T rex wasn't male and female? - Kallie Moore (PBS Eons)

This time on the sofa, I'm joined by palaeobiologist and fossil librarian Kallie Moore. We chat about cool fossils, filming, cool fossils, scientifically accurate illustrations, cools fossils, the comments section and cool fossils.

Remember, it’s low-quality production, high-quality chat.

Sofa Science is also available in podcast form in all your favourite podcast places (give it a day or two after the video goes live for it to appear).

Questions and timecodes:
00:00 Intro
00:09 Who are you?
00:55 How did you get started?
01:35 What exactly is your title and what does it mean?
02:07 Were all the fossils already categorised when you arrived?
03:39 It must be crazy knowing there are things in your collection you don’t know are in your collection.
04:00 What has been your most surprising find?
06:00 You’ve gone from doing palaeontology to your dream job. Discuss.
06:25 How did you transition into Eons?
08:45 What was the hardest thing about talking directly into a camera?
11:10 How many scripts do you film a day?
12:00 Talk me through the formation of a video. Who comes up with the ideas?
13:25 Do you fact check just your own scripts or everyone’s?
14:00 What was it like going from making mistakes in academia with peer review versus online?
16:45 Do you film in these studios? We discuss fashion choices when filming against a green screen.
18:30 Who else is in the room with you when you’re filming?
19:12 In your day job you’ve done a lot of public science communication. What were the differences moving to science communication via video?
20:56 I guess someone else is doing the editing and finding stock footage?
23:05 You’re going to people with your day job to get these images. (I apparently didn’t ask any actual questions, just sentences)
24:24 Do you have final approval on the edit?
25:00 Science animation must be an incredibly hard task.
26:43 Do you then go on to publish these artistic reconstructions?
28:02 Shameless plug to researchers writing grants that need more in their impact section!
29:35 What is the funding system for Eons, and what is its relationship with PBS and Complexly?
31:10 What’s it been like putting your face on the internet?
32:12 Do you read the comments?
33:30 Do the comments differ much between you and your (male) cohosts?
35:20 Are the others in the office empathetic about the comments?
36:19 Were people commenting on your expertise as well as your looks?
37:20 Do those comments change your attitude towards making videos?
41:40 Who do you aim for in terms of your audience?
42:43 Do you know who your audience actually are?
43:45 I can’t believe people are still telling girls they can’t be palaeontologists!
45:28 How have your academic peers responded to you doing Eons?
46:00 Do you think you’d ever do presenting full time and stop being a fossil librarian?
48:36 What video are you proudest of?
49:15 Wait, there weren’t two sexes of T. rex?
51:50 Kallie gets excited about filming on location.
53:09 What is one thing you wish the audience knew about your or your channel that you don’t think they know?
54:59 Aaand we’re off again on a scientific tangent about tar pits. I mean, what did you expect when you put two scientists together!?

Kallie:

Me:

Donate:

Dr Sally Le Page is a British evolutionary biologist and science YouTuber. The aim of these videos is to bring science further into popular culture by making science videos that make you laugh, make you feel and make you think.

[ardapelle]

Omg Thankyou Sally and Kallie I love Eons! I hope the channel keeps growing and gets more women watching it!! 😪

[BigDaddy-fxnx]

Kallie Moore has a great personality and makes the presentation of the information much more entertaining and enjoyable.

[TheBreadthatcausedLesMis]

I would love to see another Sofa Science with Simon Clark, now that you have both finished your PhDs

[keepcalmlovedinosaurs]

We need more Kallie Moores to ask out!

[karleybioanthro]

You and Emily need to collaborate! It would be amazing!

[ragnkja]

Stage makeup is its own thing. I was in the band for two musicals in school, and while the actors in _The Jungle Book_ was so obviously animal-looking that the amount of makeup they wore didn't really register, I vividly remember seeing one of the main actresses in _Hair_ backstage, and her makeup was *really* over the top, so that it would be visible enough to the audience when she was on stage.

[alexb]

If you want some advice on how to get my partner to watch more science videos, make the dinosaurs get voted off an island or do a true crime documentary.

[MakeBrooklyn]

I suspect you have the Flintstones to thank for the saber toothed tiger name but forget that and saber tooth cat too ....Smilodon??? That is my new favorite word, bar none. As far as the gender disparity in interest in science and tech goes, I would wager that a lot of it is down to peoples cultural norms as children so that only girls with a certain strength of personality will go against the apparent tide and want to play with the "boy" toys that encourage them towards science and tech. I don't think it's a conscious parental choice so much as a sort of unconscious bias reinforced by the way different types of toys and children's products are marketed. I have to qualify all that by admitting that I am in fact not female but, I have raised one so I do have at least some insight, however limited it might be.

[edthethe]

Talking about make up anytime I’m on camera I have to have my eyebrows drawn in. I don’t care about my oily sheen I don’t care about my red blotchiness I don’t care that my eyes look too small but I have to have darker eyebrows. And it’s not like I don’t have eyebrows in real life but on camera it’s the one thing that makes me feel like it’s not my face