SIO91: Dr. Kate Biberdorf on Science Outreach

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:28 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only, this is episode 91, I'm your host Thomas Smith, and Today I've got an interview with Dr. Kate Biberdorf. She is a lecturer and director of demonstrations and outreach for the University of Texas at Austin. She's doing some incredible science outreach. We've got plenty to talk about, so let's get over to it.

0:00:58 Thomas: I'm joined by Dr. Kate Biberdorf, uh, I, thanks for telling me the pronunciation of your name, and it, it does derive from Justin Bieber, I think, as, as everything does. Thanks for joining me today, very, very uh, very honored to have you on. You work with uh, Amy Poehler's Smart Girls, which is, I'm gonna go ahead and say that's, makes me one degree of separation from Amy Poehler, so this is already one of the, the most successful interviews I've ever had. So just for that. So good start. Can you give listeners a bit of your background and then maybe talk about that Amy Poehler Smart Girls program?

0:01:03 Kate: Thank you, exactly, sure, um, I was originally born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, um and so I went to a small school, small town school, um in Kalamazoo and then I moved to Ann Arbor where I went to the University of Michigan and I double majored in chemistry and German, um And Then I moved down to Austin, Texas with some horns where I went to the University of Texas and I got my Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry. And from there, I started working at the University of Texas as an instructor or a lecturer. And basically, I teach general chemistry for kids that are in either the majors course or the non-majors. And then one of my favorite parts about my job is I run an outreach program called Fun with Chemistry.

Industry and what I do is I go out to local Austin schools and I blow stuff up and I try to show kids that science is fun and entertaining and you don't have to be a dork or a nerd to like science, you can just be a normal girl who likes to play with fire or explosions or anything of that sort, um, and then Amy Poehler, um, I actually kind of on a whim, uh, ended up working with them. I was watching TV one day and I saw this incredible ad for Girls Inc. and I was like, oh my gosh, what an empowering message. I think I should work with them. I think our messages line up. And so I sent an email to them. And then I basically copied and pasted that email and send it to every other girls organization. So I was kind of empowered by this message.

And within about 30 minutes, Smart Girls responded saying, "Hey, we're also local," the co-founder. So Amy Poehler and her best friend, Meredith Walker, actually started the organization. And Meredith actually lives in Austin, Texas. And we were able to meet up. And then one thing just kind of led to another. And I've, I've actually met Amy and she's a wonderful, fantastic human. And I've just been really honored to work with that program. They

0:01:54 Thomas: Oh, God, that is so cool. Can you gives me the details of what that program is aiming to achieve?

0:03:30 Kate: Basically have the idea of they want to promote the fact that women can do anything. And it's very important to them to say that, well, basically their tagline is "be your authentic self." And so they're trying to encourage girls of any shape, size, color, gender, whatever, that you can just be whatever you want to be and there's nothing stopping you, but just be true to who you are. And I just, I think that message is so beautiful to

0:04:00 Thomas: Yeah, definitely. Can I ask you where What led you to want to choose this route? I mean, did you have any experience with maybe feeling a little alienated at any time in your educational path or kind of what led you. To want to work for this goal of trying to increase the representation of women in STEM and stuff like that.

0:04:22 Kate: Be honest, it slowly happened for me. I was able to start working on the outreach group and one thing slowly led to another, and we actually ended up going out to different schools and I started interacting with girls and talking to moms. And one mom actually told me that she thinks her daughter should only be like domestic and in the kitchen. And she was never going to send her to a science camp and little things like that Just really upset me. Better words. It really upset me. And so it just slowly came together. And then personally, I've always had a problem with the way that female nerds are portrayed in the media, um, for example, the Big Bang Theory. I love that show, I think it's a great show, but the girl nerds, frumpy, and they're in cardigans, and it's just, it bothers me because they're gorgeous women, but for their characters they apparently have to to be frumpy and cardigans and, you know, just a stereotypical nerd. And I would love for them to be looking like Penny, if you're familiar with the show, because that's, that's what I would like to see. I

0:04:46 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah.

0:05:30 Thomas: I'm not really a fan. Sorry. But I feel like, and one reason is I feel like that show deals in mainly stereotypes and it's just not very, but it sounds like maybe it wasn't as much your personal experiences as that fair to say? Or was your experience the same way?

0:05:47 Kate: I think I've definitely experienced some, um, issues on my route, uh, to becoming a PhD chemist and working at a university. Um, I cannot even tell you the number of different times things that happen to me or near me or comments made to me or just little things. It's frustrating if you're in shape and you are maybe symmetric in your face and it's frustrating to be assumed, like immediately people will assume that you're an idiot or that you can't do something for whatever reason.

