Disclaimer: This is an automated transcript, we apologize for any errors. If you notice any problems, please email the show at teachmeaboutthegreatlakes@gmail.com. Thank you.

Stuart Carlton 0:00
teach me about the Great Lakes. Teach me about the Great Lakes. John, welcome back to teach me about the Great Lakes. A twice monthly podcast in which I A Great Lakes novice get people who are smarter and harder working than I am to teach me all about the Great Lakes. co host today is Megan Gunn. Megan, what's up?

Megan Gunn 0:18
Nothing. Nothing. It has been a long day. It feels like it's Wednesday, but it feels like Friday. Yeah.

Stuart Carlton 0:27
It feels like 915. Yeah. Yeah, it has been a little behind the curtain. Look, we're recording this on January 20. And so today is the day of the presidential inauguration, which for various reasons, has been somewhat stressful. But this is the afternoon and so far, it seems like as far as I know, everything's still okay. We'll see. Yeah, so it's been, it's been a heck of a week, heck of a year, really. And so we're going to actually get into that a little bit with today's guests. We're going to talk about COVID stuff a little bit. So some of the coolest stuff we did, I think was right when lockdown kind of started. We had a couple of episodes, three episodes actually on on Coronavirus as it stood then, and I'll put links to them in the show notes. Let me actually refer to them right now. So don't screw it up. And so we did a we did kind of a suite of episodes about the Coronavirus, and I think they still hold up pretty well. So it's worth checking out if you haven't heard them. The first one is Episode Five. Called we're all in this together where we spoke with an epidemiologist from the University of Illinois about just the state of the viruses was and what it meant for outdoor recreation. You know, was it okay to go outside or was it not? And then episode six, which you can find a teaching about the great lakes.com/six We talked about, we got another perspective of ER physician, which I thought was really interesting. And then finally episode nine, we spoke with, let me get the woman's name. In episode nine. We spoke with Dr. Mean quo from the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign about sort of the psychological impacts of isolation and things like that. And so it's been about a year and so I thought we'd follow up on how some of the communication but it's gone. But today's guests but she also does some really interesting work in climate communication and stuff like that. And so I'm pretty excited about it.

Megan Gunn 2:11
I am too well, good.

Stuart Carlton 2:12
But before we get there, actually, I have got a great lakes factoid for you. Are you ready? Yes, well, not quite yet. It's a great lakes factoid, a Great Lakes factoid it's a great factoid about the Great Lakes, Chad. All right, this Great Lakes factoid comes from our friends at Michigan Sea Grant was a very fine secret program in the Great Lakes, the Great Lakes basin. So that's not just the cities, right on the lakes. But any you know, any of the drainage basin into the Great Lakes has over 34 million people, which is about a percent of the US population and about 34% of the Canadian population, which I thought was pretty interesting. The largest city, as we found out in the Great Lakes Basin is Toronto. But the largest metropolitan area is Chicago. And that is our Great Lakes factory. Oh, cool. Yeah. You see you're learning in 30 seconds what were you know, normally would take 30 minutes to learn. We're about efficiency of learning here at teach me about the Great Lakes. Anyway, all right. And so guess we have a guest let's introduce the guest today's guest. She's a research assistant professor and a in the Division of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Her name is Dr. Ashley, Brainiac, Tabasco, and we'll do the researcher feature theme and we'll bring her on.

Researcher feature a feature which a researcher teaches about third grade. Sorry about that. Our guest today is Dr. Ashley banyak Tabasco, she's a research assistant professor in the Division of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Ashley, how are you today?

Dr. Ashley Tobasco 4:02
I'm doing well. Thanks so much for having me. Nice to see you as well. Megan,

Megan Gunn 4:08
nice to see you.

Stuart Carlton 4:08
Yeah, we're really good. So you are a risk communication researcher at UIC. Is that right?

Dr. Ashley Tobasco 4:14
Yes, that is correct.

Stuart Carlton 4:16
So what is so what is how do you study risk communication? Do you like analyze people speeches? Or do you look at like, infographics or what kind of what kind of stuff do you do you study there?

