---

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors, especially in names. Click any timestamp to jump to that moment in the audio.

0:00Effective communication is not about dumping down the science or arguing about scientific evidence. It’s about understanding who you are talking to and what actually matters to them. What if you never planned to do science communication, but ended up living from it? That is our today’s story. Who are the characters behind science? This is Science Behind the Glass, illuminated in human sight. In this podcast, we unveil the human light of laboratories and science. Scientists share personal experiences and we’ll discuss their meanings from different perspectives and fields of research. Carlos Guarnizo hosts one of Colombia’s most beloved science platforms.

0:44He’s our guest today. He leads the BioCorp at Universidad de Los Andes, teaches science communication and biogeography. and is the creator of Ciencia Café para su Merced, where the complex science meets everyday learning. Carlos, thank you very much for accepting this invitation. It’s so exciting having you today. It truly is an honor to be on Science Behind the Glass. I’m really happy to be here. Thank you so much for the invitation, Linda and Daniel. To start off, we want to hear about where you come from. Where does your drive to communicate science come from? How did all these things? Well, it’s funny because I always thought of myself as a pretty introverted person, especially in small groups. But oddly enough, in large groups, I’m not introverted at all, which is quite curious. And when I was a kid, looking back at the family photo albums and the videos my uncle used to record, he had a video camera in the 80s, which wasn’t all that common.

1:41I was already making little videos with my cousins from a very young age, so I think something clicked for me right then. But it was just a fun thing, nothing more. Of course, I stopped doing that eventually. Then, when I was an undergrad, I started making videos again with some friends, just for laughs, nothing to do with science, we’d film funny situations. And again, I stopped. But then I did end up doing science communication, without ever having planned it that way. I always thought I’d end up in academia, teaching at a university, doing research. Science communication never crossed my mind, it happened almost by accident. A researcher from the United States came to visit Colombia, a woman named Karen Lips, who was working at the Smithsonian at the time.

2:20and she asked me over lunch in Bogota whether I knew of any science café in the city where she could go and learn what was happening in science in Colombia. I said, sorry, what? She said, a science café, a place, usually an actual café, where people give academic talks while you have a beer and listen. I thought, that sounds incredible, but I had no idea if one existed, so I looked it up and couldn’t find one. I found a couple outside of Bogota, but nothing ongoing in the city itself. This was back in 27 -7. So I told her, unfortunately, there isn’t one in Bogota. She said, that’s a shame, there really should be. And then she left, and she planted that seed. So, a group of colleagues, who coincidentally all worked with frogs at the Universidad de los Andes, plus a few people from the Humboldt Institute and Javeriana University, said, let’s start a science cafe. But then came the questions. Who’s going to run it? Who’s going to make the videos?

3:14Academic work takes up so much time, but I said, I’ll give it a shot. And that’s when the anxiety kicked in because I had never done science communication before. I had never recorded proper interviews. I had never organized an event of any kind. I hadn’t even organized the office secret center. I had never recorded proper interviews. So it was genuinely daunting, especially with the nagging thought, what are my colleagues going to think? By 2017, I was well into my career. The fear of what my professional peers would say when they saw me interviewing someone on camera was real. But I told myself, I’m going to try, and maybe a good shield would be to start by interviewing really top -notch people. And I was lucky enough that they said yes. The very first Science Cafe was about the birds of Bogota, and the panelists were Gary Stiles and Daniel Cajena, the absolute top of the field in Colombia. And for the first video interviews, I went to people I knew personally, people whom I trusted not to make me feel bad if I stumbled, but who were also genuine experts.

4:12I had no idea what to expect. I thought it would be a complete disaster. And it wasn’t. People really liked it. And that’s how it all began. It became a hobby. At first, it was like running is for some people or rock climbing for others. For me, this was it. And the job I have today exists precisely because I started doing science communication. Today, I work at the Vice Rectory for Research and Creation at the Universidad de Los Andes. Not studying frogs or doing biogeography, which is what I trained for through my PhD and postdocs. But that background has served me incredibly well because I now sit somewhere between a communications professional and an academic. and the researchers I interview tend to see me as a peer. They feel I won’t misrepresent them or embarrass their work. That’s really interesting. We are all terrible at this at the beginning. I’m including myself and Daniel. It took us a couple of months to get everything ready, and I find it very compelling that having that academic background gives you such a strong foundation. The what will my colleagues think feeling is so real. We do the podcast bilingually.

