"the hardest thing in this world is to live in it"
We’ll start at 5pm PT/8pm ET over at BlogTalk Radio, or you can join us in Second Life! If you’d like to ask David a question, feel free to tweet me the question ahead of time, and use the hashtag #VSpeak or #AskVS. During the show, definitely use the hashtags and either tweet me or my producer, Sherry. Talk to you tonight!
This week on Virtually Speaking Science, my guest was Dr. Emily Willingham. Emily received both her BA and PhD at the University of Texas, Austin; the former was in English and the latter in Biological Sciences.
On academic achievement alone, Emily is impressive, but she didn’t forget her English background when she wandered into science. Instead, she has written for Scientific American, The Scientist, The New York Times, Slate, and Discover; has a regular column at Forbes called The Science Consumer; and is the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of DoubleX Science. 
She was a Shorty Award finalist in 2013, as well as being selected for the Open Lab 2013 best in science writing online anthology. She has been blurbed by Steve Silberman and Ed Yong, and even has her own Wikipedia page.
Basically, she is shiny.
Emily sat down to talk with me about her multidisciplinary background, writing books at a precociously young age, and the Women in Science Writing Solutions Summit that was held at MIT last weekend. As you can imagine, we managed to fit a lot into the hour, and it was a fun show. Give it a listen! Below, you’ll find links to the papers, panels, and people we discussed.
Something I learned about when researching Emily in preparation for the interview was that, long before Ed Yong was talking about zombie parasites, Emily had written about zombie grasshoppers. Or, as I prefer to think of them, creepy worm terrorist zombie hijackers.
One of the main inspirations for the recent summit was a session at NASW 2013 titled The XX Question. You can see the video of this powerful plenary session here.
In December, Maryn McKenna and Janet Stemwedel joined Tom Levenson on Virtually Speaking Science to talk about sexual harassment, gender discrimination and science writing.
We spent a good amount of time discussing the results of a survey distributed across several professional writing communities. You can download and review the slides and data at this link.
Towards the end of the show, Emily and I started to talk about the stresses of being a feminist online, and, in particular, how it’s really necessary to know how to take care of yourself. We both referenced spoon theory (saying make sure you have your spoons); if you’re not familiar with that concept, here’s the essay that started it all.
For more information on the summit, you can head to the website, read the Storifies Maryn McKenna pulled together, and check out recaps and coverage page.
This past weekend was the Women in Science Writing Solutions Summit 2014, an event that I had the privilege of participating in not only as an attendee, but Sunday morning break-out sessions organizer/moderator.
For those of you who missed the summit, there was a hashtag for Twitter, #SciWriSum14, and the fantastic Maryn McKenna not only live-tweeted during the open social media sessions, but also collected all of the relevant tweets into Storifies. I’m including them, below, as a pre-interview resource for anyone who’d like background information.
Caryl Rivers Explains the New Soft War on Women (#SciWriSum14)
Gender Imbalance in Science Writing: Data from #SciWriSum14
The Challenge and Importance of Being a Mentor… or Mentee (#SciWriSum14)
Moving Forward: Solutions and Next Steps for Science Writing (#SciWriSum14)
“Just What I Needed”: Reactions to #SciWriSum14
I’m looking forward to going over this material in more detail with Emily this evening; talk to you tonight, 5pm Pacific, 8pm Eastern!
…so why is there a picture of a black swan illustrating this? It’s a phrase I used when Janet and I were talking about Karl Popper, deduction, and induction. I hand-waved at the black swan philosophical problem, which is a problem of induction that illustrates the role both our ignorance about what we don’t know and our own biases play in shaping the questions that we ask and the answers we assume are right. The concept of a black swan is old (Juvenal references one), but until 1697, European countries used the metaphor of a black swan to indicate something that did not exist (‘all swans are white’ being a “well-known truth”).
Why until 1697?
Because in 1697, Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh discovered black swans, in Australia.
Tonight on Virtually Speaking Science, I’ll be talking to Dr. Janet Stemwedel about the role of philosophy in science, philosophy of science, STEM, and knowing us, probably ethics and values and so forth.
The conversation topic was sparked by the recent Neil deGrasse Tyson comments on philosophy and science; my response to that can be seen here.
Tweet questions ahead of time to me or my producer, Sherry Reson, or ask during the show with the hashtag #AskVS. Join us! 5pm PT/8pm ET.