Insight Out
Insight Out is a podcast brought to you by Pavel and Carolina as a side activity during their PhD studies. We are curious minds and science enthusiastics. Insight Out focuses on daily lives of academicians and entrepreneurs. We like to talk about all types of experiences in science, scientific commmunities and especially love personal stories of our guests. This is the place where science get unfiltered with honest, truthful and engaging discussions with our guests!
Insight Out
Bonus Episode: The Art of Science Storytelling with Carolina and Pavel
Embark on a nostalgic journey with us, Carolina and Pavel, as we trace the evolution of our passion project, Insight Out: Science Unfiltered, born from a spark ignited in a university classroom. This episode is a treasure trove for anyone curious about transforming complex science into captivating stories that resonate with all. We'll let you in on the secrets of creating a successful science communication podcast, from selecting the perfect name to branding it with a logo that encapsulates our essence. As we reminisce about our early days, you'll learn how we enticed our lab mates to open up in front of the mic, enriching our podcast with personal narratives that bring science to life.
All sound effects and music in this bonus podcast episode are royalty-free, courtesy of Epidemic Sound.
All music clips were used from the song "Jukka Tukka" after agreement with amazing band and friends 2+1 Jam band.
This podcast episode was created under the technical and official support of University of Oslo, Norway.
Welcome to the next episode of.
Speaker 2:Inside Out.
Speaker 1:Science on Filter.
Speaker 2:Hello.
Speaker 1:Hello, we have Carolina and. Pavel today to talk about our podcast and how it came about.
Speaker 2:Yes, so do you want to say some initial words, carolina, or shall I spell some beans in the beginning?
Speaker 1:You can spell some beans, if you have any beans.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the podcast. So the initial idea of having podcast was like the seat was planted when I was doing the scientific communication course at the University of Oslo and I really loved it and also felt the need kind of intrinsic need that scientists should improve in the way how they communicate, and I always love to communicate science on a popularization level. I'm a very curious person, so I like to learn new stuff and communicate interesting facts to maybe non-scientific people too. But at the time, of course, I did some short podcast episode for the assignment and I really loved it and I wanted to start my podcast, but due to the sake of time I didn't continue. And then you joined the lab and was also very much into it, so we joined the first and then the podcast this year.
Speaker 1:So I can say a few words about that too. So I remember when I first saw the website of the lab, I actually saw the podcast that you made and I listened to it and that kind of inspired me later on, when I joined the lab, to maybe ask you, maybe we can do something together right, and primarily, the idea for me is that, just like yourself, I'm very interested in communication and particularly communicating science to people. I often see people trying to communicate very complex topics and, for example, during presentations or something, and I always feel like why is there so much on the presentation? I am a little bit falling asleep here and I wish they could just tell me what exactly are they trying to say. And seeing that so frequently, I just felt like why can we not try to make an example or something? So I think that's where it started for me, where I was like, yeah, let's do this. And then we started to plan yeah, that was quite fun.
Speaker 1:That was quite fun. It took quite some time.
Speaker 2:It's like you know you need to think about so many stuff. I mean, some people would thought maybe that what do you need to do for the podcast? You just need microphones and have something to talk about. But of course, that might be true, but we thought it very well through. So we had to come up with a name and we had to think about the teams, the audience on which we would like to target, of course, and the content. There was a lot of discussion about the content and whom we should invite and how we should do the interviews, for example, and yeah, and then this. I think we spent a lot of time on designing the logo and the name itself too. So, yeah, I really enjoyed that creative part.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the creativity part is definitely something that I really enjoy, and the same thing when we made the poster that actually won a prize, by the way. I think All of this creativity communication, you know, I think all of that gives so much to the public as well. So how did we come up with the name?
Speaker 2:oh, I think that was like you know, each of us had some time to think about the name and I think especially you at the beginning used the chaggity for generating ideas, which I think was very good to do. So we got some initial Maybe thoughts or like, maybe like ideas for us from where we should start. It was like kind of the process of like trying to fit the best names. We had several candidates, of course, and then I was also Having some thoughts, not with, of course, not with help with the chaggity, just trying to be creative on my own and then we kind of merged those two approaches.
Speaker 1:I think it worked nicely, I Believe yeah, I think we got pretty not like lucky, but I think we got a pretty solid name and how do you think it's been for us like so far with the podcast?
Speaker 2:You mean recording the the episodes?
Speaker 1:Yeah and. Go so far. We have kind of, I guess, practiced quite a lot on our own group members in the lab. So what we have done is essentially we tried to invite every single person in the lab to get this Kind of brief episode where they talk about themselves a little bit and their Scientific background and what what kind of science they do currently, and that's been pretty Successful, I would say, so far.
