A Conversation with Undiscovered, an Award Winning Narrative Science Podcast from WNYC
We catch up with Annie Minoff and Elah Feder on what makes their storytelling so successful, how science journalism fits into the podcast landscape, and their pitch for Everything is Alive.
Narrative podcasts have this special power to trick people into liking things. 30 for 30 does that for sports. Planet Money for economics. Twenty Thousand Hertz for sound. 99% Invisible for design. Their storytelling can guide anyone past the wall of assumed disinterest.
That is what Undiscovered from WNYC does with science. It doesn’t round up science news or break down the latest advances, but instead tells the stories of science through the dramatic events and quirky characters that are everywhere behind the scenes. Before you know it, you’re completely invested in what happens to an underdog scientist pushing back against the accepted narrative on what killed off the dinosaurs. You might not have always loved Paleontology, but everyone loves a good story with a protagonist who pushes back against the status quo.
Each episode in their newly finished second season explores a different science story in a way headlines cannot capture— everything from whether we should feel bad for robots to what happens when a mathematician tries to fix gerrymandering.
I caught up with co-hosts Annie Minoff and Elah Feder a few weeks ago over Google Hangouts. They were funny, generous, and above all, really thoughtful about what they do and how they want to do it.
(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
Getting Started and Developing Undiscovered
First off, can you guys share with me how you got into podcasting and ended up working together on Undiscovered?
Elah Feder (EF): I started off in evolutionary biology. I was doing my masters at the University of Toronto and I just needed something to keep me company while I was working in the lab. I was very bored. I was listening to a lot of loud annoying music.
Annie Minoff (AM): You were knocking out fruit flies and sorting them by sex or something right?
Yes, I’ve heard it’s a rule that everybody in science has to work on fruit flies at some point.
EF: It wasn’t even for any scientific reason. It was just to become acquainted. But you don’t need to know that part. So it was a professor down the hall who was like, “Why don’t you try listening to something else?” And he recommended podcasts, which up until then I’d actually refused to know what they were. I was like, “Ugh some trendy thing, I don’t want to know about it.” But I started listening and got really into it. I wasn’t thinking of it as a career, but eventually for my next job my friend and I thought we would start one for fun, which we did. Eventually we realized that you could actually get paid money to do this kind of thing, which was just a dream come true.
AM: It was a really cute podcast.
EF: It was a cute podcast about dating on the internet called I Like You.
How long did you do that for?
EF: We made it for about five years. And then my co-producer JP and I both ended up freelancing for the CBC. I’m from Canada and we realized we could make careers out of it. So that was how it started for me.
Was there ever a second thought to get back into scientific research?
EF: I think I pretty much figured out while I was in grad school that I didn’t want to be a scientist. I think it may be more fun to swoop in when scientists have their findings and report on them than to actually, you know, toil in the lab for years to find out this one little piece of the puzzle. So I really enjoy being a science journalist more than I enjoyed being a scientist. Although I’m still obviously fascinated by science. I just don’t want to be the researcher conducting it.
And how about you, Annie?
AM: I was a college radio kid. That’s how I started. All through college I hosted this arts interview show because somebody told me I could get free tickets to plays and movie openings if I interviewed people who were involved and I really, really loved it. So after school I did kind of a number of public radio internships and jobs and eventually landed at Science Friday despite not really having a science background to speak of.
And I just really loved producing our Friday interview show talking to scientists who were so amazingly accessible and invested in you understanding what they did. I really appreciate that. And at some point Science Friday was like, “We should have a podcast”, and I was like, “I would love to make that for you! And I would love it to be kind of a narrative thing where we tell the story behind the science and maybe a more involved story than we can get to in an interview on a Friday”.
So that was the pitch for Undiscovered?
AM: Uh huh.
And then how did you and Elah connect around this show?
AM: Elah had interned at Science Friday and she was like the most overqualified wonderful intern we’d ever had. [both laughing] And then we hired her.
EF: Yeah, I just saw the job posting about a year after I interned. I realized this was exactly what I wanted to do. So Annie…I’m very lucky she chose me to be her partner in this.
