 Boom, what's up everyone? Welcome to Simulation. I'm your host Alan Sakyan. We are still on site at Triple A, the American Anthropological Association. We are now sitting down with Dr. Maria Vizirenu. Hi. Hi, how are you? Thank you for coming out to the show. I'm excited to be here. Yes, I'm super happy to have you. This is gonna be a lot of fun. We're gonna talk about a lot of very interesting things and something, let me give a quick background. Quick background on Maria is she's a research associate and lecturer at Loyal Marama University in Los Angeles. She's a researcher at the Center for the Study of Los Angeles. She's a global health PhD at Arizona State University where she was understanding how people build mental models of complex health phenomena and she created the Eating Perception Lab and now also an evangelist of Science Communication Journal Club providing scientific community with evidence based tips on how to engage the public and as you know, we care a lot about science communication on the show, so we're really excited to unpack this. First of all, first of all, how the heck did you get involved in anthropology? It's a really strange story. I'm from Ukraine. I studied business in my bachelors because that was the way to get out of the country and live somewhere else. Then I got into health personally and I thought at some point there was a lady I was managing a health food store, something like a local Whole Foods. A lady came in, asked me for advice. I gave her advice. She said, yeah, but what's your degree? And I said, none. So I thought, okay I'm gonna go back to school. I did my MS in health promotion, which is like public health. I kind of liked it, but I was mostly interested in how people get to understand what it means to you well and that's a little bit more anthropology than public health interventions. So I ended up in Arizona with a global health degree. It was completely new. There was only one person graduating and there was so much freedom to do whatever you wanted to do. It's very interdisciplinary, so it's not just anthropology. It's not just public health. My research was really a bunch of psychology, nutrition and medical anthropology combined into a weird thing nobody else was doing, so I did that. And so I was studying how people the way you said it is correct, but I make it sound very complicated. If I had to simplify it, it's going to be I study why people believe certain things are healthy to eat and why they think there's a certain way to eat foods. So yeah, so that's that. Because the way that we see the world and the if we only have one perception on something, on a complex issue, that's gonna immediately impact the way that we see things versus if we have 10 or 20 or however many perspectives we're trying to synthesize into one. That could lead us to having a greater knowledge about what we're eating or how we're behaving with our health. Did you know that you, when were, wait, how old were you? Were you born in Ukraine? Yeah, I spent most of my life there. And then do you, so like 18 you moved to the US? I was actually 15 when I won this giant competition that was paid by the US government to send kids from those areas who know English well, who have some potential. It was called Future Leaders Exchange Program. It was called FLAX. So I was an exchange student in high school. I met an American host family that it was in Indiana. I was there for a year, went back home, started my business degree, then eventually came back to Indiana and finished it there. So that's when I stayed alone. My whole family is home. My brother is now in Los Angeles with me, but it's very recent. Other than that, everyone's there. So I was weirdly alone here for about 12 years. Yeah, just kind of making my way through. Yeah. But now, how did, how did you know that you wanted to come to the United States? I, I loved English. I loved studying different cultures. I was really into sci-fi video games and a lot of them are set in America. Which one? So all the terrible horror stuff, Resident Evil, Cylinder. Oh, cool. That's my thing. So actually, the reason I know the language so much better than all my peers at that time is because I started playing video games. All of them were not quite, you know, you know, sold certain ways, not translated. So you had to learn the English, get a dictionary out and actually understand what's happening. That's, yeah, I love video games. Most people wouldn't know, think about video games being able to teach a language that, that's cool. It's like cartoons in some other countries. Me, it was video games. Yes, yes. Story heavy. So I had to learn the words. You know, now I envision you slaying zombies in Resident Evil, you know. Yes, I'm really excited for the remake that's coming out soon. Are they on like six? Is that what it is? Oh, no, they're making the second one, which is the original. Making the second one. Did they stop at five or what? It was six. I stopped paying attention. But yeah, I'm not very good at shooting. I just want the story. The stories, stories are very interesting video game stories. So, OK, so this is cool. So you come out to, you know, to Indiana. Now, what is it like? I just want to know about this. This is an interesting point along the story is what is it like when you are dealing with like an American host family? You know, I was, you know, I have to tell you, whoever psychologist picked me were right because you have to be very flexible. That's why the program is called Flex. I think I dealt with it so well that they wanted to see me back in a couple of years. And let me stay there for free. Well, I was finished in my college, was really amazing family in Indiana. It's there's always differences, right? Let's give them a shout out. Oh, it's Deanna Hershey. She's not with us anymore, but her daughter, Deb Hershey, I saw her at my wedding a couple of years ago. She lives still in Indiana. I love her. So yeah, shout out to them. They made it possible for me to be here because otherwise what would I do? You know, it's expensive to be in this country, especially alone. So, yeah. Yeah, that's that's huge. Wow. And so, yeah, the flexibility because I've also we just we just had a show where we were talking to someone that's homeless about about street life. And and when we were talking to them, they had went through 48 foster care centers. And again, it was because of a lot of inflexibility when you get to a foster family that you just butt heads. And so when you are more flexible with things and there's a lot of other variables that go into it. But yeah, it's just being open and culturally, which is probably why I ended up in anthropology all along. Because when I first came to the United States, a funny thing is that some of the things I noticed at first ended up being really big theories in my dissertation work. I never