She is talking about Oceanography on TikTok and has 98K followers!

In this episode of the "How to Protect the Ocean" podcast, host Andrew Lewin interviews Dr. Paige Hoel, a recent PhD graduate in coastal eutrophication from UCLA and a popular science communicator on TikTok. With nearly 100,000 followers, Paige has...
In this episode of the "How to Protect the Ocean" podcast, host Andrew Lewin interviews Dr. Paige Hoel, a recent PhD graduate in coastal eutrophication from UCLA and a popular science communicator on TikTok. With nearly 100,000 followers, Paige has gained recognition for her engaging storytelling about ocean science, particularly focusing on topics like the impacts of human activity on ocean health and the intricacies of coastal ecosystems.
Paige shares her journey into oceanography, which began at a young age when she became fascinated by the ocean after watching a documentary about Dr. Robert Ballard's discoveries. Her academic path was influenced by her family's strong scientific background, leading her to pursue a PhD in a field that combines her interests in biology, chemistry, and environmental science.
During the conversation, Paige discusses how she developed her science communication skills, particularly through teaching a climate change course at UCLA. She emphasizes the importance of making complex scientific concepts accessible to a general audience, especially non-majors who may not have a strong background in science. This experience inspired her to create content on TikTok, where she initially focused on sharing tips for undergraduate and graduate students before transitioning to more ocean-focused content.
Paige's TikTok videos highlight various oceanographic topics, including coastal eutrophication, harmful algal blooms, and the effects of wastewater treatment on marine ecosystems. She balances education and entertainment effectively, making science relatable and engaging for her audience. Her ability to tell compelling stories about ocean science raises awareness and encourages viewers to think critically about their relationship with the ocean.
Overall, the episode showcases the power of social media, particularly TikTok, as a platform for science communication, allowing scientists like Paige to reach a broader audience and inspire curiosity about oceanography and environmental issues.
Paige's TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@liloceanpaige?lang=en
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There are so many graduate students that are doing amazing things and people in
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science that are doing amazing things with science, not only on their
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graduate work or their scientific work, but also their side
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hustles or what they like to, if they really get involved in science and
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they have a little bit of a knack or a skill to develop something, they
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can develop something. And today we're actually gonna be talking to Paige
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Hull, who just finished her PhD in
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coastal eutrophication from UCLA in
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the US, She's also known for a little page
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that she has on TikTok and it's at
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98,900 followers right now and it continues to grow. There are some
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videos that she talks about different stories around
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like surfing waves and sort of the impacts of the Olympics on
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surfing waves. She also talks about the Resolute Desk
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in the White House and how that has an oceanographic tie to
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it. She does these stories in just amazing ways. And I
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wanted to have her on the podcast so badly. And she actually reached out to be
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on the podcast, which I was so happy. So we have her on today. We're
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going to talk to Paige about science communication and about her PhD work
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and just science in general. So let's start
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the show. Hey,
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everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
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I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the
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ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, what you can do to live for a
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better ocean by taking action. And on today's episode,
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we're going to be talking about speaking up for the ocean, because we have
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Paige Hull, who's on the podcast today, talking about
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not only her PhD work that she did on coastal eutrophication and
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how she makes that really exciting to hear about, but also about
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her science TikTok. her science communication tiktok efforts which
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are absolutely amazing if you want to go to her
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tiktok it's at lil l-i-l ocean
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page p-a-i-g-e you
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can check it out she you're not going to be alone in watching her videos
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but she has this incredible knack to tell stories. And
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it's out of this world. I was a huge fan of her
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before she reached out to me to be able to be on this. She goes,
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hey, do you want me to come on the podcast? I can talk about this and this. And I was like, yes, absolutely.
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Yes, I'm a huge fan of yours. So I'm looking, I'm really looking forward to it, which was,
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it was an amazing podcast. We talked for over an hour about
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her PhD, about her science communication efforts. And
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it was absolutely riveting for me anyway. So
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I hope it is for you. She's a super interesting
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individual. She tells stories on this podcast, like
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she tells stories on TikTok, and it was an
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absolute pleasure to have her on. And a lot of the times, when you hear
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people do a science communication effort, or
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dedicate their time to doing science communication, you don't really hear about the
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nuts and bolts of how they put videos together, or
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how they put a tweet together, or how they put a strategy together. You
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know, Paige goes in depth into that, and I think it's really
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interesting. On the other side of that, on the science side of
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it, where she actually does science, she talks a lot about, you
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know, how she grew up wanting to do a PhD. It ran
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in her family. I've never heard of that, but it ran in the family with multiple
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people in their family. had PhDs and so she always thought she was going
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to do a PhD and then she got interested at the age of four or five in
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oceanography which is insane if you think about it and
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then now here she is just finishing a PhD in coastal eutrophication
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oceanography and just being super interested in that
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that that stuff that we don't really hear about all the time.
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Oceanography is not as common as we think. When we hear about someone
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studying the ocean, we automatically go to marine biology. She's like, nope, oceanography
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is for me, and that's what I want to do. And she talks about her journey to
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there, how she chose the project that she did, and why it
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was so important. And then, of course, the science communication aspect. So there's so
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much to get out of this episode. You're probably going to want to listen to it more than
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once, and I don't blame you. But here's the
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interview with Dr. Paige Hull. Enjoy, and I will talk to you after.
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Hey Paige, welcome to the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Are
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you ready to talk about all things oceans and ocean storytelling?
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I feel that I feel that because I have to admit like I
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do a little research before I have people come on And I did
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a lot of research on your tiktok page and you probably
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tell the best stories That I ever like I'm a huge fan. So
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I'm very excited when you when you reach out you're like, hey Andrew Do you want me to come on your
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podcast? I can talk about my phd I could talk about so i'm like absolutely like
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this is awesome and we found out we're both fans of each other so
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that's it's gonna be a lot of fun exactly so there's gonna
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be a lot of conversation but I you know I want my audience to get
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to know you today and to get to know what you did for your PhD how you
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got to the point where are you doing a PhD and what you
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want to do it on and then even into the science communication how
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that you kind of fell into that and just realize you're like hey people
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like the way I tell stories okay I like So we'll see
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how that goes. But before we get into all that, Paige, why don't you just let people know who
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Yes. Well, thank you for the kind intro, Andrew. So
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my name is Paige, and I am an oceanographer.
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I have a PhD in atmospheric and oceanic science.
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And I have more recently become known as a little
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ocean page or Ph.D. pagey on tick tock. And
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I've had a relatively successful ocean tick tock
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for the last year or so. And I'm really just enjoying all
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the science communication and spreading the wonder that I've always
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had for the ocean. But now getting random
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strangers on the Internet to learn along with me, it's been such a
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That's awesome because I am, as you know, I'm a huge proponent of
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getting people involved in the ocean, people who aren't like studying the
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ocean full time or marine biologists or coastal scientists
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or oceanographers and conservationists who may not
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know much about the ocean and, you know, want to to
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be entertained at the same time as learning and I think you
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do a perfect job in balancing those two and it's
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not an easy thing to do and we definitely appreciate it.
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What got you into the ocean in the first place? You say you've always had a curiosity. When
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do you remember that first time you were like, ooh, I like this
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So I was I was always one of those I
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have a frankly annoying story Which is that I just
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knew from the jump. I was like four or five years old
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and I saw a We had a VHS tape of
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Robert Ballard. Dr. Ballard finding the battleship Titanic
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and No, no, no, the battleship Bismarck, the same scientist
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who found the Titanic originally, but this was a
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VHS tape about him finding the battleship Bismarck. And
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he, prolific oceanographer, he used all these
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different tools and now a very outdated technology
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to find the battleship. But I watched
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this VHS tape until it couldn't play anymore. I
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was just so... Even at that age, like four and five years old? At that age. Wow.
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I was sold. I was like, you can explore the ocean as
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a job? That's a thing that you can do?
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I'm sold. And it helped
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that my grandmother lived in San Diego,
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and we would go down to visit her, and we'd spend
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our Saturdays just at the beach, sand
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on every single part of my body, in the water. I
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was always like a water baby. And I just remember wondering
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The waves keep coming. And every time I
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come here, there's waves. Yeah. what is
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this place? So that, like, imagination
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was just like, from the jump. And from there on out,
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it was like, kind of a done deal. So yeah,
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from there, it really progressed. I, it helped
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that I was good at math and science and physics and
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chemistry. I was always, my family's like
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pretty scientific in background. I'm actually like, one
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Yes. Uh, which, uh, is,
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is an advantage in the sense that I was like, well, if my, if my dad can
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get one, if my grandpa can get one. If my great grandmother
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had one, you know, like, why not me? It seemed like a very, like,
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not like it was an expectation, but almost in a sense seemed very accessible. Because
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I was like, well, they all did it. So yeah, why can't, why
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not me? Um, but yeah, I knew I was
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interested in oceanography, not marine biology. I find marine biology fascinating,
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but. I like can't see blood. So the thought
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of cutting any animal open was like a no-go for me. Um, but
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yeah, I, I understood that like, oh, it's understanding
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the physics of the ocean, understanding the chemistry of
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the water. And yeah, it was just like,
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okay, that's what I gotta do. I gotta be good at math. I gotta be good at chemistry.
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I gotta be good at physics. And then it also helped,
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too, that my dad works, makes software for
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a mapping company. So maps are
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very prolific in our household. And I
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loved maps, maps of the ocean floor, maps of countries
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and interesting... Even like the older maps, right, where the
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geography changes and the sort of the morphology changes as
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you go through it. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It
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was, it was pretty, yeah, it was kind of straightforward for
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me from the jump. I was like, okay, I love the ocean. I'm good at school. I'm
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just going to keep riding this until the wheels fall off.
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I love it. Now, were you one of those students, say,
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in high school, like, you know, it's a math-intensive subject
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matter, even just to get into science, to get into university, right? You
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gotta take your physics, you gotta take your chemistry, you gotta take your
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calculus and functions and whatever that
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might be. Were you a student that naturally, like,
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you were able to learn it pretty quickly, or did you have to, like, work your
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There's no wrong answer by the way on this. Yes and no. I'd
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be lying if I say I wasn't just good at math. I've always been good at math. But
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I think when I got into high school and in college, university
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really was a kick in the butt my first year because in high school I
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knew the exact amount of time I could put in and I would get
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a result and it would work and then I just assumed that would
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transfer to a university and I did my undergraduate at
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UC Santa Barbara and which is like
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a pretty rigorous school and I Going through
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that it was like calc to my
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my first quarter. I Failed I got
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a D. I've never gotten anything lower than a B in my entire
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life. I was like And I
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got I got I was so upset I think I got a
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C in chemistry and I was like, oh it's a good student like First
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Oh my gosh, but I remember being so upset and
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my mom was like My mom came into my room and was
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like, so you just think because you
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worked hard, you're entitled to an A. Is that what you think? Like,
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welcome to the real world, Paige. But
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I mean, she was right. She was right. And she's like, it's
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not about you failing this class. It's like, what are you going to do now? You
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got to pick yourself up, like brush your knees off, like,
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like deal with your bruised ego later. What are you going to
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do now? And I think normalizing, like failing
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so many people fail so many times before they get it
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right. I think But like perception that you need
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to be perfect at everything will cripple you. You don't
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achieve anything because you'll just be scared. But yeah,
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I mean, I failed. I failed to math classes in
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college and undergrad. And I retook them
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and I got A's the second time. Yeah, I did
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OK in physics. I got
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through it. I took like the engineering level of physics. So
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like the hella hard. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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But also too, I've always known that I had a good
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storytelling ability and I've always known that what I
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lack, even if I'm not an A plus student, my
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enthusiasm counteracts that and we can't all be
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the same. There can be someone that's
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better than me at research but can't tell the story, so how valuable is
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the research that they did if no one's going to know about
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Or that even tracks with when you go
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for a grant. It's a storytelling exercise, right?