I think ultimately our podcast is about the process of science. It’s not a show about the latest findings and here’s what we now know to be true. It’s how do people try to figure this out and what are some of the complexities of that process.
AM: Looking back, it’s so terrifying to imagine. Elah and I get along super well, which is great because I think otherwise we would have murdered one another and you would be talking to us from prison. [all laughing]
The Long Production Cycle of Narrative Podcasts
It always surprises me when I read or learn about how long the production cycle is for a well-produced and well-reported show. So I would love to know what the production cycle from beginning to end looks like for Undiscovered?
EF: It’s very, very long. It surprises us how long it is until we plot out what needs to happen each week to finish an episode, and then it kind of makes sense. But still, I’m still amazed how long it takes. So I think, Annie, what would you say, like two and a half months from start to finish? Well, but we’re working on a few stories at once.
AM: They tend to overlap, which makes it hard to suss out what I was working on at the time, but it’s definitely at least two months per episode and often spread out over many months. I’m just actually today working on a script for a story that I started doing preliminary calls and reading up on in April.
Now, is Season 2 already completely edited? [they laugh]
EF: No, we’re still making it. I mean, we’ll be making it up until the last day that the last episode is being released or the day before. Sorry, Annie, that’s going to happen. [laughs]
AM: What’s fascinating to me is actually how different the episodes can be and just how long they can take to come together, and I feel like the difference really comes in the drafting. Some stories just end up being closer to what you thought they were going to be when you started reporting them.
The scripting comes together really easily. But I think what can happen on some stories is as you’re writing it, you’re like, “Oh this isn’t what I thought. I have to go back. I have to interview somebody else or I have to rethink what is my structure here.”
And It’s hard to know in advance which ones those are going to be. [laughs]
EF: I think the most exciting, the best stories are the ones that turn out to be not quite true.
AM: So you start to feel really good and like it’s coming together so quickly. But just wait until fact checking man, because you’re going to get slammed.
Roles Behind the Scenes
As a listener, it sounds like you two are equally reporting and working on the show together in the same capacity. How are things split behind the scenes?
AM: We pretty much each kind of have ownership of our own episodes, but that’s not totally evident. I think it’s becoming actually more evident in some of the more recent episodes for who owns what.
But we have the idea for our own episodes and report them. You know, basically one of us reporting it, writing the whole thing, mixing and doing everything, which allows the other one to kind of be an editor on it as well, which is really useful. I think if Elah were in the weeds with me on every episode she’d actually be less valuable to me because she couldn’t provide any kind of outside perspective on it. But then we do both kind of swoop in when it comes to the narration and share those duties. We’re actually playing around with how that sounds, too.
EF: Yeah, that’s pretty much it. One of us is the reporter and lead producer, and the other one is more like a story editor for each episode. But in terms of narration, we used to divvy it up like half and half.
The Nuance of Science and the Challenge of Communicating it
To me, good science communication isn’t afraid to leave things nuanced and to admit uncertainty or to say things like, “it depends”. I really like that you guys do it right and don’t cop out and give the easy answer just to give an easy answer.
EF: That was true of the dino’s episode The Holdout. I didn’t come away with a conclusion at the end of that as to what killed the dinosaurs.
AM: She would always joke like, “I think if I’d have had another week of reading I could have figured out what killed the dinosaurs.” That’d be a great bow to put at the end of that episode.
EF: Yeah, I’d be like guys I just settled it, paleontologists you can sit down. Yeah I got this. I think ultimately our podcast is about the process of science. It’s not a show about the latest findings and here’s what we now know to be true. It’s how do people try to figure this out and what are some of the complexities of that process. I mean, yeah, we’re not really expected to have an answer, which is nice because we almost never do.
AM: But I would like people to leave with some kind of takeaway. It’s not like, “What killed the dinosaurs?”, but it might be, “Oh this is what consensus in science looks like.”
