Hey everyone , welcome to the second season of Hot Psycom Summer , where I talk with savvy science communicators to figure out how to get science findings outside of niche academic circles . Kicking off this summer is an excellent science writer Melinda Wenner Moyer . She is a science journalist and contributing editor at Scientific American Magazine .
Recently , melinda received the Excellence in Science Journalism Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology , the 2019 Bricker Award for Science Writing and Medicine , and her work was featured in the 2020 Best American Science and Nature Writing Anthology . But that's only recently .
She's been writing about science for major outlets for years and doing it really , really well . In 2021 , she released her first book , how to Raise Kids Who Aren't Assholes , which is a great parenting book that actually cares about evidence from behavioral science .
I've read a lot of parenting books in the last couple years and they're garbage so many of them based on speculation and a handful of cases that the author happens to know about . But Melinda's book really does a nice job of surveying the science on parenting and development and what makes a kid a kid .
So we talk about that book , but we also talk about how she got started in science writing and we even do a deep dive on a 2017 feature article she wrote for Scientific American about whether legal access to guns actually deters crime and makes people safer .
It's a really great example of what science journalism can be , and I wanted to know every step of how something like that gets written . So here we go . Season two of Hot SciComm Summer is happening , so let's jump right into my chat with Melinda Wender Moyer .
I was digging around a little bit for your backstory to see what I could figure out on my own , and it wasn't much actually . So I'm kind of curious if you could sort of walk me through like , how it is that you came to this point .
My guess is that it was through a relatively traditional journalism route , which is unique from a lot of the folks that I talk to for this , and so I just kind of want to get a sense of like where did this journalism bug come from ? How did you get your feet in the water And , in particular , what is it about science journalism that is keeping you going ?
Yeah , absolutely So . Actually I guess I'll start at the very beginning . I mean , i've always loved writing , but as a kid too . I wrote a magazine when I was in fourth and fifth grade , just for fun , and I loved writing , but I never thought like , oh , this could be a career .
I never really thought of it as something that I could do for the rest of my life and make money from it . So then I pursued all sorts of different things . I actually studied music composition in college I have a Bachelor of Music And then I also wanted to get a more traditional arts and sciences degree .
But I had no idea what I wanted to do When I was in college . At the beginning of college I didn't even like science . I didn't think I liked science . I didn't take any science .
And then , randomly after , i think , my sophomore year , i took a biology class over the summer and I just fell in love with it And I was like , ok , this is going to be my second major , i'm going to jump into a cell and molecular biology degree . And so I did that . But I also just didn't really know what I was going to do with it .
I worked in a lab for a while . I was at the University of Michigan . I worked in a cancer lab and I thought maybe I'll be a researcher . And then I was like no , i think my problem is I get bored pretty easily . And it was like you know , this focus on this one particular protein . I was like no , i can't do this forever .
And then I ended up moving to England and worked for a biotech company for a few years doing marketing And at this point I started writing a little bit about science just for the marketing literature for this company And it kind of rekindled my love for writing And I realized , oh , you know , writing about science is actually really fun , i wonder .
You know , i didn't love marketing , to be honest , but I was like I wonder how I can write about science . And every day on the train into work I was reading New Scientist magazine And just one day it was like a light bulb that went off in my head and I was like wait , how do I do what they're doing ?
How do I write about science for a magazine That seems like that would be super fun ? And started just looking into like how do you do this ? I think I reached out to some of the editors and writers , that New Scientist and other I think I reached out to , like Steven Pinker as well . I was like how do I do what you do ?
I don't think you wrote back , but eventually it became clear that there were journalism programs , master's programs in science journalism in particular . They were really small programs and I applied to several and I ended up going to NYU for their science journalism program And that was basically it And I've been writing .
I've been freelancing , actually for most of the time since I graduated from NYU in 2006 and writing about all sorts of science , but now it's this is my passion , like I love it , and I'm never bored .
Yeah , and so the other question I had before we get there is what was the third grade magazine about ? What ended up in there ?
So it was . It was called Magic Magazine and it was all sorts of things There were . It was a lot of fiction writing , actually like fake news . I actually wrote it was called the untrue news .
So yeah , and I would just make up these crazy stories about people being eaten by alligators and stuff And then I would write short stories in it and I would also have like crosswords that I made And it was basically just sold to my friends and my relatives . It was 25 cents an issue And I wrote it for a couple of years .
Once a month that came out and there's a lot of . Yeah , I know It was a lot of work , but I loved it And I guess I should have known back then that I was ultimately destined to become a writer .
But yeah , Yeah , i like , and the part of the story too is the generalist opportunity that science writing affords , right .
It strikes me that you know , when you look at when I look at the work that you've done in general like it covers a lot of bases which you know for some can be sort of like the grind of science writing and for others like a feature of doing this rather than being hunched over a bench doing the same thing for 20 years .
And so my sense from how you presented it is that this is , for you , more of a feature right That you get to like . As soon as you're bored with like this particular area , you can jump ship .
Your life affords you the opportunity to just go like now I'm going to do like I'm going to go back to that protein and see what I can talk about to the public .
No , it's absolutely true . I love that I can dig into something really deeply for a while and sort of follow a beat . And I've , you know , over the years I've dug into neuroscience and immunology , and ticks and tick-borne diseases was a big one for a while And then social science , and now you know , child development , And I do love that .
