Episode 28: Getting to the Heart of Water Communication
“What does it mean to listen deeply and act on what you hear, but in ways that are just and not extractive. What does it mean to think about conflict and collaboration but not leave out the power dynamics? What does it mean to understand trauma, not in a facile way, but one that is deeply grounded?”
A conversation with Dr. Faith Kearns about science communication around contentious issues, approaches for supporting science communicators, and relationships between water scientists and the public. Released February 11, 2022.
guests on the show
Dr. Faith Kearns
Faith Kearns is a scientist and science communication practitioner with the California Institute for Water Resources. She writes about water, wildfire, climate change, and people. Her work has been published at New Republic, On Being, Bay Nature, and more. Her book Getting to the Heart of Science Communication: A Guide to Engagement is now available wherever books are sold. Find her on Twitter @frkearns and at faithkearns.com.
Transcript
Mallika Nocco
Welcome to Water talk. On today's episode, we have a special guest co-host. And that is our undergraduate podcast producer, Victoria Roberts. Take it away, Victoria.
Victoria Roberts
Hey, Water Talk listeners. For today's episode, we are delighted to have a conversation with our podcast co-host, Dr. Faith Kearns, about her book, Getting to the Heart of Science Communication: A Guide to Effective Engagement. Faith is the Academic Coordinator, scientist and science communicator with the California Institute for Water Resources. Her research interests lie at the intersection of science communication, community engagement, and relationship building, especially as these relate to the environment and water resources. We are just so excited to see how these interests relate to Faith’s writing her book. I'm so curious, Sam, what did you think about Faith’s book?
Sam Sandoval
I love it. I think it's excellent. Not only the context and the background, she also provides a lot of good tools and experiences. Something I really like is that she thought about the experience that she had of science communication, and that some of her cases are similar to other ones. For our listeners, the book is Getting to the Heart of Science Communication: A Guide to Effective Engagement by Faith Kearns.
Victoria Roberts
And what about you Mallika? Do you have anything to say about Faith’s book?
Mallika Nocco
There's just something about the way in which Faith approaches, challenges, and problematizes her craft that's really compelling. And I feel like the book helped me to understand how Faith frames her questions and her practice. And it's so deliberate. And I really appreciate that about Faith, like anytime that Faith examines a concept, she's just very deliberate, she really thinks through all of these different aspects that include what we think of as “just the science,” but then also human dimensions of science, and then how complex that interplay between the human dimensions and the science can be, and I really appreciate that.
And then the other part of it that I thought was really fantastic is something that I've been trying to understand how to do more and more, which is just integrate emotions as they relate to science and as they relate to scientific practice. I'm somebody that when I started graduate school, a long time ago, people told me that I shouldn't do that. And that there was science and then there were emotions, and that scientists shouldn't have emotions. People used to say this stuff about letting the science speak for itself and all of that. And that's all debunked, but it's not effective engagement or communication to other scientists, if you just say, oh, those theories have been debunked, scientists are always biased, and they're always putting their engagement and their personal feelings and emotions into their work. So that's not effective either. Faith is effective because of the way in which she makes that case, I think. Instead of just saying, hey, scientists, you're always going to be biased, it's more like, do you want to be effective as a scientist and as a scientific communicator? And if you do, then that's going to involve acknowledging emotions, so that that's what I loved about that.
Sam Sandoval
It just want to add, Mallika, she said or explained it, not in a superficial way. She likes to listen, and she likes to ask the difficult questions.
Victoria Roberts
Yes, I completely agree. Faith’s writing is just so deliberate and her perspective takes such a holistic approach. And so with that, let's have a conversation with Faith.
Sam Sandoval
Let's start with some of the research that you do in terms of how science communication started. Can you explain to us a little bit of evolution of science communication?
Faith Kearns
Thanks for having me and for really engaging with the material because I know it's such a busy time for everyone. And just taking the time to read and think about the book is something I appreciate really, really deeply. I'm just going to talk a little about science communication, which I have primarily learned as a practitioner. I started working in communication in the athletics department of my undergrad university as a work study student, so I actually learned communications by doing communications while I was majoring in science. And so I'm really coming at this from somebody who's been a practitioner in the field for, depending on how you want to count it, about 25 to 30 years, and in fact, was doing science communication since before it was really called science communication. The perspective that I want to share is a practitioner perspective and someone who's worked in academia, but also in government and the nonprofit sector. So coming at this from lots of different angles, and also working primarily on environmental issues.
