Episode 37: Science podcasting at Nature India

(Lightly edited for readability)

Speakers: Arushi Batra, Subhra Priyadarshini

00:00 Subhra Priyadarshini: Hello, and welcome to the Nature India podcast. I am your host, Subhra Priyadarshini. On this podcast you get to hear interesting and newsworthy stories from the world of science in India. Today's episode is about — well, well, well — it's about our own podcast. In a sense, talking about ourselves, our science, our podcasting journey, and basically reminiscing about some of our best episodes through the years.

It so happened that I had this wonderful conversation with Arushi Batra, who hosts a podcast on the journey of science podcasters in India on the IndiaBioscience platform, and it turned out to be quite a fascinating conversation. Actually, I thought it would be great for our listeners to hear what Arushi and I talked about. And if you are someone who loves to know the inner workings of things, like most scientists and science enthusiasts do, in this case, how science podcasts are basically put together, then this episode is for you. So listen in, as I happen to be on the other end of the questions this time, with Arushi Batra.

01:42 Arushi Batra: Could you share a bit about your background in the world of podcasting?

01:46 Subhra Priyadarshini: We launched our first podcast in 2018. And I have anchored the podcast ever since covering various themes and various seasons. Science, podcasting in India truly appealed to us as the next frontier to cater to a dedicated audience.

02:06 Arushi Batra: The series like 'Our mobile world' and 'I am a scientist and this is where I work' have picked up really well. And I personally have also heard many of those. This is a personal question — how did you get to the initiation of these series? And how has that initial inspiration evolved over time?

02:27 Subhra Priyadarshini: You know, a series is a very good way to talk about a set of topics in, say, snackable portions, if you will. Our podcasts are designed to be very quick listens on the go. So each episode is somewhere between 15 to 20 minutes, not more than that. This really works well with a series because then you can dissect one story into subtopics. And then address each topic in one episode. The 'Our mobile world' series that you talked about, it talks of how the mobile phone has transformed the world of research. It's a very small topic, if you come to think of it, but then, you know, we don't give too much credence to the mobile phone being in our lives, penetrating it so much that it becomes an extension of our hand almost. And so to think of it from the perspective of science and research, and in the scientific community how everybody's using it, it gives it another layer of discussion. We come to the topic from various angles, from biodiversity to agriculture. We've done healthcare, and then the question of e-waste or digital divide. So the series concept really works well with such a vast topic. So similarly, you talked about the 'I am a scientist' series, we wanted to break the stereotype of the scientist of being a man in a white coat in a lab, doing boring stuff. Really wanted to introduce our audiences to scientists who work in diverse and unique settings. So we shadowed those scientists in their unconventional workplaces. And it was a hugely popular series, and we really want to repeat it in another season.

04:10 Arushi Batra: It was a very interesting series, you know, in places where you never even imagined people going and working. And yeah, that series was wonderful.

04:20 Subhra Priyadarshini: So we want to come to it from some other unique angles now — having scientists on our podcast speaking about their work and the rigour of science, the euphoria and the not-so-great days in science, etc. So the emotional aspect of science as well, not just the findings, or the breakthroughs, because they don't happen every day. The enigma and excitement of science and scientists is what more people want to hear about, right? So our future programming will, maybe, keep that in mind.

04:54 Arushi Batra: That's very interesting. And the idea behind the series was definitely a brilliant idea. So in what ways do you think that your journey into science podcasting has been unique or different from others in the field except for the fact that these topics or these series are things that people have not yet covered? Apart from this, how do you think that your journey has been unique?

05:19 Subhra Priyadarshini: Um, well, I don't know if it is unique, but it surely is among the very few podcasts, like you said, covering science from the basic incremental research to big ticket events of science, news and analysis, and then to dedicated series like the ones that we just talked about. We have also managed to cover, if you can call that unique, a vast number of voices in the scientific community in India. So each episode is just about three to four people. We also produce some episodes in Hindi. And that is another unique thing I feel. Our Hindi episodes are tougher to produce, by the way, but they have way more listeners than the English ones. So that really is a testament to doing science communication, or science outreach, or science journalism, in regional languages. And the success of our Hindi episodes really speaks to that.

06:13 Arushi Batra: Yeah, podcasting often comes with its own set of challenges. Like you said that the Hindi episodes are a little more difficult. So could you also touch upon some other key obstacles that you faced? And how did you overcome them?