Interviewing Scientists for Them, Not Their Findings
So in your experience with all the reporting you’ve done throughout your career, do you find interviewing scientists to be any different? Are they more guarded or more difficult to get straight answers out of?
EF: I would say in general no, although you recently had an example of a very cautious mathematician [all laugh], he just knew too much to give definitive answers.
AM: Scientists often want to talk from the perspective of, “Well here’s what I know. Here’s what I have found, and here’s how I know it.” And we’re often just as interested in their very subjective and squishy experience of doing the work.
EF: Yeah, of them as humans.
AM: And their feelings about it. And I feel like some people are more or less open to that. And so often in interviews I’ll just say, “I’m gonna ask you not just what you did, but how you felt about it. Where were you when you discovered the thing? Who was the first person you told? How did you feel in that moment?” Just to give them the heads up of yeah, I do want to hear about what you did, and how, and why, and the results. But I also want to know about you.
EF: I think if they’ve had experience with other science journalists they might not be as used to being ask those questions. They might have an idea how a science interview goes.
Science Stories Are Like Sports Stories
There seems to be a lot more science news roundup type shows than science narrative shows. How do you think through the landscape of other science shows out there and what direction the landscape is going in?
AM: First, I would say that if you’re relying on us to stay abreast of what’s happening in science then that’s not the way to go. I think something like a science news roundup serves a very different purpose.
Right.
AM: And so I don’t think either is going to go away. There’s no question that deep dives are more resource intensive. But I also think they have the ability to go beyond the normal science audience. Just speaking for myself as someone who listens to podcasts, I love stories and I don’t really care if they’re about science or….have you ever listened to 30 for 30?
Yes.
AM: Yeah, like I have zero interest in sports.
Yeah, I’m the same way. I don’t watch sports or do anything with sports, but I love that show.
AM: I don’t even have the language to talk about sports. But I love that podcast because…do I learn things about sports listening to it? Yes, but I really just care about the characters and what’s going to happen to them. So when it comes to science, the nice thing about narrative is you can pull in some other folks too — not just those who self-identify as being interested in science already.
That’s a great analogy.
EF: We have gotten feedback sometimes from people who say, “I don’t listen to science podcasts, but I listen to this and it’s super interesting”, which is great. I hope more people who are not interested in science find out about these kinds of shows and realize they can find science interesting.
It does depend on the kind of appetite there is for this, though. There are a lot more narrative style, deep dive science shows, but a lot of them are very focused on psychology. I guess there is a great appetite for psychology shows, but I hope we can demonstrate there is an appetite for deep dives into other types of science as well.
Joining WNYC
You guys recently joined WNYC as well, right? Can you talk a little bit about what that’s like and if it’s going to change the stories or scope of your show, or if it’s going to be business as usual?
EF: They don’t have any editorial control — they’re our distributor — but they have been a helpful resource. When did they come? Early in season two, right?
AM: Right. Like midway [through] when we were working on it, we learned that they were taking us on to distribute us and do a bunch of our marketing and that kind of thing. But over and above that, we’re a very small team. And WNYC has a ton of people who are very good at narrative audio and have really, really just great, great ears.
EF: Amazing, yeah.
AM: One of the things that we’ve really enjoyed about working with them is the opportunity to pull their editors in the room and say, “Hey, listen to this” and just get some outside feedback.
I think for smaller shops like ours and for especially independents, you can ask your friends to listen to something, and that’s hugely helpful, but there is something really, really helpful about a person who can listen with a kind of informed ear and say, “This isn’t working, and here’s why I think it’s not working.”
EF: Friends tend to say, “I like this, I don’t like this”, whereas the people we’ve consulted at WNYC say, “Have you thought about doing it like this?” I was actually talking to some WNYC people when we figured out what our new narration style would be. Which is again in some of the second season episodes because some were developed earlier than others. I mean, it’s been amazing so far. I’m really happy about the move.
AM: We really love WNYC.
Season 3?
So are you already having to think about the shape of season 3? When does that start stressing you out?
