker 3:

Okay, I'll let everybody in on a little secret. You have a noise machine, jason, and so the white noise machine goes all night. So I listen to white noise all night, but it doesn't bother me.

Speaker 2:

I know, but it lets me sleep. That was a game changer for me falling asleep Huge I used to have some trouble with insomnia, chris. You just go right to sleep, no matter what's happening. I could be having a full on conversation with you, the TV could be on and there could be a lightning storm outside, and you will fall asleep in five seconds. So yeah yeah, you, that is your superpower.

Speaker 3:

And I wasn't going to say anything negative about the white noise, but I just think I'm like would be used to it and it wouldn't necessarily affect me as much. But the result was those who viewed a picture of their own dog chose milder blasts and that demonstrated less aggressive behavior, and there was no significant changes for the other images. So looking at their own dog calmed you down enough to not give the triple boost of white noise.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, but they also showed people photos of their own cats and it had no effect.

Speaker 3:

Interesting.

Speaker 2:

Isn't that sad Because ginger is very cute? Yes, right, but I don't know that's so wild that they had zero effect. I can see like a random dog or especially a random cat, cause I'm not really I'm a ginger person, I'm not a cat person Like. I really like ginger, but I'm take it or leave it with other cats. I can see that. But I would be calmed down right now if I saw our dogs like, because I love those dogs yeah, I do too, and they all have great faces he has a goober face.

Speaker 2:

Please goober face would calm me down and beaker's smiley face or even, like her deadpan look I'd find that funny she just had her beaker face and I'm feeling that way from somebody blasting me with white noise, and then somebody showed me beakers like expressionless dark-eyed look, and I'd be like I feel you beaker. That's how I feel right now and it would calm me down I feel, yeah, so there's some implications and conclusions for this study.

Speaker 3:

And in the office you could have only personalized dog photos, not cat photos or unfamiliar animals, because that could appear to buffer anger and aggression in the office or your workplace. And you know what? One thing that you typically can't have in the workplace is real pets. So you know what using personal images of your pets might be a low cost strategy to reduce anger and improve workplace harmony. So what I want to do now is go on to everybody's social media and pull their dogs and then just stick them around their work area, and so I think I might do that as a bit of a prank, and they'll be like oh, I just feel so calm looking at my Rufus, or I feel so calm looking at Blue, and of course I'm not going to lie. I have our Munson and Beaker calendar and Bernoulli calendar up. I have the three stuffies right at my desk. I've got vultures of parliament art. I am already decked out with our dogs.

Speaker 2:

My desk is decked out with stuff too. The kids love it, though. They love looking, but you teach in, you teach and then your office is in a pod with 10 other teachers and my classroom is my classroom, Whereas whereas my desk. I couldn't do that, I would throw myself off a cliff. I need to quiet and be away from my colleagues to get stuff done.

Speaker 3:

But what I do in my classroom is I have we rate, the we rate dogs calendar, and I rip off the day and I stick it on the board and so there's dog pictures all over my classroom.

Speaker 2:

Now they're random dog pictures, but you know it's, so it's not going to be helpful.

Speaker 3:

Not for anger, but for anxiety.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I have. I used to have a Bunsen stuffy but I think I brought it home. I've got a Beaker stuffy in my room and kids want the stuffy on their desk when they write a test, so they fight over it, which is cute, but we're getting off track. Here is a couple couple future things or future real world effects in the workplace they could test. Would hanging a photo of your dog at your desk work on reducing your anger?

Speaker 3:

I'm going to try it tomorrow.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, could digital photo frames with all of your pets help? Not just one, but like a thousand, the ones that flash through. They show for five seconds and they go. This may lead, because it's such a good conclusion and if it's backed up in future studies, employers might have to consider implementing a mandatory pet photo policy as a way to help wellness and your anxiety, but, most importantly, your aggression, if you work in a stressful environment. And I'm just thinking. You know, the post office that we go to went from two kiosks to one and the lineups have doubled and the post office people that I've been there have had to deal with some pretty angry people through no fault of their own. And I just wish, as somebody would come up to the till though this is super invasive and creepy it would scan them and then they would, on their side of the till, their dog would come up, so they would be nicer to the post office workers.

