Spark Science – Where we explore stories of human curiosity.

Speculative Fiction

Do you like Sci-Fi and Fantasy? Then you like Speculative Fiction and so do we.

Dr. Lysa Rivera joins us again, after being one of Spark Science’s first guests, to talk about the history of Black and Brown voices in this genre and to also share some great recommendations, beyond Octavia Butler. However we of course talk about her too.
At WWU, Dr. Rivera specializes in Chicano/a/x and African American literature and has an extremely popular class focused on this field. She also currently serves on the editorial board for Femspec, an interdisciplinary and peer-reviewed journal devoted to the study of speculative fiction within feminist contexts.

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REGINA BARBER DEGRAAFF: What do you like to read? Action and adventure? Mystery? Fantasy? How about science fiction?

Welcome to Spark Science. I’m your host, Regina Barber DeGraaff, and I teach physics and astronomy at Western Washington University.

In this episode, we speak with Dr. Lysa Rivera. She’s an associate professor here at Western of Chicanx and African-American literature. And we talked to her about speculative fiction.

You may not have heard of this genre before. If not, stay tuned for an introduction. If you are familiar, prepare for some great recommendations.

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I want to welcome Dr. Lysa Rivera to our show, again!

LYSA RIVERA: Thank you! I’m super excited to be here.

DEGRAAFF: I really, really liked the first time you came to our show. The format’s a little different now. It’s just me.

Let’s go back to, like, the first interview that we did. It wasn’t always sci-fi, right? Like, people use this term called “speculative fiction.” And people still use that term.

And when we discussed that, at Western, Octavia’s Brood was one of the books that, you know, the Western Reads book. That term is actually still used. So, like, for our listeners, I know you did this in the other show, but can you explain: what is this difference between this term “speculative fiction” and “science fiction,” you know, as an English professor?

RIVERA: (Laughing.) Right.

DEGRAAFF: As scholar of this work?

RIVERA: Yeah. Um, well, I guess, for me, like, I think of speculative fiction as encompassing a wider range of texts and genres that can include fantasy, and, like, even supernatural, horror, and science fiction. So, speculative fiction is just… fiction that falls out of the parameter of realism and somehow taps into the not-yet, the what-if, and the imaginative.

And then, within that, there’s science fiction, which is also what-if and imaginative, but extrapolates from, like, known science in some way. And also, probably makes a technological statement of some kind.

So, you know, fantasy isn’t really extrapolating from real science. There’s no scientist working on Middle Earth, you know, trying to find Middle—like, I’m thinking of, you know—

DEGRAAFF: Yeah, they don’t even have, like, telescopes.

RIVERA: (Laughing.)

DEGRAAFF: I noticed that! Like, when I was a student—

RIVERA: (Laughing.) There we go!

DEGRAAFF: And even now, I was like, um, if it doesn’t have a wizard or a robot in it, then I’m not interested.

RIVERA: (Laughing.)

DEGRAAFF: You know what I mean, like?

RIVERA: Yeah (laughing)! You were a nerd, right?

DEGRAAFF: Yeah, yeah (laughing)!

RIVERA: Yeah, yeah.

DEGRAAFF: Not were. I am a nerd!

RIVERA: Oh, right (laughing)!

DEGRAAFF: But you’re right! Like, you’re not extrapolating from, sort of, technology, you know?

RIVERA: Yeah.

DEGRAAFF: There’re catapults.

RIVERA: There’s—okay (laughing)! Well, yeah! Right? Um, I mean, you know, I mean, again, I live in the world of academia. And your listeners, I would imagine, some do and some don’t. But in academia, you know, when you publish, or when I publish anything in my fields, I have to be very careful that I honor the different—or acknowledge—the different approaches to, like, key terms.

So, for me, you know, I often use just “SF.” And then, I have a footnote, because I’m an academic, and we use footnotes (laughing).

DEGRAAFF: (Laughing.)

RIVERA: And I just say that I use the term “SF,” and then I qualify it by saying— Because some of the texts I look at are more speculative because they don’t make any kind of statement about technology. They’re not extrapolating from technology. And then, some of the texts I’m looking at are not really interested in technological extrapolation or scientific extrapolation. But they’re, nonetheless, inhabiting imaginary spaces, so.

DEGRAAFF: Yeah.

RIVERA: But, yeah. These are important terms, and they get— I think the danger in academic writing is that you have to use them carefully.

DEGRAAFF: But I think it’s important. You teach this class that talks about speculative fiction from before 1900, right, like?

RIVERA: Yeah.

DEGRAAFF: And it’s always full. And it’s featuring Black and Chicana—

RIVERA: Right.

DEGRAAFF: —Latinx authors. And I’m just wondering, how has that progressed since the last time we talked to you? Like, it’s been six years.

RIVERA: Wow.

DEGRAAFF: Have you taught it online? Like—

RIVERA: Yeah.

DEGRAAFF: —are there… way more reading? Is it less popular? Like, what’s going on?

RIVERA: Yeah. Well, it’s always really popular. And it’s because of the content.

So, for the listeners, I teach both African-American science fiction, or speculative fiction, and I teach Chicanx, and that refers to Mexican Americans.

So, I teach—in terms of African-American science fiction, I do teach a class that starts in the 19th century. And of course, the phrase, “Science fiction didn’t exist back then.” And so, when I teach the earlier texts, they, you know, we just use the term “speculative fiction,” or “dystopian,” or “utopian fiction.”

And nothing has changed in my African-American science fiction class other than I’m bringing in newer writers that I’m discovering alongside my students. So, I recently started teaching the anthology of science fiction by Walidah Imarisha called Octavia’s Brood, which is science-fiction stories and social justice movements.

And they include Black writers, you know, queer writers—

DEGRAAFF: They include LeVar Burton!

RIVERA: They include LeVar Burton! Exactly! Um, so—

DEGRAAFF: Yeah.

RIVERA: —I’m branching out in my Black science-fiction class. And I, you know, finally started teaching Jemisin and other published works by writers like Daryl Smith, Evie Shockley, Nisi Shawl, who are contemporary writers who don’t just write science fiction. They also write fantasy. Daryl Smith actually even writes about religion.

So, you know, just including new writers. But the class continues to be popular. And also, since we last spoke, Black Panther came out, so—

DEGRAAFF: Right, right.

RIVERA: —it’s just way more on the radar. And I also, since we last spoke, there have been more books published on Afrofuturism, with the term in the title. So, it’s just, there’s a lot more to pull from in terms of different texts I can bring in but also, students are just more aware of the genre. And so, they come in and are like, “Are we gonna talk about Wakanda?”

You know, they’ve already seen it. They already know about it, you know? And it’s cool. Because they just… they’re just more aware of it. What surprises them—which was the case six years ago—is that, I’m like, “Look, guys! Black people have been writing about, like, you know, utopian spaces for a long time. This is not new.”

Wakanda existed in 1899, with the publication of Sutton Griggs’s Imperium in Imperio. So, we can talk about Wakanda now, but we can also talk about Wakanda back in the 19th century. And they’re like, “Whoa. No way” (laughing).

DEGRAAFF: I mean, that blows my mind right now! That you can, you know, you can take this idea of Wakanda, this utopian place that, you know, is self-sufficient and doesn’t need assistance from, you know, western civilization. And then you can go back to one of your first readings in that class—

RIVERA: Yeah!

DEGRAAFF: —and I mean, I’m sure you can do that along that spectrum, too. You probably can go to another, you know—

RIVERA: Yeah.

DEGRAAFF: —reading, ten years after that, or twenty years after that.

RIVERA: Yeah, totally. Yeah—

DEGRAAFF: So—

RIVERA: —I mean, Pauline Hopkins’s book Of One Blood was published in 1902—or 1904. And she, like, has an imaginary African city that’s completely independent, kind of cut off from the rest of the world, just like Wakanda, technologically and scientifically advanced.

DEGRAAFF: Mm-hmm.

RIVERA: Like, it’s Wakanda. And when we read it, my students are just—they’re kind of blown away. They’re like, “This is, like, over 100 years ago.” And I’m like, “I know” (laughing).

And then, you’re right! And you can go out further, like George Schuyler’s Black Empire has—this is, like, jumps to the 1930s—and he imagines… it’s a little more of an ominous take, but he imagines, like, you know, what a world where there is literally a Black empire. And this empire is super powerful, and self-sufficient, and super technologically advanced. I mean, he imagines, like, green technologies, and this is, like, from the 1930s.

So, yeah. It’s just, it’s called—Amiri Baraka, who’s a Black writer, calls it— He’s talking about, like, Black arts in general. But he calls it “The Changing Same,” which is, if you look at the history of Black literary arts, there are a set of motifs and kind of narrative spaces that repeat over and over again. But they might look differently every time they emerge. But they’re the same motif in some way.

And it’s all tied to, like, that long history of Black protest but also Black joy. Like, the insistence on imagining alternatives to the here and now. And often, those take a speculative bent because that place doesn’t exist yet.

DEGRAAFF: Right.

RIVERA: So, they have to use speculative fiction.

DEGRAAFF: Right. I just wonder, as you’re saying this, you know, did the creators—who were White men—of Black Panther, you know, like—

RIVERA: Yeah.

DEGRAAFF: —were they aware of this writing?

RIVERA: I don’t know. I would imagine not.

DEGRAAFF: Right. Me, too. I would imagine not, too.

RIVERA: Yeah.

DEGRAAFF: But… we don’t know.

RIVERA: Right. Well, there— Okay, now I might just have to write an article (laughing)! Thanks, Regina!

DEGRAAFF: Yeah!

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You’re listening to Spark Science. And we’re talking with Dr. Lysa Rivera about the term “Afrofuturism.”

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Well, last time, we really talked about, like, superheroes and what, at the time— Like, the title of the show from the first season, which was six years ago, was, like, “Afrofuturism.” And you were telling me via email that—

RIVERA: Yeah.

DEGRAAFF: —that that is not the term that people are using right now for, kind of like, you know, speculative fiction that focuses on African Americans and Black Americans.

RIVERA: Right. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, do you wanna know why?

DEGRAAFF: Yeah, tell us more about it! That was my question, yeah!

RIVERA: (Laughing.) Well, it’s really not the term in itself that is the problem. It’s that… the term was coined by a White scholar. And a wonderful writer, whose essay “Black to the Future” is seen in, like, academic circles, as like the first—well, it’s the first place—it is literally the first time Afrofuturism is coined, is, like, in print.

And so, that’s the main reason—is just that Black activists, and scholars, and writers, in, like, science fiction, and fantasy, really don’t like that term being used because it doesn’t—it privileges and centers a White voice. Even though, in that essay, you know, he’s the interviewer, and then, there are just three interviewees, and they’re all Black.

So, there’s that. And I think it also obscures the work that was done before that by Black writers who were looking at the same idea of, like, Black sci-fi. So, it’s really just that.

It became such a popular idea. Afrofuturism just exploded, like, after 2003. And that essay was, like, 1994. And then, Afrofuturism really started to take root in academia but then also pop culture. And now it’s just huge.

DEGRAAFF: If you could give us some examples of, like, what that term meant and what it’s being called now? Like—

RIVERA: Yeah.

DEGRAAFF: —I mean, I’m thinking of, like—

RIVERA: That’s a—

DEGRAAFF: —Black Panther, I’m thinking of, like—

RIVERA: Yeah.

DEGRAAFF: —Star Trek: Discovery, that’s out right now.

RIVERA: Yeah.

DEGRAAFF: And just… amazing, and has Black leads. And telling stories from the Black perspective.

RIVERA: Yeah. So, I think that now— I mean, I think you still see it. Like, when I teach Black sci-fi—and I actually recently taught it, and I called it “Reading Afrofuturism” before I really began to realize the problem with that. But you know, my students put together a list of articles that they found online.

And so, you still see it in, like, reviews of Black Panther or discussions of, like, N.K. Jemisin’s work. It’s a term that we just—I think people are pushing back against. Because young Black writers like Walidah Imarisha and Adrienne Brown of Octavia’s Brood—the editors of Octavia’s Brood— visionary science fiction, those were, you know, it was Walidah Imarisha at a talk where I began—where she basically called out that term.

And there was recently someone—Sheree Renée Thomas—who edited two volumes. The title is Dark Matter: Science Fiction from the African Diaspora. So, more global way of thinking about Black sci-fi.

She recently penned something, and she posted it on Facebook about, you know, basically saying, “We need to stop using the term Afrofuturism because it does not— It centers a White critic, which is just not what we want to be doing when we’re trying to elevate Black voices.”

DEGRAAFF: So, yeah, let’s get back to your—

RIVERA: Yeah.

DEGRAAFF: —your research. So, at Western, all the professors that are doing research. What are— Like, you’re teaching this class. How does that relate to what you do in your research?

RIVERA: So, my current stuff? Yeah?

DEGRAAFF: Yeah.

RIVERA: Or past?

DEGRAAFF: Tell me anything!

RIVERA: Yeah, yeah! Yeah, totally! So, my research is, you know, I was hired to teach Chicanx literature. And just FYI, I say “Chicanx” because it seems like that’s the way to go. But I also, you know, don’t mind using “Chicana/Chicano.” It just takes longer to say.

I have a class called “Novel Ecologies” where I look at speculative fiction by women of color. And I teach novels that are dealing with the climate crisis of some kind—specifically within that narrative of environmental justice. So, that’s my first new thing.

And they’re all written by women of color, which was sort of an accident on my part. I didn’t expect them to all be women. But they ended up all being women. And these texts are really cool because they’re taking the questions around environmental justice, and then they’re using speculative fiction to just explore that issue.

My other big project right now is looking at Chicanx cyberpunk, which is a subgenre in science fiction. And that’s something that’s really near and dear to my heart. I’ve been working on it for quite a while now. And it’s all drafted. And I’m super excited about it.

But it’s becoming that thing where I know that, in a few years, it’s gonna get super popular.

DEGRAAFF: You have, like, your finger on the pulse, like, you know it’s gonna get—

RIVERA: Yeah! So, I’m excited!

DEGRAAFF: So, tell us a little bit more about that. Like, can you tell us a story that we might know? Or tell us a new story we might not know that can give us a good picture of Chicanx cyberpunk?

RIVERA: Um. I mean, I think that it’s not as popular as Black sci-fi. But there’s a film called Sleep Dealer by Alex Rivera—who’s not related to me—

DEGRAAFF: (Laughing.)

RIVERA: —and (laughing), yeah, we’re not related! We’re friends on Facebook, but that’s the extent of it. And it’s basically set in Mexico, and it imagines the border as this futuristic space where these factory workers, the maquiladora workers, are, like, they become—they’re cyborgs. And they hook up to this machine in the factory, and they produce all this labor for Americans living north of the border.

And so, it’s like an action film/cyberpunk. And I think it might be something that some of your listeners have maybe heard of. And if they haven’t, now is the time to go watch it. And that—

DEGRAAFF: That’s what this episode is about! It’s about—

RIVERA: Yeah!

DEGRAAFF: —a lot of suggestions—

RIVERA: Yeah.

DEGRAAFF: —of things you can go check out!

RIVERA: So, I would check out that. I would check out Ernest Hogan. He goes by NestoHogan. He’s from East L.A., incidentally. And he’s written three novels. And his novels are all decidedly cyberpunk.

And so, I’m sure your listeners know what cyberpunk is. But in case there’s anybody who doesn’t, it’s basically a subgenre of science fiction that became sort of mainstream in the 80s. And its main areas of interest are twofold. It’s basically interested in, like, globalization. Which, in the 1980s, was sort of this, like, new thing. And also, cybernetic technology. So, like, cyberspace is the term that got coined in 1984.

And so, what Chicanx cyberpunk is doing is just like saying, “Hey, this is cool, but let’s reimagine it from the perspective of Mexican-Americans,” which, like, people are like, “What? That seems so weird!”

DEGRAAFF: Mm-hmm.

RIVERA: But it’s actually a thing. So, Ernest Hogan really cool.

DEGRAAFF: Would The Matrix be cyberpunk, right?

RIVERA: Yep! Totally!

DEGRAAFF: Yeah, okay.

RIVERA: So, my project is, like, “What happens if we look at at text like The Matrix, but that were created and imagined by Chicanx writers? Chicanas and Chicanos?”

DEGRAAFF: Would Spy Kids be cyberpunk?

RIVERA: Oh, my gosh! I don’t know! Would it?

DEGRAAFF: Chicanx cyberpunk? I mean—

RIVERA: Well, I haven’t— Yeah!

DEGRAAFF: It is kind of in a virtual realm in some parts, especially in the later— I have a child who loves—

RIVERA: And because it’s— Yeah.

DEGRAAFF: —loves Spy Kids.

RIVERA: Yeah, and because it’s Robert Rodriguez, right?

DEGRAAFF: Correct.

RIVERA: So, yeah. That would be cyberpunk.

DEGRAAFF: And the main characters are, you know—

RIVERA: Oh, my gosh! Yes! Absolutely! That would be cyberpunk.

DEGRAAFF: You’re welcome! I just helped you with this!

RIVERA: Yes! Thank you (laughing)!

DEGRAAFF: (Laughing.)

RIVERA: So, I would recommend that your listeners check out Ernest Hogan. Because he’s written three novels, and they’re really fun. And he’s doing really cool things with the genre.

And then, as far as, like, women, Chicanas, there’s a novel called Lunar Braceros by Beatrice Pita and Rosaura Sánchez. And that novel is set in the future and has some more interests.

And then of course, there’s Guillermo Gómez-Peña, who—when I say “of course,” because he’s been around for a while, and he has a lot of cool cyberpunk. He’s a performance artist, so he’s not quite a novelist. But all of his performance art, he publishes these things called “performance diaries.” And in them, he’ll have, like, little one-act plays that are, you know, really super cyberpunk-like.

So, yeah! But I mean, I guess, Spy Kids is the go-to as well.

DEGRAAFF: Yeah, Spy Kids!

RIVERA: You know, I’m thinking with— Yeah, totally!

DEGRAAFF: (Laughing.)

RIVERA: Yeah! Absolutely!

DEGRAAFF: I love how I just convinced you!

RIVERA: Well, no! I mean, that actually came up when I was, like, reading about my stuff. And I remembered there was a chapter on it in one book I read. But I think what qualifies it as cyberpunk writ large is because it’s Robert Rodriguez, who’s the creator, so.

DEGRAAFF: Right.

RIVERA: But Spy Kids isn’t—see, this is where my little niche comes in. Because I’m really looking at writers who are looking at globalization and asking the question, “Who benefits from globalization, and whose labor is making it possible?”

DEGRAAFF: Right.

RIVERA: So, you know, I don’t think Spy Kids is doing quite that.

I’m really glad we’re doing this episode because this is real science fiction. And people who love science fiction should know about it.

DEGRAAFF: Right.

RIVERA: And these are, you know, two Chicanas. And incidentally, they’re from San Diego. And I actually brought them to Western! They came to Western and presented!

DEGRAAFF: Wow!

RIVERA: It was cool!

DEGRAAFF: When was this?

RIVERA: This was, like, two years ago?

DEGRAAFF: Oh, wow!

RIVERA: It was when we had a conference here.

DEGRAAFF: Oh (laughing)!

RIVERA: So, yeah!

