How We Got Here - Ep 1 Transcript

Rachel Lupien: Hi everyone. I'm Dr. Rachel Lupien

Steph Spera: and I'm Dr. Stephanie Spera.

Rachel Lupien: Our climate is in crisis and we all want to help, but we might not know how.

Steph Spera: We're talking to people who have figured out how to use their talents to combat climate change in the hopes that their journey might inspire you.

Rachel Lupien: This is how we got here: because the earth needs professional help.

Steph Spera: Hi, Rachel.

Rachel Lupien: Hey Steph, how are you? I'm good. Do you wanna? Do you want to start a podcast?

Steph Spera: I think, yeah, I think we should try. There aren't enough podcasts already. Let's do this.

Rachel Lupien: I think it's a good time. Yeah. Yeah.

Steph Spera: Should we tell people who we are and why we're starting a podcast?

I guess

Rachel Lupien: I think that's a good idea.

So this is my friend, Steph. She has a PhD in environmental science and focuses a lot of her work on using satellite data to understand how changes in landscapes affect climate and how changes in climate affect landscape. Both ways. She's gotten funding from a variety of sources, like the National Park Service, Second Century Stewardship Initiative, and NASA. Easier to say.

She's published some papers. She's given some talks and her work has appeared in outlets like, wow, the Washington Post and NPR's Science Friday. Oh my God. She alleges, she peaked when Popular Science -when Popular Science described her research on fall foliage and climate change, quote, "basic," in print. Very impressive.

Steph Spera: Thanks, Rachel. I didn't realize what a mouthful that would be when we decided to do this exercise.

But Rachel-

Rachel Lupien: -that wasn't, that wasn't written out. That was-

Steph Spera: No, I know -thank you for memorizing. I'm so glad I forced you to memorize my bio.

Um, Rachel, I'm going to introduce you.

 Rachel has a PhD in earth sciences. And is an expert on the past climate change in Africa. She's written numerous papers, given talks, and won funding for this research on the relationship between environmental change and early human evolution.

Rachel also enjoys eating Mexican food. I'm going to say Taco Bell because people should know that,

Rachel Lupien: -Okay, that's named the brand-,

Steph Spera: -riding her bike.

Rachel Lupien: They [Taco Bell] can sponsor us maybe down the road.

Steph Spera: My God. She's a very good cyclist. She also enjoys and is phenomenal at coming up with fun acronyms for her NSF proposals.

Um, so yeah, Rachel and I are scientists and we care about the earth and we care about climate. So we're starting a podcast about it.

Rachel Lupien: Yeah, we are. So, so let's bring it back. How did we get here?

Steph Spera: Yeah, that's a great question. So why are we starting a podcast at a time where you're like, "Do we need another podcast?" Uh, yeah, last semester it was- I am an assistant professor- I guess I should've made you memorize that about me. And I was teaching online, as we all were, during this pandemic.

Trying to figure out fun ways to spice up a 9:00 AM online- only class where it was just me talking into the ether of black boxes on Zoom. And one of the things- I got all of my friends- who are amazing scientists and climate activists and lawyers -to do was come and talk to my students about how they got to where they were job- wise and how they were helping to fight climate change.

And my students just loved it. And I just realized that students -undergraduates, high school students -don't often get to see how people got the jobs that they got and the potentially nonlinear path that got them there and all the ways that they could use their talents in these fields that they might not know exist.

And Rachel is one of those wonderful friends to join and she was great. And so, yeah, she did receive course credit for that. This is an oversaturated field, but let's add to that, but with positivity and ways that we can all make change. ,

Rachel Lupien: So the aim of this podcast ,then, is to highlight really the different lines of work, some diverse voices and all the people who are working to combat climate change with our own unique set of talents and passions.

 Um, we just want to, we want to humanize the work and find out how people got to their positions. So it's, if it's something that, that you, as the listener might be interested in, and maybe that could inspire you to, to apply some of the skills you have or to seek out new new lines of, um, of work.

Steph Spera: Yeah. The intergovernmental panel on climate change, or the IPCC just released a pretty dire report. And I think a lot of us are just asking, how can we help? How can we contribute to the climate crisis? I mean, I could complain about how plastic straws do nothing forever. Right. But I think we all have unique talents and unique skill sets and unique voices that we can use in very specific ways that we might all not know about and actually help fight climate change

Rachel Lupien: Also, Steph- well, both of us- are in academia and we really, we need to, we need to get out there. We need to really see what else is out there for really our own sake. Steph is Steph in particular,

Steph Spera: I'm always looking for a way out, always.

Rachel Lupien: She's she's looking to bring some guests in to tell us what she could be doing instead.

Steph Spera: Yeah. So this is also a very selfishly motivated podcast,

Rachel Lupien: The LinkedInof podcasts.,

Steph Spera: Which I would argue years ago, I said is LinkedIn the new Facebook. And I still don't understand it, but I see job posts. And I see like engagement and I'm like, what is happening here?