Speaker 3:

That could potentially be a Black Mirror episode.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, there you go. And if they're oh, and if they're listening, you got to give. You got to give chris and I credits in black mirror yeah because some black mirror episodes are wholesome they're not all dystopian and terrible, so that could be a good one this would be a good one.

Speaker 3:

You know what? It's just not any dog picture, it's a picture of your own pet and just being pet inclusive. If you can't be pet inclusive, be virtually pet inclusive. If you can't be pet inclusive, be virtually pet inclusive in your workplace, and then we'll all just be not as angry.

Speaker 2:

That's a good place to end. That's Pet Science for this week. Hello everybody, here's some ways you can keep the science podcast free. Number one in our show notes sign up to be a member of our Paw Pack Plus community. It's an amazing community of folks who love pets and folks who love science. We have tons of bonus Bunsen and Beaker content there and we have live streams every Sunday with our community. It's tons of fun. Also, think about checking out our merch store.

Speaker 2:

We've got the Bunsen stuffy, the beaker stuffy and now the ginger stuffy. That's right, Ginger, the science cat, has a little replica. It's adorable. It's so soft, with the giant fluffy tail, safety glasses and a lab coat. And number three if you're listening to the podcast on any place that rates podcasts, give us a great rating and tell your family and friends to listen to. Okay, on with the show. Back to the interviews. It's time for Ask an Expert on the Science Podcast and I'm thrilled to have Dr Lori Palin, who is the founder, the chief bottle washer, the chief consultant for Data Soapbox, with us today. Lori, how are you doing?

Speaker 1:

Hanging in there. Thanks for having me today.

Speaker 2:

Good, good. Where are you calling into the show from? Where are you in the world?

Speaker 1:

So I am in currently sunny Cary, north Carolina in the US. So in the Raleigh-Durham, the capital area of North Carolina. For those who know SaaS software, saas is here in Cary, north Carolina. For those who know SAS software, sas is here in Cary, north Carolina, and that's just about our biggest claim to fame.

Speaker 2:

I was wondering if you could talk to us about your training. I did introduce you as Dr Palin.

Speaker 1:

What's going on with your?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we'd love to know.

Speaker 1:

The PhD is legit, so I did my undergraduate degree in psychology. I really thought I was going to be a therapist. I took a couple of years off and worked in human services and worked with a bunch of high-risk populations worked with individuals experiencing opioid dependence, worked with teens who were in foster care or Department of Social Services who were in group housing, worked with individuals who had Down syndrome and there is definitely a place for direct service out there. We need our direct service providers. There are lots of people out there who are excellent at it and I appreciate them so much. I am not that person. I realized that direct service probably wasn't the route for me, but also didn't want to be a therapist either and I guess that's also direct service but decided I wanted to go back to school to learn more about prevention science.

Speaker 1:

So I was working. For example, when I was working in a drug treatment clinic, I was working with clients who were middle-aged and their issues with drugs didn't start last week or a month ago or a year ago. A lot of times the origins were in their adolescence. I might have experienced some sort of trauma or used for the first time and that unfortunately set off a trajectory for down the line. So, yeah, found Penn State's Prevention Research Center. So there's a whole research center there that works on figuring out how we prevent bad outcomes among people and also how we promote good things, how we promote thriving and wellbeing. Yeah, so I went back and got my PhD in human development and family studies. So I function, or my education is developmental psychology broadly. I am not trained as a clinician, so people often joke and say and say oh, I bet you could help me out with my issues, and no, unfortunately I cannot do that.

