Learn Australian English in this interview episode of Aussie English where I chat with Dr. Jenny Martin about Antarctica, possums, and science communication.

AE 667 – Interview: Antarctica, Possums, & Science Communication with Dr. Jen Martin transcript powered by Sonix—easily convert your audio to text with Sonix.

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G'day, you mob and welcome to this episode of Aussie English! The number one podcast for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English, but also wanting to get to an advanced level in English. You know, it doesn't really matter if you are learning British English or American English, this is the podcast for you if you want to learn advanced English.

Today's interview is a special interview with Dr Jenny Martin, who is a senior lecturer in Science Communication from the University of Melbourne. She is on the podcast today to talk all about the importance of science communication, especially from scientists themselves and how sometimes we scientists generally tend to have a bad reputation for being horrible communicators. So, Jenny comes on today, we talk about that, we talk about how she ended up a scientist in the beginning of her career, an academic scientist, and then how she traded that for teaching science communication.

We talk about some amazing possums that we have in Australia, she's very passionate about her marsupials, the animals that she studied, and we also talk about her recent trip to Antarctica. Now, it's a great episode, guys, if you are in the field of STEM and especially if you are a woman in the field of STEM, I think that science, technology, engineering, medicine and maths or maths and medicine, I think I got that right. If you're in that field, this is going to be the episode for you. So, guys, without any further ado, let's get into it.

Hey, guys, welcome to this episode of Aussie English. Today I have Jenny Martin, who was a researcher at Melbourne University, but now you would consider yourself more of a science communicator, right?

Well, I guess I'm a science communicator, but probably even more so I'm a teacher of science communication. So, you know, I sort of always thought that being a biologist was my thing. I loved field work, I was a human ecologist and I really loved learning more about how the world worked, but I went from being a researcher to moving into the world of academia.

And in my first year of teaching biology and conservation and animal behaviour and all the things that I was interested in, I had a couple of very interesting experiences. First, I took part in a competition called Fresh Science, which is a competition for early career scientists to learn to essentially not sound like scientists. So, a whole lot of training to become a better communicator and going out to schools and going out to pubs. And and I really observed how these greatest scientists went from being pretty average communicators to in the days, becoming just a whole heap better at working out how to talk about their research and how to make it relevant to people. So, that was sort of, you know, that's piece of information number one, scientists can become much better communicators if you give them some training and some feedback.

Is that more our fault as scientists than, you know, the rest of the world's fault? In terms of our lack of ability in communication, we need to take the onus on ourselves and be like, look, we need to improve. We don't need to wait for others to just learn how to interpret science.

Well, look, I think it's really tricky because is it a scientists fault that they're not given the opportunity to develop these skills or is it the fault of the educators who don't recognise that teaching communication is a really important part of becoming an effective scientist? I mean, there's a lot of survey work's been done to ask scientists, you know, how much time do you spend sharing your work with, you know, non-scientific audiences or do you think it's important that you share your work with non-scientific audiences? And generally, most scientists say, yeah, I think it's really important and I'd really like to do more of it.

And then if you ask the question, well, why don't you? They say, because I'm not sure I know how. I've never really been taught and so that leads me to my kind of second piece of information and the first piece of information the science can get better, but then the second thing was that I looked at the list of what they call graduate attributes for my university. And it, you know, it said very clearly our students leave with really high level communications, so I kept asking around. So, these really important skills, where do we teach them? Where do the students learn them? Because, you know, I knew my colleagues were complaining about communication skills.

Just to acquire them.

Well, well, exactly. So, they didn't use the word acquire, the powers that be told me, ah, they just pick them up by osmosis.

That's like, so like, if I hang out with enough French people, I'll just pick up French by osmosis, right? You know, it's I don't have to actually go and practice it.

Or if you watch enough concert pianist perform, you'll be able to play piano like a concert pianist.

If only it were that easy.

So, I sort of got a bit frustrated and said, well, you know, I don't think that you pick it up by osmosis, just by watching good communicators, you don't become one yourself. And in fact, scientists, science students spend a lot of time watching scientists who aren't good communicators. So, they're not getting a constant example. And, you know, I remember I had in the back of my mind the fact that I'd just done this training with this group of early career scientists, and we'd all been taught really clearly a whole set of skills around how to write more effectively, how to speak in in more engaging ways, had captured the attention about audience, how to explain our research without using technical language, how to tell stories, you know.

And, so I guess I just worked out that you couldn't say and my research was really going to have impact in the world. And one of my core values is really wanting to make a difference to the world and I couldn't say how my research was going to do that. And I suddenly had this brainwave, hang on, maybe what I should be doing is trying to teach scientists how to communicate more effectively. Maybe that's the key thing I can do with my, you know, my limited time on the planet.

Is part of the difficulty for scientists, too, that they when you start getting into that sort of bubble of being surrounded by other scientists, you are left assuming a lot of other scientists know what you're talking about, using really specific terms and you have these assumptions kind of built in, right? So, that you don't have to dumb things down.

Is that part of the problem? That you get to a point where you're at the top of your field and everyone that you talk to knows a lot about your work or the field and so you don't have to practice speaking with people who are trying, who are learning it. Never heard of it before or, you know, you have a layman. Is that what people need to be taught more about, dumbing it down and, you know, delivering it in a more consumable form?

So, I hate the phrase dumbing it down. I have to catch you on that one.

That's ok.

Because I think people find that really offensive. You know, why do I have to dumb it down? And I absolutely don't think we have to. But what you said earlier is the key. It's about thinking about who you're talking to. So, if in your day to day work, most of the time you're interacting with your colleagues in your lab, you know, your lab groups who all have very solid and deep knowledge around the work that you're doing, of course you use technical language and, you know, jargon isn't evil.