Dr. Ashley Tobasco 4:25
There's a whole variety of ways that you can study risk communication. My research in the past has primarily focused on looking at documentary film, actually. And climate risk messaging and documentary documentary film and understanding the ways in which that documentary communicates climate change impacts the audience's that it intends to reach. So we can look at the characters that are used the way that they're framing the climate message, and really looking at the between the message and the audience response response.

Stuart Carlton 4:59
Oh, no kidding. So you Have people watch films, I guess and then and then study the response, like, how do you do that? Exactly.

Dr. Ashley Tobasco 5:05
I'll just tell you a little bit more about my dissertation research. So in this we had actually a five part study. So what we did is we had a qualitative study. So we did some in depth interviews with people after they had left or they had wide binary, we asked them a bunch of questions learned what they thought about it, and specifically, what they thought about climate change after after watching this documentary, we also did some more traditional experiments. In a lab setting, this was pre COVID, where we had folks come into a lab, fill out a survey, watch the documentary fill out another survey so we could compare their previous climate change attitudes and beliefs with their post watching this documentary, climate change attitudes and beliefs. And then we had an online experiment where we did the same thing with people who were watching online. And then we had another online, wasn't it? Well, it was an experiment, I suppose. We had another online experiment, which had people watching this documentary is actually a documentary television series over the course of time that it was airing live. So they would fill out a survey, watch an episode, fill out another save survey, come back a week later, do the same thing over eight week for eight weeks, have this huge body of data, looking at this documentary series, really allowing us to have a deep dive understanding of how people responded and why.

Stuart Carlton 6:30
Well, that's fascinating. So what like in terms of your broad, broad overview, your findings? What did you What did you find like people watched a documentary? How did that influence their attitudes and beliefs about climate change?

Dr. Ashley Tobasco 6:42
So so we found were really interested in the documentary, they thought that it was really cool it was really well done was something that we heard a lot about. And a lot of people, I can tell you the name of the documentary series, it's, well, it's Years of Living Dangerously. I'm not sure if you've heard about it.

Stuart Carlton 7:01
But I've not seen it, but I have it, we'll put a link to it in our show notes.

Dr. Ashley Tobasco 7:05
Yeah, check it out. It was on National Geographic and Showtime and was on Netflix and Amazon Prime for a while, so should be able to find it out there somewhere. There's two seasons of it. President Obama was in it, which was pretty cool. So people were really interested in climate change after watching this documentary. But the thing that I studied in particular was trying to understand how the narrative aspects of the documentary influenced people. And so I looked at something we call narrative transportation, which is this idea that when you're really engrossed in a narrative that you're either reading or watching, you can potentially be transported into this world, this narrative that you're reading about, it's, you feel like you're in another place. And so what we did is we looked at how transported people felt while they were watching this documentary, and compare that to their climate change attitudes, and beliefs. And what we found is that the more transported people felt, the more engaged they got with this documentary and watching it, the higher their climate change risk perceptions were. So they felt more concerned about climate change. And the more efficacious they felt about doing something about it, so the higher their self ability to do something about it, got and this we saw across political affiliations, which was really exciting, really exciting for us, which basically told us that storytelling can be a really important mechanism for potentially reaching across the aisle. And even more importantly, what we found is that at the lower end of this engagement or transportation scale, so people when they weren't very transported, Democrats and Republicans were pretty far apart on their climate change attitudes and beliefs. So Democrats, as you might expect, because of the, the way that polarization has gone with climate change over the last 20 years or so, had higher climate change risk perceptions, also felt like they could do more about climate change compared to Republicans. But as Trump as transportation, as people got more engaged in the documentary, that difference pretty much went away. So storytelling could potentially also be a mechanism for sort of ameliorating some of those prior impacts of polarization that we have in climate change messaging, which we think is really exciting for climate change storytelling for people who are trying to learn about and think about different approaches to communicating about climate change. Instead of you know, always recounting a series of facts about how terrible things are maybe, you know, talking about experiences and storytelling might be a good option for reaching people all over the place.

