Science Friday and the Stories that Should be Told
By Jennifer Garland, Applied Physics, 2021
This article was originally published as part of Issue 36: Local.
New podcasts seem to pop up every day, but Science Friday has been around for 25 years, airing for two hours every Friday on public radio. More than 2 million people tune in weekly, not to mention podcast downloads. Hosted by Ira Flatow, Science Friday is “your trusted source for news and entertaining stories about science.”
Aleszu Bajak is the graduate programs manager at Northeastern University’s School of Journalism and worked as a radio producer and blogger for Science Friday. NU Sci met with Bajak to talk about the radio show and his work in science journalism.
You started in science, how did you get into journalism?
I thought I was going to be a biologist ever since I visited the Galapagos when I was thirteen. Graduating from college, I got a job at Weill Cornell Medical College where I did gene therapy. But after three years of a lot of working with mice and working with viruses, I wanted to change it up…and it seemed a natural thing to start thinking about different ways I could talk about science [and] connect with people on issues that I cared about.
I was a news writer for [Biotechniques] for about four months…and I applied for…a dream job. It was an opening at Science Friday. The allure of producing something for an audience of 2–3 million plus podcast downloads was enticing. I could pitch a story on something I was passionate about or something that was coming out as a piece of science news that people weren’t paying attention to. And the challenge of trying to produce that for a live talk show was invigorating.
What are some of your strategies for making really technical subjects interesting to the public?
One strategy is finding the right person — a character through which to tell the story. So obviously, the scientist. Because you can see across different continents, the image of the scientist is something that’s sometimes very far removed. They’re very faceless people.
Do you talk to the actual scientists who have done the research? And how much do you have to learn about the subject?
It varies, but what I always felt was so invigorating about Science Friday was, on a week-by-week basis, you were learning, sometimes from scratch, about an entire area of science. That involved talking to the study authors for sure — that was first step. Second step was trying to find other people in that network that knew of the research…to understand the surrounding conversation, and then get ready for your primetime interview.
How would you say podcasts have an advantage over other types of media?
The reason I think people are selling [podcasts] or are interested in it is because of the intimate nature of stories being piped into your ears. In terms of it versus other formats, I think that done well and written well, they can be equally emotive, they can be equally interesting… I think that the story should stand on its own, I think that the reporting, that the rigor with which you do the reporting should stand on its own, and the platform is just the vehicle.
At NU Sci, we were talking about how it’s way more common to go from science to journalism than the other way around. What do you think about that?
I don’t think it’s necessary to have a science background. Sometimes it can hinder a story, can hinder your judgment of folks in that area or your ability to distance yourself, which is part of journalism ethics — writing those stories and thinking of questions that may be uncomfortable within the field of research that you’re in.
Having a truly objective and removed way is the best way for the readers ultimately…if you think about the role of science journalism and what stories the public needs to know, number one is the truth. So, what is being obscured, what is out in the open, and how do we show all of that?
Is that your motivation for being in the field — that you want to educate people about science?
I think it’s spotlighting stories that should be told. Spotlighting stories or shedding light on stories that people might not necessarily think of when they think of an area, a person, a country, a gadget. I think science is a great vehicle to explain the world. In the end, it’s showing a little bit of the wondrous aspects of science.