I can , you know , really dig into something for as long as I want to , And then , if I get kind of sick of it , I can pivot and I can , you know , find this whole new area that is interesting that I want to learn about . So I love that .
I'm constantly able to learn new things and I'm really never bored , But I do , at this point , I've been doing it long enough that you know .
I think sometimes it's hard when you're starting out and you're taking any assignment that you can get , And then it does kind of feel like , you know , you're writing about things you just don't want to be writing about and it's all over the place .
And when I started out I did have that feeling of like I don't , you know , I don't want to write about this particular protein , but it's the only assignment I can get , you know . But now I feel like I have , you know , I'm choosing what I want to focus on and I have that , you know autonomy and it .
Just that feels really , really nice And I'm kind of my own boss as well . I mean , I obviously have editors , but I get to kind of decide what I do with each day And I , yeah , I love that .
So in those early days , like what were these sorts of jobs where you were getting assignments Like this is obviously like a total outsidery question . That's probably a fairly clear answer to someone in that world . But like , what's the nature of a job like this that you're just sort of like stepping into straight out of science journalism school ?
Yeah . So you know , when you first start writing trying to freelance , the editors at publications don't know who you are and when you you send them an idea for a story , they often ignore you . They just don't even write back because they don't know whether they can trust you as a writer . They don't know you know whether you're good to work with .
So it's really hard to break in to publications and get assignments . And so when I , when I left journalism school , i did get introduced to a couple of editors by my professors , and one of them was at the scientist magazine And I remember saying you know , i got one story in with them and they liked working with me and I was like this is my in .
And I said to the editor I was working with , i said what kinds of stories are you looking for so I could pitch you things that you want ? And she said actually we have this very weird Friday feature that's like arts and sciences , like we want .
We want to cover art installations that have to do with science and theater productions that have to do with science . And I remember thinking this is totally not really my wheelhouse , like I was interested in it because I had a background in music , but also was like this kind of weird .
But I just every week would pitch , you know , something that was related to arts and sciences , even though it wasn't really like what I dreamt of doing , but it was a way to get a paycheck every week And that's what I needed . So , yeah , you're kind of like asking editors what do you need , what kind of stories are you looking for ?
And then they might tell you something , like you know immunology and you're like , oh God , i don't know if I want to write about that . That's hard . But then you're like well , i need the money . So I'm going to try to find immunology stories and do my best .
And there's probably like looking into the past or , from the outside , looking in , you can say that was probably good , though right , Maybe I don't know . I say this , I didn't have to do it myself , but you know you have to cut your teeth somewhere and if you're thrown into a particular world you've got to swim your way out of it somehow .
Absolutely Yeah , and being thrown into these stories that maybe you're not that comfortable with and these topics you're not comfortable with , really teaches you how to report quickly and how to you know how to be versatile and flexible .
And so , yes , it ultimately was a good thing , even though in the moment sometimes I was like , oh , i don't want to work on this piece .
Do you see a real difference between science writing and other forms of reporting , like is there something ? clearly there's a program for science journalism specifically , which implies that it's unique , but I could also see an argument from someone who says , like a story is a story is a story , and so I'm curious what your take on that is .
Yeah , you know , i think there are certainly some things that make science reporting unique . I mean , you really have to understand how to research a topic . You know what are the databases where you can find studies and how do you ? how do you read a study ? How do you understand a study ? How do you find ?
I think one of the hardest things is how do you find expert sources who are really credible , and so I think sometimes I see science stories where the experts that are being interviewed on the health topic like they really don't have expertise in an area and you know , and maybe they're just sort of pontificating there .
You know an internist who's been asked about endocrine decepting chemicals , let's say and you know they can kind of tell you what their opinions are , but they don't necessarily know the research . So I think there is some really important training that happens in terms of you know how can you find the right kind of source for your story ?
How do you find out if they're credible and trustworthy and have conflicts of interest , for instance ? that's another huge thing you need to look for .
But I do agree that a lot of the same tenets of just basic reporting are there , and also I think what's interesting is that if you're trained as a science journalist , i've heard you know I don't have personal experience with this , but I have heard that editors who cover other kind of difficult , gnarly topics will be interested in hiring you because they know
that you can , you know , quickly learn difficult topics .
So , like you know , if I know some science reporters who ended up going into you know finance reporting and things like that because editors will say , well , they have , you know , they have these really strong foundations and how to learn about new topics and how to , you know , gain mastery over things quickly And so I can give them these really tricky topics on
something they don't , you know , have a lot of knowledge of , and they can catch up quickly .
So of the variety of you know , you mentioned social science among other kinds of topics that you cover , and part of my interest in this series in particular is like what are the unique quirks of social science reporting ? Because it's kind of like the other question of is science reporting any different from any other kind of reporting ?
Is there like having covered a lot of different things ? do you see social science as having its own unique challenges Or does it strike you as like mechanically the same as any other kind of science reporting ?
Yeah , it's a really interesting question . I mean , i think in some ways it is similar . You know , i find some well , it's complicated , but similar I would say . You know , at first glance , when you're reading social science papers , they can be easier to kind of understand than say , an immunology paper right , there's just less jargon and stuff like that .
