Inclusive Science Communication

[00:00:19] and start another Two Cat Show. The Kitchen, we're starting on a mission to put you in the Culinist Recipes you ever will find, guaranteed to show you all a mighty fine time here at the Two Cat Kitchen. Time for a new edition of the Culinist's Two Cat Show.

[00:00:57] Welcome to the Two Cat Kitchen, the show that mixes musical mayhem with culinary calamity. Rick McKinney is here to help with the mixing. Hey Rick, ready to go. Each episode features new songs, a new recipe and a special science guest this time. We're doing a science episode. Who do we have on the program? We have Sunshine Menezes. Sunshine is a clinical professor of environmental communication

[00:01:23] in the Natural Resources Services Department at the University of Rhode Island. All right, well let's get right to this episode right here on the Two Cat Kitchen.

[00:01:55] We're back at the Two Cat Kitchen and we're joined by Sunshine Menezes. Sunshine, thanks for coming back to the kitchen. My pleasure. It was great talking to you last episode, but here we are again. Sunshine Menezes. We're going to talk to Sunshine about her science life, I guess. Sunshine is actually a clinical professor of environmental communications in the Natural Resources Science Department at the University of Rhode Island. That's great.

[00:02:24] I know that your professional life now is involved with studying science communication. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Yes, absolutely. So I, for almost 18 years, ran this program at the University of Rhode Island called Metcalf Institute that does environmental science training for professional journalists and communication training for scientists.

[00:02:53] And so what that means is that I spent the bulk of my professional career doing professional development training. So developing the curriculum, implementing the program, and evaluating the program. So while I'm really interested in how scientists especially do science communication broadly, my specific area of study is on these training programs.

[00:03:22] So I, again, develop and then test professional development workshops for scientists to help them communicate more effectively and more inclusively. The inclusive science communication piece is really my kind of niche spot in this field. Wow. That's really interesting. So it's science and journalism, really, between the two.

[00:03:50] Well, at Metcalf Institute it definitely was. Yeah. But now it's, I do much less with journalism. Except that certainly I have helped scientists learn how to communicate with journalists more effectively.

[00:04:03] But mostly I'm really trying to help researchers just remember that there are human beings who can talk to other human beings who don't have a background in science, you know, without throwing all of this technical expertise in all the time. I see. But it's not just about removing jargon. Like that's the very simplest stage in science communication.

[00:04:31] My focus is really how can kind of scientists in general interact with broader public audiences in ways that are really meaningful and relevant to those people with whom they're talking at any given time. And that's a matter of really understanding your audience, like making the time to understand who it is that you're engaging with. Yeah.

[00:04:57] And also thinking really clearly about yourself as a researcher and just as a member of a community, you know, like what do you know? What values do you share? What biases might you have as a communicator that you need to recognize so that you can do a better job of pushing past those biases when talking with other people about science?

[00:05:22] And there's actually a curriculum or a strategy that you're using to train scientists on how to do that most effectively. So I would imagine with some audiences they'll have, you know, they can get into a greater level of technical language. Yep. And knowing that some audiences, you've got to keep it at a very high level and get those key messages. Like what are the key messages you want the audience to take away? Right, right.

[00:05:50] And that, there's a lot more science communication training out in the world that does what you just described, thankfully. You know, that is very important. But again, the piece that I'm really interested in is this, what is called inclusive science communication piece, where it's really about not just understanding kind of at a surface level where your audience is coming from,

[00:06:15] but recognizing that, you know, if you're talking about issues of water quality, there might be some environmental justice aspects to that topic in a particular location too. Right. You know, maybe you're talking with people about water quality who are living in a place that has been impoverished for a long time, who maybe don't have much of a political voice or much political influence.

[00:06:43] And so, even though a community has been living with poor water quality for a long time, and should be able to get that remediated in some way, maybe they don't because they have less political power. And so, as a researcher who studies water quality, for example, being aware of those, you know, disproportionate inequities that exist

[00:07:09] is a really important component of doing inclusive science communication. Yeah. And that's not something that is typically taught in science communication trainings. Gotcha. So, I'm trying to get deeper into issues that can be uncomfortable. Right. But I enjoy that. I enjoy helping people talk through issues that can be uncomfortable. Well, I can imagine as well, I grew up in a very urban environment, a lot of manufacturing,

[00:07:40] a lot of brownfield sites where I grew up, where industry, I would say, took advantage of the lack of political equity to locate certain industries there. And now, those communities are starting to get a voice and recognize with the information from scientists, how to advocate for themselves, how to put themselves in a position to reverse some of those longstanding biases. Exactly. Cool.

