Episode 79 – Interview with science journalist Sara Phillips

We’re so thrilled to be back with you for Season 11 of Let’s Talk SciComm. And to get the season off to a brilliant start, we had a wonderful conversation with Sara Phillips.

Sara is an award-winning science writer and editor based in Melbourne, Australia. She edited the 2020, 10th-anniversary edition of the Best Australian Science Writing.

Previously, she was Asia-Pacific bureau chief for Nature News, executive editor for the Asia-Pacific region of Nature Research Group’s custom publishing arm, the national environment reporter for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and editor of ABC Environment online, a now-archived portal for the ABC’s environment content.

Starting out on an environmental trade publication WME, she later became deputy editor of Cosmos magazine, where she was part of the team that won magazine of year not once, but twice. Cosmos Online won internet site of the year under her editorship. And the editor won editor of the year for 2005 and 2006, while she was supporting him.

She was also the founding editor of G magazine, a sustainable lifestyle magazine. Her team won consumer magazine of the year (for print run over 30,000) at the Bell Awards for magazine publishing, and she took out editor of the year.

You can follow Sara and find out more about her work here:

Transcript

Michael (00:00:20)
Hello and welcome back to another season of Let’s Talk SciComm, the podcast where we explore the why and how of communicating complex ideas in an engaging and impactful way.
I’m Michael and together with Jen we’re thrilled to bring you a brand new season, Season 11, which is filled with fascinating conversations and insightful tips from some amazing science communicators.
So this season we’ve really got a diverse range of topics, everything from the nuances of medical and patient communication to the creativity behind making science funny and even the challenges of communicating science in a second language.
So whether you’re a seasoned professional, you’re just starting [a] journey in science communication, whether you’ve been listening to us for 10 seasons already or you’ve just joined us, we’ve definitely got something for you.

Jen (00:01:16)
Hello everybody, thank you so much for joining us for another episode of Let’s Talk SciComm.
I’m Jen and I’m joined by my most excellent friend Michael, who currently has a bit of congestion.
Michael, how are you going? Fighting off that nasty COVID bug.

Michael (00:01:31)
I’m trying to sound normal, so hopefully it’s coming across okay.
But no, I’m feeling good. I’m really excited for today’s episode. I feel like I’m going to be re-energised after this conversation.

Jen (00:01:46)
Yes, you definitely are because today, I’m super excited. We’ve got the great pleasure of chatting with another extraordinarily talented science communicator.
Today you’re going to get to meet Sara Phillips, who you know, she just has a crazy list of accolades. But I’ll tell you some of them. I can’t tell you all of them, it’ll take too long.
She’s currently the Asia Pacific Bureau Chief at Nature News, but she’s also a multi-award winning science writer and editor.
She’s worked for lots of different organisations. I think you’ll be familiar with most of them. So for example, she was the deputy editor of Cosmos Magazine.
And she was part of the team that won magazine of the year twice. They were so greedy, not just winning it once, but winning it twice.

Michael (00:02:27)
Wow.

Jen (00:02:30)
And Sarah was also the national environment reporter for the ABC, our national broadcaster here in Australia for quite a few years. So she was involved in print and radio and TV stories about the environment.
She was the founding editor of G Magazine, which was a sustainable lifestyle magazine, and she’s written for lots of different publications.
She’s the secretary of the Science Journalists Association of Australia. She edited the 10th anniversary anthology of the best Australian science writing, the one with the really snazzy gold cover that some of you might’ve seen.
She’s got a Bachelor of Arts, a Bachelor of Science, and also a Graduate Diploma in Science Communication.
Sarah, have I listed enough of the cool things that you’ve done yet, or do you want me to just keep going for another 5 minutes?

Sara (00:03:15)
Quite frankly, you’re embarrassing me Jen. I wish you would have stopped at the beginning.

Jen (00:03:20)
Well, welcome. We’re so excited that you’re here. Thank you for making time and thank you for asking your dog to go into the other room very politely.

Sara (00:03:29)
No worries. I cannot guarantee that she won’t wander past and just shout at the front door anyway.

Jen (00:03:36)
Well, that’s okay. We like dogs around here.
So Michael, I do have to admit at this point that Sarah and I do actually go way, way back. We actually went to high school together.
So we were only in the same year level for the last two years of high school because I went on exchange for a year and had to come back and repeat that year.
But we… Yeah, I can’t exactly remember when we met ’cause Sarah, we were in different friendship groups.
But my recollection is that we bonded during a year 11 marine biology field trip when we went down to Queenscliff. Is that your recollection? That we were the nerds, we were just like, “Marine Biology!!!”