Jargon is only bad if it's, you know, if you're using language for the wrong people and in the wrong place or the wrong time. So, when you're working with your colleagues who are all very well versed on what you're doing, absolutely. Use jargon as a shortcut. You wouldn't be bothered explaining it in detail, but I think the key thing that we really haven't taught scientists to do very well is to think carefully about different audiences and to recognise that there are times you might want to share your research with someone who doesn't have that deep training and that deep knowledge in at that point, you have to change your focus.

You know, scientists talk about all there's a gap in the knowledge or there's a gap in the literature. And, you know, you and I both have science training, we understand that that means this is a little thing we don't know and it would be great to know. But if you're talking to your average person on the street, who I should point out is funding your research, most likely, because most research is funded by taxpayers.

That person doesn't care that there's a gap in the literature, or a gap in the knowledge. They just want to understand why your research matters. You know, why do you need to find this out? Why is this a valid thing to spend time and money on? So, at that point, you have to take a really big step back and start talking about gaps in the literature and get back to the basics of why is this important? Why do we care about this? Why does this matter? Why is this justifiable? There is limited money and time on the planet. How can you justify that this is something worth doing? And, so I try and teach my students how to be able to answer the question of well, so what?

Why does this matter? Why is this important?

Is that something that people too kind of want to avoid as scientists? Because, I think, I remember getting sort of fatigued with having to try and justify myself and my work all the time just in the grant process and to other scientists, let alone to the public. So, do you think that a lot of scientists shy away from it? Not necessarily, because they can't explain it, but because it's just a tiring conversation that they maybe are too lazy to have or?

Look, I think is a really valid point and I am so aware of the challenges facing academics and all researchers. Now, you know, everyone is so overwhelmed with administrative tasks and so overwhelmed by everything that's going on around them.And, you know, I fundamentally believe that people are generally good people and they're invested in their work because they care about it. But I don't know, is it ok to feel lazy about these things? I think it's a really important point and I don't ever want to be the person standing up front lecturing and saying, you have to do this. I don't think that's helpful.

I don't think people respond well to being lectured at in that way. I guess, I just really encourage people to think about the bigger picture and particularly that kind of, you know, I think an ethical obligation that if your work is publicly funded, then you need to think about, well, how are you going to share the results of all of your findings?

And traditionally, scientists have had, you know, very few kind of metrics that we get judged on. It's, you know, how much grant money do you pull in? How many papers have you published when they've been published? Have they been published in high quality journals? And how many people have cited that research? But none of that is relevant to somebody out there who is not in in the scientific community because most papers are behind paywalls.

And even if they're not behind a paywall, they're not written in a way that's accessible. Anyone who hasn't had the luxury of the scientific training that you and I have had. So, you're essentially ensuring that it's impossible for somebody to understand your work. So, although I don't want to be out there stipulating, say all scientists must become excellent communicators, I guess, I just want to encourage people to think about the responsibility you might have to communicate your your work more broadly.

And I just don't think your job is done by speaking at scientific conferences or publishing in scientific journals. And, you know, it's not an entirely selfless act. You know, the minute you start communicating more broadly, the collaboration opportunities, the networking opportunities, the other amazing things that come your way. You know, I definitely don't think it's a selfish act that's never going to benefit you to communicate more broadly, because, as you and I know, the minute you have any sort of platform upon which to share your knowledge with people, you can do real good in the world.

People are thirsty for it, right? You forget how interested the average person is in science. It's one of those huge things like you walk into any bookstore and the science section's massive. So, it's not like there's a lack of interest in people's work, right?

People love science and we've got really good survey data. So, here in Victoria, there's been a number of great surveys and in fact, some Australia-wide. ANU's run surveys. CSIRO is one that runs surveys. We have the data. There's a really huge proportion of the population out there that have some interest in science. And if you try and find out a little bit more about how often they engage with science or how much of their time they spend reading science or talking about science, it's really clear that people are hungry for more information.

It's just that, generally, they struggle to find that information presented in a way that they can easily understand. So, I feel like it's a real call to action for any scientists out there to hone your skills so that you can give a public talk or you can go to your kid's primary school or you can write an opinion piece for the for the paper or you can have your own blog or you can be interacting with people on Twitter.

You know, you don't have to do it all, but to do something if you want to be a successful scientist.

So, do you think the system's kind of broken? I guess, in more ways than just science communication, because I always found it difficult the fact that you are sort of bent over the knee of whoever has the money for the grants and the hoops that you have to go through to publish and get reviewed. You get peer review from other, usually, scientists in your field who don't know you, but often who would have chips on their shoulders about certain things. They'd have their own biases. So, it always felt like this is a system that is, it feels like it's working well, but at the same time, it could be a lot better, right?

I completely agree. You know, everything you've just said is right. And I think being a scientist today is really hard work. And people think I'm doing it for the money. I'm not doing it for the kudos.

So, what made you become a scientist initially? Can you tell us about your story? Because I know it's an interesting one.

I think it was absolutely my upbringing. So, I grew up with parents who are both excellent nature lovers as well as really good scientists. My dad, formerly, my mom, informally. So, my dad moved to Australia from South Africa to do a PhD here and never left. My mum, while he was a PhD student, and you know, you never pick now that he wasn't Australian. He's been here for a long time and his research was about frogs.

My mum, meanwhile, didn't ever have the opportunity to go to university, unfortunately, but in her own right became a very talented natural historian, photographer. She worked at the museum and she did all sorts of incredible things. And, so I grew up just feeling like science is part of everyday life. I used to do, there used to be a thing called The Science Talent Search. I don't know if you ever did that, but I took part one year. And what I wanted to know was whether you could change or how you could get that really beautiful gold and colour in the egg yolk of commercially produced eggs.

Because, you know, people like these really golden colour. And we had chickens, we had chooks in our backyard. And so I did experiments feeding them different seeds to say what colour the yolks would be.