[00:08:09] And so, from a science communication perspective, so there's so much in what you just said that is relevant to science communication. There's the issue of the community members having the language to, and the agency to act for themselves, you know, to really be heard by the political powers that be. Yeah. And by the scientific powers that be.

[00:08:39] Because a lot of scientists don't recognize that they walk in to a situation like that with a lot of power. Sure. And if a scientist isn't kind of aware of those power dynamics, then they might, you know, miss opportunities to help these community members, to help the community members advocate for themselves,

[00:09:05] or to, you know, provide the right types of data to help people get this problem resolved. Gotcha. Yeah. That's interesting. Wow. That's really interesting stuff. Yeah. And so, I think we'll stay on what you're doing right now for a few minutes, because it's so fascinating. How do you go about doing, like, doing what you're just talking about,

[00:09:34] like putting it into practice? Yeah. Is this through courses, through workshops? Yeah. Both. Oh, okay. So, I mean, I teach students at University of Rhode Island. And so, the classes that I teach, one is about environmental crisis communication. One is about general ways of engaging with public audiences around science topics. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[00:10:04] And there's another one that is called Climate Wayfinding, that is all about kind of understanding one's own path toward climate action, but done within a collaborative classroom setting. Mm-hmm. And I'm co-developing a new class on climate change communication. But I think the environmental crisis communication class is the best example of what this looks like in practice for today.

[00:10:32] So, a lot of students who get, you know, graduate degrees in environmental science, for example, are obviously very well trained in the specifics of the natural and physical sciences and statistics, stuff like that. But they're not well trained. They're not even trained, typically, to actually communicate with all the different stakeholders in a crisis situation.

[00:11:01] And I'm talking about acute crises, like a wildfire, an oil spill, a hurricane, flooding, right? All of these things. Mm-hmm. A blizzard, like we just had here earlier this year in New England. Mm-hmm. And so, within this class, I am providing students definitely with some of the theory related to crisis communication,

[00:11:23] but more specifically, I'm helping them think about what you want as an individual or as a family or as a community in the midst of one of these acute environmental crises. And this just reminds them to step back from their science hats for a second and say, like, well, I lived, in fact, through this extreme flooding event, or I lived through this wildfire, or I lived through this hurricane. Mm-hmm.

[00:11:52] And then we start from there. That's literally the first assignment they have to think about. Did you ever live through an environmental crisis? And if so, what information did you want? Mm-hmm. What information did you need? Because those things might be different. Mm-hmm. Were you able to get that information? And if so or if not, how did you feel about the fact that you were or were not able to get that information? Mm-hmm.

[00:12:19] So I'm placing them very directly in the shoes of a person who's living through a crisis. And then we build on this over the semester so that they can think much more intentionally about how to serve the communication wants and needs of people who are living through a crisis. Mm-hmm. So that is inclusive science communication.

[00:12:45] You know, really thinking about, again, your audience and the experiences of that audience. Mm-hmm. And in some cases, those, you know, a community that's experiencing some extreme event, back to what we were just talking about with environmental justice, perhaps has experienced a lot of significant environmental crises and no one ever paid attention to them before. Right, right.

[00:13:10] Or maybe you have a community that has never done this before and they don't know what to do. So I'm helping the students really understand what it is to think intentionally about your audience and then to think about the idea of reciprocity. Mm-hmm. Goal in mind for what you're trying to achieve with your communication.

[00:13:38] You also, though, need to think about what your audience is getting out of that exchange. It's not just about you checking a box. Right. It's about you or you taking. Taking something. You know, it's about you. It is about you getting. Yeah. Right? So this exchange of knowledge of kind of co-created benefit from this communication is another big part. What inclusive science communication looks like in practice. Great.

[00:14:07] And then the last part of it is a lot of reflection and adaptation. Mm-hmm. So, okay, this is what we did. This is what we learned from this particular crisis about our communication. Now, this part of it worked really well. This part of it was terrible. You know, so how do we now adapt our processes for the future to make it better and more equitable? That's great.

[00:14:31] You know, this is, I don't want to say unique, because you do see scientists on a camera and, you know, dealing with facts and figures. You may not necessarily convey information in a way that the community can really absorb what's going on. And, um, is this unique to your program? Are other institutions pursuing this kind of thinking? Not many institutions are.