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DEGRAAFF: This is Spark Science, and we’re discussing the history of speculative fiction.

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I love this idea that we can talk about writers as speculative fiction writers, and if you listen to LeVar Burton Reads, he says that. He goes, “I read short stories of speculative fiction.” Because they’re not all about the future, even though LeVar Burton was Geordi from Star Trek: Next Generation.

RIVERA: (Laughing.)

DEGRAAFF: I hope all my listeners know that! And if you don’t, now you do!

But because I’m thinking about Octavia Butler, which I am ashamed that I am—

RIVERA: Aww.

DEGRAAFF: —I am 39 years old when I started reading Octavia Butler. So, I just read her first two books from the Patternist series.

RIVERA: Mm-hmm.

DEGRAAFF: And this series is in the future. It’s futuristic and stuff. But the first two books are not in the future. They’re actually in the past.

RIVERA: Yeah, yeah.

DEGRAAFF: And I really, really enjoyed them. I haven’t read the futuristic ones. But it’s speculative fiction, right?

RIVERA: Yeah.

DEGRAAFF: It’s not talking about technology. It’s talking about—it’s basically like X-Men. Like, her—

RIVERA: Yeah!

DEGRAAFF: —you know, before—

RIVERA: They are! They’re like mutants! They’re like—

DEGRAAFF: Yeah, yeah!

RIVERA: Yeah, yeah. Although, if memory serves me, aren’t they connected to outer space in some way? So, like—

DEGRAAFF: Eventually they are.

RIVERA: Yeah.

DEGRAAFF: I don’t know. Give me spoilers. But, um—

RIVERA: Incidentally, like, she— So, Survivor is part of that series. And I, out of deep respect for her, refuse to read it. Because she’s embarrassed by it.

DEGRAAFF: Right. I’m not reading that one.

RIVERA: Okay (laughing)!

DEGRAAFF: Yeah! I read that also, on Wikipedia, that she was, like, “I disown this book.” And I’m like, then I won’t read it!

RIVERA: (Laughing.) I know, it’s like, okay, good. That saves me another, like, 300 pages. Yeah, so.

DEGRAAFF: Yeah (laughing)!

RIVERA: Yeah. So, I love— I do teach on Octavia Butler every year. Or, I try to teach it every year. I think I stopped for a bit because, you know, I was just like, ugh, I gotta do other things. But students love her.

I mean, you know, you can just teach Octavia Butler and have the class be on a range of topics. The thing about Butler is she was an avid researcher. So, she would have an idea, and then before she would writer her novels or stories, she would research, and research, and research. So, she read, like—

I mean, if you think about it, she probably has a PhD in some subject, just on her own, you know? Like, she read science, she read anthropology, she would read, you know, about different cultures.

I mean, to write Kindred, she traveled to Maryland and, like, looked at city-old, you know, records to figure out the different records and who owned what farm when, and so.

DEGRAAFF: Yeah, and that shows up in—

RIVERA: Yeah.

DEGRAAFF: —in Wild Seed, right?

RIVERA: Yeah.

DEGRAAFF: And it’s such a good book.

RIVERA: Yeah, I know.

DEGRAAFF: I would say to my listeners, if you wanna start with an Octavia Butler book, start with Wild Seed.

RIVERA: Yeah.

DEGRAAFF: Because it’s so good.

RIVERA: Yeah, yeah. And it is. And I think it was written— An article I wanna write is looking at Wild Seed and Kindred because, like, they were written so close together in time, I think—or published so close together in time-that you could, you know, kind of do a cool comparison of, like, reading Wild Seed, as, like— Well, as you said, it’s not science fiction. It’s speculative fiction.

And actually, she also has said— I remember I went and saw her read once, and she insisted, she’s like, “Look, Kindred is not science fiction.” She’s like, “Yo, there’s no—like, there’s no science in that!” It’s just this woman goes back in time!

DEGRAAFF: There is a little bit of science in— Actually, I’m gonna take that back. There’s a good amount of science in Wild Seed because—

RIVERA: Yeah.

DEGRAAFF: —this character—spoiler alert!—

RIVERA: (Laughing.)

DEGRAAFF: —um, there’s this character, and she can change parts of her body. She looks into herself, and she talks about germs.

RIVERA: Yeah.

DEGRAAFF: And at the time—this is like in 1600 or something like that—and she’s like, “I know that there are these alive things.” And I know that because she has the ability to see into her body and know everything that’s working.

And she’s like, “I know you can’t see it. But I can feel it. And I can, like, take care of these germs that are making me sick,” right?

RIVERA: Right.

DEGRAAFF: And so, like, I really liked the science that actually did come out of Wild Seed. You know, as a scientist, I’m, like, picking all the pieces out. I’m like, “Oh, that’s science!” You know, “That’s genetics!”

RIVERA: Yeah.

DEGRAAFF: “That’s talking about organisms!” So—

RIVERA: Yeah. And then, I think, when you get to clay’s Ark, let me know. I love that book. Like—

DEGRAAFF: Oh—

RIVERA: And people are like— (Laughing.) I just taught it! And I had a student tell me, “You know, the next time you teach this, you might want to warn students about how dark it gets.” I was like, well, I mean, we’re talking Butler! Like!

DEGRAAFF: Yeah, and that’s probably why I liked Wild Seed so much. I’m not a big dark, you know, reader?

RIVERA: Yeah, yeah.

DEGRAAFF: But that brings me back to our conversation—

RIVERA: Yeah.

DEGRAAFF: —you know, six years ago, and you talked about why the stories around 1900 were so much about utopia. They were so much about, like, this good future. Because things were so bad.

RIVERA. Yeah.

DEGRAAFF: You know? And then, there was a time where people were getting more hopeful. And then, the stories got more dystopian.

RIVERA: Yeah.

DEGRAAFF: And, like, so, what is it looking like now? Or, can you tell our listeners—

RIVERA: Yeah.

DEGRAAFF: —about that process?

RIVERA: I mean, if you take the Octavia’s Brood anthology, you know, the premise behind that is, any time we try to imagine a world without war, a world without capitalism, a world without police violence against Black people, you’re engaging in a kind of speculative fiction.

And so, I feel like now, it’s not so much— It’s the same thing! It’s, like, “The Changing Same,” right? It’s like, well, you know, white supremacy is alive and kicking. What can we do? How can the imagination become a tool for resistance, you know?

Ytasha Womack’s book on Afrofuturism is all about that. She’s like, “I’m a Black nerd. But I’m also, like, politically really engaged. And that’s why I’m a Black nerd. And the two don’t have to be separate.”

And sometimes, I can watch a movie and just, you know, Black Panther, and I can watch it just to get away from my work day. But other times, I can watch it because I’m really angry about what just happened in Minneapolis or something like that.

So, I feel like more and more young Black writers and activists are super invested in this idea of using science fiction and speculative fiction as a tool for resistance and not just as a way to imagine a better place. Which is a kind of tool for resistance but also, like, a way to speak back to power.

So, when I think of, like, the stories in Octavia’s Brood, that’s— I mean, that’s what Imarisha was trying to do with that whole anthology. And it’s an homage to Butler, who saw the world around her and was like, if we don’t change, we’re really—we’re not—I mean, I hope I can say this, but we’re kind of screwed, right?

But Butler—I mean that, you know, to bring it back to Butler, that was why she wrote. She wrote to make sense of the world, and the world was increasingly hostile. And so, she, you know, that’s why she turned to science fiction—to make sense of it.

And I think that continues. I mean, that’s her legacy, in some sense, right? That’s why they named that anthology after her—because they saw that that’s what she was doing.

So, I think it’s—

DEGRAAFF: And that’s why they named the landing site after her.

RIVERA: The landing site!

DEGRAAFF: The landing Mars rover!

RIVERA: That’s right! I’m so glad you reminded me of that in the email! It’s like, sometimes life has a way of being so perfect, right?

I think her most well-known novel is Parable of the Sower, which is set in L.A. in, like—it’s actually set in L.A., but then they migrate to Oregon, or Washington, one of the two. They go north.

But it’s a total bleak dystopia. And it’s so bleak that sometimes, you know, when I teach it, you know, I always warn my students. It’s bleak, but what makes it really bleak is because it feels really familiar. And, you know, I mean, there’s even, like, a Republican party, and their tagline is, like, “Make America Great Again.” And she wrote this in 1992.

DEGRAAFF: Right, right.

RIVERA: (Laughing.) But her imaginary utopia is a place called Earthseed. And the byline of Earthseed is, “Our destiny is in the stars.” So, it makes perfect sense that— The line I think she says is, “The destiny of Earthseed is to take root beyond the stars.”

And so, it’s like, it makes perfect sense that they would name the landing site after her. Because she’s—I mean, that was her thing, was like— In a lot of her books, the protagonist, who’s Black and female, has some kind of aspiration to go to the stars. There’s—

DEGRAAFF: Mm-hmm.

RIVERA: Like, even in Clay’s Ark—which is the last book of the Patternist series—she is, I mean, the character has, like, this recurring vision of wanting to go to the stars. Because it’s an alternative space, right?

I mean, I could get cynical, though, and say that there’s also, in her books, this slight sense of, like, “But will we mess up once we get there?”

DEGRAAFF: Mm-hmm.

RIVERA: “‘Cause we have that tendency.” But we won’t go there. We’re gonna keep it hopeful.

DEGRAAFF: (Laughing.)

[♪ upbeat instrumental music ♪]

We’d like to thank Dr. Rivera for taking the time to be a guest on our show, again. We love having her. We urge all of her listeners to check out Dr. Rivera’s recommendations. You won’t regret it. Thank you, Lysa, for creating my summer reading list.

Spark Science is produced in collaboration with KMRE and Western Washington University. Today’s episode was recorded in Bellingham, Washington, on my computer, in my house, during the great pandemic that is still going on as of June, 2021.

Our producers are Suzanne Blais and myself, Regina Barber DeGraaff. Our audio engineers are Ariel Shiley, Julia Thorpe, and Zerach Coakley. This script was also written by Zerach Coakley.

If you missed any of this show. Go to our website, SparkScienceNow.com. If there’s a science idea you’re curious about, send us a message on Twitter or Facebook at SparkScienceNow.

Thank you for listening to Spark Science.

[♪ upbeat instrumental music continues ♪]

[End podcast.]

Misinformation

Why do people believe false stories on social media? Who is most susceptible to misinformation or to the more malicious version, disinformation?

In this episode, we speak with Ph.D. candidate in Cognitive Psychology at Northwestern, Nikita Salovich. Her research on how “fake news” grows and how we can slow or stop the spread.

Spark Science encourages our listeners to get vaccinated and to use the information in this episode to have discussions with hesitant family and friends to get vaccinated as well. Another great resource is the Debunking Handbook.

[♪♪♪]

Host: Welcome to Spark Science. I’m your host, Regina Barber DeGraff. I’m an astrophysicist and educator at Western Washington University. In this episode, we get to talk about something we’ve all become more familiar with throughout the past year: misinformation. Our guest today is a cognitive scientist named Nikita Salovich. And she’s here to help us understand how to keep our friends and ourselves from falling for lies that sound like truths.

Last season, we had an episode talking about: how do you convince your friend that maybe they’re being told things that aren’t quite full of facts? And we had Dr. [?]. And today we have one of Dr. [?]’s friends, a PhD candidate in cognitive psychology at Northwestern, Nikita Salovich. Welcome to the show.

Nikita: Thank you so much for having me.

Host: I just want to really thank you for talking to us because I know that there’s a lot of stuff in the media about people talking about the vaccines, things that are true, things that are not true, things that are put out in the media to scare people, to give them hope. So, what exactly is your research?

Nikita: Yeah, so generally I’m trying to better understand and support the way that people learn and interact with information. I specifically study the consequences of being exposed to false or misleading information, including why it influences people’s judgments and decisions even in cases when people should know better, like where they have the prior knowledge or an outside resource available to determine that a given thing is false.

I find that people often fail to think critically about the accuracy of information, even though they are both capable and benefit from doing so. I use a combination of lab experiments, surveys, and social media data to analyze my research.

Host: Tell our listeners a little more about what you mean about lab experiments. Because when we’re talking about psychology, I think when people think “lab,” people think beakers, telescopes, and microscopes, but that’s not exactly what you’re talking about, I’m guessing.

Nikita: No. Not exactly. We have a pretty cool eye tracker in our lab that would probably give some telescopes a run for their money. But the type of lab experiments I do– instead of it being with molecules or with particular substances that you may see in some biological or other physical sciences, we study people. So I have participants come into the lab. And we do randomized trials of showing people particular kinds of information, or testing different interventions to get people to think critically or in a different way. And compare those interventions or those groups of people with control groups, just like you would in traditional lab experiments that you may be thinking of.

I mostly use these lab experiments- so these are materials that I create, or my advisor creates, or other graduates–

Host: Oh; and you see how far they go. I see!

Nikita: Exactly. So we create these statements, so let’s say a list of 80 true and false statements about the world. And we randomly present participants with true and false statements, and ask them to rate how interesting these statements are, one at a time.

And then we give them an open answer, general-knowledge question there. Some of the questions ask about the statements that they saw previously. And then we look at the extent to which people reproduce the false information that they had seen, especially in cases where we already tested them to have the correct prior knowledge, but they regurgitate this false information anyway.

So, I guess, in this sense, we use this kind of canned true-false general knowledge statements because it lets us exhibit a degree of control as cognitive scientists, and to have this sort of lab experimental design, that studying misinformation in the real world often does not allow.

And so we’re able to craft these statements in a particular certain way, and manipulate what they see, and how much justification we give to participants, so on and so forth, so we can make these causal conclusions about the ways that what people see, if that’s what they think, or at least what they report to be true later on.

Host: I want to talk about you, Nikita. How did you get into your field?

Nikita: Yeah. The short answer is that I kind of accidentally became a cognitive scientist. Don’t get me wrong; I very intently and full heartedly prepared my PhD application. It was an opportunity that just fell into my lap. But pursuing a PhD in cognitive psychology or studying cognitive science was definitely unexpected, but a good unexpected turn of events.

My major in undergrad was biology. It was my favorite subject growing up, and I liked the idea of going to medical school, at least until I took organic chemistry. But I realized after a couple of years on this path that I was more interested in the people in my class than I was in the molecules, how people learned vs. what we were learning.

So I went to the university of Minnesota, which, for those of you that don’t know, is a really huge school. The size of the campus and the student body is great if you have, like, an awkward date in the dining hall, and never wanted to see someone again. But it was also hard to make connections in classes with a few hundred students in the lecture hall. And I learned that pretty quickly. And I used to challenge myself to make at least one friend or buddy in all of my classes. And I would sit by them during lecture. I was always nervous about getting the cold shoulder, but people were generally pretty friendly, and plus, I always shared my notes.

My first day of Earth science class, I set out on my mission to find my buddy. I saw someone sitting by themselves near the back of the auditorium. And they seemed friendly enough. We can call him Sam.

[Laughing.]

He turned out to be wicked at biology– gender neutral– but was a man– I think that he could use my flash cards as coffee posters, and still ace every exam.

But what I remember most vividly about that class is how, mid-semester, one of our lectures was interrupted by a protest of flat-Earthers, who stormed the stage, and refused to let my professor continue teaching. Just to make sure we’re on the same page, what I mean by flat-Earthers is people who generally believe that the Earth is flat, like has an edge, and you can fall off of it, and not a sphere.

Well, guess who was on the stage, with a picket sign and all? My buddy Sam. The Sam who was acing Earth science. So, as you can imagine, I felt a lot of emotions during this experience. But most of all, I was really intrigued. How could this budding biologist, my dear friend, have this incorrect belief about the state of the natural world? How did he form this conception? And would I ever be able to get him to change his mind?

Honestly, I don’t know if Sam ever changed his mind.

Host: You like, just cut ties?

Nikita: Yeah. He fell off the face of the Earth. Pun intended after that class. But it did open up a can of worms about all of the questions I wanted to ask about how people misunderstand the world. Ultimately, led me to study what I’m studying now. The science of how people are influenced by misinformation.

Host: Was there any other instances as you were, like, going through undergrad, or now in grad school, that you did follow all the way through, you did have an interaction where you saw some amount of change, even if it was a little, with what you learned.

Nikita: Yeah. Absolutely. I think that’s a great question. I think as most can relate, I have family members that have different beliefs about the world, and I think as I have become more and more confident about the best ways to talk to these individuals that hold beliefs that are different from mine– I also have made more traction, gained more ground in terms of being able to influence their thoughts and behaviors, and do so strategically vs. emotionally, which is definitely something I have struggled with, having my blood boil a bit when I disagreed with someone from a scientific perspective. But I’m able to cool my jets now and make more of an impact in that way. But it takes a while.

Host: To cool your jets!

Nikita: It does; it takes patience.

Host: Well, I mean, speaking of, I think, when we all see misinformation in front of us, we get really, you know, emotional. But I also get emotional when I see things that happened in the past, where I’m like, oh my gosh, I can’t believe this happened. So, in your studies or in your research, can you give us a story of something that happened in the past, before the pandemic, of like, an instance of misinformation that really spread wildly in society.

Nikita: Yeah. That’s a great question. Misinformation has existed far before the pandemic, unfortunately. And even before the time I started graduate school, and even the times before either of us was even born.

Host: Right. I mean there’s propaganda, right?

Nikita: Absolutely. We use this term “fake news,” and it gained a lot of traction and surge of interest in misinformation around the time of the 2016 presidency. But before then, for example, Nazi propaganda was used during World War II to spread anti-Semitic hate. And a tradition of tabloids publishing rumors as facts has been a popular attention-grabbing tactic for years now.

And I think it’s important, with that question, to recognize that we don’t get our information from just sources that were intended to inform us, like news articles. We also pick it up from sources where the main goal is to entertain us, like fictional books and movies, and also sources where it’s kind of in between entertainment and information, like podcasts, or social media. And research from my lab finds that: fiction or not, exposure to false information influences what we believe to be true about the real world. It’s not just fake news and disinformation that we need to worry about.

That said, misinformation has been shown to affect the way that we think, and navigate the world. Very much so. Some researchers have even attributed major world events, including that 2016 election, the 2019 measles outbreak in the US, and of course, the recent surge in COVID-19 cases, and hesitancy around the vaccine due to the circulation of false information, particularly online.

Host: You’re listening to Spark Science, and we’re discussing the foundations of misinformation.

Nikita: Research has shown that misinformation travels faster and wider than true news, so that means that it reaches more people, and it reaches more people quicker. And this is because a lot of times, misinformation is surprising. It’s something that we wouldn’t expect, or that’s really enticing to believe. And because of that, it plays into these biases of what we want to be true.

I had a college roommate who one time told me excitedly that she had read somewhere that redheads need more sleep. And so therefore I could not play music in the morning while I took a shower. And guess what color hair she had.

Host: Red!

Nikita: Red? Yeah. And so wherever she heard that information– I think it was from one of the People Magazines that we had lying on our living room table or something, to be completely honest. She was more likely to accept that information is true, or conversely less likely to scrutinize that information, right. So we have this bias for accepting things that we already agree with. And we have this bias toward not rejecting, or not thinking critically about things that we want to be true, because they sound really great, and it would be great to live in a universe where redheads did need more sleep, but to our knowledge, that is not true.