So that's how we got here in terms of podcasts, how we got here in terms of our friendship. We'll touch upon real quick. I guess Rachel and I we're friends. We're friends. Yeah. If that's not clear, we both went to grad school together. We're both in the same department and graduate school. We both have an affinity for a year- no, it was twice a year- a semi-annual event. There was this, there was a, there was a fall in spring. Yeah. It was like the Victoria's Secret Sale. Is that, does that still happen?

Rachel Lupien: I don't know.

Steph Spera: I feel like that was abig deal.

Rachel Lupien: And I feel like if it were, it would be coming up though.

Steph Spera: It's true.

Rachel Lupien: What we're talking about, that was grad prom.

Steph Spera: It was actually called graduate student formal.

Rachel Lupien: I don't care.

Steph Spera: Okay. Uh, basically no one should go to this, but Rachel and I really pushed it upon everybody every year.

Rachel Lupien: Yeah. It was the social event of the season, apparently.

Steph Spera: And I guess this is, some part of the foundation of our friendship, I would say.

Rachel Lupien: Anywho.

Steph Spera: Um, but yeah, I think what we're going to do is try and give you a little preview of what we want to do with our actual guests and talk about how we each got to the spaces we're in and what we do. I want to know what people- we're going to ask people what they do, but like, what do they actually do? But like, what do you actually actually do if I come to your office?

Yeah. Or do you even work in an office? I want to know what your first job was Rachel, did you start out where you a little 11- year- old saying I'm going to study mud that's 250 million years old. That's too old. I think.

Rachel Lupien: Yeah, that's too old. But, we're going to talk this episode we're just going do some little, little brief interview, but then in future episodes, we're going to bring in other experts, um, working in different fields, all working to combat the climate crisis.

So all sort of working towards this one huge goal and doing what they can, um, to really help our earth with their unique skillset and talents, and we really hope it will inspire you the listener to realize what you value and what you're good at and how you can apply your unique talents, because we're all in this together.

Steph Spera: Yeah. I'm not getting on that spaceship with Bezos.

Rachel Lupien: It takes a village. Yeah. It takes just so many different types of people, like one climate scientist or one, you know, activist can't do everything. So we need everyone to, um, to do their part.

Yeah.

Steph Spera: Rachel. I really want to know how you got to be in the position that you're in and tell us your position. What are you actually doing right now when you were not podcasting late after your actual job?

Rachel Lupien: This is actually all. This is all I do. Thank you for asking. Um, yeah, so I'm a postdoctoral research scientists. Postdoc, we call it in the biz.

 I work at the Lamont-Doherty earth observatory. It's part of Columbia university, um, out of Manhattan in the Palisades. Palisades New York. And I do research there.

Steph Spera: What do you do? If I were at a bar and I just saw you and I was making conversation, and this is the before- time, because it's COVID ,so I amsitting outside, maybe, what do you do?

Rachel Lupien: Yeah. Um, yeah, so I, um, I'm a climate scientist. I am an earth scientist, so I, , I do research for a living.

Steph Spera: So if I am pressing on you even more, if I'm really not allow you to leave his conversation at the bar.

Rachel Lupien: Like I'm ready to go get another drink.

 I, I am interested in the climate variability, um, over the past, like 25 million years, all across Africa.

And I'm relating that to the evolution of our early human ancestors. So I'm trying to disentangle or tease out these cycles, um, these natural climate variability cycles.

Steph Spera: So you're working on super long timescales into the past, trying to understand how climate has changed and how human evolution has changed and how those sort of changed together or different.

Rachel Lupien: Yeah, exactly. I'll buy you drink?

Steph Spera: Yes, that's all I wanted. Okay. But then what do you actually actually do if you?

If I went to Lamont, would I find you in a lab? Would I find you sitting at your computer? Like you would find me all day. Would I find you on a lake in Indonesia? I wouldn't find you at Lamont at all?.

Rachel Lupien: Perhaps. Um, yeah, so I, I really likemy job. So I get to do a whole mixture of different things. I'm spending a lot of time on my computer. Um, but before I get the data that I need to analyze, I'm going on a raft in a small lake in Indonesia or Africa and taking a sediment core and maybe, maybe even sort of dipping my feet into the water and then maybe being told that there was a crocodile in that water after the fact. And then I'm taking that core or core samples back to the lab. I'm in basically in an organic chemistry lab. We're separating out these different compounds. I'm also mentoring undergraduates and other students and research assistants in that lab to help me do my lab work.

And then, I'm yeah, I'm sitting on my computer and analyzing data. But also in Python and MATLAB, um, and then I'm writing up my results and I'm presenting them at conferences and I'm writing papers and I'm talking to people about it.