[00:15:01] Certainly other individuals are. Okay. So what I have learned about inclusive science communication comes from work that people all over the world are doing and have been doing. Mm-hmm. And in some ways, these ideas that I just briefly described, intentionality, reciprocity, and reflexivity, are ancient ideas. Sure. That have been practiced in different parts of the world. Mm-hmm.

[00:15:27] And even in this part of the world by, by indigenous nations that are very old, but they are not the ways that science communication is typically practiced, certainly in a more Western, global North kind of situation. Mm-hmm.

[00:15:47] Um, so I know a lot of individuals who are doing incredible research and practice on this in a lot of different contexts, um, who I've learned a great deal from. That's right. But institutions? Mm-hmm. Not so much. So, you know, it is certainly, I think, at the University of Rhode Island, I have other colleagues who are doing related work. And so I feel like we do actually have something really special here. That's great.

[00:16:16] With our, our focus on inclusive science communication. Yeah. Excellent. Really interesting. And you know what? We're going to, um, we're going to take a short break now and we're going to come back and find out how you got to where you are in your current position, which is fascinating. Great. All right. We'll be right back here in the two-cat kitchen. Sunshine, we're going to go back and talk about how you got interested in science. Like, maybe way back? When did you first get interested in science? Insert the way back machine sound. Yes. Like, woo! Woo! Woo!

[00:16:47] Um, so I grew up in a very rural part of northern Michigan. Mm-hmm. And, um, it was, is just a beautiful place. Uh, we, because we lived kind of in the middle of nowhere, um, I was surrounded by woods and streams and, um, all kinds of gorgeous plants and animals. And it was the 70s.

[00:17:16] So, you know, I was allowed to run off all day long and do my own thing. Mm-hmm. And even though we lived, um, far out of town, there was another girl my age who lived on the same two-track road as I did. So, um, I was playing outside. So, um, I was playing outside. So, um, I was playing outside all the time. Mm-hmm.

[00:17:33] So, I both had the privilege of living in a place where I could do that and the luxury of being a kid, a Gen X kid that grew up at a time when my parents would let me do that, right? Right. So, you know, you could only let me, but, you know, strongly encourage me to do such a thing. Go play outside. Right. Anyway, so, so I played outside a lot when I was a kid and, um, it was Michigan. So, you know, we definitely have all four seasons. Mm-hmm.

[00:18:01] And so, I did that year round and, um, really, really loved nature. And my dad very much encouraged this. My dad is very outdoorsy and also very curious. You know, he certainly, um, could have been a scientist or an engineer in a different timeline because he just, you know, is constantly asking questions about the natural world. Mm-hmm.

[00:18:28] Um, and my mom is a nurse and, um, has actually went to nursing school when I was young. So, I remember when she, like, just really started in nursing school all the way to getting a master's of nursing. So, she progressed from doing nursing in a lot of different contexts to ultimately teaching, um, nursing skills in a vocational school and then on her own in her own business. Mm-hmm.

[00:18:55] So, I was surrounded by, um, you know, my parents who are both very scientifically minded. Mm-hmm. And who gave me the freedom to just go out and explore. Um, I, even though I grew up in Michigan, most of my extended family lived in Miami, Florida.

[00:19:16] So, we would go there periodically to visit family, which meant that unlike many of the kids that I grew up with, I also got to spend time at the ocean. Right. Mm-hmm. And that was very uncommon for the place that I grew up in. For Michigan. And especially rural Michigan, you know. Mm-hmm.

[00:19:35] Um, so, I had exposure to just a lot of beautiful places and also the encouragement from my parents to be curious and ask questions. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And I think that that had a lot to do with why I pursued science. Yeah. And, but that wasn't all.

[00:19:54] When I, I remember very specifically that when it came time to apply for college, even though I had great grades and this was way before you had to, you know, demonstrate that you climbed Mount Everest to get, you know, accepted into college. Mm-hmm. Um, basically if you had a pulse and decent grades, you could get accepted to college. Um, I see you raising your hand over there, Rick. Yeah. All in favor? Aye. Aye.

[00:20:22] Anyway, so I, I thought, well, I'm more likely, no, someone told me that I was more likely to get accepted to Michigan State University if I, um, said I wanted to study microbiology. Okay. Mm-hmm. Because it wasn't a popular major. Right. So, that's what I said in my application, that I wanted to study microbiology.

[00:20:46] Um, honestly, my choice to go into science was not so much about my desire to be a scientist. It was more about the fact that I have a habit of choosing the hard thing in my life. Mm-hmm. And science was not the easiest subject for me. Certainly. The thing that came easiest to me was language. Mm-hmm.