And so when I walk into a room, I have to prove that I know about chemistry before I can, people just start listening to me, so that it, it's frustrating For me that I always have to, I have to prove myself before people will even listen to what I have to say, and luckily I'm in a wonderful community at the University of Texas, they're incredibly supportive and I have wonderful colleagues. So in the university I feel solid and confident and great, but when I step outside of the university and go to conferences I experience that every time, and it's just frustrating for me. And so I don't want any other girls, young girls, to ever have to experience that, and so I just want to do my part to make it easier on the next generation of scientists

0:06:04 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah.

0:07:03 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, excellent. What about the gender imbalance? Was it a big, in your program and your bachelor's and your PhD, was there a big gender imbalance in your field?

0:07:13 Kate: That in my undergrad, it, for the most part, it felt 50/50, and I don't know if I was just ignorant of that, but I, I honestly do think it was about 50/50 for me, um, in my specific chemistry classes at the University of Michigan. Um, and I do believe at the University of Texas it's about 50/50 again. Um, that being said, is when you move forward in the program, going to master's and PhD level, that's when you start to see fewer and fewer women being successful in the field. And it's for a number of different reasons, um, sometimes it can be confidence. It's very difficult to be in that setting and have people kind of rip your ideas down. And it just, it's difficult if you're not used to that and you don't have a thick, thick skin. So that can be challenging. But sometimes women can choose that they might want to go a different route.

0:07:58 Kate: If you want to start a family, a lot of women aren't comfortable being pregnant in the lab, which I totally understand and respect. So a lot OF times women will decide to leave the program for something like that. And so there's just a lot Of different little things that for whatever reason, women don't tend to graduate as much as men do with the PhD. And that's frustrating for me, because I know my female colleagues and peers are brilliant and a hundred percent capable of finishing. And so we just need to somehow make it easier for them.

0:08:32 Thomas: Yeah, definitely. It seems like there's a big... Because I've looked at the numbers and it's surprising, there's actually a ton of women getting into college now, more so than men, and they're graduating more. But is it clustered around humanities and not as much in the sciences.

0:08:49 Kate: I, You know, I don't know the true statistics, so I don't want to act like I do, but I will say at least in my field, it does seem like it's 50/50 when in the undergraduate studies. But I do see a lot of our female chemistry majors move on to maybe pre-med. They want to be doctors instead of of going on to graduate school. And so we do see a lot of things shift. Instead of, yeah, basically we don't see a lot of female necessarily pursue the PhD in chemistry or the PhD in physics. They often want to be doctors or lawyers or dentists, and they use the chemistry degree to try to help get them into medical school.

0:09:26 Thomas: Obviously we're in the backdrop of a really kind of profound moment of sexual harassment in various facets of our society. And I'm just wondering if that's ever intersected with anything you're doing, if there's a sexual harassment problem in STEM or anything like that. Yeah, could you talk about that?

0:09:34 Kate: I know.

0:09:46 Kate: Can't. We can. Can Um, I Would Say A Hundred percent, that has happened to me and probably every single one of my friends, um, it is difficult, um, at least in chemistry it's an old boys club, um, it's often a lot of men, and so, and then, and they're tenured, and so a lot times they're protected from, you know, say when they say something or do something, they feel like they're secure, um, you know, you, you hear these horror stories at big universities where there's professors that are protected by tenure and they take advantage of that. And so they use their stature to prey on graduate students or whatnot. And I don't want to say anything specific, but I will say that I know it happens a lot. And, and I know that girls are then terrified to say anything because their advisor holds their PhD in their future.

0:09:47 Thomas: Yeah. Well, we don't have to if you don't want to.

0:10:39 Kate: And it, it, it scares them and so they don't say anything. And Yeah. And that's, that's I'll leave it at that. And I know it's, I know, it's I know it happens. And, and I just hope that women are starting to find their voice and, and supporting their sisters. If somebody speaks out, you do trust them and, and help them and don't let them get stuck in some kind of weird position just because someone has tenure.

0:10:45 Thomas: Okay.

0:11:04 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. And we definitely need to do what we can to dismantle that old boys' club. Because, you know, another thing that's interesting is despite the fact that, as I mentioned, I mean, a lot of women are going to college, they're outnumbering the men in undergraduate, but the like administration positions and the tenured faculty positions are still overwhelmingly male, that definitely sounds like a contributing factor there. So I just want to, yeah.

