How To Teach Ten Million People About Nuclear Weapons
Abstract:
YouTube and TikTok are the new front line for science popularization. For the past decade, I have worked as a writer and scientific consultant for several YouTube channels, including 'In A Nutshell' by Kurzgesagt GmbH and 'PBS Space Time' by PBS Digital Studios, having contributed to about a hundred educational videos with combined view counts of a billion. Among the most popular topics are nuclear weapons issues – shortform videos offer an incredibly efficient way to inform millions of people and shape public opinion, but only if the content is sufficiently engaging and paced with a carefully chosen information density. In this talk, I will discuss some experiences ‘behind the scenes’ as a YouTuber, share some lessons learned, and describe some best practices for public scholarship online.
Bio:
Matt Caplan is an Associate Professor of Physics at ISU. He completed his BS at the University of Virginia, and his PhD from Indiana University in 2017 won the Dissertation Award in Nuclear Physics from the APS. Prior to joining ISU Dr. Caplan was a postdoctoral fellow at McGill. Among other honors, he is a Kavli Scholar of the KITP and a 2023 Cottrell Scholar. His research primarily studies the interiors of white dwarfs and neutron stars, and he is a co-investigator of the Simons Collaboration for Extreme Electrodynamics of Compact Sources. Dr. Caplan was an inaugural Fellow of the Physicists Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction, and at ISU he chairs Twelve Thousand Bombs, a distinguished seminar series on nuclear weapons.