[00:21:12] So, there was a period of time when I decided I wanted to be a translator for the UN when I was growing up. Mm-hmm. My mom discouraged me from that path. So, um, so I continue to love language, but, and that comes much more easily. Science was more challenging, and so I chose that path. Mm-hmm. So, ultimately, I did go to Michigan State, and I studied zoology. Mm-hmm. And I really enjoyed it. It was hard. Mm-hmm. And I didn't have the best grades in the world. I had fine grades.

[00:21:43] But again, um, I'm grateful for having grown up and gone to school when I did, because at this point in history, with the same grades, I might not have been accepted to graduate school. Mm-hmm. In the meantime, I, like, did some traveling in Brazil. I have family from Brazil, and so I did some traveling there and was exposed to the Brazilian

[00:22:09] Amazon for the first time, which also was just mind-blowing. Mm-hmm. Um, and then I went to graduate school at University of Rhode Island in the oceanography program. Great. Was that a hard, uh, both academic adjustment as well as a physical adjustment in coming, you know, having spent time in Florida and time in Michigan, now all of a sudden you're

[00:22:36] in a small state, and, you know, what, how did that go down? It's really funny, actually. So, I obviously love Rhode Island. I have lived here for about 30 years. I know. Um, but I didn't even know that Rhode Island existed before I started looking into graduate school. Yeah, is that Long Island or whatever? I'm embarrassed to say that, but I have much more empathy for people who say that because I was one of those people when I was a lot of time. Mm-hmm. It's just not, not hard to miss.

[00:23:09] Um, so, what I think is really fascinating about Rhode Island is that I, so I grew up in this small town in Michigan, and I could not wait to leave my small town where everybody knew me, and, you know, there was this kind of sense of predeterminism about your life when you grow up in a small town. Sure. And everybody knows all your business. Mm-hmm. So, I couldn't wait to get away from that.

[00:23:37] And the irony is that, ultimately, I ended up in Rhode Island, which is a whole state that is like a small town. Sure. But... Can't get away with anything around here. You can't. And you're one degree of separation from everybody in the state. Two at most, you know? I think it's... It is amazing, yeah. Yeah. Hilarious. I love when people start telling Rhode Island stories when you travel and you figure out that you know the same person, you know? Anyway. Mm-hmm.

[00:24:04] So, ending up in Rhode Island, which is a state that is a small town, was really eye-opening for me because I realized I actually really like that. Mm-hmm. I like the sense of community and of knowing other people. The difference is I didn't grow up here, and so that predeterminism idea is gone. It doesn't exist for me in Rhode Island.

[00:24:33] But I still have the comfort of living in a place where there is a lot of connection. Small community. Yeah. That's great. All right, we're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back.

[00:25:02] So, welcome back to Two Cat Kitchen. Thank you again for being with us today. So, let's talk a little bit about your work. You mentioned that you came from Michigan to the University of Rhode Island, Oceanography. And how did that kind of lead to where you are now with environmental communication as a focus of your work? Yeah. Yeah. I guess, you know, the best answer to that is that the best laid plans don't go where you think they're going to go in your life.

[00:25:33] Yeah. I went into oceanography because I'd always been really enamored of the ocean and had studied zoology, and I thought this was a natural progression for me. But as it turns out, in my PhD program in oceanography, I studied nanoplankton in a local estuary that we have here in Rhode Island called the Petaquamsket River Estuary or Narrow River Estuary.

[00:26:01] And so, these nanoplankton are a particularly teeny tiny size fraction, like a tenth of the width of a human hair, a thin human hair for that matter, that some of which function as plants, and some of them function as animals, and some function as both plants and animals. Wow. Crazy.

[00:26:27] So, I was looking at the species diversity of this tiny size fraction of plankton in this local estuary over time. So, I was trying to look at seasonal changes in this community composition. So, to look at these little nanoplankton, I had to do a lot of different types of preparations.

[00:26:52] I looked at some of them live, and these things were swimming like crazy because they all have a flagellum or a couple. And so, they were like spinning all over the place under the microscope. And so, I called myself the fastest microscopist in the West because I could manipulate that slide to look at all these different things and try to identify what I was seeing. But I also prepared some of them.

[00:27:21] It's called fixing a sample, which is when you use a particular chemical preservative so that they're killed, but they stay complete. Right. And then I would look at them under a transmission electron microscope or a TEM. And this is a super high power microscope that allows you to see things that you could never see with the naked eye. And it also is a way to take really incredible photographs.