Speaker 1:

No clinical training, but worked as a researcher. So I worked on mainly two research projects when I was at Penn State. One of them looked at how what kids do in their free time whether it's sports or music or volunteering or something in their faith community, how the things they did in their free time related to their development. And I worked on a project evaluating an HIV and substance use prevention program for teens in South Africa. So that was really my training was adolescent research and prevention programs and figuring out if we design a program to put it out there and stop things like substance use or risky sexual behavior or violence. We need to figure out whether or not that actually worked, and so I was the kind of scientist who went in and figured out how that works. So that's what I was trained to do and what I started my career doing.

Speaker 2:

Two very different focuses there. Wow, can you? Could you elaborate a little bit on the because I'm a teacher, my wife's a teacher about the adolescent study, I'd love to know more. What did you find out, or was it inconclusive?

Speaker 1:

Well, in particular, the study I did that evaluated the prevention program in South Africa. We did a bunch of studies to figure out did it actually help with various prevention outcomes? And we found that I believe it was effective in preventing some metrics of substance use and it was also it helped with adolescent identity development. So I mentioned before I'd done some work around adolescent free time activities and what teens do in their free time. So that program capitalized on that and worked on teaching kids how to use, find healthy ways to spend their free time and things that were motivating to them and things that they just enjoy doing rather than things they were forced to do. Some sort of functional reason. It was all about discovering who you are and what sorts of things you love to do, so there were also effects on that. So, yeah, it was a cool study to be part of.

Speaker 2:

I'd imagine the whole things adolescents do in their free time today, versus 20 years ago, would involve a lot more screen time, which isn't necessarily good for kids.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. So I was thinking about, yeah, I didn't get my first cell phone until I graduated from college, circa 2001. I got my first cell phone and I wrapped up grad school in 2008. So, yeah, technology, especially for kids, were. It was in the early, early days.

Speaker 1:

Facebook was just gaining in popularity and I'm not even sure how much YouTube we had and that sort of thing way back in the day. Yeah, so I imagine screen time is a much bigger thing. I feel back then in the early 2000s we had some video game kinds of responses, but definitely not the social media that we have now. That is totally new on the scene. And I will say that when I finished graduate school my focus in some ways shifted. So I'd spent a lot of time in graduate school focusing on these free time activities. But as a professional program evaluator there wasn't necessarily that focus. So I worked on often federally, us government funded studies on teen pregnancy prevention, on drug prevention and violence prevention and schools often it was schools, but not always schools communities would implement programs that again we'd go in and figure out whether or not that worked.

Speaker 2:

So almost you're fact-checking the facts.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, a little bit, and I think it too is supporting accountability and also protecting kids.

Speaker 2:

I was just going to say in today's climate, that's a big thing the public wants a little bit more of is they want to know that science is accountable, which it is, but it's always good to be more transparent.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think of accountability at a few different levels. So we want to make sure money is spent appropriately A lot of these. Somebody had to fund every single program that I evaluated and the funding differed. Sometimes it was the federal government, sometimes it was state government, sometimes it was private philanthropy, but someone somewhere was giving money to this initiative. So part of what we did is figure out like was this a worthy investment? Should you invest in something like this again? Should you maybe change? Sometimes you'll learn refining points, like maybe a program worked in certain groups but not for other groups of kids. Like maybe it worked for younger kids versus didn't work great for older kids. Or maybe it worked great in an urban setting, not in a rural setting. So we can also fine tune, not just did it work, yes or no, but who did it work for, just to inform how we make investments later. So do we? Does this look like this works great in our population? Should we do this again and again, or should we change our approach? Should we change who we're implementing these programs with? Should we change the kind of program we're implementing?