Steph Spera: That is a loss in one day. I mean, no, but that's great. It's nice that you have a lot of variation in your days. Um, can you specifically tell me how your work contributes to combat in the climate?

Rachel Lupien: Yeah. So we often think of paleo climate, so that's the study of past climate change, um, as characterizing natural climate cycles. So it's a good way to sort of see what the climate should be like if humans weren't contributing to the climate crisis. So if we weren't pumping a bunch of CO2 into the atmosphere and warming our climate, which is obviously having downstream effects on all sorts of all sorts of aspects in our climate system. Yeah. So I'm reconstructing natural climate variability to sort of understand the bench.

And then another aspect of that is going back in time to intervals that did have really high carbon dioxide levels or other greenhouse gas levels and understanding what the climate system was doing at that time. So that we might have a better idea of, of what's going to happen in the next hundred or 200 years.

Steph Spera: You were looking back like 225 million years. It was a long time, 250 million years. I will never get this right.

Rachel Lupien: 25.

Steph Spera: 25 million. And so you're, you can ask yourself, 'Hey, what was the past climate like,' to say, 'Hey, what should this climate be like?' And also, 'Hey, when was it really, really hot? Because what is that going to look like for us when, it is inevitably really, really hot..

Rachel Lupien: Yeah, exactly. And so contributing, I think by basically just doing basic science or academic science, to contribute to the public's understanding of, the issue at hand. Yeah.

Steph Spera: What was your first job when you were 15, 16?

Were you like I'm going to work in a geochemistry lab in, at Columbia and then go home to my pool.

Rachel Lupien: Okay. Okay. I did not have a pool. That's the most important part? No, I had no idea. I had no idea that being a scientist was a job. I had no idea that going to do a PhD in the sciences could be a paid opportunity.

, I really didn't know. , I liked math and science. , I was very much labeled as a math kid. You know how that happens?

Steph Spera: Was your first job, a math job where you, where you counting things-

Rachel Lupien: With my abacus. I'm very old.

Steph Spera: Rachel is 140.

Rachel Lupien: No, I mean, I just, you know, I was a field hockey camp counselor.

Um, yeah, I mean, I was just doing my own thing. I was a field hockey camp counselor for a couple summers.

Steph Spera: You got field hockey. How do you go from field hockey then when you went to college, you did play field hockey in college.

Rachel Lupien: Oh, I mean, it's my, oh, I forgot to tell you Steph. This is very important. Oh, I just got a letter in the mail from my high school saying that my freshman year field hockey team was just inducted into the hall of fame. At my school that nobody cares about.

Steph Spera: So I'm understanding this correctly

Rachel Lupien: You're talking to a hall of fame

Steph Spera: Your hall of fame level hockey playing self goes to college and says, I need to continue to play field hockey. Are you , I am sports medicine. Let's lean into field hockey.

Rachel Lupien: No, I really liked chemistry in high school. So I went to college and had an advisor in the chemistry department, but was not a declared chemistry major at any point.

I definitely went in undecided, which I think is becoming more common. Yeah, so I took a, I took a environmental science class. I think I wanted to help in any way. And whether that be sort of an abstract way from, you know, chipping away at the science or a more direct way.

So I took environmental science and it was a small college, so it was listed in the geology department. We didn't have like an environmental science department and, I just kept taking geology classes after that. I really liked it.

We got to- The Day After Tomorrow, we wrote a paper on the day after tomorrow, the movie about what it got right and what it got wrong. I mean, honestly, from a teaching perspective, I remembered that assignment over everything in college. I think that's pretty powerful

Steph Spera: And honestly, I think scientists are very afraid that whole Atlantic conveyor belt, that's a tipping point. We don't want to reach, will there be tornadoes in LA? Probably not.

Rachel Lupien: They had the timeframe a little off, but like -

Steph Spera: There's some facts in there.

Rachel Lupien: I live near New York now, and I was pretty frozen over. I mean, that could happen.

Steph Spera: Okay. So you're a field hockey coach. "I'm a math and science kid. I'm not doing my hall of fame self is playing field hockey in college, but I'm not doing sports medicine, thinking chemistry accidentally take environmental studies , but which is in a geology department? . And you're like, I'm outside. I love it. Yeah.

Rachel Lupien: I took the, like the normal intro geology, some may say rocks for jocks. Although at my college, it was, it was very hard course. Um, always harder than people think, because I know. Anyway, we don't have to get into that, but yeah, they give you like a mineral tray. Do you remember those?

 So I walked around campus all proud with my tray of minerals that I got to identify for homework. Everybody look at this cohort and look at this cool. And I just kept taking geology classes.

I mean, I, I liked the chemistry part of it. I actually did like petrology when I took it. And we got to go on field trips. We were really tight knit group of students and the professors were cool and we had a cool museum with minerals and fossils and it was just like, it was some very nice department to be in.

