Petr Lebedev didn’t need YouTube, podcasts, tweets or TikTok to be seduced by science. His parents are physicists; he joined the family firm.
But not everyone grows up talking quantum field theory at the dinner table. Lebedev says a friend’s experience helped him to appreciate the transformative potential of science communication.
“Her mum was a hairdresser, her dad was a police officer, and she grew up in a rural town in Western Australia,” he told The Brilliant. “She ended up doing advanced maths and physics at the University of Western Australia because she watched Carl Sagan’s Cosmos when she was a teenager. I was like, ‘There’s impact here. This changes people’s lives and it’s exciting.’”
At 27, Lebedev is staking out terrain as the next generation of specialist science communicator. He’s a researcher and writer with Dr Derek Muller’s powerhouse YouTube science channel Veritasium and has shared his knowledge with audiences on podcasts, radio and social media, as well as on stages and in classrooms.
He’s collaborated with the legendary Dr Karl Kruszelnicki as a researcher and filmmaker, helping create the pop-up holograms for his books, Dr Karl’s Random Road Trip through Science (2019) and Dr Karl’s Surfing Safari through Science (2020). He’s also close to completing a PhD in physics education research at the University of Sydney.
“He has his own slant on things,” Kruszelnicki says of Lebedev, whom he’s been mentoring since 2017. “He’s quirky: he finds the things he likes and passes them on to people.”
Creating impact
Right now, Lebedev’s work is, mostly, behind the scenes with Veritasium. A self-proclaimed introvert, he also loves the “fun, talking head stuff” and hopes to do more in front of the camera. But for now, it’s a long-term goal.
“I am doing so much behind the scenes because I just want to learn,” he says. “Science communication is so stupidly difficult, with so much depth and breadth to it. If you get a chance to work with Dr Karl, or with Derek Muller, you don’t really say no – it’s just a crazy good opportunity to work with some of the best science communicators in the world.”
As the possibilities of space travel and artificial intelligence ramp up, and global challenges such as climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic demand increasingly urgent action, it may seem like more people are engaging with science communication than ever before. Lebedev isn’t so sure, but Veritasium and other communicators like Mark Rober, an American YouTuber, engineer and inventor with 21 million subscribers, are gradually staking out important territory.
“YouTube is important,” Lebedev agrees, “but the reason YouTube is important is the same reason that podcasts are important or writing for newspapers is important. “Each reaches a different audience and can create impact.”
Lebedev’s PhD examines the impact of multimedia on physics education. He’s worked with first-year university students, reflecting on the way they absorb information and how online learning could be done more effectively.
He began his PhD in 2017, but in 2020 the pandemic meant that millions of students of all ages, all over the world, were sent home to learn. Lebedev realised that his nearly-completed thesis could have significant real-world application.
“I’m selfish,” he laughs. “I just wanted to make videos. I wanted to do science communication and doing this PhD felt like a really good thing for me. I thought I’d learn a lot, and I did. And only towards the end of my PhD, was I like, ‘Hey, this is actually might be useful.’”
Lebedev says you don’t need to make a big-budget feature-length film or television series to capture people’s attention. Fifteen-second clips made on an iPhone can reach millions, especially on a fast-and-furious platform like TikTok or Instagram – if you can master the storytelling.
A beginner’s guide
“One of the things I love about video is that it blends good writing, sound design, music and dialogue,” says Lebedev. “It also combines beautiful visuals. So there’s the visual, the writing, and the sound, and If you hit all three of them just right, it can work incredibly well. But it has to be fun to watch; edit out the boring bits. It’s better to have a well-made four-minute video than a boring 20-minute video.”
Lebedev has shared his filmmaking expertise with The Brilliant in this how-to guide.
He says he’d love to see more researchers explain their work to general audiences, and suspects that some are put off by the perceived “complexity” of filmmaking.
Perhaps they’re worried that they don’t have (or can’t justify buying) the equipment, that they have no experience with a camera or don’t see themselves as media superstars. Perhaps they don’t fully understand the platforms and algorithms.
The biggest challenge, says Lebedev, is neither the technology nor the time it takes to produce something: it’s identifying a compelling story.
“There are good stories everywhere; we need to find the right angles to tell them,” he says. “The right angle is the one that is interesting to the audience. The right angle for a five-year-old isn’t the same as one for a government official.”
We do this in our everyday lives, says Lebedev. We adapt our stories and how we tell them to suit our audience, whether we’re talking to a friend, a family member or a colleague. The same principle applies to science communication – it’s about knowing the intended audience and what they respond to.
Veritasium’s video about cosmic rays, in part inspired by a Radiolab podcast, is a good example of identifying an angle to build a bridge between science and the intended audience.
“If we go out on the street and ask people what they think about cosmic rays [high-energy radiation from space] they’ll tell us that they don’t know what they are,” says Lebedev. If a person doesn’t know what something is, it makes it very difficult to convince them to care about it.
“But we do know that people care about rigged elections, plane crashes, and glitches in computer games,” he says. “And the crazy thing is that cosmic rays have messed with elections, have attempted to crash a plane, and have glitched out video games. So, we approached cosmic rays like that – from an angle that people care about.”
For Lebedev, the stories that are worth telling are infinite; the more he discovers, the more he wants to discover and share on film, or via whatever medium works best.
“It’d be cool to reach even more people, or work on higher-budget productions, or win prestigious awards but honestly, I just want to keep telling stories about science and scientists for the rest of my life. Science communication is an artform, and to get good, you’ve got to practice – and I’m thankful that I get to put in that practice every day.”
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Article by Michelle Fincke
Photo supplied