Host: It just reminds me of all of those news articles that are like “oh; coffee is good for you. Coffee is bad for you. Red wine is good for you. Red wine is bad for you.” You know, you know you have those people who are like, I drink a lot of red wine. Or I’m a coffee drinker so thank God this is actually going to help me rid off dementia, or something like that.

Nikita: Yeah. Absolutely. And because we live in an environment where we are faced with so much information, a single Google search can come with hundreds of thousands of hits of articles. The way that we even search for information affects what we view. If you’re a chocolate lover, you may be more inclined to google the benefits of chocolate, vs. the cons of eating chocolate, right? And so, in doing so, you are going to be faced with information that’s confirmatory vs. dis-confirmatory. Also, a little bit of a scary thing, but these search engines remember our types of searches.

Host: Right. It’s going to give you more of these positive about chocolate stories.

Nikita: Exactly. It’s a feedback loop. That would be a combination of confirmation bias, and motivated reasoning.

Host: Right.

Nikita: People also generally like things that are familiar to them. They tend to find solace in people that look like them, talk like them, have similar interests. And that can be a bad thing when we use that as a cue for whether a source is reliable or accurate.

Host: Mhmm.

Nikita: And so for example, if someone learned that so and so person also has the same birthday as them, also they’re attractive, went to the same university for undergrad, have a cat that has the same as you, whatever– you may be more likely to trust them, even if they’re not a reliable source. Like, perhaps going to the University of Minnesota makes you a reliable source, because you have a college education, but having a cat that’s named Lentil probably doesn’t do that, even though I’m probably more likely to think positively of you.

Host: This is Spark Science and we’re talking with cognitive scientist Nikita Salovich about misinformation and the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We apologize in advance for the internet connection issues mid-interview.

[♪♪♪]

Let’s get to, like, the pandemic itself. What have you seen in your field that’s been very concerning during this pandemic?

Nikita: I think that, like many world events, there’s a surge of information that is circulating, but also unique to situations such as the pandemic. People are experiencing a heightened level of fear, or very strong emotional responses, which can lead to less scrutiny of information, and abandonment of logic. And as humans, we’re already not very logical. But when we are experiencing instance emotions, our latching onto these biases, and heuristics, and quick rules of thumb of how we process and jump to conclusions becomes even more and more extreme.

And so I think that that is a large concern right now, and has been for scientists, as people are being exposed to false information because of the extreme fear that people have, and also the current divides and polarization in the political sphere, now, in the US, across the world, but particularly in the US right now. We’re experiencing of the greatest divides in political ideology than ever before. And right now, health is becoming a partisan issue with the pandemic. And that is something that, even though it has been experienced in the past, or seen in the past, it is something that can be extremely dangerous where you view taking an action that is objectively and scientifically shown to be the healthier decision, and the better decision for the population as a whole, if you view that to be a political decision, or a decision where you’re abandoning your values as one party or another, then that becomes extremely dangerous because it’s dissuading people from making decisions that could very much save their lives.

Host: That’s a really good point. And as someone who teaches a science communication class– and I’m sure you, Nikita, you’ve seen this in your labs. The solution for that, though, is not to just give people facts, though, right? Like, that’s not going to work either. It seems to be this gut reaction a lot of scientists want to do, or are taught.

But what does your research show? What can we do to counteract that misinformation? Because I get a lot of push-back from scientists that are like: well we can’t appeal to people’s feelings, because that’s cheating. And I’m like: mmm, people have feelings, so . . .

Nikita: I think that that’s a really great question. There is definitely an art for the best practice of helping people realize that what they may be seeing or believing or sharing is incorrect. And even though it’s not something that we deliberately think about, sometimes there is an important difference between telling someone that they’re wrong, and helping them learn the correct information. We should be putting more emphasis on directing people’s knowledge, vs. telling people that they’re wrong, in our conversations.

And I think the main difference between those two things is that the former, or telling something that they’re wrong, can be accusatory, and even cause reactions. Being wrong is something that none of us want to hear, whether it’s getting a question wrong on an exam– it is particularly important to acknowledge this when attempting to correct misinformation that is politically or ideologically loaded. That information may be important in maintaining coherence of other beliefs that they have, or even central to their worldview. Approaching this situation as “you’re wrong and I’m right” can scare people away, and make them tune you out.

In some extreme cases, it can even make them dig their heels deeper, further insisting the misinformed belief in order to defined themselves, and prevent their worldview from crumbling, or to protect themselves from feeling silly or incompetent. So if someone starts tuning you out because the emphasis of how you approach the conversation is in what ways they’re wrong and incompetent, it doesn’t allow you the opportunity to do what you likely care about most, which is telling them what is right. So the flip-side to that is this potentially accusatory approach– is instead that you can approach a conversation with a misinformed individual with the primary objective of correcting their misinformed idea or belief, vs. a compelling laundry list of all the ways that they are ignorant.

So, this completely changes the tone of the conversation. You no longer want or can afford to alienate this individual. You have to win them over with the patience and enthusiasm for truth so that they listen to what you have to say. So if someone shares with you that they are hesitant in getting the COVID-19 vaccine, instead of jumping in immediately with how ludicrous their idea is, take a deep breath, let your blood come down from a boil to a simmer, and try to open the door for conversation, rather than slamming it in their face.

One way to let them know that you’re listening, and that, even though their belief is wrong, is that they’re not alone in holding it. So, for example, you could start out by telling them, “I’ve heard other people have that concern.” Or, “I actually had a similar conversation with my cousin the other day.” Or, “I actually used to think that for a while, too.” You may be thinking, isn’t it bad to reaffirm that others hold their beliefs? Well, it’s important not to let the conversation end at the affirmation that they’re not alone in their hesitancy, establishing that your following response is not out of the aim to belittle them, but instead to reiterate new, more reliable information, is very important. If your cousin could change their mind about the COVID vaccine, then maybe your childhood friend could, too.

Host: But there’s another side, too, right? Like, yes, we, as scientists, or science-minded people that are kind of for the vaccine have this conversation and we have to take a deep breath and really listen. But I think there’s a lot of things that go into all of these conversations. For instance, you hear people– like anyone who doesn’t want to take the vaccine, I hear my colleagues say this: it’s just an awful person; they’re a monster; they’re dumb.

And especially I have a lot of white colleagues that don’t understand why communities of color are suspicious of the vaccine, and suspicious of medical people. And the reason is being of history, right? communities of color, especially Black Americans, have been used as guinea pigs in the past. And so, to not trust medicine has some evidence to it in our society, in our country. And a lot of my colleagues don’t know that. And so to really not know your audience is, I think, the problem with a lot of these conversations.

Nikita: Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. And I think that’s why making sure it’s a conversation and not a monologue is so important. That’s why you would be able to– you know– maybe even ask questions about why someone feels hesitant, vs. assuming that it’s because they don’t have the correct information.

I think that we have to be empathetic in these situations, even if we may want to jump to these accusatory conclusions, or accusatory monologues vs. dialogues.

Host: I think it’s really also important for our listeners, because there are people that you will not turn. You just won’t. Or you don’t even know, right? Like, you don’t have a connection to– but like, we’re talking about people who are part of your life, that you are willing or interested in changing. That’s a different story. There are some conversations you will not win.

Nikita: Exactly. And I think that sometimes, we find ourselves in these conversations even if we don’t want to. And one of the– like, if you are in the middle, and you’re not exactly in the comfortable position to be able to express your beliefs, or new information to someone, another go-to for fighting misinformation to add to your toolkit is starting with a question, rather than an assertion. So it may help the person realize that their argument or idea doesn’t make as much sense as they thought. So in a situation, for example, where you may be eating with– I don’t know– a great aunt of sorts that may have a certain conspiracy theory about how the world words.

You can ask her, like, where did you get that information? Are you sure that is a reliable source of information? Have you seen the latest information released by so-and-so source? So in this way, asking people to question their own beliefs does a lot of the hard work for you, with a lower risk of alienating that person, you’re working hard to have an open conversation.

[♪♪♪]

Host: You’re listening to Spark Science. It’s now one of our favorite portions of the show, where we discuss how the field of cognitive science is portrayed in pop culture.

[♪♪♪]

Can you think of a time where there is a cognitive scientist in a movie, or a comic book, or something like that? How is your field portrayed?

Nikita: I would say that there’s a general perception of misinformation researchers, or people who study misinformation, as being political scientists. And while it’s no secret that lots of mis- and disinformation that we hear about is related to political topics. There is just so much more, and so much research on the detrimental effects on non-partisan, inaccurate, misleading information.

And so, in my opinion, there’s an over-emphasis on pitting one political party vs. another, and “who is more misinformed?” Or “have you studied republicans vs. democrats?” And it’s a little-known fact that, over and above people’s political ideologies, an even better predictor of falling for false information, and sharing fake news, is how cognitively lazy people are.

Host: [Laughing.] Tell us more about that.

Nikita: Yeah. So people are generally cognitive misers. We don’t like giving much thought to anything. So the stuff that we see, for example, online– a lot of people don’t think critically about it. It doesn’t matter your particular demographics. In a way, people just don’t want to evaluate it.

And so I think that we need to start getting into the mindset that everyone, even ourselves, even me as a misinformation researcher, is influenced by inaccurate or misleading claims, because of this cognitive science behind it. And once we accept that, I think that we can become more humble in how we approach our information sphere, but also how we react to others who may be misinformed?

Host: Is there anything I haven’t asked you that you would like to share with our listeners? Like you were saying, the misconceptions people have about cognitive scientists, or anything else?

Nikita: Yeah; I’m not sure. I guess I would say– I would just want to emphasize that we have to take it on ourselves to be more deliberate consumers of information.

I think that a lot of people put emphases on, let’s say, interventions put in place by social media companies, news outlets, and journalists. I think that people should take matters into their own hands, as the information consumers. Because, let’s be honest, there’s no way that we can get rid of every single inaccurate claim, especially with the internet. But what we can do is help people produce and recognize when and how to evaluate the information that they see in here, day to day. Also, I would want to emphasize that cognitive science and psychology are definitely sciences.

I think that the variables that we study are a lot different, and often, the variables that I study are invisible, like people’s preferences, on intelligence.

Host: Right; they’re not tangible.

Nikita: Exactly. They’re not tangible. But just because we can’t see them in the traditional sense, or measure them as consistently, as like, with a thermometer in measuring temperature, they’re still there. And they still impact every decision that we make.

[♪♪♪]

Host: We’d like to thank Nikita Salovich for taking time away from her PhD studies to talk to us about fake news. We wish her a smooth dissertation and defense in the future.

Spark Science is produced in collaboration with KMRE, and Western Washington University. Today’s episode was recorded in Bellingham Washington, in my house, on my computer, during the great pandemic that’s still going on, as of May, 2021. Our producers are Suzanne Blais, and myself, Regina Barber DeGraff. Our audio engineers for this episode or Julia Thorpe and Sarah Coakley. The script writer for today’s episode was also Sarah Coakley. If you missed any of the show, go to our website, sparksciencenow.com. And if there’s a science idea you’re curious about, send us a message on Twitter or Facebook at SparkScienceNow. Thank you for listening to Spark Science.

[♪♪♪]

mRNA Vaccines

“Which one did you get, Pfizer or Moderna?” This was the big question at the start of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout but how do these vaccines work? Why do they have to be kept at ultra cold temperatures? What is mRNA?

These questions are answers in this episode featuring WWU Biology professor and RNA researcher, Dr. Suzanne Lee.

Lastly, if you haven’t already, Spark Science would like to encourage you to get any COVID-19 Vaccine available, mRNA or not.

Spark Science Podcast
mRNA Vaccines w Dr. Suzanne Lee

[Podcast start-up music: chimes and drums.]

Regina Barber DeGraaff: Welcome to Spark Science. I’m your host, Regina Barber DeGraaff, and I teach physics and astronomy at Western Washington University. In this episode, we get to talk about the mRNA vaccine with my friend and colleague, Dr. Suzanne Lee.

In our previous episode, we spoke with an infectious disease specialist on the status of the COVID 19 pandemic, and how vaccines can definitely help. This time, we’re speaking with Dr. Lee, an assistant professor here at WWU, regarding her research on RNA pathways. Let’s take a closer look at just how these new vaccines work.

[Music swells and fades for interview session.]

I am here with an awesome biologist, somebody I’ve known for a long time, Dr. Suzanne Lee.

Dr. Lee: Aww, thanks. It’s super-awesome to be on your show. I’m a big fan, so…. [Laughing.]

DeGraaff: I wanted to bring you on because, actually, one of the students who works on the show–we have student volunteers that edit the show and give me ideas and help me storyboard. One of them is a biology major, and he wants to talk about the RNA vaccines. He asked about that. Your research is with RNA, so we’re going to go back in time and talk about your path to your research.

Dr. Lee: I wouldn’t say I was really “science-leaning” until I was in college. Growing up, I was pretty sheltered and pretty much a homebody. I really didn’t go anywhere. And so, it just doesn’t really….

I was definitely an avid reader, but I read, you know, just storybooks and things like that. You know this, Regina. I wanted to go into the performing arts. That was my secret passion. But it was definitely secret because my parents are–if they listen to this, they’ll– [laughing.]

DeGraaff: And they are going to listen to it!

Dr. Lee: I’m not going to be ashamed, no! [Laughing.] No, I ended up not going into the performing arts, but I love the performing arts so much. I mean, I just love the communication and the storytelling that’s a part of the performing arts, and that connection with the people you’re telling a story with and to. But it was not a very practical career path. And so, I started taking premed classes to basically satisfy the parents, who really wanted me to be a doctor.

And that of course was intro biology and intro chem. And I actually did really poorly in my intro chem class. My very first semester, I got a D- on one of the major exams, and I was like, “Ugh.”

DeGraaff: But on the exam, not on the final, right? I know you pulled out of that, right?

Dr. Lee: Yeah, and the only reason how I managed to pull out of that was because that particular instructor had this wonderful policy of dropping the lowest grade! [Laughing.]

But yeah, I was not so into science initially. And biology…. We were talking a little bit about this before we started. The biology just seemed to me like a lot of memorization. I’ve never been particularly good at memorizing a bunch of things, like terms, if it’s not something that’s deeply interesting to me. That’s never been my thing.

And so, I just wasn’t really into it. But then, I took a chemistry class from this awesome professor/mentor, Dr. David Hanes, at my college. He was a chemistry professor. He taught intro chem and he also taught organic chemistry, and organic chemistry is like the chemistry of biological reactions, is kind of how I think of it.

He helped me realize that I really love… that I really got into the problem-solving of science. It’s really through organic chemistry but uncovering how things work. I realized I was really interested in that aspect of science. The memorization may be just like learning a language, but really, that was to be able to understand how things work.

And then, I needed to earn some money in college, so I stumbled on a research opportunity in the summer in New York City. And I was like, “Performing arts? New York City? Broadway’s there! Oh my god!”

DeGraaff: But you said summer? It was a summer internship?

Dr. Lee: It was a summer research program, yeah.

DeGraaff: But you went to undergrad in San Diego, right?

Dr. Lee: No, no, I was an undergraduate just outside of Boston, in a small college.

DeGraaff: Okay, okay. But you did go to…. San Diego was grad school?

Dr. Lee: San Diego…. I eventually got to San Diego in my postdoc so many years ago.

DeGraaff: Postdoc, yeah. So, you’re outside of Boston, you want to do a summer thing in New York.

Dr. Lee: Yeah, I want to do a summer thing in New York. There was this hook, I think, in the advertisements of “fun excursions” you could go on, including Broadway shows. I was like, “I am there!” [Laughing.]

But it placed me in a cancer biology lab, which opened my eyes to this different view of biology. It wasn’t mind-numbing memorization, but like detective work. There was a nice melding of chemistry and biology in the field of molecular biology, which is…. Ultimately, that was what pulled me into studying biology and biochemistry, basically.

So, that was kind of how I got in, I would say. From there, I ended up majoring in biological chemistry as an undergraduate. When I graduated–when I got close to graduating, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do and I was still trying to like, okay, maybe I can do science but still do the med school thing. If I try to think about MD/PhD programs, but if I do medical school, that might be really expensive. So I’ve got to work for a while. That was my argument for why I needed to just work for a while.

So, I worked for a while in a lab in Boston as a research assistant. That was an awesome time of life, just generally, because I was working as a scientist in a lab, learning a lot, and also getting to play a lot and do some local theater.

Then, I got to a point where I felt like I had kind of hit a ceiling in what I was being allowed to do in the lab. I remember I worked really hard to figure out how to do some kind of microscopy experiment and I was taking too long. My advisor, who was a wonderful person, Dr. Stephen Volk [sp?] in Boston–he was like, “Suzanne, I know you spent some time on this, but actually I’m just going to have someone else do that experiment.”

Dr. DeGraaff: What?!

Dr. Lee: I got really mad!

Dr. DeGraaff: Yeah. [Laughs.]

Dr. Lee: I got really mad. I remember, whatever I was, probably 21 or something. I remember I went up to Dr. Volk and I was like, see? If I were a grad student or a post doc, that would be so not cool. But I understand. I’m just a research assistant.

I look back at that and I laugh. I mean, he took it so well. He was like, “you need to go to grad school.” [Laughing.] That sort of led me to grad school. I realized I was just really interested in the fundamentals of how things work. Lots of respect to doctors all over. For me, I realized that I was just really into the problem solving and the discovery, the detective work.

I went to Berkeley for my graduate degree and then traveled around a bit after that. I did my post doc. First year of my post doc was in Boulder, Colorado. Then I ended up in San Diego because the lab moved to San Diego.

As a post doc, I took a class that was about approaching teaching like you approach science and trying to figure out what’s going on with students, and then making sure that you’re really supporting students, and all of your students. That got me really excited to think about teaching, and integrating my love of science with teaching and mentoring.

That is really, I think, what put me into looking for positions like the one I have at Western where I get to basically do it all. I love getting to work with students. I love it so much. I love getting to have a little lab and I get to have that lab be someplace where me and my students are trying to figure out what’s going on, how things work.

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Dr. DeGraaff: This is Spark Science and we’re talking at Dr. Suzanne Lee about the mRNA vaccines and the science behind them.

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Dr. DeGraaff: Let’s tell a story about how these mRNA vaccines work. I know that when this happened, I remember you talking to me and how excited you were. Help our listeners understand what this mRNA vaccine is all about.

Dr. Lee: Yeah. It is just so amazing to me that what might lead us out of this mess is RNA. It’s so much fun. People are probably pretty familiar now with these images of the coronavirus. It’s like a blob with these spiky little things, like a dog toy kind of thing.

Dr. DeGraaff: [Laughs.] Again, for our listeners, Dr. Lee is making a ball with her hands like two claws. [Laughs.]

Dr. Lee: Totally. [Laughs.] Exactly. Coronavirus–the reason why we call it corona is because it’s got this spiky crown, and corona means spiky crown in Latin.

So, those spikes, those pointy things, they are proteins. The mRNA vaccine encodes–not the coronavirus–it’s not introducing in virus. It’s just introducing the instructions for your cells to make some of the spike protein. Then, what happens–because the spike protein on the coronavirus, it’s exposed out. The spiky ball–the spikes on the–basically, in the cells, when it’s expressed, that spike protein gets put on the surface–displayed on the surface of the cells that the vaccine gets into.