Science communication is something that has a very long global history. But for the purposes of this book, I really focus just on these last 25-30 years that we've been really thinking of it in the way that we think about it primarily in the United States, and a little bit in the North American context in terms of Canada and Mexico. Science communication can have this pretty broad definition, which is communicating science with non-experts. And the thing I think about with that definition is that it's actually most of us most of the time. Sometimes people who are scientifically trained, can think, oh, it's a science issue, and I'm a scientist, and therefore I'm a specialist. But I think any of us who are being honest would say that, just because I'm an ecologist certainly does not mean I understand epidemiology, right, which the last year has made super clear.
Like I said, there actually is a pretty long history of science communication. There are some folks working on that doing super interesting work, because I think as long as there's been science, there's been communication, right? And there will continue to be, it's more a question of what does that field actually look like. And what it has tended to look like in our context is filling an information gap, which people often call the deficit model, right? This idea that you can just give people information, and they will, therefore, do something with that information.
The other very interesting piece of how it's looked in the United States over the last couple of decades is that it's very much been focused on this concept of connecting elite scientists at elite institutions with elite journalists who are also at elite institutions. So it was like, you, Stanford professor are talking to reporter at The New York Times, and that was seen as the epitome of what the work is. At the same time, as I was practicing this work, I was not doing it that way, I was having a much more -- you know, as people who are familiar with extension, would see it as this -- ground level science communication that is much more conversational, much more dialogic in nature. But I never saw my experiences reflected in the normative discourse about science communication. So this book was really written to kind of say, hey, there's a whole other way that this stuff gets done.
The other thing I found was that as I tried to put forward some of the ways that I was learning in terms of how to deal with some of these contentious, emotional topics that we work on -- for myself, wildfire, water, climate change -- I got a lot of pushback from the science communication community writ large, it was always very hard to find a place there. And so in many ways, I was writing this book to create the conversation that I would rather be a part of and that has been very, very difficult to carve out for quite some time.
The other thing I will say, Sam, is that the one thing I also see really shaping this is that the people who are doing science communication work are changing. So again – it was a very elite focused thing. And at the same time there was that assumption that you were somebody who was just granted authority by society. So you can imagine what the characteristics of that person might look like. But in reality, a lot of science communication work is being done by people who do not have tenure, will never have tenure, are often precariously employed and/or volunteering. And at the same time, they're working on these topics that are incredibly difficult and are actually the ones that are probably most accountable to communities, to actual people, but whose jobs are also the most on the line. And so I think, between all of those different pieces, the science communication landscape I described is quite different than the books that have come before that have been largely written by journalists who are trying to say, here's how to talk with us better, and that's just not my framing of the topic. So it's a very different way that emerges.
Sam Sandoval
I also think that you highlight that more elite way of science communication for a broad audience, where you can also have these kind of more relational conversations with people that actually can make a change at the ground level. And those may require, I mean, not only the tools, but I also think the willingness, the feelings, all the baggage that you have when talking with people. And I think also the one other thing included in the heuristic is the reality that we scientists value prior knowledge, and we are sometimes put into these situations where there is a conflict and the opinion of a scientist may be either used or misused one way or another. The other part that is very clear to me is that some of us, we have the privilege to have certain positions that allow us to have certain conversations.
Mallika Nocco
I think this kind of gets at this tenured faculty thing, which is interwoven in the book. And actually, maybe because I know you and I know what you do, I also felt like there is a similar experience in this arena of just being someone who's had a career in science communication. Who's protected when you speak truth to power? Who gets institutional protection or doesn't? And what does that mean when you when you don't have protection?
What I would like to ask you is, what's a dream scenario for you? What do you think the institutions who claim they value this work -- whether academic or very popular NGOs or government -- what do these institutions need to do to better support science communicators? And how could they start to build models to support science communication in through early and later stages of the career, both in terms of job security and also just that protection for being in this tenuous field?
Faith Kearns
I think the first step is just acknowledging that it's happening. In an academic context, there is a very large push in most universities for there to be more forward facing scholarship and universities love the press when it's good, right? And so there's a huge encouragement to get your results out there, to write about them, do op eds, and all these kinds of things. But I think it's very wrapped up in marketing for these institutions. I think many institutions are less prepared to face when that research scholarship is difficult and challenging, and does challenge power, and that goes against the sort of marketing focus of the university. I don't have all the answers. I think we're very much, again, it's hard to even name the problem sometimes much less reckon with what it really is. That being said, I do think some institutions are handling it better than others.