Speaker 1:

So there's that accountability and sort of being good stewards of the money we have advocating for future funds and figuring out how do we spend money in the future, but also with kids, it's really important that we give them benefit and don't cause any harm. So there have been in the history of programs with teens. There have been programs that have what we call iatrogenic effects and that's just a big fancy word, for it does harm. So they found, for example, there were programs that brought together, let's say, youth involved with the juvenile justice system, and there have been programs like that that found that actually bringing all those kids together was harmful. And I'm not saying every kind of program like that is harmful, but there have been studies of certain programs that do that and you get these youth together and they share tips and tricks for delinquency, right. So actually getting them together and having this program makes them more effective and engaging in these sort of antisocial behaviors. So we want to make sure, too, that we're just not hurting kids.

Speaker 1:

There's been political and moral debate about, I think about sex education, right, and should we just be telling young people to not have sex under any circumstances? There's some people who say if we talk about sex and we talk about contraception, that means it's going to make kids suddenly have ideas that they want to go out and have sex. Right, and that's an empirical question. It's something that's been proven false that talking about sex doesn't make kids go out and have it and have all sorts of sexual risk behaviors. But that's an empirical question, right, and we can test that and say does getting kids together to talk about sex ed, does that help them or does that harm them? So that's another form of accountability to just making sure that we're protecting young people.

Speaker 2:

I think that one specifically with ours at least. Being a teacher, not that I've had to teach, haven't had to teach sex ed in a while but overwhelmingly school districts that decide to do little, none or abstinence only, they traditionally at least with the data I've seen have the highest amounts of teen pregnancy. It's counterintuitive to the end goal.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's good we test the questions or we look at the data after we've tried something.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

That's what I'm all about?

Speaker 1:

I'm all about doing evidence-based things for kids and doing things that have been proven in research to be a good use of funds, a good use of resources and something that actually helps kids.

Speaker 2:

Right, and I think this is a good pivot to your company Data Soapbox. I was wondering if you could talk to us a little bit about that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so I worked after graduate school. I worked as an evaluation researcher at a contract research organization for about 12 years and worked on all aspects of research. So from writing contract proposals or grant proposals, designing studies, designing questionnaires, collecting data, analyzing data, reporting data I did it all from front to back and it's these are to back and these are big research teams on these large projects. So I didn't do it all myself but at different points was involved in all parts of that process and I was okay at all of the steps. But I will say there's lots of people who are okay or even better than what I was. I wasn't an expert in things like survey data collection and we had people where I worked who knew everything there was to know about survey data collection and how do you survey kids in schools, and there's a whole science behind that and that wasn't my area of expertise. But where I found that I stood out was in communication. So once we had results, we had pages and pages of output from our analyses. How do you figure out what to talk about and how do you talk to people about it? Who do you even talk to and what do you say? And that's largely self-taught. I will say that I've always, since I was a kid, had an interest in art and design and throughout my life have been artsy-crassy. So I had that. I liked to write when I was a kid. I would write stories from all throughout my childhood. So writing and design were always a part of my life recreationally. So I had that sort of proclivity Learned about.

Speaker 1:

I went to a workshop with Edward Tufte. For folks who don't know, he's a grandfather of data visualization, charts and graphs in the modern era and he is an economist and statistician and sculptor and so he brings his sort of art brain and his data brain together. So I went to a workshop with him, learned a ton about data visualization, a ton about just how we share information as scientists. I had sat as a young researcher and as a student. You know I would sit in these conference presentations and I would joke with a friend who was with me. I said I think I have adult onset, ad, because I just can't, I'm not following and not engaged at all, and she would say I think you're just bored. I don't think it's any sort of psychiatric diagnosis, but Edward Tufte was the first person to say yes, like those slides that are packed with bullet points and tiny graphs with hundreds of nodes on them. That is boring, that is not engaging, that is not focused. And I it was like I blogged about this. It was like the emperor's new clothes Like I kept on saying I think the emperor is naked and everybody is. No, that was a fabulous presentation. And then finally somebody was here saying like no, it's not fabulous. Slides packed with bullet points, 300 page reports, they're not fabulous. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