Basically, this vaccine is really cool. It’s got these mRNA molecules packaged inside, essentially, a globule of fat that then can be taken up by your cells when it’s injected in. Then those cells that take it up can start to make a bunch of spike protein and display the spike protein on the surface of your cells, which then is recognized by your immune system as, “wait a minute, what’s that thing?”

The immune system will start to make antibodies and it’ll make, eventually, hopefully, some memory immune cells that can recognize something that looks like the spike protein. So that, if your body ever actually encounters real SARS-CoV-2, your immune system will instantly recognize, “oh, what are these spikes? We’ve seen that before. Let’s get rid of this thing.”

Dr. DeGraaff: So, it’s really cool because older vaccines, the vaccines that we’ve had before, are the actual virus–not alive, but injected into people. This way, they’re like synthetic. It’s not the actual virus. But it’s doing the same thing. Your body is training for when the day comes, I’ll know what this thing is and I’ll know how to defeat it.

Dr. Lee: Yeah. Exactly. Some of the more classical approaches to making these vaccines have been what are called attenuated viruses. Or there’d be similar viruses, but from another organism. But then kind of weakened so that it can’t actually make you sick, but it stirs up your immune system so that if your body ever encounters some other virus that looks a lot like what you got in that vaccine, it’ll be able to attack it.

But in this case, what’s really clever about it is that it’s just the instructions to make a particular part of the virus that your immune system would see first, and then it can attack it.

I think the reason why I’m so excited about that is because all those other methods of, sort of, an attenuated virus, or weakened virus, or some other virus from some other organism but has some similarity to the virus that you’re trying to vaccinate against–those other methods take a really long time to make a lot of. Whereas, the mRNA vaccine is not as hard and it’s also easier to change the sequence pretty quickly. So that, if you need your immune system to recognize something slightly different, we can do that really easily.

A good example is the flu vaccine. Annually, scientists have to kind of predict, well, what’s this year’s flu going to be? Alright, let’s look for some flu viruses and inactivate them and maybe this is approximately what’s going to be right, that’s going to help vaccinate people this year.

But, the flu vaccine is something like 50 percent. I’m not an immunologist, I’m not a clinician, so don’t quote me on this! [Laughs.]

Dr. DeGraaff: It’s a general statement.

Dr. Lee: [Laughs.] This isn’t being recorded! But yeah, it’s efficacy is pretty good, but some years it’s not quite on. Some years it’s better than others. But it takes a while to do that.

In this case, it’s the sequence that gets taken up by the cells and can get your cells to basically make this molecule that then your cells display and your immune system can recognize.

Dr. DeGraaff: When we have these variants of COVID-19 and you have the vaccine and your body is like, okay, I recognize this, this spikiness. How different is the spikiness for the variants? How can it deal with that?

Dr. Lee: It’s interesting. So, the immune system will generate a bunch of antibodies, which will fight anything that has resemblance to the spike protein that you’ve introduced. It’ll be able to recognize stuff that’s exactly the same thing and stuff that looks similar, but isn’t exactly the same thing. So, there’s some flexibility in our immune systems.

Dr. DeGraaff: That’s good! [Laughs.]

Dr. Lee: It is really good. Certainly, the proof of how well something works is going to be in the data. My understanding is, so far, the variant that’s called the UK variant–that one, our current vaccines work great against. I think there’s two other variants that people are starting to get worried about. That would be the South African one and the Brazilian one. Those particular variants.

Even so, even with those, even though the studies seem to be that our vaccines are not as active against those, it’s still pretty good for protecting against serious disease. So, it’ll help to keep people out of the hospital, which is important.

As we were saying, I think also the ability to tweak that sequence relatively easily is very promising to being able to update it if we need to.

Dr. DeGraaff: So, then we’ve kind of gotten to that place then. Then what’s the future for RNA research? How can we use it in the future? Are more and more vaccines going to have this now? Because they didn’t really before. What else is this going to produce? What kind of solutions are we now going to get from RNA research?

Dr. Lee: Yeah. It’s so exciting from that point of view. I mean, as horrible and disruptive as this pandemic has been, it is really just awesome that we have gotten our first RNA vaccines. Even before this point, some of the companies that had been working on vaccines had been developing RNA-based vaccines for other things. Like, Moderna was working on a vaccine for the Zika virus. You might remember Zika.

Dr. DeGraaff: It’s still around, right?

Dr. Lee: It’s still around, exactly. Dengue. A lot of countries really suffer because of dengue. Then there’s also phase 1 trials now being worked on for a universal flu shot that is mRNA-based.

I’m hopeful that this is sort of paving the way towards having more flexibility in the kinds of vaccines that can be used. It’s nice to have lots of options for things that either are changeable or have been really hard historically to vaccinate against. Now we have something that is a more flexible platform and faster turnaround, potentially.

Just based on these particular mRNA vaccines that we’ve got going, the efficacy is so high! I mean, it’s just like–remember in the fall, when the first Pfizer announcement came out and it was like 95 percent efficacy under their clinical trials in phase 3. I was just like, that is so amazing!

Dr. DeGraaff: Because you were saying that regular vaccines don’t have that kind of percentage.

Dr. Lee: Typically not. I mean, some do. Again, we can go back to the flu vaccine. It’s not nearly as high, is my understanding.

I think, too, it’s like there are certain things that could be improved about the current RNA vaccines. Hopefully there’ll be more investment and research in trying to understand how to improve it, how to start to limit some of the responses that folks have. With these shots, some people are having mild symptoms that don’t last for a long time. It’s kind of transient, but as folks investigate, what is it about the packaging of these things? How can we improve it so that it’s less of a reaction? How can we make it more temperature stable?

Dr. DeGraaff: I was going to ask you about that. All of these vaccines that we’re talking about–RNA–they have to be at super cold temperatures. Then they go bad super fast, right?

Dr. Lee: Yeah. It’s so interesting. I’ve been very curious about that. First of all, they go bad really fast. So, once you open a vial, you got to get that into people’s arms. That’s been the thing. Got to get it into people’s arms!

So, then, the temperature requirements. For Pfizer, minus 80. For the Moderna, minus 20.

Dr. DeGraaff: 20 what? What units?

Dr. Lee: Celsius. [Laughs.]

Dr. DeGraaff: There we go. These are the points I take off of students’ tests. You can’t–no units? No. No, Suzanne!

Dr. Lee: Oh, I just got a D! [Laughs.]

So, minus 20 would be like your household freezer. So, minus 80 is even more–Celsius. [Laughs.]

So, the temperature stability, I think it’s interesting. Of course, a lot of this is, I think, proprietary, so it’s hard to dig into why. But I think the temperature is likely related to the relative instability of RNA. That it’s packaged in a fat droplet, so if you heat up fat, you can think of your butter when you heat it up. It sort of melts. So, some of that kinetic, thermal energy of temperature can be disrupting that.

Dr. DeGraaff: That is the best–I have not heard anyone talk about that. Like, why do we need it to be cold? Just like when you make cookies and you cut the butter into the flour and then it melts when it’s in the oven, but you still want it to be like held together and kind of chunked before you put it in there.

Dr. Lee: Yeah. And then the sort of not lasting very long–I just recently learned this–that these vaccines actually don’t have any preservatives in them. That’s why they expire quickly and you have to get them into arms, which for some folks may be really comforting because it’s lacking some of those preservatives that people–the CDC has said those preservatives in other vaccines is not harmful, but some people have concerns about preservatives generally. So, these don’t actually have preservatives, which I thought was really interesting.

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Dr. DeGraaff: You’re listening to Spark Science and we’re talking to Dr. Lee about the development and application of mRNA vaccines and also how they relate to her ongoing research here at WWU.

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Dr. DeGraaff: So, what does this all mean for your own research then? What questions do you want to answer and what problems do you want to solve with your research with RNA?

Dr. Lee: Oh. [Laughs.] Yeah, that’s a good question. I mean, so we have been studying this RNA pathway that, like I say, the genome has these regions that don’t encode proteins. So, the mRNA vaccines here they encode the spike protein, that RNA molecule. We’re really interested in the parts of the genome that allow for RNA to be made, but that those bits of RNA sequence actually don’t code for anything. They can’t be decoded into a protein–or they don’t seem to be decoded into a protein.

We’ve been studying this pathway that takes some of those transcripts and converts them into these really short RNAs. Kind of, evolutionarily, these are pathways that were thought to evolve to actually fight off viruses. It’s basically a pathway that chops up RNA in a cell into small pieces and then uses those small pieces to trigger the degradation of RNAs that share the same sequence.

But the cells, over evolutionary time, have coopted them to help serve some kind of important function in the cell, be it gene regulation, or organization of the genome in particular ways. We’ve been trying to study the function that this pathway has in the model organism that we study.

It’s hard to study pathways that are important for human health in humans because it’s expensive and also complicated.

So, what we do is we use a model–

Dr. DeGraaff: Like ethically complicated.

Dr. Lee: It’s ethically complicated. It’s also logistically complicated and highly expensive. So, we’re really interested in trying to understand this pathway, even though it is conserved in humans. But we study in what we call a model organism, which is a single-celled creature called Tetrahymena thermophila. It’s basically a single-celled creature, normally lives in freshwater environments.

We’ve been trying to understand what this RNA interference pathway does for cells. We’re starting to uncover some clues that I’m really excited about. But we’re trying to get this one paper out soon. Soon, hopefully. Fingers crossed!

Dr. DeGraaff: You actually have students working on that research, right? So, students will be on this paper, right?

Dr. Lee: Oh, yeah. There’s a very long list of students who worked in my lab over a few years. This particular manuscript that we’re working on, we’re just trying to put the final touches on this year.

It stretches that back, I would say, at least 3 or 4 years of work has gone into this study. I think we finally actually have a handle on what this pathway is doing in our cells. What I’m really excited about is it seems like what this pathway is doing in our cells is something that we’ve been getting whispers for happening in a lot of different organisms, including humans. It has some really important implications in terms of the conservation of this pathway and in terms of the molecular mechanisms of this pathway.

Dr. DeGraaff: I really like–I mean, you can tell you’re really excited about your research, which is great. But also, for me, a non-biologist, many of our listeners are not biologists, it’s surprising for us to hear that there are so many things about the human body we don’t understand or about cells. So, it’s really interesting that you’re saying, we have to understand what this specific pathway is doing because we didn’t know beforehand.

Dr. Lee: Right. The origins of the COVID vaccine go back 20 years to a time when people were just trying to understand something and were driven by their curiosity. But didn’t know where it was going to lead. It’s these fundamental discoveries of how do things work, how can we do things, that put us in such a good position last year this time, basically, to have something like a vaccine. You can never know what your fundamental discoveries are going to lead to.

Dr. DeGraaff: Because we don’t totally understand–we’re still discovering biology, we’re still discovering physics, we’re still discovering astrophysics every day–science is a dynamic thing! All of the fields have new stuff happening, which brings me to pop culture.

[Laughing.]

Because there are so many movies out there with, you know, cloning dinosaurs.

[Laughing.]

And the movie Evolution with David Duchovny and just like–mutants, X-Files–I mean, X-Men, and stuff like that. Whenever you’re seeing that in the media utilized stereotypes or misconceptions in society, do you have anything that you’ve seen the past where you’re just like, “there’s no way we could do that!”

Dr. Lee: I mean, I think the thing that strikes me, and even with the examples you mentioned–and I think I’ve confessed to you that I’m a Shonda Rhimes fan. I’ve watched Grey’s Anatomy. [Laughs.] There are these depiction of scientists who are involved in some research. It’s like this one person–and then they’ve discovered something amazing all of a sudden. Everyone recognizes that’s like really important and everyone cares and they win all these great awards. And like, that–science doesn’t work that way. It’s rare that people really recognize the importance of something right when it happens. [Laughs.]

Dr. DeGraaff: [Laughs.] I love that that’s what you took away. They’re like, it doesn’t happen this fast. My husband is a lawyer and I remember I had a friend in graduate school. When I was getting my PhD, my husband had just gotten his first job as a lawyer, and my friend wanted to go to court with him. She was like, can I just please watch you in court? Is it just like Boston Legal? [Laughs.] Jake is like, it is not like Boston Legal.

Dr. Lee: Exactly! In the case of a scientific discovery, it’s not just one person who makes this amazing discovery and then everybody’s like “wow!” It’s like years. Going back to the vaccine, like 20 years of discovery, 20 years of work, of lots of different people involved.

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Dr. DeGraaff: Thank you so much to Dr. Suzanne Lee for being a guest on our show. It’s a great privilege to have a friend so well versed on the complexities of RNA. If you haven’t already, Spark Science would like to encourage you to get any COVID-19 vaccine available, mRNA or not. We can do this. We’re almost out.

Spark Science is produced in collaboration with KMRE and Western Washington University. Today’s episode was recorded in Bellingham, Washington, in my house on my computer, during the great pandemic that’s still going on in April 2021.

Our producers are Suzanne Blais and myself Regina Barber DeGraaff. Our audio engineers for today’s episode are Ariel Shiley and Zerach Coakley.

If you missed any of our show, go to our website at sparksciencenow.com. And, if there’s a science idea you’re curious about, send us a message on Twitter or Facebook at SparkScienceNow.

Thank you for listening to Spark Science.

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COVID-19 Follow-up with Dr. Vijai Bhola

It has been a year since we have talked with Infectious Disease Specialist, Dr. Vijai Bhola. He is now our go-to regular medical doctor to answer our questions about the pandemic one year in.

We discuss the various vaccines, the socioeconomic impact of the pandemic on different populations, and predictions for the future.

One takeaway that Dr. Bhola would like to convey is to “not let your guard down”. We are not out of this pandemic yet so keep those masks on and those interactions outside your home circle limited. Check out https://www.cdc.gov/

Image credit: CDC/ Alissa Eckert, MS; Dan Higgins, MAM

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Regina Barber DeGraaff [narrating]: Welcome to Spark Science. I’m your host, Regina Barber DeGraaff, and I teach physics and astronomy at Western Washington University. In March 2020, we interviewed an infectious disease medical doctor to create a show to better inform our listeners about the new virus that was shutting down the world. We invited Dr. Vijai Bhola back to our show to talk about how things have changed over the past year and how he thinks the pandemic is going to progress in the future.

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Regina Barber DeGraaff: It’s been one year since we’ve talked to Dr. Vijai Bhola, infectious disease specialist. It was an awesome show. It was at the beginning of the pandemic. But I want to welcome Dr. Bhola back to the show. Thank you for being here!

Dr. Vijai Bhola: It’s a pleasure to be back. Thank you for having me.

Regina: A lot has happened in the last year, but I also want to introduce the co-host for today’s show, Western Washington University physics student, editor for Spark Science for the last three years, Julia Thorpe. So, thank you for being my co-host.

Julia Thorpe: Hello. Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure.

Regina: For all you listeners, Julia’s also going to edit this show.

Julia: Yep.

Regina: So this is really Julia show. [Julia laughs] Let’s just start off with helping the listeners; what you do, Dr. Bhola. What does an infectious disease specialist do? What are you doing right now? Kind of your background.

Dr. Bhola: So I’m an infectious disease doctor by training. I just finished my infectious diseases fellowship July of last year. And what I’m doing right now, I’m working right now more in a general medicine capacity. Because I was supposed to actually be in Botswana for these six months. But because of COVID-related reasons, I find myself staying here stateside.

One very good thing I was able to do, which was very interesting for me, is assist with some of the counseling for the Novavax vaccines, which our hospital’s one of those sites. So that was a very interesting way to be involved in this process. So I wasn’t very [inaudible]; I was much more counseling patients of the side effects of the possible vaccines, and the process of the trials.

I think what was really fascinating is just how much things were changing over the central moving target. In terms of what are infectious diseases physicians, it’s primarily an inpatient, which means you work in a hospital and you see lots of consults. So any patients who have an infectious disease problem, or sometimes they have–patients have these fevers of undetermined origin, et cetera. They have pneumonias, infections with complex organisms, or complex infections. You would get called to consult on these.

In the world of COVID, you very commonly get get consulted on whether someone needs antibiotics because you have an abnormal chest X-ray and you’re not quite sure whether it’s a bacterial infection, or it’s just COIVD pneumonia, which doesn’t require antibiotics. And you get uncontrolled fever. Early on of course in the pandemic we’d get lots of those before we were quite clear on whether COVID causes the systemic inflammatory response that we now see and we now understand quite clearly. So, an infectious disease doctor has a really interesting life seeing strange infections.

Regina: I remember when we talked last year, you were saying that things could change at any minute. Like next week, the the things I could be telling you could be totally wrong. So now that it’s been a year, do you feel like as you are, your everyday in the hospital, do you think that the medical field has kind of gotten a hold on understanding COVID-19 now? Or do you think, like, tomorrow crazy stuff is going to happen?

Dr. Bhola: Oh, I hope you will publish this tomorrow because everything can change in a minute. We’re looking at a curve right now that’s heading downwards, but that can easily sort of plateau, or it can just really exponentially explode. I mean the possibilities of what can happen, we’re really at the junction where we’re not quite clear on how things will play out. We’re sort of opening up throughout the country a lot quicker than, and in a manner that’s probably not the safest. But we really are at a real inflection point, we’re really at a fork in the road where this thing can go, can still go either way. It can actually become worse than it was in the thick of the pandemic. Or we could just sort of resolve into a very nice summer. It’s really hard to tell how this will be going at this point.

Julia: So Dr. Bhola, you mentioned that socioeconomic status plays a strong role in how deadly a virus is, and we have sadly seen this in the last year. Can you help our listeners understand the issues related to this?

Dr. Bhola: Oh, this is a really fascinating question/topic. And I think, if nothing else, I hope that when this COVID has all been settled and socioeconomic factors that have been raised so prominently will become something that we really pay more attention to because it is a very critical role in terms of health dynamics. You know, if we look back a little bit, back to the point of the Spanish flu, the pandemic, we did see back then (this is back in 1918) that poverty and low socioeconomic factors played a very severe role–a sincere role–in mortality. So for example, in India, there was something like a 40-times mortality at that time compared to Denmark, for example.

And then, during the HIV pandemic, they coined this term syndemic, which means a pandemic–infectious disease pandemic–superimposed upon what can be considered a pandemic of poverty. Where we saw, especially in lower-income nations, a lack of healthcare access, lack of understanding, lack of education, lack of protecting methods; that the HIV pandemic really exploded in particularly low-income countries.

And the COVID pandemic is really following the same pattern and the “syndemic” is really appropriate to apply what we’re seeing right now. In short, we’re seeing approximately a two-fold increased risk within the United States in persons of Black, Asian American, and Native American origin. And so, we really have to ask ourselves that question, like why is there this two-times increased risk? And some studies have tried to tease this out. Is it a native genetic factor or is there something social that comes in?

And at least one study in New York sort of tried to tease out this very question. And it’s suggested that, for example, Black Americans, yes there’s twice the death rates as, per example, White Americans. However, when you correct such as more obesity, other poor health determinants, then it seemed as if it wasn’t actually the Black race being a risk factor as much as Black race is a risk factor for many other poor health determinants. And therefore, there’s a higher mortality in terms of COVID.