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When you apply for a grant. So you may be able to do the research and kick
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butt in the research, but if you can't get the grant to pay for the research, you're
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not going to be able to do the research in the first place, right? So that comes
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So during that part, that's a tough time. And a lot of students go through that. That's
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just not you. I went through that. A lot of people, we get humbled
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in university. It doesn't matter the year. There's always one course
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or two courses that really help. For me, it was invertebrate zoology one
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and two. Our lab exam
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was like you had to identify the animal in a microscope, and then
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you answered a question on it. If you got the animal wrong, you you
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you were marked like six out of ten you know to get perfect right
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so and it was never an animal that you've seen before it
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was always an animal that you hadn't seen before but you had to go through the process and
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identify the kingdom and the phylum and all that kind of stuff
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super super difficult but like For me, I learned to
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be resilient. How did that teach you to sort
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of, because look, doing a PhD is harder than
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undergrad, right? So how did that teach you to fight back
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and just be like, no, I'm gonna scrape and crawl and do what I can to
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take everything that I know and to believe in myself to be able to do
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Yeah, that's the key word there is belief. It's
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such a fake it till you make it type of deal because you realize that
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You realize when you're in university that, you
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know, it goes two ways. Sometimes it's like, everyone's smarter than me. Everyone
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has all this knowledge. But then you also do realize, well,
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everyone had to learn it. once you know everyone was
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a beginner at some point and when
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you get to a certain level of academics a lot of
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it I do think is grit like obviously you need a
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certain amount of like you know ability to retain knowledge
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but at a certain point I definitely realized as
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an undergrad I was like I think this is just about just
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pushing just pushing onwards ask
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and also to like asking for
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help asking and putting yourself in the situations that
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you didn't think you deserved. Why not try? Yep. Like as
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an undergrad, I took graduate level classes my last
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year, because I was like, you know what, why not? Like, yeah, let me just ask
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these professors and see if I have the chops. To get through a
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couple graduate level classes, and if I can do that, then why can't
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this? Like, why can't this? But
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I started and part of it, yeah, is you got to be a little bit
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cocky to be like, yeah. Why not me? I
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got this. Why not? Yeah, I got this. Whatever. And
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what's the worst that's going to happen, right? My
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worst case scenario is really not that bad in the grand scheme of things. So
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I might as well shoot my shot. But
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I feel like a lot of once
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I realized I just needed to ask and put myself out there
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and continue to bite off seemingly more than
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I could chew, I was rewarded. It
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was like, Oh, you want to do an undergraduate thesis
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with some esteemed professor. Great. He's excited
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to work with an undergrad or like you want to intern for
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this company in Denmark. Cool.
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They sit there actually interested in you because you asked
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like so much of opportunities like
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in this podcast, like, You just got to ask, you
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know, you got to, you don't, you don't wait for life to happen to you. You got to like go
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after it. And so in terms of a PhD as well, where that
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is a five year exercise in getting kicked in the teeth, like
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it is so humbling, but at the same
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time, like, you just got to ask, you just got to keep like, you're
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there. You found your way there. That's not
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for nothing. Like, Keep trying, keep asking. And
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a lot of a PhD too, which I
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didn't realize until maybe halfway through, is
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it's proving that you're a scientist. It's like making yourself into
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a scientist and proving you're a scientist. It's not about being right. Because
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so much of science is getting things wrong. And if
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you're so afraid to get things wrong that you don't do
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anything a little bit risky or do any interesting research or
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come up with any interesting ideas, then you're
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kind of failing your Ph.D. because you're not there to get
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it right. It's not a class where there's A, B, C, D. It's
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an exercise in making yourself into a scientist. And
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so that is a totally different
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experience. But it gets back to like the grit, like just ask,
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just keep just push. Even if you don't think you deserve to be there, like
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Well, here's case in point. When you reached out to ask to
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be on the podcast, You were on my mind to
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ask to be on the, like, I was going to ask you to be, I just never
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did. I'll be like, she's at 98,000 followers on TikTok. There's
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no way she's going to, she must get messages upon messages upon
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messages. If I DM her, is she going to even see the message? Right.
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And then we find out we're fans of each other and you're just like, oh
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my God, like, yeah, we're just people. And
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yes, of course I want you on the podcast. And, you know, and it's just a
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matter of asking and putting yourself out there to just be like, yeah, Might as
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well, you know. But that's
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such a hard thing to get over, I think, especially as a young undergrad
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student. I think it's one of those things where, even
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in the science, like we all have friends we've probably roomed with or
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been in a house with during the undergrad where they're in business
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and they don't start class until one o'clock in the afternoon. And
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meanwhile, I started when I was at 830 every semester
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of my undergrad career. And I went, because there's labs that happen in
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the afternoon that are all afternoon. And as much fun
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as they are, it's a hard day. It's a hard day's work. And it's a hard
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program to get through, no matter what you're going through, science related.
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It's a hard program to get through. And so during
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that time, you still have you
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know, the want to do, you know, oceanography and all
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that type of work. What was going through your mind during
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your undergrad? Like, how did your mind change or did your
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mind change in terms of what you wanted to do afterwards,
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whether it be work or even PhD or what you wanted to
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a great question. So
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I was so gung ho oceanography that
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I thought my, this was my, I think this
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was my freshman year, freshman or sophomore year. I was like, you know what? If
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I want to do oceanography, I should talk to grad students who are
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doing it right now and see, A, what they have
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to tell me, B, if it seems like they're having a good time. So
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I reached out, I sent Lord
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knows how many emails, probably like 30 or
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40 emails. So I went on to, and UC Santa Barbara is like
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a mecca for oceanography. So
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I looked on all of the different departments' websites,
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like the geography department, the earth science department, and I was
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majoring in earth science and geography, so I already knew some of
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those grad students. They had a special ocean
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science graduate school. I found everyone who was
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doing research that I was remotely interested in. I
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sent them an email. I was like, hey, I'm an undergrad. Your research
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sounds cool. Can we sit down for coffee? Can I come by your
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office? And eventually what that ended up with was
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I got opportunity to do research with
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one graduate student who is towards the marine biology and
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like fishery side. And I helped him out with his research
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for like almost a full year. And that was cool because I
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got to see he was in year two, three of his PhD. And
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I got to see what, what that kind of phase was like. Um,
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And then another God student responded to me, Alexa,
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who kind of remained my mentor to this
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day. And she was an absolute
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dynamo. I couldn't believe she was even talking to me. But she
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was like, your email was endearing. And I
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wanted to help you out. Yeah, you
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seemed really enthusiastic. And so through those
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relationships and just staying
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really in tune with the faculty. I like
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loved, we had some great professors and I just went to office hours
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every single opportunity I could. I, even
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if I didn't have questions, I just wanted to talk to them and be like, yeah, how'd you get
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into oceanography? How this, and actually my, I
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think this was my junior year. I think this was my junior year. Robert
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Ballard, Bob Ballard came to talk to the earth
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science faculty at UCSB. He's actually UCSB alum.
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And I got an email about it. This was like supposed to be a faculty meeting.
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I don't know how I got the email, but I was like, Oh, Oh,
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my gosh, drop everything. I went home to go
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get my one of his books, Eternal Darkness, which
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is about and I brought it and it's a faculty meeting
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around a round table. I see. Thankfully, I
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knew the professors are like, Hey, what are you doing here? And I
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was like, after the
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meeting, I like went up to Dr. Bauer
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I'm being cool right now, but I'm such a huge fan. This is
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And can we take a picture? So through my
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undergrad, I was really like, emboldened. I
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was like, yeah, I can do this. Yeah, I can
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like it is worth my time and it
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helped that I had I had friends out obviously
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outside and Like UC Santa Barbara is
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like known to be a party school. So, you know, you get a little
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bit of everything There's like great academics, but it's also Sunny
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and 70 every single day and you're on the beach. So, you know
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at times it was like, oh man, I wish I didn't have Two
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tough majors to do, but at the same time, it was
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just like, so cool. And the instructors
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were good. And I could, I could see I was making progress towards
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my goal. Like I could see, okay, like
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people are talking to me. I was like presented a
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conference, like all those little things that made me
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affirmed in me that all of my efforts were not for nothing. It
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would be different, I think, if I was just taking classes and I was like,
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what am I doing all this work for? But I respond well
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to external affirmation. So
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But did you think also, too, like there's the affirmation part, but it's also
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it's that It's almost that motivation when
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you start to volunteer with somebody to do their, help them do their graduate work.
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It's like, oh, this is really cool stuff. Like this is
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amazing stuff. Like even the student you said, it was a bit more marine biology. It
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probably confirmed you're like, yeah, I'm probably not into the whole marine biology thing,
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but there's all this other stuff. Did you get to do some field work with this
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Like it just motivates you to want to do it that much more, right?
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Yes, yes, absolutely. We were collecting crabs.
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We, like, went into the field. We went on, like, boats to
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go get crabs. I was like, this is so cool!
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And then we had crab tanks, and we would dissect
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the crabs, which was so disgusting. But still,
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I was like, whoa, this is so neat! Yeah, at least there's
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no blood. At least there's no blood. Yeah, true, true, true, true. I saw
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00:25:37,735 --> 00:25:41,220
more crab carapaces than I would like to have. But
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still, it was like, I like this whole process. Yeah,
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00:25:44,964 --> 00:25:48,547
it's interesting. Yeah, doing this. And
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yeah, like, no, I felt like no time was wasted. So
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I'm thankful I went through all of it. But it's, it's not for the faint of
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heart. It is like, very time consuming if you really pursue it.
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Well, and I think that's What a lot of people don't realize when they
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go into undergraduate and even graduate work is
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00:26:06,280 --> 00:26:09,362
it's supposed to take up a lot of time. You're not
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00:26:09,402 --> 00:26:13,064
just there to go through the motions, get the marks, get the classes, and then graduate.
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00:26:14,145 --> 00:26:17,487
University can offer so much more. College can offer so much more.
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And it's up to you to take advantage of that. I find in
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my experience anyway, and this is not everybody's experience, but it sounds like it's
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quite like your experience where Professors
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00:26:28,630 --> 00:26:31,773
are very open to conversation. If you show passion, you show you want to
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help out or you want to do something, you want to volunteer, they will have you
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in their labs if they have room. If there are people who
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want to go out in the field, they're always looking for undergraduates to help graduate students.
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And I think that really helps. And I find, like with my experience, the
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00:26:46,082 --> 00:26:49,605
professor had like a little community in their lab. And it was like you felt
427
00:26:49,705 --> 00:26:52,927
part of that. That almost became a bit of your friend group, like
428
00:26:52,967 --> 00:26:56,369
your professional friend group. And I still have those friendships to
429
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this day. And now we're like, sometimes we're colleagues
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00:27:00,014 --> 00:27:03,278
when we work and stuff. And so it's a kind of a cool
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experience, but you have to kind of get out
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of the... It's true. You gotta get out of the party and
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social side all the time to really immerse
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yourself into the university atmosphere and the ability to
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00:27:17,158 --> 00:27:20,919
do research or fieldwork or extra
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00:27:20,939 --> 00:27:24,020
skill sets or whatever that might be to be
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00:27:26,641 --> 00:27:29,901
It's hard to have that perspective at that age, too, to
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know the opportunity that you have. For sure. When you're 18 years
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00:27:33,582 --> 00:27:36,763
old, you're just like, this is the next thing to do. It's hard to know that,
440
00:27:36,803 --> 00:27:40,036
like, This is your opportunity that you'll
441
00:27:42,494 --> 00:27:45,736
Well, there are a lot of distractions at university. There's a lot to do.
442
00:27:46,157 --> 00:27:49,799
You can get involved in clubs. You can get a job at
443
00:27:49,839 --> 00:27:53,542
a bar, and that becomes your life. It's hard.
444
00:27:53,562 --> 00:27:57,205
There's a lot to, especially in the US,
445
00:27:57,545 --> 00:28:00,687
when university sports are such a big thing. You
446
00:28:03,729 --> 00:28:06,972
And there's the independent aspect. I was in third grade. I rode my
447
00:28:09,394 --> 00:28:12,997
Yeah, and sometimes that could be opportunities for
448
00:28:13,037 --> 00:28:16,260
you, right? Like that could lead to other opportunities, but other times it could be
449
00:28:16,300 --> 00:28:19,783
a distraction to what you want to do if your group
450
00:28:19,903 --> 00:28:23,407
is not necessarily focused on the same thing. And so you really
451
00:28:23,447 --> 00:28:26,670
have to work a little extra to get to that, which you did, which is awesome.