5:16And the English pronunciation at the start was an order. You end up overthinking everything. But what you do is generally wonderful. And why the dinosaur on Ciencia Café para su merced? What does the dinosaur come from? Well, at the start, I didn’t know what to call the project. I worked with frogs. I was in Bogotá. I wanted something with frogs in the name. My sister Carolina, she’s a graphic designer, didn’t love my first idea. She said, something with more energy. So I kept thinking, my mom is from Boyacha, from the city of Tunxa, and since I was a kid, I’ve always used the expression su mercy with everyone.

5:52It’s a traditional honorific from that region, roughly like your grace or your honor. I used it during my PhD and all the other Latin American students there started. Speaking it up too, people from Argentina and Peru said they’d never heard it before. And since it was a science café, ciencia, café, para su merce, he heard me. It had a ring to it, the name stuck. As for the dinosaur, the idea was to pick an animal, a mascot, that literally would not exist without science. I thought of Drosophila melanogaster first, the fruit fly, so I landed on dinosaurs. Because think about it, the image we have of dinosaurs comes entirely from paleontologists and artists. We would have no idea what they look like if it went for science.

6:32They are, in the most literal sense, important scientific animals. So that’s why the mascot is a dinosaur holding a cup of coffee with a little atom on it. That is the logo of Chencia Café para su Merced. That’s fascinating. And how would you connect your work with frogs to your work in science communication? Do you think your research gave you a source of inspiration? It’s a funny connection. When I started my undergrad at the Universidad de Los Andes, there was a subject that really grabbed me, animal physiology, taught by a German professor named Horst Luddecke.

7:05He was a fantastic teacher. Louis’ voice had a very steady, deep German cadence that made it genuinely hard to stay awake at the time. But the topics were so fascinating. How do animals work? What do the kidneys do? What does the liver do? What are the differences between species and how they solve biological problems? Find the link. So, when the semester ended, I knocked on his office door and asked if I could volunteer in his lab. He said absolutely, but added, just so you know, we work with frogs here. I thought, frogs? Sounds great. And that’s how it started.

7:35But here’s the interesting thing. In that lab, everyone worked in ecophysiology, a mix of ecology and physiology. Everyone, no exception. And when it came time for my undergrad thesis, Professor Lodeka came to me and said, I’ve got a scholarship for a thesis using DNA on something called phylogenography. What do you think about working in a lab on a computer? Everyone else was out in the field recording frog calls. And this was completely different. He said it was an area just beginning to gain momentum. Sure, sounds great. So, my thesis ended up being about frog DNA. And without knowing it, I was stepping into genuinely pioneering work in phylogenography in Colombia. Nobody had done it before. I had to go to a completely different lab to learn the techniques. A microbiology lab called CIMPAT, the Center for Research in Parasitology and Tropical Microbiology. I learned PCR, the whole thing. So, I was officially in one lab.

8:30working on a completely different topic with a completely different team similar things kept happening during my phd and postdocs i was always a bit of a fish out of water always drawn to topics that didn’t quite fit where i was placed and that ended up being incredibly useful when you’re always the odd one out you learn to communicate with very different kinds of people i didn’t realize it at the time in the moment it felt unsettling but looking back how lucky was that because you pick up skills without even noticing for example I developed the ability to watch two people talking and notice when person A was using language that person B clearly didn’t understand.