0:11:25 Kate: Yes, they are. It does. It does. But what I like is that there's a new generation of women that are plowing through through this and breaking down barriers. And so a lot of women right now are going through the tenure process and they're feisty and strong. I know my colleagues are just incredible. And so I really hope these two new female chemistry faculty members get tenure. I just, I'm super impressed with their work. And they're strong, wonderful women. And so I think they're going to do a lot for hopefully our field and showing our students here at the University of Texas that any women can do anything. And it just makes me proud to be part of that.

0:12:05 Thomas: Do you think about the sort of science illiteracy in our society today? Yeah, take all the time you need. Yeah.

0:12:10 Kate: Oh my God. How much time do you have? Well, I, oh golly, I could talk for days and days and days about this. So I find it so, so frustrating that people without a science background will try to pretend like they've, they know more than the experts in the scientific field. I find that to be just incredibly dumb for somebody to say that. For example, so I don't know any scientist who will just say, "Yes, I believe in climate change." They don't just blatantly make weird statements without thinking about anything. Instead, they've all looked at the data. We've all read about it. We know about how the data is actually found, what we do, what instruments we use to actually collect this data.

We know this. And so we have them come to our own opinion, opinion, saying that, yes, reading this data, we believe that there is a human influence on climate change. So it's not that we're all just trusting one scientist. Every single human has gone through that and come to the exact same conclusion. So for someone in the administration to come out and say, "Yeah, well, we actually don't believe that," to the scientific field, that doesn't mean like, "Oh, they have more information." It means this person does not know how to interpret data to. And so I immediately put you in a specific category with how much I respect you or don't respect your opinion per

0:12:18 Thomas: Yeah.

0:13:38 Thomas: I don't know if you heard about this Sam Clovis guy who was going to be Trump's pick for a science position within Department of Agriculture. But the only problem was he had absolutely no science background of any kind. What's that?

0:13:50 Kate: Familiar. Oh, gross.

0:13:53 Thomas: It really ahead.

0:13:54 Kate: There That is just so frustrating. I cannot stand. I can not stand how that happens that somebody without any background whatsoever is then put into be like in charge of it. It is the same same thing as like Betsy DeVos. I just, what is happening? I

0:14:12 Thomas: Yeah, I really don't know. And it seems like there's no easy solution. I hope that maybe things like what you're doing, which is just outreach at a, trying to reach children at a young age, you know, is something that, that could maybe fix the problem. But it just seems so profound when this, it seems like there's an anger toward experts of all kinds right now.

0:14:33 Kate: Agree.

0:14:34 Thomas: It... I'm

0:14:34 Kate: I completely agree with that statement. And I don't understand how or why that happened to be perfectly honest. And so what I'm doing is just trying to promote positive aspects of science. I like to do a demonstration and then show how it applies to the real world so that hopefully at least the people that I've talked to can maybe take a little bit of information and then be like, oh wait, I heard that it actually is true about this climate change thing. And then maybe they can change one other opinion. And so hopefully just maybe one person can talk to another person. And I just truly believe in the power of one, the theory that one person can can do a lot of good. And so I just, I hope that we as a scientific community can all try to act as one powerful person and each try to influence one person at a time.

0:15:20 Kate: So that hopefully over time, maybe in the next 10 years, we can get a little little bit better information out there, um, with some powerful leaders in charge of Um, education.

0:15:28 Thomas: Yeah. Well, You sound so optimistic, and I, I love that, but do you, is, I mean, I've, I'm kind of worried that it could be too late when it, as regards climate change, by the time we get around to doing anything. What do you think?

0:15:44 Kate: Well, So, to be perfectly honest, I do think we are in a lot of trouble. Um, you watch these documentaries, um, Vice has some beautiful documentaries, um, and they, they show these scientists, and you can see these scientists talk, and they're so disheartened because they know, I mean, they know this glacier, sure, that they've been studying for 10 years, it's gone, they know it's gone.

0:15:48 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:16:05 Kate: There's nothing we can do to stop it. The specific ones are gone, and so it's heartbreaking. And so what I try to do is think about what I know about my fellow nerds, is we are problem solvers. And so when we finally get to the point where everybody is completely believing us, that okay, we're in trouble, I believe that money is going to come in and we will start to receive funding, and we'll use the funding for good. And just like when we have some really bad disease or outbreak that comes out, we would then put all of our scientific toward this and come up with something, like a Moth or something, that would be able to grab a carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and start kind of pulling it together. So, excuse, Moth, metal organic framework, just in case, you can use, not, yeah.

0:16:05 Thomas: Uh.