realized that until recently when I first came to the United States and I was in high school and somebody gave a bunch of pencils to everyone to for everyone to get a pencil, right? Americans would take a pencil and pass it along. Somebody takes a pen and I was like, whoa, something's weird here. If you were in Ukraine and that happens out of the first person in line, I'm going to start handing out every single pencil out. And if I'm done and I don't have one myself, I'm like, oh, I guess I have to go get one for myself. There's a very known dimension in the psychology of collectivism versus individualism. Yes. So finally, Eastern Europe is considered more collectivist than Americans who are more individualistic. And that for me was the perfect first example. I had no idea yet. I was 15. But finally, in my dissertation work, that's one of the theories I had for why people think about food differently. OK, we have to talk about that. That's so cool. That's I think that's the that's a very, very relatable story. The pencil story. It's yeah, there's a huge difference. The first person that gets the bundle either passes the bundle on or they go and give everybody the group first, you know, even if you suffer. Yeah, you have no pencil. Yeah, yeah. And then this is also another example of this, actually, is when you walk into a restaurant with a group of people and you're it's one of those self-serve places, maybe like Chipotle or whatever. And you're the group orders, food insists down. You're you're the one that gets four water glasses, four knives, four forks, ten napkins, and you bring it all to the table. So yeah, interesting, interesting. Yeah, there's that's so cool. OK, so and that's good that you've now now tell us about the transition from Indiana to Arizona. Yeah, it was actually very tough because here I was coming. I'm always the new kid. It sucks. First, I'm in a business and marketing and I come to public health arena and I don't know, OK, I'm starting to catch up. It's been two years when I come to Arizona State and realize, oh, this is a little less health, way more anthropology. What's anthropology? And I get thrown into a completely different field that I ended up absolutely loving because they they're able to answer any question you can think about about humans and related to us. They can be like, cool, let's figure out how we're going to test that and what theories we're going to apply and the methodology and boom, we can answer whatever you have asked. It's amazing, right? It's fun. So when I ended up there, the hardest part about a PhD probably is to figure out what you're going to do. Sometimes you have an idea. Sometimes your professor might join you on their, you know, project. I come in with all this crazy ideas and all this nutrition stuff that nobody was necessarily doing. So I had I had a really great mentor, Dr. Daniel Hushka, he's a superstar and he's here at some point during the conference and he helped me pick my topic. And it was a weird one. It was my first time here. I knew I was coming to the conference and there was a call for papers about blame. So how people blame different foods on chronic diseases across cultures. That's why I went back to Ukraine. And I was like, let's see how Eastern Europeans feel about things. And I found an interesting, cool thing. Is that OK if I say now? Yes. So I was looking at health perceptions, perceptions of healthy eating. And I started noticing, I couldn't quite test it yet, that Eastern Europeans generally, everyone generally, when you ask them what's healthy eating, they start talking about foods, what makes them bad, good, healthy and healthy. Then they might mention some other things, like maybe you shouldn't overeat late in the day. Maybe you should always have breakfast. Maybe you shouldn't skip meals. Those kind of other things have to do the way you consume whatever it is, regardless of what it is. And I noticed that Eastern Europeans cared, seemed to care more about those the ways that you eat food. I called them eating styles. Eating styles. That's what I decided to call it. Yes. I that's a good way to put it. Yeah. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. And I thought, I wonder if that's true. So I started paying attention. And the literature on collectivism, they will, you know, once you go into it, it's in psychology. There are known cognitive differences between collectivist and individualistic societies. Collectivistic societies tend to have a more what they call a holistic pattern of attention, whereas they think of something they'll remember more about the context than the focal feature. And individualistic societies tend to have a more analytical type of attention where they'll remember more about like a certain thing. They do it, you know, how there is a picture of aquarium with some fish and some background, some whatever it is, greenery. A collective, a collectivistic person who's like scores really high on a collective scale, you let them look at it, take it away, say, what do you remember? They'll remember a lot more detail about what what everything else looked like than the central fish. So anyway, so that's kind of cool, right? And I thought, could that be applied to food perceptions? Because I'm looking first at the foods people think are good and bad to eat. And then I'm looking about all this like kind of context of when do you eat it? At what times, at what intervals, so not focusing on the food. I thought, wouldn't that be crazy if partly why Eastern Europeans care more about all this context of eating styles? Is there a cognition style? Yeah. And actually tested it in two studies. Yeah, it was partly responsible. So it wasn't about the fact that all these people live in Ukraine and Romania, Eastern Europe and for some reasons, they care more about eating styles. It was actually explained by their level of collectivism. So their cognition made them think a little bit differently about healthy eating and focus more about all these different aspects of the way you consume different foods. And that's really cool because there's always been a lot of focus on nutrition, nutrients, the foods that you eat, obviously. But now there's so much literature, amazing literature coming out. About like intermittent fasting and stuff like that. On the importance of the timing of when you eat, how many times a day? What's the time range? It really matters. And it seems to be related and to all sorts of chronic conditions, metabolic syndrome. So the way we consume food really matters, too. So I was really excited about that. It's just like a constant stream of glucose for the cells versus a period of time without any glucose, having to burn fat. And then sure, you eat and then you get some food. It has a lot to do with our internal clocks, circadian rhythms. Actually, I mentioned to you earlier that I do