So I got on that soapbox and started learning more and more about what good science communication was. Attending virtual workshops, I read a lot of books and visited a lot of websites, just learning from people who are big in the field, and it started with learning. Sort of data visualization was where I started. So people like Steph Evergreen and Cole Naflik and John Schwabish people who are in that often social science data visualization world and then branching out and learning about what is a good slide presentation. So people like Gar Reynolds I got turned on to him and what he says about the Zen of presenting yeah, and so just continue to learn and bringing those skills back to my research projects at my organization and saying how can we do better presentations? How can we write more attractive, engaging, effective reports? How can we do better posters at our scientific conferences? So more and more I got pulled into sort of that part of broad research teams, getting pulled into how do we talk about this? And yeah, I just did more and more of that and learned more and got better at it and got more excited about it, realized I just wanted to do that for a job and tried to find a place where I could do that for a job and didn't get a lot of traction.

Speaker 1:

I investigated at the organization where I was, I investigated at other organizations and Really no one said yes, absolutely, come work with us and just help with communication. I will say that a lot of organizations have folks on staff who are editors, technical writers, graphic designers. Those sorts of people say these are the exact words we want to say, or here's a pencil sketch of the diagram we want. Now go on and make it look beautiful or edit it for typos or whatever the folks on that staff do. And super useful, loved the folks I worked with in creative.

Speaker 1:

But there's a missing link for a lot of organizations and a lot of labs out there in academic settings where there's not somebody to say, hey, we've got this pile of data and we're not even sure what to say about it, like what message do we want to convey? We collected 200 questions on this survey. What here is important? What message do we want to convey here? So I found myself being in that sort of bridge position of going from raw data and summary statistics to then what is the product that we need to have? Look nice, and there just wasn't that out there and nobody wanted to hire me to do it. So I said you know what? I'm going to go on my own, I'm going to start my own thing and hope that people will want to work with me. So I left my job in 2021 and found a data soapbox and yeah, so we've been going for four years, yeah, and I did the kinds of things that I did when I was on a communication role in a broader team.

Speaker 1:

So I collaborate with researchers and other people or organizations who have data and I help them develop reports, manuscripts, infographics, presentations, all of those sort of products basically anything to get numbers and get data translated and conveyed to someone who can use it to do good in the world, and I've worked on projects that are really substantively aligned with what I did as a scientist. So I've worked on, for example, substance use prevention initiatives for teenagers so where it's right in my wheelhouse. But I've worked on projects that are like I knew nothing about before I started working on the project from a topic area standpoint. So I had a collaborator who was working on firefighter culture of workplace safety right, so it was all about does how does your firehouse protect everyone's health and safety and worked with her to develop some communication products based on surveys and interviews that she did.

Speaker 1:

I've done stuff in youth mentoring. So I have a client who we partner on just peer review journal manuscripts about topics like young people working with mentors and programs like Big Brothers, big Sisters. I've done stuff on food insecurity. I've done stuff on pharmaceutical trials. I've done things around indigenous populations here in the States and how we can promote their wellbeing. So just all kinds of different things, but the common thread is helping all of them communicate some sort of data to people who can use it to inform decisions that improve lives.

Speaker 2:

That communication piece is. It's so critical for science and everybody has a different skill set, so I'm not knocking scientists as a general group, but I do see there there is a struggle with. This is what we found to. Let's tell people about it in a way that people want to listen and care about let's tell people about it in a way that people want to listen and care about.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's there. Scientists don't get into doing what they do to just bury the results somewhere and move on. They get into it to make a difference in whatever it is that they want to make a difference in. So in my case, I'm a social scientist, so for me it's about making a difference in people's lives. But there's people who make impact on our physical environment. There's people who make impact on animals, right. So I'm not saying it has to be impactful on a human life directly, but yeah, I think pretty much all scientists they're about making our lives better and I think this has gotten better.

Speaker 1:

But I know when I went through my training, communication training was very just modeling off what other folks in your lab did. So you know I need to do a poster for a scientific conference. Let me look at what a more senior graduate student did. Or I'm learning to write a manuscript with my advisor who writes manuscripts. It's a very like use a template that exists in your sort of academic sphere. Use a template that exists in your sort of academic sphere. Work with mentors and learn to do it the way they do it.