9:04And person B wasn’t saying anything, just nodding along to save face. No real communication is happening. I could spot that. And I think that skill is invaluable in science communication. Whether you’re interviewing a researcher or talking to a general audience, you always have to ask, how do I make this actually land? Because today, everyone is busy. What I do now is completely different from the 8 days to schedule an interview approach. I reach out to someone, pull out my phone and say, let’s do a quick 3 minute video right now. They panic at first. Then they relax when I say, I’ll show you the video before I post anything. And almost no one ever asked me to change anything substantial. That whole history of being in the wrong room in the best possible way gave me communication skills I didn’t even know I was building. So the pros like you to interdisciplinary and to learning other people’s languages. And you have mentioned in one of your TED Talks that we should tell our own story, that we should narrate our own work in our own voice. Why this matters? Why is it important telling our own story? Because I used to think, even back in my master’s, even into my PhD, that when I saw colleagues getting interviewed, I’d tell myself, I never get interviewed. That must mean my research isn’t interesting. They work on sexy topics. Whales. Everyone cares about whales. I work with frogs. Journalists don’t call me. That’s genuinely what I thought. Then I started doing science communication, talking to a lot of journalists, asking them, how do you actually choose what ends up in the news?

10:35And I realized my whole mental model was wrong. I had imagined it was like this. Every morning at 7am, the editorial board meets, divides up the journals, you read science, you take nature, and at the end they filter down to the most important finding of the month. Obviously, that’s not how it works. Nobody’s going to read Notter every morning just to pitch science stories. So, how are topics actually chosen? Most of the time, a major outlet, CNN, BBC, The New York Times, has a dedicated science journalist, someone like Carl Zimmer, who actually goes to the primary sources, reads papers, finds something compelling, translates it into accessible language, and publishes it. Then, outlets around the world pick it up and translate it, and it ripples outward. Remember when the first image of a black hole came out?

11:20I used that as an exercise in my science communication class. That image ran on the front page of newspapers worldwide. I asked my students, why do you think this specific image made every front page? And after some back and forth, the real question emerges, who decides what the most important story is? I had them search what else was published that same day on Web of Science. They find 50 or 60 fascinating topics. Someone had to decide the black hole was the one worth running. That decision depends on a lot of things. The particular interest of a science journalist, timing, luck, what crossed someone’s desk that day. Or a researcher reaches out directly. I just published a paper.

12:01Here’s the press release. Let me walk you through it. That’s how it often works. Here’s the other thing. Do you know how many papers are published every year? It’s basically impossible for anyone to come looking for you when you publish. No wonder I was never interviewed. I never once reached out to anyone. I just waited for someone to discover my paper. That was never going to happen. So? Who knows your research better than you? Nobody. Your paper is one of tens of thousands published that week. Even if someone finds it, it’s highly technical. The chances of a journalist reading it, understanding it, and deciding to cover it are incredibly slim. So, if you’re the one who knows it best, and it’s unlikely anyone else will tell your story, the logical conclusion is, tell it yourself. The pushback is always the same. I don’t know how to communicate. And second, I don’t have time. The first one can be solved. I’m living proof. I had never done science communication before I started. I’m still learning, and I’m sure in 10 years I’ll cringe at what I’m doing now. But that just means you’re improving. The second one is trickier. But if you genuinely don’t want to communicate your own work, then at the very least, go find someone who will. Actively. Reach out to a podcast, maybe one called Science Behind the Glass. Find Linda or Daniel’s email and write. I just published something, maybe it’s worth an episode, or contact your university’s communications office. There are many options, but do something, because if you don’t, it’s very unlikely your research will ever reach the world outside academic circles.

13:25I used to believe that publishing in a scientific journal meant the knowledge would gradually filter outward to the public. That is pure fantasy. It’s a bit like the idea that if billionaires keep getting richer, their wealth will trickle down to everyone else. We know that doesn’t happen. I think the same holds for information. What you are saying is really interesting. It is not just about communicating your own research. It is also about how and in what language we communicate it. And there is something else you touch on.

13:55People sometimes don’t want to be the face of their own world. So they handed it off to someone else. But then you run the risk of it being misinterpreted. That happens to us. I remember being asked about one of my studies and the next day the headline read, the world’s most aggressive spider. I had never said that. Not once. I made it very clear they weren’t aggressive. They were defensive.

14:23Yes, yes, of course. The next day, the world’s most aggressive spider. So how it’s transmitted is different and how it’s interpreted. Especially if the person is not a biologist. That happens all the time. And one of the main reasons is that science journalism is a specialization. And today, in most newsrooms, there are very few people trained in it. Very few are actually hired for it. So instead, you end up with someone covering science stories who also covers politics, sports, and entertainment. No scientific background rushing to file the story. No time to run it by the researcher before it goes out. And on the researcher’s side, they often don’t help either. They start explaining their project in highly technical language that the journalist simply can’t follow. That breakdown is precisely what leads to those blunders. Like the famous water bear mistake where someone ran a story with a photo of a grizzly bear wading through water when the story was actually about the microscopic animal also called a water bear. It happens constantly.