And I do think certain scholars are very good about advocating for themselves, or are just in a position where they've been able to say something to a dean or campus security or whatever, and be in a position where they are protected. Because they ask for that kind of protection, they know to ask for it. It shouldn't happen that way. I think that's where science communication is difficult because there is always an exception or somebody does have that. But I think in terms of equity, across the line, we are going to support our folks. And so what I think universities could do, there's been there, Alex Ketchum, who's a Canadian scholar did some really interesting work about how press offices in particular, can deal with these things. I find that, as somebody who operates in a more marginal space, that's not adequate to cover somebody like me, who doesn't have tenure. And I'm not really particularly dealing with our press office. I do to a certain degree, but I'm more out there on my own.
Really, I think it's a thing that's in process and people need to be having these discussions about; what does it look like to protect our employees at all levels in all roles, when we're working on things that are very difficult? And are institutions going to be willing to take a stand when people do work on very difficult things. And this is particularly relevant when we are thinking about equity, diversity, inclusion, justice, in particular the justice piece. That, again, while institutions are very much naming these as important things, I think there's much less consideration of the blowback that can come from the actuality of challenging power structures. So I just think we're at the very, very beginning of this, unfortunately, and people are dealing with it at an individual level, that's not always helpful. And another thing I battle with, but I think is important, is that professional societies can be somewhat helpful. You'll see people who've gone up against certain kinds of critique from donors or things like that in the university system. And it's often their professional societies that will also come forward and say we value this person's scholarship and research. And that helps, right, but when it comes to science communication, we don't actually have that kind of body, so it’s a challenge.
Sam Sandoval
When we're doing science communication, all of a sudden, we want to present research that we have worked for so many years to a group that is aligning to a different direction. And I don't know, I don't think in that one we have been prepared for that.
Victoria Roberts
Yeah, that really brings to mind one example from the book where there's this researcher who's trying to present her research on aquaculture. And she's just reflecting on this experience of presenting really controversial research and how emotionally intense it was for her, and then at the same time, feeling really mixed feelings about it all. And then coming to the realization of, well, I probably wouldn't have had half of the people come to my presentation if it wasn't that controversial.
Faith Kearns
So getting back to Mallika’s question, all of that I think can be integrated into this marketing aspect of science communication, just in the sense that you're really trying to bring people in to the conversation. And you're also really trying to present these ideas in a way that's appealing to people, maybe trying to change some minds. But I think it's a sticky position that a lot of scientists are in because they're trying to appease the marketing aspects for the institutions that they're working for, who are really just interested in the publicity side of their research and a lot of cases, but also really try and come through and make some meaningful research and connect and make a relationship with the public in a meaningful way as well.
I mean, it's a tightrope you're just walking all the time. That story is about Sarika Cullis-Suzuki; I was actually present for that experience. Sarika is the daughter of Tara Cullis Suzuki and David Suzuki. David is a very well-known Canadian environmentalist and public television host. And Sarika’s sister actually spoke at the UN, many people may remember it, the Rio Conference, a 12 year old who got up and spoke very passionately about sustainability. So she's from this family where that’s her lineage. And at the same time, she was in many ways shocked by her experience.
And it was funny, I talked to her again recently; I was actually sent there to accompany Sarika on that visit, and to prepare her for it a little bit. And I remember sitting at a restaurant in New York and talking to her about what that experience might be like, but she was so excited to be presenting at the UN, and nervous and all of those things, that her memory is that nobody really prepared her for it. But I don't think that was true, I tried as best I could, but you don't get it until it's happening to you, for better or worse, and so then she sat through this thing where there was a guy who was just kind of hammering on her, her data, and her research.
And what she explains is the absolute crux of the issue, which is like, she could have gone in there being much more…what's the right word…she could have gone in there being much more relational and saying, I understand you guys are in this really hard place, and you're doing the best you can and all of this stuff. But instead, she went in there and was like, these are all the problems, and was hit pretty hard in a lot of ways for doing that. But, she wouldn't have gotten the news coverage had it not been as controversial. And she wouldn't have necessarily been able to say what she actually needed to say had she been really scared or trying to appease people. And I think so many of us can relate to that dilemma these days. I mean, again, everybody here works on these issues, where these are the kinds of things we're dealing with every day. How do you how do you talk about water use and abuse in California in a way that is helpful and doesn't get you fired? I mean, it's hard. And I don't know that any of us have totally figured it out.