But I think the complexity comes from understanding the nuances of methodology and really , you know , being able to look at a social science paper and say , you know , are the conclusions here merited , based on how they conducted the study ?
You know there's , it's not that , it's not that there's more low quality social science research than there is other kinds of research .
But I think sometimes it can be hard to tell when it is maybe not you know as robust And I think it , and I think it can be easy , for instance , to make you know to interpret a correlational study as causal and you know to . Really it's hard to I think it's .
You have to take a lot of care in how you cover social science results so that you're accurate and you're not over representing the findings or over , you know , interpreting them , and so I think that can be tricky , yeah , but otherwise I do think it's pretty similar , you know , in the way that I guess I approach the reporting .
So that's a good transition . So you identified this article on guns for Scientific American from several years ago , and I'm glad you did , because it's very good .
I really enjoyed reading that article And so I kind of want to break that down a little bit and just sort of get a sense of like how you approached that piece , and then after that we'll talk about the book as well .
But for this , if you could maybe just like to orient people I know this was a few years ago now But if you could summarize kind of the gist of the final article that appeared in print .
Yes , sure . So I guess I will start with how my editors came to me for this assignment , because I think that's important too .
So my editors at Scientific American , i've been writing for them for a while and they came to me and said we really want a story that digs into the question of whether more guns in more places keep people safe or whether the opposite is true . And they said you know , we really just want to address this .
And like have you look into the research as deeply as possible and give us some kind of semblance of an answer . And I remember saying well , you know , i haven't looked into this yet , but I want to make sure that any answer I get from the research is going to be okay with you . Like I wanted to make sure they weren't looking for a particular answer .
Because I said , honestly , you know , sometimes you think you're going to get one answer and then you dig into the research and you're surprised that actually it shows something different . So I said you know , i just want to make sure that you're not expecting me to have a particular conclusion . They said no . They said you know , we've done a little research .
We think we kind of know what the research says But of course , we trust you And if you find something different , then that's what we'll cover . So I , yeah , so that was basically the driving question . You know , what do we know about how guns affect violence rates in areas , and do just having a gun in your home keep you safer or put you at risk ?
And it really was rooted in some of the rhetoric that we were hearing from politicians who were saying you know , if we have more guns in more places and the NRA as well then we're keeping people safer , and they just really wanted to dig into that idea . So ultimately , i found that guns do not keep people safer .
I feel like this has now been reported pretty widely and maybe not become a surprise to listeners , but back then it was maybe not as widely covered .
This was from 2017 that the piece was published , yeah , and I just kind of tried to dig into this question in as many ways as I could and it and found sort of different , different aspects of the question that I wanted to look into , like what do we know about how a gun in the home affects you know , the risk of firearm violence ?
what do we know about whether guns actually are used in self-defense effectively and they're useful for self-defense . You know , what do we know about carrying a gun , you know , outside of the home and does that protect people ? So I really wanted to dig into all these sort of different phenomena and it was really interesting .
So on the research side , because the other thing about the article that's really wonderful is the on the ground stuff that you have right , like you're also talking to people and getting just like people in communities who value guns and think that they're good and what their reactions to the data are , why they hold the positions that they hold , sort of a culture
of a place . So I'm going to get to that in a second . But if we just stick with the research part , tangibly , how are you going about that process ? right , so presumably , like you said , there are databases out there , but is it just kind of like guns search , like yeah , i'm curious sort of how you embark on that process from the beginning .
Yeah , so definitely .
At first it is going to social science research databases and trying to figure out the right keywords , which can sometimes take some time , as somebody who's not , you know , enmeshed in the field And just like casting as wide of a net as possible and using all sorts of different kinds of keywords to try to capture as much potential research that could be relevant .
And then , you know , slowly I go through the studies . I find I tend to like take a few days and I just download hundreds of studies , which may not be the most efficient way of doing things , but I don't know why , but I like doing it that way .
And then I have this huge folder and I try to organize it by , maybe , different subtopics , and then I go through each study and I at least read the abstract , if not more , to just get a sense of whether it's even relevant to the question I'm asking . And then I'll get rid of some that you know .
Oh , this actually is , you know , some kind of other kind of study that's not relevant .
And the other really important thing is I start , you know , if I now have a handful or maybe hundreds of studies , i start looking for who are the researchers who keep coming up over and over again in the literature and I start setting up interviews with them And in those interviews I always ask you know who else is studying this question or related questions ?
who else should I be talking to ? and you know who might disagree with you ? or you know who's publishing research , that's you know , different from yours but relevant to the question . And so I always ask those questions and that also really helps me identify who are the researchers .
And I might also ask you know what are some of the key studies that I really want to be looking at ? and I remember , yeah , i remember there were some studies that featured prominently in the , in the piece that you know researchers mentioned to me over and over again . Oh , you got to look at Art Kellerman and his work .
Yeah , because you refer to them as like landmark or the most famous or whatever , and that's hard like as not . In that world you go . I don't know what's famous and what's not . I guess I could look at citations , but that's not everything , right right .
Yes , so a lot of that comes from really just speaking to a lot of researchers in the field and asking them you know who are the key players , who you know , what are the key studies that you know , that you refer back to or that really you know launched an area of research or that really you know framed the field in some way , in some important way ?
Yeah , so it's a lot of that as well .