0:16:47 Thomas: Yeah, no, I, you may need to, you explain that, I don't for other people, not for me, no, yeah, for me too, yeah.

0:16:50 Kate: Yeah, basically, There's these molecules, and you put them together, there's an organic component, and then there's a usually, usually a metal there, and everything's bound together. And when you get this molecule, um, it creates a big framework. And so think, think kind of like a lattice or a cube, and all these pieces are fit together in a very specific orientation, and they're incredibly good at trapping all other molecules. And so what can happen is you can, you can use a Moth, or a metal organic framework, to actually trap carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. And so what I believe is going to happen is that when it gets bad enough and everybody finally wants to donate money towards this, we'll finally have the funding to figure out how to extract the carbon dioxide from our atmosphere, to at least save us for the time being, um, until we, you know, start releasing methane that has a global warming potential of 21, um, then that will be the next problem. And so we'll just keep working on it. But, but now, you've got me sad.

0:17:41 Thomas: Oh. Yeah. Well, hopefully they can, yeah. Well, that's that's my goal here, is to make everybody really sad and worried, I know.

0:17:58 Kate: It's working.

0:17:58 Thomas: I've taken your, I've taking your very optimistic, bubbly persona, which was so delightful, and I'm doing my best to just make sure everybody is miserable. I'm sorry. What, what about you, know, know, you're in Texas, right? So what about the idea that, God would make it so that our planet would protect itself or something, or he wouldn't allow this destruction to happen? Is that something you encounter?

0:18:12 Kate: Yes, I am.

0:18:22 Kate: No one has ever said that to me personally, but Texas is a red state and there's a lot of people who have a bunch of different opinions here. I personally don't think that God is going to fix this. I believe in science and that's kind of where I put my head. And thinking about things. So I've heard that. I don't personally share that belief. I think the scientists are going to save the world. That's my belief.

0:18:35 Thomas: What?

0:18:51 Thomas: I hope so, if they can. But how do you, I mean, I don't know what your personal beliefs are, but I don't know how to interact with that argument. Like, if If someone really believes that, you know, God created the world and has a plan, short of arguing them out of their belief in God, I'm not sure how you would convince them.

0:19:10 Kate: Right. I mean, I, I agree with you. But I do, I personally believe that everybody has a right to their own opinion, to each their own. I think that's a very, very important thing to me personally. But yeah, I don't know how you you could do that, except for what I personally do is I start with numbers and I start with data and I say, OK, here, let me show you this one cool little graph I have about the parts per million of carbon dioxide and see how it goes up over 400. Let's talk about that really quickly.

0:19:39 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Well, certainly. So, but when, of course, I think it's kind of redundant. Of course, everyone has their own opinion. I get that. But when it comes to questions of science, though, it sounds like, you certain opinions matter more than others, right? Right.

0:19:53 Kate: Well, I personally believe that, yes, I try to trust the experts. So at least in the in the chemistry field, we if you have a Ph.D., you are an expert of a very teeny tiny subject. So for me personally, I studied Suzuki coupling. Um, and so I tried to design several different catalysts that were able to basically, um, form a carbon carbon bond between two benzene rings. And so if you asked me about that specific reaction, I could tell you just so much stuff about it that you would never want.

0:20:19 Thomas: Well, we should have done a show on that.

0:20:22 Kate: You wouldn't want that. You would hate it if people would not listen to that show. So, but I find it particularly interesting and how all these different ligands work in different metals and what solvents affect it and what the temperature would be and the kinetic energy and all this stuff. It's all, there's so much for this one little thing. And so what we as a scientific community basically understand is that we're each an expert in this one teeny tiny subject. And so, what I like to do is trust my community and I like to read the data that an expert has extracted and Then personally form my own opinion after looking at their numbers. And so that's my approach at everything. Show me the data. My sister goes crazy because that's what I always say. Show me the data. She'll say something. I'll be like, show me the data. I don't want to hear some statement you just gave me. I want to see the chart that you're trying to reference here.

0:20:25 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm.

0:21:06 Thomas: Is she not a scientist?

0:21:09 Kate: She's a psychologist, so I mean, it's a type of science. And so, but definitely, yeah. But what I love about it, though, is she is now working at this jail in Colorado, and she's awesome. And now she even is going to these conferences, and she is collecting data. And so she's on my side now. But growing up, I drove her crazy.

0:21:10 Thomas: Oh, okay. Oh, that's really cool. Yeah, it's interesting that what you're talking about with this specialization, I think to the layperson often, you know, we don't think about that. We think like, well, you're a scientist, so, you know, science, just all of it.