Sam Sandoval
Following with some of the examples in the book, it seems that there are plenty of ones related with the drought. And I was seeing one of our former guests, Ruth Dahlquist-Willard, who you interview and the emotional rollercoaster she was going, when she was seeing some of the Hmong farmers going through mental health issues during the drought. And then later, at some point, with Dan Macon and waiting for the rain during the drought, and just feeling it firsthand. I mean, you can be a scientist doing experiments on something else, but it was pretty much on his own business, given that he's also businessman. So I don't know in that one, Faith, perhaps expanding on the emotional part of it. And also, perhaps expanding on the working with conflict in some of those cases related with wate
Faith Kearns
I mean, just to step back for a second, the main thesis of the book is this idea that we really face more of a relationship challenge than a communication challenge. And so we have to think about the tools of the whole thing differently. And so the first part of the book is set up, framing the current context and these labor and career issues, and then kind of laying out the emotional, conflict, and trauma pieces that people are dealing with. Then the middle part is really these tools that are relating, listening, working with conflict, and understanding trauma and healing. And that's just to me, a very beginner set, an essential set, of tools. I think there are many more things that could be outlined. But I just wanted to focus on those few things.
I think it's been a very interesting evolution of this work, because people are clearly much more understanding of the emotional components these days. I mean, even just the last few days, right, there are fires all over the place. There's just been a massive heat wave in the Pacific Northwest, we're probably gonna have another one next week. You know, we're all really feeling this stuff right now. And so part of how I came to this work was saying like, this is really different than this idea that I'm in a lab somewhere generating results that might be used after I die. Whatever the case may be. It's like, no, I'm experiencing this stuff and expected to make sense of it as it's happening to me too. And that's, it's just a very, very different endeavor. Right?
And I'm in conversation all the time with people who have different experiences, different feelings on working through that conflict. And then, again, even today watching people having connected this idea that there's a lot of emotion wrapped up in some of these things like fire and drought and climate change, but then kind of staying at the level of conveying that emotion, like, wow, this is a huge fire, and I'm starting to question just how useful that kind of display is. And that's where I tried to go more into this idea that we ourselves, as practitioners, actually have to contend with our own emotions in this work, too. And that's where I realize somewhat that the work of therapists and others who are already farther along in the idea that you bring your own stuff, so to speak, to everything you do. And that's not to center yourself, it's literally to know what you're bringing in so that you aren't projecting a bunch of stuff onto other people, right? And so that's why I think our own fear, our own anxiety about all these things we're experiencing, while we're also having to research and talk about them, is really, really important.
One of those things is conflict. For whatever reason, there are some people in this in this space who love conflict, you can see who those folks are. And then I would say the majority of us are probably conflict averse. And those are two sides of the same coin, right? So it's either that you love conflict, or you hate it. And either way, you're giving it so much power, because you either want to totally participate in it, or stay totally away from it. What I'm arguing for is a more middle path where we say, conflict is here, there's nothing else to say about it, it exists, it's here. And even collaborative processes involve conflict, and they involve power relations. A lot of people who want to focus on collaborative work and say that's the path forward, it's like, but that's not absent of conflict. And we see that in our in our water work.
And so the story that is in there that centers, Dan Macon, our Cooperative Extension colleague, who's a rancher and sheep herder, and also a cooperative extension advisor. Now, when I wrote that story, he was Cooperative Extension adjacent at that point. And during the quote, unquote, last big drought that we had, I was just seeing so much interesting conflict around some of the major scientific voices. And then people like Dan, and people like me, just seeing that people's psychologies in many ways are just their communication styles. We're trying to contend with the same issue, but in very different ways. And those very different ways made it seem like and feel like there was a lot of conflict that perhaps didn't really need to be there. And so I start that chapter early on with that story, because I was trying to say, even at a fundamental level, these conflicts can come up just by the different ways that we have anxiety around the idea of whether it's going to rain or not. And that's a tiny little slice of what we're dealing with when it comes to water and drought.