Sara (00:04:09)
That is mine, yeah.

Sara (00:04:14)
Yeah. We went on this marine biology camp and we stayed in this sort of marvellous old guest house in Queenscliff.
It was like you know, this big Victorian manor and we all were sort of in bunk beds together.
And I we went out to Mud Island and I don’t know, did some sampling there. And yeah, and we just had a fabulous time. It was great.

Jen (00:04:33)
And I remember you and I both being absolutely committed that we were going to be marine biologists and neither of us have ended up being marine biologists.

Sara (00:04:41)
I think science journalism though is populated by people who wanted to be marine biologists.
Almost exclusively.

Jen (00:04:46)
So we’ve talked with so many amazing scientists now who do incredible communication work and we love to start by finding out how people got interested in science.
You know, was it a particular teacher or a family member or a place or an experience? And it’s really common for scientists, regardless of the field that they work in now, to say that it was the time they spent in nature as a child that led them to fall in love with science.
So I’m really interested for you, is that the case? Was it that childhood nature experience? Do you remember when you decided that science was your thing?

Sara (00:05:21)
I don’t remember when I decided science was my thing, but I very much did spend a lot of time in nature.
I do remember having a, like an awareness that I was much more interested in animals than I was in people.
And that, you know, in the words of a Melbourne band, The Fauves, “Dogs are the best people.” Are they a Melbourne band? Anyway.

Jen (00:05:41)
Hundred percent.

Sara (00:05:42)
So yeah, I was always up trees or collecting bugs or that sort of thing.
And as to when that turned into a desire to do science, I don’t remember when.
It was probably year 11 biology camp, to be honest. As we…

Jen (00:05:57)
Haha. So I was there.

Sara (00:05:58)
Yeah. It probably was. It was like, “Really? This is what science is? Damn. This is cool.”
You know, wandering around long beaches and counting bugs like, well, that was stuff I was doing for fun anyway.
So suddenly I thought, “Yeah, science, this is much more interesting.”

Jen (00:05:57)
Yeah, I can absolutely relate to that.

Michael (00:06:17)
Yes. Yeah. I can see the draw. You’re getting out there and doing field work.
So you became interested in science perhaps on that field trip, but you went on to do a Bachelor of Science and Arts.
So were you kind of in kind of two minds what you wanted to do?

Sara (00:06:34)
Yeah, still am.

Michael (00:06:36)
You still are?

Sara (00:06:41)
Basically…

Jen (00:06:39)
What do you want to be when you grow up?

Sara (00:06:41)
Yeah. I don’t know. Basically, I left school and I thought, “Well, I really like science, well, specifically biology.” And I thought, “I really like writing.” And I thought, “God, if only there was such a job which combined those two things. Oh well, never mind.”
I met this woman on, down at Queenscliff again. Queenscliff, it’s like the site of all my… I’ve just realized. It’s the site of all my career epiphanies.
Yeah. I met this woman who was… I was on like marine biology camp for uni and she was wandering around with a recorder and some headphones.
And I said, “Oh, what are you doing?” And she said, “Oh, I’m recording a piece.” And I think it was probably for Radio Marinara on RRR.
And I said, “Oh, you know, that sounds cool. You know, tell me about that.” And she said, “Oh well, effectively, I’m a science journalist.” And I’m like, “Wow.” Light goes on over my head.
Then she said to me, “I believe there’s such a [course], like a science journalism course that’s run out of the ANU.” And I thought, “Oh, all right.”
So I looked it up. Sure enough, there’s a science communication course. So I thought, “Right, good.”
Applied for that, got in and I thought, “Yeah, this is me, this is my thing. This is what
I really like. I’ve combined science and writing, this is what I want to do.”

Michael (00:07:58)
Yeah. Wow. Two very productive trips to Queenscliff.

Sara (00:08:02)
Yeah.

Michael (00:08:03)
I’m going to have to write that down.
I need to go and go there for some inspiration.

Sara (00:08:09)
Well, incidentally, Queenscliff was also the site of the worst hangover I ever had, also
on that marine biology camp. But that’s another story.