452
00:28:26,710 --> 00:28:30,044
But at what point where you're like, I'm going to do a PhD like
453
00:28:30,064 --> 00:28:33,469
you had your family who were probably like, yeah, you could do it like you're on track
454
00:28:33,489 --> 00:28:36,592
to do that. At what point did you be like, were you like, I want to do a
455
00:28:36,632 --> 00:28:39,796
PhD, but not only doing a PhD, but I want to do it in
456
00:28:43,921 --> 00:28:47,606
Yes. So yeah, the PhD thing was always kind of set for
457
00:28:47,646 --> 00:28:50,989
me because I was really in high school when
458
00:28:51,010 --> 00:28:54,656
i thought about okay i'm in the ocean what specific jobs
459
00:28:54,716 --> 00:28:58,924
can i get and i looked into. Actually
460
00:28:58,964 --> 00:29:02,302
being an oceanography was that entail. There are very few
461
00:29:02,402 --> 00:29:05,866
oceanographer jobs where you don't have a PhD because
462
00:29:06,066 --> 00:29:09,590
you're doing research. Oceanography is
463
00:29:09,630 --> 00:29:13,254
not cheap. They need very well educated people
464
00:29:13,374 --> 00:29:16,757
to do it. Um, so I knew
465
00:29:17,018 --> 00:29:20,782
from the jump, I was like, okay, I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to get a PhD. Um,
466
00:29:21,673 --> 00:29:24,976
But coastal eutrophication came to me kind
467
00:29:25,016 --> 00:29:28,979
of my sophomore junior year of college um,
468
00:29:29,420 --> 00:29:33,223
I was taking a biogeochemistry class
469
00:29:34,064 --> 00:29:37,707
um biology geology and chemistry all put together
470
00:29:37,727 --> 00:29:41,450
Um, and it was a marine biogeochemistry class. It's
471
00:29:41,490 --> 00:29:44,933
taught by david valentine at ucsp shout out.
472
00:29:44,993 --> 00:29:48,828
He's an incredible biogeochemist Yes, he is.
473
00:29:51,269 --> 00:29:54,851
I just remember the nutrient cycles were
474
00:29:54,911 --> 00:29:59,654
so fascinating to me and how nutrients
475
00:29:59,834 --> 00:30:03,136
interact so tightly with primary productivity and
476
00:30:03,176 --> 00:30:06,658
the biological pump. Then
477
00:30:06,738 --> 00:30:10,080
it was like, oh my gosh, we are really altering the
478
00:30:10,160 --> 00:30:13,801
nutrient cycle of the ocean in a way that we never have
479
00:30:13,901 --> 00:30:17,304
before. Never. Like, because if you even think about,
480
00:30:18,144 --> 00:30:22,007
you know, the Earth has been around for billions of years, there
481
00:30:22,067 --> 00:30:25,470
have been times where the ocean has been incredibly warm, and the
482
00:30:25,550 --> 00:30:28,812
physics has changed and the weather is different. But we've,
483
00:30:29,333 --> 00:30:32,675
the eutrophication, the influx of human
484
00:30:32,715 --> 00:30:36,198
nutrients is unprecedented. We've never seen anything
485
00:30:36,238 --> 00:30:39,861
like this and once I realized how interconnected it
486
00:30:39,921 --> 00:30:43,403
all was and how you could be
487
00:30:43,423 --> 00:30:46,865
a coastal ocean biogeochemist and focus specifically on oxygen
488
00:30:46,965 --> 00:30:50,407
or focus specifically on nitrogen or you know there's
489
00:30:50,447 --> 00:30:53,869
like a million different angles and I also think
490
00:30:53,969 --> 00:30:57,172
too Um, I love research for the sake
491
00:30:57,192 --> 00:31:00,573
of research, but to be frank, I want to do something that's
492
00:31:00,593 --> 00:31:03,814
like directly in touch with humanity and
493
00:31:04,354 --> 00:31:07,774
how we interact with the ocean. Um, because the
494
00:31:07,894 --> 00:31:11,515
ocean is a resource for us. It's also like maintaining
495
00:31:11,575 --> 00:31:15,556
our planet. And I find the interchange really
496
00:31:15,656 --> 00:31:18,876
interesting. Like, okay, if we do need to
497
00:31:18,916 --> 00:31:22,177
dispose of wastewater and we don't live in a perfect world where there's no
498
00:31:22,217 --> 00:31:25,633
wastewater. what's the safest way in which we can dispose
499
00:31:25,653 --> 00:31:28,895
of it in the ocean because we're not in a perfect world. And
500
00:31:29,315 --> 00:31:32,797
so all of those kinds of questions really fascinated me. So
501
00:31:32,837 --> 00:31:36,558
that was about my junior year of college.
502
00:31:36,598 --> 00:31:40,720
And then my senior year I did kind of a eutrophication style,
503
00:31:40,740 --> 00:31:43,842
um, thesis and I
504
00:31:43,882 --> 00:31:48,104
was totally enthralled. I was also enthralled with
505
00:31:48,444 --> 00:31:52,221
harmful algal blooms, right? that had, and
506
00:31:52,361 --> 00:31:55,903
actually I was exposed to those when I was doing research
507
00:31:56,083 --> 00:31:59,545
with the graduate student who was taking crabs, because
508
00:31:59,806 --> 00:32:03,428
some of the crabs had damelic acid, which is prevalent
509
00:32:03,468 --> 00:32:06,490
on the west coast of the United States from harmful algal blooms. And I
510
00:32:06,510 --> 00:32:09,572
was like, what? Like this crab is poisoned? And
511
00:32:09,612 --> 00:32:12,793
he's like, yep, you wouldn't eat this crab. And that
512
00:32:12,854 --> 00:32:16,196
also to me is just like, wow, like it's also interconnected. And
513
00:32:16,236 --> 00:32:21,016
so it was around then that I was like, all right, it's coastal eutrophication. I'm
514
00:32:22,036 --> 00:32:26,038
That's awesome. For your PhD, did
515
00:32:26,058 --> 00:32:29,699
you do it at UCLA? Is that where you did your PhD? Yes. Okay, so
516
00:32:29,799 --> 00:32:33,460
you moved down the coastline a little bit to UCLA.
517
00:32:38,722 --> 00:32:42,803
Yeah, so my advisor was Daniele Bianchi. When
518
00:32:43,423 --> 00:32:47,024
I was looking at graduate schools, I
519
00:32:47,084 --> 00:32:50,787
looked at all the major oceanographic schools And
520
00:32:50,807 --> 00:32:54,731
I was like, OK, who's doing coastal eutrophication? It wasn't
521
00:32:54,771 --> 00:32:58,754
until kind of at the end of my search that
522
00:32:58,814 --> 00:33:02,197
I was talking to a scientist at Scripps, Clarissa Anderson, and
523
00:33:03,078 --> 00:33:06,141
she was really involved in harmful algal bloom research. And I
524
00:33:06,181 --> 00:33:09,644
was like, I think I'm interested in how human nutrients affect
525
00:33:10,004 --> 00:33:13,327
harmful algal blooms. And she was like, I don't have any money,
526
00:33:13,427 --> 00:33:16,910
but I have a colleague who's really smart, who just got a grant. You
527
00:33:16,930 --> 00:33:20,815
should go talk to him. And so, yeah, I was
528
00:33:20,855 --> 00:33:24,297
crazy too, because I worked so hard on my applications for like five other
529
00:33:24,317 --> 00:33:27,799
schools. But last minute, he's like, yeah, I applied to UCLA. And
530
00:33:27,839 --> 00:33:31,561
I was like, Okay, cool. Um, you
531
00:33:31,601 --> 00:33:35,183
know, and so I ended up there and it was a great fit. And I
532
00:33:35,283 --> 00:33:39,106
liked that his work was modeling based. So
533
00:33:39,326 --> 00:33:43,405
using a big coupled physical biogeochemical model
534
00:33:43,425 --> 00:33:47,049
to make estimates instead of in-situ sampling,
535
00:33:47,089 --> 00:33:50,472
which has so many merits, but that is really
536
00:33:50,532 --> 00:33:54,696
expensive, really time-consuming. You're at the whim of
537
00:33:55,357 --> 00:34:01,607
the ocean, too. It's an unforgiving environment. Southern
538
00:34:01,647 --> 00:34:04,949
California, it, you would be shocked, you know? So,
539
00:34:05,310 --> 00:34:08,892
um, I was, and I love the, like, and
540
00:34:08,932 --> 00:34:12,434
this really gets into like my geography background, but I love that the
541
00:34:12,474 --> 00:34:16,017
spatial resolution of a model is everything.
542
00:34:16,697 --> 00:34:20,800
A model is inherently false because it is a model. But when
543
00:34:20,820 --> 00:34:23,962
you're dealing with ocean observations, you are at the whim of where can
544
00:34:23,982 --> 00:34:27,064
you take your ship? Where is, where is a
545
00:34:27,104 --> 00:34:30,236
pier? Where is a buoy? And you have to guess for
546
00:34:30,276 --> 00:34:34,458
everything else. Whereas like the model really appealed to me. So, um,
547
00:34:34,999 --> 00:34:38,280
yeah, once I was in, I was so happy to be there. He ended up
548
00:34:38,961 --> 00:34:42,342
actually ended up that another student he had coming in
549
00:34:42,422 --> 00:34:45,864
was like a better fit for the harmful algal bloom research. And
550
00:34:45,884 --> 00:34:49,806
so I just moved into general eutrophication in
551
00:34:49,966 --> 00:34:53,167
coastal Southern California bite, um, that region of
552
00:34:53,187 --> 00:34:56,600
the ocean around Southern California. And I focused, at
553
00:34:56,620 --> 00:35:01,081
the beginning of my PhD, I specifically focused on wastewater
554
00:35:01,121 --> 00:35:04,422
treatment policies. So yeah, in Southern
555
00:35:04,442 --> 00:35:07,644
California, about a billion gallons of wastewater are
556
00:35:07,664 --> 00:35:10,825
pumped back out into the ocean every single day. It's a lot of
557
00:35:10,865 --> 00:35:14,806
wastewater. That affects things. Yes, exactly,
558
00:35:15,066 --> 00:35:18,308
exactly. And it's treated, it's all treated wastewater. So
559
00:35:18,348 --> 00:35:22,149
it's treated to a secondary degree, meaning that all the organics, all
560
00:35:22,209 --> 00:35:25,897
of like the poop and urine and all nasty stuff, it's turned back
561
00:35:25,957 --> 00:35:29,939
into inorganic nitrate and ammonium.
562
00:35:30,699 --> 00:35:33,961
But still, when you pump that much nitrate and
563
00:35:34,001 --> 00:35:37,582
ammonium into the ocean, it's going to have major
564
00:35:37,662 --> 00:35:41,024
impacts on phytoplankton and primary production. And so
565
00:35:41,504 --> 00:35:45,245
my research focused on some hypothetical scenarios
566
00:35:45,305 --> 00:35:48,587
of different water treatment. And as
567
00:35:48,627 --> 00:35:51,748
we start to recycle more wastewater, how is that going
568
00:35:54,932 --> 00:35:58,715
And especially as the population increases, too. Yes. Right.
569
00:36:00,797 --> 00:36:04,441
Twenty three million people and counting. So very
570
00:36:04,481 --> 00:36:08,285
reliant. And the beaches of Southern California are
571
00:36:08,325 --> 00:36:11,828
visited more than the beaches of the entire rest of the United States combined.
572
00:36:15,233 --> 00:36:19,236
So it's like, how do we keep these beaches healthy? But
573
00:36:19,296 --> 00:36:22,519
also, we do really rely on, where else
574
00:36:22,559 --> 00:36:26,082
are we going to dispose of this wastewater? So I love
575
00:36:26,122 --> 00:36:30,185
that human ocean, those questions, I
576
00:36:30,645 --> 00:36:34,028
love. And now, especially with offshore wind
577
00:36:34,108 --> 00:36:37,250
energy becoming very prevalent all over, I
578
00:36:37,770 --> 00:36:41,885
love the spatial question of, Where
579
00:36:41,965 --> 00:36:45,189
could you do this? Where would this be smartest? Where is
580
00:36:45,250 --> 00:36:49,315
safe for marine species? These questions, I
581
00:36:49,415 --> 00:36:52,619
love to think about all the different angles. So it was
582
00:36:54,007 --> 00:36:57,128
Especially as the complexity increases, like the ocean users increase, like
583
00:36:57,148 --> 00:37:00,730
you mentioned, bringing in offshore wind power. But
584
00:37:00,770 --> 00:37:04,992
you also have fishers. You also have beach goers.
585
00:37:05,032 --> 00:37:08,353
You also have cruise ships and shipping in
586
00:37:08,413 --> 00:37:12,014
general, just trans-shipping in general. Then you have rivers.
587
00:37:12,074 --> 00:37:15,496
I think is it the Tijuana River that empties out into
588
00:37:18,337 --> 00:37:21,600
Yeah, right. And that's a river that has a lot
589
00:37:21,620 --> 00:37:25,223
of stuff in it, let's just say. Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes.