Stuart Carlton 9:44
Because you find so so backing up a little bit so what you found is that the there's so there people are really polarized by their politics or maybe by their values when it comes to their climate change beliefs, right. Yeah. And so you found that but but when people latch on to this story that that polarization tends to, I guess, either go away or be minimized. Is that kind of what you're

Dr. Ashley Tobasco 10:05
saying? Yeah, yeah. So, you know, the more engaging the engage that people felt, the less those differences were at the end of the film. So, you know, obviously, this is one study. So we would hope to do additional studies to sort of continue to support this, this finding, but, you know, we find this to be pretty interesting, and hope that it means that good storytelling that really hopes that tries to reach a diverse audience can actually bring us together on some issues that are really polarized, like climate change.

Megan Gunn 10:43
Have you looked at how so you you said that you could see different results in political groups? But did you look at how different demographics perceive the information or how transported they were?

Dr. Ashley Tobasco 10:55
We did not I focused on political affiliation, specifically because of the political polarization around the issue. So in my particular study, I didn't look in depth at demographic studies, or demographic differences. However, some of our other studies, which I was not a lead author on, and I don't believe those have been published yet, but did look at some things like, kind of classically, when we think about risk perceptions, it's kind of known that women or women are more consider risk perceptions than men do. And we saw that in our research as well. I, like I said, I focused on political affiliation. So I'm not sure if there were any differences across race and ethnicity or not. Gotcha.

Stuart Carlton 11:44
Or age, perhaps, especially for a couple of reasons. That's really interesting. And so then, based on that, the idea is that by latching into stories, sort of these primeval things, right, that maybe we can cut through some of the rhetoric and have more effective communications related to climate change, or maybe even, obviously, your research about climate change. So you don't want to spread too far beyond that, but potentially even other environmental or natural resources, controversy, right, exactly.

Dr. Ashley Tobasco 12:09
I think, you know, historically, we have sort of shied away from relying on a mode of communication like storytelling, because it feels perhaps too soft or not evidence based. But part of what we're trying to show in our research is that you can do storytelling and an evidence based way, you can still talk about facts and storytelling, you can still share people's real experiences. And you can still have a real impact on people. And the reality of it is that storytelling really does influence people, people care about experiences that others have had, we have used storytelling as a mode of communication for much longer to longer of human than the last, you know, 20 or 30 years. It's built into our culture. And it's a form of communication that we should be thinking about how to how to use to communicate with people, because it's a mode of communication that people really understand and stand and they can identify with.

Stuart Carlton 13:12
And so definitely, example good examples of, that's something that occurred to me, it's like, maybe we can link to some good examples of using storytelling in a way that you think is, how do you describe it? You say, fact based, or what? evidence base? There we go, yep.

Dr. Ashley Tobasco 13:26
Oh, I'm trying to remember the name of the book. I do have a book that I just read. That's all we can save all we

Stuart Carlton 13:35
can save by truth, courage and solutions for the climate crisis. It's an edited volume by a Jana, Elizabeth Ayana, Elizabeth Johnson, and Catherine Wilkinson. But it's

Dr. Ashley Tobasco 13:47
a book that's written by all women on the frontlines of climate change, who are telling stories, stories of the stuff done, done of the advocacy that they've done of their experience with, you know, living, what climate change is, like for them experiencing the effects of climate change. And these are all and also there are some poems. So it's like this really nice inter woven book that tells us really comprehensive story of what it means to be on the frontlines of climate change today, and what it means for different cultures to be grappling with climate change. So I think that's a great example. And I also think, Years of Living Dangerously while you know, in our research, we did, you know, find that there were a lot of valid criticisms of of that documentary series. I think that it does a lot of things well, namely, and talking about more than just the terrible impacts that we're going to face. But what types of solutions are out there? And what do we have that's cause for hope in the in the climate context, and what does that look like globally? And in the United States, so really giving a broad perspective, and also something that's sometimes not appreciated very much, but really using beautiful imagery, which is something that is an important part of storytelling as well. So I do recommend checking that out. Yeah, so those were those would be two, two examples. And I could probably come up with some more that I could send you as well.

Stuart Carlton 15:20
No, that's, yeah, that's great. So you've also done go ahead, Megan,

Megan Gunn 15:25
I was gonna say, I think that we should, just in general, maybe even a scientist, but people in general, like if we wouldn't just focus on the doom and gloom all the time, people would be a little bit more receptive and people are more receptive. If you show some of the positive things that there are to look forward to just because there's happiness on the other side of the bridge there or just at the end of the rainbow, there's the pot of gold, there's, there's something

Dr. Ashley Tobasco 15:49
you know, there's something to look forward to and here are some tools for what we can do to manage and how we can you know, cope and how we can move forward. I was aspects of messaging are really important.