Jen (00:08:19)
But I do find that really interesting, that a chance meeting like that can change your trajectory.
And I just wonder to have that conversation with the person you know, doing the recording down at Queenscliff, you had to have already identified that journalism was something you were interested in. Where did that come from?
Like was it at high school that you discovered you like writing? And how did you learn to
be a good science writer?
Because the course you did, my understanding was that it was a Graduate Diploma of Science
Communication. It wasn’t a science journalism course.
So how did you become a good science writer? What does it even mean to be a good science writer? Like what skills did you have to master and how did you master them?

Sara (00:08:56)
Okay. Well, you’ve just asked me a whole crowd of questions.
So I’ll go back to the first question, which was…

Jen (00:08:59)
I have, sorry. That’s why I would be a terrible journalist.

Sara (00:09:00)
When did I first decide that I wanted to write? That was way before anything.
I like, I literally remember being probably about three years old and making squiggly shapes on a piece of paper and then going to show my mother, who was doing something else and highly distracted and not at all interested in my squiggles. But showing her and saying, “Is this writing, mum?” And she’s like, “No, go away.” I’d go and I’d try again, I’d do some more squiggles on a page.
Anyway. So my interest in writing was like from very early. But because you know, ultimately I sort of imagined that maybe I’d be an author or something marvelous like that.
But I didn’t know how one becomes an author whereas journalism, I get that, I can see that, I could be that.
And then once I actually discovered that there was such a thing as combining science and journalism together. Then I thought, “Right, well, not only do I get to write, I get to write about something I’m really interested in and that I can basically make a living out of this.” So I thought, “Right, that’s it, that’s what I’m going to do.”

Michael (00:10:15)
And I mean, is there a particular style of writing that you’re really drawn to?
‘Cause you’ve got creative writing, which you mentioned. But when it comes to science, there’s technical writing that you can do, and I guess also writing in the style of being a journalist and being very informative.
Did you kind of enjoy all types of writing or is it you know, one particular style that you were really drawn to?

Sara (00:10:37)
I think that once you become, you know, sort of pretty good at something and you’ve been doing it for a while, part of what’s interesting is finding nuance in what you do.
And so for journalism, the nuts and bolts of journalism are fairly straightforward. Like writing a standard news story is not terribly complex.
And so then what I sort of am more interested in is how to make that really good.
[I] love features. I always have loved features because that’s when you actually get to stretch your writerly legs and use some adjectives and things like that, whereas news journalism is a lot more straight up.
And so you know, I read, I used to read long-form journalism. I read less of it now because there’s less of it around. But that’s where I think that part of me has always been attracted to.
But you know, there’s a certain satisfaction with doing a news story where you know, it’s sort of one and done. You can smash one of those out in a day. And you know, if you managed to get the researcher on the phone.
And so it’s a very high adrenaline form of writing and it’s, there’s a lot of pleasure in that. Like journalism is a drug, there’s no two ways about it.

Michael (00:11:53)
Oh wow.
Yeah, I’ve never heard anyone describe it like that. Yeah, I guess it’s high pressure. You’re also at the cutting edge of discovery in a way, and then you’re sharing that with people. So I can imagine how yeah, it is a bit like a drug.
And you worked for the ABC on the environment. I guess that was your topic, which is a pretty big topic.
I’m really curious to hear a little bit more about your time there. You know, what does it actually look like, a typical day for you?
And I’m also curious about, you know, the mix between covering stories for TV and radio and print, because they’re all different mediums.
So it sounds like it might’ve been a bit of a tricky balancing act.

Sara (00:12:39)
TV and radio for me were all new. And I was on a very steep learning curve while I was in that role.
And I will admit, I don’t think I learned quickly and fast enough. And probably that’s why when it came for the second round of redundancies that, that you know, my name was put forward as someone who needs to go, is because I probably needed to have got up to speed in those media faster than I actually did.

Audio and visual are two separate media.
When you write for audio, that’s easier, more easily transferred. Because you write for audio, it’s about the words, it’s whether they’re just the words are said out loud into someone’s ears or whether they’re written on a page.
When you write for audio, you write in a slightly different style, you write shorter sentences. You have less sort of clauses in the middle of your sentence. Because people can’t follow the thread when someone’s reading something out loud as easily as when it’s on the written page.
You can… Your eyes don’t track how you think they do when you’re reading. They wander back and forward over paragraphs. So people can have more complicated sentences in the written form.