What were the results?

Broccoli was the thing that gave them the most golden, the most golden yolks.

Any ideas why? What's unique about broccoli?

I don't know. There must be something in the compounds of broccoli. But, you know, I tested all sorts of different foods, and, so I guess, my point is I was a nerd very much, but science was completely normal for me. And, you know, my dad going on field trips and discovering new species of frog and writing books, and mom doing all sorts of fun experiments, with us at home. You know, that was very normal. And, I guess, I grew up with this really strong sense that I wanted animals to have more of a voice.

It always struck me as really somehow unjust that humanity was taking over the planet and that we didn't understand enough about nature. Little did I know really at that, back then, how badly we were taking over the planet and what we were doing to it.

That's such a difficult thing, isn't it, right? Because I keep saying... People keep that there's two sides of me when it comes to species and conservation today, where in the moment you see a lot of species suffering, going extinct, a lot of the environment just being destroyed, and you do hear people saying, well, you know, we humans are the worst thing ever. We need to get rid of them and just let animals exist. But without humans existing, it's kind of like the tree falling in the forest. If no one's there, is anyone going to hear it?

There's no one to appreciate the animals, right? But vice versa. If all the animals go and there's only humans, it's kind of like you've burnt down a museum full of art and you no longer have beauty to enjoy. But also, once we're gone, the earth will be fine in a million years or so with probably the same amount of diversity, you would imagine, if it hasn't been irreparably destroyed. So, it's kind of like conservation is really, it's for the animals, I see, but it's kind of for a selfish point of view, right? For the health of our planet and for our enjoyment. First and foremost,.

I think yeah. Look, I think it's for both and I grew up having this sense that, you know, for me, animals were where it was at and understanding nature was what I wanted to do. And I guess I always sort of thought, well, you can't conserve if you don't understand it. And that led me to, you know, to do an honours degree. I did keep up an arts degree as well because I had such interest in writing and literature and language. So, I studied German. I was an exchange student for a year in high school in Germany wanted to keep my German up.

Das ist sehr gut (This is very good).

Ja, absolut! (Yeah, absolutely!) I did came up my German, but, I guess, it was at some point during my PhD that I started to feel really quite concerned and dissatisfied and realising that, although I'd invested years and years and years in getting to know this particular species of porcelain that was in north eastern Victoria.

Bobucks, right?

Bobucks, mate! Good on you!

I was looking at some of your research. So, I saw that, do you want to tell people what Bobucks are and how they're different from normal brushtail possums, 'cause they are cool. And I remember your I think you were saying your PhD supervisor, Kath Handasyde, took us up to her property when I was doing undergrad at the same university that you teach at now, and we got to see the bobucks, and they were amazing.

They are, they're very charismatic. So, they're... so 'bobuck' is an indigenous name, which I always chose to use. They're also known as a Mountain brushtail possum simply because they do tend to live in higher elevation, although we now know quite a few populations that aren't in high elevation at all.

Really?

Yeah. Yeah.

And it's like basically at sea level, which is interesting.

Oh wow.

But they look quite different to common brushtail possums if you know what to look for. They have quite different shaped years and they tend to be a bit bigger and a bit pushier and, you know, they're just really beautiful looking animals, but behavioural.

The cutter version, right?

Oh, way cutter version. I mean, I'm really biased. But, way cuter version. Behaviourally, they're quite different. And the thing was that no one had really ever looked carefully at their behaviour. And there was a really interesting telltale sign and that was that usually in mammals, you'd know very well, males and bigger than females, essentially because males need to be out to compete with each other to get access to mate with females.

In bobucks, males and females tend to be the same size or if anything, females a slightly bigger. And there is this really tantalising evidence from the 1970s where a guy called Rick Howe, who worked on them, had occasionally caught a male and a female in the same trap together. And the way that trap mechanism works must mean they, you know, that they must be right beside each other. They must have entered the trap at the same moment. So, he suggested, look, maybe they're monogamous, meaning a male and a female will pair up and stay, you know, have an ongoing relationship.

But we didn't know. So, I went in to find out, is that true or not? So, I did years and years of fieldwork following them around, I put radio collars on a whole lot of individuals to understand how they were using their habitat, how they were interacting and did all the genetic work to see which males were actually fathering the young in the population and I worked into quite different populations to try to understand what was going on. And the story I found was a really cool story.

Essentially, the answer is it depends. So, neighbouring populations in one population, they were quite strictly monogamous. They had paired bonds that lasted for years. Population about a kilometre away. Males mated with multiple females and the way they used their habitat was really different as a result of where... How the resources that they depend on words were spaced out in the environment.

So, was that the thing that was underpinning why they were monogamous or polygamists was it related to the food and the resources that were available?

Exactly. It all depends on the food availability and the availability of big old trees that have hollows in them that they sleep in during the day. So, they sleeping in big old trees like in the hollows and big old trees during the day and in one of my sites, which had been selectively logged, so some of the big old trees had been taken out. It turned out that just from the way this particular site was set up, which is probably the site you've been to. All of the trees were down the bottom of the hill because they feed on silver wattle, which tends to grow where there's been disturbance.

But all the big old trees were up on the top of the hill because that's where they hadn't been logged out from. And so the females had to cover a really big area because they were sleeping high on top of the hill during the day and then coming all the way down to the bottom to feed. And because all the females are fertile at pretty much exactly the same time, it seemed like a male was much better off just to stick with one female and be sure of at least fathering her young.

And so we ended up with a long, long term pair bonds. But if I went to the strips of habitat that were growing beside the roads where there were heaps of big old trees, because it had never been logged and heaps and heaps of food because the silver wattle tree just grew everywhere along the roads, the females had really, really small areas, what we call home ranges to live in, and a male could cover the area of two or three females really easily. So, I mean, I kind of love the answer that came out of my PhD, which was you can't pigeonhole a species. What they do depends on where they live.