like this little whiteboard videos where I draw out concepts. Yeah, that was really good. Yeah. And my favorite one is the one I did on my dissertation topic and it was about the time of eating and explaining why that would matter. And there is great literature in this now showing that there's certain clocks in your body, the way your organs and everything works, works off light patterns. Like, is it light? Is it at night? What time of the day it is? But it can also be kind of messed up if you eat at funny times. Like if you eat late at night, it sort of deregulates certain things. And eventually it might be a risk factor for certain diseases. So that's kind of crazy. And I think that's cool because a lot of us eat late at night, right? Totally. Yeah. Anyway, something to look into. I'm such a culprit. I know now you're trying to think of all the things you're doing wrong. Well, I love how you made a distinction between what we eat and the eating styles because I don't think there is enough of a of a conversation about eating styles. I think we've had a couple on the show where we just talk about how interesting it is that we've never eaten three times a day with so many options with 100 percent full stomach every time we eat. And so this is a new phenomenon in civilization. And so when you look back throughout evolution, it was it wasn't it wasn't an eight a.m. noon and six p.m. full meal every time type of thing. So and there was definitely not. Oh, the refined sugar water that we that we that we drink now sodas and all that other kind of stuff. So the high fructose corn syrup. So so there's I like I like how the you know, eating perception comes with styles. That's that was so cool. Tell teach us more about this because the idea of collectivist thinking, driving more, I guess, of determining a little bit more nuance around eating versus individualistic thinking. That was a pretty interesting one. I thought it was crazy at first. I thought, no way, that's too cool, you know, but yep, it was there. So it predicts you're more likely to pay attention to all this context stuff about eating, but it's not obviously the only thing. You know, for example, back home, you know, I was born in U.S.S.R. It was all U.S.S.R. back then. And even then some of these eating styles are actually more like ancient wisdoms from coming from generation past that care about stuff like that. Like, hey, you don't eat late in the day or a certain hour or you shouldn't be snacking between when you eat a lot of this stuff. Once I start looking, there's very little research on it, but some of it is from Eastern Europe. Some of it is coming from Asia. There's a lot of very interesting ideas about timing of food from there. So it's not really new, but you know why it's not really on our radar, because it's so hard to study people's diets. Sometimes it's a lot easier to figure out what they ate than all the other factors like when and what were they doing, what they distracted. There's all this literature on if you're watching TV or talking to friends, you tend to eat a bit more without being more full. You know, so there's all these things that we might not be paying attention to, and they matter as well. Just a little plug. I've never met this person, but there's a panda lab because the professor is called Dr. Panda in California. And he's studying all of these contextual factors about eating. There is a free app you do and you have to say what you're doing while you're eating and what time it is. And he's sort of looking at like a map of when every intake happens. So I'm really excited to see what that comes out to. His outcomes, I think, are like weight management, showing that you lose weight much easier if you eat within a certain window. So like a lot of this more like fads about eating to have some really good truth to that, you know? Yeah, I mean, eating from noon until eight is that's already not eating for 16 hours a day. So you can easily do two meals at each time at the end caps. Whoa. And then that's cool that it's tough to do quantified self on your own eating habits because it's a lot of information to log. And we're already very easy in many ways. Yeah, I mean, some of this are and, you know, I one of my favorite topics is evolution of human food preferences. Even though I wasn't I'm not an evolutionary, you know, person, but while I was at Arizona State, there is a it's called evolutionary medicine center and it's center for evolutionary medicine that looks at how we can look at our health and disease from more evolutionary perspective to really get at the ultimate causes of why we are the way we are. Anyway, I took a course with Dr. Nessie, who is running the center. I really learned a lot and then I ended up writing a couple of articles for Encyclopedia of Illusion of Psychology on how people perceive food, how they make their choices. So I love that stuff. And yes, the environment we live in these days is extremely different. And it's the most natural thing that we're all overweight. You know, why wouldn't we be? We're sitting around doing nothing. There's a lot of great talks this weekend about that as well. Evolutionary anthropologists, yeah, they're looking into that as well. Yeah. Yeah. This is yes, we've heard sitting as the new cancer. We've they've heard so many things. That's how you sit. If you sit like a hundred together, which I went to that talk, which is like it's more like, you know, on the floor, you're not leaning on anything. You're sitting on the floor, so you kind of engage in more muscle. Yeah. And it's like cross-legged, sort of. Or you're like sitting really low. I can't show it right now. I'm wearing a dress. Yes, yes. But, you know, sitting on a chair is too relaxing. You're not engaging in anything. It's not great, you know. So if you sit in a different way, let's imagine there's nothing to sit on around the ground, you actually would be engaged in more muscle, you'd be better off. It was so cool. And you're also moving around more because you get sore. You might lean on an elbow. You might lean a leg out. Those micro movements, apparently, really matter. Micro movements are huge. We had a conversation with Pablo from Stanford who was working on furniture that makes you move from side to side while you're working. And other interesting things like the chair will actually run away from you and hide because it'll be on its own. That's pretty cool. And then it'll make you go and get the chair and stuff. And yeah, it's just kind of like it, I know. Yeah, yeah. I might buy it. Yeah, yeah, I know. It's interesting stuff like that. That's amazing. And there's evidence for it. I'm glad you like that. Just went to our poster session where there was an amazing guy for 40 years studying diabetes and his show. And it's all about the, he called it the contained body, the way that everything is