Fact & Science Fiction Preview

Fact and Science Fiction

Who am I? Why am I creating this podcast? This episode gives a quick background on the host and previews future topics on the show. Learn more about the real story behind sci-fi TV, books, and movies.Music: 'Heart Strings' by Coyote HearingTranscriptionWelcome to Fact and Science fiction. My name is Karly and each episode I discuss a topic or two in the real scientific field, and then discuss how my favorite science fiction portrays it, accurately or not. I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about who I am and why I decided to make this podcast, instead of maybe just a podcast discussing scifi in general. So first of all, I’m not a scientist. I went to grad school for communication, with an emphasis in health communication. And one of my main research interests was how creators or communicators explain complicated, confusing, or maybe scary science or health topics to the general public... Communicating science is messy: either you communicate all the statistics and figures and you bore everyone except experts, or enthusiastic journalists latch onto the most controversial paragraph of a study, reduce it down to 8 words, and call it scientific evidence for a fad diet. And I think that’s what’s led to a large distrust of science: this kind of binary of either really complicated, hard to understand foreign language to packaged headlines that contradict each other one day to the next. One thing that frustrates the general public the most is the uncertainty in science. In fact, it’s one of the main lines that climate science deniers bring out. We haven’t been taught that just because scientists are reluctant to call something 100% certain, that doesn’t mean results are faulty. Also, there isn’t a lot of attention paid to the context of science. We read a headline or two, but we don’t really understand the history of the specific field or the years of dedication, passion, and work that goes into a discovery. Just like communicating science is messy, science itself is complicated, but it’s definitely a worthy endeavor, and the only way we can find the truth.How do we combat this frustration, distrust, and low interest in science? I studied how narratives and images could positively impact negative opinions about science. And there’s been strong evidence that watching science television and documentaries does at least have a statistically significant impact on interest in science and trust in science. I’ve also been a huge science fiction nerd my entire life. From when I was 12 years old reading comic books and watching television, I’ve been also been interested in science. Whether it’s genetic engineering, space travel, or alien life. So all together, I felt - what is the best way for me to combine my education and my hobbies? And I came up with this. This podcast is based on the idea that science fiction reflects our greatest ideas, our greatest desires, and our greatest fears. Science fiction is inspired by real life events, by dreams... and by nightmares. Not only can it impact our interest and trust in science, but our understanding of our world as it could be... But I want to use science fiction to understand how our world currently is. During regular episodes, I’ll be discussing topics such as genetic engineering, health and disease, gender and sexuality, virtual reality, and space travel. I’ll also have bonus episodes of interviews with scientists and sci-fi creators. So if I’ve captured your interest so far, subscribe, and tune in for my regular episodes coming soon.

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