That sound like it's Yeah, it's even... It's so within it because if it's just down the hill like, that's most not even different populations, right?

So, that was one population that was covering this kind of hill. But, I just love this and I love the animals and I love the fact that it's something interesting and I loved being outdoors. And, you know, part of me was really fulfilled. But I also got to the end and just kind of felt, but how is this going to make any difference to the world? You know, no politician is ever going to read this. No policy is ever going to change. You know, just understanding a bit more about these species, although I believe it matters in the bigger picture of the world, it's not going to actually make a difference to anything about the future of our planet.

And then going through the experiences we spoke about earlier, about thinking really carefully about how important it is for scientists to communicate in order for them to have impact in the world, and the fact that we weren't training our science students and, you know, year after year science students were graduating from, you know, arguably one of the best universities in Australia without their... having had any training in how to communicate effectively. And I just felt absolutely compelled to try and change that. And, you know, that whole experience is now ten, fifteen years ago, and I love what I do now.

It does seem to be a bit of a Ponzi scheme, right? Where you have so many science students signing up and their, I think, idea initially it's all become an academic researcher and you kind of like there's not enough positions for all of you guys. It's a pyramid scheme, right? But that was the thing for me. I felt a bit chewed up and spat out after my undergrad because I was like, well, if my only option, I only feel like my other options are to keep getting more degrees, masters and a PhD so that I can eventually become an academic researcher because I don't feel like I have many other opportunities.

Do you think that's part of the problem? That with the initial degrees, it's not, they kind of channelled towards becoming one single thing, as opposed to we're just going to make you really good at understanding science and communicating science and then you'll have all these other opportunities, and not just this, you know, if you're an academic researcher at the end of it, then you've succeeded, and if not, you've failed.

Look, I think things have changed massively in the last little while because what you've just said is absolutely true. But certainly in recent years, I think we're working really effectively at getting the message out to students that the skills you develop as a science student are incredibly valuable and broadly applicable and highly in demand in the workforce.

And the reality is there are very few academic jobs out there. You're actually quite unlikely to end up as an academic, but that doesn't mean that the skills you're developing aren't applicable in so many other places. And the message that I bring to that narrative is if you're going to go out in the world and working any number of these other areas, maybe you're going to end up in teaching, maybe you're going to be a consultant, maybe you're going to be in government, maybe you're going to be in clinical work, maybe you're going to be in any number of different industries.

The key thing that is going to allow you to be effective in that job is being a good communicator, because what you bring to that job is your scientific knowledge and your ability to read and distil scientific knowledge. But unless you can share that with the diverse audiences that you're now working with, you know, what have you got to show for it? So, and I guess that's why, you know, when I first started trying to teach this stuff, you know, it took me years and years and years to convince the university that what I was doing was was valuable and important.

But, you know, yeah, absolutely wonderfully supportive now, I have a team that works with me, we're designing new subjects where, you know, really very well supported by the university, because everyone is now on board with this message that we're not saying don't do a PhD, but recognise that whether it's a masters or a PhD, when you come out, you're probably going to end up in an industry that's not academia and you have to be able of communicate effectively.

Well, that was the weird thing because I remember my supervisors kind of scoffed towards the end of my PhD when I told them I want to do podcasting, I'm probably going to go and make content to help these people learn English. And I remember it sort of being like, that's not a job.

You know, that's the like. But you've studied for 12 years and I was thinking at the time, I'm like, dude, that's not support. Like, I often get that from friends and family. They'll be like, do you regret doing 12 years of study at university to end up a podcaster? And I'm kind of like, well, I still ended up who I am today and my appreciation for science and passion for sharing that. And, you know, learning the skills of podcasting was because of science, because I was on some podcasting, some science podcasts, so I'm like, who I am today as a result of all that. So, it probably doesn't hurt society to have someone educated in science, even if they're not studying it, right?

Absolutely, I couldn't agree more. And I'm sure you bring so much of what you learned to the job you do now. And that's a huge benefit to your audience. I mean, is knowledge ever wasted? Is experience ever wasted? And what you learn about yourself during the course of being a researcher? I mean, you know, I don't know anyone who didn't get a pretty tough time at some stage.(?).

And for me it's essential that I can really understand and empathise with the students that I'm teaching now because I've been there. I mean, you know, I think if I just got up and said, "Oh, I'm a science communicator. You know, all I've ever known is science communication", I don't know if my students would really, I don't know, I'm not sure that they would see me as a valid kind of person to listen to, whereas because I've been there at the front line, I did research for years. I understand how hard it is to communicate effectively as well as how important it is to do it.

I guess that gives me some credibility in their eyes. And I'm sure your background gives you credibility because, you know, you know a whole lot of stuff that you're now bringing to your work. So, I don't think it's ever wasted. But, you know, to not support somebody who gets to the end of their PhD and says I want to go off in this other direction is just crazy, because the alternative is just say you're only going to be considered a success if you end up with a tenured academic. That's something like point... And I think it's something like 2 percent of people are going to end up with a tenured academic job.

It must be too some sort of like self rationalisation, justification sort of stuff too, for some academics where it was their dream and they pushed so hard and then they finally got it. And they want to pass on the same thing and get people to have the same opportunities. But yet, realising what the real world is like for academics, I was just like... Tap out. I think I can do more satisfying work elsewhere.

But switching back on to science communication, what do you think about social media? Has that changed the game for in the favour of science and science communication? Because you now have, you know, massive YouTube channels, Smarter Every Day comes to mind. There's quite a few of them where, you know, there's a guy from NASA, I've forgotten his name, who does all these experiments and just flies around the world, you know, creating amazing videos. And we've got Facebook and Twitter and even podcasting, right? And you're on a radio show that I'm guessing is released as a podcast too, is it in that format yet? Yeah, so, what excuses do we have as scientists in today's day and age where both of our parents generation would have grown up with no Internet and typing up their theses or writing them up with pencil.