EF: I mean, I can’t really even think about it. [laughs]
AM: I can’t think beyond the gigantic vacation I’m going to take. I’ll take all of my accumulated vacation days from the whole year. [all laughing]
EF: I mean if you want to know, she’s known as The Beast.
Who, Annie is?
EF: I mean I get emails from her at like 10:00 p.m. on Saturday night. She’s like, “So I’ve reviewed your script and here are some comments.” The woman is….she’s a hard working person.
AM: So I’m planning on taking a very long vacation. But I do have a doc where it’s season three ideas and I’ve got links and stuff.
EF: Of course she does. [all laugh]
AM: But I plan on not looking at that for like at least a month.
EF: Please, please take a vacation.
The Role of a Science Journalist
How do you approach the role of science communicator vs science journalist?
EF: We are expected to say, ‘here’s an awesome scientist doing awesome things that we love and support’. And you’re not expected to be critical or skeptical, but we definitely don’t take that approach. I wonder sometimes if some of the scientists we interview expect us to be uncritical, because that’s the kind of science journalists they’ve encountered. I don’t see our job as being science evangelists, even though I do love science as an enterprise. But I think it comes across like we are both enthusiastic and skeptical, as journalists should be.
AM: I think that is harder in science, though, [versus other niches such as law journalism]. I think part of that kind of science communication is a concerted effort to get scientists’ work out there, and I think that’s great. It’s also harder for journalists as outsiders to know the science well enough to be able to be critical or skeptical from a place of knowledge. So I think it’s very hard to have that skeptical position unless you’re a beat reporter who’s been doing this for years in a certain field.
EF: Especially since we try to cover diverse fields. We’re not strictly a chemistry podcast or a biochemistry podcast, so we don’t become experts in any one field. Science is a pretty big umbrella term.
Yeah, I do want to hear about what you did, and how, and why, and the results. But I also want to know about you.
Award Winning!
One thing I wanted to make sure I say is congratulations on recently winning the science media award in the radio and podcast category! How did that come to be?
EF: Yeah, we were really surprised.
AM: I hadn’t heard of the award before. I think they’re fairly new. I think it’s great. They’re trying to shine a light on science media, because there is so much science media out there. So they’d actually emailed me to be say ‘hey we are an award and you should consider applying’. So I did. And then we won!
EF: I think I was very surprised, but I think that reflects more on me than on Undiscovered.
AM: I encourage others to apply next year, too. It’s great, and a great way to get your stuff out there.
Always Be Getting Recommendations (and a Pitch for Everything Is Alive)
Any other podcast recommendations? It could be science or otherwise.
AM: Well, actually, this week on Undiscovered we’re sharing an episode of another podcast.. We did an episode swap with them, so I hope our listeners love it too. It’s called Sum of All Parts. I think you know it.
Yeah, I love that show.
EF: For me, actually sometimes I don’t listen to other science podcasts because I might compare.
You know, I feel like this a common thing where podcasters don’t want to be influenced by similar shows. I’ve heard that before.
AM: Sometimes I just want a break, you know? [laughs]
EF: I love Everything Is Alive.
AM: We both love Everything Is Alive.
I have to catch up, I’ve only heard the first couple, but what an interesting show.
EF: Amazing. It’s unlike anything that I make or listen to.
AM: Or have heard. I love being surprised by a new show. My first thought was, “How are they gonna make this work?”
EF: I think we should collaborate with them and make something from the perspective of a science experiment.
AM: Ooooo!
That would be great.
EF: I cannot see how that would work, but we need to do this.
AM: “I am but a humble pipette.” [all laughing]
That is a great one!
AM: “My discoveries are world shaking.” [more laughing]
EF: I do think Science Vs is a great science podcast.
AM: It is a great show, yeah.
EF: Before I started my own science podcast, I would listen to them occasionally, since they’re just crammed with citations, which I really like, and they’re actually pretty thorough. So I enjoy that. It’s supposed to be science vs. an issue. They tackle an issue thoroughly, but they do have some narrative built into a lot of their episodes. So yeah it’s a good show.
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