We find we have predictable periods of “now what”, with the podcast, Meteor, as well as in our own, separate professional endeavors. And we’re trying to embrace these cycles as one of the indicators that we are in an advanced stage of our scicomm careers.

The symptoms of our identity crises depend on our circumstances, like:

• the cadence of our evaluation cycles (say, annual reports for a grant or a supervisor)
• our workload (sometimes all freelance clients want everything at the same time!)

and may display in recognizable ways, like an itch to update our websites, change our profile pics everywhere, or overhaul our bios.

While we used to anchor ourselves first by asking whether we were doing the things that meet (external) expectations, now we’re asking: how does this work serve our communities or this stage in our careers?

Then, we ask you to dig in for yourself: What are you trying to decide in your scicomm life right now, and what sort of reflection questions do you use to navigate that decision?

Thanks for listening! We’re hoping for a community potluck 🥗🍛: Connect with us on social media (BlueSky, LinkedIn, Twitter, various Slack communities, etc.) or at www.meteorscicomm.org.

P.S. If you missed it, we’re going to try something new next season — guests!!! Deets here if you want to join. And, if anyone listening reading has funding to help us compensate guests, please let us know!

Genuine community and relationships make everything else possible. You want to change something? You can’t change it alone. You want someone to whisper-network vouch for you? As we said in the last episode, you don’t build professional community and relationships by lurking.

But that’s not all of it. There are a *lot* of payoffs to having strong professional ties.

In the interests of being (overly) honest, this week we asked ourselves: what’s the hidden curriculum of the success we’ve had in scicomm?

And…it’s COMMUNITY!!!

But, what’s that actually look like?

This week, we tell you exactly what kinds of good things have come from having strong professional relationships. (And we ponder the downsides of the amount of time, effort, and perhaps money that it may take to build these relationships.)

For example, we cover:

• Working with other people who care about the same effort/outcome/change can keep you going (in good ways and…also…maybe unsustainable ways).
• The material benefits and credibility that can come from working with/inside a given professional community and having strong relationships therein.
• How belonging in more than one professional community can facilitate code-switching that you can leverage for professional growth.

Then, we ask you to dig in for yourself: What’s the hidden curriculum that you think is responsible for your success in scicomm?

Thanks for listening! We’re hoping for a community potluck 🥗🍛: Connect with us on social media (BlueSky, LinkedIn, Twitter, various Slack communities, etc.) or at www.meteorscicomm.org.

P.S. If you missed it, we’re going to try something new next season — guests!!! Deets here if you want to join. And, if anyone listening reading has funding to help us compensate guests, please let us know!

Today, we're doing the big sister thing and sharing some straight-up advice:

• Lists of a lot of the places where we find (or are aware of) scicomm communities, especially online
• Recommendations on how not to be a creep (just in case you need to pass that advice along 😏)
• How important it is to actually get involved, not just hang-around on the fringes of these communities

We also get real honest: you have to interact with people and build relationships if you’re going to feel like you have found a scicomm community where you belong. Lurking ain’t working.

Then, we ask you to dig in for yourself: What’s a scicomm community that you are in and want to gush about, or one that you’re working your way into?

Thanks for listening! We’re hoping for a community potluck 🥗🍛: Connect with us on social media (BlueSky, LinkedIn, Twitter, various Slack communities, etc.) or at www.meteorscicomm.org.

P.S. If you missed it, we’re going to try something new next season — guests!!! Deets here if you want to join. And, if anyone listening reading has funding to help us compensate guests, please let us know!

Generosity is about a lot more than just money. We pondered this reality from a few points of view. And we found ourselves thinking through a lot of questions.

For example:

• Is it possible to think about being generous with time separately from money?
• Is it possible to scale our impact while still protecting our professional (and thus personal) time?
• In what ways can we extend to other people the same assumption we grant ourselves — that we’re all trying to be a “good guy” — and what are the mutual benefits of doing so?
• What kinds of expert knowledge, processes, network connections, and/or materials do and don’t we share..and why? (And what differences here should we be scrutinizing wrt how individual scicommers/trainers operate vs. the big scicomm organizations?)

Bottom line: Generosity doesn’t always have to focus on financials. So, how else can we create abundance, together, beyond the bounds of money?

Dig in for yourself: What’s a non-montetary form of generosity that you practice professionally?

Thanks for listening! We’re hoping for a community potluck 🥗🍛: Connect with us on social media (BlueSky, LinkedIn, Twitter, various Slack communities, etc.) or at www.meteorscicomm.org.

P.S. If you missed it, we’re going to try something new next season — guests!!! Deets here if you want to join. And, if anyone listening reading has funding to help us compensate guests, please let us know!

First, we have a big announcement!

We’ve not previously opened the show to guests because we can’t monetarily compensate anyone for being on the podcast (even ourselves). But, we’ve heard from people that y’all would like to join the convo anyway. So, let’s do this! If you want to join the possible guest pool for next season, visit meteorscicomm.org/podcast. And, if anyone listening has funding to help us compensate guests, please let us know!

