Today, Bea talks to Ben Rein, a science communicator and postdoc at Stanford University, about his journey in science communication.

Ben talks about his unexpected start in science communication when a video he made to show his friends how to correctly use masks went viral on Tik Tok in 2020.

From his own experience, Ben shares what it is like to establish yourself on already existing platforms and talks about some beginner mistakes he made at the start that one should avoid. He explains how he picks topics for his videos and shares some negative experiences that come from being a public scicomm figure. Ben also talks about his passion for mentoring and the difficulties of balancing scicomm and academia, first as a PhD student and now as a postdoc.

Bea and Ben discuss how misinformation spreads on social media and what can be done to combat the spread. Ben talks about his debunking videos, what motivates him to create them, and about the extra time and effort that goes into creating them.

To find out more about Ben and what he does, check out his website: https://www.benrein.com/

Ben’s Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr.brein

Ben’s Instagram: instagram.com/doctor.brein

Ben’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dr_brein

Ben’s research: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=wPloOgsAAAAJ

Episode Art: Photo by Hello I’m Nik (@helloimnik) on Unsplash (https://unsplash.com/)

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Intro - Outro music composed by Srinath Ramkumar: https://twitter.com/srinathramkumar

Pre-Intro jingle composed by Gustavo Carrizo: https://www.instagram.com/carrizo.gus

See you soon!

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