Joe on our set in his NASA gear Today’s post is from our rocker/scientist Joe DeGeorge.

First of all, this is an amazing project. I think that getting to know scientists as human beings and hearing them talk like regular people brings out the passion behind their scientific work. Growing up, I was always struck by the characters of fictitious scientists like Doc Brown from “Back to the Future,” “Beakman,” and some of the characters from Isaac Asimov’s books. These eccentric but completely logical characters were, subconsciously, a big part of my initial gravitation toward science. But I didn’t know very much about the personal lives of any real scientists. Here at SLoS you get to know real scientists, and I think that is valuable, especially if you’re a young person who is just beginning to become fascinated with science.

I was shocked when SLoS contacted me because it sounded like they were interviewing a bunch of accomplished scientists with cool hobbies. I am by no means an accomplished scientist, and sometimes it feels like science is more like my hobby since I spend a bunch of money to study it. And more people know me from my band about Harry Potter than from my scientific work. Still, I told my professor about the interview, and he said it seemed worthwhile to take a day off from the lab. Within weeks, I was on a train headed to NYC for the interview.

Joe rocks our set. (Photo by Laura Willcox) We were pretty excited when Joe DeGeorge came to our set. We’d met some other scientists who thought they were rock stars. But Joe really is one. In his SLoS videos, Joe talks about some similarities between rocking with his band, Harry and the Potters, and doing his science. In one of the pieces that got left on the cutting room floor, he also spoke about one of the differences:

“The sort of satisfaction I get out of music is that there’s almost this instant gratification of making something—when you play a show, people are there, and clapping for you, and excited for you. Whereas in science, if I’m just at my lab, mixing some stuff up, maybe I make a new compound—but nobody’s there, cheering for me. There aren’t a hundred people standing outside my lab, going ‘Yeah! Do it again! One more!’ I mean that would be great if that happened in science. But it’s hard to imagine a giant laboratory on stage with some guy mixing stuff together and not knowing what’s going to happen. Most of the time, people would just be like, ‘Oh—that didn’t work….’”

He’s been to Hogwarts. He’s been to NASA. And he’s been to the lab. A lot.

So what do you want to ask him?

Ask Joe DeGeorge your questions in the comments section of this post. And he’ll stop by to answer them.

Ina shares her SLoS memories with you. Once again, Ina Vandebroek goes where no scientist has gone before… at least not on our site. Today she becomes our first scientist to write a SLoS blog post. Enjoy her wit and wisdom!

When I first got the email from the NOVA scienceNOW team about “The Secret Life of Scientists,” I had just turned down a request from another production team asking me to comment on some weird behavior of animals after eating fermented fruits. Being a scientist, talking to the press wasn’t exactly at the center of my comfort zone.

Lately, though, something’s been nagging at me. The beneficiary of scientific research is the general public—you, me and everyone we know—or at least that’s the idea. Contemporary ethnobotany, for example, has been broadly described as a science that can “offer answers to many challenges that today’s society is confronted with.” Yet, more often than not, contemporary science seems disconnected from society. We scientists go to our scientific congresses, write our publications, and preach to a choir of believing disciples, our scientific peers. In the meantime, funding for scientific research is dwindling, and I believe that is—at least in part—because we don’t regularly engage with the public about what we’re doing and why it’s so important. As simple as it sounds, if people feel disconnected from science, then they won’t give money to support it. So, maybe it’s time that scientists descend from their ivory science towers and explore the outer limits of their comfort zones.

How many of them are there? Well, by now, you know that Ina Vandebroek’s one of them—the scientists who dance, that is. And so is neuroscientist Erich Jarvis. Check out this NOVA scienceNOW profile of Erich to see how he brings art to his science.