And then so between that and the research that I've done on my own , i kind of , you know , come up with a bunch of studies that I feel like are very relevant and I read them very closely and then then I kind of slowly figure out , like what am I going to talk about in the piece , what really feels the most important , etc .
How closely are you reading those papers before you talk to researchers Like , how informed are you coming into those conversations ?
It depends . It depends Sometimes . You know , i always I teach science journalism at NYU as well and I teach my students that so often we want to wait and read everything and then do interviews at the end because we want to be informed when we talk to researchers .
But that isn't always the best strategy actually , because then you're learning all this stuff sort of towards the end of your reporting from your interviews and you may not that then you're facing a deadline and you may not have time to , you know , look down new avenues that you've learned from those researchers are important to investigate . So I do a mix .
I mean I sometimes will do interviews at the beginning of my reporting and I really won't know that much . And I will say that to my source and say you know I I've looked at some papers but I haven't certainly read lots of relevant papers . Or you know , i've looked at your abstracts and read through your . I haven't read your paper in great detail yet .
And I give them that heads up and usually they're they're okay with that .
And then sometimes you know , once I've talked to them and then I've read their papers in more detail , i will , i will ask for a follow up interview And sometimes I will have read papers you know a bunch of papers by by that researcher and really comb through it and have you know highlights and notes and all these things and specific questions I want to ask
And we just jump right into you know the nitty gritty of it . So it it depends .
It's also very low level . But are you taking notes like in a notebook , in an app and just a blank Word doc ? How are you staying organized with hundreds of papers ?
Yes , so I use Scrivener , which is a great sort of research organizational tool and writing tool , i guess app . Well , it's software , it's an app , i guess , where you can . You know it's it's . It lets you organize paper you know papers into folders and take notes and make highlights and all these things . So I use that , which helps me .
You know I use keywords when I save a particular paper so I can search different papers by keywords .
I'm also I record pretty much all of my interviews with sources and I get them transcribed so that you know I can go back and I use this transcription software , otterai , which is great because you can actually like it has the both the audio and the text and you can listen .
You know , if you're like I think this transcript is a little off , you can just highlight a passage and listen to it and say , oh yeah , this is what he was actually saying or she was actually saying . And then , yeah , sometimes I open up .
You know I start a note document or I'm just like writing down my perceptions or you know bigger picture things that I am learning from the research to keep me organized .
Okay , great , i appreciate you rolling with that , because I feel like those are those weird , quirky things that you only figure out after years of doing something And if you're coming in fresh , you go . I don't know , i just don't even . I was supposed to take notes on these .
Right .
So so that that's one half right , one half is reporting on what are the data over years of things being published ? what are social scientists saying about this question ?
But the other thing that I think really makes this article saying is the people you talk to , in particular in this one town with a unique relationship with guns , and so could you describe a little bit like what the process of that looks like , like , what were you doing for that ? like how did you approach this other side of reporting on this issue ?
Yeah , so from the very beginning , when this piece was assigned , my editor and I were talking about how we didn't just want this to be like all data , we wanted it to be a narrative feature , and so we wanted , we wanted some kind of story in there . And you know we were thinking , well , what could this story be ?
what would I be focusing on one particular researcher ?
I mean , there's a lot of different ways that you can approach narrative , but I , at some point I can't remember if it was me or my editor , but we came up with this idea of having a narrative thread be this road trip that I would take through the south And I would identify these key places and people , maybe that I would go to and and talk .
You know , and very quickly actually , it became clear that there were some interesting places in the south that were drivable between each other , where there were kind of these . I don't know that's that made for this like unique opportunity to look at how a particular community deals with guns .
So one of them was Kennesaw , georgia , which is a town in Georgia , not far from Atlanta , where they've actually had a law , and a longstanding law requiring residents to own guns , and I thought , and the premise being this will keep everyone safer .
And I thought , well , that's really relevant to the question I'm trying to answer And there had been studies done on it too , so I could weave in some research .
And so I thought I really want to go to Kennesaw and I really want to speak to somebody there , maybe in the police department or maybe the mayor , who can talk to me about this law and why it exists and why they believe in it and what the data say .
And so there were a couple of places like that where I really recognize like this is an interesting place with regard to the community's relationship with guns . There was another place in Alabama where they had the highest rate of permits for concealed carry , like the .
I think you know more a higher percentage of the population had concealed carry permits than anywhere else in the United States . And I thought , well , that's interesting too . And so I went and talked to people there . So I kind of just tried to identify these places that would make for these interesting , you know , sections . Like I could .
I could have an entire section sort of rooted in this place and and engage with people with like regular people there about their relationship with guns and how the particular circumstances of that place , you know , affected how they thought about guns , and it was really fun .
I mean I was kind of terrified going on the road trip , to be honest , but I was also . It was just . It was fascinating just talking to like regular people about . You know , what do you think about this ?
And I imagine at that point you probably started to have a reasonably strong sense from the research about what the conclusions were . And so how do you navigate those conversations where you , you probably know going in that you disagree and that probably you're going to be writing an article that disagrees with these people's opinions ? Does that ?
how does that shape the dynamic of you know , trust and all those things that go into kind of forging these relationships as a journalist ?
Yeah , it's tricky . It's definitely tricky , i mean . So I think as a journalist , it's important to not lie to your sources ever about what you're writing about .