[00:27:51] So, I ended up spending a lot of time in dark rooms by myself doing this research. I had really great field research that was sometimes a lot of fun and sometimes terrible, like in the middle of winter. But I, more than anything, spent time in a dark room by myself looking at these samples. Right.

[00:28:13] And ultimately, I realized that spending all this time in dark rooms by myself was not the highest, best use of myself. It's not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Mm-hmm. So, I realized that I needed to do something else that was more fulfilling. Mm-hmm. And at the time, Metcalf Institute had just been founded. It actually was founded in 1997. I started graduate school in 1996. Mm-hmm.

[00:28:43] And it was founded at the Graduate School of Oceanography, where I was a student. And the first executive director, Jacqueline De La Harp, had this wonderful idea of doing, when they were doing these environmental science trainings for professional journalists, right, to help those journalists better cover environment stories. They had all of these experiences for the journalists to see how people did their science. So, they'd go out into the field. Yep. They'd go into the lab. Cool.

[00:29:12] And Jacqueline's brilliant idea was to bring graduate students into this workshop so that the journalists were interacting with graduate students and kind of understanding how we did our jobs. Mm-hmm. And simultaneously, the graduate students got access to these journalists. And had this early exposure to science communication. Yeah. Without even really knowing it, you know.

[00:29:39] And so, I was one of the students who did this with Metcalf Institute. So, it's funny because my interaction with Metcalf Institute was almost from its very beginning. Yeah. In one way or another. And I certainly never had any intention of becoming the executive director of this program. That was not on my radar. Yeah. But I realized that I very much enjoyed that engagement with the journalists. Right. I really loved it. Mm-hmm.

[00:30:09] And so, I continued on with my PhD. And then I got this opportunity to do a fellowship with the National Sea Grant Program from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Mm-hmm. And this fellowship was a one-year program where you are placed in either an executive office. So, that could be for NOAA or for the Environmental Protection Agency or the State Department, etc. Right.

[00:30:39] Or you could be placed in Congress working for an individual member of Congress or for a committee that worked on environmental and specifically ocean issues. Mm-hmm. So, I got placed in the office of a New Jersey congressman with a coastal district. Mm-hmm. And I became the legislative assistant who managed his coastal environmental portfolio. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[00:31:08] And that was science communication trial by fire. Oh, yeah. I had thought that I was a pretty good communicator until I got there and realized that I did not have any idea how to communicate clearly about ocean science. Mm-hmm. And I learned a lot from that fellowship. So, then I did that fellowship and I went back to URI because I hadn't actually defended my dissertation yet. So, I went back.

[00:31:38] I finished my dissertation. And then I was casting about for jobs and I worked on state coastal policy for a couple of years. Mm-hmm. And then this opportunity came up to be the interim executive director of Metcalf Institute. Mm-hmm. The original executive director had left and they were looking for a new person. Mm-hmm. For about six months.

[00:32:06] But then six months turned into 17 and a half years. Wow. So, I learned along the way that I just really loved science communication. Right. And I had always enjoyed that, but I didn't have language for it when I was younger. Mm-hmm. And, I mean, I remember I did these workshops about recycling for kids when I was in college. Mm-hmm.

[00:32:33] And I, you know, started this club when I was in high school about environmental issues. It was called Tree, Teens Realizing Earth's Endangerment. Nice. Yeah. Wow. Boy, that's a little self-righteous, but okay. So, I always had this proclivity, right? Sure. And I didn't really know it until I had enough experiences to recognize this was something I was really interested in and good at and enjoyed.

[00:33:03] Yeah. Yeah. And figure strengths. Yeah. And Metcalf, the Metcalf family is a Rhode Island family, right? Yes. That has a journalist background. Yes. Yes. Metcalf Institute was named for Michael P. Metcalf, who had been the publisher of the Providence Journal. Okay. Okay. And his family had been part of the journal for, if not like major owners of the journal for a very, very long time. Right.

[00:33:30] So, the connection there was education through journalism. Yes. About environmental issues. Yes. And boy, that played right into your hands, huh? Yeah. It was really an ideal spot for me. That's great. That's awesome. Great. All right. We're going to take another quick break, and we'll be right back here in the Two Cat Kitchen.

[00:34:12] You eventually ended up at the University of Rhode Island Natural Resources Science Department, and Metcalf ended up there, correct? Yes. And then you became a professor, as we mentioned, which is what you're doing right now. And I understand you're on sabbatical this semester. Can you tell us a little bit about what you're doing for that? Yes.