And I went abroad my junior spring and when I got back my senior fall, it was like everyone had decided to take the GRE. And I was like, wait, what's the GRE. We were all in a group chat without you. It was like, they're in cahoots. So they are taking the GRE to there's just the entrance entrance exam to graduate school, although phasing it out, phasing it out, which is great.

Yeah, but so I was like, well, I'm not ready to go to grad school. And so then I just took a chill pill and I did my senior thesis, which we had to do, which was a requirement and I. I did it with my favorite professor. You know, it was like, she asked me if I wanted to write a thesis with her and it felt very important.

And I said, yes. And then I found out that studying any aspect in a geology department was not, you know, it didn't mean that it was my favorite research topic. So I ended up writing a thesis that it was not super into science wise. And so I, was not ready to go to grad school. I didn't know what I wanted to study and I didn't even know if I want to go to grad school.

So I was applying to like an environmental consulting firms, sort of the other thing people do from a geology department. For, you know, a couple of years maybe. And I had graduated college with a geology degree, and I moved home. I didn't have a job when I graduated and then I started sending emails to professors at universities in New York specifically, because I wanted to live with my sister in New York.

Steph Spera: I also want to live with your sister in New York.

Rachel Lupien: She loves you so much. And I did, I ended up getting a research assistantship, which is a thing it's a paid 40 hour a week position that you can get if, if a professor has the need and has the funding. Very normal email to send, which nobody told me, of course, except when I, when I got that advice, I started doing it and it worked.

And I was a research assistant for two years, actually, where I work now, totally unrelated, different building, different lab group, different research questions. But those two years really helped me sort of focus in on what I wanted to.

Steph Spera: So you go field hockey hall of famer. We've got to start there.

Rachel Lupien: Well, I mean, that was a recent development.

Steph Spera: But you were at the time you just didn't know that's true.

Rachel Lupien: That's true.

Steph Spera: Then, you go undecided to college, you accidentally take an environmental studies class, which I will contend everyone should take a course in something they are not sure about. You become a geology major, you do a senior thesis. You don't love your senior thesis. I also never loved my senior thesis. And then realized everyone was taking the GRE jump on board, but aren't ready for grad school unemployed immediately after college, which is a thing people do not hear enough.

Rachel Lupien: Yeah. For, I mean, fortunate enough to be able to just move home. Yes. Um, but it was stressful, you know, you don't know when that unemployment's going to end. I mean, I was applying. 10 jobs a day. It was crazy.

Steph Spera: But then you reached out, you sent emails to people asking if they want it. If they needed a research assistant, you got in that way.

Rachel Lupien: And they all think they all responded kindly, by the way, they all responded very nicely and some had funding and some didn't.

Steph Spera: And you got hired at Columbia, realized what you liked and then went to graduate school. And now you're here.

Rachel Lupien: Yeah. So I, in this research assistantship, I was studying like oceanography -past ocean circulation change with some isotopes in the lab.

And yeah, I was talking to, you know, I was friends with grad students at the time cause I went to a small liberal arts college. So I didn't really understand what grad school looked like and what it was and what it was for. So a lot of my friends during that time were grad students and they really helped me sort of narrow it down.

And one of the questions they asked were like, well, what kind of field work might you want to do? And I was like, "oh God, I don't want to be on a boat.."

Steph Spera: I mean, yes.

Rachel Lupien: A lot of these oceanography positions require, or maybe not require, but it includes maybe two months at a time or research vessel.

Steph Spera: The wonderful opportunity for you to live on a boat, which is my literal hell.

Rachel Lupien: Yeah. And so I was like, well, I really liked this research. You know, I'm studying like, uh, climate change, past climate change. Paleoclimatology. ButI don't want to go on a boat. So I went to grad school and I knew that. And so I, I started talking to people to professors. I was reaching out to professors to talk about a PhD and, I ended up going to grad school with somebody that studies lakes 'cause, you can go out on a boat in a lake or a raft in a lake, but you're sleeping on land that night. That's basically how I narrowed it down and it worked out.

I really like what I study now.

Steph Spera: But I think that's huge: you know yourself well enough to know, "I will not thrive living two months on a boat, the same 40 people working twelve hour shifts.

Rachel Lupien: Yeah, I was just talking to somebody about this and they were like, no, they're really fun.

Steph Spera: Listen, I never want to be in the middle of an ocean with people. I don't know, not be able to see lands. I am full. I, I studied terrestrial things. Full support on the no boat life. I think it's good for you to know yourself well enough to be like, no, I don't mind going out on a boat for a day to get some data and then coming back to yeah.