For TV, the visual medium is a whole other thing. It’s got a whole other language. It was like I you know, all this time I’ve been, I’d learnt to write in English and suddenly I was being asked to write in German.
And you know, I’d watched a lot of TV, how hard can it be? Harder than you think. Because it’s you know, like one of the things that they sort of taught me in the first, in my first days there was okay, you go out, you get your pictures for your story.
And the cameraman does that, he goes and takes all the pictures and then you look through what he’s got. And whatever the best picture is, you lead with that.
Whereas with writing. You know, you lead with what’s going to be a sexy sentence, what’s going to be the hook that draws people into this story.
And so with the visual medium, you lead with the best pictures, and then you write around those best pictures.
And sometimes the best picture isn’t the story itself. You know, the story might be something that’s less visual.
And then you’re also selecting stories that are really highly visual, just because you know that you’re going to get good pictures on it.
So, you wouldn’t necessarily do a TV story on say, a new report on carbon trading, because what the heck are you going to run with pictures for that? You know, it’s just not going to be good TV.

Michael (00:15:13)
Hmm. Yeah, that’s really interesting.
And I guess you covered quite a lot of stories in your time there.
I’m curious to ask you, are there any particular stories that stay in your mind that were, particularly impactful?
And when I say impactful, I mean, where there was maybe a really big response from the public to that story?

Sara (00:15:33)
Oh, OK. Yeah, chickens.

Michael (00:15:36)
OK.

Sara (00:15:39)
Yeah, when I was online editor, I can’t remember why I did it in the first place. But anyway, I did a story about keeping backyard chickens. And for some reason, that story went absolutely off. And everybody was fascinated with keeping backyard chickens.
And I didn’t realize that I tapped into this thing, where people who are interested in the environment, in Australian animals, in preserving Australian places are also really interested in backyard chickens.
And so, then I ran another story on backyard chickens that went off as well. And I’m like, Okay, there’s a rich scene here. So, you know, duly served up lots of stories about keeping backyard chickens. That’s one example.

Michael (00:16:24)
Yeah, wow. Kind of a potential…

Jen (00:16:25)
Who doesn’t like chickens?

Michael (00:16:24)
What was it about the backyard chickens that was so interesting to people?
What was the science angle there?

Sara (00:16:35)
There was no science angle. It was purely a sustainability angle.
And, you know, just reducing your food miles, get eggs from the backyard rather than from the supermarket. Yeah. So, that was that.
And I think what I thought about this. But I think that the part of it is that I tapped into this fundamental psychology of environment interested people, which is they really love the idea of being simpatico with other species, i.e. chickens, but also running their… Like that… I think the fantasy of so many environmentalists is that they will be largely self-sustainable. And so chickens feed into that too.

Michael (00:16:39)
Yeah.

Jen (00:17:20)
Back to the Good Life, right? That BBC show.

Sara (00:17:22)
Exactly, yeah.

Jen (00:17:23)
All those years ago, which I grew up watching. And my parents had backyard chickens when I was a kid. So, you’re talking my language.

Sara (00:17:30)
See, I never had chickens. I would really like chickens.

Jen (00:17:36)
Well, there’s still time, my friend. There’s still time.
But Sarah, you talked about these two rounds of redundancies, the second one that you didn’t survive at the ABC.
And the first time I ever did anything to do with science communication was in 2006. And back then, there was already a lot of talk about the demise of science journalism in Australia, that we just, there’s no appetite for people to be paying for specialist science journalists.
And Australia has you know, it’s too small a market. And you know, all of this stuff. It sounds like your experience would say that that’s true, that science journalism is a dying art in Australia.
So is that, have I understood you correctly?
And I guess, for anyone who’s listening, who would really like to be a science journalist, what advice or recommendations do you have for them?

Sara (00:18:25)
So, is science journalism dying? Yes and no.
At the same time that the mainstream media has died, we’ve also seen the rise of citizen journalism for want of a better way to call it, including things like YouTubers and TikTokers and fill-in-the-blank Instagrammers.
And people, as I understand, and I haven’t gone here. But I believe that there is a living to be made in that sort of thing. That if you are good enough, that you can create a little following and be your own brand media.
But you’re competing on a global scale, so you have to be really good enough. But ultimately, even if you were a science journalist in Australia, working for a masthead, you’d have to be competing on a global scale anyway.
Because all the media has converged by virtue of being online. So, why would somebody read something in the Sydney Morning Herald as opposed to the New York Times?
And I think that that’s a valid question.
And so, ultimately, anywhere you write, anything then you’re producing needs to be world standard, world class.