Now, on to today’s episode!

We’re kicking off SEASON 4!! 🥳

We’ve been hearing from you, listeners, for four years now. Together, we’ve gone from advanced how-to’s to hope is an action to systemic change, and we love feeling like we’re really in this together. So, this season’s theme is “We’re in this together, now what!?”

Today, we're taking a look at the risk there is, in the scicomm field, to see everything (and everyone) as competition, as a limit on what’s possible. This scarcity mindset dominates when we perceive a scarcity of resources. The tricky thing is, we’re often operating in situations where there are — actually — plenty of resources! It’s just a question of how we (or folks in charge, when it’s not us) choose to allocate those resources.

All of this leads to some real potential for issues among scicomm professionals and organizations.

For example, we think:

• Environments with loads of resources are actually more likely to foster a scarcity mindset.
• There are individual, institutional, and systemic points of responsibility (and opportunity!) to change these attitudes to be more oriented toward abundance and generosity.

As always, on this “overly” honest podcast, we talk through several examples in our personal and professional lives.

Then, we ask you to dig in for yourself:

• What’s a shift toward abundance that you could make in your mindset or habits around the scicomm community/profession?

Thanks for listening! We’re hoping for a community potluck 🥗🍛: Connect with us on social media (BlueSky, LinkedIn, Twitter, various Slack communities, etc.) or at www.meteorscicomm.org.

REMINDER: We’re running another cohort of SciComm STEP next spring! Applications are live right now on our website (MeteorSciComm.org)! 🥳

In this fast-paced episode (with a few audio flickers, boo Wyoming wind that knocks out the internet), we make this honest podcast about scicomm with impact a bit #overlyhonest. We tackle:

• Why we think academia still matters
• Why people “valuing” scicomm ain’t what we need
• The truth that professional development is too-often worse than no investment/change at all
• A tough reality: there’s no one place to go to “level up” your scicomm career if you’re beyond-beginner
• How we deal with (the unavoidable, we argue) jealousy of being advanced scicomm'ers
• How to stop getting in your own way with your scicomm project/funding pitches

Dig in for yourself:

• What’s a scicomm change you’re going to make in 2024?
• And, what’s one honest thing about scicomm systems that you think needs to be said out loud?!

We love you for being part of the Meteor community for another season! 💖 Stay connected with us on BlueSky at @bgmerkle.bsky.social and @vgwschutte.bsky.social.

First - two big announcements:

1. Our last episode will be a Q&A- send us your questions, ideas, puzzles, and dilemmas by December 1st.
2. We’re running another cohort of SciComm STEP next spring! Applications are live right now on our website (MeteorSciComm.org)! 🥳

Truly, yelling and naming is how we process, cope, and then work toward action and change when we’re facing schtuff that’s inequitable, obstructionist, or devalues work in scicomm. We talk through a lot of layers on this one:

• Naming what is really going on when people and systems undervalue the vital work that makes communities, systems, and good change happen
• Pushing back to make the work more legible or appreciated
• Taking a hard look in the mirror: how much of this work do you want to keep doing?
• Weighing whether someone even knows or intends the disrespect
• Holding an icy grip on rage in order to move through the spaces we need to operate in

And all the time, we need community that can validate us when we are angry, and hold space when we are furious.

We also talk about a couple of books that have been a valuable frame for us:

• The No Club: Putting a Stop to Women’s Dead-End Work
• Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger

Dig in for yourself:

• What is a systemic scicomm issue that you just need to name right now?
• And, what’s something you need to yell and stomp your feet about?

Thanks for listening! Get good and mad! 🤬😤 You can holler at/with us on BlueSky at @bgmerkle.bsky.social and @vgwschutte.bsky.social.

First - two big announcements:

1. Our last episode will be a Q&A- send us your questions, ideas, puzzles, and dilemmas by December 1st.
2. We’re running another cohort of SciComm STEP next spring! Applications are live right now on our website (MeteorSciComm.org)! 🥳

Wanting to get paid real money (plenty of it) is OKAY. Full stop. And, we argue it’s also important if we’re all going to do the collective, hard work of making the world better through scicomm. In this episode, we talk through:

• Why enjoying getting paid isn’t something to be embarrassed about
• The caution of worldviews that note “desire is the root of all suffering”
• A key reframe: anchor jobs are not sell-out jobs; they can be self-determined sponsorship of your passion projects/professional goals
• Income models are wildly different across realms of scicomm and other types of media/creator jobs; that’s not just okay, it’s great
• Funding at the systems change/program-building level is hard to access, unpredictable, often exclusive, and rarely sustainable

Dig in for yourself:

• Tell us about the dollars that you’d make a difference with!
• Or, what is something about money that you need or want to know right now?

Thanks for listening! Money, honey; let’s actually talk about it. 🍯💰Connect with us on BlueSky at @bgmerkle.bsky.social and @vgwschutte.bsky.social.