590
00:37:25,703 --> 00:37:28,886
It's a big unknown. Yeah. And it's a big
591
00:37:28,946 --> 00:37:32,209
water area, but there's a lot of people on the coast, and
592
00:37:33,069 --> 00:37:36,812
that has to be accounted for. So that's a
593
00:37:36,973 --> 00:37:40,696
really interesting thing. But not a lot of people think about it. So when you talk about
594
00:37:40,716 --> 00:37:43,798
your PhD, to even your family who are full of
595
00:37:43,838 --> 00:37:47,519
PhDs, right? Like when you talk about that, do
596
00:37:47,559 --> 00:37:50,901
they relate to eutrophication? Even friends and
597
00:37:50,921 --> 00:37:54,482
stuff like that, do they relate to that? Because when you see people
598
00:37:54,502 --> 00:37:57,624
studying oceanography, like a lot
599
00:37:57,644 --> 00:38:00,925
of oceanographers, deep sea biology these days, and with the whole
600
00:38:01,005 --> 00:38:04,447
deep sea mining and stuff, that becomes popular. Eutrophication always
601
00:38:04,467 --> 00:38:07,948
seems like, water quality always seems, even though it's super important, it's
602
00:38:07,988 --> 00:38:11,550
always at the lower end. Of of the scale when
603
00:38:11,630 --> 00:38:15,013
like when it comes to interest until like a massive algal
604
00:38:16,854 --> 00:38:20,136
Yeah Yeah, exactly exactly and I think
605
00:38:20,617 --> 00:38:24,199
with Like having grown up so I grew up about an
606
00:38:24,239 --> 00:38:27,462
hour and a half inland from LA like closer towards Palm
607
00:38:27,502 --> 00:38:31,054
Springs so Even if, you
608
00:38:31,114 --> 00:38:34,356
know, you don't go to the beach all the time, people know when it's
609
00:38:34,396 --> 00:38:37,818
like, Oh, I heard there was a red tide. Like, Oh,
610
00:38:37,878 --> 00:38:41,280
I heard there was, you know, and I do think or
611
00:38:41,320 --> 00:38:44,803
something. Yeah. Yes. People are very
612
00:38:45,263 --> 00:38:48,685
interested. I think it is. And you
613
00:38:48,725 --> 00:38:52,568
know, with my research, I moved on to understanding
614
00:38:52,608 --> 00:38:56,250
how eutrophication impacts kelp and people have so
615
00:38:56,290 --> 00:38:59,705
many questions. They're like, yeah, I saw a bunch of kelp here and
616
00:38:59,765 --> 00:39:03,367
why isn't kelp growing here anymore? And so
617
00:39:03,507 --> 00:39:06,890
I will say, and especially in the sense that
618
00:39:07,990 --> 00:39:11,873
water treatment contributes so
619
00:39:11,973 --> 00:39:15,115
much nutrients to the ocean. And it's so important for
620
00:39:15,155 --> 00:39:18,277
California. We're in South California like in a drought half the
621
00:39:18,317 --> 00:39:21,667
time. So It is really important to
622
00:39:21,707 --> 00:39:25,068
like have these conversations about what are we doing with our water? Where is
623
00:39:25,108 --> 00:39:28,290
it going? People want to know about desalination. Um,
624
00:39:29,470 --> 00:39:32,731
so I will say my, I'm grateful that my research is
625
00:39:33,132 --> 00:39:36,233
usually really well-received to the
626
00:39:36,313 --> 00:39:39,775
point where at my graduation party, I had to,
627
00:39:39,795 --> 00:39:43,356
I was like, I gave a presentation on my research
628
00:39:43,456 --> 00:39:46,858
to all my friends and family. And then I said, please, can we talk about anything
629
00:39:46,898 --> 00:39:50,261
else through us? I love the
630
00:39:50,301 --> 00:39:53,783
questions, but I have gotten so many the last, like, five
631
00:39:53,863 --> 00:39:57,085
years. But yeah, I will say it's
632
00:39:57,125 --> 00:40:00,467
well-received, especially to, as in
633
00:40:00,507 --> 00:40:04,229
Southern California, it is very progressive with their water treatment standards.
634
00:40:05,050 --> 00:40:08,472
It definitely goes far. The Ocean
635
00:40:08,532 --> 00:40:12,354
Protection Council, OPC, is part of California
636
00:40:12,374 --> 00:40:16,237
State Water Board. They're very aggressive in
637
00:40:16,457 --> 00:40:20,270
treating their water, and it has paid off. So all
638
00:40:20,310 --> 00:40:23,822
very interesting and again it's just like it all relates
639
00:40:23,942 --> 00:40:27,117
because people care. If they don't
640
00:40:27,157 --> 00:40:30,379
care about wastewater, they care about fish. Yeah.
641
00:40:30,579 --> 00:40:34,720
And the quality of the water impacts where the fish are. And
642
00:40:35,281 --> 00:40:38,482
everyone wants to know why there is stinky kelp on their beach or
643
00:40:38,522 --> 00:40:42,203
why there isn't kelp where it used to be. You know, it's like all of these questions.
644
00:40:42,283 --> 00:40:45,805
And with sharks in Southern California, they're like, what's the deal with the sharks? You
645
00:40:45,865 --> 00:40:48,986
know, and that I know less about, but I do know about the fish. And I know
646
00:40:49,006 --> 00:40:52,227
the fish are related to the primary production, which is
647
00:40:52,247 --> 00:40:55,889
really the waste water. So it all kind of comes back together. So
648
00:40:56,089 --> 00:40:59,391
usually people are like, what, like, tell me more.
649
00:41:03,333 --> 00:41:07,035
Well, and that takes me to your communication, like
650
00:41:07,055 --> 00:41:11,057
a side hustle or whatever it might be, people
651
00:41:11,157 --> 00:41:14,899
asking you questions and your ability to answer
652
00:41:14,959 --> 00:41:19,214
them in a way that's interesting for people. Mm-hmm.
653
00:41:19,535 --> 00:41:22,961
How was that like, how did you develop that skill set? Is that just sort
654
00:41:22,981 --> 00:41:26,548
of one of those things? You're like, I just enjoy telling stories and this
655
00:41:26,609 --> 00:41:29,955
is just the way it comes out as I do it yeah,
656
00:41:31,443 --> 00:41:35,385
I think the writing was on the wall. Looking back, for
657
00:41:35,445 --> 00:41:38,687
example, I had science projects in elementary and middle
658
00:41:38,707 --> 00:41:42,109
school and I would pretend to
659
00:41:42,169 --> 00:41:45,530
be an oceanographer on TV or I would
660
00:41:45,570 --> 00:41:48,952
be a TV meteorologist. I always
661
00:41:49,112 --> 00:41:52,594
loved to communicate science. I
662
00:41:52,654 --> 00:41:55,879
found it so interesting and I Always did kind of
663
00:41:55,919 --> 00:41:59,383
have a knack for it. Um, it wasn't until it
664
00:41:59,843 --> 00:42:03,507
was around kovat right when kovat was happening I had
665
00:42:03,527 --> 00:42:06,771
I just started my PhD and I was
666
00:42:06,811 --> 00:42:10,575
going to teach a class a general education class
667
00:42:10,935 --> 00:42:14,119
at UCLA on climate change and this was like
668
00:42:14,139 --> 00:42:17,634
a big class, like 400 students,
669
00:42:19,015 --> 00:42:22,356
and most of them non-majors. So most of them like com
670
00:42:22,396 --> 00:42:25,897
majors, psych majors. And frankly,
671
00:42:25,997 --> 00:42:29,118
most of them go into, and I don't know if you have
672
00:42:29,138 --> 00:42:33,120
any experience teaching a GE, but most students go into an
673
00:42:33,220 --> 00:42:37,181
oceanography class or a climate change class not knowing
674
00:42:37,301 --> 00:42:40,763
that it's going to be a lot of math and physics. Right. Right.
675
00:42:40,883 --> 00:42:43,984
I'm going to learn about polar bears and whales. And it's
676
00:42:44,024 --> 00:42:47,285
like, I Wanted to do a really good
677
00:42:47,325 --> 00:43:01,584
job teaching yeah, and so I I started
678
00:43:01,604 --> 00:43:04,687
a lecture series for my friends. And
679
00:43:04,727 --> 00:43:08,410
this was the beginning of COVID where everyone was like, doing virtual happy
680
00:43:08,430 --> 00:43:11,994
hours. And so I was like, Hey, friends,
681
00:43:12,054 --> 00:43:15,977
like, I'm going to teach you about climate change, I'm going to have one
682
00:43:16,038 --> 00:43:19,581
lecture a week, it's gonna be 30 or 45 minutes can be informal,
683
00:43:19,641 --> 00:43:22,891
and I'm gonna Yeah. So
684
00:43:22,931 --> 00:43:26,393
I practiced teaching first to
685
00:43:26,413 --> 00:43:30,195
a general audience because I knew it's so hard
686
00:43:30,315 --> 00:43:33,797
when you are deep in the science to remember that most people are
687
00:43:33,837 --> 00:43:36,898
not like I, it is the
688
00:43:36,959 --> 00:43:40,140
bane of my existence trying to get other scientists and
689
00:43:40,200 --> 00:43:43,322
faculty, you know, remember that try and
690
00:43:43,342 --> 00:43:46,864
remember a time where you didn't know anything about this and now explain
691
00:43:46,884 --> 00:43:50,061
it. Yeah. Now explain it from square one. And so with
692
00:43:50,181 --> 00:43:53,649
all of my friends from like every different, you
693
00:43:53,670 --> 00:43:57,897
know, walk of life, I would give these lectures. And
694
00:43:57,997 --> 00:44:01,779
that was super enjoyable. So that then morphed into,
695
00:44:01,799 --> 00:44:04,901
um, that actually was really fun. And then after I
696
00:44:04,941 --> 00:44:08,643
was done with my lectures, all of my friends each gave a lecture on something from
697
00:44:08,703 --> 00:44:12,065
their industry, which was, um, but
698
00:44:12,225 --> 00:44:15,627
from that, uh, lecture series, I made
699
00:44:15,647 --> 00:44:18,968
a newsletter. And so I would do a newsletter every
700
00:44:19,029 --> 00:44:22,390
like month or so related to climate change,
701
00:44:22,470 --> 00:44:25,652
oceanographic stuff. Um, I went on
702
00:44:26,112 --> 00:44:29,514
two oceanographic cruises, one with
703
00:44:30,175 --> 00:44:33,797
the go ship program, which does repeat
704
00:44:33,977 --> 00:44:37,559
cruises doing carbon, uh, measurements.
705
00:44:37,819 --> 00:44:41,241
So they go on a couple of different routes all
706
00:44:41,261 --> 00:44:44,903
around the world. And every like 10 years they
707
00:44:44,943 --> 00:44:48,359
measure all the carbonate chemistry. and see how carbon is
708
00:44:48,399 --> 00:44:51,700
changing in the ocean because it's sequestering carbon dioxide. So I
709
00:44:52,261 --> 00:44:55,442
did that and I did a lot of newsletters when I was
710
00:44:55,482 --> 00:44:58,504
on that cruise because people had so many questions. I was like, great, let me just do a
711
00:44:58,524 --> 00:45:01,625
bunch of newsletters while I'm at sea. And I did the same thing. I had
712
00:45:01,665 --> 00:45:05,487
another cruise with NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
713
00:45:05,507 --> 00:45:08,829
That one was more mapping focused. Again,
714
00:45:08,869 --> 00:45:12,191
I did a bunch of newsletters while I was doing that. But
715
00:45:12,311 --> 00:45:15,732
all the while, I was still teaching that climate change
716
00:45:15,752 --> 00:45:18,908
class at UCLA. And now in
717
00:45:18,968 --> 00:45:22,189
person, but I had so many students tell me like,
718
00:45:22,909 --> 00:45:25,950
page, you should start a tick tock. And I
719
00:45:25,990 --> 00:45:29,531
was like, I wasn't even on tick tock. Right? I
720
00:45:29,851 --> 00:45:33,433
was like, I don't know. I think I'm too old. Yeah. I
721
00:45:33,893 --> 00:45:37,514
didn't even know who's on tick tock. I figured it was like all dancing. And
722
00:45:38,614 --> 00:45:42,076
I have a girlfriend who
723
00:45:42,096 --> 00:45:45,517
I love so dearly. She makes running content. She
724
00:45:45,557 --> 00:45:48,993
was collegiate runner, and we became best friends.
725
00:45:49,193 --> 00:45:52,776
And I told her, I was like, Well, actually, I'm thinking about starting a YouTube channel.