Stuart Carlton 16:02
So you've also done some work, looking at risk communication with regards to the Coronavirus itself, right? Particularly in underserved communities and how the message is being communicated or whether the message is being communicated. We talked about

Dr. Ashley Tobasco 16:16
Sure. Right now I'm one of many University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health faculty working on a community based contact tracing partnership in Chicago partnership is made up of several organizations, including the Chicago hook partnership, UIC, the National Opinion Research Center out of Chicago, Malcolm X college and Sinai Urban Health Institute. And the partnership was initiated to help respond to the COVID 19 pandemic and hopefully begin to address racial disparities in Chicago, in particular, and COVID-19, morbidity and mortality. My role on this project is primarily to provide risk consultation and education as needed for the team and for our community partners. So, for example, next week, I'll be talking with our community partners about communicating risk and giving them tips for things to consider in their interpersonal conversations with community members. Since that's a really big need right now, the contact tracers who are employed through this program, and people in general are really wanting to know how to engage in sensitive topics with their neighbors and friends and community members like getting the vaccine or talking with people who are scared to get the vaccine. And hopefully, we can provide some resources and a foundation of information about risk communication, to boost confidence and efficacy to have those conversations within communities and help to start addressing some of the fears and concerns that are out there this vaccine. So there's that I can also talk a little bit about a commentary that I wrote earlier this year, if if you're interested in hearing about that, yes, very much

Stuart Carlton 17:53
so. But well, let's get to the commentary in a moment. So first, so regarding the study in their work with the contractor, so these are people that are going out in the community to try to track the spread of the virus.

Dr. Ashley Tobasco 18:05
Yeah, so these these folks work for at community based organizations, and what will happen is, they'll get a call from the city about a case and then they'll work to follow up with that case and find that cases contexts. And hopefully try to get it so that folks feel comfortable sharing their context and also help provide information about the importance of isolation and other public health measures like wearing a mask and what to do if you have tested positive or you think you might be positive share that information within the community. And the contact tracers are also employed from within the community, which is great, because then hopefully, they're they're talking to their, their neighbors and, and whatnot, when they're having these conversations. It

Stuart Carlton 18:52
makes sense. So you're consulting with them on how to talk about these sensitive topics, like what are what are sort of the key, you know, things that that people should be doing when talking about this and trying to increase, I guess, you know, trust and message and uptake and things like that.

Dr. Ashley Tobasco 19:06
Yeah, so the things really are actually kind of intuitive. Like, really just having a sense of empathy and listening to the people that you're talking with and trying to understand where they're coming from and what their fears are. A lot of times fears are grounded in mistrust, for good reason. They're grounded in the fact that this is something that's very new, and we've all been dealing with this assault of fear for a year not knowing whether or not you can go outside and whether it's safe. So really, sort of the first tip that I give folks is really just think about what it would be like to be in that person's shoes. Really, sort of try to feel a sense of empathy and listen about what they need and what they're asking for. Another thing is to really Just try to not necessarily be the expert on everything. So I think a lot of times we often feel like, Oh, someone's asking me this question, if I don't have the answer, it's going to look bad or whatever. But in reality, if we accidentally tell somebody something wrong, and then something happens because of that bad information or miscommunication, or they don't get access to information about where to get their vaccine, or they thought that they weren't supposed to have any side effects, and they do like that can all lead to a spiral of further mistrust. So really knowing the limits of what you know, and being okay with saying, hey, you know what, that's a really good concern. I'm not sure of the answer, but let me help you find someone who can. And then the third thing is really, you know, finding people who that that are trusted in the community who can be help, that can help spread public health messages. So you know, communities aren't super interested in having experts that are outsiders come in and be sort of saviors that's not helpful. And so having folks within the community who have experience with getting the vaccine, or who are connected to the Public Health Department in some way, or who are trusted figure, perhaps a pastor, or someone who's trusted in the community, those folks will be really important for helping to, you know, dispel misinformation, combat rumors, increase calm confidence, and getting the vaccine, share their experiences and point people in the direction of public health messaging.