[00:34:36] So, first of all, sabbatical is one of the most amazing aspects of being an academic. When you're a professor and you have reached a particular stage in your, like, promotional career, you get the opportunity to apply for a sabbatical, which is a semester.

[00:34:56] And in some cases, people even take a whole year away from the day-to-day responsibilities of being a professor. So, during sabbatical, you don't have to teach. You don't have to advise students. You don't have to participate in committees or the other service requirements of being faculty. Your only job is to work on your research. So, it is such a gift to have this time, and I am in the middle of a sabbatical right now.

[00:35:26] And my sabbatical project is actually testing a particular science communication training program. This program comes directly out of a project I was working on for the last four years with my colleague Bruno Takahashi at Michigan State University. Bringing things full circle. There you go.

[00:35:47] And we were, we and our whole team were trying to develop a science communication training that really centered the scientist communicator's identities and cultural experiences. And not just their scientific knowledge, but their scientific knowledge in context of their whole selves, right?

[00:36:16] And all of their previous experiences. And we then wanted to take that year-long fellowship program that we developed and tested in this other grant and see if we could squish it down into a much shorter duration training. Because most academics can't take a whole year to do any kind of training.

[00:36:39] So, I adapted the most essential parts of that longer workshop into a 12-hour training. So, it's got three sessions of four hours each. And so, part one is testing whether this very, very short version has the same types of outcomes as the longer version.

[00:37:03] And part two of this was to test this science communication workshop series in different cultures to see whether this identity-centered, culture-centered approach actually translates to, as it turns out, a British context and a Brazilian context.

[00:37:26] So, I just got back from a couple of months in London where I was working with a colleague, Emily Dawson, at the University College London to try out this workshop there. And I am in just a little bit of time going to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to do the same thing there.

[00:37:47] And I will be teaching this as part of a class for a master's program in science communication while I'm in Brazil. That's exciting. And you have metrics or performance measures that you're going to collect post-training to see the influence and kind of applying the scientific method to the actual training. Absolutely. In fact, I do pre- and post-training.

[00:38:12] So, we have a series of questions that we ask the participants to respond to about two weeks before they do the training. So, we have kind of a baseline of sorts. And then after the training is all done, there's a second survey that asks a lot of the very same questions, but also adds a couple of additional questions to assess what they took away from the training,

[00:38:38] whether their attitudes about science communication have shifted, whether their behaviors have shifted, that sort of thing. And these are researchers and university faculty in those countries. Right. Well, the one in London was designed for post-doctoral scholars and faculty. Okay. And that was the original intent for the one in Brazil.

[00:39:04] But as it turns out, we're actually going to be doing this for graduate students in Brazil instead, just because that was the audience that we really had access to. Good. Yeah. Well, that's interesting. We'll be curious to see how that all comes out. Me too. Yeah. How's it going so far? Well, so I didn't get as many participants in London as I had hoped for. So, I don't really have great data to work with from that first one. But it was great practice. Yeah.

[00:39:32] And now, because again, remember, I'm taking this from a much longer training into just 12 hours. So, it was really good practice for me to run this workshop in this very condensed format. Yeah. Yeah. That's my silver lining from having a much smaller participation. But in Brazil, another benefit of doing this as a class is that I know people are going to participate. That's right. There you go.

[00:40:02] They will be there. That's fun. All right. Wow, that's great. Really fascinating work that you do. Thanks. And I'm so glad to be able to learn more about it. All right. We're going to be right back here in the Two Cat Kitchen.

[00:40:15] It's time in the episode to do our recipe portion.

[00:41:11] But, you know, Sunshine and Lau, you were on our podcast last month. And you did a recipe. It was a fantastic recipe. Ginger snaps. Grandma doobies. Yeah. Remember. And so we have had a recipe experience with you. But what we'd like to do now is kind of a food preference quiz. Would you be willing to take this with us? Oh, yes. I can't wait. I'm so excited for this. I have a series of five questions that I just want to get your thoughts on. Okay. Number one.

[00:41:42] Birria tacos or regular tacos? Oh. Well, birria are... That's beef, right? Yeah. Well, yeah. I think that generally the preparation for birria is that it's beef. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, goat. Oh, it's goat. Oh, it's goat. Okay. Thank you. But, you know, it's hard to get goat around here. It is hard to get goat around here. Without getting in trouble. Excuse me. Can I borrow your goat? Well, okay. I'm sorry to be so picky about this, but what do you mean by regular tacos?