engineered to just not move much. And it's like we need to exercise much. We just need to be moving to a normal place. Yes, yes, yes. He's onto something with the... Making some very interesting manipulations of our environments to make us move more. And that's really fun because it also gets blood flowing and cognition increasing. You feel looser, it's not as tight, you live longer. There's so many important points to it. So, OK, now what else about eating styles? Because I'm so fascinated with the distinction that you made between eating styles and the food we eat. Just there being such a big distinction, so interesting. What else? You know, it's funny thing is that it took me a lot of work to make that distinction because when I first suggested it, saying, hey, doesn't it make sense? There's all of these... The way I did it, I had people read a bunch of cards with statements about healthy eating on them and I knew some of them would be focused on food and some would be focused on the way that you consume it. When I tried to publish it, I got feedback saying, well, we don't think they're different. I was like, they obviously are. But I had to go through all of the statistics and the models to show like, no, no, no. Everyone perceives them as two different groups. They're kind of part of the same thing. They're all about eating. But there's something to be said about, and I think Michael Pollan called it nutritionism, like this real big focus on what's in the foods in terms of the nutrients and not thinking about other characteristics of food, like, hey, maybe how they're produced, right? But it's important to go even a little bit further from that and how do you consume them exactly? And so it's not just how later or early, it's not just the pattern, meaning like, is it better to have a couple of big meals or is it okay to snack more often? But it's also things like what are you doing while you're eating? Distraction-wise. That's huge. It's also the state you're eating in. I didn't really go into that into my research, but eating in a positive atmosphere, basically. I used stress because that didn't matter as well. So there's, and there could be more of these eating styles that aspects that really matter. I was really, I was looking at what people were telling me in the interviews, so I focused a lot on that. And my Eastern Europeans really cared about not eating late at night. And though I don't do any kind of clinical work, that's when I started doing all this research, it's like, wait, is there evidence for this? I was like, yes. All this research is coming out about eating after a certain hour, eating close to bedtime. It affects our metabolism in not the best ways. Yeah, so there's, there could be more. I have to do more. Yes, yes, I won't, wow. Okay, you gave this really interesting sort of like, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know exactly how to, the concentric circles I don't think have it make sense, but there's a different way to visualize it, but it's a way to visualize where you have the nutritionist sort of thinking of what are the nutrients in the food. And then like the next layer would be like, or a layer abstracted from the nutrition would be how is that food sourced and produced? Yeah, is it a haul? Is it processed? You know, you're going a little bit further, right? Yes. So all very important. And then the next layer is, how are you consuming that food? Is what style are you consuming it with? And you gave a very interesting example about the, whether you're happy or sad while you're eating food. There's some work on that. There's another one of, I personally find that when I am, when I give like gratitude to the food, that I find more, I guess, connection to earth and connection to nutrients and whatnot. So I'm like blessing the meal and blessing earth for giving me this meal. People will pray before they, there's something to it probably. I should do more research. There's something to it, respecting the food. There's something there. And then also the, when I'm starting to really feel a difference between when I'm eating and I'm just eating slowly and looking at the food versus when I'm watching a video while I'm eating. There's definitely some evidence for that, the fact that that matters. The pace is another thing I forgot. It definitely matters as well. I eat so slowly. Yeah? I enjoy eating slowly. That's good. That's really good actually. Like chewing your food, like whatever grandma used to say, chew your food a hundred times. See what you said, grandma? I was just about to tell you, at some point somebody told me, what is all this stuff on the cards? Like grandma science. Yeah. That's actually the cut and edge right now. No, it's cut and edge science. But it's coming, it is true that it's been around. And when I think about back to growing up in Ukraine, things that your parents would say, there's like all this little saying is like, oh, when you're eating, you're not supposed to be chatting or talking, just like focus, take your time, don't hurry. So there's a lot to it. And now there's finally more evidence because people are focusing on that and not just on nutritional composition. Which is also important, but we know a lot about it. We know it matters. And there's more to the picture. Yeah. Whoa, grandma being cutting edge science is so- Grandma cutting edge science. I like that. It's so, so interesting. It's kind of like the Lindy effect where the knowledge that's been preserved over time will likely be around that much longer. But all this new stuff that comes out every single day, could be obsolete tomorrow because it's new stuff, it's brand new. So that's so interesting. Yeah, and there's something quite, I don't know how to call Western about nutritionism because that's where the science is coming from. So the only other literature I found that was looking into eating styles or whatever they choose to call it was like Japan, Turkey. And so I couldn't quite find anything else. And that's going back to this older belief of what it means to eat well. Japan has a Harahachi Buu. You eat till you're three quarters full, 80% full. That's definitely some eating style consideration. And what was turkeys? It wasn't anything in particular called, it was just showing that there were interviewing a bunch of workers in the factory or whatnot. And they were showing like, hey, all these people really cared about the time and the fact that there's certain meals. So they cared about a lot and not as much about nutrition as some of the other societies. And I was like, oh, there it is again. Interesting. So it's so, I think it's coming back through science now, through evidence, and people are gonna start paying attention. Wow, so there might be a lot more weight on how we eat than what we eat. If we're eating like okay-sized portions, not excessive portions, and