Now the jury is out on this. But what is quite clear is that if you are a minority, you have a much higher risk of dying of COVID. And some of the issues, you also have a higher exposure. For example, if you have what people can traditionally consider a white collar job, your job is more likely within the pandemic to be ones that you can do at home on a computer. Whereas if you were in a civil sector that is of traditionally lower economic groups, you tended to have to go out there; jump into public transportation at the beginning of the day; probably put your kids in the daycare where they would have exposures; go to work in a service industry where you met a lot of people; may not have been provided much protective equipment; and then you came home to probably a more crowded household then there are now one’s mixed up in there.

And so that combination of factors, the risk, the exposure to the virus is one major factor, as well as the poor determinants of health. And so this is a very real phenomenon and we are living in the wealthiest nation that the world has ever seen. And so, post-pandemic, these poor determinants of health will still be there. And so they are things that need to be addressed. And then next pandemic, they will be factors again.

And we say next pandemic, because there’s a sort of frame of thought now that we need to think as the inter-pandemic period. Not a matter of “if there will be another pandemic,” but when. Because we know it will. It has since the dawn of agrarian society, we’ve had pandemics. And so we really expect that these things will become just a part of our lives and we have to be able to hunker down into those modes. And we have to be prepared for when that time comes.

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Regina [narrating]: This is Spark Science and we’re talking with Dr. Bhola about the next pandemic

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Julia: So, following up on that question, what do you think that we can learn from this pandemic? And do think that the next pandemic will go differently? And what can we do to ensure that it might go differently?

Dr. Bhola: Um, very good questions. And I think the most important thing to start with is that we’re not really at the phase of a next pandemic yet, because we are not out of this current pandemic. You know, Dr. Fauci said, he was saying around August that we were still knee-deep–waist-deep into this pandemic. And that’s pretty much where we’re at. If you look at the curve, we had a peak, and then we had another peak around July, and then we really went up over the winter season.

We do need to keep in mind that we have all these variants, and with opening up, and with vaccine pressure, the vaccine now has mutation pressures because they are vaccines around. And so for the first time, they have a real incentive to multiply. Now this pandemic is not necessarily over; I think we can probably go back to that as a topic in itself. So we could talk about it a bit more, but I do want to answer your question in terms of preparing for the next pandemic.

So after SARS, which was originally around 2002, there’s a 2004 paper, “What have we learned from SARS?” [Dr. Bhola laughs] And then there were reflections post-MERS, which occurred around 2012, about what did we do wrong? And now we’re here again, saying oh, what did we do wrong? I think we got off the hook pretty easily with both SARS and MERS. COVID really, you know, sucker punched us because we weren’t prepared, and sort of deliberately lack of preparedness. We just choose to not believe that something like this can happen.

And I hope that the impetus because of how severe COVID has affected the world can really help us prepare better in the future. Preparedness really, unfortunately to a large extent, lies with the political directorates in each and every country. Because almost every nation–within China, within England, within the U.S.–we all sort of downplayed the pandemic. And because of doing that, we lost critical, critical times. China initially jailed its initial physician who talked about this. Within England, there was a paper that came out of Oxford that really suggested this thing could be deadly. And that sort of pushed the political directorate there to react and become a little bit more concerned about this in a real way. And within the U.S., you know, the initial response was a sort of denial.

So if we compare and contrast that, for example, to countries like Vietnam and Taiwan, which they got out of the pandemic and their economies grew almost, you know, within a couple–within a month or two. They sort of immediately went into defensive mode, sort of contact tracing testing very aggressively, performed these measures. And they were actually able to take their pandemics down to smoldering within a matter of months.

So to be honest, if you were to look in retrospect and say, how can we do this thing differently? If, for example, in the major powers-for example, in China they reported quickly; the U.K. and the U.S. really bonded together and said, okay, let’s do quick contact tracing, limitation of travelers, widespread use of mass, decreased movement to some extent. Arguably, if we were to say we could have had a pattern of improvement just as well as in Vietnam and Taiwan, we could have been out of this thing potentially within a couple of months. And when I say out of it, not clearly out of it. But to a measure that really more closely approximates a cautious level.

As we talk about how bad COVID is, we really have to mention it could have been much worse. MERS, for example, had a mortality approaching somewhere, let’s say, 8 or 9. Whereas COVID-19 has a mortality somewhat variable, but let’s say within the U.S., like 1.8. If we combine the mortality of MERSS, a deadlier virus, with the ability to spread the way COVID-19 is, we could have a completely, completely different disaster on our hands. And so yes, COVID-19 is bad, but this could have been a lot worse.

Regina: I wanted to bring back to what you said earlier about studies that are out there figuring out why patients of color have such a high mortality rate. And then you said the jury’s still out. And I just wanted to kind of explain to our listeners what you mean by that, because there are all these other factors: the socioeconomic factors; access to health; the systemic racism that is in our country that makes it so that people can’t have the access to health. But also, there’s also studies that show that people of color are not getting, not just access to health, but once they actually get to the hospital, their treatment is different.

Dr. Bhola: So, there has been a historical mistrust of the medical community and the establishment in general by minorities, especially within the Black community. I can’t speak to exactly what are the statuses now. You know, what we have right now is a very heightened awareness within all medical systems. So I think it’s difficult–it may be difficult to quantify right now the difference in how the health care system is perceived on the side of the Black patients.

But that is definitely something that I–you know, I can’t say I’ve seen it–but that is definitely an area we do need to look very closely at to really understand what are the actual biases within medical systems, number one; where hospitals are located and how hospitals are funded in the geographical areas where minorities are located, definitely; and the the way practitioners interpret symptoms of minorities of color. So for example, there definitely have been studies in the past saying that physicians had a tendency to underplay the symptom–underappreciate the symptoms–if they were coming from a minority or Black patients, and for example, Black female patients. You know, there has been those suspicions and data to support that actually. So that is definitely something that we do need to look closely at. And though I can’t say I know the detail offhand, definitely that is a very important aspect to take into consideration.

Regina: Yeah, and I think that that’s one thing that can come out of the pandemic. If we’re being, like you said, in the medical community vigilant about this, then after this pandemic is over, how does this affect medical treatment in the future? I wanted to let Julia ask the question about vaccines.

Julia: So currently, children are not eligible for the vaccine. They have not gone through the trials for the vaccine. And I wanted to know how that may change the outlook of herd immunity that people are hoping for in these next few months.

Dr. Bhola: So there was just recently, Dr. Velinski was saying it seems as if spread within children is not as aggressive. I think we don’t understand that very well. If there is spread within children, just given the nature of children and how they congregate, and it’s a bit difficult to get kids to do anything.
COVID Follow Up with Dr. Vijai Bhola
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It can be difficult to get adults to follow these guidelines. So it’ll be even harder in kids. So it’ll be sort of trying to compare the rate of spread within children, with the increased tendency of children to congregate and get in close contact with each other. So, within COVID-19, I’m not sure we appreciate exactly how efficiently it’s spread within kids as compared to within adults, but that’s important. But there are a large reservoir of individuals that do have contact with their parents and their grandparents, and so they can potentially be reservoirs of spread. And the details on that, I’m not sure if we have an answer But we do want to vaccinate everyone that we possibly can.

They are starting to look at using one of the mRNA vaccines within the 12- to 17-year-old age group. And so as time goes by, when that data becomes available, then we’ll be able to vaccinate children also. Which would be a great thing. You many to vaccinate as many people as you can. Really, in order to know whether a vaccine is effective. When a study’s effective, it has to be tested in the study’s proper sample population. In young adults, for example. So you want to see how it works within children and within pregnant women, for example. So those are two blind spots that we have currently.

The issue is that you don’t really want to run those trials initially because the adverse events are emotionally felt a lot more powerfully in kids and pregnant women, for example. In case of pregnant women, if there are adverse events, those can potentially be really negative long-term adverse events. So data, in general speaking, kids and pregnant women, lags behind because you tend to have to see any intervention study in adults before that is expanded to kids and pregnant women.

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Regina [narrating: You’re listening to Spark Science, and we’re discussing COVID-19 vaccines with Dr. Vijai Bhola.

We want to let our listeners know that our next episode features a Western Washington University biologist who studies RNA. So there’s more mRNA vaccine information coming your way.

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Dr. Bhola: So our traditional viruses are typically, you–one classic way that we do (there are different types, of course), but a classic way is to grow virus, weaken it, and then give it to the person. Whereas the mRNA vaccines, we just need to be able to create the mRNA that codes the protein that you’re interested in, and then replicate that very rapidly. How quickly and how easy are those processes is something we really need to think about. So if you want to grow a live virus, it’s a very long complicated process. You have to grow it for a critical mass and that will take at least six weeks. Things have to be grown in eggs. We need to get a lot of chicken eggs to the extent that things are all–we don’t think of how many chicken eggs do you need! [laughing]

Regina: And that’s why if somebody’s allergic to eggs, right, that there’s an issue with this?

Dr. Bhola: Not necessarily.

Regina: Well how does that work?

Dr. Bhola: The egg allergy is sort of overrated for the most part? Because while you do use eggs to generate the virus, for the most part you’re not really giving the person egg proteins. You sort of extract the virus after that. It’s not just–you know, you don’t just create the soup and hand someone this soup. You sort of grow it and you take out the portions of the soup that you really want. You sort of extract this. To go to that quality, to go through that process takes weeks and weeks on end to develop an evaluated process. And then when you have that massive–and then it takes, each batch will take a certain period of time to generate. So that’s a very long process.

You have to be lucky enough with an mRNA vaccine to know what site you need to produce. But if you’ve gone through that step and you know what site to produce, it’s a lot quicker to do the reverse transcriptase, the DNA polymerase reverse transcriptase reactions to get a really large quantity of that vaccine. So there’s a huge time factor between ability to generate things in whether you are going to the traditional vaccines or you are going to the mRNA vaccines. There’s so many vaccines that we already have very, very efficacious–we have companies all over the world that have the equipment and infrastructure to produce the mRNA vaccines–to produce a traditional vaccine, sorry–that there really isn’t one, a reason, and two, there really isn’t a financial incentive to reinvent the wheel. So a lot of those traditional vaccines probably probably need to be where they are.

Where the mRNA becomes really exciting is the ability to generate vaccines in a pandemic situation. If you’re able to get to the point that you know what you need to produce, then you could potentially have the infrastructure to ramp up those vaccines very quickly. And for example, as we’re seeing right now with the emergence of these SARS variants, if we can then now start tweaking so that we know, if for example we figure out what proteins do we need to use for these variants, then we could start putting these things in together with the other standard vaccines. And trying to really almost dance with the pandemic and dance with the variants to figure out which ones they are and produce the appropriate vaccines fruit them.

Now, the other issues are in terms of storage and dissemination. The mRNA vaccines need to be stored at really low temperatures, like negative 70 Fahrenheit. So that’s really difficult to do in different countries’ settings. It really complicates the process. That is much different to most of the traditional vaccines which can be stored in a regular refrigerator. You know, especially in low-income settings, these things are very critical. So there are tremendous advantages to the classic method of just using an inactivated live virus.

Regina: But so the Johnson & Johnson vaccine does not need to be refrigerated. Does that mean it’s not an mRNA vaccine?

Dr. Bhola: Yeah, so Johnson & Johnson is not. It’s one of those that uses an adenovirus. The adenovirus is a virus that’s very much present in humans, so we know it can spread in humans. But it really doesn’t do that much. It’s a fairly safe virus to use to infect people or to use as a vehicle to get that genetic information or deliver that protein that you want. And so the Johnson & Johnson is not an mRNA vaccine and so it doesn’t need that level of refrigeration. That’s one of the really strong points to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. In addition, of course, to the preliminary data being use of it as a one-time vaccine. They’re still investigating whether giving booster vaccines and the duration of booster vaccines are important. But we know if you can give one a vaccine that can be kept in a regular refrigerator, then that really gives you an advantage in a pandemic setting.

Regina: I have relatives that don’t usually get the flu shot. I hope that now everyone, those same relatives are clamoring for the vaccine now, the COVID-19 vaccine, that maybe this will start–I shouldn’t say it’s not maybe going to change everyone’s minds about getting the flu shot, but I hope that number goes up after this.

Dr. Bhola: I do hope so, too. But the anti-vaccine movement is really a powerful one. And I’ll admit when you have people–because as human beings, we’re already opposed to something that’s new. And so there’s something that’s new. And if there’s any sort of fearmongering, we’re very susceptible to that fearmongering. So even if it’s a very small minority opinion, and they speak a lot, they use their loudspeaker a lot, then it makes you think twice. Should I be doing this? You know, should I be using 5G technologies. You know, you wouldn’t think about it before. But it suddenly raises questions. And then just naturally human behavior is going to be delayed, a delayed reaction.

And you know, they did one study in New York during the thick of the pandemic. This was around April, I believe, when the thick of the pandemic in New York. And there was something near 60 to 70% of people said yes, they would take the vaccine at that point in time. And so, as time goes by, the anti-vaccine movement is something that’s going to become more and more powerful, unfortunately. And WHO actually names it one of the top 10 threats to global health. And it may not sound like much, but vaccination really has been one of the greatest inventions, the greatest measures towards public health, like, ever. And so, if we start to chip away at that absolute foundation block that we have, we could lose real ground.

And what becomes especially concerning is within the Black population, because there already is this distrust of the establishment, and because of course there’s less access to care (that’s been pretty well documented), there’s even more fail within the Black population. So for example, in vaccine trials, whereas the minority populations, their sort of kneejerk reaction is, “Oh, you guys want to use me as guinea pigs.” And so that actually—

Regina: Like the U.S. has done in the past. It’s a reasonable fear.

Dr. Bhola: It’s a fear that’s there for a very real reason. And so the vaccine hesitancy really affects disproportionately those already marginalized populations. And they have devastating consequences. So for example, in Minnesota, there were Ethiopian immigrants who were not vaccinating their kids. They were really well targeted by the anti-vaccine movement. And we had a measles outbreak in Minnesota, which is almost unheard of to really have these types of problems occurring in the wealthiest nation ever.

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And so these are real concerns that we have to keep in mind. And I do hope that your relatives choose to get vaccinated.

Regina [narrating]: This is Spark Science and we’re interviewing Dr. Vijai Bhola, who is cautioning us against letting our guard down and to continue pandemic precautions.

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Dr. Bhola: What I do want to make sure we mention is, you know, there’s a lot of optimism now. For lots of reasons. We have good reasons to be optimistic, no two ways about it. And we want to be out of this pandemic. Most importantly, we want to believe what we want to happen. But right now is still a very concerning time in this pandemic. Some of really concerning things are the variants that are coming out.

mRNA vaccines seem to be effective in terms of mortality. So it has a mortality benefit within some of these variants. And so we think that we’re covered. But we have noted is that there are decreased antibody titers. So, it seems to have enough antibody response to still the variants for the most part. However, the fact is there is a decreased antibody response, and that’s something that we need to keep in consideration. We don’t understand the significance of this in the long term. And they are always possible that there’ll be slightly different variants.

And so we do have variants. We have the South African variant, for example. We have the U.K. variant. The U.K. variant’s considered a variant of concern. The two things that we are most concerned about is a combination of the ability to spread and the ability to kill. You need both of them to really have a pandemic. And at least some preliminary data has been suggesting that the U.K. variant could spread quicker and have an increased mortality rate. Like a 1.6 mortality rate.

Now these are preliminary data. We don’t know which direction they’ll end up going. But there is still concern that we can have variants. And these variants, just like coronavirus appeared in 2020 in the U.S. and led to an outbreak, a new pandemic. The potential is that those things still can happen. And now the vaccine has what it–the virus, sorry–has something it did not have before. It has selection pressure. So the same way when you have a patient in the hospital who’s getting antibiotics for a month, the bacteria, generally speaking, have the ability to get resistance. It happens before your eyes within months.

So we’re going to see now the virus sort of having this need to have these variants spread. So there is still a possibility that these variants lead to this pandemic propagating all over again. And us having to go through the process of finding the right vaccination or vaccine components that add to the vaccine that can then come to this issue. And so what you want to do to remove that selection pressure, you want to get vaccinations out as soon as you can. So what is happening now in the U.S. where you have states sort of just releasing their social distancing and use of masks really gives this virus the opportunity of a nice environment to learn and grow. You have vaccinated and unvaccinated patients. It can bounce back and forth.

So we we still are at a very critical time. And our numbers are something like 60,000 cases per week, average. And this pandemic, the first surge we had was actually somewhere around 40,000. So we really are at a very bad point still. We’re still looking at close to 1,000 deaths per day. Whereas in January/February of last year, hundreds of deaths was like a critical, mindblowing concept. Well we’ve gotten so accustomed to having a peak of something like 3,300 deaths a day that we think, okay, 800 is not that bad. And so we’re really in a phase where, again, our human nature is to want to relax. But if we do relax too quickly, we can have a brand new pandemic on our hands.

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So this is not over by a long shot. But what I really want to emphasize is that this is not the time to really relax all measures. We still have to be cautious.

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Regina [narrating]: I’d like to thank Dr. Bhola for taking the time to speak with us about the COVID-19 pandemic. We hope that next year Dr. Bhola will get to pursue his dreams in international health.

Spark Science is produced in collaboration with KMRE and Western Washington University. Today’s episode was recorded in Bellingham, Washington in my house on my computer during the Great Pandemic that’s still going on as April 2021. Our producers are Suzanne Blais and myself, Regina Barber DeGraaff. Our audio engineers are Ariel Shiley, Julia Thorpe, and Zerach Coakley.

If you missed any of our show, go to our website, sparksciencenow.com. And if there’s a science idea you’re curious about, send us a message on Twitter or Facebook at SparkScienceNow. Thank you for listening to Spark Science.

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Perseverance and the Martian Clock

What is “Mars Time”? Are you excited about machines flying on another planet? Or Martian rock coming back to Earth?

If you are curious about spacecraft on the Red Planet then check out our Season 7 Premiere featuring one of the best communicators in town, NASA Scientist and Western Washington University Geophysicist, Dr. Melissa Rice.

We reference her Op-Ed “A Wright Brothers moment on Mars will expand our cosmic perspective” published in the Seattle Times in this episode. You can check it out here. https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/a-wright-brothers-moment-on-mars-will-expand-our-cosmic-perspective/

Image credit: NASA — Artist rendition of the helicopter Ingenuity flying next to the Perseverance Rover.

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Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaf: Welcome to season 7 of Spark Science. We’re here with you today to continue exploring stories of human curiosity. I’m your host, Regina Barber DeGraaf. I’m an astrophysicist that teaches physics and astronomy at Western Washington University. I’m gonna be honest with you, I am pleasantly surprised that we’re still going strong and we’re doing so because of students, staff, and faculty here at Western Washington University who help make these audio and video episodes for you all, our amazing listeners.

For those of you who are long-time listeners, you can probably guess who our guest is today in our season premier. She’s a science communication powerhouse, she calls herself The Martian, but I call her the Steve Martin of Spark Science. Our guest on this episode is Dr. Melissa Rice. In this episode, we predict a perfect landing of Perseverance, and spoiler alert: we were actually right. We talk about the baby helicopter it’s carrying, and we also talk about the next 3 months of Dr. Rice’s life, which is going to be controlled by something called “Mars Time.” We hope you enjoy our interview with NASA scientist Dr. Melissa Rice.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaf: This is the first interview of season 7, and we have back our platinum member, our number 1 VP, Dr. Melissa Rice. Welcome! Thank you for being here!