And so then the story is layered into these deeper questions that end with Linda Mendez, who's also been a guest on Water Talk, talking about her research on power and the role that power plays in conflict and the role that power plays in science communication. I adore Linda and I love her research. And it was super fun to talk to her because she really goes to the heart of the matter saying “in many ways, I think talking about communication so much has been a distraction from these issues of power. And yet, the communication issues are totally unavoidable.”
But at the same time, it's just a very interesting space that I don't think we talk enough about the role of conflict and the role of power, particularly when we're talking about water collaboration. But also many, many other environment or science issues, we just kind of act like there's no power differential between anybody, that scientists don't have power, which we absolutely do, and which Linda names as discursive power, right. We have a lot of power societally, but we don't have much economic power, per se, or political power. So, I just find that whole thing super interesting and still, I'm glad you asked about it, Sam, because I will say even in the many interviews that I've done about the book, conflict is still something that people are very shy to talk about.
Mallika Nocco
I think that the power plus accountability piece is also just so important in terms of the decisions that science communicators make, about what topics to engage on and what to say yes to.
Faith Kearns
I think the accountability piece is super interesting. We are having this conversation, some of us anyway, in Cooperative Extension about who we serve. And this idea of what is your ultimate ethical obligation, your institution? There are all sorts of ways to think about who you're accountable to. I mean, I know for myself that has evolved over the years, and I do have a certain set of people in mind every time I weigh a decision about whether I'm willing to talk about a certain topic, to whom, in what context, all of that kind of stuff. And so I have for my own self developed a bit of a North Star in terms of whether or not…even the last few days, because of the drought, I’ve had a number of interview requests that I have sent on to other people, or I had to ask questions about who else was going to be interviewed, because I've just gotten to the point where I don't want to be included in certain things unless they're going to be more locally accountable.
For example, just thinking about a water shortage in a particular town in the Central Valley, and being asked about that, and what I can actually contribute and feel okay about contributing to a conversation. Who else is going to be quoted, and all of that kind of stuff. I've gotten much more bold about asking those things and saying no when I feel very uncomfortable with the responses, like when a reporter will email and spell the name of the town that they're writing about incorrectly, there's just these certain signs, and not to say those stories can’t turn out well, but I have enough red flags about how they might be being handled that I personally cannot speak to certain things, and I won't anymore, I will always try to find somebody better, closer to the topic, all of that kind of stuff. Because I think, what would this person think if they read this quote, and the people that I really hold myself accountable to? And if the answer is that I might be causing more harm than good, I just don't do it. And that goes absolutely against every incentive that I have to be as widely included in every media piece that anybody is willing to include me in, and that's the incentive, but I can't operate by that incentive anymore.
Sam Sandoval
You talked about that, a specific concept of ethical space. And you mentioned that ethical space, and follow up on an example of Indigenous communities, and also the relationality. And so we have our moral compass. So this ethical space that we are operating in, and the different relationships that we have with places, people, institutions, and so on. And then there is a transactionality in terms of, oh, here's a reporter now, they want to give you the microphone, and can you tell us this and that and who is using more water or so on? I think is the transaction there is like, okay, make it temporarily famous for some of these publications, and then things will go back to what you were saying about fake news, glamorous careers. I do think that here, we're really talking about some not necessarily of the techniques, but what is actually happening behind it, and being open and discussing some of these ethical spaces and relations that we are that we're building. And some of these is just pulling back again, the same narrative that it was the drought before, or the fire before, or the climate change conference before. I think you pointed out really well so can you elaborate a little bit more about this relationality, ethical space?
Faith Kearns
The way that I started thinking about science communication was just having my own deep experiences after having done the kind of work that I described early on where I basically my first real science communication job, even though it was called Public Affairs because as I said, science communication didn't really start getting used until the 2000s, was working for the Ecological Society of America. And, right away just started looking through abstracts for the ESA meeting and finding the interesting ones, and writing press releases about them, and getting them covered in the New York Times and Discover Magazine and all these things. It was super fun. I loved doing it so, so much. It is really exciting. But as I progressed, in my career, I was just like, there's got to be something beyond this.
And one of the main things that I talked about that happened was in the 2007-08, I was working for Cooperative Extension, I was working at a Fire Center at Berkeley, and we were doing one of these really typical community fire safety demonstration days. And we were up in a smaller town in northern California. And my colleagues and I were presenting this research that was like, how to keep your house from burning down in a wildfire. And we also talking a little bit about this idea of a stay or go policy like they have in Australia, which has to do with staying and defending, being trained to stay and defend, your home during a wildfire. And obviously, that's a really emotional topic. I think in 2021, many more people can relate to this story than could at that time.