726
00:45:53,317 --> 00:45:56,939
And she was like, Do not do that. She's like, I'm
727
00:45:57,019 --> 00:46:01,023
on YouTube, YouTube, and I'm on Tick Tock. And let me tell you, no
728
00:46:01,083 --> 00:46:04,525
one's gonna see your stuff on YouTube for years, right? You should make
729
00:46:04,545 --> 00:46:08,008
a Tick Tock. It's a long game. Yeah, she's
730
00:46:08,028 --> 00:46:11,170
like, if you want people to pay attention right now, you should make a Tick Tock. And
731
00:46:11,190 --> 00:46:14,631
I was like, Okay, so It was born from
732
00:46:14,691 --> 00:46:19,052
there. It's because she did it and then I
733
00:46:19,092 --> 00:46:23,857
still wasn't, I still couldn't believe that ocean,
734
00:46:24,277 --> 00:46:27,380
I figured oceanography was oversaturated on TikTok. I
735
00:46:27,400 --> 00:46:31,023
was like, there's gotta be great ocean people
736
00:46:31,163 --> 00:46:34,626
out there. I wasn't on it, so I didn't know who was doing, but
737
00:46:34,786 --> 00:46:38,370
I figured, I was like, ah, so I started a channel actually making some
738
00:46:38,430 --> 00:46:42,473
like undergrad college tips and
739
00:46:43,094 --> 00:46:46,138
like PhD tips in terms of like, How do you apply to a
740
00:46:46,158 --> 00:46:49,526
PhD program? How do you find a good advisor? What kind of workload
741
00:46:49,546 --> 00:46:52,933
can you expect? So I was doing that
742
00:46:53,074 --> 00:46:56,480
for about I don't know, half a year
743
00:46:58,021 --> 00:47:02,882
And I had like a modest following, I think at like 20,000, 10,000 followers
744
00:47:02,922 --> 00:47:06,143
or something, which is still, I know, I know we talk about TikTok being
745
00:47:12,265 --> 00:47:15,446
20,000. It was, it was like cool that a lot of people felt like
746
00:47:15,706 --> 00:47:18,940
they really trusted me. Um, Bob, I
747
00:47:18,980 --> 00:47:22,443
think the blonde Bob is very endearing. I think people inherently
748
00:47:22,463 --> 00:47:26,946
are like, she's not a threat. I
749
00:47:27,006 --> 00:47:30,228
honestly believe that. I've had this haircut my whole life. I'm
750
00:47:30,268 --> 00:47:34,512
like, I think this has some power. But
751
00:47:34,572 --> 00:47:37,855
yeah, and then I was still doing, but I was doing
752
00:47:37,875 --> 00:47:41,699
the separate newsletters about oceanography
753
00:47:41,719 --> 00:47:45,302
stuff and then it was one of my dad's, one of my dad's like
754
00:47:45,502 --> 00:47:48,725
old frat buddies, who I all consider to be uncles, he
755
00:47:48,805 --> 00:47:52,163
sent me an email and he was like, What is the Atlantic
756
00:47:52,243 --> 00:47:55,305
Mariana overturning circulation? And what is going on?
757
00:47:56,045 --> 00:47:59,187
And I did a whole newsletter on it. And I was like,
758
00:47:59,247 --> 00:48:02,610
let me just do the newsletters are super informal. And
759
00:48:02,630 --> 00:48:05,792
so I was like, let me also just film a tick tock. And that tick tock, like blew up, I
760
00:48:05,812 --> 00:48:09,774
got like a couple million views. And I was like, Oh, okay.
761
00:48:09,894 --> 00:48:13,137
Do you want to hear about it? Yeah, I guess I
762
00:48:13,157 --> 00:48:17,287
have the right expertise. And from there, it was, um, so
763
00:48:17,567 --> 00:48:20,729
fun, so fun to put the videos together. And it
764
00:48:20,769 --> 00:48:24,771
still, it just blew my mind every time that I was like, how
765
00:48:24,791 --> 00:48:28,173
are hundreds of thousands or millions of people watching this? I'm so glad
766
00:48:28,213 --> 00:48:31,535
they are. Um, but yeah, it
767
00:48:31,575 --> 00:48:35,017
was just like, it just fit very well. And
768
00:48:35,177 --> 00:48:38,959
again, a lot of it I think goes back to that teaching experience that
769
00:48:38,999 --> 00:48:42,681
I had at the university level where it's like, how
770
00:48:42,961 --> 00:48:46,323
do I get these college freshmen that are looking at me like
771
00:48:46,787 --> 00:48:49,891
they want to die when I just told them how much physics they need to
772
00:48:49,951 --> 00:48:54,377
learn, you know, like these intense equations to understand the
773
00:48:54,537 --> 00:48:57,841
Earth. And I'm like, no, stay with me. Like, this is
774
00:48:58,001 --> 00:49:01,546
actually really cool. I promise we can get through this.
775
00:49:02,047 --> 00:49:05,321
Let me make an analogy. And
776
00:49:05,341 --> 00:49:08,625
from there on out, it was like, yeah, it was it was
777
00:49:08,885 --> 00:49:12,689
a good fit. And honestly, it really
778
00:49:12,729 --> 00:49:16,553
blew up the last year of my Ph.D., my final
779
00:49:16,633 --> 00:49:20,277
year, and it provided such a nice reprieve.
780
00:49:21,163 --> 00:49:24,445
At times, because you're right, you're focused on writing at that point.
781
00:49:26,907 --> 00:49:30,109
It's just stressful and you know
782
00:49:30,189 --> 00:49:33,491
it's going to get done, but you don't feel like you can do it. And,
783
00:49:33,811 --> 00:49:37,033
you know, every once in a while I'd be like, what if I make
784
00:49:37,193 --> 00:49:41,456
a TikTok about thermal expansion of water? OK, let
785
00:49:41,476 --> 00:49:44,537
me do that, you know, and I'd like take that, you know, take an hour to
786
00:49:44,778 --> 00:49:48,080
like dally a little bit, but it ended up being like
787
00:49:48,180 --> 00:49:52,155
very motivating and fun for me to do. So yeah,
788
00:49:57,493 --> 00:50:01,056
With TikTok, it's almost like a style that people have, right?
789
00:50:01,116 --> 00:50:04,779
Some people will have dancing videos. That's probably when
790
00:50:04,999 --> 00:50:09,982
first people think about TikTok, they think of dancing videos. But
791
00:50:10,002 --> 00:50:13,465
there's others who, there's political TikTok, there's science
792
00:50:13,525 --> 00:50:16,948
TikTok, there's book talk, I think they call it. There's all
793
00:50:16,988 --> 00:50:20,270
these different categories. And everybody has, within
794
00:50:20,310 --> 00:50:24,196
each category, they have their own style. And lately, like
795
00:50:24,236 --> 00:50:27,558
if I go back to your last probably like 30 videos, it's
796
00:50:27,598 --> 00:50:30,881
very much like you need to learn about this. Like
797
00:50:30,941 --> 00:50:34,043
you need to know, have you heard of this? And
798
00:50:34,063 --> 00:50:37,266
it's like that nice hook where you're just like, oh no, I haven't heard of this.
799
00:50:37,846 --> 00:50:41,829
I need to know about this. And then you go into a lot of detail in
800
00:50:41,869 --> 00:50:45,932
your stories. Like useful information that
801
00:50:46,152 --> 00:50:49,570
really makes the story interesting. How
802
00:50:49,630 --> 00:50:53,252
long did it take for you to realize like, this
803
00:50:53,372 --> 00:50:57,153
is like a fun formula for you to to like use,
804
00:50:57,213 --> 00:51:00,435
but also a winning formula to in terms of
805
00:51:00,475 --> 00:51:03,916
like getting people to view and watch and enjoy
806
00:51:05,537 --> 00:51:10,019
Yeah, that, um, it really hit from
807
00:51:10,059 --> 00:51:13,501
the first, like from I made a tick tock about,
808
00:51:13,521 --> 00:51:17,122
so there was research released on the Atlantic meridional
809
00:51:17,182 --> 00:51:21,224
overturning circulation, and that the flow
810
00:51:21,364 --> 00:51:24,685
of warm water from the Gulf Stream up to the
811
00:51:24,785 --> 00:51:30,306
Arctic region and how it subducts underneath the
812
00:51:30,406 --> 00:51:33,987
North Atlantic. And a report came out about how
813
00:51:34,207 --> 00:51:38,288
it's potentially shutting down, how it's very concerning. And
814
00:51:38,889 --> 00:51:42,030
I was like, OK, let me make a
815
00:51:42,070 --> 00:51:46,119
TikTok on this. If I say Atlantic Meridional
816
00:51:46,179 --> 00:51:50,263
Overturning Circulation, swipe immediately. I was like, OK,
817
00:51:50,283 --> 00:51:53,466
no. So I forget what I
818
00:51:53,486 --> 00:51:56,689
took a screenshot of the headline that I had seen that
819
00:51:57,670 --> 00:52:01,533
it was on like CNN or something. It was like a very dramatic headline.
820
00:52:01,553 --> 00:52:05,156
It was like Ocean Circulation May Shut Down and
821
00:52:05,356 --> 00:52:08,900
da da da da da. And I started to tick tock like
822
00:52:09,858 --> 00:52:13,119
It's a green screen and my face was on it. And
823
00:52:13,259 --> 00:52:16,840
which is like, the way it started was a lot of people's initial
824
00:52:16,860 --> 00:52:20,681
reaction, which would be just like, Oh, no, like,
825
00:52:20,841 --> 00:52:24,161
I guess I waited a second. Yeah, so I
826
00:52:24,201 --> 00:52:27,862
waited a second for people to be able to read the headline. Yeah, which
827
00:52:27,922 --> 00:52:31,083
is crazy. And like, you know, if it worked for
828
00:52:31,103 --> 00:52:34,344
the article? Yeah, it'll work for my tick tock, right? Like people
829
00:52:34,384 --> 00:52:37,745
will be invested. So I read that I was like, Oh,
830
00:52:37,865 --> 00:52:42,403
no. And then I was like, Here's what this means. Let's
831
00:52:42,463 --> 00:52:47,906
break down why this is an alarming thing. So
832
00:52:47,926 --> 00:52:52,409
that format worked great. And my
833
00:52:52,449 --> 00:52:55,971
whole style is talk a little bit, green screen,
834
00:52:56,271 --> 00:53:00,674
point to figure, talk, point, show. I've
835
00:53:00,714 --> 00:53:04,516
always been a very visual learner, but also too,
836
00:53:05,176 --> 00:53:08,838
again, with teaching, I find that as little text
837
00:53:10,550 --> 00:53:13,872
as possible. Pictures, like
838
00:53:14,472 --> 00:53:17,874
tell a visual story. TikTok is a visual app.
839
00:53:18,574 --> 00:53:21,876
So I knew that obviously what I had, what
840
00:53:21,936 --> 00:53:25,057
I said had to be engaging, but also I wanted to
841
00:53:25,077 --> 00:53:28,285
be able to be like, Look at me, now look at this, now
842
00:53:28,345 --> 00:53:31,387
look at me. And I didn't know at the time it was a
843
00:53:31,427 --> 00:53:35,369
winning formula, but after I've grown
844
00:53:35,409 --> 00:53:38,711
in popularity, people are like, oh, did you know? Yeah, it's so smart
845
00:53:38,731 --> 00:53:42,854
of you to show your face because people like to see your face online
846
00:53:42,894 --> 00:53:46,015
because it makes them feel like they know you better. And it's like all
847
00:53:46,056 --> 00:53:49,618
these things that I was just doing, just giving
848
00:53:49,658 --> 00:53:54,400
these sentence, sentence, sentence. Changing
849
00:53:54,420 --> 00:53:58,001
the pictures. I didn't realize what I was doing was a winning thing
850
00:53:58,061 --> 00:54:02,002
to do until I'd made like a couple Good
851
00:54:02,062 --> 00:54:06,243
videos, which I enjoyed and I was like, oh This
852
00:54:06,283 --> 00:54:09,524
seems to be working. Um, but I will say yeah,
853
00:54:09,544 --> 00:54:13,365
the hardest part of my videos is the hook is
854
00:54:13,385 --> 00:54:17,386
like, yeah where do I begin because I find
855
00:54:17,486 --> 00:54:21,227
everything interesting, but there's so many
856
00:54:21,668 --> 00:54:25,244
crazy fascinating stories about the ocean and the atmosphere
857
00:54:25,264 --> 00:54:28,985
and our climate that I could tell. But the
858
00:54:29,145 --> 00:54:32,366
hook on TikTok, it's like you lose people in the first three
859
00:54:32,767 --> 00:54:36,148
Well, people are just scrolling with their thumb, right? Like, if that, if
860
00:54:36,188 --> 00:54:39,589
that. It's almost like half a second. They don't like what they see. If something
861
00:54:39,649 --> 00:54:42,786
on the page doesn't capture them. You know like
862
00:54:42,826 --> 00:54:46,027
I've watched videos on just even YouTube shorts where people are like if
863
00:54:46,067 --> 00:54:49,490
you zoom in right away then people start to you know that that catches the
864
00:54:49,690 --> 00:54:53,092
eye if you Walk into the scene that catches the eye
865
00:54:53,292 --> 00:54:56,734
or something pops up that catches the eye Something really has
866
00:54:56,774 --> 00:55:00,076
to catch because if not, they're just I'm off to the next video without
867
00:55:00,396 --> 00:55:03,698
thinking of the rest, you know Yeah, so that's that's the art because
868
00:55:03,778 --> 00:55:07,320
once I start talking I can tell a lot of stories but
869
00:55:10,022 --> 00:55:13,204
Most successful videos the most successful is that I figured out the
870
00:55:13,224 --> 00:55:16,826
hook I like knew the way in and it played my cards, right?