Speaker 1:

There was very, I would say, really no direct training and just hear the best practices in communication. And what's funny is scientists really value things being evidence-based right. That's why we're out there. We're building evidence to find out about the world and figure out the way the world works. But I find it's funny there's a negligence of the research evidence we have about how people learn and what makes people remember and what makes people pay attention. For folks who are so focused on empiricism, there's not a lot of acknowledgement of oh, there is a whole science around communication and what does that science say? And let's follow the science about what we do visually or how we write about things. So, yeah, I think my personal view for whatever that's worth is I do think every scientist should get basic communication training.

Speaker 1:

But scientists can't be an expert in everything. So just when I worked on research projects, we brought in statisticians right, and they were expert in. You got all these complex survey data. We will help you analyze them the right way and that is what we do and we are so good at it and we read all the journal articles about it. We know all the trends and all the latest developments and statistics and we will help you right. There's not the equivalent in communication. There's not usually people out there who say it is. My sole focus is to stay on top of best practices and research communication, and I don't do the research myself, but I will take it and package it and make it great. There's not many people in those kinds of positions, I would say, especially in social science. I feel like I see it a little bit more in the natural sciences. I don't see it as much in social science.

Speaker 2:

And the odd person without training just has a good innate skill set like they're just. They're just, everybody's good at different things without having to work that hard at it so that it may come easy to some people and then to others. Your training is that's just completely alien. To go that route, probably like learning, yeah, no, I was just. I was just going to say finish your yeah, go ahead, finish. And then I got my follow-up question.

Speaker 1:

Sure. So to me it feels just any other skill that you would learn. Right. There's some things. There are people out there who are naturally athletic or graceful or good with numbers or can do something really fast. Like all of us have strengths and skills that are more natural or more innate. And it's not saying those can't be learned, but yeah, I think there are some people in any sort of skill set who have an innate leg up. But I think it is something that can be learned. But just like scientists don't research every topic or do every single part of a research process. If you don't like science communication and it's not quite clicking with you, I think beyond, I think the biggest thing is to know where to go for help, so it's you don't have to do it yourself, but it's saying you know, what.

Speaker 1:

This isn't my jam and I want to find somebody who it is their jam and I want to pay them to do this for me, and that's okay. I don't change the oil in my own car. I bring it to somebody who can change the oil for me. I don't. I use this analogy like I don't raise the chickens that my kid eats in his chicken nuggets, somebody else goes out and raises that chicken and makes them dinosaur shaped and sends them to my house. So we all have things that we don't want to do, and for some people that may be research, communication, and then that's okay. There are people out there who do it.

Speaker 2:

And that's where Data Soapbox comes in. You work with those people to get their message out in a concise and eye-catching way, because I'm looking at your work samples yeah yeah, I was sneaking a peek before. Yeah yeah.

Speaker 1:

Go ahead. I felt like when I started the business and still now there are a lot of people out there in the science communication world focused on teaching. So we can teach you how to do this. Focused on teaching, so we can teach you how to do this.

Speaker 1:

Just like not everybody has wants to do or has proclivity to do or has the time to learn everything, I'm and I'll do workshops occasionally for folks who request it, but it's we really do the work. So it's saying somebody says I am mid career if I I'm not going to spend sink lots and lots of time into how to deliver the perfect slideshow, but I'm going to bring in somebody who does that and bring in that sort of expertise. And so, yeah, that's what we do is we come on as freelance members of a team often and say you know what, don't stress about X, don't stress about this presentation or this brief, or X, don't stress about this presentation or this brief or whatever it is. Hand it off to us and we'll draft something and it may not be 100% what you would do if you did it yourself, but maybe we get it 95% of the way there and then we just you give your tweaks and we get it to where it's 100% what you want your message to be.