15:21That’s exactly why either communicate your own work or find someone to do it for you. Ideally, someone with a background in science journalism trained to prevent exactly that kind of thing. And just as you were saying, there is always a decision being made about what gets published. Someone decides what’s in and what’s out. And that applies to science communication too, because we often have research with real political and legislative stakes, like climate change, biodiversity conservation, and so many others. How do you think we can present that kind of scientifically…

15:57grounded information and the policy implications it carries in a way that is accurate and as balanced as possible, so it can actually serve to improve laws and international commitments. Yes, this is a very common challenge in conservation biology. Conservation biology develops strategies to protect species and to study the mechanisms of conservation. But ultimately, the conservation of species doesn’t depend on the discipline itself. It depends on people. These are collective issues. So what good is all that theory without practice? It falls flat. That’s the question. How do we communicate these topics in a way that actually has an impact, that isn’t misrepresented, that gets through to people? And here, I think we need to work not just in the natural sciences in isolation, but also in conjunction with people from the social sciences. Because social scientists have spent centuries studying human beings, how we behave, what drives us, and our psychology. For example. Some scientific topics are easy to communicate without generating any friction or resistance.

16:59Say I walk into a community center and say, I’m a cockroach expert. I’ve spent 20 years studying cockroaches, and I’m here to tell you about this little hair on a cockroach’s leg. It’s a mechanoreceptor. When you go to slap one with your flip -flop, the cockroach detects the air movement before the blow lands. And that’s why it runs. It has a sensor that lets it escape before you can get it. Nobody’s going to say, that’s an attack on who I am as a person. There’s no friction, no politicized beliefs about cockroach biology, no worldview threatened by that information.

17:27Nothing to push back against. Now try talking about climate change, genetic engineering, that the earth is round, evolution. These are topics that, for whatever reason, some people have attached to something else, a political identity, a belief system. They’re loaded. That’s when you risk total rejection of everything you’re trying to say. And that’s exactly when you benefit most from partnering with social scientists to build a real communication strategy. Take a concrete example. Say I work in shark conservation, and I want to engage a fishing community that makes its living catching sharks. If I show up and say, Hi, I have a PhD, and I’m here to tell you that shark fishing is not prohibited. That is the single worst strategy imaginable. There’s an immediate clash. This is how I feed my family.

18:09What am I supposed to do? The same goes for communities involved in deforestation. Going in with top -down mandates doesn’t work. This is actually a well -studied phenomenon. It’s called the Deficit Model of Science Communication. The old assumption was that people don’t embrace science because they lack sufficient information about it. Give them more information and they’ll automatically support it. Just flood the internet with science content and people will come around. Obviously, that doesn’t work. The deficit model has been thoroughly debunked. The problem isn’t a lack of information. People who think the earth is flat have heard many times that the earth is not flat. They know the claim. They just don’t believe it because their trusted sources aren’t scientific. So why would they accept my sources?

18:49I remember during my Ph.D. in Texas, there was a push to teach creationism in public school biology classes, framed as intelligent design. Some of my fellow Ph.D. students decided to go to the state legislature, loaded with textbooks and evolutionary biology evidence to convince the lawmakers. I remember watching them head off with entire carts full of academic books, and we all thought it was admirable. But obviously they went and got the door slammed in their face.

19:14and they came back saying we don’t understand why didn’t they listen and i get it now completely you cannot go to a politician carrying a stack of technical books as proof of being right that person doesn’t accept those books as evidence you have to use different strategies to sum it up some scientific topics are easy to communicate because they don’t intersect with anyone’s core beliefs but other topics are deeply loaded and for those you need creative unconventional strategies ideally developed hand -in -hand with social scientists And the arts, by the way, are extraordinary for this. The arts can open doors that a pile of textbooks never will. And that brings us right to what we want to ask you next. How do you pass along that knowledge with empathy without getting into a fight with people? Because avoiding bias is easier said than done, right? Even scientists have preferences and beliefs. Everyone has biases.

