00:00.00 archpodnet Welcome to episode one forty four of a life ruins podcast where we investigate the research and careers of those living a life and ruins I'm your host Carlton Gover and today we will be joined by we I am your host Carlton Gover and today we're going to do another episode format. Really appreciate the feedback we got regarding the last episode was just basically me giving a lecture that turned into a rant at the end. Ah sorry for some of the upset feelings I've caused those have it fun messages. Ah but deeply appreciate it and so this week what we've decided to do um each segment is going to be by a different host. Ah, so I'm clearly doing the intro David is supposed to do the middle but I'm going to record a ah second segment just in case and I will close out the episode regardless with content by Connor because he has. Says he has a bone to pick with something don't know if it's or last episode or something something else might be arcgis related. We all know how it feels about that. Um, so today for this intro segment I really just kind of I wanted to talk to you guys a bit about science communication today for those that. Listen to the podcast. You know that a big goal of ours is to make archeological content more available to the public. We've done that through these interview style formats. We bring people on talk about their career. How they've got archeology and some of the research they do and and hopes to inspire other folks and to. 01:29.10 archpodnet Getting into archeology as well as provide advice tips and tricks for grad students undergrads and other career professionals and that's kind of a huge this concept of making archeological content more accessible to the public is like a huge mission of the apn. That's the whole point right. You know we have cerm Mark to talk about cultural resources management and issues in the field heritage voices to bring the light indigenous researchers um pseudoareology podcast to tear down some of those crazy beliefs and theories that are out there and so. Want to talk about it because it's important and I'm teaching a class this semester called science communication and public anthropology split level class and I've sat down with the students and every every week we go over a new kind of format of science communication and that's been. We just did podcast last week um 02:22.73 archpodnet And we actually Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle came and spoke to my class I'm deeply grateful to them and so why why is science communication important and why why are we? So why are we persevering in this? um you know as as a podcast or a couple things like 1 of my favorite graphics that I show classes when we do like usually in my intro to archeology class. 02:41.94 archpodnet We do have a day on pseudo archeology. It's important to talk about and there's really these great graphics from Chapman University in Orange County california and they do these survey of american fears and there's a really great graph from 2018 and. 03:03.32 archpodnet They they surveyed I think it was like a couple hundred people maybe a thousand folks in orange county like you know, ask them a couple questions that believe or not 58% said they believe that places seem be haunted by spirits 57% said ancient advanced civilizations such as Atlantis once existed 41% said aliens have visited earth in our ancient past and 35% have said aliens have come to earth in modern times and 21% believe Bigfoot is real creature right? These these are pretty. Pretty big percentages and the ones that want to isolate today is particularly like even in 2018 and god knows what the survey is now I've I've tried to look for it before they haven't had the survey, especially with covid that 57% of people believe in ancient advanced civilizations such as atlanis once existed. That's a lot of people. Thats a lot but whose's whose fault is that that 50% of americans of this sample of this sample size believe in ancient invents civilizations is that a societal issue is it's because of public education possibly the internet or is it archeologists themselves. Right? And I personally believe the issues that that that you know the reason why we have Graham Hancock and ancient aliens and why they're so successful and why people believe them and why people take listen to their content like vehemently. 04:37.18 archpodnet It's professional archeology. It's our fault guys and gals it is the profession's fault that ancient aliens and Graham Hancock are so successful that people believe in the garbage that's being spewed about human past first one. First first quality of this. It's the publisher parish attitude especially in academic archeology. The fact that so much stock and importance is placed on publishing peer-reviewed articles. In paywall journals that early career professionals the ones doing cutting edge and active research everything they're researching doing is primarily going behind a paywall in american antiquity plains anthropologists you know journals like that. And so the public doesn't have access to that content so they don't have access to the breadth of knowledge about humans past across the globe simply because they're not subscribed or a member of some archeological organization that gate keeps this content. Second you know academics in particular because professional archeology right? It's not just academic archeology most archeologists