Speaker 2:

Nice. Yeah, I could also take some courses to learn how to fix my car. I do not have any interest in that. Just like Data Soapbox, I take my soapbox racer to somebody who knows how to do it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we'll have, we'll make sure. In our show notes there's a link to Data Soapbox for folks to check that out and, just like out of curiosity, for people who are interested in science. There's a bridge to science communication that I feel sometimes is lacking. If we had more folks doing this for science, of course, which costs money I think we would have maybe a better chance to compete against misinformation.

Speaker 1:

I think we would have maybe a better chance to compete against misinformation, because misinformation is simple and flashy and that's what gets people more than complicated and wordy, yeah and that's a struggle that I often work with clients on is science is really nuanced and trying to find that balance between giving enough detail to be accurate and ethical and not misleading, but not so much detail that it's off-putting and distracting. Yeah, it's a tough tightrope to walk, maybe, of wanting to balance rigor with just consume what's readable. What's consumable is tricky.

Speaker 2:

If only science could grift like the grifters we would be sure of everything, we would be sure of everything with a hundred percent accuracy all the time, but science is not that way. I have a quick question before we get to our last one here, lori you are. Science is not that way. I have a quick question before we get to our last one here Lori you are. You're an expert with the visual storytelling, with data and communicating that. What do you think people should do? Because we have a lot of people who listen to us that are love, love, science. How can they help with science communication themselves? How could they help with not necessarily using data soapbox, I'm not saying, but like in general, If they want to use data soapbox.

Speaker 1:

I'm not going to turn them away, but I have a few thoughts Go, use data soapbox everybody.

Speaker 1:

I'm not going to fight you if you want to use me, but I have a few thoughts, depending on what that person's relationship is to science. So if it's someone who does science who's a scientist, I would say to make sure you include in your budget and your timeline science communication. So a lot of times SciComm is an afterthought, it's oh crud. We are at the end of our five-year grant and we have a month left. Let's churn out as many papers as we can.

Speaker 1:

Science communication is something that is best planned from the outset and saying, okay, if this is the five-year project timeline, at what points does it make sense for us to share things from that project? And being really deliberate in planning that. And again, either get the training and SciComm yourself if that's something of interest, and if it's not, reach out to some sort of expert who can help you with that. So I say that's for the folks who do science, the scientists, I would say then there are folks like you, jason, who teach science. For those folks I would say make sure to teach communication as part of doing science. So I think about the big sort of SciComm communication product that stands out to me, let's say, from high school, was if you did a science fair poster right, we got essentially zero guidance on the poster. We got all sorts of guidance.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, right.

Speaker 1:

It was like put it on a tri-fold board. Good luck to you. Yeah, may the odds be like put it on a tri-fold board. Good luck to you.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, may the odds be in your favor. Just go do it, kids.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, exactly, cut out some construction paper and let's do this. So I would say, teaching good communication practices alongside of good research practices. So what does it mean to write a good scientific abstract, for example? So there's a whole model of scientific storytelling by this guy, randy Olson, and he talks about ABT and but therefore, and he uses that as a way to structure a scientific abstract in a way that's really compelling.

Speaker 1:

Or let's talk about eight core principles of visual design and how that would apply to a research poster Eight core principles of visual design and how that would apply to a research poster. So those sorts of things. Let's talk about jargon and plain language and how to address that. So, yeah, having some education on SciComm within broader, how do you do research, science education and I would say, having students both produce science communication as part of any research-based work they do and also seeing examples of science communication in all forms and having a chance to reflect on that and reflect on what works and what doesn't. Yeah, so that's for the teachers and then for the fans. I would just say to continue to support science communication channels like this one, like other podcasts, like NPR shows, I think, about Science Friday on NPR, but that's one of many outlets, just the one that pops to mind right now. But consume science, comment on it, share it, show that there's a demand for science communication.