871
00:55:19,207 --> 00:55:22,869
No not easy to do at all Like
872
00:55:23,129 --> 00:55:26,310
and when you start to look at some of your videos like you said to
873
00:55:26,350 --> 00:55:29,592
look and you're like I've got some good views on
874
00:55:29,652 --> 00:55:33,474
here like there, you know, yeah, I'm looking at them now and
875
00:55:33,514 --> 00:55:36,750
your average you're like averaging a At
876
00:55:36,830 --> 00:55:40,673
least, you know, in the thousands, sometimes multiple thousands,
877
00:55:40,713 --> 00:55:44,335
like I'm looking at 45, you know, 16, 70. And every
878
00:55:45,175 --> 00:55:49,198
once in a while, you just start 2.5 million. You know,
879
00:55:49,238 --> 00:55:53,401
you have one to 7.2 million. You know, it's
880
00:55:53,641 --> 00:55:57,763
insane to think about. How people
881
00:55:57,803 --> 00:56:01,526
like how many people are watching these videos, I
882
00:56:04,511 --> 00:56:08,836
And you know the funny thing is, and I tell this to my friends all the time, I've now,
883
00:56:08,856 --> 00:56:12,400
I'm now like whatever, a published author. I have like a couple first
884
00:56:12,480 --> 00:56:16,124
author papers for my PhD. No one is
885
00:56:16,164 --> 00:56:21,379
going to read my dissertation cover to cover, other than me. Millions
886
00:56:21,419 --> 00:56:25,661
of people will watch my TikTok. And
887
00:56:25,901 --> 00:56:29,542
for all the academics that are hesitant with
888
00:56:29,582 --> 00:56:32,823
science communication, it's like, OK, I understand it's hard
889
00:56:32,863 --> 00:56:37,005
teaching old dog new tricks, but I'm going
890
00:56:37,025 --> 00:56:40,366
to get maybe 1,000 eyes on my best
891
00:56:40,466 --> 00:56:43,753
paper at the end of the year, maybe. If it
892
00:56:43,913 --> 00:56:48,095
blows up, but I just like talk
893
00:56:48,115 --> 00:56:51,696
to four million people about Atlantic
894
00:56:51,736 --> 00:56:55,197
marine overturning circulation, which I never
895
00:56:55,257 --> 00:56:58,419
in my wildest dreams would have thought. And I think also the
896
00:56:58,459 --> 00:57:02,080
cool thing about it too, that I definitely don't take for granted is
897
00:57:02,600 --> 00:57:05,841
that it's reaching so many people that do
898
00:57:05,921 --> 00:57:09,048
not know about the ocean. Like it's so easy to
899
00:57:09,088 --> 00:57:12,531
forget. I grew up in Southern California. I've always loved the ocean.
900
00:57:12,551 --> 00:57:15,794
I'm in a scientific family, but most of
901
00:57:16,075 --> 00:57:19,218
our world, most of the United States does not live. I mean,
902
00:57:19,258 --> 00:57:22,341
well, there's statistics about most of the world. It's like 30% of the
903
00:57:22,361 --> 00:57:25,684
world population lives on a coastline, but you know, but
904
00:57:25,744 --> 00:57:29,007
most of us do not know the ocean though. Yeah, exactly like
905
00:57:29,027 --> 00:57:33,549
the educational background and I think a lot of scientists Assume
906
00:57:33,569 --> 00:57:37,231
prior knowledge or like they've been in their bubble
907
00:57:37,251 --> 00:57:41,012
for so long even when it comes to like climate change communication Like
908
00:57:41,172 --> 00:57:44,334
obviously it affects everybody but let's not forget a lot of
909
00:57:44,374 --> 00:57:47,815
people first of all haven't been in school for a long time Yeah, so
910
00:57:47,835 --> 00:57:51,431
you're trying to tell them about Earth's like retaining
911
00:57:51,611 --> 00:57:55,274
its long wave radiation. Stop right there. You lost
912
00:57:55,835 --> 00:57:59,337
95% of the population when you said that. Um, so
913
00:57:59,377 --> 00:58:02,980
when I see like these views on my videos, I'm like, Oh,
914
00:58:03,000 --> 00:58:06,642
this is so cool. And my goal too,
915
00:58:06,743 --> 00:58:09,945
is not just to like have people walk, like, obviously it's
916
00:58:09,965 --> 00:58:13,848
great to have people watch and people like ocean people will
917
00:58:14,008 --> 00:58:18,554
continue to drink the Kool-Aid. But what really gets me is when people are like, Not
918
00:58:18,694 --> 00:58:21,897
ocean people, you know, they grew up there like in Indiana or
919
00:58:21,957 --> 00:58:25,701
there some landlocked country and they're like This
920
00:58:25,781 --> 00:58:29,345
is so interesting. I never knew this about the ocean that to me
921
00:58:29,405 --> 00:58:32,749
is like That's really cool because I could
922
00:58:33,029 --> 00:58:37,097
yeah, I could I the people that drink the Kool-Aid drink the Kool-Aid and that's great but
923
00:58:37,237 --> 00:58:40,659
that's the crazy thing about TikTok that's like I could reach
924
00:58:40,839 --> 00:58:44,041
a random person in random country that just
925
00:58:44,261 --> 00:58:47,602
learned something about the ocean and maybe that sparked a little something in
926
00:58:47,662 --> 00:58:51,084
them to just be more vigilant of their climate,
927
00:58:51,124 --> 00:58:54,626
their environment, the ocean around them like that is
928
00:58:56,754 --> 00:59:00,136
And it is. It's really interesting, especially like it's an opportunity for
929
00:59:00,196 --> 00:59:03,757
education. But again, you do it in a very entertaining way. You
930
00:59:03,797 --> 00:59:07,039
know, you feel I feel good after I listen to these
931
00:59:07,479 --> 00:59:10,680
these episodes, you know, like this. And I know like you're like, oh, that's
932
00:59:10,700 --> 00:59:13,841
what I want people to do. But, you know, when you talk about oceans, a lot
933
00:59:13,861 --> 00:59:17,503
of the times there's a lot of doom and gloom when we talk about oceans. Right.
934
00:59:17,543 --> 00:59:20,744
Like, you know, you can see the big documentaries that have been, you
935
00:59:20,784 --> 00:59:24,126
know, Emmy award winning documentaries. There's a lot of doom and gloom. I
936
00:59:24,166 --> 00:59:27,879
mean, I think David Attenborough had the
937
00:59:27,939 --> 00:59:31,200
world crying when he put out Blue Planet 2 and that
938
00:59:31,400 --> 00:59:35,242
poor sperm whale calf died of plastic pollution
939
00:59:39,504 --> 00:59:43,586
What are you doing to us? But
940
00:59:43,626 --> 00:59:46,948
when you are able to connect things that
941
00:59:46,988 --> 00:59:50,690
are interesting to people. We were talking about this before we pressed record. I was just watching
942
00:59:51,430 --> 00:59:54,772
your video on the Resolute Desk in the White House.
943
00:59:55,521 --> 00:59:58,924
never would have thought that had an ocean connection to
944
00:59:58,984 --> 01:00:02,566
it. And it's not directly with the ocean, but it's an important
945
01:00:02,927 --> 01:00:06,369
part of history, not only American history, but Canadian history,
946
01:00:06,589 --> 01:00:09,872
of people trying to find that Northwest Passage. And you get your
947
01:00:09,912 --> 01:00:13,094
map fix in there, and you talk about a different map, and you
948
01:00:13,134 --> 01:00:16,417
have those. I think it's really good. I think what you're able
949
01:00:16,477 --> 01:00:19,799
to do, and this is what Randy Olson has been talking about for years. He's
950
01:00:19,819 --> 01:00:23,262
a big science communication guy in marine science.
951
01:00:23,943 --> 01:00:27,346
And it's all about getting people's emotions involved. Getting not
952
01:00:27,386 --> 01:00:31,290
just necessarily the bad emotions, like the sad emotions, but getting the curiosity
953
01:00:31,330 --> 01:00:34,634
emotion. You got some good humor in there too. You
954
01:00:34,654 --> 01:00:39,098
got some funny bits that you do as well. But
955
01:00:39,238 --> 01:00:42,742
it's really great that you're able to Communicate that
956
01:00:42,902 --> 01:00:46,404
and it's not just straight-up facts. It's here's facts
957
01:00:46,444 --> 01:00:49,726
in an interesting way Did you ever think about this or did you know about
958
01:00:49,786 --> 01:00:53,008
this? And I've seen some creators do that, too there's another
959
01:00:53,048 --> 01:00:56,851
creator who does a lot about like the world wars and like historical wars
960
01:00:57,311 --> 01:01:00,973
and he has this way of like Really getting into
961
01:01:01,073 --> 01:01:04,375
it and he always starts did you know about this and did you
962
01:01:04,475 --> 01:01:07,938
know about it? It's just like and people like oh, this is really really
963
01:01:07,998 --> 01:01:11,114
interesting. I Yeah, yeah, it's cool to
964
01:01:11,234 --> 01:01:14,657
do that kind of stuff, but there's a lot of work involved in
965
01:01:14,697 --> 01:01:19,139
putting these videos together You can't do this in like five minutes Give
966
01:01:19,179 --> 01:01:22,321
me an average. I know it probably varies. But yeah,
967
01:01:22,381 --> 01:01:25,463
how long do you spend? With these is this a
968
01:01:27,524 --> 01:01:31,687
Yeah, so This is a great question. So I'll
969
01:01:31,707 --> 01:01:35,109
take you through the whole process because now I have like a whole way
970
01:01:35,169 --> 01:01:39,610
of doing it. Um, I will Either
971
01:01:39,730 --> 01:01:42,891
think of a question or someone will ask me a question. For
972
01:01:42,931 --> 01:01:46,751
example, like the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation.
973
01:01:46,811 --> 01:01:49,952
Someone will be like, what the heck is that? So I'll
974
01:01:49,972 --> 01:01:54,113
think of a question or someone will ask a question in the comments. I had
975
01:01:54,133 --> 01:01:57,653
a really popular one about what
976
01:01:58,254 --> 01:02:01,374
is the bottom of the sea floor? How deep is the sand? And I
977
01:02:01,394 --> 01:02:04,735
was like, oh, actually, it's not sand. It's dead
978
01:02:04,775 --> 01:02:09,446
organic matter. question and
979
01:02:09,646 --> 01:02:12,888
then I'll put together like the key. I'll break
980
01:02:12,929 --> 01:02:16,671
it down in terms of like what science, what physics and
981
01:02:16,711 --> 01:02:20,534
chemistry does a person need to know to appreciate how
982
01:02:20,594 --> 01:02:24,336
complex this is. Maybe they need to know about
983
01:02:24,956 --> 01:02:28,599
how organic matter decomposes. Maybe they need to know about
984
01:02:29,275 --> 01:02:32,618
how there's no light in the ocean. So I think about like, what are all the key
985
01:02:32,678 --> 01:02:36,061
facts that go into truly understanding this?