Dr. Melissa Rice: Thanks for having me, again!

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaf: Again!

Dr. Melissa Rice: It’s the highlight of my year to come speak with you for Spark Science!

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaf: I’m talking to you days before Perseverance’s landing. Just real quick, I know you’ve been on the show a million times, but we can give our listeners just a real quick overview of what do you do, when it relates to Mars, and how did you get there?

Dr. Melissa Rice: Yeah, so for this mission specifically, I’m part of the team that designed and built, and next week will start operating, the cameras on the rover. Actually, the rover has 23 different cameras, but I’m part of the science cameras. It’s an instrument called Mastcam-Z, the 2 cameras at the top of the rover’s head. These cameras are going to take pictures in beautiful color, and also in many colors into the infrared, the near-infrared wavelengths that the human eye can’t see, and we will use those to do a technique called imaging spectroscopy that allows us to interpret what the rocks are made of. That technique, imaging spectroscopy, that’s my specialty. That’s a technique that I’ve used on the previous Mars rover missions, Curiosity, and then Spirit and Opportunity before that. It’s through that kind of niche expertise working with these rover missions that I’ve developed that I got in the lucky position to be part of this new Mastcam-Z team for Perseverance.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaf: I mean you’re part of this big group that decides where it’s gonna go, too. There’s like this big voting contest?

Dr. Melissa Rice: [Laughing.] It was kind of a contest, and it wasn’t like there was a group of people who got to the side. It was a totally public process, so anyone in the world, theoretically if they wanted to, could have shown up and made a pitch for their (x, y, x) coordinates on Mars that they wanted to go to. And then everyone who showed up got to vote, and there was a series of these meetings and discussions, and each time they would whittle it down to fewer and fewer sites until at the very end everything but 3 sites on Mars had been voted off the island. Ultimately, NASA makes the final decision, but it’s a community process to narrow everything down to just the handful of sites that get decided between. So yeah, I brought small armies of students to those meetings so that they could take part and vote and ask questions about the sites, and I was advocating for a site early in the process that made it into the top 8, but then it got eliminated in the last round and didn’t make it into that final 3.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaf: I love it when you talk about your role in each Mars mission, and my favorite stories are the ones where you talk about once the rover actually lands and everything’s successful, you go on these Mars shifts. Your life changes once the rover lands.

Dr. Melissa Rice: The reason why everything changes and why I am not accepting any meetings for 3 months after the rover lands is because I’m gonna be living on the Martian clock, and Mars is very Earthlike in a lot of ways. Its day is close to 24 hours, but it’s a little different, just different enough to end up being really annoying. So its day is 24 hours and about 40 minutes, so there’s an extra 40 minutes to Mars’s day, and that’s just because Mars is rotating on its axis every so slightly more slowly than the Earth is. So what that means is that we can operate the rover on a schedule that’s very similar to an Earth day, but it’s 40 minutes off from the Earth day.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaf: Right, and that adds up.

Dr. Melissa Rice: And that adds up, yeah. So every day, my starting time in my workday, my alarm clock, is going to go off on average 40 minutes later than the day before. As you march through the clock, 40 minutes at a time, day after day, after about one month you’ve cycled all the way around the clock, worked through the night shift, and then cycled back into a regular Earth schedule. So basically it’s going to be 2 weeks at a time that are kind of Earthlike, and then I shift out of that into 2 weeks that are a legitimate painful nightshift. And it’s not that bad to work the night shift, a lot of people do it for most of their careers, but the real tricky thing about Mars time is that we never get to adjust to it, so it’s like going on to the night shift and then immediately going back to the day shift, and then switching back to the night shift, and going back and forth like that for the first 3 months of the mission.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaf: I mean it’s like being on a trip, where you’re going from one time zone to the next, every single day for 2 weeks.

Dr. Melissa Rice: Exactly. Exactly. So what do they say when you’re jet lagged?

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaf: A day an hour.

Dr. Melissa Rice: For an hour’s time difference, give yourself a day for every hour of the time difference to adjust to the jet lag. Well, we shift forward 40 minutes a day, every single day, so we’re constantly in that game of catchup.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaf: Yeah.

Dr. Melissa Rice: And one of the reasons why they stop this whole Mars time business after 3 months is because people get so tired that they start making stupid decisions. Their brains are so tired that they’re behaving as if they’re legally drunk, and that is not what you want for a bunch of people operating a multi-billion dollar spacecraft on Mars. Yeah, that and the other reasons why they cut Mars time off is because after about 90 days, marriages start to break down. It’s really hard when you are working on a Mars schedule when your spouse and your kids are getting up and going to work, going to school, or dialing into school and dialing into work.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaf: Right.

Dr. Melissa Rice: Living on 2 different planets in one household can put a strain on your family.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaf: So, I remember you telling me stories of– I mean it’s not just you who are on these night shifts or Mars time, it’s a whole bunch of people. So, you were telling me when you lived in California that there would be people who are also on this shift. Is there some comradery?

Dr. Melissa Rice: Yeah, you know for curiosity, the 400 scientists who work on the mission, they all descended on the jet propulsion laboratory right before landing and got short term apartments around Los Angeles. So, there were all of these people living on this weird schedule, but kind of doing it together, so we’d have after work barbeques at 5am in somebody’s back yard. My birthday was a week into Mars time, and we threw a birthday party at 7am at the end of the shift. So, having that community and being able to explore a place like Los Angeles that has a real 24-hour life cycle was really neat the first time around. And that was originally the plan for what we would do with Perseverance. But with COVID, the entire team is going to remain remote, so I will be here in Bellingham, Washington and I will be the only person in Bellingham living and working on this strange schedule. That’s gonna be even harder than usual, not having a community of people who I can reliably go get lunch with at 3am.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaf: Right. Yeah, and there’s really not a night life here in Bellingham, so . . .

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This is Spark Science, and we’re talking with Dr. Melissa Rice about why we, as humans, send robots to Mars.

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I do appreciate, though, and again I’m bringing it back to the community because I appreciate you wrote an op-ed for Seattle Times, and in it you talked about really justifying spending money on something like this during times that are so dire and so intense in our society right now, and I really liked your reasoning. You were saying that one, this gives, like you said, 400 scientists are working on this. Not only the scientists, but their students, and helping educate their students, and there’s a lot of good that’s coming out of that. But also, I liked how you actually broke down the money. Do you talk about this in your teams, the rover teams, do you talk about the benefits of your mission?

Dr. Melissa Rice: Yeah. I think everyone who works on the mission and receives government funding to be part of the mission needs to reckon with that question of what is the benefit of this, because I’m not just satisfying my own curiosity here and going to play Mars scientist to satisfy my own itch. This is work that taxpayers are paying me to do for them. So, I think everyone has or should be thinking really carefully about how is this work that I’m doing, working with a robot on Mars, how is that a service to the people who are paying for the mission?

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaf: Mhmm.

Dr. Melissa Rice: And I know that the Mastcam-Z team that I’m part of for the cameras is taking that really seriously. We’ve talked a lot about how to give the public the best of what these cameras are doing as soon. As soon as the images hit the ground, they’re going to be made available on a public website. We’re going to curate a public website that’s going to have all of these spectacular color-image panoramic images. We’re going to be posting nearly live commentary on the image as they’re received. So, every day there’ll be some outreach content from the scientists giving a quick take at what’s in the images, and there’s a real clear sense, at least among the Mastcam-Z scientists, that we’re not doing this for us and our obscure specialties and curiosities, but we’re doing this for all of humanity, even beyond the US taxpayers that are paying for my involvement. This is a record that we’re creating for all of humanity about what we’re learning about Mars. And hopefully, that record is going to help people for centuries to come as we try and understand more about the solar system and our place in it.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaf: And I would say giving hope to people during dire times is worth so much. I just keep on thinking of this idea of that money going to fund students, as well. We’re giving students the opportunity to work on this groundbreaking science, this awe-inspiring science. We’re paying them to do it, they don’t even have to pay to do it. I just think that’s really good.

Dr. Melissa Rice: The money that I get from NASA to support my involvement and my research group’s involvement in the mission, most of that money goes to pay student stipends, their living stipends, it pays their tuition, it pays their fees, and it allows them to study what they wanna study, which is space science and geology, and not to have to worry about the financial pressures of going to school to do that.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaf: Right.

Dr. Melissa Rice: They don’t have to make a choice between working in town to pay their rent while trying to study for school. They don’t have to make those choices, and so it allows students to really focus and sets them up really well to go into a whole wide variety of industries.

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Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaf: We’re talking with our favorite Martian, Dr. Melissa Rice, about the perfect landing for Mars Perseverance.

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Perseverance has landed. Walk us through your perfect day, your perfect landing, and what that day is gonna look like. What it looked like, let’s say.

Dr. Melissa Rice: Oh Gina, it was the perfect day. It was unseasonably warm in Bellingham. It was sunny, and 50 degrees. A pod of orcas jumping in the bay. Bald eagles swarming the trees, tipping their wings to Perseverance.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaf: [laughing] Yeah!

Dr. Melissa Rice: On this perfect day, even though I was so excited and nervous for the mission, I managed to sleep until 10am. That’s my goal, because on this perfect day I knew that I had to work until about 4am that morning.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaf: What a day!

Dr. Melissa Rice: It was perfect that I was able to sleep late to prepare for this, and then to tune in to NASA’s live coverage and commentary of the landing, which started at about 11:15am.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaf: I heard there was no glitches at all, like none.

Dr. Melissa Rice: No glitches at all, not even with the virtual commentary and the remote interviews, and everyone’s internet connections. And on the real excitement began 7 minutes before landing, which is called the 7 minutes of terror.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaf: That got a lot of media coverage.

Dr. Melissa Rice: That did, yeah. On the science team, we were all watching this from our living rooms, distributed around the world, waiting for that first sign that touchdown was complete. We wanted to hear “tango delta nominal,” touchdown nominal. That’s kind of the code we knew to listen for. Once we heard that the signal was received, that touchdown was nominal, then shortly thereafter, we got word that a first image had been downlinked from the rover. That’s what the scientists were really excited to see for the first time.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaf: Because you want to make sure that everything is working once you land.

Dr. Melissa Rice: Exactly, and we want to make sure that the surface of Mars is in contact with the wheels. We saw that, in the first image. It’s an image of the wheel in contact with the surface. We wanted to make sure that the wheel is intact and not flattened from a harsh landing, that the horizon looks flat, that we’re not tilted at some weird angle with one of the wheels up on a pointy rock. So there’s a lot that we can tell from that first image, and as a geologist, we all scrutinize that first image for whatever we can learn about whatever little pebbles happen to be in that first patch of ground we take a picture of. When Curiosity landed, we were all in a room together in a basement conference room at JPL, and somebody had a big projector with that first image, and then all the scientists just ran up to that screen projecting the image and were trying to do quantitative analyses of the roundness of the pebbles and trying to do statistical analyses of the distribution of grain sizes that we could see in that image. And after that, I had a couple of hours to celebrate, a couple hours to touch base with friends and team members all over the world, and then my workday started. So, the rover lands, it is awake for just a couple of hours after it lands, and then it goes to sleep. It sends all its data to Earth and it goes to sleep. Sun sets on Mars. When it’s nighttime on Mars, that’s when the scientists here on Earth wake up and start making the plan for what the rover’s going to do on its next day when it wakes up. So yeah, my first day working for Perseverance started at about 5pm and went to about 3 or 4am.

[upbeat intro music rises]

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaf: This is Spark Science, and we’re talking to NASA scientist Dr. Rice about a helicopter flying on Mars.

[music fades]

We can go back into the past, for our listeners, back into our current time while we’re recording this. I wanna talk about what we’ve already talked about in a previous episode: why perseverance– the few things that are very new. There are 2 things that we talked about in a previous episode. It’s gonna drill into the Mars, and we’re actually going to be able to, in the future, collect those rock samples. The other thing you wrote in your op-ed was that there’s gonna be a helicopter now on Mars, which is crazy. There’s this baby helicopter that’s gonna go around– it’s very light, it’s very small, and in your op-ed you said it has to be extremely light because there’s barely any atmosphere. It took me a second to realize why that has to be. For our listeners, can you explain why it has to be extremely light in a very then atmosphere of Mars?

Dr. Melissa Rice: Yeah, so in order to get lift, which is what allows birds and airplanes on Earth to fly, you have to have wings, and those wings have to be a certain size in order to get off the ground, and there has to be a certain ratio of your wing surface area to the total mass that you’re trying to fly. It’s a very precise, aeronautical science. If you look at those equations for lift, one of the important variables is the atmospheric density. How many air molecules are there to provide a force against those wings? On Mars, we have 100 times less air, less density, in the Martian atmosphere than we do on Earth. So that means that we have to have much bigger wings and much less mass in order to get the same effects of flying. So this little helicopter, it’s about the size of a baseball or an apple, for a Washington-state-centric analogy. Imagine an apple with 2 big blades that are 4 feet across, so longer than yardsticks. Those are the sizes of the helicopter blades. So, this little helicopter with its big wings, right now it’s attached to the rover, but in the first month of the rover’s mission it’s going to drop the helicopter onto the ground.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaf: It’s just gonna like plop?

Dr. Melissa Rice: It’s just gonna plop! It’s gonna kind of give birth to the helicopter.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaf: Wow!

Dr. Melissa Rice: And then the rover has to drive away, because we don’t want those wings, those blades, to start spinning up and smack into the rover. We have to drive the rover away to a safe distance, and then perseverance is just gonna sit and watch its baby fly! And the helicopter is going to fly at least 5 times in a period of 30 days, and Perseverance is gonna stand by and it’s gonna take movies of the helicopter in flight. That’s gonna be awesome.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaf: Just like any good parent, taking movies of their baby over and over again.

Dr. Melissa Rice: Exactly. Making its first steps! The helicopter has cameras as well, so it’s going to be using Perseverance as a relay to send those pictures that it takes back to earth. We’re gonna get glimpses of the whole landing area from that aerial point of view, and that’s gonna be super helpful, because we need all the data we can get to plan for where Perseverance is going to drive next and what’s gonna be the big picture path for the mission.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaf: I remember the first time I met you, and you were talking about why you study Mars and this question is that like “I want to know if there was ever life on Mars.” “I want to know if there is life on Mars.” In your op-ed, you talk about how every single mission has kind of added a little bit extra to this idea of water being on Mars. With perseverance, now it’s going to be basically extracting rock from Mars, and we as humans are gonna be able to see those– physically grab those rocks, because a future mission is going to get them and bring them back to earth. What are you, as a Mars scientist, as a geophysicist, as somebody who really wants to know more about life on Mars and what happened and what is happening, what would you like to see in those rocks? What are you hoping that we’ll find?

Dr. Melissa Rice: I hope that one of these rocks that perseverance selects to put in this sample cache of rocks that are eventually gonna come back to Earth, I hope one of them contains an unambiguous biosignature. A biosignature is just a fancy term for proof of life. What we really want to get in order to say that yes, this rock preserves the evidence of life, is not just one, but multiple types of biosignatures. And that’s really what we need to have a definitive biosignature detection. And we would want to have multiple laboratories with multiple instruments on Earth verify that those multiple biosignatures are present. And so, it’s a really high bar to imagine the point where we say yes, absolutely, that rock preserves evidence of ancient life on Mars. A biosignature can come in many forms, because Mars only had a small period of time in its past when we think it had the conditions that would have allowed life to arise and evolve. We think that if there was life on Mars, it would be primitive, compared to the way that life has flourished on Earth. If we wanted to see any direct evidence of fossils in the rocks, they would be teeny, tiny little microfossils. Or, maybe they would be something about the rock itself that tells us that that rock formed in the presence of life.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaf: We’re getting towards the end of our interview here, and I wanna ask the last question I ask you every single time about pop culture. So in the future, what in your opinion should be the next Mars kind of film, book, or television show, or what are you watching now that makes you think of that– how Mars is going to portrayed in media in the future?

Dr. Melissa Rice: Yeah, well I’ll express a hope that sci-fi shows and movies about Mars and about space exploration in general kind of move away from this dark, mopey, very serious– taking itself so seriously kind of a tone, and can start just being fun again. I’m always struck in these shows about astronauts going to Mars or exploring new parts of the solar system that they’re always so dour and serious the whole time. They’re always so depressed, almost, to be doing this work on another planet.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaf: Yeah, like, “Oh poor us!”

Dr. Melissa Rice: Yeah! I want some sci-fi astronaut to be excited that they’re getting to go to Mars, that they’re seeing the surface of a planet through their own eyes for the first time. I am hard-pressed to think of a sci-fi show with space exploration that’s come out in the past 5-10 years that really has that kind of sense of wonder and excitement.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaf: I absolutely agree. I’m thinking of 2 series, like Picard and Expanse, and they’re both very dark. They’re very, very dark. But then it makes me think, when you said the excitement, it makes me think of Galaxy Quest, and just think of this ridiculous movie where there’s this child in the movie, just excited to be even associated with any sort of space thing.

Dr. Melissa Rice: Right, right. And it didn’t take itself that seriously. And at the same time, it was kind of a love letter to that geek culture and making fun of it at the same time. That’s what I’d like to see more of.

Dr. Regina Barber DeGraaf: I absolutely agree. There should be Galaxy Quests, like some sort are reboot of that. I agree.

[upbeat music rises]

I’d like to thank my friend and colleague Dr. Melissa Rice for taking the time right before the intense Mars landing to talk to us. If you’d like to learn more about the Perseverance rover and Mars, check out mars.nasa.gov. Spark Science is produced in collaboration with KMRE and Western Washington University. Today’s episode was recorded in Bellingham, Washington in my house, on my computer, during the great pandemic that’s still going on in March 2021. Our producers are Suzanne Blais and myself, Regina Barber DeGraaf. Our audio engineer for today’s episode is Zerach Coakley. If you missed any of the show, go to our website, sparksciencenow.com. If there’s a science idea you’re curious about, send us a message on Twitter or Facebook @sparksciencenow. Thank you for listening to Spark Science.

Conservation in Zambia

For our Season 6 Finale, we speak with conservationist, storyteller, filmmaker, and fellow pop-culture enthusiast, Luwi Nguluka. She shares her path from medicine to wildlife activism. Luwi is the co-founder of “Women For Conservation”, Zambia’s first network for women working on wildlife initiatives and is involved in the “This is not Game” bushmeat campaign which tackles the illegal trade.

To learn more about Luwi’s work, check out her TEDx Talk titled What conservation can cook like for an African.

Transcript

[Airy, bright music.]

Regina Barber DeGraaff: Welcome to SparkScience. I’m your host, Regina Barber DeGraaff, and I teach physics and astronomy at Western Washington University, and this is our season 6 finale. We made it, folks! Thanks for sticking with us and listening to stories which feature diverse scientists and conservationists around the world.

Our guest for this episode is Luwi Nguluka, who’s a conservationist in Zambia. She’s a cofounder of “Women for Conservation,” Zambia’s first network for women working on wildlife initiatives. Luwi is also involved in the “This Is Not a Game” bushmeat campaign, which tackles illegal bushmeat trade. She also happens to be one of my top go-to pop culture experts!