Stuart Carlton 21:38
Latos, you're saying is just be kind of a good human being right.

Dr. Ashley Tobasco 21:41
It's funny, because I was about this, as I was, you know, thinking about this podcast and, and thinking about the talk that I'll be giving to our community partners next week, and you know, some of the stuff you don't have to be a risk communication expert to implement in your daily life. It's really sort of common sense intuitive, how do you be an empathetic listener and help connect people with things that will help them, not make it about you, but make it about what, what they need and, and realize that people come from different perspectives, and they may need different information than what you think you should be providing? But, but listening and, and using that to inform how you how you move forward?

Stuart Carlton 22:22
So yeah, let's talk about So speaking about like, who was giving messages and trusted members of the community and things like that you did write this recent common commentary, or you co authored, I suppose, a commentary on messaging during COVID. Can you tell us a little bit about that, please,

Dr. Ashley Tobasco 22:35
I'm in Terry with two colleagues of mine, Dr. On Irfan who's at George Washington University, and Cynthia golembeski, whose errors, and you can find it in the Harvard Public Health Review. And it's called pandemic of racism. And we took a look at the communications environment early on in this pandemic, and basically felt like we just had to say something about it and put a call to action out there. Because what we saw, and what we spoke about was this connection between risk and political communication and social justice. And so we in this commentary, we specifically called out the political speech that was happening early on in the pandemic as racialized misinformation about the origins of COVID-19. That further fueled racist speech and behavior toward Asian Americans. And then we also highlighted how in some cases, African American men were feeling unsafe with the facemask guidance, because they were fearful of being targeted for potentially being threatening for wearing a face mask in public. So we really focused in this commentary on thinking about how, you know, obviously, the last four years, there's been an erosion of what is considered truth and factual information. But really looking at this intersection of how this political speech and this racialized speech, this racist rhetoric was being used as a form of misinformation that was creating an unsafe environment, an unsafe environment, and already unsafe situation, we were already dealing with the fear around the pandemic, and everyone was trying to figure out what they could do to be safe. And in the midst of this, we're creating an environment where folks are fearful of taking up public health measures or fearful of going about their daily lives because they were being targeted and discriminated against. And so, you know, something that we haven't really talked about, but the federal government does have an important role in risk communication. And, you know, that happens in in a number of ways, but it can also be done really badly to the detriment of the pandemic response. So, if you're interested in reading more about that it's in the public, the Harvard Public Health Review, I believe in June or July.

Stuart Carlton 24:52
And so what you're saying is like the specifics of like, the language that people use can really matter in terms of the way that the audience receives a message and how they interpret that is that kind of, you know, like really down to the words and the images and the messages that people are saying and that we need to be thoughtful about.

Dr. Ashley Tobasco 25:10
It's, it seems somewhat common sensical. But also I think that sometimes people like to dismiss words as just words. And that's not the reality language has meaning that the purpose of language from the get go is to have meaning and to convey meaning. And it does so in very complex ways. And the words that we choose to use the imagery that we choose to use, the codes that we choose to use natural language really have an impact on the way that able people are able to live their daily lives, and on conveying important public health messaging, as was in this case. And so it's really important in risk messaging, especially at the highest levels, where people have the most visible platforms to be very clear and unequivocal, and to not be discriminatory in the rhetoric that you're using, so that you don't alienate people who need your help.

Stuart Carlton 26:06
In some ways, it reminds me actually, of the climate work you're talking about, because words and symbols, we talked about this a lot, we came up with a value statement for Illinois-Indiana, Sea Grant went through this whole process. And one of the things that people said, well, this is just you know, it's a symbol. And the answer is yes, it is just a symbol. But symbols are important, right? And it is just words, but words are important. And in many ways, it seems to me like it ties into your climate work. We're just like these different versions of stories, right? Yeah,

Dr. Ashley Tobasco 26:30
that's so true. There are so many parallels between how the COVID response has unfolded, and how climate change has been polarized over the last 25 ish years. Obviously, there's a lot of political forces that are involved in that, but there you know, it's it's a very similar playbook, so to speak, the ways in which language was sort of weaponized against people away from what might be considered a common sense public health approach, or common sense approach to addressing climate change to a place where we're now in this catastrophe that we're in. So yeah, so there's, there's definitely a lot of a lot of synergies between those two. And they're, they're very similar in a lot of ways. And I think that moving forward, people who are involved in the COVID pandemic response can probably look to how the climate change response is evolving, and how people are specifically learning to communicate in that highly political, highly polarized environment to learn some things moving forward.