986
01:02:36,882 --> 01:02:40,806
Um, I have to find some decent figures that
987
01:02:40,846 --> 01:02:44,089
doesn't take too long. Um, but I'll
988
01:02:44,149 --> 01:02:47,292
make one sheet that has all the
989
01:02:47,332 --> 01:02:51,496
pictures that I would like to show and
990
01:02:51,636 --> 01:02:54,863
I'll just screenshot all the pictures. And then I think about, How
991
01:02:54,903 --> 01:02:58,264
am I going to say this? But what takes a long time is thinking of the hook, for
992
01:02:58,324 --> 01:03:01,926
sure. Yeah, and then
993
01:03:01,946 --> 01:03:05,847
filming it never takes more than 30 minutes, 20 minutes,
994
01:03:06,087 --> 01:03:09,548
30 minutes. I will say, I have a huge
995
01:03:09,648 --> 01:03:13,550
depth of prior knowledge, so there's very little that I really
996
01:03:13,610 --> 01:03:17,785
need to research when it comes to true science questions. I
997
01:03:17,925 --> 01:03:21,429
do love maritime history and naval history, and
998
01:03:21,449 --> 01:03:24,813
I think it's ocean exploration. I think that's a really important and cool
999
01:03:24,853 --> 01:03:28,317
way to bring people into oceanography is to
1000
01:03:28,337 --> 01:03:31,500
help us all appreciate how little we
1001
01:03:31,540 --> 01:03:34,663
know about the ocean, how long we have tried to
1002
01:03:34,703 --> 01:03:38,166
learn about it. So those take
1003
01:03:38,206 --> 01:03:41,307
a little bit more time, but I live and
1004
01:03:41,347 --> 01:03:44,628
breathe. I just finished a book about cod. I'm now
1005
01:03:44,708 --> 01:03:48,369
reading a book about how the US government in
1006
01:03:48,389 --> 01:03:52,550
the Cold War invested billions into oceanography. I'm always
1007
01:03:52,610 --> 01:03:55,691
reading things about the oceans to build up the
1008
01:03:55,731 --> 01:03:59,012
knowledge base and to find like, oh, I should tell people about this.
1009
01:03:59,172 --> 01:04:02,873
Yeah. So from start to finish, I'll
1010
01:04:02,933 --> 01:04:06,334
have a couple ideas brewing for
1011
01:04:07,163 --> 01:04:10,526
couple weeks at a time. But truthfully, the best
1012
01:04:10,586 --> 01:04:14,810
ideas and the best videos do come to me in a flash where
1013
01:04:14,990 --> 01:04:18,253
I'm like, Oh, uh, I need to tell the story
1014
01:04:18,293 --> 01:04:21,656
right now. For example, I've always been fascinated with
1015
01:04:21,696 --> 01:04:24,859
how Robert Ballard found the Titanic. Such a
1016
01:04:24,879 --> 01:04:28,122
cool story. Most people don't know that he was like actually looking for
1017
01:04:28,302 --> 01:04:32,111
remnants of nuclear submarines that had been lost from cold war. I
1018
01:04:32,131 --> 01:04:36,572
think that's such a cool story. It's always been in my head, but then like
1019
01:04:36,912 --> 01:04:40,213
I didn't know how do I bring people into that? And it
1020
01:04:40,253 --> 01:04:43,694
was the day before Thanksgiving and I was with my boyfriend's
1021
01:04:43,734 --> 01:04:47,455
family and they're asking me all these like great questions about oceanography
1022
01:04:47,495 --> 01:04:51,136
and stuff. And then it just came to me. I was like,
1023
01:04:52,116 --> 01:04:55,337
Oh, I should just like do this dumb hook where
1024
01:04:55,397 --> 01:04:58,518
I say that you should talk about this at Thanksgiving. Like I was
1025
01:04:58,558 --> 01:05:01,929
like, This is what you're going to talk about this Thanksgiving. And
1026
01:05:01,949 --> 01:05:05,832
that video got like three million views because people
1027
01:05:05,872 --> 01:05:09,075
were like, what? And then I'm like, the
1028
01:05:09,095 --> 01:05:13,018
Titanic sank, right? And so like, yeah,
1029
01:05:13,038 --> 01:05:16,381
but cover to cover, it'll take anywhere between like,
1030
01:05:17,002 --> 01:05:20,625
if it's a brilliant flash, it'll take an hour. If it's
1031
01:05:23,978 --> 01:05:27,260
Yeah, I can just imagine that Thanksgiving one just like
1032
01:05:27,340 --> 01:05:30,463
so yeah, you know the Titanic sank Did you guys know this like and
1033
01:05:30,483 --> 01:05:33,665
then I'll go through the story That's I feel like that's one of
1034
01:05:33,705 --> 01:05:36,867
the things that you just like that comes out of nowhere Like why would people want
1035
01:05:38,408 --> 01:05:41,931
Yeah, I'll stay Because if I started if
1036
01:05:41,991 --> 01:05:45,473
I started my videos being like let me tell you the history of
1037
01:05:46,134 --> 01:05:49,456
The discovery of the Titanic like yeah, I'm gonna keep the history nerds,
1038
01:05:53,540 --> 01:05:56,922
Like, how am I gonna swing this around? Yeah, and
1039
01:05:56,962 --> 01:06:00,684
do so in an exciting way too. Getting back to your point about my
1040
01:06:00,764 --> 01:06:04,386
attitude and my videos, I think I find
1041
01:06:05,267 --> 01:06:08,929
the gloom and doom, although definitely
1042
01:06:09,009 --> 01:06:12,471
warranted sometimes, right? It is heavy stuff
1043
01:06:12,631 --> 01:06:16,193
and it's concerning things. I
1044
01:06:16,933 --> 01:06:20,628
think about this a lot, which is that it's
1045
01:06:20,788 --> 01:06:24,552
not fear to a certain degree is not a
1046
01:06:24,632 --> 01:06:28,555
good motivational tool. And I,
1047
01:06:28,695 --> 01:06:31,838
so when I was at the second year of my PhD, the
1048
01:06:31,878 --> 01:06:35,121
first year of my PhD, I took a class that
1049
01:06:35,141 --> 01:06:38,945
was really interesting as a graduate level class on how
1050
01:06:39,185 --> 01:06:43,549
true leaders in the environmental or sustainability movements
1051
01:06:44,290 --> 01:06:48,152
have like, how do they do a good job? Because
1052
01:06:49,053 --> 01:06:53,115
from a marketing standpoint, climate change got
1053
01:06:53,155 --> 01:06:56,998
off on a bad foot. The
1054
01:06:57,078 --> 01:07:00,400
analogy was compared to like the space race. Let's
1055
01:07:00,420 --> 01:07:03,842
think about the space race for a second. That motivated all of America.
1056
01:07:04,543 --> 01:07:07,764
Like the public approval of spending billions of
1057
01:07:07,784 --> 01:07:10,906
dollars to send a man to space, which like I'm a
1058
01:07:12,026 --> 01:07:15,248
And it was unheard of at that point. Like it was like, can we really do this? Yeah,
1059
01:07:16,768 --> 01:07:20,710
Everyone was motivated. I was like, yeah, this is a crazy scientific
1060
01:07:20,770 --> 01:07:24,692
challenge to guest and public approval widespread.
1061
01:07:25,572 --> 01:07:29,614
Now I think about that all the time. Like getting
1062
01:07:29,634 --> 01:07:33,543
people excited is not for nothing. And even, You
1063
01:07:33,603 --> 01:07:37,305
know, I could paint all of my stuff in a way scarier light.
1064
01:07:37,986 --> 01:07:41,148
And even still, some people sometimes people are like, Why are you smiling when
1065
01:07:41,168 --> 01:07:44,730
you like say all this heavy stuff? But
1066
01:07:44,790 --> 01:07:48,292
I do think it's like, well, I don't want to, I don't think freaking
1067
01:07:48,332 --> 01:07:51,714
people out is the answer. I think getting people to appreciate like,
1068
01:07:55,016 --> 01:07:58,459
No, this is a big problem, but also here's here
1069
01:07:58,499 --> 01:08:02,182
why the complexity of this are so interesting. And maybe that inspires
1070
01:08:02,222 --> 01:08:05,405
you to just learn more. I think
1071
01:08:05,505 --> 01:08:09,188
learning is like the start of actually making change happen.
1072
01:08:09,208 --> 01:08:12,490
Yeah. But yeah, I mean, you can't market
1073
01:08:12,591 --> 01:08:15,993
everything in a positive light. I'm not saying like the positive thing.
1074
01:08:16,033 --> 01:08:19,056
It's not fun like the space race. But I
1075
01:08:19,576 --> 01:08:22,679
do go back to that all the time when I'm making my content. I'm like, how do
1076
01:08:22,719 --> 01:08:26,200
I talk about something that's like a little bit the Atlanta Mariano overturning
1077
01:08:26,220 --> 01:08:29,453
circulation. That's scary. That would be really freaky if that shut
1078
01:08:29,493 --> 01:08:32,554
down. But instead of saying that, I'm
1079
01:08:32,574 --> 01:08:36,134
going to say, this is a really interesting, complex
1080
01:08:36,215 --> 01:08:39,595
phenomenon that goes on in our climate, and you
1081
01:08:39,635 --> 01:08:42,736
should know what it does. Instead of if you want to get it.
1082
01:08:42,756 --> 01:08:45,956
Instead of just being fearful that somebody's thing is going to stop and the world is going
1083
01:08:46,936 --> 01:08:50,397
Yes. Yes. Yes. Because I feel like that kind of communication has
1084
01:08:51,357 --> 01:08:55,138
only gotten more polarized, as with everything, where
1085
01:08:55,178 --> 01:08:58,561
it's like, I can't believe you don't care about this. This is so bad. And
1086
01:08:58,581 --> 01:09:01,965
then the other side being like, well, you know, this isn't
1087
01:09:02,025 --> 01:09:05,109
our fault. Why are you saying the world is an ending data that I'm like, how
1088
01:09:05,149 --> 01:09:08,353
do we lower the volume? Yeah, I'd be like, talk about
1089
01:09:08,373 --> 01:09:11,677
why this is interesting. People can draw their own conclusions and
1090
01:09:14,210 --> 01:09:17,612
For sure. And especially if you're just educating, here's the process. Here's
1091
01:09:17,652 --> 01:09:20,955
how it works. And here's what people are saying is slowing
1092
01:09:20,975 --> 01:09:24,998
down and what that means. And then you can just
1093
01:09:25,038 --> 01:09:28,220
explain it a little bit more instead of, I mean, that headline was
1094
01:09:28,260 --> 01:09:31,562
fearful. I remember that headline coming. It wasn't only on CNN. It
1095
01:09:33,283 --> 01:09:36,746
Everywhere. Yeah. And that headline seems to come up every once in a while. It's
1096
01:09:38,787 --> 01:09:42,090
Every time a new study comes out, they're like, let's swipe this
1097
01:09:42,210 --> 01:09:45,631
up. scary the crap out of everybody, which
1098
01:09:46,111 --> 01:09:49,492
again, it's like I, you know, and part of it too is like you
1099
01:09:49,552 --> 01:09:52,993
can't, I don't believe scientists can be frustrated at people for
1100
01:09:53,053 --> 01:09:56,194
not having the correct amount of empathy for a
1101
01:09:56,234 --> 01:09:59,775
problem if they didn't educate people in the first place. Like
1102
01:10:00,095 --> 01:10:03,216
you can't, you know, you need to meet people in the
1103
01:10:03,256 --> 01:10:06,497
middle. And if you're not going to, then I don't think you have a right to
1104
01:10:06,537 --> 01:10:10,067
be so frustrated because not everyone got a PhD in
1105
01:10:10,527 --> 01:10:13,692
climate science you know so you need to like meet somewhere in
1106
01:10:13,712 --> 01:10:17,237
the middle and I think the education is the first step so it's I so
1107
01:10:17,317 --> 01:10:20,582
enjoy being here at this point where I can like help
1108
01:10:21,535 --> 01:10:24,817
Well, I'll tell you, we love it. I'm gonna say that
1109
01:10:24,957 --> 01:10:28,139
from your audience as a representative from your audience, not that
1110
01:10:28,159 --> 01:10:31,260
I represent your audience, loves it. And then you can tell just by the
1111
01:10:31,320 --> 01:10:34,482
views and the consistent views that you're getting and the increased views that you're
1112
01:10:34,502 --> 01:10:37,964
getting on a regular basis. It's just absolutely wonderful to
1113
01:10:38,004 --> 01:10:41,205
watch you work, to be able to... you know, talk about
1114
01:10:41,265 --> 01:10:44,366
science in the way that you do. It's so much fun. Like I said, I'm a
1115
01:10:44,446 --> 01:10:48,026
huge, huge fan. And like just hearing your PhD and
1116
01:10:48,106 --> 01:10:51,547
hearing the enthusiasm that you have for science in
1117
01:10:51,647 --> 01:10:55,308
general and science for eutrophication and sort
1118
01:10:55,328 --> 01:10:58,668
of coastal eutrophication, I'm looking forward to seeing what you're
1119
01:10:58,788 --> 01:11:02,249
able to do and what you're going to be able to do with the next job
1120
01:11:02,289 --> 01:11:05,589
that you have. You know, you just finished your PhD like three months
1121
01:11:09,911 --> 01:11:13,561
And so I'm going to ask the fun questions, like
1122
01:11:17,402 --> 01:11:24,024
I think
1123
01:11:24,824 --> 01:11:28,385
Um, I know for a fact
1124
01:11:28,586 --> 01:11:32,167
that I think my, my skills, you know, most people
1125
01:11:32,507 --> 01:11:35,548
that know me personally, they're like, so you're going to be a
1126
01:11:35,608 --> 01:11:38,708
professor, right? Um, like, Oh, so you're going to
1127
01:11:38,809 --> 01:11:42,550
teach for the rest of your life, which I mean, in a perfect world,
1128
01:11:42,950 --> 01:11:46,319
if I could just make interesting tech talks, like I'd
1129
01:11:46,339 --> 01:11:49,562
be so happy doing that. But as of right now, it
1130
01:11:49,582 --> 01:11:52,846
doesn't really pay the bills. And I do want to
1131
01:11:52,926 --> 01:11:56,370
put my efforts to work on
1132
01:11:56,390 --> 01:11:59,974
a specific project. So for example, I've been really interested
1133
01:12:00,014 --> 01:12:03,445
in offshore wind. really interested in offshore wind. I think that
1134
01:12:03,505 --> 01:12:07,248
is the direction. Energy is critical to everybody.