In this episode, we speak about her path to becoming a wildlife activist, how to share a message that will impact a community, and what conservation media looks like around the world.

[Music picks up before fading off.]

Thank you for coming to talk to me today.

Luwi Nguluka: Thank you for having me. I’m excited!

DeGraaff: When we talk usually, it’s about TV, so to actually, actually talk about conservation and your career, I want to know more. I want to know how it all started. So, let’s start at the beginning!

Nguluka: It really depends on how far back you want to go. I am Zambian. I was born in Zambia, but I moved to Botswana, which is right next door, at 2 years old. So, I did all of my schooling, my education, there. I was very fortunate to grow up in the heart of the Okavango delta. If you know anything about conservation in Africa, the Okavango delta is a very important, protected area. So, I spent a lot of my childhood around there.

Interesting enough, when I went to university, the only thing that I knew that I liked was science, so I decided that I would study medicine. But that dream came to a screeching halt by my first lecture. I think I was pretty certain, “Nope, this is not for me!” But it took me two years to communicate that to everybody else involved.

The one thing that I did like, aside from just general science and what I was learning in pre-Med, was ecology.

So then, I shifted from pre-Med to ecology. I think it just fitted how my mind works. I’m really interested in loads of different things at the same time. Ecology is like plants and animals and people, and how everything is interconnected.

And so, by the time I was graduating from university, I went back to Maun, the town where I grew up most of my life, which is right on the edge of the Okavango delta. I got an internship studying African wild dogs and their behavior.

I think that’s what first got me interested in research. I understood, “Okay, I like research. I like asking scientific questions, and I like getting answers.” But I didn’t think that African wild dogs was the right fit for me. I just didn’t see any longevity for me. I mean, they were really cool, really fascinating, charismatic animals. I was just interested in a lot more than that specific study.

So, I moved back to Zambia. When I moved here, one of the first opportunities that came my way was again research-based, and that I think just confirmed what I already had in my head. Like, “I like this! I like asking questions!”

And that led to me doing another study looking at the

consumption of wild meat, of “bushmeat” as we call it here in Lusaka, where I was now staying. (Lusaka is the capital city of Zambia.) Yeah, trying to understand why people consume wild meat.

So, a bit of background. I think your audience would maybe think of it as venison or maybe bison meat, or something like that. It’s very popular in Zambia and in Lusaka especially. People consume a lot of meat from wild animals.

I think part of it goes back to our history as hunters and gatherers. And also, now being an urbanized population, a lot of people have moved to the cities but before, they lived in villages and they lived off the land, and wild meat was one of their main sources of protein.

So, for many reasons, people consume wild meat. Like I said, that sense of nostalgia, sense of eating something healthier, because now we’re eating a lot more farmed meat and it’s not necessarily healthy for us, and…. I mean, there’s a myriad of reasons. We could talk about that, but anyway–

DeGraaff: Well, I like that you said that! I like that you said my listeners would think about it more like venison or buffalo, because I think a gut reaction for some people in

America would be, “Why would people eat wild meat?”

I’m like, you do that all the time! You have your uncle who hunts venison, or we have Trader Joe’s that sells the buffalo burgers that people are like, “Oh, that’s so great.” So, it’s totally relatable.

Nguluka: Yeah, exactly. It’s the same thing. I mean, maybe packaged a bit differently, but I think the idea or the sentiment behind it is the same.

So, I started studying that, and one of our main findings in our study was that there was just a lack of awareness about the dangers of wild meat because most of it was consumed illegally. Like you said, it might start off with someone having an uncle who has a hunting license, but once there’s so much demand, it turns into people becoming professional poachers, sourcing this meat for people in the city. And people in the city aren’t thinking about where the meat comes from, how it’s processed, and all of that.

So, that led me into a career shift into more awareness raising and thinking about how we can educate Zambians about the dangers of this meat, and launching a campaign called “This Is Not a Game.” (Yes, it’s a shameless pun on game meat.) And talking about bushmeat being illegal,

being dangerous, and carrying diseases. And trying to offset that with legal meat that’s being sourced ethically and isn’t as bad for the environment, or isn’t bad for the environment.

That was an important piece of the puzzle for us, not just saying, “No, don’t do this,” but providing an alternative that works for the population that encourages supporting local businessmen and women in the economy.

[Cheery, transitional music comes and goes.]

So, we need to get more women in conservation interested in conservation issues, but a lot of them don’t have a space to learn. A lot of the conservationists are living in remote areas and national parks, and when they do come to urban aras, they’re so busy trying to buy supplies and stuff.

Even if you are interested in conservation, you don’t know who to talk to. And if you are working in this space, again, everybody is busy with everything else and we don’t often network.

Men are very good at leveraging their relationship. If a guy needs to get something done, he knows 10 other guys he can call in that industry and can help him.

Women have a challenge. One, sometimes you’re the only woman in that space, and I think sometimes we’re also taught to compete with one another rather than collaborate.

So, what we created with these networking events, where we have cultural events and get a prominent woman in conservation in Zambia to come talk about her work, talk about what she does. But also just give a space for women to connect and let them organically meet, and see where they can take it from that.

We started off with just drinks and a talk, and questions and answers after that, to going to protected areas and national parks. What’s been really cool is seeing people take ownership of it as well, and being like, “Oh, we’d like to sponsor the next event. We’d like to host it.”

When we first started it, we thought it’d just be for women already working in the conservation space. But a lot of the young girls and young women who are interested in conservation but never had access to it are now getting interested and thinking, “How can I support this work? I’m a lawyer or a doctor or whatever, and I’m really interested in this. How can I be more supportive?”

[Cheery transitional music.]

DeGraaff: We’re speaking to storyteller and conservation activist Luwi Nguluka about wildlife crime in Zambia.

Nguluka: So that then leads me to the work that I’m doing now, which is awareness raising. I manage a department in my organization, Wildlife Crime Prevention. We’re interested in preventing all sorts of wildlife crime in Zambia.

I think some of our biggest issues in Zambia and across the continent would be the poaching of elephants primarily for their ivry, rhinos for their rhino horn, pangolins for their scales and sometimes their meat. Of course, a lot of that goes to far East Asia, where there’s a huge demand for those products.

But there is also a domestic market that we’re interested in, and in educating the people about how this affects us. I think, more and more, we’re seeing a lot of behavior change campaigns focusing on far East Asia and targeting those audiences, but no one is really thinking about the source market and how people here are affected. So, that’s the work that I do.

One of the things that became very obvious is, there’s a

huge disparity, or there’s a huge gap. Once you start working in conservation in Zambia and in Africa, you don’t see a lot of people who look like me, especially when you go higher up and start looking at management positions.

Of course, you’ll see lots of indigenous Zambians working in government, but when you go into private sector, or into nonprofit, I think it generally attracts a different type of person, and that person isn’t always indigenous, Zambian, or a woman. So, my colleagues and I wanted to start something that would encourage more women to go into conservation.

I’ve talked a bit more about race and why you might not see as many black people in certain parts of conservation, but women as well. A lot of the work is remote and involves living in rural areas or living in the middle of a national park without access to some of the amenities that people are used to.

But also, there’s what I would call “black tax.” It’s an African term, I think. That’s the idea that when you get educated, you still have siblings and a whole family to take care of. So, you often don’t have the privilege of leaving the city (or wherever you grew up) behind, to go live in the bush and just chase animals.

And so, conservation doesn’t always attract women. It rarely attracts young Zambians as well because we’re being raised to become doctors or lawyers or teachers; something tangible, something financially stable that can help you provide for your family and for your community. And so, “Women for Conservation” is a mixture of both of those things.

DeGraaff: So, you’re dedicated to these awareness campaigns. How do you sell your message? It’s really hard to do it effectively and to make sure that people are actually going to take it in and listen, or not be turned away. So, you’ve made some films, you do presentations, you’re involved in creating conferences. But what’s your core goal? How do you do it so that you are being effective? What’s your method?

Nguluka: I think that it helps coming from a research background. Both me and a couple of people on the team as well come from a research background. So, anything that we do is always rooted in data, and collecting as much data as we can.

For example, with our bushmeat campaign, it was very important even when we were doing our research that we ask the right questions. So, we asked not just questions about people’s consumptions of bushmeat (you know,

what are they eating, when are they eating it, how are they eating it), but also just general media questions. How do you access information in general, not even just conservation information? Are you reading newspapers? Are you listening to radio? If so, when, where, how?

And also, trying to get perceptions they had about conservation. What do you think about national parks? What do you think the value of wildlife is? We ask a lot of general questions that help us get a good idea of who our target audience is, what they care about.

And, working with a great production team as well. We’ve been very fortunate. I think we try to understand our strengths. I think something that’s important for us as a team is understanding that, while we have great information about conservation, we are not necessarily expert filmmakers or expert media people.

I think over the years we’ve learned a lot and we do a lot better than we used to do, but we still try our best to partner with the best in the business, to make sure that our message is not just informational, but is attention-grabbing and it engages people.

I gave an example of a radio drama that we did early last year, and that was about conservation, human-wildlife

conflict, engaging communities, and helping them understand the value of conservation. Especially in areas where there’s a lot of human-wildlife conflict, there’s sometimes resentment for wildlife and the way the wildlife seems to be more valued than the people who live in those areas.

So, going back to what I was saying about research, it was very important for us to do research in the community, understand how people perceive wildlife, how they perceive conservationists, how they perceive law enforcement, and then think about the best way to get this message across.

With the resources given, the best way was a radio drama because people in those communities listen to loads of radio. They don’t have television. They’re not on social media a lot. Also, with radio, you have various things that you could do. You could do a chat show.

We decided to go with a drama. And it was very important to us at the beginning that the drama not be very obviously about conservation. It was about a man who falls on hard times. His wife is heavily pregnant. This is his second wife. He has a daughter by his first wife, who passed away. His daughter falls critically ill and needs to be taken to the hospital. And he loses his job.

And so, now he has to figure out how is he going to provide for his family? His brother comes through and says, “Well, I have a job for you. I’m always doing these odd jobs, and someone just offered me loads of money to transport some goods from one place to another.”

And he’s not very specific about what those goods are, but it turns out, round about episode 2 or 3, you realize that the goods are actually ivory, and it involves going into a national park and poaching.

So, you’re slowly teasing up the ideas, but you’re hooking people in, you’re reeling people in.

DeGraaff: People can’t see us; we’re video chatting, so they can’t see the giant smile on my face. I totally want to listen to this drama!

Nguluka: Exactly! I think that’s something that we always try to do. I mention this example because we worked with a really cool creative agency and really cool script writers and voice artists, and making sure that everything was genuine, authentic to the audience, or making sure that the right voices were picked, that the right accents were picked.

I’m sure you’ve watched shows or movies, and the accents are off and you can’t concentrate because the whole time you’re thinking, “That is not how we sound!”

I think one thing that I’ve learned doing this work is that it takes a really good team and it takes the right people, and you ought to invest in getting the right people whenever possible.

DeGraaff: That’s really hard, right? At least for me and this program, there are only a few people, and we don’t have the resources. I’m really happy that you have the resources to do all that and actually build a team. But it’s hard, it’s hard to get that.

Nguluka: I think we’re very fortunate that we have amazing donors and amazing support. But there’s always more that you’d like to do.

But I think what makes a good communicator is reaching people where they are in that moment, rather than trying to force them to come to you and to think like you do. You are engaging them in a way that they understand.

So, there’s loads of skillsets that you need for that, understanding human psychology, human behavior. A lot of our campaigns are behavior-change campaigns, so

understanding what motivates someone to change their behavior, understanding how long that takes. Understanding what are they interested in now, and how can I reach them where they are now? Where are they spending their time? What are they listening to? What’s cool? How are people talking?

I mean, these are some of the concepts that people in just regular marketing use, but I think they apply to science and communication as well.

And that’s how you end up with a lot of brands being tone-deaf. A lot of brands are getting called out for it now because they have no idea what their target audience is interested in, so learning is necessary.

I think, especially as scientists, sometimes we can get very arrogant and treat everybody like lesser human beings for not knowing the information that we know. But I think that most people are very intelligent. They’re just intelligent in different ways. Just because they’re not thinking about science and data all the time does not mean that they don’t have something to share, they don’t have something worth understanding.

So, I think compassion is another thing that I find very necessary in this work. And compassion helps you

become a better learner and a better communicator.

[Cheery transitional music comes and goes.]

DeGraaff: This is SparkScience, and we’re talking with co-founder of “Women for Conservation,” Luwi Nguluka, about who is seen as a conservationist and how compassion is needed for change.

How has your field been basically portrayed in media? Now you are being part of making that media, but let’s go back a little bit. Maybe from when you were growing up, or maybe other media that you see, is there good media that’s showing what you’re doing in awareness, and is there bad media? What would you like to share with my audience that probably isn’t consuming the same media, or engaging with the same media?

Nguluka: I was thinking about this the other day, just thinking about how important representation is on TV. I mean, it’s important everywhere, but TV for a lot of us is what raised us and how we got our view of the world.

I was thinking about whether there were people like me on TV when I was growing up, and I couldn’t think of a single person. I could think of Jane Goodall and David Attenborough, the big conservationists and nature people,

and I grew up watching their, especially David Attenborough’s, documentaries and I love them, but it gave a perception that that is what a conservationist looks like, or that’s what a nature biologist looks like.

And for kids growing up in Africa, that isn’t always the best thing because, if people don’t look like you, then you don’t think that you can do it too.

And so, I think it’s slowly starting to change. One of the things that we’re really interested in is creating content for an African audience. That means that it might not necessarily be relatable to a European audience or to an American audience, but that’s fine because that’s not who we’re trying to reach. You guys have a lot of your own.

DeGraaff: Yeah, we have a lot of stuff. It’s okay. You don’t need to make stuff for us.

Nguluka: Yeah, exactly. I do see things changing. For example, the work that our friend Noel does. Yeah, Noel Kok and his work in South Africa and also just across the continent, changing the stories that are told, but also changing the people that tell the stories because you cannot help but tell stories from your perspective. All of us do.

I think about that myself as well. I come from a place of privilege and I try to acknowledge that I do not have the traditional, stereotypical Zambian upbringing. I have to think about that in my work sometimes. Am I the best person to tell this story, or is there someone else who could do it better?

Going back to TV, do we really need to see a Luwi on TV, or is there someone else on the team who is better off doing that? I think that’s something I try to push as well, to have less of me and more of people who represent the majority of Zambians on TV, on radio, on social media, speaking the right language, using the right tone, and just connecting with the audience in a way that they understand.

DeGraaff: That is something that I think my colleagues at Western could hear too. Here in the US, we were just talking about all the material we have. We have Nova, we have Blue Chip Films. And you’re right, I think the person that we see hosting a lot of those nature films are white guys or white ladies dropped in to countries in Africa, dropped in to Asia.

And you’re right, it’s very hard for them, as well meaning as they are, to not tell their story from their perspective.

Nguluka: Just on that, I think another frustrating thing is, because they just drop in…. So, you have these Blue Chip documentaries with their multi-million dollar budgets that come, shoot a great documentary for NatGeo, CBS, or BBC, and the people in the community never get to see it. So, they’ll never know their own environment or the value of it, and it’s told for a different audience.

Like I said, unfortunately I grew up watching the stuff, and now I look back on it. I’m like, it was great to a point. It would have been really nice to see someone else, a more indigenous person, tell that story because I think it would be more impactful to the audience.

There’s just no money to be made in Africa from filmmaking for young Africans, for nature and environment filmmaking right now, so it doesn’t attract a lot of young Africans. One, we’re trying to create a film industry, period.

DeGraaff: Is there anything I didn’t ask you, that you would like to share with our audience?

Nguluka: If there’s one thing I would encourage people to do, think more about your audience. Think more about who is really watching, and how you can impact them. Think more about people of color as well. I think

they’re relatively ignored in the science space.

Things are changing, but whenever you get the opportunity, give the people whose story it is the opportunity to tell the story. If you can be a conduit for someone else to tell the story, you still get credit for being a producer or whatever it is you do.

I think if anything that we’re seeing in this climate that we’re living in now, which is pretty chaotic, if you don’t respect people, if you don’t respect their stories, or if you don’t respect their dignity, it always comes back and manifests itself in different ways. And I think storytelling and representation is a huge part of that.

DeGraaff: I agree. Thank you for talking to us, Luwi. You’re so awesome!

Nguluka: Thank you!

[Music picks up as the interview ends.]

DeGraaff: I’d like to thank the always-kind and thoughtful Luwi Nguluka for speaking with me about conservation and the work that’s being done to support wildlife in Zambia.

SparkScience is produced in collaboration with KMRE in Western Washington University. Today’s episode was recorded in Bellingham, Washington, in my house, on my computer, during the 2020 statewide “Home Stay” order.

Our producers are Suzanne Blais and myself, Regina Barber DeGraaff. Our audio engineer for today is Julia Thorpe.

If you missed any of the show, go to our website, SparkScienceNow.com. If there’s a science idea you’re curious about, send us a message on Twitter or Facebook at “SparkScienceNow.” Thank you for listening to SparkScience.

[Music fades.]

[End video.]

Nature Photography & The Philippines

The old adage “A picture is worth a thousand words” explains how photography can create conservation stories accessible across cultures. Our guest for this episode uses beautiful images to help save wetlands around the world. Gab Mejia is a National Geographic Explorer, Nikon Ambassador for Asia, Jackson Wild Media Lab Fellow, and an engineering undergraduate student. Join us for a conversation about his path from hobbyist to international award-winning science communicator.

Check out Gab Mejia’s Instagram @gabmeija

Image credit: Gab Mejia

Location: Mindanao, Philippines

Transcript

[♪ Music playing ♪]

Regina Barber DeGraaff: Welcome to Spark Science. I’m your host, Regina Barber DeGraaff and I teach physics and astronomy at Western Washington University.

Our guest for this episode is an internationally awarded nature photographer, a conservationalist, a filmmaker, and the recipient of the National Geographic Explorer grant, Gab Mejia. He also happens to be an undergraduate student just trying to finish his degree in engineering.

In this episode, we speak with Gab about his swift, meteoric rise from hobbyist to one of the youngest and well-known nature photographers in Asia.

[♪ Music playing ♪]

Thank you for coming to talk to us because I think our listeners would really love to hear–you’ve done a lot in three years. I remember when I first met you, you were like, I just started doing this just a couple years ago. We’re all blown away!

Maybe you can tell us a little bit about your mission in life, because I know that you’ve done lots of talks.

Gab Mejia: Wow. That’s a tough question.

DeGraaff: I’ve seen your interviews. You do it a lot.

Gab Mejia: No, but I think my greatest mission in life is really–I’ve learned to advocate my life for wetlands, which is on more conservation and nature. I think I’m just here to learn–learn more about stories. I’ve always wanted to use photography to be able to tell these stories about the world. Our world, especially now at this time, where you have the global humanitarian crisis, the climate crisis, biodiversity loss. There’s so many issues on the environment that I want to try and give people this kind of awareness or knowledge. I want to create this legacy of stories about the environment.