if we're eating maybe two medium-ish meals a day and then we're intermittently fasting, it might not even matter potentially so much if we are eating like all of the people are now gluten-free and vegan and paleo and carnivorous only and stuff. So because I've also heard people just say that, oh, if you're paleo, you can just eat all you want all day long, like no problem. Or if you're fruit terrier, you can just eat only fruits, as many fruits as you want all day long. I love these topics. I love why people go into alternative health in the past because I did before. I've tried stuff like that too. Oh, I tried it all and I kind of like it all. Paleo's my favorite, but for no particular reason. I just did a guest lecture at Loyola, Marymount University in LA, in Chicago, in evolutionary psychology class. And I think they were all really impressed because like you say, hey, you can eat anything as long as it's paleo. I had this amazing slide, I wish I had it here, of trying to get people to guess. You could have sent it to me and I'll embed it. I could, I'm really proud of it. And it's like all these fruits and vegetables, right, that are paleo that are great to eat and then I show what they would look like 10,000 years ago and it just looks all like grass and fiber and disgusting stuff that you would never want to eat. People at ASU, there was one researcher studying hunter-gatherers somewhere in the Amazon and one of the things I remember from his talk, he said, they hate vegetables. They're disgusting, they're bitter, they're fibrous, they want fruit all the time. So it's not just us that don't like vegetables, it's all the hunter-gatherers because those vegetables look like weeds, you know? They're being domesticated. So technically you can't eat paleo now, even if you really wanted to. It was just no way. And apple didn't look the same way, a banana. Definitely not. Yeah, corn used to be like this. That for sure, see everybody knows corn but everything else you can imagine right now, it's just, that's not how it looked. So I love evolutionary stuff, I do a lot of that too. And so a lot of the hunter-gatherer was fruit or meat, it was less so the vegetables. Well, first of all, it was whatever was available. So if that wasn't available, they'd be doing a lot of root vegetables and figuring out how to consume it. Cooking was important because you could make something that's just not edible at all into something more or less, okay? Yeah, yeah. And then I went to another, it was last year here at Triple A and it was the best talk ever that made me realize that all of this protein in let's call them pallolithic diets, there was a lot of variation but a lot of it could have been completely insects. So we're not talking about. Totally. Yeah. And there is, did you see cricket bars? Yeah, there's a whole resurgence. We had chips on our show. There's a whole resurgence of eating. I love that. Western people are looking at the East going like, they eat crickets and then we're like, how can we package crickets to make people eat crickets? I tried those bars. Yeah, yeah. They taste normal. Well, you can't even tell. They taste normal to me, yeah. Yeah, it's the way to go probably. Interesting. Okay, what about now with what's going on with you with research? I really am interested in this. At the Center for the Study of Los Angeles. Okay, what the hell are you researching about Los Angeles? It was, it's very new to me because even though the Center is not in any particular field, they're closest to political science. So a lot of the stuff we do is public opinion work. Right now we had a big election study. It's really cool because I'm trying to find ways to ask a very interesting question from a lot of people from a representative sample. So when we do our big survey every January, we actually can tell how Angelinas think, like everybody in Lake County because we do amazing methodology at getting people that will represent the whole place, you know, the whole area. I want to insert some health things as well with time but I've been there for less than a year. And so the kind of work that we do looks at more about how people feel about current issues. So a lot of the things that we do ends up in the media or decision makers get ahold of that information saying look at that. People in Los Angeles are really against this and they're really like that and they use that information. So it's really cool and more applied than I'm used to, but I do want to insert a little bit more health in there one way or another. That's a good one. Yeah, I think that would be really useful data. No, no, give me an idea at how one conducts the research to be not biased to have the best sample size. You know, the way we do it at studyLA, that's the short version instead of saying the whole thing. StudyLA. StudyLA, yeah. We actually, so to get 2,400 people to answer a survey that's 20 minutes long stuff, we outsource so somebody else does all the calling. It's mostly on the phone. Some of it is online, but you have to really combine it because people who answer the phone are different. They tend to be older, more conservative, this and that. So you want to have a better representation so you have to get some online people as well. And once you get all that data and it's really complicated because we do quotas, we want all sorts of ethnicities and we want to make sure we get everyone so if we didn't get enough Filipinos, we'll keep calling until we get enough of them. So it gets complicated, it takes some time. Once we get the data, you can always wait. You can see what your data looks like and you say, but I want this to represent the entire like count you let's say. So you go to your census, you see what the demographics are and then you weigh your data to match that better and then you report results. Okay, okay, so then let me see. So then you take with the census, it says that X amount of people, let's say 10% of people are Filipino, let's say. Something like that, yeah. And then the data that you've collected only 3% of the data is Filipino. Yeah, you're getting it. Okay, and then so then you need to go and pull more Filipinos to bring the data. Not necessarily, you can adjust it statistically. So you will take a look at your data. Or you can bring your sample size down to make them 10%. You can manipulate it in certain very careful ways and it's not just that, it's age, it's ethnicity, it's several factors where they live. If we got way too many people from the valley, there's not that many people that live there so we need to kind of statistically diminish them a little bit so we get the correct final picture. And that's why it's amazing. I've never done representative samples. So for me it was very new this year and it's really impressive. Because then you can say that, all right, here's how people felt about sexual harassment