Megan Gunn 27:40
So who should people be listening to, I guess, who? Who are these communicators that people should be looking to listen to as the vaccine is rolling out? Sure. Who

Dr. Ashley Tobasco 27:52
has been forced? I guess? That's a great question without a simple answer. It's not simple because of the current polarized, you know, information environment that we're in the with the massive amount of misinformation out there. And where people, quite frankly, are choosing to get their information. So I mean, obviously, you need trusted voices at all levels, the only messenger cannot be the president, you need people at all levels who are trusted. At the national and state levels. Ideally, there would be a coordinated and consistent messaging, which would make it easier for folks to know what the message is, where it's coming from and where to go if they needed to know more. The President CDC and governors should be providing accurate, consistent and coordinated public health messaging. And this type of response, which should be the norm can help maintain calm and crisis because people will know where to go for information and find a little bit of comfort knowing that there are some competent folks in charge trying to solve our problems. You know, who is trusted is really complicated. Scientists still enjoy a fairly high percentage of public trust, and should be included in messaging. Public health scientists and practitioners often have training in health communication, as well as grounding in population health, which is critical in this moment. And so they should be involved in communication at the top, as well as advising on response in general. And then when we're thinking about talking at talking with communities at the individual levels, again, like we said earlier, you know, folks aren't really going to necessarily just get the vaccine because the president governor or mayor says so. So having trusted voices in the community helping to deliver some of these messages is really important. You know, the state and local health departments are going to be really key moving forward, especially with the vaccine rollout, because there, the vaccine rollout is happening right now on a state by state basis. And so what's happening in Illinois is going to be different than what's happening in Indiana. So keeping an eye out on your Local and state, public health departments, local news, usually has a close connection with local public health and provides frequent updates. So that might be a good option for people as well. CDC will have messaging and like I said, hopefully moving forward, we'll have a more coordinated and consistent response from the federal government, as well.

Stuart Carlton 30:23
But what I'm what I'm hearing from you is like, what's really important, though, is having a number of voices out there, right? Because not everybody trusts the same people. And, and, and so having a diversity of voices, both in terms of the level of where they're coming from, but also who they are, I mean, even down to what they look like, I think is really important. Well, actually, this is fascinating conversation. And as someone who's done a fair amount of climate communication research, I could talk to you about this for hours. But that's actually not why we invited you and teach me about the Great Lakes this week. The reason that we invited you on teaching about the Great Lakes is to ask you these two questions. And the first one is this. If you could choose to have a great donut for breakfast or a great sandwich for lunch, which one would you choose?

Dr. Ashley Tobasco 31:02
Definitely the doughnut for breakfast donut for breakfast? For sure.

Stuart Carlton 31:08
Yeah. And so if I'm in Chicago, you're in Chicago, right? Yes, I

Dr. Ashley Tobasco 31:12
am in Chicago. So

Stuart Carlton 31:13
I'm in Chicago, where should I go to get a great doughnut? Whoo.

Dr. Ashley Tobasco 31:18
There's this place called Fire cakes. That's quite good. And they have some pretty interesting flavors. They had a peach cobbler esque type flavor over the summer, pistachio, something or other, which was really good. They have some really unique flavors, and they're always super tasty. So I recommend checking them out.

Stuart Carlton 31:38
Fire cakes, Dawn and Dawn, as soon as I get vaccinated, that won't be the first place. But it might be like the third I don't know. Great, and then the second assess. So you're a communications researcher, you research risk communication and related things, right? What? What is like what makes you good at your job? What is a key skill for someone in your industry to have that you think maybe is worth thinking about in the larger sense?