20:08They’re evolutionary. The first step is simply accepting that you have them too. There are a number of strategies. Going back to the shark conservation example, what can I do? One recommendation. Why not include someone from that fishing community in your research team? It’s a way to build real trust and genuine relationships. But it takes time. This doesn’t happen overnight. So, if you’re doing research with communities, one key recommendation is don’t go in once and never come back. That helicopter approach, drop in, extract your data, fly off, publish your paper. take the credit, and the community gains nothing. That has to stop. Instead, work with people, include them in the project, work with the children in those communities. Do ongoing science communication there, not a one -time visit, but sustained engagement.

20:53Because if they see you as a real person, not as some untouchable genius living in an ivory tower, trust Erodius over time. And I think part of the reason Shines funding is so under -prioritized, why Shines Ministries often get some of the smallest budget, is because… People don’t see scientists as ghosts, but participatory science is a powerful model where communities do their own monitoring, where they’re not just recipients, but active participants. Instead of just installing solar panels in a community and leaving, you teach them how to maintain and repair them so they don’t depend on outsiders. They own the knowledge.

21:25That’s called knowledge appropriation, community empowerment through science. Yes, and that leads us to another topic, the dynamics within academia that you mentioned. Very self -contained, very inward -facing conferences, symposia, specialized meetings. Very little of it gets translated into real -world advances or practical applications for the general society. What makes those kind of interactions and events actually memorable and impactful for a wider audience? Right. How do we make historically closed scientific events have a greater impact on society? Every conference I ever attended in my academic life was closed.

22:06You’d show up, pay a large registration fee, and you’d be in a hotel or convention center with your peers. Incredible topics would come up and people would share amazing work. Then the conference ended, and that was it. It evaporated. All that knowledge, and the people living right next door to that convention center, got nothing. But I’m starting to see that changing. Now you have events with one day open to the public. Activities that spill out of the conference and into bars and cafes in the host city. I remember a conference in Cali where a science cafe was organized outside the venue. And at the most recent herpetology conference in Barranquilla, science cafes were held outside the official program. I’ve also seen conferences where students’ posters, incredible pieces of work, there might be 200 of them, get turned into one -minute videos shared on social media. That knowledge starts reaching people who were never at a conference.

22:54That, to me, is extraordinary. Something else that works is inviting journalists to conferences, hold press briefings. You bring in the top experts and say, let us walk you through the main findings of this conference and what they mean for this country. Newsrooms would jump at the chance to send someone to something like that. But it doesn’t happen. Not yet. I genuinely believe the best ideas are the ones that haven’t been done before. We always ask, has this been tried? If the answer is no, we too often say, then we can’t. I think it’s the other way around. If it hasn’t been done, let’s do it. Science talks in a butcher shop. Never been done. Let’s try it. talks on the metro, in the park, in a bakery, all of that is still waiting to be explored. Also, I think you mentioned that love is the role of art. I think that is like a superpower for transmitting science through stories, through visual experience.

23:46We are visual creatures, and finding ways to use art to reach people seems extraordinary. I genuinely believe art is one of the most powerful tools for science communication, and I know this firsthand. I’ve had the opportunity to work with Paula Rios and Trixie Doe over the last two years, making music for children with real science content focused on biodiversity. And the power of music to teach is simply stunning. I’ve been a university professor for years, and I cannot achieve with my adult students the level of understanding and retention that children reach at a concert through songs about shark physiology. It’s remarkable.