and whatnot. And that's exactly how people in LA County feel. Representative analysis. When you're doing public opinion you actually want to be able to say like that's how people feel now. Just like here's how our 2,000 people felt. How I feel about how other people feel. And then we can say break it down be like this is how people from this ethnic group feel or that one or this age category. That gets really interesting. We just had an election study. I had 125 undergraduate students trained in 600 polling place location in LA County collecting data all day. It was crazy. What were they collecting? One was an exit poll where you do ask a couple of questions like how did you vote because that you'll actually get the real numbers later. You'll be able to see how close your data is and we did really well and LA Times just picked up some of our data. And then we asked a bunch of questions about the perceptions of the voting process if they had any issues. We really care about that because we can take it back to LA County Registrar Recorder. They're changing the election process to voting centers and they want to see how do people feel? Do people know what's happening and do they perceive any benefits of what they're doing? So they're using it for all kinds of ways. It's all cool. It's all kinds of cool stuff that doesn't have anything to do with health but I think it's so awesome. So it's a new thing for me. But another big thing I do is still I'm involved with health. Part of the science communication journal club the whole point is to help experts, scientists anywhere know how to how would you talk to the public? How would you talk to a friend or somebody on Facebook about this thing? The more you're in grad school the less you remember about how to talk to people. I think you sort of lose it. You get really deep into your topic. You get it so well and you know it so well and then you find it difficult to explain it to someone else. So people need to be aware of it and just make sure they have the right skills. So we just covered the latest research on how do you communicate science? And my area is food and nutrition. So I do a lot of like food technology things. I wonder what your perspective is on this because we've now had probably a couple years now this is maybe the third year that we're really passionate about science communication. We're starting to think maybe there are certain people that need to just go really, really hard into just the research and then maybe they need a liaison to communicate the science. So someone that will hang out with them a lot, learn about it and then go and speak to the public more professionally about it because they just don't want to. It's not, it's not interesting to them. And so maybe that's true in some cases but then there's also this amazing amount of people which is probably the majority of people that are interested in speaking to the public about what their research is but then they're not able, there's not environments like kind of this like it's almost like an open mic night for comedy. And they do have stuff like that. There's stuff like that now. There's like astronomy on tap and. There's science cafes. Science cafes, laser talks another one of our friends, Piero runs those. So yeah, there's actually, they're starting to form. I know, I'm really excited about that but it's not that much yet. Not, yeah. And so I wanted to hear your perspective on that because you started talking about it the more that you focus on the research the less you really go and socialize which is kind of true. That's how I feel. It's kind of data or anything. I feel similarly about that. And so we actually have these conversations with scientists and this is a very, this is a very interesting point because more people feel the way that we're talking about it. But also they feel when the majority of them actually want a place for them to be able to teach but they just don't have that place. It also builds a very interesting muscle, the muscle of public speaking which is a completely different. You have to synthesize your complex nuance into relatable messages. Yeah. No, this is very, very important and I understand completely people, there's a lot of pressure to publish and to do your research and to teach. It's overwhelming to be a faculty member. So trying to figure out how to go, yeah, where are you gonna go? Let's say you're doing social media, how do you do social media? A lot of people are really overwhelmed by that. And how do you do it well instead of everyone suddenly turning back when you're in, you know, it gets political or emotional or whatnot. So a lot of people are just turned off but they're like, it's a lot of work. I don't get, I mean, it's not part of like what my university cares about right now and I just don't know how to do it well. So with a science communication journal club one would do is like, if you're already kind of interested but you're not sure where to start, okay, you can join our chat, listen to the podcast. Let's just see what's going on, what kind of tips we can give you. But yeah, we don't provide the space for it, obviously. And I was talking to a lot of people here, just reminding them, you're younger, you're just still doing it, you have some time. You need to start building those skills now because it does get harder and you do go deeper into your research and you get really comfortable with academic talk and writing and you have to write a certain way for peer review and you just forget how to say things simpler and that's not good, like who, you know. You're building a muscle over time. I like the whole science communication muscle. But yeah, you gotta do it, you gotta make a part of it. There's no incentive sometimes, you know, it just takes time and let's say university is like, well, okay, you just publish, you know, do your thing. I guess the big incentive, I think for us to potentially communicate to other people about the importance of it is that the more that you work that muscle, the better you get at synthesizing the nuance into relatable messages which will then inspire other people in the public to care about it. It's absolutely important, everybody recognizes it. It's just lack of time and it's difficult. But yes, people who could be hanging out with scientists or whatnot chatting with them and then explaining to someone else, that's another great opportunity. There are people who do that on Twitter. I see sometimes they summarize somebody else's writing to make it more simple and accessible. So that's kind of cool, yeah. And then, yeah, it's a whole thing. It's information synthesis. It's so fascinating. Knowledge synthesis is so interesting. Yeah, sometimes I'll find myself parsing 10 articles on the internet written by different people on a topic like Amazon's HQ2, we just did a video on that. So I would go