The show started after National Science Week 2018. I participated in a program that delivers science workshops in schools across Tasmania, as part of that I was interviewed by ABC radio and really enjoyed the experience. Little did I know at the last event for Science Week, I was with the President of Edge Radio, Jenni Klaus. We got talking about what a great medium radio is and she promptly encouraged me to start a science show!

When considering starting a show I knew I’d have to do it as part of a team and ideally wanted that to be a team of women. Women are underrepresented in science – I really wanted to put women at the heart of the conversation and increase diverse representation of women in media and in science.

What I love about our show is the depth of the content. Often when scientists are interviewed, they are discussing extremely complex topics in a really tight time and interviewed by highly skilled journalists who may not have a science background. As a result, the nuance and important background information can be left out.

On That’s What I Call Science we try to only tackle one topic per show with 1-2 expert guests in that field and interview them in a conversation style. Our aim is to build on the content and spend some time grilling the credibility of the science. Although our team may not be an expert in that field we are usually in similar areas and aim to ask questions about how much we can trust the findings.

I feel strongly that we need to have deeper conversations about the limitations of science. There is a lot of mistrust in science at the moment and that may be due to the many times we have seen headlines claiming a cure for cancer has been discovered. We grill our guests in a friendly environment to get to the heart of the issue. We always try to wrap up with tangible actions for listeners either as individuals or the community more broadly so they can act on the information they’ve received.

COVID-19 has certainly seen some scientists in the limelight! It’s been interesting to see the interplay between policymakers, the public and those working in science. In my view, a really beautiful part of science has been displayed – the difficulty of navigating uncertainty and the need to change our response based on new findings.

The scientific method has been playing out in real time as we learn more about the virus. For many people, this is their first experience of the inherent uncertainty in that method. A large part of progression depends on people changing their view based on new knowledge, perspectives or data. A hard part of the pandemic is knowing what we should do and rolling with changes as we learn more. That is extremely challenging when people are impacted on such a large scale and we have so little information to navigate this situation.

I hope that more and more people are having inclusive and respectful conversations about what we don’t know and how we can get some answers through science. Before the pandemic, science communication was rare and usually with the traditional media whereas now it’s part of daily interactions, interpreting the emerging evidence and answering questions from friends and family. I think it has been a unique opportunity to test our ability to talk about science in an engaging and supportive way. I found it really challenging at the start as there was so little known about COVID-19. It is still difficult to answer anything definitively and to even keep up with the emerging evidence!