are employed in the private sector and cultural cultural resources management with the government. Okay, but academics and and. 06:09.35 archpodnet Particular who are also teachers are not necessarily good science communicators so they know' how to lecture we can do slides we can talk to early. You know we can talk to young adults all day long. But we're not really trained or taught how to speak. Or write for and interact with journalists blogging you know, just like that we're just not trained to do that and we don't know how to do it and it's it's an art form right? like that's. But people get trained or getting degrees in science communication now because like it's a whole now like field of theory and method of how to actually interact with the public in meaningful ways and to communicate your science and even if they do right? They're not rewarded I'm lucky I'm the. Ah. Half of my job here at iu is I'm the curator of public archeology and part of my tenure review is doing sapiens articles. It is creating a podcast for I uma which is coming out in a couple months it is actually making programs so like actually part of my tenure packet and I don't know anyone else. That's like this. And I can't find any other curators of public archaeology where part of my job is to actually sit down and work with the public engage with the public and turn all the amazing research being done at iuma The Indiana University Museum Of Archeology And Anthropology Into stuff that the public cares about so I lucked out right? part of that. 07:39.18 archpodnet You know is this podcast if you guys could believe that or not like crazy and then lastly like read these four qualities right? publish a parish academics aren't good science communicators. Ah but archeologists aren't not necessarily both Ciara government ner. All all 3 cerm government and and academics are necessarily rewarded for conducting public outreach the last one like the big names in pseudo archeology in particular, um, they don't have any formal education in archaeology generally. Um, they're usually just like really good writers like Graham Hancock journalist um Giorgio Suul lous the aliens hair guy. He was a bodybuilder from long beach. Um Eric Vo dankin writer. They know how to talk with the public right? They know what to say and how to say it and that's how they're able to convince a bunch of people. That they're right because they know how to target that audience. Well well Carlton if archeology if academic archeologists are really bad at science communicating and they're not rewarded for this? Well what? what can we do? How can people learn more about archeology as according to a survey from 2018 from the society of American Archaeology you can find this 87% of people that were surveyed believed that students should learn about archeology. So this wasn't like essay like talking about archeologists like they surveyed a bunch of non-areologists 87% of people like people need to learn more about archaeology. 09:09.10 archpodnet And it should be in classrooms and textbooks. 09:15.85 archpodnet Or sorry, yeah, no 87% that you learn about it and ah, most people say like what if if how do you learn about archeology survey says 58% said they learned about archeology in classrooms and textbooks 57 in museums. 56 in television and that's an a dial back to the psud archeologist right? 36 in movies and 29% in print media. So most people learn about archeology in the classroom or in museums those are the big ones and then fucking televisions there. So we really got a hit on that right? We need to teach more. Archeology um in in the classroom I think and what is what does science communication look like today. How are these efforts being made. Well you guys already listen to podcasts. That's one. That's how we contribute most of you guys know David and David is phenomenal is a phenomenal science communicator. He knows how to make those goofy videos know his big thing is of course you know Youtube Tiktok instagram like he's using social media heavy and that's where we see a lot of science communication occurring today is primarily on social media. But I really got to say sapiens if you guys have never heard of sapiens um academic blogs you should sapiens.org that have amazing articles that' are written for the public they're written in an accessible way and they're absolutely free and they're written by archeologists and anthropologists across the globe. 10:47.00 archpodnet Amazing work I try in my class to assign sapiens articles all the time rather than peer reviewed books or peer reviewed articles sorry because the students my students get way more out of a sapiens article and it's not just some random blog where you can just submit it to sapiens they post it. They have editors. That help the author write a piece for the public. Absolutely phenomenal. Additionally like free seminars and lectures always go a great way. Um, you know David gets asked to give talks I get asked to give talks I try to give talks when I'm when I'm asked like if someone asks me like i've. Curated a pretty good relationship with some folks out in California they asked me to give a talk and I I try to pop in every now and then I do my best regardless of where it's at or what the topic is to give a lecture because especially to like archeological societies. Not the professional ones like you know Colorado has the Colorado Council professional archeologists that is a organization of professional archeologists and you have the colorado archeological society and that the Colorado archeological sunny just anyone can join and a lot of time they're like amateur archeologists or advocational archeologists. They don't have formal background but they really love the topic. I love those societies and I try to talk to them and give lectures all the time because those are people generally interested in the content and they want to know more and do better. 