But at the same time , when I was doing this reporting , i was probably halfway through my research And I also didn't feel the need to tell them and I wasn't at the point where I didn't tell them exactly what my angle was going to be .
So I said , you know , meeting with , for instance , the police in Kennesaw and the mayor in Kennesaw , i said I mean , i was perfectly honest .
I said this is the driving question of the piece and I'm looking at the research And I also want to understand , you know what , you know what everyday people living in communities that are , you know , have a strong relationship with guns , how they feel about guns and why they . You know why they have guns , and I certainly did .
You know it probably became clearer to some of them that I was . So I would ask questions like well , i've seen some of the research on Kenesaw and it looks like perhaps guns didn't actually don't have much of a role in the violence there , and what do you have to say about that ?
So I mean , i was definitely showing that I had some reservations , maybe , about some of the claims that people were making based on the research I was seeing , but I wasn't also trying to be antagonistic . So it's a kind of a balance where you're not being dishonest And you're , you know , with the questions you're asking you're revealing , like that .
You're a little bit skeptical , but you know , i also really was curious And I really did want to understand how people thought about guns in these communities , and I mean , that was one reason that I decided to end up going to a shooting range while I was there too , because I wanted to understand what is it ? I hadn't really shot a gun .
Well , i had as a kid , but that's another story for another day . Just a throwaway comment Overnight camp in Alabama .
That's just what it that way Yeah .
I really wanted to understand what does it feel like to shoot a gun ?
And you know , i wanted to know like I felt like that was an important thing to have experience if I was going to write about you know how people feel about guns And so I did that And I and it was actually a really kind of transformative experience And I had this like euphoric feeling after I shot a gun and this feeling of like you know , just I'm so
like omnipotent , i can do anything , like I'm safe , and I was like , wow , this gives me some insight into why people really love their guns And I thought that was really valuable .
So that experience , by the way , opens up the piece , right Is that ?
right , yes .
Which is just like I have to say yeah , it was one of those moments where you go like , oh , okay , I don't know where this is going . Now , Like in the first paragraph , you've completely got me , because I go like , oh , you're in it And I don't know where we're going , And so like I'm like very interested in following the thread .
That's good to hear . Well , and I also just I didn't want to write a piece that that alienated people who loved guns Like . I didn't want to come across immediately as , like you know , the snarky journalist who's like guns are evil and terrible and people are dumb who have guns Like , and I didn't feel that way .
But I also just really didn't want to give that impression right , even if the conclusion of my piece was going to be that no , the research really shows that guns don't keep people safe . I didn't want to immediately come across , as you know , a journalist who had made up their mind from the get go and , you know , was not open minded at all .
So this was definitely a conscious decision to open with that And to hope that I brought some readers with me on the journey of my discovery of this research who you know maybe wouldn't have otherwise come along for the journey . And I did notice that you know some of the media I did like a media appearances and radio shows I did after the piece came out .
They were , you know , i was invited onto some shows with people who were , you know , who loved their guns and who talk about you know the value of guns and they actually we had like a productive conversation about it in a way that I'm not sure otherwise that we would have if I hadn't sort of , you know , really tried to embrace the other side and understand
it and share their perspectives .
So , so , okay , So at this point you have a mountain of papers and interviews with scientists a whole bunch of I'm sure you were recording these conversations you had with people And this is just like an enormous pile of raw material . And so how does all of that end up in one , like you know , set of pages that appear in a magazine ?
Yeah , it depends on the journalist . Everybody has a different process for this . Some journalists write these really detailed outlines . I don't tend to do that , but I do spend a lot of time thinking about structure as I'm reporting And that I mean like how am I going to talk and how am I going to organize this material right ?
And I very quickly kind of saw that there were these . I mean , there were the places that I wanted to sort of have sections revolve around and that those places kind of correlated with specific aspects of the larger question I was asking .
So you know , i Kenesaw was a place where people were supposed to own guns and keep them at home , and so then I said , okay , so I want to have a section on how guns in the home affect , you know , people's risk for gun violence .
And then when I went to Scottsboro Alabama , this was the place with a lot of concealed carry and I and people carry guns out in part for self-defense , like they want to , you know , if something happens when they're out in public . I mean , i guess self-defense is also the case for keeping guns at home .
But I realized that could work well , talking about Scottsboro Alabama , to talk about the research on whether guns are really successfully used for self-defense .
So I kind of tried to figure out what were these like smaller themes or aspects of the question that I could break down into these , you know , and deal with in these sections , and it kind of yeah , it sort of all came together in my head , like I do a lot of this organizing actually in my head and thinking through it .
I mean , i do sometimes take notes but I'm not writing down detailed outlines . And I think part of it too is that I find that the process of writing helps me think through the issue .
So I sometimes will start writing and kind of have an idea of like where things are going , but then realize , oh , you know what , actually I have to talk about this before I talk about this , because I otherwise you don't , you know , it doesn't make sense .
And so I find when I do detailed outlines I have to rewrite them so many times that it's like they're not even that helpful . So what I do is I just kind of have a big picture , sense of what the sections are going to look like , and then I start writing and that process of writing helps me understand how I'm going to tell the story .
But everybody's different . As I said , not , i mean , i do know a lot of journalists who work the way I do , but I also know a lot who work very differently . So it's just sort of , you know , you've got your own process that works for you , that you've figured out over the years .