Speaker 2:

What great advice. I really appreciate that, and something I need to think about more is giving the kids a little bit more structured direction, if and when we have time to do a poster project or something like that, instead of good luck, yeah. So that's something for me to think about.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, finding the time. It's always a challenge to find the time. I do have a blog post about my top tips for kids and presentations, and it was geared towards my son's fourth grade class, but I find that it's actually applicable to adults and if I had to boil it down to three things I would tell adults to do it's the same big three things I would tell kids or adults.

Speaker 2:

Nice. I do appreciate when kids use memes to communicate chemistry, so that shows a very deep understanding of the concept, because they're putting together two abstract concepts into humor. So I think that's probably the highest form of learning, if kids can just answer questions with memes.

Speaker 1:

Love that too.

Speaker 2:

But that's just my opinion. Lori, thanks so much for talking with us about your amazing Data Soapbox website and the stuff you do there Some great advice. We have one question we wrap up our interview with and that is a question about your pets or a pet story from your life, and I was wondering if you could share one.

Speaker 1:

So we are. I will wondering if you could share one. So we are, I will say, just accidental pet owners. So I will say, my whole life I wasn't really into cats. I was allergic to cats, didn't really vibe with cats.

Speaker 1:

And in 2010, my husband and I bought a new home and about two months later a litter of kittens was born at our house and I'd never lived really a place with stray cats before, so I didn't understand. Was born at our house and I'd never lived really a place with stray cats before. So I didn't understand that these were strays and I was sending out angry neighborhood posts about who let their pregnant cat out. I finally came to realize this was a litter of stray kittens, so we brought them in enrolled with a rescue, got a couple adopted, had a couple of failed fosters. So now, all these years later, we are still proud cat parents to Bubba, who is 15.

Speaker 1:

And we also brought in eventually, his mama and we just named her mama because we're that creative and she, we think, is 16 or 17. So we became accidental cat owners for a very long time. We also have a tank full of various aquatic animals. That was plotted by my son, who really wanted a fish tank, so we have a whole tank of little fish and little blue shrimp and a couple of snails and it's therapeutic to watch them glide by in the kitchen.

Speaker 2:

Glide by in the kitchen. That's great. We have a couple turtles my wife rescued and they're neat to watch swim around too. Yeah, Maybe not as charismatic as the dogs. They've got their. They've got their own thing going on.

Speaker 1:

And your dog set a high bar for charisma and attitude. They're lovely.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, bernoulli is such. He's 100% charisma and 100% gooberness, so it's a good combination. It's perfect. He's such a meathead. But anyways, thank you so much for sharing about your pets. Appreciate that. So, lori, we're at the end of the chat. Thank you so much for talking with us a little bit about what you do. It's definitely something that is brand new. We've never had a guest like yourself on before to talk about the science of communication and all that, so I appreciate you giving up your time. Thanks, okay, we'll make sure we have a link to Data Soapbox in our show notes. And the last thing is, laurie, are you on social media anywhere that people can connect, or not? So much.

Speaker 1:

I am, so you can find me on Blue Sky, which is a hot happening place for scientists these days, and I'm at Laurie Palin.

Speaker 2:

Okay, we'll make sure there's a link there as well in the show notes. Have yourself a nice night, and it was nice to get you up on our soapbox of science communication.

Speaker 1:

Thanks so much for the opportunity.

Speaker 2:

That's it for this week's show. Thanks for coming back week after week to listen to the Science Podcast. Special thanks to our guest and a shout out to all the top dogs. That's the top tier of our Patreon community, the Paw Pack. You can sign up in our show notes. All right, Chris, let's hear those names that are part of the top dogs notes All right.

Speaker 3:

Chris let'sbert, ben Rather, debbie Anderson, sandy Brimer, mary Rader, bianca Hyde, andrew Lin, Brenda Clark, brianne Hawes, peggy McKeel, holly Burge, kathy Zerker, susan Wagner and Liz Button.

Speaker 2:

For science, empathy and cuteness.