Look, yeah, I think it's such a great point. And I just say it's such an exciting time to be a scientist who believes in the importance of communicating because we had so many opportunities available to us. So yeah, I write a blog, I'm on a radio show twice most weeks. You know, I just think there's so many great opportunities I haven't launched into into YouTube yet. I always joked that I've got a great face for radio, but, you know, I'll never say never.

Man, Joe Rogan does three hour podcasts and he's not pretty to look at. What are you talking about?

I mean, I think the issue is people will come back and say, you know, it's so hard to know what's credible and what's not. So hard to know what's quality information and what's not. And yes, that's true to an extent, but I think that's a cop out, too, because if you say, well, the only information I'm going to trust is peer reviewed, information in the peer reviewed in scientific literature, A. we know that there's flaws with peer review process. B. we know there's a replication crisis of all of these studies that when people try and replicate them, they can't.

And C. again, most of the literature in the peer reviewed, sorry, most of what's out there in the peer reviewed literature isn't accessible to most people. So, they simply say, well, I don't trust everything on the Internet. Of course, you shouldn't trust everything on the Internet. There's so many people out there with a really good expertise and really good credibility who are putting themselves out there after day, whether it be just by having a Twitter account, whether it be by writing a blog or radio or podcasting or YouTube or whatever it is, and I think you find the thing that you love, and you find the thing that we really get reward from doing it and you should do it.

And like we said earlier, this is no excuse to say, well, I've published my paper in journals and that's my job done. You know, those days, those years are well past, and I have a colleague called Chris that I do radio with, who has a lovely analogy that he shares with my students. And you know that painting that when you're very close up, it just looks like a whole lot of dots, but when you stand back, it's a beautiful picnic. I can't remember who the artist is, I should look it up.

Is that the one from Ferris Bueller? It's zoomed in in that movie, right? At the thing and you see these dots and then it slowly goes out. You know, whilst I think the Smiths are playing in the background and the picture suddenly becomes, you know, the little girl or whatever it is at the picnic.

Yeah, isn't it so funny? I've seen Ferris Bueller so many times in my life. I just can't remember that bit, but look it could be, it's a very famous French painting, and my colleague always says, so that picnic is the where we want a world whereby where science is valued and people believe it's worth investing in science and where people seek out scientific information and make evidence based decisions, and our government listens to science. You know, it's a picnic, right? It's a world we all want.

Yeah.

And you zoom in really closely. It's going to take a hell of a lot of dots to get to that picnic. And no one person can do all of those dots, but you pick one or two dots that you love, and you do your very best at them.

So, whether that's podcasting, whether that's teaching, you know, whatever it is, just pick your dots and do them to the best of your ability and try always to be getting us closer to that world that is a picnic, whereby science has its kind of, what I believe, rightful place as something we all value and want to support and know more about. I think it's a lovely analogy because it takes the pressure off that you don't have to try and do everything all at once.

And it's important to foster, I guess, hope and appreciation of science in the public at the moment, especially in the face of bushfires, coronavirus and climate change, right?

Absolutely. Yes. It's really crucial that people recognise that we have really good knowledge and you just need to be willing to seek out and to listen to the really good advice that's out there. You know, people aren't staring into a crystal ball and making random predictions about how Corona virus is going to spread, and what we need to do to try and protect our health care systems the best that we can. They're incredibly smart people doing really intricate modelling, and the information we are we have access to these of the highest accuracy possible and we need to listen to it.

Yes, that goes back to social media. There are people out there who don't know what they're talking about, who are spreading really unhelpful messages. And I guess that just brings it back the pressure on all of us who do have science training to amplify that that accurate and helpful messages and try and point out the pseudoscience. And I think there's some wonderful communicators doing that.

What do you think is happening with climate change, science and its communication to the broader public? Because, I mean, you see with with, you know, children like Greta Thunberg now coming through and really getting a lot of young the younger generation on board, there still seems to be a lot of the older generation, which are in complete denial about climate change happening.

Is the point of failure that the communication of the complex science behind climate change and the public? Or is there something else going on there you think?

I mean, look, I'd love to be an expert on that. And I'm sure if I was, we could talk for hours on that point. My suspicion is that there was probably multiple points of failure, and you know, I think it's probably quite a nuanced story. I think the simplest message to take away is that in the early days, scientists assumed that the facts speak for themselves and because the facts were pretty stark and pretty blatant, you know, we've got the graphs that show how greenhouse gases were changing in the climate, you know, in our atmosphere and therefore how the temperature was changing.

And I think we collectively, scientists, thought that that would be enough to convince people that action is necessary. And, I guess, it was a slow process to realise that the facts don't speak for themselves. And confirmation bias is very powerful.

We tend to believe what we already think. And there's been so much misinformation out there. And, you know, a big part of the problem is that there are very, very, very well resourced lobby groups. So, you know, it's in their best interests to deny climate change. And, you know, often those groups have a lot more money than the scientific organisations do. So, I guess, now we're hopefully witnessing this tipping point whereby people like Gretta and a whole lot of other incredible activists understanding now that it's about personal stories. It's about asking people questions about how climate change affects them at a personal level.

It's listening really carefully, finding shared values and common ground. It's not standing up there lecturing and telling people you don't have the right to live this way. It's really coming at it from a very different approach. And all the evidence says that one of the very best things that we can all do, other than making our own changes in our lives in terms of eating less meat and driving. There's all those things. One of the other most useful things we can do is simply have more conversations about climate change, because the evidence suggests we actually listen to our family and friends more than we do experts.

And, so people's response and is to say, but I'm not equipped to have those conversations because I don't understand the science well enough and the research says that you don't actually have to understand the science well to have effective conversations, all you need to get across to people is that their scientific consensus around climate change, because people still think there's not.