0:21:29 Kate: Right.

0:21:42 Kate: What I would say is that because we spent five plus years in graduate school learning how to interpret data and whatnot, I think that, and not to sound arrogant, but I do believe that we have the capability of reading someone else's report and then understanding it. And so we might not be able to actually perform that reaction right now today, but I think that our training has allowed for us to interpret data across all of these different fields. So I'm personally an inorganic chemist, but I could absolutely pick up a paper from an analytical chemistry journal and completely follow it. And I know exactly what they're saying and talking about their instruments. So we understand it. We just can't necessarily do it.

0:22:00 Thomas: Right, right, right. And do you think a lot of that stems as well from a, oh, stem, a nice pun, stems as Well, from, from an ability to understand statistics? Do you think that's a big key? Because like, I, you Know, I maybe that would be a good way to educate even the non-scientists of the the society of our society of which of course vastly outnumber the scientists, um, just more statistical literacy. Uh, what do you think about that? I mean, because people are able to do incredible things with statistics and make incredible claims, um, Yeah, how big is that fundamental to to most science, or, hmm?

0:22:29 Kate: Yeah, sure, sure. Right. I, oh, absolutely. Yeah. So I think a conversation on the difference between accuracy and precision is always something that's good to talk about, what a standard deviation would tell you. So I do agree with what you're saying. I hadn't really thought about that in that particular angle before. So now you're going to make me think about that. But I do. Yeah, I do think think that a little statistics class for the world would be, um, powerful.

0:23:27 Thomas: Now Now You just got to find a way to make statistics explode load, and then and then We got it. We've

0:23:27 Kate: Right. Right. Statistics Sexy. How do you do that? I'm not sure. We'll figure it out. Oh,

0:23:36 Thomas: Um, What, what would you just mention though, with precision and accuracy? I don't, what, what were you referring to? That sounds interesting. Oh,

0:23:44 Kate: So accuracy is, um, basically reporting is how close your number is to the true value. So a group of people understand that the true value is something, and so you, you run your experiment, you collect your data, and you want want to see how close your results are to the true value. That's accuracy. But precision is saying you run this experiment over and over and again, and you get the same number. So you get like 29.2 over and over and over again. And so that's just saying you get the same. But what if the true value is 100, getting 29.2 over and over and over again just means that your experimental results are precise, but they're not accurate. So it's a big.

0:24:24 Thomas: Okay.

0:24:24 Kate: And so your standard deviation is usually an indication of your precision, not your accuracy. Well,

0:24:29 Thomas: See, these are things we all need to know. Yeah.

0:24:32 Kate: Now you do see there you go, I'm

0:24:33 Thomas: Well, How does it, is there any way offhand that that you can think of how that applies to, I, I don't know, is does that apply to say the the climate change discussion, in a way that, that people aren't getting.

0:24:44 Kate: I'm Sure. I'm sur that somebody could look at, um, our climate change discussion and say that, well, we've always been really close to 400 ppm, uh, concentration for carbon dioxide, so it's all the same. Whereas, as scientists, we would say no, no, no, that's not what we're seeing here. What we see is these normal inflections that were going up and down and up and down. That's totally normal based on the earth's tilt, how our earth is moving, what season we're in, like all this stuff affects the earth energy balance. That being said, we all can see that there was a huge spike in our concentration of carbon dioxide immediately after the Industrial Revolution. I mean, it's so obvious. And then you can clearly see now that it's way over 400 ppm. This is the highest it's ever been that we've ever recorded. And that's, to scientists, that's significant.

0:25:36 Kate: That's very significant. We can already see, especially in Austin, we can see the effect of this right now. We're having flooding. We're have fires. We have extreme weather. It's super hot, super cold. I mean, we already see the affect of this. So what's nice is here in Austin I think people believe it. I think they completely are on board with the fact that climate change is happening and humans have an influence. But we have a fantastic mayor here who's trying to make us carbon neutral. So I'm really proud to be part of the Austin community here.

0:25:24 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:26:07 Thomas: I, I've, I, I don't know myself, but I've heard that Austin is a bit of a little blue sanctuary, right?

0:26:14 Kate: Lulee, it's a beautiful blue sanctuary. I think it's fantastic here. It's one of my favorite cities that I've ever been to. This is my 10th year living here, and I can't imagine leaving, to be perfectly honest. But people are open-minded. It's usually very liberal. And just people want to be happy. And I think It's a very smart community. There's a lot of people who are involved in the university. And so people believe in education and learning. And my students are actually reading the newspaper, I mean, app form, but they do it. And it's a great place to be. And I love the University of Texas and I love Austin. And in general, they're very science happy, which is great.