I guess , and for you , that structure is occurring to you at what point , like only after all is said and done and you go sit down and write what ? how is this going to look ? Or are you talking to people knowing like , oh , you're going to end up in section three .
Yeah , it does depend on the piece . But often I have a decent sense fairly early on as to what the sections are going to look like . But sometimes it changes and sometimes I don't . With some pieces I really am towards the end when I figure out .
Oh , you know , i had this sort of Eureka moment of like I see how I can split this up into sections and this makes sense . But like there are often moments in reporting where you do recognize like this I think is going to be the opener , you know . And then when I shot the gun I was like I'm pretty sure .
That afternoon I was like I'm pretty sure this is going to be how I open the piece .
And I remember the drive back to the airport at the end of my end of the road trip when I kind of I was just thinking in the car about these bigger picture things And I realized like I think this is going to be in the last section of the piece , like how I'm thinking about this now .
I mean it makes sense because it's like a journey that I've gone through .
But yeah , there are definitely things sometimes in the moment where you're like I know that the scene is going to be in the piece and I'm pretty sure where And so you're at least allowing yourself to think about structure from the beginning , rather than because I could see some people making the argument that like nope , i don't even want to like , i just want
to explore all avenues totally free of any sense of where they're going to go , and only when all the information is compiled will I try to sort it out . But that just doesn't seem super efficient to me . I can imagine that it's better to go like okay , i , now I'm getting a sense , i'm free to change it .
I'm not like locked in , but at least you have an eye for that the whole time .
Yes , yes , and I do think it is very helpful for efficiency , because you kind of then figure out like , what do I need to do ? more reporting on , like ?
if I know I want a whole section on whatever it is concealed carry , then I know that that's an area of research I really want to be digging into and making sure I talk to enough experts on , and so it really helps shape where my reporting goes from that point on as well .
Yeah , and if there's something that I'm reading about and I realize , gosh , i don't think this quite fits into the story , it's a little too out there , then I just , you know , then I don't keep reporting that Like , and that's also helpful .
One . So , moving beyond just this article , one of the things that reminded me , it really got me thinking about one question about science writing that I hadn't really considered before , which is how do you know that it's working ?
There was a point in the article where you , like explained very well the dilemma of how to research this , like how do we actually get answers to this question ? Right , because you set up like the ideal experiment would look like this , and obviously we can't do that , and so this is the method scientists will use to sort of approximate the best case scenario .
And it just struck me that like , oh , to me that really worked , and I was like , ah , i get it . Like I understand the dilemma .
I understand I have a framework now for the research you're about to talk to me about , but you know , i don't know how you could get better at that without feedback , right , cause it makes me think of different kinds of writing where you go , other kinds of you know , think about local reporting .
I can tell you , you know what's happening in the courthouse today .
Okay , like we all kind of know what that's about , and so you can know that , as long as you're reasonably clear , people are going to get the message Or , like you know , memoir writing where it's just like I don't even really care that you get what I'm going for , like the point was that I wrote this , but with science reporting , your goal is to help people
understand something which you know . How do you know if you're succeeding in that ? that strikes me as the kind of thing that you'd want to know . Is it working ?
Yeah Well , i mean , this is why we have editors . They are crucial to this whole process because sometimes , yeah , you are explaining something .
I mean , i think that one of the hardest things about any kind of reporting but I think especially science reporting is , by the time you've reported a piece deeply , you are , you know , ideally come out as kind of an expert , but you have to explain it to people who are not experts .
So you have to pull yourself out of your own head , right , and say what is the average person going to know about this ? How do I , you know , what are they not going to know And what are their assumptions going to be ? that I need to sort of correct , and that's really , really hard to do .
And so , yes , in these situations , you know , you might write a draft and your editor will say you know , i think right about here , i've lost you , or right about here , i really think you need to establish something about . You know the way the research is done , and so they will , because they're coming at it without this expert knowledge .
You know , usually they have a little bit of knowledge sometimes , but not always , and sometimes that's a good thing , actually , when your editors don't know anything about the topic that you're writing about , because they can really be that reader that you know , the average reader , and look at this and say , huh , i'm confused here , or I don't think you're making
this point clearly enough and really help you figure out .
You know how to make it better , so yeah , I always think about it as like trying to remember who you were before you knew this right , like , who was I before I knew this ?
And I think that is what makes it particularly difficult for scientists themselves to engage in some of this public engagement , because that person was a longer time ago , right , like as a reporter , you go oh , this was maybe like a year ago . I was a person who didn't know . This for a scientist is like I was a child The last time .
I didn't understand this stuff . And you're enmeshed in a culture where everyone you're talking to has the same lingo , has the same level of experience that I'm trying to think of like strategies to break people out of that . Like how do you undo the experience that you have to sort of get in touch with who's actually gonna be reading or listening to this ?
Yeah , it can be hard . I mean , i do a range of things And some of it is weird .
I don't know why it works for me , but like I will write a section and then I will like change the font or print it out or have it displayed in a different way than I wrote it and then take 12 to 24 hours away from it and read it and read it through , like with my mind blank , and then I can find these sort of holes that need to be filled .
Like oh , i didn't connect these dots this is something I say all the time to my students like we have to connect the dots for the reader , like how does this relate to this and how did you get here and all this ?