Because of the whole like the early days of balanced journalism that you had to prevent, you know, present two sides in a story. But don't realise that with 98 percent vs. 2 percent and they got equal airtime. So, making sure people understand that, in fact, there is really, really almost unanimous scientific consensus that climate change is real. Point two, that it's being caused by us and point three, that you should be worried about it and you need to take action. And that's all you need to get across in a conversation. You don't need to understand or explain the intricacies of what's actually happening in the atmosphere, because people don't need to know that. They're not that interested in that.

It's like driving a car, right? I have faith the car is going to work. And I sort of know the basics, but I can't repair the engine and I don't need to to still know whether or not it's working or how to use it.

Exactly. And I think, you know, I think personal narrative is a really, really important. So, I was incredibly fortunate that I got to go to Antarctica at the end of last year.

I was about to get onto that. Please, please tell us how that was, because I'm sure there is a very, there's fewer people who become, you know, people that go to Antarctica than there are who become academics, I imagine. So, you did well.

I mean, I'll come to how it happened in a moment, but I guess, to me, now, you know, I feel like I've had this unbelievable privilege of seeing Antarctica with my own eyes. And now I'm grappling with, well, how do I, how do I live up to that privilege?

You know, how can I make a difference in the world? What can I write? Who can I talk to? What can I publish to really share what I've seen firsthand? Which is, you know, I've known the science of climate change for a long time, but I've never felt it before. I literally wept over it. I've never wept over, I've never stood there crying over climate change, which is what happened in Antarctica, because I could just, you know, I could see it. So, I was really fortunate to be invited to become part of the faculty, the teaching team for an organisation called Homeward Bound, which is a global leadership initiative, which is basically saying we need more women with a background in STEMM, STEMM. So science, science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine.

We need more women with that background to become really effective and strategic leaders. So, it's not about saying we don't believe men should be in leadership positions, it's simply saying that far fewer women than men get the opportunity to be leaders, and we need to have those voices at the leadership table, because women, research shows us, that women tend to lead quite differently to men. So, women tend to be much more collaborative and cooperative in the style with which they lead, and we need more of that. So, Fabian Dattner, who was her idea, she's the founder of Homeward Bound, she literally had a dream one night where she saw this huge group of women in Antarctica.

When she woke up and said, well, I need to make this happen. So, her idea was, if you can train a whole lot of women with this science background to be more strategic and more visible and more effective leaders who all have this shared purpose that they want to make the world a better place. So, to really lead with a mindset around how can we make our humanity more sustainable in terms of how we live on the planet, that's going help things.

So, Homeward Bound is a 10 year program, this was the fourth voyage. And it's a 12 month program, so it's basically eleven months of online interacting and lessons and homework, and then it culminates in this month long journey to Antarctica, where the idea is take the women out of their comfort zones and put them in a really isolated, immersive environment and allow them to see firsthand what's we all think of as these incredibly pristine environment, but allow them to see firsthand the impacts that climate change is already having on the planet.

And then send them off as advocates who don't just think that they need to help, but just deeply feels that they want to go out and make impact in the world. And it's yeah, it's an incredible program. It was a real honour for me to be part of that team who is teaching some of the kind of communication and visibility aspects of the program.

What was the journey down there like on, well, the voyage and how do you think it changed you?

I mean, it's so cliche to say it was life changing. You know, it's just ridiculous. And I feel like I really have to justify that, we ran a section on the ship called Why Antarctica, which was about getting all of the women. So, we had 100 women from 34 countries plus twelve faculty from maybe five countries, I think. I have to double check that. But to really think about, you know, why do we go to Antarctica? How can we justify. If we're meant to be an initiative that's around improving the state of the planet, how on earth can we justify the carbon cost of flying 112 women from around the world to Ushuaia, at the bottom of Argentina, and then going on a ship to a place where really we know that, you know, it would be far better to have fewer tourists than we have.

So, the journey was very much about lots of thinking, lots of talking, lots of reflecting and the kind of space and quiet that I don't have in my day-to-Day life. You know, I work full time, I do a lot of volunteering, I have small kids. Well, they're not that small anymore, but, you know, from school-aged children.

Yeah. How can I... How or when else have I had the opportunity to really think very deeply about my life, and I don't know something about being on a ship and is looking at across this horizon with icebergs in it that makes you kind of take stock of your life, I think.

I just can't imagine the isolation that I would feel there, too. Thinking just, you know, there's probably less than a thousand people within a thousand kilometres of me, right? In all directions.

Yeah. And I think, you know, the ships are very careful in maintaining that that sense that you're out there alone. I think there are realities that you're not. I mean, not only are there bases down there. I mean, there are some bases that have people on them year round. There are other bases that have people on them just in summer. We were fortunate to visit a couple of bases. But beyond that, you know, there are other tourist ships around. They just very carefully orchestrated it, so that when you are in a particular area, ideally, you don't see other ships and occasionally you do. But certainly, IAATO, which is the legislating body for tourism in Antarctica, they have really wonderfully strict and I'm so glad they do rules about how many people can be on land in any particular area at one time.

And, you know, there's lots and lots of very careful rules around how to minimise impact on Antarctica. So, whether it's true or not, you really do feel like your eyes open, open space largely devoid of other people. And, I guess, because the wildlife is... You know, doesn't seem to have any fear people at all, it helps you kind of have that imagining that I'm in this, you know, I'm in this incredible place. And I mean, you know, you and I, we're both wildlife biologists at heart, right? And all of a sudden, you're seeing penguins and humpback whales and orcas and leopard seals and you know, and, you know, you meant to stay five meters away from a penguin, but there's penguins coming towards you from all different directions and you're trying to step back and there's an elephant seal...

