August 26, 2014
Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society invited the public to participate in a live Google Hangout August 28 with Michael Stevens. Stevens is the creator and host of Vsauce, a YouTube channel—affiliated with Vsauce2, Vsauce3—that generates interest and enthusiasm for learning.
The recordings of the hangout are below. Stevens spoke about science communication and took questions from the audience.
Vsauce and its related channels "...investigate weird questions, and we look at the science and math and history and geography of interesting things. And by interesting, I mean anything," Stevens has said. His videos tackle questions such as “What is the Speed of Dark?” and “What If the Earth Stopped Spinning?”
Vsauce has more than 7.7 million subscribers.
For his service to science, Stevens has been named an honorary member of Sigma Xi. Stevens and Derek Muller of the YouTube channel Veritasium will be speakers at the Society’s Annual Meeting. The meeting will be held November 6-9 in Glendale, Arizona.
Stevens holds a bachelor’s degree in neuropsychology from the University of Chicago, as well as a bachelor’s degree in English literature. He lives in London.
Follow him on Twitter at @tweetsauce.
Below are excerpts from the Google Hangout:
What do you think scientists can do to help the public’s understanding of science?
With the Internet democratizing public outreach, you can do a lot of things. It doesn’t just have to mean make a YouTube show and be comfortable on camera. I think that what we see on forums, what we see in the comment sections on pop science articles and also what happens on websites like Reddit, where the public can all come in and a comment system, a sort of public forum, has been built—that’s actually quite awesome. By joining those types of communities and lending your expertise, your voice, I think you can add a lot. I’ll tell you, the Ask Science subreddit on Reddit.com is full of some really smart people and very reasonable and very inspiring. They’re not being paid to do this, but what they are doing is helping answer people’s questions and they do it in a very clear and fair way. So I would say get involved. If you have the time, get involved online and find what medium is right for you.
What do you think that you do in your videos that scientists could apply to what they might put in a blog post or a Reddit community as far as the way they get their message across?
Some of the best advice I ever heard about this was from C.G.P. Grey [of YouTube] … He said, ”Overestimate their knowledge but underestimate their vocabulary.” Don’t treat them like they’re dumb but they don’t always know what words you’re throwing out mean. And I see a lot of people communicating science just throwing out “inertia” … and it’s good to take a step back and to say “look, is everyone watching really going to know exactly what ‘buoyancy’ means?” and taking the time to show what buoyancy is to get to your other point is very important.
How do you know when you have all the pieces that you need to get your point across?
I write down the story points, the facts I want to get to. I need to feel like I’ve got enough of them, and I also need to feel like I know what the title is going to be and that I provide enough answers that people won’t be entirely angry that the title was not answered … A lot of it is just what’s cool and what do I think people haven’t been talking about enough. We’ve all heard about such-and-such experiment, but what’s the next layer that I can add so that the next time people talk about it, people can say, “oh, you know Vsauce actually took that a little further” or “Vsauce took a different perspective on it”?