synthesize 10 articles into something that was relatable for the public and multivariate, so it's not just binary, good or bad. And then I'd go and I'd do a video on it on our channel. So I think there's a whole growing field of knowledge synthesis that is very fascinating. Yeah, people like you then. Yeah, that's kind of cool and important. And I feel like it's almost you having to go to them and be like, you know, we can do this stuff. We can help you. And they're like, oh, I think that'd be cool. Yeah. That'd be really amazing. And you kind of have to be a little like polymathic and empathic. Those are two words that I've been using a lot over the last couple of years. You've got to know a lot about a lot of different things and you've got to have a deep sense to connection of emotional intelligence knowing how to properly engage people on a human heart level, but also on disseminating the ideas in relatable ways. Yes. And I have seen examples of people not knowing how to engage the public and turn them off. I have invited people to certain talks where they would feel really unwelcome because of someone, a scientist said something like, you don't really get this part, you know. So you have to also fix those things. That's so interesting that you bring that up. I think that that's one that we forget about a lot. It's the idea that we will purposely try and uplift our own ego to pat ourselves on the back. The yes and versus the no but conversation. So if someone's asking, if they're saying something wrong, you know, there's a difference between being like, nah, you don't know what you're just talking about versus saying that, oh, it's actually a little bit different or it's somewhat different or whatever you need to say to make that person understand that and then give them that love and that kindness and rather than disrespect and rudeness and superiority, that's a good point. There's a big thing in science communication that what makes sense doesn't necessarily mean it's true. It's not about telling facts because that's not changing people's minds. It's about meeting them on a different level, emotional level, in terms of what the worldview is, that seems to work. It's harder than just saying, well, here's ABC, so don't you get it? That doesn't seem to work. You need to relate to people. That's cool. I'm fascinated with questions. I just did a talk on the art of powerful questions in San Francisco and at TEDx over there. And there was a super interesting way of asking people questions, gaining perspective about their worldview, then meeting them with your knowledge that you're trying to communicate with them to a level where you're now combining their worldview or you're making their worldview aware of what knowledge you're teaching, which is kind of what you're saying, just spewing your own facts at them and hoping that they integrate it. So there's this big distinction between those two. That's very interesting. I'm gonna have to watch that video because that's a big thing in science communication. I'll find it anyway, but it's about listening, right? And we say it a lot in a journal club and people are like, okay, we know, we know, but what does that mean? And how are you to do that? Well, that's a certain skill, you know? I'm gonna have to watch the video. Yeah, I'll send it to you after this. And this is also, I'm happy we talked about science communication for so long because you and I just went and played some really interesting tennis about unpacking it. That was a good, it was a really strong segment. I haven't done a strong segment on science communication. Really? Wow, that was a really strong one. That's cool, that's cool. That was good. I wanna ask you about what you're gonna be teaching in January at Loyola Marama in Los Angeles. Yeah, actually, it's a very interesting course. It's in the political science department, which I'm not a political scientist, but it's preparing students for, is completely different. Preparing them for the job market, the world out there. How do you even talk to people? How do you, not just how to write your resume and cover letter, but how do you go out there? How do you make yourself likable, a person who people want to work with? And just preparing them, basically, giving them an internship. They're all doing an internship, reflecting on it, and just really trying to prepare them outside of school. One of the things, I mean, I did all these degrees, right? And every time I left, I felt like I was never prepared to leave and find what to do with all this knowledge I just gained in the real world. So that's kind of one of the points of the course. It's like an internship course. I also guest lecture, I'll keep guest lecturing in the psychology department. It's my favorite thing. And it's the evolutionary psychology class. Nice. Food stuff. And I think students really love it, seeing how we have evolved to have certain food preferences, that it's okay that we love sugar and fat and we hate bitter things, thus we don't like vegetables as much. It's like a little of that stuff. So, that's my fun one to teach. So that's food, it's like psychology in food science? Pretty much it's psychology of human food preference. Human preference. But it goes into all sorts of things, like the fact that, you know. It's like addictive to eat sugar versus like the- It's really rewarding. I wrote an article about food addiction. There's a lot of skeptics and proponents and they don't know how to mean something that is just the worst idea, it's stupid. Others are totally into it. So I don't have an answer if it's a thing. Food addiction is real. I mean- Food addiction is real. I would say so, but I don't have the data, but it makes sense to me. But it's also okay. It's like these things have been very rare and they were very rewarding and you would never die from them. Discipleization just got to like the ability to be addicted to food easily, yeah. The funny thing is that we seem to be adapting to these things as well. I mean we're adapted to milk and grains in many societies have developed certain things to make them digestible. It's amazing, like in 7,000 years, that's it. So there are some talks about like this kind of sucks, it's not the best diet, but we're actually gonna be able to adapt to it to not be all sick and super overweight. We'll see, I don't know. And okay, so there's the psychology food preference which is so cool. It's the coolest. I would really like to see some recorded sessions, please. Actually was recorded, I think. Okay, good, good, I wanna see these. And then also on the kind of like how to present yourself into the poly side of things. I'm interested, what are some of the principles that you recommend people to be likeable? Because I guess for me, one that comes to mind is when you first meet someone, you can kind of tell their vibe there or really