That would be a dream, I just feel like, can I just stay here? It's like this all year round, right? It doesn't get any colder.

Look, I mean, it was unbelievable, and this incredible joy and elation that I felt seeing with my own eyes and literally having to pinch myself to think, oh, my goodness, I'm not in it. I'm not watching a documentary. You know, I'm actually here, but I don't, it constantly tinged with this kind of sadness, as well of A., how long is it going to stay this way? You know, by the time my children are old enough to potentially come here and what will it look like? And B., what have these individual animals done to deserve this?

You know, we learned one of the key things that stayed with me was talking about two different species of Penguin that we saw Adélie penguins and Gentoo penguins. And Adelie penguins are quite specialists in what they feed on. They really specialise on krill. And krill tends to be found under pieces of surface ice because under the surface ice is where you have microbes and algae and stuff growing that they feed on. And of course, the Antarctic Peninsula, which is where we where, it's the most accessible part of Antarctica, is that part of Antarctica that kind of juts out heading towards South America, so it's only two days on a ship from the bottom of Argentina to get to Antarctica.

That's crazy.

That, you know, it's the second fastest warming place on the planet after the Arctic and the surface ice is disappearing.

Well, they just lost an iceberg or something of 300 square kilometres, didn't they? It just broke off the shelf. It was huge.

There's massive changes happening down there. And as the surface ice disappears, the Adelie penguins having to move further and further south because there's just no krill for them to feed on and there's no surface ice for them to rest on when they go and do big foraging journeys. And so, you know, right in front of our eyes, we're being told, you see this Gentoo penguin colony? That used to be an Adelie penguins colony and the Adelie penguins just can't cut it here anymore an, I don't know, you can't help but just feel deeply responsible for that.

And you know, the other thing that really, really stayed with me was we were out in a little zodiac, which is a little inflatable boat, which is how you get from the big ship onto land. Obviously, the big ship can't go near land. And, so you're in this little inflatable boat and there's lots of bits of surface ice around you. And the guides, the expedition crew who were just incredible, who are with us, said pick up a piece of ice, obviously with your gloves on, it's pretty chilly. Listen. And, you know, when you're a kid, you used to pick up a shell and listen to the sound of the ocean inside the shell or what you were told was the sound of the ocean. And if you pick out a piece of ice, you hear it. It's kind of crackling, it's quite loud.

And we sort of say, what's making the noise? And it was explained to us that any piece of ice has compressed air bubbles within it, and as the ice melts and those compressed air bubbles come to the surface, they they make a cracking sound as the air is released back into the atmosphere. And the really cool thing to know is that depending on how old that piece of ice is, those air bubbles could be thousands and thousands, even hundreds of thousands of years old. So, they're essentially time capsules from a previous year. And I got really emotional sort of imagining that I could anthropomorphise, you know, see the human point of view of those air bubbles. And as they're suddenly reunited with with the whole atmosphere and just imagining and saying, hang on, what's happened here? This isn't like it was when I left. You know, what's happened to this atmosphere?

There is way too much carbon dioxide.

And I just found it really quite profound, thinking about these little tiny, tiny bubbles of air coming back into an atmosphere that was so different from when they left. I just find that really quite hard to conceive.

Well, I think they say that Antarctic has got like another 5000 years to melt. But I'm always like, I think we will surprise you. Humans will surprise you at how good they are at screwing things up. So, I hope it doesn't change that fast or faster than that.

We saw, you know, the ice melting, we saw ice cliffs collapsing. And, you know, all of that is normal. It was summer in Antarctica. I know that icebergs carve off in bits. And I know that during the day when the sun's out, ice melts. You know, it wasn't as though we were seeing something that's completely untoward. But by the same token, you know, I just felt like for the first time, I really understood, ok, the air is getting warmer. The ocean is getting warmer, that means that all of these ice I can see is going to melt, and when that ice melts, sea level is going to increase. And as these water warms, because we know Antarctic ocean currents have a major effect on global currents, everything is going to change.

And, you know, the scientists tell us that if all of the ice in Antarctica melts, then global sea level will go up by 60 meters.

I'll have to move.

That's not going to happen any time soon, right? It's certainly not going to happen in our lifetimes. But, you know, I mean, even some tiny proportion of 60 meters is a lot.

It's frightening. Switching back on the STEM. What do you think it is that makes it so much harder for women to succeed in STEM? I would love to talk about that.

Look, I think there's a lot of different areas again. I think it's a complex question. I mean, at the very basic level, it is absolute discrimination out there. You know, there's been studies done that show, if you present two CVs, one, clearly that of a woman and one clearly that of a man, the man is much more likely to be reviewed highly and offered the job. You know, those experiments have all been done.

So, there's absolutely inbuilt discrimination at multiple, multiple levels. And I think there's, you know, the obvious practicality. You know, I have two kids. I took several years of complete maternity leave. I worked part time for many years. And I don't regret that for a millisecond. My kids, you know, are more important to me than anything. But it means that I'm in the 10 years, first 10 years post PhD I work the equivalent of, I think three years full time, in 10 years. So, any colleague out there who didn't go off decide that raising a family is their priority is effectively seven years ahead of me.

Do you think part of the problem is, too, that women, possibly by the feminist movement, have way too much pressure put on them nowadays to succeed in all of these different areas?

You need to have a family, you need to have a career. You need to be earning as much as, you know, a male who's never taken time off in the same job as you do. You think that the problem is that we expect too much of women and we don't expect enough, sorry, we yeah, we expect too much.

We're pushing them sort of to try and achieve all of these different things where maybe we need to be saying to men, it's ok for you to not be obsessed with work and for you to take more time off and be at home with children and allow your wife to go back to work and get that balance a little, a little closer.

