The NPR program Here and Now has been running segments this week on Science in America, and one of these from yesterday featured me talking about science literacy. We had some technical difficulties getting this recorded– it was supposed to happen at a local radio studio last week, but they had some kind of glitch, so instead we did it via Skype from my office on campus. (Where there was some sort of heavy equipment running outside my window before and after the interview, but miraculously, they took a coffee break for the crucial fifteen minutes of the actual call…)
You can listen to the clip online, but the main question was whether Americans know enough about basic science. I talked a little about numbers from various iterations of the Science and Engineering Indicators reports that the NSF puts out, and made a pitch for science as a process because, well, I have a whole book about that. While a pre-interview talk with one of their producers was the proximate cause of the Beyoncé analogy from a couple weeks ago, the conversation didn’t go in that direction, so I didn’t use that bit.
Anyway, it was fun to do, and I think it came out well (even though I continue to not particularly like the sound of my own voice). So if you’ve got ten-ish minutes to kill, give it a listen…