12:07.29 archpodnet I think more archeologists need to do that and and it sucks right? because like I'm at a point now in my career like early career. This is second semester being a professor like hold it shit guys. How did we get here. First off we started this when I was still like a a second semester ph d student you had to remember that you remember those times. Um. And I am so busy all the time that sometimes what they've considered like this is classified as service which doesn't count towards my tenure. You know I'm always being told. Well if you're too busy. You got to drop this other stuff I will never drop this podcast because work I'll tell you guys that right now there are days I think about it but I I love. Doing this show more than I like doing academic archeology I live for doing this stuff and I know the quality of the show is kind of gone up and down and sometimes I'm not always in it but like this is my priority and I deeply enjoy doing this? um. Right? And I get like some professors get so overwhelmed or even early career folks like doing service work to like go talk to these people just take out of it. But you know like I enjoy it and I think more people should consider doing it because I get more enjoyment out of the free stuff I do and the stuff that doesn't count towards my career. My ph d. Um, then the stuff I sometimes do so that's I think that's really step 1 of good science communication in archeology is more doing more the free stuff but you know also like science communication rate. It's not just about combating the pseudoscience like I we would try to do this. We so bad. 13:42.10 archpodnet Wanted to get Amelia doll on the podcast for a long time and it's just so hard and the reason why it's hard is Amelia is a deaf archaeologist promoting archaeology and science content in american sign language. She has amazing amazing Youtube videos and social media amelia the archaeologist and. We've had trouble getting on the podcast as one a podcast is audio and like just trying to get a translator to do this has been so hard to to get nailed down and and we as you guys have probably noticed if you followed us for a long time in our social media the life and ruins guys used to have a really good relationship. Are we still do but like more known relationship with tosh. And Raven and Amelia and Stefan Milo and since like the 5 years We've all kind of started doing this stuff like all of us have gone separate ways and gotten older and it's just been so hard and we all try to keep in touch and we want to do like a throwback episode to bring everyone back together. It just socks. It's hard. We're dogs now. Um, but Amelia is one of those and she is so active in the Colorado deaf and deaf plus seeing in communities and working with Denver Art Museum Demo Museum Nature and science and like just making archeology accessible to a group of people that are way too often overlooked I never thought about. The deaf and deaf plus communities when I gave talks until Amelia when I got back from Ukraine I was giving a talk at su you boulder. She asked if she can come if I can get her translator and that's how our relationship started because she was just so god damn phenomenal. Um and inspiring to do better and to do like and even with that. 15:16.18 archpodnet To do be good science to be a good science communicator for the deaf and deaf plus communities can just be as simple as just like having fucking subtitles on your videos and on your stories right? That's that's always hard. And always good I mean it's not hard to do. It's super easy to do. But I always forget and it sucks at times because I always think about Amelia unfortunately like um. 15:53.42 archpodnet when I'm when I'm doing those things like when I'm I'm always like what did I forget what I forget what I forget I'm like oh damn I gotta gotta head up Amelia or I got to remember to add subtitles for Amelia anyways, sad thoughts. Um so science communication just isn't about. Combating pseudoareology but also like making content accessible to the public that we don't think about. So yeah, we're going to continue trying doing this like and as you guys have noticed, we're trying to like do more things with the show these different formats once again, super appreciate the amount of. Feedback we got from the last lecture series a lot of you were like liked it. It was different. We really appreciated. It. Just don't do it all the time totally on board. Well, you'll get a carlton lecture every now and then but it won't be a regular thing but I really enjoyed doing it I hope you guys enjoyed it. And we'll be right back. Hopefully David will be on in this next segment to talk about whatever David wants to talk about and then you'll hear Connor wrap it up with whatever he needs to got off his chest. Um, until then it's episode one forty four of life from its podcast. We will be right back after to these messages.