And don’t be discouraged if you cannot find the right channel or video immediately. For example, there are few dedicated biochemistry channels that are easy to discover, but you will find them in two ways.
A) When you look a little broader, you will find relevant inspiration from channels that normally talk about anything from zoology to chemistry or medicine.
B) Let the algorithm do some of the work for you.
Pay attention to your suggested feed and to Shorts as well, since both will surface things you would never have searched for yourself.
My tip here is to keep a second YouTube account just for this. That way, the algorithm only learns from your science-watching habits, and the suggestions stay sharp.
In the end, I love YouTube as a source of inspiration so much because you only need to start with one channel that talks about any scientific topic you enjoy, and you will slowly be drawn into the rabbit hole, finding new channels every other day.
Secondly, YouTube means videos, so every channel gives you new inspiration for tone, emotion, and framing that you can use to shape your own style.
Science News and Magazines
Nature sends out updates by email, which is an easy one to set up if you want to receive interesting pieces regularly.
However, do not stop there. Science magazines can be just as useful.
This is one of the few cases where I would truly advise you to read books in your mother tongue! Even if you are just taking a walk through the city or waiting at an airport, you can always quickly browse through them and see if there is something exciting for you.
In Germany, for example, Spektrum can give you great ideas.
Just browse through your larger local magazine shops and look through the tables of contents.
Textbooks Outside Your Own Field
This might sound strange, but it's actually a great source.
Let’s assume you studied biochemistry, so a medical textbook might be the right go-to.
This is one of the few cases where I would truly advise you to read literature in your mother tongue! Even if you are just taking a walk through the city or waiting at an airport, you can always quickly flip through it and see if there is something exciting for you.
Things that are completely standard knowledge for a medical student can be a fresh idea for you.
The idea is that biochemistry (just like mathematics, theoretical physics, or quantum chemistry) is often intellectually complex and hard to visualize, however, everybody can relate to medicine or industrial chemistry.
> And because you already have some background, you can often spot a connection that would make for great SciCom.
Sometimes, there are also curiosities that are obviously exciting and just so deep in the textbooks that no other science communicator would ever find them. Or did you know that certain antibiotics can change your skin color as a side effect?
Books
You would be surprised how many popular science books there are.
I didn't finish it yet but a book I can only recommend (to read and maybe post about?!)
Just go to a good bookshop and browse through the non-academic books. They are a great, low-effort source of inspiration. Advantageously, you can be fairly sure that few people have read them, even if they are called "bestsellers."
Of course, this doesn't mean you need to read books. You can listen to audiobooks on Audible or podcasts and the like on Spotify (or whichever platform you choose).
Current Research
Of course, your own work seems like the obvious place to start.
The advantage is that any aspect can become several different posts if you think about it through different lenses: myth, history, mechanism, application, controversy, personal story, analogy, or “what people get wrong.”
Especially if you publish in society journals, such as those of the IUBMB, you can be sure they'll be happy to help promote any science communication related to your work!
However, be careful here. You are close to your own topic, sometimes too close, and small nuances that excite you might not excite anyone else.
This is why I would rather ask people working in adjacent or completely different fields what has caught their attention recently.
If everybody stumbles on one genuinely interesting paper a year, you only need about twelve friends to have a new post every month.
The advantage here is that you can read about a new topic, and your fresh perspective prevents you from falling prey to the curse of knowledge.
Reviews and Old Papers
Reviews are useful because the interesting mechanisms and implications are already bundled together for you, which gives you an immediate hook.
Of course you can also use the main message of individual papers. However, another interesting approach is to trace their idea backward.
Ask what older paper first started that whole line of thinking, or whether there was an interesting history of progression involved.
But how do you find the right papers and reviews?
My tip: read the introductions of high-impact-factor papers that either cover a topic you are interested in or that have a fancy title. You can find those by looking at the Nature, Science, and Cell websites.
The Lab Itself
People love content that feels relatable.
Pay attention to what happens around you every day.
I thought, why not try something new? I posted this on a Saturday and used a format I hadn't tried before :D
This can be something funny, something everyone in a lab recognizes, or something genuinely annoying.
Alternatively, it can also be something that gives outsiders real insight into what research is actually like, since most people only know it from television.
What’s Happening Right Now
Topics like AI in research, paper fabrication, or paying peer reviewers are usually emotionally charged, so they are worth covering whenever they come up.
Your approach here is to either analyze what kind of post does well and essentially use the same setup, or to go for an overlooked aspect or your personal opinion.
However, I would suggest starting with the first idea so you make sure you understand what about a topic is really moving people.
Everyday Things
This is one of my favorite categories!
Simply look around and try to explain something ordinary, and you will often find that you actually cannot.
Here, it's all about asking the right questions. There are plenty of blogs explaining why there's a plastic ball in Guinness beer or why food turns brown.
Whether it is how a stove works or why a puddle of oil reflects light in all colors.
Does a cold drink make you colder, or does your body just have to work to warm it back up? Do cold feet actually make you sick? Why does hair turn gray?
Questions like these often open up an entire niche, like the biochemistry of cooking or the biological differences between men and women.
Start with What Works
It is not just the topic that decides whether your post will land - it is just as much the framing and tone.
Therefore, don’t shy away from taking something that already exists and adding your own angle to it.
Always pay attention to what performs well. Sometimes, you can even turn clickbait into something genuinely valuable. And sometimes what looks like cheap clickbait is actually just smart packaging!
Similarly, if a video gets something wrong or leaves out an important part of the story, that gap is actually a gift, since you now have a foundation plus something genuinely new to add.
Of note, you do not need to worry that the topic is “already covered.” Even a video with ten million views still leaves roughly 900 million people who have not yet seen it.
Bonus: A Framing Trick
In your studies, you learn a lot of interesting things, but it can feel difficult to find a hook that takes people from where they are. It seems too advanced, intellectual, or complex to communicate. Use the following frameworks to talk about something scientific while catching people with something relatable:
Simple Belief vs. Complex Reality
Old Model vs. New Model
Lab Reality vs. Public Imagination
Individual Case vs. General Rule
Everyday Outcome vs. Mechanism For example: Why does dipping a dry piece of bread in water and microwaving it make it soft?
What Was vs. What Is I.e., Take a current development and put it next to the history behind it. What is something we cannot imagine doing without anymore, and how did people manage before it existed? This works for findings, applications, or simply the way science used to be done.
That’s it.
Keep your eyes and ears open everywhere, not just in journals, whether that is a conversation with a friend, a show you are watching, or a family member who happens to run a company in a completely different industry.
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