Absolutely. And, you know, I'm very aware of the fact that my husband is a hugely involved father, but that also comes at a cost because he's also a full-time academic, and he works incredibly hard and he's exhausted all the time. So, I think there's so many layers. And I think, yeah, look, I think there's unrealistic expectations on most professional workers these days, probably, if I'm honest. I mean, the only profession I know well is the only one I can speak of, but I think certainly in my profession, the expectations are completely unrealistic on both men and women.

Perhaps it's just easier to identify some key pressure points for women that make it even harder. And I think, you know, to some extent we're all also our own worst enemies, not just women, but all of us suffered terribly from imposter syndrome, you know, we're constantly feeling like, you know, we're not good enough. We're waiting for someone to come and take us on the shoulder and say, you don't belong here. You don't know enough, you're not good enough.

And, so we tend to impose all of our own barriers, and for whatever reason, the research suggests that women are much more likely to impose those barriers on themselves than men. So, the evidence suggests that, you know, if you have a man who's looking at a job advertisement and he reckons he can meet, you know, whatever, I don't know the exact numbers, but some reasonable proportion of the selection criteria, he'll put his hat in the ring and he'll apply for the job. A woman, at same stage, unless she feels like she really exceeds expectations that every one of those selection criteria, she won't apply because perhaps she's been, you know, criticised in the past, she's nervous of how other colleagues will perceive her and judge her.

I mean, I think it's really complicated.

And the difficulty, too, is that you have, you know, inherent personality differences between men and women, right? But then we also have societal pressures and cultural pressures, and the thing that irks me is when you have people that believe it's just one of those things, you know, I have plenty of friends who are just like gods, the patriarchy. It's society that is screwing over women and, you know, allowing men to succeed at everything. And I'm like, well, hang on. It could be both society and gender differences. And we need to say, you know, it's always a lot more nuanced. What can we do to enable more women to succeed in things like STEM?

Look, I think there's heaps of things and there is some really great programs out there, I mean, Homeward Bound is this amazing initiative. I'm super proud to be part of but, then, you know, not everyone is going to have that opportunity to get involved. I think we have to role model women of so many different, you know, we need a truly diversity of women represented in leadership. You know, the saying you can't be what you don't see, so all these girls out there from all sorts of different language, backgrounds and cultural backgrounds, if they don't see women who look like them or sound like them in positions of leadership in science, how can they envisage that that's where they could be?

And so, you know, there's so many good initiatives out there. They're a great podcasts, they're a great books, you know, the Rebel Girls, the Fierce Girls on the ABC. You know, I think things are being done and certainly at my uni, there are some great programs to support women. I guess, to some extent, we just all need to keep talking about it because it's not like at any point we're going to say, well, that's been fixed. Tick the box, move on.

You know, the more creative ways we can think of to support women, to succeed and have realistic expectations on them and to be really visible as leaders who may also have caring responsibilities, you know, whether that be for any family member, doesn't have to be a child or maybe who has a disability or certainly women of, you know, a really great range of cultural backgrounds and language backgrounds.

You know, we just need to support women across the planet to be able to succeed in their chosen field. And it's interesting, if you look at Draw Back, which is this amazing book which is basically gone through and ranked the top hundred solutions that we have in our fingertips in order to tackle climate change. And I can't remember what number it is, but certainly in the top ten, it might even be five or six up or something like that, I think, is to simply educate more women. So, one of the very best things we can do to tackle climate change is make sure that more girls get the opportunity to be educated. And there's really good stats and evidence behind that.

And that tells us, you know, so powerfully that women have a really important role to play in the future. And the fact that, you know, for me, it was relatively easy, I'm white, I live in a western country, I had many opportunities given to me. I speak English as my first language, I'm heterosexual, you know, so many things that make my life relatively easy. But there's so many women out there who face just a raft of challenges and until we think more about those challenges and largely ask them how we can help, you know, one of the things that concerns me, there's all these programs out there that potentially a lot of men have come up with.

I'm sure they've asked for advice from women colleagues around them, but, you know, how often are we actually asking the people who are facing the greatest discrimination what could be done to help you, really, truly, including them in the conversations and not just the inviting them to the meetings, but make sure that they have a true voice and that their advice is acted on? You know, I'm not at the highest levels of the university or any other place, I don't know how much that happens, but, gee, I hope it does. And then it happens more or more.

I think, you're right. Anyway, Jenny, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. How can people find out more about you and listen to your radio show?

So, if they tune in to Triple R, which is Australia's largest community radio station on your dial, it's 102.7 FM, but you can also just go to the Triple R website and listen anytime on demand or listen back later. So, I do a segment every Wednesday morning on the Breakfaster's Show. So, I'm just a little ten minute segment at 7:45 on Wednesday mornings.

And then I'm also wanted to co-host for our Sunday Science Show, which is an hour of science on Sunday mornings at eleven o'clock called Einstein A Go Go. And then I write up just a kind of popular science blog called Espresso Science. So, if you just google espressoscience.com. And then on Twitter and Instagram I'm ScidocMartin. So, I always used to joke that I needed a PhD so I could be Doc Martin.

Do you have the shoes?

No, I actually don't. I feel like it needs to be part of my image, but I just put a little 'SCI' front of my Doc Martin, and I am actually spelt differently, I'm afraid. I'm MARTIN, so I don't quite fit it, but, you know, close enough, so.

Exactly. Well, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for giving us your time today.

Thanks so much for inviting me. It's been lovely to talk.

Alright, guys. That's it for today. Dr. Jenny Martin, thank you so much once again for coming on the podcast and sharing your knowledge. It was a riveting conversation and I'm sure that the listeners got a lot out of it.

Guys, don't forget to check out all of the links that will be included in this week's episode. To find out more about Jenny Martin and what she does in places like her blog www.espressoscience.com, as well as the different radio shows that she's on on the Channel Three Triple R. Until next time, guys. I hope you have a bloody ripper of a day. See ya.