Dr. Ashley Tobasco 32:03
Sure. I think that having a sense of empathy, and sort of duty to my fellow citizens is one of the key things that makes me good at my job, I have a public service oriented, sort of mission for myself. And I take that to work in every thing that I do. And I really just think that to be a good communicator, you need to be a good listener, and you need to be able to try to understand where other people are coming from. And I think that those are things that I hope that I can do. And that I think that's really important for someone who's trying to do a good job at communicating.

Stuart Carlton 32:47
Great, well, if people want to find out more about your work, where can they go? Is there like a website or social media feed? Or should they just read your your commentaries, which we do?

Dr. Ashley Tobasco 32:57
I suppose, I have a small description of my work on my UIC website, which you can find just by Googling my I'm also on LinkedIn. I have a Twitter handle as well. It's at AB Tabasco. And so I have to be frank, I took a little bit of a break from Twitter over the last month or so because I desperately needed that. But I typically try to discuss, discuss climate change, risk, calm and other social issues. On my Twitter feed.

Stuart Carlton 33:34
Yes, I signed out of Twitter, in October of 2020. My personal account, I still do the show account, and I it's been nice. I'll be honest, it's been nice.

Dr. Ashley Tobasco 33:44
The break has definitely been

Stuart Carlton 33:47
Dr. Ashley bieniasz, Tabasco research assistant professor in the Division of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences at the University of Illinois, Chicago, thank you so much for coming on and teaching us all about the Great Lakes.

Dr. Ashley Tobasco 33:59
Thanks so much for having me. It was really great to talk with you sir. And Megan.

Stuart Carlton 34:16
Anyway, well, that was a pretty interesting conversation with Ashley there. Sounds like she's done a lot of fascinating work, both climate and COVID. And we think about that a lot in like extension, right? And outreach work. It's like the the importance of the messenger and how that's, that's hard. And it seems like it's something that it's it takes active work, I think to find good messengers, because they're inherently you know, if you're gonna speak to a whole populace, they're not going to be just like you are, you know, if you want to speak to like yourself and people like you, then it's really easy to find those people but but reaching out, I think it's a challenge, but I think Ashley argued, and it's a good argument to me. Kind of an imperative, right that you do that.

Megan Gunn 34:57
Yeah. And it's all about finding those people. Well, that the people in the community trust. Yeah, just not just somebody in the Kennedy, those those chested leaders.

Stuart Carlton 35:06
Yep. Yeah. And that's gonna be a big challenge anyway, because it's hard. And as always, the listeners continue to fund social science researchers to do work. And we, you know, we can help with that. But that's my message for most episodes of most podcasts. I think it's fun me to do stuff. Good. Well, Megan, where can people go to find out more about the work that you do?

Megan Gunn 35:29
You can find me on Twitter at underscore t f. F. P, and also on Instagram at the familiar faces project, there is a website, the familiar faces project that that org that I am actively working on updating right now. And so there will be more recess recently. There will be more resources on there soon.

Stuart Carlton 35:51
Excellent. Well, I'm looking forward to that. And that's actually I mean, this exact same story you're talking about, right? In terms of familiar, that's an idea of, I mean, it's trust. And it's, I think you're more looking at like models of success, right? Yeah, but But still, it's the same thing. It's, it's it's important to have good models out there for trust models for success and things like that. And so I'm really thrilled for the work you're doing and can't wait to see it continue to evolve. And hey, contact the show, you can hit us up on Twitter, we're teach Great Lakes is the Twitter thing. Send us an email at teach me about the Great lakes@gmail.com. And I think that's I think that's the best way. I think that's all the ways there probably more ways, but those are the ways. My name is Stuart Carlton, thank you so much for listening. And we'll be back on the first Monday of every month and third Mondays of most months. And in the meantime, keep grinding and there it is keep grinding those lakes

Megan Gunn 36:51
so I have a tidbit. I don't know if you want to keep it in the recording, but it was something that I was thinking about as she was talking about communication. Okay. Um, and I don't know if you can hear my dog barking. But, but I wonder how will I know has played a huge role. Social media has played a huge role in the messaging around the Coronavirus for the last year and the messaging around most things that we've been hearing for the last however long social media has really been around and impacting us. But I wonder how easy it was to get people on board with no shirt, no shoes, no service back in the day? And how like how long that will take for people to get on board with it. No shirt, no shoes, no mask, no service. type of message.