Rachel Lupien: Truthfully, like I haven't done a ton of field work. A lot of the sediment cores or the mud samples are stored at repositories in Minnesota and in Texas and in Germany. And so I've actually, I've traveled to those well, you can also request them. You can just put in a sample request and they send you sediment samples, and there's a ton of these cores out there. So meaning there's so much science left to be done. And climate cycles and climate change left to be left, to be discovered that are just, you know, sitting around.

Steph Spera: So for all of you, people who love geochemistry, but don't like boats, this is very honestly -

Rachel Lupien: A very niche group of people-

Steph Spera: - but still there's a job for you and that's great. So you went from hall-of-famerfield hockey player to successful post-doc at the Lamont Institute studying past climates. It's amazing.

Can I ask you what you think you're really good at?

Rachel Lupien: Oh, I can just like, tell you what I'm good at?

Steph Spera: I think it's good to know what we're good at that, because that helps us figure out our skill set and where we might apply those skills and what we need to work on.

Rachel Lupien: Well, so I was saying before, like I sort of grew up, I was always a slow reader.

My reading comprehension was never great. I was sort of labeled as a math kid. I was really good at math. You're not only talking to a hall-of-famer but I was a mathlete as well.

Steph Spera: Was your mathlete team in the hall of fame too?,

Rachel Lupien: Middle school,mathlete. No, but I went to state. Um, Maryland. So that's pretty huge.

Steph Spera: I memorized a bio that did not include these two things. I'm very upset about it.

Rachel Lupien: You know? The best thing I've ever heard about mathletes or the mathletes are just athletes with an I.

Steph Spera: Truly don't know how to respond to that.

Rachel Lupien: So, yeah, so okay, my weakness - oh, are you going to ask about me? I'll leave my weakness for another job interview.

Steph Spera: Isyour weakness, your strength? Where are we going? Right. Give me a both.

Rachel Lupien: My weakness is that I try too hard, right? No. So yeah, I've always been good at like math. Although frankly, I don't use a lot of math now, but, that kind of like logic problem solving, that kind of thing.

I think also one of my strengths and I think this might be one of your strengths too, is. Making graphs like visualizing data.

Yes. Yeah. So I think I'm, I'm good at figuring out how to communicate what my data mean and making the plots look nice so that people, other people want to look at them -

Steph Spera: -and your data is actually very, not intuitive to interpret so that's a huge. I think very important. It's not just like here's time and here's temperature. It's -

Rachel Lupien: - It's a lot of squiggly lines, but yeah, no. Yeah. That is to say, I thought that being a scientist would be only logic, math, but a lot, a lot of what I do is writing.

And so I wish that I had known that earlier on. And so I could have worked on that probably in college, but also in graduate school, just worked more on expressing my, my findings and thoughts clearly in the written word.

Steph Spera: You'd say, you would say you're really good at, and I feel like, and I think you were alluding to this earlier, Rachel, where you get sort of boxed in. And I don't know if this is the case now, because neither of us were in middle school, but you get boxed into these like math kid, English kid, and you sort of lean into the thing that someone tells you you're good at. Right.

Rachel Lupien: I mean, that's like our whole lives.

Steph Spera: Why wouldn't you? Right. But I think so you're saying your weakness, maybe one of your bigger weaknesses is writing, but I've seen you over the past decade work, really hard on writing. And I think I, it is something that you can work on and I have gotten better at it, but yeah, totally.

Can I ask you one last question?

Rachel Lupien: Sure.

Steph Spera: If there were no climate crisis, what would you be doing?

Rachel Lupien: Hall of Famer field hockey. Um, you know, that's a funny question and I totally, I appreciate that question and I might, oh, this is, I might be a, paleoclimatologist still, I don't know. I, I really like understanding the earth and even if there were no climate crisis, I, I think that I would still have that curiosity for the, these, these earth science geological questions.

But I do remember back like starting geology and I, I wanted to do more climate science because it had this sort of air of helping other people or doing something good in the world. And so if it didn't exist, I might very well be doing a different type of science.

Steph Spera: You like the, you liked the fact that your work is also applied. I get that. I fully get that. That's awesome.

Rachel Lupien: So, Steph. Doctor, professor. Stephanie Spera professor at the University of Richmond.

Steph Spera: Oh, I'm an assistant professor.

Rachel Lupien: What do you do?

Steph Spera: Yeah. So I'm an assistant professor.

Rachel Lupien: Assistant to the professor?

Steph Spera: No I'm actually the assistant regional manager. No, I'm just, I'm an assistant professor of geography, the environment .And all assistant professor means- and there's no reason for anyone outside of academia to know the tiers of assistant, associate, full- the extreme hierarchy, I think is that I don't have tenure.

I'm going to say yet aspirationally one day, maybe. Um, so that's my official title. Is that what you asked me?