1135
01:12:07,268 --> 01:12:10,470
We will run out of fossil fuel. How do
1136
01:12:10,490 --> 01:12:13,793
we find a good way to use ocean as an energy
1137
01:12:13,833 --> 01:12:16,936
resource without like causing any detrimental impacts? I
1138
01:12:16,996 --> 01:12:20,278
am so fascinated with that. So for example, like an
1139
01:12:20,378 --> 01:12:24,542
ideal job I applied for a couple months ago was
1140
01:12:24,782 --> 01:12:28,125
offshore wind environmental expert. Like I would love
1141
01:12:28,165 --> 01:12:31,577
to help you know, site offshore wind farms, I'd
1142
01:12:31,597 --> 01:12:35,685
love to be there for the full process and understand the oceanography,
1143
01:12:39,594 --> 01:12:42,956
Even just spatial analysis of how to locate them. Yeah.
1144
01:12:43,217 --> 01:12:46,339
Yes, exactly. You know, how far can you be from shore? Will the
1145
01:12:46,379 --> 01:12:49,501
other turbines interact with each other? Do they interact with any
1146
01:12:54,264 --> 01:12:57,866
Exactly. I don't want to interact with fishing. So those questions fascinate
1147
01:12:57,886 --> 01:13:01,189
me. I'd love to do something like that. Yeah. That's
1148
01:13:01,209 --> 01:13:05,271
where my aim is right now. So currently I'm living in Boulder, Colorado.
1149
01:13:10,255 --> 01:13:13,541
I loved Southern California, but I spent pretty much my entire life
1150
01:13:13,581 --> 01:13:17,209
there. I like grew up there. I went to UCSB, I went to UCLA,
1151
01:13:17,249 --> 01:13:20,431
I've lived in San Diego, and I just wanted to see
1152
01:13:20,472 --> 01:13:23,874
something new. Boulder, Colorado has the
1153
01:13:24,395 --> 01:13:27,777
National Renewable Energy Lab, which is the Department
1154
01:13:27,797 --> 01:13:31,200
of Energy, the U.S. Department of Energy, that's their primary renewable
1155
01:13:31,240 --> 01:13:34,602
energy research facility. So that is
1156
01:13:34,682 --> 01:13:37,925
out here. That's honestly my top choice. I would love, love, love
1157
01:13:37,945 --> 01:13:41,447
to work there. There's a big NOAA office
1158
01:13:41,467 --> 01:13:45,799
here, the Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. I'm already
1159
01:13:45,839 --> 01:13:50,583
in the process for interviewing for a job there. There's
1160
01:13:50,623 --> 01:13:55,087
the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Yeah, crossing my fingers. So
1161
01:13:55,107 --> 01:13:59,250
it's kind of surprising. A lot of people are like, why are you in Colorado as an oceanographer? There's
1162
01:13:59,290 --> 01:14:02,433
actually a shocking amount of atmospheric and oceanic science that goes on
1163
01:14:03,491 --> 01:14:07,132
Yeah, and I was just gonna say there's like a big like ocean
1164
01:14:07,412 --> 01:14:10,673
Proponent there like just in terms of the people I mean,
1165
01:14:10,813 --> 01:14:14,494
it's very similar to California fine where there's a lot of people who are nature focused
1166
01:14:14,594 --> 01:14:17,734
You know Rockies hiking that kind of stuff, but also there are
1167
01:14:17,754 --> 01:14:21,435
a lot of ocean advocates in In Colorado,
1168
01:14:21,515 --> 01:14:24,996
so you're not alone like in terms of that. Yeah, let your level
1169
01:14:25,116 --> 01:14:28,317
of oceanography knowledge might be you might be
1170
01:14:33,678 --> 01:14:36,999
I'd also do a lot of science communication, and it's been really fun, at least these
1171
01:14:37,039 --> 01:14:40,220
last two months, to give it all the time I can. But at the same time, I think it'll naturally
1172
01:14:40,240 --> 01:14:59,070
grow over time. I'm at this interesting point, though, where I'm like, well, Do
1173
01:14:59,190 --> 01:15:02,873
I grow it more and like how much do I grow it? And
1174
01:15:03,454 --> 01:15:07,017
I know there's an audience for it. Um, you
1175
01:15:07,037 --> 01:15:10,600
know, another like pipe dream or like offshoot
1176
01:15:10,720 --> 01:15:14,203
life, I would love to like have an
1177
01:15:14,363 --> 01:15:17,726
ocean show someday on TV or be like
1178
01:15:17,786 --> 01:15:21,530
a talking head for discovery or,
1179
01:15:21,550 --> 01:15:25,082
you know, I'd love to continue to like educate
1180
01:15:25,102 --> 01:15:28,704
people about the ocean on a broader scale. And I
1181
01:15:28,784 --> 01:15:31,845
do, like similar to my PhD, I'm like, I know that'll come. I
1182
01:15:33,046 --> 01:15:36,588
know I can make it there. Yes, exactly. I'm manifesting
1183
01:15:36,648 --> 01:15:39,809
it. But in the meantime, I don't think I have
1184
01:15:39,849 --> 01:15:43,331
the chops to do only science communication, to
1185
01:15:43,371 --> 01:15:46,625
be self-employed. I A
1186
01:15:50,189 --> 01:15:53,432
Yeah, hey, I get it.
1187
01:15:53,612 --> 01:15:58,237
It's a long process. It could be a traumatic process, looking
1188
01:15:58,277 --> 01:16:01,620
at all the stuff that you have to do. A lot of people say it's basically working two
1189
01:16:01,660 --> 01:16:04,827
jobs in one, maybe even plus that, like even more. You know,
1190
01:16:04,847 --> 01:16:08,410
it's a lot to handle for anybody, and you
1191
01:16:08,430 --> 01:16:12,033
did that. Plus, you developed a science communication channel that
1192
01:16:12,593 --> 01:16:15,916
is blowing up, and it continues to blow up. And I'm
1193
01:16:15,956 --> 01:16:19,058
looking forward to seeing what you're up to next. Like, it's going to be
1194
01:16:19,258 --> 01:16:22,461
fingers crossed for all the opportunities that you're involved with now, and
1195
01:16:22,661 --> 01:16:25,983
hopefully it continues. And hopefully your
1196
01:16:26,003 --> 01:16:29,344
enthusiasm for the science communication continues as well, because
1197
01:16:29,404 --> 01:16:32,745
it's been a pleasure to watch those videos. I enjoy it,
1198
01:16:32,765 --> 01:16:36,067
and I'm sure the 7 million people that watch your
1199
01:16:39,477 --> 01:16:42,760
Thank you, yes. Of anything, that is
1200
01:16:44,682 --> 01:16:47,925
Yeah, I think so. I think that's what it sounds like.
1201
01:16:47,965 --> 01:16:51,469
But honestly, Paige, it's been a pleasure to have you on the podcast
1202
01:16:51,509 --> 01:16:54,692
and to get to know you more. And I look forward to having you
1203
01:16:54,712 --> 01:16:57,875
back on when you get that job or once you
1204
01:16:57,895 --> 01:17:01,479
develop the science more and the science communication more.
1205
01:17:02,319 --> 01:17:05,402
Yeah, you know once you let people know how they can get a hold of you. There's the
1206
01:17:06,363 --> 01:17:10,107
Which yeah, just like let them know the handle and how they can look you up Yeah,
1207
01:17:10,127 --> 01:17:14,731
the handle for the tick-tock is little LIL ocean
1208
01:17:14,831 --> 01:17:18,755
page or you could look up PhD page II And
1209
01:17:19,015 --> 01:17:22,238
I also have an Instagram that is the same
1210
01:17:22,278 --> 01:17:25,927
handle LIL ocean page And
1211
01:17:25,947 --> 01:17:29,810
I'm starting to put my videos on YouTube Shorts, so you can find me there. And
1212
01:17:29,870 --> 01:17:33,493
who knows, maybe I'll get bored and actually start making long-form YouTube
1213
01:17:33,513 --> 01:17:36,695
videos someday. I'm not sure if I'll ever
1214
01:17:36,715 --> 01:17:39,957
do that. Maybe a podcast in the future. Part of me wants to, so who knows what
1215
01:17:41,519 --> 01:17:44,701
Love it. Love it. I can see story time with Paige, ocean story time with Paige.
1216
01:17:48,804 --> 01:17:52,046
Well, Paige, it's been a pleasure. We're looking forward to seeing what you're up to next.
1217
01:17:57,272 --> 01:18:00,653
Thank you, Paige, for joining us today on the How to Protect the Ocean podcast to
1218
01:18:00,693 --> 01:18:04,094
talk about not only your PhD work, but your science communication work. I
1219
01:18:04,134 --> 01:18:07,876
think it's really important for scientists to have both, sort
1220
01:18:07,896 --> 01:18:11,217
of that skill set, using the skills that they have, using their personality to
1221
01:18:11,297 --> 01:18:14,818
bring out the messaging that they want to bring out. And that's something
1222
01:18:15,219 --> 01:18:18,500
that Paige does. So again, her handle is at
1223
01:18:19,200 --> 01:18:22,922
LilOceanPage, so L-I-L-O-C-E-A-N. Ocean page
1224
01:18:23,022 --> 01:18:26,185
PA IGE obviously all one word you can
1225
01:18:26,225 --> 01:18:29,789
go on tick tock you can also go on Instagram to follow her I highly suggest
1226
01:18:29,809 --> 01:18:33,092
that you do She's gonna be up to some pretty incredible things through
1227
01:18:33,212 --> 01:18:36,715
her career. It's just she's just scratching the surface literally
1228
01:18:37,036 --> 01:18:40,098
just dipping a toe in and I can't wait till she dives in and and we get to
1229
01:18:40,158 --> 01:18:43,580
hear all about it. So if you have any questions or comments about
1230
01:18:43,820 --> 01:18:47,402
this episode, please feel free to leave a comment
1231
01:18:47,702 --> 01:18:50,863
on, if you're watching this on Spotify on the video, or if you're just listening to
1232
01:18:50,883 --> 01:18:54,465
it, you can leave comments. You can also leave a comment on the YouTube video and
1233
01:18:54,605 --> 01:18:57,906
you can get ahold of me on Instagram at HowToProtectTheOcean, that's
1234
01:18:58,126 --> 01:19:01,288
at HowToProtectTheOcean on Instagram, just DM me, I'd
1235
01:19:01,428 --> 01:19:05,190
love to hear your feedback on this episode and any other episode of
1236
01:19:05,230 --> 01:19:21,212
the podcast. feel free to reach out I
1237
01:19:21,232 --> 01:19:24,895
appreciate Paige reaching out, and I would love to hear from you. Whether
1238
01:19:24,915 --> 01:19:28,398
you want to be on the podcast or not, because you've got something interesting that you think is interesting, or
1239
01:19:28,418 --> 01:19:31,621
you just want to give feedback or talk about the ocean, this
1240
01:19:31,661 --> 01:19:35,224
is where we start that conversation. And we did a great job doing it today. I
1241
01:19:35,264 --> 01:19:38,687
want to hear from you what you think about the ocean, and what you would like to hear more
1242
01:19:38,747 --> 01:19:41,890
about, or what you would like to talk about. Hit me up
1243
01:19:42,110 --> 01:19:45,474
at HowToProtectTheOcean on Instagram. Thank you so much for
1244
01:19:45,534 --> 01:19:49,299
joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Have
1245
01:19:49,320 --> 01:19:52,404
a great day. We'll talk to you next time. Of course, my name is Andrew Lewin. Have a