The Future of the Lefteris Asks

What will 2024 bring?

Hello, my good human! I am Lefteris and this is my newsletter from the world of science and academia. You can subscribe by pressing this sexy little button below

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Hey everyone. I hope you're doing well.

I am also doing well and I have some news/thoughts I'd like to share with you. This might be a bit long but bear with me. There will be a TL;DR at the end. 

In December 2019 I started my SciComm journey. I launched my first podcast, which surpassed my expectations both in terms of reception and the production process. I  loved the process of learning something new from the people who did the research. I got to meet and talk with people who work in Switzerland, India, The Philippines, Australia, the UK, Norway, the US and more. Additionally, I got to learn things on a plethora of topics ranging from engineering, entomology, neuroscience, astronomy, linguistics, cultural and social geographies of music and so much more. 

I consider myself extremely lucky and privileged to have met and discussed science with these extremely talented and hard-working people. It takes me around 4 hours to edit a podcast episode plus an average of one hour to do the actual interview so for 32 episodes I've spent around 160 hours on this (math checks out). 

When I stopped the podcasts it was a temporary thing. I had just changed jobs at the time so I needed to focus more on that, then I was moving countries so I had to physically and mentally prepare for that, then another new job...  Life got in the way.  I got to a point where I wanted to create more podcasts but I wanted them to serve a bigger purpose. Maybe create a short season that deals with a specific topic or a specific theme and create a series of 4-5-6 episodes that tell a more complete story. And the plan is to still do this. 

In the meantime, in parallel with the podcast, in September 2020 I launched a newsletter. To be perfectly honest, I did it for not very good reasons at the time.

I was reading about ways to make your podcast reach more people and how podcasters should create a mailing list of their fans etc. So I figured out it would be a good idea to start one. However, as I started researching the articles, finding news from all over the world, and writing the newsletters... I found out that I really really enjoy this process as well. So I had a new goal for the newsletter. The primary goal of this wouldn't be to get as much reach as possible, but the primary goal would be for the newsletter to work as a portfolio for the future jobs I will be applying for. I figured out that since I enjoy this science communication thing so much I might as well find ways to support my effort in doing this as a prospective career. 

So since September 2020, I started sending weekly newsletters with science news from around the world. And that was every week with the exception of small breaks I was taking for a maximum of 2 or 3 weeks a year. Even though I was working, travelling or anything else. Sometimes I would wake up at 4 or 5 am on a Wednesday to write the newsletter that I needed to send on that day.  It's a lot of work which as I've said I enjoyed doing but in doing it now for three years I am beginning to question myself.  What am I getting out of this? 

Well, If my primary goal was to create a portfolio I believe 3 years worth of (almost) weekly newsletters will do the trick. As a matter of fact, part of the reason I got my job as a researcher at Welfare Matters was because of the newsletters I wrote. I keep writing the newsletter every week because I am interested in so many more things other than Animal Welfare so I do get excited to learn and write about things happening around the world. 

However, lately, I've been feeling less of a creative fulfilment writing the newsletter. Not because I don't think the things I've been writing are not important but the exact opposite. I feel spending 3-4-5 hours of research to write a newsletter every week isn't enough. I don't feel like I'm doing enough service to the people doing the research, I don't feel like I am offering something special to you, the audience that reads me every week, and I don't feel like I'm going deep enough in topics that I feel like I could spend days researching. 

Let's take the last newsletter I wrote as an example. I discussed how people from the University of Cape Town created a glossary of terms for the engineering department that translates terms into the native language of IsiXhosa which is a language many people in South Africa talk. After writing this I had more questions. How hard was it to translate these terms? How many people worked on this and what was the process? What has been the experience of students before this glossary was available? How does it feel to attend University in a language that is different from your native one but at the same time live in a society where you use your native language daily? How accurately do those translated terms convey the meaning? and so much more. 

Of course, due to the time pressure of "having" to share the newsletter by Wednesday morning, I have to create a story and then jump to the next one for the following week's newsletter.  I feel through this process I do a disservice to the people doing the work and sometimes I don't offer any new information that isn't already in the press release. I do hope I'm offering a new perspective but I've reached a point when I feel that I want to offer so much more to you and frankly... myself. 

So where am I going with this? I believe that to satisfy my own curiosity and creative needs I need to stop the weekly newsletters. However, because I still have the habit of reading science news, I will make Substack Notes and LinkedIn my home for sharing science news from around the world. I'll still keep the focus on Universities of the Global South because I believe that they don't get the opportunities they deserve in terms of coverage.  

I will restructure the newsletter and I will try to present more complete stories that will always focus on science and academia. I hope that this will be more than just text and will include audio and images that will make the stories more engaging and hopefully more interesting to more people. At the same time, this exercise will challenge me to be better at writing, audio editing, data visualization and even hopefully video editing. 

I understand that this might underwhelm some of you since you won't be getting regular updates. However, I do hope to give Patreons early drafts, and "behind the scenes" information on the story I'm working on next. I will understand if some of you wish to unsubscribe. If you don't I really really appreciate you and thank you from the bottom of my heart.

So that's what I have to write at the moment. Let me know if you have any thoughts or how this update makes you feel. From my part, I want to wish you Happy Holidays and I hope that 2024 will be healthy, wonderful and creative for you and those you love.

Take care and be kind. <3

Love,
Lefteris

TL;DR: Newsletter is changing format. Will be more irregular with longer more complete stories. I will make Substack Notes and LinkedIn the home of science news updates since I will be reading them anyhow.