Jen (00:19:35)
Yep. Makes sense. It’s the global world.

Michael (00:19:36)
Yeah.

Sara (00:19:36)
It is.

Michael (00:19:38)
Yeah, it’s a good point. Yeah. And I guess there’s lots, I mean, there’s lots of careers where being your own brand is something that’s beneficial.
So I suppose, you know, it’s possible to maybe, say, you know, be working as a researcher with an interest in science journalism, but still maybe dabble in it a little bit.
You know, with the kind of fragmentation of media, maybe there’s more opportunities now to do a little bit of dabbling.
But I don’t know if it’s… I guess it also means that it’s harder maybe to do that as your sole career.

Sara (00:20:13)
The history of journalism. Journalists only became a profession of any kind about a hundred years ago. Like, newspapers were pretty much written by amateurs up until then.
And I think that we’re looking at going back to a time where our newspapers will be again, our media will again be written by amateurs. And we’re seeing that with, you know, blogs and YouTubes and all that sort of thing.
And so the people who’ve got the time to spend on making a story good and interesting and readable or watchable or whichever medium they happen to be in, they’re the ones whose stories will float to the top.
And so I think we’re going to see a lot more of this sort of own-ed brand media, by which I mean people producing their own content and creating their own brand and marketing that.
So yeah, maybe they’re tenured professors at a university somewhere. Maybe they’re people working for I don’t know, a baked bean company and talking about the benefits of baked beans or something. But it’s still creating content.
And in the future of the media, I think you’ll just have… Yeah, you’ll get some content about baked beans, but you’ll take it with a grain of salt ’cause it came from the baked bean company. So you’ll discount that one a bit.
But the person who is an expert on dietary fiber, is a nutritionist at fill in the blank university, you might listen to their content, pay a bit more attention.

Michael (00:21:46)
Yep. Yeah, it’s really interesting the way things are heading.
And what kind of perspective do you have from your current role. You know, at the Nature portfolio, the Asia Pacific Bureau Chief sounds like you know, a pretty big job.
What does it involve?

Sara (00:22:03)
Well, basically I have a staff of two there. There’s not many of us in our bureau.
It sounds bigger than it is. But I have two journalists and they source stories from anywhere in the Asia Pacific. I also have a freelance budget. I commission freelancers for short science news stories from anywhere in the Asia Pacific.
Our biggest question is not what we should cover. That’s not the problem. There’s so much content that we could be writing. It’s whether we devote our resources to this one.
Yeah. So we produce content. We edit it. The Nature newsroom is rigorous in terms of its fact checking and its attention to detail and balance.
It’s the kind of journalism that I grew up with. And I love it because it’s real, proper, like fact checking journalism. We verify stuff.
And yeah, it’s, it’s good. It’s the kind of journalism that I miss.

Michael (00:23:05)
Yeah. And I mean, it sounds like there’s plenty of content out there.
And you mentioned you’re really trying to decide which stories do we go with, which stories do we kind of devote our resources to and do a really kind of proper job on that story.
So would it be fair to say you spend a lot of time on that question of what makes something newsworthy? Because I think that’s a relevant question.
Lots of people who might be listening, going back to people who might want to dabble a little bit in communicating kind of beyond their normal audiences that they communicate to.
You know, maybe writing a blog or doing a video. And they might be wondering, you know, should I write about this or should I write about that?
What makes something newsworthy? What would you say to those people?

Sara (00:23:49)
Yeah, it’s a good question.
Is this going to affect a lot of people? Is this a big deal basically?
The famous quote from whoever it was, I can’t remember right now, said that they were standing on the shoulders of giants. But actually what they’re standing on is a whole big tower of little tiny Lego people.
And that if they’ve seen further than most men, it’s because there’s been these microscopic little increments of science along the way. And that’s how science is conducted. Science very rarely has some sort of exciting breakthrough.
So it’s relatively easy to think, is this incremental or is this actually something genuinely new?

Michael (00:24:32)
Yeah.

Sara (00:24:33)
The other thing that you think about when picking a story is — is this just kind of cool?

Michael (00:24:39)
Yeah, yeah.

Sara (00:24:40)
Like is this the sort of thing that people are gonna like. I once had an editor say to me the “Hey Martha” question.
Is someone going to flop?…

Jen (00:24:47)
It’s what we used to teach our students, the Martha test.