And so reading it in like different fonts for some reason makes me feel like I'm reading somebody else's work , as a different person , so that gets me kind of out of my head .
Another thing I always do and I remember doing this for this piece , but any kind of controversial piece is I will try to read the piece as someone who has a very strong opinion that's maybe different from my own or different , you know .
So I remember reading this piece thinking you know if I'm reading this as somebody who really cares about and loves guns and thinks they're amazing , like , how are they gonna pick this piece apart and how can I make it stronger and how can I address some of their concerns with this ?
And I think one of the reasons that very early on in this piece I did talk about how hard it is to do this research and some of the limitations of this research , was because this was something I knew that pro-gun activists were gonna be harping on that oh , we can't , you know , this isn't causal .
We all we can determine from this is correlation and correlation is not causation . So I really wanted to make sure that I showed that I understood this and that , yes , this is a big concern . However , this doesn't mean that we can't , you know , make some conclusions from the literature . So , a lot of it .
We call it pre-buttle , or I call it a pre-buttle where I'm thinking of what is , you know , a reader going to be ? where are they gonna be like ? but wait a minute , no , no , no , no , no . And how can I sort of head that off and acknowledge their concerns or , you know , their disagreement , while also , you know , driving the argument forward ?
Nice pre-buttle . I love that . Okay , with the time that we have left , i wanna shift gears to something that maybe substantively is quite different from gun laws , which is how to raise reasonable children .
But maybe it's in the same world , and it strikes me that writing a book is a heck of a lot different than writing a feature story for a magazine , and so I know you've talked about this book a lot in the last couple years .
So if you could sort of do the quick summary of what the book is , where it comes from , and then I'll have a few questions about , like , how you more tangibly approached it .
Yeah , sure , can I say the full title of the book here .
Yes , yeah , for sure , yeah All right all right , all right .
Yes , so okay . So I , when I had kids , i started writing a lot about parenting and using science to answer parenting questions , and as my kids got older , i realized that one of the big questions I had was how do I just raise a good human being , like how do I not raise an asshole ?
basically , and it stemmed in part from , i think , what I was seeing out in the real world and some of the bad behavior I was seeing from politicians and others . And I knew that , you know , people in positions of power can have a lot of influence on kids and what kind of behavior they think is okay to display .
And so I was worried , like what are my kids learning from some of these you know characters that are in the news And what can I do to sort of push against whatever they're learning about behavior ? You know ? basically , how can I just make sure I don't raise an asshole ? And so I started looking into whether there was good amount of research on this .
I wasn't really sure And I found that there was a ton of research on various aspects of this question . Again , this was like a big umbrella question that I then was breaking down into smaller questions Like okay , so what does it mean to not raise an asshole Like ? does that you know ?
I think that means not raising a racist , not raising a sexist , not , you know , raising a bully , raising kids who are compassionate , and so I kind of broke it down into these little categories of smaller you know aspects of not being an asshole .
And then I started looking at you know what research is there on how compassion develops in kids and empathy , and what research is there on why kids bully and how that develops . And I found all this just fascinating research . Some of it was counterintuitive And , yeah , i knew like , okay , there's a book here , i want to write it .
This feels really important because so many parenting books I felt like were either books that were rooted in a particular like philosophy or theory , written by you know somebody who has this philosophy or theory , but it hadn't really been put to the test , like there wasn't a lot of science necessarily behind it , or it was books that were really about , like , how
to raise successful children . There's so many parenting books on raising successful children And I was like I don't want . I want to raise a good kid . Who can , you know , maybe help to change the world for the better ?
So yeah , that was my inspiration for the book And there was so much research that I recognized would be valuable , so I just kind of started I don't know digging in , i think .
Was it always a book in your mind ?
Yes , well , i , you know I started out in writing about parenting . I wrote a column for Slate for many years And in writing that column I started recognizing that I really enjoyed these questions about how to build character . And so it started out as you know Slate columns , i would say .
And then , eventually , actually , i was out to dinner , if I'm perfectly honest , the idea came to me one night . I was out to dinner with my husband for our anniversary And I wanted to write a book for a long time but I didn't know what And I wasn't sure it should be a parenting book . But we were sitting there and I said , you know what ?
I should just write a book called How to Raise Kids Who Aren't Assholes , and that , like it just came . The title and everything came to me in this one moment And that was it . And I was like the next day I emailed my agent and said I have my book , like this is my book , i'm pretty sure .
But I then needed to do some research to make sure it was really . You know there was enough to say , but it did really kind of come to me all at once as a book .
Did it go through the traditional proposal , sample chapter , shop it around process . So I'm curious like what did that ? did the proposal look quite a lot like what the book ended up Like , like the chapter is the idea that these core questions that you had , were they always kind of the same ? you know dozen or so .
Yeah , yeah , they . You know there were a few changes . Like I remember , in my proposal I didn't have a chapter on how to talk to kids about sex and why it's so important , and then I recognized later like , oh wait , we definitely need something in here And it's . It's definitely related to raising like good human beings .
You know , understanding consent is pretty crucial .
So there were yeah , there were a few things that got added at the end But , honestly , most of the chapters that I'd envisioned were the ones that ended up being in the book And I think it helped that I had , as I said , done some of the reporting already for these slate columns , so I did have to write a whole proposal , but some of it I could pull from
reporting I'd already done for slate , and so it wasn't maybe quite as much work as a typical proposal would be .
