This Week in Science – The Kickass Science Podcast · Dr. Kirsten Sanford Science Media

Let's Pretend With Some Science!

·49 min·6 clips

Twiss is short-staffed tonight. Blair opens episode 1047 by wondering when a show, a podcast, or even science stops being itself, then keeps the whole thing rolling anyway. The setup is silly on purpose. YouTube, sea lions, animal stories, and pretend play set the path for the night, with the solo-host format right out in the open. Then the internet gets messy. Blair uses wildlife videos to ask what people expect science communication to do in a comment section. Slow lorises carry the example. A cute clip might make someone want a pet, accuse the video of being fake, or just enjoy the animal and move on before conservation ever enters the chat. Blair does not let that settle the question. Judging a platform only by whether the comments mention endangered species or rainforest habitat feels too blunt. TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and long-form streaming all do different work, so they need different measures of success. A YouTube wildlife video may be better at starting curiosity than delivering the whole conservation lesson. The heavier context belongs in other places, like a David Attenborough-style rainforest special, a zoo visit, or a conversation with staff and volunteers. Learning is a spectrum. A comment section cannot show where every viewer began, what stuck, or what they might look up later. Blair keeps the tone loose but the argument careful: simple metrics miss a lot, and one animal video can still push somebody a little closer to knowing more. The ending goes full theater, with science turned into a storefront song about methods, opinions, robots, and global warming before the show signs off until next week.

As heard by us

A solo science episode finds conservation potential in the curiosity sparked by cute wildlife videos.

Blair Bazdurich carries this solo episode from a playful set of identity questions about when a show, podcast, or science stops being itself into a sharper look at wildlife videos online.

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Why you'd press play

You want the moment a cute slow loris video turns into a question about where conservation learning really begins.

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