Rachel Lupien: So what do you do? What's your, yeah-

Steph Spera: So I tell people that I teach because that's an easy thing to tell people. I think I'm a professor. Um, and also I'm an environmental scientist. I think if someone just bumped into me and just asked me what I do, I'd say environmental scientist, even though it's the broadest catch all.

Rachel Lupien: I mean, I would, I would maybe describe myself as an earth scientist and that has the environment in it. So maybe I should, I don't feel. I'm a scientist.

Steph Spera: I'd never say that, which is so funny. Cause I never, and I don't know why, but I don't want people to think I'm like a chemist biologist, right?

Rachel Lupien: You're like, wait, no, I do not know how the COVID vaccine was developed. Please do not ask me that.

Steph Spera: I have done a lot of research on.

Rachel Lupien: Please listeners, find that information elsewhere. Thank you.

Steph Spera: We're both vaccinated through.

Rachel Lupien: Okay. So, so what's your research on?

Steph Spera: I think about how changes in land use, like deforestation- putting soy plants where trees were affects climate. I actually think about how modifications to the landscape affect climate, and then also how climate affects landscapes we love. So I have, I do, most of my work is in South America, the Brazilian Cerrado in the Southwestern, Amazon. But I do have this small project that I love so much, and I want it to be my main project: it's how does fall foliage- in Acadia National Park- how is it being affected by climate change. Is the timing of peak fall foliage changing.

We think it is. And we're trying to just disentangle, like, is it temperature? Is it precipitation? Is it both? Um, so those are the two. Those are research things that I focus, what I'm interested in. Any question that has to do with landscapes and climate and people. Current climate. I don't go to 25 million years.

Rachel Lupien: Well, I was going to say, I mean, the, the real reason for this podcast, everyone, is to help Steph and me figure out how we can collaborate on a research project and write a funding application with a really fun title. That's I'll do that part.

Steph Spera: By the end of this podcast, I will have left academia and we will also be funded todo something that somehow spans both of our fields.

Rachel Lupien: Okay. So on a day-to-day basis, if I were to come to the University of Richmond, I came to your big fancy office, like in the show, The Chair, with the big chair.

Steph Spera: Can I tell you about the couch in my office real quick? I got pregnant and this was right before COVID ever was even on the radar. First trimester. No one tells you this -you're so goddamn tired. And so I asked, can I have an old couch sitting in the basement? Six months after my son was born, they said, "We found your couch."

I cannot even tell you how uncomfortable, uncomfortable, uncomfortable this couch is so uncomfortable that I can't even say it. And like the, the seats, you know how people like a deep seat? Anyway, that's my big fancy office. Anyone can come, but if you find me in my office,

Rachel Lupien: What are you actually actually doing?

Steph Spera: I'm usually in a meeting. Uh, I might be teaching. You might not actually find me. I might be in the classroom. I might be helping students with their research projects. I might be serving on one of those committees I'm on.

Rachel Lupien: Were you about to say, "god damn committees?"

Steph Spera: But can I say my university has a committee on committees- it's a committee on the effectiveness of committees. And every time we talk about it, my brain. The fact that this exists anywhere, anywhere, everyone should watch the chair to see the special form of Hell.

So day to day, I'm very rarely doing the research I want to do, but I'm often in meetings. A lot of my research is applied so I'm in meetings with people who are interested in the results. A lot of meetings, a lot of teaching, a lot of working with undergraduates, which I do love, a lot of work with college students on helping them with their research, advising them. I'm usually in and around one building more often than not.

Rachel Lupien: Yeah. So, so it wouldn't be too hard to find, you.

 So how does your work, not just your research, but maybe your job, um, also contribute to combating the climate crisis that we are in? .

Steph Spera: I think about the climate crisis all the time. I think the research questions I'm trying to solve or trying to ensure that the landscapes that we love, we can preserve them or understand the things that are happening to them too, so we can make better decisions about them. That's one of the ways that I think about why my research is why, well, that's one of the things that motivates my research, right?

I'm trying to figure out how can we live sustainably on this earth. Currently, if we understand how the decisions we make affect climate change, now, climate change affects the decisions we make. And then another thing that I do is maybe one out of the 40 kids I teach every semester is motivated to think about climate change in a different way.

Rachel Lupien: But more than that.

Steph Spera: Maybe two.

Rachel Lupien: I mean, that's one out of 20 right there. I'm a mathlete. .

Steph Spera: She's good. You can see those state skills right here, everybody.

Rachel Lupien: So you're, you're, you're spreading these ideas. So it's not just you contributing through your research, it's really you getting more and more people involved and maybe that person will then teach somebody else.

Steph Spera: Yeah. I mean, I do have students tell me, "I went and told somebody about this and they didn't care as much, but I was very riled up," because I do teach classes on this climate change and how the earth works. And I think that makes people care about the place where they live.

Rachel Lupien: Yeah. Okay. So take me back. We're going back. To the early 2000s, right. What did- and the listeners are absolutely dying to know -what did your haircut look like and why?