But, we were deeply immersed in these issues way back then, which is why it's even more heartbreaking to watch what's happening right now. But that's my own emotional state. But, basically, this man, it was really an interesting thing, because I could feel something happening in the room that wasn't great. As a couple of my colleagues were presenting, and there were many reasons that could have been, but ultimately, this man came up to me after a woman had spoken on stage. And I think she was saying a similar thing as what he told me. But he really just was like that was really hard for me to hear because it made him second guess a lot of decisions he just made about evacuating a fire that had just happened in that area. And we didn't have the terminology at the time. But he was essentially saying, y'all just re traumatize me with that presentation. And again, in 2021, this makes perfect sense. Back then, there was no ability to talk about this in a scientific context, none whatsoever.
It took a couple years of me just going what happened there and seeing it happen more and more, because I was working on fire issues where people had such deep feelings about these issues. And I had them too, I live in a fire prone state, to the point where I can't, there are certain parts of the Berkeley hills that I just can't even really visit because I'll start to hyperventilate about the evacuation issues. So it's just deeply paying attention to this stuff through my own contemplative practices and things. And the other parallel thing was that in grad school, like so many people, I had a total mental health crisis. I started a therapeutic relationship that I still have today, which the most transformative relationship of my life. And so I started to really wonder what was it about that relationship that was so transformative? And that's how I started going, what are the tools that people are using in these other fields to think about some of these things. And that's how I fell into this rabbit hole of relationship centered work in psychotherapy, in medicine, in law.
I have a dear friend Gail Silverstein, who's in the book, who has done a lot of this work, she's clinical law professor. And so we were talking all the time. And a lot of it came down to relational work and, and so there's two threads of that, one of which is this professional path that I think medical schools and others are trying to teach, it has limited uptake in certain ways, and that's something to definitely keep in mind. And then there's this whole other cultural but also scholarship piece where many religions have a relational focus, in certain forms of Buddhism, there's this idea of right relationship, in Christianity, and then certainly in Indigenous both scholarship and cultural practice, relationality and kinship are super strong themes. And I just started reading and talking with more and more people about these issues.
That was what really grounded the book; this is really is about human relationships, but how in a professional context do we actually start implementing some of these things? So I turned to some of these other fields and the things that they are doing and what I would say is, that I think is pretty clear in the book is that, for example, people can start to get really wrapped up in the idea of empathy. And while I think it's super important and useful, there is a way where when we only talk about empathy, it can start to erase power dynamics, or race, or the idea of conflict, right, because it's all very go along to get along kind of thing, that we can all just understand our way into each other and into a better world. And I wish that I wish that were true, but it isn't.
And so that's where you have to get into some of these things about what does it what does it mean to listen deeply to other people, but also act on that, but in ways that are actually justice focused and aren't just extractive? What does it mean to think about conflict and collaboration, but not leave out the power dynamics, not leave out the violence that can get in, that can be very much a part of conflict? What does it mean to understand trauma, but again, not in a facile way, but in a way that is very deeply grounded in the lived experiences of people who deal with trauma? And I hope I did justice to all of those topics, at least the best I could when I finished the book; these things are always a work in progress. But I did have to finish it a certain way. And I was worried about how much I was gonna regret not going further on some pieces, but you do actually have to stop the project. So sorry, Victoria. Go ahead.
Victoria Roberts
I just want to give you credit, because I feel like this book grapples with such deep and complex issues, I mean, at a fundamental level, with science being something that is this authoritative opinion on objective truth and trying to understand, well, what does that actually mean from all of these different perspectives? And then how can we communicate that knowledge in a way that also takes all these complicated human relationships into account and environmental relationships into account? And so I would just say, you not only did your best, but I think we can all agree that you did justice to all those topics.
Faith Kearns
Thank you, Victoria. It's an interesting endeavor to try to capture all these things. And I will say, it's funny because the title is this Getting to the Heart of Science Communication. And I think people can interpret that in this way that's like that they think I'm only dealing with these happy touchy feely things. But I think when you delve into the material of the book, it's very clear that it's a much more hard hitting look at all of these topics. So I do appreciate you all really diving in and be willing to talk about the hard stuff, so to speak.