Sara (00:24:49)
Yeah, right, OK. So it’s stayed with me…
Flopped out the top of the newspaper and peer at his wife over the breakfast table and say, “Hey Martha, did you know blah blah blah blah blah.”
And so is this going to be sufficiently cool that people are going to mention it in passing?
We had a story last week about elephants apparently give each other names. They have these little rumbles that they make towards each other.

Michael (00:25:14)
Oh really?

Sara (00:25:16)
And when an elephant hears the rumble that’s associated with it, it sort of stands up and looks around, you know.
And so they think that elephants actually have names. And that just falls into the category
of just cool, you know.

Michael (00:25:28)
That’s very cool.

Sara (00:25:29)
Is it groundbreaking science?
No, but it’s fun.

Michael (00:25:25)
So if it’s groundbreaking…

Jen (00:25:33)
Oh, come on, that’s kind of groundbreaking.

Michael (00:25:33)
Yeah, I guess so. I guess there’s some potential for crossover there.
But yeah, so if it’s groundbreaking or if it’s about elephants or chickens, you’re in pretty safe territory.

Sara (00:25:46)
You can see that my love of animals has never gone away.

Jen (00:25:49)
Well, that’s kind of what I want to ask you, Sara. Because you’ve just demonstrated, you’ve got decades of experience of picking what other people are going to find worth reading.
You know, that’s a core part of your job. What other people are going to want to read about.
What are you most excited about? If you had all the time in the world to be writing, what would you be writing about?

Sara (00:26:08)
I am finishing up at Nature next week. I was filling in, in a maternity leave role. So the real Miss Phillips is coming back to fill in her chair.
The Asia Pacific Bureau Chief is Nicky Phillips, not to be confused with me, we are no relation. So she’ll be back in her chair.
So I’m actually going to go off and write a book and my book will be about zoology, physiology and psychology.

Michael (00:26:36)
Ooh, sounds interesting.

Jen (00:26:37)
Oh, we can’t wait.
You heard it here first, people.
We can’t wait.

Sara (00:26:42)
I hope. I have to finish the book first though…

Michael (00:26:45)
I really want to put you on the spot since you know, you’re planning a book like that, you’re really interested in animals.
Can I squeeze another cool animal fact out of you? I wrote that thing down about elephants. You know, I just want to sound impressive down at the pub later.

Sara (00:26:58)
Yeah, yeah. Well, what else we found?
We found out that fruit flies can taste with their feet.
That was…

Michael (00:27:03)
Oh, wow.

Jen (00:27:05)
You are going to be so popular at the pub tonight, Michael.

Sara (00:27:08)
Oh yeah, buy that man a drink, he told me another cool animal fact.

Michael (00:27:16)
Well thank you, Sara.
We are running out of time. But before we let you go, we would like to switch gears a little bit and ask you some rapid fire questions.
So quick questions, quick answers.

Michael (00:27:35)
The first one that we’d like to ask you is that if you had to pick an alternative job to what you’re doing, what would it be?

Sara (00:27:45)
Architecture.

Michael (00:27:47)
OK, very quick response there.

Jen (00:27:48)
Hmm, love it.
OK, if you could choose one superpower, what would you choose?

Sara (00:27:55)
Invisibility.

Michael (00:27:56)
Ooh.

Jen (00:27:57)
So good. So good for journalism, right?

Sara (00:28:00)
Exactly. Imagine the rooms you could slip into.
Oh my god, it’d be so good.

Michael (00:28:05)
What you could also learn about animal behaviour if you could just be invisible.

Sara (00:28:09)
Yeah true. Although they’d probably smell you.

Jen (00:28:11)
Yeah, they’d smell you for sure.

Michael (00:28:11)
They would. Yeah, that’s true. Yeah.
OK. So if you could go back in time and give yourself a message at the age of 21, what would you say?

Sara (00:28:21)
I would say that one day you’re going to be Asia Pacific Bureau Chief for Nature News and 21 year old me would say “Get out, go on. No, I’m not.”

Jen (00:28:35)
Make sure you also tell yourself about all the awards that you’ve won and you know, just take, let yourself know that it’s all going to pan out just fine.

Sara (00:28:43)
Yeah, exactly.

Jen (00:28:45)
Next question. What do you think makes a good science writer? Couple of top qualities.