06:29 Subhra Priyadarshini: One challenge is to find good speakers, of course, who can articulate well within a limited time. Because you will have known by now that scientists can really go on and on, and you have to curtail it down to your time. That involves a lot of retakes sometimes. So for an episode of say, 15 to 20 minutes, you are recording for one and a half hours or so. But this challenge multiplies when we seek out Hindi speakers to talk on science topics -- multiple retakes, of course. The other challenge is to find funders who can support podcasts since this is a resource intensive process. So having a funder get into the mix is good. Thankfully, we have had some support from India Alliance for a few seasons now, great partners to work with. They give us the editorial independence. The other challenge, again, is building an audience -- all podcasters nightmare. It's tough to build audiences, since it is such a niche format, a niche subject area (science), and attracts a very niche audience. And it is tougher to get analytics to understand the growth or impact that your podcast is having on your audiences. So the very basic analytics from whichever platform you're hosting your podcast is what you have at hand to convince yourself that this is something you want to keep doing. I think podcasting is also a very, very lonely journey. And feedback from audiences is so sporadic, so you thrive on whatever comes your way and do it for the passion of the content format. And with the conviction that it must be making an impact bigger than what is visible to you. Yeah, so you just trot along in this journey somehow.

08:26 Arushi Batra: We have touched upon, you know, what I was about to ask you next. How do you perceive the impact of your podcast? Have there been any surprising outcomes or feedback like I myself have given you one today, I have heard all the episodes of 'I am a scientist and this is where I work'. And it has significantly changed my perspective, even though theoretically I did know, you know, that there are scientists working in remote areas or places where it's very cold and doing other types of research. But listening to their journeys has been very interesting on my level. Has there ever been a time where, you know, somebody's heard your podcast, and you've got a very surprising feedback that you probably didn't expect?

09:08 Subhra Priyadarshini: Yeah, thanks for all those kind words, it helps. That we have to keep doing what we do. I do receive a lot of emails and DMs, telling me that people enjoyed an episode or a series. Surprising outcomes have been when people have called us asking about, say, certain application or technology or research, and wanting to know the contact details of the researchers and whether they can reach out to them. So the 'Our Mobile World' Series has had many such moments when industry partners or scientists have reached out to us asking if we can help them collaborate with a certain lab or firm, or a specific application that we talked about in our episodes. When we did the 'I am a scientist' series, we received many social media comments and emails, where people said, "it was so inspiring", like you said just now, to hear about some unconventional science careers. Many scientists actually gave us recommendations of people who could be featured in this series because they thought, yeah, why not? I mean, we didn't think of it like this, like an unconventional workplace. But yeah, my friend or my colleague, actually fits into this description. For one obituary podcast on Lalji Singh, we actually received messages from a number of international scientists, collaborators who said, they actually played that episode during their memorial meetings. So, you know, you really never know who's listening to your podcast and where, and what effect it has on them. You get to hear some feedback. And then you take solace in the fact, like I said, that much of that is actually really, really intangible. You can't see it.

11:03 Arushi Batra: It's just like a black hole, you know, you just put out episodes and you really don't know. So how do you go about, you know, conceiving an idea up till the release? So is it all pre-planned? Or do you come up with newer ideas? Or how does the entire process look like?

11:23 Subhra Priyadarshini: Like all podcasters, we have a timeline. Right now our podcast is monthly. So beginning of the month, we would have our editorial brainstorming about the topic. If it's a series, then we have it already marked out, like which month what topic we are dealing with. And we go into researching that topic, finding speakers, interviewing them online, or going to the labs and interviewing them. And then preparing a script and editing those voices, then going into final mixing, then rolling out on the website, as well as other platforms, we use Acast as one of our platforms, which then relays it to other platforms like iTunes and Spotify and Google podcasts. And we also have to have the edited transcript along with it so that it is accessible to more people. This whole process takes about three weeks. And the podcast episode is published towards the end of the month. So that's, that's how we plan it.

12:28 Arushi Batra: I'm sure it takes, you know, a lot of people and also efforts to bring out one very good episode and content that can eventually, you know, lead to becoming a valuable educational resource. And your podcasts have, you know, proven to be a valuable education resource. So how do you balance making content accessible to a broad audience, while also ensuring that you don't deviate a lot from science and maintain the scientific accuracy in the podcast?

13:01 Subhra Priyadarshini: Yeah, that's actually a very good question. And I do feel like that is the question we came to podcasting with. Scientific accuracy, like you mentioned, is the cornerstone of all our content. And just like in all our articles, for our podcast scripts also we follow Nature's journalism style, following a very, very crisp, very concise, very information dense tone. But at the same time making science easy to understand, we have that backbone of evidence in whatever we are speaking, we make sure everything that we or our guests say is completely fact-checked. It is not deviating from what our other content showcases, i. e. scientific accuracy. Our expressions, you will see, are free from massive flourishes, you know, we won't get extremely excited or too desperate about anything on our podcast. It does follow that emotion of science being a very precise and accurate, rigorous mechanism you know, or enterprise. You will also see that our expressions on the podcast are very clear, very impartial and very factual. That way we try to not deviate, like you said, from the mix of having science but at the level of everybody being able to understand it.

14:35 Arushi Batra: And it also makes sense only then, you know, you will also reach out to a broader audience. Otherwise it is again going to be limited only to the very specific scientific community which anyways, you know, can access that information through other resources. Bringing this kind of content to a broader audience and ensuring scientific accuracy is the ultimate goal that, you know, almost all science podcasts have. What are Nature India's broader podcasting initiatives and goals, if you could help us understand. What is in the future?