[00:42:11] Non-birria tacos. Because, I mean, regular is in the eye of the beholder. So, you happen to have hit upon one of my very favorite types of food here. Okay. So, I... I mean, I can't ask you for birria versus every other type of taco. Well, I love carnitas. So, if there was a taco option with carnitas, that... Carnitas. 100% go for that. If the birria were goat, then, okay, I would go for that, too.

[00:42:41] Just because I like a good flavor. What is birria taco to you? Because we had this discussion with our friends and fiddleheads, and we couldn't really get to an answer on this. But what is birria? So, I think this is... I could be totally wrong here. But I think this is a combination of the particular flavors that are involved in the marinade,

[00:43:05] and the degree of time that the meat is marinated and cooked. Okay. That's my thought, but I could be wrong. That's good. That makes perfect sense. Absolutely. Especially if it's goat. Goat, yeah. Yeah. You want to... I imagine you want some thyme, marination thyme. Yes. Goat. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. Excellent. Number two. White rice or brown rice?

[00:43:35] Well, if someone else is cooking it, brown rice. But I hate cooking brown rice because I'm too impatient. Yes. So, I generally cook white rice. Cooking brown rice is difficult, I think. It is. Is it just me? No, it's not just you. It's slow. Yeah. Yeah. And then it goes from uncooked to exploded. Exactly. Like in no time. And then it's like burnt on the bottom of the pan. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I'm not... That's why... White rice is a little safer.

[00:44:04] If someone else is going to cook the brown rice, I'm totally happy with that. Yeah. And it depends on the dish, too. I mean, you know, we do a brown rice casserole, which has a lot of spinach. And that... White rice would be hard on that. Yeah. But white rice pretty much with any other dishes is a go-to. I do... Sidebar. I have this activity that I do with my students to help them think about how culture informs how we behave in the world.

[00:44:34] And this is actually something I got off Twitter back in the old days when Twitter was great. And so the idea is you go around the class and ask everyone to talk about how they or their family prepare rice. And I start and say, you know, my mom's family is Cajun and my dad's family is Brazilian. And these are two very rice-centric cultures.

[00:45:01] So rice is a big component of the food that I grew up eating. And I still really enjoy eating rice. But so my mom always makes rice by first putting some oil. All she uses is olive oil and sauteing some garlic. And then she puts the rice in and sautés that a little bit longer and then adds the salt and the water and cooks it from there.

[00:45:27] And so it's really interesting to do this and go around the class because some students... You know, also keep in mind that these are young adults who perhaps haven't been doing a ton of cooking for very long. And so many of them are like, I do the boil in a bag rice, which is a perfectly acceptable answer. There's no right or wrong answer. And others explain the various ways that their families cook rice.

[00:45:52] And it's a really interesting way to introduce the concept of culture being so deeply woven into things that you don't even think about. That's really interesting. Yeah. Get some thinking. Mm-hmm. Excellent. All right. Number three. Himalayan salt or sel gris? Sel gris? What is sel gris? Come on. What are you doing to me?

[00:46:22] I mean, I know sel is salted French, right? Yeah. Work it out. Work it out. Gray? Yeah. Gray rice? I'm sorry, gray salt? Still suck on rice. Himalayan pink salt or French gray salt. Jeez. Um, okay. French gray salt, you probably, I can tell you're not familiar with this. All right, so this is not a fair question, but French gray salt is, retains, let me say,

[00:46:52] it retains part of the estuary in its being. Oh. It's a little... Interesting. It's a little, uh... Earthy? Earthy. It's a little, oh yeah, sedimenty. Oh, really? It's a little, uh... There's probably even some nanoplankton in it. I'm sure. And some marine plastics, no doubt. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Oh dear. Anyway, okay. Yeah, so I... Do you use Himalayan pink salt at all? No.

[00:47:20] I use plain old table salt and I use kosher salt. Ah. Like if I'm looking for the chunkier stuff, I go to kosher salt. Interesting. I did recently get a greater exposure to the Himalayan pink salt. I have a brother-in-law who's from Brazil. Mm-hmm. And he uses it and everything. It just looks good on the table. It does look good. Yeah. I agree. Yeah. And probably better than gray salt. All right.

[00:47:47] That just doesn't sound like it would look really great. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I don't know why anybody uses it. I don't want to be... I just get my own salt and get the water out of the bay and leave it out in a pan to dry. All right. All right. Here we go. Papaya or mango? Oh, that's hard. Okay. You're asking me this at just the right time because I am just about to go to Brazil, right? Yeah.