0:26:17 Thomas: Yeah.

0:26:54 Thomas: How do we spread that though? It seems like cities are such a different, You know, the city versus rural difference in, in what we're looking at. I mean, I suppose there's, there's plenty of liberal science, uh, you know, fuzziness too, but I I just feel like it's so much more fundamental with this climate change denial. And the fact that, you know, the the administration right now is is is just fundamentally opposed to science. I mean, appointing all these non-experts and and cutting, uh, you know, Trump wants to cut all this funding for research and stuff. It just seems so catastrophic. I don't know how we bridge that. How do you, how do, do you move that enthusiasm from these beautiful blue sanctuaries of, I don't know, elsewhere, to rural America?

0:26:59 Kate: Well, I think that I'm trying is what I would say, um, I take my outreach program everywhere I can. I try to go to as many Title One schools as possible, and so for the community out there that's not familiar with that, Title One schools are basically just lower socioeconomic, they usually have a high percentage of free or reduced lunch, um, and it's just a lot of students that often have not seen liquid nitrogen before, um, where and so to me that's my favorite place to go because I can, I show up and I look like I'm some kind of cross between Jesus and Santa Claus. It's a very fun, it's a fun thing to do. And I just absolutely love it. And so I just keep trying to expand my bubble. Originally, I was only doing schools in Austin. Well, now I'm doing places. I just got back from Baltimore doing a show in Baltimore for Women of the World Festival. It was fantastic.

0:27:43 Thomas: That's good.

0:28:28 Kate: And I know a lot of those girls had not seen a couple of the demonstrations that I'd done before, and here they are, junior, seniors in high school, um, so I'm, I'm doing my part, but I'm only one person, and I'm hoping that just slowly we can do it together. I

0:28:37 Thomas: Yeah, no kidding. That sounds really cool. Really, that is awesome. And I you know, you believe in the power of one person, but hopefully, you know, a lot of different people believe in the power of one person, and then there'll be multiple people. But going Back to what you said a moment ago, you know, when you're talking about climate change, I'm sorry to keep going back to that, but it does seem like the most pressing, like, catastrophic issue that we're denying right now. And I think it's so fundamental to, when we're talking about scientific understanding, it seems like the biggest juncture where we're just not getting it. Do you think there's a component of that where scientists have just not been communicating well?

I mean, like, I, because I remember before I knew anything, you know, just being a dumb kid and and hearing stuff like, oh, the the planet could warm one degree, you know, and you're like, oh, one degree, oh, that's, that's nothing, that sounds like nothing, but it turns out, I mean, that's actually quite significant, and, and you know, 2.5 degrees or or something. The level at which it becomes catastrophic is just shockingly small.

0:28:54 Kate: Hope so. I hope so, totally Think

0:29:42 Thomas: What do you think about maybe scientists becoming better communicators in general?

0:29:48 Kate: You hit the nail on the head there, um, we as a community generally believe that we've dropped the ball, because that's the only way we can justify how we've gotten to this place, because otherwise it's bananas, it doesn't make any sense whatsoever, and so we are people who like to take ownership, and so I think as a community we are assuming that somewhere, somehow we got too involved into the nitty-gritty pieces of the science, stuck in the lab, and hope, and I guess somewhere we didn't express what was happening in the lab in in terms that would make sense to everybody. And I completely agree with you, I remember being in high school hearing, hearing Al Gore talk about climate change. And I thought it was funny. I remember laughing at it, like actually laughing at It. And now I look back and I'm like, you idiot.

0:30:00 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Oh

0:30:33 Kate: But I was what, 15? You know, you don't actually know what's going on.

0:30:34 Thomas: My gosh. I think we had the same background, except you did something with your life and I didn't. So darn. Now I have no excuse.

0:30:37 Kate: I'm doing something. Right.

0:30:43 Thomas: Yeah, no, that's so funny. I had the the same memory of being like, this Al Gore, what does he know? He's just trying to, yeah, yeah.

0:30:50 Kate: And, but What is he, a scientist? I don't actually know his background is. And so I don't know, it's somehow, even though he was out there screaming and yelling about it, we all ignore them. And so the only thing I think is there's power in numbers now. Now there's just enough of us lunatics yelling about it that hopefully somebody will believe us eventually and make a change. I'm very hopeful that maybe our administration will change up and hopefully it won't be eight years of this current situation, hopefully. And so maybe in the next two years or so we can get some changes happening. But I don't know, I don't know, I just keep calling my representatives, that's

0:31:29 Thomas: There you go. That's the right thing to do. You know, you mentioned that people are seeing the effects, they're seeing the floods, they'RE seeing all that. And sure, it's good that that's finally making people understand. But at the same time, it's got to be a bit frustrating. Like, this is what scientists said would happen. And now it's happening.