Steph Spera: I don't know, there were bangs involved and I have two cowlicks and you should do, oh, I mean, like I have this widow's peak, right?

Rachel has never known me in a bangs world and that's okay. But in high school I had bang s and it was a mistake. Um, early 2000s that, wait, why do you need to know my haircut?

Rachel Lupien: Oh, sorry. I just wanted to paint the picture. Well, what were you doing? What were you doing at that time? Were you like, I'm going to work at the University of Richmond and two out of 40 students... What was your first job? What were you up to?

Steph Spera: You know what, I actually definitely said to my chemistry high school teacher, Sheila Bonacci, who I love and still, we still converse to this day. She's just turned 80. I told her I would never live south of the Mason Dixon.

And here I am, but what was I doing? No, my first job, me and my bangs worked at a golf pro shop. So I was on the golf team in high school. I was not a Hall of Famer- I think I was seventh of eight on a team.

I definitely played in States once, but I think it's because someone better than me got mono. Okay. So yeah, so my coach in high school, he actually was the pro at the public country club or the public course country club. The public course was not a country club, let me tell you.

 I mean, the only reason I played golf was to get out of running the mile. But yeah, so I worked at the pro shop really dealing with really often old, inebriated, white men- -

Rachel Lupien: -that just got you ready ,you prepped for academia.

Steph Spera: So I guess full circle as a 16 year old, I was actually preparing for my life. I have never thought about this that was my first job.

And then I went to college. Like you, Rachel, actually our stories are more similar than I think I ever realized, I went to college fully undecided, but I swear to God, I got a pamphlet once I was like, do you like the environment? And I was like, who doesn't? And I checked that box and that put me into this program, this four year formative program, which was run by a guy named Ray Arvidson, who I think he's a really big deal in the Mars community.

I would just tell people he drove the Mars rovers and I'm pretty sure people at NASA actually drove the mars rover. I don't know. But basically what happened with this program where I just checked, I literally checked a box on a pamphlet, I said, "I want to be outside." I was put in the same program with 12 kids and we all had to take earth and the environment, as a course- I never would have taken that. I went to an all girls Catholic high school, we had science, but barely.

Rachel Lupien: So you ticked the box.

Steph Spera: I checked the box.

Rachel Lupien: That was your fate.

Steph Spera: And that box said, do you want to go on a lot of free trips? All you have to do is become a geology major. And I was like, I love free trips. Don't love, rocks, hated petrology, but I love a free trip to Hawaii. Let's do it. I love a free trip to the Southwest. Absolutely. So I literally sort of just fell into.

I got on a train by accident because I liked the side things- we're stopping at cool places. I don't know, like I got on this geology train, but it wasn't on purpose. I accidentally majored in geology because I liked all the free trips.

Rachel Lupien: Yeah, I, yeah. I mean, honestly, like still we're both in academia. We, we both travel quite a bit. I mean, COVID has obviously changed that a little, but we've traveled to fieldwork, to conferences, to classes like short courses all over and it's pretty cool.

Steph Spera: You've been really cool places. I'm just picturing you in Sweden right now. Is it Sweden? Switzerland, Sweden, Switzerland. You've got a short course. Norway. You know what everybody, I'm a geography professor.

Rachel Lupien: Oh yeah, you're like, "That's to the left of Sweden." Yeah, or is it to the right? I mean, east to west.

Steph Spera: No in map talk we say, "left to right." We also call it "map talk.

I mean, honestly how I got here, right? Like I essentially just kept doing the things that I knew. I accidentally majored in geology. I mean, not really, but I wanted the free trips and I already taken the intro course. And I was like, here I am. What else am I going to? I'm not going to read a book a week. Who are we kidding?

Um, do I wish I'd taken any English class in college? A little bit.

Rachel Lupien: And this is why we're going to have guests on the show. So we can talk to people who like reading books every week.

Steph Spera: And who have a different skillset than we do. Right. Cause we both sort of were in this academic Mindset. No. And then when I graduated, I guess I didn't feel that everyone's taking the GRE, but I also didn't know what I wanted to do. I honestly was just like, I am very good at school. I could be employed at a very low wage and continue to be good at school for the next five years. I like what I'm doing- I mean, I hated my senior thesis.

You hated your senior thesis project. I hated my senior thesis project. It was how does light reflect off sand grains in New Mexico. But I learned how to analyze satellite data as an undergraduate.

So then when I went to grad school, I looked for something where I could use this skill set that I'd gained as an undergraduate and just applyit to a question I thought mattered, which involves people.

But yeah, I went straight from college to graduate school and I always tell people, never do that because I am. tired. I am so tired and I think everyone's brain needs a break. And I think you were completely and perfectly- like you made the best decision ever to not go to take time off.