[00:48:15] So the thing is, in the U.S., I would say mango because you're much better... You're much more likely to get a good mango in the U.S. than you are a good papaya, at least in Rhode Island. Mm-hmm. That is completely different when you're in Florida. Sure. And I love papaya, but a bad papaya is so gross. Whereas in Brazil... Mm-hmm. Oh, my goodness. The fruit in Brazil is like eating a piece of heaven.

[00:48:45] It's so outrageously delicious. And the papayas there are insanely good. Oh, okay. So it's a location-based answer. Yes. Yes. Okay. So let me ask you about a mango, though, because I struggle peeling and cutting a mango with that pit. I never know which way it's going, like, and how to cut it. There's really no easy way, right? I'm not a fan of peeling mangoes either. Yeah. I am...

[00:49:12] I'm sure that, you know, there's probably 20,000 YouTube videos out there showing how to actually cut a mango in a good way. Right. So what I usually end up doing is peeling the skin, slicing off what I can, and then, like, getting really disgustingly sticky by eating the rest of the fruit from the pit over the sink. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense. I actually posted one of those videos.

[00:49:42] I actually started by making a margarita. And then showing them, I'm about to take on my mango, but I had to have the margarita first. Yeah, because the tequila was a necessary component to the process. I had to do it. Gotta have it, yeah. All right, and our final question here is pancakes or waffles? Another hard one! All right, listen. I cook either pancakes or waffles every Sunday. Oh.

[00:50:10] Because I am a Michigander at heart, and I grew up eating real maple syrup. Oh, yeah. I'm a complete maple syrup snob. Hmm. Meaning, I want real maple syrup or nothing at all. That's right. Because the fake stuff... Organic, dark amber, the darker the better. I mean, or yeah, I don't even know if organic is meaningful when it comes to maple syrup, right? Right. I mean, it's from trees. It's from maple trees. That's true.

[00:50:38] But it's just that the flavor and the texture and everything is so much different from the fake stuff that you get. Oh, yeah. So, anyway, so for me, waffles and pancakes are vehicles for maple syrup. That's right. Yeah, and butter, for sure. Delivery mechanism. Yeah. So, with the butter thing in mind, waffles are absolutely better because the water can, or the butter can, like, well up in the little waffle pockets. Yeah.

[00:51:08] But, yeah, I love both. Mm-hmm. And my husband would probably laugh out loud at me being asked this question because, I mean, yes, I make waffles or pancakes for both of us, but really, I make them for me because I'm the one who wants them once a week. It's worth the extra work. But it sounds like it's equal. It's not every other week. I probably do pancakes more often than waffles because I hate cleaning the waffle iron. Oh, good point. That's work. Yeah.

[00:51:38] So, recently I tried Ploy, which is from Northern Maine. Mm-hmm. It's like a buckwheat pancake, but it's very thin. It's like a crate. Oh. And you can wrap fruit in it. And, yeah, I just saw it in a market in Northern Maine. I'm like, ooh, what's this? And I brought it back to the folks I was staying with. Uh-huh. And I'm like, oh, that's Ploy. I grew up on Ploy. I'm like, great. Well, let's cook it and let's find out. Ploy. How do you spell it? P-L-O-Y. I think it's got an E on the end. Oh, Ploy.

[00:52:08] Wow. I've never heard of this before. I'm fascinated. It's buckwheat, which I guess was easy to grow in that hard soil in Northern Maine. And it's got a lot of French influence in terms of that. And they had one of those, you know, buy local stands in the market. And they had Ploy and they had, obviously, maple syrup. And I said, oh, okay, two of that go together. So, it was fun. It was fun, yeah. So, I would recommend that. Okay, thanks for the tip. Something new to try. I want to look into Ploy.

[00:52:38] Well, thank you for taking our food quiz. We learned a lot there. You passed. And thank you so much for being a guest once again on the Two Cat Kitchen. We really enjoyed talking with you. It was really fascinating to hear about your work and, you know, very important work, I will say. Thank you. Thank you, Sunshine. Yeah, thanks. Thanks, both of you. Appreciate it.

[00:53:33] That's all we have time for in this episode of the Two Cat Kitchen. You know, we'd like to thank our special science guest, Sunshine Menezes, who taught us about environmental communication today. Excellent. We'll see you all next time, right here on the Two Cat Kitchen. The culinary show.