15:07 Subhra Priyadarshini: I mean, it's as lofty a goal as any other podcast, our goal is to reach as many listeners as possible. And since we operate out of India, we have a massive demographic dividend to support us. And we would love to have as many people come in and listen to our podcast. So that's why we also have started Hindi episodes, to really want to reach more people. We also want to cover as many voices, like I said, in the scientific community in India. The science and science-led enterprise is so much on the growth trajectory, we really want to be able to somehow capture that excitement. We also want to continue the podcast format, and do not want to leave it somewhere in between just because there is a lack of analytics supporting us or we can't figure out what impact it is having, broadly speaking, but we would love to collaborate with more organizations to make sure that we have enough funding to keep it going.

16:13 Arushi Batra: That's actually very important, you know, that you do have funding to keep it going. And even in the absence of it, your goal is not to stop in between. Just to deviate a bit. Do you have a favourite episode from the podcasting journey that stands out to you. Are there any particular moments that you remember when you look back at it?

16:35 Subhra Priyadarshini: Yeah, some of my favourite episodes, of course, are the ones that use voices from people outside the scientific community, or say, blend arts and science. For instance, in one episode on anger, which used Amitabh Bachchan's dialogues to elucidate the trope of the angry young man in Bollywood or when we used the voice of a man from the Sundarban islands, who had lost everything, to a recent cyclone to open an episode on the United Nations Climate Change Conference of Parties. Those kinds of things that go beyond just interviewing somebody and taking their views for a podcast, those are the ones that are my favourites. I think all the 'I am a scientist and this is where I work' episodes are very close to my heart, they stand out because of the rich content and the fact that many of them were actually recorded at at their workplaces, which is very rare for podcasts to do, there are permissions involved, etc. So going past all of that, that was great. We produced two parts, on how the pandemic touched the lives of scientists, these were in the thick of the pandemic. And these two were very, very emotional episodes, where people were coming out with their fears and their absolute despair, of doing science in those kinds of really desperate times. So you can hear a lot of emotional stuff in those two episodes. Even the breaking gender stereotypes and physics episode where we heard from many women physicists, some very stark stories of what happens in physics. Actually very difficult to name just a few.

18:34 Arushi Batra: Yeah, I was just about to say that, you know, this is not a favourite episode, you're talking about the entire series of episodes that you've produced, because that is what happens, you know, you get emotionally involved or probably invested in every episode that you do. And the conversation flows so naturally, that you just can't pick one unless, you know, you have dedicatedly thought about that episode. So I agree completely. So yeah, just towards the end of the podcast for those who, you know, are aspiring to venture into science podcasting, what advice would you give based on your own experiences and lessons learnt?

19:13 Subhra Priyadarshini: I'm still learning. I think, you know, aspiring to attain a very high quality, both in terms of research and production is one of the goals that podcasters should have. There are a lot of podcasts out there. So why should someone dedicatedly come and listen to you is the question you should ask yourself. I keep asking that question to myself, and many episodes have turned out so that I thought, why did I make that episode? I could have just not published it. But you know, it's also the continuum, the fact that your audience expects something every month, that you have to keep producing those episodes, even if they may not be your best ones. But try to aspire, you know, to achieve that quality and to remain in the business. Keep the continuum. Also it is an audio story. So making sure that your voice, your pronunciation, your modulation, is podcast worthy. Otherwise, you know, hire someone who might have those qualities and do a better job than you, even if you think your voice is the best. So, anytime I feel like my voice goes down into some kind of a drone, like I'm just now in, somewhere between, you know, being high octave or low. Oh, gosh, that's so depressing to myself. What am I thinking of? So yeah, I mean, you can cultivate it over time or you can ask someone else who's better than you to do. But yeah, ultimately be patient. It's a very tough, lonely journey like we talked about, producing a podcast and expecting impact or feedback very, very quickly. Science itself is very tough terrain anyway. So hang in there.

21:08 Arushi Batra: I mean, I agree 100%, to all of the points -- it gets lonely, it is sometimes very difficult to hear your own episode and you are like, "Did I speak like that today? Why did I do that?" Yeah, I mean, I agree. But sometimes we are also overly critical of our own selves and the audience might not even notice as long as the content is engaging. But yeah, I'm very excited to see where Nature India's podcasts go further. And I am looking forward to the next season of 'I'm a scientist and this is where I work'. And I learned a lot about many things that you spoke about and agreed to a lot of things as well.

21:55 Subhra Priyadarshini: Well, so there it is. Hopefully, you've had a better idea of how we plan and execute this podcast and how much effort goes into bringing you a single episode. So keep listening and share our podcasts with friends and colleagues as we uncover fascinating stories from science in India. This is Subhra Priyadarshini and you're listening to the Nature India podcast.