quick. And the more loving and caring and gentle and present you are with that vibe between people, the more you'll get further in life in my opinion. And also I think there's another aspect to it which is even if that person is not on that vibe, they will come down from their like, let's say their arrogance or their anger or their frustration or whatever they're feeling. Whatever it is, probably insecurity in one way or another. So this is all like spoiler alerts because I haven't taught the class yet and we're still, I'm co-teaching it with Brian Gilbert. She's amazing and she's taught the class before. So we're gonna be thinking about what we want to add to it but it's even things like that. I was talking to the student the other day telling them about the importance of, everyone you talk to, just pay attention to them. Listen to them. It's all things like that make sense. And he was like, really? So just kind of pay attention to every person you talk to. I'm like, yeah, just like they're one and only right in front of you because that's what you're doing at the moment. And at some point when you're looking for a job for a lot of faculty positions, when they close doors and they discuss who they like, they're like, would you write a paper with them? Would you wanna be in the same room with them? So at some point we're all great and we have all the skills, that's all there. But do you wanna work with this person because that's really important. Yeah, exactly. So it's making sure you're that kind of person that's flexible, that can work with anyone, that affects others well. And like you say, he's even able to bring down other people from whatever they're dealing with. They're being relaxed and listening. It's things that make sense to all of us but I think they need to be told to people. They listen well. Yeah, so it's like the more grounded you are in being calm and being kind and loving, the more you can help others ground there even if they're not feeling it. Also it was cool how you said that, like the simple one of even giving someone the full perception, the full attention while they're speaking to you is so, so, so important. And it does feel like these have slowly moved us in a strange direction away from being able to give. And there's a difference I think when I sit down with someone and I say, is it okay with you if I take notes on what we're talking about? And they're like, oh, they're taking notes on one. That's very important. Or here I have notes about you, talking points that I want to address so it's there. And so I think there's making like a very transparent distinction of focus. But these in so many ways have taken us away from giving 100% attention, yeah. Yeah, and I'm gonna be teaching that. There's an amazing psychologist at LMU and she looks into first impressions basically. And it's all the stuff that should make sense for us to really, but it is things like, don't look down on your phone unless you make a disclaimer and the person knows why. They're just assuming that you're not paying attention. You know, it's all this face, eye contact, this, that, shake your hand, don't look at your phone. There's science behind it too. Yeah, yeah, if you give that, if you give like a solid hug to someone, you know, if you give a really loving like hug to someone, you can ease people, you can ground people. You know, if they don't wanna hug and you give a handshake, you know, give them, look them in the eyes and give them like a fairly firm handshake and express how interested you are in chatting with them. That's why you're there, you know. And it's, you know, it's not fake. You're not manipulating anyone. You're actually paying attention. So it's kind of just being aware of it. I want to, I like, no, I just like the class idea so much. You wanna take the class? Yeah, well, I wanna come down as a guest. Like I wanna put together like a guest, like a guest lecture. I'd love to come and do like a, you guys can, I'll send you an idea. And then if you want, and if you guys like it, then I can come down and do it. I'm sure you have a lot of interesting topics to discuss. So yeah, that'd be really cool to talk about. Thank you. I would be so honored to come and do that. And there, and I just, this has been so fascinating and multivariate. And you know, it's really interesting how many people here are just hyper multidisciplinary. Like you and even, you know, Jason and Elise that we've had on the show earlier today also been just so, so multidisciplinary. That seems to be a very central trait of anthropologists. Yeah, and it's becoming more and more popular. And in some ways it makes it a bit harder. It makes it harder on the job market because then you don't have a particular field you're really rooted in, but it is the right move. You know, one of the questions today was like, well, you guys will come here and you talk and then nothing happens. It's amazing how much we need to catch up with all the knowledge production that's happening. We need this event sometimes to just be like, what's everyone else doing? I have no idea. I'm not a robot, you know. I can't get all the information. So that's where we get in. We listen to everything and it affects our work and what we do next. And we know what someone else is not doing so we could do it and, you know, fill the gaps. But the point is, interdisciplinary is so important. When I was doing my research, right, I'm in anthropology, but I'm also pulling from nutrition and psychology. And I realize that these fields don't always talk to each other. When you look at their literature, it's like, ooh, you're saying this all makes sense but you're actually missing this. You should be also considering that from a different field. So yeah, all these things are complex. They need different lenses. So it's the right move and it's happening. Yeah. This has been so much fun. And I think, you know, I've learned a lot. Thank you for sitting down with us Maria. Thank you for inviting me. I'm glad we're into each other just like that. Yeah, exactly. And I think there's reasons. I like to live in a world of magic and possibility and joy. And there is a reason for meeting people in the universe, because it's fun to live that way sometimes. It is fun to live that way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So thanks everyone for tuning in. We greatly appreciate it. This has been a super fun episode. Give us your thoughts in the comments. We'd love to hear from you. Check out Maria's links in the bio, please go look at her work. Also, go and build the future. Go manifest your destiny into the world. This has been an awesome conversation and partnership with American Anthropological Association AAA. Much love everyone and we will see you soon. Thank you. Thanks. Wow. Rockin', rockin'. You are right. You are a professional and it did make it easier for me.