The PBS Space Time Experiment: Suprising Insights on Public Science Engagement

Traditional efforts to engage the public with science have led to a growing science fandom, and yet these broad positive feelings don't seem to correlate with improving scientific literacy. It seems our approach to science communication need an overhaul, however methods employed by traditional media are heavily constrained by institutional wisdom and the profit motive. But new forms of media such as YouTube are allowing the next generation of science communicators to test old wisdom and experiment with new methods.

PBS Space Time has been at the forefront of this experiment, having spent the last five years communicating unusually complex topics in physics and astronomy to a lay audience. In this talk we share some of the unintuitive insights that we and other YouTubers have gained, and discuss how these can be implemented by anyone to help close the science communication gap.