And the questions themselves there's . there's one version of it where you go I'm just going to Google scholar , science of parenting and see the themes that emerge , whereas what you describe is more like you know , there's a philosophy some I've heard social scientists say about .
when you're embarking on a research project , you ask a question that occurs to you in the world , not one that occurs to you from having read the literature , and it seems like all of these questions are ones that you sort of hatched independently and then went okay , is there anything out there ? Was it ? was it pretty much all in that direction ?
Yes , yes it was . It was me thinking , you know what are the sort of core tenets of non assholery , or ? or I guess first I started with what , what , what are the characteristics of an asshole , and then , like , what's the opposite of that ?
I guess , Yeah , and so it started there And then , and then I went to look to see if there was research , like , and so that did mean that you know , at first I thought I want to hold big chapter on whining and how to prevent whining , and then I realized , wow , there's really not much research at all on this , and so I had to cut that .
So that was something that that I did have to cut . So you know , the problem with coming up with the idea and then hunting for research is that you might find there's actually really no research on this yet And there's not enough to say But most of the areas that I wanted to dig into , there was actually quite a bit of research to my surprise .
I honestly didn't know that a lot of it existed And it was really rich and , yeah , fascinating .
For what it's worth . By the way , in looking at the book again this morning I realized so we've been . I have made a deliberate attempt with my two year old to label and talk about emotions And this morning she even said I am sad . I said I don't love that you're sad , but I'm very happy that you were able to tell me that .
And then I was leafing through the book and I went oh , that's where I got this . That was where that idea first occurred to me . So you're making differences in kids lives .
Thank you , i'm so happy to hear that .
And is there like ? what does the future of you look like ? Is there another book in you ? Is there projects on the horizon ? What are the sorts of things that are keeping you occupied today ?
Yeah , so I do want to write another book , i think a parenting book , but it's right now , in very early stages , that I'm thinking about it , so I'm not quite ready to talk about it and I'm working on a proposal , basically .
But the thing that I'm really doing a lot of , i have a substacked newsletter and it's all about the science of parenting And I write essays pretty much twice a week now .
So it's a good amount of work , but it's really fun And I , you know , every week I'm tackling some like again specific question that either I have or that my subscribers have sent to me that's related to parenting in some way . And so I feel like , again , i'm never bored , like I didn't realize there was so much to say about parenting .
Honestly , you know , you would think , after a couple of years of writing essays twice a week , like , aren't you , aren't you , you know , haven't you exhausted the topic ?
But I find there's just endless things to talk about and to research and to dig into , and I , you know , i feel like I'm benefiting from it myself as a parent , because I'm able to answer my own questions and I get to interview these wonderful researchers and experts on these topics , and I , yeah , and I feel like I'm hopefully helping other parents too , which
is really rewarding , and we built this nice community . Substack is really cool in that you can build a community where you know you're , you have threads and people are helping each other and giving each other support , and that is really beautiful to see . So I'm having a lot of fun with that .
That's great . Well , i just wanted to say thanks for taking the time to come on here and talk about , in excruciating detail , the work that you do . I really appreciate it .
My pleasure , andy , this is fun .
Thank you to Melinda Wendermoyer for taking the time to share her process . There was a lot in there , so I hope you were taking notes . Check out the episode webpage for a link to Melinda's site and some of the things that we talked about today .
Oh , also , i feel like it's worth noting that my daughter told me she was sad that day because we didn't have the kind of yogurt she likes . It wasn't like a you know giant tragedy , i mean for her I guess it was , but you know , context is helpful there . Later she did tell me I feel better , so I think we're good .
This series on science communication is a special presentation of my podcast , opinion Science , a show about the science of our opinions , where they come from and how they change . You can subscribe any old place where they have podcasts and be sure to check out OpinionSciencePodcastcom for links to the things that came up in this episode .
And whoever you are , i hope you're enjoying the show And I'm hoping this summer series will reach folks with a keen interest in science communication . So please tell people about it , post online about it , share this episode with a friend , your officemate .
I don't know anyone who would be interested in boosting their own communication skills , especially scientists who would like to reach beyond academia . Okay , thank you so much for listening . Come back next week for more Hot Psycom Summer .
What we right now call science communication .
I think there are three kinds of things that people are doing when they are doing that , and one is like they're doing journalism on science , which is the scientist wrote a paper and now I'm going to write a story about the paper , and that , i think , is really weird because , like , the paper was already supposed to be the explanation of the ideas .
And I understand , like , why this happens because , like , the papers are so obtuse that obviously , you know , the everyday readers of the New York Times are not going to load up science or nature and start reading . But shouldn't they be able to ? Like , why did this idea have to be expressed in this way ? that's so hard for most people to understand .
I think a lot of people would answer that question like well , it's so complicated , you like can't use regular words to do it . The gods are off doing their own thing . And then we need this priestly class of scientific reporters who , like , can interpret the actions of the gods for us . I just don't buy it Like .
I think if you can't explain to a reasonably informed and curious person what you did as a scientist , you probably don't understand what you're doing . I'm Adam Mastriani and I'm the author of the Science Newsletter Experimental History .