Sara (00:28:50)
Hmm, That’s a hard… I mean, you know, can they write well? That’s kind of the obvious question.
But can I change the question slightly and say what makes good science writing?

Jen (00:29:01)
Sure. Yeah, you’re in charge here. You can say whatever you want.

Sara (00:29:06)
Okay. Well, I would say that good science writing is characterised by both having really interesting information about science, but also humanity in it because science is a human endeavor.
And a lot of the time with you know, the sort of straight up news story. You see, like scientists did this and these scientists are sort of these I don’t know, unimaginable characters who magically just find this information somehow down the back of a couch or something.
Whereas I really love the science stories that actually show the human labour that goes into science and tells the story of how we did this and it didn’t work, and then we’re all really disappointed. And then we went down to the pub to drown our sorrows, and then we suddenly had an idea and then we rushed back to the lab.
I love those kinds of stories that really puts the humanity into the production of science.

Michael (00:30:00)
Hmm. Yeah, that’s great advice.
So related question, and this is the final question we want to ask. What would your top tip be for telling a great story about science?

Sara (00:30:11)
Yeah, narrative, basically is telling a story about science.
A lot of people want to give you the information, but they don’t tell the story about how the information happened.
So it’s probably a little bit of a similar, similar answer.
But yeah, just that not all science journalism needs to be expository, it can be narrative.
And that when you tell a story… Like people’s brains are just hardwired to remember stories.
And so it’s, it’s a really good way of getting people to remember your story is to actually couch it in a story with a beginning, a middle and an end.

Jen (00:30:53)
Well, Sara, we are so delighted that you made time to share some of your story with us.
I love the fact that you and I have been just kind of hanging out in the same worlds and catching up every now and again for let’s say what, 40 years? Not quite 40 years, but quite long, 35 years.

Sara (00:31:04)
Oh yeah, we’re aging there.
Yeah, probably has, yeah.

Jen (00:31:13)
35 years? And I think we need to get in our calendars at some point, hanging out at Queenscliff for a weekend. And, you know, having a few drinks and going for a walk on the beach.

Sara (00:31:20)
Yeah, we should. I’ll probably have some other epiphany.

Jen (00:31:22)
Exactly! You can have a whole new career. I’ll give you time to write your book first.

Sara (00:31:28)
Yeah. OK.

Jen (00:31:28)
And then once you’ve done that, let’s go to Queenscliff and go for a walk along the beach. And just revel in the fact that how lucky are we? We discovered science communication all those years ago.

Sara (00:31:38)
Yeah, exactly. And honestly, what a great career it is. Like you get to find out about new stuff.
Once someone once said to me “The only new, new news is science. Everything else is the same old tropes being rehashed, whereas science is actually real progress.”
And so we get to just find out about new stuff every day and write about it like. Like, what a great job.

Michael (00:32:00)
Yeah.

Jen (00:32:00)
100%. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. It’s just awesome to speak with you and hear more of your story. And no pressure, but we can’t wait to read the book.

Sara (00:32:10)
Yeah, great. Fine.
Tell your friends to buy it.

Michael (00:32:12)
Yeah, will do.
Thanks so much, Sarah. It’s been a pleasure.

Jen (00:32:33)
Thank you so much for listening to another episode of Let’s Talk SciComm from the University of Melbourne Science Communication Teaching Team. I’m Associate Professor Jen Martin and my brilliant cohost is Dr Michael Wheeler.

Michael (00:32:47)
And if you’ve enjoyed listening to this episode, we’d love you to share it with your friends and family. We’d love you to share your favourite episode online. And you can find us at LetsTalkSciComm on X, formerly known as Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Jen (00:33:02)
And this season, we are asking for your help to spread the word so that more people find out about our podcast.
So if you enjoy listening, we would love you to tell a friend, but we’d also love you to think about taking a couple of minutes to write us a review.
Whatever platform you listen on, there will be a place for you to leave a review. And we’re going to keep track and award our favourite reviewees some prizes.
We’re thinking about some merch. And we’d also love to reward our favourite review with a free science communication workshop that we will run for you in person or online, depending on whereabouts you are.

Michael (00:33:37)
Ooh, prizes. And if… They sound great. And if you’d like to get in touch to suggest a guest or a future topic, we’d love to hear from you. Please email us at lets.talk.scicomm@gmail.com. And as always, a huge thank you to our production team Stephanie Wong and Steven Tang.