0:31:29 Kate: Right.

0:31:49 Thomas: And Okay. You have to actually see the water rising up into your house and then you'll, you'll finally care. It's, it is a little frustrating.

0:31:50 Kate: It is It is, but you, and you have to take it, I, I assume that people are busy with their children and they're working as hard as they can and for whatever reason, um, they just can't focus on climate change right now. That's my point of view. I'm just hoping that they're so busy and so preoccupied with just surviving and being a good mom that they are not focusing on this environmental issue, which I understand. People are preoccupied. We all have busy daily lives, but I just hope for a little time to kind of work together.

0:32:30 Thomas: Yeah. Well, I think I can once again play the pessimist to your optimist here and just say that I really think it's a concerted effort. You know, it's sort of like the smoking thing where, you know, they hired, the industry street hires scientists to, I, you know, if you can find one or two scientists with no scruples and then they can become the one scientist that Fox News has on a hundred times a day who says like, nah, this is bullshit. Then it's, it really is this propaganda war. And I don't know, I don't know. I'm pretty pessimistic about it. You know, when, when so many people can believe things like Obama wasn't born here, you you know, and all that, like, what are the odds that they can this advanced scientific concept?

0:32:59 Kate: Other.

0:33:11 Kate: I truly I believe that they 100% can understand it. I'm a person who believes that any human can believe any scientific concept. As long as they put a little bit of effort in there, you can learn to understand it, at least. I could put it that way. But it's possible that certain networks are putting out false information in a way that seems accurate. And if you fully believe that your certain news channel is telling you the truth, that would be hard to stomach the fact that, oh my gosh, this person's lying to me. So what I try to tell my students is watch two different news channels. So if

0:33:24 Thomas: And

0:33:55 Kate: You're someone who loves Fox News, maybe check out CNN or NBC or something like that. Or if you are, it

0:34:02 Thomas: They're like, yeah, Fox News and Infowars. It's my two sources. I've got two sources.

0:34:07 Kate: Goes the other way too though, because I have students who really love the Huffington Post and I used to too, but I really do believe that, you know, maybe that's not fully just accurate, that there's a little bit of opinion in there these days. And so it's just a good idea to read different avenues and open up your idea. I personally really like to check out BBC News, because to me, I feel like that's a different perspective on the stories we're seeing from here inside our country. So it's interesting to open your sources. But I think another thing, a statistics course you suggested, but another course that the entire world could take was what is a quality source? What's a credible source?

0:34:08 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's amazing that we have more access than ever to fact checking. I mean, it's so cool that for any single claim, I can just Google it. And then if I check Snopes or I check there's like four or five really good, reputable fact check websites, and any of us can go do that. And yet half of us don't, more than half of the stone. It's just it's incredible. So I agree with you. That would be two courses that I would love to see at a high school level everywhere would just be statistics, you know, and maybe a version of statistics that's geared a little more toward understanding versus like, here's an intro course if you were going to go into the field, you Know, like, I don't know if that makes sense, but that and how to find the right sources for stuff. I feel like that would do a lot of good.

0:35:20 Kate: Yes, I agree. That's... I teach a dual credit program. And that was my response to alternate facts. I was, so this summer, I was just going crazy where people were talking about alternate facts, alternate facts was like, that's not a thing. That is not a way. And so my response, so that was for my high school students in the dual credit problem, I added an entire section to every single unit about figuring out what a quality source was. And so one of the first things I did was I went to The Onion and I tried to find a ridiculously funny article that they'd written about science, and I found some great ones. And so I started writing those out and listing them for the students and then asking them, do you think The Onion's a quality source? And then by the end of the semester, we get to Fox News, Huffington Post and all these other ones and try to have them actually investigate and say, okay, like here's this one story that was reported by three different stations.

0:36:29 Kate: You know, which one had the facts, here's the true report, and then here's how it was reported from these other ones. And so hopefully, if even 10 of those students pick up how to, how to look at a credible source, then I feel like that's a, that's something good, but yes, the entire world needs to have that. What you're

0:36:46 Thomas: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I, for one, believe the onion is a great source. So I, it's so good. It's a good source of something, just not what you're talking about.

