Thursday, 25 March, 2021

Small pieces of a bigger picture

PhD students Tamara Ehm and Jana Steuer start Physics Podcast "Entropia"

 

Giving PhD students a platform to talk about their research for the public - this is the basic idea behind the physics podcast "Entropia".  Tamara Ehm from CeNS and Jana Steuer from astrophysics have teamed up to start this new format. We have asked them about their motivation and how they realized their project.

How did you come up with the idea for a podcast and what is your motivation behind it?

Tamara: It is (well was...) a well-known situation - you sit in a bar, meet new people and they might say “Wow! PhD thesis in physics! What are you doing there exactly? ". The music is loud and the time is far too short to tell what the position of amino acids have to do with their electrostatic interaction, why this is not chemistry but biophysics, and what chambers made of plastic have to do with it. Most of the time I will just say “I work with proteins” and come up with a few complicated buzzwords.
Jana: For me, science communication has always been a topic that I really enjoyed. Especially in astrophysics, many people are generally very interested but often assume that they “don't understand enough math” to roughly outline the complex interrelationships of our cosmos. I am convinced that in science it is not only possible but also necessary to engage with the public. After all, their tax money enables our research.

What is special about your podcast and what is your target group?

Tamara: We don't talk about science in a general way, but rather want to show at the individual PhD student’s level how research really looks like. We try to present and place these small pieces of a bigger picture and allow a glance behind the lab door.
Jana: What matters to us is breaking down barriers. So that there is no such feeling of “those there” doing some obscure and incomprehensible things in labs and at the university. Research is fundamentally human and should concern everyone.
Tamara: Our podcast is aimed at anyone who is interested in scientific research and has always wanted to know what a scientist actually does. Our listeners won’t necessarily need a science degree to understand our podcast.

Who was your first guest?

Tamara: Our first guest was Linh Nguyen. Of course, that was easy for me because Linh and I are colleagues. I therefore already knew what she was doing. On the other hand, of course, we had to be careful not to dive too deeply into the matter and make sure that the listeners would be able to follow. For that we had Jana, who had never heard of DNA origami during her PhD in astrophysics.
Jana: That's actually a nice thing, being able to learn something for yourself as well. I'm really looking forward to the next episode with an astrophysicist. Then we will experience the situation the other way around. This will make the podcast very dynamic, because you combine a lot of expertise, but everyone is in their field and can ask the right questions, which also concern a layperson.

How do you prepare yourself? How much time do you need to produce one episode?

Tamara: Of course, an episode always starts with us choosing a guest and inviting him or her. Then there is an “onboarding” process where we understand what their research is about, so that we can come up with the right questions. Then the microphone has to be transferred to the guest (of course it is nicely disinfected in between) and then we will record. We are not professional podcasters or sound mixing experts, so the post-production is currently taking a little longer than we had planned, but we are confident that it will get better with every episode! After the podcast has been cut, it is finally uploaded to popular podcast platforms (Spotify, itunes, deezer etc.). All in all, we probably need about 10 - 15 hours for one episode.

In your opinion, what makes a good podcast?

Jana: You have to think about where people listen to podcasts. In the car, while washing dishes or hanging up laundry, maybe brushing your teeth in the morning, or even just relaxing on the sofa. The point here is to keep people's attention, entertaining them, and making them curious about more. If, in the end, our listeners have learned something and our guests' research has become more accessible by the podcast, we have achieved our goal.

What are your future plans?

Jana: I think the principle of “learning by doing” applies here, as with so many things. We will continue to collect a lot of feedback and try to make each episode a little better. We want to cover as many fields as possible, not just biophysics and astronomy. Many people are particularly interested in research areas with applications in people's everyday life, such as electric vehicles. So we will emphasize such topics as well.

The podcast is available in German only.

Entropia on Apple podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1556204117
Entropia on Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/1f6D1lzpzjtpM6DG6mog5e