DeGraaff: You’re in a younger generation than me.

Gab Mejia: [Laughing.]

DeGraaff: You’re still an undergrad. You’re almost done.

Gab Mejia: Yeah, almost done.

DeGraaff: Almost done. You decided while in undergrad to start this new experience, this new career of being basically a nature photographer and a storyteller. Can you tell us, how did that happen?

Gab Mejia: Me, coming from the Philippines, I have very a tiger mom. So, like really strict and wants you to do a professional career. In the Philippines, we don’t have that kind of mindset yet or privilege that, “oh there’s a career in nature photographer. There’s a career in conservation.” It’s all about being an engineer, a doctor, a lawyer.

So I ended up taking up civil engineering. I’m specializing on environmental engineering. But I realized it’s important, this kind of scientific background that I need especially when I get into more serious line in nature photography. It all started because of my dad, which he introduced me to the mountains. He would bring me to go hiking in the forest in the Philippines.

Growing up, that was when I was still 13 years old. Now that I’m 23, growing up throughout the years, I was really able to see and witness first-hand all the destruction happening to the illegal forests, illegal mining companies, the deforestation happening in the Philippines.

Me, personally, having this kind of attachment when I was

still a child, I realized that, okay I want the people, the kids, to also experience the same thing that I did when I was 13. That’s what really led me into this nature photography. That, oh, maybe I could do a professional career in engineering, and as well integrate arts and science together.

People always assume here in our country, in the Philippines especially, that it’s totally separate parts of a spectrum. Every time somebody asks me, “what are you taking up in college?” They realize like, “what? You’re doing a career in photography and then you’re taking up engineering?” Like, what’s the connection, right?

Then you start to explain that it’s not always different. You have this aspect in photography when you want to tell stories, but you need to back it up with hard, factual science. So that’s how it all started.

I was able to choose which specialty I wanted to do in civil engineering, so I chose environmental engineering.

DeGraaff: If our listeners go and follow you on Instagram, what’s your “at?”

Gab Mejia: It’s just my name. It’s Gab Mejia. G-A-B M-E-J-I-A.

DeGraaff: Right. And it’s beautiful. Just to go back to where we started, we talked about how you were the youngest and I was the oldest. I’m never gonna let it go.

Gab Mejia: [Laughing.]

DeGraaff: Jackson Wild Fellows, we were selected to be part of this film festival and this media workshop kind of bootcamp. A lot of people there had media experience, like I did, or they had science experience, or they had both. You were there and we would look at your images and they were like mind blowing! You have had your photography around the world!

When did you pick up a camera?

Gab Mejia: Yeah, I actually started picking up a camera about 4 years ago, 2016. I can still remember it. November 2016. I was borrowing cameras from my siblings or my cousins or my friends whenever I hike in the Philippines.

After experiencing a lot of climbing, a lot of mountains, hiking, volcanoes, I got to share these moments I had with the mountains or with these places. I wanted to dive deeper into that. I was, I think, 19.

DeGraaff: Okay. But you were in college then, so you’re in your major and you’re kind of taking pictures for fun, and you’re like, now I’m going to do this semi-professionally?

Gab Mejia: Yeah. That’s how it happened. It was a very tough time, actually. I tried to balance a lot of things. Especially with engineering, it’s very difficult. There are times when I have an exam and after that exam, I would ride a bus and go straight to the mountains. The next day I would have another exam. It was really that kind of effort that I was putting into, so much energy.

DeGraaff: When did you study?

Gab Mejia: And now I feel like–yeah, of course I did study. I would actually bring my notebooks or my schoolbag in the bus. I would read in the tent or an airplane. That’s when I knew that I actually wanted–that this is what I wanted to do in my life. I was able to willingly go this far to take photos, to go to nature, even if I had all these responsibilities that I needed to accomplish.

So that’s when I realized that this is what I’m willing to sacrifice things for, so maybe this is what I really wanted out in my life.

DeGraaff: Tell me about this Nikon ambassador. What is that?

Gab Mejia: So, it was actually a really funny story with this Nikon thing. I actually gave a talk in the mountaineering conference before about taking photos in the mountains and the forest. Apparently there was a Nikon manager that watched in the conference. She just emailed me and had a meeting with me.

Apparently I didn’t know that they submitted my portfolio to the Nikon agent in Japan. They were releasing this new camera called the Nikon Z6, like a new mirrorless camera. They needed an ambassador to choose from around Asia. So, I was really fortunate enough and really lucky to be chosen as that ambassador.

DeGraaff: Not for all of Asia, right?

Gab Mejia: For all of Asia. So I was really, really lucky. I was paired with this other wedding photographer. So it was a different kind of styles of photography. They were choosing ambassadors for different kinds of photographers or photography.

DeGraaff: So, you’re kind of jumping around here. So

you pick up a camera and now you have a portfolio. So what happened in between? How long–what is the timeframe between you picking up a camera and turning your hobby into semi-professional because you get commissioned from somebody to go into the mountains, to having a portfolio?

Gab Mejia: Yeah. It was around 4 years, 3 years. Even right now, I wouldn’t say that I’m fully professional yet. I’m still studying. I have one more year in college. But actually looking back right now, it just went by so fast. The years just went by so fast.

I got really lucky also this one time when I was joining all these photo competitions.

DeGraaff: So you just enter yourself into these competitions?

Gab Mejia: Yeah. I tried to build this portfolio. I tried to build these stories, and focus more on nature photography. I would try underwater. I would go hiking or I would go to wetlands to find more stories about culture.

Then one day, there was this competition. I was commissioned to do an expedition in these volcano islands

in the Philippines, to document it for the first time. When I was going back, apparently I got a text and there was no signal there the whole time.

So, I received this message 3 days later when I finally got signal. It said, “Oh, Gab, you won this international photo competition for your work in wetlands, which was supported by National Geographic. I was blown out of my mind! I could have never imagined being the top, first place.

When I got first place, they sent me the list of all wetlands around the world. So basically, everywhere: Madagascar, New Zealand, Canada, Greenland, wherever. They wanted me to do a story and they would fund everything.

DeGraaff: How many of those did you do?

Gab Mejia: I only did one. It was a one-prize thing. Then, I chose to go to the farthest place that I could go to from the Philippines, which was in Argentina! [Laughing.]

DeGraaff: [Laughing.]

Gab Mejia: I didn’t want to spend…. It even had the Philippines in the list, so if I would spend my time, that prize, just going somewhere close, like in Asia, that would

be a waste. So, I was thinking, “Okay, might as well go to the most exotic place that I could find, or the most expensive.”

DeGraaff: Right. “Let’s make them pay the most amount of money that they possibly could.”

[Upbeat musical segue.]

DeGraaff: We’re speaking with conservationist and engineering student, Gab Mejia, about his first trip across the world.

[Music fades.]

Gab Mejia: We ended up going to Argentina and Chile, and the southernmost city on our planet, which is in Ushuaia.

DeGraaff: So, what happened there?

Gab Mejia: I did a story about glacial wetlands, about the receding wetlands of Patagonia. I did that expedition in 2017, so that was a year after I got my first camera. So, after that, I realized that I never knew that photographs could actually make you travel the world or like….

DeGraaff: Give you that opportunity.

Gab Mejia: Give you these opportunities! That would take me tens of years just following footsteps in engineering, right?

On 2018, I realized…. There was this Filipina National Geographic photographer. Her name was Hannah Morales. I was asking advice, and she persuaded me to apply for National Geographic, for this explorer grant that helps photographers start out their career.

I wrote this application about the Philippines for about a year. It was like my thesis, basically. It’s really like a thesis kind of grant application. I thought I wouldn’t get it, and I was writing my mind out of it, and suddenly I got that grant, and that’s when I became a national geographic photographer in 2018.

And that’s when it all started. So, it’s like a really, really crazy thing, looking back. There’s just so many experiences and hardships that I was able to live out in this 4 years. I consider school as my hobby and photography as my “real career.”

Right now, it’s more difficult to get these opportunities because my whole career involved around travel. I could

get the best stories in the Philippines or in other countries. And now, I can’t even leave my house!

DeGraaff: You said you’re pretty lucky, but I honestly think that you’re very strategic too. I mean, I know you very little, but I’ve seen you very organized. I remember when we were in Jackson, you made a spreadsheet of all the people you met, and if you were going to respond to them. You’re a very organized person, and I think that that organization….

Like you just said, you spent a year on that application for NatGeo Explorer, and the Nikon Explorer of all Asia. I just want to point out to our listeners that there was one person…. So, there were 17 people picked for Jackson Wild, and you were one of them, and the only person from East Asia.

There was one person from India, one person from Asia, right? One person from Europe. I mean, you’re a big deal, and I think that yeah, it is very frustrating when you have no idea what the travel is going to be like now, but I think you’re going to find something that you’re going to apply to, and you’re going to get it!

Gab Mejia: It’s pretty cool, this Jackson Wild experience. A very diverse community, and how being able to learn

from you guys…. Even all these opportunities to be able to collaborate and work together, it’s really such a humbling experience.

DeGraaff: Yeah, I do agree with that. At Jackson, we were given 4 days to make a short film, and we were not sleeping, which Gab was very used to because he’s young, and I was not used to that at all! But I did it! I did two all-nighters!

Gab Mejia: [Laughing.]

DeGraaff: It was a really crazy experience to see all of our skills mesh into one. We were in these 4-people groups. In my group, there was myself (who had audio experience) but there were two people who had really, high level photography and film making experience. It was crazy!

But I wanted to ask you. You’ve traveled around the world. You went to Patagonia. What stuck with you the most? In these 3 years of traveling nonstop (because I’ve been following you on the Instagrams)….

Gab Mejia: I think it was really Patagonia. That was really the craziest experience. I can still vividly remember every single day of that trip. It just made me realize, “This is how far you could go,” in terms of doing your dreams

and reaching your dreams or career.

If it wasn’t for that experience, I wouldn’t have pushed myself harder. I wouldn’t try to do more work and take on more responsibilities. Right now, I could honestly feel the call of all the things, saying yes to everything that goes into your face.

I honestly consider myself a kind of self-motivated person. I don’t really care about things that other people have to say. It doesn’t motivate me as much. It’s like, what my own direction or my own compass is telling me that I need to follow, and that’s really what I…. That self-intuition, I think that’s the….

DeGraaff: So, we’ve been talking about your career, but when you are going out there and doing nature photography, you’re doing it because you have, like you said, this goal that you want to show people what we’re losing. Right?

And, your generation…. You’re so kind! I have here…. He is so kind!

Gab Mejia: Who is that?

DeGraaff: You! You’re so nice!

[Upbeat musical segue.]

DeGraaff: This is Spark Science, and we’re talking with National Geographic explorer, Gab Mejia, about the power of stories.

[Music fades.]

DeGraaff: Your generation is really vocal about climate change, and nature, and ecology, and conservation. Since I’m old, I would like you to tell me a little bit more. How do we, as people who are older…. What do the younger generation want us to do?

Gab Mejia: I think it’s really about listening. The impact. Especially with photography, there were times when I realized, “Oh, would my photos or my stories actually reach all these articles in Nat Geo? Or, would anything actually make an impact in the local setting?”

That’s when I realized yeah, it does actually make an impact. Just to give you a brief example, I was working on this story about marshlands in the Philippines, called the Agusan. It was funded by National Geographic.

I had to create this story, and I used this story about the

fires and our climate crisis. This was the first time that I covered fires on peatlands, so it was the first time that the government–

DeGraaff: What are peatlands?

Gab Mejia: Peatlands are wetlands, basically wetlands that are very high carbon, so it doesn’t decay easily. It’s kind of like soil that’s really rich in nutrients and everything, and a lot of biodiversity. They can get on fire because they’re decaying; it’s a lot of carbon.

So, it was the first time these fires are happening because of the climate crisis, because droughts are strong, the temperatures are increasing, and the annual water levels are decreasing in this part of the Philippines.

So, I had to do this story. It was the first one that was published and documented about it. It was the first time also that the governor, the authority in the province, actually heard about it.

Realizing that, wow, okay, you don’t see these stories at all about the climate crisis. You realize, maybe these authorities don’t know what’s happening in their area. You realize that, okay, it’s not that they’re ignorant, these authority or people. It’s just that they don’t know about

these stories, right?

Nobody’s telling them these stories. That’s how you get it forward. And then, when they start to get aware about it, or when they realize the impact of it, that’s when you try to double your force: lobbying for new policies, or creating new partnerships, or anything.

So, I really think making people aware…. We honestly all live in a bubble. One thing I realize is that we’re not supposed to assume that everybody knows everything.

DeGraaff: I learned that in my 30s.

Gab Mejia: No, but it’s true! You think that people are ignorant, that people are pathetic. Yeah, it’s true. People don’t know. Even in social media, especially if you think we’re so vocal as kids…. I have a lot of friends as well as colleagues, who voice a lot on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook.

But it’s just a bubble. It’s a bubble that not a lot of people would get into. When you think that maybe I’m also surrounded by people who share the same voice, and you realize you’re still a minority compared to the whole Philippines that doesn’t know about the fires.

But what I realize is that’s how the power of stories are, especially ones that are backed by hard science or factual science. That should be actually a norm, but it’s these stories that really give a stronger impact because people can connect with these stories. That’s where really change can come from.

Honestly, I wasn’t an environmentalist when I was…. I wasn’t working in the environment when I was 10 or 8 years old. I had to learn my way.

DeGraaff: You were going to elementary school…. [Laughs.]

Gab Mejia: [Laughs.] Yeah, but I had to learn this mission of mine. I had to learn it from people, from my dad who brought me to the mountains, or from mentors who would show me how to create more stories. We have a lot of teachers along the way, and that’s the most important thing. How we can educate each other communally about the environment, or how we can protect and conserve the environment?

I mean, it’s easy to say to be vocal and to be educated in just the social media aspect of things, but it’s just a small minority. You would go to a far-flung place in the Philippines, and they wouldn’t even know about what

National Geographic is. They won’t care about those names. They won’t care about Jackson Wild, right?

So, it’s really about how you can bring these stories stronger to them, and give them that kind of voice and empower these communities to be able to tell their story to the world. I think that’s how you could really make a more significant impact with whatever issue you’re trying to solve.

It doesn’t need to be about the environment. It could be about social justice. It could be about other things. You have these viral groups of moms texting each other about treatments that are fake! Concerning bleach or whatnot. It’s crazy, right?

DeGraaff: Yeah, well, but let’s end on hope, shall we, Gab?

Gab Mejia: Yeah, we definitely should always end on hope!

DeGraaff: There’s a student of mine who actually is from the Philippines. She is from… Muntinlupa?

Gab Mejia: Muntinlupa, oh wow, yeah.

DeGraaff: I was talking to her yesterday. She was talking about companies that claim to be sustainable and trying to help out the climate crisis, like you were saying. Are they?

She said that she was talking to someone in the Philippines about turning trash into energy. I don’t know if you know about these companies that are in the Philippines, and the waste from it can also be helpful to make concrete or help with algae or something? Do you know…. She was like, “I don’t really remember exactly what that company is.” Have you heard of this?

Gab Mejia: Yeah, the biofuel companies. There are a lot in the Philippines, especially in the southernmost islands. We studied this actually in engineering, environmental engineering.

DeGraaff: There we go, back to STEM!

Gab Mejia: See? Exactly! How important science is with getting engaged more with the environmental aspect. So, what about these biofuels?

DeGraaff: My student was asking if it was legit? Are these good companies?

Gab Mejia: Yeah, they are, but it’s really small, just a small percentage of (I imagine) the total amount of the population of the Philippines using other alternatives for oil. Honestly, the big problem with this is, they sometimes have to import the waste, rather than using our own waste in the Philippines because our solid waste management sucks. So, it’s really complicated.

DeGraaff: Ooh! So, literally getting the trash to burn, I guess burn cleanly, is what they were talking about. To get the trash is hard just to do, period.

Gab Mejia: Yeah, it’s really a very difficult situation. Yeah, you want to solve the plastics issues. Why not turn it into petrol? But apparently we can’t do that if the plastic is not clean. You have to get into a more cultural aspect of things, and how people throw their trash; to the more governmental and institutional side of things, the collection of trash.

DeGraaff: Right. The separation.

Gab Mejia: The separation of trash, the management. It’s a very tough thing. We have so much trash, considering that the Philippines is the third top plastic polluter in the oceans in the world.

DeGraaff: Really? Is the US number 1?

Gab Mejia: No, I don’t think the US is number 1.

DeGraaff: Man, can’t do anything right. [Laughs.]

Gab Mejia: [Laughs.] Yeah, it’s a really big problem for us.

DeGraaff: I promised I would talk about pop culture. What are the misconceptions about either the Philippines, or being an environmental engineer, or being a NatGeo photographer, or a mountaineer? What would you like to clarify that maybe is in the media a lot, that you’re like, “That’s not true”? Or maybe something was in the media and you were like, “Wow, that was actually an accurate portrayal of the things that I do”?

Gab Mejia: Like a stereotype?

DeGraaff: Yeah.

Gab Mejia: Of what? What’s a stereotype? I don’t know.

DeGraaff: Of mountaineers, there’s a lot. Right?

Gab Mejia: I have heard some mountaineers. But yeah, like, a Filipino mountaineer, what the heck is that? You only have islands, right? Not a lot of people would realize, but for me, I say, we always want what we don’t have. We don’t have these big mountains, so that’s what I want to climb.

I mean, we have the best gnarly beaches here in the world, so…. That’s something very different, to be a mountaineer, especially a Filipino. It’s not something that you see yourself as, in the Philippines. Or, if you’re a Filipino, it’s not something you see yourself as. “Wow, you want to climb mountains in the Himalayas?” Or, go to snowy mountains in Jackson Wild, or something like that?

DeGraaff: What do you like to watch? What do you like to engage with?

Gab Mejia: Yeah, it was really a National Geographic upbringing. That was really the big thing. My dad had the whole magazines, the paperback magazines, of National Geographic when I was still a kid. I was just reading it out of my mind, encyclopedia books. So, that’s the kind of media I had in my upbringing.

Right now, the media that I watch…. Yeah. Of course, I

do watch Netflix if I have time, and all that stuff.

DeGraaff: Do you play Animal Crossing?

Gab Mejia: I wish I had my Switch, but nope, I don’t have it right now. [Laughing.] I think that’s the thing. People don’t think you have time for Netflix, you don’t have time for the simple things in life.

DeGraaff: But you have to, or you’ll go insane.

Gab Mejia: Yeah, definitely! You’re going to go insane if you’re just all about your work. That’s why, after the 4 years I had, looking back, maybe I’m good to retire, I think!

[Music swells, leading to ending sound bite.]

DeGraaff: I’d like to thank the always-kind and thoughtful Gab Mejia for talking with me about his path into conservation photography. If you’d like to see his mindblowing photos, check him out on Instagram at @gabmejia. That’s G-A-B, M-E-J-I-A.

Our producers are Suzanne Blais and myself, Regina Barber DeGraaff. Our audio engineers are Ariel Shiley and Zerach Coakley.

If you missed any of our show, go to our website at sparksciencenow.com. And, if you have a science idea you’re curious about, send us a message on Twitter or Facebook at Spark Science Now.

[Music fades.]

[End video.]

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