0:36:52 Kate: Saying that. Okay, okay. Entertainment value, and that alone, I

0:37:01 Thomas: Yeah. It is great. But yeah, I know what you mean. And that really sounds like you are on the front lines of a great and hopefully ultimately successful effort of getting everybody to a level to where at least we can understand what a good source is and a bad source is, and at least know where to find the story. That sounds really cool. I think the work you're doing is great! Is there anything more that we didn't get to about the kinds of things you're trying to do with your programs? Or did we pretty much cover it?

0:37:34 Kate: Thing that are most important to me is to, to show that any human can be a scientist, that's really my message. And so, just no matter where you come from, what your background is, what you look like, what you like, who you like, you can be an scientist. It doesn't matter because Explosions are fun, right? Anybody will like, that's

0:37:48 Thomas: That's so cool. Hey, but not every science gets to explode stuff.

0:37:54 Kate: Right, and that's why you should study chemistry. Well,

0:37:57 Thomas: Yeah. Well, how do you make biology cool? I guess you have to leave that to the biologists, huh? There's always blowing up stuff. Do you ever think maybe you're less a scientist and more more just a pyromaniac. Do you ever, I'm

0:38:03 Kate: You could blow up something, like I Know that I'm a pyro disguised as a chemist.

0:38:17 Thomas: Just teasing. I think that's really funny though. I think you'd find the tie in everywhere. Astronomy, you know, stars blow up. You got, there's always explosions.

0:38:24 Kate: Exactly. I did, actually went to an astronomy lecture where I talked about explosions from astronomy, from an astronomy perspective and a chemistry perspective, and the whole time I was just blowing stuff up, and it was one of my favorite lectures I've done in a long time, and the crowd was awesome. It was also at a bar, it was called Astronomy on Tap, so it was a good Crowd.

0:38:42 Thomas: Oh man.

0:38:42 Kate: And they had, you know, some drinks, so it's just fun, but It was Before Explosions.

0:38:45 Thomas: That sounds really fun. I would like to go, I don't know how much, you know, drinking and explosions should mix in general, but you know, assuming.

0:38:54 Kate: Never, never, never, never, never.

0:38:57 Thomas: So as long as you were sober, then I guess we're good.

0:38:58 Kate: I'm sober. The audience, I cannot say that for the audience, but I was sober. We'll

0:38:59 Thomas: Okay. So cool. We'll just have to find a way to make math and statistics explode. And then we've got the ticket. We've got the way. Yeah.

0:39:11 Kate: Figure it out. Just give me a little bit of time because I might have to get creative with that one. But we can we can figure it out. If nothing else, we can set math books on fire and somebody will think that thing frowned

0:39:23 Thomas: Oh, man. Yeah, we'll see. Well, let's shelve that because I feel like that could go bad. The whole burning books thing. I don't know if that's something.

0:39:33 Kate: Upon.

0:39:33 Thomas: Yeah. Well, Dr. Kate Biberdorf, the work you're doing is excellent. It's so cool to hear about it. I tried my best to ruin everyone's day and be the pessimist, but I think your optimism and your message and what you're doing really shines through. So thank you so much for coming on the the show.

0:39:45 Kate: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate the fact that you're even allowing me to talk about this, and hopefully maybe one of your listeners will now be like, "Hey, science is cool, let's go to UT Austin and blow some stuff up" with that, I know.

0:40:01 Thomas: Well, I Will defend my listeners' honor here and say that most likely nearly all of them think science is really cool, so I got

0:40:11 Kate: That's why you have such a great podcast. Thank you, let me be part of it.

0:40:16 Thomas: Just thank you for coming on. Really cool. Everybody should go to katethechemist.com. Is there anywhere else you'd like to send people?

0:40:23 Kate: You go to funwithchem.com, you can check out our organization, or if you want to check out my pictures of me setting things on fire at fun with chem, like chemistry, so fun with chem is my Twitter and Instagram handle. Thank you. Thank you.

0:40:36 Thomas: So cool. Thanks so much for joining us.

0:41:05 Thomas: Well, that was a lot of fun. I think that was a nice change of pace. Kate's optimism and positive attitude is something that I think we could all use right about now, and really the work she's doing is so cool. So that was fun. I want to thank Kate again for coming on. And a poll again to patrons to see what you might prefer me to talk about. I know we've got a lot of options. We'll see, I may or may not do that, but I can say that I will release the second episode of Jake News with Thomas. That was a lot fun, people enjoyed it. So that'll be there for patrons as we speak as you're hearing this so enjoy I hope that you enjoy that, Patrons, and I will see everybody else on Thursday!