24:20Literature, too. Children’s literature is an incredibly powerful vehicle for science communication. The illustrations alone carry so much. And you know what else? Science communication gives you something that a purely academic career sometimes doesn’t. As a professor, you watch cohort after cohort come through. New faces every year. They graduate and leave. And there’s something melancholy about thinking, when I retire, when I’m no longer able to teach, then what? Science communication is different. You can make videos, write books, draw, make music your whole life. And every single day, you can reach someone new. That’s deeply satisfying. Art, I’ve come to discover, is one of the most powerful tools we have for making that happen. We would love to know, how do you involve your family in science communication and in science itself? Your partner, your siblings, your parents, how does that work for you? My sister Carolina has been directly involved. She designed the Sumerce logo and helps me with design things all the time. My two sisters live in Germany, Carolina and Marcela. Marcela and I have done some really beautiful things together involving music and science communication around plant biology, seeds, that kind of work. I love it because we wouldn’t have collaborated like that otherwise. We’re all different. We’ve each taken very different paths in life, but I love that these projects bring us together. My partner is also a constant creative collaborator. We’re always making music together, bouncing ideas around, and developing new projects. And my parents, my aunt, they come to every event. They support

25:53everything. and they give me honest feedback too. I sometimes ask them, does this make sense to you? Does this topic feel interesting? That input from family is genuinely valuable. I actually tell my students, you’re sitting on a gold mine, and you don’t even know it. Family gatherings are the perfect place to start communicating science. I tell them, at your next family dinner, set up a screen, call everyone over. Come on, sit down. I want to show you a video I filmed during my last field trip, and I’m going to explain once and for all what biologists actually do out there. If you show your family photos, put some music to them. Share videos from the field.

26:28I promise they will see you differently. And in the process of pulling that together, you quietly develop a whole set of skills, public speaking, event organization, video editing, and photography. Things that, if you keep at them, build up over time. And before you know it, you realize you’ve become someone who’s genuinely good at telling stories. Family can be the most honest critics, right? What do you actually study?

26:54What does any of this mean for real life? Why is it important being a biologist? You’re a biologist? Great, come help me with my plans. I’m Carlos to finalize. Tell us one story. This one isn’t exactly about science communication, but it connects. When I finished my PhD, I went to Germany to look for a postdoc opportunity. My sisters were living there. I had to travel to a place called Braunschweig. a small town fairly far from where they lived. So, I got on a train by myself, not speaking a word of German. My stop was Braunschweig.

27:23But when the train arrived at Braunschweig, it didn’t pull into a station. It stopped in the middle of nowhere, on what looked like an open field. I thought, this can’t be the station. I’ll wait for the real stop. The train started moving again and went all the way through to the next town. That was it. I got off. It was winter, absolutely freezing. I found myself in a tiny village I’d never heard of. The train was gone. I had to find my way back. Then I noticed there was only one rail, no second track going the other direction, just one. I started walking through the village, looking for someone to ask, but I could barely find anyone, and the few people I did find didn’t speak a word of English or Spanish. I genuinely thought, I may not survive this. After about two hours of wandering, I found a woman sitting at the station. I tried gestures, pointing, miming, Braunschweig, she nodded, Braunschweig, yes, yes, and I waited. Eventually, on that same single track, another train came back. The train had gone all the way to the end of the line and was returning on the same rail, like a shuttle.

28:21It was the same track all along. I arrived at my meeting extremely late. And in Germany, being late is not well received. I got quite the earful. Carlos, thank you. It has been such a pleasure. And thank you for accepting this invitation. Today, we are left with one simple but powerful idea. Science doesn’t only live in laughter. He lives in conversations, in a cafe, in a bar, in a school, in a living room, in a song, and every question someone dares to ask. Carlos Guarnizo reminds us that communicating science isn’t about winning arguments. It’s about rebuilding trust.

28:58And talking about biodiversity isn’t about reciting data. It’s about understanding that we are connected to the land and to the life that sustains it. Remember that Science Behind the Glass now lives on a platform that connects the podcast to all major streaming services via RSS. Just click the link in the description to find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon YouTube, and wherever else you love to listen. Science Behind the Glass is an independent podcast created and hosted by me, Linda Hernandez -Duran, and Daniela Guerra.

29:31With the invaluable support of our technical director, Rafael Giordano. and the original music of our colleague and friend Bernardo Aguil. Find us on Instagram, X, Facebook, LinkedIn, and TikTok. Visit our website for more stories, updates, and resources. Don’t forget to subscribe and share this podcast with your friends, communities, and networks. Let’s amplify these essential stories together. And if this podcast inspired you, consider supporting us with a contribution via PayPal.

30:04Just click the Support Us button on our website. Your support helps us to grow and allows us to keep shining light on the human side of science. Until next time.