Rachel Lupien: Yeah. I also, I was very happy with my, with my two year work experience for a lot of reasons. Mainly just figuring out what I even wanted to research because I really, really don't recommend going to do a PhD in a topic that you don't really care about.

Steph Spera: Let me tell you, by the end, you're crying or I'm crying.

Rachel Lupien: I had a pretty good grad school experience. We can, we can save that maybe for another episode about what to expect in grad school, but I had actually had a really positive experience, but I don't think that's quite the norm.

Steph Spera: I did until my fifth year, but that was my own, I was just wanting it to be done at that.

Rachel Lupien: Yeah. Yeah. And it's five years as a long time, six years is a long time. A lot of people do it in longer. Anyway. Sorry. Getting off topic. Okay. So you went from bangs to college where you ticked a box and you are now all of a sudden blink of an eye, a professor in environmental science.

Steph Spera: I shit you not, that is what this path was like, and that is why I'm so excited to hear from people who are not me.

Rachel Lupien: What are you good at? What makes you good at your job?

Steph Spera: I mean, you talked about our ability to make a good figure, which we do share. I do think, um, I think I'm actually really good at taking science jargony pieces and communicating them to non-science audience. Did I just do it correctly?

Rachel Lupien: You just made you just meant the word jargon into jargony pieces, which is ironic, but that's okay.

Steph Spera: Sorry. So I take these esoteric words... No, I think I'm good at taking complicated topics and explaining them because I have to do it all the time. And I actually think I am a good writer.

Rachel Lupien: Steph just had a piece come out explaining basically combining those two things: explaining what the IPPCSis and found. And it got picked up all over the world.

Steph Spera: It got a lot of hits, more hits than I thought it would.

Rachel Lupien: Yeah. Link in bio. We don't have a bio yet, but we'll maybe put it there.

So if there were no climate crisis, what do you think you would be doing?

Steph Spera: That's a great question that I should've thought about the answer to while I was asking you, but I was listening to your answer.

 I might be teaching still. I do love teaching, which is why I am I'm at a school that emphasizes teaching.

I had a separate life where I was on the college newspaper. I loved it though. I was arts and entertainment editor, and I don't know if I could, somehow I still love pop culture. I try and bring it into the classroom all the time. I showed an Instagram reel, this is not pop culture, but I showed a real on an inversion on how that works like a, like a weather inversion. And I'm like, who is making this content? And for whom is this just for?

 I like communicating. I'd probably try and use my writing skills in a way that would also, again, sort of like you still be applied, feel like I'm doing something that helps people in a way.

I think that's, I think maybe that's a commonality, right?

Well that's how we got here.

Rachel Lupien: That's how we got here.

Steph Spera: And hopefully you're here with us still. And I guess we're just going to wrap up by telling you what you can expect. Less of us talking for sure.

Rachel Lupien: Yeah, definitely. You're welcome ahead in advance. Um, yeah. So as we said, we're going to have guests that range a whole suite of different jobs with different backgrounds, different skillsets.

Yeah. Um, and we can promise that we won't get too deep in the nitty gritty into our science. We tried not to today. We won't be too much of downers about the climate crisis, you know, we're calling it that, but-,

Steph Spera: - we're really trying to tap into your climate anxiety though. I think our whole goal is to show the opposite, right. To show what we could all do and how we can each uniquely lend our talents to help solve what is a climate crisis. But I think our goal is to be more, "we can solve it" and less "it's too big, we can't do anything about it." We can't all have that mindset that, yeah.

Um, what should we wrap with where you can find our pets online?

Rachel Lupien: Oh, absolutely so my cat, Tina, who is now 10 and a half years old, she I've been tagging pictures of her on Instagram for years, with #TinaGetAnInstagram, so you can check that out.

But on her 10th birthday, I finally, you know, hundreds and hundreds of people wanted me to do that. They were begging me.

She definitely less than a hundred followers for Tina, but we got her an Instagram, @TinaGotAnInsta because Instagram was too long for a handle. Um, and you can follow her there and she's a cutie.

Steph Spera: Also, the content is amazing.

Rachel Lupien: Um, maybe that's what I'd be doing- being a cat photographer .

Steph Spera: You can also follow my two pets. I want to highlight that I did not create- my husband drunkenly created an Instagram for our cat. Everyone thought I did it, which I thought was unfair. And I, I don't even remember when, but then we got a dog and the cat is named Kenneth and the dog is named Edgar. So their Instagram is @Kenneth.and.Edgar and then because I had a baby that Instagram hasn't been updated in the past six months. Who knows?

Rachel Lupien: Uh, they're there though.

Steph Spera: But yeah. Thanks for listening.

Rachel Lupien: Yeah. Thanks for joining us for our very first episode. We'll have more information of where you can find us and suggestions for people to talk to you. Questions you might have.