Stuart Carlton 37:39
Hmm. So you think so it's like a masking thing. So So you mean maybe that type of simple message right now we could get people on board with it? I don't know. Yeah, question. But do you think it's just are you thinking long term with masks? You think that's gonna be a thing for a long time?

Megan Gunn 37:55
I don't know. But if it does have to be a thing. How long did it take for the other simple messages to actually for people to stop fighting it? I guess that's a good question.

Stuart Carlton 38:07
Right? Where people were there shirtless dudes barging into Starbucks and like 1954 right yelling about their freedom, because they they wanted to shirtless coffee. Yeah, that's a good question. guy throws his toe cheesy foot up on the thing. Yeah, I need my latte. Right. Yeah. I don't know. That is a good question. Megan. I don't know. Right. And I think but I think your point is this is that, or I don't know, you know what your point is. But one thing that makes me think of, I guess, rather than me tell you what your point is, you can probably do that on your own. But it is, it is true. There's been a lot of pushback on even simple, frankly, low key things right. Now, granted, I don't live in a city, but it's really not that hard for me to wear a mask when it's when it's necessary to do so. Right. Yeah, there are many people in West Lafayette compared to like Chicago, or whatever. But but but even a very simple message. I would surmise. I'm not a researcher in this, but I would surmise because of the politicization right. But even those very simple messages have been extraordinarily controversial. And and how much does it have to do with messengers? And how much does that have to do with the lack of modeling behavior? In certain groups? I don't know. It's a it's a it's a really good question.

Megan Gunn 39:31
And just even having consistent messaging on all levels, like Ashley was talking about having from Apple government to local and state agencies. And

Stuart Carlton 39:41
yeah, I feel like consistency has not been the strong suit of the messaging around this kind of at many levels. It's not been a super consistent time in our nation's history. I think it's safe to say, Yeah, well, that's a great question, and I don't know the answer. But so does your dog. What kind of talk you have

Megan Gunn 40:00
She's a Boston Terrier mix. She's about No, she's a small thing. But she's apparently overweight and needs to lose some weight before she gets her teeth cleaned. Because to me, she's a baby, but apparently almost seven years old means you're an old dog. And so Oh, dogs have to do different things than baby dog.

Stuart Carlton 40:22
Our dog is 15 and she's, we're getting there. The time is coming. It's gonna be rough when that happens, but yeah, yeah. But I still think of her. It's sad, right? Because you still think of her as the you know, the play ball all day long. And everything and she kind of thinks of herself like that. Like she's always been a really great dog awesome with kids, but she's just wanted every dog to know that she is the leader here in the champions. So so like, whenever Walker, she'll bark at any dog, like regardless of size. Yeah, and she'll still do that. But but you know, as she walks like, one mile an hour on our nightly walk, it takes us like, a half hour to walk two thirds of a mile. Because she's just old. But dogs are awesome. So you have a 27 years old. Yeah, she's not young anymore. Tiny bit overthinking. So in quarantine, everybody is getting a little bit of weight

Megan Gunn 41:17
on Yeah, they are. But she she has so much energy that it's hard to think of her as an old dog. Yeah, not as much. It's, it's crazy to think she had even more energy when I first got her. She was like, three, four months. But she still has a lot of energy and will just bounce bounce around all over the place.

Stuart Carlton 41:35
Well, she'll keep you on as long as she's there. To keep you active. That's the that's been the great blessing with the dogs. You know, I didn't want the dog. My wife did she wanted my wife at the time but we got her you know, 15 years ago or whatever. And, but then we got her and I have not fallen in love with her. I'm not going to say that. But somehow it has become my responsibility to do all of the dog stuff for the dog that I never wanted. And that's okay. But but so you know the boys so we go on two walks a day and that that moment is like kind of my moment because my kids don't want to go walking when it's like 15 degrees out or whatever. Yeah, and so that but that's been a real blessing. It's just that couple of moments of reflectiveness or a chance listen to podcast, depending on how much I feel like reflecting which is you know, sometimes lately not all that much. Anyway-