Speaker 2:Yes, and it's very easy to record and people are quite eager to do that, even though, like, they were a little bit skeptical at the beginning, maybe a little bit more nervous or scared, because it was like the first time for them to do something like that, to record in the In this type of setup, and, I have to say it, yeah, it turned out very nicely and I also believe and got some feedback from the listeners, you so that it is very nice to listen to those short interviews to and, of course, like it's was not the main purpose to publish those short ones because they are supposed to be Used for the website, so all the people who are interested in our lab, they can check it out and read a little bit about Ourselves, but also can listen to us, which I think adds more layer to, you know, maybe getting the people known better and, for example, I haven't seen many examples of the web websites that would include this type of feature.
Speaker 2:So the ultimate goal was to invite interesting people, of course, and we are surrounded by many, many interested and interesting and unique type of people. So far.
Speaker 2:We had some longer episodes as well and we are having more people in a queue and we are also continuously searching for more. So, yeah, I think that this very nice combined approach from both of us.
Speaker 1:So for our listeners. I was thinking that maybe we can mention how we got access to this.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, definitely yeah.
Speaker 1:Do you want to talk about that a little bit, how we got here?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I heard that there was a podcast studio at UIO University of Oslo, so I did some search, of course, using the old, old-fashioned Google Old-fashioned maybe nowadays.
Speaker 1:Back in the day.
Speaker 2:Google and yes, so there's one podcast studio situated at Blinder Campus. It's for free and basically after like a couple of training sessions I think it was just one Like introductionary almost not course, but like introductionary meeting how to navigate the mixer and and the microphones and everything that was held by Doug Becker, which is a very skilled person in this field. So then you basically get the access to the podcast studio. You either have to be a student of University of Oslo or be employed by University itself, so then you are more than welcome to use the facility here. Just need to book in advance and then you can start your own podcast or whatever content you want to make.
Speaker 1:So also worth mentioning is that this podcast room is always closed. So in order to actually come inside, you need to have your UIO card. So you just go up to the the person that is at the reception here and give you and give your card to them, and then they will go and bring out the key so you can get access. But of course, before you can do that, you need to be registered in the file or whatever that is. Just like Pavel mentioned. So what do you think is the future of this podcast?
Speaker 2:That's a good question. I would like to have more guests, of course. I would like to have international guests. We have already some names and that we would like to have here in our podcast, most likely recorded remotely. So that would be something we are interested in. For example, we have one person at MIT that previously worked in our lab as PhD. Now she's at MIT as a postdoc, so I really would like to get her on the podcast one day. That would be very cool, I think, also for the listeners would be something interesting to listen to, to people from those prestigious universities, I believe. But I would also expand and invite more people from private sector. There are so many companies as well, so we just need to be patient with the search and being a bit lucky with the people that would like to accept being invited.
Speaker 2:And the future in a broader sense, I mean it depends Because, of course, I'm a PhD student and I'm going to graduate this year. So then, if I will keep producing still producing some episodes for this podcast, that would be super good. Otherwise, of course, like Karolina can take over if she would have time and motivation. And, yes, I think I've so far enjoyed it very, very, very much and I would like to continue with it. It's also very interesting because you know if you are alone working on the podcast, you're working with your own ideas, but when you are two or maybe more people, then it's good to incorporate all of those like insights from all people, so inputs from the guests. You know the guest idea, the content and maybe whom you would like to reach out.
Speaker 2:So, karolina, what is it for you, who is your target audience you would like to target, and also what is the content you would like to create in this podcast?
Speaker 1:So I think the target audience for us in this podcast would be generally students I would say, not only UIO, but, you know, anywhere else particularly maybe people who are interested in doing a PhD or even coming here to do a master's thesis or anything like this, and I think the content that we would be interested in sharing would be, like true, unfiltered experiences of people in academia and also in the industry.
Speaker 1:I think this would be a very good thing to share with people so that they know, like before they come in and decide to do a PhD or decide to come here to do whatever else they want to do, that they do understand that there are it's not just, you know, butterflies and flowers and all this stuff, but you know there is more to it, and there's so many things that you have to think about before you choose where you want to go, like which PI you choose is very important, right, and which group you want to join, like how the lab is working is very important too, and, yeah, which university you want to go to, and you know there's so many things that I think is important to evaluate.
Speaker 1:And, regarding the industry, I think it's also something that people often ask, like how is the academia different from the industry? And many people never go into the industry and they are just stuck in academia Because they kind of don't know how it is like and maybe they're a little bit afraid to step out a bit To step out a bit.
Speaker 1:I think also, like this podcast would be so good, you know, for people to listen to, especially if they are considering going into the industry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure. It's like you know, the academia is not only, not only in the one way.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, thank you for listening, and this will be a special episode with me, carolina and Pavel.
Speaker 2:Yes, thank you very much, and I'm very, very happy that we could record this type of episode today, and also very grateful to all the listeners, since we are getting far and far a new listeners, so good job.